Anton's Odyssey Read online

  “The security system flagged this footage as a possible fatal industrial accident,” Allen explained, “which is a bit of an understatement. This is clearly homicide.”

  “Ah man!” Hammond cried. “I think I’m going to be sick. No wonder my dad wouldn’t talk about what he saw last night.”

  “Is that your father there?” asked Allen, pointing at the big vid.

  On the monitor, we saw a middle aged man in an orange jump suit. Like Hammond he was thick in the arms and shoulders, only with a large pot belly.

  “Yeah that’s him,” Hammond said.

  Hammond’s father picked up the comlink hand piece. He pressed the bright blue button, signaling an emergency.

  “Yes, I know you’re eating,” Hammond’s father said, obviously having gotten through to our sergeant at arms, “but this is an emergency!” Audio was not available from Jim’s side of the conversation, but we could easily figure out what was going on from what Hammond’s father had to say.

  “I’m in the engine room.” Hammond’s father said. “The foreman’s just been killed! He was pushed into an open kinetic energy reservoir.” There was a pause. “Name’s Joinksmokker. He’s an ordinary starman… kind of short, filthy jumpsuit, missing his cap, long greasy hair, growing out a beard…. I think he’s tripping on fenes pretty bad!” There was another pause as Jim Boldergat asked another question. “Trust me, I know he’s dead.” Hammond’s father said. “No I can’t take a pulse…. No, he’s been ripped to pieces…. He left, ran out, fled the engine room. I think he’s in the main passageway.”

  On cue, Allen brought up footage from the main passageway. We saw Joinksmokker fleeing the engine room, his face contorting and grimacing unnaturally. Allen sped up the video. About three minutes later, based on the counter in the lower right hand corner of the vid screen, our hero Jim Boldergat entered the scene in hot pursuit. Even at fast forward, his pace was at best a slow trot. Periodically he would have to stop and lean on the walls to catch his breath.

  Allen switched to another camera view, this one pointed from the top of a T-junction in the passageways. “Joinksmokker must have heard Boldergat wheezing in the distance behind him,” Allen explained. “As you see, when he rounds the corner, he stops running and hugs the wall so he can spring an ambush.”

  Even with the reduced gravity to ease his movement, Boldergat must not have been getting enough oxygen to his brain. When he reached the T-junction, he turned left instead of right, presenting his back to Joinksmokker. With a running start, Joinksmokker leaped into the air and planted both his feet into the center of Boldergat’s spine. As the big man goes down mouthing “oomph” his blubber oscillated, creating a shockwave so strong the buttons of his tactical vest popped out and the buckle on his belt snapped loose.

  Slow moving, Boldergat got up to find his belt and gear dangling from Joinksmokker’s left hand and his taser clutched in Joinksmokker’s right. Boldergat raised his hands in surrender, but before he can utter a word, Joinksmokker fired. A bright blue-white arc of electricity branched outward from the end of the taser and converged on Boldergat’s upturned fingers. The big man crumpled and convulsed. His blubber gyrated like the belly of beached sea lion. Even though our Sergeant at Arms was out of the fight, Joinksmokker fired the taser over and over again until the battery ran out of juice and the weapon stopped working.

  “Why is his groin area smoking?” Ellen observed astutely.

  “My guess is that when he got shocked, he either wet his pants or his pubes caught fire,” Allen replied.

  “Gad!” Hammond shrieked, clutching the front of his pants, empathetically.

  As Joinksmokker walked away, he dropped the taser and drew Boldergat’s side arm from the holster on the utility belt.

  “Each bolt fired was at least one-hundred thousand volts,” Allen commented, “but fortunately human subcutaneous fat stores don’t conduct electricity well, so Boldergat’s vital organs were pretty well insulated and protected.”

  Allen fast forwarded the video and told us to observe the counter. After about fifteen minutes the immobile lump of sea mammal blubber gradually came back to life. Supporting himself on the walls, Boldergat managed to get back on his feet and limped out of view.

  “In this next footage,” Allen said, “we see Boldergat is back to his normal self again. I mean he’s not moving quickly or anything, but he’s not dragging like he was. It’s been less than thirty minutes, so my guess is that sometime in the interim he must have dosed himself with an emergency tactical stim unit.”

  “Where is this?” Hammond asked.

  “Weapons locker,” Allen replied.

  Boldergat handed out pistols and ammunition to six other men. Three wore orange jumpsuits. Two were still dressed in bedclothes; one in a dressing gown, and another in bright purple pajamas. One guy actually showed up wearing nothing but boxers. At first I thought he was wearing a sweater, but on closer inspection I realized that he was just very hairy.

  “Who are those other guys?” Ellen asked.

  “Armed response team, volunteers with firearms training,” Allen replied. “Boldergat must have paged them and activated an emergency tactical squad.”

  “My dad used to be on armed response,” Hammond said, “but he eventually let his pistol qualification lapse. Said it wasn’t worth the trouble after he went ten voyages without getting called up a single time. You have to pay for your own training and certification tests, and you only get paid if they activate you. I suppose these guys would get to make overtime.”

  Allen nodded.

  “Is that Bob Blunt?” I asked, recognizing our steward as one of the guys in an orange jumpsuit.

  “You know the steward?” Allen inquired.

  “Yes, he’s a total jackass,” I said. “Wouldn’t even let us have an extra chair in our living unit.”

  “I think ‘jackass’ pretty much hits the nail on the head as we shall see.” Allen foreshadowed.

  Bob pointed to a long gun stashed in the corner and asked Boldergat, “Can we take the rail gun?”

  “No, don’t be stupid!” Boldergat replied, tossing the guy in boxers a tactical vest so he’d be a little less naked.

  “I think that’s the smartest thing our sergeant at arms ever said,” Allen commented.

  “Lock and load but keep your safeties on and your fingers off the trigger,” Boldergat ordered his team.

  “Okay look what happens here!” Allen said. The men filed out to hunt down Joinksmokker.

  “Boldergat didn’t secure the weapon’s locker! He left the door wide open!” Hammond said.

  “Yes, exactly, and see what happens five minutes later.” Allen sped up the video, and when the counter registered the moment he sought, slowed the video back down to normal playback speed. Bob Blunt walked back into view, picked up the rail gun, and scurried back to follow the rest of the team.

  “There’s no way that guy’s qualified to shoot a rail gun.” Hammond observed.

  “No, only Boldergat would be. It’s a class three weapon. Boldergat qualified as part of his training with Black Star International, but the others would probably only have access to basic civilian pistol and carbine training through the National Firearms Association.”

  “Why is that rifle even on the ship?” Ellen asked.

  “It’s not a rifle,” Allen corrected. “It just looks like one. A rail gun uses an electromagnetic field to accelerate a projectile rather than an explosive charge.”

  Ellen rolled her eyes. “You boys and your guns,” she sighed. “Very well then, why is the rail gun even on the ship?”

  “It’s required because of the cargo we are transporting.” Allen reversed the video and paused on the image of the rail gun propped up in the corner. “If you notice, there’s no trigger guard, and the trigger itself runs the full length of the pistol grip. It’s an arrangement specific to weapons meant to be fired in the vacuum of space. The shooter would be wearing the bulky gloves of a pressure suit.”


  “Yes that’s all very interesting,” Ellen said, somewhat irritated, “but it still doesn’t really answer my question.”

  “The weapon would provide a tactical advantage were the ship confronted with pirates wanting to loot cargo.” Allen clarified. “The idea is that the shooter walks out of the airlock wearing a pressurized suit and magnetic boots. He would fire on the pirates when they attempt to board. Keep in mind armor plating is very expensive and used almost exclusively by the Space Marines. A blast from a rail gun would easily penetrate the hull from an unarmored ship and cause explosive decompression of the vessel.”

  “Why not use a phased plasma rifle in the forty watt range?” I had heard so much about the weapon recently that I couldn’t help but ask.

  Allen smiled. He clearly approved of my interest in gun lore. “A phased plasma rifle in the forty watt range would be equally if not more effective than a rail gun, but much more expensive. My guess is that Heavy Industries General LLC wanted to pay as little as possible to comply with the Department of Corrections’ minimum standards.”

  “Department of Corrections?” Ellen asked, confused. Evidently Allen never told her we were transporting thousands of cryogens.

  To avoid answering Ellen’s query, Allen quickly brought up some more surveillance footage. “So it looks like the squad split up to look for Joinksmokker. These two were the first to make contact.” The man in the bright purple pajamas was paired with a buddy in an orange jumpsuit. As they rounded the corner of a minor passageway, a large dent suddenly appeared in the wall just a few centimeters away from the pajama man’s head.

  “See check this out,” Allen said enthusiastically, reversing the footage and playing it back frame by frame. “This is so cool! Joinksmokker fired the pistol he stole from Boldergat.” He pointed at the screen. “See this tiny grey blur here?”

  “Yeah,” we said.

  “That’s a forty gram osmium alloy low penetrating round. Watch what happens when it strikes the wall.”

  Pajama man’s face stayed nearly motionless, his eyelids quivering ever so slightly as he began a blink. The grey cone-like frustum impacted the wall and deformed into a disc as flat as a pancake. The flattened structure continued forward, pushing the thick metal wall inward about ten centimeters before coming to a stop. Pajama man had not yet reached the midpoint of his blink.

  “That’s so cool!” Cotton squeaked.

  “Forty gram round!” Hammond said. “That would have taken pajama man’s head off.”

  “Would have,” Allen agreed, “but the soft alloy in the bullet could never cause significant structural damage to the outer hull of a ship.”

  Allen reverted the footage back to its normal speed. Pajama man panicked and shrieked. The man in the orange jump suit pulled his teammate around the corner and used his com unit to alert the rest of the squad to Joinksmokker’s position. The next image was a cutaway of Joinksmokker fleeing the scene of the shooting.

  “So this is the moment of truth,” Allen said bringing up more footage. “Here we see Joinksmokker open the door to a starboard airlock. Pajama man and his teammate must have chased him to the periphery of the ship. See how the door automatically shuts behind him. That’s an engineering control safety device. Okay, so he takes a step forward, and look what happens.” In the opposite wall, another door opened and Boldergat and the man in the dressing gown stepped in, pistols at the ready. Boldergat screamed, “Drop the weapon Joinksmokker, or I swear we will kill you!”

  “Hey the voice over is much better now.” Hammond observed.

  “Yes, when I corrected the lip sync program for pitch and emotion, I started from the end and worked backward. This is very near the end.” Allen said ominously.

  Joinksmokker spun around to flee from Boldergat, but pajama man and his buddy entered the airlock from the door Joinksmokker had just used. Two more men, the hairy guy in boxer shorts and another in a jump suit, appeared right under the camera from a third door.

  “So Joinksmokker’s trapped,” Allen commented, “and based on the lucid look on his face, it seems like he’s finally coming down off the fenes.”

  Again, Boldergat barked, “Drop the pistol!” Only this time Joinksmokker complied, placing the gun on the floor in front of him and raising his hands. The guy in boxer shorts rushed forward and snatched the pistol up off the floor.

  “It’s over!” Ellen said with misguided relief. “They’ve caught him!”

  “One would think,” Allen said. “This next part happens so fast the only way to see it is if I slow the feed rate down to quarter speed.

  In the doorway, under the camera, Bob Blunt appeared and shouldered the rail gun. With a look of horror, Boldergat’s tongue touched the back of his teeth and his lips rounded as he mouthed the word “no!” A bright muzzle flash, and Joinksmokker’s body split apart at the seams as the rail gun bullet struck him near the navel. Joinksmokker’s intestines spewed out behind him, and his head and torso became detached from his waist. Cotton shrieked, and Ellen covered her eyes with her hands. Sickened, Hammond vomited all over Allen’s floor.

  “The high velocity armor-piercing tungsten carbide round punched a hole in the airlock wall.” Allen commented. “The hole caused the airlock to depressurize. Had the breech in the hull occurred elsewhere in the ship, and not in an airlock, many of us would have died.”

  The small hole was apparent in the wall facing the camera. Joinksmokker’s entrails squeezed through the orifice as if it were the mouth of a gluttonous man slurping spaghetti. Cracks appeared adjacent to the hole, and suddenly the edges of the crack buckled and bent outward. The two halves of Joinksmokker’s body were vented into space, and I could tell from the really confused look on his face that Harvey was somehow still alive. The guy in boxers was next. He managed to grab the cracked edge of the wall briefly. The explosive wind from rapidly expanding gases caused his boxers to fly off his legs; his dong dangled in the breeze. In an instant, he lost his grip and was gone. Boldergat followed. Feet first, his girth plugged the hole in the airlock briefly. His pained face turned bright red as if he were sitting on the toilet trying to pass a stubborn bowel movement, but with a pop, he was gone. The entire far wall broke off into space, which vented the remaining contents of the airlock including pajama man, our jackass steward, the four other members of the armed response team, and the camera. As the camera spun around, I got a quick look at our ship and the gaping hole in its starboard side before the image finally went blank.

  Chapter 7: The Ho-Bot

  When Cotton snored, he made soft slurping noises that sort of faded into the background as white noise. The sounds never keep me up at night. Mother’s snores, on the other hand, were completely different. As a cacophony of high pitched strider and baritone wheezes emitted from the far reaches of her throat, I could match the soundtrack to nothing more peaceful than the mental imagine of our federal government detonating neutrino bombs to char a compound of piety-freaks and their hostages. In the past I tried anything to make her stop; bumping her bed, rolling her over, even pinching her nose shut and trying to shake her awake, but when she made those awful noises, it meant she was so deep into a quadrazapam-induced slumber, that there was no waking her. In this state Dr. Zanders could cut out her spleen, and she probably wouldn’t even stir.

  I lay awake on my bunk as my mother’s snores caused the thin walls of our living unit to resonate and rattle. Hours later I had an epiphany, several of them actually. Somehow sleep deprivation inspired a devious scheme that could guarantee me restful sleep every night for the rest of the voyage. It was time to put Cotton’s inadvertent discovery to good use.

  I plugged my pocket module into the side of our vid screen, and after an agonizingly long search, managed to locate Command Central. I logged in as Captain Shatlino. As his password, I tried “bourbon” which the computer flagged as invalid. Two more chances, I thought. It probably wouldn’t be “Thurgood,” so let’s try “MacDougal.” I hit “enter,” and I was
in.

  I checked the captain’s log, and found that the names of Harvey Joinksmokker, Ricardo Meddlenates, Bob Blunt, James Boldergat, and the other five members of the armed response team had been added en block to the “deceased list” below Edward Sanstet. In flashing red letters, a line at the top of the screen read, “Crew ten hands below compliment, new hires authorized.” I looked over the different possible commands. Under “crew,” I located “fill position” and the sub-heading “promote internally.” Using my executive power as the ship’s captain, I promoted one Melinda D. Dullwid to the position of steward and rated her ordinary starman. I upgraded her pay and benefits to correspond to her new rank and assigned new living quarters. Sadly, the number of hands below compliment decreased from ten to nine, indicating my mother’s former position was very much redundant. I was very tempted to list Cotton and myself as beneficiaries for Bob Blunt’s worker’s compensation death benefits, but thought better of it and logged off. Mother had finally stopped snoring, so I returned to my bunk and fell asleep.

  Before class the next morning, I decided to stop by the steward’s office to see if my escapades on Command Central the previous night had paid off. Cotton tagged along as usual. A young officer sat at Bob’s former desk. She had reddish-brown hair and freckles and didn’t seem much older than myself. The insignia on her epaulets indicated the lowest rank of the junior officers. She didn’t seem to notice us, preoccupied instead with punching commands into a computer, sighing, and scratching her head. She seemed frustrated, frazzled even, as if she had just been assigned a task she had no idea how to execute. I had to clear my throat to get her attention.