Running Blind
by Kelli Halliburton

Space is a cruel, unforgiving bitch, and so am I. At least, when it comes to my ship. There are a lot of things that can go wrong in space, and if some idiot decides not to take those things seriously, I have a problem with that. No one jeopardizes the safety of my cargo or my crew.

"Tell me one good reason why I shouldn't just throw you out that airlock," I asked my second mate, gesturing at the airlock hatch behind me. "You can't possibly be so stupid as to think you could get away with this," I said.

"Captain, I..." he stammered, "I wasn't trying to get away with anything! Honest! I thought the online diagnostics were accurate." He had been trying to take shortcuts with his maintenance duties, and it had finally caught up with him.

"And how are the online diagnostics supposed to be accurate if the sensors themselves are inaccurate? There's a reason why the regs specify regular manual inspection."

That's what I get for taking on a new second mate at the last minute. My last one had been required to stay behind, thanks to MedServ; they said she didn't have her vax records up to date. Bureaucracies. I don't ship out with crew that might get sick if I can help it, but I have the antibody scans done privately. Sheryl was up to date on everything six months ago. She even got the latest vax series done at a MedServ facility. So of course, they lost the records of it. And MedServ won't accept the results of a private antibody scan, though for some reason they have no problem accepting vax records from the same source.

This new second mate was the only one available for a long run like Procyon to Tau Ceti on eight standard hours' notice, and that should have been my tipoff. But I hate missing departure windows, and a late delivery in this case meant less pay, so I took him on. Now I was beginning to regret that decision.

I said, "Let me make it simple for you. If we don't do regular maintenance inspections on the strain sensors, they could become inaccurate. If the strain sensors on the docking points are inaccurate, we have no way of knowing if the stresses are even or not. If the stresses are not even, the cargo unit may not be properly secured. If it's not properly secured, it could break loose and tear the ship apart. If the ship comes apart, we will most likely die. Dying is bad. Now do you understand why this is important?"

"I'm sorry, Captain. I really wasn't trying to shirk my duties. I just don't have any experience with these systems. I really thought the diagnostics were all that really needed to be checked," my hapless second mate offered.

"The diagnostics are great for finding a problem between the strain sensors and the cargo unit monitoring system. But they're no good for finding problems that are outside their scope. How long have you been a second mate, Sumner?" I asked. I had only done a rudimentary check on him before leaving Procyon, checking for criminal records and outstanding warrants, and of course medical, but I had nothing other than the Space Guild's word that he was a qualified Two. I must be slipping, I thought.

"This is my first trip as a second mate, Captain," he said. Damn. I should have checked his Guild records. A green second mate. Wonderful.

"What have you done before then?" I asked. I hoped he had at least some experience on a cargo ship. With the Guild's bizarre qualification criteria, lots of other jobs can count for a promotion to second mate status. Even higher ranks on smaller ships can go down in rank to work a larger ship. That never works out, you wind up with them bucking authority, but I can usually tell them in the interview. This guy was not one of the command types. I just hoped he wasn't something like a purser on a big liner.

"I was a helmsman for five years," he said.

"Same ship the whole time, or different ones?" I asked.

"Same ship the whole time. The Casey Jones."

"I know that ship. Her captain and I came up through the Academy together." That was a point in his favor. The Casey was a smaller version of my ship, the Running on Empty. So he wasn't completely out of his element. "If Dee could put up with you for five years, you must not really be that stupid."

The second mate appeared relieved that I had decided he was worth keeping rather than throwing him out the airlock without a suit. The truth is, I couldn't afford to be without my second mate. Every able body aboard ship is needed. So, even though it was within my rights to punish him for dereliction any way I saw fit, I simply sighed, and said, "Look, apparently you are not an idiot, but this cannot go unpunished. You're restricted to quarters for the next week except when on duty. Now get to work on those inspections." I turned and strode off.

I didn't really have a choice. Even though he had been exceedingly stupid in assuming that anything on the second mate's duty list was such a low priority that it could be ignored, I didn't want to try to shuffle around duties to make up for his absence, whether due to being in the brig or outside the ship. The Running on Empty keeps a short crew. It doesn't need a large one, though a fully staffed ship has more than twice the crew.

I walked back up to the bridge. My first mate for the past eight years, Anna Gillespie, was on duty. She looked at me and said, "Did you talk to him or just push him into a bulkhead?" She grinned. "Oh, and the bridge is yours if you want it," she added.

"No thanks. I threatened to let him go EVA without environmental protection," I said. "He got the message, and he's restricted to quarters when not on duty. For the next week, if you see him during second watch, he'd better either be working or in his cabin."

"How are the stress sensors, anyway?" she asked.

"Oh, we should know in about two hours," I said.

"If we had an engineer's mate, this never would have happened," Anna commented.

"We've been over this." I raised an eyebrow and looked steadily at her, and she fell silent. Anna is a worrier. She likes the small crew, but she thinks that I am a little too zealous about the trimming I do. We ship out, most times, with the bare minimum crew: three command officers, an engineer, and a cargomaster. Usually, the command crew consists of myself, Anna, and Sheryl Silvestri, but thanks to MedServ, Sheryl was out for this trip and Sumner Griffin was in her place. Bob Reynolds is my engineer, and he had been with me regularly almost as long as Anna. My cargomaster of choice is Charlie Dennis.

A full crew for the type of ship I own and operate consists of three command crew, three helmsmen, two engineering crew, two cargo specialists, a medic, and a cook. With a crew that size, there aren't enough duties to keep everyone busy. Trips tend to be boring, and personal conflicts start developing in the absence of anything to keep one's mind occupied. The way I do it, no one has enough time to get bored. For example, the command crew have to do their own navigation and piloting when on bridge duty, since there is no helmsman. We all share cooking duties. Charlie is a competent field medic, and so is responsible for sickbay as well as his cargomaster duties. Bob has enough to do as engineer to keep him busy pretty much all the time. So, rather than add to his burden by giving him all the engineer's mate's jobs as well, they were split up among the rest of the crew. Especially the command crew, who in reality have very little to do on a day-to-day basis, even without a helmsman.

In fact, I have no idea how the command crews on other, more fully staffed ships handle the boredom. Actually, I do have my ideas, especially given the reputations some ships have as being space-borne orgies. Oh, I'm not exactly celibate myself, and there are quite a few ways to pair up even with such a small crew, if one is flexible. I just don't have the time nor the energy to indulge in the level of activity that some ships are said to indulge in. They're all rumors, anyway. For all I know, they simply engage in month-long games of pinochle.

I'm sure the details of our own sex lives are interesting to people; as long as it's not their parents or children under discussion, most people find others' sex lives absolutely fascinating. As of this trip, the only one who didn't have some intimate knowledge of all the other crewmembers was, of course, Sumner. Two weeks into the trip, though, he couldn't say that he didn't know any of the crew intimately. Anna had taken it upon herself to break in the new guy, so to speak. This was actually how she came to find out about Sumner's lack of attention to all his duties. It's impossible to keep a secret on a ship with only five people aboard, especially when they share beds from time to time.

"Do you think he'll hold it against me for telling you?" Anna asked.

"I don't know. He does have five years on Dee's ship, so he should be used to separating his sex life from ship's business," I replied. "Besides, who can he go to? We don't yet know if he's flexible enough to take up with Bob or Charlie. He might be straight, which leaves him with two options: you or me."

Anna smiled at that. "I'm sure he's not entertaining any ideas of approaching you any time soon," she said. "Even being able to separate sex from the job, no one's really going to be all that attracted to someone who's just put them on restriction."

Sexual politics have mostly gone the way of the dinosaur, but personal conflicts will always be with us. "True," I conceded. "But it's not exactly that important to me whether or not my second mate wants to touch body parts with me. Anyway, I have to go talk to Charlie. You still have the bridge."

I didn't find Charlie in sickbay, nor did I find him tending to any of the cargo units. I finally found him in the galley. "Hey," I said. "Two has been slacking off on the strain sensors. I put him back on it, but for a while, keep an eye out for weird readings on the units."

"Aye, Cap'n. I noticed that the sensor access bays looked a little unused." Charlie was observant like that. He was the one person aboard whose job was rarely the same from trip to trip. Our cargo can be anything that fits in a standard cargo dock port. When we haul liquids, Charlie watches for leaks. When we haul crated goods, he checks for vermin. When we haul passenger units, he's a steward. He has an eye for detail.

He's also our best cook. "What are you making?" I asked. "It smells fantastic."

"Beef bourguignon," he said. "You think it smells good, wait till you taste it."

"What's in it?" I asked.

He smiled, and said, "Beef, for one thing. There's also a little bit of bacon. Onions, carrots, mushrooms, garlic, thyme, salt and pepper, tomato paste, brown sugar, a little brandy, and a fair amount of wine."

"So, this seems like a fairly complicated dish," I said. "That must mean that the cargo units are well secured."

"Yes, Cap'n, they are. About in the best condition I've ever seen, shy of brand new units. I haven't had a bit of trouble with any of them since we left Procyon. I already have sickbay squared away as well as it can be, so I thought I'd cook up something a little more involved, to keep myself busy."

"I have no doubt that we'll all enjoy it," I said. "Make sure you update the supply list."

"Aye, Cap'n," he said. Satisfied that Charlie was watching Sumner, and that we would be eating well that night, I left the galley in search of Bob. I do a lot of walking around the ship when I could just use the intercom, but I like the exercise.

I eventually found Bob in one of the thruster cubbies. Being in interstellar transit meant he could work on the sublight systems freely. He was inside the cubby from his head to his waist. "Hey, Bob," I said.

There was a slight thud. "Oof. Yes?" he said.

"Sorry to disturb you, but I just found out our new Two's been slacking on the strain sensor inspections. Do we have any spares, in case he finds one out of spec?" I asked.

"Sure. Three or four of 'em. Hand me that, would you?" he asked. I could see his face peeking out, and one hand was out of the cubby, motioning toward one of his tools, just out of his reach. I put it in his hand. "The other way, please?" I turned it around. "Thanks."

"Okay. Well, I'll let you get back to work." I decided I'd had enough wandering around the ship, and went back to my cabin. Besides, the thruster cubbies are in rather cramped spaces, and I was feeling stiff from bending so much. I wanted to sit in my lounge chair and tend to other ship's business. There were crew log entries to sign off on, and bills to pay, and communications and navigation diagnostics to run.

As the chair molded itself to me, I called up the communications log. There were the usual messages from friends and family, and some streaming news and entertainment blocks. I decided to pipe the stream of Sector News Today through to the whole ship. I called up the shipwide intercom and said, "All hands, this is the Captain. Please carry on with whatever you are doing, but here's today's SNT."

I continued working on the comm traffic as the inoffensive anchor prattled on about the human interest story of the day, tending to my own inbox along the way. Then something caught my attention.

"We are beginning to receive reports of an incident involving a spacecraft in the vicinity of Tau Ceti. Initial reports are conflicting, but the ship in question appears to be a cargo carrier. We will continue to update you as reports become available." The usually cheerful anchor was wearing her "somber" face.

Watching the incoming comm traffic, I saw a big spike of data coming in, as everyone who knew we were headed for Tau Ceti called to check on us. I slapped together a quick auto-reply that said we were all okay, still three weeks away from the system, and that we didn't know anything more than the media. That seemed to satisfy most inquiries. The remaining few were media types who were looking for a story angle. I didn't want my skeleton crew roster to give them fodder for some "Are the Spacelanes Safe?" story, so I just sent them the same auto-reply until they gave up.

I tapped the intercom for the bridge, and made the chair let go of me. I said, "Anna, did you hear that? Do you have anything on long-range?" Our sensors don't have much resolution, but I was hoping.

"All I'm getting is an EL beacon," she replied. "Other than that, it looks the same as TC always does. We're not close enough."

I got up from the chair and headed for the bridge. Anna got up immediately when I got there and said, "Your bridge, Michelle."

I said, "As you were. There's nothing we can do about it this far out, so there's no point in going into crisis mode. I'm just here to help find out what's going on." I started working with the navigation sensors to see if there was any way of getting a clearer view. The feed from SNT was still on the shipwide, but they had gone into "special report" mode, which meant that they had a live feed from TC. Like most special reports, though, the new information trickling in at the early stages was so limited that the anchors were basically just repeating the same information.

The live feed consisted of a reporter from the TC bureau of SNT's network, SNN. He was also repeating what little information they had, while waiting for a sensor feed or a telescope view. "We're also waiting for a launch window and clearance from Space Traffic Control to have a news ship match orbits with the cargo liner to give you live SNN NewsCam footage from the scene if possible."

"That'll be real helpful," I said. "I'm sure STC will be very happy to let the media get in the way of emergency response craft." Despite the seriousness of the situation, my sarcasm brought a wry smile to Anna's face.

The reporter continued. "Once again, here's what we know. At approximately 1754 coordinated sector time, a cargo ship in orbit around Tau Ceti 4 declared an emergency, and shortly afterward contact with the ship was lost. At 1803, the ship's emergency locator beacon was activated. And we have a few more details, now. Officials with the colony on Tau Ceti 4 have been able to determine that the ship was the Take It to the Limit, five weeks out of the Procyon system, scheduled to deliver supplies to the colony."

Now I was definitely interested. Not only were we on a five-week hop to TC from Procyon, but we were also on the way to the fourth planet, and also carrying supplies for the colony. Our cargo was probably even more important now. And until the Transport Safety Commission determined whether it was internal or external factors that caused the problem, my ship was potentially in jeopardy. I hate not knowing.

There's not a lot to look at in interstellar space, except for a bunch of stars. And even at the speeds we travel, they don't move perceptibly. The only way you can really tell we're moving is by the super-relativistic effects on the light that reaches us from those stars. That actually makes most of them invisible to the naked eye, so the sensor displays compensate and show them as plain white dots of light. And even though it's artificial and boring, still the most common image any ship has on its main bridge display is the forward view of the stars, as though it were a windshield. I saw no reason to keep that up, so I asked Anna to put the SNN feed up on the main screen. I asked, rather than ordered, because it was still her bridge. Of course, there was still nothing yet to be gained from having the feed on the main screen, unless I wanted to count the pores in the TC bureau reporter's nose. But when the sensor feed or telescope shot finally came through, I wanted to have a good view.

I didn't have long to wait. The sensor feed cut in just a few minutes later. The reporter said, "Now we have a live sensor feed from the telemetry station at Tau Ceti 3, and we can see the orbital vectors from the cargo ship and the vectors and telemetry from the emergency response vehicles attempting to match orbit." The screen showed a diagram of the planet, and several dots around it. Radiating from the dots were arrows indicating orbital vectors and circles showing orbital tracks, and attached to the dots were labels indicating various ship status information. One of the dots was red, and its labels were mostly empty; that was the Limit. Its labels were empty because it was not sending telemetry; it was simply being tracked by its EL beacon. It wasn't even identified on the screen as the Take It to the Limit, just as BEACON.

The reporter continued, "We have some reports that the active telemetry readings from the ship, which are recorded at Space Traffic Control, are being retrieved, in hopes of determining what is the nature of the emergency that the ship declared just before the communications loss. It is still unknown what the situation is aboard the ship. Obviously, the hope is that all members of the crew are alive and well, but without any communications with the ship, it is impossible to say with any degree of certainty."

So the Limit just orbited the colony planet, dead in space by all appearances. There were no adjustments of the orbital vectors, so the ship was not making any attitude adjustments. And without any images available, there were no visual clues as to whether the ship had power, or was even intact.

But the rescue ships were certainly making lots of adjustments. The ships were coordinating with each other to intercept the Limit, and it showed on the sensor feed. As the first ship matched orbits, the sensor feed showed both the current tracks of both ships and the projected track of the docked pair, starting from the point of interception. Of course, without knowing the exact masses of both ships, that projection was only an estimate. Each of the other ships, in turn, worked to match orbits with the projected track, and there were projections drawn from those intercept points as well. The cumulative error between the projection and the actual orbit after all four rescue ships were docked was probably horrendous, but the sensor feed had the advantage of updating in real time, so all the navigation adjustments would show up on the screen immediately. So would the adjusted projections, until there were no more projections to make.

Anna and I sat and watched the orbit circles being redrawn on the screen as they moved in their peculiar ballet, waiting for the report from the first ship when it finally came within visual range.