Titan's Plague: The Trial by Tom Briggs (story reading .txt) 📕

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Pati stood outside the Karakorum Spaceport. She had parked her groundcar in the lot by the south train terminus and Nancy was to meet her before they walked in.

The area was much like the rest of Karakorum that sat inside a pressure hull protecting people from the cold and oxygen-deficient Titan atmosphere. The ceiling, over a hundred meters above the ground, portrayed a daytime sky on Earth. It would change to night sometime later, following the position of a thirty-eight-latitude location. Pati was used to a higher latitude on Earth, but she didn’t split hairs over that inconvenience.

The spaceport exterior used blue coatings and was bare of the windows she saw on the other administrative buildings at Karakorum. A notable exception was the judicial building that had been added on. The architect must not have cared to transition seamlessly between the two. Cheap construction or not, what mattered to her was she didn’t have to visit that judicial building and face the possibility of a Long-Term Repatriation sentence. Gavin Keebler made that point as a negotiation ploy, and Pati had to admit it affected her enough to settle.

Nancy got Pati the three-month deal, with the added caveat that all charges would be expunged from her record after she completed her sentence. This would remove any barriers to negotiating a settlement with Kerry McLear. Also, the fast cruise back to Earth was available at a reduced cost, a price she could pay with the minimal funds she had immediately available.

Pati heard a trolley approach the south terminus station. The red, two-car train clanged artificially as it approached, and parked next to a platform between the two sets of rails. Pati couldn’t see the people exit the train, but she saw several people leaving the platform. Nancy was in that group and walked up to Pati.

“You ready to go?” Nancy asked.

“Yes, I already sent them the personal items I want to have with me. The uniforms they sent me fit, so I can’t think of anything else,” Pati said.

“Okay, let’s go,” Nancy said and led her to the double doors of the spaceport entrance. The doors slid open, and other passengers walked out while they entered. They crossed into a terminal, coated blue like the exterior. Maybe ten meters away was a line of transportation desks used to process passengers and their baggage. Three workers were helping about twelve people cued up to move onto their transports.

“They’re going to Picus to work this morning,” Nancy said.

Pati nodded. With her private space dock on the McLear house, she never needed to come here after arriving the first time to meet Richard. She stopped walking. That had been a wonderful time when she met him here in this room.

She had another bad dream last night. The guilt and remorse hit her after that first nightmare and had increased since then. Was it something to do with the legal negotiations that instigated the remorse, or was it inevitable? She had eaten little in the last few days, which meant the feelings were bothering her. Having to serve on this ice-mining ship almost felt like a relief.

Nancy prodded her to keep moving. She led her through a door to the right, which also slid open on their approach. They entered the massive hangar for all flights leaving Karakorum.

“I’ve been in covered football stadiums smaller than this,” Pati said.

“View the scenery as we’re walking. I have to be back for a meeting in an hour.”

“You’ll take the groundcar back?” Pati asked.

“I appreciate you letting me use it today. I’ll return it to your garage so you can have it when you come back in a month.”

“Then I can take the trolley to my house,” Pati said. “I’ll have to get used to being poor, I guess.” Pati meant it as a fact, and a joke. Nancy kept walking.

The door they walked through took them around passenger processing, and directly to the spacecraft. They walked along a designated pathway that led to the support road for the docks. The spacecraft parked nearest to the terminal were small landers meant to travel between Picus and Titan. Next, she saw the shuttles that traveled to the other moons of Saturn. Then they approached the mining ships like the one Pati would work from. Almost the size of a small building, they were still not the largest ships in this hangar.

Nancy did not plan on providing a tour, and she stopped at the first ship. Maintenance workers exited through a person-size hatch, leaving the door open behind them. Nancy turned to Pati.

“This is mining ship 37-C,” she said. “It’ll be your home for the next three months.”

The black ship towered over them, and she could see at least half the ship was below their feet. She had reviewed the specs and knew it to be fifteen meters in diameter and thirty meters tall. What she could see was the cylindrical shape of the cargo holds topped with a squatted cone holding the command center: her office for the next three months.

The engines were at the bottom, and they weren’t huge or powerful. This was not meant to be a fast ship. It picked up water and came back using some of that water as a propellant. Robots and computers did most of the work; the crew was only necessary for maintenance and immediate decisions. Her research let her know those tasks alone would keep her, and her crew, very busy.

“You ready for this?” Nancy asked.

“I better be,” Pati replied.

“You know that crew you have. I’ve seen their records.”

“I have, too. They’re nothing I can’t handle. They’re not murderers or anything.”

Nancy shook her head. “Yeah, but you have to admit, Bruno Redden can get violent. That’s why he’s here.”

“A secgen, and he’s not much bigger than Richard.” Pati regretted saying that. If she could go back and do it all over, she’d walked out of the house after Richard hit her the first time and find a constable to arrest him. Or, she could have just pushed him over, away from the steel pillar so he wouldn’t get hurt. Or…

“And I researched more about those twins. You’ll need to watch your back with those two.”

“I will. If they don’t do their jobs properly, I’ll report them, and they’ll be facing a trip back to Earth on separate ships.”

“Well, that’s true, you have a big stick to hold over their heads if they don’t act right.”

“And everything is on record. I am going to have to get used to undressing in front of the cameras, though.”

Nancy smiled. “It sounds like you’ve prepared for this mission and can protect yourself.”

“I haven’t always been the rich girl. I had brothers who could get very physical.”

“And you had to learn to get physical with them?”

“No, it just came naturally. Never had a problem jumping in and taking them on. Sometimes I came out the worst, most times I gave better than I got.”

Nancy shrugged. “All right, then. You need anything else from me?”

“No, I’ll keep you updated, though.”

“Please do. I’ll do the same with respect to your case with McLear Industries.”

“Absolutely. I can pay you better after we settle with them.”

“Just worry about getting through the next three months, Pati.”

“Okay, I’ll see you then.”

“Right, see ya,” Nancy said and turned to walk away. Pati watched till she was next to the landers, and then turned herself toward the mining ship.

She stepped through the hatch and entered a short hallway that led to a circular common room. There were personnel rooms around the circumference and another hatch across from her. Three men stood in front of that closed hatch. She had read their bios and knew them on sight.

The tall one was Bruno Redden. Born on Karakorum, his family had been on Titan almost from the start. They were drillers like Nancy’s parents; it was a good trade, and they made good money from it. Bruno was twenty-eight, unmarried, like most