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

Pati didn’t leave the bridge much during the workday. Or during much of the work night either. When she told Nancy that she’d worked her father’s fishing boat as a kid and that ice-mining couldn’t be any harder, she hadn’t understood there were different kinds of hard. Even though the ship and the machinery did most of the work, getting the humans to do their share was more difficult than talking the fish into giving up before being caught. And, she never had to worry about the fish trying to kill her when she wasn’t looking.

Pati sat at her control station on the bridge. The bridge was circular with various shades of white, five meters in diameter, and with four workstations against the wall spaced ninety degrees from each other; she did most of her work here. An exit ladder pierced the center of the deck down to their living space.

At the moment, only Bruno and she were working. The Bocelli twins were in their cabins sleeping or plotting to kill her and take over. From her work station, she could bring up on-screen what their heart and breathing rates were and compare them to their sleeping baseline. The twins hadn’t learned to mimic those signals to her, at least not yet.

The twins were amazingly intelligent, and one reason she didn’t sleep much, or well, when she had the chance. This was their third time sentenced to ice-mining, and they were somehow always assigned to the same ship. Pati would suggest in her reports they be separated if sentenced again, though if they ran afoul of the law one more time, they’d probably be repatriated on separate ships.

The monthly reports she filed were one of the few weapons she had. The crew understood their sentences could be extended if she didn’t rate them highly in cooperation and behavior. Not a fact she held over their heads, just yet, and she hoped she wouldn’t have too, but useful just the same.

“Hey, boss-lady, we have a load of water up ahead,” Bruno said to her from his workstation across the bridge.

Pati stood up and walked over to Bruno. On this ship, she and the crew wore shoes that magnetically held them secured to the deck. It wasn’t the same as one-sixth gravity, just enough to keep them from floating around the ship. The green jumpsuit uniforms they wore also had some ferrous material that could be activated and draw them to the floor if they were floating in the air and could not reach a handhold. She stood behind Bruno and stared at his video screen. “Go ahead and land,” she said.

“Engaging,” he replied.

“And shut up with the boss lady comments,” she said. “You’re required to show respect to the mission commander and talking to me like that doesn’t achieve that.”

“Yeah, sure, whatever you want.”

Pati took a few steps back, watching Bruno and his screen. He tapped the controls, and she felt the gentle movement of the ship accelerating. After two minutes, according to the time display on Bruno’s screen, the ship decelerated to match the iceberg’s position.

“Go ahead and land,” Pati said.

“I’ve got this,” he said.

Pati took a deep breath. Dealing with this idiot running his mouth continued to test her patience. She’d have to find other ways of addressing his low-level insubordination, because she didn’t want to use the bad report hammer, just for smarting off. It was also too early in their sentence. If she threw that card now, it might not be available in two months.

Pati went back to her workstation and sat down. Her screen continued to show statistics about the ship and crew, and she changed it to show exterior cameras. They were still approaching the iceberg after deceleration, which seemed odd. “Bruno, check our position,” she said.

The ship lurched down, and the effect bounced Pati from her chair.

“What the hell?!” she screamed.

“The sensors overestimated the distance to the target,” Bruno replied.

Pati rotated in the air and pushed back from the ceiling with her feet. The momentum carried her over to Bruno’s side. She landed on the floor next to him. She could see he had his feet planted while he sat, which kept him secured to the chair.

“What do you mean, it overestimated the distance?” Pati asked. “Those sensors don’t malfunction.”

“Hey, they did it, I mean, I gave it the right orders, so there can be no other explanation for hitting the ice.”

“Check for damage,” she said.

He returned his attention to his work console and tapped the buttons. “Nothing, the force of impact was within the maximum force the landing legs were designed to take.”

“Are you sure?” Pati asked.

Bruno nodded his head. “I’ve never seen the landing legs break or cause any problems.”

“So, now you’re saying the ship doesn’t malfunction.”

Bruno’s face turned red. She knew she’d struck a nerve.

“The structure of the ship is different than the control coding. The control coding is why we hit the ice.”

Pati shook her head. “I don’t see it. We have the same coding on this ship as when we left and we’ve landed on three icebergs already without incident.” She looked Bruno square in the face. “Are you sure you’re not the one who screwed up?”

Bruno stood and towered over Pati. “I’ve had enough of you, lady,” he said and swung his open right hand at her face.

Pati expected that. She popped him under the ribcage before his slap could land. It was a punch she studied before taking control of the ship. The move took little force, which was important in zero gravity, where she could not rely on having traction at her feet. Even better was it wouldn’t leave a mark. It had the intended effect of knocking the wind out of his lungs, and the look on his face in that instant told her there would also be a psychological effect.

He sat back and tried to catch his breath. “You hit me,” he gasped.

“Bruno, you’ve been on how many of these ice-mining trips? Don’t you realize we’re being recorded with every breath we take? When we get back, the constables will go through this and see you raised your hand to me, and I had to defend myself. It won’t matter what I report, because they have all the information they need to run you out here another month.” Pati paused and waited for what she said to get through his thick skull. He was breathing close to normal now, and for once, she had his attention. “Of course, you can balance that negative by having a positive work record.”

Bruno took another deep breath, and his face reddened again. He turned from her and focused on his workstation. “The ship is ready to dig for water,” he said.

“Then get it started,” she said. Pati returned to her workstation and switched the screen to monitor the ice-mining. They’d take in enough water to fill one of the tanks, yet not enough to disfigure the iceberg, which was an environmental requirement. Given that her ship must have looked like a flea on the side of a white dog, she couldn’t see the problem if they made ten trips here. However, her sentence was for three months and she would do as told, unlike her crew sometimes.