Freefall: The galactic adventure continues (Dave Travise Book 2)

  Freefall

  Dave Travise Book Two

  Richard Dee

  All rights reserved.

  Published in 2013 by 4Star Scifi

  4Star Scifi, Brixham, Devon, England

  www.richarddeescifi.co.uk/4Star

  Copyright © Richard Dee 2013

  No parts of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the copyright owner.

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. Under no circumstances may any part of this book be photocopied for resale.

  This is a work of fiction. Any similarity between the characters and situations within its pages and places or persons, living or dead, is unintentional and coincidental.

  Cover by It’s a wrap

  Author Photograph by Tim Kendall.

  Created with Vellum

  For Those that Pushed.

  Chapter One

  Now

  The port looked like any other; there were piles of cargo clustered around under coloured anti-stat tarps, all with water cascading off them. The ground was wet, and the small drainage channels which ran all over the landing bay in a grid, covered with meto-plast gratings, gurgled as the water ran away to the larger drains against the walls. Weak sunlight filtered through the clouds and cast shadows in the corners.

  As usual, there was a gang of scruffy looking kids and young adults hanging around; they offer to ‘look after’ your ship for a few coins. The gangs go by different names on different worlds, but here they are all female and are known as the gyrls. It pays to use them, if you don’t you will find your stuff gone.

  It doesn’t matter if you lock it up or not, they are insanely good with the tech. In fact, many companies recruit from them, and a lot of the things we take for granted come from their ideas.

  “Guard your ship mista,” the roughest one said, “Doan have one of them”. She waved vaguely at half a dozen others lurking in the background. “They ain’t up to the job like us’n.” Once again the slang and the accent were hard to understand.

  “Where’s Jev,” I asked her, she usually looked after my ship, how she knew when I was arriving I never managed to work out, but she was always here.

  The gyrl shrugged. “You won’t see her again, she’s dead, mista. Someone killed her ’bout seven days ago,”

  I was shocked, apart from teenage gangs and petty theft at the port there was little serious crime on New Devon, and I couldn’t remember ever hearing of a murder. The place was prosperous, everyone had enough, and as long as the Federation kept out, people were happy.

  “What happened?” I asked, but that was well beyond her knowledge.

  “Dunno,” she answered. “Just ’appened, we heard from the Guards, they was lookin’ for anyone who knew her.” She shrugged again. “Life.”

  I was so taken aback that I was about to say that she could guard the ship when I spotted a small, dark-haired gyrl over in the shadows, she made nervous eye contact, and held up a small bag, Jev’s bag. There was something about her, something that I couldn’t place.

  “She can do it,” I pointed.

  “She ain’t no good, mista,” said the first gyrl. “We ain’t seen her before, she woan do it right.”

  “Her.” I insisted, I thought for a minute that there would be trouble, as they collectively stiffened, then thinking better of it, or maybe because another ship was commencing its descent, they trooped off.

  “Come over here,” I called. “Who are you, and where did you get Jev’s bag?”

  Chapter Two

  Six hours earlier

  I do like a nice sunrise, and I’ve seen a few. There’s a beautiful binary on Wishart, and the Red Dwarf of Jintao, with its rosy glow lighting the mist rising off the grass sea. But any of them, even the boring, ordinary ones, look so much better from orbit. There’s no warning, one minute space is black, the planet’s edge may be fringed with a haze of atmosphere, instantly a line of brightness appears and grows quickly into a disc. It has the viewport polarizers working flat out to take away the glare before you go blind. But for that moment, I get a surge of well-being, a feeling that it all starts again, and maybe this time, things will be different.

  That’s the result of fifteen years of introspection, since the last time that I was truly happy.

  Captain Dave Travise, ship-owner and trader is what it says on my papers, and the grand title makes it sound much more than it is. In reality, I’m just a driver with a past, trying to forget whilst everyone insists on bringing it up and reminding me. Sometimes I think that the old me is someone else, and sometimes I wish that it was.

  Traders, or whatever you want to call us, are the lifeblood of the Federation, without us there would be just a collection of worlds, isolated in space. We deliver the mail, shift livestock and produce, and just occasionally if we stray the wrong side of the odd regulation, well most things in the universe are legal, somewhere. At least that’s always been my defence. As I said, the names a bit of a hangover, most of us don’t actually trade anymore. Now we just move stuff around for other people, big corporations and rich men.

  So here I am, hanging in upper orbit, while the customs do their thing, all coded between my computer and theirs, it’s really just checking that we both have the same story, my agent should have done all the hard work, that’s why I pay him.

  Naturally, as far as my body is concerned, it’s the wrong time of day for me to be alert, hence the value of the semi-intelligent comms link.

  The one thing that’s never mentioned, in all the books or films, is that no two planets keep the same time. And it doesn’t matter when you arrive; it’s always at the opposite time to your body clock. So if you’ve just eaten lunch, it will be the middle of the night. Although most planets’ days are in the twenty to thirty-two-hour range, travellers use standard hours in conversation and trade and rely on the wristband to do all the hard work.

  Considering what it does, how did we ever manage without the wristband? To think that mankind developed space travel and colonized the galaxy without one. The concept all started from the annoying job of having to adjust your watch every time you went somewhere.

  And like the old communicators that everyone once had, more and more functions were added to it, until only those who had never lived without one could use it properly.

  I could feel mine, on my left wrist. It’s not big or heavy and the energy cell is sewn into the strap, considering its functions it’s a marvel of design. You can get all sorts of colours and shapes, but this one is plain grey. Apparently, practical people wear them on the left and the more cerebral on the right. I don’t know about that, it just feels comfortable there.

  At its most basic, it’s a piece of kit that shows planet time, season and all sorts of useful information, and converts local to standard, all via radio from satellites. All the data is displayed on a small holopanel that hovers in midair and can be positioned where it’s convenient to read.

  The wristband also interfaces with just about anything else you might want to control or access. It’s such a common device that people forget the good old days when things were achieved with less tech than we now use to clean our teeth.


  Meanwhile, the two computers chatted away, exchanging cargo details and allocating docking facilities, maybe even talking about the weather for all I knew. My wristband told me that it was a late spring day where I was headed, and without looking, I knew that probably meant rain.

  There are all sorts of planets, as many types as you can think of, and then some. There are water worlds, ice worlds, deserts and a mixture of all the above. And unfortunately, there are the disasters; the quarantine worlds where humans have experimented and fouled up. Like Prairie 7, which was going to solve all the grain shortages the early colonists endured. But the genetically modified crops took over the ecosystem, caused mutations in the pollinating insects, and forced the settlers to get out fast. At least the damage could be confined, but no-one has been back for a long time, so who knows what’s developed. Before the corporations were reined in, there were a whole rash of planets contaminated, and even now, the odd experiment still goes out of control.

  There are about two hundred inhabited planets in the Federation; the number varies depending on who you ask, and who is in charge at any particular time. The whole arrangement is very informal; planets join or leave all the time, whenever they think they can make a better deal with the Independent Worlds, which of course doesn’t suit the Senate, the group who like to think they are in charge.

  ‘Order is Strength’ is the motto of the Federation, but about the only thing that unites people is their dislike of attempts to order them. Although they are not as heavy-handed as they used to be, the Federation Guards still manage to overreact to most things, and instead of leaving the planets to sort themselves out, prefer the remote faceless bureaucratic model of overbearing government. But there are places where you can escape, where locals are happy, and space is free. After all, it’s a big galaxy. And I’m lucky enough to be arriving at one of those places today.

  The customs check seems to be taking longer than usual, but the wait would be worth it. In my mind, I can taste the fresh food; I’ve been living on concentrates for the past week. I hadn’t been able to take much fresh food on Wishart and it ran out after four days.

  I’ve always liked New Devon (that’s the name the locals call it, as far as the Federation is concerned it’s Nova 5, not a very romantic name, but then the Federation is not that sort of government), it’s not rushed and the people don’t seem to be stressed all the time. And it’s not pretentious in the way that the newer colonies are. I think the inhabitants are more comfortable with themselves, they feel secure in their place.

  And they have a healthy disregard for the Federation. The Guards are tolerated, but the locals make it clear they are in charge. Outside interference is not wanted.

  Looking out of the viewport, I could see the deep blue of the ocean below and swirls of cloud marking the weather systems. The sun also reflected off the customs satellite, drifting in its geostationary orbit, its solar panels making it look like a golden moth. I wondered if it was manned? if there was someone there as excited as me at the thought of a return to solid ground.

  They say New Devon is named after a place on Old Earth, I can’t say that I’ve ever been, but then so few of us have, but it’s a historic fact that the first colonists came straight from there. That’s one of the things with exploration, you have to find a name for everything, and I guess it comes from the need to feel in a familiar place, even when you’re half the galaxy away from familiarity.

  I expect that the amazing scenery must have influenced the naming as well. New Devon, like its namesake, has got the lot, rolling hills, cliffs, blue seas and golden sands. It’s surprising that it’s not a tourist haunt, only the dedicated know and appreciate it, the most popular of the vacation destinations seem to be the ones least like Old Earth. This suits the locals down to the ground because, although I find them friendly, they aren’t all over you, a slow thoughtful approach is the New Devon way.

  As I said, I like the place, I’ve always been happy with my own company, and I think most traders are. It’s probably something to do with all the time spent in a small steel bubble. Life tends to pass you by, you get very confused as to where you are, planets have different customs and it’s easier to say little than to keep putting your foot in it.

  Once you get used to it, the tec is fairly unobtrusive, and after a bit more electronic chatter between the customs and the ship, the soft voice of my computer said, “Clearance has been granted, Dave, and I have the entry plan, shall I proceed?”

  No matter how many times I hear the voice, it's Myra by the way, it reminds me of the happy times. When she had put her voiceprint on the computer she said it was so she could order me around. It must be fifteen years ago, but I sometimes look over my shoulder expecting to see her in the hatchway. You can still see the faint dent in the panel if you look closely, I try not to. The paint was worn there; I rubbed it every time I passed.

  I could always use the wristband to control the ship, but I prefer the voice activation, it lets me think that I can still speak to Myra, and the responses are varied enough to maintain the illusion. And it keeps me from feeling lonely.

  “Okay, Myra,” I answered, “let’s go to work.” After a short delay, the thrusters fired and the nose dropped. There was that moment when the black of space turns red, then blue as you start to slide through the atmosphere and the hull heats from the drag.

  There’s always that instant, just before the plasma envelope cooler kicks in when I wonder if it’s going to kick in but, because it’s all controlled by the computer, there’s less chance of it all going wrong. It sometimes seems a pity that we rely so much on the tech, but there’s a reason, it works.

  There was the usual rumbling and bumping from re-entry, the ship stood up to it as well as ever, but if I looked out behind me, over the rear of the catwalk I could see the hull flexing and moving under the strain. The presence of cargo damped out the worst of the movement or at least the sight of it, but the rattling of lashings and noises from badly packed containers added to the picture.

  It was a testament to its design; the ship was older than it had a right to be. An old Federation Sprite class supply vessel, named Freefall, it had been retired from service when the Sprite Two class was developed. This one had lain, gently rusting, in a field until rescued and refitted by Myra and yours truly. I had changed the name, even though Myra had said it was bad luck. I sometimes wondered if she hadn’t been right.

  Anyway, today I’m landing in New Devon City, or Capita as the Federation would prefer, it’s the only really large population centre on the bigger of the two continents. The locals have been debating for years whether to give it a grander name, among others there’s the Plymouth faction and those who don’t see the need to remind everyone of the past. They would rather call it something else, something newer.

  Dropping through the cloud layer, I skimmed over the ocean, it covers a large part of the planet and accounts for all the rain, quite surprising, but after all the years of thinking that Earth was the only inhabited planet, the discovery that water-rich planets were quite common spurred on the advance of technology.

  Within one hundred years of the discovery of several such planets we were sending ships to them; quite slow ones at first, but these were overtaken by the discovery of trans-light drives. Of course, these crews actually arrived before the sleeping crews on the first ships. And that made for some interesting meetings. And a field day for the shrinks.

  The Gaians would tell you that the progress of space flight was very logical, deep space travel became possible when we had found somewhere to go, just the same as every other advance, we couldn’t do it until either we needed to or had a reason to.

  New Devon was one of the Five, the first planets to be settled, all those centuries ago. It was found to be very Earth-like, with an oxygen atmosphere, and carbon-based plant and primitive animal life. And it has not suffered from the arrival of the ancestors of the settlers, like a lot of the colonies. Its seas became a home for the
endangered species from Earth, and its red soil grew crops and nourished animals from the old world.

  In fact, I could see a pod of whales below me as I chased my shadow over the ocean, sounding in the clear blue waters. They had adapted very well to the oceans on several worlds and even enjoyed eating the local fish and plankton.

  On New Devon, there were mainly blue and humpback whales, other worlds had selections of different species, all of which had either been captured from Old Earth’s polluted waters and transported across the galaxy in vast tanks, or brought in as embryonic creatures, and reared locally.

  It’s funny, but in all the worlds that we found so far, there’s quite a similarity in the life forms, there’re plants and trees on most of them, and fruits and grains, even a few vegetables, and varied animal life. Some worlds have mainly fish or birds and some have a lot of mammalian type creatures, but nowhere have we seen any evidence of advanced intelligent life. Of course, these have been added to by the things that the first settlers brought with them from Old Earth, and a lot of interbreeding has taken place, not all of it intentionally.

  I could also see one of the giant sailing vessels that carried planet-wide trade, it was moving briskly through the water, using a combination of the wind and solar power generated from panels sewn as part of the sails. New Devon was very proud of its use of renewable energy.

  The tall cliffs below me marked the start of the Big Land, there are only two island continents, each referred to as the big one, depending on which one you are on the other is considered smaller. The official name is Primus, don’t ask me why it has a Latin name, but it’s the rocky, wooded and less agricultural one, it’s where the Science and Technology corporations do all their work.