As for other systems, there wasn’t much to inspect. The Bounty had the most basic of navigation computers, simple helm controls, and no weapons. Her Nexus portal agitator had been completely shut down, so as soon as there was power to spare it would need to be directed into the agitator’s capacitor. In its present state, the Bounty wouldn’t be able to leave the system and get to Capsilan. He’d have to notify the captain about that, but with a little luck it would only be a matter of turning it on and giving it time to charge. If the agitator was dead, then the ship was a write-off and there’d be no prize money for anyone.
The engine was the most important thing—everything else was contingent on it being able to provide enough power—and had to be dealt with first. Unless they could get it outputting at a decent level, it would take days to charge the completely drained agitator, even on a ship as small as the Bounty. They would have to consider tethering to the Sidewinder and charging it from her power plant, but he could cross that bridge when they came to it.
There were problems everywhere he looked, but there was something appealing in the rawness of piloting a vessel like this. Even a warship as small as the Sidewinder had a number of mechanisms and systems, like inertial and acoustic dampeners or day and night environment cycling, that softened the experience of being in space. For long voyages, the comforts were certainly appreciated, but in a ship like the Arlen’s Bounty, you could feel every change in thrust, sense the vibration of the engines through the hull, hear the sound of them powering up.
‘Lieutenant,’ Price said over the intercom, ‘the crates are aboard, and the launch is ready to depart.’
Samson nodded to himself. ‘Very good. Launch, permission to depart and return to Sidewinder.’
‘Aye, sir,’ the coxswain said, before closing the transmission channel.
‘Mister Vachon,’ Samson said, ‘get down to the engine bay and see what you can do to improve power generation,’ Samson said. ‘I want to be ready to get underway as soon as the transfers are made. We can fix anything else on the fly.’
‘I’ve reconstructed the flight path,’ Harper said. ‘Arlen was a busy man. He’s been jumping around Frontier systems pretty regularly for as far back as the logs go.’
Samson nodded. ‘One of those types who doesn’t feel right with a planet under his feet.’
Harper’s voice was monotone, as it had been every time she had spoken to him since his arrival on the Sidewinder. He’d known he was stepping on toes when he arrived. Another lieutenant on such a small ship was surplus to requirements. What made matters worse was the fact that she had earned her commission at a line officers’ school. Even though she had been commissioned a year before him, Academy graduates were always considered senior to other officers of the same rank, unless the contrary was explicitly stated.
It hadn’t been in this instance. His arrival had blocked her path to promotion, and in all functional matters reduced her responsibilities to those of a midshipman. She was clinically professional with him in all their dealings, which told him clearly how annoyed she was with his arrival. The fact that he had arrived under a cloud of disgrace could only have rubbed salt in the wound. Still, the Navy wasn’t always fair, so just like him, she’d have to get on with it.
He flicked his console onto navigational controls, and was unsurprised to see that they were operating at the most reduced level possible. Either Arlen had liked to navigate by the stars, or the Bounty had been too much for him to manage, and he had been one accident away from complete disaster. Until Vachon fed some more power into the computers, Samson wouldn’t be able to locate the Nexus portal to jump out of the system—as it was, he was barely able to locate the system’s star.
With the Sidewinder to follow, it wasn’t so great a problem, but it left Samson feeling blind, and gave rise to the possibility of getting lost. He had no desire to add that exploit to his permanent record. Other than what he could see outside of the ship’s small portholes, he had virtually no navigational information available to him.
‘Launch is away,’ Harper said.
‘Acknowledged. Samson to Sidewinder.’
‘Go for Sidewinder.’
‘Launch is away.’
‘That’s fine, Bounty. Prepare to get underway. We’ll move off as soon as the launch is back on board. Be ready.’
‘Aye, Sidewinder. Samson out.’
He didn’t think there was any point in bringing up the issue of the Nexus portal agitator just yet. With a little luck Vachon would be able to get it operational and charged by the time they reached the portal. He took one final check of the environmental systems—78.09% nitrogen, 20.95% oxygen, and a steady twenty-one degrees Celsius. They’d been breathing the air for a little while, but levels were still exactly where they should be, making the environmental controls the only system that was running within required parameters. That they weren’t going to asphyxiate didn’t change the fact that the ship stank, however. The remaining component in the gas mix must have been sewer gas. He added changing or cleaning the filters on the air recycling systems to his ever-growing mental check list.
With the priority systems checked, Samson flicked through the less important ones. Everything else was nominally functional, and Samson wondered at the mindset of a man who, with only a little more effort, could have had a far more
