Chapter 3: A Shot in the Dark

“Uh, yes Ethan?” Helen grumped as she reentered the cabin, her daughter close behind.

“Green Light Shipping picked up an hour or so on us but that’s not the problem. Look at the contract,” Ethan said and pointed at a small line of text on the screen.

Helen frowned, squinted, and moved closer to the monitor to read the text. “It says they are going to Arus Duo and are transporting personnel supplies. What about it?” she asked, straightening up and turning around.

He was once again struck a little dumb by her massive chest but pulled himself together. “Arus Duo is in the Arcturus Sector, but that’s not the problem. If the contract was something like food stores, metals, or electronics I wouldn’t be nearly as worried. Demeter Station doesn’t focus on personnel supplies; they don’t have the factories to make clothes, or desks, or paper, or anything else except,” he trailed off letting her fill in the gaps.

“Guns, manacles, and armor,” she stated in a small voice. “You think it’s a front for piracy?”

He shook his head and pointed at the screen. “If a trader takes a contract those items must be on-board when they leave and they must match up if an inspector stops you. Take our contract, for example, if I were to dump one of you and get stopped at any point from here to our destination I would be detained and questioned as to why my manifest has three people aboard but they only found two. Things can be fudged, but someone would have to throw a lot of credits at the issue. We will arrive at the next point about the same time as the Green Light ship but they won’t attack, I don’t think. They’ll want a bounty out for the two of you first so they don’t get detained for piracy if they get stopped for some reason down the road.”

Viv shuddered and looked up at Helen with wide eyes. Helen pursed her lips and breathed out. “Can we get away?” she asked in a quiet voice.

“Yes, but that won’t be the problem. It will be a problem later on if they have a bounty on your head, though. When we run, that will mean they can forward it to the Alliance, making all of us wanted,” he said while thinking aloud.

“Oh,” Viv said a little fearfully and breathed out. “Then we need to explain,” she started, but Helen started talking over her.

“What will you do then, Ethan?” she said a little louder than necessary.

“An explanation would be nice but I understand if you don’t want to. The true problem is how they are going about doing it. If you had stolen something, killed someone, or anything like that they should have already made a warrant contract for you. Since you have no bounties, they seem to be waiting to see if they can grab you quietly without Alliance interference. If I hand you over to the Alliance you would be detained, but I doubt you’d see a jail cell. This has political maneuvering written all over it.” He eyed Viv again and shook his head. “You’re probably some runaway Senator’s daughter and Helen is your nursemaid or something,” he accused without any heat in his voice.

When neither responded, he grunted and composed his thoughts. “It doesn’t matter, I’m not going to dump you off at an Alliance base anyway. The contract is set and they have clauses for traders trying to turn a profit as long as you’re on my ship until you get to the destination. Since I have our contract on file, I can prove the alteration to the original contract was made before the bounty even came up.”

Helen breathed out and smiled. “Thank you, Ethan, for everything,” she said and hugged him.

He squirmed in his seat as her amazing breasts were all but pushed in his face as she hugged him. He gently patted her back a little unsure of what to do and noticed it took a little longer for her to disengage than was strictly polite; he didn’t mind. Once they had separated, he had a hard time tearing his eyes away from Helen’s breasts and regain his composure. “No problem,” he stammered out.

Viv was watching on with a small smile on her face when they broke apart and giggled at them. Helen tutted and turned to her daughter. “Would you like a big hug too, missy?” she asked, opening her arms wide.

Viv’s eyes went wide and backed up towards the corridor. “Uh, no thanks Helen,” she replied before bolting for the safety of the cabin. Helen chuckled, watching her scamper off.

“I’ve been known to give very strong hugs,” Helen declared with a small smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. “Again thank you for everything,” she said before striding off after her daughter, her hips swaying back and forth.

Ethan watched Helen retreat down the corridor. He knew both of them were going to cause him a lot of problems in the future, but he had a smile on his face. He looked over the information again and found nothing new. Sighing, he sat back and tried to decide what he was going to do if his fears came to fruition. He didn’t lie about being protected by the contract, but what he didn’t mention is if they got hailed by an Alliance vessel with an arrest warrant on the women he would be honor-bound to stop or become wanted himself. It wasn’t a fun prospect for him. The fake name could be dumped with little connection to his real one but all his hard work would be scrapped for a few thousand credits. The biggest problem for him was the entire situation smelled bad. He didn’t mind running black when the situation called for it but if the women had really done something illegal the warrant would have been active for some time. He told himself Helen’s assets and Viv’s smile weren’t clouding his judgment, but in the back of his mind, he knew the truth.

Focusing on the task at hand, he went over the ship’s countermeasures again. He would need to have a good plan in case things went south. Taking out his tablet he ran over his options and came up with a tentative strategy. While he was working, his console beeped twice, making him look over at the main monitor. A schematic of the ship was displayed with a red flashing light over the head in his cabin with a red meter next to it. He wondered which of the girls was taking a shower and quickly pushed that image out of his mind. Shaking his head he bent to his task of planning and focused on what his future might bring.

Two hours later, he put the tablet down and secured it to the bulkhead next to his seat. He’d gotten a lot done but his stomach was screaming at him for sustenance. The girls had taken turns showering and the water gauge was sitting at about 92%. Over time it would fill back up but he was glad they hadn’t taken long showers. His leg was asleep when he finally got up and had to grit his teeth against the pins and needles that ran up and down his leg. He stomped down the corridor towards the living area, teeth gritted against the pain. As he entered the living area, he felt a rush of pride about his ship. The Twisted Bolt wasn’t big or pretty but it had everything he could want out of a small tramp freighter.

Keying the preset button on the food replicator produced a clunking noise from the machine and he waited quietly for the unappetizing bar to appear in the tray. A minute later, the flat bar dropped down with a hollow thunk. Stuffing the unappetizing bar in his mouth, he walked down the corridor and keyed the armory door open. Grabbing up the hydration unit and his tools, he moved back to the living area to begin trying to bring it back to life. Dropping his tools down beside the unit, he locked the armory back up and double checked the cockpit for any potential problems. Not finding anything that required his immediate attention, he walked back to the couch, laid out his tools on the table, and buckled down to work on the hydration system.

Helen appeared out of the cabin an hour later and sat down next to him on the small couch. “Is that the hydration unit?” she asked with a small frown, peering into the back of the open appliance. Ethan snorted aloud before replying, “yes, I think this thing is as old as the Alliance. I gutted her for the old power source, but I’m trying to wire it up so maybe I can run it off the ship’s power. To be honest, it’s a long shot.” He was confident in his skills but wasn’t confident he had the parts to regulate the power needed to run it. “Too much power and the unit could explode or short out the ship’s power but too little and nothing would happen.”

“That would be bad,” Helen replied in a flat voice. Losing power during and FTL jump would have catastrophic consequences to the ship and her crew.

“How are you and Viv doing?” Ethan asked while he connected two wires and secured them.

Helen didn’t answer for a minute so he looked over at her. She was reclined back on the couch staring at the overhead deck. “It’s been a rough few days for us,” she said in a small voice.

Ethan nodded, knowing she couldn’t see him, and patted her knee. “Maybe things will blow over once you get wherever you are going.”

“I think our problems will only be just beginning once we get to our destination. Ethan, I know we haven’t told you anything and I maintain that is for the best, but,” Helen trailed off continuing to look at the overhead deck.

“What happens will happen but you’ll get to Oanus safe. If you do need to talk about what’s going on I can listen and maybe give you another perspective on the situation, but I respect your desire to keep me out of it.”

“Thank you,” Helen replied with a deep exhalation of air.

Having said what he wanted to, he went back to trying to get the hydration system working again. Helen got curious when he opened the engineering hatch and tried to peek in while he searched for a few spare parts. Smiling, he showed her the cramped compartment and suppressed a laugh when she almost got stuck because of her breasts. After that incident, she was more than happy to remain outside the hatch and pepper him with questions while he was inside. In the end, he was able to power a small portable battery from the ship’s power and then let the hydration unit use the battery’s charge to power the system. The battery provided a small power buffer in case anything went wrong.

Helen helped him affix the hydration system to the bulkhead by bolting it next to the sink. More than once, he got distracted as her chest rubbed on his arm or back but managed to get everything in place without too many incidents. Hooking up water to the hydration unit took another few minutes.

“Alright, go ahead and get one of your meals if you’d like to see if it works,” he told Helen once the gauge displayed a fully charged battery.

She smiled and went off to the cabin after hearing his offer. She came back a moment later with Viv. “Ok, so how do I work this thing?” she asked staring at the clunky box affixed to the bulkhead.

Ethan laughed and pointed to the door on the unit. “Open the door, open the packet, and drop the contents into the bowl. I washed the bowl so don’t worry. After that, check the power gauge here on the side. If it is full you’re good to go and hit the red button on this panel. If not, wait until it is or the entire battery will be drained and nothing will happen.” He pointed to the little green gauge he had put on the side of the unit showing a full battery.

Viv and Helen inspected the unit to make sure they knew what to look for. Viv’s finger shot out and hit the red button before Helen could and smiled prettily when the older woman scowled at her. “Little scamp,” Helen muttered, much to Viv’s evident amusement.

Ethan watched the power fluctuate on his tablet as the power drained rapidly from the battery. After it had completely emptied, the ship’s power began to slowly fill it up again. A few seconds later, the unit dinged loudly, making everyone jump in surprise, and the door popped open letting a little steam out. The small living area was filled with the aroma of cooked meat and he felt his stomach grumble appreciatively; it had been a while since he had a good meal other than the offensive synthmeal bars. The women were happily pulling the dish out and rushing over to the couch to eat.

“Just make sure you let the battery fully recharge when you want to fix something else,” he called over his shoulder as he walked down the corridor and towards the cockpit. The smell was too tempting not to want to steal some so he left.

After using the head and cleaning up, he went back to his chair in the cockpit and kept himself busy looking over the raw data. Nothing new jumped out at him as he looked over the last bit of information so he turned his attention once again to his options. The idea of simply handing them over was repulsive to him so he tried to figure out the next moves of his “enemy”. Assuming they wouldn’t just try and attack the ship, he guessed they would send out the bounty information when they arrived at the trade beacon or just after they activated the FTL Drive. It would prove to the Alliance authorities that the Twisted Bolt had been informed of the bounty but they tried to run. It wouldn’t matter to the Alliance that almost no one checked the bounty boards while in transit from one trade beacon to another.

There was still plenty of time left in the FTL jump so he idly played with the coding on the program to sort through the raw data of his screen captures. His work was interrupted when Viv came into the cockpit and sat down in the co-pilot’s chair looking at him. Looking up, Ethan frowned and looked at the spot of food on the young woman’s jumpsuit.

“Everything ok, Viv?” he asked, his mind still trying to work out the code for the program.

“Why don’t you have other people on your ship? Wouldn’t it be better with someone helping you?”

Ethan blinked for a moment and scratched his chin. “Yes, it would, but it costs credits to hire someone on and keep them fed. The more experienced they are the more they will want and sadly I barely break even flying solo. Why do you ask?”

“What if I wanted to join you?” Viv asked tentatively. She shifted in her chair looking nervous and Ethan tried not to sigh.

“Number one, you don’t have any experience so you wouldn’t bring much to the table,” he replied with a hard voice and watched as Viv’s face fell. “Number two, you have something going on that seems to be far more important than getting hired on a tiny jump freighter. It’s not every day someone has people chasing after them.”

Viv nodded slowly and blew out a breath. “I know but I like it on this ship. It has a warm feeling to it I didn’t have on the cruise liner.”

Ethan bit the inside of his cheek but couldn’t help responding. “You just like the FTL Drive,” he said, trying not to laugh.

Viv blushed a little but didn’t contradict what he said. “What would I need to do to get certified?”

Breathing out, he shook his head. “I couldn’t hire you anyway, Viv. I don’t have the means to do so, but if you wanted to get certified you need to do it through the Alliance Trading Commission. They have tests to prove you know what you’re doing. You must have a clean record and pay a yearly due to them as payment for services rendered.”

Viv frowned and idly wiped the food off her jumpsuit. “Would you help me get registered?” she asked in a small voice.

“Once we get you to Oanus, I can help you get registered, assuming there are no outstanding bounties. Why would you want to join on anyway? It can be extremely boring and lonely out here in space, not to mention dangerous.”

“I’ve always loved space, but because who I am, I can’t pursue it. Maybe now,” she said sadly and quickly cut off looking up guiltily. “Forget I said anything! Thank you, Ethan,” she blurted out and took off back down the corridor.

Ethan watched as she ducked into the cabin and cycled the hatch shut. Shaking his head, he mulled over what she said and wondered what their true story was. He was a fairly good judge of character and felt nothing but worry and fear from the two women. He knew his normally sound judgment may be bias due to both of them being pretty females. Sitting back in his chair, he started to work on the program again but heard someone coming up the corridor. Turning around, he saw Helen’s smiling face coming up from the living area.

“Thank you again for fixing the hydration system,” she said with a large smile on her face.

Ethan was struck dumb by Helen’s radiant smile and body. It took him a moment to realize she had said anything and quickly composed himself. “No problem, Helen. If there is anything else you need help with I’ll be glad to attempt to fix it or set it up. The Twisted Bolt is my baby but I did skip on some of the more luxurious amenities that many ships have.”

The beautiful woman beamed at him and sat in the copilot’s chair before answering. “You’ve done plenty for me and Viv. Is there anything I can help you with?” she asked with a wink and leaned forward in the chair.

Ethan desperately tried not to stare at Helen’s large chest but failed. He could think of a lot of things he could use some help with but none of them were appropriate. He coughed into his hand and tore his eyes away from Helen before answering. “I’ve got everything done so far. I’ll do a maintenance check here in a little bit before we drop out of FTL. I could use some help then, but at the moment just enjoy the trip.”

Helen nodded to him and stretched out in the chair. “Do you mind if I watch you work?” she asked and motioned to the main screen where the code was displayed.

Ethan scratched his head, wondering how much he would be able to do while the beautiful woman in the same compartment. “I don’t see why not, but I’m not doing much at the moment. I’m just going over the code and seeing what is causing a few errors.”