Chapter 49

Third Mission, inbound in star system RKO-289 aboard the FUP Deep Space Exploration vessel Glenndeavor, 2401 CE

I realized the problem with what I was seeing. The big cargo donk, still tarped-over and that was supposedly not working, had been moved from where it was yesterday. The loaded machine now was parked off to my right next to the vehicle track that bisected the maintenance yard!

I flexed the fingers of my right hand that held the trigger grip housing of my shotgun, keeping the barrel pointed up at the very high overhead. My PAW wished there was something I could blast to help relieve my tension.

“GOWNO!“ I yelled letting off some of my building frustration and anger at all the arms and gear Beatrice had discovered in the huge storage compartment.

Both McCord and his buddy, standing by the piece of huge equipment with their backs to me, jumped in the air and spun around toward me. McCord landed on his feet in a slight crouch, balanced and ready to attack or defend. He stared at me for a moment and his upraised hands and arms relaxed.

“Well, shit my shorts!“ McCord called in an amused-sounding voice as he bent forward a bit more and slapped his raised hands down against the thighs of his grungy duty blues before straightening up. He seemed to smack all the tension out of his demeanor, and I let go of my own. McCord’s buddy looked back and forth between the two of us, his eyes wide.

“As I live and breathe ... behold, Mister Sitwell for the second day in a row. Damn, Sam, what’s the plan? Don’t tell me your sexy-as-all-the-hells wife is out getting her thrills in a cargo shuttle again?”

“On target,” I told him, giving a nod of recognition to his associate as I walked toward them. I let out a big sigh, feeling a wave of fatigue wash over me. I figured I needed to eat something soon, the adrenaline slump and tension I’d been feeling was messing with my blood sugar.

“Sorry for giving you guys a start like that,” I told them as I continued to close the distance between us. “I’ve had a trying day and I just had to shout.” I wondered why I didn’t ask how or why the tarped-over donk was parked in a different spot, but I figured McCord would have some kind of an answer—but I wasn’t going to ask just to listen to a lie.

“That’s alright,” McCord told me as I came to a stop just outside of handshake range from both of them, the big shuttle bay full of activity across the vehicle track behind them. “I’ll just see to it that I clean out your poke at the next poker game—well, once the Captain rescinds the present security level. Good folk need the chance to congregate amongst ourselves again, Sitwell—then we’ll call it even.”

“I’m certainly online with that,” I told him with a nod. “I’m sure everybody in my household could use the change of pace. Being all duty and danger everyday is getting monotonous; we’re ready for a break.”

“Sorry to hear that, Sitwell. I wouldn’t want to see any gray hairs on any of your ladies’ heads because of it—from stress and all. You know,” said McCord, shrugging the shoulder of his duty blues, “I was meaning to ask you, seeing as you’ve got that SPI bassard on your arm. I’ve heard, Sitwell, there’s supposed to be some videos floating ‘round the Ship’s interspace of you and that curly-haired young woman shootin’ it up during the kerfuffle in Stasis Bay Three. The person who told me said you both were hittin’ what you were aiming at—head shots and stuff—and graphic as the bloody First Hell.”

“I’m just happy I could do my duty to help protect the Glenndeavor from those Morlocks,” I said, and hoping to bring a quick end to this particular thread as soon as possible, I scanned out across the Bay searching for any SSC-12 that looked like it was heading towards us.

“I bet you’ve been spending some time down in old Marine Central,” McCord speculated as I turned and noticed his friend was staring at me with his eyes wide and full of suspicion, “keeping up your plinking skills at the range in case you have to throw down again. I’ve been there myself on several occasions since we left Hapner—I shoot more than well enough, of course. I just wondered if you might have heard anybody down there mention why the Glenndeavor’s carrying such a big load of khaki killers this mission.”

“I haven’t heard anybody down there enlighten me on that,” I told him, happy with my wording and hoping my first wife’s shuttle would show up soon. I wanted to get our newly acquired gear and ammo safely stored in the Royal Yacht before I sent the rest of the dangerous contraband off to Stasis Bay One. That way, I could stop worrying about the contraband and somebody in authority could cogitate on where 24 more frozen Morlocks might be hiding. “G3 Henderson, G2 Blaugelt-Sitwell, and now even Juliet go to the Range with me pretty much every day, either before or after our PT session.”

“Isn’t that nice—I was hoping to run into some khaki wrenches down in the Barracks Block,” McCord told me with a frown as he looked down at his grimy boots. “I’ve seen enough of the dirty end of the shuttles we work on in here to last me six missions. I’d like to get to see what those guys work on. You never know, I might want to re-up as a khaki wrench when my Exie stint’s up. You haven’t gotten the chance to see the flight line in their shuttle bay, have you Sitwell? I know the two times I wandered over there to see what they got berthed in their shuttle bay, they had sentries posted everywhere—I couldn’t get close to the place.”

“With everything that’s happened so far,” I said, spotting a SSC-12 making slow progress from the direction of the huge outer hatches and heading in our direction as the twin feelings of hope and relief blossom inside my middle, “you really can’t blame the Marines for keeping their security SOP online, now can you McCord?

“A lot of people have had some bad times here lately, but right now it’s going to get a lot better—for me anyway. I think that’s my wife’s shuttle about to reverse into that berth now.” I said and gestured with my left hand past their shoulders. My right hand held the trigger grip housing of my shotgun, continuing to keep the barrel pointed up at the very high overhead. “If you’re going to stay around, I’m sure she’ll enjoy seeing you, Mister McCord, and will want to say hello.”

“Really?” McCord asked in a suddenly neutral-sounding tone of voice as he looked me in the eyes. Just then a strange-sounding ring tone came from the POC on his tool belt.

I saw McCord’s eyes get big, quickly replaced by a very-good poker face. The ring tone from his POC sounded like something I’d heard before, but I couldn’t place the string of five mostly ascending triplet notes.

“Excuse me,” my sometimes poker opponent said, lifting the device off his belt and flipping open the clamshell. He glanced at the small data screen and then turned around and took five quick steps toward the pede-lane, lifting the POC up to the left side of his face. Coming to a halt with his back still to us, McCord said something in a low voice into the device.

He seemed to jerk his head and shoulders back a bit and looked at his POC before he closed the shell and put the device back on his belt. I saw his shoulders move as he took in a deep breath, and as he exhaled McCord stood up straight and moved his head to the left and then back forward while lifting his chin.

What the hell kind of a call was THAT? my PAW laughed. Did he find out the old-fashioned rabbit died, or what?

Half turning toward me and his skinny friend, McCord pointed to the shuttle settling on the berth grid that was Juliet’s and he nodded to his buddy.

“Heeey ... Not on our schedule,” the guy on my left whined. “Somebody else’s worry soon enough. Our daily labor’s nearly done.”

“We’re right here right now,” McCord replied in a soft voice, a resolve in the tone of his voice I’d not heard before around the poker table, “and it will only take us ten minutes.”

“By the Last Hell,” his buddy spit out, “I thought we were gonna take our break now and do ... you know ... that, that favor.”

“Look,” McCord snorted as he stalked toward his buddy, “we’ll do this now, or that favor won’t happen for you at all. Under-stood?“

Stopping by the skinny guy’s side, McCord grabbed him by the left shoulder and gave the guy a jerk before pushing him toward the pede-lane! The guy walked over onto the black-marked section of deck looking back and giving the rude, crude, crusty dude a frown and the stink eye. On the verge of the vehicle track he stopped and, looking both ways, broke into a trot across the brick-red section of deck as he headed toward Juliet’s shuttle.

I looked at McCord. He slightly shrugged his right shoulder, and with a hint of tilting his head to the left, gave me a half grin. I saw a glimmer of what I thought was cruel amusement in his eyes.

“Something’s come up,” said McCord before he turned his back to me and took two steps over to the piece of huge equipment. Lifting his left foot, he stepped up on the bottom frame and grabbed a handhold next to a control panel, pulling himself up. He reached back between the edge of the panel and the front of a long, meter high cylinder, pushing deep into the gap with his left arm. With a grunt, McCord slowly pulled his arm back out, and I saw his hand was gripping the handle of a thick, silver-colored briefcase-like container. I caught a glimpse of purple markings on one side before McCord hugged the case to his chest, hiding what I’d seen before I could make out whatever was printed there.

What the fuck is this guy up too? my paranoid ass-wipe asked. What’s with the case? Does this have to do with the favor he was supposed to do?

Turning and hopping down from the equipment to the deck, a genuine smile appeared on McCord’s full face. What ever emotion made him smile reached his eyes and caused the hair on the back of my neck stand up as he focused on me—shutting my PAW up.

“I hope you understand; I really gotta go,” McCord told me and shrugged the shoulders of his grimy duty blues while clutching the silver case to his chest. “Sorry I can’t stay and say hello to your sweet first wife.”

McCord then walked past me, heading over to the covered donk two parking spaces to my right. He moved the tarp covering the front out of his way and, reaching into the open doorframe of the cab, he leaned inside. I could see McCord place the silver case on the far seat. Stepping back from the side of the cab, he grabbed hold of the tarp. Taking several steps farther backward, he pulled the crinkling material from over the cab while crumpling the tarp to his chest. He used one arm and then the other to gather in the noisy covering as it slithered off the front of the big machine. With the sheet of blue material free of the control cab, he dropped the big wadded up tarp on the deck at his boots.

Then McCord stepped around to the front of the cab, and bending over, he pulled the drip tray out from under the front of the low-rider. Standing back up, he reached out and took the hand-lettered sign off the LED panel, tossing it back onto the blue tarp.

“What the fuck...” I heard my voice mumble.

Then to my further surprise, McCord started whistling as he paced around to my side of the donk again. He grabbed the lower front edge of the silver tarp covering over the mysterious cargo filling the long, back load bed. As he continued to walk to the rear of the machine while dragging the moving cover behind him, his effort unveiled the stacked boxes, barrels, and palletized items that were secured with ratcheted down cargo straps. When the tarp was peeled back off the rear of the donk, he continued to drag the heavier material off to the side until it was out of the way. All the time he continued whistling the energetic song I partially recognized as coming from some old Earth movie.

Leaving the entire length sliver tarp on the decking, G3 McCord turned and walked back to the front the donk; there he climbed up into the driver’s compartment without even looking at me and sat down. His cheeks puffed out as his lips continued forming the notes of the tune while McCord fiddled with the machine’s controls. With the sound of big electric motors, he backed the donk up as the beep, beep, beep of the reverse warning alarm clashed with his whistling. The rear of the cargo donk turned to my left as the back wheels rolled over part of the silver tarp material. Without even looking at me when the donk stopped, he guided the big donk forward and then out onto the vehicle track that went from the flight line back through the maintenance yard.

The donk turned left toward the flight line. Without even slowing down or looking either way, McCord drove across the vehicle track, giving an almost dismissive wave to Juliet as he passed by on her left while she walked across the brick-red section toward me. I didn’t even know she’d gotten out of the shuttle!

“Was that our rude, crude, crusty McCord?” Juliet asked, sounding bemused as she walked up to me. She turned around to watch the big cargo donk beyond the vehicle track as the machine turned left toward the rear of the Shuttle Bay and drove along the flight line on this side of the shuttles parked there at the moment.

“It sure was,” I told Juliet over her right shoulder with snort of disbelief at what I’d just seen—even for McCord, his actions were abrupt. For a moment I had the urge to put my left arm around my first wife and ease her body back against mine, but with the shotgun I held by my right hand with the barrel pointing up at the overhead, the vest I wore, and other gear in the way—no.

Across the way, I saw McCord’s buddy at work, pulling a big hose out of an opened access panel in the deck on the starboard side of Juliet’s big SSC-12 shuttle, his back to us. He wasn’t even aware that McCord was driving off and leaving him with all the work he wasn’t even scheduled to do.

“I wonder what thread McCord’s engaged in this time,” I said, shaking my Kilo-covered head with amazement at his actions today while getting another grip on my shotgun with my right hand. We both continued to watch the donk. “He just answered a short call that made him react strange. Then McCord put his POC back on his belt, retrieved a briefcase out of a hiding place in that big piece of equipment over to the left, pulled the tarps off a donk I didn’t think worked, then he hopped in and took off!” My inner geek was still processing about the case; something about the color purple was familiar.

In a shuttle berth four spaces along the flight line toward the aft was another SSC-12. The craft was pointed out toward the 70-meter-wide movement strip down the center of the shuttle bay to the outer hatches. As we watched the cargo donk McCord was driving approach the shuttle, the back ramp on the vessel started to come down. When the low-rider pulled almost even with the back of the craft, he turned the donk toward the vessel at the same time the ship’s navigation lights came on.

We heard the deep hum as the shuttle’s drives began to spool up. When the donk reached the deployed ramp, McCord slowed down and drove right up the ramp into the shuttle. Once the back of the crammed full donk disappeared into the cargo hold, the ramp began to lift up behind the packed low-rider!

“All that is truth-told strange,” Juliet said in a soft voice as we both continued to stare at the shuttle. “And considering we’re talking about McCord ... that’s certainly saying something. And what’s he doing with that cargo? You said he had some kind of a briefcase? I wonder if he’s part of the dark mark—you could ask your friend we got the toilet paper from. He’d know, wouldn’t he?”

“Truth-told—strange,” I muttered, wanting to see what McCord was going to do next. “I’ll ask Garrick the next time I talk to him. We really do need to invite him and his friend to dinner.”

“Golly, I didn’t think there was a flight crew on that bucket when I pulled up to our assigned berth,” my first wife told me, shrugging the shoulders of her duty blues. She turned around, gazing up at me from under the rim of her Kilo helmet; her green eyes looked into mine. I could see she was thoughtful and said nothing as I watched the wheels turning deep in her eyes.

What is a mystery donk and McCord acting weird compared to being close to my Juliet? I thought, feeling warmth start spreading out through my body from my middle as her green eyes sparkled and drew me into their depths.

“What a strange fucker,” Juliet said with a nod of emphasis and a cute smirk, surprising me with her choice of words and breaking our rapport. She turned and looked away from me, back at the shuttle now holding McCord and the donk. “Next time I face him over a hand of cards, I’m going to take McCord for everything he’s got. Maybe wear one of my denim vests with a really thin tee shirt under it and no bra. That way if he plays, I can take off the vest, he sees the outlines of my nipples, and he’s dead. I mean, what was he thinking? He gives me just a wave before he sort of drives of into the sunset and into a shuttle? What was that about?”

“Well ... you know,” I told her, trying to reorient my mind and what we needed to do, and not knowing what else to try but make light of the situation, “I knew it was going to eventually happen.”

“Now what are you talking about, husband?” she asked as we continued to look at the SSC-12 McCord boarded.

“Your world-beater charisma and stellar-class beauty starting to fade with age,” I told her hoping to sound contemplative. “I mean, if what I just saw actually happened, you’ve already lost your touch with McCord—”

Her elbow into my gut wasn’t that hard, and my ballistic vest was protecting me.

“—Hey, Jaym, you can just kiss my well-toned and heart-shaped ass, mister,” she chuckled as the shuttle holding McCord and the mystery donk started to lift off the deck. Once it was two meters in the air, we watched the SSC-12 move out of its assigned tie-down space on the flight line. The big craft turned toward the far forward bulkhead, the dreaded red-yellow checkerboard, and the huge hatchways that opened to the Big Black and beyond.

With a shiver going up his back, my paranoid ass-wipe knew that at each of the huge outer hatchways there was only a class-one force field keeping 99.972 percent of the molecules of the Shuttle Bay’s atmosphere from escaping into the Big Black. I told my PAW and my inner geek to shut up and give me some alone time with my wife as I felt a thrill building in my body in response to her being close to me.

“Where in the All Alone is the flight crew of that shuttle going with that donk?“ Juliet asked.

“Carrying McCord and cargo donk full of stuff—to another Bay? I’ve got no idea, but I will tell you this,” I said to my first wife, figuring flight control knew what must be going on or they’d lock the shuttle down or something, “I was intending to eat lunch after I shift some cargo into the Royal Yacht, but kissing your sexy, ripe ass is certainly a much better plan.”

“So,” Juliet asked me and I could hear a grin in her voice as this time she gave me only a half-hearted shove against my ballistic and beam vest with her right elbow, “other than this weird display, how’s your duty day been so far? You’ve got more claimed contraband?” She turned around and looked at me with enquiring, inviting, green eyes and a quirky grin.

Her question killed my amorous mood—I didn’t know how to tell her there could be another 24 Brotherhood soldiers who might have been infiltrated onto the Glenndeavor somehow, somewhere. My inner geek still was mulling over the silver-colored briefcase with the glimpsed purple lettering McCord put into the cab.

“Well,” I said while deciding to put off telling Juliet the news about maybe more Morlocks right now, “I’ve had a tedious day so far, we’ll talk about it in depth while we drop off our booty. We did find a whole bunch of hidden contraband back in that big supply bay over there—actually, it was Bea’s hunch that turned it up ... but how about we walk back into the yard as we talk?”

“Oooo,” Juliet cooed as she slipped her right arm under my left and with a quick step, she turned us to face the starboard bulkhead across the maintenance yard. With a nod of her head, she pulled on my arm and we began strolling. I had the chance to take in a big lungful of air smelling subtly of grease, solvent, and that funny odor of the Big Black ... and then I exhaled. Juliet would learn about what we’d found soon enough—I just wanted to spend some quality time with her, as we had the day before when we’d walked home together. Once we were off-loading our new gear we’d talk about the possibility of more infiltrated Morlock shock troops being hidden somewhere aboard the Glenndeavor.

“Are you going to pull me back under one of these tarp-covered pieces of equipment,” Juliet asked me in her teasing-sounding tone of voice as she dropped her arm and took hold of my glove covered hand, “and try to get at my naughty pieces, my sexy husband? Huh? Hoping to start your ass-kissing early? You must have missed me in bed last night ... I did think of you ... from time to time,” she laughed and tried to give me a hip bump as we walked past the mass of the silver tarp crumpled out across the deck away from us without comment. It wasn’t our worry.

“I’m sure you did think of me from time to time,” I chuckled, happy for the teasing distraction from my actual worries as the two of us headed off through the marked parking spaces—some occupied with pieces of equipment, some empty. “While our Melvina Godwyn Bimini thrilled and then surrendered to her most repressed desires under your able seduction skills, I’m sure.”

My wife squeezed my fingers and increased our pace as we padded over the deck. I think we were both remembering or imagining what had happened in C003 last night. The moans and begging I’d heard from the pass-through gave my imagination plenty of material to work with, and my cock firmed up to the point it was starting to bind in my boxers as my first wife and I matched our strides and she increased our pace again. Now we were almost power walking, and I rested the shotgun against my right shoulder, gripping the trigger housing in my right fist as our clasped hands and our arms pumped forward and back between us, swinging with our strides.

“You had your time with Vina,” Juliet managed to chuckle as her breathing increased and I let the sexy images of Mindy and Mel collapse in my mind’s eye. I noticed the still disassembled ATV that I’d seen yesterday and the boxes around it come into my right peripheral vision. “The next time ... we’ll be with her together. So, husband, is my talk making you hard? Hum? I bet it is. Tell me, where are you going to take me?”

I started to slow down as I thought about what Juliet had just said, and my wife followed my lead. In spite of the images of Juliet and me both pleasuring Melvina, I had to admit that I felt tired; but more mentally fatigued than physically weary. On top of that, there was a lot of work ahead of us, unloading the donk and storing our just-gotten gains in the Royal Yacht. However, being near Juliet was perking my body up, beginning in my boxers—and I did appreciate the effect that piloting a shuttle had on my first wife.

“Flying a shuttle really does make you horny,” I said to my sex-bomb first wife as we continued at a stroll through the empty, yellow-marked parking places, “doesn’t it.”

“My goodness, my husband,” Juliet cooed and leaned against my left arm and squeezed my fingers through my tactical glove, “if you only knew.”

Across the maintenance yard, I saw the wide hatch of the supply bay I’d been in split open and the big cargo donk, looking exactly like the one McCord drove off in, pulled out; the load of cargo easily seen above the top of the driver’s compartment. Once clear of the threshold, the machine maneuvered to the brick-red vehicle track and then accelerated toward us.

“Hey, look,” I said to my wife, “here comes our ride.” And it’s going a good deal faster that the speed limit, I thought.

“That is our ride?“ she asked from my side, giving my hand a little jerk. “Where are we going to sit?”

As the speeding donk approached and began to slow down, I could see there was another crew member to the right of the driver and the person was not a woman I knew. Juliet and I both halted at the same time and just watched the low-rider cargo hauler as it pulled up to our left on the vehicle track about six meters from us before the machine came to a full stop.

As we started walking toward the donk, we could see Anika and Beatrice. They were down on their butts facing forward with the backs of their vests against the ammo pallet strapped down in line with two other big pieces of gear at the rear of the load bed. Their knees were bent upward with their boots resting against the bottom of stacks of contraband in boxes, cases, and containers that was over head-high in places. The entire load was cinched down with ratchet straps and filled the rest of the cargo bed all the way to the back of the driver’s cab.

“Mister Sitwell,” called out G3 Kyler from the door-less opening in the cab as we walked up to the donk. With a wave of his left hand, he gestured across his chest as he said, “This is a friend of mine, G2 Xazan.”

With her short blonde hair, I recognized her as one of Anika’s team.

“She’s helped me move cargo before,” he explained with a goofy grin on his rugged face. “Is it alright if she comes along with us? I mean, a TD already came by and picked up the rest of the team. Ah, and it’s already departed. Also a donk of Marines showed up to continue the search. Your G3 Henderson talked to the Warrant Officer in charge. I take it you saw her and the G2 in the back. Like I said before, riding back there is against regulations, but you’re in charge—so...” He was checking out Juliet who put her right arm around my left and tucked herself against my side.

“What’s the planned trajectory?” he asked, looking back at me with a grin. “That is, if you can tell me, ah, Mister Sitwell?”

“Another helping hand will be welcomed,” I told Kyler as Juliet and I looked into the driver’s compartment at both of them. “Right now I don’t feel I’m at liberty to tell you what is occurring in detail. In a few minutes I’ll send our preliminary destination to your POC Mister Kyler.”

He nodded his head and shrugged his shoulders as he sat back in his seat behind the controls on his side of the compartment.

“However, first we’re going to the Catacombs to drop off some of this load,” I told him and Juliet turned her head and looked up at me, giving me a curious appraisal. “You’ll take what remains of the contraband on to the collection point in CSB-One. What was your last qualifying pistol score on a firing range?”

“My pistol score?” Kyler asked me with a boyish grin that tugged at some memory of mine from ... the previous mission. “I shot a 351 last time I qualified; why?”

Of course I knew that a score of 345 out of 400 points during a crew member’s annual pistol qualification test would earn that person an expert rating and badge.

I glanced down and looked at his specialty blaze again; it was the crossed keys on a star background of a Ship’s Logistics Specialist—I was even more impressed by Mister Kyler’s abilities yet still wondered why he was familiar.

“None of us will be able to accompany you to CSB-One to drop off the remaining contraband,” I finally replied. “I’m going to arm you with a pistol, holster, and three extra magazines.” My inner geek was more than happy to remind me of an emergency option that regulations provided me as the supervisor of my team. I figured the possibility that there were another 24 unaccounted for Brotherhood infiltrators somewhere aboard the Glenndeavor was certainly an emergency as far as I was concerned; until we knew otherwise.

“I’m going to temporarily deputize you,” I told Kyler, and I enjoyed the two pair of eyes in the driver’s compartment going wide. “You’ve reported that you’re more than qualified with a pistol, and I need to deputize you to legally provide you with a weapon and then send you off unsupervised with some of this contraband. You’ll need some kind of a head covering as well.”

“Excuse me, G5, ahhh, Sitwell,” G2 Xazan spoke up from the other side of Kyler as she leaned forward, bracing her right hand against the dashboard as she looked at us past Kyler. Her brown eyes were opened wide and she was excited. “I shot a 362 with a range pistol two weeks ago for my annual qualification; will you make me a deputy as well and give me a weapon? He can’t drive and provide armed protection at the same time, can he? Oh, and there’s those combat helmets on the back, I helped load them aboard. We could both wear helmets to signify that we’re duly authorized to be under arms.”