Mutiny in Space by Rod Walker Read Free Book Online

the depot here,” said Corbin, tapping one of the systems, “so it’ll be fifty-nine hyperjumps in all.”
    “Man,” I said, doing the transit times in my head. “That means a round trip of, what, two and a half months?”
    “You’ll have time to finish the next certification tier,” said Corbin.
    “And then some,” I said. “That is a lot of uninhabited systems.”
    “Not all of them have been charted properly, either. We’ll probably pick up some additional revenue running full scans and selling them to the Coalition navy when we get back.”
    I frowned. “Is that legal?”
    “So long as the scans are accurate, yes,” said Corbin. “If they’re not accurate, then it’s fraud. Or you could get charged with deliberately wrecking ships. That’s an old trick of pirates. Sell screwed-up navigational charts, wait for ships to blunder into the wrong gravity well, then show up and steal their cargoes.”
    “Seems like some of those empty systems would be a perfect hiding place for pirates,” I said.
    “Oh, yes,” said Corbin. “Or religious fanatics, or undocumented scientists working on unethical experiments in secret, or crazies trying to build the perfect society with an asteroid mine and a hydroponics bay. I’d guess that we’ll pass by two or three dozen off-the-books colonies, mines, and space stations.”
    “And pirates,” I said. “Don’t forget the pirates.”
    Corbin remained unruffled. “We’ll only see them if they’re stupid. That’s why she has all those guns.”
    The
Rusalka
did have a lot of guns. She was a big ship, which meant she had a big fusion reactor to power her sub-light drive and a big hypermatter reactor to catalyze the hyperdrive. Those reactors met she could generate a lot of power, enough for a dozen railgun turrets as well as the radiant and kinetic deflectors. She was well-crewed too, since Security Chief Nelson continued to insist that the crew drill every week with the weapons, and the man regarding missing a weapons-and-boarders drill as something worse than blasphemy.
    “Or if they’re really smart,” I said.
    Corbin shrugged. “Speak softly and carry a big stick. We don’t go looking for trouble, but if anyone comes looking for it, we’ll give them enough to choke on.”
    So the
Rusalka
left the company depot on the edge of the Thousand Worlds and began the long trip to New Sibersk. It took us just over the expected six weeks to get there. You’d think the crew would go stir-crazy during a trip that long, but God knows that Corbin and Hawkins kept us too busy to cause any trouble.
    For one, there was all the endless maintenance. Corbin made good money as a master technician, and the reason he did was that the
Rusalka
’s systems were locked in a never-ending war against entropy, and entropy never, ever, gave up. Simple routine maintenance filled up most of my days, interrupted by major projects when something broke or needed refitting. Studying for certifications took up most of the rest of my time, and when I had the occasional hour to relax, Arthur and I would connect to the ship’s computer, grab some controllers, and either blow away aliens or fight a quick battle in
Gunno-Tatakai
.
    The only downside? No girls. None whatsoever. Some companies hired female crew, but Starways wasn’t one of them. I noticed that whenever the
Rusalka
came into a port, most of the unmarried men (and a few of the married ones) rapidly disappeared into various discreet-looking buildings with red lights over the front doors.
    That was something I planned to investigate in more detail when I turned eighteen in a few weeks and could accompany the others. Arthur and I had tried twice to delve deeper into the mystery, but after successfully sneaking off the ship, were turned away at the door both times. When Corbin heard about our excursions, he scared us both to death with stories about what might have been our fate if we’d chosen the wrong sort of red-lit building to