Spaceship Thrive (Thrive Space Colony Adventures Book 2) Read online

  Spaceship Thrive

  Thrive Space Colony Adventures Book 2

  Ginger Booth

  Copyright © 2019 Ginger Booth

  All rights reserved.

  Cover design by www.rafidodigitalart.com

  Skyship image © Freestyleimages | Dreamstime.com

  Pono system diagram by Ginger Booth

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the author.

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  Author’s Note

  Prologue

  Rings of Pono

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Author Note

  Also by Ginger Booth

  Acknowledgments

  Join my reader group

  to receive free prequels, bonus content, news, etc.

  Prologue

  Humanity spread to the stars not with a bang,

  but a whimper.

  We gained control of gravity.

  The star drive was discovered.

  Explorers sought out new solar systems.

  The best were colonized. Terraforming began.

  But behind them, Earth collapsed.

  Launched on a shoestring,

  the settlers were humanity’s only hope for survival.

  But they’re failing on the moon Mahina.

  Captain Sass Collier heads into orbit seeking answers.

  Rings of Pono

  Mahina and Sagamore are colonized.

  Most moons omitted.

  1

  Most space station societies were quasi-military and authoritarian. – Quasar Shibuya, The Early Diaspora.

  Captain Sassafras Collier brought her skyship Thrive slowly toward the space station Mahina Orbital – MO. She held her speed at dead slow, not because the maneuver required this, but to scope out the changes time had wrought.

  The trip up from Mahina had been a hell-ride, gunner shooting rocks in their path while the pilot dodged obstacles too big to shoot. Sass spelled both pilot and gunner, the three of them playing musical chairs. Once they reached the clear space maintained by the orbital’s guns, they took a couple hours off to recuperate before final approach and admire the view.

  Her nerves still welcomed the break from sheer terror.

  How long had it been? She first saw MO 64 years ago, arriving aboard the colony ship from Earth. What a madhouse, with a quarter million refugees to keep quelled. As a cop, quelling was her job. She stole a quick glance at the station out of an airlock. But that day her attention was riveted on the colorful gas giant planet Pono and its sparkling rings. She also caught her first glimpse of the sorry little moon Mahina that day, a dust ball with craters, her dubious destination. She’d lived there ever since.

  Yes, she remembered arrival day.

  What she struggled to recall was when she last visited the orbital. The colony ship that brought her here, the Vitality, remained in orbit for nearly a decade while they cannibalized it for parts. Gradually the settlers disembarked to live on Mahina. And die. Last time she saw MO, the carcass of the immense transport still dwarfed the station, bare ribs shining like a dead whale. The vivid orange and white and magenta stripes of storms across the face of yellow Pono shone through where her cohort used to bunk.

  She hadn’t paid much mind to the space station that time, either.

  “Long thoughts?” Abel prompted from the copilot seat. Just the two of them fit in the skyship’s snug bridge for this brief maneuver. Dusky in coloring and sturdy of build, the first mate was only 25. Earth years. No one reckoned time by Pono’s 29-year period around Aloha, the system’s sun.

  “Was it your grandparents?” Sass asked. “Who arrived on the Vitality?”

  “Yeah,” Abel agreed. “My grandfather was seven when they left Earth. I don’t know much about him. Died young.”

  Sass’s brow furrowed. “Your other grandparents?”

  “That’s all I know,” Abel replied. “Mom’s first memories were an orphanage. Dad’s mom, he never knew.”

  That’s how it went back then. Longevity was slightly better now. Most remembered their parents at least, among the refugee settlers. The urbs – the first wave citizens of Mahina Actual, Mahina’s one city – could usually recite their family tree back to the colony’s founding. They knew the heroic accomplishments of their illustrious ancestors.

  Sass arrived with the settlers over 40 years later, subjective. The illustrious founders looked like hell by then, memories of Earth already grown tenuous.

  After atmosphere, she suddenly recalled. That’s when she’d last visited the orbital. She’d been living on the surface several years without visiting orbit. But she had no reason to think it would be the last time. Nearly 50 years ago.

  Sass looked the same as she had on that day, about the same age as Abel now. The years hadn’t been nearly as kind to Mahina Orbital.

  As they drew nearer, its sweeping tutu of solar collectors looked tattered and chewed on. The station’s shape, accreted in microgravity, defied the eye to interpret clearly. The squat box jutted out accessories and annexes like flying buttresses, giving an overall impression of an archaic loom. The automated guns kept the debris from Pono’s rings at bay, mostly.

  “It’s part of the ship the urbs arrived in, the Manatee,” Sass murmured for Abel’s benefit. “The Mahina Colony founders. The core of it, anyway.”

  “Weird,” Abel acknowledged. “Looks like it’s falling apart.”

  Sass nodded. She watched as more of the compound damage of a century grew clear. What the –? Lumpy organic protuberances spotted the orbital hull, as though its surface grew mushrooms.

  In her planning for this trip, she assumed she was an old space hand. She was intimately familiar with the orbital and the rings of Pono. She was equipped to lead her people and crew here. With a sudden stab of acid misgiving in her stomach, Sass recognized that wasn’t entirely true. She worried her lower lip.

  “Captain? Prepare for arrival?” Abel prompted.

  “Right,” Sass agreed. Time to drop the reverie and get serious. She’d never mated her new-used sk
yship to a dock before. This technical alignment problem absorbed her attention for the next 20 minutes.

  “Mahina Orbital?” she hailed them. “Thrive in position to dock. Will you take over?”

  “Take over what?” the comms returned.

  “Dock mating,” Sass clarified. “Pull us in to dock. We are at the correct dock, yes?”

  “Oh. I thought you did that. Hang on, maybe I can ask somebody.”

  “Somebody?” Abel murmured.

  Sass nodded sourly. “Mahina Orbital, this is Thrive Actual. We are expected. May I speak with your CO?”

  No reply. Perhaps the receptionist left her post to search for ‘somebody.’

  “How often do they get visitors?” Abel asked.

  “They complained their last resupply was fifteen months ago. Supposed to be once a year.”

  Sass paused to consider, and double-check. She was at the right dock. She made micro-adjustments until the computer said she was 100% aligned again. That state couldn’t last more than a few seconds. This close to the station hull, she didn’t dare allow drift.

  In sudden decision she launched the Thrive’s docking magnets. They struck the other hull on plates provided for the purpose. One of the magnets was a touch weak, but within tolerance. She told the computer to start reeling them in.

  “Copeland?” she hailed her engineer. “You available? Not getting much help from the station.”

  “Captain?” Copeland returned. “I worked a loading dock once. No pressure seals.”

  No, his primary experience was maintenance supervisor in a distillery, then a phosphate mine.

  Sass herself was an ex-cop and ex-farmer. “I have a similar problem,” she admitted wryly. “But we do the best we can. Correct me if I’m wrong – we don’t have a pressurized umbilical to mate with this orbital, do we?”

  “Uh, let me check,” Copeland offered.

  The reels finished their job tugging them in against the docking magnets. “Mahina Orbital?” she inquired again. No joy. Sighing, she initiated the docking clamp sequence from her end. It wasn’t safe to drift this close to the orbital without a solid lock.

  “Captain,” Copeland got back to her. “We have an umbilical. I’m guessing it hasn’t been pressure tested. Since you didn’t know we had it.”

  “That’s affirm. Copeland, report cargo lock clear.”

  Sass pictured the engineer hastily hopping out of the doorway in the hold, and kicking a few toys out of the way.

  “Clear,” he agreed after a few moments.

  “The controls are down there,” Sass told him. “I’ll be down in a sec. Abel, have fun chatting with the station.”

  “Right. Uh, Sass? How do we transfer the cargo containers?”

  The crates in their hold could simply roll through the umbilical on grav pallets. The first mate referred to the four containers the Thrive carried below like a raptor clutching eggs that masqueraded as rail cars. Sass was tempted to reply, ‘Beats me.’ She held her tongue due a vague wish to instill confidence in her crew.

  “One problem at a time, Abel.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Sar. In space, it’s sar, not ma’am.”

  “Yes, sar. This isn’t quite what I imagined, sar.”

  “Abel, you remember when we first visited Phosphate Mine 3? How amazingly gifted Atlas Pratt was as general manager?”

  “Yeah?”

  “We can’t expect to be amazed. We’re all just winging it.” Using failing tech maintained by amateurs for over a century. It was a wonder that the ship or the orbital could still keep people alive. Mostly.

  Abel snorted amusement.

  Sass headed out the steel-grid catwalk above the hold until she was above an empty bit of floor to land on. Several members of her curious crew tried to waylay her from the kitchen. She ignored them, purposefully striding past in captain mode. She hopped down, softening her fall with a quick squirt of antigravity from her personal grav generator.

  Her rangy engineer, looking every bit the ex-con he wasn’t quite, stood studying the control panel she’d referred to.

  “Did you look at the umbilical?” she asked, joining him.

  “I don’t see any way to extend it part-way,” Copeland replied. “One-button operation. Do it, or don’t.” He ceded his spot for her to take a look.

  “Sass?” her boarder Clay Rocha called down from the catwalk above. “There’s someone outside waving. And did you see the patches on the orbital? Looks like someone repaired steel with foamcrete.”

  “Busy,” she returned shortly, then repented. “Sorry, Clay, you’re right. That was worth interrupting me for. Thank you. Noted.”

  Barking at people never saved time, no matter how she wished it. And alone on the Thrive, indeed on all of Mahina, Clay was like her. He too had arrived on the Vitality. If he looked older than Sass, he was simply more assiduous about applying stick-on cosmetic crow’s feet.

  “Clay? Could you join Abel on the bridge? Offer experience. Don’t tell him what to do.”

  He nodded and turned left for the bridge.

  What was she –? Oh, yeah. “Abel? Sass. Guys in pressure suits outside. Do a radio signal sweep and see if you can talk to them. They might be here to fetch the containers. I sent Clay your way to advise.”

  “Don’t we wait for official…” Abel’s brain caught up with his mouth. No one in authority on MO was talking to him. “Right, captain.”

  Sass studied the console before her. She punched the first button, which rolled down a wall to seal the cargo airlock’s inner face. Copeland read over her shoulder to learn the ropes. Once that wall was down and reported a good seal, she tested it by depressurizing the shallow lock between it and the extendable cargo ramp. Success again, and a green light over the smaller interior door turned red. She checked the exterior cameras to verify by eye that nothing stood in the way. Then she pressed another button to extend the cargo ramp.

  “This isn’t automated?” Copeland complained. “You have a checklist you’re following or something?”

  “That would be smart,” she acknowledged. She recited a checklist of the steps she’d already performed for the computer to record. “Computer, was there any previous checklist of this kind?”

  “Manufacturer’s instructions found,” the computer reported.

  “Have I followed the manufacturer’s instructions?” Sass asked, diverted.

  “The manufacturer suggests dock mating be instigated by the larger vessel.”

  “And when that isn’t possible?”

  “You have followed their instructions for docking with a smaller vessel.”

  “Thank you, computer. Previous checklist, add item, extend umbilical, add item, test the pressure seal. Close checklist.” She tapped the button to extend the umbilical.

  Copeland stepped over to watch through the freshly washed window in the door in the middle of the airlock inner wall. This part of the Thrive’s equipment they’d used before, during the stunt woman Kassidy Yang’s skydives. Sass herself walked the gangplank several times.

  “Don’t bother pressure testing, Sass. Want me to suit up? Or wait for the orbital to get their act together?”

  Sass joined him to peer out. The umbilical fell short of the matching ring on the other side. The now-horizontal ramp didn’t quite reach, either, but the shortfalls didn’t match. Sass leaned down to peer at the upper stretch of the corridor accordion. The umbilical wall was torn, with a hole bigger than her forearm. She pointed, and Copeland bent to take a look.

  “How do we fix something like that?” Sass asked.

  Copeland straightened and scratched his head. “Have to think about it.”

  One of the things Sass loved about her prized new engineer was the way he took for granted that it could be done. And he’d figure it out somehow.

  “Low priority,” she suggested. “But it might be easier here than in atmosphere.”

  Copeland rubbed his thumb doubtfully.

  Sass ret
racted the umbilical.

  Abel hailed her. “Captain, I have a Master Chief Pollan on the line. He claims to be MO head of engineering.”

  “Master chief is a noncommissioned rank,” Sass replied.

  “Huh?”

  “Put him on. Master chief! Good to hear from you. Our umbilical needs repair. Could you accomplish lock from your side, please?”

  “Our umbilical has a hole in it,” Pollan admitted. “And dry rot on the gaskets.”

  It was a long afternoon. But eventually, they managed a pressure-tight corridor between ship and orbital. By mutual consent, they retracted the airlock walls only long enough to tow the crates across the gangway from the Thrive’s hold. After that, Sass felt safer keeping the pressure doors sealed, no open corridor between vessels.

  Besides, MO’s air smelled awful.

  2

  The Aloha system was seeded with a rare three colonies. Mahina and Sagamore were lifeless moons of the gas giant Pono, located at the outer edge of the star’s Goldilocks zone. The warmer planet Denali sported a vibrant pre-existing biota and an atmosphere incompatible with Earth species. Humans settled its north polar region.