Preview: Captain Scarlett, Martian Envoy
Family Ties

Friends at La Grange Point 3

©Copyright 2024 by Duleigh

Dedication:

To Curtis, who had faith in me and convinced me to publish my stories, and Tom, who has followed me since day one and actually got to talk to my hero, the inspiration of two of these stories - Isaac Asimov

Chapter 1

December 16, 2162

Lake Jezero Crater, Mars

Lake Jezero was a lake of broken ice pieces. Just a few years ago, a small moon made of ice was dropped in this crater and shattered before it landed on a military base populated by the Eastern Bloc soldiers disguised as pirates. The ice reached up to five feet in depth in some places and here at the buried military base, the tops of several concrete shelters could be seen sticking above the ice, and one person with a tracked excavator was digging her way toward the shelters.

Eris Carmine-Rodriguez drove the little tracked excavator down the alley she constructed by digging out the chunks of ice then freezing a wall of ice with a flamethrower, preventing the ice from collapsing on her. She had just uncovered another Eastern Bloc treasure. Protected in a concrete shelter, the small ship was in perfect shape and Eris towed it out of the shelter with the excavator. She had connected hoisting straps to it and was headed back to the edge of the crater, where the road that angled up the side of the crater led her out of the crater and to her temporary facility. There she switched from the excavator to a scooter, a multi-use utility truck, and flew out over the crater. She landed the scooter behind her prize and connected the chain that was wrapped around her find to the hoisting hook of the scooter, then climbed back into the scooter and lifted.

It wasn't long before her prize was dangling below the scooter. A Western Alliance F-231 SpaceStreak, the fastest interceptor/fighter in the known universe. Her collection was getting bigger and bigger. She had two of the famous F-733's, an E model with no .50 caliber guns and an F model with factory installed 50cals. She had an older F-303 before it was ruined for atmospheric flight, a FB-719 fighter/bomber… except for the F-231, these were all ships that fought at Venus Prime. What were these jerks doing?

She had sole permission to excavate the military base that the Eastern Bloc had built on Mars and so far she's uncovered many vehicles which are in a garage getting repaired and ready for sale, several eastern design scooters which were gutsy but built like battleships. They needed to be lightened up before they were useful. Along with the vehicles, she had tons of tools and other equipment. She also found emergency shelters that were full of soldiers that were crushed when the weak shelter they were in collapsed under the weight of the ice. With her excavator, Eris dug a huge trench in the ground and buried them. Her time with the Western Alliance Navy Berserkers gave her a respect for military people, especially these blokes that were led so poorly.

The Eastern Bloc had built a dozen bomb proof spacecraft shelters and so far each shelter had safely held a fighter spacecraft but no spacemen. It looks like the troops weren't allowed to shelter with the spacecraft when their world was ending. She had seven shelters and seven months to go before she had to evacuate the dig. That was ok, she had enough scrap metal, tools, electronics, vehicles, and plasticine 'lumber' to keep her busy for years. Everything else she gets out of that hole is 'gravy on the taters' as her gyrene husband would say.

The F-231 fascinated her. It was long, pointy, and nasty looking. It had a long nose and its tail was a gigantic exhaust for the N-52 engine, known as the Moon Buster. This machine was clearly designed to dip into the atmosphere because of its streamlined design and stub wing pylons. The pilot's front view screen conformed with the tubular body, and the aft canopy for the navigator was directly behind the pilot. The navigator had no windscreens; he had no view outside his cockpit. Two stub wing pylons with missile launchers and rocket exhausts at the tips stuck out at the middle of the long tube shaped body, and at the root of the pylons were two gaping maws which held the lasers and 20mm canons. Slug throwers were becoming quite popular since Commander White created the algorithm that linked the guns with the propulsion system to keep the ship stable and counteract recoil as the gun fired. She couldn't wait to get it back to the shop where she could tinker.

Slowly, she gained altitude, lifting the F-231 with her trusty scooter. Soon she was looking down at the crater. It was maybe a third filled with ice and from what she heard, the next solid ice moon that her brother-in-law was bringing would fill this crater to the brim with ice. Water for all of Mars for a century and more. Eris hauled the F-231 straight from the pit to her main shop and dropped it at the big air lock that closed around it. Then, going into the shop through the personnel access airlock, she opened the inner hanger door and there it was, gleaming in its anger. She hooked a tow bar to the front strut and pulled it into her main shop with a tracked excavator and the first thing she did after sealing the door was to copy down the ID number WA57-0002. Sitting down at her desk, Eris pulled off her gloves and fired up her computer terminal and logged into the Shipfinder's database, then typed in the serial number. After a few moments, the information on the F-231 popped up.

"F-733F. SPACECRAFT OWNED BY GOVERNMENT OF MARS. LOST AT THE BATTLE OF VENUS PRIME"

That confused Eris a lot. The battle of Venus Prime was fought in 2155. This ID number is for a spacecraft that was registered in 2157, the year that Alan Scarlett dropped a small moon on Mars. She went back to the F-231 and found the serial number 570204DG6058L9420002. She knows a bit about the serial numbers. The first six digits are the date it was completed. The DG means it was built by De Havilland Gulfstream, and the L means it was built in the Londonderry plant. 942 is her model number and the last four numbers are her series number that is used by the Western Alliance Navy as an ID number.

If this serial number is correct, this ship was completed in early February 2157 in a Western Alliance factory, painted and numbered for the Western Alliance Navy, registered to a neutral planet, and three months later it was buried under seven feet of ice in an Eastern Bloc military base on Mars. Eris punched the serial number into the data query and got the following result:

"F-733E. SPACECRAFT OWNED BY GOVERNMENT OF MARS. HEAVILY MODIFIED IN 2156. LOST AT THE BATTLE OF VENUS PRIME"

Even weirder, this data shows it was lost in 2155, rebuilt in 2156, and initially built in 2157. Somebody at the Shipfinder's database has a bizarre sense of humor. What is the Government of Mars doing with a military spacecraft? It looks like pirates or government sponsored pirates were stealing spacecraft and stashing them on Mars.

She logged her daily finds into the database she was required to keep, mostly so the President of Mars, Ray Clark, would know what she was digging up. That finished, she logged off and put on her helmet and locked up her shop, then got on her scooter and headed to the "water plant." The water plant was a building built by Scarlett Water Systems that provided water to the colonies of Mars. A large robotic arm scooped ice out of the crater, dropped it into a grinder that crushed it finer and a conveyer carried it miles across the Heinlein plain to Perseverance where it would be melted, filtered, tested then either bottled or added to the pipeline that provided water to the Martians.

There at the water plant she locked up her scooter, let the marine guard know that she was done for the day, and headed to the tube station; she needed to hurry, so she didn't miss her train home to Perseverance, the capital city of Mars.

The train stop at Lake Jezero was a flag stop. The train only stopped if you pressed a button at the station stop which notified the train that you wished to board. Eris stepped up to the station with plenty of oxygen to wait out two trains if she had to, and pressed the button. She sat down on a bench and headlines scrolled across her helmet visor for her to scan. Eventually, the story she was reading was blocked out by the words, "Your train approaches." Soon her train stopped and the doors on one of the rear car slid open. It was a commuter train, so the cars weren't pressurized as you got on, but there were oxygen lines and electronic lines to plug into your environment suit. Eventually, the train would decide that there are no more passengers for your car and your car would pressurize for the rest of the trip.

They blasted across the Heinlein plain and soon entered Perseverance and as the trains stopped, pressurized walkways pressed against the car exit doors, and you could enter the city. Once indoors, you could take off your environment suit and leave it in a rented locker. Most men and women who drop off their environment suit rarely wear more than sheer underwear and sometimes not even that, so it's not unusual to see a commuter on the moving sidewalks wearing nothing but tiny panties or their jockey shorts. Eris will occasionally do something like that to taunt her husband, Alex, but that's not very often.

She changed moving walks three times and soon was home. Their apartment was small, but the price was right. It was free, which really helps when your husband is an enlisted marine, and you make a living selling scrap metal. "Carmesí!" cried Alex, and he scooped Eris up in his arms and swung her around, finally setting her down with a long, sweet kiss.

"What's Carmesí?"