Backflow Boxed Set Read online

  Backflow Boxed Set

  by F. P. Adriani

  Copyright © 2019 by F. P. Adriani

  All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, without express written permission from the author and publisher.

  Published by F. P. Adriani

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away. If you would like to share this book with other people, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

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  This boxed set contains the three books in my Backflow series: Backflow, Firestone, and Omnivelocity.

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  Backflow

  The backflow light went on just as the Demeter was approaching the Genteran station.

  Genteran’s atmosphere was often quite chaotic, but making a soft landing on the planet now wasn’t too much of a problem for my ship: when the Demeter had been built years ago, retractable exhaust nozzles had been fitted into all of the main sides, and that omnidirectional thrusting capability allowed my crew and I to make very specific adjustments during both flying and landing.

  For years I had been doing well with my shipping business; I could afford the expense of maintaining the Demeter’s complex design. However, that very complexity also meant errors in operation were more likely.

  Gary, my lead engineer, had recently fine-tuned the Demeter’s sensor system to more immediately indicate if any backflow through vents and nozzles was happening—as it was now: that yellow light for the aft starboard nozzle was flashing on the silver panel in front of me.

  Alone on the bridge and strapped into my captain’s chair, I pressed one hand to my forehead and pounded the other hand on the intercom button on the black electronic panel beside me. “Gary, the aft starboard backflow light is flashing me.”

  “I see that,” Gary replied over the intercom. “I’m making adjustments—or at least I’m trying to.”

  “And what the hell does that mean?” I said, my voice sharper than it probably should have been, and that was partly because, nowadays, I was always at least a little worried about my ship.

  No matter that the Demeter was a quality spacecraft design, all machines were still subject to thermodynamic constraints, so would wear and probably never be exactly the same as before. And quality components to keep a quality design in good working order weren’t always available everywhere in the galaxy.

  Over the past few months, the aging Demeter had been having more engine and nozzle problems, and, several times, my crew and I had been forced to stop at maintenance space stations; we’d lost time on our routes, including on our current route. And at this point, I just wanted to get done with this Genteran run, which would be my last major run for the rest of the month.

  I really did not want to deal with anymore problems. Yet here was the backflow light….

  Now Gary said, “You know that I’ve been making more adjustments to the fuel-rod calibration, but the rods are still sticking too much. Hydroambin fusion quite often creates pockets of vacuum-like space in the chambers. When we’re hovering a lot, like we have been to get correctly positioned for landing—if the rods don’t descend as fast as they should into the main chamber, the vacuum issue occurs more often, and it can cause reverse motions inside the system, even into a nozzle if there’s a pause in thrust. The total force then moves in reverse.

  “It’s not an enormous reversal—like we’re not going to explode from high-pressure excessive contamination. The Rodrum Barriers take care of that. Still, nothing’s a hundred percent in every individual usage context. And the Rodrums will only start working once the backflow pressure begins approaching a specific threshold, which hasn’t happened now, as far as I can tell.

  “But Genteran’s got pain-in-the-ass emission jets from subsurface venting at this time of year. I told you to expect a little contamination when we land—”

  “But that was before we stopped at Trifold Station, Gary. I thought you meant that if you didn’t fix the liner in the starboard nozzle, then the engine would get contaminated. But the engineers at Trifold fixed the liner.”

  “Well, you know very well that I can’t be certain of anything. The ship’s still fifteen years old. The liners aren’t entirely the original ones in this design. Anytime you refit or patch, there’s probably a weakness introduced into the material at those seams. Again, I don’t need to tell you that. You know materials science.”

  “I know I do,” I said. “But, I’m not in engineering with you. And that means I can’t see minute-to-minute, every single thing that’s going on from here. I’m alone right now, too. Babs just left for her downtime…and we’re descending on course now. Five minutes to go till we near the surface hook-up, and now the backflow light’s gone out. Is that promising then?”

  “Yeah, it’s promising. Let’s just hope it doesn’t go on again. Which means: don’t yell at me if it does go on again.”

  I laughed. “Sorry I got too heated. I just want to get this done. This drop-off’s worth a lot of money, and the hydroambin deal I made is very reasonable—but you probably remember from the last time we were here that Genteran isn’t exactly a hotspot to be stuck in. I told you I’ve only been to this particular station once, years ago. It’s actually the oldest station on Genteran, and, based on what I’ve heard since, it still isn’t a state-of-the-art place. I just want in and out of here light-fast.”

  “I know,” Gary said. “We’ve started the final approach to GS—I’ve been adjusting the forward top nozzle stream, minimizing. It’s still too much, descent is too fast. Steve, adjust all belly thrusters, 2% baseline for 30 seconds as the landing gear descends….”

  Gary continued giving instructions to his staff, and, my heart pumping a little too hard for comfort, I watched the Demeter’s landing on my bridge’s front viewscreen, my eyes becoming absorbed in the view from below and before the ship.

  The silver-gray silhouette of Genteran Station slid onto the bottom of the screen. Above the structure, where the Genteran sky was usually a yellow-green, today it was all green, with some streaks of bluish-gray, which made the land look as if it was an industrially polluted place, when it actually wasn’t. It was just quite a geologically active place, which was one reason why there weren’t many settlements on the huge planet. That humans had to live indoors here was another reason: while Genteran’s atmosphere did contain oxygen, it didn’t contain enough oxygen and did contain a few human hallucinogens….

  Fortunately, Genteran had laid-back flight laws independent of any Interplanetary Commerce And Flight Committee rules, and that meant Genteran only dealt with an entry and exit if a ship asked for help, which was a setup I really preferred. Right before we first entered the atmosphere today, I had simply signaled the station about our approach.

  The Demeter was too big to fly right to the station, so, using the landing gear, we now had to slowly drive along the enormous earthen-platform toward the station’s link-up terminal.

  I raised the volume of the bridge speakers, so I could hear the bump-and-grind vibrations coming from the planet’s surface and shaking the Demeter’s lower decks and sensors. The Demeter was a long, relatively flat ship with only five main decks—

  I glanced down at my silver panel to check something—and noticed another backflow light come on, this time from one of the belly nozzles.

  “Gary!” I said, sitting up straighter against my chair’s strap.

  “I know—I know,” Gary replied. “I see it. I’m dealing wit
h it.”

  I sighed hard, my eyes still on the yellow light. “I don’t understand. We haven’t used that nozzle since several minutes ago.”

  “I think it’s a delay. We must have gotten backflow then, but the sensor didn’t pick it up right away.”

  “Awesome. This is going well.”

  “I’m doing the best I can,” Gary said.

  “I know,” I replied. Then I linked up my intercom with the cargo bay too, which was where Chen, the Demeter’s pilot, was.

  I had done some piloting early on in my in-space career. I knew how to fly the Demeter and had been doing some of that flying today. But, piloting wasn’t something I preferred doing, and, most days, I usually had too many other things to do.

  Chen usually had too many things to do too, and he usually did two things at once—like right now he was helping May, the cargo-bay director, and her assistants ready the cargo. There was a pilot’s console in the bay, from where Chen was also coordinating with Gary on landing the Demeter.

  Years ago, I’d had many of the ship’s controls rigged up so that everything wasn’t limited to the bridge only. Just like the Demeter had exhaust capability all over, I wanted it to have bridge capability all over too, especially in case of an emergency.

  “Chen,” I said over the intercom now, “I’m about to contact GS. Get ready for the numbers for hook-up pressure.”

  “I’m ready,” Chen said fast.

  “How’s the moving going?”

  “We just finished it.”

  “Good.”

  Normally, my crew and I wouldn’t be prepping cargo at this late stage, but our last stop had been only the day before on the planet Jarox, and we’d unexpectedly picked up a large amount of extra cargo from there, cargo that I was hoping I could convince GS to buy. We had kind of just shoved in the load before we took off; the bay was packed now, and I was hoping that the cargo unloading at GS wouldn’t take long….

  “I just got a message back from GS,” I said to both Gary and Chen. “I’m sending you the numbers.” I punched in some instructions on the keyboard extension in front of me; then I kept my eyes on the different camera views on the bridge viewscreen as the Demeter moved closer to the station.

  Most of the huge sprawling structure looked like a dark, metal city, with little flecks of silvery electrical equipment all over. I could see no people anywhere outside, and, so far, no one had in-person answered any of my communications; I’d only gotten text-messages back.

  Genteran wasn’t a popular place, largely because it was in a backwater area of the galaxy. But, I preferred doing business with forgotten places: because they weren’t visited as often, they were usually more amenable to buying whatever I was selling.

  On my bridge viewscreen now, the station’s big, gray sleeve-extension emerged from the closest terminal and began rolling forward toward the starboard side of the Demeter. The sleeve would attach to the cargo-bay opening and become a sealed ramp-tunnel my crew and I could move through into the station.

  It was early morning now on the planet; my plan was to unload the cargo and be gone before the evening. And I always intended to stick to my plans.

  *

  The sleeve was finally completely attached to the cargo bay, and I was finally walking through the gray tunnel and then into Genteran Station; the inside looked different now compared to the last time I was here—or at least compared to my memory of my last time here.

  The struts supporting the high ceiling above me were rustier, and the floor was dirtier with the blackish sand that covered much of the ground on this part of the planet. The station’s air was drier, too; between that and the dusty black grit my booted feet kept kicking up, I couldn’t help coughing.

  Getting stuck outside on Genteran wouldn’t kill a person very quickly or anything, but I’d suited up anyway. I hadn’t, however, pulled my helmet over my head. Considering the air inside the station now, I probably should have sealed my suit….

  There was a cavernous room up ahead; slightly to my right inside that space, someone was sitting behind a black, table-like desk.

  I walked up to him, a small smile on my face, and my personal transactions ledger and ICFC forms in my right hand. “I’m Captain Lydia Zarro,” I said to the table-guy. “My crew should be behind me in a few minutes with the cargo you ordered.”

  The table-guy’s shoulders in his black shirt were far too relaxed, and his flushed face only nodded up at me. He looked as if he wasn’t about to speak, ever. I knew people tended to be apathetic on Genteran, but I really wasn’t in the mood for any bullshit today, including apathetic bullshit.

  When the guy still didn’t say anything, I shoved the ICFC forms onto the table, my fingers pointing down at the dollar amounts.

  His blue eyes followed my fingers. He finally spoke, but only to say, “I guess this is in order.”

  “You guess? Are you in charge?”

  “Sure. I can get you what you need. Someone mentioned plastics and minerals were coming in….”

  “Yeah, and we’re supposed to pick up fifty containers of hydroambin.” I glanced around the big room, looking for a cargo loader—and cargo. But, other than some tables and a few people sitting at them, I saw none of the sealed red containers used for holding hydroambin.

  Hydroambin was a form of strange matter; it was first discovered on an asteroid many years ago, and while Genteran wasn’t the biggest miner of hydroambin today, Genteran did mine quite a bit of hydroambin.

  Small pellets were the natural form of hydroambin, but the molecules behaved like atomic nuclei: the hydroambin molecules were glued together so strongly by an unusual molecular force that they were extremely hard to break up. Hydroambin couldn’t easily be melted or turned into a gas; it was very stable and normally wouldn’t react with anything.

  However, the molecules could undergo several types of natural decay over long periods of time, and they could also be split through a reactor process—a process that would yield enormous amounts of energy.

  Both the natural decay and the reactor process would also yield some ambin alone as a byproduct, and, unlike hydroambin, ambin tended to be highly reactive and would usually try to bind with any hydrogen nearby, even if the hydrogen atoms had already been fused into molecules—under the right conditions, ambin could break up molecules to “vacuum” the hydrogen.

  Safeguards were always built into the red hydroambin containers and also into reactors, so no ambin, especially liquid ambin or ambin gas, would get out: the Demeter’s borcradium reactor vessels were lined with hydrogen-composite nodules that would absorb unrecombined or unburned ambin. The nodules were scattered over the lining like bubbles of sand in certain spots, and the insides of hydroambin containers were usually constructed in a similar way, just in case any natural hydroambin decay had begun….

  My eyes kept searching the big station room around me, but they still encountered no red containers. “Are you not prepared to sell us the ambin?” I asked the guy at the black table, but I really meant hydroambin. People tended to call hydroambin just ambin, partly because ambin was considered the most important component, and partly because that ambin usually had hydrogen attached was a given. And, right now, I was in too much of a rush to speak accurately; both my hands and my face were twitching in impatience. I felt sweat coating the inside of my suit, and, going on the wave of warmth hitting my face, it seemed like the whole fucking station was just too hot—the heat from the ongoing geological activity was yet another problem on Genteran….

  The guy at the table sat up a little straighter, and a little sharply—as if he’d only just fully realized we were engaged in a business transaction. “I don’t know anything about the ambin,” he said now.

  “Huh?” I replied, my mouth dangling open afterward, my breaths coming harder and faster. My right hand jerked to the right. “The ambin trade was part of the deal, as the ICFC forms say. If you don’t have the ambin to offset the cost of the cargo, the price on the cargo wi
ll go up.”

  His hands pulled my ICFC forms closer. “Uh—uh…” he said.

  And I stared down at the top of his dumb head.

  Then he added, “We have a small staff and security detail here all the time, but the rest of us live at the local Housing Station. We only show up here when there’s business to be done. But I’m not in charge of that.” He stopped talking; then he stared up at my face.

  Beneath my tightening lips, I ground my teeth together. “There used to be an office on the left—where’d it go?”

  “I don’t know. I only just moved to this side of Genteran and this job this year.”

  “Who the fuck am I supposed to deal with here—can you answer that?”

  At the sound of my almost-yelling voice, I saw the other heads in the room finally turn my way. One head rose up; it was dark and attached to a tall slim body in a blue outfit that had seen better days.

  “I’ll help you,” the head said as it came closer. Just like the guy behind the desk, this guy didn’t seem to want to smile either.

  He took my forms from the table and read them for a moment. Then he said, “I’m supposed to be in charge, but we really are informal around here.”

  “I can see that,” I snapped. Were they all fucking stoned? The air inside Genteran structures was always filtered, but there was a pretty strong hallucinogen, Hash, in Genteran’s outside air, and I knew that many of the planet’s residents would often step out there to get high.

  Still, I’d never encountered such blithe Genteran people. I wondered now if the Hash was somehow still getting inside, and maybe that was why the people before me seemed sluggish. But, it was more likely that having to be indoors so much dulled their responses. It wasn’t natural for humans to live on many different planets with different atmospheres and sunlight profiles and without the greenery humans had evolved in. That was why my home away from the Demeter was still on Earth; I always spent my yearly, two-month breaks there. I had another place on the sandy moon, Pink, but I only used that cottage while I was on runs, whenever I decided I needed a break then.