Free Aces by Craig Alanson Page A

to worry about, Sam said, everything was
going as planned.
     
    “You ’ re in the pipe, five by five, shuttle.” Vassily ’ s
voice declared. “We ’ re losing you now, see you on the other
side.”
    “Tssshhk-uttle,
acknowle-sssssss Nelso-“ The radio cut off, drowned out by static.
    Kaylee glanced
over at Manny, to see if he was scared that they had lost contact with their
father, as his shuttle dropped through the atmosphere. If anything, he looked
excited. The video image on the screen now showed the shuttle ’ s
planned flight path, with a blinking light indicating the spacecraft itself.
Brother and sister had elected to sit on their parent ’ s
bed to watch the video feed, rather than on the sofa in the main compartment.
Kaylee was sitting cross-legged in the center of the bed, Manny slumped back
nonchalantly against the pillows, both had an array of snacks to munch on.
Manny pointed to his watch, and was about to say something, when their mother ’ s voice came over the speaker.
    “Kaylee, Manny,
this is nothing to worry about,” Joy said in a soft voice that had a worried
catch to it, “the shuttle can ’ t use its radio when they
are coming down through the atmosphere.”
    “I know, Mom,”
Manny said, “they will be out of contact for seven minutes. It ’ s
because the super-heated plasma surrounding the shuttle drowns out radio
signals.”
    “Of course you
knew that.” Joy replied, with a hint of a laugh.
    “I knew that,
too.” Kaylee added defensively, and stuck her tongue out at her brother.
    “Good. We will
talk to your father in a few minutes. The crew here tells me everything is
going smoothly.”
    “We can see that
here, Mom, the shuttle is right in the flight path. Don ’ t
worry about us.” Manny said.
    “All right. And
don ’ t eat too much junk, we ’ re having
dinner in a few hours.”
    Kaylee rolled her
eyes at the speaker, and popped a chocolate into her mouth. “Yes, Mother.”
     
    Captain Schroeder
couldn ’ t be blamed for what happened to his ship. The Ace was a transport, essentially a long frame with four large cargo boxes and a
hyperdrive, designed to haul cargo between the stars at minimal expense; she
had no defenses, and only limited sensors. The attention of everyone on the
bridge was focused on their shuttle ’ s descent through the
atmosphere, which was now approaching the period of maximum stress on that
craft ’ s heat shielding. No one was paying any attention to
the innocent medical research ship that was approaching.
    Gina had been
chatting with Joy, to take the other woman ’ s mind off the
fact that they ’ d temporarily lost contact with her
husband, when a light on Gina ’ s console flashed. Gina
activated the display. That was odd. They had just lost the signal from the
hypercomm navigational beacon in Earth orbit. She figured there were two
possibilities; either the beacon had stopped transmitting, which had never
happened before, or something was wrong with Ace ’ s
hypercomm gear. She didn ’ t consider a third possibility.
“Just a minute, Joy, I ’ ve got a- “ she
hesitated, searching for a word that would not be alarming to the passenger
seated next to her, “glitch in my comm gear. I need to adjust something.” Her
console, like the rest of the ship, was old, and equipment sometimes
malfunctioned. The comm gear, however, had been through routine scheduled
maintenance while the ship had been in Earth orbit, and the hyperwave antenna
had been replaced. Gina frowned, and started tracing the problem through the
system. She started with the hyperwave antenna. It appeared to be functioning
normally.
    While Gina was
trying to figure out why she ’ d lost the nav beacon, and
the others on the bridge were watching the shuttle ’ s
passage through the atmosphere, Nightengale fired
her thrusters, and rolled slowly around her long axis. That in itself was not
noteworthy, ships in normal space routinely rotated, so that radiation from