Bishop's Gambit by Jeremy Fabiano

Author:Jeremy Fabiano [Fabiano, Jeremy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Violetear Publishing
Published: 2019-01-14T22:00:00+00:00

8

Through the window, we could see that the engineering room was spotless. That was likely due to the fact that the doors had been sealed.

We found a manual release panel and unlocked the door. With some effort from the two of us, we managed to pry the door enough to get some leverage with the pipes. After we exerted more effort than we would have liked to exert in our space suits, the door slowly slid open in its track. We squeezed past the half-open door and looked around the room.

“You could almost eat off this console,” said Steve. “The place is spotless.”

“Yeah,” I said. “You think it's a little weird? I mean, it's so well maintained, and they just abandoned it.”

“Bigger wheels turning than we can see,” he said. “Next round of drinks says they were ordered to abandon ship.”

“What would be the point?” I asked. “Why shut down and abandon a perfectly good freighter and create a pirate gang?”

Steve considered that for several moments while I tinkered with the backup console power. “Well,” he said. “There was a book about socialism my dad had me read. I think it was written in the nineteenth or twentieth century.”

“What was it about?” I asked.

“Socialism and totalitarianism, I think. It went on and on about certain conditions that had to be achieved in order to make a police state and have total authority of the people.”

“What's a state?”

“On Earth, they separated the continents into countries and those into states. Below those were counties, then cities, then districts, I think it was.”

“This is all new to me,” I said. “I guess that's the difference with an education.”

“That's another thing the book said. Someone who's poor, uneducated, and desperate won't rise up against a government who's giving them almost everything they need to survive.”

“That sounds like a load of crap if you ask me.”

“Yeah, but it worked. Every time some dictator put it to use, he had his entire country under their thumb. Anyhow, a police state was essentially where the law controlled everything a citizen could do.”

“Like the colony?” I asked.

“Like the colony,” he said flatly.

“So, you think that's what this is all about? Control?”

“I'm almost willing to bet my life on it,” he said.

“Damn…” I said. “You're serious.”

“As I said earlier, my sister found proof,” he said. “I'll expose them some day, and the people will realize what's been happening right under their noses.”

“Hell, I just wanted to capture an asteroid and take it back to the colony ship and fix it up with all the extra resources. But if you're right, it'd be just like this freighter. Stashed away somewhere to keep the people trapped.”

Steve nodded. “Now you're starting to get how they think.”

“I almost have the console working,” I said as I connected the last few jumper wires to our suits’ power packs. A light began to glow on the console, and I pressed it. I watched my suit's power indicator drop by half almost instantly.

“Whoa, my battery just about crapped itself,” said Steve.

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