Hal Spacejock 5: Baker's Dough by Simon Haynes

Author:Simon Haynes [Haynes, Simon]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction, Humour
ISBN: 9781877034190
Publisher: Bowman Press
Published: 2012-06-30T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter 22

"Where have you been all this time?" Clunk looked Hal up and down, taking in the stains, streaks and rips. "And what happened to buying new clothes? Those are worse than the old ones!"

Hal grunted. "You wouldn't believe it."

"Well you can't walk around like that. Stand still a minute."

Clunk took out a stapler, and Hal froze as the metal tags pieced his wrecked trousers together. By the time the robot finished, Hal looked like he was wearing a padded mailer. Still, at least the important bits were covered. "Good work getting that data, by the way."

"Miss Sandy lent a hand," said Clunk. "I can't go into details without implicating her, but I guarantee without her help we'd still be docked with the Orbiter."

"Teamwork. Good stuff!"

"Unfortunately the news isn't so good. All six robots belonged to the Galactic Mining Company, who employed them to fly scout ships. These were used to survey the local asteroid field for potential mining candidates."

"We don't need the history. We just need to know where this mining company got hold of you."

"It's not that easy. Galactic Mining lost all their records after their hosting company was raided by the Peace Force. Someone stored the lyrics to a popular song on one of their servers."

"Blatant copyright violation?" Hal whistled. "They'd have put them through the wringer."

"Absolutely. GMC had all their data wiped."

"What about backups?"

Clunk shrugged. "The lyrics might have been archived by mistake, so the only safe option was to delete everything. Financial records, survey data … all gone."

"So they went broke."

"Not quite. The shell company is still around. They're trying to raise funds for a scout vessel, to begin their surveys all over again."

"What's the next move?"

"We have two choices. We can visit the company and find out whether any of their data was recovered. Or we can track down one of the decommissioned scout ships and search the on-board computers for a copy of the data."

"How long will it take to visit the company?"

"We'd have to fly to the next system. Four or five hours at least."

"And finding a scout ship?"

"That could take a few minutes, or many days."

"What do you think Spearman did?"

"He likes certainty and direct action, so I'd say he's gone to the next system to seek out the original data."

"Right, then we'll do the unexpected. Let's find one of these scouts."

"I thought you'd say that." Clunk gestured at the console. "I'm already searching."

Hal frowned. "Hang on. If there's a scout ship out there with this vital data on board, why isn't the mining company looking for it?"

"Galactic Mining Company only has two staff members, and they spend their days cold-calling potential investors. Like I said, they're starting from scratch."

At that moment the lift opened and Sandy entered the flight deck. "I've made Daniel comfortable. Is there anything I can do to help up here?"

Hal smiled at her. "According to Clunk you already have."

"Oh, the Orbiter. That was nothing. Their firewall was three weeks out of date, and it was just a matter of —"

"Excellent.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.