Stan the Main. Man

The spacecraft Star Singer clanged around Stan, and he stopped his slow walk down the metal corridor to press one hand flat against the wall.

Vibrations thrummed against Stan’s calloused fingers. He waited long seconds for the quiet buzz to change or stop. It kept on, hard and steady. That meant—

Stan raised his communication device to his mouth.

“Maintenance to Bridge. Urgent.”

“Bridge to Maintenance. What’s urgent?”

“That rattle we just experienced was likely another craft clamping onto us. I believe we are about to be boarded. Tell Captain Dorrance immediately.”

“Understood. Stand by.”

In his mind’s eye, Stan conjured up an image of another spacecraft latched onto the hull of his, with electromagnets or grappling anchors. He could still feel the tremors of hull-to-hull scraping on his palm. The enemy barnacle was creeping along Star Singer looking for one of her airlocks. To move like that, the craft would be following a repetitive procedure of releasing their magnets or grapples, briefly firing their thrusters, and reactivating their magnets or grapples. That right there told him the pilot was no surgeon when it came to aim. Experienced boarders took their sweet time lining up with the target airlock and didn't need to keep creeping like a spider for so long. Whoever was in charge out there was willing to take the risk of being detected. Or they just didn’t care.

“Bridge to Maintenance. Are you available?”

“Maintenance available.”

“Maintenance, this is Captain Dorrance speaking.”

Stan breathed a sigh of relief. Direct contact with Captain Dorrance was difficult for him to get unscheduled.

“Be advised I have determined the rattle was natural space debris.”

And there went Stan's peace of mind.

“The bridge crew reports no threat of pirates boarding. You may return to your duties.” Beep.

Dorrance had only been off Earth for a total of four months, the last two as the Star Singer’s newest captain. Stan had already suspected, but now it was painfully clear: Captain Dorrance was not going to believe a maintenance worker reporting anything other than "The airlock door is jammed."

The vibration against Stan’s palm changed, settling down in frequency. Star Singer’s song was off pitch by just a half-step or two. The proverbial spider had stopped scuttling over his craft’s outer skin, and was preparing to sink in its fangs and deliver its venom of invaders. They must have found an airlock, and would be opening it soon.

He took his hand from the wall and set off.

No previous captain of the Star Singer had ever dismissed a report of piratical possibility while Stan was a crew member. But they’d all been older and more experienced than Dorrance. He was hardly more than a kid, only alive for 22 years, and Stan was still wondering how he’d managed to end up a captain. Captain Dorrance had seemed competent up to this point, but Stan’s estimation of the boy had just taken a nosedive.

Stan passed an alarm station and paused to activate it, inputting his code as Head of Maintenance and inputting pirates as the emergency. The alarm station showed him an error message. He tried inputting pirates as an emergency with no code. Another error message. It appeared pirates were officially a non-emergency, unless a non-maintenance code would still be accepted.

The primary maintenance control room was accessible with Stan’s physical key. The little bit of metal could not be influenced by the captain's unbelief in his seasoned crew member.

Security cameras covered all the transport’s common areas, crew and passenger spaces both. The airlock cameras were eerily empty of activity when he’d expected them to be full of action. He swept his gaze across the screens, waiting for something out of place to attract his eye.

All looked well.

Maybe, somehow, he had been wrong. He knew the Star Singer inside and out, had been learning her ways for years, and had not been wrong about anything this serious for almost a year. He thought he knew the difference between debris strikes and craft friction. Supposedly, there was a first time for everything…

A flash on a screen made Stan blink. He gave the airlocks another scan, and saw heavy doors lying on the floor instead of standing properly in their frames. Airlock 2, direct access to the bridge.

People jostled through the airlock and raced down the one-way hall. Spilling into the bridge, they collided with the crew on duty there. No audio accompanied the security video feed, but the look on Captain Dorrance’s face said a lot right before he was tackled to the floor. ‘No threat of pirates boarding,’ he’d said minutes ago.

“Oh, sure,” Stan muttered. “Don’t mind me, I’ve just been on this ship twenty-seven years and survived eight pirate attacks in space.”

The bridge crew had already been subdued. Some of the pirates split off down internal corridors.

Well, nothing left to do but try to do something.

The last time Star Singer had been attacked by pirates, the captain had listened when he was told the maintenance worker said he could tell by vibrations that another craft was riding the Star Singer. The pirates had been thwarted quickly that time, barely getting past the outer doors before they were threatened into surrender.

Stan rubbed a hand through his brown beard. The alarm wasn’t activating for him. Perhaps it would accept an emergency other than pirates? He stepped to the alarm station located in the maintenance control room and input an alarm that wasn’t for pirates, with no crew code.

Alarms started blaring, in the room with Stan and throughout the rest of the craft. An automated voice announced, “Hull breach reported in passenger area, passengers, please evacuate to safe rooms.” Perfect. Pirates tended to target passenger areas for valuables, and hostages to hold in exchange for valuable cargo and fuel. Keeping the pirates away from the passengers would be ideal.

Now he would have panicking passengers. Not ideal. But the safe rooms could be locked, keeping them from the pirates.

What to do? He had access to a lot of stuff from here. Hmm…The cameras had night vision. Humans didn’t. Since Captain Dorrance and his bridge crew were all captured already, they weren’t exactly in need of lights. If they did manage to get loose, they’d be able to find their way around in the dark on their own craft better than the pirates.

He strode to the lighting control panel, and killed the normal lights in the crew quarters. The cameras and function boards showed the emergency light strips had turned on. Off they went.

What else would be disorienting to pirates but not so much to crew?

Stan searched the communication system control board for the prerecorded sound files. The one he’d added last April Fool’s Day was labelled [accordian_to_ski], a play on his last name, Lemanski, and the instrument that featured heavily in the file.

Polka music blared through the crew areas of Star Singer, loud enough to be disorienting, but not so loud as to damage hearing.

The wall of surveillance screens showed the pirates groping in the dark down the corridors, trying to escape the madly fighting crew members they hadn’t managed to restrain before the lights went out. Their mouths were all open pretty wide, so it seemed everyone was shouting to be heard. That should help the crew keep track of where the pirates were.

Meanwhile, the passengers were proceeding to the safe rooms. Some pirates were approaching the passenger area. Stan closed the isolation doors between the crew and passenger spaces. They would still open if any crew member typed in their code.

Stan’s communication device beeped on. “Captain Dorrance to Maintenance! We’ve been boarded by pirates and the Star Singer is suffering severe glitches!" The polka music in the background almost overpowered the human voice. “Is there anything you can do?”

“Yes, Captain Dorrance, I’m already doing what I can. I’m on my way.”

Stan hurried down the pitch-black corridor to a cleaning closet, coded it open, and pulled out all the mop- and broom-like tools he could find. He dumped them in the rolling mop bucket to hand out as weapons, then made for the bridge, pushing the bucket in front of himself to check for obstacles and fend off any attacks.

The bucket halted, and someone yelled in pain. “Captain Dorrance?” Stan shouted over the music.

“Captain who?”

Stan started flailing a broom wildly before him, and made contact with a person, to judge from the yelps. “Get off my ship!” Stan hollered. “Back! Get back!”

Whoever it was retreated, and Stan chased after them.

Eventually, he’d need to get back to the maintenance control room, turn off the hull breach alarm, turn on the lights, turn off the polka music, and reopen all the doors he’d closed. But first, he was going to chase these pirates off his Star Singer. Ah, nothing like being the maintenance man with all-powerful access to ship functions, but right now he was also invisible.

Being the Main. Man has its perks.