“So you do think she was killed,” Cartwright said.
“If I did, I would not share my thoughts with you. You are a foolish amateur who doesn’t know enough to hold his tongue.” Lassiter shook his head. “Now if you don’t mind I would like to enjoy my breakfast alone.” He made eye contact with his guard as if to say, remove this from my presence.
“I will not be so easily dismissed,” Graison said, shaking off the guard’s grip and glaring daggers at Lassiter.
“I am sure you think so,” Paulson said, laughing sadly. “But if you persist in this bad habit of speaking your mind, I am sure we will see if that’s true or not.”
Jakob Waltz: On the Surface of L-4 Prime:
Jeph sat at the table feeling the effect of the miniscule gravity that L-4 prime provided. Food stayed in the bowls and on the plates without having to be careful not to stir it, and the plates stayed put without their magnet rings to hold them down. Even swallowing felt different and the sensation of belching without the threat of it being wet was odd.
He and Danel were just finishing firstmeal and as soon as he got into his exosuit they’d be joining the others in the language matrix. Dutch had assigned them all routes through the structure that would maximize their effective exploration and had tried to optimize their ability to focus on the lessons by targeting them in areas that fit their specific interests. Danel and Jeph had a path that most likely was social and philosophical language elements, but in reality the captain knew it was just a matter of Dutch knowing he was the least qualified to go into the deeper fields, even with a geophysicist to hold his hand.
Jeph sat pouring a protein drink from a bottle and watching it flow slowly downhill to the cup on the table. “One thing I can say for certain is that this ends my command. With the Waltz now permanently attached to the Tacra Un we’re done with our mission.”
“Yes, but you are technically a base commander,” Dutch said. “Since the Jakob Waltz could be considered a Fixed Base of Operations, your responsibility has changed, but your command rank has not. At least as I see it.”
“The question is, how will FleetCartel see it?” Danel said. “I doubt there’s any precedent for this kind of situation.”
“It is uncertain if FleetCartel remains a legal entity at all, and therefore they may have no jurisdiction over what was once a vessel and its crew,” Dutch said.
“I’m sure legal advisors will debate FleetCartel’s rights for a long time to come,” Jeph said. “What matters to us is that when Roja gets here, she will undoubtedly think we’re still bound by the chain of command.”
“Technically that may be true,” Danel said. “She does have jurisdiction over FleetCom vessels and base facilities.”
“However prior to the change in government, she was removed from her office as chancellor, so it may be reasonable to argue that she has no legal rights over us whatsoever,” Dutch said.
“Unless she wins the fight and gets her position back,” Jeph said, pushing back from the table and standing to carry his bowl over to the galley. “Then if we tell her to stuff it, we’re all going to be sitting in cages for a long time.”
“So we treat her like we’re still living by the law, and if she oversteps but ends up back in power, we’ve got legs,” Danel said. “There has to be a rathole we can choke her on somewhere.”
“There might be,” he said. “Back in my academy days, I read a lot of the old space laws and there are some that could work to our benefit. I’d have to research it but we might be able to apply something in the shipwreck laws to give us a lever to use to slow her down.”
“I have a limited selection of legal reference materials in my databank,” Dutch offered. “I can scan what I have on the subject, and if we require a more in depth analysis than what I can do, I should be able to access files from the Vesta Institute Library without risking exposure.”
“Paperwork is a thin shield, although it might be something to throw at her to knock her sidewise for a bit,” Jeph said. “Unfortunately she could always just come in shooting.”
“Do you really think that’s likely?” Danel asked.
“Who knows?” Jeph said. “That would depend on whose version of fake news is real.”
Office of the Executive Director: Galileo Station:
“I assume that since you’re here, you must have decided to accept my offer.” Derek said as a mountain of security flesh in an overstuffed uniform led Lassiter into his office. Three armed guards had subjected him to scanners and a physical search, as well as an interrogation, before they let him through the gauntlet and into the Director’s presence.
“I don’t see that I have much option with your AA overlord controlling the universe,” he said. “Either I play nice or I don’t play at all.”
“It isn’t that way,” Tomlinson said. “Odysseus has different objectives than we do, but it isn’t interested in our affairs as long as we don’t interfere with its … project.” He gestured toward the seat across from his desk and waited until Paulson sat before he sat down.
“You know about Carmen Ambrose?” Lassiter asked.
“I heard about it,” he said, his voice sounding distant.
Paulson leaned back and considered how far he could push. He wanted to know who he was working for, so it was essential he got a feel for where his limits were. “I had an interesting talk with Graison Cartwright this morning. He says word on the decks is that you ordered it.”
“I expected that,” Derek said.
“You didn’t, did you?”
“No. It was an unfortunate coincidence of timing,” he said. His eyes remained distant and almost lifeless.
Paulson had figured the accusation would get a rise out of the Director but the lack of emotion was telling, if he knew how to interpret it. “Was it Odysseus?”
“I don’t know that it has the resources to do that kind of thing,” Derek said. “I don’t think it would have a reason.”
That wasn’t a denial. “I can’t guess if it would, since I have no clue what it’s supposed to be doing,” Lassiter said. “All I know is that if it controls every system here on Galileo, it would have a lot of power to arrange an accident. If it wanted.”
“It wasn’t an accidental system failure that took out Carmen,” he said, his tone echoing his lifeless expression.
“You know that for certain?” he asked.
Derek closed his eyes and sat motionless for almost a minute before he nodded. When he looked back at Lassiter, the depth of the pain on his face was startling. “Odysseus can access certain optic feeds that aren’t available normally. Let’s just say I know.”
“That’s a bit frightening to think about,” Paulson said. “Is there anything it can’t see?”
“Quite a lot actually,” Derek said, cocking his head to the side like he was listening to a distant voice. “There are entire networks it hasn’t assimilated.”
“I’m surprised our god-emperor would admit being less than omnipotent.”
“It is … not omnipotent,” he said. “As a case in point, we’re still having trouble locating Tana Drake.”
“That seems like it would be simple for a master AA to access the security net and track her via optic,” he said.
Derek looked at him strangely and hesitated several seconds before he shook his head. “FleetCom assets are outside our reach. Any networks that report to their AA are inaccessible.”
“You’re saying she is hiding in a blind spot?”
“The last place where we had a good optic on her was in the New Hope Loop Station,” he said. “We know she and her wife booked into Tsiolkovskiy so we think she’s in Freeport East and trying to get into TFC. Unfortunately the security net there is impenetrable. Unless we can catch her on a random indie optic, we don’t know for sure.”
“Why couldn’t she just walk up to the gate and ask to get inside?”
He shook his head. “There’s a lot going on inside the FleetCom facilities. We can’t s
ee anything, but right now their physical security is harder to penetrate than their electronic systems. Even for people they think are friends.”
“Why do you need to tie her down?” Paulson asked.
Derek cocked his head oddly to the side again and then said, “She’s probably the only other person in the Union that knows what Odysseus was designed to do.”
“I have to question whether you and she working alone could have built and deployed something as complex as Emperor Odysseus on your own,” Lassiter said, shaking his head. “There have to be others who know about it.”
“Probably,” he said. “The concern is that Tana Drake was the only other one on the chancellery with the knowledge. If she were to talk, that gives her an uncomfortable degree of credibility. Letting her remain in the wild is not in our best interest.”
Paulson leaned sideways in the chair, resting on an elbow while he chewed on the accuracy of the Director’s assessment. There is something else to this he’s not ready to show me. I need to get his trust. Grasping at the beginning of an idea he said, “Do you want her vented like Carmen?”
Derek paused again, his face went through several convolutions that almost made it look like he was carrying on some kind of internal argument. Finally he shook his head. “It would be better to bring her in alive. We should interrogate her to see if she’s offloaded details to anyone else that we might need to hunt down.”
“You know that will make it a lot tougher to do,” he said.
“I do, but we can’t risk losing control of the intel,” the Director said.
Lassiter nodded. “Freeport might lean toward FleetCom interests, but it’s mostly unaligned and freeagent operated. If that’s where she’s hiding, I’ve still got a lot of sway with the population there. If you’re ready to get me an office, I’ll see what I can do.”
Security Center: Tsiolkovskiy Freeport North:
Security Chief Ralf Gaelsen sat at his desk with his feet up and his mind a million miles from the world around him. He had an easy job running the former DoCartel security station in Freeport North. He came in to work just so he didn’t have to stay home all day, but there wasn’t much difference between wasting time at home or wasting time in the office, except that one made him crazy and the other paid the bills. Most days he put in the hours and waited for the day to end, so he could hit the bar and stall as long as possible having to face Attila the Wife.
Even with the flipping of the government, nothing ever went on in Freeport. FleetCom contracted the security for all the Tsiolkovskiy domes, so now that the Cartels officially had ceased to exist, he wasn’t much more than an over trained private security guard with a small staff and a fancy name. There wasn’t much action to keep him interested and he hadn’t seen an assignment in a month.
He was on the edge of drifting off to sleep when his Lieutenant pinged his comlink. “Chief you’ve got a special com. Encrypted and secure. You want me to punch it through to your desk?”
“Whosit?” he asked, yawning.
“Is tagged Office of the Executive Director. Eyes only.”
“Yah, crunch it and send it up.” he said. Dropping his feet from his desk, he dialed down the audio on his newswave and leaned forward to open his console screen.
After several seconds the file decoded. He expected to see a security officer higher up the stack, but instead he was shocked when Paulson Lassiter appeared.
He tapped the playback toggle.
“Good morning Captain Gaelsen. The Director has asked me to give you a covert surveillance and apprehend order. He needs you to station teams of plainclothes operatives around the Freeport East loop terminal and watch for this woman.” An image of Tana Drake appeared on the screen and stayed for several seconds. “She is believed to be traveling with her wife.”
“You may recognize her as Tana Drake, the former chancellor of WellCartel. We believe she has traveled via loop to Freeport East in an effort to enter FleetCom protective custody. She may already have arrived and if so you are to secure a perimeter adjacent to all TFC gates and maintain surveillance until further notice. You are to apprehend her before she can enter Tsiolkovskiy FleetCom Center. You are granted authority to use whatever force is necessary to bring her into custody, however Director Tomlinson has expressed that he would prefer you keep her alive if at all possible.
“We do not know if she is armed, but other individuals may be assisting her. If so, you may do as you see fit regarding any other people that may be involved. Tana Drake and her wife are the only persons we are interested in apprehending at this time.
“Once you have her in custody, notify us immediately and place her in secure isolation until we can get there to transfer her to our facilities. Under no circumstances are you or any of your staff to interrogate her. She may be in possession of intelligence of an extremely sensitive nature and anyone who comes into contact with this information can expect to have greatly reduced future potential.
“You have your orders, Captain. Good luck and do not fail us in this assignment.”
The screen went black and he leaned back in his chair.
Now that’s an interesting assignment.
CHAPTER NINE
Armstrong: Approaching L-4 Trojan Cluster:
As soon as they reached safe cruise and were no longer accelerating, Chancellor Roja called a planning meeting. The Challenger had already been through its first combat, but neither the Armstrong nor the Archer had seen action. Of the captains under her command, limited though her experience was, only Cassandra Mei could call herself a veteran. Katryna hoped that by getting her three commanders and the admiral around the table they could all benefit from her knowledge.
Dr. Jameson, their chief scientist, joined them to provide an understanding of the environment they might face. Even in a potential space battle, terrain could often be used to an advantage.
“You’ve all had a chance to review Captain Cochrane’s message. Is it fair to say we’re all in agreement that something strange is going on?” the Chancellor asked, calling the meeting to order.
“I am concerned that he’s not seen a sign of the ghost fleet,” Captain Evanston said.
“Our concern was that they may have captured the Jakob Waltz and he was forced to send that message,” she said.
“That would be possible, but why?” he said.
“The intent of his message was clearly to make us reconsider the wisdom of entering the vicinity of L-4 Prime,” Admiral Nakamiru said. “I don’t believe it was a consideration that we could continue to approach after they sent it.”
“They could have left us guessing and then we’d be walking in blind, but because they also sent that pseudo-science we might be able to prepare,” he said.
“What exactly can we prepare for?” Cassandra Mei asked, shaking her head. “All the science file did was provide a layer of fog to the potential battlefield. The more they can give us that we have to deal with the less focus we will have on a single objective.”
Roja nodded. “You’re suggesting they did it to pile garbage on things so we don’t have any way to prepare for the right situation?”
“Exactly,” she said. “The message itself was to talk us out of crashing the party, but if that didn’t work, the science would at least guarantee we weren’t ready for the right things when we get there.”
“There is some logic in that,” the admiral said.
Dr. Jameson sat shaking his head and the chancellor looked in his direction. “You disagree doctor?”
“The strategic assessment aside for a moment, the science might not be all that preposterous,” Dr. Jameson said. “I’ve had my people going over it and they’re all saying it’s plausible. Maybe it’s strange, but we haven’t found any way to refute it at a theoretical level.”
“Does it give us anything useful?” Jeffers asked, leaning forward to look at the scientist.
“So far what we understand is that there is a field effect in place that works lik
e a special case situation of gravity. Unlike actual gravity though, it only keeps them from moving away. This field seems to be a variable gravitational gradient in some way.”
“That isn’t helping,” Roja said.
“The reality of the theory is even worse. It isn’t actually gravity at all, it is a quantum energy drain that …” he stumbled to a stop as he apparently realized he was about to go deeper than anyone could follow. “It means that once we enter this field, we will only be able to move toward the center of the field or parallel to it, but never away from it.”
“From a tactical perspective that would mean we could only attack from the same orbital plane?” Mei asked.
“Not at all,” he said. “Imagine you are fighting in a steep sided conical pit. The ground is loose enough that you can’t climb out, but you can stand your ground and walk sideways along the slope of the cone.”
“It would be easier to strike targets downhill or on your own level, but moving upward to attack things above you would be impossible?” Captain Evanston asked.
“Exactly,” the scientist said. “It’s a one-way trip downhill, but because the field isn’t pulling us in, we won’t fall toward the center of the cone without intent.”
“How did they get stuck in this, whatever it is?” Evanston asked.
“Based on earlier reports, they were inside the field when they discovered it,” Roja said. “L-4 Prime seems to be the center.”
“How far does it extend from L-4 Prime?” Mei asked.
“They noticed it at fifty million kilometers, but there is no way of knowing how far beyond that it might extend,” Jameson said.
“Could we be in this cone already?” she asked.
He shook his head. “We’re still a billion klick from there, but the science file did give us a way to detect the field using the reactor core absorption grid to detect a distortion in power distribution.”
“We’ve assigned an engineering team to watch for it and so far we’ve seen no irregularities,” Jeffers said.
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