“What else do we know about the environment around L-4 Prime?” Mei asked. The chancellor nodded at Nakamiru. He was right when he had called her out as a fleet command candidate. She stayed focused and on task.
“Forward optics are limited in what they can detect at this range, but we’re able to see a bit. It appears to be a rather normal cometary mass,” Jameson said. “As far as we can tell it’s ice surrounded by a gas ball. It has a tail that extends outward for some distance from solar pressure.
Captain Evanston shook his head. “We’re so far above the frost line that makes no sense.”
“Agreed,” the scientist said. “There isn’t enough solar energy to cause ice to boil off. It has to be induced by internal forces. Infrared shows it’s several degrees warmer than it should be.”
“Could that indicate something artificial?” Mei asked. “Like a base?”
“That’s probably the only explanation,” Jameson said. “The problem is that with the amount of gas we’re seeing there must be an unreasonably huge amount of energy involved.”
“That’s concerning,” Roja said. “Why wouldn’t you think it was something natural?”
“Because the tail is new,” he said. “By measuring its length, we can tell that it’s only a couple weeks at most since the outgassing started. It’s unlikely that there is some kind of radioactive core to give it a natural heat source, because in that situation the gas cloud would extend much further. It would have been an ongoing process. This indicates that within the last month at most, something has changed.”
“Are you saying this might be a response to the Waltz’s arrival?” she asked.
“Or the result of action they have taken. They were carrying racks of nuclear materials,” Jeffers said, nodding.
“I don’t think they had anywhere near enough to create this magnitude of a gas cloud,” Jameson said. “My thinking is it has to be something else.”
“For the sake of planning, we should work under the assumption that this is artificial,” Captain Mei said. “That might mean this sudden heating is some kind of defensive response. A thick atmosphere around L-4 Prime would adversely affect our ability to recon the surface from a distance. Maybe they’re using it to hide from long range scans.”
Evanston nodded. “They used to call the technique a ‘smoke screen.’ It allowed a military force to conceal their exact position in an active battlefield.”
“The outgassing is accelerating too,” the scientist said, nodding. “If we were still on course to arrive in thirty-six days, it would be far harder to penetrate with optical sensors.”
“Which means that we’ll have the element of surprise when we pull into orbit early,” Mei said. “If it is a defensive ploy of some kind, then catching them when they aren’t ready could go a long way. We can sneak up on them—”
Captain Jeffers snorted. “Sneak up? Do you not realize that this ship we’re riding in is over ten million tons? We don’t sneak up on shit.”
“Well there is that I guess,” Mei said, grinning at the absurdity of her own suggestion. “But we could reduce our RF and not attract any extra attention.”
“Uhm, again.” Jeffers shook her head. “We’ll be coming in ass first with these gigantic glowing columns of ionized plasma. We’ll look like a small nova as we slow down. They’ll see us from the minute we flip. And they’ll be able to hear the ion trail on RF if they happen to be pointing a dish in our direction.”
She looked at Nakamiru, who just shrugged.
“Good,” Mei said, grinning. “If you loan us a couple of your fancy eyeballs, we can take the Archer and the Challenger and deflect wide above and below your approach. If they’re looking at you coming in like a fireball from hell, they might not see us.
“A classic flanking maneuver,” the admiral said, leaning back and nodding.
“If we hang on to our outward momentum as long as possible our braking burn will be off axis from your approach too,” Captain Evanston said. “If they aren’t looking straight up our pipe, our plasma won’t look as hot on their scans, if they see it at all.”
“You think it will be better to split up our firepower?” the chancellor asked, looking at the admiral who seemed to be swinging in favor of Mei’s idea.
“If a fleet is hiding there and they see us coming in, they’ll need to pay attention to three attack fronts, and they won’t be able to form a single battle group,” Captain Mei said. “But if they don’t see us and they concentrate on you, then we’ll be able to get around to the sides and cut into them before they know what’s going on.”
“You’ve got limited weaponry,” Roja said. “How much damage can you do with what, ten lasers?”
“Some, but the point isn’t for us to kill bad guys, it is to sow chaos,” she said. “If we can shock them into splitting their attention at a critical point, you can whack on them with a lot less ugly pointing in your direction. You’re the big guns in the game. We just need to make sure we give you the best chance to use them.”
“This is all based on the assumption that there is a fleet out there waiting to take us down,” the chancellor said. “What if there’s nothing there but weird science?
“Then the green space slugs will have a good laugh watching the crazy-assed monkeys dancing like fools,” Mei said.
“After all, it’s always better to make a grand entrance,” Evanston said, looking down at the table and shaking his head.
Tsiolkovskiy Freeport East:
Edison had hoped to sneak out to get some food and fresh air. Well, fresher air anyway. Having three bodies in his room was a bit claustrophobic, especially when at least one of them self-illuminated with her own nuclear core, and had no sense of modesty.
“You know I should be charging you extra for the bodies, but since you not be keeping me up screeching, I’ll let it slide,” Lystine hollered from her sitting room off the main hallway.
“That’s much appreciated,” he said, glancing in her direction and flinching. She had her feet in the lap of one of her prettyboys and he was busy sanding her toenails and applying a bright yellow lacquer. Unfortunately, her position exposed a lot more of her worn leather skin than he had any need to see, even in a casual setting.
“Before you roll, you need to scan something.” She swatted her boytoy on the back of the head and sent him scurrying out of the room. His disappearance left even more of her revealed than before, but she didn’t move into anything even vaguely resembling a civilized posture.
Edison stopped, and swallowing hard, turned to face her.
“Your skinbuddies are maybe a hot pair, da?” she asked.
He blinked several times before he pieced together she wasn’t talking about their looks. “Might be,” he said.
“Wind’s saying that there are some blackhats asking around for a high-cred score,” she said.
“You think someone’s looking for them?” he asked, leaning against the doorjamb and trying not to let on that his adrenaline had just spiked.
“No noise for sure, just odd meatsticks sticking personal-parts onto the deck. Joes from Northdome eye-fragging turf that ain’t in their book,” she said. “Rub is, it’s bending the locals if ya scan? Nobody breathes to beaters down here, so you’re good for now, but also nobody’s eyeballed the pretty-puss you got hidden. If the deck catches the stink that you’re sitting on the big X, that might change. There was a lot of paper in the goody-bag for grabbing.”
“Nojo?” he asked. “Like serious numbers for line on them?”
“Yah, a couple megacred,” she said. “Enough that if I didn’t like the way your bag swings, I’d be selling them out the door myself.” She made an obscene hand gesture that looked like she was caressing something playfully and then cackled as his eyes went wide.
“That’s how you need to keep your eyes,” she said, pointing at his face with two fingers. “They need to be wide and moving extra while you footing the concourse for midmeal. You’re the new skin in the gam
e, and maybe you catch some attention that follows you home. That be nogo, scan?”
“Cando,” he said reaching into his pocket and peeling off a couple K-notes. He set them on the table by the door and headed out on a greatly abridged plan for sucking in some air.
Inside the Tacra Un: L-4 Prime:
Jeph and Danel stood in the central node of the Tacra Un. It was the only sphere in any way different from the others, and they had taken to calling it the amphitheater. They were working their way deeper into the far side, but since they were the last team to start for the day, they’d landed the job of hauling in the supplies to set up the base camp. After spending almost two days with nothing to eat, Jeph decided it was important to have a stock of spare food and water inside with them, even if it was only so that everybody could get together for secondmeal.
“You know it would help if we had a real clue what we’d get when we finish this,” Chei said over the com. They all took short breaks and talked to each other as they worked their way deeper into the language matrix.
“The cheese at the end of the maze?” Danel suggested.
“Exactly,” he said. “I’m getting tired of mindlessly mining words. It’s getting old fast.”
“The promise of eternal fame isn’t enough for you?” Seva asked. She was working with Anju down one of the bioscience-word tracks. Mainly she was making sure the doctor had someone to keep her from getting lost.
“Fame.” Chei snorted. “Nobody knows what we’re doing out here.”
“For now,” Danel said, “but someday they’ll name schools and universities after us.”
“Someday we’re all going to be dead,” Chei said. “Seriously I don’t care about fame. It would be nice to get a carrot now and then. Something to remind me why I am doing this.”
“Just keep doing it,” Jeph, said, shaking his head and grinning despite feeling Chie’s pain. “We’re almost there.”
“Yah, the Un Kanahto awaits. Only another forty-five days to go,” he said.
“That means you have accomplished one third of our objective,” Dutch offered.
“Which leaves a long way to go yet,” Cori said, an edge of desperation in his voice.
“Ja. Nojo,” Seva said. “Is no way to automate it?”
“Unfortunately no,” Dutch said. “The doorways respond to organically created sound. Therefore the initial activation of each doorway requires one of you to repeat the phrases.”
“And we can’t hotwire the doors somehow?” Cori asked. He was following Rocky around and even though it was still early in the day, he sounded like he was tired.
“I have addressed this with the Tacra Un,” Dutch said. “As I understand it, each doorway is roughly the equivalent of a nerve cell. It does not process commands as much as it reacts in a reflexive way to stimuli. Each node has its own core reflex, but it is not directly under the control of the processing center, in much the same way as your human nervous system responds without direct oversight. Therefore, there is no way to affect the desired response except by providing the correct stimuli.”
“But it lets you record the words and reproduce them after the first time,” Jeph asked. “Why is that?”
“Once the door has been stimulated in the correct manner by organic contact, it is conditioned to respond. Without that prior process it will not open by artificial means,” Dutch said. “As I said previously, because I am the first inorganic life form the Tacra Un has encountered, it was not prepared for this situation.”
“You’re saying we’re stimulating the Tacra Un’s nodes? Now I feel dirty,” Seva said.
A blinking blue light appeared inside one of the pedestals in the amphitheater and Jeph spun around as it began scrolling through a long text file. After the pedestals had activated when they first entered the central node, they had not displayed anything except what looked like an empty menu of some sort.
He tapped out of the comlink. “Did you do that?” he asked, glancing at Danel who was staring at the display too.
He shook his head.
“Did someone just do something different out there?” he asked, keying back into the main com.
“Why?” Chei and Anju asked simultaneously.
“Because one of the pedestals just started spewing stuff in here,” Jeph said. “It’s like it opened a floodgate and is dumping information.”
“It’s way too fast to read, and it’s a huge amount of stuff,” Danel said, “It’s just scrolling files and images.”
Jeph looked down at his body optic and made sure it was recording. “Dutch can you read it?”
“Affirmative,” it said. “It is information of a biological nature.”
“I am working deep down a biomedical relational series, and I just found a door that won’t open. Maybe it’s me?” Anju said.
“What is your current position?” he asked. One of the things that Dutch had imposed on their attack strategy for deciphering the language was an addressing protocol for the nodes.
“D20b32.”
“She is adjacent to the outer wall,” Dutch said.
“The door that won’t open would be B33,” she said.
“Do the other doors open?” Jeph asked.
“As far as I can tell,” she said. “I haven’t checked them all yet.”
“Congratulations Doctor Soresh,” Dutch said. “The Tacra Un informs me that you have completed one of the rudimentary language tracks.”
“What do I get for it?” she asked.
“Apparently a bunch of text data,” Danel said. “Will this happen every time we hit the outer wall?”
“The Tacra Un says that when the language elements essential for a specific discipline are completed, it releases a shanak-che,” Dutch said. “These files are an introductory primer for a specific advanced field and will remain accessible through the pedestals in the amphitheater node.”
“So because she hit the outer wall, it figures she is smart enough to understand what it is showing us?” Jeph asked.
“In this case yes,” it said. “However the Tacra Un has explained to me that there will be multiple tracks of language required to open many of the primer files, so not every contact with an exterior surface will release the materials. Conversely, contact with the end of a track may open multiple primers.”
“At least we can see there is cheese at the end of the tunnel,” Anju said. “Does that help with your motivation Chei?”
“Not really,” he said. “I don’t think textbooks are much of a reward.”
CHAPTER TEN
Tsiolkovskiy Freeport East:
Edison slept on the couch. Facing the back. It was small and he had to keep his legs pulled up uncomfortably, but since Tana and Saffia both slept naked and neither of them was shy about it, facing the dingy wall of upholstery was better for keeping his sanity than facing the two of them lying on top of the covers. The room was so small that the three bodies had overwhelmed the air controllers and it was too warm for them to sleep under even the thinnest of coverlets.
His com link chirped, dragging him up from a restless dream. He tapped the stud to activate his earpiece. “Yah. Go.” he said, his voice grinding out from somewhere below his consciousness.
“Mr. Wentworth, if you can be here by 0930 Commandant Pratte has a half hour available in her schedule.” It was Carranza Pratte’s secretary. He recognized her voice from all the calls he’d made trying to get an appointment.
“What time is it now?” he growled.
“0840,” the woman said.
“Yah, we can be there,” he said, rolling over and shaking the bed to wake the women.
“Excuse me Mr. Wentworth. Did you say we?”
“Yes I am not traveling alone. I will have two people with me and they need to see Pratte too.”
“I’m sorry, but because of the security situation we only permit credentialed guests into the TFC,” she said.
“They’ve got credentials,” he said. “That shouldn’t be a probl
em.” He looked at Tana who was propped up on her elbow watching him, his eyebrow conveying he needed to confirm she could show her documents to the guard if needed.
She nodded.
“I will let Commandant Pratte know, she said cutting the link from her end.
It took twenty minutes to dress and check out. Edison had given Madam Strangelove a large enough tip to hopefully ensure her silence, but before she let them head out she opened a cabinet and pulled out what looked like two ratty hamsters. She shook them and handed one to each of the women. Wigs.
“Hair won’t fool the brainy-eyes, but watch the deck and keep ‘em around your face and it’ll slow the local baggers from seeing anything but the squishybits walking by.”
“Thanks,” he said reaching back into his pocket for more paper. She put her hand on his arm and shook her head.
“I know what’s skating here, and whose hose you be bending.” She shrugged. “Is nothing about Ratface Tomlinson that I want to see more than him getting a dick in his eye, scan? Hair is my gift to the pretties so they can do it to him.”
She spun him around and swatted him toward the door. “There’s a shit spin on this deck between here and Old Main. Cut up one and then you be clear to slide.”
He followed Saffia and Tana out and along the upper main concourse toward the east gate. He tried not to be obvious that he was with the two women but he wanted to keep an eye on them without being recognized. If anyone had noticed he was watching, he wasn’t alone. Even with her hooded vest pulled up, Tana herself was striking enough to garner more than a casual glance of appreciation, but Saf had chosen a pale beige thinskin that made her look like she was wearing a lot less than the paper-thin outfit she was.
Before they left the room he’d challenged Saf on the idea that she was going to get them noticed. “I hope so. I’m doing it on purpose,” she said. “Tana attracts her own share of attention, but because she’s famous, anyone might recognize her. If I can keep everyone’s attention on me, they aren’t as likely to waste brain space trying to figure out who she is.”
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