by Brian Smith
“Whoa, Nelly,” Ashburn breathed. He quickly transitioned them from vertical to forward flight, effortlessly using the RCS system when the gyrogrips failed to yield the desired result. “Gyros are out,” he announced.
Kusaka frowned slightly. “No, they’re spinning. . . . So ka! I forgot about that! Don’t worry, Mike-san! The gyros are inside the ship—they’re inside the mass and damping fields, so they don’t have any external effect. Just use thrusters.”
Mike grinned across the cockpit at his friend. “You see, when I asked you if there were any final issues, . . . ?”
“Sorry. Watch your airspeed,” Kusaka added.
“Holy cats!” Ashburn breathed, throttling the ship back. “There’s no kinesthesia at all—no seat-of-the-pants cues.”
“Hmm,” Kusaka replied, looking thoughtful. “I can see this mode of flying will take some getting used to and will probably require some added instrumentation.” Kusaka began making notes, and neither of them said anything for a few minutes as Ashburn flew Banth One clear of the Martian atmosphere, into space, slowly relaxing and getting more comfortable as they went.
“Actually, it isn’t too bad,” Ashburn said after a few minutes. “It’s like flying a simulation in VR: you get all the instrument and visual cues, but none of the physical ones, because you’re just sitting on your ass. Lidar is coming up,” he added, switching the system on. “Okay, we’re clear ahead. I won’t activate our transponders or reconnect to any external networks until we’re a few planetary diameters away and really hauling ass.”
He began working a rough course to intercept Thuvia. It wasn’t as clear-cut a problem as it seemed, because Mars was in a different place with respect to Earth than it had been the day before, when Thuvia had executed her hard-burn. A refined solution would have to wait until he was back in the network and able to download Thuvia’s keplers.
In the meantime, Ashburn cautiously increased the ship’s acceleration to 1-g, then 2-g, then 5-g, and shook his head incredulously. By all rights, he should have been pinned on his back, unable to move. Here they were, sitting comfortably in rock-steady Martian gravity with the deckplates still feeling like they were oriented down, same as when they were parked on the surface. It might as well be artificial gravity! Ashburn thought with amazement. “Hell with it,” he muttered, gradually throttling them up to 20-g.
Their rate of deuterium consumption was ridiculously low, balanced against that acceleration; he could scarcely believe the numbers even though he was looking straight at them. He switched on an aft-facing imager, and a slow, silly grin split his face as he saw the bulk of the red planet shrink before his eyes on the ocular pop-up display. He let out an exhilarated whoop and switched himself over to virtual “clear cockpit” for a moment, enjoying the most incredible magic-carpet ride of his entire life.
“Hey, Mike,” Hansen called over the crew circuit.
Ashburn switched back to his normal AR view. “Go.”
“Is everything okay up there, captain? What’s the matter?”
“What do you mean?”
“You rang the bell ten minutes ago! When are we going to upthrust?”
Ashburn looked across at Kusaka, and they both burst out laughing, reaching across the center console to shake hands and slap each other on the back.
***
Although Mike Ashburn had been absent from Thuvia for only a few days, it seemed like half a lifetime since he’d last been aboard. Kusaka’s modifications to Banth One had allowed them to achieve what should have been impossible: less than seven hours after upthrust, they’d overtaken and rendezvoused with a torchship in hard-burn with a full day’s head start on them.
Gina Jackson had almost refused to temporarily throttle down for rendezvous—she hadn’t believed what she was seeing at first. Witnessing their own ship’s spaceplane closing on them with accelerations and decelerations far in excess of what the human body could survive convinced her that the ship had been hijacked and turned into some kind of AI-controlled drone weapon that was running them down to destroy them as they fled Mars.
Ashburn had to call her on a tight-beam maser, and it had taken some doing to “talk her off the ledge” and convince Jackson that she really didn’t want to try to melt them with Thuvia’s fusion plume as they matched velocity. If not for the fact that some of her passengers from Federov Propulsion were on hand to help convince her, Ashburn might have been forced to abort the rendezvous and risk the high-speed run to Earth.
Now they were safely docked and all was quiet for the moment. Kusaka’s coworkers had met him with radically mixed emotions. They were jubilant that Kusaka had survived, as well as amazed and excited that he’d gone ahead and modified Banth One in what amounted to a desperation-driven live-fire testing of the new technology. At the same time, they were still in a state of shock and mourning over the events on Mars, the murder of their company’s top personnel, and the thermal bombing of their corporate complex in Nuevo Rio.
The members of the prototype team who were already on Earth, as well as Thuvia’s passengers, constituted almost all the remaining personnel of Federov Propulsion Associates. As Kusaka was lead engineer and the one person with a thorough grasp of the theoretical side of the company’s work, leadership of the group fell naturally on his shoulders.
Cheryl Ayers and Carter Drayson were set up in quarters in the passenger compartment. Drayson wasn’t technically under arrest, but at the same time a pall of sorts hung over him, like a man awaiting trial. Ashburn promised to meet with him early the next morning, ship’s time. Until then, Drayson was invited to relax and recuperate from his wound; Ashburn sent him to the infirmary so that “Doc” Donato could tend to him further.
Ayers needed a shower, a hot meal, and a solid night’s sleep. She’d been on the go, both physically and mentally, ever since she’d watched the destruction of Halsey Station on a newsfeed. Ashburn promised her that she’d be included in any and all major powwows the next day.
Ashburn himself went straight to the bridge once Banth One was hard-docked and secured. The watch officer didn’t waste any time; the ship throttled back up and resumed her hard-burn as soon as the spaceplane was secured.
Jackson had met them at the airlock with a few other stout hearts, all armed with the best they could muster up. Her relief was palpable when she saw that it was in fact her captain returned, and not some boarding party of Omnisynths, MIM insurgents, or pirates.
Ashburn’s visiting the bridge was a reminder of how little time had passed since he’d been here last; it was just that a lot had happened in the time between. The ship was functioning normally. Although they’d missed loading their last two payload runs from Nuevo Rio, they had the balance of their contracted cargo and passengers aboard. Except for the world’s going crazy, they were now back to what amounted to a standard Mars–Earth run. Of course, Barsoom Traders and Federov Propulsion might no longer exist, depending on whom you asked. Who was going to pay whom for this run was now an open question, along with what would happen to both torchship and payload upon reaching their destination.
Ashburn made a brief stop at his cabin, shedding his full exosuit and cleaning up before putting on a fresh spacing jumpsuit; he wanted to look sharp when he addressed the crew, not like a refugee fresh aboard from a war zone.
He also took a minute to access his message queue.
Ashburn felt a weird twisting in his gut when he saw the communication waiting for him from the Bureau of Naval Personnel. He opened it and read, his eyes skimming over the standard-format navy message, informing him that his reserve commission was being activated and that he was being recalled to active duty forthwith. His orders were to proceed by the fastest possible means to the nearest naval facility in cislunar space and report for duty at his present rank. The directive was followed by a laundry list of administrative details and instructions, all of which he skimmed over for now.
He closed the message and sat down for a moment, wrapping his min
d around it while he drummed a finger absently against his tight-pressed lips. Since Thuvia was already en route to cislunar space, he figured he was suitably in compliance with his orders. That gave him a little more than four days to get everything sorted out both personally and professionally, and then his ass would belong to Uncle Sam for the duration. He tried to imagine serving as a division officer or department head on a navy torchship after all his added schooling, training, and experience and their culmination in his commanding Thuvia. To say that it all felt like a gigantic leap backward was a massive understatement, but duty was duty.
So much for Alpha Centauri.
The one thing Ashburn knew he needed to do now was address the crew, with as little delay as possible. He called them together in the main hold, with those on watch invited to network in via oculars or snoopers. This was something he’d done only once before, when he’d taken command of the torchship herself. This mustering of the crew reminded him starkly of holding quarters aboard a navy ship, a life in which he would be reimmersed very soon.
The gathering of the crew served a purpose: it let them see him in the flesh, assuring them that he was back and okay. It might seem like a small thing, but he knew from experience that it wasn’t, especially in a crisis. What an organization needed at times like this was reassurance that things would work out in the end, under the guidance of a steady hand. Competent leadership was the order of the day; the lack of it would only ruin efficiency, crush morale even further, and throw things into disarray. Ashburn knew his people were hurting. They knew that Dejah Thoris was still in the hands of bad actors, that more company ships had gone dark, and that Boss Forester was dead, along with many of their colleagues. It wouldn’t surprise him at all if any number of crew members either jumped ship or asked to have their contracts paid off once they reached Earth. At this time Ashburn made no mention of his own impending departure; that was an added kick in the teeth the crew didn’t need, especially Jackson. It could wait.
What Ashburn did do was summarize for the crew what he knew for sure about recent events and inform them that he’d be consulting with other company captains to try to determine the best course of action for the company, going forward. He reminded everyone that, while they considered themselves a Mars-based company, they were in fact a U.S.-flagged outfit under U.S. jurisdiction, and that Thuvia and all other company torchships were still U.S.-flagged vessels. He hinted that, with the fighting and civil unrest on Mars, as well as the loss of their company headquarters, Barsoom Traders might be relocating to cislunar space in the near term, and that any runs to Mars might be suspended indefinitely.
The last disclosure caused some consternation—strictly speaking, almost the entire crew considered Mars home; arguably, so did he. It was also not lost on Ashburn that in a cross-system struggle for Martian independence a good portion of his crew might find their loyalties with Mars in principle, if not with the actual MIM itself. Although he hated himself for already mentally abrogating his responsibilities, the prospect of a politically polarized crew didn’t worry him much, because he knew it wouldn’t be his problem to deal with. He did his best to ease the worries and concerns of his people and to assure them that things would be okay going forward; he asked them to try not to let current events distract them from their work, especially those who held critical positions. He promised that the company officers who remained, primarily the individual ship’s captains, would salvage the situation and turn it around.
Ashburn ended the meeting on that note.
Less than an hour later, when his brain was feeling like sludge and his body was crying for sleep, purser Jerry Sommers showed up at his office door with fresh coffee and grim news. As far as Sommers could determine, the company’s accounts on Mars had all been hacked, embezzled, or otherwise pilfered. Barsoom Traders had no operating capital with which to buy fuel, conduct maintenance, make debt payments, meet payroll, or otherwise conduct company business.
“In short, we’re absolutely screwed,” Sommers stated. He looked at his boss with wide eyes. “What the hell are we gonna do, captain?”
Ashburn waved Sommers to a seat. He took a bulb of coffee, fired up his oculars, and networked in with the purser.
“Let’s figure it out,” he said wearily.
***
The next morning, ship’s time, Mike Ashburn wandered into one of the maintenance bays, where he found Kusaka Shiguro, Carter Drayson, and Cheryl Ayers poring over the remains of the Omnisynths that had attempted to hijack Banth One.
Ayers looked a little out of place in a borrowed company jumpsuit; she had run her uniform through the ship’s autovalet yet again, still trying to get the bloodstains from Diane Hutton’s wounds out of the material. Until she could get to a facility with some stores or a navy exchange, that uniform, its accessories, and her personal oculars amounted to the sum total of her worldly possessions.
“Good morning, captain,” Ayers said, reverting almost automatically to the deference anyone in the navy would afford a ship’s master. That lasted only until she got a good look at him. “Gawd, you look like you’ve been shot at and missed, then shit at and hit! Did you get any sleep at all?”
“A couple hours,” Ashburn yawned. “I was going to call a meeting this morning. I decided to put it off until this afternoon so everyone can collect their wits, collate their data, and maybe figure out some semblance of an actual agenda.”
“What’s the matter?” Kusaka asked. “What kept you up all night?”
“Company business, mostly,” he replied vaguely. “Have you checked Federov Propulsion’s financials?” he added.
Kusaka shrugged. “I don’t have direct access to them normally. Why?”
Ashburn grinned wickedly. “You probably don’t want to know anyway. What about you, Mr. Drayson? Checked on the Crandall Foundation’s liquid accounts in the past couple of days?”
“No. . . . Why?” he asked, his face suddenly going ashen.
“Better check them first chance you get,” Ashburn replied. “We won’t be networking this ship back to the Marsnet, so it’ll have to wait until we get to Earth. Barsoom Traders has been cleaned out, and rather seamlessly according to my ship’s purser. What’s left of the company doesn’t have two cents to rub together right now. You don’t look surprised,” he added, speaking to Ayers.
She shook her head. “I’m not. How many times do I have to explain that the enemy has total control over the Marsnet and maybe even more than that? Back on Mars when I was TAD with the Marshals Service, I’d already found a few cases where they’d siphoned funds from corporate accounts and covered it up so seamlessly that the companies themselves didn’t even realize it. Did anyone look at the Gaianet overnight?”
Nobody had.
“The MIM is already conducting carefully aimed cyberstrikes against Earth. It’s affecting defense infrastructure, the markets, and cloud-based data storage. The MIM is wreaking some serious havoc just through network links, without firing a single kinetic shot. Right now the global governments are pulling their hair out trying to figure out how to stop it before Earth’s economy goes into global meltdown. ’Might already be too late to stop it,” she added, sounding awfully flip.
“Wonderful,” Ashburn replied dryly. “What are you three up to here?”
Kusaka fielded that one. “Just taking a look, Mike-san. Seeing if we can get any ideas about what makes these things tick. It’s curiosity, mostly, given the amount of trouble they’re responsible for. We pulled the schematics from one of the data cores for comparison, but none of us are synth engineers—it doesn’t make any sense to us.”
Drayson picked up the severed head of one of the synths and turned it over in his hands, studying it curiously. “How’d you manage to do this without setting it on fire?” he asked. “Whatever that greenish gel is that permeates these things, the stuff burns as hot as thermite when something ignites it. A hot bullet went into my Omnisynth assistant after she stabbed me, and she lit off like
a fusion torch. There was practically nothing left when the fire finally got put out. This cut is so clean—it had to be a particle beam, right? So why didn’t it light off?”
Kusaka was bent over one of the torsos. He shifted somewhat self-consciously and looked up at Drayson. “It, uh, wasn’t a particle beam, Carter-san. The cut was made with a sword.”
“A sword? You’ve got to be kidding me!”
“It’s a long story—not important now,” Ashburn interrupted. “The important thing is that we’ve got the pieces and parts of two of these things, almost intact. That may be more than anyone else has managed so far. It’s going to be vital to get these to military specialists on Earth who can really figure them out. You aren’t getting anything from the schematics at all?”
Ayers shook her head. “It’s way too advanced, captain. We took a look at the data files on the Q-gel as well. It seems to have a lot of potential applications and some interesting properties, right down to the quantum level. Again, it’s something someone who specializes in this stuff is going to have to figure out.”
She paused, looking uncomfortably at the other three.
“Y’know,” she added almost casually. “Harper didn’t have any idea what was on those cores. Have any of you taken a look at just the headers in those data partitions?” Obviously, she had.
“I took a cursory look,” Kusaka admitted quietly, sounding uncomfortable about it.
“I looked them over last night,” Drayson added. Nobody seemed surprised at that.
“I’ve been tied up with company stuff,” Ashburn added, “but I paged through them during the drive back to Shiguro’s family holding when I wasn’t crunching keps based on his modifications. There’s a lot of valuable stuff there,” he said, casually addressing the elephant in the room.
“That’s kind of what I was alluding to,” Ayers replied. “It’s the sort of technological windfall that governments will kill entire populations to possess. Without sounding overly dramatic, it also looks like the sort of thing that could give humanity the stars.”