Catalyst

by Fletcher DeLancey

  “It does to the person who wrote the orders. I questioned them too, and I was shot down. There’s nothing I can do.”

  He looked down at the table, then up again with a slight grimace. “Then I guess I’d better give Bellows an immersion session on the Rules of First Contact. Not to mention methods of bridging alien data systems.”

  “I think you’ll find him to be an excellent student.”

  He nodded, his braids gleaming under the lights. He must oil them, she thought idly.

  “I’m sorry, Captain. I didn’t want to start off on the wrong foot with you.”

  “You haven’t. I appreciate your instincts; I just need you to express them a little more carefully.” She held his gaze for a moment, then added, “My orders only specified that Bellows should be on the team. They didn’t say that he should be the only data systems analyst on it.”

  His expression sharpened. “But you said it should be a small team.”

  “Remember what else I said? Offer me alternatives.”

  To his credit, he didn’t waste a moment. “Captain, I respectfully suggest you take a second data analyst. Someone with more experience bridging alien data systems. In the event that negotiations don’t get you the answers you need, you may have to find them in their communications records.”

  “I agree. Do you have someone in mind?”

  “I do.”

  “Excellent. Get that person prepped, and don’t forget they’ll need a language chip.”

  “Yes, Captain.” He didn’t smile, but his whole body telegraphed his relief.

  “That’s all, Commander. Dismissed.”

  Left alone in the briefing room, she leaned back in her chair and stared at the display taking up the entire far wall. Like the bridge display, its projection of visual data from the sensors was flawless, giving the very realistic impression that the wall was an enormous window. The curved ribs of the space dock framed the view of open space beyond, and a flurry of dock ferries, construction bots, and equipment sleds were zipping around in a complicated dance that always seemed one second away from disaster. In truth, collisions were vanishingly rare.

  She watched two dock ferries pass each other, one bringing last-minute crew on board while the other, having discharged its passengers in her shuttle bay, went back for another load. It was always this way just before a new ship launched. No matter how far in advance the requests and travel arrangements were made, some crew could not make it until the last moment. And this really was the last moment: the personnel umbilical had already been pulled back, and the airlock was sealed. In four hours they would detach all remaining umbilicals and launch. It was a moment she had anticipated, dreamed of, and fantasized about for nearly seventeen months—the time when she was supposed to be free of Sholokhov.

  Yet here he was, still influencing her. Besides the spy and the mission, that little chat with Commander Kenji would not have happened on the Caphenon. She would have slapped him down for questioning her, refused to admit that she herself was not in complete control of their orders, and never bothered to teach him how to approach her more effectively. She had always thought that was for her officers to figure out for themselves. After all, it was what she’d had to do with every single one of her superior officers, including Sholokhov.

  She didn’t want to be that person anymore. She didn’t want any part of her command style, decisions, or way of thinking to have the remotest similarity to Sholokhov.

  For some time she stared at the view, lost in thought, until the briefing room door slid open just in front of the display. Commander Lokomorra entered, pad in hand. With his forked beard, burned-in hair patterns, and tattooed eyeliner, he would not have looked out of place as a blaster-waving pirate. But his uniform was crisp, his posture straight, and she was coming to understand that beneath his sometimes casual speech and attitude, he was an even more capable officer than she had first believed.

  “Captain? I have the results you wanted.”

  “That was quick,” she said as he sat in the seat next to her.

  “We’ve got some good people down there in data systems,” he said, and she smiled at that we. “They’d already done most of the work while we were in our briefing.”

  He set the pad on the table, pulled up the virtual screen, and tapped the file. “You’re not going to like this.”

  She watched the security footage of Dr. Wells’s empty office, showing several totes that had yet to be unpacked, a few shelves full of what must be heirloom books, and a desk already messy with instruments and files.

  “Did you see it?”

  “See what?” She frowned. “Nothing happened.”

  “Yes, it did.” He put his finger nearly in the projection, pointing to a corner of Wells’s desk. “There’s the packet. Watch it again.”

  He restarted the playback. One moment that corner of the desk was empty, the next, the packet was there. It had appeared out of nowhere.

  “Someone altered the logs,” she said.

  He smoothed one hand over his beard, pulling the two halves together. “Yes. And the analyst who gave this to me said that would take some real juice. She’s trying to find any digital crumbs that might have been left behind.”

  “Lovely. Not only do I have a spy on my ship, but he or she is a data jacker. That makes it so much better.”

  His hand stopped in its smoothing motion. “A spy?”

  She looked at him, assessing her options. To trust or not to trust?

  Don’t be Sholokhov, she told herself. “Not a Voloth spy. Someone on our own side, but not necessarily working for the benefit of this ship. Whoever this is, they’re working for Director Sholokhov.”

  His brows drew down, the tattoos suddenly making him look dangerous. “I don’t think I like this Sholokhov person. We haven’t even launched and someone is spying on us?”

  Us, she marveled. Us and we. Shippers, it was nice to be part of a team again.

  “Not necessarily on us,” she said. “Probably just me. Though I can’t be sure of that.”

  “Why does Sholokhov feel he needs to spy on you? Didn’t you just spend a year and a half working for him?”

  “Yes, and that’s why. Though I wouldn’t be surprised if he has a spy on every ship in Fleet.” It had not occurred to her before now, but the moment she said it, she knew it was probably true. This wasn’t just about her. Sholokhov’s network was vast.

  Lokomorra gave his beard a tug, then let go and deactivated his pad. “I hate to say this, but I have an idea of who it might be.”

  “Please don’t say Dr. Wells.”

  His lips thinned. “She’s visible in the medbay security logs for an hour before this time and an hour after. But the time period when this packet appears? She’s nowhere to be seen.”

  “Shipper shit.” Ekatya sighed.

  CHAPTER 23:

  Transition in

  The real launch of the Phoenix was so smooth as to be unremarkable. Without the heaving mass of dignitaries cluttering up her ship, Ekatya found it relaxing to sit in her chair at the top of the bridge dais, give the order for the release of all final umbilicals, and then say the words she had been dreaming of for a year and a half:

  “Take her out, Lieutenant.”

  The only way this moment could have been improved was by the presence of Lieutenant Candini at the pilot’s station right below her, but Lieutenant Scarp was an excellent pilot in his own right. He lacked Candini’s attitude and probably her ego, but he had impressed Ekatya during his interview, and his prior experience looked like a plan designed specifically to land him on a Pulsar-class bridge.

  “Yes, Captain.” Scarp tapped his console, grasped the control stick to its right, and moved it so gently that Ekatya could not see it.

  But she saw the result. Both the upper and lower displays were still active, and the sight of the sp
ace dock sliding past sent a tingle along her skin. Though Scarp made it look easy, she knew that maneuvering a ship seven hundred and fifty meters long out of a tight space like this took a steady hand and phenomenal skill. The Pulsars were the largest ships that could be built in existing Fleet facilities. If the ship design engineers came up with something bigger than this, they would have to build a new shipyard to go with it.

  One by one, the downward-arching ribs of the space dock slipped behind them until the last one vanished and nothing but open space lay ahead. Below their feet, half of the moon shone brilliantly with reflected sunlight, while the other half was so dark she could make out no details.

  “Well done, Lieutenant Scarp.”

  He turned halfway, enough to shoot her a quick smile before returning his focus to the readouts. “Thank you, Captain.”

  “Was it easier than yesterday?”

  “So much easier,” he said with more emphasis than he had probably intended. The tips of his ears turned pink. “I mean, it was a little stressful having all of…um, having an audience.”

  He was now so embarrassed that she could see his scalp blushing. Nervous young officers with light blond hair shouldn’t cut it short, she thought with an internal smile.

  “I think we can all agree that we’re glad to be done with the preliminaries,” she said. “And Quinton Shipyards sent us a message. They said, ‘Farewell and good hunting.’”

  It was a traditional good luck wish for any departing ship, dating back three generations to the beginning of the war with the Voloth. She wondered if there would ever come a time when a Fleet ship launched with a goal of pure exploration instead.

  “I’m taking it as a good omen that we didn’t scrape our sides on the way out,” Commander Lokomorra said. “Either time. Nice flying, Lieutenant Scarp.”

  There went the scalp blush again. “Thank you, Commander.”

  “Let’s try a little speed, shall we?” Ekatya swiveled her chair around to see the space dock looming behind them. “Orbital until we clear the buffer zone, then sub point five to the marker.”

  “Orbital, then point five, confirmed.”

  The dock slowly receded, exposing more of the structure behind it. Five other space docks held ships in various stages of completion, each at a corner of the gigantic central hexagon that housed offices, lodgings, storage bays, and a thousand other facilities, all making up the greatest shipyard in the Protectorate. As she watched it drop away from them, something in her chest loosened its hold, allowing her to breathe more easily than she had in a very long time.

  “Buffer zone cleared,” Scarp announced. “Going to sub point five.”

  The engine hum, barely distinguishable before, grew slightly louder as the shipyard seemed to leap away. Before the Phoenix had finished its acceleration, Quinton Shipyards had already vanished, leaving only the moon marking its location. At one hundred and fifty thousand kilometers per second—half the speed of light—even the moon was rapidly shrinking to a dot. Ekatya swiveled her chair forward again and waited.

  One minute later, they had traversed nine million kilometers and were nearly on top of the marker. Scarp decelerated smoothly, bringing the ship to a full stop with the marker hanging directly in front of them. The buoy itself was nothing special, simply a sign that Fleet considered this a safe distance from the shipyard to leave normal space.

  “Deactivating displays.” Ekatya tapped her console. For the first time since she had set foot on her ship, the bridge ceased to look as if it were floating in space and became a large, comfortably closed, circular room with a domed ceiling.

  “Oh, thank the Shippers,” Lokomorra said. “You’re not going to make us watch.”

  She shot him an evil grin. “Not on the way in, Commander. But I make no guarantees on the way out.” She opened the all-call and spoke to her crew. “This is Captain Serrado. We are now preparing to enter base space. Brace for transition.”

  Normally, transition required more preparation time, but the ship had already been on lockdown before they left the space dock. Since the entrance to base space did not have the same physiological effect as the exit did, there was nothing left to do but give the order.

  “Commander Yst, open the portal.”

  In the bottom ring of the bridge dais, Lieutenant Commander Yst tapped her engineering console. She was a silver-haired woman five years away from retirement, and Ekatya hoped to keep her for all of those five years.

  “Initiating pikamet beam,” Yst said.

  Ekatya pulled up a view from the forward sensors on her console. At the moment, all she could see was the marker and the black nothingness of normal space. The pikamet beam was invisible on this side, but exiting would be a different story.

  “Interspace portal at thirty percent,” Yst reported.

  And that was another difference, Ekatya thought. Opening the portal between space layers took much less time in this direction. She had already flipped her brace bars into position; now she wrapped her hands around them.

  “Sixty percent. Seventy-five. Ninety.” Yst waited a few seconds, her gaze focused on her console. “Interspace portal now open.”

  Ekatya checked the tension in her harness one last time, took a firmer grip on her brace bars, and rested her head against her seat. “Take us in, Lieutenant Scarp.”

  “Yes, Captain.”

  It started with barely detectable vibrations and soon grew to a shaking violent enough to rattle her teeth. If that was as bad as it got, she would consider this an easy transition. For a moment, she felt a spurt of fear at the thought that she had never taken this brand-new ship through a transition before. But the Phoenix had passed all field tests with excellent scores and had been through transition two dozen times. It had to be safe.

  The ship gave a great leap, as if it had been slammed sideways by something extremely large, and only Ekatya’s harness kept her in her seat. She tightened her grip on the brace bars and marveled at the fact that the Protectorate’s largest warship could be tossed around by interspace turbulence like a single-seat fighter. The internal battle hull did not help—it was designed to absorb shocks from weapon strikes, not the immense forces of a portal between space layers.

  Twice more they were jolted, the second time so violently that it broke her hold on the left grip bar. Swearing, she wrapped her hand back around it and pressed her head more firmly into the seat. This brought back memories of crashing the Caphenon, an image she did not need in her head right now.

  The shaking diminished soon after, becoming mere vibrations and finally smoothing out completely. Even before the navigation officer announced it, Ekatya knew they had arrived. Her console was lit up with the shifting red mists of base space. With a quick tap she converted it to a section status display, watching as the confirmations rolled in.

  “Hullskin at one hundred percent functionality,” Yst reported. “No damage to internal frameworks. Internal radiation levels normal.”

  Ekatya nodded to herself as each section chief, or acting section chief, reported their section’s successful transition and readiness to resume travel. They were now in a layer of space where distances were compressed by a factor of ten thousand while radiation levels were higher by the same amount. This was not a place for the slightest mistake.

  “All right, Lieutenant Scarp,” she said as the last confirmation appeared. “Let’s see how the Phoenix moves in base space. Confirm our course, standard acceleration to sub point nine eight.”

  “Course confirmed,” Scarp said a few seconds later. “Beginning acceleration to point nine eight.”

  The deep, barely discernible throb of the surf engines permeated the bridge, an element of space travel that Ekatya felt as much as she heard. That sound had been a constant in her life for years. Hearing it now felt like home.

  Once they reached cruising speed, there was no longer any reason t
o stay in harness. She slid her brace bars back inside her armrests, opened the all-call, and informed her crew that transition lockdown was lifted. Then she gratefully rose from her chair and walked down the steps to the deck.

  “Point nine eight, eh?” Commander Lokomorra had followed her to the midway point between the dais and the wall stations, where they could not easily be overheard. “That’s pushing it right to the limit.”

  “No, L one would be the limit.” Ekatya shot him a smile. “And I’ve done that, too.”

  He stared at her in feigned horror. “I thought you were a sane captain. That’s why I transferred. Are you telling me I made a mistake?”

  “I’m sane most of the time. But in that situation, we were under a severe time constraint. I was on my way to stop a Voloth invasion.”

  The tattooed eyeliner was accentuated when he raised his eyebrows. “Alsea. You flew the speed of light through base space to get to Alsea in time.”

  She nodded. “And not one meter per second faster.”

  “Well, I know that. If you had, you wouldn’t be here now. You’d be vaporized.”

  Ekatya remembered a conversation in the private cabin of Andira’s transport, when she had introduced a supposedly backward alien to the concept of base space travel. “A friend of mine has a theory about that. She suggested that when someone breaks the speed limit in base space, what it’s really doing is breaking the barrier between layers. They’re going into the second layer of base space.”

  He pursed his lips. “That’s a compelling thought. But the end result would be equally ugly. Going into a radiation field one million times stronger than normal space with nothing but hullskin for protection…”

  “Which would explain why we never heard from any of those probes. They would have been fried within seconds.”

  “Huh. Is your friend published?”

  She laughed at the idea. “I don’t think our scientific journals are ready for a submission from the Lancer of Alsea.”

  His forked beard twitched; then he laughed as well. “No, I wouldn’t imagine so. That was Lancer Tal’s theory, eh? So much for the barbaric Alseans and their swords.”