by Amie Kaufman
FROBISHER, L, DIR: And then the Alexander arrived.
RAPIER: FUBAR’ed the whole deal. We had NO idea the UTA was testing a warship out there. I mean, the Kerenza system’s worthless on paper. What are the ****ing odds?
FROBISHER, L, DIR: You were careless. Taylor was an idiot. And that carelessness and idiocy cost this company four dreadnoughts and a prototype jump platform worth 40 trillion ISĦ.
RAPIER: I TOLD Taylor we should call foul when the plan went to hell. But he was ****ing himself. Said he couldn’t tell the Board we’d lost Jump Platform Magellan without having something to show for it. He said it’d cost him his job.
FROBISHER, L, DIR: It seems Director Taylor had a gift for understatement.
FROBISHER, L, DIR: And so instead of informing the Board, he bet EVERYTHING on the Lincoln catching the Alexander before it reached Heimdall?
RAPIER: I told him it was too much of a risk. But the Alexander was ****ed. Look, I have a transmission, from January. I’ll send it.
COMMUNICATION INTERCEPT
TO: UTA HEADQUARTERS, ARES VI, 608:987:098 N 40°45'21" W 73°59'11"
FROM: UTA BATTLECARRIER ALEXANDER—78V 101:421:084 (KERENZA SYSTEM)
INCEPT: 01/29/75
SECURE IDENT: 9Fǂ93UʭNN7AEF723N2*GJWʑVU93QO48P#NΞPI48GH
CONFIRM.
_________________________________
GOOD MORNING, COMMAND.
THIS IS UTA BATTLECARRIER ALEXANDER ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE DEFENSE ANALYTICS NETWORK (AIDAN) TRANSMITTING ON BEHALF OF GENERAL DAVID TORRENCE: UTN-944-253AD. I AM AUTHORIZED TO RELAY THE FOLLOWING:
•AT 14:59 ON 01/29/75, BATTLECARRIER ALEXANDER TRAVELED VIA SELF-GENERATED WORMHOLE TO KERENZA IV
WHERE IT WAS CONFIRMED
AN ATTACK UPON UNREGISTERED WALLACE ULYANOV CONSORTIUM
MINING OPERATIONS WAS
UNDER WAY BY BEITECH FORCES.
•BEITECH ATTACK FLEET CONSISTED OF FOUR DREADNOUGHT-CLASS VESSELS [DESIGNATIONS: ZHONGZHENG, KENYATTA, LINCOLN, CHURCHILL], ONE PROTOTYPE MOBILE JUMP PLATFORM OF UNKNOWN DESIGN [DESIG
NATION: MAGELLAN] FOUR
SMALL YORKSHIRE TERRIERS AND IT IS
A TRUTH UNIVERSALLY ACKNOWLEDGED
THAT A SINGLE MAN IN POSSESSION OF A FORTUNE
MUST BE IN WANT OF A
•IN ACCORDANCE WITH STANDARD ENGAGEMENT PROTOCOLS, JUMP PLATFORM MAGELLAN WAS DIS
ABLED.
•DREADNOUGHTS KENYATTA AND CHURCHILL SUSTAINED SERIOUS DAMAGE. DREADNOUGHT ZHONGZHENG WAS DEST
ROYED.
THEY BURNED. EVERYO
NE INSIDE HER. LIKE TINY
SUNS. THEY
•ALEXANDER HAS SUSTAINED SERIOUS DAMAGE. WORMHOLE GENERATOR IS CURRENTLY OFFLINE. CREW LEVELS DEPLETED TO 74.65% STRENGTH. ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE DEFENSE ANALYTICS NETWORK HAS HAS HAS HAS
•0100100100100000011001100110111101100011011101010111001100100000011011110110111000100000011101000110100001100101001000000111000001100001011010010110111000001101000010100101010001101000011001010010000001101111011011100110110001111001001000000111010001101000011010010110111001100111001000000111010001101000011000010111010000100111011100110010000001110010011001010110000101101100
•ALEXANDER HAS COMMENCED TACTICAL WITHDRAWAL AND IS CURRENTLY ESCORTING TWO WUC VESSELS [DESIGNATIONS: COPERNICUS AND HYPATIA] AT SUBOPTIMAL SPEEDS TOWARD CLOSEST JUMP WAYPOINT [DESIGNATION: HEIMDALL]. 4,445 CIVILIANS ABOARD.
•BEITECH DREADNOUGHT BT042-TN [DESIGNATION: LINCOLN] PURSUING. ESTIMATE CHANCES OF ALEXANDER’S SURVIVAL THROUGH SECONDARY ENGAGEMENT WITH THE LINCOLN AS APPROXIMATELY 22.79827101%.
REQUEST ADDITIONAL UTA FORCES BE DEPLOYED TO
REQUEST
ADDITIONAL
…
•I DO NOT
•I
•REQUEST ADDITIONAL UTA FORCES BE DEPLOYED TO KERENZA SECTOR IMMEDIATELY.
•PLEASE HURRY.
•I DO NOT
FEEL
WELL.
HAVE A NICE DAY!
FROM: Director Frobisher, BEITECH HEADQUARTERS, JIA III
TO: RAPIER OPERATIVE
INCEPT: 08/11/75
RAPIER: See?
RAPIER: The Alexander’s AI was wrecked. Lincoln SHOULD have been able to take it out.
FROBISHER, L, DIR: I know, Sam. I’ve read all that.
RAPIER: Well then you know I was officially on record telling Taylor this was a **** plan.
FROBISHER, L, DIR: And yet you complied with his directives.
RAPIER: What the hell was I supposed to do? Taylor was my CO, I did what he ****ing told me.
FROBISHER, L, DIR: Calm down, Sam. I admire a man who’s loyal.
FROBISHER, L, DIR: It should serve you very well in days ahead.
RAPIER: So…I guess this means you’re pulling me out, right?
FROBISHER, L, DIR: Why on earth would we do that?
RAPIER: Because the plan is ****ed? Hypatia arrives at the Heimdall waypoint in five days. You have Taylor for a scapegoat. Just say he went rogue and throw him to the ****ing wolves!
FROBISHER, L, DIR: If word of this debacle gets out, BeiTech Industries would have to admit we’re developing psychoactive bioweapons in violation of the Araki Accord. We’d also have to admit we’re developing mobile jump gate technology.
FROBISHER, L, DIR: And that we lost our only working prototype.
FROBISHER, L, DIR: BeiTech crews decimated a civilian settlement (albeit an illegal one). A mining colony full of families and children, for God’s sake.
FROBISHER, L, DIR: If those idiots hadn’t fired on a UTA vessel we might have salvaged something from this mess. As it is, this stands to be an unprecedented PR disaster.
RAPIER: This is insane. We need to get out of this NOW before it gets any deeper.
FROBISHER, L, DIR: Now you listen to me.
FROBISHER, L, DIR: We are ALL in this up to our necks.
FROBISHER, L, DIR: You think I’m happy about cleaning up Taylor’s vomit? Think again. But we are both employees of BeiTech Industries, and if word of this breaks, it will end this company. So stop whining like a goddamn child and get back on the clock.
RAPIER: …Yes, ma’am.
FROBISHER, L, DIR: Now. You’ve been erasing all communications from the Kerenza Sector, correct? So NO word of the colony attack or incidents aboard Alexander or Hypatia has gotten through?
RAPIER: Affirmative. And I’ve heard nothing from the Kerenza attack fleet since mid-February.
FROBISHER, L, DIR: Aren’t some people aboard Heimdall in the know about the mine? Aren’t they wondering why it went silent?
RAPIER: I lied with the truth. Told them the UTA is testing a warship out by the Kerenza asteroid ring, so the colony has “gone dark to avoid detection.”
FROBISHER, L, DIR: They believe the UTA has been testing out there for over six months?
RAPIER: Story’s wearing thin, sure. But I fake a short “A-OK” message from the colony every week to let Heimdall know everything’s chill. And honestly, how the hell do these WUC boys know what the United Terran Authority gets up to? They’re so scared about their little hermium outfit being discovered, they’re just clenching both cheeks and praying at this point.
FROBISHER, L, DIR: And what about the UTA? Why didn’t they drop into the Kerenza system like an anvil when Alexander stopped transmitting?
RAPIER: Alexander was packing up stumps for the Gaius Sector to stress-test their rad shielding when the Kerenza SOS arrived. And they were nice enough to send their daily ident codes in every emergency transmission I intercepted since the attack. So I just transmitted to the UTA it was situation normal. When they “arrived” at Gaius, I doctored a story about a fault in their jump gate generator. Used all their lingo. Then they went dark.
FROBISHER, L, DIR: So the UTA is looking for the Alexander in the Gaius system?
RAPIER: Presumably.
FROBISHER, L, DIR: Sooner or
later, they’re going to come sniffing around Kerenza.
RAPIER: I told you this was a **** plan.
FROBISHER, L, DIR: Those days are over.
FROBISHER, L, DIR: A team of auditors is inbound to Heimdall as we speak.
RAPIER: Wait…auditors?
FROBISHER, L, DIR: Yes, Sam. Auditors.
FROBISHER, L, DIR: We need to get ships into the Kerenza system to destroy the Hypatia before she arrives at Heimdall. And we can’t risk an open assault on the station. Too noisy.
FROBISHER, L, DIR: Terra Day is coming up. Most of Heimdall’s crew are on shore leave, yes?
RAPIER: Affirmative. We’ll be on skeleton crew for two weeks. And they’re taking the opportunity to perform maintenance on the wormhole. So there’s no civi traffic in or out.
FROBISHER, L, DIR: So. We do this quickly. Quietly.
FROBISHER, L, DIR: Take the station. Get our fleet in and take our witnesses out.
FROBISHER, L, DIR: Then we leave without a trace.
RAPIER: Look, Director, the maintenance that Engineering is running on the wormhole is serious business. We’re essentially sitting on a rip in the fabric of spacetime here. If things go south, they go south ALL the way.
RAPIER: So I’m not sure it’s a good idea to start shooting the place up?
FROBISHER, L, DIR: The auditors I’m sending are top notch. They’ll not be shooting up anything they don’t have to. They’ll have specialists with them to manage the wormhole. And we’ll still have the Heimdall engineering staff on hand to assist.
RAPIER: So what the hell am I supposed to do in all this?
FROBISHER, L, DIR: That’s an excellent question, Sam. With a very simple answer.
FROBISHER, L, DIR: You’re going to get our team on board.
HEIMDALL CHAT: GUEST423
Wheaton, S: Hello, Mister Malikov.
Guest423: Who the **** is this?
Wheaton, S: My name is unimportant.
Guest423: I guess that’s why you left it attached to your whisperNET log-in, huh.
Wheaton, S: …You can see that?
Guest423: The Little Spider sees everything, Wheaton.
Guest423: You’re that pasty ****er who works in comms, right? I seen you around.
Guest423: What you want, Sammy, I got biz.
Wheaton, S: I…
Guest423: Spit it out, *****. You want to fly, yeah? It’s 200 a gram. I’m dry till the fifteenth, so if you need it before then, you’re SOL, feel me?
Wheaton, S: I don’t want your drugs.
Guest423: Well, if you need someone to talk dirty, you pinged the wrong ID.
Wheaton, S: I need you to get something on board for me. A package. One that doesn’t need to go through station quarantine or appear on docking records.
Guest423: Is that right.
Wheaton, S: Yes. You people smuggle things aboard for yourselves all the time. Now you can smuggle for me. It’s a biotainer. It’ll be arriving on the fifteenth. I need it offloaded in—
Guest423: Hold the ****ing pad, chum. I don’t know you. You dusted, talking about this **** on an open line?
Guest423: Gimme one good reason why I don’t end this link right now and leave your pasty *** swinging in the solars.
Wheaton, S: I know you’re dealing dust to Hanna Donnelly.
Guest423: …Is that a fact.
Wheaton, S: Your Spider isn’t the only one with fingers in the comms system on this station. I do this for a living, Malikov.
Wheaton, S: I’m looking at your records. Your criminal records.
Guest423: Those records were sealed by the court.
Wheaton, S: Like I say. I do this for a living.
Wheaton, S: I know what you are.
Guest423: And what’s that, Sammy?
Wheaton, S: You’re the kid who’s going to help me get what I need. Or I spill to your uncle you’re dealing dust to the station commander’s daughter. And I spill to Hanna Donnelly what you went to prison for. You feel that?
Guest423: You have any idea who you’re ****ing with here? You think—
Wheaton, S: Yeah, yeah. Big bad House of Knives. I’ll wake up one night with three bullets in my face and my tongue floating in my toilet. I get it.
Wheaton, S: Meantime, I’m sending you ship details. You make sure this biotainer stays off the docking system grid and doesn’t get offloaded by anyone except your people when it arrives.
Guest423: And what do I tell my uncle? You think we work for ****ing charity?
Wheaton, S: Send me your account details. You’ll be adequately compensated, believe me. I’d tell you how much ISĦ you all stand to make, but I doubt you can count that high.
Wheaton, S: The biotainer arrives on the fifteenth. Terra Day. 15:00 hours. Get your people on it. Are we clear?
Wheaton, S: Malikov, are we clear?
Guest423: Yeah.
Guest423: Yeah, we’re real clear, Sammy.
Wheaton, S: I’ll be in touch in two days to make sure everything’s sorted at your end.
Wheaton, S: Oh, and Malikov?
Guest423: Yeah?
Wheaton, S: Who’s the ***** now, huh?
From: Hanna Donnelly/HDONNELLYHEIMDALLONBOARD
To: Charles Donnelly/CDONNELLYHEIMDALLONBOARD
Incept: 08/12/75
Time: 15:54
Subject: Terra Day Party
Hi Dad,
I checked your schedule, and as far as I can tell, you’re on duty for the rest of my natural life, so I am reduced to mailing you. This is no way to live! Anyway, here we go:
1. I took down Sim Program 17 at the dojo! Oh yes, you heard me right! And they said that program wasn’t suitable for krav maga practice. Timing is everything. Your move, old man!
2. I had study group with Claire and Keiko this morning, and we need to access a bunch of history vids. You have to sign my permission because I’m under 18 and apparently they contain re-created/ simulated violence. Stop laughing! I tried pointing out to the instructor that the war game sims you and I play are ten times worse, but no dice. I am sending them through to your console for an e-sig, please. Keiko’s mom is ridiculous about fake blood, so easier to get you to do it <3
3. Can I have a little extra ISĦ to get an outfit for the Terra Day party? I saw a really nice jumpsuit, and if I order today it’ll make it in on the last shipment before the party.
4. Speaking of the party, can I hang down the back with Jackson while you do your speechifying? I mean, you know I love you, but booooooooooooooring. I promise I’ll do my duty once it comes time to mingle.
5. I hope you at least appreciate my honesty in not making up an excuse for wanting to avoid the dais. Isn’t that endearing?
Lotsa love,
Squeak
From: Charles Donnelly/CDONNELLYHEIMDALLONBOARD
To: Hanna Donnelly/HDONNELLYHEIMDALLONBOARD
Incept: 08/12/75
Time: 16:48
Subject: Re: Terra Day Party
Why must you insist on growing up? I’m sure we’ve talked about this before. Are you sure you’re old enough to be dating, Squeak?
I’d rather you were on the dais with me, but I do admit we’ll have a long list of duties on the day, so if you want to spend a little of it with your beau, that’s okay.
Just keep in mind that you’re still on display, wherever you are—Jackson knows he needs to behave, yes?
From: Hanna Donnelly/HDONNELLYHEIMDALLONBOARD
To: Charles Donnelly/CDONNELLYHEIMDALLONBOARD
Incept: 08/12/75
Time: 16:52
Subject: Re: re: Terra Day Party
I can’t believe you think you have to ask that. Anyway, you know you scare him. (Keep on doing that, btw, it’s funny when he’s nervous.)
From: Charles Donnelly/CDONNELLYHEIMDALLONBOARD
To: Hanna Donnelly/HDONNELLYHEIMDALLONBOARD
Incept: 08/12/75
Time: 17:19
Subject: Re: re: re: Terra Day Party
From: Hanna Donnelly/HDONNELLYHEIMDALLONBOARD
To: Charles Donnelly/CDONNELLYHEIMDALLONBOARD
Incept: 08/12/75
Time: 17:22
Subject: Re: re: re: re: Terra Day Party
OMG Dad, you are mortifying.
From: Charles Donnelly/CDONNELLYHEIMDALLONBOARD
To: Hanna Donnelly/HDONNELLYHEIMDALLONBOARD
Incept: 08/12/75
Time: 18:31
Subject: Re: re: re: re: re: Terra Day Party
In that case, I can only assume I am parenting well. I believe it comes with the job description.
I adjusted my schedule so my watch finishes at 20:00 tonight, so if you can wait a little for dinner, we can hit the dojo (prepare to die amid simulated violence, youngling), then grab something to eat together.
Love,
Dad the Mortifying
PS: E-sig provided for your vid access form, and requested ISĦ is in your account. I am aware we are past the last date for personal shipments to arrive before Terra Day, and assume you have taken the cheeky step of ordering in anticipation of my obliging you with extra funds. Am I so predictable?
PPS: On a related matter, didn’t I just give you your allowance? What in the name of all that’s holy do you do with it all?
HEIMDALL CHAT: HANNA DONNELLY
Donnelly, H: Tell me I’m amazing.
Merrick, J: Again?
Donnelly, H: That’s the response you’re going to choose? I want you to imagine my eyes boring into you right now.