by Isaac Hooke
“What’s going on?” Tane asked.
“We’re almost at the necessary jump altitude,” Lyra answered.
“Is there something I can do?” Tane said. “Man one of the dragon lasers or something?”
“That’s a negative,” Nebb said. “Let Grizz do his work.”
“But I can help,” Tane said.
“Allowing a human to track fast-moving objects in space is a recipe for disaster,” Grizz said. “The incoming fighters are manned by AIs, and use AI tracking. Even if you get a hit in, which you won’t, for every one of yours, they’ll score a hundred hits. Especially considering that you have no Starship Gunnery skill at all.”
“Oh, okay,” Tane said.
“Energy shields are at ten percent,” Grizz intoned ominously.
“Come on...” Nebb said.
Tane suspected there was some sort of three-dimensional tactical display that Nebb was using to visualize the positions of the attackers around the Red Grizzly, as well as view the current altitude above the planet. A display Tane didn’t have access to. From the way Lyra and Jed seemed entranced by the bare bulkhead in front of them, he knew there was also some other view he wasn’t privy to.
“Um, is there a way I can get access to the virtual augmentations in this room?” Tane asked.
A moment later a rotating starfield appeared on the bulkhead in front of him. He could see the nose of the ship near the bottom of the screen.
That’s better.
“Two of the fighters are pulling in front!” Nebb said urgently.
“I see them,” a female voice came from overhead. So there are a few speakers after all. The voice sounded like it belonged to someone Tane’s age.
Two gray blurs appeared on the view screen as smaller craft sped in front of the Red Grizzly.
“They’re trying to cut us off,” Jed said.
Tane heard a strange humming sound then, a sound that quickly grew in volume until it was all he heard. He felt suddenly nauseous. The sound faded just as a thick cylindrical beam of pure white light erupted from the nose of the ship. When it vanished, Tane was left with a streaking afterimage on his retinas. There was no sign of the two gray blurs.
“What the hell was that?” Tane said. The feeling of nausea had passed, but he still felt a bit off.
“That, kid, would be the Essence lance,” Nebb said.
“Who’s firing it?” Tane asked.
“My jump specialist,” Nebb said.
“Oh,” Tane said. So that’s who I heard.
The jump specialist was a she. Good to know.
I’m surrounded by witches.
“Hey Grizz,” Tane said. “I thought allowing humans to track fast-moving objects was a recipe for disaster, as you called it. Or is she not human?” He never heard of a robot Siphoning the Essence, but hey, maybe it was possible.
“I’m handling the aiming, of course,” Grizz said. “She handles the firing.”
Ah.
“We’ve reached jump altitude,” Grizz announced.
“We gotta jump, girl!” Nebb said.
“Moving to the jump room,” the female voice announced. She sounded weary.
“Shields have failed,” Grizz said. “Hull is taking damage from remaining pursuers. Aft integrity at seventy five percent.”
Tane could feel the deck vibrating.
“Girl, now would be a good time...” Nebb said.
The deck vibrations grew in intensity, and another humming sound filled the air then, coming in at a lower octave than the previous. It too grew in volume, and once more Tane felt a wave of nausea.
The sound abruptly ceased.
At the same time, on the display the constellations seemed to switch about, as if the ship had made an instantaneous one hundred eighty degree turn or something. There was also a bright emission nebula smearing half the view screen where none had been before.
“Did you see that?” Tane said.
“Jump complete,” Grizz intoned.
Nebb sat back. “She did it.” The smuggler glanced upward, as if checking that hidden tactical map Tane couldn’t see. “Grizz, it looks like none of the fighters followed us through. Can you confirm?”
“I can confirm,” Grizz said. “She closed the distortion tunnel before any of them could follow.”
Jed was shaking his head. “She almost cut us in half.”
“That’s my girl,” Nebb said, beaming.
“This is why traveling with smugglers isn’t always the brightest idea,” Tane told Jed.
But the Bander ignored him.
Tane turned his attention to Nebb. “So when do I get to meet this vaunted jump specialist who nearly cut us in half?”
“Oh, quit your whining,” Nebb said. “There was no chance she would’ve harmed the ship. She’s done the maneuver a thousand times. We’re used to cutting things close around here. We’re smugglers, remember. Got lots of practice making quick getaways.”
“I helped her with the calculations,” Grizz said. “Her timing certainly had to be perfect. Though while there might have been no chance of cutting the ship in half, there was a good chance, as in twenty to thirty five percent, that we might have lost the aft portion of the ship.”
“The aft portion!” Nebb said. “Who needs the aft portion anyway!”
“Uh, that’s where our engines nozzles are,” Tane said.
Nebb shrugged. “Like I said...”
“So where are we?” Tane gazed at the constellations. “Did we jump to somewhere in the same system?” He somehow doubted it, given that he’d never seen that emission nebula before.
“What?” Nebb said. “You’d put down my jump specialist like that? Of course we’re in a different system. This is Taldeze Caldor.”
Tane took a mental snapshot of the starfield pattern outside and ran a local correlation check against the internal database on his chip, confirming that the starfield pattern matched the view from deep space in Taldeze Caldor.
He checked his star map to get an idea of how far they had jumped. Taldeze Caldor was about eighty-five light years from his home system, Verakech.
“How long does it take your jump chamber to reset?” Lyra asked.
“Thirty minutes,” Nebb said.
“All right,” Lyra said. “When the chamber resets, I’ll make our second jump while your specialist recovers. There’s no time to waste.”
“No no no,” Nebb said. “It’s my ship.”
“Yes,” Lyra said. “But I’m the one who’s paying you.”
“Fine,” Nebb said. “Throw in an extra ten K and I’ll let you make the jump.”
Lyra’s eyes defocused.
Nebb smiled widely. “Thank you very much. Grizz, give our guest access to the jump chamber, would you? When the chamber resets, let her in.”
“Understood,” the Red Grizzly’s AI said.
“Can I watch?” Tane asked Lyra.
She shook her head. “There’s only room for one inside the chamber. It appears as a large Chrysalium box to outside observers. There’s nothing to see.”
“Time to put my skills to use,” Nebb said, eyes defocusing.
“What are you doing, Smuggler?” Jed said.
“I’m changing the ship’s registry information,” Nebb said, “and reactivating our identity beacon. To system traffic control, we’re riding the Saber class starship the Ghastly Digest. We’re perfume traders.”
“They’ll be able to detect you’re a Rapier class from the heat sig,” Tane said. “It’s visible throughout the system.”
“Yeah, thanks,” Nebb said. “I know nothing about space travel. I’m just a captain. Grizz, open up the heat emitters and modify our profile to that of a Saber class.”
The deck and bulkhead vibrated underneath Tane.
“Heat signature profile modified,” Grizz said.
“Traffic control will believe the thermal profile they detected when we entered the system was a glitch,” Nebb said. “Assuming they even not
ice.”
“How do you even get these hull modifications past the customs inspectors?” Tane said. “It’s illegal to have thermal emitters in place for any other purpose than the dispersal of excess heat.”
“And so it is,” Nebb said. “If customs officials ever threaten me, let’s just say, bribery goes a long way. If you can’t afford to pay, you can’t play this game.”
Tane shifted uncomfortably against the bulkhead where he stood. “By the way, why didn’t we jump straight to Talendir?”
“The jump distance is limited by how much Essence can be Siphoned through the ship,” Lyra said. “The larger starships, those composed of more Essence-enhancing Chrysalium, can jump farther at any one time since the specialists can Siphon all the more through the hulls. The jump chambers on the bigger ships also reset faster, and usually have a rotation of jump specialists ready to take over. Some of the bigger supercarriers even have two jump chambers aboard, and they make their jumps back to back. But as for us, based on our ship size and its Chrysalium content, and our current position, if we jump the maximum distance each time, it will still take us another three distortion jumps to reach Talendir. But I’m going to have to rest a day after wielding that much Essence through my system. As the jump specialist is doing now.”
“Oh.” Tane said. “So even if you and the specialist both take turns, you’re basically telling me it’s going to take another day to reach Talendir.”
“At least,” Lyra said.
“Why isn’t this information available in my chip?” Tane said. “About jumps and the distances involved?”
“Oh it’s available,” Nebb said. “If you pay for the expansion packs.”
Tane considered everything Lyra had told him. “So just one day until I meet your Volur friends...”
“A day, maybe more,” Lyra said. “I’m debating whether or not to help make the final jump. I may want to conserve my energy and let the specialist do her job both times. I’m not sure what kind of a welcome we’ll receive in Talendir.”
At first Tane was confused, but then it dawned on him. “The TSN?”
Lyra nodded. “They may suspect the involvement of the Volur. Or a Volur, anyway. It may be tricky to reach the planet.”
Tane regarded the star map once more. There were several other systems the Red Grizzly could have taken, given the distances in light years to his home system, Verakech.
“Did the specialist jump the maximum distance?” Tane asked.
“No,” Lyra said. “That would be too obvious. Given our ship class, our pursuers would have easily been able to calculate our maximum jump distance. If we jumped to that farthest system, soon other TSN vessels would be appearing in the system with us. But so far, no new heat signatures have appeared. Assuming this tactical display I have access to is accurate.”
“It’s accurate,” Nebb said. “Told you, we’re smugglers. We know how to cover our tracks.”
“Maybe TSN vessels jumped in behind a planet...” Tane said. “Occluding their heat sigs.”
“Doubtful,” Nebb said.
“So they don’t know where we are?” Tane pressed.
Lyra was the one who answered. “For the time being. Eventually they’ll find us, and it won’t matter that our smuggler friend has changed his thermal profile and registry beacon. The TSN will check the logs of the deep space satellites and telescopes within jump range of Verakech, including this one. They’ll recognize that a ship calling itself the Ghastly Digest appeared in this system at the exact moment we vanished from orbit above Kalindor.”
“Well sure, of course they’ll be able to piece together we were here,” Nebb said. “But by then we’ll be long gone to the next system. And I’ll change our heat profile and registry information again.”
“I wouldn’t be so certain we’ll be gone by then,” Lyra agreed. “Especially considering that the TSN is no doubt preparing to dispatch vessels to all systems within jump range of Verakech as we speak, as soon as they can free the necessary resources. The noose will slowly be closing during that time. We’ll have to hope we get lucky, and that they choose systems other than this one to investigate first. Which is why it’s so important I make the next jump as soon as possible.”
“It’s certainly a dangerous game of cat and mouse we’re playing,” Jed said. “Personally, I always prefer to be the cat.”
“As do I,” Lyra agreed.
According to Tane’s HUD, he was connected to the Galnet once more. Which meant a postal node somewhere in the system was sending pings, and that the ship was able to receive them. Since he was in deep space, he wouldn’t have realtime access to the Galnet, of course. The local node aboard the Red Grizzly would have cached several popular games and videos, and if he requested something new, the Red Grizzly would queue the download from other nodes in the system equipped with larger caches, and it would arrive in a few hours if it was a popular item. But otherwise, any uploads he made—for civilian level communications, for example—would take up to a few days to reach the intended recipients, especially if those recipients were located in other systems. Incoming messages from other systems would take just as long.
“I need to contact my parents,” Tane said.
Lyra studied him, seeming to weigh her response carefully. “You can contact them, yes. But keep in mind that the TSN will be monitoring all communications destined for your parents’ message box. While planet-side communications where you are from are relatively secure, packets bound for interstellar destinations have to stop at postal nodes in territories with different privacy laws. The TSN routinely runs their algorithmic scanners on all messages that pass through the nodes of the less restrictive territories. They’ll be monitoring your parents’ IDs, and they’ll be able to trace the message back to our location.”
Postal nodes were simply unmanned probes that waited near the outskirts of each system, gathering incoming messages destined for the Galnet. At the same time every day, distortion tunnels opened and the drones traveled into the adjacent system, where they would transmit their message loads, receive incoming data packets from the existing probes in the system, and then return. Delay-tolerant networking at its finest. The military apparently had their own version of the Galnet that operated a whole lot faster via on-demand distortion tunnels.
“But if the TSN is going to figure out our location soon anyway, why does it matter?” Tane said. “Given that it’ll take a few days before my parents receive the message.”
“I already agreed you may contact them,” Lyra said. “I’m only saying, be careful what you tell them. I don’t want you to reveal you’re in the hands of a Volur, for example. It’s possible the TSN still doesn’t know our final destination.”
“I understand,” Tane said. “Tell me something, what’s going to happen to my mom and dad?”
“Nothing, hopefully,” Lyra said. “I left my four combat droids behind to watch them. The robots will protect them from any attacks, and ensure they don’t go back to the farm.”
Tane crossed his arms. “So they’re confined you’re basically saying.”
“But safe,” Lyra said. “Let the dopplegangers do their work at the farm.”
“What about the TSN?” Tane said. “Won’t they find them?”
“I’ve instructed the combat droids to procure ID forgeries,” Lyra said. “Once installed, your parents will still be able to send and receive messages from you, but to the outside world they’ll appear to be different people. They’ll still have to hide their faces.”
“There’s technology that can simulate the facial masking job you did on me with the Essence, I think,” Tane said.
“There is, but it’s not readily available,” Lyra said. “Either way, the combat droids have instructions to protect them from the TSN. They’ll be moving your parents to different short term rentals every day. Mostly likely private, this time. No hotels.”
“You’re sure the...” Tane almost said aliens. He glanced at Nebb. He wasn’t s
ure Lyra wanted the smuggler to know about the aliens. Hell, Tane wasn’t sure he wanted Nebb to know, either. “What about the others? You’re sure they won’t find my real parents, and attack? Maybe they intend to use my parents as bargaining chips.”
Nebb momentarily glanced at him, obviously aware he was hiding something, but didn’t say a word.
“My robots have instructions to protect your parents from any possible danger,” Lyra said. “My team will meticulously guard the entry points of every residence they move your parents to, and they’ll evacuate the moment anything seems amiss.”
“Yes, but as long as they stay on the planet, they’re vulnerable,” Tane said. “We have to bring them to Talendir.”
“I’ll try to arrange passage for your parents when we reach my homeworld,” Lyra said.
Tane started to go, but then paused.
“By the way, you never did tell me when I get to meet this jump specialist of yours,” Tane told Nebb.
“Oh, she’ll be exhausted after a jump like that,” Nebb said. “Maybe she’ll show at dinner in the wardroom, you never know. Then again, she’s rather shy, and hates Outrimmers.”
“Outrimmers?” Tane asked.
“Yeah,” Nebb said. “All you dudes who live in the Outrim systems on the edge of the galaxy. Like yourself.”
“Why does she hate us?”
“Well, first of all, she doesn’t like how you essentially use slaves to operate your planet-side distortion tunnels, and neither do I,” Nebb said. “Second of all, you’ve got all these regressive laws regarding nanotech. You force people to use that expensive Reconstruct Systems crap. Reconstruct is an Outrim-based company, after all, so you’re all happy to go along with them. But did you know they bribed the TSN? Got them to make Reconstruct Systems the only authorized nanotech supplier among all the Outrim worlds?”
“Didn’t know that,” Tane said.
“Well now you do,” Nebb said. “It’s a good thing I didn’t grow up here, otherwise I would have never been able to buy my own ship: I would’ve spent all my money on body upgrades. Oh! And don’t even get me started on your terrible gun laws. She and I especially hate that. She’s a big fan of carry like myself, you see. ‘Specially open carry: she won’t go anywhere without a plasma pistol strapped to her hips. Part of her fashion, you know. But in nearly all the planets on the damned Outrim, we have to give up our guns.”