by Berg,Alex P.
I hadn’t pushed the issue yet, mostly because I hadn’t gotten the query results back from Cetie yet, but with us reaching a point of no return, I couldn’t hold my tongue any longer. Tarja, seriously. These aren’t the pirates we’re looking for. You have to know that.
They’re bad people. They deserve to be locked up until the end of their days, and that’s a merciful fate. Do NOT question me on this.
Tone didn’t come across well in Brain missives, but I could see Tarja’s face through her helmet. I knew when to keep my mouth shut.
The exterior airlock door snapped open, and we hopped out lightly onto Varuna’s dusty surface. We’d parked the Samus in a designated landing area, a fair ways from the InterSTELLA settlement at the foot of the strip mine, but thanks to the low gravity we closed the gap in a handful of buoyant jumps. It was surprisingly fun. Made me want to abandon pirate hunting for the day and test my skills at low gravity aerials. Instead, I put on my grown-up hat and followed Tarja’s lead. She’d notified the InterSTELLA police about our cargo and told them we’d be heading their way.
Paige tinted my visor as we approached the gleaming metallic structure. The glare was blinding, making it so I couldn’t even make out the blinking red light above the nearest airlock. Luckily Tarja knew where to go—or at least her Brain did.
A new voice cut in as we arrived at the exterior door. That’s close enough. InterSTELLA officer Brady. You three the bounty hunters?
Technically, me and my pal Carl are private investigators, I said.
Tarja cut us off. That’s right.
And you said you had two charges? said the officer.
I sent over a package with the details I skimmed from their computers on TCA 133649, said Tarja. Did you not go through it?
Silence reigned, during which I imagined the officer on the other side cursed Tarja’s very existence.
Eventually he responded. It’s here. Look, I’ve got an incoming transmission from HQ I have to take. I’m opening up the exterior doors. Hop in and I’ll start the cycle.
The doors slid open and we entered. I looked at Tarja. You skimmed data from the pirates’ computers?
What? she said. I told you they were bad dudes.
I’m more concerned about what you haven’t told me, I said.
A new voice cut in, one I hadn’t expected or even known was in our comm channel. Pardon, compatriots. This is Ducic. Are you receptive of my missives?
The doors closed behind us and air hissed as it began to fill the chamber. We hear you. Good to know you’re alive and well.
Alive, yes, but perhaps not so well. Due to microgravity, I feel as if my arterial valve has closed to a fifth of its natural girth. My breath is heavy, and despite the presence of neural sedatives coursing through my veins, I can barely—
What do you want, Ducic? asked Tarja.
I could envision the Tak’s nostrils widening. Of course. My wellbeing is of minimal concern. I bring only news of a missive relayed to me from the Snowbell.
Being? asked Tarja.
Word has arrived via freighter from the Sol system, said Ducic. A sixth attack has occurred.
18
I settled myself on the wrap-around bench seats in the Samus Aran’s main cabin. Tarja took a seat across from me. I’d shrugged out of my suit, but Tarja had kept hers on as a force of habit—minus the helmet and gloves, of course. She glared at me, but she’d lost some of her ferocity over the past twenty minutes. I glared right back. Unlike her, my rage had only been building.
Carl joined us, leading Ducic to the table in the low gravity. The latter’s eyes glazed over and his ears lay listless against his skull, but other than that, he didn’t look particularly out of sorts. Of course, he was covered in fur, so even if his physiology allowed him to become pale or flushed, I wouldn’t notice. Carl sat next to me while Ducic steadied himself against the table with his rudimentary hands.
“Ducic,” I said. “Good to finally see you outside your room. How are you holding up?”
“I believe I understand the crux of your query,” he said, “and while the true answer shows me in a less than glamorous manner, I believe social convention among your species is to don a mask crafted from flayed skin cells of a courageous adversary and build a ruse of wellbeing.”
“The phrase ‘put on a brave face’ doesn’t have such gruesome origins,” I said. “Either way, I’m sorry to hear you’re not feeling any better. But we need to discuss our plan of action, and I thought you should be present to provide your insight.”
“Look,” said Tarja. “Before we start, can I just say—”
“I think you’ve said quite enough for the time being,” I snapped.
“I get it, you’re upset,” said Tarja. “But I wasn’t lying. Those pirates are the scum of the cosmos. Based on what we found in their cargo bay, they’ve been hitting InterSTELLA ships for months. At least. The officers here on Varuna wouldn’t have accepted them into their brig if I hadn’t been able to prove that with the files skimmed from their computers.”
“None of which is an excuse,” I said. “Those pirates aren’t the pirates we’re after. You took advantage of an expenses-paid InterSTELLA contract to pursue some sort of personal vendetta, for God knows what reason.”
“Are we here to discus theology? If so, I am woefully unprepared.”
“Can it, Ducic,” I said, keeping my gaze trained across the table. “You wasted all of our time, Tarja. You lied to us, and you put me personally in harm’s way for your own personal gain. What part about that whole ‘we’re a team’ spiel that I delivered in your office did you not understand?”
Tarja matched my gaze, but her visage wasn’t as hard as it had been. “As I said, I get it, but I’ve been after those two bastards for a long time. I would’ve gone after them sooner if I could’ve, but I needed the SEUs from the InterSTELLA contract, and I really did feel more comfortable with you as backup. When you suggested coming to the asteroid belt, I figured why not take a shot?”
“You figured wrong.” I paused and took a measured breath. “But…I meant what I said earlier. We need to work together as a team. I’m willing to grant you a mulligan, and not only because you’re the one with a ship. There are few enough of us as it is, and we won’t be able to unravel this without everyone pitching in. As I see it, this most recent pirate attack is a blessing. It means the pirates are still active, and with any luck, we’ll be able to track them down before they disappear into the dark of the cosmos.”
“Fine,” said Tarja. “From now on, no more vendettas or personal agendas. I’m on board with the mission. I give you my word.”
I glanced at the Tak. “Ducic?”
He blinked. “Am I being asked to assert my loyalty? I do not know if this is meaningful. I am already sworn by oath to uphold the values and best interests of InterSTELLA, including but not limited to—”
“Good enough,” I said. “Lets get down to brass tacks—by which I mean we should talk business. Everyone’s watched the holovids of the attacks, right?”
“I should’ve known you’d had a theory to share,” said Tarja. “Let’s have at it, then. Lay it on me.”
To Ducic’s credit, he didn’t interrupt with an inane questions about the meaning of either turn of phrase.
“Here’s the way I see it,” I said. “I’ve watched all those holovids from start to finish, some of them more than once, and I’ve taken away a number of observations. Namely, the pirates are disciplined. Efficient. They have an impressive team of loader bots at their disposal. They’re good shots with their pistols, and they follow orders. But they also tell dirty jokes and laugh when their friends fall down. They wear dopey color-coordinated outfits and carry stun pistols exclusively. Their captain, an effusive, charismatic fellow, seems to have a bit of a mean streak to him, and yet neither he nor any of his men have killed a single one of the crew of the ships they’ve attacked.”
“And?” sai
d Tarja. “Where are you going with this?”
“That’s the thing, isn’t it?” I said. “It doesn’t paint a cohesive narrative when you put it all together. There have been firefights between the attacking pirates and the crew members on several of the ships, but no casualties, other than the vented airlock on the Agapetes. Compare that to our experience today. The pirates we encountered on TCA whatever it was didn’t chat us up or demand our worldly possessions or try to stun us. They tried to kill us, with live ammo. From what I’ve been led to believe, that’s the more common approach. Dead men tell no tales, as the saying goes. So why is Captain Horatio and his crew so merciful?
“And another thing. The pirates’ mysterious warp tech. I don’t know about you, but when I watch the vids, I don’t see physicists and mathematicians and scholars. I don’t see anyone who could’ve developed that level of technology on their own. As efficient as the crew may be, they don’t strike me as the sort who could infiltrate and rob a facility that would have the sorts of physicists and engineers who could create said advanced warp drive technology. And if that technology were to have been developed and fallen into the wrong hands, I get the feeling whoever developed it, whatever their intentions of secrecy may have initially been, would’ve come forth by now.”
“I disagree with that final statement of fact,” said Ducic. “Such a technology would be inordinately valuable, and owners of said technology might not even know of its loss. But I do comprehend your general sentiment. You doubt overall plausibility of the purported technology.”
“Exactly,” I said. “And if you eliminate the impossible, whatever’s left, however improbable, must be true.”
“I do not fully understand this euphemism of yours,” said Ducic, “but I must combat your final conclusion. If technology for intercepting and matching warp bubbles does not exist, then how were brigands able to dock to InterSTELLA freighters in the middle of their warp trajectories?”
I smiled. “The better question is, is there a pirate ship at all?”
Tarja glanced at Ducic and then back at me. “This is why you needed the Agapetes’ schematics, isn’t it?”
“Bingo. Paige, bring those up.”
My Brain dominatrix obliged. The holoprojector flicked into action, displaying the same half solid, half outline version of the Agapetes as before. “The ship’s architectural schematics are telling, but I’m getting ahead of myself. The first clue that caught my eye was what wasn’t in the holovids. For one thing, vids were only provided from the start of each attack until the end, a couple hours at most. Am I correct about that, Ducic?”
He nodded. “I provided you with all vids I myself was given.”
“And the vids, while thorough, had gaps in coverage,” I said. “The biggest being surveillance of the airlocks. None of the attacked ships have holorecorders in the airlocks, or at the very least, that footage wasn’t provided to us. Similarly, the holorecorders in the cargo bay are positioned so you see into the bay toward the ship, not out the doors. That alone didn’t make me suspicious, but when Ducic told me external ship’s surveillance hadn’t detected the presence of the pirate ship—due to the presence of the warp bubble, to be fair—that piqued my interest.”
I poked the projection of the Agapetes with my finger. “So I thought, what if the pirates could’ve hidden themselves aboard the ship prior to takeoff? As you can see from the schematics, there simply isn’t space aboard to do that. The best place to hide would be in the cargo bay itself, but that space stays evacuated throughout the trip. And, of course, if the pirates had been hidden on the ship, why would the vids show them entering the Agapetes through the airlock? The answer is obvious. The whole thing was staged.”
Ducic looked at me with flattened ears. “I beg forgiveness. I do not understand.”
“He believes the theft was an inside job,” said Tarja.
“Think about it,” I said. “There’s no place on board the Agapetes to hide three dozen pirates, but they could fit. They’d have to sleep in the break room and the engine room and on the floors of corridors, but the ship could handle them. Carl did the math. The life support systems could support that many people, at least for a trip of the duration between a Sol-Tau Ceti jump.”
“So let me get this straight,” said Tarja. “You think the crew of the Agapetes was in cahoots with a gang of pirates who they let onto their ship. When the time was right, the pirates packed themselves into the airlocks, came out firing, and took down the crew, all of which was a farce so they could split the profits from their attack. And that this happened on a grand total of six different ships, with six different crews—meaning this group of pirates are not only great actors, but extremely well connected.”
“I didn’t say it was likely,” I said. “But as I said—if you remove the impossible from the equation, the improbable must be considered. And I’m not basing this on the mere possibility of it from a life support standpoint. Consider again the pirates’ merciful nature. Heck, don’t just consider it. Watch the holovid of Captain Horatio in the Agapetes’ command center. Do Captain Rhees, or Uche, or any of the others really seem that scared? They’re defiant, but not fearful. Even Wilkins, who takes a beating, doesn’t seem squeamish. Perhaps because he knew Horatio would deal him a few swift blows and no more.”
“I remember the vid, and I get where you’re coming from,” said Tarja, “but right off the top of my head, I can think of two major problems with this theory, and I’m not even talking about the sheer testicular fortitude it would take to pull off a concerted effort of that magnitude six times in a row. First off, why would Wilkins vent a few of the pirates into space if they were on the same side, and, oh yeah, where the heck did all that cargo go if there wasn’t a pirate ship?”
“Good points,” I said, “and while I don’t have answers to either, I’ve come up with some theories. First, Wilkins and the spaced pirates. It’s possible they were victims of a malfunction, or a door actuator broke during the pirates’ raid as a result of an errant pulse shot, causing their evacuation to the cargo bay. Honestly, I don’t think that theory holds much water. What seems more likely is that their deaths were deliberate. Maybe the pirates who died had started to voice their concerns over the raids, were angling for a change in leadership, and Captain Horatio found out. In either case, the remaining pirates and crew would’ve had to hide the reasons for killing those pirates to protect the overall ruse. Hence, Wilkins’ beating—and why it wasn’t worse than it was.”
Tarja rolled her eyes. “I suppose that’s plausible, however unlikely. But what about the cargo?”
“Well, as I see it, there are two possibilities. The cargo could’ve been shifted outside the ship but still within the warp bubble—which shouldn’t be that difficult given the Alcubierre drive compresses space time, leaving the ship itself at rest. Without accelerative forces, the cargo would stay at zero gravity and in place outside the hold. After the staged raid was complete, they could move the cargo back onboard, and move it off the ship by conventional means upon completion of the warp thrust.”
Ducic wrinkled his muzzle. “I do not trust this assumption. Warp bubble adheres tightly to ship’s shape. Moving so much cargo outside ship’s hold while keeping it in bubble would be most difficult. Perhaps impossible.”
“Can the bubble be enlarged?” I asked.
Ducic regarded the holoprojection. “I suppose. Alcubierre engine is not tailored to each ship. It is mass produced for freighters, some larger than the Agapetes. If bubble were enlarged, however, it would consume more energy during burn. Said energy consumption would undoubtedly show in ship’s logs.”
“One more thing to ask of Captain Rhees, then,” I said.
“You said you had another theory?” said Tarja.
“Yes. It’s possible the pirates tossed the cargo into the warp bubble itself.”
“What?” Tarja lifted an eyebrow. “Why would they do that? Can you even do that?” She eyed D
ucic.
The Tak nodded. “Again, this is physically possible. It would atomize cargo, however, and also leave anomalous signatures in ship’s energy expenditure logs.”
“So why would anyone do it?” asked Tarja.
“Well, it’s a stretch,” I said, “but InterSTELLA is a publically traded company. As far as I can tell, they’ve kept this whole pirate thing under wraps for the time being, but it’ll come out soon enough. When it does, the fallout could be severe. Maybe someone’s shorting the company’s stock.”
Tarja snorted. “Are you serious? Come on. This is beyond ludicrous.”
“Is it?” I asked. “Then why have the Agapetes’ crew been so cagey around us? I still haven’t gotten the security logs I requested from Uche. How do you think he and Rhees will respond when we ask for an energy usage report from the Alcubierre drive? And I haven’t even mentioned the most glaring oddity about this whole investigation.”
“Which is?” asked Tarja.
“The three of us,” I said. “Think about it. Ducic is a rookie who’s barely been on the job ten months, and his area of expertise is in pseudogravitation, not warp bubbles. I’m inexperienced, to say the least. Prior to this hire, I’d had only one meaningful case, and to be completely honest, I resolved that mostly through luck. I’ve never investigated anything off Cetie before. Which leaves you, Tarja.”
Her face hardened. “What about me?”
Paige still hadn’t gotten the full search results back, so I wasn’t entirely sure what her deal was. I improvised. “Well, as skilled as you are, you’re one woman. You’re expected to bring down a group of three dozen trained pirates? It’s not like Ducic’s or my addition tilts the scales much in our favor.”
Ducic tilted his head, his nostrils wide. Perhaps he hadn’t liked my assertion of his inexperience. “What is your insinuation?”
“I’m saying we were set up to fail. Doesn’t anyone else find it odd Vijay hasn’t bothered to keep in touch? That he placed us in Ducic’s care and cast us on our merry way? If I’m right and this is an inside job, then it goes beyond the walls of the Agapetes. It has to, seeing as six ships have been hit. Someone’s trying to make sure nobody outside InterSTELLA finds out what’s going on. That’s why our motley crew was selected to conduct the external investigation.”