“Can you explain why you, a pilot who did not finish Space Fleet Academy, a man with a criminal record—”
“Objection!” Conor was on his feet.
“Sustained.”
The Prosecuting Officer smiled thinly. Again the damage was already done. “Why,” he continued, “you chose to defy the decision of the Board of Directors, made as it was by a distinguished group of men acting on expert advice.”
“Yes. I was acting on better information than they were.”
“Isn’t that a rather arrogant thing to say, Captain Larssen?”
“Not as arrogant as telling the Directors that there’s nothing to worry about, when it’s somebody else’s life on the line.” He was glaring at Stott, who he’d spotted sitting with the other Directors. Stott pretended not to notice.
“In whose assessment was there ‘something to worry about’, Captain Larssen?”
“Mine. I was flying the thing.”
The Prosecuting Officer now turned to the pirate attack, which he referred to as the “alleged pirate attack”.
“Captain Larssen, you claim that you were attacked by pirates,” he pronounced “pirates” as if he were picking up the word with tongs, “outside Mars orbit. Yet no one overheard a conversation between you and the pirate chief.” He smiled at the court.
“I challenged the incoming ships to identify themselves. That went out on an all-stations frequency. But their reply forced the receiver to conduct the exchange on a selected frequency with encoding. I had a choice. Either I talked to these people, or I told the world. I couldn’t do both.”
“You did not choose to relay the message again on the all-stations frequency?”
“You know, it’s a funny thing, but that didn’t occur to me,” Dan replied sarcastically. “Just at that moment I was a bit preoccupied with a bunch of unidentified ships coming out to intercept me in neutral space. In any case, there was no need to relay the message. The exchange was being recorded by the ship’s computer.”
“Yet there is nothing on the ship’s memory banks to confirm what you say.”
Dan’s lips tightened. “So I understand.”
“And you claim that you fired the weapons you had mounted on the ship to dispel an attack.”
“I don’t claim it. I did it. I destroyed nine hostile vessels. If I hadn’t then I wouldn’t be here now and the cargo wouldn’t be on Station Saturn.”
“The rest of the cargo, Captain Larssen, the rest of the cargo. Captain Larssen, if we are to believe your account, this was a major incident during which you sustained serious damage to your ship and very possibly your cargo. In the circumstances one would have expected you to submit a prompt and detailed report of your encounter to Mission Operations, together with a damage assessment. You did not do so. Why not?”
That was harder to answer. The real reason, of course, was that he hadn’t wanted to reveal at that stage that he’d armed the ship.
“I did transmit a short message with the coordinates of the encounter. As for the rest…well, it’s true I’d sustained a bit of damage but the threat was over and the mission was in pretty good shape again. There was no need to raise anxieties back at base.”
It was weak and he knew it. So did the Prosecuting Officer.
“Captain Larssen, would you describe yourself as a maverick?”
Dan looked at him hard. “No, I’m just a guy who wants to stay alive.”
He moved on to the business of the asteroids.
“Captain Larssen, were you involved in the flight plan for this mission?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Would it be fair to say that you were responsible for the flight plan?”
“Well, the flight plan’s a big undertaking; it’s a collaboration and I was only one of a large team. But as I was the pilot, and I was going along with it, you could say I accept responsibility, yes.”
“So you take responsibility for a flight path that – according to your own account – put you on a direct collision course with two large asteroids. Now I put it to you, Captain Larssen, that either your account is incorrect or you showed remarkable incompetence.”
Bastard, you’re trying to wind me up. I won’t rise to it.
“I inspected the flight plan drawn up by Mission Planning. It looked okay to me.”
“Captain Larssen, since your return a detailed examination has been conducted of the most up-to-date asteroid map available. No one could see a pair of large asteroids where you claim you encountered them.”
“Of course there isn’t, not any more. I blew one of them away, didn’t I?”
“Captain Larssen, if, and I say if, there was a danger of collision, were all the pyrotechnics strictly necessary? Why did you have to plough on maintaining the same course? Wouldn’t it have been altogether simpler to change the flight path and avoid the obstruction?”
“No. The guidance system said avoidance wasn’t feasible. I checked that with a program I’d installed myself. It came up with the same answer.”
“Couldn’t you slow down?”
It was hard not to be derisive. “Sir, flying a spacecraft is not piloting a skimmer. If I’d done either of the things you just suggested I wouldn’t have had enough fuel left to complete the journey.”
“So you just plunged at something like eighty thousand miles an hour into two large rocks?”
“I set a course that avoided one, and I blew the other one into small pieces. And somehow I came out the other side.”
“No more questions.”
Conor was allowed to cross-examine at this point. He smiled at Dan. “Captain Larssen, if you had collided with that asteroid, what would have been the consequences?”
Dan deliberately phrased his answer for the larger audience.
“We’re talking about an irregular chunk of rock three or four times the size of this building we’re in, tumbling over and over in space. Imagine hitting it at a hundred miles an hour. Except I wasn’t doing a hundred miles an hour, I was doing eighty-one thousand miles an hour. On a clear night you’d have seen the explosion from Earth. Like a supernova. There would have been nothing left of the ship, that’s for sure.”
“Could you tell the court in a little more detail how you dealt with the situation?”
Dan described the way he had swung the ship broadside, fired three torpedoes, swung it back again, and guided the torpedoes in by using the deep-space radar.
“Thank you. Now, Captain Larssen, would it be fair to say that you had not anticipated this encounter with the asteroids?”
“Absolutely.”
“So when you armed the ship it was not to deal with a potential threat from asteroids?”
“No. As it panned out I was glad I had some torpedoes left to deal with it, but that wasn’t the original intention.”
“Could you explain briefly, then, for the benefit of this court, what the original intention was? What were your grounds for believing that Spacefreighter Solar Wind should be armed?”
“Objection. The decision not to arm was taken by the Board and the defendant admits to violating it. His reasons are not relevant.”
“Mr O’Gorman?”
“On the contrary, your Honour, if there was evidence available to the defendant that was not available to the Board it might explain why the defendant found himself in a position of some conflict.”
“I’ll allow this line of questioning. You may answer, Captain Larssen.”
“I happened to know that the drug of addiction Dramatoin, commonly referred to by its street name ‘Blaze’, is easier to synthesize in a zero-gravity environment. I once piloted a freighter from Mars without realizing that the cargo contained Dramatoin. On reflection it seemed to me that the source of that drug was likely to be a factory just outside Mars orbit, where it would escape normal surveillance. Whoever was running that factory would certainly take steps to ensure that it went undetected. The fact that two ships had disappeared mysteriously in that sector help
ed to convince me.”
“But the Board dismissed this as speculation, Captain Larssen. Weren’t the chances of this theory being correct rather small?”
“Counsellor, I’m familiar with the design of spacecraft and the systems that run them. Many of those systems are designed to deal with extremely unlikely events, or combinations of events. On that scale, the likelihood of the mission running into trouble outside Mars orbit looked pretty high to me.”
“And what were the consequences if you did run into trouble?”
“Potentially, the loss of a large and expensive ship, a costly cargo, and the life of the pilot – my life. Add to that the disastrous consequences of a large consignment of the most up-to-date weaponry available falling into the hands of a criminal organization – well, it would have been totally irresponsible not to take precautions.”
“You think the Board acted irresponsibly?”
“Not intentionally, no. But they were badly advised, and that led them to take the wrong decision.”
Again he stared at Stott, and again Stott appeared to be preoccupied with something else.
“But you were bound, as an employee of the company, to go along with that decision.”
“The Board has a statutory duty of care for the safety and well-being of its employees. Yet they took a decision that put one of their employees at serious risk. I was responsible for the safe delivery of the ship and its cargo, and in the event of an attack I would be unable to discharge that responsibility. So there was a clear contradiction between the Board’s decision, its responsibilities, and mine.”
“And you chose to resolve the conflict?”
“Yes, I resolved it in the only way I knew: by arming the ship.”
“Now, Captain Larssen, I’d like you to clarify something. The cargo inventory showed thirty-two torpedoes missing when you reached Station Saturn. You had reloaded the launchers, so that accounts for sixteen. You fired three at the asteroid; the rest would have been fired in your encounter with the pirates. Now everyone here has seen that the launchers were installed in the Observation Bays, of which there are only eight on each side. Could you clarify how you fired thirteen torpedoes in that encounter?”
Dan took the cue and explained the rolling manoeuvre.
“Did that manoeuvre make you vulnerable to incoming fire?”
“Terribly vulnerable. It gave them a big target to shoot at and I took quite a few shell rounds. But there was no other way. There were still three ships out there to starboard and my remaining torpedoes were all on the port side.”
“Thank you, Captain Larssen. No further questions.”
In his summing up the Prosecuting Officer reminded the court that he had demonstrated the deliberate deployment of offensive weapons on a civilian freighter. “Since the freighter was not so equipped when it left the Orbital Dock and it was so equipped when it arrived at Station Saturn, and since the defendant was the only crew member on board the freighter, there is not the slightest doubt that he was responsible for the deployment of the weapons. The Board of Directors of SpaceFreight Incorporated, of which the defendant is a mere employee, stated specifically that it was not company policy to arm their freighters and that they had no intention of departing from that policy in relation to Spacefreighter Solar Wind. The Prosecution has established that the defendant was aware of this policy and yet, by his own admission, he chose deliberately and wilfully to ignore it.
“As for the alleged ‘pirate’ attack, you may well consider his account fanciful. There is certainly no independent evidence to support it. There is, on the other hand, abundant evidence that this spacefreighter suffered serious damage during the time it was under the defendant’s sole command. All sixteen observation bays will require extensive work to reverse his ad hoc modifications. And the hull of the craft demonstrates only too well the consequences of the collision course on which he entered the asteroid field and the highly unorthodox fashion in which he appears to have negotiated it.
“Finally I wish to draw your attention to the discrepancies between the cargo manifest and the cargo received at Station Saturn. The commercial success of SpaceFreight Incorporated rests on a well-deserved reputation for meeting in full its contractual obligations to its clients. That reputation has now been tarnished by this man, who was entrusted with an important mission yet decided to misappropriate cargo that did not belong to him.
“The evidence is unequivocal. I ask you to find the defendant guilty on all counts.”
The murmur of conversation that followed the prosecution’s summary was low and, Dan thought, had an aggrieved tone. These people wanted to throw the book at him.
He took a deep breath. It was high time defence had a say.
58
Conor opened the case for the defence by calling Hal to the stand again.
“Mr Lewis, in what capacity do you know the defendant?”
“I’m Senior Controller of Operations for SpaceFreight. I worked closely with Captain Larssen on planning the details of the mission.”
“Did you form a view as to the defendant’s attitude to the mission?”
“Objection. The question calls for an opinion.”
“Your Honour, the Prosecuting Officer has maintained throughout that the defendant acted maliciously. I am trying to discover whether there is another interpretation for the defendant’s actions.”
“Objection overruled. Proceed.”
Hal replied instantly. “There is absolutely no question in my mind that Captain Larssen was totally committed to the success of the mission. He is without doubt the finest pilot I have ever had the privilege of working with.”
Christ, Hal. I didn’t expect you to put your neck on the block for me.
“Did you at any time suspect that he might do something to sabotage the project or to damage the reputation of the company?”
“Never. On the contrary, he left no stone unturned in his efforts to ensure that every conceivable problem had been dealt with.”
“Thank you, Mr Lewis.”
The Prosecuting Officer wasn’t giving up so easily. “Mr Lewis, we have established, have we not, that the flight path placed the freighter on a collision course with two large asteroids. Was that ‘leaving no stone unturned’, Mr Lewis? Isn’t it the case that the defendant, who clearly became your friend, is not quite as competent as you are making out?”
“No, that’s unfair. My association with the defendant was exclusively a working relationship. And the planning of a mission is a team effort. You can’t do everyone’s job for them. If you could, you wouldn’t need a team.”
“Mr Lewis, how much time elapsed between your last meeting with the defendant and his departure from the Orbital Dock?”
“About six weeks.”
“So it’s possible that during this time the defendant had a change of heart towards the mission or the company.”
“It’s pretty unlikely. The guy’s as stable as a rock.”
“But it’s possible.”
“Yeah, it’s possible.”
“Finally, Mr Lewis. Do you approve of the action that the defendant took?”
“I’m not sure I follow you.”
“It’s simple enough, Mr Lewis. You were both committed, you say, to the success of this mission. If you had been in the defendant’s shoes, would you have acted as he did?”
Hal seemed to be buried in thought. Then he looked up. “Sir, I don’t think I would have done what he did. But I sure as hell wish I had the guts to do what he did.”
Oh, Hal. I just hope you have a job in the morning.
Conor called René Lavalle. Dan hadn’t met this witness but he understood that Conor had got him flown in from Canada. He lost no time in establishing for the court Lavalle’s credentials as an international expert on damage. He went on:
“Dr Lavalle, have you had an opportunity of inspecting the damage to the Spacefreighter Solar Wind?”
“Yes, I have.”
“And wha
t are your conclusions?”
“Briefly there are two kinds of damage to the craft. The bulk of it is impact damage, caused by objects weighing from a few grams to about five kilogrammes. So typically these objects were smaller than a house brick. A few were much larger. One cargo hold in particular was ripped completely open. I have done a rough calculation based on the design cruising speed of the ship, taking into account the gauge of the metal, the angulation of the folds and the probable angle of impact. The object that caused that damage would have weighed about fifty kilogrammes.”
“Dr Lavalle, may I interrupt you there for a moment? Would you say that the damage you have described was consistent with an encounter with a fragmented asteroid?”
“Yes, I believe so. An asteroid that had been formed by accretion could well break up into fragments of that size.”
“Thank you. Do go on. You say there was another kind of damage to the craft?”
“Yes. This other damage was quite different. Firstly it was much more focal; it was confined to a portion of the port cargo holds and the access tubes connecting them to the living pod. Secondly, the edges were fused inwards and there were scorch marks and traces of gaseous condensation in a radial distribution. The damage appeared to have been caused by a chemical explosion on the outside.”
“During your considerable experience, Dr Lavalle, did you ever see anything like that before?”
“Yes, but not on a spacecraft. I saw it once on a battlefield in the Middle East. On a tank that had been taken out by artillery.”
“So this damage was consistent with a hit from a shell-thrower?”
“Yes, a shell-thrower would produce damage just like that.”
“In other words, Dr Lavalle, the damage sustained by the Spacefreighter Solar Wind accords precisely with the account given by the defendant of the criminal attack outside the orbit of Mars, and the encounter in the asteroid belt.”
“Yes. I can’t offer an opinion on where the damage occurred, of course, but the nature of the damage is consistent with the account given, yes.”
“No further questions.”
Saturn Run Page 27