Transformation Protocol

by David M. Kelly

  I still felt the thrill as the countdown ticked away, then there was that momentary disorientation and we were there, floating on the edge of the Procyon system. It looked remarkably similar to Sirius, another bright star accompanied by a much smaller companion. Procyon was larger than Sirius, but cooler and dimmer, its light more yellow than blue-white. I held my breath at the sight. The trip might not have been under ideal circumstances but was ticking plenty of boxes on my space explorer's wish list.

  "There's so much desolation out here." Logan studied the screens in front of him. "Hard to imagine we'll ever find decent planets."

  "Maybe that's not a bad thing." Aurore set up a broad-spectrum scan to look for any traces that could be the Sacagawea.

  "How come? Earth isn't exactly prime real-estate these days." I watched the instruments as the sensor data started coming in.

  "Habitable planets are rare. But we know we can live in constructed habitats. If we build them big enough, like the Atolls, they'd be as good as a planet in most respects. And in some ways better."

  "Why better?" It was Logan who asked, but I wondered the same thing.

  "You can position a habitat wherever you want relative to a star, and if something disastrous happens you can move it."

  "That would be a tricky maneuver with a large station," I said. "Especially one with people onboard."

  "Difficult, but not impossible. The Atollers did it with Fardosh-Baird." Aurore's brow furrowed. "And if you have a community of habitats, they're more efficient environmentally. You can use sunlight in an almost pure form for energy generation, and transportation costs between them would be virtually nil, so you could easily set up trade and passenger networks."

  Aurore was as smart as they come—I could understand why Logan was attracted to her. "That's true. But they're also a lot more vulnerable."

  "You're thinking too small, Joe. I'm talking about O'Neill setups even bigger than the Atolls use. They'd be robust and protected from hazards. And let's face it, we've shown how easy it is to screw up a planet—there are no guarantees."

  "Sure, but would you want to raise your kids on some—" Logan stopped, his face flushing. "Talking hypothetically, that is."

  "The inside could be landscaped." I was thinking about the PAC ambitions. "The Taikong Gaogu project is looking into that. It wouldn't seem much different from Earth."

  Logan drummed his fingers against the arms of his chair. "I think we're better off keeping up the search. I'm not convinced people would choose a station over a planet."

  Aurore grinned at him. "Don't worry. I'm not ready for kids eith—"

  A series of high-pitched bleeps bounced around the room. I checked the diagnostic systems, but they didn't show any problems.

  "There's a contact on the sensor feeds." Aurore tapped on her console. "It could be... no, it is a ship."

  "Is it them?" Logan reached to unbuckle his straps.

  "Need more data," Aurore said.

  I brought up the system map, tagging the ship's location. Its position was a long way out from both stars and looked to be just inside the closest of the asteroid belts. If it was the Sacagawea, it had a strange orbit. As a survey ship, it should have been focusing on the planetary system.

  Whatever its identity, the ship was about two and a half A.U. from us, so any sensor data we were picking up was over twenty minutes old. A prickle of excitement tingled across my neck. Could this be one of the ghost ships Moriaby had talked about?

  The ship's clock seemed to be frozen but eventually ticked over. Logan breathed deeply, and I heard Aurore's foot tapping against her chair.

  "Any signs of a transponder?" I asked.

  "Too soon," Aurore said.

  "Should I take us closer?" I looked over at Logan.

  The creases on Logan's forehead deepened, and I thought he hadn't heard me. "Not yet. Too risky," he finally replied.

  I shuffled in my seat. It was hard to believe but only a few minutes had passed since the first detection. We wouldn't get any further information from our active sensors for another half hour.

  "Should I activate the weapons?" My hand was over the controls, ready.

  "No." Logan almost hissed. "Not before we know who it is."

  McDole came in, pushed herself over to a spare console, and strapped herself in.

  I switched the sensor information and system map to be broadcast around the ship. There was no point keeping them in the dark and risking everyone crowding the room to see what was happening. The sensor data stream rippled as more information was collected.

  "Something strange here." Aurore fed the data through the analysis systems and flipped through several screens I was only partly familiar with.

  "Is it them?" Logan repeated, his voice tight.

  "It's a transponder signal, but—" Aurore switched to another data view. "No. It's two signals. Neither matches the Sacagawea."

  "Who the hell is it then?" I snapped, though I knew I shouldn't. Aurore was at the mercy of the sensor information.

  "One identifies as the CSS Ayn Rand, the other is the CSS Independence III."

  "What are the Corporates doing out here?" Logan said.

  I shrugged. "Beats me. I thought all they were interested in was searching for resources and habitable planets. And you'd have more chance of finding a copy of the Rocket Ranger lost pilot episode in this system."

  Logan pointed to the map on the large display. "Can you get us closer?"

  I was setting up another Jump even as I answered. "Should be possible."

  "Then do it."

  I used the second Jump to take us to within eight-million kilometers again. I figured that should be good enough for relatively easy communication, while not being so close we'd appear threatening—not to mention keeping enough room between us so we could respond if things turned sour.

  I was securing the ship when the comm system beeped, and a transmission opened up on our screens.

  "USN Shokasta, this is Captain Charles Trent of the Corporate ship Ayn Rand. Do not approach any nearer or we will consider it an unfriendly act. The Procyon star system has been claimed for development by the Commerce Executive. We have deployed a standard habitat module that is in the last stages of expansion. We will protect it at all costs."

  "What?" Logan looked around. "That's ridiculous. Put me through."

  I toggled the transmit button.

  "Captain Trent, this is Captain Twofeathers commanding the Shokasta. We're on a peaceful mission in search of one of our ships that is overdue. I'm surprised to hear you claim the Procyon star system belongs to the Corporates. There are no precedents for this. We will, however, hold station at our current location. As I said, our mission is a peaceful one."

  It took almost a minute for the response to reach us. Trent's square face had frozen with the lag and now jerked back to life.

  "Your information appears to be out of date, Captain Twofeathers. Under the latest rulings in the World Congress, a nation state can lay claim to a system as long as they have fulfilled residency requirements or shown they are the first to visit and have lodged detailed commercial development plans."

  Logan accessed the controls, bringing up historical data on Procyon. "According to my records, Procyon has been visited by ships from all nation states on multiple occasions. You're hardly the first ship here."

  Trent's reply was brief. "Correct. Which is why we're establishing a colony. Our station will have a population of forty people, well above the minimum threshold demanded by the World Congress edicts. Now please depart this system, or I will take action."

  "What do you think, Joe?" said Logan.

  "Sensor data says he's bluffing. Their ship doesn't look heavily armed, though I'm basing that on configuration and power signatures. Looks like it's got a Jump drive with a bare minimum control setup. The habitat's an expanding one like he said. Could they be Jumping to star systems and dropping these off, hoping to get a claim to stick?"

  "There were rumors a
bout something like this happening," McDole said. "I didn't expect it so soon, though."

  "What if the Sacagawea is somewhere in this system?" Aurore said. "We need time to survey it."

  "Are there any signs of it yet?" Logan asked.

  Aurore shook her head.

  Logan turned to the frozen transmission. "Captain Trent, we're not in a position to validate your claim or otherwise. As I mentioned, we're looking for one of our ships. Have you picked up any signs of her? We'll transmit her identification code."

  I broadcast the information, and we waited. It seemed to take far longer than fifty seconds to get a reply.

  "I'm sorry to hear of your missing ship, but we have no information on her." He paused, and I thought his transmission had ended again then he jumped back to life. "Ships are lost in all sorts of circumstances. Our secondary mission out here is to look for traces of a Recon Discoverer class ship, the RD-627. She's been missing for six months. I don't imagine you've seen any trace of her, have you?"

  I looked up the ship's classification—a Jump-enabled reconnaissance vessel with a crew of four. "Seems like we're getting careless out here. We're all losing ships or stations." I gripped the armrests. "Don't know what anyone else thinks, but it's looking to me like someone doesn't want us out here."

  "We're not out here to start a fight." Logan looked at the main screen. "Can we Jump?"

  The Casimir power levels were at the bottom of the scale. "Need a day to fully recharge."

  "Take us away from the Ayn Rand and prepare to Jump as soon as possible." He floated out of his chair. "I need to think about things. Call me before the Jump."

  I began setting up the departure, but before I was through, the transmission from the Ayn Rand reopened.

  "Captain Twofeathers, I'm sorry if I sounded inhospitable. I have my orders, but there's no need for you to rush away. If you're interested, I'd be happy to share sensor information with you. That should help you remove Procyon from your list of potential locations for your lost ship. If you'd like to close further to facilitate data sharing, please do so."

  Logan had turned back when the transmission came in. "Take us in, Joe. But stay alert. I don't trust them."

  I reset the navigation system and plotted a route to take us closer to the Corporate ship. I also ran several basic weapons diagnostics. We needed to be ready for anything.

  *

  It took a day to reach a distance of two-million kilometers. That gave us a lag time of twelve seconds, which by spatial standards was practically real-time. We didn't stop our own sensor sweeps of the system during the approach. As we were staying longer, I thought we might as well gather as much data as we could.

  I talked to Trent, while Logan met with Hernandez to discuss strategy. Once the captain understood we weren't looking for trouble, he seemed to relax but wasn't interested in getting close enough for a face-to-face meeting. "How long have you been out here?" I said.

  "About a month. Took some time to work our way in from the outskirts of the system." He gestured around him. "These things aren't the fastest."

  I'd dug out some information on the Ayn Rand's design specifications. It was sketchy and largely speculative. The Corporates were almost as tight as the Atolls about releasing information and about as quick to steal anything useful they could get their hands on.

  From the assumed data, the ship was an Intent class colonizer built by Xselsia Corporation and could hold up to seventy people, though from what Trent had shared with us, they only had forty onboard. Most of those were colonists with a skeleton crew of three.

  We were close enough for the telescopic displays to give us a decent view of their ship. It looked similar to the back end of the Shokasta with a somewhat ridiculous-looking bulge that acted as the crew quarters. There were two long gantries running forward, and it took me a while to realize these were the field generators that would open the Bronikov fissure required to Jump. They extended out like giant insect antennae and looked as though they wrapped around the habitat when it was attached.

  "Got family?" I remembered how lonely I'd felt when I was working away from Dollie. Even now after everything that had happened.

  "Yeah." His voice was a mixture of annoyance and sadness. "You?"

  "Yes, well... no." I still felt married even though my brain knew I wasn't.

  Trent laughed. "Make up your mind there, buddy."

  The Independence III Station was floating off the Ayn Rand's port bow and looked like a floating white sausage. According to the sensors, it was barely thirty-five meters across—not much of a "colony."

  "Is that as big as it gets?" I asked.

  "Size isn't everything," Trent laughed. "It ain't an Interstellar Hotel, is it?"

  That was an understatement. With forty people in it, that thing would be full to the point of bursting. What data I'd seen suggested they used a spin rate of four revolutions per minute to produce an apparent gravity similar to that of Mars. But with that rotation, nausea would be a distinct possibility. They could spin it slower, of course, but if they went much lower the pseudo-gravity wouldn't be enough to stop bone loss or other nasty side effects.

  The Ayn Rand's data showed nothing to indicate the Sacagawea had gotten that far. Though when I looked closer, the picture was less straightforward. I showed them the problem. "You see this here"—I pointed out the gaps in their logs—"and here."

  "Any theories?" Logan asked.

  "Their logging system could be flaky..." Aurore said.

  I tapped the screen in front of me. "Or they've deleted entries they didn't want to share."

  "Why would they do that?" Aurore peered closer at the display.

  "Who knows?" I said. "But it means we can't trust them or their data."

  "Did they share information on their missing ship?" said Logan. "Would that provide a clue?"

  "Ask me another." I switched to the star map. "This is what they say was the planned itinerary."

  The route was displayed as a dotted yellow line that slashed over to Tau Ceti then plunged down to a triple star system with the rather grand designation "EZ Aquarii." Despite the name, all three were red dwarf stars and showed considerable solar flare activity, making them poor choices for habitable worlds. Whatever the Corporates' ultimate plans, they certainly weren't obvious.

  "I wonder if they reached that last system," said Aurore.

  I considered the map. "If they did, they'd only have been a couple of Jumps from Wolf-1061."

  Logan's eyes widened. "Wright Atoll?"

  "Maybe." I plotted the route on the map, highlighting it in blue so it would stand out. "Or it could be coincidental. There are over a dozen systems within Jump distance of EZ Aquarii."

  "Nothing seems to make sense, does it?" Logan sighed. "It's beginning to feel like a wild goose chase."

  I nodded. I'd been here before.

  It was enough for one day, and I headed to my cabin. Dan came out of his room as I passed by and jumped when he saw me. "Joe, you startled me, coming at me like that."

  "Someone needs to invent something to make ZeeGee noisier."

  Dan laughed—the first time I'd heard him do that—and it reminded me of Charlie's braying. "Getting some dinner," he said. "Wanna join me?"

  My guilt over Charlie made me reluctant to spend time around Dan, and I also didn't want him to become a substitute for his brother. But I hadn't spent much time with him and needed to make good on my promise of making him more welcome. "Sure. I could do with some calories."

  We headed to the wardroom and pulled some of the meal packs from the storage units. I'd chosen an Atoll meal—they were infinitely better—but Dan somewhat perversely grabbed a disgusting spicy fake-chicken one from Earth. As they say, there's no accounting for taste.

  We sat and pressed the heating tabs on the packaging. A couple of minutes later, I smelled the rich aroma of something approximating beef bourguignon, unpleasantly mixing with the hot, spicy odor of Dan's food.

  I sniffed d
ramatically. "We still have a lot to learn about living out here."

  "You ain't wrong about that." Dan twirled his fork in his noodles, letting the bubbling mixture steam off some heat. "But after all this time, I'm kinda sick of eating that fancy 'Toller food."

  "I'll be happy to trade my Earth provisions for your share of the Atoll ones." I peeled open the covering on the packaging and scooped up a small amount of stew. "You admit the Atolls are good at some things then?"

  Dan chomped on his noodles then smacked his lips. "Yeah... they ain't all bad. I guess I wouldn't be here if it weren't for them."

  I swallowed more of my food. It tasted so real, it would throw the average vegetarian into a spinning fit.

  "Well, let's thank them for that at least." I held up my water in a toast. "I don't like them much either, but they're still human."

  "You think we could work with them, Joe?" Dan ducked his head several times as he ate. "I mean, really? They've got so much and we got so little by comparison. Sometimes seems they don't even know how people on Earth live day-to-day."

  "Could be. Sometimes I think all that's needed is to get people together for a while and learn from each other." It was refreshing to see Dan's change of attitude. But it made me curious. "What did they do to you?"

  Dan chewed down three more mouthfuls of noodles and then washed them down with a big gulp of juice. "It's not... I mean... You're all so level. You and the others, and"—he jabbed his fork deep into his bowl, and his eyes seemed to lock on to something in the distance—"I can't talk about it."

  "Sure. I didn't mean to pry." There was something about his response that I couldn't pin down.

  He let out a long breath. "So, what are the Tigers' chances this year? Escarsega ain't pitching worth a damn."