In the Black

by Patrick S. Tomlinson

  “Sounds good, it’ll be up in just a couple minutes.” Cassidy disappeared into the lunch crowd again.

  “So…” Tyson refocused his guest. “What brings you—and don’t say you traveled thirty light-years for egg rolls, because I won’t believe you.”

  “A courtesy,” Sokolov answered back. “You, and by extension I, have a small problem brewing in the black.”

  Tyson’s heart fell two rungs down the ladder. So, word of their difficulties at Teegarden’s Star had made it all the way to New Vladivostok, despite his best efforts at spin control and containment.

  “We’re on top of it.”

  It was Sokolov’s turn to raise an eyebrow. “You know?”

  “Of course, we’ve known for two weeks already. We’ve had a team of immunologists on-site under level-five quarantine protocols for a week. They’ve isolated the strain and—”

  Sokolov waved him off. “I’m not talking about that flu your Teegarden colony caught. Everyone knows about that. Some even before you did, as I hear it.”

  Tyson paused. The barb, intended or not, stung. “We’re looking into who leaked the story as well. We’ll find them.”

  “See that you do. The markets turn on news. Either you control it, or it controls you.”

  Tyson held his hands out, palms up. “And what news do you have to share, Valeria?”

  Sokolov fell silent and took a long pull from her vodka as Cassidy reappeared to drop off their appetizer. “Here you go. Careful, they’re pretty hot still.”

  “Thank you, dear. But we can handle the heat,” Sokolov said with a smile that didn’t reach her eyes. The waitress took the hint and withdrew. Sokolov set her drink back down on the table and carefully turned it.

  “I have news from our mutual interests in 82 G Eridani,” she said at last.

  Tyson leaned back and inhaled a shallow breath through his nostrils. “Go on.”

  Sokolov picked up one of the diagonally cut wonton wraps and took care dipping it in what Tyson assumed was some sort of ranch sauce, then took a tentative bite off the sharp edge.

  She swallowed her bite and looked him in the eyes. “There’s been an intersection.”

  Tyson swallowed involuntarily, despite not having eaten anything yet. “An intersection? You mean a Xr—”

  She held up a hand. “Not here, Tyson. The universe itself has ears these days. But, yes. As you know, there’s a fleet element watching over our little project. A cruiser, I’m told. Two weeks ago, it had an unexpected guest. The first such guest in…”

  “Seventy years,” Tyson finished for her.

  “Officially, at least, but yes.”

  “What did we lose?”

  “Nothing important. The cruiser lost a couple of drones. Their captain believes it was just a probing expedition. Testing our capabilities and procedures. That sort of thing. No different from the sorts of games we play trying to hack into each other’s computer networks, Tyson.”

  “I would never dream of it, Valeria,” he said soothingly.

  “You wouldn’t dirty your hands,” she countered. “You hire people to do the dreaming, just as I do. It’s expected, I take no offense. Ours is just a friendly competition, after all.”

  Tyson took a sip of tea and smiled agreement, the names of at least a half dozen operatives who had gone missing during their “friendly competition” over the years floating to the foreground of his consciousness.

  “But,” Sokolov continued, “our ‘friends’ on the other side of the Red Line don’t see it that way. They play for keeps, and for whatever reason, Grendel has piqued their interest. That exposes both of our investments in the system to risks that neither of our analysts can model.”

  “If this is two weeks old, why haven’t I heard about it?” Tyson asked. “Not even the networks have to deal with that much delay.”

  “Because fleet intel is keeping it under wraps. Tightly. I heard a rumor, but it still took a six-figure bribe to pry confirmation loose.”

  “That’s a valuable piece of information.” Tyson grabbed a wedge of reheated whatever-the-hell and took a bite. It was every bit as disappointing as the news he’d just heard. “Why share it with me?”

  “Because we’re partners in the project, Tyson. If—When word gets out, we need to be prepared to present a united front and coherent messaging.”

  “And Praxis? Are you visiting Daryl next?”

  Sokolov waved a hand dismissively. “That space trucker? Daryl’s a good old boy and a gossip. He’s useful for spilling secrets, not keeping them. We only roped him in because neither you nor NeoSun had enough spare shipping capacity from our other commitments to get the standard infrastructure in place.”

  Which was true enough, Tyson had to admit. His merchant fleet was stretched thin moving around the cargo and trade Ageless had already brought to market. Trade that was making them money with each jump. They just didn’t have the tonnage lying around to divert into a new project that might not bear fruit for ten, perhaps twenty years. His thoughts drifted for a moment to the million-ton ore freighter trapped in a parking orbit not five hundred kilometers above his head, even now draining company resources as it waited to end quarantine instead of making him money.

  New hulls were under construction, but the first of them was still another ten to fifteen months away from completion and another half a year for space-worthiness certification.

  So, they’d gone to Daryl Cooper and Praxis, the “You-Buy-We-Fly” overflow fleet of human space. Daryl’s ships were castoffs bought up at auction once the larger transtellars thought them to be worth little more than scrap.

  Which, honestly, they were. But Daryl’s people spent countless man-hours refurbishing the old heaps into something that would pass inspection, if only with a few greased palms. Which weren’t hard to find among the Praxis ranks, considering how many of his employees were grease monkeys in the first place. He then waited patiently, hauling low-grade materials for fees that barely covered his overhead until the giants like NeoSun, Extra, or even Ageless bit off more than they could chew in their quest to conquer the known universe. Then, if you needed something shipped, Praxis was there to do it quickly and more-or-less competently.

  For a price. In the case of Grendel, the price wasn’t a fee, but a seven-percent cut of future revenue, negotiated down from ten.

  Daryl wasn’t smart, by any stretch. But he was hardworking, looked out for his people, and had a certain cunning about him that kept Praxis alive through the lean times, and fattened it up when opportunity knocked. Even if that opportunity was firmly in the gray area of transtellar regulations. Tyson himself had signed off on fines against Praxis half a dozen times for infractions on Lazarus that any court of law would call smuggling. But somehow, he still liked the man.

  “So,” Tyson said after choking down the rest of his soggy wedge of wonton, shredded vat chicken, and corn, “what do we do about it?”

  “Nothing we can do, at the moment.” Sokolov sipped up the dregs of her drink. “Do anything, and we give away that we knew before the CCDF made the information public, and that would jeopardize my back channels.”

  Tyson nodded. “I understand the need for discretion.”

  “But be ready for the press. You’re the majority stakeholder in Grendel, you have the most exposure to the downside risks of bad optics. Especially in light of your misadventure in Teegarden.”

  “It’s a damned bacteria. We’re handling it,” he said tersely.

  “You’d better. Because I wouldn’t want to be putting out multiple publicity fires simultaneously. Makes stakeholders nervous. Makes the Earth governments take notice. And the last thing any of us wants is for those know-nothings to start sending fucking fact-finding missions out here to play in our sandboxes. That’s never good for the quarterly reports, for any of us.”

  “Agreed.”

  “Good, that’s settled, then. Speaking of settled…”

  “I’ll take care of the bill. My treat. It�
�s the least I can do for your help.”

  Sokolov smiled her broad, wrinkled smile. It was warm, and felt as genuine as a grandmother doting over a precocious grandson. “I like you, Tyson. You have a stout heart and broad shoulders. But I’m helping me, just as much as I’m helping you. Our little side project is a marriage of convenience, after all.”

  “A mutually beneficial relationship, I hope.”

  “Time will tell. In the short term, make sure your house is tidy, in case we have unexpected guests. Da?”

  “Ya ponimayu,” Tyson answered without missing a beat.

  “Hmm.” Sokolov’s smile persisted. “Excellent diction, Tyson. Hardly any of that atrocious Lazarus accent at all. But I really must be catching a shuttle back to my yacht.”

  “So soon? You’ve only just arrived. Surely you could spare an hour for the sandstone gardens. The native rock coral are in bloom.”

  “Thank you, Tyson, but if I want to breathe air clogged with gametes, I’ll … well, let’s just say that such places are readily available on New Vladivostok as well. Although I don’t frequent them as much as I once did.”

  “A pity,” Tyson teased. “Safe travels, Ms. Sokolov.”

  “Calm seas, Mr. Abington.” Sokolov stood up from the booth and disappeared into the bustling crowd eager to leave and return to their offices and work stations. Tyson remained, chewing on his thoughts if not his lunch.

  What the hell did the Xre want with Grendel? And why did they have to pick just then, out of the last seven decades, to start poking around in human-occupied space again right on the heels of the Teegarden fiasco? Of course, there was no way to answer those questions, because there were never any Xre around to ask, not that their answers ever made much sense in the first place.

  Sokolov was right about one thing, though. Crisis had a way of increasing exponentially in apparent importance among public perception the more of them you stacked atop one another. Even several relatively small, unrelated setbacks posed a danger of being misinterpreted as a larger, systemic problem by the press and among market watchers.

  This unwelcome bit of news put even greater emphasis and pressure on him to resolve the Teegarden situation quickly and publicly. Tyson was busy pondering vectors for accomplishing that when he looked around and realized most of the lunch crowd had thinned out. He hadn’t seen their waitress in quite some time, either. Impatiently, he flagged down one of the other members of the serving staff, a young man with a cowlick even industrial epoxy would have difficulty managing.

  “Son, yes. I’m in a bit of a rush. Could you grab my server so I can settle the bill?”

  “Sure, mister. Who was waiting on you?”

  “Cassidy.”

  The youth wrinkled his brow in consideration. “Like, a boy, or…”

  “A girl. Early twenties, shoulder-length brown hair. Caucasian features. Henna tattoo on her left hand.”

  “Mmm, sorry mister, but we don’t have a Cassidy working here.”

  A chill spread down Tyson’s back. They’d been under observation. But by whom? One of the other transtellars? An Earthgov? Sokovol herself, or one of her enemies? Who?

  Tyson held up his wrist to speak into the audio pickup built into his cufflink. “Paris,” he whispered.

  “Yes, sir?” his AI assistant answered.

  “I’m sending you a section of video capture from my retinal implant. I need you to ID the waitress and flag her for surveillance.”

  “Tyson Abington?” Paris scoffed. “Afraid to ask a Chili’s waitress for her link avatar? How far the mighty have fallen.”

  “Not exactly, dear. You’re not playing matchmaker this time. She’s a spy.”

  “For whom?”

  “That’s an excellent question.”

  “Understood. I have it. I’m feeding her face into our recognition matrix. If she shows up on a surveillance camera or a mobile device, we’ll know.”

  “Thank you, Paris. I’ll see you at the office in twenty.”

  “Is something wrong, mister?” the young man asked with a tone that made it clear he was only asking to avoid blame.

  Tyson stood up and wiped his mouth before dropping his napkin onto the table. “There’s always something wrong.”

  SEVEN

  Susan’s hand cut a slash through the cool water, propelling her forward another half meter as her other arm broke the surface and shot out ahead. The far wall approached quickly. Susan anticipated it, tucked her chin to her chest and spun in place. The soles of her feet slapped onto the rough-textured surface of the wall exactly where she’d anticipated it would be. She pushed off, hard, and let her body glide through the water for several meters without moving a muscle before breaking the surface again to take a breath and fall back into the rhythm of her strokes.

  She’d lost count at fiftyish laps, which in the twenty-five-meter pool put her well over two kilometers already, but her body could go further. And so she would.

  The “pool” was actually a freshwater cistern, part of the Ansari’s water reclamation and purification system. It was a holding tank where water waited between steps in the filtration process. It wasn’t yet safe to drink in any quantity, but the chemicals were benign enough that it posed no danger to swim in, provided you didn’t swallow more than about a liter.

  A couple of ship classes ago, some bright spark in Naval Development decided to throw a retractable, watertight, rolling lid onto the cistern to let it pull double-duty as a recreation pool for the crew in calm times, an innovation for which Susan and thousands of other sailors were eternally grateful. It gave her a space to work out, to meditate, and to think.

  It had been almost three weeks since their encounter with the unknown Xre warship. Three weeks since the first incursion of an enemy vessel into a human-owned system in three generations, and the first time the CCDF had fired on an alien ship in just as long.

  Three weeks since they’d been ghosted by that same damned ship. On her watch.

  She’d replayed the engagement a hundred times since, in her quarters, in the pool, as she slept, each time turning over every aspect of the encounter, trying to spot anything she might have missed. Any clue she overlooked that could’ve allowed her to anticipate the Xre commander’s feint that had let them escape in such spectacular fashion.

  But she kept coming up empty. The simple truth was she’d never faced a Xre before, not really. Like all CCDF commanders, she’d studied their tactics from the Intersection War exhaustively at Academy. Every battle and skirmish, from large-scale fleet engagements, to commerce raids, to orbital insertions and attacks on infrastructure, right down to stray ship ambushes. They’d poured over them all, interpreting patterns, extrapolating doctrine, and even burrowing into the psychology of their foe in an effort to gain understanding and advantage in any future conflict.

  Of course, the Xre had been doing the exact same thing for just as long, adapting their own tactics to compensate for what they’d learned about their human adversaries. Guessing how humans would adapt to those changes. Shadowboxing. After seventy years of such second-guessing and head-fakes, who was to say that anyone’s assumptions, on either side, held water at all?

  Susan shook the thought loose. She’d just been outplayed, simple as that. But, she took some small measure of satisfaction knowing she’d managed to catch them completely by surprise and force them into such a reckless gambit in the first place.

  She completed five more laps before her right shoulder started to complain too much and she had to stop. As she hung off the far wall catching her breath, someone tapped her on the crown of her head.

  Susan looked up into Miguel’s waiting green eyes. He stood next to one of the diving platforms, holding a towel. She pulled out her earplugs and lifted her swimming goggles. “Yes?”

  “I was just wondering if you were finished or if you were bent on becoming the first person to drown in outer space.”

  “I couldn’t be the first. Surely someone’s managed it by now.�
�

  Miguel shook his head. “I looked it up. Couple of close calls, but you would get the honor.”

  Susan swung her shoulder around a couple of times trying to work the knot out. “I might have a few more laps in me.”

  “Not to be too direct, mum, but the rest of the crew would like their pool back.”

  “There’s five other lanes!”

  “Nobody wants to interrupt your ‘anger swims.’”

  “You wimps.” Susan splashed his trousers. “Fine, I’m done. But if I catch anyone fucking in the sauna again, it’s getting ripped out.”

  “Yes, mum.”

  “Honestly, we put privacy walls in the showers, for Christ’s sake. Use them.”

  “I understand.”

  Susan grimaced as she pulled herself out of the water. Her rotator cup complaint couldn’t be linked to any war story or heroic deed, unless one counted the battle against Father Time as an act of heroism. It had just appeared a few years earlier of its own accord, unannounced and uninvited, but it had doggedly settled in for the long haul regardless. Regular exercise, especially in the pool, helped to keep it in check, but it was the first to let her know when she’d overexerted herself.

  Miguel held the towel open for her, which she took with thanks.

  “Anything new stumble into our web?” she asked as she wrapped herself in the genuine cotton towel and tucked a corner of it by her armpit.

  “Nothing.” Miguel shook his head.

  Susan sighed hard, on the verge of a growl. Since the incursion, they’d redeployed back to low orbit around Grendel and linked up with the system’s spaceborne antimatter factory to top off their tanks. Once UnRep was complete, they’d deployed the rest of their complement of recon platforms and pushed them all the way out to their maximum effective range, hoping to catch a glimpse of their ghost.

  With their drone constellation pushed all the way out to the twelve-AU border, the platforms’ observational spheres had virtually no overlap. Each drone was effectively on its own and couldn’t rely on any of its siblings to double-check and confirm their observations. There were periodic gaps in coverage that had to be covered through a preset search pattern. Further, the light-speed delay so far out was more than an hour and a half.