Archaea 3: Red

by Dain White

  Unfortunately for him, I am a cagey one, and know all the tricks. “Janis, please disable telltales on the aft lock”, I asked confidently, hand poised to cycle the lock.

  “Telltales disabled, aye” she replied, softly.

  I laughed and started the lock cycle. Other than another very brief, slight hum of enviro as the pressure was equalized, the lock was almost completely silent. Gene did a pretty good job around here maintaining the mechanicals, something that he may regret here in a few moments.

  When the lock opened, however, the joke was on me. Gene wasn’t here. Engineering wasn’t exactly quiet, but it wasn’t trip-hammering loud either. It was definitely quiet enough in here to hear Gene snore, so I didn’t bother looking through the various compartments for him. I kicked back across the cargo bay.

  “Janis, where is everybody?” I asked the air, as I waited for the forward lock to cycle me through.

  “Yak, Jane and Pauli are on the bridge, sir. Gene is off-shift and in his cabin.”

  “Thank you my dear”, I replied, kicking through the gun deck. I was probably too late anyway, he was almost certainly sound asleep by now. I dropped down the ladder and stepped smartly into the ring, feeling my innards settle as I assumed a sense of gravity.

  “Anyone awake in here?” I asked as I tapped on the side of the cabin hatch.

  “Unfortunately”, Gene grumped. He was on his bunk, reading something on his holo that looked like an exploded diagram.

  “What are you reading?” I asked, looking around for his cup.

  "Schematics for one of our Ligo osmotic recycler units", he replied. "The head drain is getting a bit of a nasty gurgle, and the trap is clear – so I’ll be tearing this down on my next shift.”

  “Don’t you have all that memorized by now?” I asked, refilling his cup and handing it over.

  He snorted. “I’ve torn these down enough that I should, but they’re pretty complex little critters, Dak.” He took a sip, while I watched him intently.

  “Now that’s a damn fine cup of coffee, Dak”, he said reverently after another sip. “You have completely outdone yourself, sir.”

  I took a brief moment to bask in the well-deserved glory of a job well done, and another brief moment to try and identify what sort of monkey scowl Gene was working on. If I didn’t know better, I’d almost call it a smile.

  “Thanks Gene… to be honest, my last pot was inadequate. Pauli may not be able to tell, but you were absolutely right, I didn’t take any time with it. You never know when the next cup of coffee might be your last, and it was poor form for me to let it slide like that. It won’t happen again, mister.”

  He looked at me with a wrinkled forehead and took another sip. “Why are you so maudlin, Dak? Is something going on?”

  “Nah, we’re in the pipe, Gene – but you know, just like life is worth living like every day is your last, each pot of coffee is worth brewing like it might be your last.”

  “Hmm… it sounds to me like something is going on”, he said shrewdly, fixing me with another look.

  I laughed. “Something is always going on, Gene, but nothing more life-threatening than usual.

  “Well, what sort of things are you worried about?”

  “Nothing out of the ordinary, really… we’re slipping on a route that is less traveled than I’d like, with Janis’ course at odds with the old gravimetric survey data for this sector—“

  “But Janis has better eyes now than those survey ships did”, he reminded me.

  “True enough, but they mapped the area in real space, between little hops – we’re mapping it fifty times faster than the speed of light, as we go.”

  A moment of silence spun on a bit, punctuated by the sound of us both taking a thought-provoking sip.

  “Well skipper, the way I understand it, wouldn’t Janis’ route be correct, because of the way she can scroll through her timeline? Or is that really how to think about it?”

  I nodded slowly. “Yes, that’s correct… and really, that’s why I am not too concerned about it. She is able to do it, because she has the proper gear now, and naturally we installed the sensor package before it was needed.”

  “Mm-hmm”, he replied, staring off into space for a moment. “Well, it is what it is. It’s not like we don’t live a pretty dangerous existence hauling mass way the hell and gone out here, one errant rock away from smithereens...”

  He definitely had a point, though unfortunately it didn’t make it any easier to think about. “Yeah, that’s pretty much business as usual around here Gene – the life of a spacer, an independent, burning for the endless…We take risks.”

  He smirked as much as his current scowl allowed. “Fair enough, so what else should we be concerned about?”

  “Well, I am afraid that Janis may have come up with something new for us.” I replied after a moment.

  “Emwan?” he asked softly.

  “No, not yet”, I replied reassuringly. That is something none of us were ready for. “She has something else cooking. She is teasing Pauli about patterns.”

  “Patterns?” he asked quizzically.

  “Yep, she’s found some interesting patterns in Unet data.”

  “What sort of patterns?”

  I knew that Gene loved puzzles, and figuring things out. He also hates it when I give away the end of a story. “Gene, I’m going to play this hand close to my chest, so you don’t get all grumpy with me. You can probably figure it out – should we take a stroll to the bridge?”

  “Might as well, I’m not sleeping after this”, he said, draining a ghastly amount of his cup, and holding it out for a recharge.

  I fixed him with an endless blank stare.

  “Come on, skipper” he cajoled. “You don’t want me to fall asleep, do you?”

  “No… but this has to go throughout the crew, Gene. Maybe after everyone has had their fill, you can have another?” I held the carafe protectively, like a newborn infant.

  “Yak doesn’t want any, Captain.”

  “Oh, now I am ‘Captain’, am I? I see how you are.” I whipped out my most withering admiralty eyebrow and he cringed, predictably. “I know full well that Yak won’t want any, but Shorty might want extra. Do you want to incur her wrath?” I knew I had him then. None of us wanted to risk fates worse than She Who Shall Get What She Wants Most Times.

  “Nah, guess not…. lethal little ladies first, always.” He smiled and shoved off his bunk.

  *****

  Laughter rang out ahead of us, as we kicked forward through the gun deck.

  “See what you miss when you sleep, Gene?” the captain asked, waving me ahead at the companionway.

  I rolled my eyes and kicked ahead. He has no idea what it’s like being me. I have more aches and pains in my left knee than he’s ever felt, and I’m the one who does all the work around here. Maybe if I sat around reading in my jammies all day long, I wouldn’t be so old.

  “Hi Gene, Captain”, Yak said as we floated into the bridge. He unclipped and made ready to relinquish the conn.

  “As you were, Yak”, Dak said off-handedly, as he floated forward to Pauli’s station. “I’m only here to spread joy and cheer.”

  “Very well, sir”, Yak replied, and clipped back into the helm station. Shorty kicked free of her perch at Yak’s station, and kicked over for a refill, her coffee cup leading the way. I maneuvered closer to the action as well, just in case. You never know. I took a soothing float within easy reach of a grabber, and waited my turn.

  “So Pauli…” the captain started, working the carafe pump. “Have you made any progress on Janis’ puzzle?”

  “Well, it’s clear that it’s related to AV, but I am not at all sure what it all means”, he replied through a smile as his cup hissed full.

  “Hmm… not much of a big picture sort of guy, huh?” the captain asked, smirking.

  Pauli took a sip and gasped. “Oh...”

  “What is it, Pauli?” Shorty asked.

  “This is ama
zing, Captain” he said in reply, clearly trying to carbonize his throat with scalding gulps.

  “Easy there… remember, you’re on short rations, son… no offense, Shorty”, Dak added, grabbing her cup.

  She laughed. “I’m always on short rations, you guys eat all the food! What puzzle are you guys working on up here? Can I help?” Shorty asked, watching him work the pump with expectant eyes.

  “Well… it might be fun for you all to take a look, and see which one of you wins the prize.”

  “What’s the prize?” Yak asked.

  “The prize… is a second cup of coffee”, he replied with a smile.

  “But I haven’t had a first cup”, Yak answered.

  “That’s true, Yak… in that case, the prize for you, is a cup of coffee.”

  “No thanks… if I win, I want Janis to make me a brewery.”

  The captain thought for a moment. “Fair enough, Yak. If you win, you can become our official brewmaster. Pauli, put that report to the forward holo, please.”

  “Wait a minute, sir.” Pauli replied. “I am not convinced that you know the answer to this… sir” he added, respectfully.

  “Doubting your captain, son?” the captain said ominously at first, then smiling. “Fair enough, one moment while I key in my answer.” He pulled out his handset and scribbled something on the screen, hiding it under his hand like a star student. “Okay, done. Now flash that to the main holo, son.”

  Pauli worked his screens, and the forward holo lit up with a tabbed report. The first tab contained what looked like financial data for Eastern Arm market trading, a wall of numbers that had no apparent relationships, just trends over time, up and down. Janis had highlighted specific items, but they didn’t really make any sense together.

  “What is this screen?” Shorty asked.

  “It looks like market trading values, Shorty… but it doesn’t really make sense what we’re being shown here.” I replied.

  “That’s correct, Gene” the captain replied, steadying himself along a grabber and relaxing for a float.

  “Looks like a wall of numbers”, Yak rumbled behind us.

  “Indeed…” the captain replied with a smirk, “…but the answer is here, on this screen.”

  “What are those green triangles?” Shorty asked.

  “Those are market values that are trending upwards.” I answered.

  “And the red ones are losing value?”

  “Yep… this shows trends, but no relationships”, I added, doing some mental calculations against the highlighted entries, looking for patterns.

  “The highlighted values aren’t all trending one way or the other… they seem mixed”, Pauli remarked.

  Shorty made a clicking sound. “Maybe the indicator isn’t the trend up or down, but the volatility of the amount?”

  “Could be, Shorty”, I replied. She had a good point. It did seem like most of the highlighted values showed more movement than the rest.

  “So this report is showing us a series of trades, and clearly highlighting the most active…” Yak trailed off momentarily, “…but I don’t know what the hell that means.”

  “Exactly”, Pauli replied. “Nothing seems to matter. The next screen isn’t much help, either.” He swiped the next tab open.

  As best as I could tell, this was a financial report from Mexaco, and made as much sense as any accounting grid ever did.

  “What’s Mexaco?” Yak asked thoughtfully.

  “A glom that controls most of the market for reactives”, Shorty replied. “They do some other business, refining and heavy metal processing, but mostly they are known for their corner of the market on fuel.”

  “And what does this report mean?” he asked.

  She shrugged. “I have no idea, Yak. If I had to guess, the columns of this grid look like their territories, and the rows look like specific reactive blends. This looks like a profit and loss report, tracked by territory.”

  She called it on this screen, it looked to me like there was a pattern here, but it was really hard to get a fix on it. I worked through the columns and rows, but all it did was make me cross-eyed.

  “Pauli, are there additional dates for this report?” I asked, waving at the footer.

  “Yep”, he replied, and swiped through the subs slowly, one by one. “Tell me when…”

  Something caught my eye, but it was Yak who answered first. “Wait a second, Pauli.”

  Pauli stopped. The bridge grew silent as we all worked through the data on the screen.

  “Go back, Pauli”, Yak asked. Dak laughed softly.

  Pauli tabbed back, and I saw it. There were spikes in values, moving through the report, from screen to screen.

  “Hmm”, we all said, roughly in unison.

  “Whole lot of humming going on here”, Dak teased. “Pauli, switch to the next report.”

  Pauli flipped to the next main tab, and brought up a simplified system chart, overlaid with a route. “These waypoints correspond to the territory spikes in the previous report”, I said quickly, determined to get a first in our little race.

  “Well, of course”, Shorty said with an eyeroll for emphasis. “But what does it mean?”

  “If it means anything”, I added. “That it is showing the movement of profits through both space, and time is apparent… but that doesn’t necessarily mean anything. Maybe a big ship docked at…” I squinted to read the line item, “…Mardis, and the fleet pulled into…” another squint, “…Targa a few weeks later. These spikes don’t necessarily mean anything.”

  “Well, clearly they mean something”, Yak added thoughtfully. “What’s on the next screen?”

  “The next ones are off the wire, various articles about colonies…” Pauli started swiping through them one at a time. “I can’t find any relationship between them, though. Here’s an article about a collapsed colony, the next one is about a notable science team arriving at a colony of Morse-Webber’s. Here’s one about a disease outbreak, and this one looks like a revision of a financial prospectus.”

  “Hold on there a moment, Pauli”, I said softly. The prospectus had a series of numbers, and I was running through the old memory buffer from other screens, looking for correlations.

  “See something Gene?” Shorty asked.

  “No…” I replied after a moment. “I thought I did at first, but this is just a report. They’re losing more money than they projected, but that’s all I see.”

  “You’re so close, Gene.” Dak was positively gloating.

  “Well, I don’t know, skipper… there’s definitely something here, but I can’t see it.”

  Pauli nodded. “Neither can I, Gene.”

  “I know what this is about”, Yak replied confidently.

  I turned around, and his eyes were alight.

  “You do?” Pauli asked incredulously.

  “I sure do.”

  “Write it down, Yak”, the captain said proudly. “I can almost taste a nice dark beer already.”

  “You and me both, sir”, Yak laughed.

  I scowled, and ran through the data I’d seen so far, looking for a pattern. “What else is there, Pauli?”

  “That’s it, Gene.”

  Another moment of silence rolled through the bridge. Shorty swiped a copy of the report to her handset and started going through the screens. I took a cue from her, and did the same. The silence on the bridge rolled on a few more moments, punctuated by the occasional sip.

  “This is fantastic coffee, Captain”, Shorty said after a moment.

  “Thanks, Shorty. Are you about ready for a refill?”

  “Yep, thanks.”

  “And you know the answer?”

  “Yep”, she said confidently.

  “I figured you’d see it”, he said proudly. “Write it down, please. Now we just need to wait for the slow ones.”

  I scowled even harder, and squinted at my screen, contorting my thoughts looking for a common thread, something to give me the ‘aha’ moment… but
nothing added up. Colony collapse, profit loss, profit gain, market data… it started to spin around.

  “I am going to give up”, Pauli said finally. “I have no idea what we’re looking at. It’s just a mess of financial data and glom press releases.”

  “I’m with Pauli, skipper – this isn’t making any sense to me.” I added, after a few more moments. I sure did want some more of that coffee… but the chances were pretty good there’d be another pot made at some point.

  “No guesses at all?” the captain asked.

  “Well”, I answered, “I think it’s clear these are glom-related, but I am just not making any sort of connections between all of this.”

  “Fair enough… how about you, Pauli?”

  “Sorry… I don’t have a very good head for financial or accounting stuff. I am pretty good at logic problems, but this doesn’t really have enough for me to dig into.”

  “Well, that’s understandable, I guess. Okay Yak, you were the first to call it – what is your answer?”

  Yak snorted, and swiped his screen to the forward holo. His answer was ‘AV wasn’t in any of the articles’. I scanned back through my screens and shook my head in disbelief. I couldn’t believe I missed that. Pauli looked up from his screens and snorted in disgust.

  “That’s a very good observation, Yak – very impressive”, Dak replied thoughtfully. “Is that what you have as well, Shorty?”

  She called up her notes. “Yes… but as best as I can tell, not only were they not the subject of any of the articles, but the highlighted trades on the market summary did seem to be related to AV holdings.”

  I was dumfounded, and the look on Pauli’s face mirrored my own. I couldn’t believe we missed that.

  “Close, you are both so close. Close enough for horseshoes, anyway.” He reached over for Shorty’s cup and started pumping out a refill. “Janis, dear, would you please work with Yak to develop a self-contained brewery–”

  “Distillery”, Yak interjected.

  Dak gave him a piteous look. “No, dear – I mean, a brewery... the last thing Pauli needs is ready access to spirits.”

  “Very well, Captain.” Janis replied sweetly, while Yak cheered.