To Touch the Stars (Founding of the Federation Book 2)

by Chris Hechtl

  “Oh, um … sorry,” Hannah replied, this time it was her turn to blush. “I didn't mean to pry. And I know most women don't want to admit to the first trimester … in case something goes wrong,” she finished weakly.

  Aurelia looked at her then nodded slowly. “So far so good. I'm keeping tabs,” she said, smiling. She rested a hand on her tummy.

  “Think it will be another boy?” Hannah teased.

  “This one is a girl,” Aurelia said, then winced slightly when Hannah raised an eyebrow. “Call it a feeling,” she said, covering for herself.

  Hannah smiled slightly. “Well then, can I take you out to lunch?”

  “I thought you'd never ask,” Aurelia said, pushing the tablet in front of her away as she got up.

  -*-*-^-*-*-

  Saul Roshenko shook his head as he contemplated life's little pleasures. He propped his feet up on his desk, smug about how things had worked out to his benefit. He lit the cigar, a nice Cuban and puffed at it as he shook his wooden match out. He was careful to keep ash from falling onto his expensively tailored suit. A vodka bottle from his home town was nearby, specially imported from him weekly. A shot glass was in front of it, currently empty.

  Boris was outside his door, as was Ludmilla. He was tempted to call the big woman in but decided against it. The cigar was enough of a stress relief for the moment. Besides, every time he used her services Boris seemed … testy. The big man wasn't stupid enough to get jealous. He knew better than to do that over something as simple as sex, but people were people. He kept it behind the line though, low simmering distaste or annoyance, Saul wasn't certain. He shook his head.

  His office was on the lower level, not up at top with the other bigwigs of One Earth. Down below he had access to the roads around the building. That made for a quick in and out or a quick exit if necessary. It also allowed him to get people in and out discretely too. Up in the upper floors, there were not enough escape routes in his opinion. It reminded him of someone being treed, it was better to go to ground. His cold eyes looked up to the ceiling and then down. Call him a rat if they dared; he didn't care. He pulled the cigar out of his mouth and tried to blow a ring. The first attempt failed, but the second was pretty good. Not perfect, nothing ever was. But good. Good enough.

  So was Daedalus. Hell, everything they'd done so far was good. Jean might complain about not making progress fast enough, but they'd done a hell of a lot … and would continue to do a lot more if they kept their heads from getting too big.

  The mobster was amused that his nominal boss was getting ruthless but others in their organization were getting cautious or squeamish. They liked taking advantage of the sparrow's fall but hated doing the shooting or even being aware of who or how it was arranged. He shook his head. Squeamish. Brezglivym. Bez sharov. On a gut level he understood. He was glad they were to a point; they needed to temper and balance action with prudence and awareness that they could get caught and had hard limits to respect. Getting overconfident got you killed, he thought grimly, returning the cigar to his mouth. They also had to adapt and keep a close eye on the enemy.

  He was pretty sure when Lagroose Industries figured out what had happened to Daedalus they would stop at nothing to find out who did it. The politicians and authorities might get in their way, but if they had a shred of evidence pointing to One Earth, they wouldn't rest until they'd torn them apart and wouldn't care about anyone getting in the way either. He made another note to find Descartes. The bastard was good, damn good, the best, but he was a loose end. If he ever got caught, or hell, if someone paid him enough he'd squeal for sure. Which meant he'd eventually have to go … but finding him … finding him was damn near impossible. The man was a ghost. He frowned. Everyone had a weakness; he just had to find it. He needed Intel on the creep, but the man … was he even a man? He shook his head.

  He had to have a weakness, even if it was a tail, he thought, mind returning to Ludmilla. If he knew Descartes interests, the man could be ensnared. Traced, even if it was … no, most likely the little prick jacked off to kiddy porn or some computer thing. Hell, it could be he had a sexbot in a closet, he thought then grinned as he took another puff of his cigar. Yeah, that was probably it. He probably screwed his own AI Shadow on the side.

  Wouldn't it be fun to reprogram the sexbot to strangle Descartes? Smother him? Or chew his tiny chlen off? The last idea was very appealing; he could imagine it. Or just feeding him to someone who wanted his ass? That was also appealing; they could kill him and nothing could be traced back to Saul or his people. Not as … fulfilling though, he thought. He tapped off ash from the cigar into his ash tray as he poured himself a drink. “Za sbychu mecht,” he said in salute.

  Chapter 21

  Seven weeks and five and a half days in transit Daedalus exited hyperspace to find she had overshot the mark yet again. It took only a half hour for the sensory team to find the ship's location after all; Proxima Centauri's red dwarf was rather prevalent in the sky around them. They crunched the numbers and determined they were off course by 0.4 light years, not a lot, but a significant oversight. Kaku was a bit embarrassed as were the navigators. They recalculated while the crew did a quick survey of the ship. Captain Locke ordered a report to Earth with a communication's laser.

  Jamey adjusted and fine tuned the hyperdrive again. He was unsure why they kept going off course; they were either over compensating or something else was going on. They had an odometer that was supposed to be accurate in tracing the distance they were traveling; he wondered about that. Could there be some sort of time dilation going on? One the crew wasn't aware of in hyperspace? The only way they would be able to know would be when they returned to earth and compared the ship's clock to those in Sol.

  Kaku and Ben argued over the navigational software; it became a daily thing with them. The navigator insisted they had it wrong. The variables were either being misapplied or they were cutting it too fine somewhere somehow. Kaku dragged Jamey in to go over the numbers once again. “Or there was too much slack,” Ben said when Jamey who had come into the discussion as a neutral party started to side with the fin.

  “Which one is it, one or the other?” Jamey asked with a bit of sarcastic snark. He'd put up with a lot from Ben, but the other man's bigotry and sarcasm was wearing on his nerves. He knew he was getting defensive, but he couldn't help it. He was tired and had a throbbing headache from the math.

  Ben glared at him. “You watch your tone young man,” Ben growled as he stomped off.

  “You are under ship's discipline, Mister Castill,” the XO reminded him when Ben brought the argument to her attention. She called Jamey in the following morning to address the problem. To, as she put it, “nip it in the bud.” “Do remember that. And remember to treat the officers of this ship with respect at all times,” she warned icily. He had nodded dutifully to the rebuke.

  He'd unloaded with Kathy though when they'd gotten time alone together later that evening. He was smarting from being the target of blame Kathy realized, even though it wasn't his fault. She did her best to console him but knew that nothing would help until they solved the problem.

  They ran a series of simulations with the computer. The ones that they ran on systems cut out of the ship's net were off course. But the ones in the ship's net were spot on. That didn't make any sense, so they tried it again with the same results. Jamey tried backtracking the two courses, and they came out perfect. “They both can't be right. Something is wrong here,” he insisted.

  The computer tech reasoned that the systems offline didn't have the processing power to handle the simulation so it was skipping steps along the way. They went with the simulated course from the ship's net. Carefully they repositioned the ship for the final jump.

  When the ship was ready, the capacitors for the hyperdrive and force emitters were charged. At the captain's order, Kaku initiated the jump into hyperspace, discharging the capacitors to open the rip and push the ship into hyperspace. Fortunately it was short, planned
for just over six days.

  Before they jumped Kaku set his implants and the implants of the other dolphins to keep an independent log. The log would record their every action and therefore course changes in the ship. He planned to use it as evidence when they had another argument. But within a day of their jump he noted the ship was veering off its pre-planned course.

  Kaku insisted they were off course when he called it to the attention of first Ben and then the XO who was on duty as senior officer. Ben had dismissed the complaint, but the XO had taken it seriously. “You have proof?” He uploaded the calculations and course log he'd kept in his implants as evidence, then ran his own simulation on a computer off the net to prove it. The XO frowned, darting looks at an increasingly reddening Ben Whitefeather.

  She called the captain who pulled them all together for a meeting. Ben argued about it with the dolphin for some time before the captain intervened and overruled him. Seething Ben adjusted the course to compensate, splitting the difference. He was adamant they were off course though right up until Daedalus exited hyperspace 4.14 light years from Sol and outside the red dwarf star system of Proxima Centauri within an AU of their planned exit point. The crew broke into a celebration when that victory was announced.

  “I bet he won't admit he was wrong,” Kathy told Jamey quietly in passing.

  Jamey snorted as he eyed the chief navigator. “Not on your life. He doesn't like the fins. I know he's tried to run the helm simulator. He can handle it for an hour, but his reaction time and instincts aren't up to the fins. Nowhere near enough.”

  “And he's jealous as hell about it,” Kathy said. “And now to add insult to injury Kaku just showed him up by doing his job better than Ben could, which must stick in his craw sideways.”

  “Yep, things are going to be interesting,” Jamey sighed.

  “I just wish we'd do a quick turnaround. Not linger,” Kathy said.

  “We are here as we cross the system. Oh, you're talking about Alpha Centauri?” he asked. She nodded. He shrugged. “Not my call, honey. The flight plan said to wait on the probes data so we will.”

  “I still don't see a need. They could send it back by laser,” she grumbled.

  “This way we can carry it back faster … and when a copy does arrive, it will prove we've been here,” he said.

  She rolled her eyes in exasperation. “Don't you get started on conspiracy nuts, Jamey!” She growled. He smiled as the celebration in the mess wound down. “Yes I know they are out there, but please don't spoil this!” she hissed, eyes darting from one side to the other to indicate other listeners. He nodded.

  As the ship powered down her hyperdrive, the ship was oriented so her laser communications emitter was fixed on the distant Sol star. Their target was Lagroose station 34 outside the Oort cloud. The station had receiver farms kilometers across set up to pick up their transmission. Finding the target over the distance they'd traveled seemed daunting, but Juliana More the communications officer was certain they'd get it done. The crew uploaded their telemetry and entire database in laser directed to Sol. The captain ordered a complete upload of the ship's log. Since the ship was planned to be in system for a month, the ship sent her entire raw telemetry feed as well as a copy of her database, then streamed her every action live. They stopped short of sending video other than video messages; there wasn't quite enough bandwidth for that. Personal messages were sent out; they were amused to send out messages to people who'd paid for the privilege of receiving a message from another star.

  As the communication's crew wrestled with that project, the survey crew were also at work on their project. Ibraham Nakumora, their officer, had been busy trying to refine the sensor imagery while they had been in hyperspace. He'd picked up a couple kilometers of range and a little better resolution but not much. He'd had his crew do quick surveys on each exit, now they swung into action. They did another last minute feverish check of their probes with the engineers assigned to the project before they sent out the probes throughout the solar system.

  Five of the probes were aimed at the approximate location of the known planets in the system. They would swing around the system, using each planet as a slingshot while also getting as much data as possible about it. Their courses had been plotted years in advance since those five planets had been known for decades by Terrestrial astronomers. One had been found back in the first decade of the previous century. Unfortunately, all of the planets were Mercury class, too small to sustain life. Since the local star was a cool red dwarf, her Goldilocks zone was calculated to be between 0.5 and 0.7 AU from the star. None of the planets fell in that zone.

  The astronomers back in Sol had spotted what they thought were a couple possible dwarf planets. Ibraham's teams went to work scouring the sky to find them as well as any other planets their counterparts may have missed.

  Jamey was suspicious of their ongoing navigational issues; he knew they had bugs to work out but the situation felt … wrong. Ben brushed it off, after all it was a new system, new team, and he kept insisting in meetings that the dolphins were to blame. They kept maneuvering unnecessarily and didn't follow the course set by the navigators closely enough. Jamey wasn't so certain of that. The ship and navigator should be able to keep track of the ship's course and compensate for the maneuvers of the helmsman, so something was off. Since they weren't needed for the next several months, he convinced Captain Locke that they should work on refining their navigational software. The Captain had given him his blessing.

  He ran a series of sims with Ben and Kaku. Together they found nothing wrong, which was odd. Jamey wasn't sure what he should have found, but there should have been some error. Some place to say here is where you went off course. They ran the sims with the raw data and came out with a proper jump. The filter was not needed.

  Daedalus drifted inward, conserving her fuel as her sensors probed the system. They shaped their course to pass over the elliptic on a heading to Alpha Centauri. Astronomers in Sol had been probing the nearest star to Sol for thousands of years with their telescopes and sensors, but it would be nice to get back to Earth and let the current generation know if they got it right or not.

  As the probes drifted on course to the five mercury class planets, the six possible dwarf planets Ibraham's crew had spotted, and thin belts, the engineering crew worked on their own projects. Chief Shiku had been frustrated by the inability to do real maintenance on the ship while underway. Now he had the time so he put it to good use, practically driving his crew to drop or mutiny as they did an overhaul of every major system one at a time. They tore into the ship's systems to do what he called overdue maintenance while cataloging any wear into the database for further review. “We'll figure out some sort of tune-up schedule later,” he told Captain Locke during a morning meeting.

  “You mean like a six thousand kilometer oil change?” Ben quipped.

  “Huh?” Andrea asked, confused.

  “Flatlander reference,” the chief engineer explained in an aside for her benefit. She nodded. “We have a one and two million kilometer standard in sol for sublight vessels. I'm not sure what we'll set here,” he said with a shrug.

  “Eventually after each transit or round trip perhaps?” the Captain asked, looking from the chief to the XO.

  “The good thing about all this is we're setting the standard. We're writing the manual,” the XO said. “It pays to be cautious. At least until we're sure how far and how fast we can push this gal,” she said.

  The other officers nodded. “We can't do a lot of maintenance or repairs on some of the systems while we are in hyper. Critical systems …” the chief shook his head. “We realized that from the get go, but I didn't realize how much it'd tie my hands until now.”

  “Don't break your people. People who are tired make avoidable mistakes. Mistakes that can hurt them or the ship,” the XO warned.

  “Definitely. We're being very delicate with the drives. I don't want to jog our power train either, but I think we've got some b
uild up in the injectors. I am trying to find a better way to tell but …” he shrugged helplessly.

  “Well, the good news is, you've got weeks to do the job, so take your time and do it right,” the skipper told him. The chief and XO nodded. “And you've been running training sims to keep our people sharp?” he asked, turning to the XO.

  “Aye, sir. The sensor and communications people are busy, and that project Jamey, Ben, and Kaku are on are keeping them out of my hair,” she said smiling slightly. The captain nodded. “I don't think they are getting anywhere, and I know they are frustrated by the lack of progress,” she said.

  “I'll see if I can help, but I'm not sure how much. A fresh set of eyes might spot something they missed … but I'm lost when it comes to the math,” Ibraham said, shaking his head.

  “You've got enough on your plate with the probe reports and sensors,” the XO said.

  Ibraham waved an impatient hand. “Sylvia keeps track of most of that. Right now we have to wait; the data doesn't change as much as you'd think. We'll get scads and scads when they get closer to the planets though.”

  “Didn't you say you found another pair of moons yesterday?”

  “Moons or asteroids, we're locking their orbits down. Like I said, we'll know more when the probes are closer. I'll lend them a hand.” He turned to the captain. “If that is okay with you, sir,” he said.