In point of fact, I felt us more in danger on this cruise, with some of the most advance stealth tech I'd ever seen, and a weapon environment that rivaled the best anywhere in this ship class, than I would have had we been on a high-value cargo run aboard some old, unarmed hauler tub, out in the pioneer worlds, where piracy can be a real problem. With something like this new jump engine to hide, it would be an easy choice, even a likely one, for the Handshake to destroy any and all interlopers out of hand. I doubted we'd even thought all the implications through yet, but you could bet your credit that the Corporatespace bigwigs had.
It was also certain that a secret this big couldn't remain one forever. Sooner or later, this would get out -- either through official channels, or cloak-and-dagger ones like...well, like us.
Either way, it would represent a sea change. Even if the tech was far from ready, or had severe limitations, the very knowledge of its existence would be electric on the movers-and-shakers in all the industries of space.
I sat at my station, weapons ready, though not powered up and hot.
Mavis had brought us down to a crawl, and we'd maneuvered slowly near the orbit of the station, only about fifty-thousand kilometers back, following the same solar track it was on with PS2GG. We moved without using thrusters or the main drive at this point, just stabilized and watching.
"How long do we have to wait for the next test?" the ship's captain asked from her cockpit. She rarely left there, in fact, only getting up to use the fresher now and then, and to grab meals and drinks. She never seemed to sleep, and eschewed the company of people, which was something I liked about her. Chris was in the Common Room with the Sensor Spesh twins, and he seemed to spend a lot of time, now, keeping them from arguing about really juvenile things.
"We're doing a comprehensive stat check on all the highly encrypted chatter that got archived," John answered. "According to cracked communications, it looks like another flight test is pending. That info is days old, though; the latest stuff is still decoding. There could have been a schedule change in the meantime. We'll know in a few hours."
"As sneaky as this ship is," Dieter stated from Engineering on the open channel, "there's no way we can physically follow the test vessel out to its jump-off without being spotted. The engineers and scientists, to say nothing of Orbital Control, will be monitoring every element of the trial theater. We're hard to see, sure -- but they'll be looking hard for problems and every possible variable."
"We're not moving in," Chris assured him, and the rest of us. "I just want a closer view of the process. If we have actual optical vid of this thing in action, we'll be, well..."
"Heroes?" I supplied. "Not in Corporatespace. And maybe not in the Senate back home, either, when they learn they have a major industrial espionage crisis to deal with."
"I'm really getting sick of this conversation, Ejoq."
"Right. Gotcha."
So I shut up and checked my equipment. I monitored the area. I listened and waited.
Later that same shift, we had an update from John.
"Okay, the latest batch of decryptions talk about the next ship trial going forward in just about twenty-three hours from now. There's mention of certain procedures in place if there's an abort or delay, including the reshuffling of a few support craft farther out. I'm not seeing any of that, so we can probably assume the test is still on."
That left time on our hands.
From a purely dispassionate point of view, this was not the best direction for this mission to take, but I wasn't so removed from it all that I couldn't feel the importance. The basic momentum this breakthrough would have, once public, would be a like a tide across the stars. That would have been hyperbole only the day before. Now it was possibly an understatement.
Who wouldn't want this? Who wouldn't need it? How would it change space flight, and, more specifically...my profession?
I put a few sims in to run automatically, so as to check the results of some variables I'd come up with after looking a little more closely at the public info available on that Linebreaker Cruiser, Liquidator. It seemed likely its officers took the ship's name and their responsibilities seriously, especially in this situation. Maybe they'd even be desirous of a chance to prove their value. I didn't intend to give them that opportunity, and if my sims bore out my theory, we could avoid a clash entirely, even if we were somehow spotted.
The technical specs on the stealth suite we sported were not exactly an open book for me, since most such elements were need-to-know, but I had full access to those aspects that bore directly upon the defense of the ship. We could vanish from full view with a silent running approach, but only if we could gain a moment's distraction.
Liquidator had top-of-the-line sensors for a military vessel, but the station likely had even better. The scientists and engineers would need them to monitor every single aspect of the ship trials. We had also picked up pings from all over the inner star-system from a huge number of monitor drones tied into the test network. These robots didn't seem to sport fine-grained sensors, but they would allow the builders a tight view of the experimental vessel at all times.
This meant much more than us keeping out of sight. We might have to actually get them to look the other way, as it were -- and that's what I was reaching for with my sims.
It was all quiet and unremarkable, except for one small thing. During the previous shift, Stinna broke in on the open channel and announced that she'd picked up some faint transmissions that didn't correspond to any of the vessels or drones we'd yet plotted in the system. This raised eyebrows for a few minutes, until John (just irritated by her voice, I think) pointed to records of several other hard-to-read signals, and then directed her to the textbook description of some obscure effect known as a Doppler echo. It was described as junk noise from stellar interference that combined harmonically in a very specific way with human signalling. It was uncommon, though well-documented, and involved stuff called cascading chaoticism, instrument over-precision, and hyper-focused data sets. I didn't understand any of it, but, based on Stinna's sudden silence, I guessed that she did.
Eventually I racked out, having put in over two shifts straight by this point, but it was hard to sleep. I just laid there, sipping Vaussermin from a red cup with cute swirly patterns.
SS1 was in his place in the Common Room (which, by now, could have used a new name, considering it was the Sensor Specialists' actual duty station). Stinna was in the fresher, Mavis up front, and Chris was snoring quietly in the next bunk over. Dieter must have been back in Engineering, and I suspected he had built a nest for himself in there for close monitoring of the ship's many systems. Only he and Mavis had the clearance to enter Engineering, due to the classified and proprietary nature of the stealth tech. Siddel, speaking for Meerschaum, had been very specific on this point to us all. Again, it was need-to-know, and only the ship's Engineer and Captain really did.
At any rate, I was on my back, drinking Red Runoff, and thinking about the future.
A universe with instant travel.
A universe where no one had to wait, terrified, on an approaching missile strike; or wonder if that dodgy little freighter with the fake transponder was a threat. A universe where you could just jump away if anyone came at you, no matter where you found yourself in a star system.
In such a future, who would need a professional gunner?
Who would need or want an ex-gunner with a mixed bag of unrelated qualifications that always put him behind the first pick for other positions?
I had a terrifying flash then, of an old spacer with my name -- the butt of jokes, drifting from station to station, begging for attention with his ancient stories, and maybe begging for work on the new ships he barely understood and likely despised.
That future was foggy and depressing. I couldn't grasp my life there at all with what I knew about this one. No one would see things the same way, once this tech went into mass production. Certainly no one who might be interested in hiring
me. Doris would have a hard sell with her Golden Boy in that place, and I decided I didn't want to find myself there with a profession that only a dinosaur would recognize.
A galaxy in motion required people in motion.
But I still wanted to be here...out in this vacuum, working, traveling, seeing and learning...
I thought about it long and hard until I finally drifted off -- but by then I had a plan.
And it started by getting through this job.
OOOOOOOOOO
"Could you repeat that, please, Mr. Dosantos?"
I sat forward in my chair, nervously, uncomfortable in my brand new formal suit. I'd only bought it that morning, a quick grab off the rack from a clothiers on post, just before shove-off. It was the only one I'd ever owned up to that point, and frankly couldn't see the appeal.
Emaross Basta, Customer Field Representative for Meerschaum Assoc., ILLC, was looking at me incredulously. They all were.
"A violation does, in fact, exist," I explained. "There is a substantial military presence there. I don't have the evidence with me right now, but, as a member of the mission sent to gather this express information, I'm willing to sign an affidavit that what I'm saying is the truth. That should be enough for you to justify any further investigations."
This was taking place in an unassuming office given over to United Humanity and its sub-contractor for the duration of the cruise. We were aboard the Bellaire Class Grand Carrier, Citystate, Alliance Fleet, Flagship of the Zulu Dawn Detachment under Admiral Bethany Dusane. I hadn't met the good admiral yet, but Emaross had, and he'd gotten the fear of God breathed into his bouncy, self-assured frame. That was entertaining, but it didn't bode well for the rest of us.
As the supervising go-between for Meerschaum and UH, Emaross was ultimately responsible for collecting and collating all the necessary reports and follow-up information of the mission. Sitting in a borrowed chair next to him was Annia Wi'iloni, here because it was she who had done the actual nuts-and-bolts layout of the job.
Annia looked worried. This was only appropriate, under the circumstances.
Lawyers for both organizations flanked their respective clients, Meerschaum on the right, UH on the left. A freelance arbiter with a very high reputation and security classification sat at the end, quiet but watchful. They were all in a line, on one side of the table.
I was on the other side, alone.
When the call came in, Siddel had been on a sleeper shuttle out-system from Juniper, having just left Circlet Station. As expected, he had resigned from his position as mission supervisor while I'd been away. There was an emergency clause in his contract that stated he had to return to UH employment, however temporarily, if any serious complications arose with ongoing projects he'd left behind.
This one certainly counted, so he was served with a Contract Summons at the jump point, and handed a ticket for cold passage aboard a superliner just then leaving. He had been on his way to Greenbelt, where his fiancé was waiting, so the Summons doubtlessly represented unwelcome news.
At some point, there was a scheduling complication with a connecting starjump, and Siddel's arrival was delayed past Fleet's announced departure time from Murietta System. Both the UH and Meerschaum camps were annoyed by that: he missed our ride, and had to follow on as best he could. That wouldn't be hard, though, since Fleet earmarked a fast personnel jumpship just to carry him over the border into Corporatespace, and then on to 216-11B where we would be waiting.
"Not that part, important though it is," Emaross instructed. "I mean, could you please explain once more about the man we have in custody?"
OOOOOOOOOO
four
* * *
"What's the ETA on that decryption?" Chris asked both John and Stinna, tension in his voice like a coiled spring. He seemed like a stable, smart guy, but the edginess of the moment could make a saint bark like a mean dog.
This was not where we were supposed to be, according to the mission briefing back on Circlet, and I was becoming a creaking wheel about it, spinning around and around with the same old wobble. He'd actually told me to shut up, in those exact words, when I brought it up again. And no one else seemed to be in a hurry to agree with me.
It was a matter of degrees: degrees of risk, of liability, of moral shading. There wasn't anything I could do about it. He was the boss of the job, and the others liked what he was saying. Or so it seemed.
Once again, I found myself at odds with management. Once again, I had a problem with the way things were being run, and I couldn't seem to follow simple orders like Shut up! Not for long anyway.
But I was quiet now. Whether or not I wanted us to be here was immaterial, because here we were. All I could do was keep watch; if anyone screwed up, things would get very hot, very fast.
Liquidator had scrambled five of its fighterboats, and they fanned out spherically around the test ship, about five thousand kilometers distance. We'd taken to referring to the thing as a freejump, because, well, it was free to jump anywhere it wanted. In theory. I mean, if they had it functioning perfectly, they'd have been selling it already. Obviously, there were still kinks to work out. Maybe a lot of them.
"Yeah, sorry," SS1 replied, sounding a bit sheepish. He pasted up a copy of the latest transmissions to and from the station that he'd been able to decrypt. They were nearly an hour old, and Shady Lady was capturing more all the time, as the next test approached. The freejump vessel involved was Jaybird again. We had it on visual from the moment it left the station, but our angle of view was from the back and slightly below, so these images weren't too impressive. Stinna had been able to put together a detailed model from just that, though, which is what I was staring at now, in Gunnery.
Jaybird was running across my retinals, spinning on an imaginary axis. Roughly teardrop-shaped, it looked like it could have had no more than a crew of two. That it was being piloted by people, instead of an AI or by remote, was obvious from the decrypted chatter. The pilot, in addition to flying the ship, also monitored it locally for all changes. From the highly technical character of his conversations back and forth with the station on a separate channel, it was clear he was also an engineer active in the thing's development. He kept up a certain familiarity of discourse with his colleagues outside the ship that his partner didn't seem to share.
The co-pilot was all business, precise and thorough in her broadcasted confirmations and go-aheads. She seemed less friendly over all, but whether it was because she had fewer bosom comrades on the other side of the mic, or because this was simply how she'd been trained, it was impossible to say.
Speculating, I saw it like this: the pilot (and nominal commander of the flight) was a scientist and engineer. The co-pilot was possibly Team, retired or current, and there only to help fly the machine.
Civilian and military, hand in hand.
Naturally, in a deeply commerce-driven society like the Handshake, civvie researchers and eggheads, backed by private and commercial investors, led the charge. Any commercially viable tech or products derived from the research would be licensed out to corporate and governmental agencies -- and over here those were often one and the same. But for Corporate Security Space Branch to be embedded in the project at this stage, which seemed rather early yet, meant they were seeing the same national defense issues on the horizon that I did. And their commitment of a Linebreaker warship on full time guard duty only bolstered this conclusion.
The military implications, to which, I confess, I'd only given passing attention before, now seemed wickedly sharp-edged and vivid.
The way things currently stood was that every nation with a sizable defense presence in the form of manned and automated vessels had their assets, as a matter of course, separated into two general categories: ships and boats. While the distinction between the two was often far from clear, by and large, ships had starjump engines, and boats did not. Ships traveled across the stars so as to have a wider field of action, while boats focused on the defense of
singular assets, and particular stellar systems.
Warships, therefore, tended to hover around the perimeter of a primary's gravity shadow. This allowed for faster travel between stars, since most of them were unwilling to crawl along in normal space for days or weeks, if it could be avoided. Warboats clustered near any high-value assets needing protection, such as stations or inhabited planets, and also cruised around on patrol.
If you could jump deep inside a stellar gravity well, though, you could avoid confrontation with starships entirely. And boats would only be a worry if they could get to you fast enough to put up a fight. That, on its own, seemed unlikely, if you had the ability to jump around the system, attacking at will.
The astro-political and military implications would be enormous. Nations would feel threatened or emboldened, depending upon which side of the technological divide they found themselves. Automated freejump drones with powerful warheads could be used to wipe out stations, slow moving masses of ships, or even cities on planetary surfaces -- all from lightyears away. Peace negotiations would invariably slant in favor of those with this capability. It represented a tech imbalance the like of which humanity hadn't seen since pre-star days, back on Terra. Like fighting a battle on horseback against tanks and aircraft, anyone in the stirrups was bound to have a bad day.
If Team had cottoned on to the implications of the new mapping protocols yet, they hadn't figured out what to do about it. That made the choice of 216-11B, or any other star system in Javelina Region, a mystery. Even before the mapping reassessment, this would have been too close for comfort to an area of interest. At least, it would have been for me, if I were planning this thing. There were considerations involved we had no context for.
Risk Analysis (Draft 04 -- Reading Script) Page 5