Kemp nodded. The constant spinning up and spinning down of the hab ring had been an enormous pain on the Mad Astra. It tended to dictate carefully planned flight vectors, in order to minimize time spent under thrust.
“The ferry pilot mentioned something about you having done some mods. You’re not going to rip the hab ring right off the ship the first time you pour it on, are you?”
Jennings laughed. “No the hab ring can actually withstand far more straight-line strain than even the 4600 nacelles can provide. Even on the Astra, we could technically have accelerated with the hab ring spinning. But if we did suddenly have to maneuver, we’d have popped the hab ring out of its bearings.”
Jennings stopped and turned. With a flourish, he gestured to a row of doors. “And these are your staterooms.”
Kemp looked in the first door and whistled. As an officer, he’d had a bigger room than the crew anyway, but this put his former room to shame. “I could get used to this.”
Narang looked inside the next unit. “On the ICDC budget, I usually have to fly coach. And share seat space with a barnyard animal.”
Captain Jennings grinned. “Make yourselves at home, then come up to the bridge when you’re ready.”
Kemp watched as the captain walked down the corridor. “Now, there is a happy man.”
Reports of My Death
Moore pulled the next item from his in-basket. Unbelievable. It was over two hundred and fifty years since the invention of computers. And, for almost that long, pundits had been predicting a paperless society. Moore rubbed the sheet between thumb and forefinger. At least they were no longer using dead trees, but nowadays the use of plastics gave the environmentalists fits. You just couldn’t win with the loony left.
He scanned through the report. The Mad Astra had departed, headed for the Lunar Antipodal docking station. Moore snorted. They would charge Jennings five times what the Navy would have levied. And nickel-and-dime him for every little thing. Probably charge him for micro-meteor impacts.
Well, that at least was no longer his problem. Moore frowned for a moment. Strangely, the ICDC weren’t coming on as strong as expected. And of course, Jennings had had his teeth pulled, although Moore would have expected him to try something less direct.
Internally, there was a push to have his use of a nuke investigated by the JAG, but other than that…
Moore shrugged. All upside, as far as he was concerned.
The admiral continued to work through his in-basket. Promotions, disciplinary issues, logistics and supply, quarterly reviews, all the administrivia that he hated so much, but could do in his sleep.
He glanced at the next item, a surveillance report, then scanned the contents quickly. His jaw dropped, and he went back to the top and re-read the whole thing slowly, several times.
“BENTLEY!”
There was a crash as Bentley’s chair struck the wall, then he poked his head through the office door. “Sir?”
“The Mad Astra. Did anyone actually show up to pilot her?”
Lt. Bentley looked confused for a moment, then went to his desk and began to dig through his files. “I have the departure report here, sir. All protocols handled properly, no citations. A completely forgettable event.”
“Find me the report on the arrival of the pilot.”
Bentley spent several minutes at his workstation, then looked up to meet the admiral’s stare. A sheen of sweat showed on his forehead. “Uh, there doesn’t seem to be any record of anyone arriving. Of course, they’re different departments, there’s no reason to tie the two together…”
Moore leaned forward, his face in his hands. He took several deep breaths and tried for calm. “Contact Lunar Antipodal. Find out if the Astra ever showed up. For that matter, find out if they even expect it.”
Bentley scrambled to comply, and Moore scanned down the report again. A transcript of a conversation between Dr. Charles Kemp and someone who purported to be Ivan Pritchard.
Shit and Hell.
* * *
The officers seated around the table looked nervous. And well they should. Moore hadn’t been forthcoming with details in his phone calls, but enough came through in his tone to make it clear that they were facing a major snafu, and attendance was not optional.
“Pritchard is still alive.” Moore saw no reason to ease into it. Better to get the ball rolling as quickly as possible.
“How?” said Castillo. “You’re not saying he survived the nuke?”
Moore shook his head and nodded to Bentley. The lieutenant stepped forward and passed out a set of stapled sheets to each person. Moore waited until he left the room before continuing the discussion.
“This is a surveillance report. A transcript of a conversation on Dr. Kemp’s phone. It says it all, I think.”
Admiral Richards frowned at him. “You had a tap on the doctor’s phone? Was that authorized?”
“Oh, don’t go all law-and-order on me, Richards. We all knew this would be a messy operation. The doctor had a history of tête-à-têtes with Pritchard. A tap on his phone was the obvious next step. We’ve put one on Robinson’s phone as well.”
Richards rubbed her forehead. “Damn, I wish I could un-know this. I think this puts us squarely over the line, Moore.”
“Whereas setting off a nuke in near-Earth space didn’t? Really, Admiral?”
Castillo interjected, “Let’s deal with the immediate problem, please. The threat is still extant. Possibly worse, now, since Pritchard is in the wind.”
“Should we arrest Kemp?” Gerrard asked.
“For what, exactly, Commodore?”
Gerrard frowned at Moore. “Conspiracy? Accessory after the fact?”
“Conspiracy to escape an illegal assassination attempt? Accessory to a successful escape from same? I don’t see a prosecutor wanting to take on that particular challenge.” Moore rubbed his eyes with thumb and forefinger for a moment. “We could maybe work up something to do with theft of a space ship, but we’d need Jennings to swear out a complaint. I don’t imagine that working out for us, either.”
“We are so much in the shit…” Gerrard muttered.
Moore chose to ignore him. If the man didn’t get it together, though, steps would have to be taken.
At that moment, Lt. Bentley came in, waving some paper. “Response from Lunar Antipodal. No flight plan filed, no berth reserved, no contact, no arrival. They totally didn’t know what we were talking about.”
Moore lifted an eyebrow. It sounded like Bentley was going a little bit squirrely as well. He’d have to be watched.
“Gentlemen, we have a situation. My immediate thought is to send out everything we have in a search pattern. Problems with that plan?”
“Authorization, for starters,” Castillo said. “You’ve gone off the rez, Admiral. Excuse me,” he added, seeing Moore’s return glare, “we have gone off the rez. The last thing we need is to attract a full Board of Inquiry. Especially not right now. We might be forgiven later, if we are ultimately successful. Right now, I just see a whole lot of heck in our future.”
“What about an exercise? We’re due for one,” Lt. Bentley said.
Moore realized with a start that the lieutenant hadn’t left the room after delivering the communication. That was a breach of protocol, as was his speaking out of turn.
On the other hand, it was an excellent suggestion. Naval exercises were a tradition as old as the Navy itself. And often a smoke screen for other actions. And Lagrange Four was overdue for one. Moore decided he would give Bentley the benefit of the doubt, this time around.
“Good point, lieutenant. What have we got available, and how fast can we deploy? Consistent with this being a non-urgent, completely routine naval exercise, of course.”
“Uh, sir?” Bentley looked like he realized he’d overstepped, but couldn’t get out of the mode. “We could make it an exercise based on an emergency rescue, where we don’t know the precise location
of the derelict ship.”
Moore nodded. “Surprise exercise. Excellent.” And why was he being schooled by a lieutenant? For the first time in his life, Moore wondered if he was getting too old for this.
Castillo looked skeptical. “Naval exercises are fine and dandy, Admiral. But you’ll want to make sure you pull it off. The Navy has a history of accepting faits accomplis if they’re successful. Make sure you succeed.”
“Thanks, Alan. That clarifies things.”
“I’m not just spouting platitudes, Ted. I’m serious. An argument could be made for the nuke, at least, that it had theoretical support from the Scenarios people. This will take you completely off the continent. I don’t see any kind of defensive argument or rationalization that would work.”
Moore sighed and nodded. “Understood. But so far, we’ve deployed a nuclear device during peacetime, and failed to accomplish the goal. If we throw in the towel at this point, we’re not only criminals, we’re also failures. I think our only valid option is to double down. Success is the only outcome that will bring us out of this with our asses intact.”
Humanity’s Options
The Mad Astra floated in free fall, far enough from the Earth/Moon system to avoid visual detection unless someone knew where to look. On the bridge, a silvery ball of nanites was slowly growing. Time for the next step, whatever that might be.
What now, Ralph?
We need a communications station.
The response was accompanied by the usual image of a little bear.
Ivan pulled up a 3D map of the solar system in the holotank.
Where?
Unimportant.
Okay then. Best to head a little farther to celestial north, so they wouldn’t be transmitting through the ecliptic. And if Dr. Kemp had picked up Ivan’s hints, that’s where he would head. Ivan wanted to be far enough from in-system clutter so that he’d be easily detectable on radar. Fortunately, Ralph so far seemed oblivious to that whole line of action.
Ivan set the autopilot, then turned his attention back to Ralph.
Construction material?
Image of the Astra.
They’d be using Ivan’s ride as construction material.
That makes this a one-way trip, Ralph. What will happen next?
Makers will respond.
No, what will happen to us?
Unsure.
Image of warships. Image of riots. Emotion of contempt.
Well, that was suboptimal.
What MIGHT happen, Ralph? What are the possible options?
Ivan received a series of images in quick succession. There were two groups. Therefore, two alternatives, presumably. They went by too fast to parse, but Ivan had recently found that he now had a perfect memory. He would have to take the time to work out a series of possible interpretations, then query Ralph. It was like a game of Twenty Questions, where you didn’t necessarily agree on the meanings of words.
The main problem seemed to be Ralph itself. Whatever else it was, it was not an A.I.—more like a very complex Expert System. As near as Ivan could tell from their limited communications, Ralph didn’t have an ego—a sense of self. It had directives, but no real sense of self-preservation or an agenda of its own. This appeared to be deliberate, otherwise Ralph would as likely as not switch sides to the Arts.
That Ralph seemed willing to admit this in such a matter-of-fact manner went a long way toward proving the statement.
The problem with an Expert System, even one as advanced as this, was that it had limited flexibility and no imagination. What it had instead were a series of goals and decision trees. Which was where Ivan came in. He provided the local knowledge, and the drive to accomplish the task. It seemed convoluted, but he was getting a sense of the age of the civilizations behind this scheme. They apparently had a lot of experience with this stuff.
The goal seemed to be to welcome humanity into the, uh, Federation. But first, they had to survive if the Arts showed up.
And, as it turned out, humanity also had to survive its own nature. From some of Ralph’s comments, Ivan was beginning to get that this might be the more immediate threat.
If the Makers were willing to help humanity out with some of these issues, then obviously Ivan should be cooperating fully. But there was still the possibility that Ralph’s visit had more sinister consequences. Ralph was strangely reluctant to answer some questions, and Ivan’s spidey sense was starting to twinge.
He needed a strategy for the latter possibility. It would, unfortunately, probably involve deliberately getting himself blown up. He’d have to wing it to a large extent, but some chains of events did seem to be coming together in a way that could be useful.
Naval Exercise
Twelve Navy vessels—four battle cruisers and eight frigates—set out from the Lagrange Four Naval base on a surprise exercise. Aboard the flagship, the cruiser Outbound, Admiral Moore stood watching the bridge crew. A double horseshoe shape on two levels accommodated all the stations required on a Navy ship. Crew spoke quietly into their headsets and worked their panels with no wasted motion. The aura of calm efficiency made Moore nostalgic.
Captain Xuân Lê sat, relaxed but alert, in the Command chair. Trim and clean-cut, his buzz cut immaculate, the captain was a graduate of the new Naval Academy. Moore still wasn’t completely convinced of the value of the changes, but so far Lê seemed competent enough.
A buzz of focused activity showed off the crew’s skill. Moore felt the nostalgia turn to regret. He’d always wanted to make admiral, and it had seemed like the pinnacle of his career at the time; but he admitted now that the days commanding a vessel had been the most enjoyable part of his time in the Navy.
Lê glanced in his direction, but would wait for the admiral to volunteer information or give orders. In an exercise, unless Moore spoke up, he was invisible.
Bentley had put together a masterful piece of detective work, collating and integrating observation and tracking data not only from the base, but several traffic control centers and shipyards in the Earth/Moon system. The resultant trajectory had considerable scope for error, but they at least had a general direction for the Mad Astra. Lê raised an eyebrow at the specified coordinates, but followed orders without comment.
Moore smiled. A rescue exercise at close to perpendicular to the ecliptic was unusual, but not unheard of. The whole point of exercises, after all, was to practice activities that wouldn’t be routine.
After checking with Lê, Moore retired to the captain’s Ready Room. He settled into the chair behind the desk with a sigh. This wasn’t a combat situation, so they were using the Hab Bridge, which gave them normal half-gee gravity. At some point, Admiral Moore would have to upgrade the sitcon, and they would move to the on-axis bridge. Moore hoped that time would be brief. Although he wouldn’t admit it publicly, he’d always hated low-gee and free-fall conditions.
He pulled out his tablet and connected to NavNet. First, he checked with Bentley on his course analysis, but no joy—Bentley reported that his current estimate was probably about as good as it was going to get.
Next, a quick email to Castillo, who had been tasked with repelling assaults from the ICDC and Jennings. While he waited for a response, he worked on tactical details for the current “exercise”.
Castillo’s response came back quickly—disturbingly so, until Moore read the contents.
No further attempted incursions. Both actors are quiet. No explanation forthcoming.
Moore smiled, glad for the unexpected reprieve. Then he lost his smile as the last sentence registered. Castillo considered this state of affairs anomalous, obviously. And so should he. Something else was in play. They had access to information of some kind that Moore did not.
Moore reached into a drawer and pulled out a pen and notepad. Doodling always helped him think.
Item: Jennings had been partially defanged with the Little Rock threat, but it would be naïve to think that he�
�d just slink away. If Jennings thought Pritchard was dead, killed by the Navy, he’d be in high dudgeon. Therefore, Jennings believed Pritchard to be alive. Kemp had told him.
Item: The ICDC had no real dog in this hunt. Without Narang pushing, the ICDC would coast to a stop. Therefore, Narang was no longer pushing. Kemp had told her.
These events must have happened very recently, since he’d not yet seen transcripts of any such conversations. Therefore, they would be reacting now.
This was beginning to resemble a conspiracy. Moore chuckled briefly at the irony of that thought, coming from him.
So, what could he expect? Jennings had purchased a new ship. He’d be itching to take it for a cruise in any case. Moore certainly would, in his shoes.
Moore reached for the intercom button and pressed it.
“Lê here.”
“Captain, it is possible that a bogey either is or soon will be following our track. Please keep an eye open for it.”
“High Command? Newsies? SSE? What?”
“Civilian. And with good legs.”
“This is developing into a very odd exercise, Admiral. I hope this will all be clarified at some point.”
“So do I, Captain. So do I.”
Strike Force
Ivan glanced at the monitor. Sure enough, he saw a dozen bright points of light leaving Earth’s environs, heading his way. The corona from the fusion drives would be far more visible from the rear, of course, but there was enough omnidirectional glow to register, if you were looking for it.
The Mad Astra was not, at the moment, maneuverable. Cannibalization of the ship to build the communications station involved periods of time where everything was in transition and nothing was operational. He’d have a working but much reduced version of the Astra in about twenty-six hours. Not soon enough to get out of range of the Navy.
The Singularity Trap Page 24