by James Peters
“Were you able to disable the beacon? Keep it from leading us right here?”
“In a sense. Nicholai told me about your plan to build dozens of probes with recordings from Earth. He and I decided—”
“What? What did you decide without my input?”
“First off, we asked you for your input. You stared at us in a catatonic stupor. Secondly, listen to the plan before you condemn it. We copied the beacon’s signal as well as a loop of the broadcasts from Earth. I’ve built twenty-four probes; it was everything I could scrounge from the shuttle’s systems. I also programmed the beacons. We can scatter them among this arm of the galaxy, and with any luck, those searching for us will search for years.”
“Sounds like a smart plan. Good work. We can’t be certain how long we have before they get here. What’s your gut tell you?”
Maven’s body clenched up as she talked. “Weeks. We need to launch as soon as we can and get a jump on placing those beacons. I don’t know if the drive has that many jumps left in her.”
“If they’re probes, can’t we just launch them in a random pattern once we escape orbit? They can go in whatever direction, as long as it’s away from Earth.”
“Think about it, Raka. Twenty-Four signals all roughly equally spaced out in an expanding field. If you were looking for something and saw that, where would you look first?”
“At the center of where they had come from.”
“The most logical choice. Also, keep in mind that the probes cannot travel faster than light. We’d lead them right here. We have to jump and place each one.”
“I don’t support you using Earth as a weapon and never will. But the reality of the situation is that we don’t have a choice, and we need to work together. Once Earth is safe from the Empire, we’ll have a long discussion about what to do. At least for the moment, it appears that our goals align, Maven. We work together to prevent the Empire from finding Earth. Deal?”
Maven nearly smiled. “Deal. I believe with time, you’ll come to see things my way, Raka. Let’s take care of the immediate need of protecting this planet. We have a few final preparations, then can launch. Have you seen what we’ve done to the shuttle?”
“No. What have you done?”
“The shuttle’s skin had been through more than it was ever designed for. I found several micro-cracks that needed to be filled or a catastrophic decompression might occur. I also wanted to smooth out the area around the patch to improve the aerodynamics. My only option was a high carbon ceramic finish. She looks a little different now.”
Maven led me outside of the shuttle to look it over.
“It’s black. High carbon ceramic, huh? That seals the cracks?”
“Baking on the ceramic shell gives us the best this planet has to offer. She’ll still fly like a turkey in the atmosphere, but I’ve added a few ribs around the top patch to keep the harmonic feedback from building exponentially.”
“So now instead of a turkey, what, she’ll fly like a buzzard?”
“Not a buzzard. More elegant than that. A swan perhaps.” Maven said. “I like that. The Swan.”
“Call it the black swan. That’s what it is.”
“I like it. It’ll be our name for the shuttle. The Black Swan. Maybe we can even paint one on her side.”
Chapter 30
S.O.S.
Encrypted paired quantum message transcript, decryption by Decrypton™ Ultracomputer
ISLF Field Agent Report
Sirs:
This is an urgent request for assistance from any agents available. We have confirmation that a retrieval force from the Empire is on its way to my location. I cannot stress the importance of this planet to the long-term survival of The Front. Situation is dire. Assistance is needed immediately.
- Agent M.
Chapter 31
Beans and Blueballs
ESS Dissolute Ultralog-Complete™ Log, recorded in accordance with the Patriotic Love for the Empire and Freedom of Monitoring Act. Released under Imperial Order #C53TH341
Lieutenant Denton Morrow picked at his dinner of refried beans served in a bean-flour tortilla, a side of beans in a red sauce, and a sweetened bean desert. No matter how much spice, sugar, or culinary manipulation done, the food remained beans. The ship’s stock had been reduced to very few options and rationing of non-bean-stuff essential. Denton Morrow’s stomach rumbled as he ate, but no one any longer cared about politeness. Flatulence happened regularly and odorously on board the Dissolute; luckily humans become desensitized to olfactory stimulus over time. He turned his fork over, lost in thought.
“Lieutenant Morrow…”
His face went from a disinterested stare to a slight smile as Perry approached, with his own plate of beans.
“Mind if I join you?”
Denton took a small bite from the fork, his lip curled as if it tasted terrible. “Not at all. It’s amazing what Cookie can do with the ingredients we have...”
“I know you don’t like it when I talk in percentages of likelihood…”
“Go ahead, Mr. Tremblan.”
“If the crew doesn’t get something of a less-legume nature to eat soon, the chance of a riot is high.”
“As in how high?”
“Ninety-two point three one percent chance within the next twenty-four hours, based upon historical analysis and crew personality indexes.”
“Wait, let me guess which crew member might be the one to start the riot. Let’s see, either the doctor or could it be Magus Aldis? Hmm, my gut is telling me…” He paused and farted. “Aldis. Definitely. I can smell it in the air. Aldis.”
“Aldis is the most likely instigator, followed by—”
“Understood. I’ll talk to Cookie.” Denton Morrow’s eyes turned to a raised voice coming from the food line.
“Fucking hell, Cookie. I warned you yesterday that my farts were farting in their sleep,” Magnus Aldis said. He snatched a piece of plastic film from the top of a tray, and in a motion so fast and fluid it seemed choreographed, he had the plastic wrapped around Cookie’s head and the film wrapped tightly in a knot behind the man’s head, his arms pulled behind him. The cook gasped and his eyes darted as he tried to breathe. “You’re trying to kill us all, aren’t you? A slow death by methane poisoning. That’s your plan, isn’t it? Your death won’t be so slow. How long can you hold your breath, cook?”
Magnus stared at the cook struggled to free his arms. “The more you fight, the less time you have. Quite the conundrum, isn’t it? Your reptile brain is kicking up the adrenaline, your body wants more air than ever, but you know that it’s against your best interests. Under calm conditions, you might go three or four minutes before blacking out. Like this, I give you two.”
“Let him go, Mr. Aldis,” Denton Morrow said, reaching for his rail pistol and patting his hip, finding no weapon there. He had not been wearing the weapon for the better part of a month. He had become complacent in the sealed ship and normalized routines of daily life.
“Or what?” Magnus said. “You’re going to tell me again? You stopped carrying your weapon twenty-three days ago. Yeah, I noticed.”
“You are aware that cold-blooded murder is a crime punishable by immediate ejection, aren’t you?”
“I’m also aware that we’re four jumps away from home, and I’m needed on this mission. I’ve done the background checks. You’re a decent pilot, Morrow, but you and I both know that I could outfly you while in a drunken stupor and one arm cuffed to my leg. I was talking to the stat-boy the other day.” Magnus nodded toward Perry. “What are the odds of success of this mission if I’m at the controls?”
“Ninety-six percent, and forty-four percent if you are not. I recall the conversation,” Perry said.
“And how important is a cook that makes nothing but beans?”
“No measurable effect on mission success,” Perry said, his eyes to the floor.
“There you have it, Morrow. This will be easier if you just walk away. You ca
n go on record to say that you did not witness the moment of death.”
“Aldis, I was just having a discussion with Mr. Tremblan here about the menu.”
Perry said, “It’s true. We were just talking about the need to make some modifications.”
Magnus grunted. “Doesn’t matter now. I’ve already got my kill on.”
“You just need to get your kill off, Mr. Aldis.”
Magnus shook his head, grimacing. “A fella can’t just get his kill off. All the build-up, the foreplay, then finally the moment that everything comes together and I watch the lifeless body hit the floor. You can’t stop that train once it’s left the junction. Can’t be stopped now.”
Denton Morrow watched as the cook’s eyes fluttered, about to pass out. “Sounds like the blue-balls. Have you tried a cold shower?”
Magnus eased up his grip a little. “What the fuck are you talking about? Blue-balls and cold showers?”
“You know, when you are getting romantic with a girl, and you think it’s going to all work out, and you get all aroused, then something goes wrong and she stops it. You’re stuck there with your soldier at attention and the General walks off? You know, that painful feeling you get. That sounds like what you were describing when you get your kill on. You just need a cold shower.”
“Nope. Never heard of them. Sounds like a personal problem. Maybe the doctor can give you something for it. Blue-balls!” Magnus said.
“It’s a normal thing. Everybody has had it happen to them at least once. Are you saying you’ve never been left standing?”
“No.”
Denton Morrow turned and scanned the room, filled with grunts, all staring at him. “You guys know what I’m talking about, right?”
They all shook their heads. “Really? Nobody here knows about blue-balls? Am I the only one? Epididymal Hypertension? Vasocongestion?
Every man in the room shook his head.
“You’re left aroused and hurting? No one?”
A snicker started somewhere in the group, then another, then the laughter became contagious.
“Right. I’m the only guy in this room that’s been rejected?”
One hand raised; The cook. Only the cook knew what the lieutenant spoke of.
Magnus Aldis stared at Denton Morrow with a look that pierced deep into the Lieutenant’s psyche and wrapped strangling hands around his ego, snapping it in two with a quick motion. That look would haunt the Lieutenant’s dreams for the foreseeable future.
Magnus exploded in a fit of laughter that left him gasping for air and mimicking a soldier standing at attention, nervously looking side to side. He shoved the cook in Denton Morrow’s general direction. “Get a cold shower, you two.”
***
Doctor Mitch Sorren knocked at the bulkhead leading into the makeshift room Denton Morrow had been left with, next to the Chronos Drive. “May I come in?”
“Yes, Doctor. What can I do for you?”
“I heard about the situation in the mess hall. I just wanted to let you know that I appreciate the fact that I’m not performing an autopsy at the moment. I never really cared for autopsies: procedure calls for me to set up a sterilization field before I start, but I always have this nagging wonder of ‘why bother’?”
“I can understand that. Perhaps it’s for your own protection? I’m assuming the field protects you too.”
“Yes, it does, and that actually makes sense when you think of it from a non-medical perspective. As a doctor, we are trained to always think of the protection of the patient first. Speaking of which…”
“Yes, doctor?”
“I heard about your problem.”
“My problem?”
“Yes, the vasocongestion issue. As your doctor, I have to ask. Does this occur often?”
“No!” Denton said.
“I’m not here to judge you. I’m here to help. I can write you a prescription to address this issue.”
“A prescription? For apparently being the only person in the room that gets awkward around women?”
“Actually, you weren’t the only one. I just came from checking on Cookie.”
“And what did you prescribe him?”
“Out of a respect for privacy, and Doctor to Patient confidentiality, I’d rather not answer that question.”
“I’m certainly not going to order you to break confidence.”
“Thank you, Lieutenant. In your case, I wanted to show you the new line of Vibratron™ prescription undergarments. They have made some great advances…”
“I don’t need prescription underwear!”
The doctor’s face reddened briefly. “That’s exactly what Cookie said. Oops. But anyway, allow me to explain the benefits of the SmartSensor System. This system can actually react to stimulus and learn from personal history, surroundings, present company or lack thereof, and provide a level of feedback appropriate to…”
Denton Morrow pointed toward the hallway. “Out.”
“I’m only trying to help.”
“Let me ask you something Doctor. Do you make a commission on the sales of these devices?”
“Uh, well, it’s not a commission, per se. It’s more of a rewards program. It’s completely accepted by the Ministry of Medicine Morality board. I never receive actual credits, but I can collect points that I can convert into some coveted merchandise at a later date.”
“Thank you, Doctor. The hallway is right behind you.”
Chapter 32
A Fly in the Ointment
Maven grabbed the Black Swan’s intercom. “Probe number two is now away.”
I didn’t need the intercom to hear her, as I sat right there next to her. The slight echo of her voice from a nearby speaker made her voice sound funny; deeper than usual; almost like a man’s voice, and that bothered me for a moment. Strange that I still thought of Maven in the female sense, even though I knew better. I theorized that outward appearances override knowledge when it comes to pronouns. “Good. Now we wait.”
“Raka, our plan is flawed. We’ve placed two probes and now we have to wait for the drive to spool up again. Each time it takes longer than the last. We’re looking at years out here placing these probes.”
“With every probe we place, Earth becomes safer,” I said.
“I’m not disagreeing with that. My concern is that with this drive acting the way it does, we may make a jump only to find that it never spools up again. The data isn’t perfect, but I’m seeing an exponential growth in time between jumps.”
Maven called up a graphical display. “Here’s the trend from our first jump to the last.”
The trend line looked clear and fairly linear. You could extrapolate the next point with reasonable precision.
“I understand that each jump is taking longer than the last, but that graph doesn’t look exponential to me. More or less a straight line.”
“I know it looks like a straight line. But this graph is logarithmic in nature. Let me show you the same data on a natural scale.”
Maven made a few motions and the graph changed before me.
“Wow. You’re certain about this?”
“As certain as I can be with the data we have. The model isn’t perfect, but it’s a good model. We’ll be waiting weeks for this next jump. After that, the model predicts years.”
“That won’t work. Is there anything we can do?”
“There’s no servicing the Chronos Drive. It’s the Empire’s most tightly held secret, designed to self-destruct if tampered with.”
“That sounds like a sailor’s tale. How do you know that?” I said.
“Do you recall the incident on Phelbaus Minor?”
“The spaceport exploded and radiation contaminated two-thirds of the planet. Everyone knows that.”
“What do you think caused it?” Maven asked.
“This is grade-school stuff. But I’ll play along. Improper procedures maintaining the containment field generators led to a micro-crack in the fusion chamber. The
n it was just a matter of time for the whole thing to explode.”
“You know your history, as it’s taught in the Imperial educational system. I happen to know that there was a group of people working on that station that weren’t exactly working for the Empire. They had obtained a ship with a Chronos Drive and had orders to learn how it worked. They got as far as removing the outer casing.”
“Millions of people died. You think this was just due to taking the cover off of the drive? That makes no sense. Why build such a vulnerable design? A fool-hearty engineer gets bored and starts tinkering with it and next thing you know, an entire ship or space station blows up.”
“The Emperor finds that a fair trade to protect the Chronos Drive technology,” Maven said.
“Do you have proof?”
“No. There wasn’t much evidence left after the explosion.”
“So you don’t really know what happened. This group of people was trying to gain access to the drive, something happened, and it exploded. That in itself doesn’t indicate the Empire has these things booby-trapped. It could have just been an accident. Or perhaps they got further than you thought and did something to the drive that caused the explosion. Do you know for certain?”
Maven sighed. “No, not for certain. There are a lot of things that could have happened. We know they didn’t get far before it exploded and caused countless casualties. In my heart, I know it was booby-trapped.”
“But you don’t have proof. I agree that we don’t try and open up the drive. None of us would know what we’re looking for anyway.”
“It probably doesn’t matter anyway, but I have this feeling there’s something more to that drive exploding. The Empire is willing to kill innocent people to protect their secrets.”
I noticed her fists clinching as she talked.
“I don’t doubt that. Has there ever been an empire that wouldn’t do the same? But none of this helps us, here and now. If we’re running out of jumps, what do we do? If we stay out here indefinitely, we run out of food, water air, or something that we need to survive. What is it we run out of first?”