by Mark Wandrey
Karma Upsilon 4
Jim Cartwright – At Large, Chapter One
By
Mark Wandrey
PUBLISHED BY: Seventh Seal Press
Copyright © 2018 Mark Wandrey
All Rights Reserved
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Get the free prelude story “Gateway to Union”
and discover other titles by Mark Wandrey at:
http://worldmaker.us/
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Cover Design by Brenda Mihalko
Original Art by Mika Gruszka
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License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only and may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
This book is a work of fiction, and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.
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To the fans who begged for more Jim and Spunk, enjoy!
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Contents
Chapter One
About the Author
Titles by Mark Wandrey
Excerpt from Book One of the Revelations Cycle:
Excerpt from Book One of The Psyche of War:
Excerpt from Book One of the Kin Wars Saga:
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Chapter One
The name “Karma” referred to a lot more than just a single large orbiting habitat, home to many of the galaxy’s famous Merc Pits. There were also 42 other orbiting stations and 112 deep space installations. Stations orbiting the planet were given a designation based on their orbital height. Low Karma orbit started at alpha, going through beta, gamma, delta and epsilon. As the more well-known Karma station was in a gamma orbit, and alone, its official designation was Karma Gamma 1, but few beyond space navigators knew this.
The lower orbits were home to only a few stations, though there were many undesignated satellites. Above Gamma, things became a little more crowded. Once you passed epsilon, you were in the outer system, and orbits were around the star, not the planet. There you could find various mining facilities, factories, research and development, as well as antiquated and poorly maintained defensive systems, many of which dated back to the Great Galactic War.
These facilities were owned by many different entities. Consortiums owned some. Private entities owned many. A couple were even owned by various guilds, which were the ones heavily defended or carefully shielded to avoid prying eyes.
One facility had sat empty for more than 5,000 years. Designated Upsilon 4, it swung around Karma’s star at the rate of one orbit every 309 years. Compared to Sol, it would be about where you’d find Saturn, or 1.3 billion kilometers when both of their orbits were at perigee.
During the long period of reconstruction following the Great War, it’d had a number of owners. They’d all tried to pry the facility’s secrets from it, and none had succeeded. Eventually, it fell to a series of owners who used it for deep space storage, and eventually to intermittent squatters. Eons passed. The owners, the Tek Consortium, listed it among their assets, the latest in a long series of speculators to regret the purchase. Eventually, Upsilon 4 became nothing more than a red line of data in a corporate journal.
Jim Cartwright got off the lift in the labyrinthian business district of Karma Station and consulted his tablet. He’d been looking for this particular office for 3 hours that morning, with no luck so far. “You’d think a place with a name like Tek Consortium would be easy to find,” he said as he scanned the names on the doors.
“We’re lost, Jim…
“I’m glad you’re amused,” he said to his companion, Splunk. The little Fae, no bigger than a large Earth cat, rode his shoulder in her usual place. Her dark brown fur stuck out in the relatively-clean, white antiseptic halls of the station. Her unusually long tail was curled around Jim’s thick upper arm, and she was munching a piece of hard salami, her favorite snack. She looked at him, her huge blue on black eyes invisible behind the dark goggles she wore, a product of her own creation. She was a singularly-gifted mechanical wizard, able to figure out any machine he’d ever given her. The only thing she wore, besides the goggles, was a tool belt that held many instruments and pouches, which she used to hide things she purloined from the station during her wanderings.
“Not amused, bored…
“Oh, well that’s different,” he said and gave her a sidelong glare. She worried off a piece of meat with her sharp little teeth and looked around. Jim smiled despite himself. She really was an innocent little free spirit. The only time she got into any real trouble was that rare occasion someone caught her helping herself to an interesting piece of technology, or she got into his.
He’d spent an entire day on the return from the most recent contract Cartwright’s Cavaliers had completed going over leasing information in the Karma system. He needed a facility the Cavaliers could call their own, for a lot of reasons. One was he didn’t want anything at home; Earth’s government and lawyers had left a bad taste in his mouth after robbing him of his inheritance. The second was that Karma held a lot of convenience for a merc unit like his. Ease of access to the rest of the galaxy chief among them. Finally, he needed something away from prying eyes, without trying too hard to appear like he was hiding something.
That search yielded a dozen candidates—various orbital facilities of varying utility—everything from a played-out asteroid which once had a good platinum mine to a scientific research station recently abandoned due to an infestation of “Teachal.” Some research on the GalNet showed that Teachal were small avians, massing on the order of a kilo each. They were considered pests, adapted to life aboard space ships thousands of years ago by the Kahraman to, ironically, reduce pests. They proved to be yet another nasty legacy left behind by the creators of the planet-destroying Canavar. Jim was surprised he’d never run into them before.
Regardless, all his hard work had been for naught. Shortly before the Cavaliers’ ship, Bucephalus, transitioned back to normal space in Karma, Jim went to his cabin to find Splunk ‘tinkering’ with his personal slate. Tinkering to the Fae was closer to what most people would call a RUD, a rapid unscheduled disassembly. Sure, she could usually put it back together. Usually. Jim also usually backed up all his data to his pinplants, a memory buffer in his brain. Why he hadn’t that time, he had no idea.
“You know it’s your fault we’re wandering all over Karma, right?” he asked her. Munch, munch, munch. He sighed and kept looking. She’d managed to wipe the alien-manufactured slate’s memory, something the sellers promised was impossible unless you did it on purpose. After a frantic scan using his pinplants, he’d found exactly one of the listings he wanted. Since the research would take hours to recreate, he’d elected to just check out the one she’d deigned to leave him before digging back into the listings.
Jim reached the end of the corridor and turned around in disgust. This was at least the sixth floor he’d searched in that building. He was halfway down the corridor when he came up short, and backed up a few steps. A tiny door he’d figured for a service room had an equally tiny sign reading Tek Consortium. “Bingo,” he said.
“Bingo…
“A lot of help you’ve been,” he said and examined the door. It didn’t have a signaling
button, and by the amount of dust on it, hadn’t been opened in ages. He gave it a rap with his knuckles. “Anyone in there?” he asked in a slightly raised voice. The door hissed and slid aside. Without thinking about it, Jim’s hand dropped to the holster he wore on his right hip, thumb breaking the retention clip that held his now-venerable GP-90 handgun in place.
The door moved to reveal a small office with a desk and a pair of universal species chairs. Humans called them variable benches, or VBs. He moved into the room slowly, his eyes taking in the fixtures. The desk was unoccupied, and the recessed lighting gave the room a dull, almost funeral home quality. Splunk stashed the rest of her sausage and slid the goggles back on her head so her big blue eyes could take in the room. He often took his lead from her in dicey situations; her instincts were usually quite prescient.
The door slid closed as slowly as it had opened. Nothing jumped out to attack him, and Splunk stayed calmly and observantly on his shoulder, so Jim moved up to the desk. As he got closer, a Tri-V came alive with a common 3D display showing the Tek Consortium logo, which by Jim’s recollection was a stylized “T” in one of the dozen common alien scripts.
“Hello” he said again. The display instantly changed to show a horse-like Equiri. Jim had seen plenty of them around, they were a common trading species in their arm of the galaxy. The alien began to speak, and the software in Jim’s pinplants instantly rendered it into English for him.
“Greetings from the Tek Consortium,” the alien said, and a rather barking, screechy music played in the background, making Jim wince.
“Hi,” he said, “can you lose the music?” The alien’s features froze, then spoke a second later.
“I’m sorry, this system does not recognize your language.” Jim accessed his pinplants and set up a simple script to broadcast in Equiri using the speaker on his slate, then spoke again.
“Are you an AI?” he asked.
“I understand you now,” it said. “I am an autonomous virtual assistant to the Tek Consortium. As you are no doubt aware, by Union law, autonomous artificial intelligence mechanicals are forbidden.” Jim was intrigued. He’d heard of AVAs before, but had never run into one. The finer points of Union law were sometimes hard to grasp. AVAs could do almost anything. Versions called AVPs, or Autonomous Virtual Pilots, could even operate starships. Someday he’d have to learn exactly where the Union drew the line.
“Can you shut off that music?” The screeching ceased instantly. “Thank you.”
“How can Tek Consortium assist you today?”
“I’m here regarding a posting in the GalNet,” Jim explained, and transmitted the listing identification. As he spoke, Splunk jumped off his shoulder and landed on the desk. She’d perked up the instant the virtual assistant began speaking.
“Please stand by,” the AVAA said. As it did whatever it needed to in order to complete Jim’s request, the disembodied Tri-V Equiri head turned to regard Splunk, who stared back at it.
“Don’t even think about it,” Jim said sotto voce. Splunk gave him a baleful glance. “I mean it, we’re here on business.”
“The creature with you is of a genotype on record as having caused some damage to Tek Consortium assets here on Karma Gamma 1,” it said. Jim shot daggers at his companion who shook her head in a very human gesture.
“Can you show me any video footage? If it was my friend here, I will of course make the consortium whole.” The Tri-V Equiri disappeared and was replaced with security footage inside a cargo bay. Jim couldn’t tell if it was on that station, or another. It wasn’t the best of images, probably a standard 2D camera, and not a more expensive Tri-V model. As he watched, a tiny shape emerged from a ventilation duct and began to fly about.
Zero gravity, Jim thought. There weren’t very many large null-gravity cargo areas on the station. The starship maintenance section in the core, along with cargo transfer and holding. The large, zero-gravity bays were located on other stations in higher orbit. Most ships paid for an automated robotic ship to move it for them. It was small and quick, dark colored, and he thought he could see it was wearing a tool belt. Yeah, it could be Splunk.
“Not me Jim…
Suddenly there was a flash of movement in front of the camera, and the image cut out. The AVA backed up the image and froze it. He was looking at the face of a Fae wearing dark goggles. But it wasn’t Splunk. Jim looked over at his little friend, and she was gone. He stood up and quickly scanned the room, but found no sign of her. After a moment he slowly sat down. His head was spinning a bit as he looked at the emotionless Equiri face.
“I think it’s obvious that wasn’t my friend,” he said at last. “Please compare the images.”
“They are the same species.”
“I never questioned that,” he said. Though I’m at a loss to explain her. He didn’t say that out loud. “However, they aren’t the same coloring and their features are different.”
“Agreed,” the AVA said finally.
“Can you tell me where those images were recorded?”
“The images you have been viewing were recorded at our Karma-Bzzzzzt!” The AVA exploded into static, and when it just as suddenly returned, it was now a lovely shade of pink and had a blue bow in its mane. It flashed a huge smile to Jim, which was extremely disconcerting, since the Equiri were carnivorous with many sharp white teeth.
“Welcome to the Tek Consortium,” it said. Jim’s pinplants informed him the Equiri was speaking Oogar, of all things.
“Splunk,” he hissed. “What are you doing?”
“I’m sorry, please restate the question,” the AVA said. Jim cursed under his breath and again expressed his interest in the facility he’d originally come here for. “That installation is for sale.”
“Yes,” Jim said, his pinplants rendering the words in Oogar now, “that would be why I am here.” Another spasm of static and the AVA was back to a tan and white Equiri, minus the bow, but still speaking Oogar. “We’re interested in leasing the facility for 20 years.”
“I-I’m s-sorry,” it said, now stuttering, “but it is only for sale.” Jim ground his teeth and wondered what the hell Splunk was doing.
“How much?”
“H-how much w-w-w-what?”
“How much for the facility?”
The AVA disappeared, and a Tri-V image of Upsilon 4 appeared. It had started life as a roughly oblong carbonaceous asteroid 4.7 kilometers long and 3.5 kilometers wide, with some mineral deposits and a gravitation pull of less than 0.05 Gs. Mined out in ages past, the mining, support and other structures remained, and the asteroid facility had been repurposed. There was no detail on what that purpose might have been, only that it included cavernous working areas, large living quarters, and extensive warehouse and space docks.
The Tri-V listed the facility’s assets in nice bullet points. Jim smiled a little; even aliens seemed to have PowerPoint. At the bottom, a figure appeared—126 million credits. He sighed and got up to leave. The number dropped to 12.6 million.
“Is this figure acceptable?” the AVA asked.
Jim considered. He knew Splunk had to be behind this, or at least he guessed she must be. Taking advantage of this consortium because of what his friend was doing behind the scenes was about as unethical a thing as he’d ever considered doing. He had a feeling it wouldn’t be the low water mark. He took out his Cartwright’s
Cavaliers corporate universal account access card (commonly called a “yack”) and touched it to a glowing square on the desk. His pinplants informed him that his balance sheet was 12.6 million credits lighter.
“Thank you for doing business with Tek Consortium.”
Jim took his yack and headed for the door. He didn’t remember Splunk until the door closed behind him. He turned around to go back in and found her perched on a service robot. The machine was frozen in place. Splunk had its control access panel open and was happily pulling computer modules out and examining them.
Jim looked from her, back to the closed door, and then back to her again. “What…” he started, then stopped, not really sure what he was going to say.
“We go home…
“Sure,” he said, and she leaped onto his shoulder.
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“Prepare for zero gravity,” Captain Kim Wu said, her voice echoing over the ship’s intercom. Jim reset the seatbelt almost instinctively, a habit he’d gotten used to from many trips to space. It was moments like this that Jim missed Captain Winslow. The older man had captained his previous ship, Traveler. A relic of the Cavalier’s past from the early days of his father’s era, it had been saved from the Cavalier’s bankruptcy by its transfer to the museum trust, which he later took control of. It had been destroyed when his merc company accidentally arrived in the middle of a space battle. Winslow had saved most of the crew, sacrificing himself in the process.
The ship he was currently on, Bucephalus, had been sold with the bankruptcy and purchased by the Winged Hussars for five credits. It was part of the respect the Four Horsemen got from other Earth mercs. Two years later, Jim bought the ship back from the Hussars for twice what they’d paid for it. Good thing too, because a large merc unit without its own capital ship was not effective.