Confidence Game

by Britt Ringel

  “Who’s responsible for maintaining ship separation while navigating inside CORRAL?” Lochlain asked.

  “Each ship inside the zone.”

  “You guys are good,” Lochlain threw out as a compliment as he looked up at the wall screen. He flinched slightly when he realized that an Appiation snow was currently holding inside CORRAL. “Uh-oh,” he mumbled while manipulating Zanshin’s Encountrix optical array toward the system defense ship.

  Sensing the change in mood, Lingenfelter asked, “What’s wrong, Captain?”

  “Nothing,” Lochlain lied effortlessly. “I just want to see what that snow is doing at CORRAL.”

  The right half of the wall screen flickered, replacing the tactical plot with a high resolution optical of an Appiation snow named Crop. The picture provided a view of the small warship’s stern. Lochlain took it as a good sign that the traffic cop was facing away from Zanshin and toward the tunnel point.

  “Are you worried they’ll inspect us, Captain?” Lingenfelter pressed.

  “No… well, yes but only because it’s a pain in the butt.” He sat back nonchalantly once again and added, “I guess it would be good experience for you two.”

  Qiang spoke from behind his panel. “Should we request an inspection?”

  “Oh, hell no!” Lochlain blurted. “You do that and any freighter captain will put you off his ship at the next stop.” He took a deep breath before continuing. “Here’s the deal, Li. We appreciate the service SDSes perform and we certainly respect them but the truth is that more often than not, an inspection is going to turn up a discrepancy or two. Even if you’re sure your freighter is within bounds, the midshipman or sublieutenant leading the inspection team is going to be sure to invent something so he can report back to his superiors how good of a job he’s doing. We don’t want them on our ship.”

  Both students meekly nodded in understanding.

  A half hour later, tunnel point approach granted permission to continue and informed Qiang that Zanshin was twenty-first in the queue to dive out of the system. Five minutes after that, the freighter slipped quietly past Crop without notice. The vessel continued unimpeded toward the Ancera tunnel point at .15c. By the time she closed to within three light-minutes of the tunnel and was handed off to Ancera Control, her position in the queue had improved to ninth.

  Qiang’s speakers broke the quiet inside the bridge. “Zanshin, Ancera Control, you remain ninth in the dive queue. Maintain twenty light-seconds separation from the traffic ahead of you. Traffic is a bulk freighter, EF One-Seven.”

  Qiang acknowledged the directive, and soon Zanshin was rotating 180 degrees in preparation to reduce her forward momentum. At her new speed and position in the long line, it took another forty minutes to reach the Type-A tunnel point.

  Ahead of Zanshin, the enormous 450,000-tonne bulk cargo carrier named EF-17 warbled slightly on the wall screen optical and disappeared from normal space.

  “Zanshin, Ancera Control, position and hold.”

  Qiang acknowledged the command. A beat later, he said, “You can move up, Elease.”

  Using thrusters, Lingenfelter pushed the freighter across the threshold of the anomaly of physics. Lochlain eyed her actions carefully from behind his console and noted with satisfaction when she brought the freighter to relative rest less than half a light-second from the tunnel point’s center. “Make sure you sound the dive bell before you engage the tunnel drive, Elease,” he reminded her. “Sure, everyone on Zanshin is on duty and knows what’s happening but on the bigger freighters, there will always be someone in the gym or shower and you want to give them a warning that their head is about to spin.”

  “Yes, sir,” Lingenfelter answered nervously as she prepped actual tunnel drive controls for the first time in her life.

  * * *

  Brooke stood directly behind Huseman at the engineer’s panel. Her fingernails dug into her palms as the panel indicators crept into yellow caution zones across the entire board.

  “Power core output is ninety-one percent,” Huseman stated with a keen edge to his voice.

  “That’s enough, Wyatt,” Brooke ordered. “Maintain those levels.” She took her eyes off the panel and shot apprehensive looks at the massive power core buzzing threateningly only a meter away.

  The entire compartment hummed with barely restrained energy. The incredible amount of power the core generated was, essentially, being wasted right now as heat and emissions vented into space through the open ducts of the Deltic tunnel drive. Power couplings joining the core to the drive strained to keep the load harnessed and properly channeled. The core itself was consuming the fuel cells like a ravenous beast. More disturbing than the alarming rate of consumption was the violent vibration coming from the core itself. The tremors had started benignly but as the core’s power output grew, so did its shaking.

  “Is this normal?” Huseman asked in a loud, unnerved voice over the growing cacophony.

  Brooke could not tell if the student’s hands were shaking out of fear or from the intense buffeting inside the compartment. She could feel the distressing tremors driving through the deck, into her boots and through her body. Many of the alloy supports running alongside the power core were visibly pulsating. Her cool voice countered her panicky helper. “We’re outside the red. Keep it going, Wyatt.” Inwardly, she urged the bridge to signal for the dive.

  Huseman pointed anxiously at a reading on his panel. “The shielding on the power core is degrading, ma’am!” His voice was several octaves higher than usual and in the stress of the moment, he had fallen back to the comforts of formality.

  “It’s nothing to be alarmed about,” Brooke soothed while her mind raced for contingencies. “We’ll get clearance to dive any second now.” She stepped back and moved around Huseman to be closer to the left side of the panel and its emergency switches.

  Above the pair, a loud chime sounded over the ruckus three times in rapid succession. Seconds later, the bridge command ordering the tunnel drive’s activation appeared on Huseman’s panel.

  “Engaging!” Huseman shouted as he grabbed hold of a support bar on the side of the station with his left hand while inputting the commands to generate the tunnel effect.

  Brooke gripped the bar as well and prepared for the disorientation common to every tunnel dive. Bracing herself, she watched the power levels inside the tunnel drive jump in staggered, exponential increments as the drive’s ducts closed and power shunted directly into the heart of the machine. The gauge rushed over the activation threshold and a burst of distortion sprung from the drive, pushing Zanshin into tunnel space.

  A blanket of nausea fell over Brooke. She felt her knees begin to buckle under the burden but an instant later, the weight lifted to leave only a mild taste of bile lingering in her mouth. After her blurry vision cleared, she scanned the engineering panel nervously.

  Zanshin was back in the green.

  “Wow,” Huseman said after he recovered from the transition into t-space. “Is it always that… exciting on a real ship?”

  “It’s not supposed to be,” Brooke confessed. “Typically, it’s just a lot of noise.” She eyed the large power core in front of her with a mixture of disappointment and irritation. “We need to check every connection from the core to the mounts to the deck and bulkheads. A core running over ninety percent is going to make noise but that vibration should not have been happening.”

  “Is the core okay, Mercer?” Huseman asked with a renewed trace of anxiety.

  She considered the question for a moment before responding. “I think so but we have seventy hours in tunnel space to make sure. After that, we’re diving for Ancera whether it’s okay or not.” To date, any ship that missed its dive window in tunnel space was never heard from again.

  The distance from the Svea star system to Ancera was slightly over 7ly (light-years) in normal space. In the condensed realm of tunnel space, that immense separation was compressed to a mere 7lh (light-hours). Given the universe’s appa
rent speed limit of .1c in tunnel space, Zanshin would sail in its isolated depths for just under three days before reaching the exit point where a second tunnel dive would take them back into normal space.

  Brooke reached over Huseman’s hands to the comm controls. “Captain?” she called.

  “What, Mercer?”

  Brooke could hear laughter behind Lochlain’s response. As she suspected, the crisis in Engineering had gone unnoticed on the bridge. “Can I have a word with you in the chartroom in ten minutes?”

  “Sure,” came the response. A second later, Lochlain asked, “Is everything all right?”

  “Yeah,” Brooke sighed. “But we had a nasty vibration in the power core that needs to be corrected before we dive out of tunnel space.”

  “Okay, just poke your head into the bridge when you get up here,” Lochlain replied indifferently.

  “The captain doesn’t seem too concerned,” Huseman noted with a growing relief. “I guess if it was as bad as I feared, he’d be more worried. I suppose the automated systems installed on Zanshin would’ve aborted the dive if something was seriously wrong.”

  “Mind your panel,” Brooke answered neutrally. She moved away from him, toward the direction of the tunnel drive further aft in Engineering. As she walked, she gave close examination to the side of the power core while passing near the gigantic reactor. Upon reaching the Deltic tunnel drive, she docked her datapad and inputted several commands. She inspected the drive with a practitioner’s eye while waiting for the commands to execute. When they were finished, she took her datapad and completed her slow tour around the power core on her way back to Huseman.

  The student gestured to his console. His voice was growing confident again. “Everything’s green. I guess I got all anxious over nothing.” He looked at her sheepishly. “I’ve dived before in my father’s schooner but this was my first dive inside a freighter’s engineering compartment.”

  “You did fine.” Brooke confirmed the readings on the panel and stepped toward the stairwell in the far corner of Engineering. “Like I said, Wyatt, dives are usually just a lot of noise and a couple of tense moments.” She climbed up both flights to reach the catwalk on the main deck. From her higher vantage, she paused at the railing to inspect the power core again. “I’m pretty confident that what we have are just some loose mounts, or maybe, something that needs tightening inside the core. Nothing is leaking, nothing is broken.” She waved her datapad. “I’m going to run over this data to make sure the tunnel drive is functional and talk with the captain. Ping me if something happens.”

  “Will do, Mercer.”

  Brooke swung by the life support panel on the catwalk for a superficial inspection and then began the long walk from the rear of the freighter to the bridge.

  * * *

  “Why didn’t you catch this during your inspection?” Lochlain asked critically. He had tried to keep his tone neutral but even he found it scolding.

  Brooke frowned at him from across the chartroom’s table. “Because I didn’t run the power core up to tunnel dive levels. It’s a big drain on the fuel cells. By the way, the dive ate up eight and a half percent of the charge in the fuel cells.” She bit her lower lip and looked at the starchart displayed on the table’s surface. “With that kind of consumption rate, after we dive into Ancera, we’ll have a three star system range before we’ll need to recharge.” She scanned the names of the surrounding systems. There were still many, good options on the table. “Do we have enough credits to squib and recharge?”

  Lochlain brought his fingers to the bridge of his nose. “Let’s get squibbed first and worry about fuel later.” He shot an anxious look to the portal between the bridge and chartroom to ensure it was secure. After a long sigh, he looked at Brooke with tender eyes. “I’m sorry I snapped at you. It’s just that I’m operating without any kind of safety net and the last thing I need is for Zanshin to start falling apart. I know you did your best on the inspection and the ship is just going to have some growing pains.”

  Brooke allowed her scowl to fade with the apology. She reached across the weathered table and took hold of his hand. “You’re not alone, Reece. This isn’t On Margin where you had to constantly watch your back. We’re in this together and we’ll come up with the solutions together.” She poured positivity into her voice. “On a good note, I’m pretty certain the vibration isn’t as bad as it seemed. Wyatt and I will go over every connection and I’m sure we’ll find the problem. I just hope those vibrations didn’t jar anything else loose.”

  “How did Huseman cope with it?”

  She released Lochlain’s hand. “He was scared,” she answered. “I don’t blame him. That was one of the worst dives I’ve experienced.” She swallowed and admitted, “The power core shielding was beginning to collapse.”

  Lochlain shuddered. “How quickly?”

  “Fast enough that I think a tunnel drive vent might not be opening fully,” Brooke theorized. “We’re getting a rebounding current that’s finding its way back to the core and overpowering the shielding. That would help explain the vibrations too.” She tapped lightly to her datapad. “It’s number one on my to-do list.”

  Lochlain ran his tongue over his teeth briefly as he considered the news. “Has the problem with the ship’s chronometer recurred?”

  Brooke nodded with a weary sigh. “It’s still running fast. I’ve been setting it back every few hours. This afternoon, while Wyatt is checking the mounts, I’ll reinstall the software and see if that fixes it. If I have to, I can build a program that resets Zanshin’s clock to my datapad’s time automatically every hour until we locate the source of the problem.”

  “That’s not a bad solution,” Lochlain complimented.

  “Until I step off the ship,” Brooke snorted. “Don’t worry, On Margin had her quirks too. I just have to learn Zanshin’s.”

  Chapter 11

  It was 10:00 and Lochlain still lingered under his bedsheets. His shift on the bridge did not start for another four hours and Brooke had quietly slipped out of the cabin earlier in the morning. Zanshin was in her first, full day of t-space. Despite her tumultuous start, the ship was sailing smoothly in the tunnel.

  Lochlain reluctantly pushed the covers away and rose from the bed. His cabin controls were set to a lower than standard temperature but nothing like the arctic blast that had greeted him the first morning on the ship. He skipped a water shower for the quicker sonic version, dressed into one of his new shipsuits and left his private sanctuary for the stairwell.

  After climbing to the main deck, he walked the short distance to the mess. Unsurprisingly, it was empty. Lingenfelter was in the middle of her watch on the bridge and Qiang was most likely sleeping after pulling the night shift. Both of his engineers were working tandem twelve-hour day shifts.

  Unlike Engineering, Lochlain had broken the bridge watch into three, eight-hour shifts. Despite a deck officer needing only to be “alert” and “available,” the students were spending most of their shifts inside the bridge. Lochlain had done the same thing as a “greenie” too. Only experience and time had changed his routine, which now included only the first and last hour of his shift physically in the bridge compartment. In tunnel space, there was simply no danger of collision and in the event of a ship malfunction, Zanshin would immediately send an alert to his datapad regardless of his location.

  He ate a small breakfast of synthetic eggs and hash, sipping his coffee while reading his students’ entries in the ship’s log. They ranged from Lingenfelter’s comically detailed notes to Qiang’s pedantically formal reports.

  6.4 – 004@ 06:11GST

  Trainee Li Qiang officially relieved from his shift. Trainee Elease Olivia Lingenfelter assumes command. Zanshin is 1.93833 light-hours out of Svea for Ancera. Estimated remaining journey is now 50 hours 37 minutes and 22 seconds. Deck systems remain functional although the Encountrix-60 produced a variance of 0.156% on its last diagnostics sweep. (Note: Capt. Lochlain, is this worth reporting
?) Course plotting double-checked and true. Hourly communications check with Engineering tested and registered “loud and clear.” (Note: Capt. Lochlain, am I irritating Chief Engineer Brooke with my comms checks? She sounds a little less pleasant with each passing hour.)

  Lochlain chuckled as he entered a response.

  Elease, The Encountrix is fine; don’t worry about anything less than 0.5%. I absolutely think you should continue with the hourly comm checks. -RL

  He finished breakfast and began to backtrack to his quarters when he passed by the ship’s entertainment lounge. It was also deserted but, curiously, the holographic game board was running. Lochlain entered the compartment and walked to the large table in the center of the room. There were chairs for three players at the table but only the holo-screen for Player One was projecting. He raised a hand to deactivate the board. The screen cast the holographic image of a freighter, quite possibly a Tuoma-class ship. The game table itself was old and, judging by the graphics of the freighter’s hologram, the running game even older. Many of the buttons and controls on the table were wearing poorly. On the holo-screen, the freighter slowly orbited a planet Lochlain did not recognize. The game menu underneath offered but a single choice: “Start.” Lochlain slid his hand to the board’s side and turned off the power.

  Once back in his quarters, he sat on the loveseat in front of the curved viewport. The menagerie of twinkling stars in tunnel space looked identical to their normal space counterparts. He linked his datapad to the office desk in the bedroom and began to flip through the trade pages of Ancera. Zanshin could hardly afford to transit more systems without transporting cargo. He hoped that Cindi Isett, his contact in Ancera, would be able to toss him a more lucrative job than simply hauling standard freight but even a legitimate load would help offset the looming costs of recharging the fuel cells and more importantly, squibbing the ship’s identity.