Status Quo

by Drew Wagar

  'We say we failed. We affirm it can’t be done. Galcop was right, injectors can’t be enhanced further. End of story. We destroy our notes, our research findings, the remaining isotopes, the lab recordings, the wire frames, everything. The sneers won’t matter, as long as this doesn’t get out.'

  'Are you prepared to do all that? Make that sacrifice? Do anything to stop this?'

  'I am. Are you?'

  Geraint stared at him for a moment.

  'It will blow our reputations out the airlock, our careers will be over,' Geraint said with a sigh. He was only commenting; Jim could see the understanding in his eyes. They were going to give up a lot, but the stakes were immeasurably higher.

  Jim held out his hand. 'You swear?'

  Geraint took his hand and shook it firmly, 'I swear.'

  The fuss died down remarkably quickly. The project was top secret, so few knew about it. Galcop requested the results, but Faulcon reported that they were destroyed in the explosion. Geraint provided a faked wire frame that ‘proved’ that the modified injectors were unstable and not practical to implement. The Galcop techies enjoyed their moment of superiority and didn’t even bother to check the wire frame: it was a classic case of seeing what you wanted to see. The techies enjoyed gloating over both Jim and Geraint for their audacity in trying to succeed where their best minds had failed. The public and private sector competition was as strong as ever.

  Six months passed quickly. Jim and Geraint were separated, put on different projects and achieved some minor successes. Jim worked on some new flight control systems for Cowell and MgRaths latest ship, the Cobra Courier. Geraint had transferred to the weapons division, working on a brand new replacement for the much-reviled Faulcon de Lacy HM3 Homing Missile. They met occasionally, usually off-station on restaurant junks nearby, to talk about their progress on making overtures to the other political organisations.

  'So. News? How’s life treating you?' Jim began.

  'I’ve spent the last three months blowing up cargo canisters for fun. Life is good. Well, good enough.'

  'Sounds like more fun than Astrogation.'

  'Have you heard about the new SuperCobra?'

  'Only in rumours, I heard it was a story put about to keep the shipyard workers amused.'

  'Oh no, it’s real enough. They’ve put together a prototype already. It will make the Cobra Courier look like a bathtub.'

  'Yeah?'

  'Get this, they’ve managed to cram in seven energy banks and upped the speed to point-four-five. It’s our revenge on the Imperials.'

  'Speaking of which,' Jim said, changing the subject, 'how are our fine Imperial colleagues?'

  'Funny you should mention that. I have a meeting with Zerz Furvel two days from now,' Geraint said, sotto voce, despite the fact that they were the only two present.

  Jim blinked in surprise. Zerz Furvel was the chief Galcop technician. He was reputed to be working on plasma weaponry, currently a source of some pride to Galcop. A coherent beam of accelerated plasma could potentially make a military laser look like a peashooter.

  'How did you manage that? And what does he have to do with the Imperials?'

  'A rare opportunity. The Imperials have invited a select group of Faulcon engineers to be awed by their latest RamJet technology at a political conference. We’re going to put the fear of God into them in return with our plasma work. No actual data exchange, of course, and the usual no-scanners drill. It’s part of a peace and goodwill overture. Not likely to get us anywhere, but, crucially, Zerz is giving a keynote address. I’ve arranged to meet with him. I expect he wants to gloat over our failed injector test.'

  'He knows about that?'

  'One of the privileged few apparently.'

  'Can we trust him?'

  'Not on your life. But we’ve got to start somewhere. I’m hoping to make some contacts with the Imperials while I’m there. How are you doing with the Federation?'

  Jim shrugged, 'Nothing like as good as you. I’ve made some contacts over there, but it’s proving hard to be noticed without revealing too much.'

  'We have to be careful about Galcop too. I think our movements may be being monitored. We should probably stop meeting like this.'

  'We’ll arrange message drops using our codes. Text only.'

  'Agreed.'

  'When’s the conference by the way?'

  'I leave tomorrow and will be gone for a month or so. The Imperials are sending a ship to pick us all up. Another gloating opportunity.'

  'Why?'

  'Guess which ship.'

  'Not the…'

  'Oh yes. One of the Royal ones too. An Imperial Courier.'

  'You lucky Goid!'

  Galcop’s military Chief of Staff was very much primus inter pares. De jure he was part of an elected council, including the chiefs in the areas of Commerce, Judiciary, Health, Diplomacy, Science and Governance. However the military position held huge gravitas, and so de facto he was second in command to the real primus, the Galcop President himself.

  He was a tough, determined man, a veteran pilot, commander and Admiral of the Navy. A man who saw all things though a lens of determination focused on one thing: keeping Galcop together, whole, powerful; resisting anything that might detract from its continuation.

  If that included elected members of the council, then so be it.

  His office was located on a heavily fortified Anaconda Cruiser, usually in orbit about his home planet of Aesbion, escorted by a fleet of Mambas.

  He sat at his desk, studying the reports on his desk. The contents of the plain manila folders were complex, difficult and inflammatory documents. Capable of starting wars, or ending them, making legends, debunking myths. Virtually everything that was known was accessible to the military Chief of Staff, and what little that wasn’t probably didn’t matter.

  The folders were labelled in a baroque, old fashioned text. They looked like paper, but that was a deception. They were composed of neuro-cartilage, genetically keyed to particular individuals, which would simply evaporate if handled by the unauthorised.

  He sorted though the items one by one. The first few were mundane.

  Plasma acceleration, Imperial progress.

  Slave trading quotas, Galactic Discrepancies.

  Narcotics Sting Operation: Riedquat

  The next one was more esoteric.

  Raxxla. Classified.

  He picked up the folder and placed his thumb over the DNA clip. The file stat indicator showed a comprehensive set of documentation was enclosed. He was keen to read up on the latest developments, apparently there had been some quite interesting activities of late.

  He put the document down. Perhaps later. A more pressing issue required his attention.

  Galactic Navy. Operation Manhattan.

  He knew about that one already. He’d masterminded it.

  INRA. OXP.

  He frowned. OXP. An abbreviation that always meant trouble. Usually a new and different kind of trouble. In this case an Obligatory Execution Permit.

  A request for assassination.

  Never something to be taken lightly. It always implied a very serious state of affairs.

  Quickly he thumbed the clip and the document opened, projecting a hologrammatic wire frame image. A voiceover accompanied the image.

  'It is a very small bomb, with the destructive power of a miniature supernova, and just as deadly. The gravitic shockwave causes any matter caught within its range to be annihilated in another deadly gravitic flash…'

  Fifteen minutes later the military chief of staff closed the folder and stared thoughtfully at his desk. Assassination wasn’t a skill practised by Galcop. On the rare occasions it became necessary, it was… outsourced. This particular request was most unfortunate, but absolutely necessary.

  He touched another corner of the document. It glowed green and a single word appeared for a brief interval, before fading away.

  Approved.

  The file was transferred back to the s
torage module and the Chief of Staff paced his office floor for a few minutes before returning to his desk and the remaining files. Time to read up on the Raxxla developments.

  Jim had watched the Imperial Courier dock and later leave with Geraint and the Galcop team aboard. It had been quite a sight. The Courier was unlike pretty much any other ship in space right now. A product of a less-than-honourable war over a hundred years ago, the twin-hull catamaran design was still revolutionary now, and unequalled.

  Life resumed as normal. Jim received text only messages from Geraint on a regular basis. They were simple and contained little information. They had assumed the Imperials would be closely monitoring all transmissions from the conference. Geraint and he had long ago collaborated on some basic symbolic language so that they could communicate covertly if necessary. Mostly they had used it to keep each other informed on research activities across departments which were supposed to be separate. They had never really had much call to use it for anything else.

  Jim finished his early morning coffee and as expected another text dropped into his console. For the most part it was the normal conversational letter, except for a series of sentences about two thirds of the way down.

  Trumble infestation awful by the way. Zerz likes the little critters; I can’t clean them out because the scanners aren’t working.

  Trumble was their code for trouble, ‘infestation awful’ meant something really bad. The next sentence implied Zerz was the cause. ‘Scanners not working’ meant Geraint was investigating but didn’t have the answers yet.

  What the hell was going on?

  Zerz Furvel knew about the failed injector. Was Geraint implying that Zerz knew more than this, maybe about the cascade reaction? Zerz was a brilliant technician: if someone was going to understand it, he would be able to.

  The message had been sent almost twelve hours earlier, according to the marker, and a lot could have happened in that time. He decided to give Geraint a call. It would cost a small fortune at that distance, particularly over to the Imperial side. The conversation wouldn’t be direct either, but at least Jim would be able to get a clearer idea of what was going on.

  It took some time to get a comlink to the Imperial Systems. The operator called back when it was established. A woman appeared, frowning at him from across almost fifty light years of space. Her accent was the strange drawn out tones of the Imperials.

  'Yeah?'

  'I’m trying to contact Geraint Karella. A guest at the Duval conference centre.'

  The woman looked at him with distaste, immediately picking up his Galcop accent by return. She sighed and rolled her eyes, as if his request was directly causing her life to be unfairly disrupted.

  'Who’s calling?'

  'My name is Jim Feynman.'

  'Stand by.' she said rudely and put him on hold. Jim watched his credit balance ticking down steadily.

  After three minutes she came back, without an apology for the delay. 'I’m sorry; Mr. Karella is unavailable to speak to you.'

  The line was abruptly cut.

  Jim wasn’t able to believe that. Geraint would have taken a call from him regardless of whether he was asleep, drunk, or in the throws of ecstasy with any floozy you cared to mention. Something wasn’t right.

  Something wasn’t right at all.

  The Chief of Staff received a blip on his console. He glanced at it briefly and then resumed his speech to the council with virtually no hesitation. It was good news. The text was simple, sparse, to the point and told him everything he needed to know..

  One, complete. Two, proceeding.

  Jim was at lunch when the next text message from Geraint came in. The marker showed it had been sent just an hour before Jim had tried to contact him directly. This time the letter was shorter. There were some typing mistakes, as if Geraint had been in a hurry. Again there was a coded set of sentences.

  Zerz brought the trumbles aboard. He had a backup supply apparently and he thinks there will be a population explosion once there are enough of them. Navigation is terrible here, though it looks clear your end. Use the lower docking bay for sightseeing if you come for a visit. See you in witchspace.

  Jim starred at the text. It implied Zerz knew about the cascade effect. The inference was clear: ‘…explosion…’. The reference to backup supply wasn’t clear though. ‘Navigation terrible’ meant Geraint didn’t know what to do. Jim didn’t understand the reference to lower docking bay either. It wasn’t part of their code.

  ‘See you in witchspace’ was clear though.

  It meant get out.

  It meant get out now.

  It was their panic code: mortal danger; immediate threat; life in danger. They’d never used it before.

  If Zerz knew about the cascade reaction, what would he do? How had he got hold of the information? Jim rescanned the text and then swallowed in fear.

  Backup supply.

  He wracked his brains, trying to remember all the steps they had taken when they had discovered the cascade reaction. All references had been destroyed. There was no evidence, no copies, no backups. They had purged everything.

  Hadn’t they?

  Unless a generic automated backup had been running during their investigation. It was possible. They had taken almost four hours to clean up, figure out what happened and delete everything. Enough time for the data to have been harvested. If someone had monitored that, they would have seen everything. That was over six months ago, long enough to build the real thing.

  'Stards!' Jim muttered to himself. 'Galcop already has the bomb.'

  Zerz must have been able to build a bomb from the information in the backup. Geraint had somehow discovered this and was warning him. He couldn’t do anything at that end, but there was something Jim could do here? What was it?

  Use the lower docking bay for sightseeing if you come for a visit. See you in witchspace.

  The Torus station had a lower docking bay. Jim keyed the vid link from a tablet console. The tablet beeped and prompted him for more information.

  Specify Bay.

  Jim keyed in ‘One’. A Cobra was parked there. It looked perfectly normal, a standard trading model showing the scars of a hard life.

  Two. A squadron of four police Vipers, Fuelled and ready to launch.

  Three. A Krait, in for long-term repairs. Parts were hard to get nowadays. It looked like the carcase of another one was alongside, being striped for parts.

  Four. Two Ophidian-class yachts. Classy retirement vessels for drifting through space in.

  Five. The tablet buzzed in annoyance..

  Vid link unavailable. Error 443: Camera Maintenance.

  He left the apartment at a run.

  Docking bay five appeared deserted, the internal bay doors closed and locked. Outside there were two Galcop officers, both loosely cradling laser rifles. They looked bored and fed up. He approached as close as he could without being seen, just within earshot.

  'We can’t leave our duty station.'

  'It’s only five more minutes, it’s not like they’re paying us overtime or nothing. It’s just a new ship. It’s only those tech journalists who give a frag anyway. Who cares? We’ve been here for eight hours and seen no-one.'

  'Aint right. Duty and all that.'

  'Frag that. What are we going to do? We got no fraggin ammo anyway! Fake powerpacks, fraggin insult! Cost cutting cheapskates. I heard they’re sending Viper pilots out without food packs now, bring your own fragging food, for praks sake!'

  'I still don’t think —'

  'Tobius is up on duty next and he’s a mate, he won’t crag us upstairs.'

  'We shouldn’t.'

  'I’ll buy the beers.'

  'Yeah? What, all of them?'

  'Yeah. You in?'

  'Well, if you put it like that…'

  The two officers wandered off. Galcop security at its best! Jim couldn’t believe his luck.

  Jim looked around carefully, moving over to the hanger doors. The next crew w
ould be here in minutes, he didn’t have long. The bay doors were locked by simple pin security code. It was a device Faulcon themselves had designed, thus having the standard backdoor access codes when it left the factory. These were supposed to be deleted once the unit was in place of course. Jim was only a little surprised to find all the original codes were there. Even despite this, it was poor security to use a Faulcon device to guard a Faulcon lab! He’d heard Galcop standards were slipping, he hadn’t realised by how much.

  The door slid back. He closed it behind him, relocking it.

  He ran into the bay and hid behind a rack of Quirium canisters and sneaked a look at the ship within.

  It looked to all intents and purposes just like a normal Mk3 Cobra. Only a slightly lurid colour scheme gave it away on first glance. To the practised eye, though, there were some subtle but noticeable differences. Jim picked up on them straight away. The engines were completely different, the same dimensions for sure, but the exhaust flux mechanisms were not standard fare. There were also twin outrigger engines on either side, rather than the blanking plates on the standard ship. The ship was also balanced differently on its landing gear, implying a major mass change or internal realignment. It had to be the SuperCobra prototype Geraint had mentioned.

  The bay appeared disserted. From his vantage point he saw two guards arrive outside, presumably ‘Tobius’ and colleague.

  The docking ramp was down, implying somebody was aboard the ship. Jim approached cautiously. He climbed aboard as quietly as he could and found himself in the ship’s main hangar. It was completely empty.

  The faint sound of voices propagated from the bridge area. Somebody was giving a speech. He moved forward until he could hear clearly.

  '… important covert mission Galcop has ever undertaken. A pre-emptive strike at the heart of the Duval Empire. Your mission is simple: destroy the Duval Dynasty. This ship is carrying a pair of unique and highly classified weapons. They are one-shot devices, and there are no duplicates. Deployed from low orbit, they should vaporise the entire surface of the planet. You must evacuate the area immediately. The blast radius is significant. Fuel injectors are mandated, the coordinates are locked into your autopilot. Gentlemen, you launch in one hour.'