Pandora’s Crew

by Gorg Huff

  Tanya hesitated for a moment, wondering about Pan and whether or not the ship would listen in. She knew that on a Spaceforce ship there were places where the ship’s systems were not supposed to watch or listen—in your quarters, in the head, things like that. But she’d never been on a brain ship before and had no idea what it might do. She knew better, but she grew up with artificial brains as the villains in about half the holo-dramas. It didn’t engender feelings of trust. “I want you to play a game with me.”

  There was just a momentary pause, like Jimmy was going to pull up short, then he continued. “A game?”

  “Yes. It’s called Nets and Rocks. Jenny showed it to me.”

  Jimmy glanced at the ceiling of the passageway. There were no visible sensors, but they both knew that meant nothing. Tanya nodded.

  “It sounds interesting. What do you do with the nets and rocks?”

  Tanya waited until they got to her cabin and led Jimmy in. She pulled a data cube and inserted it into the room reader. By long tradition, the private room reader of a person’s quarters wasn’t supposed to be hooked in to the ship’s systems. On the other hand, it was Jimmy who showed her the hidden connections that did allow the private room readers on a warship to be monitored. It was only supposed to be done with a warrant, but things happened. She sat on the bunk and waved him to the chair and they both plugged in.

  They were in the arena, both Parthian neuters, and Tanya started showing him the game. Jimmy picked it up quickly. He pulled up the menu of commands and realized on his own that you could throw the nets. Well, she knew that Jimmy was meticulous about checking the manual. He claimed you couldn’t know what rules you could break until you knew what the rules were.

  After they had played a few rounds, Jimmy stopped the game and said, “This is an interesting game, ma’am, but it surprises me a little. I mean, a gladiatorial fight is all about individual accomplishment, but Parthians are hive creatures. It doesn’t seem their sort of thing. I could see them having fights in an arena, but not individual fighters.”

  “Well, I think you can have more than one on each side if you want to, Jimmy.”

  “That would make more sense. How do you think it would play out if only one side could throw the nets?”

  “I think the side that couldn’t would get slaughtered!” Tanya said, and it was her turn to glance at the ceiling.

  “Even if they outnumbered the one that could. Who would win if you were playing with the ability to throw nets and say me, Mr. Givens and Miss Allen were all fighting against you?”

  That was a very good question. Tanya considered it and thought back to the game with Jenny where she hadn’t known it was going to happen. “It might depend on if they knew that I could throw the nets.”

  Jimmy nodded. “It would be a nice trick to have up your sleeve, wouldn’t it, ma’am? On another subject, you know I talked to a friend of mine and he got hold of the after-action report on that little dust up with the pirate off Morland. And, of course, you’ve heard about what happened in the Canova outsystem.”

  Tanya looked at the ceiling again and nodded. “Well, perhaps we should play a game or two with the rules set up that way. But don’t warn Chuck or Petra. I wouldn’t want to spoil the surprise.”

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  Danny stretched in his bed, then rolled out and headed for the head.

  “Captain, I think Commander Cord—”

  “Pan, while we’re in Drake space, it’s Miss Davis. Or First Mate Davis, or Tanya. But not Cordoba anything.”

  “Yes, Captain. I think First Mate Davis has figured out the nature of Nets and Rocks. She asked Chief Dugan to play with her.”

  “What did they say?” Danny asked while he was doing his business.

  “I didn’t listen once they got to First Mate Davis’ quarters, but in the passageway there were significant glances at the ceiling.”

  “So how bad is it?” Danny washed his hands as he spoke. “And how much worse would it be if they knew?” Danny shook his head. “I’d almost like to just go ahead and tell them, but we don’t know these people yet. And there is a world of difference between reporting that you ‘think we have a new super weapon’ and you’ve ‘seen our new super weapon.’ The first will just get you laughed at. The second will produce an investigation.”

  Location: Drake Space, Alenbie System

  Standard Date: 10 23 631

  They spent seven days in the Alenbie system, selling goods and buying Green Tar, and during that time there were congregations of the Cordoba Combine officers in Miss Davis’ room almost every off shift. Miss Allen started playing Nets and Rocks with Jenny, and Mr. Givens was giving Danny and Professor Schmitz suspicious looks. Things were a little tense, but at the same time easing into something that looked a bit like familiarity. The crew was working together well, and the new hires were mostly in flexsuits. Miss Allen had lost out on the drawing for whose suits were built in what order, and the suit bot was working on hers as they left Alenbie. The holds were mostly full and the ship was in better shape than it had been in years.

  Meanwhile, Tanya picked up on the financial situation of the Pandora and Danny’s debt. That debt could well be an opportunity for her. It was true that she did have enough money to buy a freighter the size of the Pandora. What she didn’t have was a good way of accessing those funds in Drake space. There were ways of doing that, but to try them under these circumstances would be to blow her cover. The best way to do it would be from Cordoba space. It occurred to Tanya that if there was some super weapon on the Pan, the Pan had to know about it. And artificial brains were supposed to be loyal to their legal owner. If she bought the debt and foreclosed—or even just converted it into partial ownership of the Pandora—that would give her access to the super weapon.

  And that was where her planning stopped, because she knew that having dumped her, her family wouldn’t welcome her back, even if she said all was forgiven. They would always suspect that she held a grudge . . . and they’d be right. The situation with the Spaceforce was even worse. She realized, now, that they had never accepted or trusted her, and after the reaming they gave her would trust her even less. She had the skills of a Spaceforce commander but the Cordoba Spaceforce wouldn’t let her be one.

  Location: Big Dark Between Alenbie and Franklin

  Standard Date: 10 28 631

  Pandora felt the return of a coded radar signal at the very edge of her range. She used a variety of sensors to observe the universe. Passive detection of light from long wave radio all the way to gamma rays, as well as coded radar and lidar pulses, readings of electromagnetic potential from her wings, and telescopic observation.

  And with all of that, she almost missed it, even though it was right on the track between the two jumps. It was a light second off her course and although it was radioactive, the amount of radiation of any spectrum it was putting out was minimal.

  It was a Drake flagged battleship, the Kingfisher. Or what was left of her, after what Pandora estimated as three high yield nuclear warheads went off within a kilometer of the ship.

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  Chuck Givens used a comealong to open the hatch to the personnel quarters on the Drake Spaceforce Ship Kingfisher. The stale air puffed out and in the room was a body. It was a woman in the uniform of a Drake Spaceforce Chief Petty Officer. She was seated, strapped into her couch, and looked to be asleep. She wasn’t the first such body, nor the twenty-first. Mouth tight, he searched the room for any unfried electronics. He didn’t find any.

  It took a day and a half to search the Kingfisher, and while they found no survivors, they did find some standard memory cubes, most of them fried by the radiation. They found a lot of bodies, and some of those people lived for hours, or even days, after the attack, slowly dying as their air ran out and the radiation got them. The crew that repaired aboard the Pandora after the search was subdued.

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  “This is crazy.” John Gabriel set the large bowl of kla
k bread on the table. “I spent thirty years in space before I went groundside, and only saw one wreck like this. Back in space a couple of years, and every time I turn around there’s another battle or pirate attack or dead hulk in the space ways.”

  “I agree,” Danny said, reaching for one of the small warm loaves, and Gunny Dugan nodded.

  “I have been doing a survey since you mentioned that some months ago, Captain.” Rosita Stuard sprinkled parmesan on the spaghetti in front of her. “It’s not just actual attacks. The incident on Casa Verde is another data point. And there are others in the system databases. Over the last fifteen standard years, both the Drakes and the Cordobas have had a marked increase in criminal activity in general. It appears, from the data I have gathered, to be an exponential curve and we haven’t hit the hard upswing yet.” She looked over at her husband. “Gerhard was more correct than he knew, and the collapse of civilization in the Pamplona Sector is more imminent than any of us suspected.

  “I think the best analogy between now and a point in the human past is probably the Dark Ages after the fall of the western Roman Empire,” Professora Stuard continued. “Or perhaps the periods after the fall of one of the pre-columbian South American cultures. Maybe the old USA, after the fall of the republic in the mid-twenty-first century old calendar—”

  “A bit less erudition and a bit more explanation,” John Gabriel said with a smile. “I don’t know about the children, but my ancient history is a bit rusty.”

  “Sorry. My point is that, for a variety of reasons, technological advancement seems to have slowed drastically, and in some areas even reversed. The suppression of artificial brains and of the search for jump points are two of the main factors where governments seem to be actively suppressing the technology involved.”

  That brought conversation to a halt for a few seconds. Then Tanya said, “That’s very interesting and I’d love to read your paper on it. But what I am concerned about right now is who hit these people. It’s not like there’s a Cordoba route near here. And I haven’t heard of any pirates that could take out a Falcon-class battleship.”

  “There are no routes we know about. But it’s possible someone found one. Pan, what’s the nearest Cordoba jump point to us here?” Danny was asking for the location in real space of the nearest jump point in the public Cordoba rutters. “And, Tanya, would you mind checking your records and seeing if there is something closer to our location in the Cordoba military rutters?”

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  Tanya did examine her rutters, both the general military rutters and her private set. Then she assured Danny that she didn’t have anything closer. Well, she didn’t have anything much closer.

  Chapter 24

  When killing off a royal family, it’s important to get them all. Don’t leave survivors, not even little babies. Babies grow up.

  Unknown political adviser, 2200 BCE, Old Calendar

  Franklin Outsystem, Nominally Drake Space

  Standard Date: 10 30 631

  Danny liked to be on the bridge when the Pan made jumps, so he was in his couch when Pandora came out of jump. The space near the jump contained a small ship, but the space around the next jump in contained three larger ships. All of the ships were squawking Cordoba Fleet IDs. Pan didn’t wait. She sent her ID. Less than half a second after they emerged from jump, Pan got the challenge.

  “Tanya to the bridge,” Danny called. He then informed the communications officer on the CSF Joseph Buckley that the Pandora was an independent trading ship with Cordoba stockholders aboard. By the time he finished, Tanya was on the bridge but shaking her head and staying out of camera range. She mouthed “Rosita” and Danny continued. “Professora Rosita Stuard is aboard, doing a survey of linguistic changes for the University of Danworth. Her husband, son, and grandchildren are aboard as well, and I’m a stockholder too. I take it there has been a change in ownership of this chunk of space? I guess we’d better talk to the Stockholder Relations Officer.”

  The comm officer looked surprised at the request, but a few minutes later a young woman came on the comm, and explained. “Sorry, Captain. Things are a bit tense at the moment. Stockholder relations are barely even in the race in a situation like this.”

  “A situation like what?” Danny asked. “I don’t want to screw up through ignorance and get my ship and several Cordoba stockholders blown out of space.”

  The young woman in the lieutenant commander’s uniform got a considering look, then said, “The Franklin system has been liberated by units of the Cordoba Spaceforce under the command of Admiral Julio Chin. However, we are expecting a response from the Drakes at some point.”

  Danny nodded and glanced at Tanya, who looked worried and gestured that she wanted to talk to him.

  Rosita arrived and Sanny waved her over. “Lieutenant Commander, this is Stockholder and Professor of Linguistics from Danworth University Rosita Stuard. I have a few shipboard matters to handle. Perhaps you can explain our circumstances to her?”

  Rosita picked up Danny’s cue without missing a beat. Danny let her keep the SRO busy while he stepped out of range of the camera and had a talk with Tanya.

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  “So what’s up with Chin?”

  Tanya grimaced and pulled Danny further from the camera. Then, in a low voice, she said, “He’s political, but not grand stockholder. An old line Spaceforce family like Givens, but he’s been involving himself in Cordoba management.”

  Danny lifted an eyebrow.

  “You know that Spaceforce personnel receive a temporary grant of stock when they join up and more as they get promoted. They keep it until they muster out, and if they retire they keep it until they die.”

  “I’ve heard that,” Danny said.

  “If you own stock, you can give your proxy to someone or even sell it. But Spaceforce stock doesn’t work like that. You can’t give your proxy to anyone. You have to vote it or not vote it.”

  Danny nodded. “To keep officers from using coercion to get the proxies of lower ranking personnel.”

  Tanya shook her head. “Officially, yes. But the effect is to keep Spaceforce stock from being voted as a block. That limits the clout of Spaceforce, especially in regard to matters not directly related to it. That keeps the admiralty from, for instance, getting a retired admiral onto the board of directors.”

  “There are two ad—”

  “Admiral Grand Stockholder Raul Allenby Denver-Cordoba and Admiral Grand Stockholder Paula Samantha Natasha Denver. Both members of the Two Hundred, and neither one ever commanded a ship in action.”

  “Okay, I get it,” Danny acknowledged. “Chin wants to change that?”

  “Among other things,” Tanya said. “He wants Spaceforce to vote the Spaceforce reserve stock too. And, from some of the rumors I’ve heard, but until now not believed, he wouldn’t be opposed to the military forming the basis for a new government.”

  “Are things that bad?” Danny asked.

  “If he’s invading Drake space without a Cordoba manager along, they just might be.”

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  Rosita waved Danny back to the camera. “Captain Anderson would like to speak to you about Cybrant.”

  Danny spoke to the captain. “I can’t tell you anything recent. I haven’t been there in forty years.”

  “So I was informed. But if you aren’t going to Cybrant, what are you doing here?”

  “Looking for a route back to Cordoba space, Captain,” said Danny. “We are also a registered Parthian clan, and we are trading as we go.”

  “What? Captain, you don’t look Parthian. Wait a minute . . . aren’t you the guy who rescued those Spaceforce personnel after they got mousetrapped near Parise?”

  “Well, yes, I guess you could say that. We saw a bit of the battle from a short jump away and then found the survivors.”

  “Then, Captain, let me extend Spaceforce’s thanks. I knew George Rodriguez at the academy. It’s a great loss.”

  Danny just n
odded, but he wondered what the reaction would be when these people found out that Tanya Cordoba-Davis was on the Pan with some of the survivors. Nor was it something he could keep secret. Danny thought fast. The longer it took for them to admit that Tanya was here, the worse it was going to be, because it would look like they were hiding things.

  “Perhaps I should mention . . . After we finished our business in the Parthian system, we hired some of the survivors,” Danny said.

  “Really? That’s the first I’ve heard about it. Who?”

  Tanya was looking pissed. Well, she could just be pissed. The Pan couldn’t afford to look like they were hiding things from the Cordoba Spaceforce.

  “Tanya Cordoba-Davis, Charles Givens, Petra Allen, and two enlisted.” Danny watched the captain’s face as he named the officers. There was a touch of a grimace when he mentioned Tanya, but Chuck and Petra got fractional nods. “They needed berths and we needed crew. Besides, Cordoba Spaceforce training is the best.”

  “Perhaps we could have a chat with them.”

  “We’re looking for a quick way back to Parthia, Captain. Could we perhaps go the way you came?”

  “I don’t think that’s going to be possible, Captain Gold. The way we came is still a classified military route.”

  “In that case, we need to get to Congreve as quickly as we can. We have cargo our trader wants to sell here, but we weren’t planning a long stop.”

  “I’m sure you can take the time, Captain.” There was now not much warmth at all in Captain Anderson’s tone.

  Location: Pandora, Approaching Franklin

  Standard Date: 11 01 631

  “The royal station is gone, Captain,” Pandora reported and sent Danny the visuals. There was still rubble where the royal space station used to be. Royal Station housed the royal family and their staff and the Franklin System Spaceforce headquarters. That was all part of a rather elaborate fiction.

  Franklin was limited by the Drakes in what it could have for a spaceforce, but the royal family was related to the Drakes and were entitled to jump-capable ships for their personal use. “Can you tell how much of the fleet was at the station? Was the Franklin family yacht docked? What about the auxiliaries?”