The Sculpted Ship

by K. M. O'Brien

  It was true, she didn't get any new leads. She went back to The Black Mountain a little depressed, but not surprised.

  “Hey, there Captain, how'd it go? From that frown, I'm guessing not well.”

  “No, no luck. I didn't expect anything, though.”

  “Sorry to hear that. You know, even if, in the end, you don't find those parts, don't feel bad about time and effort you've spent. You should be proud of even trying.”

  “Thanks, but I'm still planning to succeed. I'll see you around.”

  “Wait, before you go, I have a question for you. Do you own any Cutter Wine?”

  “Funny you should ask that. I just got my first case last week.”

  “Well, congratulations, Captain! Then I guess you know that bartenders can also bet, at least those who run a captain's bar?”

  “Sure, I had that explained to me.”

  “Our port here is pretty much only for ships carrying cargoes directly in and out of the mine here. For the pilots, my place is as close as we get to a Captain's Rest in this little town, so here's my question: Would you bet a case of Cutter Wine that you'll find some of the parts missing from your Dove?”

  “What? Doesn't that mean you're betting against me – that you win if I don't find my parts?”

  “That's what I'm betting, but don't get me wrong, Captain; I'd be happy to see you win. But how serious are you? Will you risk your first and only case of Cutter Wine?”

  It seemed like a rude bet to Anailu, but she was absolutely serious about getting the Queen flying again. “You're on.”

  They shook on it.

  Chapter 22: Another Curiosity

  Anailu fell into a pretty regular regimen: She'd fly Monday to Friday with the Beast. Once or twice a month, she'd take a trip for the Torrells, usually four or five days long. She knew that Untsala was happier when one of the Torrells' trips took place over a weekend, because that was two fewer days she was away. It was also one weekend less she had to visit towns, villages, or industrial sites, looking for the missing parts.

  Anailu's evenings started to get a little boring. The ship was in excellent condition, at least for the systems she could afford to fix. She'd gotten reasonably competent with etiquette, and a single evening wasn't enough time to go hunting for the missing parts.

  When she got her first paycheck from the University, she ordered the plain dining-ware she'd wanted to stock the autoprep. She also had replacement gaskets made for all the hatches. The old gasket material had been sitting in the same position for so long it had become inflexible.

  As it was, the ship wouldn't hold much pressure, so it kept her altitude very limited unless everyone was in suits. The Queen was also equipped with air shields, but those didn't count for the safety regulations or for her Imperial ship registry. Air shields – energy shields designed to stop air while staying passable for solid object – required power, and the regulations assumed that could fail and leave you breathless.

  Because of the gasket leaks, the Queen's initial ship registration had limited her so that high altitude or extra-atmospheric travel was only permitted if everyone was in vacuum suits. Since groundlings tended to get worried if they were required to wear vaccsuits, she'd kept her flights limited to the low altitudes that were safe with the old seals.

  With the gaskets replaced and inspected (and a new stock of emergency air masks), she got the high altitude restriction removed. Permission to take the Queen higher meant she could reach higher speeds in the thin air. The removal of that restriction also made Anailu happy because it brought the Queen one step closer to truly being a starship.

  Untsala (via Petro) didn't like losing a half-day's work for the inspection until she sent him an analysis of how much travel time it could save each week for trips to widely dispersed scan points.

  With all the time she spent with the research assistants, she couldn't help but get to know them better. One unfortunate side effect of this was hearing numerous discussions of “Aether Wars.”

  The “Aether Wars” was a historical fantasy series that had first come out a century ago. About all Anailu had known was that it existed, that there were still fans (for some reason).

  Anailu's big mistake was mentioning that she had never watched any Aether Wars, one day at lunch. “No, I've never seen them. It's kind of a joke among spacers. I've heard plenty of stories of Aether Wars fans who have weird ideas about starships and space combat.”

  Rollie, a dusky, muscular young man, rolled his eyes. “That's always the first thing people want to mention, but hardly any fans are that way. Most of the time, you won't even know someone's a fan unless you bring it up to them.”

  Gracie interjected, “Or they quote a line at you out of the blue.”

  Rollie chuckled. “True, that's kind of a giveaway, too. But look at us. We've all spent years studying serious science, and we're here working at the cutting edge of our field, and yet we're Aether Wars fans, too.”

  Anailu had to admit he had a good point. She'd never really talked to anyone who admitted to being a fan before, but a spacer would be crazy to admit it. “Alright, fine, I can see that.”

  Rollie smiled. “Why don't you let us show you some Aether Wars – just the three shows that got it all started. Then you can make up your mind based on real data instead of hearsay.”

  Anailu shrugged. “I'm not sure I want to put that much time into it.”

  From then on, the same group kept bugging her about it, though politely, until finally she gave in. As a group, they watched the three original, most liked shows, piece by piece, over several lunches. (The lounge could be configured into a first rate theater.) Once she started watching, Anailu discovered the shows weren't as bad as she feared. She was surprised to discover she actually liked them, at least enough that when the assistants were watching other “Aether Wars” shows, she would join them from time to time – at least when she wasn't busy running the ship.

  She also found another diversion, thanks to the assistants. One day, Robert and Janna, two of the assistants that were a couple, came to her asking for assistance with the lounge. Apparently, Robert wanted to use the lounge's holo to display data from a StellaTactics game, so he could explain something to Janna.

  Anailu knew StellaTactics. It was a space combat game that had been around for decades. It had been popular at the cadet academy she had attended, both because the combat tactics were similar to real life, and because the cadets knew that the Navy used a secured, customized version of the game for its exercises. Rumor had it that sometimes actual starship officers played StellaTactics incognito.

  Anailu had enjoyed it, but she'd preferred flying little ships, while her classmates had preferred working together to run big, powerful capital ships with lots of guns, which was the strategy of the Imperial Navy. Anailu heard other players claiming that StellaTactics was biased against little ships, but she'd always thought it was just because so many people wanted to be on big ships. The game also had a whole element of ship design, production, and logistics, but she'd never been interested in that side of it.

  Anailu had stopped playing StellaTactics once she had a real job. Since then, she had been too busy working as an engineer on real starships to have time to fly pretend ships.

  The lounge could be reconfigured to many different modes, but Robert said he needed her permission to set the lounge to play StellaTactics. That seemed odd, so Anailu went back to the lounge with them to check it out. Sure enough, it required her permission to activate. She thought that was odd, but she gave it.

  First the big window blacked out, blocking all light from outside. That was typical for any holo entertainment, since it kept the display from looking washed out.

  The lounge doors also closed, which was a little odd: the corridor lighting wasn't bright enough to affect the holo display. Then the furniture reconfigured, setting up series of stations around the perimeter of the room, each with its own holo display, along with an inner ring of stations around
a large floor. The center was dominated by a single massive holo display.

  Robert was very impressed. “Wooooow! You could run a whole faction battle from here!”

  Anailu agreed. “Yeah, you could.” Also, Anailu was a little disturbed to note how much this looked like an Imperial Navy Battle Command Center she'd seen as a cadet touring an Imperial Battleship. That one had a third, larger ring of stations around the outside, as well as additional support rooms elsewhere in the ship. The core layout was the same, though.

  The holo was showing the Doran system, with markers for tracked ships and satellites.

  Anailu sat down in the seat that, in a real BCC, would be reserved for the admiral. Sure enough, that seat had the master controls, so she cleared the displays and selected Exercise mode. “OK, where's that data you wanted to load?”

  Robert linked it in, and Anailu brought it up on the main holo, giving Robert access to it from another station. Now the holo showed a fictional star system from StellaTactics, along with positions of ships and troops. Robert proceeded to explain to Janna about a battle they had been in the night before.

  As she watched them converse, Anailu got the idea that Janna was more interested in Robert than in StellaTactics, so she locked down the command console and got up. “Let me know when you're done in here.” She left the lounge and went up to the bridge.

  Anailu was starting to wonder about the Silver Queen, but when she got to the bridge, she found another surprise. They were sitting on the ground, doing a scan, of course, but then she saw a notification light blinking on the captain's chair. Normally, she flew the ship from the pilot's position, since it was more convenient to access all the ship's systems from that console. Now she sat in the captain's chair to read the notification. It said, “Fleet System Active. Echo Displays?” with an option to activate. She did so, and a miniature version of the main lounge holo appeared, hanging before the captain's position, showing the fictional StellaTactics system.

  What.

  Maybe there really is something strange about the Queen.

  Sure, some rich company owner might want to manage her assets in an efficient way while aboard her yacht, but why link it to the bridge? Was this theoretical owner also stuck on being the captain of her own ship? Maybe, maybe it might have been some wealthy naval veteran, using a familiar setup, but her hypothetical reasoning was starting to get tenuous.

  Why would somebody do something like this with a Dove?

  Between the comm system and the lounge, the most likely suspect was the Navy, but she couldn't imagine them just abandoning a covert ops ship on some Rim world for thirty years. She knew they were careful to account for every ship, especially in Imperial space.

  She didn't have a good answer, but whoever got the ship modified, it was likely the Telani knew something, since they probably had done the work. If she ever had the time and money to take a voyage to the Core, she could ask them. She knew they had refused to answer any of the questions that Orym had sent them, citing customer privacy, but perhaps they might say more if she visited in person.

  That still left Robert and Jenna. When they were finished with the lounge, she spoke to Robert. “Can I speak to you for a moment?” She was going to ask him not to talk about the lounge, but he beat her to it.

  “Yeah, sure. I wanted to talk to you, too – it sounded like you've played StellaTactics before, Anailu.”

  “Well, yes, I have, but it's been a while.”

  “Let me ask you something else. That setup you have is totally sweet. Can I convince you to let my faction, the Bear Claws, use it for the next tournament? It will be a few months from now, so I was hoping you would keep your setup quiet until then. If you'll agree to do that, I can set you up with a good ship from my faction. What do you think?”

  Anailu thought for a moment. She did want him to keep quiet about what he'd seen, and if he kept thinking it was all about the game, that was better than any other excuse she could come up with. Besides, she did have time most evenings. Thinking back to her four years in the Escus Naval Cadet Academy, the only two bright lights of the whole experience had been learning about how ship worked and StellaTactics.

  “I might be willing to work with you, but I've got another condition. Don't tell anyone – not even your own faction – about this setup until it's time to actually use it. It will have the most impact if it stays secret.”

  “I'll have to tell at least some of our leadership council.”

  “That's fine.”

  “Great. Do you have an account with the Doran Locality?”

  Anailu shook her head.

  “OK, when you get your account set up, I'll give you access to see what we've got available. What was that other question you had?”

  Whoops, I've already gotten my answer. I need a different question! “Ah, what about Jenna? She saw it, too.”

  “Nah, she's OK. I already asked her not to talk about it, but she's not really serious about the game. But don't worry, I had her checked out before I brought her into the faction, just in case. The Bear Claws got burned by a mole a few years ago. Our backers put together a fund to pay for investigating any prospective members.

  “Which reminds me, once your background check is done, we'll invite you to a little party, so you can meet some of our players. Technically, it's our monthly meeting, but we usually take care of any business in just a couple minutes. The rest of the 'meeting' will be a sim test for you and any other new players, but don't worry about how well you do; we just use that to figure out where your skills are when you start out with us.”

  Chapter 23: Snow

  Anailu set to work researching the Doran Locality, which was dominated by three major factions. The Bear Claws were the second largest of these. She also found that in this Locality, there were a decent number of players using small, maneuverable ships, which was a pleasant change.

  The real-world distance between StellaTactics players was limited by the distance that would allow communications without a noticeable lag, a necessity for a multiplayer combat game like StellaTactics. So, the StellaTactics community in each star system formed a “Locality.” In the game, each Locality represented a fictional star cluster with many fictional star systems.

  By design, each Locality had two or more warring factions, so there was always someone to fight. Most battles were really just skirmishes or raids. Since most players also had jobs, families, or both, any major battles had to be scheduled well in advance, to make sure enough players could attend. The largest events were annual tournaments like the one Robert had mentioned.

  Anailu started spending some of her free evenings knocking the rust off her StellaTactics skills. She did plenty of regular ship handling, flying the Queen, but she was out of practice with combat maneuvers, gunnery, and tactics. For her new account, she chose the same callsign she'd used as a kid, “Greywind.”

  The faction meeting, initiation test, and welcome party was held at the home of Ardel Sammon, one of the members of the Bear Claws Council. Robert, as Anailu's sponsor, was there to greet her when she arrived. He introduced her to each of the five Council members who were present. Robert explained that most of the Council members didn't attend regular meetings in person. Plenty of regular Bear Claw members were present to help with the entrance examination and the party afterward.

  The formal meeting went quickly, as Robert said it would, with the only business being the nine new members joining the group. Six of the new members, including Anailu, were there in person. The other three were participating remotely. After the meeting, they went to an adjoining room, already set up with StellaTactics stations.

  Before they started, Ardel explained how the test would go. Each round was set up to finish quickly, starting the players just out of range of the opponents. Eighteen of the regular players would take part in the test. During the first round, half the regular players would be on the same team as the new players. For the second and third round, more of the regulars would move
to the opposing team. By the fourth round, it would be just the nine new players versus all eighteen participating Bear Claws.

  He reiterated what Robert had said: this was only a placement test, to determine the skills of the new players. He also impressed on everyone that the results of the test were a Bear Claws secret. They didn't want their opponents to know if their new players were any good.

  Early in Round One, Anailu could see that one of the new players, a woman using the callsign, “Snow,” was an incredible pilot. She was using the same class of ship as Anailu, but while Anailu thought her own flying was pretty good, she wasn't even in the same class as Snow. Anailu decided the best thing she could do for her team (and her own survival) was to follow Snow and help her kick ass. She focused on supporting Snow, flying as her wingman. It worked out well. Snow focused on attacking the enemy ships, while Anailu focused on defending them both. Both Anailu and Snow survived to the end. The newbie team won handily, and Round Two started immediately.

  In Round Two, Anailu's team was at a numerical disadvantage, but it wasn't as bad as the numbers made it seem. The regular players who had switched from her team were those who died first in Round One, which meant they were some of the least skilled regulars. Snow racked up an impressive kill count. Both Snow and Anailu survived. Again, the newbie team won. They immediately moved to Round Three.

  In Round Three, it got tougher. Again, the first regulars to die in the previous round got switched, but some of them were fairly skilled, and the difference in numbers was itself an advantage. Snow's flying was amazing, and Anailu was working hard just to stay with her. It was obvious that the lesser opponents were avoiding the two of them. Again they survived, and again their team won.