“Shona, how long ‘til you can confirm our new trajectory?” he asked, shaking off the fog that clung to him after the engine cut out.
“Yah, hang on,” she said, leaning forward to get a new set of beacon locks. She shook her head and rubbed her eyes. “Sorry. Give me a few minutes, boss.”
Jeph understood the gray fugue that clung to her brain after the blood flowed in the wrong direction during a burn. She came from a much lighter gravity colony than he did, so she struggled even more with hard acceleration.
“That’s impossible,” she said. The green line that had been their previous flight path disappeared as she put their new position on the plot. It sat squarely on the same heading they’d been traveling. “Our course hasn’t changed.”
“Dutch, can you confirm that?” he said.
“Confirmed commander,” Dutch said. “Internal accelerometers indicate that we have added seven thousand meters per second to our velocity, but we have not deflected from our previous trajectory.”
Executive Council Chamber: Galileo Station: Lunar Lagrange One
FleetCartel Chancellor Katryna Roja stood at the podium in the center of the Executive Council Chamber and looked up at the Prime Minister and the Union Steward. She smoothed the front of her black dress uniform with a firm tug and squared her shoulders as she scanned the room. FleetCom, as the operations branch of Roja’s cartel, was a non-military space navy and her service uniform carried an air that set her apart in a crowd. She knew its sharp lines gave her an edge when she was in the Council Chamber. A veteran of three decades of space service, she projected confidence that came across in her appearance. Formality on the podium translated to respect in a debate.
As a heavy-world endomorph that lived most of her life in light gravity, she looked much younger than the reality of her sixty years. Already entering her third term in office, she was at the median age of the chancellors, yet wielded an exceptional amount of power for as early in her political career as she was.
Each of the chancellors seated around her also stood at the top of a specific technical or social discipline, and represented the interests of the millions of aligned members in their respective cartels. The Union Steward set the executive agenda based on the represented will of the unaligned majority, while the Chancellery and the Prime Minister voted to codify law from that and that alone. No one else carried any weight in running the entirety of human civilization and as a result, the Human Union operated as a well-balanced technocracy.
The Chamber was a lofty pinnacle with rarified air, but what they had achieved in these halls was how the Union maintained the peace and kept humanity alive after the Great Collapse sent humankind out onto the rocks of the solar system.
Although Chancellor Roja’s private personality stood at odds with the showmanship of the arena, she understood the game intimately. Sometimes though, she resented the need to make speeches. Particularly when it was the same one she’d made on several previous occasions.
“We’ve covered this before,” she said, clearing her throat and locking eyes with the Prime Minister.
“Since Chancellor Tomlinson took his position over DoCartel, he’s argued that FleetCartel has a stranglehold on the operations of the Union. We all know this is absolutely preposterous.
“FleetCartel does have a limited check against the abuse of power. But this is the exact same check that each cartel has over the others.
“After the Great Collapse, the Union remains focused exclusively on guaranteeing that humanity survives by reaching out and developing the resources of the solar system. Two centuries ago we had virtually destroyed the biosphere of our home world. Those who came before us here knew we must change how we worked together so we wouldn’t continue to dig ourselves into an ever-deepening grave.
“To our credit, we’ve worked without conflict for almost 150 years. We have achieved this because we understand that we are interdependent and that our competitive history is what nearly ended civilization when we lived on Earth. Since we moved into space, FleetCartel has served our collective goals with an altruistic and balanced approach.
“Yes, FleetCartel provides the majority of transportation services throughout the Union, but we are not the only cartel to have ships. SourceCartel has ice harvesting and material transport ships. DoCartel has its repair tenders and support ships. DevCartel has research vessels that are exploring the depths of space. WellCartel operates dozens of hospital ships across the system. Even SocCartel runs cruise liners and mobile recreation centers. Every one of us has our own fleet.
“I grant that FleetCartel does supply and coordinate the largest portion of the transport services, but the majority of this is done in ships that are owned by the other cartels. We provide the professional training and oversight for the crews that every one of you use in your fleets. We maintain the standards for safe operation of your fleets, but do not control these ships.
“With the exception of our Lunar L-2 shipyard and a repair facility out at Mimas, DoCartel is the exclusive assembler of ships in the Union. There are no other places in the entire Union where ships are manufactured without engineers and expertise provided by DoCartel.” She paused and looked straight at Chancellor Tomlinson. He shook his head as if he was denying the truth of her commentary.
“Ultimately, it isn’t FleetCartel tipping the balance. It is DoCartel that has a stranglehold at the point of ship manufacture. This should be far more troubling than any influence we have at the operational level.”
This was the fourth time in as many months that Chancellor Roja had made the same speech. Each time she had to get up and say it again, was the direct result of Derek Tomlinson pushing the argument onto the monthly agenda through the Steward’s office. He always played it out with a different spin so the newswaves would re-varnish it in a new color of shellac, but it was still an identical challenge and stopped by an identical defense.
If Paulsen Lassiter had a backbone, he’d have resisted Tomlinson’s motion after the second try, but the Union Steward was a spineless slug that lived and died in the brainless court of popular opinion. It was unfortunate that he apparently liked the DoCartel Chancellor.
Fortunately, he didn’t have a vote.
The Prime Minister nodded, releasing Chancellor Roja from the floor and ending the discussion. As she stepped down from the dais to return to her seat, Madam Ambrose asked for further comments.
Of course, there will be none. Roja had won this argument again and she knew where the votes stood because she knew who her allies were.
“Well said, Katryna,” Arun Markhas whispered as she took her place beside the DevCartel Chancellor. He was an insufferable old scholar, but he was one of the few on the Chancellery that understood the politics better than she did. She considered him a friend even if one she kept at a safe distance.
“Again,” she said, sighing as she sat down. She punched in her vote and waited as the other Chancellors made their choices. There were only seven votes to count and she was shocked to see that the tabulation was not done the instant she entered hers. There would be two dissenting votes. DoCartel and SourceCartel. The same as last time. The actual votes of the Chancellors were secret, but she knew who stood against her.
Prime Minister Ambrose cleared her throat. “On Chancellor Tomlinson’s motion for releasing ship operations currently under the control of FleetCartel to the specific cartels owning individual vessels, the motion fails by a vote of four to three.”
Four to three? She scanned the faces of the other Chancellors looking for a clue to who changed their mind. No one flinched.
“Unless someone has other business, I think that ends our session,” the Prime Minister said. “If there are no objections, I declare this session closed.”
Katryna leaned back in her chair and studied everyone as they got up to leave. No one gave the slightest tell that they had shifted their position.
Arun leaned toward her and smiled. “It will do you no good to fret ove
r that which is irrelevant,” he said. “You still controlled the vote and we all understand that without your cartel, the chaos would overwhelm us. Sanity does outweigh politics.”
“Yes but politics is like cancer. It grows on its own, and rots the life out of us,” she said, pushing back from the table and already planning her counterattack.
Unlike cancer, Tomlinson was about to be cured.
CHAPTER TWO
SourceCartel Operations: Galileo Station: Lunar Lagrange One:
There might not be anywhere near as many humans as there were before the collapse, but Galileo Station was the nexus of humanity’s bureaucracy so no one could tell. Everything had a channel, and everywhere channels crossed, there was a person responsible for keeping things flowing. Even if they didn’t know exactly what they’d pushed through which pipe, someone had most certainly pushed it.
Living in the plumbing of civilization’s administrative understructure was an exercise in enduring overwhelming sameness, every day. Particularly when you worked in something as dull as Materials Reprocessing Management.
Zora Murphy showed up for her shift ten minutes before her scheduled login. She sat her decaf hardball on the edge of her console and tossed her thinpad into the corner of her workstation before she looked at her screen. There was a message alert blinking on the lower corner. She opened the file, thumbing her login into the bioscanner.
“Here’s the info you were looking for. Keep your head down, this stinks big, and there’ll be flies swarming soon.”
There was a large attachment and when she opened it, she realized she’d stepped clear outside her safe zone.
“Frag me,” she whispered as she scanned the attachment. Glancing over her shoulder to see if anyone was watching, she grabbed her thinpad and linked it to her console. As soon as the file transferred, she deleted it along with the original message on the server.
That won’t be enough to hide my tracks, she thought. Why the hell did I agree to do this?
She folded her thinpad and tucked it safely inside her jumpsuit, hopefully far enough under her squishy bits that nobody would think about looking for it. At least not without a legal binder.
She stood up, trying to decide if she should just walk out. Looking over the top of the surrounding cubicles, nothing seemed out of the ordinary. No guards charging through the door, no commotion anywhere. She could see her manager’s office across the workdeck. He sat calmly at his desk like he did any other morning.
An alert chime pulled her attention back to her screen. Tamir bin Ariqat stared at her.
“Good morning Miss Murphy,” the SourceCartel Chancellor said as her legs collapsed and planted her abruptly in her chair.
“Yes sir,” she said. “Am I in trouble?” She instantly regretted her words. You don’t invite lightning when it might come from a person who could incinerate bosses six tiers above you on a whim.
“That would depend, Miss Murphy,” he said, his eyes sparking in a way that told her that her life situation could change. In decidedly bad ways.
“Then what can I do for you Chancellor Ariqat?” she asked, her voice dragging out of her throat with an undertone of sandpaper.
“I understand that you have been looking into reprocessing efficiency reports?” He paused and glanced off screen at what might have been another person in his office. “May I ask why?”
“I’m doing some independent research,” she said. “I’m hoping to test for a better rating and thought …” her voice trailed off. It was a bad excuse and she knew it even before his eyes told her he was skeptical.
“Of course,” he said, shaking his head. “I am sure there is a reason you didn’t go through appropriate channels to get your, research information?”
“Uhm, well …” She looked down at her hands. They were shaking and she set them down on the console. “My manager is … well, he is … he doesn’t like me. So I didn’t think he’d support me taking the initiative like this.” That part was true. She hoped it was a good enough answer to satisfy the chancellor.
“Indeed,” he said, leaning back. “What do you intend to do with this information Miss Murphy?” he asked.
“I wanted to see if there was something that might lead me to a suggestion on how to increase production in recycling?” she said. She was fishing and knew she was in dangerous waters.
“I see,” he said, his lips tightening into what looked like a snake trying to smile. It was a very uncomfortable expression to witness, especially when aimed at her. “We will be in touch. Soon.” He slapped his hand down on the disconnect and left her staring at an empty screen.
A new message appeared on her console an instant later. It was her Manager.
“What the hell are you doing? Ariqat’s people are asking me all kinds of questions that I can’t answer. I want you in my office. NOW!”
“Frag off,” she said under her breath.
She stood up to glance across the deck in his direction. He was still at his desk and staring at his screen. Probably waiting for me to reply. Looking at her console where her thinpad normally sat, she subconsciously patted her left breast. It was still there.
Zora took a deep breath, squared her shoulders, walked out into the aisle, and turned away from his office. She knew more than enough to realize there was something going on that was way bigger than her lousy job.
Twenty meters to the door.
Jakob Waltz: Neptune L-4 Trojan Cluster:
The entire crew sat gathered around the galley table, staring at the commander. He had no answers and honestly had more questions than any of them.
“I’ll have to file a formal Situation Alert,” Jeph said. “I’m supposed to make a report when we run into problems, but so far this one defies explanation. I can’t even say for sure we’re in danger.”
He looked at Danel Cross who shrugged. “Don’t look at me,” he said. “I’m just a rock jockey in a bow tie.” Danel was the only credentialed scientist on the Waltz, but he was a geophysicist with a specialization in cometary ice structures. He wasn’t much use dealing with astrophysics.
“I’d say danger might be a real possibility,” Anju Soresh said. “If we can’t break free, eventually we’ll run out of resources and be in trouble. Wouldn’t that count?” She was the ship’s doctor, but other than being an adept surgeon, she admitted she wouldn’t know enough about orbital mechanics to venture a guess why they couldn’t break free.
Seva Johansen and Corin Stone both glanced at each other and shook their heads. They were EVA specialists, but between payload targets they took turns working the life support recycling gear. “As long as we have power, we’ve got food and air,” Cori said.
“Ja, the system self-sustains,” Seva said. “Old age gets us before we starve.”
“Reaction mass tanks are at ninety-two percent,” Rocky said. “Fusion reactor could run for hundreds of years on fuel available.”
“You all are just so comforting,” Anju said. “I don’t mind dying of old age, but I didn’t want to do it out here in the middle of nowhere.”
“Is like Siberia,” the engineer said, smiling uncharacteristically. “Cold and lonely, but risk is limited to boredom.”
“Maybe it’s dangerous,” Kiro said. “Something out there creating shit-tons of gravity. A black hole would be nogo.”
He looked at Danel who shrugged. “I will send for info from the academy core and hopefully it will help me get my brain up to speed on it. A black hole could be a possibility,” he said.
“It’s not a singularity,” Chei Lu said flatly. He was the youngest member of the crew, by almost a decade. A specialist in the arcane thermonuclear technology that was the core of their TICS units, he kept his background well hidden.
“Why do you say that?” Jeph asked. He knew Chei was the product of a boosted childhood, but other than what was on his personnel file, he had no clue how much actual education he had.
“It’s just not,” he said. He sighed, his expression
looking like he was making a decision. “When I was working on the Hyperfusion project at the Vesta Science Academy—”
Rocky snorted in disbelief. “Is unlikely. Hyperfusion project was canceled ten years ago. I read technical papers when ended.”
“Yah. I was sixteen when that happened.” Chei nodded. He pulled his personal thinpad out and thumbed the screen open. He tossed it to the commander.
Jeph read the title out loud. “An Analysis of Quantum Sink Potential Above the Fusion Threshold and its Bearing on Triggering a Sustained Micro-Singularity.”
“That might be the one you read?” Chei asked, looking at Rocky.
She nodded. “Is familiar sounding.”
Jeph handed the thinpad to Danel. The scientist scrolled down the abstract and stopped. “Look at the authors’ names,” he said, handing it back to the commander.
The second name on the paper was Chei Lu, Ph.D. Designatus.
“What’s a Ph.D. Designatus?” Jeph asked.
“It means he completed everything for his doctorate, including his dissertation defense and publication, but he hadn’t yet received the degree,” Danel said.
“Never got it either,” Chei said, shaking his head. “I screwed up and picked the right side of a fight. Unfortunately, the wrong side happened to include the crotchbrain that was my academic adviser. I didn’t think when I decided to shoot down the Hyperfusion project, Stanislav would kill my diploma in retaliation.”
“You didn’t appeal?”
“Wasn’t worth it. Some things stink worse with agitation.” He shrugged. “Took my under-degree and certified in nuclear tech, then went to work designing steam burners.”
“And that landed you out here?” Jeph asked.
“Yah. Someone told me that the best way to get around an old physicist is to wait for him to die. Stanislav is an old flatch, so I figured eight or ten years in the dark and maybe he’ll be gone when I get back. Then I’ll see if I can get the paper.”
“Does this mean we have to treat you all respectful-like?” Cori asked.
Seva elbowed him in the ribs, almost knocking him loose from his chair straps. “Why? We don’t respect Danel either.”
Shan Takhu Legacy Box Set - With an Extra Bonus Story Page 2