Nakamiru was ancient by any measure. One of the last refugees to leave Earth directly from the Japanese Republic, he had to be 130 years old, but other than gray hair and faint lines around his eyes, he showed no signs of his age. His earthly physique had apparently quit aging when he relocated to the lunar gravity. She served with him on more than a dozen command postings, and he was instrumental in her nomination for the Chancellery.
They ate in silence for several minutes before he put down his sticks and leaned back, steepling his fingers in front of his face. “Although I enjoy your company, I know you seldom do things without reason. Would you care to enlighten me?”
She nodded, letting out a slow breath. “How much of the total Union space fleet is privately owned ships?”
“Less than five percent. Why?” he asked, his face showing that he had not expected the question.
“I’m trying to scan something that Arun said last night,” she said, drumming her fingers on the arm of her chair. She didn’t want to share her thinking yet, but she was fishing for some way to make things fit together. “He talked about the idea that maybe DoCartel wants to do something outside the law and that’s why they’ve been campaigning to get us off their back.”
“And why would that lead you to ask about privately owned ships?” he asked.
“I’m just exploring options.” She shrugged. “He made it sound like he thought they were hiding something big, but he was being cagey.”
“Is he ever not?”
“True,” she said. She glanced around the room and lowered her voice to a whisper. “He suggested that they were putting together a ghost fleet and trying to get to where they could operate it without having to keep it hidden.”
“Sounds paranoid, if you want my opinion,” he said, chuckling.
“I know. Hypothetically, if someone wanted to build a secret fleet, how would they go about it?”
“I suppose they could have a hidden shipyard somewhere,” the admiral said, frowning. He closed his eyes and shook his head. She could tell he was grinding out some other idea. She’d watched him do this many times before. He’d toss out a first idea, then after a minute or so he’d retract it and replace it with a better one. It was how his mind worked and she let him run his course.
His eyes popped open and his face lit up. “Or they could steal ships from the recycling chain. That would take SourceCartel’s cooperation, but they could do it.”
“What?” She blinked in surprise. She’d figured he would work out where a shipyard might be hiding, but his statement dropped perfectly into the part of her conversation with Arun that she hadn’t told him yet.
“We recycle thirty or more ships a year. Minimum. Well over half of those are still space worthy.” He nodded as the idea gained traction in his mind. “If SourceCartel wasn’t actually scrapping them, they could disappear from the inventory as long as they pushed new materials into the supply chain to make up for it. The cost would be higher than the cost for recycled metals, but if you factor that against the labor to build a new ship from scratch you could easily bury it.”
“Eat a loss in one department to make it up in another?”
“Exactly,” he said. “They would refit and upgrade the carcass and park it somewhere until they needed it.”
“Or operate it without broadstream and a transponder, but keep it out in the deep-system,” she said. “It’d be easy to avoid tracking stations and it might as well be invisible. A real ghost ship.”
He nodded. “Once you get into the Jupiter gap, there is a lot of open space.”
“I wonder if we could find where they might be doing this.” She leaned forward and pulled a thinpad out of her pocket to make notes.
“They’d have to be working well away from prying eyes. There are a lot of large bodies in Centaur orbits that run from the gap all the way out to the Kuiper Belt. They could turn any of those into a base of operations,” he suggested. “As to tracking it down, an operation like this has to be bleeding a lot of supplies from somewhere. That would show up on somebody’s ledger sheets.”
“If I had access to the other cartels’ records, maybe that would be useful, but they could also be running unregistered mining operations. That’d give them potential resources that never made it into the real economy.”
He nodded. “Perhaps, but reaction mass is still at a premium. If there is any place it will show up, that would be where to look. Ice haulers are notoriously sloppy at record keeping, but they are all running at 100%. Figure out where they are showing up late or loaded light and you might have a clue.”
“But the question that still remains is, why?”
CHAPTER FIVE
FleetCartel Executive Offices: Galileo Station: Lunar Lagrange One:
Katryna had just set her hardball down on the edge of her desk and was steeling herself to face another day in the asylum that her office had become. She’d spent most of the night staring at economic reports and trying to dig out how there could be anything to what Arun Markhas told her.
A Ghost Fleet?
His theory still sounded like the delusions of a paranoid conspiracy fiend. What bothered her most about it was, even without proof, her guts told her she needed to chase it down.
Her com chirped and she flopped down in her seat, drawing in a deep breath. “So begins another day,” she said, before tapping the icon.
Graison Cartwright’s face appeared on her screen. Her Chief of Staff’s office was next to hers, but he preferred to use the com rather than intrude. Especially before she finished her first hardball. “Excuse the interruption Chancellor,” he said, “but you have a com from Deputy Inspector Josiah Carsten with the Investigator General’s Office.”
“When did you start answering my coms?” she asked.
“It bumped up the system, because he needs to talk to you personally about an ongoing investigation.”
“What kind of investigation?” she asked, wondering if Ariqat already made a formal complaint. The Deputy Inspector was the second highest position in the IG Office.
“He wouldn’t give me any details, but he says he’s working with the Capital Crimes unit on a special case.”
“Capital Crimes?” She sighed heavily. “Put him through.”
Josiah Carsten was a middle-aged man with close-cropped hair and dark eyes. She recognized his face from when it appeared occasionally on the newswaves. “Thank you for taking my call, Chancellor Roja” he said, nodding.
“Not a problem, Inspector Carsten. What can I do for you?” She riveted a professional smile to her face.
“I’m reaching out to you because I need to get permission to enter a crime scene to perform forensic work,” he said.
“That seems strange,” she said. “I thought you had authorization to work pretty much anywhere?”
“Ordinarily, we do.” He nodded. “But in this case the crime scene is aboard the FleetCartel multicruiser Pegasus. The ship undocked from Galileo last night at 2340 hours and the officer of the watch reported the incident as soon as they discovered it. Unfortunately, that was just after they left the docking stanchion. Technically our jurisdiction doesn’t extend to mobile assets while not in spacedock, so we need to get your permission to go aboard to conduct an investigation.”
She tapped in a request for the current posted orders for the Pegasus. It was on a routine cargo run to the Vesta Science Labs. No urgency. “We can order the ship to reconnect to Galileo,” she suggested.
“It’s a matter of formality,” he said. “The call came in from the ship and that leads us to believe the officer thinks it happened before they left. Until we do a prelim assessment, we don’t know if the incident occurred when the ship was still under our jurisdiction or not.”
“Got it,” she said. “We have a department that handles this kind of situation. May I ask why you didn’t go through channels?”
“Because of the type of incident it is,” he said.
“And that would be?”
/>
“A homicide,” he said.
“Seriously?”
“Yes ma’am,” he confirmed. “They discovered the victim in an open cargo lock. According to the ship’s doctor, it looks like the cause of death is blunt force trauma but it’s possible this happened when the lock blew. We’d like to bring in a forensics team to look over the scene.”
Katryna shook her head. “There’d be ConDeck alarms for an emergency hatch blow, and there are safety interlocks that would prevent the outer door from opening without an active suit transponder inside the lock. They’d have to have overridden all of those systems. Was the victim a crewmember?”
“No ma’am,” he said. “She was a FleetCartel member many years ago, but as far as we know, she was never involved with ship service. She was with SourceCartel for the last few years and was working in their operations center as a systems specialist.”
“What was she doing aboard the Pegasus?”
“That’s one of the things we’re looking into,” he said. “It’s possible she was killed somewhere else and dumped on the ship.”
“That still leaves me wondering how she got there,” the chancellor said. “I know dock security can be lax, but getting into a cargo hold without FleetCom ship clearance is not an easy trick.”
“That’s my understanding,” he agreed. “That’s why we’re being very careful in how we pursue this. As soon as we opened the investigation, we determined that she has been missing for about forty-eight hours.”
“She’s been aboard the Pegasus for that long?”
“Again ma’am, we don’t know,” he said.
“Do you want me to have the ship return to the stanchion?” she asked.
“That is your option, but Investigator General Wentworth said it might be best to leave it where it sits for now. Intercartel politics being what they are, you might want to retain control of the investigative process rather than hand it over to Galileo Port Authority. If they take over, the station police will handle the matter and neither of us will have any control over how long or which direction that might go.”
“Understood,” she said. “I don’t want to obstruct the investigation in any way, so your people have permission to do a preliminary exam. We’ll keep it out of the locals’ hands, until you advise it to be desirable to release it.”
“Excellent,” he said, smiling for the first time.
“I’ll have a rep from our Legal Advisor’s Office meet your people at the dock. You won’t mind if someone accompanies you as you work this?”
“No problem.” He nodded. “Thank you ma’am. I will pass the word and coordinate this with your advisor’s office. We don’t want to hold your ship up any longer than necessary, and I will keep you posted as the investigation progresses.”
Even before the screen closed, she was on the com with Legal. It was too much of a coincidence that the victim of a murder, on one of her ships, sounded a lot like the woman that Ariqat claimed was her spy.
She didn’t dare pull jurisdiction to stop the investigation, but the whole damn thing was starting to reek.
Jakob Waltz: Neptune L-4 Trojan Cluster:
They all tried to eat at least one meal a day together. It was a way for Jeph to gauge how everyone was doing. Since they stumbled into whatever mess they were facing, a daily gathering felt far more important. Anju pointed out the first day after this all started, that there was a new undercurrent to the mood of the crew. She stopped short of calling it fear, but said it smelled like something that might become malevolent.
This morning, they had their first tidbit of real news. It wasn’t much, but Alyx spent most of the night compositing images from the exterior optics and they finally had a picture of whatever it was that sat at the center of their situation. The commander asked her to bring the results to their meal hoping it might give them a bit of optimism.
“It’s not what I’d expect a black hole to look like,” Jeph said, looking at the small splotch of light on the screen.
“It’s not a singularity,” Chei said, appearing from his room and stifling a yawn as he floated toward the galley to grab some food.
“Hasn’t he said that before?” Danel asked, looking around the table at everyone else. They all nodded.
“It looks like a normal iceberg,” Alyx said. “It might be bigger than average, but otherwise it’s not unique in any way. At least not from what we can see in the optical spectrum.”
“The object appears to be hydrostatically spherical, which is unusual for an object in this size range,” Dutch added. “Angular measurements put it at approximately 100 kilometers in diameter, with an error of no more than ten percent. Over the last four hours of observation, there has been no measurable fluctuation in albedo, which indicates that it is either very smooth or not rotating measurably. Either of these conditions would also be uncommon.”
“We’re not measuring any abnormalities in absorption or emission either,” Alyx said. “What we’re getting is clean reflected light.”
“That’s probably a good thing,” the commander said. “Does this mean it’s safe to say we’re not about to be eaten?”
“Not yet,” Danel said. “This helps eliminate some of the possibilities. In my opinion, the lack of radiation is moving the idea of a singularity down the list of likely suspects.”
“We know. It’s not a singularity,” Anju said, grinning at Chei and holding her hand up to cut him off before he could say it. “But it really does look like an iceberg to me.”
“It could still be an Einstein-Rosen Bridge,” Danel said. “Theoretically, we could be seeing an object on the other side. I mean, through it.”
“How?” Jeph asked.
“An ERB is basically a corridor from one place in the universe to another. If we were looking straight down the hallway, we might see light from the far end. If what we’re experiencing is a gravity stream through the bridge, that might indicate we’re in line with the opening.”
“Why can’t we ever just look at something and say, ‘See it’s just an iceberg’?” Cori asked, grinning. “Why do you science types have to make things so hard? Life is so much easier in the back of the bus where we live.”
Seva nodded, looking far less amused.
“If we could bounce a pulse off the object, would we be able to tell if that’s what it is?” Jeph asked.
“A solid HDA ping off of it would be a good starting point,” Danel said. “If it is an ERB, there’ll be all kinds of distortion on the return.”
“How far away did you say it was?” Alyx asked.
“270 light years,” Shona said, “or 47.5 million klick, depending on if it’s this side of the wormhole or not.”
“In either case, no way,” Alyx said. “Even if we collimate the beam to get a maximum focus, we’re only good for ten to fifteen megaklick. The HDA’s not designed for that kind of range.”
“We could get closer,” Danel suggested.
“NO!” Seva and Kiro said in unison.
“It looks like a normal iceberg on the optic images we have,” the commander said. “I don’t think—”
“No,” Kiro said again. “Respectfully, boss even if it isn’t a black hole or a wormhole, it’s got our butts glued in place. At this range. If we get closer, there’s no telling what it might do to us.”
“I’m not suggesting we land on it,” Jeph said surprised at the level of pushback he was getting from his pilot.
“It’s never a good idea to get closer to a bear than you have to in order to take a picture ... with a big lens and a lot of running room. We’ve got a big lens, but we’ve got no way to run,” Kiro said.
“Where’d you ever see a bear?” Danel asked.
“I didn’t, but I read about them,” Kiro said.
“Ah, so you read about bears and think that’s the same kind of logic that applies to a singularity,” Danel said, winking.
“Ja. Don’t get close to a bear or a black hole,” Seva said. “Sounds like good adv
ice to me.”
“But it’s not a black hole,” Chei said.
“It’s not a bear either, but I don’t want to take that chance,” the pilot said. “Could be a one way trip.”
“But you heard Alyx,” Danel said. “We can’t shoot it from here.”
“Could we boost the signal on the sensor beam?” Jeph asked.
Alyx shrugged. “The hardware is limited in how much you can push through it, but it’s not power as much as focus. The HDA works like a giant multispectral flashlight. We send a specific set of electromagnetic pulses at something and then measure the distortion in the returned signal to decode information about the target. We wouldn’t need to have as much strength in the transmission if we had a tighter beam, but that would require a major modification to the antenna. With better aperture control we’d lose less to diffusion.”
“I could create extension for antenna assembly that would improve collimation,” Rocky said, nodding. “Would need to mount necessary hardware to end of mast with HDA in deployed position.”
“Yah, we could do that,” Alyx said. “The problem is the sensor impulse is a phased broad-range signal so each frequency would require a different physical attachment.”
“Could we pick an optimal pulse range and then if we don’t get anything, change the hardware and shoot again?” Jeph asked.
“Would take some time to create and mount hardware, but cando,” Rocky said.
“How long will it take?”
“Eight hours?” the engineer said, looking for confirmation from Alyx who was shaking her head skeptically. “Maybe more.”
“Do it,” he said.
FleetCartel Executive Offices: Galileo Station: Lunar Lagrange One:
Jaxton Quintana was the youngest admiral on Chancellor Roja’s staff. In fact, he was the youngest admiral in the entire history of FleetCom. He was her best executive officer when she was still a captain and she favored him to be her replacement as Chancellor of FleetCartel. He ran the Lunar L-2 Shipyard and was the embodiment of efficiency and precision. Everything about him, from his tight-cropped beard to his laser sharp eyes said he was in charge. Of everything.
Shan Takhu Legacy Box Set - With an Extra Bonus Story Page 5