Sometimes she wished his posting was closer, but she needed him where he was. She could count on him to keep FleetCartel’s one shipyard operating perfectly.
“Thanks for taking a minute to talk to me,” she said. “I know you’re up to your pits in work.” There was almost a full second of transmission delay each way between Galileo and Lunar L-2. It wasn’t too bad, but it kept the conversation chopped into bite sized pieces.
“I’ve always got time for you, Madam Chancellor,” he said.
“Cheese it, Jax. This is a casual com and off the scan, copy?” She sat back in her chair and picked up her hardball. She toggled the icon on her desktop to encrypt the transmission and the red border appeared on her screen. He’d see the indicator on his end and know that, although she was talking to him off the record, it was important enough to keep secure.
“So what can I do for you?” he asked.
“I am chasing ghosts,” she said. “I need to know something technical and I think you can help me. Do you know of any way to tell if the metal in a ship is new or recycled?”
He sat for several seconds longer than the transmission delay before he replied. “I think it would depend on what metal you’re talking about. There are chemical signatures in most alloys that give away the place of origin. Why?”
“I’m trying to follow up on an idea and I need to know if someone is substituting newly processed material for recycled metals,” she said.
Again he waited several seconds before he reacted.
He wrinkled his face into a caricature of confusion. “Why would anyone want to do that? Takes more time and labor to work ore up from scratch.”
“I understand, but if someone wanted to make it happen, could they do it without raising too many red flags?” She took a small sip of her hardball while she waited.
“Probably. But, why?” The expression still hung on his face.
“How much harder is it to bring new material out of a mine and get it all the way to the supply line than to reprocess from scrap?” she asked. She watched his face shift once the transmission delay got to his end. He sat staring at her, while wrestling with the idea that she was serious.
“I don’t know.” He shrugged. “Other than DoCartel, I don’t think anyone’s got as much automation as SourceCartel, but the biggest cost advantage of reprocessing is that it can be done almost anywhere. New, raw materials have to be transported from wherever they’re found.”
“Off hand, do you know how much of the material cost is manufacturing labor? Say on a multicruiser?” She set her drink down and pulled a thinpad closer.
“Overall, not much. Maybe twenty percent,” he said.
“So it’s a relatively small part of the cost to produce.” she said. “If someone could re-commission a ship scheduled for recycling and replace the recycled materials with new in the supply chain, their investment would be far less than the cost to manufacture a new ship.”
He leaned sidewise and rested his chin on his knuckles while he waited for her response. “Possibly. But why would anyone want an old hulk?” he asked.
“Where could this kind of work be done? Where do they tear the old ships down to base materials?”
He shook his head. “There are a dozen yards that gut old ships. Most of them are out near Ceres. There’s also a repair yard on Iapetus that handles scrapping. It might be big enough to process ships.”
“Saturn is mostly run by Dev and Source too. That makes sense,” she said, muttering as she tapped in commands to pull up a map of the system.
“I’m afraid you’ve lost me,” he said.
“Sorry, but I’m not sure I’m ready to buy into this either,” she said. “For now, keep what I’m about to tell you tightly wrapped.”
She waited until he nodded before she went on. “It’s been suggested that one or more of the cartels is working on building up a ghost fleet. If so, they could grab operational ships off the reclamation line, reporting them as scrapped and then stashing them somewhere.”
His expression registered slight surprise. “You’re thinking that Source could substitute recycled with new metal to cover it.”
“Exactly. If we were watching for it, would we be able to detect new alloys when we weren’t supposed to be getting them?”
“Maybe,” he said. “We’ve got our own material sciences lab, but we don’t usually order recycled materials.”
“I might suggest you pick some up for a small project of some sort and see if it passes muster. Perhaps you need some unusual alloy that would be hard to mistake?” she asked.
“There are beryllium products that are reasonably specific and we can tell where they came from. There are only a couple smelters tooled to handle them and it’d be easy to spot which one manufactured it.”
“Let’s do that,” she said. “And just keep it between us for now.”
CHAPTER SIX
FleetCartel Executive Offices: Galileo Station: Lunar Lagrange One:
Katryna was walking out of her office for a quick lunch meeting with her security staff when a uniformed officer of the Chancellery Guard walked in. He stood in the doorway and held out a single sheet of cream-colored paper. She took the page and without a word, he spun and walked out.
Paper was a rarity reserved for the most important events of government. She looked at it for several seconds, rubbing the rough texture between her thumb and finger before the words filtered through to her brain.
DECLARATION OF SEALED DOCKET SESSION
Pursuant to Union Charter Provision Twelve, as of 2243.107, Chancellor Tamir bin Ariqat has requested and been granted a Sealed Docket Session. This SDS is to be held in closed session ten days hence and is to occur in the Executive Council Chambers on 2243.117 at 0930 hours. Session will continue until the Petitioner’s grievance is resolved.
As per Union Charter, the subject of this session may not be disclosed in any manner, public or private, except to the parties of the grievance, until the session begins. It is the responsibility of the Petitioner to notify parties to the grievance of the de facto nature of their dispute. Failure to notify does not abridge the rights of the Petitioner, however such failure may be grounds to move for dismissal or extension of the session so that suitable arguments may be developed.
Discussion of the subject of the SDS between members of the Chancellery, directly or through proxy, is forbidden. All other communication between chancellors is to be limited exclusively to essential operational business until after the SDS is completed. There will be no tolerance of attempts to influence non-aggrieved members of the Executive Council by any party to the grievance, any such infraction will be grounds for immediate divestiture of Chancellery Status.
There will be no further notification of this session given.
Signed: Carmen Ambrose, Prime Minister of the Executive Council
Signed: Paulson Lassiter, Steward of the Human Union
She read the page a second time.
Even though there would be no notice from the Prime Minister that she was Ariqat’s target, she felt the gun pointing at her.
As far as she knew there had been only three Sealed Docket Sessions convened since the foundation of the Union. It was the highest level of political challenge and all three instances had ended up with the removal of a chancellor.
“Well this changes things,” she said, glancing at her office manager and pivoting back toward her office. “Wipe my schedule and see if you can get Arun Markhas here for a meeting, today sometime.”
“Yes ma’am,” he said. “Chancellor Markhas’s office is on the line now trying to schedule with you.”
“Work that out for this evening. I also think I need to talk to someone from Legal immediately,” she said. “I’ll need one familiar with the process of a Sealed Docket Session.”
He looked up from his screen, his expression showed he wasn’t sure he heard her correctly. “Excuse me ma’am?”
She nodded. “You heard me. Trouble’s coming.
Get on it.”
It took almost ten minutes to get the right advisor on the com. Chancellery level law was a rare specialization in the FleetCartel legal department. To find someone with credentials for an SDS session, they had to look to a non-aligned private practice. She didn’t like going outside Fleet, but she knew the risk of underrepresentation was not one she wanted to take.
“Chancellor Roja, it’s a pleasure to meet you,” the man said from her com screen. He was a pleasant looking older man with eyes that screamed intelligence. Her screen showed his name as Aryk Rasmussen.
“Thank you for talking with me on such short notice Mr. Rasmussen,” she said. “I have a few questions for you and then perhaps we can come to terms.”
“I need to advise you upfront Madam Chancellor, that with the notification of SDS going out to the members of the Chancellery, we have become very popular. Thus far, no one has formally engaged our firm, but that status may change at any moment. Should this occur, it is my advice to you that what you choose to disclose to me should be limited to avoid potential exposure of your position and any professional conflict of interest on our part.”
“I understand that,” she said. “What would be the requirements for retaining your firm?”
“Retaining us may be premature,” he said. “I can give you an informal consultation to familiarize you with the Sealed Docket process with no obligation on either of our parts. Until we know the identity of the chancellor that is the focus of the SDS, there is no purpose in entering a professional relationship.”
She took a deep breath. “Send me the contract.”
He blinked once. “Oh. I see,” he said. She could see his hands moving at the edge of her screen. A red ring appeared around his image telling her he’d encrypted the com. A second later, a file pinged into her system.
“That is a standard Intent to Representation statement,” he explained. “Your AI should be able to determine the suitability of the conditions and if you agree to the fee schedule and terms, please imprint it and return it. I will wait.”
She tapped her screen and opened the file, waiting as her computer interpreted the document. Its results appeared almost instantly:
Contract is presented in standard form with no special exclusions or conditions. Fee schedule is at, or slightly above, standard rates for private legal representation. Exit from agreement is per Union Law. No detected detriment to consent.
She pressed her thumb against the seal blank and returned it to Rasmussen.
“Now that we have that out of the way, where would you like to begin?” he asked.
“I’d think you would know far better than I what comes first,” she said.
“Indeed,” he said. “I will send you a background overview of the process itself, but it’s important to realize that an SDS is not like a court as much as it is a private tribunal. It is conducted in absolute secrecy and no advisors are allowed to participate once the session begins.” He looked over at something off screen and nodded.
“We must move quickly to prepare your arguments so you are able to defend yourself effectively. I need for you to send me everything that might have a bearing on Ariqat’s grievance.”
“That could be problematic, since I haven’t received anything from him,” she said.
“Then why do you think he would be pursuing this action against you?”
“To keep me from investigating illegal activities that I suspect involve his cartel,” she said.
“Do you have any evidence of that?” Rasmussen asked.
“Not yet,” she said, shaking her head. “His decision to do this would be to preempt my ability to get that evidence.”
“Interesting,” he said. “Is it possible that Chancellor Markhas would have this evidence?”
“Why would you ask that?” she said.
“Because he also just contacted our firm and when we told him we were already retained and were not available to represent him, he offered to help you with your case,” he said. “You specifically. And what made that interesting is that we would not under any circumstances disclose who we were representing.”
Jakob Waltz: Neptune L-4 Trojan Cluster:
“So what do we know?” the commander asked as he flipped down onto the CrewDeck.
“Not much,” Chei said, pushing off a food locker toward the table with two plates and a thermocup tucked under his arm.
“The first sensor ping didn’t tell us anything,” Danel said.
“I think I already knew that,” he said, shaking his head as he anchored himself to a chair at the end of the table. “I was wondering if we knew why it didn’t work yet.”
“It has to be that we collimated the wrong frequency spread,” Chei said.
“Or it got sucked into a black hole,” Danel said, winking.
“We know. It’s not a singularity,” Anju said from the galley where she was putting the remains of the meal away.
Chei snorted. “Fortunately, Rocky was willing to install the next set of aperture upgrades to the HDA, so hopefully we’ll know more soon.”
“Will power up new antenna modifications once Specialist Donegal has completed shower,” Rocky said, her tone showing a deeper layer of frost than normal. Obviously she was frustrated at having to work outside on an EVA while the others had finished their meal and called it a day. The engineer would normally have hit the showers after unsuiting, but since Shona and Alyx were in the wetroom, she sat staring at the plate in front of her.
Chei had just reached the table when everything lurched violently, sending him plowing into the ceiling, then tumbling toward the opening to the chute. He snagged a handhold on the overhead rail, and with his Earth-born strength somehow snatched Seva as she rocketed over the edge of the chute beside him.
Anju slammed against one of the open galley lockers, cart-wheeling into the overhead storage bins. She crashed hard and jammed to a stop, pinned against a bulkhead.
Danel’s legs jerked out from under the table edge. Howling in shock, he flipped flat onto his back against a light bracket. Shards of plasglass exploded across the room in a wave of debris.
Cori, who’d been floating well above the floor, bounced harmlessly off the overhead. His training as a security officer helped him control his impact, and he almost looked graceful as he rolled into a seated position next to Danel. Upside down.
Rocky cocked her head sidewise and watched in abstract curiosity as her dinner tray ripped loose from the maglock on the table and smashed into Danel above her.
Although the Commander was fortunate he was sitting in a position where his PSE took the full force of the table edge, he swung forward like a pendulum and slammed his face into the tabletop. Through a fog of red that was both pain and a mist of his own blood, he watched Chei trying to haul Seva’s bulk back over the railing.
“Collision Alert!” an automated warning system rang from somewhere in the ship. “Collision Alert!”
Then as suddenly as it had begun, they were back in freefall.
Instincts, built over years of working in space, kicked in despite his injury and Jeph prioritized the dangers of a collision without thinking. A hull penetration had to be their first concern.
Lose your air and it didn’t matter what other problems you might, or might not, have.
“Are we venting?” he hollered over the cacophony of loose objects clattering around the deck.
No response.
“Dutch, are we venting?” he bellowed.
“Atmo is tight,” Kiro said over the com. “Dutch is offline.”
“Systems report,” the commander said, lowering his voice as the clutter came to rest or was between bounces.
“Reactor relays are offline. We’re on backup power until we reset the breakers,” he said.
“I am on breakers,” Rocky said, unbuckling to head down to the power distribution controls.
The commander grabbed her arm and shook his head sending him into an unexpected wave of nausea. “Wait.
Other priorities.” He closed his eyes and the spinning eased, but his lips felt pinned to his teeth and he was having trouble forming words. Blinking to clear his vision, he focused on Rocky. “Go check the girls,” he said.
Shona and Alyx were from asteroid colonies and neither of them were in a PSE. Their bones weren’t strong enough to deal with much banging around, so they might be in bad shape. Without hesitating, Rocky launched herself like a missile toward the showers.
He and the girls in the shower were the only ectos on the crew. Other than Anju, who was holding her right arm away from her body at an odd angle as she struggled to pull herself out of the overhead bin, none of the others appeared hurt.
“Kiro, what’d we hit?” Jeph asked, holding his hand over his nose and trying to contain the blood while he talked. He was spraying splatters of red every time he spoke and it was obvious he was bleeding a lot more than was healthy.
“Dono,” the pilot reported. “We’re tumbling, so we’ve got—“
“Doctor, come now!” Rocky called from the shower door. Danel and Cori launched themselves beside her while Chei ripped his shirt off and tossed it to the commander to slow his blood from spreading. He pressed it carefully against his mouth and nose. Chei hung back with him in case he needed help.
“Save it Kiro,” the commander said, “Just keep us flying. Bigger deals in front of me right now.”
“Jeph,” Anju said, calling him by his first name to make sure she had his attention. He unbuckled and shot over to the wetroom, but Cori stopped him from going inside.
The doctor appeared in the door. “It’s bad,” she said. “They’re both unresponsive. They’ve got multiple compound fractures and probably internal bleeding. Maybe organ damage too.”
What he could see behind her looked like something violent had exploded all over the shower. He tried to push past Cori, but couldn’t move him.
“I need to get them both into surgery,” Anju said, her voice steely calm. “I also need their PSE. Hopefully, the exosuits can hold them together until I can repair their bodies.”
Shan Takhu Legacy Box Set - With an Extra Bonus Story Page 6