“Have you followed up on the Jakob Waltz?” he asked.
She paused trying to remember what he was talking about. Then, it clicked. “That icebarge way out in the deep? Honestly, I haven’t because it seems like such a reach in logic. And like I said, it’s been a hell of a week.”
He shook his head. “Please, Katryna, do not discount this. I sincerely believe that vessel is sitting on the edge of where you need to be looking.”
“So why don’t you contact them yourself?” she asked.
“We are in the charter as a secondary partner. Source holds the command rights on the mission,” he said. “Your FleetCom authority allows you to check the status of any ship in the Union.”
She leaned forward and picked up her thinpad. “You understand that unless they’ve upgraded that Sit-Al to a formal D-call, all I can get is basic status information.”
He stared at her and nodded.
He’s really worried about this, she thought as she waited for the system to deliver the info. The data took several seconds longer than normal to return. When it came up, her heart skipped a beat or two as she read the file.
“Well that might be a problem,” she said. “Its transponder is down. Given its last official update was that their NavCom was potentially failing, it might be just hardware.”
“When did it go down?” he asked as the lines on his face grew visibly deeper.
She drew in a breath and let it out. Her answer was bound to play into his conspiracy fears. “On the same day that Ariqat filed the SDS motion.”
She held up her hands to cut him off before he launched into a paranoid seizure. “Don’t go sidewise, that could be pure coincidence.”
“Do you honestly believe that?” he asked.
“I don’t know, but if SourceCartel doesn’t declare it missing, I don’t have jurisdiction,” she said.
“You could do a charter intervention,” he said.
“Not without just cause,” she said, shaking her head. She realized he wouldn’t accept that as an answer. “Fine, I’ll look into it.”
Jakob Waltz: Neptune L-4 Trojan Cluster:
The commander pulled himself into a seat between Anju and Danel. He looked at the diagrams on the screen, but was no closer to understanding what they meant than when he first started. Looking toward Rocky and Chei, he waited for one of them to explain it in words he understood. So far, it was not going well.
“I’m still not sure I get what you’re looking to do,” he said.
Chei glanced at the engineer who nodded. “According to the theory we used to challenge continuing the Hyperfusion project, we expected to run into a quantum effect that would become more dangerous with each progressive fusion level we tested. That was the basis for why they shut the project down. If we had kicked off a carbon-cycle test, we could have potentially collapsed spacetime below a threshold where the shockwave became self-sustaining.”
“I remember you saying that before, although I still don’t scan it,” Jeph said.
Danel nodded and winked. If he was tracking the science so far, that was enough.
“What Rocky has done is figure out a way we can precisely quantify several components of the event,” Chei said. “It’s possible that what’s whacking us is an externally induced compression wave in the sub-quantum energy state. If it is, then it’s creating a transient gravitational entanglement.”
“That’s what we’re feeling as the shockwaves?” Danel asked.
“Yes,” Chei said, “and it’s also what’s kicking out the extra energy from the fusion reactors that trips the breakers.”
“Is it also what’s holding us here?” Jeph asked.
“Probably,” Chei said. “They would be opposite ends of a quantum foam disturbance. One would be sinking energy down into a lower density spacetime construct, and the other is pushing it back in ripples.”
“Pushing it back?” Danel asked. “Does that mean that what’s beating us up is a reaction to the energy we put into the field, when we tried to get out of here?”
Chei’s mouth fell open for several seconds, before he slammed it shut. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “It’s possible. I never even considered a source for the energy in my equations. Everything we did before assumed the fusion boundary itself provided the impulse that triggered the collapse of spacetime. This might be a situation where—”
“Is this also what’s knocking Dutch’s core out?” Jeph interrupted before he ran off into a coma inducing spasm of math-speak.
“Da. It appears to be overwriting computer core’s quantum state with noise,” Rocky answered.
“So it’s erasing his core?” Anju asked.
“Not so much erasing, as dumping so much quantum data on it that it loses its own information cohesion.” Chei shrugged, apparently realizing that nobody knew what he was talking about. “There’s a theory that says energy exists inside the quantum structure of matter as a non-temporally-fixed information field. The data in this field defines what state the subatomic structure takes and therefore determines the nature of the atomic structure of matter itself. What might be happening is that the density fluctuation is altering the information field and—”
“Nevermind. You’re not making it better,” Jeph said. “Let’s just say it scribbles his brain out of existence every time this happens and call it good enough for the crayon-eaters amongst us.”
“I like the blue ones,” Anju said, winking and grinning at Chei’s discomfort.
“That’s a good way to look at it, I guess,” he said, looking like someone let the air out of his brain balloon.
“Does Dutch feel this?” she asked suddenly serious.
“I do not know with certainty,” Rocky said. “Computer core does not have equivalent of pain receptors, but might be shock to its cyber-psyche.”
“Then I’m reluctant to use him as a measurement tool, if he is even remotely aware of what is happening,” the commander said.
“We could wait and only boot processor immediately before shockwave hits,” Rocky offered.
“It is likely he won’t be more than autonomically functional at that stage,” Chei said. “It would be like being brain dead, but with the body functioning.”
“Is it possible to see what’s being accessed in his core code?” Anju asked. “Can we know if it is showing signs of self-direction?”
“Does not do more than organize data matrix for several hours after process starts,” Rocky said. “Algorithmic logic loads, and then buffers dump data to internal storage. Is not doing more than assembly work for first five hours. In my opinion, until that occurs, self-awareness should not be possible.”
Jeph looked at Anju who shook her head in response. When he glanced at Danel, he got the opposite answer. Dutch was as much a member of the crew as any of them and they were asking to use his brain as part of an experiment.
He let out a slow breath as he thought it through. After several seconds he asked, “We’ve already subjected Dutch to this echoing death repeatedly, haven’t we?”
“Unfortunately, yes,” Rocky said, looking down at the back of her hands. “I am sorry. I did not realize.”
“I know,” he said. “How long will it take to get the hardware installed?
“Less than hour,” she said.
He nodded. “Do it. We have to know.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Civilian Security Office Six: Galileo Station: Lunar Lagrange One:
Katryna Roja sat in the interrogation room, waiting for the Investigator General to arrive. She expected to face questioning earlier, but the process of the investigation had to work its way through channels since there were so many political toes that needed to be left untrampled.
She discussed the potential of her questioning with Aryk Rasmussen and he insisted that she have representation present in the room for the interrogation. He sent one of his junior associates, but he assured her that although he was more than competent, it made her look less suspicious than if he had sho
wn up to represent her. His reputation apparently matched his ego, but since every chancellor who’d talked to the investigators had also chosen to have an advisor present, it made no real difference.
Holding her hands in her lap, she tapped her thumbs together impatiently. It annoyed her that they’d kept her waiting for almost twenty minutes, but she refused to let it show on her face.
“Are we having fun yet?” she said, glancing over at the young man beside her. He may have been a professional legal counselor, but he looked more nervous than she’d felt since this whole thing began. He shook his head.
When she was about to have him go ask if they had forgotten about her, the door slid open and Investigator General Wentworth and Deputy Inspector Carsten came in followed by an autoclerk recorder bot. Carsten carried two cups of coffee and he set one down in front of the chancellor. “You prefer Boa Vista Black don’t you Madam Chancellor?” he said as he took his seat.
She nodded and smiled. It was her absolute favorite, but it also told her they’d been thorough in running her background. “Thank you,” she said, picking the cup up and smelling the dark roast.
“The chancellor is here of her own free will,” her advisor said. “At this point, we acknowledge that she is not a suspect in this investigation. Is that correct?”
“Of course,” the Inspector General said. “We have no suspects as of this moment, and there’s no reason to suspect that Chancellor Roja is involved in the situation. We’re trying to determine anything factual she may know that is of relevance.”
“Do you have any leads?” Katryna asked, fishing for whether Wentworth was being honest. She knew he was looking at a lot more than was visible on the table.
“Off the record, we’re thinking Chancellor Ariqat’s kidnapping was an act of terrorism,” the IG said. “It’s widely known the chancellor was investigating what appears to be a significant data breach in his cartel. We have several leads we’re following and although we had concerns that the person he was calling out in the Sealed Docket Session was our prime suspect, there are other players in the field that are also interesting. That individual would have motive to kidnap or commit murder however, we do not believe that is actually what precipitated this situation. We are thinking the intent of this crime might be to terrorize other members of the Chancellery.”
“That’s an interesting idea,” she said, her face expressionless as she shrugged and looked at her advisor. She was more than a little shocked that the IG would so directly telegraph the status of the investigation.
“If you don’t mind, I’d like to get this session underway,” Wentworth said, nodding toward the bot.
“Absolutely,” she said.
Inspector Carsten tapped the record icon and a small tri-vid optic extended from the machine. “Annotate, identify, and begin recording,” he said. The device beeped as a red light appeared on the top of the camera.
“As a matter of record, where were you on the evening of 2243.116?” he asked.
“I had dinner and a couple drinks at the Homeworld and then did some shopping on the earthward promenade. I purchased an antique hourglass at a curio shop. One of the news vultures got it on vid,” she said. “After that, I was in my apartment. I think I dictated some correspondence and worked on a fleet asset report.”
“Do you have a record that would indicate what time this transaction occurred?” he asked.
“I paid papercred,” she said, shaking her head and glancing at her advisor again. “It would have been around 2200, maybe. But like I said, there is a video of the transaction.”
“Do you know which news service?” Carsten asked, grabbing a thinpad and opening the screen.
She shook her head.
“We can find it,” Wentworth said. “Obviously, you weren’t alone?”
“Sure I was. As much as you can be with a flotilla of press corps close enough to hear you break wind,” she said.
“I understand,” he said, smiling. It was a well-known fact that the IG had a running feud with the media entourage that had descended on his office since the announcement of the Sealed Docket.
“When was it you last had a conversation with Chancellor Ariqat?”
“Before he disappeared, I’d say almost daily in the course of our council business,” she said. “Our cartels work closely in managing fleet deployment to support ice mining.”
“In any of his conversations with you, did he mention anything about anyone threatening him?”
“No. Not anything I recall.” Again, she looked at her advisor, who was staring at the recorder bot.
“Nothing about Chancellor Tomlinson?”
She shook her head. Tomlinson?
“You’re sure?” he asked again. “He was known to have a somewhat contentious relationship with Chancellor Tomlinson.”
“I’d heard rumors about that, but I’ve never seen any evidence of it,” she said. “I mean the newsies are always trying to paint a bad picture of things on the council, but that doesn’t hold air.”
“How about Chancellor Markhas?” he asked. “Would you say Markhas and Ariqat got along?”
“Sure,” she said. “Arun might be a bit pompous, but everyone likes him.”
“But does Chancellor Markhas like Chancellor Ariqat?”
“I guess so,” she said, shrugging. “But you’d have to ask him I think.” She leaned back in her chair. This is a strange line of questions.
“I plan to,” Wentworth said. He tapped the screen of his thinpad and thumbed through it for several strokes.
“Do you know of any projects that DevCartel and DoCartel may have been working on together?”
“I am sure there are dozens. Hundreds maybe,” she said. This time when she looked over at her advisor, he looked as puzzled as she was.
“You’ve never heard of a venture they might have been working on by the name of Project Odysseus?” he asked.
Her advisor shook his head before she looked back at the IG. “As in the Greek King Odysseus?” she asked. “Not a clue.”
“Thank you Madam Chancellor. You’ve been very cooperative,” he said, tapping his thinpad to shut it off. He glanced over at the recording bot and nodded. Carsten touched the screen and the tri-vid retracted back into its door.
“Wait, it sounds like you are focusing on Tomlinson. Is he a suspect?” she asked as both men stood to leave.
“Off the record, he and Chancellor Markhas are both persons of interest in this matter,” the Inspector General said. “I would appreciate you keeping that to yourself for the time being.”
“Of course,” she said, watching the two men disappear through the door.
This is about to get very interesting.
FleetCartel Executive Offices: Galileo Station: Lunar Lagrange One:
“Was it you?” Tana Drake blurted out as soon as the autobot set their dishes on the table and cleared the room. “Please don’t take this the wrong way, but you are my only friend in government and I need to know.”
“Was what me?” Katryna asked shocked at her friend’s lack of decorum.
“Was Tamir coming for you with the Sealed Docket Session?”
“I thought you were going to accuse me of kidnapping him,” the chancellor said.
“Oh I’m sure you did that,” she said, blinking her eyes in an affectation of innocence.
“I know you’re joking, but in all seriousness, Arun accused me of it,” Katryna said. She picked up her scotch and took a large swallow. It had been a long morning and although she usually didn’t drink with lunch, today she needed to make an exception.
“Arun’s an ass,” Tana said, shaking her head and picking up her fork. “Hopefully, he’s smart enough to keep his opinions to himself.”
Katryna shrugged. “Even if he isn’t, he’s intimidated by the idea that I might be that cutthroat.”
“Fear works wonders,” she said. “But do you know if the SDS was Ariqat pushing Tomlinson’s agenda to get FleetCartel out of the wa
y?”
“Maybe. We have to be careful though. My legal advisor is trying to figure out how we can get it formally shut down without pointing a finger back at me. He doesn’t think, even with Ariqat out of the picture, the SDS is technically closed.”
“So we can’t officially have this conversation.” Tana nodded. She sat back and picked at her food in silence. Several times, she looked like she wanted to say something, but stopped short of asking the question on her mind. “Do you know what happened to Ariqat?”
“No. Not for sure.” Katryna said.
“But you have suspicions?” she asked.
“I do,” she said. “Strong ones.”
“Anything you care to share?” Tana asked. She set her fork down and picked up her wine glass, swirling it as she studied Katryna over its rim.
“Derek Tomlinson did it,” she answered.
“Why?” Tana blinked several times. “They were allies.”
Katryna leaned back and sighed. “To remove a loose cannon from his team. They’re doing something way bigger than just fighting for the right to have their own ships. When Ariqat decided to make a public spectacle out of taking me down, I think Tomlinson was concerned it might push the whole thing into the sunlight. He knows I’d fight back, but he doesn’t know what I might have found.”
“So he kidnapped his own ally. That’s pretty ruthless.”
“Considering what I think they are doing, not really,” she said.
“You’re serious aren’t you?” Tana sat her glass down and locked eyes with Katryna.
“It’s huge. Big enough, I’d be considering relocating the summer home to the middle of nowhere.”
She pushed her plate back and shook her head. “Are you being hyperbolic?”
“No.”
“Explain it to me,” she said after several seconds of intense processing time punctuated with a slight shudder.
“I’d rather not,” Katryna said. “It sounds paranoid without all the background, but I’m tracking something that should give me the evidence to put their plans out of commission. If I can get it done before I end up going the way of Ariqat.”
“You think he’d go that far?”
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