The constellations on the main screen swung as they rotated toward their new heading. Several targeting rings lit up on the display and once the appropriate stars filled each, Kiro set them in place with another nudge of the thrusters.
“We’ve got the calculations locked down?” the commander asked. He wasn’t worried about the course as much as the quantum quicksand. Chei had been trying to determine how it might affect their acceleration, but he had almost nothing to work from.
Chei sat in the navigator’s seat and nodded. “I don’t know if we can count on anything to any level of certainty.”
“For all we know we are inside some kind of distorted space,” Danel added as he watched from one of the two engineering stations.
“If space was deformed in some manner, would we not see distortion on radio signal from beacon?” Rocky said. “Thus far, is precisely on standard beacon frequency.”
The cloud hanging over Chei evaporated. “Brilliant! I should have thought of that.”
“Not bad for wrench head, no?” She winked, smiling for the first time in days.
“That gives me some hope that we might get out of this on the other side,” Danel said.
“Signal frequency will blue-shift as we approach,” she said. “This will provide mechanism to measure distortion of spatial region as we pass through.”
“At the least, we will gain velocity as we fall toward it,” Chei said. “We can measure our known velocity from outside references against the apparent velocity measured from the frequency shift to determine if there is a discrepancy. A disagreement in the data, will tell us how much distortion we’re experiencing.”
“And no discrepancy means?” Jeph asked.
“That the universe is flat,” Danel said. “That would categorically rule out a black hole. It also would let us determine the mass of what is down there.”
“If it’s an iceberg, it won’t exert much measurable acceleration on us until we get damned close,” Shona said, opening her eyes and rolling her head to the side.
“That would make me all kinds of fuzzy,” Kiro said.
“I think that goes for all of us,” Jeph agreed. “How long will it take to figure that out?”
“We’ve got several strong beacon locks,” she said. “I’ll have to wait for the engine cut out to get solid readings. It might take me most of a day to get enough angular motion to estimate the mass.”
“If it pulls on us hard, like with a dangerous amount of mass, can we deflect our heading to give it a wider berth?” Jeph asked.
“Since we’re limiting our velocity change to four hours of burn, another four hours in the opposite direction puts us back to a relative stop,” Kiro said, shrugging. “We’ll just be a lot closer.”
“Then let’s get on with it shall we?” Jeph said. “All hands stand by for acceleration.”
Far behind them, the engine of the Jakob Waltz thundered to life and they leapt toward the unknown.
Tsiolkovskiy Fleet Training Center: FleetCartel Headquarters: Luna:
Chancellor Roja sat at the end of a conference table big enough to land a small shuttlecraft on, but she shared the room with only Nakamiru and Quintana.
She leaned back and drummed her fingers on the table in front of her. “I’m tired of playing behind the curve. I want to get the upper hand.”
“Agreed,” Nakamiru said, nodding. “You have made someone nervous enough to go after you directly.”
“It’s got to be Tomlinson,” she said. “With Ariqat out of the picture, there’s nobody else that makes sense.”
“Who took Ariqat down?” Quintana asked. “They had to be working together on building this ghost fleet. Are we sure there isn’t someone else in the mix?”
“I suppose there could be, but when I talked to Arun, he thought it was a play to instill fear and to keep Ariqat from pushing me into exposing them.”
“That is rather convoluted,” Nakamiru said. “Not impossible, but to kill his own partner is rather cutthroat.”
“We’re assuming that Ariqat is actually dead and this wasn’t a staged thing to gain sympathy from the council and try to force our position,” Quintana said.
“I never took you for a politician,” she said. “But you’re a natural.”
“I hate it, but that doesn’t mean I don’t understand it,” he said. “I am, however, serious. Could this be a tactic between them?”
“I don’t know and I’m not sure I need to,” she said. “I think it’s time to stop playing this halfway and just stomp on it with both feet. We have to come up with a way to make sure they can’t make another attempt to take over critical infrastructure. They aimed at me this time, but imagine what would happen if ALC systems across the Union all tanked at once. There have to be hundreds of ships on approach to stations and bases at any given moment. How many of them plowing-in would it take to wipe out confidence in our safety and training procedures?”
“That actually makes sense,” Quintana said. “If Tomlinson is after discrediting FleetCom, that would do it.”
“What can we do to keep that from happening?”
“I pulled Daveed Burgess out of cybernetics and assigned him to a forensic study on what happened,” Quintana said. “He worked all night on the problem and he thinks a disruptive AI code got in through the broadstream network.”
“All our ship to ship data communications and transponders rely on the network,” Nakamiru said. “If that’s compromised we’re in deep trouble.”
“Not necessarily,” Quintana said. “Daveed suggested that if we’d been watching for it, we could have stopped it dead. The ALC attack would have induced a massive processor load as the core code was wrestling to repair itself against an active assault. He said if we had an overload cutoff to detect an abnormal spike in processor function built into the ALC system, it could reinitialize from a backup and wipe the invasive files completely.”
“Don’t AI systems take a while to reload?” she asked.
“AI systems are reasonably fast, but the bigger Artificially Aware hybrids are a lot slower,” Quintana agreed. “The ALC is an AA system, but if it tapped out, the Approach Control operators have manual protocols.”
“What if they targeted a ship’s computer and not the ALC system?” she asked.
“It would tank the automated control and broadstream systems,” he said. “With the bigger science ships they might also lose advanced sensor hardware, but you can fly a ship without the AI, it just can’t fly itself.”
“We’d also lose the transponders and the high-gain com,” Nakamiru said, nodding in agreement. “That could be chaotic if it happened across the network, but would be more manageable than waking up when ships went hard down.”
“How long will it take to get a failsafe like this deployed across the fleet?” she asked.
“Burgess made it sound like it might be fairly quick,” Quintana said.
“Have him address the details and get me a firm deployment plan by no later than tomorrow,” she said. “I think I’d rather lose the benefits of the broadstream than have ships crashing.”
“Yes ma’am,” Quintana said, pulling out his thinpad and tapping notes into the screen.
“So, on the offensive front?” she asked.
Nakamiru cleared his throat and glanced at Quintana. “This morning I ordered a weapons refit on three multicruisers.”
The younger admiral stopped keying notes into his thinpad and looked up in confusion. “We only have one multi in the yard now.” He blinked several times as the rest of what he heard penetrated. “Wait. Weapons?”
“Yes. Heavy beam weapons,” Nakamiru said. “I sent the orders to have the work done at Ceres Alpha.”
“Why there?” he asked “That’s a public facility. You’ve got no security control.”
“I agree,” Katryna said, her eyebrow echoing Quintana’s concern.
The older admiral sighed and a mask dropped over his face that hinted at his true age. “I’ve k
nown the Yard Master there for a long time. I did him a kindness during the Burroughs Epidemic. His wife and kids were in the twin cities when the refugees overran the staging center on Phobos. I was captain of the Alexander and I made sure they got aboard before the situation went critical and we pulled out.”
“I didn’t know that,” the chancellor said. “Weren’t the evacuations by lottery?”
He nodded. “If anyone knew what I’d done, I’d have been court-bound.”
“Then he owes you a mighty big debt,” she said. “Millions died there and he’s lucky the lottery favored his family.” Burroughs was before Quintana’s time, but Katryna was a lieutenant on one of the relief ships that made port at Deimos Staging about three months into the crisis. She knew reality often wasn’t in the history archives, and those memories still haunted her.
“I’ve never called in that debt,” he said. “I know I can count on him.”
“And once we know if Neptune L-4 is the ghost fleet’s base of operations, then saving deployment time is probably worth the security risk,” she said.
“You think that’s where they’re based?” Quintana asked.
“Maybe,” she said. “We’re about to push an intervention on a ship out there that’s in trouble. We don’t know yet, but if it’s where they’re hiding, the situation is about to get intense.”
“Why?” he asked.
“Because this particular ship happens to be carrying enough nuclear materials to wipe out half the Union,” Nakamiru said.
Quintana stared at Nakamiru for several seconds. His expression said he was fighting to fit a complete paradigm shift into his frame of reference in a single swallow and it wasn’t going down easy.
“I understand,” he said. “I guess it’s time to do some stomping.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Jakob Waltz: Neptune L-4 Trojan Cluster:
“Well, this will be interesting,” Kiro said. The next cycle of waves was due to hit them and they were running almost straight toward the source. Head down.
He did his shift as pilot eyes, then scraped the galley for a meal. Food was running thin and he decided he wasn’t as hungry as he was tired.
“Why can’t we turn around? We’re in free fall and coasting,” Cori said. “It shouldn’t matter which direction the ship is facing and it would have been a fragload easier to not have to drain the vats and beds.”
“Ordinarily, no.” Kiro floated back to the table to secure himself into a seat ready to dangle from the ceiling when the waves flipped everything upside down. “What’s nogo is we have no long-range sensors. That means if something pops into our flight path, the nose proximity radar gives us about a minute to jump sidewise.”
“That’s enough time?” Seva asked. She’d been helping Cori and understood his frustration at the extra workload.
“Yah, but we don’t have the computer to pilot, so the boss or I have to stay eyeballs on the screen. It’s brainless, but there’s lots of crap in the cluster and even a half-meter sized snowball would punch this can. We’d all be foobed before we knew it.”
“That’s not encouraging,” Cori said.
“It’s not that bad, but it’s why we’re cruising slowlike. If we did anymore burn, we’d cut our response time and might be in trouble. Out in the open or when we’ve got the sensors running, we don’t have much to worry for. Plus, Dutch never sleeps and has an eye on things even when they go buggy. Bad deal is that a human pilot’s brain wanders.”
“How many times have we had to dodge something?”
“One. So far. And it was more ‘be safe thinking’ than need. Probably would’ve missed, but was better we ducked around it. Was about three meters, and would have been a bad day if we’d crossed paths.” Kiro looked over at the chrono on the wall and nodded to a chair. “You might want to buckle in,” he added.
Dropping into a seat at the table, Seva grabbed her thermocup as the chrono scrolled down the last seconds.
Nothing.
“What?” he said. They all sat in silence, watching the numbers countdown for the next wave. Five minutes later. Nothing again.
“Kiro report to the ConDeck,” the commander ordered over the shipwide com. “Bring Danel and Chei, but be careful. I don’t want you all halfway up the chute and the waves getting us.”
Operations Office: Ceres Alpha Shipyard: Ceres:
The Ceres Alpha Shipyard was the busiest maintenance and fabrication facility in the Union. With a FleetCartel multicruiser finishing a major refit, the Facility Manager Lukas Rodriguez, was pulling his hair out. Or he would have been if he had any hair on his head. Multicruisers were the kings of the FleetCom navy. The largest and most versatile ships in the Union, they were also the most labor intensive to maintain and support.
One multicruiser in the yard was a storm of crap to deal with, but his traffic controller had just announced that they’d received new orders. The Challenger would arrive within the week. His shit storm was about to become a full-scale typhoon.
The Challenger wasn’t due for maintenance for a year, so the orders were more than a little strange. Maybe it was a mistake and some idiot up the chain read a date wrong. He asked for a confirmation, but with everything coming unglued down-system, he thought he’d better be ready in case.
Drumming his fingers on the console, he stared at the video feed of the number three docking stanchion and swore under his breath. His crews swarmed around the Galen and the handler tugs were pushing the upgraded hospital module back into place. The process would take another day and a half. Then they had to complete the power couplings and reconfigure the reactors. That was a week alone. Until then, they didn’t have a port open to even attach another multicruiser.
As he watched, a message icon pinged on his desktop. Traffic Control. “Yah, speak to me,” he said, opening the link.
“They’re confirming Challenger is inbound. Due at 0630 on 2243.139.” Casey Leigh handled several thousand things a day as a matter of routine and was the kind of woman that could smile in the teeth of Armageddon, but she looked grim.
“Nojo? Whyfor?” He knew there was more to come. And from the look on her face, it wouldn’t make him fuzzy.
“Extra crew and a refuel,” she said, looking away for a second. “And some special power work.”
“Crew and power work?” he glanced down and noticed another file blinking on his desktop. He opened it, but didn’t read it.
“Yah, scan the file I sent,” she said, nodding. “Is nojo and Admiral Nakamiru at FleetCom said to keep it low ‘til you’re eyeballs with the skippers of all three ships. He said he knows you’re not gonna fly with this one, but that it has to run ice tight.”
“Wait one,” he said. “Three ships?”
“Confirmed it. The Archer is twenty-two days out.”
“Dafuq they need three multicruisers in one place?” he said, skimming the specs on the file she’d sent.
“They’ll be going deep. Out to the Neptune L4 Trojan for a mission of some sort,” she said. “Need full tanks and looking to shanghai a couple thousand recruits from the labor pool.”
He whistled. “Wasn’t that where we sent that weird-ass ice miner?” he asked. He remembered the ship because it was where he got rid of that Valkyrie-bitch Seva Johansen.
“Sure thing. The Jakob Waltz,” she said.
His eyes locked on the spec list in front of him and he shook his head in disbelief.
“Figured that’d get your attention,” she said. “When you add the fact that they’re looking to recruit specifically from security personnel, it stinks pretty straight up don’t it?”
“No shit,” he said. “This is through channels?”
She shook her head. “From Admiral Nakamiru directly. He posted it to you only.”
“Frag me,” he said. “He ‘spects me to keep it wrapped tight too?”
“Reads as if.” She nodded. “Said he’d consider it square, whatever that means. I haven’t spread the word. Just you and
me.”
“Three multi tied to pylons at once,” he said, “Nobody’s going to like it, but as long as they’re getting overwork pay, they’ll hang. But keeping it down low?” He shook his head.
“What’s so urgent with tooling those ships special?” she asked.
“Sure dafuq ain’t after rescuing the Waltz,” he said. “Thinking myself, they’re starting a war.”
Jakob Waltz: Neptune L-4 Trojan Cluster:
Danel stood with his feet anchored to the ceiling plating, upside down to the rest of them, but probably feeling safer than if he was on the ConDeck itself. “Who the hell knows?” he said.
Chei shrugged, confirming the assessment. “We might know what it does, but we’ve got no clue what’s causing it. We’re just shooting in the dark and until we’ve got eyeballs on the source, we’ve got nothing to work with.”
“Is it possible we’ve moved out of the beam?” Kiro asked from where he’d taken over the pilot duties so the commander could focus on decision making. He didn’t look up as he spoke.
“We haven’t added angular velocity with regards to the source, although that will increase as we make our approach,” Shona said. “In fact, our radial motion, from the perspective of L-4 Prime, is less now than before. We decelerated laterally and accelerated toward it.”
“If it’s tracking us, we’re an easier target,” Chei said.
“Target? You make it sound like it’s aimed at us specifically,” Anju said. She’d followed Danel to the ConDeck, but stayed near the railing. She was still upset, even though Shona was making progress.
“No. Not necessarily. Not even likely, but it was focused on where we were with respect to it. Maybe it likes us.” Chei was rubbing sleep out of his eyes and it was impossible to tell if he was serious or not.
“It’s possible there’s something in our electromagnetic field that locked it on us,” Danel said, stifling a yawn. “Now that we’re moving toward it, maybe the field is different from its perspective? Crap, I don’t know. We’re completely and absolutely without anything to go on.”
“Should we figure this is the end of the hammer blows?” Jeph asked.
Shan Takhu Legacy Box Set - With an Extra Bonus Story Page 16