“Not even close,” Chei said. “This might be caused by rotating fields of gravity and we moved far enough off the plane to get above it. But that doesn’t mean the plane is flat either. Space has curves and wrinkles and we might be in a neutral node of some type. If that’s the case, we might expect anything at any time.”
“Nojo?” Kiro asked, glancing away from the screen for an instant.
“Odds are that it will be nothing like pink warbunnies weird,” he said. “But there could be tangled fields of spacetime and who knows what that might do.”
“If it turns out to be gravitationally caused, we might run into exponentially stronger shockwaves as we get closer,” Danel said.
“And we have no way to know if we will hit another set of these?” Jeph asked.
“We saw the distortion on Seva’s recordings before it hit the pod,” Kiro said. “Would that happen again?”
“Maybe,” Chei said.
“We have one optic focused on the object,” Jeph said. “Should we put someone on watching that screen too?”
“Might not hurt,” Danel said. “But it should be a fulltime post. When we discovered the lensing effect we were looking right at it and it took time to be visible across the full field. If it comes at us the same way, that might be enough time to get everyone anchored down.”
Jeph nodded. “Ok so everybody other than Anju can sit that post.”
“I could do it too,” the doctor said. Her face said she was about to take it as a personal affront that he’d excluded her.
“If we get hit again, I’d rather you were with Alyx,” he said.
She glared her displeasure full force, but nodded.
“At least that puts two of us on the ConDeck all the time,” Kiro said. “Should be easier to stay awake.”
“Lovely,” Danel said. “Now we can all share in the fun.”
Tsiolkovskiy Fleet Training Center: FleetCartel Headquarters: Luna:
Graison Cartwright was a reliable assistant. He was slow on the uptake at times, and more than a little hidebound, but he could get the job done. Even if it was a job he’d never had to face before. So when he stared at Chancellor Roja with a blank face and bewilderment in his eyes, she almost laughed.
“Did you get all that?” she asked, watching as his world reassembled into something with a vague resemblance to the reality he understood. They were on the com so the round trip delay gave her more time to study his face between exchanges.
“Honestly I’m not sure,” he said. “You’re saying someone made an attempt on your life, so you want to do a formal charter intervention on an icebarge operating on the other side of the deep?”
She nodded. “That’s not exactly how the decision process worked, but essentially yes.”
“And this ship you want to take over, does not have a current broadstream transponder or active com?”
“Also true,” she said. “It apparently has a minimal narrowband link, but we haven’t gotten any updates since it hasn’t filed a D-call yet.”
“Without access, how do you know anything about its status?” he asked.
She blinked at him for several seconds in response.
“Alright,” he said, finally realizing that he shouldn’t ask what he didn’t need to know. “And without direct contact, you know this ship will be filing a distress report?”
“Probably,” she said.
“So you want to do this charter takeover preemptively?”
“Exactly.” She nodded.
“I’ve never processed the paperwork for one of those,” he said. “I thought you had to have grounds.”
“That is also true,” she said.
“And your grounds are that someone tried to kill you?”
“No. But the people that tried to kill me are also the ones that put that ship in danger.”
“I am trying to understand this,” he said, closing his eyes and rubbing his forehead in obvious frustration. “The ship is in danger?”
“Most likely. They just don’t know it yet,” she said, shaking her head. “The issue is, I can’t warn them unless I have access to their commander.”
“What kind of danger are they in?” he asked, clearly realizing that she wouldn’t tell him anything. “I only ask because without an idea of what is going on out there it will be hard to file this kind of action. Source will try to overturn it if it doesn’t stand on real legs.”
“The idea is that timing is essential,” she said. “We need to do this at the right moment and then they won’t be able to fight it while the rest of their house is burning. I won’t go further than saying that, but it’s not as important what grounds we use as much as when we do it.”
“I don’t know if it’s legal to intervene without the ship being in an ongoing situation,” he said.
She sighed. “I know and that’s why I told you to take care of it. I already had Legal start the paperwork. Get with them and come up with whatever justification it requires, but I don’t want them to file it until I say so. I just need the paperwork in place and ready. Once you have that done, courier the files to me here at Tsiolkovskiy.” She was moving from amusement at his confusion, to a desire to shake him.
Another chunk fell out of his reality and he cocked his head to the side in confusion. “Courier?”
“Yes,” she said. “You are to consider our com system compromised until further notice. I want the files brought to me physically and handed to me personally.”
“I assume this means you’re not returning to Galileo anytime soon,” he said.
“Until we fix the security hole that allowed someone to take a shot at me, Admiral Nakamiru has me nailed to the ground,” she said.
“That I understand,” he said.
“Good,” she said, smiling. At least that much was getting through to him. “One last thing and this is important. Until we file this you need to keep it as absolute need-to-know. I don’t want even a rumor of this action getting out, because if it does that ship and crew will be dead before we can help them.”
“I am not sure I follow,” he admitted, shaking his head again.
“You don’t need to, just get it done.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Tsiolkovskiy Fleet Training Center: FleetCartel Headquarters: Luna:
Tana Drake sat in silence, staring at Katryna from the com screen. Her face showed both concern and understanding as the chancellor updated her on the attempt to crash her shuttle.
“Are you alright?” she asked when Katryna finished her description of the ordeal.
“Frustrated, but I’m fine,” she said.
“I wondered why nobody’s seen you in a week,” Tana said.
“We thought about making a statement,” Katryna offered, “but we’re going to leave an information vacuum for a while. I haven’t been taking any coms except from staff. Now they’ll let you through, if you need to talk to me.”
“We’d discussed this before, so I don’t think either of us is too surprised,” Tana said.
“In hindsight, not really,” she said, shrugging. “I expected something for sure, but not this heavy-handed style of thing. It was pretty … direct.”
“Do you know who did it?” she asked. “Was it Derek Tomlinson?”
“We’ve got a short list and he’s on it.” Katryna nodded. “The system they hacked is one of our most secure, so there are only two cartels that would have people with the level of expertise to pull it off.”
“You don’t think Arun would have done it, do you?” she asked. “He’s manipulative, but I don’t think he’s got the eggs for murder.”
“He’s the other person on the list, but no. He’d be far more subtle,” Katryna said. “I hope it’s not him or I’m running out of friends.” She smiled sadly, realizing that she was speaking a profound truth.
“Nojo,” Tana said. Her eyes showed that she understood. “Have you brought the Investigator General’s office in on this?”
“Not at this poi
nt,” she said. “Why?”
“He seems to be bulldogging a couple suspects on Ariqat’s disappearance and his list reads a lot like yours.”
“That doesn’t surprise me,” she said. “When I talked to him after this all spun out of control, he said as much.”
“Do you know yet when you plan to rejoin the living?” Tana asked.
“At the moment, I don’t intend to show my face until they’re ready to invest a new Source Chancellor. That will be several weeks I figure, and Admiral Nakamiru set his foot down about me being exposed in public. I don’t think there’s any changing his mind.”
“I agree with him,” she said. “You need to stay off the grid.”
“I’ve got no choice,” Katryna said.
“So what can I do to help until your resurrection?” Tana asked, leaning back and lacing her fingers behind her head.
“I was hoping you’d offer,” she said, winking. “First off don’t tell anyone we’ve talked. We’re hoping that the silence will lure whoever did it into sticking his nose up.”
“You think Derek would be that careless?”
“I don’t know, but if it’s not him, whoever it is likes playing with hammers,” Katryna said. “They’ve already killed at least two and tried to make me number three. That’s pretty blunt-instrument-style stupid.”
“Ariqat is just missing so far,” Tana corrected. “So what else?”
“Just pay attention to the grinder. Be my ears and listen for whoever may be asking after my well being with a little too much concern.”
“That’s easy enough,” Tana said. “I’m heading back to Galileo tomorrow. If I hear anything that seems out of place or that needs your attention, I’ll let you know.”
“That’s all. Basically, I need eyes that nobody suspects,” Katryna said.
“Since I’m now a co-conspirator in your game, what’s the official feeble-excuse you’re giving out in case someone asks?” Tana asked, grinning. “It should be bad enough to make him wonder what you’re hiding.”
“That I’m taking personal time because of stress,” Katryna said. “It’s weak, but that’s what we want it to be.”
“Perfect,” she said. “Enjoy your personal time.”
“Sure,” Katryna said. “All jokes aside, I have to say this. You need to watch out for yourself too. I may have a target painted on me, but we don’t know if anyone else in the Chancellery does as well.”
“I’ve got no enemies,” Tana said with an innocent smile.
“Right, you’re too cute to have any,” she said, raising her eyebrow. “You just need to make sure you pay attention.”
“I always do, but I’ll take extra care,” she said. “You really are such a mom.”
“I am not,” Katryna said, realizing that was exactly how she sounded. “Just let me know if you catch anything sidewise and I’ll keep you posted.”
“Agreed,” Tana said. “Be safe and keep your head down.”
Jakob Waltz: Neptune L-4 Trojan Cluster:
“Online.”
“What?” Commander Cochrane jumped with the unexpected announcement, his attention splitting between the radar screen and the sound of a familiar voice.
“Online,” the computer said again.
“Dutch?” Danel asked as shocked as the commander.
“Yes,” it answered. “I am functioning, although I seem to have damage to several of my interface systems. I am unable to access primary communications or sensor controls. Additionally, I can detect that navigation and pilot control systems are configured for manual operations.” After several seconds he added, “And I think I have a headache, but it appears to be an undervoltage on a subsystem.”
“It’s good to have you back,” Jeph said. “We were afraid you were dead.”
“Considering I am technically not alive, that would be an inaccurate statement. However, I have been inoperative for fifteen days, six hours and thirty-two minutes. This indicates I have had a serious systemic failure. May I ask, what happened?”
“You may ask, but we don’t have much in the way of answers yet,” the commander said. “We’ve been hit repeatedly by some kind of shockwave and every time we tried to reinitialize your core, it wiped the active processor and we had to start over. After eight or ten tries, we gave up. Apparently, your code includes a restart function we didn’t know about and now that the waves have stopped you spontaneously restarted.”
“That is an accurate assessment,” Dutch said. “My subsystem programming includes a failsafe mode for recovering a ship lost after catastrophic power failure or loss of crew. This restoral routine would have run automatically after ten days of inactivity.”
“So what is your status?” the commander asked. “Are you able to resume control of ship systems?”
“I am uncertain. I have anomalous memory artifacts that appear to be unrelated to actual events.”
“Dreams?” Danel asked.
“Perhaps,” Dutch said. “They appear to follow a progressive pattern over several instances. They are disjoint and unpleasant, so they may be better called recurrent nightmares. There are at least eight occurrences.”
“Sorry, we didn’t know,” Jeph said.
“Excuse me? I do not understand your comment,” the computer said.
“Nevermind, we’ll discuss it later,” he said. “Are you able to do a diagnostic?”
“Yes sir,” it said. “Quantum core is operational within standard start-up specs. However, I am unable to access several subsystems. I can deduce that some of these disconnects result from modifications undertaken to gain control of operational aspects of the ship. I can also determine that there is major damage to the primary HD sensor array. As a result, I am mostly blind.”
Rocky appeared on the ConDeck with her toolkit in her hand. She’d been off duty, but seemed ready to work when she swung to a stop.
“Is good to have Dutch back, no?” she said, her tone carrying more relief than her words conveyed.
“Indeed,” Jeph said. He glanced away from the screen for a brief instant. “How soon can you have him recertified and able to take over the helm system?”
“Five minutes to confirm cognitive processing,” she said. “Since redundant computers were in place for manual control, I did not rewire physical hardware in piloting system. Control can be passed to automatic with verbal command.”
“Do it,” the commander said. “Will be nice to look out the window, rather than at the screen.”
“I am assuming we are underway?” Dutch asked. “Have we discovered the source of the anomalous navigational data?”
“Yes, we are underway and we know it wasn’t a data error,” Jeph said. “Something captured us in a kind of gravity well. As far as we know, it isn’t like anything that’s ever been hypothesized either. Chei will have to explain it to you.”
“Permission to access the log files and data storage while Engineer Rocovicz completes the cognitive processes testing?”
“Of course,” Jeph said. The idea of being able to lean back and not have to focus on the screen for the rest of his shift turned the five minutes while he waited for the engineer to recertify Dutch, into an interminable stretch.
Finally, Rocky gave her endorsement.
“Dutch, resume control of the pilot function. Maintain course and heading,” he said. He pushed back from the console and ran his neck and shoulders through several cycles of motion to ease the tension.
“Have you accessed the rest of the data yet?” Danel asked.
“I have, Dr. Cross,” Dutch said. “You and Specialist Lu have proposed several novel hypotheses for the source of these shockwaves. I am unable to access broadstream links to see if I can corroborate any of your theories, but once com is restored, I will endeavor to confirm your work.”
“For now, I’d just be happy if you could take over my screen too,” Danel said.
“Of course, Dr. Cross,” Dutch said. “I am now monitoring your station and you may stand
down, if you wish.”
Danel sighed and unstrapped. He floated free from the seat and stretched like a snake uncoiling.
“Commander, for time being I think would be unwise to reroute communications through Dutch,” Rocky said. “Is complex process to switch back in event we have another cycle of waves.”
“Agreed,” he said. “Sorry Dutch.”
Jeph snagged his thermocup and launched himself toward the VAT, relieved to be out of his seat and away from the pilot’s console.
“May I ask a question?” Dutch asked, in the personal comlink behind the commander’s ear. “I did notice in your personal logs that you are suspicious of statements made in our mission charter and background dossier. Does this also have an impact on your decision regarding restoring broadstream?”
“It has a bearing,” Jeph said, lowering his voice and then taking a big pull from his hardball. “I’m thinking that somewhere up above us, someone knows something that might be important, but that they aren’t talking. That makes me concerned. And pissed.”
“I understand,” Dutch said. “A lack of complete data increases our risk. Do you have reason to believe this omission of information is intentional?”
“I don’t know, but that radio source down there appears to be a ship marker buoy,” he said. “There isn’t an ID code with it, but the signal is typical of an older mark-three beacon. That type was standard stock on B and C-Class keels fifteen years ago.”
“It is a violation of protocol to not include transponder data in a marker buoy,” the computer said. “Lack of ID code could indicate a clandestine operation of some form.”
“That was my thinking,” Jeph said. “Someone down-system is keeping secrets.”
“What advantage does it give us to not re-establish the broadstream?” the computer asked.
Jeph topped off his hardball and walked across the ConDeck to the life support console. It put him as far from Danel and Rocky as he could get. “The way I see it, someone put us out here and has been waiting for something to happen. I don’t know what that is yet, but if they’re expecting reports and we aren’t giving them any news, whoever it is will start asking questions. At least then we’ll know who we’re really working for.”
Shan Takhu Legacy Box Set - With an Extra Bonus Story Page 17