Tsiolkovskiy Fleet Training Center: FleetCartel Headquarters: Luna:
It had been a busy morning, so when Nakamiru and Quintana appeared at her door, she was already into her third hardball. “Take a number gentlemen,” she said, nodding toward the small conference table.
Picking up her cup, she walked over to the VAT and hesitated. She could feel the rattling buzz from having too many double shots in her system, so she left it empty and carried it over to the table to join them. She figured she needed the cup to fiddle with as she listened to them.
“I sent the intervention order to the Jakob Waltz this morning,” she announced before she sat down. “I’ll have Graison submit it with the Prime Minister’s office so that the timing puts the filing concurrent with the orders being received by the ship.”
“That will up the stakes,” Admiral Nakamiru said. “And it cuts the window down on how long they have to respond before the ship confirms.”
“It’s only a procedural thing.” She nodded, looking at her chair and wondering if she was too stimmed to sit. “If we can get a response from Commander Cochrane, it implies that he acknowledges the ship and crew are in danger. That gives us stronger legal legs in a fight.”
“It also confirms they are still alive,” Nakamiru said.
“There is that,” she agreed. She forced herself down into the chair and put the cup on the table in front of her, rocking it back and forth on its edge.
Quintana shot her an eyebrow and then stared pointedly at the cup.
“Sorry,” she said, pulling her hands away from it and pressing them onto the table. “A week with no sleep and two liters of hardball this morning.”
“You should try tea,” Nakamiru said, grinning.
“She should try sleeping.”
“Not going to happen anytime soon.” She shook her head and shot the look at the younger admiral.
“So what’s on your agenda this morning?” she asked. She drummed her fingers on the table as she waited for Quintana to recover from the impact of her glare. To his credit, he regrouped quickly. Lesser men under her command had wilted permanently.
“We deployed the update to the AA this morning,” he said.
“Excellent, when will it be operational?” She tapped her fingers in unison to emphasize her pleasure.
“Dr. Burgess says it will take twelve hours to deploy across the system,” he said, pulling a thinpad out of his uniform and linking a diagram to the wallscreen. “You can watch the progress if you’re interested. Blue icons are systems we’ve updated already and yellow ones haven’t received the code, yet. Red ones won’t be updating.”
“Who got it?” she asked, turning to study the image. At the scale of the display, the progress of the blue wave was almost indiscernible.
“Only FleetCom ships and facilities,” he said.
“You didn’t send it to everyone?”
“No ma’am.” He shook his head. “If we proliferated it freely, then whoever created the malicious AI would have a copy of the failsafe code and be able to develop a workaround.”
“That means non-FleetCom vessels are still at risk,” she said.
“Unfortunately that’s true,” he said. “We don’t know where this denial of service attack might happen again. Nothing says it will be the ALC systems next time.”
“We run almost all docking facilities across the Union,” Nakamiru added. “If someone were to shut one down, shipmasters have training in manual approach. If an ALC or a ship goes offline, most of them will still be safe. Hopefully.”
“We also sent out sealed orders with the update to all FleetCom captains and base commanders,” Quintana said. “They’ve been instructed that if something trips the failsafe, they are to sever broadstream connections immediately. That should guarantee that enemy forces cannot deploy second tier attacks.”
“Enemy forces.” She turned back to face the admirals. “A month ago that phrase didn’t even exist in our awareness.”
“That’s true. In our awareness,” Nakamiru said, “but not so much for whoever is behind this. We’ve apparently been their enemy for a while. We just didn’t know it.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
Jakob Waltz: Neptune L-4 Trojan Cluster:
Jeph had just finished his breakfast. Their food supply was returning to normal and he was comfortably full as he sat listening to Chei and Danel discuss how to mount and modify their portable ground sensors to work as ranged gear once they got to L-4 Prime. Seva sat in for a while, but when they switched to working the math, she gave up and headed for the shower. Science was rarely a spectator sport.
The two of them were compiling a wish list of what they wanted and Rocky was passing judgment on whether or not they were talking stupid.
He glanced at the chrono and with a resigned sigh pushed up from the table to relieve Kiro from his watch at the pilot station. Even with Dutch back online, they made sure they had someone on deck at all times. It wasn’t back to normal by any means, but it was showing signs of becoming a routine.
“Commander, we are receiving a narrowband com for you,” Dutch said over his personal comlink. “It is encrypted and marked command only.”
“Send it to my desk,” he said, “and let Kiro know I’ll be a few minutes late.”
“Problem?” Danel asked, seeing him change direction and head toward his quarters.
“Dono.” Jeph shrugged. “A private com from down-system.”
“Didn’t know we were back online with that,” Chei said, glancing up from his thinpad.
“We are not,” Rocky said. “We have only narrowband voice and limited video.
“I’ve ordered Dutch to monitor uplink com traffic only,” the commander said as he floated past the VAT in the galley. Anju was still railing against his consumption of stims and although he wanted a hardball, he realized that if Anju caught him, there’d be hell to pay. He still felt the remains of a vague brainache and knew if he told her, she’d be restricting more than his stims use. He grabbed a small bag of newberries and shoved them in his pocket as he floated toward his quarters. Nothing felt urgent to him at the moment.
Closing the door as he entered his quarters felt strange, but he knew it was appropriate given that the arrival of a coded message was more than a little unusual. He pulled himself into his workstation seat, bucked the belt, and flipped open his screen expecting to see a video message. Instead, there was a request for his command ID to unlock a text file.
His heart skipped a beat as the file decrypted and he read the first line:
JAKOB WALTZ: CHARTER INTERVENTION:
THIS MESSAGE IS OFFICIAL NOTIFICATION THAT PURSUANT TO UNION LAW, SECTION SIXTEEN, SUBSECTION TWENTY-SEVEN, FLEETCARTEL IS DECLARING AN INTERVENTION ON THE JAKOB WALTZ MISSION CHARTER. SAID ACTION IS THE RESULT OF INTENTIONAL ENDANGERMENT ON THE PART OF THE PRINCIPLE CHARTER HOLDER AND IS TO BE CONSIDERED EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY. THIS ACTION IS IN FULL FORCE AND BINDING AND SHALL BE CONSIDERED IRREVOCABLE UNTIL SUCH TIME AS THE SITUATION NO LONGER NEGATIVELY IMPACTS THE WELFARE OF THE SHIP AND CREW AS DETERMINED BY FLEETCOM.
THIS STATEMENT SERVES FORMALLY TO TRANSFER MISSION COMMAND FROM SOURCECARTEL TO FLEETCARTEL. ALL FURTHER COMMUNICATIONS REGARDING THE OPERATION OF THE JAKOB WALTZ ARE TO BE DIRECTED TO FLEETCOM OPERATIONS CENTER, TSIOLKOVSKIY.
SOURCECARTEL SERVICES COMMANDER JEPHORA COCHRANE IS HEREBY GRANTED THE RANK OF FLEETCOM SHIP CAPTAIN WITH ALL APPURTENANT AUTHORITY VESTED HEREIN.
IN THE EVENT THAT CAPTAIN COCHRANE IS INCAPABLE OF IMPLEMENTING THESE ORDERS THROUGH INCAPACITY OR REFUSAL, ANY FLEETCOM PERSONNEL ABOARD THE JAKOB WALTZ ARE AUTHORIZED TO TAKE WHATEVER ACTION NECESSARY TO ASSURE COMPLIANCE WITH ORDERS AND SECURITY OF THE VESSEL. CURRENT OPERATIONAL COMMANDER OF THE JAKOB WALTZ IS TO ACKNOWLEDGE RECEIPT OF THIS COMMUNICATION VIA STANDARD FLEETCOM ENCRYPTED CHANNEL.
UPON RECEIPT OF ACKNOWLEDGEMENT, FURTHER ORDERS TO FOLLOW.
SIGNED: ROJA, CHANCELLOR, FLEETCARTEL.
Jeph pushed himself back against
his seat and reread the message. Slowly.
In twenty years of service, he had never heard of a charter intervention happening. He knew the law provided for such an action in extremely limited circumstances, but as far as he knew it had only ever happened in a handful of cases in all of Union history.
“This makes absolutely no sense,” he said as he read it for the third time. No matter how he twisted it in his mind, he had no clue why they would issue an order like this. Even with the current Sit-Al on the mission, there was no logical reason.
At least none that they would know about down-system.
He’d been staring at the screen for several minutes when someone rapped at his door. “Come,” he said, reaching up and turning his screen to where it wasn’t visible.
“Thought you were due to relieve Kiro,” Danel said. “Are you alright? You look like your head’s hurting again.” He pulled himself in, closing the door behind him.
“Sorry,” Jeph said, blinking several times and trying to focus on Danel’s words. He nodded. “I’m fine.”
“You don’t look fine to me. I should call Anju?”
“No, I’m just trying to make sense out of this and it’s not working.” Jeph nodded toward the screen.
“I scan that,” Danel said. “So what’s wrong in your part of reality?”
“I just got intervention orders from FleetCom. They’re taking over the mission,” he said.
“Intervention orders?” Danel asked, anchoring himself to the chair across from Jeph.
“When a mission is in danger or involved in something illegal, FleetCartel has the right to transfer command authority to their jurisdiction,” he said.
“I’ve never heard of it,” he said.
“I’m sure you haven’t,” Jeph said. “It’s a high-level legal maneuver and it’s so rare that I don’t think it’s happened anywhere for the twenty years I was in the service. But that’s why all operating ships anywhere in space have FleetCom trained command crews.
“That’s you and Rocky?” Danel asked.
“And Shona and Kiro,” he added.
“I didn’t think you sent out a distress call,” Danel said.
Jeph shook his head. “Even if we had, a standard distress call requires someone on the command roster to request an intervention. It forfeits the mission charter and no commander wants that to happen. The inquiries afterward get very messy.”
“If you didn’t do it, who did?”
“The only other one on the ship with authority is Rocky,” he said.
“Do you think she did it?”
“No,” Jeph said. “I talked to her about sending a D-Call and she pushed back hard against me on it. She’d be the last person on the ship to scream for help.”
Jeph cut loose from his seat and floated over to his personal safe. He needed the command manual to look up the encryption protocols, so he could confirm the order. Thumbing the biometric scanner, he frowned. “The only way this could happen is from the top down,” he said, thumping the screen with the side of a fist as he waited for it to open. “The orders are signed by Chancellor Roja personally. I’m not sure, but that’s got to be two or three pay grades above the normal bureaucratic level.”
“Roja? That does seem fragging high,” Danel said.
“What’s foobed about it is that it tells me somebody who breathes better air than us, knew what we would be dealing with and didn’t think we needed to know.”
Tsiolkovskiy Fleet Training Center: FleetCartel Headquarters: Luna:
“I don’t know, if it will make a difference, but at least now they’ll be walking into whatever is coming their way with their eyes open,” the chancellor said as Admiral Nakamiru settled into the seat across from her desk.
“I assume that means you received the acknowledgment,” he said. “And the Waltz is still alive.”
“An acknowledgment is all they sent back,” she said, twisting her screen to show him the message.
THE JAKOB WALTZ ACKNOWLEDGES RECEIPT OF INTERVENTION ORDER AND IS STANDING BY.
JEPHORA COCHRANE, CAPTAIN.
“He is probably in shock considering the rarity of an intervention,” he said. “I am sure once that wears off he will send a full update.
“That might take a while,” she said. “I just sent him the full load.”
“The full load?”
“Everything we suspect on the ghost fleet, and all the dirt that went into his charter,” she said. “There were fourteen sealed caveats behind it.”
“Considering what’s going on, I am sure that’s true,” Nakamiru said.
“I also sent orders to protect the nuclear materials they are carrying, at all costs.”
“At all costs? That’s a tough command position,” Nakamiru said. “That far out there, he knows he’s alone for the foreseeable future, so he needs to be autonomous if he wants to stay alive. What do you know about him?”
“Only what’s in his service record,” she said, turning her screen back so she could refer to his file. “He graduated from Galileo Poly and the Command School here. He was a FleetCom command officer for twenty years and worked his way up the ranks to Commander. He held that rank for nine years and posted to three ships as first officer. But he never got the big chair.”
“In nine years, he never made captain?”
“His performance was solid, but he was born in Juno Commons, so he never qualified physically,” she said.
“That was all that held him back?” he asked. “That is unfortunate.”
“Apparently so. Every performance review, in his file, said he was well above average in all the skill sets and that he had exceptional problem solving skills. The only negative comment I found anywhere in his record was that he tended to be a bit slow to react to a crisis, but he mitigated that with a knack for pulling off a good save.”
“If things go sidewise that might be all we have between us and a war,” the admiral said. “Did he leave because he got tired of being passed over?”
“That is what it said in his resignation docs,” she said, nodding. “He obviously didn’t want to retire from service, because he posted for command of the Waltz with SourceCartel a month later. They snatched him up, in a short nano.”
“Shame we lost a good officer because of him being an ectomorph,” he said.
“Well he’s got his big seat now,” she said. “Let’s hope he’s not holding a grudge.”
Jakob Waltz: Neptune L-4 Trojan Cluster:
Jeph sat at the galley table where he’d spent an entire shift explaining the significance of the change in their charter status. Four of them had FleetCom training and of them, only he and Rocky had command level certification that would have included any reference to how an intervention works. It was hard to explain and, other than the fact that it meant their ice harvesting mission was over, not much of it made any sense to them. Or to him, in all honesty.
“Captain, you have a substantial datafile coming in,” Dutch said, interrupting the conversation. “It’s marked high-priority and the sender is listed as Chancellor Roja.”
“Direct from her?” he asked.
“The digital trace tag has her personal identifier, and says it was relayed directly through Lunar L-2,” he said. “It contains a video coverfile and several hundred other documents as an attachment. Because we are receiving through the narrowband antenna only, it will take several minutes to compile.”
“Punch the video to the CrewDeck screen,” he said, “and send the rest to my desk.”
He twisted to look at the screen. Several seconds later, the face of Katryna Roja materialized. Everyone fell to silence.
“Captain Cochrane, before I begin, let me congratulate you on your promotion to Fleet Captain. We are proud to have you back as a member of our command staff. I also want to commend you and your crew on the way you are handling a difficult and unprecedented situation.”
“Pause,” Danel interrupted. “You told me you haven’t sent any significant
updates. How does she know what we’re facing?”
“Good question,” Jeph said, nodding without turning. “Resume playback.”
“With that said, I also have to apologize for the fact that those who held your charter have been less than forthcoming with information. FleetCom has only recently become aware that someone sought to conceal aspects of your mission as sealed caveats to your charter. You would be correct to assume that there are certain political machinations involved, however, the situation is far more complex than is readily obvious. It is important that you are aware of these details, so you may protect your ship and crew. I am attaching a file to this transmission that contains the pertinent situational information, as we understand it.
“Your original background dossier did not reference a previous science mission to the Neptune L-4 Trojan Cluster. On 2230.010 DevCartel established a charter for a science mission to determine why two previous, unmanned probes disappeared in the region. They assigned the science vessel Hector to this mission and under joint command of Commander James Caswell and Dr. Ian Whitewind it launched the following year.”
Chei whistled in surprise. “If Whitewind was out here that might explain a lot.”
Jeph shot him a hairy eyeball, but didn’t stop the playback.
“This vessel disappeared on 2232.095 and the crew and ship were declared lost. Although there’s no evidence of a catastrophic event, official records list the Hector as ‘destroyed in service.’ Certain aspects of the mission charter resulted in the records being sealed.
“Because of the extreme range of the Neptune L-4 Cluster, they did not consider it economically feasible to mount a recovery effort. However, when SourceCartel proposed your mission to the same region, DevCartel offered resources to the Jakob Waltz Charter in exchange for design and crew considerations. As a result, they outfitted the ship you now command well above the specifications required for ice harvesting.”
“Pause,” Jeph said, turning to face the table. “Crew considerations? Do any of you know what the hell she’s talking about?”
“I might,” Chei said.
“Me too,” Anju whispered, looking down at her hands.
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