To Fire Called (A Seeker's Tale From The Golden Age Of The Solar Clipper Book 2)

by Nathan Lowell

“I’ll bet if we sort them, we’ll find some aren’t routed to the trash can,” the chief said.

  “You think some got delivered?” I asked.

  “If our suspicions are correct, we’ve got representatives from Mellon-Merc, Pravda Systems, and Manchester all swimming in this soup bowl. They’re going to be controlling the outgoing comms.”

  Pip clambered up the ladder. “Not all of them,” he said. “Not if these people are getting paid.”

  The chief sat up straight in her chair. “High Tortuga.”

  “Exactly. If you know how to route through the bank, you can send a message anywhere.”

  “If you can get to the bank,” Al said. “Otherwise you’re left with this.”

  “That’s the question,” Pip said. “I set the ship up to relay through High Tortuga when we left Dree.”

  “What about all this message traffic?” Ms. Fortuner asked.

  “That’s in the commercial system,” Pip said. “As long as we don’t hit a comms relay, it’ll stay there.”

  “I asked her to route it to a save buffer until we can sort some of this out,” I said.

  Pip nodded and leaned over Ms. Fortuner’s shoulder to watch the message headers scroll in. Even from the captain’s chair I could see the lines flashing past too fast.

  “You’d think these people would wonder why nobody got any incoming mail,” Pip said.

  “The wonder is that the company let them send any out,” Al said.

  “It’s probably been ostentatiously censored ‘for the good of the project,’” the chief said.

  Pip turned to look at her. “Sounds like the bitter voice of experience.”

  She shrugged but her face twisted into a sour expression.

  “All right,” I said. “Focus, people. There’s a station here somewhere.”

  “Bring up the miners’ voice channels,” Al said.

  “What good will that do?” Mr. Reed asked. “The communications will be hours old.”

  “Not if they’re working the belts closest to us,” Al said. “Even if it is, hours old is more recent than years old.” She nodded at the messages still scrolling up.

  Ms. Fortuner nodded and clicked keys to open one of our voice receivers. “Any insight as to frequency range?”

  “Set up the frequency analyzer for everything between a hundred kilohertz up to five hundred megahertz,” Al said. “If anybody’s using radio, it’ll probably be in that range.”

  Ms. Fortuner shook her head. “Of course. Sorry, Al.”

  “We’re all on the same boat, Kim. Just keep plugging.”

  “It’ll take a while to sample that many frequencies.”

  “Just let it run. We’re not going anywhere,” Al said.

  “I just got an astrogation update,” Mr. Reed said. “Came from the buoy.”

  Ms. Fortuner brought the message window back up and nodded. “I’m seeing a few HazNav reports scattered in here now.”

  “What’re you seeing, Mr. Reed?” I asked.

  “They’re almost two decades old. Slow ship navigation warnings from 2356. Ship navigation testing 2357 and ’58. Loose debris warnings. Most current one I’ve got so far is 2361. Slow ship warning.”

  Pip snorted. “Good way to keep things under wraps. Send out HazNav warnings while you’re testing the prototypes.”

  “They’re all routed to BoE-1212,” Ms. Fortuner said.

  “They never arrived,” I said.

  “Local consumption only,” the chief said. “Some right-hand, left-hand shenanigans. A rule pusher insisted on following the CPJCT regs while a corporate type flagged the outgoing HazNavs for destruction.”

  “And nobody realized that the messages weren’t getting picked up?” Pip asked.

  “When all you know is how it’s always worked, why question it?” the chief said.

  Pip sighed. “If they’re still alive out here, it’s going to be a miracle.”

  “Somebody’s alive,” Ms. Fortuner said. “I’m getting spikes on the spectrum analysis.”

  “Anything we can listen to?” I asked.

  She tapped a few keys and a speaker crackled with static for a few heartbeats and then settled into a jiggly data tone. “Encrypted traffic, I think,” Ms. Fortuner said. “It doesn’t respond to any of the common wave-form analysis I’m used to. It’s also very weak. Either a long way off or low power, or both.”

  “Maybe we’re overthinking it,” Al said.

  “How’s that?” I asked.

  “Kim, can you patch in the channel we used for approach control at Dark Knight?”

  “Sure.” The warbling data tone cut out, replaced by a quiet static.

  “We’re still too far out for them to hail us,” Mr. Reed said. “If they’re more than a light-hour away, they don’t even know we’re here yet.”

  “Yeah, but we’re not so far out that we can’t hear them hail somebody else,” she said. “It’s the standard hailing frequency across the Toe-Holds.”

  “These people aren’t Toe-Holders,” the chief said. “We’ve seen it over and over.”

  Al grinned. “Yeah. The management is stupid, but the miners aren’t. If they’ve got a mining operation big enough to support refineries and ship building, they’ve got to have a good number of Toe-Hold miners and haulers moving stuff around here. Even if it’s not leaving the system.”

  The chief nodded.

  As if to prove her point, a faint and broken voice transmission came from the speaker.

  “Well, we know somebody’s still here,” I said. “Are you still getting message traffic from the buoy, Ms. Fortuner?”

  “I am, Captain. I’m seeing dates in the ’60s now.”

  “Well, let’s settle in for the ride,” I said. “Looks like it’ll be a while before we learn anything useful.”

  “Feels a little anticlimactic after the rush to get out here, doesn’t it?” the chief said.

  She surprised a laugh out of me. “A bit,” I said. “I didn’t know what to expect.”

  “How do you want to proceed, Captain? We’re still at navigation stations,” Al said.

  I sighed. “Ms. Fortuner, send a standard arrival message on CPJCT and Toe-Hold notification channels. We may as well let them know we’re here. Mr. Reed, assuming they’re on the far side of the primary, how long would it take a message to get to them and for us to get a reply?”

  “Could take ten or twelve stans, depending on where they are on the other side. Theoretically, if we can hear them, they’re not in the primary’s shadow.” He paused. “It’ll get shorter, but we’re not carrying much velocity by CPJCT standards. It’s going to take us a long time to get into the gravity well here.”

  “Good point, Mr. Reed. Let’s hope we don’t need to. Plot us a course around the outer belt if we’ve got the sail and keel angles to support it.”

  “We should have, Captain.”

  “Good, I don’t want to get too far down the hole unless we have to. It would be par for us to get halfway in only to find out the station is out on the rim.”

  “Plotting now, Captain.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Reed. Ms. Fortuner, keep the spectrum analyzer running and leave the traffic channel open on speaker with recorded backup. Whoever has the watch can monitor it for traffic and let me know if anything interesting happens.”

  “Can you define ‘interesting,’ Captain?” Al asked.

  “Not really. If they call us, that might qualify. If you hear them talking about scrambling defense forces, I’d like to know.”

  Al snickered. “You think that’s likely?”

  “Not really. That’s why I think it would be interesting.”

  “Because you don’t think they have any?” Al asked.

  “No. Because I don’t think they’d use the public hailing channel to do it.” I shrugged.

  “You’re serious?” she asked.

  “The system is flagged quarantine. Don’t you kinda wonder if somebody might have poked a nose in here before now?
Just to see how bad it is?”

  Al didn’t say anything, just stared at me.

  “Secure from navigation stations, Ms. Ross. Set normal watch. Log the extra comms procedures in the OD notes. Ms. Fortuner, I’d like to see a summary of the steps we’ve taken to establish communications including accessing the buoy traffic.”

  “Aye, aye, Captain,” Ms. Fortuner said.

  Al made the announcements and the ship settled down to an uneasy wait.

  Chapter 42

  Telluride System: 2375, November 15

  We cruised around the outer reaches of the Telluride system for over two solid days. Long-range scanning mapped the major system features by the end of the first one. We found the shipyard and what looked like the major component fabrication facility. As we drew closer, we heard more intelligible communications on the hailing frequency, but the signal strength left a lot to be desired. Based on what we knew of Mel’s Place and Dark Knight, we still couldn’t pick out anything that looked like a habitation area. I didn’t expect we’d find the kind of spread-out platforms that made up Bar None, but I couldn’t see anything that might have rivaled even Odin’s Outpost.

  The response, when it came, didn’t really surprise me much.

  Al bipped me to the bridge right after evening mess. When I topped the ladder, she pointed at the long-range scanner. “Somebody coming out to meet us,” she said.

  The blinking target showed a velocity vector that the computers thought would reach our projected path within a few days.

  “They’re not squawking?” I asked.

  “Nothing we can see. It’s either military or masked.”

  “Or both,” I said.

  She shrugged. “Either way.”

  “You sure they’re coming to meet us?”

  “Nope, but it’s going too fast for a mining barge coming out to the belts and there’s nothing on that vector he could be jumping to for a very, very long way.”

  “He might not be going on that vector the whole way.”

  She shrugged again. “Always an option.”

  “Sails?” I asked.

  “Too far away to tell. Might be. Might be just kickers.”

  I checked the range. “Four light-minutes out?”

  “That’s how I read it, Skipper.”

  I started to sit down at the systems console. Old habits die particularly hard but I stopped myself from doing any serious damage to my reputation. “Bip Ms. Fortuner to the bridge, please, Al.”

  “Aye, Captain. Ms. Fortuner to the bridge.”

  She arrived in less than two ticks. “Yes, Captain.”

  I pointed to the long range. “This looks like our welcoming committee. So far they haven’t hailed us but this is the first ship we’ve seen. Can you set up a tight beam to intercept him?”

  She frowned at the scanner. “I can give you a narrow beam that will get to where he will be four minutes from now, but that’s too far to get real precise.”

  “I just want to focus as much power as I can at him. We know where he’ll be, mostly. I want to see if he’ll answer us.”

  “We can try, Skipper.”

  “If you’d set it up?”

  “Aye, aye, Captain.” She settled at her console and pulled the long-range display over to her screen. “I’ll be just a couple of ticks.”

  “We are squawking our ident, aren’t we?” I asked.

  “Yes, Captain,” Ms. Fortuner said.

  I watched the mystery blip while she set up the communications arrays, wondering what I’d say when the time came.

  “Ready, Captain. Bridge ambient in three, two ...” She held up a finger for “one” and then pointed it at me as she clicked a key.

  “Unknown vessel on intercept course from Telluride, this is the solar slipper Chernyakova inbound with a shipment of food. Over.” I nodded at Ms. Fortuner who clicked another key.

  “We’re off, Captain. Eight minutes before they can reply.”

  “Shall we start a betting pool?” Al asked.

  “On how long they take to answer?” I asked.

  “On whether they’ll answer and what they’ll say if they do.”

  “No bet for me. Ms. Fortuner, when did we send the last arrival message?”

  “I put it on a loop for top and bottom of the clock, Captain. Last sent 1800 hours.” She consulted a window on her console. “Negative response.”

  “What was the last message recovered from the buoy?” I asked.

  “We’re still getting them, Captain, but they’re coming slower now.” She checked another window. “We’ve queried three buoys since entering the system. Looks like we finally drained the system. The last message was date-stamped at 1945 on November 14. Nothing received in the last three stans.”

  “Al, would you ping Mr. Reed to the bridge?”

  “Aye, aye, Skipper.”

  Reed scampered up the ladder. “You rang?”

  “Al spotted this fellow coming out from the gravity well. We’ve hailed him but gotten no response so far.”

  “Still two minutes to run, Captain,” Ms. Fortuner said.

  “Thank you, Ms. Fortuner.” I nodded to the plot. “Can we shift our course in a way to make him miss this intercept?”

  Mr. Reed leaned into the long-range and took a long look. “He’s still four minutes out. We won’t be close for a week, Skipper.”

  “I’d rather we didn’t get too close if we can help it,” I said. “Keeping him at a one-light-minute range leaves us a lot of options, including bailing out of here if we need to.”

  He gave me a sharp look and then squinted at the long-range again. “You want to get deeper in the well or farther out?” he asked.

  “How much farther can we go in and still jump out at least a couple of BUs?”

  He sat down at the astrogation console and started tapping. “Lemme see.”

  “Thirty seconds, Captain,” Ms. Fortuner said.

  “Thank you.”

  “Jumping isn’t the problem, Skipper,” Mr. Reed said. “It’s where we jump to. We need a clean place to land or we wind up with another rock—or worse.”

  “So we need a vector that will let us make a short jump to a safe spot. Are there any places we can jump to if we had a couple of stans to adjust course?”

  “There’s one just two BUs dead ahead. We’ve got the legs to jump there now if you wanted.”

  “I want to change our vector to see if the mysterious friend adjusts to follow us. What have you got?”

  “That’ll take some thinking, Skipper.”

  “You think. We’ll wait.”

  I looked at Ms. Fortuner.

  “Any time now, Captain,” she said.

  I stood there in the bridge, waiting, wondering what we were going to do if this wasn’t just some pilot vessel come to escort us to dock.

  “I have a plot, Skipper, but there’s a problem.”

  “Tell me about it, Mr. Reed.”

  “Time to intercept is six plus days. He can’t close any sooner as long as we maintain this course.”

  “Keep going, Mr. Reed.”

  “We don’t have any vector to a viable destination other than the heading we’re on now. If we want to scram, it has to be on this course or we have to do some serious adjustments to get onto a new vector. Either use the primary to swing back around the way we came or maybe one of the giants to get an exit vector toward The Junkyard or toward Diurnia. We’ve a few options for that vector, but all those options are weeks away in terms of viability.”

  “What if I just want to verify he’s coming out to meet us?” I asked.

  “If we use the kickers to change our vector further out of the well, he’ll be forced to adjust his course and speed up in order to intercept.”

  “But we can’t jump on that course?” I asked.

  “We can, but it’ll take a few days for us to get far enough out to jump to the next clear landing zone that we know of. We can always jump blind, but that’s a risky proposition.”r />
  “How long will it take him to notice that we’ve changed course?”

  Mr. Reed snorted. “Depends on how good his instruments are, how alert his bridge crew is, and whether or not he cares. If he changes his vector, we’d know it in about four ticks but it would probably take ten or more for us to have a solid read on what the new vector is.”

  “How long will we have to burn to get a vector change big enough to notice at that range?”

  “There’s another option,” he said with a grin.

  “Hit me.”

  “We pull in the sails. Maybe flip the ship, and use the kickers to kill some of our forward momentum. Wouldn’t take much and that would register on his long range in about a day.”

  “Won’t we get pulled off our vector by the primary?”

  “Yes, but not by much and we can adjust for that with the sails and kickers relatively quickly if we want to scram. At the rate we’re going now and with this tangential vector across the outer edge of the system, we aren’t going to have moved much off the line even if we keep on it for a couple of weeks.”

  “I don’t really want to hang around out here that long,” I said.

  “Until we know where we’re going, I don’t have anything else to suggest, Skipper.”

  “I know, Mr. Reed.” I stared at the plot for a few ticks while I felt the eyes on me. “Ms. Torkelson, reef up the sails. Pull them all the way down.”

  “Full reef on sails, aye, Captain.” She made the corrections at the helm.

  Al started chuckling.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Chief Stevens in three, two ...”

  “What’s going on?” the chief asked as she shot up the ladder and onto the bridge. She looked around at the crowd on the bridge. “What? You’re having a party and I’m not invited?”

  “All we need is Pip, now,” Al said.

  “I’m coming.” Pip’s voice echoed up the ladder just ahead of his arrival. “What’s happening?”

  I took a moment to explain the situation and noticed Ms. Torkelson grinning.

  “Something tickle you, Ms. Torkelson?” I asked.

  “I never expected we’d be having this much fun,” she said. “My last ship we just picked up a can. Flew over there. Dropped off the can. Picked up another can. Flew back. Over and over.”