by Piers Platt
“And I think we can assume they didn’t stop along the way,” Paisen said.
“You said they each traveled for ‘approximately’ seven or eleven days. You don’t know the precise timing?”
“Uh, that’s what it said in the riddle. So, no.”
“May I read the riddle?”
Beauceron but his lip. “Um, no. I forgot to bring it.”
“Well, that was foolish. Regardless, it’s a simple question of where their travel potential radii overlap. What you really need is an astro-cartographer, I’m more of a specialist on the physics side. But still, I may be able to help.”
“We’d be willing to pay you for your time,” Rath offered.
Entenari dismissed the notion with a wave of her hand. “Nonsense. I like puzzles.” She stood up, and activated a holographic projector on the ceiling with a snap of her fingers. A virtual star field appeared in the air surrounding the astronomer. “But I fear your father may have played a trick on you.”
“How so?” Beauceron asked. “The riddle seemed to suggest we could triangulate on the location using just the information I gave you.”
“Triangulate? No. We can eliminate a lot of possibilities, but it’s unlikely that will tell us where your mystery planet is, without more precise timing for each trip … down to the hour, say.” Entenari spread her arms wide, then brought them together, and the stars shrunk down significantly, coalescing into the arm of a galaxy. “But we shall see. Highlight Delta Copernica and … what was the other planet?”
“Tarkis,” Beauceron and Rath said, at the same time.
The professor flashed Rath an inquiring look. “… and highlight Tarkis.” On the spiral arm, two blinking dots appeared. Entenari placed a finger on each holographic dot, and then pulled her hands apart, zooming in their field of view. “Draw me a hypothetical circle around each of the highlighted planets. Maximum travel distance for a conventional spacecraft. Tarkis at seven days, Delta Copernica at eleven.”
Two spheres appeared, with the blinking planets at their centers.
“Contrasting colors,” Entenari ordered. One sphere turned red, while the other turned blue. “So, our spheres overlap here, in this purple area. In the two dimensional plane, that geometrical shape is known as a vesica piscis. Your planet is somewhere in that overlap.”
“That was my suspicion,” Beauceron said.
Entenari sat back down at her desk, and typed on a keyboard next to her datascroll. “But I’m afraid that region contains … eighty-seven known planets.”
“Are any of them habitable?” Rath asked.
“Was that stipulated in the riddle?” she replied, taking her glasses off.
Beauceron nodded.
“How did the riddle define habitable? Aleppo is technically habitable, with the right life support systems.”
“No.” Beauceron shook his head. “Breathable atmosphere.”
“I see. So capable of supporting human life unassisted? Oxygen-rich atmosphere, temperate climate …?”
“Yes,” said Beauceron.
She typed again. “No … no planets match that narrow definition of habitable. Not one.”
The room was silent for a few seconds, then Paisen stood up. “Thank you for your time, Professor. We won’t take up any more of it.”
Beauceron held up a hand. “Wait. What was the gravity like?”
Paisen shot him an icy glare.
“Normal gravity,” Rath said quietly.
“Gentlemen, we should go. Now.” Paisen crossed her arms.
But Beauceron turned back to Entenari. “Can you filter that list down to planets with Earth-like gravity, please?”
“Of course. That gives us fourteen.”
“That’s still not your answer,” Paisen pointed out. “The riddle says there’s only one planet.”
“I know,” Beauceron said. “And if they altered the data on the planet being habitable, they could have altered the planet’s gravity data just as easily.”
Paisen frowned at him. Entenari looked from Paisen to Beauceron, a bemused smile on her face. “Apparently this ‘riddle’ is more nuanced than you initially assumed.”
An awkward silence fell over the room.
Rath looked at Entenari. When he spoke, his voice was quiet. “What if we had a picture of the constellations, as seen from that planet’s surface?”
The astronomer peered at him for a second. “Yes, that would work. The computer can match constellations to star charts.”
Paisen sighed. “How does that help us? I don’t remember the passengers in the riddle having cameras when they landed.”
“Just … bear with me,” Rath told her. He turned to Entenari. “Do you have something I can draw on?”
She handed him her datascroll. “A rough sketch won’t work, the software will be looking at the star’s relative positions, distances and angles from each other. A rough sketch won’t be accurate enough—”
But Rath had closed his eyes, recalling.
“Candidate 621, your rest cycle begins now.”
And I would lay back on the sand, and shiver, and look up at the stars.
Rath put his finger on the datascroll’s screen, and started adding stars. A light finger tap for a small one, a heavier tap for a large one. He worked for several minutes, until the screen was nearly full. When he was finished, Entenari took the datascroll back without a word, saved the sketch, and then uploaded it.
“It’s searching now,” she told them. The device beeped almost at once. She looked at Rath for a second, studying him. “You have a gift, my friend. Ninety-seven percent accuracy.”
“What planet?” Rath asked.
“Fusoria,” she replied. “That’s Ancient Latin for ‘crucible,’ or ‘foundry.’ ”
Beauceron and Paisen traded looks. “What do the survey records tell us about it?” the detective asked.
Entenari skimmed the text on her screen. “A nasty place. It has a very odd orbit, huge temperature extremes. Its atmospheric composition is atrocious, mostly methane. The unmanned exploration report says it also has high radiation levels, above average rates of seismic activity … not a good real estate investment. Its possibly one of the least habitable places I’ve heard of.”
Beauceron cocked an eyebrow at her. “Almost unbelievably so?”
“Unbelievable? No. It’s certainly possible. But it’s a bit unlikely, perhaps.”
Beauceron turned to Paisen. “If I were hacking into the exploratory records, and I wanted to edit a planet’s description to discourage anyone from ever visiting … I might write a description like that.”
Rath rubbed at his chin. “He has a point.”
Paisen sighed. “Fusoria?”
Entenari nodded, then sat back in her chair, smiling. “It looks like you’ll get your inheritance after all.”
6
At one end of the hangar bay, a small fleet of automated hoversleds worked to unload a container ship, while nearby, a team of mechanics used robotic arms to weld a new deck plate into place on the hull of a massive passenger liner. Paisen stepped around a refueling hose and jerked her head toward the far end of the bay.
“This way,” she said.
Rath craned his neck to look. “The grey one? The light freighter?”
She shook her head. “The yellow one next to it.”
Rath frowned. “What the hell is that?”
“A long-range surveyor ship,” she told him. “You think you can find another ship around here that has launch, reentry, and atmospheric flight capabilities, by all means, go find one.”
The ship was squat and wedge-shaped, with a rounded nose that flared back into a pair of wings and a set of four engines mounted over a cargo bay near the tail. It was painted bright yellow, with orange markings on the wings.
“It’s just … noticeable,” Beauceron said. “Hard to miss.”
Paisen ignored him. The ship’s rear ramp was down, allowing them to climb up into a roomy cargo hold. Paisen keyed a door releas
e at the front of the hold, and they passed through into a corridor running down the spine of the ship.
“Cockpit up front, dead ahead,” Paisen said, pointing. “Crew quarters on either side of the passageway. Port side has the lounge and the kitchen, sleeping quarters on the starboard side. Captain has his own cabin just off the cockpit.”
“Where’s the captain?” Beauceron asked.
“Filing our flight plan,” she said. “Which has us going somewhere in the Territories, I don’t remember what he put down.”
She opened the door on the right, and selected a top bunk near the door, setting her Forge down at the foot of the bed. Beauceron and Rath claimed their own bunks.
“How much did this cost?” Rath asked.
“A hundred thousand a week,” Paisen said, shaking her head. “And we might get fuel surcharges if prices go up.”
Rath whistled. “Ouch.”
“Yeah. Fusoria is an eight-day journey from here, so we’re going to burn most of our funds just getting there and back.”
Rath palmed the door switch, and it slid shut. “What do you know about the pilot?” he asked, voice low.
She shrugged. “He has the ship we need, and he didn’t ask any questions.”
“What did you tell him?” Beauceron asked.
“Enough,” Paisen said. “He knows we’re likely to see some action.” She tapped a fist against the ship’s bulkhead. “This thing is armed. Lightly armed, but enough for our purposes.”
“Did you get the sense we can trust him?” Rath asked.
She laughed. “Trust? What’s that? Look, he gouged me on the price, but I got the sense this isn’t the first time he’s done this kind of thing. He took the money up-front, and didn’t want to know our destination until after we take off.”
There was a discreet knock at the door.
“Come in,” Paisen called.
The door opened, and the captain entered. He was a slight man, with an impressive head of dreadlocks tied back in a copper band. His dark, freckled skin was somewhat pallid from long hours spent traveling through space, but he was meticulously groomed. He wore a set of pressed coveralls and a silk cravat at his neck, which looked strangely out of place against the rough cloth of his uniform coveralls. He glanced at Rath and Beauceron.
“Gentlemen, welcome aboard the Hurasu. I’m Captain Mikolos.” He caught sight of a smudge on the polished desktop next to the door, and wiped it away with a micro-fiber cloth from his pocket. “We’re, ah, ready to leave whenever you are,” he told Paisen.
“Then let’s get going.”
* * *
In the Hurasu’s lounge, Paisen fiddled with the holographic projector in the center of the lounge’s table. It flipped on and displayed a boot-up logo.
“You think the survey maps of Fusoria are going to be accurate?” Beauceron asked, nodding at the hologram.
“No,” Paisen said. “But I always plan better when I’m looking at a map.” A blank planet appeared in the projector, spinning slowly. “Okay, we’ve got a little over seven days before we exit faster-than-light. Let’s put them to good use.”
Rath sat down at the table. “Enemy situation?”
“Yeah,” Paisen agreed. “Let’s start with what we know. Long range transports bring in recruits – and presumably supplies, and new medical personnel from time to time – but they dock directly to shuttles in orbit. On the surface, there are Group facilities in at least two different locations: the island itself, and the medical facility out at sea.”
“If you docked directly to the shuttle when you arrived, that means there’s no orbital transfer station?” Beauceron asked.
“Right,” Rath said. “Probably too expensive to build and maintain.”
“That’s a reasonable assumption,” Paisen agreed. “If there is a transfer station, it would likely have a complement of fighters or long-range anti-ship missiles. Or both. Either way, we wouldn’t stand a chance.”
“We’d have to bug out, and make a new plan based on what we see of their defenses,” Rath said.
Paisen cocked her head to one side. “Or let them board us, then overwhelm the boarding team.”
Beauceron shook his head. “I’m not sure I’ll be doing any ‘overwhelming.’ That could quickly turn to bloodshed.”
Paisen sighed. “Beauceron, we may not have a choice.”
“There’s always a choice. We can leave, call Interstellar Police, and notify them where to find the planet.”
“… and hope we didn’t call a dirty cop, and hope the Group doesn’t find us and kill us before the IP get their act together to come investigate the planet. I don’t think so. I’m not a big fan of basing my plans on hope.”
“I don’t think you hope much, period,” Beauceron pointed out.
Paisen ignored him. “We’ve covered the most dangerous enemy scenario - heavily defended orbital transfer station. Now let’s talk most likely scenario. My money is on deep space drones in high orbit, and some fixed weapons emplacements on the island and the training facility, in case anyone gets through the high orbit screen. The weapon emplacements are easy … once we take out the drones and establish aerospace superiority, we can locate the weapons emplacements from orbit and pick them off with PKDs before approaching. But the space drones will maneuver into a defensive posture as soon as they pick us up on sensors, and they’ll be much harder to defeat. I’m thinking counter-drones are our best bet, with the Hurasu’s guns for mop-up.”
“What are ‘PKDs’?” Beauceron asked, looking at Rath.
Rath shrugged. “Yeah, what are counter-drones? Where did you learn this stuff?”
“What, orbital assaults?”
“Yeah. I’ve never heard of PKDs, I don’t know any of this.”
“It was in one of the later training modules … I don’t remember, sometime in the second year of training.”
“Wait, what? You had two years of training?”
“Nearly,” Paisen confirmed. “About twenty-two months. You didn’t?”
“No,” Rath said. “I finished in under a year.”
“Perhaps they changed the curriculum before you went through, Rath,” Beauceron suggested. “To get you out into the field faster.”
“Yeah, with less preparation,” Rath noted.
“Can we get back on track?” Paisen asked. “‘PKD’ stands for Precision Kinetic Dart – it’s a guided munition that we drop from high altitude.”
“A bomb?” Beauceron asked.
“No, there’s no chemical energy component, it’s just an inert metal rod. But by the time it reaches the surface, it’s going so fast that it’s nearly impossible for static targets to defend against. We can build a dozen or so with our Forges, they don’t have to be big.”
“Collateral damage?” Rath asked.
“Minimal. There’s shrapnel from the impact, so if you’re standing right next to where it impacts, you’re going to have a bad day. But otherwise it just punches a neat, surgical hole right through any defenses we target. That’s why the emplacements are easy. It’s the space drones that I’m worried about. We’re going to use up a lot of our Forge canister reserves to build counter-drones, and we need to start building them now to allow enough time.”
“Okay,” Rath agreed. “Assuming we get through the drones and take out the anti-air weapons on the ground, what next?”
“They’ll have us on sensors as soon as we come out of faster-than-light drive, so we’ll have lost the element of surprise. Things will be a bit fluid from that point on. I think we keep pressure on them, and assault one of the facilities while momentum is in our favor.”
“The only facilities we know of are on the island, where candidates are tested, and the platform out at sea, where surgery and training happens, right?” Beauceron asked.
Paisen turned to Rath. “You’re the one with the photographic memory – did you see anything else while you were there?”
Rath frowned. “No. All I saw on the island was
my drone. No other people, not even the other trainees. There could be structures underground, but … I doubt it. I agree that the platform is our best bet. Plus, that’s where we think most of the Group employees are, and we’ll need to secure them, fast.”
“True,” Paisen said. “We don’t want them mounting a counter-attack while we search the island.” She tapped at a control screen mounted in the table top, and the hologram of the planet disappeared, replaced with a three dimensional rendering of the platform. “The training center is actually a converted deep sea drilling rig. I did some research several months back and obtained the structural plans for that model. It wasn’t easy – this thing is a real dinosaur, it even runs on an old fission reactor. I started labeling areas based on my recollection, but … it was a long time ago.”
Rath walked slowly around the table, examining the hologram. “It’s … different. That’s not quite right.”
“They may have modified the platform from its original configuration,” Paisen admitted.
“Is this manipulable?” Rath asked.
“Go for it.”
Rath swiped several elements off the screen, and enlarged a section of the super-structure. “This whole platform was built up … it looked like an outdoor recreation area for staff, or something along those lines. On the air car flight in, I saw autonomous weapons emplacements … here, here, here, and here. And this looked like an interstellar communications node.”
Paisen reached into the model and added icons where Rath had indicated. “You might not know orbital assault, but that head of yours is a handy thing to have around,” she told him.
Beauceron shifted in his seat. “How many people are stationed on the platform?”
Paisen shrugged. “Eighty to a hundred, by my estimates. A small guard force, probably with their own air car – call it ten. Another ten miscellaneous support staff: clerks, cleaning crew, cooks. Medical teams are about twenty personnel, assuming two full surgical teams on standby, in case multiple recruits complete Selection at the same time. And then some techs and supervisors to monitor and direct the drones during Selection. That’s the biggest unknown – we don’t know how many contractors are on the island at any one time, so trying to figure out how many techs would be needed to monitor their progress is iffy. But I don’t think the platform is big enough to house more than a hundred people, and even that would be pretty tight.”
