A Stitch In Space

by Christopher Lansdown

  It was the usually quiet Xiao who started the conversation.

  “Is it true that there’s a small cargo ship docked at the entry station?” he said to Jack.

  “It is,” Jack said.

  “Are you worried?” he asked.

  “No,” Jack said. “We checked up on it and it’s a privately owned cargo ship specializing in small valuables. It’s been around for a while and it has no history of complaints.”

  “Pardon me,” Fr. Xris asked, “but what might you be worried about?”

  “Pirates,” Freia said cheerfully.

  “Are Pirates real?” Hannah asked.

  “They are,” Jack said, “but their legend is much bigger than their reality.”

  “The original pirates, or at least the famous ones which started International Talk Like a Pirate Day, hung out around the new world colonies and attacked trading ships,” Fr. Xris said. “But they relied on the fact that you couldn’t see anyone after a day or so of sailing, and so they could attack ships comparatively close to ports which would then let them sell their more-or-less untraceable cargo. Surely none of that applies in modern times?”

  “Fencing stolen goods depends more on what people are willing to buy,” Jack said, “rather than how traceable it is. In the newly settled worlds, it’s not like they have the universal comm infrastructure for stolen goods to report themselves. I mean, not if you don’t want it. Lots of people have settlements which aren’t on the grid. The new worlds tend to attract people who don’t want to be on the grid, so there may be more of that than you’d expect.”

  “But aren’t the slipstreams monitored? I mean, they are straight lines. There isn’t a horizon to obscure us from view,” Fr. Xris said.

  “Yes and no,” Belle said, joining the conversation. “They’re monitored, but they’re very long. I think people tend to forget that because they make such big distances crossable. Traveling at two tenths the speed of light, the average trip on a slipstream is two months. Even big ships are small at these scales. I mean, remember that Pluto is only 8 light-hours away from the sun. Could you make out a fist fight on the surface of Pluto using a telescope on earth?”

  “But wouldn’t a ship being attacked by pirates send out a distress signal letting both sides know who was attacking them, Ma’am?” Shaka asked.

  “They would,” Belle said, “but there’s no such thing as an unjammable transmission. The pirate vessel could put a lot of energy into jamming the signal. And worse, you can’t transmit through your ablative shield, so you can only transmit backwards. And the Pirates aren’t going that way. If they time their attack right, the message doesn’t have time to get from the entry station that they came from back to the entry station at their destination before they get there. Once they’re in a solar system, there’s really nothing to keep them from changing their ship’s ID and laying low for a while.”

  “That sounds risky,” Fr. Xris said.

  “No one said that space pirates have good judgment,” Belle replied.

  “Fair point,” Fr. Xris said.

  “That being said,” Belle said, “I’ve been doing this for a long time, and I’ve never run into pirates.”

  “What would you do if you did?” Fr. Xris asked.

  “Curse my luck,” she said. “The first thing is to get off a clear message. And we do have emergency comm beacons which we can jettison out the side to transmit forward. They’re not perfectly reliable at point-two C, but they’re about as reliable as the missiles pirates could use to shoot them down.

  “After that, it depends on what they do. We do have anti-missile defenses. Mostly lasers. The problem is that you have a very short window, since you can’t fire backwards through your engines, you only have when they come around the thrust. And it’s not ideal to leave debris in the slipstream, but it is legal to defend yourself. We do have a few missiles to fire back, and they’re more reliable firing backwards since in that direction their thrust helps to protect them from space dust.

  “The real problem is if they board us. It’s not very practical to destroy another ship right next to you, since our side armor isn’t very strong. Docking with another ship in a slipstream is a really dangerous move for both ships, since neither ship will be designed for maneuvering, and you might start listing. That’s really bad as ships are not designed to take space dust on the side for longer than it takes to flip around.

  “But if they pull it off, then it’s up to Biff to fight off the terminators they send in.”

  “Terminators?” Hannah asked.

  “Fighting robots,” Biff said, helpfully.

  “You mean they search and kill everyone?” she asked.

  “If by everyone, you mean all of the robots, yes,” he said. “They’re not programmed to keep us alive, but they’re also not programmed to seek out humans since it’s not like we’d be a problem for their harvesting robots. I mean, if a robot is picking up a palette of CPUs, what are you going to do to stop it? Sit on the palette?”

  “You don’t have any weapons? Guns, I mean?” Fr. Xris asked.

  “There’s no point,” Biff said. “If humans started carrying weapons, we’d be a threat and the terminators would have to kill us all. If the weapons are restricted to our defender robots, we’re safe, and it’s not like a human has better aim than a robot, so it’s not really conceivable that we’d succeed where the defenders failed.”

  “Highly logical,” Fr. Xris said, dryly.

  “Anyway, it’s all theoretical,” Belle said. “There haven’t been any reports of Pirates attacking anyone on the way to New Mars since the New Mars slipstream was discovered.”

  (New Mars was the Hopeful’s destination. Xanadu was merely a stop on the way.)

  “Knock on wood,” Jack said.

  Belle looked around, but the table was made of metal.

  “Here, you can borrow mine,” Freia said.

  She pulled a small flat piece of wood out of her pocket. It was a common knocking stick, as it was known. It was ordinary wood, polished and rounded to fit easily in a pocket and be there whenever the bearer need to knock on the eponymous substance.

  “Thanks,” Belle said, and knocked the prescribed three times on it.

  “If you don’t mind my asking,” Fr. Xris said, “do you do that out of a general practice, or to please the god of luck?”

  “It’s a general thing,” Freia said.

  “It pleases Tyche,” Belle said.

  “I was always taught that it placates Nemesis,” Jack said. “That you knock on wood when you’ve said things that she might think are too confident, and by knocking on wood, you acknowledge your fault so she doesn’t have to teach it to you herself.”

  “I always learned it as karma,” Hannah said. “That saying something which sounds like you know your fate will off-balance the universe, and knocking on wood is an opposite action, so it balances it out so your life doesn’t have to balance it out in some other way.”

  “I was taught that one does it to ward off demons,” Xiao said. “Spirits might be a better translation. The universe is filled with spirits who love to do us harm, yet they are only allowed to harm us if we step out of our role in the universe through arrogance or pride. Knocking on wood wards them off, and keeps them away during their window of opportunity.”

  “I never heard an explanation,” Biff said.

  “I always learned it as something you do just in case it works,” Katie said.

  “It pleases Tyche,” Kari said.

  “I don’t knock on wood,” Shaka said. “It just makes noise.”

  * * *

  The change in routine came as the after-dinner games were coming to a close, several weeks after the above conversation. The first warning the crew had was the proximity alarm going off.

  “What the hell!” Jack exclaimed. “Command: Intercom on. Kari, what’s going on?”

  “I’m not sure yet. Somebody is right next to us and closing fast... It’s that ship that was dock
ed at Xan-Zeta!”

  “Are they paralleling us, or behind us?” Belle cut in.

  (The intercom was transmitted to everyone, but had to be actively joined for sending.)

  “Paralleling us, it looks like,” Kari said.

  “Balrog milk!” Belle said. “I’ll be there in forty five seconds. Did you issue a warning? And where’s Biff?”

  “Here,” Biff said. “I’m awake and coming to the command room. Did we send that warning?”

  “First thing I did was send the warning,” Kari said.

  “Good girl,” Belle said. “Have you issued a second?”

  “It hasn’t been a full minute,” Kari said.

  “Issue it anyway,” Belle said.

  “I can’t legally open fire until thirty seconds after the second warning,” Biff said.

  “I’m getting a response,” Kari said. “I’ll put it on the intercom.”

  “Cargo ship, this is the Intrepid. We were trying to pass you when we had a small mis-fire on our port side from a maneuvering thruster. We’ll have our starboard thruster firing momentarily.”

  “Belle, they’re not slowing down,” Kari said.

  “Freia!” Belle said, “Can you get me enough thrust to outrun them?”

  “It will take fifteen minutes to spool up the main engines,” Freia said. “But I can get you full power from the cruising engine in two.”

  “That’s not fast enough, but do it,” Belle said.

  “I’m not sure firing on them will be helpful,” Biff said. “If we take out their maneuvering thrusters, they won’t be able to avoid us and at this distance we don’t have anything to destroy them entirely before they hit us.”

  “I’m seeing some thruster firing,” Jack said. He had gotten to the command room, where Belle and Biff had already arrived.

  “But is it enough?” Belle said. “I don’t like this. If they were passing us, why didn’t they hail us and use proper procedure? Biff, can we legally fire?”

  “Not with that response and no hostile intent evident,” Biff said.

  “All the same, wake up the defender robots,” Belle said.

  “That seems wise,” Biff said. He entered the commands. “Where does it look like the collision point will be? They can’t be more than a quarter our size?”

  “Front,” Kari said.

  “Freia, where’s that power?” Belle asked.

  “Coming,” Freia said. “The magnetic containment shell takes time to build. You’ve got 15% more power now. More coming.”

  “That’s enough to prove a point,” Belle said. She entered the command to increase the thrust from the ion drives. “If they match speed with us, this is no accident.”

  “They’ve increased their speed!” Kari said.

  “Cargo ship, we’re increasing speed because we don’t want to get caught in your thrust. Can you kill your engines and aerobrake? Our thrust wouldn’t be a problem for your ablative shield.”

  “Is their thruster firing getting them away from us?” Belle asked.

  “It’s slowed their approach,” Jack said, “but it isn’t enough.”

  “Are those defenders awake?” Belle asked.

  “They are,” Biff said. “I’ve got two thirds moving into position in the port-side forward cargo areas. The other third I’m dividing between the engines and the thrusters.”

  “Sounds good,” Belle said.

  “But ready those missiles,” she added. “If they board us and we manage to get them off, I’m not letting them go without a scratch.”

  “That, I can promise you,” Biff said.

  “Freia, where’s my power?” Belle asked.

  Just then there was a loud metallic sound, somewhere between a bash, a crash, and a thump, followed by extremely loud grinding or perhaps scraping sounds.

  “The bastards have docked with us!” Belle shouted. “By the Balrog, they’re not going to live to regret it.”

  “Cargo ship: we were unable to stop the collision, but we have not received much damage. What is your status? We have a light compliment of repair robots, but we should be able to repair the damage and separate soon. Can you thrust to keep us in the slipstream?”

  “Pirate Ship: suck on the Balrog’s teat. We’ll be sending you to him shortly.”

  “Cargo Ship: we are not a pirate ship. We’ve had an accident, and need your help to recover. Please assist us. What is your status?”

  “Kari, kill that connection. I don’t want to hear them anymore. Biff, what is our status?”

  “I’ve located where they’re trying to breach our hull and I’m massing the defenders there.”

  The metallic grinding sound stopped.

  “I think they’ve breached it already,” Belle said. “How long until the defenders are there?”

  “Thirty seconds now, for the first ones. Do you want the video feed of where they’ve breached?”

  “I’ve found it,” Belle said.

  “Shit,” Biff said, “those are Orca class mark ten terminators. Our Castle Eights are barely in the same league. This is going to be tough.”

  The weapons fire was causing a lot of damage in the hallway the pirates had breached into. One might have expected that robots battling each other would be very clean and surgical, but it was found that in robot combat, predictability was perhaps the biggest weakness, so there was no such thing as an optimal strategy. Various models used different optimization strategies, but all were based on a randomized behavioral seed. This meant that suppressive fire was effective. As well, it was more effective to guess where your target was going to come out from cover than to wait and see. For those and other reasons, most bullets fired never hit another robot.

  “I just lost communication with the units,” Biff said. “The pirates seem to be using broad-spectrum jamming. That’s a high power curve if they mean to sustain it.”

  “I don’t like this at all,” Belle said. “Everything they’re doing points to them being good at it.”

  “I just sent a drone in on recon. I’ll get its results back in a few seconds,” Biff said.

  “Freia!” Belle said, “How long until we have main power?”

  “We’ll have 10% main power up in two minutes,” Freia replied. “With 50% in five minutes and 100% in ten.”

  “Still too late but keep going,” Belle said.

  “It seems we got two of the attackers,” Biff said. “but lost six of ours.”

  “This isn’t going to work,” Belle said. “Does anyone have options for me?”

  Belle let the silence stand for ten full seconds, more to make a point than because she thought there might be an answer.

  “I know a way to shake them,” she said, “I’m going to turn the ship at a right angle to the slipstream.”

  “With the engines running,” Jack asked, but already knew the answer.

  “Full blast,” Belle said. “Better lost than dead.”

  “Not much of a difference between the two options,” Jack said.

  “Unless someone has a better idea, I’m going with the option that leaves us alive for longer.”

  “A lingering death isn’t necessarily the best way to go,” Freia said.

  “You can commit honorable suicide at your leisure,” Belle said.

  Belle entered the command in the computer which fired the maneuvering thrusters at maximum thrust.

  Maneuvering thrusters were inefficient but powerful, and the ship turned quickly enough that people had to catch themselves. When the ship crossed out of the slipstream, there was another jolt as it began accelerating.

  Due to the non-euclidean geometry of slip-streams, they have a much higher density of space dust than regular inter-stellar space. Because of the more than thousand-to-one ratio between the slipstream and normal space, the space dust of 1000 cubic meters which wanders into the slipstream gets compressed down to 1 cubic meter, and so the slipstream has a space dust density closer to that near the inner orbits of a star. This exerts a comparativel
y large amount of drag on a ship going two tenths the speed of light, which is the reason for the cruising engines. Once the ship’s thrust is directed away from the drag induced by space dust, the acceleration it provides is more appreciable.

  (Incidentally, it is not yet understood why there is not a compressive effect on solid objects entering a slipstream. For that matter, it’s also not known how the gas can get denser without getting hotter. It has been speculated that there is a quantum effect, related to tunneling, which preserves the relative spatial relations of near-by particles. If so, that is probably why the ship was not torn apart when leaving the slipstream at speed.)

  “Captain,” Kari said, “I just got a message from the pirates asking what the hell we’re doing. Shall I answer?”

  “Prepare the missiles,” Belle said to Biff, and then to Kari, “give me the audio channel to the pirates.”

  “You’ve got it,” she said.

  “I’m taking you to the gates of hell,” Belle said. “We’re already twenty kilometers away from the slipstream. I told you that you’ll suck on the Ballrog’s teats tonight.”

  “You’re insane!” the pirate screamed.

  “That may be, but I’m still taking you with me.”

  There were a few moments of silence, then they heard the shudder of the other ship releasing.

  “When they’re 200 meters away, hurt them. Hard.”

  “Aye aye, Captain,” Biff said.

  A few seconds later, they heard the minor metallic shudder of a missile tube being pushed against by missile thrust. Then another. Then another.

  Between the second and third launch, there was a small tinkle which Fr. Xris later realized was the sound of debris from the other ship hitting theirs. The complete lack of sound—other than when things transmitted vibration into the metal superstructure of the ship—was eerie.

  “Nice firing,” Belle said, looking at the display.

  “If they’re in the ship I think they are, then according to the schematics I pulled up, that last one completely annihilated their engines.”

  “Kill our thrust, Freia,” Belle said.