Starflight (Stealing the Sun Book 1)

by Ron Collins

Finally, the group cheered.

  The invitation was in Torrance’s system when he returned to his desk.

  CHAPTER 13

  UGIS Everguard

  Ship Local Date: May 21, 2204

  Ship Local Time: 1715

  To: Black, Torrance, LCMD

  From: Casey, Malcolm, Government Security Officer, Everguard

  SUBJ: Debrief

  Content:

  I would like to speak with you regarding the launch and subsequent flight path of wormhole pod #12.

  An invitation to a meeting the next day was attached.

  Torrance touched “Accept.”

  As if there had been any choice.

  CHAPTER 14

  UGIS Everguard

  Ship Local Date: May 22, 2204

  Ship Local Time: 1330

  The security officer stood as Torrance stepped into Malcolm Casey’s office.

  Casey was a svelte, well-conditioned man of average height. His hands were long for his size, and his dark hair was thinning as it receded. He wore a tailored beige jump jacket trimmed in navy. A pair of matching navy pants gave a formal edge to his faux casual appearance. The outfit gave Casey the air of a man trying to be younger than he was, but the entire package gave an awkward and dangerous edge to his sense of command.

  “Thank you for being prompt,” Casey said.

  “You’re welcome, sir.”

  Torrance needed to get through this conversation without Casey learning about the Eden files he had stored away—a thing Torrance was fairly sure he could accomplish. All he had to do was stick to the report—which he had read often enough since the summons that he thought he could quote it verbatim. But actually being in Casey’s office, which was permeated with the aura of real power, made his brain run in a series of endless loops. It was suddenly harder to breathe. The palms of his hands grew damp while the doorway cycled shut behind him with a finality that multiplied his discomfort.

  “Please take a seat.” Casey motioned to the padded chair that sat before his desk.

  Torrance cleared his throat and sat down.

  Casey waited until Torrance got as comfortable as he was going to get.

  The office was cold, a fact that was a running joke in the shipboard systems command, but otherwise it seemed no different from any other officer’s space. A curved projection screen fit into the corner to Torrance’s right, and the security officer’s desk was the same clear surface that Romanov’s had, a surface complete with an interactive layer that could be used as a display, or to project photons into a form of holographic output—though in Casey’s case, the display was shrouded in the pure noise that was indecipherable to anyone without the proper implants.

  Torrance’s gaze went to the rounded sensor pod in the far corner.

  It was one of three e-lint transmitter shields installed in the office. Together they comprised an electronic intelligence system that made it impossible for conversations inside the office to be overheard by most sensors in existence. It wouldn’t block devices inside the shell, though. Torrance knew that every element of this conversation was being recorded, including most of Torrance’s vital signs and the tonal qualities of his voice as he replied.

  “I read your report regarding the stray wormhole pod,” Casey finally said.

  “Captain Romanov said you would.”

  “I’m sure he did.”

  Torrance swallowed, and put his hands into his lap, waiting for Casey to continue. He cleared his throat again, wondering where this was going.

  “Could you describe for me what you think happened?”

  “It’s all in the report, sir,” Torrance said.

  “I would like to hear it in your own words.”

  “I’m not trying to hide anything, sir.”

  “I’m sure that is the case, Lieutenant Commander.”

  “Thank you,” Torrance said. He knew Casey would ask these questions, but it was different dealing with them in person than thinking about how he should answer them when he was by himself. “To be completely honest, no one can say with one hundred percent certainty what the issue was, but it seems obvious that the guidance software had a bug in its calibration.”

  Casey leaned forward. “Perhaps you could educate me. Why didn’t that kind of error affect every pod?”

  “That’s a good question, sir. In some cases it would do just that. The cals…uh, calibrations…are loaded from the central memory unit, and every pod should get the same one.”

  “And that didn’t happen this time?”

  “Yes, that did happen. We checked the loading routine, the wiring paths, and the calibrations themselves. It’s clear the system loaded each pod the same.”

  Torrance’s gaze went to the e-lint pod and flickered back. He rubbed his palms against his pant legs. So far he had not had to lie.

  “What happened, then?”

  Torrance cleared his throat again, and the sound served to make him even more uncomfortable. Casey was going a little off script.

  Casey gave a relaxed smile. “It’s all right, Lieutenant Commander. I’m sure you haven’t done anything wrong, and if you haven’t done anything wrong, you won’t have anything to hide, right?”

  Torrance’s throat constricted. He hated that argument.

  “Yes, sir.”

  Casey sat back in his chair, crossed one leg over the other, and gazed at him in contemplation. He motioned the question again with one long-fingered hand. “So?”

  “As I said,” Torrance replied. “We can’t say anything with absolute certainty. Either the cal didn’t load properly, or the pod had a hardware failure. I’m calling it a software problem because the system’s hardware passed multiple tests prior to both launch attempts.”

  “What are the chances that someone adjusted the parameters after the calibrations were loaded?”

  Torrance paused and cocked his head as if in thought.

  It was a gesture he did often, and one he had practiced several times since receiving Casey’s summons. He spoke his words now in that same, slow way he had practiced. It felt better, he thought, to be back into a conversational flow he had prepared for.

  “It’s not completely impossible, sir. But it would be very hard to do. It would have to come from outside the system as a whole, and it would probably leave some fairly obvious tracks that I would have seen—things like access registers in various logs.”

  “And you do not see these accesses on the logs now?”

  “No,” Torrance said, trying to remain calm as he spoke his prepared phrase. “There are no accesses on the registries when I look at them.”

  The room fell to a silent pinpoint.

  This was the critical moment. Torrance struggled to keep his heart from racing. He had loaded the final calibration from a remote system, and had gone in and cleaned the registers immediately after launch. It was important that Casey not pick up on the truth here. Get through this step of the conversation, and both Torrance and Romanov should be in clear sailing.

  Casey tapped his index and middle finger against one arm of the chair.

  “You are probably right,” he said. “Though, I admit that I have wondered if it was possible that you, yourself, could have sabotaged the system. However, I keep hitting two points that make me doubt you would do something as egregious as sabotage a mission-critical pod.”

  Torrance waited.

  “First, I can’t see a motive. I can’t figure out why you would do it. I mean, you’re an engineer. What benefit would you have for taking that kind of risk? None, right? I mean, beyond the pure fancy of seeing that it could be done, I suppose.”

  Casey’s gaze fell on him.

  “I’m not really that kind of geek, sir.”

  “Yes,” Casey said. “That is reason number two. Your career has been a fairly simple one. Stable, right? Or maybe unremarkable is a better descriptor. You’ve never been one to step too far out of line, and never one to take on half-baked ideas. So the second barrier I have to thi
nking you would actually do this kind of thing is that you have never been bold enough to perpetuate such an act before.”

  Torrance felt the insult in Casey’s voice.

  “I’m not sure what to say, sir.”

  “On the other hand—” Casey’s eyes drew tighter and his gaze became laserlike. A chill came to the back of Torrance’s neck. “—there is the fact that you recently learned you did not make the promotion list.”

  Torrance swallowed, and gripped the arms of his chair. He didn’t expect this turn. Heat rose to his cheeks and forehead.

  “That is true, sir. I did learn that.”

  “And you’re not upset.”

  “I’m disappointed. Of course I am. But what does that have to do with the wormhole pod?”

  Casey hesitated then broke into an overly large smile that was animated enough to say the point of this conversation was at its end.

  “You’re right, Lieutenant Commander. It is probably unrelated.”

  Torrance caught the probably exactly as he was sure Casey meant him to.

  “But it is important to remember that there are those who would exult to see us fail, Torrance. Never discount that fact.”

  “I won’t, sir.”

  “And you can rest assured that I will not allow that to happen on my watch.”

  Casey waited, assessing Torrance.

  In that moment Torrance understood exactly the game that was being played. Casey was telling Torrance that the security officer had too much at stake to accept returning to the Solar System with a black mark on his record. He was still a young enough man that Everguard wouldn’t be his last assignment. He expected a bigger play next time around. And Casey was telling Torrance that he didn’t believe his story, but couldn’t find anything to take him down with. Not yet, anyway. But the government security officer wasn’t happy, and he wasn’t finished. Torrance could almost hear the message on Casey’s gaze. Be careful, Casey was telling him. Be very careful.

  He swallowed.

  “I understand,” Torrance replied.

  Casey smiled and sat up slightly.

  “I thank you for your time today, Lieutenant Commander. I think you can return to your post.”

  Casey stood to dismiss him.

  “You’re welcome, sir,” Torrance replied, also standing. “Thank you for your time, too. I understand how important your time is.”

  “Have a very good shift.”

  Later that night, Torrance stood in his office scanning the system controls.

  He was alone now.

  The command was second-shift quiet, just the occasional low voice from the hallways or the nearly silent creaking Everguard made when she thought no one was listening.

  Torrance listened, though.

  He knew this ship inside and out. He understood it.

  The low buzz of a power system hummed in the background as he ran his fingers along the bottom of his data screen.

  Marisa had asked if he wanted to see a vid, but he begged off, telling her he was tired. “You have a good time, though,” he said to make sure she left him alone. They had seen each other three times since the party, and he most certainly wanted to see her again. But, while he was tired, that wasn’t why he begged off now.

  This thing with Casey had him unsettled.

  All day long, the government security officer’s warnings kept worming their way through his thoughts, making his mind spin loops upon loops, and do flip-flops on top of flip-flops. The line that kept boiling up surprised him, though.

  “… you have never been bold enough to perpetuate such an act.”

  He replayed that line over and over, and every time he did his stomach clenched at the way Casey had taken extra time to draw out the word bold.

  It was an ugly word.

  But it was, he realized, a true word.

  The phrase never been bold enough was the story of his life.

  Lieutenant Commander Torrance Black was intelligent, dependable, and diligent, but he had never been bold like Kip Levitt was bold. He had never stood up for things in the way Kip Levitt had stood up for them.

  He had never taken a direct action to make a difference.

  Until now.

  He paused to sigh, thinking about the Eden files, then created a tri-key secure channel to his private space and called up a data segment that was resident there, thinking of the wormhole pod and thinking about the planet.

  Who was there? What were they like?

  He scanned the registers where he had stashed the EMI scans.

  These data files were important to him.

  He wanted to see them again: he wanted to play with them, to spend time understanding them. To really see something in piles of data, he needed to swim in it for a while. The files were the reason he had begged off Marisa’s invitation. He was idiot enough to have not really realized it until right now. But he thought about Romanov’s warning, and he recalled the edge on Casey’s voice. If either of them found out about him cracking open this data, things could get bad in ways he didn’t want to imagine. Yet, the data did sing to him, and the words never been bold enough prodded at his gut.

  This was how it was going to be, he thought. From now on the only way he could work with the files would be to find quiet time when he was by himself. He took a deep sigh, and set himself.

  “Abke,” he said, “get me the A-2 file, spun to a point two hours prior to the first attempt to launch the wormhole pod. Split the data into one-minute segments.”

  Bold, he thought as he waited for Abke to finish.

  I’ll show you bold.

  A list of new segments appeared on the display.

  “Files prepared,” Abke said.

  He touched the first. Information flashed in the space above his desk.

  It was beautiful in a very real way—sensual, as essential as oxygen, or food, or merely that infinite thing that happened inside him when he looked into deep space.

  Torrance needed this.

  He needed to understand.

  He reached out to touch a column of the feedback spectrum …

  “Hey?”

  Torrance nearly jumped out of his skin.

  Marisa stood in the doorway, one hand on the door, the other propped against her waist.

  “I’m sorry!” she said.

  Torrance killed his file and turned to face her.

  “What’cha doing?” she asked.

  “I thought you were going to a vid?”

  She crossed her arms at her waist and leaned a shoulder against the bulkhead. Her feet crossed at the ankle.

  “Decided there might be better options.”

  She hadn’t seen what he was looking at, which was good. Once that idea settled, he smiled.

  He noticed the slant of her smile then, and her white dress with its orange and yellow pattern that fell from her shoulders to wrap around her thin waist.

  He couldn’t help but be interested.

  Something was different for him now.

  The decision to look at the files wasn’t just a spur-of-the-moment thing, not just a knee-jerk reaction to Casey’s threat. The decision to dig into the Eden files was, instead, something that his mind had been struggling with for days. Now that he had made up his mind, though, things clicked. He felt good about it. Studying them would take time, but that was all right. Time—as both Romanov and Casey had so directly insinuated—was the one thing he had a lot of. Now, rather than stressing out over whether to work with the files or not, he realized the right question was how he could do it without being caught.

  The change made him feel…well…

  “Have I ever told you that you look good in your casuals?” he said.

  “This old thing?” she said, gesturing to her dress.

  “Yes,” he said as he stepped around the desk to stand before her, “that old thing.”

  He kissed her then.

  He put an arm around her, and brought her close and kissed her.

  She melted i
nto him, giving as good as she got, and wrapped her arm around his waist. Her touch on the small of his back was light, but noticeable.

  “What did you have in mind?” he said.

  “What’s that?”

  “You said there might be better options.”

  “Well,” she sighed. “I was going to invite you to my quarters, but the roommates decided to have a little pinochle party.”

  “I take it you don’t play pinochle?”

  “Not when I can avoid it.”

  He made an expression that confirmed her position.

  “Well,” he said. “We could go to my quarters.”

  She smiled. “I suppose we could.”

  “I have to warn you that I don’t play pinochle, either.”

  “Oh, no,” she said as she rose up to kiss him again. “Whatever shall we do, then?”

  As they left his office, Torrance smirked to himself.

  How’s that for bold, he thought.

  The Long Leg Home

  CHAPTER 15

  UGIS Everguard

  Ship Local Date: June 12, 2204

  Ship Local Time: 0755

  As was his norm, Torrance entered Systems Command five minutes before he was due.

  “Morning, LC,” Ensign Yarrow said.

  He raised his coffee to her. “Morning.”

  Everguard had been accelerating for nearly a month, and the crew was settled back into its routine. The shipboard systems all flashed their status on the displays built into the wall outside his office.

  As he did every morning, Torrance started the day by checking his workstation. His desk was raised to the standing position, which in the early stages of his shift was his preference—he sat only when he had visitors or sometimes later in the day, but standing worked better for him much of the time. He put his coffee container on the panel and scanned the reports.

  Fifteen work orders had come in during third shift.

  “Hot time in Alpha Centauri city,” he muttered.

  Fifteen. Were these people whaling on equipment for the pure fun of it?