The Stones of Silence_Cochrane's Company_Book One

by Peter Grant

  “I’m sure there’s one built into the AI, ma’am,” Darroch said, and turned to his console to investigate. Sure enough, interpreter programs in most of the languages in the settled galaxy had been included in the software.

  “With your permission, I’ll use the berthing compartment terminal to try to communicate with him,” Hui proposed.

  “Go ahead, ma’am,” Darroch assented.

  As she hurried out, Cochrane said, “We’ve learned some lessons today, to add to my earlier concerns. I’m going to specify four modifications to our new corvettes. I want an extra berthing unit or two, to house survivors, and to carry extra spacers for search and rescue or boarding parties. They can form a damage control party until they’re needed for that. I want a jail cell, where we can secure uncooperative prisoners. I want a second Medicomp in the sick bay, and I want a supply of damage control materials and equipment.”

  “What about this ship, sir?”

  “We’ll wait until we have enough of our new ships on hand; then they can either modify this ship to match them, or take her back for what we paid for her, and build us another corvette to our specifications.”

  Darroch whistled admiringly. “You don’t do things by half measures, do you, sir?”

  “No point in it. If it’s necessary, do it, and be damned to anything that gets in the way.”

  Even as he spoke, he recalled Hui’s words about his attitude. He shrugged. She might have a point, but so did he. He’d just have to find a happy medium between them, over time.

  “Commander, send a boarding party to the drifting spaceship hulk. Include an electronics tech. I want to know whether any of her computer systems survived, particularly memory units. If they did, recover them all and bring them back aboard for analysis.”

  “Aye aye, sir.”

  Next day, aboard the depot ship, Cochrane briefed Cousins and Darroch about what they’d learned.

  “We recovered her main computer intact. Its data is encrypted, but I reckon Jock Murray and his people can deal with that for us. With luck, we’ll be able to find out where she came from. That may lead us to some of the people behind this.” He looked at Hui. “Any luck with your interrogation?”

  “No. The uninjured survivor understands the Albanian translation provided by the ship’s AI, but he just curses me when I press him for answers. He doesn’t seem to like women very much.”

  “More fool him, I’d say! The man shot by the cutter crew died last night, and the other, unconscious survivor is still out of it. He’s in the hospital now. Dr. Masters reports he has internal injuries and severe concussion. She can’t say if or when he may wake up.”

  “Can he be moved, sir?” Cousins asked.

  “Dr. Masters says, if he survives the next forty-eight hours, it’s possible, but she isn’t sure yet. If she approves, please bring him back to Constanta with you aboard the freighter. I’ll take the uninjured survivor aboard my courier ship, under guard.”

  “What are we going to do about interrogating him, sir?”

  “I’ve got a few ideas. Let’s try to keep the other one alive, in case they don’t work out. Dave, I want you to collect every beaconed asteroid in the prospector bot fields sowed by those Albanians, and by the Callanish consortium; then confiscate every robot prospector in them. Make sure there are none left. If you can’t pick some up, use laser cannon to destroy them. Retrieve the mines you laid in the Albanian field, and redeploy them here to defend our installation and the satellites. Bring the asteroids and the bots back to Constanta with you.”

  “Yes, sir, but… wouldn’t it be better to leave the bots out there, along with a patrol craft to intercept any more ships trying to collect asteroids?”

  Cochrane shook his head. “With its outdated sensors, a patrol craft probably wouldn’t detect them until they got close enough to hit her, assuming they’re armed. You’d need multiple ships, to cover each other, and we don’t have that many to spare in this system yet. Let’s concentrate them around this planet for the time being, where they can provide overlapping coverage.”

  “Aye aye, sir. What about the NOE bot field?”

  “Leave that in place, along with any asteroids it’s identified since our last visit. NOE is sure to send a ship soon to collect them, so let’s give them something to find. I’ll explain to them that we’ve removed the other two fields.”

  “I get it, sir.”

  “I’ll leave Amanita here for now. Her sensors are several times better than anything else we have in this system. Make sure local commanders keep them active at all times, along with her automated defenses. If any ship launches missiles at you out of nowhere, that’ll be your best defense. Remind all our people how easily Colomb snuck up on this planet. Other ships might do the same.”

  “Aye aye, sir.”

  “Captain Lu and myself will depart for Constanta tomorrow aboard my courier ship, along with our prisoner. I’ll see you back there, Dave. Lieutenant-Commander Darroch, you’ll be the senior officer of the patrol craft division until Dave gets back. Keep your eyes and sensors peeled for intruders, and stay alert.”

  “Aye aye, sir.”

  14

  Tracing The Enemy

  CONSTANTA

  As the courier ship sped toward its orbital rendezvous with the planet, Cochrane asked Hui, “D’you mind if I try something with our prisoner? I’ll need your help.”

  “What do you have in mind?”

  “We’ve got to break his resistance somehow. If he’s part of an Albanian Mafia offshoot, I presume he’ll know about the Dragon Tong, and where it’s based.”

  “I’ll be very surprised if he doesn’t.”

  “Then, if you’ll please put on your best uniform, we’ll see if we can get him into a more cooperative frame of mind.”

  As the ship slowed, Cochrane entered the cabin where the prisoner was confined under guard. He glanced at the terminal in the corner. The interpretation software was running, and would automatically translate his words into Albanian.

  He turned to the guard, who’d been briefed beforehand. “All right, pack his gear.” The prisoner had been issued basic underwear, utility clothing and toiletries, since all his own possessions had been lost. “We’re transferring him to the Qianjin communications frigate.”

  As the software translated his words, and spoke them aloud through the terminal’s speaker, the prisoner suddenly sat bolt upright, his eyes widening.

  “Will do, sir. Is Captain Lu taking him with her?”

  “Yes, she is. He won’t talk to us, so we’ll let the Dragon Tong loosen his tongue.”

  The guard laughed. “A Tong for his tongue. Dang, sir, that’s almost poetic!”

  The prisoner suddenly burst into a torrent of speech. The translation software interpreted, “You cannot do this! You cannot send me to Qianjin!”

  “I can, and I will,” Cochrane told him coldly. “You’ve given me no reason to keep you here.”

  “But they will torture me! They use drugs on me, then kill me!”

  “So? That’s not my problem. You won’t tell us what we need to know. They’ll make you tell them, then they’ll tell us. That’s good enough.”

  As he finished speaking, Hui entered the cabin, wearing her uniform. Her face was stiff, formal. “Is he ready?” she asked coldly.

  “He is. Let’s get him aboard your gig.”

  “Thank you, Captain.”

  The prisoner pushed himself back into a corner of his bunk, huddling there with real fear on his face. “You cannot do this! If… if I talk, will you keep me here?”

  “You wouldn’t talk before. Why should we trust you now?”

  “You can truth-test me! Ask me anything! I promise I’ll tell you everything!”

  Cochrane exulted inwardly, but kept his face stern and impassive. “Captain Lu, what do you think?”

  “I can delay my departure for twenty-four hours. If he tells you everything in that time, all well and good. You can give me a copy of his i
nterrogation. If he doesn’t, I’ll take him to Qianjin, where he will tell us everything. I guarantee it.” The cold formality of her tone was almost sinister.

  “I can work with that. Did you understand?” Cochrane looked at the prisoner, raising his eyebrows inquiringly.

  “Yes, but – what if I talk? What will you do with me?”

  “That depends on how much you tell us. If we’re sure you’ve given us everything you know, I’m willing to let you go. If you belong to the Albanian Mafia, you might not want to go back to them. They’re said to dislike traitors.”

  The prisoner shook his head vigorously. “If I don’t talk, the Dragons kill me. If I talk, the brotherhood kills me. All I can do is talk, then run and hide where brotherhood won’t find me. You give me money to make fresh start? Maybe ticket off-planet?”

  “You’ll have to earn it.”

  “I will! I promise – but you must also promise! You not send me to Qianjin!”

  Cochrane considered, then said slowly, “I promise that if you tell us everything you know, and the truth-tester confirms you’re not lying, and the computer data we recovered agrees with what you say, then I’ll put you aboard the next freighter leaving here. It won’t go to Qianjin, or anywhere near it. When it arrives at its destination, you’ll be given ten thousand francs, in cash, and your identity documents, and be taken to the planet’s orbital space station. Where you go after that, and what you do, and what happens to you, are none of my concern.”

  “Is good! I accept deal!”

  “All right. Wait here. I’ll get a truth-tester team on board, then we’ll talk.”

  As they walked back up the main corridor, Cochrane grinned at Hui. “That was very well done. Thank you very much.”

  “It was your idea.” She relaxed, smiling as she took off her uniform cap and pulled a couple of clips from her hair, letting it fall. “Let’s see what he has to say.”

  The man, who identified himself as Enver Asllani, had a lot to tell them. His ship, the Puka, had left her home planet of Patos more than a month ago to collect asteroids beaconed for collection by the Albanian Mafia’s prospector robots. She had emplaced the bots a year before. She’d made one voyage to collect asteroids about four months after that, but had since been sidelined with drive problems. Repaired at last, she had crept into the Mycenae system without being detected, but had been destroyed – by what, he didn’t know – as she drew near to the first asteroid beacon.

  “What was that?” he demanded. “All your ships were at Mycenae Primus. We knew. We watch on sensors, and our satellite told us no other ships nearby.”

  Cochrane cursed inwardly. If the Albanians had a satellite watching the area, they would have recorded Cousins’ ship collecting the final asteroids, then capturing or destroying all of the bots. “I’m not sure what it was. What’s the contact frequency and code for your satellite?”

  Asllani shrugged. “I am spacehand, not bridge crew. I do not know codes. First Mate Selimaj, he knows codes, and much more.” They had shown him a picture of the man they’d left in a coma aboard the depot ship at Mycenae Primus Four, and Asllani had identified him. The truth-tester operator glanced at Cochrane, and nodded. The Albanian wasn’t lying.

  Let’s hope the First Mate wakes up, and can tell us, Cochrane thought. If not, perhaps we can read them off the ship’s computer. “All right, go on.”

  The spacer couldn’t tell them much more about the events that had led to his capture. Cochrane handed over to Hui, who put him through a tough five-hour interrogation on the activities of the Albanian Mafia as a whole, his own branch of it, their interest in asteroid mining throughout the galaxy, other planets where they’d sown their prospector robots, where they took the asteroids for processing – anything and everything she could think of that had a bearing on the problem of stolen asteroids.

  Cochrane left her to it, and delivered the computer to Jock Murray. He explained where it had come from. “Can you dig through it as quickly as possible, and get us any information at all that you can salvage? We’re interrogating a survivor right now, and we’d like to compare what he tells us with what’s on this thing.”

  “Sure thing, sir. I’ll get to work with a couple of my system techs. We’ll pull an all-nighter if necessary. We should have something for you by early tomorrow.”

  Jock was as good as his word. He met with Cochrane and Captain Lu for a late breakfast next morning.

  “The memory module was intact,” he assured them through a mouthful of scrambled eggs on toast. “We’ve been working on it all night. The ship was homeported at Patos. Over the past three years, she’s made seven round trips from there to systems that have active asteroid mining projects. They’ve all been extended journeys, because she sneaked into the systems from a long way out, coasting slowly to avoid detection, and left the same way. Mycenae was the most recent, followed by a long period out of service with a defective gravitic drive. She’d just been repaired before making her last run. She’d just collected their surveillance satellite here before she was destroyed.”

  “Can you identify all her movements during those three years?” Hui asked eagerly.

  “Not all, ma’am. Some of them seem to have delivered the asteroids she collected to a refinery ship. The voyage tracks and coordinates for those legs of her journeys, and from the refinery ship back to Patos, are quantum-encrypted. I can’t crack them.”

  “That’s a pity. What about the codes for their surveillance satellite, that she just collected?”

  “They’re not in the public data on this system, ma’am. They’re probably also quantum-encrypted. We’ll have to ask Lieutenant-Commander Ross to look at it. That’s her area.”

  “Even without that, you’ve done an outstanding job. I must get this back to Qianjin at once. If we hurry, we might find their robotic prospectors in all those systems, and be able to get our own samples, now that you’ve shown us how.” She inclined her head to Cochrane gratefully. “Can I take a bit-level copy of the memory with me? I’ll have our specialists tackle the encryption, too.”

  “Certainly,” Cochrane agreed.

  Jock nodded. “I’ll already made a bit-level copy, so I’ll run off a duplicate for you, ma’am. I reckon the robots will still be in those systems, too. After all, the Albanians don’t know what happened to their ship. They may not even have missed her yet.”

  “Yes, but they will, and soon. We’ll have to hurry to reach those systems before they can clean them up.” She glanced apologetically at Cochrane. “I’m sorry. I know you wanted to talk, but…”

  “I understand. You have your duty to your Fleet to consider.”

  “Yes.” She shrugged helplessly.

  She departed within the hour, her communications frigate scorching away from the planet toward the system boundary. They had time for only the most perfunctory of farewells. He felt an emptiness in his heart as he watched the icon of her ship receding in the Plot. Maybe, one day… he told himself, but he knew that might be no more than wishful thinking.

  To break that train of thought, he threw himself into his work. The second courier ship had arrived from Neue Helvetica, and was standing by. He wrote a long message to Mr. Kim, then sent for her captain.

  “I need you to deliver this to Kang Industries at Goheung with all dispatch. As soon as you’ve done that, head for Barjah and wait for me there. I’ll arrive a couple of days after you, aboard a slower freighter. I’ll have some business there for a few days, then we’ll head for Goheung again before coming back here. The freighter will make its own way back.”

  “Understood, sir.”

  “Thank you. On your way.”

  It took a couple of days to deal with all the work that had piled up in his absence. While he tackled it, he had Sue McBride load thirty more asteroids into the freighter. He also ordered that the Albanian prisoner should be closely confined aboard it, taking his meals in his cabin, seeing only his guards. Finally, he left instructions for the continued confi
nement and medical care of the second Albanian prisoner when he arrived.

  Satisfied at last that he’d brought under control as many administrative fires as possible, Cochrane boarded the freighter and told the commanding officer to head for Barjah. He withdrew to the owner’s suite, which he’d appropriated for himself, and collapsed into bed to sleep the clock around. When he woke, he’d have more than enough work to occupy himself until they arrived.

  BARJAH

  As the freighter braked to enter orbit, Cochrane braced himself, already feeling mentally and morally stained in anticipation of what was about to happen. He picked up his cabin’s comm unit, obtained a link via the Communications desk to the orbital telephone network, and placed a call to a private number.

  It was answered within a few seconds. “Mr. Hsu’s office.”

  “This is Captain Cochrane. I need to speak to Mr. Hsu at once. It’s urgent.”

  “Yes, Captain. Please wait a moment.”

  Within a minute, there came a click on the line. “Hsu.”

  “Mr. Hsu, this is Captain Cochrane.”

  “Ah, Captain! How good to hear your voice again! You have brought more asteroids?”

  “Yes, but there’s something else – a potentially serious problem. Can you meet me at the space station as quickly as possible? It would be… helpful… if you could bring some assistants from your parent organization.” He knew Hsu would understand he was referring to the Dragon Tong, rather than the asteroid mining operation.

  “I see. I can be there in two to three hours from now.”

  “I’ll meet you in the docking bay foyer. Is there somewhere private we can talk?”

  “I will make arrangements.”

  “Thank you. I look forward to seeing you.”

  Cochrane replaced the comm unit in its cradle, went to the safe, and counted out ten thousand francs. He put it into an envelope, sealed it, and went down the corridor to the cabin where their captive was being held. Nodding to the guard on duty, he knocked and went in.