XD:317 (Fourth Fleet Irregulars)

by S J MacDonald

  ‘I volunteer!’ Shion said, while he was still signing the advisory. ‘Just tell me what to do.’

  Alex did so, though it was a couple of minutes later that he laid out star charts and flight plans for her and the other two pilots. Every pilot qualified to fly the fighters had volunteered at once, which hadn’t surprised Alex at all, but he’d chosen Very Vergan to fly as wing commander on the F-alpha they now called Wasp, and Jace Higgs to fly F-gamma, now known as Bluebottle. The three of them, everyone knew, were the best pilots on the ship. Very and Jace had been training with Shion, too, trying to learn some of her handling skill even if they could never match her speed. They looked very natural together, already a team, totally focussed on the flight plans. They might be from very different backgrounds, different species, even, but they were all, essentially, pilots. It didn’t take long to brief them; the task was clear, nods and acknowledgements, and off they went to prep their fighters.

  Alex got the same brisk cooperation from the Stepeasy, and was not surprised by that, either. He’d taken their help for granted, and accepted at once the offer of including their tender in the search. Shuttles were no good for this – their own field of view was so small, they didn’t extend scanner range by very much even if they were right on the edge of scopes, and as many ships had found, it was all too easy to lose track of them and end up having to look for them, too.

  The Stepeasy’s tender, however, was a ship in its own right. It had caused a sensation at Therik when the superyacht had slid aside hull panels and lifted the tender out, gracefully, from its hangar deck. It was the size of a Fleet patrol ship, a yacht that, in itself, millionaires would covet. They were launching it now. That would take some time, to get it out of the hangar deck and fire its engines up for independent flight, but they would be ready by the time they got to the search zone.

  That didn’t take them long, either. The journey that had taken the Benefite more than an hour and a half took the Heron only seventeen minutes. They flashed past the point at which the lifepod had been ejected, taking their own scans of the ejecta in passing. It was supposed to point out the direction that the lifepod had gone; a scattering of fragments dropped in the lifepod’s wake like a trail of breadcrumbs. They had exploded, creating a highly energised streak of debris, and since they already knew exactly where it was, the Heron took their own, more accurate scans, laying out the cone to be searched.

  It took them just three quarters of an hour to run along the route that the lifepod should have taken, past the point at which it could have gone at L-basic. They were flying in an irregular hexagon formation, the Heron and Stepeasy at scanner-length from each other with the tender and three fighters spread out beneath. The fighters had the same kind of scanners as the Heron, thanks to their relationship with the Second. The scanners they had were still so hot from development that they were still in field trials aboard the Heron and a couple of other ships, but Alex had managed to persuade the Second to let him have three units for fitting on the fighters, too. They wouldn’t work on shuttles, but the fighters had both the power and telemetry to handle them. It had been one of the upgrades they’d made, doing the work on that themselves as they’d headed out to Amali. Now the scanners proved their worth, expanding the field of vision for the search four times greater than they’d have had on their own.

  But even that, they knew, was miniscule, hardly more than holding up a match flame in the darkness. That was a famous explanation, often used by the media, by a Fleet officer many generations before, attempting to convey the scale of such searches to groundside understanding. Imagine, she’d said, that you’re on a planet, a big planet, on the night side, and someone has dropped a penny somewhere that might be anywhere on the surface of the planet, thousands of kilometres to search, and you are on foot, and it is pitch dark, and all you have is a box of matches.

  If the Point of Dead Reckoning failed, spacers knew, there was no hope. You would go through the motions, of course, widening the search cone and swinging your ship through the spiralling pattern that would cover it most efficiently, but time was not on your side. The lifepod had obviously drifted off course, as any craft would without the constant use of stabilisers. Wave space was inherently unstable, and both physical and temporal drift were a normal part of navigation. Starships didn’t signal the time to each other just to check their wristcoms; they were checking and calibrating chronometers for temporal drift. That was the value of shipping lanes, that they were so closely mapped that every kilometre and microsecond of drift could be accounted for by autopilots. Out of that tiny corridor, however, maps were far less detailed. Random fluctuations could take a lifepod off in any direction at all. The area of space it was physically possible by now that the lifepod might be in was tiny on the charts, but would still take them sixteen hours to search. Alex had not put any dramatic countdown up on screens as some skippers did on search and rescue. His crew could tell the time, after all. They had until 1826 till the guaranteed survival of the pod expired, another half an hour or so after that for luck. The skipper might take it till 1900 in the hope of a miracle, but it would all be over then.

  As far as Davie North was concerned, indeed, it was all over already. As their ships came out of the dead reckoner zone, they converged back to communication range. Davie called, his manner one of a regretful but necessary decision.

  ‘Look, you know the odds,’ he told Alex. ‘There’s no point. And it’s just upsetting for everyone.’

  He managed to convey with no more than a subtle undertone and look, that what he really meant was that it was upsetting for Shion. He might be casual about it but Alex knew that he felt very responsible for and protective of her, and he knew she would be going through a lot of stress, here.

  In fact, Alex knew, she was fine. One of the reasons he’d given orders for the search ships and fighters to regroup if they hadn’t found anything on this search pass was to evaluate how Shion was holding up emotionally. He could see that, both on a visual feed from aboard the fighter and on the lifesigns feed that the flight controller was monitoring from all three pilots. Shion looked calm, in the process of exchanging routine flight checks with Very. Even if she’d been distressed, however, Alex’s priority would still have to be the search and rescue mission.

  He looked at Davie, and he was all skipper in that moment, no hint of friendliness.

  ‘You can help,’ he told him, ‘or you can go away.’

  It was clear that there were not going to be any other options, certainly not any option of discussion about it, and after looking at him for a second Davie sighed and broke off the call with an impatient flick. The Stepeasy did not move away, though, and after a few more seconds its exec signalled that they and the tender were standing by for new flight plans.

  Alex, however, was taking a moment. An idea that had already been lurking in the back of his mind had crystallised into the forefront. It was those words of Davie’s, the repetition of words so many others had already used, words he’d even used himself, the litany of despair, you know the odds. At the same time, a little shiver had run through the ship along with an irritated grumbling from the engines, the rating at the helm giving the console a pat and murmuring soothingly to it.

  Alex looked at the screen on which data analysis had put a profile of the missing couple alongside the downloaded log from the starseeker. They looked a very ordinary couple. Roger Levet, aged fifty eight, slightly corpulent, civil servant in a national government public health division. Jayanne Levet, aged fifty two, gym-trim, hospital administrator. They had a modest city apartment and neither had a car, with annual public-transport passes amongst the documents discovered. Murg, their data analyst, had used this with other pointers to conclude that Roger and Jayanne Levet budgeted carefully to be able to afford their yacht – it wasn’t a casual luxury, for them, it was a passion. That was supported by the fact that they’d owned several yachts over the last twenty years or so, all at the very cheapest second hand end of
the market, till they’d bought the considerably newer Jolly Roger just the year before. They were well qualified by starseeker standards, too. Jayanne Levet had a system pilot’s licence and a yacht-club competent pilot certificate for deep space, while Roger Levet had taken starship tech courses.

  Alex recognised the type. Weekend spacers, the yacht would be the centre of their social life. Having reviewed all the evidence from the log, Murg had confirmed that the Benefite’s explanation was correct. There’d been a period of some hours where the Jolly Roger was logging engine problems, the distress beacon activated, and a frantic operating of controls in the minutes before they’d activated the lifepod launch.

  An experienced eye could see, from the nature of the problems logged and the way that the controls had been worked, that they had been see-sawing the engines. When they thought they were running hot, they’d cut them right down, and when they began to judder, they’d rammed them right up. It was their own over-reacting that was causing the problem. If they’d been able to step back for a minute or two and let the cores settle, it would have been fine. But the worse things got, the more they’d tried to compensate, and the more they tried to compensate, the worse things got. Finally, a crackle of excess power had convinced them that the engines were dephasing, and at that the two of them had dived into the lifepod and blasted clear.

  It was incompetent ship handling, panic, stupid decisions. Nobody would expect Alex to do any more than standard Fleet-pattern search, here, till the last possible moment that the lifepod might have survived. The inquest would return a verdict of death by misadventure, with acknowledgement to the Heron for their efforts in attempting to locate the lifepod, and that would be that.

  Alex, though, looked at the picture of those two very ordinary people, conscious that the only chance of life they had was in his hands, right now. He had an idea, a wild idea, that might be their salvation. On the other hand, the Fleet had worked out these search patterns to give pods the best possible probability of being found. If he tried his idea and it failed, he would never know if following the orthodox pattern might have saved their lives. If he tried this and failed, indeed, there would certainly be an official enquiry, even the risk of court martial.

  ‘Kate.’ Decision made, he activated a comscreen. He had to buzz Kate Naos’s wristcom to get her attention. She was sitting out the Ridge in her quarters, wearing earplugs and reading a book, which she set aside as she answered his call.

  ‘Skipper?’

  ‘Can you come to the command deck, please?’ His tone made it apparent that he meant right now and she got off her bunk at once, already on her way as she told him she’d be right there.

  She was pink faced when she hurried onto the command deck, as if worried that she might have done something wrong, but his calm, pleasant manner reassured her.

  ‘Kate, I need to ask you if it’s possible for you to visualise the wave space contours here and use that to help narrow down where the lifepod might have gone.’

  She stared at him for a moment, opened her mouth as if to say automatically that it wasn’t, and then stopped.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said, with a wondering look. ‘I’ve never done anything like that, I don’t even know if it’s possible.’ She was thinking, though, as she spoke, and ventured, hesitantly, ‘I could try, if you like, but I’ve no idea how accurate it would be.’ It was apparent that the idea was taking fire in her mind, though, as she spoke, a look of intense thought coming into her eyes. ‘Yes, I see – like a Petrasky curve. I’ll need the MDD on the lifepod.’

  Alex put an engineering specification of the lifepod on a working screen, which included detailed information on the mass density distribution. As she sat down, he added a file giving the height and estimated weight of Roger and Jayanne Levet, from their holos.

  ‘Where will they be?’ Kate asked. ‘Moving around? Sitting?’

  ‘The lifepod is in freefall.’ Alex drew her attention to the lack of power to the gravity plates, which were normally powered by the starseeker’s systems. As with many starships, the lifepod was also the airlock, which also contained shower and lavatory. On a starseeker, there was supposed to be room for four people in there, but four would be a very tight squeeze and even two would not have room to move around. ‘The probability is that they’re strapped into harness,’ Alex said, and felt that he could be pretty confident of that from the profile Murg had provided. These were the kind of people who would do safety drills from time to time, and they would surely have practiced how to strap themselves in for a lifepod launch. ‘No way to know which ones, though.’

  ‘They’ll be spinning, whatever.’ Kate said. She was using side screens as she spoke, running a simulation that calculated the effects of all the different combinations the two of them might be strapped in, as well as some where they were unsecured. ‘And rolling,’ she added. Then she called up large-scale wave space topography charts of the region where the lifepod had been fired, and stared at them intently.

  She was still and silent for so long that Alex became conscious of the time slipping past them, minute by minute, the Stepeasy, its tender and the fighter still awaiting his orders. There was near-silence on the Stepeasy, people watching and wondering what the skipper was thinking. The crew, at least, knew what a risk he was taking, even considering doing anything other than the standard Fleet search pattern.

  ‘If you can’t...’ Alex started to say, with a note of apology, feeling then that he’d been wrong to ask this of her, that it was a foolish idea.

  ‘Sssh!’ said Kate, imperatively, without even looking at him.

  The skipper shut up. A Fleet skipper was not really supposed to accept being shushed on his own command deck, certainly not by a civilian, but the circumstances, after all, were exceptional. Kate was transformed, too – no sign of the shy kid now, she was a powerful intellect wholly absorbed in extraordinary calculation. You could see it on her face, the shifts of thought, even half-made little gestures as if she were visualising twenty four dimensional space. Then, as Alex began to wonder how much longer he could give her to think, she sat forward, drawing a perfect sphere, freehand.

  ‘There,’ she said, and looked at him, apparently oblivious to having shushed him, before. ‘That’s the best I can figure, though I honestly don’t know how good it is.’

  Alex looked at the spot she’d indicated. It was only an hour and twenty minutes away by direct flight, but if they followed Fleet protocols they would not get out that far in the search pattern for another three hours.

  ‘It’s the best shot we’ve got,’ Alex said, and laid in the course, signalling to the Stepeasy, tender and fighters to resume their search formation. ‘Thank you, Kate,’ Alex said, as they turned and hurtled at top speed towards the spot she’d indicated.

  Kate looked at him, then at the astrogation screens, then back at him. She turned white, and looked for a moment as if she might even be sick. It was apparent that she had been viewing the question as a purely academic challenge, so focussed on it as a math problem that she hadn’t understood the implications. Not until now, anyway. Alex could practically see the thought, written on her face, If I’m wrong, I’ll have killed them.

  ‘Kate, look at me,’ he said, kindly but with such a note of command that she did look at him, then, not with blind panic but with her full attention. ‘My responsibility,’ he said, and touched the insignia on his collar. ‘Command decision,’ he said. ‘That’s what that means. You may note that I did not even ask the opinion of my exec or any other officer. This is my decision, mine alone, and I carry all the responsibility for it, okay?’

  Kate flicked a glance at Buzz, who nodded, giving her a sympathetic look. His own manner was thoughtful, but he certainly had not raised any objection to the skipper heading off the approved search route. Nor, come to that, had Martine. Search patterns were a protocol in the Fleet, not a regulation, and skippers had the right to make alternate decisions, even if on no other basis than going wi
th gut instinct. They had, naturally, to be prepared to justify such decisions if they turned out to have been wrong.

  ‘But if I’m wrong...’ Kate said, in a very small voice, her eyes full of anticipated guilt.

  ‘Kate, the odds, the calculated probability of us finding them at the Point of Dead Reckoning more than eight hours after firing were already less than one in ten thousand.’ He told her, quite bluntly. ‘The odds of finding them in the near-locality sweep were one in six hundred and fifty thousand. Now we haven’t found them in that, the chances of locating them during the next two hours are in the region of one in 3.5 million. I’ll give you the probabilities if you like, and you can check them for yourself. They’re dead, Kate, realistically, we all know it, it’s just a matter of time. You giving us a point to head for, well, that may shorten the odds. I have no idea how much since we don’t have a probability factor for genius like yours. But me, I saw you pilot this ship for six hours and you rode those crests like you could see them. You have an extraordinary gift, an ability not only to theorise the physics but to actually visualise wave space and understand it in ways the rest of us never will. If I can use that to shorten the odds even a little, I think it’s worth a shot. If you’re wrong, I’m wrong, but we won’t have killed them with that decision because there’s no hope for them right now anyway. So we’re giving them the best chance we can, okay?’

  She nodded without taking her eyes off him.

  ‘Okay,’ she said, but she shivered a little. ‘It’s just so horrible, though, thinking of them out there in that tiny...’

  ‘Don’t,’ Alex cut across her, firmly. ‘I know, yes,’ he said, as she gave him a stricken look. ‘It is horrible to think about. But dwelling on it won’t help them, and allowing yourself to get emotional about it means you’re not thinking clearly or functioning as well as you could, and those people deserve your very best, calmest endeavour, yes?’