The Orpheus Plot

by Christopher Swiedler

  Lucas was now thoroughly confused. Why did Sanchez want to talk about capture-the-flag games and their bridge-training session? “Well, Ensign Weber is right. The simulation went terribly. Nobody seemed to understand my orders, and if they did, they didn’t act on them properly. The result was that we failed what should have been an easy mission.”

  “I see,” Sanchez said. “So the problem was with your crew?”

  Lucas opened his mouth to say yes, but then he stopped. Something about her tone made him suspect that blaming them wouldn’t be the right answer. He thought back to the training session. He’d been furious with them at the time, but was it really their fault? They’d done their best. They just hadn’t understood what he wanted them to do.

  “I guess not. I was the commander, so it was my responsibility.”

  “That is the first lesson of leadership,” Sanchez agreed. “The historical figures we’ve been studying—what did they do well?”

  Lucas thought for a moment. “They understood people, I guess. Even the ones they didn’t like.”

  “And that’s the second lesson. Leadership is fundamentally about persuasion, but before you can persuade someone, you have to know how they see things.”

  “I thought commanders just gave orders,” Lucas said with a frown.

  “Sometimes they do,” Sanchez agreed. “But if all you do is give orders, the results are going to come out like you saw in bridge training. If you want to be an effective leader, you have to have empathy—the ability to understand another person’s feelings and point of view.”

  “That doesn’t sound easy,” Lucas said. “As far as I can tell, I don’t see things the same way as anyone on this ship.”

  “That does present a challenge,” Sanchez said, smiling slightly. “But it’s one I feel you can overcome. In fact, it’s why I’ve called you down here. Cadet Chen has been studying the finer points of command, and she now leads training cruises on our patrol ships. I’ve asked her to bring you along so that you can learn.”

  Lucas perked up. Sanchez wanted him to go along on one of Tali’s training missions? “This stuff about commanding is interesting. But I still want to be a pilot, ma’am.”

  Sanchez smiled. “And I still have some time to persuade you. Speaking of time, the mission is scheduled to leave shortly. So the two of you should get down to the hangar.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Lucas said. “Thank you.”

  Tali gave Captain Sanchez a salute and headed out to the ladderway. Lucas chased after her. “I’m really coming with you?” he asked when the wardroom door slid shut behind them.

  “Apparently.” Tali sped down the ladder to the hangar and pushed off toward one of the patrol ships. “Suit up and get on board. And whatever you do, don’t screw this up.”

  She was halfway across the hangar before he could think of a reply to that. He glared at her for a moment and then ducked into the prep room and slid on a pressure suit. When he arrived at the ship, he found Oliver and Maria already inside, with Tali settling into the commander’s seat.

  “So,” Oliver said from the pilot’s station. “You’re our new junior officer?”

  “He’s just an observer,” Tali corrected. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”

  “Well, whatever you are, have a seat,” Maria said, glancing up from the engineering console. “We need to get going.”

  Lucas climbed in and sat down behind Tali. Oliver closed the hatch and Maria powered the ship up. Everyone began going through their preflight checks. “So what should I be doing?” Lucas asked Tali.

  “Absolutely nothing.”

  What was the point of being here if there was nothing for him to do? Shouldn’t Tali be explaining something, at least? You have to know how other people see things, Sanchez had said. The frustrating thing was that sometimes he had more trouble understanding his own sister than anyone else on the Orpheus.

  “Engines ready,” Maria called out.

  “Ignition,” Tali said. The patrol ship trembled as its main engines powered on. Carefully—too carefully, in Lucas’s opinion—Oliver piloted them out of the hangar and through the atmosphere containment field.

  “Course laid in,” Maria said, typing at the navigator’s console. “Nothing unusual on the sensors.”

  “Should I—” Lucas began.

  “No,” Tali snapped.

  Oliver caught his eye and gave him a little apologetic shrug, as if to say, “That’s Tali.” At least he wasn’t the only one thinking she was acting crazy.

  Training missions, as it turned out, were pretty boring, especially when you were a useless supercargo trainee. Not that Tali bothered to train him in anything; she mostly just sat cross-legged in the commander’s seat, flipping between the different sensor readings on her console. As much as he was irritated by the way she was acting, it made him homesick to think about how she used to sit just like that in the copilot’s spot in the Josey Wales. Sometimes she seemed so different from what he remembered that he wasn’t sure she was the same person. But then something subtle would change, and all he could see was the old Tali, dressed up in a Navy pressure suit and trying to learn how to be a cadet, just like him.

  “Hey—I think I’ve got something,” Maria said, tapping at her console.

  “Pull it up,” Tali said. A moment later, a radar signature appeared on the main screen. At first all Lucas could see was the irregular blob of a small asteroid, but then Maria overlaid a false-color pattern from the spectrographic sensor, and the clear image of a mining ship appeared in the noise.

  “Contact,” Moskowitz said from the bridge of the Orpheus.

  “We see it,” Tali replied over the radio.

  “I don’t think they see us,” Moskowitz said. “They may all be out on the surface.”

  “Kind of dumb, don’t you think?” said Mendoza. “If I were mining illegally, I’d keep someone on lookout.”

  Mendoza’s tone irritated Lucas. Maybe the miners had a valid permit, and so they didn’t need to keep any kind of watch. Or maybe they just figured that there wasn’t any chance they’d escape from a Navy cruiser. He’d met a lot of miners in his life, and he hadn’t known a single one that could be described as dumb, especially when it came to their job.

  “They’re getting ready to move,” Maria said. The false-color image bloomed as the ship’s engines ignited.

  “I guess they’re not so dumb after all,” Lucas said under his breath. Tali gave him a half-amused, half-disapproving glance.

  “Are they repositioning? Or running?” Sanchez asked.

  “Not sure,” Mendoza replied.

  Tali increased the magnification on the main display. “Looks like they’re headed for the other side of the asteroid.”

  Lucas watched the blip that represented the mining ship as it accelerated. Whoever they were, they were moving fast and staying low. But why? He’d never seen a Belter ship do anything like this. Did they think that their radar signature would get lost in the reflection from the asteroid? So far it didn’t seem to be working.

  The ship arced around the edge of the asteroid and disappeared from sight. “Contact lost,” Maria announced.

  “Requesting permission to make an intercept,” Tali said.

  “No intercept,” Sanchez said. “But get a little closer.”

  “Aye aye.”

  Oliver and Maria worked to produce a flight plan that would take them nearer to the asteroid. Maria, especially, seemed a little uncertain of what she needed to do, which surprised Lucas. Apparently mid-flight course corrections weren’t something she was used to.

  “Captain, I’d like to point out that we have a cadet on that training flight who—” Mendoza said.

  “I’m well aware of who’s on board, Ensign.”

  Lucas stiffened. Was Mendoza really suggesting that because he was a Belter he didn’t belong on a training ship during an intercept? What did he think Lucas was going to do—signal to the miners so they could get away?

&n
bsp; “Contact!” Maria called out. A bright dot appeared on the display, heading away from the asteroid.

  “They’re running,” Moskowitz confirmed from the bridge of the Orpheus.

  “Belay current course,” Sanchez said calmly. “Plot an intercept. Cadet Chen, stay close to her.”

  As Oliver and Maria adjusted their recalculated course, a second dot bloomed on the screen, heading out from the asteroid in the opposite direction. “Another contact!”

  “Two ships?” Sanchez asked.

  “Appears to be,” said Moskowitz.

  A third dot appeared, and then a fourth, fifth, and sixth, all in quick succession, until the sensor display looked like a kid’s drawing of a sun, with rays of light leading off in all directions.

  “What the hell?” said Mendoza.

  “It’s some kind of decoy system,” said Moskowitz. “One of them is the real ship. The others are fakes.”

  “Then get me the right signal,” Sanchez said. “We don’t have time to chase them all down.”

  Oliver glanced at Lucas. “Have you ever seen anything like this?”

  Lucas shook his head. His dad, like every Belter, would skirt a regulation or two if he thought he could get away with it. He might not correct the duty officer on Ceres if they underestimated the mix of uranium to iron-nickel in a load of ore, and once in a while he’d buy a thirdhand mining permit at a don’t-ask-where-this-came-from price. But Lucas couldn’t imagine him ever trying to run away from a Navy ship.

  “We’re running out of time,” Sanchez said. “Chief Moskowitz?”

  “All the signals look identical,” Moskowitz said, clearly frustrated. “If I gave you one, it would just be a guess.”

  “Cadet Chen?”

  Tali glanced at Maria, who shook her head. “We don’t see anything unusual about any of them.”

  Lucas stared at the fast-moving blips. If he were the captain of that Belter ship, what would he be doing right now? Which of those radar signals would he be?

  Suddenly he realized the answer. His eyes locked on the craggy outline of the asteroid at the center of the radar display.

  “For god’s sake, someone please tell me which one is the damn ship!” Sanchez bellowed.

  “None of them!” Lucas blurted out.

  Tali, Maria, and Oliver turned toward him in astonishment. For a moment the radio link was silent. “What do you mean, Cadet?” Sanchez asked.

  “If they have decoys that can fool our sensors, why risk getting caught at all?” Lucas said excitedly. “Why use five decoys when you can use six?”

  “You’re saying they’re still behind the asteroid?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Anyone have a better theory?” Sanchez asked. “All right, then. Cadet Chen, see what’s on the other side of that rock.”

  Tali watched Oliver and Maria confer about yet another course change. Finally she sighed. “Lucas, switch places with me.”

  “What?” Lucas asked, blinking.

  She unfastened her harness and motioned toward her console. “Use the commander’s manual-control overrides and fly us in. We don’t have much time.”

  Oliver frowned in annoyance at the implied insult to his navigational skills, but he didn’t object. Lucas tried to keep his face neutral and professional as he settled into the commander’s seat, but he couldn’t keep a tiny grin off his face at the thought of showing Ensign Mendoza what happened when you had a Belter cadet on a training flight. He strapped himself in and put his hands on the manual controls.

  “Acceleration in three, two, one . . .”

  He slid the main throttle forward a few notches, and the patroller’s engines kicked in. With a practiced eye he used the small control sticks to get them on a course for a flyby. As they approached the asteroid, he kept his eyes on the radar display, nudging the controls to make sure they didn’t approach too closely. An egg-shaped gray blob appeared in the cockpit window, growing larger and larger until it suddenly flashed past. With a quick motion he flipped the ship around one hundred and eighty degrees and braked to a halt.

  “Maria?” Tali said.

  “Contact!” Maria said excitedly. “This side of the asteroid. She’s powered off and laying low.”

  “Interesting,” Sanchez said over the radio. “Cadet Chen, if you please?”

  Tali tapped a button to open a general ship-to-ship channel. “This is a patrol ship from the ISS Orpheus. Identify yourself immediately.”

  There was silence for several seconds. Finally someone on the other end cleared their throat. “This is the Charlemagne, out of Vesta,” a tired voice said. “What can we do for you?”

  11

  TO TALI’S DISAPPOINTMENT, Sanchez ordered them to wait nearby and keep the ship under observation. After about thirty minutes, Palmer arrived with a security team in the second patrol ship and landed next to the Charlemagne. Soon Lucas caught a glimpse of two men being escorted out of the mining ship.

  “Did we really have to handcuff them?” he asked.

  “It’s standard procedure,” Tali replied.

  “We’re heading out,” Palmer called over. “Cadet Chen, can someone on your crew fly that thing back to the Orpheus?”

  “Yes, sir,” Tali radioed back. She looked around at the other cadets for a moment, and then sighed and turned to Lucas. “Come with me. Oliver, follow Lieutenant-Commander Palmer back to the hangar.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Oliver said, clearly relieved not to be picked to fly the mining ship.

  Tali depressurized the cabin and Lucas followed her out through the main hatch. The asteroid was too small to have a noticeable gravitational field, so they used their thruster packs to fly over to the Charlemagne.

  “See you back home,” Oliver radioed. “Don’t get lost.”

  As soon as they were through the mining ship’s airlock, Tali pulled off her helmet and wrinkled her nose. “Ugh.”

  Lucas had a similar reaction—after a month on a spotlessly clean Navy cruiser, the miner’s ship seemed like it had been used to haul nothing but trash and sweaty bodies. But still, he didn’t like the disgusted way she looked around the ship.

  “The Josey isn’t much cleaner than this,” he pointed out.

  “Believe me, I haven’t forgotten,” she said, heading into the cockpit.

  Lucas eyed a shovel on the wall and briefly entertained the fantasy of bonking his sister over the head. Doing his best to keep his anger under control, he sat down next to her and looked around. The important controls were all familiar, and they weren’t going to have any trouble flying the ship back. He helped Tali power everything up and sat back as she lifted them off the asteroid and accelerated off toward the waiting Orpheus. The two of them sat back in their seats, and soon a familiar calmness settled over them.

  “So do you really like this whole command-training thing?” he asked. “I thought you always wanted to be a pilot, like me.”

  Tali shrugged. “Flying is fun on little ships. But when it comes to the bigger ones, I’d rather be in charge.”

  “Remember when Dad had that fever, and you and I had to fly us all the way back to Ceres?”

  To Lucas’s astonishment, the hint of a smile flickered across her face. “I was only eight, I think?” he went on. “I was so proud of you. When we got home I told everyone the story until they were sick of it.”

  “Dad laid in the course,” Tali said. “All I did was watch the autopilot do the work.”

  Dad, she’d said. When was the last time she’d called him that, instead of saying “your father” or “Tomas”? Her face hardened a little as she realized her slipup. “And here I thought my days of flying rusty ore haulers were over. I guess everything you do comes back to haunt you, one way or the other.”

  “Was it really all that bad?” he asked. “Growing up on the Josey Wales?”

  “Being stuck on a ship like this for months at a time? Having to make new friends almost every time you got back to port? Waking up every day to a
future of mining stupid rocks, over and over, until finally you turn too old and gray to run an ore loader? Yeah, Lucas, it was really that bad.”

  “You didn’t always hate it.”

  “Only because I didn’t know there was something better,” she said.

  “Do you even enjoy being in the Navy?” he asked. “You don’t seem to have any real friends here.”

  “I can’t have friends, Lucas,” she said. “What would I say when they asked about growing up on Mars? Or if they noticed how I know my way around the colonies better than the officers do?”

  How would it feel, Lucas wondered, to be at the school you’d always dreamed of going to, on a ship filled with other cadets who’d grown up the way you wished you’d grown up—and yet still be so isolated? He was starting to understand some of the crazy stress she’d been under since he’d arrived. She didn’t want him on the Orpheus because she was afraid people would find out she was really just a kid from the Belt like him. But at the same time, he was the only person she could actually talk to.

  “There’s something I still don’t understand.”

  “There are a million things you don’t understand,” she said. “But please, if you’ve got a question, go ahead. Now is the time.”

  “Why did you plant that device on the sensor array?”

  She looked startled for a moment, and then quickly regained her composure. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “I saw you out on the hull,” he said. “The other day, right before the capture-the-flag game. And then later that night, I went outside and found it.”

  Tali was silent. Lucas tried to read her expression, but there were too many conflicting emotions for him to sort out. “That was you?” she said finally.

  He nodded. “What was it? Why did you do it?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  Lucas’s frustration with his sister over the last month suddenly all boiled up at once. “Of course it matters! Do you realize what they’d do to you?”

  “Yes,” she said simply.

  “Then why?”

  “Because I had to pay off a debt.”

  Lucas blinked in surprise. He wasn’t sure what sort of explanation he’d been expecting, but this definitely wasn’t it. “A debt? To who?”