Risk Analysis (Draft 04 -- Reading Script)

by David Collins-Rivera

  Intellectually, I understood that an early tip-off about this tech to the rest of the galaxy would be worth risking an international incident. What bothered me was that it violated our contract with United Humanity. They were paying the bills, which meant they were supposed to be calling the shots. Out here, that meant Chris was calling them. If UH decided to raise a stink later on, it could easily go far enough to put bad commentary on all our official records. This grand opportunity to beef up my c.v. could backfire in the worst possible way. Other interests, back in the Alliance, might praise our work here, or even compensate us for the risks involved, but it wouldn't matter if I couldn't get work in the future. Fleet or AIN Intelligence or even UH itself could contract others to come back and do what we were doing now. It didn't have to be us.

  "Assuming everything has gone smoothly," Chris announced, "they should have started the countdown two hours ago. We're still waiting on those decrypts, right?"

  "Yeah," John said, "a little while yet."

  "Okay, then, if the countdown isn't holding, we'll see Jaybird in action in exactly ten minutes thirty-two seconds...mark."

  "Gunnery's ready, if that helps."

  Mavis chortled, but Chris said nothing.

  "Engines and ship systems are nominal," Dieter put in.

  "Helm?" Chris asked, assuring himself that nothing was left to chance.

  "I'm fine, Chris," our resident cyborg responded, still amused. "Don't worry."

  "I'm not worried," he replied, "because I'm careful. Sensors?"

  Both specialists responded at the same time, to the effect that they were all set for the show, but it started another round of bickering.

  "Who's SS1? That's all I'm asking."

  "I have eyes, too. We're green across the board."

  "Just...not now, guys, okay?" Chris begged.

  Between my complaints and their spats, he was not super-thrilled with this crew, I could tell. I wasn't super-thrilled with his decisions, so I figured we were even. Not that there was a tally sheet. If it worked out, and we got away clean, no one would care. At least, that's what I kept telling myself.

  When the countdown reached zero, and nothing happened, we knew something had.

  "Only a delay," Chris muttered, watching. "They must be holding to let the escorts get in proper position. See? These outrunners are changing vectors a bit."

  "So, how much longer?"

  "Who knows?"

  So we waited.

  ||||||||||

  The lights of the ship seemed brighter, closer. I reached out, stretched out, grasping for a rounded corner.

  The body of the vessel slipped by, but one of the strut-like legs was there, and I hooked an arm on it, chest heaving, my own scream adding to the now-fading noise all around.

  For the air was almost gone, and the bright fog of its extinction was going with it!

  I hung there, gasping, yelling, crying, unheard by anyone anywhere. The soft, flexible plastic of the bubble helmet fogged up, and I couldn't see for quite some time.

  It went on and on, this panic attack.

  I had my legs around the strut. I held it with my whole body.

  I held it with absolute desperation.

  Tears and mucas floated inside the helmet, randomly clinging to the inside of it, and to my hair and cheek.

  Around me was total vac now, total silence, and those exterior lights were the only source of illumination in all the tiny universe...

  ||||||||||

  five

  * * *

  Ten more minutes.

  Twenty.

  Forty-five, and Jaybird just coasted there in a solar orbit.

  Another hour of this, and it would be out of sight, lost in the corona of the primary from our point of view. That would require us to move in order to keep an optical lock, which would impose some risk. If anyone detected a heat anomoly, despite our pre-cooling, we'd get attention.

  "Yep, here it is," Chris announced, looking over the latest decrypted communications. "They wanted everyone in optimum positions. Countdown was reset to...oh boy! Thirty seconds from now!"

  That kicked energy levels up a notch!

  We all watched the visual, piped directly from sensors to our various stations. Jaybird just seemed to hang there, a gray figure on a dark background of stars.

  And then, suddenly, it was gone.

  "Was that it?" Chris asked, excitement held at bay with some effort. "John, Stinna. Confirm we didn't lose visual. The camera is still focused in the same spot, yes?"

  "Yeah," SS1 answered. "The ship jumped. I have a big graviton exit discharge right there, and a corresponding entrance cone on the far side of the system. Two-hundred sixty million klicks, and all of it inside the gravity shadow!"

  We all started talking at once.

  "I don't believe it," Mavis commented, admiringly.

  "I never thought I'd see the day," Deiter added on the channel.

  "Absolutely amazing," Chris agreed, and I could hear his grin.

  Only Stinna sounded concerned when she spoke (well, serious, anyway), and then, suddenly, we all were.

  "The ship put out a pulse I've never seen before when it jumped. It was strange."

  "Oh no!" John cried, sounding like he'd been flipping through read-outs as Stinna was speaking. "It caused a sympathetic re-pulse on our electrical system -- like a secondary flash. For maybe a full second, we were visible!"

  "Crap!" Mavis called then. "Crap, crap, crap! I have microwave washes! They're focused in this direction!"

  "I see it, I see it!" John replied, jumping back to passive displays. Suddenly an audible alarm sounded, and SS1 cursed out loud. "We're getting sprayed with charged particulates. Somebody has a lock on us, but I don't know what with -- this ship is transparent to regular targeting radar."

  "They'll pass along their readings to the warship," I pronounced. "They'll all have have our coordinates in a minute!"

  "We need to run," Stinna stated in a lull between the outbursts. "We're not supposed to be here."

  "I'm getting comm challenges now," John stated.

  "We have to announce who we are," I said.

  "No!" Chris ordered, real command in his voice at last. "We maintain silence. This cannot get back to our employers."

  "UH has the right to be here," I argued.

  "We will not reflect bad on Meerschaum! It would be a mark on all our records."

  "This isn't our fault!"

  "It won't be my fault, Ejoq, when I shove you out the airlock!"

  "That's enough, both of you," Mavis intruded flatly, but with an edge to her voice. "We have to identify ourselves. It's in the treaty. If the ship should get spotted, we have to come clean. That's the law, and we will be following it. John, open up a standard channel."

  "I, uh...I can't..."

  "Excuse me?"

  "Comm channels are jammed," Stinna put in. "White noise, and trash data."

  "Looks to be coming from the station," the other spesh explained. "It's that energy splash. Very powerful. Some kind of focused charpac beam -- maybe part of their fine-grained sensors. I've never seen anything like it. It's not a weapon, I don't think.

  "It is right now," I injected.

  "It's creating EMF all up and down the radio band when it hits us. That could be our stealth shielding on the hull, causing a scattering effect."

  "You can't get through at all?" the captain asked, sounding worried.

  "I can receive but not send. If we had lasercomm aboard, we'd be okay, but there isn't: they cut it to save space."

  Mavis cursed like a sailor.

  "This will quash my targeting sensors," I stated. "We'll need to be point-blank to aim with opticals and passives."

  "That's the least of our problems," Chris replied, dismissively. "We don't dare approach another vessel without IDing ourselves. That warship would pick us off."

  "It can do that right now," I stated. "A Linebreaker Security Cruiser can target at great distances."


  "But it can't see us..."

  "If that changes," I put in,"we're as good as splashed if Liquidator wants us that way."

  "Thank you for stating the obvious once again, Ejoq!" Chris snapped.

  "And who got us into this to begin with?! Who insisted we go this far?"

  "Silence on channels!" Mavis commanded. "If you two don't keep it cool, I'll send both of you out there with a hand-written note! If we try to leave, they might fire. If we try to approach, they might fire. We need options right now, not chaos. If you don't have any new information, or a real idea of what to do, keep your mouth shut. That's a ship-wide order."

  So, I minded my p's and q's, smoldering, with Chris doing the same.

  Looking at the realtime data coming in from those passive sensors not blinded by the beam, I could find nothing of value for Gunnery. There weren't any simulations to use with this information, because there were no vessels close enough for Shady Lady to see and hit.

  Team ships, on the other hand, could fire longe-range directed energy weapons. It would be over for us in an instant if that were to happen, but I thought DEW's to be unlikely choices in this situation, since the Fleeties could not see us directly. Energy weapons require extreme precision -- unlike, say, mass-effect devices, like nukes riding in on fast-strike missiles. Such things could pull heavy gees, and arrive in our general neighborhood in only seven or eight hours. They could be off-target by hundreds or even thousands of meters, depending on the yield, and still be able to take us out.

  We were half-blind right now, but even if we weren't, Liquidator and the other Team vessels were way out of our range -- too far for me to target any missiles they launched when there was at least a slight chance of intercepting them. Once close enough to resolve as targets, they'd be going too fast to do anything about. Such weapons could easily be moving at zero-point-something of C by that time. And even if, by a miracle, I did destroy them, at least some of the scrap would keep on coming: at those speeds, the kinetic potential of even a tiny flake of paint would be enough to tear us in half.

  Sitting out there in the limitless reaches of space, we were, nonetheless, pinned very neatly in a corner.

  * * *

  A few hours later, passive light sensors showed that we were being painted with targeting lasers from Liquidator -- or it was trying to -- our magic coating on the hull simply wasn't returning enough light for them to get a lock. The focused charged particle accelerator beam from the station, though, still danced on our hull, so I had no illusions we were invisible again.

  Chris thought we might be, for whatever reason, and asked Mavis to alter course just a bit -- not enough to look like we were running away, but enough to shrug off the military siting systems.

  We did lose the lasers, but for only for a few seconds. They then followed us along in a jittery, herky-jerky sort-of way, like you'd expect if they were pointing them out blindly.

  Mavis moved us again, just the slightest lurch to port, and with a bit of yaw thrown in, our inertial compensators taking all but the slightest sensation away.

  The lasers still followed.

  "How can the cruiser still be tracking us?" Chris demanded from his Sensor Speshes.

  "I...I don't know," John replied, sounding really confused. "The amount of EMF rad we'd be sending back their way should be impossible for military vessels to pick out from normal background noise."

  Stinna just looked at our ML, as if in agreement. Actually, I don't know what she was thinking.

  "They aren't," I put in after a beat, the slowness from up front irritating me. "That science station is. Mylag Vernier. Its piping Team our coordinates. Their equipment is designed for higher resolutions by an order of magnitude -- far more than anything weapon targeting requires. They could pick up someone smoking a mosca cigarillo out this far. They can probably see us anywhere we go, right now. If we could lose them for just a moment, though, we might lose them entirely: our stealth tech is very good. Liquidator would have nothing to target directly. Then Mavis could get us clear before they pushed nukes or something out this way."

  "I didn't think about that," Stinna said, plainly and without even a hint of self-consciousness.

  "We're not spies!" Chris growled in exasperation. "They have no reason to attack. We can't stay here, but we can't heave to? Ejoq, how do we lose that beam? Once out of it, we could call and identify ourselves. Then they'd have to stand down."

  "No, they wouldn't," I corrected. "They could shoot at us all they wanted -- because if we called them, they'd have our coordinates again."

  "Don't be pedantic!" he snapped. "Let me and the captain worry about the direction of this mission, okay? Just answer the question."

  "Right. Well, if we could create a big enough multi-spec flash between the station and us, it might overwhelm their receiving aperatures -- sensors would have be dialed in very finely right now to pick up what little we're throwing back that way. If Mavis then moved us off obliquely -- it would a fine-timing thing -- then...yes, I think we could. But I have no ordinance that can deliver a flash like that."

  He was silent for a moment, considering his options -- all our options.

  "Can any of their ships cut us off, if we run for the jump point right now?"

  "Yes," John, Stinna, and I all pronounced simultaneously.

  "We're not fast with the temperature dampening units engaged," I supplied. "Their fighters can overtake us in about three days. Their missiles could do it much sooner, though I'm not too worried about that. DEW's are the problem. Liquidator might be able to hit us even from way over there, and if a fighterboat gets in range, it can do the same. That would be bad -- we can't take even a single hit from military class energy weapons."

  "Dieter, can you disengage the pre-coolers, and get us some speed?"

  "Sure," he replied. "That's not a problem. Just tell me when."

  "Ejoq, if we do this, can we outrun the fighters?"

  "One moment...Dieter, what kind of acceleration could we hope for without that system running?"

  "I can't tell you that, I'm sorry. It's classified."

  I closed my eyes and counted to five.

  "Could you give me a ballpark figure then, that doesn't break your NDA?" I rephrased, barely holding the frustration in place.

  "I...yeah, I guess. Hold on..."

  A few moments later, he piped over some numbers. They were obviously rounded off, indicating he had just made them up.

  I brought up a sim, and plugged in our current position, the locations of all Team vessels we knew about, and then Dieter's off-the-cuff information.

  "Okay...yes. We can make it to the rim before any small craft can intercept, or be in likely range to use energy weapons. I don't have any hard-and-fast details on Liquidator, though, so we should probably assume it can hit us right up to the moment of starjump. There are Alliance battleships that can hit from that far, so there's no reason to believe a more advanced vessel couldn't."

  More silence, and then a sigh.

  "The mission is scrubbed," Chris announced. "Time to leave. Engineering, shut off the pre-coolers and crank up power. Mavis, get us out of here. Top speed. If that cruiser fires its guns, it's entirely possible it could miss. If any fighters get close enough for an optical lock, they won't."

  "Aye-aye," Dieter acknowledged, the old wet navy phrase making me smile, despite all: no one ever used it now, except to be ironic.

  "You got it," our captain stated, and already inertial compensators were in effect. Mavis' reaction time, coupled with Shady Lady's responsiveness, was really impressive. Maybe, plugged in as she was, all the ship required was for her to think about it, and it happened.

  That made me consider the idea getting cyber-neural implants of my own. They weren't yet legal in AINspace for commercial gunners, but there was legislation being pushed through to change that; and both Corporate and Noblespace had few such restrictions. Churchspace...well, I had no idea, and less interest. That was on the other side of everywhe
re that mattered, and I'd never even been there.

  "The other ships are shouting," John said, plainly. "It'd be nice if we could respond. The energy beam from the station is still on us, but the laser sites can't seem to keep up. They aren't useful for targeting anyway, considering our hull. But Team will be seeing our heat trail right now."

  "They need more than that for DEW attacks," I injected.

  "Dieter," Chris then called. "can Mavis run us at full speed all the way out to the jump point?"

  "Sure," he replied, "This is some robust stuff back here -- and it's in perfect shape, if I say so myself. Captain, just tell me what you need, and you'll have it."

  "I will," she spoke, sounding distracted.

  And so we ran.

  I set up some audibles to blare throughout the ship should we get locked on again by any targeting systems. The fighterboats that Team had deployed for the test were too far out to be a direct threat. Missiles from them, or from the cruiser, could follow our tack, though, so we weren't out of the woods. Sure, we were faster now, but some Military Class ordinance had extensive range, and could very possibly overtake us.

  My only consolation in that thought was just how expensive such weapons were. Any commander that gave the order to fire one or more would have to justify it to the Corporate bean counters -- especially when less expensive alternatives, such as energy guns, existed. A career military officer, over here in Moneyland, didn't get to command a ship-o-the-line without also being a politician and upper management monkey.

  I called up all the info we had on the current command staff of Liquidator, just in case there were some spendthrifts or gung-ho types to worry about. I left Gunnery then, with what our classified database had on the cruiser scrolling across my retinals in a ghostly fashion. I found this method useful for skimming while I was doing other things. It sort of split my attention, but at this point, with no one near enough to attack yet, and a series of alarms in place to warn us the moment anyone decided to try it anyway, I felt comfortable-enough to leave my post and get something to eat.