Confidence Game

by Britt Ringel

  “Roger, Zanshin, Svea Tower. Contact at Bay Sixteen. Proceed to the TIMES hold short marker via alpha-echo-bravo. Hold short at TIMES. You are second for clearance.”

  “Did you get that, Elease?” Qiang asked.

  “I think,” Lingenfelter answered while tapping her control screen.

  Lochlain watched the student navigator mark the path the controller had ordered Zanshin to follow to a position in space designated as TIMES. The position was the jumping off point for commercial shipping to leave the influence of the orbital and join the major sailing lane to the Ancera tunnel point. Zanshin would have to hold at TIMES, at relative rest, and wait for a freighter ahead of her to enter the lane.

  “Captain,” Lingenfelter asked as she pushed the route from her console to the main wall screen, “is this right?”

  “Right as rain, Elease. Take us out.”

  Lochlain sat straighter once Zanshin began to move. There was real danger with the ship unmoored and an utter novice behind the helm. He knew that despite what he had told the students, the only safety net Lingenfelter had would be his quick reactions to identify and countermand an action that might see the vessel smashed into the orbital.

  Thrusters fired at the front of Zanshin’s bow, gently pushing her away from the slip. When the starship was half a kilometer from the station, she began to rotate to the heading that would take her to the hold short marker.

  “Nice and easy, Elease,” Lochlain coached while keeping a strict eye on the ship’s speed and course. “We have to hold short anyway so we’re in no rush.”

  Minutes passed as the freighter unhurriedly moved through the milestones of her course enroute to TIMES. As Zanshin entered within twenty-five kilometers of the marker, the Svean controller’s voice came over the speakers.

  “Zanshin, Svea Tower, you are cleared to enter the shipping lane. Contact Svea Departure, good day.”

  Lingenfelter’s hands hesitated over her panel before moving to input the next step of her sailing plan.

  “Keep her sailing, Elease. You’re doing great,” Lochlain encouraged. Qiang was looking at him.

  The student practiced, “Svea Departure, CSV Zanshin with you at TIMES…” He paused before asking, “That’s all, right?”

  Lochlain nodded. “Yup, Departure has our sailing plan on their sail strip. They’ll already know where we want to go.”

  Qiang turned to face his panel with growing comfort in his role. As he switched to the new comm frequency, he muttered to Lingenfelter, “This is just like the simulator.”

  Fifteen minutes later, Zanshin was sailing briskly at .15c (.15 the speed of light) inside the shipping lane toward the Ancera tunnel point. The nearest traffic was the freighter, CSV Conception, 54ls (light-seconds) ahead of them.

  “ETA to the tunnel point?” Lochlain asked.

  Lingenfelter paused again. The wall screen flashed as it computed time and distance between the two marks she had placed on the system plot. The answer came two seconds later. “Four hours, six minutes and forty seconds, Captain.”

  “Hours and minutes are usually enough,” he told her with a faint smile. He brought his hands together and looked to the students. “Well done, my deck monkeys. It gets really boring now from here to the tunnel point.”

  “We just basically monitor our panels and respond to any incoming messages, right?” Qiang asked. “Departure will eventually hand us off to a controller at the small outpost near the tunnel point?”

  “Yeah. Normally, a captain will reduce the watch at this point. Sailing regulations require at least one certified deck officer at all times on the bridge while in normal space. With Zanshin’s automation package, we can sail with only a student up here and a licensed deck officer ‘on call.’ Zanshin’s normal complement of engineers is only one and Mercer fills that requirement.” The corner of his mouth crooked slightly. “Incidentally, the head of this program said it’s probably best if the students just act like a normal freighter crew. He thinks if we self-identify that we’re on this special program, we’re just begging to be boarded constantly.”

  Both students nodded eagerly.

  “So, if you get a message from a space traffic controller or an SDS, just call me or Mercer up to the bridge before you respond to it. Between the two of us, we should be able to get to the bridge in only a couple of minutes. Even if we can’t, we can answer the hail using our datapads from anywhere on the ship.”

  “Does that happen often?” Lingenfelter asked.

  “No,” Lochlain replied and shook his head. “Messages typically only come near orbitals and tunnel points. Even with ship inspections, most system defense ships loiter near the congested areas and conduct their inspections there.” He looked to his students. “Any questions?”

  They stared at each other before shaking their heads. “Maybe after I’ve had a chance to absorb this,” Lingenfelter stated.

  Lochlain rose from his chair. “Then I’m going to head to Engineering and see how Huseman is doing. You two all right up here by yourselves?”

  Their eyes bulged but both nodded.

  With a casual wave, Lochlain exited the bridge. He lingered in the chartroom after the portal closed.

  “This is so cool,” Qiang’s muffled voice carried into the adjacent compartment.

  “At first, I was disappointed when Wyatt said that Evora broke down but this is amazing!” Lingenfelter gushed back. “I’m actually piloting the ship!”

  Secure in the knowledge that a ruse is rarely detected when its targets are happy, Lochlain began to make his way to the back of the ship.

  Chapter 10

  Lochlain stepped onto the catwalk, eased slowly to the rail and peered over. His stomach churned slightly at the view as he had never been fond of heights. One story below, Brooke leaned against the worktable in the corner of the compartment, watching Huseman monitor Zanshin from Engineering’s primary station.

  “Until you learn the idiosyncrasies of the ship you’re on, just go with the standard variances published in the manuals,” Brooke advised from her corner. “Once you’ve figured out the ship’s quirks, you can adjust exactly what will trigger a master caution alarm.”

  Huseman nodded from his panel. “Don’t you get worried that too many things will happen at once? In the simulators, there were always five or more students in Engineering. How can one person keep track of all this?”

  “You just follow the priorities list,” Brooke answered casually as she caught sight of Lochlain high overhead. “You may get multiple failures but they’re almost always going to relate to a single problem. Besides, most good ships will give you quite a bit of warning before they suffer a major failure. It’s not like we’re a brig taking weapons fire.” She offered a friendly wave to Lochlain and advised Huseman with a smile, “Look sharp, the captain is watching you.”

  Huseman’s head swiveled up to the catwalk. “Hello, Captain!” His greeting was almost giddy but he quickly reported in a more somber tone, “All systems are running normally, sir. Chief Engineer Brooke said you already know about the port drives and thrusters performing underspec.”

  “Yeah, the ASA techs didn’t have the time to overhaul them if they wanted to install the automated systems before your class,” Lochlain covered smoothly. “I’m going to unpack. Mercer, do you want to grab some coffee with me?”

  Brooke pushed off from the worktable. She moved the three steps necessary to stand by Huseman and skimmed his panel. “You comfortable monitoring things by yourself?”

  He bobbed his head. “I’ll have to do it eventually.” He pointed to the upper left portion of the panel. The controls located in that section were shielded by physical covers preventing their accidental use. “If all else fails,” Huseman noted with a sidelong glance, “I can always dump the core, right?”

  Brooke snorted. “I’d prefer you save the ship by throwing yourself over a power core explosion first but yes, if you’re tired of oxygen and want to be spaced by Captain Lochlain, you c
an always eject the power core.”

  * * *

  Lochlain prepared two cups of coffee inside the ship’s mess. The beverage was enormously popular in the Svea star system due to the planet’s brutal winters but good beans had to be imported from outside the system. Consequently, most coffee in Svea was either unaffordable or unpalatable. Lochlain added a healthy amount of sugar supplement to kill what was sure to be a noxious taste given the brand’s cheap price.

  He brought the cups to the round table and sat across from Brooke. Behind him, the curved viewport was a shimmering curtain of infinite black. “There are still a couple of snows at the Ancera tunnel point. Right now, they’re just loitering near the traffic control station but we’ll sail to within a light-minute of both of them.”

  Brooke reached across the table to take her cup. She raised it to her nose and inhaled deeply. “It may taste like sludge but it still smells glorious.” She took a sip and grimaced. “We’re not even carrying illegal cargo and we’re still violating the law. If they board us, they could ask for the crew’s licenses.”

  “Yeah,” Lochlain agreed. “I really should have stopped by the tenement before seeing Larsson. I had a program that can counterfeit most CCZ certifications. They wouldn’t hold up under scrutiny but they’d pass a spot check.”

  “Well,” Brooke said after another sip, “the likelihood of being boarded while empty is pretty low, isn’t it? I mean, those snows will be able to see with their opticals that we’re not carrying cargo containers.”

  Lochlain nodded. “There are certainly better targets right now but eventually we will draw the short stick and even when we have a legal crew, this ship’s registration is going to come up red once Appiation catches on.”

  “So we’ll have to squib Zanshin. Isn’t that expensive?” Creases appeared in Brooke’s knitted brow. She stared past Lochlain at the black tapestry behind him in silent dismay. Finally, she said after tearing her eyes away from the viewport, “We’re going to run out of credits soon.”

  Lochlain sighed his agreement. He lazily stirred his coffee. “Yeah, squibbing is expensive if it’s done properly and when you’re changing the identity of a stolen ship, you really want it done properly.”

  “Where would we go to do that? My training was in infiltrating smuggling operations, not actual smuggling.”

  He stared thoughtfully at the table’s marred surface. “The best place would be back to Larsson. She doesn’t have a squib shop but she has contacts to one. Obviously, that’s not possible.”

  “What’s Plan B?”

  Lochlain looked directly at Brooke. “Ancera,” he replied. “I have a friend who might know someone who knows someone, etcetera.”

  “How long will it take?” Brooke held the brew to her nose, preferring the coffee’s smell to its taste.

  Lochlain pressed his lips together briefly as he pulled his spoon from his steaming cup. “Assuming Cindi knows someone—”

  “Why am I not surprised it’s a she,” Brooke interrupted dryly.

  Lochlain ignored her. “Knows someone… figure a night to find him and negotiate a price and then twenty-four hours for them to perform the squib.”

  Brooke raised her head toward the ceiling as she calculated. “Arthur Lunde will spend most of today trying to contact us. By tonight, tomorrow at the latest, he’ll file a complaint with Consumer Protections… sooner if he thinks to check on the credit payment balance and finds it’s been transferred to a third party. It’ll take a few days for investigators to uncover the whole story, not because we’ve covered our tracks well but because the law enforcement bureaucracy is so damned slow.”

  “So we have about a four-day head start,” Lochlain summarized. “Any longer than that and we risk having Zanshin flagged.”

  “Literally,” Brooke agreed. “The first thing they’ll do is embed an alert in standata and if Zanshin receives it, it will automatically flip our nav beacon to red. Permanently.”

  Lochlain grimaced at the thought. A navigation beacon showing red would call down every system defense ship within reach upon them. The emergency status would demand attention from every space traffic controller who communicated with Zanshin. It would be akin to trying to act naturally while carrying a wailing fire alarm.

  “In other words,” he said, “if we can’t find someone to squib Zanshin at Ancera within a day, we need to keep sailing away from Svea to try and stay ahead of the information wave.” His expression made clear the futility of that. Information traveled at the speed of light, and all ships collected and swapped that information in standata exchanged with every tunnel dive or friendly contact. He offered a third alternative. “There’s always Brevic space.”

  Brooke almost spurted her coffee and her eyes widened. “No way!” she stated emphatically. “The ‘Vics are psychotic. Smuggling is a mandatory life sentence in the Republic. Piracy gets you a noose.”

  “Or, we could try to sell the ship.”

  Brooke’s hazel eyes turned downcast. She dropped her hand from her cup to glide it over the rough table. There were worn grooves on its surface in a number of places. “I don’t want to sell Zanshin,” she confessed. “I like her. Besides, the money would just go to another credit balance that we wouldn’t be able to cash out before the fraud was exposed.”

  “They make it so hard to steal things these days,” Lochlain grumbled irritably while shaking his head in mock disgust.

  “If we successfully squib Zanshin in Ancera, what will we do with the students?” Brooke asked.

  “Leave them on the orbital,” Lochlain answered easily. “Or the planet’s surface. Give them forty hours leave off work, have them shuttle down to the surface and then just clear the system before they realize they’ve been stranded.”

  Brooke frowned at the proposal. “They’re nice kids.”

  “Would it ease your conscience if we flashed each of them glowing recommendations right before we dove out?” Lochlain grinned at his joke but the expression wilted under Brooke’s scornful gaze. His shoulders slumped. “How about we transfer enough credits to allow them cheap passage back to Svea, although we may wish we had those credits later.”

  Her expression softened. “Let’s do that. Between passage back and the fact that the ASA is kind of responsible for their predicament, hopefully they won’t have to pay for their class again.” She mused silently before adding, “You know, I might actually send a recommendation along with the credits.”

  “That was a joke,” Lochlain pointed out. He waited for Brooke to take another pull from her cup. “Personally, I was thinking about offering them a chance to take a rapid certification test that would license them out upon return to Svea… if they paid us an extra fee now.”

  Brooke snorted and coffee dripped from her nose. When she recovered, she condemned Lochlain. “You are an evil, evil man. I see I’m going to have to be the conscience of this operation.”

  “And the brains,” Lochlain added. He tapped his chest. “I have looks and courage covered though.”

  She rolled her eyes as Lochlain’s datapad chimed.

  “Captain?” It was Qiang. “Uh, do I call you captain if I’m on the bridge but you aren’t?”

  “Only on days that begin with a ‘T,’ Li,” Lochlain answered smoothly. “What do you need?”

  “We’ve exited Svea Departure’s control space and they’ve just ended their tracking on us. We’re cleared to resume our own navigation.” Qiang paused a moment and said, “I think I just acknowledge them and that’s it, right?”

  “That’s right, Li. Good work,” Lochlain praised. “You were right to contact me but go ahead and confirm we’re on our own. Ping me if anything else comes through. I’ll be up before we enter the controlled space around the tunnel point.”

  “Aye, Captain.” The connection terminated.

  Lochlain sat back comfortably, crossed his legs and sipped his terrible coffee. He smiled blithely at Brooke. “It’s good to be king.”

  “The
y’re good kids,” Brooke reaffirmed. “I think I’m more nervous about hurting these students than I ever was during my time with On Margin.”

  “That’s because you’re a good person, Mercer,” Lochlain answered. “I promise you that these kids aren’t going to suffer any negative consequences over this. It’s not their fault.” He smiled reassuringly at her. “And think of the story they’ll have to tell, kidnapped on a stolen ship by the dashing and devastatingly attractive captain of Zanshin… and his good friend, Mercer Brooke.”

  * * *

  Three hours after his coffee break, Lochlain was back on the bridge. Zanshin had spanned nearly two-thirds of the distance to her objective, sailing to within 15lm of the Ancera tunnel point.

  “Go ahead and send your request, Li,” Lochlain ordered. “We want to have permission before we breach the ten light-minute sphere of Ancera tunnel point control.”

  Qiang pressed a finger to his panel. “Ancera Approach, this is CSV Zanshin, inbound fifteen light-minutes in the main sailing lane, requesting tunnel point dive to Ancera.” He looked expectantly at his captain.

  Lochlain nodded affirmation. “How long until we can expect a response?”

  Qiang smiled at the question. “Fifteen minutes there, fifteen minutes back, less a bit since we’re moving toward them.”

  Lochlain turned his head to Lingenfelter. “How long until we actually enter controlled space?”

  Her rapid answer hinted that she had anticipated the question. “Thirty-three minutes, Captain.”

  “And who gets the violation if Zanshin enters controlled space without permission?” Lochlain asked the penultimate question.

  Lingenfelter raised her hand high. “The left seat takes the heat,” she answered, repeating an old adage.

  “So, what do you do if you’re about to enter Approach’s space but don’t yet have permission?”

  Lingenfelter’s hands played on her console. The wall screen’s display split into virtual halves. The left half continued to show the system plot. The right half zoomed in significantly with the local space’s navigation landmarks overlaid on the plot. She tapped her console and a zone labeled “CORRAL” flashed. “First,” she stated, “I can slow down if I think clearance is coming shortly. However, if it doesn’t, I can always sail to CORRAL and hold at relative rest until we get permission.”