by Mark Wandrey
The voice seemed to drift in and out.
“Damn it, I need certainty.” She sat for at least a minute. “Are the Hussars in danger?”
“Here, in Sulaadar?”
Alexis nodded. She stood, brushed pure white hair out of her eyes, straightened her uniform and headed back to the CIC. Heads, tentacles, and eyestalks turned as she entered, the command crew waiting expectantly for her orders. She moved across the armored command center and took her seat. Paka finished issuing an order to the engineering staff and looked up at her.
“Chug,” she said, “increase acceleration to two gravities and get us a solution for a high velocity transition through the stargate.” Several of the command staff exchanged worried looks. “We’re getting out of here, now.”
* * * * *
Chapter 13
ECS Coronado
Approaching Jupiter Orbit
Sol
The Coronado’s departure from Martian orbit had been set to make the transit from Mars to Jupiter at an optimal time. As the orbital velocities of all the planets were different, matching orbit could take vastly different amounts of thrust depending on when you made the trip. In this case, Jupiter had been a quarter of the way around the sun from Earth when the ship pushed away. After the days in transit to Mars, and the time to unload and top off fuel, Jupiter had moved closer, and Coronado had less distance to travel.
Rick was much more interested in the view as they decelerated toward the Jovian system than he had been in the approach to Mars. The massive reddish gas giant was also visible to the naked eye much, much sooner than the proportionally tiny disk Mars had been, as Jupiter was 21 times the size of Mars. The timeless swirling mass of sublime gas clouds, all mixing and racing around the equator at different speeds, was a visual lure that drew the crew to the big Tri-V display in the mess hall at all hours of the ship’s day.
Coronado finished braking into the complex, interconnected orbits of the planet Jupiter. With 63 moons and four not-quite moons, it was the busiest planet in the system after Earth. With the tech boost provided by joining the Union, and the funneling of millions of credits from merc taxes, the various governments and corporations had raced out from Earth to find riches and opportunities in the solar system, and Jupiter’s moons teemed with all manner of enterprises.
Even with fusion torch-powered ships, travel back and forth between Earth and Jupiter took time, fuel, and most importantly, F11. Ganymede, as the largest and most stable of the Jovian moons, became the center of operations for the sub-system. Despite the size of the moon, it only possessed a gravity one seventh of Earth’s, equating to an escape velocity of just 1.7 miles per second. Captain Holland joked you could throw a baseball into orbit.
A dozen starships were tied up next to the main orbital transfer station at Ganymede. Coronado only spent an hour in orbit waiting for its flight assignment before descending to the moon’s surface. The descent was managed vertically, using the ship’s less powerful but cleaner ion engine until they approached the settlements, then via its hydrogen thrusters. It was so gradual, and the gravity so light, Rick didn’t feel the touchdown. The ship sat on her tail, just as she had before boarding in Houston.
Once cargo was transferred and his work done, Rick went to Kubrick City. Captain Holland gave him his first weeks’ pay, minus the advance he got on Mars. Unlike Mars, there was no shortage of things to do on Ganymede. The city sported a permanent population of more than a quarter million. Several times that amount went through each week, to other Jovian satellites as well as to the rest of the solar system.
In Kubrick City, he spent time walking through various domes, saw a low-gravity ballet (which he found beautiful), and took a hopper out for an excursion on the moon’s surface. After returning, he found himself in the city’s entertainment dome and spent the evening club-hopping. Quite a few people his age had found their way to Ganymede for opportunities and freedom. Unlike Earth, the laws in space more closely resembled those of the Union. That is to say, there were very few laws to speak of.
Rick returned to Coronado well before the planned time for liftoff. He’d taken a room for a few credits late in the morning and gotten a few hours’ sleep before returning. The captain greeted his returning crew, as was his policy.
“Glad you had some fun,” he said as Rick bounced down the hallway in the low gravity.
“I did,” he admitted. “Kubrick is a neat place.”
“The rest of the stops are boring. Now I’d like to leave, so get to your station so we can get out of here.”
Coronado lifted off the surface of Ganymede and back into orbit using her ion drive, something impossible on most worlds. Kubrick’s traffic control carefully monitored their progress. From orbit, they headed deeper into Jupiter’s gravity well, down toward Europa. Once there, they transferred still more cargo. The moon was home to a research station and tourist stop, and rich people would come from Earth and travel miles down through the ice to spend days in submerged habitats. Microbial life swarmed in the water, one of the rare non-Earth life forms found in their star system.
The next stop, Io, was to service another station. This one was a naval installation operated by Earth’s government. It provided a base for patrol ships as well as sensor visibility outside of Earth’s orbit. A small facility was maintained by Earth’s mercs for training, as it helped defer costs.
The last stop in the Jupiter system was at a space station orbiting the gas giant. Like one of the sixty-three moons, the station had its own orbit, deep down where it skimmed the outer edge of the planet’s atmosphere. Coronado’s nominal shields were massively taxed as the ship rode its fusion torch down, braking to drop into an ever-lower orbit, until it finally matched that of the station. The station’s shields then protected both craft.
“She’s actually an old freighter,” the facility administrator, Francisco, explained to Rick during a tour. Once offloading was completed, they were allowed to poke around. The man looked like he enjoyed the chance to talk to a new face. “A consortium led by the Winged Hussars purchased it as scrap, moved it here, and refit it to act as a proof of concept. They also do other special research.”
“What concept?” Rick asked.
“Why, F11 mining, of course.”
“I thought you only found F11 near black holes and systems where a supernova had occurred.”
“Yes,” Francisco said with a smile, “but F11 isn’t there because of the supernova. It accumulates naturally in the cores of gas giants, a molecule at a time. Only, you can’t get it out very easily while there’s thousands of miles of atmosphere in the way.” He gestured out the synthetic clear-ruby window to the incredibly close clouds of Jupiter. Their low orbit made the planet fill half the sky, stretching out in all directions. The ex-starship, not station, had a rotating gravity deck around its cylindrical center, which allowed the main station to remain weightless. The observation area was in the weightless zone. “We dip a tube down and suck up gas from the lower layers. We extend it a few miles a year. Slow work building material that tough.”
“How low?”
“We’re not even one percent of the way to the surface. Just over two thousand miles long, so far.” Stretching out from the end of the station was a thick line, extending down toward the planet. It thinned until it was swallowed up by the multicolored depths of Jupiter.
“How long before it’s low enough to reach the F11?”
“Oh,” the administrator laughed, “we already have.” Rick blinked. Francisco nodded.
“Wow, how much?”
“We get exactly one ten-thousandth of an ounce per 10 million gallons of atmosphere we pull up.”
“I’m sorry, did you say one ten-thousandth of an ounce?”
“Yes, amazing, isn’t it?” Francisco beamed like a new father.
“I’m sorry,” Rick said, “I don’t understand. That’s such a tiny amount.”
“Tiny?
Well, yeah.”
“Then why is it amazing? It can’t possibly be profitable.”
“No, of course not. We burn almost a gallon of F11 through the fusion plant every week just in station-keeping and sucking up and filtering raw atmosphere. Even more for running the shields!”
“Then why?” Rick asked, the confusion clear on his face. The administrator laughed yet again. He was obviously a jovial man.
“Because we’re less than one percent of the way down!” Rick’s expression must have looked bewildered because the administrator continued. “In a decade or two, we’ll be far enough down to get into the serious gravity flux zones.” Rick just stared. “Don’t you see?” Francisco asked. Rick shook his head. “Finding this much here means there must be lots of F11 in flux zones; that’s why they find it in deposits in the cores of gas giants where the atmosphere is blown away. If we can get to the lowest levels, the density is probably more than one part per million!” Rick still didn’t really get it, so he changed the subject.
“You mentioned some other special research?”
“Uhm…” Francisco said. He looked at Rick’s uniform, merc standard with his name on the breast, but no logo on the arm. “I figure it’s okay to tell a merc.” Rick didn’t mention he wasn’t currently assigned to any unit.
“They have a lab here researching AI.”
“Artificial intelligence?”
“Yeah,” Francisco said.
“Don’t we have that all over the place?” Rick asked.
“No, what we have are just fancy decision trees. Computers can’t really think. They don’t make up songs, or do anything out of the box. Here, they’re working on the real deal.”
“You mean like a sci-fi, alive computer?” Rick asked.
“Yeah, sort of. Independent thought. They can think for themselves.”
Rick scratched his head and mulled it over. Sounded like something his friend Jim Cartwright would like. “Okay, so why do it out here in the darkest corner of the solar system?” As soon as he said it, he was afraid the man would be offended. “I mean, isn’t Earth a better place? Or even Mars?”
The other man laughed. “Well, it’s sort of illegal.”
“On Earth?”
“No, in the Union.” Rick looked skeptical. “I know, there isn’t much illegal in the Union.” The man ticked off some points on his fingers. “Space ships can’t shoot at planets from more than 10 miles up; no nuking civilians, even if military are hiding among them; no bio weapons; and no genetically-manipulated life forms.” Rick nodded, he was familiar with all that, both from merc training and his Union civics class in school. “However,” Francisco continued, “apparently AI are illegal according to a clause which states you can’t turn weapons over to a computer. AI are considered computers, and since most Union laws are about blowing each other up…”
“The researchers are afraid of crossing a line,” Rick finished. Francisco grunted and pointed at him for successfully figuring it out.
“They have some huge computer processing power, Union built, all set up and running. They bought a couple of junked warships from the Maki and the Bakulu, just to get the tactical computers. Apparently, those races have the best prediction combat computers. Borderline AI, I guess. Anyway, they’re running with it. I’ve heard they’re making progress too!”
Rick wondered if the AI researchers knew that Francisco was this chatty with random visitors. If they did, it would likely make them reconsider just how much they told him. Then a thought struck him.
“That sounds expensive. Who’s paying for it?”
“It’s a joint venture,” Francisco said, “between the universities on Earth and the Winged Hussars.”
“The F11 mining and the AI research?” Rick said incredulously. Francisco nodded.
“Yep, they apparently spend millions on all kinds of research. I hear the other horsemen do as well. You know it was the Cavaliers and the Horde that funded the development of the mecha, right?” Rick hadn’t known that. He’d always thought it was the Japanese doing what they do. The conversation drifted into other areas, and eventually Rick had to head back to his ship.
Coronado clawed its way back to a higher orbit. All the way, Rick thought about the interesting, and pricey, operation they’d left behind. That the Winged Hussars were funding it was curious to him. What kind of forward-thinking outfit paid for such an experiment? He knew F11 was expensive. Like 10,000 or 20,000 credits per gallon expensive. That ten-thousandth of an ounce they’d harvested at a cost of 20,000 credits (plus basic facility operation costs), was itself worth only about an eighth of a credit! Yet the Winged Hussars were dumping a fortune into an operation that was light-years from yielding a profit. Then there was the AI project. Forward-thinking and dangerous. Fascinating.
After refueling at Ganymede station, Coronado left Jupiter behind and fell back toward Earth’s orbit. During the trip, Rick did research on the Winged Hussars via the ship’s Aethernet node. It was a fascinating history, both from their position as one of the storied Four Horsemen and the fact so little was known about them. They were, by far, the richest of all the Horsemen; they were also the only one with a large number of aliens in their employ, which was rare among any Human merc unit. For a Human merc company, they also had little presence on Earth and no bases.
Four days later they decelerated to Earth’s 5th Lagrange point, or L5. The Coronado came to a stop within a mile of the stargate, a huge ring of satellites interconnected by cables, with miles of solar arrays drinking in the sun’s power and storing it in massive capacitor banks. Nearby, four other starships waited with Coronado for the appointed hour.
As the clock ticked down, Rick borrowed the ship’s high-powered navigation targeting scope (not in current use) to look at the planet of his birth. Earth was huge and blue with swirling storm patterns. The moon was a tiny white spot almost behind it. He felt a strange sensation of completion watching the planet as transition stations were called.
“All personnel, prepare for stargate transition.” The ship’s fusion power plant spun up to full output, pumping terawatts of energy into the hyperspace nodes placed all along the hull. Coronado’s thrusters pushed the ship toward the stargate as the giant hyperspace shunt used all the accumulated power it had stored over the last two days to twist space and make a discontinuity. Minutes later, Coronado and the other four ships which had been waiting moved as one into that discontinuity.
Rick felt like he’d been utterly obliterated for a split second, then he was back. The image of Earth and all reality was gone, replaced with a featureless whiteness in all directions. There was no sign of the other four ships. They were in hyperspace.
The ship’s power plant throttled back to the output levels needed to keep them in hyperspace, while the navigation system automatically began to draw them toward their destination. In 170 hours, they would arrive at their destination, more than 1,000 light-years from Earth.
* * * * *
Chapter 14
Ardent Grove
Sulaadar System
Stargate Highguard
The embargo of the Sulaadar system by the Transki Syndicate had proven a profitable endeavor for the Guardian Forest mercenary company. An entirely Maki-owned and operated space-based merc outfit, they were the preeminent assault company in the guild with more than 100 starships at their disposal. They commanded everything from battleships and carriers to squadrons of patrol boats. As a merc, it could all be yours, for a price.
“Courier outbound from Sulaadar 3,” the SitCon announced. Captain Yackyl looked up from his command station, his delicate lemur-like face examining the main status board. The commander of the Ardent Grove, a Thrush-class battleship, and its squadron, he was responsible for the system’s highguard on the stargate, which meant he held the system and kept anything from leaving without Transki’s approval.
“Do they have the day-code?” Yackyl asked the comms operator. The captain shifted for a better look, his b
ifurcated tail instinctively grasping one of his command station’s many holds.
“Yes, captain,” the tech confirmed.
“Very well, inform the picket to allow them through.”
Yackyl had hoped to have overall command of the combat operations part of the contract in Sulaadar. Unfortunately, that had gone to his brother, Syshkyl. At least Syshkyl didn’t have anything bigger than a battleship. Now that the system was in hand, Yackyl commanded more ships! Syshkyl only had a battleship and its escort of two battlecruisers and a flight of five escort frigates. Yackyl had the same arrangement in his battleship’s task force, but he also commanded five squadrons of 10 interceptors. They weren’t hyperspace-capable vessels, but they were incredibly fast and heavily-armed, as their fusion plants only had to power weapons and shields.
They’d held the system for over a week now, and only an occasional merchant craft had come in to be taken by the blockade. One merc frigate yesterday had tried to shoot its way out of the blockade at emergence. The Bakulu company assigned to watch the emergence point had dealt with that handily. Yackyl would rather Guardian Forest handle all the work in the black, however Sulaadar was a massive operation by the Transki.
The syndicate had been trying to get the Sulaad to accept their help in developing several new technologies involving drone cargo haulers. The Sulaad weren’t interested; their society emphasized individual jobs for everyone, and robots took away valuable work. The Transki decided to up the ante, but Sulaadar was a massive system with thousands of ships transitioning through it every year. It was all but certain someone got away before the stargate was properly interdicted, and a major merc unit or 20 would show up. That was the other reason they let the Bakulu watch the emergence point. Let them die, if necessary. Should more throw weight arrive than Guardian Forest could handle, their control of the stargate would allow them to easily escape. To entropy with Transki.
