Starburst (Stealing the Sun Book 2)

by Ron Collins

  For Katriana Martinez, however, things were a bit more straightforward. The next few days were a blur of security checks, priority reviews, and system diagnostics. She moved from one session to the next, barely eating and sleeping even less.

  Lieutenant Commander Wagner had a lot riding on this program—as they all did, she supposed. He pushed his crew hard.

  “Sleep is for those who can afford to fail,” he said at a team meeting late one night, ignoring two centuries of behavioral science that suggested otherwise.

  This wasn’t a problem for Katriana, though. She wanted to work through it all because whenever she felt tired or drained, and would then close her eyes in the quiet of any moment that presented itself, she found the faces of her girls staring back at her. She felt their presence with her. She felt them intertwined in her thoughts. And when it wasn’t Rosa and Talia, it was one of the others. In a silent nook on the second day she found herself thinking of her daughters’ father, who had been conscripted to the army the week they were born and who she had not seen since.

  This kept her focused on her job.

  While everyone else was buzzing about how the idea of visiting the farthest reaches of the galaxy had just moved from the realm of physics to the domains of engineers, Katriana kept her mind on the tasks of making her way through the exercises before her.

  Operation Starburst was near.

  For her, the fun was still to come.

  Operation Starburst

  NEWS

  SOURCE: INFOWAVE — NEWS for the twenty-third century

  TRANS: UGIS SUNCHASER

  TRANS DATE: March 12, 2206, Earth Standard

  HEADLINE: Operation Starburst Prepares to Blast Off!

  Starburst, the first multiple-craft Star Drive mission, is a marketer’s dream. With a churning mass of fused hydrogen and helium from the Alpha Centauri A wormhole pipeline ready to fuel their power plants, four Excelsior spacecraft—Sunchaser, Einstein, Orion, and Icarus—are now due to light their engines at the same time.

  If this sensational launch sequence is successful, the crews of each spacecraft will experience faster-than-light travel as the four ships are launched in four different directions in an event that some have called a modern-day ode to Buck Rogers and Han Solo. They will explore faraway worlds and return in less than two days’ time, each bringing home more raw data about remote star systems than has been collected in the millennia before.

  “It’s like a weekend jaunt,” Fleet Admiral Jenniah Gleason said yesterday. “But, of course, in this case it’s a working weekend.”

  CHAPTER 10

  Kensington Station, Asteroid Belt: Section 912

  Local Solar Date: March 12, 2206

  Local Solar Time: 2357 Hours

  Knowing she wasn’t going to get much rest anyway, Katriana settled into her sleeper after an eighteen-hour shift. The cell was a small fold in the security systems block—her own little slice of heaven a meter wide and another meter tall, just deep enough for her to stretch out comfortably. She had painted one side pink, the other a mishmash rainbow of colors that reminded her of a finger painting Rosa had done once. The ceiling was an active array that piped in video and other system information from the command structure.

  If she were ever to have been bumped a rank, perhaps she would have gotten a unit big enough to hold a holo projector, or if she were ever to declare as a pairing with a shipmate, she could get a bigger sleeper, too, but neither of those were going to happen.

  That was fine, though.

  She was happy enough with her enclosed walls and her hand-painting. The cramped space was good because it reminded her of her girls, and that’s what mattered most.

  Forgetting was not an option.

  A cool breeze of air filtered through the sleeper and raised goosebumps on her arms. She lay still and let her muscles melt into the mat. An endless loop of numbers flashed through her head—code sequences that she had been working with all day, execution orders and decision tree checkoffs that were part of Wagner’s drills.

  She thought about taking a tab of drite to help her sleep, and maybe plugging into Abke for a holo that would mold her dreams.

  Instead, she asked for her mail.

  Which is where she found a message from her brother, Carlos.

  The memo was full of triviality and a suggestion that she should clear time to get together for a summer vacation. It was a code, of course. The file containing the message carried an executable program inside its tight, triple-layered wrapper. As her eyes scanned the phrase Nos vemos en las estrellas, the input routine on her reader scanned her retinal signature, and the code block released itself.

  So much for sleep tonight.

  The knowledge of what was about to happen made her heart race.

  Despite the fact that Interstellar Command probably couldn’t stop them now even if they were scanning the data logs and looking for anomalies, she decided to match her established behavioral pattern and read the message a second time. It probably wasn’t necessary, but the process of reading twice was ingrained inside her and it made her feel better to follow the ritual of protocol all the way to the end, so she read it a second time, surprised to find it actually seemed to help her stomach. Regimentation was apparently her friend.

  “Abke,” she said. “Please close memo Carlos Martinez twelve.”

  As the message closed, code ran across her processor: Photons raced through optical tracing and quantum transistors to channel logic inside her system that connected up with the shipboard security systems. The software peeled back the base communication protocol that ran Kensington Station’s core operations, then, as it dug deeper, stripped the multiple layers of encryption that the UG used to guard against internal corruption. All messages that arrived at Kensington Station carried these two layers. But the code from the Carlos memo accessed a third, transparent protocol, a randomly switching interface that required additional manipulation from Katriana’s master key.

  She gave the reference, and rather than porting the return message to her screen, this third interface sent the data embedded in Carlos’s memo down a different path.

  The mail closed after the program finished executing.

  The file, an activation profile, was now waiting for her, encased in a shell on her home memory space and filled with a set of coordinates that pointed to a sector in space that she wasn’t privy to.

  Next she had to break into each craft’s unique control systems.

  Each Excelsior spacecraft had its own set of security walls—one for propulsion, another for the bridge, food services, navigation, and so on. Each craft also had a unique master that overrode the rest on that craft. Finally, an overlord pattern also existed—a multidimensional, fractal-encoded skeleton key that opened all systems in all spacecraft. The overlord pattern was primarily used to provide for common upgrades and system troubleshooting of every ship in the dock at any one time, and it was controlled by someone higher than even Wagner.

  The Carlos program created a key that fit Interstellar Command’s overlord pattern.

  Katriana didn’t know how Universe Three had obtained that key, nor did she care to know. The organization had been there for her when she needed them. They were reliable. Everyone did their jobs like the professionals Casmir Francis recruited them to be. This reliability was one of the things that told her she had made the right choice aligning with Universe Three. Pretty much anything a United Government coder did was guaranteed to need at least three passes of testing and remediation before it worked. Universe Three coders, on the other hand, had never failed her.

  So it was no surprise that the interface came up as promised, and even less so that it worked the first time she ran it.

  Not that it would have mattered in the end. Even if U3 software slingers had sucked, she would have stayed with them, but the fact that they were top-notch made her just that much more smug in her decision.

  She opened the navigation controller and the security
system, then she ran her activation profile.

  The update code distributed changes.

  Despite their own Intelligence Office’s warnings, the United Government had always acted like Universe Three was a simple fringe organization.

  They were about to pay for their disregard.

  CHAPTER 11

  UGIS Icarus

  Docked, Kensington Station, Asteroid Belt: Section 912

  Local Solar Date: March 13, 2206

  Local Solar Time: 0700 Hours

  The following day, Katriana boarded Icarus exactly on schedule, went through the security stations, and took her position at the security systems monitor. Per protocol and as her commanding officer, Lieutenant Commander Wagner visited her for first-posting recognition.

  “Congratulations on your assignment, Ms. Martinez,” he said, standing before her. “I’m sure you’ll be worthy of the honor.” His hands were clasped behind his back, and he wore his work fatigues, which she supposed were intended to represent an industrial ethic on this historic day.

  “Thank you, sir,” she replied.

  If she’d actually cared about the UG’s assignment beyond her need to make it happen, just the idea she should feel honored for having been provided it would have served to hang her goat.

  This was no honor she had been bestowed with.

  It was a post she had earned. Her reward for three years of results, and months upon months spent focusing on nothing but her job. Specifically, she guessed it was for her work creating the surveillance code that had provided superiors with dirt on a group of insiders who were running law pods on the side: small factions of wildcatting executives who created areas of the Solar System that would operate essentially on their own, all while skimming back mounds of cash straight off the top for rigging up juicy supply contracts.

  None of it mattered, though.

  Her interest in UG politics was purely pragmatic.

  If the uppers wanted to spy on their own people, she figured they would do it with or without her help and, law pods or not, they were all just UG folk who wanted the raw freedom to screw the people they wanted to screw. In the end, the only reason anyone cared about the podders was that their black markets made it hard for bigger companies to get their hooks into the asteroid mining zones.

  But spying on the population was her front. Proof solid that she was UG to the bone, which was the Universe Three way. Rather than try to infiltrate higher levels to begin with, U3 started with a multitude of candidates in the lower ranks, and let the few who could rise, rise organically. Katriana’s work modeled the processes perfectly. Put work above all things. Be quietly excellent, drive hard, and create an impeccable record.

  Regardless, no, she would never feel honored to achieve a position.

  Instead it should be her superior officers who felt honored she had driven herself to the point of a near physical breakdown so that they could continue to live the lives of such relative ease they were already living.

  She saluted Lieutenant Commander Wagner, though, then sat at her station as he walked away. She dried her palms on the thighs of her red jumpsuit and waited for all the other rituals to finish.

  The entire staff was here, forty-five officers and enlisted scattered around a large bridge that was shaped like a half circle. A huge observation screen dominated the forward panel of the ship, built into a curved section of the craft to give everyone in the room a direct view into open space. It was a view protected in-flight by a dynamic sensor shield designed to deflect microscopic objects in the same fashion that a magnetic field protects a planet from the solar winds. Rows and rows of numbers flashed a constant loop on the forward screen.

  Behind her, Captain Boyer stood tall over the triple rows of command stations, looking stiff and worried despite the fact that all signals so far represented a perfect launch.

  Katriana dried her hands one more time, embarrassed to be nervous after all her preparations.

  Focusing on her girls only helped a little.

  She wondered which of the other six hundred people it took to operate Icarus were U3 operatives. Of the forty-five on the bridge, she guessed at least three others were co-conspirators, but she wouldn’t know who they were until the time came.

  Pela Abedian, an E6 on the nav panel, looked jumpier than usual but she was a bit of a basket case anyway, so that could be standard preflight nerves. Engine Specialist Lenny Tash seemed more than a little distracted as he checked over Star Drive coolant parameters—but then Tash was always distracted.

  Everyone was nervous today.

  She focused on her station.

  The upper corner of the screen showed the state of the real-time antivirus worm she had initiated earlier. It was working its way through the proper executables. The security system was registering green, just as it was supposed to.

  Abke’s voice came over the room. “Launch positions in five minutes.”

  She stared into the darkness of space.

  Three hundred seconds had never felt so long.

  Sunchaser’s crew reported that FTL travel came with a light show better than the aurora borealis, and though she wanted to be all business, Katriana admitted she was interested to see that.

  At the top of the bridge, Lieutenant Commander Wagner whispered into the captain’s ear.

  Katriana’s heart rate spiked.

  Could Wagner know something?

  She glanced at her screen. It was still all green.

  All morning she had been ultra-careful, going so far as to even avoid accessing her system to make sure she didn’t screw up by accident. She kicked herself for that now—not accessing her system was an anomaly. Could the deviation have registered? Would the fact that she hadn’t looked at her mail be the slip that gave her away?

  She waited, but the captain did nothing but smile in response to Wagner’s comments.

  It had just been a joke—a one-liner or other such jovial aside between two friends.

  She was okay.

  At least, she was okay so long as she calmed down and didn’t do anything stupid. She wiped her hands on her thighs again and took a breath, trying to remember the salted smell of the open ocean that surrounded her home Earthside.

  “One minute to launch,” Abke said.

  The crew quieted. Status lights lit.

  “Thirty seconds.”

  The petty officer in charge of launch coordination spoke loudly enough that his voice carried across the floor like a bullhorn. “We have green on the screen, Captain.”

  “Kick it on,” Boyer replied.

  “Aye, sir.”

  He entered his commands.

  “Launch engines full thrust,” Abke reported. “Multidimensional gate toggle set on timer. Five seconds…Four…Trim engines active…Two…One…and Go Launch.”

  The wormhole gate opened inside Icarus’s propulsion system.

  Hydrogen and helium flowed through an extradimensional throat created by the folding of math onto physics; tendrils of energy fed back into the structure of the wormhole itself, thereby letting the device maintain its shape and provide for its own eventually cannibalistic existence. Fluid pressure rose in the compressor. Atoms rent and combined and scattered in billions upon billions of gluonic explosions.

  Deep inside Icarus’s quantum computer, a software code toggled different switches than the project leaders had originally placed in the calibration.

  A subroutine changed coordinates from one set to a newer one.

  A series of functions accessed the newly modified data structure, and navigation parameters changed.

  Control stations shut down their interfaces.

  Weapon systems went off-line.

  And finally…slowly…a toxic nerve gas that had been working its way through the ship’s air-handling system began to seep into the ship’s command center.

  Rivulets of color shimmered across the forward screen. Flashes of red, orange, and neon-metallic colors that Katriana hadn’t believed could have
existed a moment ago bloomed and flowed. A blue wave swirled, eventually twisting into a ghostlike dragon that flickered away into the ethereal beauty of the flight. Green lighting brought oohs and aahs from the crew. Energy billowed and pulsed. Stars became yellow flares.

  Katriana did her best to keep her eyes on her screen as doors locked and systems ground to a stop.

  Abedian was the first to notice a problem.

  “I have an anomaly,” she said loud enough to draw attention.

  “Report,” Captain Boyer replied with professional calm.

  “Coordinates are incorrect, sir.”

  Another ensign running the Magnetic Sensor Board confirmed her report. “I have Sunchaser and Orion on the MSB, Captain,” he said. “Sunchaser just over a million kilometers port at thirty degrees roll. Orion dead ahead at eight hundred thousand. I don’t yet see Einstein. No…update that, sir. Einstein is within range also.”

  The pause was palpable.

  Starburst was supposed to result in all Excelsior craft arriving at different star systems.

  The central doorway snapped open.

  Lieutenant Commander Timmon Keyes, a man responsible for the ship’s environmental control team, held an energy weapon at his side. His face was drawn in deep lines, his eyes dark and sharp as he stepped forward. He was a big man, and his bearing said he was in control. He snapped a portable rebreather into place as he came farther into the command room.

  Keyes, Katriana thought. That made sense.

  The air-handling system itself was the operation’s primary weapon delivery mechanism, and as environmental control, Keyes would be in charge of that portion of the operation.

  “Let’s all remain calm,” Keyes said. “So no one gets hurt.”

  “What is this?” Captain Boyer said, stepping toward Keyes.

  “Stay there,” Keyes warned. “This will be over in a moment.”

  Boyer stopped.