Alpha Contracts

by Chris Kennedy

  “We’ve only figured out how to get a sustained fusion reaction for a little more than a minute,” one man said.

  “And it still hasn’t yielded a net power gain,” another added.

  “That’s just the start,” Lawrence said and tapped the slate, showing several outlines of ships on the display. “The top is a freighter of the size you purchased. The closest analogy we have would be a tramp freighter prior to World War II. They can land, because they’re designed to trade with outlying worlds in the galaxy, away from civilized planets. Note the shape, a wide flattened sphere. It’s to support all the lifting engines, tankage, and cargo spaces.” Numerous eyes looked from the design to their ship, and noted the differences. Lawrence continued.

  “The second one is a deep space freighter. It’s never intended to land, but plies its trade between larger worlds and is serviced by ground-to-orbit shuttles. Those shuttles are lofted into orbit via ground based lasers.”

  “What?” Lech asked incredulously. “Lasers?”

  “Firing at ablative plates on the ship?” someone asked, and Lawrence nodded. “They’ve studied that idea here,” the man said to Lech, “but we don’t have the power ratio for our lasers.”

  “The Union does,” Lawrence said, “and then some. These deep space freighters are huge, some a mile across. They’re all relatively slow, with no more than 1G or so of acceleration provided by one or maybe two fusion torches driven directly off the reactors. It’s a technology our scientists and science fiction writers proposed decades ago.” More nods from some of the assembled people. “Due to the inverse square law of hyperspace—”

  “The what?” Lech demanded. Several more people shifted in their chairs. Lawrence suspected a lot of what he was about to explain was going to be discussed today.

  “The stargates only push you into hyperspace,” Lawrence said, “after you’re there, the ship uses hyperspatial generators fed by fusion generators to keep you there. The smaller the ship, the more power it takes. The Union calls this the Inverse Hyperspace Equation, but it’s basically an inverse square law of power. The ship you bought is about twice as big as the smallest vessel that would be practical to have its own hyperspace generator.”

  “Then how do smaller ships do it?” Lech asked.

  “They latch onto bigger ships, usually for a fee. Since the larger mass merely makes it cheaper to operate in hyperspace, the big ships get something for nothing.” He pointed to the big round deep space freighter. “Those usually make a fair sum of money carrying smaller craft, many of which are actually capable of hyperspace, but conserving F11.” Lech opened his mouth but Lawrence cut him off. “I’m getting to that.” Lech gave him a mulish look but shut up.

  “All of these ships, even the ones not capable of hyperspace, use fusion power. And the key to that is an element called F11, an isotope of fluorine we have yet to discover. According to the GalNet, it’s one of the rarest elements in the galaxy. It’s also the reason the galaxy’s economy functions the way it does. You can’t have intergalactic trade without hyperspace travel. You can’t have hyperspace travel without fusion power. And you can’t have fusion power without F11. The element is an energy retarder, it absorbs most kinds of radiation, from neutrons to thermal radiation. It’s the reason our fusion research on Earth has been at a standstill for decades.”

  “There were three kinds of ships in your example,” the man who’d first commented on laser lifting said. Lawrence nodded and pointed to their ship.

  “The ship we bought has a name in Bakulu that roughly translates as Shallow Waters. Unlike the freighters, it has three fusion generators, and three fusion torches. It should be capable of about 10Gs of acceleration. Far more than any freighter I was able to access.”

  “It has space for about a thousand tons of cargo,” Lech complained, pointing at one of the schematics which showed four cargo holds detailed around the center of the ship. Lawrence put up his own schematic showing storage racks inside those same spaces, and handling equipment.

  “Magazines,” he said, and pointed again, “launchers,” again, “shield generators,” and a final time, “redundant fusion plants to power the hyperspace generator, shields, and fusion torches,” again, “a central command and control, CIC, buried in the middle of the ship.”

  “What does all this mean?” Lech yelled finally.

  “Your freighter is an old Bakulu missile escort frigate, obsolete, and nearly scrap. It’s F11 is probably spent, it doesn’t have any missiles, and it was likely built before Christopher Columbus discovered the Americas.” Lawrence tossed the slate onto the polished conference table where it bounced twice and slid up to Lech before falling to the floor. All eyes followed the alien computer until it came to a rest. By the time they looked up, Lawrence was gone.

  * * * * *

  Winged Hussars - 6

  Lawrence rolled over and stared at the door. Someone was pounding on it, though the pounding didn’t quite match his head. The two women in his bed didn’t stir. They’d only fallen asleep three hours ago. As he raised up on an elbow he cringed at a sweep of pain, glancing down he remembered there was a new tattoo there, but for the life of him he couldn’t recall of what.

  “It’s the middle of the night!” he yelled at the door. “Go the fuck away!”

  “It’s 11:00 a.m.,” a feminine voice he recognized replied. Lawrence rolled onto his feet and managed to stay on them as he padded across to the door, released all the locks, retracted both bolts, and pulled it open. The company lawyer he’d hired, Amelia, stood there regarding him balefully.

  “What do you want?” he asked.

  “First could you put on some clothes?” she asked, then looked over his shoulder. “And maybe get the bimbos a cab?”

  “If it has to do with work, I don’t care. My cousin has ruined us, and I have no interest in watching the remnants burn.”

  “The Tadia sank in a typhoon off Hawaii yesterday.”

  Lawrence sobered. “How bad?”

  “All hands were lost.”

  He cursed in Polish. Eleven men dead. “Is Lech responsible?”

  “Not directly. The crew was trying to skirt the storm to save fuel, and it turned into them. He’s been offering bonuses for savings in bunker fuel and early contract completion. By the time the United States Coast Guard arrived, they found no survivors.”

  Lawrence went over and shook the bed until the two girls woke up. He’d thought they were twins, but found out differently. Mother and daughter. Warsaw, what a town. Amelia called a cab, then went to the kitchen to brew tea while Lawrence said goodbye to his bed warmers. They were so hung over, they didn’t even care when he didn’t pay for the cab.

  When he entered the kitchenette, drawn by the smell of brewing tea, Amelia glanced at him and nodded in satisfaction to find him wearing pajama bottoms. Then she glanced at his tattoos as he added some milk and a lump of sugar to his cup.

  “You really like tattoos,” she noted.

  Lawrence nodded, then shrugged. “I got into them when my cousin put me in jail. They give you jailhouse cred, so most of them tend to leave you alone.” He gave a quarter turn, and she could see a long line of pink scar tissue under his left arm. “The worst weren’t impressed, though.” He sipped the tea and felt the caffeine do its magic. “Look, I appreciate you giving me this news, but what do you want me to do about it? Lech made it apparent he had his own goals. He’s turning that piece of shit ship into a freighter, or something.” Amelia speared him with one of her typical British looks of appraising displeasure.

  “You’re still part owner,” she said, sipping her own tea, “and the papers say he can’t sign a contract without you.”

  “Fine, then I’ll sign it. I don’t care.” She reached into her coat pocket and handed him a sheaf of papers. Compared to a typical commercial carriage contract, it was huge. There were a pair of little stick-on arrows where he was to sign. Despite himself, he started glancing at clauses.

  24-C –
Space Piracy Interruption of Service

  84-A-II – Non-interference with aligned aggressors. What the hell? He thought. The paper didn’t feel like paper either, more like very thin metal. But the edges weren’t sharp enough to cut. Then he saw the other signatories besides Lech.

  Mercenary Guild Represented – Seedo P998-11-Zeta-One

  Earth Controlling Authority – General Emmanuel Thales, Ambassador, U.S. Army – Retired.

  “Holy shit,” Lawrence spat out some of the tea. “This is for one of those mercenary gigs.”

  “Very perceptive of you,” Amelia said, “must be that tattoo of Minerva on your left pectoral.” Lawrence glanced down at it and scowled, returning to the contract.

  “It says here that a retainer and bond in the amount of 10,000 GCU,” he looked up at her, “galactic credits?” She nodded, and he continued. “That this retainer must be paid. But credits are trading like 50,000 to one, aren’t they?”

  “Down to 29,000 to one,” she said, “the Russians have been trading a lot of their rare earths.”

  “Fine, that’s still 290 million euros! We’re broke.”

  “The insurance settlement for the Tadia covers it, with about 50 million euros left over. He’s using that to get the John III Sobieski up and running.”

  “Wait, the what?”

  “The warship the company bought. He renamed it the EMS John III Sobieski.” She saw his strange look. “EMS is a designation assigned by Ambassador Thales; it means Earth Mercenary Ship.” He gave a slow nod.

  “I didn’t know any of those contracts were for ships?”

  “We own the only functional warship. After your little performance last week, Lech began to think it through. No government on the planet would pay half of what we did, so he talked to some contacts in the Polish government, who had access to the mercenary contracts. There were several for starships. He tried to get one for transport, but they refused because the ship wasn’t a freighter.”

  “Like I told him.”

  She nodded, then continued. “There were three combat contracts; assault, defensive highguard, and escort. I understand the assault paid the most, then highguard. That’s when you guard a stargate or emergence point. The escort paid the least.” He snorted and looked at all the paperwork. It would take him all afternoon to read through it.

  “Smallest, eh? How much is that?”

  “Ten million credits upon completion of primary objective. Ten percent bonus for combat actions, up to 40 percent additional pay. Total potential payout 14 million credits.” Lawrence blanched.

  “F-fourteen million?” His eyes went back and forth as he tried to calculate.

  “That’s 406 billion euros,” she said to save him the computing cycles. “Even if the exchange rate continues to fall, it probably won’t for much longer, and even if you don’t have any combat, that’s still around 300 billion euros.” He was back to looking at the contract.

  “It says the duration is the length of time some operation takes, expected six months, with additional hold over for another two months with ten percent bonus per month.” She nodded. “Half a trillion euro for six to eight months?”

  “Yes,” she said. He did the mental math. His share would probably be in the billions. Holy shit. “There’s just one catch,” she said, pulling back the pen as he made a grab for it.

  “And what would that be?”

  “You have to be on the crew.”

  “Pieprzyc moja matke,” he said, and Amelia blushed crimson.

  * * *

  “It looks like a big dildo,” Lawrence said as he floated behind the pilot. The man chuckled, a 3rd cousin by the looks of him.

  “Yes sir,” the man said, “but a dildo with lasers and missiles!”

  Prior to taking one of the John III Sobieski’s two shuttles to orbit, he’d gotten a much better rundown from the first Human crew who’d taken possession. The magazines weren’t empty, but they were only half-full. They reported the F11 was only about half expended, and all the primary systems worked. They got that much from the Bakulu crew who turned it over. The problem was the Bakulu were basically big snails. The ship didn’t have a single Human-made interface or system, and smelled like the Gulf of Danzig at low tide.

  “How are the transfers of consumables coming?” he asked the shuttle pilot. Lawrence had started the job by converting the shuttles to Human pilot use. It only cost them a total of four of their precious slates. It was a workaround, but at least now they could travel back and forth to orbit. Luckily, if the shuttles weren’t overloaded, they’d be good for almost 100 trips apiece to orbit before their reactors needed new F11. The price for the rare gas was currently quoted by the Trade Guild at 6,221 GCU per liter. Each shuttle took 11 liters. That was only 68,400 GCU, or almost 2 billion euros for one shuttle. Everything depended on them completing the contract before they needed to replenish either the John III Sobieski or either of the shuttles. The John III Sobieski would need 223 liters to replenish her F11, a staggering 1,387,000 GCU or over 40 billion euros!

  “It’s coming along well,” the pilot said. “We’ve refilled her reaction tanks and brought the first of the retooled missiles up from Warsaw.” The deal he’d signed months ago with the Poland Navy was paying dividends. Not only were the ship’s officers trained Polish Navy reservists, but the Warsaw government was providing them with a variant of their Rapier missiles. Lawrence shipped down some of the John III Sobieski’s Union-manufactured electronics repair parts and the Warsaw Navy hired a tech firm to do the upgrades. Of course, now the Polish Government officially owned 5% of Kosmalski Shipping. It was a small price to pay, in Lawrence’s opinion.

  Lech hadn’t agreed. “You’re giving away all our profits!” he’d raged.

  “So you’d rather get in a fight and run out of missiles?” Lawrence had asked.

  “We have almost a hundred missiles left.”

  “Yes, out of 220 with full magazines. These escort frigates are useless without missiles. Its lasers are only rated at a nominal 5 megawatts. They aren’t even powerful enough to hurt another ship of her class.”

  “Then what good are they? Maybe we can strip them and sell them on Earth?”

  “Lech, what do you think will happen if we get hit by a few missiles ourselves?” Lech’s eyes had narrowed. “Those explosive charges are scary powerful, cousin. My numbers indicate three could take our shields down. The next one blows us in half. Those lasers are what the navy called point defense, for shooting down other missiles. So, if we take them out…”

  “Fine.” Lech had relented. Lawrence only wished he’d relented about being in command of the ship. Outside, the shuttle was nosing into one of the two docking bays.

  “Those squids who sold us the ship were very phallic,” he observed. The shuttle slid into the bay in just such a way.

  “They’re more like snails,” the pilot observed. The hull reverberated as it was clamped into place. A moment later the hatch hissed and swung inward, and half a dozen men swarmed in and began taking crates off the ship. Two weeks in space, and freefall was home to them. Lawrence’s stomach gave a gurgle as he watched them spin and jump in all different attitudes and directions. The slight odor of ripe seafood drifting in didn’t help in the least. “You know the way to the CIC?”

  “Yes,” Lawrence said. After weeks of working with diagrams and schematics, he knew every square centimeter of the ship. “Thanks for the ride.”

  “No problem, sir.”

  He maneuvered around the working men and out into the main trunk that cross-connected the two docking bays. In the middle, a companionway ran the length of the ship. It wasn’t a very big ship, and it was crowded. He’d watched a video of the first missiles being delivered. Phallic indeed; only those organ-shaped missiles had 100 kilogram, high-explosive warheads. He worked his way to the CIC, which was abuzz with a dozen men working on various systems, and the captain arguing with someone.

  “About time!” he yelled to Lawrence.

>   “Lech,” he replied.

  “Captain Kosmalski!” Lech snapped.

  “Captain,” Lawrence conceded, just managing to not make it sound like a joke.

  “I’ve been telling you for days you needed to get up here and supervise the computer project.”

  “You also wanted more missiles; I needed to oversee that first.”

  “And, how is it?”

  “The contractor is convinced the refit Rapiers will be serviceable anti-missile missiles. They don’t think they’ll make decent anti-ship missiles. They don’t have those fancy warheads or the fancy fuel.”

  “We’ll try and buy some after we finish the first contract,” Lech said.

  “After you take me back. That’s the deal. One contract, and I go home.”

  “As long as everything is working satisfactorily,” Lech said and pointed a finger at him. “You promised.”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  Lech grunted and went back to haranguing the hapless crew member. The man had yellow tabs, which meant supply. Lawrence couldn’t help the man, so he floated over to the computer section of the CIC. The woman in charge there was a former U.S. Navy computer specialist named Denise Wojcik. Her family had immigrated to the U.S. when she was a child, but she spoke fluent Polish and Yiddish, and she had ties to the Kosmalski family. “How’s it going, Lieutenant?” he asked as he grabbed a handhold. They’d had a crew working non-stop welding and gluing them everywhere. The Bakulu didn’t need handholds, and the ship reflected that.

  “Like I said yesterday,” she said, her frustration obvious, “every time we upload the bios change, it resets when we lose power. If we never shut them down, it’s all good.”