by Nick Webb
He considered this for a moment. “Well, they can orbit one thing.” He looked up at her, shrugging. “Black holes. Light can orbit a black hole, right at the event horizon. Any farther away and the light particle thingie eventually shoots off. Any closer and it falls in towards the black hole. But right there at the event horizon, it’s like an eternal orbit.”
She eyed him skeptically. “Ethan. I hate to break it to you, but … we definitely don’t have a black hole in our cargo hold.”
“I know, I’m just saying, for argument’s sake, it is possible. Just … unlikely, in our current situation.”
A sigh, and she collapsed further onto the deck, leaning back on her elbows. “Orbits eternal and ascending….” she murmured.
“Huh?”
She shook her head. “Just Grangerite mumbo jumbo. I get it every Thanksgiving from my brother-in-law. You mentioning light eternally orbiting a black hole reminded me of a thing he’s always saying.”
He sat down in the pilot’s seat and faced her. “Ok, so back up here,” he said. “You’re reading a meta-space signal that looks like it’s coming from the cargo hold, but it’s … circular?”
She shook her head. “No, it’s not quite that simple. It’s not so much a meta-space signal as it is a meta-space signature. And I only say circular because it looks like it has no origin. There’s just this spot right in the center of that cargo hold, where it looks like the meta-space … background energy, you know, coupled with the background vacuum energy, it’s just … swirling. Not creating a new signal, but just, rotating around that spot.”
A few moments of silence.
“Creepy,” he finally said.
The console beeped again. He struggled to his knees and peered up at the dashboard.
“Get ready for q-jump number three hundred and fifty-six.” He paused, and glanced back down at her. “You don’t suppose this funky ghost reading back there can interfere with the q-drive?”
She shrugged.
“Well,” he pulled himself back into his chair. “Perfect. Let’s hope we don’t explode before we show up at San Martin.”
“Or get sucked into meta-space,” she offered.
“Yeah, that too. Thought at this point, I’d be surprised if something doesn’t happen.”
A smile tugged at her lips. “It don’t rain, but it shitstorms.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Irigoyen Sector, San Martin System, San Martin
Danny Proctor’s apartment, Ciudad Libertador
Admiral Shelby Proctor knocked on the door, just in case someone might actually answer. Just in case Danny had been hiding out at the pub this whole time, and would now answer the door, hung-over and half naked.
Nothing. The street outside was quiet, with hardly any pedestrians, or ground cars, for that matter. A bodega down the street murmured gently as a customer got her unruly kids under control as she placed her order for coffee.
After waiting for nearly a minute, she nodded to her marine guard. “Wait here.”
“Ma’am? We’d prefer at least one of us go in with you,” said the shorter one. The one she’d nicknamed Stretch in her head.
“No. I’ll be fine. See that no one comes in.” She reached for the door controls and entered the bypass code Admiral Tigre had given her, and the door slid open. Clothes and old food boxes littered the floor.
“Looks like someone trashed the place looking for something. Burglary?” said Stretch, peering in through the door, hand resting on his sidearm.
“No, I doubt it. Danny was never the cleanest kid….” She stepped into the front room and the door slid shut behind her. The smell of old pizza boxes and rotten fruit wrinkled her nose, but beyond that she could smell her nephew—his scent was unmistakable to her, having kissed his little head all the time while growing up. His dirty clothes were tossed haphazardly across the sofa and floor. A pile of socks lay in the corner.
“Dammit, Danny, haven’t you ever learned to pick up after yourself?”
She tiptoed carefully through the mess, nearly losing her balance at one point when she stepped on a fork with her bad leg. “Shit,” she mumbled. “Danny, Auntie Shelby is going to kill you if you’re not already dead.”
The remark nearly made her cry, so she focused on the apartment. It was about what one would expect from a twenty-year-old young man’s first place he lived away from the civilizing influence of parents, or basic cleaning supplies. There were large framed pictures of starships in orbit around various planets hanging on the wall—Danny was always fascinated with ships. He’d play with his toy spaceships for hours every day, setting them up in mock battles, blockade lines, chases, orbital rail gun fights. Sometimes she’d overhear him chattering away, dropping ship names like Constitution, Warrior, Victory, Chesapeake—all the names of the old Legacy Fleet that Aunt Shelby had served aboard—and she’d catch snippets about the evil Swarm, and the backstabbing Dolmasi, and the enigmatic Skiohra, and even the other two known alien races that humanity had never met, the Findiri and Quiassi, and Danny would make up names for the alien ships and descriptions of what the aliens looked like and how their ships—
Dammit, stop daydreaming, Shelby. It won’t bring him back.
She studied one of the ships on the wall. This one was not in space, but rather a photograph of a bulky old transport freighter sitting in dry-dock at some planetary station somewhere.
It was the Magdalena Issachar. She recognized it from the video Admiral Tigre had shown her. She stepped closer, examining some writing near the bottom, almost like a signature, except with an added message.
Danny, she’s all yours. -Rex
“Looks like you were right, Miguel,” she said to herself. Dammit. That meant that the odds her nephew was now a collection of subatomic particles just ticked up a few notches. Keep it together, Shelby.
Her hand comm pad chirped in her pocket. She pulled it out and tapped it on.
“Proctor.”
The voice on the other end was Yarbrough’s. “Admiral, we’ve just received a report of a sighting of the alien ship.”
“Where?”
“Here, actually. In the San Martin system. It appeared near San Martin’s moon, just momentarily. Stayed for about two minutes. Then it q-jumped away.”
She rubbed her elbow, where the bone was bruised from the explosion the day before. It already seemed like forever ago. She stared at the photo of the Magdalena Issachar—she felt like she’d lost a child.
“That’s damn peculiar, Commander. It did nothing? Just jumped in, and jumped away?”
She could almost hear him nod. “That’s right, Admiral. Shall we set a course? We can be there in a few hours. Or in just a few minutes if we t-jump there.”
“No. Ask Admiral Tigre for any sensor data he’s got from whatever monitoring base he’s got out at the moon—I assume he has one—and that should be sufficient. I’ve got unfinished business here.”
A pause. “Yes, ma’am.”
She sensed his unease at the fact she was down on the surface, and not in the captain’s chair where she belonged. He was mostly right. But not right enough. There was a connection, dammit. That Golgothic ship just appeared out of nowhere, almost immediately after the worst disaster since the Second Swarm War. No, not just a disaster. Terrorist attack.
“I’ll just be awhile longer, Commander. Prepare the ship to break orbit when I get back.”
“Yes, ma’am. Where should I tell Ensign Riisa we’ll be going?”
“Wherever your analysis says the mystery ship went. Get the data from Tigre, science the shit out of it—don’t let Commander Mumford tell you he can’t work miracles—and then we’ll be on our way.”
“And if the ship is not still at the coordinates we come up with?”
She rolled her eyes. “Then we look in the closet and under the bed—that’s where monsters usually hide. Proctor out.” She tapped the link closed before she said something she would regret.
Look in t
he closet and under the bed.
“If it were only that easy.” She remembered little Danny, no older than four, being scared of the Swarm monster under the bed and its Dolmasi cousin in the closet. She grit her teeth against the memory, and tiptoed her way back through the mess. She paused at the closet. Just to be sure, so she wouldn’t doubt later, she pulled it open.
Empty, except for, yes—there was a God of miracles—a vacuum cleaner. She smirked—it looked pristine and unused. Satisfied there was nothing else there, she closed the door and eyed the bed in the corner. May as well be sure sure. She picked her way through the clutter, and holding onto the bed for support, sunk to her knees. The bad knee popped and a twinge of searing pain shot up her leg. “Dammit, Danny!”
She looked under the bed. More clothes.
And a piece of paper. No, not paper. A card. Like an old-fashioned business card. She plucked it up and turned it over. It actually was a business card. The electronic holographic sort. Black text scrolled across, flickering somewhat as the nano-batteries were on the verge of failure, and the unmistakable holographic image of a spaceship seemed to leap off the paper and hover just centimeters above it. She read the text.
Rex Ramanujan, certified used ship dealer.
It listed his address. 550 Alabama Boulevard, Ciudad Liberator, San Martin.
In the hallway, the marine guard snapped to attention. She tossed the card to Stretch. “Get on your hand pad and drive us to Alabama Avenue.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Irigoyen Sector, San Martin System, El Amin
Shuttle Fenway
“Last jump,” he said. Peering out the front viewport he could see the bright star at the center of the field of view. San Martin’s sun. At this distance it was as bright as Eire during a sunset on Britannia, or like Venus burning brightly on the western horizon at evening on Earth.
“And we didn’t even explode,” she added, a lop-sided smile tipped toward him. “Or get shot at. I think this is a record for us.”
“Don’t count your chickens before they hatch.” He glanced at the instruments before he authorized the computer to make the final q-jump. “Hold on,” he said.
Something was off.
“What is it?”
“We’re, uh, well we’re close to El Amin. That might explain it.”
“Explain what? Is that the farthest planet in the San Martin system?”
He nodded, but bit his lip. “Yeah. And we’re getting some funky readings on the … surprise surprise, the meta-space scan.”
“Is it a signal?” she asked.
“No. Just noise. Static.” An idea occurred to him. “Hey, go back into the hold and look at our magical meta-space loop, will you? Just in case they’re connected.”
She nodded and left. Moments later, she called back from the hold. “Yeah, it’s doing something. Like, flickering. Or something.”
“Is it stable?” he called back.
She reappeared in the cabin. “Stable? I don’t even know what it is. I say we hightail it to San Martin before we find out.”
“Don’t twist my arm … that’s the best idea I’ve heard all day. Hold on.” He reached out and pressed the initiator button. A second later, the view out the window changed in an instant, a giant blue cloud-dappled planet replacing the sterile field of stars. “Aaaand … here we are.”
She shrugged. “Now what?”
“Yeah, I’ve been thinking about that. The shuttle logs say that it came here. But, given our experience back at Bolivar I don’t think showing up at Shovik-Orion’s headquarters is the most prudent thing to do.”
“Right.” She shook her head. “Or CENTCOM San Martin, given what you saw your two IDF buddies do to Jerry Underwood.”
“Agreed.” He started fiddling with the computer, trying to access the IDF network without logging in or revealing his computer’s access ID. “And yet we still need to find out where exactly this shuttle docked, and what the cargo was, and who was involved in the transfer. And find pops.”
“But his location is classified.”
“Right. But I can send him a message on the civilian network and it should be routed to him.” He shrugged. “Eventually.”
“Ok, that gets us to your pops, but what about the shuttle?”
He scratched his growing stubble on his chin—it had been two days now since he’d been able to shower. And he was already tired of shuttle food. “So here’s the plan. Let’s … go hang out above the North Pole and monitor system transmissions and traffic until we have a better handle on things.”
She eyed him skeptically. “Ethan, your plans suck.”
He swiveled to face her. “Fine. What’s your brilliant idea?”
“Well,” she leaned back in the seat, “we have to assume that whoever was shooting at us has managed to send a meta-space signal to alert their people here to keep a lookout for us. Surely they’ll be on the lookout for this shuttle. So the answer is obvious.”
“Change the transponder?” he offered.
“No. You can’t change a transponder without physically switching out the hardware, and doing some pretty fancy shit with the electronics to fool the shuttle’s computer into thinking that the new hardware is legit. No. We need to ditch the shuttle.”
“Come again?” He eyed her like she was crazy. “Are you crazy?”
“As long as we’re in this thing, we’re a target.”
“As long as we’re us we’re targets.”
She smiled. “Now you’re catching on.”
It took him a moment to understand. “Wait, are you suggesting we not be us?”
“I am.”
“Disguises? Sara, this isn’t a movie. I can’t just go put on a dress and think I’m going to fool anyone.”
She eyed him skeptically. “You in a dress? Naw, you wouldn’t be fooling anyone.” He tried to unpack her retort, sensing an insult in there somewhere, but she continued. “No, we need to change our biometrics. Or at least mask them. Fool the facial recognition cameras and other other biometric signatures we have. You know. Fingerprints, heartbeat signature, heat signature, retina pattern, speech recognition, etc., etc.”
“Woah. Yeah, no, we’re not changing all that. It would take … months and money we don’t have, and we don’t have the time or—”
“Calm down, I’m not suggesting we change all that. Just the basics, to at least fool the facial recognition cameras. At least to give us some time to find a new ship, and figure out who we can trust. Maybe by then your dad will come through.”
“Fine.” He nodded, and looked around the shuttle’s cabin. “Any ideas? I’m fresh out of wigs.”
She stood up and walked over to the printer. “This thing can print basic tools and parts, and even food—”
“Shitty food,” he interjected.
She shrugged. “Shitty is being generous. But all the same, it can print basically anything, within reasonable size restraints and basic material restraints. I mean, we’re not printing out plutonium rods or anything,” she said, fiddling with the printer controls.
“I fail to see how plutonium rods would make a good costume.”
She ignored him. “But cellulose, adhesive. Pigment. Easy.” She fiddled with the output selection screen at the printer for another minute before finally tapping the screen. “Yep, here we go.”
He peered over her shoulder at the screen. “Prosthetic face masks? You’ve got to be kidding.”
“I used to be on the theatre tech crew back in high school. Believe me, these are a cinch. I say we print two each, that way we can exit the shuttle wearing one—the cameras will surely be watching us as we leave and they’ll eventually trace the shuttle to us, so after we find shelter somewhere we swap out our masks. Maybe shave your head. I’ll dye my hair—you know the drill.”
“I—” he was about to protest.
“Look,” she interrupted in a huff. “You got a better idea? Because believe me, hanging out over the north pole is not the answ
er. That’s liable to get us captured very quick-like once they figure out it’s us, and they won’t leave anything to chance this time—it’ll be shoot first, pick up the pieces later. I don’t know about you, but I want to live out the week.”
She had a point. There was only so much they’d be able to tell just by tapping into IDF and Shovik-Orion broadcasts. The unencrypted ones, at least. And he just wasn’t keen on getting shot at again—maybe going incognito would give them a brief respite from the bullets. Worth a shot, at least, until he could find his old man.
“Fine. Give me a facial.”
She smirked, and clicked print on the output screen. “That’s what she said.”
He couldn’t help but chuckle while he turned back to the navigational controls to bring them down to the planet. I like this girl.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Irigoyen Sector, San Martin System, San Martin
550 Alabama Boulevard, Ciudad Libertador
The used ship dealer’s showroom was just a nondescript store with ugly, inconsistent branding on the sign hanging above the front door. Even though it was regular business hours, the place looked absolutely deserted. Just a dozen knee-high holographic kiosks that projected the owner’s wares up into the air: dozens of ships, mostly smaller yachts, a few tiny cargo carriers and mineral haulers, and even a few decommissioned commercial passenger liners, all in various states of disrepair.
Ground cars and public transportation pods hummed along on the street, and a few people strolled the sidewalk. It seemed to be a seedier part of town, and Proctor wondered if she shouldn’t have brought more than her usual two marines along with her. Stretch seemed to read her mind.
“Ma’am, request permission to augment your security detail,” he said, as his eyes scanned over the broken windows of an abandoned building down the street.
