The Eridani Convergence

by Alastair Mayer

  She checked her omni. It was time to go for dinner. She headed back to the aft compartment. Taking an autocab into town was an option but not one she chose. It would cost credits and project the wrong image. She had her motorbike; small, easily stowed, and designed for streets or rugged terrain. Just the thing for short excursions planet-side, and perfect for tonight.

  Jackie lowered the aft cargo ramp and wheeled the bike down it. She straddled it, donned her helmet, then watched as, at command sequence from her omni, the Sophie retracted the ramp and sealed the aft door. Her omni’s nav system had already synched to the bike’s dash display. With a whine from the bike’s motor, she steered around her ship and headed for the starport gate, then into town.

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  The Wheatley was no Hotel Interplanetary, but it wasn’t horrible. Harp City was growing, but it was too distant to attract upscale tourists from Earth. That was just as well; she was looking for somewhere more relaxed, but a step up from a bar. If Ducayne’s man was smart—and if he was Ducayne’s man, he would be—he might think to check the hotels after a ship landed. Besides, she really did want some good food.

  There were a few other patrons in the restaurant, and Jackie noticed a few heads turn her way as she entered. So far, so good. As long as Vaughan’s crew wasn’t here. She didn’t think they would recognize her, she’d been a hundred meters away and shooting at them back on Zeta Reticuli, so they’d kept their heads down. On the other hand, someone might remember her green hair. Oh well.

  A waiter took her order and she sat back with a glass of wine, idly glancing about at the other diners. There was a young man, sitting alone, who kept eying her. He seemed to be gathering the nerve to talk to her. Sure enough, after a minute he stood up and walked over.

  “Uh, hi. You by yourself? I am too. Would you like some company?”

  Somehow this did not seem like her contact. He seemed a bit young and unsure of himself, although that could be part of the cover.

  “Actually, I’m waiting for somebody.” She casually moved her hand to her thigh, near where her pistol was holstered. That shouldn’t intimidate anyone working for Ducayne.

  “Oh, uh, oh.” He took a step back.

  “But thanks for asking,” she said, softening the rejection. This wasn’t John Smith.

  “Well, enjoy your dinner.”

  “Thanks.” She looked around once more. Nobody else seemed to be paying attention. She hadn’t really expected it to be that easy.

  The waiter arrived with her dinner, placing the plate in front of her and warning that it was hot. Then from his apron pocket he withdrew a folded slip of paper. “Uh, excuse me ma’am, but there was a gentleman here who was leaving shortly after you came in. He asked me to pass this to you.” He handed her the note.

  She took it and opened it. “Diamond Lady,” it began, “Sorry, but I have an appointment to keep. Same time tomorrow?” It was signed with the initials “J.S.” John Smith? Had she just missed him? The “Diamond Lady” at least seemed to acknowledge her signal.

  “Everything all right, ma’am?”

  “Yes, fine, thank you. Can I get a refill on the wine?”

  “Of course.” The waiter departed, leaving Roberts in thought. She hadn’t noticed anyone passing a note to the waiter, or leaving as she came in, but that didn’t prove anything. She could have just missed it, especially if “J.S.” hadn’t wanted to call attention to himself.

  Tomorrow night it would have to be.

  CHAPTER 24: CARSON'S OTHER RIDE

  Carson

  Aboard the system boat Aspis

  “OKAY, DOCTOR CARSON, if you’ll come with me back to the cargo bay we’ll get you set.”

  They were aboard the Aspis, a ship designed for shuttle flights between Sawyers World, around Alpha Centauri A, and Kakuloa, orbiting Alpha Centauri B. Most of the trip time was on regular thrusters, to and from the planets’ surfaces. The warp jump between the two stars took twenty seconds, so what on a deep-space starship might be fuel tankage had been built out as cargo space. This particular ship’s cargo bay could be depressurized and had a large bay door to allow message torpedoes—or other small spacecraft—to be deployed or retrieved.

  Hannibal Carson looked over the passenger torpedo. At five meters long, it took up a good portion of the cargo bay’s length, but it was less than two meters wide at its widest. A long, slender cone with a rounded base, not unlike those old ICBM warheads whose precision Ducayne had compared it to. This, of course, was considerably bigger than those had been, and with two kilograms of antimatter fuel, had the potential to pack a bigger punch than even the largest ICBM.

  And he was going to ride in the damn thing!

  “All right, sir, if you just float over here we’ll get you secured into the pod.”

  They were in orbit, and so weightless, and over his regular clothes Carson wore a lightweight pressure suit. He wore a helmet with its visor open; if needed, it would close automatically, and the bailout bottle strapped to his thigh would provide air.

  The pod itself was nestled in the middle of the oversized torpedo, whose aft section was currently unlatched and pivoted back on hinges. The pod, what Carson could see of it, was a custom design, similar to a civilian hibernation pod or a traumapod, but without all the latter’s surgical gear. Its door was also open, with the patient table or bed extended on its slide rails.

  The technician guided Carson into the pod, and began securing him to the padded table surface loosely with straps. “These are just to keep you from floating around in there, they’ll yield if you pull hard enough. There’s an emergency switch beside your right hand; you shouldn’t need it.” He slid the bed halfway into the pod.

  Carson felt gently along the right edge of the bed. It was more of a pull handle than a switch. “Got it.”

  “Okay. Now, let me hook this up.” He pushed Carson in a little farther then grasped a cable attached to the instrumented cuff around Carson’s upper left arm, and reached in to plug it into a socket inside the pod housing. “Not strictly necessary, the pod can read your signs without it and can insert an IV if needed. Again, it shouldn’t be needed; the drug, hiberzine, is delivered through the air supply. When you wake up, a feeding tube will be positioned within reach of your mouth, it’ll supply a nutrient and sugar rich fluid to help wake you up and give you energy for the entry phase. It will IV you if you don’t drink from it within a few minutes after the pod thinks you should be awake.”

  “Okay, so wake up, take a drink.”

  “You’ve got it. You’ll be in zero gee; the plan is to wake you up a couple of hours from the planet so you have time to come fully awake and assess the situation.”

  “Assess the situation? Is there anything I can do if something’s wrong?”

  The tech grinned. “Well that depends on what’s wrong, but you can abort the entry sequence, establish an orbit, and send a radio signal. That might prove helpful. Although you might want to eject before a rescue ship comes close, the torpedo will still want to self-destruct if approached by an unknown.”

  Lovely, Carson thought. “Is the Sophie an unknown?”

  “Roberts’ ship? Let me check.” The tech did something on his omniphone. “No worries, the Sophie has a Homeworld Security transponder; the torpedo will recognize it.”

  “Okay. If something does go wrong let’s hope she’s the one who rescues me.” Something about that last phrase gave Carson pause. He and Roberts seemed to be doing a lot of rescuing each other lately. They really should find a better way to get together.

  “So, assuming things go well—and they should—you’ll stay in the traumapod for the peak heating of entry, then the pod will eject and stabilize on a drogue ‘chute while the rest of the torpedo goes on farther to play meteorite. It will airburst while you’re still in the pod, between that and the distance you’ll be fine. Then at a couple of thousand meters the pod will pop you out. If it doesn’t—” The tech reached in to activate a small screen above
Carson’s face “—this screen will show your altitude. If you still haven’t ejected by 1500 meters, pull the emergency handle by your right hand.”

  “Got it.” Carson had been briefed on this already, but he didn’t object to the refresher.

  “It’s a smart chute. It will seem a bit fast at first but nearer the ground it will open further, and glide you down nice and gentle. Just to be safe, keep your legs together and roll with the impact. May look a bit silly if you’re coming in slow, but better than a broken leg if you’re not.”

  “Actually, I have jumped once before, but that was years ago.”

  “Oh? Sport or military?”

  “Military, a training exercise.”

  “Well, good. This will be similar, but don’t get overconfident.”

  “What’s the rest of the traumapod doing all this while?”

  “It will have hit the ground before you do. It’ll be pretty broken up. If you’re near enough to civilization you think it might be found, go ahead and cover up the pieces, but there’s nothing unusual about it that would survive the impact. Hiding it is more so nobody gets to wondering if someone came down in it. Hide your chute too, although it’ll disintegrate in a few days.”

  “Uh, it’s okay now, though, right?”

  “No worries. Built in sensors assure me that it is, and the reaction doesn’t start until it’s opened. Now, if you’re all set, let me finish sealing you up. You should be asleep within a minute.”

  Carson took a deep breath and let it out. “Okay. Oh, quick question . . . ever done this yourself?”

  The tech grinned. “No, but I once had to bail out of a ship using something similar.”

  “Ah, okay.”

  “If it makes you feel better—” the tech lowered his voice “—I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but I have done this side of the process before, and I did see the, ah, passenger again a couple of months later, so he survived.”

  That did make him feel better, a little. “Okay, thanks. Button me up.”

  The tech touched a switch and the bed slid rest of the way into the pod. Carson heard sounds of the hatch being secured. The pod’s interior light began to dim, and before it was all the way out, Carson was asleep and sliding into a medical coma.

  CHAPTER 25: THE WHEREABOUTS OF SMITH

  Vaughan

  Vaughan’s HQ, Harp City Church of Divine Stellar Providence

  “SMITH DIDN’T GO anywhere interesting tonight, boss. He might have known we were tailing him.”

  “What happened?”

  “He went to the restaurant at the hotel, the Wheatley, ate a meal. Checked his omni a few times like he was looking at the time, not any messages. At least, he didn’t send any. He kept an eye on who came and went. Then he got up and left.”

  “Anyone come in or leave about the time he left? Maybe he was following somebody.”

  “Nobody left. A gal came in just before. Jumpsuit, leather jacket, big sparkly design on it. Eye-catching. Haven’t seen her around before. She might have come in on that Sapphire that landed this morning.”

  “Huh. Did she pay any attention to Smith?”

  “Nope. Walked in, got seated at a table, ordered wine. Young guy came up to her, but it looked like she gave him the brush off. Smith was already on his way out, so we didn’t stay.”

  “Where did he go from there?”

  “He wandered toward the warehouse district. Stayed on foot rather than calling a cab, so we couldn’t track him that way. Walked around for about an hour. Either he was looking for something but wasn’t sure of the address, or he knew he was being tailed.”

  “So, you were sloppy, and he saw you.”

  “No, boss. We gave him plenty of space, traded off following him.”

  “In the warehouse district. At night.” Vaughan shook his head. “Don’t you suppose he found it a little odd to have so many people wandering around there at that time? There’s not much night life in that part of town.”

  “Aw, geez. What were we supposed to do?”

  “Next time, see if you can plant a tracker on him. If he’s wandering around there, odds are the item is in a crate waiting for shipment.”

  “Okay, we hack into the databases and see what’s recently manifested for outbound. How hard can that be?”

  “Hard enough.” Vaughan knew it was possible, especially if the computer security was as lax as it often was. A few hours of computer time to brute-force some keys or snoop network traffic could do it. But there was no single system covering all the warehouses, they were owned or operated by several different small companies. It would days or weeks to try each of them, and if they had good security, perhaps without success at all. “If we can narrow it down to one company or one warehouse, the odds are better.”

  “Is it really that big a deal? We have other things to be doing here.”

  Vaughan’s temper flared. “I know exactly what it is we need to be doing. And we’re doing them. But I also want to know why the Homeworld Security agent-in-residence is sniffing around warehouses and making arrangements for something to be shipped out.”

  The thought had occurred to Vaughan that the whole thing was a charade on Homeworld Security’s part to smoke out or confuse Velkaryan operations here. The rumors of an alien artifact were a little too convenient in light of what he had heard about Chara III, and what they had seen in the Zeta 1 Reticuli system. But he couldn’t be certain of that, and if it was a high-tech alien artifact, the Velkaryans had to have it.

  CHAPTER 26: RENDEZVOUS

  Roberts

  Hotel Wheatley restaurant, next night

  ROBERTS RETURNED TO the restaurant at the Hotel Wheatley the next evening. She had spent the day on routine ship maintenance, making sure it was fueled up and ready for space on short notice, before changing into the outfit she’d worn the previous evening.

  Again, she looked around on entering the restaurant. There were a few solo diners, but nobody she recognized from the previous evening. But then, if Smith had left just as she arrived, she might not have seen him at all.

  She noticed a couple of heads turn to look at her as she entered and was shown to a table, but then she wasn’t exactly inconspicuous. One man had glanced up briefly then return to whatever he was looking at on his omni. As she sat, she saw him look up again, not at her, but around at the rest of the room. As though he might be looking to see who might be watching her. Her waiter, the same one who had slipped her the note the previous evening, caught her eye and then tilted his head in the direction of the seated man, who was back to looking at his omni. Jackie raised an eyebrow questioningly. The waiter nodded slightly. She nodded back. He took her drink order and left.

  The waiter returned with her drink, and as he left her table, the man who’d been looking at his omni stood up and took a couple of steps in her direction, calling out “Hey there, Diamond Lady. Sorry, I didn’t see you come in. I don’t know where my head was at.”

  Well, that was one approach. The note had also addressed her as “Diamond Lady,” a clear reference to the Queen of Diamonds emblazoned on the back of her jacket. She looked back at him, not quite in acknowledgment but open to further contact. He came over.

  “Hello, John,” she said to him, then in a quieter voice: “It is John, isn’t it?” Worst case, if this wasn’t her contact, he might think she meant something else. She’d deal with that if she had to.

  “For you, my queen, I’d be a Jack, but the last name is Smith. Sorry about last night, I really did have an appointment.”

  Bingo. Maybe. “Have a seat. If you’re not who I’m waiting for, at least you’ll keep the others at bay.”

  As he sat, he looked pointedly at her sidearm and nodded. “You realize, of course, this hotel has a peace-bond transmitter.”

  “High class. I suppose you know how easy it is to hack an override?”

  Smith grinned. “So, are you a card player, Miss . . . ?”

  “Call me Sophie,” Roberts said.
/>   “Sophie. That’s a mighty fine Queen of Diamonds on your jacket. Do you play?”

  “Not much. Solitaire gets old quickly.”

  “Solitaire? That’s not much of a game for a lady like you.”

  “Which is why I don’t play it. What about you?” She paused, then: “Poker?”

  A brief frown crossed his face at that last word, as if he wasn’t sure he’d heard her right. Jackie smiled inwardly and raised an eyebrow at him.

  Smith’s frown had gone, his face neutral. He grinned, then said: “Hardly. I knew a guy back on Sawyers World though, great poker player. Queer duck, he was.”

  “Oh? Sounds like someone I met once. I imagine he’d be a good poker player, he was quite devious.”

  Smith gave a short nod, then leaned in and lowered his voice. “Okay, so QD sent you?”

  “Ducayne, yes. I’m a courier, my ship is the Sophie.”

  “Ah, and for now Jack works fine for me, but the name is actually Burnside, Jordan Burnside. And you’re Captain . . . ?”

  “Roberts, Jacqueline Roberts. And yes, I go by Jackie,” she added at his raised eyebrow. “And I do want dinner. What’s your schedule?” She didn’t want to have to just take the package and fly, but surely a few hours wouldn’t make a difference.

  “More flexible than I’d like. We can chat while you eat, I was hanging here hoping to make contact.”