by J. Benjamin
J. Benjamin
A Spacetime Tale
Copyright © 2019 by J. Benjamin
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.
J. Benjamin asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
First edition
Cover art by Jeff Brown
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I dedicate this to my #1 fan
Grandma Joyce
1
December 1st, 2081 - William Herschel Station, Mimas Orbit
The two thousand watts of weaponized energy missed Edie’s head by mere inches. She dove behind a stack of metal crates, clutching her blaster in hand. Two more shots fired from the two mercenaries on her six, the sound like thunder in her ears. Killing people was their specialty. Unfortunately for them, the same was true for Edie Brenner, and she was far better at it.
Edie could hear the footsteps of the two men approaching the crates. She looked up, and five feet to her left was her ticket to freedom. It was the automatic door that led to Bay C1, one of the twenty-five docking-bays on the ring-shaped station. The journey from her current position to that door would likely be her last if she moved from the crates. She looked carefully at the door, willing the moment to arrive.
Wait for it, she thought to herself. The reflection on the door gave away the positions of the mercenaries. Edie immediately jumped up and fired away. Two headshots and the mercs’ lifeless bodies hit the floor. She waited a few seconds and then got up.
The plexiglass door to the docking-bay was locked, as indicated by the red-light panel right by the door. Edie’s keycard certainly wasn’t going to work, given that she had just declared rebellion to the station’s chiefs.
Edie ran to the closer of the two deceased mercenaries and took a close look at the body. She knew the merc; his name was Charlie. He had a card attached to the pocket on his left pant leg with a cord winder. Edie ripped the badge off and ran to the door.
“Please work,” she said as she held the keycard to the door plate. The plate turned green, and the door slid open. Edie proceeded with haste. It was a hundred-yard dash to C1. The hall was well-lit, but it was no match for the outside light of the station, ships, and reflection of the sun from Saturn shining through the glass wall to her left.
A massive collector rig was returning from a ‘fishing expedition’ to Saturn’s rings. The rig itself was an agile little box-shaped craft with two pilots inside. However, the long metal truss anchored to the craft’s tail and graphene net attached to the truss were what made it ‘massive.’
In a fishing expedition, the rig would orbit asynchronously with Saturn’s rings. The globular net would unfold from the front, and over several hours, it would absorb as many ring particles, rocks, and Saturnian minerals as possible. Once full, the rig would return to the Herschel. There it would anchor its net in the doughnut hole at the center of the ring-shaped station.
The many robotic arms, probes, and mechanisms that lined the Herschel would then carefully sort through the contents of the net. They would mine the materials that get sent to various colonies across the solar system. Space mineral mining was the bread and butter of the Cosmineral Corporation, and it delivered enough profit to make Cosmineral the wealthiest private conglomerate in existence.
Edie’s observation got cut off by a loud siren accompanied by flashing red lights. Her only surprise was that the alarm didn’t go off sooner.
She made a command to the invisible, personal smart device on the corner of her right eye. “Call Simon Emmerson and Alex Harper.” As Edie dashed down the hall, two yellow telephone icons appeared before her on her smart lens. The first turned green while the second changed to red.
“Edie, where the hell are you?” Simon demanded.
“I got held up by some mercs. I’m thirty seconds away. Where is Alex?”
“Alex can’t talk. He’s busy trying to override the security protocols on the skipper craft. Ivanov has figured us out. He shut down everything. We don’t have much time.”
“Got it,” Edie replied. Toward the end of the hall, she saw a metal door with the ‘C1’ label above it in red. She knew that Simon and Alex were on the other side. Edie took the former mercenary’s keycard and held it up to the door’s scanner. The light above the scanner turned red. She held it again and got the same result.
“Didn’t take them long to figure out I jacked Charlie’s keycard,” Edie said to Simon.
“Shit!” Alex shouted loud enough to be heard through Simon’s sound input.
“We don’t have much time,” Simon said.
“Both of you relax,” Edie replied. “I came prepared. How close are you to the left-hand entry to C1?”
“Twenty feet away,” Simon said.
“Good. Don’t move,” Edie said to her deputies. She unzipped the left pocket on her jacket and dug her hand inside. She removed a small device with an adhesive and a tiny keypad. Edie removed the film covering the glue on the device, attached it to the metal door, and entered 6-9-0-5. She ran several paces back to stand clear of the door.
The device exploded. Though the blast itself was small, it was enough to knock the metal door off its hinges. The smoke cleared away. In years past, such an explosion on a space vessel would have ripped open a hole in the station and killed Edie instantly. That changed with advances in pressurization and material densities. Edie observed the dumbstruck faces of Alex Harper and Simon Emmerson standing at a control pad by the first of the ten docking stations on the left side of the long bay. Edie hopped over the blasted metal door and proceeded inside. Meanwhile, the alarms still blared.
“Well. Don’t just stand there. What’s our progress?” Edie asked.
“I’m almost there,” Alex replied. “I’ve successfully hacked one of the skippers using the credentials from someone in upper management. Now I have to override the skipper’s security firewall.”
“Hurry up. The cavalry is coming,” Edie said. She turned back to Simon. “You. Do you have the data-crystal? We cannot leave Herschel without it.”
“Got it right here,” Simon replied. He then unveiled a glowing, bright object that resembled a souvenir rock-formation crystal. It was as orange as a glass of instant Tang. “Thirty zettabytes of pure freedom. Right here. Thank you very much.”
“The most important human achievement in a half century. These fuckers are so screwed! Great work,” Edie said. “Simon! How’s it coming over there?”
“Hacking a skipper is not like hacking an escape pod. The firewalls are much tougher to crack. The good news is I’m almost… done!” The hatch to the skipper opened.
“Great work! Let’s move,” Edie said.
As the three renegades proceeded into the skipper, seven mercenaries stormed the docking bay from three different entries. A shot bounced off the floor. A second shot grazed the left side of Edie’s abdomen.
“Son of a bitch!” Edie shouted. “Go! Go!” She motioned to Alex and Simon. They scrambled inside the skipper craft. Edie saw the merc that had hit her and shot at the other woman’s forehead. Edie fired several more rounds at the gathering of armed ex-convicts while slamming her left hand against the red button next to the skipper’s cargo bay. A few laser shots made it through as the doors closed, but missed their intended targets.
Edie took a deep breath. She just pulled off the impossible with two men who she had met only eight months prior. They dashed
into the cockpit. The triangular-shaped skipper craft was made for long-distance travel at high speeds, particularly from the outer planets to Earth and vice versa. It could house a dozen people for a journey that long and was one of thirty currently docked to the Herschel.
There were four seats in the cockpit. Edie ran toward one of the pilot stations while Simon and Alex positioned themselves behind her.
Alex diverted his attention to the back of the skipper, where the sounds of blasters banging against the ship distracted him.
“Relax,” Edie said. “Unless they can break through your security override, there’s no way they are blasting their way through those doors.
“And the fishing expedition,” Alex said. “What about their fighter escort? Two GSF Lancers, third generation! And with Dev’s modifications, their primaries could shrivel up this craft like burning cotton candy.”
“We’ve been over this,” Simon said. “They don’t work for Dev Contractors. They get paid to follow the cargo and nothing else. Best to escape while the company is receiving its cash cow.”
“Better hope this comes in handy,” Edie said while unveiling the orange crystalline object. On the nano-leather dashboard sat a circular outline. Edie knocked it twice with her left hand. The panel made a gear-shift noise, and the circle moved up to reveal a cylindrical tube with a clear liquid inside. Edie unscrewed the leather lid on top to reveal a metal cover underneath. She placed the orange crystal atop the cylinder.
The crystal vibrated on the grated cover and dissolved in the tube below. The fragments oozed through the pores. Its nano-particle remains fell into the liquid below and continued until the crystal had vanished entirely. The nanites moved around in the liquid like a school of fish.
“Thirty zettabytes of fuel and information,” Edie said. She screwed on the leather cap, tapped the cylinder twice, and it shifted back into the dashboard. “Brace yourselves. Seatbelts on.” Edie pulled a red lever, and the skipper shook as it undocked from the Herschel. Almost immediately, the three escapees felt their insides lurch up as they left the gravity well of the Herschel.
“Okay. Now let’s see if we can get past those fighters,” Simon said.
* * *
The Herschel Command Bridge sat between a massive arc on the opposite side of the station. Though there were several decks above and several decks below, the bridge looked out both sides of the ring. Cosmineral’s chairman wanted to have as extensive view of space as possible when he commissioned the station.
On the command bridge of the Herschel, that very chairman, Dev Ivanov, stared at the monitors in front of him in horror. Before him sat Herschel Commander and Cosmineral Chief Technical Officer Sook Nguyen. She was busy attempting to assess the unfolding situation on the other side of the ring-shaped station.
“Alert the Lancers,” Dev said. “Tell them they have new orders. Disable that skipper.”
“It’s not that easy,” Sook replied. “They’re third-party contractors escorting a fishing expedition on its final leg. They have orders to flank the collector ship at all times. They can’t fly outside a kilometer of it. The regulators will be pissed.”
“We’ll deal with the aftermath later. Brenner has probably nanetized the crystal drive already. Get those skippers hopping!”
“You got it, boss,” Sook said. She picked up the phone attached to the console and called the pilots in the Lancer fighters. “Echo 1 and Echo 2. Abort your escort mission. Breakaway from the fishing expedition and chase down Skipper #24. Disable its engines.” Several seconds went by. “You heard me correctly, Echoes. Disable the Skipper. Don’t worry about your supervisors. Just switch your primary weapons from kill to low-intensity mode. Blast those engines so we can recover that craft.” Several more seconds went by. “Thank you,” Sook said.
“Well?” Dev asked.
“They’re breaking away from the collector ship and targeting the skipper’s engine subsystem. Dev, I sure hope this is worth it.”
“Our stock value can survive a hit if something happens to the collector ship. What Brenner has in her possession is Cosmineral intellectual property that is of unquantifiable value. We cannot let her escape!”
* * *
Edie moved the engines toward full throttle. Within seconds, the Herschel started to shrink in the rearview monitors.
“Yes,” Edie shouted. “Adios, Mimas! Hello, freedom.” As soon as Edie began celebrating, the ship jolted. Several blue pulses zipped past the windows facing toward Saturn’s ring.
“We got company,” Simon said, pointing to the rearview monitor. “Looks like we’re more important than the fishing expedition.”
“Dammit! Dev must have scared them shitless,” Edie said. She gripped the craft’s controls and forced the skipper to do a barrel roll. She looked out the craft’s flight deck. Saturn and its inner rings filled the horizon before her. From where the skipper stood, Edie could see the trails of dust and globes of ice zip past like dense grains of sand. Edie suddenly had an idea. “We’ll lose them in the rings.”
“Are you insane?” Alex said.
“Perhaps, but you got a better idea? Nope? Didn’t think so. Hold tight,” Edie said. She pushed the ship’s thrusters to maximum velocity. Edie, Alex, and Simon now felt superglued to their seats as the craft soon pulled several G-forces. The laser pulses continued flying past the skipper’s windshield but with less frequency. Edie entered a series of commands into the console. The rings of Saturn drew closer. The craft shook violently and accelerated far beyond its normal limits. Alarms blared, indicating that the engines were overheating, and the hull integrity was in jeopardy.
“Please God,” Simon said as he clasped his palms together and closed his eyes. “I know we don’t talk much, but I’m so sorry about that time I hacked the Olympus Mons crypto exchange.”
* * *
Dev looked out the window of the bridge. Far away, he could see Skipper #24 and the fighters chasing it down. The skipper quickly broke away from their pursuit and was now zipping toward the rings. He turned to Sook.
“Get another skipper ready,” Dev said. “Arm it. With any luck, they’ll decelerate at the rings. We’ll scramble a search party and—” He was cut off by a blinding flash of light that filled the bridge for three seconds, and he turned to the scene. “What the hell?”
“Um,” Sook said, “I think that was the skipper!”
Dev looked in the area where the blast occurred. His mouth gaped open. The skipper was gone.
“No,” he said. “No! No! No!” Dev screamed in shock and anger. He was at a loss for words.
“It’s confirmed,” Sook said. “Skipper #24 has disappeared from radar.”
Several incoming call alerts drowned out all other sounds on the bridge. Sook observed the caller IDs.
“Sir. I’m getting dispatches from across the station. Sir?”
Dev paused.
“Sook,” he said. “Alert Cosmineral’s chief counsel to get down here immediately. Do not answer any calls. We only speak to the lawyers.”
2
December 3, 2081 - San Francisco, United California
Kiara made her way down the grassy, streetcar-lined backbone of San Francisco’s central business district, Market Street. At the crossing of Second and Market, she stepped on an underground escalator. It led her down to the Montgomery BART/MUNI/SRCE Station, which had been in operation for more than a century. Once below ground, she saw the San Francisco MUNI entrance to her left, and the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) entrance to her right. Straight ahead though, she saw another option, the Sally Ride City Express. Kiara made her way to that entrance.
There were no turnstiles. Instead, a scanner quickly examined Kiara’s eyes and registered her crossing the border. On Kiara’s smart lens, a greeting message appeared.
You are now leaving United California. Welcome to Global Space Federation territory, Dr. Kiara Lacroix. Your journey to the Sally Ride City Federal District shall take approximately twenty minutes.
Twenty minutes? Kiara thought to herself. The typical San Francisco-to-Sally Ride journey took ten minutes. However, today was different as Kiara was en route to the Global Space Federation Annual Conference. Kiara stepped on another escalator, one that descended in a dark, blue-lit tunnel several stories below Montgomery Station. She spotted several more people on the moving steps who were also in formal attire. They appeared as if they were heading to the same event.
After a three-minute wait, Kiara reached the boarding platform for the Sally Ride Express. There was not much inbound traffic, but a few dozen people waited as mag-lev egg cars filled the outbound platform. Kiara finally boarded one of the egg-shaped glass cars with five others clearly heading to the same conference. The automated egg quickly whisked away down the dark, underground track.
Kiara passed the time reviewing notes on her smart lens. The conference had been going on for three days. Kiara had skipped the first day of the event but helped lead a panel on Responsible Colonization of Outer Planet Moons on day two. As someone with a personality that leaned more toward introvert, Kiara didn’t always enjoy speaking before crowds. However, she got better with experience. Public speaking became expected for academics at her level.
The keynote address of day three by high dignitaries warranted far more formal attire than the panel discussions and breakout sessions of the first two days of the conference. It was the most public event of the GSF for the entire year. Hence why Kiara found herself wearing a one-piece, custom-cut white dress instead of the usual business suit.
As a deputy exobiologist in the life sciences division of the GSF, Kiara spent her days researching alien biology. Her specific focus was on marine organisms discovered in the subsurface oceans of Europa. The biodiversity of Jupiter’s fourth largest moon and the ensuing research was enough to fill a library as wide and deep as the Mariana Trench. All it took was one probe to melt through the ice and poke around. A thousand skippers were on their way complete with inflatable bubble habitats, EVA suits, and enough dried ice cream to survive a nuclear apocalypse.
