I closed the connection and watched eagerly as the final three civilian ships began to move away from Pilar Station.
Soon, I would be leading my first major convoy across the occlusion and into Chal. There was no doubt in my mind that this would be the beginning of a swift rise to flag rank and the command of my own fleet.
It was sure as stars.
When I walked onto the bridge, Penny was in my seat. Mostly. Today, the woman wore an iridescent blue gown that likely contained as much fabric as the rest of the bridge crew’s clothing combined.
It hung off her in sheets and completely engulfed my seat. Her head was off to one side, and for a moment, I thought she’d been maimed, but then I realized she was laying across the armrests, her feet dangling over the side.
“Get off there,” I muttered, glancing around to see Tammy and Finn in their customary places. I’d already encountered Oln in the galley, which meant that Kallie and Sherry were the only crew unaccounted for.
As Penny flipped herself around with a fluidity of motion I wouldn’t have expected under so much cloth, I checked the ship’s locators to see that Sherry was doing laps in the main hold, while Kallie was in the rear engineering bay.
“Sorry, Jax, just keeping it warm for you.”
“ ‘Captain’ to you,” I muttered, taking my seat.
Penny gave me a mock pout and gestured at Tammy. “But you let her call you ‘boss’.”
“She’s special.”
“And I’m not?” Penny opened her eyes wide and blinked slowly.
“No.”
A moment later, all pretense at child-like innocence was gone from her face and posture. “Well, shit. You sure don’t know how to have fun.”
“I know all about fun,” I replied. “I have lots of it when there are no unwanted passengers on my ship. Tammy, how’re things looking?”
Penny’s expression darkened at my curt dismissal, and she took a seat on the far side of the bridge. It was Kallie’s favorite spot, and I hoped she didn’t come up for a visit. Penny was itching for a fight, and Kallie would likely give it to her.
“We just got a new vector from the convoy—which is named, get this, ‘Iron Lance’. Why does the military always use such lame names for shit?”
“Probably something Sinclair picked,” I muttered.
“Pardon?” Finn spoke up for the first time. “Why would she have named it?”
“Because…” I knew my crew would not be happy to hear this. I’d held off telling them, but I couldn’t any longer. “Major Commander Sinclair is running the show.”
My statement was met with groans of dismay. Even Penny joined in.
“Well, isn’t that just the shit,” she said. “That woman has cost Korinth more credit than anyone else in the DSA.”
<How are we going to run our op with her watching over our shoulders?> Finn asked a second later.
Kallie and I had brought both he and Tammy into the fold regarding our plan to board the Daedalus. Oln was still in the dark, but he’d been playing the altered combat sim so much, he could probably run the breach in his sleep at this point. The only wildcards were Penny and Sherry, but we’d take care of them once we got to the cores.
Based on the route Iron Lance planned to take through the occlusion, the Kerrigan would be able to ‘suffer a small engine failure’ and veer off course just long enough to grab the cores.
We’d hold off on breaching the Daedalus until that—and the cleanup of our two unwelcome guests—was complete.
Just so long as things don’t come apart at the seams before then.
“Oh, look at that!” Tammy said with a strange laugh. “We’re getting our own private escort till we meet up with the flotilla. It’s the Daedalus.”
<Is that someone’s idea of a joke?> Finn asked. <We can’t breach the ship yet. We can’t do it till we’re into the occlusion. We’ll be spotted out here for sure.>
<Relax,> I said. <Check the convoy’s assignments. The Daedalus is one of their picket ships. Makes perfect sense that they’d assign it to shepherd us.>
The statement spawned an idea and I turned it over, wondering if we could use that to our advantage later.
<Oh,> Finn sounded relieved. <That’s good. No way are we breaching this close to Delphi.>
<Don’t worry, not till the occlusion. And we’re still a day at sublight and three at FTL till we get there. So you can breathe easy.>
This time, Finn snorted aloud. <I’ll breathe easy when this is over and we’re all at some far-flung mining outpost, spending our money and talking about how we’ll never go back to Chal or Delphi.>
“Message from Commander Petrov of the Daedalus letting us know that they’ll shadow us on the way in, and instructing us not to change course,” Tammy announced. “You know, since I’m actually paying attention to comms.”
“I saw it.” I sent an acknowledgment and left the channel open in case the DSA cruiser wanted to send us any other directives.
For the next thirty minutes, nothing changed other than the position of dots on the forward holodisplay. The convoy steadily boosting away from Lothar, and us creeping toward their position. The Daedalus passed a few thousand kilometers over our bow and came about slowly, boosting to match our v, and then remained ten thousand kilometers astern.
It made me nervous to have a cruiser right on the Kerrigan’s ass, but that was going to be the norm for the next few weeks, so I knew I had to get used to it.
“I’m going to inspect the ship,” I said, rising from my seat. “Let me know if anything changes.”
I wandered the upper deck first, grabbing a snack in the galley before passing by the ladder shaft and lift. Aft of those were a few rooms we used for storage and maintenance equipment. At the very rear was the access hatch that led out onto the hull. It was also just under the dorsal cannon, and power conduits ran on either side, delivering power from the central superconductor batteries and reactors to the weapon.
Shield emitters were also mounted on either side of the ship’s dorsal ridge, and each of those had secondary batteries in closets accessible from the passage I was in. I took a look at them, verifying that their indicators matched the readouts on the shipnet.
Satisfied that everything was in order, I opened the door that led down a narrow access passage to the aft ladder shaft. From there, I climbed down to the main deck. The shaft had an exit on the narrow catwalk that ringed the main cargo, and I pulled out the hatch and stepped out.
I was welcomed by the sound of feet hitting the deck, and I leant over the railing, watching as Sherry completed another lap around the bay. She cut an impressive figure. Lean, but well-muscled, barely sweating after what had to be a dozen kilometers worth of running.
She stopped next to the DSA crates and walked in a circle for a minute before doing several sets of body-weight exercises. After that, she stretched, using a nearby crate to lean against or hold onto several times.
I knew that she’d spotted me watching her, and I didn’t care. It wasn’t her impressive figure that had my attention, but rather her proximity to the DSA cargo. Finn and Kallie had added their own tamper detection to the crates, and so far, nothing had been triggered, but it still made me uncomfortable.
I pushed off the railing and did a circuit around the catwalk, checking on several panels, ensuring that the ship’s systems were in order before reaching my starting point. I gave Sherry a final look—she was running again—and ducked back into the ladder shaft. I climbed down to the same level as the floor of the main bay and pulled open the door that led away from the bay and toward the maintenance passage that ran just under the skin of the hull.
The port and starboard maintenance passages granted access to the lateral shield emitters, as well as our primary and secondary comm arrays.
Ever since our guests had come aboard, Kallie, Finn, and I had taken turns inspecting the access panels for any signs that someone was tapping comms to send out external messages. No matter what s
he said, I just didn’t believe that Penny had boarded the Kerrigan without some sort of backup nearby.
I reached the panel for the port-side comm array and opened it up, looking at the readouts. Everything was nominal, and I almost closed it up, but decided to check calibration.
Flicking open a small panel on my wrist, I pulled out the short hard-Link cable tucked in there and connected it to the panel’s port. I could have made a wireless connection, but I was feeling especially paranoid today.
Once jacked in, I ran a full diagnostic, which matched the information on the readouts. Once that was complete, I set the array to run an active two-seventy sweep of space off our port side, storing a reading of all active RF signals.
<Tammy,> I called up to the bridge. <Give me a hundred-eighty-degree roll. Hold it for five, and then roll back.>
<You got it, boss.>
I didn’t feel a thing, but through the comm array, I could see the radio signals in space wheel about. When the ship stabilized, I tapped into the starboard array and performed an identical sweep. Once it was done, I pulled up known standard candles of RF noise: the beacons surrounding Lothar, the distant light of Paragon Prime, several points beyond the nebula, and a series of nearby navigation buoys.
One by one, I checked each source to ensure the port and starboard signals matched, using a variety of characteristics. Each one did, with minor differences that one would expect due to the movement of the ship and other local EM conditions, such as Lothar’s rotation and the stellar wind.
I was about to mark the data as passing when I decided to check the Daedalus’s beacon.
The data showed it to be identical. I did a second sweep and then waited for the ship to roll back. Once it had, I ran a port-side sweep and shook my head in disbelief. The data was identical.
There were two other arrays on each side of the ship, and a fifth on a tower just fore of the main cannon. I ran sweeps with them as well, looking at the signal that was detectable with each array, and found the same anomaly.
They all showed variances within statistical norms, save the Daedalus’s.
I dug in deeper, looking at data from nav buoys that three of the comm arrays could see at the same time.
Shit.
Each array showed small differences in the RF signals. I ran a calibration routine against a set of signals, adjusting each array and resetting their baselines. Then I did another sweep.
Double shit.
Simultaneous readings of the same sources showed discrepancies again. I could see one of the arrays disagreeing, but to have all three show variances that looked like perfectly random differences in data captured at a different time and place was unusual to say the least.
I reset all the arrays to their prior configurations and closed the panel.
<Hey, Finn, I’m bored. Want to join me for a run-through of the combat sim?>
<Uhh, sure, why not. Nothing going on up here.>
I messaged the pilot. <You have the bridge, Tammy.>
She responded with a laugh. <I always have the bridge, boss.>
<Smartass.>
Five minutes later, Finn and I were in one of the smaller forward holds where the full-sensory VR system was set up. Unlike more basic models, or simply using a neuro hookup for full immersion, this system made you feel like you were in the virtual reality.
Grav columns lifted players off the deck while still making it feel like there was a solid surface beneath one’s feet. Everything from air currents to surrounding smells matched the game’s environment. Even the weapons we held in our hands had a-grav systems to alter their weight and feel like their VR counterparts.
It was only a hair’s breadth below the level of equipment the DSA used to train their own soldiers: simulated combat honing real muscle memory and twitch reflexes.
Once in place with weapon in hand, I activated the simulation. The hold around me disappeared and was replaced with the deep black of interstellar space—well, as black as it got in the L.
Looking up, I saw a small shape hanging above my head, an irregular blob, glinting dimly in the L’s light. Our target, the DSS Abernathe, an eerily similar cruiser to the Daedalus.
I considered how the Daedalus was currently the same distance from the Kerrigan as the ship in the simulation.
Next to me, drifting toward the target on the same vector, was Finn. He looked serious, like we were actually preparing to hit a real target, and not just moving to a private location to have a conversation about a discrepancy in our arrays.
<So what’s the deal, Captain? I assume you didn’t pull me in to run a two-man drill on a ship that takes four to breach.>
<Perceptive of you,> I said with a respectful nod. <I just ran a calibration routine on our comm arrays.>
<Oh, I know, Tammy was bitching about it. She had to finesse things with our asymmetrical engine output.>
I waved a hand in dismissal. <She’s a big girl, she can manage it.>
<OK, I’ll go tell her that, see how she takes it.>
<Let’s focus, ‘kay? There’s an irregularity in the data.>
<Isn’t this Kallie’s domain?>
<Normally, yeah,> I nodded. <But with Penny sitting up there with you on the bridge, it sure would look like I had found something if I suddenly called on her to play a game after doing the calibration runs. Besides, our problem isn’t hardware, it’s software. And that’s your domain.>
I sent the data over, not pointing out the anomaly, curious to see if he’d spot it on his own.
<Damn,> he muttered. <The variances are too uniform. Too perfect.>
<Variances in what?> I asked, not expecting that answer.
<It’s just too clean. Usually there are spikes and dips from background events. Look at this reading from one of the nav buoys. A nearby ore hauler fired up its engines between the two scans. That should have caused significant signal attenuation, but when the second scan ran, the base data has that attenuation filtered out.>
<Oh…> I shook my head. <I didn’t consider that. I was going to point out how the Daedalus’s beacon data is one hundred percent identical on each array.>
<Sure,> Finn nodded as we drifted through space. <That’s the smoking gun, I saw it right off. I thought you wanted me to look for something deeper.>
<It means that there’s some sort of pre-processing filter in the data stream ahead of our processing units.>
<Hardware or software?>
I could see Finn purse his lips. <Well, it could be hardware, but they’d have to get it in all the arrays. Given the number of outfits Penny brought, I don’t see how she could have fit that much equipment in her bags.>
<It could have been Sherry, too, but I agree that it’s unlikely.>
<I’d previously scheduled a visual inspection of the forward NSAI processing cores today. They’re in the same closet as the bow comm array units. I’ll look things over then and see what we’re dealing with. Either way, it’s safe to say someone’s doing something bad on the ship.>
<Still,> I mused, hand to chin, <they can’t listen in on end-to-end encrypted comms.>
<No, but they’ll know who we’re talking to. More importantly, if they have a pre-processing filter in place, they can hide data from us. Either something important, or their own conversations.>
<Any chance it’s something Fledge left behind that we just didn’t spot?>
Finn shook his head. <No. Kallie and I ran more rigorous calibrations than this back at port. If this hack had been in place then, we would have seen it.>
<What if it was dormant then?> I countered.
<OK, that’s fair. Still, I’m more suspicious of the two criminals we have aboard now than the Intel guy we had a week ago.>
<Can’t fault you there. OK, let’s hit this ship and do a short assault before we wrap up.>
<I’m always game to shoot some pretend DSA soldiers.>
I couldn’t resist a
laugh. <Getting your bloodthirst on?>
<Maybe. I just want to stay alive when we do the real thing.>
<Fair enough. So do I.>
24
WHEELS WITHIN
I’d lost track of how many laps I’d done around the Kerrigan’s bay. It was in the hundreds at this point, a few done under the watchful eye of the ship’s captain.
Of course, it wasn’t the distance that mattered, it was time. Less about the time spent exercising, and more about time spent examining the crates.
Each time I rested against them, I deployed new microdrones and retrieved old ones, sampling everything I could think of, from old lading stickers to scuffs, dirt, even the type of paint for the markers and warnings.
It was a messy way to collect data, but it was giving me a bit of a picture. I’d narrowed down the manufacturer of the crates and a few places they’d been, plus places they hadn’t been. Because not all the crates were the same age and with the same history, I was looking for commonalities.
Granted, that assumed the crates all spent time together in the past. It could very well be that the first time they’d ended up in one place was in the Kerrigan’s hold. It was unlikely, but possible.
It wasn’t as though I had anything else to do. I’d made contact with Jacy through the ship’s comms, carefully hiding any trace that I’d accessed the system. She knew to hold back until we broke ranks with the convoy—which I expected not to happen until we were in the occlusion.
The other reason I was spending so much time running was because I couldn’t trust anyone on the ship. Not the crew, not Penny. If any of them figured out who I was, the next run would take me straight out the airlock.
A small voice in the back of my mind hinted that since my survival hinged on laying low, my effort to determine the origins of the cargo, and thereby postulate its contents, was a risky gamble to make.
But boredom won out. We were still three days from jump, and then it could be as long as a week till Captain Bremen brought us to the cores.
It was a bold move for him to make that pickup while hauling DSA cargo in a military convoy. He didn’t seem fazed by it, though, which meant he was used to operating outside the law.