M. Planck - The Kassa Gambit

“I’m carrying no cargo. Give me a vector that wastes less time in-system.”

Cursing, she saw that the machines on Monterey had already taken that into account.

It was harder to not cry when she didn’t have anything to do.

Ten minutes, and they were out of the atmosphere. It seemed like hours. How long had it seemed for Garcia?

A light on her console. Another ship, making contact. She sat, paralyzed with fear, unable to respond.

The console relayed the message anyway.

“This is the Altair patrol boat Launceston, hailing the Ulysses . Acknowledge, please.” Captain Stanton’s voice washed over her like the dregs of an incomprehensible dream. Did he follow her around from disaster to disaster, like some tardy herald of woe?

“This is the Ulysses, ” she answered, feeling unreal. “Captain Falling speaking.”

“May we ask if Altair is on your current itinerary, Captain?”

It was the kind of question that had only one answer.

“I think we could arrange that, Captain. Is there something you’d like us to deliver?”

“We have a surveying report we’d like to send back. Nothing exciting, but regulations are regulations. You can collect a moderate payment for it, of course.” The report would be a cryptographically sealed data pod. Fleet vessels scattered these little pods all over the local sector. Theoretically it was a backup system, in case the ship in question disappeared. Since no Fleet vessel had ever disappeared, Prudence was pretty sure they used the capsules as a way to smoke out who could be trusted and who couldn’t. She’d never been tempted to crack one of the pods, since she was positive it would just contain a note that said something pithy like “Espionage doesn’t pay.”

“We’d be happy to oblige you. Can you meet us at the halfway point?” They would have to match velocities to do a physical exchange. If they did it halfway to the node, she could still pick up enough velocity to make the trip on the other side in a reasonable amount of time.

“Negative, Captain. We’re not at the Solistar node. We just came over from X785-C844.”

The dead node. The one that led to Kassa. Going that way would get them back to Altair in one less hop. She had just enough fuel to get there, running without cargo.

“Captain … was it quiet over there?”

“Dead as a doornail. That’s why they call them dead nodes.” Stanton’s voice was not suited to mockery. Then she realized he wasn’t mocking. He knew, and he knew she knew, there was reason to suspect what others took for granted. They had both been at Kassa.

There were monsters hiding in the dark places, after all.

“Captain Stanton, have you cleared,” she beat at her screen, pulling up a node-chart, “X784-D12?”

“Where? Oh, you mean the inward link?” Inward was an arbitrary designation that meant “toward home.” It wasn’t the kind of term tramp freighters used. “Yes, we came from there. If you wanted to go to Kassa, it would be a short trip.”

“That suits our plans perfectly, Captain Stanton. I’m contacting Traffic Control now and informing them of our course change. We hadn’t considered it before, because of the risk. But if you say it’s safe, then we can shave a hop off our trip.”

They were oh-so-careful to talk in generalities, to explain everything in simple terms. It was a tight comm beam, and encrypted to standard privacy, but both of them were assuming they were being overheard.

“We can do better than merely say it’s safe, Captain Falling. Our mission takes us back the same way, so we can go through with you, if you’d like.”

Would she like to be escorted by a fusion-powered warship? Would a girl like to be escorted to the dance by the captain of the football team? “That would be very generous, Captain.”

“I’m sending you the latest orbital data, for both nodes. Pick your optimal transit velocity, Captain. We’ll match you.”

That was potentially a lot of fuel Stanton was willing to expend to make her life convenient. She hoped it was merely because he was trying to impress her, like lonely men in deep space often did, and not because he was worried about something dire.

Monterey Traffic Control was not happy. The machines beeped and complained, threatening her with fines for filing false course information. She brushed them off. Free navigation was still the law.

There was a pause in the warnings, and then they went away. That might mean that a human being had taken charge, or it might mean the machines had exhausted their limited threats.

A human being. There was one down there right now, on the planet, making this all possible. She put her hands to her eyes, to hold back the feelings that poured through her.

“Anything?” Kyle asked softly, from the entrance to the bridge. She didn’t know how long he had been standing there.

“No.” No news was good news.

“Remarkable that the Launceston showed up,” Kyle mused. “Nice to see an old friend.”

“They’re not my friends.”

Kyle grinned. She could tell by the sound of his voice. “One thing I can tell you after my two weeks on the Launceston is that Stanton is as anti-League as it is possible to be, and still hold a commission in Fleet. He’s a friend to both of us.”

“Why are they here, Kyle?” It was too suspicious to let go of.

“For the same reason we are, Prudence. Fleet isn’t stupid. There are too many threads pointing this way. Stanton is out here looking for clues.”

Stanton came back on the line. “Captain Falling, we’ve examined your course, and we feel it would be best to handle the delivery on the other side of the node, if that’s acceptable to you.”

Apparently Stanton found Monterey system as unpleasant as she did. She doubted his opinion would be improved by learning that the planet was crawling with genocidal clones.

“Of course, Captain. We’ll see you on the other side, then.”

“Acknowledged, Ulysses . We’ll match with you after exit, while you’re doing your cross-system flight. Give you more time to adapt, if there are any problems. Regulations require commercial vessels to try and avoid course corrections during node approaches.”

“Understood, Launceston .” Stanton and his regulations. For once she appreciated them, knowing how handy they might be in the next few hours.

An hour passed. Then two. After the third hour Prudence began to consider nominating Garcia for sainthood.

The comm channel lit up again.

“ Ulysses, this is Monterey Traffic Control. We would like you to return to the spaceport to answer some questions.”

A human voice, but not recognizable as Dejae’s. Traffic Control didn’t stint on its filters. The monks on Monterey had been concealing their identity for a very long time.

“I’m terribly sorry.” She was, but not for them. For Garcia. “We’ve already passed turnaround. We can’t abort now. It’s not physically possible.” Garcia had bought them the time they needed.

“We understand that. However, this is a serious matter. We are dispatching a patrol boat to follow you through the node. We require that you reverse velocity on the other side, and return with the vessel.”

“I don’t think I can. I’ve already plotted a vector through the next node, and my current velocity presumes making that hop.” She’d been running on maximum acceleration since liftoff. They would streak across X785 like a meteorite, unable to stop before the next node even if they wanted to. There was no margin of error. She was trusting the orbital data from the Launceston with their lives.

“Our vessel is equipped with grappling lines and fusion power. It will assist you with velocity management.”