Linton Chronicles - Maia
06 Apr 2018Andrew Linton
Previously at Lodestar Laboratory14Apr3304, Obsidian Orbital, Maia
It's my first time taking a Corvette into Obsidian Orbital. The access corridor suddenly looks rather small. I'm given pad 24 so I roll over 180 degrees to put the green lights to port. Once inside the docking bay, I realise I'm going too fast and decide to lower the landing gear to check my speed. The trouble is, the Corvette controls are rigged differently from the Asp and instead of deploying the gear I tap boost. I'm suddenly examining the back wall of the station in minute detail. The shields on the Corvette hold up nicely but there's damage to the starport that I'll have to pay for.
close inspection of the Orbital's back wall
After the 'reverse thrust of shame', which I'm sure is amusing everyone greatly, I get the ship down on the pad. I grab the PDA and head out to Vinny's workshop.
Vinny Ayr, quantum mechanic and electronics wizard, is the person I go to when things get too technical for me. He runs traces on comms when it's needed for a case; he can recover deleted data off DNA drives, and he knows how to fix corrupt firmware that's been damaged in deep space.
He's hunched over his bench when I enter the workshop; he never seems to stop working and I haven't seen him wearing anything other than his ancient, solder-blobbed, resin-stained, white lab coat, even when we've gone for a celebratory drink after a case. He's five years younger than me, slightly built with tangled black hair that he never washes. His face is thin though his nose is large, his teeth are crooked and the lenses in his glasses look like he's taken them from an old microscope. I feel handsome in his company.
He turns to greet me and I see that the left half of his face is red and inflamed with second degree burns. His left eye is shut.
"Thargoids do that?" I ask. "It's definitely an improvement."
He grins, but I can see it makes him wince and I'm sorry I was so flippant. He takes a painkiller.
"Andy, long time. Got something interesting for me?"
That's what I like about Vinny; straight to the point; no smalltalk.
"I have this," I say, tossing the PDA to him. "It's got some strange encryption on it; wondered if you could hack it for me."
His good eye lights up. He turns the device over and round in his hands.
"It's clearly home-made, a one-off; where did you get it?"
I give him as much as he needs to know but he's hardly listening, he's so busy with his examination of the box.
"Battery's dead," he says, reaching for a power supply and plugging it in. The screen bursts into life and there's a series of notification pings. There are three new messages in the inbox.
"Whoa! They weren't there when I found it. See what I mean about the encryption? What do you make of it?"
messages two to four
He has a glint in his eye that I've seen before which means he's intrigued.
"Can't say just yet, but what I will say is this, it's not high-end military encryption, that would be pure binary and much harder to crack. No, this is the work of an enthusiastic amateur, and that's what I like about it; it means we're in with a chance of decrypting it."
"I wouldn't know where to start," I confess.
Vinny likes to be the technical authority; it gives him some power over me. I don't mind, it gets the job done.
"There's clearly an alphabet here, so one of the things I'll do is look at letter frequencies; you know, the vowels and some consonants are more common than others and sometimes looking at how frequently different symbols appear is a way in. You do need enough cryptotext to do this, though, and I will assume that it's English. There might be some further encryption involved; we have to wait and see."
He sees my eyes glazing over and adds, "Leave it with me; I'll let you know when I've got something."
*
It's time for my meeting with the Vice President of the Pleiades Resource Enterprise, so I head over to the Flight Operations Department, using a starport layout graphic to guide me; I haven't been to the restricted access areas on Obsidian Orbital before.
Flight Ops is busy; some people are hurrying through, others are chatting in groups. It's easy to identify people by their clothing. The station-based staff are in smart, mid-grey uniforms, their rank denoted by the colour of the thin ribbon displayed on the chest, just above the heart.
The pilots responsible for security within the no-fire zone wear black flight-suits and sport standard issue haircuts – close clipped with a maximum guide comb size of one. The longer-range system defence commanders are freer to choose from a number of different outfits, but always in shades of grey.
A group of black-suited pilots, all male, surround two flight controllers, both female, circling them like they were at work, providing the nest of vipers within which the station shelters. I suspect their motives have nothing to do with protection.
I see another cluster of people gossiping close to the reception desk. They seem to take it in turns to watch me as I approach. The occasional giggle and the smirking are clearly aimed at me.
One of the viper pilots breaks away in mid-pickup-line and grabs my arm. I realise it's Eric Cobham and fear grips me.
He's squeezing my arm hard as he leans in and says quietly, "Remember what I said; stop looking for Dieter Wegener."
I know he won't try anything here, so I yank my arm free and face up to him.
"Who do you work for, Cobham?"
He's not even remotely bothered that I know his name. He smirks and says, "For the security services, of course; don't you see the uniform?"
I carry on across the foyer.
"Would you like to pay for the station repairs while you're here, Commander Linton?" the receptionist asks condescendingly, like he's ever flown anything bigger than a Hauler. Now I understand the mockery and the giggling. I flew in like a rookie, or the way a smuggler might. I'm lucky they're not taking my ship apart looking for illegal salvage. I see there's no way to save face.
"Just bill me in the usual way," I say, and realise that makes it sound like crashing into stations is something I do a lot. I change the subject. "I'm here to see Rafaela Burgess."
"The meeting room is through the door next to the toilets. I'll unlock when you're ready to go through."
I stand by the door and the locking bolts withdraw. The corridor before me is in stark contrast to the brightly-lit and bustling reception. The walls and ceiling are black. Thin strips of pale blue light at foot level act as guides while overhead dim panels flicker into life as I pass beneath them and then extinguish.
The corridor is not long, no more than thirty metres. At the end is what appears to be an elevator. As I stop in front of it a security panel lights up. It's a VRFD system from VeRiFieD Corp and comprises four identification methods.
V is for voice; I say my name.
R is for retina; I look into the eye-level scanner.
F is for fingerprint; I place my right index finger on the pad provided.
D is for DNA; I feel the quick stab to my finger as a sample of blood is taken.
Ten seconds later I hear, "Identity verified by the VeRiFieD Corporation. Good day, Commander Linton."
The elevator door whooshes rapidly upwards. Immediately afterwards I get the announcement, "Door closing in three…two…"
I throw myself into the compartment as the door slams shut. There are no buttons to press and the elevator moves sideways with a jolt. To say that security is tight is an understatement. It makes me nervous; I even wonder if the door at the end of the ride will open directly into space and I'm the subject of an elaborate con that aims to rid the Pleiades of its trash.
But no, the door opens to a conference room. The walls are crowded with monitors. Down one side they show: the galaxy, the Maia system, live feeds from the planetary outposts, and scrolling Galnet news. Down the other side are live streams from ongoing incidents within the system: fighting at the Nav Beacon, interdictions in progress, and other responses to crime.
There are three people sitting at the conference table. At the head is Rafaela Burgess and to her right is Cody Ratliff, Governor of the Merope Expeditionary Fleet.
I know them well and I'm allied to both their factions, having run plenty of missions for them in the past. The man sitting opposite Ratliff I recognise as the agent who was following Eva Wegener. I nod to Ratliff and sit next to him.
"Welcome to the brains of the Obsidian Orbital operation," Burgess says.
"I see it more as the beating heart," Ratliff says, seemingly obliged to contradict. It's all part of the competition between factions.
"More like we're in the bowels of the starport," I chip in, and look across at the agent. "Anything?"
"I don't think you know Pnin Re," Burgess says. "He works for our insurance company and is on secondment to us,"
"I've seen him around," I say. "What's this about, Rafaela?"
"Sure; this last few weeks we've been suffering dramatic losses of cargo."
"Pirates?"
"We don't know," Ratliff says. "You see, the ships disappear. Whole wings transporting thousands of tonnes of cargo have simply gone missing without trace."
"Except for one," Burgess says, "and that was Satnav Patel. He made it back to Maia with no shields and one percent hull. Sadly, he died after crash-landing at Darnielle's Progress, his home port."
"But not before I could speak to him," Re says. "He said he was hauling synthetic fabrics out of Darnielle and was travelling somewhere around the border between Aries Dark Sector and Hyades Sector when he was hyperdicted."
"So, Thargoids," I say.
"No, not Thargoids, not exactly," Re continues. "When he dropped into normal space, Patel couldn't believe what he saw. Sure, there was a Cyclops there but there was also a fleet carrier and dozens of other ships - combat and trading - and the Cyclops wasn't paying them any attention."
"What we think," Burgess says, "is that a pirate gang has managed to commandeer a Thargoid ship and they're using its hyperdiction technology to pull our trading ships out of witchspace."
I turn to Re.
"Why were you following Eva Wegener? I saw you in The Heat Sink."
"It was something Satnav Patel said. It was a name carelessly dropped into voice comms while he was struggling to get away. It seems that a wing of transport ships was hyperdicted at the same time as him. They were carrying cargoes more valuable than synthetic fabrics, so they bore the brunt of the attack. The pirates systematically destroyed the wing and turned their attention on Patel. By this time he had ejected his cargo and was already charging his frameshift. Like I said, he was down to one percent hull when he escaped."
"And the name was...Dieter Wegener?" I ask.
"Exactly so, and that's why I was trailing his wife - trying to find out something about him."
"It seems that you're ahead of us in that," Burgess says, "and that's why we want to recruit you to find Dieter Wegener, and either confirm or disprove what we think is happening."
I have no objection to being paid twice for the same work, so I readily agree.