Linton Chronicles - En Route to The Gnosis
09 Apr 2018Andrew Linton
The story so far14Feb3304, Obsidian Orbital
I plot the route to the Vela Dark Region where The Gnosis is currently based and I find that it's sixty-seven jumps in the Corvette. I consider transferring my fifty-lightyear Asp from Stargazer, cutting the trip to twenty jumps, but I'm getting used to the power and the comfort of the bigger ship. Anyway, I see this journey as an opportunity to think and reflect on the case. Many is the time that the answer to a puzzle has come during sleep or unexpectedly while doing something relatively mindless.
First, though, I need to check in with Vinny.
"Any progress?"
He gives me that wry smile that comes from years of my pressuring him to get results.
"Give me a break; I've only had this box for a couple of hours."
"And...any progress?"
"Actually, yes. It looks to me like what we have here is a variant of an autocrypt system."
"Autocrypt? Will I understand the explanation?"
He tells me anyway.
"At the heart there's a Playfair cipher where a keyword is used to construct a matrix which is used to transpose pairs of letters in the plaintext."
He's losing me already.
"With the autocrypt, the keyword is embedded in the text so the message carries everything that's needed to decrypt it. It's quite neat, actually."
"So you've decoded the messages?"
Vinny huffs and puffs.
"I wish! I may have some of the symbols and understand how the messages are encoded, but I still don't know the keyword, and there may be a different keyword in each message. I'll get there, though."
I know that Vinny thrives on hard work, which is just my excuse for piling more on to him.
"There's something else I need you to do. There's an officer in the security services, name of Cobham, works sometimes in Advanced Tactical Response. I want you to look into his financials, and find out who he talks to, who he runs with."
"Got it. Anything else?"
"Nope, that's it. I'll be in space for several hours but send me anything you have straightaway."
*
It takes me seven jumps to leave the Pleiades Sector behind and I start to see signal sources that are not Thargoid in nature. I have no intention of engaging the aliens, especially when the threat level is seven or eight.
I get into the rhythm of jumping and scanning and my mind is freed up to consider the facts of the case.
Fact: I saw Wegener's family being kidnapped. To me that means ransom, slavery, or leverage. Given that Wegener himself has disappeared, or at least his sister hasn't heard from him, this suggests that he's been taken as well and whoever has him is holding his family hostage to coerce him into doing something. Of course, he might be incommunicado on The Gnosis; their top secret projects are often run with a communications blackout. I'll find out when I get there.
Fact: Trading ships are being hyperdicted between the Pleiades and the bubble and, according to Satnav Patel's dying words, a pirate gang is at the heart of these activities. Hyperdiction means pulling ships out of witchspace and Dieter Wegener is an expert on the physics of witchspace and what he calls hyperwitchspace. The fact that his name was overheard by Patel suggests that he's involved with the gang, but probably under duress.
Fact: Eric Cobham and Maria Lindsey attacked me on Stargazer with a warning to stop looking for Wegener. I need to find out who they're working for. Then I remember something Falco Bryce said about Cobham forcing him to put a listening device on Syn Wakeman's ship which forwarded her scans somewhere. I should ask Vinny to find out where the data go. I know that Syn scans manifests; what if Defence Force pilots like Cobham and Lindsey are doing the same? They are ideally placed to scan outbound trading ships and tell the hyperdiction gang what to expect?
I realise a lot of this is pure speculation but it does seem to offer a coherent explanation.
*
After thirty jumps, I get a message from Vinny.
I go to the first attachment and look at the messages that Dieter Wegener sent his wife.
| 14Feb3304 | lena if you are reading this then the first test of the vspace modulator has been successful I will use it to send you messages that only you can read give my love to klaus and elke |
| 15Feb3304 | been invited to work with canonn interstallar research going to the gnosis tomorrow wish me luck it has been fun working on stargazer but i need to move on to greater challenges |
| 16Feb3304 | we are not allowed to send message from the gnosis everything is top secret here however i see no harm in sending you messages using the vspace modulator so tune in and i will keep you informed |
| 19Feb3304 | progressing at a fantastic pace the equipment here is first rate and they give me anything i want i really do think i will crack the details of how the thargoids use hyperwitchspace then it is a small matter of building some countermeasures |
There's nothing new or particularly interesting here - other than the rather astounding fact that Wegener has invented a wholly new way of communicating across galactic space. As I thought, Wegener was not allowed conventional external communications on The Gnosis, however, I no longer think I will find him there.
Next, I open the second attachment and see it's another message sent using the v-space modulator, but I think it wouldn't be to his wife if he knew she were being held hostage. I'll have to wait for Vinny to work his magic to find out what the message says and to whom it is addressed.
I'm making fairly leisurely progress, scanning quite a few stars as I go. This is mainly because I discovered at Obsidian Orbital that maintenance costs on the Corvette are about the same as the cost of a Sidewinder or Eagle - per trip. Picking up some decent cartographics should cover this.
I'm seeing plenty of signal sources out this way: large and small survey caches, degraded and encoded emissions, and then...a distress signal. I feel honour-bound to check it out. I don't have fuel transfer or repair limpets but maybe there's something I can do.
I drop into normal space and there's a Keelback and its ship-launched fighter doing their best to keep at bay a wing of marauders. The most powerful ship is a Fer-de-Lance which is supported by two Eagles and a Type-7 to sweep up the loot. The Keelback is taking a battering from the FDL and then I see the fighter explode and the Keelback's on its own - except I'm here.
Although I'm triple elite my combat skills are very rusty. I deploy hardpoints and check the fire groups. I have an efficient 4A beam laser, five engineered multi-cannons, and a seeker missile rack. I put power into weapons then discover that the Flight Assist switch isn't where I expect it and the throttle is configured for forward flight only. This is less than ideal.
The FDL turns its attention on me while the rest of the wing continue the attack on the Keelback. I'm being easily outmanoeuvred and I'm only getting in the occasional burst of laser fire. I'm feeling a bit flustered when, from behind me, I hear:
"Need some help?"
I spin round to see Pnin Re making his way to a co-pilot's chair. He straps his muscular body into the seat and takes control of the weapons.
"What the...where did you come from?"
Until now he's always looked rather serious to me but now he grins and says, "The Corvette's a big ship; plenty of places to hide. VP Burgess thought you might need some help and I've handled plenty of 'vettes before in my naval career."
Without any further comment he starts to melt the shields on the FDL and then targets the power plant.
With the Fer-de-Lance gone the other pirates make their escape, discretion and valour and suchlike, leaving the Keelback to lick its wounds and continue its journey.
"Do you want to get me up to speed?" Re says and, although I normally prefer to work alone, I share with him what I know.
We're thinking things over when another message comes in from Vinny.
I insert the relevant blanks and have the message:
URGENT URGENT URGENT IF ANYONE IS READING THIS TELL WANG SHU TO BRING THE BLACK BOX SYN ON STARGAZER KNOWS WHERE PLEASE SAVE US
"This means that Wegener and his family are being held together somewhere," I suggest.
"Because of the 'SAVE US'. What's this black box, though?"
"I think I have the black box that the message refers to; it was centre-stage in his crowdfunding video. Synthia Wakeman, who lives on the Stargazer asteroid base, showed me where it was on an asteroid near the station."
"Know anyone called Wang Shu?" Re asks.
"I don't and, what's more, I don't know where to take the box or how it will help Wegener."
"Maybe he's somewhere in the Hyades Sector; that's where the ships are disappearing and he used HYADES to encrypt his message."
"You could be right," I say. I'm not sharing my fee with you, though.
We continue the journey to the Vela Dark Region and twenty-five jumps later we're almost there.