Minerva's Dirty Secret: A Message
23 Jan 2018Mack Winston
PREVIOUSLY...1. The Contract
2. Need To Know
3. Purple
M7 Sector VZ-U b4-2 (deep space)
Gutamaya Imperial Cutter, "Alan Mathison Turing"
Distance to Sol: 870.88 ly
Distance to Colonia: 21,305.26 ly
Turning your back on the bubble. Mack always felt it meant something, but he could never quite figure out what, other than a rather nebulous emotion. He'd felt it on previous journeys to Colonia, and he felt it keenly now - right at the beginning of a four month expedition that would take them fifty thousand light years from Sol. There wasn't much to do on this leg of the trip, they were no more than simple travellers in this well-explored part of the galaxy, and so Cal Vazquez and Mack Winston had decided to simply make good progress, barely looking at the system map of each star that went by. The real charting mission wouldn't start until after Waypoint 1.
Mack was at the helm, already into a steady rhythm of "jonking" - the act of merely firing the discovery scanner at each system and immediately jumping to the next. To jonk, the new verb of the 34th century explorer, had been coined shortly after the mass production of the modern frameshift drive and discovery scanner. It had by now been incorporated into the Oxford English Dictionary, the ancient tome of daily language.
Cal was still going through the information Joe Kemper had delivered to them, the details of the job Norman wanted them to do.
"Mack, he's left us a message"
"Norman?"
"Yeah, Norman. I'll send it over"
The message began to play on both their consoles. A small holo image of Norman Mosser talking to the camera. The monologue began. Norman had obviously practised his short speech.
First, I apologise for not asking you to do this job myself. The Empire only just tolerates me, and leaving Capitol could gain me attention I really don't want. So I apologise in advance for sending Joe Kemper, and I apologise for his undoubtedly bad manners when he delivered you my request and the data. I've explained that I trust you, and I have confidence in you. I'm afraid Joe thinks I'm misguided.
Norman smiled conspiratorially, and moved closer to the camera, the holo image now looking slightly bizarre as it showed only the top half of his body.
Seriously, my continued well-being, and those of a few others depends on you now. I'm sorry to burden you both with this, but we are where we are. You must find my ship, and its data core. You also must destroy the ship, if anything destroying it is more important than retrieving the data core. The data is valuable to me, but more valuable is that it doesn't fall into the hands of my adversaries. The ship itself is enough ammunition for my adversaries. The ship and the data... Norman shook his head ...the ship and the data together, if discovered, would be a catastrophe... good luck in your endeavour, I have hopefully provided sufficient information in the data pack that finding the ship will be more straightforward than it will be for my enemies...
"He sounds very contrite," Cal observed.
"Yeah, it's uncharacteristic. My father's journal paints a picture of someone irritatingly confident. My one meeting with him also left that impression"
"And destroying the ship? We have no weapons apart from the fighter, and what's it going to do with an ancient Panther Clipper? It'll still be there afterwards just sliced up into pieces by the beam laser, which doesn't strike me as adequate"
"Yeah, it's a problem. It's going to take a pretty big bomb to erase one of those things. Galpedia says the Panther Clipper was larger than a Lakon Type 9"
"We can hardly turn back to the bubble, if anyone's watching what we're up to, then it's going to be a bit of a bloody give-away, and in any case, where are we going to get something like that from?"
Mack brought up the galaxy map.
"There is one option," he said, highlighting a system. "Observation post Epsilon, in the Trifid Nebula. It's a military installation"
"Whose?"
"Says it's independent, but I bet they have demolition munitions there. Take a look..."
The galaxy map dissolved, and the holo of the local system appeared, zooming into the station. An asteroid base, embedded in the rings of a gas giant.
"How did they hollow out that asteroid? Demolition munitions."
"You think they will sell them to us?"
"Absolutely not. Those things are strictly controlled", Mack replied, looking at Cal expectantly. "How do you fancy stealing one?"
Cal looked back at Mack, his eyes narrowing.
"Stealing, from a military installation," he said quietly, shaking his head.
"It's a terrible idea, I know"
"Let's do it"