The Eridani Convergence (Carson & Roberts Archeological Adventures in T-Space Book 3) Page 12

  “More flexible than I’d like. We can chat while you eat, I was hanging here hoping to make contact.”

  “With me? Have you been coming here every night?”

  “Not quite. I guessed Ducayne would send someone and I guesstimated the time frame, but there’s another contact I need to make.” “By the way, that Queen of Diamonds was inspired. I had no clue who to expect, but Quentin likes his little jokes.”

  His use of Quentin reassured Jackie; she hadn’t mentioned that name. “Is this in relation to the pickup I’m here for?”

  “Yes. I expected to have the package in hand before now, but, ah, complications arose.”

  “Do you have an ETA?”

  “That’s one of the complications.”

  Just then her meal arrived. Burnside ordered a coffee. He’d already eaten, and didn’t want to stay much longer.

  “I have a couple of other places to check for my other contact. Are you staying here at the hotel?”

  “No, aboard my ship at the spaceport.”

  “Would you mind if I came by later? To talk, that is. The situation here merits discussion but I’d rather it was somewhere more private.”

  Roberts thought about it briefly. She wasn’t worried about Burnside, as a charter pilot her ship had systems which could quickly deal with unruly passengers—or potential hijackers—and in a hurry if needed. But if someone was tailing him . . . well, she’d probably burned that bridge already. “Okay. It’s the Sophie, a Sapphire. Shouldn’t be too hard to find.”

  “No. All right then, I’ll be by late this evening. If you don’t hear from me by tomorrow—” he paused, considering “—did Ducayne give you any other instructions?”

  “No. I guess he didn’t think there’d be problem, or he thought I could handle it if there was.”

  “He’s probably right, but if you don’t hear from me by tomorrow noon, check his message for a hidden attachment.”

  “Check for . . . ? There was nothing else.”

  “You might be surprised. Could be timed to reveal itself after you arrived here. Or there’s nothing. Anyway, I’ll contact you by then.”

  As far as Jackie knew, there was no way to hide, or time-delay, an attachment using standard messaging software. However, ‘standard’ was a term that rarely applied within Ducayne’s organization. “Got it. Noon tomorrow. I don’t suppose there’s any way to reach you?”

  “Sorry, no, best not. I’ll be in touch, probably tonight.” With that he finished his coffee and stood up. “All right, Diamond Lady, until later then.” He put a hand on her shoulder and leaned forward, whispering “let’s make this look good” in her ear before kissing her cheek like an old friend.

  She paused but a fraction of a second before rising slightly from her chair and kissing his cheek in return. “Later, Jack.”

  As he turned and left, she sat back down and picked up her fork. She held it a while, paying no attention to her food, trying to decide how she felt about the whole situation. It was certainly a change from the usual—hopefully—boredom of interstellar space. I wonder what Carson is up to? she wondered. Then: And where did that come from?

  CHAPTER 27: APPROACHING CONVERGENCE

  Carson

  Deep space, approaching 82 Eridani

  CARSON SNAPPED AWAKE. The interior of the pod was dimly lit, and he was still weightless. It didn’t work!

  Then he noticed the feeding tube on the little mechanical arm in front of his face, and how weak and hungry he felt. The screen in front of him lit up, with text on it. It took him a moment to focus on the words, and meanwhile a soft voice came from a speaker somewhere in the pod. “You have reached your destination. Please drink some nutrient.”

  Reaching the feeding tube was relatively easy, he didn’t have to lift the weight of his head against gravity. He took a sip. The fluid had a slight flavor of salty orange, and sweet, with a hint of savory aftertaste. It would never be a popular soft drink, but it did the job. He took a deeper swig. Might not be bad with a little vodka and ice, Carson thought. Another swig. Either the beverage or something the pod was putting in his breathing air worked quickly, he was already feeling stronger and more alert. The stuff would make a pretty good hangover cure, too.

  Okay, let’s see what’s up. “Status report,” he said. The pod’s computer would be linked with the ship’s—or rather torpedo’s—computer, and both would take basic voice commands.

  “We are in the outer reaches of the 82 Eridani system. We have dropped out of warp for position fixes. All systems are nominal.”

  ‘Nominal’. That was a relief. “Thank you. How long to Tanith?”

  “I am still obtaining a precise position and velocity fix. Impossible to state at this time.”

  “Approximation to the hour is fine.” Stupid computer.

  “Approximately six hours to entry.”

  Six hours in this tube? “Why waken me so early?”

  “A minimum of four hours normal sleep is recommended after waking from hibernation before activity.”

  “You woke me up to tell me to go to sleep?”

  “That is correct.”

  Irony was lost on this computer. But Carson had to admit he did feel strangely tired, considering he had been asleep—well, technically in a coma—for the past week. “All right, wake me in four hours.”

  “Affirmative.”

  One of the valuable skills Carson had learned in the army was how to go to sleep quickly. Part of that, at least for Carson, was to have a wake-up plan. There was something he would need to do.

  “Computer, can you establish a stealth radio link with Captain Roberts and/or the Sophie?”

  “By stealth radio link, do you mean one not using normal radio channels?”

  “Yes.”

  “We are out of range for such contact, even if Captain Roberts and/or the Sophie are equipped with the correct equipment.”

  Of course we are. “But if the Sophie has it and we’re within range?”

  “Yes.”

  “Fine, that’s all.” Carson wondered if it was just him, or if this ship’s computer was particularly obtuse. Whatever. He closed his eyes and dropped off to sleep for the next few hours.

  CHAPTER 28: AN UNEXPECTED CALLER

  Roberts

  Aboard the Sophie

  PING-PING. JACKIE ROBERTS lay asleep in her small cabin aboard ship. Ping-ping. She always slept more soundly when on-planet, without the constant low whirr of life-support fans and power system pumps. Ping-ping! The insistent chime of the comm system finally broke into her consciousness. Ping-ping! PING-PI— Roberts slapped a hand down on the comm button.

  “This is the Sophie. Who is hailing?” As she came wider awake, she realized the signal was coming in over the suit-to-ship channel. What the . . . ?

  “Sophie, this is Jordan Burnside. I’ll be there in two minutes. Permission to come aboard?”

  “Uh, what? Ah, roger that. Affirmative.” She could ask questions when he got here. It occurred to her that Burnside might be using the suit channel to avoid eavesdroppers. It was unlikely anyone would be listening on those frequencies here planet-side, and by default the comms would be encrypted to a specific ship’s ID. How had Burnside gotten hold of that? Ducayne.

  She rolled out of her bunk and pulled on her ship-suit. Another change planet-side; in space she’d sleep in it, often as not. Shaking her head to help clear it—she should have avoided the wine at dinner—she called out “Sophie! Coffee!” It was a sign of how tired she was; she almost never used the Sophie’s voice interface. She’d heard too many stories of solo captains who started developing weird relationships with their vehicles because it was the only verbal interaction they had for days or weeks at a time. She didn’t need that. Sure, she loved her ship, but not that way. In the end it was just a machine.

  As she reached the galley to get her coffee, the perimeter warning sounded and then came a thumping at the main hatch. One of these days I should put in a doorbell, she thou
ght, and clicked the selector on the galley screen to view the hatch camera image. It was Burnside. She keyed the control to open the outer hatch, then shut it again as he entered, leaving him locked in the airlock.

  There was another thump, this time on the inner hatch, then Burnside found the intercom button and his voice came. “Captain Roberts? It’s Burnside, I’m alone. Can I come in?”

  Jackie had walked forward to the hatch and palmed it open. “Welcome aboard. Not quite the timing I was expecting, it’s what, three AM?”

  “Sorry about that. Hazard of the job. Is that coffee? I’d love some.”

  “All right, come on back to the galley,” she said, gesturing the way. “So, this couldn’t wait until morning?”

  “Wanted to make sure I got here before noon.”

  “The days aren’t that short here.” She handed him coffee. “Have a seat, I think I need some explanations.”

  Burnside winced as he sat down. Under the galley lights he seemed a bit pale. “Sure, what—” he gasped and held a hand to his side “—what did you want to know?”

  “Are you all right?” She looked him over. His dark shirt made it hard to tell, but his hand was red where he’d pressed it against himself. “Are you bleeding?”

  “Probably. It’s nothing.” The last was through gritted teeth.

  Jackie got up and went over to him. “I’ll be the judge of that. Let me see.” She pulled his hand away. The shirt was wet. Red fluid dripped from it onto the deck. Blood.

  She began to lift his shirt up.

  “No, really—”

  She slapped his hand away. “You’re on my ship, you’ll do as your told.” She continued to pull up the shirt, but it was stuck to the wound. “Did you put quick-clot on it?”

  “Uh, yeah.”

  “You’re not supposed to do that through clothing.”

  “I was in a hurry.”

  “Let’s get you to the traumapod. What happened?”

  “I don’t need a ’pod. A bandage and I’ll be fine. Maybe a staple or some wound glue.”

  “The pod can do that for you. Clean the wound, too.”

  She looked at it as best she could while helping him to the med-bay. There was a several-centimeter gash in the shirt, not noticed at first because the clotting agent holding it to his skin. The blood loss didn’t look serious, it didn’t look like the abdominal wall had been punctured.

  “Were you shot, or is that a knife wound?”

  “Would you believe I scraped it climbing over the spaceport fence?”

  “No.” She thumbed a switch on the traumapod and the bed slid out. “Lie down.”

  “I can’t stay.”

  “Let it check you out. If it’s only a scratch the pod will clean it up and bandage it better than I could. If your abdomen did get punctured, you need to be in there, stat. That’s an order.”

  “I’m not crew.”

  “One more word and I’ll have the anti-hijack system knock you out. That’s a lot less comfortable than the traumapod anesthetic.”

  “All right. Leave me conscious. I need to fill you in.”

  “Done. Now lie down.”

  As he did so, Jackie touched a sequence on the pod’s control panel. The bed retracted most of the way, stopping short to leave Burnside’s head exposed.

  There was a brief whirring as the pods internal scanners checked Burnside out, then mechanical noises as its internal robot arms began to cut the shirt away and debride the wound. Burnside grimaced.

  “Want a local?” Jackie asked.

  “Uh, sure. Be easier to talk.”

  She touched the control panel again and a brief hiss sounded from within the pod. “Better?”

  “Yeah, thanks.”

  “Okay, now, tell me what’s going on. Start with whether I should expect anyone else to be hammering on my airlock.”

  “I don’t think so. Nobody was chasing me, if that’s what you mean. Nobody should know I was headed here.”

  “Good. So, what happened?”

  “I made contact,” Burnside said, then grinned wryly.

  “With someone who didn’t want to be contacted?” Jackie nodded toward where the traumapod was busy cleaning Burnside’s wound.

  “There was someone else who didn’t want me to make contact. I don’t think he wanted competition.”

  “Competition for what, exactly?”

  “The package you’re supposed to pick up.”

  “Which is . . . ?”

  “Alien technology.”

  “Why am I not surprised?” Everything she’d been involved with since meeting Ducayne seemed to have something to do with alien technology. Before that, even, considering how they’d first met.

  “Roberts. The Sophie. You were on Chara III, weren’t you? With the archeologist?”

  “Hannibal Carson, yes. You heard about that?”

  “It was in a briefing. Come to think of it, weren’t you also in the Zeta Reticuli system?”

  Roberts felt herself come to full alert; the hair on the back of her neck rose, and she felt her stomach tighten. How had news of that reached here ahead of her? Carcharodon? She did some quick mental math. She had made a side trip, and Ducayne had message torpedoes. Okay, it was plausible without Burnside having a connection to the Velkaryans. She relaxed a bit. “What does that have to do with the package I’m picking up? It didn’t come from there, did it? We were warned off.”

  “I don’t know where it came from. But I remember mention of an anomaly in the signals from the warning beacons. Was there?”

  Jackie thought back. She’d broadcast a hail when the Sophie entered the Reticuli system. They then detected two anomalous signals, one when their broadcast would have reached halfway to the terraformed planet in the system, and the second from the planet itself, too soon for her broadcast to have reached it. If whatever had triggered the first signal had sent a message torpedo at warp to the planet, that would account for it, but there had been no evidence of something entering warp then.

  “Yeah, you could call it that. You must have had a pretty in-depth briefing.”

  “It was. Secretive as Ducayne is, if he thinks an agent has a need to know, he makes sure they know as much as possible. Or at least as much as the opposition is likely to. This anomaly, would FTL radio explain it?”

  “FTL radio is an oxymoron, radio is a kind of light. But yes, an FTL signal of some kind would explain it. We thought it might be a message torpedo with too weak a warp signature for the Sophie’s instruments to detect.”

  “We think it might be an FTL communicator. Maybe gravity waves, or something. But it would explain a few other things.”

  “An FTL communi . . . .” Jackie’s voice trailed off as she considered the implications. It wouldn’t be gravity waves, at least not through normal space. But the energy from warp drives mostly bled off through extra dimensions; could there be a connection? That could change everything about interstellar travel—and the courier business—as she knew it. “And that’s what this package is?”

  “We have no idea, but the very possibility makes it worth investigating. It would also explain why the Velkaryans are interested. We have some hints they already have a pair of them.”

  “A pair?”

  “Obviously just one doesn’t do much good, and if it’s alien technology we may not be able to figure out how it works, let alone reproduce it. If that’s even what it is.”

  “But one might let you eavesdrop on Velkaryan communications, if they do have a pair.”

  “Depends on the technology, but yes, maybe. Whatever it is, if it’s alien and it’s high tech, we want it.”

  “Yet another cosmic Maguffin.”

  “I was thinking more of the Polish Enigma machine.”

  “The what now?”

  “Mid twentieth century, just before World War II. The Nazis had an encryption machine called the Enigma. Poland had a copy of one. The story goes that Polish cryptanalysts got it to England before the war broke ou
t, and helped the English crack the Enigma code.”

  “You seem to know quite a bit about it.”

  “Call it professional interest.”

  An indicator light on the traumapod changed color, accompanied by a soft ding. It had finished suturing Burnside’s wound.

  “Looks like you’re done, Jordan.” Jackie touched the panel and the traumapod bed slid out. “Can you sit up?”

  Burnside swung his legs around then sat up, wincing a bit as he did so. “Still a bit sore, but yeah. Thank you.”

  “Looks like you could use a new shirt.”

  The man was well muscled, Jackie noted. If he had a desk job, he also worked out. There were several scars on his torso and arms; one might have been an old bullet wound.

  She realized she was staring. “I think I have spares. Wait one.”

  She stepped over to a storage drawer, rifled through it briefly, and pulled out a package containing a dark blue tee-shirt. She handed it to him. “That should fit.”

  “You’re well equipped.” He glanced at her chest. Jackie snorted. She was hardly flat, but she took it as meaning the spare shirt.

  “I used to have a co-pilot, and you’re about his size. Uniform came with the job, but there are no logos on the undershirt.”

  “I’m just thankful the color isn’t pink or bright yellow.”

  Roberts grinned. “Dark colors hide the dirt, and for what it’s worth, the Sophie is named after a warship.”

  “Hey, no offense meant.”

  “None taken. So, about this gizmo. Where did it come from and who has it?”

  “Not certain on the former, possibly this system, but I don’t think anywhere on Tanith. One of the outer moons, perhaps. I heard a rumor of it just before a Velkaryan ship showed up, so I assumed there was a connection.”

  “Velkaryan ship? You mean the Carcharodon?”

  “You know it?”

  “Had a run-in with it at Zeta Reticuli. I wondered why it was here. But you said before it arrived?”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t see how they could have known about it then. Carson said they took some hull damage, nothing major, but if they’ve been here more than a week or two, the timing doesn’t fit with them coming here from anywhere but Zeta Reticuli, at least not from anywhere inward and then back out here. When did they arrive?”