The Jovian Sweep (Asteroid Scrabble Book 1) Page 6

  She drew a slow breath to try and calm herself, so that her mind could wander along the delicate control nets that tied together the controls, the engines and the navigational arrays. She could feel Hollins in the link too, a brooding presence looming at the edge of her conscious mind. She tried to ignore him while she ran through the set up procedures and initialisation checks.

  “Well, Cadet?”

  He wasn’t speaking to her. What she could “hear” was his very thoughts whipping across the drone’s neural network and directly into her brain, much faster than the spoken word. Because it came straight from his brain, even the meaning was clearer than the subtle tones and inclinations of speech. His question was strident, impatient and, deep, deep beneath, she caught a hint of enjoyment, a glee at being in control of her.

  “Care to answer me, perhaps?”

  “Yes sir. Sorry sir.”

  “So are we perhaps ready to go?”

  “Yessir.”

  “Everything working alright? All checks complete?”

  “Err, yes sir.”

  “Are you sure?”

  He was supposed to be impartial and professional, but he wasn’t even trying with that last question. Anyone linked in would have been able to pick up the smug malevolence. She was sure she had checked everything. But had she? Suppose something was wrong? Was this part of the test?

  Methodically she went through the start up routine again, trying to remain calm, looking for even the slightest glitch in the process. Everything seemed ok. Was it some kind of double trap? Slag it! She couldn’t check forever. That clock was ticking! She had to give an answer.

  “Very sure sir.”

  “About time! Now, pay attention. The drone has been set to emulate a ‘Herald’ class medium drone. I will be covering the piloting station with you through the cross controls on seat two. Lieutenant San here will be operating Communications, Countermeasures and Systems. Neither of us will act except on your instructions, unless we believe a dangerous situation is developing. Do you understand?”

  “Err…yes sir.”

  “Good, because I don’t like to repeat myself. Switching to ‘Herald’ class emulation…now.”

  As a training drone the Carousel had to incorporate dual controls for every single possible function that a war drone could have. Software adjusted the inbuilt systems to copy the characteristics of every war drone used by the Confederation. Well, theoretically it did anyway. The limitations of the design meant that it wasn’t possible to exactly duplicate all of the features of a drone that had higher performance. The only way to even approximately do that was to scale everything else down. That could lead to some decidedly odd results, particularly with the newer high performance war drones.

  And the ‘Herald’ was just about at the cutting edge of war drone design.

  Josie began to slowly feed power into the engines. She caught a brief flash of something – smugness maybe - along the neural links. Mentally kicking herself, she held the engines and checked the short-range navigational sensors. There was nothing nearby that could be an obstacle. Feeding power again, she tried for a gentle lift off. It wasn’t easy. As the drone began to move she had to switch rapidly between the engines and the navigation sensors. The presence of Lieutenant San was distracting. As she juggled the two, the drone almost stalled, and then lurched upwards fast and erratic. Josie fought to keep control, which was difficult, as the main way of keeping control was to keep calm. Anxiety and despair fogged the link connections.

  “Not good Tallion. I doubt this is going to be a pristine performance.”

  The carefully timed criticism from Hollins sliced into her concentration. The drone wobbled in sympathy. Desperately she righted it, but she lost even more time. Quickly she fed more power to the engines. The drone steadily picked up velocity. She alternated between powering the engines and checking the short-range sensors. Nothing was nearby. She could just make out other Carousel’s at the outer limits of her detection range.

  San’s virtual voice boomed into her brain. “We have an incoming transmission from ‘Cresta’. Flight path instructions.”

  “Err…patch them through please.”

  A pulse of complex 3D code powered into her mind. Momentarily stunned she checked it. It didn’t look complete. She checked again.

  Hollins interrupted “Problems Tallion?”

  “Errm…Comms can you ask Cresta to repeat those instructions please?”

  She caught derision from Hollins. San simply acknowledged.

  Was that a mistake? Had she failed to catch the transmission properly? Or had it been deliberately scrambled as part of the test?

  “Repeat transmission from Cresta received.”

  Josie checked it. This time the instructions made sense. Relieved she fed them into the navigation controls and began to plot a course.

  “Aren’t you even going to acknowledge receipt of Cresta’s transmission?” asked Hollins heavily.

  “Cresta is asking if we have received those instructions,” San confirmed.

  Josie mentally cursed. Of course she should have responded! She was getting rattled. She tried to keep her reply as measured as she could. “Comms, please send to Cresta – ‘message received and understood’.”

  She felt more smugness from Hollins.

  The route was complex. She had to concentrate on correcting and changing the drone’s course, while periodically checking the sensors. The mental effort required soon began to tire her. She fought to keep focussed. Once you went off track piloting you had to correct quickly, or everything would just spiral down. Hollins didn't make it easy. Snide little comments, exquisitely timed, sapped her confidence. Her head was aching and she didn’t think it was link fatigue.

  Nonetheless she completed the initial stage of the approach to Cresta reasonably well, even if she was behind schedule. She even managed to dodge the simulated obstacle the examination had readied for her. She detected a vague disappointment from Hollins, which cheered her up immensely.

  Then just as she was lining up for the final run in to the Depot Ship, an alarm sounded. There was a sudden drop in acceleration, and the drone lurched off course. Frantically Josie checked her controls. An entire bank of thrusters were out, and the one next to it was sputtering. Instinctively Josie tried to figure out the problem, but this gave the drone more time to drift. Naturally Hollins was right onto her mistake. “We are now out of control.”

  Slag! She should have known that was the first priority! Piloting was supposed to be her job, and piloting only. All that systems engineering training was getting in the way! Obviously this was part of the test. Trying to stay calm, she cut all power, and then reactivated individual thrusters to counter the spin. It took some time. With an entire bank of thrusters out it was difficult to manoeuvre. To make matters worse every so often another thruster would die on her. It also didn’t help that Hollins kept on her case.

  “What now Tallion?”

  What indeed. She had to make a decision, and her head was hurting. Ok, it was a piloting exam. So she had to pilot. It was awkward with so few thrusters. She had to move the drone crabwise towards Cresta’s welcoming bays. It was slow and stressful, and the number of active thrusters kept falling. She was almost there when San chipped in.

  “Contacting Cresta Control to request landing permission.”

  Slag! She had been concentrating so hard on controlling the pseudo-damaged drone she had forgotten to contact Cresta! The drone lurched in electronic irritation at her mental distress. She fought to regain control. Another thruster gave out at the critical moment. The drone spiralled, then came suddenly straight and level, all systems normal. Josie tried to give it orders. No response. Her controls had been bypassed.

  “End ex,” said Hollins.

  “Wha…”

  “End ex. All over,” repeated Hollins. “Examiner takes action.” The man could barely conceal his glee.

  “But…”

  “No buts. Wait while I do
ck this drone.”

  Bewildered, tired, stressed, Josie watched Hollins expertly slide the drone into the drone bays. What had happened?

  Hollins brought the drone to a stop. “Right. Link out.”

  The disorientation of unlinking was less intense but seemed longer. When her eyes regained focus Lieutenant San had already left and Hollins was stood at the bay door.

  “Well that’s it for you Tallion. Examiner takes action. Instant fail.”

  “Why did you..?”

  “Because you bungled so much I judged the safety of the crew and drone necessitated it. Now get yourself up and back to your dorm.”

  She stood wearily, fatigue enhanced by the bitter taste of failure.

  “It’s your own fault,” continued Hollins. “You shouldn’t have been up until the early hours.”

  He turned his back immediately, but she saw his smug grin. With his final words rolling around her mind, she wobbled back to her dorm and slumped into the shower, exhausted and depressed.

  Wait a minute. ‘up until the early hours…’ Hollins has said. How had he known that?

  Chapter 6.

  Administration complex, Courage Asteroid.

  Jack Courage sighed. Visiting Virtue Confederation Fleet Headquarters was always an unsettling experience.

  It was located in Sopis Square, the very heart of the government area of Courage Asteroid. Even reaching it meant having to weave his way through hordes of officials in overly fashionable business attire. Half of them appeared languidly calm. The other half looked harried to the point of imminent heart failure. It was only on his third visit that Courage realised that the harried ones were the junior staff, the ones who did all of the actual work and took any of the blame flying about, while the calmer ones were their lordly superiors, whose function was to “supervise” and take all the credit for the occasional successes.

  Fleet Headquarters was the living, beating heart of the Virtue Confederation's military might, responsible for coordinating the forces of the seven member-states into some kind of coherent overall strategy. As a result the place majored in labyrinthine political intrigue. The joke in the navy was that staff officers at Fleet Headquarters were far better at outwitting each other than they were at outsmarting the nation’s enemies.

  Located directly next to Virtue Confederation Fleet Headquarters was its Courage Asteroid counterpart. The Courage High Admiralty was easily the largest and most important of the five Admiralties that the Virtue Confederation drew its military might from. It was therefore only natural that Confederation Fleet Headquarters had been set up on Courage Asteroid. Of course, it resulted in even more political intrigue. The other four admiralties were most definitely unhappy with the arrangement, thinking it gave Courage Asteroid too much influence over strategy and appointments. It was a difficult argument to gainsay, largely because it was true.

  Jack Courage felt a momentary pang of guilt as he admitted that to himself. His first loyalty had to be to the Courage High Admiralty. For all he might agree with the criticisms of it, feeling it himself was almost treacherous. Well, he had a loyalty to being honest too, and thus relieved, he could look on the Courage Admiralty building without flinching.

  It was a very old structure, built in the severe and functional style of the middle settlement period. As the navy had grown the building had duly been extended, but in the main by taking over and modifying adjacent construction, most of which was of an equally ancient pedigree. The inevitable result was that the Courage High Admiralty building was large, rather plain, and definitely ramshackle.

  There had been attempts in recent years to make the whole edifice grander and more fitting to the dignity of the premier space navy of the middle solar system. If nothing else it was important to keep ahead of the other admiralties in the Confederation. So the exteriors had been burnished, and a selection of small statuettes of famous ships and admirals had been tacked on around it at random intervals. Far from augmenting its appearance, to Jack Courage’s eyes the modifications only served to highlight the difference between it and the much larger and grander Confederation Fleet Headquarters building soaring majestically by its side. It was a distinction that highlighted the evolving relationship between the two authorities. The older building was the glorious past and the troublesome present. The newer one aspired to be the bright future.

  The Confederation Fleet Headquarters building might have been built on Courage as an acknowledgment of the asteroid’s position as the largest, wealthiest and most populous member of the Virtue Confederation, but it had been designed by the renowned architect Klev Adams of Charity Asteroid; assembled on Industry Asteroid with materials from Patience and Loyalty; transported by merchant ships registered to New Hope Asteroid and the first Captain-Admiral was a native of Fortitude. The whole process had been judiciously oiled by complex exchanges of political favours and (allegedly) huge quantities of hard cash.

  The building was the largest and most graceful on Courage Asteroid, and arguably in the whole of the Confederation. Artificial gravity had been deliberately muted in the upper domes, so that barely visible struts were enough to hold great soaring decorative structures – a giant model of a spaceship in flight, a 3D representation of the asteroid belt, and a stylised Human figure leaping between worlds. Jack Courage appreciated the artistic vision, and the strategic value of impressing foreign dignitaries, but inwardly he felt revulsion. The cultural heritage of life in the Asteroid Belts, with its emphasis on practicality and thrift, was not lightly dismissed, especially for the brother of Rose Courage.

  Controlling the urge to stare, he strode purposefully around the small knots of protestors dotting Sopis square. Their presence did not concern him in the slightest. Intense political agitation was one of the defining characteristics of Virtue Confederation culture, second only to that of making money. The protestors were as much a part of the square as the mismatched buildings and the scurrying officials.

  Typically protestors were rather passive, a tacit admission that their activities had long moved on from being provocative and were now merely quaint. Protestors were expected now, even lauded. Tourists frequently visited the square specifically to see them. It was only on particularly tense occasions that they became dangerous. Today their attempts to rally public opinion to their respective causes were confined to forlornly waving a few crudely constructed placards.

  Courage covertly checked the viewpoints being expressed. It was commonly held that the complexion of the Sopis Square protestors was a more accurate measure of public thought than any survey or opinion poll. The placards shouted out their messages in strident shades of red and black, sometimes assisted by outrageous caricatures of prominent political figures. A few were calling for the war to be ended, but far more were calling for it to be prosecuted more energetically. A few even called for declarations of war to be made against one or other of the currently neutral Belt Powers. Several decried other members of the Confederation and one, curiously enough, demanded prospecting rights over Sopis Square. Impassive marines kept the various factions separated and away from the courtyards of the government buildings proper. It didn’t appear to be a particularly difficult task. The protestors mostly just stood there.

  Courage proffered his perscomp to the sentry at the entrance. The guard linked it to his own perscomp and activated a security protocol. Meanwhile another marine waved a hand held scanner over him in a few efficient passes. The guard's perscomp beeped. He flicked his eyes over to his colleague and got a minute nod. Only then did he detach the link and salute.

  “Admiral Courage sir.”

  Courage had to juggle his baggage clumsily to return the salute. The marine's face remained patiently blank. Gathering as much dignity as he could, Courage walked inside.

  He blinked at the sudden surge in colour. Vast lighting panels in the fluted ceiling bounced light off a highly polished granite floor, decorated in alternating bands of black and white. At intervals around the walls armed sentr
ies stood by thickened doors. Officers of varying seniorities stood in little clusters around the room, deep in conversation. A few were stood on their own, trying not to look too much out of place.

  Courage went up to the reception and was directed immediately to the most prominent of the large doors. Several of the waiting officers glared at seeing such privilege. Courage tried to ignore them. At the door he had to show his perscomp credentials again. Behind a short corridor led to an outer office and an immaculately turned out orderly.

  Courage gave his name to the man, who saluted and offered him a chair. Courage sat down and was immediately offered refreshment, which he declined. The orderly was polite and efficient. He was also a Lieutenant Commander doing the job of a Staff Sergeant. Courage recalled reading somewhere that a proliferation of officers was a sign that a military organisation was in decay.

  Courage looked about. The outer office was very ordered, not a speck of dust anywhere, not a file out of place. That was either a measure of organisation or an indication there was nothing to do. His arrival did not seem to have been reported, but after a short while the orderly was at his shoulder again.

  “The Coordinator is available to see you now sir. Would you care to follow me?”

  Courage scrambled to his feet and followed the orderly into an even plusher inner sanctum. Coordinator Wentworth was sat behind an enormous but mostly empty desk. He was a short, plump ball of a man, nearly hairless and approaching the end of middle age. He was perspiring heavily, although it wasn’t hot.