The Immortal Empire – Episode 23: Protoplanet Facility Redux
Author's Note: Due to the unintentionally long delay with this most recent update, this chapter is substantially longer than anticipated.
"Isn't it amazing how little things change?"
The question had been posed by Suzuka to Melfina, who had been reading one of her textbooks she had brought along for the trip. Melfina looked at Suzuka, then in the direction Suzuka was looking: across the spacious hotel suite paid for by some ministry or another in the foreign government, the heads of Starwind & Hawking were lounging about in an undeniably lazy fashion. Gene Starwind was lying back on an unfolded couch not far from the table Melfina had been using the study; Jim Hawking was sitting backwards in a chair taken from the kitchenette, staring at a television broadcast on a the thin though depressing monochromati flat panel television mounted above a small, unused fireplace. Both men, despite their difference in ages, shared a common expression of sedentary boredom.
Melfina held back laughter. "Yes, I suppose it's very surprising."
Twilight Suzuka shook her head in her customary manner before taking a seat at the other end of the suite, and Melfina turned back to her book. She was close to finishing the chapter she was reading when the telephone on the end table next to Gene's couch chirped loudly. Gene gave a groan and was reaching over to answer when Jim Hawking slid over, snatching the handset and almost tipping over the end table in the process.
"Starwind and Hawking here," he answered, while Gene rolled his eye and then his back, turning away. Melfina looked up from her book in curiosity. "Yes, this is he. Oh, you are? That's great, thanks for getting back to us so quickly. No, now's a great time to go over it."
By this point, Gene had rolled in the opposing direction and was half sitting up. Jim was groping around the inside of his trouser pockets before turning towards the table Melfina was sitting at, pointing repeatedly. She took a notebook and a pen and brought them to him, which he dropped onto the end table and opened to a blank page. "Go ahead."
A short pause, and Jim wrote down numbers in a pair of lines. "And that's per tonne?" An answer. "And that's only up to the border?" he aske, sounding disappointed.
"Wait, that's across the border? No, that's great! And with our choice of the route?" he asked, sounding surprised. "I mean, I'll have to discuss it with my br-…with my partner, of course, but that's very promising. What about insurance?"
Another pause, and he wrote down another number. "Well, it sounds reasonable, but it sounds like this 'Outer Periphery', what the Ctarl-Ctarl call it, is pretty heavily policed right up to the border." Another pause, and Jim shook his head. "No, we won't skip on it, the last thing we need is a fine with whatever serves as the Empire's space transportation regulatory agency."
Melfina watched him twirl the pen in his hand. "No, I wasn't going to negotiate on the insurance rate," he lied defensively. "Give us a day or two to make the preparations on our side, we won't take up more of your time than we need to. Speaking of which, what's the best way to reach your office, or should we just call Fred-…?"
Jim paused again. "Oh. Well, I see. No that's not a problem. Go ahead with your number." He proceeded to watch a long series of digits, typical of a superluminal telephone number. After finishing, he seemed to be listening again, his eyes widening. "Oh…sure, thank. I'm not sure if we'll have someone in our company escort the cargo in transit, but thanks for being so…forthcoming about it. We're, well, we're not the biggest company out there, and our representation in the empire has been, uh, declining. I'll get you our decision on that as soon as possible."
His expression relaxed a little. "Thanks, you'll be hearing back from us soon."
He hung up the phone, staring at the handset for a moment, before turning and grabbing Gene's shoulder, shaking it. "You get all that, Big Bro?" he asked, practically shouting.
"Yeah, yeah, quit it will ya'?" Gene rolled again before sitting up. "So, that was the subsidiary of Lou Enterprises?"
"Yes. I mean no, technically," Jim corrected himself, frowning. "Actually they're an associate company that Lou Enterprise has a controlling interest in, or…something. Outer Limits Special Shipping, O.L.S.S.. It's all pretty recent."
Gene stare at him, matching his bewildered expression for a few seconds. "And?"
"And their quote per tonne was very competitive. I might be able to haggle the insurance price, I mean, insurance from what? The only people with armed ships are the Ctarl-Ctarl Imperial Navy, and they're the ones who hired us!"
Gene gave him a knowing grin. "Don't push it, Jim."
"Oh, come on Gene! One of us has to be concerned about the bottom line here. Or was the point of chasing Aisha all the way to the old country just to go bankrupt?"
The accusation had the expected response, as Gene easily grabbed him and secure his head in his arms. "What was that?" he menaced.
"You heard me!" Jim menaced back.
"Truly, you two are unrivaled business prodigies in this galaxy," Suzuka teased, not looking away from her tea. "The gifted conquerors of the Galactic Leyline."
Jim gave an exasperated look at Gene, but his older partner instead pointed his right finger at Suzuka like it was a pistol, then made a firing motion. "And don't you forget It," he retorted jovially.
Jim sighed. "Gene, do we want to have someone escort the cargo back across the border? It'd probably bring down the insurance rates a little."
The amiable smile faded from Gene's face, as he reached for the wall-mounted controls next to the large television display and began scrolling through the channels. He only stopped when he reached a color broadcast, which seemed to feature a moderately attractive but otherwise unremarkable Ctarl-Ctarl woman in a blue suit and tie, mechanically reading a news report that was being computer translated from Ctarl-Ctarl and into a language they could understand. The newswoman seemed to be discussing two unrelated topics: government policy against Terran piracy and internal diplomacy with some internal secessionist part of the Ctarl-Ctarl Empire.
"Gene!" Jim repeated.
"Yeah it would, but who?" Gene asked sharply. "There's only four of us here, remember?"
"What was it the two of you used to say about this sort of thing?" Suzuka asked from the table. "Sounds like…"
"Sounds like Aisha work," Gene and Jim replied in unison. "She would've done it too," Jim noted.
"Too bad Bethany isn't around," Gene muttered. "I bet we wouldn't have had to pay her much more to babysit it for a few days."
Giving him a skeptical look that suggested what he was thinking, I'm not going to get an answer for that, am I? Jim walked towards the kitchenette, taking his chair with him. "Melfina, is there any of that coffee left from this morning?"
"Do you want me to brew you a fresh pot?" she asked helpfully.
"Also, go ahead and give Fred Lou a call about this O.L.S.S. associate company or whatever," Gene interrupted offhandedly, not taking his eyes off the newscaster.
"Oh, come on Gene!" Jim whined loudly, as Melfina rose from the table and reached for the coffeemaker. "What does it have to be me?"
Almost immediately, Ron MacDougall found himself disappointed. As he was not accustomed to hiding his disappointment at circumstances beyond his control, he made no effort to do so. After the Force had emerged dangerously but necessarily close to a dense ring of stellar material orbiting a pair of binary yellow dwarfs, about 0.9 and 1.5 solar masses respectively, that had quickly descended upon the chunkiest asteroid in the ring, quickly making out the only artificial feature in the protoplanet's landscape: a very dilapidated-looking factory complex consisting of winding assembly halls and three geodesic domes, all of which were punctured. It matched some of the opening external footage in the transmission from the Black Hole Pathfinder's event data recorder.
"Well, this is disappointing," he told Carver, standing over her diminutive shoulder.
Carver seemed annoyed at his rush to judgement. "Can you see the print on the roofs of the halls and the insignia on the domes? This belonged to the Ctarl-Ctarl Empire's Protoplanetary Resources Corporation. Looking at the facility itself, and the concentration of planetesimals, their initial stability estimates proved incorrect, it was designated unsafe by the relevant trade unions. The workers stopped coming in, and rather than importing robotic labor, they evacuated and terminated operations."
"No workers, no mine. Funny that the Ctarl-Ctarl haven't figured out that particular inconvenience in their current stage of interstellar capitalism," Ron smirked. He returned to his seat in the small cabin immediately aft of the cockpit; the last few days he's spent traveling with Carver had not ingratiated her to him, or vice versa. In fact they'd barely interacted at all, except when necessary to discuss matters of navigation, which had happened less frequently than he'd expected. And he hadn't pressed his question from when he had first boarded the Force: why was Hoburn doing him this favor?
"And you're not going to find much worth salvaging in this dump," he concluded aloud. "Though I'm sure that won't surprise Hoburn."
"How do you know?" The question sounded genuine.
"Because if there was anything left behind by the company, Chiong would've sold it years ago. The fact that two probably-unarmed Ctarl-Ctarl pilots or sailors wiped out an entire pirate outpost that had been operating this deep in the empire for years confirms it," he explained matter-of-factly.
"Then I suppose you'll have to settle for avenging the death of an old comrade," Carver muttered in response.
He chuckled at her. "Bring us in."
The bio-gynoid obeyed, bringing the Force right alongside the invisible of the protoplanet's weak influence of gravity. From there, it was a short ride for both of them on the ventrally-mounted dropship down to the recessed docking bay at the far side of the main complex, sheltered from rogue debris from the accretion disc but not from many years of other forms of damage.
Carver exited into the vacuum of the protoplanet's outdoor environment first, keeping one eye on the data being relayed to a wrist-mounted display in her spacesuit. "Standby power's still running in the core of the facility, but still no life signs from the short- and long-range sensors after we landed." From the docking bay, she could simultaneously review the sensor arrays built into the Force, its dropship, and her own spacesuit. "If there's anything alive down here, it's deep underground or substantial structural shielding."
Ron followed her, in his own formfitting spacesuit that he wore under a maroon trench coat. Unlike Carver's high-precision gear, his own helmet wasn't polarized, but a single piece of thick, molded transparent material that afforded him a wider field of view. "I doubt it. More likely, they didn't leave anyone alive, and if they did…why stay here?"
"Let's get moving. I don't need my ship being knocked to pieces in a debris field," Carver responded tersely. They made the short walk through vacuum to a reinforced door that dated back to the original asteroid processing plant, with Carver manipulating an access panel. Ron stood back, first studying the small but curvaceous body underneath her spacesuit, then her only visible weapon, a holstered sidearm on her waist. I suppose she's not expecting any Ctarl-Ctarl here either.
"Security lockdown…lifted," she announced, as the door opened and the two entered the poorly lit metal catacomb. The darkness didn't last for long though; through each proceeding airlock and blast door, the interior lighting increased, as did atmospheric pressure, until they exited from the network of corridors into an assembly hall with high ceilings.
"Atmosphere's stabilized at around eighty kilopascals, at a cool ten degrees centigrade," Ron announced. By now, they no longer needed shortrange radios to communicate, and their muffled voices carried normally through the atmosphere. "Oxygen mixture is breathable, but I wouldn't recommend taking off your helmet," he concluded.
"As banged up as this place looks on the outside, it can still maintain something close to a livable environment," Carver acknowledged, glancing around the rows after rows of steel storage racks, largely devoid of anything but industrial-grade pipes. "The Ctarl-Ctarl Empire was careless, not demolishing the entire facility when abandoning this project."
"Their lack of care was the Kei Pirates gain," Ron muttered, scanning left and right. "You remember that outdoor reactor we saw in orbit, at the end of the trench a few kilometers out?"
"It looked like a converted naval reactor, Space Forces-use."
He nodded in agreement. "If I know Chiong, and I do, he probably brought it in when he set up here. The Ctarl-Ctarl didn't blow the whole installation, but they didn't leave much for use aside from prefabricated buildings, docking bays, and whatever equipment cost more money to transport than abandon. That was what the Kei Pirates were using for power after they arrived."
He turned back to her. "Besides that, I doubt there's much here that'd interest your boss."
"That isn't my problem," she replied.
"Oh?" He raised an eyebrow in an exaggerated manner she wouldn't miss.
She pointed at some Ctarl-Ctarl print aboard another doorway. "Come on, the main complex is this way."
Ron's prediction was accurate and they ran into little of value as they ventured deeper into the base. The one exception might've been the slowly increasing number of pirate corpses and their personal equipment, left to slowly decay in the comparatively sterile environment. Carver's body language suggested she was repulsed; Ron just ignored them as they steadily but carefully continued onwards, gingerly stepping over the bodies in the way. Carver, as expected, didn't want to engage in small talk with him; Ron forced himself to continue chatting, and not because he was enjoying it either.
"Don't misunderstand; I'm very impressed by how easily you got me across what is alleged to be the most secure border in the known universe," he complimented her. They stopped in front of a large blast door that Carved had to hack open with her suit's toolkit; Ron gave the door a preliminary inspection, before turning back to her, palms open in the gloves of his spacesuit. "Crossing the demilitarized zone's a relaxing Sunday jaunt by comparison. Every outlaw worth their salt can cross the demilitarized zone if they've got a fast enough ship." Despite himself, mockery was beginning to enter his voice.
"Very funny," she chided him.
He smirked under his helmet. "I'm serious. Oh, sorry, I forgot, you're not an outlaw. Lieutenant Carver? Or Captain? Or do they not let bio-androids advance up the rank table that far? Ensign Carver?"
She turned to him, and Ron wondered if she would lower the opacity on her helmet's visor so he could see her scowl. "Are you done?"
"Just a little fun," he sneered back. "Though all joking aside, I am curious about what I.F.F. systems you'd have access to that let a decades-old freighter design from Tri-Force just jaunt through the Ctarl-Ctarl Empire's Outer Periphery," he said more seriously.
"Well I'm glad I meet your high standards of approval, Ron MacDougall," she growled at him, increasing her pace ahead of him. "If you're done…"
She stopped, and a moment later Ron saw what had stopped her: not just one or two slain pirates, but a whole cadre of them, up against a toppled rack of industrial tubing, all of them riddled with countless holes. Ron glanced down, then followed dispersed trail of used ammunition brass to the opposite wall, where there was a large hole, the kind left in light armor plating by an antitank weapon.
"So one of them obtained a chain gun, at least twelve-point-seven-millimeter, and fired it in this direction," Ron announce, his voice reasoned rather than ridiculing. "They had at least one light rocket launcher, which they missed with."
"Careless," Carver mumbled.
"I would've had a sniper covering me," he looked around before his eyes wandered upwards. "Up there, on the higher level. Good positioning too. Maybe they got a shot or two in, but they're shooting at Ctarl-Ctarl with Terran infantry weapons, so that isn't enough." He pointed at the similar pattern of high-volume bullet holes left along the far wall and ceiling.
Carver wasn't bothering to hide her disgust at the dead. "Do you see your friend among them?"
Ron had taken a few steps to the side, knelt down, and pushed aside another pile of toppled aluminum piping, revealing a chain gun discarded by its operator, the kind mounted on a car or light reconnaissance vehicle. "Not yet. A Ctarl-Ctarl could've used fired this easily."
"What about through there?"
Ron stood up and turned; Carver was staring at another, larger hole in the wall, this one blown inwards and towards them rather than outwards and away, visibly melted rather than rendered by high explosive pressure, as if a colossal fireball had just manifested in the adjacent compartment.
"That wasn't a rocket launcher."
"No, it wasn't," Ron muttered soberly. He followed the melted path that emerged out from the large hole back to its strangely unburned, un-melted origin, where under a layer of settled ash, the body of a middle-aged male in a better spacesuit than his neighbors was lying on its side. His face was visible despite some damage to his helmet. The bayonet of a semi-automatic infantry rifle, and the rest of the rifle, was still firmly stuck in his back.
Despite himself, a brief moment of solemnity overwhelmed Ron, and he felt compelled to stand up straight and turn back to Carver. "This was Chiong," he announced matter-of-factly. "He's dead."
"I can see that," the bio-android responded. She was looking upwards, over Chiong's body, at another burnt-through hole through the ceiling panels towards one of the faces of the dodecahedron structure above them. A slow but steady rain of ash, melted metal and burnt structural compound, had been falling for some time.
Ron stiffly turned from the body, brushed aside some of the ash, and pulled a pole-shaped object from the floor, tapping it twice on its end.
"Is that…?"
"The caster gun from the black box recording? The very same." Brushing it a few times, he could still see the long, polished metal barrel with only a few scuff marks, the precisely machined venting holes, and the fine curve of the stock. "He kept it after all these years."
"Why wouldn't he have?" Carver asked. Ron turned to her, smiling awkwardly under his helmet, before picking up the staff-like caster weapon and resting it over one shoulder. "Well?" she asked.
"You're not religious, are you?" he asked, raising an eyebrow. A religious bio-android, now that would be a new one.
"No…"
"Then there's nothing else to be done. Aside from that naval reactor, which from the power output we've seen so far is probably worth something, this little novelty is probably the most valuable thing in this whole failed industrial venture," he explained. "And it was a gift, so I'm taking it back. Go ahead and forward your suit video to Hoburn's technician or whoever you need to and they can do their appraisal with their hammers. I'm not a delivery man after all."
Ron wondered if Carver was going to chide him for his callousness towards a supposed friend and mentor, or something else. Instead, she turned away and save the installation a single sweeping glance. "This would be a valuable location for someone like Hoburn."
"Too bad the Ctarl-Ctarl Navy is bound to show up blast the whole thing to hell one day, finish what the Protoplanet Resources Corporation started," Ron concluded. He gave a mischievous grin again. "Care to offer odds on how long they'll take? As I was saying, you must have quite the connection in the Imperial Navy, or even higher up in the government."
"And what if I do?" she asked indignantly.
He cocked his head slightly and tapped the caster weapon's end against the metal floor beneath him twice. "Hoburn must have quite the connection in turn. Don't be offended, Carver, it just means you have good job security. We could all use that in these trying times," he said, gesturing around him with his free hand before turning away.
"And where are you going?"
"Where else? Back to the dropship. The only reason the Ctarl-Ctarl haven't investigated this place is because, despite what happened to my old friend, they still don't consider it worth investigating. Yet. I don't intend to be around when they change their mind." He gave a sigh under his helmet. "Location, location, location, my dear Carver. The good news is, I don't think a man like Hoburn is going to be sad you can't haul off a naval reactor in that ship of yours. He's much more of a big picture man, I can tell that much."
Let her ruminate on that for a while. Still smirking, Ron departed the same direction the two of them had entered the central area. When Carver returned to the Force's small dropship, she was displeased to see him still see him seemingly deep in thought with his eyes closed but still smirking.
"Done here?" he asked, not looking at her, though he could feel her scowl on him.
"I was going to ask you the same. This was your idea after all." She turned to him, undoing the magnetic seals in her helmet a few seconds after the airlock door closed behind her. "And your friend Chiong…"
"Chiong is dead. As a war veteran yourself, I'm sure you'd agree seeing a dead body is the best way to confirm that. The video from the event recorder was correct: he and his company tangled with a pair of Ctarl-Ctarl and were killed for their trouble." Removing his helmet, he forced a sober expression onto his face. "If the Ctarl-Ctarl Navy don't destroy this installation, I could see how it'd be useful to a man of Hoburn's ambitions, though I don't think your video feed is going to sell a major salvage operation, depending on what a second-hand warship reactor sells for nowadays."
"I'm getting too old for this line of work. But if he wants it, he'll have to act quickly." Ron sighed and rubbed his brow. "He probably knows enough about this installation since the moment I showed him the event recorder data. More likely, he had a good enough idea what we'd find here even before we worked out this little deal between the two of us."
Carver twitched again, and he shrugged at her. "What would you like to hear? Sorry for the inconvenience?"
"That's ridiculous," she snapped, unable to keep the anger out of her voice. "Do you know what…"
"What it took to bring me here? I complimented you already, didn't I?" he smirked. "You should stop playing dumb. This whole errand is just a distraction, some trick of Hoburn's which I look forward to seeing that come to fruition. But the Black Hole Pathfinders? This abandoned installation and my dead friend? They're not it."
He looked at Carver, who was apparently stunned to silenced, then turned and glanced through the small, reinforced porthole window at the sparse view outside. "No, Hoburn's up to something. Something with the Ctarl-Ctarl, Space Forces, and this hardware I've been salvaging. And he doesn't want to tell me about them." His lip curled before looking over his shoulder again. "Isn't that right?"
Now she was shocked into silence. "Ctarl-Ctarl got your tongue? What were you going to say?" he prodded at her.
"Hoburn…that Hoburn would just…" To his amusement, the bio-android was grasping for excuses. "The cost of the crossing alone! I know his whole organization seems prone to fits or…whatever, but…when it comes to the empire, he wouldn't just be wasting our time like that. Hoburn is…" Carved stopped herself. She seemed to be him to be genuinely upset in a way he hadn't seen before. Why are you defending him? You can't possibly respect the man, could you?
"Do you mean something like 'Hoburn is the sort of man who likes to make schemes, conspiracies, that sort of thing, and then likes to think he's smart enough to make another scheme or another conspiracy on top of them?' Was that it?"
When Carver failed to respond, he continued. "I've worked with that kind of man. And woman, though usually man." He looked for a reaction from that but saw none. "Overconfidence is usually a liability, sure, but it's not as big a problem as the opposite."
"And what would that be?" she finally asked him.
"It's not obvious? That'd be having no confidence at all." He cocked his head. "But don't worry, I doubt that's the issue here. Whatever Hoburn has planned for this fiscal year, I'm sure it won't be lacking for ambition."
Still frowning sullenly, Carver and leaned towards the dropship's controls, then paused. "You know I could just tell Hoburn all of this, and he wouldn't like it," she pointed out, with the clear implication and you'd be screwed.
Don't be so sure, he thought. Better men have said that before. "You could, and it would cost me some money. But I don't think you will."
"And why is that?" she sneered, matching his tone.
"Because, and this is the fun part of our conversation, I don't think you really work for Hoburn."
He gave her a cold, disinterested half-smile, watching her response and considering how current anger stood in sharp contrast with their dispassionate first meeting. How easily exploitable it seemed. Was it just an eccentricity in her probably decades-old behavioral programming? Or was she just a volatile person to begin with? He could probably find out, if given enough time.
Resisting the urge to hum to himself as he waited for her response, Ron began undoing the seals of his spacesuit's gloves, turning the ring-shaped latches one at a time.
"I see." He looked up at Carver; instead of the expected disdain, her face had returned to cold disinterest while he waited for the question: Then who do you think I work for? But it didn't come, and instead Carver turned back to dropship cockpit. She is smarter than she looks. "Did I offend you?" he mumbled to himself, settling down in his seat as the dropship began the sequence necessary to leave the protoplanet.
"By the way, I realize your jokes at my expense—concerning what you assume is my military history—are just a cover for the my refusal to reward your fascinating stories of your early career with explanations of my own," she snapped at him abruptly, finally breaking the silence.
He grinned back at her. "Good. I thought you were smart, and not just a pretty face."
Terms to Know:
Controlling Interest – When a corporate body possesses an ownership interest in another to prevail in a stockholder motion. A majority of total voting shares (50%) always results in a controlling interest, though a smaller percentage can result in a controlling interest.
Demilitarized Zone – Or DMZ or DZ, an area between two or more states were agreement forbids military installations or activities., effectively neutral territory. The best known example is the lightyears-wide space between the Ctarl-Ctarl Empire and multiple Terran Empires, including much of the Stellar Wastes; that DMZ is monitored an policed by the Ctarl-Ctarl Empire, who are generally effective at interdicting any ships that travel to their side.
Identification, Friend or Foe – Better known as IFF, the identification system wherein a radio transponder listens for an interrogation signal before sending back a responding signal to identify the broadcaster. While the radio technology has obviously changed, the basic principle is still used on spacecraft.
United Space Forces Navy – Also known as the "Terran Space Forces" or just "Space Forces", the combined spaceborne military forces of the four Great Terran Empires, technically separate of their national space fleets. At its height between the first and second Freespace Wars, it was the largest naval force by tonnage in the known universe, but was technically more outdated than its main rival, the Ctarl-Ctarl Imperial Navy, due to the variable quality of its national participants. The disastrous losses it suffered during the Ctarl-Ctarl Wars, and the recall of much of its surviving inventory by the Terran nations that contributed it in the first place, left it a skeleton force by T.S. 160 heavily reliant on contract defense, as seen in Outlaw Star.