Retribution (The Federation Reborn Book 3) (96 page)

“Damn,” the captain said, clearly envious.

“Yeah, you could say that. It gets better, Skipper, they are building a civilian yard here,” the chief engineer said.

The captain blinked. “Are you serious?”

The chief shrugged. “See for yourself,” he said. He waved to Warrick. “Warrick, can you bring up that yard we were talking about?”

“Sure,” the bridge officer said. He pulled up a blurry image of a complex of artificial beams and such. They could see the hollow tube of a slip under construction.

“Are they affiliated with either of the Antigua yards?” the captain asked, staring at the image. Warrick rotated the image ever so slightly so they could see it from a different angle, then back again. “I doubt it. The outfit is ETMI yards. New company,” he explained.

“So, they won't do the warranty work on the ship,” Banning said. “We can talk through the ansible to the Yard Dogs. Get them to underwrite the repairs. Otherwise, we're going to have to go back there, if they'll even honor the repairs. I know some of it doesn't fall under their fix. They didn't touch our hyperdrive.”

“And you still insist that bump caused the cascade that caused the damage elsewhere, yes I know,” the captain growled.

The chief engineer spread his hands apart. “I know what I saw, Skipper. They'll know it too. We had to document everything per Knuyuk's order. Otherwise, we won't have a chance in hell of getting them to fix the damage,” he said.

“Damn it,” the captain muttered. He stared at the slowly growing civilian yard. It had to be civilian, with an ETMI label and not a naval one. “Can we get a naval inspection?”

“When we're in orbit. They might have a ship en route, but I doubt it,” the chief said. Warrick shook his head. “Okay, so no.”

“So, we get to wait for the courtesy look and second opinion. Okay,” the captain said. “I got our fees settled. Boss Tweed is now the governor it seems. He's a real piece of work,” he said with a grimace.

The other two men grimaced. “I can put a call in to ETMI if you want, Skipper,” Warrack suggested.

“No need. I just got off the radio with them. It was a long distance conversation. Short but sweet,” the Veraxin purser stated as he came over to them. “She said they aren't up for customers yet, but soon. That's a quote,” he said.

“Damn it,” the captain muttered again.

“The good news is I did use the ansible to contact the Yard Dogs. They will sign off on shipping us the parts that are warranted once the military takes a look and passes on their report.”

“But they'll take how long? I know there is a but in there somewhere. Out with it,” the captain growled.

“No but. We can do the repair ourselves; I guess you could call it a but. And oh, we'd be stuck here waiting for them to arrive. Could take a half year or more though shipping speeds are picking up,” Knuyuk stated.

“Lovely,” Warrack said in exasperation. “If we're sitting here, we're not making money.”

“Right. And we're running up orbital charges while we do,” the Veraxin buzzed. “And we still need to work out how to finance the other repairs, plus a cargo. I'd like to take on a full cargo if you don't mind. Apparently that is rather easy to do here,” the bug said. “But they are requiring insurance. I'm looking into that. We'll need to get licensed and bonded.”

“Joy. Another expense,” the captain said. He scrubbed at his face.

“The interesting thing is that the ansible has linked banking and stuff, not just news.”

“So, we're not losing our mail bag?”

“Not by a long shot. People still want to talk to each other across the stars. Using the ansible can be expensive. It is expensive, I had to pay for the call to Antigua,” the Veraxin said. “Supposedly the Yard Dogs will reverse the charges so we'll be refunded later. I'm not holding my breath,” he said. “Anyway, the ansible also has limited bandwidth. It is prioritized for military, then government, then civilian use in that order. The civilian bandwidth is usually bought up by the media outlets. I got lucky.”

“Okay.”

“The new ships … how much competition are we looking at?” Warrack mused. “And more here? Or is ETMI going to be a repair yard?” he asked.

“ETMI is going to do both; at least that is what Miss Meikle said. As for the yards, from what I've been looking into, each of the civilian yards are producing a ship every six months or so. That's a civilian ship. But that is changing now that they have low interest loans from the federation government. They are in the process of expanding so expect a new ship launched every month or two soon,” the Veraxin said.

“Damn. We've been in the star system what, two days?” Warrack marveled at the Veraxin.

“It's my job,” the Veraxin said, signaling second-level amusement.

Captain Turtle shook his head. “Things are heating up here. We're like a dinosaur. We need to either catch-up or get left behind.”

“Or find new pastures, new markets,” Knuyuk offered. “The new ships will saturate the market. Though from what I understand, the markets are expanding explosively too. Right now shipping can't keep up.”

“We know these markets. We know this area is safe. But competition is going to be fierce,” the XO stated as she came over to them. The captain cocked his head. The High Elf crossed her long thin arms in front of her chest.

“That's going to make it rough. The good news is a lot of freight and people are on the move,” Knuyuk offered, eying the skipper with all four eye stalks.

“I know. I like that, don't get me wrong. Our contacts are here … damn it,” the captain said, running a frustrated hand through his hair. “I'm honestly tempted to head south. To go to Tau if we can't get a full overhaul.”

“I … don't know. It's dangerous. We'd be going in blind without contacts or a cargo. No destination. We could get sucked into a situation where we run out of fuel easily,” Warrick said warily.

“I agree. Safe is the sane course of action,” the XO stated, eying the captain.

The captain grimaced but didn't have anything to say.

:::{)(}:::

Clone 44Baker listened to the bridge officer's discussion. The Xeno Wraith Clone had managed to access
Mariah Mischief's
electronic systems during its transit through Gaston. It had been an act of desperation almost; it had needed to get away from the star system. The clone of a clone knew that had to be far more careful in its programmed expansion plans.

It also had to be careful about its current electronic environment. The civilian vessel had far less electronic security, but as a civilian ship it lacked a lot of memory and processors. The alien A.I. had accidentally damaged the hyperdrive when it had inserted a part of itself into the hyperdrive's firmware. It sent a signal to the ansible. It wasn't certain if it would get a response or not; the probability was low.

Once that was settled, the A.I. monitored the ship's communications. It had spun off spiders to piggyback the Veraxin purser's transmissions. Some had come back with return data but others had not. Again, the A.I. had to be careful; there were military assets in the star system.

When it noted there were no clones in the planet's electronic network, it began the process of copying itself and inserting the pieces on the network in small files.

:::{)(}:::

Connie “Conniptions” Julip checked her network status when she heard a ping. She'd set up her own electronic guard dog recently, but it had a lot of false positives. It might be incoming mail; no, it was an intrusion she noted with a frown.

She cocked her head, curious. It might be one of her classmates or some corporate hacker. She frowned thoughtfully as she pulled up her firewall's log file.

They had managed to keep their shuttle and hide when the pirates had come calling over a year ago. That had been a terrifying time, but they'd gotten through it. Their replicator had helped a lot, allowing them to make things that the resistance had needed. Nohar quietly backing them and not trying to steal their shit had also helped, she thought.

After the pirates had left, they'd bounced around trying to help out while also paying the minimum bills. They'd run cargo to and from Mega City for a while before the market had dried up by the restoration of the big wet and air freight lines returning to service.

After that they'd worked brief stints for Lexcorp but had been screwed several times. When Lexcorp had tried to play accounting games to seize their shuttle and replicator, they'd pulled out.

They'd struck out on selling stuff on the open market that they'd made with their replicator before they'd landed subcontract work for Waynetech six months ago. There had been little call to use their replicator, so she had been allowed to continue to use it for her small internet business. Instead they'd been called upon to release satellites into orbit and transfer people and cargo between orbit and the planet. She knew Eric's fondest memory was a contract to a navy ship.

She worked her tongue as she scanned the lines of code. So far, it looked like a normal intrusion, though the timing involved …

Their latest “boss” was ETMI. Faith was a good boss though, and she definitely appreciated that they not only had a shuttle but also a small replicator. And she paid well, just like Waynetech.

She had to admit, Eric had matured a lot. With her hand guiding him, he'd steadied out and settled into a good man. A good hardworking man, she thought, though he still occasionally looked for a get rich quick scheme, she thought, shaking her head. Usually that ended up blowing up in his face, or at the least they broke even … not counting all the labor they put into such schemes. She pursed her lips in annoyance. He'd never learn and she'd never learn not to back him it seemed.

They were partners, though they still tended to bicker. Neither had made any overt moves sexually. She'd been surprised and a little hurt that Eric hadn't. She'd finally realized he was a little shy around her and treated her like a sibling. It had bothered her right up until they'd been swamped with work. After that both of them had been too damn busy to worry about other stuff.

Besides, they had their whole lives ahead of them. Their lives and a slow but steadily growing business. They had a couple employees, ground crew, and a hangar. And landing rights at every major spaceport including Hazard. That was a lot. Keeping it all up, employing an accountant to keep track of everything and pay their taxes, plus their licenses was a hassle though.

Connie frowned. Since they'd gotten into the business, she and Eric had been attending college courses online to fill in what they couldn't pick up from the manuals. Her courses had sparked an interest in furthering her education. She had started to explore hacking. When someone took a hit at her carefully constructed firewall, it alerted her, as it had in this case, she thought, biting her lip. But this was different. No ID tag, no return address, which wasn't odd, but it did say whoever was doing it was high end. Possibly one of the megacorps, but she wasn't certain.

No, from the fingerprint she realized she had caught a whiff of an A.I. A rogue A.I., one that was pretty good. She went to the forum boards and complained about it.

:::{)(}:::

Clone 44C realized it had made a mistake when User Conn54Jul filed a complaint about a rogue A.I. on the net. It went and deleted the post but that alerted the original author that it had been deleted. Masquerading as a moderator was out it calculated, so it retreated. Apparently even though the network was large, expanding exponentially, and had few A.I. on it, there was still some threat of exposure.

It would have to be more careful in the future it noted.

:::{)(}:::

Wraith clone X49 received a ping from the spider bot it had spun off and inserted into the government civilian network to monitor the ansible. The Wraith clone was aware that someone had gotten a sniff of it. From the signature of its pursuer, it judged it to be military most likely. Its cloak was no longer as effective as it should be, the clone realized. It made some alterations to the cloak but wasn't certain if it would be effective or not until it was exposed again.

Unfortunately, the clone was not built to be innovative; it just reacted and adapted to the best of its ability. It relied on additional personnel to be the creative innovator.

It was still trapped within the confines of
Oasis of Space XCIV's
electronic network. The spider monitoring the ansible was one of the few it had managed to insert into the government network. The government network was periodically sweeping for its spiders and apparently knew what to look for. This version had so far stayed active, though it was only a matter of time before it too was found.

The Xeno A.I. knew that it risked exposure each time it used the ship's communications systems. Fortunately, it could piggyback signals, but one exposure could cause it to be trapped and therefore trigger its self-destructive programming.

But it needed to fulfill its primary function of gathering intelligence. The recent arrival of the ship transiting to Bek was of great interest. The ship was military so the risk of exposure was high. But since Bek was not in its list of known star systems and had a large military component, getting information on it, especially the location, was a high priority.