Flight of the 500, page 3
“I’ve been meaning to ask. How am I expected to plot while in Jump?”
“QuanCom. I’m getting there, give me a moment.”
“All right.”
She squeezed her hands above the AR diagram, zooming out. “The course is fifty light-years. It twists and turns through star systems, around a nebula, a black hole, and straight through a few other hazardous stellar features. White dwarfs, pulsars, you know the drill. Ten laps, with a week between each lap for rest and recovery.”
“Ah, I was wondering how humans would survive over half a year of racing at once.”
“Even almost a month at a time will be rough, but they’ll manage.”
“And they’re letting SIs and humans race against one another?”
“Yep.”
“I see.” Raith reached out, zooming back in on the course and S-1022. “All right, so tell me about QuanCom.”
She nodded. “Now is as good a time as any to reveal their secret. They’ve developed new communications technology—specifically, they’re testing a quantum communicator capable of seamlessly communicating between multiple vessels at once . . . in real time.”
“Sounds impossible.” Raith clicked on S-1022, revealing a space station orbiting a dead terrestrial world.
“From what I understand,” Olive said, “they’re running it all from their research station there. The Hub, they’re calling it. Every racer will be equipped with a transponder, allowing you, the racer, to track every other racer while in flight. More importantly, spectators and race officials can track your position throughout the entire race. And, provide real time data regarding course hazards. More importantly, it’ll give your team at the Hub direct and constant access to you.”
“There it is,” Raith said. “Incredible. I love it. You’ve made me excited. Wait—a team?”
“I’m glad you’re happy.” She stood, waving her hand to both remove the diagram and direct him to follow. “With me. I’ve got something special to show you.”
“You said something about a team?”
“Never mind that now. Something special. Come on.”
“Oh? This all hasn’t been enough? You spoil me.” Raith tapped a few fingers on the table. “But you will tell me about this team.”
“Maybe.” Smiling, she led him down a hallway of their suite, made a few turns, and led him into a darkened compartment with an empty pilot’s couch. “A simulator,” she said. “For practice.”
“Oh, that’s beautiful. Just beautiful. I could kiss you.”
“I appreciate the thought, but please don’t.”
Three bogeys on his tail. Several light-years into the course, about to hit the next checkpoint partway through an uncharted system chock-full of asteroids and fractured planetary bodies, they screamed down his neck, pushing their Jump-cores too hard.
In response, Raith plotted out their courses based on their Jump-relative velocities. With Jump physics, everything got weird. Vessels weren’t technically going faster than the speed of light, but everyone liked to refer to it as such. However, glossing over the gravitational effects of Jump could lead to some serious miscalculations. Jump-cores warped space. If a pilot took their ship too close to a larger gravity well, they would most likely knock their vessel into “real space”—for lack of a better term.
Using the data predicting his opponent’s trajectories, Raith observed their vectors. They’d be skirting close to the well of one of the system’s gas giants. It would only take a minute or two for all the vessels to pass through the system. If he nudged into their path just a tad, shifting his Jump velocity . . .
Raith, followed by the three racers in pursuit, entered the confines of the star system, darted through the next checkpoint a hundred thousand kilometers out from the closest rock to the star, and slipped toward the gas giant on the far side of the system. Edging back on the throttle, Raith pushed . . . and was thrown out of Jump, warping space too close to one of the planet’s moons.
“Of course.” The simulation ended, lights activating around him. “Promise me you’re not just throwing random variables at me. I’ll be happier if I’m making mistakes, because this is incredibly hard.”
“I’m not touching the simulation,” Olive said, stepping into the room through a side-door. “It will truly be this difficult.”
“If I want to win,” Raith amended.
“Correct. If you want to win, you cannot afford a single error. Because you’ll be racing against the best of the best.”
“Well, I need to beat at least the first ten light-years if I have any hope—”
Alarms sounded, red and yellow klaxons blaring through the hauler’s override AR systems. Without thinking, Raith selected the alert, revealing a ship-wide broadcast from its managing SI—he’d not bothered to learn its name. The message was clear, however. Pirates. The Goliath had just finished dropping off cargo in the Mariy El system, right about to hit Jump, and some idiotic group of vagabonds was deciding to strike the One Synthetic hauler.
“Well this is going to be fun,” Raith said. Seconds later, the lottery triggered, assessing the registered pilots on-board. A few beeps more, and his number showed up. He’d been called forth to pilot a defense fighter. “I’m surprised Theren didn’t keep me out of the lottery to keep their research project safe.” He said the words, but he was already on the way out of the simulation room.
“You know we can’t skirt company regulations that way,” said Olive. “That would look . . . uncouth.”
“One way to describe it.” Raith didn’t wait for her, though he was surprised to find her in tow. “I’m a little excited, to be honest.”
“As am I.”
Raith swiveled his head. “Come again?”
“I got selected too.”
“You’re kidding.”
“What, you thought because I fly a ship like the Rift I can’t fly?”
“No, that’s not what I—”
“Or is it because I’m a woman, or a human? Hm?” Together, they stepped out of their suite and into the corridor, kicking their pace into a sprint toward the defense hangars.
“I just didn’t—”
“See you out there, Raith.”
Like every corporation with massive transports, whether for people, or for cargo, One Synthetic rarely employed a company of picket fighters on staff. Instead, they employed the masses. If you’re paying us to Jump so you don’t have to buy your own Exo, then the least you can do is defend us from pirates. That was the logic, and as exploitive as it felt, Raith appreciated company policy today.
To starboard, a hundred or so DS-10s stood racked in launch bays. Dozens of other pilots were already seated in their assigned ships. Olive and Raith hopped into side-by-side fighters.
“Ever flown one of these?” Olive said, her voice coming clearly through his fighter’s peer-to-peer communications.
“I flew the DS-9,” Raith said. “How different can it be?”
Static filled her chuckle. “You’d be surprised. They received a few significant updates. You should see the DS-11s.”
“Well, I’ll learn fast.” He assessed the controls. Standard layout—most of the readings and sensor-displays showed up in AR, including some of the more advanced flight algorithms. The targeting computer overlaid across the perma-glass descending to enclose him. The only significant “tools” were the flight stick, a weapons toggle, manual boost throttle, and an ejection pull. The other buttons were ancillary, overridden by his AR overlay. “This will be easy,” he muttered to himself.
“What was that, Raith?” said Olive.
“Don’t worry about it.” He’d need to watch whether his com was active before he said any comments aloud to himself.
“This is flight command.” A voice overrode all pilot chatter. “Blocking our transit route out of the system is the ‘independent’ frigate Hercules, supposedly owned by the Conglomerate. IS-SEC has long suspected the Conglo has let pirates run the ship; it appears they were correct.”
The Conglo. The Conglomerate. Raith searched his memory. Why’d that name sound familiar . . .
“If you’ve not met me yet,” the voice continued, “my name is Persepolis. Thank you for flying with me over the past few days and weeks aboard Goliath, and together, we’re going to defeat our collective enemy.”
Of course. The voice was none other than the hauler’s bound synthetic. Properly described, the ship was Persepolis. Now that he had a name to put to Goliath’s mind, walking its hallways would be even more discomforting.
“You’re receiving squadrons through AR.” At the words, assignments appeared. Twelve groups of ten—Olive was his leader, their call-sign Water. “The frigate has a compliment of fighters in addition to two gunships. We’re expecting a boarding party to make a hit-and-run, though they intended to catch us more unawares. I’ve given us an extra few thousand kilometers to prepare. You will handle the fighters utilizing the battle plan I’m transmitting now, while I’ll handle the frigate and gunships.”
Raith had forgotten the commanding presence an SI like Persepolis could take. Their minds integrated through every centimeter of their ships, constantly accounting for every exigent circumstance. Persepolis appeared particularly on guard.
“Raith, you ready? You’re my number two.”
Raith looked to his right. Olive was waving her hand, two fingers outstretched. He said, “Good to go.”
“Punch it.”
In a split-second, Olive’s fighter disappeared, launched out of its bay. Raith looked forward, queued in the commands, and a few seconds later, his ship blasted away from the Goliath, revealing the starscape beyond. He was home.
Like an expanding flock of birds taking flight, the swarm of Goliath’s fighters fanned out, forming tight squadrons networked together by their commander. While pilots like Olive were given “squadron lead” titles, everyone knew who was actually in charge. Persepolis’s commands reached all of them. The only reason the ship didn’t simply control every fighter remotely stemmed from the potential time delays. It was too costly to install a quantum communicator on every ship capable of receiving commands quickly enough from a controller—and if a battle extended to three- four- or five-hundred thousand kilometers out, three seconds of time delay could doom a battle. They needed pilots making immediate decisions. Pilots like Raith and Olive.
And Raith was ready.
“All right Water Squadron,” Olive said. “This is Vector One. How we all doing today?”
A chorus of affirmatives came through as their v-formation looped up and over the immense hull of Goliath—well, Persepolis’s hull. It was easier to just think of the ship as the SI. Raith hated it when bounded SIs named their ship separately from themselves.
“Good to hear.” Olive paused, as if assessing a game board. “As I’m sure you’ve noted, our orders are simple. We’re running cover around Goliath with Alpha Squadron. The other ten squadrons are initiating a pincer on their incoming fighters. If the gunships slip through our plasma-bolt barrage, we’re the last line of defense. If fighters slip through the net, we’re the last line of defense. We do not deviate from our patrol loops. Understood?”
Another round of choruses, though the conclusion weighed on Raith. He wanted to be out in the battle, engaging with the enemy. Regardless, the name Conglomerate was still ringing in his brain. Why couldn’t he remember its significance? He was an SI; he didn’t usually have memory problems. He might be nearly two hundred years old, but maintenance had never been an issue. All his neural nodes worked just fine.
They slid into their patrol routes, looping figure eights around Persepolis. In reality, it was a bit more complicated. The Persepolis was barreling toward the enemy frigate, closing the gap between the enemy and its quarry, complicating the actual vectors involved. Regardless, the tactic made sense, for Persepolis could easily take a smaller enemy in a one-on-one fight. In fact, Raith was surprised the enemy hadn’t already fled in the face of overwhelming force. There was no way—
Raith pulled up a direct line to Persepolis. “Commander”—he loathed using the honorific, but no time for semantics—“the enemy is setting a trap. It’s a classic maneuver. Draw you in with the easy bait, thinking you can beat them in a straight fight, then they’re bringing in the cavalry from the rear.”
A diagram appeared on Raith’s screen, transmitted by Persepolis. A diagram of the Mariy El system, including the ensuing battle still over ten thousand kilometers distant. “Hello Raith, been wondering if we’d ever chat. It’s fun to have a celebrity onboard. I loved watching your races.”
Raith groaned. A freaking fanboy. “Nice to meet you too. Now what am I looking at here?”
“A full schematic of the battle. You’ll notice why I didn’t Jump us immediately—they set up an anti-Jump minefield in our way. They really want something we have, apparently.”
The Conglomerate . . . “All right, so what about my trap theory.”
“I’d warrant you’re correct. I’m running calculations, unsure what trajectory they’ll approach from. They’ve got a few million options, after all.”
“So you’re letting them spring their trap?”
“Not exactly. Take a look at squadrons Beta and Falcon.”
Raith assessed the diagrams, noting the lazy loops the two flight groups were running at the rear of the pincers. “They’re ready to deviate course and slip back if necessary.”
“Correct. Did I impress the great Raith?”
“Are you teasing me?” The personalities of ship-SIs. So weird. He shivered. “Regardless, I’m impressed.”
“Oh good. Very good.”
The diagram disappeared, and Raith leaned into his flight path.
Like choreographed fireworks, Persepolis’s fighters and Conglomerate forces danced between the planets of Mariy El, alighting it with the reds and blues of plasma juxtaposed against the glint of kinetics. Shields shimmered. Ten minutes ago, Persepolis reached a viable range to hit the Conglomerate frigate with its batteries, and immense blasts fired from afar, pummeling the vessel.
Even still, no enemy trap, Raith mused. Maybe he and Persepolis were both wrong.
For twenty minutes, Water Squadron continued its loops around its mother ship, flirting with Alpha Squadron in their own courtship above their protectorate. Banter passed back and forth between the pilots like life and death weren’t on the line, and it reminded Raith of his days, decades ago, from well before he was a racer. He’d flown with IS-SEC for a few years, and for a few more, he’d flown with pirates. He’d seen almost every home of humanity, from Emerald Jewel to HEROS. Only place he hadn’t visited was Orion, but those colonists were crazy to travel so far anyway.
Yet the name Conglomerate eluded him. Why? He stepped back to the days before entering prison, before his crash. Before he’d failed Hector and his crew. He was racing in the Solar Sprint, about to hit the Thread. He’d owed creditors. They were why he crashed. To win the odds placed on—not the Conglomerate. He was thinking of the Venus Vacation Corporation. The casinos, and their underground sports betting rings . . . known as the Conglomerate. Could they be one and the same?
Possibly.
If so . . . was this attack about him?
“Hey Olive.” He pulled up a private channel. “You and Theren. You targeted me, picked me up the second my sentence ended. Did . . . did you happen to know if anyone else had a lead on me?”
“Hmmm.” She expanded the channel to include Persepolis. “Hey Persy”—Nicknames? Raith wanted to destroy a neural node at the thought—“The dossiers Theren provided. Who was targeting Raith along with us?”
Raith nodded. So they weren’t the only ones seeking him out. Good to know, in case a more favorable opportunity arose.
“Oh, interesting theory.” Persepolis sent them a file. “And I think it warrants credence. Right after you left Dagestan, a crew often employed by the Conglomerate entered the system and arrived at the prison asking about Raith. Looks like they had faulty information on his parole hearing!”
“You sound way too excited, Persepolis,” Raith said.
“Just intrigued. Anyway, turns out while we thought maybe the crew just wanted to hire you, with this new development, perhaps the Conglomerate itself was seeking you out? Why might that be?”
“Oh, you know, I may or may not still owe them five million. Apparently they . . . expanded a bit while I was in prison.”
Olive laughed. “You’re joking.”
“Oh, no, I owe them five million.”
Persepolis removed the dossier from their screens. “This changes my calculations. If their target is you, then . . .”
“Persy?” Olive said. “You there?”
“Yes, one second.”
How many perspectives you got running? You can’t set one aside?”
“Don’t tell me how to run my body.”
Ignoring the snide comment, Raith considered the options. The enemy had placed a minefield throughout the system, meaning they’d had time to prep. If they wanted one person, then—“Wait, what about a vac-suit boarding party?”
“Crazy, but possible,” Olive said.
“Transmitting new orders now,” Persepolis said. “Alpha Squadron, engage the frigate. Water Squadron, enter the hangar and—”
Something rattled Raith’s ship. “What the—” He looked up, a metallic hand on the perma-glass. “Uh. I’ve got company.”
“Water Squadron, all hands on deck!” Olive’s voice resounded across the flight group’s com, their tight formation displayed clearly on Raith’s HUD. “We’ve got . . . got . . . got—”
Silence.
Seconds later, all incoming data from outside his DS-10 disappeared. Raith was alone.
