Authors: Dain White
“Janis, where is everybody?” I asked the air, as I waited for the
forward lock to cycle me through.
“Yak, Jane and Pauli are on the bridge,
sir. Gene is off-shift and in his cabin.”
“Thank you my dear”, I replied, kicking
through the gun deck. I was probably too late anyway, he was almost certainly sound asleep by now. I dropped down the ladder and stepped smartly into the ring, feeling my innards settle as I assumed a sense of gravity.
“Anyone awake in here?”
I asked as I tapped on the side of the cabin hatch.
“Unfortunately”, Gene grumped. He was on his bunk, reading something on his holo that looked like an exploded diagram.
“What are you reading?” I asked, looking around for his cup.
"Schematics for one of our
Ligo osmotic recycler units", he replied. "The head drain is getting a bit of a nasty gurgle, and the trap is clear – so I’ll be tearing this down on my next shift.”
“Don’t you have all that memorized by now?” I asked, refilling his cup and handing it over.
He snorted. “I’ve torn these down enough that I should, but they’re pretty complex little critters, Dak.” He took a sip, while I watched him intently.
“Now that’s a damn fine cup of coffee,
Dak”, he said reverently after another sip. “You have completely outdone yourself, sir.”
I took a brief moment to bask in the well-deserved glory of a job well done, and another brief moment to try and identify what sort of monkey scowl Gene was working on. If I didn’t know better, I’d almost call it a smile.
“Thanks Gene… to be honest, my last pot was inadequate. Pauli may not be able to tell, but you were absolutely right, I didn’t take any time with it. You never know when the next cup of coffee might be your last, and it was poor form for me to let it slide like that. It won’t happen again, mister.”
He looked at me with a wrinkled forehead and took another sip. “Why are you so maudlin, Dak? Is something going on?”
“Nah, we’re in the pipe, Gene – but you know, just like life is worth living like every day is your last, each pot of coffee is worth brewing like it might be your last.”
“Hmm… it sounds to me like something is going on”, he said shrewdly, fixing me with another look.
I laughed. “Something is always going on, Gene, but nothing more life-threatening than usual.
“Well, what sort of things are you worried about?”
“Nothing out of the ordinary, really… we’re slipping on a route that is less traveled than I’d like, with Janis’ course at odds with the old gravimetric survey data for this sector—“
“But Janis has better eyes now than those survey ships did”, he reminded me.
“True enough, but they mapped the area in real space, between little hops – we’re mapping it fifty times faster than the speed of light, as we go.”
A moment of silence spun on a bit, punctuated by the sound of us both taking a thought-provoking sip.
“Well skipper, the way I understand it, wouldn’t Janis’ route be correct, because of the way she can scroll through her timeline? Or is that really how to think about it?”
I nodded slowly. “Yes, that’s correct… and really, that’s why I am not too concerned about it. She is able to do it, because she has the proper gear now, and naturally we installed the sensor package before it was needed.”
“Mm-hmm”, he replied, staring off into space for a moment. “Well, it is what it is. It’s not like we don’t live a pretty dangerous existence hauling mass way the hell and gone out here, one errant rock away from smithereens...”
He definitely had a point, though unfortunately it didn’t make it any easier to think about.
“Yeah, that’s pretty much business as usual around here Gene – the life of a spacer, an independent, burning for the endless…We take risks.”
He smirked as much as his current scowl allowed
. “Fair enough, so what else should we be concerned about?”
“Well, I am afraid that Janis may have come up with something new for us.” I replied after a moment.
“Emwan?” he asked softly.
“No, not yet”, I replied reassuringly. That is something
none of us were ready for. “She has something else cooking. She is teasing Pauli about patterns.”
“Patterns?” he asked quizzically.
“Yep, she’s found some interesting patterns in Unet data.”
“What sort of patterns?”
I knew that Gene loved puzzles, and figuring things out. He also hates it when I give away the end of a story. “Gene, I’m going to play this hand close to my chest, so you don’t get all grumpy with me. You can probably figure it out – should we take a stroll to the bridge?”
“Might as well, I’m not sleeping after this”, he said, draining a ghastly amount of his cup, and holding it out for a recharge.
I fixed him with an endless blank stare.
“Come on, skipper” he cajoled. “You don’t want me to fall asleep, do you?”
“No… but this has to go throughout the crew, Gene. Maybe after everyone has had their fill, you can have another?” I held the carafe protectively, like a newborn infant.
“Yak doesn’t want any, Captain.”
“Oh, now I am ‘Captain’, am I? I see how you are.” I whipped out my most withering admiralty eyebrow and he cringed, predictably. “I know full well that Yak won’t want any, but Shorty might want extra. Do you want to incur her wrath?” I knew I had him then. None of us wanted to risk fates worse than She Who Shall Get What She Wants Most Times.
“Nah, guess not…. lethal little ladies first, always.” He smiled and shoved off his bunk.
*****
Laughter rang out ahead of us, as we kicked forward through the gun deck.
“See what you miss when you sleep, Gene?” the captain asked, waving me ahead at the companionway.
I rolled my eyes and kicked ahead. He has no idea what it’s like being me. I have more aches and pains in my left knee than he’s ever felt, and I’m the one who does all the work around here. Maybe if I sat around reading in my jammies all day long, I wouldn’t be so old.
“Hi Gene, Captain”, Yak said as we floated into the bridge. He unclipped and made ready to relinquish the conn.
“As you were, Yak”, Dak said off-handedly, as he floated forward to Pauli’s station. “I’m only here to spread joy and cheer.”
“Very well, sir”, Yak replied, and clipped back into the helm station. Shorty kicked free of her perch at Yak’s station, and kicked over for a refill, her coffee cup leading the way. I maneuvered closer to the actio
n as well, just in case. You never know. I took a soothing float within easy reach of a grabber, and waited my turn.
“So Pauli
…” the captain started, working the carafe pump. “Have you made any progress on Janis’ puzzle?”
“Well, it’s clear that it’s related to AV, but I am not at all sure what it all means”, he replied through a smile as his cup hissed full.
“Hmm… not much of a big picture sort of guy, huh?” the captain asked, smirking.
Pauli took a sip and gasped. “Oh...”
“What is it, Pauli?” Shorty asked.
“This is amazing, Captain” he said in reply, clearly trying to carbonize his throat with scalding gulps.
“Easy there… remember, you’re on short rations, son… no offense, Shorty”, Dak added, grabbing her cup.
She laughed. “I’m always on short rations, you guys eat all the food!
What puzzle are you guys working on up here? Can I help?” Shorty asked, watching him work the pump with expectant eyes.
“Well… it might be fun for you all to take a look, and see which one of you wins the prize.”
“What’s the prize?” Yak asked.
“The prize…
is a second cup of coffee”, he replied with a smile.
“But I haven’t had a first cup”, Yak answered.
“That’s true, Yak… in that case, the prize for you, is a cup of coffee.”
“No thanks… if I win, I want Janis to make me a brewery.”
The captain thought for a moment. “Fair enough, Yak. If you win, you can become our official brewmaster. Pauli, put that report to the forward holo, please.”
“Wait a minute, sir.” Pauli replied. “I am not convinced that you know the answer to this… sir” he added, respectfully.
“Doubting your captain, son?” the captain said ominously at first, then smiling. “Fair enough, one moment while I key in my answer.” He pulled out his handset and scribbled something on the screen, hiding it under his hand like a star student. “Okay, done. Now flash that to the main holo, son.”
Pauli worked his screens, and the forward holo lit up with a tabbed report. The first tab contained what
looked like financial data for Eastern Arm market trading, a wall of numbers that had no apparent relationships, just trends over time, up and down. Janis had highlighted specific items, but they didn’t really make any sense together.
“What is this screen?” Shorty asked.
“It looks like market trading values, Shorty… but it doesn’t really make sense what we’re being shown here.” I replied.
“That’s correct, Gene” the captain replied, steadying himself along a grabber and relaxing for a float.
“Looks like a wall of numbers”, Yak rumbled behind us.
“Indeed…” the captain replied with a smirk, “…but the answer is here, on this screen.”
“What are those green triangles?” Shorty asked.
“Those are market values that are trend
ing upwards.” I answered.
“And the red ones are losing value?”
“Yep… this shows trends, but no relationships”, I added, doing some mental calculations against the highlighted entries, looking for patterns.
“The highlighted values aren’t all trending one way or the other… they seem mixed”, Pauli remarked.
Shorty made a clicking sound. “Maybe the indicator isn’t the trend up or down, but the volatility of the amount?”
“Could be
, Shorty”, I replied. She had a good point. It did seem like most of the highlighted values showed more movement than the rest.
“
So this report is showing us a series of trades, and clearly highlighting the most active…” Yak trailed off momentarily, “…but I don’t know what the hell that means.”
“Exactly”, Pauli replied. “Nothing seems to matter. The next screen isn’t much help, either.” He swiped the next tab open.
As best as I could tell, this was a financial report from Mexaco, and made as much sense as any accounting grid ever did.
“What’s Mexaco?” Yak asked thoughtfully.
“A glom that controls most of the market for reactives”, Shorty replied. “They do some other business, refining and heavy metal processing, but mostly they are known for their corner of the market on fuel.”
“And what does this report mean?” he asked.
She shrugged. “I have no idea, Yak. If I had to guess, the columns of this grid look like their territories, and the rows look like specific reactive blends. This looks like a profit and loss report, tracked by territory.”
She called it on this screen, it looked to me like there was a pattern here, but it was really hard to get a fix on it. I worked through the columns and rows
, but all it did was make me cross-eyed.
“Pauli, are there additional dates for this report?” I asked, waving at the footer.
“Yep”, he replied, and swiped through the subs slowly, one by one. “Tell me when…”
Something caught my eye, but it was Yak who answered first. “Wait a second, Pauli.”
Pauli stopped. The bridge grew silent as we all worked through the data on the screen.
“Go back, Pauli”, Yak asked. Dak laughed softly.
Pauli tabbed back, and I saw it. There were spikes in values, moving through the report, from screen to screen.
“Hmm”, we all said, roughly in unison.
“Whole lot of humming going on here”, Dak teased. “Pauli, switch to the next report.”
Pauli flipped to the next main tab, and brought up a
simplified system chart, overlaid with a route. “These waypoints correspond to the territory spikes in the previous report”, I said quickly, determined to get a first in our little race.
“Well, of course”, Shorty said with an eyeroll for emphasis. “But what does it mean?”
“If it means anything”, I added. “That it is showing the movement of profits through both space, and time is apparent… but that doesn’t necessarily mean anything. Maybe a big ship docked at…” I squinted to read the line item, “…Mardis, and the fleet pulled into…” another squint, “…Targa a few weeks later. These spikes don’t necessarily mean anything.”
“Well, clearly they mean something”, Yak added thoughtfully. “What’s on the next screen?”
“The next ones are off the wire, various articles about colonies…” Pauli started swiping through them one at a time. “I can’t find any relationship between them, though. Here’s an article about a collapsed colony, the next one is about a notable science team arriving at a colony of Morse-Webber’s. Here’s one about a disease outbreak, and this one looks like a revision of a financial prospectus.”