Alabaster Noon Read online

  “Braking to dock with Sphinx,” the pilot said.

  Aleksandra looked up in surprise. “Oh, right,” she said and cinched her straps. A second later, the image of Hippogriff forgotten, the shuttle’s engines roared to life, pushing her back into her seat.

  A little over fifteen minutes later, Shuttle 322-A docked to an airlock on Sphinx, and her pilot checked the connection manually.

  “I appreciate the caution, Ensign,” she said, “but I trust the automatic systems.”

  “With all due respect, Commander, this is a brand-new ship…” She left the rest unsaid.

  “Oh, I see,” Aleksandra said, and she quietly waited while the pilot went through her process. It only took a minute, and then the hatch was opened from the inside.

  “Commander Kowalczy,” an older man said, floating just inside the hatch. He gave her a formal salute. “Lieutenant Jameson, formerly retired, in temporary command of EMS Sphinx.”

  “Then it is Captain Jameson,” she replied and saluted. “Permission to come aboard?”

  “Granted,” he said, smiling.

  Aleksandra floated through the open hatch. The shuttle pilot was already closing up; she had a dozen more flights waiting on her roster. The hatch seated with a clank and a hiss of pressurization.

  “Well, there goes my ride,” Aleksandra said with an uncomfortable laugh. “You might as well show me the problem.”

  “Sure,” Captain Jameson said. She followed him down the shiny new corridor. “I’m sorry my XO wasn’t here to meet you, but you see, I don’t have an XO right now.”

  “We’re incredibly shorthanded,” Aleksandra said.

  “I’m sorry we had to ask you to come over, but nobody can decide what to do about it.”

  “I understand,” she said, though she didn’t entirely. Had Alexis Cromwell routinely dealt with minor issues like this? Somehow, Aleksandra doubted it.

  Though she’d never served on a Steed-class, all command-level officers and technical crew in the Winged Hussars were required to have at least a basic familiarity with all the deck plans of the common ship classes. Of course, since she wasn’t a serving shipboard officer, she had little experience converting those deck plans into real world experience. She kept the plans constantly running in her pinplants and still couldn’t quite get her bearings. Luckily, Captain Jameson seemed to have the knack of it.

  They’d nearly reached the CIC when something that had been bothering her finally firmed up in her head: the lack of crew. “She seems so empty,” Aleksandra said.

  “Normal complement is 225, not counting marines,” Jameson said. “I served on Sleipnir just before retiring. I have twenty-nine hands on board, including myself, and no marines.”

  Aleksandra just nodded, because she knew that, she’d signed off on the crew assignments. “You’ll have another eleven once the evacuation is complete.”

  “Kids and old farts like me,” Jameson said, shaking his head. “What the hell went wrong back on Earth?” He glanced at her and caught a handhold to bring himself to a stop. Aleksandra did too, though a tad less gracefully. Like so many other shipboard skills, zero-G operations was one in which she was lacking due to insufficient practice. “Ma’am, permission to speak candidly?”

  “Granted,” she said.

  “How the hell do you know what happened?”

  Aleksandra sucked on her teeth for a long moment. She’d decided not to make it public that Alexis was dead. Her fear of the company falling into despair was stronger than the need to motivate them. They were executing the needed operations the way they’d been trained and doing it by the numbers. How would introducing the knowledge of Alexis Cromwell’s death affect that efficiency? Badly.

  The look of profound concern on Jameson’s face told her she needed to confide in him. Despite being lower in rank, he was many years her senior, and, as such, deserved to be in her confidence.

  “Colonel Cromwell is dead,” she said.

  The expression on his face went from concern to confusion then to horror in an instant. “No,” he said.

  “Yes,” she stated. “I have high confidence in this fact.”

  “Why haven’t you told the Hussars?”

  “Why do you think?” Aleksandra asked. “Can you imagine the reaction? How it would affect morale?”

  “Yes…but still…”

  Aleksandra shook her head. “It was my decision. The fleet will be back in just a few days. I’ll have the full details then.” And someone else from the fleet will take command, she thought but didn’t say.

  “And how do you know this?” he asked, some of the concern returning.

  “Yeah, that’s the tricky part.” She took a calming breath. “You’ve heard about the Fae, the little aliens that came to New Warsaw with Colonel Cartwright?”

  “Furry little monkey things?” he asked. She nodded. “I’ve heard of them but haven’t seen one.”

  Aleksandra described her encounter with Seldia and Sly. The older man listened to every word she said before commenting.

  “You believe them.”

  “What would you do?”

  He considered. “I don’t know.” She cocked her head at him. “I would probably believe them too, I guess. This whole war feels like a reckoning. I met Lawrence Kosmalski once—did you know that?”

  “Really?” she asked.

  “Sure, it was about fifty years ago. He was old as sin and twice as mean.”

  Aleksandra laughed and shook her head. It sounded like the founder of the Winged Hussars.

  “So much of what the Winged Hussars are today are the result of Amelia Cromwell’s guidance that many people have lost sight of Lawrence Kosmalski’s contributions. The man was a financial genius who some said could see the future.” Jameson made an expansive gesture. “He was responsible for finding New Warsaw and moving us here. Some say he was bitter because his accomplishments were eclipsed; I think he liked the quiet.”

  “How does that factor into this war?”

  “In addition to being mean, he was prophetic. He was the one who was sure war would, one day, come to our home, no matter what we did to prepare for it.” He looked her square in the eye. “So, I believe you and the little aliens. War is finally coming here.”

  “Thank you,” she said. “I wish you could take command of the system.”

  He laughed and smiled. “I wish you could take command of this ship.”

  She smiled back at him. “We’ll see who’s left of senior command when the fleet gets back. The Fae didn’t have enough details to tell me how badly they were beaten. We might not have much to defend the system, outside of what’s here. On that, let’s see what it is you brought me here for.”

  An hour later she was scratching her head in the CIC as a pair of techs ran the fifth diagnostic on Sphinx’s tactical systems, with the outcome completely unchanged. The two techs looked at each other in confusion.

  “What could it be?” she asked them.

  “A fundamental problem with system integration?” one of the techs suggested.

  “The shield control system has a deep logic problem,” the other said.

  “You can’t decide which?” Aleksandra asked. They both shook their heads. The pair were young, though not from the academy. Both were qualified to work at the shipyards; however, they were still supposed to be under supervision. Their normal boss was halfway across the system working with the Golden Horde on some of the other defenses. “Okay, how about addressing both?”

  “Not practical,” Jameson interjected. “You see, the shield control system is dispersed through the hull at several locations.” He activated a Tri-V showing a schematic of the Steed-class. The named systems were highlighted in blue and showed in a dozen places along the hull. “Trying to see if the shield systems were improperly integrated means a complicated process of running cross-connected diagnostics between each system interacting with the shields.”

  “Which is half the systems on the ship,” Aleksandra sai
d. Jameson gave a sad nod. “How did the ship get moved from the shipyard without testing? I thought it was essentially done before assets were reallocated.”

  “And there’s the problem,” one of the techs said. “Those tests were completed. We did them ourselves. Full function in standby and under load. No live-fire tests yet, of course; we would have progressed to those as the next step.”

  “It was working in the shipyard?” she asked. Both men nodded.

  Captain Jameson shrugged. “I didn’t see her until she was clear of the yard.”

  Aleksandra acknowledged the fact with a nod; she’d assigned him, after all. “When exactly did you discover the problem?”

  “When we were preparing for a simplified live-fire test,” Jameson said. “Thirty-six hours ago.”

  “Thirty-six hours,” she thought. Using her pinplants she checked on when the ship was first moved out of the yard. A little over two weeks ago, just before the fleet left for Earth. She continued her research on the process of moving Sphinx out of the shipyard and into the final fitting moorage. Everything was routine, as indicated by the work orders, until something changed.

  Nine days ago, work began to miss deadlines, which corresponded with the beginning of personnel shortages. It wasn’t bad, only notable. Everything which needed to be completed was still being done, it was just taking a little longer than originally planned. Since Sphinx wasn’t ready for the Earth campaign, and they were short on crew anyway, it hadn’t been a priority. She was about to remove the file from her pinplants when a log entry caught her attention.

  “Equipment Check—T. Sato.”

  Instantly, she remembered Uuth in her office reporting Dr. Sato’s disappearance. The HST director had told her Sato’s last sighting was on Sphinx!

  “Holy shit,” she said, drawing the attention of everyone on the CIC. “I need to check something.”

  She floated to the side to get out of the way and sent a message to Uuth, as she was too far away from Prime Base to make a live conversation practical. “Please forward the report from the marines who were escorting Dr. Sato on his work aboard EMS Sphinx. I need to know precisely where he was working on the ship.” She sent the message with top priority, and she got the reply in only a minute.

  “The marines weren’t familiar enough with the Steed-class’s exterior to provide those details; however, I have included their suit logs which have camera images. I hope this helps.”

  “It does indeed,” she said as she loaded the enclosed files and ran them forward. She hadn’t seen the recording of Dr. Sato’s specially modified CASPer going into the ship. She forwarded the recordings before suddenly freezing it. She clipped the image and cleaned it up. “Captain Jameson,” she said, “can you show me where access panel 22-A-99 is located?”

  “Sure,” he said, and the deck plans moved to flash a position. It was next to one of the blue-highlighted shield control systems.

  “I knew it,” she said. “Please check there, I believe you will find your answers at that section.”

  “We’ll have to go EVA to reach that section,” Captain Jameson said. She nodded and waited. The captain looked at the two maintenance techs. “Suit up and have a look.”

  Despite her meager skills, Aleksandra helped with configuring and checking systems while she waited, and she instructed a young Buma, who was still in the academy, on the ship’s damage control station. Those systems were nearly identical across all the Hussars’ ships, except the Egleesius-class, of course. Eventually the two technicians returned from their EVA carrying a small case.

  “Try it now,” they said.

  “Shields function check,” Jameson ordered.

  The defensive coordinator activated the system and keyed the shields to life. After a second, full function was confirmed.

  “How did you know?” Jameson asked.

  “Another event which coincided with your issue,” she explained.

  “The main shield controller was connected to a slate which was sending an interruption test sequence,” one of the techs who’d went EVA said.

  “Harmless but intentional,” the other tech agreed. He held up the case he was carrying. “This was zip-tied to the sabotage.”

  Aleksandra took the case. “It’s not sabotage,” she said.

  “Then what is it?” Jameson asked.

  “An arrow pointing to this case.”

  “There’s a menu option on the shield control system which isn’t normal,” the defense coordinator said. He looked at his captain. “Should I activate it?”

  “No!” Aleksandra said, louder than she’d intended.

  “I thought you said it wasn’t sabotage,” Jameson said.

  “It isn’t. Or at least I’m pretty sure it isn’t.” She looked at the case she was holding for a second, then let it float before her and carefully released the simple locking mechanism. It opened easily to reveal a common slate. “Can I borrow your ready room, Captain?”

  “It’s not much of an office but be my guest.”

  Aleksandra forgot to thank him as she pushed off a workstation and floated through the doorway into the captain’s ready room, pulling the door closed behind her. Built into the same armored sphere which held the CIC, the ready room was a combination meeting room, office, and temporary quarters for the captain. A fully completed Steed-class would have the space appointed with a meeting table, desk, personal effects of the captain, and a tiny toilet. All made to operate in zero gravity or under thrust, of course. This ready room was more an open space with a simple desk.

  Aleksandra hooked a foot through one of the fabric loops next to the desk, using it to hold herself steady. The desk had a number of flexible bands built into its surface in order to hold things in place. She secured the case with one and the slate with another, then touched the slate’s activation window. She wasn’t surprised when it scanned her finger.

  “Lieutenant Commander Aleksandra Kowalczy—Identity Confirmed” the screen displayed. The Tri-V came alive, and an image of Dr. Taiki Sato appeared above the desk.

  “Hello, Lieutenant Commander, I hope you are doing well.” After the greeting, it went silent. She watched for a while as Sato looked at her without moving.

  “Strange recording,” she said.

  “I am not a recording,” the image said.

  Aleksandra jumped slightly and would have floated across the room if not for the strap around her foot. “Then what are you?”

  “I am a modified ACSP.”

  Aleksandra used her pinplants for the acronym. Automated Customer Service Program. “You’re an AI?”

  “That is an over-simplification,” Sato’s image replied. Then the ACSP gave her a wry look. “Besides, Lieutenant Commander, AI are illegal.”

  “Okay,” she said, giving a little, uncomfortable laugh. “Why did you take the Sphynx’s shields off-line?”

  “Why, to lead you to this slate, of course.”

  “Sure, but why?”

  “I wish to have this conversation with Alexis.”

  “So do I,” she said. “Except Alexis is dead.”

  The Tri-V image froze for the first time, more closely resembling a static picture. It stayed that way long enough to make her think the program had broken. She was about to see if the slate would reset, when Sato suddenly spoke again.

  “I was not programmed with that contingency. Who is in command?”

  “I am.”

  “Processing.” The image stilled again for a few seconds. “There are no contingencies stored to match the one you are describing,” the program said. “Thus, I am proceeding with the one which most likely matches probable outcomes.

  “I have modified Sphinx with defensive systems based upon technology acquired from 2nd level hyperspace. I was unable to fully understand the technology involved; however, what I was able to decipher has been produced.

  “The plan I assembled was for Alexis Cromwell and her AI to begin evaluations of the new technology and, once complete, to int
egrate it into the Winged Hussars’ vessels in a measured manner to allow tactical doctrine to be adjusted accordingly.”

  Aleksandra listened and marveled at the program—its intricacies, the level of effort it must have taken to put together, and how well it worked. She’d only met Sato once in passing, although she’d heard all the stories and mentally labeled him an eccentric genius. She now considered her assessment of his genius off by an order of magnitude. This program was only written for one purpose!

  “The situation as stated has invalidated all options,” the ACSP version of Sato continued. “Information is being copied to a data chip. This information needs to be given to the shipyard personnel. It includes installation procedures for the same modifications I’ve made to this ship. They need to be given the utmost priority.”

  The Tri-V began displaying schematics and virtual displays of the new hardware in action. Aleksandra wasn’t a front-line combat officer, and she’d never been shot at in the line of duty, but she’d gotten adequate scores on tactical training. What she saw made her gasp and put a hand to her mouth.

  “This…” she stammered. “This is a paradigm shift.”

  The computer-generated Sato gave a slight smile and nodded its head. “You are correct. Please do not try to follow me. I’m going where you cannot follow. I’m sorry for what I’ve done in the past, even though I had good intentions. Things were done to me by forces I cannot explain for fear of endangering every Human in the galaxy. I hope, one day, to come back and see New Warsaw again. It was the only place where I felt…at home.

  “A copy of this conversation has also been saved to the data chip. Please remove it now.”

  Aleksandra pulled out the chip, and the representation of Dr. Sato nodded. “I wish you luck, Lieutenant Commander Kowalczy, and farewell.” With a sudden flash of actinic power, the slate self-destructed.

  “Oh!” she squeaked and pushed back from the desk. A tiny puff of smoke came from the slate and was pulled away by the room’s air circulating fans. “I didn’t know a slate could do that.” She examined the data chip. There wasn’t anything unusual about it; it was a common data chip. There were probably a million of them in this star system alone. But what this one held might well change the balance of power for an entire galaxy.