March 2251

On the Frontier

Light years away, on the Grugell frontier, one of the less publicly known bits of Senator Crider’s funding agenda was at work.

The Star Ship Shade Tree was a privately owned vessel, but in spite of its small complement – three officers and twenty-one crew – it was faster and better armed than most of the light ships in the fledgling Confederate Navy.  A reading of history had prompted the Senator to quietly seek out the adventurous sorts that would be amenable to a re-creation of a bit of Earth’s seafaring history, and the concept of the privateer had been born anew.  Mounting six ship-to-ship missiles and three particle beam projectors, the small, agile and fast Shade Tree was quietly doing a bit of intelligence gathering along the frontier.

“Bring her right a few degrees,” the Shade Tree’s Captain Jean Barrett ordered.  “Give me a scan on that big asteroid there – yeah, that one.”  She pointed at a blue speck on the main viewscreen.

The flat black finish on the ship’s radar-transparent polymer hull reflected not a bit of light as the craft turned, slowly, only the slightest glow from its oversized Gellar drive tunnel giving it away.

“Returns coming now, Captain,” the crewman at the Scanning station replied.  “Nickel-iron asteroid, nothing unusual.  No hitchhikers, no indications of any mining or any other activity.  Trajectory indicates it’s in an irregular orbit around that type G star a half light-year to our stern.”

“Very well.  Helm, return to base course.  Let’s see if we can pick up the trail of that Grugell cruiser that passed through here.  It might be interesting to see where they’re going.  That system aft of us, it’s in Confederate space, no habitable worlds but lots of iron-rich asteroids.  I bet they’re looking it over.”

“I’m getting a slight ripple in the dark matter matrix for this region, like a big Grugell drive field just went through,” Crewman Iolanth Simmons reported from Scanning.  “I’ve seen it before, anyway.”

“Good,” Captain Barrett answered. “Cross-link the data to Helm.  Let’s drop in behind them and trail a while.  If they’re unescorted, we’ll follow along and listen to them chatter.  Bring us to pursuit course, ahead two-thirds.” 

“Coming about now, Captain.”

“Stay clear of that asteroid, Helm.  It may have some trailers.  I can’t afford any more repairs this quarter.”

“Yes, Captain.  We’ll pass about a kilometer starboard of the rock.  Search radar showing no trailers.”

“Good.  Secure radar and rig for EMCON.  No more emissions of any kind until I say otherwise.  Passive sensors only.”  I need to find a good First Officer, she thought wryly.  The lack of a good Second-in-Command had Captain Barrett on her own Bridge an average of fourteen hours every twenty-four-hour shipboard ‘day.’ 

She looked at her watch.  “Change of watch in fifteen minutes.  I’m going to take a nap.  Wake me in three hours.” 

Sliding silently through space, the Shade Tree turned to follow the unknown ship into unknown territory.

Only about ten steps and one ladder separated the Shade Tree’s Bridge from Captain Barrett’s stateroom.  Her ship was only a year in commission; new enough to have installed the first generation of gravity-generating deck plates copied from the wreckage of a Grugell ship destroyed twenty years earlier over Tarbos.  None but the newest of the Navy’s ships had those yet; most of the Navy crews had to make do with spinning outside sections for gravity, and zero-gee Bridges and Navigation suites.  But the legacy of her grandfather’s early investment in Off-World Mining & Exploration had left her a considerable fortune, enough to build and equip the Shade Tree.  A grant from the Confederacy paid her crew, and she hoped that any salvaged weapons and equipment from any Grugell ships taken unawares might actually bring her a profit.

She closed her stateroom door behind her.  Never much of a one for uniforms, she wore only black canvas fatigue pants and a black t-shirt; most of her crew followed her style.  The five former Marines she kept as a boarding party and security force had combat armor on board, but generally went about the ship in well-worn black workout outfits. 

 It had been three months since she – or any of her crew – had bathed with water, or eaten anything more appetizing than dehydrated Combat Ration Alpha-Packs, the acronym for which well suited the taste.  With a frown at her tiny static-jet shower, Barrett stepped to her tiny sink.  Pressing the hot water button gave her a five-second ration of tepid water, which she splashed on her face before examining herself critically in the mirror.

She carried her thirty-six years well.  Her curly strawberry-blonde hair was cropped short for shipboard life, but she liked the way it framed her fair-skinned, slightly freckled face.  Her eyes sparkled bright green, befitting her Irish ancestry; while her father had been a London businessman, her mother had grown up mere blocks from the River Liffey in Dublin.

With a skill born of practice at dressing and undressing in the tiny space, Barrett kicked off her shipboard sandals, skinned off her fatigue pants and removed her t-shirt before turning her attention once more to the mirror.  Still looking good, girl, she told herself.  For all the good it does you.  Only four single men on this bucket, and the Captain sure as hell can’t get caught in the sack with one of the crew.  Still, her fair skin was smooth and unblemished, her stomach flat, her breasts small but shapely.  A petite woman, she would never have the long legs that some men drooled over, but her legs were still strong, straight, and tightly muscled.

Maybe I should have joined the Navy after all.

Shrugging off the thought, she turned to her tiny foldout bunk to catch her nap.

Three parsecs away

The border between Grugell and Confederate space was not well defined.  A vague area between three of the more recently settled Confederate worlds and two identified Grugell colonies formed the “frontier” between the two civilizations. 

It was this frontier now that a trio of invisible Grugell frigates was crossing.  A quarter of a light-year behind them was a force composed of two larger, uncloakable ships.  Gleaming silver orbs trailed by four drive pods each, the two Grugell cruisers followed their reconnaissance screen on a mission to probe Confederate responses in the area.

On a command from the flagship, the frigates fanned out into a line abreast formation, roughly a hundred thousand kilometers wide, and made a course for the nearest known Confederate world, New Albion.  The cruisers fell in behind them as all five ships leaped into subspace to transit, hopefully undetected, into Confederate space.

The Shade Tree

“Bridge to Captain Barrett.” The voice page was followed by a chiming tone that battered its way into Jean Barrett’s sleeping mind.  With a muttered curse, she reached over her head to tap the intercom button on the bulkhead.  That was never three hours, she thought angrily.  A glance at her desktop display clock told her she’d been asleep forty-five minutes.

“What is it?”

“Sensor ghosts, Captain, three of them.”

“All right.  Give me a minute.”

Tugging on her fatigue pants and t-shirt, Barrett picked up her sandals and walked barefoot the few steps to the Bridge.  “What is it?”

At the minuscule Scanning station was one of Barrett’s prize “finds,” Indira Krishnavarna.  Once a PhD candidate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on Earth, Krishnavarna had been involved in an “experiment” involving a quarter-gram of anti-matter, a magnetic bottle rigged to a remote switch, and the luggage truck of the visiting Yale University football team.  Expelled for her part in the prank, Krishnavarna had eschewed the discipline of the Navy in favor of a five-year contract with a privateer, and Jean Barrett had made her the best offer.

“Captain,” Krishnavarna called, “I had you paged.  I’m reading three sensor ghost tracks, fading rapidly.”

“And that means what?”  Barrett’s testiness betrayed her fatigue, but she was interested.

“It might be three subspace transits.”

“You can’t track ships in subspace,” Barrett snapped.  She sat in her bridge chair and lifted her right foot to put on a sandal.

“That’s what the Navy and the brain trust at Off-World thinks, yes,” Krishnavarna replied.  “But I think you can, if you calibrate for it.”

“And how do you do that?”  Barrett shifted in her seat to put on her left sandal.

“It’s a matter of adjusting the dark-matter scan to…  Captain, I’m not sure how to explain it.  Unless you want to study physics for about five years first.”

“All right, what makes you think it’s a subspace transit?”

“Because I tried it when we were leaving Caliban last month after our provisioning stop.  Remember when we were in the traffic pattern behind that big OWME liner?  I tracked it when it kicked in its drive, and followed it up to the subspace transit.  We were accelerating in the lane right behind it, so I was able to analyze the track for about four minutes after it jumped into subspace before we broke in ourselves.  And just like I figured, there was this sensor ghost trail, right along the liner’s last bearing.  And now I’m tracking three sensor ghost tracks right now, running parallel, heading in to the Confederacy from Grugell space.”

“I don’t suppose you’ll be able to track them if we jump into subspace ourselves, will you?”

“No, I don’t think so.  I mean, our scanners work in subspace, but the data stream is gibberish.  Nobody’s figured out yet how to interpret it.”

“You’d think, after all these years…  All right.  Record everything you can on those sensor ghosts.  Feed the trajectory to Navigation.  Navs, I want a plot of every inhabited system on that projected trajectory.  As soon as you’ve got that, get Helm a course to the nearest one.”

“You got it, Captain.”

“Helm, the minute you get that course, I want us headed for that system at best possible speed.”  Captain Barrett stood up, yawning.  “Indira, you just keep right on experimenting.  You know, I’m not going to be able to afford you one of these days.” 

Indira Krishnavarna grinned at her Captain.  “I’ll settle for a nice bonus this trip, Captain.”

“So would I.  You find out where those ships are headed, and we may just both get our wish.”

“Captain, the first settled system along that track is New Albion.  There’s really nothing much else on that track; about twenty degrees above and to the left relative to the Galactic ecliptic is Corinthia, but it’s another three hundred and eighty light years past New Albion.  Smart money says they’re heading for New Albion, ma’am.”

“Good work.  Helm, get us under way.  Haul ass.”

“Coming about already, Captain.  Course plotted; engine is ahead full.”

“Fine.  Now, since we’re almost an hour into the third watch, do you think I might finish my nap now?”

The Bridge crew – all three of them – shared a laugh as Captain Barrett left the compartment, once more, for her stateroom.

To see more of Animal’s writing, visit his page at Crimson Dragon Publishing or Amazon.