Star Empires: The Entropy Machine Chapter Eight: “Flotsam”

Tairyoku thought she felt the ship shudder underneath her an instant before the proximity alarm went off. "What is it?"

"It's actually INSIDE the ship," Smith answered. "Something appeared out of nowhere in the hanger bay."

"'Something'?" The admiral asked. "A transmitter?"

"No." Smith was holding an earpiece tight to his ear, trying to make sense of what he was hearing. "Sorry Admiral, it's a little confused down there. This is a craft. An auxiliary craft. A warp sled." He put the earpiece down and looked at her. "A Tsantarii warp sled."

Tairyoku's eyebrows both went up and she rose and headed for the lift. "You have the con. Have Doctor Odetta meet me in the hanger bay along with an engineering team." She wanted to bring Brigitte in as well, but after she had an idea of what would greet the woman.

She arrived in the cavernous hanger bay to find the Tsantarii warp sled that she'd been chasing, sitting on the deck. It's loading jaws were wide open, and a smaller, crab-like Prospector craft was sitting next to it. What seemed like steam or vapors were rising from both. A human male in an unmarked civilian jumpsuit was standing a short distance away, watching anxiously as an engineering crew examined both craft. Odetta was waiting for her. Tairyoku glanced at the doctor, and they both approached the man. "Are you Marty Levinson?"

"I want a lawyer," he answered as he folded his arms in front of him.

"You don't need a lawyer," Tairyoku answered. "Marty, your wife is here, close by, and she's okay. You need to see her first. Then we can figure out what to do with you two." She saw his eyes widen, and maybe a little relief replace the suspicion on his face. "Doctor Odetta will take you to her, and the three of us can iron things out later." She noticed that he was torn between leaving quickly and staring at her, as if he was trying to figure her out. "Seriously, go. Your wife and your daughter need you. The legal issue can be worked out. Take care of your family."

He choked out an emotional "Thank you" as he left, trailing Odetta.

Once he was gone, she addressed the engineering crew hovering around the two craft. "I want to know what happened to this ship. What it's been through. What forces have acted upon it. Where it's been. Pull the black box and navigational records. They should match, but we're dealing with rogue elements and Tsantarii technology. We're staying in the area until I know what happened, so the sooner we have those answers the better."

Doctor Odetta had escorted Marty to Brigitte's room and left them alone. From her office, she contacted Tairyoku. "Admiral?"

"Yes doctor?"

"Our passengers are getting reacquainted. I've left them alone, as the emotional display is more than I am comfortable with."

Tairyoku raised an eyebrow at that, but let it go. "Fair enough."

"But that is not the only reason." She hesitated. "The cordite smell is back. Heavy on him and even heavier on the ship he arrived in. I would guess that the transmitters were directly involved in what happened."

"I tend to think you're right, and hopefully the engineering team will be able to shed some light on it. When you think our passengers are up to it, I'd like to have a conference so we can all look at the evidence and put our heads together."

"Yes, Admiral. They're still talking. When they're done I'll give him an examination. She has had enough rest for a short meeting, and I'm sure his presence will help. I'll contact you when they're ready."

"Thank you. Bridge out."

An hour later, Tairyoku was seated at a conference table with Odetta, and Marty and Brigitte Levinson. The diamond-encased transmitter was between them, in the center of the table. The admiral glanced at it, then at the couple, who were seated close together. "Marty, Brigitte, I want to get one thing out of the way, so hopefully I can put your minds at ease and we can get to work." She saw them glance nervously at each other before turning back to her. "I have an offer for you. It's more than fair, and one that I'll need an answer to quickly. I have a mission mandate that gives me broad discretionary power in pursuit of information on these transmitters. I can, for example, grant the two of you retroactive crew status on the Monitor. That will authorize your otherwise illegal FTL flight within the Sol System, as well as your unsanctioned interstellar travel. Your warp sled will be confiscated, as it is contraband and dangerous. The Prospector craft will have its black box wiped and it will be returned to its owner. Upon completion of my mission, you will be returned to Earth with no official or unofficial record of your activities."

Marty instinctively snickered, and Brigitte shot him a glare. "Please excuse my husband," she said. "What he meant to say was, 'what will it cost us?'."

"I don't blame you for being skeptical. Neither of you. But all it'll cost you is any data you have. Any transmitters. And a legally binding Non Disclosure Agreement. Violation of which would warrant severe penalty. Really, it doesn't ask much of you but your cooperation. And I'm willing to share our findings with you, if, as I said, you'll observe the NDA. The reason I'm doing this is because I think these things are dangerous. Very dangerous. I think they destroyed Canopus, and if there are more of them spread throughout the universe..." she allowed her words to trail off.

Marty seemed to look at her with new eyes, and the transmitter on the table with fear. Then he glanced at Brigitte with questioning eyes. She raised an eyebrow, and one hand moved to her belly. She nodded. "Admiral, I think we agree. We accept your offer," he finally said.

"Brigitte?" Tairyoku asked.

"Agreed," she said.

"Good. We have the black box from your Prospector, and the warp sled. What I need to know, before we do anything else, is if they are accurate and unaltered."

She noted that they glanced at each other quickly before Marty answered. "They haven't been touched."

"I'm glad to hear that," Tairyoku said. "We can, if necessary, dig into them and check. It's been done before. But I need for you two to trust me, so I'll start off by trusting you. My crew will pull and analyze them. But I also want to hear, in your own words, what you've done and where you've been." As she noted a shadow play over their faces, she added, "and again, you have been given retroactive crew status. So this is all now authorized and legitimate and legal. I only ask for it in your words because that will tell me more than the black box does."

Together, Marty and Brigitte recounted where they'd been and what they'd done, excluding the name of contacts on Earth and within the solar system. Tairyoku noted this and let it go. They included all observations and left out no relevant information. The narrative went all the way up to what they hadn't realized at the time was the destruction of Canopus. "We were in the process of warping out of the system when the sled was thrown out of control," Brigitte said."At that point, I was knocked unconscious and found myself on the other ship."

"The Nightingale," Tairyoku said. "So Marty, what happened to you at that point?"

Marty hesitated again. "Look, I trust you. I believe you. But you aren't the courts. You know they can rescind this agreement."

Brigitte rolled her eyes, but Tairyoku put up a hand. "I don't blame you for thinking that. The courts have run rampant over treaties and agreements. But when I say 'retroactive crew status', what I mean is that our records will show that you were drafted and agreed to serve, a year before you first left Earth for the Oort Cloud. 'Discretionary powers' means that I can legally alter time stamps and rewrite logs if it's that important. Do you get what I'm saying? Marty, I know that for all the legalisms and technobabble, what I'm doing is cheating, and in a sane world it should cost me my career and more. But I think that these transmitters pose an existential threat not just to our civilization, but to our galaxy and beyond. What happened to Canopus could happen, without warning, to Earth or Ev'nan or the Bhengarr worlds. These transmitters are everywhere. I think they're spread throughout the universe, and one of them just destroyed a solar system. So I'm prepared to cheat if I have to in order to get to the bottom of this. There are reasons that Earth controls the travel of our citizens. Serious reasons that you can't know about. Grave concerns and more than a little paranoia thrown in. But all of that is peanuts compared to what these things can do. So you really need to understand where my priorities lie. They lie with you and your wife and daughter, and with the continued existence of our civilization. The technicalities of law and travel restrictions just don't measure up to that because they're in place in order to safeguard that civilization. If they start to get in the way then we need to be prepared to go around them."

Marty stared at her silently for a few seconds after she finished. Finally he spoke. "That's a little scary, honestly. I mean, you've read 1984, haven't you?"

"Really?" Brigitte said in an exasperated and threatening tone.

"But okay," Marty added. "Anyway, I already agreed, I just- I had to point out how scary it is, because it makes sense to me. And rewriting the past, even when it helps me, should never make sense. We are justifying the unjustifiable."

"Are we moving forward or not?" Tairyoku demanded.

"We're moving forward," he answered. "Dangerously. Okay. When the warp sled was thrown out of control, I found myself on your ship, still inside the sled. There was no passage of time. I didn't go anywhere else. But-."

"But what?"

"There were transmitters everywhere. Inside of the sled, around me. Outside of the sled. All of them blinking on and off at different times. All of them pinging at different times. It was like they'd  gone crazy."