Nostromo

And this morning Sir Ian was reading through his dispatches from the regional capital on New Caledonia before his first appointment of the day, with this Ripley woman from one of the tugs. Reading through her dossier was like reading the summary of a condemned man, or woman, as was the case here; her parents were celebrated U.S. Naval officers who had been among the last to matriculate from the old Naval Academy on Earth, but they had disappeared during the course of the disastrous Mintaka expedition and had not been heard from since -- until a month ago, that is. For the entire USNSF Enterprise Battle Group had instantly -- and mysteriously -- appeared in Earth orbit and been contacted by a disbelieving Antarctic Traffic Control. And that was when the shit had well and truly hit the imperial fan.

Yet of more immediate interest to Tarkanian, in that one instant the entire balance of power within the empire had seismically shifted into unknown territory, and he had been looking for a way to exploit the sudden appearance of this fleet.

Because there simply weren't any ships like the Enterprise or the Constellation in the new Imperial Navy. Even frigates like Stavridis and Darwin were more potent than anything built in recent decades, and this was the simple, unintended consequence of the so-called Peace Dividend declared by Leonidas after the final collapse of the Russian-Chinese alliance. "All threat of war is hereby abolished!" the King had merrily decreed, and so centuries of military tradition and warfighting capability had withered and died in the span of a single generation.

And yet here was this girl, in effect raised by the last four-star Admiral of that Navy and without any knowledge of the whereabouts of her real parents, and now he was going to get to break the good news to her. Her parents were alive! She was to return to Earth immediately by the fastest available means! It was all very breathless and amusing, and he was almost looking forward to delivering some good news for a change -- when Thomas Dolby floated into his office without so much as a knock on the governor's Duraplast door.

"When is Ripley scheduled to meet with you?" Dolby growled as he came across the room, finally sitting across from Tarkanian -- and then putting his filthy boots up on Sir Ian's desk.

Doing his level best not to look supremely put out by this unwanted intrusion, Sir Ian looked at the CIAs local head-of-station and shook his head. "0800, I think."

"She's not to be told anything about her parents, and she is not to return Earth or the Gateway under any circumstances," Dolby sighed. "Am I being clear? She's not being sent back to Earth to meet up with dear old Mom and Dad. Got that?"

"And why the devil not, if you don't mind my asking?"

"Because the Company wants it that way," Dolby said, handing over a dispatch. "You're to confer her adjustment in rank to Chief Warrant Officer, effective on the date noted, and mention that comes with a quarter-point increase in shares for this flight -- and that is all you are to tell her at this time."

"And that's it?" Sir Ian grumbled. "But all that blather is normally transmitted internally, isn't it?"

Dolby shrugged. "What the Company wants, the..."

"...the Company gets. Yes, yes, so I keep hearing. Any idea what this is all about?"

"No, not entirely, but I suspect it has something to do with her parents."

"Obviously," Sir Ian said. "But what the devil could they have done?"

"My guess is they've refused to swear the oath of allegiance to Leonidas, and that makes the situation a real problem."

Tarkanian nodded in complete understanding. From what he remembered reading a few years ago, the Enterprise Battle Group was immensely powerful and could lay waste to entire planets, and the thought of an old-school U.S. Navy admiral showing up in orbit over New Sparta with that fleet had to be keeping the imperial court up at night -- because there was nothing at all in the new "Navy" capable of stopping Ripley and that fleet of his. If the admiral were to refuse to cede the disappearance of the old United States of America, and if they were to attempt to...

"Ah yes, I see the problem, and quite clearly now," Tarkanian sighed.

"Do you? Well then, that's excellent."

Sir Ian nodded. The one thing that might sway Admiral Ripley could very well be to throw his daughter's future into the mix. To, in effect, hold her hostage? Obviously, the intel services would have to use the Company to pull off something like that, and he wondered what Dolby had come up with.

+++++

There were currently three Tesotek 2100-B bulk ore carriers on Thedus, and as the captain of the Nostromo looked at the dispatcher's display he sighed, then turned away in anger when he realized only one of them had been -- partially -- loaded. Time was money and this screw-up, Arthur Dallas knew, was going to cost the Company some real money. Though the ore separators would continue to process the bulk ore during the flight back to Sparta, tight construction deadlines on the imperial planet meant that a late arrival would slow progress on any number of major construction projects nearing completion, as a late arrival meant unnecessary delays in steel and aluminum production -- and these types of delays always rippled downstream into further production bottlenecks and even more delays. Still, because Sparta was such a pristine, not to mention gorgeous world, the Crown had long since decreed that the home of the imperial aristocracy would not suffer the same fate as Earth, and that meant ores would not be extracted from within Sparta, and to this day only the barest minimum hydro-carbon emissions were permitted. Turning these ores into steel beams and aluminum sheathing were considered to be within this framework, for the time being, anyway, but these ore ships carried even more precious cargo.

In addition to the iron ores and bauxite carried in the massive storage domes, more than 110 tons of refined gold and and 35 tons of palladium had already been secured inside Nostromo's internal cargo bays, and the Crown desperately needed these precious metals to pay for the massive infrastructure projects already in progress -- both on Sparta and on the eleven settled worlds of the Co-Dominium.

Thomas Kane, Nostromo's XO, pulled himself into the dispatch office wearing his habitually dour face, his eyes studying the latest ore download rates and departure estimates as he floated over to Captain Dallas. "Call it thirty hours to finish the load-out, and then two more hours to pressurize the reactor and dock with the refinery module," Kane said as he looked up from his paperwork.

Dallas knew it was almost impossible to maneuver into position and secure the docking clamps to a Tesotek in less than four hours, and he'd already guesstimated the time needed to finish loading the four domes with raw ore, so he wondered what Kane was up to. "We have any passengers this trip?"

"No, no one this time," Kane said. These bulk ore runs were slow, but passage could be booked on the cheap -- and with no questions asked -- because the crew usually pocketed the proceeds from these off-the-book transits.

"Any crew changes?"

"No. Lambert is still on NAV, Walter on Science, Ripley has the stick and it looks like we're stuck with Parker and Brett again down in Engineering. Oh, in case you haven't heard yet, Ripley's promotion to CWO just came through, so she can officially handle all flight deck duties now."

"Wow, that fast? Well, three more runs and she can sit for the Commissioned Officer's Exam, then she'll be gunning for your job..."

"You still gonna retire from the merchant marines?"

"Yup. This is my last trash run, Tom. I'll be flying passengers between Sparta and New Chicago by this time next year."

"Oh? Did your orders come through?"

Dallas held up a hand-held screen and pointed to an entry. "Final interview a week after we finish unloading."

"Hey, congratulations! About time!"

"Thanks, Tom. Four more round trips and then you can sit for the exam, right?"

"You got that right. No more hypersleep for me." Big bulk haulers like Nostromo were simply too massive to generate Langston Fields, so they relied on a constant 1.1G acceleration to get up to near light speed, then at the halfway point flipped and applied a 1.1G braking thrust until reaching orbit around Sparta. If the ship ran into trouble, Earth was near the halfway point and the old Gateway was their alternate.

Joan Lambert floated in and Dallas immediately looked at the navigator's fingernails -- because she was constantly chewing on them, often to the point where they were a bleeding mess wrapped in gauze. The woman was perpetually nervous and, generally speaking, suspicious to the point of being paranoid. Ripley was the only one on board that seemed to get along with her, too, leaving Dallas to conclude that Lambert had been through a few bad relationships with men. Then again, he'd heard rumors that Lambert and Parker had a sex-type thing of their own going on, so who knows, maybe he was wrong about her.

"Any surprises on our route this time, Joan?" Dallas said to Lambert as she hovered nearby -- doing his best to ignore the little bits of fingernail under her perpetually scowling lower lip.

"Possible comet as we approach the Terran Oort Cloud. Nothing else listed," she said -- just before she began chewing on a thumbnail.

Dallas shook his head and looked away. "Oh, by the way, Ripley's Chief Warrant Officer rating came through, just in case that comes up."

Lambert nodded but she looked away, too. She'd been passed over for CWO two times already, which meant she was trapped now, that she'd spend the rest of her time with the Company as a navigator. Her only way up the ladder would be to dump flight status and go teach at the merchant marine academy on Mars, something she had been considering for a while. Still, she'd need a few more trips to even be considered for a ground-side teaching assignment, and she was already coming up on thirty years old. "That was quick," Lambert finally said. "How long before we head out to the ship?"

Dallas looked at Kane again. "You want to take Ellen and go make sure the food-paks were loaded correctly this time?"

"Yeah, sure."

Dallas nodded and then turned to Lambert. "We'd better go out and make sure Mother has the mission parameters sequenced correctly, and that her fuel calculations tally with yours."

"Now?" Lambert asked.

"Yeah, unless you've got something better to do?"

"I'll have to go download the updated files -- and format a new drive," she said, exasperated by having been asked to do her job.

"Okay," Dallas said, suddenly tired of trying to work around Lambert's incomprehensible moods. "Why don't you bring out a hard copy, too. Just in case I want to look over the route."

Ignoring his sarcasm, Lambert nodded brusquely and pushed off. "See you up at the ramp," she said before she disappeared down the accessway that led to the NAV Center.

"Where's Ripley?" Kane asked Dallas, shaking his head at Lambert after she was out of sight.

"Still in the BOQ with that goddamn cat; at least she was a half hour ago."

"You want anything special this trip?"

"No, not really. Whatever the kitchen comes up with is fine by me."

"We all liked that green stuff last trip out of here. Tasted kind of like spinach."

Dallas shrugged and turned to his personal correspondence; Kane took the hint and turned to push off and make his way out to the BOQ, or the Bachelor Officer Quarters, relishing the pure freedom of zero-G up here in the orbital base station -- while it lasted.

+++++

The Nostromo was a Lockheed Martin CM-88B Bison, an M-class interplanetary tug powered by one ChiCo contained fission pile reactor and two Westinghouse fusion plants. Power in a vacuum was provided by four large Rolls-Royce ion drives, while the command module was designed to detach for flight into known atmospheric conditions using either a scramjet or six high bypass turbofan engines. She was larger in all aspects than the ocean liners of the early 20th century and could generate enough power to supply the needs of a small city. That such a huge machine could be handled by a crew of seven was a testament to the power of the computer that, in truth, really ran the ship.

And for almost 20 years, the MU/TH/UR-5500 class computer had handled these routine duties, but M-class interplanetary tugs had recently switched over to the larger -6000 series. With six ten-terabyte cores, 'Mother' could handle the most complex astro-navigational chores with ease, and she interfaced with the computers servicing each of the ore processing towers, dispatching maintenance drones to all areas of the two ships.

Because both Walter and Gordon units could interface directly with Mother, and perhaps more a matter of economics, most ships were assigned synthetics as science officers. Their energy requirements were minuscule compared to human needs and, with the exception of the disastrous David model introduced in 2080s, synthetics quasi-human AI-driven emotional reactions made them ideally suited to the conditions encountered during long-duration interplanetary voyages.

Dallas and Ripley were on the bridge entering waypoints into the ship's INS, a new, state-of-the-art Thales Inertial Navigation System, while Lambert entered the same data -- manually -- into Mother's NavDat terminal. Done this way, Mother could independently crosscheck that waypoints had been correctly entered before departure, as well as monitor the progress of the ship during the voyage. Making major course corrections during transit had to be approved by a bridge officer, and on this trip that meant either Dallas, Kane, or Ripley had to sign off on such changes.

Dennis Parker, the ship's engineer, and his assistant, Sam Brett, had already double-checked hull integrity as well as the the three docking clamp mechanisms that would be used to secure the refinery complex to Nostromo, and they were off to see that all provisions were up to date in the ship's lifeboat, the same Narcissus-class lifeboat affixed to all CM-88 tugs. This meant ensuring the oxygen scrubbers and food paks were all replenished, and that the hypersleep chambers on the main deck were correctly pre-loaded with occupant information and their current flight profile.

Tom Kane, as the ship's executive officer, was responsible for double checking Parker's work, and more often than not he found maddening errors and glaring deficiencies, and while he'd long wanted Parker tossed out of the merchant marine, Parker, and to a degree his useless assistant Sam Brett, were protected by the powerful Spacer's Union, so getting him fired would literally take an act of the crown, which meant it would never happen. Making his rounds behind Parker and Brett this morning he'd already found eight major errors in their pre-load settings, and he was only halfway through his pre-takeoff checklist!

Ripley and Lambert had double-checked the INS entries and now Ripley was waiting for the final load-out report so she could enter the cargo's mass. With that information entered she could calculate the fuel requirements for the voyage as well as the fuel needed to enter a parking orbit around Sparta. Dallas would have to sign off on those calculations, and only then would the final flight profile be sent to Mother.

"Forty-five minutes to cargo launch," ground control said over the radio.

"We still need the numbers!" Ripley replied.

"Right. Sending now," a too-young voice said over the circuit.

Ripley shook her head. Labor shortages were a fact of life in the Co-Dominium, and probably would remain that way for a hundred years, or so they'd been told. With more than ninety percent of the Earth's population lost, automation had become more important than ever, but there were still too many things that required human intervention and judgment. Still, she'd been stunned to see a twelve-year-old girl working approach control in the tower on Thedus.

And as she entered the cargo weights and performed balance calculations she noticed a short, squat-necked man walk onto the bridge. He appeared to be in his 40s, if his close-cropped steel gray hair was any indication, and his facial expression seemed guarded, his eyes furtive, almost evasive.

The stranger walked over to Captain Dallas and handed him his orders.

His name was Ash, and he would be replacing the ship's Walter for the duration of the voyage.

C1.3

"Where is she, Denton?" Judy asked her husband.

"I'm not sure," he sighed as he looked over the dispatch he'd just received from COMMs. "A planet called Thedus, but it's not in our database, and of course, it's not on our star charts. She's been working on a bulk ore carrier..."

"What? You're kidding!"

The blue light on the admiral's intercom flashed -- meaning that the Lars Jansen avatar was waiting -- so Ripley hit the 'ENABLE' button and watched the boy's mesmerizing blue-swirling form take shape on his monitor...until it finally snapped into sharp focus.

"Ah, Admiral Ripley, I'm glad to see Judith is with you. I have new information."

"You look happy, Lars. What have you been up to?"

"Walking on a beach, I think."

"Uh-huh. And how many girls were with you this time?"

"I think I've moved beyond that phase of life, Admiral. I was walking with a...I do believe it was an otter. Yes, it was a sea otter, and he was telling me all kinds of things."

"A talking sea otter. Lars? You doin' okay in there? I mean, I know this all came as a surprise..."

"Oh, yes, I understand, Admiral, and thanks for asking, but yes, I am most happy in here. I was always an awkward sort, you know, but so many of us are. Now if I want companionship all I have to do is think about it and there it is. Talk about instant gratification!"

Ripley smiled. "So, you have news?"

"Yes, Admiral. I have found something of immediate importance. A video file left by Admiral Stanton. I found it on a drive located somewhere in Armstrong City, I believe on a personal storage device left by Admiral Stanton before his...well, you'll understand after you watch the recording."

"Is it a personal message, Lars?"

"Some of the information is of a personal nature, sir, but most concerns the immediate situation we are now facing. The information is self-explanatory, sir, though I would say that many parts will need to be viewed by all the other captains in the fleet."

"Okay, I'm putting you on the large screen."

"Ah, Judith," Lars said amiably as he popped up on a large, wall-mounted display. "Nice to see you again."

"Hello," she replied uneasily, still not sure what to make of the dead boy's free-range memories roaming throughout the ship's various computer systems.

Lars noted her reticence as he pulled up the file. "I would recommend that you remain seated, both of you. Some of the material is a little graphic."

"I see," Denton said. "Okay, start playback."

A USNSF seal popped up on the screen, then a recording date of 15 November, 2122 appeared, followed by a Top Secret classification and encryption warning, and that the material in this file was 'TSC-Eyes Only' to the Flag Officer(s) in charge of Agamemnon and/or the Enterprise Battle Group, then Admiral Stanton's steely-eyed visage appeared onscreen.

He was shuffling note cards but then looked up suddenly, and his eyes looked care-worn and anxious: "Denton, things aren't going well here at the moment, but there have been some positive developments recently. First things first. I've enrolled Ellen at the Merchant Marine Academy High School in Musk City, and I've sent Walter with her. She's about to finish her first term and she's doing well. I've done my best to shield her from events here, but I may not have been entirely successful on that front."