Tales from the Inbox: The Dirtside Job

2952-12-18 – Tales from the Inbox: The Dirtside Job 

The last we heard of captain Svetlana Cremonesi of the Tycho Spike, she was trying to save Nestor Palazzo from ferrying a group of Gilhedat on their diplomatic mission. Though she was not entirely successful in this effort, Mr. Palazzo does seem to have benefitted from her intervention all the same. 

When I reached out to see if she had any new accounts of her travels as a light-duty spacer here in Sagittarius, her first response was a rather colorful refusal, which I am not permitted to publish because of our editorial rules on profanity. 

Evidently she changed her mind, because a few days later this story found its way into my inbox. It reveals tantalizingly little about her current activities, but much about her current fears, which still revolve around unwelcome life-forms getting aboard her ship. 

An unfamiliar alarm woke Svetlana from troubled sleep. As usual, she was vertical and pulling on her trousers before she was even fully awake to marvel at the fact that she had never heard this particular alarm sound before, in her decade of operating Tycho Spike. 

“Hells, what now.” Svetlana hopped over to the desk console and smacked the surface to wake the display. As she wrestled with the catches that fastened a standard set of spacer’s smart-fabric fatigues, her eyes roved across the ship status panel that appeared there. At first, the board looked normal - nothing was on fire, nothing important was unpowered that should be, and nothing was powered that shouldn’t be. 

It was the outside temperature reading – thirty Celsius – that snapped Svetlana back to her senses. Her ship wasn’t on an automated course between station and system jump limit, or vice versa. Nor was it docked to the side of one of Confederated Sagittarius’s many stations, awaiting cargo.  

No, she had landed on a planet – a habitable planet at that – and that explained the unfamiliarity of the alarm. She hadn’t actually landed Tycho Spike since the first year she’d owned it, after all. It must be related to external conditions, not to the ship’s internal status. 

Sure enough, when Svetlana called up the detailed alert list, it was full of “PERIMETER BREACH SENSED” - a clear enough phrase, though even in its clarity she was confused. She hadn’t realized her ship had a ground perimeter sensor system installed.  

A few more commands called up the external camera feeds, and soon she was looking out four digital windows onto the rolling, mauve-colored grassland that went on for miles around her landing site. She’d gotten a decent look at the place from orbit, but had landed after dark, so this was her first real look at the world she’d landed on.  

Svetlana had to admit it was beautiful, even though normally she didn’t go in for any place that threatened to get her boots dirty. Supposedly the place was on the Survey colonization list for after the war, and she hoped whichever ship-full of clod-shovelers landed here first were wise enough to respect what they had been given. 

She had only a moment to appreciate the aesthetics of the world, though. At least two dark shapes were weaving through the tall grassy plants toward the ship. When visible light offered no clue as to what they were, she switched to thermal, but that was no good either, showing only bright, hot ellipses. 

At first, Svetlana thought these might be emissaries of her employer – this was no pleasure trip, after all – but something in the way they moved suggested wild animals, not people. Normally, those would be no threat to her or the ship, but this was an unfamiliar world, one for which Survey had never published a biosphere report. What was out there could be almost anything. 

Svetlana grabbed her gun-belt and fastened it around her hips. She’d heard all the usual watering-hole stories of alien peril: acid-spitting horrors that could eat holes in a small ship’s hull, titanic megafauna which could tear metal like tissue paper, hive-mind drones kamikaze-diving into air-vents and access ports by the thousands, and of course the ever-popular monsters composed largely of phased matter, capable of sidling through solid bulkheads to rend the unsuspecting crew within. No doubt such fears were misplaced on such a pleasant world as this, but it didn’t hurt to be prepared. 

As Svetlana configured the hull loudspeakers to shriek an alarm every time the proximity alert went off, one of the creatures briefly revealed itself in a clearing. It was long of body and low to the ground, slinking forward with its narrow muzzle lowered as if smelling its way. She saw no eyes, nor ears, nor fur; the body seemed almost a sculpture of liquid obsidian, rippling with the motion of every tendon and muscle. She shuddered at the idea of running into something like that unawares. Hopefully her employer’s goons knew the local hazards better than she. 

Even as she thought this, the chime of incoming comms sounded. Svetlana brought up the lights, rubbed the remaining sleep out of her eyes, then hurried forward to the cockpit to take it from there, in case a video transmission was requested. 

Sure enough, the incoming request was from Piers Jerome, her current employer. His ship, the Leyla Robbins, was entering orbit, and had presumably spotted her transmitter.  

Jerome’s chubby face and insincere grin filled the center viewpanel as soon as Svetlana slapped the “accept” control. “I’m surprised you beat us here, Captain Cremonesi.” 

“It wasn’t hard to find.” Svetlana shrugged. “I got here day before yesterday and didn’t see you for three shifts, so I decided to land.” 

“Shame you don’t have high-end gravimetric sensors. We were already in-system by then.” Jerome clapped his hands together. “We will be planetside in about two hours.” 

“I’ll be waiting.” Svetlana hesitated. “Going to be all kinds of fun transferring cargo in normal-gee. Plus there’s a good bit of local wildlife skulking around down here.”  

Jerome waved one pudgy hand. “Xenolife shouldn’t give us much trouble. Nothing on this world is classified as sapient.” 

“I’m more concerned about it being classified as hungry.” Svetlana started as another perimeter alarm sounded. “But we’ll figure that out when you get here. Tycho Spike out.” 

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Tales from the Inbox: Ramiro’s Golden Cage

2952-12-11 – Tales from the Inbox: Ramiro’s Golden Cage 

Of all the characters who have appeared many times in this space in recent years, none has gotten more attention from the audience – and more queries for messages to be forwarded – than Ramiro W. Obviously this isn’t his real name, nor is Jen Daley really the name of his little ship, but going by a pseudonym in this space is his own choice. 

When last Ramiro graced this space, he was on contract with Survey ferrying Gilhedat diplomats from Maribel to the Core. At the time, Gilhedat encounters were still very much a novelty, and the ease with which one member of this group saw through him was still mysterious. It has not yet been two years since then, and those encounters now seem so mundane, at least to this embed team, who regularly encounters these golden-skinned diplomats on The Sprawl. 

It is unknown what Ramiro has been doing since the end of the diplomatic contract (which must have been a month or so after his last appearance in this text feed at the very latest), but when I reached out last month to see if he was willing to share anything about his current status, I did get a response, cryptic though it was. 

What happened to Livia he did not say, unfortunately, but the subject’s total absence from the message suggests he knows more than he’s saying. Perhaps Livia’s new friends have the official backing they assured him they had, and perhaps they didn’t; it’s impossible to say. 

He also did not provide any idea of when the following took place, except that it is relatively recently. 

Ramiro paused at the airlock to put Jen Daley into maximum security mode, and listened to the gratifying series of serve hums and mechanical thumps of a half-dozen internal  hardened doors closing. When he stepped away from it, the outer airlock, too, slid shut with a definitive clank and a series of clicking noises as its locks engaged. He’d had the ship’s intruder defenses upgraded back in the Core Worlds not because there was anything aboard worth stealing, but because too many times recently it had been host to people who might attract unwanted attention. 

As his datapack and earpiece cycled over to station-side configuration, Ramiro heard the triple chime of message delivery. Most datasphere communication had been forwarded to him hours before he’d docked, of course; anything he was getting now had been sent specifically to his local comms handle, and had not been captured by any of the system filters that would either discard it as unwanted or forward it to his general datasphere presence associated with Jen Daley. 

Ramiro frowned. He’d set things up to avoid that happening; it was bad business to miss messages to any of his local contact points. He pulled up the message data on his wristcuff, but learned nothing; the message was untitled and lacked any of the metadata tags indicative of being a business query. The name of the sender, one Scott Vacovich, was entirely unfamiliar. Fortunately, though Ramiro had been out of Maribel for many weeks, the message was only three days old. 

After checking that his sidearm was secured correctly to be in compliance with station regulations, he queued up this mystery message for audio playback and crossed the short boarding tunnel to the docking ring. He’d arrived in the middle of the local night shift, so traffic was rather light, with only a few spacers and local technicians hurrying about on various errands. 

“Hello there.” The smooth, silky voice on the recording was familiar, but it was no comfort to Ramiro. “Whatever you’re doing back in Maribel, it can wait. I’ve got-” 

Ramiro paused the recording, his frown deepening into a scowl. He was tired of being an errand boy for official agencies. It paid well, but he would prefer lower pay if it meant getting his freedom back. He’d thought after his last run, six or seven months before, that he was no longer of any use to Naval Intelligence or to the other military-offshoot outfits which Intelligence had sold his services to. Apparently he’d been wrong. Otherwise, there was no reason for “Sera” to be bothering him again. 

“I’ve got another job for you. No passengers this time, so I’m sure you won’t mind. A mutual friend has something very important that needs to be run over to Botched Ravi. Don’t worry about fetching it, the cargo system already has the loading request queued up.” 

Ramiro, passing one of the many viewpanels on the docking ring, looked out toward the boxy Jen Daley. Sure enough, a cargo crane was already moving a cylindrical M40 cargo container toward one of the ship’s pair of external container sockets. Short of putting the ship’s own crane in the way, there was nothing that could stop that damned cargo from being aboard his ship. 

“As usual, we’ll pay you on delivery. There’s no rush, dear, but do try to avoid attracting any unwanted attention.” 

The message ended there. There was no mention of what Ramiro would be paid; no matter the number, it was not worth the lack of control over his own destiny. He couldn’t refuse or even reply, of course; the Scott Vacovich profile was probably a burner account, like several others “Sera” had used to give him his assignments lately. 

Ramiro watched the crane line up the cargo pod with the socket on his ship, then turned away and took a moment to deactivate his local Maribel datasphere profile. It wouldn’t stop “Sera” from contacting him, but it would make it harder for her to ambush him like this again. Perhaps it was time to quit the Coreward Frontier and try his luck back in Gal-West, a backwater which none of the military or intelligence institutions cared much for. He had plenty of savings and a much better equipped ship now than he had when he’d left there the first time; perhaps he could even try his luck in the more affluent Memoire de Paix. 

Before he could do any of that, though, Ramiro had to be rid of the cargo. And to do that without attracting attention he’d need to spend a reasonable amount of time on the station and make some pretense of looking for passengers going into Farthing’s Chain. With a sigh, he headed for the lifts which would take him down to the commercial section. 

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Tales from the Inbox: The Mission of Force 72

 2952-12-04 – Tales from the Inbox: The Mission of Force 72 

As you probably know by now, Seventh Fleet has dispatched a task force into Kyaroh space to assist them in resisting the Incarnation offensive, and that force reached the Kyaroh world of Obzahi yesterday. A little math suggests that the force was dispatched days before we published the interview with Adviser Lved, otherwise it would never have reached such a remote location in time without going through Incarnation held regions. I learned that it was dispatched weeks ago, but obviously I do not know the precise date. 

What is curious to me is how the fleet knows the task force has arrived. Obviously we have no Hypercast relay connections built that far out, and they would be easily destroyed if we did. Perhaps this was merely the arranged date of rendezvous on station, and Admiral Abarca is merely banking on the fact that even if that fleet is days behind, no-one on this side of the lines can possibly know it for some time. 

What is interesting is that the force is led by a familiar face to this publication. When we talked to him last in October for the main vidcast, Samuel Bosch did not let on that he was already preparing for a behind the lines operation, but he certainly was. The leader of the Lost Squadrons is the logical choice to lead Force 72, obviously. His new command is centered around two of the fleet’s newest ships: the brand-new Farragut-class heavy cruisers Raymond Spruance and Isaac Macready. Neither of these vessels has been in service longer than a year and a half and they seem to have all of the fancy upgrades the Admiralty has devised to optimize its ships for this conflict. 

In addition to these two capital vessels, Force 72 is composed of at least three light cruisers and a dozen destroyers, plus frigates, cutters, and support vessels. Obviously the specific strength was not listed by the fleet’s announcement, but it is surprising that any vessels besides Bosch’s own Spruance were listed by name. 

I did ask Mr. Lved if he had any comment on the fleet’s announcement, and he said only that he was glad that this action was made public. 

With the last four feed items of the year, I did want to spend some time revisiting people who have made their mark on this publication over the years, both within military service and otherwise. When I suggested this idea to Nojus, he thought it very sensible, but he was less enthusiastic about my desire that he be the subject of the first of these entries. Nojus’s signature commentary has been absent from most of our feed items of late because he and I have been splitting up to cover multiple things at once – we are rarely both in the same place to jointly author each scheduled publication. 

Nevertheless, I was able to extract from him this very brief account of a recent adventure in his work behind the scenes for Cosmic Background. 

“Anyway, there I was, facing down a hellreaper...” Nojus swept one big hand through the air to imitate the scything claws of the notorious monster of Glitterwold. “With nothing but my camera drones and my multitool, as usual. I’d heard they were big, but let me tell you, they’re a lot bigger in person. And sharper.” 

The pretty brown-haired woman leaning on the bar next to him smiled, but something in her manner told Nojus she was not listening with her full attention. Perhaps she thought this was a mere tall tale, but Nojus, as a rule, never made up any of his adventures, nor exaggerated anything, because almost all of it was on the datasphere in full-capture. He was no stranger to poetical language, but exaggeration which could be disproved? That might ruin him. 

“I had planned to try to take it on, you know. I’ve killed bigger beasts with nothing but my trusty RSSM. I’d even got the right hunting tag in case I came across one.” This, too, was no lie. “But the moment I saw it clambering up over that ledge, I knew I wasn’t going to be killing it. Getting anywhere near it was suicide. So I started-” 

“Excuse me.” A smooth, elegant voice behind Nojus interrupted. 

Nojus turned around, and was surprised to meet the ruby-gemstone gaze of a Gilhedat female. He knew she was a female at first glance, even though his eyes scrambled to find any solid evidence of this; the species had none of the usual feminine or masculine features to go by.  

Others might be intimidated by those piercing eyes that seemed to see too much – thoughts and emotions, even – but this wasn’t Nojus’s first experience with the species. He had nothing to hide for the hyper-perceptive xeno to divine. Besides, as they went, this one wasn’t bad looking, and she was bound to be more interesting company than the brunette who couldn’t even pay attention for a short anecdote. “You are excused. Can I help you?” 

 “Am I mistaken in identifying the Nojus Brand?” The Gilhedat placed one golden hand on the bar, two fingers upraised toward the proprietor in a familiar way. The portly man picked up the signal immediately and scurried off into the back. 

“You are not mistaken.” Nojus bowed his head. “And you have the advantage over me, Councilor, since we have not met.” This title wasn’t much of a guess; nearly every Gilhedat one ran into in Sagittarius Gate was a member of the Grand Journey diplomatic corps. 

“I wonder if I do.” Her faceted eyes caught the dim light as she threw back her hood, revealing a smooth, bald golden head. Gilhedat were hairless; that was, as far as Nojus was concerned, the strangest thing about them. “My name is Nahsa. Perhaps you can assist me in something.” 

“Unfortunately, Nahsa, I’ve hung up my muddy boots.” Nojus shrugged, barely conscious of the fact that the audience of his interrupted story was getting up to leave. “No more hazard romps. At least until after this war is over, eh?” 

Nahsa smiled. It wasn’t a broad grin, just a little smirk, but it was enough to brighten the whole bar, if only for an instant, and only for Nojus himself. He wondered how much of that winning grin was calculated, and how much was spontaneous; he’d heard plenty about the Gilhedat councilor training to know that nothing they did was ever purely spontaneous. “You are precisely as you seem in the media, aren’t you?” 

“Never had the patience to be someone else for the cameras.” Nojus caught the bartender’s eyes as he returned, and gestured to the empty glass in front of himself. “I might turn it up a little sometimes, but who doesn’t?” 

“There is wisdom in that.” Nahsa leaned over and lowered her voice. “Are you read into the mission of the seventy-two?” 

Nojus frowned. He was, but that wasn’t something an alien representative should know about, nor something that should be discussed in so public a place. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” 

“Admirable.” Nahsa nodded. “I will say my piece, then, and let you be. The Grand Journey wishes to contribute diplomatically to the seventy-two operation. We need only some way to send word of our coming to those taking part.” 

Nahsa fell silent as the bartender placed a glass of something brilliantly green in front of her, then refilled Nojus’s whiskey. She and did not speak again until he had wandered off. “Convey this notice to someone who can make use of it. I will not be difficult for them to find.” 

Nojus shook his head. “I still don’t know what you’re talking about.” 

“Again, that is admirable.” Nahsa placed a hand on his arm for a moment. “Convey my message then to whoever you think it would be wise.” 

Nojus stared hard at the Gilhedat woman as she sipped her drink. As usual with her kind, she had a way of seeming unnaturally relaxed and tightly wound all at once, and that conveyed no useful information to him. “I can promise nothing.” 

“I did not ask for promises.” Nahsa arched one thin eyebrow. “But now my duty is complete, and I would like to hear what became of the slashing beast.” 

Despite himself, Nojus could only chuckle. “Well I do know something about that.” He arched his fingers back into an imitation of raking claws. “So when I saw it, I knew it was suicide to try to kill it, right?” He swiped at the air in pantomime of the monster’s fury. 

“As you said.” 

“But I couldn’t outrun it either, and it was mad as all hells. So I had to do some fast thinking.” Nojus kept his voice lower than before; this time, it was a story for a private audience. “So here’s what I came up with. Mind you, quick thinking isn’t usually sound thinking, so this is going to sound pretty stupid...” 

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Tales from the Service: A Life on Prospero

2952-11-27 – Tales from the Service: A Life on Prospero

“Dogs.” Sebastian made a note. “I can certainly get you Sigurd terriers.” He took his slate back, tapped in a few commands, then handed it back. There was little expectation that the Incarnation had any of the same breeds of dogs as Earth-based society, after all.

Shakil scrutinized the images of young and adult dogs, then nodded. “Yes. They’re a little like the Greenwatch dogs we keep to hunt burrowers on Prospero.”

“Excellent.” Sebastian pulled the images of dogs back to his side of the table. “Now start talking.”

Shakil shrugged. “I grew up in a town of maybe two hundred people. Not much to say about it, except that it was a peaceful life.” He sighed. “My father drove the supply crawler – a one week round trip to the big city. My brothers and I helped him unload at the depot, and helped him load produce for the inbound run. Nothing about that helps you much.”

“Sounds nice.” Sebastian agreed, making another note. “What sorts of supplies?”

“Oh, nearly everything. Essentials, plus anything someone requested special from central. No matter what you requested, it would come in eventually, no matter how silly.”

“How did someone pay for these requisitions? Was there some sort of exchange system?”

“In the Incarnation?” Shakil made a horrified expression. “We’re saving humanity. We can’t put a price on our duty to prevent extinction.”

“So it’s a rationing and queue system, then.” Sebastian had heard about the economics of Incarnation society quite a bit when talking with other prisoners, but none of them were from small towns on the world of Prospero. “They tell you that economics cannot be a barrier to survival, or some such slogan.”

Shakil bristled. “If you know all of this, why are you asking me?”

“We like to get a broad swath of perspectives.” That there were only a handful of prisoners who had grown up on Prospero in particular was something Sebastian didn’t think the man needed to know. “So, you loaded food on the outbound shipments, and got tools, home goods, and electronics when it returned?”

“Who said anything about food?” Shakil looked around the nearly-empty mess hall, then lowered his voice. “They didn’t tell us what our crops were for, they just sent down seeds and instructions each season. Father told me once that he was unloading them at a Navy depot.”

Sebastian frowned. He’d never actually found a prisoner who could explain to him what the Incarnation was growing on its worlds; everyone seemed to have been involved in helping with the harvest, but no-one seemed to know what the produce was for. “So you didn’t grow food, then?”

“Almost every house had a garden.” Shakil shrugged. “But other than that? No.”

Sebastian leaned in. “Are you telling me most of the town’s food came in on the crawler?”

“Most of the calories, sure. Standard issue nutrient blocks.” Shakil gestured to the bank of food-fab machines. “They taste a fair bit better than what those machines give us, but there are only four flavor patterns, so you really have to have some vegetables and herbs for variety. Obviously we hunted wild animals too, in the winter. There’s a lifeform we call a banker-bird there whose meat can feed a whole family for three days.”

Sebastian wrote this down. This was not quite the same story he’d heard from other Incarnation civilians, but none of them had been Prospero natives. “How do they make sure the shipments arrive on time, so nobody starves?”

“Let an essential production site starve? The Incarnate would be derelict to allow it.” Shakil made a warding gesture with his hands. “The depot does keep a reserve of food in case bad weather slows the crawlers, but we only used this twice that I can remember.”

“It would take some serious bad weather to slow a heavy crawler down.” Sebastian agreed blandly. “Do you remember what caused those delays?”

“It wasn’t weather the first time. They sent Father to another town because someone loaded him with another town’s cargo. Then he had to go all the way back to Central to get ours.” Shakil sighed. “We ate a lot of vegetables for a few days.”

“And the second time?”

“We were snowed in. Almost three meters of snow. Even the best crawler has to slow down for that. Father was delayed two whole days.”

Sebastian made sure to note that a three-meter snowfall on Prospero was unusual but not unheard of. “What was your town built with?”

“There’s a machine that you feed dirt and some sort of clear goo, and it makes beams and big flat panels.” Shakil traced a square on the table with his forefinger. “Most everything is built with those. They lock together at the corners, all you have to do is fill in the gaps with epoxy.”

“So, not particularly sturdy, but easy to repair.” Sebastian wrote this down, too. He’d seen a report on a curious fabrication machine captured on Hausen’s World; perhaps this is what Mr. Shakil was referring to.

“And warm in the winter.” Shakil nodded, then a sad look passed over his face. “I guess we didn’t know how good we had it back home. Do you think when all this is over, I’ll get to go back?”

Sebastian smiled. “Probably. But that’s not my department.”

I can tell that this account has been retouched a bit to remove bits of the conversation that Naval Intelligence would prefer not to be publicly known at this time, but the glimpse into life on Prospero is nevertheless quite interesting. The fact that food is processed centrally and shipped out to each village is very strange, and comically inefficient – unless one keeps in mind that the Incarnation seems to spend a lot of time policing its own people for any sign of dissent. Controlling the food centrally prevents anyone from having a realistic chance of rebellion; any rebel town would starve as soon as their local reserve ran out, which presumably would be too soon for them to grow full-scale food crops.

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