Tales from the Inbox: Indigenous Immolation

2947-04-30 - Tales from the Inbox: Indigenous Immolation

I know you all want me to have a story about the topical subjects of the day – the simultaneous reports of Angel activity on the Sagittarius Frontier and of Sagittarian ships sighted on the near side of the Gap – but neither of these reports come with proper eyewitness stories which Cosmic Background can currently publish. Some of them are stuck in the Naval Intelligence approval queue, and the others are difficult to source. Fundamentally identical sighting accounts from several places lead me to believe that there is a Datasphere copycat effect amplifying the underlying phenomena, if any – far outside their true size. 

If we get an account fit to publish by next week, expect to see it in this space, but I can offer no guarantees. 

Today’s entry by contrast comes from a very reputable source – the Confederated Navy. Specifically, our source is Mikael T., a helmsman aboard the frigate Phoebe Sherbourne. Sherbourne is one of the vessels in the Arrowhawk task group under our friend Samuel Bosch, which was dispatched on a solitary high-speed patrol run through a nameless system near Sagittarius Gate. Given the events which Sherbourne observed, Naval Intelligence has cleared us to ingest his account for the entertainment and education of our audience. The new Sagittarius Frontier is not as empty as our own Coreward Frontier – it seems to teem with native space-faring sapients like no region surveyed since the Brushfire Nebula, and just like the denizens of the Nebula, the Sagittarius natives are absolutely capable of making war.

While this does make the region more dangerous, it is generally regarded as a positive sign for the economic future. Just as trade with Cold Refuge and other Brushfire worlds boosted a flagging economic situation shortly after the brief but intense Brushfire War. I expect the Navy to boost its presence on the new frontier in case a similar colonial conflict is sparked in Sagittarius. Perhaps with a show of modern force, a direct conflict can be avoided.

The sudden chiming of the console startled Mikael enough to spill his cup of hot pseudo-tea on his clean white uniform. Fortunately, the smart-cloth prevented both liquid and heat from penetrating; it rolled off his chest in large droplets, splattering to the deck below his crash-padded helm chair. 

“Damn!” Kicking his feet off the console, Mikael pulled up the alert which had caused the noise. The ship’s course, set hours before on the beginning of the high-speed system patrol run, now seemed to be a collision course with a tight cluster of asteroids tumbling through the system. While not strictly urgent – the collision wouldn’t occur until the next shift – the alarm did signify a major change in the astrogation computer’s understanding of the system dynamics. The course Sherbourne traced had been calculated – by Mikael himself – to stay a healthy distance from the orbits of all the known system objects. 

“Helm, is there a problem?” Skipper Uggeri turned his stern gaze in Mikael’s direction.  

The skipper’s ring of displays and readouts replicated the alert on the helm station, so the question was obviously not one that could be answered by repeating what Mikael could see on his console. “Astrogation recompute, skipper. I’ll plot us a course update.” 

“What caused the recompute?” The question was directed at the officer maintaining the system tactical plot. The estimated orbits of five planets and two hundred lesser objects tangled the three-dimensional display just ahead of the skipper’s station. “I didn’t see any orbits move.” 

“We got new velocity data for these two groups of asteroids.” The woman manning the plotting station highlighted a set of ellipses in the tangle. “The group in green is moving far faster than original telescope readings suggested. The group in red, much slower.” 

Mikael glanced up at the display. The orbits of the two groups intersected – or nearly did – just before their mutual closest approach to the system’s nameless star. Something about the arrangement seemed too neat, but he put it out of his mind in order to compute a new plot that didn’t involve Sherbourne flying right into the heart of the red group and possibly battering itself to pieces on a succession of tumbling space-rocks. 

“What’s the error on those velocities?” Uggeri could pull that information up on his myriad consoles, but he preferred to make his subordinates do it and tell him the results when there was no particular rush. 

“For the green group the first data was off by...” The young officer reading out the results hesitated, frowned, then continued disbelivingly. “Over forty percent, Skipper. More than ten thousand meters per second deviation.” 

Everyone on the little warship’s bridge looked up at the absurd figure. How could telescope readings hours before have been so wrong about two clusters of asteroids, and not about the planets or the other objects in the system of similar size? 

Uggeri scowled, then nodded. “Sensors, get the ‘scopes on that red group and verify those numbers. Damage control, diagnostics on the telescope systems.” 

Both officers bent over their consoles to execute the skipper’s order just as Mikael finished computing a new course that had no collision risks. “New course plotted, Skipper.” 

“Hold onto it, helm. We’ve got some time to figure this out.” Uggeri’s voice was calm, but Mikael had been with Sherbourne during the previous year’s counter-Ladeonist operations, and he recognized the edge that had appeared in the stern officer’s tone. The skipper smelled danger. 

“Aye.” Mikael prepared the course change to be executed with a single tap of the controls, then sat back. 

“New ‘scope readings indicate the new figures for the red group of asteroids... Off by another five percent.” 

“Five percent lower?” Uggeri leaned forward. 

“Five percent lower, aye.” 

"Powered acceleration!” Mikael blurted, immediately regretting his outburst. 

Uggeri speared Mikael with a hard look, then nodded his agreement. “Ship to general quarters." 

The ship’s computer obeyed the order before any of the officers could change the alert level. A murmur swept across the bridge as the lights dimmed and the general quarters alarm began to wail in the corridor. 

The young man at the sensors station spoke first, having to speak up to be heard over the alarm. “Skipper, there’s no gravitic drive signature, no rocket plume, no ionized tail. How?” 

“Hell if I know, but those things are accelerating.” Uggeri took control of the plot and factored in the estimated acceleration rates of both groups. To nobody’s surprise, the rapid velocity bleed of the red “asteroids” appeared to be a means of reversing course too late, and the more measured velocity change of the green group adjusted its course to maintain intercept despite the dramatic efforts of its prey. 

“There are ten objects in that green group as big as a cruiser.” Mikael didn’t see who had made the observation, but the horror in the voice was obvious. 

“But they’re asteroids.” The young sensor tech insisted numbly. 

“Asteroid starships.” Uggeri corrected. “Like the colony haulers of the twenty-third century.” 

“But they have no drive-” 

“That we know how to look for.” Mikael was surprised to find his own voice interrupting the young man. “Wouldn’t be the first time.” 

“Helm, cut the drive and give us a gentle tumble. Sensors, get every eye we have on these things.” 

Mikael flicked away the course change and began executing the skipper’s order. Stealth measures when the frigate had loudly blazed its way in from the jump limit for most of a shift were unlikely to have much of an effect, but it was worth a try. Even if the asteroid ships were crude things, the large group tagged in green probably shipped enough weapons to smash a lone frigate. 

Fortunately, as the minutes ticked by, it remained obvious that the green group had eyes only for its original prey, the red group of similarly constructed vessels. The shift came to an end, but Mikael stayed on the bridge long after he had surrendered his station to a replacement, intent on seeing what would happen when the two groups closed. 

“Increased infrared signature on forward elements of green formation.” The new sensors tech, more senior but no more comprehending the sensor data, put the figures up on a screen. “Dust jets.” 

“They’re taking hits.” Uggeri muttered. “Probably mivrowave lasers.” 

“Will those work on an asteroid?” 

“They’ll heat it up.” Someone had evidently remembered the difficulties even a modern starship had bleeding excess heat into the un-conductive void. “Stars around, they’re going to roast alive in there.” 

“Now seeing increased thermal on lead green elements.” 

Mikael tried to imagine the primitive battle taking place farther in-system. As microwave lasers heated up the metals and rocks of each asteroid-ship, the carved-out interiors would become hotter and hotter, until flesh began to cook and overheated equipment caught fire or simply melted. Even the winning crews would likely emerge from their cratered battlewagons badly burnt, if they emerged at all. He could think of few more horrifying modes of war, even in the annals of Terran warfare. 

The battle had only one possible conclusion, of course. The green group, both more numerous and more massive on average, heated the red group until the targets glowed cherry-red even in visible light imagery, and the heat on its own ships stopped increasing. Mikael wondered what the conflict was about – was it a civil war between members of the same species, or a battle between the forces of two similarly-equipped cultures? What were the stakes of the battle? Had the red fleet fought valiantly to the end, or had its leaders begged for mercy as they died? 

Skipper Uggeri, of course, wanted none of the risks inherent in getting answers. “Helm, get us the hell out of this system.” His voice had become grim as he too probably imagined the horrific deaths of the losers. 

Mikael’s replacement gratefully entered a new course and Sherbourne executed a graceful turn back the way it had come. 

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Tales from the Inbox: The Fall of Cerberos

2947-04-23: Tales from the Inbox: The Fall of Cerberos

The survivors of the failed colonial effort on Cerberos here on the Frontier are lucky to be alive. Of one hundred thirty colonists recorded in the settlement's records book, only ten remained to be evacuated when a supply ship finally touched down and took them aboard. The culprit - a xenopredator they justly dubbed the Cerberos Ravager - is the closest thing to a true dragon that human explorers have ever encountered on any habitable world.

Obviously, the lizardlike avian-analogues of Herakles IV have the basic body plan of a dragon, but these small, agile predators are hardly the stuff of legends. Cerberos's apex predator, by contrast, has the size, scaly hide, and appetite of the horrors of antiquity, though its anatomy is more wolf-like than lizard-like in many other respects.

Gilbert S. is one of the ten survivors, and he is lucky to be alive. As the unofficial head of the colony's militia, he led a final effort to divert the Ravager away from the survivors of its first attack - an effort that likely saved what few lives were extracted from Cerberos's ruins. He briefly stood up to the predator alone, armed no better than Nojus Brand - he had only a survival multitool. He doesn't know how he survived - one of the other colonists pulled him to safety after the beast dashed off in pursuit of his three brave associates, none of whom were ever seen again. It seems the beast tried to bite him in two and missed, but knocked him into the cover provided by a nearby boulder, which sheltered him from a second attempt. Gilbert remembers little, however; he suffered a severe head wound and only recovered after the survivors were rescued.

Speaking of our friend Mr. Brand - I have received word that he has recovered from his injuries and, despite the advice of his doctors, is planning a new adventure. My sources say he will be announcing his next destination soon, and that he has been consuming a large amount of Cosmic Background media offerings while recovering from his injuries. Perhaps his media diet even includes this text feed, and some of the strange worlds which our submissions have describe will someday appear on his vidcast program.

The last of the colony outpost’s buildings was a flaming ruin by the time the array had been made ready to send the distress signal. Cerberos had defeated its would-be tamers; now it was only a question whether the huddled dozens cowering in the irrigation ditches of what had once been a kilometer-wide farm plot would survive to be rescued.

Gilbert and three other men watched from the cover of a rocky hillock as a lone Ravager nosed through the burning rubble, looking for anything edible. Edible to a thirty-meter-long Ravager bull, of course, included human flesh – local meat was indigestible to humans, but nature had not been fair enough to ensure that the reverse was also true. Worse still, the Ravagers were clever, perhaps as smart as an Earthly bear – not sapient, but they learned quickly that only the largest human weapons could inflict any serious injury on their scaly hides, and that even the most powerful sonic fences had weak points.

The only thing saving the survivors from absolute annihilation was the fact that ravagers were solitary and territorial – they only had to fend off one at a time. The one which had ruined their settlement was the only beast for many kilometers. If it was sated, it would protect the surviving humans – a future food source, in its eyes – from its own kind.

Unfortunately, the Ravager had returned after leveling the town, looking for more to eat. Even as Gilbert watched, it dragged a few hopefully-lifeless bodies out from beneath the twisted beams and torn plating that some thirty homesteads had been reduced to, gupling down each one in a single mouthful. Soon, it would smell the survivors hiding not far away, and the only thing between it and them were Gilbert and his compatriots, who between them had only two Reed-Soares multitools, a single hunter’s rail-rifle, and a dodgy jolter pistol which wasn’t even lethal against human targets.

Gilbert loosened his white-knuckled grip on the high-tech machete in his hand, knowing that no amount of death-grip would let him cut through a Ravager’s thick scales. The four of them could only try to draw the beast off into the hills, hoping that it would not return for the remainder of the survivors. Their lives were already forfeit – but each of them had a sister, or a mother, or a wife, who would perhaps survive long enough for a rescue ship from the mining installation in the outer system to receive the distress signal broadcast from the colony’s faltering comms array and pick them up.

At last, with a decisive shake of its great head, the Ravager faced the landing field, put its nose to the ground, and began wandering toward the hopelessly outmatched foursome. Gilbert took a deep breath, squared his shoulders, and prepared for the end. “Gentlemen, it’s been a pleasure homesteading with you.” With that, he hopped up onto the rocks and waved his machete at the beast, catching the light with the reflective flat of the blade to ensure its attention.

The Ravager looked up and snorted almost derisively at the challenge. It had shrugged off the fiercest counter-attacks the colonists could muster, so it had every reason to be unafraid. Even as it stalked forward, Gilbert taunted it, his legs trembling so fiercely he worried he would fall off his perch and break his neck before he had a chance to be torn apart by the xenopredator’s three-foot-long teeth.

The man with the rifle fired a single well-aimed shot, which slipped between the predator’s slightly open jaws and burrowed into the soft tissue of its palate. Surprised but not badly hurt by the tiny projectile, the Ravager snarled and backed away several thundering steps. “Now!” Gilbert shouted, and the group took off from its cover, running toward the narrow gullies of the hills.

The beast’s surprise lasted only seconds, and soon it was charging forward in pursuit of the fleeing colonists. It was faster than they by far, but before it could catch up, the four men dived into the cover provided by a cluster of boulders, firing a few flashy but ineffective jolter blasts to persuade it to stop.

“What now, boss?” One of the others asked Gilbert, peering out at the Ravager as it began to sniff among the rocks, looking for its hidden prey. It was a fair question – the nearest fresh cover was too far away to reach before they were overrun.

Gilbert gestured for the others to get ready, then held up his machete. “Go. I’ll give you the time.”

They knew it was pointless to argue. Gilbert pressed himself against the boulder, and the others crept farther away. A machete to the nose would only annoy the Ravager if he hit it exactly right; with dozens of lives riding on the diversion’s success, Gilbert knew he had only one chance. 

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Tales from the Inbox: The Capture of KR-233

After last week’s piece (Tales from the Inbox: KR-451) about a trio of KR ships (or at least ships that claimed to be KR ships) which vanished near Deana’s Rock at the edge of the Frontier, I was contacted by an officer of Naval Intelligence, who must remain anonymous for security reasons. Evidently, some time in March, Navy patrol captured one of these “KR” vessels when it tried to enter restricted space near a Navy installation on the Frontier (he did not say which).

Obviously, I was excited to accept this proposal. Full-capture recordings of this tour will be available on the Cosmic Background datasphere hub, and highlights will appear in a few days on Aston’s flagship vidcast. Apparently the Navy wishes to spread the word that these vessels, apparently those of a Ladeonist sect, are active both on the Frontier and in some parts of the Colonial Reach. Though their iconography and association with counterhuman influences is consistent with the usual Ladeonist behavior pattern, this sect appears to have greater financial resources than most, evidenced by the ability to outfit at least one (perhaps dozens or more if all KR sightings are of these ships).

Unfortunately, the three members of KR-233's crew remain comatose; Naval Intelligence would have learned much more about them if the EMP which had disabled their ship had not also disabled them, probably permanently. Are the Ladeonists really behind the rash of ghost "KR Ship" sightings? Or did they outfit KR-233 as a copycat, after hearing about one of last year's sightings?

Oddly, though their vessels are equipped quite well for stealth and evasion, they are not suited for smuggling or sapient trafficking, and they are not sufficiently armed for piracy. Perhaps KR-233 was meant to ferry Ladeonist magnates to cells on Frontier worlds? If Naval Intelligence has a theory as to the syndicate’s intentions or the equipped purpose of the captured vessel, it was not shared with me.

This week, I am devoting Tales from the Inbox to a unique effort: its narrative is pieced together from my own tour of the vessel and my interview with the crew of the Donald Albring, which captured it. Unlike my contact in Naval Intelligence, the names of the vessel and crew involved in the capture are not secret; this incident is being made public, both through Cosmic Background and through several military spacers’ content networks.

Sergeant K. Vogts disengaged his weapons’ safeties as Albring reeled in its prey. As leader of the three-Marine presence aboard the aging corvette, he hadn’t expected the last year of his last tour with the Marines to feature any action, but he had always prepared as if action was certain.

For all their griping during biweekly drills, the two green privates who he’d been tasked with wet-nursing until they grew up into proper Marines weren’t complaining now that Albring’s captain had a use for the three troopers. Corna and Hase looked a bit pale behind their helmet face-plates, but they moved confidently in their heavy armor-suits, and they carried their weapons like veterans. They were, Vogts decided, ready for the real thing.

The airlock depressurized with a rumble and then yawned open to the void. The snared ship – a quick little thing which had failed to run the local Navy security cordon – had been disabled by a salvo of EMP-loaded missiles, but the crew was probably still alive within.

“You are go for hot insertion, Sergeant Vogts.”

As soon as the calm voice from the bridge had given the order, Vogts stepped forward through the hatch. As he crossed out of the ship’s A-grav influence and became weightless, he activated his mobility pack and thrusted clear of Albring. As soon as he was clear, his cohorts followed.

“ETA one-five-five seconds, control. Any sign of activity?” Vogts found the target against the starfield easily; its hull was illuminated by Albring’s EVA spotlights, along with the tether lines which had been used to tow it close to the larger warship.

“Negative activity.”

“What do you think they’ll do, Sarge?” Hase’s voice trembled; the burly young man sounded uncertain. He’d never been under fire.

“We’re about to find out, Private Hase.”

The remaining seconds of transit passed in silence, and soon the target loomed only meters ahead. Slowing to match its velocity, Vogts marveled at how small the intruder was. Though expensively outfitted for stealth and infiltration with EM-absorbing hull paneling and collapsible “wings” of what appeared to be solar foil, the underlying vessel was had all the graceless, lumpen lines of a civilian vacationer’s yacht.

“Control, what are these panels?” Private Corna jetted closer to one of the collapsed wings.

“Best guess, those are parts of a photokinetic drive.”

“Of all the things to bring when you’re sneaking into a Navy base… Solar sails?” Hase’s muttering, though poor comms discipline, echoed Vogts’s own.

“Let’s get inside. Corna, set up the breacher.”

As Vogt and Hase moved in close to the only visible airlock, Private Corna unhooked a heavy breacher limpet secured to his armor-suit and backed off, pointing it at the pair of Marines and the airlock. As soon as he had it in place, he left it drifting there and joined his compatriots.

“Albring, be advised we are beginning our breach.” Vogts turned toward the lock, snapping his railgun into position to receive any trouble that might issue forth in the proper manner. Though not nearly as snappily, the other two pointed their guns in the same direction.

“Acknowledged. Happy hunting, Sarge.”

“Breaching on my mark.” Corna announced without waiting for his superior’s go-ahead. “Three… Two… One…” Though the radio didn’t transmit it, Vogts imagined the nervous gulp that occupied the slightly longer than regulation delay. “Mark.”

On the signal, the automated breaching module fired a curtain of gossamer, which slammed into the intruder’s hull and stuck fast. Though no sound carried through hard vacuum, Vogts knew how loud the breacher limpet’s cycle would be inside the target ship.

Almost as soon as the silky material’s leading edge had adhered to the hull, the limpet blasted its tank of compressed nitrogen into the newly enclosed space. Vogts made sure he was not in a direct line between the limpet and the airlock, and the two privates had already moved as far as they could toward the outwardly-bulging fabric walls.

“We have pressure and seal is holding.” Corna’s voice trembled. “Breaching charge in three… Two… One…”

Vogts didn’t hear the “mark” this time. When Corna keyed his remote, the breacher limpet’s shaped-charge explosive detonated with a thunderous crack in the newly pressurized space, and a white-hot beam bright enough to be visible through auto-dimming faceplates lanced between the limpet and the airlock.

“Go!” Vogts pushed Hase toward the lock, and the private drifted through the jagged, still-glowing remnants of two heavily reinforced pressure doors. Vogts followed as soon as the narrow entrance was clear, his suit-lights automatically coming on.

The Marines found the vessel’s interior surprisingly open. Where most yacht-like vessels were arranged into several sub-divided compartments for privacy and utility, the intruder’s interior was dominated by one large, open compartment, into which the Marines had entered on a balcony-like second semi-deck. Three sets of lights swept the interior for threats, but nothing moved.

“The hell is this thing?” Hase’s question carried through the air, not the radio.

Vogt scanned the jungle-like tangle of machinery bolted to the main deck below. No, he realized, it wasn’t jungle-like – it was an actual jungle. Intermingled with the machines were several overgrown specimens of unfamiliar plant. “A damned mess. Where’s the crew?”

“Over here, Sarge.” Corna pointed his light, and the other two followed the beam to a female human body strapped into a crash-pad chair on the other side of the balcony deck.

“Cover me, I’ll check.” Vogts shouldered his weapon and clambered toward the body. An EMP near-miss shouldn’t have been enough to kill the crew through the hull. Sure enough, his medical scanner found a weak pulse; the woman was comatose, but not dead.

“I’ve got another body!” Hase called, pointing his light down into the tangle on the main deck. “Male. Not moving.”

The scanning equipment found something else. A warning marker bearing the terrifying abbreviation “UNKN NANO” lit up on his faceplate display. “Nanotech.” Nanotechnology was far from uncommon; the fact that the suit systems couldn’t identify the nano-agent was enough to scare even a grizzled Marine. “Counts are off the charts.”

As he searched the unconscious woman for weapons, Vogts suddenly recoiled in horror. One side of her face, from her hairline to her cheekbone, was covered in intricate tracery of metal filament, all winding rootlike out of a metallic device embedded above her ear. “The hell?”

“We see it, Sarge.” The bridge controller seemed just as perturbed as he. “Invasive implant of some kind. If that connects to her brain...” Neither the controller nor Vogts needed medical training to know that it didn’t take much current through a human brain to cause serious damage.

“Sarge, we’ve got a third body in the back.” Corna drifted out into the open space and headed down toward the main deck.

“Everything else is clear.”

“Acknowledge clear.” Vogts drifted back from the strapped-in body. “Control, you’re go to reel us in. Observe nano-contamination protocol.”

“Any ideas, Sarge?” Hase asked, drifting toward one of the other limp forms, then recoiling as he spotted a similar implant there. “Augh! Counterhumans, all the way out here?”

“Not just any counterhumans, boys.” Corna turned his light up against the above bulkhead, and the other two Marines turned to look. Painted lovingly on the only open stretch of paneling in the entire ship was a familiar and sinister insignia: a stylized avian with outstretched wings shedding sun-fire. “Damned Ladeonists.”

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Tales from the Inbox: KR-451

2947-04-09 - Tales from the Inbox: KR-451

While there have been a few more notable reports of Sagittarian aggression across the Gap, there’s no major news on that front that hasn’t been covered sufficiently by our vidcast programs in the past few days. Instead, I want to bring to you another story of a KR-X ship – I’ve heard several people tell me about ghost ships seen on the Frontier, but since sightings of this particular class of ghost ship were among the earliest Tales from the Inbox episodes and I regularly field requests to publish more accounts of such encounters, I would be remiss to keep this particular tale from this audience.

As with many recent episodes, this story was created from notes taken during an in-person interview which took place recently here at Håkøya. Interacting with interstellar professionals with stories to tell personally does cut down on my free time considerably, but I think it results in better content.

On most runs between Maribel and remote Deana’s Rock, Henricus never even picked up another star-ship on any of his sensors. Two weeks out and two weeks back without being hailed by passers-by or boarded for random customs inspections suited him fine, compared to the relative bustle of Core Worlds space. When he wasn’t fixing his old Bois Bennette, a ship which whose main disadvantage was that it was designed to be crewed by at least six spacers, he had plenty of time to himself.

As usual, at the end of the final jump, Henricus steered away from the ruddy light of Damnation’s Candle, heading for its distant binary partner, the yellow-white pinprick of Deana. Only when the computer had plotted a course through the chaotic debris rings around the pair of stars did he notice gravitic echo on the plot. There were other ships in the system – three of them, to be precise, all of them quite small and appearing to fly in convoy.

Deana’s Rock being one of the most distant official Confederated colonies, Henricus was at first apprehensive of this presence. Dedicated brigand operations on the Coreward frontier were quite rare, but the hard-luck denizens of unregistered colonies did occasionally resort to space-lanes piracy to survive. Three vessels arriving at such a remote world at the same time as his own regularly scheduled supply run seemed a recipe for trouble.

Three shifts later, this suspicion was reinforced when the ships still hadn’t responded to transponder queries sent in their direction. Henricus sent a query to the diminutive Deana’s Rock orbital station, and received an equally uninformative reply – though the station control center had been in audio-transmission contact with the three small ships, they remained as puzzled as he. The crews of the three claimed to be lost and wanted to dock for full navigation system overhauls, but the always-frosty Deana’s Rock natives had refused until the “lost” ships provided proper IFF transponder signals. These demands had been ignored, and the three ships continued to plod inward, making inefficient maneuvers and generally behaving as if they indeed were operating with bad navcomputers.

Henricus didn’t believe the ships’ excuses for a second, of course. His cargo was only a load of parts and food for the colonists, but a bulk hauler like Bois Bennette was a prize even empty. He continued inward, watching the ships for any sign of aggressive maneuvers; though big, his ship was quick enough in an emergency to outrun most pirates who took it to be as sluggish as its configuration suggested.

After five shifts of awkward silene, Henricus tried to raise the lead stranger on an unencrypted audio channel. “Unidentified vessel, your transponder is off. Advise you re-enable it.”

Several minutes later, he got a reply. “Hauler Bois Bennette, it should be on? We are sorry. Experiencing equipment trouble.” The voice was that of a young woman who couldn’t have been older than twenty T-years, and transmission lag being what it was, he estimated the ship had sat on his message for nearly a minute before sending its response. Most likely, the commander had coached one of his subordinates into sending the reply, perhaps to sell the idea that the vessels were crewed by incompetents.

Henricus, of course, wasn’t buying it. “You know damn well it’s off. Turn it on, or your engine profile goes into the known pirate database when I get back to Maribel.” He was trying to coax the ships – pirates, he had decided – into dropping their cover early, when Bennette’s surprisingly high acceleration would still protect him.

After a delay, again longer than strictly necessary, the young woman’s voice replied again. “This is KR-451, on route from Alipran to Nova Corsica with KR-407 and KR-383 on private business. I can provide any transponder information over audio link if the equipment is still not operating.”

“Alipran?” Henricus knew the place; it was one of the other outermost settlements, but it was one he knew to avoid. Alipran was an unregistered settlement, neither definitely illegal under Confederated law nor sanctioned by its government. As with most like it, the planet was no place to make honest deliveries. It was also halfway across the Frontier, and the listed destination, Nova Corsica, was in the other direction. “Like hell any of that is true. You’re in violation of at least three counts of the Law of the Spacelanes, KR-451. Station control would be in their rights to open fire as soon as you get into range.”

The delay this time was much longer, perhaps long enough for KR-451 to perform some scans of the station and determine what Henricus knew – its secondhand defense network was in no shape to be fighting off three small, agile ships. “I hope that doesn’t happen. Many systems on manual control… They need to let us dock.”

Henricus snorted at the brazen declaration, then recorded a final reply. “They don’t need to do anything, kid. This joyride is over.”

Before he could hit send, however, he looked up at the plot once more, and saw that the three ships had all vanished without a trace. Being close enough to detect them on radar as well as tracing their engines’ gravitic echo, he ran an active scan, but that came up empty – the ships had simply vanished.

“Station control, did you see what happened to those three ships?”

The station replied as quickly as signal delay could allow. “Negative, Bennette. They just up and disappeared. We’re scanning for debris clouds, but nothing yet.”

Henricus shook his head and stared at the plot some more. He’d heard of ghost ships, just like any other spacer, but he had a hunch KR-451 and its compatriots were still out there, somewhere, and he didn’t like it.

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