2952-07-10 – Tales from the Service: The Courier’s Coordinates 

Yes, we are delaying coverage of other stories to continue with Director Bleier’s account.  This is partly because it is about a Reacher encounter, and partially because this is one of the most high profile things the Alien Sapience Welfare Authority has done in recent memory. 

I am of course aware of the highly publicized details of Operation HELLESPONT, which concluded last month but which was kept secret for several weeks. I think this is being covered relatively well already by other outlets, but we may discuss it here, if the stories I want to publish get Naval Intelligence approval. 

Director Ris Bleier was glad when Howard Helios Hughes finally departed the Tanner-Wyatt waystation and was cruising for the tiny system’s jump limit again. Though the stop at Tanner-Wyatt was necessary both for intelligence and for supplies, every hour spent there seemed like one wasted. 

Unfortunately, the informant Ris had been hoping to meet on that station was nowhere to be found. His most productive agent in all of Sagittarius had, despite all covert messages sent ahead of Ris’s arrival, failed to make the rendezvous. While inconvenient, that was not too uncommon; Ris knew enough about the agent’s outward line of work to know that he couldn’t always appear on command. 

Supplies, of course, could be had at Tanner-Wyatt in abundance, if one didn’t look too hard at package expiration dates. Hughes had a food-fab, of course, but this needed nutrient slurry to work on. No doubt a quarter-tank of slurry would have served Captain Bermudez for several more journeys, but on this outing, consumption had understandably quintupled. Just to be on the safe side, Ris had ordered his crew to buy up a month’s supply of ration bars and shelf-stable packaged food as well as a full tank of nutrient slurry. There was no telling how long this outing would take. 

Bermudez, of course, remained sulking in her cabin throughout most of her ship’s time docked. She emerged only once, only to scowl as crates of reserve food were wheeled aboard and stowed away. Bee retreated back into her quarters once more, she muttered something about not paying for any of that. Ris had begun to disregard her presence aboard; after all, he only wanted her along as a form of de-facto incarceration. She had no expertise relevant to locating and investigating a Reacher wreck. 

Ris, eager to be off, joined Giffards in the cockpit for the departure from Tanner-Wyatt, sitting in the copilot’s chair and careful not to touch any of the controls. It was good to put the boxy station behind them, and go on to the mission proper – besides, he was almost through with his backlog of reports. 

“Are we really going to be out here long enough to need those damned food-bars when we have coordinates?” Bermudez, poking her head into the cockpit, sighed. “I hope I’m getting paid by the hour.” 

“ASWA will pay fairly for your time.” Ris barely glanced up at the spacer. “We have the coordinates you provided, yes, but no velocity or timestamp for that data. And if the vessel my agent sighted is not entirely dead, it might have regained partial drive power in the interim. We must plan for the worst case.” 

“The worst is right.” Bermudez turned as if to leave, but stopped. “What do you plan on doing if you really do find a dead Reacher ship all the way out here?” 

Ris shook his head. “There are standard protocols, but this situation has many variables. We will investigate as appropriate.” 

“That's bureaucrat-speak for ‘hells if I know,’ isn’t it?” Bermudez arched one eyebrow. 

Giffards, still at the controls, kept her gaze straight ahead, suppressing a smile by the thinnest of margins. 

Ris stood. “It is bureaucrat-speak for ‘we’ll find out when we get there,’ Miss Bermudez. If you would like a report on the most likely workflows, Mr. Lund can provide it.” 

“I might just. If it’s written like you talk, Bleier, it might work better than sleep-meds.” Bermudez stood aside to let Ris pass. “Supposing we don’t find anything?” 

“That is the worst case which we plan for.” Ris shrugged. “It is probable we will find something.” With that, he brushed past the ship’s captain and headed back to his closet-sized cabin. 

As it turned out, the reserve food wasn’t necessary. A metallic debris cloud was easily visible on sensors from the coordinates Bermudez had carried to Ris’s office on The Sprawl. A few days of scanner sweeps later, and Hughes’s sensors were able to pick out the derelict from the other asteroid-like objects drifting on erratic orbits through the system.  

The ship’s computer was hardly state of the art, but it was able to model based on the velocities of the wreck and the debris cloud what had happened – the Reacher ship had been decelerating on a course to meet, and probably consume, a large metallic asteroid, when something had exploded either on the hull’s surface or just within. What exactly had caused that six or seven kiloton explosion, only closer investigation could determine, but it had disabled the big ship’s drive, apparently for good. 

“Still no response to hails?” Ris, studying the computer models on the large holo-display in the lounge, turned to Art Lund. 

“None.” Lund shook his head. “But it would take power to reply at this range, and if there’s power in that thing, it’s reserve batteries and backups at best.” 

The existence of backup generators and reserve batteries on Reacher ships being at best a hypothesis, Ris decided this was a far from hopeful sign. “Then we need to get closer. Do you concur?” 

Lund sighed. “We’d better. But carefully. If they were attacked, and there are still some of them alive, they might not realize we’re friendly.” 

Ris nodded. “Work with Kuriega to dump our data suite to a sensor drone and launch it. We’ll run a data-stream as we approach, so whoever comes looking for us has all the data we can give them.” 

Lund winced and left the room without a word. Ris almost regretted bringing him along; Art Lund was married and had three children. Risking his life was an unfortunate necessity; the Sagittarius ASWA had only a handful of people who had studied the Reachers, and he was the only one of them available on short notice. 

Ris was risking his own life, too, but that was, if not exactly bureaucratically standard, at least less unfortunate. If there were survivors, having someone of his rank involved from the beginning would hopefully make the recovery effort go smoothly, and if a broken fire-control system or a panicked, oxygen-starved Reacher gunner managed to blast Hughes, then he’d at least get a nice silver plaque in the ASWA headquarters back on Centauri for a memorial.