A Needle In a Hay Stack
The light over the door blinked silently amber. The time he had booked in the private office was almost at an end. The coop work spaces were not in as high a demand on the orbital platform as planetside mostly because everyone had their own ships. But Rodney preferred to do business where he could walk around with a nice view. The Edge Dancer was a good ship, but it wasn’t a great space for walking and talking.
The coop space offered the unique advantage of giving him two different gravitational orientations. He could stand on the spinward side so that his head was toward the axis of the station, or he could stand on the orbital side - where the stations rotation around Earth made Earth “up” and his feet pointed toward open space. The transition between the two orientations was always a little disturbing, but he’d gotten used to it. Besides, it was a distinct advantage during some negotiations. Even the most experienced pilots and corporate types had to sit down after stepping from one zone to the other too quickly. Only his exmilspec friends could keep up with him when he followed the curved ramp at his natural pace.
He was still in pretty good shape. Good, but chubby he thought looking down at his paunch. He was healthy, watched what he ate, and worked hard to counter low gravity effects but as Sam liked to remind him, “you can’t out run your fork.” How am I going to find a date with this thing? He thought. Then shoved the frustration and shame aside to focus on the task at hand. He grabbed his slate off the desk, then headed out the door before the light turned red. He always arrived early and left early. He instructed his synthetic assistant to respond to all incoming messages - already three more leads had come in.
Not all of it was finding lost executives of course. Space was harsh. Shit broke, and Rodney had a good reputation for bringing all kinds of lost things home. Even if he didn’t do most of the work himself.
He stepped into the lift, and announced his floor. “Licensing,” he instructed the lift and it sped off immediately. One reason people liked taking Rodney’s jobs is that he did his homework. While most of his competitors were content to let search and synthetic intelligence write the specs for a job, Rodney liked to talk to people. Not everything you wanted to know was stored in a computer.
He arrived at the Global Launch Code Licensing Office. Anyone or anything that left, or entered the system had to be cleared by licensing. Rodney side stepped two officers coming out of another elevator with a very angry looking man between them. The officers were the prototypical space marines. Square jaws, broad shouldered, bodies encased in battle armor to make them effectively gender indeterminate. As far as they were concerned you were human, or not human. And the dark skinned man between them was definitely an unhappy human.
Rodney did not recognize either marine, but he did recognize the situation. In principle it was possible to leave the solar system without permission. In practice, Global Licensing controlled departures like a gear box made of diamond - brilliant, meticulous, and impossibly hard. Try to jump without an approval code and the sentient machines shut down your drive before the neutrino wave pulse would even fire.
Perhaps man had not yet figured out how to transmit faster than light messages, but the GL sure acted like they knew things before they happened.
The two marines dragged the pilot between them, ignoring his protestations. Rodney shook his head. Sure as hell wouldn’t want to be in that guys shoes, he thought, then followed the beacon on his heads up display toward his appointment. The scanners detected his DNA at the portal and opened it the moment he approached. His body was the key and doors opened for him, floor lights illuminated for him showing him a way he already knew by heart. The system finally directed him to a small office with not porthole, just a screen showing renderings of the planet rise. Sitting in front of this gaudy, and slightly defective display was Mark Delany shaking his head.
“What are you doing here Chief?” Delany complained as much as he asked the question. He didn’t look up.
“What did that guy do?” Rodney thumbed back over his shoulder. Physical arrests weren’t common, at least not any more.
“He switched target vectors at the last second.”
Rodney suspected as much. “And let me guess, he didn’t get permission?”
“Not even a germ bit,” Delany said. “Securities extra tight these days.”
“Extra?” Rodney always found the security protocols near the mother planet to be if not excessive, at the very least fanatical. Joining the Andorian Unified Federation as provisional members had taught humanity one thing - how utterly devastating it can be to play fast and loose with jump technology. There were about half a dozen ways to strip the atmosphere off a planet, most intentional, but a few unintentional. Converting a school bus size chunk of matter into pure energy a few hundred miles above orbit was one.
“That’s the third ship this week to perform a last second target switch,” Delany let him know, “but the first to try and skip the protocols.” In principle, Rodney knew it was possible for the Orbital platform to shut down a jump but they rarely exercised that power. Every drive needed a synchronization source before the final neutrino burst was released - by law the engine controller retrieved that signal from the Licensing beacon, and that beacon had the option of sending a kill command instead of a location confirmation.
“But that’s his problem, not yours,” Delany looked up. “Like I said, what brought you here?” They both knew Rodney could have pulled jump coordinates from the traffic control application programming interface.
“Got a job,” Rodney replied, not really answering Mark’s question. Why had he come down? Because he wanted to be able to tell Sam, with confidence, nothing was wrong with Nina’s brother. He leaned on the counter that separated him from Delany.
“You? A job?” Delany looked incredulous. “Well, I don’t think it will end up being a job,” Rodney replied. “It’s not the job part I think is hard to believe,” Delany leaned back in his chair. “It’s the YOU part I find to be a bit hard to swallow.” Rodney bristled at that, taking the bait. “I do my fair share of work.” “Ha!”, Mark dug deeper, “When’s the last time you took a job Rodney?” “This morning,” He replied. “No, I don’t mean took a job and gave it to someone else, I mean took a job and delivered on it yourself?” Rodney almost growled. He liked Mark, but the guy could be a smug bastard. Still, it didn’t help his cause to turn mark into an enemy. As much as it irritated him to do so, he let Mark have his fun. He said nothing.
“Thought so,” Delany said smugly. “What is it this time? Joy riding teens? Someone take their mistress on a pleasure cruise and the wife got wise? oh, I know, a corporate widow invited her yoga instructor out to see the rings of Saturn and the husband found out?” Mark always thought his comments were clever. Rodney didn’t see any point in telling him that none of them were funny. No, not even a little.
“Looks like another missing silver spoon,” Rodney said. He started to pull up the file on his slate then stopped. He’d reached for a nonexistent folder. He hadn’t even created a file yet. Damn it, how had Sam gotten him to work on this? He wasn’t really working on this he told himself. He was checking facts on his way home. Ten years of marriage had taught him that cool calm evidence didn’t always sooth the savage ego-beast, but it made his position much easier to defend.
“Just a sec,” Rodney said, then opened a file on his slate and directed his AI to pull everything it could about Nina’s brother, Geoff Stikine. “It’s a class 2 general purpose starship, the Sunshine Expanse…” he paused. “Should have pulled out 10 days ago.”
“How long has he been missing?” Mark asked, leading forward and starting to type. Mark didn’t like talking to his machine.
Rodney shrugged. “Couple of days. He hadn’t really filed a flight plan. His wife said he had an important meeting on Monday that he missed. Not like him.”
“A couple of days!?” Mark objected. “Rodney, the clock hasn’t even started ticking to file a claim.”
“True, but that’s why they called me,” he said. He decided to come clean. “Actually Sam called me. The missing guy is the brother of a friend. Family is losing their minds apparently.”
Mark looked up and they locked eyes. “Still doing favors for her?”
Rodney shrugged. “I suppose.”
He shook his head. “Rodney, when are you going to learn.”
“As always, it appears I need at least one more lesson.”
Mark pulled up a halographic mirror projection of his own screen to Rodney could follow along. He pulled up the launch approvals for the time period in question. “There was a lot of traffic that day,” Mark said.
“What’s that?” Rodney noticed a red bar across a line of jump codes, obscuring them. Mark frowned right as Rodney pointed it out.
“Well son of a pup,” Mark zeroed in on the codes. “Those appear to be the coordinates you’re looking for…”
“Why are they red?” Rodney asked.
“Because they are locked restricted,” Mark replied. “Rodney, it appears you are not the first person to ask for these coordinates.”
Rodney frowned. “How is that possible? You just told me it was too early call it a missing ship.”
“Let me check something,” Mark typed away noisily pulling up another screen and wizzing through the interface faster than Rodney could follow. Mark always used this old school gaming keyboard with loud clackity-clacky style clicky keys. “Well, apparently someone pulled these coordinates the day after the launch, and then locked them.”
“Locked them?” Rodney asked. “Locked them how?”
“Locked them as in restricted, no access, unavailable.” Mark replied. “From what I can tell it looks like your client not only did a last second target switch - which by the way was submitted and approved, but both his original destination and the actual coordinates have been locked at a level way above my pay grade.”
“Are you telling me you can’t override the lock?” Rodney asked incredulously. Mark had never not been able to get him useful information.
Mark also looked frustrated. “No my friend. Not even if I wanted to.”
“Wait, did you say Stikine changed his coordinates at the last second?”
Mark nodded.
“Then do me a favor, and this I know is a real favor…” Rodney paused for a second, he had a hunch but he needed to protect his friend. “Hold please.” He sometimes contributed blog posts for an industry newsletter. He stepped away from the desk and then called up Erin, the newsletter editor. What time was it on her side of the world? Her face appeared on the screen, looking groggy. He’d woken her but she’d answered with video? God she was cute, but he had not time for that.
“Rodney Morris?” She looked surprised, and possibly pleased.
“Hey Erin, I need a favor. I need you to write an article about jump safety protocals, a reminder.”
“Jump safety?” She repeated.
“Yeah, can you start the file now, mark me as an expert source?”
“Yeah I can do that, what’s it about?”
Rodney felt a surprising reluctance to tell her. “I’ve just got a hunch. Can you do that for me? Can you do it now, it’s time sensitive.”
Erin nodded, muted her phone, then came back a moment later. “SuzyAI did as you asked.”
“Thanks Erin,” Rodney smiled. “I owe you one.”
“Promise?” She smiled. Rodney suddenly paused. When was the last time he’d seen her? At an industry function? Didn’t matter. He made a mental note to come back to that idea and explore it further.
“I promise, now go back to sleep. And thank you.”
She nodded and ended the call.
Rodney turned back to the desk. “Officer Delany, as a matter of public record, can you please share with me the jump coordinates of the perp that the Marines just brought in? I think the public has a right to know the kind of reckless behavior that you and your brave compatriots are protecting us from.”
Mark look puzzled, then smiled. “You really think they’re related?”
Rodney shrugged. “You said it yourself, a lot of last second coordinate changing. And while you’re at it, can you pull the other late switches in the last week. Let’s see who else was prone to changing the minds.”