Chapter 6
Wyodreth Antagean suppressed the feeling of flightiness that dominated his senses. The experience of perpetually falling was a shock to his system after months spent living in Planet Oswight’s comfortable gravity. Now that he was crossing the clipper gangway to one of the three Antagean starliners which had been drafted into Constellar military service, Wyodreth left himself a mental note to get out and see the company’s orbital operations more often. It wasn’t good to get soft.
“Sir,” said the Antagean-uniformed civilian flight officer on the other side of the ship’s hatch.
“Everything’s still ‘go,’ Miss Wef?” Wyodreth asked.
“We’ve had three other clippers dock, transferring personnel and cargo,” the flight officer replied. “Yours is the last of the day.”
“Any problem interfacing with the Task Group ship-to-ship network that Admiral Mikton is running?”
“Once the military installed their special encrypt-decrypt units in our communication module, things got better.”
“Good. How’s Captain Loper, and the rest of the team?”
“Other than being fantastically annoyed at seeing his vacation cut short? Fine. The rest of us are just happy to hear about the nice bonuses.”
“You oughta be,” Wyodreth said, smiling. “Even I was impressed with the DSOD’s offer. Hopefully none of you will have to be earning that money the hard way.”
Wyodreth patted the flight officer on her shoulder, and began to pull himself past her. He was anxious to get to the command module, where he’d be able to get onto the Antagean intranet and talk to the other two ships he was shepherding for this trip.
“Sir?” she said.
“Yes, Miss Wef?” Wyodreth said, pausing his movement.
“Do you really think it’s going to be dangerous?”
“I honestly can’t say,” he admitted. “It’s not like any of us have ever done this before. Not even the DSOD. It’s a chance to literally go where nobody has ever gone. What that entails for us, in terms of risk, is difficult to gauge. I certainly hope that Captain Loper—and the other captains—put out my message to all three crews. Anybody who’s not up for this can say so. I won’t fault anybody for staying behind. Though, you’d be fools to pass on the cash.”
“Oh, we love the kick in the paycheck!” Miss Wef exclaimed, smiling. “It’s just that…well, having all these military people around—they were putting lockers full of weapons into one of the cargo modules—sorta makes me nervous.”
“Don’t sweat it,” Wyodreth said to her. “Having military people around makes me nervous too.”
He tugged at the hem of his one-size-too-big DSOD mustard-yellow topcoat, for emphasis.
Wef, along with several nearby Antagean employees, all broke out in laughter.
“Come on,” Wyodreth said to them all, “let’s get our visitors strapped down and taken care of, right? We’ve still got my father’s reputation to uphold. We may be under Admiral Mikton’s command for now, but Antagean delivers first-rate service, before anything else. No matter who our passengers are.”
The crew chorused their understanding, and began to politely herd the people coming in behind Wyodreth, to their respective seats.
Like the clippers which had come up from Planet Oswight, each of the Antagean ships was built more or less like a high-rise, with thrust delivered via nuclear-fusion motors on the ground floor. Unlike the clippers, the starliners each had huge storage tanks for the slush hydrogen which was used as both reactor fuel and reaction mass—a necessary encumbrance, considering the vast distances each starliner needed to cover in a very short span of time.
Not that crossing over the Slipway would require a great deal of fuel. The Key consumed the equivalent of a strategic hydrogen bomb during the instantaneous interstellar voyage. Which ate up just a fraction of the total hydrogen stored aboard.
No, the bulk of the mass would be eaten up pushing each ship out to the distant Waypoint, and back again.
Which reminded Wyodreth of a problem nobody had yet properly addressed. How were any of them supposed to tank up once they reached the other side of the mystery Waypoint? The standard starship facilities used to store and transfer slush hydrogen had been in existence throughout the Waywork for many centuries. Every significant outpost had them, along with the attendant manufacturing industry.
The Task Group’s destination—presumably—had no such amenities. And while there were ways to distill the necessary slush hydrogen from raw materials at the destination, such a process would be messy, and protracted.
With full tanks, each of the Antagean ships had enough fuel and reaction mass aboard to make a couple of full transits of a given system’s planetary plane—end to end. But no more. If suitable natural reserves could not be easily found or accessed, the entire Task Group might find itself stranded.
“Figure it out as we go,” Wyodreth muttered under his breath, as he packed into a lift car that ran up and down a tube at the spine of the ship. He waited patiently while various civilian and military personnel got off at different levels—the civilians doing most of the directing, and the military people obediently going where they were told—then he was stepping off at the lift alcove within the command module proper.
Captain Loper was there to greet his boss.
“Another thirty minutes,” the captain said, his graying hair forming a half wreath around his shining, bald head. “Then I think we can button up, and join the formation that’s already taking shape a few thousand kilometers out from dock.”
“Any problems with the cargo Admiral Mikton’s ordered aboard?”
“We gave them precise specifications,” Loper said, “but they still sent up too much. Their own quartermaster officers have had to work it out, deciding which crates and lockers to keep, and which to send back with the clippers. I gather they didn’t get a lot of prep time themselves. DSOD is usually pretty good about not overdoing it, or underdoing it for that matter. But on this job? Nope.”
“Well, if anyone had told me this morning, that I’d be doing any of this by dinner,” Wyodreth said, then let the thought hang in the air between them.
Captain Loper merely grunted. A lifetime civilian pilot, he was nevertheless one of the most experienced men on the Antagean payroll. He’d been one of Wyograd’s first hires upon founding the company—before Wyodreth himself had been born. When Wyodreth had been a young man, sent to space to learn the ropes, Captain Loper had been a patient teacher. He’d since become one of the few people Wyodreth actually considered to be a friend.
The two men trusted each other.
“Congratulations,” Loper said, pointing at the new pin on Wyodreth’s collar.
“Thanks,” Wyodreth said. “Temporary.”
“Betcha you keep it, if we get back in one piece.”
“You’re that optimistic, eh?”
“Your dad hired me for my sunny side.”
“And a good thing too. Look…Captain, I meant what I said. Nobody is under any company expectation to participate in the mission. Not even you.”
“Are you kidding? By the Waymakers’ Ghosts, I wouldn’t miss this. We’re about to create history. I can tell my grandchildren all about it. Or, at least, somebody can tell them.”
“Yeah. Well, before we go writing our collective epitaph, let’s ensure that we keep the Antagean end up. Some of these lifer DSOD people don’t take too well to being passengers only. Be courteous, but be firm. If anybody gets out of line, and won’t take no for an answer, you let me know, and I will make them take no for an answer. We’re being paid, sure, but we’re not getting enough to be treated badly.”
“You think there will be fighting on the other side of the Waypoint?”
“I think we’d be foolish to assume that Starstate Nautilan is not sending its own expeditionary force over their Slipway. Admiral Mikton, and that delegation from Family Oswight, are sure to bring some diplomatic clout to the table. But if the Nauties decide to shoot first and ask questions later, we might wind up caught in a nasty situation out of which there is no clean escape route.”
“Speaking of the delegation,” Loper said, after clearing his throat uncomfortably.
“Yes?” Wyodreth asked.
“There was a bit of a switch-up during travel to orbit. Lady Oswight is currently making herself comfortable in the ship’s executive suite. Her, and that old bruiser who’s along to keep an eye on her.”
“You’re joking.”
“No.”
“Why, by the Exodus, are they here? They’ve got their own ship for this voyage!”
“Something about the Lady Oswight demanding to be part of the crew that’s going to be exploring the planets orbiting the target star, versus riding back and forth across the Slipway while they bring over fighting spacecraft from the security flotilla.”
“What about her helpers and other staff?”
“They went to the Family ship. Just the Lady Oswight and her bodyguard are with us. Oh, and one other unexpected guest too. He was on the clipper that docked right before yours did.”
“Who?”
“You ever hear of Zoam Kalbi?”
“No…wait, yes. Yes. God, he’s that infotainer. Right? What is he doing onboard?”
“Last-minute addition,” Loper said. “He cited Article Thirty-six.”
“I didn’t even know he was in this system,” Wyodreth admitted.
“Apparently, he was already here, doing some freelance work on an entirely different story, when he got word about the new Waypoint.”
“So much for DSOD confidentiality!”
“Inevitable,” Loper said. “Every Waypoint pilot—civilian or military—can see the new system on their charts now. Across the whole of the Waywork. There was no way this wasn’t going to become a very big deal, very, very fast. We’re just the ones who happen to be closest. The other Starstates will be chewing down Constellar’s front door, begging for an opportunity to cross Constellar space and see the new system.”
Wyodreth massaged his forehead with a meaty palm, then slowly slid that palm down over his face, his fingers scraping the stubble which had accumulated on his cheeks during the day.
“Dealing with a royal pain in the ass from a First Family is bad enough,” he said. “But carting along an infotainer too? I am amazed Admiral Mikton permitted it.”
“Article Thirty-six is fairly broad,” Captain Loper said, then smiled wickedly. “You’re DSOD. You know that infotainers have been present and accounted for during every Constellar engagement going all the way back to the beginning of the war. Plus, the discovery of a new system is just the kind of story that could make any infotainer drool.”
Wyodreth stared at nothing, his head tilted forward. The Antageans had no love for infotainers, nor the First Families for that matter. Dealing with both had been a necessary evil since the birth of the family business. But that didn’t mean Wyograd, nor his son after him, had to like it. In Wyodreth’s experience, infotainers and Family folk alike tended to have an overinflated opinion of their own importance. So far as Wyodreth was concerned, the fact that the former had the ears and eyes of the public, while the latter had the money and the traditional social standing, didn’t immunize either party against being complete pains in the collective Antagean ass.
“You want to move to another ship?” Captain Loper asked, only half joking.
“No,” Wyodreth said, groaning the word. “What would be the point? Dad always used to say to me, ‘Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.’ I’d rather have Lady Oswight and Zoam Kalbi somewhere I can keep an eye on them. If they’re here, I’d better damned well be here too. For the sake of corporate public relations, if nothing else.”
Captain Loper nodded his understanding, then turned and pushed off with his toes, expertly gliding through the hatch into the command module proper. Wyodreth followed suit, and soon found himself sitting at one of the free workstations, using a keyboard and headset to talk to the captains of the other two ships under his control. Unlike the ships of the DSOD, none of Antagean’s ships carried names. The family owned close to two dozen of them, with operational hubs in three different systems, including the current one. To Wyograd Antagean, a ship was simply a means to an end. He did not romanticize the starliner life. He merely stated—for Wyodreth’s sake—the necessity of knowing all the bits and pieces. How each ship moved from star to star, and port to port. Maintenance schedules. Spare parts. Creating and maintaining separate depots across Constellar space, which would warehouse and service the various modules forever being grafted onto, and then pulled off, the spines of the starliners themselves.
Because a ship in the modern sense was not a whole thing. It was actually bunches of little, practically self-contained things—each and every item riding on the backbone of the ship, to be swapped out, serviced, and replaced at various intervals. There were modules on the present starliner which were older than Wyograd Antagean himself, as well as modules which had only come into service within the past two years. By the time a given starliner had seen two decades or more of service, easily seventy percent of itself had been turned over in the constant process of replacement and refurbishment.
So, the three starliners joining Admiral Mikton’s fleet had Constellar commercial registry numbers. Nothing more.
It took the better part of an hour to confirm that all three ships had finally taken on the last of their cargo and passengers, and could now be released from their docks. There was no fanfare for such an event. No wharf filled with spectators, all waving goodbye. The ships merely withdrew from their cradles—noses coming unclamped from the standardized hardpoints built into the surface of the asteroid moon, which doubled as a space station. Negligible gravity meant that each starliner could maneuver easily on reaction thrusters alone. They wouldn’t start up the main motors until they were well clear of the dockyard’s minimum safety radius. And, then, only for as much thrust as was needed to nudge each of the three ships into their assigned places within the Task Group formation.
Along the way, Wyodreth fielded calls from his own people and DSOD personnel alike. On several occasions, he found himself directly speaking with Commodore Urrl, aboard the Catapult, who seemed to be the main orchestrator of things. As always when in uniform, Wyodreth found himself lapsing into the familiar tones and wording of explicitly military dialogue.
“They’ve sweated it into you,” Wyograd Antagean had said one day, after overhearing his son discuss a matter of company logistics—while unconsciously using DSOD jargon.
“What do you mean?” Wyodreth had asked.
“Like a piece of shopworn leather,” Wyograd had continued. “You keep the shape they want, even when you’re not in use.”
Wyodreth had never been entirely comfortable with that assessment. But now, as he prepared to lead his father’s ships across many light-years to an unknown system of worlds circling an unknown star, Wyodreth had to admit his father had been correct. The DSOD’s officer training program had left its mark. Wyodreth—who preferred being a civilian—couldn’t help but notice in his behavior, and in the sound of his voice, the quality which his father had first noticed years earlier.
For the voyage out to the Waypoint, the three Antagean ships formed a flat-plane triangle. To the left and to the right were the two DSOD scouts—the Gouger and the Tarinock—with Mikton’s flagship Catapult riding herd above, and the Oswight yacht Hallibrand passing below. As a Task Group, they synchronized their reactor ignitions and throttling so that this formation was kept coherent within a cubic space no larger than five kilometers to a side. There were no checks out portholes, nor sightings performed from any masts. Everything the pilots of each spacecraft needed to know was collected by the labyrinthine nest of gadgets and electronics which made up each ship’s sensor module.
The scouts, of course, had more than one sensor module, and each of those was much more robust than anything Antagean Starlines had ever placed on any of its ships.
When they reached the far side of the Waypoint, those scouts—along with the monitor, Daffodil—would be the long-range eyes and ears of the Task Group.
Until then, however, there was little to do but wait. It would be many days before they reached the transit radius of the Waypoint. Time enough for Wyodreth and the other visitors to settle into their various cabins and dormitory compartments, take care of whatever sorting and tidying hadn’t been handled on the ground, and get better acquainted with each other—as well as the plan for the mission ahead.
Satisfied that all three of his father’s ships were performing normally, Wyodreth finally took off his headset and—with his old compatriot, Captain Loper—retired to the section of the galley module which had been cordoned off for distinguished guests, as well as ranking civilian and military personnel. There were no set meal times aboard the liner. Merely people getting on and off shift, taking breaks, or stealing a moment to find a snack. The galley module itself was overflowing with a variety of foodstuffs and prepackaged meals, all preserved against both decay and potential vacuum decompression.
People took what they wanted from the dial-to-order dispensers, making cold and hot portions available at all hours.
It wasn’t gourmet. But then, it wasn’t slop, either. A fact which Wyodreth had come to appreciate during his “sea legs” period, as a young man. And at many points afterward.
His only specific regret in the moment was having to muster the courage to face the two people onboard whom he least wanted to face—and present himself as having a good time while doing it.