Chapter 1

  “ and send!” I sat back in my chair, stretching. I had just finished my final project for funded schooling, or what used to be called high school. I did my report on the Sedona Incident and the following Accords, which took place 7 years after our colony declared and fought a war of independence from the Star League. I watched the publicly available sensor report again, closely tracking my great-grandpa's ship, the Paladin. I remember listening to his stories from the Theocracy War when I was younger, but the one he told most often was about his first fight, the Sedona Incident.

  Both sides wanted to forget about it once the Theocracy launched its invasion and raid, but great-grandpa would always say he lost a good friend that day, and while he held no Ill will for the League, that doesn’t mean that we should forget about those who died that day on both sides. Last month, on the 75th anniversary, the League quietly released their sensor records from the battle, which had a much better definition than the previously available Paledes logs. I watched it again because although I had seen both 100 times, something bothered me.

  “Hmmm, it's close to the end,” I mumbled, fast-forwarding to the right when the battleship broke in half. I hit play again and watched the next thirty minutes in real time but still couldn’t see it. “ hmm, let's do this.” I pulled up a second tab and divided my screen down the middle, then played both recordings side by side from that point again, “there!”. I shouted, jumping from my seat and pausing the logs. I was tracking the Paladin; she had lost her engines when she spread out from the rest of the fleet to get an angle on one of the carriers. The battleship shot off her engines.

  Grandpa would tell me about this part he had just landed to rearm when the whole ship shook violently. He fell off the ladder and hit his head on the floor. Luckily, he saw someone crack their skull during training from falling off even the bottom of the ladder, so he got in the habit of leaving his helmet on until both feet were on the ground. The blow stunned him, and he was taken to medical an hour later. When the crew determined the ship was going to hit the atmosphere and break up before anyone could get a tug to recover it, an orderly evacuation was made to two of the armed merchantmen. As I watched all this happen, I overlaid his story with the events on the log. I watched the two merchantmen pull away, and the Paladin enter the ring around the planet where its signal was lost.

  “except wait a minute.” there was a brief ping from one of the League’s cruisers' sensors showing a shape about the right size sliding around the bottom of the planet. “ no, that can’t be right,” I pulled up the suspected heading and speed of the contact from the sensor report. I had just finished my flight training last week to get my hauler and small ship license. It was complimentary in exchange for signing up for the militia. My aunt and uncle would have paid for it if I asked. Still, the Militia hadn’t been activated since the Theocracy War, so two weeks a year and one weekend every other month of essentially starfighter laser tag for the next 13 years in exchange for the training I needed for a career as an independent miner was a no brainer.

  I pulled up the training software and a medium-class freighter similar to the frame the Paladin was built on. Then, I accessed Longbow’s web page. Longbow and the other two ships of her class that survived the war were decommissioned thanks to the new agreements with the League. The Paledes yards only built frigates, destroyers, and starfighters, which we mostly sold to the League. And the League had us three carriers for our fleet’s use over the years. But unlike her two sisters, who were scrapped, Longbow became a floating museum covering the early years and the war of independence.

  All of Longbow's stats, such as weight, thrust, etc., were available on the website, so I plugged those into the software and adjusted the scenario for complete engine destruction into the program. Then, I took the Sedona III gravity and added the planet to the scenario. Finally, I set the initial speed and starting position and the autopilot to attempt to avoid a crash. “ well, this should be interesting,” I hit play and watched. I also queued up the sensor log one more time. About three seconds after the ship disappeared from the actual log, the simulation vessel suddenly hauled over and applied maximum burn on all portside thrusters, acting like a poor set of engines.

  Nevertheless, the ship began to swing around the bottom of the planet. A glance told me the numbers were close to the ghost contact the League vessel picked up. I sped up the simulation, and a short time later, the computer dinged “ simulation complete, “ and a red x appeared, signifying failure. “ I figured as much.” looking at the cause of failure, instead of a ship destroyed, it said total power failure. I raised an eyebrow and confusion and reran it in fast forward; sure enough, the ship survived the maneuver but over-stressed the reactor, causing a safety shutdown. “ no way.” if my rough shot experiment was right, the Paladin might have survived the maneuver.

  But why was the transponder lost before the shutdown if it didn’t crash? The transponder had cut out shortly after entering the ring, so I decided to check that first. Looking at the public database for the Sedona III survey report, the only thing found out of the ordinary was a slightly higher concentration of three elements I couldn’t pronounce, but a quick search on the planet net revealed that those elements plus other unnamed materials were mixed into paints for stealth ships, was it possible it was just enough to block the signal from a failing transponder? I couldn’t answer that, but I knew who could. I grabbed my communication device or comm.D and called my cousin Alex.

  “Hey, Ben, what’s up? Have you finished that report yet?” I smiled even though he couldn’t see me. Alex was three years older than me and my cousin on my mom’s side. After the accident, when a miner who was operating a company hauler drunk crashed into their shuttle and killed them, I had been living with Alex and his family, and for the last 7 years, they have treated me as one of their own. Even if I don’t plan on going into the family business of long-haul shipping. “ yep, I just sent it in; are you at the office? I have some numbers I’d like to run by Ali.''

  A.L.I or Artificial Learning Intelligence was a high-end AI the company had bought to help them plan shipping routes, loads, and other important stuff, and she was good at helping with my homework. “yep, I’m here and sure you are trying to figure out which hauler to buy?” The rock haulers company had settled out of court. Legally, they weren’t responsible for their employee flying drunk. Still, the event would have significantly damaged their reputation, so I agreed not to go to the press, and they gave me a decent amount of money. Between that and the summer jobs I had been picking up the last few years, I had just enough to buy my own hauler, allowing me to be my boss.

  If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

  The government subsidized the refinery in the system. It only charged independent haulers five percent of their load to process the ore they brought in and another five to find a buyer. Still, I planned to sell to the family business so I would get to keep 95% of my load's worth. “No, it's probably nothing, but..” I trailed off, not sure what to say. Luckily, Alex finished my sentence, “But it could be something. Yeah, swing on by.” I thanked him and hung up. I quickly sent the files and data I had been working with to A.L.I's net address, then got up and grabbed my coat and holster. Paledes militia culture was still strong. Most everyone went armed, and some folks even owned personal Starfighters that were better than the massive stockpile of spare units the government kept just in case the militia used them.

  I checked my dart pistol and ensured the red magazine was in it. I carried three magazines, two red and one green. The red magazines fired darts. A selector on the pistol would set them to one large dart or separate into a shotgun-style blast. The green rounds were armor-piercing, not illegal, but more challenging to get a hold of. They would get you funny looks and probably a visit from the constabulary if you bought them in bulk. Grabbing my keys, I walked out to my town car. Town cars were cheap and only made for use in town. They had a small onboard battery but were powered mainly by remote chargers on the road. It had two seats, one in front of the other, and a small trunk so that you could fit two town cars in the space of an old combustion vehicle.

  I climbed in and shut the door. “ where is Mr. Miles?” the computer asked, “ Morison Corporation headquarters, please.” Most people found my politeness to dumb computers funny, but I spent much time with A.L.I. While the company that designed her swears the A.L.I.’s aren’t sentient, I’m sure I’ve seen her get annoyed and give intentionally correct but misleading answers to rude company employees who never seemed to last long in the company. Since I didn’t know which smart toaster would become the A.I. overlord in the future, I was just going to err on politeness.

  “Manual or auto?” “auto,” the car began navigating from my apartment complex to the office. Fifteen minutes later, I pulled into the main parking lot and walked into the main lobby, which had a large-scale model of the Camel hanging from the ceiling. The Camel was the water haul the original Morison family head volunteered to have converted at his own expense to be a fleet tender. I walked over to the front desk where Rick, the retired marine and long-time company employee, sat. He was part greeter, part security. “ Hey Rick, I’m here to meet up with Alex.” Rick smiled back and hit the button that unlocked the interior door under his desk. “Sounds good,d Ben; I’ll let him know you're on your way up.”

  I waved and walked into the hallway, over to the elevator, and went up to the fifth floor, where Alex had his office. His dad still ran the company day to day after our grandpa stepped down to vice president last year, and Alex was assistant vice president while he went to specialization school or College. For business, our grandpa was likely to retire fully in a year or two, and then Alex would take on the Vice President role.

  Alex met me at the door. “ Ben, good to see you; how's your week been?” I smiled and gave him a quick hug. “ good, as I mentioned, I got my paper in today, and the net updated with my small craft license yesterday, so I can’t complain'' Alex took a seat behind his desk, and I sat in the chair “ so you wanted to talk to Ali right? A.li Ben is here.” a small hologram project of a woman in her 20s in conservative business attire appeared on the desk. “ Ben, it's good to see you. How may I help you today?” “Hi Ali, can you bring up those files I sent you?”

  Ali nodded but then, to my surprise, recommended, “ I believe we should set the office to privacy mode first.” Alex looked at me funny. “ Ben, I’m engaged now, buddy; Alysha would have my balls if she caught me looking at anything that required privacy mode.” I rolled my eyes at him. “I know that, and she’s too good for you anyway. I’m not going to be the one to give her an excuse to wise up.” we both chuckled. “ o.k., now that we got that settled, Ali, privacy mode then, please,” Alex requested. The glass windows to the hall were frosted over, and his window blinds were locked into place. Ali dimmed the lights so only the blue light of her projection filled the room.

  I gave Alex some background. “ so you know I was doing my report on the Sedona Incident?” Alex nodded along. “ well, I was looking at the new data released by the League last month and saw something odd,” Ali helpfully highlighted the sensor return. “So I ran a quick and dirty test.” Ali showed a quick demonstration of my program’s simulation. “So I figured I would ask Ali to run the real numbers and see where I went wrong because there's no way the government would misplace a light cruiser, right?” I half asked. Ali said, “Based on all available data, there is a 34% chance of the Paladin’s Survival.”

  Alex whistled, “ 34% not bad. I wonder how far out the system it would be and why no one saw it on sensors in the years after. Sure, the transponder was off, but the League and we often run war games in that system. You’d think something that size would have been investigated at least once as a ship playing possum.” playing possum was a term dating back to earth, something about an animal that pretended to die not to be attacked; I always thought that would make something more likely to eat it but what did I know. The term was used to refer to ships that would shut down most systems in hopes of not being detected so they could get close to another ship and launch a surprise attack. It rarely worked without other things to distract the enemy, but enough captains had pulled it off over the years that it was still used occasionally.

  “ According to my calculations, I believe I have an answer to that,” Ali interjected. “One of the variables Ben forgot to set was the date of the engagement. It would have likely wound up here if I had rerun the scenario with the right date and assumed the ship had survived.” The 3d map floating in the officer followed a blue line representing the Paladin. It swung under the planet's south pole and then around the back. Just when it looked like it was going to sail into space, it got caught in the orbit of a small moon or massive asteroid, and it eventually settled over the next five years into a position between the moon and the planet.

  “ as you can see, if the Paladin survived, she would be in the shadow of this geostationary moon, always on the planet's side and unlikely to be found by accident, which is why I thought we should keep this meeting private because there is a one and three chance there is a derelict light cruiser behind that planet which per League and Paledes law having been abandoned for over twenty years is now the legal property of the first person to find it and claim it” I looked over at Alex “ dibs on the Cruiser” we both laughed “ hey, no argument from me the only way to afford to maintain something like that is to use the flight bay to haul cargo, and there is a reason I’m working the company office instead of running one of the freighters space is nice for trips, but I want to live under a sky.”

  I nodded. I didn't feel the same need. The lease on my apartment ended next month, and I had planned to buy a hauler with a living space to save on rent. “ Alysha’s busy studying for her law exam this weekend, so I’m free if you want to go take a look. I’m sure we could barrow Grandpa’s runabout; its gate is capable.” I nodded. It would be a fun little trip even if there were nothing there. After a quick walk to Grandpa’s office, he agreed to let us borrow the runabout. I made arrangements to meet Alex at the local spaceport in the morning.