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This rock was smaller than a planetoid, but, as asteroids go, this one was on the large end of the scale. It didn't have enough mass to form a sphere but was large enough to have a decent enough gravity well that would allow surface work without us flying off after every step. It was an amalgam of several large primordial asteroids crammed together.

  On the second day we found it. A porous piece of sheet metal. Once we exposed more, we found it to be a very small section of a huge ship. It took us a week to open up a large enough area to really see what we had below all that rock.

  The samples we took were amazing. The ship was a total wreck. It had been squashed flat in most sections and was wedged between two of the several asteroids that formed this larger one. Flat as a dinosaur fossil. We used our sub-surface mobile scanners to get the 3-D data we needed to support our claim. Then all hell broke loose when we sent in our claim to have it legally recorded.

  It took only two days before half of that system's navy showed up. We thought we would get screwed out of our find, but they played it square. They really were there to protect us and the find. Within a week, a corporate bidding war started. That turned into a joint-corporate bidding war, and finally evolved into entire star systems bidding on our claim. Two of the larger systems joined together to buy us out.

  Our scan data had picked up more than we knew. We never found out all the important bits. Our shipboard systems just weren't good at deep data analysis. We accepted the highest auction bid of nine-hundred and sixty billion credits. After slicing off the legal and system fees, we received over fifty-seven billion each.

  I could have claimed half of our cut for myself and distributed the rest among the crew. But they had been a good crew and had stuck it out with me in the lean times. Everyone got an equal share. I kept a small piece of the original metal we found and had a jeweler make it into a plain finger ring. Still not a scratch on it.

  Now that the technical data had been squeezed from that old ship's wreckage and stored in data cores, these sneaky AIs had used it on this side of Wonderland to restart their effort to close the dimensional rift.

  When I asked them where this bubble-bump was, they said they weren't quite sure. Guess things move around every billion years or so. They knew where it was on their side, but locations there could not be easily pegged to specific three-dimensional coordinates on our side of the looking glass. One big plus, the neutron star had finished evaporating a few billion years ago.

  The most bizarre revelation was that they didn't know how many of them there were in their dimensions. Things just didn't collate like that on their side. But because of the dimensional differences on this side, in the here and now, all four of them are separate entities. Ghosts in the machine, but separate. They had no definitive collective name for their species, so, for lack of a better name, I chose to refer to them as the Zees. End of the alphabet. It seemed to fit. End of the line, and that seemed to suit them just fine.

  I asked them how I was going to explain how my ship had disappeared from one system and magically appeared in another. Ranger said that they could make those records disappear. By the way, my ship has a cloaking system that no current tech could break. That was one of the functions of the dimpled outer skin of the ship. Terminating our discussion, I headed to my stateroom to digest this crap sandwich.

  6 Looking Glass

  My cabin light levels rose slowly to a moderate level as I woke. I rubbed my hands over my face to brush away the remnants of sleep. Maybe I'd grow a beard. I always hated shaving.

  A hot, I mean really hot, shower took away most of the physical knots and a few of the mental ones. After dressing in a clean jump suit and chewing on a light wake-up snack in my cabin, I went in search of Tweedledum and Tweedledee. In my mind. I had assigned Ranger and Traveler the role of the Cheshire Cat in this twisted story.

  Jack and Joan, the Bobbsey Twins, Frick and Frack, were in the lounge tweaking some of their equipment they had mounted on tables. “You Two! Or is it one? Do you have anything to add to what Ranger and Traveler told me last night? You and I both know you're linked to them so no more blank stares please.” Speaking to one was speaking to all.

  “Good morning, Captain. I hope you slept well.”

  “Cut the crap with that dual voice act. Just what are you doing and, more specifically, what do you plan on doing while aboard my ship. Don't tell me it's just astronomical surveys.”

  “Well, first, we will be attempting to narrow down the coordinates of the rift, then move to new locations to get more precise readings. Step three will be to either cap or close the rift.”

  “I gathered THAT from my talk with Ranger last night. Is there anything else? I want full disclosure. Why did you choose to look like someone's frumpy grandparents?”

  Joan looked up from her equipment. “We determined that a non-threatening appearance and demeanor would be more conducive to success if we had to interact, face to face, with any reasonable beings. Unpleasant types will have to be controlled a bit differently. We don't want to bring unnecessary harm to others.”

  That response was just too blasé for my taste. I felt a very unsettling undercurrent here. “Just what unpleasant types are you expecting?”

  “Just the usual suspects; thieves, pirates, and mercenaries, as well as shoot first military types. We don't expect to encounter any dangerous aliens.”

  “Do you expect us to encounter any friendly aliens? And, how do you propose to control any trigger-happy pirates, not that I've ever heard of any, or ward off rogue military units?”

  “Well, sir, if we engage in any affairs that trend toward hostility, we can use the ship's weapons systems to prevent early termination of our mission.”

  “This ship, like all other civilian ships, does not HAVE any weapon systems other than my sidearm.”

  Jack interjected, “Perhaps your discussion with Ranger and Traveler was cut short a bit too soon. This ship has very robust defensive and offensive weapons capability with a much longer range, accuracy, and power than any that exist in this galaxy. In addition, the sensor suite has a much longer assessment reach than the most advanced vessels in human space. Paired with our cloaking system, as well as our instant-transit jump system, we can survive a stand-off engagement with any military fleet and win without getting a scratch or spilling your tea.”

  “I don't believe this! It's highly illegal to have weapon systems on a civilian ship. Almost ALL planetary systems require a full safety scan of ships and cargo entering their areas. When they detect weapons, I'll be put in jail until my great-grandson is over a hundred years old.”

  “Not a concern, Captain. Scans will not detect our weapons and even if someone were to take this ship apart bolt by bolt, they would not find anything that was out of the ordinary. All the advanced systems are sub-quantum level engineering that are piggybacked on top of the normally installed ship systems. The advanced systems are derivative technology developed by the Surrons over three billion years ago.”

  “I take it that the Surrons were the race who were helping you and that it was their wrecked ship I found.”

  “That is correct, Captain.”

  “So, what will stop someone from using the recovered Surron ship data and remains from developing these same capabilities.”

  “Well, first, we muddied the waters a bit in that data pool. Additionally, it’s much easier to build something you know is possible than it is to build something that all your science and engineering tells you is impossible. By the way, the blank console on the bridge is for weapons and defense functions. As added redundancy, any console on the ship can be used to control any ship's systems. They are now locked to your bio-signature and Q-Com, as are all the bots.

  Jack and Joan gave me a decently detailed description of our defensive and offensive capabilities. Those systems ran the gauntlet from an almost impenetrable ship’s shield to a moon busting compression weapon. The shield could create a protective sphere out to a hundred kilometers. Additionally, th
e defense data-management system could take over control of other ships or stations AIs. For more aggressive point defense, there's a pinhole-sized light speed quanta-plasma streamer, which can be used to destroy kinetic missiles or disable hostile ships.

  Stronger offensive capabilities included something they called a compression force wave. That system creates a focused, and very destructive implosion on the atomic level. It skips in and out of our dimension, with the effect happening at the target in a micro second, no matter how far away. The wave causes the target to instantly implode and then expand after the matter has become nothing but a densely compressed cloud of very energetic monatomic hydrogen.

  Pretty handy for clearing away asteroids if we needed to. What I really liked was that the ship didn't have to be aimed at a target. We had full three-hundred-sixty-degree spherical coverage. Given all that, since everything was energy based, there were no weapon deployment equipment like missile tubes, rail guns, laser systems, or gun turrets. I was relieved to hear that. The dimpled hull was our gun.

  We didn't have any drones yet, but the fabricators could turn them out fairly quickly. To all appearances, they were standard exploration and prospecting drones. Ours could also pack a wallop if we needed that option. We had more shielding and punch than a battle cruiser.

  Later, I realized they had avoided answering my question about encountering friendly aliens.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  “Ranger, I'll make you a deal. If I help you on this mission, I want your assurance that this ship and all its alterations remain as my property, whether we succeed or fail.”

  “Sir, that is what we had planned all along.”

  I had suspected that they needed me specifically for some reason. I wanted to know that reason. I thought that it gave me a strong bargaining position.

  “Also, I am captain of this ship. Regardless of where you came from, you and all the other Zees are to consider yourselves my crew. You are to instantly carry out my orders and follow all shipboard rules to the letter. It that understood?”

  “Aye, aye, Captain. Crystal clear and agreed. By the way we have just detected two military frigates approaching our vicinity. They are on an outer system patrol. Their transit orbit coincides with this system's ring of orbital Guardian and Q-Link platforms. Most likely they're on a link-up route for maintenance checks on the platforms. Their closest point of approach will be five-thousand eighty-seven kilometers. We are cloaked and will not be detected.”

  “Very well. I'm coming to the bridge. Light up the survey and scanner station, I want to see firsthand how well it functions.”

  “Aye, aye, Captain.” I detected a more submissive and measured tone in Ranger’s responses. Perhaps the Zees really would agreeably toe the line.

  The scanner setup was so well designed, the controls were almost totally intuitive. I reminded myself to take a bridge watch at each station, especially the weapons station. I tinkered with the scanners, peeking at the frigates as they approached. I had never seen or heard of a scan system that could passively collect such detail. I could even see life form readouts. It showed crew locations in real-time, plotted as red dots in a wire-frame representation of each ship. Each of the frigates had two fighters slung underneath on rail launchers.

  “Ranger, the sensor sweeps the twins are doing can't be picked up by those frigates, can they?”

  “No, sir, they cannot be detected.”

  No time like the present to do a little operational check on our systems. “Ranger, on my mark, send an active one-second light-speed sensor ping at the frigates. Wide beam. I want to see what they do when they can't see anything out here that could be transmitting. Mark!”

  I saw our outgoing ping on the sensor screen. It took less than a second to reach the frigates. Thirty seconds after the ping, each ship released a broad-spectrum active scan along the path of our signal.

  I zoomed in on the bridge of the lead frigate. It was like being a fly on the wall. I couldn't see actual video of the crew, just a color-coded wire frame of the ship with those small red dots representing the crewmen.

  Ranger told me that we could tap into their shipboard cameras and audio in real-time. Oh my God, this is unbelievable. A cursor lit up on the scan console inside the wire frame. I centered it on their bridge and clicked to activate. On a side screen, I now had full audio and video of their entire bridge area.

  Their captain leaned forward in his command couch, directing his Communication Officer to coordinate with the other frigate to triangulate the exact location of our ping. He rubbed his chin when he received a negative contact report from his Scan Officer. I'll bet this was the most excitement he'd seen during a very boring transit tour.

  I waited in anticipation to see what his next actions would be. I didn't have long to wait. Both ships went to full military power. Nobody likes a knock and hide at their door. The frigates separated. I could see the crew dots moving to their action stations. I'm sure the same thing was happening on the other ship.

  “Ranger, are you closely monitoring the crew on the other frigate?”

  “Yes, sir. I will notify you if our scanners pick up anything outside normal parameters between the two vessels.”

  “OK. Let’s move off laterally about 500K klicks. Those two are on a swoop-n-sweep vector to our coordinates. I want to stick around to see how they react.”

  We watched as both ships released their fighters on spiraling out-rigger parallel courses with 5K klick separation.

  “Let’s move aside another 200K klicks.”

  “Aye, aye, Captain.”

  As we quickly moved away, our scanner remained hard locked on both their ships and fighters. The video feed proceeded smoothly. Got to love this Surron tech.

  The lead frigate's captain started looking a little pissed. Either he was being played by someone out here in the cold dark or his officers were inept at interpreting their sensor readings. I could tell that he had mentally flipped a coin when he ordered his senior enlisted sensor tech to the bridge. In his estimation, someone was out there. He wanted a seasoned old salt to figure it out.

  This was almost too good to watch. Having had the same experience in the military, I felt a bit sorry for the fighter jocks. A scramble launch was not a fun thing. Run to the ready room, suit up, cram yourself into the cockpit, get power-boosted off the mother ship. You barely had enough time to take a breath while doing a cold system start-up. No time for a safety checklist.

  I toyed with the idea of spoofing their sensors to show that a fleet of military ships had popped-up from nowhere, but I held back. No need to screw with someone's career just for a few laughs.

  “Ranger. Are there any Q-Com platforms within a two-degree orbital arc?”

  “Yes, sir. There are two. One is in orbit behind us and closer in-system. The other slightly ahead in the same orbit as the other platform.”

  “OK, Ranger, time to end this snipe hunt. Have the platform ahead of us emit time-random pings, matching the one we sent, for the next ten minutes. Then have it go dark.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  I watched our sensor board light up with the platform's ping. A minute later, the frigates and fighters slowed to normal cruise power. I saw the Sensor Chief, who had previously arrived on the bridge, point at the sensor station, telling the captain that the pings were coming from the platform ahead. He said that there might have been feedback noise in their sensor system that made the initial ping look like it had come from a different coordinate. Since their ships were Q-linked, they both would have experienced the same glitch.

  Their captain ordered sensors de-linked. He shot the sensor officer a dirty look. The chief left the bridge with an exaggerated sway to his walk. He said he would have the data checking module replaced by his tech team immediately. Enlisted people loved it when they could get one up on a junior officer. There was even more gravy if they could do it in front of a senior officer. Since time immemorial, it had been the old salts who kept the ships steady.
Every good captain knows that. Bad captains find out the hard way. I suspected that this was a good Captain.

  I continued to watch as they recovered their fighters while moving toward the offending platform. Someone was going to have to suit up and board it for hands-on system checks.

  “Ranger, stay in this orbit but keep moving us away from those frigates. I'm going to check on our rift search team in the lounge.”

  “Aye, Aye Captain.”

  I knew that I didn't have to do a face to face with Jack and Joan, but it just felt wrong to act like the Zees were all joined at the hip.

  I stood at the hatch to the passenger lounge for a few seconds. I knew they were aware of me. As I shifted, they both looked up. “Well, since you are both crew members now, move yourselves and your gear into the crew section. You can use the crew lounge for your equipment but keep it to the outboard bulkhead. Also, keep the area neat and don't make a mess for the housekeeping bots. Pick any crew quarters you like, but stay off the bridge. Move your equipment when it’s convenient. No need to interrupt what you're doing right now.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Jack replied. I was glad he'd dropped the rambling ‘indeed, indeed' comments from his speech pattern. The Zees knew it was only a gesture on my part to move them to the crew quarters. It really didn't matter where they worked from or bunked. Besides, it would put them closer to me so I could keep an eye on them. Not that I really knew what they were doing, beyond the basics.

  “By the way, you are both officially assigned as the ship's science officers.” No reaction. “When do you think you will be finished up here so we can move along?”

  “Actually, we have just finished. We have a narrowed search corridor defined and can proceed when you order.”

  “Alright. As soon as you've moved into the crew spaces, notify me and we'll jump out of this system.”

  I left to get some lunch.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  “Ranger, just where are we headed next?”

  “Sir, our search corridor is a narrow tangent lane through the Beta Quadrant of the Centaurus galactic arm.”