Exploitation and Other Stories

Exploitation

1

Contact The Cartel, Cybernaut Becket sent to the communications console. Mayhem is operable. Three Goldilocks. One hot, one cold, one just right. For a microsecond she almost smiled at the joke she had made before what was left of her humanity was swallowed up again by the cybernetic implants. The part of her that had almost smiled shuddered. Insufficient atmosphere on both extremes, she continued without pause. Goldilocks 3 has minimal atmosphere. No apparent life forms. A whimsical half-grin threatened to break through as that part of her that could almost smile wondered if her statement included herself, but it was swiftly lost amid the swarm of data she was processing. Only the echo of the realization that she was more machine than human remained as she finished her report. Minimal prebiotics. Eighty-four planets identified. Erratic orbits and evidence of past collisions. Early developmental phase.

A touch of a frown reached the remnants of her lips despite the rapidity of her shifting thoughts. If she were still fully human, it might have registered as a minor depressive episode, but in her enhanced state, it lasted barely three seconds. She did not like incomplete data, and her survey of the system had been a challenging one. There were errors that needed purging, but initial survey protocols were too strict for a more thorough analysis. Her task was to give a rough sketch of the solar system in order to determine if colonization were possible. A single orbit of a sun’s habitable zone usually sufficed for this, and protocols did not allow for a second one. But this system was different, and that intrigued her—all of her, mechanical and biological. It was a binary star system with a blue star in a tight orbit around a red giant. The blue star moved rapidly around the red giant, but a few planets still somehow managed to weave their way between the two stars. Others might have escaped her sensors. That didn’t bother her overmuch, though; such oversights were commonplace in the initial survey of a system. What bothered her was the structure of the system as a whole. The math was not acting properly; it was as if the system hadn’t settled down yet. Math should be settled down, and that suggested errors—but from what? Where were the anomalies coming from? What was causing the readings to be inconsistent?

Theoretical, she appended to her report. Two systems may have collided. Recent phenomenon. Integration incomplete. Orbital trajectories unsettled. Recommend detailed analysis. Another smile threatened to erupt as she thought about how The Cartel would respond to her recommendation. They would never send a ship out this far to satisfy scientific curiosity, no matter how interesting the puzzle may be. The science division would put up a fuss, but in the end the only thing that mattered to The Cartel was profit. They would come here for that, though; Goldilocks 3 was rich in superconductive ore. That was profitable. The Cartel would contact the nearest ship and tell them to suspend whatever they were doing and get to Goldilocks 3 as soon as possible. The exploration of deep space could not be done without superconductors, and that planet had enough superconductive ore to affect her ship’s engines as she approached it. Only a highly concentrated deposit could do that—or a significant supply of refined product.

As she finished organizing the astronomical data, she instructed the navigation computer to move the ship above the plane of the binaries in order to gain a direct line to the buoy she had deployed at the edge of the system. At the same time, she oriented the bullet ship’s antenna to align it with the buoy and prepared the communications array to transmit her message. Another part of her continued to process the incoming information from the sensors gathering information on the suns, planets, and their orbits. There were anomalies she couldn’t explain, and she would continue to revise her computations and conclusions up until the moment of transmission. Still, all of these activities were routine and occupied only parts of her mind. The rest of her mind was focused on what to do next.

Standard protocol required that she prepare the bullet ship for exiting the system, which required initiating coffin procedures. The ship would accelerate at a lethal pace as it left, and she would die if she weren’t encased in the coffin’s goo. Then most of her would go to sleep until she arrived at the next system. Normally that was what she would do, without question or hesitance; it was not part of a cybernaut’s makeup to disobey protocols. But there was still that small part of her that could almost smile, that could almost frown, that could still wonder, that could remember….

The system puzzled that part of her, and it didn’t like leaving puzzles unresolved. Another orbit would provide more data. Goldilocks 3 was a mystery. If she visited it again, what more could she find out about it? What secrets did it hold?

Standard protocol….

As the ship moved into place, she updated the data and added a few new projections to the message. When the antenna was aligned, she transmitted the message to the buoy she’d placed just outside the system, which would in turn relay it to the buoy she had left behind at the last system she had surveyed. The Cartel’s exploitation ship should already be in that system, and when they found out about the deposit of superconductive ore, it would be the one redirected here. When the message ended, she sighed. Janice Becket sighed—at least she thought a sigh; what was left of her body would never manifest such a thing.

She had to decide what to do. Standard protocol? Or satisfy her curiosity? Normally, it would only take a fraction of a second to make such a decision because there wouldn’t be one to make: she would follow standard protocol. But this time it took almost five full seconds to decide.

She turned her ship….

2

Mayhem, Captain Stephanie Nelson muttered as they neared the fringes of the binary star’s solar influence. The Oort cloud reached further than she had expected, and it had a peculiar asymmetrical pattern. Most Oort clouds were roughly spherical in shape, as if it were a bubble wrapped around the system, but this one had all sorts of protrusions and indentations. Perhaps Becket had been right about the ongoing collision of two systems? But if she was, how had it happened? When had it happened? The computer records tracing the known history of the system showed no indication of such a collision, but direct observations only went back a few hundred years. What would they see if those observations had gone back a few hundred thousand years? Cybernauts seldom made mistakes, and their conjectures were always derived from the best available and most recent data.

Ping the buoy again, Mary, she said as she stood up. The light artificial gravity always made her feel like she was a butterfly resting on a leaf—at least, what she thought it would be like, since she had never seen a butterfly. She had seen videos of them though, and it always looked like the butterfly was hovering weightlessly on the edge of the leaf. Circuitous approach Graham, she added, knowing it was unnecessary. Standard protocols for approaching a new system required caution, and in the case of Mayhem, it was doubly justified. Unlike her usual meticulous reports Becket’s analysis of Mayhem held a great deal of uncertainty in it, almost enough to call them contradictions. They had heard nothing from Becket since that report, which was not unusual, but the buoy she had anchored outside the system had quit transmitting its beacon two weeks after its deployment.

Still no response, Ma’am, Lieutenant Mary Charles said as she glanced sidelong from her console.

Her eyes betray her, Captain Nelson thought as she turned to reassure her. She needs to learn to conceal her fears better if she hopes to become a Commander. A steady voice is not enough, no matter how confident it may sound. Mary was young, still only a few years removed from the Academy, but she had more than enough experience in those years to have the confidence she was feigning. Instead, her uncertainty reverberated through the formal address; it had been months since she had last called her Ma’am. Still, those months had been spent in the emptiness between systems where nothing ever happened, and Mayhem was a troubling system. A little formality was a good reminder to keep focused on their duties, especially in light of the buoy’s silence. But there could be many reasons for that silence, and some of those reasons were quite benign. The others….

All right, Mary, Captain Nelson said, her voice carefully modulated to reassure her young officer. Keep checking at regular intervals. The power source may be depleted or damaged. Its antenna may have been knocked askew. Either way, its range would be limited. She waited until Mary’s soft, dark brown eyes lowered beneath her black bangs and her delicate, tawny fingers were dancing on the console again before she turned away. Was Mary’s back a little straighter? It was difficult to tell; her shapely little shoulders barely rose above the top of the console. Perhaps she should go to her, rub those shoulders….

Our present angle of entry will take us close to the buoy’s position, Lieutenant Graham Archibald said from the navigation console. His voice was calm, almost bored, as he added, If the buoy is still there, it will be in range of our sensors in— he glanced at his console —about an hour. The first visuals will become available about twenty minutes later. The resolution will be fuzzy, but we’ll be able to recognize it—or a debris field, if there is one.

Captain Nelson glanced at Graham. He was a seasoned veteran, like herself, and had even turned down a command of his own so he could stay on The Magellan. At the time, she had asked him why, but he had shrugged off her question. I like the crew, he had said, a half-smile twitching at the edges of his thick lips. She had thought he might have meant he liked her, but she had quickly dismissed that idea. When he said crew, that was what he meant, and she was only a part of that crew. Still, she was a part of it, and he was a well-muscled man whose white skin was as soft and smooth as silk—or what she imagined silk would feel like. Soft skin was a strange affectation from living in space for over a decade. He was also vain; maintaining muscle mass and muscle tone was not easy in space, and most long-term spacers didn’t bother with it. Why should they? Most of the time they spent nearly weightless in the void between stars, and the exoskeletons were there if they needed to go to the surface of a planet. And that flaming red hair! How could he stand having it that long? He was exotic, and that gave him a lot of appeal—at first—and his stamina and experience sustained that appeal.

They had an hour to kill….

The computers did most of the work on the exploitation vessels. The crew—two dozen specialists whose areas of expertise often overlapped—usually had little to do but push buttons on their consoles. It left them with a lot of free time, and a person could do only so much studying. But when situations arose that the computers couldn’t manage—like Mayhem’s missing buoy—the crew was invaluable.

Steph, he asked, What do you plan to do if the buoy isn’t there?

Steph. He was the only one who called her that, and she didn’t really like it. It was too intimate, too much like a pet name. Like when he called Mary, Missy. It was almost derogatory. Almost. But it didn’t quite reach the point of being disrespectful or possessive. It was just his style, his way of showing affection, of marking his territory. It was also his betrayal. He was worried, too. She shrugged. What can we do? she asked. We didn’t spend a year getting here to turn back around, did we? We’ll follow standard protocols for approaching a new system—and then some—and then make our way to Goldilocks 3.

There are no standard protocols for this, he noted. It hasn’t happened before. Buoys don’t go missing once they have been put in position. Even if they break down, they don’t go missing. The beacon is an independent system.

Captain Nelson sighed. He was right, and there was no avoiding it. If the buoy isn’t where it’s supposed to be, she said, we’ll follow standard search protocols, starting with the likeliest locations suggested by extrapolating from known factors.

It is a large grid, he replied. I ran simulations starting from its last known position, taking into account potential changes in its velocity and trajectory. Even a conservative estimate of such changes results in a search area covering almost a third of the system’s Oort cloud—assuming, of course, that a natural phenomenon is the cause of its silence.

I am aware of the possibilities, Captain Nelson reminded him. I did the initial calculations myself not long after we left. Whether it’s there or not, we have to begin our search at its original location and spiral outward from there. If we’re lucky, there might be some clues there that will narrow down our search grid.

You make it sound so commonplace, Mary interjected. "It isn’t. Buoys simply don’t go silent. There are too many safeguards in place for it to happen. The redundancies are too layered and diverse. At least one of them should have operated long enough to report its failing condition. Her tone was held tightly under control as she finished. A catastrophic failure of this sort just can’t happen."

Graham laughed. It was a rich, deep-throated laugh that started deep in his belly and bounced off the walls of the bridge.

Mary glared at him, her lips tight and her eyes narrowed. What’s so funny? she demanded.

Before Graham could answer, Captain Nelson swiveled in her chair to bring both of them into her field of vision. Yes, Graham, what do you find so amusing?

Graham’s laughter eased up, and then he grinned at Mary. "You know the first law of space, don’t you, Missy? In space anything can happen. Including that catastrophic failure you think is impossible. He paused and his grin faded a bit as he added, his voice soft, Let’s hope it did. The alternative is much more unnerving."

Alternative? Mary repeated, her fingers gripping the edge of her console more tightly than they should.

Simple, he replied. The buoy is still working properly.

Mary frowned and shook her head. But it isn’t, she protested. If it was, we’d have its beacon signal. It automatically corrects its position so as to maintain constant contact with the previous buoy.

Graham shook his head and said, You are naïve, aren’t you, Missy?

What’s that—

All right, Captain Nelson interrupted in her most commanding voice. You’ve had your fun, Graham. Explain it to her.

Well, he said, there are outlandish possibilities like time distortions and wormholes, but the most likely explanation—short of catastrophic mechanical failure or impact damage—is an alien incursion.

There it is, Captain Nelson thought. The Alien Hypothesis.

If that was going to happen, Mary retorted, it would have happened already. We’ve been out here a long time, and aside from the home system, we haven’t found any sign of life larger than a microbe.

Graham nodded. Yes, he agreed. That’s what all the nay-sayers say. But someone has to be first, and it could be us.

Unlikely, Captain Nelson interjected. I know the math as well as you do, but the Drake Equation is flawed. Every lifeless Goldilocks world that gets surveyed reduces the possibility of life on planets—especially intelligent life. Prebiotics and microbes, no matter how prevalent they may be, are limited in scope, and until we find something significant that has evolved from them, the estimates for encountering an advanced alien species will continue to shrink. Although what she said about life on other planets was true, she couldn’t dismiss the Drake Equation entirely. After all, the scale of the equation was astronomical—literally astronomical—and there was bound to be another intelligent alien species somewhere in the universe. But what were the chances of it being near enough to make a difference? Slim? None? Besides, she added, if there is an alien intelligence at work here, we wouldn’t be the first ones to encounter it. That would have been Becket. Remember? We haven’t heard from her, either, and she should have reached the next system by now. That was another reason for going to the location of the buoy. She could have already set up another buoy at the next system, and if she had the transmission would be directed at the buoy in this one. Even if the buoy wasn’t there, The Magellan would be able to receive Becket’s message directly.

Graham shrugged and said nothing. What more was there to say? Every exploitation crew hoped to be the first humans to encounter an alien civilization—and dreaded the possibility. But at every new system, that hope was quashed and that dread turned into relief. Then the excitement of discovery would set in as they began exploiting the new system. Second, then, he said.

Aliens, Mary muttered as she turned her attention back to her console and tapped buttons more fiercely than was needed.

Yes, Captain Nelson thought as she met the look Graham sent her way. He could be right. She swiveled back to her console and fumbled absently at the tabs on it. As she pulled up one display after another, barely glancing at each one, she idly wondered how long it would take to create a tab for aliens and what protocols would be subsumed under it. Until that happened, there was only one informal order for first contact: Don’t screw it up. If aliens had interfered with the buoy—an unlikely, marginally realistic possibility—it would fall upon her to find a way not to screw it up. She had even thought about it as they neared the system, but in the end, there was only one conclusion she could draw: There were lots of ways to screw it up.

3

Those are definitely the pieces of the buoy, Mary said. The outer casing looks like it was dismantled. See the screws? There isn’t any damage on any of them.

Captain Nelson frowned. Why would Becket dismantle the buoy? It had to have been her, didn’t it? The amount of drift in the debris and the cluster of pieces suggested that it happened about a year ago.

Mary tapped her console a few times, frowned, and then tapped it a few more times. Most of them, she corrected. A few components are missing. The transmitter is one of them. So is the power source.

Captain Nelson ran her finger along her jawline and tugged on the lobe of her ear. It was a bad habit, one she had thought she had overcome while she was a Commander, but it still cropped up when she was puzzled—really puzzled. What would Becket need them for? If it is Becket. An alien….

Well, Mary said, the transmitter is a simple device. All the buoy really does is receive, amplify, and redirect tachyon beams to the desired location. The processing requirements are minimal, just enough to stabilize the buoy’s position, conduct diagnostics, and reorient the antenna. There isn’t much else that it can do. She paused, leaned in to look more closely on her console, expanded a part of the image she was looking at, and added, She didn’t take the antenna, though. A little bit of its edge is sticking out of the clump. I’m sure of it. Without that antenna, the transmitter is almost useless.

Useless? Captain Nelson thought. No. Cybernetics never waste energy like that. Becket needed that transmitter—and the power source—for something. But what? All right, Mary. Becket took those components for a reason—

If it was her, Graham muttered, barely loud enough for it to be heard.

—and I want to know what that reason is. Bring up the schematics of her bullet ship and wake up Dmitri and the other engineers. Ask them what she could do with those components. She frowned and added, "Don’t forget about her components. She might be integrating the transmitter and power source with her cybernetic implants."

Yes, Ma’am, Mary said as her fingers worked the console.

Nervous? Captain Nelson wondered. No, not nervous. Professional. She swiveled to meet Graham’s speculative gaze and tugged on her ear a final time before lowering her hand. The Alien Hypothesis again?

Graham nodded. It has to happen sometime, he said. It’s inevitable.

All right, she agreed. "It’s a possibility. So how do you propose we proceed? Why would aliens want those components? Why wouldn’t they take the buoy as a whole and study it? Why isn’t there any sign—any sign—of them in the system? Or have you been keeping something to yourself?"

Graham almost frowned but stopped. He thought for a long moment and shrugged. They’re aliens, he said, a grin playing at his lips. How should I know?

Exactly, Captain Nelson said. "How can we know? That’s the problem with The Alien Hypothesis, isn’t it? All it does is lead to fear and uncertainty. It should bring caution, but it doesn’t. Instead, it magnifies the unknown into something horrendous and we start seeing ghosts. It’s a perfectly natural progression. We all have an innate fear of the unknown and The Alien Hypothesis taps into it, brings it to life, and clouds our judgment. Well, I won’t have it. There are plenty of real unknowns out here to deal with, and we don’t need any imaginary ones distracting us from them. We have to start from what we know and try to fill in the gaps. So, what do we know?"

She looked down at her hands and began counting off the facts as she highlighted each one. "We know that Cybernaut Becket was here a year ago and used the buoy to transmit her message. We know the buoy continued to transmit its beacon for several days after that before suddenly falling silent. We didn’t know why it stopped until now. We speculated—Did it break down? Had it been destroyed? Did aliens do something to it? Now we know the buoy was dismantled, not broken or destroyed or taken. So, let’s build on these facts and try to find a plausible answer.

"The fact that the buoy was dismantled tells us there was purpose behind it. The precision in which the dismantling was done tells us that the one who dismantled it had intimate knowledge of its design. True, an alien could have gained that knowledge by scanning the device, but it is far more likely Becket used the specs for it. The specifics of what was taken and the presence of the remaining parts in this location all suggest that she was the one who took it apart. The fact that she did not transmit a reason for doing so indicates she was either hard-pressed for time or that she lacked the ability to do so. Either way, it indicates a state of urgency.

"But let’s say you are right, that it was an alien and not Cybernaut Becket. Instead of solving the riddle of the dismantled buoy, it expands it. Assume aliens took those specific parts from the buoy. Why would they do it? Why would they leave the rest of the buoy behind? Would you do that if we ran across an alien artifact? Or would you leave it alone? Would you take the whole buoy? Would you even understand how the technology worked? How likely is it that an alien species would develop the same technology that we have and need those specific parts at that specific time? No, Graham, this is not evidence of alien intrusion or activity; this was done by Cybernaut Becket, and I want to know why."

As she had lectured him, his grin had slowly faded to a frown, and when she finished, he lowered his eyes to his console for a few seconds. When he looked up, a hint of his grin was returning as he said, his voice soft and a bit defiant, Maybe they were curious?

Captain Nelson almost rolled her eyes at him, but she didn’t. He was right. Alien curiosity would answer all of those questions. That was the other problem with The Alien Hypothesis, wasn’t it? It was just like the ancients who used to say, God did it! as if it that was an explanation for the things when they didn’t have other answers. It could be true, of course, but it wasn’t helpful. What were helpful were workable hypotheses. They could be tested. Her hand started up toward her ear again but she quickly halted its ascent. Perhaps, she said. How do you propose we investigate that possibility?

Graham eyes narrowed, and he didn’t answer.

Mary had been listening to their conversation with a great deal of interest, and as the silence expanded, she cast a knowing, almost sympathetic smile at Graham. Then, to hide it, she turned her attention back to her console and lowered her gaze.

Exactly, Captain Nelson said. When you have a command of your own, you’ll understand that you can’t run a ship on unsubstantiated speculation. It must be run on fact-driven inferences.

Mary gasped and her dark eyes were wide as she looked up sharply from her console. You’re right, Captain! she said, her voice excited. "It was Cybernaut Becket. Both of the others turned toward her, but before either could respond, Mary continued. It’s the screws! Take a look at them!" Her fingers danced like ballerinas on her console as the other two turned toward their consoles.

Captain Nelson’s eyes widened slightly as soon as she saw the screen of her console. On it was a magnified image of a cluster of slowly rotating screws. The screws were rotating at different speeds, but at the moment, they had almost reached synchronicity. The pattern that was forming as they tumbled around the clump of debris was unmistakable. If viewed at just right moment from just the right angle, it resembled a 3. But as the synchronicity passed, the image quickly dissolved into a jumbled mass again. Only a Cybernaut could have done the calculations for that.

Or an alien.

4

It had been a mistake.

Her ship was nearly dead.

She was nearly dead.

She needed a plan.

Her mind whirled, simultaneously forming and discarding plan after plan after plan until she settled on one that might work. It had a low chance of success, but it might work. All of the others would not.

A part of her desperately clung to the hope that it would work. The rest of her simply calculated the odds and accepted them. Slim odds of success were better than certain odds of failure, and she had a duty to survive if she could.

Cybernaut Becket used some of the remaining precious energy to redirect her ship toward the buoy. As she did so, she entered her coffin and sealed herself in. The goo settled in around her, but she didn’t activate the sleep sequence. She didn’t activate the hyper-acceleration sequence. Instead, she used the minimum amount of power to nudge the bullet ship toward the buoy and then shut everything off. The odds favored freezing before she got to the buoy. The goo wasn’t designed to insulate biological components from the chill of space. But it would take time for the cold to seep into the ship. Her mechanical components would survive, but would they be enough? If she continued her computations they would generate some heat, perhaps enough to warm what was left of her biological brain.

Sealed in the goo, she thought furiously, running through contingency after contingency. Almost all of the calculations reduced to zero, and those that didn’t relied too much on external factors. A part of her screamed at those odds, pleaded with the external factors, begged for survival. It was a small part, the last vestige of her identity from before the cybernetic upgrade. It should have died off long ago, but it stubbornly refused to do so. The rest of her accepted the facts as they were and waited.

5

Speculate, Captain Nelson said as she turned to face Mary and Graham. What does it symbolize?

Well, Graham said, It’s obviously a three, so it would have to be Goldilocks 3, wouldn’t it?

Not necessarily, Mary said. Our orientation may be influencing our interpretation. From a different perspective, it could be an E or a W or even an M.

Given the circumstances we have encountered and the fact that we made a normal approach to the system, Graham hedged, I don’t think so. Becket would have expected us to do that and would have planned accordingly. It’s a 3.

If we assume it represents Goldilocks 3, Captain Nelson said as she tapped her console and brought up Cybernaut Becket’s report, "what could it mean? Goldilocks 3 is in the middle of the habitable zone and was ‘just right,’ as she called it. Its temperature is within the ideal comfort zone, while the other two Goldilocks are on the fringes. Its atmosphere is adequate, but barely; it’s a bit too heavy on carbon dioxide and sulfur compounds for easy breathing. Possible residue from previous volcanic activity. The only noteworthy item about the planet is the presence of superconductive