Torchship

Torchship

Karl K.
Gallagher

© 2015 Karl Gallagher.

All Rights Reserved.

This is a work of fiction. Names,
characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of
the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to
actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Published by Kelt Haven Press,
Saginaw, TX.

Cover art and design by Stephanie G.
Folse (
www.scarlettebooks.com
).

Editing by Laura Gallagher.

Audio Recording by Laura Gallagher.

First edition.

To Laura:

Friend, Lover, Wife, Muse

Fives
Full
Cross Section

Planet Lapis. Gravity 10.2
m/s
²

Mitchie cursed as the “Don’t Walk” sign switched to a wanted
poster. “Have you seen this man?” hovered over a rotating image of a
dark-haired, bearded man’s head. Smaller text at the bottom explained that he
was an illegal artificial intelligence researcher and, of course, threat to
public safety.
Dammit
, she thought,
I promised I’d keep him safe.
If security was already escalating the search it might be a hard promise to
keep.

The target of the poster indignantly
burst out, “I wasn’t trying to—ow!” Wrapping her arm cozily around his waist
let Mitchie jab a thumb into the man’s ribs without being too obvious about it.

“Shut up,” she muttered up at
him. “Don’t say any keywords. We only have another half-klick to get to the
spaceport, don’t blow it now.” She’d given him a shave and bleached his hair to
keep any casual passers-by from recognizing him. Serious observers would be
reviewing the surveillance imagery from this intersection within the day. They
were looking for a lone man. Mitchie was the best camouflage against them for
her cargo. She tugged his arm onto her shoulder. “Hold me. Gently. I’m your
girlfriend, we’re going for a walk. It’s a nice day to watch the rockets take
off.” She sighed. “Pretend that you’ve held a woman like this before.”

The sign changed to “Walk.”
They strolled down the street between warehouses. “Okay,” said Mitchie, “we’re
safe for five minutes. Vent now, then shut up when we get to the port.”

“I wasn’t researching
artificial intelligence!” complained the scientist. “It’s just simple
optimization. Okay, complex optimization, but it had no danger of going rogue.
This is completely unreasonable.”

“Pete, your planet has lots
more unreasonable stuff than how they define AI research. But do you think a
jury is going to care about your distinction? Or those guys?” Some waldo
operators across the street watched a news report and bragged to each other
what they’d do if they caught “that world-melter.”

“Well, if I’d had a chance to
do a practical demonstration people would slow down enough to think about it. I
wasn’t ready. I don’t know why they’re bothering me. I didn’t do anything to
set off any alarms.”

Which was true. The alarms had
probably been triggered by the datatrawling Mitchie had done from his system.
Once the code police had realized what Pete was developing they’d lost all
interest in why he’d been prying and focused on containing it—and him. But she
didn’t feel any need to enlighten him. If he’d been staying inside the law they
wouldn’t have bothered him.

“Well, they’re looking for
you now,” she said. “Do you want to take your chances with a trial? Gotta make
up your mind now. I’m not asking my friends to stick out their necks if you’re
going to jump ship before they lift.”

Pete let out a deep breath. “I’m
going. No sense staying here. Even if I’m acquitted of illegal research they’ll
never let me code again. If I emigrate I’ll be able to finish my work someday.
And anything beats getting executed.”

“No stipend,” Mitchie pointed
out. “You’ll have to buy your own computing gear.”

“I know. I watch frontier
vids, you know, we all do.”

The Disconnected Worlds
native bit her tongue. She’d seen some of those vids and hated to think that he
was basing decisions on them. “Okay, time for you to shush again until we’re on
the ship.” Mitchie pulled out her comm. “Agum, it’s time.”

“Will do. You’re going to owe
me for this, Mitchie,” answered the spacer on the ship they hoped to reach.

“I’m good for it,” she
insisted.

“Going.” The comm went
silent.

“Now we stroll some more,”
she said, looking up at Pete with a bright smile. She tightened her arm around
him again.

Pete had never seen a bigger
open space than the spaceport in his whole urbanized life. He gawked like a
tourist. Mitchie snuggled into him, relieved that she didn’t have to play
acting coach again.

The security post had the
usual two guards. Agum strolled toward them on the far side. By the time
Mitchie and Pete got to the post the argument was in full progress. “This is a
perfectly legal device!” protested Agum. “It’s a dedicated reading unit, in
full compliance with Fusion of Inhabited Worlds regulations.” He added some
extra sarcasm over the Fusion’s belief it represented all inhabited worlds.

“Sir, that is an unmonitored
processor capable of general-purpose computation,” declared the guard. “All
such hardware is forbidden from import and must be destroyed on entry.”

“I’m not letting anyone pry
my reader apart for parts! And I’m not letting you petty thugs harass me into
giving up my gear just because you’re bored and hate Diskers!” Agum actually
turned a dark red, impressive given his tropical ancestry. Mitchie decided she’d
have to figure out something extra for him.

“Um, ma’am?” Mitchie
distracted the female guard from the confrontation. “We’ve been invited on
board the
MS Barito
. Uh . . . do we need to come back later?”

“No, no, this won’t take
long.” The guard kept looking back at her partner, making sure Agum hadn’t
gotten physical. He and the first guard were now quoting regulations at each
other by the paragraph. The female guard briefed them. “As visitors to an
unsecure area you must avoid all possible data contamination. Read/writable
devices must be restored from the network on exit. Any device you don’t want
erased must be left in secure storage at the guard post. Do you have any
questions on these restrictions?”

“No, that’s fine,” said
Mitchie. Pete stared at a descending freightliner. The guard didn’t press him
for an answer.

Agum was now accusing the
other guard of making up the regulations he quoted. Pete moved along to Mitchie’s
prodding.

The
Barito’s
crew gave
a warm welcome to Mitchie, and a wary one to Pete. “Who’s he?” asked the
captain bluntly.

“Pete. New immigrant. Willing
to work hard. He’s got some friends on Akiak who’ll cover his passage.”

A crewman laughed. “A Fusion
boy working hard? This I got to see. I’m Hatta. You ever use a mop, Pete?”

Pete accepted the handshake
from Hatta. “No, I haven’t. What’s that stand for?” That got all the Disconnected
Worlds natives laughing.

“Doesn’t stand for anything
Pete, it’s what we use in the Disconnect instead of floorbots. I’ll show you.”
Hatta led Pete below decks.

“Friends?” asked the captain.

“Yes, someone will come
aboard and pay his fare at Akiak,” promised Mitchie. “And pick up these.” She
laid some data crystals on the console. The captain swept them into a drawer.

“All right, I trust you. And
Hatta may get a passage’s worth of work out of him anyway. What about you?
Working or riding with us?”

“Neither. I’m not going back
to the Disconnect any time soon. Time to find a new job. Can I get a favor from
Otto?”

“Of course. But you be
careful, little girl,” said the captain.

Mitchie blew the captain a
kiss and headed downbelow.

“Otto!” called Mitchie as she came through the converter
room hatch.

“Little Michigan!” replied
MS Barito’s
mechanic. He
wrapped her in a hug. “So what’s the favor?”

“Hey, that’s not fair. I’m not always hitting you up for
favors.”

“True, true, but favor is the way to bet. What is it?”

She felt herself blush a little, and hated that her fair
skin made her so easy to read. “I need a data crystal destroyed.” She held out
a cloth holding some shards.

“It’d take some work to reconstruct that. But if you want it
obliterated I’ll put it through the pipes.”

“Thank you.” She pulled on his collar and stood tip-toe to
kiss Otto’s cheek.

“Are you riding with us?”

“No, not this trip. Can’t go back to the Disconnect yet.”

“Best get this done and you off. We’re lifting soon.” The
mechanic levered open an inspection port on the start tank pipe. Water spilled
out. Mitchie dumped the glittering shards into it, scraping the cloth back and
forth to make sure they all went in. He closed the port. “All right, no one’s
going to read that again,” said Otto. “Go on, I’ll see you next time.”

“Thanks, Otto!” She scampered up the ladder. At the end of
the ship’s ramp she turned right toward the shuttle to the orbital highport.
She didn’t want to cross the security line again.
Somebody might have recognized Pete in one of those videos with her. The spacer
hall had a wing by the shuttles. That gave her a place to stay and check for
ships that were hiring. If nobody was she’d just have to talk her way onto one
headed inward.

***

The shards sat on the bottom of the water tank until the
Barito
cleared atmosphere. They ignored the chatter as orbit control granted
permission to fire the torch. The start tank warmed a bit as the converter
started turning iridium into energy and iron. Then the valves opened and the
water swept the shards through the heating coils. Data storage matrices
separated as the plastic holding them evaporated. The water flashed into steam.

The pressure split them among dozens of pipes. A
high-voltage current ran through the steam, superheating it into plasma, water
molecules breaking up and electrons popping off the hydrogen. The
silicon/gallium data matrices shattered, going from complex crystals to
handfuls of atoms.

Rippling magnetic fields accelerated the plasma out the
magnetoplasmadynamic nozzles. The remnants of the data crystal flew off at half
a percent of lightspeed. The captain had kept the thrust low while maneuvering
in crowded low orbit.

When the last few molecules hit Lapis’ atmosphere they broke
apart. No two atoms of the data crystal were still bonded to each other. No one
else would read Michigan Long’s instructions.

Jason Station (Lapis
Highport). Centrifugal Acceleration 5 m/s
²

The
Fives Full
was at
dock 37A. It was a pleasant walk from the station’s shuttle bays empty handed. Carrying
her duffle that far tired Mitchie enough to wish she’d spent a half-key to rent
a cart. No one was on watch in the accessway but the airlock stood invitingly
open. She went in and grounded her duffle out of the way.

She was in the cargo hold.
This ship just had the one circular hold, a hollow middle between the fuel
tanks below and crew quarters above. It was barely wide enough to fit a couple
of standard containers end to end. A crane on the ceiling stood ready to move
cargo.

“Hi there.” A middle-aged Han
woman sat on one crate while doing accounts on a datasheet balanced on another.

“Hello. I’m Michigan Long.
I’m applying for the pilot berth.” She spoke in her thickest Akiak accent.

“Captain’s expecting you.
He’s on the bridge.” She waved at a ladder on the forward bulkhead of the cargo
hold.

“Thank you.” The datasheet—one
of the starport loaners—was the only non-Disconnected Worlds product in sight.
The few containers in the hold were against the starboard bulkhead. Mitchie
guessed the ship was preparing to receive an oversized item.

She climbed up the ladder
into a long corridor, then headed to the ladder at the midpoint. The ship
didn’t exactly match the plans she’d looked up. A couple of the portside crew
compartments had been converted to expand the galley. She went a few rungs up
the bridge ladder and rapped on the edge of the open hatch. “Hello?”

“Enter!”

As she stepped onto the
bridge Mitchie saw the captain standing straight and glaring at her. She
snapped to a matching attention. “Michigan Long, applying for pilot position,
sir.”

The captain wore a faded blue
jumpsuit with SCHWARTZENBERGER written on the right chest and no sign of his
rank. After studying her a moment he asked, “Where’d you learn to fly, Long?”

“Akiak. Surface-to-surface
shuttle runs to the mining towns.”

“Any electronics on your
birds?”

“Not much, sir. Commo and a
locator for when I was within sight of the highport.”

“Your note said you did
mechanic work.”

“If the shuttle broke on a
run I’d have to fix it up enough to get back to the port. The delivery service
couldn’t afford a hauler, it’d be three month’s profit to rent one. I’ve kept
up on shuttle maintenance since then but haven’t done any for a ship.”

“They’re not that different.
On this ship when there’s a problem everyone turns to.” She nodded. “So how’d
you get into the black?” asked the captain.

“
Elephant’s Tail
fired
her co-pilot when she landed at Akiak. I’d had the advanced course on analog
navigation so they took me. Signed on as co-, I worked up to navigator, then
lead pilot when Chauncey transferred.”

“Quick work in five years.
Why’d you wind up dirtside?”

Mitchie reddened and looked
away. “When the
Tail
went into overhaul the crew had a choice between
half-pay until it finished or a separation bonus. This boy convinced me to give
life in the Fusion a try. So I took the money. Didn’t take me long to decide
that was a mistake. I’ve been looking for a berth for over a month now.” Did
his stern look have a flicker of a smile at that? She wasn’t sure.