Problem Solving.

Posted on Fri Dec 20th, 2019 @ 2:57pm by Commanding Officer Mickey Serendipity

Mission: A Shadow On Velvet
Location: SS Albatross, Trans Mars Injection Orbit
Timeline: Just After Breakfast of Champions.

The bright red star of Mars sat perched atop the sensor studded bow of The Albatross. Right now it was just a moody point of light, tomorrow it would be an egg sized portent of ill will. Then it would grow in detail, showing off gossamer clouds and a golden tracery of city domes illuminating its night side.

And entire planet, geared towards the comment purpose of turning a lifeless rock into a new eden. From the moment of birth a Martian’s life was set against that seemingly impossible goal. Would your child grow up to to play a key role in the terraforming effort? And if not that lofty goal, then perhaps one in support of it? A soldier manning the high frontier of the Martian Congressional Republic Navy? Or a janitor mopping the floor of the Senate Building?

Mickey remembered seeing an old MCRN recruitment poster, showing a an old balloon space suited astronaut reaching down from orbit to place the MCRN flag into the gauntleted fist of a Marine. ‘Thank You Grandfather!’ the caption had read. Some centennial celebration. Even their history was bent to the task of telling the correct narrative.

So a ship leaves Eros Station for Mars, with a drive signature and delta vee quotient on par with a minimal fuel passage. Rolling the clock back is a cinch, that old train going west at 30KPH squared passing another training heading east at 30300 KPH squared. Grade school and lower university college stuff.

You were on Eros Station when the alarms went off, and the shutters came down. You might be a plague ship. You might be a ship of the dead already.

So time to change the narrative.

It wouldn’t be the first time, nor the last time, Mickey had had to doctor the ships books to make it look like they’d come from Somewhere Else when actually they’d been to Elsewhere Station. It was a little easier to do on the Jovian and Saturnian Lunar Systems, what with the hundred plus moons and staggering sheets of radiation both gas giants threw off.

But a shortest time path from Eros to Mars didn’t leave many desirable destinations. The refinery station of Pallas was a MCRN Free Port, the same way a prostitute was free lancing for a pimp. Vesta and Ceres were nearly at a right angle to where Mickey would have liked them to be. Hygiea was looking more and more promising, and with the doctor new on the rolls of the ships company, picking her up from the Belts largest micro gee medical centre seemed like a no brainer.

The UNIB agent on the other hand…

Mickey closed up his desk terminal in his bunk, and then leaning back popped open the cubby hole within which the great deal of his worldly possessions resided. A few things from his past, tidbits that might reveal something to someone. One of those things was a glossy black case, embossed a top it was the logo of Bay Tree Securities, a little mom and pop security outfit registered from Switzerland on Earth if mom and pop had been trillionaires with a taste for winning wars for the highest bidders.

That had meant not skimping on the toys.

The molecular computer built into the case read off his DNA code, the placement of his fingers on the case, even a few proximity implants in his palms keyed into his vitals. All to make sure someone couldn’t just kill him and then have his dead finger tips open the box post mortem. An invisible seam appeared around the boxes edge, and with a click it opened like a jewellery box.

Inside the box were the tricks of a trade Mickey, a former version of himself before Mickey at any rate, had used to great impact. Some of them were newer additions to the field kit that he’d chosen to put in there. As an example, the trio of heavy brass rings were the winnings of a card game played against the Factotum of a Japanese solar energy magnate. The bodyguard and chief fixer of Rising Sun Energy had not parted with the rings easily, but a bet was a bet.

For a moment his fingers traced over the other items within the X-ray, scanner proof box. A host of memories waiting just beneath his fingertips.

‘You know…if we can be reborn after this life is over…I’d not mind coming back as a bird.’

He took the rings out of their padded foam holders, and slips them over the middle, ring, and index of his right hand. He worked his fingers, loosening them up, and then closed them into a fist. With a careful, practised ease he gave the three fingers a preprogrammed wiggle. The brass seemed to turn tacky for a moment, loosing some of its lustre as the metal flowed together. Then with alarming speed, it sprouted out from his knuckle to form a three-inch punch dagger.

Poly smart alloy, keyed a thermal kinetic code. Untraceable, undetectable, and nearly forensically sterile. And illegal mostly anywhere with a human-rated atmosphere. And 99% of the time lover looked by anyone not operating at a certain level of threat awareness.

He closed the memory box, put it back in its cubby, and got up from his chair.

“Location, Kol Wescott-Fitzgerald,” Mickey the air. A wall screen flickered with a ship diagram, pin pointing the UNIB’s location.

Time to go solve a problem.