Schrödinger's President

Federation President Halsey is missing.

Or dead.

Quite possibly both.

It very much depends on who you listen to, or want to believe. Factions within the Federation are each telling wildly different stories; with an investigation that seems to lead to more questions being asked than answered.

So I have to go there to investigate on my own.

Dropping back into normal space in Azaleach finds it busier than usual. Much busier. A small cluster of ships break out of tight fuel scooping orbit around the sun, and begin the 20,000Ls long run out to Leoniceno Orbital. Two more ships jump in and turn immediately, apparently more confident in their remaining fuel, and follow close behind.

“12 hours ago, following entry into hyperspace, Spaceflight One went dark. All attempts by the President’s security team to trace the vessel have met with failure.” - Secretary of State, Felicia Winters.

Missing! They can't find the ship.

The system is huge. Azaleach B and C stars glimmer faintly, orbiting each other and barely visible at over 220,000Ls away. They almost, but not quite, fall into the background of nearby stars. They've already been picked out by an advanced scan of the system along with their orbiting asteroid belts so there's no problem finding them.

It's a damn trek out there to go take a look, and precious little chance of finding anything.

"We exited hyperspace uncontrolled and in deep space – something I’ve never seen before... We first searched the deep space around our positions, then jumped to the destination point rendezvous as quickly as we could. Nothing. Not even wreckage.” - anonymous escort of Spaceflight One.

A misjump then into a dark and uncharted volume of space and lucky to get back out alive. Almost unheard of these days with the safety features built into these drives.

How exactly do you force a misjump?

The system is full of security patrol ships as the system is in a state of semi-lock down. Searching for a piece of wreckage, a transponder, any signature that could be Spaceflight One. Any clue on what happened.

There's nothing here to see, and nothing found. They are searching in the same way that I am. They carry a hope of finding a clue that others might have missed, and have a palpable sense of something most definitely lost.

Having ensured that the tumbling rocks around Azaleach B remain protected these two security ships jumped out.

The background to these events don't stop some of the wilder speculation making it out onto the comm nets either.

“Learn your history, people. It wasn’t all that long ago that our ancestors were being plucked out of the black right into the belly of bugs ... Weird, pulsing, alien things. I don’t know where they came from ... You think it’s a coincidence that the President went missing just weeks after those THINGS turn up?" - Alex Snoori, host of Beyond Top Secret.

This one sounds like the rantings of a conspiracy theory.

Except for one thing.

When you do go a check your history books it's clear that Spaceflight One made a detour that took it within 300Ly of a known base of operations for the Thargoids.

There, I've said it. I'm almost ready to buy into something as imaginative as that. The history books are full of commanders that went missing, and some that even came back with wilder stories. Jameson himself claimed to have survived more than one witch space encounter, bringing back technology that would have made its way into the research laboratories.

"But the idea, the very notion, that our best and brightest out there on Starship One would have let that bird fly with a busted engine... No way. Those guys are military. We need to be looking for who did it. We need to nail them NOW. The assassin is busy covering their tracks while we speak." - Shadow President Hudson, Federation Congress.

The Shadow President seems certain it was an assassination. Is he grasping at straws, or does he have some inside track?

In any case the call of a vote of no confidence in the President, missing and believed dead, is brutal and callous. With Vice President Naylor also on board Spaceflight One (against all the usual travel conventions for senior leaders) there is no-one to answer to the vote, or hold to account should it pass. Hudson is making his powerplay and the Secretary of State is meekly letting it go ahead.

“Starship One’s disappearance appears to have been caused by a major malfunction in the Frame Shift Drive’s safety systems. It looks like there was a major power surge, followed by four separate system failures in quick succession according to the data we have, resulting in a catastrophic explosion. We do not believe this explosion would have been survivable by anyone on board.” - Lieutenant Barringer, Federal Transport Safety Administration

The story has changed. As they were originally searching for a missing ship, then the catastrophic explosion must be inferred from the consequences of the system failures. I keep on coming back to the question of how to perform a mis-jump. Was it a deliberate act of ... intent... or sabotage?

Perhaps Hudson was right about such an accumulation of chance being malicious: the Federation leadership on one ship, the power surge, the sequence of safety system failures...

Neither the Empire nor the Federation now has a credible and unifying leadership to maintain the peace, and the known human space is accelerating into a turmoil not seen in recent history. Major powers fracturing along internal divisions of ideology and ambition, and openly competing for hearts, minds and territory.

What really happened to Spaceflight One?

The conflicted mercenary and the tail of the tiger

I didn't think they'd trust me. Certainly not at first given my somewhat chequered and difficult past.

Now there's an understatement if I ever heard one, even though I'm only telling myself that crock of... spin. At least that particular turn of phrase is running more easily through my mind, and I might soon start to believe it.

That isn't what brings me into HR 706 though. I'm following a hunch.

The focused battle at Kui Hsien left me angry and drained. That Senator Patreus sold the survivors into slavery as a business decision was something I had not anticipated. The mercenary in me was paid, but the conscience did not rest so easily.

The next contract didn't quite fall into my lap the way they normally do either. A GalNet news article on the Emperor's assassination attempt, and a call for assistance in investigation from the Princess Arissa Lavigny-Duval in a nearby system.

Only two jumps from the carnage I left behind in Kui Hsien. Two jumps from Eotiensis, the home system of Senator Denton Patreus. And finally, with the Senator's patronage of HR 706, I feel I am only two jumps away from making a connection with the Emperor's assassination.

Patreus would not be the first ambitious Senator kept young by the longevity drugs that are the favoured of the rich. Nor the first to have laid an envious eye on the highest position of power in the Empire. Such thoughts against a Senator who has declared himself loyal to the Empire would also be treasonous in their own right, and they are buried deep while I play a dangerous game.

So I find myself in a resource site of a nearby system, helping to calm the criminal elements in this nearby sector of space. Listening to the lawless go about their business and gathering transmissions, data on time and location, and then finally their bounty as well. Sifting and searching on my own meagre resources before feeding it up to a much larger organisation with wider reach and better capabilities that I could ever muster.

Hoping to find a tremor on the spider's web of deceit that leads me ever further on. One of us will see it first.

The data processing techniques of the Princess have impressed. A rapacious thirst for knowledge that can correlate data at that pace would raise eyebrows and could even have constrained AI capabilities. Though it is no straightforward task to keep them occupied and distracted with puzzles to solve. At the moment it pays to be indifferent to these things, and it certainly wouldn't be healthy to inquire further.

I'm not entirely sure that I'm trusted yet, but I know they're willing to accept the discerning information that I bring. Some do occasionally seek me out for my skills and contacts, but this time it is given freely with an ulterior motive on my part. The mercenary inside me is most satisfied however, for the pay is very good indeed.

Another payload of data dropped off at Laming Orbital. Another paycheck. But still nothing that satisfies.

The GalNet news overflows with speculation once the HR 706 chapter of the Emperor's Grace was found by the Princess to be operating without sanction. Though their protests to the Senate did delay these findings, as the guilty are wont to hide behind the protection of process and assumption of innocence, it did buy time for another operation to complete.

Kui Hsien fell. Hard.

Any leads that might have led there from HR 706 and then back into the adjacent system of Eotienses, home world of Senator Denton Patreus, have now been utterly decimated. Its people scattered to the corners of known space as slaves where they have no voice, and no presence.

The business decision to sell the assets of Kui Hsien now makes perfect sense. It severs a connection.

That the Senator did eventually intervene to allow the investigation into HR 706 goes a long way to establish credibility and distance from what might be discovered. However when there are conspiracies inside conspiracies then the assassins are themselves ultimately expendable.

For now the trail has chilled beyond my ability to follow.

The conflicted mercenary

I rescued a slave girl once. A very pretty slave girl. She saved my life and didn't even know it. At least that's what I believed at the time.

Nothing is ever as it seems.

I shake my head to try and remove the unwanted intrusion, and the recollection of events past falls away as I store the powerful memory back into a locked chest I would much rather leave untouched.

With the memory suppressed my anger returns with nothing to distract it. Boiling and seething inside me at the goddamn feckin' arrogance of an Imperial Senator. Thousands dead and an oh so simple change of plans that wasn't telegraphed at the start.

Used, exploited, and discarded is how I feel and that should never, ever be the outcome of a mercenary contract. The slaves of Kui Hsien weigh heavily on my conscience.

Defaulting on a debt is no small matter, though knowing this the small colony of 30,000 people on Kui Hsien refused to accept a one sided rate increase imposed on them. All of this is normal for the business world of a wheeling dealing senator like Patreus. A debt only has meaning when it provides a return on investment.

That the entire colony is then crushed under the weight of a cadre of loyal or mercenary commanders is a text book response. All the commanders involved are looking for a profit and have been handsomely rewarded once the dust has settled. They probably don't look any deeper.

That Senator Patreus has expended huge amounts of money to achieve this makes little business sense though. Over 10 billion credits in combat bonds and probably the same again in personal reward. The interest increase and remaining debt could not have been worth spending all of that, could they?

Apparently so, for it has happened.

Yet this must have been foreseen as one possible or even desirable outcome, for it would not be a good business decision to have started the campaign otherwise. The asset foreclosure is also a normal part of business, and huge tracts of land are sold with a tidy dowry of slaves to a Senator who has a penchant for slavery as a profitable business.

The memory of the slave girl intrudes again unbidden, raising a dam against the flood of my emotions and changing their course.  The adrenaline rage struggles weakly before acquiescing again, and the memory tries to nudge me towards something I can't quite see yet.

A pretty slave girl is easy on the eyes and quite the distraction. There are many uses and some are even documented in the contract, and invited as an easier way of life than many of the alternatives out there, but...

A moments silence hangs heavily in the air as other recent events play back through my mind, and for the second time I put the memory of the slave girl back into the past where it belongs. This time it is different though: a connection has been made. The raging emotions that had clouded my mind are gone; replaced by a cold and calculating view of the universe that demands facts and evidence to go any further.

What I've imagined would be treason in the Empire at the highest level.

I'm stunned. Could a Senator be so bold?

It would be quite the powerplay for a senator in waiting. A young senator who is going places and isn't known for patience or compassion.

Signposted by the enslaved of Kui Hsien, a new path opens up in front of me.

[Note: the link back to an earlier blog entry is, at this point in time, an unfinished background story. I'll get around to writing the rest of it one of these days...]