humanity had developed the need to stay connected on a globe-to-globe scale. Hand held or vehicle mounted devices would communicate to a pylon. From there, small bundles of quantum entangled particles would, with a little super-scientific prodding, transmit data via their matched pairs over virtually any distance instantaneously. Pylons scattered along all mapped transit routes meant that any slidepad in mapped space could communicate with any other one, given enough hops.
The quantum communication, aside from thumbing its nose at relativistic physics by transmitting information faster than the speed of light, was subject to the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. Physicists liked to define this with fancy equations that featured letters from three different alphabets, but to the layman it meant that it was impossible to observe the data without altering it, thus making the communication absolutely secure as long as the connection was direct. Any wireless steps or repeater relays spoiled the effect by at least briefly requiring it to be decoded to a less secure form. Thus, if you were the sort who required utter secrecy, you needed to dock directly, and very few had access. This man was among them.
Fingers tapped out a long sequence of digits on an access screen, then swiped their prints for authentication. A screen read off a list of connection steps. A moment later, a voice crackled across the com speaker in the ship.
“ William Trent,” said the voice, a terse introduction that managed to communicate with remarkable clarity how much of a waste of time he considered the call to be.
“ Agent Fisk reporting. I found the leak,” said the mysterious ship’s pilot.
“ About time,” Trent barked.
“ There’s a problem,” warned Fisk.
“ What is it?” fumed Trent, murder in his tone.
“ It may not have been contained. I did a trace on network activity. She did some research. Freelancers.”
Fisk spoke in short, precise bursts, like machine gun fire. He delivered exactly what information needed to be delivered with the sort of efficiency you only get in soldiers and butlers.
“ Damn it!” Trent replied.
“ Narrowed it down to one. Found surveillance of a hand-off. Package contents unknown. It looks like he is off planet already.”
“ Find him. Get it back. This doesn’t get any farther. Not now.”
“ What about her?”
“ If she sprung one leak, she can spring another. We can’t have that. Take care of it.”
“ What level of authorization do I have in this matter?”
“ Take. Care. Of. It.”
“ Acknowledged.”
The communication was severed. Fisk pulled away from the pylon and pulled up his surveillance notes. His primary target had a short trip to a neighboring star system planned that day on a commuter shuttle. That would be simple enough. Some collateral damage, but no trail to follow. As for his new secondary target, the freelancer... That might require a more personal approach.
Seven hours, forty winks, and twelve thousand colored bricks later, the view outside the window made the slide back toward red and into visibility. It wasn’t the destination. That would be the better part of a week and a few dozen jumps away. This was just the interstellar equivalent of a strip mall, close enough to a VectorCorp route that even a damaged ship could limp to it from there, but far enough that there was no chance of being forced to pay licensing fees. Lex liked to make at least one or two stops in a place like this along the way. They had real bathrooms and real food. The same could not be said of his ship, which made do with... substitutes.
The bathroom was replaced with a bedpan sized contraption officially called a waste reprocessor, but more familiarly dubbed a turd burner. It converted human byproduct into a chemically pure compound that could be dropped off for processing into explosives or fertilizer or some such. More importantly, it didn’t stink and took up less space. Food came
The quantum communication, aside from thumbing its nose at relativistic physics by transmitting information faster than the speed of light, was subject to the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. Physicists liked to define this with fancy equations that featured letters from three different alphabets, but to the layman it meant that it was impossible to observe the data without altering it, thus making the communication absolutely secure as long as the connection was direct. Any wireless steps or repeater relays spoiled the effect by at least briefly requiring it to be decoded to a less secure form. Thus, if you were the sort who required utter secrecy, you needed to dock directly, and very few had access. This man was among them.
Fingers tapped out a long sequence of digits on an access screen, then swiped their prints for authentication. A screen read off a list of connection steps. A moment later, a voice crackled across the com speaker in the ship.
“ William Trent,” said the voice, a terse introduction that managed to communicate with remarkable clarity how much of a waste of time he considered the call to be.
“ Agent Fisk reporting. I found the leak,” said the mysterious ship’s pilot.
“ About time,” Trent barked.
“ There’s a problem,” warned Fisk.
“ What is it?” fumed Trent, murder in his tone.
“ It may not have been contained. I did a trace on network activity. She did some research. Freelancers.”
Fisk spoke in short, precise bursts, like machine gun fire. He delivered exactly what information needed to be delivered with the sort of efficiency you only get in soldiers and butlers.
“ Damn it!” Trent replied.
“ Narrowed it down to one. Found surveillance of a hand-off. Package contents unknown. It looks like he is off planet already.”
“ Find him. Get it back. This doesn’t get any farther. Not now.”
“ What about her?”
“ If she sprung one leak, she can spring another. We can’t have that. Take care of it.”
“ What level of authorization do I have in this matter?”
“ Take. Care. Of. It.”
“ Acknowledged.”
The communication was severed. Fisk pulled away from the pylon and pulled up his surveillance notes. His primary target had a short trip to a neighboring star system planned that day on a commuter shuttle. That would be simple enough. Some collateral damage, but no trail to follow. As for his new secondary target, the freelancer... That might require a more personal approach.
Seven hours, forty winks, and twelve thousand colored bricks later, the view outside the window made the slide back toward red and into visibility. It wasn’t the destination. That would be the better part of a week and a few dozen jumps away. This was just the interstellar equivalent of a strip mall, close enough to a VectorCorp route that even a damaged ship could limp to it from there, but far enough that there was no chance of being forced to pay licensing fees. Lex liked to make at least one or two stops in a place like this along the way. They had real bathrooms and real food. The same could not be said of his ship, which made do with... substitutes.
The bathroom was replaced with a bedpan sized contraption officially called a waste reprocessor, but more familiarly dubbed a turd burner. It converted human byproduct into a chemically pure compound that could be dropped off for processing into explosives or fertilizer or some such. More importantly, it didn’t stink and took up less space. Food came
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