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Project Valkyrie
Chapter 11 - Preparation for Perfidy
The first thing Thyra did once she got back to her ship was make certain that she could remotely summon the small lift that would take her up to the airlock. Thankfully, it reacted to her request, swung itself out of the airlock, and dropped down to allow her to ride up in a normal fashion. It wouldn't do for anyone to see her getting into the ship any other way.
"Welcome back," Mimir said as soon as she stepped through the airlock and shucked her coat and filter mask. "Things have been quiet while you were gone, but something unusual has come up. I was preparing to summon a refueling truck to bring us back up to a full load of fuel, but I have noted an oddity. Our fuel tankage is precisely 50.54 displacement tons, and since we just finished arriving after jump, it should be empty, but it is not. It is, in fact, almost completely full."
Thyra stopped and looked up at the ceiling. She knew that wasn't where Mimir was located, but it seemed polite to do so since that was the equivalent of looking at him while he was speaking. There were speakers and audio receptors built into the ceilings in the common areas, and she wouldn't be at all shocked if there were cameras in her quarters as well. One more thing to check.
"How much fuel was used?" she asked.
"Right at one hundredth of our tankage: .5054 displacement tons. The behavior seems similar to what is seen with regular jump drives using a jump governor. If a jump drive is capable of making a three parsec jump, it typically uses one third of the fuel available when jumping only a single parsec. The implication is that our jump drive may be capable of jumping a hundred parsecs, which is far beyond anything that I can find mentioned in the public network we have access to. Vincennes can produce vessels capable of making a seven parsecs jump, but the amount of space required for fuel is egregious. Even a dedicated vessel would be hard-pressed to carry even a single passenger with no frills whatsoever and make a jump that long. There are rumblings about prototype Hop drives that can do ten parsecs with the fuel needed for a single parsec in a normal jump drive, but this is far beyond that."
She thought back to what she'd seen of the jump drive, and now some of the oddities began to make sense. Unlike everything else in engineering--with the exception of the power plant that still made no sense to her--the jump drive looked like it had been torn apart and rebuilt piecemeal. Rather than being a single construction, someone had taken various parts and built something unique. The only question was, had it been the old man or the people he'd stolen the ship from?
"While that is certainly curious, I don't want to jump to any conclusions," she said. "Did you find out what the process was for refueling? Perhaps we can just have them fill up what is empty, and it won't raise many eyebrows."
"That seems unlikely. A ship jumping in--even one that uses a governor--will have used far more fuel than we are taking on. I would guess that the old man might have purged the fuel tanks after the jump to make it seem that he'd made a complete jump without any oddities. As we did not know that we needed to do so, we are now in a position where we have to explain something that is inexplicable."
"What happens if we don't call for fuel? Will that raise any red flags?"
"Unknown. I would wager that no one keeps track of which ships refuel and which ships do not because that is not something worthy of tracking. Everyone will need to refuel, so the assumption will be that everyone does. If we are comfortable that we have enough fuel for the next jump, then I would suggest that we simply keep our mouths shut and pay closer attention during our next jump. If the behavior is the same, then we will know the limits of the vessel. We should still dump any remaining fuel to avoid raising eyebrows in the future."
"You should be able to figure this out now," she said, checking her astrogation skill. "If this ship is capable of jumping a hundred parsecs--as crazy as that sounds--then you should be able to plot a jump that far. A normal jump program won't be able to do so. Why don't you give it a try while I'm doing something else and let me know how it turns out?"
"Understood. I will get right on it."
With that done, Thyra headed for the primary robotics laboratory, as she was thinking of it. The other two seemed to have gotten less use, so the old man had done most of his work in the big one. Of course, the four cybernetics laboratories hadn't gotten any work done in them.
Part of her wondered if she should see about disassembling them and storing away any critical equipment and reclaiming that space for cargo, but she felt disinclined to make any changes at this point. Just as she'd advised Mimir, it might be best to just let things ride until she knew more.
Once she was in the robotics laboratory, she retrieved a set of tools and sat down at a workbench. She would make a small incision in her artificial skin and see about placing the chip inside her palm.
First, though, she needed to see whether or not she could pair her encryption module with it. If she could work it so that she was using something more sophisticated than tech level 16, that would likely mean that no one else would be able to get into her accounts.
A thorough examination of the chip revealed that it would take power from the biological processes of a normal body, but she should be able to see that it got power from her artificial one in much the same fashion. Her robotics skill told her that that would be a trivial modification to make.
The little chip was already powered and would have enough energy to maintain itself for an extended period of time, as it was not currently installed, though the case itself might be feeding it energy. On reflection, that seemed the most likely method of keeping it operating during times when it was not installed.
She connected with it wirelessly, and it wanted to verify her DNA matched what it was supposed to be using, so she rubbed a finger across its top, and it authenticated her. Once it had done so, it allowed her to access it, and she began probing its circuits. The little device was very complex, and its encryption was excellent. It wasn't as good as what she was using--not by far--but it would be a match for virtually anything that could be brought against it using Imperial technology, even at tech level 16.
Searching out its capabilities when it came to encryption was a slow process because she didn't want to commit to using something that was less capable than she had to. She started off by attempting to load her current encryption, and was rejected because the system could not even recognize it. She began stepping things down until the device accepted what she proffered.
Interestingly, it was something she would have classified as a tech level 17 encryption program. Definitely more advanced than anyone else should be able to put in place, and that implied that this little chip was more advanced than her contact at the Travellers' Aid Society had stated.
Had he known? Maybe. The fact that the system could use something in advance of anything the Imperium was currently producing made hacking into it an almost impossible proposition. Unfortunately, unless it was loaded with a similar technological innovation when it came to encryption, it was weaker than it could be. Her protections would now be sufficient for anything she ran into unless it utilized technology greater than tech level 17.
With that done, she prepared to install it. The first thing she wanted to find out was exactly what her artificial epidermis--and what was under it--looked like. She took a laser scalpel and made a slight incision in her left palm. She could have used her right hand as she was ambidextrous, but it seemed that most humans would have a chip installed in their off hand to keep their primary hand ready for any other purposes. She would mimic that particular behavior so as not to seem even more odd than she already did.
Underneath her skin, she found a fatty layer and other biologic material that was indistinguishable from what she would find if she dug into a human hand. It might very well have been that she could've let the medic at the Travellers' Aid Society do the installation, though she would never have taken that chance.
She dug a little deeper and went into the muscles themselves and found artificial armor underneath them. It was thin, but seemed very strong. In a way, this could also have been dismissed as normal subdural armor that the Imperium could produce, though she suspected the material was far stronger than anything currently on the market. Once again, she had no idea what armor 80 meant, and she hoped that she wouldn't find out soon.
Taking a pair of forceps, she placed the chip at a convenient place at the base of her palm. It was small enough that it would not be visible under the surface and should not cause her any discomfort.
Her nerves were telling her that she had cut herself, but pain was different for an artificial being, she suspected. She recognized the damage, but she had no impulse to pull away from it because she didn't have the same self-preservation reflexes that a biological being had. She had done this to herself, she had known it was coming, and other than her body notifying her that an injury--very minor in nature--had been sustained, there was no further effect.
Once the chip was in place, she prepared to perform the necessary repairs to get everything back to the way it had been before, but stopped when she saw that the flesh was already beginning to knit back together. She watched, fascinated, as her hand healed in real time. In just a minute, the wound was gone, and there wasn't even a scar left behind to tell her that she had made an incision.
Very interesting. Her body had a rapid healing capability that she suspected was carried out by nanorobots. That was reassuring because if she suffered damage, having it repaired as quickly as possible would be useful. This was the only body she had--unless she built herself another one--so she needed to take care of it.
The last thing she did was have her robotic brain connect to the chip as a verification method. Now it wouldn't work without being attached to her. Not only was her DNA required, but her physical presence was as well. No one would be able to mimic her brain, so her accounts were as well protected as possible. Mission accomplished.
With that done, she needed to focus on getting the other work finished. With the ship firmly under her ownership, she sent out messages to the three clients that were expecting freight and indicated that she had landed at the down port and would be available to deliver their goods beginning tomorrow morning. It was already late in the day, so she didn't expect to have an immediate answer, but this would preclude someone coming late looking for their freight.
It was important because she needed the funds. While the ship had two hundred thousand credits in its account, she wanted to see that number grow, and delivering these cargoes would generate a thousand credits per displacement ton, so she could more than double her ship's fund.
And that didn't even count what she would be paid if she could figure out how to deliver the illegal cargo tonight. The old man had undoubtedly had a method planned for doing exactly that, and she needed to figure out what it was, and she needed to do it fast.
Thyra knew where the cargo was stored, and she hadn't seen anything unusual in the smuggler's hold. That meant that the next place to look was the runabout. It had four displacement tons of cargo stashed in it already, and it was entirely possible that it was part of the delivery mechanism.
She walked back to the runabout and climbed aboard. As she'd seen the first time, there wasn't much to it. It was robotically piloted and only had a single acceleration couch. The rest of the interior space was filled with four dtons of cargo.
Thyra hadn't booted the pilot brain, as it wasn't one of the robots that she had initially worked on while going through the ship. The one in the ship's boat on the dorsal surface was also still turned off. It was time to rectify that.
She found the appropriate switch and reactivated the runabout's systems. It only took the robot brain a few seconds to come online, and she was able to interface with it through her wireless connection. It recognized her authority and opened itself up for her examination.
The runabout was a capable little ship. It could achieve five gravities of thrust, which was a significant acceleration. That wasn't going to assist her in outrunning any reaction to her trying to get out of the down port, though.
Going through the ship's systems, she chanced across something that explained everything. There was a means of activating an active camouflage system. She'd already seen how that worked with the system embedded in her own body, and that would make the runabout invisible and, presumably, undetectable.
She instructed the runabout to activate the active camouflage system and then stepped out of it to take a look for herself. It was gone, except for the open hatch and the interior she could see through it. Even standing directly next to it, she was looking at the cargo on the other side of the vessel. The image didn't even waver.
Thyra rested her hand against the hull of the vessel and could feel it well enough, but even to her exceptional vision, it seemed that the craft wasn't there. To test that theory, she brought her face close enough so that her nose was touching the hull and could still see nothing unusual. There was no sign that anything was in front of her face. Remarkable.
If this was how the old man had gotten illegal cargoes to their buyers and picked up similar things in the past, she could see how he had managed to do so successfully. It had to make the little ship quite expensive, though. Active camouflage was cutting-edge technology in the Imperium, and it was far from cheap.
She instructed the runabout to deactivate the system and then began examining the hull closely. She saw no signs of the quantum waveguides built into the exterior of the hull, but she was able to scan it closely enough to just barely detect hints of them under the exterior surface. They were there, but they wouldn't show up even under close examination unless someone knew what they were looking for.
Curious, she made her way back to the front of the ship and climbed up to the ship's boat attached to the dorsal surface of the ship. She then stepped out on the hull and examined its exterior closely. It had active camouflage, too. As a thirty-ton vessel, that implied that the cost of sheathing it was six times greater than for the runabout.
On a hunch, she knelt and examined the surface of the ship's hull. It also had quantum waveguides built into it. It was a five-hundred-ton ship, and sheathing it in that type of protective concealment seemed prohibitively expensive. She wondered if the old man had done it or the people that he'd stolen the ship from.
For her purposes, the answer hardly mattered. She had the capability, and she could already begin to see ways that it could be useful. It was wildly extravagant, but once again she hadn't spent that money.
Now that she had an idea of how the delivery would need to be made, she reassessed everything. She could load the illegal cargo into the ship's boat. Making one trip was much less of a risk than taking seven to deliver the cargo. The old man had wanted to do this in multiple trips, but it only needed one.
Or was it better to do it his way? If she took the ship's boat, she would be revealing much more capability than she would by using the runabout. There were pluses and minuses to either way of doing this.
Thyra activated the pilot brain inside the ship's boat and made certain that it was online and functional. She didn't test the active camouflage because there was too great a chance that it would be seen, as there were people going about their business nearby. There would still be traffic, even late into the night, but her ship wasn't parked close to anything else, and the chances of getting out and back without being noticed were better early in the morning.
Perhaps that's why the old man preferred to use the runabout. It was inside the ship, and its absence would not be noted, so long as no one saw it leave. That level of concealment might actually be better than taking the risk of using the ship's boat.
While she was thinking about that, she went back down into the ship and to her quarters. She opened the small armory by the door and looked at her assembled weaponry. She didn't have any external armor, and that would be something she needed to address. She had internal armor, but revealing it should be a last resort.
The first thing she did was take the bracer that held the energy shield and strap it to her left forearm. It was something that could be seen through while still protecting her from someone shooting at her. Not her entire body, but her torso and head for certain. That was worthwhile.
Next, she strapped on the belt holding her Gauss pistol and the monoblade knife. If she had to shoot someone, she needed a weapon to do so. It was highly illegal on this world, but it wasn't as if she weren't breaking the law already by delivering her load of forbidden cybernetics.
She was about to close the armory when she took another look at the battleax. It didn't make as much sense to bring something like that, but it would be a useful tool if someone needed to be threatened.
After a few moments' consideration, Thyra pulled it out and found the harness that could hold it to her back. When it was in place, a breakaway strap would keep the handle right where she could grab it, but everything would come loose the moment she yanked on it and freed the weapon.
Thyra stepped in front of the mirror and examined herself. She seemed intimidating, though her current clothes really clashed with the look. With a smile, she stripped out of the shipsuit and dressed in the clothing from the stash in the fresher room. It might not be normal in the Imperium--or the Confederation--but she was supposed to have a Sword Worlds' heritage. Maybe she should lean into that.
Dressed in that, the weapon didn't seem at all out of place. She looked like a primitive warrior and felt dangerous. Perhaps others would see her that way as well. At the very least, the axe didn't stand out while she was wearing it. She could consider whether this was right for her later.
As she was already dumping some of her clothes. Maybe she should get rid of them all. One more thing to ponder.
With that accomplished, she felt she was ready to dive headfirst into the criminal underworld. It was still hours away from when she needed to go, but she could spend them examining the power plant and trying to figure out how it worked. She would also give the jump drive another look.
Mimir had been silent, but she imagined he'd already discovered whether the ship could jump further than a single parsec. She'd ask about that shortly, and then once she'd puttered around until just before the agreed upon delivery time, she would take the runabout out and make the first installment of the fourteen-dton delivery.
Part of her actually hoped there was a bit of trouble. She looked forward to seeing how she could handle it.