Prologue

SN-006Q

In 2253CE, a Confederate Navy frigate, the Adam Sonntag, discovered the Sonntag Nebula, a small, mostly unremarkable cloud of dark gas less than a parsec from the New Albion system.  Buried in the dark gases of the Sonntag Nebula, the Adam Sonntag also found the first verified example of a quark star, a collapsed ex-star consisting mostly of subatomic matter.  SN-006Q consisted of roughly 2.63 solar masses.  The object was radio silent, detectable only by the effect its massive gravity had on the local space matrix.

SN-006Q presented a serious problem for navigation in the area of the Sonntag Nebula.  Discharges from ionized gas in the small, unusually dense cloud rendered most sensing equipment useless, and the matter density also presented problems operating the then-standard Gellar Star Drive at even minimal power settings.  Adding that to the difficulty in even detecting the quark star at other than close range, the Navy faced the problem of dealing with this hazard in an area that was beginning to see a significant amount of traffic.

As a result, the Sonntag Nebula was surrounded with a series of hyperphone warning beacons and placed legally off-limits to travel by civilian vessels.

The exclusion zone was rarely violated, but there were several known incidents.  One of those violations was by a unit of the Grugell Imperial Navy, in an illegal intrusion by a non-diplomatic ship.  The Grugell were engaged and destroyed by Confederate Navy fighters patrolling in the area, and a Confederate-registered scout packet that had been damaged by the Grugell ship was briefly detained and boarded, then released.  The Confederate Navy never released the name of the Confederate ship.

– Morris/Handel, “A History of the First Galactic Confederacy,” University Publications, 2804CE

One

Earth, 2248 C.E.

It was her fourth visit to the dock in less than a week.  There was really no good reason to go, but she had nothing better to do – not until the project was finished – and so the petite, red-haired woman hurried through the various levels of the Tarbos Fleet space dock until she came to a viewport through which she could see her prize.

It’s tougher than it looks.  Like me.

Jean Barrett stood looking out the viewport for some time.  Outside the dock leased by I.G. Warren Shipbuilding, her dream was taking place, the armed commercial scout packet Shade Tree.

The packet was neither sleek nor graceful, but Jean thought the ship beautiful.  A charcoal-gray polymer and titanium hull surrounded the cavernous mass tunnel of the Mk IV-A Gellar Star Drive.  From the viewport, Barrett could see the pressure-suited forms of engineers setting and tuning the anti-matter injectors and plasma field generators inside the drive itself.  Around the long gray form, a bumpy superstructure bristled with detectors, hard-points for weapons, shield emitters, scanners and viewports.  Two stub wings with additional weapons points protruded from the sides of the drive tunnel.  In a moment of humor, Jean had ordered a subdued skull and crossbones painted on each stub wing, as a tongue-in-cheek homage to seafaring adventurers of times long since past.   The ship had a standard docking hatch and umbilical on the port side, a hatch with a clampon lander for ship-to-ship traffic (for boarding other ships by force, Jean thought to herself) on the starboard side and a shuttle dock under the keel for a landing shuttle she could not yet afford.

It was a small ship, and months in space would be cramped, even claustrophobic, but it was her ship.  Hers. 

“Everything is going very well, Miss Barrett,” a voice behind her announced.  She turned to see the sleek, olive-skinned, slightly oily form of Vincent Olivero, the shipyard’s Production Coordinator.  Olivero was nattily dressed, as always, in a dark blue suit with a sparking white shirt and pale blue silk tie; Jean felt a bit scruffy standing there in her habitual cargo pants and t-shirt. 

She stuck her hands in her pockets and grinned at the man; she liked him in spite of his fussy demeanor.  “Any chance you’ll be moving up the completion date?  I’m anxious to start recruiting and get out there.”

Olivero pulled a datapad out of his jacket pocket, touched a contact, and examined it.  “Maybe,” he evaded. “No more than a week or two.  Problem is the same one we’ve been having…”

“Armaments,” Jean finished for him.

“The manufacturers are a bit reluctant to sell us these particle beam emitters for a private ship.  They’ve only dealt with the Navy up to this point.”

“It’s not illegal to arm a private ship,” Jean said, for what surely was the thousandth time.  “In fact, given the number of freighters that have been going missing, it seems downright idiotic not to.”

“You know that, and I know that, and Restick Technologies knows it, too, but they’re reluctant.  I think we’ll press the deal through, though; it just takes time.”

“They sell pee-beam emitters to miners, do they not?  What’s the difference?”

“Power,” Olivero said. “Miners use particle beam emitters capable of scouring rock, or slicing samples away from a comet or asteroid.  The ones you want will be able to slice an unshielded starship in half.”

“Well, I suppose that’s a difference, but it’s still not illegal.”  Jean turned back to the viewport; it was hard for her to tear her eyes away from the still-forming dark gray polymer hull of her ship.  “No problems on the missile bays, though?”

“No, not there,” Olivero said.  “After all, they’re just the same kind of launch tube you’d use for a scouting proxy or a probe droid.  We have made plenty of those for scout ships and prospectors.  Dimensions of the launch vehicle are just a little different.”

“As long as it will take a Shrike missile,” Jean said.  “Which will no doubt lead to another purchasing issue.  That, however, is my problem.”  She frowned.  “Bloody hell – it’s not like I am trying to buy nukes or antimatter warheads.”  At least not openly, she reminded herself privately.

“I have to confess to some curiosity, Miss Barrett,” Olivero said, “as to your insistence on arming your ship so heavily.  When this is finished, it will be faster, more agile and better armed than the first-generation Navy frigates.  The armament and extra shielding is adding an awful lot to the cost.  Not that we aren’t glad to have the business, mind you.”

“I have my reasons,” Jean answered him.  “There’s a hostile civilization out there, in case you haven’t heard.”

“Of course,” Olivero agreed easily.  “But then, we don’t really know where they come from.”

“Exactly.”  Jean smiled at the unfinished form of her ship.  “Exactly.  We don’t know where they come from, and we don’t know who else is out there. Sure will be interesting to find out.”

***

The Sonntag Nebula, 2257C.E.

“Thirty seconds to main drive shutdown.”

Another anti-proton bolt slammed into what remained of the Shade Tree’s aft shields, shaking the privateer ship viciously.

Captain Jean Barrett stabbed a contact on her Bridge chair’s comm panel.  “How are the shields holding up?”

“Down to sixty percent,” Chief Engineer Bernard James Smith replied.  “We lost three emitter points when that torpedo went off.  Trying to get one of them back online, the other two are completely wrecked.  I have managed to extend the forward shields to cover most of our aft quarters, but at greatly reduced field intensity.  We must be hitting some of the nebula material already, too.  Starting to get some fluttering from the drive; once we hit the main cloud…”

“…I know, we’ll blow up unless we shut the drive down.  We’re going to shut down in time, BJ.  Keep working on that emitter,” Barrett said.  

“Ten seconds.”

“Scanning, stay sharp when we hit that nebula.”

“Won’t do much good, Captain,” Ophelia Watts replied.  “All that ionized gas is going to screw up our scanners for fair.  We should have visual.  I hope.”

“Fine,” Barrett said. “If we can’t run scanners, neither can they.  Who knows, maybe it will keep them from going back into cloak.  At least we’ll be able to see them shooting at us.”

“I’ve only got a very faint fix on that Q-star,” Navigator Giorg Constantin said. “I was hoping gravimetric readings would be tighter than this.  It’s going to be hard to plot a trajectory to slingshot us back out.”

“Odds?” Barrett snapped.

“Fifty percent we go wide and don’t get enough velocity to get out of the nebula before sometime around the first of next year.  Forty-five percent we smash into the quark star and end up as subatomic matter.  Five percent chance it works.”

“Sorry I asked.”

“You want the truth, Captain?  Or shall I just make up something that sounds good?  Nobody has mapped this nebula or the Q-star.  I’m going on gravimetric readings, and guessing on the exact mass of the star.  This is all I have to plot our trajectory, and it’s very, very thin.”

“I always want a straight answer,” Barrett answered, a note of apology in her voice.  “This is a pretty tight spot.  Even for us.  I know I got us into this, but you’ll have to get us out, Paolo,” she said to her Helmsman.  Paolo Guerra was, she knew, one of the best pilots in the Confederacy, but this was asking a lot even for him. “Can you do it?”

“Eu tentarei, Capitão,” the Brazilian pilot answered.  He glanced over his shoulder, flashing a cocky grin.  “I’ll sure try.  I learned to fly by the seat of my pants.  How hard could it be?”

Barrett flipped the main display to the take from the aft scanner, and looked at the gleaming shape of the Grugell corvette that was pursuing them into the Sonntag nebula.

***

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