Chapter 17

The Doxy system was an interesting place, with an interesting, multi-faceted history full of the extremes of human diversity all trying—and occasionally succeeding—in finding a way to live and work together. Some held it up as a testament to humankind’s innate propensity for coming together for a common cause. Others held it up as a testament to humankind’s innate propensity for strife and prejudice. Interestingly enough, both sides of this argument tended to use the same facts and arguments to present their respective cases.

Doxy was a binary system consisting of the G-class main sequence star Doxy A and its smaller red dwarf companion Doxy B. Distributed amongst the two stars were a total of eleven planets, five of which were gas giants massive enough to serve as circuit point entrances to various other systems in the neighborhood, in addition to the barycenter between Doxy A and Doxy B themselves, which marked the primary circuit point that led inward (as the saying went), to the Leads System, beyond which were the Calaveras system, the Yuba system, and finally, the center of civilized human space, the Alpha Zulu system. With so many circuit points leading in so many directions, Doxy was one of the largest and busiest crossroads systems in all of human space and had been for many hundreds of years post Great Human Expansion before it was actually colonized by groundborn.

The only astronomical body within the system that was habitable by unprotected humans was a large moon simply called New Home by those who eventually colonized it. New Home orbited around the massive gas giant Doxy A4 and was not as inhospitable as Redreams 4, but it was no great prize either. Though it was one of the larger known moons in human space, it still only sported a gravitational pull of 0.48G—less than half of standard—which meant that huge, power sucking artificial gravity plates had to be installed under any area where development occurred to keep the future inhabitants from mutating into tall, thin, willowy creatures with feeble bones, understrength muscles, and chronic calcium deficiency. In addition, the moon’s magnetic field was weak and the radiation given off by Doxy A and Doxy A4 were both quite strong, thus necessitating the installation of five kilometer high Zecker rods around any living, working, or agricultural region to produce an artificial magnetic field to deflect incoming ionizing radiation away and prevent crop loss and rapid genetic mutation.

The gravity and the weak magnetic field were only the beginning of New Home’s quirks. The moon itself was mostly ocean, with only two roughly Australian sized landmasses, one in the northern mid-latitudes in the western hemisphere, the other in the southern mid-latitudes in the eastern hemisphere. The moon was just far enough away and the differences in mass just enough to not be tidally locked in its orbit. Thus, its rotational speed was reasonable enough—a comfortable 11.7 metric hours, which was slightly longer than a standard metric day—but the constant tug of gravitational influence between Doxy A the sun, Doxy A4 the planet the moon orbited, the sister gas giant Doxy A5 and even, to a lesser extent, the distant star Doxy B, meant that both the weather and the ocean tides were constantly undergoing dramatic (though at least predictable) shifts.

The largest oceanic tidal changes in known space occurred on New Home, making any land within thirty kilometers of any coastal region uninhabitable due to routine tidal flooding. There were thousands of seasonal islands apart from the landmasses that simply could not be used because they spent part of each season more than half a kilometer under the surface. This also created a problem for the groundport city itself. New Home Ground, a city of more than six hundred thousand, could only be located on the surface of the ocean since there were no landmasses or islands along the equator that spent all of their time above the surface. The sea level of the ocean in any given spot, however, varied with the daily and especially the seasonal tides by more than a kilometer in each direction. In order to keep the cables that attached New Home Ground and its orbital companion, New Home Topside from stretching, sagging, or breaking, an intricate system had been developed to allow the cables themselves to slide up and down from the topside platform, as well as the counterweights above them, to keep them constantly stretched and functional. Again, like the artificial gravity generation and the artificial magnetic field generation, this was all very power intensive, requiring huge propulsion systems and huge fusion generators to power them.

And then there was the weather. It too was an exercise in extremes. The average distance from New Home to the source of its light and heat—Doxy A—and the minimal axial tilt meant the moon enjoyed an almost Earthlike level of sunlight at its equatorial and mid-latitude regions. But, as went the argument in many a statistical discussion, the average only meant the sum of the daily measurements divided. New Home’s distance from its sun varied in a complex and intricate manner by up to a million kilometers depending on where Doxy A was in its orbit with Doxy B, where Doxy A4 was in its orbit with Doxy A, and where Doxy A5 was in relation to all of the others. In addition, there were frequent eclipses of Doxy A by Doxy A4, which interrupted the sunlight cycle for hours at a time, thus throwing more variables into the mix. All this meant that the temperature at the equator—where the space ladder was, and where storms formed—and the mid-latitudes—where most of the inhabitants lived, grew food, and mined—varied considerably from day to day, cycle to cycle throughout each year. Winds generated by the variations in temperature swept across the surface all the time, shifting directions frequently, varying in intensity from a mild gale to hurricane force. Rains pounded both of the continental landmasses for cycles at a time and then were alternated by dry periods that lasted for cycles more.

And then there were the cyclones. Huge tropical storms generated by equatorial heat and warm ocean currents were spawned in that period when the alignment of the two stars and the two gas giants all conspired to place New Home at its closest approach to Doxy A, thus warming the ocean, particularly at the equator, and spawning the massive evaporation of water into huge rotating storms that had huge expanses of warm water over which to move and power them. Some moved southwest and some moved northwest. The reason why a particular direction was followed was something that even triple meteorological PhDs using the most powerful computer programs and half a millennia of data still could not quite figure out. The net effect, however, was that these storms—many of them a thousand kilometers in diameter or more and rated category 7 or above—moved for cycles across the surface of the ocean, plowing onward, driven from place to place by the complex interaction of jet streams, ocean currents, and the rotation of the moon itself until they either worked their way to the higher latitudes and colder water or washed ashore on one of the landmasses. Every New Homian year—which consisted of 412 New Homian days—no less than three category 5 and above cyclones would make landfall somewhere on each of the two landmasses—the eastern coasts being the most vulnerable to both.

Despite all of these drawbacks, New Home was a thriving colony with a population of six million plus on the southern landmass and four million plus on the northern landmass. It is the inhabitants of each of these landmasses, however, which made New Home truly unique and interesting.

The northern landmass was named Sanctuary by those who colonized it. Its inhabitants were primarily fundamentalist Stevenists—those who believe that the so-called Chronicles of Steven, written by the so-called Post-Expansion Prophet of Whoever, Steven Barton (who modern researchers had pretty much proven was an unemployed marijuana addict who lived with his parents until the age of forty-one metric years) were the literal and factual outpourings of Whoever Himself (or Herself, or Themselves). It is they who believe that Whoever not only produced the Big Bang, designed the planets, the circuit points, and all life, but still exists today and still watches over all that his finest creation—intelligent life—do, say, and think, and judges them based on a set of moral rules that regulate their behavior. Many Stevenists were advocates of a theocratic style government and were eager to sign up for the trip when the then unnamed New Home was opened for colonization five hundred years before the concluding resolution became a phrase.

However, since which planets are open to colonization is controlled by the Spaceborn Federation and the Fleet (for the most part) and since the spacies are the ones who financed and built the space ladder system and the basic infrastructure that made colonization possible, the Stevenists were not allowed to dictate who came to New Home or where they would settle and were not allowed to set up a theocratic government.

Thus, the southern landmass, called New Asia, was heavily settled by the descendants of the Japanese, Chinese, and Vietnamese who had lost the Petroleum wars and had been living—for the most part—in abject poverty and subject to subtle and sometimes even legal discrimination on Earth since. The more ambitious and forward thinking of the New Asians just happened to undergo a mass exodus from Earth at roughly the same time as the Stevenists. Both had been under the impression that the moon New Home would be theirs to do with as they pleased and to run as they pleased. Both were wrong.

And so began one of history’s great experiments in “can’t we all just get along?”

Had each group of colonists simply been able to establish their own government and run their own affairs on their respective landmasses, things probably would have run smoothly—for a while anyway. There was little for them to fight over in this regard since each landmass was more or less equal in terms of resources, weather, and livability and they were separated from each other by more than ten thousand kilometers of open, inhospitable ocean. Unfortunately, the space ladder was vital to the success of a colony and there was only one of those. For this reason primarily (although there were several others as well—including historical precedents about what eventually happened with multiple governments on one planet), Federation law regarding colonization insisted that each colonized celestial body would exist as a single government under a common-sense oriented constitution that protected everyone’s rights and had to be approved by the Federation Colonization Council—a branch of the lower house of the Federation legislature—and ratified by the Executive Council itself.

What this all meant is that the New Asians and the Sanctuarians were obligated and forced to form a government together and to share the priceless resource of the space ladder. The Stevenists were not allowed to outlaw homosexual relationships or words they considered blasphemous and were not allowed to compel the use of marijuana by everyone over the age of twelve. The New Asians were not allowed to mandate mandatory reproduction quotas or to outlaw the intermarriage of various ethnic groups within their subdivisions. Most of all it meant that they were forced to cooperate in order to run the New Home groundport city and, to a lesser extent, the Topside city. There had been times when the strife had become almost violent. Dozens of times since the naming of the moon, Fleet marines had been forced to deploy to groundport in order to enforce the peace between the bickering factions. Even after five hundred years and multiple generations, the two landmasses remained primarily segregated and the two groups had little in the way of interaction with each other.

At the groundport, however, things were a little different. Both the Sanctuarians and the New Asians had to live together and work together at the groundport in order to make it function. Thus, it was primarily those who were not quite as fastidious in their beliefs and cultural observations who tended to migrate to that city and serve the function of custodians of the lower half of the space ladder. In New Home Ground, the two groups actually interbred with each other and had formed a new culture that was a mixture of the two—a culture that became completely distinct from the parent cultures that had given birth to them and one that was welcome in neither of the continental landmasses. This particular group referred to themselves as New Homian Grounders and they held in contempt most of the stuffy traditions of their forebears. The city of NHG itself was considered a wild, decadent place by both the New Asians and the Sanctuarians, a place where sexual promiscuity was rampant, where career choices were actually picked by those who had to work them instead of by elder family members, where marriages were actually chosen by those who had to live with them instead of by financial and genetic considerations.

Even worse than New Hope Ground, however, was that horrid, licentious pit of evil known as New Hope Topside. The manufacturing and shipping center that sat in geosynchronous orbit some thirty thousand kilometers above NHG was infamous throughout human space—both civilized and uncivilized. Unlike most topsides, NGT was not inhabited primarily by spaceborn, but was a diverse, multifaceted mixture of groups from all over the surrounding star systems and inhabited planets, drawing heavily, of course, from Sanctuary and New Asia itself. Those groundies who had made the choice to live topside were those who had considered NHG to be a little too conservative for their tastes. Such were most of the spaceborn and outsystem inhabitants as well. Pretty much anything went in NHT—as long as it was not overtly illegal under the spaceborn constitution. There were large gambling hotels, houses of prostitution, virtual reality porn immersion palaces, zero gravity sex hotels, just to name a few. NHT was actually the center of the civilized space pornographic industry and VR studios abounded. Though few who considered themselves respectable would ever admit to visiting the city, it was hands-down the most popular tourist destination in known space—a city that enjoyed more than sixty million visitors each year—and that kept the tourist population at any given time around thirty percent of the resident population.

In addition to the habited planet of New Home and the space structures above it, the Doxy system was rich in metallic asteroids which were primarily located in large belts around each of the stellar objects. These asteroids were extensively mined for their resources and huge extraction and processing platforms were scattered throughout both belts to facilitate this. The asteroid miners were a distinct culture onto themselves, a rough and tumble bunch, known for their crudity, plainspokenness, and quickness to fight when crossed, even if the odds were hopeless against them.

And because of the system’s status as a major crossroads, two huge hydrogen gathering operations—one in each of the stellar systems—were established in orbit around the gas giants Doxy A5 and Doxy B6, thus covering both sides of the system. The hydrogen operations in Doxy were among the largest in human space, directly employing nearly twenty thousand people each and indirectly supporting another thirty thousand or so who lived in the orbital platforms that served as cities to support the operations. In here was yet another distinct culture, one that embraced risk-taking and daredevilry, sometimes for no reason other than to scare themselves into an adrenaline rush.

All these varied populations and all the crossroads of circuit points meant that there was high space traffic in the system. At any given time there were multi-dozens of ships moving about in the Doxy, some plying from the asteroids to the circuit points and planets; some in transit through the circuit points; some cargo vessels making runs between New Home and the other platforms as well as the circuit points for interstellar trade; some tourist ships heading for NHT. Because of this high volume and because of the vital strategic nature of the system, two large naval bases were in operation—again, one in each of the two star systems. The larger of the two bases was in orbit around New Home itself and, in addition to berthing three dreadnoughts, one superdreadnought, a squadron each of destroyers and ninety-nines, and countless support vessels, was also the headquarters of Intermediate Space Command.

In all, the Doxy had a permanent population of around twenty-three million with a transient tourist population of another million or so and a transient shipboard population of close to a hundred thousand. Thus, when the emergency communications probe sent by Rear Admiral Reeker popped out of the circuit point at 0169 hours Universal time—fully eighteen hours before the Magnum itself would enter the system—and began transmitting, there were a lot of people to hear the news it delivered.

The naval report from Reeker and staff was encrypted, of course, and did not find its way anywhere but the offices of ISPACECOM at the base. Reeker had not, however, taken the precaution of sending the emergency message out in an empty probe. All of the media reports, personal mail messages, requests for clarification, and other communications that had been sitting in the queue waiting for that five hundred petabyte threshold imposed by the “probe shortage” were loaded into the probe and sent as well. These too were transmitted to their various recipients in-system as well as to the various data transfer probes at the various circuit points that led out of the system. In most of the cases this amount of data was enough to push those probes over that five hundred pete limit and trigger their firing as well—and beyond the Doxy system the restriction on data came to an end.

And since the RDA circuit point emerged in the barycenter between Doxy A and Doxy A5, both the naval report and the media reports reached their destinations in under ten minutes from the time of transmission. There were eight major media companies on the surface of New Home, two up on New Home Topside, and two more at the hydrogen processing city in orbit of Doxy A5. Many of the media reports received had copies of the holo produced by the crew of the Magnum attached. Within an hour of reception enquiries were pouring into the offices of ISPACECOM, demanding answers, clarifications, and responses.

At the office of ISPACECOM itself, things were also heating up. Within ten minutes of receiving the emergency message from the Redreams, Vice Admiral Beeble Goon, ISPACECOM herself, was wakened from a sound sleep to deal with the most significant and baffling crisis of her lengthy career.

Ox and his crew knew that the emergency communications probe had been sent off into the Doxy long before they made it to the RDA circuit point for their own transition. Initially there had only been suspicion of this. Suspicion became fact when another emergency probe, this one coming from the Doxy itself and sent by ISPACECOM, came through from the Doxy side while they were in the midst of their deceleration burn. Inside this data dump was a message specifically addressed to Magnum and crew.

“It’s an order from Vice Admiral Goon herself,” Manny reported to Ox.

“Onscreen,” Ox said, bracing himself for just about anything.

Manny put it up. It was a text file only. “Magnum, proceed on course through the Redreams/Doxy A circuit point and initiate routine climb out upon transition. Send entry report to Doxy STC with a copy attached to ISPACECOM when clear of stellar interference. No need to attach your forged orders to the communication. There will be further instructions for you at that time.”

“Well now,” said Ox. “Not exactly encouraging, is it?”

“Not exactly,” agreed Phlegm.

They finished the burn and drifted toward the circuit point, their velocity down to just above orbital velocity for Doxy A, their angle of entry adjusted so they would exit the circuit on the Doxy side in more or less the correct orientation.

“Time to entry?” Ox asked navigation.

“Seventy-four minutes,” navigation replied.

Ox nodded. “I guess we should start getting ready for this.” He ordered Gath to get the natives medicated with their Phent-D—they would be under high acceleration once they emerged from the circuit—and then ordered everyone else to get some food and some coffee while they still could. “It could be we’re at the end of our little trip here, depending on how this ultra-white Admiral Goon views her duty.”

The minutes ticked down and the Magnum entered the circuit point. The ship emerged from the Doxy/Redreams Prime circuit point twelve thousand kilometers above the coronal layer of Doxy A. The engines kicked in at three Gs the moment they were out of the circuit, pushing them higher and faster to clear the stellar neighborhood quickly. All aboard heard the roar and felt the vertigo that went with it.

“Course is on the line,” reported Tull. “Engines burning as programmed.”

“Copy that,” Ox said. “Detection?”

“Too much stellar interference to see much right now, Ox,” Giggles reported. “I’m just getting a bunch of fuzz and false returns. Same with the comm frequencies. It’s all getting swallowed up by stellar radiation.”

“Copy,” Ox said with a nod. “Doxy A is a pretty active G class. Keep me informed. I want to know the second you can identify contacts.”

“Aye, Captain,” Giggles said.

The engines pushed them faster and faster, which, in turn, pushed them further and further away from the hot, turbid mass that was the main sequence star Doxy A. Gradually, the display began to clear up and Giggles was able to see what was in the neighborhood. What she reported was not encouraging.

“I’ve got a complete superdreadnought battle group, in formation, on an intercept course with our projected path,” she told Ox.

“A complete superdreadnought group,” Ox said slowly.

“Affirmative, Captain. The superdread is the Peacekeeper according to the IFF telemetry. It’s being escorted by two cruisers, four destroyers, and two anti-stealth platforms.”

“That’s a lot of torkin firepower,” Ox said.

“Isn’t that kind of overkill for little old us?” asked Phlegm. “After all, we’re just a ninety-nine. A destroyer alone could outrun us and then hammer us into space dust without even trying.”

“It does seem a bit excessive considering the circumstances,” Ox allowed.

“There’s something else, captain,” Giggles said.

“What’s that?”

“There are two Fleet hydrogen carriers and two tenders traveling with the formation as well.”

Ox raised his eyebrows a bit. “That is a bit odd,” he said. And it was. Tenders and hydro-shleppers—both huge, heavily loaded vessels—were only capable of acceleration at one G. Since a Fleet group was only as fast as its slowest accelerator, these vessels were typically only put in a group if it were planning to travel a long distance and would conceivably require replenishment of propellent and consumables en route. Any action that took place within a single system certainly would not meet this requirement—especially not in a system with two naval bases and two hydrogen processing facilities.

“I’m getting a green on the EM spectrum now, Captain,” Manny reported. “Would you like me to send off our check-in to STC?”

Ox shrugged. “I guess we probably should,” he said. “Send it off.”

Manny sent it off. Nine minutes passed and they received an acknowledgement. The reply did not, however, contain the usual direction to proceed on filed course, which was to the Doxy Prime circuit point that sat at the barycenter of the two stellar objects.

“No directions at all?” asked Phlegm after the communication was read.

“Nothing,” Manny replied.

“Interesting,” said Ox.

“Proceed on course for now?” asked Tull.

“Nothing else to do,” Ox said. “What’s our time to the Doxy/Leads circuit?”

“Seventeen hours, sixty-three minutes, assuming a normal acceleration cycle,” she replied. “And once we get there, we’ll have enough propellent for one more deceleration cycle before we’ll need to tank somewhere.”

Ox nodded and filed that information away. If they got to the point where they needed to worry about fueling in the next system, they would be ahead of the game. “Maintain acceleration and navigation program until told otherwise,” he ordered. “We stick with the plan. Keep going until something makes us stop.”

“Aye, Captain,” Tull said.

“Con, comm,” said Mandy.

“Go ahead,” Ox told her.

“I’ve received a transmission from the Peacekeeper,” she said. “It’s an encrypted holo file, authentication deciphers as coming from ISPACECOM authority.”

Ox sighed. “I guess this is the message we’ve been waiting for, huh?”

“It would seem so,” Phlegm agreed.

“All right then,” Ox said. “Let’s see what ISPACECOM has to say. On screen.”

“Putting it on screen,” Manny said.

The main holo stage came alive with the three dimensional image of a late second career female with short, neatly arranged brown hair. Her eyes were blue and piercing, her expression one of clear discontent. Her white shirt sported the insignia of a vice admiral of the Fleet. The identifier floating in the air above her confirmed her identity: Vice Admiral Beeble Goon: Commander of Intermediate Space Fleet resources.

“Greetings, Magnum,” her holo said. “This is Admiral Goon, but I’m sure you already know that. I understand that Lieutenant Commander Oxford Dripper is in charge of your stolen ship and guiding you on your unauthorized mission. Dripper, I’ve never had the pleasure of making your acquaintance—at least not that I remember and not that my official logs have been able to establish. I have heard much about you and your crew in the last twelve hours, however. Whatever becomes of this situation you and your crew have put into motion, allow me to say that you are certainly not lacking in courage and guile. Your common sense, however, remains to be established in my mind.

“We have received a summary of your actions to date from a comm probe out of the Redreams system. We have also received a copy of the holograph you and your crew made explaining your actions and the actions of Fleet resources in the Sol system, from which you came. I must say, I am shocked and disturbed by these allegations that have been made and I have sent emergency probes inward to command authority asking for clarification of your story and requesting instructions on what to do about this issue. Unfortunately, as you know, light speed is a bit of an issue and I cannot reasonably expect a reply any sooner than three metric days, and that’s assuming that everyone in the chain answers immediately.

“What this all means, is that for now I’m on my own as far as figuring out how to deal with this situation. I have a staff, of course, and I am receiving lots of advice, most of which is on the line of I should immediately take you and your crew into custody and impound that ship until such time as higher authority can determine your status. I am also being advised that I should destroy your ship if you do not comply with my order for you to halt and submit to boarding and arrest.

“This is all good advice I’m receiving, delivered with honest intentions that center around protection of Fleet and civilian assets. You see, you are currently in command of a ship of war that could, if you so desired, be used to bring down tremendous destruction and loss of life on space platforms and planetary population areas. While it does not seem that is your intention, and while you have proclaimed numerous times in numerous ways that you will not attack any humanned asset, I must consider the possibility that a man who will commit mutiny and hijack a Fleet ship will not necessarily tell the truth about what he plans to do with it.

“On the other side of the equation, however, is the strong possibility that you and your crew are telling the truth and that that which you have alleged really is taking place. If that is the case, I can appreciate how time really is of the essence in order to put a stop to the events that may be taking place in the Sol system.”

She gave a weary smile. “This is why they say command is lonely, Magnum. No matter what I do, I could be making a bad decision that will lead to loss of life, loss of my career, and possibly even my imprisonment. I simply do not have enough data, enough confidence in either side of this matter to make that decision right now.

“So here is what I’m going to do. I have been flown out to the Peacekeeper, the anchor of the battle group that is currently moving on an intercept course to your projected path. I am ordering you to continue your current course without deviation. In addition, you will continue your current acceleration level until you reach a velocity of zero point zero zero one C. That will be roughly the same speed my group will be moving as our intercept point approaches your vessel. At that point, I will personally fly out to your ship and board it and we will meet face to face and you will explain to me, in person, why I should not take you into custody as advised. I will fly out aboard an A-74 launched from the Peacekeeper and I will be accompanied by only two marines.