Winds of Change Snippet 4

 Contract: World Builders 2

Sierra Keys

 

Captain Madeline Croft was on the bridge as her terraforming ship, the AuroraXXIV, arrived in the Sierra Keys star system at the Sparkling Seas jumppoint. “Stand down from hyperspace. Rig for sublight running,” she orderedcrisply.

The bridge crew echoed her order as they implemented them.

“Transmit our IFF to the picket and the planet. Wake them up. Not thatthey don’t know we are here,” she said.

“Given the massive energy we just unleashed, a blind man wouldn’t missit,” Deacon Croft stated in amusement. The teenager had recently graduated tohelm duty. His twin sister Harley was at the engineering console.

“Well, we are rather big,” Harley said.

“Are you calling my ship fat?” the captain and their older sister askedhumorously.

The twins glanced at each other and then looked at her with mischievousexpressions. She snorted and then shook a fist at them. They grinned back ather.

The captain sat back and ran her hands over the armrests. The ship wasancient; she had been left in Bek B as a space station for six centuries afterher hyperdrive had been taken offline. The Croft family had remained on boardto run her.

When Admiral Irons had restored contact with Bek, the family had donesome good business for a time. But then that had dried up as new space stationswere constructed and the use of hyperdrives meant their station and itslocation were made redundant.

Instead of giving up, she had convinced the family to turn theirmisfortunes around and restore the old beauty to her glory days. They’d linedup investors and set out to do just that.

It helped that a lot of the family, herself included, were former orreserve Spacebee Engineers. They had been born with a wrench in their hand.

She snorted softly to herself as her practiced eyes scanned the plotand the ship status screens. All were good.

“The picket has confirmed our presence and sent their regards. We arecleared to set course into the inner star system,” the communication techstated.

The captain nodded and tugged on her vest. She’d worn it in case sheneeded to be on camera. “Very well. Set course for the planet and someone raisethe government. Let them know we are here to get to work and time is of theessence.”

“Aye aye, ma’am.”

~~~#~~~

Fred Heo watched his boss Cole Croft secure the hyperdrive. The shipwas running smoothly. Now that they had plenty of jumps under their belt, Colewanted to try to squeeze additional speed out of the old girl.

They knew it was possible; the old ship had gone a full octave higherin her heyday. The skipper didn’t want to push the frame and systems, however.But, with more and more contracts lining up every few weeks, they needed toeither clone themselves or speed the ship up.

~~~#~~~

Doctor Marcus Chau immediately contracted the government email he hadbeen given. The time delay as they transited through the inner star system wasa bit irritating, but there was no way around it.

They could still get the ball rolling though. Time was of the essencein more ways than one.

They had originally been contracted by their first major client, thesector capital no less, New Tau Metropolis, to build a planet.

Their work there had barely started. The Browns and a team of engineershad been left behind to manage that while the ship went out to work on sidecontracts that they had agreed to.

Several star systems in the chain had been infected by a beetle. Thepest was devastating timber and agriculture. Petra was said to be the rootcause but there was some doubt there.

The bugs had spread to Sierra Keys, which had some artisan woods andagricultural exports. The blockade of that material was harming their economy,hence the contract.

He had a small but mighty team of geneticists and environmentalistsworking on the problem remotely. They had done what they could through thatroute; now that they were on scene, they intended to put their theories intopractice.

To pay for it all the planetary governments had received matchinggrants from the Federation. Each grant was broken down into phases. Completionof each phase unlocked the funding for the next.

They had a very tight timeline though to get through the next phase.Two months from the time they made orbit. It was going to be … tricky.

Hopefully, nothing like weather would throw them off, he thought with apang.

~~~#~~~

Governor Simon Kane stared out from his new digs and smiled. As arealtor, he really liked his new “purchase” even though he’d gotten it with alot of strings from his “investors.”

He had managed to capitalize on inflation and economic turmoil causedby the timber crisis by promising sweeping changes. His conservative party hadswept into power as the newly elected government.

He had to admit, the governorship was harder than he’d expected. He’dhad to cut back on his social outings and his time on the golf course a bit,limiting it to just the weekends. That was annoying.

He had expected an easy win since the people had wanted change and manyhad been suspicious of Governor Raye. Raye, a male Tauren, had been tied to theConfederation because of his species.

Kane had capitalized on the governor’s race andits connection to the Confederation. The veiled racist attacks had cut bothways but had helped him to undercut the governor and eventually beat him in thelast election.

The people had wanted change, and he was going todeliver them that wish. They just might not get what they were expecting. Hisfollowers were digging into the government with a will.

It was … tricky though. He had promised them thatthey would keep AI at bay since AI stole jobs. The reality was that an AI coulddo the work of hundreds of people for a much smaller pay. He’d tried to havedumb AI created to do the work for free only to run into the limitations of theAI at the lowest level. Upper level AI, even dumb AI, had to have some sort ofpay.

Then there were all of the job positions. He hadpromised to cut the fat, to whittle down the government by eliminating wasteand corruption. His friend Marcus Enron had sent a team in to do just that.

Sure, there had been some minor issues with a fewof his people making racial comments that had been deleted. And oh, one hadbeen outed as a hacker. But they were finding waste. They had cut out a hundredmillion credits. It wasn’t a lot compared to the interest on the planet’sgrowing debt, but it was a start and something that they could point to withtheir supporters.

He had begun pushing tariffs on imports sincetheir timber and agricultural goods were being blockaded by the Federalgovernment. The protectionism was supposed to help the economy but was causingrampant inflation to flourish.

And now this. The damn ship had appeared just aspredicted. Damn them, he thought sourly. He didn’t want or needoutsiders. They can fix their own problems with native work. They just neededto find the right way to do it.

Enron had come up with a scheme to keep the grantmoney local. If they did that and downplayed the threat, they could eventuallywear the Federal government down into allowing some timber to flow again.

To do that though, he needed to get rid of the ship after they turnedover whatever they’d come up with.

According to the reports, they had identified several approaches to theproblem. His administration had diverted funds allocated to prep for thearrival of the ship to appease Enron and some of his other financial backers.They were supposed to build a university too in order to keep the scientistshappy… however, were delaying it.

Doctor Hans Lorn, the head of the Timber project and chair of theDepartment of Timber and Agriculture at the Capital University, had insistedthat they lacked the skills and equipment to put any of the ship’s proposedmethods of treatment into practice in any realistic timeline.

He didn’t believe that. It was just a matter of pressure and keeping asmuch money for themselves and away from the greedy outsiders. Once they hadturned over their work, his people would get rid of them and the doctor or hissuccessor could use the work as a blueprint. Sure, it would take a few extra yearsor so but that was fine with him.

Daniel Locke, his administration’s chief lawyer, had gone over thecontract with the ship and identified a couple of approaches to break thecontract. The key was to make it look like it was the ship’s fault.

Delay was the simplest and best option.

“So, option one is out. They arrived in the expected window and havecompleted the initial work on their ship,” Mike Tate, the governor’s chief of staff, stated.

“So, we owe them something,” Daniel stated. “They completed the firstphase.”

The governor grimaced.

“You say that we can minimize the outlay by delaying them until theirwindow to do something expires?” the chief of staff asked. “Let’s introducethem to government red tape.”

The attorney nodded. “With any luck it will tie them up in knots andthey’ll make a wrong move or give up and move on. After that we can have thegrant reworked to support our scientists.”

The governor nodded. And naturally his supporters would be right alongfor the ride, skimming what they could off the fat Federal teat.

~~~#~~~