Winds of Change Snippet 4

 Contract: World Builders 2

Sierra Keys

 

Captain Madeline Croft was on the bridge as her terraforming ship, the Aurora XXIV, arrived in the Sierra Keys star system at the Sparkling Seas jump point. “Stand down from hyperspace. Rig for sublight running,” she ordered crisply.

The bridge crew echoed her order as they implemented them.

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

“Given the massive energy we just unleashed, a blind man wouldn’t miss it,” Deacon Croft stated in amusement. The teenager had recently graduated to helm 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 asked humorously.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Aye aye, ma’am.”

~~~#~~~

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

They knew it was possible; the old ship had gone a full octave higher in 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 to either clone themselves or speed the ship up.

~~~#~~~

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

To pay for it all the planetary governments had received matching grants from the Federation. Each grant was broken down into phases. Completion of 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 a pang.

~~~#~~~

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

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

He had to admit, the governorship was harder than he’d expected. He’d had 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 many had been suspicious of Governor Raye. Raye, a male Tauren, had been tied to the Confederation because of his species.

Kane had capitalized on the governor’s race and its connection to the Confederation. The veiled racist attacks had cut both ways but had helped him to undercut the governor and eventually beat him in the last election.

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

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

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

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

He had begun pushing tariffs on imports since their timber and agricultural goods were being blockaded by the Federal government. The protectionism was supposed to help the economy but was causing rampant inflation to flourish.

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

Enron had come up with a scheme to keep the grant money local. If they did that and downplayed the threat, they could eventually wear 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 turned over whatever they’d come up with.

According to the reports, they had identified several approaches to the problem. His administration had diverted funds allocated to prep for the arrival 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 scientists happy… however, were delaying it.

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

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

Daniel Locke, his administration’s chief lawyer, had gone over the contract with the ship and identified a couple of approaches to break the contract. 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 have completed 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 first phase.”

The governor grimaced.

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

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

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

~~~#~~~