Family Law 2: The Long Voyage of the Little Fleet (36 page)

"They shouldn't be sent off with a scrubber and filter changer for escort. They deserve a little more respect than that. I figured I'd go with them, first time, myself," Dauntless offered.

"Your parents named you well," Fussy said, a little jab.

"My parents named me wisely," Dauntless insisted. "I grew up challenged to fit the name."

"To answer Bob then, yes I'd like to see Mozart go out on station with you and my XO. It would be well for the station folk to see both of your races."

"I agree, but not the first walk-around. I'd like him on the lock until we see things are calm. Then later we'll do the dog and pony show."

Fussy looked at his pad and grinned. "These folksy expressions are endless, aren't they?"

* * *

"Thank you Station Control. We have positive indicators for docking lock. We are bringing pressure to slightly positive, but maintaining Badger standard with no exchange and connecting waste water service. We won't be needing station power or fresh water service for our short stay. Data dump and news will contain our docking payment information. We are not posting to the trading boards, since we are carrying no freight. This is a courtesy escort flight to familiarize the Humans and Derf with our star system mapping and its accuracy. We're on our return leg now."

"Thank you
Dart
. We have three ships at dock, noted on system scan. Nothing of interest to you since you have no trades to offer. Are your escorts going to want to dock later?"

"No, the
Roadrunner
and
Sharp Claws
are going to hold position and wait on us. We realize this is unusual, but as you know besides their lack of a docking collar, we have had some aggressive attention elsewhere from Biter vessels and they are being cautious. They said to reassure you they have no wish to be a problem and will maneuver or relocate if they interfere with operations. I doubt we shall be here longer than two Bill days. We would like permission to come aboard and play the tourist and do a bit of shopping if that is permissible."

"Do you have an appointment with the mining company?" Station control asked.

"No, I have spoken to them about your operations, but we did not come this way with any intent to buy an Eye. We've been letting them pick a route at random instead of any predetermined itinerary. I have no idea if they even carry sufficient exchange for that. These are two of their smallest ships and carry lesser officers of their fleet."

There was a surprising pause, with nothing forthcoming. Fussy curled his muzzle up in dimples they had come to see as a sign of frustration. He sat up straighter in the seat and the visitors thought he was going to say something to prompt Station Control, when they replied. "You have the courtesy of the Station."

"Thank you Station Control," Fussy repeated. We'll be out on dock and do a little sightseeing this shift. The new folks will have a Badger guide with them."

"I have no idea what all that hesitation was about," Fussy said unhappy. "That's not normal. They had plenty of time to object when we decided not to grapple the
Roadrunner
on a mast, if they didn't want the
Dart
docking. We aren't fueling or provisioning, so what is the point of docking if we don't leave the ship?"

"I'll ask what has been going on at a few businesses," Dauntless offered. "I'm curious if the Biters caused trouble while they were here, or leaving so abruptly.  I wonder if perhaps they were negotiating to buy an Eye and our arrival disrupted that?"

"Now that's a thought. I can see they might not care to tell us that," Fussy decided.

* * *

"Have you noticed none of the ships or the station here every seem to use anything but very low powered radar?" Thor asked Gordon.

"No, it never occurred to me that was unusual," Gordon admitted. "It's just courteous in a crowded environment not to SHOUT! I mean, some stations even publish power limits in their approach procedures. They don't want inductive interference or having maintenance workers outside cooked in your beam. I don't expect to see high power modes except in combat operations. The Biters used a little higher power density, but nothing spectacular it's true. We were close though."

"I asked  Jeremiah Ellis on the
Retribution
about it and asked him to check it out without asking the Badgers directly, he got back to me just a bit ago and what he had to say was interesting."

"Oh?  He usually knows his stuff."

"Yes, well he decided to check a few of their ships out by eyeball as they passed by closely and as far as he could see with a pretty decent telescope, they don't carry all the antennas our sort of array does. Now, our elements have to be bigger the lower the frequency we wish to use, so we tend to higher frequencies to have more elements and higher total power. Also the higher the frequency the smaller the spot to which we can focus it. Sometimes we miss having very low frequency radar because it lets us look through atmosphere or water, or even soil to a certain depth. That's why we carry a couple side looking long antennas for such orbital work, even at lower power. But our regular radar is rather distinctive, round plates, smaller than my hand that show a geometric pattern on their face from the different materials side by side."

"Yes, I know there have been a few attempts to add panels to the smaller ships," Gordon remembered, "Because they don't have enough hull surface to mount them. We are about maxed out on hull hardware on the
Retribution
with the fuel mining drones and stuff we've added. No way do I want to start stripping radar antennas off and drop our peak power, I'd rather be
adding
plates to the system if I could."

"Yeah and the flat panels sticking out looked like hell and got in the way docking and all sorts of other problems. They increase your radar cross section and add mass at the worst possible place, making the ship harder to roll. If you make the miserable things fold out that's just something extra to break down and even more mass with the mechanism."

"Well, what do they use, if they don't have our sort of emitters?" Gordon asked.

"Some sort of antennas or apertures enclosed in a upright pyramid or block that stands out from the hull about like one of our drone hangers."

"Well, that's odd. I guess they went a different path to different solutions."

"The thing is, I don't think they can emit much higher power levels than what we are seeing."

Gordon looked shocked. "Then they can't focus down and paint a target hot enough to see it in detail?"

"They can steer the beam, but to focus it down to a wavelength? No. They can still use stealth features against the sort of radar they have and their electronic counter measures would be very limited. I can't imagine they could use it like a weapon, the way we captured the
Sharp Claws
with the
Retribution
."

  "I'm not sure I want to offer it to them in that case," Gordon decided. "I think I'd rather give up my missiles than my radar! I can't imagine fighting near
blind
."

"Their computers are quite a bit behind ours too. I don't have a real physicist or a heavy hitter for electronics design with us, but looking at the tech information they have released to us, I am suspecting they have no idea how to make 2D quasi-metallic films, or engineered 3D materials that depend on the properties of Dirac Fermions," Thor concluded.

"So, radar, computers..." Gordon hesitated and thought.

"Optics, displays, imaging, memory, very short period pulse generation and storage, magnetic isolation, non-statistical fusion, surface current routing and non-blackbody emission. I doubt they can even make a decent Veselago lens. Trouble is we
can't
really withhold this tech. It's in so much we are going to display and sell them they'll figure it out even if we don't explain it explicitly."

Lee who was listening silently had an opinion on that. "In that case get the best price you can for it, instead of seeing how long it takes them to work it out, because then it will have no value to us at all."

"I'll tell Prosperity," Gordon promised.

* * *

Mozart and Bart had been standing on the dock about a half hour. Both were in not just armor, but vacuum capable suits. Bart had on the full USNA Space Marine rig that so many former users no longer needed after visiting the Red Tree keep. They had recovered enough parts and the field service equipment from three captured shuttles to keep them running for quite awhile too. The residual radiation from the neutron bomb that had killed them all was hardly detectable now. It was never high and decayed quickly.

The suit had armor, but the additional jump frame he wore was another layer protecting it that added to the wearer's safety too. It especially had an additional ballistic shield over the face that was too heavy without the powered frame. The thing that bothered Mozart was that he expected it to make noise working, but it moved so silently it was eerie unless he ran. Then it was like a horse galloping.

Mozart on the other hand had no power, but he was roughly equal in size and strength to an adult male grizzly bear. He wore a hundred and fifteen kilograms of armor in addition to his arms and didn't even think about the weight when he moved. He carried a 20mm carbine compared to Bart's 8mm and a huge double bit steel ax with a hook on the bottom of the cutting edge that was sharp on the inside too. The composite handle was seven tenths of a meter long and had a soft grip molded on the end for the claws of his middle limbs to engage. The hook and that much leverage would allow him to remove a suit of armor like Bart wore much like an old fashioned can opener peeling open a tin of sardines.

"Seems sort of dead out here, doesn't it?" Mozart asked. They had seen exactly one electric cart whine by without any trailer or freight piled on the back. A door beside the larger air curtain leading in station had opened briefly and spilled bright yellowish light on the dusky dock. The Bill who appeared looked down the dock both ways and went back inside the bright room closing the door.

"If it was full of all kinds of traffic and people going every which way I'm be a nervous wreck trying to watch everything," Bart admitted.

"But I wouldn't feel like we have some horrible plague," Mozart rumbled.

The lock behind them cycled noisily, lighting the dock just like the Bill's door had. They didn't look, no threat was possible from that side and the distraction might be noted by unseen eyes.

"Thanks for keeping the crowds back," Bob said.

"They all left when Mozart farted," Bart told them.

"Thank the gods that was outside our vessel," Dauntless said. "Have you seen anybody since? Did somebody rescue the unconscious or collect the fallen?"

"We had one fellow poke his head out of yonder man door beside the curtain and look around. He ducked back in without a word or even looking at us directly," Bart said.

"I'm pretty sure that's a Bill door," Mozart said, dead pan. Bart didn't dignify it with a reply.

"Yes, they have a little office there, what would the expression be? For directing movement and loading?" Dauntless asked.

"Ah, a dispatch office," Bob supplied.

"I knew you'd have a special expression for it. Let's go seek entry there. It's customary to use that rather than make them open the big freight curtain for no reason. See you in a bit," he told the guards with a genial nod.

"Bob didn't look like he armored up very heavily," Bart worried.

"And that vest Dauntless had on didn't fit very well. And nothing on the legs, though it hung down over his hips at least," Mozart allowed.

"I think they cut down one of your light weight Derf vests to make it. That's why it fits so strangely. My understanding is they don't make anything decent of their own. Nothing we'd bother putting on."

"Oh... I guess that's something else we'll be selling them."

* * *

"I let the Badgers have another chunk of the English web," Prosperity said.

"And your face says that wasn't any source of joy to you," Lee said, very quickly.

Prosperity shook his head. "The Badgers have rather elementary graphic editing software. Their hardware isn't really up to the kind of stuff we have. I mean, they have software. They're not as hopeless as the Bunnies, but their drafting and design software is just crap, but I digress...When they saw the sort of thing kids post on the web for a joke, ridiculous images where things are cut and pasted in impossible situations or images blended. Well, let's say they were not amused. That's just still images. The video stuff seems like magic to them... Black magic."

"I'm surprised. I thought Badgers had a pretty good sense of humor."

"It makes them wonder if they can trust
any
image in our archives is true."

"Even growing up on a spaceship, away from what you'd call society. I knew very early that it's part of being grown up to be able to tell the ridiculous from the possible. It applies to edited images as much as fairy tales and humor. Adults don't just believe something because it
looks
real," Lee insisted.

"Do you really want to explain it to the Badgers that bluntly?" Prosperity asked. "They are already offended. If you frame it as they need to
grow up
I think it will just insult them twice."

"Yes, I'm going to tell them right away, through Talker. If they hate me for it that is their privilege, but they didn't grow up learning this. They have no
filter
. The next generation of Badgers, or the other races, will acquire the needed skepticism naturally. They'll look at a picture of something like a cow with an impossible pattern in its hide, or a supposed man-pig chimera and say, 'Yeah, pull the other one," without even hesitating. But somebody has to tell them the truth about it
now
."

"Better you than me," Prosperity invited. "I have to deal with so much else right now."

"I have an advantage, I'm young and I'm still small physically. I've already had several instances where they made it clear they think I'm a child. Do me a favor and when you deal with Talker again apologize for my hitting him over the head with it. Say kids just blurt out what they think with no effort to be subtle or polite."