The Data Traders

Guild Membership: Ship

Any operational data ark of any class may apply for Guild membership at any time. All applicants must establish to a certified guild inspector that they meet all Guild minimum Data Ark technical and legal requirements as outlined in GTP 432.1. Once the vessel has been certified, it will be issued a unique DRM signature and will be registered in the ship’s registry service. DRM signatures may not be modified once issued and remain with the vessel until it is decommissioned. Ship Guild memberships cannot be revoked for any reason. Guild ships that cannot meet the standards outlined by the Guild are subject to impound and auction by the Guild.

Excerpted With Permission

Data Trader’s Handbook

Copyright 3250, Interstellar Data Trader Guild

“Leo, take a look at this panel.”

Slowly, Leo walked over to the panel that Ollu had indicated. “What about it?”

Ollu looked at Leo like he was slow in the head. “Just take a look.”

“Ollu, I’m a envro systems specialist, I don’t work on reactors.”

Ollu just put her hands on her hips. Reluctantly, he looked at the panel. Then he really looked. Scrolling through a few screens, he became increasingly upset. “This isn’t possible. Why would they do that?”

“That’s the question isn’t it?”

Finally Ramona could take no more. “What in the hell are you two on about?”

Leo relinquished the panel. Pleased that he was once again playing his role as Ramona’s mentor. “Just like enviro systems, these reactors have maintenance records. Very robust, they are baked right into the core design. Not something you can easily remove. They need to survive an accident to see what went wrong.”

Ramona thought she understood. “So, we know what went wrong? Why the reactor went critical?”

“Yes. Nothing went wrong.”

Now she was confused. “What the alarm broken then? Did we eject a working core?”

“No. It was critical all right. Just like it was supposed to be.”

“What?”

“Someone removed all the safeguard circuits and intentionally set the system to go critical. It didn’t break, it was rigged as a bomb.”

“How is that even possible?”

It was Ollu’s time to lecture. “Most ships systems can be rigged to exceed parameters. We learned ages ago that a trained human operator is much safer than a pre-programmed control circuit. Sometimes, you need to run a reactor at 200% just to save the ship or the crew. You don’t do it unless you really need to, but sometimes you have no choice. The reactors have multiple levels of safeguards to protect against human error but if you are persistent you can rig one to exceed safe parameters.”

Ramona was aghast. It had never occurred to her that a ship’s engineer could destroy the ship if they chose. “What do you mean, by ‘exceed safe parameters’?”

“I mean big boom. No more ship. That much energy released all at once would be instantly fatal to the ship. The ship’s hull is designed to protect the crew from space, not designed to withstand an explosion inside of it.” Ollu tapped the insignia on her collar and grinned. “That’s why we get the big bucks.”

Leo was just beginning to work out what this meant. “So, someone tried to destroy the ship? Why?”

Ollu just shook her head. “I have no idea. These logs just show that an authorized operator intentionally overrode the control circuit and set the reactor to overload. The shutdown command came later from the bridge. Then the logs are blank, no commands until we issue the restart order here.” She pointed to a part of the log from just a few hours ago.

Ramona had a realization. “So, two people. Or two groups of people.”

Leo wasn’t following Ramona’s train of thought. “What? Why two?”

“Why bother setting the ship to explode and then just shut it down? You would do one or the other. Either you leave the hulk to drift, never to be found, or you blow it up. Why set a trap that will never be sprung?”

“But we found it.”

Ramona just looked at Leo. “You said it yourself. It’s impossible. There was zero chance that we would come across this ship way out here. The people who left it here never expected it to be found.”

“Then why rig it to explode?”

“To keep a secret.”

“What?”

“There is only one reason why you try to destroy something AFTER a crime is committed. To remove evidence. There must be something on this ship that they didn’t want to be found. Even if it was years later. Even if it was extremely unlikely.”

“But only some people knew.”

“Right. A secret within a secret.”

Leo’s eyes began to wander around the compartment. It was massive. Huge machines designed to power a ship through interstellar space. Enough energy to reduce them all to atoms in an instant. For the first time in his life, he was fearful of being on a ship. Fearful of the consequences of the actions of others. “Do you think there could be others?”

Ollu just stared at him. “Oh, fuck.” She ran over to a master console and began typing quickly. After a few minutes, she sighed. “OK, I just wrote a command string that will set all safeties to defaults. Faster than checking every system.”

“No big boom?”

“No big boom.”

Leo began inspecting the control console. After a few minutes, he opened the access panel underneath. A few minutes later he got down onto all fours and stuck his head inside. “This is an Elmandorf. I trained on one of these when I did enviro school. Same basic design as the consoles we used on the Connie.” There was a muffled click and Leo scooted back out of the console with a grin on his face. In one hand he had a memory module. “Backup node.”

Now both Ollu and Ramona were confused. “What?”

“Finally, something about the ship that I know more about than Ollu!” The two women just glared at him. “These Elmo units have a nice safety feature. They automatically sync their backup memory with other nodes on the network. It’s bolted into the design. The backups are written to a secondary memory controller so that you can field service them. Something goes haywire with a node on the net and you can pull the node and put it into the failed node. It’s a backup mode in case the ship’s network is damaged.”

Ollu looked annoyed at this bit of info. “But we would never do that. Just re-route the network and install a new node. Running a physical memory module up to the bridge would just be a pain in the butt.”

Leo laughed. “Yeah, the feature never got used on Trader ships. Those consoles were originally designed to be used on warships that had hard compartmentalization requirements. The extra memory backups were not ever intended to be used on civilian ships.”

Ramona just looked puzzled. “How the hell do you know all this?”

Leo laughed. “How do you think I made Journeyman? My last buy as an apprentice was for the new Paulson design. Half this size and less power required. Still the best trade I ever did. Really ran up the score. I had trained on Elmos and knew them inside and out. My old trainer was a real son of a bitch and made us take them all the way down to components and build them back up again.”

Ollu was staring at the memory core. “Can you use that to restore the bridge control station?”

“Care to find out? If we print out some new cores, we should be able to run a restore from this one. Well, we should be able to restore ALL the ship’s systems from this. In theory.”

“Timur, Eddington, REPORT!” The obviously pissed off voice of Gunny transfixed the three of them.

“Fuck.” Leo keyed his communicator. “Gunny, this is Timur. We believe that the situation here is stable. The critical core has been ejected. We are checking systems now to confirm. Please stand by.”

Ramona looked intently at Leo. “Leo, don’t say anything about the backup.”

“What, why?”

“Just trust me. Safer for us if nobody knows.”

Leo glanced at Ollu who nodded minutely. “Timur, you have five minutes. Get your ass to the airlock.”

“Roger that Gunny. Starboard personnel lock in five.”

Shrugging, Leo put the memory unit into his utility pouch and started walking to the airlock with Ramona and Ollu.