The Data Traders

Guild Data Replication

All Guild ships and buoys are required to accept replication requests from any other guild node within their latency envelope. The Guild Data Replication network has been perfected over the past one hundred years and provides an extremely robust platform for trading and transport of data. However, in order to ensure the system works as design, all nodes must participate fully. Any Guild ship refusing a validated replication request from a signed node will be banned.

Excerpted With Permission

Data Trader’s Handbook

Copyright 3250, Interstellar Data Trader Guild

Ramona slumped down in a chair in Café one. A cup of coffee was in front of her but she was struggling to find the strength to actually drink it. She had been working with Wilson for over six days trying to make the quantum comms unit work. She had finally convinced herself that they had followed the instructions correctly, but the unit never successfully established a link between the two quantum entangled endpoints.

“Well, you look like shit.”

Ramona just glared at Leo. Too tired to even be angry with him.

“Quantum comms doohicky not working?”

Ramona sighed. “I don’t think it will work. Even Wilson can’t make it work.”

“Even Wilson?”

“You said he could fix anything.”

“Actually, he said that. I said I wanted to find out if that was true.”

“Isn’t it?”

“Well, we’re going to find out, aren’t we?””

“Ya, I guess.”

“What’s he doing now?”

“Building a test rig. The problem is that the IP didn’t include any sort of calibration or bench test equipment. There is no way to tell if the particles are actually entangled or not.”

Leo put a hand on her shoulder. “No reason to kill yourself. Get some sleep, we drop out of FTL in twenty hours and you’ll want to be rested for the down leg into the gravity well.”

“Where the hell are we, anyway? I forget.”

“Idiluym.”

“Anything interesting there?”

“We’ll find out.”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

The Theo dropped out of FTL about eight AUs up well from the nine o’clock buoy.

“Thirty minutes to the latency envelope for nine o’clock buoy.” Ollu checked the system for signs that another guild ship was present. Finding none, she released the interlocks in anticipation of starting sync once the bouy was within the latency envelope. While the one hour latency window was somewhat arbitrary, anything beyond about 7.5 AU’s (20 GigaMeters) meant that laser comms would take over one hour to travel one way. Effectively, latencies this high meant that any meaningful communications were just not worth it. Easier to simply move closer to whoever you were trying to talk to. At the extremely high rate of speed they were travelling relative to the system meant that they would enter the envelope quickly and then cut across the epileptic before exiting the system without having to place undue stress on the ship or the ship’s engines.

Prompted by a laser burst from extreme range, the nine buoy started blasting compressed bursts of information in the direction of the Theo using multiple lasers running at different frequencies. Some of these bursts were incomplete or corrupted. Others came through clearly. All of this was automatically managed by the ship’s computers and automated comms relays. The secure laser comm links used by the guild had been perfected hundreds of years ago and hadn’t really changed much in the intervening years. Given the physical limitations of light as a propagation medium, they had achieved the theoretical maximum ages ago and very little improvement had been made for a very long time.

Leo sighed as he watched the system come online. More work to be done. This system hadn’t had a Trader ship through in months so there were thousands of automated transactions stored up. The automated sell side systems handled most of the buyer requests, but the buy side system would automatically flag most IP buys for manual intervention. That meant hours going through them one by one. Now that the ship had working capital, they could afford to do more buys but they didn’t have enough traders to actually do the legwork.

“Ollu! Where the hell are Ramona and Wilson? We need to get moving on this buy side queue.”

Ollu looked up from the console she had been working at. “I think they’re down in the build lab still.”

“Working on that stupid Quantum comms thing?”

“Yah.”

Leo moved to the communicator, “Eddington, Wilson: Report to the trading floor IMMEDIATE.”

Leo was still frowning when Ramona and Wilson came into the trading floor. “Eddington, Wilson: When we come into the latency envelope for any system, I want you here, not messing around with research or build labs.”

Wilson looked like he had been shot. “Y-y-y-y-yes, master trader!”

Ramona was less impressed with Leo’s exalted status. “Relax Leo, I already pre-qualled the entire weps buy side queue last night.” She glanced at a console for a few seconds. “Only one new weapon in the queue. Nothing to hurry about here.” Looking up, she smirked at Leo.

Leo just stared at her. “Fifteen before. No later.”

Realizing that Leo was truly upset, she nodded. “Yes, master trader.”

Hours later, Leo had calmed down enough to inquire about the work in the lab. “Do you really think all that work is worth it, Ramona?”

Ramona shook her head, obviously frustrated. “I have no idea. Wilson is a great mechanic but neither of us really understands the theory. At this point, we think we have all the gear set up and connected correctly, just no signal.”

Leo wasn’t sure what to say. It was obvious that quantum communications were just a myth, but it was also obvious that Ramona believed that it could work. “Even if quantum is possible, there have been so many cranks and outright charlatans out there that you can’t expect it to work your first time.”

Ramona put her head in her hands. “How many possible solutions could there be?”

Leo just shrugged. “Craig says he’s seen hundreds of these things over the years.”

“Hundreds?”

“At least.”

“Oh, great. Just great.”

Days later, Leo was reviewing the trades they had made. Having passed outside the latency envelope, trading was basically shut down although they would not hit the e-limit and leave the system for another hour. Suddenly, his communicator interrupted his reverie. “Leo, come to the bridge, please.”

It was Ollu’s voice and she didn’t seem happy. Leo immediately got up from his workstation and headed to the bridge. Upon entering, he looked around and was chagrined to realize he didn’t know the names of any of the three people other than Ollu who were there. “Ollu, what’s up?”

“Ship coming in.”

“OK.”

Ollu looked at him with a disappointed look on her face. “Trader Ship.” Leo still didn’t react. “You’re not concerned?”

“No, should I be?”

“The last trader ship we saw tried to ram us with a cutter.”

“That was Gunny. Nobody else would do that.”

“And who is this coming into the system?”

“No idea.”

“Exactly.”

Leo could see Ollu’s point. The ship coming into the system was coming from about the 3 o’clock position. They had entered from the six o’clock. In theory, the Reggie could have made it to this system by now if it had chosen to make longer jumps than the Theo had done. Of course, there were so many systems it would be pure luck if the Reggie had guessed where they were headed. It was unusual to run across another trader ship this far from the core worlds, but not unheard of.

“There is no way they tracked us down here.”

“No, but don’t discount random chance. They know about what sector we have to be in, they could have just pointed the Reggie in this general direction and gotten lucky.”

One of the watch standers looked up. “We are coming into the latency envelope. It’s a Trader vessel, they are trying to sync with us.”

Ollu looked at Leo.

Leo had a moment of panic but then realized it was silly. On the other hand, best to be cautious. “What’s the name of that ship?”

The crewman consulted the console. “Leona M. Tarsican.”

Leo let out a breath he didn’t know that he was holding. Then laughed at himself. “Ok, release the interlocks. Let’s get a good sync.”

After a few minutes watching the systems sync and assuring himself that everything was normal, he waved goodbye to Ollu and started walking off the bridge. Before he got there, his communicator started beeping. Priority message inbound. Puzzled, he turned around, only to see Ollu frowning at her communicator. “Message traffic from the Leona.”

“Personal priority messages for both of us? The last priority message I got was when my Uncle died.”

Ollu shook her head. “I’ve never gotten one before.”

Leo looked back at his communicator. He didn’t recognize the sender. So, it wasn’t a family member. Who then? Opening the message, he didn’t understand what he was seeing at first. Then realization. “BANNED! We’ve been BANNED!”

Ollu was a faster reader than Leo. “We’re GOING to be banned. This is a summons to our trial. Wanna bet Ramona got one also?”

Ramona settled the matter a minute later when she came running onto the bridge. “Did you get a summons also?”

“Yes, Leo and I both did.”

“Bastards!”

Leo was still reading. “This makes no sense, it says we have been trading banned material. What the heck are they talking about?”

A crewman hesitantly interrupted. “Excuse me, Captain. We’ve reached the e-limit.”

Ollu nodded and gestured for him to return to his station.

“So, do we go?”

“Go where?”

“To the trial, of course.”

Leo was incredulous. “Of course we go! If we don’t they ban us for sure.”

Ollu laughed. “Do you really think they won’t anyway?”

“That’s not the point. If we want to operate a Guild vessel, we need to be accepted by the larger Guild. If not, they will simply remove us as a signed node and we won’t be ABLE to trade. If we allow them to ban us, we don’t have a functioning business.”

Ollu was still shaking her head. “Remember what happened last time, Leo. We can’t assume that they will follow their own rules.”

“So, we just give up?”

Ramona looked up from her pad. “They won’t fuck with us if we’re packing heat.”

Ollu shook her head again. “We can’t take on the whole Guild.”

“We don’t have to. Just enough to get clear. As long as we don’t leave the ship, we can keep them off us long enough to get to the e-limit. Most Guild vessels aren’t armed.”

Leo had no idea what she was talking about. “Neither are we.”

Ollu was nodding now. “Blockade runner.”

So was Ramona. “Blockade runner.”

Leo took a moment to catch up. “Blockade runner?” Then he realized. “Blockade runner!”