The Data Traders

Human Diaspora

In the early days of FTL travel, humans quickly began to explore their immediate area in the spiral arm. Proxima Centauri, the closest star to earth, became a jumping off point for exploration and was eventually settled via artificial habitats. Over time, the technology for terraforming became more sophisticated and hundreds of worlds were eventually altered to support human life. This has resulted in clusters of habitation across the spiral arm as various star systems have been developed.

Excerpted With Permission

Data Trader’s Handbook

Copyright 3250, Interstellar Data Trader Guild

Craig had collapsed into a chair at the back of the bridge, still muttering to himself. Despite his better judgement, Leo walked over to see how he was. “Craig, you allright?”

Craig looked at Leo with grief in his eyes. He looked like he had been crying. Leo was stunned. “Leo, I need to talk to you and Ollu.”

“Craig, I think Ollu is a little busy at the moment.”

Craig just shook his head. “Leo. Now. I need to speak to you both RIGHT NOW.”

Leo considered for a moment. While Leo was pretty upset about the tribunal, Craig looked like his entire world had just ended. “OK, just calm down. I’ll get her.”

Leo got the three of them into a nearby conference room. Ollu wasn’t happy at being disturbed, but she seemed to sense the urgency of the request from Craig. “OK Craig, what do you want to say that’s more important than getting tracked down by these morons? We need to take an evasion course soon, so I don’t have much time for you.”

Craig looked down at the table. For a minute, Leo thought he would start to cry again. “We need to go to Proxima Centari.”

Ramona just stared at him. Leo shook his head. “Proxima? It will take us a MONTH to get there. Why would we do that?”

Craig sighed. “Because we need to end this.”

“End what?”

“The guild. We need to end the guild.”

“WHAT?!?!”

“You heard me.” Craig paused for so long that Leo thought he wasn’t going to continue. Then he took a deep breath. “This doesn’t make me happy, but 406 was an insane measure adopted by the Guild many years ago, before you were born. It basically allows the Guild to punish ANYONE who challenges them directly. There is no appeal, no due process, nothing. There were only two of us who voted against it when it was enacted over a hundred years ago. I was able to fool myself into thinking that 406 would never be used and would just remain a dusty footnote in Guild history. I mean, quantum comms doesn’t really exist, so there is no danger, right?”

Ollu had been watching Craig’s face intently for his entire speech. Now, she shook her head. “I agree that 406 is a nasty overreach, but how is it worse than any of the other things that the Guild does every day?”

Craig looked like he had been slapped. He took a moment before answering. “OK, I guess that is fair. The guild does some really crappy things. However, it was always an organization based on rules and equal standing. The entire point of the Guild was supposed to be that no master stood above the rest. A meritocracy if you will. 406 basically says that any master can be banned at any time as long as two other masters don’t like them. Now that the genie is out of the bottle, how long do you think it will be used to settle political scores within the Guild? Any dissenting voices will immediately be silenced.”

Now Leo was nodding. “You mean it would allow people like Gunny to remove any masters that want to moderate Guild policy, don’t you?”

“Yes, exactly. 406 is completely capricious and arbitrary.”

Ollu was still for a moment, then she hit the comm button on the table. “Helm, drop out of FTL. Also, can you please ask Journeyman Eddington to join us here?” She looked up. “OK Craig, you have our complete attention. Once Ramona gets here, you are going to tell us the ENTIRE STORY and don’t leave ANYTHING out. Then we will see what we see.”

A few moments later, Ramona entered. “Did someone die?”

Ollu almost grinned despite the gravity of the situation they were in. “No, but we need to hear what Craig has to say about 406.”

After Ramona seated herself, Craig began to explain the history of the Guild’s cold war with the Seekers and his years of believing it was just paranoia that caused the initial rift. After two full hours, he finally wound down. By the end of it, Ramona was just staring at him. “So, it’s all true.”

Craig didn’t look up from his clenched hands on the table. “Yes. All of it.”

Leo had no idea what they were talking about. “What’s true?”

Ramona turned to face Leo. “When I was recruited to special forces in Raeburn, I was given access to classified material.” Leo nodded. “Raeburn’s military has a massive amount of information about the guild and has spent over thirty years developing intel about the internals of how the guild works.” She paused for a minute, looking intently a Craig. “I thought that they were just caught up in intuitional paranoia.”

Craig was still staring at his hands. “No, I haven’t seen the details, but I think it’s safe to assume they’re not paranoid.”

Ramona nodded. Then her eyes got VERY wide. “Does that mean that the epsilon protocol is real too?”

Craig sighed.

“IS IT?”

He looked up at Ramona for the first time. “Yes. It’s real. And I intend to activate it.”

Ollu had been shifting her gaze from Ramona to Craig like watching a tennis match. “Craig, explain.”

Another deep sigh from Craig. Ramona just gave him a warning look. “Around the same time that 406 was being drafted, a Journeyman I worked with decided to perform a ‘black hat’ exercise against the database in his ship. The theory was that it could be possible for known bad actors like the seekers to simply corrupt the Guild databases and by doing this force the guild to give up the plans for quantum entanglement communications.”

Ramona looked shocked. “We never wanted to break the guild, we just wanted the Guild to stop interfering with us.”

Craig nodded sadly. “Yes, I know that. However, paranoia isn’t exclusively a Raeburn disease. There was immense fear that once Raeburn was banned, it could lead to war or perhaps a guerilla action. Anyway, the point is that he performed a study to see if the system could be broken.”

“And.”

“And, he succeeded. On the fifth try.”

Ramona smacked her hand on the table. “Of course, epsilon. Fifth letter in the Greek alphabet.”

“Exactly.”

“And where is this journeyman now?”

Ollu suddenly understood and spoke before Craig could answer. “Proxima Centauri.”

Craig smiled, but there was no happiness or joy in that smile. “Exactly.”

There was a long, long silence after that.

Leo was first to break the silence. “Is that what we want? To destroy the Guild? My entire family is in the Guild. I don’t think I want to make them suffer.”

Ollu was nodding. “I agree Leo, it’s not something I want to do either. However, where do you think this is going to end? Do you think that masters like Gunny will simply leave it at that? How long until they go after someone else?”

Craig looked very somber. “Leo, I have to say I agree with Ollu. Now that they know they can make accusations with 406, they won’t hesitate to use it again. There’s no appeal, no second chance on that. They can go after anyone they want and probably will.”

Leo was about to answer when the door burst open. “Sir! Sir! Ah, oh, ah, Master Trader Timur!!”

Ollu stood up. “Apprentice Wilson! Get ahold of yourself.” Wilson visibly shook himself and an expression of sheer terror indicated that he finally realized that he had burst in on a meeting with three masters and included all of the ship’s shareholders. He took a deep breath and started again. “Master Trader Timur, I need to speak to you urgently. Sir.”

Leo was just as confused as everyone else and it showed on his face. “You’re here now. Say what you have to say.”

“The com thingy works. Ah, uh Master Trader.”

“Com thingy?”

“Yes, master trader. The one me an Ramona done be working on.”

Ramona was out of her chair so quickly if flipped over behind her. “WHAT?!!?”

“The uh, quantinum thing.”

“You mean the quantum entanglement communications device?”

“Ah, yes. Oh, ah, Yes Master Trader Timur.”

Before Leo could ask questions, Ramona grabbed Wilson by the elbow and started pushing him towards the door. “Show me. NOW.”

After they left the room, Leo looked at Ollu. “Should we join them?”

Ollu just shrugged. “Why not?”

Craig shook his head. “It doesn’t work. Why bother?”

“And if it does?”

“Then the guild is fucked.”

“Exactly.”

Craig grinned. “Well, you know how to sell a guy, don’t you?”

By the time Leo, Craig and Ollu had made their way into the fab space that Wilson had been using as a lab, Ramona and Wilson were deep into conversation. After a few moments, Ramona stepped back. “Are you certain it’s not using RF?”

Wilson nodded vigorously. “There ain’t no radio in that box. I can tell you that.”

Ollu looked more closely at the unit. Or rather, the two units. They were fairly unremarkable. Each one was only about twenty centimeters high, almost a meter deep and a bit more than half a meter wide. The front panel looked exactly like any com unit she had ever seen and the back just took a standard power receptacle. Wilson had them both connected to separate isolated networks and each network had a pad attached. Leo took a closer look at one of the pads and he could see that a standard network diagnostic was running. Leo was unsurprised to see that it read 10MB throughput.

Ollu finished her inspection with a shrug. “So, someone figured out how to build a 10 meg pipe that will cover a couple of feet. I’m not impressed yet.”

“But it must be using entanglement!”

“I don’t care if there are two gerbils and some string. Does it work over interstellar distances?”

Ramona had a fierce look in her eyes. “Let’s find out.”

Ollu turned to the com panel. “Deck department. Please fire up a BR and equip for a crew of two.” A muffled acknowledgement came back.

“Eddington, Wilson, pack up one of those units and set it up on the BR. Let’s make sure it works within the ship first, then we can test at farther ranges.”

Ramona grinned. “Yes, Master Trader Channah.”

As soon as Wilson disconnected the first unit, the test pattern on the tablet attached to the second one went to zero. So, the test was, in fact, going through the new com units.

Leo could tell this would take a long time. “Let’s get some coffee, this is about as exciting as watching paint dry.” Ollu just nodded.

After returning with their coffee, it only took about another ten minutes for the test signal to come back.

The com panel chirped. “Ollu, we’re in the BR, are you getting a signal?”

“Yes, 10 meg like before.”

“OK. Heading out.”

Leo waited, eyes glued on the pad. Ollu was casually sitting back and drinking her coffee.

“No change.”

Ollu sat up and tapped the com panel again. “Helm, let’s get some distance from the BR. Give us ten percent on the mains, please.”

“Aye, 10% on the mains.”

The pad stubbornly refused to change: 10 meg.

“Bridge, 95% on the mains.”

“Aye, 95% on the mains.”

10 megs. They all waited, expectantly. Nothing happened. Or rather, the same something KEPT happening. No change in any way. They waited for a long time, but nothing.

Then Leo noticed something. The latency. The network latency was only 2 milliseconds. That wasn’t amazing, but it was way better than they should be getting.

“Ollu, how far away is the BR from us?”

Ollu consulted her pad. “About a gigameter.”

“Then why is our latency only 2 milliseconds? At a gigameter, it should be about 3 seconds.”

“Let me see that.”

The readout stubbornly refused to change. 10meg, 2 milliseconds of latency. About what you would expect from a normal RF transmitter at close ranges, certainly not what you would expect at a gigameter.

“Helm, distance to the BR?”

The answer came back almost instantly. Apparently, the rumor mill on the Theo was also working just fine. “One point two eight four Giga Meters.” There was a pause. “And rising. Relative speed, approximately five hundred thousand KPH.”

“Well fuck me with a broom.” Ollu’s astonishment was so deep that she didn’t even turn to give Craig a dirty look for the crude comment. She simply sat there, staring at the comm box.

Finally, she pinched the bridge of her nose between her thumb and index finger, took a deep breath and looked over to Leo. “Leo, the universe we know just changed.”

“Changed to what?”

“I don’t really know.” Ollu gathered herself with an effort. “Helm, engage FTL.”

“Course?”

“Current heading. It doesn’t matter, we just want to get some serious distance between us and the BR.”

“Engaging FTL in ten.”

Leo could feel the subtle vibration that meant that they had shifted to FTL. As soon as it did, the displays changed. “IT JUST DROPPED TO ZERO!!”

“DAMMIT! I SHOULD HAVE KNOWN IT WAS FAKE.” Ollu slapped the table with so much force Craig jumped back, startled by the loud sound in the quiet compartment. “Helm, drop us out of FTL, and get turned around to pick up the BR.”

“Aye, dropping FTL now.”

Suddenly, the network connection came back. 10 megabytes, 2 milliseconds of latency. “HELM! BELAY THAT ORDER!”

Leo examined the display closely. “I’ll have to check the logs, but it seems like the drop was exactly the same time as our FTL. It came back as soon as we dropped out of FTL again.”

Craig chuckled. “Well, that explains that.”

“Explains what?”

Craig shook his head. “I will bet you one million guilders this thing doesn’t work inside the e-limit and doesn’t work under FTL.”

“I get the FTL part, but why the e-limit?”

“Think about it. A guild ship is almost ALWAYS inside an e-limit or in FTL, right?”

“Yeah, so?”

“And who is convinced they don’t work?”

“Well until now, everyone in the universe.”

“No, not everyone.”

“Ya, if the guild DID test these things, they tested them underway or inside the e-limit.”

“Right.”

“So, it’s related to gravity?”

“How the fuck would I know? I’m an A&E specialist. I’m just guessing as to why there haven’t been more successful tests. Places like Raeburn would have figured this out years ago if they worked inside a solar system. The guild would know very well if they worked onboard a ship in space. Ergo, neither of those things work.”

“I’m not going bet against you. Yet.”

Leo was still reeling from the discovery but remembered Ramona sitting in the BR, not knowing what happened. “Let’s get the BR and then set course.”

“To where?”

“Proxima Centauri, of course. One way or another, the guild is done.”

Ollu took a moment to process. “Right. Well, we will have plenty of time to figure this out on the way.”