The Data Traders

The Information Economy

Once the Singularity occurred, coupled with practical FTL, most objects and materials that had previously been valued by human society rapidly lost value. There is little point in valuing something like gold or a particular make of air car when the ability to produce both are readily available to the general public. This change to a true information economy was the most profound side effect of the singularity. This is sometimes referred to as a “Post Scarcity” economy but we of the guild do not prefer this term. The implication of “Post Scarcity” as a term is that there is no commodity valued by the society. We know that this is simply untrue. The one commodity that retains value and will always retain value is information or more accurately Intellectual Property. The ability to control intellectual property and other types of information forms the basis of the post singularity economy. We refer to this as the “information economy” and it is the purpose of the Data Trader’s Guild to help manage and regulate this economy. {{Meta Tag: “Post-Scarcity Societies”}}

Excerpted With Permission

Data Trader’s Handbook

Copyright 3250, Interstellar Data Trader Guild

Cutting its FTL drives, the cutter dropped into normal space above the plane of epileptic for U-I. Activating the gravimetric drives, Leo shaped a course for the six buoy. They were on time. There was enough time to dock with the buoy, do the full diagnostic and manual inspection and still get back into position to rendezvous with the Reggie before she passed in-system of buoy six.

Ramona was manning the sensor suite. He had set her the exercise of scanning the buoy remotely mostly to test her out on the sensor console, rather than because he thought she would find anything. “Leo, I’m picking up a drive flare about ten gigs away from the buoy.” He was about to ask why she was scanning ten giga-meters beyond the buoy when she continued, “ship is on a reciprocal course from buoy six. Estimate 99% probability that they are burning away from a close rendezvous based on current heading and speed.”

While it was unusual for ships to visit a guild buoy in deep space, it wasn’t completely unheard of. The buoys also acted as emergency stations of a sorts. Ships having issues with environmental systems could dock and make repairs. For this reason, they were stocked with consumables and this meant occasional restocking missions for systems which were infrequently visited like this one. So, this MIGHT be a coincidence. But then again, “see if you can hail her, it might be a resupply mission from the local polity.” Ramona brought up the comms system. With a distance to target of 30 giga-meters the light propagation delay was already 90 seconds. And this would only increase as the ship continued to accelerate away. They would have hard dock with the buoy in two minutes. Not enough time for the hail to reach them and the answer to come back. Leo instructed the ship to begin docking procedures.

“Don’t you think we should wait until the outbound ship has responded?” Ramona didn’t look concerned as much as puzzled. To her, a ship was a threat until proven otherwise. To Leo, a ship was a potential trading customer until proven otherwise. Very different life experiences led them to look at the world differently.

“I’m sure they will just tell us they were doing resupply. Besides, we’re not going to hunt them down in an unarmed cutter. If we’re not happy with the answer, we’ll tell the Reggie when she arrives and let the locals deal with it.” There was a loud CLANG as the cutter made hard dock with the station. Leo and Ramona floated back into crew quarters and got their hard suits on. In theory, the interior of the buoy should be fully pressurized. One thing that Leo and Ramona’s life experiences completely agreed on is that “in theory” and “bet your life on” are not the same thing at all. Leo wondered what Ramona would do with the handgun she had left drifting nearby as she suited up. Then he learned what a “zero-g harness” was as she affixed first the harness to her suit’s hard-points and then the gun to the harness. Ramona pushed a button on the side of the weapon and then put her gloves on. The little weapon changed shape, the grip grew and the trigger guard re-formed. Leo was puzzled for a moment and then nodded, the pistol would have to be a different shape to use with gloves than with bare hands. A very clever design indeed. The only time Leo had trained with weapons while suited up they had used special weapons designed for gloved use.

“Leo, the station is registering five degrees warmer than nominal. The last ship through did not report any issues. There could be a problem onboard.” She was referring to a display inset into the arm of her hard suit. It was repeating the diagnostics running on the main console. To Leo, problem meant mechanical problem. That’s not what Ramona meant but he didn’t realize that until later.

“OK, let’s check it out.” He cycled the lock open and started to enter the station.

“Leo, wait!” Ramona had been looking down and didn’t realize he was about to open the door. Now she was positioned behind Leo. Suddenly, she reached out to the grab bar she was floating next to and compressed her legs. Then she gave a powerful thrust and flew across the airlock, right at Leo.

“Wuf!” The collision knocked the air out of Leo’s lungs and sent them both tumbling into the main area of the buoy. As they twisted, he could see two armed and armored spacers standing to each side of the airlock. Not visible to anyone inside of the airlock, they were perfectly positioned to ambush anyone coming through. The unorthodox entry must have surprised them however because they did not have their weapons pointed towards the tumbling pair.

Ramona twisted and threw Leo away from her. This stopped her spin and canceled much of her forward momentum. Pulling her pistol, she barked at them through the external speakers of her suit. “Toss your weapons! No sudden moves or I shoot!”

The two men were either very brave, stupid or both. She clearly had them zero’d. However, each leveled their weapons. Rather, they attempted to. In the time it took them to aim, Ramona had fired four times in rapid succession. Two hits on the first suited figure and one on the second. The recoil had shoved her backwards into the far wall of the room but she maintained her aim point on the second opponent. The first one wasn’t going anywhere. The projectiles has apparently been set for “penetration” because they had punched a hole clean through the face shield, through the man’s head, through the back of the armored helmet and then torn a chunk out of the very thick armored casing of the airlock. The other was badly injured and most likely to lose a leg if not immediately treated. He released his weapon and it floated away, towards the middle of the room.

Meanwhile, Leo had flown across the room like a sack of potatoes. He hit the far wall, taking another blow to the back as he bounced off. Gathering his wits, he was able to bend his body enough to cancel the spin and the second impact was soft enough he was able to regain control and take a handhold. By the time he righted himself, the fight was over with one man dead and another seriously wounded. Leo himself was no slouch in zero-g, he had competed in school in gee-ball and thought he was pretty good. However, Ramona’s circus stunt of using Leo’s greater mass to cancel her spin and negate her velocity was something he had never seen anyone do. He had heard that militia training on Raeburn’s World was very good but this was beyond his wildest imagination.

Ramona had attached herself to one wall but still had the second would be ambusher under her gun. Based on what she had just accomplished, no sane person could think she would miss from that position. “Leo, you OK?” He gave her a thumbs up. Shaky, but definitely OK. “Grab the emergency locker over there. Should be a med kit and some emergency patching tape. Tape his hands together and put the med kit on that leg. He may bleed out.” Despite being “senior” to her, Leo did not consider objecting. Leo could see the well-marked emergency locker on the wall and gave himself what he would have thought of as an expert push off to float over to it. He had just revised his estimate of what “expert” zero-g maneuvering was, however. Getting it open, he found both a med kit and a hull patch kit. The tape in the hull kit was strong enough to cover holes in the outer hull and retain hull integrity so he was pretty sure it would hold a guy with a leg wound.

Getting the attacker’s hands taped behind his back wasn’t super easy in zero-g. Leo wound up using his boot magnets to hold himself down while he taped the man’s hands together. He was utterly compliant which made it possible even if it wasn’t easy. Even so, Leo was very careful of Ramona’s line of fire, he had no doubt she would shoot to kill if needed. The assassin apparently agreed with Leo’s assessment and made no hostile moves. The binding done, he then activated the medical kit and clamped it the intruder’s leg and set it to automatic. Leo knew almost nothing about gunshot wounds, but the whole point of a self-contained med-kit was that he didn’t have to know. Based on what he’d read, he thought the man would live unless his blood loss was much higher than Leo was guessing.

“He’ll live.” Ramona apparently agreed and Leo had the feeling this wasn’t the first time she’d seen a gunshot wound. “Give me a hand with this vacuum. Gotta get this blood out of here before it spreads into the environmental system.” She sounded calm, but Leo could see that the hand holding the vacuum was shaking. Leo’s hands were shaking also, but he didn’t need pinpoint control to vacuum up the loose liquid. Thinking about a normal spacer function like cleaning up loose liquid in zero-g made it easier to keep from screaming his head off.

Ramona had her helmet off and was talking to a console on the far side of the room. “This is Eddington, we have an emergency on buoy six. Say again, emergency on buoy six.” She turned to Leo. “Reggie just passed the e-limit. She’s still a ways out but she should get the message in about ten minutes.” Leo looked at the panel on his sleeve. Had it been only ten minutes since they had docked? It seemed like hours.

Once all the blood was cleaned up, they were able to make a shroud out of hull patch fabric and tape the dead body into it. It probably wasn’t strictly necessary, but Leo for one felt better not having to look at the gaping hole in the man’s head.

“….and now we wait.”

Leo was confused with Ramona’s comment. “Wait? Wait for what? Shouldn’t we finish cleaning up? Or do the maintenance?”

Ramona had a sad look on her face. “Leo, I just killed one guy and gravely wounded another. There will be an inquiry. We cannot tamper with any evidence.” Before Leo could interrupt, she continued. “We did what was necessary, kept the blood out of the enviro system and covered the body. Anything else would be considered tampering. And before you ask, yes I have done this before but I was on the other side. The Raeburn Militia is both a military and police force for any part of the system outside the jurisdiction of a local polity. I have worked several murder scenes so I know the drill.”

Leo’s quiet “oh” was probably lost in the background noise of the vacuum. Once again, his mouth engaged before his brain could stop it. “Is everyone from the Raeburn militia a lethal circus performer?”

Ramona looked stricken by the question. Perhaps Leo should not be talking. He was a bit rattled and random stuff was going to come out. Too late. “Uh, no. I mean I wasn’t in the circus. I was on my district gee-ball all-star team which is how I won my scholarship to the academy. Because of that, I was section leader for my zero-gee combat class at the academy. When I got to my ship, we did some boarding actions. If you do something enough, you get good at it. Even a blind squirrel finds a nut sometimes.” Leo wasn’t sure what a squirrel was or why it would be blind (did they have eyes?) but he got the picture. He understood the value of repetition and practice. He had spent hundreds of hours in the gym practicing his outside shot in gee-ball himself but he had never thought about zero-g combat before or why being good at gee-ball would make you a good candidate for the military.

Before Leo could ask another stupid and/or embarrassing question, Gunny Tomlin’s voice came from every speaker in the room including Leo’s helmet and the operations consoles. “Eddington, Timur: confirm your status. Is the buoy secure?” Leo was over his shock so he was able to activate his communicator to answer in the affirmative. “Roger that Timur. Lock down and do not touch anything. We will be coming in the aux lock in two minutes.”

Giving Leo an “I told you so” look, Ramona locked the aux control console she had been using and went to check on the prisoner. Putting her helmet back on but face shield up, she waited by Leo for the aux lock to open.

Predictably, it was Gunny who was first through. Carrying what looked to be an old fashioned zero-gee carbine slung across his chest, he quickly checked the interior of the buoy including a couple of cubby holes that Leo and Ramona had not checked to her obvious embarrassment. Two other armed spacers came through the lock. Leo didn’t recognize either of them but he could tell from their insignia that they worked for the ship’s master at arms. That is to say, they were ship’s crew and not traders.

Gunny was in full military mode, issuing crisp orders that he clearly expected to be followed and no nonsense. One of the men took possession of the prisoner and quickly moved him back through the aux airlock. Gunny was checking the enviro system for fouling, he gave a pleased grunt when he found none and removed his helmet. “You two are on restricted duty until further notice. We are on a guild buoy so we are subject to guild law only. The guild master will need to convene an inquiry. The Reggie is thirty minutes out, we’ll transfer you across on a shuttle. Your cutter will remain here until it has been processed for evidence.” In a much lower voice with his mouth inches from Ramona’s ear he said: “Well done spacer. Nice grouping on the stiff.” Leo would learn later that there had been quite a commotion back on the Reggie when Gunny had usurped the master at arms’ authority by taking command of the armed cutter assigned to recover Leo and Ramona. In the end, Gunny was a master trader and the master at arms was simply a hired hand so the outcome wasn’t really in doubt once Gunny decided to take issue.

When it came time for Leo and Ramona to transfer back to the ship, they sealed up their hard suits and went out the aux lock like the rest of the Reggie’s spacers had done. Looking up, Leo could see the massive face of the Reggie looming over the buoy. Even at a safe kilometer stand-off distance, Reggie was huge. Living inside a moving mountain was one thing, seeing her from outside was another. Festooned with antennas and other external fittings, the Reggie was more functional than what most people would consider beautiful. Her bluff bows sprouted with emitters for her FTL system and her mid-ships were wrinkled with heat sinks for her massive data cores. She lacked the clean lines of a ship designed to enter atmosphere or the deadly grace of a warship. Leo enjoyed the view until they entered the airlock of the shuttle which had been sent to pick them up. She was the most beautiful thing Leo had ever seen.