Banned Worlds


    While the Guild attempts at all times to remain neutral in any political or military dispute, there are times when the very foundations of interstellar commerce are threatened. In those cases, the Guild retains the right to ban a world or worlds based on a strict set of criteria laid down in the Guild bylaws. The Guild may ban a world under the following conditions:


    <ol>


    <li> If it is shown that the world, worlds or other political entity has no respect for intellectual property and/or refuses to enforce intellectual property laws as agreed to by the Interstellar Commerce Pact.</li>


    <li> If it is shown that the world, worlds or other political entity participates in human trafficking or refuses to enforce human trafficking laws as agreed to by the Interstellar Commerce Pact.</li>


    <li> If it is shown that the world, worlds or other political entity refuses to allow Guild members free transport of their space, dominion or other special and national boundaries.</li>


    <li> If it is shown that the world, worlds or other political entity has traded intellectual property to any banned world, worlds or other political entity. </li>


    </ol>


    Petitions for bans or ban relief are heard at the quarterly Guild security council meeting. Banned worlds have up to five tenths of a Terran year to respond to petitions and have the right to be represented before the security council.


    Excerpted With Permission


    Data Trader’s Handbook


    Copyright 3250, Interstellar Data Trader Guild


    Back on the Reggie, Leo was no more settled in his feelings for Ramona than he had been aboard the orbital. In some ways, she was not his type at all. She was a dirtyfoot and from a banned world, for goodness sake! He was sure his mother would not approve. On the other hand, she was a bit mysterious and definitely different than the other women he had dated over the years.


    The GQ alarm was at once a familiar sound and something totally unexpected. While the ship had regular GQ drills, this was not one of them.


    “General Quarters, General Quarters! This is not a drill. Say again, this is not a drill. General Quarters, General Quarters….” The automated alarm repeated three times and loud enough to ensure that even those heavily medicated and in a coma heard it.


    Because Leo’s GQ station was on the trading floor and he was already heading in that direction, he simply lengthened his stride and hurried to the trading floor which was becoming crowded with other traders.


    He arrived in time to hear Gunny arguing loudly with someone on the comm. “Godammit, that is not the point. What if they are hostile in there? Have you ever led a hostile boarding action?” There was a pause while the other person spoke. “Yeah. Right. I have. So that means I’m going. End of discussion. Pick ten security team members and have them meet me on the boat deck in armor.”


    Gunny slammed down he handset with even more force than he usually used. “Eddington, you’re with me.” He looked over to the ComDes pit. “I need a systems specialist in case the enviro systems are fucked. Who over there with an enviro systems specialty has an EVA rating?”


    A group around Leo raised their hands. Including Leo. Gunny continued. “And small arms quals?” All the hands went down. Except for Leo. “Ok Timur, you’re with me.” Gunny stormed out of the trading floor with Leo and Ramona in his wake.


    Out of earshot of Gunny’s rapidly retreating back, Leo whispered to Ramona, “What the hell is going on?”


    Ramona looked very focused. “We have detected a ship ahead of us and it’s not responding to comms.”


    “What? That’s impossible.”


    “Coms go down sometimes.”


    “No, I mean finding a ship in the deep dark. Do you know the odds against that?”


    “Why? We’re between two populated systems. Must be a few ships going this way every day.”


    “That’s not the point, space is HUGE. The odds against us just accidentally finding a ship in the deep dark are a million to one. Besides, everything is moving all the time. The route we are taking is going to be different than the route that a ship will take leaving even an hour later.”


    “Well, it’s there.”


    Gunny glanced back. “Hurry the fuck up. I want you in suit liners with your side arms in ten minutes on the boat dock.”


    After that, Leo was in too much of a hurry to ask any more questions.


    Arriving on the boat deck, Leo was not surprised to see ten crewmembers from the Master At Arms in full battle armor, but he was surprised to see Ollu suited up in a hard suit and ready to go. While Ollu was fully EVA qualified, she didn’t leave the ship very often. Unlike the battle armor the security personnel wore, the hard suits were designed for maintenance and other normal ship’s activities in vacuum.


    As Leo and Ramona struggled into their hard suits, Gunny was giving a short briefing. “Listen up, we have a ship in apparent distress. No engine signature and not answering on comms. We have no idea what is going on, could be simple mechanical failure or something more ominous. I want weapons tight, but eyes open. You see something, you say something. Copy?”


    A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.


    The response was nearly in unison, “Copy”


    “Zero latency?”


    “Zero latency!”


    The ride in the shuttle was quiet. Gunny and Ramona looked grim. Ollu looked resigned. The security personnel were a range from excited to openly fearful. Leo had literally never heard of a ship being found like this in deep space. Yes, ships had vanished over the years, but you never found them. Space was just too big.


    The loud CLANG of magnets pulling the shuttle in startled everyone except Gunny. “Button UP! Check your buddy!”


    Leo carefully sealed his hard suit and then turned to inspect Ramona’s. As expected, everything was working properly. When he finished, she returned the favor. One by one the members of the boarding party held up their hands to indicate a good suit check and telltales turned green.


    After isolating the crew bay from the pilot’s cabin, Gunny opened the airlock. The receiving vestibule on the other side was dark. “Timur! Get your ass over here! Eddington, cover him!” As Leo knelt down, both Gunny and Ramona readied their weapons. Gunny was once again carrying his antique carbine and Ramona her preferred handgun. Examining the panel, he saw that it was pretty familiar.


    “Gunny, this is a trader ship.”


    “No shit, Timur. Why do you think we’re here?”


    Feeling angry that Gunny had chosen not to reveal that little detail, he got to work. Most trader ships operated off of the same consoles and used the same enviro systems. Those systems worked and were tested. They didn’t change that often. This one had apparently been shut down but still had power.


    “Hmm.. Systems shutdown ordered. Trying the evac override.” Most trader systems were triple redundant. Failures of environmental systems tended to be fatal so there was little incentive to under-spec them. “OK. I’m in. Starting. We have emergency power. Someone will have to go down to engineering if you want to start main power.”


    “Good job. Stand back, son.” Slowly, Gunny led the armored boarders into the disabled ship. “Stay tight. Russel, you have tail. Timur, stay with him.” As they stepped into the ship, what struck Leo the most was how ordinary it looked. Nothing strange, nothing out of place and no apparent damage. “Left, up to the bridge.”


    Deck after deck, hallway after hallway it was the same. No damage to the ship, nothing out of place. Except the people. No people anywhere.


    Leo had never been on the bridge of the Reggie, but he imagined this one was similar. It certainly looked like the bridge on the Connie he remembered from tours when he had been in school. Two main consoles that looked like ships controls and an array of smaller consoles that he assumed controlled engineering and other functions. In the center was a slightly raised chair which he assumed was for the captain. As Leo walked around the bridge, he noticed that one panel was open. Not sure what it was supposed to look like, he didn’t know if that was normal or not, but he assumed not since all the others were firmly closed.


    Ollu saw his interest and moved over to take a look. “Data cores. All the data cores are missing.”


    “What? Why would there be data cores on the bridge?”


    Ollu smirked. “All these years living on a ship and you don’t really know how they work?” Leo just shrugged. Traders didn’t run the ships. “The systems are all fully redundant. If this part of the ship is cut off from the rest, you don’t want things to fail because you don’t have computer support. Each major control point has their own compute nodes and data cores. Just in case.”


    Gunny was looking at the empty cabinet also. “Timur, take Eddington down to the trading floor. See if you can bring any systems up. Eddington, keep a sharp eye out.”


    Ramona readied her pistol and nodded for Leo to proceed. While they didn’t know exactly where the trading floor was, they should be able to find it.


    “Leo, I don’t like this.”


    “Me neither, this ship is creepy.”


    Ramona stopped and turned to face Leo. “No, not the ship. The situation. What happened? Where is the crew? Were they boarded?”


    “I don’t know.”


    “That’s what worries me. If it could happen to one ship, it could happen to others.”


    “Let’s see if we can find out what happened first.” Finally, after several wrong terms, they found the trading pits. Similar to the Reggie, the pits were gathered into a large room in the center of the ship. All of the systems and consoles were shut down. Leo tried to activate one of the consoles, but wasn’t able to do so. Main power was out and the backup systems had drained down to zero. “This isn’t going to work. We need to go to a data core. Let’s try the one we passed a ways back.”


    Backtracking to the data core, they were presented with another problem. The door was locked and power was off. Ramona removed a small toolkit from her hard suit. “Let me see if I can get this open.”


    “You’re a lockpick also?”


    Ramona gave Leo a withering look. “Standard guard training. What’s the point in trying to rescue the crew from a disabled vessel if you can’t get the doors open and they suffocate?”


    “Right.”


    After a few moments Ramona and was able to get the door open. The massive data core room on the other side was dark. “That can’t be.”


    “What?” Ramona was standing in the open door with a hand light. Sweeping the beam around to get a look at the large room.


    “This part of the ship I know. There should be lights in here. System backups, backup generators, the works.”


    “Perhaps the emergency systems just ran down?”


    “Doubtful. On the Reggie and the Connie each data core has it’s own backup fusion reactor. Those things are rated to run ten years without refueling.” Leo also snapped on a handheld light and started looking for the emergency console. When he found it, he just stood there. Looking.


    “What’s wrong?”


    “It’s off.”


    “Yeah, I got that part. Can you turn it on?”


    “No, I mean it’s all the way off. Like when a core is removed. These things are never off. Never.”


    “Can you turn it on?”


    “I think so. If the batteries are intact. Normally, you start from shore power. But there is an emergency restart sequence. I had to memorize that for my Journeyman’s exam.” As Leo puzzled over the console, he found what he was looking for. After flipping a few large switches, a small green button lit up. Leo held it down. A low moan filled the compartment as the fusion bottle lit. “OK. There we go. Fusion bottle coming up. It’s fully fueled. Looks just like the one on the Reggie.” He stopped, puzzled. “The system should be coming up.”


    “Should be?”


    “I don’t know. I’ve never actually started a data core on my own. Not something we usually do.”


    As the compartment lights started to flicker on, Ramona turned around to get a better look around. Row after row of memory core cabinets filled the large room. “Leo? Are those cabinets supposed to be empty?”


    “What?” As Leo walked over to the nearest cabinet, he realized it was empty. All of the memory modules that were supposed to be in there were gone. Quickly, he opened the next one, then the next. They were all empty.


    Leo toggled his communicator. “Gunny?”


    “I read you Timur.”


    “Gunny, it appears that all the memory modules in this data core are gone.”


    “You mean they are damaged?”


    “No, I mean they are gone. As in someone took them.”