An aftermath (part II)

***

Michael sat motionless behind the dark oak desk for a long time. His face was a map of calculation: a slightly raised left eyebrow, lips pulled into a thin, tense line, and eyes locked onto the nearest object with a predatory focus. He wasn't just thinking; he was mining his own memory, reaching back through the decades for a precedent, a strategy, a ghost of a solution.

On the desk sat a small, bronze coloured model of an orbital bombardment satellite, enclosed in a sterile glass case. Even in the dim office light, the metal gave off a dull, but frightening sheen. This wasn't just a decoration; it was a replica of the first-generation commercial kinetic platforms -- Schutzgeist-class.

The Schutzgeist project had been a monumental collaboration, an enormous effort that had united nearly all the industrial giants from Central Europe and parts of the Northern European regions into a cohesive, gigantic actor. It was one of the predecessors to the modern Clusters, a weaponised commercial peacekeeper that had rewritten the laws of sovereignty from the vacuum of space. To Michael, the model was a reminder of the Cluster's abilities.

The sight of it always brought him back to the breaking moments of history. He remembered the days the world changed -- when a constellation of these satellites had silenced a dozen of autocratic regimes in a single, coordinated set of strikes. There had been no radiation, no messy fallout -- just simple, pure physics of kinetic energy. Tungsten rods, dropped from orbit, had punched through reinforced bunkers and some of ICBM shafts like they were made of parchment.

The resulting political crises and the subsequent vacuum of authority were gradually filled by a technocratic rule born from the most powerful industrial unions; these were the first seeds of what would eventually become the Clusters. The bloated bureaucracies left from previous governments and unions were dismantled and replaced by a worldwide committees; domestic laws were ditched in favour of global regulations and rigid protocols.

The era of national governments, autocratic empires, petty politics and trade limits had fallen. Endless wars, in their ancient sense, had ended. New values and new goals had set a new and different way for competition -- one that reached far beyond the primitive ambitions born at the dawn of human civilisation thousands of years before.

Looking at the model now, Michael felt the power of actions of this kind -- action that could rapidly fuel the long required changes. He needed that same surgical strike precision today. The incident on the one of the advanced habitats and the death of Lizzie Wolters were unforeseen events cracking the shiny and polished shield of the Cluster. In order to fix them, he couldn't use a brute force; instead, he needed to find a completely different way.

The steady flow of the different thoughts has been suddenly interrupted by a voice call notification.

"Michael here," he answered. He immediately noted the communication delay estimate for the secured channel: 3.6 seconds.

It was plenty of time to switch contexts in his head. Needless to say, such a delay was not merely a matter of distance, but a result of the signal traversing an enormous chain of relay stations. Still, he knew he was lucky to have a connection this direct -- fewer than ten relays.

The entire radio and optical networking infrastructure of the inner system had been engineered with this distinctive, modular feature: a design intended to keep communications alive even in the event of a massive failure among the numerous relays. It was somewhat similar in concept to the ancient Earth-wide global data network, but far more rigid and advanced.

Advances in fusion technology and smart logistics had made it possible to deploy thousands of these relays at strategic points, stretching from the Mercury Lagrange points to the high orbits of Mars. Because these relays didn't require astronomical power output in the gigahertz range, the units were durable, required rare maintenance, and were quite cheap to mass-produce.

"Equipment and materials have been received," a voice finally broke the four second silence, sounding thin across the void. "But... the quantity is wrong. Please provide recommendations."

The protocol for voice channel usage had been written centuries ago, however this type of communication was still relevant.

"Be specific," Michael replied, his voice flat. "What exactly is the discrepancy? Can you provide a brief for the situation?"

Now his palms were damp, and a surge of stress hormones hit his bloodstream; those four seconds of silence felt like hours. Somewhere out in the orbit, his signal had left Earth, reached the first relay, and had its destination data read. The routing info was modified and broadcasted further, leaping from relay to relay across the vast invisible network in the vast space.

"According to the contract, we were to receive seventeen standard containers," the station officer's voice finally returned. "But there are only four. Furthermore, the logs have been modified in a highly suspicious manner. We've already cross-referenced the data: this is our entire cargo allocation from the crawler for this cycle. The crawler's manifest explicitly called for seventeen containers; the loading reports confirm all seventeen were present at the point of origin. However, every subsequent checkpoint log only accounts for four."

It was a dangerous game to move unaccounted cargo. At this stage, smuggling was a pinnacle of high tech subversion -- something only the largest commercial or organisational structures could afford. But this time, it seemed the smuggler themselves had been outplayed.

Usually, to lower insurance premiums, every spacefaring container was equipped with a beacon to broadcast its location and vital internal parameters. This provided total control and made clandestine transport nearly impossible. The complicating factor was the Tyflos cargo agreement with the Outer System: the internals of their containers could not be scanned by standard means. It was a centuries old pact of mutual interest, a form of high stakes gambling where any Cluster might wait years for a shipment, only to risk it being empty. The trust in the agreement had always been stronger than the need for intrusive monitoring -- until now.

"Move all of them to the farthest section of the station," Michael replied quickly. "Do not check the contents. Await further orders and recommendations."

"Lock down the station and maintain communication silence," he added. "The next communication window should be opened in two hours."

The turn of events was deeply alarming. The incident on the habitat had been merely the first spark in a rapidly expanding chain. He closed the communication channel, picked up a pen, and leaned back in his chair, the weight of the situation settling over him.

He didn’t hesitate; he sent an instinctive, high-priority summons to the rest of the board: "An urgent meeting in forty minutes. All members of the directorate must be present. The last delivery contract is flawed."

He had thirty minutes left to think -- only thirty minutes to find a way to explain a flawed contract without admitting his operations had lost control of seventeen containers of Outer System cargo.

***

John Berg was distracted by the arrival of a new report and a high-priority investigation request. He hadn't held this senior investigator position for long; the company was a newcomer to the industry, carving out a specific niche by covering the blind zones of deep space and monitoring data traffic during cargo loading procedures. Operating under the Belgian Protectorate of the French Cluster, the company largely functioned as a specialised contractor for the established insurance giants.

In a role like this, one would expect a quiet, predictable, and mostly boring career. Most of the Inner Solar System was considered well known -- or at least, that was the prevailing consensus. An enormous network of communication relays covered the majority of the sector's space, while the gaps were filled by listening posts that drilled into the emptiness with electromagnetic signals of different frequencies, tracking the movement of asteroids, crawlers, tugs, and anything else adrift in the vast area.

Strict navigation regulations and the sheer rarity of incidents had made space travel so routine that the listening posts surplus time was often rented out to scientific organisations, represented as an inter-Cluster Circles. It was a convenient arrangement: by linking the array of posts, researchers could create a virtual radio telescope of staggering proportions using aperture synthesis. Consequently, John Berg spent most of his days buried in the paperwork of these contracts, managing regulations and overseeing the flow of research data.

But the new report appearing on his terminal didn't look like a routine scientific or investigation request.

He hadn't expected anything unusual today and had grown quite used to the predictable rhythm of the office. To him, this new investigation request felt like a punishment for the long stretch of calm he'd enjoyed in the role. Fortunately, it wasn't marked with an urgent tag, which meant it could either be offloaded to someone else or at least handled at a leisurely pace.

The report summary contained a data link to an anomaly: a period of weird, unreported communication activity. While the space tug's sudden route change had been technically authorised, the owner had curiously failed to file any claim with the insurance company. For a moment, John considered a technical glitch at one of the listening posts, but the reporting officer had been observant enough to rule out hardware failure.

It fell into a different category of unusual altogether.

John’s mind drifted back to a transportation safety conference held recently on one of the orbital habitats. It had been a gruelling, multi-day affair, but he had met a cadre of communication experts there whose insights had been invaluable. They had helped him resolve several cases involving uncommon signal activity in the past.

A solution sparked in his head: "allocate the budget with the company and hire those experts again. What a wonderful deal."

In the Belgian Protectorate, arranging costs and external contracts was rarely a fast process, but this was an exception. To his frustration, his request for expert consultation was rejected because there were no active claims from the customer side. Despite the rejection, the protocol stated the investigation had to continue -- meaning more paperwork for him and no expert help. His mood shifted toward the somber; he locked his workstation terminal and headed out for a smoke.

Descending in the elevator, John Berg brooded over the weight of responsibility this case carried. Most of the regulations for transportation -- all terrestrial, orbital and space -- had been forged centuries ago. Every incident, no matter how minor, was subjected to a gruelling investigation; it made no difference if it was a crushed bumper or a habitat breach.

With the human population swelling to such enormous numbers, life had become a meticulously regulated machine. When the national governments fell, these regulations were elevated to absolute law for everyone, everywhere. Society had taken an unexpected turn along the way: a paradoxical mixture of cold-blooded technocracy, aggressive free commerce, and a near-religious privacy cult. It was a social structure that would have shattered the minds of ancient philosophers and politicians alike.

The elevator doors hissed open, and a cold, wet breeze slapped John’s face. He stepped out and smoked quickly, his fingers trembling with a nervous energy, until a specific name surfaced from the depths of his memory.

He recalled the final, boring days of that last conference. Having grown tired of the lectures, he had sought refuge in a local pub. It was there he had met a man from a transport investigation agency.

"That guy was obsessed with technical weirdness," John remembered.

"Adrian Porinen. Yes, he's exactly the type who would find this intriguing." He finally concluded.

John and Adrian were very different men, but they shared one vital commonality that had sustained their long-distance friendship: a mutual appreciation for good old pubs and better ales.

It had been a few years since their last meeting. John flicked his cigarette away and pulled out his terminal. He decided to reach out, sending a brief, tentative message:

"Hi Adrian, I’ve been assigned to a case that might be of interest to you. I hope this finds you well. Regards, John."

He waited a minute, then pasted the technical summary from the report and hit send.