Quantum Shift
by RJGlynn
Rattling gloom. The whine of poorly tuned engines, a decrepit cargo hauler's quantum-pulse drive priming for intersystem jump out of Consortium Space.
Enforcement Inspector Church Tyrell unfolded her long, armored limbs from the hull access duct she'd just stealth docked with and breached. She flowed into a crouch, her spacesuit's boots hitting scarred deck plates, her dark form merging with the shadows around her. Resting gloved fingertips on corroded metal, she scanned the cable-festooned spaceship corridor she'd infiltrated—that of a pre-liberation Federation Oxen freighter, a once state-of-the-art craft.
Now, an inglorious trash hauler.
Exposed by broken bulkheads, retrofitted systems tangled with crudely mended ones. A rodent's nest of illegal and uncertified tech.
Church curled her lip in the humid confines of her helmet. The ship, the unenviably named Shakey Caboose, was typical of Uraturn's rundown civilian fleet. The trade settlement was an economic jewel in the Consortium's collection of manufacturing planets, but sixty years had passed since the agritech world's divestment from the Star Federation. In its three-hundred-year reign, the science-worshiping Federation had gifted humanity many miracles. Their quantum-pulse Collapsing-Origin Vector-Inflection Drives—COVIDs—like the one whining fifty meters aft of her, had been a space-time–warping phenomenon that'd swept humankind to the edges of the galaxy. But Consortium resource-rationalization laws now restricted sci-tech education to those approved for the extra expenditure. The magic of the Federation's inventions had faded, leaving frayed wires and flashing system errors, malfunctions few knew how to fix.
At least, among the Common citizenry.
Church snarled at the neglected tech around her. If there was one thing she could not abide, it was waste—squandered potential. Why obtain something capable of miraculous feats only to disrespect it and use it for the mundane?
And the Shakey Caboose wasn't the only thing that deserved better treatment. She was Guardian class, her implanted neurotech and education superior to those of the Common, those grown en masse in worker-level farms. Three months ago, after five brutally competitive years of specialist training, she'd graduated top of her class. And yet, this was her assignment: conducting inefficient random cargo checks on vessels passing through Orbital 9, Uraturn's outermost spaceport.
Well, frakk that shit.
Because this check wasn't random.
Church's lips twisted upward, anticipation burning away confused frustration. Enforcement Overwatch had been short-sighted in assigning her a junior Trade Regulation and Customs role. She'd majored in Intel and Infiltration. She wasn't about to spend her time collecting overdue taxes and issuing fines to Common goods haulers. It'd had only taken her an hour of data scraping and trend analysis to detect a real crime.
One of the worst in Consortium Space.
She rose to her full height. One point nine meters—every centimeter of ebony skin within her armored suit polished; every muscle lean and honed. Testimony to her training and general all-round superiority to her pitiful prey. It'd been child's play for her to hack into the freighter's dilapidated systems and board undetected. The ship might have once had impressive artificial-intelligence firewalls and a breach-detection system to alert its crew to any unauthorized contact with the hull, but all that beautiful, clever Federation tech had been left to fray and glitch.
Typical Common incompetence.
Church unclipped her Ooorah's Special from her hip; flicked the volt pistol's stun setting to '2': temporary but nerve-searing immobilization. She'd introduce this crew to the only tech they were worthy of: Enforcement stunner and immobilizer cuffs.
She moved to the end of the corridor, to where faded yellow paint indicated the direction of the cargo hold.
Twenty meters to her goal—to the evidence she needed to prove guilt.
And, with it, her value to the Consortium.
Inside her helmet's face shield, intercepted data and ship security feeds flickered on her HUD. The heads-up display images revealed her targets and their locations—the closest, an elderly woman in the cable-strung rat's nest of Engineering. A filthy grey flight suit hung off a body bent with an osteoporotic stoop. Relying on thick corrective goggles, the white-haired engineer scowled at flashing drive warnings, yet to comprehend that a system hack suppressed the jump capacitors.
Church vetoed a confrontation. The woman carried no obvious weapons and her health status appeared to be a notch up from dead.
The rest of the crew sat strapped in for quantum jump on the ship's bridge. A pimple-spotted teen, gaunt enough to be a skeleton, hunched in the pilot's seat, eyes on the main viewscreen, its fluctuating drive stats. Perspiration beaded his brow. His chest rose and fell—shallow, fast. As threats went, he looked more likely to faint than fight.
In contrast, his long-legged captain reclined beside him, one tapered finger tapping beside her chair's armrest controls. Overly lean and clad in the same grimy uniform as her crewmates, she should've looked as pathetic, yet she appeared defiantly vivid on the camera image. Cropped poppy red hair. Gleaming gold eyes edged with dark ink. If there was any real threat on the vessel, she was it: wiry one-meter-eighty frame, an illegal electroblaster at one hip, and a cool sensuality designed to distract, if not outright dismantle brain cells.
The only other entity active onboard clunked about in the gloom of the cargo hold: a squat yellow GG9 loader bot supervising the ship's highly suspicious cargo.
Rows of large grey cylinders. Racked and stacked five high and strung with makeshift piping and monitoring equipment.
Eyes narrowing on that intercepted image, Church sidled up to the hold's hatch where it rattled in its track, protesting the ship's untuned engines. The Shakey Caboose's manifest and jump permit claimed the ship was delivering "locally unrecyclable" class U1 waste to Carmine Cross, an unaffiliated free-trade settlement outside of Consortium Space. But her data analyses had found an anomaly in the crew's supply ordering.
Extra oxygen. Way too much for a three-person crew.
Church eyed the racks of cylinders imaged on her HUD—the cargo jolting and shuddering beyond the door right beside her. Her pulse quickened, her educated hunch now a near certainty. Class U1 refuse, usually contaminated metals and polymers, did not need life-support pods.
Labor-unit theft. Church exposed her teeth, fingers tightening on her pistol. In trafficking their fellow citizens for profit, this crew had become traitors to the Consortium—economic parasites. And the ungrateful Common workers who no doubt made up their cargo were as good as thieves as well. The Consortium invested fifteen years of subsidized food, shelter, and education into every Common citizen. At age fifteen, every one of them had a duty to start repaying that debt. Only after no fewer than forty years of labor were they free to live life as they pleased.
But some tried to escape their obligations. And there were plenty of vultures outside Consortium Space more than ready to take advantage, happy to profit from workers someone else had paid to raise and educate.
Swallowing dark words, Church watched the battered cargo bot clomp into the shadows of a recharge alcove, stowing itself for quantum shift—a jump that would not happen. The Shakey Caboose's thieving crew would be wearing prison pink and 'skimming the green' in one of Uraturn's sprawling algae biofuel farms by the end of her shift. Take the Consortium's property, become the Consortium's property—for life, not just forty years.
Or sixty.
Church stifled a wince; forced up a sneer. Her Guardian-level debt might be larger, her education more expensive and extensive, but she'd soon be paying it back at double her current rate. With the number of life-support pods racked in the hold just meters from her, Enforcement Overwatch would gratefully grant her transfer request. Tomorrow, she'd clock in at Central Command and start using her talents to their full value, rather than wasting them on cargo infractions.
Applying those overlooked talents now, she suppressed the hold's hatch alert with a simple neurotech command and inched the rattling door open. Deactivating the cargo bay's automatic sensor lights, she slipped into the gloom, a silent shadow. Pure child's play, the Shakey Caboose's internal systems hers to toy with.
Her next plaything—the loader—stood unmoving in its recharge alcove, a dull, dented hulk.
Ducking down behind the first rack of life-support pods, avoiding the glossy stares of security cameras, Church aimed her hacking tools at the robot. As her infinitely more sophisticated tech went to work, she tuned into the voices crackling over her helmet's audio: the internal comms she'd already compromised.
"Captain, the quantum drive's being a sluggish bitch," the aged engineer rasped, the decades of hard living and pain-med abuse detailed in her citizen file evident in her voice. "There's a glitch in the regulator, hobbling the charge rate. Will be another ten to fifteen to reach jump capacity."
"That's cutting things a tad fine, Blink, darling." On the bridge security feed, the ship's cool-eyed captain scanned the drive stats from her slouched position in the co-pilot seat. "We've twenty minutes until our assigned jump window closes, and we're unlikely to get another for twenty-four hours." She smoothed her seat harness, revealing faint nerves or impatience. The move also artfully drew attention to a low-riding jumpsuit zipper and the profitable assets that'd allowed the woman to purchase her ship and trade license. Captain Harli Despard had given up a lucrative corporate hostess gig to haul trash. Another red flag over the crew.
And, in Church's opinion, a waste of talent. Two hundred credits for thirty minutes of intelligent but flirtatious conversation over cocktails? There was something about Despard that made that seem like a bargain.
"Bitch ain't looking to hold a charge." The engineer thumped her monitoring station. "Might have to reschedule, Captain."
"That right?" On the bridge's camera feed, Despard remained reclined, gold eyes half closed, her lips lifting in a coy smile. "Well, that's a pity, darling, given the delay will result in at least thirty percent of our cargo spoiling—and, Blink, my sweet, you do understand what I mean by 'spoil,' don't you?"
Church scanned the hold—the life-support pods racked five high in the semi-darkness. Given the number, a thirty-percent spoilage rate would mean the loss of over fifty units. A major loss of profits for the crew. But a loss of life for those they trafficked.
The aged engineer grunted and peered closer at the drive settings before her, her bloodshot eyes magnified behind her goggles. "I'll goose the charge, see if that gets her moving."
"You do that, darling." On those drawled words, Despard tapped her armrest controls, switching her comms to the cargo bay. "Gigi, my sweet, is our cargo secured for jump?"
"Affirmative, Captain," a smooth feminine voice answered, not the standard electronic twang of a GG9 loader. Whether for nostalgia or because the cannibalized parts of a former robotic assistant had been available, the cargo bot had had its voice module replaced with a hostess bot's—no doubt without certification.
Church checked her hack's progress. Five possible system weaknesses IDed. Suppressing a satisfied smile, she selected the security gap with the best odds of gaining her a silent takeover and access to the bot's cargo data.
"Any losses?" Despard's dark tone made the bot's suggestive voice seem innocent. For all her casual sarcasm, the captain appeared to know exactly what she was doing—and risking.
"Sensors indicate optimal storage conditions," the bot purred, its tone suited to planning intimate dinner parties, not the fate of over a hundred people. "No losses so far. However, several containers require close monitoring and adjustment to keep their contents stable."
Despard flicked medical supply stats up onto the bridge's viewscreen. "How long can we maintain optimal conditions with our current supplies?"
"Twenty hours," the GG9 replied. "Twenty-five if a thirty percent loss is acceptable and cargo is prioritized by viability. Diverting the storage resources to units with the highest probability of reaching their destination in a functional state will... Oh—hello." The bot broke off as an alert flashed on Church's HUD. "May I be of assistance?"
Church jolted. AI defense encountered. Her tech had broken through the bot's last firewall but triggered a hidden defensive protocol—code that did not belong in a GG9 loader. Heart hammering, she sent a command to shut the robot down, foregoing any sophisticated takeover.
The loader slumped in its alcove, its unexpected defenses not including a secondary power source.
Sucking in air, Church sharpened her gaze on Despard's nonchalant HUD image—and allowed herself a dark smile. Illegal bot modding would be the cherry on the top of labor unit theft, reckless endangerment of life, and smuggling charges. Goodbye dreary ship inspections, hello commendation and promotion.
"Gigi?" On the bridge, Despard brought the hold's security feed up on her viewscreen. The image showed the unresponsive loader in the near darkness. "Gigi? Report."
The ship's rundown comms system crackled, the old engineer, Blink, linking into the discussion. "Recharging port likely blew a fuse again. Want me to deal with it?"
"No. Your priority is ensuring we make this jump." With cool sensuality, Despard slipped from her seat and turned to the ship's teenage pilot—inspiring an instant blush and a hard swallow. "Mr. Stiks, punch go the second Blink green lights quantum shift. I'll strap down with the cargo, babysit while Gigi is taking her unscheduled nap."
As the long-legged captain sauntered off the bridge, Church felt her own blood quicken. But unlike the teen pilot's simple, immature desires, hers held a far darker edge.
Her prey was coming to her.
And she had less than two minutes to gather the proof she needed.
She swept into action. Firing off a mental command to her tech, she looped the hold's security feed. With the loader shutdown, no one would question the unchanging camera image. Free to move in the darkness, she pushed aside retrofitted tubes to access the nearest life-support pod's monitoring screen—and found exactly what she expected.
An unconscious human wired with old, discolored med sensors. Medical stats overlaid the woman's screen image: heart rate, blood pressure, blood oxygen saturation.
Tapping the screen's control icons, Church brought up an ID: Labor-unit LU8097x, Common citizen Anya Dudge. A query to the Consortium's Labor Database established the 'lunit' to be a former bio-grow worker, one specializing in hydroponics. Current labor status: retired.
Church frowned; peered at the image on the dimly glowing screen. While gaunt and sporting short ashen hair, the woman looked to be in her twenties. Her citizen records confirm that.
A dull ping. Proximity alert.
Church glanced to her HUD—its intercepted view of the ship's central corridor.
No more than a minute and a half before the ship's captain arrived.
Vetoing further inquiries about the unconscious criminal before her, Church shifted to the next pod racked at deck level. Labor unit LU7077x; Cerf Lonnardi, a former sanitation worker. Current status ... retired.
Church swore softly. A raw burn marred the man's face, making his age harder to guess, but his citizen records were clear: Mr. Lonnardi was only twenty-three.
The next two pods followed pattern, their occupants under thirty years of age, yet officially retired.
Adrenaline a buzz in her ears, Church moved to the next pod. This was more than simple lunit theft. Someone had changed these traitorous Commons' employment status to hide their defections. That meant a premeditated, coordinated hack of Consortium databases.
Church's smile came wide and fast. This ass-end port would be in her rear view before the end of her shift.
Heart pounding, she accessed the next pod's monitoring screen ... and felt her stomach dive.
A small, haggard face dotted with healing lesions.
Church fell back a step, her head going light. The buzz in her skull became a numb haze.
She ran her ID queries automatically. Labor unit LU10024x, Sammi Dunn, age three years and four months. Employment status retired.
Church gripped her pistol; fisted her free hand on the pod sustaining the tiny boy. A lunit code assigned to a kid? How? He wasn't even close to employment age. And how could his status be set to 'retired' when he had no employment history?
The system should've flagged those obvious errors.
Shaking her head with a snarl, she straightened. Better question: What kind of person sold children? Unwell children. She didn't need to look up the boy's health records to know he needed medical care. The pod's internal camera revealed a disturbingly clear image.
Diseased, emaciated flesh pulled tight over immature bones.
Church bit back an oath. What would someone want with such a child?
Her stomach lurched at the possibilities.
Rage like nothing she'd felt before blurred her vision. She'd never had parents, and she would never be one. For efficiency, all Consortium citizens were batch grown and raised in group homes. But she now understood a lack of experience did not end human parental instincts.
Shifting her gaze to her pistol's settings, she contemplated turning them up to eleven.
A dull rattle and clank—the hold's hatch opening.
To hell with stealth.
Church had the captain disarmed and pinned against a pod rack—stun pistol to red-haired temple—in under three seconds. Flicking her face shield from opaque to semi-transparent, she ensured her prey saw the promise of death in her eyes. Even on a low setting, a stun bolt delivered directly to the brain would be fatal.
Despard froze, gaze wide, shock and fear replacing cool arrogance.
Church fought the urge to pull the trigger. The Consortium would forgive her disseminating preemptive justice, and if Despard had been just a low-level smuggler, her death would've been no loss. But who had manipulated Consortium databases and how? That traitor needed to be uncovered before Despard could face her sentence.
"Answer quickly or die painfully." Church jammed her pistol harder against the captain's temple. "How exactly will your cargo be 'recycled' outside Consortium Space? And how much are you being paid to sell your own kind—including children?"
Despard's breath shortened, but a gleam of defiance returned to her gaze. "Why? Is the Consortium afraid it'll miss its cut of the resale value of its property?"
Church jolted the woman against the metal rack behind her, aware of every lean, cultivated curve and sickened by them. "The Consortium doesn't profit off human lives."
Despard laughed, low and husky. "They farm us in batch factories and call us 'labor units.' They issue loan contracts to us at birth—as if infants can agree to the terms of their enslavement. Then they set our pay rates. I can do the math. Can't you?"
"You think it unfair they expect a return from what they invest? You and the traitors you smuggle are ungrateful thieves." With a blunt command to her tech, Church ripped open the woman's financial records. Much could be divined from a person's transactions: social and commercial connections. She'd find the captain's co-conspirators.
Data scrolled across her HUD, a screed of bills: ship supplies and repairs; fines for missed work hours and illegally housing a delinquent worker; hundreds of—
Medical bills.
Church's heart skipped. The charges—including one for body disposal—did not carry Despard's name.
Eva Serth. Church searched the dead woman's history; found she had the same infant batch number as Despard—a batch sibling. At age twenty-six, she'd been diagnosed with pneumonia and declared 'retired' that same day, an act that would've removed all medical benefits and worker-accommodation support. For what appeared to be sentiment, Despard had given the woman shelter and taken responsibility for her debt.
She'd taken on the bad investment the Consortium had written off.
Staring down into Despard's mutinous gaze, Church felt her stomach sink to the hold's deck. The ship's human cargo... The child with lesions. The man with a fresh burn on his face.
She suddenly understood who had changed their employment status.
"Captain!" The hold's comm screeched to life, transmitting a panicked young voice—the pilot's. "The Port Master's threatening to cancel our jump window. Says if we ain't capable of using it within the next thirty seconds, we'll have to report for a full trade review and ship inspection."
Despard tried to break free. Church asserted her hold, gaze drilling down into fearful gold eyes. Labor unit theft. A high-volume smuggling operation. Harli Despard might resent the Consortium for holding her and those she cared for to their citizen debt, but paying it off would no longer be a problem, because the rest of her life—along with the lives of her crew and cargo—would be forfeit. Today, Uraturn's penal algae farms would gain themselves fresh labor, the end date of each worker's contract the day of their death.
Church bared her teeth, her own future crystallizing bright in her mind. One call to Enforcement Overwatch and she'd be promoted. The time to pay her own debt would be halved—thirty, not sixty years. She'd no longer be stuck mindlessly wasting her life and talent.
And that last was what mattered. Having purpose, her life valued.
Church's smile turned cool. The criminal cargo she'd so cleverly located rattled around her, sick citizens the Consortium had written off. If left free, Despard, a woman seemingly driven by soft feelings, not profit, would transport her cargo beyond Consortium Space, to where lives might be saved—including that of a three-year-old boy. But she'd been caught. Those she'd attempted to rescue were now destined to work 'the green'—or, more likely, feed it, given convicts got little med care. As for Despard, all those worldly wiles and the naive sentiment beneath them... She'd be worked to death within ten years.
Church shook her head. The Consortium had wasted her hard-earned skills on cargo-reg enforcement and was happy to throw away others' whole lives. Oh, yes, she saw her future.
Crystal clear.
Directly linking to the ship's comms, she contacted Orbital 9's Port Master. "Operations, this is Enforcement Officer Tyrell, badge number five zero nine. This vessel is currently under Trade Reg inspection, its jump permission suspended."
"Acknowledged, Enforcement," a harassed voice responded. "Cancelling jump—"
"That won't be necessary," Church interrupted the harried man. "This is a simple matter of cargo misclassification—R1, decommissioned low-value recyclables recorded as U1, 'locally unrecyclable.'" Before her, Despard's jaw dropped in shock, but the determination was only logical. The Consortium could have 'repaired' the labor units on board and put them back to work; instead, it'd retired them and, in doing so, declared them unwanted trash.
Church lowered her pistol; pushed back from Despard stunned stare. "Operations, I've corrected the jump documentation and have issued an infraction notice and fine. The vessel is now cleared for departure."
"Acknowledged, Enforcement." The Port Master's rushed reply was that of a man only interested in keeping his schedule, whatever it took—no curiosity, no questions. Typical Consortium incompetence. "Your efficiency is appreciated. Vessel, your jump window will close in exactly seven minutes. Move it or lose it!" The stressed man severed the comm link, off to deal with the next delinquent vessel.
Despard didn't move; just continued to stare, breath fast, eyes wide.
Church holstered her pistol. "Cargo misclassification is a serious matter, Captain, one that could get your entire operation audited. If you've doubts about any future cargo, I suggest you seek advice." On those cool words, she strode for the exit—but pivoted as she reached the hatch. "You might like to note, my contact details are on the infraction notice."
Waiting only long enough for an elegant eyebrow to arch, she exited without another word.
No goodbyes were needed. She had Despard's 'number,' so to speak, and the captain now had hers. They'd cross paths again, she had no doubt.
Diving through the hatch to her stealth-docked vessel, Church sent the craft the coordinates of her next target: a non-Consortium freighter likely carrying undeclared humanitarian supplies. More illegal, renegade activity her inferior Enforcement colleagues had failed to detect.
Church smiled. Traitors and rebels. Clandestine cargos. She'd trained for this shit. And if the Consortium didn't want to utilize her talents, if it insisted on wasting the potential of its citizens...
As the Shakey Caboose's quantum drive roared up to jump capacity, Church punched the controls for her own wild launch. The next sixty years paying back the Consortium; they'd never looked so good.
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Written for Tevun Krus' 'Return to the M'Verse' Jan 2023 issue. Copyright remains with the author.