Pax Galactica - A Space Opera

Chapter 28 - "We Put The Stars... In Your Pocket(TM)(GRX)(7YF)"

"Hello Sam-Sam," said Ophelia.

"Ophelia," said Decker, nodding.

"You're to call him Squire Decker," Aranarth corrected. "And you, squire, use her last name."

Decker still didn't know Ophelia's last name.

"Oh no," said Helios. "If Dane's squire has an embarrassing nickname you are to refer to him by that exclusively. That's an order."

Ophelia laughed. "Aye aye."

"It's a direct legal order."

"Fine," said Aranarth. "I fundamentally do not care. We're going to need four cover identities to get on Synergy Station."

"Don't act like you don't know I already have that taken care of. We're traders from the outer colonies. Draco Belt, to be precise, but let's try to keep the accents tasteful. They just turned on a new orbital antimatter refinery and everyone knows it. So we're going to come offering to trade weapons grade antilithium for refined calcutronium."

"Refined calcultronium?" asked Aranarth.

"It's slightly modified computronium that's come out the other end of a marketing AI. I think it's lighter and less powerful but functionally the same thing. It's not exactly easy to manufacture but Saturn Starlifting makes a lot of it. Trading it for antilithium is just interesting enough to get us on the station but not interesting enough to get a lot of extra scrutiny."

"We're not actually going to give them antimatter, though, right?" asked Decker.

"We're not going to give it to them but we're going to bring a sample," said Helios. "People aren't just going to take you at your word that you have weapons grade antilithium. It's the most important element of the costume."

"What if they use it to make an antimatter weapon?" asked Decker.

Helios laughed.

"Squires. Do you think Saturn Starlifting doesn't have massive stockpiles of antimatter of all kinds? If there was anything they thought needed annihilating utterly with antimatter, trust me, it would be done already. We're not hurting anyone doing this."

"You put all this together in the time it took us to fly over here?" asked Aranarth, amazed.

"I even have a bunch of drab outer colony-style clothes ready," said Helios, with a hint of pride. "Now let's get into costume and then load up into the Angel Baby. Only nobody touch any of the controls with your grubby hands. The analog controls."

"The ship's name isn't actually going to be Angel Baby is it?" asked Ophelia. "I thought that was a joke."

"It's both," said Helios.

* * *

The Angel Baby hitched a ride through hyperspace with a larger ship to a system with an active wormhole router. Taking a deliberately circuitous route so as to confound even the most advanced hyperspatial tracking they eventually came out of the router connecting the the Lalande system, deep in the heart of human space.

Here the fully enclosed three-ring Syngery Station orbited a cold red dwarf star. Unlike a typical human-style orbital no part of Synergy Station was open to the naked sky. It was a fully regulated artificial environment.

The outer ring was something of a galactic market, where all kinds of human-manufactured goods were available for trade with the galaxy at large. The inner rings were a secured corporate office overseeing the market, accessible only by sufficiently high ranking employees.