3.8 Signal
Talking to Tasser wasn’t as simple as dialing a phone number. Even if we weren’t worried about our messages being intercepted, it was still talking with someone on another planet.
No, getting a hold of Tasser, especially without tipping off the Vorak, took jumping through a few very convoluted hoops.
As the name suggested, High Harbor boasted one of the largest spaceports ever built. Or rather, it boasted two of them, the civilian freight yard in the city and the military spaceport on the Coalition base itself. The strongest competitor in this star system was Glatten Island back on Yawhere.
High Harbor’s interplanetary freight system was a thing of beauty to behold, and yet another unexpected area of human overlap. A swarm of local workers used distinctly alien, but still familiar looking cranes and forklifts to move thousands of corrugated metal containers all over shipping yards the size of a small national park.
But Nai and I were not interested in the fascinating logistic subtleties that went into moving so much freight.
What we were interested in today was borrowing…well not ‘their’ broadcasting equipment, but broadcasting equipment that sure looked like it was theirs.
In the process of being the single largest port in the star system, they also did more interplanetary broadcasting than anyone.
Broadcasting between planets got dicey very quickly. Even if the planets were on the same side of their star, even if they had absolutely nothing between them to interfere with broadcasts, it would still be a nightmare and a half.
Accounting for the speed of light alone turned sending an email into a wickedly difficult game of darts. Where the dartboards were all so far away that aiming by sight was useless. Math, glorious math, was the only way to calculate how to aim your signals.
I was good at math back on Earth, but psionic tools made me fast at math.
“Elevation?” Nai asked.
“Six three one one four two zero three,” I replied, a bit sloppily. I hadn’t mentioned our units.
“I wasn’t asking you,” she frowned.
“Waiting…six three one one—he’s right,” Deg said.
“Hush,” Nai said. “Don’t encourage him.”
“Sorry.” Deg was apologetic but also maybe a little impatient. He was the only Farnata among my bodyguard rotation, and the one I’d spent the least time with. So he didn’t necessarily know why my numbers weren’t reliable.
“Double confirm with Nai anyway,” I said. “I can do the math faster than your computers, but I don’t actually know how to use any of the information.”
“Frequency modulation and…rotary coefficient? Do I have that right?” she asked Deg out loud.
Deg was not Adept, but he did have an impressive level of general knowledge. Nai hadn’t been kidding about Farnata education. He was tapping away at the steamer trunk-sized excuse of ‘portable’ computer we’d brought with us from the base. At least local gravity made it lighter. He was double checking all the settings and equipment positions we needed beforehand while Nai was manning the freight yard’s broadcasting machinery.
It was virtually identical to dozens of broadcasting hubs that routed signals all over Lakandt and even the other Paris moons.
At a glance, we were trespassing, hence keeping Nikrim on watch duty. If anyone actually did disturb us, we technically were allowed to be here. But it was just…better if fewer people were aware. Militaries kept secrets even from their own civilians, so we’d been told to uphold the illusion that this was an ordinary fixture of interplanetary shipping rather than a sporadically used Coalition comm facility.
Sporadically, because there were a lot of obstacles that, when combined with the massive distance at which the planet orbited, blocked the signals from this station’s particular satellite. Almost a third of the time, Yawhere and Harrogate would be obscured by the star, its corona, or even Paris itself.
But Deg and Nai’s superior technical knowledge, coordinating with the Archo chapter of the Coalition, had devised a very sketchy way to get in contact. The method was known, if convoluted, but implementing it required more legwork than was usually worthwhile.
No broadcast in space actually travelled in a straight line. Even ordinary broadcasts would go from the ground to a satellite to another satellite then finally back to the ground of whatever planet or moon you were messaging.
We were adding a step. Sometimes, in that middle leg, you would need to add a third intermediate satellite. That way your signal could reach its way around big inconvenient obstructions like stars or gas giants. But that middle step was usually exactly that, a proper satellite capable of receiving the signal whole, processing it, and then rebroadcasting it on its new vector.
But the Coalition had a horribly less reliable variant that was, at least, much harder to detect.
Instead of a satellite, you could technically accomplish the same thing with a very well positioned ballpark-sized mirror sitting out in the middle of some aimless orbit.
It made the math a lot more complicated though.
So instead of broadcasting from the Coalition base’s harbor, we’d hunted down the one comm station that had its equipment already set up to aim at just such a mirror.
But there was still work to do.
“No, our result vector needs to be…seven two six three two two degrees off the plane,” Nai pointed out. “Check the calculation again, you changed the wrong axis.”
“Right, right,” Deg said, tapping away again. “…Wait, stellar plane or planetary?”
We’d been sitting in the broadcasting room for more than three hours now, but I was patient even without the diversions I had access to in my head. I could only hope Tasser was similarly fortunate.
We had a time window that wouldn’t arrive for another four hours, but the sooner we were set up properly, the better I’d feel. Every adjustment instruction we sent to the mirror’s alignment system would take almost an hour.
Seven hours were allotted to have everything ready to go. I’d thought that figure had been overkill at first.
Tasser, Nemuleki, Corphica, Wurshken, and more, were stuck on Archo. Archo was firmly under Red Sails occupation. And monitoring communications was near the top of the laundry list of any occupying military force.
It meant that as janky as our setup was, theirs was even more so. But this wasn’t the first time we’d managed to trade messages with them, and all of our correspondence traded information on where and when to aim the signal for next time too.
“Alright, confirm the attitude and pitch,” Nai said.
“Fourteen point three nine nine six,” I said.
“He’s right,” Deg confirmed. “Fourteen point three nine nine six two.”
“I said ‘ and pitch’,” Nai huffed.
“Two point seven zero one zero four!” Deg read, before I beat him to it.
“Thank you,” Nai said, heaving a sigh of relief. We were set up. “That matches what I have, so now we’re just waiting on our window.”
Broadcasting between planets had a significant lightspeed delay. After we sent a message, it would be more than an hour before our signal actually reached Archo for them to read and vice versa. We would have to wait the same amount of time to receive their response.
It was another two hours before our broadcasting window would line up, so in that time, Nai and I went over the contents of the messages we were going to be sending Tasser and company.
Our broadcasting window would be open for several hours, but if we had to wait until we heard a response every time, we’d only trade one or two messages.
There was a workaround though. Just have multiple conversations simultaneously.
We would broadcast in bursts, addressing different topics preemptively so by the time we received their response to the first topic, we’d have just finished sending something completely different.
Topic one was a miscellaneous mail call. Dozens of soldiers and civilians on Lakandt knew people in the clandestine Archo chapter of the Coalition, and all of them had things they wanted to say that wouldn’t reach their friends or family through conventional channels.
It doubled as a control broadcast. The first thing they sent us would be similar, and that way we could confirm our relay setup was working properly.
Topic two was Nai’s: Hello Tasser, Nemuleki, Corphica, and friends. We hope you’re keeping away from the Vorak. Caleb and I are doing fine. He got to meet Tiv, and he made an agreement with Laranta to share psionics with our troops. Nora is still unconscious, but also alive, so no updates on that front yet. Serralinitus is working to find a new way to get personnel off Archo, but its slow going. The Admiral approved some additional resources to support the ones who didn’t make it out of Cirinsko. It might be difficult to access, but in Inkarsi colony, pod 2, there’s a bank near the southwest side. An account there has funds available for you to utilize, account number 11451. Tasser, Nemuleki, Wol, and Persak’s names should all be valid. Next topic will be classified for Tasser & Nemuleki’s awareness only. Signed, Nai Cal-Yan-Ti
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
Some words of encouragement from someone like Nai went a long way for morale. I hadn’t heard about the cash beforehand. What did Casti soldiers buy for fun?
Topic 3: Tasser and Nemuleki, you both, part of the Coalition’s agreement with Caleb for psionics involves dedicated significantly more resources toward locating both his homeworld and the other abductees. Nora was in the custody of a Vorak Adept named ‘Halax’ before she was evacuated with Caleb. They were trying to get in custody with Red Sails Marshal’s Adjutant Tox Frebi. Given this, we believe the other Human abductees are in Marshal Tispas’s custody, or one of his direct subordinates. If Halax was trying to reach Tox with Nora, it seems reasonable to think that Tox might be willing to assist efforts to remove those Humans from Tispas’s custody. Serralinitus has been unable to contact Tox since Cirinsko. We think it’s possible that Tox, Halax, the Humans, or the starships they were abducted on are somewhere on Archo. You are hereby formally authorized to contact Tox or Halax, and otherwise attempt to find someway to gain information about the abductees. Reply with questions and details. Signed, Nai Cal-Yan-Ti & certified by Nosoth Ki’Tham Laranta.
We had a list of messages to broadcast in order, most of them general Coalition discussion, tactical information, advice and warnings. That sort of thing. It was slow going, with long stretches of sitting idle between messages, but topics four and five went smoothly and in the middle of broadcasting topic five, we finally started receiving their replies.
Just like ours, their first topic was miscellaneous messages from the soldiers on Archo. But their second transmission was a response to our second. Text rolled across the screen of Nai’s console, reading:
Topic 2-response a: It’s good to hear we haven’t been forgotten. Sorry to hear about Nora the Human, but we’re glad something good came from that operation. We have some prospective options to get off Archo too, enclosed is a list of ships and their proprietors, mostly from Apegan colony. If HQ could evaluate them and reply which ones are reputable enough to trust getting off this rock, we might get some of ourselves home. Thank you for the financial aid, we can swing through Inkarsi this coming week, then sneak our way toward Apegan. Standing by for classified topic. Signed Mu-Rahi Wol Fin-Shur-Ti.
Attached to the message was a long string of ship names and owners in plain text form.
“Caleb,” Nai snapped, “record those names and send them to Ase Serralinitus. We might be able to evaluate them and give them an answer today rather than waiting for the next broadcast window.”
Serral was still back on base but still reachable psionically.
I pushed him a document with the dozen or so names. It was a little risky pushing a document over this great a distance, but I could manage it. Attaching it to the signals we were exchanging kept it stable enough to reach. Imparting psionics to my bodyguard contingent had given me the opportunity to upgrade the transceiver.
“Serral’s working on the list,” I said.
“
“He said he’d get us a timeframe soon,” I said.
Serral repeated to her.
Their messages would be arriving in sequence now, and we would have to figure out which ones to spend our time devising responses too.
Topic 3-response a: Tasser here. Adjutant Tox is on Archo. We aren’t sure where now, but he was in Cirinsko two weeks ago. Nothing concrete, but he seems to still be on the hunt for Caleb, or maybe Nora.
Now Nemuleki here, we haven’t had the most opportunities to spy on the Vorak, but it wouldn’t be impossible for us to leave a message for the Vorak. The only trouble is, there’s no way rak besides Tox wouldn’t see it.
Tasser again, I’ve been told once again to thank Caleb on behalf of all of us—and maybe now the whole Coalition—because the psionics he gave us before have been invaluable. Sorry we couldn’t ask for permission, but we shared the basic ones with Wol and he managed to reproduce them with some difficulty. But they’re giving us a huge edge in keeping the Vorak off our trail. Standing by for topic 4 response a.
Nai and I scrambled to get our reply sent. With the delay, there were only so many times we could trade messages.
Topic 3-response b: This is Caleb. Cool to hear about the psionics you’re doing. Don’t worry about permission, the agreement I have with Laranta isn’t that strict. Keep your receivers open the next few weeks though, Nai, Tiv, and I are going to try interplanetary psionics soon, and its unlikely but you might pick up a signal we send. Who knows? As for Tox, I have some text I can't broadcast with this machine, so standby to receive a digital image. It’s a message written in English: the Vorak that was with Nora should be able to read it. It won’t matter which Vorak besides Tox see the message if none of them know what it says. If you can get the message to Tox, then we might be able to rescue the other Humans the Vorak have got.
This is Nai, stand by for topic 4 response b.
Each message was long. It wasn’t a real conversation, in fact, according to Nai, the most efficient version of these transmissions tried to predict responses before you actually received them. Both sides tried to talk for each other, and just corrected each other wherever they went wrong.
Still, there was a lot of downtime between broadcasts.
“How big is the Coalition’s Archo chapter?” I asked Nai.
“Depends on who you count,” she said. “In terms of official soldiers? Maybe a few hundred? But they’re scattered. There’s probably more than ten times that number in support though. Civilians from all over lend their help in small ways. Storing supplies in a garage, delivering food, even finding personnel places to sleep or work.”
“This almost sounds like an underground resistance,” I said.
“It’s a moon,” she replied. “Half of everything is underground.”
Hah.
“I meant that it’s more like a secret club, or spy group rather than an organized army.”
“We’re five years into a furfish occupation,” she shrugged. “It is an insurgency.”
“I’m imaging Tasser wearing a fake [mustache] trying to get past some Vorak checkpoint,” I chuckled.
“[Mustache]?” Nai asked.
“It’s like… hair that grows on your face,” I gestured. Come to think of it, I really needed to shave.
“Yeah, we don’t have that.”
“I know, but there’s a joke on Earth where a [mustache] and glasses being used to make a really crappy disguise, but then it works anyway…never mind.”
It was fun idle conversation, but soon enough the other topic responses came in and Nai and Deg were occupied formulating responses to Coalition matters I wasn’t involved in. Dropping supplies onto the moon’s surface, updating lists of active personnel, who’d been captured, whose release was being negotiated.
I didn’t have many glimpses at standard operating procedure for the Coalition, so I felt a little privileged to be trusted with this kind of information, even if tangentially.
But the four of us were handling this broadcast instead of normal Coalition communication technicians for very specific reasons. This was about humans, so it was eyes only.
Soon enough, the message rotation made its way around.
Topic 3-response c: Tasser again. Message received. I recognize the English too. If need be, are Nemuleki and I authorized to speak with Tox directly? Or do we not want the Red Sails knowing what I know? In case of the former, speaking with Tox in person would likely result in my capture, even if Tox was playing nice. The schism in the Red Sails is oddly sporadic. There’s been rumors of live-fire infighting on some spots on Archo. HQ already has those reports. In the event we should keep our distance from Tox, are there any specifics we should convey? Contact methods or warnings? Also, understood about the psionic broadcasts. We’ll keep our eyes open for that. Caleb, I can’t wait for you to see some of what we’ve done with psionics. You’ll get a hoot from it.
Wol now. I’m not privy to the specifics of what Tasser and Nemuleki have received, but I’m the Adept working with them on these psionics. I’d appreciate any information Caleb can spare about them. The transceiver units have been invaluable in protecting our local communications. Sten Ramor was livid when we slipped out of Cirinsko. But the longer we use them, the more they degrade. I’ve managed to reproduce them, so we can maintain what we have, but I really don’t understand what’s being done here well enough to take it much further. Are psionics…
Wol’s message continued on for some time, asking a number of psionic questions I could only partially answer.
Our topics were being closed off as we exchanged information. Toward the end of our broadcasting window, we would be sending and receiving information simultaneously as we were forced to communicate up against the deadline.
Serral sent me.
This was going to be our last broadcast, so we wouldn’t get to hear a direct response. Nai and I hurried while we formulated exactly what we needed to tell them.
“Your cut off is coming,” Deg warned. “We need to get ready to send the next contact timing.”
With just a few minutes to spare, we finished typing up our final response to Tasser.
Topic 3-response d: Nai, relaying Ase Serralinitus: avoid contacting Tox directly. Spread the English far and wide, if Halax doesn’t see it, and he isn’t with Tox? Then we’ll figure out what to do afterwards, but right now our biggest strength is that the Vorak don’t know how much we know about Caleb and the Humans. For all they know, Nora is awake and telling us everything. I repeat, keep your distance from Tox and any other Red Sails rak. Serralinitus evaluated the list, and you have two options: the Balance Pale and the Perilous. All the others were no good. Especially watch out for whoever suggested the ship called Dusk. That one was flagged as a Vorak trap.
Caleb dictating here, Nai is typing. Wol, thanks for putting up with Tasser for Nai and me. Make sure he’s getting enough water and sunlight, or else he wilts. Kidding. Psionically, there isn’t too much to tell, but I’ll do my best. Nai and I are workshopping a theory right now that psionics might be a form of abstract matter. It’s not this simple, but the theory right now is that they persist for exactly zero time, contrasting with acute and momentary Adept creations. But the underlying principle is still Adeptry, I think. It’s just a form of matter that’s extremely responsive to thoughts and intentions. I’ve had lots of success using personalized metaphors to define psionic constructs. Mental pieces of paper with writing on them to preserve information, I’ve imagined a camera and used it to capture images of what I’m looking at. The better you understand the metaphor of the thing you're making, the better you understand what it’s supposed to do and how it does that, the better the psionic construct will be. Don’t forget that psionics can affect themselves, so if your first try seems like a dud, don’t just scrap it. Try making a different tool to modify, repair, or otherwise affect the first one. Just make sure everyone understands how to expel psionics from their own mind if necessary. Tasser says you haven’t had any big side effects yet, but that indicates to me that if anything does go wrong, it’s going to sneak up on you. In that event, just dump whatever you even think might be part of the problem.
Nemuleki, Corphica, Wurshken, Adden, Grami, and the rest of the Green Complex crew, I hope you guys are alright.
“That’s it?” I asked.
Nai leaned back from the console as soon as we hit ‘send’. “We’re going to wait for a signal confirmation from the reflector module, but yes. That’s it.”
“So what now? Throwing a bunch of English all over Archo isn’t subtle, but it might still be a while before Tox decides to actually try talking to us, and that’s assuming he even has Halax to tell him what the message means.”
“It could be a while,” Nai agreed. “But this isn’t the only idea we had. Stay patient.”
We stayed in the communication room until Nai’s console beeped with an alert. Our last message had made it to the mirror and was now hurtling toward Archo at lightspeed.
It wasn’t much, but it felt like progress.