THE PRIVATEERS: Letters of Marque
Signing a contract to build a faster-than-light drive is one thing. Actually building it is something completely different.
A delegation from Qefa arrives shortly after the Compact is signed. It’s supposedly a government audit. Sela Orvak aboard Haza Corfu is straightforward in her requests for documentation and her ongoing evaluation.
Time is the enemy for the contractors as well as the auditors. Two sides working in concert toward wildly divergent goals.
Derick Rogers, technical lead at Shackleton Station has the immense task of building the Heim-Dröscher FTL drive before the audit is complete. One year to build something that never existed in human history based on theory with the help of one alien who knows how the engineering works.
A completed drive supersedes the audit and almost guarantees the Compact is sound. Orvak wants to see the Humans fail. Rogers wants to succeed because he sees the possibilities.
The math adds up until the variables become overwhelming, especially after the shooting starts. Rogers is in over his head at the front of a pending intergalactic fight for primacy that started with a simple commercial contract.
Read Merchants of Light #2 today, a hard science fiction novel where math and engineering merge with the interstellar commerce. Will the Humans survive Capan law and Capan governmental oversight?