“I didn’t know I was meant to me on duty, sir. I had been informed that Midshipman Diaz was to cover the bridge watch for transition.”
Shaking his head, Mitchell said, “Fitzroy again.”
“Lieutenant,” Ikande snapped, “I suggest you keep your thoughts to yourself, rather than inflicting them on the bridge crew. We will maintain a professional attitude at all times. I want that clearly understood.”
“Aye, sir. I apologize.”
Turning to the young man, he said, “Take your station. Midshipman. This time I will excuse your tardiness, given that we are unlikely to require the services of the weapons system while we’re in Martian Orbital Space, but in future I suggest you confirm your shift assignments with your division officer.”
“Yes, sir. I will.”
“He didn’t…,” Thiou began, earning a glare from Ikande.
“Doctor Thiou, you are a guest on this bridge, and will conduct yourself as such. Be grateful that I do not cite you for your improper attire. In future, uniforms are to be worn at all times.” He paused, then in a deeper voice, asked, “Well?”
“Yes, sir. Sorry, sir.”
“On course, Captain,” the helmsman said. “Approaching transit point. Dimensional rift generators are charged and ready.”
“Very good, Petrov.” Tapping a control on his chair, Ikande said, “Engineering, this is the Bridge. What’s the story down there, Chief? All systems go?”
“Khatri here, Captain,” a clipped voice replied. “All decks are ready for hyperspace flight.”
“Thank you.” Glancing at Mitchell, the Captain asked, “Dimensional sensors?”
“All clear. Nothing to report.”
“In that case, Helm, you may make the jump to hyperspace at your discretion.”
“Aye, sir,” Petrov said, his hands sliding across the controls with a flourish, lights flashing unheeded on his console as he guided the ship towards its destination. There was a brief flash, and the stars faded away, replaced with a starfield, the image showing Endurance on its transit course to Epsilon Indi.
“That’s it?” Thiou asked.
“If you can feel a hyperspace transition,” Mitchell replied, “then that’s usually the last thing you ever feel.”
“Transit successful, sir.”
“Very good.” Ikande smiled, then said, “Secure all stations. Spaceman Bianchi, I need to address the crew. Now that we are in flight, it’s time to brief them on our mission. They need to know where we’re going, and way. Doctor Thiou, I’d appreciate if you would prepare a short, detailed briefing for those with greater interest. The more information our people have, the better. Thirty days is a long time to be in hyperspace. I want them to know that it is worth it.”
“You’re on, Captain,” Bianchi said.
“Thanks.” Cracking a smile, he glanced at Marshall, and said, “I hate this part.”
“Everyone does, sir.”
“All hands,” Ikande said, leaning into the microphone. “This is the Captain.” Looking up at Thiou, he said, “I know you’re all wondering why we left Mars so quickly. The answer is really very simple. Two days ago, one of our top academics made a discovery that could literally change our history books, and we get to be the ones to rewrite them. Approximately two centuries ago…”
Chapter 7
DeSilva swirled her green, viscous soup with her spoon, forcing herself to take a mouthful. She reached for a sourdough roll, trying to get rid of the taste, with only limited success. According to the manual, this was a nutritionally balanced, calorie intensive diet, everything needed to fuel a crewman through a hard day’s work. It tasted like someone had already eaten it. The labor rations on Mars were bad enough, but if anything, this was worse.
She glanced through an open door at the Officer’s Mess, a small annex to the main dining area, spotting the officers tucking in to treats taken from the hydroponic store, fresh salads to garnish their meals, provide at least some variety. Except for Lieutenant Mitchell, sitting off on his own. He seemed to be eating the same food as the crew, no evidence that he was partaking of the same luxuries of the rest of them.
More than on the surface, the Guard increasingly had a caste system. The last time she had served, the Captain had made sure that everyone had their share of the limited fresh food, one tolerable meal a week, with priority given to those in Sickbay. She knew that no starship could ever produce enough to give everyone the same rations, but that didn’t mean the crew wouldn’t start to resent it, especially over a long voyage like this.
Taking another mouthful of soup, she caught the side of her mouth with the spoon, sending some of the bubbling green slime running down her face. Reaching for her napkin, she wiped it clear, then spotted something written on the paper. A word and a number. The number was ‘8-920’, a designation for one of the storage rooms, low on the innermost part of the ring under the hydroponic bay. The word was ‘Wallace’.
One of the code designations for the Democratic Underground. Harrison had provided her with a list of keywords, names designed to be meaningless to the uninformed, each with a different message. ‘Wallace’ was the codeword for a secret meeting, one to be held immediately. She looked down at her soup, the bowl still half-full, and hastily finished the rest of it, trying to hide her excitement. She’d resigned herself to the uniform for the next four years, but if there was a chance that she could continue the fight she’d begun back on Mars, she had to take it. For the sake of those who had already died, if for no other reason.
Sliding her tray into the cleaning chute, she left the Mess, making for an open maintenance shaft, stepping onto the ladder and climbing down to the inner deck. Most of the crew used any shortcut they could find, the elevators restricted to priority use only. Cobwebs reached out to her as she descended, covering her trousers in sticky grey goo, more evidence of the time this ship had spent in storage. The clean-up crew had removed all the oxygen from the ship for long enough to kill the vermin, but she’d spent her first day on board cleaning the dead mice from the storage bays. Most of the crew had been stuck on the same unpleasant duty. One of the aspects of deep space flight the recruiting teams never mentioned.
She caught a faint smell of burning meat in the distance, and for a moment was tempted to go in search of it. They’d been in flight for less than a day, and already the technical crews were setting up the black market, concealed stills hidden down in chemical processing, illicit farms tucked away in isolated regions of the maintenance shafts. Where there was scarcity, there was demand, and it was a lot harder for Ship’s Security to detect whether a crewman had eaten a burger than whether one had taken a joint.
Dropping to the bottom of the shaft, a new smell overcame her, the glowing odor of life, the plants growing in the hydroponic section beyond. Though the crew weren’t permitted to take the produce, a walk in the ship’s garden was strongly recommended as a counterpoint to the bleakness of deep space, and most of the crew would take their turns basking in the artificial sunlight, a recreation all were permitted to enjoy.
Making her way to a locker, she pulled out the smallest toolkit she could find, then pulled open a hatch in the floor, revealing a crawlspace below. Theoretically, she was assigned to the deck gang, babying Endurance’s shuttle flotilla, but for the first couple of weeks, everyone was simply going where they were needed, trying to complete a year’s worth of checks in a month, before they arrived at Epsilon Indi.
As she crawled down the passageway, she could hear a faint voice up ahead, then froze as a man rolled out in front of her, out of a hidden compartment, pistol in hand. He glanced at a tablet in his hand, then looked her over again, before placing the device on the ground and sliding it over to her.
“DNA doesn’t lie,” he said. “Nothing personal, but I need to be careful.”
Nodding, DeSilva tapped her finger on the reader, feeling the faint pinprick as the device took a droplet of her blood for testing, matching it with the records Harrison
had taken from her when she’d first contacted him. She waited impatiently, watching as the machine did it work, finally looking up as a green light winked on, confirming a successful match.
“Satisfied?” she asked.
“Just about,” he said. “Spaceman Zhou. Weapons technician. Meaning that I know exactly how to use this gun for maximum effect.” He backed down the passage, and said, “Follow me. And please don’t make an untoward move. I’d really rather not use this.”
“Of course not,” she replied. “Every detector on the ship would go off, and Lieutenant Romanova and her team would be down here in a minute to put you under arrest for murder. You might have played some games with the internal sensors, but the combat routines are hard-coded.”
Grinning, Zhou holstered his weapon, and said, “You passed. You’d be surprised how many people can’t think straight with a gun pointed at their head.”
“It’s not an experience I’d like to repeat.”
“That won’t be necessary,” a familiar, booming voice said as she dropped into a compartment that, according to the floorplans she’d studied, didn’t exist. Her eyes widened as she recognized Petty Officer Nguyen, crouched in a corner of the room, taking a bite of a sandwich that had real meat inside, curls of roasted guinea pig reaching over the sides of the bap. “Have one,” he said, reaching into a bag. “Fresh from the farms on the lower level. Third-generation, so they’re scarce. And to be fair, they’re still experimenting with the coating.”
“Thanks,” she replied, taking it from him. “I wasn’t expecting to see you here, Chief.”
He shrugged, and said, “Out there I have to put on an act. Here I can be myself. It’s nice to take a break for a while.” Gesturing at the cubbyhole, he said, “There were advantages to spending time in the Mothball Fleet. We installed this a year ago, while our officer was stoned in his cabin.”
“Of course,” Zhou said, “we provided the drugs. All part of the service.”
“It was being used for storage, to hide a few bits and pieces we didn’t want the Watchmen to find, but as soon as we found up they were recommissioning the ship, we managed to clear it out. There’s no internal monitoring, not in here, but we’ve got a hook into the sensor grid to spot anyone who might get a little too inquisitive.”
“We’ve got a few little hiding places, scattered around,” Zhou said. “Though you don’t need to know where they are, at least not for the moment. If you have got anything you need hidden, feel free to pass it along, and I’ll get it stowed away for you.” He patted his pistol, and said, “We’ve got some of these, as well, just in case it becomes necessary.”
Nodding, Nguyen replied, “Though naturally we don’t intend to use them unless we have no other choice. As tempting as it might be to put a bullet between the eyes of that bastard Fitzroy. We have to keep a low profile, at least for the present.”
“Are there any others on board?”
“Zhou and I are the only two from the Inner Circle who came along for the ride, but there are at least a dozen other sympathizers on board. I’ll be having quiet words with them over the next week or so, try and sound them out a little. We’ve got to be careful, though. Romanova isn’t a fool. I wouldn’t be surprised if we had plants on board.” He frowned, then said, “If your background hadn’t already been carefully vetted, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. I know you had a meeting with Romanova before departure. What did you discuss?” She looked at Zhou, and he added, “Speak freely. He knows everything I do. You can ignore our Guard ranks here.”
“She offered me a choice between this ship and the Mercury Mines. I think she was worried about creating a martyr, and I knew more than she liked about the mission. That, and I saved the life of Doctor Thiou. Apparently, she felt she was in my debt. I don’t believe that for a second, though. Almost certainly it was a question of keeping me out of the hands of Coalition agents.”
“And what do you know?” Zhou asked.
“Only that the Coalition might know what we’re doing, and that’s the reason for the rapid departure. Given the prize, though, I can understand the urgency. An extrasolar colony…”
“Yes,” Nguyen said. “An extrasolar colony. Another slave world for the Tyrants of Mars to exploit. Assuming they made it to wherever their destination is, then they’ve been free for two centuries. They aren’t simply going to sign up to join our glorious Commonwealth without force. No more than Callisto did, thirty years ago.”
“I doubt it was an accident that Commander Ikande was assigned to this mission, either,” Zhou added. “His mother betrayed her people when she surrendered the Callistan Space Fleet…”
“To prevent an orbital bombardment, surely,” DeSilva protested. “An attack that would have led to the deaths of millions of people.”
“Possibly,” Nguyen said. “Though I find it hard to believe that they’d have launched that sort of attack. What would be the point of conquering Callisto without taking the ice mines, the orbital refineries, the heavy industry. Or the workforce, for that matter.”
“I was there,” Zhou pressed. “My father was serving in that fleet, and none of them wanted to surrender. Everyone was ready to fight to the last ship, to the last man. Admiral Ikande denied them that decision, took it upon herself. And if she was so altruistic, she could have turned down the rewards the Tyrants threw her. Scraps of political meat from their table.”
“It’s going to happen again,” Nguyen said. “That’s the whole purpose of our mission. You can forget about all that crap Commander Ikande said about recontacting a lost human colony. Putting this ship into commission would have cost the Commonwealth a not-so-small fortune, and heading into Coalition territory without a damned good reason isn’t something the Space Ministry would order.”
“Then we’re on a mission of conquest?” DeSilva said. “This ship isn’t large enough for that. No marines, and our weapons system isn’t designed for orbital bombardment.”
Nodding, Zhou said, “Sure, but look at the possibilities. We might just find a wrecked ship out there, just something for the historians to pick over. Which means this expedition is a nice public relations stunt, but nothing more than that. Or we might find another struggling outpost, like the one the Coalition found at Kapteyn’s Star. Five hundred people on a space station that was on the brink of catastrophic failure.” He frowned, then added, “I still think there was something else going on out there. They wouldn’t expend the resources for a rescue effort like that without a damned good reason.”
“Hence this ship,” Nguyen said, nodding. “We’re a recon party. That’s my guess. Our mission is to find out what’s out there. If we find a settlement, then we race back to Mars and come back with a task force. Enough ships to secure the planet from attack by the Coalition. We’d have a good head-start over anything Triton could send. Maybe we trick the colonists into joining the Commonwealth willingly.”
“There were enough fools on Callisto willing to talk about that, before the war,” Zhou added.
“What can we do about it, though?” DeSilva asked.
“Watch and wait,” Nguyen replied. “And gather as much information as we can. A conquest fleet would require a major effort by the orbital shipyards. We could organize protests, strikes, demonstrations. Targeted sabotage, slow down their efforts.” He smirked, and said, “You’d be surprised just how annoying a disgruntled maintenance technician can get.”
“What do you want me to do?” DeSilva asked. “They’re going to be watching me. Romanova…”
“Of course they will,” Zhou replied. “And that’s precisely the point.”
With a sigh, she said, “I get to be the decoy.”
“That’s the idea. If Ship’s Security is watching you, then they aren’t watching us. We won’t be contacting you again, not unless the situation changes.”
“Aren’t you afraid I might talk, if Romanova picks me up?”
He shrugged, and said, “Not really. If you get caught, yo
u’ll be dead before any serious interrogation can take place.” Looking her squarely in the eyes, she said, “We’re playing for high stakes, and the cost of failure has always been death. Mars will not be freed without sacrifice. A lot of people have already died for the cause. A lot more are going to die before we win. Probably including the three of us in this room. And that’s fine with me. I don’t need to live to see Liberation Day.” Tapping his heart, he continued, “I can already see it, right in here. That’s enough for me.”
“You’d better get moving,” Zhou said. “Back the way you came. I put a work order into the system to cover your tracks, but it’ll expire soon. You can’t loiter in those crawlspaces too long, or Security will think you’re hijacking crops. Don’t try and get back here, either. Unless one of us is present, unfortunate things will happen.”
“I understand,” she replied. Taking a deep breath, she added, “I knew the risks, going in, Chief. Nothing’s changed. We watch, we listen, we wait.”
Nodding, he said, “We’ll act if we must. But only if we must.” With a thin smile on his face, he added, “I might be willing to die, but that doesn’t mean that I’m looking forward to it. Now get moving. I’ll see you tomorrow. If there is an emergency, something I need you to do, then I’ll pass you the word the same way I did to bring you here.”
“Right, Chief,” she replied, climbing back out of the corridor.
“Oh, one more thing,” Zhou said. “Harrison’s dead. We got the word just before we left. He did it himself, to prevent facing a mind-ripper. There wouldn’t have been anything left of him if he hadn’t.”
“I know the sort of people we’re fighting,” DeSilva replied. “You don’t have to convince me.” She turned, climbing through the tunnels, her thoughts a tangled daze. She’d led her people on the surface in peaceful protest, had accepted that she’d likely have to step further at some point, but the cold reality of her cause was beginning to sink in. She could die out here. With nobody to know, and nobody to care. And she wasn’t sure she wanted to die for Harrison and his kind.
Exiles of Earth: Rebellion Page 6