by T E Olivant
The first thing that Lu Tang noticed when they reached the command room was that it was half empty. Barely half a dozen people to crew a ship of this size. Most of them seemed to be children. They didn’t stand a chance of success.
Then Lu Tang noticed the second thing.
“That man tried to murder me!”
“Yes he did, but he’s terribly sorry about it,” Mackay said with a lop-sided smile.
Hastings gave the Augment a cheery wave.
“He should be in the cells!”
“You’re right. But we’re a little short staffed at the moment, so I have decided to offer him parole, on the basis that he doesn’t try to kill anyone.”
“Is that really Scotclan procedure?”
Mackay’s face contorted into a grimace. “We’re not Scotclan anymore.”
This was a new development, and not an unwelcome one. Lu Tang had his suspicions about the so-called law-enforcement agency. Not least because they seemed determined to try him for murder.
“When can we commence our mission?” Lu Tang asked Mackay.
“As soon as possible. It won’t be long before Campbell takes the ship by force. We need to be out of here before he gets the chance.”
“He has already put out a warning to the planetary authorities that we are not to be allowed to leave the system,” a small voice said. Lu Tang turned to look at the source. A shivering pale girl who might as well have had Faithful written on her forehead looked as if she might fall to her knees in front of him. Lu Tang avoided her eyes. Being worshipped was so embarrassing.
Mackay looked like she was considering this information for a moment. “Well, that was to be expected. But it does make our life a little more difficult. Geek? Can you look at some strategies to get us out of here?”
“Will do.” A disembodied voice said from a hidden speaker.
“All right,” Mackay said. “Let’s get down to specifics. How many Augments are we looking at?”
“Around a dozen.” Lu Tang replied. “The Voice was not clear on that point. Maybe as few as six.”
Francesca raised a hand. “We won’t be able to revive that many. Maybe one or two.”
Lu Tang was about to reply but he noticed Mackay was already shaking her head.
“We’re not going to revive them,” the Detective said. “Not until I’m sure that they’re not a bunch of murderers and rapists.”
“They are Augments!” Lu Tang said, horrified.
“Exactly. Who knows what they might have done? No, I’ll rescue them from Eritree, just as you ask, but I am not going to bring them out of stasis. Not at first, anyway. We’ll bring them onto the ship, pods and all.”
“How will we do that?” Phil asked.
“We’ll need some sort of cargo ship. Something we can pack the pods onto, then use it to take them up to the Black Maria. Then we stick them all in the hold.”
“These are Gods, not supply boxes!” Lu Tang could not stop his voice from raising a few more decibels.
“When they are in the stasis pods we can just stack them, isn’t that right?”
“Yep,” Francesca said. “Like leftover tubs of curry.”
Lu Tang decided not to dignify that one with a reply.
“What about the place where they are being held?”
Lu Tang walked over to the screen. “Can you bring up a map of the planet? Focus on the section to the South of Moscov. There’s a facility there listed as a waste processing plant.”
“The one with all the warnings about toxic chemicals and being unfit for human habitation,” the Navigator asked as she zoomed in on the image.
“Yes. A mere smokescreen. It is a prison.”
“What else is there beside the Augments?”
“The so-called waste processing plant. Fully automated. But funnily enough there is no evidence that any waste goes in or out of there. I’ve seen the files.”
“Guards?”
“None. Possibly some automated bots.”
“It all sounds a little too good to be true,” said the murderous Captain. Lu Tang ignored him.
“Kenzie,” Mackay said to the trembling Faithful, “will you check out the station logs for the plant? Double check Lu Tang’s info. Get the Geek to help you with systems access if it’s a problem.”
The pale girl nodded and scurried out of the room.
“You do not need to double check my information. I am a God.” Lu Tang said, resisting the urge to yell at the Detective. His emotions were out of control and he needed rest. He took a long, slow breath. There would be time enough for that when it was all over.
“Yes I do.” The Detective was pressing the bridge of her nose as if she was trying to relieve some sort of pain there. “I’m guessing you have some sort of plan for rescuing your people from the planet?”
“Of course. I’ve had a decade to plan it. Nothing can possibly go wrong.” Lu Tang chose to ignore the stifled snigger from somewhere behind him.
“We have half an hour before we are going down there. I want to know a more definite plan than we’ll just pop inside and liberate these prisoners with no trouble at all.”
“It is the truth,” Lu Tang said, the irritation clear in his voice.
“You need to do better than that,” Biddy said. “I’m not risking my friends unless you give me more details.”
“I suppose I could always appeal to your human capacity for empathy, but it seems so beneath me.”
“What the hell are you talking about now?”
“Give me a datapad and I’ll show you what the Voice showed me when I was on Widdershins 3. I’ll show you what convinced me to escape.”
Chapter 37
The picture on the main viewscreen was grainy at first and it took Biddy a moment to work out what was going on. A jumble of shapes coalesced into a line, a curve, then an arm, hanging limp out of the side of a truck.
“Delivery!” A voice shouted from somewhere, perhaps even the same place as the camera originated.
“By the false Gods,” a second voice said. “You just threw them all in the van? We’ll be lucky if half of them are still alive!”
“Good riddance,” the first voice replied. “Time those arrogant bastards got what was coming to them.”
The two men started to drag bodies out of the van, like they were pieces of meat. The Augments were bruised and bloody. The thuds made as their bodies hit the trailer turned Biddy’s stomach.
The camera panned backwards, scanning the horizon. Biddy recognized the desert landscape of Eritree.
“No one’s watching,” the first voice said as the camera view returned to the bodies. Biddy’s gaze was caught by the reflection of moonlight on bare, greying flesh. “Why don’t we just leave them out here to freeze?”
“They’ll be cold enough inside.”
The short film came to an end. Biddy turned to the Augment, but she couldn’t find anything to say.
Lu Tang spoke into the silence. “The video shows that three Augments suffocated to death on the ride to the prison. The rest were placed in the freezer. The miners of Eritree wanted the Augments gone, and they certainly achieved that.”
“Hang on, let’s see the truck again,” Hastings said.
“I think we’ve seen enough,” Francesca replied. She sounded like she was about to be sick.
“Biddy, please, just show me the truck.”
She shrugged and scrolled back through the tape. The side of the truck came back into view.
“I thought so. That’s a mark seven Hustand. They stopped making them fifty years ago.”
“Could just be an old truck, Hastings.”
“Nah, that’s the problem. Those Hustand’s had a fault. Turns out if you ran them in low oxygen the engine core’s overheated. They recalled them after a dozen of them blew up, mostly with people in them. No one would use one now. Or for the last fifty years.”
Lu Tang waited for the inevitable question.
“When was this video taken
?” she asked him.
“Seventy-five years ago. My friends have been in stasis for the best part of a century.”
Biddy searched the Augment’s face for any sign of emotion but there was none. Did it really change anything? Perhaps not, but there was something chilling about the idea of those hidden sleepers, frozen since the time of her great-grandmother.
“Tell me more about this Voice,” Biddy said, trying to keep the pity out of her speech.
“I first heard the Voice three months ago. The first words I had heard spoken in a decade. It came through the walls of my cell and it told me about the Augments.”
“It sent you the video?”
“No, that was later. But it told me to be ready. Then around a month ago a datapad was waiting under my mattress when I had taken my morning shower. Access to the cloud, completely unrestricted. It enabled me to plan my escape. But there was also a single file on the pad.”
“The video?”
“Yes. I could identify every one of the bodies you see there by name. But they have been long forgotten by the humans that used to worship them. I am the only one left who remembers them at all.”
Now the pain was evident in the Augment’s voice, but Biddy was still torn. “I almost believe you. But I’m risking my crew, a dozen people that I am directly responsible for, to save a bunch of Gods that might not even exist.”
“I give you my word as your God that they are down there. Just waiting to be awoken.”
Biddy couldn’t help but bite her lip. “I don’t find that very comforting.”
Someone spoke and it took Biddy a second to realize that it was Ali. She had barely heard his voice before.
“If we rescue the Gods then it will be worth the risk. Blessed be.”
Biddy’s eyes widened. “I thought you guys were neo-Buddhists.”
Lee laughed, a rasping sound. “We left the Rising Sun system as religious refugees. We have prayed to the Gods since our birth. We should take this mission if there is any hope of saving them.”
Strangely this made Biddy feel worse about rescuing the Augments. Did she really have the right course of action planned when religious zealots supported it?
“What about you, Francesca, you’re not of the Faithful.”
“I am a medic. If there are innocent people who are being harmed then it is our duty to save them.”
Slowly, Biddy nodded. “All right. I like that reasoning better. Lu Tang, upload any information you have to my servers. We have half an hour to plan our mission.”
What the hell am I doing? Biddy thought. It was thirty-seven minutes later. She was standing on the surface of Eritree outside a huge metal hangar. The tiny lifepod that they had squeezed in to make the journey lay discarded nearby. Small enough to be undetected by the people of Eritree, or at least that was the hope. To her right the Augment was muttering to himself and shivering, looking for all the galaxy like someone who had lost whatever grip on sanity they might have had.
“Before we go in,” Biddy said, her right hand on her stungun, “I want you to swear that no one is going to get killed.”
The Augment gave her what she was coming to think of as his ‘God look’. “I do not make such promises.”
“Then I don’t go in with you.”
The Augment tapped his foot on the floor. “Listen, I’m not even carrying a weapon. I have no intention of killing anyone today. Is that good enough for you?”
“No. But it will have to do. Just bear in mind that if I do see you getting all vengeful God on me then I will stungun your ass.”
“Duly noted.”
Biddy turned to Phil and Francesca. They were standing at the entrance to the waste treatment facility. They still had their full spacesuits on.
“You two wait here until I signal that we have the Augments in visual.”
“You know I think this is a dumb move ‘tec,” Phil’s voice said in her ear. “I should be going in there with you. I’m your bodyguard.”
“You were the bodyguard of a Scotclan Detective,” Biddy said with a weary tone. It was not the first time they had had this discussion in the last half hour. “Now you are just one member of an unauthorized space cruiser crew. And I need you out here just in case it all goes wrong.”
Phil went silent. Biddy just had to hope that he would listen to her orders. There was no way she was going to risk any of her crew members inside the facility. If Lu Tang got blown up she wouldn’t be too worried, but she couldn’t say the same about anyone else.
“All right,” she said to the Augment. “Let’s see if you can get us in.”
Lu Tang held his datapad up to the lock on the door and after a few seconds it started to open.
“We’re going into the airlock. Keep all comms open.”
It was only when the door shut behind them that Biddy realized she was stuck in a ten-foot bubble with the Augment. He looked at her out of the spacesuit with an unreadable expression. If he wanted her killed then he could simply smash open her helmet and she would be dead in seconds. Phil and Francesca wouldn’t get there before her lungs exploded.
Pressure Equalization Complete.
Lu Tang pulled off his helmet, and after only the briefest of hesitations, Biddy did the same.
“Let’s do this,” the Augment said, and Biddy didn’t like the sickly grin on his face one little bit.
“Just take it easy,” she said, but he was already striding along the empty corridor. They got into the lift. There were buttons for floors one to five. Lu Tang pressed the button for the second floor.
“How do you know where they are?” Biddy whispered. Despite the fact that the place seemed like no one had been there in decades, she couldn’t help but feel like there had to be some kind of guards.
“I checked the floorplans on the cloud. The hibernation pods use a hell of a lot of power. There are extra generators on the second floor. It must be the place.”
Biddy didn’t like the clammy sheen that had coated the Augment’s face. It didn’t exactly fill her with confidence that they were on the kind of mission that could make a God nervous.
The lift door opened. They were in some sort of vast cavern that had been dug into the rock of Eritree. Strip lights glowing green only seemed to emphasize the darkness.
“This is it,” he whispered. “Here they are.”
Biddy stepped out behind him and saw what the Augment was looking at. There was less than ten of them, upright coffins stacked against a wall. Corridors led off to different sections of the cavern, but there didn’t seem to be any guards coming down them. Biddy kept her stungun raised anyway.
“The old Gods!” Lu Tang practically skipped over to them, caressing the hibernation pods with an almost indecent tenderness.
“Mackay?” Phil’s worried voice came over the radio.
“We’ve found them. No sign of any guards, human or otherwise. Give me a few minutes to work out how we’re going to get them out.”
She walked closer to the Augment. The LED light bounced off the sweat on his brow. She put a hand to her own forehead and found that it was damp. Damn, she was tense. And, truth be told, she was genuinely scared. There was something profoundly creepy about all those frozen coffins with their sleeping almost-corpses. She kept expecting one of them to snap their eyes open.
“Aargh!” Biddy yelled as she felt a clawed hand grab her arm.
“Relax,” Lu Tang said, releasing his grip. “There’s nothing to worry about.”
Biddy walked over to one of the pods. The technology was both cutting edge and ancient. Screws had rusted around the metal frame that kept the module in place, but the plastic coffin itself looked sleek and the display had readings that she could not interpret. It was like looking into a window on the past, but one that had imagined a future that had never come to pass. Or something. It was giving her an instant migraine.
“Do you think they’ll be happy?” She asked, her voice soft in the darkness.
“What?” The
Augment was typing something into a computer console. His brow was furrowed in concentration.
“I mean, do you think they’ll be happy that we woke them up?”
“That we released them from this prison? Of course they will! Do you think I was happy to escape Widdershins 3? Where they had locked me up for a decade and waited for me to fade into nothing? No, I was not happy. I was ecstatic. I was exalted to a higher state of being.”
“Hmmn.” Biddy stared at the pale, almost skeletal face in front of her. What would it be like to be in a room of awakening, ecstatic and exalted Gods? She was starting to feel like she might just throw up.
“How are we going to get them out?”
Lu Tang glanced up at her and blinked a few times. Were there tears in his eyes?
“There are trolleys near the door. But they are heavy.”
“All right. Phil?”
“Yes.”
“I need you and Francesca to come and help us load up the bodies. And tell the Geek to bring around the rescue craft. Let’s hope to God he’s got it ready.”
“God is kind of busy right now,” Lu Tang called out as he pushed over a metal trolley.
“You know what I mean,” Biddy barked back.
Chapter 38
It took the humans nearly twenty minutes to load the Augments onto what the Detective had called the rescue craft.
“I do not think this is a fitting mode of transportation for the Gods,” Lu Tang said, looking around the waste collection van. They had stacked the habitation pods next to a pile of domestic waste. And it stank.
“Let’s give them a chance to object,” the bodyguard said, flashing his teeth. “Any objections? No? I think they’re all good.”
Insolent cretin, Lu Tang thought, but he simply closed his eyes and said nothing. He could afford to be magnanimous. All the effort of the last few months was coming to fruition. He had saved his people. And this was just the start.
“We will have to wait here for the Geek to work his magic,” the Detective said. She was still holding her stungun as if she expected some sort of foe to jump out behind her.