by G J Ogden
“He’s going to want you back,” said Maria. “By leaving, you’ve made him look foolish, even weak.”
“But…” interrupted Diana, “seeing as you’re here, I will, of course, extend to you the same protections as offered to the others. If that’s what you want.”
Maria’s eyes widened. Even now, Diana was still able to surprise her.
“So… we can stay?” asked Ann.
“Yes,” said Diana. A second deck officer appeared and lingered just outside that hatch. Maria ducked down so he could see her, and beckoned him inside.
“This man will take you to your sons,” said Diana. “Go and get some rest, and we’ll talk more later.”
“Thank you,” Ann replied, and it was clear to both Diana and Maria that her words were sincere. Ann stepped down the ramp and disappeared from view.
Diana could feel Maria’s eyes on her and she folded her arms again. “What would you have me do? Put them on a shuttle and send them back?”
“That would be one option,” said Maria.
Diana scowled back at her. “Back in the UEC spaceport, I offered sanctuary to any that wanted it. And that includes Ann Kurren and her sons.”
Maria held her arms wide, conceding. “Okay, Diana, it’s your space station, and your call, but I think letting them stay it a mistake.”
“Your opinion is noted,” said Diana, sarcastically.
Now it was Maria’s turn to scowl and fold her arms. “Anyway, I suppose they might come in useful.”
Diana stepped closer. “No,” she said firmly. “We will not use them to bargain with.”
“Diana, we’re in a dangerously bad situation, we need to use every advantage.”
“We’ll find another way, but right now, we have other things to worry about.”
Lieutenant Aster appeared and stepped onto the ramp, but then noticed the fierce expressions on both the women’s faces, and stalled awkwardly, half-way onto the ship.
“It’s okay Lieutenant, you can come in,” said Maria. “What do you have to report?”
Aster ducked under the hatch and gingerly stepped inside. “All ships have docked, sir, and GPS deck crew are escorting the passengers to the shelter.”
“Thank you, Lieutenant,” said Maria. “Any word from Commander Raina?”
Aster hesitated. “Nothing confirmed,” he said in a low voice. “We tried to establish a commlink several times, but the signal was jammed.”
Maria was silent as she considered the possibility that Raina’s resistance had failed.
“Let’s not jump to any conclusions,” said Diana, though she was also thinking the worst. “We’ll be able to get a better idea of what’s going on from the Operations Tower. I’ll take us there.”
They set off through the vast open space towards a broad, circular tower that appeared to grow out of the direct center of the hangar and reached four stories above the deck. Behind and to the left of the tower stood a fleet of scavenger ships, most of which had been converted from other vessels that, before the war, would have been shuttles, recon vessels, cargo ships and, in the last few years as the peace process began to succeed, combat craft. As she watched, one ship was taking off and heading towards its launch tube. To the right of the tower were the six UEC ships that had escaped from the moon base. From the open bay doors of each was a thin line of people streaming towards a large structure that could have been a maintenance bay or crew room. During the flight to the space station, Diana had messaged ahead and ordered that a space in the hangar be converted into a temporary refugee shelter, in preparation for the sudden influx of three hundred new inhabitants. Maria was again struck by how many of them were children, most of whom had been separated from their parents and would likely never be reunited with them. Maria considered what was to become of these unfortunates and the options seemed bleak. The chances of the Flying Corps being able to mount an effective defense against Kurren’s forces were slim; at best some might escape and form a guerrilla-style resistance and at worst they would be captured and executed. Even if Kurren did not kill the traitors immediately, he could use those he captured as leverage to demand the return of the UEC defectors, threatening violence or execution as a way to force GPS to comply. Since Diana had already refused to use Ann Kurren as leverage, the only other possibility was that they stayed with GPS, claiming asylum, and never being able to return. Not that there would be anything for them to return to. This was the cruel reality of Kurren’s self-proclaimed ‘victory’.
Damn you, Kurren, Maria thought. We could have ended the killing and become one people again. All you’ve done is push us all further apart.
They reached the main entrance to the operations tower and were met by a man in smart civilian clothes, comprising a pair of plain gray trousers, white shirt and dark blue jacket. In contrast to his clothing, his wispy brown hair was messy and it looked like he hadn’t shaved for at least two days. He stood by the door, nervous hands fidgeting inside his jacket pockets, and had the look of a man who was expecting to be arrested.
“President Neviah, I’m so sorry for the lack of formality, and my appearance, we weren’t expecting you…” the man babbled as Diana approached.
“It’s okay,” said Diana calmly, “We weren’t expecting us either. This is a rather unique situation.”
“Yes, of course; terrible business, so unexpected,” the man replied, still fidgeting.
Diana waited for him to introduce himself and invite them inside, but instead the man simply stood in the door frame, blocking the entrance, with his head bowed and shaking gently from side to side, as he continued to mutter words like, ‘terrible’, ‘awful’, ‘shocking’ under his breath.
“May I make use of your facility, Mr. …?” said Diana.
The man jolted upright and sprang his hands from his jacket pockets. “Oh, of-of course, yes, p-please do!” he stammered. “And it’s Mr. Tenson, Edgar Tenson, I run operations here. It really is an honor!”
“Thank you, Mr. Tenson,” said Diana, smiling warmly. “I would like you to join us, please, we may need your expertise.”
“Of course, of course, anything you need,” said Edgar, smoothing the loose tufts of hair away from his eyes. “Please follow me, the flight operations deck is on floor four.”
They walked inside and took the single elevator to the fourth floor, very aware that all the other workers in the operations tower were watching them intently. Edgar appeared to notice this.
“Don’t mind them,” he said jovially, “It’s not every day we get a visit from the President.”
“I just wish it were under better circumstances,” said Diana, standing in her customary pose.
The elevator stopped and the door hissed open. Edgar wasted no time, scurrying to the center of the room and shooing the duty staff in the direction of the stairwell as if he were chasing naughty children off his doorstep.
Diana, Maria and Aster stepped out amid this commotion and made their way to the command console in the center of the room. Unlike the first three floors, which had solid walls with windows at set intervals, the fourth floor of the operations deck had floor-to-ceiling glass walls, allowing an unhindered, three-sixty-degree view of the hangar. Edgar returned from chasing his staff down the stairs and stood opposite them, red-faced and breathing heavily.
Diana removed a square silver card from her trouser pocket and slid it into the ident reader in the console; a second later a rim of green light surrounded the card slot. “Command override, Diana Neviah,” she said.
A square panel rose from the center of the console, and Diana placed her hand on it. A few seconds later a rim of green light illuminated around the edge of the panel, and the console displayed the text, ‘Voice Print: Confirmed. DNA: Confirmed. Ident: Diana Neviah, President. Level C9 Access Granted.’
Edgar’s eyes grew large and a sort of giddy smirk appeared on his face. “Wow, C9 access, what I couldn’t do with that!”
He looked up, anticipating an amused
reaction, but only saw Diana’s placid smile looking back at him. Then he looked at Maria, who was most definitely not smiling, and the twinkle disappeared from his eyes.
“Perhaps you can help by monitoring communications and external sensors,” said Maria, though she did not phrase it as a question.
Edgar coughed, clearing his throat, and then stammered, “Of c-course, of course, yes.” He remained at the console, but looked down and started to tap away at his screen.
“Over at the auxiliary console...” Maria added, nodding towards a station just in front of the glass wall, near the stairwell that Tenson’s staff had been abruptly chased down.
Edgar looked up at Maria’s stony expression and anxiously smoothed the hair away from his eyes.
“Yes, certainly,” he squeaked, and quickly shuffled across to the other side of the glass-walled room.
Diana shot Maria a reproving look.
“What?” said Maria in a hushed voice. “I was nice!”
“You should hope that people here don’t treat you as ‘nicely’ once they hear what happened,” said Diana.
Maria scowled, but the point was well taken.
“Speaking of what happened,” Aster chipped in, “Shouldn’t we make a statement, before news of what happened on the moon base spreads to this station?”
Diana nodded, “Yes, Lieutenant Aster, thank you for the reminder.”
The recognition appeared to please Aster, who puffed out his chest a little.
“Kurren may attempt to publicize his twisted version of the truth, and we cannot allow that,” Diana added. She pulled up the master over-ride for the station’s communications systems and disabled the internal public holos in each of the station’s many labyrinthine sections. “I’ve temporarily disabled the public broadcast holos, so even if Kurren did try to broadcast an unencrypted transmission to the station, no-one would see it.”
“Now we just need our own message to broadcast,” said Maria, “Can we do that from here?”
Diana thought for a moment. “We don’t want to alarm people any more than is necessary,” she said. Then she examined the rips and dirty marks on her suit, and ran a hand through her hair, feeling the knots in what was usually an arrow-straight arrangement of striking red strands. “And right now, I look quite alarming, I think,” she added.
“Considering what we’ve just been through, I’d say you look pretty good,” said Aster, and both Diana and Maria looked at him with raised eyebrows.
“Talk about a backhanded compliment,” said Maria with a wry smirk, and Aster’s face flushed.
“Ignore the Commander, Lieutenant; I understood your meaning,” said Diana, sincerely, before shooting Maria another scolding look. “However, my point is that we need to show the people here that we are unruffled by the experience. I’ll contact my staff and have them prepare my office for a holo broadcast. That will give us all time to get cleaned up.”
Aster looked puzzled. “Us?”
“Yes, I’d like you two beside me for the broadcast.”
“Won’t that make it worse?” said Aster. “I mean, we’re hardly going to be popular once this gets out.”
“It will show people that the UEC still stands with GPS,” said Maria, understanding where Diana was leading with her plan. “It will help us to show that Kurren is a rogue element and that he doesn’t speak for the all the UEC.”
“I hope it will help to soften the blow of such bad news,” said Diana, “and give them a glimmer of hope.”
“Okay, well, I hope you’re right,” said Aster, sounding unconvinced. “I’ll do whatever I can to help.”
“Thank you, again, Lieutenant,” said Diana with a thin smile. “I realize this must be difficult for you, especially leaving your post and your commanding officer behind.”
Aster’s eyes seemed to tremble at the reference to Commander Raina, but he did not look away. “I won’t let Kurren get away with what he’s done, so if it means stopping him, I’ll do whatever you need me to do.”
Diana smiled back at Aster, and then opened the commlink controls and began to type a message to her personal secretary. As she was writing, she added, as coolly as possible, “Is there any way to contact Commander Raina? It would be helpful to know if she managed to hold the spaceport.”
Maria folded her arms tightly across her chest. She was trying not to think of Raina’s fate and the two recent references to her had made Maria feel slightly queasy.
“No, not from here, not with this equipment.”
“What about our PVSMs?” suggested Aster, but Maria shook her head.
“Good idea, but they don’t have anywhere near enough power to get a signal through the shielding on both the space station and the base. We’d need to hook into a more powerful antenna array, but to send a message direct to Raina’s coded band, we’d need a UEC military transceiver to send an encrypted signal.”
“What about the ship you came over in?” said Aster. “It’s a combat scout. Would that work?”
Maria smiled and slapped Aster on the shoulder, which he wasn’t expecting and it nearly knocked him over. “Good thinking, Lieutenant!” she said brightly, as Aster stumbled sideways.
Aster regained his balance and tried hard to look as if nothing had happened, which only had the effect of making his awkwardness more obvious.
“I’ll, erm, go and fire up the ship’s communication systems then,” he said, casually, and then headed towards the elevator.
Maria stifled a laugh and looked at Diana; they both smiled. It reminded Maria of how much she had enjoyed Diana’s company over the last four years. Away from her formal duties and more official persona, Diana was a warm and deeply intelligent woman, with a dark sense of humor, quite unlike what Maria had expected her to be. She wondered how many people had ever truly got to know the real Diana.
“He actually reminds me of someone we both used to know...” said Diana, quietly enough that Aster, who was waiting for the elevator to arrive, couldn’t hear them.
Maria hadn’t considered this, but now that Diana had made the comparison, it made her think. She snuck a look over her shoulder at the young Lieutenant. He didn’t look like Ethan, but she understood Diana’s sentiment. Aster was idealistic, honest and driven, but also naive and unworldly. But, unlike Ethan, Aster was quick to enflame and lacked the young ranger’s empathy and instinct to help others. If there was just one of Ethan’s traits that Maria hoped Aster possessed, it was his ability to absorb change and survive, because the world that Aster had woken up in this morning was not the same world he lived in now. He would have to adapt. They all would.
“Erm, excuse me, Madam President,” came the chirpy voice of Edgar Tenson. Maria and Diana looked over to see him with his hand raised. Maria rolled her eyes.
“Yes, Mr. Tenson, what is it?” said Diana, cordially.
“I’ve picked up a curious signal,” said Edgar, “curious because it was broadcast in the clear from the moon base.”
This got Maria’s attention. The elevator arrived and the doors hissed open. Aster was about to step inside when Maria called back to him, “Hold up a second, Lieutenant.” Aster let the doors hiss closed again and turned around.
“Anything wrong?” said Aster, but Maria held up a hand to silence him.
“Go on, Mr. Tenson,” she said to the operations manager.
“Well, at first I thought it was just the typical encrypted chatter that forms the background noise from the moon base,” said Edgar, sounding more serious and professional, “but then I realized that this one small stream of data wasn’t encrypted like the others, though it is still in code.”
“Send it our console,” Maria ordered, feeling a growing sense of excitement at the possibility this could be a message from Raina.
Edgar worked his console, nodding excitedly, and a few seconds later the coded message appeared on the screen in front of Maria. She studied it for a moment and then her face brightened; she looked up at Diana, the light fro
m the holo twinkling in her eyes.
“It’s from Raina!”
“Are you sure?” said Diana, studying the data closely, but seeing no obvious patterns.
“Yes, it’s a cipher that Raina and I used to encode silly messages to each other at flight school,” said Maria. “We’d ping them to each other’s PVSM, and if we ever got caught, we’d just claim it was a malfunction or something. Just garbled data.”
“How very rebellious of you…” said Diana, and Aster smirked; it was a look that was a mixture of surprise and admiration. “Well, let’s hope it’s good news,” Diana added.
Maria looked down at the screen and began to decode the message a word at a time, speaking each out loud in real-time. At first, she read with enthusiasm, her voice laced with excitement, but as the content of the message became clear, her reading slowed and became somber.
“Sal, please recognize our code. The spaceport is lost. Many dead already. I may be soon. I’m sorry. Don’t let the bastard win. Kira.”
Maria read it again in her head, making double sure that she had decoded the message correctly and then cleared the screens and deactivated the holo.
“Wait, we don’t know…” said Aster, stress evident in his voice. “She said she could be dead soon, but we don’t know. There’s a chance. We have to help her!”
“Aster, take a breath…” said Maria, but Aster slammed a fist on the console.
“No, damn it!” he shouted, “I’m not giving up on her, or the others. I’ll take the ship back myself if I have to!”
Maria stood tall and squared up to him. “Get control of yourself, Lieutenant. We can’t help her now.”
“But, sir, she could still be alive…” said Aster, backing away.
“We have to be smart, Lieutenant,” said Maria. “Clear your head and focus.”
“I can’t leave her! I can’t believe you’re just going to abandon her.”
Maria was angry now and Aster seemed to recognize that he’d over-stepped.
“Kira Raina is my friend. If I could save her, I would. But returning to the base now is suicide. We need to re-group. We need a strategy. Now get a grip, or I will relieve you of duty, is that clear?”