by Allen Stroud
A replacement chair has been bolted into where mine was. I’m in it, shifting around uncomfortably. Duggins is in the engineering chair and Jacobson is acting as navigator. Le Garre is about the ship with her investigations, and the others are asleep.
It’s quiet. I can hear the fitful throbbing of the ship from before. She’s labouring along, weakened and limping away from a bloodied enemy who has licked its wounds and is coming back for more.
Since the meeting, we’ve got the laser scanner back online. Communication is close to being repaired, but only if someone takes a walk outside. Currently we have no functioning airlock, so that’ll have to wait a while longer.
My screen flashes. An incoming private communication request from Le Garre. I slip on my headphones and pick it up. “You finished with Sam?”
“Yes, finally.” Le Garre frowns into the camera on my screen. “He’s admitted to being away from his post. Says he heard something in the cargo hold and went to see what it was. The door closed and locked on him, and he was too embarrassed to mention it. When he got back, nothing had changed, so he didn’t think it was important.”
“You believe him?”
“I think if it was a lie, it’d be more elaborate.”
My instincts aren’t reliable around Quartermaster Sam Chase. He’s my closest friend in space and the person I’ve known longest aboard the ship. I’m not sure I could think of him as a traitor, responsible for the deaths of my crew. I’m trying hard not to let those feelings affect my judgement. Le Garre has responsibility for this investigation. I need to give her space to work through it all.
“Okay, let me know if I can help.”
“Will do.”
I end the call and pull off my headphones. “Jacobson, give me an update on the position of the Gallowglass.”
“She’s in pursuit and increasing speed,” Jacobson says. “She’s gained sixteen kilometres on us in the last hour.”
“How long until she catches up?”
“At the moment, eleven days. If she has a working resonance drive, that’ll come down significantly.”
“Yes, of course.” I turn to Duggins. “Can we get any more speed out of our engines?”
“Not if we want to be able to decelerate into Phobos orbit,” Duggins says. “The Gallowglass doesn’t have to factor that braking into its course as they have no intention of going there. They only need to decelerate to a speed in which they can launch missiles at us.”
I nod. “If we accelerate to our maximum possible speed, we won’t be able to stop?”
“Not without killing everyone aboard,” Duggins says. “We could aim for another destination, but we’d only be prolonging the time until the Gallowglass hunts us down. There’s also the issue of fuel. We have to make sure we have enough to brake.”
“Okay.” Something else is on my mind. “How much of the freighter’s records did you get?”
“About forty-five per cent.” Duggins looks at me. “You think there’s something in there we need to know?”
“I’m not sure,” I say, thinking aloud. “Our enemies wouldn’t have boarded the ship if they didn’t want something from it. Perhaps they wanted the lot, perhaps there was something specific, but we’re more likely to find that out from the files in the secure transmission. Right now, I’m more interested in the flight records.”
“You want to know where they’ve been?”
“No, I want the active records, right before the Hercules was attacked. There must be camera feeds, scans, all the saved data from the ship’s and crew’s last few hours.”
“Okay, now I see what you’re thinking.” Duggins manipulates his screen. “I’ve got a partial download of the recorded system data from the last two hours before the freighter lost power. Sending it to you now.”
“I’ll take a look at it in my quarters.” I unbuckle myself from the replacement chair. “Let Bogdanovic know I’ll drop in to see him on my way.”
“Aye, aye, Captain.”
I’m through the door and into the corridor. I’m in pain. My left hand is awkward, and I fumble my grip on the safety rails. It’s a long and frustrating trip into the lower decks, more difficult than the journey up as painkillers have worn off.
There’s no one around in the passageways. The strip lighting buzzes and flickers, intermittently. One of the security team should be on duty, patrolling between here and the cargo hold. Probably Sam, Keiyho, or someone else they’ve pulled in to help. Tomlins would have been the one taking the third shift, but he died, doing his job, burned alive and sucked out into space during the altercation with the Gallowglass.
I’m passing an intersection when I feel pain in my right shoulder, like a bee sting, sharp as a needle. My arm goes numb, and I crash into the hatch at the far end. I struggle to turn around, groping with my left hand.
My back is against the hatch. My heart is pounding, lurching. I see a figure emerging from the side passage. I can’t see their face. I can’t keep my eyes open. I can’t move.
“It had to be you, didn’t it?” A man’s voice. “I’m sorry, Captain Shann.”
There’s a shout and the sound of a gunshot. A hand grabs my arm, shakes me. “Are you—”
“I’ll be okay, leave me! Get after him.”
When I was a child they had to operate on me as I grew. There were complications with my bones and the necessary plugs for the use of my prosthetics. They gave me all sorts of sedatives and anaesthetics for the surgeries. I know the signs.
My headache fades into a buzz, and the pain in my wrist disappears. I’m floating physically and spiritually, soaring outside myself up and above.
I want to go to sleep, but I know I need to stay awake. Dimly I can hear alarms. There’s shouting and another gunshot. I force my eyes open. Two figures are grappling with each other in the passageway in front of me. Someone is wounded; there’s blood spiraling around them both in a trailing stream.
I gather myself and push off from the wall with my broken wrist. I hear the bones grind and crunch. I’m flying toward the two people, screaming a wordless challenge. I slam into them both, trying to grab hold of someone, anyone, but I have no strength and drift past, bouncing off the deck and on down the corridor.
Another figure appears in front of me. It’s Duggins. He’s by the intersection. I gesture wildly. “He was in there!” I shout.
Duggins enters the storage compartment. He shouts something and the hatch closes, locking him in. There’s more shouting behind me and I hear people moving. They’re getting farther away. I try to push myself up, but my right arm isn’t useful, and my left isn’t enough. I can’t go after them. I’m—
“Captain, you’ve been shot.”
Le Garre’s in my face. She’s calm. She’s holding me in her arms. “Some kind of tranquiliser,” I say. “You can’t let him get away.”
“Don’t worry; half the crew’s chasing him. Did you see who it was?”
“I didn’t get a good look.”
“Well, he’s got nowhere to go. We’ll get him.”
“You need to check on Duggins,” I tell her. “He went into the storage compartment the traitor was coming out of. The door sealed after him.”
“Okay,” says Le Garre. “I’ll take a look.”
She lets me go. I’m still struggling to focus and move around, but I make it to the hatch and down a deck before Bogdanovic finds me. “Le Garre said you’d been attacked,” he says.
“Yeah. Injected with something.” My breathing is fast and shallow. I try to hold on to him, but my fingers won’t grip.
Bogdanovic guides me into the medical bay. There are three patients already here. Ensign Chiu is sitting up on one of the beds. “You all right, Captain?” she asks.
I nod and concentrate on breathing. Chiu helps Bogdanovic get me onto the vacant bed. My eyes are starting to lose foc
us again. “You need to stay awake,” the doctor says, “at least until I figure out what to do with you.” He waves a needle full of blood in front of me. I didn’t even feel him take it. “I’ll do a quick scan to see what you’ve been injected with.”
Ensign Chiu is in front of me. I can feel her fingers on my face. She’s talking to me, trying to keep me awake. “I never thanked you properly for selecting me for the ship’s crew, Captain. I wanted you to know, no matter what happens, how proud I am of getting the chance and how proud my family were when I gave them the news…” Chiu continues talking, but I don’t understand the words anymore. I try to keep nodding and keep my eyes open. They’re rolling all over the place, wanting to close, wanting me to sleep. I—
“Okay, I think I know what it is. I’ll give her a shot, and then you can let her sleep it off.”
This time I feel the needle in my left arm. It’s the last thing I feel.
I pass out.
* * *
I’m staring at a man I don’t know through reinforced glass.
The Khidr doesn’t have a prison cell. When we detained Arkov, he was restricted to his quarters, after those quarters had been searched. Now I’m gazing through the door slot of the late ensign Thakur’s room. The man who is in the room is the man Lieutenant Commander Keiyho captured in the corridor, after he assaulted me.
This is a man who knew my name and spoke to me as if we were acquaintances.
I do not remember this man.
There’s a hand on my right shoulder. I can feel it now that the tranquiliser has worn off. I’d been injected with enough to trigger a heart attack. Thankfully, Doctor Bogdanovic got to me in time.
“You were very lucky,” Le Garre says, echoing my thoughts.
“He said something to me after he stuck me with the needle. I think I disturbed him; he didn’t want me dead.”
“Duggins says he was wiring up the compartment to explode,” Le Garre says. “That room was storing all the replacement communications equipment. If it had gone up, we’d have never been able to contact Phobos and we’d have decelerated significantly, meaning the Gallowglass would have caught up to us much more quickly.”
“He knew where to hit us then?”
“Seems like it. He’s well trained too. Keiyho shot him, but he says if you hadn’t barreled in when you did, we’d be short another crewman and he’d have gotten away.”
“I didn’t know what I was doing,” I say.
“Well, you did the right thing,” Le Garre says.
“Thanks.” I point at the man in the room. The drugs have mostly worn off, but my left arm still feels awkward when I move it. The shoulder twinges and there’s a dull ache in my hand. “What else do we know about him?”
“Not much,” Le Garre says. “He was carrying some unusual items, including a sidearm and portable near-field communications. I think that was the source of the transmission Johansson detected. Otherwise, his face doesn’t appear in any crew or passenger registration document from the interplanetary files or the colonial citizen registration system.”
“He’s from Earth then?”
“I’d guess so, but he’s been trained to operate up here by someone. We need to question him and find out who that is. Are you up to it?” Le Garre asks.
“You want me involved?”
“We’re dealing with ship security and an ongoing tactical situation,” Le Garre explains. “This isn’t just about investigating a crime. You need to be a part of talking to him.”
“You lead then, Major.”
“Understood.”
Le Garre opens the door. I switch the comms bead in my ear to record mode, and I follow her in. The man at the table looks up and smiles. He’s a well-built Caucasian, in his midthirties with dark hair and eyes. The only sign he’s been shot is the slight bulge of a bandage on his shoulder, beneath his tight black shirt. He’s strapped into a chair with restraints that are designed to hold him and protect him should we make any course changes.
“Captain Shann, I’m glad to see you survived. That’ll make what comes next a little easier.”
I don’t reply; instead I settle myself into a chair. Le Garre is carrying a portable screen. She pulls up some information and gazes at our guest. “What’s your name and rank, soldier?” she asks.
The man sighs. “Do we have to stick to formalities, Major?”
Le Garre scowls. “You know who we are; I’d like to talk on equal terms.”
“I suppose that’s fair,” the man replies. “My name is Kieran Rocher. I was a special operations officer in the Kommando Spezialkräfte, but that isn’t relevant to this conversation.”
“You’re an assassin,” Le Garre says.
“I’m a messenger. Everything else is part of the way in which the message is delivered.”
“Very well, what’s the message?”
Rocher smiles again. “It’s not for you.” He points at me. “It’s for her.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Shann
Le Garre laughs. “If you think you’re going to get any alone time with my captain or anyone else on this ship, you’re deluding yourself. Whatever you have to say, you can say to us both.”
Rocher shrugs. “Very well. I’m here to persuade you to join us.”
I stare at him. His smile hasn’t disappeared, but there’s a fierceness in his eyes, something that makes me believe he’s serious. There’s a game being played, but it’s for stakes I don’t entirely comprehend.
I need to see where this goes.
I hold up a hand. “You’ll get your chance to make your case,” I say. “We have questions; we’ll start with those.”
“I’m sure I have answers that will help you,” Rocher says. “But you’ll forgive me if I’m not entirely obliging.”
I ignore the barb. “When did you board this ship?” I ask.
“While you were boarding the Hercules,” Rocher replies.
“Were you alone?” Le Garre asks.
“Perhaps. Perhaps not.”
Le Garre snorts. I hold up a hand. “Why did you really come here?” I ask.
“I have said, to deliver a message that will make you see we are on the same side.”
I look at Le Garre and she looks at me. “You came from the Gallowglass then,” I say.
Rocher shakes his head. “I stowed away aboard the Hercules when she stopped at Phobos. We survived in a pressurised cargo container for three days and then made our move on the crew. Unfortunately, some of them decided to resist.”
“How many of you were on board?”
“With me? There were three of us, but I don’t know if there were more.”
“How does the Gallowglass fit into this?” Le Garre asks.
“They were to escort us to the rendezvous point.”
“Which is where?”
“I was never told.”
I nod instinctively, digesting the information. “Was it you with the portable transmitter?”
Rocher smiles. “An automated signal to indicate I had infiltrated your ship.”
I sigh and wave a hand. “Okay, speak your piece.”
“As I said, I’m here to invite you to join us.” Rocher taps his hands on the table. “The circumstances in which we find ourselves meeting are not quite the ones I would have chosen, but they’ll have to do. You’re out here running out of options.”
“And you’re here to present a new alternative?”
“I am.” Rocher gazes at Le Garre and then stares at me. “By now, you must have an idea of what you’ve gotten involved in. The Hercules was carrying supplies for a new colonial mission. Those supplies were being hidden and illegally transported under the authorised agreement between Earth’s nations and the off-world settlements. We had every right to stop and seize that freighter.”
&nbs
p; “Fleet has authority to intercept supply missions,” I say. “Last time I checked, the Gallowglass was not on the Fleet roster.”
“Our mandate comes from a higher authority,” Rocher says.
“Name them.”
“You already understand,” Rocher says. “If we had not stopped the Hercules, you know what would happen. This is the first step in a war between those who seek a united humanity and the fools who want to divide us. The people who I work for want to keep us together, moving forward for everyone’s betterment. A secret colony, beyond the reach and authority of Earth, would change everything. It cannot be permitted.”
“Your answer is to murder people in space.”
“Far better than letting thousands die who have never left the ground. When you’re up here, among the stars, it’s easy to lose sight of the true objective.”
“And what is that?”
“To improve the lot of all of us, every human being who is born, lives and dies. This cannot be a future for a privileged few.”
“You’re not an idealist,” Le Garre scoffs. “You’re a contract killer.”
“We’re all military people here, Major,” Rocher replies. “We follow orders. I have mine. You, however, have two masters pulling you in different directions. You have a standing order to patrol and maintain the trade route between colonies, outposts and Earth. You have evidence that someone is breaking the international agreement to supply these colonies. You know this is systemic – it’s not just one cargo shipment. This is just the first we have caught. You received a detailed manifest before you encountered the Hercules. That wasn’t from me; that was from people in Fleet who know what’s going on.”
“You murdered the freighter crew,” I say.
“They refused to surrender and to be placed under arrest.”
I’m trying to process this. Rocher’s position is implacable and it raises questions about ours. “What is the option you’re giving us?” I ask.