Fearless

by Allen Stroud

  What I do with the information now is crucial. It could mean life or death for all of us.

  I’m thinking about the way Langsley looked. How he was behaving. The video file had the right encryption and titles, but the truncated ending isn’t what I’ve seen in any other flag briefings. Also, he isn’t my immediate superior at Fleet. Why would he be sending this message? Who would be giving him orders?

  Who was behind that camera?

  There are pieces to this puzzle that I’m missing. Events have moved on. If I order the Khidr to stand down and surrender to the Gallowglass, there’s no guarantee we’ll be allowed to live, despite what Bogdanovic says, but at the same time, if I continue on without paying Langsley’s orders any regard, I could be court-martialed.

  Military officers aren’t supposed to be put in a position where they have to interpret orders.

  The communications system buzzes. “Captain, I errr… We’ve detected something.” It’s Travers again. I’m almost glad for the distraction.

  “What have you found?” I ask.

  “I think you better come to the bridge and see, Captain,” Keiyho chimes in.

  I consider the difficult trip from the strategy room, down the lift shaft and through the rest of the ship while we’re still decelerating. “How long until we’re in position?” I ask.

  “About forty minutes, but this won’t wait.”

  “Okay, I’m on my way.”

  I sigh and disconnect the control linkage between my portable screen and the displays in the room.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Sellis

  “Okay, I think we’re ready.”

  I’m in the acceleration chair again, the straps and buckles all connected, as instructed. Bogdanovic appears to have done the same. I can’t see the pistol anymore. Maybe he’s hidden it somewhere.

  The airlock door opens, and Quartermaster Sam Chase comes in. He’s carrying a pistol, aimed at me. Behind him, Commander Keiyho aims a weapon at the doctor.

  I think something’s coming. Bogdanovic hides it well, but he’s desperate. I glance at him, but he’s not meeting my eye. Instead, he’s looking down, his chest rising and falling rapidly.

  Do I say something? No. That would be betrayal.

  And courageous. Fuck, I’m such a coward.

  Arkov slips past both men to the side of my chair and presses the release. “Get up, slowly,” he says. I do so, raising my hands as I float out of the chair.

  “You are with me,” Keiyho says. He gestures toward the open hatch. “You go first.”

  Carefully, I back toward the exit, making sure I’m facing everyone, my hands raised and palms outward. I still have the chemical cutter in the pocket of my suit, but there’s no point in mentioning or drawing attention to it now.

  Keiyho’s gun is trained on me all the time I’m moving, and Chase is still covering the doctor. If Bogdanovic kicks off, I have to hope everyone will think for a second before shooting me.

  “Nice and slow,” Keiyho says.

  I nod and try to smile reassuringly, but I’m not sure it comes out how I wanted. I meet his hard gaze, but then I see movement over his shoulder and his attention flicks away from me. He turns around as Bogdanovic screams and raises his gun, aiming at Chase.

  Then everything goes to shit.

  For some reason Chase doesn’t fire, but grabs for Bogdanovic’s arm. The gun goes off; the recoil noise is deceptively quiet. Arkov cries out in anger and pain, just as Keiyho reaches them. He seizes Bogdanovic’s other arm and reactivates the emergency strap restraint mechanism. Suddenly, the doctor is held fast by the chair’s automated acceleration safety protocol. He’s struggling against it, but that nylon fabric is like steel, manufactured to withstand twenty g’s or more. The gun, taken from Travers and given to me by Rocher, floats free. Chase plucks it out of the air with his left hand and points his own weapon at me.

  “You stay right there,” he snarls.

  I haven’t moved since it started, other than to gently drift backward with a forced grin on my lips.

  “Vasili, you okay?”

  “I’ll manage.” Arkov is clearly in pain. He’s breathing in gasps, and there’s a thin spiral of blood leaking out of his work suit into the air. Keiyho holsters his own gun and takes Bogdanovic’s weapon from Chase. He gets hold of the airlock tech’s collar and pulls him backward, past me and toward the exit.

  “I didn’t do anything,” I mumble.

  “No, you didn’t,” Chase replies, scowling at me. “And right now, you’re going to keep on doing exactly that.”

  A minute later Keiyho returns. “We’ve sealed the wound and called for Ensign Johansson,” he says. He points at me. “Best I take this one and come back to help you with the doctor.”

  Chase nods. “Sounds like a plan, Commander.”

  Keiyho touches my shoulder, and we start moving for the airlock once more. He’s still got a gun aimed at me, but really there’s no need. Any last thought of resistance drained away when I saw what Bogdanovic tried. Sure, there’ll be consequences for my family and my career, but I can’t live waiting for some nameless fucker to act on all that. I’ve made up my mind on what I’m going to do right now – that’s play along and behave. There’s really no point in doing anything else.

  We’re out of the airlock and into the passage. “Take a left turn at the end,” Keiyho says.

  I do exactly as I’m told, facing him, keeping my hands open and my movements slow and deliberate. “Look, I’m really sorry about—”

  “No talking, just keep moving.”

  “Oh, right, sorry.”

  We take several lefts and rights. Eventually, we get to corridor four, near where I was working on sealing off the wrecked hydroponics section. There are a couple of storage rooms just before the worst of it. Keiyho gestures for me to enter. I do so. It’s a small space. All the boxes have been cleared out, apart from one to sit on. Major Le Garre is standing inside. She’s also carrying a pistol.

  “Everything okay, Commander?” she asks.

  “We had a little trouble with the doctor,” Keiyho replies. “I need to go back and help deal with it.”

  “No problem. I can handle Sellis.”

  “Great.”

  Keiyho departs and I’m left alone with the major.

  The silence is pretty awkward. I’m fucking ashamed of myself. Of all the senior officers on the Khidr, she’s the one I respect most. Sure, I’m attracted to her too, but that’s a separate issue. She’s always dealt me straight and honest.

  “What’s going to happen?” I ask softly.

  Le Garre looks at me and shrugs. “In the short term, that depends on you. In terms of the investigation into Drake’s murder and everything else that’s happened, I’ll produce a report and hand it over to Fleet Intelligence when we get back.”

  “You mean, if we get back? There’s a lot that could see us dead in space long before that.”

  “Of course. Your friends on the Gallowglass could wipe us out, but I’ll still be writing my report.”

  “They’re not my friends.”

  “Okay, then what are they to you then?”

  It’s a straight question. I take a deep breath and start explaining. Once I get going, it all comes out in a confessional rush. I go over all the information that appeared on my screen, the deactivation order I gave to the cameras and how I was summoned to the bridge. While I do, Le Garre nods and listens silently, giving nothing away. When I’m done, she gives me a thin, humourless smile.

  “Sounds like you did your best to dodge your way through all this. Of course, we only have your word for it.”

  I sigh. “I can understand you thinking like that. If Bogdanovic and I were the only survivors, then—”

  “You weren’t the only survivors.”

  I stare at her and real
ise my mouth is hanging open. You weren’t the only survivors. Bogdanovic has lost it. I don’t trust him to back up my recollection of events unless it suits his interests, which it won’t. However, if someone else is still alive who was there, then they’ll be able to validate my story.

  For whatever reason, Le Garre has thrown me a bone by mentioning it.

  I regain control of my jaw and bite off the instinctive questions that I want to blurt out. This isn’t some kind of pity fuck. It’s an incentive to do the right thing. I can’t be totally desperate; that’ll make the situation worse, and she’s not going to wave a magic wand for me.

  “I fucked up,” I say at last. “I had no idea all this was coming.”

  “Perhaps,” Le Garre says.

  “It’s on me. No one else is going to fix it.”

  “You can’t go back, Jake. Some bridges are burned.”

  “Yeah.”

  I run a hand through my hair. It’s slick with sweat. My face is oily too. There’s been no letup since all this went down. “What’s the water situation like?” I ask.

  Le Garre shrugs. “We’ll ration it. The scrubbers can cope for a while.”

  I tap the empty bottle attached to my shoulder. “Enough left for me to have some then?”

  Her lips quirk. “Yes. One moment.”

  She steps outside and turns her back on me. While she’s away, I pull the chemical cutter out of my pocket, activate the little magnet on its side and put it against the wall. Then I quickly return to my seat.

  Le Garre comes back in with a replacement water bottle. I point to the cutter attached to the metal panel between us. “I kept that back from my toolkit, in case Rocher or Bogdanovic decided to get dangerous.”

  “Would you have helped them?” Le Garre asks.

  “I’d have defended myself,” I reply truthfully. “I didn’t help the doctor when he decided to get violent just now.”

  The major plucks the cutter from the wall, deactivates the magnet and puts it in her pocket. “I’m glad you gave this up,” she says.

  “Just give me a fair hearing. That’s all I ask.”

  “The more you cooperate, the easier things will be.”

  “I have to think about what they’re threatening to do to my family and friends. I hope you understand that.”

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Shann

  There was a day when I was seven or eight years old when I was left alone in the house.

  I don’t remember why, but I do remember waking up and pressing the call button beside my bed and no one answering. I waited for half an hour or more and started shouting to get someone’s attention.

  But still no one came.

  I crawled to the end of the bed and tried to get into the auto-chair, but somehow it slipped out of the cradle and I couldn’t reach it from where I was.

  I recall looking over the edge of the bed, judging the distance. The carpet was thick and soft, but I knew I’d have to fall onto it. The trick would be to fall the right way. I’d done it before, but not when I was alone in the house. If I got hurt, there would be no one around to help.

  The impact was a shock. I managed to land and roll, but I hit my head on the side of the auto-chair cradle. There was a bit of blood and some disorientation, not too bad as it turned out, but enough to give me a fright.

  By now, I needed the toilet. I struggled into the chair, but because it hadn’t been securely placed in the cradle the night before, the power unit had run down. I had to struggle out again and make my way down the hall to the bathroom.

  It wasn’t very far, but the urgency and loneliness made everything twice as hard. All the while, I kept wondering where my parents had gone and why they’d left me behind.

  About an hour later, I found out why when they returned. My brother had run off, forcing them both to go and search for him. By then I’d managed to reseat the auto-chair to get it charging and made my way downstairs. They were surprised to find me in the lounge.

  I never told them how frightened I was.

  Now, in this moment, I have to make my way back to the bridge. I didn’t expect to be moving while the ship would be decelerating, so I didn’t bring my prosthetic legs with me to the strategy room.

  No easy task.

  The braking means I’m drawn to the far wall of the room, pushing against the straps like I’m hanging above the ground. The door is to my right. I’ll have to work my way around toward it. My hands close over the safety release and I hesitate. I’m remembering what happened to Drake. The fall for him had been under six g. For me it will be less than one, but it’s still dangerous.

  I press the button and raise my arms. There’s a shrill alarm from the chair, and the wall rushes toward me. I manage to avoid hitting the table and bump into the wall. The impact is sudden, but not too painful. I manage to roll, using some of the momentum to get closer to the door. I crawl the rest of the way and manage to climb up the wall to press the door access. The panel slides away, and I grab hold of the frame with my fingertips, lifting myself up.

  The passageway is fairly easy to manage. I can feel the shifting of our ship’s braking. It makes the sensation strange and not like Earth gravity at all. You get little shifts in a generated gravity environment too, but they aren’t this pronounced.

  The large lounge gym will be much more difficult to get through. We don’t usually come up here when the torus isn’t spinning. There are fixed tables and chairs that are sideways to me, acting like a crazy climbing frame. Small indentations in the floor help too. I think I can see a path to the lift shaft.

  Navigating the Khidr like this would test anyone. We’ve had some practice in orientation training, but Fleet designs its ships to ensure you don’t have to move far in the event of an emergency. That’s why there are safety seats in every space, just in case of sudden acceleration or deceleration. You might need to move around if you had to get to an escape craft, but even then, the ship is designed to prevent that. Rooms and corridors are sealable containers with emergency air and water, ensuring you’re already in a lifeboat all the time.

  “Shann to Keiyho.”

  “Yes, Captain?”

  “I’m in the rec room. This better be worth it.”

  “It is, Captain, trust me.”

  I’m getting a better sense of my ability to fling myself around. I get to the end of the corridor and reach out, ensuring I have a good two-handed grip on a chair base and then pull myself off the edge of the door. Once I’m balanced I reach out again, this time to grab a chair.

  Progress is slow, steady and exhausting. Someone with legs would take more risks, leaping or jumping the gaps, but there’s danger in doing that. For me, it’s no option, so my journey is gradual and repetitive across seats, tables and couches.

  A fresh challenge comes when I get to the end of the recreation area. There’s an open space in front of the lift shaft. I’m looking for handholds on the floor that has become a smooth, manufactured cliff face. There are fingertip holds between metal floor tiles and DuraGlas plates, but it’s too far to rely on those. Instead, I rip open the emergency tab on my suit sleeve and activate the interior magnetics. There’s enough charge to polarise all the contact points in my clothing to hold me suspended on the floor. The difficulty will be ripping away from each connection to continue to make progress.

  This was the method Chase and Keiyho used to get to the bridge, only they had boots and gloves designed for exterior traverse. All I have is my suit’s emergency charge that isn’t designed to be flipped on and off. Still, needs must.

  I make it to the lift shaft. I’m able to slide down it on my backside and tumble out into the deck at the bottom. Shah is there with a plasma torch, working on reinforcing a bulkhead. He’s strapped into a bracing harness. He turns toward me, pushing up his safety goggles.

  “You need a hand, Capt
ain?” he asks.

  “Have to get to the bridge,” I pant in reply.

  Shah nods. He slips off his mag-gloves and hands them to me. “Looks like you’ve done the hard bit,” he says. “I can manage without these. Might make the next section easier.”

  “Thank you,” I say and make my way out.

  “You’re welcome, Captain,” Shah calls after me.

  * * *

  Ten minutes later, I’m through the bridge door and climbing into the spare seat. I take out my portable screen and plug it in. “All right, Travers, this better be good.”

  Travers spins around in his chair as I’m strapping myself in. It’s just him and Keiyho on the bridge. “We’ve picked up an object on the closer range scan. It didn’t show up on our laser sweep.”

  “Didn’t show up? Why?”

  “It appears to be made of an ultra-absorbent material, Captain.” Travers’s fingers sweep across his console, and a short-range scanning plot appears on the screen in my hands. “You can see, the original laser sweep was hitting it, but just disappearing, leaving a small blind spot in our plotting field. Occasionally there are glitches like that, so I think our computer system was filtering it out as a data error. However, we’re a lot closer now and…well…it’s there.”

  Laser field sweeps are designed so any reflection, diffusion or refraction of the beam is detected by the instrumentation. This is what gives us an accurate picture of our surroundings. However, some materials are known to absorb light to such a degree they look like holes. “Does that mean our scan was inaccurate?” I ask. “We can’t know if anything was behind this object, can we?”

  “Well, we do now,” Keiyho says. “Our change of course meant the local communications relay’s position changed in relation to ours. It passed behind the object and disappeared for a moment. That’s what caused us to find it.”

  “How far away is it?”

  Travers checks his screen. “We’ll pass within six metres in about…five minutes.”