by Allen Stroud
Or at least, that’s what I thought back then.
“Is that you, Captain?” Bogdanovic asks as the door closes behind me.
“It is,” I reply. He looks pathetic, confined as he is, but we’ve no choice but to manage things like this. “I need your help.”
“You’ve considered my offer?”
“I need you to tell the captain of the Gallowglass that we have surrendered to you. I need you to use the code words you were given to ensure him that our surrender is authentic and that you have full command of this ship.”
“Why would I do that, Captain Shann?”
I hesitate and glance at Sam. He nods, encouraging me to go on. “You’ll do it, because if you don’t, you’ll die here, blindfolded and strapped to a chair.”
Bogdanovic forces out a laugh. “Not much of an incentive. I don’t believe you’ll murder me.”
I sigh. “Doctor, you need to realise this is the only option on the table. I’m going to lead the Khidr into battle with or without your cooperation. If you help, the odds of your survival go up a bit. If you don’t…” I pause, leaving the sentence hanging for a moment or two. “I’ll go next door and tell Sellis you’re helping us.”
Bogdanovic’s sweaty face pinches. “Sellis won’t believe you,” he says. “You left it too long to play that card, Captain.”
“Perhaps,” I say. “But we’ll only know if I have to try. I spent a fair amount of time digging into his background and yours, looking for something to work with. Did you know he owes some pretty dangerous people a lot of money?”
“It doesn’t matter whether I did or didn’t.”
“Okay, well you have nothing to worry about then.”
I move away and out of the room. Tomlins’s old place is a few metres along the corridor. I go inside. Sellis is in there, similarly strapped into a chair with Le Garre standing over him. I remove the blindfold. Sellis stares at me and I stare back.
I’m trying to remember what I know about him. He’s always been in the crowd, behind others when it came to volunteering for anything. A classic second, probably a good place to be when you’re trying to hide something.
“Seems you got yourself in a lot of trouble, Specialist,” I say.
Sellis flinches but doesn’t reply.
“I’m here to offer you a way out, if you’ll take it.”
Two blinks. I can’t read anything from that.
I decide to lay out my cards. “Sellis, I need you to tell the Gallowglass we’ve surrendered to you and give them whatever code word they’ve told you to say. If you don’t, I’ll fight them anyway and our chance of winning will be less. If you want a better chance of surviving, you need to lie to these people.”
Sellis blinks again, and for a moment, there’s a spark of something. Could it be hope? “I don’t care about surviving,” he says. “This isn’t about me.”
I nod, remembering the records. “You had a wife and a daughter, right?”
“Yeah.”
“And you’re divorced.”
“Uh-huh.”
“You’re worried about them?”
Sellis grunts. “More than worried. The minute I do anything, they’ll be executed. You can’t protect them. No one can.”
“What’s your way out?” I ask.
“Huh?”
“What are you trying to do to get safe and away from these people? You must have some kind of plan.”
“I thought they’d stop. I never dreamed I’d end up in a situation like this.”
“Bullshit.” I lean in until our faces are inches apart. “You’ve played this well, but you have to have a way out. What did they offer you?”
Sellis flinches again, looking away from me toward Le Garre. I turn to her and she shakes her head, slowly and deliberately. “They said I could disappear,” he mumbles. “After this tour, I would be totally out. No debts, new identity, the works.”
“And what guarantee did they give you that they’ll leave you alone?”
Sellis doesn’t reply.
I look at Le Garre. She shrugs. I turn back to Sellis. “Do you know the people on the Gallowglass?” I ask.
Sellis shakes his head. “No, only Rocher did. Bogdanovic introduced him to us and said he’d verified himself.”
“Do you have a code to verify yourself to the Gallowglass if you took over the ship?”
“Yeah. I think we all do, or did.”
“Sellis, you know these people will keep using you. They’ll make you betray everyone you care about until there’s no one left. Your daughter will only be safe if you find a way out, a proper way out.”
“What are you suggesting?”
“After this fight. We’ll register you as dead. After we get to Phobos, you can disappear. Your family will be safe if everyone thinks you’re dead.”
Sellis stares at me. There’s that spark again. It stays for a while this time. “I can’t trust them. Why should I trust you?”
“Because you’ve been on this ship with me; you know me. Have I ever lied to you?”
“No…you haven’t…”
“You agree then?”
“Yeah, okay.”
I turn to Le Garre. “Get him out of here and in a room with access to comms. I want Ensign Chiu there as well. When the moment comes, they can both send the message with their verifications.”
Le Garre nods. “I’ll get to it, Captain,” she says.
I’m at the door. I look at Sellis. “You’re doing the right thing, Specialist,” I say.
He tries to smile, but the expression is twisted and painful. “I hope so,” he says.
* * *
Humanity has always been fascinated with the concept of extraterrestrial life. Our religions constantly looked to the stars to explain our origins. Later, artists and writers flouted the constraints of dogma to imagine heaven and hell beyond this world, tying all things into a series of mythologies that could not be disproved with the evidence at hand.
Later, religion was forced to retreat as our knowledge disproved much of the speculation of great thinkers. Our world expanded but became less and less defined. We were forced to adopt an evidence-based approach to our understanding, and this enabled our advancement.
However, our imaginations remain a part of who we are. We still look into space and try to explain the unexplainable. In our colonisation of the solar system, we have reached out farther and farther than ever before and discovered xenobiological life, but not intelligent neighbours. So, the mythology remains and we continue to imagine answers to the question, are they out there, or are we alone?
When this question is considered, another argument becomes prominent: do we know all there is to know? Conspiracy theories about alien encounters have swirled around since Roswell in the 1940s and before. Interpretive opinion that links ancient societies together claims either that we came from the stars or that we were fostered by aliens, alternately, depending on which paranoid fantasy is popular at the time. There are stories of military cover-ups, abductions, mysterious recordings and more. Some fragmented half-truths make us see shadows in the darkness. Evidence-based research is supplanted by fiction, and we return to the same speculative storytelling as our ancestors, huddling together and dreaming of the possible.
A mysterious intelligence, existing beyond our world. Lurking and observing us. Leaving clues for us to find, assessing our responses. Recording their observations and assessing our technology before deciding to reach out…
Chapter Forty
Johansson
I remember being five. I was on my own at home. It probably wasn’t for long, maybe an hour or so, but for me, it felt like forever.
I was playing with my toy cars in my room. Something happened and one of them ended up under the bed, out of my reach. I lay on the floor and stretched out my left ar
m, getting my fingers to it, but I couldn’t pull it out.
I remember looking at the gap between the frame and the floor. There was enough room for me to be able to squeeze under there, so I did, wriggling my way right up to the car and grabbing it.
It was only then that I realised I couldn’t get back out. For some reason, I just couldn’t push myself back the way I’d crawled in.
By the time my mother came home, I was screaming. She heard me and lifted the bed so I could escape. Afterward, she hugged and scolded me, saying I should never do anything like that again.
Now, I’m disobeying her.
The metal plate under my feet is hot. I have to keep shifting my toes so they don’t get burned through the soles of my heavy-duty EVA boots. I know what’s causing it. Sam Chase is busy with a welding iron and chemical sealant, wedging me into the hollowed-out body of a torpedo, along with a drone’s manoeuvering thruster, a portable data screen and an oxygen supply.
My field of vision is intentionally limited. The helmet of my EVA suit faces the touchscreen display. My left hand is bent up in front of my face so I can operate it by moving my wrist and my fingers. For now, I have my visor up, which makes things a bit less claustrophobic. I’ll need to pull it down before I get outside.
I must be crazy thinking this would work, but there’s no turning back now. We have ten minutes and there are still three plates to fix.
“What are you doing in here?”
The words are muffled but spoken with an inflection of surprise. I shift my head as much as I can to look out of the gap that Sam has yet to weld shut, but I can’t see the speaker. I hear shuffling as Sam gets up.
“Vasili, please, this has nothing to do with you.”
It’s Airlock Technician Arkov. He’s turned up at the worst possible time. There’s silence. I know the two men are staring at each other. I recall what happened between them before; Sam accused Arkov of being a traitor and chased him into the gravity deck.
I’m trapped in here. I can’t get involved. Whatever they decide will be my fate.
“Okay, I’m not going to rush to any conclusions,” Arkov says coolly. “But, in light of everything that’s happened, you’ll understand why I’m going to need an explanation for what you’re doing.”
“You don’t want to be involved,” Sam says.
“I’ll be the judge of that. Tell me the plan or I buzz the captain.”
After another pause, Sam begins to talk, grudgingly. “Johansson’s in here. It’s her plan. She wants to use the torpedo as a vehicle to get over to the other ship. She thinks she can disable it, if she can get close enough.”
“And you’re going along with this?”
“I owe her a favour.”
“And you’re repaying that by letting her kill herself?”
I’m not waiting for this to resolve itself. I tap the screen, activating the comms panel, and buzz Arkov directly, enabling the secure channel protocol. Under normal circumstances, all comms traffic would be monitored and recorded, but no one has time right now. The ship’s computer will flag the secure encryption for the attention of the bridge officers, but it’ll be a while before someone picks it up.
“Vasili? It’s me.”
“April. This is crazy, you know that?”
“It’s a little crazy,” I concede. “But I’ve done all the calculations. There are good margins for doing this. That’s why Sam’s helping.”
“He says he owes you.”
“Yes, he does, and so do you.”
Arkov laughs. “If you mean your patching up of my arm, I’m grateful, but come on! Assisting a suicide is not a comparable transaction.”
I sigh. “We don’t have time for this. Make your choice.”
“Sorry?”
“I said make your choice. Report me or help me. The Gallowglass will be here in minutes. I’ll not waste more time fencing with you.” I shut down the comms.
After a minute, I hear muffled voices. Sam and Vasili have moved away to talk about me. That’s fine, but they need to hurry up and decide. I shift my position a little, easing the pressure on my shoulders, but causing a section of the casing to dig into my ribs.
A metal plate comes down over the gap near my face, and there’s a chemical smell. Decision made. I flip down my visor and try to move my head away from where Sam is working. I can feel the heat on my neck through the EVA suit, but it’s bearable. Whatever Arkov has opted for, we’re carrying on.
That means I just have to wait.
It’s dark in here, like it was under the bed. I remember closing my eyes and trying to think of another way out. A part of me couldn’t stop thinking about the frame and mattress pressing down on my skull and my chest. If someone sat down above me, I’d be crushed. Which of my bones would break first?
Looking back, I stoked myself up into a panic. It was a ridiculous, delusional fear. No one would have gotten on the bed without seeing me and hearing my cries for help. My feet were probably sticking out and would have been the first thing my mother saw when she came home.
This time, it’s different. I’m safe enough for now, but once I get out in space I’ll be at the mercy of the speed at which I’m ejected from the Khidr launch tube. Most of the drone jet fuel will be needed to slow me down. Otherwise, if I somehow manage to be pointed in the right direction, I’ll crash into the Gallowglass and the metal shell of the torpedo will crumple in around me, breaking my bones a lot more easily than any mattress might have done all those years ago.
We might have been able to avoid that risk if we’d launched earlier. Captain Shann has deployed several torpedoes as maneuverable assets in the debris field. If I’d been one of those, I would have had more control over my velocity, but we weren’t ready, and I’d have been out in space too long. My oxygen supply would never have lasted, and the Gallowglass would have had a lot longer to identify me, acquire a target solution and turn me into dust.
I reset the screen to its previous window, the tactical position plot of the Khidr and the Gallowglass. Sam has mounted a tiny camera to the exterior of the torpedo’s warhead casing, along with a drone arm, which I can control from here. The problem is both additions are pretty obvious to spot. He’ll need to smuggle me into one of the launch chambers and load me up before anyone notices. That’ll require some quick work and quick thinking.
I run some basic calculations again, making sure all the files I’m working with are locally hosted. If all goes well, in a few minutes, I’ll be far away from the Khidr, so making use of the central storage drive won’t be an option. It’s surprising how you can become used to having all these resources at hand and forget about what you’re using after months and months of working with the same equipment.
I touch a finger to the new metal plate, pushing against it. There’s no movement. The weld is solid. A moment later the casing around me shifts and I hear a muffled thud. Sam has detached the torpedo from the clasps he was using to hold it while he worked on sealing me in. He must be moving me to the launcher.
That means Arkov must have at least agreed to look the other way.
I flick up the visor and breathe carefully, trying to stay calm. All of the crew have biomonitoring, and although Bogdanovic is not going to be monitoring the screens while he’s locked up, the computer system will alert the captain if my heart rate goes too high. Being chucked out of a torpedo tube might be cause enough to trigger that, but by then it’ll be too late. What I can do without is any kind of alert beforehand that ruins my chances of getting clear.
There’s a beep in my ear, and my screen registers an incoming comms request from Sam. It’s unencrypted. I key it up. “How’s things going?” I ask.
“All on schedule now,” Sam replies. “We’ve gained an extra pair of hands.”
“That’s helpful,” I say.
“Yeah, it’ll help with a few o
f the difficult jobs coming up.”
“Great.” The channel clicks off.
I bring up the exterior camera. There’s something partially covering the lens, but I do get a slanted image of the corridor we’re moving down. I run the adaptive visual recognition system, and text and lines start appearing around each blurry object, identifying and cataloguing everything it can see. I’ll need this when I’m outside in the dark. The computer optics are far superior to anything I can eyeball.
The screen goes dark. I hear muffled voices again and there’s another clump. I’m being packed into the firing tube, I hope, or I’m being put back on a rack and this isn’t going to plan. There’s a comms channel click on the screen, then another one. That’ll be from Sam, two clicks for success, three clicks if something’s gone wrong.
I wait for a third click.
It doesn’t come.
Chapter Forty-One
Shann
“She’s here, Captain.”
“Broadcast the message.”
“Aye, aye.”
I’m on the bridge with Keiyho, Le Garre, Chiu and Travers. Duggins is lurking somewhere in the ship’s bowels. The rest of the crew are at battle stations. Chase is with Sellis. The message he prerecorded with Chiu has been sent. All we can hope is that the Gallowglass crew believe what they hear and that our two traitors haven’t sold us out.
This time, we’re prepared. Everyone is wearing emergency suits, with a portable oxygen supply. If any compartment of the ship is compromised, the crew will have a chance to survive.
The bridge shutters are drawn back. I can see into the darkness. We’re drifting in a field of our own debris. There’s something serene and peaceful about it all. The silence of a lethal void that waits for us, waits for me…
“Two minutes since broadcast, Captain. No change of heading.”
I can’t see the enemy ship. I won’t be able to see her until she’s almost on top of us. “What’s her trajectory?” I ask.