by Richard Penn
We see the girl again in the office. The commissioner bends her over the desk…’
Everyone was silent for a while.
‘But it is not just this guy, this “commissioner?”’ asked Lisa.
‘No, we have seen many cases, heard them discussed,’ said Sou. ‘It is everywhere.’ They all confirmed this.
‘Tommy,’ said Lisa, ‘I saw a lot of equipment on your screen. I take it you’ve been exploring the greasy bits?’
‘Yes,’ said Tommy. ‘I just couldn’t—’
‘That’s OK,’ said Lisa, who felt the same way. ‘We need to know about the ship as well. Go on.’
‘We’d left a bug on floor one, but that was just a staging area. I found a stairwell and got up to floor two, where we’d seen that mesh door. Inside was a kind of engine room, not the reactor core obviously but pumps and engines, the gear that cools the reactor and generates power from its steam. If we are looking for a place to destroy the ship, that would certainly slow them down some. That mesh is tight though, we won’t get a weapon through it.’
‘There were people there?’ asked Shani.
‘Yes,’ said Tommy, ‘both men, the neat-suited types we saw get off the bus. They all speak Chinese, some of the tech talk was in English. They had a visit from two of the women upstairs, not the young girls. It looked like it was a routine thing for them, part of their coffee break. One of them gave a little strip routine, while the other… Enough, already.’
‘One important point from the women’s room,’ said Sou. ‘We’ve confirmed that only the men have phones, but the women have a screen, hooked up with some kind of one-way Internet access. They can view things but not post or speak.’ It was Tommy’s turn to look scandalised.
‘Why is this important?’ asked Lisa.
‘Well, there are two factions down there, but they are all avid quidditch fans!’ said Sou. ‘One faction supports the Juewa Junebugs, but the other supports… us. The Terpsichore Dancers.’ Everyone laughed for the first time that day.
‘I can see how it would be attractive to them,’ said Shani. ‘I am surprised they are allowed to view it. All those images of women and men playing freely together, the agility… it would be like… porn to them.’
‘It isn’t allowed,’ said Sou. ‘I saw them hiding it, distracting the trusty while they looked.’
‘OK, thanks everyone,’ said Lisa. ‘I know that was hard but it needed doing. I want to tell you now that we are not looking for abuse any more. I want to switch the focus—’
‘But we need to get the evidence,’ said Sou. ‘To track down all the guilty—’
‘And what?’ said Lisa. ‘Go in with handcuffs and stun-guns, haul them off to the farm tunnels? You’ve read some military stuff, Sou. What’s the first thing you lose when you’re badly outnumbered?’
‘Discrimination. Choices,’ said Sou, reluctantly.
‘That, or your entire force is killed. Yes. Folks, if we are very, very brave and very, very lucky, we might, just might, be able to get some of the women and children out and disable the ship. Much more likely is, we all get killed, or worse. Forget fair trials and forget “collective punishment”’.
She sat back, releasing Stjepan’s hand, and looked very serious. ‘I expect to be in a war crime trial for this, so I’m not asking for a vote. My personal responsibility, as captain of a vessel in high space. We will rescue who we can, but our primary objective as of now is the destruction of that ship. We shall not leave here while it is capable of flight.’
Lisa put her handcuffs on the table and held out her wrists. ‘Second Officer Papadakis, is there mutiny?’
Sou looked around the table. ‘There is no mutiny,’ she said.
‘Very well. Shani, Stjepan, I want to ask you about Dekker. We need someone we can trust in that place, a spy. Is it possible we could use her?’
‘She’s not really a doctor,’ said Stjepan. ‘She’s a nurse, a midwife. She is the one who stole Martin’s semen, remember? She must have been in on the conspiracy before Fred Soon disappeared.’
‘But she is all those women have,’ said Shani. ‘Imagine where they would be with no medical help. She seems to do what she can given that she’s under surveillance.’
‘She could have given that poor woman an abortifacient, secretly. But no, they probably do not have access to all drugs… oh, I don’t know.’
‘Chep, we’re not trying her here’, said Lisa. ‘In that environment every single person will do something morally repugnant every day. Or die with their principles intact. All we want to know is can we trust her to help us, at worst not to betray us. We have leverage. We know about her son, and we… have her daughter. Little Daisy is Floortje Dekker’s daughter.’
‘Yes, of course. You’re right, it’s just—’
‘I know, Chep, I know,’ said Lisa, touching his hand lightly.
‘Minah, Tommy, I want you to pull our flies in, concentrate on three things: how many people are there, where is the control room for their surveillance, and what do we need to destroy to stop that ship, at least for several months. Look on the ninth or tenth floors, that’s where the real power will be.
‘Stjepan, Sou. Strategies. Come up with scenarios for completing the mission. Refine them as the flies give us more data.
‘Shani, private chat with me, please.’ They moved into Lisa’s cabin, and she continued. ‘I can’t order you to join me but—’
‘I know what you are going to say, and you’re right. I need to go in, to infiltrate. But, Captain, you cannot—’
‘I must,’ said Lisa. ‘I can’t ask either of the others to go. I hate to have to ask you, the risk of death, of… rape, it’s…’
‘No, Lisa, listen to me. It is a simple practicality. I must go, and I will, gladly. It is simply that you are too tall.’
‘Tall? What’s tall got to do with it? That’s preposterous.’
‘You have not seen most of the videos,’ said Shani. ‘I have looked at them all. Not one of those women is more than 160cm tall. You are 190, you would stand out like a barge in a scooter dock.’
‘How is that possible? Never mind, you are right, now I think about it. But, oh my god, that means…’ She opened the door. ‘Minah, could you come in here, please?’
Minah came in and closed the door, as the two of them tried to find the words. ‘It’s OK, Lisa,’ she said. ‘I am proud to do it. I have started to make a shawl already. And Tommy has been sharpening the kitchen knives, putting a wicked point on them.’
Once more, Lisa was amazed at the strength of this small woman. ‘If you are sure… Have you spoken to Sou about it?’ she asked finally.
‘No,’ said Minah. ‘That is still to do. It will be a very hard talk, but I am my own person. In the end I must go, even if she disagrees.’
‘We must tell them soon,’ said Lisa, ‘There is no point in making plans without this. I will give you a chance to discuss it first, but…’
They returned to the group, and Minah took Sou to their room, while Shani quietly told the men what they had in mind. Tommy and Stjepan both spoke up, tried to insist that they should go instead, but had to admit that only veiled women would be able to move around unchallenged. Mina returned to the table after a few minutes, but Sou stood by the door, as far from the table as she could be, tears in her eyes.
‘Sou, will you join us, please?’ said Lisa, and she rejoined the circle.
32 Choosing Evils
‘Right,’ said Lisa. ‘Hold off gathering information for a minute. I want to give you an outline of the plan as I see it. I still have some bits where I just don’t know what to do, so we’re looking to patch those holes, find something we can survive. Phases are contact, blind, rescue, destroy and escape. “Contact” means getting to Dekker, getting her a phone and talking her into helping us. “Blind” means defeating their surveillance, so we and our agents can move freely. Ideally that needs to be done without alerting them. “Rescue” means getting those child
ren and some women out, away from enemy control at least. “Destroy” means stopping that ship from flying, at least for several months. “Escape” means getting out of here, back to Terps. I know some of us have started to think our own escape is a lower priority, but we need to get the kids out, we can’t sacrifice them.’
Tommy spoke first. ‘Can’t we do this without putting Shani and Minah in that awful place? Surely we can—’
‘Let’s not solve that at this moment,’ said Lisa. ‘By all means, if we can find a way, that would be wonderful. When I try, it seems to rely too heavily on people we can’t trust, and puts the victims, especially the children, in far more danger. Work it through, but keep an open mind.’
‘“Blind” seems impossible to me,’ said Shani. ‘If we succeed in taking out their surveillance, they will either ascribe it to us and redouble their search efforts, or blame the women. You know how they would punish a woman who betrayed them.’
‘I’ve thought of that part,’ said Lisa, leaning forward and looking at the floor. ‘We can only ask the women to help us when we are very close to the rescue phase. Yes, I know. I don’t have an answer for you.’
‘“Rescue” … you said the children and some of the women,’ said Stjepan. ‘What happens to the ones left behind? Surely we must take them all?’
‘Chep, dear, we can’t,’ said Lisa. ‘Some will be with the men, we will find some are not to be trusted, we won’t have time, we don’t have room… that’s the… if we were a huge commando force, we could rush in, immobilise everyone, line them all up for trial. We’re not. We’re terrorists (sorry, Minah but we have to face facts), this is asymmetrical warfare and we’re on the small side. Good people will die.
‘Stjepan, you just volunteered to take “Escape.” I’m making each of you prime for planning one of the phases. How many people can we take? Work with Sou on the timing, Tommy on anything technical. Is there any way we can set up a shelter here, keep some of them safe while we take the others to Terps?
‘Tommy, you’ve got “Destroy.” What’s the minimum we have to do to guarantee the Long ship can’t be flown off into the dark? Try not to kill everyone; the Navy will be happier if they are all sitting here waiting to be arrested. But, you’ve got to destroy their ability to shoot us down while we’re escaping. Dancer is a lovely ship, but she’s crap as a military vessel. Immobilise them, pull their teeth. What are our weapons, where do they need to be placed?
‘Shani, you have “Contact” – how to reach Dekker, persuade her to help. If you and Minah are going in, how and when?
‘Minah, you have “Blind” – if anyone has a clue on that. Otherwise you’re looking at how you as infiltrators will be able to operate without blinding them.
‘What’s left? Oh yes, Sou, you have “Rescue.” How do we get a dozen or more people out of here without putting Dancer in jeopardy, without the enemy picking them off, and so on.
‘Back to spying then, and do any research you need. Nobody acts until we have a plan. It’s 1430 now. Plan to report by 1730 and we’ll eat after the meeting. I will keep the watch.’
Each of the primes set up a screen, covering most of the walls of the bridge, broke down their task into questions, and started to fill in some of the answers themselves or by ideas from the others.
“Destroy” soon acquired schematics of the ship’s reactor, and sketches of ingenious little devices. While Tommy’s fly tried to buzz its way into every office on the ninth floor, another window opened up with the whizzing green text hackers always seem to favour.
“Escape” showed diagrams of Dancer, but done out like a 17th century slave ship, with life support calculations and orbit diagrams.
“Contact” showed the fly in the doctor’s office, trying to see into every room, and then out into the corridors around it, systematically searching. After a while a curious video window opened, a view into the women’s room with several of them peering into the camera, but this was not from any of their flies.
Shortly after that, “Blind” acquired a similar video window, this one divided into four views of various places around the colony.
‘What’s happening?’ asked Lisa, ‘where is all this video coming from?’
‘I can answer that,’ said Tommy. ‘I’ve hacked their surveillance system, the spider found a wireless router on the bus with a weak protocol. That’s the screen on the desk in the control room. If we can’t blind them we can at least know where they’re looking. Also, that screen in the women’s room, I’ve pwned the outgoing block. What you’re seeing is the girls, watching Earther Pratfalls.’ A video series from Phobos, Pratfalls showed tourists from Earth doing foolish things in low gravity, popular with children across the Belt.
‘Are you sure they won’t be able to tell we’re in there?’ said Lisa. ‘This is life or death, Tommy.’
‘I know that. I am sure, or I wouldn’t have gone in,’ said Tommy, sounding a little hurt.
‘Well, it may give us a huge advantage,’ said Lisa. ‘Well done.’ The word “suspended” appeared on the “Blind” screen, and Minah moved over to “Contact” with Shani. They had two flies under control, and had found a way into the farm tunnels.
“Contact” acquired a question: ‘talk to girls through screen?’ but Tommy was too busy with bombs to answer it.
“Rescue” was thinly populated. It had stills of the harbour bus. Sou asked for permission to walk the spider out of the hangar onto its outside wall, and that was going ahead. So far, it was only in the airlock, waiting for the next boat movement.
The question about talking to the girls on the “Contact” screen was answered: ‘No. Trusty would betray them.’ A map of the rooms in the medical centre appeared, with corridors around it, and overlapping cones with the field of view of cameras. A couple of small wedges of green were possible areas to talk in.
“Destroy” now showed a detailed schematic of something which looked like a rat, with four stubby legs and a camera for a nose. Most of the body was a stick, labelled ‘Acme Dynamite.’ Engineer humour.
“Escape” was now divided into two, with the Dancer diagram reduced to 24 bodies, most of them quite small. The other half of the screen was a smaller habitat which Lisa did not recognise, with two large bodies and another ten small ones.
“Rescue” lit up with a view from the spider, now with the hold door opening and the bus coming out.
‘Captain,’ said Sou. ‘I want to put that spider on the boat. We’ll lose control of it, but it will record, and we can get it back when the boat returns. We’ve got to know where the boat is going.’
‘I thought the landing field was out of our control range?’ said Lisa.
‘That’s just a maybe,’ said Tommy. ‘If it’s on the bus and out of control, it will just—‘
‘Got it,’ said Lisa. ‘Approved.’ The spider jumped off the wall and onto the roof of the bus, taking up position near the front. They all watched the bus lumber across the field to the boat.
When it got close, Tommy said ‘I have a ping from it. Go?’
‘Go,’ said Lisa, and the view changed as the spider found an inconspicuous perch on the starboard side of the boat, looking forward and slightly down. Sou pulled up stills of the boat taken by the spider as it came in. It was a modified scooter, similar to their own gig but without the stealth fairing.
‘Four missiles each side, five kilos each,’ said Sou. ‘Guess whose name is on those.’
‘Good call, Sou,’ said Lisa. ‘Let’s hope we get something back from it.’
Over the remaining hour, the research continued to fill in blanks. The map of the farm tunnels on the “contact” screen filled out, with icons representing girls, women and a few young boys.
On “rescue,” a set of counters had appeared ticking upward, currently running Men:6(+2?), Boys:4, Women:6(+3?),Girls:15. Next to it was Dancer:3W,12G;Extra:2W,10G.
There was a ping and a roaring sound from the photonic receiver on the equipment rack. It
ran for thirty seconds, then repeated twice, and stopped. Tommy moved across to the desk and threw a graph up on the screen, what looked like a speech signal. ‘Let’s see… encrypted for sure, but black-hat or white-hat? I’ll try the public key from our fancy phones… yep, that’s it.’ He played the message back.
‘BNS Dancer from Belt Naval Base in Phobos. Acknowledge receipt of images from asteroid 992374. Grave concern for public safety. Patrol ship BNS Beowulf dispatched, estimated arrival 87 sols 15 hours from this message. Imperative you contain threat. Act to contain threat at any cost.’
They sat in silence for almost a minute, until Sou spoke. ‘The cavalry is coming! Yay, just wait three months and you’ll be fine.’
‘Actually, that’s some ship, if it can make it here from Phobos in three months. The enemy will know a message was sent. They won’t be able to decrypt it,’ said Tommy. ‘It was relayed from Terpsichore, which implies the folks at Terps know we’re here, and tells the enemy they know. They can’t help us, though. We have the last spare RTG.’
‘Means you don’t get that war-crime trial, Lisa,’ said Shani. ‘Someone higher up the food-chain has taken responsibility.’
‘Frankly,’ said Lisa, ‘I’ll be happy if I survive long enough to go to trial. This doesn’t change anything, guys. We thought we were on our own, and guess what? We are. 1725: everyone ready for that briefing? Let’s take them in order.’
Shani spoke first, pointing at the “Contact” screen, where a fairly complete map of the colony came up. ‘The basic idea is this. Minah and I break into a farm tunnel at night, when nobody is there. The farming is entirely done by children, overseen by two women, both trustys. Avoiding the women, we contact one or more of the older girls, have one take a phone to Dekker. From there we have to play it by ear, go by what she says.’
Next came Minah, with the sparse “Blind” screen. ‘I think we’ve accepted that blinding the surveillance is impractical. We must be guided by what they are looking at, lay low when we have to.’