The Hyperspace Trap

by Christopher Nuttall

  “So it’s Angela now, is it?” Carla teased. “Watch yourself, really.”

  “I will,” Matt promised. He peered over her shoulder. “Do you think she needed a bodyguard?”

  “I don’t know,” Carla admitted. “Didn’t you check? There’s nothing on her record to suggest that she had to go with someone. There’s just a blanket ban on leaving the ship.”

  Matt frowned. “Is that common?”

  “Not for anyone over eighteen,” Carla said. She bit her lip. “I suppose someone could program in an exception, but . . . Matt, the captain would have to sign off on it. Perhaps it would be better not to ask too many questions.”

  “I see,” Matt said. “Ouch.”

  “Ouch indeed,” Carla agreed. She rose. “Let’s get something to eat, shall we?”

  Angela stumbled into her stateroom, feeling wretched.

  She hadn’t meant to break down, not like that. She . . . she’d hoped to leave, to see what she could do on the surface. She’d even booked a hotel room for herself. But when she’d tried to leave . . . it hadn’t been Matt’s fault, she knew, but she’d screamed at him anyway. The entire ship would be buzzing by the end of the day. Everyone would know she’d thrown a tantrum that would have disgraced a five-year-old child.

  It might be a good excuse not to attend parties, she thought. Or perhaps I should go anyway, just to make it clear that I don’t listen to my wretched fiancé.

  She strode across the carpeted floor and pressed her finger against her father’s bell. There was a long pause, long enough to make her wonder if he was somewhere else, and then the door opened, allowing her to step into his office. Robert Cavendish was seated at his desk, his eyes disapproving. Someone had called him already, she realized dully. She hoped it hadn’t been Matt.

  “Tell me something,” her father said. He sounded tired, but angry. “What were you thinking?”

  Angela glared at him, then threw herself into an armchair. “I was thinking that I wanted to leave the fucking ship.”

  Her father looked stern. “Without clearing your departure with your parents first?”

  “I’m nineteen,” Angela protested.

  “And you have the mentality of a toddler,” her father said. He went on before Angela could think of a retort that wouldn’t sound childish. “You were going to go down to the surface as part of a group. Now you will remain on the ship.”

  Angela stared. “You’re grounding me?”

  “Your behavior towards Finley has been unacceptable,” her father said. Angela grasped that he wasn’t talking about her breakdown. “I need you to be mature and responsible, not . . .”

  “Not what?” Angela demanded. She’d never dared talk to her father so rudely before, but she found it hard to care. “He doesn’t own me.” She paused. “Or do I have to keep him sweet?”

  “Yes,” her father said. “Right now, we need him more than he needs us.”

  “He won’t get the title without us,” Angela pointed out.

  “Money would be better than a title,” her father said. “Would it not?”

  Angela bit down on a snide remark about society bitches who would probably disagree.

  She sank back in the chair, feeling bitter and depressed. There was no way out. There was no way . . .

  I can’t even get off the ship, she thought. They won’t let me go.

  “It’s not fair,” she said.

  Her father raised his eyebrows. “If you genuinely believe the universe should be fair,” he said, “I have committed a severe blunder in your education. Or do you believe that there is no one who would gladly marry Finley, if it was the price to swap places with you?”

  “. . . No,” Angela said.

  “True,” her father agreed. “One does not have to look very far to find people who lack the advantages you were born with.”

  “I know that,” Angela said.

  “Then stop moaning,” her father told her. “There’s a price for everything.”

  “Like marrying Finley,” Angela said. The depression grew stronger, mocking her. “And if I don’t marry him, I lose everything.”

  “Yes,” her father said. “And so does everyone else.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  “It’s not as bad as it seems,” Raymond Slater said. He sipped his coffee thoughtfully as he sat in front of Paul’s desk. “We can put the bastard in a stasis pod and put the pod in the brig. That should satisfy Corporate.”

  Paul snorted as he paced his office. Corporate had flatly refused his suggestion of hiring another ship. He’d attempted to convince Robert Cavendish to StarCom home and pull strings, but Mr. Cavendish had been oddly reluctant to comment. It made no sense. Paul had even considered trying to deny Bryon permission to board at the last possible minute, but the decision would have been a career-wrecker.

  “I hope so,” he said crossly. He scowled, cursing diplomats and bureaucrats under his breath. Surely someone would have reasoned out the problem with the damned treaty before a starship and her crew got stung. But then Bryon was being extradited somewhere a little farther away than Tyre. Britannia wasn’t part of the Commonwealth. “And his escort?”

  “Constable Hamish Singh, retired marine,” Slater said. He sounded pleased. “We had a brief chat, sir. He’s quite willing to accommodate us. He thinks the stasis pod and cell combination is workable.”

  “I bet he does,” Paul said. The constable would have an easy trip if his charge remained in stasis. There would be plenty of opportunity to sample Supreme’s delights. “I trust that Mr. Bryon doesn’t have anything that might interfere with the stasis field?”

  “Not according to his file,” Slater assured him. “We’ll do our own checks, just in case, but I’m fairly sure he doesn’t have anything military-grade.”

  “We shall see,” Paul said. He cleared his throat, changing the subject. “Anyone else we should be worried about, Chief?”

  Slater didn’t bother to look at his datapad. “There’s a missionary group heading to Britannia, sir,” he said. “They’ve booked a couple of cabins in third class. I don’t think they’re going to cause trouble, but we should probably be aware of the dangers. Other than that . . . nothing that really makes me sit up in alarm.”

  “Good,” Paul said. “One serial killer is quite enough.”

  “No serial killers would be better,” Slater said. He shook his head in wonder. “What was Corporate drinking when they signed off on the treaty?”

  “I don’t know,” Paul said.

  He cursed under his breath. In theory, there wouldn’t be any problems with transporting the bastard to Britannia. No one could escape a stasis field without outside help. In practice, the guests would not be pleased when they heard about transporting Bryon. Paul had seriously considered accidentally leaking the information, secure in the knowledge that most of the guests would start screaming at Corporate. But his lords and masters would turn Paul into the scapegoat and fire him.

  “Make sure the brig is secure at all times,” he ordered. “There’s no point in taking chances.”

  “No, sir,” Slater said. “I’d like to give Mr. Bryon a modified telltale too. Might make his chances of escape even slimmer.”

  “Do whatever you need to do,” Paul ordered.

  He returned to his desk and sat down. Bryon’s file was horrifying reading. He’d made his first kill at thirteen, apparently, then gone on to kill at least seven others before the local authorities finally started to close in on him. Somehow—the file didn’t say—Bryon had realized he was under investigation and fled. And he’d made it all the way to Williamson’s World. He’d been damn lucky the local authorities hadn’t killed him on the spot.

  “We’ll be leaving orbit this evening,” Paul said slowly. “At least we’ll still have our escorts.”

  “Until we leave the system,” Slater reminded him.

  Paul resisted the urge to bang his head onto the table several times. No escort . . . if even one of the destroyers
had stayed with Supreme, he could have transferred Bryon to a military brig, to be watched by a military crew. That would have satisfied the treaty without putting his passengers in even the slightest hint of danger.

  Something must be wrong back home, he thought. Corporate might not give much of a damn about his opinions, but they’d care about the guests’. The customer was always right . . . why put passengers at risk, even if the risk was minimal? He didn’t like the implications. I should have stayed in the navy.

  “We could put Bryon out the airlock,” he said, knowing even as he spoke it was wishful thinking. Serial killer or not, he couldn’t be simply executed out of hand. Paul lacked the sweeping authority of a warship captain. “Blast it.”

  “I’ll keep him under control,” Slater promised. “And when we reach Britannia, we’ll make sure he gets bundled down to the surface before anyone sees him.”

  “Very good,” Paul said.

  He sighed. I really should have stayed in the navy.

  “Remember you had some shore leave,” Falcon boomed as the stewards gathered outside the airlock. “Put smiles on your faces!”

  Matt pasted a grin on his face. Shore leave had been fun, but far too short. He’d wandered around Spaceport Row with a few of his friends, sampling the local bars. Most of them had been effectively identical, right down to the stench of shipboard rotgut, whores lining the streets, and spacers trying to drink themselves into a stupor. He rather suspected that someone, somewhere, owned a franchise. Every Spaceport Row looked the same.

  He glanced at Carla and frowned. She looked pale and hungover, something that bothered him more than he cared to admit. They were flatly forbidden alcohol onboard the ship . . . there wasn’t even an illicit still, as far as he knew. Had she been drinking with a guest? Possibly, Matt supposed. She hadn’t come down with them for shore leave.

  “Check ID cards, hand out telltales, then pass them onwards,” Falcon added, striding up and down like a demented drill sergeant. “Don’t worry about escorting guests to their cabins.”

  Because these are mere third-class passengers, Matt thought. They don’t get even a lick of special treatment.

  He leaned forward as the first group of guests walked through the airlock. Three families, one with over a dozen children. A check of the manifest told him that it was a line marriage with seven adults . . . half of the adults seemed to have been held back. He wondered how the arrangement worked—he wasn’t sure he could have shared his wife with anyone, if he’d had a wife—and then started to check ID cards. The children were remarkably well behaved.

  He ran the children through the scanner . . . no alerts popped up . . . and handed out telltales. The kids all had telltales covered with popular cartoon characters, although the older children didn’t seem too impressed. Matt didn’t blame them. The telltales looked cheap and nasty and not particularly secure.

  “Thank you,” a harassed-looking mother said. “Which way to our cabin?”

  Matt pointed towards the inner hatch. “Through there; then follow the numbers down to your compartment.”

  He turned back as the next set of guests arrived . . . and blinked in surprise. Nine men walked through the hatch wearing monkish cowls that hung over their eyes. He had no idea how they actually saw. Their robes were as dark as space itself, covered in strange designs that made his head hurt. Matt rather thought that some of the designs looked like a cross between an octopus, a spider, and a giant eyeball.

  “Greetings,” the leader said. His voice was almost unaccented. Matt would have bet good money that he hadn’t been born on Williamson’s World. “I am Brother John, Speaker of the Brethren of the Holy Voice.”

  “Welcome onboard,” Matt said automatically. Falcon had said something about the Brethren, hadn’t he? He kicked himself for not paying more attention to the morning briefing. “Please, can I see your papers?”

  “You may,” John said.

  Matt waited, then said, “Please, may I see your papers?”

  John smirked as if he’d won something worthwhile instead of a petty little power game and passed over an ID card. Matt inspected it thoughtfully, then inserted the card into the reader and ran the scan. Biographical details flashed up in front of him. He’d been right. John had been born on Rockall. His parents had probably come from Tyre.

  “I trust there are no problems,” John boomed. “The Holy Voice moves us.”

  Matt bit down a sarcastic reply. He couldn’t remember much about the Brethren, but what little he could recall hadn’t impressed him. He’d sooner have started worshiping the old gods than super-advanced aliens who lived in hyperspace and watched humanity from their lofty perch. There were no aliens. But there was no point in questioning the Brethren. No doubt they’d see it as an attack on freedom of religion.

  “You’re cleared to board,” Matt said. He checked twice, just to be sure. No warning flags appeared in John’s file, save for a note that he’d been deported from Satilla. Probably religiously motivated, Matt decided. Nothing suggested that he’d been convicted of a crime and kicked off the planet. “You’ll find your cabins on the lower decks.”

  “The Holy Voice thanks you,” John informed him. He took the telltale and snapped it on his wrist. “We wish to speak our message to the other passengers.”

  “You’ll need to clear that with the captain,” Matt said. He hoped the captain would tell the Brethren to keep their faith to themselves. Trying to convert the rich and famous, or even the second- or third-class passengers, wouldn’t win the group any friends. Religious freedom was part of the Commonwealth Charter, but so was freedom from religion. “You can send him a message from your cabin.”

  “We wish to speak to him in person,” John said. “When can that be arranged?”

  Never, Matt thought.

  “You would need to request a meeting,” he said. The captain would be very busy over the next few days. Matt had been listening to rumors, even though he didn’t know how much credence to give them. A resumption of the war wasn’t too likely, was it? And yet something had clearly put a bee in the old man’s bonnet. A group of religious travelers probably wouldn’t be a very high priority. “I can put in a request for you, but it might be a while before he sees you.”

  “The Holy Voice thanks you,” John said.

  He turned and walked off, moving slowly under his heavy cowl. Matt resisted the childish urge to stick his tongue out. Falcon was in a snit—the captain’s displeasure had filtered down to the lower ranks—and Matt had no doubt he’d be chewed out royally if Falcon caught him doing anything objectionable. The other Brethren followed, moving in eerie unison.

  “Well,” Carla said, “that was interesting.”

  Falcon made a noise for attention. “Do I need to remind you all of the rules?” He went on before anyone could object. “They’re allowed to hold services in the chapel, if they book it, and they’re allowed to invite others if they wish,” he said. “They are not allowed to harass other guests, whatever the situation. Nor are other guests allowed to harass them. If you spot either, call security and intervene.”

  “I hear they do nude worship,” Jack said. “It sounds like fun.”

  “They’d be a bigger sect if they did,” Carla said cynically. “I think they probably wear those robes the whole time.”

  “Quiet,” Falcon said. He scowled. “Or do I have to force you all to reread the religious regulations?”

  “Cruel and unusual punishment, sir,” Matt muttered.

  Falcon had sharp ears. “Cruel, but not unusual,” he said. “Making you write them out a dozen times would definitely be cruel and unusual.”

  “Beats cleaning the head, sir,” Carla said.

  “I’ll remember that,” Falcon said dryly. He glanced at his wristcom. “Departure is in two hours. Get a snack; then go to your stations. And try not to look as though you don’t believe a word they say.”

  “Yes, sir,” Matt said. He glanced at Carla. “Shall we go?”

&n
bsp; Carla nodded. She still looked pale. “Why not?”

  Paul didn’t need to be there when Roman Bryon was brought onto his ship. He had every confidence in Slater and his staff, who were trained to handle everything from fistfights to pirate boarding parties. But still . . . he’d made the decision to watch. It was his ship, insofar as Corporate let it be his ship, and he was damned if he was leaving his crew to handle the serial killer alone.

  The shuttle hatch opened. Two men appeared carrying a large stretcher between them. An ordinary-looking man lay on it, wrapped in a straitjacket. There was nothing remarkable about his face, nothing that screamed monster. Paul would have felt slight sympathy if he hadn’t known precisely what Bryon had done. He didn’t even know if the file contained all of Bryon’s crimes. The writer had speculated that the murderer might be responsible for several unexplained deaths before his flight from Britannia.

  “Check his ID; then scan the body,” Slater ordered. “And then repeat the scans.”

  “Aye, sir,” his officer said. There was a pause. “One set of standard-issue implants, deactivated. Nothing else, as far as I can tell.”

  “There was nothing,” a new voice said. Paul looked up to see another man stepping through the hatch. “He had a limited amount of genetic enhancement, but nothing particularly unusual.”

  “Constable Singh,” Slater said. “Captain, please, can I present Hamish Singh, retired marine.”

  “Pleased to meet you,” Paul said. Singh was statuesque and strongly muscled, clad in a constable’s uniform. He had a marine-issue carryall slung over his back. “Is our guest secure?”

  “He has made no attempt to escape,” Singh informed him. His accent was odd. Paul couldn’t place it. “However, he panicked when he was informed that he would be returned to Britannia to face trial.”

  “The second scan is clear,” Slater’s officer said. “His implants have definitely been deactivated.”