by Gem Jackson
“That’s cute,” said the diplomat. “You’ve never come across meatplants before? Where did you think all the meat came from? Farming? In space?”
“What are they doing?” asked Ramis.
“They’re being electrically stimulated. It promotes muscle growth and is used to tailor the consistency of the meat.”
“That’s disgusting.”
“Is it really?” said Ramachandran. “Would you rather we grew actual chickens? These plants have no central nervous system. No brain. No pain receptors. You would rather an animal suffered for your meal?”
“I don’t know—this is weird. It’s not just me, is it?” Ramis looked around the group for support.
“Come on,” said Tem. “Let’s just get through this.”
Tem never appreciated how much of a relief it could be to see vegetables again. After the pig-backs, grown like marrows, heaving together in pulsating clumps and the low, looming beef-trees, returning to algae-growing protein ponds felt almost cleansing.
“We’re almost there,” said the diplomat. She sensed his mood was darkening. He waved a phone at them. Why did he have a Ceres phone if they were just passing through? “I’ve booked us tickets on a lighter going back up to the station. If we can get into the departure lounge, we’re home free.”
“The bad guys can’t resist duty free, eh?” said Ramis.
“No, you masterpiece of moronic mum-fuckery, the departure lounges are guarded by gun toting security staff. Ceres depends on trade and so nobody fucks with the lighter ports. Nobody.”
“How do we get on board?” asked Tem.
“Through there,” said the diplomat, gesturing through yet another set of service doors. “We walk out, pass through the barriers and board the lighter.”
“Easy as that?”
“Yes, and no. Yes, in that it’s literally what we have to do. No, in that there may be any number of armed bastards watching for us, ready to make our heads explode into interesting shades of violent-death.”
“Nice. Helpful.”
“What the fuck did you expect? I got us here unharmed, didn’t I?”
“How did you manage that, anyway? I’ve been meaning to ask—where does your intimate knowledge of the back alleys of Ceres come from?”
“What exactly do you think I do all day? What do you think my job actually involves?”
“I have absolutely no idea,” said Tem.
“Exactly. And that’s how it’s going to stay. Now, get in close. Follow me and don’t stop for anyone.”
They moved in behind the diplomat and made off together, through the final service door and back out into the open. The departure gate was just a hundred feet or so from where they emerged. Tem tried to avoid looking around nervously and stayed focused on the gate instead. It was hard not to look suspicious. It felt very different to be prey rather than the predator. When the boot was on the other foot, she loved situations like this; the thrill of the hunt, the adrenaline-fuelled anticipation of pursuit and capture. It wasn’t as fun from this perspective.
They made it to the gate without incident. The diplomat confirmed their booking and waved them through. There was a shout from behind and Tem spun round instinctively.
“Get down!” It was Tariq. He took hold of the diplomat’s jacket at the collar and yanked him backwards at the precise moment the shots cracked from the gunman. Tariq and the diplomat fell. The security forces at the gate flew into action, with two that Tem could see firing assault rifles at a target in the crowd. The noise was deafening. She instinctively reached for her gun, and once again remembered it was still on board the Aggressive.
“Make yourself useful,” she muttered beneath the reverberating gunfire and grabbed both the diplomat and Tariq by the wrist, dragging them at a sprint towards the lighter. Someone was shouting at her as she passed into the ship but she paid no attention, focusing instead on hauling the two prone bodies she was through the porthole.
She heard the door seal behind her. Hopefully, everyone else had made it on board. The diplomat was okay. Winded again from the fall, but otherwise unharmed. Tariq had been hit again and was going into shock. He had taken one bullet to the shoulder at least. She checked him over more thoroughly but couldn’t find any more obvious injuries.
“Is there a doctor on board?” she asked, not really expecting a response.
“We’ve got a medical kit. Should I get it?” It was one of the flight attendants, ashen faced and on the verge of tears.
“Yes—that would be helpful.”
“Is he going to be all right?” asked the diplomat, now sitting up. Looking around, it seemed like everyone else had made it too.
“I think I’m losing a lot of blood,” said Tariq.
“You’re going to be fine,” said Tem. She hoped he would be. The medical kit was pretty good in the end. Between them they were able to raise Tariq up a little and seal the entry wound with a good quality homeostatic patch. There was no exit wound, which made things easier in some ways. The presence of some good pain relief also meant they could make Tariq more comfortable and get to work cleaning the shrapnel wounds too.
The diplomat, once recovered, took himself away to speak to the pilot and was able to persuade him to fly directly to The Aggressive. They were less than thirty minutes away. She could only imagine how that conversation had gone. She couldn't see the pilot having much choice in the matter. Still, soon they would dock and the professional medical teams would take over. You could say a lot about the diplomat—and she planned to at some point—but however unconventional he was, he got stuff done.
Chapter 19 – Leon
Leon needed a doctor; he was sure about that. There was some lasting damage to his throat and the rest of his body felt like it had been hit repeatedly by a large man with a plank of wood. The fact he was expecting to feel this way didn’t help an ounce. Neither did the palpitations. Every so often he would close his eyes and see the bag over Murray’s head or hear the crack of steel on bone. If he didn’t pull his mind away quick enough, it would spiral into a repetitive cycle of screams, pain and anxiety. He needed to keep himself focused on something, and that something had become figuring out what the Jove was going on. Like how they were ambushed by a capital warship, for one thing.
The mechanics of T-jumping were well established, even if they were not well understood. The accuracy of a jump was dependent on the distance a ship wanted to travel. The probability of a ship ending up where it wanted to be was represented by something like a normal curve—that is, up to a certain distance, there was almost zero chance of hitting the target, but after a point the chances become pretty high. As the distances increased beyond this, the chance of an accurate jump dropped like a stone again. Physicists had discovered two basic equations to plug into the T-drive; one, the Cox-Ince Minor equation, worked over moderate distances between two and five AU. The other, the Goble-Johnson Major equation, worked over greater distances, typically ten to twenty AU. This basic principle explained why T-jumps were next to useless in close quarters. You might want to jump next to something a few hundred thousand miles away, but to do so would, in all likelihood, send you a few million miles away. In the wrong direction. Long distances were easy, short distances were hard. Even jumping from Earth to the Moon was practically futile as any ship that did so was far more likely to end up out beyond the asteroid belt somewhere.
What Ardbeg had described ran counter to this. The vessel that captured them must have been close to pick up the distress signal and act quickly. Yet, that proximity would mean that they could not have jumped with any degree of accuracy towards the Jackdaw’s Straw. Even if they had jumped from five AU, which was absurd, the chances of them jumping to within an hour of their location was insanely small. So how did they do it? Astronomical good luck? Possible, but by definition, extraordinarily unlikely. Maybe Ardbeg made a mistake? It was certainly possible. However, it wasn’t just Ardbeg that had been in the cockpit; Sleet had been there and Torr
en had been in and out too. It would have to have been a big screw up by all three of them.
Yet, what was the alternative? Intriguing, that’s what it was. The intriguing possibility that someone had developed a new T-jump drive, or a new equation; something to accommodate smaller jumps, or maybe make existing jump distances more accurate. If this were the case, it would be game changing—the possibilities for travel and trade were tantalising.
However, it was the military possibilities that were the most arresting. T-jumping was an anathema to a military fleet—it all turned on the compromise at the heart of strategic movement: T-jumping was inherently ambiguous as the jump location could only be narrowed down to a large bubble of space around the chosen jump point. Thus, on average, when a ship jumped it then took around three weeks or so under conventional locomotion to get to precisely where it wanted to be. If a fleet of ten ships attempted to jump to one location, each ship would be scattered somewhere within the bubble. It could take up to a month for the whole fleet to reconvene.
The solution was for the entire fleet to slave their jump computers to a single vessel, thus ensuring that they all made the same jump to the same approximate point within the destination bubble. It was a good methodology but there were further issues in the mechanics. The most efficient way to achieve this was through some form of radio or digital communication between the ships, but this left open the possibility of hacking. It was the same reasons why pilot officers were used to check the computer calculations. If the slave connection were surreptitiously hacked it could result in half the fleet being jumped to the other side of the galaxy, never to be seen again. So, typically, more low-tech solutions were employed, which involved bringing all the ships in the fleet within close proximity of one another and a physical connection being made between them. In effect, every ship was strung together. This massively cut the chances of sabotage, but it was cumbersome and time consuming.
That was why cruisers like the Aggressive were in vogue—without an accompanying fleet, cruisers were nimble, flexible and yet at the same time, powerful.
Yet a fleet equipped with a new drive or piece of tech that meant it could jump quickly and accurately? It was every admirals dream. There’s no way a ship like the Aggressive could compete with that. It would be outnumbered, outgunned and outclassed.
At the same time, all of this was entirely unknown. It was idle conjecture. Maybe Ardbeg had missed something, and they had just been unlucky. For the first time in a number of days Leon felt the urge to leave his bunk and speak to someone. This needed clarifying; at least, he needed to put this idea to rest one way or another.
He put on his Starflight uniform, which someone had kindly washed for him, and set off to find Sleet.
Sleet was in the cockpit with Torren. They stopped talking as he entered. Exactly how bad did he look? The cockpit was a mess. It looked like Sleet had eaten her last three meals in the pilot’s seat and hadn’t cleaned up a thing. Torren’s side was predictably tidy.
“Hey there, Starflight. How are you feeling?” asked Sleet.
“Better. Getting there, anyway. Listen,” said Leon. “I’ve been thinking about stuff, whilst I’ve been laid up, and if it’s okay with you I’d like to check some details to make sure I’ve got a handle on everything. You know, to make sense of it all.
“Sure,” said Torren. “Shoot.”
Leon elaborated his theory—that the ship, which had captured them, might possess some new jump technology. They listened patiently and appeared to understand what he was getting at. They were both emphatic that Ardbeg hadn’t been mistaken. Torren in particular had been furious with Ardbeg after they escaped and checked the scan logs when they returned to the Jackdaw’s Straw. The logs clearly showed the ship jumping into close proximity from nowhere.
“I think you might be on to something,” said Sleet. Leon felt his chest swell a little. “Let’s go and speak to the defector and see what he has to say on the matter.”
“Defector? You mean the guard? Six?” said Leon.
“Yeah. We’ve got him confined to one of the rooms. He’s not causing any trouble and, honestly, I don’t trust myself not to smash his face in if I’m around him too long, so he’s in there and we’re out here.” She was fuming but noticed that he had winced as she mentioned hitting the guard. “Are you sure you’re all right?”
“I am. I’m fine,” he said. “It’s just some stuff, that’s all. So what’s the deal with the guard?”
“He says he’s defected. He seems happy enough just to be off that fucking hell-ship. He apologised a lot for things, but frankly we weren’t in the mood for listening.”
They left Torren in the cockpit and moved through the ship to find the guard. The Jackdaw’s Straw, once a foreign and alien place, now felt warmly familiar. He nodded at the other crew as they passed through the living space. Someone had been cooking noodles, and they smelled delicious. It was as if a switch in his stomach was suddenly flipped. He was starving. He hadn’t eaten noodles in so long! He stopped dead in the corridor.
“Do you know, if I had died on that ship, I would never get to eat noodles again.”
Sleet narrowed her eyes. “You’re still a bit broken, aren’t you?” He nodded noncommittally, and they moved off again.
The guard, when they got to him, was on a bunk watching something on the screen. He was big, just as Leon remembered, but dressed in civilian clothes, with no socks or shoes, he didn’t look half as threatening. He looked to be in his mid-twenties, hair shaven short with a face that told a story of hardship and brutality. He swung his legs to the floor and sat upright, an expression of resigned calm on his face, but this changed the second he saw Leon. In an instant he was on his feet, nostrils flaring and shoulders hunched.
“What the fuck is he doing here? What you did to Four,” he thrust a finger towards Leon. “There was no need for it.”
“Yes, there was and you damn well know it,” said Sleet. She stepped between them and shoved Six hard. It was a big hit, but given the size difference between them, he barely moved an inch. They squared up, neither willing to give ground. Eventually, the guard sat back down on the bunk. “That’s better. We just want to talk—about where you came from?”
“You mean Titan?” asked the guard.
“No, the ship.”
“Ah, I see. You planning on going back?” He laughed to himself and lay back, stretching himself out on the bed. He really was enormous. Not quite as big as Ardbeg, but getting there.
“Tell us about it.”
“What can I say? I was security. We don’t know shit about shit. Hell, the drones did half the work. We mostly hauled people about and even that was pretty rare.”
Leon stepped past Sleet. “Let’s start with the name. What was it called? Who does it belong to, because it sure as heck isn’t an APSA vessel?”
“Well, you’re damn right about that, it ain’t APSA. Okay, here goes. The ship is called the Cronus, and it belongs to Titan. It’s meant to be part of the main fleet but we’ve been out by ourselves doing a bit of pirate hunting the past year or so.”
“Cronus?” Sleet wrinkled her nose. “That’s a shit name.”
“It’s just a name ‘innit? I dunno. Anyway, that’s who we are.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” said Leon. “We don’t have a military. I mean Titan doesn’t have a military.”
“Where have you been, kid? We do now.”
“What about the ship, the Cronus?” asked Sleet. “What else can you tell us about it? Where was it built? What can it do?”
“I don’t know,” he rolled his head back. “I’m not technical personnel, am I? I’m just muscle. It’s just a ship. I haven’t really seen any others so I can’t compare it to anything.” He thought for a moment. “It’s new, I guess. Got built somewhere else, somewhere in the asteroid belt, I think. It’s fast, I know that. We never had any trouble chasing anyone down. The officers seem pretty happy with it. Always talking about h
ow we’re a new force in the solar system. Something about a paradigm shift, whatever the fuck that it.”
“What about jumping? Did you hear if it jumps in some special way or anything?”
“Only rumours. It jumps right on top of people. Apparently nobody else can do that.”
Leon nodded. “How does it work?”
“I don’t fucking know, I keep telling you. Listen,” he ran both hands over his face and to the back of his head. “I just did what I was told. I joined up ‘cos I got into a bit of trouble at home and this seemed a good way out. Then, all of a sudden I’m on this fucking nightmare ship with a psycho for a captain ordering us to blow pirates up so the medics can use ‘em for practise.” He didn’t say anything for a long time. They waited. Eventually he looked up, eyes distant and unfocused. “They tortured anyone who caused trouble, who didn’t do what they were told. I mean, we tortured them.” He turned to Leon directly. “I tortured them. You saw what we did. You either went along with it or you ended up in the chair yourself. What would you have done?”
Leon felt the panic rising in his chest. What would he have done? He knew. He knew exactly what he would have done in Six’s position. He scrunched his eyes closed and saw the image of the Murray before him. He couldn’t see anything except what was directly in front of him. He was breathing too quickly.