Gunboat

by James Evans

  “No, sir, sorry. I’m using what sensors we still have to sweep the belt, but the resolution is so low they could be breathing down our neck and we’d probably never know.”

  Cohen grunted at that image. “Keep searching. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  Cohen stared at the main display, which showed little more than a plethora of alerts, warnings and damage reports. It was a dispiriting body of information.

  He flicked at his slate, but that showed nothing new. He let the slate go and then snatched it quickly from the air as it was tugged gently sideways, towards the wall. After days of free fall, it was taking time to adjust to the asteroid’s low gravity, especially with Ascendant laying on her side.

  “Incoming message, sir,” said Jackson. Cohen dragged his attention to the screen as the message flashed into view.

 

  “Er, what?” said Cohen frowning at the screen. “Where the hell is that ship, Mr MacCaibe?”

  “No idea, sir,” said MacCaibe, frantically checking his screens. “There’s nothing on the scanners.”

  “Give me a view of the outside of the ship at door C2,” snapped Cohen. While Jackson worked to bring the camera feed to the main screen, Cohen opened a channel to Warden. “Child of Starlight claims to be making a delivery. Get a team to door C2 immediately and find out what the hell is going on.”

  Warden barely had time to acknowledge the order before Cohen closed the channel.

  “Oh,” said Jackson in surprise. Then he shook his head. “Camera feed, sir.”

  All eyes turned to the main screen as it switched to show an image of the outside of the ship. Mostly, it showed Ascendant’s hull, and beyond that, only darkness and stars. But standing on the hull with what looked like a pair of large sleds were two tall figures in suits.

  Cohen sat back, staring at the screen, utterly nonplussed.

  “Where did they come from?” he muttered. Then he switched back to Warden’s channel. “What’s going on?” he demanded.

  “Almost there, sir,” said Warden. “C2 opens into a cargo bay and nothing’s as easy as it should be when the floor is a wall.”

  “Well, hurry it up,” snapped Cohen. “There are guests waiting for you outside.”

  “Deploying now.”

  Cohen glared at his slate, almost willing it to update.

  “We’re ready,” reported Warden eventually.

  “Evacuate the air,” said Cohen, “and open the doors.”

  The air was sucked from the cargo bay and the Marines stood ready, weapons at hand but not yet pointing at the door.

  “Aye, sir,” said MacCaibe. “Opening the doors now.”

  The doors slide open and the two figures dropped neatly in, falling elegantly into the cargo bay and anchoring themselves to the near vertical floor. The sleds followed and parked themselves inside the bay, squeezing in through the doors and settling against the wall. The doors slid closed behind them.

  And then there was an awkward pause.

 

  Cohen stared at the new message for a few seconds.

  “Jackson, send this: Delighted to talk. Welcome aboard HMS Ascendant.”

  He opened the channel to Warden. “Bring our guests to the briefing room, Captain, and have someone take a look at those sleds to make sure they are what they seem to be.”

  “Roger,” replied Warden. “Bay is pressurising, we’ll be with you in a few minutes.” Cohen nodded and closed the channel. Then he pushed himself out of his chair and headed for the briefing room.

  11

  The briefing room was not a happy place. The large display at the end of the room had been shattered by a railgun round that had gone on to tear through a column of chairs before punching a hole in the opposite wall.

  Secondary damage from depressurisation was apparent in the rest of the room’s fittings, and the repair crews had done nothing more than seal the breaches and clear the bodies. It was a grim setting for a diplomatic meeting, even without the inconvenience of the ship’s angle and the malfunctioning artificial gravity.

  Cohen rose from his chair when the door opened and the guests floated in. Even through the distorted perspective of Ascendant’s crazy angle, it was clear that the two visitors were far more familiar with low gravity conditions than either the Marines or the crew. They climbed nimbly into the room, pushing along to come to a halt a few metres from Cohen.

  “Welcome,” he said, remembering the lectures he had received on diplomacy and first contact protocols. “I am Lieutenant Commander Alistair Cohen, captain of HMS Ascendant.”

  When the two figures removed their helmets, Cohen barely contained his surprise. Young and attractive, the two visitors were obviously human rather than the Deathless clones they’d expected.

  One was clearly female, with blue hair and tattoos that climbed up one side of her neck. The other was bald, with striking grey eyes. Each wore a transparent eyepiece mounted on a thin arm, like half a pair of lightweight spectacles, which Cohen assumed was some sort of interactive display.

  “Er, hello.” Cohen glanced from one to the other, unsure how to proceed.

  The woman spoke in the language that Cohen, like everyone else, now thought of as Koschite. He looked automatically at his slate for the translation.

  “I am Anne Trygstad of the mining vessel Child of Starlight. This is my colleague, Kaare Ramberg. You are wearing a Koschite clone, and–” she paused when she saw the slate translating her words. “You wear a Koschite clone, you command a Koschite vessel, Varpulis, but you do not speak the language. Why is this?”

  Cohen hesitated, unsure quite how much to divulge. He glanced past the two visitors to see that White had now arrived and was hovering near the door with Warden.

  “It’s a long story,” he replied. “There was an engagement. We captured Varpulis and her store of clones, and renamed her Ascendant. But you are right, we are not Koschite and we do not speak the language. We are from Sol, and we represent the Royal Navy of the Commonwealth.”

  That seemed to surprise both visitors.

  “From Sol? The Origin?” asked Ramberg, and the translation engine marked their tone as ‘highly sceptical’. “Do you have a way to prove this? It seems more likely that you simply pretend to be ignorant, and that you claim to be not of the Koschite for some other reason of your own.”

  Frowning, Cohen said, “I’m not sure why we would claim that.”

  Trygstad raised an eyebrow. “Maybe you are pirates who have captured this ship and seek now to take our home, Child of Starlight. Is that it?”

  “Madam, please,” said Cohen, aware that the conversation was taking a potentially unpleasant tone and keen to restore some degree of control. “I can assure you that we are not pirates, that our capture of this vessel came at high cost to ourselves and that it was motivated entirely by the desire to prevent suffering and body loss amongst our civilian population. And as for taking Child of Starlight, well,” he shrugged, “I am afraid we do not even know where Child of Starlight is. Our sensors are barely functioning. Right now, all we’d achieve by fighting would be to demonstrate a courageous determination to die with honour.”

  Trygstad and Ramberg exchanged a sceptical glance.

  “You have seen our vessel, both inside and out, and you have kindly brought materials to enable repairs. Would any self-respecting pirate venture forth in a vessel as damaged as this one?”

  “Venture forth? No,” said Trygstad, a hint of steel in her tone. “Only an idiot would fly this vessel in its current state. But pirates often suffer at the hands of the Koschites. This damage could have been inflicted in battle.”

  “And it was, I can assure you,” said Cohen, flicking at his slate. “A most awful and one-sided battle that resulted in significant loss for our side. Please, take a seat, let me show you images of the encounter.” The two visitors made
no move to sit. “They will demonstrate that we were not alone and that we were most vigorously attacked by a Koschite fleet.”

  “Wait,” said Trygstad, holding up her hand, “you were attacked by a Koschite fleet? Why?”

  “We are at war,” said Cohen simply. “The Koschites attacked one of our planets, and we travelled as part of a fleet to find out why.” And to destroy their ability to wage war, he didn’t add. There was a time and a place to reveal these sorts of things, and this most definitely was not the right time.

  Trygstad shook her head dismissively. “Convincing images can be created by even a halfway competent artist, let alone an AI. Show me something real, something that cannot have been faked. Show me something that proves you originated outside Koschite space.”

  Cohen blinked, uncertain. Then he nodded. “Of course, Ms Trygstad. Lieutenant White, please ask Mantle to join us.”

  “Aye, sir,” said White, opening a channel to relay the request.

  “It may take a moment,” said Cohen, “so please, sit.” He gestured again at the seats and this time the visitors sat, although they obviously found the angle and the associated discomfort amusing.

  “You wanted to see me, sir?” Mantle pushed her way into the room, clearly ready to be gone as she had more important things to be doing. She stopped when the two guests turned to look at her.

  Cohen waited a moment then nodded. “Thank you, Mantle, that will be all for now.”

  Mantle looked at him as if she couldn’t quite believe what she was hearing. Then she snapped a surly salute and disappeared, heading back to the engineering department.

  “Sub Lieutenant Mantle has been wearing that body, a standard Royal Navy clone, for a few weeks. As you can see, it is most definitely not a Koschite artefact or one that could have originated within Koschite space,” he said, fervently hoping that this would be sufficient.

  Trygstad stared at him so long he thought she might have fallen into a daydream. Then she gave him a chilly smile.

  “The fact you think such clones might support your argument is charmingly naive,” she said, “and I cannot imagine any genuine Koschite would ever believe that such things might lend credence to the fantastical story you have spun for us today.”

  Cohen opened his mouth to speak but Trygstad held up a finger to silence him.

  “And so, strangely, I find your story more convincing. There are other anomalies with this ship, whether Varpulis or Ascendant. Handwritten Latin text on walls and doors, computing devices that are obviously not Koschite designs, a mode of address that seems quaint to our ears. These deviations from Koschite norms are indicative of something that originated outside their sphere of control, and so I will, for now, accept your explanation and relay it to Child of Starlight.”

  “Thank you,” said Cohen, offering a polite nod of his head to cover his disquiet. The fact that the Deathless had clones sufficiently similar to RN standard that a quick glance couldn’t tell them apart was disturbing. Neither he nor the boffins back at HQ had picked that up from the information retrieved by Warden and his teams on NewPet.

  “You said you would need two weeks to make your vessel spaceworthy,” said Trygstad. “We have delivered two sleds of processed elements to speed your repairs but, by the look of your ship on the way to this room, you will need far more time and rather more material to complete the work.”

  “We will arrange further deliveries,” said Ramberg, his quiet voice carrying a measure of authority.

  “You are very kind,” said Cohen, aware of something nagging at the edge of his mind, something he couldn’t quite grasp. “But that will not be necessary. We will construct an automated mining machine and extract what we need from this asteroid with no further need to trouble you.” He gave them a friendly smile that was not reciprocated.

  Then his mind latched onto the strangeness he had noticed.

  “What did you mean by ‘their sphere of control’? Are we not within the Koschite sphere of control at the moment?” he asked, frowning.

  “The Koschite volume is large and expanding. They have little interest in systems that lack readily habitable planets, like this one,” said Trygstad. “And in the gaps, around the edges or in systems where the Koschites find nothing that meets their criteria, other groups gather.”

  “Other groups like us,” said Ramberg.

  Cohen sat back as the pieces clicked into place. The clones, the suits, the names. Even the way the visitors spoke. None of it seemed typical of the Deathless they had encountered so far.

  “You aren’t with the Deathless,” he said quietly, shaking his head slowly as he thought through the implications.

  “Deathless?” asked Ramberg, raising their eyebrows.

  “What we call the Koschites,” explained Cohen. “Their Ark was the Koschei, named after a Slavic god who never died, hence Deathless.”

  “It is a fitting name,” nodded Ramberg solemnly.

  “Regardless of the name or the history,” said Trygstad with a hint of annoyance, “you are within the volume claimed by our people, the Valkyr.”

  “That is not a name with which we are familiar,” said Cohen, glancing past his visitors at White and Warden. “Are you allied with the Koschites? Or under their control?”

  Trygstad shook her head and Ramberg snorted derisively.

  “We are similar, but separate,” said Trygstad. “The Koschites have their priorities, we have ours. We keep to our own volume, they to theirs.”

  “Mostly,” muttered Ramberg.

  “We are a peaceful people,” said Trygstad, ignoring her colleague, “as you will see. But we prefer to avoid contact with outsiders, and so we will do what we can to assist you to leave our volume. We have already delivered resources to aid your repairs and more will be arranged.”

  “That is most generous, Ms Trygstad,” said Cohen with a slight bow of his head.

  “Just Trygstad,” she replied. “We do not typically use honorifics or titles, merely names.”

  “I understand,” said Cohen. “Please, forgive my presumption.”

  Trygstad shook her head. “You could not have known, so your ignorance is forgivable.” She pushed herself out of her chair, and Ramberg and Cohen followed.

  “Thank you, Commander Cohen, for your time,” she said. “It has been most informative.”

  “We will be in touch,” nodded her colleague. Then both moved towards the door.

  “Wait,” said Cohen, pushing away from the table so that he could float gently after them. “You haven’t explained why you don’t want us to mine here, or where Child of Starlight is. How did you reach us so quickly?”

  Trygstad stared at him for a long moment. “Your sensors must be more degraded than we thought,” she observed. “We didn’t reach you quickly, you came to us.”

  Cohen bewilderment was obvious.

  “This asteroid, as you call it,” said Ramberg, “is Child of Starlight. Your vessel crashed at our front door.”

  Cohen’s mouth fell open, then he shook his head in astonishment. “The asteroid is populated?”

  “Yes, Commander,” said Trygstad. “Welcome to our home, Child of Starlight, an asteroid colony of Folkvangr, the people of Valkyr.”

  “They live here? On this rock?” asked Mantle incredulously. The visitors had gone, escorted back to the door by Captain Warden’s Marines with many thanks for their generous gifts.

  “So it would appear,” said Cohen, his mind elsewhere. Asteroid mining was common throughout Commonwealth space, but almost everybody preferred to live on a planet. He had never heard of anyone colonising an asteroid permanently, especially not one orbiting so far from the system’s star. “So we were never going to find Child of Starlight because we were looking in completely the wrong direction.”

  “We’re the first visitors ever to crash onto their home,” said White, oddly proud of the achievement.

  “Well, I suppose that’s something,” said Mantle acidly. “But more to the point, they
brought us four cubic metres of various inert materials. Aluminium, silicon, phosphorus, titanium, cobalt, nickel, copper, tin and a few others. A good mix, all useful.”

  “Enough to get the wormhole communicator working?” asked Cohen.

  “No,” said Mantle. “No exotics, nothing radioactive, nothing lighter than aluminium or heavier than gold. Which means the WC still can’t be fixed, but we’ll be able to make a start repairing all our other systems, given time and power.”

  “That’s disappointing,” murmured White.

  “Maybe, but not surprising,” said Mantle.

  “And they promised to deliver more,” said Cohen, “so let’s get the fabricators working to turn these elements into useful materials.”

  “Already underway, sir,” said Mantle.

  “Good. I want us capable of flight and safe to travel as soon as possible.”

  12

  Cohen walked into Ascendant’s command suite, pausing briefly at the threshold to clutch at the doorway and heave in a deep, calming breath as the gravity shifted suddenly beneath him. The ship’s artificial gravity system had been restored only hours before, and it was still suffering occasional glitches that could produce unpleasant shifts.

  He dropped into a seat and opened a comms link to Palmerston.

  “What’s your status, Corn?” he said, once he’d got the nausea under control.

  “We’re looking good, sir,” she said from Palmerston’s small bridge. “Your engineering team has been feeding us spare parts, and all our critical systems are now operational.”

  Cohen looked over Corn’s shoulder at the patches on the wall and the missing workstations.

  “It looks like you’re still short of a few things,” he said, nodding at an empty desk. Corn followed his glance then turned back to the comms unit.

  “We can manage, sir,” said Corn confidently. “As soon as you have a target, we’ll be ready.”

  “Good. When will you be ready to conduct main engine tests?”