by D. M. Pruden
Hayden thought of Gunney and the couple of engineers and techs working with Cora and Chin. With the exception of the gunnery officer, there was nobody with combat training. Scimitar’s only defences were the Glenatat dark energy cannons, but deploying those would precipitate the same crisis he wanted to prevent.
“No, but I have an idea. I need access to communications.”
Malkovich eyed him.
“Look,” said Hayden, “there is only one solution here, and I need to talk to Scimitar.”
“I’m listening, Lieutenant.”
“We want to avoid any kind of conflict that will scare off Stromm, am I right?”
“Yes.”
“And neither of us wishes to risk Scimitar in a firefight. This ship we’re on is undetectable, at least until you fire those missiles. We can use that advantage to board her unseen. With your Rangers, we will have the manpower to quietly overpower the repair ship’s crew when they dock. We can avoid attracting unwanted attention from Stromm’s patrol ship and spooking Stromm himself.”
“We? It sounds like you joined us.”
Hayden shrugged. “You know: the enemy of my enemy.”
Malkovich appraised him. “I don’t know. You have too much of your father about you; the Kaine duplicitous nature. I’m not sure I can trust you.”
“I’ll program a five-second delay into the comms; put a gun at my head, and if I say anything to betray you, feel free to pull the trigger. Your only other option is to reveal yourself by shooting at everybody. Given that your people shot at us once before, my gunnery officer won’t hesitate to track our location and blow us out of the skies.”
“So, Scimitar is not as wounded as you let us believe, eh?”
Hayden put on his best poker face and stared impassively back at the general.
“Very well, Kaine. We will try it your way.” He unclipped his sidearm holster. “You may have your delayed communication.” Reaching across the console, he released the lockout on Hayden’s communications panel then drew his pistol. “But I’m keeping my missiles at the ready.”
“Fair enough.” Hayden set up the tight-beam transmission and programmed in the delay.
After wiping the perspiration from his hands onto his trousers, he opened the comm link.
“Scimitar, this is Lieutenant Kaine. Are you there, Cora?”
A few seconds later, the speaker crackled. “Thank goodness you’re alive. Where are you?”
He glanced at Malkovich before replying. “Umm, it’s kind of difficult to explain, but I’m tight-beaming you from about fifteen hundred kilometres off your port stern.”
An even longer pause ensued. He imagined Cora examining the output from every drone and sensor sweep that ran through her systems.
“I can’t verify that. You’ll have to prove your identity to me.”
“Quit horsing around, Kaine,” said Malkovich. “It won’t take her long to get a fix on the origin for your tight beam.”
“Cora, do you remember the last thing I said to you before we stepped out of my shuttle? I apologized for cutting off our conversation.”
Another long pause. His stomach was tied in a knot as he stared at the console, avoiding Malkovich’s gaze.
“I believe I understand the situation. What are your orders?”
“I’m going to dock at port B2 in ten minutes. I have, ah, some guests with me—”
Malkovich’s arm shot across the panel and terminated the connection.
“Hey!”
“What the hell kind of fool do you take me for, Kaine? Do you think I don’t know a trap when I see one?”
“Listen, Malkovich. Cora is...a highly advanced security AI; She—I mean it—is really smart. It will have deduced the likelihood of my escaping in one of your stealth craft. If I don’t give it the whole story, this ship will be taken out, no matter what I say.”
The two men stared each other down, grim-faced.
“What are you going to tell it?”
“Something you might not be familiar with; the truth.”
“I never lied to you, Kaine.”
“So you claim, but you love secrets, like every other senior officer in the fleet, it would seem.”
“Listen, Kaine—”
“No, you listen. By now the AI will have figured out our position and have weapons locked on us. If it doesn’t hear from me soon...well, it has full control of our X-ray lasers.”
“Lieutenant Kaine, are you still receiving?”
He glared at Malkovich. “Tick-tock, General. What’s it to be? Are you willing to trust me?”
He pointed his pistol at Hayden’s head. “Go on; answer. I’ll judge the situation as it unfolds.”
Hayden reestablished the comm signal. “Cora, I have a team of Malkovich’s Rangers with me. They are not hostile and are coming to help us neutralize a boarding party from the repair ship. May we please have permission to dock?”
No response came from the speaker. After almost a minute of silence, Malkovich pressed the pistol into Hayden’s temple.
“It’s being thorough, General; running a voice analysis on my transmission; looking for signs of stress or anomalies in my speech patterns; considering a myriad of probable outcomes.”
“It sounds like one hell of an AI.”
“You have no idea.”
“Lieutenant, you are cleared for docking at port B2.”
“Thank you, Cora. Please clear all sections between the airlock and the bridge. Tell Gunney to stand down and be prepared to receive guests. They are friendlies. I repeat, these are allies.”
“I understand, XO. I’ll roll out the red carpet.”
“I’ll see you in a few minutes. Kaine out.”
Hayden turned to face the muzzle of Malkovich’s pistol. After a second, he slowly raised his hand and pushed the barrel away from him. “Are you satisfied, General?”
Malkovich smiled and holstered his gun. “You have no idea how much I am. I’ve been waiting a long time for this opportunity.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
True Character
STELLA CURSED PAVLOVICH.
The chamber she and the remaining members of Scimitar’s crew were confined in was cramped, hot, and poorly ventilated. Sitting on the floor, she couldn’t shift her position without bumping into the people crammed next to her. Her skin felt clammy with old perspiration, and the pungent smell of unwashed bodies filled her nostrils. None of this distressed her as much as the raw fear that assaulted her senses. Not just her own, but the collective dread of every person who shared that space with her.
The cell was only able to accommodate a third of the crew. The last time they led her down the corridor to rejoin them, she tried to reach out empathically to determine if any of the doors she passed hid those who were not accounted for. The only thing she could sense was the bored determination of her escorting guards.
After Pavlovich departed with Kovacs to return to Scimitar, Stromm’s treatment of her and the others who remained behind changed.
No longer guests, they were now treated as enemy combatants and prisoners of war.
Individuals were plucked from the crowded chamber at irregular intervals. Like her, most came back after a few hours of intensive questioning, unharmed but drained; at least until recently.
For what she believed to be the past several hours—she’d lost all sense of time—individuals had been removed but not returned before the soldiers came to take another. The population in their oubliette grew thin, and terror ran through the group every time the door opened.
Two men, armed and wearing light combat armour, stood in the entryway, silhouetted by the bright lights of the outer corridor. A third shadow of a man Stella had become familiar with passed by them as he entered the chamber.
In a scene that had played out too many times for her to recall, his adjusting eyes scanned the dark room for his next victim. In time, his gaze fell on her, and panic gripped her heart.
Seated along the
walls, the other prisoners pulled their legs to their chests to clear his path to her.
The grim-faced gaoler advanced, like a poor caricature of Moses crossing the parted sea. Standing before her, he stared down. She detected no malicious emotion or enjoyment from him, only fatigue. This was merely a routine job to which he gave no more special consideration than filling out some form for the thousandth time.
“You will come with me.”
“You just brought me back a short time ago,” she said, voice cracking from a parched throat.
“Get up,” he said in a tone that left no room for interpretation.
Sighing, she stiffly struggled to stand and stared at the officer. “Where are we going?”
His reply was to grip her upper arm and push her toward the door.
The other prisoners avoided her gaze as she passed, as if doing so protected them from falling under the officer’s notice.
She couldn’t blame them. If her empathic ability had not revealed every person’s raw emotions to her, she too would have tried to distance herself from events as much as possible.
Her abilities were only known to a handful of her shipmates. Hayden, Pavlovich, Cora, and Gunney all had history with her “gift.” They had agreed to keep it between themselves, so none of the new crew was aware that she could read their relief at it being her who was selected in their stead.
In silence, the guards escorted her down the now familiar corridors. Not until they passed the interrogation room did their moods shift, as if they questioned something about their orders.
“Where are you taking me?” she asked.
Her escort ignored her, but she sensed their anxiety increase. Something about their assigned duties unnerved them.
They paraded her along unfamiliar corridors and down several levels to a closed door at the end of a long hallway.
With her pulse pounding in her ears, she was led in to a small, dimly lit chamber. A single chair, more like an inclined medical examination table, occupied the middle of the room. Two trolleys holding trays containing unfamiliar instruments waited on either side of it. When she spotted the restraints hanging from the table, naked panic seized her. She struggled against the hands that gripped her arms and wrestled her forward. Though significantly smaller than each of the burly men manhandling her, she gave them considerable, if not ultimately futile, difficulty.
Once she was tightly restrained and barely able to move, they left the chamber, leaving Stella alone in the dark, cold room.
A shuffled footstep from behind, out of sight, startled her. Seconds later, she was blinded by a brilliant light shone in her face. Squeezing her eyelids shut, she turned away as she heard the mysterious footfalls move in front of her. Firm hands grasped and turned her head. A restraint was attached, forcing her to face the blinding lamp.
One of the trolley’s wheels squeaked as it was rolled closer. Someone fumbled with one of the instruments on it. Moments later, a pair of hands assaulted her face, prying open one eye. She shook her head, trying to protect herself. Something was affixed to her, and she found that she could no longer close her eyelid.
When they repeated the procedure on the other, Stella screamed and fought against the restraints.
“Why are you doing this?” she cried as, unable to blink, tears pooled in her eyes to eventually run down her cheeks. Panic threatened to overwhelm all her senses.
The procedure complete, she saw the silhouette of her tormenter move away and pause near the edge of her vision, as if appraising the work before vanishing into the shadows. Footfalls receded toward the door. It opened, and muffled words were exchanged.
Two sets of footsteps—or perhaps three—returned to her. Stella tried to calm herself so she could take an empathic reading of the room, but it was too difficult to override her own heightened emotions masking everything.
A shadowed head, with a halo of curls, loomed over her.
“Why are you doing this, Stromm? I answered your questions.”
“You supplied answers, Miss Gabriel, but after some deeper investigation, I concluded that you are keeping things from me; things I must know.”
“No,” she said, her voice cracking, “I told you the truth. Don’t hurt me.”
A calming hand patted her shoulder. “There, there. I don’t want them to harm you. You simply need to answer my questions truthfully, and you can return to your crew mates.”
“What do you want to know?”
“I want you to tell me what you know about the cynosure.”
“I...I’ve never heard of it.”
“That is an unfortunate reply, my dear. This will not be pleasant for you, after all.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
The Cynosure
“YOU’RE WANTED ON the bridge.”
Pavlovich looked up from his book to the ensign delivering the summons. The young man appeared annoyed.
He imagined the pipsqueak believed he had more important duties to attend to than playing messenger. Where did Kovacs find someone so young? This youngster wouldn’t have popped his first zit when the light gate collapsed. He concluded that Stromm was conscripting from the general population to supplement his ranks.
He wondered what kind of training the youth, or any of his compatriots received. Then he realized that the same scenario was playing out in countless other star systems. This fellow and his peers would be the last to benefit from the academy education and experience of his superiors. Subsequent generations would progressively become less capable as a fighting force or surviving off planet. He pondered how long it would take for their descendants to forget there ever was a Confederation. How much time before space was abandoned and humans were forced to accept their isolation? Would people be able to build new civilizations on the worlds where fate had isolated them?
Maybe Stromm had the right idea. Consolidate control while the technology still worked and there were people who knew how to run it. Then there might be some hope to prevent humanity from regressing into the stone age.
“I’ll be right there,” he said as he laid his pad down.
Satisfied with the response, the ensign made a quick visual inspection of the room before departing without another word.
Pavlovich rose from his bunk and stretched before pulling his boots on and making the journey to Iliad’s bridge. He was curious why Kovacs sent a messenger. The intercom system functioned perfectly.
But then Kovacs was always an anachronism. He was one of the old-school intelligence officers, someone who didn’t believe that modern surveillance technology could replace good, old-fashioned human observation.
Had he used the comm system for the summons, he wouldn’t gain insight into how his guest dealt with confinement. Only an experienced observer could glean a person’s psychological state by simply observing him, relaxed on the bunk, reading a trashy novel. It was subtle, spooky shit that a surveillance AI couldn’t accomplish. He suspected the young man had empathic abilities akin to those of Stella.
Amused, Pavlovich nodded and smiled to himself. The ensign was no mere junior officer but an agent in an ideal position to gather valuable intelligence, unsuspected. He decided he needed to be more cautious in how he behaved around anyone on the ship.
The two armed Rangers guarding the entry to the bridge snapped to attention at his approach. He casually returned their salute and entered.
Standing on the threshold, he took a moment to survey the activity in the command centre. Iliad was one of the newest ships put into service before the collapse. State-of-the-art technology meant that she could be run by a minimal crew, with all operations managed via LINK. There were no control interfaces anywhere from what he could see. Every bridge officer reclined on an acceleration couch, staring blankly ahead. Occasionally, their hands would make a movement, creating an input into the virtual environment they were jacked into. He wondered if it was like the world Cora occupied aboard Scimitar.
“Ah, you’re finally here,” said Kovacs
from his position on the elevated, circular platform.
Pavlovich grinned and joined him. “You asked so nicely, I couldn’t refuse.”
Kovacs waved an arm to activate a holographic projection. A three-dimensional view of Scimitar appeared, as viewed through the Iliad’s sensor drones.
Pavlovich’s light mood was deflated by what he saw. The repair ship was docked with her, and that would generate a lot of questions about why people were discovered aboard his supposedly abandoned vessel.
“I thought you were going to wait for our arrival,” he said, trying to conceal his disappointment with feigned annoyance.
“I gave the order for them to dock. I thought you were full of shit.”
Pavlovich swallowed past his dry throat but said nothing, opting to study the hologram until he could think of a response.
“They boarded your ship twelve hours ago, and we haven’t heard from them since.”
Pavlovich’s frown masked his surprise. Had Kaine and Gunney overpowered the repair crew? It was not out of the realm of possibility; most maintenance ships did not carry combat personnel and had no weaponry.
“Well, their deaths are on you. I warned Stromm about my security system.”
Kovacs sneered. “Are there any other traps I should know about?”
“No, not if you just send me over to deactivate it and resume command.”
Kovacs grunted. Then a smile spread across his face. “There is something I want to show you.”
He strode past Pavlovich to the doorway. Turning, he said, “Are you coming?”
Overcoming his reticence, the captain replied, “Of course,” and followed him into the corridor. The two Rangers guarding the entrance fell in step behind them. Their orders were apparently to protect their commanding officer. He wondered if the internal threat was so pervasive that Kovacs needed a personal guard to feel safe. If so, Stromm’s grasp on power was shakier than he let on.
The group entered a lift and travelled to a part of Iliad he hadn’t seen. That there were places on the ship he was not familiar with was not unexpected. The Lau class destroyer had been in the planning stages when he’d last shown his face at headquarters on Earth. Much of the design was novel to him. But the location they were headed to, far removed from the operations centre, coupled with the armed escort, had his imagination working overtime.