Voyage

by E M Gale

  Her eyes were wide.

  “He used to be my friend and now, ‘cos you don’t like me, he doesn’t talk to me any more and when he does it’s all, ‘We should leave this ship, it’s dangerous’ and ‘Jane thinks it’s a pirate ship’ and other such crap.”

  “Huh.”

  “Yeah, and he wouldn’t tell me what he knew. He investigated some stuff, useful intel that could keep us from getting killed, and he won’t tell me just ’cos you poisoned him against me. And now you’re having a go at me ’cos he’s investigating stuff and could find himself spaced as a mutineer–”

  “Spaced?”

  “–and that’s not my fault, ’cos if I knew what he’d found out, we might have a clue who’s up to what on this ship.”

  She was staring at me. “Why do you think he’d be spaced?” she said in a small voice.

  “The first thing a mutineer would do is sneak around the computer systems finding stuff out, nicking the map or stealing weapons.”

  “Are you planning to mutiny? Is that what’s going on?”

  “What? Who mentioned mutiny?”

  “You did.”

  “I’m just saying, the captain is paranoid, best not to piss him off. So, if you’re worried about Mark, tell him to stop investigating and tell me what intel he’s found.”

  She sighed. “I’ve already told him to stop. He doesn’t listen.”

  “Oh. You, er, been passing on the gossip you’ve heard?”

  She nodded. “Why? You think he cares what crap you get up to?”

  “I doubt it, he knows all that shit.” I paused for a moment. “Although he always did seem to like trying to find it out. Practice, I guess.”

  She shook her head. “Look, I gotta go, got stuff to do before my next shift.” And with that she walked out. I tilted my head to the side as I watched her go.

  “Yeah, bye, Jane.”

  * * *

  The morning rolled round, as much as it ever does when you are: A, in space where there is no sun to give meaning to the word ‘day’; and B, on shift work, where morning is defined as being the time you wake up and nothing more.

  Given that I needed less sleep than a normal human, I seemed to spend a lot of time leaving people sleeping. I wondered what the marines thought about it. Did they miss waking up next to a woman the morning after? Or were they happy to avoid any awkwardness? Not that there seemed to be any awkwardness anyway–they all seemed to enjoy the opportunity to let off a bit of steam. It was Wright’s turn to be left to wake up alone, so I picked up my clothes, dressed silently then, after sniffing the air to check that there was no one in the corridor outside, I misted under the door and sauntered back to my quarters.

  I had a few hours before my shift so I started with a hot shower followed by a coffee-powered literature search on Dr. Harvey M. Cleckley. The idea that Mark was still investigating made me think I ought to be getting on with that as well.

  ‘Well, it seems that I was right, he’s a government or military researcher. He published a lot of papers then, about eight years ago, his output dried up drastically. He still publishes about one paper a year, but I guess that’s the stuff that wasn’t top secret. So let’s see if we can tell what he was working on for the military.’

  I read the titles and abstracts of his papers. Since it was biology and I was a physicist, I could only understand about one in four words, but I got enough to get the gist of the work.

  ‘Hmm, genetics is obviously his thing. On the one hand that’s good, since it means I can trust him to run those experiments on me properly. On the other it means that he might understand the conclusions. Correction: he will understand the conclusions.’

  I sighed to myself and started chewing on my knuckle.

  ‘Well, Clarke, if you want help from help from good people you will have to put up with the fact that they will educate themselves. Cleckley is going to end up knowing a lot about vampires. And as he works for the military, they will end up knowing a lot about them too. But what else can I do? My choice is to proceed with the experiment and learn a lot about myself that I might need later, or not do the experiment and never know. I suppose the least I can do is make sure that Cleckley doesn’t keep the data; the military might not believe his wild stories if he has no corroborating evidence.’

  I finished off my coffee and headed down to med bay. I kept a nose out for people and vanished before they got an eyeline on me. Not everyone on the ship was engaged in shift work. Engineering and med bay both had night and day shift. Most of them worked the day shift–for example all the engineers wanted to work together, so they could exchange knowledge and share coffee breaks. And the medics worked the day shift so they were around to fix up injured engineers and were on call in case of pirate-attack-related injuries.

  It was different for the marines. Our shifts rotated so that there were the same number of marines available at any point of the day or night, since pirates were not known for respecting people’s schedules. In addition to that, if the alarms went off, we were expected to go and fight for our lives regardless of whether we were on shift or not. But of course, if the ship got attacked, it was in our best interests to do that. And, if the ship wasn’t attacked, our job was just exercising and military exercises.

  Since it was the graveyard shift, the med bay had the minimum cover. There was one tired-looking person on duty at the front desk, armed with the number for Cleckley and whoever the emergency nurse was, and he was playing a card game to keep awake. He was under a single fluorescent light. The rest of the med bay was dark, other than some dull red lights to enable him to find his way to the toilet. I misted and sneaked past him, although I suspected that I could have crept past him without needing to mist.

  The inner part of the med bay was shadowy and quiet. It reminded me of the college labs in the evening once everyone had gone home. I misted under the door to Cleckley’s office and looked around. It was even darker in here, just a few stray beams of light coming in from behind the closed blinds, a few orange status lights on the computer and the centrifuge; a normal human would need to turn the lights on, but I was more than able to see.

  ‘I guess that’s why sunlight gives me a headache; I’m adapted to see well in the dark. It’s easier to seduce people in the dark, so it’s far more useful to see what you’re doing in a murky bar than under a noonday sun.’

  ‘Right then, to work.’

  I looked around. My blood samples weren’t in the centrifuge as it was off. There was a fridge under the work surface. I opened it and found my sample in a neatly labelled bottle: ‘Subject 37’.

  ‘At least he hasn’t put my name on it. I don’t want the orderlies finding out about this.’

  I swirled my sample around a bit. The red blood had separated out from the plasma so it looked more like the sugary syrup and Cointreau cocktails the student union was fond of on casino nights, rather than the frozen pink things they normally served.

  ‘Ah, the freezer. I bet there’s some of my blood in the freezer outside.’

  I put the sample back and sat at Cleckley’s desk–I managed not to make the chair creak–and went through the drawers. Annoyingly, a drawer was locked. I sighed.

  ‘I think I might need to learn how to pick locks. I suppose I can sneak into his room and borrow the key, but that really is going a bit far in invading his privacy.’

  I switched the computer monitor on. The computer was already on and thrumming.

  ‘Have they really not solved the problem of cooling chips in two hundred years? Although this isn’t the sound of a fan–this is different. OK, Clarke, now is not the time to play with the computers.’

  I gave up contemplation of the computer and looked at the screen.

  ‘Great, it’s password-protected. Shit.’

  I turned the monitor off, misted and drifted out of his office. I reformed and strolled down to the areas of the med bay I’d never seen. As I expected, I found a very well-stocked lab. Far better stocked th
an I would have expected on a smuggling ship or possibly even a military vessel.

  ‘Is Cleckley continuing his research here? Or does he actually need all this stuff for routine injuries?’

  I shook my head at myself.

  ‘It’s been two hundred years since I last visited a doctor’s surgery, and even then I did my best to avoid medical doctors. Maybe he does need all these machines.’

  I found a room full of refrigerators. These didn’t have fans in, so it seemed that someone had invented a better way of cooling things. The refrigerators were bigger than a person, with lots of little drawers in, which were full of those body parts we had had to bag and tag.

  ‘Yuk.’

  But my blood samples were in there and they weren’t alone either. They had thirty-six friends.

  ‘Are these blood samples from the unfortunates we hunted down? Why does Cleckley need their blood samples? Are they for identification of the bodies? In which case why keep the body parts?’

  I pushed the fridge door shut and had to push against it for the door to shut it properly. As I did so, my calm was invaded by the horrible mental image of myself locked in that fridge, standing up in coffin-like darkness.

  I shuddered.

  ‘Calm down, Clarke. Cleckley is not going to lock you up in a fridge. I hope.’

  I looked around myself, unable to think of anything else useful to do. So I left the med bay, misting past the night staff, and then strolled up to the sims rooms. I ran through a few kata for about an hour. It felt like a hundred years since I’d done kata for practice and not had to use it for anything. As I worked, the movements relaxed me and made me feel calmer. The problem was that my mind started wandering. I remembered Price calling me mercenary and him saying I ought to be comfortable with what I was. I was a mercenary. I did kill people for money, and what was left of them was neatly labelled and locked up in those coffin-like fridges, along with my blood samples.

  ‘Yes, the UESF is funding this operation, which makes it warfare, not assassination, but I’m not a soldier and I didn’t know that the ship was a military vessel when I agreed to work here. I’m here to practice my skills, to better survive my future.’

  ‘But what about the people we’re engaged in… killing? Might as well use the correct word there, Clarke. What have they done to deserve the UESF coming after them?’

  ‘OK, surely it’s more moral to work for the military than be a freelance mercenary? But it’s only chance that I’m working for the military and not working for mercenaries. I didn’t exactly enquire what the ship was up to when I joined. I was just trying to look out for myself and my friends.’

  I shook my head at myself.

  ‘Being honest, I didn’t really have the luxury of caring about morals. It’s only now that I know a bit more that I can think about that sort of thing…’

  I pushed the questions away from me and concentrated totally on my movements. There was a peace in the repetition of the kata moves.

  I smelt Mark in the corridor, not who I wanted to see at that moment. I shook my head and opened the door.

  “If you’re just here to have a go at me, turn around right now.”

  Mark shook his head. “I’ve calmed down.”

  I frowned. “Good for you, but the question you want to ask is, do I care?”

  Mark sighed. “Clarke, come on, you will want to hear this.”

  ‘I s’pose I ought to give him a chance.’

  I stood aside.

  Mark looked at the corners of the room. “Not here. Your quarters. Or mine if you prefer.”

  I eyed him in confusion and looked around the room.

  ‘I s’pose the sims room might still be active and recording… but that really is paranoid.’

  I looked back at him.

  ‘What the hell does he want to say that he can’t say here?’

  “My room then.”

  I nodded. We walked up to my quarters in silence, which was weird.

  I put my hand to the plate and then gestured at the room. “Food and shelter.”

  He looked confused, but wandered in and sat down. I sighed and followed him.

  “So what are you going to accuse me of this time?” I asked. “Or did Jane send you?”

  Mark sighed. “No, she didn’t send me. And last time I was annoyed. Why didn’t you just tell me the ship was UESF?”

  I stared at him. “Oh, was that what you were getting at?”

  He nodded. “What else is there?”

  I thought back to the last conversation. “I forgot I knew that and that you didn’t. I would have told you if I remembered. But how did you know?”

  “I didn’t. But you corrected Price when he referred the marines as soldiers, not mercs. You didn’t correct me when I called them marines.”

  “I forgot I knew and that you didn’t know.”

  He smiled easily. “OK then, apology accepted.”

  I narrowed my eyes.

  ‘It wasn’t an apology.’

  “So have you changed your mind about not wanting to leave the ship? Now that you’ve found out it’s military?”

  Mark frowned. “I don’t think so.”

  “Why not? It’s nice and legal and safe.”

  “I’m not sure I would use the word ‘safe’ to describe it. We should leave. We should never have come aboard.”

  I shrugged. ‘Safer than a real smuggling ship.’

  Mark was frowning. I decided to leave that argument for now and try to get intel from him.

  “So what is it that I would want to know?”

  “This ship is dodgy.”

  I stared at him confusion. “Well, surely not if it’s UESF and not a smuggling ship?”

  “There are spies on board.”

  I sat up straight. “What?”

  “There are two people sending unauthorised transmissions off the ship.”

  “Really?”

  “The first is quite easy to crack. They haven’t covered their tracks well, and their transmissions are very regular and seem to be heading towards Earth space.”

  I chewed on my knuckle. “The captain?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know, but the captain talks to someone in Earth space at random intervals. That’s not hidden. They’re not doing very well at pretending to be genuine smugglers.”

  I eyed him. “I guess they don’t think that conscripts will be able to hack their systems like you’ve done. And they don’t smuggle anything at all. So, yes, they’re not great at disguise.”

  “Oh, if you were in charge you’d smuggle just to make the cover better?”

  “I’m not in charge.”

  Mark was giving me a considering look.

  I held my hands up. “OK, so maybe I think would do a better job of it.”

  “And you’re already doing your bit to ‘help’ their cover.”

  I grinned.

  He sighed. “I suggest you keep your opinions on your management ability quiet. It would count as mutiny.”

  I frowned. “The captain’s strangely paranoid about it. D’ya think he’s a successful mutineer himself?”

  “He’s been captain the whole time.”

  I nodded. “What if the mutiny happened eight months ago and he wiped the records?”

  Mark shook his head. “The computer systems were first booted eight months ago. If he had mutinied he would change the crew manifest, but why would he rebuild and repatch the comp systems?”

  “Good point.”

  “You’re right, however, he is paranoid and he doesn’t trust us.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “Well, Anna’s a great linguist. She’s been picking up orcish and kreeglish, and she spoke what, six languages already?”

  I nodded.

  “Yet the captain made her a navigator, not comms where she could talk to all the French pirates out there.”

  I stared at him.

  “And he made Jane do comms rather than pilot or something.”
>
  “Why’s that odd? She’s not got any skills.”

  He stared at me in shock.

  “Sorry, I mean no skills relevant for piloting a starship. She’s a philosophy student, what use is that in space?”

  Mark nodded. “The point, she’s not a linguist.”

  “I already knew the captain’s paranoid,” I continued. “And if there’s spies it seems he might have a reason to be. So, tell me about the second spy.”

  “Whoever they are, they’re good. There’s no record of their transmissions.”

  “So how do you know there’s a spy?”

  Mark grinned. “Unscheduled ‘essential maintenance’ of the systems that doesn’t correlate with any essential maintenance tasks on the engineering log, but does correlate with power draw consistent with moving and using the hyperspace transmitter.”

  “Wow, I’m impressed.”

  “With me or him?”

  “Both. And it could be a her.”

  Mark shrugged. “As I said, it’s someone good, either someone high up in the command structure of this ship or a hacker.”

  “Could you do it?”

  Mark nodded.

  “So it could be anyone.”

  “What do you mean? I’m bloody hot on computers.”

  “No, I meant it could be the command staff–either the major, Cleckley, the captain or the CTO–or it could be someone good with computers who’s kept their skill secret. And if they’re a spy, they’d want to hide they were good at computers, but still have access to them… so probably a low-level systems engineer rather than a computing guy…”

  “Maybe it’s Rob.”

  I laughed. “As if. He would be a terrible spy.”

  “That was a joke. Anyway, there’s more.”

  ‘OK, it was a good idea to put Mark on the scent of this.’

  “By looking at when the hyperspace transmitters were moved and for how long, I can get the volume of space where the transmissions are going.”

  “Really?”

  “It’s different every time, so I had to correlate this with the ship’s position and cross-reference. Luckily, they use the hyperspace quite regularly. The pattern is they send something small every week and sometimes there’s a longer communication exactly six hours after the first. The first communication is roughly the same length, the second varies.”