Shifting Infinity (ISF-Allion Book 2)

by Patty Jansen

  And with that, she and Cocaro got up from the table. Dr Chee and anyone who had been in the room who wasn’t part of the mission made for the door.

  “Oh, one more thing, Lieutenant Rudiyanto. I’ll leave Dobson here. He’s pretty good at making chocolate.” Dolchova winked and was gone.

  The person in question stuck his head into the room. “Would you like me to go and get some?”

  “Um, yeah.”

  “How many?”

  “Um.” She counted. “Eight.”

  “I’m onto it, ma’am.”

  Chapter 15

  * * *

  WELL, THAT WAS . . . embarrassing. Scary, disturbing, exciting all in one.

  A timid teacher of young constructs advanced to leading her own mission. No one had ever called her “ma’am” before, at least not when they were being serious.

  Melati went back to the table.

  The room felt empty without Dolchova or Cocaro or any of the other top brass. Everyone was looking at her. Everyone of that oddball, randomly thrown together team. She liked having Ari, and Hasegawa was probably quite good, if cocky, but seriously, a kitchen hand? And Jas with his jumbled-up emotions?

  “Okay,” she said, trying to gather her rattled thoughts. And then again, “Okay. Maybe it would be a good idea if we all said a few introductory words about ourselves so that we all know who we’re dealing with. Anything you want to share about why you think Dolchova chose you for this mission.”

  They nodded and an awkward silence followed. They were waiting for her to appoint someone to start.

  “Okay, you.” She pointed randomly and her aim happened to be the Fiorelli construct.

  “I’m Kya,” she said. Her voice was soft but confident. “Fiorelli 26. I’ve been with the Felicity for only three months, and before that I worked on the Sunrise.”

  Hasegawa sucked in a whistling breath. The Sunrise of course was the General’s ship, and its locality in the system was supposed to be a secret.

  Melati said, “Fiorelli constructs are uncommon, and known for their exceptionally even temper. Apparently it is impossible to scare, stress out, offend or anger a Fiorelli. I’m guessing we will be putting that ability to the test.”

  There were a few chuckles around the table at that.

  She continued, “Didn’t a Fiorelli have something to do with the negotiation of the New Pyongyang agreement?”

  “Yes. I did.”

  “Right. I’m happy to have you on the team.”

  More than happy. She nodded to the next person, who happened to be Hasegawa.

  “I’m a pilot,” he said. “I believe you need one.”

  Everyone laughed. He looked like a pilot, he talked like a pilot, had a name like a pilot and swaggered like a pilot.

  “Are you from Ganymede or Europa?”

  “Europa. My great-grandfather was the founder of the mining corporation.”

  “You didn’t want to continue that line of business?”

  “You know how boring business is?”

  Everyone laughed again.

  “I was a bit of a brat, so my father decided to send me to school at Ganymede, and I dared a friend into applying for an ISF scholarship. I won it instead.”

  More laughter.

  “That’s where the funny part stops. I loved flying dangerous missions so much that I won’t go back to Europa for as long as I can help it. I’ve held my Flight Captain badge for over five years now, waiting to get accreditation for the really big birds. Been involved in a few skirmishes.” He inserted his hand inside his jacket, hesitated, and pulled out something on a silver chain. “I’ve got this. I don’t really like showing it off.”

  Melati read. Johnson Award For Bravery. Wow. “That’s a Fleet decoration, isn’t it?”

  He nodded. “For my involvement against criminal rackets in the asteroid belt.”

  “Well, welcome to the team.”

  He smiled.

  The next person was Majoa Houston. “I’m really impressed with the people here,” she said. “I don’t really have any awards to my name. My only claim to fame is that I am reasonably fluent in Centrasian, courtesy of my mother, who defected from Allion when I was a few months old.”

  “That’s a very useful skill,” Melati said.

  At that moment the door opened and Dobson came back with another tray full of cups. “Here you go, ma’am. I’ll be outside the door if you need me.”

  “Thank you.” Hmmm, she could get used to this.

  Melati turned to the next person, who was Milo Brown. He was quite old for a construct, probably in his late fifties, and had sad brown eyes. “You may wonder what I’m doing here.”

  “I am, to be honest.”

  “I’ve worked in logistics all my life. I love cooking and kitchens and have coordinated support for many large-scale missions including New Pyongyang. One of the things we do in backup is detailed calculations of the needs of entire ships and stations. I’ve worked in recycling prior to coming to this system.”

  Melati understood. “So you can help with getting the system back up.”

  “Precisely. Also, I have a side interest as a combat fighting instructor.”

  “Just for fun?”

  “Eyup. We fill a tube up with smoke and send two people in from either side and teach them how to be the one that comes out.”

  “That is very useful. Both things. Thank you.”

  Next was Ari.

  Melati said, “I know who you are, but tell everyone else.”

  “I work in flight tech. I grew up in New Jarkarta’s B sector. I speak B3 with a sekong inflection. I am also the creator of the greatest menace there ever was in this system.” He, too, inserted his hand in his jacket and pulled out a clear container.

  Melati almost felt sick as she realised what was in it. A gecko. “I can’t believe it. Those things are the greatest nuisance of New Jakarta and you brought one here?”

  He looked indignant. “I didn’t. I’ve actually done the ship a favour by scouting them out. I found them in the corridor where the New Jakarta refugees lived after we first escaped the station. They must have come with their possessions. I scouted them all out and captured them. I’ve bred them and reinvented the technique.” He looked sideways at Melati. “No, madam soldier, I’m not using the stick-on film that Allion was selling on the station anymore. This is a completely new model. It also includes mindbase technology so we can now have some control over where the beasties go.”

  Hasegawa looked intrigued. Most of the others seemed puzzled.

  “For the benefit of the team, can you give a demonstration of what the purpose is of this lizard?”

  In a virtual repeat of the scene a long time ago in Uncle’s rumak, Ari took the lid off the container and tipped the animal onto the table. He picked it up and transferred it to the surface of his PCD and used this as a serving tray to transfer the gecko to the wall. It ran up, and then over the ceiling to the other side. Oh, the sight of it reminded Melati of her home so much that her eyes pricked with emotion.

  Once the gecko had arrived on the other side, Ari collected it, put it on his hand, pressed the PCD against its back and put the animal back in the container. He then showed the PCD around. On the screen was a recording—upside down—of everyone sitting at the table in the room.

  “Well, we sure collect a lot of dirty cups,” Milo said.

  But he sounded impressed. In fact, they were all impressed.

  Nysa Kessler was next. “I’m just a boring IT tech,” she said. “If your network breaks, I fix it. That’s all, really. Oh, and I have a Centrasian module because I once worked on breaking the systems of an Allion ship that we captured.”

  “So you have knowledge of Allion’s systems.”

  “Yeah.”

  “That is very useful.”

  It was Jas’ turn next. “Sometimes I feel that this whole situation is my fault. I went on a mindbase exchange and my exchange partner was Paul Ormerod. He took off with
my body.” He gestured at himself. “This body. I came back to New Jakarta by myself. The Lieutenant here says that I have a sentient mindbase. I don’t think it’s worth much, but I do remember what it’s like to be caught in the system. Not nice.” He nodded and stared at his hands. “Other than that, I’m just your average workhorse. Used to be a pilot for the Taurus Army.”

  Then they were all done, and it was Melati’s turn. “I guess there are not many people who know me.”

  Hasegawa said, “You kidding? People talk about you all the time.”

  “What, that I have a chip on my shoulder about being disadvantaged because I’m from the B sector?”

  “There is a bit about that, but most of those are just people who don’t like anyone who’s different, no matter what. Most people know you as someone who is not afraid to speak up for what you think is right.”

  She gave him a puzzled look. He was kidding, surely?

  “Well, I was born on New Jakarta. My parents were miners. They died in one of the many accidents.”

  Hasegawa nodded. “Appalling operational standards.”

  Jas protested. “Hey, you’re talking about my job.”

  Melati ignored them. “My Uncle looked after me. When I was a teenager, I grew rebellious. I didn’t want to go into mining and every other option required a lot of money, which I didn’t have, so I got into some . . . really deplorable thing . . . to make some money.” She used to yell out across Uncle’s table what happened to her, but she found it increasingly hard to speak of it. It was long ago, it embarrassed people and none of them could say anything that would change it. “Dr Chee rescued me. I signed up to thank him. My family hated me for it.”

  “They don’t hate you, Melati,” Ari said.

  “Then why do they keep asking me when I’m going to get married?”

  There was another awkward silence.

  “Anyway, I’m committed to helping my family, so that is why I proposed this mission, besides all the other reasons to have it.”

  There were nods around the table and a sort of ominous silence passed between them. They all knew that it was going to be dangerous.

  Melati felt intimidated by all these people. She had thought that Dolchova had picked these people because they were the ones who could do the job who were the most expendable. She had thought that Dolchova was playing this petty game of rivalry between Fleet and Force. The reality was nothing of the sort. These people were highly capable and the best to offer assistance.

  Dolchova was expecting fireworks, and she was giving this mission her best shot. Dolchova was not a gung-ho captain happy to shoot from a distance and mop up the damage later. She was conservative in order to preserve her resources, but when she made a decision, it was not a half-hearted one.

  Melati felt stupid and insignificant. She had thought herself accepting and tolerant, but in fact she had judged others on her own criteria far too often. When speaking with Sengkia, she really did have a chip on her shoulder about belonging to a repressed group. In fact, the barang-barang were probably a lot less repressed than they made out to be. Their main problem was a chronic lack of funds that were exchangeable outside their community, and this was the result of a lack of education.

  It was not that the barang-barang shouldn’t be grateful for ISF support, it was that they should make themselves worthy of that support. They provided vital assistance to the community as a whole. They should own their task with pride.

  Chapter 16

  * * *

  ARI POINTED. “Now you put this hose clip over here and thread this hose through.” His voice sounded muffled through the loudspeaker.

  Melati did as he said, fumbling with the hoses in her gloved hands. The breathing unit was attached to the suit, but Ari had insisted that she learned to take off the pack and set it on the ground, change the tank and then put it back on again. “The hoses get tangled sometimes,” he had said. “It would be stupid if you died because you didn’t know how to do up your pack.”

  The vacuum training room was unheated but still she was sweating inside her suit. Each time she sucked in a breath, it sounded like a storm.

  “Ready? Now put it on.”

  Melati heaved and managed to get the pack onto one shoulder, bumping the top of the tank into the side of the helmet. Getting her arms through the straps was a whole next level of awkwardness. “It’s so heavy.”

  “You need to be able to do this by yourself.”

  “Yeah, yeah.” She wriggled and wormed her arms and shoulders and managed to get one arm through and with a lot of wriggling, the other.

  “Okay, now you do up the straps over your stomach.”

  Melati couldn’t see those straps, because of the helmet. She felt around, but her gloves didn’t give her the type of control that she needed to find them. “Where are they?”

  “They should be dangling down the sides of the jacket.”

  Melati felt and pulled. No straps. “I can’t find them.” She was getting frustrated and was beginning to see why this required accreditation.

  “I’ll tell you a secret. They’re tangled in the jacket.”

  “Can you untangle them?”

  “No. You have to take the pack off, make sure that the straps are hanging down the front when you put your arms in and try again. Once you’re out there, there may not be anyone around to help you.”

  And so it went. Everything he said made sense in terms of safety. By the time Ari was satisfied, Melati had heaved the tanks and breathing apparatus onto her shoulders three times. She was exhausted and the most exhausting part was yet to come.

  Once all the equipment was on to Ari’s satisfaction, he had her walk over a beam between two platforms, climb up and down a ladder and crawl under a table. It was awkward and hot, and by the time their time was up and the tanks empty, she was utterly exhausted.

  When she peeled off the suit’s outer layer, her clothes stuck to her with sweat.

  “Is going outside going to be awkward like this?”

  “It will be worse when we’re carrying equipment.”

  “But we’ll have the trolley.”

  “Yes, but we dock on the side and have to climb to the inner surface of the habitat ring first, straight up, carrying the stuff and the trolley. We’ll be under close to full gravity, and we’ll have to avoid all kinds of obstacles. I’ve been working on a path for us to take, but we don’t know what dock they’re going to put us at, so there is some uncertainty.”

  By God, why had she ever thought this was a good idea?

  “Meet me again here tomorrow. We’ll do some zero-g work and I’ll take you for a little excursion out the airlock.”

  * * *

  Melati dragged herself off to the project meeting with Cocaro, Stani Karoslav—Head of Communications on the Felicity—and Kya Fiorelli. They met in the central communications department where Cocaro contacted Sep Kerakis.

  Melati had only seen him in the stage-managed propaganda messages that Allion broadcast to the surrounding ships: as a slick-looking, sharp-faced man with olive skin, long black hair that seemed greasy or slicked down with a lot of gel, and greying at the temples.

  This recording showed him pale-faced, in a plain navy blue uniform with just a few symbols to denote his status. Normally, Allion’s symbol of two blue interlocking circles would be a small patch on the left side of his shirt, but the symbol was much larger on this shirt, and in the centre of his chest.

  He spoke in a halting fashion in response to the questions and offer by Cocaro. He appeared to be in the station’s central command room. People moved in the background against the glare of screens.

  Melati tried hard to see if there was anything or anyone she recognised, but she had never been inside the station’s command room, and never knew who used to work in there before the siege.

  At first Kerakis denied sending the message for help, but when Cocaro read it out, he conceded. Then he said the problems were being dealt with. Then Cocaro said
that ISF had ships in vectors to keep that help from arriving at the station.

  He was silent for a while after that.

  Then he went on his usual rant about Bassanti having destroyed everything they needed to run the station properly. “If you don’t want civilians to die, then don’t stop us from trying to look after them.”

  “My commander is offering to fix your systems,” Kya said. “We have all the diagrams and software to get it back up and running. We’re offering to send a small team to fix it for you.”

  He seemed to do a double take. “Why would you do that?”

  “Because we don’t want civilians to die. We don’t want a repeat of Mars.”

  She paused to let that sink in. Mars had done a lot of damage to Allion’s reputation.

  Cocaro then continued to describe the sort of help ISF could give. He took a while to digest that, and called in a woman to sit next to him, possibly his second in command. Melati was surprised at how old and non-threatening she looked. Like someone’s grandmother.

  Just as she had predicted, they wanted to know what ISF wanted in return, and why they thought Allion should allow them on the station.

  Kya gave the thumbs up, because they were talking and this meant that the mission would go ahead.

  There was a lot of to-and-fro about conditions and timing. Kerakis demanded that if he allowed the team on the station, ISF pull back on the two warships they’d sent to meet the incoming help. Cocaro responded that no shots had been fired or targets programmed. If the Allion ships changed their course, there would be no conflict. To which Kerakis responded that if the team could fix the problems on the station, he would order the ships to change course.