by Greg Curtis
“We know that. But it doesn't matter. We're being hunted down and killed. Innocents. Men, women and children. And we can't escape. We're desperate. And at some point we're going to have to act.”
“Act?” That sent shivers running down Annalisse's back. When mutes acted it was bloody. Everything she had ever known about them told her that.
“Not like that Detective. We're going to expose ourselves to the Commonwealth. Publicly. Loudly. On every channel. And when we do we're going to need support. We are going to need the police to stand by us, and help us to protect our rights.”
“That's … that's …?” Annalisse searched for the words and couldn't find them. Insanity? Madness? Courageousness? Righteousness? All of them and more? When he'd first said they were going to act she'd assumed violence. But this, this was proper. It was lawful and decent, but it was dangerous. If the warbots were accidentally killing protesters, what they would do to mutes had to be a thousand times worse
“It's desperation, nothing more. We don't know how many of us there are. Who we are. But we do know one thing. We're trapped. We came to Aquaria because there was a way out. But that's gone now and somehow the Navy have found out that we're here. And if we don't do something we'll die.”
“You had a way out?” Despite everything else he'd said that was the thing which stuck. Maybe she'd been too long a cop but the instant he said it Annalisse thought of fugitives fleeing. And there were always some who were willing to take them – for a fee.
“A man called Barclay Hamilton. That's the name we were given. He’s one of us. Barclay Hamilton and a million credits. That was our ticket to another world - Eden. But now he's dead. The Navy killed him.”
“Shards!” The moment she heard the name it all fell into place. A million credits for passage out of the Commonwealth. An industrialist-turned-bomber who had killed their contact. This was a people smuggling ring. And either two rivals had gone to war or one partner had killed the other. White had killed his partners.
“Actually, that may be the one atrocity the Navy’s not guilty of.”
The man looked at Annalisse in surprise, because from his perspective she realised, what she was saying didn't make sense. It was a Navy warbot which had shot him. For him the Navy were his enemy and they had killed his contact.
“He was killed by Maximilian White-Jones. Max White. You know the name?”
“The bomber? Of course! It's on every holo. The Navy’s saying he's one of us. A mute. But it doesn't track. No one knows his name. And why would anyone bomb a reserve?”
“At a guess he was killing off his partners. A takeover.”
She knew she was right. White had been the middleman. He’d connected clients with services. He was who’d provided the clients, with Iris De Lion providing the services. Annalisse had read her file a dozen times, and the one thing that stood out was that she was from an outlier background. She had the connections with the ships. White's plan however was to take the entire business over himself. This was all about greed, and had nothing to do with politics.
“A takeover?”
“It's not important. But White is a mute. I saw him.” It had been a sight she wasn’t likely to forget.
“Then maybe he's a rogue.”
“A rogue?” Annalisse knew the word but she knew he meant something more than that.
“According to the people who came for us, rogues were created by the military. They took the bones of the Progressive Genetics Programme and usurped it to make super-soldiers. They became rogues. The mutes of the legends. They tweaked our genes a little more. A lot more actually.”
“And you have proof of that?” Annalisse's mouth abruptly turned dry as she asked. If he was right then the Navy were neck deep in this as well. For the moment they had power, because they were protecting the people from a threat. But if they'd created that threat too, it all fell apart. She wanted the rule of law to return. The Navy might be able to simply ignore the media and get a pass on their illegal interrogations and whatever else they were doing, but not after that. There would be questions asked. There would be oversight. And there would hopefully be people held to account.
“No. The woman said that Barclay Hamilton would show us the proof we needed to see.”
And now he was dead and his plant was ashes. Annalisse wanted to cry as she finally understood. The evidence had gone with him. Because it wasn't the sort of thing that someone would put in a digital storage facility. Everyone knew that there was no true security in the digital world. If you wanted security you kept your information off the mesh. You put it on a chip and locked it away where no one could ever get to it. So the chances were it had been stored on a holochip somewhere. A chip that was now dust thanks to a thermo-kinetic bomb.
Which left her right back at the start. A world in flames. And a military overthrow of a civilian government in the makings.
She did have one more thing she realised – her badge. For all that what she'd been told by the man couldn't be verified, she knew he was right about one thing. She would always be a police officer. She didn’t get a pass out of that. There was a crime in progress and she had to stand against it.
“Alright. Don't tell me anything else about you and your people. I don't need to know. Just send me the time and the place when you're about to make your protest and I'll be there.”
“Just like that?” the man's eyes widened. He sounded surprised, almost disbelieving.
“Of course.” She turned to look straight at him, and for the first time in ages there was no doubt, no hesitation, no trace of a conflict within her as she knew her duty.
“I am a cop. I will always be a cop.”
Chapter Twenty Three
“You're sure of this?” The ship asked Carm, obviously doubting the wisdom of what it was being asked to do.
“Shards no! Of course I'm not sharding sure! I'm just desperate!” Carm snapped back. He was nervous, as nervous as he’d been about anything in his life. He didn't know if the coordinates were good, or what awaited him on the other side if they were. She was an android and she would happily have them jump into the heart of a sun if it would suit her purposes.
He was also angry at having been backed into a corner. He’d seen the evidence Del had provided, and he wished he hadn't. She’d been right, and it had forced his hand.
There was a lot of evidence on the holochips. Too much to view in a single week, or even several years. But what he had seen couldn’t be denied. Not when it showed Admiral Vidan – the hero of the mute wars according to all the history holos – sitting down with the scientists of the PGP and more or less telling them what he wanted. He wanted soldiers. Granted it could be fake. Carm desperately wanted that. But it just didn't look like one to him. And the ship could find no sign of tampering in it either.
Delilah – may she be hurled into a supernova for this – was right. He could never reveal what he knew. Even if everything else was a lie, those records would get him thrown in a naval brig for the rest of his life – or worse. The Navy was not about to allow the good name of one of its most venerated heroes be tarnished.
The only part he didn't understand was why the mutes – the Edenites as Del insisted he refer to her people as – hadn't released the information centuries ago. But she’d said their senate had taken a vote, thinking that if they did the Navy would kill any and all of their people. They were hostages and that there were giant internment camps full of them – paid for by the Commonwealth.
He would have thought that if the Navy were the murderous gang of thugs she'd claimed, they would have just killed them. Del had an answer for that. The rise of the citizen reporter had prevented that – it would have made the danger of discovery too great. Carm doubted it. If word got out, they could claim they were simply holding enemy combatants in a war in accordance with the articles of war and things had gone wrong.
Whether any of that was true or not Carm couldn’t know, but it didn'
t matter. He’d seen the evidence, and had heard the testimony of the few who had escaped. He’d seen the rest too. Budget records. Testimonies. Ancient holos. There was enough in it to make him doubt the Navy, which meant he couldn’t tell anyone about the mutes. Him and his family's lives would be at risk.
Kendra had performed a voice-stress analysis on him before handing over the algorithms. In fact she'd done one every day while travelling back from Bounty to the jump point. It was only when they'd finally arrived that she'd agreed to release the algorithms. She had to be certain that her master was safe from him as she’d said. She’d vetted his cover story too, just to make sure that what he said he would keep private, he would.
In fairness she'd also provided testimony that he hadn't blown up the reserve, and it had been her who’d sent his biometric data to a third party, and that he'd been with her at the time of the blast. She didn't do it out of the goodness of her mechanical heart though. She did it partly because it was an element of their agreement, but also because it was another way of controlling him. If he revealed what he knew or thought he knew, her lying alibi went away and he was once more in the firing line. Actually it was worse than that. A man who needed a false alibi was a suspect by definition. Both women had explained that to him.
She hadn’t said who she'd sent his biometric data to, but she’d dangled enough hints to implicate her chosen victim – Iris De Lion. Even knowing she was lying Carm found himself almost believing her. He suspected she could fool others, and that her testimony would establish his innocence.
But that was the deal. He wanted to go home, and this was his only chance. Del wanted to take her people home. And Kendra wanted her master to return to his credit-making ways, free and clear of any suspicion. None of them were allies, let alone friends. But they were united in this one goal. Carm had to believe that it would be enough to stop any of them from betraying the others even after it was done. He would have to risk the Navy's wrath, Del would lose her underground railway and Kendra's master would be out of pocket.
So here he was, about to jump into the unknown once again, gambling his life. Normally the unknown was safe; however he had no such confidence in this.
Kendra swore the coordinates she’d given them were for an outlier station, a base where her master would sometimes meet with first generation mutes, and a place where he could drop off thirty-one steel coffins, a disinterred mute and a homicidal android. That wasn't the plan though. What they'd agreed on was to leave a message and coordinates to a world only he knew. However, Carm was going to change that strategy if he could – the captain's prerogative he called it. Call it simply acting in a way which would keep Del off-guard. He'd decided on it the instant Kendra had suggested using the station – it was neutral ground and therefore safer, Del agreeing readily enough and he'd gone along with it. But the instant he'd heard the term outlier, Carm had known what he was going to do.
Even so he had no faith they would find themselves at the promised base. Kendra had sworn that she loved him and was loyal. She had lied convincingly about De Lion's involvement in her own murder. He had no particular reason to believe anything that came out of her mouth. Only the calculation that it was more in her favour to have him live so that her master could resume his business than it was for them to die. And that was more of a guess than a guarantee – which was why the ship's question annoyed him.
“You're the computer. You have the algorithms and the coordinates. You tell me.”
“And how can I tell you about a place I've never been to and a jump I've never made?” It was the ship's turn to snap. “This jump is effectively blind. Do you trust the coordinates?”
Carm wasn't sure what was happening with the Nightingale lately, but it was becoming more irritable by the day. Then again maybe it was because his nerves had been stretched tighter every day as well. Either way it hadn’t been easy between any of them this past week.
Del hated him. There was no other word for it, though loathed was possibly more apt. Hatred with a large helping of scorn thrown in. And he had no doubt that she wanted to kill him. Which was the reason why he'd made sure she was locked in her cabin before the ship jumped. She’d complied, if only because she had no choice. They jumped under his conditions or not at all, plus the ship wouldn’t jump if it knew he was under duress. So she complied and hated him for it.
Kendra was more about the disdain. He was still completely useless to her as she said, but she didn't want to kill him anymore. However, the instant she decided he was more of a threat to her master than he was harmless and the means by which her master could profit, that would change. Luckily she was crippled and lying in her plastic prison so she wasn’t a physical threat.
The three of them were all agreed on one thing – they all believed he was cognitively deficient.
“No. That's why we're doing the jump in two stages.” Carm knew it was a waste of fuel and would put extra stress on the translation drive jumping twice in quick succession, especially when it was finally starting to show problems. But if the algorithms were good they would arrive at a system he’d visited years before and had never placed a claim on because it was useless. And if the coordinates were bad wherever they ended up would be unlikely to be a death trap. It would just be some other random point, no more dangerous than anywhere else. The first jump was relatively safe. Neither of the women knew that though. He was changing plans without consulting them.
“Is Del secure?” Carm asked, knowing she was but still determined to make certain.
“That's the fourth time you've asked! Has your brain finally started melting from all the copulating you haven't been doing?”
“Just answer the sharding question!” Carm was in no mood for the ship's ill-humour.
“Yes, she's secure Carmichael.”
“Good! Then extend the field and when you're ready, jump.” Carm collapsed into his chair and thought about not ever speaking to the ship again. Then he thought about having the entire computer system replaced. He was beginning to believe that what he needed desperately was a computer without any form of personality. And a cat! The Spacer's Guild was wrong. There would be no more dark side computers and androids for him – there would be cats instead!
The long minutes crawled by while the ship extended the sub-atomic polarisation field until every part of it was completely encased. Eventually the field reached one hundred percent and Carm took a deep breath – it might be his last one.
The ship jumped and after a brief moment of nausea he realised nothing had gone bang. No alarms, and no flashing lights. It had been a clean movement.
“Alright, soon as you're ready, break out the astrogation equipment and see where we are. Compare our position to where we should be.”
“I know what to do mush brain!” the ship retorted
If the minutes leading up to the jump had been slow, the next five seemed to take forever. Because it was one thing to be alive, but if the algorithms had worked as promised, they were now sitting at a coordinate from which they could go home. They were no longer lost. Carm could hardly dare to believe that.
What's going on? We jumped. Are we at the base?” Del's voice came out of the speakers unexpectedly, causing Carm to jump.
“We jumped, but not to there.”
“You're changing the agreement?” Her voice was filled with suspicion.
“Only a little. I'm being cautious. We're doing a two-stage jump. One to an empty system that only I have the coordinates to. If that's good, we'll jump again.”
“You don't trust me at all!” It was Del's turn to snap at him and the bitterness in her voice was almost palpable.
“No actually, I don’t. But in this case it's Kendra I don't trust. She provided the algorithms. I'm testing them. If she tried to send us into a sun, she's failed.”
Del muttered something under her breath, but Carm ignored her. He didn't care. He needed to know if he could finally go home.
“Results coming in,” the ship finally broke the silence. “We're in the Hellacious system, at the orbit of the fifth planet, forty four degrees above the ecliptic.”
It wanted to continue with telling him the rest of the analysis but Carm wasn't listening. He was too busy yelling with sheer joy as he realised they'd made it. All he cared about just then was that they were in the Hellacious system. He was only a single jump away from Aquaria, from his home and his family.
It was amazing! A thousand years of fruitless research had been solved and his ship had the answers in its digital hands! One of the most basic limitations of the translation drive had been overcome. They had a geometry to the jump points, and a connection between them and spatial coordinates.
Thanks to that they could do two things. They could zero set as Del called it, and could overlay one spatial distribution over another to compare them. That made two different sets of coordinates, one. And all the worlds they'd jumped to while being spaced were now part of the Commonwealth map. No ship would ever have to be spaced again. All they had to do was jump thirty or forty times, build up a map of their own, and then overlay it on the existing map.
The second thing they could do was combine jumps. The algorithms allowed them to take all the courses between two jump points connected by a chain of existing points, and calculate a single course between them. That was radical. More than that, it was a revolution. Every point on the Commonwealth map was only one jump away.
And now he could do both those things.
But there was even more. If he was right, he could run parallel courses where the jump point and arrival points were very close – within a matter of light hours of one another. It was trickier, but it meant that for systems like Aquarius where the established jump point was three days travel from the world, he could create a new one, closer to it and use that to jump to another jump point in any system, that was roughly the same distance away from its established point.