Eclipse

by K. A. Bedford

  “You and … Mr. Janning!” I was finding it very hard to think straight. “I don’t, I don’t understand. What’s going on?”

  Critchlow put a hand on my shoulder. “Mr. Dunne, Miss Riordan is going to personally supervise you until we get back to Ganymede. That means she’s going to have you stay in her quarters.”

  “Doc, isn’t that … um, against regs?”

  Critchlow looked at Riordan, “Now he worries about regs!”

  Riordan said, arms folded, “You might have thought that before you shagged Admiral Greaves, son.”

  I blushed, hearing it put like that. “Well, hmm. But isn’t it, you know, inappropriate for a junior officer of one gender to occupy the quarters of a senior officer of another ­gender?”

  She said, still looking arch, “I’ll actually be staying somewhere else, so fear not. Propriety will be served, Mr. Dunne.”

  That all seemed fine, if puzzling. “But why do I have your headware…?”

  Riordan glared at me. Almost immediately an encrypted message appeared in my head. Her headware unscrambled it in a picosecond:

  Mr. Dunne:

  My headware contains the security overrides that let me access parts of the ship that are otherwise locked and sealed. My job ­description contains all the authorization I need for such access. I don’t need probable cause. The Service has declared that if the safety of the ship is even remotely in doubt, I am entitled to use my own discretion over a wide variety of actions in order to protect her. I have deemed this to be one such instance, and am using my discretion to provide you with a suitably hacked copy of my headware. Mr. Janning was only too happy to be the conduit.

  It is not my place to provide you with ­instructions on what you should do next. I ­believe you will know what to do at the right time. Suffice to say, there are a lot of people on this ship with a profound degree of sympathy for your situation, Mr. Dunne, but are too ­terrified to let their feelings of solidarity be known. If you have any further queries, please put them in cryptomail like this, using my ­personal decrypt key, okay?

  L. Riordan

  I looked up at her. “I see, ma’am. When do we start?”

  Eclipse exited the tube and returned to real space.

  “Whenever you’re ready.”

  She left me in her quarters, with firm instructions not to touch her violin or she’d kill me. “You think Ferguson’s scary? He’s just a pathetic old bastard. Me, you should be scared of.” With that, she stalked out the door to ­resume her patrols.

  I sat at her desk and thought about cracking open an old book she had evidently been reading, a biography of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach that looked dense and daunting. Instead I started exploring the features of her headware. She had bridge cloud access, I discovered right away, with both present mode and surveillance mode. I toggled the latter and got into the feed.

  I appeared, sitting, off to one side of the “room.” Rudyard was at the head of the table, chin resting on his hands, with Ferguson standing, hands behind his back, next to him. Rudyard looked tense and worried, though trying to mask it. Ferguson had his “let’s kill everybody!” snarl going. He was loving this. Janning, smooth and professional, was in control of the Helm himself, I saw, with support from his team, who would be in their own cloud. In a different world, I could have been in there with them, helping compile the navigation data. Finney, sitting further down the table, relayed important comm traffic. At that moment, Eclipse and Queen Helen were swapping information about the immediate tactical ­situation and where Eclipse should go in the flagship’s defensive perimeter and Janning’s people were processing that and making the necessary adjustments. Bartlesby, on weapons, sat quietly disclosing the readiness of the ship’s main gun, the ­turrets, power supply, loader systems, fire control, infowar capabilities. Critchlow sat at the end of this table, already looking angry, full of doom, providing infrequent reports on the Infirmary staff and facility readiness.

  It was so quiet. So much of the real activity was ­occurring within the heads of the people gathered here. Comments were only made regarding significant changes. Habit, and training, and brain-mounted control systems, ­combined to cut the time needed for understanding and communicating down to a bare minimum.

  The room we occupied felt smaller than the last time I was here. I kept wanting to hunch over, lest my head bang on the low ceiling. There were so many people in here, too — more than usual. There was a stifling, hot feeling. It was strange, too, to notice how Ferguson, standing, easily dominated the table while Rudyard, murmuring commands, looked uncertain, and like he hadn’t slept in a week. His hair was a mess, perhaps unwashed, and I thought he needed a shave. It looked like he could feel the tightness in the room, the sense of airlessness and confinement. I had no idea where his physical self was. He could be wandering around loose, or jogging on a treadmill in the gym, or lying on his bunk in his quarters, sweating buckets, wondering if we could make a difference.

  Perhaps wondering where the Asiatics were.

  Queen Helen had a new commander, Admiral Charles O’Connor, a man who looked more like Ferguson’s kind of officer than like Rudyard’s. O’Connor was tall for a Service officer, filling out his whites like something from an ad; but behind his reassuring, fatherly charisma there lay the same steel-eyed predator I saw in Ferguson. Only O’Connor looked so charming you could wind up thanking him for killing you.

  He appeared over the cloud, standing over the other side of the room from where I sat, invisibly watching. He stood there, cap under his arm, silver hair worn long enough to require brushing, his face stern.

  “Captain Rudyard, XO Ferguson, men and women of HMS Eclipse…” he opened.

  I saw Ferguson snap to attention. Rudyard looked like this was one more damned thing he could do without.

  O’Connor continued, in a deep, serious voice so we’d know he wasn’t kidding, “We move at 0700 tomorrow. The QH Battle Group will enter the same tube, with a view to emerging in Jupiter Space shortly thereafter. Our intelligence indicates the Asiatics are planning to ­neutralize the Community government seat on Ganymede, with secondary targets consisting of our communication infrastructure nodes. Government officials have already left Ganymede on a routine transport and entered a tube.”

  The time now was 0100 hours.

  I wondered if I was the only one in the room who thought the Asiatics were being unusually dainty about their operational plans. They had the resources to mount at least two major Battle Groups; we all knew that. It would be no trouble for them to, say, go for Mars at the same time, or perhaps a couple of the bigger habs. Then again, Mercury and Venus had very few defenses, but who’d want to live there, let alone pay for the terraforming? Terraforming Mars had proved strikingly unpopular once the population realized their taxes would have to pay for it over hundreds of years.

  And all that assumed we could trust what Service ­intelligence had found out. They had been wrong on other occasions. And it had been several months since the last big spy scandal hit the intelligence community.

  Could I be blamed for thinking we were totally screwed already?

  O’Connor went on, “And now, it is my great pleasure, to introduce you to our leader, Her Majesty Queen Helen, who has a prepared an inspirational message for us all.” Even Ferguson looked pained at the prospect.

  O’Connor stepped back and disappeared. The lights in the room dimmed. A circle of light appeared on the floor, and a tall, slim figure stepped into this circle. Queen Helen, High Commander of the Service, wore the dazzling white uniform befitting the Service’s ultimate position, ­Spacecraft Command Officer Level 10. Her uniform was encrusted with decorations and festooned with commemorative ribbons, and she wore on her shoulder the patch of the Home System Service’s first flagship, Earthrise: a blue crescent on a black field. Her short, dark hair was trimmed up neat; her vi
olet eyes were set hard with purpose.

  She said, “Men and women of the Royal Interstellar ­Service — good morning. By now you know your mission, and you will be preparing to carry it out. I know that you are feeling scared, that the forces arrayed against you are overwhelming. This is true. We are just one system, and a crippled system in many respects, with the loss of Earth and without the support of most of Mars, yet we still number in the hundreds of millions of souls. We are plentiful in population, if not in territory. And all of those souls are counting on you now, each one of you, from the lowliest SSO1 to the Admiral of the Fleet, Mr. O’Connor, to stand between them and the storm to come. Perhaps you think we have no chance against such an opponent. Perhaps you think the battle is already lost. Perhaps you are letting your own fears and petty concerns prevent you from seeing the real issues.

  “More than your lives and your ships are at stake. What is at stake here today is our home. We had no say in what happened to Earth. By the time we could act, she was already gone. Now we face a new threat — but this time, we can act, and we will act, together, for the sake of our very home.

  “Good luck, and good hunting.”

  She saluted, stepped crisply back out of the lit circle, and disappeared. Silence followed her departure. What does one say about an inspirational speech that fails to inspire?

  Twenty-Four

  I had six hours to stew in my own juices, stuck in Riordan’s quarters, wondering what was next, and what my supposed last chance might involve. So far, not much.

  Riordan’s natural scent was thick in the air. I knew she wore no perfume. It was an intimidating feeling, sitting there in her room, surrounded by her stuff, artifacts of her casual presence. It was like she was there, sitting behind me perhaps, watching to see what I might do.

  And what that might be, I did not know. What could I do? Riordan and Janning — and perhaps Critchlow and his people — were up to something, and it involved me. Again, I was being used, a tool to do a deed they dare not do themselves.

  But what deed? And why now?

  On a lark, I got back into Riordan’s headware; I thought I’d noodle around some of the other features. She had a lot more gear in her rig than I’d ever seen. She must have had processor mesh webbed throughout most of her brain. Lots of the features were disabled, I found; I lacked most of the neuroid structure support she had.

  There was one interesting feature: I could interrogate every door on the ship on whether it was open, closed, locked, unlocked — and who had passed through. For a while I looked around the ship, talking to doors, monitoring crew movements. It might be fun, I thought, to see where I’d been. So I found the door to the Brig. The door indicated I had gone in.

  But not that I’d left.

  This gave me pause. I sat and thought about this for a moment. It had to be a system glitch. So I had another look. Still no record of me leaving for the Infirmary, and no record of the orderlies coming to get me, either.

  I had a look at Riordan’s Brig records. There was a note saying I had been deposited in cell number one — and that I was still there.

  Riordan’s headware had access to a surveillance feed from the cells, so she could monitor activity in there. I tuned into that channel through ShipMind. The view was from overhead, and the image bulged to get the whole cell into the view.

  “I” was lying on the bunk, sleeping.

  I skimmed back over the accumulated record. The person on that bed used the bucket occasionally, used the fab, was heard to bitch about the vile water, scratched himself, sometimes sat on the edge of the bunk looking wretched, holding his head, talked incoherently to himself, slept some more. Vital sign info pulled from the cell’s surveillance systems showed he was depressed and angry, but definitely alive. Interrogating the identity-checking system showed that it was definitely SSO1 Dunne, J. Unique, uncrackable ID code and everything.

  Damn. Pulling out of there, I switched to Riordan’s quarters. Visual surveillance showed her room, at this moment, was empty. Door logs showed that Riordan had entered a short while before, and left again, locking the door behind her.

  She had been alone at all times.

  I got back into a map of the ship, and traced the route from the Infirmary to Riordan’s quarters. Every door between here and there was unaware that I had been with Riordan when she brought me here. In the Infirmary there was no record that I had been there recently, either.

  The time was 0220 hours.

  I phoned Riordan. She answered right away, “Riordan, go.”

  “What’s going on?” Before she could answer, I went on, “What are you and Janning up to?”

  Riordan asked, “You’re still in my quarters?”

  “There’s no trace of my movements anywhere. The system thinks I’m still in the Brig. I’ve looked all over! What are you doing?”

  “It’s all right. It’s nothing to be worried about. We—”

  I was up and pacing. Panic was heating up within me. “I’m not gonna let you bastards use me. I fell for that once before, and it’s not gonna happen again. You hear? You hear me?” I went on in this manner, my voice getting louder and shriller.

  Riordan said, “Just wait there. I’ll be right there and we can talk.”

  “I’m not going to be the fall guy for you! I don’t know what it is but I’m not doing it, I’m not playing along!”

  “Just settle down. Everything’s all right. Just hold tight and I’ll be there shortly, okay?”

  I was screaming, “You’re not gonna use me the way Greaves used me! I won’t do it! Do your own bloody dirty work! Do it yourself!” And so on.

  At some point, Riordan killed the connection, leaving me ranting to nobody.

  She arrived a few minutes later. I was still pacing, feeling sweaty and tense. Riordan took one look at me. “I’m sorry, James.”

  I wasn’t interested. “Why does your surveillance system say I’m still in the Brig? Huh?”

  She walked up to me. She looked at me. It was a serious stare. “We’re going into a possible combat situation in a few hours, James. You know that.”

  I stormed away from her, ranting, shouting abuse, hitting things. I felt incandescently angry. The prospect of actual combat did not concern me too much; I didn’t figure I’d be much involved, and I didn’t figure we’d last long. I’d be sitting around in my Brig cell, or stuck here in Riordan’s quarters, instead of in the Helm cloud doing my job.

  Riordan tried to get me to listen, shaking me hard. This took a while. At some point she said, “James — we can’t go into combat with Ferguson as XO.”

  This surprised me. “What?” I stared at her. And, down in my bowels, I felt a slow tightness, as I began to get an idea of what was going on.

  Oh no, not that…

  “That’s right. It’s bad enough we’re stuck with Rudyard, but at least he knows he’s got problems. Maybe if we’d got back to Ganymede, he might have gotten himself some med leave or something, get his head sorted out.”

  “The captain’s that bad?” It wasn’t hard to imagine, knowing what I did about him, and his background. Chances were the thought of what he did to that planet was eating at him.

  She continued, looking at the floor, face pinched with anxiety, “That bastard Ferguson, he’s… Something’s changed in him.” There was something disturbing about the way she said it.

  I said, “Get Critchlow to take him off duty. Easy.”

  “He’s tried. I’ve tried. Rudyard says he won’t stand in the way. He knows what Ferguson would be like as ­acting captain. Meanwhile, Ferguson says he’ll kill anybody who thinks they can take him off duty.”

  “He said that?”

  “To me, he said he knows what’s going on: that the bleeding hearts on the ship want to get him. That we want to bring him down as if
he were some rogue bull elephant.”

  Ferguson as a bull elephant gone nuts. Crushing everything under its giant feet as it rampages through the jungle. I could see that. But to say he’d kill to stay in his job…

  “So what’s changed in him?”

  She stood back, arms crossed and looked away. “Miss Riley’s stunt, mainly. Also the prospect of war — it’s got his blood up, so to speak.”

  “But Ferguson’s not likely to be acting captain, is he?”

  “Critchlow and I think Rudyard’s a risk. He’s never had to take a ship into combat, except in sims. And in his present shape, he might … well he might fail under pressure. It’s happened before, on other ships. Which means we need an XO who can be relied on, someone solid.”

  “Janning is next in line, isn’t he?”

  “Right.”

  So here it was, perfectly clear but unstated. My gut feeling was correct. Here I was: Boy Assassin for Hire. And conveniently, already thought to be nuts, so the conspirators get to maintain their deniability. Who’d believe me if I talked?

  Or maybe they had that risk covered in their calculations as well, I thought, feeling queasy and cold. I looked at her, the anger now hard like cooling steel. “Find another sucker. I’m not touching this little game. No way.”

  She shoved me against a bookcase. Things rattled. Her hot blue eyes scalded me. I could smell bad coffee on her breath. “Mr. Dunne — do I need to remind you of your Oath of Service?”

  I tried to push her away; she secured herself against me harder, forearm jammed against my throat. “Piss off!” I gurgled, but I was scared.

  “We need you for a special mission of the highest importance, Mr. Dunne. The safety of the ship and her crew is at stake!”

  I scowled back at her, as best I could. “Spare me! I’m already staring down the barrel of summary execution after a nice show-trial court-martial. My plate’s nice and full, thanks.”

  “Mr. — James,” she said, breathing hard, glaring at me. Her face was so close to mine, I could feel the tension coming off her like heat. She was quivering with it. A part of me began to think she really might be willing to hurt me to get her point across.