Omnipotence: Book I: Odyssey

by Geoff Gaywood

  “Wait!” said Chang, but the doctor was already moving out of the lander cabin and down the landing ramp.

  Chang stood watching the departing figures for a moment, then shrugged, turned, and approached Marcel. He studied him for a minute or two, then put his hand carefully into his pocket and pulled out a syringe.

  * * *

  News of the hijacking of Prometheus spread rapidly through the criminal community on Earth. Chan Lu Fat had called Joe Favaloro to congratulate him as soon as he had received Chang’s message. “Your man done good!” he said with a mouth full of cigar. “We’re in business!”

  “I ain’t heard nothing from Clayton,” said Joe cautiously.

  “Well, my man Chang’s on the ball,” said Chen, “and he’s already down on the planet, bossing. The CIA man got wiped and the bitch is tied to the toilet.”

  Joe allowed himself a grin. “Sounds good,” he said.

  Within hours both men were receiving fealty from their peers and business prospects soared.

  The message received a little later by Mission Control told a very different story. While acknowledging the foresight of Colonel Bertin in setting up the secret surveillance and mobility passages, it described in glowing detail the courage of Julia Rogers and recommended that she be awarded the Crimson Star. However, it also lamented the loss of life of eighteen crew members who were not in control of their actions through no fault of their own, and the piteous performance of pre-flight security. Genes Clayton had not been infected by the virus; how could his criminal loyalties have gone undetected? There was, however, no mention of suspicions over Chang’s role.

  The Mafia-inspired rumours of the takeover which emerged in the media, however, were full of praise for Clayton and Chang, who, it was suggested, had finally lost patience with the despotic political manipulation of the ISEA and struck a blow for ordinary humanity. The cruelty of the odious Colonel Bertin, already responsible for the loss of so many lives aboard, had, it was suggested, reached intolerable levels. Commander Piccard, far from being the hero portrayed in recent propaganda, was no more than a CIA stooge, sent to prepare a soft landing for the political big-wigs who had so miserably failed the populations they represented. Now, hard-working citizens with initiative would be able to participate in the wealth and freedom offered by these two brave men, and turn their backs on the greed and corruption of the political establishment.

  Mission Control had no choice but to go public with the news that the attempted takeover had actually been foiled, but, in the absence of any explanation of Clayton’s behaviour, and reluctant to announce the death of a further eighteen crew members, was unwilling to provide any more information.

  The media responded with the gravest cynicism. The mission was out of control. The hopes of tens of millions of desperate citizens, whose tax money had financed this great venture, were once more to be dashed by the utterly ruthless authorities who cared nothing for the welfare of the ordinary citizen.

  Ugly demonstrations broke out across the world against any and all forms of authority. In New York the Mayor’s office was attacked by a huge crowd and overwhelmed. The Mayor himself was dragged out and lynched before the National Guard was able to restore order, and more than 700 were killed in the process. A similar protest took place in Beijing, where hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets, ransacking any administrative buildings they could find. The government responded with tanks and machine guns and more than 5,000 were killed. There was a spate of attacks on government buildings in the main European capitals, with missiles launched from remote high-speed mobile carriers, which were later found abandoned. Almost a hundred government officials died as a result, as well as nearly a thousand civilians. Political leaders were aghast at this new development, because it indicated that huge financial resources were being brought to bear to bring down civil order.

  * * *

  Chang rolled up the sleeve of Marcel Rousseau’s tunic, rubbed his arm and selected a vein. A shoe on the stair behind him creaked softly. He spun round and a hard, coffee-coloured fist hit him right on the point of his jaw. “Bad idea, Mr Chang,” said Arun Dar.

  Chang plunged forward and fell half onto the ergo-couch beyond Marcel’s so hard that it turned in its gimbal and delivered him forcefully onto the one below. This in turn spun him even more forcefully onto the next one down. Arun watched with increasing horror as Chang’s flailing body progressed ever more rapidly down through the lander cabin until it hit the bottom with a sickening thud. Arun scampered down the stairs to where Chang was lying on the rear bulkhead, eyes open, neck bent at an impossible angle. “Oh, my God!” he said.

  Sanam came skipping down the stairs behind him. “What happened?”

  Arun turned to her, his face contorted with anguish. “I’ve killed him!”

  “Good,” said Sanam.

  * * *

  The news of Chang’s death was another blow to Henri. The loss of life in the process of defeating the conspiracy had been horrendous, and perhaps all but two of the casualties were innocent of deliberate malevolent intent, of whom one was now dead and the other, Genes, was in a coma. The other four survivors almost certainly knew nothing of its origins. Furthermore, there was no certainty that the crew did not include one or more other sleepers, who might turn on the leadership at an inopportune moment. It was, however, reassuring that all the arms on board had now been accounted for and were under the full control of the militia. Henri prepared a security analysis bitterly critical of the pre-mission screening programme that had failed to identify two traitors at the highest level of leadership in the crew. If this could happen on such a high-profile mission, how flawed, or even corrupt, could the rest of the ISEA be?

  28

  Sombre News

  Marcel recovered consciousness after six hours. He remained weak for another twenty-four, but then recovered completely. Phase 3 exploration, which was to concentrate on the identification and assessment of natural resources in Ceres, then began in earnest and involved journeys long enough to require the crews to spend at least one long, cold Ceresian night inside the personnel carrier. Their encounters with the local wildlife life were, mostly, more amusing than frightening. They made a number of sightings of the giant, multiple-tailed yellow scorpions, which galloped off clumsily when they sighted the little convoy. They also had several encounters with cow-sized beetles which bumped into them during the night for no apparent reason. One popular conclusion was that the personnel carrier was being mistaken for a potential mate, and consequently they became known as Sightless, Lecherous and Obtuse Beetles, or SLOBS.

  More importantly, an extensive outcrop of limestone was identified only six hours’ drive from the base, and the process of calling down equipment from Prometheus to exploit it for the production of building materials began. The transporters that had been sent down with each package of equipment to enable its recovery were put to work to perform their secondary task as bulk carriers and within a week the base had begun to look like an urban building site. The limestone face of the new buildings remained perfectly in character; it was a rich orange in colour.

  The total complement on the ground had now risen to fifty-five, with Lander 2 becoming a dormitory for those who could not be housed in the base. This was not a sustainable arrangement, but it provided solid motivation for the construction workers, as the majority of those on the ground had become, to get on with the job of building a permanent base as quickly as possible. That construction could not continue efficiently at night was a major frustration. The crew were conscious of the buzzing in the distance every night but still attempted to finish some tasks with the use of flashlights. These interludes became progressively longer and it was only a matter of a week or so before an ominous drone was heard one night coming in their direction. The lights were quickly shut off but the hapless beast still crashed into an unfinished wall and caused it to collapse.

  Life on Prometheus went through a painful readjustment as the cr
ew were constantly reminded of the recent loss of their fourteen former comrades by the need to find replacements and double up on duties. Nearly everyone had lost a friend and they were remembered not by their final acts of treachery but by their earlier camaraderie. Carefully edited videos of the latest outrage and the earlier control centre assault were shown to all members of the crew, and no one was in any doubt about the danger the Wayward 19 had represented, but most wondered whether it wouldn’t have been possible to contain them rather than kill them. The four survivors had been integrated back into their former positions, but none of them were able to explain lucidly how they had felt when under the influence of Genes and the stimuli being delivered to their highly sensitised brains.

  The sombre atmosphere was further aggravated by the boring routine of checking and rechecking equipment and systems on board, and most of the crew were now looking forward to participating in activities on Ceres, regardless of spitting spiders, long, dark nights, and predominantly manual labour.

  As Chief Navigator on Prometheus, Cobus Vermeulen enjoyed the rather enviable task of conducting the detailed surveys of the surface required to select future landing sites. Cobus was a studious, modest man, an astronomer by training, and, true to his South African origins, passionate about cricket. He shared this with a handful of his Indian, Pakistani and Australian crew-mates, but sadly there were too few of them to play the game on board properly. They did, however, manage to stage a five-a-side game in the gymnasium which knocked out so many of the lights that they were obliged to curtail any further matches. Cobus was tall and well built, blond and boyishly handsome, with an innocent smile that was utterly beguiling to the opposite sex.

  He was constantly finding himself surprised by his own success. He had so impressed the staff when he visited the Large Telescope in Cape Town as a small boy that they had kept in touch with him and sponsored his studies. Emerging, to his surprise, with a first-class degree, Cobus was dispatched to California, where he quickly developed a talent for picking out extraordinary astronomical events from the cosmic background and his name began to appear frequently in academic literature. He was recruited into the ISEA, proved himself to be a natural pilot, and “fell over the Omega 16 system by accident”. Nevertheless, he was amazed at being recruited for the Prometheus mission when his predictions about planets 16-3 and 16-4 were proved correct, and he accepted immediately.

  The primary focus of interest for landing sites was no longer flat, secure surfaces but rather environments that could be developed to support larger populations. He was examining a promising river estuary when a warning flashed onto his screen: “Moving Object at 16-5.3”.

  “Damn,” he said at this unwelcome distraction. He re-orientated the ship’s telescope to the gas giant 16-5 and focused it on the third of its moons, now progressing across the face of the planet. He saw nothing at first, but as his eye shifted to the shadow of the moon on the planet’s surface, he saw a second, much smaller, darker, shadow beside it, and it was moving. He increased the resolution to maximum. The shadow was cigar-shaped, and, as he watched, it slowly retreated back behind the moon.

  Cobus sat back and bit his lip. “There’s something behind that moon,” he said to himself. “It’s not a natural object, and it doesn’t want me to see it.” He thought for a minute, then pulled up the visual archives and selected 16-5.3. Of all the passes of moon 3 across the surface of 16–5 in sunlight since they had arrived, there was no similar event, nor was there any other case of movement in the radar records. “Damn,” said Cobus again. He checked the radar scan. Something was definitely moving behind moon 3, and too close in to be in orbit.

  He called Arlette on his earphone. “Commander, I have to report that there is an unidentified object moving close to the third moon of planet 16-5. It is not a natural body and the records show that this movement is new.”

  “Do you have photos?” asked Arlette.

  “Only of its shadow. It’s on the far side of the moon, facing the surface of the planet.”

  “Get me the best detail you can of the shadow and bring some stills up here in fifteen minutes,” she said.

  When Cobus arrived at the Commander’s quarters, Henri and Julia were already there. He nodded at Arlette and Henri, then stepped up to Julia. “It’s a privilege to be on this ship with you,” he said. “What you did was just incredible.”

  “Thanks, Cobus, I rather surprised myself,” said Julia.

  They sat down and scrutinised the photos that Cobus had brought with him.

  “I don’t like the look of those knobs,” said Julia. “They look like turrets.”

  “You’re right; this is not a natural object,” said Henri. “Have you detected a comms stream from it?”

  “No,” said Cobus, “but I’ve got it under close surveillance now. We’ll soon find out if it’s talking to someone.”

  “Will you have immediate intel if there’s a missile launch?” queried Henri.

  “Yes,” said Cobus. “We’ll pick up a heat signature if there’s a missile coming our way, and our shielding should be effective against lasers. What concerns me is its size; it’s about four times as big as we are by my estimation.”

  “Well,” said Arlette, “it’s still a long way away and hasn’t shown any aggressive tendencies, so I guess we’ll just monitor it for the time being.”

  “What do we do if it does show aggressive tendencies?” Julia wanted to know. “We don’t have any armaments to take on a thing of that size!”

  “You’re right. Given the options of fight or flight, I’d opt for flight in the circumstances,” said Arlette.

  “And leave our colony on Ceres unprotected?” Julia was aghast.

  “If that’s the only way we live to fight another day, yes.”

  As they left the meeting, a thought struck Henri and he hurried after Cobus.

  “Something just occurred to me, Cobus, in terms of what we might do for heavy weaponry. It would be a bit of a one-shot strategy, but I was wondering how you were getting on with…”

  Cobus turned and grinned at him. “I’m already on it, Colonel,” was all he said.

  Some twelve hours later moon 3 dipped behind gas giant 16-5. “Well,” Cobus thought to himself, “now we’ll have to wait and see.”

  * * *

  “Yes, Hannah?” Henri lifted his head as her news was delivered into his brain. “I’ll be right there.”

  He hurried up to the clinic. “He’s conscious but not yet coherent,” she told him when he arrived. “He must be as strong as a horse to have come through so quickly.”

  Genes was propped up in a sitting position, his head and torso in bandages. One foot was rather obtrusively manacled to the bedpost.

  “Well, Genes, how are you feeling?” was all Henri could think of to say to this rather comical-looking figure.

  “Ah don’t rightly know who ah’m talking to,” replied Genes weakly.

  “You are talking to Colonel Henri Bertin,” said Henri, “and you have a great deal to tell me.”

  “Well, Colonel,” said Genes, “Ah’m mighty pleased to meet you, but could you please tell me where I am and what I’m doing here in this hospital?”

  Henri sighed. He took Hannah’s arm and they moved outside. “What are the probabilities that this is genuine amnesia?” he asked her.

  “Rather high, I’m afraid,” said Hannah.

  “How long is it likely to last?”

  “Days, weeks or even longer.”

  “How do we know if it’s genuine?”

  “I’ll be able to do psychometric tests on him in due course, but not for a while – he’s too sick.”

  “OK,” said Henri and they moved back inside.

  “You are on the spaceship Prometheus,” he told the bandaged figure, “and we are in orbit around planet Omega 16-3. I want a full explanation for your conduct on this mission.”

  Genes chuckled. “Hell, Colonel,” he said. “Do I get to meet Mr Spock?”

&n
bsp; * * *

  Mission Control continued to suppress the news of Chang’s death and the circumstantial evidence of his treachery. Chan Lu Fat, suspicious that he had received no follow-up message from Chang, waited forty-eight hours and then released a spate of rumours that he had been murdered by fascist agents on Prometheus. Once again, Mission Control was obliged to release more information than it wanted to and to confirm Chang’s death. However, this time it also released a partial transcript of the negotiations between Genes and Julia, in which Genes admitted ‘business interests’ as his motivation for taking over Prometheus. The public was not impressed, nor did they give much credence to the report that Chang had died accidentally while attempting to give Marcel Rousseau a lethal injection. For the second time in twenty-four hours public sentiment erupted into wholesale violence against the authorities and destruction of property, exacerbated this time by a report that 700 women and children had been found dead in a refugee camp in India, apparently abandoned by the camp administrators because the water supply had failed.

  * * *

  Oblivious of the concerns on Prometheus and the crises on Earth, the pioneers on Ceres pursued their site development activities with close to manic enthusiasm. Scientists and engineers happily applied themselves both to creative improvisation and to hard manual labour, the foundations and steadily growing stone walls of the Orange House began to give the base a sense of permanence, and food production diversified and expanded to meet the needs of all. The cook, Giuliano Benedetti, spurred on by his initial successes, became the base’s first true celebrity, introducing his latest creations at mealtimes in his unashamedly accented English with flourish and humour.

  Marcel Rousseau proved himself an outstanding colony administrator, encouraging all forms of innovation and intelligently reading the ever-changing needs and desires of the pioneers for challenge and entertainment. While seven-a-side mixed-gender football remained unquestionably the most popular leisure activity, running and swimming, music and art all began to take root in the daily agenda. Following the initial success in exploiting the limestone deposits for the production of stone and cement, copper smelting was identified as providing the next big opportunity for expanding the scope of their activities.