Harry Heron: Into the Unknown

by Patrick G Cox

  Reaching a conclusion, she called the Master at Arms office. When the warrant officer answered, she said, “Go to secure channel.” The hologram flickered into view. “Mr Suddaby, I need to know, very quickly please, everything we have on file for the people on the list I am sending now.”

  She saw a flicker of surprise cross his face as he read the list and nodded his confirmation. “I’ll have it for you in a few minutes, Commander. Will you be at your command station?”

  “I’d prefer you bring it to me in person, and make sure no one else has access to this or knows that I asked for it.” Hesitating, she added, “I will be taking it to the Commodore, and he’ll have a job for you when I do. That is all.” Cutting the connection, she contacted her second in command. “Trevor, keep running the tests. You know who to avoid using.”

  “Will do. Who are you using?”

  “I’ll take Jay Williamson, WO Howell and TechRate O’Connor.”

  “O’Connor? Does he know enough about these systems yet?”

  “You’d be surprised. Besides, have you seen his micro work? He’s perfect for this, and no one would suspect his being involved.” She paused. “Log anything you find. Any and every defect is vital.”

  “THIS IS UNBELIEVABLE,” said Martyn Howell, his voice an angry growl. “Whoever did this knew exactly what would happen if we attempted to fire this weapon.”

  “Dead right they did,” snapped Commander Petrocova. “Now we have to get it sorted out and make sure they don’t know it’s fixed. Jay, I want you to record exactly what is done to it before we replace it. Then I want a false unit put in place. That’s your task. WO Howell, you and O’Connor are going to relocate this control unit and rerun the cables so they are concealed and can’t be rejigged.”

  “Got you, Commander,” said the warrant officer. “Right, Fergie me lad, this’ll be a piece of cake.” Opening his toolkit, he accessed another panel. “I always said this would be a better place to put the controller, and no bastard will think of looking for it here either.”

  The arrival of the Master at Arms drew the commander’s attention. She scanned the information on the data tablet that he handed her. Making several swift entries, she handed it back to him. “Thanks, Mr Suddaby. Please carry out the instructions I’ve entered—and I must stress that this remains absolutely confidential for now. I suspect the Commodore will have a view in due course.” Laughing, she drew a finger across her throat. “I know what I would like it to be.”

  Despite his wide shoulders and heavy build, Ferghal was supple and dextrous. The warrant officer watched as the youth squirmed into the tight space they’d chosen. “Find a spot we can get at, Ferghal. Some poor bastard might have to get in and repair it sometime.”

  “Aye, aye, Warrant.” Ferghal twisted round. “This looks like a good spot. It won’t be obvious here, and the cables to the original run right by it.”

  “Let’s have a look.” The older man squeezed his head and shoulders into the space. “Show me.” He followed the pointed finger. “Perfect. Right, stay there, I’ll get the casing ready, and you can mount it.” He pulled back and grinned. “Bloody hell, lad, how’d you get yourself in there? Can you work like that?”

  Ferghal laughed. “Oh, aye, Warrant, sure and just give me t’ tools.”

  Seeing that Ferghal and the warrant officer had the situation under control, Commander Petrocova set to work with the lieutenant to isolate the sabotaged unit, creating a harmless circuit that would show it as live to anyone not aware of the replacement.

  An hour later, the modification was complete. Ferghal crawled out of the small compartment and wiped the sweat from his brow, his russet hair matching the flush on his face. “All done, Warrant. It fires up just fine.” A cheeky grin spread. “A touch more tricky than t’ old flint an’ lock on a thirty-two—t’ auld guns were not half so easy t’ break, though.”

  Laughing, the commander checked the installation. “Maybe, but this one makes a much bigger bang, and it doesn’t need sixteen fellows like you to handle it.” Straightening up, she nodded. “Right, now remember, not a word to anyone about what we’ve seen, done and checked here, clear?” Keying her link, she said, “Fritz, we’re finished. You can put your decoy readout in place.”

  “It’s going live now. So is the monitoring system. From this point on, anyone accessing any part of the primary weapons control system will raise an alarm at my personal console.” His laugh was harsh. “I will be able to lock a trace on it. Anyone entering that space will also set off an alarm here. It is good.”

  Someone is going to get a very nasty surprise, Valerie reflected, shutting off her link.

  THE POLITICS ANNOYED COMMODORE HERON. Tossing his uniform jacket onto a chair back, he took a drink from the steward. “Thank you, Adriana. Damn it, Richard, these colonists seem to have more factions than a Mandelbrot fractal. For a colony world with just over two million inhabitants, they have as many damned politicians as anything else.”

  Taking a glass himself, Richard loosened his jacket and sank into a chair. “No wonder Mr Kodiak and his pals were able to take over so easily.”

  “Bloody fools. As soon as we withdraw, they’ll be so damned busy squabbling that the first bunch of thugs to arrive will take it all over before they even notice.” Commodore Heron took a drink and set the glass down. “Mike Kernan’s people are uncovering some really unpleasant evidence—enough to put the people who run the Johnstone Foundation into the Interplanetary Criminal Courts. The worrying thing is that all the staff members have vanished. That Ceacescu woman and the so-called general and his second in command are still at large.”

  “I’ve seen the briefing about the mass graves and the crematorium. Sometimes I’m ashamed of our species.” Captain Grenville sipped his drink. “Len suggested something the other day. You know how he makes those throw-away suggestions.” Richard smiled. “He was watching the local news channel and said what you need is to set up a constitutional conference and let all the factions make idiots of themselves on air.”

  The Commodore paused, his glass halfway to his mouth. “You know, that’s a damned good idea. I’ll talk to Mike and we’ll do it.” Taking a drink, he replaced the glass. “I’m playing a dangerous game with these saboteurs, Richard. I have my reasons, the most important being that I want the enemy, this Consortium outfit, to think we don’t know what their people have done, or that we’ve rectified it. If the Consortium people think we can’t see them with our targeting equipment, they may get careless. That’s what I’m counting on. Now, what’s our progress on isolating and neutralising the saboteurs? Are we likely to get any unpleasant surprises if we have to fight?”

  “We have most of them identified, and I have people running checks on everything they do. You’re aware that Val’s team have changed the primary control unit, relocating it and setting up a replica exactly as they found it. We’ve done the same on several other finds.”

  “Good. Twenty-four hours before their fleet gets here, I’ll want every last one of the bastards arrested and in the brig.” He drained his whiskey. “That should give us time to make our dispositions without anyone passing them on and sabotaging anything else. My feeling is they want to disable and capture, not destroy. They’ll do just enough damage to force negotiation or surrender. I don’t plan to play their game.”

  “WE THINK WE’VE FIGURED OUT THIS CLOAKING DEVICE. Clever system, really.” The scientist looked up. “Our scanners rely on receiving a return on the impulses they emit. This gizmo scatters any return, and then bingo! It becomes invisible to any scanner system.”

  Commander Dieffenbach joined them. “It works by disrupting the scanner’s signal,” he explained. “This is why we can see it on a passive scan that only recognises the emissions from a power source. It isn’t sending a signal. It sees the field generated by any electronic system, not an echo from a signal emitter. The good news is that it also affects the ship using it, which is why it activates o
nly when it receives a scan.”

  “How badly does it affect their scans?”

  “We’ve tried this using a modified scanner.” The commander smiled. “The results were interesting. From inside the screen, the scanner signal is disrupted sufficiently to make it difficult to read. This means they must drop the disruption field as soon as they engage.”

  “There is also a way the device can be rendered useless,” Dr Grüneland added. “A high energy pulse on a focussed beam completely disrupts the field it creates and renders the ship or hidden object visible.”

  “Yes,” the commander agreed. “A lucky chance revealed that. A malfunction in our test scan did it. I can modify our arrays to produce the same effect.” He glanced at the engineer commander. “It will require the creation of a pulse generator. I will provide the specification but will need some assistance with this.”

  “You’ll have it. But I must stress that we need to keep this very quiet until we use it. This information is need-to-know only, and only for screened personnel.”

  SATISFIED WITH THE PREPARATION OF HIS SHIPS for the coming confrontation, the Commodore turned his attention to the situation on Pangaea.

  “The conference is working, sir. They are making good progress,” reported the colonel. “We had to bang a few heads together and apply some undiplomatic pressure to one or two, but there’s some useful stuff shaking out now.” Laughing, he added, “Amazing what putting it on the live broadcast produced.”

  “Good work, Colonel. Well done. Keep them busy.” The Commodore paused. “Just for your info, we’re expecting visitors, so I’m preparing a reception.”

  Cutting the transmission, he looked up as Adriana appeared ushering in Commander Gray and the lieutenant serving as the Commodore’s staff officer. “Come in, Martin, Nick. What have you got for me?”

  “Latest status reports, sir, and the security reports on our potential saboteurs.”

  “Things are getting back to normal in Pangaea City, sir.” Commander Gray placed his report of patrols, resources and strike craft in maintenance and repair on the pile already on the desk. “The patrols are helping, and the broadcast of the conference debate is producing some positive results as well. People are making their feelings known at least.” He paused. “The Siddhiche ships have reappeared, though, as elusive as ever.”

  Frowning, the Commodore nodded. “I’ve had reports from the frigates of those sightings. And Fritz has found another file from them. If he’s deciphered it correctly, we can expect a visit from a numerically superior enemy force in fifteen to twenty days.” He grimaced. “And Ramilies has been delayed. She won’t get here for at least eighteen days, and Admiral Cunningham and his ships won’t be here for another six weeks. We’re on our own, I think, so once this cycle of leave is recovered, we prepare for defence. It’s going to be a tight situation. Everything depends on whether their weapons are superior to ours, and on their not knowing that we can negate that screen or that we have found and fixed all the sabotage.”

  Adriana announced that Dr Silke Grüneland was here for her briefing.

  “Thank you, Adriana. You may bring her in. We’re done, men—thank you.” The Commodore nodded to Nick and Martin, and they departed with Adriana.

  Captain Heron stood and shook hands with Dr Grüneland then gestured toward a chair. “So, I gather you’ve had time to analyse the reports on the recovered probe units you lost when the three boys landed here some months ago.”

  “Yes, we have—thank you,” Dr Grüneland added as Adriana handed her a glass of water. “The larger probe unfortunately suffered an explosive failure, a pity since that unit carried the instrumentation that would have given us the bulk of what we were hoping to capture. We have recovered a little from the smaller one, though not as much as we’d hoped.”

  “Why so? I thought it was intact.”

  “It is, but there must have been an attempt to open it. It had depressurised, allowing sea water to enter, and that destroyed some of the instruments.”

  “Someone attempted to open it...?” the Commodore prompted.

  “Yes, the power pack installation panel, and it’s a good thing they had no success opening it. Even with it cracked, the internal pressure would have displaced, possibly atomising the seals. Anyone trying to touch the gap or make contact with the gas stream would have lost a limb, or part of one.”

  “What sort of pressures are we dealing with here?”

  “These landing units are pressurised to withstand the crushing forces you’d encounter on a gaseous planet such as Jupiter. They’re designed for dropping into an atmosphere of that sort. The ones we brought had been modified for this specific task, but the pressurisation is required to keep it functioning.”

  “So what would cause one to burst as the larger one did?”

  “We’re not absolutely sure, but we’ve modelled the event.” Silke touched a control, and a holographic image appeared. “As you can see, the transfer involves displacement and a distortion of the space-time continuum. There!” She stopped the projection. “See, we appear to have the probe at the surface and on the Vanguard, and if you look carefully, you can see there appears to be something within both those units—as if they are sharing space with something else.”

  Peering at the image, the Commodore frowned. “Ah, yes, I see it now.” He shifted his attention to the duplicate image. “Hmm...yes, I see, but what does this mean?”

  She activated the projection then stopped it again. “There. Here on the Vanguard, we now have the cannon, the youths and the wreckage, and the Spartan has our probes.”

  “Yes, but both are still intact.”

  “Correct. However, we found one gun that was recently fired, another evidently in the process of loading, and one loaded but not fired.” Activating the simulation again, she added, “We tried to simulate what would happen if the gun fired at the moment of transfer, and we got this.”

  For a full minute, there was silence as the Commodore stared at the image playing before them. He leaned back in his chair, his face serious. “So the cannon discharging as it changed places created some kind of disruption field that caused the probe to destroy itself.”

  “That seems to be the most likely explanation. We are extremely lucky the bigger gun that arrived loaded didn’t fire as it landed here. That would have caused a big enough explosion to destroy this ship.”

  Steepling his fingers, Commodore Heron frowned at the simulation replaying on a loop. “In other words, we were incredibly lucky. Good work, Silke. Send these simulations to your Institute. We need to make sure this never happens again.”

  Chapter 23

  Pangaea Beckons

  F

  or Harry and his fellow midshipmen, the days were full of tasks assisting various officers as they prepared the ship for a possible attack, ferried supplies or equipment to Pangaea, shuttled officers between ships or installed new beacons on the surface or in space. For Harry, the concept of the old navy assigning charge of a boat to a midshipman and the new fleet’s practice of placing a midshipman in charge of the various craft designated as launches, barges and shuttles made sense. Though he wasn’t given such a role, he was assigned to a barge as assistant to Sub-Lieutenant Trelawney, and he found it fascinating.

  “I want an observation unit established on the innermost moon,” Commodore Heron ordered. “Set up a surveillance and recording observatory. Use a fully automated unit. The solar arrays will have to be screened, though.”

  “Yes, sir. Should we set it to track and record all surface activity or any orbital activity?”

  “Set it up for both. The record may be important later.”

  “IS THIS NOT EXCITING, FERGHAL?” Harry asked as they disembarked on the moon, its gravity barely sufficient to keep them on its surface. He experimentally hopped a short distance. “It is as if we are wearing seven league boots.”

  “Aye, Master Harry.” Ferghal chuckled. “But seven leagues
here will see you back on the ship, I’m thinkin’.”

  Harry stared at the multihued planet below them. “Is that not a breath-taking sight? Does it not put you in wonder of creation?”

  “That it does,” Ferghal replied, and then he excused himself and hurried to where the warrant officer waited for his help moving the sled with its load.

  The actual installation and setup of the observatory was easy. After manoeuvring the unit out of the landing barge and putting it in position, the crew set up the bracing and levelling gear. With the solar arrays deployed, the observation unit was operational. Ferghal was tasked with adjusting the optics and securing the housing, a job that went smoothly despite the awkward gloves. For his part, Harry had no more important duty than to locate and mark the mounting point. His free time brought the temptation to be a typical teenage boy, and he earned a swift reprimand for attempting a somersault instead of watching and learning while the Rates stowed their equipment.

  The beauty of the planet they were suspended above enthralled Harry. To his delight, he was told that he and two other midshipmen would be allowed some leave time on their next sortie to the planetary surface.

  “The Commodore’s given the clearance for Danny to go planet-side with us—the surgeon commander’s advice, apparently.” Sub-Lieutenant Trelawney smiled. “You’ll have to take responsibility for him, Harry.”

  Harry’s face lit up. “My pleasure, sir, and Danny will enjoy it immensely.”

  Trelawney laughed. “Just keep him out of mischief. Oh, and O’Connor will be joining us.” Glancing at the two midshipmen who made up the rest of the party, he added, “It’s unusual, but the Captain stated that Ferghal is to remain with you and Danny—something about a threat to you, Harry, and keeping you together makes it easier to limit that.”

  “I understand, sir.” Beaming with pleasure, Harry said, “Ferghal will take care not to presume, sir. I know it.”