The Nightshade Problem: Sol Space Volume Two

by James Wilks

  Of course, now that Overton was on board, he might have taken over the coms position from Brutus, but he had said that he wasn’t quite ready for that, and Staples had agreed. There had been a great deal of change for the crew, and to her it made far more sense for Overton to fill in as extra security, especially since Quinn and Parsells had turned out so poorly. It had been helpful for Dinah to volunteer to assist with security on Titan Prime, but Staples knew she couldn’t rely on the woman for everything. Overton had pointed out that it had been several years since he had served or even trained, the recent gun battle in Atlas notwithstanding, and so Jang had agreed to take him on as a trainee.

  Templeton sat in his customary seat next to his captain. The doctor had cleared him for light duty, but with reservations. The real concern, Jabir had said, was not whether Templeton was in the cockpit or sitting in his room. The danger was the ship itself. High stress turns and acceleration like the crew of Gringolet had endured in their last conflicts could exacerbate his wounds and cause complications. He was still fragile and needed a great deal of rest, but Jabir had admitted that as perilous as it might be to have him onboard a spaceship, leaving him behind on Titan Prime was far more so. Declan at least could defend himself, assume a new identity, and find work. Leaving Templeton lying drugged and weakened in a hospital, even under the care of Glover’s deputies, felt like leaving cheese out in a rat-infested house.

  Dinah had joined them in the cockpit as well; she sat at the tactical position. She had thought it prudent, at least as they departed Titan Prime, just in case there were any surprises in store for them. Staples considered it unlikely given Victor’s reluctance to expose the Nightshade vessels to public view, but then, she wasn’t in the habit of turning down tactical advice from her tactical officer either. She couldn’t help but notice that Dinah looked agitated, and that was saying something for a woman for whom self-composure was a way of life. Dinah tapped her strong fingers lightly on the console in front of her as though she was working through something, and she continually glanced away from her tactical display to gaze through the windows at the front of the cockpit.

  There was a slight shudder as the ship left the last of the atmosphere behind them and moved into naked space. The crew felt the shift from light gravity to none, and Bethany’s hair began to float around her. Saturn, huge as ever, dominated the right windows of the vessel. The rings hung above them still, deceptively contiguous in appearance.

  “Everything okay, Bethany?” Templeton asked.

  “Yes,” she replied, but her voice was meek and more reedy than usual. That was to be expected, Staples thought. The last time she had sat in that seat she had nearly died. She moved around all right now, but Jabir had reported that she was suffering from some abdominal and back pain. The young woman had always been frail and faintly sickly, and the debris that had shot through her had done her constitution no favors. He had prescribed her pain relievers which she had gratefully accepted, but she had insisted that she would take them only when she was not due for a shift in the pilot’s seat. Staples appreciated her sacrifice, but it made her feel all the more guilty for putting her back in that chair.

  “You did great. Great take off,” Templeton assured her. The departure from a low-gravity moon like Titan was hardly difficult, but Templeton was determined prop the woman’s confidence up. Bethany, always vulnerable to flattery, smiled.

  “Charis, you have our course laid in for Mars?” Templeton asked.

  “Sure do,” she replied. “Got the astrogation updates from Titan Prime berth control before we left. Should be there in nine days.”

  “Sounds-”

  “Captain,” Dinah interrupted as she spun around in her chair. “We need to talk.”

  Staples was nonplussed, as they had only just gotten underway and Dinah had been the one to insist on her presence in the cockpit in the first place. She had had ample opportunity to speak to her before they left. “All right,” she said, rather awkwardly. “Later or-”

  “Now.” She unstrapped herself from her seat and pushed off towards the back of the cockpit.

  Staples favored her first mate with a look of confusion. He returned it and shrugged. Might as well see, the look said. She nodded in agreement and unbuckled her own belt.

  “Bring the robot,” Dinah muttered as she left the room. That brought Staples up short for a second. Brutus turned in his chair and looked at her in unspoken query.

  “Yes, I guess you’d better come along,” she said to the blank white face, then pushed off from her own chair towards the exit. “Let’s hold off on acceleration for the moment,” she said to Templeton before leaving the room.

  It was all Staples could do to keep up with Dinah as she moved expertly down the corridors of the ship. She seemed to be leading them towards the elevator that served to link the top deck with the four below it. The cockpit was on deck two, and it took the lift a few moments to reach them. As Dinah was waiting, Staples drifted into the small elevator lobby and stopped herself with a bar on a nearby wall. A few seconds later Brutus soared into the room and arrested his momentum with mechanical precision using the magnetic couplings on his feet.

  “What’s this-” Staples began, but again she was cut off.

  “In a minute, sir,” Dinah said. She stared blankly at the closed elevator doors in front of her, and Staples fought down a surge of annoyance with Dinah’s constant interruptions. She respected Dinah immensely, and there was no arguing that she was an invaluable member of the crew, but she could be infuriating at times. Brutus cocked his head at Staples, and she thought that if the automaton had eyebrows he would have raised one. She ignored him for the moment.

  Sixty seconds and an uncomfortably tense elevator ride later, they stopped on deck four. Staples had initially thought that the chief engineer had been taking them to the shuttle bay, but instead she led them to the ship’s small gymnasium. Any vessel worth its salt that spent time in space had a room set aside for working out, and Gringolet was no exception. It was less a matter of recreation than it was of maintaining the crew’s ability to function. Muscles atrophied quickly when they weren’t used, and even the reflexive strains on the body that came with things like walking and lying down under normal Earth gravity were absent in zero-G. Human bones tended to deteriorate in space, and Staples had little doubt that was at least part of why Gwen was small and thin for her age. The time they spent at high thrust also made it possible that Gwen was actually several weeks younger than her apparent calendar age, but Staples tried not to think too much about the laws of relativity as they applied to birthdays.

  Gringolet’s gym was modest in size but well appointed, as was standard for the ship. When it came to the health of her crew, she was not one to cut corners. Doctor Jabir was the ultimate expression of that, as his salary was nearly twice that of most of the rest of the crew. She would have sprung for the high gravity chairs as well when she originally bought and outfitted the ship, but she had never anticipated the strains that they had been through of late.

  Dinah led the captain and the robot into the room, grasped a grip bar on the far wall, and maneuvered herself into a sitting position on one of the weight machines. She strapped herself in reflexively. Staples’ confusion over her engineer’s choice in destinations vanished when she realized that this was the perfect place for Dinah to talk. She would never have taken them to her room; that was far too personal. But this was a safe place for her, a room where she spent time, one that reflected part of what she found important in herself.

  She eyed Dinah for a moment, then pushed herself over to a leg machine and clicked the belt home. Two light thunks echoed through the room as Brutus affixed himself to the floor near the doorway.

  “Dinah, I’m inclined to indulge you,” Staples began, and Dinah opened her mouth to speak, but she continued, “but if you interrupt me again, we’re going to have problems. You’ve been acting weird since we arrived at Titan Prime. I said it wasn’t my place to tell you
how to spend your shore leave, and that still holds. You want to get drunk and get into bar fights, that’s your business. But when it affects your duties on this ship, I’m going to ask what the hell is going on.”

  “That’s why I brought you down here, sir.” Dinah’s voice was without emotion, but she was wringing her hands.

  “Yeah, I figured.” Staples sighed. “I just wanted to encourage you in case you tried to back out.”

  Dinah’s response was uncharacteristically open. “Wise decision on your part, sir.” Staples watched her silently and waited.

  Dinah in turn looked at Brutus. “You’re right. I don’t like you.”

  “I appreciate you taking the time to bring me here and tell me that,” Brutus replied, and Staples thought that his sense of humor and delivery was improving, even if his timing was questionable.

  Dinah nodded as if the response had been devoid of irony. “But it’s probably not for the reasons you think. It’s not what you are. It’s what you’re occupying.” Staples thought that she meant the ship for a moment, but then she realized that Dinah was referring to the automaton shell in which Brutus’ intelligence resided. “I also wanted to tell you that I know where the asteroid facility that you want to visit is. I can guide us there if you like, but there’s no point; it’s been destroyed.”

  Staples leaned forward, and Brutus took several magnetic steps towards Dinah before he appeared to remember himself and took a step back.

  “Do you want to explain how you know that, Dinah?” Staples asked quietly.

  “Not really, sir, but I think I’d better.” She suddenly seemed very tired.

  “Tell me,” Staples said.

  Dinah began to speak.

  Chapter 10

  Dinah’s story.

  It happened almost three years ago. I was career military, and after four years as an engineer on a battle cruiser and two and a half as a tactical officer, I got another offer. The Navy has the SEALS, the Army has the Rangers. The USSO has the Strategic Space and Planetary Operations Division. Not a very colorful acronym, but then, they weren’t interested in getting attention. I was placed in K squad. Think of it like the Special Forces, but in space, and each squad had its own ship.

  Once people began leaving Earth in larger numbers, it didn’t take long for the governments of Earth to realize that space was just too big. Undesirables, religious extremists, terrorists, murderers, cultists, militant factions… they could all claim an asteroid or a moon and just do whatever they wanted, build whatever society they wanted. You’d think that no one would care; they’d be happy to be rid of them, but there was always the concern that some group would start developing weapons or start dropping meteors on cities. Space is just too big to watch all of it, so how do you police it?

  The short answer is, you don’t. What you do is develop a response. That’s what the SSPOD is. The nice thing about splinter factions building secret bases on random moons is that no one tends to notice when they disappear. SSPOD was wet work. Sometimes we investigated, sometimes we disarmed or put down rebellions, but mostly we were a kill squad.

  The United States Space Operations might have been created by the US, but it didn’t take long for others to join. Countries like Pakistan, Korea, Kenya, and India had real political and economic power, but they couldn’t each fund their own armadas, so they pooled their resources behind the US’s venture in exchange for a piece of the pie. They all know about the SSPOD, but none of them talks about it. It’s not in anyone’s public budget, and there’s nothing official about it. Groups like that have existed for hundreds of years, I suppose, and probably always will. If anything, working in space made it easier to hide the operations.

  I never really liked killing people, but I never really minded it either. We took down a dozen different facilities, and every time it was obvious that the people we were shooting at had plans to shoot at someone else very soon. The intelligence was good, and the kills were conscience clean. I slept well. I knew I was making the system a safer place. That was before AR-559.

  There were six of us in K squad, and I don’t mind saying we were the best. We had to be pilots, engineers, tactical officers, and mechanics on our ship. In orbit, we had to be evaluators, combat strategists, and logistics experts. We were almost always operating on our own, without official sanction and without backup. It takes too long to communicate with command when you’re a billion clicks away. And we had to be warriors on the ground, experts in weapons, power armor, and low and zero-G combat. The best and brightest don’t often join the military. They figure they can make more money and live longer in the private sector, and they’re not wrong. When it does happen, you can bet command singles them out and makes good use of them.

  In late July of 2123 orders came in that Martian Separatists had built a weapons facility on an asteroid called AR-559. It’s a mid-sized asteroid in the belt, and there are about a few hundred just like it. Intelligence said they were building asteroid engines, which if you don’t know can be used to push small asteroids into planets. The resulting destruction can be anywhere from Hiroshima to extinction level, depending on the size of the asteroid. It only took us four days at high burn to get there.

  We came in at nearly four Gs of deceleration. Had to get the drop on them. Njubigbo spied the facility from thirty thousand clicks out. It had skylights and an observation room. Not very well hidden. I should have known then that something wasn’t right, but you should understand. We were committed to our cause, and all I’d done for the past ten years was follow orders. Questioning those orders, especially in combat situations, gets your squad killed.

  Gingerich, our pilot, brought us in perfectly. We hit zero speed relative to the asteroid about a kilometer out. She matched spin, and then we clamped onto their airlock. We made hardseal in order to keep atmosphere. The suits didn’t need it, but it was easier once the place was cleared if it had air. Oxygen helps things burn, should it become necessary.

  They had to know we were there at that point, but we still had the advantage. Some ragtag bunch of Martian Separatists with small arms was going to be no match for trained soldiers in powered armor. Intelligence said they’d be messy and unprepared; building asteroid engines takes engineers, not soldiers. The plan was to sweep them aside, perform summary executions, then glass the facility.

  Teller was the first one through the door, and he wasn’t ready for it. He ran smack into a squad of armed, and more concerning, well-trained security forces. They had barricades and a firing line set up, and they didn’t panic or scatter. Njubigbo and I were right behind him, set to move in after he’d evaluated or cleared the room. He lasted ten seconds. He managed to take down three of them before someone landed a shot on his neck joint. Powered armor repels most small arms fire, but the joints have always been vulnerable. Given a choice between range of movement and armor, most soldiers will take the first.

  As soon as his signal flatlined, Njubigbo and I charged through the door. Our magnetic boots gave us maneuverability. There were five of them left, a mix of men and women in light armor and helmets. I knew right away that they weren’t Martian Separatists, at least not believers. Ragtag groups of resistance fighters, even when they’re well-funded, like to be individuals. If they all wear the same armor, they decorate it. They don’t like to feel like part of an institution; the institution is what they’re fighting against. These guys wore company issue armor. It was light, but effective on small to medium caliber weapons. The helmets would even protect them against vacuum for a few minutes. They were private security, and that made me suspicious, but if these separatists were well funded, they could afford them.

  Teller was leaning against the wall to my right; his boots anchored him in place despite the fact that he had stopped breathing. We all carried fifty-cal burst rifles, the kind of thing you can’t really handle unless you’re wearing powered armor. The recoil and kick is just too intense. You’d miss most of the time and have a bruised or broken shoulder the n
ext day besides, but we handled them just fine in the armor.

  Too bad for them their company-issued armor didn’t stand up long against the fifty-cals. I took the three on the right while Njubigbo handled the two on the left. None of them tried to run, I’ll give them that. Their munitions shook my helmet and arms, but nothing penetrated. A few controlled bursts at each was enough to put them down, and a few seconds later the air was full of floating globules of blood. I grabbed the last guy, tore him loose from the barrier his restraint was clipped to, and crushed him against the wall. That’s one of the things that having gravity boots in zero-G gives you: leverage. The suit made me about four times stronger than I am otherwise, so even if his collision with the wall didn’t kill him, he wasn’t going to be moving anytime soon.

  Njubigbo noticed something at the end of the hall, and I followed her gaze. A techie was floating there, a middle-aged woman with short blonde hair. She looked like she was stunned, maybe injured. Whatever she was, she obviously wasn’t a threat, but that didn’t mean we could let her go. Intel would have pegged her as a scientist, and if she was working on an asteroid engine, she was a lot more dangerous than the eight guys we had just taken out. Njubigbo raised her rifle, trained it on her, and pulled the trigger. Just as she fired, another security guard flew in out of nowhere and pushed her out of the way. Damn fine heroic looking moment that got him killed. Njubigbo managed to kill the guard and tag the scientist in the leg as well.

  I started relaying the situation to Gingerich and the rest of the crew on the boat. I told them about Teller, though there wasn’t much point. They had access to the bio data from his suit the same as me. Even so, it was possible the suit was damaged and he was still alive. I went over to him and flipped up his visor; he was dead. His pale skin was chalky, and there were flecks of blood on his face and in his blonde hair. His eyes were open. I swore, long and loud, off channel. I had liked him. He was a good guy in a fight; a real prototypical space marine, the kind of guy they would have put on posters if anyone actually knew about SSPOD.