The Last Hercules

by Ron Bender

  Our ingress is the main passenger access lock, port side, mid-ship. The lock slides open to a deserted steward’s area and passage to the main lounge.

  This is a long-haul ship. The lounge is a common area banked on either side by a series of size-flexible cabins whose doors all face the central room.

  Morochevsky nods once and the team mate with us rolls a small robo-cam into the main room. It color shifts to match the carpet. We all have access to the feed. As expected, the lounge is empty and quiet. The lights are dimmed. It was technically nighttime in shipboard time. Any passengers should be in their rooms.

  I get an all clear and take point, moving into the room.

  My helmet visor auto-overlays with the passenger manifest and room assignments. The oversized one in green is the door I head toward. Hall, David and Hildebrandt, Margret is displayed on a tiny door screen. I step along the wall. Morochevsky slips past me to the other side of the door. He motions to our teammate who crouches in front of the door. He uses a key to open the cabin’s door monitor system and pulls the panel open. After he hotwires the box we get a feed from the door video cam. I can see David in the bed.

  “He’s not breathing.” A wave, fear mixed with relief crashes into me. “And I don’t see Maggie.”

  The Russian thumbs a door hacking program on his handheld. “Opening.”

  The door hisses aside. I lift my visor. Analyzers pick up traces of death in the heavily recycling air.

  I step into the cabin and check the personal facilities room. “Clear.”

  This is a problem.

  Maggie isn’t in here. Unless she’s in the bed she’s not in here.

  The Russian and I look at each other. David’s body is under the sheets up to his chin. My optical scanners read no electromagnetics, he’s not trapped or wired in any way. I flip the sheets back.

  He’s in his street clothes. I pat down the body. His Id, travel passes, and transit vouchers are still in his pocket. “Probably poisoned, there’s no visible marks on him, no blood anywhere.”

  We check the rest of the room, storage, and cabinets, and emergency locker.

  Morochevsky hauls up David’s suitcase.

  “Wait.” My warning comes too late. A tiny spark of static discharge lights from the tips of Alexander’s fingers and the catches of the case.

  The outer wall of the ship bursts outwards into naked space as the explosion rips the cabin apart.

  My suit clenches up so fast my chest plate armor aches. My visor slaps shut and the suit compresses, bright neon purple sealant oozes out of nicks and cuts.

  As I tumble, the flaring colors and debris of a second explosion blaze along the rim of my helmet.

  The concussion had been rough with me but it was worse on my suit. The encounter with the wall behind me has taken its toll. The stabilizer micro-rockets built into the backpack have been misaligned and are partially crimped closed. The system is programed to stop wild spins like the one I’m in but instead they send me on a random spiral and shut down. Debris and wreckage tumble around me. I look at the rest of the ship. Its acceleration acted on by an outside force…. The forward section completes nose to tail rotations, spewing flakes if metallic alloy, strips of wiring and venting oxygen.

  David’s shredded corpse floats away followed by Morochevsky and tumbling hull segments.

  I’ve seen unconscious people and dead people in space and unless you get vital signs they float around the same way.

  Morochevskys been hammered hard, his right arm ends above the elbow, and as he spins I see a torn sheet of bent steel pushed through into his chest cavity. The edges of the cut, the stump of his arm, and hundreds of other slices and tears are sealed in the same neon purple as my cuts. His helmet at least looks intact….

  “Report, Colonel.” I recognize the voice of our attack shuttle’s pilot. There is a short pause. “Colonel. Report.”

  “This is Lee. We triggered a trap in Hall’s stateroom.” I pull up the passenger list and cabin assignment lists. The segmented body of a civilian, in their pajamas, floats by, boiled off bodily fluids drifting around them in a ragged cloud.

  The explosion, the violent concussive compression and near instant decompression to vacuum, will have killed a lot of passengers.

  I struggle with the thought that Maggie was someplace aboard.

  The internal sensor had indicated two less people than should have been on board, coupled with David’s murder…Maggie can’t be here. She isn’t here…. But the casualty count would be high.

  “International Convention dictates that we render aid,” I say. “Send an emergency distress signal to the Lunar base, Liberty, Origin Oasis, and HQ.”

  I half-listen to orders coming out from our pilot, now the missions default control…. The focus becomes search and rescue.

  Scanning the growing debris field, I can see at least a dozen bodies floating free. Everyone else is still inside their secure modular cabins, some of which are rolling free, pushed into spins as their atmo bleeds out of jagged holes. Only fast action and a level heads will save the passengers inside them. The non-compromised cabins would be safe for a few hours.

  I scramble along the remnants of the ship hand over hand, trying to keep Morochevsky in sight. Drifting away in the dark and getting lost… a matt black suit against the void of space….

  Our team-mate who had been by the cabin door has been bisected by hull plate from the secondary explosion I push off from one chunk of hull to another until I can grasp his upper body. I maglock his torso to what remains of the ships spine.

  The teams from the separated and wildly spinning cockpit and the cargo areas extract themselves and start the long task of recovering survivors.

  Keeping an eye on Morochevsky I haul my bow off my back and load a heavy hook arrow and clip on a line.

  I line up a shot as I leap off and spin toward another ship component big enough for me to work with. My arrow rams into a damaged hull of the retreating shuttle. “I’m recovering Colonel Morochevsky.”

  Around me, our craft has grappling lines out, tethering the biggest segments of hull together as anchor points to corral the rest.

  I pull myself along a bent section of Whipple plate, bent and broken along the top of the destroyed ship. Locking on in a standing position, I track Morochevsky, tumbling away.

  Software plows through the calculations in a heartbeat confirming my own observations about his vector of drift. I play out all my line even as I push the pressure in my rams to max. I squat and then push into a full extension timing my jump to intercept with a large piece of torn hull. Pushing off an object with so little mass is hard but it’s enough. As I scramble past the next piece and push off of it, adjusting my trajectory as best I can, while clearing a field of sharp-edged debris near my path.

  The Russian bounces off my chest as I run into him and wrap an arm around him. His suit has held pressure but he is nonresponsive. A signal to my fingers locks them around his torso harness. I have six feet of cable left. “I have Colonel Morochevsky.” The medical facility on our ship will be hard pressed to treat him. I work on getting him back aboard….

  3.22

  Forged by Fire

  Jen pipes in on my internal com-link. Her call comes just as the waiter is walking away from taking my dinner request. I had better things to do than this but refusing requests from European royalty had undesired consequences. A princess from Spain, whose mother my own mother had been godmother to…different level of consequences.

  Jen says, “We have a developing situation with our orbital extraction team.”

  “Go ahead.” I nod at her highness, a charming woman, younger than I, whom I’m sure my mother would have enjoyed as a daughter-in-law. Her highness isn’t at all my type, but this dinner has been on my agenda for months.

  This is her first trip outside of the Unified European Block and like every European who comes here, the topic becomes a compare and contrast monologue. “I had only seen things on strea
ming. The ugliness of the lower levels, you know? But here… everything is so sparkling, so bright. Only the palace and the cathedrals are lit like this….”

  Her light Spanish accent is a distraction. I force my focus onto what Jen is saying. Maybe I could make an excuse and duck out past the swarms of media outside the restaurant and get back to work….

  “The Speedwell, our target vessel, a long-range shuttle chartered to Origin Oasis, has been destroyed. Several of our team are injured.”

  Destroyed…. I push down my emotions and ask for facts. “Fatalities?”

  “Colonel Morochevsky. He is currently undergoing postmortem stabilization and revival prep. There is a delay in the teams return. They are rendering aid to the survivors.”

  “Your Highness, would you excuse me a moment?” I ask her in Spanish. I’d been wishing for an excuse to duck out of dinner, but instead the universe has sucker punched me. “A serious situation has come to my attention and I have to deal with it immediately.”

  Even with disappointment on her face, she leans over and squeezes my hand. “Of course.”

  I stand and move toward one of the elegant side cubicles. They’re designed for private business meetings. The La Fleur de la Croix d’Or is built to facilitate almost every client need and I feel the need for silence, distance, and utter privacy.

  News of Alex’s death is a surprise. Even revived from a postmortem state he may be useless to anyone. His personality could be so changed that he may as well have stayed dead. Revival is a gamble with anyone other than Raven. Vlasta has said that because we have an excess of baseline data, Raven is the only one who’s personality and memories could be rebuilt from scratch whenever it was called for.

  I discreetly signal the manager who replies with a mild smile and a slight nod. I push the cubicles oak door closed and sit on the edge of a wide banquette. “Jen, how bad is it?”

  “A large number of his internal organs were sheared by a segment of hull plate during the explosion.” Her report is blunt. “He has had most of his organs enhanced or replaced during his career. I’m told, that fact may improve his chances at a normal recovery.”

  “Keep me apprised of his condition.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “What else?”

  Jen continues. “There are large numbers of civilian casualties. Our team is rendering aid to survivors and recovering bodies. The debris field scatter is also being monitored as it poses a threat to future shipping.”

  This is bad. Ships don’t just blow up. Those kinds of accidents are decades behind us. This is deliberate. Aimed at me as a message? Or an attempt to eliminate Baylen? If that, then why? “Send me an indexed passenger list.”

  A list scrolls down, layered over my view of the delicate baroque carving of the wall panels around me.

  Numbers of CitOnes and EuroElites are confirmed as dead. A couple of corporate officers, a handful of heirs to sizable portfolios, and some unlucky souls who had just won lotto draws for a vacation of a lifetime.

  “This is going to be a fucking shit show.” The soft cushions behind me loft around me as I lean into them. This already long day was going to become impossibly extended.

  “Agreed,” Jen says. “We have no media containment on the incident. Media Control is working on a story spin right now.”

  “How many media outlets have picked it up?” The exchange was going to plummet on the news.

  “Too many to silence easily,” she says.

  “Bully or shut down the ones without corporate patronage and get our media department onto the rest.” I opt for prudence in an effort to stem the possible tide of outflowing investment capital. “Contact our major shareholders in our subsidiary corporations and prep them on the news. Have people in Finances ready to lend a hand for shareholders with concerns.”

  “Yes.”

  As I rub my eyes I ask. “What about Baylen and girl… Maggie?”

  “Major Lee has reported no injuries. There is no confirmation about the girl. Mr. David Hall was confirmed dead before the initial explosion. No cause of death could be determined before the incident.”

  “Before?” I sit up. “Are we sure that the footage of Bransen and Maggie boarding is legitimate?”

  “Yes.” She replies and then adds, “Update; Media Control would like to tell everyone that AlphaTek was perusing a lead that indicated a possible terrorist explosive had been hidden with cargo and that we were sending a team of removal experts when the device detonated prematurely. It was a covert operation designed to be as discreet as possible to avoid unpleasantness for Origin Oasis, and the wealthier patrons on board the ship.”

  That’s fit for public consumption. “I authorize that message.”

  If the goal had been to eliminate Baylen, they’d failed twice. It concerned me that Bransen had possibly kept the girl. They had, by Baylens description, captured the remains of his unit, and knew that act would have him hunting them down. They didn’t need him; and that meant Maggie was leverage over Vanessa, a Raven clone…. A clone that Phillip was now aware of and wanted back.

  “Update; there is an emergency meeting of the local Corporate Council. They are demanding your attendance, not a VR link.”

  “What does Legal Division say?” I have my own gut feeling on the matter, but the lawyers keep all of AlphaTek partitioned and safe, including me.

  “They highly recommend your attendance.”

  I thought so. “Make the necessary adjustments to my schedule for the evening.”

  “Done,” she informs me. “Your personal AV will be out front in under a minute. The media who are already present are becoming aware of this news item.”

  “Do what you can to lock down the story’s spread.” I say.

  “Except for our preapproved outlets and those ones operating at street level in UnderCity.” She makes the leap without my instruction.

  I pace the cubical end to end, thinking.

  She says. “Update; a minor corporate account in Africa belonging to Bransen’s mercenary organization has just shown activity. A deposit of fifteen thousand credits and the withdrawal of the hard-fold equivalent in local cash.”

  It had been months since Snitch had told us that Phillip and Bransen were working together. It had taken weeks to pinpoint all of the hidden flows of cash.

  “Raven and Brios are scheduled to arrive in the area doing follow up?”

  “Yes. They were there to close the Eastern European human trafficking ring.”

  “Change their mission. Bring them up to speed on this and pass on instructions for them to find and follow Bransen. Keep them in the dark about Vanessa. But if they have a clean opportunity to recover Maggie to do it but don’t act unless they’re one hundred percent.”

  “Message relayed. Confirmed by Brios. Estimated time to the new contact location, debrief and rebrief on the new drop; four hours.”

  “I have issued those orders and forwarding the intel on your behalf.”

  “Thanks Jen. Please send my apologies to her Highness.” I make my way to the street by cutting through the bar. The other patrons here know me and understand that when I’m moving in a hurry to not bother me. I nod my thanks to a few of them and step out to the flash of cams, and urgent inquiries from the media types.

  I don’t acknowledge any of them. Instead I let my support team clear a path to the AV. A swarm of AlphaTek drones hover nearby watching over me as I seat myself into the Oppenbach Razor. The buttery Corinthian leather seats shift around me.

  The door whispers shut. Angel looks back at me from the pilot seat. “Popular guy tonight. Must be bad.”

  “Bad enough.” I reply. Tipping my head back onto the rest, I close my eyes and try to make a clear mental picture of all the pieces in play.

  I’ve barely sorted out the players and their connections when the chime indicating landing mode sounds. I sigh and sit up.

  Angel sets the car down in the LZ in front of the Council building. I look through the tinted glas
s. The entire plaza is a flurry of activity.

  Bad news travels and a lot of people have been waiting to see AlphaTek take a PR hit like this. I can see Streaming Infotainment hosts rushing toward their make-up teams, not counting on post production edits to clean everything….

  “That. That is a crowd,” Angel comments dryly. “Good luck with the meeting.”

  “Thanks.” I steel myself for the onslaught and step out of the AV.

  Security is heavy and not all of the troops here are mine.

  No one wants blood on the steps and a policy of direct deterrence has been the defacto normal for years.

  Armed men from other corporations watch me. Brandishing rifles, their eyes on me, more than on the sideshow players.

  “Jen, this an open meeting?” The answer is obvious. I ask out of frustration at the expanding gravity of the situation.

  “Emergency Measures Ruling thirty-four has just been activated. A two-thirds majority carried the vote. Living Memories was the initial voice urging the enactment of the rule.”

  The ruling was designed to allow media access to the chamber in the event of disaster. Originally it had been used to help with public accountability after storm flooding. It was supposed to be a tool for coordination efforts and information dispersal….

  Whole transports full of media types are arriving even as I walk the dozen yards to the bottom step. Cam operators and observers are hastily setting up along one edge of the stairs and more are moving quickly in and out of the gallery doors. The fluted honey-colored marble columns rise around the clusters of fountains and palm trees encrusted with sparkling pin-dot lighting. Clouds, tugged by the night air, hint at distant rain somewhere on the Gulf. I wonder if the storm surge will force the Rafters higher upstream….

  Media keep coming, descending like locusts on a Kansas wheat field, the volume of their voices echo around the plaza. Spotlight drones dazzle the staircase.

  I’m recognized. Dozens of remote cams pan quickly onto me.

  Ignoring them, I think about who called the meeting, and why. Nothing happens in council without layers of secret needs, deception, or manipulation.