Pelquin's Comet

by Ian Whates

Shut up.

  Will do.

  Drake didn’t really believe that the captain was stupid enough to blithely fly into Xter space without a stratagem; which meant that he was missing something, and it irritated the hell out of him that he couldn’t figure out what.

  Everybody bar Anna and the captain spent the morning in the hold, unpacking the equipment that had come aboard at New Sparta and Babylon.

  Nate and Bren were doing most of the heavy work, of which there was plenty despite the presence of a compact but solid powerlifter with its claw-like crane functions, easy-lift netting, and forklift appendages. The doc was largely peripheral, as he tended to be in most things. He was there and he contributed, helping when instructed, but he was rarely proactive.

  “Feel free to muck in anytime you want to,” Bren said at one point, looking across to where Drake stood and watched.

  “No chance,” Nate said immediately. “You don’t really think he’s going to risk getting his precious suit dirty, do you?”

  Drake refused to be baited and declined the invite to help, though not without a twinge of guilt. That changed when a crate was knocked by the powerlifter and began to topple towards Leesa, who was squatting down examining an already unpacked item and oblivious to the danger. Drake was there immediately to half hold and half steady the tottering carton.

  “Thanks,” Bren said, stepping in to join him. Between them they managed to manoeuvre the heavy container back into position. Leesa glanced up, stared at him blankly, and then went back to work without saying a word. Once he was there, with his hands dirtied, it seemed churlish to step back and simply observe again, so Drake took off his jacket, setting it neatly aside and ensuring Mudball was sitting comfortably on top of its folds.

  Aren’t you afraid I’ll go running off and causing trouble?

  Behave.

  If you insist.

  Drake then rolled up his sleeves and joined in the unloading, contributing at least as much as the doc did. In fact, that worthy seemed to take the banker’s arrival as an excuse to do even less, smiling at Drake as if he were an ally come specifically to relieve him of this burdensome chore.

  “My, my,” Nate commented on seeing Drake beside him. “Wonders will never cease.”

  Drake reckoned that if this was the worst Almont was going to throw at him then he was doing okay.

  The biggest crate of all sat firmly in the centre of the floor with the other crates surrounding it. Nate levered the front open and it moved as one piece, hitting the floor like a felled tree, to reveal what waited within. Bren let out a whistle of appreciation.

  A haulage buggy. Drake knew the type – a broad, flat-backed vehicle designed to handle rough terrain. Two sets of big wheels with fat tyres that were almost impossible to puncture and could be automatically pumped up with extra pressure when the buggy was loaded. Predictive suspension ensured a smooth ride for fragile cargo–dedicated sensors monitored the ground in minute detail and enabled each wheel to react to conditions a fraction before they were reached rather than a fraction after – while a powerful engine meant that the buggy could really shift when empty and haul an impressive amount when loaded. All in all, a handy vehicle to be taking on a cache hunt.

  “I’ll bet these beauties don’t come cheap,” Bren said, stepping inside to run an appreciative hand over the fender.

  “They don’t,” Nate confirmed, “which is one of the reasons we have to put up with our grey-suited friend’s company.”

  Even Leesa put aside what she’d been doing to come and stare as Bren and Nate pulled away protective packaging material to reveal the buggy more clearly. It was a bizarre contraption, little more than a rimmed platform with an open two-seater driver’s cabin at the front and multi-spindled wheel braces and axles projecting from the four corners, but that didn’t seem to bother Bren.

  “Bags I get to drive it,” she said,

  “Not likely,” Nate replied. “That’ll be Anna’s job, while you get your hands dirty with the rest of us fetching and loading things onto it.”

  Although there were still a few crates to unpack, including the one housing the dissonance field generator – a fact that Drake suspected was far from coincidental – the unveiling of the buggy signalled an end to the morning’s work. Nate disappeared to report to Pelquin, Leesa went off frowning to run some tests on the pumping system of one of the big drills, which evidently she wasn’t happy with, and the doc used the departure of those two as an excuse to make his own. Bren lingered, sitting down on the steps leading to the rest of the ship and staring wistfully at the buggy, which still sat in its crate, facing outward like a dog in a kennel.

  “Are you all right?” Drake asked her.

  “Yeah, fine. I was just thinking.”

  “About Monkey?”

  She nodded. “About Monkey.” She studied him, quizzically. “How do you do that? How do you know what people are thinking without being told?”

  “I notice things; that’s all. It’s just a matter of being observant.” She grunted and seemed about to say more, but he pre-empted her, changing the subject back to where they’d started. “So, what brought Monkey to mind?”

  “The buggy. If he was here he would have had that thing out of the crate the minute Nate’s back was turned. By now he’d be racing around the hold, seeing what it could do. Probably lose control, probably skid into a crate, probably damage something, and definitely get a bawling out from the skipper.”

  Drake chuckled. For a moment, their smiles matched, then hers faded into something more wistful.

  “You really miss him, don’t you?” he said.

  “Is this you doing that ‘observing’ thing of yours?” Her smile returned. “Yeah, I miss him. More than I ever thought I would, but don’t you dare go telling the skinny runt I said so when we pick him up on the way back.”

  “My lips are sealed,” he promised. They sat in silence for a few seconds. His pitching in with the unpacking had earned him a little tacit approval, perhaps even respect. Enough that he dared push it a little. “Bren, mind if I ask you something?”

  “What?” she asked sharply.

  “This big falling out between Nate and the captain, what exactly caused it?”

  Bren gave him a hard stare, and he sensed she was tempted to tell him to mind his own business, so he got in first, saying quickly, “Sorry; I don’t mean to pry, but the more I know about what’s gone on, the better I can understand people and the easier it is for me to do my job without treading on anyone’s toes.”

  “I don’t see how raking up the past is going to help.”

  “Because whatever happened then is relevant to what’s going on between them now,” he said.

  “Okay,” and she glanced around, as if to confirm they were the only ones in the hold. “Just don’t go asking either of those two about it, not unless you fancy getting your ear chewed out.”

  “I haven’t, and I don’t want to have to. That’s why I was hoping you might fill me in.”

  Bren was quiet for a second. Eventually she said one word: “Julia.”

  “Who?”

  “Julia; real easy on the eye and almost as easy to get on with – she was a good listener; someone you felt you could trust, you know? She used to be one of us, part of the crew I mean, before Anna joined.”

  “You liked her, then?”

  Bren shrugged. “Some. Quite a bit at first, to be honest, until she started to get above herself and stirred things up.”

  “The men…?”

  “Yeah, the men.” Bren gave a sour smile. “She hadn’t been with us all that long herself, but, like I say, she was friendly and she was pretty. Pel took a real shine to her.”

  Bren must have loved that, Drake reflected. No wonder she quickly cooled towards this Julia.

  “There was a connection between them,” Bren continued. “Nothing heavy, just a sort of closeness that was obvious to all of us. I don’t think the captain thought too seriously about it really, not until Na
te started to take an interest in her. Julia enjoyed that – the attention she was getting – and suddenly Pel began to get all competitive and jealous, like Nate was trespassing on his territory. Julia really liked that. Started to play one off against the other. Neither of the dunderheads could see it, but I could.”

  Bren paused, shaking her head. Drake waited for her to resume. “Never thought I’d see the two of them fall out – Nate and the captain, I mean – but I guess jealousy can do that. Things on board got uncomfortable, and one day it all boiled over. There was a scene – a lot of things were said that shouldn’t have been, a punch was thrown… and Nate stormed off; left the ship saying that he wasn’t coming back.

  “What happened to Julia, did she leave as well?”

  Bren shook her head. “Not at first. She stayed on the crew, but I reckon deep down she regretted not going with Nate, and she never forgave Pel. Things weren’t the same between them after that and life on board sucked. The captain can be a real surly bastard at times. Something had to give or we’d all have quit. I think Julia recognised that, and at least she had the decency to do something about it. A couple of months after Nate left, so did she, saying that she couldn’t stick Pel and his moods any longer. So she just upped and joined another ship. Good riddance, if you ask me.”

  “And that was when Anna came aboard?”

  “Yeah, thank goodness. She might be a bit kookie but she ain’t trouble, and kookie gets my vote every time.”

  So the argument had been about a woman, which shouldn’t have surprised him; that argument had led to Almont disappearing for a year, and in that time he stumbled upon a significant Elder cache. Something about the scenario still didn’t feel right to Drake, and he couldn’t help but wonder what else Almont had been up to in that year, who else he’d met and how much resentment he still harboured towards Pelquin.

  Interesting questions, all of them.

  “And don’t you think of trying to ask me anything else about this,” Bren said, “because I’ve said all I’m going to on the subject. Clear?”

  “Perfectly,” he assured her. “And thanks. I appreciate you filling me in.”

  She nodded and climbed to her feet. “I’m going to get something from the galley. See you later.”

  She seems to be in a good mood today, Mudball observed. Do you think she had sex last night?

  Sex isn’t the only thing that puts humans in a good mood, Drake assured him.

  Really? You do surprise me.

  THIRTEEN

  Leesa held her position effortlessly, confident that all was as it should be and that they couldn’t possibly fail. They moved like ghosts across a blasted landscape, mottled suits shifting colour and pattern constantly as they adapted to background and surroundings, dampener fields minimising heat signatures to fool infrared sensors, decoy beacons would be causing ‘ghost’ units to flicker to life and disappear at strategic points, further confusing the enemy. Their radios were silent. They didn’t need anything as archaic as radios, not these soldiers. Her brothers’ and sisters’ voices sang out clearly, joyously, in her head.

  This was Tyson Five. Federal forces had the temerity to come here, to beard the Auganics Corporation in its own lair, and the authorities were about to be taught a lesson they would never forget. A bold move, a magnificent move, to strike at the opposition’s very heart; she applauded them for that, but it was also a desperate move; a do or die gambit which would likely decide the outcome of the war; for war it was, there could be no escaping the fact. This might have started out as a philosophical disagreement but it had escalated far beyond that, and the coalition oligarchs knew themselves truly challenged. If government forces failed here, their strength would be broken, their cause severely damaged if not lost. Of course, if they won…

  But they wouldn’t. They couldn’t. The planners and schemers who sat spider-like at the corrupt heart of the bureaucratic behemoth had no idea what it was they faced on Tyson Five, or the mayhem that was about to be visited on their military, the backbone of their authority. This day the coalition would be humbled, swept aside by the full flexing of auganic might, which, for once, could be brought to bear at the same place at the same time. Human destiny was about to be rewritten.

  There was no consideration of failure in any of their minds as the technologically augmented host swept into battle. The day could end only one way: in resounding victory.

  So they sang their silent song, her brothers and sisters, as battle-lust coursed through their veins and excitement coloured their every thought with dreams of imminent triumph.

  What the auganics shared wasn’t complete gestalt; it wasn’t the total sublimation of self to create a shared consciousness, a combined whole, but it was the closest thing to that state that humanity had yet achieved. Much of what made them individuals was moulded and channelled to produce unified thought, response and purpose. Leesa had come to yearn for such moments and now felt complete only when acting in concert. Yet she was still herself; immersed but not wholly subsumed.

  This tight-knit sharing of thought and emotion enabled an auganic unit to react far more cohesively and effectively than even the most elite of organic troops. This cohesion combined with their other attributes made them the most formidable soldiers mankind had ever committed to the field. And they knew it. And they were reviled for it.

  The authorities outlawed techorg, declaring it an abomination, and two philosophies clashed. The corporations accused the authorities of being anti-technology and anti-progress; recidivist suppressors of human evolution. The government painted the techorg companies as inhuman monsters, dispassionate meddlers in what it meant to be human. The government controlled the media and the propaganda war was lost before it had begun, but the coalition had underestimated its foe. When the authorities tried to treat this as a mere policing action their collective noses were bloodied in a dozen disastrous operations across human space. So began what amounted to civil war, though those in power preferred to use less inflammatory terms.

  And now they chose to go for overkill. They had committed their full strength, to stamp out the unrest once and for all, wary lest public sympathy swung behind the auganics and their sponsors, who were being cast in the role of underdogs – ever a seductive lure for the public’s conscience. Coalition forces attacked with overwhelming force, their intent obvious: to win by sheer weight of numbers if all else failed.

  Leesa and her fellow auganics stood ready to welcome them.

  Even so, even at the very height of the combined euphoria that swept through auganic ranks, a part of Leesa recognised that this wasn’t her euphoria, her fanaticism; rather it arose from the pooling of all of them and represented the majority emotion of the many, not the one. An emotion magnified to the nth degree by the fact that it was shared. She wasn’t swept away by the moment, however, not entirely. Afterwards, she would wonder whether it was this small corner of reserve that saved her.

  At first everything went to plan. She remembered a heavy fire fight in which the enemy outnumbered them but didn’t stand a chance. Distantly she sensed similar upwellings of triumph from other auganic units around her and in the jet fighters, singleships, and heavy ships stacked in layers above her. Not her cadre, not part of her bond group, but still her brothers and sisters. The heavens were lit by a stuttering dance of pyrotechnics, lightnings never destined to reach the ground as squadrons of nimble fighters duelled for supremacy of the air and, higher still, dreadnought pounded dreadnought with lethal energies beyond the planet’s atmosphere. The whole world growled with rolling thunder and the frequent report of lethal munitions.

  It was night in the part of the world she fought in; a fact that made little difference to either side but less to Leesa and hers. It meant that the skyborne conflict was all the more spectacular. She and her unit were now enjoying a rare respite after coming through several vicious skirmishes in which they had suffered light losses – a brother or sister dropping away from their communion, to be m
ourned properly later when time allowed. Around them stood the ruin of a recently abandoned village; ahead the village’s central square. The setting made all of them uneasy, though they couldn’t pinpoint why.

  Without hesitation they sent in decoy drones – basic humanoid robots in battle suits, containing enough viable organic elements to register on enemy sensors, designed to imitate poorly shielded soldiers. The ploy worked. As the drones crossed the square they were caught in the crossfire of lethal energies from concealed positions and obliterated in a few spectacular seconds.

  The realisation that the enemy was able to hide so effectively from their auganic senses came as a shock but they didn’t hesitate, she and her fellows, falling upon the would-be ambushers without mercy. They wiped them out, suffering no further losses themselves. Only then did they pause to consider the implications. What other surprises might the coalition have in store for them? For the first time, a seed of doubt entered the collective consciousness.

  The next skirmish went much the same as previous ones had, but were her brothers and sisters a little less wholehearted in their celebration? Was their subsequent advance a fraction less enthusiastic? It seemed so to Leesa. Prescience, perhaps; an inexplicable foreboding of what was to come.

  And come it did.

  Noise. Leesa had grown used to the external sounds of combat, from far and near, and to the internal sounds of her brethren – as comforting and constant as the love of her paternal quad – but this was something else. It started somewhere in the background, a shrill discordant whine, distant but at the same time internal. Before she had time to analyse its presence the whine had grown to become a roar, a piercing, agonising gale of almost-sound that clawed at her thoughts and shredded the fabric of auganic communion.

  This was no gentle dissolution such as might occur when the unit stepped down at the end of the day and her kin became no more than a comforting background presence, but rather a violent, agonising rending; trauma as opposed to relaxation. One instant they were whole, the next torn apart. She heard her brothers’ and sisters’ screams and caught a hint of their suffering as they were carried away from her, before she was consumed. Fire raced through her head like molten lava, washing into every corner of thought and obliterating reason,