Vanguard Rising: A Space Opera Adventure

by A. C. Hadfield

  “Luca? I know he’s trying to hack the QCA. I wouldn’t call that being clued in. I would call that a cowardly act of treason against the people of the Sol-Fed. You’ll both never see freedom again when I’m done with you.”

  Harlan stood up and loomed over his old colleague’s battered form.

  Even now, when he was clearly beaten, Aurier seemed not to care. The loyalty Vanguard appeared to generate from people clearly knew no bounds. It was so strong, in fact, that Hugo and Gandit had killed themselves.

  At least Hugo had the decency to recognize his cowardice.

  “You make me sick. You think you’re somehow superior, part of something bigger, but look at you. You’re nothing but a used-up tool. You think those running Vanguard care about you? You’re nothing to them. All these years you’ve served have been for nothing.”

  Aurier shook his head as he tried and failed to raise himself up onto his elbows. “You’re wrong. It wasn’t for nothing. If it wasn’t for me, little Luca Doe would still be running around after you, two clueless orphans in search of parental figures. I set him free. I put him on the path to greatness, and he’s going to deliver true freedom to all of humanity. You think what we have now is freedom?” He coughed and spat more blood onto the ground as he built up his energy. “You think those damned abbots have us in mind for their future? You say I’m nothing to Vanguard, but the truth is, we’re nothing to the abbots, and Vanguard is going to change that. Luca will cut them loose from the QCA. Let’s see how the abbots manage when they don’t have a centralized control system to rely on. Then we’ll see which species has a future.”

  “You’re deluded if you think that. As for Luca—I know him better than you ever could. But he’ll get what’s owed to him soon enough.”

  Harlan turned his back and made his way toward the airlock while he prepared a segment of video to send to the SMF for Aurier’s arrest.

  He got halfway when Aurier cleared his throat and shouted, “It was me, you know. The death of your precious mentor, the sweet, wise, stoic Marius Rubik… how touching that he gave you his surname. You, his prized pupil. How disappointed he would be in you if he could see you now. You’ll be pleased to hear that your hero died a true stoic. He didn’t blink an eyelid when I slipped the knife into his heart. He accepted his failure, just like you will. Just like you have to face up to the fact that your little secret, Milo, has never been a secret.”

  Harlan had no rage left.

  Only sadness at what had happened to Marius.

  He knew that he should follow his mentor’s lessons and be even-tempered. Marius was dead now, so Aurier’s revelation wouldn’t change anything. There would be no reason to get emotionally invested.

  Aurier was right about one thing: Marius would be disappointed.

  Disappointed that Harlan gave in to emotion, raised the Janzai, calmly located Aurier’s smug, bloodied face in the middle of the scope, and pulled the trigger, blowing Aurier’s head apart like a child’s water balloon.

  The kill didn’t make him feel any better. He knew it wouldn’t, but it didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered now was that Harlan get aboard the Goat and dispense justice to the rest of the Vanguard group.

  He slung the rifle back over his shoulder and reached to the brain-computer interface on the back of his cranium, where he activated the release and pulled out the tiny chip that held the programming for his peripheral.

  Gylfie was right all along. He didn’t need it.

  Milo had become a liability, a tool with which Vanguard could stay one step ahead of him. He wondered just how long they’d had access to it. It all made sense now, though: the abbot attacking them at Fizon’s apartment, the two that tried to stop them from getting off Turing Station, Aurier finding Harlan here at the G4 airlock, and Leanne’s and Hugo’s warnings.

  No more.

  He threw the chip to the ground and crushed it into pieces with the heel of his boot.

  It was time to forget all his failures, near-misses, tragedies, and crutches. It was time for Harlan to put all that aside and do what he did best.

  Be who he was.

  Hugo’s note to him came to mind: Trust your gut, Harlan. Data isn’t as reliable as you think it is: it can be manipulated and used against you.

  He sent Bella an updated message. “Prepare the shuttle’s airlock. I’ll be coming in fast.”

  32

  Harlan wondered, not for the first time, if he had gone completely insane. Here he was, standing in a pressurized airlock without a functional suit. On the other side of the door was the shuttle, its airlock open and aligned to within a few degrees here or there.

  Bella had tried to talk him out of it. So too Irena. Greta thought it was the funniest thing she’d ever heard. Yet, despite that, here Harlan stood, one hand on the grip bar, the other hand hovering over the lever that would blast open the door.

  He had visualized how it would work: the door would slide up into its housing in less than half a second. Pressure from within the airlock would extinguish out into the vacuum of space, forcing out anything untethered—including himself.

  The shuttle managed to get within twenty meters. A few calculations later, Harlan knew this was the only way. He’d be exposed to the cold vacuum for no longer than twenty seconds given the rate of velocity generated from the pressure.

  Experiments on humans—back before society had reorganized itself—had shown that depending on the individual, exposure up to two minutes could be tolerated quite safely without any major injury after revival.

  That he would pass out was a given. That would take approximately fifteen seconds due to hypoxia: the pressure levels in space being much lower than what the human body was used to within a pressurized atmosphere such as the station.

  Whether he would reach the ship before unconsciousness took him would remain a mystery; he didn’t have the time to calculate all the variables. Responsibility to catch him if he drifted off axis would be down to those on the Goat. It was, without a doubt, the ultimate trust exercise.

  To help protect himself as much as possible, he had donned the least damaged suit. He would still be at the mercy of the cold and the vacuum over time, but it was better than nothing and, like all Atlas-issue suits, it included a suite of drugs to help combat the effects of pressure exposure. Given how little time he ought to be exposed, he probably wouldn’t need them, but it was always useful to know he had backup. If, psychologically, it made him feel safer, he was happy to go with it.

  A little delusion never hurt anyone when it came to facing the cold indifference of space.

  He spent a short while going through a series of pre-breathing exercises as taught by station security to all inhabitants. It helped negate the inevitable effects of anoxia and, by making sure his lungs were empty when he launched, would prevent them from rupturing, which, by all accounts, was never a fun experience.

  Bella’s voice sounded taut with tension over the comm channel. “Are you ready? We need to do this in the next few seconds: The SMF have spotted us.”

  “I’m ready now if you are.”

  “On three, then?”

  “Sure, run the count.”

  “One… two… three…”

  Harlan exhaled sharply, yanked the lever, and tensed his bicep to hold his position until the door had completely retracted. He felt the pull immediately as air rushed out, whipping at his suit, dragging at him until he could hold no longer.

  With the exterior door now completely open, Harlan let himself go, pointing his body forward as though he were a deep-sea diver, aiming toward the rear of the shuttle.

  Irena, Greta, and Bashir stood inside the Goat’s airlock, their faces masks of stress and concentration. Harlan locked eyes with Irena. She appeared to reflect the terror that he felt in his guts as he flew across the open void, his body temperature dropping rapidly, and his internal fluids approaching the limit to where they would undergo evaporative cooling.

  As he fast approache
d the shuttle, and despite telling himself he wouldn’t, he looked around. Other than the Goat and what looked like an SMF gunship approaching from behind the station, everywhere else was deep black, empty, unfathomable.

  A boiling sensation on his tongue drew his attention away.

  His body tightened with fear, and his guts cramped. He reached his arms out toward the Goat as he drew closer, but his vision blurred. A shadow around the perimeter of his gaze encroached further until, finally, he could hold it no longer and passed out just a meter or so away from Irena’s outstretched hands.

  Harlan woke with Bashir standing over him, a large syringe in his hands. Harlan sucked in a deep breath. His lungs burned and his entire body writhed with muscular cramps. Irena was standing to his left in a dark area of the shuttle he recognized as the airlock.

  He wasn’t in his suit anymore; that lay in pieces to one side.

  “Hold still,” Bashir said, coming closer. “We need to treat you for the exposure. Your blood pH is off. This will help with that and any nitrogen that might have built up.”

  Irena crouched to his side, placing a hand on his shoulder. Harlan noticed she had changed into a new space suit. “You’re okay. You were only exposed for seventeen seconds, and we re-pressurized you immediately. It should mitigate any lasting internal damage.”

  “How long was I out?”

  “Only a couple of minutes.”

  Bashir jabbed Harlan painfully during the short conversation. “Sorry. I’m not trained in applied medicine. How do you feel?”

  “Cold, cramped, and I have a pounding headache.”

  Irena consulted her wrist terminal. “Your life signs are good. Although I don’t know how long that will be the case. The SSF Wickham has ordered us to stand down or face total destruction.”

  “Tell Bella to stall them a minute. I need to get my faculties back.”

  With that, Harlan lifted his head, then his torso, until he was straddling the bench on which they had placed him. He held back the desire to vomit due to light-headedness and vertigo, but with each breath, he began to feel a fraction better. It would take time until he was fighting fit, but during the journey to Earth, he’d have a few hours to recuperate. But first, what to do about the Wickham?

  “Could you two help me into the main hold? We need to discuss a plan.”

  While Bashir and Irena helped Harlan into the main section of the shuttle, he listened to Bella’s conversation with Captain Saffile of the Wickham. That the latter sounded like a self-important asshole didn’t come as any surprise.

  Throughout Harlan’s career as a silicon runner, he’d run into many members of the upper hierarchy of the SMF. The space fleet was by far the worst. He wasn’t completely sure why that was—he theorized that it was perhaps the result of spending too much time in space in cramped conditions with no one to question their authority, each ship a tiny fiefdom of their own to rule.

  A number of captains over the years had been court-martialed and imprisoned for horrific abuses of power. Saffile, with his nasal voice, exuded a self-possession born of unchallenged authority. And the more he ordered Bella to stand down and prepare for boarding, the more a plan came to Harlan’s mind. It would be risky, but then what was new? Everything in the known universe was a careful balance of risk versus reward. To get bigger rewards, one had to risk a little more. There was no way of cheating that universal law, even if some people believed they could beat the odds. It’d bite them on the ass, eventually.

  It was one of Harlan’s mentor, Marius’s, favorite life lessons. One could wander through life never reaching for anything, mentally or physically, just going with the flow. That required no effort and therefore no risk. The other choice, however, was to always strive, always reach for betterment, but being cognizant of the attached risk and determining whether the worst-case scenario was worth it.

  What life was it to never seek an understanding of oneself or of one’s environment, whether that be the station, the solar system, or farther beyond? It was only small thinking that eroded the soul. The small thinking that created the abuse of power as shown by various captains and bosses over the years. It was this thinking that led to grandiose delusion and the rise of shared insanity as exemplified by Vanguard and Luca.

  The latter didn’t risk being better. He took the easy route: promises of power if he took the road of least resistance. It was much harder to be decent in this fragmented, difficult society than to give in to a life of criminal and selfish motivations.

  To oppose Vanguard and their plans, to expose them for what they were—now that was worth doing. Even if on the other end of the scale, the weight of risk seemed gargantuan.

  But that was the crux of it, Harlan realized. He was prepared to risk everything for the reward. He accepted the worst-case scenario and would continue until the very end, whatever the results might be.

  Now was not the time to be timid.

  And so, the plan came to him whole.

  Bashir and Irena helped Harlan into the hold. Bella poked her head through the bulkhead from the cockpit.

  “How much fuel do we have?” Harlan asked her.

  “Not enough to reach Earth on a two-g burn with all this maneuvering, especially if we have to escape the Wickham.”

  “So even if we do escape, we haven’t got enough to get there in time?”

  “It’s looking unlikely.”

  “That’s fine. We’re not escaping.”

  The rest of the crew stared at Harlan with expectation.

  Wilbur scratched his neck. “I sense you have something up your sleeve, as the old saying goes. Does it entail any of us getting killed?”

  “I’s a possibility, but then it’s a greater possibility if we don’t do anything. We don’t have the fuel capacity to reach Earth in time now. We don’t have the weapons required to defeat the Wickham, and we can’t outrun them in open space. They won’t let us go—we don’t know if any of those on board are members of Vanguard, and we can’t risk capture. Our fates are already sealed.”

  Greta regarded the wall of weapons. “We fight them hand-to-hand, then.”

  Harlan shook his head. “And face murder charges on our return? No, think bigger.” When no one spoke, he added, “We’re boarding the Wickham and taking it for ourselves. It has more than enough capacity to reach the castle, not to mention weapons if we need them. But we’re not killing anyone.”

  Irena caught Harlan’s gaze. She wore a now-familiar determined expression. “And how do you propose we do that?”

  “All will be revealed shortly.” Harlan then looked through to the cockpit and then back to the rest of the crew. “Wilbur, I need you to hide under the console in the cockpit.”

  “Why me?”

  “You’re the smallest and the only one that will fit. I need to be in the cockpit when the goons come aboard. Now, everyone listen up. I’ve got a plan to explain, and we only have one shot at it.”

  33

  Harlan placed the rifle to the side of the cockpit’s bulkhead and arranged the assortment of grenades within a section of webbing on the opposite side. From beneath the shuttle’s console, Wilbur’s face poked out, only adding to his mole-like appearance.

  “I don’t like this at all, Harlan. It’s not going to work.”

  Harlan shushed him and gently pushed him deeper beneath the Goat’s console so he wasn’t visible. “If I hear so much as a breath out of you, I will kill you. Understand?”

  Wilbur tapped twice against his leg.

  “Good. Now wait for my cue and don’t do anything unless I tell you to.”

  Two more taps.

  Harlan turned his head and looked through to the hold. Bella, Greta, Bashir, and Irena were cuffed to the bench seat. Their hands were wrapped in makeshift manacles using the meat storage supplies from Sanjeet’s prior business. As per the plan, they looked like a criminal gang. Well, on some level they were, Harlan reminded himself. This would only aid in his plan.

  Once he w
as satisfied with everything, he gave the crew his final command: they pulled the cloth gags over their mouths and waited. Irena’s chest was rising and falling quickly, and sweat dripped down her face, adding to the illusion.

  Taking a deep breath to compose himself, he opened the comm channel to the Wickham.

  “Captain Saffile, this is Harlan Rubik, senior investigative officer of the silicon runners. I’ve taken control of this vessel and placed the crew under arrest. I would like to request that you dock with us and take the crew into custody.”

  At first there was no response.

  Harlan’s headache continued to jackhammer inside his skull, making it hard to concentrate, but he forced himself to relax, breathe, and wait.

  Nearly a minute passed before he received a response.

  “Mr. Rubik. I’ve received your request, but before we can go any further, I need to confirm your identity. Send your credentials to the following encrypted identification service.”

  “I can assure you I am who I say am.”

  “Are you the idiot we just witnessed floating through free space?”

  “The very same. Although I’m by no means an idiot. I’ve spent the last few days infiltrating this gang of scavengers, gaining their confidence. I have them detained in the hold. I’m forwarding the camera feed so you can see.”

  Another minute ticked by.

  “Our facial recognition confirms the criminal statuses of three of your prisoners. But we’re concerned about why you have the daughter of potential presidential candidate Victoria Selles. Explain yourself, Mr. Rubik—and confirm your identification. We won’t ask again.”

  With nothing to lose, Harlan let his terminal transfer his DNA reading and stored credentials to the secure ID link he received from Saffile. It was a standard procedure, and he’d done it hundreds of times before when working with government organizations, but he was hesitant due to not knowing if Hugo, or perhaps even Alex Aurier, had altered his status within the silicon runners. But after a few seconds of flashing dots, an affirmative beep sounded and the status message read: