Archangel

by Scott Harrison

  ‘Deactivated? You mean it’s still in there?’ Jenna asked, incredulously. ‘The surgeon didn’t remove it?’

  Clearly Jenna’s words appeared to tickle the doctor. ‘You obviously know very little about your friend’s condition.’ He pulled another device from his pocket, waving it over the injured man. ‘Whoever implanted that into your friend’s body did so with very little thought for how it was going to be removed afterwards.’

  ‘So, it’s stuck in there for good?’ Jenna asked.

  Once the device had completed its scan of Kodyn’s body, it emitted a soft trill, informing whoever was listening that the required data was now available. The doctor cast a brief, cursory glance over the readings before stuffing it back into his uniform pocket. ‘I would say so, yes. We could try and remove it, although I would strongly advise against it. There is an 85 percent chance that your friend would not survive the procedure.’

  Vila shook his head. The transmitter had been deactivated and Kodyn was still alive and in one piece, they should just leave it at that and be thankful. ‘Fine. If you think that it won’t be necessary.’

  ‘Good. You are making the right choice.’ The doctor seemed quite satisfied. ‘We have made him as comfortable as possible. All he needs now is complete rest and he will be as right as the rainfall—or so the old saying goes.’ The doctor chuckled delightedly, then became serious once more. ‘Now if you would be kind enough to leave your friend in peace? This is not a waiting room, you know. Seating areas are provided for friends and family on the floor below.’

  Vila was more than happy to get out of the room. If he was honest, the view was starting to depress him, and he’d had the idea that if they were just sitting around doing nothing he might be able to convince Jenna to let him go back down to the hologram suite.

  ‘If you could let us know the moment there is any change in our friend’s condition?’ Jenna said. ‘It’s very important to us.’

  The doctor nodded. ‘Yes, of course.’

  Vila and Jenna followed the doctor from the room, and Kodyn was left alone.

  *

  ‘Do you mind if I get rid of all this first? I’m finding it rather distracting.’

  Tobin swept his hand in the air around him, indicating the sailing skiff, the harbour and the whole of Sabbath Row beyond. He didn’t wait for Blake to reply. Instead he pulled a communicator from beneath his robes and clicked on the power.

  ‘DeFlor, this is Tobin. Scrub the feed in Games Suite 118. Give me one of the screensavers instead, I don’t care which.’

  Almost immediately, the air around them began to blur and change. The effect, Blake noted, was vaguely similar to flipping through the channels of the public vid-cast, some containing tantalising glimpses of exotic alien landscapes and secluded sun-kissed beaches, while others were just an echoing void of spluttering white noise.

  They suddenly found themselves standing on a rich, green hillside watching a bright yellow sun pull itself clear of a distant, unbroken horizon. It was chilly, despite the clear blue sky, and the thick coating of dew on the grass at their feet told them that it was early morning here—wherever they were.

  Tobin sat down on the damp grass and crossed his legs, trying to breathe in the cold, sweet air. ‘Sample Hologram 414—Morning Has Broken,’ he told them simply. ‘No idea where it’s supposed to be. It’s only ever used when one of the simulations break down—kicks in automatically. One of those “Normal Service Will Resume Shortly” kind of things.’

  He waited for Blake to sit down next to him before he told them what they wanted to know. Avon chose to remain standing, watching the two men silently.

  ‘Travis came here with a couple of his mutoid pets in tow and gave me the data-slug. He told me that you’d probably be turning up soon asking about something called Archangel. And when you did, I was to give it to you and say it was all I could find.’ Tobin plucked a long blade of grass that was growing by his foot and stuck it in the corner of his mouth. He chewed on it thoughtfully for a second or two. ‘Well, you know what Travis is like, Blake, he’s not the kind of person you can refuse. I tried that once when I was in Space Command—not with him, you understand, but with someone very much like him—and ended up in the infirmary for several days.

  ‘You see, Travis is just one in a very long line of ruthless, power-mad little despots. It’s the nature of the job, I’m afraid, it tends to throw up people like him on a regular basis, so at some point everyone serves under a Travis-type. I actually served under two—but that’s another story.

  ‘He told me that he knew about the hidden operations room, knew that the Freedom Party was using the Dionysus as a base of operations and as a sanctuary for all our colleagues who had been—shall we say “liberated”—from various Federation prison camps. So, he cut me a deal—I passed the information along to you, turning on my best buddy-buddy act so that you wouldn’t suspect, and he wouldn’t tell Space Command or the Administration about our little set-up here.’

  Avon thought it over. ‘And so you agreed to lie to Blake—to all of us.’

  ‘I didn’t lie,’ Tobin told him. ‘I decided to withhold certain details.’

  ‘However you attempt to justify it to yourself and your conscience, the fact still remains that you purposefully misled us—and we walked straight into Travis’s trap,’ Avon said.

  Tobin looked across at Blake who until now had been staring silently down the hillside at the animals that were grazing in the lower fields. A slight breeze was beginning to pick up, tussling their hair, bringing with it the sharp tang of manure and damp fur.

  ‘All the information I’ve given you is real, Blake. I didn’t lie about that,’ Tobin said earnestly. ‘The list, Kodyn’s connection to Archangel, his transfer to Pharrox, all of it is true. I checked it myself.’ Tobin paused, as though considering his next words carefully. Then he continued, ‘I had hoped I might find something in there, something that might help explain what happened to Sheya, but…’ He shook his head sadly.

  ‘And what about this ultra-experimental assault ship? Was that real or just more of your lies?’ Blake asked.

  ‘All true, I swear,’ Tobin told him. ‘The Federation was working on something out there in the Callidus system. Something dangerous enough to scare the High Council into shutting it down. I’m positive that assault ship was part of it, part of Project Archangel. I haven’t got any proof, not real proof anyway, but I know it’s all part of Archangel.’ He looked at Blake. ‘And I think you know it too.’

  There was silence for a moment, then Blake said, ‘What was it that Travis wanted?’ He saw that Tobin was confused so he continued. ‘Let me put it another way. Obviously he wanted me, but what was he hoping to gain by putting Kodyn on board the Liberator?’

  ‘He was supposed to disable the ship and its crew long enough for the pursuing Federation ships to get there. From what I gather Travis was intending to board your ship personally,’ said Tobin. ‘Typical of him, wanting to be the one that gets the glory.’

  ‘Kodyn would never have agreed to help Travis. He hated the Federation as much as I did.’

  ‘You’re assuming that Tam had a choice,’ Tobin said. ‘He spent three months locked away on Pharrox before he was transferred to Sigma Minor. He walked out of that place with his brain twisted around so much he didn’t even know his own name, let alone who you or the Federation were.’ He paused, looking nervously between the two rebels. ‘I’m taking a hell of a risk telling you all this, Blake. My own personal wellbeing, not to mention the continued safety of the Freedom Party, rely on my keeping my mouth shut and doing as I’m told. If Travis was to find out I’d told you…’

  ‘He’d probably kill you and I wouldn’t blame him,’ Avon said. ‘I’ve been considering doing it myself. I really rather enjoyed breaking your nose.’

  ‘That’s not very sympathetic. Especially after all the information I’ve just given you,’ Tobin said.

  ‘You’re appealing for sympathy f
rom the wrong person. Those kinds of feelings are in short supply with Avon. I’d quit while you’re ahead, if I were you.’ Blake pulled himself to his feet and offered a hand to Tobin. ‘Travis won’t find out from us.’ He paused briefly, before adding, ‘On two conditions.’

  Once on his feet Tobin shot a glare at Blake, his frown deepening. ‘Why am I not surprised?’

  ‘Call it recompense, if you like. Payment for damages incurred,’ Blake said. ‘First I need access to your main computer archives,’

  ‘That can be arranged,’ Tobin answered. ‘And the second?’

  ‘I’d like to borrow one of your shuttlepods.’ Blake glanced across at Avon. ‘Although “borrow” is perhaps too optimistic a word. I’m afraid you might not get it back.’

  CHAPTER NINE

  It was cramped inside the cockpit of the shuttlepod, barely enough room for the three of them to work comfortably.

  The deck-master in Hangar Bay two had assured them that it was the only one available at the moment.

  ‘All the rest are out ferrying guests between the platform and the carrier ships,’ the deck-master explained as he led them across towards the launch pads. ‘Those that aren’t are up in the docks having their quarterly refits.’

  The shuttlepod had been sitting out on the end pad all by itself; an ugly, box-like contraption with unnecessarily long retro-burners that ran two-thirds of the length of its bodywork. It looked to Jenna like an old converted planet-hopper, a short-range transporter that had, at some time in its worryingly over-long life, been refitted with a MK VII Fireburner kit—presumably in an attempt to disguise its age. In her opinion the thing wasn’t really fit for anything other than rotting in a junkyard, so she was enormously relieved when Blake informed her that no-one would need to actually pilot the craft.

  Programming the autodrive systems was relatively easy, even for a ship this old—once the navi-comp had been recalibrated all that was needed was to wire in the co-ordinates manually—it just took a surprisingly long time to do, that was all. No, the real problem was changing the ship’s transponder codes. She’d done it once before, a few months ago; with Vila’s help they’d changed the transponder frequency on a Federation cargo vessel called the Celestine, so that it would be identified by local detectors as a ship that had security clearance to enter a restricted planetary system. But that had been a large, interplanetary vessel and this was a tiny shuttlepod—there was quite a difference.

  It took Jenna the better part of an hour to reprogramme the navi-comp. During that time, Vila and Avon were attempting to access the onboard computer without it shutting down. The trouble was, every time they tried to hack the system files the computer interpreted it as some form of corruptive virus attacking the entire system and would immediately shutdown and reboot.

  Jenna paused for a moment, the dust panel still unlatched from the front of the navi-comp, her work all but forgotten. She tapped the phasic-wrench thoughtfully against her thigh as she thought the idea through. ‘I think there might be a way around this,’ she said. ‘If I’m right we can use the transmitter signal to cancel out the transponder altogether. That way we won’t have to touch the computer systems.’

  ‘Do you really know what you’re talking about or are you just trying to impress me?’ Vila asked.

  There was silence for a handful of seconds. Then, at last, Avon’s head emerged from the place it had been buried for the past 60 minutes—the open panel beneath the computer terminal—his face smudged with dust and machine oil. ‘That would mean boosting the signal beyond the tolerance level of the equipment, it might not last very long. Judging by the age of the ship, it’s possible the whole transmitter array could short out within minutes, possibly less.’

  ‘It still might be long enough to confuse the pursuit ships,’ said Jenna. ‘Or at least convince them that we’re no longer on the Dionysus.’

  Avon considered this, although admittedly not for long. ‘Worth a try, particularly as we’re running out of time and options.’

  Jenna nodded. ‘What have we got to lose?’

  ‘Oh, apart from our lives,’ Vila returned sarcastically. ‘Nothing at all, really.’

  *

  Blake looked down at the small, black box in front of him and thought, ‘So this is the CCT, is it? This is what so many members of the Freedom Party died to protect?’

  They’d returned to the ops-room, only this time Tobin had switched on the narrow strip lighting that ran the entire length of the walls, completely encircling the room, and now Blake was able to see the equipment properly. He had to admit it was much more impressive than he had first thought. Most of it was new, or at least well looked after by its previous owner, and each component appeared to be compatible with the neighbouring one. Even those pieces that so obviously didn’t match had been expertly joined together using industrial shunt-rig connectors and channelled through power converters.

  Everything in the room was connected up to the Centralised Computer Terminal, which sat almost dead centre of a large hexagonal control unit to one side of the main entrance. The entire room was set up like some vast network library, so that every piece of information was routed into the CCT, where it was stored until needed. All the information could then be flashed across to the bank of computer terminals on the far wall at the touch of a button.

  Blake turned slowly, taking in the rest of the room. His eye was suddenly caught by Tobin, who sat over by the comms desk regarding Orac closely, a look of almost comic perplexity on his face.

  ‘Is that it?’

  Blake’s words appeared to burst some fragile bubble of thought, dragging Tobin back into the room with a start. He glanced up towards the CCT where the rebel leader stood.

  ‘Sorry?’ he said and smiled apologetically.

  ‘You’re thinking “Is that it? Is that really the mighty supercomputer Orac?”‘ said Blake. ‘Don’t worry, most people do. I’ve been thinking something similar about the equipment in this room.’

  All perplexity had vanished from Tobin’s face now, replaced by a look of almost abject fascination. ‘What’s it doing?’

  ‘I’ve asked Orac to copy all the files you’ve been pulling from the Federation archives over the past few years,’ Blake said. ‘I’m hoping that there might be one or two files stored in your database that no longer exist in the Federation’s central computer, things they might have deleted some time after you copied them.’

  ‘There really isn’t anything in there relating to Archangel,’ Tobin told him. ‘I’ve run a thorough check of the files, trust me.’ He dropped his eyes to the ground, embarrassed by his own choice of words. ‘What I mean is, I wasn’t lying to you about that.’

  Blake said, ‘I know. I’d already guessed that much.’

  ‘Then what are you looking for?’ asked Tobin.

  ‘Information on the Callidus system,’ Blake said. ‘Anything that Orac can find. Ever since you gave me that name and we intercepted that transmission…’ Blake stopped and looked at Tobin. ‘Since that transmission was aimed at us, I’ve been trying to figure out why it seemed so familiar to me, where I’d heard it before. Well, it finally came to me, while we were sitting in the grass on that hillside.

  ‘Five years ago, at one of the Freedom Party meetings, a young cyberneticist I’d never met before called Kodyn Tam was introduced to me. He said that he’d been approached by the Federation to work on a new project, and when he declined they’d made it very clear that they weren’t prepared to take no for an answer. Kodyn told me that they’d threatened his family and he wanted out of the Dome—in fact he wanted to get off Earth altogether.

  ‘He actually revealed very little about the details of the project they wanted him to work on, except that they’d referred to it as Archangel and it had something to do with the propulsion system for a new class of pursuit ship,’ Blake said. ‘But there was something about the project that Kodyn didn’t like, found distasteful even. He said that what they were asking him to d
o felt…wrong.’

  ‘What were they asking him to do?’

  Blake shrugged. ‘He didn’t say and I didn’t ask. He just told me that he hadn’t trained for all those years for his skills to be used for something as twisted as that.’ Blake nodded at the memory. ‘That was the word he used—twisted.’

  ‘Tam was a cybernetic engineer, right?’ asked Tobin.

  Blake nodded. ‘One of the best. Studied under Calvino.’

  ‘But all this was some time ago,’ Tobin said. ‘Archangel has been shut down for at least three years. If you do find any information on the project what good will it do you now?’

  ‘Because I’m not convinced that Archangel is as dead and buried as the Federation would like us to believe,’ said Blake, glancing across at Orac. ‘In fact I’m almost certain that someone is trying to start the project up again.’ His eyes flicked momentarily back to Tobin. ‘Only this time it’s without the High Council’s knowledge. I think that whoever it is will be there, at the Callidus system. Project Archangel began there five years ago and I think that’s where it’s starting again. I need to find out who’s behind all this and stop them, before innocent people start dying all over again.’

  artefact [4]

  Malcus hated the shipyards, always had. Even as a boy, when his father had brought him here with his little sister Fraya, he hadn’t enjoyed it.

  It was no secret that his father had wished his children to be bitten by the engineering bug too, had hoped that perhaps one day a visit out to these immense web-like structures orbiting Callidus IX would inspire them both to follow in their father’s footsteps and enrol in the Federation’s Space Engineering Program.

  But Malcus had always found the shipyards mind-numbingly dull and regarded his occasional visits there as something to be endured rather than looked forward to. And yet, despite this, he had always kept those thoughts and feelings to himself, never sharing them with anyone, not his friends nor his sister—and especially not his father. Malcus knew that the truth would have devastated him, had he known it.