by Alex Lamb
She pulled a sour face and looked away. ‘Let’s not go that far,’ she said.
She knew what Jaco was trying for. He wanted to build a sense of camaraderie and mutual support right out of the gate so they’d be better able to work together. However, a joint celebration about duping Will Monet wasn’t what she needed.
The pod locked home against the hatch to the Chiyome’s habitat core and Ann led the way through. For a ship capable of delivering so much silent death, it didn’t look like much on the inside. Standard-issue self-cleaning panels in soft white clad the walls. A triple-stack of crash couches lined either side of the main cabin – the same layout the Fleet had used aboard small ships ever since the war. But for the serial numbers on the walls, she could have been inside the Griffin. As her crew moved wordlessly to their bunks, Ann felt a stab of profound loneliness, as if some of Will’s isolation had rubbed off on her.
On the Griffin, her crew had felt like family even though she’d been forced to keep secrets from them. On the Chiyome, there’d be nothing to stop her from talking about everything she knew, yet she felt more distant from her colleagues than she had in years.
Kuril paused as he manoeuvred past her bunk to reach his slot.
‘Just wanted to say, ma’am, proud to be serving with you. I know you’ll do good.’
Ann smiled. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘I’ll do my best to live up to that.’
Perhaps not totally alone, then. One friend was a start.
4.4: WILL
Will smiled as he descended towards the Ariel’s primary habitat core. Ann had been right, of course. His behaviour on the return leg of the failed lure star mission had been self-indulgent in the extreme. Maybe he’d have the chance to atone for another lesser sin while doing his job.
Nelson hovered beside him, his gaze probing.
‘If you don’t mind me asking, Will,’ he said, ‘what did Ann say to you?’
Will shrugged. ‘Not much.’
Nelson pulled a face like a man dining on lemons. ‘It’s just that you look rather distracted, considering.’
In truth, Will was. His agreement with Ann didn’t amount to much. It was the fact that it existed at all that pleased him. That and the no-nonsense style with which she’d challenged his request. It had been years since someone had treated him that way – direct, honest, but rooted in compassionate instinct. The sudden discovery that he could still be treated as something other than a god or an embarrassment held remarkable appeal.
Acceding to her request had been a spur-of-the-moment decision. It didn’t cost him anything, and the choice felt very unlike one the person he’d been for the last two years would make. This mission was bringing out sides of him he’d believed were long dead.
‘She’s blunt,’ he said. ‘I like that.’
Nelson’s eyes went wide. He looked long and hard at Will’s expression.
‘Will,’ he said heavily. ‘Please don’t kid yourself. That woman is hard as nails – she’s more machine than person. Don’t you dare go gushy on me at a time like this. And particularly over a shark like Andromeda Ludik. Don’t go confusing her with Rachel just because they’re both tough. Will, I know her and you don’t. Expect nothing of her except orders well executed and you won’t be disappointed.’
‘I’m not confusing her with anyone,’ Will snapped. ‘That’s the last we’ll see of her, anyway. After this she’s on her own.’ He clapped his hands and rubbed the palms together. ‘Onwards and outwards, then, I guess,’ he said, pushing the conversation forwards with false brightness.
He tucked his smile inside. Ann’s persona might be that of the efficient machine, but Will sensed that he’d perceived something rather different in her. Her request hadn’t been all pragmatism. Will’s instincts told him there was more to it than that. He would have to see how it panned out, of course, but if she did decide to check in with him, Will had already decided he was going to enjoy it.
4.5: ASH
Ash tried not to look at Mark as the Gulliver team descended into the core of their ship in the tiny docking pod. It had been hard to keep his emotions in check. Just seeing Mark made him angry, and having to listen every time he interrupted someone made it worse.
So many memories he’d forgotten came flooding back. Mark the smart-ass. Mark the favourite. There were eighteen of them in the aborted roboteer crèche, all closer than siblings at one point, in the way only roboteers could be. But over time, it became clear that in the eyes of their all-important mentor – Will Monet – only one of them mattered. The rest might as well have been invisible.
Then came the relocations and the secrets. When they next met, years later, siblings had become rivals as good at screening their thoughts from each other as they’d once been at sharing them. Just thinking about it made Ash seethe. He had been proud of himself for putting it all behind him and becoming a real asset to the League. Now Mark had reappeared and pulled the rug from under him all over again.
Ash didn’t feel jealous, exactly, though there was some of that. What made him itch was how much harder Mark’s presence made his job, when it had been scary enough to start with. His role in the League plan had originally been simple: fly in, wait for the cue and fly out to Snakepit, then watch Will get his well-deserved comeuppance. Now he had his boss aboard watching over his shoulder and they both had to be ready to act in an instant. Rather than fret, he tried to concentrate on what their resident Vartian Institute lunatic was saying as she babbled at them about the ship.
‘… in fact, the Gulliver was designed fifteen years ago,’ she was saying, ‘in a collaboration between the Fleet and the Institute. The scenarios they envisaged for its use mostly involved dialogue with the Transcended, which is why the project got shelved. Construction of this ship was only completed two years ago. We designed it to protect against intrusive hacking and any other kind of alien incursion we could dream up. So, short of being shot at, we should be pretty safe.’
Ash bit his lip. As if that would do them any fucking good.
‘As Yunus mentioned, there are three modules: fleet, science and diplomacy. Control over one cannot be used to usurp control of another.’
‘Doesn’t this create control problems?’ said Mark. ‘It sounds counterproductive, frankly.’
Ash watched Zoe Tamar shoot him a cold glance. Classic Mark. The guy hadn’t changed. He could barely open his mouth without pissing somebody off. And this was who they put in charge of a diplomatic ship? Ash tried not to laugh. At least no one was likely to complain when he took over.
‘Remember, our stated goal is to make contact with antagonistic aliens,’ said Sam. ‘Anything intended to make that process safer should be welcomed.’
‘The ship does have a shared central data core,’ said Zoe, ‘but it only records information and can’t act as a comms channel. It uses a transparent non-blocking intercept protocol that we believe should be impervious to abuse. And while the ship has no weapons, we do have two shuttles equipped for first contact, plus some of the most extensive analytical tools you’ll find anywhere. Not to mention some fairly slick living quarters.’
The pod docked against the ship’s habitat core and opened its doors. One by one, they spilled out into the interior. Ash had seen it before but remained impressed by just how plush a ride the Gulliver was.
Every inch of inhabitable space on a starship came at phenomenal cost as it had to be buffered against the ferocious radiation that filled the rest of the hull. This meant that most modern ships usually featured just four or five compact chambers, usually serving double duty. Fittings were invariably utilitarian and the decor served exclusively to keep the crew from going nuts under such confined conditions.
The Gulliver, in contrast, had been designed to carry diplomats and executives in style. It featured private cabins, a bio-lab, a study centre and a circular meeting space. In reality, the habi
tat core wasn’t that much bigger than on a regular ship, but no expense had been spared in hiring designers to make the ship feel special.
Inspiration had come from the hallowed halls of Mars’s Lowell University. The padded walls resembled redwood panelling and screens like picture windows filled much of the available space, showing three-dimensional views out onto the rust-tinted perfection of Martian Zen gardens. The guide-strips and touch controls resembled polished brass while being warm and soft to the touch. The air smelled mountain fresh, tinged with a hint of Burroughs pine. Even the acoustics had been tailored to give the auditory sense of a much larger space. So long as you stood still and didn’t touch anything, the place wasn’t a claustrophobic nightmare.
Mark whistled as he looked around. ‘Wow. This makes a change from cargo-lifters, I can tell you.’
Citra Chesterford shot him a nervous look down the length of her elegant nose.
‘Cargo-lifters? Your bio said nothing about cargo-lifters. I thought you were a starship captain.’
‘I’ve been on sabbatical,’ said Mark.
‘To fly lifters?’
‘Mark’s credentials are not in question,’ said Sam. ‘I can assure you he’s the best pilot in the Fleet.’
‘And he has a personal endorsement from Will Monet,’ Ash couldn’t help adding.
Sam peered at him pointedly. He was making it sound like Mark’s selection had been an inside job. Which, of course, it had been. It was exactly the kind of nepotistic pandering Ash had witnessed since they were little. It was funny how he’d never been the recipient of that attention.
‘The habit core has three levels,’ said Zoe. ‘The top is an astrogation and immersion lab. Most of the action is here on the central ring. This corridor links all the work and cabin spaces, and your retinal implants will tell you which segment you’re in. And down here, at the bottom of the core-sphere, we have something special.’
She led them to the access tube that ran down to the meeting area below. It had been styled after one of the university’s grand discussion chambers. Beyond the circle of velvet-lined crash couches, the wall-screens made it look as if polished floors stretched away to gothic windows where the cliffs of the Valles Marineris beckoned. Faint scents of leather and paper books hung in the air.
‘We have a fucking lounge?’ Mark exclaimed.
‘People who think for a living function better in a pleasant setting,’ said Zoe.
‘Everyone on a starship thinks for a living,’ Mark retorted. ‘They just usually get by with fewer cushions.’
‘I think the Vartian Institute did a terrific job,’ said Ash. ‘I’ve had some experience flying the Gulliver and it’s a great ship. All the features make sense once you get used to them. I’ll make my memories available to you, Mark, so you’re not starting from scratch.’
Venetia Sharp’s owlish gaze flicked from Mark’s face to his own. She peered at him like a lab specimen.
‘Interesting,’ she said. ‘Our most experienced pilot isn’t our primary captain.’
Ash squirmed a little under that gaze. Psych-types made him uncomfortable.
‘Oh, Mark’s very good,’ he said. ‘Prior to his unexpected sabbatical, he was winning all kinds of awards for mock combat.’
He noticed Sam’s mouth tighten and knew he had to back off.
‘I hope your skills extend beyond combat,’ said Citra. ‘This mission will require a rather different kind of flying.’
‘That’s why you should be pleased to have a lifter pilot in charge,’ said Mark with a dry smile. ‘My experience is very diverse.’
Yunus clapped his hands together. ‘Well, clearly this will be an excellent base of operations. We should prepare to leave, I think. Triton Control will be awaiting our signal.’
‘Absolutely right,’ said Mark. ‘Please make yourselves comfortable, everybody, while Ash and I retire to the bridge.’
What passed for a bridge on the Gulliver was a minuscule cabin on the main level with two crash couches arranged like bunk-beds and just enough room to walk or float beside them. Ash and Mark took their places, coupled fat-contacts to their necks and met virtually in the ship’s metaphor space. It resembled a circular obsidian platform situated in the Zen garden that lay beyond the simulated windows. Afternoon light slanted across the rocks and a cool breeze tickled Ash’s virtual skin. Like most other features of the ship, no expense had been spared on detailing the helm-arena.
Ash sighed to himself. He’d tagged all the metaphor spaces in the Gulliver’s subsystems with his own designs weeks ago. Now Mark would want to use his own, obsessively Earth-biome-orientated imagery. Flying with Mark, he recalled, was like piloting a shrubbery.
Mark’s avatar appeared. ‘Enjoying yourself?’ he said with a scowl.
‘Not sure I know what you mean,’ said Ash.
‘I’m not stupid,’ said Mark. ‘You’re trying to make my life harder. It didn’t take you long.’
Ash laughed it off. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘You’re right. My bad. Old habits die hard. You make it easy, though. I’m trying to think if there’s anyone on this ship you haven’t annoyed already.’
He conjured a flock of control visualisations out of the red sand like birds and busied himself checking their slowly rotating glyphs.
Mark exhaled slowly. ‘Let’s start this again,’ he said. ‘You were slated to be captain of this ship. Then I showed up. Now you’re not. That must piss you off.’
Ash shrugged. ‘It’s no biggie. We’re both professionals.’
‘For what it’s worth,’ said Mark, ‘I’m sorry. I’m not here to rain on your parade. This whole thing wasn’t my idea, and we both know whose it was. I’m just here to do a job. After that I’ll get out of your life and you’ll never have to see me again. In the meantime, I’ll take any advice you have to offer because you’re better with people than I am and you understand this crowd in a way I never will. While we’re out there, I’ll do my best to make you look good, so that you get something decent out of this trip, career-wise. Because I’d really, really like this mission to go well so that we can both put it behind us. How does that sound? Can we have a truce?’
Ash felt his smile crumbling and tried his damnedest to prop it up. That was the problem with Mark. He might be a self-indulgent little prick, but he was still capable of acts of deep humility. Ash wished he wasn’t. He’d be a lot easier to hate that way. Ash took the guilt that threatened to well up inside him and screwed it down tight.
He’d sold Mark out during the tribunal and Mark hadn’t even mentioned that. Sam had asked him to do it to prove his loyalty to the League but it had come at a huge price. It had put him at odds with most of the other Omegas. It didn’t help that Ash had never really believed he deserved the Omega ranking in the first place and felt like he’d been faking it his whole life. He’d always suspected they gave him the grade because he was good with people, and the Fleet was desperate for a friendly face for its roboteering efforts. That fear had messed with his confidence ever since. Or at least until Sam made him a true insider and brought him into the League. These days he worried more about who did accept him rather than who didn’t.
‘Sure,’ he said, uncomfortably. ‘We can have a truce.’
‘Great,’ said Mark. ‘Thank you. I mean it.’
Ash turned back to his station and summoned up a stack of flight-path sheets like a tower of luminous tea trays. He tried not to think about what the League had in store for Mark. After the nasty surprise would come the imprisonment, followed by despair or death. Mark would never forgive him then. Ash knew he might as well enjoy the companionship while it lasted.
5: UNDERWAY
5.1: MARK
Mark spent his first shift out from Triton checking over the Gulliver and familiarising himself with its features. While the pretentious academic decor wasn’t to his taste,
the ship was, as Ash had suggested, a beautiful piece of engineering. It made him realise how much he’d missed flying in space. Besides the extraordinary engines, the Gulliver had impressive redundancies built into the robots that teemed in its outer hull layers. They had enough robotic support on board to rebuild the ship from the inside out.
There were frustrations, of course. The diplomacy and science sections had been walled off from him due to those ridiculous security concerns. He hated having two great dark patches in the cabin where his eyes and ears couldn’t roam. But, for the most of part, the Gulliver was a pleasure.
Best of all, Mark loved the ship’s feel. His unusual interface design dispensed with many of the metaphor layers roboteers customarily relied on to manage a ship’s systems. Instead, it made heavy use of the trick Will had learned from the Transcended: employing sketched copies of a roboteer’s own mind in place of SAPs to manage each function. Input from each copy filtered hierarchically into the pilot’s consciousness as seamlessly as feedback from his own body. This gave him an intuitive, immediate grasp of the vessel around him.
The fit was never perfect, of course. Balancing subminds often felt like choosing between different ways to see an optical illusion. The worse the system’s design, the more jarring the distinction between each perception. But the Gulliver had been designed with Mark’s type of interface in mind, so the merging of ship facets was almost perfect. Getting used to it felt as easy as sliding his hand into a velvet glove.
And what a glove! The Gulliver didn’t drive between stars, it soared. It didn’t turn with boat-like ponderousness the way most ships did. It banked effortlessly, gravity bursts slewing around Mark like a cloak made of thunder. Hooked up to the Gulliver he felt like some kind of huge vacuum-dwelling avian, slipping through warped space as if it were no more complicated a medium than air. By the time his shift finished, Mark was in love.
When he checked out, though, reality wasted no time intruding. He found a message waiting for him in his home node from Sam Shah. What Mark craved was a good night’s sleep. He certainly didn’t feel like attending a meeting. But his confidence was up and it was surely better to start behaving like the master of his own ship sooner rather than later.