by Alex Lamb
Zoe shook her head. ‘Not without checking the source.’
‘Look at him,’ Citra sneered. ‘It’s obvious he’s hiding something. I can see it all over his face. I want another no-confidence vote. Right now.’
Sam held up a warning hand. ‘Whoa there a moment. I have to remind you that Ash and I are military staff and this situation has definitely gone military. We can’t participate in something like that any more. It’s not Fleet procedure, and we can’t be counted as passenger-witnesses. It’s down to the rest of you, I’m afraid.’
Citra stared at Venetia. ‘All those in favour of removing Captain Ruiz,’ she said. Her hand snapped up.
Venetia’s stayed down.
Citra glared at the psychologist. ‘I don’t know why you’re protecting him,’ she said. ‘Do you hate my husband that much? If you don’t support me in this, I’ll have your actions investigated by an Earth court the moment we get home. How long do you suppose your funding will last then?’
‘Nice threat,’ said Venetia. ‘My hand is down because there’s no actual evidence of wrongdoing. Everything you’re saying is supposition and I’m not going to derail this mission on the basis of that. Bring your lawyers and see if I care.’
Zoe kept her hand down, too, though she looked reluctant about it. Mark could almost see the gears turning in her head as Citra turned to glare at her.
‘While I’m not impressed by his attitude or his flying style,’ Zoe said slowly, ‘removing him is wrong. So I can’t back the action, despite my respect for Ash. I mean Subcaptain Corrigan. And besides, I suspect that the drone remnants we picked up back there will prove critical to the success of this mission, so I can hardly fault Mark for collecting them.’
‘You what?’ said Citra. ‘He abandons my husband but picks up some trash for you on the way out, so that makes it okay?’
‘No,’ said Zoe, blushing. ‘It’s not like that.’
Citra regarded both women with disgust and stormed up the ladder.
‘Professor Chesterford,’ said Zoe, following closely behind. ‘Wait. Please.’
Sam shook his head. ‘Meeting adjourned, I guess.’
He and Ash left together. Just like last time, Venetia stayed behind.
‘We seem to be making a habit of this,’ said Mark. ‘Thank you. Again.’
‘Don’t bother,’ she replied. ‘Citra’s not acting rationally. There isn’t a captain in the Fleet who’d have gone back for Yunus under those conditions.’ She peered at him. ‘How are you coping?’
‘Okay,’ said Mark. ‘Freaked out, but okay.’
‘That was Will’s doing, wasn’t it? That override problem?’
Mark nodded.
‘Did you know he’d hacked the ship?’
‘No!’ said Mark, then realised it wasn’t quite true. ‘I knew he’d given me an update package but I had no idea he’d put anything so extreme in it. We had a minor security problem before we left. I assumed he just installed code to compensate for that. No more.’
‘Then why didn’t you say so?’
Mark gestured at the ladder, his expression incredulous. ‘To her? She’d have just turned it into another weapon.’
Venetia exhaled. ‘Probably, yes. But it doesn’t look good. Sam came to see me, you know, after we made it out of Tiwanaku. He’s very suspicious of you right now. Coming on the back of that whole no-confidence-vote business, he’s more convinced than ever that there’s something wrong about you being here. And he still thinks Will shouldn’t have waded in there with guns blazing. He’s convinced he had everything under control.’
‘That’s bullshit,’ said Mark. ‘Everyone could see he was flailing.’
‘Everyone but him. And claiming that you had no idea about the override isn’t going to cut it. He thinks there’s something fishy going on. He’s just not as vocal about it as Citra.’
‘Really?’ Mark said wearily. He didn’t know whether to be surprised or just disappointed. ‘He apologised to me just now, before the meeting. He said he was the one who made a mistake back there.’
‘He did,’ said Venetia. ‘But that won’t stop him snooping. Sam’s a cop, Mark. He’s going to put you at your ease while he builds his case.’
Mark rubbed his eyes, exasperated. The whole situation felt ridiculous.
‘Do you think I should just relinquish command, then? Give up the whole thing and let them do whatever they want?’
It would at least prove his good intentions. It’d go on his record as an abdication of command, which he wasn’t keen on, but arguably their mission was beyond such concerns at this point.
Venetia fixed him with a cool, penetrating gaze. ‘Do you?’
He shook his head. ‘No. For all his strengths, Ash would never have been able to get us out of that mess. If those things come after us, I’d rather have my hands on the controls. Once we’ve got the Ariel Two watching our backs again, I’ll happily hand off command if they still want that. But not before.’
‘For what it’s worth, I agree,’ said Venetia. ‘Particularly given that we’re not even sure you can hand off at this point. This is all conjecture anyway until we have our team back together. Until then, try to stay calm. I’ll talk to the others. Okay?’
Mark nodded.
‘You did good back there. Those manoeuvres scared the shit out of me, but you got us out alive. Thank you.’
Half a laugh escaped Mark’s throat. ‘You’re welcome.’
9.3: WILL
Will slid into the unknown system with his sensors on full spread and his quantum shield running. The first thing he noticed was what wasn’t there. Despite its proximity to Tiwanaku and the Fecund domain, this system didn’t appear to have any of the characteristic habitat ruins in its out-system. Or none close enough for him to see, at least. That in itself was surprising, given that the star was a G-type. Either the Fecund hadn’t come here, or the place had been cleaned out. Interesting.
‘What’re you looking for?’ Devi asked.
‘Fecund artefacts,’ said Will.
He felt duty-bound to at least keep them clued in as to what he was doing. It couldn’t have been easy sitting around in the nestship while he took them charging off into uncharted space.
‘Factories,’ he added. ‘We know the sects discovered that network of Fecund charging stations. They’ve been busy exploring behind our backs, and my guess is they found something here that makes drones which they either activated by accident or decided to use at Tiwanaku.’
‘I’m not seeing any, though,’ she said nervously. ‘Are you?’
In truth, Will wasn’t, no matter how deeply he searched. However, his scans of the in-system revealed two surprises. The first was a planet of one-point-one Earth masses in the yellow star’s broad habitable zone. Analysis revealed calm weather and an apparently breathable oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere. A biosphere world, in other words, in apparently perfect condition.
However, the more startling discovery was his second: a short-range beacon quietly broadcasting a Fleet signal. Will held his breath and stared at the survey results. It took him a minute to form words.
‘What the fuck is that doing here?’
He burrowed into the data, scrabbling for a better look. The beacon proved to be a low-powered relay attached to a small orbital habitat stationed at the planet’s L2 position. A closer inspection of the planet showed a faint Fleet signal coming from the surface, too, along with some curious atmospheric contaminants that suggested the presence of industry.
Will’s face froze as the implications started to settle in. Unless the beacon’s security certificates had been faked, this planet had been found by the Fleet, not the sects. But this star system lay outside the domain of surveyed worlds, which meant that someone in the Fleet had come here off the books.
Disgust swelled inside him. If this was a
Fleet secret, then his own people – his fellow IPSO officers – must have travelled here and made first contact without telling him. They’d kept him out of the loop and subsequently screwed it up. His team had been responsible for incurring the aliens’ wrath – and then hidden that fact from the rest of the organisation. It was an inconceivable breach of Fleet protocol and an unforgivable breach of trust.
But who’d done it? How many people were in on this? He remembered all those dreary budget reports from the Far Frontier he’d been made to look at, and all those depressing figures about lost ships and miscalculated fuel supplies. He’d not wanted to believe his own people capable of such incompetence. Maybe they hadn’t been. He should have looked deeper.
Will compared the security certificate in the beacon signal with the Fleet deployment database. The station he was looking at had supposedly been destroyed in a Flag conflict two years ago, light-years away in the Rosetta System.
Two years.
He swallowed, his mouth dry. While he’d been wallowing in private misery, someone had played him for a fool, and now people had died because of it. A kernel of white-hot wrath formed in the pit of his stomach, at least half of it aimed at himself. How had he, the most powerful single entity in all of human space, been so duped? With disgust, Will realised it had probably been easy. He drew some long, level breaths.
‘Will, stay calm,’ said Nelson quickly. ‘I don’t like this either but we’ll solve it. We just need to take it one step at a time, that’s all. No rash actions.’
Will turned to face him. ‘Did you know about this?’ he growled.
Nelson’s nose wrinkled in affront. ‘Of course not! What do you take me for?’
Meanwhile, Will’s SAPs kept ferrying back fresh details on the biosphere world below. The number of unusual biochemical signatures in the atmosphere beggared belief, yet the ocean showed extensive signs of algal vegetation. His long-range imaging systems returned pictures of a world with purplish oceans and charcoal-grey continents dotted with huge, symmetrical land-features shaped like starfish tens of kilometres on a side. They were clearly artificial.
Whatever was down there wasn’t Fecund or human. This wasn’t just a biosphere, this was the biggest alien discovery since the lure star. This time, though, it was his own people who’d hidden the secret while he’d been left playing politics. His guts wound tight with betrayal. Had the war meant nothing to these people? Were their memories that short?
As he closed on the mysterious orbital, Will opened a channel.
‘Fleet Station, this is Captain Will Monet of the Ariel Two.’ His voice quavered with barely suppressed rage. ‘I do not have this location assignment in my records. Please self-identify.’
He ground his teeth while he waited through the light-lag for their response.
‘It’s a relief to see you, Ariel Two,’ said a voice from the station. They left the video channel blank. ‘Welcome to Snakepit. We’ve been waiting a long time and we’re glad you’re here at last.’
Will gawped at the calm reply. ‘Fuck your gladness,’ he told them slowly. ‘Explain what you are doing here and what is going on. Otherwise I will blow you out of the fucking sky.’
9.4: ANN
Ann dialled back the warp at Snakepit’s heliopause, kicked in the tau-chargers and raced into the system under maximum stealth. Using the chargers and the stealth shield together put a ferocious drain on her antimatter but Ann couldn’t have cared less. Every second counted. The tension in the Chiyome’s cabin had never been higher. Beside her, Jaco Brinsen scowled into his display, his jaw flexing. Below her she could hear the nervous coughs of the others over the hum of the vents and smell their fear in the air.
As the light-lag dropped, bursts of Will’s conversation with the Snakepit habitat reached Ann, the gap shortening between each message.
‘… wise I will blow you out of the fucking sky.’
‘We’d be pleased to give you all the answers you need, Captain Monet. What would you like to know?’
‘What is this place?’ Will snapped. ‘Why wasn’t I informed when you found it?’
‘This system has been tentatively named Snakepit. It is the site of humanity’s finest exobiological find to date. The risk associated with informing you too early was deemed unacceptable.’
‘Unacceptable for whom?’ The menace in Will’s voice was palpable.
‘For the entire human race. Please don’t judge us until you’ve been fully briefed.’
‘And what the fuck does that entail?’
‘That will become clear shortly.’
‘By which you mean what?’ Will yelled.
‘Please wait one moment.’
‘Are you playing for time? Really, you fucking traitors? Because in case you hadn’t noticed, I’m in a shoot first, figure shit out later kind of mood.’
It was clear that Will’s emotions were ratcheting up dangerously, just like the models had predicted. She’d almost missed her window. Right now, everyone on that station would be holding their breath and getting ready to die.
Ann dived in straight, losing stealth-integrity as she did so.
‘Warm the boser, please, Kuril,’ she said. Regret choked her throat.
‘On it.’
‘We have boser targeting range,’ Jaco told her.
‘Zoti, fire the disabler message now,’ said Ann.
‘Done.’
The Ariel Two’s quantum shield stuttered as the hidden relays added during the mighty ship’s last refit came online. The liquid-silver shell surrounding the Ariel Two snapped in an instant, showering space with fused shielding alloy as its uncollapsed atoms lurched back to their natural state.
‘Boser scatter pattern Kazak One, please, Jaco,’ said Ann. She hated herself even as she spoke. ‘Fire at will.’
Jaco fired. While far less powerful than the Ariel Two’s main cannon, the Chiyome’s weapon still packed an incredible punch. Beams of coherent iron, fired at near light-speed, flickered across the Ariel Two’s massive hull.
Without a quantum shield to protect it, the boser lanced through the vessel as if it wasn’t there. Each perfectly aimed shot bored a hole through one of the ship’s primary power junctions before exiting on the other side, two hundred kilometres from its insertion point.
‘Successful delivery of the scatter pattern,’ said Jaco. ‘I recommend we move immediately to delivery of Kazak Two. That ship’s wired up like a brain. It has redundancy everywhere – give him five minutes and he’ll have half his systems back online.’
‘No, Mr Brinsen,’ Ann said quickly. The thought of firing again on Will’s crippled ship made her feel sick. ‘Your point is well made but our gesture is adequate, I think.’
She opened a channel. ‘Ariel Two, this is Captain Ludik of the Chiyome.’
A mixture of guilt and embarrassment flushed her features. She’d restricted herself to audio. She couldn’t stand the thought of anything more.
‘Your primary power is offline. You cannot fire or run. Please power down the rest of your ship and surrender. In return, your questions will be answered and your safety assured.’
She closed the channel before Will could scream at her. He’d need a few minutes for his predicament to sink in.
‘Keep a close watch on them, Jaco,’ she said. ‘Let me know if that ship so much as twitches.’
‘Of course,’ said Jaco. ‘My congratulations, by the way, ma’am. I wasn’t sure we’d make it, but you timed it perfectly. We nailed him, which means we’re past the next hurdle. It’s a win for the League and a step forward for the human race.’
‘Thank you, Mr Brinsen,’ she said coldly. ‘I appreciate it.’
She found it hard to put her finger on when in the last day or so she’d actually started to hate Jaco. One good thing about the next part of the mission was that she wouldn’t have to l
isten to him any more.
10: FAILURE
10.1: MARK
On arrival at Nerroskovi, the Gulliver tethered itself to an asteroid half an AU out from the star to mine metals and conduct repairs. At Sam’s suggestion, they kept their albedo matched to the rock in case of unexpected visitors. Then they waited.
The two days Mark spent there felt longer than the rest of the mission put together. The Nerroskovi System held nothing but a small red star, some desolate rubble and a little ice. Mark felt naked sitting there every time he merged with the ship – naked and scared.
The expected arrival time for the other two ships came and went. The deadline for emergency departure loomed. The Gulliver still had no word from the rest of the mission. Mark wondered what had happened. Surely those tiny drones hadn’t been a match for the Ariel Two. That ship had been built by the Fecund for a scale of warfare the human race had never engaged in and hopefully would never see. He thought perhaps that Will might have gone to explore the exit vector the watchers had told them about. But then where was the Chiyome? Why hadn’t it arrived to explain what was going on?
The mood on the ship steadily worsened. Zoe and Venetia disappeared into their research. Sam talked extensively about contingency plans, most of which had nothing to do with their actual orders. And Citra confined herself to her lab in the science section, unwilling to come within Mark’s camera range.
Mark set the ship and its attendant rock at a comfortable spin to try to improve mood, but it didn’t help. At the end of his shift on the second day, he found himself conducting another futile scan for incoming signals when Zoe joined him on the bridge.
It wasn’t the first time - after Tiwanaku, she’d made regular visits. She generally asked for tweaks to the ship’s systems or assistance with robots to manoeuvre the drone remains around within the outer hull cavities. Under the circumstances, Mark had been only too happy to oblige. So long as he helped with her research, she stopped looking at him like dirt, which he counted as a distinct improvement. One happy passenger was better than none at all, even if their conversations usually petered out after the first minute.