Mapped Space 1: The Antaran Codex

by Stephen Renneberg

  I stared into her large brown eyes, feeling nothing, keeping my emotions calm to make her job easier and get the psychic dissection over with as fast as possible. While we were both genetically modified, it was in our specialties that we differed. She’d gone mega-psi, a very rare choice that involved getting your brain rewired for transcendent mental powers. Most people went eye-hand and became weapons experts and field agents. A few – like me – went ultra-reflex, ideal for deep cover work because even without weapons, you were always armed and deadly.

  If your modding took and you were top one percent, you were threaded – implanted from head to toe with bionetic filaments. The catch was you had to volunteer without knowing what you were volunteering for. It had to be that way to preserve the secrecy. You were given a spiel about joining an elite program, about doing your duty and serving in a way very few humans ever could, but you never really knew what you were getting into. After the implant surgery, months of physical rehabilitation followed, during which time they trained your mind to blend with the threading, to use its sensory inputs and to allow it to guide you instantly and without hesitation.

  While I was purpose built for deep cover work, the mega-psi types like Lena became probers, able to extract secrets telepathically. A few probers became subverters, gaining the ability to persuade people to work for the Earth Intelligence Service – even against their will – while the really high functioning evolutionary freaks became breakers. Supposedly, a breaker could shatter a target’s sanity with a thought, but they were rare – exceedingly rare. The rumor was there were only four, but you never knew who they were. Lena claimed to be a subverter – not a breaker – although I had my suspicions. Her EIS security clearance was inexplicably high, but it was not something we ever discussed.

  Presently, she drew a deep breath and relaxed, giving me an approving look. I guessed that meant I’d passed.

  “Does the navy know who you are?” I asked.

  “They know I’m in charge. That’s all they need to know.”

  The entire crew would be speculating that an Earth Intelligence Service officer was aboard. The EIS were the only people who could give the navy orders and EIS officers were always civilians, which made it easy for navy crews to identify them, although such whispers were never discussed outside the ship. It had been drilled into the military relentlessly that their highest duty was the preservation of secrecy, even before the safety of the ship.

  It was an essential, mutually beneficial partnership. The EIS investigated, infiltrated, sometimes eliminated, and if necessary, called in the Earth Navy to enforce. Mercy was never a factor.

  “Do they know who I am, or why I’m here?”

  “The crew knows nothing, not even the captain.”

  I nodded towards the Tactical Warfare Center beyond the hatch. “They’ve seen my ship.”

  “There’ll be no record of the Nassau intercepting your vessel, or even coming to this location, and the officers who scanned your ship will say nothing.”

  No leaks? That could mean only one thing. “It’s an all Union crew?”

  Lena nodded.

  That explained a lot. The navy might have been under the control of Earth Council, which represented the four distinct Earth civilizations, but the reality was the Democratic Union –who paid most of the costs – didn’t fully trust its three ‘allies’. When the EIS or the Union wanted something done without their three partners knowing about it, they used one of the few ships secretly crewed by only Union citizens. For Lena to have commandeered one of those ships meant her mission was top tier.

  “That explains the URA’s presence.” The Democratic Union’s Regular Army provided combat forces when required, but the navy normally handled its own security. The only reason Lena had brought URA troopers with her was because their genetic engineering made them almost unbreakable.

  “I couldn’t trust your biomap to anyone else. The colonel is the only person who knows your name, and no one will ever get anything out of him. Only I know you used to be EIS.”

  Everyone sworn to secrecy, just like old times. “Are you going to subvert me, to force me back in?”

  “No. You’re going to volunteer.”

  “Am I?” I laughed. “Do I look crazy to you?” I’d had fourteen years of sneaking around in the shadows, of hunting down and eradicating mankind’s maddest. That was enough. I’d left the service for the freedom I’d had growing up on my father’s ship, when my brother and I had learnt from the best, before we’d gone our very different ways. I’d come out here hoping for a chance to find my brother, before the navy killed him, but that had become a forlorn hope. No one knew where he was, not even the EIS. I may have lost him, but I’d found my way, and I liked it. “I’ve got a life now, a real life.”

  “That’s why you’re so valuable to us. To me. You may not be on the payroll any more, Sirius, but I just confirmed you’re as committed as ever.”

  “Maybe your spooky radar’s a little off, Lena, because I don’t feel like I belong to you or the service anymore.”

  “It’s not about the service. If you found someone about to violate the Access Treaty and put at risk our entire civilization, would you allow it? Or would you eliminate the risk?”

  “That sounds like a subverter question.”

  “Not at all.”

  “You forget, I’ve seen you work.”

  “I forget nothing, ever,” she said meaningfully, reminding me that eidetic memory was an integral part of mega-psi reengineering. “And I’m not subverting you. Just answer the question honestly.”

  “I’m a creature of habit,” I said, avoiding and answering the question at the same time.

  She smiled, already certain from her probing that I wouldn’t hesitate. “You don’t get recruited unless that’s true.”

  “So why me? You have lots of people out here. Good people.”

  “We do, but none like you. You’re known out here as a trader, a businessman, maybe even a smuggler. Sirius Kade, captain of the Silver Lining, and a man with a foot on both sides of the law. You have a reputation and access to people we can’t approach without raising suspicion. Your father was a trader. You and your brother grew up on his ship. You’re one of them, one of the people out here – even though we both know you’re not.”

  “They hate my brother. That’s got to count against me.” I hadn’t seen him in twenty years, didn’t even know if he was alive or dead, but I knew people wondered if we were the same.

  “They fear your brother, but he’s part of your cover. One very bad brother, one . . . not so bad brother, and a father many respected before he was killed. Your ‘real life’, as you call it, is the best kind of cover for a deep cover agent.”

  “And there’s the problem. What you do, what we did, that’s the past. There’s no room in my life for that anymore.”

  “Consider it a contract – a well paying contract. We really don’t mind treating you like a mercenary. We only care about results. You know that.”

  “And of course, money is no object.”

  She grinned. “Pick a number, as high as you like.”

  Damn, she really was desperate. “It’s that serious?”

  “That’s why we need you. We need someone who is believable and who can do what’s required.”

  If the Earth Intelligence Service was writing blank checks, then it was the real deal – an Access Treaty violation. The whole purpose for the existence of the EIS and the navy was to ensure there were no more Treaty violations, ensuring nothing would stop Human Civilization’s second attempt to gain Forum membership – what amounted to Galactic Citizenship. It was a near impossible job with the scum of mankind scattered across several thousand light years, far from the watchful eyes of the four Earth collective-governments. They had formed out of the old nation states of Earth along cultural and philosophical grounds and still wielded most of humanity’s economic and military power. Individually, they were each larger than most off world colonies c
ombined and, as the Earth Council, they spoke for Human Civilization. Even though billions of humans had spread through Mapped Space, the vast majority of mankind still lived on Earth. It was why our ancient homeworld continued to call the shots and would do so for a long time to come.

  The navy and the EIS – both created by the Earth Council – were the only truly unified expressions of mankind’s will, of Earth’s will. Both organizations were dominated by the Democratic Union, the largest of Earth’s great power blocs spanning Europe, the Americas, Australasia and parts of east Asia. I was born in Mawson City, Antarctica, which made me a Union citizen even though I’d spent less than three years of my life on Earth. That birthright put me on the most trusted list, while Lena’s psionic powers elevated me to the top.

  She waited for my answer, fixing me with a perceptive gaze that made me feel as if she was boring into my soul.

  I sighed. “OK.” Simple as that. There were no contracts to sign, no hedging my bets, no way out. She was desperate and I was back in – for one last mission.

  A hint of relief appeared on her face, revealing she hadn’t been as confident that I’d help her as she’d seemed.

  “My crew can’t know?”

  “Absolutely not,” she said, leaning towards me. “Neither can the girl.”

  There was no female member of my crew, but I knew who she meant. “She knows nothing about my past.”

  “You never used to have a weakness, Sirius,” Lena said. “You do now.”

  “Did your probing tell you that?”

  She nodded. “She’s all over your psyche like a flashing light.”

  “She’s not my only weakness. I also can’t swim,” I added lightly.

  “Good thing there’s no swimming on this mission,” Lena said. “Suppose she gets in the way?”

  “Marie’s over a hundred light years away. She won’t be a factor.” Marie Dulon had taken her ship to the Kazaris Belt to extract as many credits as she could from a bunch of hard working miners. She wouldn’t be back for weeks.

  “I hope you’re right,” Lena said doubtfully.

  “What about my threading?” The bionetic technology implanted throughout my body had been deactivated the day I left the service. They couldn’t reverse the genetic engineering, because the human body can only stand so much modding, but the implanted tech was different. They switched it off and locked it down the day I left. I’d missed it at first, but as the years passed, I’d almost forgotten what I’d lost.

  “You’ll need it.”

  “So how do we do this?”

  Lena held out her hand.

  “That simple?”

  She nodded.

  For a moment, I wondered if I really wanted my senses to be boosted again, to have my mind flooded with a situational awareness as far beyond the norm as sight was from blindness. It had taken me a long time to get used to not having it, and now I’d have it back – at least for a while. When the mission was over, I’d have to readjust to losing it all over again, but it was already too late to pull out, so I took her hand. A mere touch was enough to connect our nerve endings and allow her active tech to talk to my long dormant threading. In the blink of an eye, she passed a code through my nervous system into the bionetic threads running through every bone in my body, filaments that because of their biological nature were undetectable to any known human science. Suddenly, signals I’d not seen in eight years appeared in my mind, jarring me back into a long lost sensory reality, telling me about my environment – what was in it, who was in it – information I’d never have noticed without the threading.

  I’d barely begun to process the new awareness when a flood of information poured from Lena’s threading to mine. When I left the service, my bionetic memory had been wiped clean. Now she gave it all back to me, updated for the years I’d been away; DNA patterns for every known human criminal and for thousands of alien species; EIS and navy authorization codes; technical specs on all kinds of useful and nasty devices; contact and informant lists; recognition signals for every EIS agent and station; and diplomatic codes all the way to ambassadorial level for hailing alien ships and even Galactic Forum Observers.

  Threading was one of mankind’s most closely guarded secrets, designed to be indistinguishable from normal human DNA so even alien-tech scanners wouldn’t detect it. I could wipe it clean with a single thought and if I died, automatic safeguards would purge my bionetic memory before its data could ever be read. Even the Matarons, our one truly committed adversary, seemed unaware of our bionetics. They were so far ahead of us, they could break through any tech defense we had – and frequently did – but they were also complacent in their superiority. The EIS had waged a covert war against them for centuries, adopting unconventional methods to hide our innermost secrets. Of course, the Matarons might know everything and were just letting us think we had secrets. There really was no way to know.

  When the data transfer finished, Lena let my hand go and studied me with genuine concern. “Are you OK?”

  I breathed slowly, taking time to integrate my thoughts with the swirling array of threaded inputs assaulting my mind. “Yeah, just like bouncing off bulkheads in zero gravity. You never forget how.”

  “Are you ready for the mission briefing?”

  I felt oddly exhilarated at the threading input flowing seamlessly through my mind. It was something I thought I’d never experience again, something I’d convinced myself I never wanted, but now that I was active again, I felt strangely whole.

  “I’m ready.”

  Chapter Two : Hades City

  Subterranean Habitat

  Star HAT-P-5

  Outer Lyra Region

  0.91 Earth Normal Gravity

  1,105 light years from Sol

  1.2 million inhabitants

  After we dropped the p-grams and supplies at Macaulay Station, we backtracked to Indrax – a small Indian Republic trade hub – and picked up deliveries for Hades City. The completion bonuses barely covered the cost of the flight, but they gave me a reason to go to Hades where Lena’s fish was waiting to be hooked.

  Hades moon was the largest of seven natural satellites and was tidally locked to a hot Jupiter, a gas giant orbiting close and fast to its star. The approach was tricky, requiring a fast descent into the giant planet’s shadow to avoid getting fried by the star’s plasma wind, while timing our run to intercept the moon as it orbited around to the giant planet’s dark side. Scary anytime, but with the Lining’s military grade bleeder shield, we were better protected than most.

  There were three ships ahead of us when we arrived, orbiting a safe distance out from the star. Two made it down first time, while the third had to go around for a second attempt. When our turn came, I rolled the Silver Lining into the guide beam and throttled up. Our flight deck’s curved view screen wrapped around us on three sides, giving the impression we floated in space above the star’s boiling surface. With no windows anywhere in the hull, the optical sensors were our eyes, automatically filtering the star’s blinding light down to tolerable levels. A digital overlay across the center of the screen showed our position in the guide beam and updated critical parameters as we dived towards the star.

  Below us, drifting like a tiny dot above an ocean of superheated plasma was the gas giant. It appeared as an insignificant blue fleck against the star’s immensity, growing rapidly in size as we followed the guide beam down and our shield’s temperature soared. It was a race to reach cover before solar heat overloaded the shield, exposing our hull to the star’s full ferocity.

  “The shield’s bleeding at sixty-two percent,” Jase reported tensely, clearly more worried about the approach than I was. He was usually full of bravado and humor, but with the big G-type so close, he was unusually on edge. “It sure is hot out there!”

  “Nervous?” I asked, letting him know I enjoyed seeing him squirm.

  Jase stiffened. “Only of your flying!”

  I grinned. “You’re smarter than you look!”<
br />
  He didn’t know this wasn’t my first landing at Hades and I wasn’t about to spoil the fun by telling him. I’d spent the last few days feeding him horror stories – all true – of catastrophic landing attempts on the hot Jupiter’s moon, neglecting to mention they were all before Earth engineers had installed new landing control systems. The canyon floor beyond the city doors was littered with wrecks, all hundreds of years old, testimony to poor judgment and even poorer conditions.

  Soon, the gas giant began to fill our screen, hiding us in its shadow and allowing the Lining’s shield temperature to stabilize. Several tiny black marbles floated above the planet, the largest of which was the near-Earth sized Hades Moon. It quickly swelled to a spherical airless world strewn with jagged mountains, ancient craters and deeply shadowed valleys, all seared black by the star’s fiery breath.

  When we entered the moon’s gravity, the autonav rolled the ship and slammed on the brakes while I gently feathered the engines to imply they were overdue a maintenance cycle or two. We could have gone in faster but it never paid to advertise, especially as Raven spotters were everywhere. If they targeted us, I didn’t want them knowing what the Lining was capable of until our lives depended on it.

  Soon the glow of our engines lit up the blackened landscape, casting sharp shadows across the surface, then we thrust vectored hard into the long, straight canyon that led to the city’s entrance.

  “I’m reading closed doors,” Jase announced.

  “I was afraid of that,” I said, feigning apprehension. “The door guy’s a known stim-head.”

  “There’s a door guy?” Jase asked, wondering why the city’s outer doors were manually operated. “And he’s a stim-head?”