Tales from the Edge: Escalation: A Maelstrom's Edge Collection

by Stephen Gaskell

  I sighed. I tried to dredge up some reasonable argument, but I owed them better than that. They had been through a lot during the evacuation runs, taking more than their share of risk. The ship was falling to pieces, but it had held until now and it would hold until the next contract came in.

  'I'll go and talk to Boscile, see if he's amenable to an early departure.'

  'You think he will be?' Maisha asked.

  'No.'

  Maisha pulled out her pistol. 'Then you'd better take this.'

  'I don't like guns.'

  'You like late departures even less,' Drago reminded me.

  *

  I went back outside with the pistol jammed into a pocket. Maisha's weapon was a crude little Araldyne knock-off with a stubby barrel, low yield and not much accuracy, but when it came to persuasion – as we'd found out on more than one occasion - it looked nasty enough to do the job.

  The pink flares were beginning to die down. Boscile was sitting patiently on the case, his back to the ship, looking at the open stairwell. He looked calm, almost serenely detached, like a devotee at prayer. In his hand was a small black cylinder, about the size of one of the medical vials.

  'We have an issue,' I said, barely daring to speak.

  He turned his head around to look at me.

  'We do?'

  'The cybel gate. There's some instability that wasn't there when we came through.'

  Boscile ruminated on this for a few moments. 'I studied your navigation plot. This system is well connected, is it not?'

  'For now.'

  'Then I do not think a delay of an hour or so before we leave is going to make any great difference. If the existing gate is viable, we will leave the way we arrived. If the gate closes, we will take one of the other routes.'

  'They force us closer to the Maelstrom, through systems with much sparser connections.'

  'There is always a risk, Captain.'

  'Nonetheless, I think we ought to be on our way. I'm sorry that your contacts haven't arrived …'

  'They will be here shortly.'

  I talked over him. ' …but I must insist on an immediate departure. If the gate instability begins to die down, then maybe I'll consider turning round and coming back here, but in the meantime …'

  'Are you carrying a weapon, Captain?'

  The question took me aback. 'Why would I be carrying a weapon?'

  'Because you must have wondered what to do if I would not obey your directive. You won't abandon me – you're too ethical for that. I know, I've studied your record. It wasn't just your ship that appealed to me – it was you, Captain. You are honest and you honour contracts to the letter. So if I will not come of my own accord, and you won't leave me to die, force would be the only instrument open to you.'

  I slipped a hand into my pocket, closing it around the cold grip of Maisha's weapon. The maglock weapon had a half charged power source. I felt the prickle of it, as if I had my hand around a high-voltage line.

  I stepped off the landing deck, onto the main part of the roof.

  'I'm only thinking of our safety, Mister Boscile.'

  He still had his back to me. Slowly he elevated his hand, the one with the black cylinder.

  It was not a medical vial. I could see that now. There was a little button on the end of it, and he had his thumb over that button.

  'It's a small charge,' he said. 'Barely worth mentioning. It won't damage your ship, not to begin with.'

  I drew out the pistol, my hand shaking.

  'What charge?'

  'The demolition fuse I allowed to drop from my pocket, onto the landing deck, when I stepped out. Oh, look for it if you will. But don't get too close to it. If I thought you might kick it over the edge, I'd have no option but to detonate the fuse.' His white-crowned head gave a nod. 'Suicide, yes – in all but name. I'll be marooned here, and so will you. Just us and the Remainers. I don't want to do that, not after all the trouble I've been through to get here, but it's very important that you grasp the seriousness of my intent. Remind me: what was the stress margin on that pad?'

  'Don't do this.'

  'I shan't. If you allow me to wait.' He patted the ground next to him. 'Sit with me, Captain. It won't be long.' Then, as if I might not have grasped that the statement was an order, not a request: 'Now, Captain.'

  I moved to his side. I had the weapon trained on him. I could kill him here, now. In an instant.

  But maybe not fast enough to stop him triggering that fuse.

  'What is this about, Boscile?'

  No more Mister Boscile now. We were past niceties.

  'Trelusker,' he answered. 'The man to whom we owe our salvation. The only one who could have coordinated the evacuation effort across so many worlds, so many systems, forcing us to bury our differences in the interests of the greater good. Drawing the best from us all. The best from people like you, Luza – brave, decent captains with their little brave ships, willing to do their utmost to help with the clearance. Making heroes of us all. Isn't that what he called you and your crew?'

  'He says that to them all,' I answered, trying to keep the edge out of my voice.

  'I'm sure he does, and I'm sure – in the moment, at least – it's perfectly sincere. That's the great gift of a politician, you see – the ability to believe themselves, if only for an instant. Conviction, they call it. Did you look into his eyes? I did, once. I saw that sparkle. He said kind things to me, not knowing who I was. Not knowing what I know.'

  'Which is?'

  'Trelusker is not Trelusker.' We were sitting side on now, me squatting down. As he pushed the dour mask of his face into something like a smile, the yellow sky flared off the round lenses in his glasses. 'By which I mean, Trelusker is a synthetic identity. A construct. Assembled meticulously, I'll grant you. Put together with astonishing care. But a fraud, all the same. Such a thing could only have been pulled off during the chaos and bloodshed of a planetary civil war, when it was possible for such a man to discard one name and assume another.' He paused, looked down, the yellow light flickering out of his glasses. 'Trelusker's real name – the one he was born under – is the same name we saw written on that plinth. Vorgon Lehrter.'

  'That's impossible,' I said.

  'Don't be fooled by those harbours and resorts we saw,' Boscile said. 'They're new, and none of them were built to last. This whole system – not just Calexis, but all the other worlds – was a very turbulent place only a generation or two ago. The Maelstrom was coming, but no one knew exactly when it would arrive. There was a lot of disagreement about the best response – whether to settle differences with other systems, to go it alone with evacuation, to ignore it completely. Differences that spilled into civil wars, some of them remarkably bloody. Lehrter was a recurrent figure in a number of those nasty little episodes.'

  'It can't be the same man. Trelusker's not from this system – not even this part of the cluster. They don't even look alike!'

  'Oh, the deception is thorough, I'll grant you that. How could it have been otherwise? Lehrter was never a man to leave much to chance. Not even the shedding of one identity and the assumption of another. Anyone who might have known, or been able to follow the right clues … they were silenced. It wasn't difficult. A new face, a new anatomy, an invented biography, some rejuvenation therapy, some genetic camouflaging … I mentioned the exclusive services this medical facility once provided, didn't I? After it all, a new life awaited. It was brazen of Trelusker to adopt so public a persona … but he'd only have done so in the confidence that the old name would never come to light.'

  'Captain!'

  Both of us jumped a little. I turned around, slowly enough not to give Boscile cause to press the button, still keeping the pistol aimed at him, while doubting I'd ever have the nerve to use it.

  'We need to wait, Drago.'

  'We can't. The tunnel's closed, and I'm not going to stake my life on the others holding up while you have a little chat. Why the hell isn't he already aboard?'

&nb
sp; 'Tell him,' I said.

  'There's no need,' Boscile answered. 'We'll be leaving very shortly, as I promised. They're here.'

  I followed his gaze to the open entrance of the stairwell. Six or seven hooded figures were emerging into the open air, moving slowly and silently. One of them, perhaps the oldest, had collected the pink signal flare and was now holding it aloft as a kind of torch. They wore cloaks, turning them into shapeless grey forms, with only a hand or two pushing out from the folds. It was hard to see much of their faces under the shadows of their hoods, beyond a bony jaw, a sharp cheekbone, the hard, hungry gleam of sunken eyes.

  Eventually a dozen of them stood in front of the stairwell. They were all adults, and most of them seemed older than me. But I wouldn't swear to that.

  The one with the pink torch stood a little further out than the others. She was a thin-faced woman with a jutting chin and scars across her forehead.

  Her fingers on the torch were like a skeleton's grip.

  She held out something in her other hand.

  'We have it,' she said, her voice scratching across the air.

  Boscile rose from the case. Still keeping his thumb on the trigger, he picked up the case and walked across to the leader.

  He set the case down before her.

  'This is what I managed to bring. I'm sorry it's not more. Examine it, if you like.'

  The woman settled a foot onto the case. She pulled it back toward her, the metal scraping across the roof's surface. She knelt, opened the case, opened the compartments. There was more to it than I'd seen: extra layers, more vials, hypodermic devices, bandages, sterile solutions.

  She lifted her sharp face to Boscile.

  'This is the best you could do?'

  'Yes.'

  There was a silence. I looked back to Drago, holding up a hand as an instruction not to do anything rash.

  The woman threw something down onto the ground at Boscile's feet.

  'I believe you.'

  Boscile knelt slowly and picked up the object. It was a flat sliver, like a playing card. Some kind of data storage device, I decided – maybe something particular to this system.

  'Everything's on it?'

  'Everything you'll need.'

  Boscile fingered the sliver. Some alloy patterning on it caught the yellow sky and flared it back. For a moment he seemed frozen, unable to accept that the transaction was finally done. I wondered how long he had been dreaming of holding that sliver, with all that it contained.

  'If I'm able to secure the funds to make a return trip, and bring back more medicine …' he began.

  'You'll find it hard,' the woman said. She cocked her chin at the sky. 'Not long now, anyway. You've done what you could.'

  'You could come with us,' I said. 'The ship isn't big, but it'll take a dozen of you, easily …'

  The woman turned her face onto me. Her look was one of bitter dismissiveness, as if my offer was insulting.

  'Go.'

  At last Boscile slipped the sliver into a pocket, patting it once to make sure it was really there. Then he lifted his thumb from the triggering device, and allowed the little black rod to drop from his hand. It rolled harmlessly away.

  'We're ready, Captain. I thank you for your … forbearance.'

  'It's amazing what a bomb threat will do,' I answered. 'Get aboard, Boscile. We'll talk about this when we've put some distance between us and Calexis.'

  Boscile nodded, walking back to me. The hooded figures, their business conducted, were disappearing back into the gloom of the stairwell, leaving only a thin line of pink smoke in their wake. 'I'm sorry that it came to that. But you understand that I couldn't let them down. I had promised them those medicines, and I knew the Remainers would stand by their side of the arrangement.'

  We went up the connecting steps to the landing pad. Maisha must have started the pre-launch sequence, for the engines were beginning to whine. Drago was still on the boarding ramp, urging them to quicken their pace. But I slowed.

  'You said something back there, Boscile.'

  He seemed puzzled by my sudden lack of haste. 'What?'

  'About me being an ethical Captain. About how you knew I wouldn't abandon you here, no matter what.'

  'I was right, wasn't I?'

  'Up to a point.'

  There had never been much colour in Boscile's face, but what remained of it flushed away as if a valve had just opened in his neck. 'I don't …' he started.

  'I am ethical,' I said. 'I try to do the right things. Run an honest ship and an honest crew. And you're right – I wouldn't have left you here to die. Not after we had an agreement. But I'm also a realist. I know what you're going to do with that data.'

  'Which is?'

  'What you've bent half your life to achieving. Revealing the truth about Trelusker. Bringing his past to light. Exposing him as the war criminal you always knew him to be.'

  'Of course.'

  Sometimes there are decisions we take only after months or years of careful consideration. We bend our lives onto a new course the way a Captain, after the lengthy consultation of charts, after the skilled evaluation of every relevant risk factor, commits a huge ship onto a new heading. At other times we make decisions that are just as consequential, but we give them no more thought than when we swat an insect. And yet, if we had the luxury of decades, we would still find ourselves making the same choices.

  This was one of those decisions.

  'I can't let you do that.'

  'I'm sorry?'

  My grip tightened on Maisha's pistol. The maglock drivers seemed to sense my intent, sending out an anticipatory tingle. 'I hate politicians. I hate easy-going, confident slimeballs like Trelusker even more. But I know an effective figure when I see one. You were right – I've seen the conviction in his eyes. And I know what he can achieve – what he's already achieved, and what still has to be done. We were part of that evacuation effort, and I know what it feels like to be a tiny piece in a much bigger machine. A machine that works, and must keep on working. Trelusker's essential to that. We need that grease. Take him down, and the machine falters. That can't happen.'

  He stared at me disbelievingly, hearing the words but not ready to accept their message.

  'But the crimes …'

  'The crimes happened. Justice ought to be served, I agree. But not now. Expose Trelusker, and you'll both have blood on your hands. Him from his crimes, you from the millions of lives that won't be saved when this whole evacuation effort falls apart. Do you really want that?' I waggled the pistol in his direction, just in case he had forgotten I still had it. 'I keep my bargains. You're coming back with us. But the data isn't.'

  'I could give it to you …' he began, his face brightening as he snatched at this one last idea. 'For safekeeping.'

  'No,' I said firmly. 'Not because I don't trust you, but because I don't trust myself. There's too much at stake, and the temptation to make money from that information might be too much for me. So it stays here.'

  'You can't let Trelusker get away with what he did …'

  'I can. If he ends up dying peacefully in his bed, years from now, the great work of the evacuation still running smoothly … that's how it has to be.'

  'Captain!' called Drago, above the rising whine of the engines. 'We have to leave now. You're about one minute away from a mutiny.'

  I put a boot onto the boarding ramp, then a second. 'You heard what the man said, Boscile. I've given you the option. I've been more than fair about it.'

  Drago touched a control near the hydraulic ram and the ramp began to whine its way back into the hull. Boscile stared at it, both of his feet still on the landing deck. I reached up. As the ramp angled back into the ship, I was able to place a steadying hand on the hull plating. It was still warm from when we had come in.

  Boscile sprang forward. He got a foot onto the ramp, then a hand, and began to haul himself onto the elevating surface. I slipped Maisha's pistol into my belt, leaned down and pulled him to safety. We sto
od there, him on the end of the ramp, me facing, my hands clenching the black fabric of his suit.

  I reached into the pocket and took out the sliver. He watched me do it, his eyes tracking my fingers as they closed around the rectangle. It was both heavier and thicker than I had thought. Never mind Maisha's pistol: this was what it really felt like to have power in my hands.

  I thought of all the worlds, the numberless women and men, all the future lives that depended on this moment, this instant. There were threads binding me to the future, tight as the strings on a musical instrument, converging on a hard tangled knot somewhere behind my ribcage. I was just a small woman with a damaged ship, but just for a second or two I doubted that anyone else in the galaxy held the power that I did.

  I won't lie.

  It was a fine feeling.

  I opened my fingers, allowed the sliver to fall. It bounced off the edge of the ramp, then fell toward the landing deck below. Before it hit, the wash from the engines caught it and sent it scurrying away from the ship.

  'You're not the Captain I thought you were,' Boscile said, something in him at last letting go.

  'Better, or worse?'

  'I'm not sure.'

  He flinched out of my grip and dropped from the ramp. By then we were already some way up. He landed, his legs buckling under him in a manner that legs were never meant to buckle. If there was a scream, I did not hear it over the rising whine of the engines or the increasing separation between us.

  The boarding ramp was still closing into the belly. Through a narrowing gap I watched Boscile try to move himself. He couldn't get up. He leaned forward, planting one hand on the ground, reaching out with the other, his fingers grasping wide. On the edge of the landing deck, caught in an eddy, the sliver seemed to float as if luring him closer.

  The ramp sealed itself.

  I waited for a breath or two, then went forward to talk to Drago about exit vectors.

  LITTLE BOTS

  ★

  by ROB ZIEGLER