The Syracuse Deception

by T. S. Williams

  The Syracuse Deception

  by

  T.S. Williams

  Chapter 1

  Adrenalin burned in her blood, filling her mind with imagined screams and gunfire. She knew it was just a figment, the ancient human tendency to fill in the gaps. The ship had lost power then decompressed in short order. No sounds could carry to her ears. The ship’s gravity dissipated with the air. She rushed through the maintenance passageway hand over hand, pulling herself towards her target.

  She reached a junction and turned right. The passageways ran through the ship for repair bots to carry out their work unobtrusively. Now she was using them to avoid contact with whoever had wrecked her ride, at least until she made a discrete call for backup.

  She had switched her retinas to infra-red. The ship’s power had failed completely, even the emergency battery system. The massive system failure had caused numerous casualties and few were awake when it struck. Decompression had killed them before they could suit up or climb in rescue balls.

  She had tagged a few of the repair bots with nano-scouts, which then deployed them across the ship for her. However, her own paranoia led her to sleep in her combat suit.

  The thin matte black material covered her from head to foot. It’s internal air supply had saved her life. She had awoken from her protected slumber to face a slower peril.

  She was left with little choice but to get to her cargo and release a jump drone, like a message in a bottle, to carry a cry for help and hope they arrived before she ran out of munitions.

  By her own chronometer, she’d slept barely 4 hours. A warning chirped in the back of her mind, the ship’s net had rebooted and was transmitting a simple text message on repeat. All crew and passengers were required to surrender. Good treatment was promised. To and by whom was not mentioned. She knew a lie, when she read it.

  Before leaving her cabin, she’d added an armour layer to her suit, a bandoleer of smart missiles and a small but lethal single stage coil pistol. It’s mass reassuringly cradled in her left hand whilst her right remained free to force open hatches.

  She checked the map and directions displayed in her mind’s eye. The Spirit of Free Enterprise was a clipper, build for speed and small high value time critical cargo. Spirit was 220 metres long and built light for acceleration. Passenger quarters and crew working spaces were located in the middle. A 20 metre diameter domed shield marked the bow. Behind that, were fuel tanks, then a cargo space, a small craft hangar, the life support section and finally at the stern, the drive section.

  This ship and crew had worked for others in her line of work. Tell-tales left from past Laurentian Intelligence officers were scattered about the ship. Spirit came well recommended, efficient and not remotely curious, if expensive.

  As she moved forward, her mind’s eye reviewed data from the ship’s logs prior to jump. The last 30 seconds of recorded log explained where they were. Coppinger’s Graveyard. It was a mystery like no other in known space. A gas giant had been blown apart, flinging its constituents out far beyond where any balance between gas pressure and gravitational pull could explain it. Theories explaining the huge cloud filled with mountain sized rocks orbiting a tiny remnant of a planetary core were common place. Every astronomer and astrophysicist in known space got hooked on the mystery at some point. For the crew of starships, it represented a nest of jump points hidden within a gas cloud. Smugglers and intelligence agencies loved the privacy. Tourists loved the spectacle. Militaries hated it. Rescues or combat are hard enough without the added difficulty of.

  Fuzzy jump points came and went within the nebula. Normal jump points were stable for at least decades, some millennia. But here, fragments of the planetary core and moons were constantly moving relative to each other, so the jump points waxed and waned in turn.

  Spirit’s pilot had plotted a jump homeward towards the treaty port of Hyperion Station, just as she’d expected. Spirit had completed an alignment burn and run in at a half gravity. Before Spirit could cross the jump point threshold, her cow catcher grid had glimpsed a coffin sized object on approach within a quarter second of interception, then every circuit breaker in the ship had tripped. The last time stamp in Spirit’s log was 2 seconds after her own monitoring program had awoken her.

  The desperate scramble along the maintenance passageway ended near the small craft hangar. She had to cross that in the open, before more passage ways could take her through to the cargo hold.

  She reached across her chest and plucked a smart missile from her bandoleer. Her right palm lined up over the data port and she linked into the simple control system. She had no idea what had happened to the ship, but didn’t believe for an instant it was an accident. She dared not let a single transmission stray. Everyone brought up since the invention of radio could understand the mantra “Careless emission costs the mission”. She set the device to perform a slow stealthy recon flight around the hangar deck and return to her. If attacked it should break emission silence and send a status report back in a wide broadcast.

  Waiting a few minutes for it to return seemed like an aeon. The seconds stretched and twisted in her mind, each longer than the next. The chronometer in the lower left corner of her mind’s eye barely seemed to move at all.

  The little missile faithfully returned, though this deep in to the fight or flight mentality she nearly shot it. The hangar bay was decompressed and empty apart from Spirit’s two small craft and a now thoroughly tangled repair bot. All 8 of the bot’s electro active limbs had wrapped around themselves and the bot’s last anchor point and locked solid.

  She wasted no time, pushing straight off the life support cabin bulkhead to the far side of the hangar. Her infrared vision shared an eerie vista of a familiar space.

  Her waking hours on Spirit had been filled with gentle background noise. The machinery placed throughout her pressure hull kept the crew breathing and in control of the ship. Vacuum blocked out all those sounds. Her own breathing was sensed through her skull more than heard. Floating across the hangar only increased her sense of isolation. It would be easy to lose mental focus, to panic, to curl up and wait to die. There were few times in her career when she felt so alone and so far from relief. That’s not what she’d do though. Better to go down fighting.

  Her drift across the hangar ended abruptly, the far wall approaching fast in the final moments. The opportunity to focus on her task dragged her back from the dark temptation to give up.

  She rolled and twisted in flight and touched down feet first, looking like a high diver. The zero g combat app running in her mind’s eye moved her body, let her touch down the cargo bay bulkhead as gently as a butterfly. Her mind remained focused on the external universe. The soles of her feet turned adhesive as her combat suit responded to orders from her mind’s eye. She scanned around the hangar again checking for threats. There was nothing to worry her. Yet.

  Vacuum was good for one thing. It concealed the force she used to get through the powered down hatch between the hangar and the cargo bay. Slipping the magnetic locking bolts was slow but simple. She popped open some maintenance covers on the hatch. Then run a current into the electromagnets that moved the locking bars securing the assembly. She set her smart missile on over watch, keeping her safe whilst she went to work. Forcing the hatch was a nano-boosted bastard.

  All the strength her exquisitely upgraded muscular-skeletal system barely sufficed. Her mind’s eye overrode the safety limits on her combat suit. Her power pack’s watt counter spiked and set alarm flashes across her vision. The hatch slid grudgingly at first, building momentum, finally she had to fight to stop it opening too far. She swung herself through and slid it shut behind her with much less drama.

  The cargo bay loo
ked like the town drunk had tried to finish 3d puzzle missing a quarter of the pieces. As she moved towards her goal, she left behind smart missiles like lethal bread crumbs. Eventually someone would sweep through here. The ship might have value, but the only reason to go to the effort of intercepting it was the contents of the cargo bay. A few factions amongst the human nations would also consider her capture worth it. Her main cache of supplies and equipment was secured near the bow against the inner face of the hull by an emergency port.

  After a number of twisting turns negotiated as fast as she could swing herself, she reached her main cache. She had a number of other containers placed through the cargo bay. They were there to draw attention and secure less important equipment. Her cache had a far loftier purpose, though it looked no differed from the hundreds of containers and pallets making up her surroundings.

  Her enhanced retinas and her combat suit sensors registered a much higher surface temperature than the ambient, particularly obvious whilst the ship remained shut down. The bulk of her cache was taken up by the innocuous containment system. Her right hand touched the surface and received an update on the cargo’s condition. The prize inside seemed more rebellious than previous retrievals. The container was running at 90% capacity, constantly fending off physical and digital intrusions and putting out heat like a small sun.

  Ancient tech long abandoned had awoken and was testing its strength against some of the most sophisticated digital and nano-tech available to her own civilisation. The artefact had become very hostile since retrieval. So far it was contained. If it broke free near a large population the resulting nano plague could plunge that unlucky nation into a new dark age. If the nation in question had even the simplest digital technology base, the artefact’s malign influence could extend much further.

  The container system included a single use electromagnetic pulse generator. If the container’s governor decided the container was pushed to the limit, it would activate, wrecking both the artefact and the container. Then a secondary shaped explosive charge would dump the whole ruined assembly out through the emergency port. It was designed to allow a low risk transportation option. Disarming artefacts in situ was rarely an option. Smash and grab operations were a far more common.

  This was her tenth solo retrieval and each prior had gone as planned. The artefacts were identified and smuggled back across human space to the Laurentian Kingdom then handed off to another insular section of government.

  There were hundreds of Laurentians like her across human space and even a very few beyond. They spent their mandated service hunting the ancient and malevolent technology of previous civilisations. Most completed their mandated ten decades of service and joined the Centuriate. A few went missing and were never found. It was an almost an insignificant number failed outright. They usually died, messily and mercifully fast. The very unlucky amongst them were subverted by the very artefacts they were supposed to collect. Hunting the Blighted was the most demanding and vital assignment her profession could draw. The Blight and it’s corrupted victims were a threat, not just for her own nation, but across the human sphere.

  She dragged her focus kicking and screaming back to the matter at hand. Failure was not an option. She moved around to the far side of her embattled cache. Separately secured to the inner hull, Her mission pod remained sealed and secure, just as she had left it. There were no physical or digital tell-tales flagged, indicating no attempts at unauthorised access had been made. Reluctantly she holstered her pistol. The emotional security it represented to her animal brain, far outweighing it’s continued use. It was time for heavier equipment.

  Only her thoughts linked from her mind’s eye to the pod’s computer array would allow access. She pressed her hand into a small and insignificant indentation. The contact allowed direct communication via cellular implants, present throughout her body and brain. Options for the pod appeared in her mind’s eye. She threw away her now empty bandoleer with her free hand, then pressed it and her feet against the pod.

  Material flowed from the pod, up her limbs and over the top of her combat suit, intermingling, then reinforcing it. Her armour layer quickly thickened, bringing both greater strength and protection. A heavy heat sink was added, then an extra power pack. A smart missile launcher emerged from the pod from on a pseudo limb and integrated with her upgraded combat suit, attaching to her back, but still allowing her to flex.

  Her hands released from the pod, but her feet stayed attached. The physical link thinned back, no longer passing material, simply providing convenience in zero g. A silver metallic tube two fingers wide and as long as her forearm was extruded lengthways next. She grasped it lightly and tested it. She willed the form to change. The cylinder remained, but the outward facing end extruded a slim blade radiating a harsh green light. The cargo bay around her was bathed with light for the first time since she had entered. It disappeared as quickly as it formed.

  She pressed the weapon to her hip and the combat suit held it in place. If she stopped to think about it, her psy-blade always raised mixed emotions. She was proud of it and had worked so hard to earn it. But it marked her. Amongst her own society, many viewed her with suspicion. In the larger human sphere beyond, it could produce instant enmity. People sharing her gifts had caused a lot of pain and suffering. Unless she knew she was going to fight, she preferred to keep it out of the public eye.

  She retrieved her pistol from the pod’s grip and placed in her other hip.

  She gave three last instructions to the pod. Two items emerged. The largest was cold gas manoeuvre pack, which oriented itself to her and attached to her back over her missile launcher without obscuring it’s launch ports. The smaller pack was oblong, about the length of her arm and wider at one end. She placed her hand on the surface of the oblong, fingers lining up with small indentations one third of the length of the object down from the wider end. The oblong remoulded itself, letting her hand grip it pistol fashion. At the narrow end, material parted and revealed a barrel.

  The coil rifle rested naturally in her one handed grip. Her mind’s eye linked with the electronics in the weapon. To fire and be guaranteed a hit all she needed to do was point it in the rough area of her target and let the field guides in the barrel do the rest. In atmosphere, at full power, the sound of the shots leaving the gun could betray her over a huge distance. In vacuum she was free to use the weapon’s capabilities to the maximum, without giving herself away.

  A small counter started running down in the top right of her vision. Her small network of smart missiles alerted her to a presence entering the cargo bay. The hatch she used had been forced open again. This time it did not close.

  A streak of dark grey entered the cargo bay. The streaks changed direction and speed spreading out in a credible search pattern, glows from onboard thrusters winking in and out under acceleration, then fading as they cruised along a new vector. Her hunters were near and well equipped with recon probes. Her other pods lit up, sending out thermal energy designed to hide the real treasure.

  Fight or flight, what would buy the most time? Her mind raced trying desperately to make up for information denied her by the sudden change in her circumstances. The counter in her vision continued ever down.

  She designated a fire pattern and passed it to her smart missile launcher, each of the new probes became a target for two of her electronic minions. They raced forth. The probes engaged in a hunt for biological characteristics, like her own, failed to notice the technological threat and were destroyed before registering they were under attack.

  With little choice, she broke emission silence, using her mind’s eye to wake a decoy container near the cargo hatch. An automated heavy coil gun deployed from within to cover the hatch opening, sensors active. A smart missile magazine in another pod released a cloud of its contents, straight for the hangar hatch.

  The counter in her vision reached zero. The emergency port near the cache popped open. Explosive bolts and a small charge releasing the cove
r and pushing it away from the hull. Her armoury pod spat out a large matte black object about two metres long. It vanished out through the now open port and disappeared from her view. Background light from the accretion disk flooded in, weak compared to a sun, but strong compared to the near dark of the cargo hold.

  With her message drone away, there was some hope of receiving help. Her armoury pod confirmed it had made it to the decaying jump point and disappeared into infinity. Now she had to hope it came back with friends.

  The smart missiles released from a decoy cache ended their flight telemetry. The final report from control cache noted eight humanoid objects radiating heat and moving independently had been intercepted by smart missiles. The resultant mayhem spread rapidly freezing gore across the surroundings.

  She considered holding her position and defending her cache, but decided against it. The hangar hatch created a handy choke point, although the emergency port now offered a back door. She might be able to cover both at once, but it left her reacting to the opposition and her smart missile supply was limited. Eventually they would succeed, quite possibly before her call for help was heeded. Now they knew they had a live enemy trying to prevent their acquisition, they would take more care. Better she hunt her prey than try for a glorious last stand.

  The cargo bay had four emergency ports, located equidistant around the hull. She picked one quarter of the way round and the hull and headed straight for it. The artefact and container were far too big to bring with her, she would hope to take the fight to whoever had attacked Spirit and in her efforts, deny them the artefact. And live. A small distant consideration in the grand scale, but vital to her.

  She sent forth another smart missile, in scout mode and directed straight out the hull. If she wanted to free jump, she needed to know what she was up against. Then it was time to move.

  She pulled arm over arm around the inner hull, clinging to the surface like a gecko. She was intent on her target, only pausing when a radio broadcast of considerable strength was pinged up by the electronic warfare software in her combat suit.