Jones smiled “Yes. That’s gonna be fun flying”.
Everyone else seemed caught in a sigh.
Chapter 17
The arrival in the Formic System was unremarkable. The CIC crews on the Dreadnought and Frankenstein breathed a sigh of relief as they jumped in above a super Jovian gas giant, Vespin. The blue-silver atmosphere looked like living marble below them.
Athena was on the command level in a supernumerary seat. Magnus sat in the command chair to her left. Her psi-talents were still useless on him, but her eyes told her all she needed to know. He’d swapped one kind of threat, existential, for another, bureaucratic.
He sat is his chair and forced a smile, while Heisenberg, Bainham and Jones cheered. It didn’t quite reach his eyes. Athena, almost took pity on him then and there.
She knew the Spectrum’s leadership on Cloud base would support his actions, out of naked self-interest. They wanted future Fleet Officers weren’t to terrified to answer calls to aid other operations. That meant senior people from some of the Kingdom’s biggest bureaucracies were squarely in Magnus’ corner. He’d likely get a medal or a Baronetcy. Maybe an early release from service and entry to the Centuriate.
A mild pang of jealousy kept her from relieving Magnus of his burden of worry. She’d been a good little ‘soldier’ and would receive no recognition. Despite the risk to her life, her health, her bodily integrity. She knew it was a little unworthy. Magnus and his crew had taken their own risks, but only for a few days.
Finally, the inevitable happened. Heisenberg at the sensors post had finished patting herself on the back to report the obvious “Skipper, no sign of any base on sensors”.
Athena kept the mild contempt from her voice “I should hope so too”.
Magnus turned to her, his face blank, his voice dull “Care to knock on the door for us”.
She accessed a file buried deep in her mind’s eye, linked to Dreadnought’s tactical section and executed it. The spinal launcher loaded itself and fired in the blink of an eye. A smart missile shot away into Vespin’s atmosphere. Bainham looked surprised to see the systems he was in charge of take on a life of their own.
Magnus continued looking at her, mild exasperation clouding over his face.
Athena smiled. “You’ll get a response the same way. The atmosphere blocks sensors and communications. Kind of the point really. I suggest you drop into low orbit and wait”.
She stood up and strolled languidly out of CIC, throwing over her shoulder “I’m off to get some lunch”.
The ship had been rigged for stealth and dropped into a low orbit. No answer had arrived yet. No point in missing a meal or sleep. Bureaucracy keeps its own time and riding a smart missile up from orbit could take hours. The CIC crew changed over at the end of a watch, so Magnus headed down to the mess.
He ran an order for chicken curry through his mind’s eye to the food extruder, then settled at a table to await his order. In a lovely example of complicated but unconscious choices, the mess room had divided itself in two. At one end, sat those crew members who enjoyed spicier, more aromatic foods, sat. The other end became the home of those who preferred the opposite. Following military habit going back to time immemorial, if it was done twice, it was a tradition. A pair large of digital signs had appeared on the display wall “This end is spicy” and “This end is mild” corresponding roughly to the seating arrangements.
Magnus wasn’t sure if it was good the crew were taking ownership of their vessel or bad that food appeared to have divided them.
His mind’s eye chimed with a message telling him his dinner was ready, he collected it and resumed his seat. As he did so, Jack Armstrong and Greg Jones ambled up with their own orders, trying to deduce whether he wanted company at the table. Custom had it that Commanders could turn away guests, but if he’d wanted to eat alone he could take dinner in his day cabin. Magnus smiled and nodded his agreement to company. Being left alone with his own thoughts did not appeal right now.
He looked over at Armstrong “Managing to stay out of trouble?”.
Armstrong assumed the official blank faced stare assigned all Corporals for dealing with Officers. “Don’t know what you mean Skipper”.
Magnus decided to have some fun, his voice equally flat “Oh, rumour had it, you had found the time for sparring sessions with the enigmatic Agent Athena”. He’d heard no such thing, but the slight blush that built up on Armstrong’s cheeks told him the fish had bitten.
Armstrong, his voice still flat, replied “Train hard, fight easy Skipper”.
Jones chose to stir the pot “Is that why you cancelled sparring with me yesterday?”
Armstrong, started to sound more sheepish now “She’s a lot prettier than you are, Greg”.
Jones wasn’t quite prepared to leave it there “And looking for someone to help her unwind no doubt. Be careful, that one is a praying mantis”.
“Hmm! More like preying, not praying. Don’t let me find your chewed corpse lying round the gym”, Magnus smirked.
The companionable chat continued until he’d just finished his meal. He heard the tell-tale chime in his mind’s eye. Able Telemetrist Kelly Devon had messaged him “Skipper to attend Briefing room. We’ve had a reply by signal rocket”.
At the same time, Greg Jones received a similar message, the same way.
They made their apologies and left Armstrong to enjoy a desert.
After a short walk, up three decks, they entered the briefing room to find Athena sitting down alone with a flying course and transponder instructions displayed above by a holo-projector table.
She didn’t bother looking away from her work “I assume you can fly that.”.
Jones had decided if he couldn’t enjoy desert calories, he’d try sarcasm which he found nearly as delicious “Yes, your succinct and disengaging briefing has matched my learning style”. He paused “Can I go now?”.
Magnus decided not to nurture his own of desert deprivation grievance “Ah. Agent Athena, so why have you called us here at short notice?”.
She finally looked up “Because I have just finished configuring your transponder to kick out a specific identification on a sub channel as we get enter Vespin’s atmosphere and you have about ten minutes to start our descent or we have to do another orbit”. Her nerves were somewhat fraying now the end of her mission really was insight. She tried punching someone, she’d tried fucking the same person and neither had quite provided the outlet she needed.
Magnus faced Jones and spoke, the exasperation hovering unspoken on his lips “Right, Greg, send that flying course to CIC, then go take the Flight post. I’ll be up in a minute”.
Jones turned and left, fast with a quick “Aye Skipper” thrown over his shoulder.
Magnus turned back to Athena, his voice started out sympathetic “Listen to me. I shall say this once only. I get that you’ve had a rough few months and can’t wait for this to end. I get you don’t particularly like me and that’s a shame because I risked my life and career for you, so a little civility would be the least you could manage”, he paused.
The cold, laser sharp anger bled into his voice when he started again “But your behaviour is getting out of control and the mission isn’t over. When it is, you can annoy or fuck or both whomever you please. When it’s done, not before”.
He turned and left for CIC, leaving the shaken figure of Athena behind. Her cheeks blushed from some mix of anger and embarrassment. In the end, she scolded herself for her lack of professionalism. She knew she badly needed a break. She also knew she should have hung on for just a day or two more. Apparently, a different kind of bollocking was what she’d needed.
In Frankenstein’s CIC, Cartwright was sitting in the command chair. Whilst she was still settling in it, the feeling had become at least a little natural. Until now. Flying a Starship into a gas giant was new even for her. It implied someone had managed to hide a station down there. Impossible to find unless you knew where to look.
&n
bsp; She messed around with the odd remote sampling mission, but whole starships were definitely ‘an opportunity to excel’. She’d been lent Dreadnought’s Junior Pilot, Peter Anthony, back in the Socotra system. Now she wondered if she should have pushed for a more experienced crew. The Frankenstein was a tough old bird, but terms like crush depth and thermocline layers were not standard worries for any Pilot.
Vespin’s atmosphere was far thicker and the gravity gradient was steeper than Coppinger’s Graveyard. There, Dreadnought’s short flight to had barely taxed her systems. Now, they were swooping down into a veritable swamp. The sensor techs on both ships had set up a data link, each could share what they saw. The square root of sod all. Worse, the most useful sensor system that might have been able to penetrate the soup, Dreadnought’s sensitive tail, couldn’t take the atmospheric friction, so had been wound in.
She watched Dreadnought move ahead on the tactical display until Frankenstein could only just keep in communication. Her grandfather contacted her by mind’s eye “Crazy place to hide the family silver”, he sounded flat and unemotional as an actual ghost in a machine. Real life suited him better. It probably suited everyone better.
Anthony seemed to be in direct contact with Jones onboard Dreadnought, he kept calling out course corrections or acknowledging orders, like he was concentrating so hard he’d forgotten not to speak out loud while using his mind’s eye.
The mood was equally tense with other members of Frankenstein’s CIC. Chief AstroTech Wallis Barnes was sweating away at what she still considered her own territory, the engineering post. It was like coming home to find one of your friends wearing your favourite pajamas. And sweating a lot.
After a few minutes, travelling through wisps of gas, Anthony managed a gentle and well controlled entry into the upper atmosphere. Frankenstein barely even shook. Fred took the moment to throw out a grumpy comment to her by mind’s eye “Careful with my hull. I don’t know when I’ll get the mass for a new one”.
Cartwright didn’t bother to reply. She didn’t know if he meant that message for her to pass on, or just his way of grumbling.
She looked over Barnes’ work as they descended. He was doing a nice job of tuning Frankenstein’s drive field to cope with the atmosphere and greater gravity. Cartwright would have to see him sited for his expertise, assuming they weren’t all sent into exile after this little mission.
Moments like this, she found, were the most frustrating part. As a Chief Engineer, she would have had work to do at times like this. Now she envied Barnes. Apart from him having every appearance of all over body hair. Not that. Now, like Magnus, she had to sit back, monitor and hope it didn’t all go wrong. Her recent experiences helped her realise the effort to maintain a leader’s calm façade.
Just as her navel gazing had begun to really distract her, CIC’s display lit up with indications of their impending arrival. Anonymous guidance signals directed Dreadnought and Frankenstein on to an approach vector. As the ships advanced, Cartwright kept expecting to see their destination appear on Frankenstein’s sensors, but frustratingly it didn’t.
Able Bombardier Derrick Baselgette was managing both the tactical and sensors post. He spoke to her “Ma’am, we’re receiving a voice transmission”. Cartwright pulled her eyes from the gigantic flying miracle before her. “Put it through” she acknowledged.
On the main screen, a male head and shoulders appeared. He had short cropped hair and a neat, thin moustache. His name flash said Camperdown and his collar insignia and epaulettes indicated a rank of Counter-Admiral in High Guard Fleet Intelligence.
“Dreadnought, Frankenstein, welcome to Cloud base. Activate your ships’ auto landers and prepare for docking”. He disappeared again to be replaced by an image of their destination.
Cartwright watched in astonishment as the CIC display updated to show an immense ellipsoidal dome hung before the two ships. Cartwright couldn’t help but imagine it was the cap of some giant’s toadstool. Cloud base, home of Agent Athena and Operation Spectrum. The scale indicated it was nearly two hundred kilometres across and ten deep. Small lights twinkled across the surface. It was larger than White Spire City back on Avalon, though the surface appeared to be constructed of the same programmable white pseudo-marble. Cartwright’s jaw dropped. Truly, she was seeing a great engineering marvel.
Chapter 18
Cartwright’s astonishment increased as she watched Dreadnought draw inside a huge air lock through Cloud base’s outer wall. Given the constant four Terran gravities pull of Vespin’s mass and Cloud base’s five hundred kilometres an hour progress through the sky, not even Greg Jones could have flown that manoeuvre.
Frankenstein was up next. Peter Anthony had coped admirably with the flight down to Cloud base, but the last procedure was a real test of nerves. He had to slide seven mega-tonnes of starship gently into Cloud base’s magnetic catcher field, cut the drive before it did any damage and hope.
Cartwright watched him like a hawk, knowing the greatest risk on the whole flight came now. Anthony tucked the Frankenstein neatly into the approach, then rather than cut the drive, first sent a request for the engineering post to change the hull shape. Normally Laurentian starships had an elongated teardrop hull form with various wing shaped outcroppings for heat radiation, sensors and weapons to name but a few. The hull generated no lift, relying wholly on her drives for altitude control.
The hull rippled and changed, the upper surface inflating and increasing its curve and the lower surface flatten shrinking its curve. Just as the drive fields cut out, there was a sickening feeling as her stomach tried to leap out her throat. The hoped for aerodynamic lift suddenly kicked in, buying Traffic Control a few more seconds for their mag catcher to lock on to the Frankenstein, before she plunged down into the gas giant’s hidden depths.
The main screen flashed up a priority message, “Traffic Control confirms catch is made”. The CIC crew let out a sigh of relief in perfect unison. She saw Anthony sit back and take his hands off the controls. Frankenstein followed the Dreadnought deeper inside Cloud base.
In Dreadnought’s CIC, Magnus had half expected to be ordered into his own quarters under confinement. Instead, he was to transmit the ship’s log straight over to the Cloud base, then present himself to Counter-Admiral Camperdown at his earliest convenience. Meaning pretty damn quick.
Magnus made his way through Dreadnought’s corridors and stairways to the personnel airlock, barely noticing that a slightly sheepish Athena had fallen in next to him.
He flicked his eyes over to her, unable to quite control his hostility “Come to watch my downfall”.
She sighed. “No”. She paused clearly partaking in some internal argument. Magnus wasn’t sure he cared just now.
After a brief but awkward interval, she spoke again “I know what will be said. Same as I say. Your intervention saved my life and prevented critical intel falling into hostile hands”.
Once she started, she couldn’t seem to stop “I don’t have to like you to know to be glad for what you did. They won’t throw you to the wolves. The intelligence community can’t afford for you to be punished”.
He caught on, finally a sense of relief flooding through him “Because you may need Fleet Officers in the future to make the same choice again?” mostly to himself.
He added thoughtfully “If I get exiled or cashiered, they might not take the risk”.
She smiled, the first genuine one he had seen her offer “Precisely, Commander”.
A tinge of sarcasm entered her voice, “Now come along, can’t keep your admiring fans are waiting”.
They crossed a docking airway from Dreadnought to Cloud base in comfortable silence. Magnus spent the brief walk staring. The airway was transparent apart from the decking they walked on. It revealed Cloud base’s huge vaulted space dock. Tor Station’s fleet could have hidden inside Cloud base, though the space docks seemed empty at the moment.
Magnus’ heart pounded. A veritable city hung here
in Vespin’s cloying atmosphere. Unknown to the universe beyond. A wonder seen by so few.
He was almost pushed through into Cloud base proper by Athena, so captivated was he. Megastructures were a rarity even in this age of wonders.
The first thing Magnus saw was an impressive looking scanner station. Athena stepped through confidently, he followed. Nothing happened until he reached the other side. In the large lounge beyond he found an eight-strong security team in full body armour, gauss rifles cradled in their arms, shoulder launchers in firing position. All apart from one, who stepped forward towards Magnus’ on his left side. He held out his hand in front of him authoritatively and spoke the same way “Commander, I must relieve you of all weaponry”.
Magnus reached for his psy-blade, the only weapon he carried, but Athena rolled her eyes, “No. You don’t. Toddle off back to your guard post. If you bother anyone else, I’ll shove that rifle up your arse”.
She pushed Magnus forward “We’re off”. They walked to the end of the lounge, where a number of lift doors were set in the wall. A door slid open, they stepped inside and noticed that Cartwright had stepped in behind.
Cartwright smiled a greeting “I’m glad to catch you both. I thought I might get lost in this maze”.
Magnus returned the smile “Who’s minding the store if we’re both here?”.
Cartwright replied “Heisenberg is overseeing both ships being secured for dock, I was ordered to report aboard with you”.
Athena interjected “I know you two have a little secret. Normally neither I, nor anyone here would care. Don’t leave it out in the debrief. That’s my advice”.
Magnus and Cartwright both looked sheepish.
Athena continued “Your Granddad's memories, they’ve made a very capable ship AI”.
Cartwright and Magnus both made to speak, but Athena continued over them “This whole place is off grid ok. The rules here are much more”, she paused searching for the right word “flexible. He shouldn’t work at all. The reasons he does needs exploring, not deleting”.
The Syracuse Deception Page 13