by Alex Lamb
‘Galatean agents!’ the Earthers boomed over the Truce Channel. ‘You are hereby claimed as prisoners of war for the Kingdom of Man. Reveal yourselves immediately! Any attempt at violence will be met with force.’
There was nothing but silence from the hole. Ira felt a surge of pride. His crew weren’t the surrendering kind.
When the silence started to drag, the Earthers tried a slightly softer approach.
‘This site has been deemed a scientific resource of the Reconsiderist subsect. You are trespassing. However, surrender now and you will be not be harmed. The captain is prepared to offer full sanctuary terms in return for strategic information.’
Ira didn’t doubt that the Earther captain had plenty of questions, like: What the hell is this place? for a start.
There was still no reply from the hole. The Earther drones started moving. Several of them docked like lampreys onto the shuttle. Another, bristling with weapons, nudged towards the hole. Behind them, the gunship inched closer.
‘We have line-of-sight,’ John said triumphantly.
‘Hugo, fire!’ Ira ordered.
There was a grunt of surprise from Hugo’s bunk as the suntap snapped on. For a second, all the Ariel’s exterior sensors wobbled. A deafening squawk drowned out the comms bands. Then the beam was gone.
John was the first to get his console back in shape. ‘Earther broadcast channel is dead,’ he said. ‘Their drone control appears to be down.’
‘No signs of retaliation,’ Amy reported. ‘Scanning their ship for damage.’
It sounded like a direct hit but Ira wasn’t taking any chances. ‘Hugo, give them another shot.’
‘I can’t!’ Hugo whined. ‘The circuits are all burned out – the weapon used a lot more power than I thought it would.’
Great, thought Ira. Now we’re sitting ducks again.
Aloud, he said, ‘John, ready torpedoes.’
‘Ira, I’m not sure we need to,’ said Amy. ‘Earther defences are in passive rundown. They’re drifting and they have a hull-scorch like nothing I’ve ever seen. I think we got them.’
Ira blinked. Could they really be dead already, from just one shot?
‘I’ve cracked their level two,’ said John. ‘Want to take a look?’
‘Go ahead,’ said Ira, but no pictures appeared in his visor.
‘Huh!’ John grunted. ‘None of their internal cameras are responding. No, wait – here’s one.’
A window popped up at last. The view it showed was startling. Charred bodies floated in a sea of black dust. Everything inside was ruined. Every single buffer on the ship must have burned out as if it wasn’t there. Hugo made a strangled sound.
Ira immediately thought of Will and Rachel. They were outside. And they hadn’t been far away from that monster beam.
‘Rachel!’ Ira shouted into his mike. ‘Rachel, are you there?’
The reply was faint and crackly. ‘Here, Captain.’
‘Are you all right?’
‘We’re fine, Captain,’ said Rachel.
‘What happened to you?’
‘Will and I retreated into the tunnel system,’ she said. ‘Will was watching through the waldobot when there was this flash and all the Earther drones went dead. Was that Hugo’s work?’
‘It was indeed,’ said Ira jubilantly. He found himself breaking into a massive grin. ‘Any damage?’ he asked. ‘What do your Geigers show?’
‘We’re fine, Captain. Will’s got a headache from being in the waldobot’s mind when the flash came, but he’ll live.’
Ira laughed in relief. ‘Thank Gal!’
‘We should be back aboard the Ariel within the hour,’ said Rachel.
‘That’s excellent. Really excellent.’
Ira turned off the channel and leaned out of his bunk. ‘Hugo, that was great! Well done!’
But Hugo didn’t reply. Ira checked his bunk camera and found the scientist white and shaking.
‘Hugo, what’s wrong?’ he said.
‘I don’t think he’s ever killed anyone before,’ said John.
Ira blinked. He should have guessed. His heart sank. Hugo was almost certainly in shock. As if the man hadn’t been fragile enough already.
‘I’m sorry,’ Ira told the scientist gently, ‘but it was them or us and I’m glad it’s them. You did good, Hugo, even if it feels awful. You saved all our lives. You might even have saved the home world.’
He addressed the rest of the crew. ‘I want a full investigation of that ship, and I want a fuel-transfer conduit set up immediately. There could be others coming in any time. I don’t intend to be here when they arrive.’
Ira found it hard to suppress a mounting sense of delight. They were free of this awful place at last.
10.3: WILL
Ira didn’t look particularly impressed when Will returned to the ship with a hundred-ton piece of cargo but was clearly too preoccupied to complain.
‘Great, you’re back at last,’ he said as they emerged from the docking pod. ‘I need you both to work on the fuel transfer right away. John’s lined everything up for you – you’ll find the details in your data spaces.’
‘Captain,’ said Will, ‘I’d like to talk to you about what we found.’
‘Me, too,’ said Ira. ‘Once we have this situation under control. Getting us mobile comes first. There could be more Earthers out there.’ He turned back to John and Amy. ‘All right, have we come to any conclusions yet?’
Will fought down his frustration. Had he not made it clear what the nest archive was? It was the answer to the entire war. He glanced quickly at Rachel to share his displeasure. She gave him a knowing look. He’s the captain, her eyes said.
She was right, of course. Will slid into his bunk and plugged in. John’s work on the conduit was laid out before him but Will chose not to completely immerse. He kept his audio link to the cabin fully open. He wanted to hear what the captain was planning.
‘John and I have been looking over the charts,’ said Amy. ‘With what we can siphon from the Earthers, we should be able to get through the lobe and out past Zuni. The bad news is that we still don’t have enough to reach Li-Delamir. However, the good news is that John’s identified a system occupied by the Earthers with a strong resistance movement that could help us.’
‘Which one?’ said Ira.
‘New Angeles,’ John replied. ‘They’re well organised and have access to juice-factories. I know because I used them back when I did that project with Counter-Propaganda. We could arrive by stealth, link up with them and be on our way in no time.’
There was a pause.
‘Do you trust them?’ said Ira. He sounded unconvinced. ‘Remember, we’ve been burned by local resistance people before. I don’t like tangling with them unless it’s under orders.’
Then don’t, Will thought. Hadn’t Ira received Rachel’s report when they were freeing the archive? They already had an answer, if they could take the time to work it out. He was convinced now that this was what the Transcended intended for them, and that their solution was almost certain to be a better one than anything humans could devise.
‘What do the rest of you think?’ Ira asked.
That was enough. Will unplugged and drifted out of his bunk to join the conversation.
‘John has convinced me,’ said Amy. ‘These people sound pretty reliable.’
‘Hugo?’ said Ira.
Hugo hung near the top bunks with his arms folded, looking uncharacteristically pale. ‘I don’t know,’ he said.
‘Rachel?’
Rachel shrugged. ‘I don’t see that we’ve got much choice.’
Will winced. How could she not?
‘But I’d like to hear what Will says first,’ she said, glancing back at him. ‘I think he’s better placed than any of us to comment right now.’
Ira turned to face Will. The captain’s eyes had a kind of hungry, impatient look to them, as if he was about to demand to know why Will wasn’t still working on the ref
uelling. Well, fuck that.
‘I think we should stay,’ Will said before Ira could get a word in. ‘The answer to our problems is somewhere in that archive. I think we should be looking for it, not dashing out of here as fast as we can.’
Ira’s face darkened. ‘For how long?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Will. ‘Till we have answers.’
‘And if there are more Earther ships on the way?’
Will spoke as calmly as he could. ‘We give them the same treatment we gave that last one.’
Ira shook his head. ‘We can’t. That blast blew the circuits. Hugo says it’ll take two days to get the suntap running again and he’ll need to borrow more kit from the Ariel to do it.’
Will hadn’t known that. But then again, they didn’t need suntaps to rig an ambush. He opened his mouth to reply but Ira talked over him.
‘Not to mention the fact that there’s still a battle fleet waiting to turn our home into slag just a few light-years away from here. And now they know about us. We’ve found what we came for, Will – a working suntap and defences against it. But if we don’t get home soon, they won’t help anyone. Furthermore, I have no intention of being captured at the next place we refuel, and that means we need to leave in time to conceal our radiation trail. Which means now.’
Will frowned. Why was the captain talking to him like an idiot? Did he think Will was clueless about all this? It just wasn’t as simple as Ira was making out. Since the Transcended had involved themselves, it was a whole different ball game. They were talking about the future of the human race here.
And why had Ira even bothered to ask the others if his own mind was already made up? To give the impression of it being a group decision? What a joke.
Will tried to speak again, but Ira interrupted a second time.
‘Do you even know why you want to stay?’
‘To read the archive,’ Will said stubbornly.
‘You can do that on the way home,’ Ira countered.
‘No. It has to be done here.’
Ira raised an ironic eyebrow. ‘Why, Will?’
Will folded his arms. ‘I don’t know. They haven’t said. But what does that matter? We’re being given clues here!’
But the captain pressed harder. ‘Clues to what, Will? So far, your alien buddies have taken us a long way up shit creek, and this is the first paddle we’ve found. Do you know what compromised means?’
Will found something about Ira’s question chilling. ‘Yes,’ he admitted.
‘I have to consider the possibility that you’ve been lied to, Will,’ Ira told him. ‘That you’re being used. The truth is, we have no idea what we’re dealing with.’
‘Exactly!’ Will insisted. ‘And this could be our last opportunity to find out.’
Ira smiled humourlessly. ‘Now you’re sounding like Hugo.’
Hugo looked up in surprise and regarded Will suspiciously.
‘I’m sorry,’ Ira said, ‘but we can’t afford to pin our lives on your hunches. If the thing in your head wants to come clean and tell us why we should hang around, now’s the time for it to do so.’
Will scowled and willed the Transcended to offer him something. As usual, nothing happened. How could he explain? He turned to Rachel. If the captain wouldn’t listen to him, maybe he’d listen to her.
‘What do you think?’ he asked.
Rachel sighed and looked at him sadly. ‘I’m sorry, Will, but I think Ira’s right. The repairs are complete and we can’t afford to stay right now. If we can get ourselves out of this scrape, there’ll be nothing to stop us coming back here. Nothing you’ve told us about the Transcended suggests they’ve given us a deadline. Once home is safe, the pressure will be off.’
She glanced down, as if in shame. ‘Think of it this way,’ she offered. ‘You got the archive. If you’re right, it contains everything we need to beat off the new Earther fleet. What more can this place give us?’
The crew’s eyes were on him. Will felt Amy’s concern, Rachel’s regret and John’s urgent desire to leave, which was showing ever more obviously though his veneer of amusement. Will’s chest felt tight. They still didn’t trust him, or what he’d become.
‘Look,’ he said, ‘I know that none of you likes this situation. Nobody hates it more than me. And I know we’re dealing with a lot of unknowns. But if it wasn’t for the Transcended, we’d be dead already. They’re helping us for a reason. This is bigger than just us. This is about our species.’
‘Exactly,’ said Ira, ‘and that’s what concerns me. How much do the Transcended care about Galatea, Will? We’d all like to see humanity continue, but personally I’d prefer keep my home world, too. Have they made you any promises about that?’
Will winced. Of course they hadn’t.
‘That’s what I thought. Look. Don’t think I’m taking what you’ve discovered lightly – I’d be a fool to do that – but remember that we’re also trying to stay alive. And we understand that it’s frustrating for you. Someone’s dropping facts into your head and leaving it up to you to explain them to the rest of us. That must be maddening. Let alone the fact that you’re expected to take the weight of the entire human race on your shoulders without even understanding why.
‘So if you honestly think Galatea would be better served by me leaving you here with a shuttle so you can carry on with your research alone, we’ll do that. We have enough spare robots to make that possible. But the Ariel needs to get home right now, and you must ask yourself whether you’re still the roboteer on this ship – or not.’
Will’s mouth twisted in frustration. He could hardly save mankind hanging around in this system on his own. But if he went with them, he might still stand a chance. And more than anything else, he couldn’t bear to see Rachel looking at him that way.
‘Okay.’ He squeezed the word out from the pit of his stomach.
‘That’s what I like to hear,’ said Ira, gracing him with a smile as if it were some kind of reward. ‘Amy, plot us a course out. Will, how about finishing that fuelling?’
Will nodded and turned away. He found himself intensely disappointed with the captain. With all of them, in fact. But could he blame them? They were still themselves. They weren’t sharing their heads with the unknown.
And maybe Ira was right. What did he really know of the Transcended? Just because they’d led him down a few tunnels and shown him some memory fragments, what did that mean? If he were in the crew’s shoes, he’d probably want to leave, too.
Will told himself that, all things considered, they were doing the right thing. But no matter how hard he tried to convince himself, he couldn’t shake the feeling they were making a dangerous mistake.
11: SICKNESS
11.1: GUSTAV
Gustav stared intently at the progress monitors in the brown, padded docking pod as it crawled from the hub down to Tang’s habitat ring. He couldn’t wait to get aboard and check on the details of the search. It had been nearly two weeks. By now, messenger drones should have come in from gunships investigating some of the suspected fuelling stars.
Gustav tried to keep his contact with Konrad Tang to a minimum, but now he needed to know exactly what was going on. He didn’t trust the admiral not to have augmented the orders to the gunships with a few of his own, designed to speed up the attack on Galatea.
Then there were the protectorate governments – another headache. If the Gallies were foolish enough to head for one of the Kingdom star systems, he’d have even less control over what happened. All three colonies within the Gallies’ maximum predicted fuel-range were under the jurisdiction of other subsects. And all of them were hungry for chances to improve their own standing at the Prophet’s court at the cost of the Reconsiderists.
Gustav had given strict instructions for the Gallies to be well treated when and wherever they were caught, and for him to be informed as quickly as possible. However, most protectorates had a habit of interpreting such orders in their own ways. He could only hope
his security rating scared them enough to keep their noses out.
If it didn’t, Gustav’s career – and probably his life – was over. His one remaining chance of getting out of this mess was to be the man who saved the day. It was a role that everyone else was certain to try to take from him. But if he could stay on top of things, he’d at least get to keep his life. If he made it that far, he could work on extracting enough leverage from the debacle to convince the Prophet that the Relic was safe in Reconsiderist hands on a permanent basis.
Behind him, Rodriguez hummed a hymn. Gustav’s shoulders tightened. It was unfortunate that things had to happen this way. Tang would get to meet the disciple, which was something he’d hoped to avoid.
Thankfully, Rodriguez had been less of a pest of late, probably because he wanted to keep his lily-white robes clean of the whole affair. Then, when the time came, it’d be easier for him to stand aside and let the Kingdom’s wrath descend upon Gustav’s head. Gustav just hoped the disciple held on to that strategy once Tang was involved.
The docking-pod door slid open. The blunt, bricklike figure of Admiral Tang was standing in the drab corridor on the other side. He waited with his hands clasped behind his back.
‘General,’ Tang growled, with a barely adequate nod of respect. The fact that a Military Intelligence officer had been given authority over an admiral on what was essentially a fleet project had always been a sore point for Tang, and showing deference was a constant struggle. ‘Welcome back,’ he said, sounding even less convincing than usual.
‘Why, thank you, Admiral,’ said Gustav. ‘And may I introduce Disciple Rodriguez, my new assistant?’
Tang gave Rodriguez a perfunctory, stiff-bodied handshake and immediately returned his attention to Gustav.
‘I wish to register my disapproval of this search you have instructed me to conduct.’
Gustav hadn’t instructed Tang to be involved at all. He restrained himself from pointing that out. ‘Disapproval noted,’ he said. ‘I trust it has not prevented you from carrying out my orders swiftly.’
Tang’s face coloured. ‘No. The ships have been sent out as per your request.’