The Dark Defiance

by A. G. Claymore

  It was his unofficial nickname. He never seemed to miss a chance to remind others about his education. He managed to work it into every conversation, almost as if he were trying to convince himself that he was a valuable member of the crew. As the purchasing agent for Red Flag Minerals, he seemed to feel that he should be involved in any decision taking place within earshot.

  As far as Tommy was concerned, ‘Bernie Stanford – MBA’s’ job consisted of a few hours of negotiation followed by several months of shutting the hell up as they travelled home.

  “Mr. Stanford, we’ll be taking the lighter down to the surface in forty minutes.” It wasn’t quite an order to join them, but it wasn’t exactly an open consultation either. It was about as diplomatic as the captain could be when dealing with him. Bernie nodded gravely, the man of the moment.

  “Mr. Kennedy,” Harrison continued, grinning as both Tommy and his father, Liam, looked up. “We should take a strong security presence. No way of knowing what we’ll find down there.”

  Kale grunted, raising his eyebrows in agreement, as he re-doubled his efforts with the felt-tip pen.

  “Mr. Kennedy – the younger,” the captain continued. “We’ll need you as well, seeing as they still speak Dheema down there, or at least the Orbital Controllers do.” He nodded. “That’s it, folks. If you’re part of the shore party, get yourselves prettied up. We want to make a good first impression. The rest of you, go back to whatever you were doing. Thanks, everybody.” He headed for his own cabin up in the bridge tower.

  Those who weren’t on duty stayed in the lounge to chat. Four of Liam’s five-man team came over as he stood. He nodded to Danraj. “Danny, you mind the store up here. I’ll take the rest of the lads down with me.”

  “You really need five operators to guard three crew?” Kale came to his feet, walking over to join the group. “Are we here to do business or start another war?”

  Liam looked at him for a few seconds; just long enough to make the big man uncomfortable. “Since when are you reluctant to start a fight?” The former JTF-2 operator merely shrugged. “Black combats,” Liam advised the group. “And black watch caps. I want us looking organized. Colt Commandos for everyone except Ken.” He nodded at the ex-Ranger. “Take the Stoner ’25, just in case we need a little extra punch.”

  “Grenades?” Kale put his marker away.

  “Two smoke, two flash-bangs, one CS, no frags.” He held up a hand as surprise registered on their faces. “Kale’s right, we came to deal in minerals, not kill innocent bystanders in a firefight.”

  “Suppose that’s our new motto,” Kale grumbled. “A dead customer’s not a repeat customer…”

  Liam ignored the interruption. “We’ll meet in the lighter bay in thirty minutes for weapons check. Lets get moving, gentlemen.”

  “So,” Tommy began as the security team headed for their cabins. “Were there ever any cannibals on Khola?”

  “What am I, a bloody historian?” Gelna shrugged. “Just make sure you get some video while you’re down there, and don’t keep the captain in the dark this time.”

  “The dark?”

  “You know what I’m talking about.” An irritated flick of his tail. “You tend to forget that you’re translating someone else’s conversation. You end up conducting entire negotiations on your own and then telling the captain after the fact.” Gelna leaned in closer. “Captain gets angry, yells at you and then you get angry. You’re the only real friend I have on this ship and it’s an itchy cloaca when you spend all your time brooding over a book.”

  “I think you mean ‘pain in the ass’,” Tommy grinned.

  “Whatever. Why can’t you just do your job?”

  “I don’t know,” Tommy shrugged. “It’s just so damned restrictive. I hate just being someone else’s voice. Sometimes I just know what needs to be said and I go ahead and do it. Fiddling around with the conversion to English destroys the momentum of the negotiation.”

  “You aren’t the negotiator.” Gelna’s tail poked Tommy in the chest. “Captain is, or ‘Bernie Stanford – MBA’, gods help us.”

  “You really think Bernie can do a better job of negotiating with the locals?”

  “No.” A mischievous twitch of his tail. “Even an alien like me can plainly see that he’s a bloody ass-hat.”

  “I’ll try to get some video of Kale getting pinched.”

  The forward lift door was just closing when a hand caught the safety bar, forcing it back open. Carol stepped in and grinned at her captain as the door slid shut again. “Y’know, Harry, even in science fiction movies, the crew is always reminding the captain that he shouldn’t be going with the shore parties.”

  “Yeah, well they don’t show the captain reading the same books a hundred times over when he’s off duty.” Harrison gave her a grim smile. “If you think I’m going to step aside and let you get the first visit, then you don’t know me half as well as you think.” Busted, Harry thought as he watched her face. She just wants to get off the ship for a while. “Look, Carol, if the place checks out, we’ll start rotating the crew for some shore leave. It looks good from orbit,” he added helpfully.

  “Yeah, well my brother’s lawn looks good from a distance until you find out about the structurally unsound septic tank underneath…” She remained on the elevator as the doors opened to let Harry out. “Just don’t dawdle down there,” she said with mock severity. “The rest of us need to stretch our legs too.”

  Harry chuckled as he walked down the companionway. Unless there was a full-out war going on down below, he would be letting everyone have a chance to spend a few days on the surface. He frowned as the doors opened to the lighter bay. Liam and his team were there, inspected and ready to go. Tommy sat on the boarding ramp of the lighter, a small bag at his feet. Where the hell is Bernie?

  He resisted the urge to check his watch. It would only draw attention to the fact that he was being made to wait. “Alright, load up,” he boomed. He loved this cavernous room. His voice alone was a perfect match for this lighter bay. No other crew member could make the walls reverberate with their voice, but Harry only had to raise his voice slightly above normal talking volume. He chuckled; it made him sound like a god.

  He could see through the starboard bay windows that ‘Bernie Stanford – MBA’ was casually strolling down the companionway. Probably watched a monitor to make sure he’d be the last to arrive. Harry walked resolutely up the ramp and hit the ‘close’ button. He wouldn’t have left without the purchasing agent, but it wouldn’t do to let him know that.

  He resisted the urge to glance out the closing gap, turning instead to head for the cockpit. He saw the momentary grin on Liam’s face as they heard feet pounding across the bay. Childish, Harry thought, for a captain to play at such a petty game. Bernie got under everyone’s skin, but Harry’s most of all. The self-important purchasing agent questioned almost every decision the captain made.

  “Wait,” the man huffed as his face appeared beyond the closing angle of the ramp. “I’m here. Hey!” His face showed true alarm. If the crew were to make a decent deal without him, then he would be lucky to leave Red Flag Minerals without having the cost of his accommodations on the Völund being deducted from his final paycheck.

  Childish, yes, thought Harry as he turned back to hit the ‘open’ button for the ramp. But very satisfying. He hit the ‘close’ button again as Bernie was trundling up the ramp, forcing him to move a little quicker. Harry turned his back on the man’s reproachful glare and walked to the cockpit, taking the right hand seat. “Pre-flight done, Jim?”

  Jim Anders, a deck officer and old friend of Harry’s since their days at Annapolis, nodded as he did one final check of the board, noting that the hatch indicator had turned green. “We’re good to go, Harry. Just setting the frequency for passage through the nav-shield.” He poked a few screens. “And we’re set.”

  Harry slouched at a casual angle in the co-pilot seat – at least it felt casual. It’s a start, he thoug
ht. “Take us down, Jim.”

  Jim activated the launch sequence before striking a parody of his captain’s pose, doing him one better by draping a leg over the right armrest. The Völund’s onboard systems were designed to handle all launches and recoveries. It would take days of round-the-clock flights to fill her cargo holds – assuming they purchased ore instead of gas. Human error was an inevitable factor. No shuttles were allowed to pass through the nav-shield while under human control. If the cargo was in gaseous form, loading could be done through the umbilical system, eliminating the need for shuttle traffic altogether.

  Harry frowned at his companion. “What are you going to do if the guidance algorithm fails? We’ve only used it a handful of times so far.”

  Jim shook his head in mock sorrow. “Whatever happened to that fearless young cadet who established a beach-head on the second-storey ledge of the ladies’ dorm?”

  “He spent half the night hiding in the snow, trying to avoid getting arrested by the jimmy legs.” He shivered as his mind reached back. “While you were getting obscenely drunk, I was in lockup.” He shrugged. “Screw it. You’re responsible for getting us down there, Bernie’s responsible for the deal, Liam’s looking after security and Tommy will handle all the translation.” He looked out the cockpit windows as they passed the shields. “I’m just along to look important and take in the sights.” An overdressed, overpaid button-pushing monkey.

  Their forward motion ceased as the ship handed control back to Jim. He turned the small craft towards Khola and engaged the thrusters. The view was magnificent. Ghela, the gas giant, loomed beyond the curvature of Khola, impossibly huge and unsettlingly close. Striations of colored gas were interrupted, on occasion, by circular storms that were easily bigger than Earth.

  Khola, in contrast, was a blue world. It had more than twice as much water as Earth and most of the land mass was centred on a collection of sub-continents near the equator. It looked idyllic. Only twenty years ago, thought Harry, we thought the Mars colony was impossible. And yet, here I am, landing a team on a world thousands of light-years from home – on a shopping trip for Red Flag Minerals.

  “Switching back to magnetic,” Jim announced. “Magnetic drives are nominal. Good thing too, we’re past the point where the thrusters could push us back into orbit.” He grinned at his captain’s frown. “You need to work harder at relaxing, Harry.” He looked back out the window, where the flight path was projected in front of them. He made a minor course correction as they dropped into the cloud cover. “I’m just fooling around – I always check at least five times before I trust those mag lifters with my life. Momma Anders didn’t raise no fools – well, maybe one.” He frowned as they entered the clouds.

  Harry smiled as he looked out a window panel to his right. He had developed a crush for Jim’s architect sister while at the academy, but it was ultimately doomed. Jim’s wife, however, had been more to his sister’s liking and the two of them were now happily married and living somewhere in southeast Asia. Dodged a bullet there, I suppose.

  The thought of bullets, brought him back to the present. This must be a peaceful system, he mused. Carol found no trace of warships anywhere. We’re the most dangerous thing in the area, for now. He hoped the locals wouldn’t cause any troubles for them. He had a heavily-armed escort and the ability to reduce any city block to rubble in a matter of minutes. Of course, if you had to resort to that, then you probably weren’t doing very well at forming business relationships.

  Harry was still not sure he had made the right choice. Stuck in one of the surface fleets while other officers were getting exciting postings in the fledgling new space arm of the military, Harry had jumped at the offer from Red Flag. His only regret stemmed from the fact that he was now a glorified freighter captain. Not going to make much of a difference out here, buying minerals…

  They finally dropped out of the clouds and into a light rain. Both men leaned forward as the city came into view, an atavistic reaction. Getting several inches closer to a city three hundred kilometers away wouldn’t improve their view.

  “Would you look at that?” Jim breathed in wonder. “It’s just one huge mass of structures, all tied together. How tall is it?”

  Harry looked down at the terrain mapping screen. “Over three klicks high, seven in diameter.” he looked back out the window as they came closer. “It’s an arcology,” he said in surprise.

  “Arcology?”

  “Term invented by Paolo Soleri, an Italian architect. The concept was a mega structure, like what we see in front of us right now. Maximum population density married to minimal environmental impact.” He was on the verge of explaining where he had first heard of the concept, but caught himself just in time. Not that Jim wasn’t already thinking about his sister…

  “She’s showing her age now,” Anders muttered.

  “What?” Harry blurted in surprise.

  The pilot nodded out the window. “Looks like they used concrete for most of the structure. The salt air is taking its toll.” The city stood on a peninsula that jutted out into a large bay. It was surrounded on three sides by water.

  Harry turned back to the view. Sure enough, the city was showing age lines. Cracks were visible everywhere. Some sections were severely corroded, exposing the reinforcing material. Crews hung suspended near some of the worst areas, patching the gaps.

  The guidance projection led them down into the surface mist where a concrete pad waited for them, supported twenty feet above the waves by concrete columns. A ring of green lights slowly emerged as they dropped through the fog, indicating their assigned destination. Now that they were beginning the landing cycle, the damage was even more pronounced.

  “You seeing the columns under those landing pads?” Jim muttered. “One of ‘em had a chunk the size of my old refrigerator missing. Are we sure we want to land on that damn thing?”

  “You need to work harder at relaxing, Jim,” Harry couldn’t resist throwing the words back at his old friend.

  The rain drummed harder on the windows as Jim slowed their descent to a crawl. Just as the skids were making contact, the rain began to ease.

  “Hope the rain stops,” Harry tilted back to look up at the sky as the lighter settled down on its suspension. “Don’t really want to communicate with aliens through an interpreter with a pouring rainstorm if I can help it.”

  “Yeah, well look on the bright side,” Anders drawled as he shut down the systems. “If it does rain, at least I won’t get wet.”

  “Hmm…” Harry had just stood up, opening the hatch leading to the crew compartment. He paused, looking at Liam and his men as they stood in the center aisle, checking their gear. “Liam, I don’t feel comfortable leaving the lighter with just Jim to guard it.” He grinned as Jim came to stand beside him. “He’s not exactly a pro with that MP-5 – liable to fire it accidentally and breach the hull.” He ignored his friend’s indignant snort and continued. “I think we should leave a man here to help keep an eye on the lighter.”

  “Right,” the security officer replied with a grin. “Willie, stay here; make sure the locals don’t start pulling parts off for scrap.”

  Willie Simpson, another ex-SAS trooper from Liam’s old unit, looked annoyed at missing a stroll through an exotic, alien city. He kept it to himself, responding with a curt nod and dropping back down into his seat.

  Harry opened the back ramp. A rush of warm, moist air rolled in, the salty tang of sea-meets-shore tickling their noses. It had a strange pungency that set it apart from seaside cities back home. Familiar, yet slightly different – a reminder of how far they had traveled.

  He walked down to the end of the ramp and stepped off as it came to rest on the platform. He could see no Customs control points. Looks like they’re wide open for visitors. Harry pulled up the hood of his jacket. “Alright, boys,” he called up into the lighter. “Time to earn our pay.”

  The shore party trundled down the ramp and stood in a tight group under the broad tail of
the lighter. “Looks like the whole city is one big mega structure,” Harry explained to the group. “Once we get inside, we should be nice and dry.”

  With that, he started off down an open concrete walkway that connected their pad to the city. The surface had been paved with a tar and aggregate mix and it was showing a tracery of cracks. Corroded green conduits snaked along one of the low side walls, carrying power to the landing pad. At the halfway point, the walkway branched off to the right and left, leading to two other pads that were currently unoccupied. A red glow tinted the rain above their landing indicators.

  They could hear voices now as the rain lessened and a mist began to rise from every surface. A road extended around the city as far as they could see in the growing fog and they could see figures moving about as they approached the city. They were chatting quietly among themselves as they opened up their shops for the day. It was a surprising mix of storefronts, some set into the massive structures and some built out into the wide avenue that circled the city at water-level. Several figures pushed carts along on small mag lifters, calling out in short rhythmic patterns as they walked.

  “Food sellers,” Tommy commented as they stopped at the end of their walkway. “They must come here to sell breakfast to the shopkeepers.” Sure enough, the figures were darting over to the carts as they approached. After a quick, occasionally-heated exchange, they scurried back into their shops with bundles of food. Three creatures, slightly smaller than humans, appeared at the top of a stairway leading up from the water to their right, carrying crates of fish.

  “This must be the fish market.” Liam nodded at the three aliens as they made their way across the ring road, heading for one of the shops. He walked to the low concrete wall of their walkway and leaned over. “Makes sense, since the docks are directly below us.”