“I don’t care what you are, all you have to do is tell us which one of your crew has the primary command codes for the Triton. We’ll find him and take care of the rest.”
Ayan was surprised at the request but did her best to hide it. If there was someone with the command codes, then they could bypass the whole mess they were in with the Carthans. They’d have their own land as well as the Triton back in their possession, more than she could have dreamt.
“Don’t try to lie, we know someone’s been trying to reactivate the main computer core several times a day since you landed on Tamber,” Thurge pressed.
“What’s stopping the transmission?” Ayan asked, playing along just in case they actually did have someone with the codes. Turning the situation to her advantage was something she couldn’t pass up.
“The Carthans disconnected the core form the ship then wrapped it in shielding. I thought you’d know, having spent so much time in the negotiation room.”
“Never occurred,” Ayan replied. “It doesn’t matter, I don’t know who has the codes.”
“Bullshit!” Burke shouted. “A prissy bitch like you wouldn’t let something like that wander around outside of her control.”
“Why the Triton? Isn’t what Wheeler’s trading earning him enough for a ship he can manage?” Ayan asked. “The Triton is a half broken ship and he never got her running at her full potential in the first place.”
“Not your concern, sweetheart,” replied Burke. “Just tell us who has the codes, and we’ll know you’re worthy of the cash and prizes.”
Ayan noticed the butt of a handgun poking out from the fake Jake’s coat. “I’ll think about it,” she said the instant before she snatched at it and pushed away.
The false Jacob caught her by the throat with inhuman speed. He flicked the sidearm out of her hand with his free hand and grinned.
“Give her a reason to reconsider,” Doctor Thurge said. “Time to go, Burke.”
“Yes, mum,” Burke said.
“I love you, Ayan,” the imitation Jacob said earnestly. “So you know this will hurt me as much as it’ll hurt you.”
Ayan’s suit kept her throat from being crushed, but her attempts at fighting him off were completely ineffective. Her fists struck his face, his throat, and when he pulled her up off the floor, Ayan kicked him frantically. She knew her suit signalled an alert the moment it changed from its dress shape to protective mode, but there was no telling how long it would take for help to arrive.
“I love you, Ayan,” he said again, holding his free hand up.
“Whoever programmed you must be a real charmer with the ladies. What are you, anyway?” she asked as she pressed both her feet against his chest and pushed as hard as she could. Nothing budged.
He pointed his hand at the belly of her suit and a particle beam so fine she could barely see it began testing the vacsuit. She writhed with renewed vigour, and found herself pinned on the floor a moment later, one of her hands caught in his grip. He knelt on her legs.
It didn’t take more than a few seconds for him to catch her other arm and clasp both her wrists in one hand. He smiled at her, a warm, loving expression that made her want to retch.
“Don’t kill her. Do anything else Wheeler programmed you for, but don’t kill her,” said Tamera Thurge.
“You’re going to want to give up that name sooner, rather than later,” Burke said as the door closed behind them.
The imitation Jake’s beam cut across her chest, leaving scars across her vacsuit and raising alarms on her visor. She kept struggling as her eye movements directed her communications and command bracelet to begin materialising compound 35B. Before it complied, it warned her that it was a highly illegal substance on Tamber.
Her assailant swept his cutting tool down her belly, and celebrated a small opening over her belly button with a lecherously gleeful expression. “Don’t resist, Love,” it said. He shoved his fingers into the hole and tried to tear it open.
Ayan hurriedly signalled her command and control unit to bypass the safeties and begin manufacturing the compound. She gnashed her teeth and fought harder at the sound of the false Jacob ripping her vacsuit enough to get a grip on the tear in her suit’s belly with his other hand.
His leering, excited eyes were focused on that opening, his expression filling her with rage and disgust. She wailed on him with her fists, and when her comm unit announced that it had finished manufacturing an eighth of a gram of compound thirty-five, she held her bracelet up to his eyes and ordered the miniature materialiser within to apply an electric charge.
With a flash of heat and incredible pain, the explosive went off.
Chapter 10
The Shade
The lights went out on most of the Triton's decks two weeks earlier. The army of investigators and repair personnel took their turn with the ship for four weeks solid. There wasn't a minute where a portion of the ship wasn't being examined or serviced for storage. It took their best over a week to ensure that all systems were powered down, and three more to secure everything aboard for a long storage period. Considering how different the Earth technology was compared to their own, it didn’t take them long.
The Carthan Engineering Corps couldn't take all the credit, however. Larry made sure they found instructions and repair schematics for the entire ship. If they wanted to waste their time and resources preserving the Triton, he was more than happy to make sure they did it right. There were no secrets to betray. Most of the technology aboard was between fifty and seventy years old; Sol Defence had since moved on to even better technology, so the fact that the Carthans learned a few things while they were rebuilding wouldn't displease Larry's superiors - much. He stayed out of their way. It was like dodging a herd of glowing elephants. Even when the repair people were dead quiet, they had no concern for stealth. Everyone believed that the old Triton crew was gone, that they were servicing an empty ship.
An hour after the repair people left, the cleaning crew started to arrive. They were even easier to avoid. He even pretended to be one of them for two days, cleaning several crew quarters himself so he could get access to the safe in Captain Valance's old quarters, where he found exactly what he was looking for. He sunk back into the shadows that night, watching as the cleaning crews used special equipment to scour the blood and other evidence of carnage from the decks. The repair crews were efficient and came in force, but they didn’t work on damaged portions of the ship, only made sure its condition wouldn’t degrade if it was left in port. At one time, the ship's passive security sensors reported over twelve hundred crew armed with little helper drones scouring the ship. Two hundred experts and support staff accompanied them.
The Carthans sent a testing team aboard on the last day of cleaning. They ran the Triton's built-in diagnostic tools and decided the ship was ready for long-term storage. It was then that Larry began to formulate a plan to dissuade the Carthans from taking possession of the ship. He wouldn't let an unknown captain take command, not when he knew exactly who he and Sol Defence would want sitting in that chair. To his surprise, they simply shut all but the life support systems down and left. They didn't enter a senior officer into the ship record, try to hack into the computer's cold backups, or even post a scanning patrol aboard. The airlocks were sealed with Carthan sensor tape. The lights went out, and they moored the Triton somewhere inside an orbital dock around Kambis.
For the first time in his life, Larry was completely isolated. For several days, he didn't dare to deactivate his cloaksuit. Not even to use the privy, even though he despised what the Freegrounders called 'built-in plumbing,' which took care of human waste. He recalled Ashley talking about it in the galley, when she managed to explain the mystery of the built-in plumbing perfectly to a newer crewmember. "No, no," she said. "You don't figure the private bits of your vacsuit out. They figure YOU out. You shoulda seen my face the first time I put on a - how did Captain put it? Right, a fully equipped suit." He laughed along then, but as he
wandered the ship, he couldn't help but miss using a toilet.
When he thought of Ashley or Oz – and he thought of them often – it was with some regret. He never let Oz know his role aboard; it would have gone against his orders, but Larry was sure it would have been to his benefit. When he let Ashley in on his secret, he mismanaged the whole thing. He could have had her trust, selectively let other important crewmembers know his real position, and a diplomatic solution would have been found when the Carthans took possession. The Triton would be crewed. Unfortunately, his hands were still tied. He was an observer, and he’d broken enough rules by killing several West Keepers. Even if the ship was stuck in port for five years, his duty was to watch human behaviour and chronicle the story of the ship.
Even still, he wished he could just engage the computer core and reveal to the galaxy that he was the true master of the Triton. He missed the crew, especially members like Agameg and Finn, though he was starting to like Jason, who reminded him of his brother. Even if he wanted to turn the lights on, it took two command level codes to bring the primary computer core online, a fact that he’d kept from Ashley, and the main reason why it hadn’t been active since the ship was allowed to be stolen from Kuiper Drydock. If another officer were assigned to the Triton and made the journey from Earth, then they would bring the main computer core online, and they’d begin a new mission.
It was something Larry sometimes caught himself dreaming of. The chances of that were slim. He fully expected to be aboard or near the Triton for the next thirty years before being summoned home. The fantasy he let himself indulge in sometimes was of the crew who had adopted and honoured her returning to take the Triton back. With Terry Ozark McPatrick in the lead, they’d break through the Carthan seals, start the ship up again, and to everyone’s surprise, he and Ashley would bring the Triton back to full functionality for the first time in decades.
It was nothing more than a fantasy. Any attempt would be a brash display of heroism and stupidity, but it didn't stop him from wishing something would happen. The fantasy didn’t hold boredom off for long. Sometimes he’d retract the headpiece of his vacsuit and come out of stealth just to see if the Carthan guards would come running, or even step out of the shadows in stealth suits of their own. No one was watching. They had the ship locked down tight, sealed along every hatch and seam.
No one would scold him for not leaving the ship and send him down to Tamber, where he could reunite with the Triton crew and offer the good news. If he did so on purpose, it would be a severe breach of orders with Citadel Command. Leaving was not an option. He’d have to wait and hope that Ashley found her way back to him. He’d apologise and find a way to tell her how to issue a command code to someone he trusted. That way he could be indirectly responsible for the revival of the Triton, and perhaps avoid a harsh sentence from Citadel.
No matter how he planned, or how he fantasised, he was still stuck aboard. The ship began to take on an entirely new character after the lights went out. The slightest sound echoed down the darkened halls. Thick bulkhead doors sounded like rolling thunder, bringing on a fresh wave of hyper-vigilance. Every time he thought he'd made enough noise to trip a passive port sensor, he was wrong. The ship wasn't meant to be empty. She had been built to house thousands of working men and women.
After a week in the utter stillness, Larry realised he wouldn't last much longer. He didn't even blame Ashley for her rash act, or for leaving him fully exposed. He was conscious and free before the Carthans found him, and his place was with the Triton anyway.
It was time for him to sit and watch quietly, to wait. He tapped into the Triton's passive sensors, and didn't attract notice from the port. They didn't need enough power to register, since they were designed to operate while the ship was cloaked.
His direct connection to the sensors was made in one of the officers' quarters, and he found the days he spent there more comfortable. Avoiding the halls, the vault-like central areas. and the all too silent concourses seemed to be the key to maintaining sanity. After he was sure everyone was gone for the long term, he tried sleeping in a bed. It was a fitful sleep, and he woke with a start in the middle of the night, not knowing why. When he replayed the recording taken by his comm unit, he burst out laughing as he watched the slumbering image of himself wake suddenly after a particularly deep snore. For reasons he couldn't understand, the laughter became weeping. It had been seven weeks since the crew of the Triton left the ship.
"You're trained for this. Citadel agents must thrive in isolation and civilisation alike,” he told himself. “Contemplative and watchful while at peace. Cunning and swift in war. We are Citadel - defenders of balance and enablers of the righteous," he recited through tears. He buried his face in his hands, noticing how rough his stubble was against his palms. "When did I stop shaving? Was it last week? Two weeks ago?" he idly asked himself.
Larry leapt to his feet at the sound of his command and control unit vibrating a warning signal against his skin. He hurriedly activated the holoprojector, which transmitted its images directly into his eyes. "A crush gate? Tainted with temporal radiation? Why would the Victory Machine be coming here?"
His self-pity and loneliness lifted from him as quickly as a flock of startled birds. In seconds he strapped on his weapons and pack, and had his stealth suit sealed. He knew that port control would pick up the stirrings of strange energy. He only had a few minutes before the exit of the wormhole fully manifested, and he ran as hard as he could towards the botanical gallery, where the Sol Defence software he'd installed on his comm unit predicted it would appear. He made surprisingly good time, but by the time he ran through the heavy protective doors of the botanical gallery his lungs and his leg muscles were burning.
He ran across the long grass, down paths that had already begun to become overgrown and finally into a clearing near one of the large ponds. A spike in ambient energy gave him just enough warning to cover his eyes and turn away from the exit of the wormhole only metres away. A violent flash of light announced the arrival of the crush gate traveller.
Larry braced himself before turning around. Crush gates were highly compressed wormholes that were severely directional, forcing the traveller through it at speeds many people failed to survive. It was still experimental when he left Mars years before, and was being hailed as the future of travel. One could travel dozens of light years in the space of a few days. To the traveller it would seem like only seconds had passed. The Victory Machine dumped most of its waste energy into a crush gate generator the creators had built in, and there was a limit to how much it could contain before the bearer had to create a gate and travel.
To Larry's relief, no temporal radiation was leaking from the bearer's suit or the small box containing the Victory Machine, and he turned around. "You, you're not supposed to be here," rasped the man in the old, heavy containment suit. He was face down, struggling to push himself upright.
“You mean, on the Triton?” Larry asked, hopefully. He loved the ship, but freedom would be a sudden and joyous blessing.
“No, with me. You’ll get caught. You have to run, keep hiding."
Larry crossed the space between them and helped the man by propping him up against a tree. His face was ashen, and there was no strength left in his frame, which looked like it was once sturdy, even powerful. "My control unit has a basic medical treatment component. I can try and get you on your feet before the Carthans get here," Larry said.
"Don't bother. There's something wrong with the containment suit. Been dosing me with temporal rads since I gated from Mount Elbrus. At least now I know why I've been sick these ten years,” replied the traveller.
It was an awful, mysterious truth of temporal radiation. One dose in the future would make you ill in the past, a paradox even the brightest minds on Earth couldn't fully puzzle out. The Victory Machine had a nine year reach by default, so it only made sense that this man was ill for nine years before he was exposed, inasmuch as anyone could make sense of tempo
ral radiation. "What am I supposed to do? Where am I supposed to be?" asked Larry, desperate for direction. "Am I the next bearer in line?"
The man began to laugh but coughed violently instead. Once it passed, he shook his head. "No, the bearer who's been passing me information from the future is here somewhere. They never let on who they were, but I think I know where they want me to be. At least I’m sure the rogue element is nearby. I don’t know much about you though, except you’re not supposed to get caught with me."
"There's nothing I can do to help you?"
"No. We're working a bigger picture, the next and me. You get to wander around doing what you're doing until you get a better idea. Just don't try too hard,” replied the traveller.
"How is the next bearer going to get his hands on this thing if the Carthans are busy studying it?"
"Who says the next bearer will be a man? Besides, with the suit serving as secondary containment, there's no way anyone but the bearer will pick this thing up. It's not like the Carthans, or anyone out here, for that matter, know how to repair this thing. No one's built one for a few centuries."
Larry looked at the weary man for a moment. "How long am I going to be here?"
"What, alone? Don't worry, you'll come out fine. Just think of me next time you're feeling you got an unfair hand, that'll set you straight," the bearer chuckled ruefully. "Now get going. You have a place, Larry Nevil. You'll see where you're needed when the time comes. For now, it's time for you to forget your birth name and embrace the one you chose when you left the Sol System. That's all I can tell you."
The tip wasn’t as satisfying as he’d like, but it was better than nothing. "Thank you for your service, I'll remember you," Larry hesitated a moment. "I never got your name."
"Roman. Just call me Roman. I gave up my birth name over twenty years ago."
"Thank you, Roman," Larry said as he activated his stealth suit. The Carthan port guards were close, he could hear them in the garden. "I'll wait," he said, knowing no one could hear him. "I'll be ready when the time comes." It was a resolution he didn’t need anyone else to hear.
Spinward Fringe Broadcast 7: Framework Page 8