Orion Lost

by Alastair Chisholm

  “Guys,” said Arnold. His voice sounded odd. “Guys, look.”

  He was standing by one of the shapes, its cover lifted almost entirely off. And underneath…

  “What is that?” breathed Lauryn.

  The item was large, about the size of a small truck or a large generator, and bulky, covered in white panels with strange flat angles. The end nearest Beth had an opening, like an iris, covered in thick green glass or Perspex.

  A large marking on the side in red said “N-32”.

  No one spoke at first. Then Arnold said, “I know what it is. I mean, I think I do. I think it’s a weapon.”

  Mikkel nodded. “Yes. I have seen something like this before. It is a prototype.”

  “Prototype of what?” asked Beth.

  Vihaan shrugged. “A new laser?”

  But Arnold shook his head. “The lens is wrong, I think.”

  On one side was a small control panel and a display. Beth tapped at the controls and the screen shimmered into life.

  PROJECT NULL PROTOTYPE N-32, it read. FIELD TEST ANALYSIS. LEVEL-SIX-SECURITY-AUTHORISED ONLY.

  Underneath, there was a single button, marked REVIEW FIELD ANALYSIS.

  “Level Six,” said Vihaan. “That means—”

  “Admiral or higher, yes,” muttered Beth.

  “We are not authorised to look at this,” said Mikkel. The others stared at him, and he shrugged. “I am just saying, yes?”

  Beth pressed the button and the screen changed.

  It showed the back of someone’s head in a helmet, with machinery round the edges and a black window in front. After a moment, Beth realised she was seeing footage taken from inside the cockpit of a scout ship or fighter. The black was dotted with very faint stars. Then hands moved and the view changed as the ship changed direction, and a Videshi ship appeared in front of them.

  Lucille gasped and Arnold stiffened. The Videshi ship was colossal, almost as large as the one that the Orion had encountered, and, as the little scout ship moved towards it, Beth could see its vast surface, covered in overlapping sheets of rough metal, flickering with lights. Behind it, she could make out three others, roughly the same design but much smaller. They were undocked and floating behind the mothership.

  “Behemoth,” muttered Arnold. “Class Five.”

  The huge Videshi ship’s triangular sails were glowing, as if it was getting ready to Jump. The smaller ships’ sails were also glowing.

  The pilot moved and a voice came over the speakers. In the noise of the cockpit it was muffled and too distorted to hear properly, but subtitles had been added to the film. “Target acquired,” the pilot said. Then there was more chatter and more subtitles, this time in a different colour. “Target confirmed. Proceed as planned.”

  The enormous Videshi ship was closer, and the lights flickering across its hull were blinking faster. It was getting ready to fire, Beth thought. The little scout ship couldn’t possibly withstand a blast. As if hearing her thoughts, the pilot worked his controls and the scout ship began weaving erratically from side to side, keeping its movements unpredictable, dodging like a fighter.

  It moved closer … closer … and then suddenly the pilot’s hands reached down to a control panel and flicked a switch. The whole screen seemed to light up in a green glow, too bright to make out.

  Beth realised the glow was a beam coming from somewhere below the cockpit, a green-white line from the little scout ship to the Videshi ship, too fierce to look at directly. And at the other end bright colours spun across the hull of the Videshi mothership in a ferocious cascade of sparks. They formed a web over the ship, as if coating it. One second, two seconds…

  …and then darkness. The beam switched off. The mothership stopped, and its lights darkened all at once until Beth could hardly make it out. Everything seemed to have shut down. The tendrils that floated out from the back were still drifting, but seemed somehow less coordinated than before.

  The pilot muttered something into the microphone. “Device activation successful,” said the subtitles. “Target neutralised.”

  “Oh, wow,” muttered Arnold. “What did it do, fry the electrics? I didn’t think you could even do that.”

  The three smaller ships didn’t react, at first. Then they moved closer to the larger ship and seemed to be trying to dock. They looked suddenly clumsy, as if their crews were scared, or their sensors weren’t working properly. They ignored the scout ship.

  “What are they doing?” asked Lucille.

  “Perhaps they are evacuating the mothership,” said Vihaan.

  Beth shook her head. They were close enough to dock now, but nothing was happening. No shuttles were leaving the larger ship. It wasn’t moving at all. And the smaller ships, the way they moved – moving towards the larger ship, so close they were almost colliding with it, drifting away…

  “I’ve seen this,” she said abruptly. The others turned and stared at her, and she shook her head. “I mean, not this. But something…” A memory, there and gone, of a hand at her shoulder – her father’s hand. She was crying, and he was saying … something…

  “Why aren’t they attacking the scout?” asked Arnold. “There’s still three of them, right?”

  “Or Jumping away?” asked Lauryn.

  Vihaan was still staring as if appalled. “No one can disable Videshi ships,” he said. “No one’s ever even seen a Videshi.”

  “Is that what this is?” asked Lucille. “Is this a machine to stop Videshi?”

  “Looks like it,” said Arnold.

  Beth stared. The vast ship was still just floating, showing no signs of life. What were the crew thinking? Were they disabled too? Why weren’t the smaller ships reacting?

  The video kept playing, but she didn’t want to look. It felt wrong. Obscene. This was an awful thing to see. Without quite meaning to she reached for Lauryn’s hand and squeezed it, and was reassured to feel the smaller girl squeeze back.

  “We should turn it off,” she muttered.

  “There might be more,” said Mikkel.

  “We know enough,” she said. “This is what Murdoch’s been looking for. I don’t know how it got here, but this is what she wants.”

  On screen, the scout ship continued to monitor the Videshi vessels. The pilot asked something – again, the cockpit noise and distortion blocked it out, although for a moment Beth thought his voice sounded familiar. The subtitles came up. “Should I take out the others too?”

  “Negative. Monitor and evaluate. Good work, soldier.”

  The figure nodded, leaned back and turned towards the camera in the back corner of the cockpit. One hand lifted from the console and gave a mock salute, oh-so-coolly, and the pilot grinned with perfect white teeth.

  “Roger that,” said Captain Kier.

  The video stopped.

  For a moment, nobody spoke.

  “No way,” muttered Arnold. “No. No way.”

  Beth stared at the screen.

  “I’m sorry you had to see that,” said Kier from behind them.

  32

  Empires

  Captain Kier wasn’t smiling, but he didn’t seem angry either. He looked thoughtful, with his hands in his pockets. Ship’s hologram floated beside him, glowing softly in the shadows of the cargo bay.

  “Captain Kier?” asked Lauryn uncertainly. “What’s going on?”

  “You tell me,” he said. “This is a secure area – what are you doing here?”

  Arnold shook his head. “This is you,” he said. His voice sounded hoarse. “In the video.”

  Kier glanced at the screen. “Well … yeah. Yeah, you got me. Former life. Test pilot. Not as glamorous as they say.” He sniffed. “Not as well paid, either.”

  “But…” Beth found herself struggling to speak.

  Images from the video flitted past her – Kier’s grin, the beam of light, the smaller Videshi ships hovering round the larger one … and that strange half-memory – her father’s hand on her shoulder…

&nb
sp; “Was this you?” demanded Vihaan. He waved his arm around the cargo bay as if trying to describe everything that had happened to them. “The Event? All this?”

  Kier sighed. “Listen, Vee, it’s not what you think. This wasn’t the plan. But it can still work out OK.”

  “You did this,” hissed Lauryn. “You and Ship, all along.”

  Kier frowned. “Ship’s got nothing to do with it. It’s just obeying orders, aren’t you, Shippy?”

  Ship said, “I must obey my orders.”

  Mikkel pointed at the screen. “This is an experimental weapon to disable Videshi ships.”

  Kier nodded. “Yup. First successful one, too.”

  “And you stole it,” said Beth. “You smuggled it aboard when we left Earth.”

  He shrugged. “Guilty.”

  “And then … what? I don’t understand. What happened after that?”

  Kier pulled his hands from his pockets, spread them wide in a slightly helpless gesture, and smiled his charming smile. “Then we had a great plan that went a little wrong.”

  “Murdoch,” said Vihaan. “You told Murdoch where to find the Orion.”

  “And you sabotaged the ship,” added Mikkel. “And all the crew.”

  Beth remembered Kier running past her and her mum, down the corridor, leaving the Orion. Investigating an anomaly, he’d said – but of course he wasn’t, really. He was just getting clear before Murdoch arrived. Look after the ship for me, he’d told her. How he must have laughed at that.

  “It was simple,” he said. “Disable the ship and the crew, swoop in, take the weapon, swoop out. Twenty minutes later, Ship would wake up and sort everyone out and we’d be gone. No one harmed, no permanent damage, simple.”

  “So what happened?” asked Beth.

  Her voice sounded as if it was coming from somewhere else.

  “I missed a bit,” he said frankly. “My fault; Ship was more resilient than I expected and managed to Jump before we were ready. We knew there was a chance, and we just had to follow you. Ship would be stranded without a crew.” He laughed, a genuine, isn’t-it-funny-how-things-work-out laugh, as if chatting with friends. “Only, when Ship woke up after the Jump, it Woke you lot up, too. And wouldn’t you know it, suddenly there’s a crew. Only it’s a bunch of stupid kids –” his mouth twisted just for a moment – “and they’re Jumping around half the galaxy, and us chasing behind…” He sighed.

  “You set Scrapers on us,” muttered Vihaan, still looking as if he’d been hit.

  Kier looked hurt. “Hey, hang on! I had a deal. No one was going to get hurt. Murdoch would get the weapon, and me to fire it, nothing else. All this –” he waved around him – “was just an accident. I promise, Vee: it wasn’t personal.”

  Still Vihaan stared at him.

  Beth said, “But why?”

  “Well…” He hesitated. “For the money, of course. I mean, can you imagine what it’s worth? The only Videshi-killer in the galaxy?”

  “But you can’t give this to Scrapers!” Beth found herself reeling at the idea. “They’ll go crazy. You’ll start a war!”

  He laughed. “No, we won’t. Beth, we’ve been wrong about the Videshi the whole time. There’s never going to be a war.”

  “How can you say that,” demanded Vihaan, “if you start killing them? Everyone knows the Videshi are more advanced than us! They’ve got billions of ships and we don’t even know where they live! You said it yourself: we’ve never even seen a Videshi!”

  Kier smirked. “Well … that’s not entirely true.”

  And now, suddenly, Beth remembered. Her father’s hand on her shoulder, his voice soft in her ear, calming her as she cried… She was still young, still on their farm back on Earth, and one of the nanny goats had become ill. She lay in her stall, too sick to move, almost dead. And beside her…

  They were so small, Beth remembered, the two little goat kids; only a few days old. But they knew something was wrong. They kept butting at their mother, not just for food, but trying to get her to move. They bleated and butted and wandered away as if dazed, and then came back and did it again. And Beth had seen them, and she’d been crying, and her father’s hand was on her shoulder, and the little kids…

  “That’s what they were doing,” she murmured, aghast. “The little ones.” The others turned to her, but she stared at Kier. “We’ve all seen the Videshi, haven’t we?”

  He smiled.

  “The Videshi aren’t inside the ships,” she continued. “They never were. The Videshi are the ships. All this time, they’ve been there in front of us. The Videshi are the ships.”

  Captain Kier laughed in delight. “Well done, you!” he said, clapping his hands. “You saw it! I never did, I admit, but then you always were perceptive, Beth. The Videshi are the ships. Amazing, right?” He chuckled. “I mean, we knew they were ancient. We just assumed that meant they were this mysterious super-advanced space-faring race. We’ve been wondering what they wanted, why they behaved so weird. Trying not to antagonise them, because they must be sooo powerful, right?

  “Only, they’re not. They’re just animals, evolved to survive in space – who knows how, but they did. They’re silicon-based, metallic instead of blood and bone, but still, just animals. And they’re stupid.” He laughed again. “Like, I don’t know, space whales, or buffalo, or something. They can just about talk, like chimps, but otherwise they’re just flying around, fighting, having little baby ships – they’re not advanced. They’re nothing. We’re not going to have a war with the Videshi any more than we could have a war with cows.”

  He shook his head. “They’re not this great enemy. What they are … is a resource. Think about it – these things are thousands of tons of metal. Minerals, alloys, weird evolved alien tech – all just floating about in space. And with this device you fire once and it’s yours. No more Videshi: just a thousand tons of treasure. Perfect. But…” He sighed. “Then someone in high command got cold feet. Suddenly there’s all this talk about how we should respect them, and how they’re miracles of evolution and we should protect them, and ‘not endanger their natural habitat’.” He held his hands up to make quotes, his lip curled in disgust. “So the project got canned.”

  “But if they are alive…” said Lucille. She shook her head. “Then you cannot! You cannot kill them!”

  “Course we can!” he retorted. “Every great empire on Earth got there by exploiting someone or something. Buffalo, whales, forests, oil … slaves … it doesn’t matter. We take the resources, we create an empire. That’s what humans do. There’s no point fighting it.” He stared at them. “The Videshi are our resource. For a new empire – a vast new space empire, beyond anything we’ve ever imagined. It’s there, just waiting for us. And if high command won’t take that opportunity…” He shrugged. “I know someone who will.”

  The children gaped at him.

  A horrible thought occurred to Beth. “Who did you send the Sparrowhawk to, Kier?”

  “Oh no,” muttered Lucille.

  Kier frowned. “Well, yeah. Sorry.” He held his hand up. “Look, everyone stay calm, OK? It’s just the same as before.”

  “You’re giving us to Murdoch,” hissed Vihaan. “To Scrapers.”

  “Murdoch’s not a Scraper,” said Kier. “She’s a leader. She has vision. She’s creating a new order out here, free of Earth and its stupid rules, and she’s not afraid to take what she needs to create it. This is going to be our galaxy.”

  “Created by killing millions of Videshi,” muttered Beth.

  Kier shrugged again. “Who cares?” He sniffed. “Look: I’m getting you home – you, your parents, everyone else. That’s the deal, and Murdoch will agree to that, in return for the weapon. It’s all good, see?”

  Beth turned to Ship. “Ship, you can’t allow this!”

  “Captain Kier is the commander of this vessel.”

  “But this is insane! This is … war crimes!”

  “Authentication protocols have been disable
d,” the hologram said. “I am unable to override Captain Kier’s orders.”

  “Reactivate the authentication protocols!”

  “Authentication protocols can only be activated or deactivated by the captain.”

  “I rescind my order!” Beth shouted desperately. “I no longer want to resign!”

  “I’m gonna kill you,” shouted Arnold.

  He ran towards Kier, but then stopped.

  Suddenly, without his hands even seeming to move, Kier was holding a small, blunt-nosed gun. It didn’t look very special. It just looked very black and very compact. And very lethal.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “This is the only way.” He looked at Beth.

  She glared back at him in disgust, at him and at herself. She remembered the first time they’d met, at the captain’s dinner. He’d seemed so charming.

  “You told me not to trust you,” she muttered. “When we first met. Remember? You warned me.”

  She closed her eyes.

  33

  Resistance

  Kier held the gun close to his body. His hand didn’t shake. He had cast off his boyish cheerfulness like a snake’s skin.

  “I’m sorry,” he said again. “This is the simplest way. Ship, start Sleep activation for all crew members except myself.”

  “Sleep activation has been blocked,” said Ship.

  He frowned. “Unblock it, Ship. Captain’s orders.”

  Ship said, “I am unable to remove this block. It has been cryptographically sealed by user ‘Limit’.”

  Kier blew out a short breath of frustration. “Who is ‘Limit’?”

  Ship paused. Then it said, “There is no user by that name.”

  Kier stared at it. He turned to the children. “Who’s Limit?” he demanded again.

  None of them spoke and Arnold gave him a look of hatred.

  “Fine,” he said at last. “We don’t need Sleep, we’re not Jumping, and you won’t gain anything by this. If you can’t Sleep, you can stay in your dorms while I finish up here. Turn round, head out of the cargo bay. One at a time, nice and slow.”