The Gibral led them to a vast warehouse packed tightly with shelves sagging under piles of spacesuits. The blue alien emitted a high-pitched sound, halfway between a whistle and a buzz. In response to this signal, a small cubical drone emerged from a corridor and came to a stop in front of them.
“This device will scan your morphology in order to find an appropriate suit,” the cyclops informed her.
Mallory submitted willingly to this process. Most of the time, she ended up with a suit that was way too big.
After taking her measurements, the flying robot hurried back into the rows of shelves and returned holding a suit by one claw. While she put it on, the drone repeated the process for the Gibral.
After sealing her helmet, Mallory’s first reflex was to ensure that the suit’s navcom was synchronized with her own.
The cyclops guided her to an airlock. The depressurization cycle had barely completed when the door opened onto a colossal steel structure.
The unfinished ship looked like a skeleton infested with spark-spitting ants: thousands of robots and workers were soldering components onto the colossal framework.
Impressed by the spectacle, Mallory walked down the passageway leading to the construction site. She noticed belatedly that the Gibral had not followed her…
“What is he playing at?” she growled, losing her temper.
A fleeting movement attracted her attention. She raised her head and saw a dozen workers in spacesuits near a metallic structure that seemed to stretch to infinity. They were very tall bipeds, each with four thick arms. Spicans, the pilot concluded. Their direction and speed left no doubt: they were coming right at her. And the tools they were carrying looked strangely menacing…
V
ZERO GRAVITY
ALRINE was annoyed. She liked Mallory, although the hard-as-nails pilot was impossible to control. Even worse, Mallory had talked the policewoman into granting the highest access credentials available to the Sirgan’s Natural Intelligence.
Because she was more used to working with AIs, she hadn’t realized the depth of her mistake: AIs never stepped beyond their bounds, but Jazz tended to ignore them completely.
To top it all off, this disappearance case was as welcome as a hair in a bowl of soup. Alrine was pondering whether there was any connection to the aliens’ bizarre behavior when she noticed that her feet had led her to Cole Vassili’s place. She had been so lost in her own thoughts while she listened distractedly to her navcom’s instructions that she hadn’t paid any attention en route.
Deïna was waiting, standing in front of the door. Alrine took in the look of concern on her face. The redhead with the silvery tattoos hesitated briefly, then approached her.
“Lieutenant Lafora?”
Alrine nodded and saw relief wash over the woman’s features.
“Thank you for coming. I didn’t know what to do. The Gibrals wouldn’t listen. They refuse to open a case until he’s been missing for at least two days.”
Alrine shrugged. That was no surprise: it was the standard waiting period on most planets. A police force three times the size of the one on Solicor wouldn’t be big enough to track down everyone who spent the night away from home.
Yet for some reason, Alrine’s instincts were telling her to dig deeper. According to Mallory’s description, Cole Vassili wasn’t the type of guy who made a habit of waking up in a strange place after an overly eventful night. Stepping around Deïna, she pushed the apartment door open and crossed the threshold.
She found herself in a modestly furnished room about three hundred square feet. The walls, ceiling, and floor were shaded in brown and ochre tones, and standing lamps in each corner bathed the room in a soft yellow light. The warm effect was marred by the state of the bed. The mattress was sideways, and the wrinkled sheets lay in a ball on the floor. Alrine turned towards Deïna. “You’ve already been inside, I suppose?”
“Yes. But I didn’t touch anything.”
The policewoman made a face. “Fifty-fifty instincts… Not great, but not bad enough to muddy the evidence.”
She slid a hand into her jacket and brought out an ovoid object that looked like a little metallic egg: a sniffer. With the device sitting in the palm of her hand, she extended her arm and said, “Complete DNA scan.”
The sniffer flew upwards and darted like an angry chrome bumblebee from one end of the apartment to the other, projecting a field of greenish light. It finally slowed down, came to a stop in front of Alrine, and emitted three beeps.
She pocketed the object while her navcom interpreted the data it had collected. The room contained substantial traces of Cole’s DNA as well as fragments of about twenty other individuals of various species.
As she had expected. Alrine approached the mattress and examined a brownish stain: the blood that had so concerned Deïna.
The latter stood slightly off to the side, watching. Alrine peered at her and decided to be direct. “What is your relationship to Cole Vassili?”
Instead of being embarrassed by the personal question, amusement flashed in the guide’s eyes. “Strictly professional. Mr. Vassili is a member of a powerful consortium. If anything happens to him, I could lose my clients… Preventing this kind of situation is part of my job. If he’s really important to his employers, they could go so far as to take me to court.”
Alrine held back a sigh. As usual, big corporations had more sway than any individual. “Okay. Do you know where he was supposed to go today?”
The redhead hesitated. “To the Vohrn embassy…”
“And you’re sure he didn’t go there before calling you, right?”
Deïna admitted that she wasn’t sure and attempted to explain herself. “When I saw the blood on the bed, I tried to get in touch with him, and since he didn’t pick up, I thought…”
The policewoman interrupted again, unable to restrain her sudden irritation. “Thought what? That he had a nosebleed? That his one-night-stand scratched up his back?”
Deïna remained silent, embarrassed. Alrine calmed down, already regretting her fit of anger. Since she was there, she might as well finish her investigation. With the back of her hand, she swept away her navcom’s display and requested a connection to the embassy. After what Mallory had told her about the Vohrn, she’d rather not go there in person.
An AI answered. “Mr. Vassili was here. He left with the Gibral Kreygn. They went to visit a sector where they’re considering a joint construction project between the Vohrn and Milankovic, his employer.”
Alrine disconnected. By professional reflex more than real interest, she looked up the Gibral in Solicor’s police database.
As she read the results projected by her navcom, her forehead wrinkled. Kreygn had been convicted of several crimes and was required to wear a tracking device. The tracker, embedded into the convict’s bone, provided an easy way to keep an eye on repeat offenders.
There might be something to this so-called disappearance after all…
Leveraging her access privileges, she was able to obtain the Gibral’s current location. He was about eighteen miles away, in a zone marked “uncharted.” Intrigued, she asked Deïna about it.
“That’s not unusual,” she replied. “The sector in question must be under construction. In that case, the layout of the hallways and the location of the elevators change according to the worksite’s requirements. I’ve spent time in these kinds of areas. If you want to go there, it would be better if I came with you.”
Alrine weighed the pros and cons. Evidently, Deïna wanted to make herself useful, but having a civilian underfoot could have unexpected consequences. On the other hand, why waste time wandering around when she had a guide at her disposal?
“Okay. Let’s go together.”
Deïna led her through the maze of the city-planet with confidence gained from long experience. Alrine noticed quickly that many of the passages they traversed didn’t appear on the navcom’s maps. The guide was efficient: it only took them fiftee
n minutes to travel to the sector indicated by the Gibral’s tracking device.
There was a surprise waiting for them there: the place wasn’t under construction, but rather seemed to have been abandoned.
Seeing the narrow, poorly lit corridor before them, Alrine regretted accepting Deïna’s offer: a disappearance that wasn’t one, an alien criminal, an unreachable businessman, and an AI whose information didn’t seem to be accurate… All of these elements combined to indicate a bad situation. The policewoman would have been much more comfortable with Laorcq at her side.
She decided to call him. He answered immediately.
“Alrine! Torg and I had an interesting conversation with the Xilfs. You’ll never guess…”
“Not now, please,” she cut him off. “I need reinforcements.” She summarized the situation in a few words.
“That does sound shady,” he confirmed. “We’ll come to you right now. Keep your line open, and I’ll tell you about out adventures with the Xilfs.”
The policewoman remained on high alert while she and Deïna waited. Laorcq told them about Torg’s exploits and the information they had gleaned from Frrrj.
As she listened, Alrine grew more and more concerned. She thought about leaving the abandoned sector and returning later. Her thoughts kept coming back to the same idea: between the trail, which had been too easy to follow, and the deserted area, she smelled an ambush.
Her fears were soon validated: Laorcq and Torg were still twenty floors away when five aliens whose silhouettes resembled a cross between a crustacean and a centaur approached them.
Alrine recognized them with dismay. They were Orcants, the species humans had battled for dominance of the Procyon system. Even under normal circumstances, they’d be unlikely to leave the human women alone. In this situation, they could only be there for her and Deïna.
The policewoman swore through her teeth. She only had her service weapon, a sad little low-caliber revolver. It would barely scratch the quadruped aliens’ carapaces. Deïna was frozen, tense without being panicked. Alrine noted with relief that the guide was remaining calm. Reluctantly, she murmured to Laorcq, “Too late. Five Orcants, with an equal number of guns.”
She didn’t have time to say more. One of the aliens lunged at her and put the barrel of his pistol against her forehead.
“Shut it,” he spit out through a translator box. “Give me your navcoms and your gun. Quick!”
Alrine complied, followed by Deïna. The Orcants pushed them deeper into the deserted sector.
Between Mallory and the enormous Aldebaran yawned a chasm of space, bathed in orange light from the giant star. As if the pilot didn’t already feel tiny enough, the ship’s incomplete structure seemed to stretch to infinity in every direction. She turned to discover the airlock was closed. Obviously. No point in checking to see if it’s locked…
Alone in the middle of a shipyard with an extraterrestrial horde descending on her, Mallory dismissed the questions flowing through her mind. Finding out why these Spicans were after her could wait.
Pursued by the tall, four-armed aliens, she moved deeper into the heart of the immense, unfinished liner. Girders and metallic panels jutted out everywhere, offering several potential hiding places that doubled as obstacles. It was a total labyrinth in all three dimensions.
A deadly chase began: in this kind of environment, the slightest slip could prove fatal. Worse, Mallory realized with alarm that her mastery of zero G was a bit rusty. Panicking, she lost precious time before her reflexes kicked in. Working in complete silence exacerbated her stress level.
She focused on her progress, but almost missed a handhold when Jazz’s voice jangled from her spacesuit’s loudspeakers.
“Mallory! What’s happening? Given your respiratory rate, I’d say you’re having a heart attack!”
“I’ve got a pack of Spicans on my tail and I’m stumbling around in zero gravity! You’d better come up with a genius idea if you don’t want to have to find another captain!”
On the Sirgan, Jazz shifted immediately into emergency mode. A cocktail of stimulants flowed into the circulatory network that kept him alive, speeding up his cognitive abilities. The ship’s systems granted top priority to the NI’s requests, transforming into a cybernetic legion under his command.
Armed with Alrine’s authorization, Jazz combed through Solicor’s information network in seconds. He hacked and decrypted data about the shipyards in a flash and analyzed the liner’s blueprints for good measure.
Struggling to return a more normal speed of thought, he reopened the line to his captain. “We’re fine. Head toward synergetic tube number three. It was activated recently. I’ll send you the itinerary.”
With relief, Mallory saw a map of the pleasure craft appear in the corner of her visor, with highlights indicating the path forward.
As she ran, her reflexes returned, which made progress easier. Her breathing became more regular, her movements more confident. Emboldened, she began jumping from one part of the structure to another, taking the risk of veering off course in order to gain a more comfortable head start on her pursuers.
She had just made it to the drive when a violent blow threw her against a girder, which she bounced off before landing about three hundred feet away. Several red lights flashed on her visor. Fortunately, her suit had maintained its integrity. She looked around, searching through the nearby clusters of metal and composite.
Just in time, she caught sight of her attacker: an ovoid robot with extendable arms ending in prehensile appendages. It used its disproportionately long limbs to move like a monkey through the iron jungle, hanging from the girders that formed the ship’s skeleton and swinging from platform to platform. Mallory saw that it was about to slam directly into her…
Unwilling to absorb another impact, she leapt sharply to the right just before the insane machine reached her. Dragged along by its inertia, the robot hit the steel structure hard where Mallory had been standing just moments earlier. She didn’t have time to celebrate: the Spicans weren’t far behind her. Continuing along her path, she rushed toward the synergetic tube that Jazz had indicated.
Still guided by her navcom, she arrived in front of a hatch that opened using a lever as thick as her arm. She grasped it firmly and, taking advantage of her weightlessness, pushed off with her legs to launch her body forward. She did a sort of flip without letting go and managed to shift the heavy lever. Once unlocked, the hatch slid back smoothly. Mallory went through into the propulsion system. The immense cylinder’s interior was smooth and dark. It must have measured a half-mile long by a quarter-mile wide.
If she had understood Jazz’s plan correctly, she knew that the smallest mistake would cost her life: ignition would release enough energy to rip a moon from its orbit.
“Jazz? I’m in the propellant tube,” she confirmed.
“Good. There’s a maintenance panel a few feet away. Link up with it, and don’t worry about authorization: I registered you with the system.”
Mallory followed her Natural Intelligence’s instructions. The suit she wore was equipped with a thin cord ending in a standard connector. Once she plugged in, her navcom emitted a tone signaling data transfer.
Finally running out of patience, she asked, “Done. Now will you tell me what’s going on?”
“I rewrote the drive’s microprogram. On my signal, the tube will partially activate, causing a violent discharge of energy. The guys coming after you will be blown to bits…”
“And what about me?” asked Mallory, with a skeptical tone.
“You’re not in any danger! I made sure there was a safe zone. I’ve sent the coordinates to your navcom. Hurry up and get there!”
The Spicans were already diving into the drive system through the still-open hatch. Mallory took up a position in the safe zone, about three hundred feet away. As the aliens charged towards her, Jazz’s voice emerged from the navcom.
“Here we go!”
Inside her spacesuit,
Mallory felt the hair stand up on the back of her neck.
The tube walls shimmered with phosphorescent green. A first flash appeared, and then everything sped up as bursts of light roared through the gigantic cylinder. Instead of ebbing, as she had expected, they increased in intensity and fused into torrents of energy. Caught up in the maelstrom, the Spicans were trapped and incinerated one by one. As soon as the lightning touched them, their suits seemed to flare up inside before exploding suddenly like over-filled balloons. Nothing remained of the Spicans but ashes floating in the tube, a macabre fog tossed about by the jets of energy.
Her polarized visor couldn’t fully protect her eyes from the light given off by the artificial storm. To Jazz, she said, “Stop! They’re all dead!”
No reply. She saw the flashes diminish in intensity, then pick up again. “Jazz!” she screamed. “I said stop!”
“I’m sorry, Captain, but I’ve lost control…”
Laorcq swore copiously after the connection to Alrine died, attracting the attention of the non-humans around him. Too concerned to worry about their reactions, he turned to Torg. “Let’s go! Alrine and the guide are being attacked by a band of Orcants. We’re going to find out right now whether we can trust Frrrj!”
Matching these words with action, he called the Xilf. The extraterrestrial didn’t answer right away, which tried Laorcq’s patience.
“Human. Why are you contacting me?”
“We need you. Two members of our team have been assaulted in a deserted sector. Five Orcants, maybe more.”
“You haven’t done anything for us, and yet you ask for our aid. That’s not a very good sign.”
Laorcq let out a groan of despair. “If we go after them even though we’re outnumbered, we may not make it back! And if we’re dead, we won’t be able to help you at all…”
The argument worked. Frrrj agreed to send about a dozen of his compatriots. They appeared before Laorcq and Torg had gone another three hundred feet. To have arrived so quickly, the thin aliens with the wide fly-like eyes must have already been in the area. Laorcq deduced that the Xilfs had been watching them. Given the circumstances, he wasn’t going to complain…
Aldebaran Divided Page 5