by Gem Jackson
"So, what is it? What do you want?" asked the diplomat.
"Information. You are going to show me how to access your diplomatic information and communications account on that secure tablet, there. I want everything I would need to become you. That's all."
"What? Why? I'm a very low-level diplomat. I don't do security work, I have very limited commercial—" Anton slapped the diplomat hard across the face, sending his glasses flying into the air. "I don't want to hear objections Mr Diplomat McVeigh, not unless you want another visit from Mr Pencil? If you become in any way difficult, I will escalate this fast. Do you understand? I'll drag a family member up and we can continue the dialogue while I chop bits off. Fingers, toes, eyes, I don't care, whatever it takes so you give me what I want."
Anton was grateful that little more cajoling was needed. He knew people who would clam up under this kind of interrogation, but with a man like McVeigh, going in hard was effective. Within moments, he had the necessary codes and protocols to effectively become Forest to anyone who didn't know him personally. After briefly testing each one on the remote system, he spent a couple of minutes committing them to memory and then turned to his captive.
"Right, that was very efficient, well done diplomat McVeigh. Let's go and reunite you with your family."
After binding his hands behind his back once more, they marched through the vessel to the cargo bay. They stopped only to open the secure bulkhead door, the cold air within hitting them with a blast as it swung aside.
Anton pushed the diplomat forward into the cargo bay with enough force to knock him off balance. He pulled another bag and zip-tie from his pocket, clenched them between his teeth and, using both hands, flipped the shotgun round like a bat, taking the barrel in a double-fisted grip.
McVeigh saw his dead family just as he recovered his footing. The three bodies hung painfully from their wrists, blue palms and fingers motionlessly grasping upwards. Any reaction was cut short as Anton, with a grunt, skilfully smashed the butt of the shotgun into the side of his neck. He fell sideways onto his shoulder, eyes bulging. Anton dropped onto him and fixed the bag and zip-tie into place. He leapt off again, leaving Forest to asphyxiate helpless and alone on the freezing floor, jerking and twitching like an insect.
Anton took the time to get his breath back and put on a pair of black thermal gloves. He did a tour of the cargo bay, visiting each of the three hanging bodies in turn. He uncuffed them from the wall and dragged the bodies into the middle of the room, in front of the wide, external doors. Once all three lay next to one another he retrieved a small, dark holdall from the corner of the bay and walked over to the motionless Forest. He removed a slim rectangular plate, pressed it in turn against each of Forest's hands before replacing it into the holdall. He then took a pair of scissors and a handful of small plastic bags. He unbuttoned Forest's trousers and snipped away a small amount of pubic hair, placing it carefully into one of the bags. He did the same with some hair from Forest's head. Finally, he retrieved a syringe and careful took three vacutainers of Forest's blood before binding the wound.
He dragged McVeigh's body to the side of the cargo bay and with effort, manhandled it into an open steel container, just big enough to contain the man. He slammed the lid closed, took two heavy-duty padlocks from the holdall and fastened the container shut. After a final look around, he picked up the shotgun and the holdall, walked out of the cargo bay and closed the hatch behind him. He took off the gloves and checked the time, before making off towards the cockpit.
"Good work. Going well. Still on time."
Chapter 3—Leon
Sub Lt Leon Wood and petty officer Ramis often met to share a coffee in the mess before starting their shifts. Despite being an officer, albeit one of low rank, Leon found that nobody minded him being in the petty officer's mess when it was quiet. The traditional barriers between the ranks tended to fall away on the more cramped space vessels as a necessary consequence of spending months on end in the same sealed tube. As a result, a degree of mingling between the ranks was considered normal, barring the senior executive team of course. The petty officer's mess was usually quiet for some reason, so the two of them had settled into a routine within a few days. Ramis was offering advice.
"Screw 'em."
Leon winced. He was still adjusting to the cursing that was so common among those born on Earth. It was miraculous that he and Ramis had become friends. In many ways they were opposites; Leon was small and quiet, an outsider from the fringes of the Solar System. Ramis was big and brash. He knew everyone and understood the world; how to get things done. Yet, for whatever reason, they got along. Plus, Leon wasn’t overwhelmed with offers of friendship.
"I know." Leon trailed the rim of his mug with his index finger. "I'm just sick of it already. It's been a week and I feel like blasting myself out of a waste disposal vent."
"So they don't like you? Screw 'em." Ramis slapped the table. "The point is, they needed a pilot officer, they got you and you're getting the tour out of it. Yes," Ramis planted a finger on the table between them, "the next eighteen months might be the worst experience in your life. Yes, it might lead to a gun-crazy rampage around the ship taking four, maybe five people down before you kill yourself. And yes, it might turn out I'm one of your victims, in which case, my last thought will be of the delicious, but tragic, irony of this conversation. But whether or not they let you actually pilot anything, you get to say you've done a tour on a hunter-killer destroyer as your first posting—"
"It's a cruiser," corrected Leon. "This is a cruiser, not a destroyer."
"Cruiser? Destroyer? It doesn't matter, it's still pretty fucking cool."
"I know, I know. A year ago and I was dreaming of being somewhere like this. Well, not exactly like this. I mean, why the hell did I have to get stuck with a bigoted c/o?" Leon took another sip of the coffee. It was still too hot, but at least it was good. The food was another issue altogether. "It's on her, really. I'm good at my job. It's not my fault she's an idiot." More coffee. He brought his eyes up from the table and looked at Ramis.
"You know what she said to me?" Leon thought back to the meeting the day before with Helmswoman LT Jones. She had called Leon over to 'clarify' matters. He could feel his face burning red just thinking about it.
"She said, 'Wood, I want to make this very clear. The only way you're piloting anything on this tour is if we have to travel in a straight line. And even then, only after someone competent points the ship the right way to begin with'. I mean, for goodness' sake."
"Was she joking?" asked Ramis.
"No."
"What face was she making when she said it?"
"I don't know, I was looking at the floor."
"What did you say?"
"What could I say? I nodded and got the hell out of there. She hates me."
"No. Well, possibly," Ramis searched around, looking at Leon for the right response, "I mean, yeah, she probably does."
"I am a qualified pilot. I passed the tests, I did the training, I can do the job."
"It won't make a difference. If she hates you, you won't change that. Think of this, though; if she hates you so much, she'll want to get rid of you at the first opportunity. She's not going to write you up as being shit, otherwise she'll never get shot of you. Just don't fuck up from here. Fucking up when you've got nothing to do? That's bad."
"Yeah, well. I reckon I can manage that." Leon downed half the coffee.
"Don't be so sure. My cousin Gillespie didn't manage it. Worst spanner monkey the navy ever saw. You know, he was the reason the Indiana never made it to the Lancaster Orbital for the anniversary celebrations last year?"
Leon vaguely remembered that. The Indiana was one of the old American built warships. It was supposed to be centre stage at the hundredth anniversary celebration of Lancaster Orbital a year ago, but had to pull out a few days before.
"Your cousin did that? Go on." Leon leaned in. Ramis told a lot of stories and beneath the nonsense there
was usually a kernel of truth to them.
"Well, like I say, Gillespie was fucking awful; worst crewman you ever knew. God knows how he ever got through selection, but anyway, he's been bouncing round from one ship to another for years. No one wants him, but he sticks with it 'cos the whole things a laugh for him. It pays better than anything he'd get back home and he always has the odd side-line here and there.
"Anyway, he'd fucked something up again, so the chief pulls him over and says, 'See this gauge? Watch it and shout if it goes red', and that was his life for the tour. There was some problem where the gauge reading wasn't showing on any of the instrument panels in the control room so they made it Gillespie's job to sit and watch it for twelve hours a day while the techs got round to fixing it. Problem was, they never got round to it. His shift leader enjoyed having him away, so the arrangement, which should have only lasted a day or so, just carried on.
"Well, that suited Gillespie fine. He was brewing vodka in one of the stores anyway, so he'd turn up, look at it for half an hour then fuck off to his stills and wank for ten hours straight.
"So they jump in from god knows where and have a week to get to Lancaster. Easy. Except there's a problem with the structure of the ship when they go to accelerate. Now it turns out that's exactly what Gillespie was supposed to be watching out for. When he wasn't on shift, they had someone popping down every hour to make sure it was okay, but when Gillespie was on shift, they didn't bother. So this problem goes critical and, long story short, they end up ejecting six of their reactor cores into space. The Captain went fucking nuts, screaming at his XO on the bridge 'cos they've just lost half their power and so the XO storms down to find Gillespie. Only he's not at the gauge.
"Queue a two-hour search, now with the marines and the master at arms, and they eventually track him down in his makeshift vodka still, pissed and unconscious, sat on a bucket, stinking of booze, pants round his ankles with his limp cock still in hand and a pile of sticky tissues on the floor."
The mess echoed with Ramis' dirty laugh. A couple of people looked over at them.
"What happened? Did they boot him off?"
"They couldn't. Not without letting on that someone had been brewing vodka on board for however long. How many senior crew would be in the shit for not doing the rounds properly? Eventually they call into Lancaster Orbital, a week overdue, and the Captain gets Gillespie reassigned to the station as a maintenance technician with a glowing reference. Course, Gillespie loves that too 'cos he can get up to more mischief in one place with regular shuttles back down to the planet." Ramis ran a hand over his stubbled chin. "So there's your plan. Sit tight, don't fuck up and hope for the best."
Leon checked his watch and let his head drop to the table with a bang.
"Time to go, eh? C'mon Leon, what's the worst that could happen? It'll be fine."
Leon and Ramis departed to begin their shifts. Leon walked through the ship slowly, trialling an alternative route from the mess to the control room. He had been doing this for the past couple of days, finding different paths, walking through unexplored areas of the ship. He told himself it was so he could get to know his new vessel as thoroughly as possible. Yet, however circuitous the digression, he always ended with the same leaden feeling in his gut as he reached the painted metal hatch to the control room.
Growing up on Titan, Leon studied the APSA ships obsessively. They were glamorous in a way that the small anti-piracy vessels and lumbering deep space haulers that visited Titan just couldn't match. He knew that a cruiser like the Aggressive was designed to operate independently, away from the large battle fleets. Whereas a normal battle fleet relied on specialist ships to fulfil a different roles, from mapping to logistics to firepower, a cruiser was self-sufficient.
Now serving on the vessel, he saw it in every part of the Aggressive’s design. It was a knuckleduster of a ship; bigger than a destroyer, but not at the enormous scale of the battleships at the heart of the fleets. It was constructed with one purpose in mind—to engage and defeat any vessel of comparable size without support. Huge sections of the hull were devoted to core functions of power, sensors, weapons and drones. Even in areas given over to the human crew, everything had been pared down to the basics; narrow corridors, small bunks, minimal recreational space. When Leon was being optimistic, he thought of it as lean. Most of the time he just thought of it as cramped.
He reached the control room and stepped into the gloom. The pace and tension caught him by surprise. He'd seen it busy before; when they had left Lancaster Orbital, the bridge had come alive. Yet this was different. This was busyness with an edge.
Leon spotted Sub LT Murray, the officer he was due to relieve. They had trained together as pilots. They both scored well in the exams, though not well enough to win a placement on a vessel in the main fleets. Still, the Aggressive was a fighting ship and being assigned to her was a mark of success. The difference between them was that while Leon worked and agonised over every test and exam, Murray took it all in his stride. Murray made everything look ten times easier than Leon. Despite following the same path, Leon never clicked with Murray. He took a deep breath and headed over to start his shift.
"It's Murray, isn't it? Next shift is mine. I guess it's been a busy one?" Leon stepped back a little to give Murray room to vacate the terminal.
"Yeah. Leon Wood, right?" Murray swung round and looked up at Leon, but made no attempt to vacate the terminal. "I don't think you'll be piloting today. Maybe next time." Wood swung back and brought up some calculations on the screen. Leon looked around to see if he was missing something. Nobody was looking over. It all looked normal.
"Erm, listen, I'm sure I should be here? I mean, you are due to finish your shift now, aren't you?" said Leon. Murray replied without taking his eyes from his work.
"Yes, I am due to finish any time now. But no, you are not meant to be here." He stopped working and looked at Leon. "I'm waiting for a real pilot to take over."
"What? Are you joking?"
"I'm not joking. Have you been paying attention to what's going on? It's cute they let you lot join up, but let's not kid ourselves. This is a serious ship, with a serious job to do and there needs to be serious people doing it. Your lot are a joke round here. You’re here to make up the numbers, everyone knows it. So back off, okay?"
Leon understood what 'your lot' meant; he was a 'rimmer'. He hadn’t been born on Earth, or even the Moon. He was from the rim, from Titan. He had never come across the term before arriving at Earth, but he knew it well enough now. As a rimmer he was APSA in name only. It was strange watching the reaction from others as they realised; he passed as Earth-born in appearance. It was when he spoke that he gave himself away. It wasn't just his accent, though that was enough to mark him out. He was entirely unprepared for what he would encounter as he moved further into the Solar System. The cursing that sprinkled virtually every conversation horrified him. He flushed at the onslaught of sexual images and discussions that dominated life on and around Earth.
There was nothing of the kind on Titan, which existed in its own moral vacuum. The first settlers on Titan were devoutly religious, fulfilling God's command to 'go forth and multiply'. As it grew in size, the founders had been careful to protect the colony from the corrosive immorality of the inner planets. This was partly why Titan was such a productive place in the Solar System; the people were kind and hardworking. Crime was rare, and they used their time efficiently. Away from Titan, all that people like Murray perceived was a strange accent and a naïve disposition.
"I... I don't understand. I'm on the roster. You don't decide whether or not to let me sit down."
"Listen, Wood, I don't know what you're supposed to be doing, but I can't let you take up an important position while I'm waiting for a proper crewman to take over. I don't know what you want me to say?" Murray threw a smile and turned back to the terminal. Leon searched for a reply, but nothing came. He felt his hands shaking and folded his arms to hide it.
/> "Seriously, Murray. Move. Just move, now." He could feel people's eyes burning into him. By now other crew members had noticed, this was turning into a 'thing'. They would talk about it round the ship. Everyone was watching to see what he did. But Murray wasn't even responding to him anymore. "Come on Murray, get up, I'm on the roster. Stop screwing around. Please—"
Leon thought about trying to move Murray physically. To wrestle him from the seat, maybe? After a moment of consideration it was obvious that there wasn't a good outcome from such a move.
Leon stepped back when he noticed Helmswoman LT Jones approach them.
"Excellent, just the two I want to speak to. Oh, and Murray, stop fucking around with Wood. You know how sensitive rimmers can be. The two of you need to speak to the XO over in the CIC. He has a job for you. Head over straight away. Wood, I'll be taking your shift here." LT Jones turned away. Everyone around the bridge looked very busy again. Murray made little effort to hide a satisfied smirk.
"Come on Wood, follow me."
Leon mentally told him to fuck off, but said nothing out loud. He quickly crossed the bridge to find the XO. This wasn't hard. The man stood beside the Captain, the two of them deep in conversation. The CIC was located just behind the bridge and made up the rear half of the control room. It was only a few feet from the piloting stations, but Leon felt out of place. They waited until the XO looked up and raised his eyebrows expectantly.
"Yes?"
"Sub lieutenants Wood and Murray, sir. Reporting as requested. Sir."
"Wood? Oh, the pilots. Yes. Follow me." The XO led them to the side of the CIC and picked up a tablet. "We've a very special job for you. You have been specially selected by the senior executive team..."
