The Aggressive (Book 1 of the Titanwar saga): A science fiction thriller

by Gem Jackson

  A small group of Russian separatists had infiltrated the crew and set fire to three of the passenger decks on the Tranquility’s superstructure. They left two of the decks unharmed, but disabled the fire-control systems on the third. The passengers on deck fourteen didn’t have a hope. Locked out of all but three exits, the separatists had covered the only escape routes with automatic weapons, catching the tourists between a hail of bullets and an inferno for an hour before they succumbed to the smoke and flames themselves.

  Tem was already a seasoned investigator when she boarded the Tranquility, she was prepared for the stink of pork and sulphur that accompanied such investigations. But it was the piles of burnt corpses, crawling atop one another at the sealed stairwells, flesh fused to flesh, hairless, lipless children baring their charred teeth, cradled protectively beneath the bodies of their parents that had left Tem feeling gutted and hollow. They never had the evidence to prove it, but it had been one of Anton’s, she was sure. His fingerprints were all over it, not literally of course. He was too careful for that.

  That’s how Biarritz worked. The violence and deaths were always a sleight of hand. The Tranquility was a prime example. An atrocity carried out by separatists, just another mindless act of terrorism, of killing? No, it was more subtle than that. She suspected a commercial motive. The separatism element was designed to push people away from using the Russian space tourism companies, the market leaders at the time. Biarritz had been ‘hired’ by someone to destroy a country’s share of a lucrative emerging market and make room for his paymasters to grow. And he had gone about it with fire and guns and death. Wheels within wheels within wheels.

  Tem brought up schematics of the Lancaster Orbital and the Enigma. The attack had been carried out by a military vessel. It was an absurd choice. There was a twisted logic, of course. The interdiction craft were powerful enough to steer even the biggest commercial ships out of harm's way given enough notice. The Station Commander had been right about that. It was a manoeuvre they carried out every couple of years, albeit usually as a precaution. An alteration of just one or two degrees, even half a degree, would avert disaster.

  The Enigma was different. It was military grade. The point defence system that swatted the interdiction craft away like flies, and armoured mass that led to the catastrophic impact were double-edged swords.

  Everything that made the Enigma perfect to carry out the attack also made it difficult to get hold of in the first place. The only way to hijack a destroyer like the Enigma was with another destroyer, or preferably, something bigger. Tariq had pointed out that the military approach, as experts in such matters, was to use an entire fleet. Even then there would be no guarantee of success. It would take weeks wrestling control of the Enigma from its crew. More than enough time to get a message back to Earth or Ceres or Mars. It didn’t make sense. How do you steal an armed and alert warship without being noticed? Not easily, that’s for sure.

  Yet someone had managed it, and there was the puzzle. There was the snag, the loose thread that if she picked at it enough, September was sure she could unravel the whole thing. If she could work it out, if she could follow the trail back from the Enigma, she was sure she would get Anton. Nobody could steal a destroyer and keep their hands clean.

  Tem shook her head and cleared the schematics from her view. She brought up the classified records of the Enigma’s movements from the weeks and months before. There was nothing out of the ordinary. A couple of months back the Enigma had left the first battle group round Earth and was assigned to convoy duty, escorting commercial vessels out to Titan. This was in line with current military policy. Small warships like the destroyers were regularly rotated between supporting the battle groups, solo pirate hunting tours and convoy escort duties. It prevented things from getting stale and allowed the crews, and captains, to build up a range of quality experience while protecting increasingly exposed commercial interests.

  After reaching Titan, the Enigma was to jump to Ceres and escort another convoy back to Earth, ultimately docking at Lancaster orbital. It reported the trip to Titan went smoothly, so whatever happened must have occurred between Titan, Ceres and Earth. How long would that have taken? The time allocated in the reports was both vague and generous. There appeared to be something around an extra week built into the schedule. That wasn’t unusual in itself, given the vagaries of T-jumping. It could be something or nothing.

  Most intriguing was the destruction of the Beacon. This had been playing on her mind since being on the orbital. The value of the Beacon was obvious; without its hourly bursts of radio activity, nobody could jump to Earth. Beacons were essential for T-jumping, allowing pilots to complete the jump calculations and calibrate the drives properly. It would only have taken four hours for the Beacon’s last signal to pass beyond Neptune and after that, Earth was cut off until a new system was put in place. Normally that would take a matter of hours, but with a Kessler syndrome? Who knew?

  The most obvious conclusion to draw was that an attack on the Beacon was a precursor to a major assault on Earth or the Moon. Then again, such a move was childish; APSA had immediately pulled its major battle groups back to Earth, nullifying any advantage gained by cutting the planet off.

  It all added up to something. Something big. She tried to picture the scene where the orbital had been; the frozen bodies staring lifelessly with misshapen, bloodshot eyes, flesh torn and shredded by ugly fragments of metal and plastic flashing past. She shook the image clear. It was a distraction. Was that really it? The thousands of deaths on Lancaster? The loss of the Beacon, the Kessler syndrome? If they were a distraction, where was the threat?

  A flash of panic flashed through her. A feeling of being overwhelmed by the scale of everything that had happened, that was happening. She resisted the urge to try to see the whole picture at once and instead went back to the Enigma. One thread at a time. Pick at something manageable and see what else comes loose in the process.

  She heard the knock the second time round. It was faint, almost hesitant. She cleared the open files from her view and turned to the hatch at the end of the narrow room.

  “Come in.” Nothing. She tried again, this time louder, “Come in. It’s open.” Again nothing. Tem switched off her optitact and opened the hatch.

  “Yes? What is it?” Outside the hatch a man stood with his back to her. He spun round, hand in his pocket and looked at her inquisitively, cocking his head.

  “Agent September Long?” The man paused before offering a hand. His mouth hung open as if searching for what to say. “I don’t think we’ve met. I’m diplomat Forest McVeigh. May I come in?”

  Tem weighed the diplomat up before gesturing him inside. He looked the part. Probably in his fifties, he wore a smart grey suit. His hair, also grey, was wiry like his frame. He was slim, skinny almost, but in the same way as a taught steel cable. An inch or two taller than Tem, his face, like her own, was dominated by high cheekbones and predatory, piercing eyes. As he stepped in she noted how instead of looking around the room, as most people did when entering somewhere new, he didn’t take his eyes off her. An image came to her mind from many years before. She had been climbing at home in Majorca, high in the mountains of the northwest, when she spied a peregrine falcon circling above. The diplomat possessed the same balance of calm lethality as the raptor soaring above her head that day.

  “How can I help you diplomat?” she asked.

  “Oh, nothing really. And call me Forest please. I just thought since we’re all on board together I should introduce myself. I’m stationed on Titan at the moment I was only at Lancaster station for a conference you see, so the government asked me to be on board to help with the,” a hesitation, “I guess you’d call it the mission. I understand that you’re here for similar reasons?”

  “Diplomat McVeigh, was it?” asked Tem, taking a seat at the small steel table at the end of the room. She wasn’t about to discuss her mission parameters with this man.

  “Yes, though no
need to stand on ceremony here, especially if we’re going to be working together, so Forest, please.” The diplomat joined Tem at the table. He seemed to be relaxing.

  “Okay, well, if we’re being informal, people call me September or Tem. Take your pick. Can I get you anything, Forest?”

  “No thank you, as I say, I’ve just had tea with the Captain. How was your trip from the station? Did you get caught up in any of the chaos?”

  “It was eventful but we got here in one piece.” Tem smiled, and allowed herself to relax. Whoever this was, she was certain it wasn’t diplomat Forest McVeigh. Her line manager Mo had met diplomat McVeigh and his wife a couple of years earlier at an evening fundraiser. At the time Mo had joked about his appearance; a giant mole squeezed into a ‘man suit’ with only a pair of round glasses as a disguise. His wife by contrast was beautiful, in Mo’s view at least. Drunkenly, this had been at their Friday evening ‘weekly debrief’ at the bar after all, they had both wondered why this was so often the case with senior civil servants. Tem suggested that maybe having a big dick and a bigger inheritance was a part of the diplomatic recruitment process.

  There was no way that this man, with his sharp lines and long limbs, was the same man seen by Mo at the fundraiser. This begged the question; who was he? It was time to do a little prodding.

  “Eventful,” Forest laughed, “that’s one way to put it. After they signalled the evacuation I just about made it to my shuttle. If it hadn’t been for the minister asking me to join you here, I would have been caught up in that horrible, horrible mess around the orbital. Terrible events. It’s a,” Forest paused, choosing his words carefully, “bleak day for all of us, I think. This will change things.”

  “I think you’re right, Forest. You know, I think you may have met my boss a couple of years ago. Mohamad Hamoud? He’s fairly senior in APSA. It was at a charity fundraiser, somewhere in Paris I believe?”

  Forest closed his eyes and rocked his head back as if thinking. Tem chastised herself for the abrupt change of subject. That hadn’t been smooth. She really wasn’t on form today.

  “Charity fundraiser? Paris? You’ll have to forgive me, September, I meet a lot of people in my line of work. I’m afraid I don’t remember Mr Hamoud directly, but I’m assuming that must have been the Vision Saine fundraiser. It was a blindness thing if I remember correctly. You know, that was only a month or two before they stationed me on Titan.” Forest got to his feet. “Anyway, I’m sure you are busy and I should continue my meet and greets around the ship. I believe your partner is next door?” She nodded. “It’s been lovely to meet you September.” He offered his hand to her again.

  She was stunned. How the fuck did he know that? He had got the name of the fundraiser spot on. She shook his hand again and accompanied him to the hatch as he left. There was no way of checking the details with Mo anymore, but she was certain that couldn’t be him. Unless he had undergone a whole-body transplant.

  She weighed up her options. Ultimately, her suspicions weren’t based on any kind of objective evidence, just her own recall of a drunken conversation with her boss over two years ago. Even she had to admit there was a reasonable chance she was mistaken. But it would be an odd thing to be wrong about. How many conversations about diplomats had she ever had? Presumably he had undergone the same fingerprinting and DNA sampling she and Tariq had when he came on board, which would be worth checking. It just didn’t seem to connect to anything. Why would anybody impersonate a relatively low level member of the diplomatic corps? She mentally filed the whole episode into her to-do list over the next few days and decided to head next door and make peace with Tariq. Plus, she’d be able to keep an eye on Mr McVeigh in the process. Or whoever he was. She needed to speak to Tariq.

  The air in the cabin next door was foul. Tem inhaled the familiar odour of male sweat, made worse by the associated heat and humidity of having six people in a compact space with no fresh air. Alongside Tariq and the man claiming to be diplomat McVeigh, the room was occupied by the diplomat’s assigned escort and the pilot who was present when they docked. Finally, there was a figure Tem didn’t recognise, a senior officer of some kind.

  She worked her way across to Tariq, edging around torsos and under arms, trying to stay out of the ebb of conversation as much as possible.

  “What’s going on here? It all seems a little tense.”

  Tariq stood and addressed the man Tem hadn’t recognised, the one talking to ‘McVeigh’.

  “Commander. May I introduce my partner and lead agent in this investigation, September Long.”

  He was as smooth as ever. Tariq always was the best for meeting and greeting. He got on with people, almost as if he liked them. Tem remembered Mo’s explanation of the difference between the two of them; ‘Unlike you and me, Tem, Tariq is an ordinary human being. He has a thing that we in management call ‘tact’. That means he doesn’t go round looking at everyone like they’ve got a fucking heroin filled condom up their arse and a collection of dead-puppy sex toys hidden under their bed. You do and that’s why nobody except me likes you’.

  “Are you okay agent Long?” The commander was offering a hand towards her. She must have drifted.

  “Yes, sorry. Thank you, Commander…?” She shook his hand in two short, firm movements. His round face and bald head, set off with a pair of black, round glasses gave him an appearance that was at once cartoonish yet devoid of humour.

  “Commander Predovnik, Slavoj Predovnik. I’m the executive officer, or ‘XO’ as you might hear, on board the Aggressive.”

  “Of course,” Tem drew herself up to her full height and shook his hand firmly, “it’s been a long, frustrating day.” Tem furrowed her brow at her own choice of words.

  “It has. A very long day. There will be many more to come. This is something you should all be prepare for.” Predovnik looked around the room, eventually landing his gaze on the dishevelled young officer accompanying the diplomat, who shrank back against the wall.

  Again Tariq interjected, addressing the XO, “Commander, could you bring agent Long up to speed on what you just said?”

  “Of course. For the third time. I have just informed diplomat McVeigh about the plans, agreed with the Captain, for his vessel, the Jackdaw’s Straw. It is too risky to T-jump while the vessel remains alongside, yet the Captain understands the tactical benefits of having a smaller, civilian craft at our disposal. Consequently it will be placed at the disposal of sub-Lt Wood and another pilot officer.”

  Tem could see that neither the pilot nor McVeigh were happy with the arrangement. The diplomat shouted over the top of Predovnik.

  “And once again, I’m telling you it is unacceptable. I am not leaving a billion dollar, government owned, diplomatic yacht in the hands of a boy who looks like he’s spent more time in his bedroom with a sock over his cock than he has at the controls of a goddamn spaceship.” Forest, one arm folded across his chest, used the other to stab repeatedly at the air in front of the XO with a long finger. It took all of Tem’s self-control to keep her eyes on the exchange and not exacerbate the young officer’s humiliation by looking over at him.

  “And I am telling you, again diplomat McVeigh,” said Predovnik, “that this is a military ship and you are on board at our sufferance. The Captain and myself considered all available options. Your choices are to allow two of our qualified pilot officers to jump your ship and rendezvous with us at Titan, or we can leave it adrift here. That much is up to you.”

  A tense silence.

  “Fine.” McVeigh closed on Predovnik stopping only a few inches from his face, “But if anything happens to that ship, I’m holding you responsible. In fact, I’ll name you. Publicly. Across the Solar System. I’ll make sure it’s a big fucking headline, with the word ‘incompetent’ in nice easy-to-read letters. Italicised, in fact. I’ll have your name and ‘incompetent’ italicised. So you,” he picked out Wood, “fly carefully, right?”

  The XO smirked. “Wood, it’s time you went and t
ook possession of the diplomat’s ship. Murray will be with you shortly. Off you go.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Wood. The XO took another look at Forest before turning on his heel and leaving. There was an awkward silence. Forest remained standing in the middle of the room. His breathing was deep and his jaw set hard.

  “You know what?” he said to the room at large pointing in the direction Predovnik had left, “I don’t like him.” With that he left too.

  “That guy is a diplomat?” said Ramis. “Right?”

  Chapter 8 – Anton

  They don’t have any idea who I am. Anton leaned back in the small, rigid chair at the end of his ‘state room’. He thought about it again and corrected himself.

  She doesn’t have any idea who I am. It wasn’t as optimistic a thought as it sounded. It cut two ways.

  He inhaled deeply and pressed his fingers into his eyes. His room reeked of the antiseptic cleaning agents used to cleanse it. It made a pleasant change from the miasma of body odour that inhabited most of the ship, but the chemical smell left him feeling like he was hiding in a hospital.

  It wasn’t ideal having Long and Abbas on board, but neither was it a disaster so long as they didn’t recognise him. Abbas wasn’t a problem; he had plenty of dirt on him. It was just a matter of pulling the trigger at the opportune moment. September was different. She was terrifying. It seemed to Anton that she was suspicious of him for some reason. The question about the fundraiser was a little too quick to be chit chat. Then again, he thought, she might just be awkward like that.