Gunboat

by James Evans

  “But, why?” persisted Cohen. “I don’t understand why anyone, let alone someone from another system, would go to the effort of attacking an asteroid. How can their gains possibly make the risk and effort worthwhile?”

  “I wonder if you may have misunderstood the scale of our colony,” said the prime minister, “or the scale of asteroid habitation in general, perhaps because you are more used to thinking about planets where only the surface is occupied. Maybe the translation system is not helping.”

  She stood and moved to the viewscreen wall, banishing the face of Giacomo Khan with a gesture and bringing up a live feed of the desert biome. The camera showed a river running through a rocky desert landscape that stretched into the distance. The cavern was lit as if by a star. Vultures could be seen circling over something in the background. In the foreground, a group of figures sat around a viewscreen. Warden let out a long whistle of appreciation.

  “How big is this place?” he breathed, staring at the vultures.

  “Child of Starlight is a dwarf planet, Captain Warden,” Haukland said. “To all intents and purposes, we have as much space as we want to have. The swimming pool you see in the compound is a hundred metres long, if that helps you get a sense of scale.”

  “You’ve built a desert, inside an asteroid, complete with vultures and presumably other life, so you can run what looks like a class for primary school children?” asked Warden, incredulous.

  Haukland gave a thin smile. “Would that be such a bad idea?” she asked rhetorically. “But no, it’s not just a teaching facility. We can run simulations on a grand scale in this biome. We can try new technologies and see how they affect the desert. Once built, can we push it back and turn empty brush into fertile forest? We can terraform here, test our ideas and improve methods so that we can, one day, speed up the process of bringing life to dead planets. We can also make more palatable environments for our citizens. One day, humanity may need to inhabit places like this simply to survive as the stars are extinguished one by one.”

  “Yes, but that sort of need is billions of years away,” Cohen said.

  “True,” said Berdahl, “but we believe in being well prepared, and the terraforming technologies are of much more immediate benefit. We also use these biomes for leisure and entertainment purposes. The techniques and technologies required to build and maintain such things have many applications.”

  “And all of this requires a great deal of material to build, and it must be precisely the right material of course. Child of Starlight provides us some of what we need but the rest we get from asteroid mining and other resource gathering techniques,” said Haukland.

  “Wait, you said other biomes?” asked Cohen.

  “Yes, of course. The artificial river you see runs in a continuous loop through many biome caverns that allow us to experience life as you would on a planet and to run experiments.” The Prime Minister flicked at her slate, changing the display to briefly show an arctic zone, which was beautiful in a stark kind of way, followed by a temperate zone where a huge deciduous forest ran up to one bank of the river and the other side was green fields of pasture and crops.

  Then she came back to one of her favourite zones, the tropical rainforest that she’d had on in the background earlier. First she showed them the view along the river, then she switched to another camera.

  “Ah, and here we can see the tour group for your personnel.”

  The small group of Marines and naval personnel was being shown around by a couple of Valkyr guides. A series of treehouse homes and other buildings could be seen on the ground, behind a stockade fence. One figure could be seen striding toward the gate, a guide behind him gesturing wildly and shouting. A large monkey with an orange ruff, long blue cheeks and a scarlet nose appeared between the gates and the man walked straight up to it. They appeared to be talking to each other.

  “What on earth is going on? Is that one of your Marines talking to a monkey, Tom?” Cohen asked.

  Warden let out a resigned sigh. “Yes, that’ll be Marine X.”

  “How exactly is he talking to a monkey, though? It looks like they’re having a conversation.”

  “I did tell you he’d encountered space monkeys, but you seemed to think I was winding you up.”

  “The mandrills were bio-engineered by our ancestors, so they have certain improvements,” explained Haukland. “They’re larger than their cousins on Earth, a little more intelligent, and perfectly capable of conducting a conversation. Their vocal chords aren’t entirely suited to speaking our language, but they wear throat microphones that translate for them. It prevents them from getting a sore throat. They have the same problem you would have if you tried to put on a scary growling voice to tell a story to a child. Our languages are just a bit hard on them, but that was easily solved. You say this man has met mandrills before, Captain?”

  “Yes, on one of the Koschite planets we, err… visited,” Warden confirmed.

  “Then I’m sure he will be fine. Our mandrills are similar to theirs, though ours have the same voting rights as any other resident of Child of Starlight,” said Haukland, watching as this Marine X was escorted into the mandrill village and up the steps to the foreman’s office.

  “Voting rights?” Cohen asked. “I thought you said they were only engineered to be a little more intelligent.”

  “Of course,” said Haukland, frowning. “Out of interest, how intelligent do you think the monkeys of Earth are in comparison to us? Do you restrict voting rights to people who can’t understand quadratic equations or who don’t like reading? Is that how Sol runs their societies now?”

  They watched as the guide approached the gates and another mandrill appeared to block his entry to the village. They spoke, then the tour guide nodded and went back to his group. Curious. The mandrills didn’t invite strangers into their villages, not even Valkyr, but they had taken Marine X. Haukland made a mental note to find out about this Marine X and discover how he had persuaded the mandrills to forego their usual practice of meeting people outside the stockade. She had never heard of anyone being invited so quickly into a mandrill village.

  Warden answered for Cohen, who appeared entirely flummoxed. “No, ma’am. Every government in Sol space is democratic, in one form or another, and although there are some that have experimented with alternative voting methods, they’re still fundamentally democratic. We don’t have any non-human voters, that’s all. Captain Cohen is merely surprised by this news. It’s a bit of a revelation to me too, to be honest, and I already knew about the mandrills.”

  “My apologies. I shouldn’t be judgemental, there was no way you could have known this. We have been out of touch with Sol for a very long time.” Haukland glanced at the screen, still showing Khan’s frozen image.

  Captain Warden said, “Getting back to the matter at hand, you want us to deliver the requested ransom, recover the hostages and return them to Child of Starlight? You don’t want us to assault the asteroid, deal with the mercenaries, and liberate the hostages?”

  The Prime Minister shook her head as Warden’s words were translated.

  “That approach has obvious advantages,” she said carefully, “but I absolutely cannot ask you to put yourselves at risk, and we have no military resources to contribute to such an operation.”

  There was a pause, and it was clear that she was considering her words carefully. “I do fear that paying the ransom will embolden Khan and weaken our position, but all I can ask is that you help us carry out the exchange. It is a serious blow to lose the asteroid, but we don’t have the capability to free it through military means, and our first duty is to the miners and their families.”

  “Hold on, there are families on board that station?” asked Cohen.

  “Yes, it’s a significant installation,” said Berdahl. “Once the first asteroid is mined out, there will be considerable space for living quarters and as our survey drones identify similarly suitable asteroids, we’ll look to mine those too. Typically,
we establish an initial colony on any sizeable asteroids or dwarf planets, like Child of Starlight, and then use that as a base to process more asteroids. Only during the very earliest stages of a new build do we restrict families from travelling together.”

  “This station had plentiful facilities before the first children were allowed to live there, I assure you,” said Haukland. “It’s one of the reasons we’re so loathe to relinquish control.”

  “I suppose it shouldn’t surprise me,” said Cohen bitterly. “The Koschites attacked New Bristol, and there are children there, too.”

  “That is deeply regrettable. I am unable to explain why they would attack you or allow their companies to attack us. We have recently had problems communicating through our normal channels, and I am not hopeful that we will get a response on this issue before Khan’s deadline expires.” She paused and looked calmly at Warden and Cohen. “Are you able to help us, Captain Cohen?”

  Cohen turned over the request in his mind. What would Admiral Staines do? he wondered. Then he dismissed the thought. Trying to second-guess the admiral wasn’t helpful.

  “I will have to see information about what exactly is required,” he said. “Palmerston isn’t a big ship, and there’s a limit to what she can carry.”

  “As soon as my technical people can confirm the requirements, I’ll send the information to you, and you can let me know your decision. You’ll have the coordinates of the asteroid, plans of the station, and the details of the ransom within the hour,” she said.

  “Understood. We’ll take our leave and await further information. If you wouldn’t mind telling the guide the tour is over, we’ll meet our personnel at the docking bay.”

  Haukland nodded and showed them out of her office, where they were escorted down to their transport ship.

  “You’ll take care of the details, Ove?”

  “Of course, Prime Minister,” said Berdahl, flicking at his slate.

  “Good. Do you think they’ll agree?”

  Berdahl’s hand hovered over his slate. Then he looked up at the prime minister.

  “Yes,” he said. “I think they will.”

  Haukland nodded, relieved, and Berdahl left to ensure that everything was in motion. Their scans of Palmerston had confirmed that the ship could carry the cargo and that she had space for the hostages during the cramped, but brief, return flight to Child of Starlight.

  Then she relaxed into her chair and turned on the massage feature. For a while she lay there, letting the vibrations soothe her body while her mind mulled over the meeting.

  Would Cohen understand her unspoken request?

  18

  Warden followed Lieutenant Commander Cohen into his conference room and headed straight for the tea. He wasn’t quite sure what Haukland had served him, but it wasn’t from any tea plant he recognised, and he needed something to wash away the lingering taste.

  “I’ll be mother, shall I?” he asked, choosing to interpret the grunt he got in response as ‘Why yes, Captain Warden, I would love a cup of tea. My usual two sugars and plenty of milk, please.’

  “What do you want us to do about these GKI people? Get stuck in, root them out, and free the hostages?” he asked as he slid a mug of tea across the desk toward Cohen.

  The captain looked up at him and the sense of relief was palpable. “Yes, that’s exactly what I want to do. These people are bloody barbarians. Attacking a space station with children on it, over a bunch of rock. It’s despicable.”

  “Rare rock, but yes, I couldn’t agree more. You don’t have any objections to me planning to switch out the cargo for an assault team, then?”

  “Actually, I do have some reservations. Prime Minister Haukland clearly had no idea of the military strength of these mercenaries, what kind of ship, or even ships, GKI have sent to deliver the troops or how many people have occupied the station. For all we know, we might turn up and find a thousand GKI personnel aboard the station with three light cruisers in support. Yes, I want to actually liberate the mining station, not just rescue the hostages. But we may simply be outmatched.”

  Cohen paused to take a sip of his tea.

  “So we take the ransom with us and pay it if necessary. You’ll have to work around the space problems to come up with an assault plan that we can then execute only if the situation allows it. If there aren’t too many combatants there, and you think we can succeed, and the ships are something we can handle, we’ll do that. If not, we play it cool, pay the ransom and live to fight another day,” Cohen said. “Any major disagreement with that?”

  Warden sipped his tea for a moment while he considered their options.

  “No. I can’t spot a problem, much though it pains me to admit we might not be able to do what we’d prefer. If we have to bring back that many hostages, we’ll only be able to take a small team of Marines, and that means we can’t reasonably expect to deal with large numbers of GKI mercenaries, especially when they have the advantage of home ground.”

  “Good, then let’s see if we can work out the details while we wait for the information from the Prime Minister, hmm?” Cohen said, tapping at his slate until a projection of Palmerston appeared.

  Agent O transmitted.

  Warden blinked. What the hell?

 

 

 

 

  sent Warden.

 

  Warden pondered that for a moment before he started to become suspicious.

 

 

  Warden rubbed his temples.

  Warden asked.

 

 

 

  Warden pulled open the maglock drawer on the tiny desk in his cabin and pulled out a couple of painkillers, knocking them back with a dose of good strong water. That was as exotic as drinks got on Palmerston. There was no space for anything that smacked of luxury.

 

 

  Not confined to it? He wasn’t sure he wanted to know what Agent O meant by that, but he was pretty confident it would go down like a ton of bricks with Cohen.

  Warden replied.

  Before he went down to the loading bay, he stopped in at the small bridge that perched atop the great barrel of the rail cannon. Going up and down levels in Palmerston was mostly achieved with ladders to minimise space requirements. It was quite the most uncomfortable ship he had ever been on.

  Warden went straight to Cohen’s side and whispered in his ear, starting with a pre-emptive warning that the captain shouldn’t get angry. It didn’t work. Cohen leapt to his feet.

  “Midshipman Robinson, you have the con,” he announced.

  On Ascendant, Warden would have had trouble keeping up with Cohen, but you couldn’t get far on Palmerston before you had to change direction and t
hey soon had to slide down a ladder to reach the mess hall, such as it was.

  Inside they found the Valkyr scientist, Frida Skar, eating a sandwich and poring over her data slate.

  Cohen coughed to announce his presence when she didn’t look up. She seemed lost in her own world, barely paying attention to her half-eaten meal but scrolling up and down her screen and muttering to herself. Cohen coughed again.

  “If you are ill, Captain,” said Skar in Koschite without looking up, “then I would appreciate it if you would see a medic and not cough all over me. I am an extremely important scientist and the Valkyr can ill afford to lose me to some primitive virus you have brought from Sol.”

  Warden bit his lip as the translation scrolled across his HUD. Lieutenant Commander Cohen was technically his superior and certainly not in the mood for laughter after finding a stowaway on his ship, but Warden struggled to contain himself.

  “Miss Skar, I am not ill–” he began.

  “Then why are you coughing? This is not logical; we cough when something is affecting our throat or lungs. If you are not carrying some kind of virus or bacteria, have you perhaps inhaled a large quantity of particulates? If so, you should still see a medic because that could easily damage your respiratory system.”

  Warden held back a laugh as his superior grew red. “I was coughing to get your attention,” Cohen said, “not because I am ill and not because I have inhaled something I shouldn’t!”

  “That is silly and inefficient. And anyway, I don’t want to give you my attention. I have far more important things to be doing.”

  Cohen was growing visibly angrier. Probably not a good idea to ask him for anything for the rest of the day.

  Then the captain reached out and pulled the data slate from Skar’s hands. She looked up in horror.

  “Give that back this instant, Captain Cohen! That research belongs to me!” she spat with venom, the most emotion Warden had yet heard from her.

  “Shan’t,” came the rejoinder from Cohen. “Not until you tell me what the bloody hell you’re doing aboard my ship!”