by E M Gale
“I, Clarke, do solemnly swear to you, Captain, that I will not mutiny, I will protect your ship and crew, and I will work to protect your life whilst in your employ.” I opened one eye and looked up. The captain looked triumphant and Cleckley was grinning.
‘Are they serious? Is it possible I can’t break my word once I’ve sworn it? Weird. Of course I don’t have a choice, and I have no desire to mutiny.’
“Great,” said the captain, smiling.
“Well, glad that’s sorted then.” I stood up, brushing my trousers down and then I smiled. “May I kindly request that you don’t call me a ‘sucker’ again?”
The captain nodded, his smile fading at my tone.
“So you’re not going to put my poor friends in with the mercs, are you?”
He shook his head. “They seem to lack combat potential, though they’ll have to get tougher wherever I put them, just in case.”
‘I’m sorry, guys. Still, this is better than starvation or jail.’
“OK then,” I said. “Let’s talk pay.”
* * *
I left the captain’s office. My friends jumped up to their feet as I came into view.
“Are you OK, Clarke?” said Anna.
‘Why wouldn’t I be?’
“Don’t worry about him, Anna,” I said, “He’s a paper tiger. A pussycat. A puppy-dog.”
She looked relieved. I wondered if the ship had need of a translator. She was pretty good at languages. But then again, the sort of people this captain might be meeting would probably go in for more direct forms of communication.
Anna was the next to be called in; I hoped she wouldn’t give too much away. As I had no desire to watch my friends panic, I wandered off into the spaceship, which seemed to be made up mostly of grey-painted corridors. I wondered idly where they would put my berth.
‘Surely they won’t be stupid enough to make me share a room?’
The guys I’d seen earlier were still busy loading and unloading things onto the ship. I did my best to spot the mercs, but I guessed that they would be enjoying their shore leave. Sighing, I turned my steps back towards the bridge and arrived just as the others were leaving on a tour of the ship. The captain narrowed his eyes at me. I did notice that he wasn’t as interested in my friends as he had been in me. I also got the distinct impression that he felt like a person who had gotten a bargain in the sales.
“Clarke, where did you go?” asked Anna. When I shrugged, she sighed and shook her head.
My friends spent the tour being awed at everything. I affected a more world-weary curiosity. Really, there was not much difference between working on a future spaceship and any old job: far too much work and hastily made unkept promises on both sides.
I was, thankfully, assigned my own quarters. The ship had a small crew. All in all, it looked like about a hundred. I mused about how few the ship could be piloted with. Both Mark and Rob had been put in engineering and Anna and Jane had been dumped in the bridge, where they would learn how to operate machines of some sort. The tour over, Anna and Jane headed off that way with the captain. Rob and Mark strolled down to the engineering quarter with a technician and I followed along.
The engine room was a mass of noise, moving parts, pretty lights and buttons. Even two hundred years in the future, machines still needed oil, noise and steam, oddly enough. Heat engines were still as good a way as any of powering things.
We were introduced to Chief Technical Officer Brooks. He was a short, chubby and jovial-looking guy who was going slightly bald at the crown of his head.
“And you two are”–he looked down at his PDA–“Robert Deegen, really?”
“Yeah. Why?”
He glanced at me. “No reason. Deegen, you’re in the Engine Room.” He looked down again. “Mark Jameson.” Mark nodded. “Jameson, I think I’ll put you in Engineering Control.” Having got Mark and Rob settled in, he finally turned to me. It was the first time he looked at me throughout the whole conversation.
“So, Clarke, isn’t it?”
I nodded at this indirect question.
“What are you hanging around here for?”
“I’m apparently free ’til we take off. So I was after a keycard to operate the sims room.”
He nodded, turned and scrabbled through a desk drawer. Finding what he wanted, he removed a card and slipped it into a slot on a computer and formatted it.
“You’re not working in engineering then?” asked Rob in surprise.
“Nah.”
“Where are you working?”
I said nothing.
The CTO handed me the keycard; he was sweating at his temples. “You want to get some practice in then? How very eager.”
I shrugged. “I’m out of shape and if I leave the ship now, I’ll probably end up on a bar-room floor whilst you guys are taking off.”
He laughed at this. “Yeah, you’ll fit in fine down there, love,” he commented. “OK, this is your memory card,” he said, handing it to me. “It’s been formatted, so just save your progress on this. Your password’s ‘Clarke’, capital C, it’s the same as your log-in. Nice and easy to remember for you.”
I raised my eyebrows at this.
‘I know I’m not going to be working with the most intelligent people on this ship, but that doesn’t mean I am an idiot.’
But I said nothing. It was probably better that I was underestimated anyway.
Brooks grinned. “It has all the standard programs you’d expect and a few more interesting ones, so enjoy.”
“Ta.” I pocketed the card and nodded to my friends. “I’ll catch you guys after your shift.”
“Sure, Clarke,” said Rob, sounding confused.
There were several things that interested me at that time. I wanted to know what had happened to the rest of the crew. I could see from how easy it was to fit us in and the fact that my friends were all going to be doing highly necessary jobs from day one that the ship was understaffed: Anna and Jane had gone to help with takeoff.
‘So where have the rest of the crew gone?’
That was the sort of gossip I needed to hear, but with only a few hours until takeoff, anyone not currently working on the ship would be drinking in a dive bar on the surface, so I couldn’t get any gossip that way. And I didn’t want to risk going ashore whilst we were running through takeoff preparations. The last thing I wanted was to be left behind. Actually, the last thing I wanted was to run into the yakuza whilst being left behind.
However, the thing that most preoccupied me was my survival. Leaving aside any vampiric powers that I might or might not have, I had had very little training. The military section was run by a retired United Earth Space Fleet major, who still used the title of his rank. I knew from my research that the UESF was the largest military organisation of the Solan Empire. I had the feeling that the major would expect me to know the right end of a gun from the wrong one. I could march and I’d done half a year of martial arts at college, but I had dropped it to do dancing instead. I figured that neither the ability to salute nor the ability to cha-cha would be of much use to a bunch of mercs. As I couldn’t guarantee that I wouldn’t see any action until I’d been trained, I decided that I’d better start training myself.
The sims room was a big, white room with some odd-looking equipment. It seemed to be a mishmash of a gym, a training simulator and a computer game. There was a clipboard outside to book the rooms out. I didn’t put my name on it; I didn’t want anyone to realise how much I would be using these rooms. Either I’d get the reputation as an overachiever, a computer games fanatic or someone completely untrained: in actual fact, all three of those descriptions were accurate.
Unfortunately, I hadn’t foreseen the need for sims room instructions when I was in the library. I fiddled with some of the equipment. There were various weights that seemed to be made to attach to limbs, like wrist-bands or ankle-bands. I slipped one on. It had lots of buttons on the side, like all the worst gym equipment does. So I pressed
a few and found my arm dropping as the weight got heavier. Dialling down one of the numbers made it lighter again.
‘Cool, so in the future they have some sort of material that can be made heavier. Now this is amazing. Is it generating mass? Given that I’ve seen some anti-grav machines that make things float, I know that they have some sort of anti-grav forcefield technology. So perhaps the weights are really heavy, but a battery-powered anti-grav forcefield generator is modulated to change the effective weight? Or maybe it is a gravity generator, like anti-grav, but backwards.’
I was tempted to take it apart to try to figure out how it worked, but now wasn’t the time. And anyway, the exact details were more something that Rob would be excited about than me.
Now I’d figured out how the weights worked, it was time to try the simulation. There was a console in one corner of the room, I flicked it on and plugged in my keycard. A welcome screen came up. It read:
’Name: Clarke;
Species: Homo sapiens vampiricus;
Sex: Female;
Is this correct?
Yes, No.’
I looked at the glowing ‘Yes’ button for a moment. It was odd to think that I was now classified as a different subspecies. I selected ‘Yes’.
The computer then came up with a tutorial mode that showed me how to use the equipment. I usually skipped those sorts of things on the basis that I would figure it out as I went along. For the first time in my life I didn’t.
Having done the tutorial, I loaded up a basic troop combat simulation and picked up the gun controller that the game told me to. It was far heavier and more solid than I expected, I supposed because I was used to plastic toy-style game controllers.
I pressed the go switch on the computer and suddenly I was in the jungle. The tutorial had told me that the projections on the wall were reinforced with direct brain wave stimulation, but I hadn’t quite expected anything this good. I could see the leaves moving in the breeze, hear the crunch of twigs underfoot. But it was odd–the ground looked spongy, but it didn’t feel it and I couldn’t feel the humidity. The whole thing still smelt like spaceship and old sweat, not like the lush and verdant rainforest it looked like. Realising this, I listened harder. I could tell where the speakers were if I concentrated whilst moving my head from side to side and I thought the floor moved, matching my step, so the small room seemed like an unending forest. I wondered if I would have been able to notice those problems in the program before I had turned into a vampire.
I looked round. The s members I was with were rendered well and looked pretty human to me, if I didn’t look too closely. But their lack of scent bugged me. By this point I had started to sort out my vampiric senses a bit and I’d noticed that my sense of smell had become many times sharper. I could smell where people were if they were within range, so long as they weren’t standing behind an airtight door.
“Move out,” said the simulation commander.
‘Ah, the voice synth isn’t fantastic either. There’s no emotion to it.’
There were six people in my s . They moved forward slowly, guns held at ready, crossing their feet over as they walked in a sort of low, crouching movement I’d seen in the odd war movie. I tried to copy them as best as I could, but I found it inelegant and difficult.
Suddenly we came under fire. I was at the front and I moved to fire back. I couldn’t see the enemy so I aimed at where the simulated bullets were coming from. I heard a few generated dying screams from that area so I moved sideways towards them, shooting all the while. Just then there was a strange, sharp pain across my back. I fell to one knee and gasped. The pain vanished as quickly as it had come.
The jungle disappeared and I was in the training room, my hand pressed on a nonexistent injury. The words ‘Game Over’ appeared on the screen. I sighed and lay on the ground to get my breath back.
‘OK, Clarke, first lesson: don’t step in front of your s -mates’ guns.’
I looked at my score. It wasn’t too bad–one kill and a helpful comment to work on my teamwork.
‘Teamwork? Oh, dear, am I in trouble!’
* * *
Space Mercs
After a few hours of basic sims, I called it a night and headed up to my quarters. I hadn’t done anything more than glance around and dump my stuff up there earlier. I located the shower, set it to scalding, washed and dressed, and then circumnavigated the room. It wasn’t too big, of course, but they’d managed to fit in a tiny bathroom, a smallish double bed, some compact storage space, a low sofa and a coffee table in a spare gap. I went over and opened the blinds on the viewscreen. It was set to show a live view of what was outside the ship. I grinned.
‘This is more like it. I can see millions, no, billions of stars suspended in inky blackness.’
‘Hold on, that means we’re in space? I didn’t feel liftoff! Surely I should have done? Strange.’
‘Of course, if we’re in space, then that means I am late for my first shift! Shit!’
I pelted it down to mercenaries’ area of the spaceship. Rounding the corner I nearly ran into a group of muscular guys.
‘My bad. I ought to have been paying attention, then I would have smelt them before I’d turned the corner.’
“You, you’re late,” bellowed an old guy at me. He was about forty-five to fifty. The years of military training had left their mark; he held himself straight as a ruler and didn’t have an ounce of flab on him. This, I guessed, would be the major, or ex-major, who was spending his retirement smuggling.
‘It seems an odd thing to do to me. After all that time spent following orders for governments, why would you then go and break their import-export rules? Of course, the military isn’t like being in the police force. So maybe the breaking of laws doesn’t bother him all that much.’
“Sorry… sir,” I said.
‘I suppose I should get used to that. Maybe I ought to have thought this through more thoroughly. I don’t like answering to anyone. And taking orders really isn’t my style.’
‘Still, as I said to the captain, ’beggars can’t be choosers’.’
He was just staring at me. Then he leaned in and whispered: “Going incognito, are you?”
Since he had said it quietly, I decided I didn’t need to go through all the ‘Yes, sir’ rigmarole. So I sighed and nodded.
‘Honestly, how on Earth did vampires keep themselves hidden for so long? Everyone seems to know what I am. Bloody teeth.’
“Glad to have you aboard, Clarke,” he said, slightly louder. “OK, everyone, line up.”
‘Seriously? I have to line up? God, this is like school.’
I got assigned basic training with an instructor whilst the others went through exercises. I would have thought that a specialised military unit was rather a luxury on a ship this small. Perhaps it was not a nice galaxy out there. After all, imagine if defence of the ship was left to people like Rob, Anna or, God help us, Jane.
Until there was trouble, it seemed that my job was practising avoiding a glorious death. It wasn’t too bad really, I was being paid to exercise, whereas normally I would pay to exercise. However, Connor, the guy doing the basic training, didn’t seem to be too impressed with me.
“For goodness’ sake, love, you look like you’ve never handled a gun before,” he said.
I smiled, trying to charm him. “It’s been a while.”
He just shook his head in a ‘I give up’ motion.
‘Not good.’
I tried to assemble and disassemble my gun again.
‘Seems a dumb thing to do to me. How often will I need to do this crap in a combat situation? I want to learn things that will keep me alive, not pointless stuff like taking my gun to pieces.’
“Why are you bothering, love?” Connor asked.
I sighed.
‘I’m bothering because this is better than starving on Ragnarok IV. Being forced to listen to my friends whinge about time travel and the lack of food and soft bedding whilst I, appa
rently unable to speak the language, am left with a choice between stealing or, even worse, shop work, until the day the yakuza catch me with stolen goods and torture me to death. OK, maybe that is a little melodramatic; it would probably just be boring.’
“It’s Clarke.”
“What?” Connor said, a little taken aback.
“Clarke’s my name, not ‘love’.”
He shook his head. “OK, try it again.”
I did better this time. My fingers had learnt how to move through the task. The major stuck his head in to see how things were going. He watched me for a bit then sent Connor off on a break.
“You’re overdoing it, you know,” he said once Connor had left the room.
‘Overdoing what?’
“You don’t have to pretend to be completely useless.”
I smiled tightly.
‘So, just ’cos I’m a vampire I’m supposed to know soldiering? I know nothing about being a vampire and nothing about soldiering. Or should that be mercenarying? See? I don’t even know the correct term!’
“I’ll get better.” I shrugged as if it wasn’t a problem. Maybe a little arrogance would help me, but in truth I was feeling disheartened.
‘Maybe engineering isn’t such a bad choice after all. In fact, all this disassembling and reassembling is practically engineering anyway.’
“Well, have it your way, but I expect better in actual battle.”
‘Yeah, about that. Let’s avoid battles, eh? And anyway, how often will I need to dismantle and reassemble a gun under fire?’
“Of course, you’ve always got your sword,” he said over his shoulder as he left the room.
‘Was that a joke?’
But the major was long gone so I couldn’t ask him.
* * *
The shift over, I left the mercenary area. The other mercenaries were heading to the mercenaries’ bar, but I ducked out to find my friends, saying I had to ‘get my shit in order’. I thought it sounded like the sort of thing a mercenary would say. I found my friends in the canteen, so after grabbing some sort of meaty slop from the catering staff, I sat down with them.
