by Patty Jansen
“I don’t know . . .”
“There is not much I can do, if things go wrong. Either the module takes or it doesn’t. I can’t change that outcome. If it doesn’t take, keep trying for as long as you can.” He meant for as long as the patient was still alive. “The procedure itself is simple. All the instructions are the same as we use for copying modules to constructs.”
Melati nodded. Although the last time she’d done that, ten months ago, had not been a great success. It was when she had been preparing the cohort that still helped her in the lab. One of them was a boy named Keb, but Jas had broken through, making his own way back from Ganymede as autonomous mindbase. Not only had no one noticed the presence of a spare mindbase on the bullet probe, but no one, including her, had noticed that Jas had breached the security wall between the ISF base and the station.
She didn’t want to do this alone, and she also didn’t want to go to the mess to hear what Dolchova had to say. This might be her last chance to get information out of him.
Dr Chee took off the hospital gown he wore over his uniform and left. Melati opened Dr Chee’s copy of the mindbase software on her computer. He was right; it was disturbingly straightforward.
For a while, she worked, following the sequence of events as he described them: place the pads on the relevant section of his head, start the program, stream the module as the old one was overwritten—
—And the screen displayed an error message.
FATAL ERROR IN FILE
Well, damn it. What was that supposed to mean? She wiped sweat from her upper lip. Try again, Dr Chee had said.
Moshi’s heartbeat was irregular. The nurse bustled around the bed, hooking him up to the ventilator because his breathing had stopped completely.
There was an intense moment of panic.
She changed a few parameters and tried again.
And another error message.
She whispered, “Come on, come on.”
She had to try again, and again and again, until she was successful or he died. Jas came into the lab and looked over her shoulder. He pointed to one of the parameter settings. Melati wasn’t sure what he meant, so she leaned aside so that he could change the setting. By now, she was ready for any desperate measures. She was glad that Jas was here, never mind that he was probably supposed to be at the crew meeting. They’d hear about it when it was really important.
Melati wiped her face. Drops of sweat trickled through her hair.
Try again.
She held her breath. The module scrolled over the screen, and kept scrolling and scrolling . . . She had to take a breath. Moshi’s chest moved up as he, too, took a deep breath. The readout in his heart rate spiked.
The text on the screen was still scrolling. That was a good sign, wasn’t it?
“I think we finally got it,” she said.
Jas sat watching with his eyes wide and mouth open. Melati barely dared to look at him. The whole business with being lost in the system and coming out in the wrong body had freaked him out badly. He’d had several meltdowns already. She didn’t want to trigger another one.
The last lines of the file scrolled off the screen.
Melati watched.
The screen remained empty.
She waited, looking at the black screen.
Wasn’t something supposed to come up?
Not that she remembered what should come up. But—
Moshi took in a sharp breath. His eyelids flickered.
“He’s waking up,” Jas said. He held his hands, white knuckled, on the edge of the bed.
Moshi’s eyes opened. He looked at the ceiling. He frowned, tried to turn his head, but couldn’t, because it was still encased in the BCI harness.
The expression in his dark eyes was clear, free of madness.
“Do you remember me?” she asked softly in B3.
He blinked. A tiny smile crossed his face.
Melati felt a little reassured by that. She carefully removed the uncomfortable immobilisation harness. He moved his head, seemingly glad of the freedom to do so. For now, he appeared to be all right.
Her heart was thudding. This was the moment of truth. They didn’t really know what they were doing, copying mindbase sections onto a natural born person. They could easily have made him worse.
“You’re Melati,” he said.
“Yes, I am.” She nodded, flooded with relief.
“You’re a woman of God. You’re from New Jakarta.”
“Yes, but I haven’t been there for ten months. Do you know who you are?”
“My name is Mobashar Qureshi. Your people call me Moshi. I am from . . .” He frowned and looked around the ward. “This is an ISF ship?”
“You’re aboard the Starship Felicity.”
“A warship.”
“It’s an A class cruiser with both fusion and ion propulsion. We carry launchers for regular missiles, cluster missiles and Z-missiles. Each of those can destroy a ship. We have many.”
His expression grew wary. “How did I get here?”
“You escaped from New Jakarta.”
“You can’t escape. ISF will shoot you . . .” He hesitated. Frowned again.
“We obviously didn’t shoot you. You gave us enough reason to open fire, but we didn’t.”
“The ISF shoots at everything that leaves the station.”
“The ship with the twenty-three construct workers on board was shot by Allion from within the station.”
“No. They were shot by you.”
Melati shook her head. “They were shot by Allion. Do you want to see the images as proof?”
An expression of confusion crossed his face.
“Do you remember what is going on at the station?”
He frowned at her.
“Do you remember New Jakarta?”
There was a short, terrifying silence. The he said, “I think so.” And then he looked aside at the blinking equipment, but said nothing further. His face displayed brief bursts of emotion: confusion, anger, disturbance, annoyance.
Melati wiped her sweaty hands on her trousers.
“What about Mecca?”
He frowned at her. “I would never have enough money to go to Mecca. If we were allowed to visit.”
“Are you associated with Allion?” she said when he made no move to continue the discussion.
“No!” and then, after a short pause, he added, “I guess I am, from your point of view. But I am a merchant and I was making business contacts. I’m interested in selling things, not in war. Electronic goods for food manufacturing and water purification. We are the distributors for agri-boxes.”
She knew of the apparatus. It produced protein and meat substitutes from cultures and recycler paste. It was a basic piece of equipment for any ship or small base. The Felicity had one. It made the munchies.
“You were in their armed forces.”
He raised his eyebrows. “That was a long time ago. How do you know that?”
“I watched your memories.”
“It’s compulsory for everyone who grows up in an Allion community. I didn’t like it. They tried to get me to sign up for longer. I didn’t want to, because . . .” He hesitated. “I don’t want to go to war. I don’t know why it’s necessary. I don’t want war. I grew up in an outer community and don’t even know why we need to have this war.”
“Is it because of Paul Ormerod?”
He gave her a sharp look. “You know about him?”
“You were looking for him?”
He went all nervous again. “No. No. I happened to come across him.”
“Because you were with the hypertechs.”
He nodded.
“And the hypertechs had him.”
“They didn’t, at first, but I told them where he was, because I knew the young idiot who had stumbled on this man.”
“That young idiot is my cousin. He is now an aircraft mechanic on this ship. The woman who was killed over this was my other cousin.”
>
“I’m sorry.” He cringed and looked down.
“You were the man who came into the mindbase exchange and put Socrates Finlay in stasis?”
“No, no, no. I’m a merchant, and that is the truth. I don’t do any things like that. I was stupid enough to pass this information on to them because . . . because I was hoping that it might move me up the queue to favoured status so that I could get training for a powership licence. That’s all. It was stupid, because I don’t think it will work, and I didn’t realise how many people would be affected by this, and also . . . what this man Paul Ormerod knows is truly dangerous, and no one should have it.” He looked up at her. His eyes glittered. “I’m sorry about your cousin. I’m sorry about everything. It is truly the only thing I did: tell Kerakis where Ormerod was in the beginning. Kerakis sent the agents, including the ones who put the owner of the mindbase exchange in stasis, and the ones who were friendly with the hypertechs. Kerakis asked me to lead the operation. I said no. I shouldn’t have been in that situation in the first place. I should have shut up and never mentioned it. I’m sorry.”
Well, it was a bit late for that now. “Was your refusal to do as they asked why you attracted the attention of Mariam Denzel?”
He gasped and shuddered visibly.
“You don’t like her, right?” Melati saw the woman in question as she had seen her in Moshi’s memories, parading around his chair.
“She is bad, bad news.” His vision went distant.
“A kind of Lieutenant Kool?”
“Oh, yes. But much worse. I’d choose him over her any time.” His cheek was still a bit discoloured from where Lieutenant Kool had hit him. His eyes met hers, wide with fear. “You’re not going to send me back, are you?”
“I honestly don’t know. That’s for my superiors to decide. We might, if we can exchange you for something that we want.”
“Please. They’ll kill me.”
“I’ll talk to my commanding officer. We may need a bit more cooperation.”
“I’ve already told you everything I know. I’m not a military person. I’m just a merchant. I was helping your people. That was what got me into trouble. I’ll do whatever you want. Just don’t send me back there.”
Melati pushed herself up from the desk.
“Please! Please don’t leave. You’re the only one who is nice to me. Please. Promise me not to send me back there.”
Melati looked down on him. He was still tied to the bed, so wouldn’t go anywhere in a hurry.
“I can’t stay. I have a meeting to attend. I’ll ask the nurses if they can bring you some food and clothes and take you to the shower. I’ll be back later. The captain wants you transferred to the prison ship. You may want to give us some reasons why you shouldn’t be. Think about that while I’m gone.”
She glanced at her desk. The computer screen was still blank. That was odd.
She tapped the screen, but it appeared to have frozen. Oh well, she’d sort it out after she came back from hearing what Dolchova had to say.
But when she tried to leave the room, the door wouldn’t open.
What?
She tried to pull the door handle, but it wouldn’t budge.
The panel next to the door was frozen, too. The nurse station computer was unresponsive as well, frozen on a screen with test results of some kind.
Her PCD . . .
Wait.
The CAU computers were isolated from the rest of the ship. If she used her PCD to log into the CAU systems to open the doors, she might bring the contamination across.
“Do you have anything to do with this?” she asked Moshi.
“With what?” Oh so innocent.
“Don’t try to be smart with me.”
“I don’t understand. Am I supposed to have done something?”
No, he probably hadn’t, but it was probably just as well that Dr Chee had brought him into the CAU and not the regular hospital.
Melati turned off the door panel and turned it back on. The reset allowed the door to open. On the way out of the corridor, Melati told the nurse to feed and bathe the prisoner, but not to let him out of the room. They would have to increase the security on the room and do a more precise mindbase scan to clean out any other malicious code he carried.
She ran to hear what would probably be the tail end of Dolchova’s talk. And to find Alan Dixon, who would have to help make the system secure.
Chapter 11
* * *
THE MESS HALL of the Felicity fitted about a hundred and fifty, and the crew of the ship numbered a bit over four hundred. Not everyone had been in a position to drop everything and come to a meeting, but still the majority of the crew was there. And it was crammed. People stood on tiptoe in the doorway, looking over the heads of others who sat or stood in the aisles or around the perimeter of the room, in the servery or crammed up against the racks for the trays.
Dolchova stood in the middle of the room, on one of the benches—so much for not putting your feet on the seats—and she was saying, “. . . we expect an engine burn at ten-o-nine for thirty-nine seconds. All crew will be in secure positions at ten-o-four. Major Fujimoto and Major Park will contact their divisions to be on full alert and once the all clear has been given, they will receive plans . . .”
Wait, what?
Melati looked around at all the people who stood crammed at the entrance to the mess hall. What was this talk about engine burns? The ship had barely used its engines for ten months, not nearly enough to warrant a seek safe positions order. Were they breaking orbit? Were they finally doing something?
“What’s happening?” she asked in a low voice to the people around her.
“Two Allion cruisers have entered the system,” a man said. He was a Grimshaw construct. “The Victory and General Coates have broken orbit to meet them. We’re covering them.”
By God, fireworks. That was why Major Fujimoto of the Ordnance Division and Major Park of Artillery would each be speaking to their divisions.
Melati’s heart thudded like crazy. The blood rose to her cheeks. She signed up to help her people on the station, not to fight in this war in a big warship.
Then another thought: They’ve come in response to the distress call by the station.
The rest of Dolchova’s words were a blur to her. There was talk of shields and evasive manoeuvres, and of essential and non-essential processes. Melati stood on her toes and leaned sideways to see if she could find Dixon in the crowd. She did see Ari on the other side of the room with the other flight tech crew, looking all dapper and somewhat mortified, but not Dixon.
The meeting broke up, and people streamed out of the room. Melati waited at the door to grab Ari when he came out, but someone else called her first.
“Melati.”
Dr Chee. He guided her a little along the corridor, away from the throng of people getting out or trying to get into the mess hall.
“We’re heading into war?”
“Who knows? Two Allion ships showed up. The Victory and General Coates are likely to be in the front line if there is any fighting.”
“They will try to speak to these ships first, won’t they?”
“They’ll send warnings. It’s my guess that if the ships change course, then Stanton may consider negotiations, but not if they maintain their current vector.”
That was General Stanton, who had his command centre aboard the cruiser Sunrise, of which the exact location in the system was a secret.
“What if they’re responding to the station’s call for help because of their problems with the systems?” Melati said.
“Then they should identify their mission unless they want to be shot at, but Stanton still won’t let them through.”
Melati felt cold. This was highly likely to end in a battle. Being Fleet with Fleet philosophy, Dolchova would order weapons to be fired long before the ships came close enough to hold a meaningful conversation. She’d send a short message of threatening nature and if the shi
ps didn’t change course, she would order missiles to be fired.
Dr Chee said, “We’ve been ordered to start preparations for three Kessler cohorts.”
“That will take far too long. We’re doing a Brown cohort, and by the time we can develop Kesslers, the war will be long over.”
“Not if we are going to chase them, because if that happens, we’re in for the long wait.”
And ultimately, having gone through some conflicts, Dr Chee knew far more about space warfare than she did. The thought of leaving the system filled her with panic. She wanted to go back to New Jakarta and check on her family. If the Felicity took off on a chase, possibly to Allion’s worlds at Tau Ceti, she might as well be dead.
Her family might as well be dead, because she would never see them again.
The vice of panic closed on her heart.
“Melati, I need you to go to the lab to help secure all our equipment in preparation for the engine burn. The patient needs to be put in a cot. We’ve got several machines that need securing. The nurses have gone back already to start on the check list.”
“I came up here because there is something strange going on with the computers.” She briefly explained the situation.
Dr Chee frowned, but then he said, “We can sort that out later, as long as the prisoner doesn’t leave the lab, and no equipment containing computers leaves the lab, including PCDs that have been connected to the equipment here. It’s secure for now.”
“Is there time for me to get some lunch?” Melati said.
He checked his PCD, and nodded. “Be quick.”
It wasn’t her shift to have lunch, but it looked like all attempts at maintaining shifts had gone out the window, and many people lined up in the servery to grab a quick bite to eat before preparing for the engine burn. Melati collected a tray and sat down near the room’s centre aisle from where she could see everyone who came into or went out of the door.
Ari had vanished and Dixon was still nowhere to be seen.
The large screens against the room’s back wall were showing status reports as more and more of the flight deck came online. A schematic diagram showed that the thirty-nine second engine burn would put the ship into an elliptical orbit around Sarasvati from where, in three weeks’ time, when the Allion ships arrived, it would be in a position to provide backup for the two ships that were on a direct course out of the system.
