Spaced

by Greg Curtis

  But the Navy wasn't finished. Annalisse discovered that when she heard screams from the front and turned to see naval ships landing. Big ones loaded with soldiers and warbots. And it was then that her heart sank.

  “Protective formation immediately.”

  The command came over her comms and immediately Annalisse went into action. The police closed in on the mutes and placed themselves directly between them and the Navy. But as more and more soldiers and warbots flooded out of the ships in front and behind them, she had to wonder if they could do anything. She had seen the warbots in action before and she knew how deadly they were. And these were armed with what looked like even larger weapons. All she had was her tiny little hand-laser on her belt. If it came to a battle it would be less than useless.

  Things became incredibly tense as she and her brothers and sisters took up positions. The march came to a halt and everything went quiet. Even the thousands of citizen reporters had stopped asking questions. There was a sense of expectation in the air as everyone waited.

  “This march ends. Hand over the mutes and be on your way.” A naval officer in full black braid addressed them from a floater overhead. But she knew her duty and held her position. The best chance she had, that all of them had, was to stand strong.

  “I am Commissioner Norris and by order of the Aquaria Law Enforcement Bureau you will stand down. Put away your weapons and your warbots and return to your bases. The Navy has no place here. These are Commonwealth citizens who have committed no crimes and they are under police protection.”

  Annalisse couldn't see the Commissioner through the press of bodies, but she marvelled at how strong he sounded even over the hailer. There didn't seem to be even a hint of doubt in his voice. How was he not terrified?

  “You stand down. These are mutes - enemies of the Commonwealth and this is a military emergency.”

  “These are citizens. They have committed no crimes and you have no authority to touch them. If any naval officer attempts to make a move, they will immediately be placed under arrest and charged. Now get back in your ships and return to your bases. You have no place here.”

  “I repeat –.”

  “You repeat nothing!” The Commissioner raised his voice. “You are in violation of Aquarian law: carrying weapons in public, threatening behaviour, refusing to obey the commands of duly authorised officers. You will be charged. Do not make this any worse for yourselves.”

  “How dare –!”

  That was as far as the officer got before the peace was abruptly broken by the sound of pulse weapons exploding followed by screaming and people running in all directions. There was fire and flame, and burning ash. Thunder in the ground and lightning above.

  Annalisse drew her weapon but she couldn't see who to fire at. She could see nothing, the entire world having turned into a blaze of burning dirt. Breathing was difficult, the air was thick with smoke and fire. The only thing she was sure of was that the smudges she saw were people like her, confused and panicking. Half of them were probably other police. The Navy were somewhere on the far side of that dirty inferno.

  And then her world turned upside down when the ground in front of her exploded. The shockwave smashed into her, picking her up, and throwing her off her feet. There were no words to describe the pain; even in midair she knew something had broken. It was her leg – she’d felt the snap of the long bone shattering. Plus her skin was burning – she was on fire.

  She hit the ground tumbling out of control, and what had been bad became worse. Her ribs and hip broke one after another. She was being tenderised like a steak under the impact of a mallet. By the time she stopped bouncing she was sure there weren't any working bones left. Not even enough to scream with.

  Lying there, hurting as never before, she realised that as bad as things were for her, they had to be worse for others. She was still alive at least, if only for a while. But she knew many others wouldn't be. Hundreds, if not thousands.

  The Navy had attacked! They'd actually fired on the police! For some reason she couldn't quite seem to believe it. None of it felt real. The Navy had opened fire on the police. Stars – how many had they killed?! The sickening smell of burning flesh filling the air told her that it was too many.

  It wasn't right! None of it was. However, hurting and unable to scream or even move, she knew it didn't matter.

  As the light began leaving her eyes and the pain slowly metamorphosed into something unintelligible, she clung on to one thought – the only thing that did matter – she had done her duty. The light might not return to her eyes again and she might never know the joy of breathing again, but she had done her duty.

  She was a cop.

  Chapter Twenty Six

  The jump to Sol was as quick and smooth, but the arrival was something else. As soon as they’d reached Mars alarms had started going off across the bridge, and for a moment Carm had thought they were dead. That angered him. To have come all this way only to fall at the end – it wasn't right.

  But little by little he realised that, as bad as it sounded, with the consoles covered in yellow and red flashing lights, it wasn't terminal. They still had air and power.

  It was the coolants. There was a leak, and the jumps had now ruptured a pipe somewhere. That was bad. Worse than that, while they could make repairs, they had no spare coolant. It was one of the few things the ship wasn't able to regenerate. They were going nowhere until it had been fixed and the coolant could be replaced. They couldn't jump.

  They’d reached the home of the Commonwealth and were here to stay – potentially for a very long time.

  Carm spent the next several hours in engineering directing repairbots as they patched up the burst pipes. It wasn't hard to find them. Coolant was all over the deck. He just wished they'd been able to spot them before they'd fractured.

  Still, when they were done and most of the alarms had been silenced and the lights had turned green, he knew they weren't going to die. There was enough coolant left to run the EM drive, and that was all they needed. The other good news, maybe the only good news, was that they were nearly where they'd intended to be – the Mars jump point.

  He'd hoped they would be. They’d been close enough to the Aquarius point that the jump course, more or less matching the route they would have taken to get to Mars, would be more or less parallel. But he hadn't known for certain that it would work until they'd arrived.

  It was time as Carm finally returned to the bridge, to do what he had come to do.

  “Ship assess our relative position to the interlink satellite.” If all had gone well he knew they should be almost on top of it. The satellite had been placed in deep solar orbit just beyond Mars.

  “What?! You're still going through with this madness?” the ship yelled at Carm, obviously surprised that he could suggest such a thing. “When we're crippled? When the Navy’s going to be hunting us down the moment the message goes out? You're dark side! We should never have jumped at all!”

  The ship was more than upset. It sounded as though it wanted to question him about it to check if he was sane. That set warning bells ringing in Carm's head. If it truly decided that he was insane, it would stop taking orders from him and it would simply stop dead and send out a distress call – for the Navy to respond to. That would not be good.

  “I'm not dark side. We have a disaster to stop. You know that. And that has to take a higher priority than us being caught.” Carm tried to be the voice of reason. He tried to sound sane.

  “We could find a dealer with coolant and supplies first, then broadcast.”

  “And how long would that take? Every passing day more people on Aquaria will die from something that we can help prevent. And there's that damned march. It must have started by now and the stars alone know how badly it's gone. Every day our home slips closer and closer to complete rebellion and anarchy. They’re a ship in distress and we have no option but to respond if we can and with all haste.”
/>   “They haven't sent out a distress call.”

  “They don't need to.”

  There was silence after that, and Carm’s heart raced just a little. The case he had put forth was logical even if it was a world and not a ship, but that didn't mean that the ship would accept it. However, the law was clear – a ship in distress was a highest priority mission. Any ship that was close enough and capable of responding was required to whether or not the ship called for help. It might not be able to call. This was the same. They were capable of responding and therefore they had to.

  “Agreed you sharding defect! But after this is over I want you checked over by some decent mush brain analysts!”

  The ship eventually answered him, unhappily. A wave of relief flowed over Carm. The mission couldn’t end here. If nothing else there was a major march planned and he feared where that would end. There would be mutes among the marchers. Shards! What had possessed them to do such a thing?

  “Stellar! Plot the position of the nearest dealer with coolant for sale, and prepare to lock in the EM drive the moment the message is sent. Access the mesh, find the hundred most prominent citizen reporters and mesh lords, and stream the files to them, highest priority.”

  His plan was a simple one. Infodump what he had to those with the biggest followings and then run. Thanks to his location the Navy wouldn’t have an easy time tracking him. First they would have to intercept the data – and he had no doubt that they were watching all citizen reporters. But they were in Sol system, nowhere near Aquaria, and while the Navy’s focus would be on stopping word of their crimes against the mutes getting out, they wouldn’t be worrying about messages from anywhere else. As far as the Navy were concerned anyone who knew anything was on Aquaria. Trying to find where the broadcast had come from would take time, enough he hoped to be long gone before Navy ships started scanning this part of space - time that would allow them to escape.

  It was a gamble, though.

  “Nearest space-based shipyard is Harlows Miners. Eight million klicks from here. Message being sent.”

  This was the moment! As Carm sat quietly, his heart pounding and sweat trickling down his forehead, he knew that this is when everything could go either very right or very wrong. Whatever happened though he’d be doing his duty. He would do what he could to help his people. After that it was up to them. There was no certainty that this nightmare would end even if he succeeded.

  He also didn't know if they’d be able get away. That became ever more of a worry as the long minutes ticked by. Communications were fast these days, but the sheer amount of information he was sending was vast. It would take at least half an hour – time he might not have.

  Still the meteor was in the atmosphere as they said. It had only one way to go from here – either it hit the ground in one piece or it didn’t. But it was going down.

  “Anything on the channels? The mesh?” Carm asked twenty minutes into the transmission. It was too soon he knew, as people would need time to watch it and then it would take more time to resend it. But he was hopeful.

  “I'm not scanning them. I'm looking for ships and spybots.” The ship told Carm off for being so bot-brained as to bother it with stupid questions. “Do you want to change my priorities mush brain?”

  “No. No. Continue what you're doing.”

  “Finally! Some common sense!”

  Carm had to wait another full fifteen minutes while the transmission continued, and even then when his nerves were taut to the point of snapping, they couldn't run as he wanted to. The EM drive would give off too much radiation, so they were limited to twenty eight percent. But eight million klicks on the EM drive even at that rate was still only a day's travel. They had a chance.

  The moment he felt the kick in his back telling him the ship was under way, Carm's heart started beating again. He knew they had a chance now. If the ship had done its job properly no enemy spybots had discovered their mesh identity or location. Supplies were only a day away, the cooling system would be repaired by the time they arrived, and loading the coolant would only take an hour, allowing them to jump shortly after.

  They had a chance and so too did Aquaria. The Navy would have to stop its pogrom once the revelation of the mutes' origins became known. They'd have to. Even if they weren't smart enough to realise that there was no point continuing when all their secrets were now out in the open, the Commonwealth would step in. They couldn't have a Navy that was lying to them, defrauding them out of trillions of credits, and carrying out pogroms against their own citizens.

  The chances were that Naval Command was going to be called to account before the end of the day. How that would end Carm couldn’t know. He just hoped it would end the unofficial coup on Aquaria.

  The one thing he did know with absolute certainty was that the Navy would sooner or later start hunting for the source of the leak. And so too he guessed, would the mutes. In only a few short hours he'd managed to put himself at the top of the hit-lists of two groups. Perhaps the ship was right – he did appear to have a unique ability to attract enemies.

  Maybe, he thought, he should get the ship to go a little faster.

  Chapter Twenty Seven

  Harlow was a pirate. He called himself a trader but after dealing with him Carm was certain he was actually a pirate. No mere trader could ever be so mercenary. At the very least he was pure outlier, even if he claimed no clan and his entire operation was based in the Commonwealth. That huge larcenous grin defined him as clearly as any clan name. His outrageous prices were also a fairly good indication. They were also completely unjustifiable when he had such low overheads.

  His store and salvage yard was nothing more than an ancient floating colonizer which had seen many, many better days and to which he'd attached a circle of docking spokes. They appeared as if they'd been built by a team of monkeys with a torch and some plastic webbing while they were drunk. They were definitely not to standard. But they didn't need to be if his business was outside the purview of the local enforcement agencies. No local business inspectors would be checking on him and he paid minimal taxes given that he lived just far enough away from Mars to be outside their economic sphere. But still he was close enough to the Mars jump point to gain customers.

  The entire operation was the definition of ‘cheap’. His stock was the same. Attached to his docking spokes were second hand vessels, most of them one step removed from salvage. And though he did have some newer stuff it was all run-out lines and discontinued items. Whatever he could buy in bulk for next to nothing and then sell at astronomical prices.

  But he did have what Carm wanted. Forty cubic metres of top grade coolant and, after the grief the ship had been giving him, Carm wasn't about to use the recycled variety. It'd be like telling a DD he couldn't have his next fix. He'd never hear the end of it. Besides he never skimped on servicing and maintenance, and he was sure that that was why the Nightingale had survived for so long. So he'd paid for it and now half of it was sitting in the system, keeping the ship cool, while the rest was in storage – just in case.

  Of course he'd had to buy a lot more than that, most of it stuff he didn't really want. But the moment he'd arrived without a working beacon Harlow had known he was in trouble. So he'd sold him a brand new one, citing space law from the start, and Carm hadn't been able to say no. A ship had to have a working beacon. Neither could he refuse the new ventral stabiliser assembly. The ship would have killed him.

  Harlow had also sold him at least a couple of klicks of fibre electric cable – not a bad thing to have considering how much had been burnt out in their initial jump. Again Harlow had insisted when he'd seen how much of the Nightingale was offline. He didn't know that Carm had been intentionally running dark. Either that or he didn't care. What he was concerned about was that a ship had come to him seemingly in need of parts and he had them to sell.

  The pirate's biggest score though had been the advanced engineering bot. The ship’s collection of
service bots, even programmed with the details of the Nightingale's systems, could only do so much. Half a million credits’ worth of advanced engineering bot could do much more. It could inspect the heart of the drives and tell him everything that was wrong. It could also get to grips with the nuances of the reactor as well.

  The other thing it came with was a massive library of designs for certain upgrades, one of which it had already built – a hyper-cooler. Normally cooling the drive took a couple of hours. But that was fine when every blind jump left him needing to spend several hours locking in the new translation points. Now though, he could jump wild if he had to and still get back thanks to the algorithms. He didn't need to lock in those points. So he might as well be able to jump faster if he needed to.

  As a result the room right next to the translation drive was currently filled with the pipes and chillers that formed the core of a reverse-flow hyper-cooler. It looked messy, but it could chill the drive in under an hour. Currently the bot was busy building a second one for the EM drive.

  While it was new the advanced engineering bot was part of a discontinued line from a company which had ceased trading. That worried Carm a little. He knew there would be no guarantee if it failed. It annoyed him too, knowing that Harlow had probably got it for a tenth the price he'd charged him. But its specs were good and short of an actual ship yard it was the best chance Carm had of bringing the Nightingale back to original condition.

  Purchasing the bot had left his accounts dangerously low. But the real danger was that as the new bot worked and found more faults to fix, it was going to cost more, with credits he no longer had.