by Greg Curtis
“Check your records Captain. I jumped wild three and a half standard months ago – from the New Andreas space-port no less. And I'm back. That should tell you I have a little more knowledge about the workings of the translation drive than you do. In fact I can jump to any coordinates from any established coordinates. You have no chance of capturing me. Meanwhile this ship contains the most important scientific breakthrough in a thousand years, so you can't even risk shooting me.” But he carefully didn't tell her that he was in the jump point. She would still be expecting him to make a run for them which was why she wasn't coming for them.
“That's not possible!”
“Check your records Captain. It should only take a few seconds.” Carm smiled politely once more and then waited. He didn't have to wait long as he saw her studying the details on the personal holo by her seat. He knew she'd found what he wanted her to when he saw her face suddenly go ashen. Her world had just changed and she now knew that he potentially had the most important discovery of the last thousand years in his possession. There was absolutely no way she could afford to shoot him down and she knew it. That would buy them some more time. Of course Del was going to kill him when she found out, but she was probably going to do that anyway.
“That's very impressive Doctor.” Eventually she worked out what to say. “Your discovery will make history. You need to make it public.”
“By handing myself in to be murdered?” Carm risked a small laugh of his own. Meanwhile he was watching the temperature gauge and seeing that it was almost in the green.
“I seriously don't think so. Besides, it's not my discovery. I'm a geologist not a translation drive theorist. I got the details from my android companion.”
“Your bangbot?” The Captain's eyes widened appreciably.
Carm winced. Why was everybody calling them that lately? It was starting to become embarrassing. “My android companion who as it turns out was reprogrammed by Maximilian White-Jones to become a spy, agent and assassin. You'll see his name in the reports about me.”
He waited while the Captain started reading everything in front of her as fast as she could. And then he waited some more for what he knew would be her next reaction.
“A mute?!” She looked shocked.
“Actually according to the mutes he's what they call a rogue. And rogues apparently term most mutes as first generation. But that's neither here nor there. What is important is that the mutes worked out the details of the translation algorithms six hundred years ago. Ship why don't you send the good Captain the details of that conversation I had with Del when she first got out of her coffin. I think she'll find it interesting.” But that wasn't why he was sending it – he was buying himself more time for the drive to cool.
And it was working. Even though she fast forwarded through whole sections of the conversation it still took her a good few minutes to hear it all. Minutes while the drive continued chilling. That was good for him though what wasn't so good was the thought of what Del would do to him if or when she found out what he'd done.
“The mutes have this technology?” She looked up at him finally, her face bone white. “This is terrible.”
“No what's terrible is that you have been hunting, killing and imprisoning them for six hundred years. And now you've taken it one step further - genocide. Can you imagine how angry they're going to be when they find out what you've been doing to their people? You really should look at the transmission I just sent Captain. You didn't just murder a thousand police officers. You murdered children – innocent children.”
“I may not know much about mutes and I certainly don't trust them. But one thing I am sure of is that the mutes love their children.”
Wordlessly she finally did what he suggested and he waited, keeping an eye on the drive temperature all the while. And when she finally finished and looked up at him once more, grey-faced, he knew what to tell her.
“Captain, in a matter of hours that and so much more is going to be out there. Everyone in the Commonwealth will have seen it by the end of the day. And everyone will know that Naval Command's coup—”
“—military emergency,” she interrupted trying desperately to salvage some pride, but she didn't sound convincing. She didn't look as though even she was convinced.
“—is nothing but a desperate cover-up to keep the admirals' hides out of jail. And then you'll have to start making decisions. About which orders you can follow and which you can't. About who it really is you need to detain. I'd suggest you start by showing that to your crew.
“In the meantime tell your bosses this.” Carm glanced at the temperature gauge to make sure it was in the green. “I'll be in Aquarius, sitting at a jump point that only I have the coordinates for, listening and watching. And if I need to I'll come back and find another jump point here and start broadcasting again. You won't catch me and you can't stop me.
“You have no secrets anymore.”
“You will all be marched before the courts, in front of the holos of billions. You will all be made to confess. You will all be tried, found guilty and sentenced. And the only hope that any of you have of seeing the sky free from bars again is that you did not know what was happening and you acted to prevent this crime from continuing when you found out.
“I don't know who you are Captain. I don't know what you've done or what you knew or when. You may actually have been completely ignorant. But I know that this is your only chance to shine.
“Ship, jump!” Carm gave the order and a heartbeat later they’d jumped, back to Aquarius and safety. From here on he knew, he could do little except watch and hope. He was just a man and he could do only so much. There were millions of others who were going to have to take matter from here.
But he could hope that he’d done enough.
Chapter Thirty
Pain. Everything was pain, and it wouldn't end. Sometimes the blackness would and take her away from it for a while. But it always brought her back. Annalisse wasn't happy about that.
She was broken, badly so she suspected. She had been for days. At times the darkness was night itself. She was sure that at least two of them had passed while she'd lain in what remained of a road. It could have been more, though.
Annalisse needed help. She needed a medbot and a hospital. She probably needed surgery as well. But it wasn't coming. Every so often she heard heavy pulse weapons followed by screams in the distance, and she knew that the battle wasn't over. The Navy might have won and most of them might have gone away, but they'd left some warbots behind just to make sure that none of the dead or injured got up, or that no one went to help the fallen.
Others were in the same position. She couldn't turn her head to look – there was something lodged in her neck that prevented it – but she could hear. She’d heard the cries, which were now groans. And there were fewer of them, and getting fewer every day.
The chances were that the warbots were going to keep watching, to make them lie until they died one by one. That way they could claim it wasn't murder, that they’d died of natural causes, or that it had simply been some form of unfortunate accident. The Navy’s filthy hands would then be somehow washed clean.
Bastards! Sharding bastards!
She would have screamed at them except it might have drawn their attention. She didn't think she could anyway, not with the pain in her lungs. She hoped it was just broken ribs, but it felt so much worse. Maybe that was because of the amount of time she'd been lying where she’d fallen. It was becoming worse. Even through the remains of her body armour she felt the hard ground pressing into her and, as much as she tried to move, she was unable to. Only her arms were free but they weren't strong enough to pull her out of the crater or along the ground.
On top of that she had a fever. One of the broken bones, she suspected, had pierced the skin and become infected. She needed antibiotics, painkillers, and someone to set her breaks.
How long had she been here? Surely it had t
o be two or three days, much too long for the wounded to be left. But when warbots were making certain that no one went near her, or anyone else, it was understandable. And truthfully, though she wanted help, she didn't want anyone to die trying to bring it to her.
Too many were dead already. The memories of the warbots firing and the bodies flying were fresh in her thoughts. So many of them in bright blue: her brothers and sisters. The mutes as well, along with any number of citizen reporters and bystanders. She remembered the smoke and the flame and the screams. But by the time she'd been hit and begun her own flight, events had been too confused. After that she hadn't been able to twist her neck to look around.
What was wrong with these people? How could they do perpetrate such monstrous acts? How could they fire not just on enemies but civilians? On police? And how could they then, after they'd destroyed any possible resistance, deny the basics of aid being given? It had to be some sort of war-crime.
And they were supposed to be the good guys! The ones protecting the Commonwealth? Not the monsters it needed protecting from.
Then the monsters moved and she forgot her question. She felt a brief spurt of fear when the ground shook under the impact of heavy steel feet. They were coming to kill her! They'd finally given up on waiting for them to die, and had decided to finish the job.
Annalisse desperately clawed at the ground, using everything she had to pull herself out of the crater, but it was impossible. She was stuck, the pain in her ribs and lower back excruciating. It felt as if she was pulling herself apart.
Her brief spurt of strength faded as quickly as it had come but the fear remained, and she soon gave up. She lay still, frightened, and waited for the end. At least it would be quick. A blast to the back by one of those weapons, and it would all be over. Her family would at least know what had happened to her. They would be sad, and they would bury whatever was left. Return her flesh to the world and help turn a little more of Aquaria into the paradise it would one day become. That was fitting. Even in death a citizen should help the cause.
But death didn't come. Instead she heard the thumping of their approaching legs, heard them stop and then their mechanical voices sounding across the battlefield.
“Citizen in distress. Medical emergency. Citizen in distress. Medical emergency.”
For the longest time Annalisse didn't understand. She'd expected to hear the sound of pulse weapons firing. Were they now calling for medical help for the fallen? When they'd been the ones preventing it from arriving? Or was it some sort of trap? Were they planning on firing on those who came to help? But whatever it was she could do nothing except lie still while massive steel legs walked on, criss-crossing the remainder of the battlefield and periodically letting out their strange call.
What convinced her it was real was when she heard a man's voice almost on top of her and then felt a hand on her shoulder. She tried to process that. It just didn't seem real, not even when he called for a medbot. Not even after feeling something sharp – a needle she assumed – punch its way into her skin. Moments later she was rolled on to her back and hoisted into the air, and it didn't hurt.
She could see sky! Blue sky! Not just dirt and bits of road. It had been so long. She didn't know what to think– save that it was beautiful. And it was moving – she was on a stretcher, being taken from the battlefield. Hopefully she was being taken to a hospital.
What had happened? Why the sudden change? Annalisse tried to ask, but her mouth wasn't working. Whatever the medbot had given her hadn't just taken away the pain, it had also affected what little remained of her movement. All she could do was helplessly watch the sky move overhead.
“Baby!”
Annalisse heard her mother's voice and then saw her head move into the sky above. Even through her blurry vision she knew it was her, and that her mother was hysterical. Laughing and crying, joyful and frightened. Annalisse would have tried to comfort her, to tell her it was all going to be alright, but she couldn’t. Strange sounds came out instead, nothing like speech. And when she tried moving her arms they did nothing either.
Distantly she heard more confusing words, spoken by others. Words which didn't make any sense, like how the Navy had finally arrived. Except that they’d always been here and they were the ones who’d done all this. She heard snatches of conversation saying that the Navy were fighting themselves, and that arrests had been made. As far as she knew the Navy hadn't been doing much in the way of arresting anyone lately. They'd been murdering them instead.
None of that mattered though. What did was that she was on the back of a floater being transported to a hospital. And that her mother was there, as well as her father. He looked grim-faced, towering into the sky above her. He was telling her he was proud of her, that she wasn't alone. That finally, after all the time spent dying alone and in pain, she wasn't anymore. None of them were.
Chapter Thirty One
“News.” The ship interrupted Carm as he was working out on the bike. The ship seemed to like doing that.
“What is it?” Carm was hopeful that it would be news about his family. Events were still very confused on Aquaria. The whole planet was in an uproar, and with a hundred million people all screaming at once it was hard to identify individual voices. All searches for his family had come up empty thus far.
The most recent mentions of them were over three months old, from when the family home had been burnt down. His parents had been fired from their jobs as lecturers at New Andreas Tech – no reason had been given but he could guess it had something to do with having a son branded as a terrorist. His brother Harmond had had to leave his medical practice – patients refused to be seen by him. Cameron had had to give up his legal practice for the same reason. And Elsbeth had given up her courses. He had committed no crime, but he had fled and his family had paid the price for that.
After that his family had gone into hiding and not been seen since, clearly doing a very good job of it. However, in the back of his mind was the fear that they hadn't gone into hiding at all. That someone had abducted them – or worse.
“A new naval vessel has arrived in the system and it is calling for the surrender of the officers below.”
“Good.” Whether it was the Navy proper or just one of the factions it had dissolved into Carm didn't know. Probably no one did. What he did know was that it meant there would be even more pressure on the officers to stay where they were. He also knew that it was about time.
The information they were getting from the rest of the Commonwealth was chaotic at best. It changed with every hour. Sometimes the coup that wasn't a coup was over, at other times the military emergency was continuing. Every so often one part of the Navy and of Naval Command called on another part to surrender. Any number of captains had simply taken their ships and docked, never planning to lift off again. They didn't know who to obey. It was beginning to look as though Naval Command was being run by a bunch of warring mesh-heads and DDs.
The chain of command had been completely shattered and it would take time to establish a new one. Against that the Commonwealth was carrying out investigations and calling for arrests.
From Carm's point of view the coup was over, the pogrom had been stopped and the secrets were all out in the open. From now on he hoped, everything would return to normal. It was only a matter of time.
“They're also calling for your surrender.”
“Mine?” Carm was surprised, but then realised it made sense. They knew the information he had and they wanted it. That knowledge had not yet made it out on to the mesh and neither had the knowledge that he had returned. Someone, either Naval Command or the Commonwealth was deliberately keeping that quiet. Still they wanted him. Luckily, they didn't know where he was. All they knew was that he’d be in the system somewhere. But finding him would be tricky.
“Well I'm afraid we won't be surrendering today ship. If that's alright with you?” He thought it might be as they'd had two days of doing not
hing while the new bot had checked and rechecked the systems. The Nightingale was in good condition and the ship was happy. Maybe he should have bought an advanced engineering bot long ago.
“What's it got to do with me mush brain? You're the Captain!”
“Stellar!” Carm answered as he kept pedalling, the ship wasn't arguing. Obviously it was finally beginning to accept his decisions a little more uncomplainingly. It was relatively content. A happy ship was a peaceful one. Maybe it was time to do something to help it along that path a little more.
“Then keep an eye on them please. Warn me the minute they either scan us or start heading in this direction. And while you're at it you might want to go through the new bot's list of schematics. See if there are any in there that could be of benefit to you and then work out what we'll need to build them. Materials, parts, time, labour, certification, that kind of thing. Prioritise in terms of improvements to reliability, practicality, safety, efficiency and legal requirements. Also what we can do ourselves. Credits are low but we if we can fabricate the parts … we may as well make use of the sharding thing after all.”
“Who are you and what have you done with Carmichael Simons?”
“And I can just as easily un-suggest it!” Carm wasn't about to take any more abuse from the ship.
“Alright, alright. I'll get started on a list.”
The ship fell quiet and Carm suspected he wouldn't hear from it again for a while. The advanced engineering bot had an entire library of designs and the ship had to assess every one of them against hundreds of different parameters. There was a reason he'd come up with the idea. The silence would be a blessing, and it would give him a chance to continue looking for his family.
