by Greg Curtis
Carm really hadn’t wanted to say that. While it might buy him a little peace for a time, the ship would come back to him more upset than before. And he especially didn't want to say it when the ship's response was an angry burst of static over the comms which hurt his ears ending the discussion. It had been a very long few days finishing their journey to Eden.
“More pulse weapons?” Carm asked the engineer beside him. It was getting tiresome now. Nevertheless he had to admit that concealing them in the landing struts had been a clever idea. Who would ever think to look there? By his count they'd now pulled out approximately fifty of the weapons from six struts – any and all of which could have failed since the hydraulics were massively undersized. Even the tiniest leak or a low fluid level would have made it impossible for the ship to deploy them.
The astro-engineer nodded grimly. He was a serious sort. But then all the Edenites Carm had met thus far had been serious, apart from Del who was just seriously annoying. He scrutinised the holo he held showing the results of the scan of the container.
“Another eight. They go well with the three warbots found in the reserve housing behind astrogation, the military-spec flyers in the stern thruster housings and the deep space transmitter in the forward port stabiliser. And of course the jacker. Congratulations, sir. You are a major gun runner.” It might have been meant as a joke, but it wasn't very funny, and neither of them laughed.
The jacker – just the word sent a wave of horror surging through Carm. He'd never seen one before, thinking they were a myth. So, to find out that one had been installed in the Nightingale, ready to take control of all its systems when it was given the command, was a nightmare. No doubt White had been planning to make use of it. Give the order and he’d be in charge of the ship. Then with the weapons and bots, he could have landed, killed everyone and had the Nightingale to himself. There was a reason he’d been so angry that he hadn't been able to get onboard.
“Me and maybe two thousand other spacers. And not a one of us had a sharding clue.” That annoyed him. He’d been completely blind to what was happening on his own ship. Kendra had really played him and he'd never even guessed.
“You want to keep going?”
“Shards yes!” Carm was surprised the man would even ask. “I want to find out everything that dark side bastard put on my ship and get it removed. Then I want my systems put back to how they should be.”
“Better than spec!” The ship jumped in once more.
“As the ship says, best spec available.” Carm thought he'd better at least try to get back on the ship's good side – assuming it had one. But in fairness he’d be fairly annoyed if someone had done surgery on him without his knowledge too.
“And what do you want done with this stuff?” The engineer cocked a finger at the growing pile of containers and machines.
“Dispose of it of course. No one's allowed to own stuff like that.” But the moment he said it Carm stopped and thought for a moment. “Not in the Commonwealth anyway.”
“Nor on Eden Doctor Simons.”
Carm didn't turn around even hearing the Provost’s calm words beside him. Somehow he just wasn't surprised that the man was on Eden despite the improbability of it. In fact he'd almost been expecting him.
He shouldn't be here. They'd left him behind in Aquarius, six days ago, meaning the Provost had had only half the time to get here since Carm had alerted the Edenites of what he'd discovered. The Provost had obviously been kept informed and had made it back to Eden in time for the discovery. Clearly, the jump point he’d been forced to use wasn't the only one in the system despite the ship's inability to plot any closer ones. But then, after the emergency message he'd asked the Edenites to send through to the Spacer's Guild and the Commonwealth he wasn't surprised that the Provost had come running.
He'd had to send the message. The moment he'd learned that every deep spacer ship had an android onboard waiting to kill the pilot when it was given the order, he'd had to act. They all had to be destroyed. But now, when he saw what had been hidden onboard the Nightingale, he knew things were even worse than he'd feared.
“You know what this means Provost?”
“About fifty years in a Commonwealth prison?”
The Provost did actually have a sense of humour, but this wasn't one of those occasions on which he should have let it loose. He wasn't smiling as he said it, but then Carm wasn't in the mood for laughter either. Not when he was looking at the vandalism White had had inflicted on his ship. This was preparation for a war.
“Two thousand ships, all I assume loaded up like this. Android companions ready to kill their masters and take over the ships through the jackers. This is an invasion force. White had big plans.”
“To take over Aquaria?”
“No.” Carm finally managed to tear his eyes off the bots still searching the ship. He'd had a few hours to think while they’d worked. “I don't think he was interested in Aquaria, even if he had the resources to overrun it. I don't think he would have. I don't think he was after any Commonwealth world at all. He would know that taking one of their worlds would leave him badly exposed. The Commonwealth's too large and in a matter of months or years the Navy would have got its act together and come for him.”
“Then you think…?” the Provost’s words trailed off as he realised what Carm was saying.
“Yeah. He was coming for you. For Eden. One world – I assume – all on its own. With advanced tech and no allies to defend it. You were always the prize.”
“He wouldn't have got far. He has no idea of our strength.”
“That's always the gamble in war. It's not like chess where you see all the pieces. You never know your opponent's true strength until you face them. But they don't know yours either. And he did everything he could to weaken you beforehand.”
“They?” the Provost’s face became even longer and more serious, as if such a thing was possible. “Go on.”
“His plan was an old one, much older than the Commonwealth and space travel. Divide and conquer. Start with infiltration, then divert everyone's attention with a decoy. Then overwhelm with a surprise attack on a target no one was defending.”
“First he builds up his resources – android companions to gain access to deep spacer ships. Distribute more androids throughout all the space-ports and any number of other businesses, the bots being updated with new parts from his company. Little by little ships become converted to act as bot-carriers and weapons suppliers. That must have taken years. But when it was done he had an army just waiting to be deployed.
“Then when he was ready, he’d use the decoy. Reveal the existence of the mutes on Aquaria – mutes with thermo-kinetic weapons. He sparked off a military emergency, starting a naval hunt for them. He didn't kill his partners in crime to take over the smuggling business. This was never about credits. He killed Hamilton and De Lion to create an emergency. Potentially thousands of mutes trapped on Aquaria and the Navy desperately hunting them down.”
“He also took the police out of the hunt early on. Not because they might catch him, but because they would obey the law and act with restraint. He always needed the Commonwealth Navy to be the ones in charge. Because he knew they would go too far, especially if they were attacked and felt threatened. He needed them to go too far. He probably arranged it.
“As part of that he deliberately got himself captured so he could spread more lies and reveal the presence of the mutes. No doubt while he was in custody he was busy telling the Navy guys horror stories about what your people were planning. More thermo-kinetic blasts. More attacks on Navy officers. Whipping them into a complete panic.” And that was the one thing that seemed almost impossible to believe – that a man would hand himself over to his enemies to advance a plan. But a rogue, gifted with the physiology to allow him to survive and recover from most forms of abuse and torture, and with an absolutely unwavering faith in his ability to achieve whatever goals he wanted to, in add
ition to the belief that others would fall for his lies, might. That was the essence of a rogue. Confidence. Arrogance.
“Once he'd done that he could start fomenting rebellions and insurrections. The Navy would inevitably overreact to the threat by trying to control events but it would backfire. And he would help them along in doing that. At some point, when the plan was far enough along he would release the information about the Navy having created the mutes. Let the Commonwealth go nova.
“At that point the Navy would be in the untenable position of both trying to fight a war against an enemy they truly believed was trying to kill them, and at the same time having their support by the Commonwealth cut out from underneath and having everything they claimed considered to be a pack of lies. It would have been an absolute disaster. The Navy would have had to disobey the Commonwealth to do their duty. There would have been a full blown coup and anarchy. And the Commonwealth would have been left in an interstellar shambles.
“I beat him to it, but only by a little. He’d always intended to do it, probably a little later when he had everything on the boil.
“My leaking it early forced his hand. But it was already too late to change anything. He had to push on. He needed something to light the fuse. An incident like the massacre, for instance, and everything would fall apart. There would be rebellions and insurrections, followed by martial law. A Navy at war with itself, and a Commonwealth in complete disarray. Investigate that incident a little more closely and I suspect you'll find his fingerprints all over it.
“White needed complete anarchy, so people wouldn’t notice two thousand ships going missing. And equally your people would be somewhere nearby, desperately looking for other mutes to rescue. Your home world would be vulnerable.
“After that there was one final goal - find Eden. To do that he had to get one ship here and back. He needed the jump points. After that, he would be ready to go. Perhaps he’d intended getting a whole group of desperate refugees with one of your people among them onto one of the deep spacer ships he was ready to jack. They'd jump, his android would take over the ship and two hours later they'd jump back with the coordinates. Maybe he'd use an android double, or he'd trick one of your agents, or even try his hand at torture to get the information. Whatever it was he had a plan – several probably.
“Meanwhile your forces would be divided. A lot of your ships would be in the Commonwealth on rescue missions while Navy was hunting them. You could even have been at war. It was a clever plan.
“But it didn't work out as he'd hoped. After the second leak, the anarchy he wanted was tamed. Law and order was being restored, which meant that his hopes of finding Eden were vanishing. That's why he wanted to be on the Nightingale. He could jump here, take command of the ship through the jacker, and then jump back.
“It was another failure, however.” Not because he’d been out- thought, but because Carm had a temper.
“He did all this so he could conquer Eden?” The Provost sounded sceptical. Beside him the engineer looked completely unimpressed by Carm's logic.
“Conquer? No, rule. And not just him. I was working my way through your historical records and it occurred to me that all of them have overlooked one thing. Everyone knows some of your people escaped to the stars. And you naturally tend to think the records are talking about you – the first generation mutes. But there's no actual record of who escaped. So what if it's not just first generations who got out? What if somewhere out there is a world full of rogues – perhaps several.
“That fits well with another thing I noticed. Actually Del told me it but I missed the significance. There were a dozen major breakthroughs in designing the android companions, and when I checked Billingsgate Lucius Scientific had another twenty significant patents in the field, spread over two decades. They've got forty or fifty more, not related to robotics at all. Now I'll accept that White is smart. But that smart? I don't think so. Could he have a team? Yes. But it still seemed to me that he needed more. But a world filled with genetically superior brainiacs could make a dozen breakthroughs in cybernetic programming in short order. They could also manufacture thermo-kinetic devices.
“And as much as I hate to say it whatever they couldn't do themselves, they could steal. My parents are lecturers at New Andreas Tech in synthetic engineering and robotic systems. And it confused me that I couldn't find a trace of them. Not on the mesh nor through their friends. And they talk. But then it occurred to me, what if they couldn't talk? What if someone had taken them?
“So I did a search, looking for people with those sorts of skills on Aquaria – and guess what? Many have gone missing over the last decade, too many to be a coincidence. And not just from Aquaria. I'm guessing that together they became a research facility.
“That's why he killed his partners. He’d always intended to because they might have some information about where the breakthroughs were coming from. Just the knowledge that they weren't emanating from the company's research department would have been enough to make people curious. But killing his partners stopped that line of questioning. Plus it gave him the ideal cover. His plan was to look simple and greedy, the type of person the Navy expected him to be, and which they could control. The kind they believed would tell them the truth when they applied a little pressure.” The Navy weren't going to be happy when they learned what Carm had figured out – that they’d been played as badly as he had. And they had a lot more to feel ashamed of.
“The chances are that even while he was locked away White was communicating with his androids. Or his partners were. Arranging the Commonwealth's collapse. And when everything did fall apart he was expecting them to let him go.”
“And that was why you had the message sent?”
“Yes.” He'd had to warn his friends. But warning them came with risks. The android companion might hear it and act. “It was sent?”
“Yes,” the Provost nodded.
“Good. Because now that White's plan is in ruins, he and his people have nothing to lose. They’ll be wanting to salvage whatever they can. Every ship they've managed to get an android companion on, they'll attempt to capture. You saw the jacker. I'm guessing it's not the only one. Every deep spacer out there is in danger. All of them are badly wired and they will all do what Kendra tried to do to me – kill them and take command of the ship, then bring it home.”
But how many was that? Word had got out long before he'd returned to the Commonwealth that the android companions were defective. But how many spacers had given them up? The theory had been that just a few had been reprogrammed. No doubt the androids would have their emotional claws deep in the psyches of their owners. Most wouldn't have given them up without a fight. Not because a few were bad.
Now he knew they were all defective. They’d been designed this way from the outset, and what they would do now that everything had gone wrong was obvious. The Spacer's Guild was facing the greatest threat it had ever known. And it probably didn't even know there was one yet.
His conspiracy theory set out for the Provost, Carm fell silent. If he was right, he had not only no idea where his family was, he might also never find out. Nor could he do anything for his friends. For the deep spacers. He'd broken the conspiracy – but too late.
The provost and the engineer didn't say anything either, possibly because they thought he was crazy and didn't know what to say to a lunatic. Instead they just looked at the piles of weaponry mounting up.
“So we dispose of this stuff? Who pays?” the astro-engineer eventually returned to practical matters.
“Well as far as I know you guys do. I've been conscripted more or less to run a shuttle service for your people, so you have to do the upkeep on the ship. At least that's how it was on the Journey's End. Isn't that right Provost?” He turned to ask and then discovered the Provost was no longer there. He was already some distance away marching quickly back to the space-port buildings, talking to someone on his comms.
“But
, I'm going to keep the flyers – just strip the weapons out please.” He reckoned a couple of military-spec flyers might be useful as ground survey vehicles when he was finally able to return to exploring worlds.
“Might take a bit. And I'll need some approvals.”
“Fair enough. Do what you can. I'll be here if you need someone to speak to your people.”
“You'll be here? As in on the ship? I thought they were putting you and your passengers up in town.”
“They are. But I'm not leaving my ship while work’s being done. Nothing gets finished without my checking it. The ship will expect it.” And he would too. He was never going to make this mistake again. He wanted his ship in proper working order.
Plus he wanted at least a little peace from the ship's complaints.
Chapter Thirty Eight
The Journey's End was a massive ship, awe-inspiring in its grandeur Annalisse thought. She’d been impressed right from the moment she and her companions had been brought through from the shuttle bay. The bay was large enough to hold fifty large shuttles with another half a dozen full-sized ships on the other side. There was no doubt that the mutes had advanced their technology in the six or seven hundred years since they’d fled the Commonwealth. Perhaps those genetic improvements had boosted their intelligence far more than anyone had realised.
The naval officers – she wasn't completely sure why they were among the group – were looking completely overwhelmed. They had no ship to match the Journey's End, at least for size. No doubt they were wondering what else the mutes – the Edenites – had made. Perhaps they were even thinking how stupid it had been to anger them. It seemed lucky to her that the Edenites were such a law abiding people, though of course the only Edenites she could judge them by were the marshals.
Maybe the officers – the remnants of Naval Command – had been brought here as a subtle warning, a hint that they shouldn’t anger them any further. It was one thing to go after refugees: going after Eden itself was something else entirely.
