Spaced

by Greg Curtis

  But that wasn't her concern. Hers was that nearly a hundred officers of the ALEB, those who had been part of the thin blue circle as people were calling it, and who’d been injured, were being offered treatment for their wounds. In some ways she felt a little like a fraud being there – she was now almost part of the walking wounded though she needed crutches to go with her callipers. But they’d also taken most of the seriously affected while more of their people were treating the rest in hospitals. And it wasn't her fault. If it hadn't have been for the Navy’s interrogation drugs she would have been much further along the road to recovery.

  Her leg bones weren't knitting as they should because of them – hence the callipers and crutches. It was ancient technology and something the doctors in the hospital found humiliating to have to use. Breaks should be almost completely healed in days. But in her case, as well as several others, they were talking about months at a minimum. Months spent on crutches or in a hover chair. She simply couldn't abide that thought.

  Something was still going to have to be done about the interrogation. That the Navy even had such drugs was a crime, but that they were willing to use them was a greater one. There had to be justice. But she doubted it would happen. So many other crimes of theirs had been exposed that the kidnapping, torture and murder of police officers was almost a minor offence.

  But the Commonwealth had said that everyone would have their day in court, and every crime would be tried. All of it would be public. They weren't in the mood to let the Navy slide out of control again and there would be no hiding of their crimes. She had to hold to that hope.

  That was why the officers were so quiet she supposed – that, and the fact that there wasn't an admiral among them.

  There were very few admirals left. Nearly every single one of them had known about the fraud. That was a crime. The Navy couldn’t be run by criminals. So the mesh had been filled with stories of high ranking naval officers resigning their posts, with more being arrested, others fleeing and some committing suicide. Those few that remained would probably not be staying where they were and would be waiting to be brought up on charges.

  Annalisse felt no sympathy for them. In the end they were criminals. They deserved what they got. And these officers would adapt. They were here and not up on charges. The Navy would survive. Everything would eventually return to how it should be.

  For the moment, she was more concerned with the fact that several hours into her treatment the ship had jumped. No one had told her that they were going anywhere.

  Then the Counsel had visited them in the ship's medical bay and brought them here – all those who were fit enough to make the trip. It was a surprisingly long journey, especially considering that they were on a ship. The Journey's End was far too big to be a ship in her view.

  As for this place – the oratorium as the Counsel called it – it was huge. Again too big to be inside a ship. It was an open town hall with walls made of what looked like burnished bronze, fluted columns towering above them, and ornate stone tile floors. It possessed an elegance and a grandeur completely out of place on a space ship. But in keeping with its title she supposed it would be a good place for someone to give an address – to hundreds, maybe thousands of people. Maybe that was why the Counsel had brought them here. He was planning some kind of speech.

  She quite liked the Counsel. He was tall and straight like all his people. He looked quite distinguished with that hint of grey in his dark curly hair. But what she really liked was his easy going manner; he spoke in a simple, straightforward way. There was never any hint of political doublespeak, or that he couldn't be trusted. He just said what he meant. That was a rare thing in a politician. But just then he was confusing her telling them about the system and what a natural trap it was.

  “I still don't understand why we're here Counsel.” Someone pointed out the obvious saving Annalisse the trouble.

  And that was the simple fact of the matter. She understood that the Edenites felt that they owed something to the officers of the ALEB. Especially those who had been there with their people before events had gone dark side. She understood that they wanted to offer medical services to them. In fact she was grateful for that. They'd only given her a single injection and already she felt better. Stronger. But the space trip she didn't understand. And most of all she didn't understand why they would have come to this system. If ever a system was lacking in anything worth visiting it was this one. It wasn't a perfect trap at all. No one with any sense would ever come here.

  “We're testing a theory Detective. And unfortunately it looks like being correct.” The Counsel didn't explain any further. Instead he walked forward until he caught the eye of a marshal and nodded.

  Immediately the marshal gestured, and unexpectedly the entire side wall of the ship slid open. That Annalisse hadn't been ready for. She'd thought the wall was solid.

  It revealed a vast panorama of inky blackness. Front and centre in it was a planet, the one she'd seen in the smaller holo.

  It didn’t look like much, just a rock in space. One side of it was molten caused by the heat of a massive red sun, while the other side remained completely dark. But save for that it was featureless. The heat on the sun side reached over a thousand degrees Kelvin according to the readouts. On the other it sank to a more tolerable minus one hundred or so. Nothing would survive down there long, being alternately baked and frozen as the planet spun slowly on its axis.

  “This is a system discovered by Doctor Simons, one he quite aptly named Hellacious.” The Counsel raised his voice only slightly to address them.

  Meanwhile Annalisse was thinking that it was strange that this was something to do with the Doctor. Or maybe not. The man seemed to have a positive genius for being at the heart of things he shouldn't be involved in at all.

  “He named it that because, in his own words, there isn't a single millimetre of land down there on which a ship could land safely. He was wrong about that. The planet in front of you is survivable, in a space ship, for about eight standard days, as long as you land away from the sun.

  “And as you can see the first ship is about to do that.”

  First ship? There was a ship out there? Annalisse couldn't see it – until the marshal once more gestured at the unseen console causing a piece of the image to be magnified. A heavy freighter hung there, on an intercept course for the dark side. That explained part of it she supposed. But what did he mean by the first one?

  “A couple of standard days ago the Doctor came up with a theory about the disaster we all seem to be dealing with, and how it was caused. That theory will be sent to your comms in a few hours when we're ready to return to Aquaria, for you to act upon as you will.”

  And there it was! The Doctor had a theory and no doubt because of it the universe would be turned upside down again. How did he keep doing that?

  “But in the meantime it can be summarised in three simple words. White did it. And that ship is unfortunately the first part of the proof that the theory is correct. The android companion on board has taken control of it – one of White's android companions.”

  There was a small gasp at that. Androids taking command of ships? It was unheard of.

  “When we heard the theory, our first thought after hoping that it was wrong, was to test it. So we set a trap. And we seem to have caught our first victim.

  “What we did was to tinker with Doctor Simon's android companion.”

  “The bangbot which tried to kill him?” A voice spoke up followed by a general titter of amusement.

  “That would be the one. Though android covert operative would be a better term for what they are. Double agents, assassins, spies, saboteurs. They really are amazingly advanced creations.

  “Anyway, we loaded it on the back of a small transport and pretended that we were going to take it to a research facility some hours later for a complete analysis. But we also made sure to reactivate some of its backup repair systems when we d
id so.”

  “Because of that, it was slowly able to repair itself. And then it stole the transport and escaped Eden, never realising it had been used. As far as it knew it had escaped. And it had succeeded in its mission, which was to get the coordinates to Eden.”

  “Unfortunately for it we had tampered with the transport. The system it showed was Eden but the coordinates the android could get were instead for this place. A system which has never been logged on the Commonwealth databases since the good doctor seems to be allergic to bureaucracy and form-filling. Then we set up our trap. It seemed like the perfect system.”

  “Counsel,” a marshal interrupted. He pointed at the holo and they all saw why. Another ship, an ore freighter, had entered the system and was already heading down for the planet. The Counsel just nodded in response, before continuing.

  “After escaping Eden the android returned to Aquaria, somehow made contact with Maximilian White-Jones, gave him the coordinates, and here you can see the results. His private navy is arriving, preparing to attack Eden.”

  “Sadly for them, not only are the coordinates wrong, but we left a small satellite in orbit with an energy drain. So they arrive, the satellite uses its weapon on them the moment they appear, their systems are badly compromised, and they end up crash landing. As near as we can calculate, the ships have enough power to land on thrusters and anti-gravity, but they'll never take off again. Even if the light from the sun was good enough to recharge them, which it isn't, by the time they got enough of it they'd be sitting on the sunward side of the planet and the rock underneath them would be melting. Nothing is getting off that world without help.”

  Energy drain? Annalisse didn't know what that was, though she understood what it did. No doubt the Navy would dearly love to get their hands on it.

  As for the trap it was ingenious. Some would say diabolical. And there was no chance that any of the ships would be able to resist it. All ships came through their jumps blind. So they had no hope of avoiding being hit. Something that was proven a moment later as the next ship jumped into the system and began its descent. But as the terraformer began its long, slow fall, she realised there was a problem.

  “Counsel – these are the spacer ships? The ones that have White's bangbots on board?” Of course they were she knew. In hospital she'd heard the story that a whole bunch of ships had gone missing. Deep spacer ships. And a terraformer, an ore freighter and a heavy freighter were exactly the sorts of ships the deep spacers would fly. But they weren't exactly a navy. They were unarmed civilian vessels.

  “So far.”

  “Then there are innocent people on board them. The spacers.” All of whom it seemed were destined to suffer a nasty end trapped on the planet below. And then she wondered – what did he mean so far?

  “More than you know detective. We would guess they have the spacers on board, though they may well be dead, as the androids are quite efficient killers. But they may also have people being smuggled. Some of our people. And, if the doctor is correct, there may be others. Experts in certain fields. Locked away in the life support chambers you've heard about.” He paused for a moment, as if considering his words. “There may also be rogues.”

  “Rogues?” Annalisse was shocked. Thus far they'd only encountered one of them and she’d thought that that was all there were. White had been enough.

  “If Doctor Simons is right – and unfortunately he seems to be more or less laser-guided – Maximilian White-Jones was not acting alone. He represents a group, perhaps a world of rogues, which has set out to invade and conquer Eden.”

  The Counsel's words were greeted with silence. No one knew quite what to say. But everyone knew that someone should say something. Perhaps that it was dark side. That there couldn't possibly be a world full of rogues out there.

  “A navy?” A Naval Command officer asked.

  “Up to two thousand deep space vessels. Civilian vessels, but loaded down with contraband. Weapons and armies ready to be assembled and made into an invading force to assault Eden. No warships yet – though they may come. Rogue warships.”

  Rogue warships! Annalisse tried to get her head around that. First they had mutes who were good and law-abiding with their own world. Now they had rogues as well with their own navy? It was just too much.

  “We have to do something.”

  Annalisse was glad that someone finally broke the awkward silence and ended her confused chain of thoughts. The man was right. If there were people down there, falling to a long, slow lingering death on a hell world, they had to do something. But what? Rescuing them would take both fuel and worse than that, they would have a potential army of androids and who knew what else to overcome. The police couldn't do that. And the Navy was in such bad shape that she didn't even know if it could.

  “We know. And it has to be you who do it. These people, all of them, whether they're first generations like us or un-advanced like you, are Commonwealth. They are your responsibility. And our Senate has limited our involvement in Commonwealth matters. But they have given us permission to grant you two pieces of technology which will help. The first is this.” He accepted a small steel box from another marshal and held it up for them to see.

  “This is a synthetic immobiliser. Push the button and any android within a hundred metres will lose all control. Everything else will work though including the vocal processor, so it could still issue commands. But it won't be able to attack you.

  “The second is this.” He pointed at the holo calling up an image of something that looked suspiciously like a gun.

  “This is – actually it doesn't have a name since our scientists only just designed it a few days ago – but it will disengage a jacker – as long as it's similar to the one we removed from the Nightingale. Simply put, jackers couple and engage through electro-magnetic fields and this will break them. Fit one to a shuttle, press the button from a klick or two away, and the device will fail.”

  “With these two devices we believe it should be possible for a shuttle with a small crew to land, gain access to a ship, refuel it, and lift off. There are no guarantees, and there may be other dangers onboard those ships, bots for example, but it’s a start.”

  Abruptly Annalisse understood why the naval officers were there – they were being asked to finally put on their Navy hats and do their proper duty. No more hunting down mutes or defrauding the Commonwealth. They were being asked to save people, end a threat and perhaps even make some legitimate arrests.

  It was a challenge, but it was also an opportunity and a chance for them to regain a little pride. So she wasn't surprised when the officers immediately accepted it. This was their duty. And even though they had not been part of the crimes carried out by their service – she assumed – they had still been shamed by them. They wanted to regain their reputation.

  “And the rogues?” Annalisse asked. The pilots and the people in the coffins being smuggled were one thing, even if they included a few rogues among their number. But enemy combatants? That was another matter.

  “That's why the Senate has chosen for us not to get involved. We will provide these technologies. And we will arrange to remove people from their life support systems. We have the medical technology to do it safely and also to separate the rogues from the rest. But we don't want to get involved in a war.”

  Which, Annalisse realised, meant they were expecting a battle. So was this moral cowardice asserting itself she wondered? Did the first generation mutes for all their power and wonder have a weakness? An aversion to battle? Or were they simply letting the Commonwealth show its colours? To prove itself better than Naval Command? Or to prove themselves the same?

  But, watching yet another ship begin its long slow descent into near oblivion, Annalisse knew why it didn't matter. What did was the answer the Commonwealth would give them.

  And for the life of her she didn't know what that answer would be.

  Chapter Thirty Nine

  Hellacious.
Carm had never expected to come back here. He'd never wanted to. And he'd never thought anyone else would want to come here either. But here he was, and if he'd been reading the reports right, he was so far from alone that it defied all belief. And yet, as the Nightingale disembarked from the Pilgrim only to dock once more in the Journey's End, he had seen for himself that it was true.

  There were eight hundred and ninety-three civilian vessels below, all of them captained by deep spacers like himself. There were another forty-three unidentified ships in addition, including big warships which matched no known configurations. They were all assumed to be rogue. None had answered any hails, and none of them had beacons. None of them could be found in the ship registries. But all were heavily armed. And there was a fleet of Commonwealth Navy vessels in orbit as well as an unknown number of Edenite ships – they couldn't be spotted unless they wanted to be.

  Carm detested this. He hated the system and he hated the trap which had been built, even though it had returned so many missing deep spacers. He was irked that they were trapped on a world which would kill them in a matter of days – if they weren't already dead. He hated that the Navy was dealing with the rescue. He hated everything about it, including that it had been suggested to him that he might want to watch the entire operation from the Oratorium of the Journey's End. He would have been happier sitting locked away on the Nightingale, alone. But still when the officer had come to escort him through the Edenite vessel he had followed without protest.

  That was wrong. It was his first time on the Edenite ship. He should have been fascinated, but his thoughts were on his friends trapped below – dying or already dead.

  Even the Oratorium couldn't distract him. A chamber on a ship which was more like a concert hall. At one one end of the huge space either a massive holo or porthole – he couldn't tell which – looked out into space.