John Rankine - Dag Fletcher 01

by The Ring of Garamas

  Yola knew all about the Ring. Its administration absorbed half the graduates of the Polytech. She had specialized in science courses which would lead automatically to a junior post in the organization. There, she would be breaking new ground for the female faction.

  One afternoon, she took him to see her department at the Polytech. It was dominated by the demands of the power ring.

  In the forecourt was a fifty metre diameter scale relief globe of Garamas, slowly turning on its axis and showing the route of the great cable.

  They stood in front of it for some minutes in silence. Even in model form, it was impressive.

  Fletcher said, “How come they let you in at all, if it’s so restricted?”

  “My father, Kaalba, is a Provincial Governor. He has travelled widely and he believes that women should have more opportunities. All the girls at the Polytech have influential contacts. But mostly they take language courses and social studies. They go into government departments as secretaries.”

  “But that didn’t appeal to you? You seem to have a fair arm lock on language yourself.”

  “I have always had this interest in mathematics. My father trained as an engineer originally. There were instruction tapes in the library at home.”

  “What does your mother think about it?”

  “She is traditional. She accepts the conventions. But she could not go against my father’s wishes. She does not like it.”

  “She wouldn’t like you to be mixed up with an underground group either.”

  Yola said simply, “No. But then you cannot avoid following your reason. That would be the greatest betrayal when you understand what must be done, you must try to do it. Many women who have stood up for human rights have been arrested and are in the internment camp here in Kristinobyl. We shall not rest until they are free.”

  Back in his pad at the Space Terminal Hotel, Fletcher reckoned that she had a point. If he was left much longer on the beach, he would be taking a hand himself.

  From the balcony, he could see more than half of the space port itself. On the perimeter, the two interned Scotian ships stood like minarets. In the foreground, freight and passenger ships from all points of the stellar compass were being serviced for take off. It was a sight that was a familiar part of his life and usually gave him uncomplicated pleasure with its blend of routine chores and high endeavour. Phoenician traders all, on their updated version of the wine-dark sea.

  Usually he was involved in it. Preparing his own ship. This time, as a spectator, conditioned by knowledge of the hinterland, he was wide open to the winds of doubt. God, there was enough to do on every planet, without touting round the universe for more trouble. When his stint with I.G.O. was done, and that could be any day, if the enquiry pronounced against him, he ought to get back to Earth planet and cultivate his own garden. Keep a pig on the common and work at saying “Arrh”.

  Speculation cut off abruptly with a calling bleep from the video inside his room.

  It was the I.G.O. commissar for Garamas in person, a squat Venusian, condemned to wear a ruff-like, air-adjustment unit to allow him to breathe the Garamasian atmosphere.

  The gear was a sounding box for an already harsh voice and its metallic rasp was out of key with the surface courtesy of the text. Duvorac’s large grey face filled the small screen and his eyes, golf-ball size with a hue of boiled spinach, seemed to have no part in it.

  “Commander Fletcher, I hesitate to disturb you at this time; but I would be glad to see you in my office.

  There is a small matter in which you could help.”

  “Now?”

  “That would be most kind. I shall expect you in five minutes.”

  “I’ll be there.”

  Seen close, Duvorac might have been an android torso, fused monolithically to a polished plinth. He was enclosed in a three sided executive console, which gave him a personalized information silo and minimized physical effort.

  He wasted no time in getting down to basics. “You will know, Commander, that the corvette Petrel is in the port. What you will not know is that there is nothing unserviceable about her. It was deliberate policy to keep her on that launch pad.”

  Duvorac shifted a key with his left hand and a ground plan of Kristinobyl space port appeared on the blank wall behind him. He took a stylus to point to the miniature on his desktop and an illuminated arrow tracked over the big screen.

  “There she is, on the perimeter. It was the placing she was given, that determined our action. A lucky break, you might say. As you know, all military craft are allocated stations on the perimeter, at the maximum distance from the city and a defensive screen lies in an arc to seal them off from the rest of the port. That is standard practice. You will ask, why is the position of Petrel important?”

  Dag Fletcher reckoned that for a man with a breathing problem the commissar was doing all right. To give him a break, he asked the question. “Why is the position of Petrel important?”

  Duvorac gave him a hard look as though filing it away for reference and went on, having a ready answer.

  “From the ship it is possible to overlook the internment area. It is a large complex, where many thousands of persons are held. Mostly these are Garamasians, who have become unpopular with their government; but in one special sector there are some hundreds of foreign detainees…”

  “As for instance, the crews of the two Scotian frigates?”

  “Exactly. Also some of the crew of Petrel. They are not prisoners in an exact sense, you understand. But security is very strict. There are also many civilians, who for one reason or another do not have current visas. Often their stay is of short duration; until their own governments supply credentials. Amongst this group is an I.G.O. agent, who had information for us but was arrested on a minor infringement.”

  “But I.G.O. will arrange release?”

  “That is the difficulty. The agent is Fingalnan by birth. For I.G.O. to accept responsibility would be unusual. Fingalna has tended to be in the O.G.A. sphere of influence. At the moment, a routine enquiry has been made to Fingalna. The agent’s cover was complex and will take some time to check. But in the end, Fingalna is likely to repudiate citizenship. Under refined interrogation, the agent will talk.”

  “This is very interesting, Commissar, but why do you tell me?”

  Duvorac unexpectedly moved from his personal fortress and stamped out into the middle of his office.

  Height-wise, he could still have been sitting down. Hardly a metre and a half tall, he was like a mobile block of biological tissue, a compressed man; but impressive none the less.

  Fletcher slewed round in his chair to stay facing the oracle and there was silence for a count of five.

  Then Duvorac seemed to come to a decision, “It is important that our agent is not questioned. Death would be preferable.”

  Dag Fletcher stood up to say it. “I am a spaceman not an assassin. Try somebody else.”

  Duvorac was not impressed. “You are quick, Commander; but in this case too quick. It may not come to that. I sincerely hope it will not. But you Earthmen continue to surprise me. You have a sentimental view of life. You would not hesitate to risk your own life or indeed to sacrifice a member of your crew in an engagement. A secret agent is also under orders. They are not children to be shielded from the harsh realities. However, to proceed. In the first instance, I want you to go aboard Petrel. Take a look at the layout of the internment area. I will give you a plan to assist orientation. Memorize the detail. Then return to me. I would rather outline my plan when you have a first-hand idea of the terrain. I trust you have no objection so far?”

  “Getting aboard Petrel will be difficult. The military sector is sealed off.”

  “A continuous power screen is expensive. It operates only a percentage of time. This is believed by the operators to be random. But we have observed it over a long period. We have matched the computer.

  Prediction is now reliable. I will give you the forecast for the next tw
enty four hours. That is more than enough.”

  Duvorac returned to his pedestal and played himself another tune. A panel slid away and he fished out a small printed slip and a diagram. “Memorize this sequence and destroy the paper. As you see, the next period is from fifteen hundred to fifteen thirty. It is now fourteen forty-one precisely. I suggest that you make a start right away. Here is the route which you are to take. You will find that it avoids all observation points. Once across the barrier, there is a system of blast trenches which will bring you below the gantry. All hatches were left on external manual.”

  Action was welcome, but Fletcher reckoned that Duvorac was the optimist of all time to believe that a man could walk through a space port complex without a challenge. So far, he had been proved right; but the luck could hardly hold. Currently, he was threading a maze of metre-wide alleys, between slab-sided building blocks, walking in the bottom of a half-round culvert designed to carry away seasonal rain and now thick with white dust.

  Ten metres ahead was the last intersection, brightly lit by direct sunlight shining along the gap, with a further twenty-five metres of alleyway to the edge of the building zone. After that, it was open ground for fifty metres with the power field bisecting the area. If Duvorac’s calculations were wrong, he would be crisped in a nanosecond.

  The thought of it heightened sensitivity. He was a metre from the turn when the faint scuff of movement round the twist brought him to a halt.

  Flat back against the wall, he peeled off his tunic, set his blaster for a wide-angle, stunning beam, shoved it in his waistband and waited for the pay-off. Now he could hear the cat soft tread. It was someone familiar with the route, sure that he was safe. A Garamasian workman checking out the drainage.

  An elongated shadow grew up the wall, supporting theory. But judgement took a knock, when an olive-drab uniformed leg preceded its owner into direct vision. Fletcher had a split second to recast his strategy with a sick, nervous dread in his stomach, which was the all-too familiar prelude to personal, physical action. He had planned to shroud the head to avoid recognition then lay the man cold for a two-hour stretch.

  But the leg signalled that the wayfarer was a Scotian. Duvorac was not alone in his calculations. With or without Garamasian knowledge, the Scotian high Command was keeping a line open to their ships.

  Reptile quick, the Scotian had sensed danger. He was round the corner in a twisty knot with a bulbous blaster sawing about for a target.

  Fletcher grabbed for the wrist and the cold contact sent a galvanic surge through his body. Once in, he was okay. He had time to think that it might not always be so, that some time he might be inhibited by fear, whatever his mind wanted to do about it; then there was only the cold, efficient pattern of destruction.

  Maybe the first shrinking of the nerves had a use in forcing a reaction. He felt his mind sharpened beyond normal, with every ongoing move crystal clear.

  He took the Scotian’s own kinetic urge and threw him into the culvert, then jumped down feet together as on to a landing pad.

  Personal scores came into it. Knowledge of what the Scotian had done to his own crewmen. When there was every reason to believe the man had a flat EEG, he still took his laser and drilled a pattern of bodkin holes in the narrow skull.

  Nothing could look more dead than a dead Scotian. Ghoulish blue-white skin, reptile mouth gone slack showing the ridged bone that was the racial variant for teeth, pale eyes turned up to leave glaring pink disks. A gone scavenger.

  They were the hatchet men of the O.G.A. organization, swarming from their dung-hued planet to pack into their deadly ships much as Northmen had packed the long boats that preyed on Europe in the long gone past. But without the Northman’s heroic zest and barbaric splendour. They were cold, sadistic killers, without any code except expediency.

  Fletcher knelt by the body and searched through the uniform pouches. There was nothing to give him a lead. That figured. They travelled light. Identity, stencilled on the left forearm claimed that he had been an executive in the power section of his ship, Alope -frigate class. Clan name Hathor. Number, birth group and dates of previous service. They carried the detail as a decoration.

  Fletcher straightened up and checked the alley and the T-junction. Nothing moved. He went back and picked up the body, which was curiously lightweight for its size.

  He went on at a quick walk, paused at the open end, then crossed the clear space at a jog trot. Only his subconscious was counting the metres and triggered off the signal to sweat at the half-way mark.

  But Duvorac’s timetable was holding up. In under fifty seconds, he was dropping into the first blast trench.

  At the foot of Petrel’s gantry, he stopped for a break. Leaving Hathor in the ditch, he hoisted himself up for a look round the set. From this point only the blank side of terminal buildings showed up like white cliffs. Nearer in, was a line of empty pads stretching in an arc either way with the two Scotian ships down left.

  Using an elevator would show up as a power take on some engineer’s console. He would have to climb.

  He lifted Hathor out and dumped him on the blast bed midway between Petrel’s tripod jacks.

  Here he was shielded, anyway, by the containing walls of the pit and inside the gantry, a sketchy run of cladding screened the ladders. But he could not help think that Duvorac had been over smooth. At any point, some security-minded official at Mission Control might run a scan to see that all was well with the idle ships.

  At the main hatch, there was no cover. He crossed a ten-metre gangway on his belly and only stood up against the I.G.O. blazon, where he reckoned the pattern would be camouflage enough.

  Inside, he felt more at home than anytime in the last ten days. Petrel was a more recent marque than Terrapin; but the layout was not much different. He went through the lock into a small reception area and through again into the narrow central trunk that communicated with all modules.

  First he dropped down under gravity, through the power pack to the freight bay which doubled as ship’s hospital. There, be broke out a disposal sack and lowered a hook to pick up the Scotian.

  Within two hours there would be nothing for anybody to find of Hathor.

  Then he activated the moving grab line and hauled himself two hundred metres into the cone.

  As Duvorac had predicted, the view from the forward gunnery module might have been set up for visual recce of the internment complex. Using the powerful direct vision scopes, he quartered the area.

  Fifteen minutes close work and Fletcher was confident he could walk round the cage without a guide. He still had an hour before the next break in the power screen. He dropped to the command cabin and sat on the gymbol mounted acceleration couch on the command island. Circling slowly, he remembered Terrapin as she made the last course change that strained every centimetre of her hull and sent her streaking in for the kill.

  A tell-tale on the communication’s desk bleeped for a half minute before he recognized that it was not sounding in his mind.

  It was one way traffic and scrambled at that. But a tape punched it out in clear for him to read off.

  “Screen on full operation. Stay.”

  It was just as well he had visited the control cabin. Duvorac’s master-mind was too fond of long shots for comfort. But then, like the man said, individuals were expendable in the public interest. You just had to take a professional view.

  Chapter Two

  Dag Fletcher fixed himself a meal at the ward room dispenser and ate with one ear cocked for a summoning bleep on the communications console.

  Two hours moving round the ship proved Duvorac dead right on one score. She was all systems go.

  Except for the gantry, locked on at two points, she was ready to blast off.

  Outside light levels began to drop. Twilight on Garamas was uniform and fast. Light a cigarette in broad day and you could flick its glowing stub in an arc against black night. But before dusk made true darkness, there was a recrudescence of ci
nnamon light, a curious warm glow that was a unique feature of the planet.

  Fletcher stood by a direct vision port waiting for it, looking over towards Kristinobyl—a filigree of light.

  From this angle, it could be anywhere he had ever been. European Space Corporation complex looked like that from ships on the perimeter. All cats grey in the dark. Where did that get him, anyway?

  It was more a time for nostalgia than for deep thought. A time of diffused excitement with no focus. A feeling that anything was possible; that anything might develop from this minute now, which would change the future. Nothing ever did. But he recognized that it was important to believe that it could. Without some expectation that the future could be changed, that a man’s past and present were not necessarily a strait-jacket on him, there would be no reason to go on.

  Brought up by a cosmic dimmer, the set flooded briefly with reddish-brown. Kristinobyl put on a structured skin and appeared solidly on the cyclorama. Every detail was momentarily clear, before a smooth fade-out into deep blackness that picked out the sky as a star map.

  Fletcher moved as the light went to look across at the Scotian frigates. He was left with a picture on his retina, that persisted against the black curtain. Below the freight hatch on the nearer ship, there had been a blurred movement. His mind tried to fill out the pattern from the clues and supplied a full-colour version of a green-uniformed Scotian being winched smartly aboard by a hoist line.

  Reason could find no flaw. In two minutes, he was convinced that it was what he had seen. Well, that figured. Hathor had been returning from his ship. They probably had a watch detail working. Regular changes. Keep all hands on a war footing.

  Fletcher moved restlessly about the silent ship. Knowledge that Scotians were aboard their craft was unsettling. It turned the two silent landmarks into strongpoints. For a sure thing, units of the main armament would be trained on Petrel as a starting gambit.

  Habit died hard. She was not his ship; but as the only executive on the site, he was responsible for her safety. He climbed again to the gunnery module, picked up the Scotians on a direction grid and lined up a destructor beam for each midship’s module.