Shifting Reality (ISF-Allion Book 1)

by Patty Jansen

  “You are warned, we will use live ammunition—”

  “Come, little people. They’re bluffing. Come with me, and we will build our independent lives—”

  A sizzling bolt blasted from the mezzanine level of the hall straight into the lift.

  People screamed.

  A young male voice near Melati yelled, “Pak!”

  People close by looked over their shoulders.

  Troy whirled around. “Shut up!”

  Budiman had let go of Paul’s arm and was trying to push between the people going the other way.

  Ari yelled, “No, Budiman, stay here!”

  Elko was yelling on his pocket comm. “No, in the crowd here.” He looked up. “Who was the idiot who did that?” He listened. “Stop it now, or you’ll have real panic.”

  Two sizzling bolts of light erupted from somewhere on the hall’s floor. Both hit the balcony where the enforcers stood. Several of them returned fire.

  An alarm started blaring.

  Jao pushed past Melati and took Paul’s free arm over his shoulder. “To hell with being careful. We’re going to make a run for it. Do not get involved in any fights, no matter what.”

  “Melati!” This was Budiman. “Melati, they shot Pak. We must help him, please!” He grabbed her arm.

  People turned and gave the group strange looks.

  Jao snapped at him. “Shut up and stop making such a fuss!”

  “They shot him! They shot him!”

  Jao grabbed Budiman with his free hand and drew him so close that their helmets touched. “If you want to live, shut the fuck up before I smash your face in.”

  He let a moment of unspoken threats pass between them.

  Melati was desperate to get going. People ran in all directions, jostling her. The sounds of screaming and discharging guns made her ears ring. Now the main fire alarm was going off. Troy and Elko were nowhere to be seen.

  Budiman let his shoulders sag.

  “Come,” Jao said and he and Ari continued with Paul.

  From the corner of her eye, Melati noticed the hypertech on top of the tower throw something. The object flew over their heads and landed amongst the crowd, a silver canister with thick smoke billowing from one end. People tried to scramble out of the smoke’s reach, but the hall was too crowded and there was nowhere for them to go. Some were coughing. A young woman fainted. A friend tried to help her up, and fainted, too.

  God, some sort of gas.

  Melati fumbled inside her helmet, prising her fingers between the plastic and her skin, and managed to slip the mask over her nose and mouth. The stale, burnt air inside it made her feel sick. People bumped into her, and every time she lost sight of Jao, panic crept up in her. It was impossible to guess what was going on.

  The inside of her mask fogged up. She tripped over arms and legs, and every time her too-big boots hit something soft, she cringed.

  Then they were at the steps to the lift. Thick smoke was spreading through the hall. Red lights flashed in the ceiling, and a moment later water rained down. A female voice boomed through the announcement system. “Attention, the fire doors will be closing. Attention . . .”

  The ISF guard at the lift held the door open. “Hurry up. Is that all of you?”

  “I’m not sure.” Melati panted. Her mouth tasted funny. She felt dizzy.

  Ari and Jao half-dragged Paul between them into the lift and placed him with his back to the rear wall. Budiman followed. Troy and Elko were still nowhere to be seen. Maybe they’d gone back to the other enforcers.

  Ari let go of Paul’s arm. “Please. Can you look after him now? I have to go.”

  “What, Ari? Where are you going now?”

  “I have to warn Uncle and Grandma! Don’t you care about them?”

  “Of course I do, but you’ll get killed out there. They’ll be safe in the B sector.”

  Ari hesitated, half out of the lift. The hall was a scene of utter chaos, with people trying to escape through the bypass doors, which was effectively an airlock and not designed for a lot of traffic.

  Were Uncle and Grandma safe in the B sector? Who knew what was happening there.

  Jao had gone back to the railing, and fired at one of the towers, where a man in hypertech gear was throwing down silver canisters.

  The shot hit the tower below the man. The metal buckled and the tower toppled like in slow motion. The hypertech jumped free of the falling framework with a leap like there were springs in his legs. Another aggregate.

  Half the entrance to the market hall was now closed off with the thick metal of the fire door, and people were squeezing through the ever-smaller opening. Pushing each other aside, trampling, climbing over each other, and falling down. They couldn’t get out because a stream of people was entering the hall through the bypass access door. They all wore black, but had done away with their face masks. One man held up a raised fist. Someone on the floor responded.

  All hypertechs, many without masks. Those were all aggregates, and with the masked hypertechs, they were the only people who were still walking in the hall.

  Melati could hear nothing except her own breathing inside the helmet. Did these monsters just kill everybody at the party? Surely, the gas only made people unconscious. She felt cold. There was too much smoke in the hall to be certain.

  They wouldn’t just kill everyone, would they?

  They did kill everyone in the Mars wars.

  God.

  “We’ve got to call backup,” one of the guards said. His voice sounded woolly through the roaring of blood in Melati’s ears.

  Jao abandoned his position and ran into the lift. The doors closed and the guard punched a command that said Arm door.

  The lift jumped into motion. Melati took the hypertech mask from her face. Ari did the same. His face was sweaty and his expression hollow.

  His shoulders slumped. “What are we going to do, Melati? We need to find Uncle and Grandma.”

  She forced herself to say, “They are probably fine. They have to be.” But who knew if the aggregates hadn’t used the gas on the B sector? After all, who had a need for thousands of defiant, thieving, subversive little people.

  “What is going to happen to us?” Budiman asked while he took his facemask off, too. “Were all those people dead?”

  No one could answer that.

  Melati asked him, “Did you recognise any of those guys throwing the canisters?”

  His dark eyes met hers in a disturbed look. “Some of them.”

  “Have those characters been with you for long?”

  “Hypertechs take in every soul who wants to join and don’t ask questions—” He stopped, and the look on his face showed that he realised he was repeating propaganda. He shrugged. “I didn’t really have anything to do with recruiting, or new members, lo. I only got involved because of Pak . . .” His voice wavered—

  “You can’t be certain that they shot him,” Melati said. “I certainly couldn’t see it well enough to tell.”

  Budiman nodded, his lips pressed together. “Pak wanted me to be with the hypertechs. He said they would get all the good jobs in the station once he’d been elected. He said there would be people paying for everything we needed. I just worked in the stores. I don’t know who many of these visitors were.”

  But it was clear enough. No one else had asked who these people were either. They had been happy enough to be offered money and not ask any questions.

  What had Ari said again about bribing people?

  She met Ari’s eyes.

  He repeated it for her, in B3, “Anyone who is not a completely opinionated arsehole will take the money.” He sighed. “I was right, wasn’t I?”

  “And I am an opinionated arsehole.”

  He nodded. “As we should all have been.” His eyes glittered. Melati reached over and hugged him, enveloped in the smell of grime and sweat. No one spoke while the lift rumbled towards the ISF base.

  Melati met Jao’s eyes. His face had lost its expre
ssion of bravado. He’d gone pale and stood slightly bent over. Not only had he lost a partner, he was injured.

  He averted his gaze and turned to Paul, whose helmet no one had yet removed. “You fucker, you better be worth all this.”

  “He is,” Melati said. Oh, yes, he was. And she would make personally sure, or die, that Paul’s knowledge, and the Luminati, stopped existing right here.

  “So, what now?” Budiman asked. “How are we going to help Pak?”

  Melati shrugged, not sure that Harto deserved help, since a lot of these troubles would never have happened had he not been so desperate for power. ISF was evacuating with problems of its own, and as long as Allion aggregates held the rest of the station, she bet they would not be keen to return.

  Was this defeat? ISF hadn’t even fought. New Jakarta was a support base and didn’t have much combat personnel. New Jakarta was supposed to be safe. Even if they did have the combat staff, ISF did not engage in corridor-to-corridor fights if they could help it.

  The guard said, “We took in a lot of station tier 2 refugees. Felicity took a lot of them as well. Some of your family are likely to be on board.”

  Uncle and Grandma should be safe. They were safe, she decided, until proven otherwise.

  Chapter 29

  * * *

  THE LIFT DOOR OPENED into the base, to a blinding white corridor, clean air and the huge wall screen that normally showed the base’s daily activities, but now said All personnel to SS Felicity. A number of uniformed people walked past, giving strange glances at the limp form of Paul.

  Ari mumbled, “Wow.”

  Budiman’s eyes were wide.

  Behind them, Jao stumbled out of the lift.

  “Are you all right?” Melati steadied him. His skin felt sweaty. “You should get yourself looked at.”

  “I’m fine.” But the look in his eyes told her that he wasn’t. “Go, take them to the Felicity and find your boss.”

  “What about you?”

  “I’m part of emergency personnel. I stay behind.”

  “But you’re hurt.”

  “I’ll be fine. Thanks to you and your friends, I have some good information. Go to the ship. It could get nasty.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “We’ll clean up, erase and restart the computer system. Maybe we’ll decouple the base and send it into a slightly wider orbit.”

  Decouple the base? Melati knew that was possible, but also knew that once it had been done, it would be very hard, if not impossible, to rejoin the two sections. She stared at him, realising that nothing would ever be as it was before, that all the constants in her life—the station, the base and the tier 1 and tier 2 people—would be permanently changed. She might indeed never be back at New Jakarta.

  A group of base personnel came rushing down the passage. They were lab assistants and had probably stayed behind to lock up all the lab rooms.

  In passing, one of them said, “Hurry up, bird’s leaving in five flat.”

  “Go,” Jao said. “Be safe.”

  Melati started walking, looking back over her shoulder at Jao. He’d risked his life for her. He’d lost his partner and faced a battle with an evil enemy and an alien entity. On top of that, he was injured. It didn’t seem fair to leave. Uncle and Grandma might still be at the station, in the section in the hands of Allion.

  The lifts to the ISF docking ring were in the other part of the base, the part that was normally off-limits to Melati, where the military command had their offices and where visiting high-ranking military officers found lodgings on-base.

  They couldn’t move too fast, because Ari and Budiman were still dragging Paul. A couple of clangs made the floor shudder. Red lights flashed on the walls and ceiling and every wall display reminded her to hurry up and go to the Felicity.

  Fortunately, the lifts were not far into the restricted area. They dragged Paul in. The attendant called that he was bringing a group of stragglers.

  A rough male voice said, “Fire doors closing. Attention, all non-essential staff should be aboard SS Felicity within two minutes. Repeat, boarding tube will be disconnected at C2:08.”

  The lift took them to the base’s docking ring. The gravity in the lift came and went while it moved up and sideways towards the station’s central hub. Judging by the way he gripped her arm, young Budiman found it scary. In the docking ring, gravity was much less than in the rest of the base. It was easier to drag Paul.

  Melati had only seen pictures of the clean but featureless corridor accessing the docking tubes to the giant ships that floated outside. Flight personnel in dark grey jumpsuits were already disconnecting the permanent fixtures of the ship’s access tube. A soldier stood, stone-faced, next to the door. One of the ones staying behind. His tag said Fiorelli. She was not familiar with the stock; he was probably one of the highly specialised lines.

  They went into the tube, which curved sideways along the outer wall of the ring in an S-bend. The ship revolved with the station and gravity was away from the centre. Large military vessels, such as this one, had their own internal rotation, and the docking tube and airlock was the point of transition.

  At the end of the tube, a couple of people waited at the closed doors. They were all regular ISF personnel with their regulation duffels. There was also a crewmember of the ship in dark grey.

  “Last ones, eh?” He grinned and made an effort not to look at Paul.

  A green light flashed on the outside of the door. “Ah, there it is.” He unlocked the massive door, and heaved a handle to slide it open.

  Into the air lock, a round chamber with handholds on all sides. Melati had trained in here and knew what to expect. A green light burned on the panel of a door in the ceiling. That would be the one attaching onto the ship. She found a harness on the floor and clipped herself in lying down. The other ISF people were doing the same, and the attendant helped Ari and Budiman then strapped in Paul.

  The door hissed shut and then the capsule lost what little sensation of gravity it had possessed. Then up became sideways and down was no longer at her back. Budiman squeaked. Gravity was pushing them onto what had been a wall previously, making the harness cut under her arms. The floor of the cabin moved sideways until it was under their feet. Melati unclipped the harness and let herself down. Felicity was nowhere near as big as the station, and fake gravity was likewise less—but it was more than in the docking ring.

  The door with the green light hissed open. In the brightly-lit foyer stood Laura Jennings with a couple of nurses.

  “Melati.” Her voice sounded oddly warm.

  Melati met her grey eyes. Laura put a hand on her shoulder. “Well, I didn’t know if I’d ever see you back.”

  And that disturbed her surprisingly. It was overwhelming and strange. All the time, she had thought that no one cared.

  Louise came from the side, in the company of nine young boys.

  “Melati!” Simo yelled and threw himself in her arms. The other boys followed his example, surrounding Melati with hugs.

  Little Tika looked up at her. “Will you never leave us anymore?” His eyes were big and brown.

  “All personnel take up flight positions!” A voice commanded behind her.

  “Come on, boys, let’s go,” Louise said.

  “Noooo, we want to stay with Melati!”

  Melati met Louise’s eyes over Esse’s head. Was she mistaken or had he grown in her absence? She shrugged, ruffling hair and fighting her pricking eyes. It was all too much, too emotional.

  Louise shrugged. “I guess we can stay, if you can find a safe place to sit.”

  The nurses had Paul on a stretcher and carried him down the corridor and Louise and the boys took Melati, Ari and Budiman in the other direction. They hadn’t gone far before Abe started asking Budiman questions about the helmet he still held under his arm and wanted to know what every little thing inside it did.

  To Melati’s surprise, Louise took them to the ship’s fighter docks. />
  It was busy there, with goodness knew how many small short-range fighter craft attached to the walls. Tech crew, rappelling from the ceiling, were still working on them.

  The boys as well as Ari and Budiman stood transfixed, looking up at all the small attack craft. Some were piloted craft, but most were drones, all painted black.

  “Wow. There’s hundreds of them.”

  Keb pointed to all the different types of ships.

  Louise called, “Come on, boys. Keep going.”

  The refugees were in a side room off the docking area which looked like it usually contained cargo. At least a hundred people sat on the ground under transport webbing. A soldier walked around, giving instructions, which most of the barang-barang wouldn’t understand.

  As Melati, Ari and Budiman entered, many hopeful glances went to the door, followed by expressions of disappointment. Melati similarly looked over the group, but realised quickly that these were mainly people who had been at the party in the main hall, including a couple of sekong in bright outfits. One smiled at Ari.

  “Engine burn in thirty seconds,” the announcement boomed through the hall.

  Melati sat down next to Ari and Budiman and allowed the boys to help her with the webbing. She felt so tired and numb all of a sudden. Of course Uncle and Grandma weren’t here. They weren’t likely to be on the Felicity either. No doubt they were still at the station, at home, scared of what was happening, and hiding inside. The tier 1 were fighting the invasion and the news channels would be down.

  No doubt, too, many of the barang-barang would be angry with what had happened in the hall. Maybe some of them would support Allion. Maybe they would do so while believing that they were supporting the hypertechs.

  The voice announced that the burn would be for twenty minutes, after which people were free to move with caution.

  A light started flashing, and then all lights in the hall and storeroom went out, except for the emergency ones above the door. A siren rang three times. The floor moved sideways.

  A child screamed.

  There was a violent lurch to the left, and a sensation of falling. And then hanging upside down. All sensation of up or down vanished. The pressure in her ears increased more strongly than Melati had felt before. People screamed.