Old Ironsides

by Dean Crawford

  Nathan turned to look at Schmidt. ‘Never heard of a computer virus then?’

  ‘Doesn’t apply to me,’ Schmidt smiled back in delight. ‘Virus contamination of computer code cannot breach the quantum field that shields my data stream from outside influence: it would take more computing power than could exist in the entire universe to infiltrate my internal coding.’

  ‘You’ve never heard of luck, either.’

  ‘Neither have you, apparently,’ Schmidt observed. ‘You got woken up four hundred years late, everybody thinks you’re a walking disease and you’re now stuck in a small prison with me for company.’

  Nathan winced as Schmidt probed the interior of a drone on a nearby work station.

  ‘I don’t understand any of this,’ Nathan said. ‘I don’t get how Viggo even knew who I was but he reacted the moment he laid eyes on me, would’ve run through a solid wall to get away if he could have.’

  ‘I know how he feels.’

  ‘I’m serious,’ Nathan said and stood up. ‘These people know who I am, recognize me on sight. There must be a reason for that?’

  ‘Well,’ Schmidt said as he looked up from his work at Nathan, ‘aside from your abrasive attitude, it is a fact that for about a hundred years after your death you were quite a famous figure.’

  ‘I was?’

  ‘The first person proven to have been exposed to the plague that killed billions,’ Schmidt said, ‘the first person to be cryogenically preserved with the plague inside them and the first person to go on public display after the cure had been found. Your face was well known and remains in the public record all over the known quadrants of the galaxy. You’re famous, for all the wrong reasons.’

  ‘It’s your bedside manner that makes people warm to you, y’know that?’

  ‘I tell it like it is,’ Schmidt carried on. ‘There’s no reason to suspect conspiracy here, Nathan. Viggo likely just recognized your face from his school education.’

  ‘His education?’ Nathan echoed.

  ‘Yes, of course!’ Schmidt chuckled. ‘All school children are educated about the plague and your face is often featured in the presentations, whether they be conducted by a tutor or via download into the child’s ID. You’re the face of the plague, Nathan, a poster child for terminal illness, an icon of suffering and…’

  ‘I get it,’ Nathan muttered miserably.

  Schmidt chuckled and offered Nathan a reassuring smile. ‘Relax, you’re clean of infection Nathan. This is all nothing more than an unfortunate coincidence.’

  The door to the office dematerialized and Foxx strode in with Vasqeuz and Allen behind her.

  ‘We got Viggo to break,’ she announced to Nathan as she approached the quarantine cube, ‘and his knowledge of who you are is no coincidence.’

  Nathan looked at Schmidt, who shrugged and continued working on the drone.

  ‘How does he know who I am?’ Nathan asked her.

  ‘That’s the fun part,’ Vasquez informed him cheerily. ‘Turns out that Arwen Minter was selected personally by a big wheel of some kind to smuggle those drones in and out of North Four, directly because of his relationship to you.’

  ‘To me?’ Nathan stammered. ‘But I’ve never met the guy.’

  ‘It’s not a personal relationship they were interested in,’ Foxx explained. ‘It’s his genetics. For some reason, his connection to you made him important to whoever hired him for this job. Viggo doesn’t know much, but in return for immunity from prosecution and police protection he folded and said that somebody was running physical tests on Minter.’

  ‘Tests,’ Nathan uttered.

  ‘Yeah,’ Allen joined in. ‘Viggo said that Minter was being paid a fortune to undergo these tests, and that a couple of days ago he suddenly got real agitated about something and hired a killer to track you down.’

  Nathan pressed his hands against the walls of the cube. ‘An assassin?’

  ‘Fortunately for you, Minter was an idiot,’ Foxx said. ‘He used the drones and put them in place on the surface, which of course ultimately led us to him. For some reason Minter desperately wanted you dead Nathan, and was prepared to go to some lengths to make it happen.’

  ‘Minter also set up the explosives that started the fire in the apartment block,’ Vasquez informed him. ‘He probably figured that you or the police might show up there and likely wanted to cover his tracks.’

  ‘And he was waiting for me with his accomplice when I followed you to the apartments,’ Nathan said. ‘They attacked the moment I got out of the cab.’

  ‘Which means they knew everything,’ Foxx said. ‘Who you are, when you were reanimated and where you would likely be going. They were watching and waiting and we managed to figure out that Minter got agitated the very same day that you recovered consciousness after being tended to by Doctor Schmidt.’

  Nathan turned and looked at the holosap, who shrugged without apparent concern.

  ‘Don’t look at me,’ he said. ‘I’ve spent the last two years trying to bring you back to life, although having spent two days in your company the urge to kill you myself is just as tempting.’

  ‘It’s mutual,’ Nathan replied, and then turned to Foxx. ‘So why do they want me dead?’

  ‘We don’t know,’ Foxx admitted, ‘and the crash that killed Minter and his driver created a blaze sufficient that there isn’t much of a body left to figure out what tests were being run on him. His ID is intact but it’s been tampered with and wasn’t recording in the months leading up to his death – a proxy chip was used to allow him to travel and convince the security system that his normal chip was active.’

  ‘So the system can be cheated,’ Nathan said.

  ‘At great expense,’ Vasquez explained. ‘Proxy chips are high value black-market items, hard to come by. Minter wasn’t a big enough player to afford something like that so it had to come from somebody else.’

  ‘Which plays into our idea that this is all about something bigger than just Nathan,’ Foxx said.

  ‘What about Viggo?’ Nathan persisted. ‘He knew my face, said that I was the plague man. What did he mean by that?’

  ‘We think that he thought you were still infected,’ Allen said, and with a flick of his optical implant the translucent walls of the cube vanished and Nathan was free again. ‘We had all of your plates re-checked, just to be sure, and there’s no plague in your system. You’re clean.’

  ‘Told you so,’ Schmidt said without looking up from his work.

  ‘What now?’ Nathan asked as he stepped into the office.

  Fox shrugged.

  ‘Dead end,’ she replied. ‘Viggo doesn’t know anything more, Minter is dead and we don’t have any new leads other than Viggo’s insistence that Titan is important to all of this.’

  Nathan felt disappointment weigh heavily down upon him. ‘And I’m guessing we can’t get aboard her?’

  ‘Not unless you can convince the Director General to override military protocol,’ Foxx said. ‘Then get us security clearance to board the ship, likely against Admiral Marshall’s wishes as he dislikes civilians aboard warships, and then somehow prove that one of his crew is behind your attempted homicide.’

  ‘Well, I’ve got an idea,’ Vasquez said. ‘Clearly somebody wants Ironside dead, again, so why not use him as bait and see who shows up?’

  ‘Oh please do,’ Schmidt said from behind them.

  ‘That could be dangerous,’ Foxx pointed out.

  Schmidt nodded encouragingly as he worked on the drone.

  ‘But it could draw out another lead,’ Allen said. ‘Maybe if we assigned an undercover unit to him and…’

  ‘I’ll do it,’ Nathan said, and the others fell silent for a long moment. ‘You said it yourself: we’ve got no leads, nowhere to go. Somebody, somewhere knows all about me and the plan to reanimate me, and they’re going to great lengths to stop me from surviving this. I’ve got to assume that they’re not going to stop until they achieve that objective, so why don�
�t we draw them out on our own terms and see if we can’t catch one of them alive this time?’

  The cops stared at Nathan and then Allen clapped his hand across Nathan’s shoulder.

  ‘Y’know, for all your faults you’ve got guts, Ironside.’

  ‘What faults?’ Nathan asked.

  ‘That one,’ Foxx smiled as she turned to Vasquez. ‘Okay, how are we going to do this?’

  ‘The Director General, Ceyron, said he would help me any way he could,’ Nathan pointed out. ‘Why don’t I ask him for a favor?’

  ‘You don’t just ask the DG for a favor,’ Allen uttered.

  ‘We need to get aboard Titan,’ Nathan insisted. ‘Whoever started this is aboard that ship, has a connection to Minter and Viggo and presumably me.’

  Vasquez shook his head.

  ‘More chance of winning the lottery, man. Maybe we put Ironside on the city streets with an observation team and wait for another gunman to show up and…’

  Nathan didn’t hear the rest as he moved across to one of the communication panels and pressed a channel request, as he had seen Foxx and her team do in the past. He waited for the screen to come to life, but nothing happened and he glanced at Foxx.

  ‘It doesn’t recognize your prints, your iris patterns or your DNA,’ she explained. ‘It won’t respond to you.’

  ‘Would you mind, then?’ he asked.

  ‘You’re wasting your time,’ Vasquez insisted. ‘The DG won’t even give you the time of day.’

  Foxx accessed the terminal, and then allowed Ironside to speak to the holosap that responded from CSS Headquarters down on the surface. Moments later, Franklyn Ceyron’s visage appeared on the screen.

  ‘Nathan, how are you?’

  Nathan resisted the smug smile that tried to creep onto his features as he saw Vasquez’s jaw drop and Allen’s blue eyes open wide. ‘I’m well, sir. I’m afraid that I have an urgent request.’

  ‘Anything, Nathan,’ Ceyron said. ‘What do you need?’

  ‘We’re following leads on the case, and we’ve been led to believe that the drones which attacked me were programmed aboard CSS Titan, the fleet’s flagship.’

  Ceyron’s eyebrow lifted. ‘Titan? Marshall’s ship? You’re absolutely sure?’

  ‘All paths lead to Titan, sir,’ Foxx added as she moved to stand alongside Nathan. ‘We’re not sure what it means, but we’ve exhausted all other leads.’

  ‘We were hoping that you might be able to exert your influence with Admiral Marshall,’ Nathan suggested, ‘and get us aboard the ship.’

  ‘Admiral Marshall is a…,’ Ceyron hesitated: ‘complex man, but he cannot stand in the way of a police investigation if we support it. The military serves the people, ultimately, and we at the Senate represent those people. I will send a priority signal, and have a shuttle sent to New Washington to collect you.’

  ‘I really appreciate that, sir,’ Nathan replied. ‘We’ll report back as soon as we know something.’

  Ceyron nodded, smiled and the transmission cut off. Nathan folded his arms across his chest and examined his fingertips as he turned to Vasquez and Allen.

  ‘No problem.’

  Vasquez opened his mouth to protest but was cut off as the office door opened and Captain Forrester strode in.

  ‘Drop everything,’ he snapped as he saw them. ‘We’ve just had a signal from CSS Polaris Station.’

  ‘Some kind of emergency?’ Nathan asked casually.

  ‘They won’t say,’ Forrester replied, suddenly suspicious as he peered at Nathan, ‘apparently I don’t have sufficient security clearance and this is an off station matter. You’re to report directly to CSS Titan and this goes no further than us, understood?’

  Nathan took a pace forward.

  ‘But of course. I take it our shuttle is waiting?’

  Forrester heaved in a deep breath and let it fall out again as he turned to Foxx. ‘Something about all of this is setting my guts off. First you get hosed with a drug that erases your memory, then Ironside here turns up, and before we know it all hell’s breaking loose. How the hell did you guys get a pass onto Titan?’

  ‘Well, y’know,’ Nathan intoned, ‘it’s not what you know…’

  ‘The Director General’s got our backs,’ Foxx explained to the captain.

  ‘Well, I still don’t like it,’ Forrester muttered. ‘Whatever’s up there, it’s big and it’s dangerous. Watch yourselves, and Doctor Sears who will be joining you, understood? Vasquez, Allen, I want you on the case down here. Push Viggo as hard as you need to, find out what’s behind this. He must know more than he’s been telling us.’

  ‘You got it,’ Vasquez replied.

  The captain dismissed them and Nathan followed Foxx out of the office.

  ‘They’re going to let us get on a space ship,’ Nathan whispered.

  Foxx winced. ‘Big deal. You make a nuisance of yourself and Marshall will probably let you get off the space ship too, in mid-flight no doubt.’

  Nathan chose not to reply to her as they hurried up a flight of stairs that branched off onto various other levels of the police building. As they walked, Doctor Sears joined them and cast a concerned glance at Nathan.

  ‘You have quite the capacity for trouble, Mister Ironside,’ she observed.

  ‘That’s what my mother always used to say,’ Nathan admitted.

  Holographic signs directed them toward the landing pads, and within minutes they were climbing away in a shuttle toward the docks in New Washington’s center, priority traffic.

  The journey took less than two minutes, and the five of them jumped out of the police cruiser, Foxx taking the lead as they approached a military-class shuttle parked in a cordoned-off area of the landing bays.

  ‘Have you ever been aboard the Titan before?’ he asked her as they slowed, each of them passing through a scanner one by one.

  ‘I’ve never even seen it,’ Foxx admitted as they walked through the scanner, ‘except on holoboards advertising for new recruits into CSS. It’s the fleet flagship.’

  ‘I can’t wait,’ he gasped, as excited as a child at Christmas.

  ‘Subject exhibits childlike immaturity and an obsession with wish-fulfilment,’ Doctor Sears whispered to herself as she recorded Nathan’s actions to her ID.

  ‘I’m a person, not a subject,’ Nathan said, mildly offended.

  ‘Subject prone to being easily affronted,’ she whispered.

  Before them on the pad was a craft much larger than the shuttles and cruisers they had been using up to that point. Sitting on a tripod undercarriage, the military-grade shuttle had a hooked nose like a bird of prey, angular wings that extended from the top of a bulky fuselage and were equipped with what Nathan assumed were heavy cannons of some kind. The whole craft was painted in a metallic gun-metal gray, the emblem of the CSS emblazoned upon its side below the cockpit.

  ‘This way,’ a soldier directed them inside the craft.

  Nathan walked up the entry ramp into the shuttle, saw rows of fairly Spartan seats with four-point harnesses and a bare metal interior. He was barely able to disguise his disappointment.

  ‘Not exactly luxury travel,’ he said as he filed toward a vacant row. ‘Can I have the window seat?’

  Foxx gestured her consent with a weary wave of her hand, and Nathan plunged into the thinly padded seat alongside a wide window and buckled himself in.

  ‘These are military shuttles,’ she explained as she joined him. ‘They’re not meant to be comfortable.

  ‘It’s not exactly Star Trek though, is it?’ he complained.

  Lieutenant Foxx tutted as she fastened her seat buckles into place. ‘People always think that the future will be somehow cleaner, brighter and more perfect than the now. It’s always turned out to be just the same, but bigger and messier than before. Get over it.’

  ‘I used to love that show,’ Nathan grumbled.

  His ire vanished as the shuttle’s door closed and moments later the craft lifted off the platfor
m and turned in mid-air before it accelerated through the bay and passed through the double-door exits and out into space.

  ‘Where is Titan right now?’ he asked.

  ‘Saturn, Polaris Station,’ Foxx replied. ‘It’s her home port.’

  ‘How long will it take us to get all the way out there?’ Nathan asked.

  She didn’t reply as the ship’s interior lights darkened. There was a brief pause, and then Nathan looked outside and saw the vast earth and New Washington suddenly blur away from them. The view outside flared bright white and then was plunged into blackness as a voice spoke from speakers inside the cabin.

  ‘Sit tight folks, we are now super-luminal. Destination ETA, six minutes.’

  ***

  XXVII

  CSS Titan

  The shuttle lurched out of super-luminal travel after just six minutes, and as it slowed dramatically Nathan strained in his seat for a glimpse of the iconic battleship he had heard so much about. Foxx watched him with interest as he leaned to one side and craned his head for a better look out of the viewing ports.

  ‘You know that they’re just screens,’ she reminded him. ‘You can’t see any better for moving about.’

  Nathan didn’t listen as he ducked and weaved his head. ‘I just wanna see the damned spaceship, okay?’

  Foxx appeared unconcerned, disinterested even.

  ‘It’s one of many,’ she replied and rested her head back against her seat. ‘You’ll get used to seeing them soon enough.’

  Nathan was about to reply that he doubted that very much when he saw something emerging from the blackness in the viewing port, and he suddenly knew without a shadow of a doubt that he would never grow tired of seeing the sight that greeted him as the shuttle turned to join a stream of traffic making its way toward a massive star port.

  A flare of light broke the blackness and dimmed the countless stars and Nathan felt his chest expand in anticipation as he saw the broad limb of Saturn appear before him, unimaginably immense, and then the broad and graceful rings that surrounded the planet like a halo. The distant sun was beaming through the disc-like rings, shafts of light cast through the bitter blackness like a distant lighthouse breaking through thick fog.