Shooting the Rift - eARC

by Alex Stewart

  I followed, feeling faintly bemused. I’d heard Rennau raising his voice often enough since joining the crew of the Stacked Deck, but never to Clio, and, come to that, I’d never heard her argue with her father before either. Pointedly turning her back on him, she smiled at Neville. “Are you going to be docked here for long?”

  “Just a few hours.” He answered automatically, still looking vaguely stunned at this unexpected turn of events. “We’re going back out on patrol once we’ve finished the paperwork.”

  “But you will be back?” Clio persisted, holding eye contact for just a fraction of a second longer than necessary.

  “In about a week.” He stepped back from the sled, maintaining eye contact in his turn, and grinned.

  “Maybe we’ll see you then,” Clio said breezily, and settled into a seat at the side of the sled, where she could rest her arm more easily. A second later the driver fed power to the emitters, and the vehicle began to move. She turned to wave to Neville, and then back to Rennau. “What the hell was all that about?”

  “Just smoothing the path,” Rennau said.

  “By dropping a boulder in it?”

  Rennau smiled lazily. “Trust me. Lad like that, he’s going to be twice as keen if he thinks I don’t approve.”

  “Thanks for nothing,” Clio said. An uncomfortable silence descended as we crossed the docking bay, a foot or two above head height, and I found myself thankful for a human driver, instead of the AIs of the Numarkut cabs. The ride was certainly a great deal smoother, which, considering how close I was sitting to Rolf and Lena, came as something of a relief.

  As the silence stretched, I found myself searching for a fresh topic of conversation. Clio’s love life certainly seemed a lot more complicated than I’d hitherto suspected, but now really didn’t seem like a good time to ask her about that, even if it had been the sort of thing I felt comfortable discussing.

  “Do you think any of the ships they’ve impounded really do have Commonwealth agents aboard?” I asked instead. I suppose, technically, ours did, but since I’d had nothing to do with Ellie at all, apart from fetching her a drink, I was quite confident of escaping any lines of enquiry focusing on her associates.

  “Who knows?” Remington said.

  “Who cares?” added Rennau. “So long as they sort it all out quickly and send us on our way.”

  “It’ll be the Freebooters,” Clio put in. “Why else would they cut and run like they did?”

  “Could be lots of reasons,” Remington said. “Freebooters are always up to something dodgy.”

  While we were talking, the sled had reached the edge of the docking area, and moved into a long tunnel, wide as a city street, which others intersected with at intervals in neat right angles, both horizontal and vertical. Several times we climbed or dived into these shafts, finding the local gravity swinging around with us, so that after a brief altercation with our inner ears we found ourselves moving along a subjectively level surface again.

  Wherever we went, drones and other sleds were skimming along around us, either keeping pace, or heading in the other direction. There were innumerable pedestrians too, most of them in uniform, passing in and out of doorways, or the mouths of narrower corridors too small to navigate a vehicle down. One or two seemed to be on guard in front of particularly solid-seeming portals, but we were past too quickly to try and see whatever it was they might have been protecting. Several times we passed through pressure doors, intended to seal off sections of the base in case of a breach, but I couldn’t really see the point: by this time we were so deep within the rock that any accident or attack which threatened to vent the atmosphere would have been so catastrophic there would probably have been no survivors left to breathe it anyway.

  At first I tried to memorize our route, in case I needed to find my way back to the Stacked Deck, but soon gave up the attempt; even my neuroware’s tracking program found the frequent twists and turns hard to follow, so I simply let it record our progress, resolving to sort it out later when I had the chance.

  “You’d think they’d have found us some quarters a bit nearer the ship,” Sowerby complained. “It’s going to be really inconvenient getting back to run the systems checks.”

  “That’s the military mind for you,” I said, with the authority of long familiarity. “They want us a long way away from the docking bay, so we can’t just steal the ship and make a run for it.”

  “Through a squadron of warships, and whatever else they’ve got defending this place.” Clio rolled her eyes. “Oh, please. Like we’re that stupid.”

  “Quite.” Remington nodded. “All we’ve got to do is sit tight, and everything’ll be fine.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  In which a fountain makes an unexpected appearance.

  Our new quarters turned out to be comfortable enough, and quite different from what I’d expected; after several more twists and turns, the sled pulled up next to a heavy pressure door, sealing off another section of the base, and sank gently to the floor. (Or, to be a little more accurate, came to rest a inch or two above it.) A small squad of Naval Infantry was waiting for us, in different uniforms to the ones the boarding party had worn: dull green fatigues, instead of the deep blue Neville and his people had sported, with the same color body armor over the top of it, rather than gray. They were, however, carrying short-barreled small arms, with folding stocks, as though they knew how to use them, and wouldn’t mind proving it if we gave them enough reason to.

  “First the Navy, then the Marines,” Clio said disdainfully. “I suppose we ought to be flattered.”

  “They’re not Marines, they’re Naval Infantry,” I said, without thinking. Tinkie would have had a conniption if she’d overheard that mistake, and, not for the first time, I found myself missing my sister; far more than I did the rest of my family. We’d not been that close as adults, but a shared childhood with a largely absent mother had forged a strong bond I’d always felt able to rely on, and although she’d become a good friend since our initial meeting, I still couldn’t see Clio in quite the same light.

  “If you say so.” Clio shrugged, apparently indifferent to the distinction, then relented, as curiosity got the better of her. “All right, I’ll buy it. What’s the difference?”

  “Marines are trained to operate in space as well as on the ground,” I said, “and deploy directly from orbit. NI just hitch a lift aboard starships, and use landing craft to get to the surface.” At least the Commonwealth ones did; I was beginning to realize just how much I didn’t know about the way everybody else went about things. Apart from the Guild, of course; I was pretty sure I was starting to get my head around some of their customs and practices, even if I still didn’t understand a lot of them.

  “Captain Remington?” The corporal in charge stepped forward, searching the line of faces staring at him for some sign of seniority, and settled on Rennau.

  Who indicated the skipper with a perfunctory jerk of his head. “Him.”

  “That’s me,” Remington confirmed, climbing out of the sled, and proffering a hand to shake. “John Tobias Remington, Commerce Guild, master of the Stacked Deck.” The corporal was too wary, or constrained by military protocol, to shake hands, however, simply nodding curtly in acknowledgement. “And you are?”

  “Corporal Fledge.” A simple statement, giving nothing away. I tried reaching out with my ‘ware again, but, just as before, I found nothing I could latch on to; none of the League soldiers had a personal datasphere, though they all seemed to be carrying handhelds of one sort or another. “If you’ll come with us, please.”

  “Of course.” Remington continued to act as though he was completely at his ease. “I take it the Guild representative is on their way from Freedom?”

  “I’ve no information about that, sir.” The final honorific was delivered in a flat tone which made it clear it was purely for convention’s sake.

  “No, of course, you wouldn’t. I’ll just have to talk to someone more senior
.” Remington’s nod in return was a mere hairs-breadth on the right side of patronizing. He turned back to the rest of us, who had all remained in our seats aboard the sled, watching the conversation unfold. “Come on, then, down you get. I’m sure the nice lady driving us has a job to get back to.” Having established that we took our orders from him, not a League non-com, to everyone’s satisfaction (except possibly that of Corporal Fledge), he turned to the driver, who’d not budged an inch since coming to a halt. “Thank you for the lift.”

  “You’re welcome, sir.” Her tone was neutral, although it seemed plain from her expression that she couldn’t have been much more surprised if a crate had expressed polite appreciation for her driving.

  I jumped down after Clio and Rennau, and hefted my bulging kitbag onto my shoulder. It was a little heavier than I remembered, and I found myself stumbling sideways as I took the weight, bumping into someone I took at first for one of my own shipmates. “Oops. Sorry.”

  “Don’t mention it.” One of the troopers, a young woman with skin a shade or two darker than my own, smiled at me in what looked like genuine amusement. “If you were trying for my gun, it’s the worst attempt I ever saw.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of it,” I assured her. “Not unless I had a buyer lined up.”

  Her smile spread. “You must be a real Guilder with an attitude like that.”

  “Why would there be any doubt?” I asked, already anticipating the answer. Which, of course, was precisely the one I was expecting.

  “An accent like that, and you have to ask?” But, unlike the idiot barman back on Numarkut, it was said with a smile.

  “He’s Guild. Does it matter where he was from before that?” Clio asked, with a little more heat than seemed strictly necessary, probably expecting the same kind of trouble we’d run into before.

  “Not to me.” The trooper looked faintly surprised, glancing from one of us to the other with an appraising expression.

  “Mokole!” Corporal Fledge nailed her with a glare only a fraction of a degree above the temperature of open space. “Are we interrupting your hectic social schedule?”

  “No, Corporal.” She began to turn away from us, pulling a face, while he was still only able to see the back of her head. I began to suspect that Corporal Fledge didn’t exactly enjoy the unqualified respect and confidence of the people under his command. Not all of them, anyway.

  “Yikes!” A sudden yell snatched at my attention, and I whirled round to face the sled. Lena had slipped in the process of disembarking, and was toppling towards us like an avalanche of transgene muscle. Clio and I both flinched reflexively, and I barged her aside without conscious thought, shoving her unceremoniously out of the way. Had I not done so, I’m pretty sure I’d have been able to avoid the falling woman with ease, but pushing Clio out of danger had eaten my margin for error; now, it seemed, I was about to pay for my moment of gallantry by being crushed myself.

  Even as I began my desperate leap, however, Mokole was there, in a blur of motion, her arm upraised. “I’ve got you,” she said cheerfully, arresting Lena’s fall with one hand, while the transgene giantess got her feet back under her again.

  “Thanks.” Lena regained her balance, and looked at her with an air of faint bemusement. “You’re stronger than you look.”

  “We don’t all go for the visible tweaks,” Mokole said, and I remembered Neville helping Clio into the sled a short while before. It seemed a lot of our new hosts had subtle enhancements of one kind or another, which I suppose shouldn’t have come as all that much of a surprise. The League had taken to transgenics as enthusiastically as the Commonwealth had to neuroware, and tweaks were probably just as ubiquitous here as the ability to sense dataflow was back on Avalon. I found myself gagging reflexively at the memory of Sowerby’s hangover cure—that had come from a League world, or void station, somewhere, hadn’t it? If the Leaguers could throw something like that together, God alone knew what else they were capable of brewing up.

  “Why not?” Rolf asked, seeming genuinely curious.

  Mokole smiled. “Why play your aces face up?” she asked.

  I thought about that. Enhanced strength would be a popular tweak, if she and Neville were anything go by; pretty much a no brainer for any Leaguer joining their military. It might even be a perk of the job. (As it happened it was; I found out later that one of the inducements to enlist was a complete set of tweaks intended to enhance their effectiveness in the field, which they could keep when they returned to civilian life.) Her reflexes were a lot faster than the baseline too, I’d just seen that for myself. As to what else had been worked on, I’d simply have to keep my eye on the people around us, and see what I could deduce.

  “Now who’s thinking like a Guilder?” I said, in a bantering tone.

  “I take it you think that’s a compliment,” Mokole said, as though she wouldn’t mind at all if I did.

  “Pay attention.” Fledge cleared his throat, with a hint of self-importance, and glared at everyone from the Stacked Deck. He gestured towards the bulkhead behind him. “Through here are your quarters. The rest of the base is strictly off limits. If you wander off,” he directed a cynical glance at Remington, who returned it with a bland smile, “we cannot be responsible for your safety.”

  “In other words, stay put or get shot,” Rennau muttered, just loud enough to be heard.

  “In other words, we prefer our guests not to have any unfortunate accidents,” Fledge said, meeting Rennau’s eyes. A moment of quiet understanding seemed to pass between them.

  “How very reassuring,” Remington said, as the bulkhead door began to grind open in response to a rapid, and encoded, data pulse from Fledge’s handheld, which I watched carefully through my ‘sphere. The basic principle seemed simple enough, but the encryption appeared to be based on the Corporal’s own genetic code, which made it very secure indeed; only a pulse from a device being held by an authorized person would open that door, and that was probably true for most of the others on Kincora Base into the bargain.

  “It should be,” Mokole said to Clio and me, in a conversational undertone. “Any of you lot get hurt, and we have to explain it to the Guild. Could get very messy.”

  “Would get very messy,” Clio corrected her.

  After a little more shuffling around, and retrieval of baggage from the sled, we all coalesced into a loose group in front of the bulkhead, the troopers on the outside, and the crew of the Stacked Deck in the middle. After a word from Fledge, and a confirmatory nod from Remington without which none of the Guilders were going anywhere, we set off together, the formation now a little lopsided from the heartbeat’s delay between the troopers’ response and our own.

  After passing through the portal, which looked intimidatingly solid to me as it ground closed behind us, we found ourselves in a completely different environment from the one I’d anticipated.

  “This looks . . . comfortable,” Clio conceded, a little grudgingly.

  “It’ll do,” Rennau agreed, glancing round at our surroundings.

  I suppose I’d been expecting something spartan, or utilitarian, but we’d entered a wide cavern, the center of which was floored with grass; a wide, lush lawn, like an urban park, broken up with shrubs and flower beds, filled with bright blossoms. Scattered bench seats were artfully placed to make the most of the vistas thus created, all of them converging on a fountain in the middle, the spray from which fluoresced into rainbows whenever the light from the overhead lamps caught it at the right angle.

  Around this central garden area ran a wide, paved walkway on which a number of people were strolling, in civilian clothing, a good deal of which was adorned by Guild patches. The few exceptions were wearing the uniforms of non-Guild shipping companies, although I didn’t recognize either of them offhand. Most of the strollers lacked any visible tweaks, although one or two had tails, or the enhanced musculature Rolf and Lena had gone for, presumably for much the same reason.

  Many of the internees nodde
d a greeting as they passed our group, or bade us welcome with a few words, though no one lingered; there would be plenty of time for introductions later, without the League troopers around to overhear. The main thing I noticed, however, was that most of the people in the cavern were surrounded by personal dataspheres, which I immediately found reassuring.

  At least we can find out what’s going on, I sent to Clio. As soon as we find a node—

  Good luck with that, she rejoined. Perturbed, I expanded my ‘sphere right to its limits, finding nothing other than the personal ‘spheres of my companions and fellow prisoners to mesh with. My rising spirits immediately plummeted again. You didn’t really expect them to leave a node within easy reach, did you? Leaguers are paranoid about ‘ware.

  Of course they were; everyone knew that. They thought it made you less human, although how anyone willing to muck about with their own biology on a molecular level as casually as changing their socks could think that, I had no idea. For my money, if God had intended people to have tails and paisley fur She’d have made them like that in the first place.

  “Here we are.” Fledge smiled as sincerely as he could, and waved a hand at one of the building fronts facing the garden; although I use the word “building” only in its loosest sense. On the outside of the walkway enclosing the open space, living quarters had been carved out of the cavern wall, the stone being dressed to resemble a freestanding structure. “Your home away from home.”

  “I’m sure it’ll do fine until we can return to our ship,” Remington said courteously, managing to sound as though the quarters weren’t quite up to the standard he’d expected, but he was willing to make the best of it.

  “Which I’ll need to do every couple of days,” Sowerby put in. “Unless you want an unexpected plasma vent in your docking bay.”

  “This is a Naval base, ma’am.” Now it was Fledge’s turn to sound faintly patronizing. “I’m sure we can find someone qualified to maintain your systems for you until you’ve been cleared for departure.”