Shooting the Rift - eARC

by Alex Stewart

  The trouble was, unlike the sleds I’d hailed so casually on Numarkut, these were all manually controlled, the dim sparks of their onboard AIs concerned only with speed limitation and collision avoidance: another inconvenient consequence of the Leaguers’ irrational prejudice against neuroware. But if I couldn’t get one to come to me, I’d just have to go to where they were parked.

  That involved a short hike along a network of service corridors, ducking, in a few cases, through utility conduits, which at least ought to make my trail harder to follow. After some twenty minutes of twisting and turning through the bowels of Kincora Base, during which my confidence rose every time I passed someone who didn’t seem surprised to see me there, I found myself walking into a service bay on the edge of one of the main transport arteries. I’d briefly considered heading for a transport pool and attempting to requisition a sled, but that had struck me as a lot more potentially hazardous: I’d be dealing with professional clerks, who’d probably have PhDs in officious box-ticking, and even the tiniest anomalies in the credentials I’d have to forge were likely to be noticed at once. The mechanics in a place like this, on the other hand, would be more concerned with the vehicles themselves, quite likely overworked, or at least disposed to think of themselves that way, and consequently more casual about the paperwork.

  At least that was the theory: time to put it into practice. I took a deep breath, and walked into the clamor of a busy repair shop.

  “Yes?” A harassed-looking tech sergeant extracted himself from the bowels of a partially dismantled emitter array, and glanced in my direction, clearly hoping I’d take the hint and piss off.

  I waved my arm in an approximation of a perfunctory salute, not entirely sure how it was supposed to go: even in the Commonwealth the different service branches liked to have their own ways of doing things, and though I’d never paid much attention to the interactions of our hosts, I’d got the impression the same thing held true for their counterparts in the League. The sergeant didn’t seem all that bothered, though, simply acknowledging it with a nod, instead of bawling me out for sloppiness as I’d half expected.

  “Private Mokole,” I honked, ironically grateful to Wymes for the damage to my nose, which went a long way towards masking my Commonwealth accent., “Here to pick up Ensign Hamst—” quick recovery—“Neville’s sled.”

  “Hamish Neville? Never heard of him.” The sergeant shrugged, and poked something inside the emitters, which were clearly far more interesting than me or my problems.

  “Wish I hadn’t,” I said, “he’s a complete asshole. And he’ll take it out on me if I go back without at least a progress report.”

  “Right.” The sergeant glanced up again, with a scintilla more sympathy. “Grover,” he called. “Officer’s sled. Done yet?”

  “Dunno.” Another technician appeared from the recesses of the workshop, and glanced in my direction. “Let me check.” He pulled out a handheld, and inspected it. “Could be.”

  “Then show him, and get him to sign for it.” The sergeant went back to work, my existence already forgotten.

  “Over here.” Grover led me through an echoing cavern full of disemboweled sleds, some of which were being worked on by preoccupied technicians, and some of which looked as though they’d been abandoned as hopeless cases a long time before. He stopped beside one which looked barely more functional than Aunt Jenny’s, but right about then I was happy to go with whatever I could get. “It’ll run, but you’ll need to get it back here for a proper service some time in the next few weeks. Otherwise you’re going to lose focus on the rear left emitters again. And the cupholder’s still rattling.”

  “I can live with that,” I said.

  “You won’t if that emitter fails in the middle of a traffic stream,” he said, although even I knew the chances of that happening were pretty remote. Grover, however, was clearly not one of life’s little rays of sunshine. He got out his handheld. “But it’s your funeral. Name?”

  “James Mokole,” I said, putting my hand in a pocket as though activating a handheld of my own, “but I usually go by Jas.”

  “Whatever.” He opened a clear channel, which I meshed with straight away, using Jas’s identity code again. If Grover double-checked it, and realized I was an X chromosome shy of who I was supposed to be, it would all be over, but, as I’d anticipated, he couldn’t be bothered. The sled was signed for, and no longer his responsibility. He started to turn away, his mind already on more important things, like the job I’d interrupted, or the time remaining to his next tea break. “You can get it out of here on your own?”

  “Sure,” I said, with a confidence I didn’t feel. I could drive a sled manually, after a fashion, but I wasn’t exactly an expert at it; I was used to meshing with a neuroware interface for that sort of thing, and had never really felt the urge to master the physical controls. Besides, that sort of thing wasn’t thought of as a suitable skill for an Avalonian gentleman to cultivate, being best left to the artisan classes. I slid into the driver’s seat, and poked the starter.

  The power came on with a smooth hum, and I felt a faint lurch in the pit of my stomach as the sled lifted a foot off the floor. I fed a little more power to the emitters, feeling the vehicle steady, and slide forwards, oversteering slightly and almost ramming a roof support before bringing the nose round and heading towards the large double door in the wall of the workshop. Just as I was beginning to panic slightly it began to slide open, triggered by a proximity sensor, and I found myself in the fast-moving traffic stream outside.

  My first sensation, I have to admit, was one of alarm. Everything seemed to be moving a lot faster than I was, and I overcorrected wildly a few times in an attempt to avoid a collision, before I began to relax and accept that the AI, limited as it was, could do the job a great deal better than I could. After that my confidence increased, and I cranked up the speed to the maximum it would allow, following the twists and turns of the map in my datasphere with single-minded diligence. It would have been a lot easier if I could simply have fed the destination I wanted to the AI, and let it get on with the trip all by itself, but League sleds were a lot more basic than the ones I was used to, and relied on a human driver to handle the steering, braking, and acceleration.

  Eventually, though, I reached the main thoroughfare I wanted without killing myself, and coasted to a halt outside the hatch leading to the cavern in which I’d been interned for so long.

  I disembarked, and regarded it cautiously. There were no data hotspots on the other side, which would indicate the presence of troopers carrying handhelds, but that didn’t necessarily mean there was no one around.

  There was only one way to find out, and by now I’d got away with so much I was beginning to feel quite blasé about courting risk. I sent an unlocking pulse to the door, only to be met with a complete lack of response. After an initial surge of panic, during which I convinced myself that my escape had been discovered already, and Jas’s security codes purged from the system, I realized it simply hadn’t been locked in the first place, and pulled it open, feeling slightly foolish.

  On the positive side, it had been a wake-up call, reminding me I wasn’t untouchable, and could still make mistakes. And as I padded down the corridor towards the internment area, I couldn’t help wondering if I was about to make my most catastrophic one yet.

  To my faint surprise, I met no one on the way down the corridor, but then in retrospect I suppose I shouldn’t have found that particularly strange. All the merchant crews who’d been interned here had left the base by now, boosting for Freedom with as much speed as kicking against the gas giant we were orbiting could give them, and no doubt vying to be the first to deliver their long-awaited cargoes. The only people still in residence here would be Clio and the trio of Freebooters, so there wouldn’t be much point in anyone else hanging around.

  I expanded my ‘sphere about as far as it would go as I approached the pressure hatch, searching for the telltale glow of handhelds or
eyeware beyond it, but I couldn’t detect a thing. Which probably meant the guards had been withdrawn from inside the cavern too, as there was no one left in there worth keep an eye on. I could pick up the distinctive signatures of two neuroware dataspheres, though, so I sent a message to one of them, hoping it would get through.

  Clio. Are there any guards inside the cavern with you?

  Simon? Not quite the crisp response I’d been hoping for. How are you doing this? You should be well out of range.

  Long story, I replied. Short version, jailbreak. I’m just the other side of the pressure hatch. Are there any guards there?

  No she isn’t. The terse message managed to seem snapped, even though it arrived in my ‘sphere in the same neutral manner as all such communications. Try the barracks. Or wherever it is Soldier Girls go for fun around here.

  I’m here to see you, not Jas. Perhaps I’d better not mention I’d already spoken to her. And definitely not mention the kiss. It didn’t sound as though there was anyone on the other side of the hatch ready to greet me with a gun butt to the head, however, so I used Jas’s code once again, and stood back expectantly as it slid open, just in case I was wrong.

  No one shot at me, or tried to part my hair with a bayonet, so I hurried through, and closed the hatch again, leaving it unlocked in the faint hope that I might be able to make a run for it once my business with Clio was concluded. I tried not to think about where I could run to, or for how long—big as the base was, sooner or later Wymes and his people would catch up with me, and when they did I was pretty certain that the offer Jas had made would no longer be open.

  “Simon!” Clio was running towards me, and I had a sudden flash of déjà vu, wondering if this was how Deeks had felt just before she felled him. But instead of battering me to the ground, she hugged me, squeezing the breath from my lungs with such enthusiasm I began to fear for the structural integrity of my ribs.

  “Good to see you too,” I gasped, as she released her grip just in time to allow some air into me before I passed out.

  “What do you mean, ‘jailbreak’? Why are you dressed like that?” She paused delicately. “It’s not exactly fragrant, you know.”

  “You should smell it from the inside,” I said. “Have you heard anything from the Guildhall yet?”

  “My request’s in the system,” she said. “I’ve asked for a personal meeting with the Grand Mistress to argue your case, which would mean the tossers here would have to let you come with me, but that was a pretty long shot even before you complicated things.” She stared at me in perplexity. “How did you get out, anyway?”

  “Cracked the security system with my ‘ware,” I said, deciding part of the truth would be simpler than lying. “Tripped the locks, got hold of the uniform, and walked out like I owned the place.”

  “You utter pillock,” she said, which I must admit fell some way short of the awestruck admiration I’d been hoping for. “I’ve gone to all this trouble to be in with a chance of getting you out of here legitimately, and you’ve just blown it open to vacuum. What are you planning to do now, walk home?”

  “I hadn’t thought any further ahead than here,” I admitted. “I never really expected to make it this far. But I had to see you.”

  “I suppose I ought to feel flattered,” Clio said, eyeing me appraisingly, “but I know you too well for that. What do you want that’s so urgent it’s worth running the risk of getting shot for?”

  This, I sent, dropping the file I’d shown Remington into her ‘sphere. You’ve got to get it to the Guildhall, and have them transmit it to Avalon.

  “Do I hell,” she said coldly, after taking a cursory look at it. “So, John was right about you after all.”

  “Sort of,” I admitted. “But that’s not important right now. If this invasion isn’t stopped, people will die. Possibly people I care about.” Which actually did include Mother, though possibly not as much as it should have done.

  “Guilders don’t take sides,” Clio said flatly.

  “Yes, we do,” I said. “All the time.”

  “Only when we’re paid to,” she said.

  “Fine,” I snapped. “Then I’ll pay you to deliver the message to my aunt, all right? You’ve just got to get it to the Guildhall riftcom.”

  “How much?” she asked, like any Guilder would under the circumstances, although I thought I could detect a hint of other motives for considering the request.

  “Whatever the Commonwealth pays for the information,” I said. “It’s all yours.” I thought I saw her wavering, and went in for the clincher. “Enough to get your dad his ship back, probably.”

  “Maybe John was right,” she said, considering the matter. “You’ll never be a real Guilder, if you’re willing to give that much away.”

  “It’s not like I’ll ever get the chance to spend it,” I pointed out.

  “I suppose not.” Clio sighed, with what sounded like genuine regret. “All right, how do you suggest I get the message to the Guildhall?”

  “You’re in touch with them,” I said. “Wymes gave you access to the comms system, I heard him. Just transmit the data, and ask them to forward it.”

  She actually laughed. “Oh yeah, like that’ll work.” She began to count off points on her fingers. “We’re twenty minutes transmission time from Freedom, so it’s not like we’re having a conversation. I send a few words, and wait an hour before anyone gets back to me. If I’m lucky, and whatever I say doesn’t need too much discussion at the other end first. A datafile this size is going to stick out like a sore thumb on the system logs, and the bastards are bound to take a look at it, Guild privilege or not. Assuming it doesn’t just trip some automatic filter they’ve got in place to pick up any classified data being sent out by someone who shouldn’t even have seen it.”

  “Good points,” I conceded, with a sigh. “Sorry to have wasted your time.” I was, too. Conscious that this was probably the last time I’d ever see her, I leaned in, and kissed her lightly on the cheek in farewell. “Look after yourself.”

  “I always do. No other bugger will.” She watched me appraisingly for a moment, as I turned to go back through the pressure hatch. “Where do you think you’re going?”

  “No idea,” I said. There was still a remote possibility that I hadn’t been missed yet, and could sneak back to my cell before anyone noticed I was gone, but my luck had already been stretched to breaking point, and I strongly suspected it would go twang! long before I managed to complete the return trip. “Just somewhere I won’t make things any more difficult for you.”

  “So you’re giving up,” she said, with an edge of contempt in her voice. “Just like that.”

  “Unless you can come up with another way of getting off this rock,” I said, “I can’t see any alternative. It’s not like the League are going to lend me a ship, is it?”

  Then the idea struck. All the pieces had been rattling around in my head for a while, I suppose, but they just hadn’t collided up until now. My sarcastic remark to Wymes about hijacking a ship with a shaving blade, the shipping schedule I’d pilfered, and my recently assumed false identity as one of Ertica’s freebooters . . .

  “What?” Clio watched me narrowly. “You’re having ideas again, aren’t you?”

  I nodded. “Just how far would you go to deliver that message, and buy John out of his interest in the Stacked Deck?” I asked.

  “Pretty far,” Clio said, after a moment’s thought. “But unless that’s a rhetorical question, I draw the line at murder.”

  “No one needs to get killed,” I assured her, hoping that was true, especially in my case. “But you’ve already accepted an information gathering contract from me. Are you willing to up the ante?”

  “To what, exactly?” She’d been playing the negotiation game most of her adult life, and wasn’t about to give anything away, even to me.

  “Privateering,” I said. “I want to commission you, on behalf of Commonwealth Naval Intelligence, to steal a ship from one
of the docking bays, and deliver me to the Guildhall in it.”

  “All by myself?” She looked at me in astonishment. “They haven’t been putting hallucinogenic in your food, have they?”

  “I don’t think so,” I said, with an exaggeratedly serious frown, “but how would I know?”

  “Because you’re talking bollocks?” she suggested. Once again her fingers began counting the reasons I manifestly was. “They don’t just leave ships lying around unattended, you know.”

  I meshed with her ‘sphere again, and highlighted one of the ships currently in dock. “The Tom Shelby. Just finished refit, waiting to be loaded. Crew all on shore passes.”

  “That doesn’t mean it won’t be guarded, especially as it’s a Q ship. But let’s assume it isn’t. That bay’s too far to walk to before they definitely realize you’re missing. By the time we arrive, it’ll be locked down tight.”

  I grinned. “I’ve got a sled.”

  Clio grinned back. “Got a crew as well? Because it’s a League ship, so won’t have a neuroware interface, and I can’t fly it alone.”

  I shook my head. “No, I don’t have a crew. But I know a woman who does.”

  Ertica proved surprisingly easy to convince, although I suppose from her point of view there wasn’t much left to lose by joining our last desperate gamble. Her ship was gone, and with it her liberty, at least for the foreseeable future.

  “What the hell?” She shrugged, with the usual effect, but by now I was used to it, and couldn’t afford to get distracted anyway. “Might as well go down in a blaze of glory.”

  Baines nodded. “I’m in,” he agreed, which was just as well, as we wouldn’t get far without an engineer. He turned to Rollo, who, unusually, had listened to the entire proposal in silence. “What about you?”

  “Forget it. I’m too young and pretty to die.” He shook his head dolefully. “Prison can’t be all that bad. At least you get someone to talk to. Not like a coffin.” Then he burst out laughing. “Oh, your faces. Really had you going there, didn’t I?”