Vanguard Rising: A Space Opera Adventure

by A. C. Hadfield

  “Check the other rooms, would you, Bash?” Bella said over her shoulder.

  The new recruit nodded acceptance of the order and went from room to room. He came back into the lounge a few moments later. “All empty.”

  “I must ask you people again, what the hell is this all about?”

  “Charles, isn’t it?” Bella asked. “Charles Gandit.”

  “Why, yes, but—”

  “No more questions. All you need to do is answer ours honestly, and we’ll soon be gone without harming what hair you have left on your head. Lie to us, however…”

  “This is all being recorded. The SMF are on their way right now.”

  “Then you better get talking. Because when we show them your personal files, I suspect they, along with the Supreme Judiciary, will have some questions of their own.”

  Gandit fidgeted in his chair before composing himself. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t know what you think you know, but you’ve clearly got the wrong man.”

  “Is that so?” Wilbur said, leaning forward and adjusting his spectacles. “Are you saying your role as a director of the Jovian Group never presented other… opportunities for you?”

  “I haven’t been a director for nearly four years now. I’m retired. Is this about the merger? That’s nothing to do with me. If you want in on that, I suggest you apply for worker status like everyone else.”

  He sat back in his chair and folded his arms, assuming the body language of someone who thought he was superior to those around him.

  “You misunderstand us,” Bella said. “We’re not here to get a job. We’re here to get information. We know you’re still active with the goings-on within the Jovian Group. We have proof that shows you in talks with other members via a number of memos.”

  “Bullshit,” Gandit said, standing.

  Bella also stood, placed a hand on his shoulder, and forced him back down. Leaning in closer, she said, “I know you’re involved with Vanguard. I know you are part of the insiders working to pull the strings. I also know that Vanguard found something near Europa.”

  Gandit’s shoulders dropped. His entire body slumped, and his face fell into an expression of dread. His gray eyes seemed to lose all their light.

  Her words had clearly hit home.

  “You don’t know what you’re messing with. I don’t know how you found out about Vanguard, but if you value your lives, I suggest you walk away.”

  “Quite the opposite,” Wilbur said. “We’re going nowhere until you tell us what you know about Gianni Mazzari’s disappearance and subsequent reappearance. We know Jovian Group members boarded his ship a week after he went missing. We have the video implicating them. Unless you want to face arrest, you better get talking.”

  The older man leaned forward and dropped his head into his hands. When he looked up at them again, he shook his head. “I can’t give you what you want. I… I no longer have anything to do with Vanguard or the Jovian Group. But there is something that might help you… it’s in my office. I’ll go get it, and then you leave, right?”

  “It depends what it is,” Bella said.

  “It’s the full recording of Mazzari’s return… please, let me get it and then you can leave.”

  Bella stepped back and gestured for Gandit to fetch the recording. The old man staggered toward the door on the right of the lounge. Bella followed, but he surprised her with a sprint that she could never have predicted. Gandit darted into the room and slammed the door shut.

  Wilbur and Bashir rushed over to it. Bella tried the handle, but it was locked.

  A loud smash came from within the room.

  “What’s he doing in there?” Bashir asked.

  “Whatever it is, we’ve got to stop him. We can’t let this lead go,” Wilbur said.

  Bashir backed up. “Step aside.” He launched forward and rammed his meaty shoulder into the side of the door, breaking the flimsy internal lock and sending the door flying open.

  Bella stepped inside what she now saw to be the bedroom.

  And then, to her horror, she saw Gandit standing on the ledge of the broken window that overlooked the internal side of the station’s rotating torus. Wind whipped at Gandit’s thin hair and blew his suit around his bony body.

  “No,” Bella shouted, reaching out to him.

  He closed his eyes and leaned back.

  The gravitational pull of the centrifugal force generated from the rotating torus pulled Gandit away from the ledge and down, dragging him through the levels. As he fell, he reached to his terminal and slid a finger across the screen.

  A second later an explosion erupted from the lounge. A flash of orange fire lit up the bedroom, and black smoke wafted in through the doorway. Bella dashed back, away from the blast beyond the door. An alarm blared out, its high-pitched tones making her wince as smoke continued to fill the room.

  A dark shape appeared at the door: Greta.

  “What the hell happened?” she shouted, sweat pouring from her face. “We need to get you out of here.” Their voices were barely heard over the ringing in Bella’s ears. Greta grabbed Bella by the arm and dragged her away from the window.

  Bashir and Wilbur soon followed.

  The apartment was ablaze now, flames licking up the walls. Antique artwork curled and popped in the heat. Greta urged Wilbur and Bashir to leave, shouting over the roar of the fire.

  Greta was yelling at Bella, but she didn’t register the words. She was too concerned with finding some evidence of her brother’s fate. She couldn’t afford to have come this far only to leave empty-handed. Greta tried to pull her out of the room, but Bella snatched her arm away.

  “You go,” Bella said. “Make sure the others are okay.”

  “What are you doing?”

  “I need to find something—a computer, a terminal, anything to make all this worthwhile.”

  Greta removed her jacket and beat back the flames. Bella did likewise as she made her way around the room. The temperature was almost unbearable, snatching every breath and making her throat feel as though it were as engulfed in flame as the room.

  Sweat clung to her and smoke filled her lungs, causing her to cough. Her eyes watered, making her search more difficult, but eventually, after two long minutes, she found a personal terminal inside the drawer of a desk.

  It was hot to the touch, and she cursed as the metallic enclosure burned her hand. Unable to cope with the conditions anymore, she followed Greta out of the apartment and slumped to the floor.

  Greta slammed the door shut. “Holy crap. That was crazy. You could have got yourself killed.” She helped Bella to her feet. “What the hell happened in there?”

  Bella coughed, cleared the smoke from her throat. “The… old guy… jumped. I had to…. get evidence.” She held up the terminal drive.

  Wilbur wiped the sweat from his face. “He clearly thought this day might come. He even rigged the apartment up. Which rather makes one wonder: what was he prepared to hide?”

  “That’s what we need to find out. We better go before the fire service arrives and starts asking questions. When they see the video feed, the silicon runners or, more likely, the SMF will come after us.”

  Dozens of people were starting to leave their apartments now and filling up the corridor. Bella had moved away from Gandit’s burning home and ushered her crew to the other end of the level, where they would take an elevator back down to level five.

  She sent Harlan a message via her terminal, explaining what had happened, and received a reply telling her to meet him at the RDC on level two and to ask for Gylfie. She looked at her hand, the skin turning dark and puckering around the burn. The pain was a small price to pay if it meant a lead on finding her brother, and given Gandit’s response and final act, she knew she was getting closer to the truth.

  22

  Irena turned into the familiar corridor and approached her parents’ apartment on level seven. Her attention had been caught by the commotion comin
g from up on the higher level. A fire alarm pealed out, and people from all around were jostling to get to the glass walls so they could peer up and see what was happening.

  Because of this interruption, and the fact that she had to push her way through a crowd, she hadn’t realized there was a separate crowd forming, this time around the open door to her parents’ apartment.

  The hundred or so people looked mostly to be media types. Their shiny clothes, designed to ‘pop’ on holographic scenes, were always a giveaway.

  An unsettling feeling crawled inside Irena as she inched her way forward.

  Toward the front of the crowd, bathed in light from the apartment, half a dozen SMF Marines stood with their rifles pointing toward the ground. None of the soldiers looked at any of the individuals hanging around outside.

  “What’s going on?” Irena asked a short man with a shiny yellow shirt, who was standing on the tips of his toes to try to get a recording.

  He shushed her. “They’re about to speak.”

  “Who?”

  “The Selleses,” he said, then glanced up at Irena. “You didn’t hear?”

  “Hear what?” she snapped impatiently.

  Another journalist, a tall woman with striking black hair cut into a tight bob, said, “The merger. It’s just been signed. The Selleses are announcing the deal—and apparently something else. I take it you didn’t get the press release?”

  “Um… no, I was out covering another story,” Irena said, not wanting to give away that she was their daughter.

  Harlan’s information, then, appeared to have been correct regarding the merger between the Jovian Group and the Ceres Mining Company. Yet in the previous weeks when she had spoken with her parents while she was back down on Earth, they hadn’t mentioned anything about it.

  She reminded herself that it wasn’t necessarily surprising. They weren’t always forthcoming with details of their jobs, preferring to be vague and waving it off as just boring government business that she wouldn’t find interesting.

  Come to think of it, that didn’t make sense anymore, considering her father had badgered her for years to take a job in one of the government departments instead of the sciences.

  “Have they explained anything about the merger yet?” Irena asked.

  Bob-cut lady shook her head. “That’s what we’re waiting on. Been here for nearly an hour while they prepare their presentation.” She then glowered at the Marines standing guard in front of the door. “If they would just let us ask some questions.”

  One of the Marines, a beefy young man, glared at the reporter with a bored look that told Irena that he was as frustrated to be here as the journalists, yet he managed to do it menacingly enough that Bob-cut looked away and stepped back into the crowd.

  Irena brought up her terminal and scrolled through her messages to see if she had missed anything from her parents explaining what this was all about, but there was nothing.

  She had half a dozen updates from the people at the ERP, along with a message with the date and time of Dr. Osho and the others’ funeral.

  It was taking place in a week’s time, when it was hoped the coroner would complete their autopsies and release the bodies for cremation.

  The sound of reporters clamoring for information became a dull background hum as Irena thought about Darnesh, Osho, and Siegfried. She hadn’t had time to grieve for them properly, and a well of emotion bloomed within her, choking her throat and tearing her eyes.

  She pictured the first time she’d arrived and her three colleagues had welcomed her.

  All of them were friendly, and that made her memories of their short time together harder for Irena to bear. Darnesh and Siegfried had become respected colleagues, and Irena’s respect for Dr. Osho’s work and skills only increased the more she got to know her.

  A part of her ached to be back there again before the abbot attacked.

  She wished she could turn back time and do things differently, make more of a protest about going out to Station Nord. Perhaps if she’d been more forceful about the dangers, they wouldn’t have gone and they would still be alive today.

  “Miss?” The small man was tapping her on her shoulder.

  “Yes?”

  “Are you okay? You look upset.”

  “I’m just…. Yeah, it’s a long story.”

  “They’re coming out. Finally.”

  The hustle of the journalists dragged Irena forward as those at the back pressed to get closer so that they could get video and audio footage for their respective media channels. Wrist terminals with their blue holographic glows were thrust into the air.

  Irena’s abs clenched when she saw her parents walk out of the apartment and stand behind the semicircle barrier created by the Marines. Her father was smiling, being charismatic in that frighteningly genuine way of his.

  She knew it was a lie. She’d seen it so many times. One moment he was charming, greasing the wheels of diplomacy, and the very next instant, he’d be right back to his scowling, hard-faced self.

  He was dressed in a navy-blue suit that was made to measure by the best tailor on Atlas. His hair was slicked with oil, and he had clearly whitened his teeth since she’d last seen him. Her mother, Victoria, wore her usual pastel-colored trouser suit with the big geometric shoulders that were all the rage in her circles these days. It made her look top-heavy, Irena thought, despite her ample curves, which were expertly framed by her suit’s tailoring.

  The pair of them stood on a raised dais so they could address the crowd without the Marine’s blank faces getting in the way of the video feed.

  Irena also suspected it was so they could talk down to everyone else. Raise their own stature, as it were. Growing up in their household, Irena had learned that they were often quite literal with things like that.

  They took a brute-force approach to diplomacy and human relations.

  Which is why they did such a bad job raising me.

  If it wasn’t for her now-deceased aunt, who had taught Irena the scientific method and critical thinking, she’d be just another puppet, another tool in her parents’ political games.

  Her mother coughed and looked out at the sea of reporters eagerly waiting for her.

  Someone at the back shouted, “Get on with it.”

  Her father glared toward whoever had said it, and then whispered something in the ear of the Marine closest to him. The soldier nodded and focused on that area of the crowd.

  There were no more shouts.

  Eventually, her mother spoke.

  “Thank you all for coming this morning. I must first apologize about the vague nature of the press report, but it’ll become clear soon why I couldn’t go into too much detail; there were some last-minute negotiations with Companies House.”

  The crowd murmured and whispered. Irena caught the word merger doing the rounds. Carlos placed his hands behind his back and scanned the crowd as Victoria continued.

  “As your representative in the House of Messengers, I’m pleased to announce the successful merger of the Jovian Group and the Ceres Mining Company. These two fine institutions will be more efficient, effective, and driven to provide a superior supply of resources to the Solar Federation’s manufacturing facilities, along with increased job opportunities and higher access status for employees.”

  She took a breath and let that sink in.

  Many of the reporters were typing on their terminals in that one-handed way of theirs that Irena had never perfected. All across the Sol-Fed, hundreds of news stories were now going live. To many people, this would be shocking news; in fact, most of the reporters appeared to be surprised.

  For Irena, this was just a confirmation of everything she and Harlan had learned in the last few days. And it made her sick to her stomach. She was holding out for the chance that there could have been a mistake. Hoping that her parents weren’t up to their necks in conspiracy.

  But one short speech shattered that hope.

  Her mother continued. “I
n addition to the merger, the other news I would like to share with you today is in regard to the presidency. Many of you will be aware of the tumbling popularity of President Kallstrom. His approval rating is currently hovering at just two points over the election threshold.”

  She stopped and let the moment build as the reporters anticipated the obvious follow-up.

  “If, and when, the election is triggered, I, Victoria Selles, will stand for election as president of the Solar Federation. If elected, I will put the interests of Atlas Station front and center, as it always should be as humanity’s first and greatest non-planetary home.”

  Her husband grinned and clapped along with half of the reporters.

  Despite the way her mother had reacted to Irena the last time they spoke, her public reputation was of a warm, professional, and competent Messenger.

  Even without the merger influencing its workers to vote a certain way, she’d have stood a good chance. She was often touted as a potential runner for the election, although there were at least two or three others that were considered more favorable.

  This turn of events and the proof that she was involved with the Jovian Group, outside of her role as a Messenger and negotiator with Companies House, would easily tip her into the odds-on favorite.

  All around Irena, reporters busily typed up their notes or recorded the requisite thirty-second sound bites for their news outlets.

  Carlos was whispering something to her mother, who nodded and turned her attention back to the crowd. “Ladies and gentlemen, we have a few minutes available for questions.”

  Instantly, a hundred or more hands shot up.

  Carlos scanned the front row and pointed to an older man with long gray hair that cascaded over his shoulders. He wore an old-fashioned tweed suit that hadn’t been available on Atlas, or any of the other stations, for at least a decade.

  “With the merger, will there be any new edicts from Companies House to create a new firm?”

  “No, not at this time. The merger won’t change anything regarding the production or output of the two companies. What this will do is allow the managing hierarchy to more easily provide opportunities for the workers to move around and explore different roles, gaining new skills and becoming more effective contributors to the Solar Federation’s continual growth and success.”