by Alex Lamb
The discomfort of the moment, though, paled in comparison to the one that followed.
‘And may I introduce the physicist with our scientific team?’ said Nelson, pointing back over Mark’s shoulder. ‘Doctor Zoe Tamar.’
Mark turned around to see the girl with the purple hair gliding down from the pod bay.
‘Doctor Tamar is also the mission’s representative from the Vartian Institute,’ said Nelson. ‘She’s more familiar with the workings of the Gulliver than anyone else, so you’ll be working with her closely.’
Dr Tamar’s expression suggested she was at least as disappointed as he was.
‘Oh, but we’ve met,’ she said, before clapping a hand over her mouth in mock-regret.
Mark’s heart skipped a beat. Nelson regarded her in confusion.
‘We had a lovely conversation in a hallway,’ said Zoe. ‘Something about contemporary privacy issues, if I remember correctly?’ She glared at him with a cryptic kind of anger, as if his being in the same room as her constituted an affront.
‘Oh, yes,’ said Mark stiffly. ‘I’d forgotten. How nice to see you again.’
‘Super,’ said Zoe. ‘We get to fly together? How unexpected.’
Now that he had an opportunity to look at Dr Tamar properly, it was also easy to tell what kind of company she was likely to be. She had big dark eyes, full lips and curves under her one-piece. She also clearly considered him dirt. Her bio said it all. She was a year younger than him but had published a dozen seminal research papers already. Her resume said I’m out of your league and you know it. Mark liked his crewmates a little less obviously acid in temperament. It was shaping up to be a fun trip.
‘And may I introduce the Gulliver’s exopsychology specialist, Venetia Sharp?’ said Nelson, gesturing to the woman behind Zoe Tamar.
Mark found himself being scrutinised by a thin woman in her subjective forties with a severe black bob and a sly smile.
‘Nice to meet you, Captain Ruiz,’ she said. ‘Your reputation precedes you. I admire your work.’
She appeared to find this statement quietly amusing. To Mark’s ear, it sounded like a veiled slight.
Great, he thought. A comedian.
Venetia stuck out a hand and Mark shook it distractedly. Between Ash and Zoe Tamar, his attention was already scattered; his focus didn’t split nearly so neatly when human relationships were involved.
‘Excuse me,’ said a loud voice with a strong Leading-class accent.
Mark and the others looked up to see a man floating into the centre of the crowd with his arms raised. He was tall, with a scrawny build and weak chin but an impressive mane of professor hair.
[Yunus Chesterford,] his introduction SAP informed him, [mission leader.]
Mark frowned and shot a silent request back to the program.
[I thought Will Monet was in charge?]
[Will Monet is the senior Fleet officer,] said the SAP. [Yunus Chesterford is the head IPSO representative.] The top diplomat, in other words.
‘The shuttle tells me we’re all here,’ said Yunus, ‘so we’ll be leaving shortly. May I recommend that you all take a seat and we’ll begin the briefing?’
Mark grabbed the nearest strand of clamber-web and made his way down to the meeting space. He spotted Will as he moved to clip himself into a seat. Will sent him a short electronic hi. Mark declined to respond.
‘First, welcome,’ said Yunus. ‘I see some new faces here and plenty of familiar ones. It’s not often that people in our line of work get to put their talents to the test, and these are hardly ideal circumstances. Regardless, I’m delighted to see you all. With luck this mission will achieve something wonderful for the human race, and at the very least it should help resolve a dangerous situation.’
He glanced down at his hands with a wry expression.
‘And to all of you who, like me, have been required to take on some Fleet augmentations for this mission, apologies on behalf of IPSO. Apparently they’re necessary for flight safety under possible combat conditions. They assure me that, upon conclusion of this mission, anyone who wants the augs removed can have them taken out. Now, before we begin the meeting proper, I’d like to share a message from our senate sponsor – the head of the Senate Committee for E. T. Affairs, Parisa Voss.’
Yunus gestured at the central projector bubble, which sprang into life. Auntie Pari’s face appeared against a majestic background of stars. It’d been years since Mark had seen her. She looked exactly the same. Just as plastic. Just as prissy. Her nose was, if anything, even more eerily button-perfect than he remembered. Will liked her, of course. But she’d never had a particularly good effect on Will, in Mark’s opinion, particularly after Rachel’s loss. Through her, Will had been dragged further and further into the very politics he hated.
‘The mission you are about to undertake is the most important in recent history,’ said Auntie Pari. ‘You are travelling to meet a very real threat, some of you unarmed. That threat is unquantified in its scope. Whether we face extinction or the beginning of a golden age may depend on the actions you take. There has been precious little time to prepare for this mission, which means that all of you will need to cooperate and improvise at the highest levels of Fleet performance. I know you’re capable because we’ve chosen our best. For what you are about to do, on behalf of IPSO and all the Human Worlds, I salute you.’
Polite applause sounded around the room. Mark played along.
‘Fine words for a fine mission,’ said Yunus, waving a professorial finger. ‘I’ll be brief as we have a lot to cover today. In outline, this mission will comprise three ships: one diplomatic, one enforcing and one silent backup. The diplomatic ship is the Gulliver.’
The projector bubble gave them a slowly rotating 3D view of the ship. Like all human-built ships, it looked like a dull metal ball covered with the broken-umbrella spines of warp inducers.
‘It will be unarmed, of course, except for two highly trained Spatials who will remain in coma, except to provide support if we engage in any face-to-face diplomatic activity. In accordance with Vartian Institute recommendations, this ship will not carry messenger drones in case alien tampering leads to soft contagion.’
Mark tried not to groan. That was classic Vartian Institute reasoning for you – paranoid to the last. Rather than keep something useful aboard, they threw it out to prevent the one-in-a-billion scenario that someone might try to use them to spread viruses.
Hugo Vartian had been obsessed with alien software infections. At the end of his life, he’d lived in a recreation of a twentieth-century home, apparently, without a single data hub in it. He even had a human cleaner, if the rumours were true, and cooked his own food on gas burners like someone out of a period drama.
‘At the recommendation of the senate, the ship has been configured for maximum security,’ said Yunus. ‘It will run under a segmented security regime. This means it will comprise three independent modules, each with its own software domain – one for science, one for diplomacy and one for pilot control. This should prevent any software incursion that does arise in any section from spreading to the others. Each module will have its own primary officer. The science section will be run by Professor Citra Chesterford, the diplomacy section by Overcaptain Sam Nagano-Shah, and the Fleet section, of course, by the ship’s captain, Mark Ruiz. I will be the only person with emergency overrides for all three.’
Mark tried not to look chagrined. Who had ever heard of a captain not having full control over his own ship? He couldn’t help but wonder if this gem was a direct result of Will getting him the job.
‘This also means that instead of a single set of cut-outs for your surgical augs, there will be three,’ said Yunus. ‘If a software incursion occurs in one part of the ship, hitting the aug cut-out will drop body support everywhere. It’s our hope that this will enable the team to avoid being even pa
rtially exposed.’ He pulled a droll expression. ‘Reassuring, isn’t it?’
The regal-looking woman in a conservative head-sleeve sitting next to Yunus let out a peal of tinkling laugher. His wife, the biologist, the SAP informed him.
‘Having said all that, the Gulliver’s objective will be to engage in peaceful dialogue with whatever force is responsible for the Tiwanaku Event. If that objective proves impossible, the Gulliver will withdraw. While unarmed, the ship does possess some of the most sophisticated warp engines ever devised.’
Yunus brought up some engine specs. The Gulliver really was eye-wateringly fast. It could manage two kilolights, which was ridiculous. Mark didn’t doubt the ship guzzled antimatter. He hoped they had plenty of fuelling stops set up.
‘The enforcer ship is, of course, the Ariel Two,’ said Yunus. The familiar flower-bud shape of humanity’s only weaponised nestship appeared in the bubble. ‘As usual, it will be under the command of Will Kuno-Monet and subbed by Nelson Aquino and his crew. The Ariel Two’s objective is to observe the diplomatic exchange while providing the promise of force if negotiations are not held in good faith.’ Yunus raised a cautionary finger. ‘It will be paramount for the Ariel Two to maintain a safe distance from the proceedings unless called upon to act. If physical threat becomes apparent and the Gulliver is forced to withdraw, then – and only then – will the Ariel Two take over as primary point of contact.’
Mark glanced across at Will to see how he was taking this but Will had his Statesman face on and was impossible to read.
‘The backup ship is the Chiyome,’ said Yunus, ‘under the command of Andromeda Ng-Ludik and subbed by Jaco Brinsen-Nine.’
He pointed to an athletic-looking woman with a buzz cut and don’t fuck with me eyes who looked like she’d be equally at home in a lab-coat or at the safe end of a sniper’s rifle. He’d heard of Andromeda but never met her in person. She had the reputation of being scary effective and about as warm as a nice day on Triton.
When Yunus brought up a picture of the Chiyome, Mark sat up and blinked. It looked like a human rebuild of a Fecund ship on a much smaller scale, with a heavy emphasis on the quantum shield. Mark had never seen a ship like it, and he’d seen plenty. Someone in Fleet Research had been busy.
‘The Chiyome’s objective will simply be to observe,’ said Yunus. ‘It uses a new kind of cloaking technology that extrapolates from the Fecund quantum shield principle and will be effectively invisible throughout the mission.’
‘Wait, what?’ said Zoe. ‘You’ve got a working gravity cloak? When was that problem solved?’ The purple-haired scientist managed to look excited and appalled at the same time.
Yunus shrugged. ‘I don’t have any data for you, I’m afraid. And in any case, after this briefing, the Chiyome will operate as a separate entity. It will be deployed only in the unlikely case that the Ariel Two encounters difficulties. If that happens, the Chiyome is well prepared to resolve conflict. It is equipped with both a modified suntap energy-capture system and a boser canon. As you can see, we’re taking no chances with this mission.’
Mark’s mouth fell open. So the Fleet was building stealth ships with bosers now? The boser was another Transcended giveaway technology like the suntap. It accelerated coherent iron to near-light-speed and fired it like a laser. It was also banned by just about every law that IPSO had. Even the ones on the Ariel Two had special locks on them that only a few people could open. With a ship like the one he was looking at, you’d be able to slide up to the planet of your choice undetected and butcher the population with the flick of a switch. It was a blatant invitation to war.
Mark glanced around at the other faces in the room to see if anyone else was worried by this. To her credit, Venetia Sharp looked disgusted and was scowling from under her black bob. Zoe Tamar looked stunned. Will was as carefully blank as ever.
‘For obvious reasons, our fuelling stops will all be at secret locations.’ Yunus showed them a star map. ‘We’ve picked out two stars in the local shell, here and here. They have the survey names Gore-Daano and Tontoundin.’
Their flight plan went out of its way to avoid the primary traffic routes on the Penfield Lobe that lay between the old and new frontiers. Mark scowled. He’d assumed they’d be going via New Panama. Anything else seemed crazy and nothing in the high-level briefing he’d received had suggested otherwise. This last piece of Fleet secrecy was going to cost them.
The lobe was the Transcended’s artificial bridge between the navigable sheet of stars referred to as the human galactic shell and its neighbour closer to the core: Fecund space. You couldn’t get from one shell to the other without going through it, which meant that all the cheap, efficient crossings were crammed with traffic. Any other route came with delays and serious fuelling overheads.
‘I’m sorry,’ he blurted. ‘What’s obvious? Why won’t we be stopping at New Pan? Don’t they have data and resources we need? Like the latest scans of the target system, for instance? And other neat stuff that will help us not die?’
‘The Chiyome can’t be seen at—’
Mark cut Yunus off. ‘Okay, fine for the death-ship, but you just said it’ll be operating independently. Why should it affect anyone else? We’ll be going in blind, otherwise.’
A warning ping from Will appeared in Mark’s sensorium. [Remember, you have to fly with this guy.]
Mark ignored it. His opinion of the Fleet had dropped plenty in the last five minutes. If they were going to distort the entire mission so they could bring this war-crime-on-rails along with them, Mark wanted to know why.
Yunus looked peeved at being interrupted again, which was fine in Mark’s book.
‘The mission is being conducted quietly so as to not create panic,’ said Yunus. ‘Which is why we’re here today.’
‘New Pan has ships routed via quiet stops in the out-system all the time,’ said Mark. ‘There are police missions every week. Plus didn’t you just say that ship was invisible?’
‘The senate decided—’
Mark raised his eyebrows. ‘Obviously. But why?’
Yunus pulled a face that suggested he was working hard to stay civil.
‘Maybe I can help out here?’ said Sam Shah.
Mark recognised Sam, of course. Overcaptain Shah was regional head of Far Frontier police operations and one of the heaviest hitters in IPSO. He was the man most people credited with keeping the Frontier safe and open. In person, Sam had a kind of cheerful gravity like a well-mannered neutron star. When he entered the room, all eyes bent towards him. The fact that he was even on this mission was astonishing to Mark, let alone that he’d agreed to come as a passenger.
‘Essentially, this is a matter of Fleet secrecy, I’m afraid,’ said Sam sadly. ‘There are strategic reasons for our routing. You’ve all signed the Fleet non-disclosure so I see no point in not telling you. The alliance of sects that spearheads the Flag movement has found and repaired an intact network of Fecund fuelling stops.’
Mark’s eyes went wide. ‘Intact?’
Muttering filled the room as Sam’s explanation continued.
‘They’re at brown dwarf stars that didn’t nova during the Fecund extinction event, which means they’re in nearly perfect condition even after ten million years dormant. Many of these sites have biological remains and devices that are still under analysis.’
Mark shook his head in disbelief. This was huge.
‘In some ways,’ said Sam, ‘the sects have been more innovative about tracking down Fecund artefacts than the Fleet has. Needless to say, this represents a technological goldmine for Earth’s Truist Revival movement. And it explains how they’ve been able to get so many people to sites at the Far Frontier without Fleet detection. To the best of our knowledge, they don’t know we’re on to them – we still hold the technological edge. But the Tiwanaku Event calls that supremacy into question. As you can probably gue
ss, we developed the Chiyome to even the odds in case of a sneak attack. Obviously revealing it to you all on this mission constitutes a calculated risk. But frankly, if we can’t pull this mission off safely, it wouldn’t stay secret much longer anyway.’
Mark realised then that human civilisation was teetering a lot closer to the point of meltdown than he’d ever imagined. The fact that the sects hadn’t announced so huge a find and just made a profit off it spoke volumes. Behind the clotted crap of IPSO politics, forces were aligning. The Flag settlements might depend on loopholes in the law right now but there was no reason they had to stay that way. It cast the presence of a ship like the Chiyome in a whole new light.
‘Naturally, we don’t want to give the game away any more than we have to,’ said Sam. ‘So our route to Tiwanaku remains quiet, in case someone decides we should have an accident before we get there. And indeed, several of the scenarios our modelling SAPs have raised show exactly that outcome. In those cases, the Tiwanaku Event functions as a kind of lure to get the Ariel Two out of the picture, leaving the Far Frontier open for a bolder military move. If the sects have the resources to cook up a scheme as ornate as the Tiwanaku Event, we have to assume they also have the ability to attack colony worlds on multiple fronts. In light of this, the data we need for insertion will be provided by stealthed sentinels posted at the edge of the Tiwanaku System rather than from New Panama itself. So don’t worry, Mark – you’ll get the data you need. Nobody is going to send you in there blind.’
Mark nodded absently. He could now see the dual standard the mission represented. Yunus was there for the fluff. The likes of Will and Sam were there to make sure that whatever group was behind Tiwanaku got nailed to the wall before they started a war. Will had brought him in because, for all their history, Will knew exactly where Mark’s allegiances lay. And he wasn’t wrong.
