by Alex Lamb
Nineteen seconds later, he had reached the edge of the cloud. By then, though, the drones were following him. Four hundred and fifteen drones flicked out of the cloud behind him, like a pseudopod from an angry, oversized amoeba.
‘Really?’ said Mark. ‘You want a race?’
The Gulliver was in its element now. With clear space ahead, the drones didn’t stand a chance. Their distorted engines were no match for his. Mark piled power onto his remaining warp inducers, bringing the engine growl up to a frantic whine. Artificial gees squeezed them into their couches as the Gulliver shot away from the drone cloud, leaving it dwindling in the distance.
Mark sucked air as he eased off the drives and blinked at the ceiling of his bunk. He guiltily checked his passengers’ life signs. All still green, thankfully, though everyone was probably going to need some bones set. Next time, he’d remember to deploy the gel-sleeves on the crash couches before the fancy flying. Nevertheless, they were all still alive. Just.
He kicked off a program of extremely gentle warp-scatter manoeuvres, set the autopilot SAP on course for Nerroskovi and exhaled with relief.
8.2: WILL
Eleven hundred warp-enabled munitions thundered towards the Ariel Two in a desperate bid to rip a hole in Will’s hull.
‘Piss off,’ said Will.
The Ariel Two’s g-ray banks opened fire, eviscerating the swarm and smothering the massive hull with blooms of light.
In the lull that followed, Will fired a squadron of dropbots at the ravaged planet below, programmed to seek out and defend Yunus before the Photurians could get to him. Whether anyone down there was doing anything except cowering from the world-spanning radioactive grit-storm was anyone’s guess.
‘Where the fuck is the Chiyome?’ said Will. ‘If this doesn’t qualify as an emergency, I’d like to see something that does.’ He eyed the next wave of incoming drones. The entire cloud was centring on him and there were millions of them. ‘That’s the problem with an invisible ship. You can’t tell if it’s even fucking there.’
‘Give Ann some credit,’ said Nelson. ‘You asked her to look after the Gulliver. Maybe she’s doing that. She’s probably en route to Nerroskovi right now.’
Will realised with a start that Nelson was absolutely right. Given what he’d seen of the woman so far, that was exactly what he should expect. It upset him that she hadn’t tight-beamed him to at least let him know what she was doing – probably more than it should have.
‘We live in hope,’ Will muttered.
He watched through the dropbots’ eyes as they plunged into the ruined atmosphere, their descent envelopes ablating dangerously fast. Will didn’t care. If even a handful made it down there in time, it’d be enough. He pulled up his scans of the planet’s surface, paging through infrared wavelengths to find one that would give him a clear look at Yunus’s position. He set a SAP working through every possible combination of imaging filters.
The situation on the surface leapt into focus. Where Yunus’s shuttle had been, a pile of frenetic Photurian activity now buzzed. They appeared to be trying to build some kind of shield around the shuttle and themselves for protection against the raging storm.
Will roared his displeasure. Who knew what had been done to their diplomat by now? Everything was going to hell in a handcart. He’d come here for a miracle and instead he’d built himself a clusterfuck. And it was all because he’d let halfwits like Yunus have a say in the mission instead of trusting his intuition and shutting them down the moment they’d started acting stupid. Because of that, he was now left with the unpleasant choice of leaving the away team to the mercy of alien machines or glassing them from space. There didn’t seem to be much in it. With disgust, he released his links to the dropbots and turned his full attention to the swarm.
‘Right!’ he yelled. ‘Who wants some?’
A shimmering sheet of drones light-seconds wide was curving in towards him, wrapping slowly around the nestship like a shawl of death.
‘Merry Christmas!’ Will yelled and threw the Ariel Two towards them, his g-ray banks scything space like a thousand flaming swords.
Drones died and died and died. Will’s blood surged in his veins. These pathetic robots didn’t stand a chance against him. Even the Earthers thirty years ago had put up a better fight. At least half of the machines were too malformed to fight. Nevertheless, his heart sang at the destruction. If felt good to smash something up after decades of tiptoeing around, trying to forgive everyone else’s terrible behaviour. So seldom did he get a chance to exercise the strength the Transcended had burdened him with.
But his sense of satisfaction waned rapidly, leaving a hollow ache behind. No matter how many drones Will obliterated, there were always more, just as easy to predict as the last wave and just as expendable. It would take him days to clear out the entire system – pointless days that would remove any chance of Tiwanaku Four ever hosting life again.
‘We’re achieving nothing,’ said Nelson as he winced from another blast-wave hitting the shields. ‘And for all we know, those drones are carrying human hostages.’
Will paused his onslaught and flicked his view to a camera in the habitat core. Nelson looked drained, his crew terrified. Peter and Mitra lay there with eyes pressed shut, their view-fields off. Even Devi looked distressed. She’d never seen Will in full fury before. None of them had.
He realised his friend was right. Whatever or whoever had been the guiding intelligence behind the invasion, it wasn’t here now. Most of the drones weren’t even in fighting shape. The clever warp technology they’d exhibited in their initial attack on the Reynard was nowhere in evidence. Instead, these drones appeared to be low-grade approximations of the craft that had launched the initial assault.
He was fighting ghosts. He wasn’t achieving anything except scaring his own people. For all its baroque decoration, the system was effectively empty and the away team no closer to being retrieved. By now it looked obvious that the Photurian machines had got them. Will hoped for Yunus’s sake that the storm had killed him first.
‘If we want this situation fixed, we’ll have to try something else,’ said Nelson. ‘We’re still in the dark as to the cause of all this.’
Will nodded as he looked out at the damage he’d done. The space around the Ariel Two had become a rosy haze of plasma and shrapnel so bright it obscured the planet below. Tiwanaku Four would have a ring system for centuries. A tide of embarrassment swept through him.
‘You’re right. We’re going to that system the watchers identified,’ he said. ‘I want to know who’s behind this shit. I’m going to find them. And I’m going to fix all this.’
Nelson shot him a reproving look. ‘You realise that’s outside of the mission parameters. The only place you’re supposed to go after this is the rendezvous star or home.’
‘Fuck the parameters,’ said Will. ‘I should never have let those bean-counter fuckwits set them in the first place. I haven’t got my miracle yet, and I’m not going home without one.’
Will brought his ship about and headed in the direction of the uncharted star. Whoever was out there was going to get a piece of his mind.
8.3: ANN
The moment Will warped out, Ann groaned in relief. He’d fallen for it, thank Gal. The whole process had taken way longer than it should have, and had been far uglier. Watching the feed from Yunus’s shuttle had made her want to puke.
In the wake of this mission, she knew she’d never be able to think about herself the same way again. The weight of guilt incurred, regardless of the intended goal, was just too high. The ends, as it turned out, did not justify the means. Ann watched the Ariel Two flicker out of the system with lead in her heart.
She stared down at her sweating hands and rubbed them together.
Look at me, she thought. I’m the Lady Macbeth of deep space.
What would Sam think o
f her in this state? She hadn’t even remembered to check the Gulliver’s exit vector. Not that it mattered, next to everything else they’d seen. She didn’t doubt that Sam had a better handle on things than she did right now.
‘Ma’am,’ said Kuril. ‘Do you want an immediate tail?’
She blinked, grateful for the distraction.
‘No,’ she said. ‘What we’ve seen here scares me. We need to know if the machine behaviour is going to return to normal. If it doesn’t, our entire plan is worthless.’
Jaco craned out of his bunk to face her. After their first-contact ordeal, they were all looking a bit sticky and uncomfortable, him included.
‘Ma’am, with respect, I disagree. There’ll be time for that later. But if we don’t keep up with Monet, everyone at Snakepit is at risk. As soon as he arrives, everything we’re doing will be visible. We’ll have minutes at best.’
Ann found her jaw clenching. Jaco seemed content to trot out Sam’s old mission expectations regardless of what the Nems actually did, or the kinds of horrors he had to watch. Zealous he might be. Realistic he was not.
‘Mr Brinsen,’ she said slowly, ‘I am fully aware of the risks incurred by sitting still. I do not need a reminder. However, what we just observed was not part of any of our modelled scenarios. First, that planet should have been cleared out by now. Second, there should have been no dialogue. And third, the Nems should not have been coordinating to acquire extra human samples during their reflection cycle. We are dangerously off the map. If the Nems do not become predictable again, everyone is at risk. The entire human race. The Ariel Two may be able to withstand whole waves of Nem attack, but what about, say, the surface of Galatea? How long do you suppose that would last? Or Drexler, perhaps?’
Jaco’s brow furrowed in frustration. ‘I accept your orders, ma’am. However, request permission to speak freely.’
Ann curled her lip. ‘This is still an IPSO Fleet ship, Mr Brinsen. You do not need my permission. Informed dissent is expected of you.’
‘I’m concerned that we may be overreacting,’ he said, ‘and in doing so risking the mission objective. To your points: first, there is always a partial nest-building phase after the Nems hit a target. This time there was just more than usual. It doesn’t last. Second, the dialogue still fits our expectations of reflection-phase data traffic. And third, we should expect some blurring between behaviour phases. The phase model of Nem activity was invented by us for modelling purposes, not by them.’
‘And that is precisely why I am concerned!’ said Ann, her voice veering towards a shout. ‘If our expectations are even slightly out of whack, then where the hell are we? What are we doing here? Without confidence in that phase model, our actions amount to little more than poking a stick into a hornet’s nest. We’re using dangerous alien technology because we have scientifically assessed that it’s safe. If that’s not true, then we’re no better than the Truists and their suntaps.’
Jaco’s expression darkened. Like many Drexlerites, Jaco was touchy about the war. They’d suffered more than most at the hands of the Kingdom of Man and weren’t about to forget it.
‘And what do you intend to do if the Nems have changed?’ he said. ‘What can we actually do?’
‘Inform New Panama,’ said Ann. ‘Explain everything. Rally defences. We’re not committed until the Nems follow Monet’s warp trail home and strike at Earth.’
Jaco’s eyes went wide. ‘Are you serious? They’d string us up.’
‘I suggest you worry less about being incriminated, Mr Brinsen, and more about doing your duty.’
Jaco flushed. ‘Yes, ma’am,’ he growled. He turned away.
Ann’s heart was racing as she refocused her attention on her displays. They were all on edge after what they’d witnessed, but she and Jaco were clearly parsing the experience differently. They’d need another discussion before they hit Snakepit – preferably one not in front of the rest of the crew.
Over the next two hours, she watched the frenetic machines slow and regain something of their former somnambulant wanderings. They didn’t completely settle, however. And rather than siphoning up the material left in the debris cloud Will had created, the Nems circled warily, endlessly passing analytical probes back and forth across it. Certainly there were no dramatic responses, such as, for instance, chasing the Ariel Two straight to Snakepit as she’d half-anticipated.
Ann was left with the uncomfortable sense that while the Nems weren’t exactly back on track, there wasn’t enough unusual activity left to warrant outing the entire conspiracy. Doing that would inevitably doom herself and all her colleagues to treason tribunals. Everyone on her ship would face execution before the end of the year.
She hated to leave without more clarity, but it was slowly becoming clear that it would take days to determine whether the Nems would regain their habitual behaviour patterns, if not weeks. By that time their plan would be in shattered ruins.
Eventually, Jaco could stand it no more.
‘Ma’am,’ he said, his voice strained, ‘do you have a time window for how long you want us to monitor here? It’s just that Monet now has a hundred-and-forty-minute lead. That means we’re cutting it extremely fine.’
‘Accepted, Mr Brinsen,’ she said reluctantly. ‘Kuril, grease the rails, please. Prepare for maximum warp. We’re catching up with the Ariel Two, so don’t spare the juice.’
She’d have to content herself with a thorough report to Sam once she reached Snakepit. Hopefully, by the time she got there he’d be prepping for Will’s welcome, with Mark already in civilised confinement.
9: RENDEZVOUS
9.1: ASH
Ash paused at the doorway to the privacy room in the science section, far away from Mark’s remote vision. He checked both ways before ducking inside, then leaned up against the door, shut his eyes and breathed deep.
He felt sick with dread, as he had for all three hours since they’d left Tiwanaku. Despite his best efforts at managing it, his sense of impending doom would not lift. His mind kept replaying that awful moment when Sam had invoked the override and it had simply failed. In that instant, Mark had gone from a personal annoyance to an object of terror. Their lives now depended entirely on his horribly under-informed choices.
How had it happened? They’d not for a moment expected that particular point of failure. Yunus had been off the ship, thereby ceding – Ash had assumed – control of the override system to Sam. Weren’t Fleet override protocols supposed to be set in stone? Mark’s interface must have received exactly the same status-handles that Ash had during their mission prep on Triton, yet for some reason their impact on the system had been entirely different. Was the Vartian Institute somehow involved?
That moment would have been bad enough on its own, but it had followed on the heels of the nightmare involving Yunus Chesterford. In all of Ash’s previous experiences, the Nems had run like clockwork. They’d been tested and tested until the League technicians had simply run out of tests to do.
They still didn’t understand the cellular machinery they ran on, of course, but that had felt like a distant concern. After all, you didn’t need to understand the physiology of a wolf to know what would happen if you kicked it. Yet something had happened at Tiwanaku. By giving the Nems such a large target, they’d tripped some hidden wire in the system.
‘Sam Shah requests entry,’ said the door.
Ash moved aside to let him in.
Sam wore a murderous expression. ‘This is not supposed to be happening,’ he said.
‘No shit,’ said Ash. ‘Any idea why the override failed?’
Sam paced the tiny room and declined to answer. ‘Can we turn that fucking garden off?’ he snarled at the walls. ‘At least give me something honest.’
The displays flickered and the room became a glass box surrounded by the star-field that lay beyond the hull.
&
nbsp; ‘I have no fucking idea,’ Sam said at last. ‘That command code should have been enough to knock an admiral off his perch. I can only guess that Monet is behind this. It’s some fucked-up notion of mission security that he sneaked in behind our backs.’
‘Or Zoe Tamar?’
Sam shook his head. ‘I’d know it. I went over this ship inch by inch before we boarded. The Vartians are sly, but not that sly. In any case, it’s obvious what we need to do next – regain control of this ship. We need Nem-cloaking active immediately and a vector to Snakepit. And we don’t have long – they’re expecting us within forty-eight hours. After that, we’re out of the picture.’
‘But how?’ said Ash.
Sam snorted. ‘If Ruiz won’t give us control, we’ll have to take it. Knock him cold, if necessary. With him unresponsive, ship control would slide to you by default.’
Ash pulled a queasy face. ‘That won’t be easy. You can’t drug him – the ship’s sedatives won’t work on him unless he allows it. He’s got a self-aware metabolism like mine. If he’s anything like me, he has to run a shutdown just to fall asleep at night.’
‘You’ll have to take him out physically, then.’
Ash shot Sam a look of disbelief. ‘Are you crazy? First up, he has eyes in the fucking walls.’
‘Only in his section,’ said Sam. ‘We made sure of that. He has none over here.’
‘Secondly,’ said Ash. ‘He’s an Omega. How do you expect me to get the jump on him? He reacts faster than most people can see.’
‘So do you,’ said Sam. ‘Didn’t you both come out of the same gene programme?’
‘Yes,’ said Ash, ‘but we’re not clones. There was a huge amount of variation. The whole project was experimental, remember? What Mark lacks in social skills, he makes up for in speed. There was no one in the programme who could touch him for reflexes. Plus, if I fail, what then? The cat’s out of the bag.’
In truth, he didn’t relish the idea of attacking Mark. The flight had been one long reminder that they’d been almost brothers once, before everything had gone sour. They’d slept in the same dorms, taken the same classes and played together under a sequence of habitat domes, each more secure and less fun than the last. Grabbing him in a choke-hold in a corridor somewhere lacked appeal.
