Charlotte's Army

by Patty Jansen

  There were some dubious glances at this, but most of them agreed, and a couple of them clasped hands in some kind of brotherhood gesture.

  "Charlotte will help us," one said.

  "Charlotte," they all agreed. It sounded so solemn it creeped me out.

  "Listen, I have a plan. We need to get someone off this ship to talk to her."

  "How?"

  "Well—geez, mate, get one of us into the hospital of course. That's where she works. Where are your brains? Oh—they didn't give you any."

  Rane got up and threw Aidin a mock-punch. The two tumbled onto the bed, until Rane, physically stronger, wrestled Aidin onto his back.

  "For not having any brains, mate, I'll volunteer to do whatever you need. At least I get to meet her."

  There were some guffaws at this.

  "Good." Aidin stumbled up and retrieved his gun from his desk. "Let's do this outside. A bit messy in here. And mates, after we've finished, a couple of us better make ourselves scarce. I don't want another run-in with Crozier."

  There were mutterings of agreement as they all went into the corridor.

  I sat there, staring as Rane lay down willingly. Aidin gave the gun to the man I recognised as the man who had come with Donagh, the Pfitzinger sharpshooter called Stani. Stani flipped the catch, aimed, and shot. Rane didn't even scream, even if blood exploded in droplets over the wall. Donagh ran to the wall panel and hit the alarm button, gesturing to the others get out! Before Aidin, Stani and Kali disappeared, Aidin clasped Rane's hand and squeezed it.

  What had I said again? The emotional age of a child? No, these men were much more focused than we had thought.

  17

  "Still no guns?" Donagh glanced up.

  Kali shook his head. "You're on a mission to collect our mates from a friendly vessel. Who would go armed for such an expedition?"

  "I would," Stani muttered, stepping into his suit. "Especially with her around." He glanced at the door, where Donagh's blood brother Erro had gone to get Captain Crozier.

  Kali sighed. "Yes, I know you would, but the pristines wouldn't. That's the important bit."

  "Oh." Donagh put down the laser. His face showed disappointment. "Suppose I wasn't made to think."

  "You were made to think all right. It's the pristines that aren't thinking," Stani grumbled, now up to doing up his belt.

  "Just as well they're not thinking, mate," Jade said from behind the computer. "Or we could never pull this trick. Can you put on your glove and wriggle it a bit so I can see if that data patch is working?"

  Donagh did and wriggled his fingers as Jade directed. He didn't like wearing gloves and the prickly electronics Jade had inserted didn't make it any better. If he had to wring someone's neck, he preferred to do it with his bare hands.

  Jade had scanned all the Comfort's signals; there was no record of Aidin anywhere. Donagh and Stani were walking into the same trap, he was sure. But the glove was the key. As long as Jade got what he needed, it was all worth it.

  Jade gave him the thumbs-up from between his tangle of screens and spying devices.

  Donagh turned to Stani. "Ready to go, mate?"

  "Ready."

  The door slid aside and Erro came in, pushing Captain Crozier ahead of him. She held her chin high and didn't look at anyone. Donagh put on her helmet, and then his own. Then he took her arm. She felt stiff, like a first aid dummy.

  Stani slipped the helmet over his head. They all gave each other the thumbs up and the three of them entered the tube. There was no gravity here. The magnetic boots stuck to a strip that was supposed to be the bottom, but walking remained awkward with the wobbling tube.

  Donagh might not have Kali's brains, but he didn't quite understand why no one from the Comfort had entered through the tube to inspect the vessel last night. Certainly that Mayfair lady seemed eager enough. But maybe they, too, were not crazy and suspected that they could never send enough soldiers through that tube to mount an attack. Maybe they thought it would stop the crew from the Forward streaming on board. There were other ways into the ship, of course. Jade had told the men about all of those.

  They reached the end of the tube, and wobbled into the air lock. The doors shut, and the air hissed in while there was a clunk and a bone-jarring jolt as the air lock cubicle was scooped up by the ship's rotating inner shell that provided the onboard artificial gravity. There was a moment of disorientation, familiar, because Donagh had done a lot of crawling over the outsides of ships breaking in. Donagh grasped for the handholds while the inner airlock irised open to let them into the docking hall.

  Normality returned here. Donagh thought it was a pity.

  He slipped off his helmet. Stani did the same, with one hand, since he was still holding Captain Crozier.

  Commander Ehrlich was waiting for them, but Captain Mayfair wasn't there. Instead, there were a couple of nurses in hospital gowns. Unfamiliar names. A wiry woman. Lt Fenwicke, her tag said.

  At least they were going to the hospital.

  "We've brought her, as promised," Donagh said.

  "Let her walk to us," Commander Ehrlich said.

  Donagh let go of Captain Crozier's arm, and she walked slowly to the group from the Comfort.

  There were some words exchanged, outside Donagh's hearing. He missed his gun.

  Then Commander Ehrlich said, "We'll honour our promise. We'll take you to the men."

  They started walking. Donagh kept a mental image of the layout of the corridors. As a soldier trained for in-ship combat, he was good at that. He also tried to run his gloved hand along as many railings and walls as he could.

  It will pick up any signals, Jade had said. Jade would be listening and watching his screen. Donagh had no idea how Jade made sense out of all that rubbish on the screen, but the fact was that he did, and he was frightfully good at it.

  The group advanced in silence through grey corridors. There were screens on the walls here, with strange gaudy images of green fields and sunsets. He had heard that pristines needed these to stop them going mad. Screens sent out lots of radiation, Jade said, so Donagh made sure to get his glove close to them.

  Sometimes, people met them going the other way. They just stood to the side, and waited. There was a smell of disinfectant on the air, and it grew stronger.

  Commander Ehrlich opened a door. They entered a room with a number of beds with green blankets. Rane lay in one of them, motionless. Another figure sat on the edge of a bed.

  "Aidin!" Stani called.

  The man turned. He looked like Aidin, but his eyes were dead and his expression demure. There was no sign of recognition.

  "What have you done to him?" Stani yelled. "Where is he?"

  "He's right here," Commander Ehrlich said.

  "That's not him. That's a new brother. Where is he?" Stani almost screamed.

  The man's eyes met Donagh's and Donagh reeled with a sense of recognition. This was Aidin, but they had done something terrible to him.

  Donagh clenched his fists. He forgot about his glove. He was a combat soldier and Kali wouldn't have sent him here if he hadn't intended some kind of combat to take place.

  He hesitated only for a very short moment, when his thoughts ran through each other and his brain was trying to sort out what the best course of action was, what to use for a weapon, who to attack first.

  In that time, he saw her.

  Charlotte. She stood by the door into another room, wearing a hospital gown and with a hair net covering her red curls. A surgical mask dangled on her chest.

  Her eyes widened when she saw him. Her lips formed the word no.

  His brain cells fired. It was a warning. They'd walked into a trap all right.

  Rane rose from the bed. "Donagh, watch out!"

  His mission, Jade. His mission came first, above anything else, even above his life. Donagh lunged for the nearest computer. Put his full hand on the screen. Data shrieked through his brain, freezing him to the spot. Around him, he heard shouts. Stani
yelling. Rane lunging for Charlotte. Other people ran in. But in his mind, Jade shouted, [You beauty, mate! Beauty! Now get out of there if you can.]

  Donagh turned around, but at that moment there was a sharp pain in his upper arm, followed by a sensation of spreading numbness. One of the nurses held him by the arm, while putting down a hypo-injector with the other. Donagh stumbled.

  Stani was already one the floor, his eyes rolling in their sockets. Aidin still sat emotionless on the bed.

  The world slowed and went blurry. Donagh tried to fight it, but the blackness won.

  18

  In the aftermath of the struggle in the hospital room, I shivered so much that Commander Ehrlich ordered Julia to get me a hot chocolate.

  "They're all after you, it seems," he said. "Rest assured, despite silly remarks about your non-military background, we're all firmly behind you. You are a vital part of the crew."

  "Thank you," I whispered.

  Never mind that it hadn't been Rane's lunge for me that had scared me so much. I clutched my drink. He totally misunderstood me. I wasn't upset because I thought I was in danger. I was upset because the little incident was the most awful thing I'd ever had to do. I had been used as bait.

  The construct men trusted us. They didn't know the meaning of betrayal. They definitely didn't expect to be knocked out and have their brains erased. But I said nothing. I didn't yet see an alternative.

  "I need your advice," Commander Ehrlich went on as I sipped chocolate. "We'll be transmitting an ultimatum to the Forward. We're letting them know that Captain Crozier has told us what happened to her and that ISF punishment for mutiny is jail. We'll tell them we will extend a period of grace, in which all troops who come down the tube voluntarily will be spared punishment. Any who do come down of course will go straight to the hospital for you to treat. What I need to know about these men is: what would be an effective threat for punishment? They don't seem to fear pain and are not afraid of fear itself. We can't hold that many in our correctional rooms. But knowing them as well as you do, what could we threaten to make them comply peacefully?"

  I answered truthfully. "Solitary confinement. They live for their mates."

  "I thought they were fighting each other?"

  "I think we were all wrong about that."

  He frowned. "Are you telling me these constructs are smarter than we thought?"

  "They're men. Yes. They are, to answer your question." Much smarter.

  He left.

  I went back to the lab and we treated Rane, and Donagh, and the third man, the Pfitzinger sharpshooter Stani. I insisted to the nursing staff that I had to be present when the final override command was given, and secretly slotted their original mindbase data onto my computer. I was fast running out of private storage space, and figured I would soon enough have to ask the systems operator to reserve me an area for this data. I had to come up with some sort of excuse for wanting to keep it. "Research" was probably as good an excuse as any. But everyone was busy, and the war machine trundled over sensitivities.

  I hated it. I was numb. I couldn't even cry anymore.

  By midday, men started coming down the tube, first a trickle, then in larger numbers, looking scared and bewildered. Some were sick from the air lock and sudden gravity changes.

  The dock crew made them sit down on the floor in the hall and recorded their family stock and serial numbers. Kessler, Jones, Pfitzinger, Cole, the odd Heslop. There was not a single Landau amongst them. By the end of the afternoon, there were almost five hundred of them. Work was going full-tilt, and to top it all off, the computer was playing up, freezing at the most inconvenient moments. The nurses were rushing from one bed to another, re-booting frozen routines.

  In the middle of this chaos, Commander Ehrlich burst into the hospital, a broad smile on his face.

  "What do you think of that, Doc? It's working."

  "We are still missing about two hundred crew."

  "About a hundred and fifty, by the latest count. When they stop coming, we'll send some troops into the ship and mop up the rest of them. Problem solved."

  I resisted the temptation to glare at him. I would never, ever do anything like this again.

  "I'm not happy with our progress. We have massive computer issues."

  "I'll send the systems guy to fix it. We'll divert capacity from elsewhere. That's not a problem, Doc."

  "Well... I'm not so sure I'd call it a victory yet."

  The smile faded from his face. "Is there a hitch?"

  "Maybe. I can't help but notice that all the men who have volunteered to come so far are lower-ranked techies. They are, to use the war-time term, expendable. There are a number of men still aboard the ship, who are probably a lot smarter than we think." Dangerous. This Kali was Aidin's blood mate, from the same batch, and with more modules inserted. There was no way we were going to catch him so easily. There were another twenty Landaus aboard.

  He smiled at me in a condescending way. "Don't worry. We have that all covered."

  19

  Jade sat at the control panel, pushing the microphone down over his mouth.

  On the centre screen, the buggy-eyed camera on the outside of the Comfort rotated slowly, angling its view away from the Forward.

  Jade watched its progress with sharp eyes. Any moment now, any moment. . . Come on, you bug-eye, look the other way. The Forward slid slowly from the screen.

  He tapped the microphone. "Standing by. Four... three... two... one..." The last bit of the Forward disappeared from the viewer's screen. ". . . zero! Go mates. You have five minutes." He hit the command. A tiny shudder went through the ship as both cargo locks and the main dock opened. Another screen showed a white figure hurtling through space, a rope and leads attached to his suit.

  Jade hit a few more commands and switched to a different camera. The Comfort's cargo dock opened, too.

  A suited figure hit the hull of the Comfort next to the opening. Next moment, another one. The two men clambered into the opening, stuck to the hull with magnetic boots and handgrips. They yanked at their ropes. White tubing slid down the ropes from the Forward's hull. One, two, three tubes.

  Two minutes. Go, go, go! The camera was swinging back.

  The tubes stretched taut and jiggled with the passing of many feet.

  [Everyone in?]

  [Yes]

  Jade commanded, Detach.

  Cables whined. The tubes retracted. The Forward's hatches closed with not a second to spare. The Confort's camera panned over the hull, and would not register that anything had happened.

  Bombs away.

  Jade blew out a breath, leaned back in his chair and put his feet on the edge of the control panel. Ah, for some peace and quiet. The screen at his feet sputtered some irregular blips and the occasional flash of random communication, while the other screen displayed the serene outside of the Comfort.

  Jade could only imagine what was going on inside.

  Then a third screen burst into life.

  [Starhip Dawn Rising to Starship Forward. Copy, mate?]

  Jade lunged for the controls.

  [Forward here, go ahead Dawn Rising.]

  [Broken hyperspeed to give you some backup. ETA 11.28 hours]

  [Thanks mate. I hope we won't need it]

  [How's Charlotte?']

  [Lovely.]

  [You lucky bugger.]

  20

  I worked until late. We treated about fifty men, far below our target. But every time we pressed the override routine, the computer would freeze. I spoke to Systems; they said they'd fix it. They didn't. I spoke to Captain Mayfair. I think she blasted them, but fix the problem, it didn't.

  Eventually, Julia came up to me and threatened that if I didn't go to bed that very instant, she'd report me for unsafe work practices. I went to my cabin, and barely conscious, changed into my pyjamas and crashed into bed.

  I woke up in the night to a thud somewhere on a wall, outside my cabin. I sat up in my bunk, staring at the lo
ng shadows cast on the opposite wall by the tiny light on the room comm. Air hissed out of the ceiling vent; the floor vibrated ever so slightly from the engines.

  I held my breath. Listened.

  But I heard nothing. The clock on the opposite wall displayed ship time as 3.09am. I cursed myself for sleeping through the alarm I'd set. I had intended to check on progress at the hospital. Had someone fixed that blasted computer yet?

  I got out of the bed and sneaked to the door, looked through the peephole. Nothing stirred in the grey-walled corridor.

  I flicked on the light, went to the com screen and called up my work area, but that was as far as I got. The entire system had frozen. Oh blast it. Here I was, asleep, while the staff had to deal with all these problems. I better go—

  There were voices in the corridor. Male voices, agitated, and running footsteps. I went back to the peephole. Several shadows flitted past, like ghosts, running too fast

  Heart thudding, I made a dash for the wall phone. "Command Centre?"

  There was no answer.

  Then came a knock on the door. "Charlotte?"

  Trembling, I turned off all light in the cabin, and went back to the peephole. In the corridor stood a hulk of a man, straight-nosed, with dark curly hair. Aidin. How could he... I had spoken to him yesterday, and he didn't remember his name or mine; I had overridden his personality.

  "Charlotte, open up. It's Aidin."

  I backed away from the door. Looked back at the computer, the screen still frozen, and something occurred to me. What if the computer problems... The Forward and the Comfort were linked. One of the men who hadn't yet come out of the ship was a Kessler with Comp1, Comp2 and Comp3 installed. From Aidin's files I had learned that the man's name was Jade. If Aidin's development was any guide, this man might well have learnt to read his own mindbase and would know what the files looked like. Through the link, he might have picked up that I was storing the personalities we were overriding, or he might simply have slipped in a routine that looped the data back onto itself.