The Cronian Incident (The Formist Book 1)

by Matthew Williams

  The Cronian Incident

  Book 1

  of

  The Formist Series

  MATTHEW WILLIAMS

  Published 2017 by Castrum Press

  An imprint of PP Corcoran Ltd.

  138 University Street, Belfast, BT7 1HJ

  United Kingdom

  www.castrumpress.com

  Copyright © 2017 Matthew Williams

  Cover Art by Duncan Halleck

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in any retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publishers.

  Table of Contents

  Part I: Hermians Prologue

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Part II: Martians Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Part III: Jovians Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Part IV: Cronians Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Twenty-Six

  Twenty-Seven

  Twenty-Eight

  Twenty-Nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-One

  Thirty-Two

  Thirty-Three

  Thirty-Four

  Thirty-Five

  Thirty-Six

  Thirty-Seven

  Thirty-Eight

  Thirty-Nine

  Forty

  Epilogue

  Glossary

  The Jovian Manifesto One

  About the Author

  Connect with Matthew Williams

  Books by Matthew Williams

  Part I: Hermians

  Given its extremes of temperature, slow rotation, and lack of a viable atmosphere, few settlements have ever existed on Mercury. While a source of ample energy and metals, the endless grey landscape and the impossibility of terraforming largely deterred colonists looking for a new world to conquer. The only exceptions to this were a series of small facilities located in the polar region, where the land is shrouded by perpetual night.

  Here, in the craters of Prokofiev, Kandinsky, Tolkien and Trggvadottir, one can find ice miners, ore miners, and solar jockeys – people dedicated to providing the other planets with the basics of life. The work is hard, and the lifestyle dangerous. Luckily, there are no shortages of convict laborers who would rather risk incineration or hypoxia over dying slowly in a cell.

  -Nevsky’s Guide to the Solar System (3rd ed.)

  Prologue

  They stood, two by two, in standard squad formation, moving onto their target area.

  Bern and Valeri stood in front, arms held squarely at their sides. Durand could see their hands twitching. Valeri attempted to hide it by crossing her arms and tapping out the rhythm of some unheard melody against her bicep. Bern couldn’t decide what to do with his hands, and kept wiping them against his trouser legs.

  Durand and Chayond were fortunate. The equipment bags hung in their hands. Though relatively light, they were burdensome enough to require both hands to carry. They didn’t have to worry about idle hands or telltale signs of nervousness as they waited for the elevator to finish descending.

  “Remember, no talking.” Valeri reminded them as the elevator came to a stop. The doors slid open to admit them to the station’s main hub. Bern nodded forward, and the four stepped out onto the platform.

  Evening was now upon them, several bright lights shining down from the station’s vaulted ceiling. Through the station’s dome, a thick grey haze of atmosphere was barely visible. The faint traces of light reflected off Saturn’s disc turned what would have been the black night into a deep, murky twilight.

  The din of chatter, footsteps, and the sounds of computerized announcements in Anglish, Franz, Deutsch, Chin and Swahili promptly swallowed up the four of them.

  The station filled with hundreds of locals milling about, moving from one transit lane to another. Few paid them any attention as they walked through the crowds. Why should they? To onlookers, the group’s blue and orange coveralls designated them as maintenance staff. To all recording devices and sensors in the area, their ID tags also designed them as such.

  Still, Chayond felt a tinge of panic every time the bag he carried rattled. None of their party would fare too well if stopped for inspection. Chayond felt himself looking at the few Gendarmes mixed in with the commuters, out of the corner of his eye. If Bern saw him, she would surely backhand him across the face. Of course, she would wait until they were no longer in public before doing so.

  It seemed to take a terribly long time to cross the main floor. At the far end, they began to descend a flight of stairs, and Chayond felt a little better. The bag rattled louder, the sound drowned out by the whooshing noise of hypertrains coming and going inside their tubes. The dull, monotone computerized voice continued to announce the arrival and departure of trains, though becoming more difficult to hear. The noise acted like a cushion cloaking their every move.

  Valeri motioned to their left as they reached the bottom of the stairs. Commuter traffic continued to pour around them, which made maintaining their tight formation somewhat difficult. Still, they held in their two-by-two stance, moving towards the left track, and to the small door leading to the maintenance tunnel. No one followed them there. All the commuter traffic headed for the tubes and left what appeared to be a maintenance crew alone.

  As soon as they stepped through the hatch, the noise stopped. The busy station now sealed behind the pressure door. The only sounds were the gentle hissing of the tunnel’s pressure controls. And of course, Valeri’s commanding voice. Checking her chrono, she made a quick consult of their timetable.

  “We’re on schedule, let’s keep it that way. Move out.”

  The four collapsed into a single line, moving down the tight tunnel as rapidly as they could. Durand threw the strap of his bag over his shoulder and Chayond did the same. Their steps became fast and heavy, their work boots striking hard against the metal grates lining the floor. Heavy pipes and ducts, controlling the settlement’s flow of fresh water and air, whizzed by their heads. The high pressure and heat combined to make the going very uncomfortable.

  Still, they moved. Rigid discipline and a clear purpose drove them onward. Until they reached their destination and set up, they could not relax.

  When they at last came to the hatch that would admit them onto the platform they wanted, they had all broken a good sweat. Only Valeri appeared to not be out of breath.

  “All right, pay attention because we don’t have time to dither.” Reaching into the pocket of her coveralls, she retrieved a small handheld and held the transparent device up. The device displayed a single frame. A man’s face.

  “This is David Lee,” Valeri stated. “He’s the Formist the Chandrasekhar’s sent on ahead to do their dirty work. Our intel says he’ll be travelling alone by the time he gets to the line. So that’s when we take him down.”

  She tapped the screen. Lee’s image vanished, to be replaced by a video feed of him standing with a woman. They stood close to each other, a degree of intimacy patently implied by their body language.

  “This is our contact. She’s the one who provided us with Lee’s itinerary. According to her, Lee will be here at the time indicated, and he w
ill be alone. However, if we find them together, then something’s gone wrong and we’ll need to take them both down. There can’t be any suspicion on her.”

  “Who is she?” Durand asked.

  Valeri shrugged. “Didn’t ask. Neither should you. All you need to know is, she’s not our target. If it comes down to it, we take them both down. But we leave her behind for the authorities to collect. Any other stupid questions?”

  Durand, sufficiently shamed, shut up. Bern, though, had some thoughts on that score and offered them freely.

  “Probably some whore from the Yellow Light District. Point is, she’s a fucking patriot and gave us this information. She’ll understand, I’m sure.”

  All heads in the group nodded. A rumble shook the tube, indicating a hypertrain speeding by. It was nothing more than a passing tremor. No sound made it through the sealed pressure doors.

  “That’ll be the twenty-one fifteen to Cassini now,” she uttered, smiling. “Our Doctor Lee will be making the next one. Better suit up.”

  Durand dropped his equipment bag on the ground, kneeling to open it. Chayond did the same, placing his bag on the floor and separating the tabs on the seal. As Durand began removing their change of clothes, the others began to disrobe. The suits Durand passed out appeared like something reptilian, scaly surfaces the same color as mercury. They were thin, no heavier than a stack of thermal blankets, with hoods at the top and small terminals on the left arms.

  Valeri and Bern hurriedly became half-naked, their sweating frames glistening from the tube’s lighting. Swiftly, they pulled the silver skins over their coveralls and began doing up all the clasps, sealing the suits around themselves and firing up the cells powering them.

  Durand tossed a suit aside for himself before handing one over to Chayond, who hesitated. His head swimming from all the heat, the run had left him drained and full of endorphins. Still, he remained aware enough to feel damn apprehensive. Accepting the suit seemed like a terrible step, one from which there could be no turning back.

  Durand noticed his hesitation. “Hey, you good?” he asked. Chayond glanced fleetingly in Valeri’s direction. She glanced up from her suit to shoot him a look of disapproval and he hastily averted his eyes.

  “Yeah, I’m good,” he responded, taking the suit in hand and unzipping his coveralls. Somehow, one look from Valeri silenced any doubts, those eyes enough to scare him into compliance.

  A moment later, all four members of the team were suited up in their new vestments. Everything from their necks down was now covered in specialized material. Valeri pulled the last piece into place, pulling the hood up and covering her hair.

  “Remember,” she admonished. “Make sure your sticks are charged right. Too much, and his implants might rupture. And that’s the last thing we want.”

  All heads nodded again. Chayond interpreted the mention of the sticks as an order to distribute them. Reaching down into the bag, he began pulling them out, one by one. Four slender truncheons, a small console on one side, each containing a power indicator, an electrical port, and a few controls. He handed the first to Valeri, passed out the second and third, kept the fourth for himself.

  Each team member inspected the sticks to ensure they were set at precisely the right power level, before sliding them neatly into the waistband of their outfits. Each stick connected with the suit’s internal power supply.

  “All right, let’s power them up,” ordered Valeri. “Let’s see if these things were worth the price.”

  “Doubt that,” Bern uttered sarcastically. “But they still better work.”

  As one, Bern, Durand and Chayond pulled the hoods up over their heads and engaged the suits’ power supplies. Three low-frequency squeals sounded out in the tube, and where three men with silver skins stood, suddenly there were just three faces. The rest of their heads, like their bodies, were now cloaked in advanced stealth fields.

  Valeri smiled. “Not bad.” She pulled her mask into place over her mouth and eyes and put her finger to the terminal on her arm. Taking less than a second, she completely disappeared from view.

  “How do I look?” she asked, her voice filtered and modulated by the mask.

  “Like nothing at all,” replied Durand.

  “Good.” She suddenly reappeared, removing the mask and hood. “Then be ready. If the target escapes, we may not get another chance. So, make this one count.”

  #

  3G read the sign on the far side of the station. The stop that would take him to his rendezvous. To her, and all the sensual pleasures she promised. Lee drew in a slow, deep breath and tried not to feel too excited.

  This, however, was a fight he did not want to win. No matter how many times he had enjoyed her company, the thought of her never ceased to excite him. Perhaps he enjoyed the clandestine nature of it. Perhaps the fact it could only be done far from home and the prying eyes of the Survey. The digital second skin connecting and monitoring all the Inner Worlds could be a blessing and a curse, and he never knew how liberating it could feel to escape it until he met her. And then, of course, there was her very unrestrained nature. It seemed only appropriate she asked to meet him in the Yellow Light District, where so much sleaze and depravity went down already.

  What did it matter? He would be back in her arms soon.

  Calling up an overlay, he consulted the time yet again and accessed the train schedules’ live updates. The train was running on time. No reason to fret over the train’s schedule. And yet, what else could he do? Aside from thinking about her, and making himself more excited, all he could do was lament the train wasn’t getting to him fast enough.

  Jay, my little bird. Oh, the things I will do to you.

  He drew in another deep breath and ignored the messages coming from his biomonitors. They were asking for permission to regulate his heart rate and epinephrine levels. Why would he want to control himself now, when that very abandonment of control drove him on?

  Jay, if only they knew. Would they even care? Why does anyone care about fidelity anymore?

  A small click caught his attention. He spun around, his eyes searching for the source. It sounded much like a footstep, an approaching one.

  A quick glance behind him confirmed he was alone on the platform. Not even the faintest hint of a human presence. Looking up at the rafters above, he noted the mounted camera keeping vigil on this section of the platform. Though something of a bother, its presence didn’t disturb him the way the thought of another person might.

  Easy now, he thought. It seemed odd to get worked up by a simple noise. But he knew that, besides the risk of being seen and identified, he had to consider the odds of being assaulted. Abductions were common in the Outer Worlds, and such actions usually targeted people like himself: affluent, enhanced, and from the Interior. All the things the radicals hated.

  His biomonitors began to scream at him again, and this time he obliged them. With a simple mental command, his system began to flood with endorphins and norepinephrine, his heart rate easing down through the careful blocking of nerve impulses.

  He breathed a sigh of relief, right before the searing pain exploded in his side.

  He cried out. His voice echoed sharply off the walls before the ground rushed up to meet him. The last thing he remembered clearly was the sight of the girders crossing overhead and the faint smell of ozone, followed by a surreal feeling of weightlessness.

  The next few minutes were fragments. Lee’s mind passed in and out of consciousness. His overlay kept trying to signal him, but he couldn’t stay awake long enough to issue any commands. He couldn’t even be sure how much time had passed, possibly minutes or perhaps hours.

  In due course, his eyes opened long enough for him to realize he wasn’t on the platform anymore. He could hear a voice whispering to him from close by.

  “You’re alive, Doctor Lee.” Feminine but firm. “Sorry to interrupt your plans. But we have plans of our own for you.”

  One

  A sea of stars.
Tiny pinpricks in the firmament bled light through a wall of shadow. Among the black, a few shone brighter than the rest. In the eastern sky, the particularly big specks were the result of Venus and Mars hung at conjunction.

  Taking a deep breath, Ward allowed himself a moment of nostalgia, calling to mind the last time he had seen either up close. It had been some time ago; however, the memories were like shoeprints in soft earth, running deep and leaving a solid imprint. Ward remembered the Drift, the feeling of riding it down towards the vast red dunes of Mars. Then there were the glittering lights of Pavonopolis, and how it appeared from above.

  A risky business, to be sure, allowing himself to slip into memories that reminded him of where they were now. At times, life on Mercury – known to locals as “the Rock” – couldn’t be endured otherwise. A man had to cling to whatever memories of normalcy he had simply to get by.

  “Boss?” buzzed the bud in his ear. Ward didn’t immediately answer, either unwilling or unable to tear himself away from the memory. The voice on the other end refused to be denied. “Bossman? Jer? Are you there?”

  Sighing, Ward tapped his earlobe to activate the reply function. “Yes, Guernsey, what now?”

  “Just letting you know,” he said warily, “terminator is starting to creep up on us, sir.”

  Ward glanced down and adjusted the navsat map on his display. In the center of the field, amidst grid lines and a pockmarked representation of the local terrain, a small speck of bright grey sat on a dark grey background. Around that speck, bright blue lines and a set of alphanumerics designated the Sapper, the large transport vehicle he currently occupied. Ward frowned, zooming out until he could see the long, mottled line indicating the approach of daybreak. Grumbling, he tapped his earlobe again.

  “Guernsey, you idiot, we’re still a good three days away from the terminator! Why are you calling me with this?”

  “Yes, boss, but regulations state all mining crews need to remain a full seventy-two hours ahead of daybreak at any given time. We’re getting close, sir, and our prelim scan says we still got a shitload of ore deposits we haven’t tapped yet. I don’t want to burn alive in my suit, sir!”