LoneFire

by Stephen Deas

  ‘Constantine! Freeze!’

  I remember I still have the Tesla at my back and let the flechette gun drift past me. I look over my shoulder. Back to where Doyle came from. The dead guards are just hanging there, silhouetted against the market lights. And Jones, clutching the mangled remains of one hand to her chest, pointing a gun at me with the other. A flechette gun, thank God. Flechettes are great for zero gravity, great for close combat but they’re shit at range. No stopping power once they spread out. Takes a lucky hit to actually kill someone unless you put most of a burst into them.

  I check I still have the Tesla as I shout to her:‘What the fuck was that all about?’

  She kicks herself towards me. Blood wells from the wounds in my arm. I can see drops of the stuff breaking off and drifting away. The pain’s starting to break through the adrenaline, and I left my bag full of drugs on the Spiral Dance. I hate pain.

  Jones keeps her gun pointed at me. I can see movement behind her, people starting to emerge from wherever they hid, curiosity driving them to come out and find out what happened. Me, I’d be staying locked away in a tight little hole until I knew damn well it was safe to come out, but I guess they don’t know Doyle as well as I do.

  Jones is trembling slightly. She’s losing a lot of blood. Hard to say how much but streams of it thread the air behind her. I let her get close, hold my hands out, let her know there’s nothing in them.

  She’s coming straight for me.

  Her eyes close.

  She slides into me, limp. Still breathing but the breaths are short and shallow. Shock and blood loss.

  Doyle must almost be back at the Spiral Dance by now. As soon as that happens then the Vednar Freeport security clones are going to stop chasing her and start cleaning up the mess, except for the guys in the tank armour and the plasma torches who are going to be burning into the Spiral Dance’s hull and making a real miserable time for anyone on board. Better be gone by then.

  I feel lightheaded. Must have lost a pile of blood myself. Wonder how long before I follow Jones into oblivion…

  The phone inside my heads rings. Shit. Just what I need. Probably Gemini wondering how his probability matrices are doing.

  ‘Yuh?’ We’re drifting towards a wall again. There’s a handhold. Maybe I can reach out and grab it…

  ‘Jez. Doyle’s halfway home. There are… complications. The fat man’s dead. You’ve got to get on the inside.’

  The handhold slips through my fingers. Seems they’re not as strong as they used to be. I shake myself. Can’t afford to slip away now.‘Jez, Doyle put three holes in me. I’m not in the best of shape, nor the best of moods.’

  ‘Superficial, C. We’re going to make off as though the fat man’s still alive…’

  Well. Thanks for caring, Jez, you cunt.

  ‘… I want you to make sure they chase us. Force their hand. If they’re the ones with the missiles, I want to know where they are.’

  Missiles.‘Of course they’re the fucking ones. By the way, did I mention that bit about being shot, you shit?’ but Jez is gone.

  Another hand hold drifts past. I grab it, anger releasing a reserve of strength. The only thing I can think to do is to go back to the dark hole in the ceiling where Jones found me.

  Strange. I find myself wishing Ortov was here.

  By the time I find the hole I’m feeling cold. Fading. A bit in and out. Hands grab me. ‘Jones!’ I hear someone say.

  ‘Company agent,’ I hear myself croak.‘Spiral Dance. Jez.’ I shake my head, trying to clear it, but all it does is hurt. I’ve no idea how long it took me to get here. I have this feeling I spent the whole time muttering to myself.

  I feel a needle puncture my skin.

  Warmth. Comforting.

  Darkness again. A deeper darkness.

  Oh shit.

  Time passes. Eons or heartbeats. Then light. Harsh burning light. I screw up my eyes.

  Where am I?

  I try to get up, but I can’t. I feel weak and drained. There’s something wrong with my clothes. They’re stiff and hard.

  ‘He’s awake,’ says a someone.

  ‘Help him up.’ This voice I recognise. The man with the veil.

  Hands touch me. I manage to sit up. A tiny cabin, clean, fresh. Looks new. I’m covered in blood. Jones’ I hope, but a good dose of it must be my own.

  ‘Spiral Dance is within range,’ says a third voice.

  Shit! I’m on a ship! I try to get up, stagger and fall down. Marvellous. Gravity. Just when maybe I could have lived without it for a bit.

  ‘Easy,’ says the first voice.‘You’ve lost a lot of blood.’

  ‘What’s…’

  The man with the veil comes in. He lifts it up. The face underneath is hideous, mutated. He leers at me. I suppose it’s meant to be a smile.

  ‘Radiation killed my mother three months into term. They brought me the rest of the way in a laboratory. She worked for Victor Longthorne. It was their fault she died. Their mistake. That’s why. In case you were wondering. Oh, and I know you’re with them. So don’t fuck about or we’ll just shoot you.’

  I try to pick myself up, but it’s too much effort to do anything but lie still. All I can do is look at him and wonder how much of this is the drugs.

  ‘You brought them right to us. How did you let that happen? Why didn’t they pick you up? What do they want with us? Why are we more important than you are? I should have listened to those questions.’ He holds up a Tesla. My Tesla.‘Cestus government issue. Same model as the one your killbot used. Careless. I expected better of you.’ He shakes his head.

  ‘Idiot,’ I gasp.‘They gave that to me years ago. It’s clean. No reason to throw away a perfectly good gun.’

  The bloated head doesn’t stop shaking.‘Serial number says it was issued long after you stopped working for them. Less than a month ago, in fact.’

  Shitfuckbuggerballs! Where the fuck did he get that little gem from? And Christ, maybe I’m going punch Jez in the mouth for getting me shot, but I’m going to fucking kneecap her for this…

  ‘Spiral Dance is decelerating,’ says a voice from outside the cabin.

  ‘Take their engines. Put another into their hull so they know we’re serious. Let me know when they’re ready to talk.’ He turns back to me.‘I ought to throw you into the airlock and let you drift among the asteroids. Some people come here for that, you know. They come here to die because they think they’ll achieve some sort of immortality as an eternal navigation hazard. But you saved Jones’ life. I suppose you didn’t mean to, but you did, and I find that means something. So I’ll trade you.’

  Trade me for the fat man. Didn’t Jez say he was dead? Fucking marvellous. Guess I’ll keep that gem to myself for a bit.

  ‘We’ll put you back on your ship and leave you floating here. Maybe the Cestus government will come and pick you up before you run out of air. We’ll be long gone by then. Or maybe we won’t. Maybe we’ll pick off the rescue crew.’

  I struggle to find my voice again. Takes a bit of doing but I get there eventually.‘How many of you are there?’

  He grunts– a laugh, I think.‘Just the five of us.’

  ‘Missiles away!’ says the voice outside.

  ‘Excuse me.’ He leaves me there, lying on the floor.

  ‘Spiral Dance is turning.’

  The gravity suddenly goes away. I can move again. I look up at the man still in the cabin. Except it’s a woman. The scrawny one. She kicks me hard. I slam into the wall and start sliding up it. I reach for something to hold on to but my fingers have no strength. She hits me. Nothing I can do.

  ‘Shit! What’s that?’ The veiled man, from another room.

  ‘Mine! Brace!’

  Gravity returns from a different direction. Suddenly I’m on the ceiling. The scrawny woman falls onto her back and I crash on top of her. She lies still. I can feel her heart beating. The shuttle shudders and all the lights go out. Gravity goes away again. Silence takes its plac
e. Not even the hum of the power plant.

  Voices in the darkness, whispering.‘What happened?’

  ‘Energy pulse. I’ve lost everything. Engines, power, life support, all gone!’

  ‘Where’s the Spiral Dance?’

  ‘I don’t know!’

  The scrawny woman starts to move. I push myself away from her and feel for a place to hide. This is why they put the bridge at the front and give it big windows in the holoflicks. So when the shit happens we can still all stare out at the stars beside Captain Boldly as the rest of his ship goes down.

  Shmeikal, E. ‘Leonard Ortov– the first man in cyberspace.’ Journal of the Society of Neuro-Electronics, 1 47-63 (2221).

  This is, as far as I can remember, a disturbingly accurate description of the techniques that got me here. I guess I brought it on myself but jeez … They had my head cut open for three weeks, teams of surgeons working in shifts, more than three hundred thousand probes inserted into my brain, seventeen thousand Electro-Encephalic scans. No wonder I lost my rag when they turned me back on … Something that’s been bothering me, though. If I went crazy every time they woke me up, how come this version of me is stable?

  Twenty – Sodium Haze

  A dull distant thud. The shuttle shivers again. Metal creaks and whines and groans. I hear whispers. The scrawny woman is close– I think I could reach out and touch her if I tried. My fingers are numb. I can’t feel my legs. The skin of my face tingles.

  A ringing crash.

  Silence. My eyes and ears stretch out, searching for something to sense, finding tiny sounds, little pricks of light out of nothing. The air smells strange.

  ‘How are you?’

  Ortov?

  ‘Melissa. How do you like it here?’

  Where am I?

  ‘Memory…’

  It’s dark. I’m used to waking up and cringing from the light at times like this. Usually a big white light with lots of big people in white brandishing surgical instruments. Or maybe that’s just the nightmares. But this time it’s dark. Not quite black– there’s a weird pale glow coming from somewhere; dim but enough that I know where I am without having to ask. Even if it wasn’t, I can tell from the smell. I’m on the Spiral Dance. Someone picked me up and dumped into my own bunk.

  ‘Oi! Constantine! Get a grip!’

  I try to move but it’s really not worth the effort. My head is stuffed with Velcro.‘Who’s there?’

  ‘The fucking wizard of Oz. Who’d you think?’

  Doesn’t sound like Jez. Can’t be Su. For a moment I wonder if the voice is coming from inside me– maybe someone dialled my headphone, but it sounds all wrong.

  ‘First name Leonard. That hint enough?’

  I give my filters a twitch and the voice changes. Must be coming from outside then. That would explain the glow. He’s come in through the console.‘You ever thought about being called Lenny?’ I ask.

  ‘Fuck off!’

  ‘What do you want?’ Shit. I feel like I fell off a tall building.

  ‘What do I want? You called me!’

  ‘I did?’

  ‘Yeah. You were incoherent as hell. Kept calling me Melissa. Rambled on for a while then hung up. Care to hazard a guess as to why?’

  ‘I’ve been shot, drugged, beaten and gassed in the last few hours– take your pick. Coherence has booked up an extended vacation, packed his bags and everything. His friend Captain Sanity might be joining him. Anyway, I left the console turned off. I know I did. How’d you get in here?’

  ‘The usual crowd of tachyons and a bit of wave function massage.’

  I struggle. It’s far more effort than it’s worth but I get to sit up. Sure enough, the pale glow is Ortov’s face, shining out of the wall at me.‘Tell me who took your incoming call, Ortov. No one here apart from Jez is supposed to know you exist.’

  ‘Relax. Your ship’s comms rig is an old model. You can switch it on from the outside if you know how. Safety feature built into all the 08Z series, seeing as how they had to be powered up before you could do a thing with them. Pretty secure in their day but, like I said, they’re old. The sort of thing a hacker cuts their teeth on these days.’

  ‘Ortov, you’ve been dead for two hundred years. Crap as it may be, everything on this ship is an undreamed-of technical advance over anything you knew back then. So don’t bullshit me.’

  ‘You left me in that Melissa woman’s box and it’s full of hacker shit. I’ve been experimenting. Did you realise there’s a simulation of you built into this chip?’

  ‘What? Me?’

  ‘Yes. Think about it. We all go around with little models of everyone we know inside our heads– you of all people should know that. Tells us what to expect from those around us. The chip’s just the same, except I can unplug you if I want to. Make you a complete stranger to me and then take a calm and objective look at everything I know. It’s great. All those millennia of Eastern mysticism are nothing to this. I can take myself apart like a jigsaw puzzle and look at each bit one at a time. You should be envious– in your line of work I’d have thought that was damn close to the Holy Grail.’

  My head hurts. I can’t cope with this.‘I think I’m going to puke.’

  ‘Suit yourself– I’ve got some stuff on the Longthornes and Cestus and there’s some weird shit going on. It’s pretty deep. Get in touch when you’re ready to hear it.’

  The console turns itself off. I still don’t quite get how he knew how to do it. Makes me uneasy. I wonder whether Ortov’s everything he claims or whether he’s been talking to people I’d rather he didn’t even know. Perhaps I should get Jez to take Melissa’s box into Analysis for a good dissecting.

  I haul myself out of bed. Damn poxy cabins don’t even have their own water supply. I head for the lounge. No one there. No one on the bridge either. I go to the head and tip some water over my face. Makes me feel better. Reminds me of showers. Can’t remember the last time a I had a proper shower…

  Then back to the bridge.Let’s see if I can’t figure out how to work this ship. Or if I can’t find out where everyone else is.

  I settle back in Doyle’s command chair.‘Yo, computer?’

  ‘Mr Constantine, sir. How may I help you?’

  Mr Constantine, sir has a nice ring to it. I’m going to like this computer.‘Yo, computer. So, are you as shit as the rest of this ship?’

  ‘Sir, I am a fully functional pseudo-artificial intelligence. My thought capacity is approximately equivalent to fifteen standard humans– although this is a dubious measure at best. I recognise this is not impressive by current standards but I assure you it is quite sufficient to monitor and control this vessel through almost any conceivable circumstance. In addition I have an extremely eclectic knowledge base installed. I have not quite finished integrating this data, but I do feel competent to attempt an answer to any factual question you may have.’

  Yawn. Bored already. Oh well, since I’m here:‘So, computer, do you know what the original design specifications for this vessel are?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘And you know what additional features have been installed since it was launched.’

  ‘I do not have a complete history. It is possible that systems were installed and then removed. I may have no knowledge of these systems.’

  ‘But you know what we’ve got right now?’

  ‘Correct.’

  ‘List me all modifications from the design standard.’

  ‘You must receive authorization from Miss Breen to access that information.’

  Bugger, though I guess I should have seen that coming. Still, maybe I can learn a thing or two.‘Apart from Jez, who else on board has access to that information?’

  ‘I cannot answer that question.’

  Sigh.‘OK computer, let’s start with something simple: where is everyone?’

  ‘I assume you mean to limit your question to my crew?’

  ‘No, fuckwit, everyone in the universe.’

  �
�I do not have…’

  ‘Oh, for fuck’s sake. Yes, the crew. Where are they and what are they doing?’

  ‘Andreas Cal and Toni Flynn are in Miss Flynn’s cabin. Miss Breen, Miss Kitumi and Miss Doyle are in the engine room. My knowledge base is not well equipped to fully answer your question, but I believe they are committing a number of class one offences including kidnap, assault and torture.’

  Now we’re getting somewhere.‘Who else is aboard the Spiral Dance?’

  ‘There are three passengers aboard. I do not know their names.’

  ‘Where are they?’

  ‘In the engine room.’

  ‘Show me!’

  The main monitor flickers into life. Takes its time. I figure it’s one part of the Spiral Dance that’s still an original. I’m curious to know more about the other modifications, but such thoughts vanish when the monitor finally staggers into life. Looks like I’ve got a grandstand view into hell. Everything’s bathed in bright sodium light. Centre stage the scrawny woman is lying face up in a pool of blood. Her own, from the looks of her. Both her arms have been torn off just below the shoulder. There are gaping holes where her eyes used to be. She’s still alive, quivering, the fast shallow breaths of the near dead. Above her I can see Doyle. She standing in front of someone– no one I recognise, must be the pilot from the shuttle. She has one hand locked around his jaw, forcing his face upward. I can’t see her other hand but I can see the pilot’s face, the rigid muscles, gaping mouth, wide eyes. Both of them are spattered with blood.

  The mutant’s on the right. He’s tied up to some part of the engines. Struggling hard and not getting anywhere. Looks like he’d rather be anywhere else than here. On the left, Jez and Su aren’t paying attention. Their backs are to me and I can’t see what it is that they’ve got, but whatever it is it’s plugged into the engine room computer console.

  ‘Computer… do you have a name?’

  ‘My designation is Aries STO-12-slash-5, serial number T10053778.’

  ‘I’ll take that as a no. From now on, I’ll be referring to you as Clive. Understand?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘OK then, Clive, what device are you operating from the engine room console?’ Yeah, yeah, Clive is a dumbass name, and yeah, Aristotle or something swanky would have been better, but I got more important shit going down here and it was the first thing in my head that I could find once I got past all the BLOODY-HELL-THEY-RIPPED-HER-ARMS-OFF shit in my head.