Interim: On the run from the Galactic FTL Police

by P. K. Lentz

  Or maybe he had nothing. The only certainty was that three centuries had passed without any hint of a threat to the Interim’s translight monopoly. Why risk provoking Kearn now? If he was harmless, they stood to lose nothing by letting him go. If, on the other hand, he did pose a threat, then a preventive strike against him amounted to sheer provocation. A simple exchange of Martijn for Zerouali would have represented one hundred percent accomplishment of Fleet’s objective at Merada. Stumbling onto the long-lost Kearn, not to mention instigating a planetwide rebellion, had been mere happenstance.

  But those decisions were not Sallat’s to make, and with Reissa a full day away by translight beacon, even appealing to Command was not an option. Even if it were, such action would represent considerable risk to his career--even when, as he suspected, the very future of the Interim might be at stake.

  Such debate was academic. Sallat’s more immediate and personal concern was now his own culpability in the event of failure. His position as nominal head of the mission against Lady left little doubt who would be first in line to receive blame. It would not be Bohringer.

  Sallat’s musings were cut short by an announcement from his number two.

  “Sir, there’s no response from the medsuites. Security section reports that sensors there show nothing amiss. They’ve sent a team to investigate.”

  Moments later a security detail arrived in the medsuites to find the entire staff there unconscious and Martijn nowhere in sight. Hunter went to high alert.

  ***

  Simon Ascher suppressed gut-wrenching anxiety upon his and Serenity’s first encounter with fellow crewmen along their escape path. Ascher had been especially worried that Serenity’s pregnancy might give them away. In his entire career he had never known a female crewman to work in that condition, but, he decided optimistically, that didn’t count as proof that it never happened. To his knowledge there was no specific regulation against such a thing.

  Hunter’s crew seemed to share his own level of uncertainty. As something uncommon, a curiosity, ‘Ensign Hawthorne’ drew glances, but no one stopped to question her credentials. Her badge and uniform, along with the mere fact of her presence aboard, gave her the benefit of the doubt. There were stares directed at Ascher, too, the meaning of which, once he grasped it, caused him mild embarrassment. Naturally the child must have a father.

  Whatever embarrassment Ascher felt was quickly replaced by panic when the ship went to high alert. He and Serenity were halfway across the floor of the cavernous cargo hold.

  This was it, he thought. They were certain to be caught. Even if the alert were unrelated to Martijn’s escape, the launch bay doors would never open to allow them off the ship now. Nonetheless, they had no choice but to continue. Whether he was caught now or later, the consequences would be the same. No traitor had ever earned leniency by turning himself in. Examples had to be made.

  Ascher shot an encouraging look at his companion, urging her to remain calm and continue walking. The cylindrical lift leading to the launch bay was just ten meters off now. The few crewmen present in the hold became wary as the alert lights flashed to life, but none of their nervous attention was directed at the two innocuous-looking figures walking calmly across the hold and into the lift.

  The pair ascended to the hauler bay without incident, and Ascher dared to hope they might escape after all. The phantom had prepared his way in the medsuites; it may yet get them through this obstacle, as well.

  Ascher’s retinal scan granted them access to the empty hauler bay where, finally free to run, they hurried to one of the flyers. Ascher helped Serenity into the co-pilot’s station and adjusted her harness to keep pressure off her belly. He felt as if someone else was doing these things. Certainly it was not any Simon Ascher he knew.

  This other Ascher took the pilot’s seat and keyed the series of commands that would seal and depressurize the launch chamber, neutralize the local gravity field, and open the bay doors above. He held his breath, hoping the controls would function in spite of the shipwide alert.

  To his relief and amazement, they did. He could have done without the warning klaxon that always accompanied decompression, but this minor worry was as nothing compared to the sheer joy of seeing the bay doors part above them on starry void and the curving blue expanse of Merada.

  Ascher felt confident enough now to think ahead to their flight path. The plan was to make for low orbit, putting several degrees of longitude between themselves and the two Interim warships before attempting planetfall on Merada. The chunky cargo hauler was not intended for atmospheric use, but was designed to survive accidental entry. He’d just have to steer clear of mountains and open ocean.

  Such thoughts of his future became suddenly, shockingly irrelevant when the launch chamber darkened around Ascher and the bay doors ceased to retract. The ghostly message that flashed across the hauler’s lit displays just before they winked out swept away any last shred of hope.

  >>DISCVR*D FORCD OUT. SO SO*RR&^”%****

  ***

  Sallat watched the entire row of consoles before him go dark.

  “What’s happened?” he asked.

  The tech punched frantically at his instruments. “I don’t know, sir. Everything’s gone dead.”

  “I can see that. Why?”

  The tech offered no explanation. How could he? System failure on this scale aboard Fleet’s flagship, or any Interim voidship, was unprecedented.

  After several nervous seconds the panels blinked back to life, one after another.

  The crew’s confusion subsided, or at least was set momentarily aside, as reports began to filter in from Hunter’s Security section.

  There had been an unauthorized launch attempt by a cargo hauler, which sensors had completely failed to detect. Then had come the unexplained shipwide systems failure. When instruments came back online seconds later, the breach had been immediately discovered. The suspect hauler was now trapped in the launch bay and a security team en route.

  There would be much explaining to do in the wake of these incidents, both security breach and technical failure, but those were problems for Hunter’s own commanders. Sallat’s one concern was to verify that the missing Serenity Martijn was indeed, as he strongly suspected, aboard that hauler.

  ***

  In those dark and silent moments after his fate was sealed, Ascher felt strangely resigned. He experienced no fear of arrest or court-martial, none of the wild panic he would have expected from himself. Instead he remained calm, embracing that other self that had emerged in this time of crisis.

  What he did feel acutely, however, was the shame of his failure. Now Serenity would go back to meet whatever end awaited her. Maybe his actions had even worsened her fate, assuming of course Hunter’s Drive core wasn’t about to crack and compress them all to subatomic size.

  After a few uncertain moments, Serenity asked in her extinct dialect, “What’s happened?”

  Ascher had trouble facing her. “It’s the end,” he said sadly. “We’re caught. I’m sorry.”

  Serenity said nothing for a time. Above them the launch doors began an ominous reversal, sealing off the escape that had been so near. Gravity returned to the launch chamber, pressing them into their seats. Ascher sat with head bowed, awaiting the end.

  He felt a hand on his arm. He looked up to find Serenity watching him with sad but understanding eyes. Her fingers slid down his sleeve to find his hand.

  “Thank you,” she said. “I’ll never forget you.”

  Smiling mournfully, Ascher now felt even more ashamed.

  He turned his palm upward and their fingers interlocked. They remained quietly in that position, hands clasped, until their unceremonious detention by Security.

  ***

  Reissa InfoFLUX - Your total news source for Reissa and beyond.

  I.0286.05.27 04:34

  Commonwealth:BREAKING NEWS

  THREE VOIDSHIPS DESTROYED--SABOTAGE?

  Three ships of the 2nd Fleet
were obliterated by spontaneous implosion today while in port at Veilat. The vessels, two Eagle- and one Ariel-class, apparently suffered catastrophic core failure of a kind that has not occurred since the Drive’s initial testing phase more than 300 years ago. As with earlier disasters of its kind, there were no survivors among the crew and virtually no physical remnant of the vessels themselves. Fleet Command estimates the combined casualty count at 624, a figure that includes the entirety of the three crews plus 91 additional personnel believed to have perished in affected sections of the port facility.

  Fleet Intelligence is investigating the circumstances behind the disaster. Terrorism has not been ruled out, although military analysts express disbelief that any known terrorist group could command the assets required to mount such precise and devastating simultaneous attacks. Experts, however, are at an equal loss to explain how such a catastrophe could have occurred without deliberate intent. The timing of the three implosions, which occurred within seconds of each other, particularly fuels suspicion of foul play.

  One less menacing explanation put forth is that the orbital port facility passed through a henceforth unknown and unexplained space-time anomaly which reacted catastrophically with the vessels’ Drive cores.

  With the remains of the three vessels measured in micrograms and scattered in planetary orbit, forensic investigators face a difficult task.

  Relatives of personnel stationed at Veilat may contact their local Fleet offices for more information.

  [END]

  ***

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  With just a few minutes remaining before the planned hostage exchange, Kearn tried hard not to think about what was to come. As distasteful as the development was, Fyat looked poised to become Lady’s savior. It was weaponry from the assassin’s arsenal and some dirty tactics of his design that promised to give mere commercial spacers a fighting chance against Fleet’s finest.

  Kearn was currently armed with three fist-sized metal canisters. Two of these canisters contained thousands of minuscule concussion grenades that were smaller than Fyat’s surveillance motes. When these bomblets were dispersed in a confined space and detonated simultaneously, the air itself would seem to implode with concussive force. In a high enough concentration they could perforate unprotected eyes and eardrums, even kill.

  But Fyat assured him that the Fleet boarding party would not come unprotected; a nonlethal concentration of the bomblets probably wouldn’t be effective against the marines’ armor. Unfortunately, the deterrent to using a higher dose was Ren. Getting her back dead, or even deaf and blind, would have to be considered something of a failure.

  Two canisters of bomblets dispersed in the cabin of a standard Fleet medium transport, Fyat said, would fall near the upper limit of nonlethal force. Guessing that a Fleet marine’s ‘upper limit’ and that of a pregnant civilian might be rather different, Kearn had opted to empty one of those two canisters by half.

  The third container held bomblets of another variety: screamers not unlike those the Meradi rebels had employed against Whisper of Death. These would fill the shuttle’s cabin with enough sonic and EM noise to blind electronic eyes and ears and cause physical pain to flesh-and-blood ones.

  Roughly, the revised plan went as follows: in advance of the Fleet shuttle’s docking, Kearn would release both types of bomblet into the airlock and raise the pressure inside to 125 percent. When the lock was opened from the outside, the resulting rush of air would disperse the motes into the cabin of the docked shuttle, where they would be triggered. Thus, ideally, the strike team would be blinded and stunned when Kearn went forward into the craft--insulated against the screamers, of course--to extract a disoriented but hopefully intact Serenity.

  According to Fyat, the tactic was an old favorite. It was also, in Kearn’s opinion, a rather nasty trick. Ironically, the Fleet marines were lucky that Fyat had stepped in, for the plan originally devised by Lady’s crew had called for grabbing Ren and spacing the boarders without regard to whether they lived or died.

  It scared Kearn a little to realize how easily his enemies had been able to make him something he was not, a killer. The realization was something that, with luck, he would live to dwell upon later.

  Fyat had offered to carry out the rescue himself, but Kearn wasn’t quite willing to trust him that far. Especially not since the assassin’s confirmation that Sallat’s last transmission had, in fact, contained more coded orders. Once the boarding marines verified that Kearn and Zerouali were safely in custody, Fyat was to liquidate Lady’s remaining crew.

  With that chilling possibility in mind, Kearn had convinced the assassin to remain in the medlounge for the duration of hostilities. That left Kearn with this task for which he was ill-suited in training and temperament, but at least the outcome, whether positive or negative, would rest squarely on his shoulders and no one else’s--least of all those of some Interim butcher.

  Aprile’s voice sounded urgently over Kearn’s comm: “Incoming shuttle confirms entry point as Airlock Six. Three minutes.”

  “On my way,” Kearn answered, already in motion. He flew down Lady’s corridors at breakneck speed, racing to prepare the boarders’ unfriendly welcome.

  “One minute,” Aprile counted down. She wasn’t thrilled about being stuck on the bridge, having argued extensively for a more active role. But the ambush at the lock was an all-or-nothing gambit; if Fyat’s bomblets failed to deliver, there would be no resisting the inevitable counterattack. Far better that Aprile remain in the second line of defense, where she might yet save the rest of the crew. Her instructions upon failure of the rescue effort were to vent the entire quadrant of the ship containing the invaders. Kearn would have liked to include spacing Fyat as well, but there was little doubt the assassin would survive to bear a grudge.

  To further reduce the potential body count if anything should go wrong, all but Lady’s four senior crew and the three uninvited guests had been placed into hibernation.

  The second and final stage of the current plan, escaping the two Fleet voidships, was far simpler--and unknown to Fyat. Regardless of success or failure in securing Ren, Lady would soon be light years from Merada.

  With less than half a minute remaining, Kearn slammed into the bulkhead at his destination and scrambled to open the airlock’s inner hatch. The Fleet shuttle was probably just dozens of meters away beyond Lady’s hull. One by one Kearn discharged the canisters into the airlock, its hatch open just a crack to prevent backspill. Each can hissed and released a jet of what looked like nothing more than steam.

  When they were empty, Kearn slammed the hatch shut and keyed the nearby panel to boost the pressure within. Then he stationed himself in the airlock’s anteroom, detonator in one hand, a powerful palm-sized energy weapon, also courtesy of Fyat, in the other. Just in case.

  He waited breathlessly.

  Soon his comm sprang to life, startling him enough that he nearly squeezed the detonator.

  “Bad news,” Aprile said ominously. “Lock eight. Six was a bluff. They’re almost there now, say they’ll wait for you to bring Zerouali.”

  Kearn’s mind flooded with scores of expletives in a dozen tongues. None was sufficiently powerful.

  Of course they had bluffed. These were professional military men who wouldn’t subject themselves so readily to ambush. The game was over before it had begun.

  Kearn’s comm burst to life once more. This time the voice was not Aprile’s.

  “Stay where you are,” Fyat ordered. “I’m on my way.”

  With this final insult, Kearn’s helpless despair flared into rage. “I’ve had enough of your help for one day!” he cried.

  The assassin offered no reply. Kearn pounded empty air with his fist and set off toward lock eight, a trip that would take him some five minutes. There was little doubt Fyat would arrive first, even assuming he’d remained until now in the hab module as promised. There was no real effective way to monitor his whereabouts.

  En route,
Kearn commed his crewmates. “Ilias, forget the countdown and act on my signal instead. Aprile, if it looks like Fyat is moving against us, don’t hold back. Vent any sections that don’t have our people in them. Space me if you have to.”

  Aprile gave a morbid laugh. “Never pegged Will Gareth for a martyr,” she said. “I think I like Kearn better.”

  “I hope you’ll have time to get to know him.”

  A full three minutes later, Kearn broke his rather considerable momentum on a grab hoop in the antechamber of airlock eight.

  Staring back from that lock’s closed hatch was Fyat. It was not the assassin that drew Kearn’s gaze, however, but the woman clinging white-knuckled to his side. Spattered blood covered Serenity’s exposed face and hands.

  “Give the command!” Fyat ordered urgently.

  Coming quickly to his senses, Kearn screamed into his comm. “Now, Ilias, now! Go!”

  An invisible hand plunged down Kearn’s throat to scoop out his innards. His head swam. Maybe he blacked out--he couldn’t quite be sure.

  He still felt intensely nauseous when, a short time later, he opened his eyes and struggled to focus. He found himself staring silently at Ren, whose own eyes were shut tight.

  Dragging his gaze from her, Kearn took in the scene around him in the lock antechamber. Fyat seemed unaffected by the jump. It was only natural; someone in his line of work would be well accustomed to translight. Even if Fleet’s more advanced breed of Demon Drive didn’t sport the same unpleasant side effects as Lady’s poor man’s version, Fyat still had the advantage of being virtually indestructible. Kearn’s eyes lingered briefly on the assassin, mostly to assure himself he wasn’t the man’s next target. For the moment Fyat seemed firmly on their side, but who could know what motivated the killer, or what he might do next.