Act of War

by R. L. Giddings

  Morton was relieved when Sunderam walked in.

  He didn’t say anything, simply walked through and approached the far wall. Morton thought his behaviour to be very odd indeed but then the whole wall dilated open. She couldn’t hide her amazement but Sunderam didn’t seem to notice, indicating for her to follow him as he stepped through.

  Neither of the two guards moved a muscle.

  The lighting in the next room was purposefully dim making everything inside look jaundiced. The research lab, for that’s what this surely was, was much more open than the previous rooms. A space where colleagues could interact in a lively atmosphere of discussion and debate. There were numerous work stations scattered about which would easily accommodate twenty scientists but they were deserted now.

  Looked like the senior scientists only worked office hours. Interesting.

  Sunderam moved into the centre of the room and then turned to study her.

  “I trust that you found what you were looking for, doctor.”

  “I’m – I’m sorry?”

  “Last night. Did you find what you were looking for?” There was no menace in his words, he was speaking in a flat monotone and yet suddenly she was very frightened indeed. “It’s a simple enough question.”

  She wanted to say something. Tell him that she didn’t know what he was talking about, but she was also aware that it would be futile to deny it. Sunderam would get to the truth eventually. She had nothing to gain by playing dumb.

  “I wanted to know what it was that you were keeping from us,” she said, like a child who’d been reprimanded by a teacher. “I thought that there might be other prisoners.”

  “From the Mantis?”

  “Yes. I didn’t believe you when you told us that you only had capacity for forty five pods. I still don’t.”

  “In some respects, you’re right. Let me show you.”

  Sunderam moved stiffly for such a big man and had a tendency to bump into things. He was just too big to move around efficiently. He took her down to the far end of the lab and out onto a mezzanine balcony. From there they looked down on a hive of activity. There must have been forty scientists and technicians moving about down there. But it wasn’t these that caught her attention.

  Suspended in the middle of the room was the same section of fuselage they’d examined the previous evening. Only now it was completely uncovered, held in place by a ring of what looked like powerful magnets.

  But this time it seemed more benign than the last time she’d seen it, less threatening. Part of the reason for that, she supposed, was that the scientists were slowly disassembling it – pulling it apart piece by piece. The various component parts painstakingly laid out on vast sections of tarpaulin. She’d seen a similar process conducted by various space crash investigators. As a young recruit, she’d had a recurring nightmare about crashing her ship on some remote planet. She was always the sole survivor and she wondered how she might survive.

  When she woke from those dreams she did so experiencing a combination of fear and excitement. That was how she felt now.

  While they appeared to be destroying something precious, at the same time their actions were helping to find a solution to a puzzle she’d previously only been aware of on the edge of her understanding. Perhaps, if she thought about it more closely, she might even be able to come up with a solution herself.

  Sunderam began moving away from her then, towards the far end of the balcony and the thought was gone. Morton found herself following him despite herself. She had countless questions and only Sunderam appeared to have access to some of the answers. But she was also wary of him. The very fact that he knew that she’d been out of her holding area meant that she had broken their unspoken agreement. He would tolerate her and her people so long as she didn’t interfere with what it was he needed to do. There would be a price to pay for her deception. She only hoped that she could meet it.

  Sunderam didn’t strike her as the sort of man who did things on an impulse. He would have had a very definite reason for bringing her down here. She just hoped that he wasn’t intending to tell her everything only to have her killed subsequently. That’s what a psychopath might do to help justify what he was planning to do.

  Was Sunderam a psychopath? He certainly seemed cunning enough.

  He’d been very careful about not showing himself at the Confederation camp. If Morton were to disappear, there would be nothing to link her to him. If anything, they would presume that the Scarpa had murdered her.

  She was starting to develop a new found respect for him. He’d certainly thought things through, which was more than could be said for her.

  He was standing on the far end of the balcony consulting a series of four smartscreens while, down on the floor a technician was removing a section of the craft using a laser. A thin skein of smoke rose up as he worked.

  Despite her suspicions, she felt that she had little option but to go over and join him.

  Initially, she was unsure exactly what it was that he was looking at. Slowly, realisation came. She was looking at a series of model based 3-D images. Gemstone spectral imagining of a very high order. Four bodies, analysed in pin sharp cross-section seemed to float in mid-air. Sunderam was able to manipulate the image reconstruction from any angle he liked.

  From the warmth of the colour palate it appeared that the subjects were alive, though marginally so. The outer layers of their bodies were resolutely blue. Also, they were arranged in a variety of odd positions. Normally, to get image resolution like that the patients had to be totally incapacitated, which usually meant they’d be lying down but these figures appeared to be sitting upright as though suspended in amber.

  Sunderam looked at her, as if to judge her reaction. “What do you think?”

  “I don’t know. Who are we looking at?”

  “You honestly don’t know? I find that hard to believe.”

  Morton went and stood closer to the screens, marvelling at the details. Certainly, the Confederation had no analytical equipment anywhere close to what she was seeing here. The level of detail was incredible. She could track arteries as they became veins before branching out into tiny capillaries. This type of technology would revolutionise the Confederation’s medical facilities.

  It was like being given a glimpse of the future. Without thinking, she reached out and tapped one of the screens. The image began to slowly revolve. Unlike the others, the bones here were brown and discoloured, showing signs of multiple fractures.

  “That’s him, isn’t it?”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “Compare this bone density with that of the others. These other three are still in their prime. Look at that femur it’s been completely shattered and then re-aligned. Badly by the look of it. I’ve only seen one set of scans like that outside of a veteran’s hospital.”

  “Captain Faulkner?”

  Morton couldn’t bring herself to look at him. “You knew, I take it?”

  “Suspected. It’s always best to get confirmation from the patient’s private physician.”

  Morton shook herself. She had to fend off the melancholy that had settled on her while she’d marvelled at him. Had to reassess the situation.

  “You’re absolutely sure?” Sunderam probed.

  “I’ve examined him often enough. That’s him. That’s Faulkner. ”

  No questions about how those fractures had been acquired. They were both aware of Faulkner’s military record: twenty years in a Yakutian jail. A death sentence for most.

  And now, here he was: transformed into a trophy for his old enemy. The fact that there were still signs of life didn’t fill her with much optimism. The ship had made some attempt to keep them alive but often as not such attempts were unsuccessful. She’d seen it all: those seemingly healthy individuals who were irredeemably brain dead, the long since mummified corpses, the perfectly preserved skeletons whose escape pods had malfunctioned.

  After a while, her job stripped away
all hope.

  “How did you even find this?” she asked.

  “One of our communications officers alerted us to it. It seems the bridge of the Mantis was fitted with its own transponder.”

  Morton nodded.

  “Obviously, we then had the job of tracking it down. A mere quarter of a million miles, but somehow we managed it.”

  “So this section of the bridge was jettisoned just prior to the Mantis impacting with Blackthorn?”

  “Yes, we believe that it was designed with that purpose in mind. We’re still unsure how they were frozen, however.”

  “Flash freezing,” Morton said. “It’s only been used a few times, to my knowledge. Brutal really. Lacks any of the subtleties of a cryogenic freeze.”

  “Well, let’s see what we can do for them, then.”

  That explained why the room was so cold. Unlike the escape pods which could pretty much resuscitate people autonomously, the flash freezing process was very much hit and miss. The chances of a subject being successfully brought round were less than fifty percent. And that assumed that their health hadn’t been compromised by the process itself. A high proportion of those who did survive it went on to develop heart and lung complaints.

  Morton realised that Sunderam was speaking to her.

  “It would be a great help if you could also identify the others.”

  Morton massaged her temple. Her headache had been building since first light and was now starting to assert itself.

  Why did he want to know their identities? Should she even tell them?

  After an initial panic, she decided that there was no sense in refusing. As prisoners of war, they were obliged to identify themselves to their captors anyway. It would have been an easy enough thing to do if she’d had access to their medical records but without them it would very much be a guessing game.

  And where to start?

  “I’m pretty sure that this is Lieutenant Commander Bertran. He had his spine re-modelled as a child. The surgeons did an excellent job, otherwise he’d never had made it into the Academy. Still, you can see some of the titanium struts here and here. I reviewed his notes when he joined the ship but I never examined him personally. Still, he’s the right age. Height and weight match up as well. I couldn’t swear to it but I’m pretty sure that’s him.”

  “And the others?”

  “That’s a little trickier. I’m cheating here, of course. Making assumptions but I know Colin Yamada, head of comms, would have been there at the end. Looking at his bone structure and his general musculature I’d say that this is possibly him. I seem to remember that he was a rower in his youth and his lung capacity would certainly tally with that. That left only one other person unaccounted for. You have to understand: all this is just an educated guess.”

  Sunderam nodded. “I understand. And this gentleman?”

  “No, you’ve got me there,” Morton had quickly got the hang of the system and was running through the images at speed. “There were any number of junior officers on duty during that last day. There would have to have been a very good reason for this man to have stayed behind but I can’t for the life of me think who this might be. He’s a rather thickset individual, late twenties. There’s a number of old fractures: right fibula and a number of digits, mostly on the right hand. Suggests he was involved in some kind of contact sports: football, say, or martial arts. But, other than that, I’ve got nothing.”

  Sunderam looked at her as though he’d just been served a deeply disappointing meal.

  “Thank you, Doctor Morton, that must have been difficult for you.”

  Morton thought about that for a second. “No, not really. It all feels so unreal. What are you planning to do with them? I mean how do you propose to store them once you get them out?”

  “Store them?” Sunderam scowled, indicating the array of scientists and technicians milling about. “We have no intention of storing them.”

  “I don’t understand. What do you intend doing with them, then?”

  “We aim to thaw them out. Captain Mahbarat is very keen to meet with your Captain Faulkner.”

  Morton couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “But what facilities do you have on-board? At the very least, you’re going to need a fully staffed cryogenic lab.”

  “Why would we need all that, doctor, when we have you?”

  “You’re not serious. You want me to do it? I wouldn’t know where to begin.”

  Sunderam wasn’t to be dissuaded. “Captain Mahbarat is quite insistent. You will have all our facilities at your disposal.”

  “Look, commander, I’m very flattered by your confidence in my abilities but you must understand: this is a much more complicated process than you could imagine. It could take days, or even weeks to restore them to their normal temperature and I doubt that you would have the appropriate equipment on-board. I’m sorry, but if you insist on going ahead with this, all you’d succeed in doing would be to kill them.”

  Sunderam adjusted the screens so that they showed the figure of Faulkner from a variety of angles.

  “As I said earlier, doctor, our captain is quite insistent. If you decide not to cooperate we have a team of surgeons standing by who won’t hesitate.”

  “No, commander. I’m sorry. This is a terrible idea and I don’t want any part of it. Without access to a modern cryogenic lab there’s no point us having this conversation – it just can’t be done.”

  “That is disappointing. But, if I can’t persuade you to change your mind, we will be forced to consider other options.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Sigrid Ardent couldn’t wait to get out of the shuttle.

  It had been a comparatively short journey from the Dardelion to the Renheim but she’d hated every minute of it. She felt suffocated by the cramped interior and, while she had tried to clear her mind and do a little meditating on the way over as a way of distracting herself, she found that she couldn’t.

  The pain in her hip was too distracting. She’d been fortunate that her gunshot wound hadn’t been more serious – an inch to the left and it would have shattered her hip completely – and she’d only needed a few sutures. But ever since then she’d had shooting pains from her hip being transmitted through her whole left leg. She could ignore the pain if she was busy but whenever she tried to sit or lie down, the pain seemed to intensify.

  Still, she was glad to be away from the Dardelion.

  Grimes’ death had affected everyone on-board. There’d been a lot of resentment over what had happened to Grimes. A lot of the Marines felt that Webster had been largely responsible for his death, sending him outside without a proper suit on. Markham’s attempts at defending Webster seemed to have only made matters worse. The funeral had helped matters somewhat but there was no denying that there was a near toxic atmosphere on-board so that it came as a relief to everyone when he and Silva had gone to visit the Renheim. It still didn’t help Ardent’s sense of being trapped aboard her own ship. She wasn’t used to having lots of people around so the fact that she was having to share all the amenities with a group of Marines she found very trying indeed. Having to share the same bathroom with them was, for her, almost unbearable. She knew that it was stupid but she couldn’t find a way of getting around it.

  When Silva had contacted her over the comms to outline this new plan to take the ship to Tigris she’d very nearly lost her composure. But she suspected that Silva had intended that response. As much as she hated being on the Dardelion, she suspected that they didn’t much like having to accommodate her either. And by telling her about the privations they would face on this new mission it would only make her more acquiescent to any alternative they might choose to offer her. The idea of abandoning everything and transferring across to the much larger Renheim sounded too good to be true. The fact that she would have her own quarters was a huge incentive but she was also had a keen hankering to stay close to Blackthorn. Despite what had happened, she still had an enormous affinity with the pl
ace and knew that after all that had happened, they’d need the idea of returning there in some kind of leadership, though highly unlikely, still appealed to her. Ridiculous, she knew, but that was how she felt.

  Immediately she had come off from speaking with Silva she’d gone to gather her things, only to realise just how little she had to collect. She hadn’t been allowed to take a bag with her when she’d been arrested so that, effectively, everything she owned she was standing up in. Even her underwear wasn’t her own. She’d had to print that off herself. A month ago she would have rather died than put on synthetic underwear but a lot had changed since then.

  Before she’d left, she’d gone down to the rear of the ship to see if she could speak to LaCruz Jackson. Ardent felt a strong affinity with the young woman and wanted to thank her for all that she’d done but her route was blocked by Marines unloading a series of heavy crates which the Renheim shuttle had brought over. One of the troopers went off to go and see if she could find Jackson but then didn’t come back.

  She’d bumped into Markham as she was on the point of leaving. She wanted to have a quiet moment with him alone, to thank him and his men for getting her safely off Blackthorn but he was too distracted to fully grasp what it was she was trying to say and, in the end, the moment passed.

  That upset her. Not because of anything Markham had done but more as a reflection of how she perceived herself now. As governor of Blackthorn she had been used to people going to great efforts to grab some time with her but now, ever since Parnashikan’s coup, she’d found herself being marginalised. Not only was her opinion not sought after, it often wasn’t valued at all. Markham was a good soldier whose work she greatly admired but he genuinely didn’t seem to care what she thought of him. All he wanted to do was get on with his job which, in her eyes, made his actions all the more commendable.

  She envied him his sense of purpose and only wished that she had something like that herself. All she seemed to be able to think about was her own personal comforts. She realised that she’d spent so long tied up in her role as governor with all its perks and privileges that she’d lost sight of what it was that had initially motivated her to get involved in politics.