Inside the elevator was an instrument panel to key in arrival codes and a screen displaying a welcome message from the Transhuman Federation. The elevator was transparent and looking behind them, they could see other smaller asteroids drifting, a couple of ships approaching, and the sun—a small, faraway ball of light. In all their missions through space, only the sun remained constant. Its influence diminished with distance, but constant, unchangeable, like the past, like an ancestor. Orshio tapped at the panel and they started to descend.
Lien-Ådel played with her hair as the elevator descended beneath Ceres’s surface. The sun disappeared. Crackling electricity illuminated the darkness of the tunnel around them.
‘Are you worried, Captain?’
‘No. Not really, Engineer,’ he lied.
‘You don’t suppose they think we had something to do with blowing up the Freedom Queen, do you?’
Orshio thought about that. ‘I’m sure they will ask.’
Lien-Ådel kissed her teeth and stopped playing with her hair. ‘Bad luck,’ she muttered. ‘After hauling supplies halfway to some godforsaken Tellurium mining outpost in the Kuiper belt, we come out of drift to this shit.’
‘Are you okay?’ Orshio asked. This was the most agitated he’d ever seen Lien-Ådel and he didn’t like it. Not when they were about to walk into what could easily be a crisis.
Lien-Ådel looked to him, dejectedly, which only made him more worried. ‘When I was at university, I heard about the pirates, how terrible working the belt had been during that time but I still wanted to work for Federation shipping because I dreamed of being in drift-flux, of seeing the universe. Now the pirates are gone but there are all these rumours of terrorists. I don’t know. I guess I’m just worried that we might get caught up in or blamed for something and lose the Igodo just because some agitated philistines are probably trying to start a war.’
The lights around them brightened. Orshio exhaled a hot breath. ‘We didn’t do anything. They will question us, find out what we know, and find whoever did this. Plus, no group in the system is actually foolish enough to start a war with the Transhuman Federation.’ He paused before turning to her. ‘Do you want to know why I have these tattoos?’ He raised his right hand, pulled back his sleeve and watched her eyes. ‘I know you’ve wanted to ask since the first day you saw them.’
Lien-Ådel managed a small smile. Even though she knew he was trying to distract her from their present predicament, she didn’t mind, she needed the distraction. ‘Sure. Please. Tell me. What do they mean?’
‘I am one of a people called the Idoma, from the Nigeria unit of the Federation. We are an ancient people and according to Idoma traditions, life is an unending continuum. Always has been. Space, time, energy, matter, spirit, and life, are considered as one integral whole. Our understanding of the nature of the cosmos predates modern science and is anchored to our belief that our ancestors are always with us, interacting with the rest of the universe just as we do but in a different way.’
‘You mean like in an alternate dimension?’
‘Sort of. You can think of it that way. My people believe that death is a process of passing on to this other level of existence. A realm called Okoto. A dimension from which they find new ways to interact with the same space and time we share. Personally, I think that when we are in drift-flux, coupled to the universe’s zero-point, we are in the boundary between our dimension and Okoto. Therefore, my ancestors can guide my hand. Ensure I do not slip out of the vacuum energy probability field and crash into something. The tattoos are just stylistic and hieroglyphic representations of my ancestors and their stories, going as far back as records exist.’
Lien-Ådel leaned against the elevator with her right shoulder, pulling at the sleeves of her body-hugging suit. ‘Hold on. You really believe your ancestors exist as part of space? Guide you in drift-flux?’
Orshio smiled. ‘Well, No. Not really. But it’s a good story to tell people who wonder about my tattoos, isn’t it?’
Lien-Ådel stared at him for a moment before erupting into laughter. Orshio laughed with her.
The elevator stopped and lights flickered. Their faces recrystallised with seriousness. The elevator door opened to reveal a squad of six women and a man, with menacing eyes and holding sleek plasma rifles, all wearing the familiar white uniform of the Transhuman Federation forces. Behind them, the bright, mechanical sprawl of the main Ceres station tunnel spread out like the digestive system of a rock and metal animal.
‘Igodo crew. Come with us.’ One of the women said to them in a manner that left no room for questions, only obedience. Her red hair was cropped short. The cool, green eyes and freckles dotting her nose and cheeks seemed out of place on the same face as that hard-set jaw. She turned sharply on her heel and the others flanked Orshio and Lien-Ådel.
They followed the woman.
‘Why do I feel like we are being arrested?’ Orshio queried.
None of the officers responded. Lien-Ådel eyed him nervously.
The small party walked about halfway into the main tunnel before turning to walk down a set of energy shielded stairs and through a tall doorway that looked like it could withstand a plasma cannon when sealed. A sign on the door read: Transhuman Federation Security Corps Offices: Authorised Personnel Only. Behind the door, they stood in the centre of an octagon with each side bordering a smaller door. The woman in charge walked up to one of the doors and motioned them to enter the office of Ceres station Security Chief Mwanja Mukisa.
Lien-Ådel winced when the door shut behind them. The chair behind the desk at the end of the office swivelled around to reveal a man that was certainly not Mwanja Mukisa. At least not the Mwanja Mukisa that had ordered them to Ceres station. This man was short and had skin like Orshio’s, hair cropped close, and a perfectly shaved round chin that, in some strange way, made him look like a pre-teen. But there was nothing puerile about his voice and his tone when he spoke.
‘Finally, Orshio Akume and Lien-Ådel Ting of the Igodo. Welcome to Ceres station. Do you have any idea how much trouble you are in?’
Orshio looked around the office, trying to find something he could use to estimate the identity of the man they were talking to. A photograph, a plaque, something. All he found was an unusually empty wall and some very modern nanomaterial furniture.
‘We haven’t done anything wrong,’ Lien-Ådel began. ‘We saw the Freedom Queen destroyed a few minutes after we dropped out of drift-flux. We don’t know what happened, but we are ready to make a full report.’
‘The records inform me,’ the man, who was not Mwanja Mukisa, paused to stand up straight before continuing, ‘that you just completed a supply run to the Kuiper belt mines. Are you aware that the outer belt is becoming a den of anti-federation rebels and agitators?’ he asked, his lips curling up at the corners in a smile.
‘Well, yes, we heard some stories, but we have nothing to do with anti-federation rebels!’ Lien-Ådel exclaimed, her voice hoarse from fear or perhaps something more elemental.
Orshio shook his head and leaned forward in his chair, his eyes narrowed and focused like a navigation beam. There was something that did not sit quite right with him about the conversation that had quickly become an interrogation.
‘Where is Officer Mwanja Mukisa?’ he asked, softly.
The man eyed Orshio like he was a stain or a miscalculation. It was a look Orshio had seen before and it sent off alarms in his head, but his brain was still running diagnostics to determine exactly why when the man spoke.
‘You have both been implicated in the destruction of the Freedom Queen by the ship’s AI. You will consent to DNA extraction for further analysis and will remain in remand at Ceres station until such a time as formal charges are brought against you.’
Suddenly, Orshio realised where he knew that look from. He’d seen it once at the Luna Railgun Transit Station while he was waiting for his launch to Mars station. It came from an old confederacy pilot, one of those born befor
e the Adedevoh drive and the rise of the Transhuman Federation who couldn’t believe that the people whose way of life he’d been raised to think was inferior were now running ninety-six percent of the solar systems economy while the Confederacy struggled. Orshio had taken an empty seat next to the man and politely smiled at him when their eyes met. There had been no reciprocal smile, only a look like disgust but much worse. In the man’s eyes lurked a powerful, primal resentment. The old pilot had risen from his chair and muttered something under his breath that sounded a lot like a word Orshio had only ever read about but never actually heard.
And now, here was the look again.
Orshio didn’t change his blank expression as he looked at the man that wanted to place him and his now panicky partner under arrest. ‘You can’t hold us here without an official arrest warrant,’ Orshio responded, his voice low as he started to stand up.
Panic washed over him when he realised he couldn’t.
Something cold and solid had wrapped itself around his legs and arms, locking them in place like a vice.
He grimaced and shouted, ‘Lien-Ådel! Get out now!’
But it was too late. She was struggling in place too, her arms and legs enveloped by what looked like a part of the chair as she screamed. ‘What is going on?! Officer? Officer?!’
He watched part of the back of her chair liquefy, extrude, and wrap itself around her neck and mouth, morphing into a solid restraint as she screamed.
It had to be programmable material furniture. The last major technological advancement to come from the Confederacy.
He felt the cold and liquid material of the chair wrap around his own neck and pull him straight up in the chair as it covered his mouth too. He heard the voice of the man pretending to be Mwanja Mukisa say, ‘Goodnight, Captain.’
There was a hiss. A sickly-sweet smell like rotting flowers. A loosening of edges of the world. His eyelids fell. There was darkness, like the embrace of space.
Consciousness returned like an explosion. Orshio’s eyes shot open.
The first thing he saw was a small black cube on top of the desk. There was a matrix of light symbols surrounding it and they seemed to be pulsing, beating out a slow, steady rhythm. He could not turn his head to see if Lien-Ådel was okay or if the short man pretending to Mwanja Mukisa was gone.
Orshio closed his eyes again and focused, remembering what his body enhancement therapist had told him the day after he’d decided to get his melanin genes updated for increased radiation resistance and an improved bioplasmium arm. If you want to access the power-booster functions, clear your head. Think exactly how much power you want and what exactly you want it to do. Breathe slowly, then apply.
He opened his eyes and swung his arm upward. The programmable material restraint broke into three clean pieces and scattered across the room. He reached up and ripped the restraints off his neck, glad to see that Lien-Ådel was beside him and stirring. As he pulled at the restraints on his feet, he heard the door open and saw a shadow in the corner of his vision move on the floor. It was his only warning.
Something hit his thigh and a shock shot through him with so much ferocity he cried out in pain.
The redhead with the green eyes and hard jaw who’d seemed to be the leader of the squad that had meet then at the main Ceres elevator, shouted at him, ‘Freeze! Don’t move!’
He rolled forward, crashing into the desk as another stun beam stabbed into the chair where he’d been. The redhead surged forward and Orshio, thinking calmly but quickly, rose, lifting the desk high above his head as he did, and flung it at her. It sailed clear over Lien-Ådel, who he could see was fully roused and conscious. The redhead fell to her knees and slid forward, firing another stun beam that missed Orshio by less than an inch. He could hear something like an explosion come from somewhere in the building.
‘Hey! I’m not the enemy!’ he called out as he backed into a corner of the office, off balance. ‘Someone was impersonating Officer Mukisa!’
The redhead leapt up into the air so effortlessly, Orshio was sure she’d been edited for agility. Her face was a mask of pure concentration, her eyes like navigation beams.
‘Freeze!’ she ordered, crashing down onto Orshio.
She was all over him. He managed to grab onto her right hand, the one that gripped the gun like it were an appendage. He twisted it and the gun fell, clattering to the ground. He could hear commotion come from outside the room now. Something was happening, and he needed to stop her long enough to figure out what it was. Pain shot into his side like lightning as she kneed him in the belly. Her fingers wrapped themselves around his throat, shoving him up against the wall. Her fingernails were a bright red, almost the same as her hair. And long, like claws. They dug into his neck. She was powerful, and she wasn’t going to stop unless he made her. With a determined grunt, Orshio grabbed her hand with his bioplasmium arm and pushed down and to the left, forcing her off balance. He was about to administer a kick to her side but changed his mind midway and kept his foot low instead, clearing her feet out from under her. She came down hard and he fell to the floor with her, pressing down on her shoulder and shouting, ‘I’m not your enemy!’
She stopped struggling at that, glaring up at him and breathing heavily. ‘Then what the hell is going on?’ she demanded, her voice still defiant.
‘I don’t know but from the fact that we were just restrained and drugged by someone pretending to be a security corps officer, I think Ceres station is under attack.’ He lifted his hand from her shoulder slowly and rose to his feet. ‘I’m going to free my engineer, okay? Don’t shoot us, officer...?
Her eyes narrowed as she sat up. ‘Chloe. My name is Chloe.’
‘Chloe. Good. Now. What’s happening outside?’ Orshio asked as he slowed his breathing and grabbed onto the restraints holding Lien-Ådel in place. ‘What’s all that commotion and why did you attack me?’ His voice strained as he broke the restraints.
Chloe bounded up to her feet. She was of average height, yes, but with a slender, muscular frame. She moved like a cat and had power disproportionate to her size. Definitely altered. Orshio was sure she would have taken him if he didn’t have the arm.
‘A Confederacy mining ship lost control in the docking elevators. Started a fire. At the same time, an urgent distress signal was issued from this room on the old Transhuman Federation comms channel. Where is officer Mukisa?’ Chloe asked.
‘We don’t know,’ Lien-Ådel said, finally free and staring at Chloe with eyes full of both confusion and anger.
‘This doesn’t make sense,’ Chloe said, looking around the room as though the missing officer could be in a corner somewhere.
Orshio thought for a few seconds.
The short man had to be an anti-federation rebel agent. And the burning ship in the docking area had to have been crashed there deliberately, it would be too much of a coincidence otherwise. And if it was not a coincidence, then maybe the destruction of the Freedom Queen was not a coincidence either. But even if the Confederacy was working with the rebels or the rebels were just rogue former citizens of the Confederacy acting independently, then why would they throw away two old and expensive mining ships just to make a pair of unremarkable Federation shipping crew look somewhat guilty of aggression.
Unless...
He scanned the floor, looking for the pulsing-light cube that had been on the table when he woke up. When he found it, it only took him a second to remember where he had seen it before. He turned to Lien-Ådel and met her hard gaze. Her lips were tight.
‘What if all this is just a distraction,’ he quickly. ‘What if they blew up the Freedom Queen just to get us here so they could copy our genetic ID matrices?’
‘What?’ Lien-Ådel shook her head. ‘I don’t understand. Why us? Why would they want our genetic signatures?’
Orshio looked down at the floor, feeling Ceres station tremble beneath his feet, like a fearful child.
‘To access our ship,’ he announced as if
it were obvious. ‘They’re stealing the Igodo.’
Chloe looked from him to Lien-Ådel and back again in astonishment, as if Lien-Ådel could make some sense of what he had just said.
‘And they clearly have Officer Mukisa’s genetic signature too, so they will probably be the only ones that can launch during an emergency station shutdown, right?’ Lien-Ådel added.
‘Like the kind caused by a ship crashing during an attempted docking.’
‘Officer Mukisa is probably drugged somewhere or still in their custody.’
‘It all has to be deliberate. Has to.’
‘Even if it’s true... all this just to steal one Adedevoh-class driveship?’ Chloe asked, shaking her head as if it would help the pieces fall into place. ‘No. I don’t buy it. I’m sorry but I have to arrest you until all this is sorted out. I don’t care what the specs on that arm of yours are but if you resist, this time, I will take you.’ Her eyes focused with determination as she finished her sentence.
Lien-Ådel’s face went pale. ‘No. No. Listen. Why else would they drug us and use a genetic ID copybox? Driveships use direct pilot and engineer genetic ID systems to gain access to all aspects of the ship. But then... why us? The Igodo is not special. In fact, right now it’s got a minor fault. You remember right, Orshio, after we got hit by that nasty rock out in Kuiper, the techs told us that the only damage was to the processor relays that pass messages between the genetic ID and ship controls. So right now, the relays aren’t quite right, and they could theoretically allow the direct genetic ID system to access all aspects of the ship. Including the hardcoded navigation limits which means if they bypass security then they can enter drift-flux and be halfway across the solar system in a few minutes and no one would be able to follow them because they could turn off all the velocity safety limits, they can even override the... the...’
‘...planetary approach limit.’ Orshio finished the sentence for her, his eyes widening.
Orshio and Lien-Ådel both turned away from Chloe at the same time and saw the same thing in each other’s eyes. They stood silent, hoping they were wrong but unable to find any doubt that was large enough to obscure the potential danger if what they were both thinking was true.
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