_______Phlebas the Phonecian, a fortnight dead, _______Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep seas swell _______And the profit and loss. ___________A current under sea _______Picked his bones in whispers. As he rose and fell _______He passed the stages of his age and youth _______Entering the whirlpool ___________Gentile or Jew _______O you who turn the wheel and look to windward, _______Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you. ___________- T.S Elliot, The Wasteland
Summary
On the eighth of April, fifty one years after humanity set foot on Planet Manhattan, the heavy transport Chardon left the planet of its birth behind and began the long, solitary burn into interplanetary space that would carry it the New York jumphole and on to New London.
Chardon vanished en-route, ten souls and more than a quarter of a million tonnes of starship apparently swallowed by the void.
More than seven hundred years later the tramp hauler Adventure Galley stumbled across an unknown signal. When the ship’s engineer tracked the signal to a long lost pre-jumpgate ship, the promise of salvage seemed like a godsend for a freelance captain struggling to cling to the right side of the profit/loss equation.
Calling in a bretonian mercenary-turned-patriot, the Galley’s three person crew prepared to take advantage of the opportunity of a lifetime but, far from home or help, and trapped aboard a long-dead ship at the edges of civilisation, the crew of the Adventure Galley will learn that some ghosts are better left undisturbed.
"This is really sort of a personal project of mine."
- James Arland, on single-handedly engaging an enemy regiment.
Barrier Gate Station had not changed much since Arland lived there, he noted as he disembarked from his Raven’s Talon.
Same old-but-functional aesthetic in the hangar bays, same seedy-looking clientele and indifferent management. A place where you could be anybody from Queen Carina to the most degenerate member of Sirius’ pirate societies, and nobody would care an iota as long as you could pay for the services provided. Living here in the aftermath of his sudden departure from the Armed Forces had been trying at times, as funding and contacts gradually seemed to slip away from him as time passed. Then again, place like this, his skillset was sure to be in demand, and he found contracts from time to time that more than covered his expenses.
None of that was incredibly relevant anymore though. His mercenary days were past - though, looking at this little venture Sarah had offered, he wasn’t quite sure how well that assertion held up.
Oh, well. A little time away from the war effort couldn’t hurt, right?
From the Talon’s cargo hold he withdrew a few heavy duffel bags, soft carry-cases. Inventory he’d carefully assembled before heading to the station. Weapons, ammunition, personal effects, a few pieces of equipment that might be useful.
What he couldn’t sling over his shoulders, he simply picked up and carried. Heavy though the gear might have been, his armoured suit was more than capable of managing the strain without tiring him out much. He stomped off towards Leslie Durant’s freighter, the Adventure Galley.
It was impossible to miss, really - it was the Serenity-class surrounded by enough fuel containers to power half a continent, estimate pending. On his approach, he noticed Sarah McFarlen, the ship’s drive engineer. Catching her attention, he smiled and waved, bags shifting around his shoulders with the motion. “Hey, Sarah. I see we’ve both packed for a long trip.”
Sarah, crouched down and halfway buried between a container and the Galley’s loading ramp held up a single finger and tugged at something under the floor panelling with the other hand. A solid mechanical click cut over the background drone of the bay, and the lanky engineer straightened up, wiped her hands on her trousers, and flashed Arland a grin that wouldn’t have been out of place on a partygoer. “Hey Spookshow, awesome to see that you could make it. Nice suit.” She gave an appreciative nod. “Any chance it does fuel lines?”
James glanced down at his suit, grinning wryly. What used to be a matte-black carbon shine was now stained a very dull and inconsistent green-brown hue, and it was covered in minute nicks and scrapes all over. It still smelled faintly like a swamp. “Sorry to disappoint. Wasn’t really a functionality we covered while making this thing. I could help you shift a fuel tank, though, if that’s any consolation.”
“Would’ve been a day ago.” She gave a dismissive shrug. “Happens, right? I don’t think I’ve worked with this much hydrogen since I ran out on the Zoners. If someone lit a match, I think we’d probably qualify as a city buster by now.”
“Nothing quite like riding a deathtrap along with enough chemicals to vaporize thousands of people at a significant fraction of the speed of light, am I right?” James quipped.
“Space travel’s a hell of a drug.” Sarah agreed and spared the empty containers dotting the hangar floor a glance. “This stuff should be okay out here for a minute. Come on, we’ll get you loaded up. Leslie’s up on the bridge playing at starship captain. She’ll probably want to say hi too.”
James shifted in place, motioning at his bags. “Getting this stowed away securely would be nice, preferably not in the same compartment as the fuel. Storing different types of flammables in the same place makes me a bit nervous, you know?”
“Love to.” Sarah nodded back at the cargo bay and its patchwork of supplementary tanks, crouching in the darkness like dying elephants. At least three quarters of the serenity’s bay was crammed with the containers, plastered with bright yellow warning signs that looked like they came off a dozen different ships.
“We’re pretty much all fuel down here, but it’s not like we’re using all the crew cabins anyway. You can have Leslie’s room. I’m sure she won’t mind bunking on the bridge. Not like she ever leaves it anyway.” Sarah flashed a grin and stepped over an abandoned length of fuel line into the darkness, moving a little slower, a little more cautiously, than her grin warranted. “Can that suit of yours handle stairs okay?”
James snorted a quick laugh, and followed her inside. “This thing’s rated for EVA, but damn, stairs? Now there’s an operating environment we hadn’t considered, I am finally laid low.”
“You’d be surprised. I knew a guy who couldn’t fit his suit through hatchways. We spent half an hour trying to get him out of the airlock.” Light drifted down the stairwell. Sarah curled her hands around the railing and started pulling herself up. “God, I couldn’t stand the smell of grease for a month.”
Arland smiled ruefully, carefully navigated up the stairwell. The bags made it a little difficult, but he was keeping up. “It was the pauldrons, wasn’t it? It’s always the bloody pauldrons. Everyone seems obsessed with making those, of all things, as bulky as entirely possible. Never understood that obsession.”
“See, that’s why you wear the armor instead of designing it.” She nodded, sage-like. The effect was only slightly spoiled by the catch in her breathing. “Sorry. Stairs. Very important things, pauldrons. The shoulders are a vulnerable area. Skipper, are you still alive up there?”
A muffled noise of what might have been assent drifted by.
“I’m giving James your room, okay?” To her credit, she gave it at least half a second. “Okay.”
“Oh no you don’t.” The drifting voice was followed by the Captain herself, glaring at the pair with her hands on her hips. She pointed an imperious finger at James. “You are late.” The finger shifted to Sarah. “And you are not getting paid.”
James blinked. “I take it you’re not cool with me taking your room, then?”
“Oh, no.” Sarah placed a hand over her heart in mock offense. “She’s always like this. That just means she likes you.”
Leslie facepalmed. “Just clean out one of the unused quarters for James here. I thought I’d already told you to do that?”
“Oh, that. Why didn’t you say so?” Sarah nodded down the hallway. “First door on the left. Opposite room’s empty too, so you can drop your gear in there. Second door’s the gym, third one’s Leslie. If you hit the reactor, you’ve gone way too far.” She paused. “And you’ll probably die sometime within the next few days. So, try to stick to the room.”
Leslie nodded. “Have you secured the fuel lines yet, Sarah?”
“Almost. Got the last one wired up when James arrived.” Sarah said. “Just waiting on results on a couple of tests now, but we should be good in an hour or so. We’re officially sitting on a bomb.”
James motioned to finish getting up the staircase, rather than continue the conversation standing in it awkwardly. “Well, let me just get this secured, then I’ll settle in. Anything I can help out with before we launch?”
Leslie shrugged. “See if Sarah needs any help, I’m good. And if all is in order, we’ll meet up in an hour or so to discuss our plans. Capiche?”
James nodded. “Absolutely. I’m eager to hear the details about our prize, if we even know anything about it yet.”
“We’ll see. Sarah convinced me against my better judgement to give this a go, and she’s convinced you as well, apparently. Who knew grease monkeys had charisma?” She waved a placating hand at Sarah. “I need to complete pre-flight checks. See you in an hour.” Saying that, Leslie stalked off as quickly as she had come.
“Anything I can do, just say the word,” James said, then parted ways with Sarah, heading off to one of the two empty cabins. He’d have to make sure those ammo cans wouldn’t get too jostled in flight...
James shuffled down the hall and to the right, into the empty quarters that he’d been given for storage. He set his kit down on the floor by the sparse-looking cot-and-harness combination that was so common aboard freighters like this one. While normally spartan-looking even while people lived there, cabins had a unique way of feeling depressingly empty when they’d been vacant for some time.
He sighed. However homely the rest of the ship felt, it hadn’t extended to these cabins yet, that was for sure.
Like stepping into a different world. That suited him well enough.
He set about to begin his work, such as it was. He separated the ammunition and explosives from everything else, first and foremost - gathered all of it in a corner, secured it tightly to the floor with magnetic clamps and cabling. Sure, Sarah would probably not lack for that kind of stuff - but James hated relying on single points of failure, even when it came to simple logistical matters.
He rifled through the now-secure ammo - examined the contents briefly, just to check that he hadn’t missed anything. Six cans of pistol cartridges. Three hundred each. Half that number in intermediate rifle ammo. A couple boxes of shotshells. Hundred and fifty each. Loads per shell… varied. High powered rifle rounds, one box. Old brand. Fifty cartridges.
Grenades… about a dozen. Mix-and-match in make and disposition. Thermobaric, fragmentation, stun, flash, tear gas, plasma… R9-KV series nerve agent, he’d almost forgotten about that one. Universally banned. Horrific stuff - dual use, canister/grenade capable of being primed to either release a lethal variant of the agent that kills messily, or a “less-than-lethal” variant that only incapacitates and leaves the victim in crippling pain for a few hours - gets through anything short of fully-sealed suits, can be absorbed through breathing or skin contact. Effective within seconds. A souvenir from a raided weapons shipment.
It was a vile thing, he knew. A trump card he’d rather not use. But in a ship-borne environment, it could either be… well, completely ineffective, if it was depressurized. No harm done, then. Or it could spread through an entire ship in minutes if applied to the ventilation system.
He put it back with the rest. Locked the cases down tight - nobody else on board would touch these. Hell, if he had his way, nobody on board would know the full extent of what he’d brought along to begin with.
He moved on to the soft gun cases, moved them over to the empty desk. Opened them one by one, inspecting the contents. First of all, he withdrew his pistol from the magnetic plate on his suit thigh. Popped out the magazine, checked the chamber - empty. It was a Bretonian officer’s sidearm, surface pitted, the once-bright alloy sheen of the finish turned matte by extensive use. A small engraving had been made along the slide, minute lettering. Known, I take the heart and waste it.
He left it on the table. Next was a submachinegun, chambered in the same 11.5 millimetre round as the pistol. A practiced flick, and the stock folded out to its full size. This one was of Rheinlander make. Perfect for shipboard combat, in a pressurized environment. The rounds wouldn’t go through a ship’s hull, and it was capable of battering its way through most armour with its withering rate of fire at close range anyhow. It featured an integral suppressor, whisper-quiet. Magazine long as sin, small indicator light on the side to tell you how much was left.
He’d brought along a carbine, too. Same LNC-86 series he’d recently used on Operation Musket. James gauged it thoughtfully. The increased stopping power could be invaluable. It could also pierce something it shouldn’t and cause a fatal decompression by accident, and that just wouldn’t do. Maybe if he felt confident. He’d just have to see.
The last two larger firearms were essentially novelties, stuff he’d brought for kicks. A classic shotgun, in use all across the colonies, be they police, criminals, or militant farmers with an incestuous streak. Valued for being lightweight, versatile, and having a completely superfluous pump-action for good measure. Even though the weapon was fully automatic. Some things just never change, he supposed. Still, quite good for shipboard fighting.
The final piece he admitted had no practical application where he was going. It was an
ancient-looking gun, a semi-automatic hunting rifle that had been refurbished and tinkered with so many times it barely resembled the weapon it used to be some fifty years ago. Old Faithful, Arland admitted was a sappy name for it, but he could make that rifle dance like nothing else, and tinkering with it, buying new parts and testing them was something he always enjoyed as a pastime. He’d owned it since he was a snot-nosed teenager. All of JADE’s new ballistic simulations, he first ran using this rifle as a template.
Here, of course, it was almost completely useless, but at least he’d have it along to tinker with.
Finishing up… A couple of spare, entry-level pistols. If he was lucky, he could peddle them to Sarah and Leslie - he knew he’d feel much better if they weren’t completely defenseless on this job. He wasn’t sure they’d even so much as consider it, but at least he could say he tried.
The rest of his gear was quite mundane. A cutting torch. A decryption package, courtesy of Lisa Jaeger. An old power unit, adaptable for a lot of outmoded tech.
All set. He changed out of his combat suit into a fairly nondescript set of fatigues, left it standing upright in the storage cabin with the magboots engaged, clamping it securely to the floor. He attached the mask to the suit, patting the strangely disfigured-looking visor on where his cheek would have been, had James been wearing it.
Well, he thought, stretching as he left into the hallway. Now, for some answers.
“Nerve gas Spookshow? Really?” Sarah cocked an eyebrow in apparent surprise. The lanky engineer was leaning on the wall opposite Arland’s erstwhile armoury, arms folded across her chest. A hint of amusement glinted in her eyes. “And here I thought we were supposed to be the good guys.”
James flinched a little at her tone, as well as in surprise that she’d managed to stalk in here unnoticed while he’d been working. “F--k me, don’t do that. Wait a minute, how’d you recognize one of those anyway?”
“Leslie asked me to come get you.” She gave a half shrug, a grin, and completely ignored the question. “The diagnostics came back on the lines, and we’re pretty much good to get going once everyone’s briefed in. Everyone, in this case, being you two.”
She unfolded her arms, stepped off the wall. “It hurts, you know, being this well informed.”
James did not miss that she’d completely avoided his question, and that raised flags in his mind. Perhaps the drive engineer hadn’t always been who she was now. That wasn’t any of his business, though. Not right now, anyway. It marked her as someone to scrutinize a little closer, however.
“Right. And, sorry, I guess that’s the sort of hazardous material I really should have declared before coming aboard. Doesn’t matter. I make no apologies to those I’d use this on, anyhow. Let’s get going, shall we?” He motioned for her to take the lead.
“One question. You haven’t been hiking within the last two weeks, have you?” She asked.
“Hiking? Not really, no. Why’d you ask?” He was genuinely puzzled at her question.
“Biosecurity. I mean, if we’re doing declarations. I’d hate to contaminate this pristine wreck with something nasty off your boots. I don’t have a dog on hand, so I guess your word’ll have to do.” She grinned, turned towards the hallway. “Alright. Mess is this way.”
*
“Basically, we don’t know anything for sure.” Sarah had converted Adventure Galley’s mess into a barebones briefing room. Rations and bulbs had been carefully secured in the slim cupboards that pressed into the cramped room like spectators in a ring fight, chairs fastened to the floor with magnetic lugs, view screens locked into their housings on the wall in preparation for the flight. Well, nearly all the screens. A single matte-black display rose out of the table. Sarah was perched on the table next to it, legs dangling off the edge, and a paper-thin remote resting in one hand. “But I’ve got some good guesses.
The Galley arrived in-system at 3am on the 28th, Manhattan time.” She tapped the remote and a map of Coronado flashed onto the screen. The Galley, labelled helpfully in blue, sat alongside the Baffin jumphole. “I was on the bridge. Leslie was on the bridge too but, you know. Sleeping.” Sarah smiled across the table.
“I was surprised too. Anyway. At 6am the sensors picked up a new contact, way out in the Barrier.” Coronado was a far larger system then the handful of trade routes stretching out from Barrier Gate implied, but it was rare for a legitimate ship to stray from them. Even illegal traffic tended to stick to the usual routes. There simply wasn’t anything that far out worth the trip, unless you put a disproportionate value on hydrogen and solitude. “Name of Chardon, a little over thirty five AU out from Barrier Gate. Normally the USI’ll match a transponder up to a class and owner just as soon as we get the signal but, weird thing is, we didn’t get any of that information with Chardon. Just a name.”
The image of Adventure Galley drifted a little further down the screen, a timer rolling past the seconds. “She vanished from the sensors a little over two minutes later. Best guess on the heading put her skating right out of Coronado in a few years and vanishing in to deep space again. But, in the meantime, we’ve got a window where we can reach her and get back before we run out of… Well, everything.”
James raised a hand. “Question. If you detected the ship, couldn’t others in Coronado also have? This is hardly an empty system.”
“You can put your hand down.” Sarah nodded towards the screen. “Probably would have, if it was a general transmission. The Barrier’s not a huge obstacle to comms and if we picked it up I’d be really surprised if the stations missed it. But, here’s the wierd part. When I got on the subspace network on the ‘gate a couple of days ago, I couldn’t find any record of it. I mean, it’s possible that it’s been wiped, but the only thing the station administration’s crazier about than money is anonymity. I don’t think it’d be an easy system to get in to. So, my best guess is that the transmission was tight beam. We just happened to be in the way.”
“Two questions.” Leslie did not bother raising her hand. She had chosen to lounge in a corner, wearing her much-loved and worn Adalbert Stein shirt again. As you probably realize, it’s my money and my ship on the line. What are we expecting to get out of this to offset my costs?” She paused. “Secondly, what are the risks? A few I can think of is not getting to the ship in time, or getting jostled by some less-than-friendly gentlemen along the way.” She did not smile.
“Right, skipper. That’s why I waited until we got back.” Sarah nodded, shifted a little under Leslie’s gaze. “No idea what Chardon was from the USI, so I ran the name through the net. I managed to pull up a few matches. The name’s been used a bit, but, you know. Considering it was way out beyond our range when we picked it up, that narrows it down a bit. There aren’t many modern ships that would have reason to be that far out. A lot of the files were blocked, but I managed to find launch details. Left Manhattan in April 51 A.S.” Sarah glanced up, as though it was an answer.
James’ eyebrows rose in surprise. “That’s certainly something,” he mused. “Even the vessel itself might be worth something to the right organizations, if recovered. Or anything in the ship computers if they’ve not been bricked by radiation… and given the transponder was still functioning, I’m thinking they’re not.”
Sarah gave a grateful nod. “Yeah. If it’s that old, it’s not surprising the transponder’s coming and going. There’s something else as well. Liberty had three classes of intersystem ships going in the 50’s. Nixon, Lincoln, and Roosevelt-class haulers. Smallest to biggest, in that order, in case you were wondering. All of them used the same drive system, though. Deuterium-tritium fusion. It’s cold and clunky by today’s standards but, hey, the colonies were just getting into it, and it worked. Tritium’s radioactive, so it’ll be long gone, but modern ships still use deuterium in H-Fuel, and they carried a lot of it. It shouldn’t be hard to find a buyer if we can get that fuel back.”
Leslie folded her arms, skeptical. “What else can we get from it?”
“Whatever tech’s on board could be valuable… to a museum,” James offered, half-joking. “I wonder if there’s any crew remains on board. Even cryo’d have to fail after all this time.”
“You’re into skeletons?” Leslie glanced at Arland, looking mildly discomfited.
“Droll, but no. Their identities and mission could be of some interest, however,” James replied.
“Whatever it was, it’s nearly eight centuries dead,” Leslie countered.
“Quite right. Though considering it’s been floating in space for so long, there could be some very valuable sensory data on board - provided it’s recoverable, to which I make no guarantees. But it’s possible. How it ended up all the way out here from Manhattan is bound to be at least mildly interesting.”
“I’m not seeing the part where it makes me any money though.”
“Frankly, I’m not seeing any guarantees you’ll make much of a profit off of this, Leslie. There’s potential for a payoff, I guess what Sarah is saying, with the right combination of luck and exploitation. It’s your call, I’m just along for the ride.” James leaned back in his seat, folded his hands behind his head. “Be a shame to let all this fuel go to waste, though.”
“James is right. There’s so little information on this thing, and it’s been gone for so long that all I can offer are informed guesses.” A pleading note crept into Sarah’s voice. “But they didn’t have jumpgates, or hyperspace access, or anything like that. Coronado wasn’t even charted when Chardon was launched, and I couldn’t find records of any jump hole from Manhattan to here. Everything I’ve got says that Chardon shouldn’t be here. Shouldn’t still be transmitting if it is. There’s a whole lot of questions flying with that ship, and this might be the only chance we ever get to answer them.”
Leslie shrugged helplessly. “S--t, If I wasn’t interested I wouldn’t have let Sarah load all that fuel. But unlike you two, I have to pay the bills.” She smiled. “If things get particularly dire, I can always dock Sarah’s pay for a few months. But apart from that, let’s do it. Maybe we’ll find some priceless old artifact to finance me a mansion on Curacao so I can ditch wearing clothes altogether.” She paused. “Maybe that was too much information. Anyways, what kind of risks are we expecting?”
“That’s the spirit.” Sarah beamed. “Apart from the clothes thing. Really could have done without that part.
Risk wise, the biggest problem’s going to be other salvagers. I used the public network to pull up the info on Chardon and the anonymity expires in a few days. If anyone’s trailing my search history, they’ll have access to it then.” She paused, glanced down at the remote. “Sooner, if they’re willing to put some cash down. It is the Barrier. Even in meatspace, I can’t exactly hide all the supplies we’ve been loading. I’d be really surprised if that doesn’t get a few people asking questions. There’s a chance a few opportunists might load up and try to follow us once they figure out the course, but we’ll be halfway there by the time they can make that call. Should give us five days to grab what we can and get clear before the rest of the pack catches up. “
Sarah nodded towards the screen. “Unless you count getting lost, there shouldn’t be any risk from the ship itself. I mean, it’s nearly a millennium old. We’ll probably have to cut our way in, but any system that could have caused problems will be long dead.” She shot a glance at Arland. “And anything that isn’t shouldn’t have that problem for long, right?”
“So that was the reason for inviting him, huh?” Leslie raised an eyebrow speculatively. “Here I was thinking you just wanted eye candy to ogle at to pass the time.” She nodded seriously. “Seems reasonable, however. And heck, it isn’t everyday you get to look at the past. Also, meatspace?”
“Maybe a little bit of ogling.” Sarah gave a happy shrug and folded the screen back into the table. “Unless there’s a warship I missed, we should be gone before anyone else shows up. We’re looking at a little under thirteen days outbound and about the same on the way back, so you might want to claim a chair.”
James shrugged. “Ogle all you’d like, I suppose, but yes… I’m primarily here as your heavy, with all that it entails.” His tone was jocular enough, but it held an edge.
“I trust we’ll know very quickly if someone follows us, unless they’re under cloak?”
“I’d imagine so, James. If anything is even remotely close to us on that route, they are headed to the derelict as well. It’ll be hard to mask that fact,” Leslie said.
“Besides, they’d have to be at least as big as the Galley to keep pace.” Sarah added. “I mean, we’re pretty much running right on the line to make it in the time we are. Anything smaller’d be coasting after a day or two at that pace.”
James chuckled. “At least we’ll rest safely assured in the knowledge that if something does kill us out there, it’d have to be a capital ship.” He sighed. “Dibs on a seat with a view.”
“Anyone ever tell you that you’re morbid as hell, James?” Leslie glanced at the soldier. “I’m telling you now.”
James met her eyes, looked faintly amused. “Gallows humour is a staple back at base, sorry. I could try to be all chipper and optimistic around you, I suppose, but somehow I think you’d find that much worse.”
“Yeah, this suits you more,” Leslie said, looking away.
“No, here - let’s try.” He put on his most vacant smile. “Hi, Leslie! Did you know we’re extremely unlikely to spontaneously combust today? Isn’t that great? I think it’s fantastic.”
“You know, I think I like this one.” Sarah cocked an eyebrow. “How long do you think he can keep it up before he ruptures something?”
“Three minutes,” Leslie said, rubbing her forehead in mock irritation.
James continued, still mockingly oblivious and serene. “Did you know most people in the colonies live long, happy and successful lives? Just try not to think too hard about those that don’t! You’ll have a great life. Probably.”
"This is really sort of a personal project of mine."
- James Arland, on single-handedly engaging an enemy regiment.
Five days burning, and Sarah McFarlen was the most alone she had ever been. Barrier Gate was nothing more than a speck on her sensors, visible only in a half a dozen exotic spectrums, none of them visual, and the reassuring blip of the station’s subspace relay on her display was steadily fading. Ten more days, and the last reminder that humanity existed beyond the Galley’s bulkheads would be gone altogether.
The displays wrapped around the Galley’s bridge in a facsimile of a cockpit were similarly barren. A sea of stars hung in the sky beyond the ship’s nose, cold and distant, more than human science had devised names for. Sarah thought it was just the ostrich sticking its head in the sand on an interstellar level. Naming them would have been an admission that, for all the wonders of the jump network, there were still countless worlds beyond their reach. Instead, the ship’s system responded to her queries with an identification code, a discovery date, and a string of outdated information that was about as useful to her as a sun dress in zero G. A languorous smile stretched across her face.
She reached up and tugged her headset clear of one ear, arms slow and sluggish beneath the weight of the transport’s thrust. One point five G. Enough that doing anything more than sitting was likely to end with her tumbling down the ship’s corridor, flying across the cargo bay, and slamming into something in the engine room hard enough that anything that happened afterwards would involve a mop and a team of coroners. So she sat.
”Do you ever think about how far away we are?” Sarah didn’t need to turn her head to see James Arland. Spookshow was strapped into the pilot’s seat alongside her, almost a mirror image, though where her displays fed back a steady stream of flight information; power outputs and exhaust velocities, the Bretonian’s showed effective ranges and arcs of fire, engagement windows and intercept courses. This far out most of them were measured in weeks to contact. Sarah was certain the Galley, a tramp hauler by design, hadn’t come with that software package.
James looked up from the window he was examining. He appeared to be running simulations on the sparse armaments of the Galley.“Well… only when I look outside,” he said, gesturing to the great void in front of them.
”It’s different from the lanes. People say space is space, but you’re never far away when you’re on the network. Sure, there’s the distance, but it doesn’t mean anything when there’s always someone who can reach you. Not out here.” Sarah glanced at the displays and her lips curled into a contented smile. ”Out here it’s just you and the ship and the stars. It’s beautiful.”
“Yeah, I can see that. Solitude is good, at least when it’s not… enforced on you.” He paused to consider. “Though we’re off the network, we’re still in range of most other ships in our weight class. I’m not entirely certain whether I find that comforting or not.”
Sarah inclined her head in acknowledgement, then realised it was doubtful that Arland could see her. ”I know what you mean. The Barrier’s clientele aren’t exactly the cute-and-cuddly roadside recovery sort.” She let her hands drop to her lap. ”You’ve been out here before?”
“Yeah. Spent some time here after I deserted the Armed Forces. Mercenary work. Plenty of scum wanting to rid the universe of other scum in these parts,” He said. His tone was still pretty conversational, but it was fairly obvious he didn’t find much of his time on the station very pleasant.
”Do you want to talk about it?” Sarah tried to keep the question flippant, but couldn’t entirely keep the undertone of interest from her voice. The station had been home to her a few years ago, courtesy of the Vagrant Raiders.
James grimaced. “Not particularly. I doubt you’d find the gory details very interesting anyway. It all boils down to the same clutch of petty and senseless reasons when the various… personages… on the Barrier start putting out notices for trained killers. I didn’t take jobs that were too distasteful - not generally at least - and it was a living, I guess. Paid well enough. Something to help me gather up some of the resources I no longer had access to from the military.”
He might as well have been talking about doing the gardening, for all his tone changed. Sarah felt a chill that had nothing to do with the temperature. Her eyes flicked back to the screen, away from Arland’s voice. Sitting here, speaking with him, it was easy to forget what the man did for a living. Not for long.
”Why leave the Armed Forces? I don’t follow the war, but…”But Bretoina’s losing. She let the question hang.
James leaned his head back into the headrest - the stronger than normal gravity pressing it into the upholstery to the point where it might actually become a little uncomfortable, should he maintain that position long enough.
“There’s the kicker, isn’t it? If you’ve heard anything about the war at all - and you will have unless you’ve been living without a neural net connection for years - you know as well as I do that we’re losing. Sovereign system after system lost. How many millions of Bretonians - of my own generation - dead? Leeds, burning as the ground war drags on, cities, industrial centres and spaceports being bombed to rubble.” He stopped there for a moment.
“I left because we were making efforts to try and actually win this bloody war - at the very least even up the odds, regain some of the initiative - and the admiralty had the nerve to actively try and sabotage it. That’s why I’m no longer in. I will not serve someone who fights to lose. That is all.” The final syllables were clipped, staccato and endlessly bitter.
Sarah sat in silence for a long minute, taken aback. Super, Sarah. Well done. If she’d hit that nerve any harder she would have needed a sledgehammer. Normally Arland was cheerful enough, but this was a glimpse of something, someone, else altogether. Someone Sarah wasn’t sure she was comfortable seeing. She twisted her head to look at him, thrust pushing her cheek into the headrest. His jaw was clenched, arctic blue eyes fixed forward like a soldier on parade. Sarah could see the veins in his neck. ”God, James. I’m sorry. I didn’t know it was that bad.”
He exhaled, slowly. Turned to meet her eyes. Some of the tension seemed to have dissipated out of his body. “The war becomes rather different when you see it up close, for what it is. I don’t blame you for having kept that at a distance. It’s not exactly pleasant, is it? I can count the people I graduated with out of Basic who are still alive on one hand. The violence - the loss, the anger - it changes you, whether you like it or not.”
Sarah didn’t nod, but she didn’t look away either. When she spoke her voice was soft, barely audible over the drone of the engines. ”Life changes you. No-one’s proud of everything they’ve done. Everything they’ve become. I don’t know. We all go eventually, but, like that...” She shook her head, the expression more suggestion than motion, flicked her eyes toward the display and back. ”It seems like such a waste. None of those stars have ever seen a human being. Sirius is a tiny, tiny, fraction of the worlds out there. We’re rarer than planets, and we’re spending our time killing each other. Gallia. Liberty. Bretonia. I wonder if it matters, in the end. If it’s worth it.”
James smiled faintly, looked back out into the void. He wasn’t really looking at the stars. “That’s a wonderful way to put it, Sarah. And I genuinely wish I could see it like that. But when it comes down to it - no matter how precious each life is in the grand perspective of things - we cannot escape our own… flaws. As a species. Not as we are currently. Paradoxically enough, we are made to be capable of horrific violence, and at the same time, it’s actually quite rare to see a species so averse to it. Look on the bright side, I suppose. If we truly lacked restraint altogether, I suppose we would have rendered ourselves extinct ages ago.”
”Avoiding extinction is the bright side? Leslie was right. You really do know how to ramp up the morbid, Spookshow.” Sarah smiled and turned back to her display. The smile dropped off her face almost immediately. A little gasp of disbelief slipped from her. ”No, no. That’s not right.”
James snapped back, fully present. “What? What is it?”
Sarah’s voice rose a couple of octaves in surprise. ”Chardon. The derelict’s hailing us.”
"This is really sort of a personal project of mine."
- James Arland, on single-handedly engaging an enemy regiment.
Sarah floated alongside the long plastic table in the Galley’s mess, datapad clutched in one hand and the other curled around the top of a chair. The serenity’s life support was a low, comforting hum that reverberated through the ship. She hadn’t noticed the noise until the engines went silent, but it had been the only way to bring the crew together.
Long conversations in one and a half gees were very rarely more than grunts, and even more rarely productive. If they had been having the meeting for any other reason, Sarah would have welcomed the break. Instead, she held the datapad, and the message it contained at a distance, as though it were a venomous snake that might rear up and bite her. She eyed it nervously. Perhaps it might. It wasn’t as though anything else about that ship was making sense. Reality might as well be out to lunch too. She gritted her teeth, took a breath, and tried for a relaxed smile. Perhaps Leslie and James were too caught up in their own heads to notice. And perhaps she really was queen of Bretonia.
”So.” She said, tone flat. Her eyes drifted across the table and settled on Leslie. ”Chardon’s talking to you.”
James was loosely seated, hands folded in front of him. His thoughts were hidden behind an expressionless, if mildly expectant look. ”What, specifically to Leslie?” He asked.
”Yeah.” Sarah flicked her wrist and sent the datapad drifting across the room to James, folded her arms across her chest, and resisted the impulse to tug at her hair. ”To: Leslie Durant. Gone gone gone gone… It just repeats.” A ghost of a shudder crept its way up her spine. ”I kept the connection open for two hours, and that’s all it’s sending.”
Leslie rubbed her forehead tiredly. ”Great, the eight-hundred year old ship knows my name and wants me gone. Are we in a horror movie?” She looked up, at Sarah. ”Any idea what’s going on?”
James frowned down on the datapad. ”Why’s it sending this? I’m pretty sure it’s no emergency code. And if we’re just receiving this now, what changed from when we spotted it entering the system? I don’t like this, it’s too… cryptic.”
Sarah’s shoulders rose and fell in a shrug. It would have looked more convincing if she’d unfolded her arms. ”I don’t know why. I’m still working on how. Everything we’ve got says that ship’s almost a millennium dead. There’s nothing I know of that we can build now that lasts that long. Even big RTGs degrade after a couple of centuries, and they don’t have any moving parts. It shouldn’t be able to transmit.” She shook her head. ”And even if it could, our comms systems are centuries apart. I mean, the data packet’s just text, but… It’s surprising we can even receive that. I checked with the Barrier, and they didn’t pick anything up. It’s sending tightbeam transmissions at us, specifically.”
James gave the datapad a little flick, sending it spinning nearly in place. ”Times like these, I wish Lisa was here with a full JADE instance, the one on board my suit doesn’t have the processing power for a full signals analysis. Data transfer protocols change pretty regularly and legacy system transmissions can be a b-tch. There’s no standardization across the sector quite yet, you know? And by the time a standard can be met, a new protocol is implemented.” He paused, noticing the odd looks. ”What? I hang in Lisa’s spacement a lot.”
”To the eternal chagrin of all your other friends,” Leslie quipped, but her heart was not in it.
If the joke registered, Sarah didn’t show it.
”Right. And Chardon’s talking to us across centuries of systems. I can’t even pretend to know how it’s doing that.” She drummed her fingers against her arms. ”I’ve heard of building to last, but that’s just absurd.”
James had a thought. ”If it’s impossible for the transmitter gear to survive that long, then it could very well be the equipment… is not native to Chardon’s initial configuration. As in, we’re not the first to have found this thing.”
Leslie nodded slowly. ”Makes sense. And if they are using my name specifically, they know my ship is headed there…” She exhaled quietly as realization hit.
”Someone else has been on board.” Sarah frowned. ”Doesn’t really fit. We’re already heading out about as far as it’s safe to go, and it’s not like this thing’s course takes it past any other inhabited system. If someone else saw Chardon before we did, they’d need a set of eyes bigger than anything in the Barrier to do it.” The engineer shook her head. ”And that’s without actually getting to it. Someone would have seen them go.”
James shrugged. ”So which is it? An impossible transmission, or an equally impossible prior boarding action by an unknown party? Either way, something here seems very off.”
Leslie got up suddenly. ”I’m going to take another look at the thing, just to be sure.” She carefully got up and left the room.
”I don’t know, James.” Sarah whirled in space to face the lieutenant commander. ”I’m trying to find out. You don’t need to bite my head off for it.” She jerked her head towards the Galley’s bridge, auburn strands hovering around her. ”If you want to go up there and see if you can find someone else out there, be my guest, because I’ve been looking for two hours, and I’m telling you that there’s nothing there.”
James held his hands in front of him, a placating gesture he’d found himself using with some frequency lately. ”Relax, I wasn’t trying to be snappy. I’m just as frustrated as you are. There are a lot of questions right now, and what info we have doesn’t seem to cover a third of them.”
”Mhm.” Sarah didn’t exactly nod, but she let her gaze drift back to the floor. ”Long story short, I don’t know what we’re pointed at here. My best guess is maybe there’s a solar panel hiding somewhere on that thing that our sensors didn’t pick up. Maybe it’s close enough to scrounge up enough power to shoot off a couple of transmissions. I don’t know. It’s a lot of maybes. Still doesn’t explain how it knows Leslie’s name.
I’ve heard of power sources that might be able to survive that long, but...” Sarah paused, tugged a loose strand away from her eye. ”They’re not ours. Not human.”
James grimaced. ”Better not be squids. Didn’t come out here to become a puppet.”
”I’m not an expert, but this isn’t their style, right? It seems like way too much trouble to go to for little old us.” Sarah’s voice carried only the slightest hint of a woman trying to convince herself. ”Besides, we’d have picked up the output on one of their cells before we left the barrier.”
James shook his head. ”I don’t think there’s much use in trying to make more conjecture at this point. All we know is, we’ve got a creepy message that by all means should not have been transmitted to begin with. I say we just continue on with that in mind, and be ready to flee if something’s up, though… that’d be the captain’s decision.”
”We’ve already burned a lot of fuel to get here.” Sarah sighed. ”And it’s not like there aren’t other scavengers on the barrier waiting to take a shot. If we turn around we’re not going to get another shot at this thing. I don’t like it, but I can’t really see any other option but staying on course. It’ll be an adventure, I guess.”
Silence settled in the Galley’s mess. Sarah shifted a little in place and reached across the table to retrieve the datapad, still drifting above the surface in a slow arc, spinning like a carousel. Logically, she knew there wasn’t anything she could do about the message, but the mere fact of its existence was unnerving enough. Either someone had somehow evaded every sensor in the barrier and made it out beyond the edge of the star system without being spotted, or… Or a ship eight centuries old was talking to them. Neither possibility was a happy one.
How can he be so calm? Arland lounged in his seat, hands folded neatly across his lap, blue eyes untroubled. The bretonian could have been discussing plans for the weekend, and he wouldn’t have looked any less relaxed. Tired, yes, but they all looked tired. Fluctuating gravity really took it out of you, but Arland had handled it better than most. Sarah’s fingers drummed a beat on the datapad. Some system or another beeped. Sarah absent-mindedly swiped her thumb across the screen, powered it off.
”So, you and Leslie.” Sarah coughed, the cramped mess sending echoes bouncing back at her. ”Did you two grow up together or something?”
James’ eyebrows rose, and for a second he said nothing. Then he slowly pivoted his head toward the door into the hallway, to ensure that some cosmic sense of comedic timing hadn’t sent Leslie marching - or, well, floating - into the mess right as they were having this discussion. He turned back to Sarah, bemused. ”Nope. Frankly, I haven’t even known her that long. Couple months at most. Why do you ask?”
”Just curious.” Sarah gave a shrug that she hoped looked nonchalant, raised an eyebrow and twisted a little to look at Arland. ”I mean, the way you two talk to each other, I assumed that you’d known each other for years. Not many people make a habit of taking a month off-duty to help someone they barely know, and after what Leslie said about the Admiral… You two have been through a lot.”
James grunted something that could have been assent. Then he explained. ”We made fast friends. And that whole business with Admiral Sakuma… well, high-pressure situations helps cement trust and establish where two people stand in relation to each other very quickly. And we are in agreement on the Gaul question, which helps. As for why I’m taking a month off, last op I was on was exhausting in more than one way. Really, thus far, this has been my vacation.”
”Riding a bomb out to the far edges of the Barrier is a vacation for you? Remind me not to-” Whatever Sarah was going to say was interrupted by a creak from the Galley’s cargo compartment. A moment later, a pair of hands wrapped themselves around the hatch. The rest of the Galley’s captain followed shortly after.
”Right…” Leslie lowered herself back into a chair, huffing. She looked equal parts annoyed and tired, and her bobcut hair had fallen out of place, strands drifting over her place, which she adjusted with irritation.
”I really doubt it’s the ship itself sending that. The probabilities are too bad, which leaves us with the other option.” Leslie glanced at James meaningfully, then continued. ”Someone’s probably already made it there, and they knew we were coming.” She shrugged. ”Two possibilities...either they are still there, waiting...or they have left, leaving us with a spooky message to scare us off.”
”We’d have seen anyone leaving in the past week or so.” Sarah said. ”And why bother scaring us off if our hypothetical visitors already got what they came for and left? I mean, why bother sending the transmission at all if they’re trying so hard to be sneaky? They may as well write ‘we’re here’ in hundred foot letters on the hull. It’d be more subtle.”
James undid the strap holding him to his seat, floated gently above it. ”If there’s someone - and that’s a big if - it seems to me, they want to avoid a confrontation to the point that that they’re willing to sacrifice secrecy. So either they’re desperate, or there’s something to this we’re missing. Again, too many unknown unknowns.”
”Because what I needed was more mystery in my life.” Sarah straightened out, ignoring the momentary disorientation as her brain tried to reconcile James floating perpendicular with her with the idea of down. Almost a decade in space, and the vertigo never quite went away. She just got used to dealing with it, like an irritating roommate. Albeit a roommate that made you feel nauseous whenever she entered the room. After half a second’s panicked signals, her sense of spatial orientation gave up and went to sit in a quiet corner somewhere.
”So, we keep going.” She glanced at Leslie and continued. ” If someone’s there, and if they’re that desperate to keep us away, there has to be something valuable out there. People don’t go to that sort of trouble over thousand year old scrap.”
Leslie nodded, after blowing an errant strand of hair out of her eyes. ”We’ve come too far to turn back now. But I’d think we should prepare for the worst. There’s probably someone there already, and they probably left us some unpleasant surprises. James can take care of that.” She glanced at the soldier, then back at Sarah. ”I’d suggest lowering our acceleration, and diverting as much power to the sensors as they can handle. Think you can manage it?”
Sarah shot off a lazy salute that would have had any sergeant worth his stripes frothing at the mouth. ”Yes ma’am. I’ll dial us down to one G when we fire the engines up again. There’ll be a bit of wastage, but we’ve got enough dee to cover it. I don’t know how much more we can get from the sensors, but I’ll keep our eyes open.”
”It’ll have to do. We don’t want to court more trouble than we can handle.” Leslie was now leaning back, hands clasped behind her back, a lazy grin on her face. The expression was reminiscent of ancient predatory cats, and she could feel the fear, and the excitement. In this moment, Leslie Durant was in control. ”Let’s see what the future holds for us, shall we?”
It was late “afternoon” in the Galley’s artificial day-night cycle. James had another turn on the bridge, and he was actually alone for the moment. He’d stopped messing with the ship’s weapons systems since the strange news yesterday, and was currently trying to put real-world concerns out of his head with a bit of light reading. Figuring Sarah would mostly have tech-manuals for solid paper literature, he’d borrowed one of Leslie’s paperbacks which he now read while occasionally glancing up at the consoles in front of him, just to ascertain nothing was wrong.
Immersed as he was, he paid little mind to soft footfalls as they carefully and gingerly made their way around him. Leslie took care in depositing herself into a chair and strapping herself in. Any hasty move at this speed could be fatal, after all. She spent a moment looking at the console, and then at Arland.
“You seem relaxed,” She said.
James looked up. He actually was relaxed, settled pretty snugly into his seat with the assistance of the higher than normal gravity. The corner of his mouth quirked upward at Leslie’s comment. “Yeah,” he began. “Reading’s nice like that. All I’m missing right now is a cup of tea, really, then I’d be about ready for a nap.” He motioned with the paperback. “Thanks for lending me some of these, by the way.”
Leslie shrugged, smiling. “You’re welcome to them. Sarah doesn’t use those, says it’s too old-tech for her liking. Her loss, right?”
“Yeah. I never liked reading off monitors, strains my eyes a little too much. I suppose an engineer would be used to that, though.” He said, idly turning a page. “Say… How do you know Sarah, anyway? I gather she’s a recent hire, but other than that, I don’t know a whole lot about her.”
Leslie’s smile turned predatory. “And why do you ask, James?”
James briefly wondered exactly where Leslie’s mind was going with that question, the way she spoke it. A number of possibilities came back, most of them vaguely inappropriate. Or explicitly, for that matter. Maybe she wouldn’t be entirely wrong about a few of them, either, but what stuck was how the hell Sarah’d recognized a nerve agent on sight like that. He put on his best innocent expression, decided to test the water. “Why, I’m going to be living with you two for some time, aren’t I? Just trying to get a better read on my companions.”
Leslie wiggled her fingers at him. “You can mark us both as low-threat, threat analyser.” She paused. “Frankly, She’s not very open about her past. And I’m fine with it. Everyone likes to keep their secrets, right?”
James shrugged, raised one arm (and the paperback) in front of him in mock surrender. “Of course. And relax, I’m not LSF, come to take away your freedoms and snoop in your pasts on shady government business. I’m snooping entirely out of idle curiosity, if that makes you feel better.” There was a distinctly libertonian twang to the way he spoke the word “freedoms”.
Leslie laughed at that. “‘Ello guv’nah, the krauts may be invadin’ but they’ll never take my FREEDOM!” She shrugged. “That’s the best Texan I can do, sorry. That being said, I’m pretty sure she’s been involved in some...less than legal business in the past. Mostly circumstantial evidence pointing towards that.”
James chuckled in turn, nodded. “I get that. I just get the feeling she’s seen the… rougher spots of the Sector at some point, which seems at odds with her behavior and idealism at times. I guess I just enjoy a good mystery,” he said, and waggled the paperback in his hand again. “Then again, could be I’m just a bloody idiot with a paranoid streak.”
“You’re awfully self-aware, James.” Leslie’s tone was teasing. “But yeah, I get what you mean. Then again, she’s young. Sometimes young people do stupid sh-t.” She glanced at James more seriously. “And if she shares those stories, it should be on her terms. Best you can do is help her along.” She smirked at a sudden thought. “Maybe take her out to dinner or something.”
“Oh, that’ll go over great, I just know it,” he laughed. He shifted his tone to nasal, slightly higher-pitched mockery of himself. “Hey, Sarah, how’s about we go out for some synthpaste and you can tell me all about your secret past?”
Leslie reached over and smacked Arland in the head. “Quit pretending to be a dumbass. She’ll appreciate it, trust me. And maybe she’ll tell you that time she went drinking with a stranger and returned with a massive hangover, not telling me what she’d been up to.” She smiled. “I’m sure you’re curious.”
He pointed a mildly accusatory finger at her. “See, now there’s the sort of secret I would not trust you with further than I could throw you.”
“You could probably throw me a fair distance,” She idly remarked. “And just for that, you now owe me a dinner as well.”
He raised an eyebrow. “And what is the Sword of Damocles hanging over me should I not?”
Leslie rubbed her chin. “Good question. Maybe I’ll just heavily imply that you spend a lot of time in Lisa’s spacement.”
He brought a hand over his heart, dramatically. “Oh, you wound me. I’ll have you know my spacement time has been entirely platonic.”
“Oh, I know. She doesn’t, though.” Leslie was now amused. “You’re treading a fine line here, James Arland. A two month trip with only two women for company, and if you annoy any one of them...that might make this trip a mission worse than any you have faced.” She pointed a finger imperiously at him. “And that’s why you owe me dinner.”
He rolled his eyes, none too subtly. “Fine, what would you like?”
“I thought you’d never ask. Take me to the Hilton on Manhattan. I like feeling fancy.” Leslie’s tone was carefully flat.
James scoffed. “Yeah, it’ll just be you, me, five thousand credits I would rather spend on a brand new gun, and a five month reservation time. Trust me, we’d try to kill each other long before we’d ever get that lined up and ready. How about something slightly less preposterous?”
Leslie’s smile was sad. “I’ll let you figure it out.” She glanced at him. “And someday you’ll need to find something that’s worth more to you than your guns. Something worth what you are doing.”
James was quiet for some time. He hadn’t turned a page in several minutes, now. “That someone…” he began. “...will have to be a better person than me.”
“Bullsh-t. You’re a good person, you just need to admit it.” Leslie opened her mouth to continue, but her console suddenly flashed. “Huh, better check that out.” She began unstrapping from her chair. “Think about it, James,” She said as a parting remark, walking carefully off the bridge.
James was left with his thoughts. “Good person or no,” he muttered to himself. “Whatever happens there won’t be a rose garden.” He tried to focus on his book. Why the hell was he reading a romantic comedy, anyway?
The Galley’s airlocks felt smaller from the inside. Sarah rolled her shoulder, felt the slight rubbery resistance of the suit pushing against the movement. The Galley’s suits would have probably been obsolete on any corporate merchant, but they were solid enough for her tastes. Oxygen cylinders and proper radiation shielding, not the cloth-thin vacc suits the inner systems were pushing these days. The specs might have said they were safe, but there was something comforting in the weight of the old suits.
A tool tray was strapped across the suit’s stomach, and a helmet floated loose in one hand. She gave a long suffering sigh and turned to face the figure hovering still stubbornly in the serenity’s cargo bay. ”It’s just a routine check, skipper.”
Leslie shook her head. ”If it’s that routine, you can take care of it. Why do you need me?”
”I haven’t seen you outside of your room or the bridge in three days. Being cooped up like that’s not healthy.” Sarah raised a frustrated hand to her forehead. ”James, tell her it’s not healthy. Besides, someone’s got to cycle air through that thing. The Galley’s a big girl. She can fly herself for half an hour without you mothering her, Skip.”
Leslie folded her arms, looking distinctly put out. ”I’ll remind you that being on the bridge is my job. Floating dangerously in the vacuum of space looking for dents is yours.” She pointed a finger imperiously at James. ”If you need an assistant, take him. He’s just a waste of space right now.” The last remark was softened with a smile.
James was wearing his sealed hardsuit, sans combat rigging, plus an extra oxygen tank - and would have looked distinctly intimidating if he didn’t have to crane his head to fit in the airlock. ”Whatever,” he said, a little sourly. ”At least I’m not averse to, you know, going outside. I swear, why are all my female friends such homebodies?”
Sarah gave a pointed cough.
”I might forget to open the airlock for you on the way in, James,” Leslie said sweetly. ”Anyways, Sarah. What else do you need to get this inspection done?”
Sarah tapped her chest rig proudly, nodded towards the spool of wire running from the back of the suit to the airlock wall. ”I’m all set. If you’d rather stay in tonight then, you know, go outside, we should be okay. James can run second, and you just come out if something jumps out and eats both of us.” She glanced at James’ suit, all camouflage and materials she hadn’t seen before outside of a lab. ”How long does the air supply on that thing last anyway?”
”Onboard scrubbers are pretty high tech, with no external supply I can last for about ten hours. From there, it’s all tanks like this one,” he said, and patted the tank on his back. He also had a cable fitted to his harness to prevent him from floating away in zero-gravity.
”How much time are you intending to take, Sarah?” Leslie asked.
”Er.” Sarah glanced at the datapad fixed to her wrist. ”I couldn’t get replacement scrubbers for these on the Barrier, and I’m saving what we’ve got for Chardon. So, I’m on tanks. Should be good for about eight. Six if I have to run anywhere.” She grinned. ”It’ll be fine. If nothing’s broken, we shouldn’t be more than an hour, max.”
Leslie responded with a giant shrug. ”I’ll keep an eye on systems, make sure the ship doesn’t make any sudden movements.” She slapped James on an armoured shoulder, withdrawing her hand with a wince. ”Nasty bit of work, that.” Sighing, she shuffled over to the extra spacesuit they had, going through the motions of putting it on. ”This’ll be annoying to wear and sit on the bridge. But I do this for you.” She did not specify.
”Just try not to break a nail or something putting the gloves on, yeah?” James deadpanned from behind his visor.
Leslie muttered something inaudible, but which might have been ‘asshole.’
The valves in Sarah’s suit hissed as she locked the helmet into place. She raised a gloved hand in a cheerful wave. ”One hour. If you swat me with a spaceship, haunting doesn’t even begin to describe what my ghost’ll do to the bookshelf.”
Leslie shrugged, now mostly in her spacesuit, only the helmet remained. ”That’s a threat and a half, Sarah. I’ll try not to.” She put her helmet on, nodded briefly. ”Get moving, you two.”
James nodded. ”Sure thing, don’t fall asleep.”
Sarah slapped the airlock control before Leslie could respond. The effect was only slightly spoiled by the wailing siren. She eyed the door. Oh, and the fact that the airlock doors shut at a rate usually applied to continents. A tap on her datapad and the suit’s radio flickered to life. ”I’d check your suit, but I wouldn’t know where to start. Does that thing even use regular seals?”
”Y’know, if you want to strip him I’d rather you do it when I can’t hear you both,” Leslie’s voice drifted into their ears over radio, slightly tinny and distorted.
James chuckled. The microphone quality was excellent, and would come out on the receiving end like he’d been standing in the same room. ”The seals are reactive, works one layer below the surface armour material. I don’t think a visual check’d have much purpose to begin with,” he said, pointing a finger at a hair-thin seam at his throat.
”Right. Forgot. Military-super tech. Mind checking the seals for the primitive over here?” Sarah flashed a grin. ”And Leslie, I’m shaking my fist at you. I know you can’t see, so just imagine, alright?”
James gestured for Sarah to turn around. He probably would have made a quip, or a playful remark, but training took over, and to his surprise, he found himself not saying a thing as he checked Sarah’s suit seals - worked rapidly as he identified and scrutinized everything important. ”You’re good to go,” he said, patting her shoulder twice. ”Let’s go for a walk, shall we?”
”I thought you’d never ask.” Her fingers skated over the pad, and the indicator light above the door flicked from red to yellow. The low rumble of the Galley’s life support equipment softened and faded to nothing as the room vented air. An eternity passed in half a minute, and the light flashed green. Sarah counted to five and opened the exterior airlock.
The Barrier was waiting for her. Not the station, not a shaded region on a map, not a word dropped in a conversation the same way you might talk about a corner shop. The Barrier, the real Barrier was none of those pale abstractions. Stars hung in the far distance, crisp and clear and steady without the intervening haze of an atmosphere.
The Galley felt tiny and fake beneath her, less than a speck of dust held against the distances unfurling in front of her, and Sarah felt like nothing so much as a cliff diver looking down. She reached down and flicked the locks off her boots, drifted slowly into the center of the airlock. Even that much motion felt like sacrilege. ”You don’t ever really get used to it, do you?”
”The great outdoors doesn’t get much greater than this,” he said after a moment. ”Come on, gawking at space doesn’t get the ship inspected any faster.”
”I’m on the bridge now,” Leslie’s voice drifted in again. ”Things seem to be in order, for now.”
”Thank you for the qualifier, Captain Ominous.” Sarah nodded and thumbed the suit’s jets. She drifted clear of the airlock in a slowly-dispersing cloud of propellent, twisted to face the serenity’s bow. ”We’ll start out with the retrothrusters. Just follow me and keep an eye out for anything that looks out of place, okay James?”
”Gotcha.” James activated his magboots and tentatively took a few disorienting steps out onto the serenity’s hull. He looked up at Sarah, floating above him towards the bow. Their cables trailed behind them, still securely attached. ”You’ll have to tell me what kind of things to look for, though. I could probably identify a sparking mess of cables or a gaping hull breach, but I think the computers would tell us about those, at least.”
”You’d be amazed how often something manages to take out the sensor that was meant to detect it.” Sarah paused, frowning at an antennae extending from a mess of similar structures spiking from the ship’s spine, a forest of steel as tall as a man. ”I like to think it’s nature’s way of keeping me in a job.”
James strolled along, stopped to scrutinize a Dulzian turret housing. By contemporary standards it wasn’t hugely impressive, but it’d ward off the more anaemic pirates in the sector, at least. ”Power plant deal with these turrets okay?”
”Most of the time.” Sarah was wrist-deep in an access panel. She waved the other hand in a spacer’s shrug. ”Don’t tell Leslie, but they’re pretty much dead weight while we’re burning. It’s all going to acceleration for this trip. As it should be.” The engineer smirked into her helmet.
”I know, smartass. At this speed, you’d need something like a Dreadnought to move and fire at the same time. We’re good,” Leslie said, acerbically.
Sarah shot the turret a protective glance. ”Don’t give the bad guys ideas.”
”What, getting a Dreadnought? If they’re that good, I’d rather spend the time thinking of epitaphs for my gravestone,” Leslie shot back.
”Better to have and not need, right?” James continued, careful not to step on anything important.
”Dreadnoughts or epitaphs?” Sarah asked.
”Gun turrets,” James said dryly.
”Dunno.” Sarah stepped back from the comms array, apparently satisfied. ”I think I could do with a dreadnought. A flak cannon or two. Lighten the place up, you know?”
”I’ll have to tell you if I ever survive long enough to be assigned command of one. Hell, maybe you’ll get to name it.” He stalked up behind Sarah, seeking to get revenge for the time she managed to sneak up on him when he first came aboard. With vacuum not transferring sound so well, it wasn’t exactly difficult. ”Boo.”
Sarah didn’t quite jump, but her legs twitched and she managed a half-spin that would have made an Olympian proud before one flailing arm latched onto the shoulder of Arland’s suit and bought her to a staggering stop, legs floating parallel above the maintenance walkway.
”Shi-” She stopped, heaved a breath, realised what she’d grabbed on to. Then grinned through her visor, reached down and locked her boots to the Galley’s hull. ”Oh, it’s on, Spookshow.” She released the man’s suit, glanced at the panel under him and took a very deliberate step back. ”Leslie, be a pal and fire the number twelve RCS thruster?”
James looked down at the thruster nozzle on the panel under him. For several seconds, nothing happened. ”Well. I guess not, huh?” He took a step back.
Sarah frowned down at her datapad. The microcomputer remained cheerfully unmoved. ”Give me a minute. I swear, this doesn’t normally happen to me.” The nozzle continued to do nothing. She gave a half-shrug, hand bobbing alongside her, and stepped back between the thin red lines that marked the traversable paths across the serenity’s hull. ”Guess you wouldn’t consider doing me a favour and standing behind the primary thrusters?”
”As curious as I am to see how high temperatures this suit can withstand, I’d prefer testing that while I’m not wearing it, yeah?” He said, a bit of laughter at the edge of his voice. ”Come, let’s move on. Maybe pose a little in front of the bridge viewport. Or float past it listlessly.”
”I can do listlessly.” Sarah flashed the bretonian an approving grin, disengaged the locks on her boots, and pushed herself into space above the walkway with a flick of her ankles. The suit resisted the movement, but Sarah had spent all of her adult life sucking air through filters rather than trees, and she drifted into the vacuum like a fish dropping into a stream. Oh, she didn’t have the easy grace of lifelong spacers, of the zoners and their ilk that sat scattered among the stars, for whom a life down a gravity well was nothing but a generation-old memory. But, for a dirtsider, you move pretty good, kid. She smiled at the memory and kicked the suit’s thrusters, caught her shoulder before it could roll her forward, and turned back to face the bretonian still clamped to the Galley’s surface like a statue. ”Come on, Spookshow! The bridge is a long way to walk.”
The operative cocked his head. ”You do realize I sort of don’t have a thruster kit?”
”Really?” Twenty metres above him, Sarah raised an eyebrow. ”You’ve got enough firepower on that thing to punch a mountain into orbit, and you don’t have a thruster?”
”Nope. External kits can be used, but it doesn’t come with thrusters out of the box. I can only jam so much tech into this before it becomes a nightmare to maintain.” He paused. ”I suppose you could drag or push me in the right direction, though.”
”But really, no thrusters? In the Navy?” Sarah thumbed the switch and drifted to a stop a few paces in front of Arland, surprise colouring her voice. A shock ran through her legs as the boots locked back onto the hull. ”That’s information that would have been really good to know a few years back. I could’ve started a recovery company.”
”This isn’t a Navy job,” he replied. ”Everything I’ve brought along is my private property, well, maybe not the carbine laying in the spare cabin, but other than that, all of this is private sector.”
Sarah ran an appreciative eye over the suit. Just the torso segment would have cost more than she was likely to see in a career’s worth of transport hopping. ”I don’t think we shop at the same stores.” She breathed, and extended a gloved hand towards Arland. ”There’s really no way to do this that’s not incredibly awkward. Um. Just stand in front of me, okay? I’ll hook my arms under yours. If you could not cut me to pieces with a concealed bayonet or something, that’d be nice.”
”Huh. Alright. If it’s any consolation, there’s a lot of material layers, as well as the vacuum of space to consider before this gets weird.” Sarah would thankfully not be able to see James trying and failing to suppress a grin under the suit mask.
”James.” Sarah nodded her towards the path, realised Arland couldn’t see her face, and waved at it instead. ”You just made this weird.”
”I agree, and I can’t even see the situation,” Leslie’s voice drifted in after a long while. ”Most romantic thing I’ve heard in ages, James.” Her tone was dry.
”Shut up, Leslie.” If looks could have killed, Sarah would have sent the Galley’s bridge halfway to the next solar system. Or at least scratched the paintwork.
”Shut up, Leslie,” Arland said, pretty much right at the same time.
Leslie roared with laughter, and soon found breathing difficult due to the force of her mirth. ”Oh dear god you two have synced whathaveyoubeendoing?” She said breathlessly, still trying to control her amusement. It gradually subsided, and her voice approached normalcy. ”Sorry for phasing out on you two earlier. I’ve been watching the radar, and there’s a few...uh, inconsistencies.”
James was about to suggest a synchronous flipping of the bird through the bridge viewport, decided there were more important things at hand. ”What inconsistencies?”
”It’s spotting contact almost near the periphery of our vision, but unable to keep them in view. I think the systems are just too old, so it’s not actually working at maximum range properly…” She paused. ”But there’s definitely something on our tail.”
Logically, Sarah knew that looking to the Galley’s rear was a pointless motion. She found herself doing it anyway. A handful of stars and a lot of empty space stared smugly down at her. ”Any idea on the bearing?”
”If I could get a proper bead on them, I’d tell you,” Leslie said, sighing. ”You two finish up outside as soon as you can and meet me on the bridge.” A brief pause on her end. ”It could just be radar malfunctions, or nothing at all.”
”Could be.” Sarah echoed. But the Galley’s radar was her responsibility, and her gear didn’t just start spitting at ghosts. Unless you counted the last week. ”Or it could be that someone up there’s dialling up the creep-o-meter. Unless an engine’s slagged, we should be back inside in maybe forty minutes. That okay?”
”Don’t hurry on my account,” Leslie responded, her tone laced with an uncertain emotion.
James remained quiet, head still craned towards the Galley’s aft. Pursuers… How many would there be? What kind of craft? Disposition, who sent them… Still not enough information. Great. He hoped he’d brought enough ammo. After a moment, he turned back to Sarah. ”Well, so that’s new. How do you want to proceed?”
Sarah was running her own calculations, eyes darting from fore to aft and back again. A dozen manoeuvring thrusters, four vectored engines that had been burning for the best part of a week, and forty minutes for checks on the lot of them. Oh. And there were possibly going to using them to outrun pursuers. In a mid-tonnage transport. No pressure.
”I’m thinking I’d like to proceed by swapping the Galley out for a nice sleek fast escort. Maybe a Defiant, something sharp. But unless you’ve got one tucked away in that suit somewhere, we might have to make do with checking that hardware twice instead.” She flashed a grin that was more nerves than joy, extended her hands, and gave a brisk nod that managed to set the suit helmet rocking for a moment. ”Come on. We didn’t have time to walk before Leslie spooked the radar.”
”Oh, right.” James walked up close to Sarah, extended his arms to his sides. ”Well, grab on.”
Sarah’s hand bobbed in recognition, and she stepped into place behind Arland, reached up to lock her arms under Arland’s, and fired the suit’s thrusters. She was tall, but the Bretonian had an inch on her even without the suit. With it, it was a stretch to see over his shoulders. Agonisingly slowly, the pair drifted up into the space over the Galley.
Locked into place against her chest, Arland’s suit was like nothing so much as a large, camo-green deadweight. A fact she constantly had to remind herself of with each shift in the suit’s thrust that pushed and pulled at the hardsuit. It was only armour. There certainly, definitely, wasn’t a Bretonian commando in it with a physique that some greek gods would have killed for. Absolutely not. Focus, Sarah.”We’ll check the front thrusters first and swing back to the main nozzles. We haven’t fired the retro’s since we left, so there shouldn’t be anything there, but, better to check, right? There’s a pad in the pocket on my left sleeve. See it?”
”This one?” Arland patted for the pocket, found the pad.
”Uh huh.” Sarah’s voice crackled over the radio. ”Density scanner. I mean, it does other things too, but that’s what it’s set to. When we get to the nozzles, just take it out and point the lens at them until the yellow light turns green. If it doesn’t, let me know.”
”Sounds simple enough. I know I technically didn’t have to come along for this bit, but what’s the engineering life without ‘bring your commando to work’-day?” He inspected the pad, found the indicator light he’d be looking at.
”I know, right?” Sarah might have flushed a little behind her suit visor. ”Okay. Eyes open, we’re coming around now.”
"This is really sort of a personal project of mine."
- James Arland, on single-handedly engaging an enemy regiment.
Sarah McFarlen couldn’t feel her arms. What’s more, she was blessedly grateful for the fact. The engineer tugged at the straps securing her to her seat, idly rolled a shoulder. Twelve days of droning engines, and Coronado’s sun was nothing but another faint point of light in an enveloping pool of black. This far out, a solar array might, if you were lucky, net you enough energy to power a wristwatch. That way you would at least know exactly how long you had until you ran out of food, air, fuel or all three. How long until oxygen consumption outpaced dwindling life support. How long until all that was left was to lay down and die, and broadcast a distress signal that would be weeks dead before help could arrive. No sane crew strayed this far from the jump network. There was nothing but vacuum this far out.
Nothing but the Adventure Galley and her quarry.
Chardon was finally close enough to see unaided. A huge, cylinder-shaped length of black against the star-speckled night. She wasn’t as big as a modern carrier, but the ancient transport could have looked a dreadnought in the eye without blinking. Chardon was little more than a small crew and cargo capsule strapped atop a fuel store that could have swallowed the entirety of the Galley and come back for seconds, and thirds, and fourths without breaking stride. Sarah felt a sudden kinship for the minnows that travelled in the shadows of whales.
Rangefinders and ladar bounced off the long-dead ship’s hull like rain, and each second bought sent another surge of information to the Galley’s computers.
”Nine hundred and twenty meters long. No obvious weapons. Reactor’s deader than a morgue.” Sarah’s eyes flicked across the display, noting and discarding, chewing through the deluge of information as surely as any machine. ”Three kilometres and closing. Looks like we’ve got two possible entry points. Cargo port amidships, and what’s probably a maintenance airlock near the engine.”
James made a low whistle, strapped in and fully armoured save for his headpiece beside Sarah. ”She’s not right small, is she? Any reads on deck layout, or do our sensors not get that deep?”
Sarah shook her head. ”Shielding, I’m guessing. Chardon was built pre-EM shields, so it’s all solid matter. We’re blind as far as anything past the hull goes, and I couldn’t get access to deck plans for the Lincoln-class.” She waved at the readout. ”I can tell you it won’t be anything like the Galley. Probably vertical layout on the decks, though. Think skyscraper instead of wet navy ship.”
James nodded. ”Where should we start, though… If we want to make a thorough sweep, I’d go bottom up.”
”No arguments here.” Sarah said. ”Going in amidships puts us closer to command and cargo, but… There’d still be a lot of bird on either side. I’d rather start at the engines and work up. It’ll be easier to hook up power from there, too. If this thing’s even compatible with what we’re putting out.”And we can see how she’s still managing to talk. She didn’t say it. Seeing the ship out the window was enough without drawing attention to it. Gone gone gone gone…
”And that’s presuming most of the electronics on this boat still work after eight hundred years. Bring a flashlight.” He shrugged, straps straining against the movement.
Sarah glanced across the bridge. ”Thoughts, skipper?”
Leslie did not respond immediately, keeping a keen eye on the radar and various readings that were flashing across her screen. After a moment, she nodded and turned in her chair to face Sarah. I suppose heading to the bridge of that thing would be the first step. Take a few of our portable batteries along with you and hope that something boots up long enough for us to get some info.”
She tapped her screen, zooming in on the ship. Any thoughts on where the bridge might be?”
Sarah shrugged. ”Bow, probably. Ships of that era were usually rigged to dump the crew clear if something went bad during a burn, and the bridge is where they’d be. Makes sense to put it somewhere you can get out of the way quickly.” The engineer nodded at the readouts. ”God, I was still in high school when I last looked at something like this.”
Leslie nodded. This thing is ancient. If we could tow it back to civilized space, Sotheby’s would pay a killing for this kind of relic. But that’s hardly possible…”
”Unless you’ve got a century to kill.” Sarah confirmed.
”We’ll just have to make do with whatever we find on board.” James murmured.
Leslie turned to James. Do you agree that we should look for the bridge first? I’d rather not go around without having a map of some sort, and that’s where we’ll get one.”
James took a slight pause to consider. ”The problem with going to the bridge first of all is that there’s no guarantee we can power the computers from there. It may be better to try and hook up power directly from the reactor area, then hit the bridge. It also makes searching less of a problem, and we’re less exposed if we’re not going in from the middle. I don’t know about you, but I like knowing everything behind me has been secured while I move forward.”
Leslie tapped another area of the ship’s image. So you want to try working your way forwards from the reactor core?”
James nodded. ”By boarding from the bottom, yes. If we’re not in trouble, we have the time. If we are, we’ll be a bit safer.”
”And sitting next to an engine bigger than a cruiser.” Sarah added. ”But, I’m with James on this one, Skipper. If there are any functioning systems left on Chardon it’ll be easier for me to hook into them from engineering, which means the engine room.”
”And you said it yourself, Sarah… that reactor is as dead as dead can be. Even if someone were to try and reactivate it, we’d definitely notice, and it’d take time to fire her up. Right?” James said, turning his head to look at the drive engineer.
”Yeah. Think months.” Sarah jerked her head back toward the Galley’s engine room. The motion was almost enough to send her drifting from her chair. ”Entirely different system to what we’re using now. Ships in Chardon’s era ran colder and messier. Deuterium-tritium birds. Nastier fuel, nastier waste. To get it going again you’d need to find somewhere that still produced tritium, for one. You know, without the LSF coming to ask why you’re building a bomb. Better off building a new reactor from scratch, really, unless you’re into re-enactment. It’d be quicker, cheaper, cleaner, and less likely to explode in your face. Which is always a nice advantage.”
She gave a disappointed shrug. ”If there’s anything left in there, it’ll be easier just to hook it up to the Galley than to try and bring Chardon back to life.”
Alright then. We’ll have to decide how to approach this. We know we have pursuers...we’ll have to be quick, but someone also needs to stay on the Galley,” Leslie said, raising a finger.
Sarah’s eyes darted over the dead ship and a shudder wandered up her spine. Gone gone gone gone…”I can stay. Not much good me going until we know there’s something I can hook the Galley to.”
”I’m not going to argue, but I am going inside. It’s kind of what I was brought along to do, besides being pleasant company.” A crooked smile crept onto the soldier’s face at the last part.
Leslie raised an eyebrow. I can’t say I’m too fond of the idea of me going inside that thing. And I’m not exactly technically qualified.”
”I can see where this is going.” Sarah shifted in her seat and tried to ignore the part of her mind still running action replays of the derelict’s transmission. ”James, you didn’t bring another engineer in your gear, did you?”
James shrugged. ”JADE would qualify if she had hands. Or tools. Or a degree. Otherwise, no.”
”And I have two of those things.” Sarah gave a long-suffering sigh and tapped the display. ”Alright. So, we’ll go in through the maintenance airlock here and work our way out. The reactor chamber’s big enough to fit a city block inside, so it should be easy enough to find. Once we’re there, I can tell you what we’re working with. Sound okay?”
Leslie nodded. It’ll be better if we work in shifts. If you can establish a general pattern for us to look, I can go in while you take a breather. Four-hour shifts, maybe?”
”What about James?” Sarah twisted to look at the Bretonian. ”He can’t watch both of us constantly, and I’m kinda creeped out by the idea of leaving anyone alone on that thing.”
”True. I’d rather not have to pop chemicals just to stay awake, either. The stuff in those combat stims is not good for my health, long-term.” He recalled the weeks after Gaia. The twitching, the nausea. The dreams. He suppressed a shudder.
”So, JADE can’t just take control of the suit and meat-puppet you around the decks?” Sarah raised an eyebrow. ”Good to know. Maybe we’d be better off locking up the ship and all going once we’ve established a beachhead. Is that the right term?”
”A bit grandiose in this context, but sure. So are we about ready to proceed? Leslie?” He glanced at the ship’s captain.
Leslie nodded. "Go ahead. Stay on comms, I’ll monitor you...and return in four hours.”
"This is really sort of a personal project of mine."
- James Arland, on single-handedly engaging an enemy regiment.