Renegade (39 page)

“Plus they’re going to be busy,” Kaspowitz added. “We were betting on questions and suspicion, but with all this going on, they might barely notice.”

“Oh they’ll notice,” said Erik. “But either way we can’t waste the chance. Nav, lay us a course for mid-system boost at middle-V, let’s try to get to Hoffen Station as quickly as possible. Scan, stand by to switch transponder to orange alert.”

“Aye LC.”

H
offen Station gave
them a hub berth, and
Phoenix
dumped velocity close enough to leave them a mere five hours of low-V coasting to station.

The plan had been to claim they’d been intercepted one jump short of Homeworld by an unidentified assailant, who’d put the hole in their side and damaged their jumplines. This ambush could only have been carried out, they’d insist, by someone who’d known their route in advance, which suggested a leak, and thus a traitor of some kind at a very high level. Supreme Commander Chankow would have to be informed as soon as possible, and no one else was trustworthy, so they’d changed course and headed for Heuron… only to have their jumplines fail, and spot a rock that appeared settled and thus a useful place to do some self-repair, only to find it occupied by a hacksaw nest.

The genius of this particular tall tale, Erik thought, was that the least likely part of it — the encounter with the hacksaw nest — was actually true, and could be proved by the hacksaw parts they had in storage. He was hoping that that fact alone would at least buy them enough credibility to get the rest of their story accepted. The necessity to tell Supreme Commander Chankow of the traitor personally was also going to give him a face-to-face meeting… in which he’d do something to get some information from him. Exactly what, he hadn’t decided yet.

But closing in on Hoffen Station, no one from HQ had even asked to talk to Captain Pantillo, and Lieutenant Shilu’s brief operations report had gone unremarked upon. Unauthorised station traffic was blank, no civilian or other networks broadcasting, so they had no idea what the situation was on station. Erik guessed it was very busy, and simply no one had the time. He had Shilu put in a request to brief Supreme Commander Chankow, and it too went unanswered. What the hell was going on in there?

“Well that’s annoying,” said Trace, peering at the extra camera rig the techs had put above the command chair’s screens. “You get the whole system set up and you don’t even get to use it.” The command chair’s coms had a camera function, so the ship captain could be seen by whomever he was talking to. With superior officers, their use was compulsory. The engineering techs who’d installed the extra cameras insisted the software was simple enough — it would convert the feed of Erik’s face in realtime to look and sound like Captain Pantillo. The special effects weren’t hard for processors the size of
Phoenix
’s, and Erik was sure he knew the Captain’s mannerisms well enough to do a reasonable job — it was used from time to time to fool enemy ships and commanders they had reason to talk to, on the off-chance any of them believed what they saw. But so far no superior officer had called, and as commander on station, he was going to have to leave the ship as soon as they’d docked. That would leave Lieutenant Shahaim in the chair, and Erik wasn’t as sure of her acting ability.

“What does it mean?” asked Lieutenant Draper, who stood at the back of the bridge with Lieutenant Dufresne. With the LC off the ship, it was important that their two second-shift pilots knew the score first hand. “Why haven’t they called?”

“Several possibilities,” said Erik, watching the approaching bulk of Hoffen Station, slowly rotating, its rim filled with an endless, circling row of starships. “First, they’re on to us, and I’ll be arrested as soon as I leave the ship. In that case, Lieutenant Shahaim will be in command, and you are instructed to break dock immediately and run.”

“Yeah, that’s what you think,” said Trace, with a glance at Shahaim. Shahaim nodded knowingly.

Erik looked back and forth. “You guys do actually know who’s the ranking officer here?”

“Sure,” Trace reasoned. “But as soon as you’re arrested, you’re out of the picture. And I think Lieutenant Shahaim and I are in agreement that the ship’s survival requires you in the chair.” Shahaim did not disagree with the younger woman. “Besides which, if you get arrested, I’ll get arrested, because I’m coming with you. And good luck keeping my Lieutenants on
Phoenix
if that happens.

“My alternative plan is that we go out armed and in force. It’s a messy station, we don’t know the security situation, and station’s not talking to us. We’ll assume a hostile dock and deter them from arresting us in the first place.”

Erik took a deep breath. A week ago he would have been angry, being contradicted by his partner in command (and in crime) in front of everyone. But it wasn’t a bad plan, and everyone’s consent that he was irreplaceable was flattering. “Sure,” he said. “You’re the ground combat specialist, let’s do that. Second option is they’re just too busy. I don’t buy that, there’s plenty of lower ranking officers on Hoffen, or in one of these other Fleet vessels, who could query us. Something else is going on.

“I personally favour a third option — this is politically complicated, and they’re very unhappy to see
Phoenix
here at this moment. They think Captain Pantillo is still alive, they’re wondering why the hell he’s here, and they don’t want to deal with him right now. Probably they think he’s up to something, so they’ll be very suspicious. I’d guess they don’t want to talk to him right now for fear that he’ll discern something about
them.
You know how good he was at reading faces.

“So everyone’s pretending to be too busy to speak to us right now… only they’re not entirely pretending, they probably
are
very busy. I’ve been in contact with Mitchell Klinger, CEO of Debogande Enterprises, Heuron Division. He’s agreed to see me and offered me secure quarters… he’s not a friend of the family but he’s known to be a very good manager, we should be able to get a good view of what’s going on from him. I think we can trust him but as the Major says, if we’ve enough guns along it shouldn’t matter either way.

“Major, what will we need?”

“Command Squad would seem logical,” said Trace. “Light armour only— full kit would seem overdoing it. I’d like you in light kit as well LC.” Erik nodded — that was her prerogative to request. “We’ll put a platoon on the dock until we learn better, if we learn better. One complication — our hub berth is directly alongside an alo vessel. Shtikt-class warship, so advanced even we won’t want to mess with it. Alo don’t do marines, but they might not like us on their dock all the same, we’ll have to tread carefully.”

“They can lodge a complaint,” said Erik. “It’s a human station, I don’t really care what they think.”

Trace nodded. “Everything else, we can wing it. Our story is that Captain Pantillo and Commander Huang were exposed to a toxin as a sabotage from within, as a part of the traitorous leak that got us ambushed, and are currently in medical and unable to be exposed to others. It’s actually not far from the truth with our internal crew troubles, and will match our actual security posture. Our platoon on dock won’t allow anyone in, and we’ll both be in the hospitality of Debogande Enterprises, so anyone calling on available command staff should call on us there. If they want to see Captain Pantillo personally, we tell them they should have called on the way in. And if anyone does call, Lieutenant Shahaim can… what was Lisbeth’s expression? Lie like a Senator?”

“Lie like a Congresswoman,” Shahaim confirmed. “I’ve got kids, I learned the art.”

“A last thing,” Trace added, “I’d recommend we prepare some of those hacksaw carcasses for transfer to station, Hoffen have some advanced labs, but mostly we need to maintain our story. If the tale we’re telling had actually happened to us, we’d be giving them bits of hacksaws for study. And that might distract them from the rest of it.”

“Yes,” Erik agreed. “Lieutenant Shahaim, please give the order to prepare some of our hacksaw material for relocation, and contact station labs to let them know it’s coming.”

L
isbeth had helped
store and study the hacksaw remains, so when the order passed through Engineering to get some out of storage after they’d docked, she left Jokono and Hiro to their com feed and went down to storage with Carla and Vijay.

“We should get out there,” Vijay insisted as Lisbeth followed Carla down the back-quarter corridor. Both bodyguards were armed with the personal weapons they’d brought aboard,
Phoenix
marines seeing no point in removing them. “Or someone should. They’ll be watching all
Phoenix
personnel on station, but they don’t know us. If we can sneak on, we could move around and talk to some people, learn what’s going on.”

“Sure,” said Carla, eyeing the passing foot traffic. “Let’s let the LC talk to our company guy here, then we’ll have some idea what to do next.”

They climbed the next level up to storage and found Ensign Remy Hale already directing several spacers about the storage racks. “Lisbeth, good!” she said. “I was thinking we’d take the third and fourth torsos, they’ve got no technology we haven’t got replicated in the others, and they’ve got some cool bullet holes that make our story look good.”

“Um, sure,” said Lisbeth, going over to help with the racks while Vijay and Carla took position at the door. “Just, I think the third torso had some really interesting heat diffusion that looked very different from the others? That’s the amazing thing, they’re all unique and…”

“Fuck!” yelled one of the spacers, scrambling back from an open rack. Everyone spun.

“Geri!” Hale demanded. “What is it?”

“It fucking moved!” Spacer Townsend said, backing away, her eyes wide. “I saw it!”

Lisbeth crouched to look at the segmented torso, suspended in netting within the sliding frame. Was it her imagination, or could she hear a faint whirring sound? The torso segment twitched, and the whole netting leaped as Lisbeth bit back a scream, and others shouted alarm.

“Get back!” Vijay shouted, putting himself between Lisbeth and the open rack, pistol levelled. “Get the hell back, all of you!”

“No wait!” Lisbeth shouted above the commotion. “It’s… don’t shoot it again, it’s dead!”

“I don’t care,” said Carla, hauling Lisbeth to her feet and pulling her to the door while Vijay covered. “We’re out of here.”

“No! No wait, it’s not… Remy, tell them it’s not…” Remy Hale gave the two bodyguards a fast nod and wave, telling them to go while talking rapidly into her com. “Dammit guys, let me go!”

E
rik stood
in the storage room, Trace at his side. Rooke was there, mobile scanner in hand, turning slowly about as the readings changed. Remy was there too, and Lisbeth, still fuming at having been dragged away by her armpits. Three more marines were also present, fully armed. Trace would have brought more, only there wasn’t enough room for them plus the techs and command staff.

One of the big wall racks had been extended, and a segmented hacksaw torso hung in the nets, periodically twitching. Several of the steel limbs in the vertical press racks also made an occasional rattle. Creepy didn’t begin to describe it.

“So much for them not coming alive and murdering us in our sleep,” muttered one of the marines.

“I
told
you,” Lisbeth said with exasperation. “They’re all disconnected, they can’t hurt anyone, they’ve no means to move and all their weapons have no ammunition anyway.”

“Sure fine,” Trace said coolly, keeping one shoulder ahead of Lisbeth, her rifle levelled as she looked slowly around. “No one get any closer.”

“No… look.” Second Lieutenant Rooke stared only at his device. “It’s… it’s definitely coming from the alo ship. It’s docked right alongside, we’re, like, right inside its primary field, the hacksaws are just echoing that field…”

“A field of
what?
” Erik asked.

“It’s… it’s just a very modulated form of gamma, it’s at harmless low levels but it’s… it’s present in every alo ship we have on record. The ones they operate, anyway —
Phoenix
doesn’t have it, there’s something different about the powerplants on the tech they give to us, and the tech they use themselves.”

“You mean they’re not
doing
anything?” Hale wondered.

“No, that’s just it,” Rooke insisted. “They’re not doing anything different. They’ve just got engines on standby, basic systems running. Nothing special.”

“Only no one’s ever brought a dead hacksaw this close to an alo ship before?” Lisbeth asked, wide-eyed.

Rooke lowered his device and looked at her, as though properly seeing her for the first time. “Yes.” He grimaced, as though realising the enormity of that. “Yeah. Shit.” And put a hand to his head.

“So wait,” Trace said in a low voice. “What does that mean? Alo use hacksaw technology? Or hacksaws use alo technology?”

“We don’t know,” said Rooke. “No one knows the alo. We’re not allowed into their territory, they don’t permit study, they don’t talk, they’ve flat out killed any ship that goes anywhere it’s not supposed to be in their space, ally or not. They’re a mystery, we just know that they’ve been allies with the chah'nas for a few thousand years and they’ve got the most advanced ships and technology in the Spiral. And
Phoenix
is based on their tech, which is why it’s so much faster than anything else we’ve got… save for a few others
also
based on alo tech.”

“Unbelievable,” Erik murmured. “Would have been nice to ask that queen a few questions while it was still alive and talking.” Trace said nothing. “Only thing we know is there’s no record of the alo being in space before or during the Age of the AIs. Is there
any
record of a connection between alo and AIs?”

“Well sure,” said Trace. “I bet someone knows. Up in Fleet High Command. Another thing we can ask them, when we get their ear.”