Renegade (41 page)

For all the life and colour, it was less lively than Erik recalled — many of the once-crowded facilities looked empty. And here passing the walls were a squad of station cops, grey uniforms with light armour and non-lethals — zap-batons in official parlance, but ‘kidney sticks’ to the locals. This group had sidearms holstered but moved with purpose, stopping now to talk forcefully to some shop owner floating in his circular hatchway. Some teenage kids holding to the inner piping, where no kids were supposed to hang, watched the cops sullenly. One saw Erik looking, and gave the passing crew the finger.

“I see everyone’s real happy we won the war,” Erik remarked.

“Which war?” said Trace.

“Yeah,” Erik murmured. “Good question.”

They dismounted opposite Registration — the dismount line ran close alongside the handline, and passengers simply took a plastic handle and let it run them at slow deceleration into the dismount station, alongside the mount queue waiting to get on. From there another handline ran wide up the wall to avoid tangling with traffic. Erik saw one of the shop glassfronts was broken, with no sign of impending repair. Several others were closed, lights off and dead. An office worker from an insurance shop watched them pass — insystem runners often liked face-to-face quotes, so insurance companies put reps up in the hub, one day a week so they didn’t violate the heavy-time mandates. This rep looked bored and wary, watching the passing marines while sipping a sealed coffee flask. A Spacer, Erik guessed, personally unworried by the cops but unimpressed at the disruption to business.

Registration queues weren’t long, automated gates checked IDs once they got inside, and scanned irises, while patrolling station security watched behind the gates with guns. Staff Sergeant Kono led them up the military queue, where a fast scan and a station guard let them through. All IDs heading from hub down to rim were registered, mostly to keep track of insystem traffic. Erik doubted the starship traffic was the main cause of station’s security headaches here.

Beyond Registration, parallel passages emerged into one of the most amazing spaces Erik had ever seen. It looked like a steel canyon, with enormous magnetic railings along the walls, buzzing and crackling with incredible electricity charge. ’Above’, the slowly moving canyon ceiling was the rotating outer hub, the outside part of Heuron System’s largest wheel bearing. To either side of the canyon, capsule car rails ran alongside the mag-railings, curving up the endless horizon. These capsule cars were larger than those up in the station hub, and without near or far doors. People ahead floated into the near car, and it took off on humming rails while another took its place.

Kono led them on, and no following civilians tried to share it with them. They set off, shifting onto the outer lane and accelerating gently after the car ahead until they saw the huge stubby end of the station’s five-arm elevator shaft running away from them within the massive space between canyon walls ahead. The first car paralleled it, people floating into the elevator car, then sealing as the empty capsule car pulled into the inner lane, and their own chased it.

A new elevator car arrived within the bulky double-shaft elevator, and passengers emptied onto the departure cars on the far side of the hub rim. Far doors closed, and near doors opened as the elevator car shifted from the ascent shaft to the descent, matching the open side of the marines’ capsule car, and the
Phoenix
crew all pulled themselves in. A tight seal hissed, then a thud of movement and they were away, feeling as though they were moving ‘up’, into the ceiling between giant hub rails.

Information screens flashed on within the moving car, as shaft walls enfolded them at increasing speed. Kono’s security ID would ensure it didn’t stop for more passengers. “
Welcome to Hoffen Station
,” beamed a friendly female voice. “
Did you know that Hoffen is an old Earth word meaning ‘hope’?
”

“It’s German,” said Private Terez, holding a support as station rotation pushed them sideways. “From Germany.”

“No shit,” said Arime.

“Where was Germany?” Van wondered.

“Europe,” said Terez. “Where white people came from.”

“Yeah I know that dumbass,” Van retorted. On the information screen, the saleswoman continued to prattle about various tourist-friendly station statistics.

“Tavalai called it Kroptaptamian,” said Trace. “It means a completed life’s goal.”

“Damn,” said Rael. “Froggies got a word for everything, don’t they?”

“Better than Hope,” said Trace. “What the fuck is Hope? Hope for what? An icecream? A quick death?”

Bemusement on the faces of several marines. “Uh, isn’t that kind of the point?” Arime asked. “That Hope can mean anything you want it to?”

“It means nothing,” Trace said flatly. “I’m sick of happy bullshit that means nothing. Vacuous words for vacuous minds.”

Kulina had no hope, Erik thought. Kulina accepted their karma. The universe had something in store for everyone, and for Kulina it was usually bad. Eventually.

“Kulina volunteer their lives, and their service, in the ‘hope’ that it will make a difference, surely?” he asked her.

Trace looked at him, as the sideways force translated to downward force, and they all slowly swung upon the pivots of their handholds, feet drifting toward the ceiling that now became the ground. “There is a necessity that someone should,” Trace retorted. “Recognition of a necessity is not the same as hope.”

“So you hold no hope for yourself,” said Erik. “You’re Kulina, you accept your fate, come what may. What about hope for the rest of us? Hope for
Phoenix
? For humanity?”

“Hope creates illusions,” Trace said firmly. “People who hope only see what they wish to see. What you’re talking about are my personal feelings. Of course I hope, I’m weak and human like everyone else. But I fight it every day, because wishful illusions get you killed.”

“You hope it’ll help,” Erik offered.

Trace gave him a dry sideways look behind dark shades. It turned into a reluctant smile. “Don’t be a smartass.”

“I’ll try,” said Erik. “But I don’t hold much hope.”

Trace grinned. “Me neither.”

“Evidently.”

“Are you two flirting?” wondered Terez. And tried to shrink into his armour as both his superiors stared at him.

“No hope for this one,” Erik deadpanned.

“I abandoned it long ago,” Trace agreed.

The support arms on many wheel-stations were little more than transitions between hub and rim, but on Hoffen they had levels and levels, like a four kilometre high skyscraper, each level with progressively more gravity the closer it was to the rim. More hundreds of thousands of people in each arm, and this was just Hoffen-A — the entire station repeated, the second wheel of Hoffen-B, joined by the stationary axle and twin hubs. Seven million capacity per wheel, close to another million in the zero-G hub and axles, fifteen in total. The very first humans to see such things had had trouble getting their heads around the scale of it, and how it would be possible to fill such facilities with people. Now there was amazement that people had ever wondered, and talk of new facilities in the planning phase, to accommodate the growing boom.

The elevator whined to a halt at main rim dock, full gravity restored as the doors opened onto a high metal ceiling and relative open space. Simulated sunlight seemed bright, and Erik reached for his own glasses as they stepped out. The right-hand wall was the outer rim — First Rim in stationer talk, a hundred and ten berths all the way around, a hundred and ten more on Second Rim, two hundred and twenty on Hoffen-A and the same number on Hoffen-B. First Rim wall was a series of lighted displays all the way up the curving horizon in either direction, the ceiling heavy with piping for air and water, while cargo and fuel ran below-decks. The opposite wall was retail and accommodation, the station/city presenting a welcome face of bars, clubs, hotels and other entertainments to visiting spacers. Beyond that, through the hallways, the living and work spaces for all these people, layer upon layer about the rim.

Exiting the elevator, Private Kumar immediately swung left, indicating possible threat, and Kono followed. No rifles were raised, so Erik joined them and looked. Before them, standing by the elevator wall as though waiting for them, were three tall, robed, hooded figures. Their robes were various shades of grey and black, silvery in the synthetic sunlight and shimmering. Their faces were mostly veiled, save for jet black eyes with a bluish tint. Beneath the veils, the hint of wide nasal and mouth arrangement that made up most of the lower face, delicate and protected.

Alo. Three of them, and apparently waiting for them, as though they’d known precisely where to be.

“Greetings,” said the one in the middle. Its voice was toneless, little more than a high-pitched series of clicks produced so rapidly it might have been mechanical. The hacksaw queen had been more expressive. “Crew of
Phoenix
. Welcome to Hoffen Station.”

“Greetings to you,” Erik said cautiously, stepping forward to Staff Sergeant Kono’s side. “To whom am I speaking?”

“Aloish I am. That is enough. Your ship is damaged. We can repair.” ‘Alo don’t answer questions,’ Erik recalled the Captain telling him once. ‘They’ll walk all over you if you let them. Too much respect for alien customs is dangerous. Call them on it, or you’ll find yourself dancing to their tune.’

“Without your name, your offer means nothing to me,” Erik replied.

A short pause that might have been laughter. The dark eyes squinted a little behind the hood and veil. “Aloish. I am senior.
Phoenix
is a grand vessel. One of our best. It pains us to see you mistreat her. Fix her we will.”

A hand appeared from the robes, with a wise lack of urgency, wary of armed human reflexes. In the gloved fingertips was a white card. Kono reached for it, and the alo pulled it sharply out of reach, looking at Erik. Erik reached into his pocket, and pulled out a glove. Tugged it onto his bare hand, pointedly, then reached past his Staff Sergeant to take the card. Another light hiss from the alo, laughter again. With a gesture, it turned, and its two companions followed it away.

Erik looked at the card. On it was scrawled alo script, oddly scruffy looking, next to the alo’s usual immaculate presentation. “Anyone read alo?”

He showed it to Trace. “Hang on.” Presumably she activated some uplink function on her glasses back to
Phoenix
. “Torshik. That’s an anglicised name, the original’s untranslatable. Ambassador.”

Erik frowned. “Ambassador to Hoffen Station? Or to Heuron V?”

“Ambassador to Heuron System. All of it. Database even gives me a match on the visual I got of his face. That’s him, Ambassador Torshik. This is the alo’s most important post in human space, so that’s probably the most important Ambassador they have anywhere.”

Offering to fix their ship? Erik watched the three robed figures vanish into a doorway, and felt a very nasty trepidation. Like somehow, they were all being watched, and Fleet command weren’t the only people they had to worry about.

“Ask them why our dead hacksaws come back to life in proximity to their ship?” Kono growled. “Makes me wonder if we ran into those things by accident after all, or if our alo-built ship led us to them. I mean, what are the odds?”

Terez summarised everyone’s feelings. “Fuck,” he said.

Trace gave her Staff Sergeant a whack on the arm. “Don’t scare the children,” she said. “Come on, we’ll be late.”

There were a lot of station cops on the dock, and far less civilian traffic than Erik recalled from last time he was here. Or on any big, busy station, for that matter. Some bars were closed, flashing signs muted or turned off entirely. One hotel window was smashed, a big hole that looked like something, or someone, had been thrown out of it. Corporal Rael indicated some dark droplets on the steel deck as they passed — blood, it looked like. Some men stood nearby, and paused deep conversation to glance at the passing marines.

“Cops,” said Kumar. “Plain clothes.” The cops nodded. Erik nodded back.

“Bird can smell them,” Van offered. “Cops that is.”

“Never got along where I’m from,” Private Anthony ‘Bird’ Kumar admitted. Many marines came from that sort of background, Erik knew. A few had been given ultimatums by judges — a long stretch in prison, or service. But only those who learned to control the aggressive impulse were any use.

Along the First Rim wall, occupied berths were either sealed firm, or watched by armed guards, or worse. Before one berth, another heated discussion — station officials in Immigration uniforms, arguing with freighter crew, while some worried-looking civvies watched on. One of the women held a small child, while the father clutched a suitcase. Either someone was being kicked off station, or had just arrived and was being denied entry.

Next up was a warship —
UFS Curzon
, the display read. Guarding the ramp were ten spacers with guns and light kit. They saw the
Phoenix
crew coming, with whispers and nods amongst themselves. They knew what ship these approaching marines were from. The officer amongst them saluted as they passed — technically outside the twenty meter limit for that formality, but spacers on dock always acknowledged other ships, and a salute passed as a greeting at distance. Erik returned it precisely, with a further nod, and kept walking.

“
Curzon
?” Trace asked him. As a spacer, he’d be more up to date on non-carrier ships than any marine.

“Sixth Fleet,” said Erik. “Tiger-class I think. Nothing special.”

Ahead, behind some decorative bushes before a hallway, was a disturbance, shouting and pushing. They got a clear view, grey uniformed cops in heavy gear were dragging some civilians, arms locked behind their backs while others shouted and yelled at them. Worlders, Erik guessed, as the marines silently formed up around him without needing to be told. Others were gathering, Spacers now grabbing those Worlders who were harassing the cops. More scuffles, and punches thrown. A wave of others rushing through, people flailing, screams and disorder.