The Agathon: Reign of Arturo (16 page)

“Wait, wait, wait,” he said, grabbing the coat and taking some tools out of the breast pocket.

Aron took the coat and wrapped it tightly around Stanley’s severed neck. Oliver looked away as the sound of torn ligaments and crunching bones filled the room.

“Okay, that’s really gross,” he said.

“On three,” Aron said, preparing his legs to take the dead weight of the body.

He counted to three and the two men lifted the body off the floor. There was a squelching sound as it lifted off the blood. Aron couldn’t believe how heavy he was. Stanley was a big man at over six feet, but it looked like it was all muscle. Aron’s throat still ached from the powerful grip that had been around it and he coughed painfully when they finally had him off the ground. Oliver took a breath.

“Fucking hell, this guy is heavier than The Unity,” he said steadying himself.

“Okay, straight out the door, Ollie, as fast as you can to airlock one,” he said as they walked with the body towards the door. Aron was surprised at how little blood was dripping from the corpse. He figured most of it had been left on the floor as it felt wet underfoot all the way to the entrance. The door hissed open and the pair walked into the hall. It was all clear. Most of the crew were below decks prepping the final deployment, so their route to airlock one, which was about one hundred yards down the hallway, should have been clear. They moved swiftly. Oliver was walking sideways and looking behind him as Aron kept a firm grip on Stanley’s shoulders. His loose head flopped from side to side and kept knocking from one of Aron’s hands to the other. He tried to ignore the grim feeling and moved steadily down the hall. He reminded himself that he needed to work out and thought that maybe India was better suited to this task after all.

They reached the airlock door a few minutes later and Oliver pressed the release mechanism to the outer hatch. The door slid open and they placed the body inside on the ground. The pair stepped out, back into the corridor and hit the door mechanism sealing Stanley inside. Aron looked around the deserted corridor and tapped the outer release commands into the console. There was a ten second countdown and a red light flashed intermittently giving the chance to override the command. The two men stared at the corpse lying on the ground and waited. Aron watched closely as the outer door opened and the decompression quickly emptied the contents of the airlock into space. He entered the command to reseal and pressurise the room and looked over at Oliver.

“We’re fucked, right?” Oliver said raising his eyebrows.

“Yep,” replied Aron.

The clean-up had not taken long, and after a few hours the mess hall had been restored to its usual drab looking state, albeit a lot cleaner
than it tended to be. That, would probably raise suspicion with the crew, but it didn’t matter. If the chancellor found out what had happened, it would all be over in seconds anyway. After a shower and a change of clothes, Aron went back to the flight deck to check on India. She had gone there to check on things as it had been empty for the last several hours. He had brought her a hot tea and they were sitting in silence looking out at the stars. The final deployment had gone smoothly and all communication buoys were now in place. India had brought The Unity alongside the communications satellite and had allowed the ship to drift beside it. She had her legs perched up on the console in front of her and was sipping her drink. Aron had his arm behind his head and was deep in thought. He was running through the list of all the possible accidents that can happen on a space ship and which one sounded most plausible. He knew it didn’t matter, but maybe it could buy him time to make their move against Arturo.

“Any luck with the data rod?” he asked her suddenly remembering what Thomas Greenly had been executed for.

“Huh?” India said, obviously galaxies away in thought.

“The data rod. Any luck? There’s nobody looking over our shoulders now, better get on with it,” he said.

The little stick of data had been quietly ignored for the past several weeks. There was too much attention on The Unity to even attempt breaking its coding, and Aron thought now was as good a time as any to discuss it.

“Oh right,” India said, “No, give it to me.”

Aron reached down under his chair and ripped open the sealing, pulling out the inch-long transparent device. India took it from him and slotted it into the computer console on the left of her flight control display. She seemed to welcome the distraction and sat up in her seat placing the tea down and focusing on the task.

“Running a decryption algorithm, this may take a minute,” she said.

Aron looked at the screen as it glowed to life with streams of code and data symbols. India tapped commands into the computer. Aron
admired her skills with computers. Brains and brawn, and a temper to match.

A few minutes later the computer monitor changed to a menu screen prompting the user to choose which data file they wished to access. There were three main file directories to pick from.

        
•
Fuel Pods

        
•
Vishal Output Analytics

        
•
Vishal PODPERSONELL

Aron sat up and leaned over to India.

“Jesus, that was fast,” he said.

India looked at him.

“A little too fast?” she said.

Aron shook his head, not knowing, then turned his attention back to the screen. India selected the ‘Fuel Pods’ directory and the pair watched as a schematic began to take shape on the screen. Aron did not recognise its configuration. It looked like rows of pillars or columns with stacks of oblong containers attached to them. There were four containers in each row and ten rows of four stacked on top of each other. The pillars were set in a circular formation surrounding a larger dome at their centre with cables all leading to the central structure.

“What the hell is that?” India said.

Aron shook his head. He had never seen anything like it before in his life.

“I have no idea,” he said.

“Some new reactor Vishal is working on?” India said.

“Could be,” said Aron.

Aron couldn’t figure out why the plans for a reactor would be of any consequence, as finding a way to generate power had been a generations long battle. It was well known in all the tribes that power levels in the stations were nearing critical. Maybe it was more serious than he had realized. They looked at the computer rendering of the structure
for a few minutes more before India returned to the main menu. She tapped the screen and entered the ‘Vishal PODPERSONNEL’ folder directory. Rows and rows of faces descended onto the screen. Each had a set of physiological medical data typed neatly beside them, but no name. Aron did not recognise any of them.

“Who the hell are these people?” India said.

Aron shook his head.

“Scroll through,” he asked her.

She complied and started scrolling through the list of faces. They looked asleep, or dead. Aron didn’t recognise any of the faces. Which was not that unusual, they could have been files from the original colonial founders. The name of the folder worried him. What were Pod Personnel?

“I don’t get it,” India said, “what’s so important about these people that Greenly had to sneak this out of Vishal’s lab?”

Aron agreed. Greenly risked his life to get this data rod out of the forbidden zone and paid the ultimate sacrifice. He would not have done that for old colonial files. India continued to scroll down through the faces. There were hundreds of them. Then something caught his eye that made his heart skip.

“Stop!” Aron suddenly said.

India looked at him. Aron was sure it had just been an optical illusion.

“Go back,” he said sitting up in the chair and leaning over her to get a better look. India complied and started scrolling back slowly through the faces.

“There,” he said reaching over her and stopping the image.

He leaned in further to try and get a better look. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing. It was Jennifer. He was sure of it. It was a much younger version of her.

“It’s her,” he said keeping his eyes fixed on the girl. Her eyes were closed and she looked like she was sleeping.

“Jennifer?” India said surprised.

“Yes,” Aron said.

Aron got a sick feeling in his stomach. She looked like she did when they had first met. But there was something different about her. The scar. She had a scar above her right eye that cut a neat little row of hairs through her eyebrow that Aron had nicknamed the path to freedom. In this photo, her scar was missing. She had told him it had happened to her when she was a child, while she had been climbing down a ladder in one of the cargo bays. Now it was gone. There was something else different about her. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but she was different.

“What the fuck is going on?” he said.

India shook her head.

“Who the hell are these people? Damn you, Greenly,” he said.

He began to get angry. He wanted answers. The shock of seeing Jennifer had distracted his attention away from the communication beacon which had suddenly started to blink quietly behind him. India spotted it and pointed to it.

“Aron,” she said getting his attention.

He looked over at the light which was meant to activate when the relay buoys they had been laying out had made contact with The Agathon beacon. He turned his attention away from his dead wife and looked at the screen relaying data from the satellites.

Agathon beacon detected, please enter passcode to activate relay.

Aron looked at India.

“I don’t suppose he told you the password before I killed him?” India said.

Aron shook his head. They stared at the blinking red light for a moment when a second audible sound suddenly reverberated in the cockpit.

“Incoming ship to ship transmission, sir,” India said picking up the signal on the normal radio bandwidth.

“It’s The Kandinsky,” she said suddenly sounding panicked.

Aron exhaled deeply.

“Well … shit,” he said.

He sat back in his chair and rubbed the side of his face trying to figure out what to do next. All he could see was Jennifer’s quietly sleeping face as thoughts of her last scream drowned out the sounds of the cockpit.

11

The Kandinsky

G
eneral Escat waited. Something he did not do well. He sat back in his chair and sipped a large glass of hot water. He had not felt well all morning. Recently his nausea had been getting worse. He had put it down to a lack of sleep, but the cancer inside him was beginning to show its ugly head more virulently of late. The doc had told him it was pancreatic and while Arturo had secured him a vile of the few gene modification serums left in the colony, it had only bought him a few years. There simply wasn’t enough of the medication left to cure the disease. According to the ancient data base, it had been cured long ago while the Earth had still been a planet. It had crept slowly back into the colony and was starting to once again secure a foothold within its small population. Escat had managed it well and it had remained a tightly controlled secret with only Arturo, Stanley and the doc knowing the extent of the disease. Hot water calmed his stomach down in the mornings. Today he had vomited blood, which was new. He knew that it had probably progressed to his lungs as he was wheezing a lot more. Something he had never done. He had been finding his morning push ups to be a gruelling task and had cut the amount he could do, in half, in recent weeks.

The communications channel continued to bleep trying to make a connection with The Unity. Stanley had still not checked in and Escat had started getting suspicious. It suddenly turned to an active channel and the view screen shifted its black background with that of an image of Aron Elstone. Escat could not help frowning as his smug face filled the screen. He was alive after all. Stanley should have finished him off by now, Escat was sure of that.

“Mr Elstone,” he said raising an eyebrow.

“General Escat, what a pleasant surprise,” Aron replied, “To what do we owe the honour?”

Escat leaned forward in his chair and repositioned himself to square off with the captain of The Unity.

“Report, Mr Elstone,” he said.

Aron widened his eyes. There was something in them Escat did not like. He watched them closely.

“All systems nominal, General. We are just about to complete the last of the relays as per your orders. Everything is running like clockwork over here. The mission has been a success,” he said.

There was a moment of silence as Escat looked into his eyes.

“Where is Stanley, Elstone?” he asked.

Escat saw Aron’s shoulder shift slightly.

“He’s down in the engine room at the moment with Oliver working on the last of the relay systems. Oliver needed his assistance on one of the calibrations,” Aron said.

Escat frowned. Stanley never missed a check in and it seemed strange that he would be needed for any type of calibration.

“Can you please go get him, the chancellor wished to have a word,” he said.

He could clearly see Elstone shift slightly in his seat, but his eyes remained focused on the general.