The Mind Field (6 page)

From the long hallway, she could see more than two thirds of the ship. She added dimensions and schematics to the information she was displaying on Javier’s screen. To the right, the hatchway that probably led onto the bridge. At the rear, a huge, armoured bank–vault of a hatch. Obviously engineering. You wanted things going boom back there to stay back there.

Someone had painted a really strange logo onto the wall a little forward of the crossway. At first, Suvi had dismissed it as art, but from here, it looked official, and kinda important.

For fun, she locked her targeting brackets on the image and beeped Javier’s console extra loud. Through the tiny fish–eye lens he had installed on the control portable, she could see several people jump suddenly.

Suvi giggled.

She missed having access to
Mielikki’s
data banks. That thing looked like a symbol, but it was outside her current knowledge base. She would have to rely on the much–dumber computers running
Storm Gauntlet
to hopefully have an answer.
Mielikki
would have known instantly.

She missed being a starship.

A few moments passed. She watched the group consult. Guns came out. Javier apparently was arguing with them, but there was too much noise for the little microphone to wash it all out. And she didn’t want to listen to an argument today.

Javier surprised everyone by walking away from the group and entering the boarding tube. She could hear him clomp up the walkway towards her, followed a few seconds later by the big woman, Sykora, and the rest. The profanities bouncing around in the cool air seemed interesting. She filed them away for future use. You never knew when they might be useful.

Suvi watched Javier enter the ship through one of her cameras. She put his picture on his screen to say hello while the rest of her attention scanned the hallway.

She could hear little radio emissions bouncing around the ether. Javier had never bothered to load cryptographic software onto the remote, so she couldn’t listen in to whatever conversation the strange ship was having with itself. It didn’t sound particularly exciting, from the strength and frequency of the transmissions.

And Storm Gauntlet was WAY too stupid to be able to do something like that all by itself.

How could humans get around the galaxy in a ship that didn’t think? I mean, sure, they had before good AI’s had come along. But still, she was way smarter and way faster, and rarely fat–fingered a control. Whatever.

Javier stopped beside her, looked her in the eye with a smile, and cracked open the faceplate to his skinsuit. He took a shallow sniff, cold air being detrimental to organic lungs, and nodded.

According to her readout, the air should smell acceptable. Boring, without all those complicated trace signatures that plants, and soil, and chickens gave off, but not lethal and not particularly uncomfortable. To someone accustomed to
Storm Gauntlet
, probably a breath of fresh air, literally.

Humans were weird. But, hey, it paid the bills.

“Aritza,” the big woman boomed, across the air and the radio, “what the hell do you think you are doing? This ship could be dangerous.”

“Nope,” Suvi heard him reply with a chippy glibness. “Not with that.”

He pointed at the logo as he spoke.

It was a blue circle, reasonably thick, with a green ellipse painted across that. Overall, exactly fifty–two centimeters tall and fifty wide.

It had been painted by a human, rather than an AI. AI’s were too fussy for that level of wobbliness.

Okay, most AI’s. I might have done it in a lighter green, and added some sparkles to the paint. And maybe a few stars for effect. You know, ART.

From her knowledge of human eyesight, it might appear to be a planet with rings. Weird looking rings, but rings. There were a lot of weird–looking things out there. She had been a galactic surveyor for years. She could testify.

“What is that?” Sykora asked over the clamor as the rest of the boarding crew caught up.

“Something the
Neu Berne
military programs probably didn’t cover,” Javier said quietly, forcing her to lean down to listen.

She hated that, according to Javier. Suvi got the impression Sykora might be grinding her teeth right now. Certainly, she took a breath before she answered.

“Oh?”

“I only know it because I spent a weekend at a religious retreat a while back with the modern incarnation of those people,” Javier said evasively. “Weird folks. Generally harmless, but weird.”

“Pot, kettle,” the short, brunette pathfinder injected into the conversation as she arrived. Sascha was an extremely smart woman, from what Suvi had been able to surreptitiously observe.

Javier made a face at her.

“I got over it,” he snapped sarcastically. “Anyway, that is the emblem of a group of pacifists from a very long time ago.”

“Pacifists?” Sykora asked, dripping sarcastic honey on her words.

Suvi loved to listen to the tone and inflections the woman used. It was so different from Javier’s, or anyone she had known in the
Concord
. One of these days, she needed to convince Javier to take her to
Neu Berne
.

Sykora did something with her hands. Suvi watched Sascha and Hajna, the other pathfinder Javier played cards with, take up station looking fore and aft, guns drawn. The others stayed back in the side hallway, prepared to run or fight.

As far as Suvi could tell, Sykora was the most dangerous thing on the ship right now.

Javier watched, bemused.

“Pacifists,” he repeated. “Shepherds of the Word.”

“Which word, Javier?” Hajna asked, kneeling beside Javier and covering the aft hallway to engineering.

“Aritza,” Captain Sokolov’s voice came suddenly over the radio. “What are you talking about?”

Suvi got a headstart and transmitted the image of the logo back to the ship. They would think he had done it. He would back her up, later.

A moment of silence passed, breaths baited.

Suvi imagined the Captain asking his ship’s computer for more information. She envisioned an ancient butler, shambling along looking through a musty library for an ancient book. She giggled.

“Javier,” the Captain continued, “are you sure?”

“Sure enough,” Javier responded. “Plus, it’s been a very long time, so it’s not like there’s anybody here to bother us.”

“Agreed,” the Captain replied. “Sykora, stand down for now. Those people really were pacifists. Pay attention for surprises, but you should be safe from booby–traps.”

Part Five

Javier refrained from smugness. Outside. Inside? Different story. After all, Dad loved him best. See?

That thing on the wall had brought back a lot of memories. Most of them things he’d rather not remember, these days. He’d kinda forgotten how ugly things had gotten in his life after his first ex–wife left and his career with the Concord Navy started to ramp down with the budget cuts.

Out of work. Out of married. Down on his luck and himself. Amazing he had survived. Even gave religion a try at one point. For a long weekend. Those people had just been too weird to be believed.

He was much better now. Even Sykora really only occasionally got him mad enough to go back there. Okay, weekly. But that was down from daily. Hourly. Whatever.

The Shepherds of the Word. The Prophet of the People. The
Union of Man
. Things from the history books.

That painting there meant that this ship had, at one time, belonged to one of the actual Shepherds, one of the close followers of Rama Treadwell himself. The Prophet who had preached a universal brotherhood of man that should be reflected in a union of worlds. The Union of Worlds.

The battle that had destroyed
A’Nacia
had been, in its own bizarre way, the culmination of Treadwell’s life and teachings, twisted though the outcome had been. Even after he simply disappeared from history while traveling in deep space, his words had resonated. Some people had thought that that disappearance was what triggered the Unification War.

Javier wasn’t sure. He was kind of sketchy on that history anyway. After all, it was just about 650 years ago. And the Battle of A’Nacia was nearly 600 years ago, at the other end of the Unification War.

The Shepherds had faded, down the centuries, until they were only a few small monasteries tucked in out of the way places that were too damned cold and frowned on gambling and drinking. Silly people didn’t understand what made human organizations successful.

For luck, Javier touched the painting. He spun in place and scanned the hallway, correlating naval architecture with what he had learned in school.

Skinsuits didn’t allow it, or he would have cracked his knuckles.

“Right,” he said, mostly to Sykora. She and Ilan Yu were the only two looking at him, anyway. “Bridge at that end. Two cabins right behind it on one side, office and stores on the other. Wardroom and Rec room behind the hallway, most likely. Big engineering section back there.”

“Recommendations?” Sykora asked. There was no doubt she was in charge here. None. Devil take the hindmost if you asked her.

“We have power,” Javier replied. “Heat would be nice, and I want to see if the environmental system is up to handling a dozen people.” He smiled extra evil at Ilan. “You’ll get to practice on a very old system.”

“Joy,” Ilan replied with a tired sarcasm. Still, it was his job, and he was pretty good at it over on
Storm Gauntlet
. This should be a much less complicated system to fix up.

“Very good,” Sykora decided. “Drone first, then pathfinders, then me. Civilians behind that and one guarding the rear.”

Javier shrugged, pretty sure he and Ilan were the civilians. Still, let the gun bunnies absorb any incoming fire. Better that way. He pushed a button and let Suvi take point. She would protect him better than Sykora. She’d already proven that.

So he ambled along. Sykora’s Skinsuit just emphasized how nice her butt was. He could follow her around, pretending to pay attention to the remote, while Suvi was actually doing all the work. Too bad the rest of the Dragoon was so much less fun.

The words on the door didn’t really catch his attention. It was just another one of the side doors headed back to engineering. There were a lot of them. Turned out the ship was a little longer than he had expected. Or had smaller rooms.

After a beat, his brain clicked.
Cryonics Lab
.

“Oh, crap,” he whispered, forgetting that he was arm’s length from a keyed–up, heavily–armed lunatic.

She spun in place and drew her pistol in one motion, even before he could say anything to stop her.

Next thing he knew, she had it pointed between him and Ilan, safety off, prepared to unleash complete mayhem. Or what she probably called Tuesday.

“What?” she whispered hard at him. There was nobody to shoot. She sounded disappointed.

Rather than speak, Javier stuck out one hand and touched the little brass plate next to the door. He tapped it twice for emphasis.

“You don’t suppose…” He let the rest of the sentence trail off into the surf of its own accord.

“How old did you say this ship was?” she asked, standing a little more erect and holstering the weapon. She was no longer eye level with him.

He looked up and shrugged. “The design dates back about five centuries or so. I’d have to look at the deck plate on the bridge for her actual keel date.”

He thought about it for a few seconds. “Really freaking long ago.”

She looked at him hard. Javier nearly jumped in surprise when she shrugged back at him. “Anyone in there isn’t going anywhere, anytime soon. Let’s get engineering ship–shape.”

Hopefully, she wasn’t relaxing around him. He’d have to do something stupid, or personal, or both, if that happened. Little miss amazon ramrod never relaxed. He would bet money she slept at attention, although he had no intention of ever finding out.

“Move it, people,” she called out.

Suvi was already hovering at the hatch to engineering.

Javier knew she was just waiting, as she could have triggered the mechanism herself. But a remote wasn’t supposed to be that smart, so she played along.

Javier just pretended as though anything he pushed on the console actually did something. He made a mental note to ask her what actually happened, next time they were alone. It was probably something pretty silly, knowing her.

Sascha had to open the big armoured hatch to engineering instead. Hajna and Sykora covered her with weapons out. He and Ilan just stood around. The guy at the rear walked backwards with a cannon pointed up the hall.

Some people.

Like all good, military–grade starships, engineering was separated from the rest of the hull by a fairly solid internal airlock. Fires didn’t breath deep space, and if something went wrong back there, sometimes that was the only solution. Sucked to be an engineer at that moment, but they kept emergency breathers in every drawer for a reason.

Suvi passed through the airlock first. Javier typed away on the keyboard as she provided a running commentary.

Not as big as I was expecting.

Older design. Significant technological leaps during the Great War. It’s what made you possible, young lady
.

Still, it looks rough. Unpolished.

He had to agree. What she showed inside there had an almost amateur look. Maybe civilian was the word. Almost every starship he had been on in three decades was either active–duty military or retired surplus. There were certain rules of architecture that every navy followed. Physics were physics.

This looked like something thrown together from parts someone had salvaged from a junk yard. While drunk.

Of course, if they had been as serious about the whole vow of poverty thing in those days as now, they might not have the funds to build custom ships to spec.

Not that poverty had been the breaking point with him, that weekend he had spent at the monastery. No, it had been that stupid requisite vow of chastity. And sobriety.