Nemesis (16 page)

Polite applause sounded around the room. Mark played along.

‘Fine words for a fine mission,’ said Yunus, waving a professorial finger. ‘I’ll be brief as we have a lot to cover today. In outline, this mission will comprise three ships: one diplomatic, one enforcing and one silent backup. The diplomatic ship is the
Gulliver
.’

The projector bubble gave them a slowly rotating 3D view of the ship. Like all human-built ships, it looked like a dull metal ball covered with the broken-umbrella spines of warp inducers.

‘It will be unarmed, of course, except for two highly trained Spatials who will remain in coma, except to provide support if we engage in any face-to-face diplomatic activity. In accordance with Vartian Institute recommendations, this ship will not carry messenger drones in case alien tampering leads to soft contagion.’

Mark tried not to groan. That was classic Vartian Institute reasoning for you – paranoid to the last. Rather than keep something useful aboard, they threw it out to prevent the one-in-a-billion scenario that someone might try to use them to spread viruses.

Hugo Vartian had been obsessed with alien software infections. At the end of his life, he’d lived in a recreation of a twentieth-century home, apparently, without a single data hub in it. He even had a human cleaner, if the rumours were true, and cooked his own food on gas burners like someone out of a period drama.

‘At the recommendation of the senate, the ship has been configured for maximum security,’ said Yunus. ‘It will run under a segmented security regime. This means it will comprise three independent modules, each with its own software domain – one for science, one for diplomacy and one for pilot control. This should prevent any software incursion that
does
arise in any section from spreading to the others. Each module will have its own primary officer. The science section will be run by Professor Citra Chesterford, the diplomacy section by Overcaptain Sam Nagano-Shah, and the Fleet section, of course, by the ship’s captain, Mark Ruiz. I will be the only person with emergency overrides for all three.’

Mark tried not to look chagrined. Who had ever heard of a captain not having full control over his own ship? He couldn’t help but wonder if this gem was a direct result of Will getting him the job.

‘This also means that instead of a single set of cut-outs for your surgical augs, there will be three,’ said Yunus. ‘If a software incursion occurs in one part of the ship, hitting the aug cut-out will drop body support everywhere. It’s our hope that this will enable the team to avoid being even partially exposed.’ He pulled a droll expression. ‘Reassuring, isn’t it?’

The regal-looking woman in a conservative head-sleeve sitting next to Yunus let out a peal of tinkling laugher. His wife, the biologist, the SAP informed him.

‘Having said all that, the
Gulliver
’s objective will be to engage in
peaceful
dialogue with whatever force is responsible for the Tiwanaku Event. If that objective proves impossible, the
Gulliver
will withdraw. While unarmed, the ship does possess some of the most sophisticated warp engines ever devised.’

Yunus brought up some engine specs. The
Gulliver
really was eye-wateringly fast. It could manage two kilolights, which was ridiculous. Mark didn’t doubt the ship guzzled antimatter. He hoped they had plenty of fuelling stops set up.

‘The enforcer ship is, of course, the
Ariel Two
,’ said Yunus. The familiar flower-bud shape of humanity’s only weaponised nestship appeared in the bubble. ‘As usual, it will be under the command of Will Kuno-Monet and subbed by Nelson Aquino and his crew. The
Ariel Two
’s objective is to observe the diplomatic exchange while providing the promise of force if negotiations are not held in good faith.’ Yunus raised a cautionary finger. ‘It will be paramount for the
Ariel Two
to maintain a safe distance from the proceedings unless called upon to act. If physical threat becomes apparent and the
Gulliver
is forced to withdraw, then – and
only
then – will the
Ariel Two
take over as primary point of contact.’

Mark glanced across at Will to see how he was taking this but Will had his Statesman face on and was impossible to read.

‘The backup ship is the
Chiyome
,’ said Yunus, ‘under the command of Andromeda Ng-Ludik and subbed by Jaco Brinsen-Nine.’

He pointed to an athletic-looking woman with a buzz cut and
don’t fuck with me
eyes who looked like she’d be equally at home in a lab-coat or at the safe end of a sniper’s rifle. He’d heard of Andromeda but never met her in person. She had the reputation of being scary effective and about as warm as a nice day on Triton.

When Yunus brought up a picture of the
Chiyome
, Mark sat up and blinked. It looked like a human rebuild of a Fecund ship on a much smaller scale, with a heavy emphasis on the quantum shield. Mark had never seen a ship like it, and he’d seen plenty. Someone in Fleet Research had been busy.

‘The
Chiyome
’s objective will simply be to observe,’ said Yunus. ‘It uses a new kind of cloaking technology that extrapolates from the Fecund quantum shield principle and will be effectively invisible throughout the mission.’

‘Wait,
what
?’ said Zoe. ‘You’ve got a working
gravity cloak
? When was that problem solved?’ The purple-haired scientist managed to look excited and appalled at the same time.

Yunus shrugged. ‘I don’t have any data for you, I’m afraid. And in any case, after this briefing, the
Chiyome
will operate as a separate entity. It will be deployed only in the unlikely case that the
Ariel Two
encounters difficulties. If that happens, the
Chiyome
is well prepared to resolve conflict. It is equipped with both a modified suntap energy-capture system and a boser canon. As you can see, we’re taking no chances with this mission.’

Mark’s mouth fell open. So the Fleet was building stealth ships with bosers now? The boser was another Transcended giveaway technology like the suntap. It accelerated coherent iron to near-light-speed and fired it like a laser. It was also banned by just about every law that IPSO had. Even the ones on the
Ariel Two
had special locks on them that only a few people could open. With a ship like the one he was looking at, you’d be able to slide up to the planet of your choice undetected and butcher the population with the flick of a switch. It was a blatant invitation to war.

Mark glanced around at the other faces in the room to see if anyone else was worried by this. To her credit, Venetia Sharp looked disgusted and was scowling from under her black bob. Zoe Tamar looked stunned. Will was as carefully blank as ever.

‘For obvious reasons, our fuelling stops will all be at secret locations.’ Yunus showed them a star map. ‘We’ve picked out two stars in the local shell, here and here. They have the survey names Gore-Daano and Tontoundin.’

Their flight plan went out of its way to avoid the primary traffic routes on the Penfield Lobe that lay between the old and new frontiers. Mark scowled. He’d assumed they’d be going via New Panama. Anything else seemed crazy and nothing in the high-level briefing he’d received had suggested otherwise. This last piece of Fleet secrecy was going to cost them.

The lobe was the Transcended’s artificial bridge between the navigable sheet of stars referred to as the human galactic shell and its neighbour closer to the core: Fecund space. You couldn’t get from one shell to the other without going through it, which meant that all the cheap, efficient crossings were crammed with traffic. Any other route came with delays and serious fuelling overheads.

‘I’m sorry,’ he blurted. ‘What’s obvious? Why won’t we be stopping at New Pan? Don’t they have data and resources we need? Like the latest scans of the target system, for instance? And other neat stuff that will help us not die?’

‘The
Chiyome
can’t be seen at—’

Mark cut Yunus off. ‘Okay, fine for the death-ship, but you just said it’ll be operating independently. Why should it affect anyone else? We’ll be going in blind, otherwise.’

A warning ping from Will appeared in Mark’s sensorium. [
Remember, you have to fly with this guy.
]

Mark ignored it. His opinion of the Fleet had dropped plenty in the last five minutes. If they were going to distort the entire mission so they could bring this war-crime-on-rails along with them, Mark wanted to know why.

Yunus looked peeved at being interrupted again, which was fine in Mark’s book.

‘The mission is being conducted quietly so as to not create panic,’ said Yunus. ‘Which is why we’re here today.’

‘New Pan has ships routed via quiet stops in the out-system all the time,’ said Mark. ‘There are police missions every week. Plus didn’t you just say that ship was invisible?’

‘The senate decided—’

Mark raised his eyebrows. ‘Obviously. But
why
?’

Yunus pulled a face that suggested he was working hard to stay civil.

‘Maybe I can help out here?’ said Sam Shah.

Mark recognised Sam, of course. Overcaptain Shah was regional head of Far Frontier police operations and one of the heaviest hitters in IPSO. He was the man most people credited with keeping the Frontier safe and open. In person, Sam had a kind of cheerful gravity like a well-mannered neutron star. When he entered the room, all eyes bent towards him. The fact that he was even on this mission was astonishing to Mark, let alone that he’d agreed to come as a passenger.

‘Essentially, this is a matter of Fleet secrecy, I’m afraid,’ said Sam sadly. ‘There are strategic reasons for our routing. You’ve all signed the Fleet non-disclosure so I see no point in not telling you. The alliance of sects that spearheads the Flag movement has found and repaired an intact network of Fecund fuelling stops.’

Mark’s eyes went wide. ‘
Intact?
’

Muttering filled the room as Sam’s explanation continued.

‘They’re at brown dwarf stars that didn’t nova during the Fecund extinction event, which means they’re in nearly perfect condition even after ten million years dormant. Many of these sites have biological remains and devices that are still under analysis.’

Mark shook his head in disbelief. This was
huge
.

‘In some ways,’ said Sam, ‘the sects have been more innovative about tracking down Fecund artefacts than the Fleet has. Needless to say, this represents a technological goldmine for Earth’s Truist Revival movement. And it explains how they’ve been able to get so many people to sites at the Far Frontier without Fleet detection. To the best of our knowledge, they don’t know we’re on to them – we still hold the technological edge. But the Tiwanaku Event calls that supremacy into question. As you can probably guess, we developed the
Chiyome
to even the odds in case of a sneak attack. Obviously revealing it to you all on this mission constitutes a calculated risk. But frankly, if we can’t pull this mission off safely, it wouldn’t stay secret much longer anyway.’

Mark realised then that human civilisation was teetering a lot closer to the point of meltdown than he’d ever imagined. The fact that the sects hadn’t announced so huge a find and just made a profit off it spoke volumes. Behind the clotted crap of IPSO politics, forces were aligning. The Flag settlements might depend on loopholes in the law right now but there was no reason they had to stay that way. It cast the presence of a ship like the
Chiyome
in a whole new light.

‘Naturally, we don’t want to give the game away any more than we have to,’ said Sam. ‘So our route to Tiwanaku remains quiet, in case someone decides we should have an accident before we get there. And indeed, several of the scenarios our modelling SAPs have raised show exactly that outcome. In those cases, the Tiwanaku Event functions as a kind of lure to get the
Ariel Two
out of the picture, leaving the Far Frontier open for a bolder military move. If the sects have the resources to cook up a scheme as ornate as the Tiwanaku Event, we have to assume they also have the ability to attack colony worlds on multiple fronts. In light of this, the data we need for insertion will be provided by stealthed sentinels posted at the edge of the Tiwanaku System rather than from New Panama itself. So don’t worry, Mark – you’ll get the data you need. Nobody is going to send you in there blind.’

Mark nodded absently. He could now see the dual standard the mission represented. Yunus was there for the fluff. The likes of Will and Sam were there to make sure that whatever group was behind Tiwanaku got nailed to the wall before they started a war. Will had brought him in because, for all their history, Will knew exactly where Mark’s allegiances lay. And he wasn’t wrong.

Silence hung over the meeting room as everyone digested the political reality they’d just been presented with.

‘Glad we’ve got that covered,’ said Yunus brightly. ‘In a nutshell, our job is to visit, understand and report back to New Panama. If our ships are split up for any reason, we are to rendezvous here.’ Another star map appeared. ‘This system has the survey name Nerroskovi. It’s just two light-years from Tiwanaku, which should make the process straightforward. Of course, if the location is needed, it’s likely that your ships will have engaged in evasive manoeuvres, so we’ve modelled expected rendezvous windows and included them in your flight plans.’

Mark watched Yunus scan the room, surveying the distracted gazes of the participants and trying to recapture some semblance of control over the proceedings.

‘As you’re all aware, despite the military speculation behind this mission, it will be carried out under the working assumption that
aliens
are responsible, not humans. And it’s important we make that possibility our focus and our number-one priority. And this presents us with a paradox,’ he added enthusiastically. ‘If the aliens are as malign as they appear, why have the Transcended not intervened in their development as they threatened to do with ours? Yet if they are not malign, why did they attack? I have my own theories, of course, but it would be wrong to bias you this early.’