Nemesis (30 page)

‘Factories,’ he added. ‘We know the sects discovered that network of Fecund charging stations. They’ve been busy exploring behind our backs, and my guess is they found something here that makes drones which they either activated by accident or decided to use at Tiwanaku.’

‘I’m not seeing any, though,’ she said nervously. ‘Are you?’

In truth, Will wasn’t, no matter how deeply he searched. However, his scans of the in-system revealed two surprises. The first was a planet of one-point-one Earth masses in the yellow star’s broad habitable zone. Analysis revealed calm weather and an apparently breathable oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere. A biosphere world, in other words, in apparently perfect condition.

However, the more startling discovery was his second: a short-range beacon quietly broadcasting a Fleet signal. Will held his breath and stared at the survey results. It took him a minute to form words.

‘What the fuck is
that
doing here?’

He burrowed into the data, scrabbling for a better look. The beacon proved to be a low-powered relay attached to a small orbital habitat stationed at the planet’s L2 position. A closer inspection of the planet showed a faint Fleet signal coming from the surface, too, along with some curious atmospheric contaminants that suggested the presence of industry.

Will’s face froze as the implications started to settle in. Unless the beacon’s security certificates had been faked, this planet had been found by the Fleet, not the sects. But this star system lay outside the domain of surveyed worlds, which meant that someone in the Fleet had come here off the books.

Disgust swelled inside him. If this was a Fleet secret, then his own people – his fellow IPSO officers – must have travelled here and made first contact without telling him. They’d kept him out of the loop and subsequently screwed it up.
His
team had been responsible for incurring the aliens’ wrath – and then hidden that fact from the rest of the organisation. It was an inconceivable breach of Fleet protocol and an unforgivable breach of trust.

But who’d done it? How many people were in on this? He remembered all those dreary budget reports from the Far Frontier he’d been made to look at, and all those depressing figures about lost ships and miscalculated fuel supplies. He’d not wanted to believe his own people capable of such incompetence. Maybe they hadn’t been. He should have looked deeper.

Will compared the security certificate in the beacon signal with the Fleet deployment database. The station he was looking at had supposedly been destroyed in a Flag conflict two years ago, light-years away in the Rosetta System.

Two years.

He swallowed, his mouth dry. While he’d been wallowing in private misery, someone had played him for a fool, and now people had died because of it. A kernel of white-hot wrath formed in the pit of his stomach, at least half of it aimed at himself. How had he, the most powerful single entity in all of human space, been so duped? With disgust, Will realised it had probably been easy. He drew some long, level breaths.

‘Will, stay calm,’ said Nelson quickly. ‘I don’t like this either but we’ll solve it. We just need to take it one step at a time, that’s all. No rash actions.’

Will turned to face him. ‘Did you know about this?’ he growled.

Nelson’s nose wrinkled in affront. ‘Of course not! What do you take me for?’

Meanwhile, Will’s SAPs kept ferrying back fresh details on the biosphere world below. The number of unusual biochemical signatures in the atmosphere beggared belief, yet the ocean showed extensive signs of algal vegetation. His long-range imaging systems returned pictures of a world with purplish oceans and charcoal-grey continents dotted with huge, symmetrical land-features shaped like starfish tens of kilometres on a side. They were clearly artificial.

Whatever was down there wasn’t Fecund or human. This wasn’t just a biosphere, this was the biggest alien discovery since the lure star. This time, though, it was his own people who’d hidden the secret while he’d been left playing politics. His guts wound tight with betrayal. Had the war meant nothing to these people? Were their memories
that
short?

As he closed on the mysterious orbital, Will opened a channel.

‘Fleet Station, this is Captain Will Monet of the
Ariel Two
.’ His voice quavered with barely suppressed rage. ‘I do not have this location assignment in my records. Please self-identify.’

He ground his teeth while he waited through the light-lag for their response.

‘It’s a relief to see you,
Ariel Two
,’ said a voice from the station. They left the video channel blank. ‘Welcome to Snakepit. We’ve been waiting a long time and we’re glad you’re here at last.’

Will gawped at the calm reply. ‘Fuck your gladness,’ he told them slowly. ‘Explain what you are doing here and what is going on. Otherwise I will blow you out of the fucking sky.’

9.4: ANN

Ann dialled back the warp at Snakepit’s heliopause, kicked in the tau-chargers and raced into the system under maximum stealth. Using the chargers and the stealth shield together put a ferocious drain on her antimatter but Ann couldn’t have cared less. Every second counted. The tension in the
Chiyome
’s cabin had never been higher. Beside her, Jaco Brinsen scowled into his display, his jaw flexing. Below her she could hear the nervous coughs of the others over the hum of the vents and smell their fear in the air.

As the light-lag dropped, bursts of Will’s conversation with the Snakepit habitat reached Ann, the gap shortening between each message.

‘… wise I will blow you out of the fucking sky.’

‘We’d be pleased to give you all the answers you need, Captain Monet. What would you like to know?’

‘What is this place?’ Will snapped. ‘Why wasn’t I informed when you found it?’

‘This system has been tentatively named Snakepit. It is the site of humanity’s finest exobiological find to date. The risk associated with informing you too early was deemed unacceptable.’

‘Unacceptable for whom?’ The menace in Will’s voice was palpable.

‘For the entire human race. Please don’t judge us until you’ve been fully briefed.’

‘And what the fuck does that entail?’

‘That will become clear shortly.’

‘By which you mean
what
?’ Will yelled.

‘Please wait one moment.’

‘Are you playing for time?
Really
, you fucking traitors? Because in case you hadn’t noticed, I’m in a
shoot first, figure shit out later
kind of mood.’

It was clear that Will’s emotions were ratcheting up dangerously, just like the models had predicted. She’d almost missed her window. Right now, everyone on that station would be holding their breath and getting ready to die.

Ann dived in straight, losing stealth-integrity as she did so.

‘Warm the boser, please, Kuril,’ she said. Regret choked her throat.

‘On it.’

‘We have boser targeting range,’ Jaco told her.

‘Zoti, fire the disabler message now,’ said Ann.

‘Done.’

The
Ariel Two
’s quantum shield stuttered as the hidden relays added during the mighty ship’s last refit came online. The liquid-silver shell surrounding the
Ariel Two
snapped in an instant, showering space with fused shielding alloy as its uncollapsed atoms lurched back to their natural state.

‘Boser scatter pattern Kazak One, please, Jaco,’ said Ann. She hated herself even as she spoke. ‘Fire at will.’

Jaco fired. While far less powerful than the
Ariel Two
’s main cannon, the
Chiyome
’s weapon still packed an incredible punch. Beams of coherent iron, fired at near light-speed, flickered across the
Ariel Two
’s massive hull.

Without a quantum shield to protect it, the boser lanced through the vessel as if it wasn’t there. Each perfectly aimed shot bored a hole through one of the ship’s primary power junctions before exiting on the other side, two hundred kilometres from its insertion point.

‘Successful delivery of the scatter pattern,’ said Jaco. ‘I recommend we move immediately to delivery of Kazak Two. That ship’s wired up like a brain. It has redundancy everywhere – give him five minutes and he’ll have half his systems back online.’

‘No, Mr Brinsen,’ Ann said quickly. The thought of firing again on Will’s crippled ship made her feel sick. ‘Your point is well made but our gesture is adequate, I think.’

She opened a channel. ‘
Ariel Two
, this is Captain Ludik of the
Chiyome
.’

A mixture of guilt and embarrassment flushed her features. She’d restricted herself to audio. She couldn’t stand the thought of anything more.

‘Your primary power is offline. You cannot fire or run. Please power down the rest of your ship and surrender. In return, your questions will be answered and your safety assured.’

She closed the channel before Will could scream at her. He’d need a few minutes for his predicament to sink in.

‘Keep a close watch on them, Jaco,’ she said. ‘Let me know if that ship so much as twitches.’

‘Of course,’ said Jaco. ‘My congratulations, by the way, ma’am. I wasn’t sure we’d make it, but you timed it perfectly. We nailed him, which means we’re past the next hurdle. It’s a win for the League and a step forward for the human race.’

‘Thank you, Mr Brinsen,’ she said coldly. ‘I appreciate it.’

She found it hard to put her finger on when in the last day or so she’d actually started to hate Jaco. One good thing about the next part of the mission was that she wouldn’t have to listen to him any more.

10:
FAILURE

10.1: MARK

On arrival at Nerroskovi, the
Gulliver
tethered itself to an asteroid half an AU out from the star to mine metals and conduct repairs. At Sam’s suggestion, they kept their albedo matched to the rock in case of unexpected visitors. Then they waited.

The two days Mark spent there felt longer than the rest of the mission put together. The Nerroskovi System held nothing but a small red star, some desolate rubble and a little ice. Mark felt naked sitting there every time he merged with the ship – naked and scared.

The expected arrival time for the other two ships came and went. The deadline for emergency departure loomed. The
Gulliver
still had no word from the rest of the mission. Mark wondered what had happened. Surely those tiny drones hadn’t been a match for the
Ariel Two
. That ship had been built by the Fecund for a scale of warfare the human race had never engaged in and hopefully would never see. He thought perhaps that Will might have gone to explore the exit vector the watchers had told them about. But then where was the
Chiyome
? Why hadn’t it arrived to explain what was going on?

The mood on the ship steadily worsened. Zoe and Venetia disappeared into their research. Sam talked extensively about contingency plans, most of which had nothing to do with their actual orders. And Citra confined herself to her lab in the science section, unwilling to come within Mark’s camera range.

Mark set the ship and its attendant rock at a comfortable spin to try to improve mood, but it didn’t help. At the end of his shift on the second day, he found himself conducting another futile scan for incoming signals when Zoe joined him on the bridge.

It wasn’t the first time - after Tiwanaku, she’d made regular visits. She generally asked for tweaks to the ship’s systems or assistance with robots to manoeuvre the drone remains around within the outer hull cavities. Under the circumstances, Mark had been only too happy to oblige. So long as he helped with her research, she stopped looking at him like dirt, which he counted as a distinct improvement. One happy passenger was better than none at all, even if their conversations usually petered out after the first minute.

‘Doctor Tamar, can I help you?’ he said, rising from his bunk.

‘We have to talk,’ said Zoe. She stood in front of him with an urgent look in her eyes, her body blocking the doorway.

‘Okay,’ said Mark cautiously. ‘About what?’

‘About that debris you picked up and what it means.’

This was new. Since their first abortive conversation, Zoe hadn’t tried talking science with him.

‘Go on,’ he said cautiously.

‘Most of it is recycled human equipment, or new kit built to modified human designs,’ said Zoe. ‘Take that out of the picture and all you have left is some
very
complicated biomachinery – too dense to understand, really – and some surprisingly lame warp-drive tech.’

‘Okay,’ said Mark. ‘That’s interesting, I guess. Nice work.’

‘It’s not just interesting,’ said Zoe. ‘It’s critically important. You gave me the pointer I needed, actually. Your remark about faking the warp signature the other day – it was wrong, of course, but it prompted me to write extra code to scan the warp envelopes on those drones, just in case. If I hadn’t been looking that closely, I’d have missed it.’

Mark felt a frown coming on. Zoe was being weird. ‘Missed what?’

‘There were
two
warp-drive designs in use in that cloud,’ she said, ‘not one – ours and theirs. Fortunately, the remains we collected contained bits of both kinds of drive. Just enough for me to prove the hypothesis. Apparently, when the Photurian machines encountered humans, they dropped their version of warp and started copying ours. I can hardly blame them – their version is weirdly over-designed and makes a warp field so thin I’m amazed it ever worked. No wonder the emission spikes were so sharp. It’s as if they were trying to build magnetic containers for a quantum shield and changed their minds about what they wanted halfway through.

‘The best you could do with their version was create a
film
of curvon discharge, not a channel of it. So we have our answer about the drones at last – Photurians are apparently terrible engineers, just like they’re terrible negotiators. Maybe that’s what happens when a bunch of SAPs try to invent warp drive instead of having people do it for them.’

Mark folded his arms and tried for a polite smile. ‘I don’t get it. How is this critically important?’

‘Here’s the thing,’ said Zoe. ‘Those original warp drives are so bad, there’s absolutely no way the drones we found could have reached Tiwanaku on their own – or ever leave, for that matter – which means they got here some other way. In other words, there’s a big part of the Photurian puzzle we just don’t have yet. A crucial part. And that’s why we have to go back to Tiwanaku.’

Mark stared at her for a moment, trying to figure out if she was serious. Her eyes retained their round, owlish stare. He realised, with a sinking feeling, that she was.

‘I can’t do that,’ he said. ‘It’s not in the mission plan and it would put everyone on this ship at risk.’

She brushed his comment away. ‘Mark, listen. Think about it. If the drones couldn’t have got there without help, what brought them? Why didn’t we spot it?’

Mark shrugged. ‘It had a tau-charger?’

‘No!’ she exclaimed, her voice rising. ‘It’s more obvious than that. The radiation weapon they fired when they arrived at Tiwanaku
wasn’t
a weapon. It was a drive. We were looking at the mother of all warp flashes without realising. It was the arrival of whatever brought those drones. Understanding what that thing is will give us the advantage we need to protect ourselves. And we’re not going to figure that out just sitting here and doing nothing.’

‘That’s great,’ said Mark. ‘Very impressive reasoning, and you’re probably right, but I can’t change my orders. We’re supposed to wait here until the final deadline passes, eight hours from now, and then we’re supposed to go home.’

Zoe scowled. ‘I know that. But this could mean the difference between peace and war. It’s the last piece of the puzzle!’

‘It’s the last piece of the
technical
puzzle,’ said Mark. ‘We still have no real idea why the Photurians attacked in the first place.’

‘What does that matter if they can’t do it again? Look, we don’t have to go right back into the system. Just to the edge. I could scan from there.’

Mark gave up and squeezed past her towards the chute that led down to the lounge. She followed him.

‘Look, I believe you,’ he said. ‘It’s just that we have a job to do here. I know that’s not a very popular idea right now, but we made a commitment to IPSO and it’s my intention to carry it out.’

‘So you can get your interface rights, is that it? Ash told me as much.’

Mark scowled and headed down the ladder.

‘Look, this isn’t about you and whether you’re a screw-up or not,’ she said. ‘It’s about the future of the human race.’

Mark rounded on her as she clambered down to meet him. ‘Did you even consult the rest of the crew yet?’

‘No,’ said Zoe. ‘I didn’t want to have to take it to a vote. We know what that’s like. I wanted to make you see reason first. But I can hardly imagine that Citra would complain. And I bet Ash would help.’

‘This conversation is over,’ said Mark and headed for his chair.

Zoe seized his arm. ‘Stop!’ she yelled.

Mark spun around. ‘What?’ he snapped, yanking his arm out of her grip. His anger derailed slightly when he saw the panicked expression on her face.

‘Don’t move,’ she whispered. She started sniffing the air.

‘What?’ said Mark. ‘What’s going on? What kind of bullshit is this now?’

‘Shut up a minute,’ said Zoe.

She sniffed the air energetically, as if impersonating a bloodhound, until she neared his chair.

‘Holy shit!’ she breathed.

‘Can I sit now?’ said Mark, his patience waning. He started to slide past her.

Zoe’s arm whipped out to block him. ‘Don’t! It’s been smeared with neurotoxins.’

Mark peered at her in confusion. ‘
What?
’

‘I can smell them,’ she said. ‘Vartian Institute implants in case of alien attack – I was fitted with biotech augs to detect chemical incursion. What did you think I was doing on the privacy level back at Delany – having my nails done? Stay right here, and if anyone else comes in, don’t let them sit down. Anywhere. I mean it.’

Mark stared after her as she raced up the ladder. He didn’t buy it. Who would be stupid enough to do such a thing?

Zoe returned seconds later with a medical sampler in her hand. She handed it to him.

‘Look for yourself.’

Mark synced with the device and swept it back and forth in front of his usual seat. Warning icons started piling up in his sensorium. She was right. Someone had rubbed the headrest of his chair with a very nasty nerve agent – one even his smart metabolism wouldn’t have picked up.

He blinked, thunderstruck. Someone had just tried to kill him.

‘What
is
that shit?’ he said, pointing at the seat. ‘And why do we even have it aboard?’

Zoe queried the database, patching information straight to her view. Then she threw him a window. A rotating model of a large, complex molecule appeared in his primary metaphor.

‘Look – it’s a compound from the Davenport biosphere. It’s a cytoskeletal disassembler used in comparative biology. Citra’s lab carries it.’

Mark couldn’t believe it. It was his usual chair, but anyone could have sat in it. It was pure luck that Zoe happened to have an aug that could detect it. She dashed back up the ladder again while Mark stood in a daze.

Citra was the likely culprit, but what could she possibly have imagined the fallout would be? She was a respected biologist. With him dead in a chair, her career would be over. While Citra had shown plenty of capacity for irrational behaviour, she wasn’t stupid. And the Chesterfords were nothing if not protective of their public personas.

Could it have been someone else, then? He wondered for a moment if Zoe was responsible. She’d discovered it, after all. Maybe she’d wanted to scare him. But with what motive? Venetia he ruled out immediately. She’d been supportive of him throughout. And he and Ash had too much history. His old friend had been unusually quiet over the last few days but Mark had felt, if anything, that Ash was working harder at their relationship. He looked constantly on the brink of opening up. And now that the mission had been so badly scorched, Ash didn’t come off as remotely hungry for the captaincy.

That left Sam. But as Venetia had pointed out, Sam was a cop. His whole career had been about maintaining order. Even if he genuinely thought Mark constituted some kind of nebulous threat to the mission, why try to kill him? And why now, with Tiwanaku already behind them? While talking to Sam still left Mark feeling uncomfortable, trying to picture him as the culprit didn’t sit right. He’d have just as much to lose as Citra from a stunt like this. More, in fact.

Zoe returned with a squeeze-bulb marked with lab codes and started spraying down the chair.

‘It’s time for another meeting, I think,’ she said.

Mark nodded in agreement and sent out an alert to the others while his hands shook from the shock. He’d come to hate their meetings. But an attempted murder called for an all-hands, whether he liked it or not.

10.2: WILL

Will experienced the blast as physical pain. He arched in his couch as his integrated mind burned with the damage to the ship’s internal systems. An agonised gasp escaped his lips. He collapsed back into the captain’s chair, his body bathed in sweat, and had to open his eyes and physically check to ensure he hadn’t actually been shot in the gut.

‘How?’ he wheezed.

While his heart pounded, he reached out through the tortured ship to scan for the origin of the attack. He knew what to look for. Though it pained him to contemplate it, he could think of only one ship with the capacity to deliver the blow.

The
Ariel Two
had been pierced through every one of its primary power routings in the same second. That implied an extensive knowledge of his ship. And the attack had come on the back of a soft assault that had taken out his shield. The
Chiyome
was out there somewhere.

Ann hailed him before he could spot her.

‘
Ariel Two
, this is Captain Ludik of the
Chiyome
. Your primary power is offine. You cannot fire or run. Please power down the rest of your ship and give yourself up. In return, your questions will be answered and your safety assured.’

Her demands sank a lead weight through his heart. The reason she’d been so keen to let him spill his feelings was now painfully clear. She needed to keep tabs on him to deliver this blow. Something cold curdled inside him. Give himself up? Fat chance.

A grim picture had started assembling itself in Will’s mind. The habitat below had sat here waiting for him without any shields to speak of, suggesting it didn’t consider the planet a threat. And Ann’s attack had left him defenceless – a move that suggested she held the same opinion. All this left the sickening implication that the Fleet hadn’t incurred the wrath of some alien species after all or tried to hide the details behind the Tiwanaku event. They’d caused it.

He could guess why. The Earth sects had been using hidden Fecund sites to fuel their advance, and this, somehow, was the Fleet’s answer. They’d gone looking for secrets of their own and found this place. And then they’d turned it into a tool of war. They’d taken an unknown alien technology and made it into a weapon.

No wonder the timing of the Tiwanaku Event had been so propitious. There’d been nothing accidental about it. Were the people on his own side that stupid, though? Hadn’t they read any history? But of course, they had to know how he’d feel. He’d never have let them do this, and that was why they hadn’t told him.

How long had they been exploring this while he’d been covering their traitorous asses on Mars? he wondered. How much time had they stolen? How much opportunity? And how badly had they fucked things up? It occurred to him then that he’d dragged Mark into the middle of a set-up. In doing so, he might have killed the closest thing he had to a son.