Spinward Fringe Broadcast 7: Framework (16 page)

Changes had to be made, and it would start
with her. Ayan caught herself letting her eyes close when the
memory of the eager android Jake returned and she flinched herself
back to wakefulness. “Why did it have to be him?” she asked the
empty room.

“What’s that?” Laura asked.

“The one they sent to attack me looked like
Jake,” Ayan told her, squeezing her eyes closed. She was already
tired of breaking down, whether from emotional or physical pain, it
didn’t matter. “I stopped him,” she said, unable to stop a new wash
of tears.

“I’m sorry,” Laura offered genuinely. “I’m
so sorry.”

It was the last thing she had a chance to
say before the doors were forced open and Carthan soldiers rushed
in with a medical team in tow.

Shamus Frost couldn’t remember the last time
he’d taken a moment to watch an eclipse. It was only a phenomenon
of perspective and the movement of celestial bodies, but the one
above him was somehow special. The busy sky and the myriad ships
that traversed it were tinted in hues of red and purple as Kambis
appeared to block out the sun. Frost knew it was Tamber, the moon
he stood on, that was moving, and the colour was a result of light
passing through Kambis’ atmosphere, then through Tamber’s, but for
once the knowledge didn’t spoil the illusion. The view from where
he sat was incredible.

When he spotted the old lift leading to a
gangway running along the roof of the main hangar they were
rebuilding the Samson in, he wanted to check it out. However, the
need to remain anonymous was far more important at the time, and he
didn’t want to stand out as the only worker peon that was
exploring. When things settled down after the nearly two thousand
workers who had been sealed in their vacsuits for weeks were told
they didn’t have to remain hidden, he took the opportunity to take
that lift up all the way. From the gangway, he watched as everyone
below was given the next twenty hours off. Relief became
celebration, and he knew it would be an evening to remember. He
found a hatch leading up, and he made it to the roof of the hangar
in time to catch the light show of the eclipse.

The heat of the long day hadn’t subsided
yet, but Frost kept his hood down. A bead of sweat would
occasionally roll down his face and catch in the scruffy grey beard
he’d grown while he was incognito. The air was always swirling
around, thanks to the ships and smaller craft flying as near as a
hundred metres overhead, but that only heated the air, and lent it
fragrances of burnt fuel and that of superheated thrusters. He
claimed many times that it was his favourite smell in the universe,
but that was untrue. It smelled as bad to him as it did to everyone
else, but Frost, the name and the guise he put on for the benefit
of his men and himself, loved all things mechanical, all things
that gave men the power to live and fight between the stars.

The criss-crossing lines of light around
Kambis became brighter as more of the sun was blocked out. The
lines represented large ships and beneath that were radial cities.
While they were hiding, the solar system was coming to life.
Millions were arriving in every kind of craft, in every condition,
from as many as nine sectors of space. There was a time only years
ago when he would have broken from the Samson crew, taken Stephanie
with him if he could have, and turned the coalescence of humanity
into a grand opportunity or two. Fleecing the desperate was easy.
Immoral, he knew, but not all desperate people were poor people. He
could make a fortune and disappear into the crowd effortlessly.
He’d done it before, when it was far easier to track someone
down.

He looked down to the settlement the Triton
crew had built in the space they’d managed to rent from Patrizia
Salustri. It seemed so big when he was down there, walking amongst
the people. From where he sat, near the edge of the huge hangar, it
was impossible to ignore how tiny it really was. They had a few
slips, had erected walls where older barricades had fallen down
using scrap metal and a couple of smaller stripped vehicles. There
were two heavily guarded gates, and he could see a great deal of
security officers below, patrolling the habitat and work areas.
They were little black dots amongst a shifting sea of people in
grey, yellow, red, green, and blue vacsuits. Aged shipping
containers, some stacked three high, were converted into buildings.
Most people didn’t have a bunk on a ship; they lived in cramped
quarters, sleeping on small cots. The interiors of those homes were
constantly improving, thanks to creature comforts they stripped
from the Enforcer, but there was never an improvement in how much
space they had to work with.

The slips they called home were full to
capacity. Even the fighters had to stack when they weren’t being
prepped for a mission, an operation that was so delicate that he
was glad it wasn’t his job.

Thin towers made from more scrap reached up
slightly higher than the roof he was sitting on. They were emitter
towers that they started building while he was on the Enforcer. The
energy shield would be tested tomorrow, and he was glad he’d be
able to show his face, because he wanted to congratulate Laura and
her team on a job well done if it worked. If it didn’t work, he
wanted to dig in and help. So many people beneath him bought into
the illusion of safety that numbers brought.

Ships crashed every day in Port Rush, thanks
to the removal of many autopilots that were tied into the functions
of artificial intelligences. The shield would protect against most
impacts, and it could be moved if they had to relocate. He’d heard
that the negotiations led by Ayan turned out better than expected.
The rumour that they would have their own island in the fresh water
sea was spreading through the settlement like wildfire, and Frost
couldn’t picture what the scene below would look like if the whole
settlement was relocated to some oversized beach. He wanted to see
it though, and that led him to a realisation that slowly brought a
smile to his face.

He had no desire to leave. The call to war
didn’t make him nervous. He felt he was at peace for the first time
he could remember. He had a purpose, was part of a crew, he was
respected, and for the first time in a long time, he didn’t feel
like he was alone. The people he would be fighting for were all
there below him. He was so far above they looked no taller than the
last joint of his thumb, but he was close enough to make out what
they were doing.

With bare faces, they gathered into groups.
Little ones darted between those clusters of old and new friends.
He could see Minh picking up a young lad and showing him the inside
of his fighter, his dad looking on with crossed arms and a smile
Frost supposed must have been there. In the early weeks of work, a
couple of hundred people left. More than half returned with the
realisation that it was much worse outside.

There was sadness in the first month, when
most of the messages reaching out to family and friends started
yielding results. Most of the replies were from governments, or
from close friends who had unfortunate news. Billions were dead all
across human civilisation. That brought sorrowful news for most,
and solidified their desire to remain a part of the Triton crew,
even without the ship.

Most of the slaves they’d rescued didn’t
have homes to return to. The Order of Eden had taken entire solar
systems and the Eden Fleet, more massive than anyone could have
imagined, stood sentry. It was rare that Frost felt fortunate to
have only one surviving family member – a sister who hadn’t gotten
back to him yet. She was a great ways off, so even if she survived,
he wouldn’t get a response for another ten or so days. He hoped for
the best, and tried not to think about it.

Frost looked to the sky as the sun’s light
finished disappearing behind Kambis. The scene below lit up as most
of the people still wearing their vacsuits turned on their work
lights. Stripes on their arms, backs, chests, and shoulders glowed
brighter the further they were from other similarly dressed
workers, and dimmer as they stood closer, so they always walked in
a safe level of luminescence. “Now that’s somethin’ to see,” he
said to himself. It was a strange, beautiful light show from his
vantage point.

He tapped his real command and control unit,
the high powered one from his time on the Triton, and called
Stephanie’s ident using silent mode. He projected her hologram onto
the roof beside him, and watched her dig through a box. Seeing her
extended the life of that smile that had grown on his face.

Stephanie pulled a long, simple, stretchy
dress with slits part way up the sides out of the box and she held
it up against herself. “You’d turn heads in that,” Frost said.

She let the dress slip back into the box and
smiled at him through her comm unit. “Ash is sharing a bunk room
while her quarters are being rebuilt, so she’s picking through her
stuff and handing a few things out. I think she gave me all her
Slink Fit clothes, from the looks of it.”

“Strange, that’s the last thing I’d think
she’d pass on,” Frost said.

“I know,” Stephanie said. “I’m going to hang
on to this stuff for a while. I think she’s just worn down from
only being able to talk to me this whole time. The buddy system
seemed to work for a lot of people through this anonymous crap, but
I don’t think it’s done her any favours.”

“She didn’t link up with a couple of other
people?” Frost asked. “Even I linked with the maximum.”

“Eight people?” Stephanie asked.

“Aye. Why?”

“I guess I’m just surprised. I thought you’d
enjoy the break.”

“What can I say? People need people,” Frost
replied.

Stephanie pulled another garment out of the
plastic box, and he had trouble figuring out what kind of clothing
it was, but couldn’t help noticing that there wasn’t much to it.
“That’s true, especially for Ashley,” she replied. “I’m hoping she
feels better after sleeping for a shift.” She dropped that garment
back into the box and looked at him through her comm. “If you come
down quick I think I’ll have time to model a few things for you
before our cabin mates get back.”

“On my way,” Frost said, standing up. He
took five steps towards the hatch and broke through a panel in the
roof. “Bollox! I knew that was there!” he said as he tried to
manually set his flimsy workman’s vacsuit for a fall. His command
and control unit had difficulty connecting to the suit as he
plummeted through the open air.

“Shamus!” Stephanie shouted as she realised
what was going on.

Time ran fast as he fell through thirty-five
metres of open air. His comm unit flashed green and he felt the
suit change the moment before he hit.

“We still tell stories about you, our little
Ash who bought her freedom and became a pilot,” the small image of
Frederick Andie said. Ashley sat cross-legged in her bunk, with a
small bag and a duffel in front of her. She’d just finished
checking her incoming messages when one more appeared from
Frederick, the older gentleman who raised her when she lived as a
slave on the Gamrie estate.

“I was so glad when I got your data burst,”
he went on. “I was so worried you got caught by something like so
many other people. The Sand Rhumerie, the resort in which I was
head chef, survived very well. The dispensers seemed a little
peevish once they were infected, but they couldn’t do much harm.
Bumped Gilly, one of our guest services girls, on the head
something awful, but that was the worst of it. A few other resorts
that specialised in the human touch fared very well, as did the
poorer quarters in the cities. It seems anyone who couldn’t afford
anything with an artificial intelligence had the best chance of
staying clear of this while our government got to work on putting
the mad droids down. Grand House Gamrie is gone, burned to the
ground by those serving bots the Lady bought right before you were
packed off with Master Gamrie on his star yacht. The slave quarters
got off fine, most of them are here now.

"With most of the federal and provincial
governments crippled, we’re holding a new vote, and it looks like
one of the equality parties will get a majority, so we expect
slavery to be outlawed sometime early next year, on this world at
least. I watch for you or your captain to appear on the Stellarnet,
and I’m not the only one. So many people wonder where he is, what’s
he’s doing and if he’s going to hold up the promise he made to take
the fight to the Order of Eden. They have booths here now, where
they sign people up, putting them on the path to paradise, so they
say. It costs sixty eight thousand credits here, so only a few
people I know have signed up. They go in, get tests, pay, and I
never see them again.” He rolled his eyes, in just such an
exaggerated way that reminded her of all the times he caught her
doing something he didn’t approve of when she was younger. A laugh
bubbled up from somewhere deep inside.

“Happy message?” Finn asked as he entered
the eight bunk cabin. The bunk beds seemed too white and new. They
were from the Enforcer, installed only a week before. The rest of
the cabin was still bare in most places, all the cables and tubing
was plainly visible running tightly against the walls and
ceilings.

Ashley paused the playback and nodded.
“Fred, his transmission finally got here.”

“I remember you telling me about him,” Finn
said as he dropped his duffel bag onto the bunk across from hers.
“That must be a huge relief. I’ll let you get back to it.”

Ashley didn’t hesitate to continue the
playback, her attention fixed on Fred’s head, hovering above the
smooth navy blue sheet on her bunk. “I hope there’s some truth to
what the Order of Eden is promising, but I can’t help but side with
those people who write ‘hate fate’ everywhere. It’s graffiti, but
it gets people thinking about that little Prophet’s 'better fate
for mankind' rhetoric, it gets people talking, and some of them
wonder when they’ll see more about your captain leading a charge
somewhere. I have to admit my reasons for watching for him are more
selfish than most. I’m looking for a glance at you, little raven.
Not so little anymore, but you’ll still be that girl the Gamries
dropped in my lap because they couldn’t get her to stop fidgeting.”
He smiled at the fond recollection. The message cut out for a
moment then continued with his head turned differently, indicating
that he’d cut something out. “This is getting long, so I won’t keep
you. I only must say that you have nothing to worry about. Everyone
you knew and loved here are well; I’ve shared your message with
them and they want the best for you.” He said it almost like a
presenter, but he always had a slightly stiff air about him. “I
hope you’re where you want to be, and doing something you believe
in. If you ever need to retreat, there’s always room for you here.”
The recording ended and Ashley added it to her long-term
storage.