‘Still not the same,’ Akenon insisted.
Alex nodded, for Akenon undoubtedly had a point. In driving them away from the sun, Galahad had won a brief skirmish in what Alex felt might be the start of a wholesale war. They now no longer had access to the power of the sun, so what would be the Owner’s response? How did Alan Saul intend to prevent Galahad from killing them all?
Akenon, Ghort and Gladys fell into a discussion about power usage, the effectiveness of the new rectifying batteries and how much could be stored in ultra-capacitors scattered throughout the station. Alex sat back and wondered how long this present shift would take. Presumably the Owner was taking them to some point where they would have a relatively clear run at the Asteroid Belt. With the Rhine drive running and their speed approaching that of light, this could take just minutes or it might take hours – he had no idea.
He had nearly finished his beer when they emerged from the shift, and Argus heaved and groaned all around them. Much less of a pull now from the gravity of the sun, Alex realized. Would this distort the vortex ring? Would adjustments have to be made? No . . . already he could feel the tension, the distortion of space and the pull of the ineffable building-up. Saul’s image again appeared on the screen.
‘Once we have possession of the materials we require from the Belt,’ he continued, as if there had been no pause, ‘we must fire up the Traveller again to get us clear. Then the next shift beyond the Asteroid Belt will ensue.’
Again the holding picture flicked onto the screen, as the second shift kicked in, and again Alex began speculating on its length. The Asteroid Belt lay three hundred million kilometres from the sun, so at light speed, which was approximately three hundred thousand kilometres per second, that distance could nominally be covered in a thousand seconds. However, the Belt was well over a hundred million kilometres thick, they might not be travelling that close to the speed of light, and not necessarily even in a straight line out from the sun. All he could say was that it would take over seventeen minutes to reach their destination: a miraculous rate of travel achieved over truly immense distances.
After ten minutes Alex suddenly found himself sweating. He diagnosed Hawking radiation, which meant their ship had to be now reaching the edge of light speed. And what would happen if they ever passed that speed? Would they all fry, all die? Alex felt his anger increase because he was tired of always facing these questions; tired of being a pawn. After fifteen minutes, conversation at the tables all around began to dry up except for the occasional doom-laden mutter. This changed, in turn, to nervous chatter when the shift finally ended after twenty minutes. Then the chatter stilled as Saul reappeared on the screen.
‘The last shift will take us to Jupiter,’ Saul announced, ‘where we should be able to obtain the rest of the materials we need. In orbit around the gas giant are currently hundreds of booster shells from the various Mars missions. These we’ll retrieve, dismantle and turn into what we require.’ Saul paused, seeming to gaze straight at Alex, who gazed back, wondering if becoming the ‘Owner’ had made this man lose any human concept of time.
‘Doubtless you have all been wondering what we’ll do for energy, and if we’ll again be working only with fusion,’ Saul continued. ‘We will not, because once we reach our final destination, we’ll move this ship in close, and there we’ll tap the flux tube between Io and Jupiter. There will be energy to spare; energy enough to build more fusion reactors so that we never end up in such straits again. I mean enough energy to finish turning Argus Station into what it must become: an interstellar vessel.’
There, it was said, and Alex felt his spine crawl. He had heard others debating this possibility but had given it little thought himself. Now it was plain and he could discern the worried tones of those around him as they discussed the last statement. Saul was building an interstellar vessel, so that meant they were going to fly between the stars. No questions, no debate – they were powerless.
‘So there’s our future,’ said Ghort, leaning in close.
In that same moment, Alex decided he no longer felt satisfied with being a working grunt. He would respond to the notification received that he could have an implant like Ghort’s, and that would be just his first step on the ladder. He fully intended now to gain some power over his own destiny. However, he understood the limitations of that power and, unlike Ghort, could not find it in himself to resent being one of the owned.
He shrugged. ‘It’s an improvement on our past, at least.’
‘Maybe yours,’ said Ghort, then clamped his mouth shut, as if wishing he had not revealed quite so much.
Scourge
Trove stood up as they entered her cabin. She was skeletally thin now, and moved like an old woman. But, then, Clay reflected, who of them was not moving about like a geriatric? She wore only soiled overalls and slip-on gecko slippers, and was allowing her Mohican to grow back – a stubble line from her forehead to the nape of her neck.
‘What is it?’ she asked tiredly.
‘We’ve had killings aboard,’ said Scotonis, his voice sounding flat, almost indifferent.
She nodded, then suddenly realized. ‘Killings? I knew about Myers . . .’
‘Somebody has murdered the team assessing our nuclear capability,’ Scotonis explained.
Clay, meanwhile, stepped a little closer to Trove to get a look at the dosimeter stuck to the sleeve of her overall. It was graded at a lower level than those both he and Scotonis wore, but that meant nothing. She could have changed it recently. He reached into his jacket, his hand straying briefly against the butt of the pistol he had retrieved from his cabin, then beyond that to take out the small hand-held Geiger counter.
‘Why would anyone do that?’ Trove asked, obviously confused. Then she focused on the device Clay was holding. ‘So you think it might be me.’
She was quick, Clay thought; he had to allow her that.
Scotonis stepped back, drawing his sidearm. ‘Just let Political Officer Clay check you out, and don’t make any sudden moves.’
Clay glanced at Scotonis. It was almost as if the man wanted her to react badly, so that he could conclude this quickly. Clay stepped forwards and took a reading, and found himself oddly pleased to see that she obviously hadn’t set foot anywhere near the assessment team. She probably hated him for punishing her with her cabin inducer on the outward journey to the Asteroid Belt, but nevertheless he felt a grudging respect and almost a liking for her. He turned back to Scotonis, shaking his head. ‘It wasn’t her.’
Scotonis seemed reluctant to accept this, for he kept his gun aimed vaguely between Clay and Trove. He just stood there with his jaw moving as if he was chewing on something bitter, and meanwhile searching for a reason to pull the trigger. Perhaps he had become paranoid, though he certainly had reason to.
‘Now we check Cookson,’ Clay said carefully.
For a long thoughtful pause Scotonis did not lower his weapon, then he abruptly holstered it. ‘Yes, Cookson.’ He turned towards the door, Clay heading after him, then swung back once he had opened it. ‘You remain here, in your cabin,’ he instructed Trove, who had seemed about to follow.
‘I need to know about this.’ Trove was staring at her captain with a kind of sad horror – not an unusual expression for those remaining aboard.
‘You must do as you’re told and stay here,’ Scotonis repeated. ‘Or do I really have to compel you to?’
Trove nodded in tired acceptance but, as she turned away, Clay caught a look, directed solely at him, that seemed an amalgam of exasperation and panic.
Scotonis marched off down the corridor with Clay in tow. Since Cookson’s cabin lay on the same deck of the ship, it did not take long to reach it. However, it did take a long time for him to respond to their knock and to open the door.
Cookson appeared even worse than before – like a corpse clinging to a handle set beside the door, his motionless feet hanging just a few centimetres above the carpet. At the sight of them, he towed himself alo
ng a recently suspended network of ropes back towards his narrow bed. Clay scanned around. The place stank of sickness and death; used drug patches and blister packs of pills floated through the air.
‘What is it?’ Cookson said briefly, not even looking back at them as he paused by his urine-stained bed.
‘Give me the counter,’ Scotonis commanded.
Clay reached into his jacket, his hand again brushing his gun before closing on the Geiger counter. He pulled it out, slapped it down in Scotonis’s hand. The captain stepped forwards, right up to Cookson, switching the device on.
‘So it’s time, is it?’ asked Cookson, turning.
It happened so fast that Clay had no time to react. The vicious crack of Scotonis’s weapon rang out and Cookson tumbled back through the air, the side of his head gone and chunks of skull and gobbets of brain spattering the wall behind him. Clay reached for his own weapon as Scotonis turned to him, but the captain holstered his sidearm and walked back carefully, a sick expression twisting his features.
‘There,’ he said, holding up the counter to show Clay the display. Cookson had obviously taken a huge dose of radiation – one which would have killed him sometime in the future, but had certainly killed him now.
‘We should have questioned him,’ said Clay.
Scotonis shoved the Geiger counter in his pocket and stepped through the door. ‘To what end? He’s been stopped, and that’s all that matters.’ He eyed Clay bleakly. ‘Now you can get out of my damned sight. Get back to your cabin, and make sure you stay there for a while. I don’t want to see you again until we’re within range of Earth.’ Thereupon Scotonis strode off.
Clay stared at his retreating back. Something was wrong here, very wrong, and, if only he could think clearly, he felt sure he could work it out. He turned away and decided it politic to obey Scotonis, for now. Back in his cabin he could rest a little, take some time to ponder things. As he began moving, his gecko boots crunching on the floor, he began to think seriously. Why had Cookson killed Myers? Perhaps the doctor had picked up on Cookson’s increased radiation dose? Perhaps Cookson wanted extra drugs, or even to exact some odd petty vengeance on the rest of the surviving crew for not being as badly injured as himself. Why had he killed the assessment team? Surely Cookson was the one with the least to gain from that, since he was certainly dying.
Clay entered his own cabin, stepping over to sit down before his screen. He needed data. Maybe he would be able to call up some cam footage of Cookson and thus try to trace his movements, but system log-on was dodgy. He found himself able to check on some things but on checking others, the system immediately asked for his password which, when input, just didn’t work. Definitely something wrong. He checked further, then stared in horror at a screen partially blocked out by a password request. Numerous readerguns had been reinstated aboard, so had the cabin pain inducers.
‘What the fuck?’ he exclaimed out loud.
Perhaps it was the surge of adrenalin that cleared his mind. He now suddenly understood that it didn’t have to be Cookson or Trove who had been killing people. Replaying events in his mind, he realized that the Geiger reading Scotonis had shown him had not necessarily come from Cookson, but could have been from Scotonis himself. So what was the captain up to? What did he want?
Clay sat back, staring at the screen. First and foremost, Scotonis wanted vengeance; he wanted Serene Galahad dead and, it seemed to Clay, the captain was careless of his own life in that respect. So what if the assessment team had reported the nuclear arsenal unusable, or maybe impossible to fire? What weapons could Scotonis use then? Of course: the Scourge itself. Scotonis wanted to drop this ship right on top of Galahad’s head, but he knew that his crew would object to that. Fatalistic they might have become, but many of them still hoped for some reprieve – such as Serene Galahad being nuked out of existence, and a chance of survival for them in the ensuing chaos. Perhaps Myers had detected Scotonis’s radiation dosage, or perhaps Scotonis had just killed the man who was managing to keep many of the crew alive. Certainly he had killed the assessment team so they could tell no one else whatever the situation was with the arsenal.
Pain inducers? Readerguns?
Scotonis intended to kill everyone aboard, and Clay had to stop him. He stood up. Good thing he had disabled his own cabin inducer . . .
The pain hit him first on the crown of his head, and spread down his body as if he was being immersed in boiling water. He screamed and stumbled for the door, realizing, even as he fled, that this pain was not at a disabling level but that he was being driven from his cabin deliberately. Out in the corridor, other crew members were stumbling along. The inducer effect was operating out here too, but much less so in one direction. Sobbing in agony, Clay stumbled away from the direction he would have taken to reach the bridge. Scotonis was driving them away; that was all.
Readerguns?
He heard them ahead, delivering three neat shots at a time, just as something slammed against his skull and dropped him into blackness.
7
Warp Weapons
Though the versions of the Alcubierre drive created by professors Rhine and Calder were intended initially for faster travel through space, weapons applications were not far behind. In this sense, these drive systems were the antithesis of the rocket engines preceding them, which were first developed as weapons-delivery systems before being put to less lethal uses. Calder’s warp missiles, as he himself dubbed them, were specifically made to knock out the warp bubble of Saul’s ship and deliver an EM pulse by an atomic blast, and their full potential was never fully explored. They were capable of exceeding the speed of light, but only for a brief time, since the internal Hawking radiation would soon damage their load. The thinking behind this was narrowly focused on the missiles being able to travel fast enough to intercept Saul’s ship. It is perhaps fortunate that Calder decided on a test shot at Earth’s moon at merely railgun speeds, for the amount of energy that would have been generated by an FTL shot would have been immense, perhaps enough to have turned the Moon entirely to rubble. Perhaps weapons like this are another reason why Enrico Fermi felt compelled to ask, ‘Where are they?’
Earth
For a moment there, as Argus Station just shifted to a new orbit around the sun, Serene wondered if Saul was going to call her bluff, or was maybe even preparing to attack. Elkin had immediately foned to inform her that the drop shuttle re-entry vehicle was prepped and ready, if she wanted to board it. However, Saul had not attacked, but had run away as predicted.
‘If he had stayed there, it would have been a stalemate,’ commented Bartholomew.
‘Stalemate?’ Serene enquired, turning from the astounding view across the construction station from Calder’s apartment, which she would occupy during her stay here.
‘Yes, stalemate,’ Bartholomew affirmed, glancing at Calder for confirmation.
‘Work aboard Argus Station would have been halted while it dodged the shots,’ Calder confirmed. ‘He was lucky not to lose his smelting plants the first time round.’
Calder’s expression was bleak. He knew Bartholomew was right but did not want to himself imply any criticism of the dictator of Earth. Serene experienced a momentary disappointment with him, immediately followed by the rise of something predatory inside her, for she was sure he was hiding his fear behind that expression. Was this how the lion felt when faced with a crippled gazelle? Perhaps one day she would find out, if they could ever manage to resurrect those two species.
Right now she found her whole attitude to Calder changing. It was, she felt, sensible of him to show such caution now that his usefulness was drawing to an end. The infrastructure was all in place, the new drives were already being improved on by research teams and new ideas were blossoming. New ships could be built quickly, and none of these required Calder or the extravagant promises she had made him.
‘Still not an adequate explanation for the word “stalemate”,’ she observed, her gaze drilling into him.
br /> Bartholomew shot Calder an odd look and replied on his behalf, ‘The resource drain and the work involved here in feeding the railguns would have brought work on our own three ships to a standstill.’
With Saul on the run, she felt she had won this round but, still staring at Calder, she declared, ‘Perhaps it would have been sensible for you to apprise me of this fact before we fired off those shots, Professor Calder.’
He sat utterly still. Of course he dared not say, ‘I thought you knew what you were doing,’ because that would have represented too much of a criticism, and also because Calder had to be thoroughly aware of the presence of Sack, who had ensconced himself in a comfortable chair by the door but looked no less lethal for that. Then something clicked into place, and Calder’s mouth clamped shut for a moment as his expression hardened in a way she did not much like.
‘As I understood it, ma’am, you wanted to “scare the rat out of the woodpile”, and those shots aimed at Argus Station were more in the nature of a salutary reminder to Alan Saul that he is not beyond your reach.’ Calder paused, appearing momentarily thoughtful. ‘If I misunderstood your intentions, then I can only apologize.’
The raptor instinct inside Serene subsided, and she felt a momentary chagrin on realizing that she had just completely misread the man. She turned back to Bartholomew. ‘So, the crews are in training and the Vision will be ready for launch in just two weeks. Is it your intention to launch it immediately, or will you wait until the Command and the Fist are both ready?’
Now an earlier anxiety had returned. For a while the Hubble and other telescopes on the Core stations had simply lost track of the Argus and she had feared she had lost Saul or, more importantly, the Gene Bank data and samples. When the Argus warp bubble was again detected, heading way out, she’d felt a panic rising to choke her. He was running all the way, he was really going to leave the solar system . . . But, no, the station, or rather the starship in the making, halted at the Asteroid Belt where, the tacticians told her, it seemed likely Saul would be mining for further materials. But still an anxiety remained: she must not lose him.