Burnt Ice (12 page)

‘Roger, mate. Wait one. OK. Fuel
on the way with lots of ice cream being delivered as well, courtesy of Jan.
Marko, if you are able, could you check off the landers, and the three combat
units? Bit snowed under up here.’

‘Will do. Fritz, are you sorted
with the comms and computer systems? If you are, could you come over to my
station? The monitor has a problem with her AG unit.’

A few minutes later a slightly
bleary-eyed Fritz walked up behind the monitor.

‘Hey, so what’s the prob? Hey,
you were a chick once, eh? I’ve never checked out a monitor before — well not a
live one anyway.’

‘Hello, Sergeant van Vinken. I am
Sirius. The AG unit is not accessible to me. I am reading that one of the
couplings from the pile is malfunctioning.’

‘OK, I’ll go grab some tools. Be
right back.’

He returned towing his toolbox on
a little custom-made antigravity unit.

‘Right, Sirius. I need a diagram
of your unit please. OK? This plug gives me access? Right, download to my plate
please. Yeah, I see it, this coupling here. That’s curious: it’s located where
your pelvis should be. Where is your pelvis? Sorry, just that none of us have
ever been this close to a monitor before unless it’s one interviewing or
recording. So you have no pelvis, no legs, almost all of your digestive system
is gone, and you have an augmented heart and lung. What you have left is very
efficient and augmented as well. But where is the rest of you? Um. Hell, no sex
organs either. Shit, no pussy! That’s just weird!’

‘All that was dispensed with. We
don’t need any of it, sergeant. The unit attends to our every need. It is a day
of great celebration for us when we receive our final augmentations, and so
become fully functional Games Board monitors.’

‘Yeah, right, OK, OK. Um, how
about we open up the panel and I’ll swap out that coupling and cable? Give me a
couple of minutes.’

Marko carried on working through
the checks of the lander and the combat craft on his board. He routed full fuel
loads for each of them and sent another list across to Harry for
replenishments. As he checked through the ammunition load-outs he noted that
they were also well down in all the magazines.

‘Hey, Harry. How come this bus is
so low on ammo? Oh, I see. It must have been used during the punch-up. Shit,
they threw everything they had into the pot, eh? Boss, do you want full ammo
and consumables for the weapons?’

‘Yeah, I have the lists here,
Marko. We take everything we could possibly need. No point in pissing about.
Harry is also checking through all the weapons on the main ship. I see a few
things needing refurbishment. Nice little job for us to eat up the time between
jumps.’

Marko smiled to himself that work
creation was typical for the captain. He hated seeing anyone wasting time,
doing nothing.

‘You good, Fritz?’

‘Yeah thanks, Marko.’

‘By the way, Sirius has her
equipment and whatever else she brought down in the main hangar. I assume that
you have a maintenance pod for your unit, Sirius?’

‘That is correct. I lock myself
to it when you are sleeping, as I only require a few hours to rest and recharge
my systems.’

‘You don’t sleep in a bed then?’

‘No, it’s not possible, and I don’t
miss it, Fritz.’

‘That’s stupid. Bed is the best
place in the Universe. I’ll get a drone to bring your unit up and put it in a
cabin.’

Marko nodded at Sirius as he
passed her then walked down to the lower hangar deck and did the physical
checks of the additional craft. First, he checked out the landers. The two on
board were capable of sustaining a six-person section each. They were eighteen
metres long, six metres in diameter — the classic hourglass shape that had been
favoured by the Administration and the Gjomvik Corporations for the last twenty
years. All the propulsion and manoeuvring thrusters were located around the
waisted centre.

Marko whistled a small
Administration drone to him. The sphere deployed from the engineering equipment
storage and hovered beside him on its little antigravity unit. As Marko walked
around the landers he spoke to the drone, pointing out areas and items that
needed attention. He keyed open the landing ramp from a fold-out panel at the
rear of the first craft, frowning at the mess of ration wrappers and empty
drink bottles exposed on the rear cargo section floor. Then he saw that someone
had left a combat pack hanging on a deployment hook. He walked inside,
gesturing at the mess.

He lifted the pack off the hook,
opened it and shook out the contents, finding nothing of note except clothing
and a sleeping bag that was still sealed in its cover. Looking inside, he
sighed, seeing a personal toiletry bag. He realised that the person it had been
issued to was probably in a tank somewhere close by, in orbit. He left it where
it was and moved forwards, looking over the cockpit to find it in the same
state of disarray He decided not to bother looking in the galley, ordering the
drone to do it.

Walking out and across to the
other lander he found the same story, except that at least someone had gone to
the effort of stuffing all the rubbish into a bag. Shaking his head at the lax
attitude of some fellow soldiers, he used one of the consoles on the hangar
deck to program a few of the housekeeping drones to start the work required,
then instructed the refuelling systems to top all the fuel tanks of the five
craft. With the little drone still following, he first walked around each of
the wasp-shaped skuas held in their deployment cradles, then opened their
canopy shields and climbed up into each of the cockpits.

He found that the three craft had
sustained minor damage, with one of them having what appeared to be acid damage
on the canopy. Looking at the etched mess and realising that it was probably
some of the octopoids’ spat material, he smiled, walked down to engineering,
found a small interstate isolation flask, then returned to the skua and spent a
few moments getting a good sample by activating the flask and holding it over
the etched material. A globule lifted off the canopy and was then suspended
from the sides in the flask by the interstate field, which consisted of matter
on its exterior and energy at its core, with the surrounding space filled with
the interstate — neither energy nor matter.

The flask employed the same
technology that allowed the antigravity devices to exist, but it didn’t have
the few fragments of quark material spinning at a high percentage of the speed
of light or the required power and control systems of an AG unit, so it was a
small and compact device. Sealing the flask by closing the interstate field,
then placing it on a workbench, Marko carried on inspecting the remaining
craft, ordering spares and replacements for them. As he walked around the
hangar, familiarising himself, he came across a sealed container with Fritz’s
name on the outside.

‘Hey, Fritz. You know there’s a
container with your name on it here on the hangar deck?’ he said through his
comms link.

‘Had better be, mate. That’s my
diagnostic and information retrieval unit. Don’t touch it! Has all the octopoid
coding in its computers so I can read the stuff in the Octopoid Library.’

‘So, only you can read the info,
if there is any?’

‘Nah, the intel AI they’re
sending over will have its own backup suites of data as well.’

Marko arrived back at his
workstation on the bridge to find that Fritz and the monitor had long gone.
Marko smiled to himself, knowing that Fritz and his own computer systems would
have taken a great deal of information about the monitor, without her or anyone
else knowing. He also knew that Fritz’s computer systems would be able to lie
much more effectively than him about what happened to the information, so when
the opportunity allowed, Marko would get it all as well.

‘Hey, Harry. You realise that
Basalt
and all its craft were down on the planet?’

‘Yeah, saw that in the logs.
Those craft all useable?’

‘Yup, filthy, but no major
damage. All the internal diagnostics are OK. Looks like they were used hard.’

The captain’s voice came over the
comms link. ‘Marko, stand by. Engineering AI is sending across a heavy midi
clone of himself. He’s Patrick. Plus we’re getting a senior security and
intelligence one from
Gamma.
She’s Lotus. We’ll have two AIs on board,
twinned. A low-key operation, they say, but one they’re taking seriously.’

Marko was overseeing four drones
that were checking the outer hull of the ship when a squad of MPs arrived at
the secondary airlock with the two AI midis.

‘All stations. Gravity is going
off on the bridge support deck in two minutes. Will have it back as soon as we
twin the midi AI Patrick and AI Lotus.’

He programmed the system then
went to the airlock to meet the MPs as the gravity gradually lifted. Between
them, they manhandled the three-metre by two-metre armoured, gold-and-red,
barrel-like canisters into an escape pod, advising them to activate. Each
canister extended a few little arms and rotated and locked itself into the
receptacles, which then closed and sealed, while also linking to the power
supply, communications systems and running their own checks to attain full
system-wide control of the ship, including its computers.

‘Crew, I am Lotus. It will be a
few hours before we depart. Compliments to you, Captain Longbow. I shall enjoy
getting to know you and your crew better.’

Marko wasn’t surprised that one
of the AIs would dominate, as the more senior ones had always done so in the
past. Back at his workstation he watched the boards on the displays beginning
to all turn green as systems were slowly secured during the course of the day.

~ * ~

Six

Early
that evening the captain announced, ‘We are good to go, people. Physical checks
on airlocks please. Flight, this is the frigate
Basalt.
May we have a
tug in attendance please?’

They soon felt the gentle motion
as the frigate
Basalt
was pushed away from the Orbital by a large waldo.
Marko and the others sent brief messages to their respective darlings. The tug
came up, locked on between the main engine thrusters, oriented the frigate,
then started to push up and away from the other Orbitals and capital ships. An
hour or so later they were given permission to operate under their own power as
the tug pulled away.

Marko brought the fusion engines
online, then once they were a few thousand kilometres from the planet he
brought the antimatter engines online, smiling as he did — they were one of the
propulsion systems that he had always enjoyed. Inside the frigate the gas pressure
from the exploding matter.’ antimatter against the engine bells generated a
nice, steady rumbling roar throughout the ship. The acceleration steadily built
up. As they approached the trailing Lagrange point,
Basalt
was already
doing one hundred and ten kilometres per second. The frigate’s newly installed
AI, Lotus, was controlling the ship and aiming it at a very specific point in
space, but the captain was still in command, with Harry riding shotgun in the
right-hand seat.

‘This is Longbow. Stand by,
gravity is coming down in three minutes. Final checks. Does everyone concur?
OK, the ship is yours, Lotus. Jump when ready.’

Marko had nothing to do at his
station but ghost the actions of Lotus, so he switched his primary screen to
see what was immediately in front of the ship. The mind-bending colour displays
of the wormhole generator became apparent as the ship’s gravity went to zero.
All the armoured shields closed over any viewpoints and the engine thrusts were
brought to zero. The accumulators, which had been steadily increasing in
capacity throughout the ship as the preparations for the jump were made, came
online in a microsecond. An enormous amount of exotic energy was discharged
into the wormhole generator. In a blink they jumped across to the nearest
gravitational well with a determined Lagrange point of nil gravity. The larger
the Lagrange point used, the less energy expended.