Nemesis (19 page)

Yunus clapped his hands together. ‘Well, clearly this will be an excellent base of operations. We should prepare to leave, I think. Triton Control will be awaiting our signal.’

‘Absolutely right,’ said Mark. ‘Please make yourselves comfortable, everybody, while Ash and I retire to the bridge.’

What passed for a bridge on the
Gulliver
was a minuscule cabin on the main level with two crash couches arranged like bunk-beds and just enough room to walk or float beside them. Ash and Mark took their places, coupled fat-contacts to their necks and met virtually in the ship’s metaphor space. It resembled a circular obsidian platform situated in the Zen garden that lay beyond the simulated windows. Afternoon light slanted across the rocks and a cool breeze tickled Ash’s virtual skin. Like most other features of the ship, no expense had been spared on detailing the helm-arena.

Ash sighed to himself. He’d tagged all the metaphor spaces in the
Gulliver
’s subsystems with his own designs weeks ago. Now Mark would want to use his own, obsessively Earth-biome-orientated imagery. Flying with Mark, he recalled, was like piloting a shrubbery.

Mark’s avatar appeared. ‘Enjoying yourself?’ he said with a scowl.

‘Not sure I know what you mean,’ said Ash.

‘I’m not stupid,’ said Mark. ‘You’re trying to make my life harder. It didn’t take you long.’

Ash laughed it off. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘You’re right. My bad. Old habits die hard. You make it easy, though. I’m trying to think if there’s anyone on this ship you haven’t annoyed already.’

He conjured a flock of control visualisations out of the red sand like birds and busied himself checking their slowly rotating glyphs.

Mark exhaled slowly. ‘Let’s start this again,’ he said. ‘You were slated to be captain of this ship. Then I showed up. Now you’re not. That must piss you off.’

Ash shrugged. ‘It’s no biggie. We’re both professionals.’

‘For what it’s worth,’ said Mark, ‘I’m sorry. I’m not here to rain on your parade. This whole thing wasn’t my idea, and we both know whose it was. I’m just here to do a job. After that I’ll get out of your life and you’ll never have to see me again. In the meantime, I’ll take any advice you have to offer because you’re better with people than I am and you understand this crowd in a way I never will. While we’re out there, I’ll do my best to make you look good, so that you get something decent out of this trip, career-wise. Because I’d really, really like this mission to go well so that we can both put it behind us. How does that sound? Can we have a truce?’

Ash felt his smile crumbling and tried his damnedest to prop it up. That was the problem with Mark. He might be a self-indulgent little prick, but he was still capable of acts of deep humility. Ash wished he wasn’t. He’d be a lot easier to hate that way. Ash took the guilt that threatened to well up inside him and screwed it down tight.

He’d sold Mark out during the tribunal and Mark hadn’t even mentioned that. Sam had asked him to do it to prove his loyalty to the League but it had come at a huge price. It had put him at odds with most of the other Omegas. It didn’t help that Ash had never really believed he deserved the Omega ranking in the first place and felt like he’d been faking it his whole life. He’d always suspected they gave him the grade because he was good with people, and the Fleet was desperate for a friendly face for its roboteering efforts. That fear had messed with his confidence ever since. Or at least until Sam made him a true insider and brought him into the League. These days he worried more about who
did
accept him rather than who didn’t.

‘Sure,’ he said, uncomfortably. ‘We can have a truce.’

‘Great,’ said Mark. ‘Thank you. I mean it.’

Ash turned back to his station and summoned up a stack of flight-path sheets like a tower of luminous tea trays. He tried not to think about what the League had in store for Mark. After the nasty surprise would come the imprisonment, followed by despair or death. Mark would never forgive him then. Ash knew he might as well enjoy the companionship while it lasted.

5:
UNDERWAY

5.1: MARK

Mark spent his first shift out from Triton checking over the
Gulliver
and familiarising himself with its features. While the pretentious academic decor wasn’t to his taste, the ship was, as Ash had suggested, a beautiful piece of engineering. It made him realise how much he’d missed flying in space. Besides the extraordinary engines, the
Gulliver
had impressive redundancies built into the robots that teemed in its outer hull layers. They had enough robotic support on board to rebuild the ship from the inside out.

There were frustrations, of course. The diplomacy and science sections had been walled off from him due to those ridiculous security concerns. He hated having two great dark patches in the cabin where his eyes and ears couldn’t roam. But, for the most of part, the
Gulliver
was a pleasure.

Best of all, Mark loved the ship’s
feel
. His unusual interface design dispensed with many of the metaphor layers roboteers customarily relied on to manage a ship’s systems. Instead, it made heavy use of the trick Will had learned from the Transcended: employing sketched copies of a roboteer’s own mind in place of SAPs to manage each function. Input from each copy filtered hierarchically into the pilot’s consciousness as seamlessly as feedback from his own body. This gave him an intuitive, immediate grasp of the vessel around him.

The fit was never perfect, of course. Balancing subminds often felt like choosing between different ways to see an optical illusion. The worse the system’s design, the more jarring the distinction between each perception. But the
Gulliver
had been designed with Mark’s type of interface in mind, so the merging of ship facets was almost perfect. Getting used to it felt as easy as sliding his hand into a velvet glove.

And what a glove! The
Gulliver
didn’t drive between stars, it
soared
. It didn’t turn with boat-like ponderousness the way most ships did. It banked effortlessly, gravity bursts slewing around Mark like a cloak made of thunder. Hooked up to the
Gulliver
he felt like some kind of huge vacuum-dwelling avian, slipping through warped space as if it were no more complicated a medium than air. By the time his shift finished, Mark was in love.

When he checked out, though, reality wasted no time intruding. He found a message waiting for him in his home node from Sam Shah. What Mark craved was a good night’s sleep. He certainly didn’t feel like attending a meeting. But his confidence was up and it was surely better to start behaving like the master of his own ship sooner rather than later.

He reluctantly made his way around the
Gulliver
’s faux-spacious companionway, past the holographic gardens with their sand fountains and cool, rusty light, to the privacy chamber where Sam waited. He’d set the ship’s drive to provide a steady one-gee of pull. The
Gulliver
’s engines purred so smoothly that the gravity almost felt Earth-like.

Sam welcomed him in, flicking aside screens full of numbers and maps. The walls returned to their garden-view default, making the tiny chamber slightly less claustrophobic.

‘Hi, Mark, thanks for coming. Want to sit?’

A chair slid out of the wall, momentarily breaking the illusion.

Mark sat. ‘What’s up?’

‘I want us to get off on the right foot,’ said Sam. ‘I may be here in an advisory capacity, but I’m still the senior Fleet officer on this ship and you deserve to know where I stand. First, you weren’t my preferred choice for captain, but you probably figured that out already.’

Mark wasn’t surprised but didn’t enjoy hearing it anyway. He brushed his resentment aside.

‘Second,’ said Sam, ‘you’re a brilliant pilot and a great officer for this job. And, if we’re honest, were it not for a few past mistakes you’d have been my top choice for this position from the get-go.’

‘Okay,’ said Mark, relaxing a little. ‘Thank you, sir, I guess.’

‘I understand that you probably want to make a point with this trip,’ said Sam. ‘Were I in your shoes, I’d want to redeem myself and put the past behind me.’

‘That’s the plan,’ said Mark.

‘Great. Because I have an offer. Let me mentor you on this trip and I will give you my complete support in the business that follows. I’ll throw myself behind the case for the complete restoration of your interface privileges.’

Mark wasn’t sure what to say. He hadn’t needed oversight running a starship since he was sixteen. Had they given him a captaincy or not?

‘Mentor me, sir?’

‘In a manner of speaking, yes.’

Mark tried not to feel insulted. ‘I really appreciate the offer, sir, but I would hope that such a deal isn’t necessary. It’s my intention to follow the mission profile to the letter.’

‘I don’t doubt that,’ said Sam, ‘but I think we both know this mission isn’t going to be that easy. For a start, these people you’re carrying are all VIPs and they all know each other. They’re used to being treated like little gods. Any one of them could probably put the stoppers on your career with a single call after this trip is through.’

Mark said nothing. Sam undoubtedly fell into that same category himself.

‘Maybe you think that just sticking to the mission profile will be enough,’ Sam went on, ‘but again we both know conditions might arise where the profile is exceeded. We’re heading into a very uncertain situation.’

‘Even so, I’d like to think that you’ll be pleased with my performance,’ said Mark. ‘Extra input shouldn’t be necessary for someone at my career level. And the best way for me to make a point to the Fleet is surely to do my job properly without oversight.’

Mark knew how Fleet courts worked. Any evidence on his report that he’d abdicated responsibility for his actions to another officer during the mission would give them an excuse to hold back his interface rights. No matter how well intentioned Sam might be, Mark couldn’t be seen to let someone else guide his command choices for a minute, not even a more highly ranked officer. Plus being seen to take sides among such heavy – and politically charged – company might prove more dangerous than staying neutral.

Sam spread his hands and chuckled. ‘Fair enough. Excellent attitude. Let me try to be a little more … candid. As a member of the Fleet strategic board, I am sometimes privy to information I can’t share. And it’s … possible that this information may have a bearing on our mission.’

‘I get it,’ said Mark. ‘And of course I’ll welcome your input at all times.’

‘I wish that were enough. But we may find ourselves in a situation where the reasoning behind my recommendations might be opaque, or even counter-intuitive.’

Mark tried not to squirm on his chair. ‘And if you signal that, I will give your input the corresponding weight. I’d love to do more, sir, but I can’t agree to automatically accept your proposals without due process. That would be less than the Fleet expects of me.’

Sam’s expression slid a little, betraying some frustration. ‘I
do
see the bind you’re in, but I’m trying to give you a way to offset the responsibility if something actually goes wrong. You’re basing your reasoning on the assumption that there even
needs
to be a court session at the end of this. If you get my drift.’

In Mark’s experience, there was always a court session.

‘What I’m offering you here is a free ticket to a clean slate,’ said Sam. ‘I just want to help.’

Mark wondered what anyone reviewing the surveillance tape from the mission would make of all this. Sam appeared to be extremely confident that circumventing Fleet process wouldn’t be an issue, even in the event of disaster. Unless, of course, Sam was setting him up. Will’s words suddenly came back to Mark with a jolt.
Someone doesn’t want you to fly, Mark, and chances are they’re coming with you on that ship.

‘But that’s the thing, sir,’ he said. ‘I don’t want a free ticket. I want to earn it.’ He got to his feet. ‘I’m sorry I can’t do more, sir,’ he said. ‘Thank you for taking the time to talk with me, and please know that I take your input extremely seriously.’

He let himself out, not sure whether to feel insulted or worried by how the conversation had gone. Hopefully the entire subject would be moot in a few weeks when Sam had a chance to see him in action. Either way, Mark no longer felt ready for sleep. He needed a distraction. A book, perhaps, or a few minutes of light interactive. He made his way to the ladder that led down to the lounge but paused at the top when he spotted Zoe Tamar seated below, reading a tablet in a shaft of artificial sunlight.

He sighed to himself. The prospect of sitting with an attractive, talented woman who considered him something between a brawling mobster and ship’s dogsbody didn’t strike him as particularly restful. However, short of disappearing back into the ship’s metaphor space, there was nowhere else to go. Like all starships, the
Gulliver
was crowded.

He decided to retreat anyway just as she looked up and noticed him. Mark smeared a smile onto his face and grudgingly descended. He picked the chair closest to the wireless node and slumped into it with his arms folded. He peered out at the simulated canyon and hoped she’d keep reading.

‘What’s up?’ said Zoe. ‘Someone piss in your crash couch?’

Despite her tone, she sounded curious, not critical. Mark had no idea how to avoid talking to her without coming across as even ruder than usual.

‘Are you sure you really want to know?’ he said. ‘I don’t want to dump on you. We haven’t exactly hit it off so far, and that’s almost certainly down to me.’

‘We need to be able to work together,’ said Zoe, ‘so you might as well talk. Otherwise I’ll just sit here wondering why you’re in a shitty mood.’

She paused uncomfortably and ran a hand through her hair. Mark belatedly noticed it was the same purple as the Vartian Institute logo.

‘I was short with you last night,’ she said. ‘Your presence spooked me, I admit that. I may have blamed you a bit, which wasn’t strictly rational. So now I’ve done the easy part of opening up and you’ve got nothing to lose by talking. Who knows, my opinion of you might go up.’

Mark regarded her nervously. He recognised an olive branch when he saw one and couldn’t really turn it down, though chatting lacked appeal. He reluctantly decided to return the gift of transparency.

‘I just had a meeting with Sam,’ he said. ‘Didn’t go so great.’

‘Why not?’ she said. ‘What happened? Is he upset with you or something?’

‘No, nothing like that.’

Zoe waited expectantly.

Mark writhed inside and wondered how much to say. He hated situations like this. With another roboteer, he’d just hand them a memory file and let them figure it out. With norms, you had to tortuously work out what you were and weren’t supposed to disclose. Whatever. If she wanted honesty, he might as well do it properly.

‘He seemed to want some kind of concession from me. I’m not even sure what it was. We didn’t get that far. He offered to
mentor
me. Which, first off, I can’t allow, and, secondly, is kind of insulting. It’s just one more reminder to me that I don’t really like Fleet work. I can’t wait for the mission to be over so I can get the hell out of this project and leave all this political shit behind. It’s the little things like this that make me wish I’d never said
yes
.’

‘That’s ironic,’ said Zoe, folding her arms. ‘I had to fight so hard just to be included. The Vartian Institute was forced to offer up millions in tech patents to get me my slot.’

Mark winced. He’d managed to scorch the mood already. Amazing.

‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘That came out badly. Look, ignore me. My life is weird. I don’t need or expect sympathy.’ He sat there and smouldered, wishing he’d never opened his mouth.

Zoe looked at him oddly. ‘Can I offer you a little advice?’ she said.

‘Sure,’ said Mark. ‘Go for it.’

‘For the next few weeks, our lives are in your hands,’ she said. ‘And as you point out, you’re a little weird, and you’re clearly not happy. Most of us don’t know the first thing about you except the
very
short bio the Fleet gave us, and that you have some kind of link with Will Monet. So don’t be surprised if people on this ship are a little concerned about that, and maybe look around for ways to exercise some control over their destiny. Like offering to mentor you or cheer you up or find out who the hell you are, or whatever. That’s just human nature.

‘If you don’t want to be on the receiving end of that, why not try reframing how you look at the mission? I don’t know what your reasons were for taking this job, but I can tell you why I’m here, and why I’m excited about it.’ She leaned forward in her chair. ‘I think this is the start of a new phase of history. We’ve been given all the clues: the radiation flash, that message, their warp signature. I believe the Transcended are involved in all this and that their agenda will be revealed. We’ll know what they’re angling for, at last. For better or worse we’ll know where the human race is headed. And this ship will be right there when we figure all that out. That’s worth getting a bit ramped about, surely?’

Mark saw the glee in her eyes. It certainly felt nice having someone want to share their enthusiasm with him, but even so, he couldn’t help himself. Suspending disbelief didn’t come that easily.

‘So you don’t think it’s all some kind of a bullshit scam, then?’ he said. ‘That’s what Will and Sam seem to think.’

Zoe sat back and offered him a slightly wounded smile. Mark immediately regretted his words.

‘No,’ she said. ‘I don’t. I’m pretty sure they’re wrong.’

‘Really?’ said Mark. He felt a desperate urge to explain his unpleasant remark and sound consistent at the same time. ‘I mean, I take your point about the warp drives – it’s a good one, and you’re the expert. But if I was going to try for something like that, I’d trick out every drone with tau-chargers to hide their signature and then just dump out a tailored g-ray flash every time they warped. They could make it look however they liked. And at the kind of distance the
Reynard
was sitting at, I can’t see them having the sensor resolution to tell the difference.’