Nemesis (31 page)

Beside him, Nelson hung his head. ‘Apparently we don’t have much of a choice,’ he said. ‘We can’t see them. We can’t fire back.’

‘Fuck that,’ Will spat. His ship had the capacity for limited warp using the secondary conduits. That would have to do. ‘We’re leaving,’ he said. ‘I’m routing power through the secondaries. Hold on tight, everybody.’

‘Will, stop!’ said Nelson. ‘Are you
crazy
? We don’t have any shields. We’re sitting ducks.’

‘Then we’d better sit somewhere else,’ said Will, and sent subminds racing through his ship’s systems, seeking out alternative channels for power.

Nelson stared at him, horrified, his expression imploring. ‘Will, please remember you’re not alone on this ship. It’s fine for you to risk your own life but my team is still aboard. You’re risking everyone.’

Will picked a vector designed to put the
Chiyome
at the greatest disadvantage and threw power into the thrusters.

‘Then tell them to buckle the fuck up,’ he snarled. ‘I’m not giving that bitch the satisfaction of imagining she has me pegged. I’m going to make this as hard for her as I possibly can.’

‘Will!’ Nelson roared. ‘You’re not being rational and you’re damaging the ship. The secondaries aren’t designed for this. And besides, that beacon had a Fleet signature – isn’t that proof enough they don’t want us hurt?’

Will glared at Nelson with his human eyes. The man was starting to sound weirdly naïve. Hadn’t he noticed they’d just been shot at by their own side?

Drones raced ahead of them and detonated, sending shock waves clanging through the unprotected hull. Warning shots from the
Chiyome
. Will layered in an evasive manoeuvre program. He could feel the strain on the ship like the ache of tired muscles. It was years since he’d tried to use the
Ariel Two
this way.

‘You’re overloading couplings all across the ship,’ said Nelson, his eyes skittering over the data in his view. ‘At least let me help!’ He reached into the
Ariel
’s smart-web and started tinkering.

Abruptly, power died altogether as several overworked secondary junctions blew simultaneously. All across the mighty ship, fluid stopped pumping and robots sagged mid-task. The lights in the primary habitat core dulled to a clotted red.

The ship drifted. The
Chiyome
raced up behind them in a second and dropped its cloak, revealing a boser pointed straight at them.

Will rounded on Nelson. ‘You did that,’ he said. ‘You crippled us on purpose.’ He started climbing out of his couch, hands closing like claws.

‘Now you’re being childish,’ said Nelson. ‘Why don’t you listen to what these people have to say first?’

Will froze. His skin prickled as the obvious finally dawned on him.

‘You’re with them.’

To his credit, Nelson didn’t bother denying it. ‘This isn’t what it looks like,’ he said.

Will sagged. He’d entrusted his secrets to Nelson. He’d let the man decide things for him. Crucial things. Nelson had watched him cry, heard about his war nightmares, listened to him babble out his innermost fears. This new betrayal cut deep enough to suck the strength from his body. He hung his head and drifted. A sense of disgust and exhaustion as heavy as a glacier stayed his hand from killing.

Ann’s voice sounded over the comms.

‘
Ariel Two
, this is your final warning. Captain Monet, will you surrender peacefully, or must we fire again?’

Nelson thumbed the comm. ‘We’re without power,
Chiyome
,’ he said. ‘You can come aboard. The captain will be waiting for you.’

10.3: ASH

Ash was lying in his bunk, failing to sleep, when the alert came through. He saw Mark’s ID attached to the message and immediately knew the plan hadn’t worked. He fought down a surge of angry desperation. He’d proposed to Sam that he make nice with Zoe and try to convince her to change her vote. Sam had refused.

‘That moment’s past and we’re out of time,’ he’d said.

So Ash had taken the bottle Sam had given him and applied it carefully, as instructed. He’d trusted Sam that it would just knock Mark out without wanting to think about it too much. What else was he supposed to do, after all? In the meantime, Sam had managed Citra.

Ash got up. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. At this point, he preferred any kind of resolution to the dread of waiting. He’d spent his life aboard ships, flying risky missions to and from the Frontier, keeping secrets, pushing life’s envelope. He wasn’t used to being afraid. It was, he’d come to appreciate, the anticipation that got you, not the experiences themselves.

And Ash knew what was coming – not starships, just death. By his estimates, they had only a few hours left before the Nemesis machines arrived. The
Gulliver
’s warp trail would be painfully easy for the Nems to see. And the Nems
always
chased down perceived antagonists.

When he joined the Rumfoord League, he’d never guessed it would end like this. He’d seen himself as a brave defender – one of the few making sacrifices to maintain the peace. Now he just felt like fish-food. He tried to keep the guilt and fear off his face as he headed for the lounge.

The others showed up on the lower level looking more than a little confused.

‘Another meeting?’ said Venetia. ‘Really?’

‘Do you want to tell us what’s going on?’ Sam asked Mark. He looked gently curious, and as unruffled as ever.

‘This is going to sound weird,’ said Mark, ‘but there’s been a murder attempt on this ship. The intended victim was me.’

Ash’s heart sank as disgust curdled inside him. He should never have taken Sam at his word. Sam’s eyes, meanwhile, went wide in a perfect simulacrum of surprise.

‘Murder? In here? Are you serious?’

‘Very, I’m afraid,’ said Mark. He pointed. ‘Someone painted this chair with neurotoxins. Whoever sat down and rubbed their neck against it was going to take it in the …’

‘The proverbial neck?’ Venetia finished for him.

Mark nodded weakly. ‘Yeah.’ He didn’t appear to have much strength for wit at that moment.

‘How do you know it was poisoned?’ said Sam, peering at the crumpled velvet.

Zoe handed him the medical sampler. ‘See for yourself.’

‘This is bad news,’ said Mark. ‘As if we didn’t have enough trouble already. Someone’s going to wind up in coma till we get home.’

He shot Citra a furtive glance when she wasn’t looking. Ash was thankful for that, at least. Perceived guilt was following Sam’s preassigned path.

‘Can someone explain exactly what happened here?’ said Venetia. ‘Because it’s just weird. It’s all a little, you know, twentieth century. I mean, who tries killing anyone on a
starship
? Isn’t that, like, the most self-defeating crime anyone could possibly attempt? The surveillance alone—’

‘Except this ship doesn’t have it, remember?’ said Zoe. ‘Or hardly any compared to a usual Fleet vessel. Look, Mark and I came in here. He was about to sit down and then I smelled it. It took us another couple of minutes to figure out that someone had deliberately painted his chair with an undetectable neurotoxin.’

‘Wait,’ said Sam. ‘What did you just say? If it’s undetectable, how come you detected it?’

‘I have augments,’ said Zoe. ‘Vartian Institute tools to protect against chemical incursion.’

Sam shot her a wary look. ‘You never told us that.’

‘Of course not,’ she retorted. ‘I didn’t tell anyone on the ship. The Institute delivers information like that on a need-to-know basis.’

Ash suppressed the urge to guffaw. How angry Sam had to be right now. He wasn’t the only person on the ship shaping events behind the scenes. First Will Monet had gone around him, and now so had the lowly Zoe Tamar, a scientist with a predictability score of seven-point-three. He must be fuming.

Sam gave Zoe a frosty look. ‘So you were keeping things from us as well.’ His tone spoke volumes.

‘Of course,’ said Zoe tartly. ‘The Vartian Institute’s job is to prevent alien subversion, just like yours is to prevent Frontier security problems. If anyone aboard should understand
need to know
, Overcaptain Shah, it’s you. Do we ask you about
your
secrets?’

‘So,’ said Sam, ‘you
detected
it. Then what?’

‘Then Zoe went for the sampler,’ said Mark, his voice strained. ‘And that’s when we figured out the substance came from Citra’s lab.’

All eyes turned to Citra Chesterford. She glanced around at them with astonished contempt before raising her hand to point at Mark.

‘He did it,’ she said.

‘I’m sorry?’ said Zoe.

‘This is a ruse,’ said Citra. ‘He never meant to actually sit in that chair. The whole thing is a carefully constructed trick to frame me because of what I said and what I’ve figured out about him. It’s obvious.’ She shook her head, her face twisting with disgust. ‘I had no idea you’d stoop so low.’ Her voice warbled as she spoke.

Ash watched Mark’s expression close up in anger.

Citra turned to Sam. ‘You know this is true, don’t you?’ she said. ‘Tell them.’

Sam threw up his hands and managed to look upset. ‘Hey!’ he said. ‘This is an awful situation, but we can’t afford to make any assumptions about who did what here. For a start, Professor Chesterford, no one has accused you of anything yet.’

‘But that’s not how it looks, is it?’ she said. ‘It’d take a fool not to see that I’ve been set up.’

‘Nevertheless,’ said Sam, ‘when there’s a legal accusation of this severity, there can be no short cuts.’

Venetia rubbed her temples and looked worried. ‘Zoe, isn’t there some way we can bypass the security settings and access the camera logs?’ she said. ‘I mean, there has to be, doesn’t there? We’re not living in the dark ages here. All we need to do is reach the memory core.’

Sam shook his head. ‘Sadly, the security on this ship is watertight. That’s why we chose it. We were protecting against aliens. We never expected this kind of situation would arise.’

‘Actually, that’s not completely true,’ said Zoe. ‘We might be able to do it.’

Ash’s heart skipped a beat.

‘And how would you do that?’ said Sam. His tone leaked scepticism. ‘Is there more you haven’t told us?’

Zoe shot him a sour look and explained. ‘While we didn’t bring messenger drones, this ship still has the firing tubes for them and all the accompanying data support. Logs are automatically passed from the core to the memory caches in the docks. Dock security still runs on Fleet standard, not the diplomacy lockdown the rest of the ship uses. It wasn’t upgraded because there weren’t any drones to make the modification worthwhile. We don’t have direct access to those docks, of course. However, we could send a robot up there to interface with one of them. We’d have to fake something to make the robot look like a messenger drone, but that shouldn’t be too hard.’

Ash knew what they’d see. They’d see him painting the chair. They probably wouldn’t even bother winding back as far as his conversations with Sam to figure out why. And Sam wouldn’t let them. Ash wondered how Sam had ever convinced him to play along. He understood how Citra had to be feeling at that moment: trapped and appalled. His heart hammered in his chest as if demanding to be released. He looked across at Sam with newfound loathing and watched as his boss calmly assessed their options.

‘How long would that take?’ said Sam.

‘Mocking up the interface would be the hard part,’ said Mark. ‘Maybe a couple of hours, max?’

‘It’s not a matter of time,’ said Venetia.

‘It is for me,’ Mark replied. ‘That’s why I’m already on it.’

Sam blinked at him. ‘Really?
That’s
convenient. I hope you’ll remember to keep an open feed on that process throughout, so we can make sure you’re not tinkering with it.’

‘Of course,’ said Mark curtly. ‘Check your view profile. I’ll have the final attachment to the dock done with everyone in here so there can be no doubt I didn’t touch it first. You can break the seals yourself.’

‘Okay,’ said Sam grudgingly. ‘Under the circumstances, then, I have to admit that the security lapse appears justified.’

Ash ground his teeth and struggled for something to say. The only thing he could think of was a full confession. The awful knowledge of the entire plot sat in his mouth like a bolus of burning food, begging to be spat into the world. He drew breath to speak.

Sam beat him to it. ‘In the meantime, we should get the whole story straight,’ he said. He shot Ash a significant look as if reading his anxiety. ‘Zoe, do you think you could point out the substance in the lab you believe was used?’ He turned to Citra. ‘And Professor Chesterford, do we have your permission to examine your lab? To see if there are any traces of intrusion, for instance?’

Citra managed to look freshly affronted, but nodded. ‘If that’s what it takes.’

‘Is that strictly necessary?’ said Venetia. ‘I mean, if we have the profile of the compound, isn’t that enough?’

‘Not if we don’t know where it came from,’ said Sam. ‘If Citra
has
been framed, wouldn’t it have been easier to do without sneaking into her lab? Another sample could have been smuggled aboard somehow.’

‘Under Fleet maximum security conditions?’ said Venetia. ‘You think so?’

‘Why not? I could have done it,’ said Sam. ‘Did you think of that? My point is that we have yet to determine guilt here. Until we have clarity, we’re
all
under suspicion. And the more we learn, the faster we’ll get this horrible business cleared up. Okay. To the bio-lab, please, everyone. I think it’s better if we go together, don’t you?’

Sam ushered them all up the ladder to the main ring of the habitat core. Ash let the others go up before proceeding, leaving only Sam behind him. As Sam came up, Ash noticed him pulling the emergency sedative gun from the wall and clipping it to the back of his ship-suit. He wondered what the man had in mind this time. Sam didn’t appear to care that Ash had spotted him. Nevertheless, Ash decided to keep a close eye on Sam in the minutes that followed, just in case he was the intended target of the gun.