Goliath, p.26
Goliath, page 26
“Sparky!” Duncan almost dropped his weapon in his haste to get to the man’s side. He pulled him over on his back, staring in shock at his blood sodden jacket.
“Oh, bloody hell.” Payce hurried over to them.
“I shot him,” Duncan whispered. “I shot him.”
Sparky twitched again, his eyes flickering open. His mouth worked but no sound came out of it. Payce pushed the taller Smithy twin aside so he could get a better look. He unzipped the man's jacket and pulled up his shirt.
“We’re lucky,” he said. “It’s only a scratch. It’s bleeding a lot, but it’s not deep.” He poked the edges of the wound. Blood still welled from it, but it hadn’t hit anything critical. He could see layers of blood smeared fat where the bullet had passed through one of Sparky’s love handles. “Lucky,” Payce said slowly, so Sparky could read his lips. “You’re lucky. You’ll be ok.” He turned towards Duncan. “Find me something to wrap this up with.”
“You’re a doctor?”
Payce laughed. “Hell, no. I live with Sistine Davido, she’s told me all I ever need to know about wounds and what to do with them.”
Duncan stood back, looking guilty. He backed away slowly, mouthing apologies. Sparky waved a sign slowly, doing it again when Payce shrugged. He held up a thumb and pointed to his side.
“Oh, you’re ok." He realised Sparky's meaning. "Well, good. Hang about here for a bit until we get this treated. You’ve lost a lot of blood. You know, mate, you should try switching your bloody lamp on.” As he said it he noticed the device was missing. Sparky had lost it somewhere in his travels about the interior of the warship. Unfortunately he’d never be able to tell them about it.
Duncan returned with a bandage and antibiotic ointment from a first aid kit. Payce cleaned Sparky up as much as he could and helped him carefully to his feet. “Sit down over here,” he said, ensuring Sparky could read his lips. “Where’s the others?” He said slowly. “Prentice?”
Sparky sighed. He shrugged, making a quick sign. Of course no one understood what he meant.
“Did you get separated?”
Sparky pointed towards the deck.
“They went to a lower deck? Why did they leave you behind?”
Sparky shook his head. He signed again but it was a waste of time.
“Yeah, ok, pal. You just rest up.” He scooped up the fallen shotgun and checked it clumsily. As he did so he noticed Duncan standing some way off, quietly reloading his spent clip. “Not your fault, mate. None of us could see who it was. I’d have shot him if it was me.”
Duncan shook his head. “No. That,” he pointed, “could have been Marco. I could have shot Marco.”
“Ah, well, you didn’t.” Bemused Payce left him alone. Perhaps Davido’s goons weren’t bothered about catching the odd civilian in crossfire from time to time. It was bound to happen, he guessed.
“What a lovely way to earn a living,” he muttered. As he said it, he heard movement from behind him. The makeshift bridge creaking as something eased out onto it. He turned and stared into the darkness. “I don't think we’re alone. Andrea, that you?” He shuddered. How could the woman disappear like that?
Chapter Twenty Four
“What a waste of time that was,” Davido commented, leading the way forward as his small band headed deeper into the abandoned dreadnought.
“I tell you, boss. There was a rope there. I saw it,” Marco protested.
“Yeah, and so we spent three hours looking for it. Wasted,” he said. “We wasted three hours.”
“There may have been someone there,” Sollander conceded. “But for some reason they decided to avoid us. Irrational, but there you go.”
Davido shrugged. “They might have known where Sissy was, but we can’t waste time here.”
“So, you’re not interested in the rest of the crew of the first mission then? Just your sister?”
“Should I be? You don’t seem particularly bothered about tracking them down yourself. Why are you here again?” Davido turned and shone his lamp in her face.
Sollander grimaced, holding her hand up to protect her eyes. “Shine that thing somewhere else.”
“Go on, you brought this up. Why are you here? I'm here to get my sister, and I’ll freely admit I don’t give a fuck about the others. But you, you’re something else. You said you wanted to get your people back. I’m not seeing much concern now, lady.”
She shrugged. “They left a job half done. I need to ensure it’s finished.”
“What job? To secure this ship? Yeah, I can see that happening.”
Sollander said nothing. She certainly did not trust this man. There was only one person who knew the real reason she was here, and Singh could be trusted to keep it to himself. Whatever could be said about the man, he would always do what was in his own best interest. If he opened his mouth he would be as dead as she would. Drefus would see to that personally. “Perhaps you should just consider yourself lucky to have me here, and leave it at that?”
Davido shook his head. He didn’t like secrets. Secrets were dangerous. That was not how he ran his organisation. “Listen, babe, I don’t really care. As long as you don’t get in my way.”
Sollander bristled. She was no one’s ‘babe’. “You don’t have to worry about that.”
They had left the hold behind, giving up on trying to find who the rope had belonged to. Presuming there had ever been a rope. Davido had known Marco for a long time, and knew the man was not prone to flights of fancy. Still, it had been dark and there had been strange shadows everywhere. He could have simply been mistaken. He’d forgive him. This once.
These companionways were no longer naked metal. Perhaps the Confederate designers had never imagined boarders would get this far in, so had spared some expense making the compartments more welcoming. Trailing his hand against a bulkhead Davido tried to identify what kind of material it was. He failed miserably. It was hard, like baked plastic, coloured a light beige or brown—he couldn’t tell which in the lamp light. The lights overhead, although dark, were set in long strips. Even the deck’s hard rubber had vanished, replaced by a cross between a mat and a carpet. It was pleasant, in a hard wearing, military kind of way.
There were more doors here too. Once again they were all unlocked, permitting him to push them open carefully to peer inside. The chambers within were an assortment of gyms, running tracks and sports halls. A marine training facility, Sollander guessed. In deep space for months at a time they needed to keep their military contingent busy and in peak condition. There was even a firing range of sorts, which Marco had searched thoroughly. There were no weapons to be found.
“There’s gotta be an armoury here somewhere,” Marco groused. “This is a naval ship after all. You’re telling me that with all these defensive features they threw rotten grapefruit at invaders?”
“I’m not telling you anything,” Sollander returned. “Interesting.” She held open a side door so they could have a look at the interior.
It was a barracks, row upon row of beds lined up in military precision. Each bed made and each foot locker stowed neatly beneath it. There were more bodies here. A lot of them.
“I’d expect it to smell a bit,” Davido commented. “Without the air conditioners working the air in this chamber hasn’t moved in eighty years. It should reek in here.”
“LEM,” Sollander said.
“What?”
“Well, we don’t know what they called it,” she aimed her lamp towards the bodies, “but we call it LEM. We’ve seen it before, it was even used in some of the ships we’ve converted to cities. We’ve never been able to get it working properly. Apparently you have to align the panels just right otherwise it just causes eddies.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Clearly. The Confederates used a material in their ships that created a weak electrostatic charge on its surface. It caused air currents to flow along the surface of walls and ceilings. Aligned just right the walls themselves would circulate the air through the ship without them having to use bulky air ducts and impeller systems. Doesn’t require power either, so it would have kept on working even when everything else didn’t.” She smiled. “Like the gravity. They were quite fond of redundant systems.”
“Yeah, thanks for the science lesson,” Davido muttered.
“I don’t get it, Boss.” Marco stalked inside, turning a few of the corpses over.
“Ghoul,” Sollander commented.
He ignored her. “Not one of them has a mark on them. They all just fell where they stood. This is wrong.”
“Could have been some sort of contagion,” Sollander said.
“A very fast acting one,” Davido replied. “I’ve ... ah, I've used gas before. Nothing poisonous, you understand. Chlorine gas is useful.” He hesitated, wondering whether he was saying too much. “It never hits everyone at once. Not simultaneous like this. And nothing hits this quickly. Even if it’s fast acting some bright spark always realises what’s happening and holds his breath. Or some weirdo is immune. I've seen people running around in chlorine gas like it wasn’t there. They just weren’t touched by it.”
“Touched by bullets though, weren’t they, Boss?” Marco laughed.
“Yeah. But we wanted them incapacitated, not dead. That’s why we used the stuff.”
“We don’t know what kind of vector was used,” Sollander said. “It could have been extremely virulent and rapid acting. They might have been dead before they even realised what was going on.”
“Suicide then?”
“I have no idea,” she admitted. “It doesn’t make a lot of sense. There’s no record at all of what happened in the Mentor Archive. The presumption has always been mass suicide.”
“Eighteen thousand souls,” Davido said. “I can’t get a room of employees to agree on lunch breaks. How did they get that many to agree on this?”
“I doubt we’ll ever know. Come, Marco, leave them be.” Sollander held the door open so they could exit back into the passage.
“It could be important,” he protested.
“If there was anything deadly in the atmosphere we’d already be dead,” she said. “As we’re not, we need to continue what we came here to do, and not involve ourselves in things that happened eighty years ago.”
“Somehow I think that’s exactly what you’re here to do,” Davido commented dryly.
“What?”
“Involve yourself in things that happened eighty years ago.”
“The past is as dead as those marines in there,” Sollander said. It sounded hollow in her ears too. “Like what?”
“According to Sissy there are still a lot of unanswered questions. Like, why do the demons hate us?”
“Our mentors would have us believe it’s because the AI's attempted to destroy us. But their effort at patricide failed due to the intervention of those same self proclaimed mentors. The AI's hate us because they failed," Sollander said.
Davido smiled. “Sissy didn't believe it answered the question. Rather, she believed our benefactors are hiding something from us,” he continued.
“Tell me then, what answer did she suggest?”
He shrugged. “It’s all bound to be speculation.” He peered around another door. A washroom. “There was one.” Out of curiosity he ventured in. More dead bodies. Some of them naked and in the shower. Now, that was not something you’d take the time to do if you planned on dying. And it certainly wasn’t the way you would choose to die. This wasn’t right. This was clearly not suicide. These people had been caught by surprise. They had not planned this.
“Yes?” Sollander asked as he stepped out of the compartment.
“Well, this makes me sound like a heretic. Which I’m not. It would be bad for business.”
“Would ruin your reputation,” Marco agreed.
“Go on,” Sollander urged him.
“Well, according to our history ... a history supplied by our mentors, as all our own histories were maintained by our faithful AI’s. Who are no longer in the business of sharing their information with us. According to our history, our ancestors were aboard the Arc Ship, Suetonius. The Syat discovered us somewhere; I forget where it was exactly. A long way from here, anyway. Our ancestors were doomed, the ship was falling apart. They wouldn’t have survived another year. The Syat emissary, Aching-Loss, boarded the ship and offered us salvation.”
“So?”
Davido paused, turning to face the engineer. “Well, the Syat swept through all of human space, obliterating everything. Every man, woman and child. Every cat, every dog... every bloody goldfish. Yet they saved our ancestors.”
“So?” she repeated.
“Well, what deal did we offer them? What did our ancestors promise them in exchange for their lives? And why would the demons hate us because of it? It makes you think.”
“Does it?”
“No. I don’t bloody care. I’m not a heretic, am I?” He smiled broadly and continued walking.
Sollander looked thoughtful for a moment, before following. Davido was quite an infuriating man. “It is a good question,” she said, wishing to continue. “What could we have offered them?”
“What are we to them?” Davido asked. “Pets? A zoo exhibit?” He smiled again. “A farm?”
Sollander said nothing. Good questions indeed. Questions a great many had died trying to find the answers to. But then the Syat were not talking either. Some believed an uncontaminated AI might. One that had not been interfered with by the Syat and their crony, the prefect. Those that had not been castrated.
Such as the AI aboard the CSS Goliath.
Personally, she did not believe Davido was far wrong. The Syat’s relationship with humanity hadn’t changed that much; they still harvested human memories, only now they waited for people to be dead first. True, the memory engrams were not as fresh, but perhaps that was the deal they had struck. A farm indeed.
Still, it did not feel right to her. There was something missing. Surely the AI’s, the demons, would not hate them as they did now. Hissing obscenities every time a human passed them by; promising to kill them, all of them, if they only had the chance. She couldn’t see how such a deal, made in the face of inevitable extinction, would generate such hatred. Pity perhaps, a certain shame possibly. But hatred? It made no sense.
“Ooh, looky look.” Marco vanished from beside them, disappearing into a wide entrance way, leaving only the glimmer of his lamplight to mark his presence.
“What you got?” Davido followed him.
They found a small garage, several vehicles pulled up into neatly marked bays. They were all built around the same basic design, simple oblong boxes with four wheels and a robust electrical drive train. Some were designed to carry personnel, six simple, wide seats perched on the chassis. Others were flatbed vehicles, clearly designed for carrying freight. Marco was sat on the closest personnel carrier, studying the controls.
He whooped. “There’s power!” he announced. With a faint hum the vehicle backed up slowly. He swung it around to face the entrance. “Better than walking, Boss?”
“You did good, Marco. Real good.” Davido swung into the passenger’s seat alongside him. “You coming?”
“It’s got lights too,” Marco said as Sollander settled herself behind them. Light blasted from the headlights, banishing shadows from the compartment. The three switched off their own lamps to conserve power.
Davido relaxed on one of the seats. They were hard and clearly designed for someone far larger than he was. Fortunately the ride was smooth, so it wasn’t too hard on his posterior. If anything it was a relief, he was not accustomed to walking quite this much. Generally people came to him, he did not go to them. Just as he became comfortable their first hurdle presented itself to them.
“Ah,” Marco said.
Two bodies had fallen over each other, blocking the passage. While on foot they had been simply stepping over them. Driving over them now was not an option.
“We’ll take turns,” Sollander said. She slipped off the cart and dragged the bodies out of the way. She noticed the uniform of the soldier on the bottom. An officer of sorts. She rolled her over and studied the uniform. Lieutenant Powler, the name badge clipped to her blouse stated. Red Group, was printed beneath her name. Whatever that meant. Other than that the uniform was featureless, a duplicate of all the others they had seen. She had been carrying something however.
“What you got there?” Davido squinted in the glare of the lights.
“Some sort of device.” Sollander picked a slim calculator shaped instrument from the deck. It had no keys on it, rather it’s upper surface—she presumed it was the upper surface—was one large screen. She turned it over in her hands slowly, inspecting it. There was no on/off button. She pressed her thumb on the screen
‘Comsole AO15: Lt AM Powler’ appeared above the screen in glowing green holographics. Then: ‘negotiating with host’. ‘Network failure’ came and went.
“It’s got power in it. But it’s not connected to anything.” She was about to put it back when the wording changed.
‘Negotiating with alternate’ appeared. ‘Connected. Verifying ID.’ There was a pause, and then: ‘security protocols disabled.’ A menu appeared, the words ‘Goliath Science Lab, The Dark Place Project’ at the top.
“Hey, this is interesting,” Sollander said. “It’s connected to something. The Dark Place, what’s that?”
“It might have maps,” Marco said. “We could use it to navigate.”
“Access to their internal sensor system would be more useful. We could use it to track down your sister,” Sollander said to Davido.
“Sensors won’t be working,” Marco said.
“Let me see.” David joined her. “Try one of the menus. What’s that?” He pointed to an option. ‘Status Update, the Guilt Vector.’
“Guilt Vector?” Puzzled Sollander tried to activate it. Before she could the wording changed. The menu vanished, replaced with ‘remote override.’
“Damn. We’ve been kicked out,” Sollander said. She tried pressing her fingers against the smooth, glassy surface but nothing happened.
