The messier fold, p.11
The Messier Fold, page 11
‘Registration unit,’ said Lei, noticing the puzzlement among the visitors. ‘We can’t be tracked now.’
‘But what about these guards?’ said Lake, nodding his head towards them.
‘Different faction,’ said Lei. ‘Not allegiant to the ruling dynasty.’
‘Won’t they hunt us down?’ Herez asked.
‘Most certainly, but there are particular areas where even they fear to go,’ Lei answered. ‘And where your ship landed is one of them.’
‘Then, why did we bother coming here?’ said Aranjuez.
A look of disappointment came over Lei’s face and he stared at the floor for a moment.
‘I was hoping that the opportunity you represented would help in the reconciliation of the factions. But as you saw, Heise was blind to you being anything other than Gao. If it had been any of the other committee advocates meeting us, the outcome could have been very different.’
A sudden thump sounded from underneath the jia and it jinked to the right.
‘Shit,’ said the pilot, as the craft dropped out below the line of traffic. ‘We’re taking fire.’
Lei and the guards all craned their necks, looking in all directions, trying to locate the shooter.
‘There,’ called one, pointing.
Lei followed the line of the outstretched finger.
‘It’s a bianzi,’ he said. ‘How did that thing find us so quickly?’
Lake could see smoke trailing from the rear of the jia, and smell burning. They continued to lose altitude as the pilot wrestled with the controls.
‘Get us down somewhere inside,’ Lei shouted at him. ‘Everybody, brace yourselves and prepare to disembark.’ He glanced across at Lake. ‘And you guys stay close, have your weapons up to engage that bianzi if he follows us in.’
‘What is it?’ asked Lake, trying to see what they were talking about.
‘A one-man gunship,’ replied Lei. ‘Not something you would normally have flying. I believe they planned to shoot us down on the way back anyway.’
They all swayed around as the pilot put in some severely aggressive manoeuvres. Another laser bolt grazed the canopy and this time Lake saw their adversary. It was a slightly smaller jia, coloured grey, with a blacked out canopy.
‘What is it with them about the colour grey?’ said Lake.
‘In there, in there,’ shouted Lei, pointing to a small landing bay inside a tower they swerved near.
The pilot nodded and wrenched the controls over, clipping the cladding around the entrance to the pad. The jia slewed sideways and slammed into the safety railing, ripping off the canopy and bending the railing flat. Momentum caused the jia to slide across the pad before crunching into the far wall.
‘Out, out,’ said Lei.
Which took seconds with the canopy missing. The bianzi had overshot the entrance and dropped below. It quickly recovered and loomed up into view. Everyone swung their rifles towards it, firing as soon as it appeared.
It managed to get at least one shot off as a guard screamed and fell, half the left side of his body missing. The bianzi shuddered under the sudden onslaught of being engaged by ten laser rifles from only twenty metres away. Large lumps of it disappeared, its antigravity drive started making an awful screeching noise, before it tipped backwards and dropped away, vanishing from sight.
Once they were sure it wasn’t returning for an encore. Lei organised the remaining five guards, who fanned out and secured the corridor leading away from the pad.
‘We need to find transport and quickly,’ said Lei. ‘We’re still deep in––.’
‘Grey territory?’ questioned Lake.
‘The shit?’ asked Herez.
‘Both,’ said Lei, pointing at the door and ensuing corridor. ‘Go –– GO.’
The group thundered up the corridor and met one of the guards, who pointed at a sign on the wall. Lei nodded and they all bundled into what Lake expected to be a stairwell. He was surprised to find a bank of four large elevators, one of which had a pulsing light around the entrance, but the doors remained closed.’
‘Maintenance cars,’ said Lei.
A sound that reminded Lake of an air rifle shot cracked, and the doors swept open. They all trooped in. He felt his body go almost weightless as they descended; it lasted only a few seconds before gravity returned with a vengeance and the doors reopened.
‘Are we only going down a couple of levels?’ asked Lake.
Lei looked at him and smiled.
‘That was a hundred and eighty-nine levels,’ he replied. ‘There’s a staff jia pickup station on this floor.’
As they exited the elevator, one of the guards quietly opened the door to the jia rank a crack and peeked outside; he nodded and held up two fingers.
‘There’s two people,’ said Lei. ‘We can use them.’
As they all piled out the door, towards the awaiting jias, Lake saw the expressions of shock on the faces of the two men standing on the pad. Before they could react, the guards grabbed them and bundled them into one of the three empty jias.
‘Sit down, look normal and you won’t be harmed,’ said Lei, to the two strangers. ‘Everybody else lie down on the floor.’
One of the guards had placed the first stranger’s hand on a palm reader as they embarked and Lei called in the destination with his voice.
The jias were designed for up to twelve people to sit around the outside of the pod and not two sitting and nine lying down. It was a tight fit and only possible with everyone lying on their sides.
‘Don’t be getting any ideas, Mr Herez,’ said Lake, chuckling, as his employee spooned up behind him.
‘Don’t worry, boss,’ he replied. ‘It’s Nicolas I’ve got the hots for.’
A muffled ‘you can fuck right off’ came from behind them as the door swished closed and the jia lifted and turned towards the exit.
Lei had made sure the two strangers could clearly see his rifle covering them and they sat like sentinels, staring into space.
‘Talk amongst yourselves,’ called Lake. ‘Look as if you’re enjoying the day.’
He wasn’t sure if it was because he carried a rifle or the tone of his voice, but the two strangers immediately struck up a conversation about the weather.
‘How very English,’ said Herez.
The jia exited the building and quickly ascended to join in the throng heading across town towards the original landing pad.
Lake could only see what was above them and decided not to lift his head up to peer around. He was soon glad he hadn’t, as a bianzi zipped across his vision, heading back towards the building they’d just vacated.
A few minutes later, Lei lifted himself up and checked their whereabouts.
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘We should be safe now –– and, you three,’ he added, pointing at Lake, Herez and Aranjuez. ‘Stay sat down there –– your height draws attention.’
‘Not to mention our charisma and dashing good looks,’ said Lake, with a wry grin.
15
The Bridge, Starship Gabriel, Unknown System, Messier 86 Galaxy
Spin 210, Revolution 3081, W-7 H-03
The sudden flash lit up the bridges of both ships. Linda saw Le’Gard shield his eyes from the flash on his holonav system.
‘What the hell was that?’ said Tony.
‘It was the alien moon,’ said Cleo. ‘It seems to have self-destructed.’
‘No kidding,’ said Andy. ‘It’s just as well we weren’t still inside it.’
‘That’s not the worst of it,’ said Cleo. ‘The shock wave has disrupted the orbit of the closest gateway moon. The other two were sheltered by it absorbing and deflecting the majority of the wave.’
‘Can’t we pop across and reposition it with the tractor?’ asked Andy.
‘Firstly, it’s too big,’ said Cleo. ‘We don’t have the power to move something that large on our own. Secondly the radiation levels need to dissipate before we go anywhere near the system and thirdly, its orbit is decaying at an alarming rate.’
‘You mean, it’s dropping into the planet’s atmosphere?’ Linda asked.
‘Yes.’
‘How long have we got?’
‘Three minutes.’
‘Three minutes?’ gasped Linda.
‘Then, we’re stuck here,’ said Rayl, her eyes wide.
The bridge went silent as they watched the small moon begin its fiery plummet into the planet’s upper atmosphere.
The silence was broken by a message from the Gao vessel.
‘That can’t be good for you guys,’ said Le’Gard.
‘It’s a disaster,’ admitted Linda.
‘I’ve lost my support drone, which will probably get me a demotion.’
‘Has one of those exploded before?’
‘No. It seems the Hexin have incorporated a delayed dark matter self-destruction program into their software. If one of those moons does that in a populated system, the radiation alone would be catastrophic. I need to return home and put in a full report on this.’
‘We were about to pay the core a visit,’ said Linda. ‘But if it’s a space station orbiting a populated planet, then I think we need to rethink our approach. Do you mind if we tag along with you and introduce ourselves?’
‘I’ll have to pre-warn the authorities,’ said Le’Gard. ‘The military command will definitely want to check you’re not a Wei vessel before approaching any of our central worlds and even then they can be inordinately paranoid.’
‘That shouldn’t be a problem,’ said Linda, smiling. ‘I’ll just put on the little girl lost routine and charm them into submission.’
‘Good luck with that,’ said Le’Gard, returning the smile for the first time. ‘Follow my jumps until I signal you to stop. It’ll take around two rotations.’
Before Linda could answer, his little ship vanished.
‘He jumped thirty-one light years,’ said Rayl. ‘Here are the emergence co-ordinates.’
‘Okay,’ said Linda. ‘Do as the man says and keep at a thousand kilometres.’
Fifty-one hours and nineteen jumps later, they emerged into a system next to an enormous blue gas giant. Le’Gard’s little ship was stationary for the first time since they left and Andy, who was on shift at the time, parked the Gabriel fifty kilometres off its port side.
He’d called Linda and three minutes later she zipped up through the floor on the tube lift.
‘Where are we?’ she asked, rubbing the sleep from her eyes and reclining on her couch.
‘In an unpopulated system next to the mother of all gas planets,’ said Andy, pointing to the blue orb hanging in the middle of the bridge.
‘Bloody hell –– how big is that thing?’ she said.
‘About four hundred times bigger than Jupiter,’ said Cleo.
‘It’s so blue.’
‘It’s the methane reflecting the sunlight back,’ Cleo continued.
‘I never knew something that smelt so bad could be so pretty,’ said Linda.
‘Yeah, but we still love you,’ said Andy, smirking.
‘You’re on rocky ground, Faux,’ she said, flicking her tongue out at him.
‘Good morning, Starship Gabriel,’ said a chirpy Le’Gard. ‘This is where we part company.’
‘Do we just hang around here and wait for an escort?’ asked Linda.
Two large monolithic ships jumped in to the system, one hundred thousand kilometres away, and began powering towards them.
‘Perfect timing,’ said Le’Gard. ‘These guys will be looking after you from now on. Don’t piss them off.’
‘I think it’s the other way round,’ she said, giving Andy a pre-planned signal.
He nodded and proceeded to evaluate the two huge newcomers.
‘Farewell,’ said Le’Gard, and his ship moved away, accelerating towards the system’s designated jump zone.
As his small ship passed the two military ships, one of them reached out with a tractor beam, snared Le’Gard’s ship and began dragging it closer.
Linda opened her eyes and looked quizzically across at Andy.
‘Two kilometres length, pretty basic shields, standard battleship armaments, nothing out of the ordinary,’ he said, lifting his gaze to give her a nod.
‘Cloaking?’ she asked.
He shook his head.
‘No.’
‘Corruptible systems?’ she asked, this time looking hopeful.
‘Absolutely.’
She smiled. ‘It can’t be long now before they––’
An almost bored sounding monotone voice interrupted her, speaking over all frequencies.
‘Unidentified ship will power down, drop shields and accept a boarding party.’
‘Good morning, un-introduced voice transmitting from Gao vessel,’ Linda began. ‘This is Captain Wisnewski of the Starship Gabriel, which you will have been already informed of by your border sentinel Le’Gard. By the way, would you release his vessel, as he has important information to convey back to the authorities?’
Linda winked at Andy, which was the sign for him to use his DOVI to disconnect the tractor beams on both warships.
‘Thank you,’ she said, as Le’Gard’s little ship shot away and jumped almost immediately. ‘As I was saying, I represent over sixteen hundred human races in the Milky Way galaxy, collectively known as the GDA. We would like to––’
‘You need not continue,’ said a new commanding voice. ‘As we both know, intergalactic travel is not possible. You are most likely a new design Wei spy vessel and you will comply with the original automated transmission.’
The two battleships closed in on the Gabriel and came to a full stop only ten kilometres away. Linda and Andy could see all the surface weaponry on the two ships was pointed in their direction.
Linda looked up at the ceiling.
‘Cleo, have you got a fix on the origin of that last transmission?’
‘Affirmative.’
‘Are you ready to instigate our little ruse?’
‘Affirmative.’
Linda closed her eyes again.
‘Okay, I’m ready.’
On the bridge of the Gao battleship Quilorn, Fleet Admiral Kan was in a tetchy mood. Roused from his cabin in the middle of his rest period to deal with what looked like a Wei spy ship, and now the tractor beams on both of his newest battleships had inexplicably failed. To cap it all, the insolent captain of the spy ship was challenging his decision and continuing with the ridiculous story of being from another galaxy.
Kan wasn’t born yesterday, although how the Wei ship had got past the Hexin he wasn’t sure, but he knew a pile of crap story when he heard one and he most certainly wasn’t going to allow this ridiculously small ship to upstage the two most powerful battleships in the galaxy.
He turned to speak to his engineering officer and came face to face with a tall dark-skinned female, dressed in a short summer dress that elegantly showed off her figure. Her hair was brown, long and flowing, and she had startling black eye makeup and long gold intricate ear rings, with a multitude of jewelled bangles around her arms.
‘Who the hell are you?’ exclaimed Kan, taking a step back in surprise. ‘And how did you get on my bridge?’
Two soldiers flew onto the bridge bringing what looked like hand weapons to bear on the intruder.
Linda smiled and glanced over at the two approaching soldiers. She raised her hand and both men went sprawling across the floor and found themselves unable to stand. One brought his weapon up and immediately dropped it as though it was too hot to handle.
‘Good morning, Captain,’ she said. ‘I always prefer to converse in person. It’s so much more congenial, don’t you think?’
Kan stared at the soldiers’ futile attempts to get up.
‘You’re the captain of that small ship?’ he thundered. ‘How are you doing that?’ he said, pointing at his soldiers. ‘And how did you get over here? Through my shields and untold levels of security?’
‘How long does a lady have to wait for an introduction around here?’ said Linda, ignoring the questions and assuming an air of impatience. She noticed that the bridge was now completely silent and all eyes were on her.
‘My name is Fleet Admiral Kan,’ he said, finally.
‘Fleet Admiral, eh,’ said Linda. ‘Did you miss the diplomacy course during Admiral training?’
A snigger sounded from somewhere on the bridge.
Kan just stared, his eyes wide and body language demonstrating he had no idea what to do.
‘Was it you that disrupted my tractor beams?’ he finally asked.
‘Ah, talking of ship systems,’ said Linda. ‘Would you mind awfully not targeting my ship with your main weapons?’
This was the sign Andy was waiting for, and again he delved into the battleship’s systems to shut down their laser control software. Linda knew he’d been successful when the holo display showed all the laser turrets on both ships floating back to their default straight out position.
‘Thank you very much,’ she said, as a call from one of the bridge officers caught Kan’s attention.
‘Did you just do that too?’ he growled, after being informed that his main armaments were offline.
‘Don’t worry, we’re not going to fly your nice new shiny ships into a star or anything,’ she said. ‘It’s just next time a friendly race decides to knock on your door and say hi, you might try to be a little more diplomatic.’
‘Download complete,’ said Cleo, her voice booming out around the battleships bridge.
Kan’s head snapped up and he stared around the room.
‘Who was that and download of what?’ he demanded.
‘Well, it’s been lovely chatting,’ she said. ‘But we really must be getting on, time is money and all that.’
