The Expansion Box Set, page 18
part #1 of The Expansion Series
“Brandt, this is my flight officer, Sarvanto,” he said. A young man, slim but athletic, smiled at her. “He runs things up here when I’m not around. You’ll need to get some stick-time up here to be able to take command shifts.”
Brandt shook his hand and felt her warm, strong grip returned as his eyes met hers.
“Pleasure, Commander,” he said in an accent that made her blink.
“Swedish?” she asked.
“Close enough. I am from Finland originally,” he answered. Sarvanto nodded a slight bow and left them as Torres gestured for her to take the seat once more.
“Thank you, Captain,” she responded with the same sarcastic formality he had used when addressing her by her newly restored rank. Before her ass could reach the seat, the door hissed open to admit a man who stormed toward the ship’s captain.
“Torres,” he barked, “the hell are you doing?”
“Levenstein,” Torres responded in a cold, almost bored tone. “How can I help?”
“Help?” he said, eyes wide with incredulity and horror. “Help? You can help by turning this ship around, immediately, and surrendering it to its rightful owners.”
Torres said nothing, but stared at the man who stood directly in front of him and braced his hands on his hips. The posture of defiance was so ridiculous that Brandt let out an unprofessional but involuntary scoff of laughter.
“Lieutenant Commander Brandt, I presume?”
“That’s me,” she said warily, utterly refusing to add a ‘sir’ even though the man clearly believed he owned the place. Levenstein said nothing, just scowled at her with a withering look that cried out, ‘I’ll deal with you later’. He turned back to Torres.
“This ship belongs to the Hudson-Yu Corporation,” he said, “as do its contents and certain… indentured employees. I order you to turn us abo…”
Torres stood, uncoiling fast to demonstrate the six-inch height difference between the two men.
“Let’s make one thing absolutely clear, Levenstein,” Torres told him. “You don’t give me orders, you got that?”
Levenstein swallowed, not breaking the eye contact but refusing to back down.
“You are here as a courtesy,” Torres went on, “because if you weren’t here then you would be in the custody of a hostile territory on the surface of the Moon right now. You will be disembarking when we reach Mars. This ship is under my command, and because we are now on-mission, it is a military vessel and no longer under the control of your purse strings. I therefore invite you to get the fuck off my bridge.”
Levenstein quailed slightly under the unexpected onslaught of the man he had never seen bare his teeth, but he didn’t move.
“Mainframe,” Torres said out of the side of his mouth without breaking eye contact, “restrict the access of Levenstein, Ryan, to civilian areas, Hyper laboratory and crew quarters only. Acknowledge.”
“Access levels updated,” came a robotic reply from the speakers.
Levenstein shot looks at both of them as he stepped back, straightened his coat lapels and tried to walk away with a shred of dignity.
“Who—what—was that?” Brandt asked.
“That was Ryan Levenstein,” he told her, investing each syllable of the man’s name with scorn. “He’s a goddamned accountant, but someone at Hyper gave him a brief with the word ‘oversight’ in it and since then he’s been laboring under some misapprehension that he’s in charge of anything other than his own zipper.”
Brandt chuckled. “Welcome to the private sector.”
“Let’s just say Hyper can afford the losses. If we’re successful, they stand to gain a hell of a lot more. Take a seat.”
“Our mission?” Brandt asked lightly.
“It was supposed to be to load up and leave for Mars quietly, offload and pick up some personnel there—more CP soldiers, thank God—and head for our new destination to test the Fold Drive.” He sighed in resignation before continuing. “Looks like we’ll be forced to test it a little sooner than we expected…”
“And if we can’t make it work yet?” she asked.
“Then we have to shoot it out in deep space and shoot it out again when we get to Mars. That, of course, assumes we still have a base there and they aren’t overrun in the four weeks it’ll take us to get there under normal speed.”
Brandt thought about it for a minute before asking the question at the forefront of her mind.
“What idiot-level of imagination calls their mainframe, mainframe?”
Torres smiled. “No idea. What would you suggest we call it? Give it a nice girl’s name and a sweet voice so men do what it says? Make it a sarcastic asshole?”
Brandt shrugged. “I just think someone could’ve come up with a better name than that, all I’m saying.”
21
onboard the Bōken-sha Ichi
12 hours later
Brandt had taken the ladders down to deck three, where she found herself regulation underwear and a fitted flight suit bearing the name of their ship on the left breast. She climbed back up to her quarters and took a shower before she swigged water from a bottle and swallowed down a ration pill to fill her stomach. She slept for almost five hours before waking to the alarm she had set as a backup. She hadn’t actually expected to be able to find sleep but had succumbed to exhaustion brought on by adrenaline far more quickly than she imagined possible.
She fixed her hair and face with as minimal effort as possible before stepping into the clean clothes and lacing up the boots she had been wearing with her civilian clothing. She had no waistband to tuck the pistol into, so she swung by the armory on the deck below her on her way to the bridge.
Opening her mouth to ask the soldier for the equipment she needed, he preempted her request and pulled a belt down from a shelf behind him. She smiled her thanks at him, mostly grateful that she wasn’t forced to speak before she had found coffee. She strapped the kit around her waist to settle the holster on her thigh before adjusting it to suit. Slipping the gun into the holster, it locked in place and wouldn’t release unless her hand was around the grip, just as it did when locking magnetically to her armor. She opened her mouth again to ask for something but stopped as two fresh mags hit the armorer’s desk.
“You’re the man,” she said. “What’s your name?”
“Bauer,” he said in an unexpectedly German accent. “Heinrich Bauer.”
“Brandt,” she said, offering her hand to the man. He leaned over the desk to shake it, a slight mechanical whirr sounding as he moved. Her eyes flickered toward the source of the sound and he moved one leg out from behind the desk to show her.
“Lost it in the shootings in Bruges a few years back,” he explained.
Brandt nodded. She had been on the other side of the world running some backwater gig as befitted a ‘Track’ when news of the mass shootings in Belgium had reached them by way of a global terrorism alert. She knew the fighting had been savage and quick there.
“Thanks, Heinrich,” she said. “I’ll be seeing you.”
She left, feeling clean and awake for the first time in a while. When she took stock of their situation she could barely believe that only a few hours before, she had been running a small prison unit and going about the day-to-day before everything flipped upside down.
She walked toward the door to the bridge but before she swiped her implant to open it, the door hissed open and Torres, also clean and shaven and wearing a flight suit like her own, walked toward her with Eze at his shoulder.
“About turn,” he called to her. “Deck four.” She made a comedic, exaggerated about-face, mimicking the parade ground from when her captain had been just a kid who didn’t need to shave, and she had been naively proud of the two white stripes over her shoulder.
They arrived on deck four and swiped their arms over the reader panel where a double door hissed apart to allow them entry to the main lab.
It wasn’t quite the grand reveal they were hoping for; sparks flew from a jury-rigged device snaking cables too close for comfort. Torres turned and covered his eyes. Brandt leapt backward and Eze felt foolish as she slowly removed her hand from the handle of the gun she had gripped.
“No, no, no!” yelled Paterson’s voice. “Shut it down!”
The sound of something powering down whined through the lab and Paterson emerged in a cloud of something with a datapad held in both hands, as if he were about to brain one of the lab techs. He saw the visitors and almost dropped the pad like he’d been caught playing with matches in a hay barn.
“Hi,” he said weakly.
“I was going to ask how things were going…” Torres said, leaving the silence to be filled with answers.
“Fine, fine,” Paterson said, just as weakly as before.
“Cut the shit, Jamie,” Brandt complained. “Can you do it or not?”
“Do what?” he asked innocently.
“Can you make the Fold Drive work and get us to Mars before our people there are all dead or in custody and we get blasted out of space by the two warships chasing us?” Torres’s calm tone quietly betrayed the seriousness of his words.
“Oh, err, not sure. In theory, yes, but if we try it and it doesn’t work then we’ll never know about it. That’s the upside anyway.”
“So, if we try it and it doesn’t work, then what?” Brandt asked. “We all die?”
“No, we get vaporized and deconstructed at a cellular level and scattered across a couple of light years of open space,” he answered, doing nothing to allay their concerns.
“So what’s the issue?” Torres asked, to break the very awkward silence.
“Human trials,” Paterson answered. “We know it works with organic material because Amelia Earhart over there hasn’t turned inside out yet.”
“Just need a volunteer to get zapped through and we will know for sure if the magnetic field frequency is right. I’ll need us to be at full stop to be certain.”
“You got the part where we were being pursued by two ships that will probably launch tactical singularity nukes at us the second they are in range, right?” Torres asked.
“Did you get the part where the test goes wrong and I transport someone out into open space when we’re travelling at twenty clicks a second?”
They held each other’s gaze for a moment.
“Valid point,” Torres answered. “If the test works, how long until we can travel at FTL speed?”
“Three, maybe four hours?”
“Thirty minutes?”
“Three hours tops,” Paterson said with what he hoped sounded like finality.
“You’ll have an hour,” Torres told him, seeing the scientist shrug as though he’d tried his best.
“Fine. I’ll just need to fine-tune the last of the emitters for extended projection. In case you haven’t noticed, this boat’s a little bigger than a person.”
“What person?” Brandt asked. “Who is your volunteer?”
“I don’t have one yet,” he answered.
“You just need someone in a suit to get zapped from one side of the lab to the other, right?”
“Yeah,” Paterson said, drawing out the word. “Not quite so simple, but yeah…”
“I’ll do it,” said a voice from the fringes of the room. It had that telltale metallic twang that could barely be heard.
“You sure about that?” Torres asked him. “Your bosses wouldn’t be happy with you taking risks like that…”
“Captain,” Specter said as he emerged from the shadows silently to demonstrate his name so aptly. “I am not property, not entirely anyway,” he joked, “and I signed no contract to stay out of trouble. Besides, I rather think we are beyond the known realms of risk, aren’t we?”
He was still Jake in so many ways, but something about how he spoke, made Brandt believe that he really was a different man.
“Doctor,” Specter asked, “how long do you need to set up the tests?”
“Two hours tops,” he replied.
Specter shot an amused glance at Torres at his familiar claim of timeframe.
“Wait,” Brandt said in confusion, “I thought you were setting up the tests now. What’s all the smoke about?”
“That’s steam,” Paterson responded with annoyance. “We left the lab in such a hurry that nobody brought the coffee machine. You expect me to work without cappuccino?”
Somehow Ryan Levenstein had got wind of the plan and called up Torres on the comm to formally complain about UNID seizing control of Hyper assets.
“He isn’t a toaster, Levenstein,” Torres told him. “He’s a conscious human being with the freedom and capacity to volunteer, just as he’s done. Torres out.”
The comm blinked again in seconds and Torres considered having the mainframe cut the man’s comm privileges. He decided against that. It was just mean. He wasn’t permitted access to the subspace communication array so any message he could send would take nearly a day to reach anyone as it was.
When that avenue didn’t work, Levenstein stormed into the lab to order Specter not to conduct the experiment. That avenue became a dead-end even faster. The company cyborg refused his orders and walked past him like he didn’t matter.
“Stop,” Levenstein said in his most commanding voice. “Power down. Shut down. Power off. Halt. Pause.”
Specter rounded on him with inhuman speed and stopped unnervingly still in Levenstein’s personal space.
“I am a person with biomechanical implant and prosthesis,” he said quietly. “I’m a cyborg, if you feel the need to classify me, but one thing I am not is a robot you can give orders to.”
He said nothing more, simply turned and walked away. He crossed the room to where Paterson was calibrating a tiny version of the main electromagnetic projector array that stuck out ahead of their ship.
“Good to go, Doctor?” he asked.
“Sure thing,” Paterson answered. “Give me a minute.”
He made a noise of satisfaction, as if he had just won a personal duel with whatever component had been resisting him. He gestured where Specter should stand, on a wide pad that had the hallmarks of a mobile shield array. A similar pad sat twenty meters away on the opposite side of the wide room and had lab techs buzzing around it like insects, as though Paterson were their queen.
“I need to know what sensations you feel,” he said. “Tell me about any pain, nausea, headaches, dizziness… got it?”
Specter nodded.
“Amelia hasn’t been too talkative about her experiences, if you catch my drift.”
“First hamster to cross the Atlantic solo?” Specter asked with a lopsided smile as the gesture pulled at the old scars on his face. “Why would she not want to talk about it?”
“Exactly,” Paterson agreed, more concerned about the test than jokes. “Not too late to pull out.”
“Let’s just get this done,” he replied stoically.
Paterson stepped back and nodded, backing off the sentimentality and getting back to business.
“Paterson to bridge,” he said over the comm. “Ready for test.”
“Understood, Doctor,” Torres’s voice came back. “All ahead stop… on your mark. Tell us the second we can go back to full power.”
“Ready? Increase power to the micro array,” Paterson called out to a lab tech, who tapped at a screen. The command coincided with the thrum and whine of the apparatus ramping up.
Please work, please work, he repeated inside the safe confidentiality of his own mind.
“We’re at power,” the assistant said nervously.
Please don’t turn inside out or explode or disappear…
“Activating on my mark,” Paterson called out confidently. “Three, two, one…”
Please work…
“Mark.”
Afterward, when Specter was able to speak and stand unaided, when he didn’t feel as though he had been crushed through a tiny fraction of the universe to reappear within spitting distance, he was able to explain how it felt.
“Not… not good,” he said, dribbling from one side of his mouth.
“Anything more specific?” Paterson asked with genuine remorse for how the man was feeling.
“Weightless… then too much gravity…” he murmured. “No up or down…”
Paterson turned to the terminal beside him, one of the few fixed terminals in the lab, and ran the fastest basic diagnostic he could over the ship’s gravity emitter and found it working perfectly normally.
“Anything else?” he asked the disorientated man who seemed to be trying his hardest not to fall off the floor he was holding on to. Specter shook his head, lips pursed as though he either wanted to speak or else throw up; Paterson couldn’t say for sure.
“Give me… a minute,” he said in an exhausted mumble, “and put me… put me back in…”
“Why?” Paterson asked, unable to comprehend why anyone would put themselves through that kind of pain and risk. In response Specter struggled to flip onto his back and tapped feebly at the device on the inside of his left forearm. It was like their normal comm units, only more compact and was actually a part of his arm. As Paterson watched, a dialogue screen popped up on his terminal asking if he was willing to accept a file. He hit the screen to say yes and a box filled with code flashed up.
“These are… these are shield harmonics,” he said as he deciphered them. Specter tapped at his abdomen weakly.
“Calibrate my shield,” he muttered breathlessly, “to the same field frequency as the Fold… Drive…”
Specter passed out, his senses ravaged by the unshielded passage through space-time with little protection. Paterson called a medic and had him lifted onto a table to be monitored as he got to work. The tech dedicated to keeping their cybernetic project functioning pushed to the front and opened a compartment under his diaphragm. It popped and slid open, revealing a singularity energy source and combined shield generator. Paterson had been aware of the developments in shielding technology, but this had the look and feel of a prototype about it.
