Brick, New Jersey, Earth.
Our first destination—after we had finally calmed Mikhael down and he had agreed not to reduce our abductors to a fine paste—was a class eleven world.
I wish I knew its location, or anything more about it than its classification, but it was a pleasant place. Clement warm weather, stunning scenery, gravity just a little lighter than Earth’s, atmospheric pressure just a little higher. I felt quite buoyant—Mikhael complained of the heat. Supposedly, the world was home to a host of terrifying plagues, but neither of us ever got so much as a sniffle. Incompatible with human biology, I suppose. Or maybe Earth’s plagues are just nastier still. Who knows?
Have you ever heard a Geiger counter in action? Many people are alarmed by how rapidly and often they click just in response to background radiation. That in itself really ought to be a clue as to how cruel a mother the Earth is, when you think about it. That the basic background level of radiation to which we are entirely accustomed seems excessive even to us when we first learn of it…?
…Well, this planet—I suspected that it would only be the first of many we visited, and so I named it “Prathama”—had a background radiation much lower than that of Earth. It was so low, in fact, that Mikhael and I both fretted that the counter was broken, and requested replacements. The replacements corroborated the original, and in hindsight, why WOULD an alien world have the same background radioactivity as Earth? It would hardly be an alien world if it was identical, would it?
We had been dropped on this world, and told to search the area. Given who we were and the equipment our “employer” had granted us, it wasn’t hard to put together that we were searching for fallout zones, but what wasn’t clear was why. Deathworlds, after all, are supposed to be uninhabited. Humanity, we are told, is a lone statistical anomaly, the one race to defy the odds.
If that were true, and if spacefaring sophonts avoid deathworlds out of sensible caution, then why would there be any kind of evidence of nuclear catarstrophe on the surface of such a world?
Folctha, Cimbrean
A cry of “They’re coming back!” echoed across the camp.
Sir Jeremy turned to his predecessor as Cimbrean’s colonial governor and extended a hand. “Best of luck, Jen.” he said.
“And you, Sir Jeremy.” she replied, shaking it. “Enjoy the paperwork.”
“You can call me Jeremy.” He allowed. “I’ll make sure to have the bath enclosed and hooked up to the hot water. You’ll always be welcome here.”
She smiled. “Thanks…” a quick check showed that the truck was picking its way down the hillside. They had only a few minutes until the survivors from the ship reached the camp, and neither Jen nor Kirk had any intention of being identified as having been present. “I’d better run.”
“Before you go…” Sir Jeremy rummaged in his pocket and produced a folded envelope. “This is from the Prime Minister. He would like you to do something more for Earth. I suspect you’ll find it more to your liking than ‘governoring.’”
“Oh?”
“You’ll have your own spaceship for a start. Read it as you go.”
“I’ll do that. See you when I see you, Jeremy.” They shook hands, and she ran, sure-footed across the palace rubble and across the open field up the Sanctuary’s ramp, which closed behind her.
“Just in time.” Kirk said. “I was about to leave you.“
Sanctuary’s engines heaved, and she popped up and was gone in a startlingly short space of time, inertial compensation making the whole exercise feel eerily detached from the way the ground retreated and curled at the edges in short order. Jen’s last glimpse of Folctha was when the camo field snapped on below them, obscuring the vehicles just before they entered the camp.
They paused when Cimbrean itself was nothing more than a distant crescent sliver of blue-white, so small that she could have covered it with a pinhead at arm’s length, and Sanctuary pulsed once as Kirk fired something into orbit around the star.
“What was that?” She asked.
“System defence field.” Kirk said. “A little modified. The colonists brought it back from Scotch Creek with them.“
“Oh… a whole system? Like the one round Earth?”
“Very similar.” Kirk agreed. “Except that we can turn this one off when we want to.”
Jen said nothing, and pulled the letter from her pocket.
She was halfway through re-reading it when Kirk interrupted her thoughts. “Ready to go FTL.” he informed her. “Where would you like to go?”
“Irbzrk.”
“How’re they doing?”
The colony’s newly-arrived doctor was an American, Dr. Martin Adams, and had undergone intensive training in nonhuman anatomy and medicine as a precaution. He had, to put it mildly, been surprised as all hell to have to practice his skills the instant he arrived. He and Powell had met briefly during the preliminary phases of the colony operation, and he had the intense, competent air of somebody who threw themselves completely into their work.
“One of the vizkittiks died.” he reported. “Not much we could do for her. The rest, well… I’ve set their bones, cleaned and dressed their wounds and made them comfortable, but they just don’t heal as fast as we do. Some of them are going to be in here for a long while. Frankly it’s a good thing we all have those disease-suppression implants or they’d be in serious trouble already.”
“And the Spetsnaz?” Powell asked him.
“Kaminsky’s basically fine. I’ve got his arm plastered, and a big glass of water sorted out the last of that “pixie dust” stuff. There’s nothing I can do for the other guy though. I got an IV in him, but if or when he pulls through is out of my hands, captain. Frankly, he needs to go back to Earth.”
“His only ride just left, too… Alright. Keep me posted. For now I want a word with our POW.”
“He’s over there.” Dr. Adams jerked a thumb to a bed with the curtains drawn. “Knock yourself out.”
Kaminsky was sitting up in his cot, looking bored. The man standing guard over the prisoner was a valuable resource kept from doing something more constructive, Powell knew. Hopefully, Kaminsky would turn out to be cooperative and his warder could be returned to a useful assignment.
Russian was a language that still formed an important part of the modern British special-forces soldier’s curriculum, but he knew only a few key phrases. Still, it seemed only polite to use them. “Kак дела, captain?” he asked.
Kaminsky’s English wasn’t perfect and was heavily accented, but was a damn-sight better than Powell’s Russian. The translator implants he had received from the alliance were useless: Powell didn’t have a matching set for them to talk with. Still, he might come in handy as an interpreter for the alien prisoners.
“Better.” The Spetsnaz captain replied. “I could do with vodka though. Several vodkas.”
“You lost men on that ship?” Powell asked him,
“Da. Sorry: yes I did. To traps, ambushes, maybe to that fucking foam.” Kaminsky indicated the dormant form of Markovitz, then to an empty cot opposite his own. “Sit down.” he invited.
Powell did so. “So, I want to strike a deal, mate.” he said.
Kaminsky looked interested. “What deal?”
“If I HAVE to, I’ll need to assign a guard to you at all times, and I’ve got fookin’ precious few men to waste on that duty. You can see how a Russian special forces trooper smack in the middle of my mission is a bit of a sticky wicket.”
“I see that.”
“So… do I have to?”
“What is your offer?” Kaminsky asked, carefully.
“Quid pro quo, mate. A little information, and I might be persuaded you’re going to behave yourself and I can put private Hodder there back to work.”
“Where I’m from, my interrogation would not be so pleasant.” Kaminsky joked.
“Been there, fookin’ done that.” Powell told him. “But I don’t see the need to start wi’ threats and pain when you and I can just come to an officer’s agreement, like.”
“I agree. It is better this way.” Kaminsky said. “But are you asking about the spaceship and how I came to be on it? Or about my Australian friend with the alien mutant juice?”
“Alien mutant juice.” Powell’s tone of voice was a flat repetition, but also a question.
“Just something he said, and my suspicions. I’ll tell first one story, then the other, yes?”
Powell acquiesced with a bobble of his head and a shrug. “Sounds fair.”
He listened. Kaminsky’s life had rapidly swung for the strange the second he had encountered the now-crashed cruiser, moving from a relative cakewalk to a desperate fight to survive. All things considered, that the man had escaped only with some mild poisoning and a broken ulna to show for it was impressive.
Whether out of soldierly efficiency, Russian brevity or simple terseness from being a slightly hesitant Anglophone, Roman’s account didn’t take long. They sat considering the implications for a while.
Finally, Powell stood up and shook the Spetsnaz officer’s hand. “I have your word you’ll behave?” he said.
“I would like to go home as soon as possible.” Kaminsky confessed. “I think betraying your trust would only delay that.”
“Good enough for me.” Powell said, then deployed some of his own meager Russian again. “Спасибо за информацию.“
Kaminsky smiled. “Пожалуйста.” he said. “Good luck with this Australian, he’s crazy.”
Brick, New Jersey, Earth.
We had grown so accustomed to the sporadic background noise of our counter that when it ticked up to what was, by any human standard, merely a healthy background, we both became quite fretful and uncertain.
Our trepidation was not without good reason, it must be said—the difference between a perfectly safe exposure and rapid but unpleasant death could just be whatever it is that you’re standing behind at the moment. From that moment on, we moved carefully. We tested the water, kept some clean in a bottle to wash any fallout from our persons if we should be contaminated, paused every few hundred meters to probe the air, the soil and the plants for contaminants.
And we found them, oh yes. isotope concentrations in the soil, all from Uranium’s decay chain. Signs of heavy metal poisoning in the local wildlife, including one unfortunate predator that must have had a vast concentration in its equivalent to a liver, concentrated into it by its food chain.
It was lying, dying, by the side of the first sign of civilisation we had seen—a road.
Folctha Colony, Cimbrean, the Far Reaches
Adrian Saunders turned out to be huge. It HAD to be Saunders, even though Jen had been perfectly convinced he was dead. Even without knowing the first name, there were no other Australians with engineering experience and military training on the abductee list. The guy wasn’t tall—in fact, Powell had a good couple of inches on him—but he made up for it by plainly having the kind of physique that strongman competitors and bodybuilders beat themselves up in pursuing. It looked like working muscle, too, rather than pure steroidal bulk.
He let the man stew for a few minutes as he sorted out some paperwork, including a quick re-read of Saunders’ file. When he judged that his prisoner was about on the verge of starting to fidget, he looked up and gave him his well-practiced “I really don’t have time to deal with this shit so you’d damn well better impress me” look.
Contrary to the usual response, Saunders instead smirked and laughed slightly.
“I’m not findin’ this fookin’ funny!” Powell snapped, shutting the man up even if the response was more arrogantly sullen than alarmed. “Do you have any idea what kind of problems you’ve caused just by being here? If you are who I think you are, you’re doin’ a shite job being dead!”
“And if I am who you think I am, you should have a long fucking think before making it known.” Saunders retorted, though why he felt that should be the case was a mystery from Powell’s perspective. “Where’s Jennifer Delaney?”
“You don’t ask questions,” Powell told him. “You answer them.”
This earned another insubordinate frown. Frankly, it was amazing the man had made any kind of a career in the military at all. His body language and defiant expression was more rebellious teenager than professional soldier. “You bastards just shot down my ship—” He began to protest.
Powell interrupted him, not in the mood to let the prisoner claim the initiative. “Captain Kaminski tells me it was a pirate vessel, and that you only boarded it once he’d taken control of it,” He said. “In fact, he’s told me a lot of interesting things about you.”
Saunders gave a dismissive shrug. “So I’m the one who stole it most recently. I’m still the guy who crash landed a starship on a planet and walked away, and that’s not even close to the most fucking terrifying thing I’ve done this week.”
Powell had once led a team which infiltrated a Jihadist compound specifically to stab one man and steal his notebook, then exfiltrated with the entire camp hunting for them. That had taken skill, courage and no small amount of daring. Surviving a water landing in a starship, especially a badly damaged one, smacked more of luck, and luck in his experience was not to be relied upon, nor boasted about. “Not fookin’ impressed, mate.” he said.
This dismissal seemed to score a hit because Saunders shifted forward angrily and raised his voice, apparently oblivious to the five guns that all snapped to aim directly at him, and the way Powell’s hand dropped his holstered sidearm. “I’ve just been on a merry jaunt through fucking hell” he snarled “and all I want is the answer to One. Goddamned. Question!“
Powell let the moment of tension play out, until Saunders calmed down a bit and sat back. The angry shouting approach hadn’t worked, forcing him into a more reciprocal, reasonable approach. “Please?” he asked eventually, settling down.
Powell kept his satisfaction from showing, and instead made a show of standing down in turn, as did his men. “Quid pro quo, then.” he said. “You answer my questions and I’ll answer what I can of yours. Something tells me neither of us is going to like the answers.”
“No fucking kidding?” Adrian asked. “Well, I haven’t liked much for as long as I can remember, so why the fuck should I start now? Where’s Jennifer Delaney?”
“First” Powell persisted, “Your name.” He gave it a moment, then when no answer seemed forthcoming, he decided to say it outright. “You are Adrian-”
The captive interrupted, jerking a thumb towards the soldiers. “You better trust these fuckers here implicitly if you’re going to finish that sentence. Or maybe we can just assume that whatever you were going to say is right?”
Powell gave him a cool stare. Of course he trusted them implicitly. This was a top secret mission, and the men under his command were the best of the best. Not a single one of them was a security liability.
Besides, whatever reasons the man felt he had for needing to keep his secret superhero identity—and Powell wasn’t about to rule out some kind of paranoid delusion—he hadn’t yet revealed what they might be. Powell wasn’t interested in playing “Interstellar Man of Mystery.”
”…Saunders.” he finished. “As for Miss Delaney, you just missed her. She shipped out when we detected your mob comin’ in. “
There was a long, bewildered pause, and then the Australian broke down and started laughing. It wasn’t a happy laugh—it was a black cynical one, the laugh of a man who’d just figured out that he was the butt of a sadistic sense of humour. “Of course…of course she did!” He exclaimed, somewhere between the laughing and the sobs. “Gone home I bet? No reason to wait for a dead man!”
“Jesus fookin’ Christ…“
Powell decided, as the Australian slowly pulled himself together, not to correct him on that point. Jen had clearly been holding a torch for this guy, but mental cases like this tended to be a danger to themselves and anybody nearby. Jen was too competent, capable and useful a resource to endanger like that.
“Kaminski wasn’t bloody kidding,” he declared. “Is the rest true? The infrared? The…muscles?”
Adrian nodded as he ran a rough hand through his beard and across his head. “Yep,” he said, voice still trembling, “but I wouldn’t fucking recommend it. How are the Russians doing? Quid pro quo, remember?”
True enough. “Kaminski’s recovered. We have no idea what’s wrong with Markovic outside of ‘Pixie Dust’. Something to do with the alien fire suppressant?”
“Apparently it sends you totally fucking mental before you go catatonic. At least that’s what I’ve gathered from it.” Saunders revealed. “I’d stay away from that shit if I were you.”
<+No shit.+> Powell thought, feeling that his intelligence was being insulted. Who did this idiot think he was dealing with? There wasn’t a soldier on Cimbrean who wasn’t veteran special forces, they didn’t need advice from a crazed resurrectee, they needed the facts, unbiased and plain. Shit like “Don’t breath in the toxic foam” went without saying.
He kept his cool by changing the subject. “You’re a wanted man on Earth, you know,” He told him, keeping his tone light and companionable. “By rights, we’re supposed to imprison you and keep you until we can send you back… but.”
He looked the Australian up and down. “I can smell the kind of shit you’re in, and I’m not going to put this colony and my mission at risk over a dropout who’s legally fookin’ dead.” He said. “D’you know how long that paperwork takes? I don’t have the fookin’ time nor the inclination, so long as you promise to get the fook out of my hair and never come back. Spread the word there’s nowt but ruins on Cimbrean and I might even be persuaded to see if there’s owt useful you can be doin’ instead of stealin’ pirate ships and chasing after a girl who’s got her shit together way better than you do.”
They stared at each other for a few moments, then Adrian unclenched his fists, sighed and nodded. “Looks like you’ve still got some broken down old ships. I can probably put a working one together given a bit of time, a week…two at most, and then I’ll be out of your hair.” he offered.
“Good,” said Powell. Anything to get the man away from the colony and back out in the wider galaxy where he could do less harm. “We’ll give you food, clothes and shelter…and a fookin’ shave if you want it, but you need to get out of here before you become a problem. And for the moment, Captain,” he added, stressing Saunders’ former rank “you are going to give me a full debriefing.”
He listened as the disgrace seated opposite him relented and launched into a characteristically foul-mouthed summary of everything that had happened to him since his abduction.
What was clear was that Saunders was completely out of his gourd, and a danger both to himself and to everybody around him. He briefly entertained the thought of just shooting the dangerous prat then and there and giving him a grave somewhere in the Folctha palace grounds. It would certainly have been the most expedient solution, and when it came down to it the SBS had done a lot worse during their history for the sake of the mission than putting down a figurative rabid dog.
It wasn’t a choice between pragmatism and compassion so much as a choice between conflicting forms of pragmatism, really. In the end, letting him live won out. Getting the word spread that Cimbrean was uninhabited might just put paid to the rumours of a colonial effort that had lured Saunders here in the first place. Not to mention that having the man sighted a long way from here could only increase the colony’s security, next to the trail going cold on its way here. Besides, if he kept taking crazy risks then eventually his luck or tenacity would run out and that would be the end of it.
“The fookin’ dinosaurs built a spaceship.” He said, flatly. It wasn’t a question so much as a simple statement of disbelief.
“Yep.” Saunders said it with his apparently trademark “I couldn’t give a fuck even if somebody else did all the heavy lifting” attitude, but also with the total assurance of somebody who knew what they were saying was absurd and yet sincerely believed it to be the truth.
“I asked for a fookin’ debriefing, not a flight of fancy.”
“Space dragons, fucking X-files grey aliens, blue giraffes, raccoon people, and, yep, the dinosaurs built a fucking spaceship. Not my fault the universe is totally fucking mental.” Saunders objected.
He sniffed, and added: “Fucking good spaceship, too.”
Powell sat back and considered as Saunders rambled on at length about saurian robotic terminators, stasis chambers, the trouble with blue fur, statues, collapsing buildings, missile-riding, Vulza-riding and how much he hated fire suppressant, black holes and Darragh Houston. The whole monologue was being recorded for transmission back to Earth. How much of it was true or even plausible wasn’t a matter he intended to waste much time and thought on, but he did notice that while Saunders mentioned something called the “Hierarchy” a couple of times, he didn’t elaborate on who—or what—said Hierarchy might be.
When it came up again, he finally had to interrupt. “Okay, that’s the third fookin’ time you’ve mentioned this ‘Hierarchy’. Who in the hell are they meant to be?” he demanded.
Saunders had the good grace to look embarrassed. “Long and short of it? They’re the Space Illuminati.”
“For fook’s sake!” Powell exploded to his feet, spun away from the desk and pinched the bridge of his nose as he stood facing the corner for a second, head bowed. “I have no idea why I don’t just assume you’re taking the piss.” he muttered.
“I know a few things…they’re beyond cutting-edge. They’ve got a fucking army. And they love robots. Oh, and they can copy their brains away.”
“Greeeaaat.” Powell muttered. He turned and considered things. “Bloody ‘ell, Why in God’s name do I believe you, Saunders?”
“Don’t fucking ask me.” the Australian gave him a wild-eyed shrug. “I hardly believe all this shit. But you do have a crashed Hierarchy ship sitting offshore.”
“Not like I can do owt with it.” Powell grumbled as he sat down again. Nobody on his team was even remotely qualified to handle, salvage or work with nonhuman technology. A critical mission oversight, in retrospect.
<+And here I thought this debriefing was going to make my job LESS fookin’ difficult.+> he mused.
Adrian shrugged. “You can’t.” he said.
Powell, distracted by his own thoughts didn’t catch the inflection properly. “Can’t… what now?” he asked
“You can’t do anything with it. I probably can.” Adrian repeated.
”…My lads and the SEALs could dive that wreck, no problem, but we wouldn’t know the warp engine from the shitter.” Powell said. “You sayin’ you would?”
“I rebuilt a dinosaur spaceship and killed a fleet of fucking arseholes with it.” Saunders boasted, looking as if he was regaining a degree of focus. There was a hint of the once-professional soldier in the way he spoke. “I’m not saying it’s recoverable but if it is…”
Powell considered, scratching his own facial hair. “…If it is, you might actually turn out to not be a complete fookin’ liability after all.” he acknowledged.
Saunders’ professionalism slipped again, and there was a certain manic glint in his eye that only reinforced Powell’s conviction that he belonged as far away from Cimbrean as possible if the colony was to succeed. ““I was going to take some hard fucking revenge on these fuckers anyway, so…you know, it’s no problem.” he said.
Powell weighed his options. Unstable though he was, Saunders was the only man to hand who had the knowledge and experience necessary to do anything with the crashed “Hierarchy” ship before the salt water completely ruined it. And if they were as dangerous as he suggested, then his mission demanded at least sweeping the thing for tracking devices, beacons or other potential mission-compromisers, not to mention intelligence of a long-term threat.
”…Fine.” he relented. “You get to dive that wreck. You find any intel we can use and turn it over,and I might even drop the whole “never come back” thing. Now, I’m still kickin’ you off this planet because I need trouble like you a long way from my mission, but if you can prove you’re not a complete cock-up and turn up owt that’s useful—and rip out and destroy anything that might lead this Hierarchy here…Well, there’s the deal.”
“Honestly I doubt it even has what I want.” Adrian confessed. “But I’ll be sure to look. What about after I’ve left? You got a phone number?”
“Next best thing.” Powell said. “You know Star Trek?”
“Yeah. My old man had an obsession.”
“Good, then you should remember this. There’s an… agent we use. He handles courier work, messages and odd jobs for us. He’s got an interstellar datanet dropbox, if you have a message for us, send it there and he’ll pass it on. The address is November-Charlie-Charlie one-seven-zero-one. Got that?”
“Got it.” Saunders nodded, the soldier showing again for a second, in the attentive way he gave his undivided attention to the important information.
“You know how to stay secure online?”
“I have a guy who can crack cyber security like an egg.” Adrian reassured him.
“You trust him?”
“We’ve seen a lot of shit together, so you know how it is. I know he’s not Hierarchy.”
That would have been good enough for Powell had the Australian been talking about a fellow human, but only one name in the story he had just told fit the description.
“You don’t mean this “Askit” bloke, do you? I thought you said he was Corti?”
Trusting a Corti with valuable information was, as far as the analysts back on Earth had been concerned, about the same thing as trying to carry boiling oil in a colander. The only way it could end was you’d get burned. You only told them secrets if you WANTED those secrets to fall into enemy hands.
“He is,” Adrian acknowledge “And I’ve almost never wanted to kill him.”
”…Whatever.” Powell sighed. “I guess trustin’ you with this means trusting whoever you trust in turn. Just don’t send in the clear, and use a codename. “Kirk”, “Enterprise” and “Federation” are already taken. Got that?”
Adrian considered, and then an impish grin parted his beard. “Reckon I might go with Captain Scarlet. Looks like I’m breaking the theme.”
“If playing the fookin’ special snowflake is what floats your cock, sure. Whatever.” Powell told him. “Got anything more to add before I let you bugger off and start building your pet starship?”
“Just one thing.” Adrian replied, shifting forward in his seat. “I’m about to start waging my own personal fucking war on an enemy I can’t even imagine. If you’ve got a wish list for souvenirs just let me know.”
He wasn’t engaging his brain or else that list should have been obvious, but then again Powell knew the value of repeating things in case something had been overlooked. “Anything that proves they exist and aren’t just your imagination.” He said, extending his fingers to list the items he could think of. “Bleeding-edge technology. Alien hard drives, journals, logbooks, computers, that kind of thing. A working cloaking device, or at least one that’s not too badly broken. Maps, encryption keys…intel, basically.”
“You need a cloaking device?” Saunders asked, sounding faintly incredulous. He waved his arm vaguely towards the tent wall, indicating the unseen crashed starships outside. “You’ve got a half dozen wrecked Hunter ships lying all over the place.”
“Bloody lovely.” Powell agreed. “Now if you can point out which bit of the fookin’ things is the cloaking device, I might consider it a tick in the “not a complete waste of space” column.”
Saunders scowled “Your confidence is fucking overwhelming.” he grumbled. “I’ll put it on the list of shit I have to do.”
“Saunders:” Powell warned “As far as I’m concerned. the one thing that makes you worth the oxygen you’re breathing is that you’re the only bastard on this planet right now who knows a spaceship’s arse from its elbow.”
He looked Adrian dead in the slightly crazed eye. “Remember that, aye?”
The intimidation tactics didn’t seem to work: Saunders seemed to take it more as a joke than as a reminder of just how tenuous his position was, and grinned. “I’ll remember.” he promised.
“Right.”
Powell nodded upwards towards the door, dismissing the man. “Fook off.”