Ditched (part 7)

   “Shit.” I stop and slump to the floor.

  “Its dead. Some sort of semi-organic robot?” Jimmy peers at the thing with a complete lack of fear.

  “Not that, that's just disturbing, I can handle disturbing.” I hope I am handling the whole thing quite well. “The map, I figured out where we are.”

  “Ah, do you know of any good restaurants in the area? I have a sudden hankering for seafood.”

  “Ah, indeed, Jimmy. Another thing that I had to work out on my own?” I refuse to be sidetracked.

  “And what, exactly, have you worked out?”

  “We're not on Earth.”

  “So when do you leave?” She asks me over her coffee cup.

  “Hold on, I've not agreed to anything yet, the whole thing is crazy, I stopped being a spaceman twenty years ago.” I look down at the drink in my own cup, it contains no caffeine, no calories and if I did not know that then I am sure it would taste just fine.

  She laughs, a full on hearty outburst of amusement. Stops, looks me in the face and then starts again. She puts the cup down and the house remotes appear to clean up the spilled liquid. Eventually she has herself under enough control to speak.

  “You'll go, there's no question. There's this big alien spacecraft thingy hurtling towards Earth and they want someone with experience to go out there and talk the aliens or whatever into signing up with them before anyone else gets a chance. They asked you. You'll do it because you hate what you do now. You'll do it because you would do anything to get back up there. You'll do it because its one last chance to be the hero. You'll do it because Jimmy asked. You'll do it because if you don't then someone else will. I knew exactly what you were like when I married you, and you are still the same man. I still love that man. If you ever stopped being that man then I would leave you like a shot.”

  I stare at her, wondering if I should be hurt that she managed to distill me into such a small container or be proud that she knows me so well.

  “Call them and get going. I am supposed to be working at the piano and you keep distracting me, I'll see you when you get back. Call ahead if you are bringing aliens over for dinner.”

  “You're right. But before you ask, I honestly have no clue where we are. That's something we'll have to find out together.” Jimmy gestures at me to move onwards, but I still have questions.

  “Is there anything you are going to tell me, or do I have to play detective with my own past?”

  “You've had quite a bump on the head, its best if you sort out those memories and file them away on your own. Trust doctor Jimmy.”

  “Like I trusted you when we were making the comm-link repairs back on Brayard Station?” I lift myself back up and start to make an attempt at the lip of the door.

  “That was a drunken bet, besides, they never managed to pinpoint the blame.”

  The spin of Brayard Station imparts a feeling of weight, but it is not enough that pacing back and forth is advisable. Still, I imagine Jason Vickers, would be doing that if there was space in the room. The entire team is here, sixteen cadets, the graduates of Beyond Inc.'s training program and the next generation of space miner. Vickers is only a few years older than us, but he has the benefit of practical experience and the authority the company have invested him with. He is not happy.

  “I just can't see why any one of you would think this was in any way safe, advisable or funny.” He has been holding forth like this for quite a while and his face is red. “And seeing as no one of you is willing to come forth and admit responsibility, I have no alternative but to punish the lot of you!”

  Behind him a display screen shifts its focus from a woman's ecstatic face to a close-up of male genitalia. There is a cough as one us suppresses his giggles.

  I cast my mind back to the exercise, all of us working together to upgrade the station's array of communications equipment, a mix of drone piloting, actual space-walking, internal alterations and the job of co-ordinating it all together. Working outside of the station, I had followed Jimmy's instruction to the letter, but at the time had not had a clue what the strange box I was wiring up was supposed to do, I should have known better.

  “With all due respect, and I know you don't want to here this,” A voice from the back, the class's acknowledged expert on signal processing, someone who could not be far from the centre of this little plot. He chokes off as Vicker's withering gaze turns upon him, swallows and then regains his courage. “I don't know exactly how it was done, but if it is anything like I suspect, I think I can turn it into a kind of unintended upgrade.”

  “Really? Do you think you can do it within the hour I have before I need to make my report to the central office and make arrangements to deport the lot of you back down to solid ground?”

  There are a number of gulps in the crowd.

  I lose my balance and tip unceremoniously into the room, coming to rest uncomfortably close to one of Crabzilla's outstretched, but unmoving limbs. There is a smell in the air, something that would turn my stomach if I was convinced it was plumbed up correctly. It is horrid, but it convinces me that the monster is quite and irrevocable dead. I detach the lingering horror and replace it with curiosity.

  “Some sort of robot, you said. A weapon, or do you think its into construction?” I ask Jimmy.

  “If it is a weapon then we got shot down for a reason, I certainly wouldn't want that thing getting close to me if it was angry.” He crouches close to it. “Would you trust that thing to build your extension?”

  “Fair point. Do you think they grow them or build them?” I swallow my revulsion, reach out and stroke my hand along the smooth shell.”

  “Something between the two, that exoskeleton is probably an metallo-ceramic composite, and most of the muscles are probably artificial, but it certainly smells like a dead crab. Maybe his friend has some answers.” He straightens himself and gestures at the human corpse.

  “Maybe she has a spare pair of legs I can borrow, this is getting tiresome.” I drag my carcase over to the dead woman. The overalls carry the name of Jun, her mirror shades are shattered, much like her spine, I stare at her legs before I work out the visual puzzle. “She has arms for legs.”

  “Enhancement for zero gee work?” Jimmy suggests. “Meet the new humans.”

  Bayard station has changed, other larger facilities have taken over its former duties as a base for the rock catchers and there is little left from its use as a wartime command centre. Nowadays it is home to Beyond Inc.'s experimental test labs, although their security division still maintains a presence. I estimate it is twice its original size, although as the transport approaches I catch sight of the memorial to Irena Ivanov we welded to the outer ring, metal stars and her old helmet, to remind us of her supreme bravery.

  A new docking system catches the shuttle, cargo and personnel taking different routes into the station. Jason Vickers, now carrying the rank of colonel in the security arm of Beyond Inc.'s parent company, intercepts me in the disembarkation area with a hearty handshake, a little too hearty in this unspun area.

  “Steady there, I've not acquired my space legs yet.” I grin, part of my soul ecstatic to be back in free-fall at last.

  “Apologies, its not often I meet one of the old boys up here, most of our generation are now ground-bound. Talking of space legs, Medical want you to pop in for the final fitting on your new prosthesis. But before you get into all that I thought you'd like to meet the boys on your new crew.”

  He leads me through the rotation lock into the spinning part of the station and then into a elevator that takes us slickly down, gaining weight. I recall the old elevators, slower and less reliable than the ladders. A short hike along the main outer corridor brings us to a small meeting room containing a small crowd of people I mostly recognise from their files and, mercifully, a small buffet.

  “Richard Saunders, one of the finest drone operators on our books,” Vickers starts the introductions with an earnest young black American, they are all young. “Ikaro Itaki, propulsion engineer; Ilse Liefman, electronics and communications engineer; Roger Davis, materials science; Henrik Peterson, linguistics and diplomacy; Tseng Hueng, medical and biological science; Felicity Patrick, policy officer; Maria Fernandez, physics and navigation; and of course, Muhammed Mahdi you already know.”

  “Intimately.” Says Jimmy, giving me a sandwich and a wink.

  Davis looks me up and down with disdain, a scowl on his pasty white face.

  “I don't wish to put a downer on this reunion for some of you, but shouldn't we be putting our piloting in the hands of someone with a little more current knowledge and experience.” He drawls, the accent too hard to place in today's mostly mobile population. Jimmy, my second in one too many brawls back in the day, puts his hand on my arm. Vickers jumps in with the iron edge that he used to discipline my squadron all those years ago.

  “Captain Larkin has been recalled because we wanted someone not prone to making rash decisions and he beat the next pilot on the intercept simulation by a good six hours.”

  “Besides,” I add. “I was probably consulting on ninety percent of the components in that tub we'll be flying as well as most of our likely competitors' birds, your own score in the centrifuge doesn't come close to mine from last week and any time you want to book a court for a game of zero-gee baskets we'll show you what a bunch of old space-farts can do.”

  Jun yields no new clues. Nothing in her pockets, no terminal, if she has one then it must be internal.

  “Looks like whatever we wanted to accomplish, we were doing it while leaving as few clues as possible. Helpful.” I resign myself to living perpetually in the dark, no-one wants to tell me anything.

  “Probably doing something naughty, Bill.” Observes Jimmy.

  “That's Commander Larkin to you, Group Co-ordinator Mahdi, wasn't it?”

  “Ah, the glory days of directing orbital rock interception. Besides, if this was secret you were probably acting under some sort of codename, Commander Legless.”

  “I've still got half a body more than you, Group Co-ordinator Realised Psychosis.”

  “You'll remember eventually, just try...”

  “Not to panic, got it. You realise we have no idea where the fuck we are in the galaxy, what the fuck we were doing here or how the fuck we are going to get out of this mess and we are arguing like an old married couple?” The ship moves slightly under me to emphasise my point.

  “Just like old times, eh?”

  “I'm not going back.” Saunders tells me.

  “Don't be soft,” I reply. “Set the bomb and we'll be gone.”

  “Bill, I can't do this any more, I feel like I've eroded away to nothing. There was two of me in here, now there are many, all of me talking at once. Each one take a little more of me away and I can't hold myself together.” He is wasting time, our drones are slowly being knocked offline by the counter-attack and before long we'll be vulnerable.

  “Come on, we'll get through this together, Liefman and I can both help you.” My guilt mounts, he has followed me this far and I missed the signs that he was losing it, Hseng's coded message starts to make sense.

  “What's the hold-up?” Liefman over the comm. “You're running out of time.”

  “No, I'll defend the bomb, give you some time to get clear.” He is trembling, fighting his own nervous responses.

  “He's too far gone,” Opines Jimmy “There must be a flaw in the Angel' work, Ikaro was complaining of something similar before he was captured.” Captured and dismantled, Jimmy is right, I just thought it was the stress of our whole situation, the implications start to creep across my brain.

  “Saunders...Rich...” I am out of words to say.

  “Go!” Saunders and Liefman in my ear simultaneously, our time has run out.

  I sprint back into the connecting tunnel, a trio of drones cutting the air ahead of me. One of the drones succumbs to some sort of electronic attack, turns on its fellows and takes one out before it is disabled by the remaining quadcopter. Damaged, the final machine lags behind me and is lost in the gloom.

  A countdown appears in the corner of my vision-enhancing goggles and I increase my efforts to avoid incineration. Something flashes in my vision to the right and I flinch away, but not fast enough to avoid an aerosol spray. My right hand catches a good amount of the spray and then I am past whatever machine just ambushed me. I see my glove starting to dissolve.

  “Jimmy!” In the heat of the moment I forget just to form the words in my mind and it comes out as a shout.

  “On it, invasive nano-compound, aggressive, might be a problem.” He replies.

  “Shit! Options?”

  “Safest and quickest is to lose the hand, separating at the elbow now, grab your knife.” Jimmy is calm, it is not his hand.

  Left-handed I saw at my sleeve with my knife and then with a wince plunge it into the flesh at my elbow. Jimmy's work means the tissue parts easily, but butchering yourself is never pleasant, then pain is mostly but not completely dampened. Blood spurts sluggishly from the wound, then stops, cut off. I slice away the last of the fabric and the grisly totem falls to the floor, dissolving and becoming something else.

  I increase my speed back up to that of a run, trying to protect my wet stump. The timer ticks down to zero.

Ditched (part 6)

  “This is hardly the speediest escape in history.” I tell Jimmy, dismayed at my own progress.

  “Well, from some angles you do look like a snail.” I scowl at his comment. “Just around the corner there might be a nice big lettuce leaf for you.”

  “Tell you what, why don't you scoot ahead and find out for me?” Make believe friends must have their uses somewhere. “And take that dazzling wit with you.”

  “Sorry, buddy, gotta stay here and look after you.”

  “You still making sure I don't panic?”

  “Just making sure nothing new comes out of that murky memory of yours and spooks you.”

  “Have you seen this on the newsfeed?” I ask her over breakfast. Cereal, juice, no coffee, definitely sticking to the dietary regime this time.

  “Hanson working with the philharmonic? He mentioned something about it when we were recording last month, I expect a call some day soon asking if I'll arrange the piano section.” We've lived together for so long, but some mornings we are just in completely different worlds.

  “Sorry, I meant my newsfeed.” I flick the article across to her screen. She browses it, flicking a wayward strand of hair out of the way of her spoon.

  “Its a bit technical, isn't it just a rogue rock? Surely they'll just catch it or blow it up or something.” She reads scientific and space industry terms much the same way I read music.

  “Its not from our solar system, its moving really fast, its a very funny shape and they think it might be slowing down.” I explain.

  “You don't mean people are calling it an alien spacecraft? That's just silly.”

  “They probably are on the populist channels, here people are speculating that its something someone launched in secret during the war.” Twenty years of the accord holding peace between the various larger powers, but still no-one trusts anyone else.

  “Well ask Jimmy if it is, he's still plugged into all that.”

  I pull myself another half dozen centimetres forwards and then stop to rest, as I drop back to the ceiling I realise I can just about see down the corridor. It runs for about three metres before some sort of structural brace bisects it. There are two doors off it, the one on the far side is buckled and looks like it is probably stuck closed, the near one looks open, but the angle is wrong for me to see properly.

  “Not a dead end, then. Looks like Billy the snail can crawl a little further.” Jimmy encourages me.

  “Billy the snail thinks that leaving Jimmy the dead weight behind might speed things up a little. Get off my back, this would be easy in zero gee.”

  I catch the ball, take a fraction of a second to note my new trajectory and then hurl it towards the goal. It looks destined to miss, but the slight drift imparted by the spin of the station carries it to glance of the inside of the bar and into the net.

  “Eight-three, I believe. Not bad for a team of dilapidated old space-farts.” I crow. Davis scowls at me, Liefman shakes her head and Peterson covers his face in shame. Jimmy floats over and gives me a high five that sends us both slightly out of control.

  “I give in,” admits Peterson. “Apparently there is a reason why we are letting the veterans fly this mission.”

  The third member of our team, Colonel Vickers, suggests we leave it there, so we agree the point has been made and head back to the parts of the station spun fast enough to simulate gravity to collect on the bet at the bar.

  “Fucking hell,” I say to Jimmy when we are out of earshot, trying to regain my breath without making it obvious. “We're definitely not as young as we used to be.”

  “One more push?” Jimmy raises an eyebrow and once again gives me his 'punch me here' smile.

  “If you're so eager to see what's through that door then why don't you take a peek and let me know?”

  “And spoil the surprise?”

  “Is this the surprise I should not be panicking over? Because if you don't start filling in the blanks before long I think I might just panic to see exactly why I shouldn't.” The ship moves around us again, I brace myself for a catastrophic slide, but again it settles.

  “You must be getting tired, you're making even less sense than usual.” I am already pulling myself forwards again before I realise I have risen to his gibe.

  I ease myself around the corner into the corridor. The doorway has a lip on the ceiling that could hamper my progress, but also provide some thing to pull myself along with. The door itself is either open or missing. I grab the edge and pull my head into the room.

  The room appears to be some sort of cargo bay, with boxes mostly still attached to the walls, that much is easy to figure. The body of a broken woman lies like discarded laundry not far inside the room. Most of the rest of the room is filled with something that my mind struggles to make sense of.

  There are what I take to be legs, legs with far too many joints encased in a grey armour or shell. A lot of legs, one seems to be equipped with an industrial cutting tool, another with something that could be a gun or blowtorch. The legs spill upwards from a carapaced body, probably two metres across, something like a massive crab lying on its back, it takes me a moment to realise it is probably upside down like the rest of this place.

  The structural spar the blocked the corridor has crushed this alien monstrosity, it lies in a pool of its own greenish fluids. It would be sensible to consider it dead, but I freeze in terror, waiting for it to twitch, to come alive and reach for me. My heartbeat echoes in my ears, so I force myself to relax, not very easy with Crabzilla watching me.

  “What the...”

  “...fuck is that?” The tunnel between the spaceport and the main body of the settlement gives me my first proper view of this new planet. New to me, I remind myself.

  Something moves in the refuse pile so thoughtlessly dumped outside the enclosed human habitats. Small quick movements, a pause, a scuttle, too many legs. I widen my view to try to gain a sense of scale and see that it is not alone. Swarming over the detritus is an army of giant, dark grey crabs, digging, shuffling, chewing.

  “Sorting the settlement's rubbish you may see the recycling crustaceans.” The drone guiding me accepts my outburst as a query. “These were genetically modified from crabs brought by the original settlers, to survive in the local atmosphere and to exist consuming waste and convert it via their tailored intestinal bacteria back into usable materials. Their meat is considered a delicacy which can be purchased at many stalls and restaurants.”

  “Sounds delicious,” Jimmy comments, “Ask the tourbot if you get fries with that.”

  I grimace and continue along the tunnel, wondering how much longer I have to endure the awful music piped in to make the foot slog more bearable. The strings finish their journey into crescendo, orgasm, spasm and then are silent, replaced by an even more annoying choral group. I begin to doubt if intelligent life ever left Earth and journeyed to the stars.

  I surprise myself by humming along, it seems familiar and then realisation dawns. Someone has left a message in the language of the Angels, disguised as music. There were only nine people who could have done that, four are certainly dead, three probably, one hopefully and I did not do it myself.

  “Decipher that for me, Jimmy.” I subvocalise.

  “I have left here, looking for those who started this, follow me if you must, travel lightly for we trail destruction in our wake.”

  “Liefman.” Jimmy concurs. “I thought she was captured, I never dreamed she escaped the entire thing.”

Ditched (part 5)

   The terminal's screen fails to wake up to my touch. Not having any pockets on my ruined clothing, I lie back and secure it to my own wrist at which point it wakes with a soft beep. The screen announces that it is detecting a new user and I should apply thumb and voice prints to affirm identity, so I do.

  “Commander, eh?” The screen welcomes me but disappoints me by only addressing me with a title, still its more than I had. It goes on announce that the system is on full lockdown, limiting communications options to 'none', information access is denied and there is one stored message.

  “Helpful, we still have no idea where we are.” Jimmy says, despite not being at the correct angle to see the screen.

  “I still outrank you, Jimmy.” I fumble with the interface and bring up the message, two unhelpful words.

  Good luck – Y.

  An attachment looks more promising, a map of somewhere I don't recognise and two intersecting lines. An icon suggests this is a video so I play it. Two dots travel and meet each other while a timer runs. In trying to stop it I accidentally rotate the image. One dot flies from one location to another whilst the second dives on it from great height. An interception from orbit.

  “Someone was in a hurry to make a meeting,” Jimmy comments.

  The bird is stable, screaming through the atmosphere in level flight after its plunge from orbit. There is an acknowledgement from Jimmy as our drone escort take up positions ahead of us. Launched from an allied algae factory ship mid-Atlantic they have been repainted in bright colours to mark the nature of our mission.

  There is a knock at the cabin door, I press the release and the most important of our passengers enters the cramped flight deck.

  “Well boys, how does it feel to be flying the last mission of the war?” Nicole Ayrault, the woman who has come to represent the corporate side of these negotiations is to meet with representative of the remaining governments and the United Nations for the ceremonial signing of an agreement designed to end conflicts and realign the world's power.

  “Its a relief,” I reply. “I look forwards to being able to retire and let the computers fly these things without someone trying to fry them.”

  “Well, no matter what you choose to do next, you can rest assured that you made the world a better place.” Being an supersonic bus driver, I have met her before, a hard bargainer, with a reputation for listening before speaking.

  “We made the world a different place, that's true.” Last time we met she told me she valued truth, it seems with a hold full of the corporate elite she is towing the company line.

  “Well, we have completely repainted the political map, but feel proud you fought in the first global war when the civilian population was not directly targeted. This agreement gives us the power to move forwards and build the world of the future.” She sounds like she is quoting straight from her speech. Jimmy gives me a warning look, but it is too late, I have already launched.

  “I used to have a sister until she was 'not directly targeted'. There are millions out there going hungry because of the global recession, but they can be thankful the war hasn't touched their lives. I just drive your taxi, but I hope you build your world of the future quickly, because someone has made a big mess of the world of today.”

  “Well...” She starts, but Jimmy jumps in quickly.

  “You are going to have to excuse my colleague, Ma'am, he hasn't seen his wife in a while, so is a little on edge and I am going to need his concentration to help me land this plane. I am sure he is as thrilled as I am that all this has finally come to an end. Now, if you wouldn't mind taking your seat, we are approaching crowded airspace at several times the speed of civilian traffic and we may need to apply the brakes sharply.” He gives her his big, everything-is-fine grin and she exits the cabin. Turning to me, he gives a sterner expression. “You are going to tell me what was in that message before you single handedly restart global hostilities.”

  “Any idea where this is a map of?” I ask Jimmy as he shows no sign of going away. I look closer, estimating distances from the re-entry glide path this is a map of continents I have never seen before.

  “Not a clue, somewhere I've never been before.” There is a sudden lurch and I slip on the deck. The craft has gained a slight tilt it was missing before.

  “I don't think I'm safe here.” I tell Jimmy.

  “No, looks like its time to get moving.” I feel a faint tug at the point where my body abruptly ends and see the nightmare rope attaching me to Peterson's corpse detach. No longer the conjoined twin of a cadaver I take a look around to try and determine which way to go, I pick a direction which seems to have fewer obstacles and start to drag my carcass along what was once a ceiling.

  “You, know, Jimmy, this would be a lot easier with legs.”

  “Feel free to crash your next flight a little gentler.”

  “Are you okay, I saw it on the news and it looked awful!” Her face shows real concern.

  “The video makes it looks much worse than it was.” Towing a tail of flame I had put the shuttle down on a commercial runway, there certainly had been a lot of fire.

  “The commentary made it sound like you were going to crash, if I had known it was you I would probably have passed out.” She has been my wife for five months, we have spent very little of that time together, she looks more ravishing every time I phone her.

  “We just caught a bad bit of luck, computer error put us off course and we were mistaken for a military bird, by the time they realised their error they had put a hole in our backside.” We had attempted a covert drop using a converted civilian shuttle, they had seen right through it, but didn't have anything fast enough to finish us off after the initial missile hit.

  “So does that mean you're going to be in town for my concert tomorrow night?”

  “I'd fall burning from orbit any day just to be with you.”

  Going is slow, picking my way around anything too sharp to drag my carcass across. There appears to be some sort of access corridor to the aft of the cockpit, or at least in the direction I have taken as aft.

  “So what happened after the war, Jimmy?” I haven't left him behind with Peterson, so I figure I might as well, use him as an information source. “I remember working with someone called Liefman, but she wasn't part of our squadron, so that must be later.”

  “Its all in there, probably, remember it for yourself.” I have had enough of this.

  “Screw you, Jimmy, what happens when you get into that corridor and I need something you don't want to tell me really quickly?”

  “Your winning attitude and willingness to crash any vehicle placed under your control made certain that you were drummed out of active flight duty as soon as possible. You lost your leg proving them right and went into contracting, which you hated.”

  “We had fifteen kids and lived happily until the giant crab monsters invaded.”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Will, I know this isn't what you want to hear, not right now when it looks like the war might finally be over and we can settle down.” Her voice cracks and my heart stops.

  The message is audio only, with everything going on we are supposed to be in a media lockdown, but being a pilot I can smuggle all sorts of things back into orbit and that brings favours.

  “Believe me, that's what I want so much.” My heart restarts timidly.

  “I slipped and injured my wrist a week back, so no piano playing. I went to get it checked out and when at the doctors they ask me when I last had a full check-up, which was probably never. So I let them go the whole hog on me.” I picture her playing with the strand of hair that always escapes her attempts to tame it.

  “They even checked out my...” Embarrassed pause, she is the only person I know who still blushes when genitalia is mentioned. “...Lady bits. They're doing further test, but it looks like I can't have children.” I want to gather her in my arms and tell her its okay, tell her that she is all I need, tell her only a fool would bring children into a crazy world like this. But she is on Earth and I am in orbit, and any attempt to get a message out will have me thrown in the brig.

  “Will, I'm sorry.” The sound of a sob, hers or mine I can't tell.

  “William. That's my name.” I tell Jimmy, redundantly.

  

  “Fireball Billy, you build it, I burn it.” My companion agrees with glee. “Come see my fabulous display of wrecks. Take a flight with me, if you dare!”

  “Fuck off! I seem to remember you weren't exactly scared to fly with me.” I put my hand on something sharp, wince and hold my it up to my face to see the damage.

  “When something did go wrong you always had a habit of making it home.” There is a small drop of blood, but as I watch it shrinks and disappears back inside the wound. Its hardly the weirdest hacen'sthing that has happened to me recently.

  “And I thought you were just still chasing my arse.”

  “I hate to break it to you, but your gorgeous rear is currently on the missing persons list.”

  “Bill, we need to disappear completely.” Liefman's voice through the suit communicator is almost conversational in tone, as though we were not drifting untethered, it is a long time since we have managed to have an unmonitored chat. Four suits only connected by a flimsy rope slowly orbiting the Earth.

  “I know a bunch of people on the west coast of the USA who will help us out there.” Below us dawn marches across the face of Africa, I almost feel it is a shame that we both have spent too long in orbit to find it novel or breathtaking.

  “That's if Alhacen's contacts at Palmic Inc. are on the level and don't just want their own piece of us.” Behind us a transport pod is fired from the space station in a brief flash of light on its way to Palmic Inc.'s orbital manufacture platform.

  “Everyone wants a piece of us, if we hadn't become minor celebrities they would have dissected us already. With Davis and Hseng running the shop it is only a matter of time until they do.” Slow drifting is excruciating for a species evolved for propelling itself, but if we move any faster we risk someone taking a closer look.

  “Yeah, but your enmity with Davis and the affair with Peterson certainly hasn't helped us in the slightest.” Automated systems have queried our suits and are satisfied we are human, the iris scanner in the HUD giving our identities, but a sneaky hack in the system by a friend of Liefman prevents them being flagged up as suspicious.

  “Peterson was gone, there was nothing of him left, we did him the only favour we could. Davis is a fucking prick and no mistake.” As expected, it is only matter of time before our disappearing act is discovered, a quartet of drones power out from the station to intercept the suits. We use the manoeuvring jets to gain what speed we can, but it is a forgone conclusion.

  When they drag the suits in the airlock they discover the gristly truth. They are empty, controlled remotely by servos, the iris scanners foiled by a removed eyeball, the conversation relayed by radio. Foiled, they go through their records and find irregularities in the weight of the transport pod dispatched shortly after our faked escape. The recovery of the pod and exposure of the conspiracy causes friction with Palmic Inc., but the four bodies expected to be found within are missing.

  A string of malfunctions, oversights and hacks mean that when the shuttle launched from the station an hour earlier is hijacked by a gang of war veterans and landed on a camouflaged runway in the Ural mountains, the miscreants and four stowaways escape without capture. Newscasts notice the increased tension, but fail to realise it as the first step in a new war.