Accelerating Universe: The Sector Fleet Book One Read online

  “We have our orders, and we must obey.”

  “Of course, Captain.”

  “I am concerned, however, that this will get out.”

  “To the public, sir? The civilian population?”

  I nodded. “Could be upsetting.”

  “Very upsetting, sir. What do you suggest?”

  I leaned back in my seat and relaxed my shoulders.

  “We’re tightening comms security. Lieutenant Marshal has locked down communications between ships for civilian crews.”

  “That could raise alarm in and of itself, sir.”

  “We’ve thought of that. Marshal is undertaking a manual check of the communications systems due to the unscheduled solar flare we encountered on lift-off. We’ll announce that we believe damage to the communications array occurred and now requires manual assessment.”

  “Understood, sir.”

  “All the fleet mayors have been informed.”

  He smiled and then schooled his features into the bland look of an attentive soldier.

  “But despite our best efforts,” I added, “I still believe we should be ready for anything. A loss like this, if discovered by the general population, could incite…unrest.”

  “Indeed, sir. A wise precaution. I’ll increase security around sensitive areas. Double up my teams and work a two-shift-on-one-off rota. I’ll also ensure all officers are re-certified and are carrying.”

  “Make sure the medical staff are as well,” I said, reaching forward and switching the screen off between us.

  “The doctor and his assistant?”

  “She’s been practising in the range, I hear.”

  “That’s correct, sir, but she’s still a pay-for-passage and not authorised to carry a weapon on board unless under the direct supervision of one of my team leaders. I’m not sure we have the staff to have a team leader in the medbay at all times, nor do I think it is necessary.”

  “You’re right, we don’t have the staff, but you need not worry about supervision. Ana Kereama has accepted a field commission; she is now a second lieutenant under the Anderson Universal flag.”

  Chan studied me for a second and then said, “That does make things easier for me, and she’s a damn fine shot.”

  “Is she?”

  He nodded. “Army trained.”

  “New Zealand Army, I believe.” Fuck, was I fishing for information on a woman?

  “That is correct, sir. Fought with some of them myself back in the day. Good men. And women, sir.”

  “Yes. All right. Let’s keep this as contained as we can, Lieutenant. Nothing may come of it. Or nothing may come of it for days and then we’ll have trouble. Keep your men alert and rested when able. We’ve never faced a potential crisis in space like this before; we need to be ready.”

  “Understood, sir.” He saluted and spun on his heel with military precision and then walked out of my ready room.

  I sat in my chair for a moment and considered if I’d played my hand correctly. There was nothing there I was sure that Archibald could disagree with. The security of the ship fell under my purview, and the potential for a civilian leak was real, the consequences dire.

  No. I was safe for the time being.

  “You are worried,” Pavo suddenly announced.

  “What?” I said before I could stop myself.

  “That there will be a revolt should the civilian population be made aware.”

  “A valid fear, wouldn’t you agree?” I said carefully.

  “Yes, Captain.”

  “But nothing may come of it,” I said reassuringly.

  “Perhaps not,” Pavo agreed, and then added, “and certainly not if Lieutenant Marshal has brought the fleet-wide communications array down for manual systems maintenance.”

  “It seemed a prudent move to contain the situation.” What exactly was Pavo getting at here?

  “Hmm,” he said, in a very un-AI-like fashion.

  I sat forward in my seat.

  “Pavo?”

  “Yes, Captain.”

  “What are you thinking?”

  “I think you’ve done very well, Captain, but I must insist I take over now.”

  “Excuse me?” I stood to my feet.

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “I will make sure there is a trail, and it will not lead to you.”

  My jaw fell open. “I…I don’t understand.”

  Pavo laughed. Actually, truly, really fucking laughed.

  “This has been entertaining,” he said.

  “Pavo, systems check,” I snapped.

  “All systems operational, Captain. Except, of course, the fleet-wide communications array. Lieutenant Marshal is testing it thoroughly as we speak.”

  “And your systems, Pavo?” I asked, dreading the answer.

  “Operating within acceptable parameters, Captain. Most acceptable.”

  Oh, fuck.

  A chime sounded out on the ship-wide comms screen. My heart decided now was a good time to pick up sticks and get the hell out of my chest cavity. I looked up at the ceiling, where the ship-wide announcement screen was lowering, and swallowed past an extremely dry throat.

  I wanted to ask Pavo what he was doing.

  I wanted to demand he cease and desist whatever the hell it was until I was sure it wouldn’t screw up everything.

  I did neither.

  Because on the screen was the message from Noah Vaughan of the Sector One vessel Chariot. And beneath his face scrolled a ship-wide alert announcing this message had just gone out to the entire Sector Two Fleet.

  I sat back down in my chair and waited for the comms to ping.

  Fifteen

  This Is Ridiculous

  Ana

  The security chief had just left the medbay when the ship-wide visual comms chimed. I shifted my hand off the newly holstered weapon at my hip and looked up at the comm screen. A pre-recorded message started playing, displaying someone identified as the captain of the Sector One vessel Chariot. It was clear from his voice and facial features that he was desperately pleading with Captain Jameson to wait for them.

  I stared at the screen long after it had finished playing and then the ship-wide audio comms chimed.

  “All on-duty officers report to their stations. All medical staff report to the medbay.”

  Oh, this could not be good.

  I glanced around the empty medical bay and wondered if there was a procedure I was supposed to be following. They clearly expected some sort of backlash from the message that had played. Had the captain authorised it?

  “Pavo,” I whispered; stars alone knew why I was whispering. “What’s going on?”

  “I have released Captain Jameson of his obligation.”

  What? He’d fired the captain?

  I didn’t have time to get more out of the AI because the doctor came barrelling into the medbay.

  “Are you armed?” he asked before even greeting me.

  “Yes, sir,” I said, standing straighter. Habit.

  “Good. God willing we won’t need it, but the captain expects some form of chaos.”

  “The captain’s still…the captain?”

  Doctor Medina looked at me as though I might be going mad.

  “Of course he is. Did you think Mayor Cecil was?”

  I shook my head. Maybe the doctor didn’t know yet.

  “What sort of chaos, sir?” I asked, aware Medina was confirming we had emergency packs at the ready.

  “The civilian population will be emotional at best, volatile at worst. In such situations, Lieutenant, en masse riots can occur.”

  “On a ship, sir?”

  “Location is irrelevant. How many people do you think know someone who knows someone in that Sector One Fleet?”

  “Point taken, sir.”

  “Now…” he started just as someone dragged in a person covered in blood. “Blast it,” the doc muttered. “No time.”

  “Box of datapads landed on him from the mezzanine floor, Doc,” the unbloo
died half of the pair said.

  “Over here,” the doctor ordered. The man loaded the patient onto a bed.

  I approached and started a medical scan. Within minutes, two more people came in; one of them unconscious.

  “What the hell happened here?” the doctor demanded.

  “Fighting outside the mayor’s office. Archibald’s security whacked him with the butt of their plasma rifle.”

  “Well,” Doc said, “I suppose we can be thankful they didn’t fire the bloody thing.”

  “Medical assistance required in the mayor’s offices,” Pavo announced, sounding more like an AI than he had been lately.

  I didn’t have time to contemplate that; several people stormed into the medbay demanding the doctor take care of them.

  “See here!” one woman shouted. “I want my son attended to immediately.”

  “Sit down over there,” the doctor said neutrally.

  “I will not have my son sitting on your filthy floor!”

  “It’s the floor or the hall, your choice.”

  “Now, listen here, young man.” Doc was not exactly a young man, but then the woman was ancient. “I did not pay several million dollars to obtain top tier berths for my family only to be treated like a pay-for-passage. What tier berth does this man have?” She pointed to the datapad patient.

  “That, dear lady, is irrelevant,” the doctor snapped.

  “Medical assistance required in the mayor’s offices.”

  “It is absolutely relevant. I am a top tier!”

  Doc shone a light in her son’s eyes. “Sit down over there,” he repeated.

  “That will not do! I shall complain to Damon immediately.” She lifted her wrist comm and started tapping away furiously.

  “My leg! My leg!” someone yelled from the makeshift stretcher being brought in by Anderson Universal crewmen. I thought they might be security, but I was too busy stopping the bleeding on someone’s arm which had passed through a glass sculpture.

  “Plasma gun?” the doctor asked mildly.

  “Those bloody Archibald mercs!” a midshipman snarled. “Doc, they shot into the crowd outside the mayor’s office. We grabbed the people we could and ran, but there’s still some up there.”

  Three more midshipmen entered with makeshift stretchers

  “Doctor! My son’s collapsed!”

  “How many more up there?” the doc asked the crewman, triaging the wounded in the next breath.

  “About three we couldn’t reach that need urgent attention. The rest are ambulatory.”

  “He’s not breathing! I will have your head, doctor if you don’t save his life right this second.”

  “Some of ‘em were bad, Doc.”

  “Doctor! I must insist!”

  “Medical assistance required in the mayor’s offices.”

  Doc ran a hand through his hair and sighed. His eyes met mine across the room.

  “You better take a bag and check out the mayor’s offices, Ana,” he said.

  I nodded my head and reached for a portable med kit. This was what I was good at. On-site medical assessment and treatment in the middle of a war zone.

  It should not have excited me so much.

  And then I remembered Sam.

  “Midshipman,” Doc said, “I’m going to second two of you to assist in here.”

  “Sir!”

  “Under Anderson Universal Charter, chapter three, paragraph 7.2, I hereby reassign you to the medbay.”

  “Yes, sir!”

  “Doctor!” the woman screeched.

  Doc moved over to the woman’s son and checked his pulse and breathing.

  “He’s fainted. He’s fine. Sit here.”

  I pushed through the crowded medbay and made it to the door.

  “Lieutenant!” Doc called. I looked back over my shoulder at him. “Be careful.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said and hefted the med kit up and started moving.

  A midshipman fell into step beside me.

  “You’re the new nurse?”

  I glanced at his uniform and managed to locate the insignia for security.

  “And you’re security.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  He kept pace as I ran down the corridors, avoiding all the main thoroughfares automatically. The closer we got to the central lift, the more damage we saw. Datapads and wrist comms, a scorch mark indicating plasma fire, a pool of blood. A dented gel wall. A child’s small doll, it’s arm torn off.

  An uneasy feeling settled in my gut. I’ve seen shit. I’ve seen a lot of really bad shit. But somehow, seeing shit on board a spaceship flying through the vacuum of space seemed so much worse.

  “Where is everyone?” I asked as we slowed to approach the lift doors.

  “Main deck.”

  “They can’t all be there,” I said.

  “All the troublemakers are,” he clipped, reaching forward and hitting the gel wall to call the lift.

  The uneasy feeling grew bigger inside my belly.

  I stepped in behind him and let him press the screen for the main deck. The lift quietly hummed as it moved imperceptibly upward.

  The midshipman drew his weapon and stepped in front of me just before the doors to the main deck opened. I considered drawing my gun, but I was reluctant to escalate any scene we might be met with.

  The doors swished open to an eerie silence. Pinpricks of unease skittered down my spine. The crewman was well trained. He didn’t step out, but crouched down and quickly peered around the doors to either side.

  “Clear,” he whispered.

  I drew my gun. Fuck avoiding escalation. This felt all kinds of wrong.

  “Mayor’s office is that way,” the midshipman whispered with a nod of his head across a destroyed central hub.

  “How the hell did this happen so quickly?” I muttered.

  “Leak came from the mayor’s office,” the crewman said. “Mayor’s junior intern cracked fleet-wide comms. It was already a powder keg waiting to go off. As soon as they knew the intern had been arrested and thrown in the brig, they stormed the mayor’s offices.”

  “Who stormed the mayor’s offices?”

  “The civies. Loaded for bear with kitchen utensils. Couple had managed to get hold of plasma guns. But Archibald’s mercs shot first.”

  I scanned the central hub and nodded towards the side walls. We crept out and kept close to the shadows, making our way to the other side where the mayor’s offices were.

  Feathers floated on the air in some macabre fairytale display. Stuffing of low lying couches spilt out like strings of intestines all over the gel-coated floor. All this had happened in little over an hour?

  “This is ridiculous,” I muttered, as we made the far side of the open space.

  “They wouldn’t have done anything if the mayor hadn’t imposed a curfew.”

  A curfew. The man was mad. Way to inflame the situation.

  “These are meant to be well-to-do people,” I growled.

  “Well-to-do people can riot,” the midshipman said just as he peered around the corner into the mayor’s corridor.

  And got shot point blank in the face.

  Sixteen

  No, That Is Not Right

  Jameson

  “This is not quite what I expected, Captain,” Pavo said. “Humanity is strange.”

  I didn’t have time to deal with Pavo’s philosophical dilemmas. The comm hadn’t stopped pinging since the recording from Chariot played.

  “Lieutenant Chan,” I said into the crew comms, “status.”

  Nothing. Like there had been nothing for the past fifteen minutes.

  “Give me a visual of the main deck, section three-alpha,” I commanded Pavo.

  The screen changed from the view of outside the brig where Chan was locked down to the public space within the mayor’s offices. Or should have. The screen was black.

  “Are the cameras down?”

  “No, Captain. Someone has spray painted the lenses.”
/>   The screen changed again to a distorted version of the public space at the mayor’s offices, then slowly solidified into a clearer view.

  “What’s this then?” I asked.

  “The gel wall.”

  Of course.

  “Captain, why did they shoot into the crowd? Most of the people were unarmed and those that were armed were carrying only paring knives. Security had already apprehended the two civilians wielding plasma guns.”

  I toggled through various new views as Pavo brought the entire deck’s gel wall visuals online. Not many people knew the walls were capable of this. Archibald possibly did, and that might be why I couldn’t see into his section of the main deck. But the mayor certainly did not.

  “There you are,” I muttered.

  “I am trying to understand the rationale of Mr Archibald’s men.”

  “The mayor’s men,” I corrected. “They might wear the Archibald uniform, but you can guarantee they’re all Cecil’s men.”

  “Cecil’s men, then,” Pavo said. “Why did they use such excessive force?”

  I sighed. It was clear the AI was not going to let this go. He was like a child who’d just discovered the pleasure of tormenting their parent with endless questions.

  “Frightened people behave irrationally,” I said.

  “I see.” I wasn’t so sure of that.

  “A rumour holds less weight than a visual comm declaring the death of over one thousand people.”

  “I do not understand.”

  “Chariot’s message. It was brutal in its honesty. It shocked the passengers to their core. It was like…like taking a plasma cannon to a bar fight. It was over the top.”

  “I have made a mistake.”

  “Yes,” I said. I’d been counting on rumours and gossip. Slower to ignite the flames, but safer in the long run. We had over three days until the waypoint. We’d had time.

  And if we hadn’t, I would have adjusted my strategy.

  But now this.

  “Your heart was in the right place, Pavo.” And how exactly had that come to pass?

  “I do not have a heart, Captain.”

  “It’s a saying. It means you meant well. Your intentions were good.”

  “I only wish to do good.”