Burnt Ice (35 page)

Veg was his usual cheerful self,
helping out wherever he could. They remained at their posts until docking was
completed. The station’s security, and a medical detail, came on board to carry
out their checks.

Marko gathered up the three ACEs
and again read them the rules of conduct while on board the station. He felt
that he might just as well have been explaining plasma physics to terminally
excitable five-year-old human children! As soon as he finished, they chorused
their goodbyes and vanished at speed. He resigned himself to the fact that
there would be trouble. He mentioned it to the major, who laughed, clapped
Marko on the shoulder, and informed him that it was not a commander’s problem.

Jan and Marko were booked into a
room in the sergeants’ mess, which suited them just fine. Harry vanished after
they had all wished Stephine and Veg an enjoyable few weeks back at school. The
major stayed on board, ostensibly overseeing refurbishments and repairs, but
Jan said he just liked being in his own space, with Patrick and his studies.

‘Hey, Marko,’ Fritz said through
the comms link. ‘I have found your Captain Willie for you. He is now a baron
working with the Gjomviks. Message I got is that he is delighted that we all
made it back and would be very happy to arrange for the uplifting of his
dragon. Seems that he may be persona non grata, as far as the Administration is
concerned, so an intermediary will meet with you in six days. I’ve flashed the
info across to you.’

‘Good news. Thanks, Fritz.’

Marko had an hour or two to kill
before a meeting with one of the senior medical staff members on the station
who wanted to trade information about his arm, so he started to read the info
package that Fritz had flashed across. It transpired that, the now Baron Willie
der Boltz and most of his pilots, including Helena, had left the
Administration, and were now calling themselves Leopard Strike, as part of the
Gjomvik Corporations.

Marko felt a sadness that this
was so, as it meant he would not see Helena any time soon. He went back to
Basalt,
gathered up the case containing the hibernating dragon, and placed it in a
powered remote unit, which he locked and sealed. He took the container to the
logistics centre on the station and signed it across to the staff for
safekeeping until der Boltz’s intermediary arrived.

They were all still catching up
with developments throughout the Sphere of Humankind. Marko realised that it
would take him time to adjust. He wondered how Harry would be feeling, exposed
to the worlds he had been hiding from for so long. The crew of
Basalt
were being treated like celebrities, as the major had handed over everything
Sirius had recorded to the Games Board. Some of it made very good AV. Marko
thought it weird, watching himself on a mess screen, with strangers checking
his reaction. He was keen to simply disappear — though it did help the bar tab.

He recalled an occasion when Jan
had freaked about the exposure and Ernst had assured her that no one would
recognise her from her past. Marko was somehow not surprised to realise the
beautiful woman he knew and was so fond of had been someone else a few times before.
Fritz must have also hacked Sirius’s files, as some things that happened had
been altered for the public consumption on AV. Sirius would have been angry to
discover the deletion of her carefully collected images. There was no mention
of the attempts by the Lotus AI to take over the ship nor of how Jan and Marko
took back control, and nothing about the Ernst and Topaz AIs.

‘Boss?’

‘What’s on your mind, Marko?’

‘How’s our fruit situation?’

‘Picked a lot this morning and
sent it across to the messes. Why? If you need some you know where it is. I’ll
put on a brew. Shall expect you in forty minutes.’

Marko went down through the drop
shafts to the airlock closest to
Basalt.
He signed out a hazard suit and
an MMU, attached them to his ship suit then, after routing his request through
local flight control, he was flown by them to the ship. Arriving at the main
hangar deck, he entered through one of the small airlocks, stowed the heavy
suit and MMU and made his way into the empty hangar. Pulling out his crew comms
unit he placed it in his ear, knowing that the major always wore his.

‘Boss, I’m aboard. Have a thought
about Sirius. I didn’t see her or the Games Board hierarchy remove her original
power and editing backup unit. I think it’s still aboard.’

‘Interesting thought, Marko. What
brought that up?’

‘Just watched her AV about the
Octopoid Library. There was only a very quick series of images of the planet. I
think that there may have been more down there then we realised at the time.
She edited everything almost immediately after she recorded the images. The
Games Board protocols require that monitors submit only finished product, so
the raw data may still be in that unit. I remember having a look at it when she
was elsewhere — the data capacity was considerable. Hey, Patrick. You know
where it is?’

‘Affirmative. I placed it in the
ammunition and armscote after she tanked. It is still there. The engineering
staff have removed all they need and will start the next stage of installations
in two days’ time. So apart from you two there are no other biologicals on
board. I have instructed two drones to fetch it. I have two other drones now
reconfiguring, so they can check it for octopoid contamination, then interface
between it and me.’

‘I’m in the galley, Marko. Brew’s
waiting.’

They drank their tea, munched on
some of the biscuits Marko had baked for the major, discussed the various
upgrades that
Basalt
would be receiving, then picked a case of fruit and
nuts for Marko to take back with him while they waited for Patrick to analyse
the data.

Eventually, Patrick announced, ‘I
have the data. There are many hours of it. What are you looking for, Marko, and
how sensitive is it?’

‘At one point she was bored
spitless watching Fritz, so she moved out of the Octopoid Library, flew up the
outside of it, then recorded weather activity on the planet. From what I saw on
the AV it looks like she recorded hours of it — there is a major planetary
rotational jump between the frames and I would swear that something was happening
in the sea. We’ll treat all of it as sensitive.’

‘Good idea, Marko. Code it all,
then route it to our visors please, Patrick.’

Seconds later, they were hanging
in space, with
Basalt
small and far below them as the iridescent pink
hues of the huge Octopoid Library rolled in front of them. The silvered,
turquoise colours of the planet’s ocean came into view, interspersed with storm
clouds. As they watched over the next hours, sampling seconds every five
minutes, the cloud covers parted to show small creatures on the sea surface
coalescing into a lens, then the lens focused on the Octopoid Library, the
artefact and
Basalt.

‘Shit! The stupid, arrogant
bitch! Why didn’t she share this with us? This is amazing! Very interesting
biotech. Oh hell! Pictographs! Fuck! Translation, Patrick?’

‘Sorry, but that will take time.
I need to update my translation codes. Shall I ask Fritz for assistance, major?’

‘Not until you have exhausted
your own avenues of research, Patrick. Excellent find, Marko. I don’t believe
it will take long before someone else turns up looking for this. Bury the info
deep, Patrick. Once you’ve gleaned everything that you can from Sirius’s unit,
change the chronograph units in it, then wipe everything, as if she’d done it
herself. This lot we keep to ourselves — we don’t want the Games Board’s
involvement.’

~ * ~

With
little to do, the crew wandered around the station for a few days, taking in
the sights, catching up with old comrades and friends, stripping, refurbishing
and upgrading their armoured suits, clearing mail and doing the hundreds of
little chores humans were all so-good at avoiding — like sending long messages
to family and old friends. Marko made some serious coin selling the design of
his arm to the medicos in the Administration. He also took a tidy commission
from the station’s chief engineer for another spider ACE, after Flint had
ridden into a meeting perched on Harry’s shoulder then, looking for something
to do, had serviced the chief engineer’s coffee machine, much to the woman’s
delight.

Jan was away most days in the
main armoury, spending time with the legendary Warrant Officer Hopi, a renowned
gunsmith, trading ammunition designs for one of her archaic weapons — one that
used brass casings containing propellant and projectiles. Marko was fascinated
that they had an exposed detonator in the end of them. He jokingly told her she
was barmy to have such hugely dangerous ammo. She just smiled, reminding him
that Glint was one of the few ACEs to have a linear rifle built inside his
spine, so Marko must be just as mad for designing it into him.

Still, Marko mused, some of the
designs were beautifully engineered. The old-timers knew their stuff, doing the
best they could with contemporary technologies. Jan had also tweaked one of the
so-called semi-automatic designs, with a 14mm projectile. This was a serious
bit of kit which all the crew were secretly keen to try out, for the sake of a
little badness.

Marko was in one of the lounges,
drinking what he considered was laughably called an orange juice. He had been
spoilt by Stephine’s real juice — this one tasted so awful that he considered
going across to
Basalt
and getting the good stuff, and a feed of real
vegetables, when Glint, with Flint riding on his back and Nail in hot pursuit,
came racing into the lounge. Everyone seated around the lounge glanced up, then
smiled, nodded in acknowledgment and went back to whatever they were doing.

A few of the station staff had
made the mistake of trying to pick up and stroke Nail. The news of the results
had rocketed around the station and everyone gave him a respectfully wide berth
from then on. One of his forms of amusement was to seek out someone who did not
like cats and deliberately climb into their lap. Flint shone with anyone who had
any sort of tech interest. He demonstrated how he could pull a smaller piece of
equipment apart, diagnose the problem, make the repairs and then reassemble it,
faster than any tech drone or biological human could.

Glint’s game, on the other hand,
was tormenting bombastic senior officers; this made him popular with the junior
ranks. He was cunning with it. If he was spied doing something, he made it look
like an innocent accident, or simply vanished after the action. His
chameleon-ware was used to good effect. Marko had had to deal with more than
one seriously agitated officer alleging that minced meat had been placed in
their pockets or thrown across a busy concourse by Glint. If they couldn’t
prove their case, though, then Marko was sorry, but they must be mistaken. Of
course, the injured parties knew it was him, all right.

‘What have you lot done now?’

‘Nothing much, Marko. But we have
news for you. Private stuff.’

He moved to the end of the long
viewing window that took in the vast starfield in all its brilliance. The local
star was on the other side of the station, making for a breathtaking vista. He
took one of the little comms units, Fritz’s gift to them all, from his pocket
and popped it into his ear. Nail looked up at it. The UV comms laser mounted
behind his left eye pulsed a file across. Marko took out his antique glasses
from the top pocket of his overall and put them on. The files opened and
displayed in the HUD.

After a few moments he nodded.

‘Right. Good find. Follow me.’

~ * ~

Marko
opened his personal screen, attached to his left arm, and queried where crew
were, then flashed a short code to each of them, excepting Stephine and Veg. He
suggested an RV point at
Basalt’s
lander, which the major was using as a
runabout. An hour later they were all on board, Fritz loudly grumbling about
lost live-music time.

‘This might just be a little more
important, Fritz.’

‘Hard to believe, Harry. Music’s
everything, just everything, to me.’

Marko opened the files again and
flashed them to their plates, as the crew put on their secure comms units. They
went through the data, then waited for the major’s decision.