Debatable Space (33 page)

“Where’s Harry?” says Alliea.

“Otherwise engaged,” Brandon chips in. He hacks into all the ship’s cctv cameras, he has a funny smirk on his face. Ooooh,
I think, Harry’s up to something naughty . . .

But back to me! Flanagan turns to the bridge crew: “Jamie will be supervising the computer links.”

“Have we time for a vanishing trick?” I ask.

Flanagan nods. “I’ve assigned five thousand vessels.”

“They need to accelerate into position right away. You need a diversion.”

Flanagan presses a button on his console. On the vidscreen, we vividly see one of our own ships explode.

“Who did you kill?”

“They were volunteers,” he says, curtly. Into the intercom: “This is your Captain speaking. Panic, please, act like a bunch
of arseholes.”

The fleet of ships panics, in incoherent unison, veering off every which way. I try to hide my grin. I have learned, painfully,
that people don’t like it when you laugh at such moments. It’s considered bad form.

“How many vessels in the Corporation fleet?” I ask.

The computer flashes up an answer: circa 4,800,000. We have 251,602 vessels, having built all those extra ships during our
long voyage. So, we’re way outnumbered.

“This is your Captain speaking,” Flanagan says into the intercom. “ You have your instructions, and you must follow them to
the letter. Remember: our aim is not to defeat this enemy fleet. Our aim is to reach Kornbluth. Let’s kill some robot.”

“Flanagan!” A shrill voice cries out. Lena has arrived on the bridge.

“
I
was meant to give the order to attack,” she says petulantly. Flanagan hides a smile.

“I haven’t yet given the order.”

Lena presses the intercom switch. “This is your leader. Attack.” And she lets out a rebel yell. Despite myself, I feel goosebumps
down my spine. I echo the rebel yell.

Everyone in the bridge does a rebel yell. It feels good.

We feel like real warriors.

Lena is now in charge in the bridge. She runs around a lot and barks aggressive instructions. But most of our strategy is
pre-programmed. So while Jamie runs the computer link, and the Captain tries to keep out of Lena’s way, I sit at my screen
and flick from space camera to space camera to follow the totality of what is going on. The Captain nods. “Keep your eyes
peeled Brandon,” he says, and I flash my teeth in an almost-smile.

As always, the Corporation warriors show no strategy. Our fleet is diffuse and straggly; theirs is focused and compact, making
a smaller and much easier to damage target. Also, while our ships are making a play of floundering about in panic at the “unexpected”
accidental detonation of a warship, our advance party of five thousand vessels have cloaked themselves in flying mirrors so
that they cannot be seen in the blackness of deep space. As our main forces assemble, the ambush troop fly fast and high above
the enemy fleet. There they hover, as the enemy prepare their force fields and laser cannons.

We stand our ground. They move inexorably forward. Lena orders the launch of our torpedo. It weaves and curves its slow path
through space, a small missile the size of a pea. It is, we hope, undetectable by any of their sensors; it’s a grain of sand
on a sandy beach.

They fire their laser cannons, and at one fell swoop our first rank of a hundred vessels is incinerated.

“Panic more,” orders Lena and our fleet becomes even more undisciplined and incoherent. Then we launch our antimatter bombs.

Wave after wave of antimatter bombs sweep through space… but the enemy have a counterplan prepared. Each of our AM bombs
is snarled in a razor-wire net and forced to spin around in spiral patterns. Some of them come back at us and explode our
own vessels. Some are hurled into deep space. Not a single AM bomb gets through; our great strategy has been a fiasco.

Antimatter/matter explosions shatter the silence of space that looms between our two distant fleets.

“Good,” grunts Flanagan.

“Keep panicking!” screams Lena.

“This is so sweet,” I mutter, my fingers running over the computer keyboard, dancing my dance.

Apparently reeling after the total failure of our antimatter bomb attack, we fire our own laser cannons, but their mirrors
and force fields easily deflect the cannon rays. Their own laser beams are “smart” beams brilliantly designed to change frequency
and direction in a totally random way, obviating all barriers. We are totally outclassed.

“They got us!” I yell. “We’re d”

“oomed!” Jamie says, continuing my sentence.

Flanagan smiles.

The enemy wallows in smugness. We smarten our formation in space. No more fake panic.

Then our ambush party attacks. They have been, for the last thirty minutes, hovering patiently above the enemy fleet. Now
they unleash their full firepower. It takes a few seconds for the enemy computer to adjust to this new direction of threat
and gear their weapons
upwards
. In that time, dozens and dozens of Corporation warships are blown up. And that is our cue to . . .

. . . retreat. At high speed. We leave behind our camera-bots in space, to give us a bird’s-eye view of the carnage. Our ambush
ships put up a valiant fight. They score direct hit after direct hit, and chunks of enemy hull go flying off into infinite
orbits. Our ships’ laser beams cut through reinforced plastic and skilfully evade force barriers. But the reverse toll is
devastating. The enemy warships are astonishingly heavily armed, and they wreak havoc with our pirate predators.

Then the torpedo finally lopes its way to its destination, and the remote detonator is triggered.

The torpedo is our most valuable weapon. It contains the residue of an asteroid compressed at the expenditure of vast energy
to the size of a pin. And then compressed again, and again, to sub-microscopic dimensions, so that space itself is being crushed.

This is a compressed space bomb, one of Jamie’s many brilliant inventions. It is, essentially, very much like the Universe
before the Big Bang, a parcel of energy and mass in a form so tiny that the mind cannot imagine such a minuscule scale. These
days, we use compressed space as a form of energy storage. Jamie’s unique genius was to find a way to release the energy all
in one go, without entirely devastating the Universe.

We cannot see or hear an explosion. The bomb merely pops, like an inflated crisp packet burst by a hand. And then, for a few
chilling seconds, nothing happens.

Then suddenly all the ships in the sky vanish. It is that simple. We have destroyed our own ships of course; but we have also
cut the heart out of the enemy fleet. Two or three million Corporation warships have, in the blink of an eye, ceased to be.

It is, of course, a dangerous and desperate strategy. Now that we have invented this weapon, we have to endure the bitter
fact that the enemy will be able to copy it and use it against us. Our fabulous contribution to posterity is to find a new
weapon even more appalling than the ones humankind has already created. But that’s a price we have to pay.

“Fire the asteroid,” Lena says.

Our workers have quarried out the inside of the asteroid and filled it with liquid hydrogen. Now rocket launchers at the arse
end of the big rock are fired and the asteroid shoots through space. Inside it, the hydrogen is being drenched in huge amounts
of energy, and the transmutation of hydrogen to helium is taking place.

Our fleet tries to tuck itself out of the way of the flying and in-the-process-of-exploding asteroid, but it is inevitably
caught up in the wake. And as it travels the asteroid slowly ignites. It flares.

It becomes a sun.

The flaming sun lights up black space as its course takes it through the region where the enemy fleet used to be, towards
the second line of enemy warships. They are, frankly, flabbergasted to discover that we have thrown a sun at them. And, once
again, the “warriors” on Earth who control the all-powerful Doppelganger Robots show their typical inability to adapt to new
circumstances. They flail and flounder and do nothing.

Then the sun hits the enemy fleet; and they are devastated. Another million ships at least are incinerated. And slowly the
fires die down and we are left with the ragged remnant of the enemy fleet.

But there are still, at a guess, almost a million ships facing us. Some are badly damaged and disorientated, but we are still,
after two massive strikes, outnumbered and outgunned.

The Captain gives the signal to Lena; Lena gives the signal to us.

“Charge,” she says, in cool and deadly tones.

Our fleet forms itself into an arrow formation and charges. Our own ship holds back and we watch our people accelerate into
the enemy ranks. A bitter space dogfight breaks out.

Missiles and torpedoes flash and flare. Our ships break formation and start weaving and bucking. Sheer speed and brilliant
piloting allow our ships to veer under and above the slow-thinking enemy battleships. A terrible carnage ensues.

Then I see on my screen Doppelganger Robots abandoning their damaged ships and taking to open space. They are wearing body
armour to further protect their frames, though all of them are able to “breathe” in space vacuum so none of them need to wear
actual spacesuits. They do, however, wear body rockets and carry formidable laser guns. And, with their increased manoeuvrability,
they are able to dive into the very heart of our fleet.

“Okay, guys, go and get ’em,” says Lena.

It is an extraordinary event, war most bloody and barbarous. Legions clash and lasers flare and bombs shatter and hulls impact
inwards and bodies are sundered and fried and internal organs are compressed and blood emerges from nostrils and space itself
is shocked at the sheer atrocity of man’s atrocious cruelty to man, is that too many atrociouses?

It is.

. . . man’s contemptible cruelty to man and yet, ah, the green-glow-incandescence of it soars my spirit with bitter-bleak-black
sweetsourness and

Lena, please focus, there’s a battle going on.

It’s okay, we’re in the rear flank, we’re a long way from the action.

Not any more. Two Corporation battalions just appeared behind us.

Shit.

I am lost in the combat, my hands are a blur, my brain is in a million places at once. I steer the nanobots through space
into Corporation ships, I send energy blasts, I steer the unexploded bombs into vital positions then explode them. I sit at
my computer and I am a warrior as brave as many, but my fingers are stiffening, I fear repetitive strain of the brain will
kick in . . .

“Keep with it Jamie,” the Captain says, in an infinitely calm and comforting authoritative growl. I fight on.

I howl with rage, like the animal I am. Our ship is out of the battle zone. I yearn to stand and fight and bite and claw my
enemies. But I cannot!

Hera and I are among the first to be propelled from the airlocks. We fly out into open space to encounter a scene of such
vastness and grandeur that my heart stops. Huge spaceships are aflame, dead DRs and human beings float through space, a burning
sun sears our vision as it speeds away into space – then veers, and kinks, and turns around, and comes back again for a second
crack at the enemy.

As we spin swiftly around, we see vivid red and yellow flame colours smeared against the inky blackness of the stellar backdrop.
Then we fly like hawks with our rocket backpacks and shoot robots out of the sky. They are fast and powerful, but their controllers
have little practice at this kind of warfare. We, however, have trained every day for twenty years. Flying is for us, as natural
as walking, or weeping.

My concentration is split. I have a computer readout on my visor; I hear intercom voices in my inner earpiece; I see a video
screen of the battle which I can switch at will; and my heart is with Hera. I watch her tackle a dozen Doppelganger Robots,
weaving in and out of them like a deadly dolphin in a shoal of shattered and bewildered sharks.

They thought they could best us in open space! In truth, their only useful weapon is superior firepower and greater resources.
In every other respect, they are, indeed, shite.

“Left flank, Alliea!” Hera screams at me, and I zoom in a circle and blast the ambushing robots behind me. I complete the
circle just in time to see . . .

. . . two DRs blow Hera’s head and feet off simultaneously with their laser blasts.

For a moment my heart stops.

Then I cut the robots to ribbons with my own laser and speed into the next assault.

The carnage becomes mechanical. After a while, I cannot believe I am still alive. But my rocket keeps flying me, my laser
keeps shooting. DRs keep exploding. The war keeps on. The war continues. The war continues.

The war is over. I am still alive. I check my visor. I have programmed my computer to flash red every time one of my children
dies in the course of the battle. I have, in all, forty-three children. Forty-two of them are adopted, twenty-one are girls.

Slowly, carefully, I count forty-three red lights on my visor. That doesn’t include Hera. So first, I mourn Hera.

For one long, agonising, heartfelt minute, a second at a time, I mourn her. And each second is a death knell.

Then when my pain is purged, I mourn each of my forty-three children. I mourn them for five seconds, each.

Jack.

Hermione.

Silver.

Garnet.

Hilary.

Roger.

Lustre.

Ji.

Ajax.

Baldur.

Mystery.

Jane, Sheena, Magic, Leaf, Phoenix, Edna, Sharion, Jayn, Shiva, Persephone, Garth, Rob, Will, Diane, Apollo, Catherine, Jon,
Letitia, Leo, Dawn, Sunset, Raphael, Zayna, Cosmos, Rob Junior, Ashanti, Amor, Tara, Helios, Jenny, Rosanne.

And Roberta.

After 215 seconds have elapsed, I disconnect my oxygen cylinder. I take off my helmet.

I breathe in a huge lungful of deep space.