Charles Stross - Singularity Sky

“On your feet.” A petty officer stood in the entrance.

“What—”

“On your feet.” The quilt was pulled back briskly; Martin found himself dragged halfway out of bed before he had quite finished blinking at the brightness. “At the double!”

“What’s going on?”

“Shut up,” said one of the ratings, and backhanded him casually across the face. Martin fell back on the bed, and the other rating grabbed his left arm and slipped a manacle over his wrist. While he was trying to reach his mouth — sore and hot, painful but not badly damaged — they snagged his other wrist.

‘To the brig. At the double!“ They frog-marched Martin out the door, naked and in handcuffs, and hurried him down to the level below the engineering spaces and drive kernel. Everything passed in a painful blur of light; Martin spat and saw a streak of blood dribble across the floor.

A door opened. They pushed him through and he fell over, then the door clanged shut.

Shock finally cut in. He slumped, rolled to his side, and dry-heaved on the floor. From start to finish, the assault had taken less than two minutes.

He was still lying on the floor when the door opened again. A pair of boots entered his field of vision.

Muffled: “Get this mess cleared up.” Louder: “You — on your feet.” Martin rolled over, to see Security Lieutenant Sauer staring down at him. The junior officer from the Curator’s Office stood behind him, along with a couple of enlisted men. Martin began to sit up.

“ Out ,” Sauer told the guards. They left. “On your feet,” he repeated.

Martin sat up and pushed himself upright against one wall.

“You are in big trouble,” said the Lieutenant. “No, don’t say anything. You’re in trouble. You can dig yourself in deeper or you can cooperate. I want you to think about it for a while.” He held up a slim black wafer. “We know what this is. Now you can tell us all about it, who gave it to you, or you can let us draw our own conclusions. This isn’t a civil court or an investigation by the audit bureau; this is, in case you hadn’t worked it out, a military-intelligence matter. How you decide to deal with us affects how we will deal with you. Understood?”

Martin blinked. “I’ve never seen it before,” he insisted, pulse racing.

Sauer looked disgusted. “Don’t be obtuse. It was in your gadget. Naval regulations specify that it’s an offense to bring unauthorized communications devices aboard a warship. So what was it doing there?

You forgot to take it out? Whom does it belong to, anyway?” Martin wavered. “The shipyard told me to carry it,” he said. “When I came aboard I didn’t realize I’d be on board for more than a shift at a time. Or that it was a problem.”

“The shipyard told you to carry it.” Sauer looked skeptical. “It’s a dead causal channel, man! Have you any idea how much one of those things is worth?”

Martin nodded shakily. “Have you any idea how much this ship is worth?” he asked. “MiG put it together. MiG stands to make a lot of money selling copies: more if it earns a distinguished combat record. Has it occurred to you that my primary employers — the people you rented me from — have a legitimate interest in seeing how you’ve changed around the ship they delivered to you?” Sauer tossed the cartridge on Martin’s bunk. “Plausible. You’re doing well, so far: don’t let it go to your head.” He turned and rapped on the door. “If that’s your final story, I’ll pass it on to the Captain. If you have anything else to tell me, let the supervisor know when he brings your lunch.”

“Is that all?” Martin asked as the door opened.

“Is that all?” Sauer shook his head. “You confess to a capital offense, and ask if that’s all ?” He paused in the doorway and stared at Martin, expressionless. “Yes, that’s all. Recording off.” Then he was gone.

Vassily had gone to Lieutenant Sauer immediately after the abortive search through Rachel’s luggage: badly frightened, needing advice. He’d poured everything out before Sauer, who had nodded reassuringly and calmed him down before explaining what they were going to do.

‘They’re in it together, son, that much is clear. But you should have talked to me first. Let’s see this gadget you took from him, hmm?“ Vassily had passed him the cartridge he’d stolen from Martin’s PA.

Sauer took one look at it and nodded to himself. ”Never seen one of these before, have you? Well, don’t worry; it’s just the lever we need.” He tapped the exhausted causal channel significantly. ”Don’t know why he had this on board, but it was bloody stupid of him, clear breach of His Majesty’s regulations.

You could have come to me with it immediately, no questions asked, instead of digging around the woman’s luggage. Which, of course, you didn’t do. Did you?“

“Uh — no, sir.”

“Jolly good.” Sauer nodded to himself again. “Because, if you had, I’d have to arrest you, of course. But I suppose, if she left her door unlocked and some enlisted man tried to help himself to her wardrobe, well, we can investigate it …” He trailed off thoughtfully.

“Why can’t we arrest the woman, sir? For, um, possession of illicit machinery?”

“Because”—Sauer looked down his nose at Vassily— “she’s got a diplomatic passport. She’s allowed to have illegal machinery in her luggage. And, frankly, far as I can tell, she’s got an excuse. Would you be complaining if she had a sewing machine? That’s what she’ll say it is; a garment fabricator.”

“But I saw these things coming out of there, with too many legs! They were after me—”

“Nobody else has seen them,” Sauer said in a soothing tone of voice. “I believe you; you probably did see something. Spy robots, perhaps. But good ones, good enough to hide — and without evidence—” He shrugged.

“What are you going to do, then, sir?”

Sauer glanced away. “I think we’re going to pay Mr. Springfield a visit,” he murmured. “We’ll take him away. Stick him in the cells for a bit. And then”—he grinned, unpleasantly—“we’ll see which way our diplomat jumps. Which should tell us what all this means, shouldn’t it?” Neither of them noticed the pair of polka-dotted knickers hiding behind the ventilation duct overhead, listening patiently and recording everything.

The Lord Vanek accelerated at an economical two gees, using its drive kernel to curve the space-time ahead of it into a valley into which it slid easily, without imposing punishing stress on crew or machinery.

Ninety-two thousand tonnes of warship (with an eight-billion-tonne black hole at her core) took a lot of moving, but once set in motion, it could go places fast. It would take days to cross the vast gulf that separated Lord Vanek’s parking station from the first jump point on the return leg of its timelike path — but nothing like the years that humanity’s earliest probes had taken to cover similar distances.

The ships of the fleet had traveled barely twenty light-years from the New Republic, but in the process, they had hopped forward in time by four thousand years, zigzagging between the two planetless components of the binary system in an attempt to outrun any long-term surveillance that the Festival might have placed on them. Soon the spacelike component of the voyage would commence, with a cruise to a similar system not far from Rochard’s World; then the fleet would pursue a bizarre trajectory, looping back into the past of their own world line without actually intersecting that of their origin point.

Along the way, the fleet tenders would regularly top up the warships with consumable provisions, air and water and food; no less than eight merchant ships would be completely stripped and abandoned to fall forever between the stars, their crews doubled up aboard other vessels. The voyage would strain the Navy’s logistic system beyond the point of failure: something had to give, and an entire year’s shipbuilding budget would go into the supply side of this operation alone.