John Ayliff - Belt Three

‘Hail them again,’ Jonas said.

Ayla put the call through. ‘They’re not responding.’

‘Keep trying.’

He sat back in his control chair and tried to form an image of Keldra in his mind. She had no reason to keep him waiting. It was possible she was tied up by some unrelated task, but more likely she was deliberately keeping him waiting, he decided. Perhaps she liked the feeling of power.

‘Are we sure they’re pirates?’ asked Ayla hopefully. ‘That symbol they’re using…I thought pirates used skulls.’

‘They usually do.’ Jonas pulled up a magnified image of the logo on the pirate ship’s cargo bay. The spiral was only the skeleton of a more complex pattern: the blue circle was criss-crossed with white streaks and swirls, looking irregular and feather-edged as if they had been hand-painted. He stared for a few seconds before he realized what it depicted. ‘Clouds. That’s a picture of the Earth.’

‘Oh,’ Ayla said. ‘I didn’t know what it looked like. I suppose you’d know.’

‘I suppose.’

‘I’m getting a response through now.’

Keldra’s expression was smug and cruel; she knew she had already won. ‘Captain Gabriel Reinhardt. I see your ship’s changed course. I hope your pilot isn’t taking matters into her own hands.’

Jonas made himself smile. ‘Captain Keldra, as you can see, the Worldbreaker has forced us to travel through dangerous territory with no escort. I’m prepared to offer you a substantial fee in exchange for your protection.’

‘I’m not interested in being bought off. I want your cargo and your crew.’

‘There must be some deal we can reach. This doesn’t have to end with my crew mind-wiped.’

Keldra looked at him with disgust. ‘You want to negotiate ? Spineless true-born scum, think you can talk your way out of every problem.’

‘They’re locking weapons,’ Ayla said.

‘We have no basis to negotiate,’ Keldra continued. ‘You have nothing I want that won’t be mine in a few moments anyway.’

‘I’ll destroy the ship,’ Jonas said suddenly.

‘What?’ Keldra froze, and fixed Jonas in a piercing gaze.

‘You heard me.’ He had made the threat without thinking, but now he couldn’t take it back. ‘If you try to dock, I’ll overload the reactor.’

‘You won’t,’ Keldra said, but Jonas could tell she wasn’t sure.

‘Ayla!’ he shouted. ‘Remove reactor safeties!’

Shocked, Ayla hesitated, but then she closed her eyes for a few seconds and warning icons appeared all over Jonas’s console.

Keldra seemed to study him for a moment, not quite hiding her uncertainty, then her mouth curled into a wicked smile. ‘So do it. I’m not turning back.’ The transmission shut off.

Ayla turned back to Jonas, her eyes wide with panic. ‘Gabriel, don’t do this.’

The Remembrance of Clouds had matched orbit with the Dancer and was closing in to dock. Jonas’s heart sank; he wasn’t sure he could go through with his threat. ‘I can’t let her turn you and the others into servitors,’ he said.

‘Sir, we’re dead anyway,’ Ayla pleaded. ‘Let her ransom you to your family. You’re the important one. You…you knew what Earth looked like.’

On his console’s lidar display, the Remembrance of Clouds was drawing alongside. Jonas’s finger hovered above the control that would overload the reactor, but he found himself unable to press it. Ayla was right: she and the crew were dead, one way or another. Gabriel wouldn’t have wanted Jonas to die like this. There had to be a way out.

He couldn’t beat the ship, but perhaps he could beat the person. He knew Keldra was emotional; he was sure that her anger had been genuine and not an act. She seemed to have enjoyed gloating, so he knew she was cruel. Perhaps he could use that.

He had an idea. Jonas had years of experience with servitor programming, from his time as an Administrator. Keldra didn’t know that, so she wouldn’t expect him to know some of the tricks he did. The servitor combat programme wouldn’t be any use while the ship was being boarded, but if he could save it for the right moment…

A shudder ran through the ship as the pirate’s docking lines locked on. The pirates would cut through the Dancer’s cargo bay door and enter the ring through the cargo airlock.

He walked over to Ayla’s chair. ‘Ayla, hold still.’

She looked up, startled but obedient. Jonas put a hand on her shoulder and held the programming spike to the back of her neck, just below the base of her skull. Her eyes glazed over as the spike momentarily took control of her pilot implant. He tapped in his Administrator override code and then loaded the combat programme into the implant’s free space. ‘Prepare to enter dormant mode,’ he said, speaking to the combat programme through Ayla’s ears. ‘Verbal re-activation, my voice, password…’ He searched for a word. ‘Oberon.’

The implant blinked Ayla’s eyes twice, acknowledging its new instructions.

‘Short-term memory wipe. One minute.’ If this was to work, it was better that Ayla didn’t know. ‘Enter dormant mode now.’

She swayed as the implant released control. Jonas kept his hand on her shoulder to steady her.

‘Are you all right?’

‘What happened?’

‘I think you blacked out for a moment.’

‘I’m sorry, sir.’

He held the pilot’s gaze. ‘You have nothing to be sorry for.’ He nearly told her that it was his fault, but then stopped himself: she would respond that it wasn’t, and he would be fishing for her forgiveness for what he was about to do. These were her last moments as a free-willed human being and he had no right to make them about him. Instead, he said, ‘you were the best pilot I’ve worked with, and it’s been an honour flying with you.’

There were tears in her eyes, but she managed to smile.

There was a noise outside the door. It sounded like the pirates had reached it, and were preparing to blow the lock. There was no point resisting now. Jonas pressed the door release.

A pirate walked in, a large man dressed in an armoured vacuum suit. A servitor; he walked with a robotic gait, and his face inside the visor was expressionless. He scanned the room with a pistol and then fired quick bursts at Jonas and Ayla.

Jonas’s muscles seized up painfully, rooting him to the spot. A nerve gun, set for paralysis. He could move his eyes and facial muscles a little, but nothing else. The servitor lowered the gun and gave a hand signal to someone in the corridor.

Captain Keldra strode into the room, followed by a second servitor. She was tall, and from the way she was built Jonas guessed she had been raised in at least half gravity, probably more. She wore a yellow armoured vacuum suit, but her helmet was clipped to her belt, leaving her head arrogantly unprotected. She looked around the room critically, then pointed at Ayla.

‘Spike her.’

Jonas could see the helpless panic in Ayla’s eyes as the first servitor produced an enslavement spike and walked up to her. The servitor held the spike to the back of her neck and there was an unpleasant organic sound as it injected a servitor implant. Her eyes moved wildly for a moment, and she twitched, muscle spasms fighting against the paralysis, as the servitor implant systematically destroyed her higher brain functions and installed its own tendrils in their place. The pirate servitor touched her with an anti-paralyzer but she remained motionless, her mind gone.

Keldra pointed at Jonas. ‘Search him for weapons, and cuff him.’

The first servitor kept Jonas covered with a nerve gun while the second patted him down for weapons, put a pair of cuffs on his wrists, and then released him from the paralysis. Keldra watched smugly.