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– Chapter 11 –
‘Mervyn! Mervyn! Wake up it is nearly midnight.’
His dream about winning the Galactic Champions took a strange turn. Midnight? Then he realised he had forgotten to set the alarm and someone was hammering on his bedroom door.
‘Mervyn ,wake up!’ Tarun yelled.
He flung off his covers and raced to the door in his pyjamas. Tarun and Loren were already assembled in front of the main screens in the common room.
He peered at them through sleep laden eyes, ‘What’s up?’
Tarun yawned, ‘Nothing. Absolutely nothing.’
Loren nodded, ‘There’s a meteor storm hitting Garagyat II, and unseasonably high level of noxious gases in the swamps of Bocas Dorcus. Apart from that, it’s the quietest night the Galaxy has ever seen.’
‘It’s not midnight yet,’ Mervyn reminded them.
‘Ok, one more sweep of the net, then I’m going to bed,’ Loren sighed. She waited for midnight to pass then started the sweep. A collage of images flashed across the screen, the news stories of the moment; a crashed train, an erupting volcano, storms, the meteor shower on Garagyat II, minor dignitaries spouting about local politics, flies around a nut, the swamps of Bocas Dorcus.
‘Wait,’ Mervyn shouted, something had caught his attention, ‘go back, Loren.’
‘What, the swamps of Bocas Dorcus?’
‘No, before that.’
Loren scrolled back to the flies.
Tarun squinted at the screen through tired eyes, ‘What is it.’
‘It’s a long range shot of an asteroid,’ Mervyn informed him, ‘and those flies are ships.’
‘Nothing significant about that,’ Tarun said. ‘Keep scanning.’
Loren had the glazed look of someone accessing data on the link.
‘What is all this noise,’ demanded a strident voice behind them, ‘it has gone midnight – how dare you keep me awake.’ Aurora, hugging a fluffy pink dressing gown around her, glared accusingly at each of her team mates and then at the screen, ‘And why are you watching a battle?’
‘Battle?’ Realisation struck Mervyn in the gut, ‘Great muons -- it’s Starlight. And someone’s attacking it. Look!’ They watched in horror as more explosions blossomed silently on the surface of the asteroid.
‘I’ve got to talk to Dad,’ Mervyn said. He tried to link to his father via his biolink, but all he received back was static. ‘It’s blocked,’ he said in despair. All he could do was stand helplessly and watch Starlight be ripped apart, and his family with it.
‘Everything’s blocked,’ Loren confirmed.
Mervyn glared accusingly at Aurora, ‘Where’s the Ethrigian navy? Why isn’t anyone defending them?’
‘I will speak to my father,’ she announced and went glassy eyed. After a few moments she turned back to the others, she swallowed hard, ‘My uncle says the navy is on exercise with the Republic. They are steaming back here as fast as they can, but I don’t think they are going to make it in time. Sorry, Merv.’ Tears blossomed in the corners of her eyes, it was the first sign of emotion, other than contempt, Aurora has ever shown. He shouldn’t blame her.
‘Is this the best view we can get?’ Mervyn asked, desperate to see more detail, yet afraid in case he saw too much.
‘It’s a long shot from a relay station, there’s nothing closer,’ Loren said.
‘We’re closer, Mervyn said. ‘What about the Academy’s telescopes?’ The Academy had an array of telescopes for astronomy classes.
‘Of course,’ Loren said. ‘Give me a moment,’ her eyes glazing as she searched for the right connections. A few seconds later the giant screen flicked to a background of stars. The largest of Academy One’s telescopes tracked slowly to Loren’s new co-ordinates and Starlight filled the screen.
A swarm of fighter craft circulated the asteroid bombarding the surface and a single warship sat in orbit blasting away with its big guns. As Mervyn watched, horrified, a photon blast ripped apart Starlight’s central dome. Debris scattered outwards as Starlight’s atmosphere whooshed into the vacuum of space. He turned away from the sight. Anything not tied down would have been sucked out too; he could only imagine the devastation inside. A shoal of life-rafts erupted as Starlight’s residents fled the safety of their home. With his heart pounding, Mervyn hoped fervently that one of them contained his family. A moment later he changed his mind.
‘Look!’ Tarun called.
‘Oh quarks,’ Mervyn mouthed in horror. The fighters began picking off defenceless life-rafts as if for target practice.
‘I wish we could do something,’ Aurora said, her eyes staring wide in shock.
‘We can,’ Mervyn said. ‘Loren, upload this feed to the main news networks -- all of them! Let everyone see what’s going on. It might just stop them.’
Loren’s eyes glazed again, ‘the original station has taken it, and five more -- let’s hope that’s enough.’ Almost instantly the fighters turned away from their prey and returned to the warship.
‘Someone’s given an order,’ Tarun said. ‘Thank goodness for that.’
‘Saw themselves on the news I’ll bet,’ Mervyn said. The friends watched with relief as shuttles appeared and started gathering up the life-rafts. Soon the warship sped off taking the survivors with it.
‘We must go and see what we can do to help,’ Mervyn said starting towards the door. ‘I’m going to wake the principal.’
‘No need,’ Aurora said. ‘My uncle has already ordering him to help.’
‘In that case, I’m going to kill De Monsero or at least find out what he knows,’ Mervyn snarled, but before he had even taken two paces towards the door the alarm sounded calling all hands to emergency stations and locking them in their apartments.
Mervyn breathed heavily into his spacesuit. He stood on a gallery in Central Control looking down at the remains of Starlight town with mixed feelings. In happier times he would have been please to show off his home to his friends, but not in these circumstances. An eerie silence reigned in place of the usual happy bustle.
Above stretched the shattered dome, a self-contained bubble of air -- until last night. A shaft of light streamed through the hole in the dome: collected, focused, and reflected by the mirrors of orbiting satellites. Right about now it should be noon -- the dome protectors would have cleared allowing the artificial sun to shine through the hexagonal panes at its brightest. He would have stood here, in the warm sunshine, eating a packed lunch with his Dad, but now he didn’t even know if his Dad was alive.
He remembered their last conversation, more a shouted exchange, really – they had stopped actually talking a long time ago.
‘No, Mervyn,’ his father had snarled across the kitchen table, ‘all this talk of racing is just stardust, and as for the Space Academy, do you really think they would let a son of mine into their midst?’
‘This hobby of yours has gone far enough. You are going to get a solid job in the mining corporation. If you work hard you could become a section manager, maybe even take after me, and become a Senator for the Republic.’
‘No way. I’m not interested in politics,’ Mervyn shouted back, ‘I don’t want to work in the mines, and I don’t want to be a traitor, like you.’ A resentful silence followed this last statement and Mervyn realised he had gone too far.
He tried a more reasonable tone, ‘I just want to race sleds,’ he said with an effort. ‘The Space Academy turns out champions, it’s the best place to learn, and I want to be a champion.’
Loren had already gained a science scholarship at the Ethrigian Space Academy through her formidable intellect. Mervyn lacked her brains, besides, the Ethrigians didn’t have a price on her father’s head.
‘I need to win the racing scholarship – it’s my only chance.’
‘It’s a trap,’ his father replied, carefully sitting down as he struggled to reign in his
temper and match his son’s reasonable tone. ‘As soon as you touch Ethrigian space they’ll kidnap you and demand I turn myself in for your release. Which I, of course, I will.’
Mervyn waved the communique at his father, his trump card, ‘This is a guarantee, from Lord Tivolli – free passage, immunity from your crimes, the Patriot’s own assurance of safety.’
‘Lord Tivolli is honourable,’ his mother murmured from the sidelines. She hated to see the men of her household fight. Predictably, her son’s sledding ambitions were at the route of the conflict. ‘Why not let Mervyn have his chance, follow his dreams, get it out of his system, like you did.’
His father glared at her, ‘And who will pay to have his sled transported to the race?’
‘I’ll make you a deal,’ Mervyn said quickly, sitting opposite his Father. The tide was turning in his direction, ‘If I lose the scholarship race, I’ll give up sledding until I can fund it myself, and follow you into the mining corporation. However, should I miraculously win, we talk again.’
If his father paid any attention to sledding he would know Mervyn stood a better than even chance of winning. His father foolishly agreed to the deal.
Mervyn won the race, and the Tivolli scholarship to the Ethrigian Space Academy, but he had no intention of returning to face his Father. Instead, he sold his beloved sled and purchased his own passage direct to the Space Academy. He would face his father’s wrath later. Maybe.
Mervyn shuddered, if only he could turn back time and unsay the things he had said, maybe he should have taken the time to work out a proper deal with his Father.
He sighed and pointed out his house in the distance to the others. Like every other dwelling on the asteroid, the windows and glass roof had blown out when the dome exploded. All the debris, furniture, and anything else not secured had instantly disappeared into space -- it looked as if a giant vacuum cleaner had swept everything clean, which in a way it had.
The friends had volunteered to join the Principal in the rescue party, citing their intimate knowledge of Starlight as the excuse they needed to find Mervyn and Loren’s families. They had spent all morning helping survivors out of their hiding places in the storm-rooms and ferrying them to the terminus where they were evacuated to Academy One.
These were people Mervyn knew and had grown up with, so seeing them so forlorn and desperate was heart-breaking. He was relieved to have found his mother and his sisters among the survivors, and Loren’s Aunts, Uncles and cousins, but there was no trace of his Dad. Mervyn knew he would have commanded Starlight from Central Control, so the friends had slipped ahead of the Principal’s search party to investigate the control tower from themselves.
‘You grew up here?’ Aurora asked as they stood outside Mervyn’s house. She had insisted on accompanying the rescue party and had worked tirelessly to rescue survivors. When the others slipped away she insisted on coming with them. Mervyn would rather she had stayed behind, but she could easily tell the Principal where they had gone, so reluctantly he agreed. ‘But it’s so...’
‘Small,’ Mervyn added aggressively.
‘The other homes are practically on top of each other. You must have been falling over one another.’
‘Not really. It’s large for an outworld house,’ Mervyn said, feeling the need to justify his lifestyle, but hating himself for doing so. ‘We had a happy home -- lots of fun -- and I was never alone.’
‘Duty and tradition came first in the Patriarch’s palace.’ Aurora said wistfull, ‘I would have given anything for a happy home.
Mervyn immediately regretted his aggression.’
He turned back to Central Control, now twisted and crumbling, where his father would have co-ordinated resistance. Had anybody inside survived the blast? Was his father still alive somewhere? He stepped back through the shattered remains of an airlock, careful not to rip his spacesuit on the jagged metal.
Everything looked so different from the fresh building he had seen on his frequent visits to dad’s work. Even the staircase to the upper storey lay in ruins.
‘How do we get up there?’ Tarun asked.
‘Use the pinion lines on our spacesuits,’ Mervyn said. ‘Find a secure bit of ceiling, shoot the pinion, and use the suit’s winch to pull yourself up.’
‘That’s meant for a nil-G environment though,’ Tarun said, ‘are you sure It’s strong enough?’
‘Sure, the molecular grip on the end is incredibly strong, I’ve done it before -- one of the advantages of being a light-weight kid.’
‘How do we get it out again?’
‘Easy,’ Loren said, ‘when you feed an amino acid up the line and the molecules on the end let go.’
Mervyn laughed at the blank look on Tarun’s face, ‘Press the release button and it lets go.’ Tarun looked relieved.
Loren sighed, ‘That’s what I just said.’
Mervyn led the way. His pinion lodged in the ceiling and he swung his weight on the line, it still held so he activated the winch and sailed up to the first floor landing. The pinion loosed itself on command. ‘This way,’ he said as the others joined him and led them to the main control room.
The beautifully engraved glass doors were cracked and splintered. Mervyn expected to feel crunching glass beneath his feet, then remembered all the debris had been sucked into space along with anything not bolted down. The roof had completely gone and Central Control stood open to the stars. Mervyn hoped his father had escaped before the roof exploded.
Aurora made the grisly discovery, ‘Argh. Quick, there’s something over here!’ The others ran into a small side room built like a bank vault. Aurora stood with her hand to her mouth. At her feet lay something crumpled and orange.
‘Who is it?’ Loren asked anxiously as Mervyn knelt by the lifeless body.
‘I don’t know, but I’ve seen him working here before. Look, someone shot him with a blaster.’ Dried blood crusted the edges of a hole in the corpse’s chest.
‘Fully suited,’ Loren said, ‘that means he survived the main attack and someone shot him afterwards.’
‘You sure?’ Mervyn asked.
‘Of course, his body would have been sucked out when the roof went otherwise. If he survived, it’s a fair bet others did too.’’
‘What is this place?’ Tarun asked.
‘Airtight secure room. If they made it into here before the dome went they would have been safe.’
‘Look at the walls,’ Aurora said. ‘Photon blasts,’ she wandered back into main control. ‘It is the same in here -- photon blasts everywhere. Someone put up quite a struggle here.’