Marvin bowed his head in acceptance.
‘That’s fine, young man, so it’s been worked out, and it sounds sensible to me. I’ll convey the message. In the meantime, perhaps it would be prudent to show a little respect, some deference. Nettles is going places. He’ll be central to the secessionist movement if we can get him back to Trevon. People listen to the man. He has connections across the OR. You need him on your side.’
Scat didn’t quite know what to say. He had just risked his life to free the beggar, willingly.
‘Sure. But he does things up here my way and under my orders. I’ll suck it up and listen to his comments if he has any, even keep him in the loop on the current stuff until I can drop him off. And he can play like royalty if he needs to—I’ll play along. But I’m running the physical side of this rebellion until someone with a bigger fist comes along.’
Marvin gave Scat a genuine grin and a wink.
‘Good man. I knew you’d understand.’
93
Goosen organised the new recruits into 11 four-man teams, and, in anticipation of the long haul ahead, stood three of them down to act as a general reserve.
He put one team on standby to meet any shuttle that might unwittingly attempt to dock with them, and then he stationed a team at each end of the accommodation section of the ring to secure the Outer Rim Force troops, the crew and any ex-cops who didn’t want to join the rebellion.
The remaining five teams secured strategic locations around the vessel: one of them watched over the flight crew; two covered the two flux-drive rooms, and one guarded the IT bay. The final team roamed the corridors, the shuttles and the cargo bay looking for extra weapons and other useful equipment.
That task done, Goosen hunkered down in the command cabin to review the communications between the vessel and Trevon. He wasn’t a comms expert, but Thomas had given him a decryption programme to help sort through the body of each message. He was trawling for anything that might indicate the rebels had assaulted the vessel. As he did so, he learned that the vessel was in almost continuous communication with Trevon: passing on companynet updates; obtaining Universal web uploads; providing the spaceport with navigational updates; passing on buoy correspondence and so on.
Leaving the comms open was a risk, but to close it would invite enquiry. So far, he could find no alerts warning Trevon of the hijacking, so it was probably best to leave it open. He would have to check with Scat.
‘So what do we have, Birdie?’ Scat asked as he returned from his brief meeting with Nettles.
Goosen left the decryption scan running and looked up.
‘Well let me see,’ he said, referring to a notepad beside the screen he was using. ‘Two of the shuttles are faulty, but they can either be repaired or cannibalised, depending on what skills sets we’ve acquired among the new recruits. We’ve found two more PIKLS. That makes 15 in all if you include the ORF’s weapons. We’ve 10 stuns. The V4 is fitted with military-grade StarGazer software, and we’ve enough fuel for perhaps 250 light years of travel. Each shuttle has enough fuel for maybe four or five round trips to Trevon.’
‘Are any of the crew likely to sign on?’ Although Scat asked the question, he didn’t sound particularly hopeful.
Goosen confirmed his doubts with a shake of his head.
‘Unlikely. They’ll lose their bonuses, but perhaps we could make them the same offer Thomas made me—about the land, that is. It may be worth more than money to some of them.’
‘If we did that, could we rely on any of them not to abuse out trust?’
‘There are no guarantees in the insurrection business, Scat, but I wouldn’t trust them unsupervised, if you get my meaning?’
Scat nodded.
‘So get Nettles in here,’ he said. ‘No, rather, respectfully request Nettles’ presence and ask him if he would explain Trevon’s future position on land reform. If he doesn’t have one he can make it up as he goes. Then you can let them know that the Irwin family is offering land for services rendered. Let’s see where that takes us. We need a willing, long-term driver for this thing, some shuttle pilots, plus a life support systems specialist and some IT support for the StarGazer and flux-drives.’
Goosen stood up as if getting ready for something. He showed Scat a big grin.
‘Actually, Scat, I can fly a shuttle, and we’ve already got ourselves an IT expert who’s familiar with the SG and flux-drive software. He used to work for Raddox before leaving them under some dubious circumstances. His name is Tillier Bing. He’s a Welshman.’
Scat narrowed his eyes and cocked his head.
‘Bing’s a Welsh name?’
‘Well, no,’ Goosen admitted. ‘As I said, his history with Raddox is a little murky, and anything beyond that is pretty black, but he’s talented. We used him to crack databases and monitor bad boy traffic.’
Scat didn’t want to go into details.
‘Well, get him up here and let’s see what he can dig out for us. I want a complete review of the V4’s software. I don’t trust Matheson, here,’ he said, watching the man as he struggled to cut short the ftl initiation process on the other side of the console. ‘He’ll be holding out. Ask your friend to look for any non-standard weapons, sensors and functions programmes, and let me know what he finds asp.’
‘Will do, and while I do that, I do have a couple of things for you.’ Goosen put his notebook back down and invited Scat to look at the screen. ‘Do you want me to kill the connection with Trevon? It’s in constant communication with the Lynthax Centre. They’re updates mostly, but I’m not sure if any of the crew has access from outside of the command cabin.’
Scat had missed that. He stroked his broken nose, realised he was doing it more frequently and stopped. He looked up at Matheson and raised his voice.
‘Do they, Matheson?’
‘Do they what?’ Matheson snapped.
‘Where else can we access external comms from, outside of this cabin?’
Matheson waved a finger in the general direction of the damaged doors.
‘The shuttles and the flux-drive rooms,’ he replied.
‘Just them?’
‘Yes.’
Scat turned back to Goosen.
‘You have them both covered, Birdie, so you can leave the comms open. We’ll be cutting them when we move off channel in a few minutes, in any case, which will alert them plenty soon enough. Once we’re gone, they can scramble for an explanation as much as they like, and once they realise we’ve nabbed this baby it’ll be too late for them to do anything about it. And when we come back—which they won’t be expecting—we’ll have hit them and be on our way again before they can recall that frigate of theirs.’
At least Scat hoped so: it was a lot to juggle, and they were assuming the frigate was still around Prebos, a full light year away.
‘And the other thing?’ Scat asked.
‘Khoffi Khan wants to talk to you. He seems agitated.’
Scat screwed his face up. He had just wasted 10 minutes with a bunch of politicians.
‘Later,’ Scat replied, waving a hand. ‘Maybe never. We’ll see.’ He then turned to threaten Matheson. ‘Seriously, Matheson, if this thing isn’t moving in less than a minute, your brain won’t be worth comparing to a seagull’s.’
Matheson refused to look up. He stared at his screen.
‘We’re ready. Where do we go?’
‘Take us half a light year closer to Prebos, but half a light year off-channel. Between channels, if you please.
Matheson baulked. He glanced up at Goosen, realised the hulking ex-cop wouldn’t understand anything about interstellar space travel, and then finally looked at Scat.
‘But we never travel off channel,’ he said, nervously clearing his throat. ‘It’s too dangerous.’
‘We do travel off-channel, Matheson. You’ve military-grade SG, and we’ll be using it. So the quicker you show us how to steer this thing by ourselves, the earlier you can get off this thing and the s
afer you’ll be.’
The 100 kilometre wide channels were the established ftl routes between Earth and the New Worlds. They provided safe passage for ftl travel and the buoy network that ran along them provided constant ftl communication. Less well emphasised, the channels also helped Inter-Space Regulatory Authority—and the Corporations—regulate ftl traffic. They had taken years to establish and, as they weren’t static channels—the universe was always moving—they required constant work to keep open.
They were kept open by the hundreds of ftl buoys that ran in relay up and down each of the channels, playing tag at the buoy stations along the way. The buoy stations acted as both route markers and dedicated points in space where civilian vessels could exchange information with one another.
The channels ran Earth-to-New World and back again. They didn’t operate New World to New World. The only onward channels that existed were the approved channels to asteroid or pseudo-planet dependencies, such as Prebos.
ISRA didn’t allow anyone to travel off-channel, but it was thought that smugglers did—to avoid detection. And with the military-grade StarGazer software, Scat intended to do the same thing: get lost in uncharted and little-travelled territory. He wanted to be far enough away to make a subluminal search almost impossible—no one had yet worked out how to conduct a search at ftl speeds. Half way to Prebos and half a light year off channel was good enough. He already had his eye on disrupting the channels, so he may as well learn to work without them.
‘Couldn’t we travel sub-ftl?’ Matheson asked.
‘And take two years to get there? Nice try, but I don’t think so. Get a move on. Push a button or something. Get us moving. Now!’
Matheson sighed, letting his shoulders slump. He swore under his breath that he would take a baseball bat to this guy at some time in the future—when he wasn’t holding a shotgun, and didn’t have so many hostages.
‘OK. On your head be our necks! Please inform everyone to prepare for rapid decompression.’
‘Don’t be so melodramatic, Matheson. Just press the farking button,’ Scat replied.
Matheson put his finger on the button and closed his eyes. Scat watched the man utter a prayer of some sort under his breath. Eventually Matheson pressed down.
Seconds later the V4 emerged, unscathed, at the coordinates Scat had requested. Immediately Matheson conducted a review of the V4’s systems and scanned the outer hull for any damage caused by space dust collisions. There was none.
‘So! Not so dangerous, after all,’ Scat observed. ‘Please give my thanks to the crew.’
94
‘We’ll go after Lynthax’s head office in Go Down tonight—well, actually, first thing in the morning.’ Scat confirmed. ‘It’s a high profile target, there’ll be very little collateral damage, it’s an uncomplicated task, and it’ll send a strong message that no one is safe. Besides, the Centre holds their data bank. It’ll take days to replace.’
Goosen was keen, but had yet to hear the plan.
Nettles wanted clarification.
‘Just how many people might be categorised as collateral damage?’ he asked.
Scat eyeballed Nettles over the brightly lit 3-D bench. He had invited the man to the meeting as a courtesy; after all, he was coming along for the ride. Marvin stood alongside him, trying to avoid the upcoming argument, pretending to study the hologram of Go Down City showing the Lynthax Centre highlighted in red beneath the environmental roof. From what Scat could see of Nettles’ face in the upward glare of the bench, their political leader still had his doubts.
‘By that, do you mean how many would be in the building at the time?’ he asked.
‘Yes.’
Scat shrugged. It would be a guess.
‘Around 80, if you include all the janitors, security guards and anyone who enjoys working on company premises after hours.’
Nettles’ nostrils appeared to narrow a little.
‘That’s a lot of people. That’s 80 families and 80 funerals. Don’t you want to start off a little smaller, Scat?’ he asked.
Scat pursed his lips and shook his head.
‘No. We hit the biggest available target: the Lynthax Centre. We hit it now, and we hit it hard. We get the maximum possible return for the least amount of effort and risk to ourselves. We do the unexpected.
‘If we start small, we might never get off the ground. Lynthax and the ORF will start to build a picture of our capabilities. We might create patterns. They’ll build up their countermeasures and bring in more assets before we achieve anything worthwhile. By doing this, by hitting the Lynthax Centre unexpectedly, we strike at the centre of power in this part of the OR—with little immediate loss of life.’
For a moment, no one spoke. Nettles continued to stare down at the Lynthax Centre. Eventually Goosen decided to break the silence and ask the obvious question.
‘But very few of us are mentally prepared or competent enough to do something like this, Scat. Wouldn’t it make sense to bloody our hands on something more manageable?’ he asked.
‘Relax, Birdie. We have the resources, and we’ve enough experience among us. And, in any case, no one has ever taken on one of the major Corporations before, so no one is ever going to admit to being quite ready.’
‘So how do you propose we take out the Centre?’ Marvin asked.
Scat smiled. He had a surprise for them all.
‘Bing, here,’ he said, pointing at the only person in the group not known to everyone, ‘has discovered that this baby,’ he tapped his foot on the ground a few times, ‘has a light-tug.’
Nettles looked at Marvin. Marvin shrugged. Goosen glanced at Bing. Bing showed no surprise or curiosity; it was obvious he knew exactly what Scat was about to propose.
‘Of course it would!’ Goosen said as though Scat was stating the obvious. ‘And it’ll be powerful enough to drag another LM-V behind it, no doubt. What of it?’
‘Well Birdie, we use it to “pinch” the Centre, and then release its energy and destroy all its electronics, data banks, security barriers, elevators, PCs, communications and scanners—basically anything that’s wired.’
Scat could see eyes were widening, and although Nettles never actually looked worried, he did appear to relax.
‘So we don’t have significant loss of human life at all, then?’ he asked.
‘No. We don’t. We just get ourselves a highly effective first strike.’
Marvin thought Scat had missed something.
‘Unless someone inside the building is fitted with a neuralnet implant or just happens to pass by the building wearing a pacemaker, or something similar.’
Scat looked back up from the hologram and smiled at him.
‘So you should stay here, then.’
He got a middle finger in mock reply.
Bing began to explain the plan in more detail. He highlighted some factors that would affect it:
‘We don’t want to hit the neighbouring tower blocks: some are key civilian facilities, like private clinics and media stations. I doubt we could achieve the right kind of accuracy from orbit, and the V4 can’t get close in: it doesn’t have the power to resist the high Gs. That leaves us with an attack by shuttle. If we don’t want to move the centre—just knock out its electronics and fry its databanks—then a shuttle should provide the light-tug with the necessary power. It’ll also keep the V4 out of harm’s way.’
‘What about the Lynthax Centre medical facility?’ Marvin asked, sticking with his pacemaker theme. ‘There’s bound to be one or two execs hooked up to a monitor overnight? Possibly an employee or two, maybe even a family member.’
Scat thought he might as well plan for it, if only to shut him up. He looked across the hologram.
‘Birdie, could we slip a message into that stream of data the V4 is sending to Trevon; something that we could get to Thomas?’
‘Possibly,’ he replied, looking at Bing who shrugged. ‘What are you thinking of telling him?’
‘H
e could send in a bomb threat, or we can make it look as though someone has sent one from within Trevon; whatever works. That’ll cause an evacuation. It’ll clear the way, and maybe even get us some live coverage.’
‘Good idea, Scat,’ Nettles said, signalling his approval for the attack, now they were planning to minimise casualties, especially the innocent ones. ‘If a message can be sent, then please try,’ he said to Bing.
‘The med centre is to be cleared by three am, Go Down time, please, Bing,’ Scat added. ‘We’ll be using the light-tug at 3.10.’
‘OK, but why wait? That’s several hours away,’ Goosen asked.
‘Because we have some prep to do. We’ve to knock out the next couple of buoys which means Bing’s got to write a little code, and we’ve got to be there when they drop into space.’
‘The purpose being?’ Nettles asked.
Scat leaned over the 3-D bench, resting his weight on his hands. He looked around, making eye contact with everyone.
‘This is a once-in-a-rebellion opportunity. If it goes well here, we need to be able to do it again, elsewhere, and as often as possible before anyone catches on. All we need to do is disable the buoy systems around each planet, so no one hears what’s going on. The buoys work New World to Earth, Earth to the New Worlds—they don’t cross between New Worlds. If we can knock out the buoys, Earth won’t hear about our actions for a very long time. That means they can’t alert the other New Worlds until it’s too late. For sure, Lynthax won’t be able to alert its other colonies unless it pulls its frigate away from Prebos.’ He then allowed that to sink in. ‘And if they do that, Prebos is fair game.’
Goosen whistled his appreciation.
Nettles nodded.
Scat continued.
‘Once you’ve written your code, Bing, we need to move the light-tug down to the shuttle and get some practice. Can you get it fitted before 11 pm tonight?’ Scat was mindful that after that they then had only four hours to intercept the first couple of buoys, get back to Trevon space, and then launch a shuttle for the attack.
Bing already had it worked out. It was doable. He was sure of it.