Into the Light by Jane Wallace

As it happened, Lauden was waiting for him outside the Briefing Room, shifting nervously from foot to foot. He brightened when he saw Sevin.

‘Any luck with those files?’ Sevin asked.

‘No, but I got this Enigma program from my buddy I think will do it,’ Lauden whispered, looking around for eavesdroppers. ‘I won’t get time to run it before the mission starts though.’

‘Do what you can,’ said Sevin, returning the salute of Captain Cantor who was coming down the corridor. ‘Keep me up to date.’

‘Wilco,’ said Lauden and moved off.

‘Morning sir,’ Cantor said, removing his uniform cap and smoothing down his grey hair. ‘Ready for the big day?’

‘As I’ll ever be. Let’s go in.’

Fleet Commander Brodie appeared to be in good humour that morning, sitting in his favourite spot facing the autodoors and guffawing at a remark from Lieutenant Colonel Regis who sat on his left. To his right, Colonel Reverre was studying papers and did not look up.

‘Ah, Major Sevin, sit down, sit down.’ Brodie beckoned Sevin and Cantor forward. ‘A splendid hijack by the way, a text-book case, so Regis tells me.’

‘Thank you, sir,’ said Sevin. He and Cantor took the seats across from Brodie.

‘Everything ready to go?’

‘Just finalising the details now,’ said Sevin.

‘Excellent, excellent. Well, then, Operation Secret Strike. Let’s go through it one last time.’

Heat rose from the tabletop as it changed from matt white to tones of khaki which coalesced into a map of Tian City and the Koffgardt plant. The aerospace facility was massive, taking over a forty hectare area to the east of the city. The road into it wound past the plane parks and their hangars where hundreds of the finished valostraal fighters waited for onward shipment. North of the parks lay the practice runways and a launch pad with the research laboratories close by. Moving further east was the main assembly line, surrounded by smaller workshops which made electrical components and weaponry.

Much of the production was automated but humans were required for the more sophisticated procedures. They lived on site in the southern dormitories, mainly local Tian or imported Gridon slaves and prisoners of war. The Gharst officials who supervised them had their billets in the former manager’s quarters nearby. Located between the two types of accommodation were the canteen and its storehouse, the destination for the Coalition’s special delivery.

Sevin picked up the light pen Brodie had rolled towards him and stood up.

’The Odin will disengage from Vehement at 12:12 GST and follow its original course into Tian City docks, arriving at the estimated time of 14:25, having been delayed for two hours by a near-collision with space junk,’ he said.

‘You’ve fed that to Tian Space Traffic Control already?’ asked Regis.

‘They seem to have accepted it. We estimate it will take an hour to get the landing permissions processed. Once that’s done, they’ll start unloading the goya on to the maglev which will transport it offsite to the warehouse. It’s a pretty fast process so we estimate the crates will be in the warehouse ready for pick-up by at least 16:30.’

‘How can you guarantee the crates will be delivered that day?’ asked Reverre who was finally taking an interest. ‘What if the crates remain in the warehouse for a week or so? If they are buried under other containers, the agents could be trapped. Or they might get separated and diverted to the wrong location.’

‘The freight forwarders have been paid handsomely to ensure a quick throughput,’ said Sevin, more defensively than necessary, unable to stop himself reacting to the question as a personal attack rather than a genuine concern. The colonel’s perfect face was impassive but that worried Sevin more than open hostility. He comforted himself with the thought that he was relying on his own sources for this mission, not the bogus information he suspected Reverre had deliberately supplied to him during Rebel Heart.

Sevin continued: ‘It’s a thirty-minute ride in the delivery van to Koffgardt. With time for a few delays built in, the crates should be unpacked and in the storehouse by 17:30. Then it’s a matter of waiting until the guard changeover at 22:00 to start the operation.’

‘Good, good. Then you’ll set the Scorpion on the assembly line?’ said Brodie.

‘Yes, and the subsidiary devices in the laboratories and the hangars.’ He indicated the locations they had in mind with the light pen.

‘You’ll have to make a quick exit.’

’The trikes should get us to the space port in fifteen minutes, even carrying three agents. Odin has taken a contract to carry kron valves to Borredan. She’s got clearance to load up and leave by 00:00. We’ll be onboard,’ said Sevin.

‘You’d better be,’ said Regis. ‘If the Scorpion’s set for 00:30, it doesn’t give you a lot of time.’

‘It’s enough.’

‘Alright,’ said Brodie. ‘Kick-off is when?’

‘12:12, sir.’

’Good. Once Special Ops has cleared the way, we can send in Ground Force to clean up. The Ministry has seen fit to send us a couple more ships, CSS Vigilant andCSS Vengeance. They’ll be here by 22:00 and they’ve got twelve hundred onboard between them. With us and Valiant, we can see the bloody gribs off – after the dust settles.’ Brodie beamed around the table. ‘Twenty minutes to go, you’d better get loaded up, Sevin.’

‘Sir.’ Sevin turned to leave.

Reverre cleared his throat.

Brodie took the prompt. ‘Ah yes, hold on a minute, Sevin. One last thing. We’ve made a personnel change on the team.’

’What’s that?’ he said, wondering if they were unhappy with his choice of captain for the Odin, Air Captain Pol Marik.

‘You’ll have to stay behind. Gilip here will be leading the expedition.’

‘What?’ Sevin turned to Cantor who looked as shocked as he did.

‘You can’t go in the pods with that injury.’

‘It’s nothing, it’s just a scratch!’ He glared at Reverre, convinced that the colonel had a hand in this turn of events. Reverre merely lifted a mocking eyebrow.

‘The healing process won’t work in stasis, doctor says, and the drugs’ll make it worse. You’ll be several rounds down before you even get going, you can’t lead on those terms,’ said Brodie.

‘Sir!’

‘That’s an order, Sevin. You’re staying up here.’

γ

Forty minutes later, Sevin was brooding in his cabin. He had bad-temperedly watched Odin slide away from Vehement on the screens in the Briefing Room where they had set up Operation Sure Strike’s temporary field HQ. With nothing to do for the next eight hours, Sevin had retreated to his own quarters.

Bloody Reverre had stitched him up again, he thought, got him grounded like a fractious teenager. It was so humiliating. He kicked the corner of the single cupboard which satisfyingly dented. He should be there on Tian leading the operation, not Cantor. He didn’t believe they had chosen Cantor over him because of his injuries. It was to slight him or for some ulterior motive. Possibililties swam around his head but none of them made a match. He was sidelined, and that was that.

Sevin plumped down on his bunk, at a loss for something to do. The bare surfaces of the cabin stared back at him. He supposed he could have another go at Reverre’s files, that would be the most productive use of his time. He thought of the Enigma program Lauden had mentioned earlier. Maybe it was in Lauden’s cabin? Knowing Jes, he had probably left it in full view on the desktop. Sevin jumped to his feet and set off down to Level 3 in double-quick time.

Lauden had left his door wide open, a general invitation to all passers-by if anyone cared to enter the dog’s dinner inside. His current room-mate was recovering from a leg wound in sick bay so all restrictions against mess had eased, allowing a flood tide of clothes and papers to rise almost to the height of the lower bunk. A collection of food containers had colonised the unused top bed as the rubbish receptacle had reached capacity several days ago. The air had the texture and odour of unwashed socks.

Sevin picked his way through the fug to the desk at the foot of the bunks which had disappeared under a slew of wires and tech junk. He swept aside a pile of gameloads and musak, pausing over a new release by an Auxo group he liked. Then he saw a white cache which had been tossed on top of a couple of broken totavision visors, still in its cellulane wrapper. He tore off the packaging and clipped it to the media player. An avassador appeared on the viewer, a barely dressed Thalian woman splayed on a red couch.

‘Hello,’ said the image. ‘I’m Enigma. Would you like to use me?’

Sevin laughed out loud at the classic geek touch. ‘Yes,’ he said, sitting down at the controls and hitting go.

The avassador widened her eyes and sat up, the angle concentrating on her supersized cleavage. ‘You show me yours, I’ll show you mine,’ she lisped.

‘It’s all yours,’ he said, highlighting the files that he wanted deciphered.

’Thank you,’ she said, getting up from the daybed. ‘Just sit back while I get to work.’ With a saucy nod, she flounced out of her cyberspace. The sound of a door slamming announced that the decryption process had begun.

Sevin decided he’d leave her to get on with it.

δ

’Treff-oh,’ Marik said to himself as he guided the Odin into the arms of the docking crampons which smoothly clamped on to the freighter and drew it into its berth. ‘Grut me, but that’s the best job a first-timer ever did.’ He high-fived himself then looked around the ageing flight deck with its patched-up controls. Despite what he had told Sevin, he had zero experience of piloting containers. He never doubted he could do it, and do it better than all those other pant-jackers, but there had been a few hairy moments. He threw the cargo hatches to open, locked the bridge and bounded along the gangway and out of the forward hatch, stretching and taking the fresh air on the bridgeway like any other long-range pilot after months of transit.

Tian was the furthest planet in the system from Altan’s solar core and the effect of the twin suns out here was negligible. The temperature was freezing and he drew up the collars of the merchant fleet jacket they had purloined from Odin’s previous captain. It bore captain’s flashes, which amused him, but the navy coat was too short in the sleeve and too generous around the chest to provide proper insulation. The coldness of the afternoon sanded his face as he took in the colossal otherworld which was Tian City Space Port.

TheOdin was stationed in the middle of the commercial docks, two long spines of quayside cut across at regular intervals by skinny pontoons. Each pontoon was cockscombed with towering gantry cranes. They nodded and pulled with such grace they appeared like ogreish horses which might turn and canter away. Either side of the pontoon was a berth, and, for as far as he could see, every slot was occupied. He estimated there were seventy ships in port, all types of carrier, unloading raw materials or collecting the end product to ferry to the latest battleground. The scale of the operation was immense and, he realised, all of it was dedicated to the killing and destruction of the Coalition peoples. Finally he understood the significance of the mission and his part in it. They must eliminate this monster, not just for the sake of Charis and Altan, but for humanity itself.

A crash of deck plates falling away from their payload on the neighbouring ship brought him back to the reality of his duties. He clattered down the steps of the bridgeway to be halted at the bottom by two waiting customs officials in dun-coloured greatcoats. They were both Tian, with the slanted eyes and wide swarthy face typical of their race, but they addressed him in Gharst. He waved his hands uselessly and they switched to a soupy Standard.

‘Port authority. Papers,’ said the first, looking at him suspiciously.

Marik handed them over, trying to appear unconcerned as the official checked the certificates with a thoroughness that made Marik’s hands damp. The second watched Marik closely.

‘You not Gharst,’ he said. ‘Why you drive Gharst ship?’

‘It was me or no-one, they’re so short-handed, you know, so busy with the war and everything that they’ve got to get us prisoners-of-war to do it. Don’t know what’s worse – jail or going around in that old crock!’ Marik laughed nervously as the second official stared at him.

Completing his inspection, the first official grunted in approval. ‘Freight office over there. Window number three. Get chop and you unload.’

‘Thanks,’ said Marik, taking back the documents. ‘I’ll get over there now.’ He felt their eyes boring into his back as he followed the shining rails of the maglev along the pontoon. At the end, he turned right on to one of the spines of the docks where a large circular kiosk sat on the next cross-spar down. Queues radiated out from the eight counters, mostly ship captains in flight suits, stamping their feet or hugging their arms against the cold. They were all Gharst. Marik found window number three and joined the line feeling conspicuous, avoiding meeting any of the pairs of red eyes which viewed him with curiosity or plain antipathy. The line moved quickly and soon Marik was sliding his faked notes under the polypro window to the balding and overweight Gharst who took them without looking up.

’Vargin harcht,’ he said. When Marik did not respond, he raised his little piggy eyes which widened then narrowed.

’You are morkan,’ he said in Standard.

‘Yes,’ said Marik, flashing his most engaging smile.

‘You cannot be captain of the Gharst ship!’

‘Crazy, isn’t it? Actually, I’m a prisoner of war. From Escovar, Charis system, originally. I was a captain in Space Command, you see, before I was captured, so when there wasn’t anyone available, they got me out, simple as that.’

’It’s the sad day when morken do our jobs.’ The Gharst looked at Marik as if he had shown up on the bottom of his shoe.

‘In times of need, you got to use what you’ve got.’

The Gharst considered him for a long, agonising moment. Then he hit a button on the touchpad by his elbow and dumped the official chop, a green valknot, on the documents. He passed them back to Marik. ‘Go back to the ship. Stay onboard till you leave.’

Marik had no intention of doing anything else. He took the papers and the insult gratefully and scurried back to Odin where the cranes were swinging into action. He watched them unload every crate onto the maglev, wincing when one failed to make purchase on the invisible flatbed and rebounded against the concrete pontoon. Luckily it did not break open, although whoever was inside would have taken a bruising. Like balls bobbing on an air current, the crates trembled in a long line until a hefty shunt sent them careering down the track through the centre of the docks and out to the waiting warehouses racked behind the highway to Tian City.

It was 16:03. Marik scaled the bridgeway back to Odin to wait for the arrival of his next cargo – sixty thousand kron valves.

ε

A black aerial no thicker than a hair crept out of a crate of goya perched precariously on top of four others in the dry goods section of Number 1 Provisions Storehouse. It curled upwards some twenty centimetres, seeming to scent the air, before retreating. On the strength of its surveillance, the intelligent system which managed the pod judged it was safe to wake the sleeper inside. Ten minutes later, there was a delicate thump and then splintering as a whole side of a crate came away from its frame. Its contents, one Captain Gilip Cantor, spilled out in a peristaltic drop to the floor below.

The warehouse was pitch-black and deathly cold. There was a yeasty smell like stale bread. Cantor shook his head, bleary from the stasis drugs, his muscles aching. He could see nothing, relying on what he could feel through his gloves for orientation. Adjusting his eyeshields, he switched to thermal imaging and gained some blurry visuals of the shelves and stacks around him. He jumped as something ran over his foot: the furry outline, yellow and orange through his visor, probably a rodent. A concert of fibreboard splitting from nail started up as the other agents began to decrate. Eventually three groups of three stood ready.

‘Charlie?’ whispered Cantor.

‘Check,’ said Zendra, securing the square pack of a trike wheel to the back of one of her group. The agents were hard to distinguish as faces and gender were obliterated by the combat dress they all wore, a bodysuit with the chameloflage turned to black for the night-time assault.

‘Bravo?’

‘Check,’ said Lauden’s bass tones. The tallest and broadest figure of the trio patted the package attached to his chest to show he had the Scorpion.

‘Alpha?’

Check,’ said Fenne from behind him. Along with Dbou, a young woman from Zudan, he and Cantor made up the command group.

Cantor took a deep breath. ‘This is it, people,’ he said. ‘Go, go, go!’

Cautiously the three groups tip-toed along the aisles of boxes and crates, past the chest refridgerators which cast a green glow from their temperature and insentory displays, to the vast double doors barring them inside the storehouse. They were operated with pull-down levers like a bank vault. Was such security really necessary to keep out pilferers? Unless they were really hungry, thought Cantor, imagining an army of half-starved drones forced to build killer planes for the Gharst. The doors were secured from the outside but Lauden’s wizardry soon overrode their controls and they eased open. Cantor poked his head out to recce the way ahead.

All was quiet, the air heavy and inert as if it were frozen too. The storehouse where they hid faced on to the kitchens of the refectory, the twisted shapes of idle catering equipment visible through its back windows. The dining hall was a long rectangle looked over by the ends of the flat-roofed blocks of worker dormitories, stacked up like shoe boxes in stories of three or four. No moons orbited Tian, but light flooded out of the dormitory windows and from the pale globes marking the tree-lined pathways which meandered through parkland to the main production facilities about a kilometre north. A thick mist was rising, slurring shapes and masking movement. Cantor shrank back as a man appeared, trudging in a heavy coat, hands buried in pockets, towards one of the blocks. He waited until the man had gone inside and then motioned the advance.

Charlie group went first, taking their cue to exit when the security cameras scoped the far side of the storehouse entrance. They darted across the open ground to take shelter under window sills or behind drainpipes, their figures fusing with the night as they cleared the buildings and disappeared into the bush-studded flats beyond, bound for the research laboratories on the north-eastern perimeter.

Bravo followed soon afterwards. Their target, the valostraal assembly line, was in the same direction, although closer to the storehouse. Cantor winced as Lauden gallumped between cover, a loose strap flapping against his leg which seemed to resonate like a shout through a gorge. But they too crossed the space without mishap and it was Alpha’s turn.

As the command group, Alpha had the easiest job. Their task was to set the zentrite cookies around the two groups of hangars, North Field and South Field, on the western edges of the compound. Each group was a cluster of five sheds - one long central installation and two smaller workshops either side - laid out in a semi-circle. The groups faced each other across the highway from the main gates. Newly minted valostraal were lined up in matrices on the tarmac aprons either side of the road, awaiting deployment or testing on the airstrip behind the North Field construction.

The valostraal were a thorn in the side of the Coalition. Roughly cornet-shaped with a blunt nose, they were designed to carry a single pilot and a small payload of missiles as well as a forward beamer. The current model, the K-10z, was heavier and slower than the Coalition’s rapid-burn supernova. But its larger fission engines kept energy reserves high so it could travel further than the supernova while carrying more of the deadly glory ball missiles. The supernova, with its superior manoeuvrability, could best the valostraal in dogfight. Over long distances, the valostraal was fatal, a fact that Gharst pilots tried to exploit whenever possible.

He was going to enjoy sending a whole field of them up, Cantor told himself as he tailed Dbou and Fenne round the sides of the outermost dorm and raced across the short expanse of treeless verge to the rear of the South Field hangars. Moving more cautiously, they approached the main shed, Cantor testing its ferronium panels as he passed. The structure seemed to be mere sheets of metal nailed on a rickety frame. It looked like a strong wind could blow it over.

Keeping in the shadows, they moved eastwards, maintaining a distance of ten metres between them. They stayed in constant contact by viewing the pictures sent from each other’s helmet cameras to the screens on the insides of their eyeshields. Cantor was also linked to the Bravo and Charlie leaders. He saw the threat on Fenne’s stream before he caught the arm signal from Dbou in front. Three sturmgangers were approaching on the path between the factories and the dorms, coming in at two o’clock from where Fenne crouched motionless underneath a ventilation duct. Dbou hid in the tall weeds growing close enough to the walls to escape the mower, Cantor behind rusting drums stacked several metres from where the guards would pass. Strobes of flashlight swung over their heads as the sturmgangers strolled by. There were two women and a man, talking animatedly – they were off duty or not taking the patrol seriously. Cantor held his breath until they walked by, heading in the direction of the main gate.