Fleet of Knives Read online

  I tried to reach her, only to narrowly avoid getting caught by another of the giant pincers. I thought maybe I could drag her clear. But before I could even get close, one of the crustacean’s spear-like feet stabbed downward, skewering Kelly through the chest and pinning her thrashing body to the polished rock. And even then, before I’d really had time to grasp the full horror of what was happening, I already knew I’d never be able to un-hear the splintering crack it made as it punched through the armoured breastplate of her suit, into the yielding ribcage beneath.

  * * *

  Addison pulled me out of the cavern, and then into a narrow side tunnel that led off the main corridor. It was an access way designed for creatures that were tall and thin rather than low and wide.

  “We should be safe in here,” she said. “It can’t follow us.”

  Unable to wedge its body into the confines of the access way, the crayfish howled in its thin, reedy voice and thrust a pair of pincers into the opening, grasping blindly for us.

  Guns at the ready, we backed away, to where the others were waiting a few dozen metres along the passage.

  Gil Dalton took one look at my face, and gave a sympathetic nod. The normally ebullient Santos looked grim. Only Henri Bernard seemed confused. He peered past my shoulder, a frown creasing the skin between his brows.

  “Where’s Kelly?”

  I couldn’t answer him. All I could see in my head was that final, fatal thrust.

  Behind me, Addison said, “She’s dead.”

  Bernard opened and shut his mouth. He pulled his battered old rifle tight against the chest of his shiny new suit, and turned away.

  At the end of the corridor, the creature—whatever it was—continued to scrabble at the walls in its attempt to reach us.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  TROUBLE DOG

  Imagine you have been living in the same, familiar house all your life. You know all its rooms; you feel comfortable there. And then one day, out of curiosity, you peel back one of the floorboards to find a bottomless cavern yawning beneath. All your life you have been walking and dancing on this thin skein of wood, never suspecting the abyss below the flexing boards, and the fragility of your position.

  That is the best way I can describe the higher dimensions. The safe, comfortable house is the everyday universe, the cavernous depths below the higher dimensional void that surrounds and underpins it all, separating it from other universes and realities.

  As I roared through the mists of the hypervoid, I could hear the calls of other ships, in other systems, their signals accelerated and stretched into whale song by the peculiar physics of the higher dimensions. Some spoke of boredom and drudgery, hauling cargoes on unchanging routes and inflexible schedules. Others warned of local dangers: navigation hazards, and an increase in the frequency of reality quakes in the vicinity of the Intrusion.

  The Intrusion was an area of space where two realities struggled to coexist. The higher dimensional void between them had been breached, creating a pathway—a pathway around whose borders the laws of physics had become malleable and skittish. In the hypervoid, it sounded like the dull growl of a nearby tornado, grinding away in the background.

  And then, faint and faraway and almost lost in the grumble of the storm and the chatter of other ships, came the cries of battle. Somewhere, ships were dying. Scimitars and Carnivores were being torn apart. And to my horror, the message tags identified the ships in trouble as vessels of the Conglomeration Navy. The canine genes they’d spliced into my brain had been put there to promote tenaciousness and pack loyalty—and I could feel those implanted reflexes twitch involuntarily in response to the cries of my former comrades-in-arms, even though those cries had been made several hours ago.

  Something bad had happened at Camrose, and part of me itched to be there, to drop everything and race back to the fray, even though whatever was happening would probably have been long over by the time I covered the intervening distance.

  At first, those desperate transmissions stood alone in the vastness of the hypervoid. Then I started to detect other, equally frantic voices in systems neighbouring Camrose. First one, then another and another, as the violence spread outwards like a contagion.

  I longed to linger in the mist to find out what was happening. But we had reached the approximate last known position of the Lucy’s Ghost, and if we overshot we’d find ourselves as trespassers in Nymtoq space.

  I applied braking thrust, and felt myself start to fall through the higher dimensions, back down towards the physical certainties of the everyday universe.

  Wisps of reality began to buffer my hull. I adjusted my angle of descent, brought my defensive systems online, and prepared to fire up my fusion motors, ready to rip my way back through the membrane separating formlessness from actuality.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  SAL KONSTANZ

  “It’s the Marble Armada,” Clay said. “It has to be.”

  I didn’t want to jump to conclusions, but I knew she was right. Who else in the Camrose System had enough ships to take out a Conglomeration battle group, let alone simultaneously spread the attack to nearby systems?

  I thought of the veteran I’d met at the Temples of the High Country, and his insistence the alien fleet could not be trusted, and felt a stab of guilt. Had I brought this viper into the heart of the Generality? Was this whole thing somehow my fault?

  “Are there any transmissions from the attackers? Any clue what might have set this off?”

  The Trouble Dog had switched her avatar’s appearance back to one of its default settings, and now appeared to be clad in black combat fatigues rather than the slinky dress she had been wearing earlier.

  “There is one,” she said hesitantly. “But you’re not going to like it.”

  The bridge’s main screen dimmed, then brightened again, displaying the face of a middle-aged woman with short-cropped hair and a powdering of grey at each of her temples. The signal had been stretched and scratched during its passage through the void. The picture kept half-dissolving into pixels, and the sound quality wavered. Nonetheless, I recognised her.

  “That’s Ona Sudak.” I hadn’t seen her since turning her over to the authorities on our return from the Gallery.

  Beside me, Preston said, “I heard she was dead.”

  “Evidently not.” I gestured at the screen. “Although I can’t make out what she’s saying.”

  “The signal’s heavily compromised,” the Trouble Dog said. “I’ll try to compensate.”

  The screen flickered. There was a burst of static, and then Sudak’s familiar tones filled the room, the words a quarter of a second out of sync with the movements of her mouth.

  “…not be tolerated. I repeat: my name is Ona Sudak, human liaison to the Fleet of Knives. We are currently engaged in peacekeeping work in Camrose and a number of other systems within the Generality. All armed vessels are advised to stand down and await further orders. Defiance will not be borne. Violence will not be tolerated. I repeat: my name is…”

  The picture froze, and the Trouble Dog said, “It’s on a loop.”

  Beside me, Clay cursed. “Peacekeeping, my ass.”

  Hunched in the doorway, Preston seemed stunned. His eyes were wide and he didn’t seem to know what to do with his arms.

  “They’re really attacking us?”

  “It looks that way,” I said.

  “What do we do?”

  I removed my cap and dragged my fingers across my scalp. I’d been asking myself the same question.

  “There’s not much we can do, way out here,” I said. “So, I suggest we concentrate on the job at hand. Everything else can wait until we know more.”

  Clay shook her dreadlocks. “I don’t think we can afford to wait. They’ve got a million ships. Whatever they’re up to, we’re heavily outnumbered.”

  On screen, the Trouble Dog made a show of clearing her throat. “I’m afraid I concur with Alva. These messages suggest the Armada’s im
pounding or attacking armed vessels—a category into which I fall.”

  “But the House is neutral,” I reminded her.

  “Only to human governments. This ‘Fleet of Knives’ might feel differently.”

  “But I thought they’d endorsed the House for inheriting their philosophy?”

  “That doesn’t mean they won’t take our toys away if they consider it to be for the greater good. Remember their motto?”

  “Life above all.”

  “Exactly.” The Trouble Dog fell silent for a moment, her perfectly symmetrical face troubled.

  “I gave them their mission,” she said. “I told them to ensure we’d never have another conflict on the scale of the Archipelago War.”

  “And you think that’s why they’re taking away our ships?”

  From the doorway, Preston mumbled, “You can’t have a war if you haven’t got anything to fight with.”

  I looked at the frozen image of Ona Sudak, poet and war criminal, and wondered how the hell she’d inveigled her way into the Armada’s trust. The last I’d heard, she’d been sentenced to death by firing squad, and sent to a high-security facility on the surface of Camrose.

  “Okay, I’ll admit it sounds bad. It might even be our fault. But right now, there’s nothing we can do about it.” I replaced my cap and tugged the brim into place. “We came here to answer a distress call, so let’s make that our priority. We can discuss the rest later.”

  I ordered the Trouble Dog to locate the Lucy’s Ghost, and sent Preston down to the infirmary to prepare for the possibility of casualties. Things might be going to hell at home, but I couldn’t afford to let my crew succumb to shock, or go off half-cocked on some desperate, futile quest for vengeance. As long as we had a job to do, I could keep them occupied while we processed the full ramifications of the news from Camrose.

  * * *

  It only took the ship a few minutes to ascertain the position of the Lucy’s Ghost. The freighter was an old, obsolete model, and in places it was hard to tell the difference between recent damage and long-term wear and tear. In other places, though, that difference was stark and all too clear.

  “Holy hell,” Clay said. “It looks as if something took a bite out of her.”

  I could only nod. The old ship tumbled in a cloud of frozen gases and minor debris. Her bow had been smashed in, and a crater had been gouged in her spine, as if an entire section of hull had been torn away by the closing of atrocious jaws.

  “Can you access the onboard intelligence?” I asked the Trouble Dog, hoping enough remained of the ship’s mind to be able to tell us what had happened.

  “I’m trying, but it seems to have been taken.”

  “Taken?”

  “The processors are functional, but there’s no trace of a personality. It’s as if it’s been deliberately removed.”

  “Any information on survivors?”

  “Only a text file on the public server. It seems the ship was involved in a collision. There are four bodies on board, and the remainder of the crew evacuated.”

  Clay frowned. “They abandoned ship? Where could they go? We’re in the middle of bloody nowhere.”

  The Trouble Dog opened a sub-window.

  “It seems they were planning to board an abandoned Nymtoq Colony Vessel. I’ve retraced the Lucy’s course, and found it collided with such a ship two days ago.”

  The sub-window contained an image of something black and scarred, like the snout of a whale. I blinked at it. For a moment, I didn’t even recognise it as a ship.

  “That’s huge.”

  “It had to be. Those early Nymtoq ships weren’t capable of higher dimensional travel, so it would have needed to carry everything the colonists needed.”

  “How far away is it?”

  “The ships diverged following the collision, but it’s only a few hundred kilometres from our present position.”

  Clay was still preoccupied with the image of the Lucy’s Ghost.

  “Any idea what made that hole in its back?” she asked.

  “Nothing suggests itself.” The Trouble Dog looked apologetic. “I can only assume it happened during the collision, although the precise mechanism for such an injury eludes me.”

  “And it’s not our job to figure it out,” I reminded them. “You know the drill. We go in, collect the dead and rescue the living. Everything else comes second.”

  “Yeah?” Clay’s voice wavered. “Even that?”

  “Even what?” I turned to look where she was pointing. On the screen, something crawled across the exterior of the Lucy’s Ghost—something large and insect-like, with a profusion of legs and a metallic carapace that glimmered in the light of the surrounding stars.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  ONA SUDAK

  The nine-eyed bear snarled.

  There has been an incursion.

  I glanced at the tactical map. As far as I could tell, the only ships currently moving in the Camrose System belonged to the Fleet of Knives.

  “Where?”

  Another snarl sounded deep in its throat, prolonged this time.

  We intercepted an emergency request for information from a vessel of the House of Reclamation.

  The beast waved one of its plate-sized paws and an image materialised in the air between us. I leaned closer and frowned at it.

  “What on earth is it?”

  The picture appeared to show a giant mechanical lobster astride the wreck of a civilian transport ship.

  Evidence. For the first time since I’d known it, the bear looked genuinely agitated. The view on the tactical map rotated as the ship swung around and began accelerating outward from Camrose. Two other ships fell into formation to either side of us.

  “Hey,” I protested. “What are you doing?”

  We must ascertain the seriousness of this incursion.

  “We’re going there? How far away is it?”

  As we can travel considerably faster than your ships, the journey will take us less than a day.

  “But I still don’t understand.” I considered the image of the lobster. “What is this thing, and why all the concern?” After all, the Fleet held a million ships. How much danger could an overgrown crustacean pose?

  The creature is a parasite. Its presence in this realm indicates an intrusion from the higher dimensional reaches.

  The bear gave a series of violent, cough-like barks, and our speed increased. I took a final look at the tactical display. Clusters of marble daggers struck at every armed ship or facility in the system, their attacks coordinated and pitiless. Energy beams punctured pressurised domes; sleek, almost undetectably small neutronium-plated projectiles punched holes through the hulls of military and civilian vessels alike. Ships and stations—people—were dying out there as the white ships enforced their embargo on weaponry.

  And yet…

  When I’d ordered the attack on Pelapatarn, I’d done it in order to stop the war. I’d sacrificed one world in order to spare a hundred others, and I’d done it in the sincere belief the scales would somehow balance and the destruction I’d unleashed would be justified because fewer people would be killed in the raid than would have been had the war dragged on for another five or ten years. I’d become a murderer in order to save lives. And now these alien ships were doing something comparable, and I couldn’t fault their logic. A Conglomeration battle group could rain nuclear fire on all the major cities of an entire planet, and wiping them from the sky was the only sure way of ensuring a future free from such atrocities.

  For goodness’ sake, humanity had been doing its best to kill itself for millennia. Evolution had endowed us with the potentially lethal combination of intelligence and belligerence, and I’d lost count of the number of near-miss bottlenecks we’d scraped through, from the Cuban Missile Crisis to the Archipelago War, by way of global warming and climate collapse. If it took an alien war fleet to impose order upon us, maybe that was just what we needed. Maybe it was the only way to bring us into l
ine, once and for all: our last, best hope for peace.

  The display broke into a ragged spider’s web of pixels, and evaporated. Without any fuss, we had skipped into the higher dimensions. The external screen showed a moment of disorientating static, and then cleared to reveal the familiar, ever-changing curtains of sparse, intangible vapour that made up the scenery of the hypervoid.

  “Do you have a name for this Reclamation Vessel?” I asked, remembering the last time I had been aboard one, on the journey back from the Gallery.

  The bear ground its teeth.

  Trouble Dog.

  “Trouble Dog?”

  Affirmative.

  I exhaled, and considered throwing myself from the platform, onto the curved floor of the spherical chamber.

  “Of course it is.”

  I didn’t want to do myself harm, only escape the insanity of my situation. I needed to rest. I needed time out to internalise what was happening around me, and make my peace with the necessary work being undertaken by the Fleet of Knives.

  The bear showed no such hesitation.

  Will the presence of this ship be a problem?

  I thought of Captain Konstanz and her crew. In some ways, they had saved my life; and yet, I’d only known them for a few days. It would be agreeable to encounter them again, but I wasn’t attaching any emotional freight to the idea.

  “Not at all.”

  The bear’s lips peeled back to reveal its ivory fangs. Its claws slipped from velvet sheaths.

  Then you won’t mind if we destroy her?

  “What?” I jerked back and glared up at the beast. “I thought you worshipped the Trouble Dog? I thought she gave you your mission?”

  The ship gave us purpose when we had none. She gave us direction. But our mission remains the same as it has always been. To protect life. To quell conflict. To be vigilant for fog-dwelling predators.

  The Trouble Dog participated in an atrocity. She demonstrated remorse. But she remains a weapon of war. And humanity cannot be trusted with such things.