No Direction Home Page 3

  And looking anything but calm… Well, they had said it was an emergency.

  Captain Jukka Lahtinen was a tall, balding individual in his late forties at a guess and he was leaning over the shoulder of a lieutenant who was peering intently at a comp screen as Vinter approached him. Lahtinen was one of twenty ‘captains’ who would take command of Terra Nova at some stage during the journey; unlike most other crew members who would only serve a single two year shift, he and his fellow COs would have to put in two five year tours of duty en route. Was he cursing the luck of the draw that had landed him with this emergency on his watch? I certainly would…

  ‘Very well, Khumalo – let me know when you have the results collated.’

  ‘Aye aye, sir.’

  Do they still talk like that? Apparently so…

  Lahtinen turned and nodded at Vinter. ‘Inspector – good of you to be so punctual. I appreciate that you have been rushed through the Revival process, but this matter is rather urgent. Can we talk in my office?’ He gestured at a door about ten feet away, then, without waiting for an answer, led the way towards it; Vinter followed.

  ‘Close the door, please, Inspector,’ Lahtinen said, going round the desk that faced the door and sitting down behind it. Vinter did so and, at a gesture from the captain, took the seat in front of the desk. A quick look round; there was nothing else of note in the room apart from the desk, with its comp off to one side, and a display screen currently showing an image of some ancient aircraft carrier at full speed by the looks of the bow wave, behind Lahtinen. This was a work place, pure and simple, but Vinter sensed that Lahtinen rarely used it; he did not look the type of CO that left the bridge when he was on duty.

  ‘Right, Inspector, first I need to know how much you remember about Terra Nova and its mission. I’m asking you this because, as I’m sure you’ve had explained, newly awakened individuals are experiencing memory gaps, at least on a short term basis, so bear with me on this – I need to know how much more briefing you require, because we need to have you up to speed on this as soon as possible.’ He leaned back in his seat and waited expectantly.

  ‘OK, sir. Terra Nova is basically a refugee ship, built by the United Nations to enable some people to survive any future war between EarthCorp and New Dawn–’

  ‘And they are?’

  Bloody hell, do I really have to spell it all out? ‘Two multinational power blocs, roughly corresponding to North and South America and Europe for EarthCorp and Asia and most of Africa for New Dawn. They were originally conglomerations of megacorporations that effectively took over political control in what used to be separate nations and–’ He broke off again at an impatient gesture from Lahtinen.

  ‘We’ll take that part as read, Inspector. What caused this ship to be built?’

  Make up your bloody mind, will you? Vinter swallowed the impatient retort and continued, ‘There were several armed conflicts in Central and South America and South-East Asia that almost escalated into nuclear war, so the UN had this ship built in order to rescue at least some survivors in the event that, next time, the two blocs would not pull back from the brink.’ Vinter was aware that his voice had taken on a sing-song quality again, as if he were reciting by rote, but he probably was, actually; it had only been yesterday that he had been given an orientation update via subliminal input.

  ‘And how were these survivors chosen?’

  ‘Selection – the brightest and the best.’ He hesitated, then continued, ‘Although there were some exceptions, the candidates for selection were single, or couples without children, if both were suitable candidates. Parents and siblings were excluded unless they were also suitable, otherwise they had to qualify independently. It meant the break up of a lot of families.’ But not yours, Captain, if I remember rightly – your wife, children and grandchildren are all in the cryosleep chambers, aren’t they? Others were not so fortunate, but then they didn’t know the right people, did they?

  Lahtinen seemed to be watching him intently, but now he nodded heavily. ‘Regrettably, it did – but it was necessary… Very well, there’s obviously a lot more that we haven’t covered, but you clearly know the main points.’

  A lot more… you could say that. Seems a bit sparse and simplistic so far…

  ‘The reason that you have been revived, Inspector, is this. We have detected what appears to be a large spacecraft following us and which is steadily overtaking us. At the moment, it is too far away to make out any details, but it has to come from Earth – its course exactly matches our own, so it couldn’t have come from anywhere else, really.’ He smiled briefly. ‘I’m afraid this is unlikely to be a First Contact situation.’

  Pity… ‘Another UN ship?’ Vinter asked, but he had already guessed the answer.

  ‘Unlikely. Building this ship more or less drained the UN of its resources. In addition, it has made no attempt to contact us so far, which rather implies that it has come from either EarthCorp or New Dawn. And that its motives are hostile.’

  ‘Have we tried contacting them?’

  ‘Yes. With no result.’

  ‘Do we know its speed?’

  ‘The best guess is zero point oh seven cee.’

  ‘About point zero one cee faster than us?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘So either it wants to rendezvous with us, or it’s on its way to Delta Pavonis as well. And if it’s the latter, they’ll get there well ahead of us.’

  ‘Indeed – by about thirty eight years.’

  ‘More than enough time to be well established by the time we arrive, in other words.’

  ‘Exactly – and there is no way that we can take them on in a race. We have only enough fuel aboard for the turnover manoeuvre and subsequent deceleration at Delta Pavonis. If we accelerate now and use up literally any of that fuel, then we will simply overshoot at PlanetFall and just carry straight on through the Delta Pavonis system with insufficient fuel to slow us down.’

  Vinter stared thoughtfully at the picture of the old warship, wondering vaguely why it was there; as far as he knew, Lahtinen originally hailed from Finland and he was pretty sure they had never had any aircraft carriers. None of which is exactly relevant, of course… ‘We don’t know for certain they’re hostile,’ he pointed out, conscious he was playing for time; he still couldn’t see why he had been revived yet.

  ‘We can’t afford to assume otherwise – neither power bloc is exactly friendly to the UN, after all. It may be that all they intend to do is overtake us and get to Delta Pavonis first, but they may have more drastic plans in mind.’

  ‘They could be armed, you mean.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  Vinter stared at Lahtinen. ‘Look, sir, I still don’t see where I come into this. I’m a security officer, not a soldier.’

  ‘Indeed. I’ve been told you were the best officer in UNSEC, Inspector – as you said, only the brightest and best were chosen. It appears that we have traitors aboard the Terra Nova. When I said there had been no contact with the following ship, I was not being entirely accurate. We have detected messages from our pursuer that are beamed directly at us, but are not hailing us. They’re in a heavily encrypted code that we have yet to decipher, but–’

  ‘They’re intended for someone aboard here.’ Vinter interrupted flatly. ‘And you want me to find them.’

  ‘Exactly. Find them and question them so that we know what we’re up against.’

  ‘And then? I know we’re not supposed to have any soldiers aboard but – do we?’

  Lahtinen fidgeted in his seat for a moment, then said, ‘Actually, yes we do. Just in case. They are in the process of being revived. We hoped we would never need them, but…’

  ‘Looks as if you’re going to, though, doesn’t it?’ Why did I just say ‘you’?

  Lahtinen stared intently at him, evidently picking up the undertones in Vinter’s voice. ‘Inspector, surely you were not so naïve as to believe that we would not take military units with us?’

 
‘No, I suppose I wasn’t, really, but it was what everyone else was told, wasn’t it? How many do we have?’

  ‘One hundred in the cryosleep chambers.’

  ‘A hundred?’ Vinter stared disbelievingly at the other man. ‘OK, let me get this straight. We’re talking about a lifeboat ark escaping from the horrors of modern war carrying a hundred people trained in those same horrors instead of a hundred doctors, nurses, teachers or scientists, right? Five per cent of those aboard? Who were they intended to fight – green bug-eyed monsters or something?’

  Lahtinen seemed about to unleash an angry retort, but then he shook his head in irritation. ‘They said you might be like this…’ he muttered, almost to himself, then stared down at his comp screen for several seconds as if coming to some sort of decision. He typed in a series of instructions on the comp’s keyboard and the aircraft carrier disappeared in a shimmer of pixels to be replaced by an image of Earth from orbit. ‘Inspector, what I am about to show you has only been seen by half a dozen individuals before today. Whatever security classification you regard as being the highest, this is above even that, do I make myself clear?’

  Vinter nodded, his throat suddenly dry. ‘Absolutely.’ His eyes were fixed on the frozen image of the Earth; somehow, he knew, beyond all doubt, what he was going to be shown.

  ‘We received this signal seventy four years ago,’ Lahtinen said gravely. ‘It was broadcast on an open channel, so we cannot absolutely verify it as being genuine.’

  ‘But you think it is.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Vinter let out his breath in a long sigh. ‘OK,’ he said quietly.

  Lahtinen touched another key and the image on the screen began to move. It showed an Earth in full daylight, probably from a geostationary satellite, with North America visible; within moments, he saw a sudden bright glow where New York was, followed moments later by Washington DC, Toronto, Chicago… and then the flashes were appearing too rapidly to keep track. The image cut to one of Eastern Asia, with a smouldering red glare where Beijing had once been… Hong Kong, Tokyo… Cut to Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paolo, Buenos Aires… Cut… New Delhi, Mumbai, Kalkuta… Cut… London, Paris, Rome, Berlin… Cut… Mexico City, Los Angeles… The images were from different sources and distances, some from satellites, others from the Moon, but it was all there.

  Armageddon.

  The end of the world. The end of thousands of years of history, of the hopes and dreams of the billions of people who must have died in those deceptively innocent looking flashes of light that had been entire cities being obliterated. Had there been any warning for any of those billions, or had it just been an instant of indescribable agony and then nothing? Infinitely preferable, perhaps, to the slow lingering death by radiation for those further away from the epicentres, coughing up their lungs while the burns festered away on their skin…

  The bastards… Those arrogant fucking bastards… They’d fucking well gone and done it after all… Who had started it? Did it even matter any more? It was all over, finished in a blink of an eye. Now there’s no more morning dew…

  Morning dew? What was that all about...?

  He pushed the stray thought away – it wasn’t exactly relevant, after all. Except that it did seem to keep on happening – random flashes of thought that seemed to come out of nowhere. A by-product of cryosleep?

  Concentrate, dammit!

  Abruptly, with one final bright flash followed by static, presumably as the satellite was vapourised, the signal was over; it had lasted less than three minutes, but there was no need to see any more. He wished to Christ that he hadn’t seen even that much…

  Vinter realised that he was staring unseeingly at the aircraft carrier, with just a single thought in his mind: How could they have been so stupid? ‘You said–’ he had to clear his throat to carry on. ‘You said it was seventy four years ago?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So we were only a fraction of a light year out then? Close enough for long range spectroscopic analysis? Radiation levels, or signs of nuclear winter, that sort of thing?’

  A momentary flash of surprise crossed Lahtinen’s face, possibly at the extent of Vinter’s knowledge, before he nodded. ‘Yes, we were.’

  ‘And?’

  Another nod, more reluctant this time. ‘High radiation levels. Too high.’

  Vinter raised a hand towards the screen. ‘So that wasn’t a fake?’

  ‘No, it wasn’t.’

  Vinter leaned forward, placing his elbows on the desk and rubbed his face wearily with both hands. ‘Jesus fucking wept,’ he muttered. ‘The fucking idiots…’

  ‘Indeed,’ Lahtinen replied, to Vinter’s surprise; the other man had struck him as being completely strait-laced so far. ‘However, the point is that whoever is in that ship behind us belongs to a power bloc that, even if it didn’t start that conflagration, didn’t do anything to prevent it either. And if they can do that, what are they likely to do to us once they catch up?’

  Vinter stared at Lahtinen, wondering how he could appear so unmoved by what had happened before it dawned on him that the other man had already seen the footage and had thus had longer to come to terms with it. ‘OK,’ he said, tiredly. ‘This ship behind us – presumably, they left Earth orbit before this happened?’

  ‘Yes – about a year before. Why?’

  ‘So they’re just as much on their own as we are now. Whatever their mission might have been before they left Earth, it could well have changed by now.’

  ‘You mean they might not have hostile intentions now, even if they did before?’

  ‘Possibly.’ He sighed. ‘Unfortunately, it works both ways. If they didn’t have hostile intentions before they left, they might have now.’ He paused for several seconds, collecting his thoughts. ‘The bottom line is that, if they’re refusing to talk to us but are instead trying to contact agents aboard here, they don’t seem to want to reach out to us across the interstellar gulfs, do they?’ He shook his head as another thought struck him. ‘Not only that, but has anyone analysed their actual course since leaving Earth? Have they deliberately set up a rendezvous with us?’

  ‘You mean, are they on their optimum course for Delta Pavonis? No, they’re not. Given their later departure and the relative movement of the Solar System in the meantime, they would not be passing this close to us if they were. They’ve deliberately made a detour – only a slight one, but enough.’

  ‘OK, so that doesn’t look very promising either, does it?’ He looked up at the now blank screen again, then, trying to make his voice sound brisk, said, ‘I take it that this broadcast remains secret?’

  ‘Would it particularly benefit anyone aboard here to know what has happened? None of us could ever have gone back again anyway, could we?’

  ‘No… OK, Captain, I’ll try and find your agents. I’ll need to have a Security Team revived as soon as possible.’

  ‘Already in hand – they’re being revived as we speak. Six officers – I’ll have their details sent to your comp.’

  ‘Right – but I might want more put on standby.’

  ‘Very well.’

  ‘I’ll get started on it – unless you have any more orders?’

  ‘No. The very best of luck to you, Inspector.’

  Vinter was completely unaware of the speculative looks he was given as he crossed the bridge on his way back to his quarters because all he could see in his mind’s eye were the bright glows that had once been cities containing millions of people, gone in a flash – literally. Shit… in all probability, then this ship and the one following us could be all that’s left of Mankind and we’re going on a war footing in case we have to wipe those other guys out…

  Haven’t we learned anything?

  *****

  Vinter looked around the other people in the briefing room, reflecting irrelevantly that it was a pretty representative cross section of UN personnel in terms of ethnicity, but not of age; at forty-two, he was the oldest there by fifteen years or so. Hard
ly surprising – he was (or had been) a fairly senior officer in UNSEC, but… He recalled a joke that was probably as old as police forces – One sign of age is when policemen start looking young – and stifled a smile as he realised that it certainly applied to him at the moment…

  However, the fact that they were all still reading the files he had placed on their data comps enabled him to take the opportunity of adding his visual impressions to the ones he had already formed from reading their personnel dossiers over the past few days as they had been taken through the revival and rehabilitation process, gaining a perverse pride in the fact that, although he was, indeed, fifteen years older than any of them, none of them had come close to recovering from the cryosleep effects as rapidly as he had.

  OK… Sitting to his right was Kari Sondgren: age twenty-seven, the next oldest, a lieutenant who had been based in New York, still the most important UN posting outside Canberra – before it was vapourised, of course… Tall, with short light brown hair, she pretty much gave away her Swedish ancestry, but she had, in fact, been born in the USA – Bruce Springsteen…

  He almost shook his head in irritation – he was going to have to do something about these random flashes of memory, only they weren’t memories, because he didn’t have a clue who Bruce Springsteen was… Kari Sondgren: excellent record, played a significant part in uncovering an EarthCorp cell that had penetrated the New York office – she would be his second in command.

  Next to her was the only other woman in the group – were they sitting together as some sort of female solidarity? – Becky Adebayo, whose skin was as dark as Sondgren’s was pale; she was petite and, even sitting down, was noticeably shorter than the other woman. Her speciality was data analysis and she had worked out of Cape Town, whose status had been upgraded following the transfer of UN headquarters to Canberra twenty years earlier; her record was as impressive as Sondgren’s.

  As were all of them, actually – ‘the brightest and the best’; they would not have been aboard at all otherwise. Anand Mendis: his speciality was as a covert communications specialist, with a detailed knowledge of how terrorist or undercover cells passed information or instructions between each other – cut out procedures, fallback options, use of ‘mules’, one time pads, even hacking into comsats to pass ELINT messages … Luis Moreira, interrogation specialist, infinitely patient and persistent, expert at catching out suspects in minor slips in their stories, with the looks of an old-style gigolo, but with an incisive brain… Doctor Takeo Naragama, an authority in the field of forensics in his own right, an affable façade disguising the fact that he would spend days at a time tracking down the microscopic item of evidence that would prove to be crucial… And, on Vinter’s left, Goran Simunic, the cryptographic expert; anyone could feed encrypted material into a computer and tell it to decode it, but only someone like Simunic could get the computer to come up with a solution within a reasonable time frame, say less than six weeks in some cases…