“Well, anyway, me and Markham got to discussing it. We decided that the smart thing for the Da’al to do would be to wait until we’d finished all our preparations and then send in a Special Forces unit.”

  “What? You mean, sabotage the whole thing before we have a chance to get off the ground?”

  “That’s right. So, as soon as we picked up on this ground disturbance, I set him over to take a look-see.”

  Nash tossed his helmet into the air, caught it one-handed and swung it back in a wide arc.

  “And, did they find anything?” he sounded strangely restrained.

  Webster ripped out the pin on the grenade and threw it down on the ice. Almost immediately, it started giving off a long trail of red smoke which billowed as they watched.

  “That’s what we’re about to find out.”

  “They haven’t been back in contact with you?” Nash said.

  “We still haven’t figured out the comms on that shuttle yet, so I wasn’t expecting them to. I’m sure if they’d run into trouble they’d have let me know.”

  “Okay. But what if they ran into a Special Ops team who slaughtered them all, re-acquisitioned their stolen shuttle and are flying back in now to finish the job?”

  “Yeah, well, I guess we’ll see, won’t we,” Webster said, sounding more bullish than he felt.

  The shuttle came in fast at about seventy metres, only slowing when the air brakes were applied.

  As they came into land, Webster checked that the safety was off on his side arm, instinctively turning away from the down draught of the hot oily air. When they were safely down, he and Nash walked around to the rear together and he was relieved to see the first of the Marines coming down the ramp.

  But the atmosphere changed completely when he saw them bringing someone out on a stretcher.

  Webster stared in wonder at the patient, who he only vaguely recognised. Then he saw Markham appear in the doorway.

  “What the hell happened?” he wanted to know.

  “We’re not exactly sure,” Markham said as he jogged down the ramp. “They were in a pretty bad way when we found them.”

  Webster glanced back up into the main cabin. They were bringing out a second stretcher but this time he had no trouble placing the patient.

  “Jackson? Is that you?”

  She turned at the sound of his voice, one half of her face obscured with a thick dressing.

  “Commander,” she said. “I didn’t realise…”

  Then her eyes closed and her head lolled to one side.

  “She’s going to be out of it for a while, sir,” the corpsman who was tending to her said. “They’re lucky to be alive.”

  He turned back to Markham who had taken out an ear bead. He handed it to one of his men.

  “Tell them we’re going to need some transport. Oh and blankets. We’re going to need plenty of those.”

  Webster said, “How did you find them?”

  “We tracked back to the location indicated but we couldn’t find anything. Been there twelve hours when this flare went up. Even then we were struggling, it was such a mountainous location. Luckily, we came across signs of a rockfall. As soon as we saw all the bodies strewn about, I knew we were in the right place. Da’al troops, as far as I could tell, all loaded up with heavy weapons.”

  “Special Forces?” Nash asked.

  “Might well have been. It was only as we were going over the bodies that we realised we were being pelted with rocks. Someone was up on the mountainside – trying to get our attention.”

  “How did you manage to get to them?” Webster said.

  “We used the shuttle. Lowered Greene down from there – they were on some kind of ledge, still in their Armoured Personnel Suits. In a way, that made it easier to winch them back down. And damned if one of them wasn’t Corporal Jackson. Dangdest thing I’ve ever seen.”

  “But how did they…”

  Markham extended a hand before the obvious questions started pouring in.

  “Sir, that’s all I have at the moment. She tried to say something to Greene before she passed out, but he couldn’t make sense of it. Both of them were in a pretty bad way so we got a line in them and got them back here as quick as we could.”

  That was good enough for Webster. After the attack on the Dardelion, he had given up on the idea of seeing any of that crew again and so now, finding two of them seemed like a wonderful bonus. For the first time in a long while, he felt as though their luck might be changing. Perhaps they were going to be able to turn this around, after all.

  He watched as a pair of jeeps raced out to meet them. Another timely gift from the Motar people.

  Yes, perhaps things were starting to improve.

  Markham was talking into his ear bead. He indicated for Webster to come over then moved even further back when he saw Nash hovering.

  “What is it?” Webster asked.

  “It’s Kekkonen. Seems there’s been a problem.”

  *

  Kekkonen had transferred his office to one of the habitation blocks the Motar people had brought with them. At first, he’d refused, preferring to maintain a presence back in his own camp but after visiting Webster in his office he’d been impressed by how efficient the whole thing was. It was essentially a prefab which could be stored flat. Then, when it was unpacked it became a sealed unit with its own solar power blocks built into the roof. It was so heat efficient that it hardly needed heating, relying on body temperature alone to bring the place up to a level where they could even think about stripping their coats off.

  It was small though, with three desks other than Kekkonen’s being occupied pretty much round the clock. But for this meeting, Kekkonen had excluded his staff. Webster sat at one desk with Markham while Marsh sat next to Dalbiri. Nash sat on the desk at the back of the room, his feet resting on a chair. All of them faced Kekkonen.

  “What about the salvage guy?” Nash said. “The Kaminsky kid. Shouldn’t he be a part of this?”

  “I didn’t invite him,” Kekkonen said. “And after what I’m going to tell you, you might agree.”

  “Is there a problem?” Webster said. “Because if there is, this whole operation is going to have to be shut down.”

  “It’s not a problem, as such,” Dalbiri said. “More of a concern, than anything.”

  “So how come this guy knows about this first. Surely, one of us should have been consulted first.” Nash said.

  He indicated himself and Webster, although Webster noticed how Nash thought of himself as his equal.

  “Dalbiri was the one who brought this to my attention,” Kekkonen went on. “He told me. It seems that the lights have started coming on.”

  “Where?”

  “On the Ghost Ship,” Marsh said.

  “Can we please not call it that?” Kekkonen asked.

  “It’s what everyone else calls it,” Marsh said.

  “What do you mean: the lights are coming on?” Nash asked. “Isn’t that a good thing?”

  Kekkonen pulled a disgruntled face. “Well, yes and no. Perhaps if we’d found some mechanism by which we can turn the lights on, then, yes, that might be a good thing.”

  “But, I don’t understand. What’s the problem? It tells us that this ship, this Ghost Ship is viable. That we haven’t all been wasting our time out here.”

  “But that’s the problem. We didn’t find any mechanism. I wish we had. What’s worrying is that the ship has chosen this moment,” he checked the count-down on his screen, “almost exactly six hours before we’re due to start the salvage operation, to effectively turn itself on. Don’t you think that’s something of a coincidence considering the amount of time it’s been lying there.”

  “We could have triggered something accidentally,” Webster said. “Those construction towers are pretty impressive. Is there a chance that the ship is using them as a way to communicate? Perhaps it’s picked up a signal from somewhere?”

  “We’ve considered that,” Kekkonen said dismissively. “Before we lost our satellites, we attempted to rig up a way of communicating by sending a signal back to earth but we couldn’t do it. Now I think that the ship was attempting to block our communications.”

  “I don’t know about the rest of you,” Webster said. “But that sounds a little strange. “The ship was trying to block your communications.” What are you trying to suggest? That this ship is in some way…”

  “Sentient,” Marsh said. She looked first to Dalbiri and then to Kekkonen. “Yeah. I think that’s exactly what we’re trying to say.”

  Kekkonen held out a hand while he accessed something on his screen. “Hear us out. It’s not just the lights. We’ve had sensors spread all over this ship for nearly three years and never got so much as a picosecond of energy passing through. Apart from that one time.”

  “When you fired the main weapon at that mountain,” Nash said, sounding openly excited by this development.

  “We didn’t ‘fire’ the weapon, as you maintain,” Dalbiri had his arms folded.

  “Well, I’m sure the mountain would beg to differ.”

  “We didn’t actually aim to fire it. That was the weapon discharging itself. There’s a difference.”

  “Okay, you fired the big gun by accident. Happy now?”

  Kekkonen came around his desk and into the main body of the room, his arms outstretched. “Look, look, we’re getting away from the main point. Our sensors are telling us that the ship is powering up some of its systems. We don’t know how it’s doing it but that’s what it’s doing. And then there’s this other development. Dalbiri? You want to tell them?”

  Dalbiri laid his hands flat on the table and looked directly at Webster.

  “I was inside when all this started happening. Very weird experience, let me tell you.”

  “I bet you’ve had weirder,” Nash said.

  Dalbiri ignored him. “One room I was in – some kind of adjunct to the engine room, I’d guess.”

  He put up a picture of the room and everyone leaned in to get a closer look . Webster’s overriding memory of the ship’s interior color scheme was one of dark, musty browns with lots of black. What he was staring at was nothing like that. The lines were very clean and precise. Lots of greys but also a lot of white, with some red areas. Added to that, it all look incredibly new. As if it had been sealed shut for the past couple of hundred years.

  “I can’t believe this is the same ship,” Markham said, giving voice to his thoughts.

  “Trust me, it is,” Dalbiri said. “But just as I was taking this shot, I noticed that the doors were closing.”

  “Okay,” said Webster. “But I’m assuming you got out, somehow?”

  “That I did. I didn’t hang around. But before I left, and this could be just my mind playing tricks on me, I could swear that the ventilators had come on.”

  “How could you even tell,” Nash said. “You’re in an oxygen rich atmosphere anyway. You wouldn’t have known the difference.”

  “Regardless,” Kekkonen said. “This is happening. All over the ship. Dalbiri’s not the only one who saw it. The ship is coming to life.”

  “I still don’t see how this is a bad thing?” Nash said.

  “Because it foreshadows quite a major moral concern. If the ship is switching itself back on then it is responding to an outside stimuli, whatever that might be. It seems to be readying itself for tomorrow’s salvage operation.”

  “Scary,” Webster admitted. “But so far nothing too terrible.”

  “But, if any of this is true,” Kekkonen said. “Unless this is some amazing coincidence, then the evidence suggests that the ship has some sense, self-aware. It’s sentient. It’s aware of us in the same way that we are aware of it and, considering what it has already shown us that it’s capable of, then, yes, commander. That is a very scary thing indeed.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Winterson felt fresh and rested.

  Such were the privileges of rank. With Captain Hoyt in charge of running the ship, he felt that the pressure was off. He knew that tough times were ahead. It had been impossible to ignore the rehearsals for Battle Stations which the various duty areas had been running through over the past few days.

  Luckily, he had been spared the worst of it so that last night he’d been able to get a full eight hours sleep. Duvall, whose quarters were adjacent to his own, had been charged with the task of waking him in the event of a real emergency ever presenting itself.

  He didn’t feel guilty about entrusting Duvall with this particular duty. It certainly wouldn’t have disturbed his sleep. Duvall was like a cat in that regard. No doubt as a result of his years as a Marine, he had the ability to sleep anywhere and could go for long periods of time operating on short snatches of sleep. On several occasions, Winterson had found him sleeping while standing up. It was as if he was permanently on guard, which Winterson found extremely agreeable. There were few people in the galaxy that Winterson trusted implicitly, but Duvall was one of them.

  While Winterson showered, Duvall had laid out his uniform and while Winterson was dressing himself, Duvall was busy arranging his breakfast.

  That was one of the few things Winterson regretted about his rank. How it effectively cut him off from the everyday camaraderie which was the norm on big ships like these . Even as a captain, he had enjoyed the opportunity of dining in the officer’s mess , the companionship of a small band of senior officers. But that all disappeared when he stepped up into his role as admiral.

  He’d been on-board The Spur, as everyone called it, for well-nigh two years, but there was always a sense that the other officers were watching what they said around him. The most obvious sign of this was the degree to which they would allow themselves to drink in his company. He knew that naval officers enjoyed letting their hair down with a few drinks, especially on a long deployment, but the ones on The Spur were always careful not to overindulge in his company. In some regards, it helped maintain proper decorum, but it also became wearing after a while.

  If Winterson wanted someone to drink with he had to rely on Vincenzi – Duvall, of course, never drank. Vincenzi fancied himself a connoisseur of fine wines and made for distracting company up to a point but he was a terribly maudlin drunk, who tended to revel in his own shortcomings if given the opportunity. Winterson had had to recruit Duvall’s help in putting Vincenzi to bed on more than one occasion.

  Winterson ate sparingly. He was conscious of putting on weight and hadn’t had a chance to exercise since the call had come through. He had access to a small but well-equipped gym though he tended to gravitate to the treadmill – he could get through countless reports whilst running.

  His first meeting was with Captain Hoyt in his state room.

  They were still a day away from taking up position around the gas giant, Ares, and so far, things seemed to be progressing smoothly. He had a meeting scheduled in the afternoon with the auxiliary fleet’s captains and he was keen to be well briefed before going into that. Normally, there’d be no need for a daily meeting but this situation was far from normal. For a start he was all too aware that these were civilians he was dealing with and he was adamant that they would be the ones to adapt to his way of working and not the other way around. It was imperative that they each knew the role they had to play, and were well schooled in it before they got anywhere near the enemy.

  This, of course, wasn’t anything like how he’d envisioned his first combat mission going. However, he was determined to make a success of it whether it was civilians he was dealing with or battle-hardened spacers. What he had to avoid, at all costs, was a break down in the chain of command. Because if that happened, they were possibly looking at some sort of unmitigated disaster.

  If we can keep our heads, we’ll get through this.

  His other concern was whether they were going to be able to fully convert the ships for military use before they were forced into their first engagement. Things hadn’t gone as he would have hoped when it had come to setting up the new armaments on the civilian ships. Ideally, he would have wanted his own technicians supervising these new builds but that was impossible. They had more than enough to be getting on with the construction and installation of this new Sloth technology.

  None of them had ever worked with anything like this and certainly not on this kind of scale but he was sure that his people were up to the challenge. What he was most concerned about was how little time they were going to have to get it up and running properly. The technicians had pressed him for a minimum of three test firings but he had reduced that to just one.

  It wasn’t so much the massive energy requirements such a thing would require, it was the potential for things to go so badly wrong that the technology might actually shut down The Naked Spur’s defences permanently. And he worried about what it might do to the morale of those around them if their flagship experienced a catastrophic systems failure just prior to them engaging with the enemy.

  No, he had to maintain a calm demeanour. The test would go ahead, albeit in a much-diminished fashion tomorrow afternoon and hopefully the technicians would be in position to learn enough from that to make a full-scale test firing redundant. At least, that was what he hoped.

  One man who might jeopardise all that was Frans Jacobs, the captain of The Blackbeard. Jacobs was an egotist who was trying to raise his own profile through his involvement with this campaign but he had a vastly exaggerated view of his own capabilities as far as Winterson was concerned. There had been an unfortunate incident two days ago when a power surge on-board The Spur had led to the unfortunate deaths of three ground crew. They hadn’t been involved in installing the new technology themselves but had been unfortunate enough to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  Jacobs had then had the temerity to bring this up at yesterday’s meeting and then to demand that he and the other captains be briefed on what had happened and how a similar incident might affect them. Winterson had been quick to shut him down, citing the official secrets act but then Jacobs had gone further to request details of all the new ordnance being attached to their own ships and grudgingly Winterson had had to comply.