The dark side, p.1
The Dark Side, page 1
Scanned by Highroller.
Proofed by the best elf proofer.
Made prettier by use of EBook Design Group Stylesheet.
The Dark Side by Zach Hughes
Chapter One
The Hendron Messenger, a CCP, was three blinks and almost ten parsecs out of Tigian II bound New Earth when the Panic Flash from X&A Headquarters on Xanthos began to travel all recorded blink routes in the Andromeda sector of U.P. space. The Hendron Messenger's automatics recorded the Panic Flash and sent an alert to the officer on watch, Captain Janos Black. Black pulled himself up from an alcohol-deepened sleep and, only half dressed, made his way to the bridge.
Any alarm in deep space is, without a play on words being intended, alarming. The Hendron Messenger, cargo carrier perishable, was not a new ship. Black's thick, gray hair was standing on end literally and figuratively until he saw that it was only a message. He brushed back his tousled hair, tugged his trousers into a more comfortable conformation over his paunch, and sat down at the console with a sigh. Probably, he was thinking, just more panic from the home office. He had never lost a cargo, even when it was as critically perishable as tani fruit, a rich man's delicacy that grew only in the temperate zones of the multi-sunned Tigian II.
Black punched buttons and the message printed itself across the screen and he jerked into instant indecision. A Panic Flash from X&A was, for any ship in space, an order to be obeyed at the risk of the most severe penalties known in space law. He had, he knew, only one choice, and that was to obey.
But Janos Black was one week short of retirement. He had, for five decades, sunk his bonus and retirement pay into Hendron Unlimited stock, and he was just one week away from drawing out his nest egg and starting the best part of his life, retirement on a new and beautiful little planet where imported money was not taxed and other laws, including those regarding the hidden ownership of females not registered as citizens of the U.P., were equally favorable to a man of somewhat odd tastes. Black owned enough Hendron stock to sit on the board of directors, and he knew that the company's financial position had deteriorated after the death of old Evan Hendron, the company's founder. He'd seen things go from good to not so good and then to risky, risky enough to induce Black to file for retirement at the end of his current trip. Things were, he knew, so bad that the loss of his cargo—Evan Hendron would never have risked carrying such an expensive and perishable commodity—would make it possible for one disgruntled creditor to ruin fifty years of savings. The stock of a company in receivership would be worthless, and that would leave Black no choice but to rot aboard such space tramps as the Hendron Messenger for the rest of his life.
Black made his decision within seconds of seeing the message flash on the screen. He, being the captain of the ship, had the only emergency access key to the ship computer's sealed chambers. He, like all licensed ship's captains, had had his required training in computer repair. It was but the work of minutes for him to be probing into the computer's recording chambers. He knew that he was breaking the law, for the computer's recorder was the ship's log, but he had already bought a thousand acres along the shore of a clear-water lake, had plans drawn for the retreat which would serve him for the balance of his life, and he'd be long gone, his stock sold and his life's savings safely liquid before the company ran a routine check on the Hendron Messenger's log to find the tampering.
Next, he removed the keyed cover from the communicator, hurt one small chamber, resealed the communicator, and leaned back. He punched up the repeat of the X&A Panic Flash, got, as he had planned, garbage, and then, with a satisfied smile, sent to the nearest blink station ahead a request for a repeat of the message just sent down the line. Because of his work on the communicator, the repeat was the same as the one that was on the screen, garbage.
Meanwhile, the blink generator was building charge for the next leap down the established blink routes, and that blink would remove the Hendron Messenger from the sector of space affected by X&A's Panic Flash. Any one of his three crewmen could find and repair the hurt to the communicator rapidly, but by that time the Messenger would be so near New Earth that there'd be no question of her blinking back to a small planet hundreds of parsecs away.
Captain Janos Black was relieved on watch by his number three, a young man just three years out of the Merchant's Space Academy on Xanthos.
The Hendron Messenger was a casual ship. Company uniforms were worn, but the four men aboard, including the captain, could come up with colorful and comfortable adaptations of company attire. Aaron Delton had cut the legs off a pair of company white slacks, and the resulting shorts were topped by a loose, comfortable civilian shirt.
"Morning, Captain," Delton said. He was a throwback, in some ways, Janos Black thought, to earlier ages. At five feet ten inches, he was below average in height, and his face did not reflect his age. He had heavy, black hair that he allowed to become somewhat unruly while in space, but he was a good man, conscientious, easygoing, if not overly talkative.
"All nominal, Number Three," Black said, rising and scratching his paunch. "She's all yours."
Delton went to the dispenser and drew a mug of coffee, white, and sat down in the captain's chair. Black paused in the hatchway, still scratching his paunch. "You have a few minutes, after you finish routine cargo and systems checks, take a look at the communicator."
"Sure, Captain," Delton said. "What's the problem?"
"Probably nothing," Black said. "A blink came through garbage. Maybe military, scrambled, you know, but it won't hurt to check."
"I'll get on it, sir," Delton said.
First, however, there were the routines. Sensors in the cargo areas showed optimum temperatures and humidities. The precious cargo was reaching a peak of ripeness and would bring the highest prices on the docks at New Earth. All ship's systems were puttering along in the optimum as well. The checks went into the ship's log, mostly the computer talking to itself, and Delton sat, watching, savoring the good Tigian coffee.
Chores done, he opened the communicator hatch and attached monitors. It took five minutes to find the hurt chamber. If a man had wanted the communicator to garble an incoming blink message, Delton was thinking as he lifted the component board and inserted a spare that he'd taken from ship's stores, that was exactly the place to hurt the communicator. Odd, because that chamber was the heart of the receiver and had been engineered to be almost fail safe. In his experience he'd never known that particular component to fail.
He put the damaged unit under magnification in the ship's shop. He had expected to find the mark of an electrical arc, perhaps. He shook his head when he saw, instead, an indentation into soft metal. That would be one for the engineers to puzzle over, how metal trauma could occur in a closed chamber where there were no moving parts.
He recorded his finding into the ship's log, drew more coffee. They'd be on New Earth in less than a week, and he'd have two full months of leave. He smiled at the thought, because going home was the reward for months in space.
Aaron Delton was old to be a third officer on a merchant ship. He looked younger than his thirty-four years, but thirty-four was old: most academy men were third officers while still in their twenties. He had entered the academy at an age when most men were graduating, for he had made a basic mistake, early on, in his choice of careers. He'd spent a lot of time in laboratories before he had discovered that the life of a researcher, with its politics and restrictions, was not for him.
His education and experience in electronics and amino-acid memory chambers had not been totally wasted. If he couldn't advance computer science, he could absorb the knowledge that existed. His background in science had helped him breeze through the academy and then had immediately threatened to get him stuck in a planetside job, for computer masters were in short supply. He had, however, held out against lucrative offers and signed on with the Hendron Company, and was now in line to be promoted to second officer after his current trip.
He had taken to space. Hendron ships traversed, mainly, well-traveled blink routes, in trade among the planets in the U.P. metro area, and he'd seen a lot of things he'd never have seen working in a lab. For a time the feel of new planets, and far places, had been enough. That was before he had met Tippy. As a married man, he now had a new goal, to move into the passenger liner trade and rise to captain, for the captain of a passenger liner had luxurious quarters and was allowed to have his family with him.
At the moment, however, he was not thinking of his family or of his future plans. As he finished his second cup of coffee he considered the problem of the bright, damaged metal in a place where nothing capable of doing that damage could have penetrated. He grunted, put aside the coffee cup, and, looking furtively over his shoulder, used a small, esoteric tool from a queer little gadget he carried always in his pocket to jimmy the fail-safe lock on the computer, then poked his head curiously into the computer's interior.
There were many things about Aaron Delton that his employers did not know, unless they had requested an X&A security clearance, not the usual thing for a merchantman officer. One of those things was the fact that Delton had spent years working on Century Series computers. In fact, it was Delton's inability to improve that venerable and widely used computer that convinced him that he was not an original thinker, and it was the boredom of it that had driven him to the space academy and into the lonely trade of space. What there was to be known, however, about a Century was known by Aaron Delton, and if his memory didn't contain it, he knew exactly where to find it in the ship's l ibrary.
In this case, he had no need to consult reference material. To his shock, he saw immediately that the ship's log had been altered, a criminal offense. That made him very curious. He got instruments from the locked captain's compartment in stores—the lock gave him no problem—attached them to the inner examination ports of the computer, and quickly located where an erasure had been performed, so sloppily that he had no trouble enhancing the echo image left after alteration. He saw the Panic Flash as originally received and his face went slack, his eyes opened wide, and he gave a hoarse shout. His hand lashed out to trigger the ship's alarm, a call for all officers.
The number-one and number-two officers arrived on the run, followed closely by a rumpled captain. By that time Delton had turned the ship, as she'd been lying on charge, waiting for the generator to be ready for another blink, and had programmed the longest blink he could compute in the direction of St. Paul, the only life-zone planet of a small star far outside the most traveled blink routes.
In spite of his personal agony, Delton had decided quickly not to confront the captain head to head. It was, of course, obvious that the captain had received the Panic Flash, had realized that it meant the loss of their perishable cargo, and had tampered with the ship's log. To accuse Black of that, however, would pit him against a ship captain's absolute authority. Better, he felt, to attack the captain obliquely in the presence of two other witnesses.
"Captain," he said, "I have programmed a blink toward the planet St. Paul, at the order of an X&A Panic Flash. That was the signal that came in garbled. I recovered it from an echo image in the computer. Permission, sir, to blink."
"Now hold on, Delton," Black said, panic making his voice high. "We're outside the alert sector. We're too far away."
"We weren't, sir, when the message was received," Delton said. "We're under space law, Captain." His finger went toward the blink button.
"Don't touch that button, Delton," Black said, and in his hand was his sidearm, a saffer that at the range of six feet, the distance between Black and Delton, would be a fatal weapon.
"Captain," Delton said, his finger poised, "St. Paul is my home. My wife and child are there."
Black paled. So that was why the name St. Paul had seemed familiar to him. But they were just three blinks out of New Earth and his retirement. "Delton," he said, "just how many passengers do you think we could put on this ship?"
"Captain, we are under a Panic Flash," Delton said. He was growing more desperate with each wasted second.
"By the time we got there it would be over," Black said. "Every ship near that point in space is there. Your family has most probably already been removed to safety." His voice became more firm. "You will continue the course toward New Earth, Mr. Delton. It is my decision, as captain, that the ship is outside the alerted sector."
"Captain," said the first officer, "we were in the alert sector when the message was received."
"Garbled," the captain said. "We are now outside the alerted sector."
"Captain, as first officer, I advise compliance with the X&A order."
Black's eyes narrowed. "Are you challenging my authority. Number One?"
"Sir, I agree with the first officer," said the number-two man. "A Panic Flash takes precedence over all other considerations."
"We are going to New Earth," Black said. "Mr. Delton, push that blink button, now."
"Captain, log monitors are running, and have been since I called an alert," Delton said. "And I hereby officially refuse your order, on the grounds that it is illegal and against the directive of an X&A order."
"You may leave the bridge, Mr. Delton," Black said, swinging the vented muzzle of his weapon to point directly at Delton's chest.
"I go on record as being opposed," the number two said.
"Captain Black," said the first officer, "in accordance with space regulations, well known to all of us, I hereby declare that I, as first officer, am taking command of this ship, for the purpose of obeying an X&A Panic Flash. I remind you, sir, that this is being recorded into the log, and that I cite the priority of an emergency in space involving potential loss of life as my authority."
"Take one step toward me and I'll end this mutiny quickly," Black said as the first officer began to move toward him.
"I doubt, Captain, if you'll commit murder with the recorders going," the first officer said. "Now I'll have to ask you to give me your weapon."
In that instant, Black saw five decades of working and dreaming turning into cargo holds filled with rotten fruit and that was too much. He hardly realized that his finger was tightening on the trigger of the saffer until the flash engulfed the first officer.
"No," Delton yelled, leaping toward the captain just as the number-two officer, nearer Black, yelled and leaped to seize Black's arm and tilt the saffer toward the ceiling.
It happened in seconds. First there was the flash of the weapon and the first officer was falling, dead before he hit the deck, then the second officer's swift response and two men struggling, trying to keep their balance as they fought over possession of the saffer, with Delton, who had to move all the way around the control console, running to aid the second officer. So quickly. There had been four living men on the bridge when it began, and then, as Black lurched, lunged, pushed, put his chest hard against the second officer with the saffer pointed upward, held by the right hands of both men, the weapon flashed again at a moment when Black and the second officer were nose to nose. The flash caught both under the chin, deadened skin, muscle, and brain tissue, and it was over and there were three dead men on the Messenger's deck.
It took Delton only seconds to check vital signs and assure himself that all three men were dead. He had never seen men die by violence, and he was shaking as he stood and moved swiftly back to the control console. He would, in accordance with space practice, put the three bodies into a cold room, but first he had things to do. His wife and child were on St. Paul. He used the charge in the Messenger's generator and, while she recharged, dragged the bodies to a cold room, turned the temperature down, locked the door, and put an official ship's seal on the lock.
He slept fitfully, for a few minutes at a time, during recharging periods. The perishable cargo reached full ripeness and then began to rot and stink, the smell permeating the ventilation system. He discharged the entire cargo into space, millions of New Earth credits' worth of it, and continued the long, long blink trip, leaving the well-traveled ways, arching out into the periphery. He came out into normal space near a planet that he did not recognize. St. Paul had been a small planet, but blue and beautiful, and peaceful, and fruitful. St. Paul, his wife's planet of birth, had been a paradise. But no longer. She was now shrouded in an obscene cloud, a dark, impenetrable cloud.
All around him, in space, his detectors showed ships, large and small. The computer's emergency cooling system cranked in to dissipate the heat generated as the computer's full ability was put into action to place and avoid the largest congregation of space craft Delton had ever seen.
Delton opened up the close-range voice communicator and sent a call and was answered by the harried voice of a man of obvious authority, an X&A voice.
"The Hendron Messenger," Delton said. "I can accommodate at least twenty people."
"You're a little late, Hendron Messenger," the harried voice said. "Stand by, however. We'll use you to ease the overload on another ship."
"Commander," Delton sent, "how successful was evacuation?"
"Stand by, Hendron Messenger," the harried voice said.
"Messenger," another voice said, "This is Calisto Miner. I'm off your port quarter, low. We're overcrowded. We've got men and women sitting atop ore in the hold. You care to relieve us of a few?"
"Calisto Miner," Delton asked, "how total was evacuation?"
"It was a madhouse down there," Miner said. "Less than ten percent, some say."
Delton's heart went cold. But Tippy and his son lived in the capital city. Surely the big city would have been a prime port of evacuation. "I am at rest, Miner," he said. "Please come alongside on the port. Main hatch is marked with the company logo."
It took a good half hour for the mining ship to maneuver into position, another hour to match the locks. Then the survivors began to come aboard. He took thirty of them, knowing that they'd be overcrowded, that the ship's supplies would run out quickly under that demand, but aboard Calisto Miner women and children still had to sit on the hard, rough ore in the holds.
