Shifting Infinity (ISF-Allion Book 2) Read online

  Melati never knew what to say to him when he went like this. It was as if he expected some sort of reaction. She could thank him, and she did that when that was warranted, but she always had the niggling feeling that he wanted a more personal reaction, and of course he couldn’t know that men winking at her freaked her out big time.

  The istel pilots did that, and as a young tier 2 barang-barang girl, she had been taken by their charms, and had been sucked into a horrible scheme of abuse and exploitation.

  Jas seemed oblivious to her silence. Of course he didn’t really get it.

  He dragged a chair over and started up the calibration process. While he was at work and instructing the boys how to use the jars with contents of varying densities to calibrate the pads, Melati waited at the door.

  He worked quickly and efficiently. The boys followed his instructions. There were no problems, but still the process took them to her allocated lunchtime.

  “You go and eat,” Jas said. “We’ll have it all set up by the time you come back.”

  She should have been grateful for such efficient assistants, but the tone of his words disturbed her, and she was trying to work out why. Jas was almost too keen to do jobs for her. He worked for her, but he wasn’t her servant. Then she got angry with herself for having these thoughts. A normal crewmember with her ranking wouldn’t think twice about accepting seniority. To someone like Lieutenant Kool, having a position of authority came naturally. She should accept it, too. She should stop acting like the shy and obedient tier-2 girl she had been told to be all her life.

  Be quiet. Do as they say. Don’t make trouble. Get a husband. Don’t provoke the ghosts.

  She had heard these things from the time she was a little girl and it was so hard to ignore the messages and warnings, because the people giving them were people she respected. Uncle, Grandma, Wahid. But, oh, she often wished that she could bluntly say things as she saw them, without fear that she would sound ungrateful or impolite.

  Melati went upstairs and paid a quick visit to the canteen to pick up her lunch. Rice crackers and energy spread today, with a side salad with little tomatoes and fresh lettuce from the onboard hydroponic farm.

  Standing at the door to the serving area, she looked over the heads of all those in the room, seated at the long tables, chatting and laughing. There were all the usual faces who shared the meal shift with her. The Communications workers, the Ordnance personnel, the upper deck flight-maintenance crew. She looked twice over the table where those flight technicians sat, but she didn’t see the one person she had wanted to see. He must be working in back.

  She unwrapped her crackers and finished her juice, put the packaging in the recycling, and left the room. She ate her crackers while walking through the corridor.

  Instead of returning to Research, Melati took the lift to the top level of the habitable section of the Felicity. Up here, gravity dwindled to 0.3g. No one lived or worked here permanently, but this level housed the onboard gardens and the low-g training rooms and storage areas. It also provided access to the zero-g flight hall, a circular construction that sat over the top of the turning axis of the habitat. Getting there involved going through a security check that issued you with a pass for an hour, followed by a short wait for the lift to carry you up and sideways or whatever you wanted to call it, out of the spinning habitat ring to the main hull of the ship. The lift shaft came out in the floor of the docking area, but by that time, there was no more gravity and Melati’s feet had left the ground. She unreeled the tether from her belt and clipped it onto the railing. When the doors to the lift opened, the cable kept her from floating into the huge hall.

  Other than security, this was the reason that every visitor got a one-hour pass. If a visitor hadn’t returned after that time, someone would go and look for them, because it was easy for a person unfamiliar with the hall to become lost.

  The walls and ceiling, or whatever passed for the walls and the ceiling, were covered with huge shelves on which hung countless rows of fighter craft. There were many, and they were all the same.

  Closer to the lift hung scores of one-person fighters, and further away, or maybe up or closer to the irised entrance to the airlock, hung the larger ships that carried heavier weapons. There would be even larger ships attached to the outside of the hull.

  The hall was a hub of activity. Maintenance personnel floated around, trailing belts with equipment and tools.

  Ari usually worked on the heavy craft, so Melati pulled herself along the railings in the direction of the hall’s “roof”, if one could talk about a roof in zero-g.

  The air around her was full of noises made by electronic tools, and the smell of hot engines and talk and laughter from the techies.

  “Melati.” Ari noticed her before she had seen him.

  He pushed himself out of an engine panel of a fighter craft and floated towards her, trailing his belt with various diagnostic devices plus the usual screwdrivers and other tools.

  In the ten months since starting here, he had cut his hair short without complaining, removed his chains and earrings, taken off his make-up and grown the pink polish out of his nails. He visited the gym a fair bit and was stockier than he used to be, in a visually pleasing way.

  But it pained her that he now looked more ISF and less New Jakarta. They were both failing their culture, and as oldest, she should take charge.

  He met Melati at the guide rope that ran past the craft, and deftly gathered up the belt so that the tools wouldn’t float past and hit her. “What’s wrong, cousin?”

  “Have you heard from the family recently?”

  “Last time was a few weeks ago. Why?”

  “Did they mention that there is anything going on at the station?”

  “Not that I heard. Why are you asking?”

  Captain Dolchova hadn’t explicitly told her to keep quiet about the refugee and neither had Lieutenant Kool, so Melati told him about the man. Ari’s eyebrows knitted together as she spoke.

  “A New Hyderabad merchant? Using one of Socrates’ craft? Were they even still operational? Most of that machinery hasn’t been touched for months.”

  Strange how the lack of maintenance would never have been a problem for him when he still lived on the station. Oh, Ari had developed a very healthy respect for the machines that kept people alive in space; and, to be honest, that was not a bad thing.

  “I find it really hard to understand what is happening with this man. He looks like a New Hyderabad merchant, doesn’t speak Standard but he can fly a ship. He won’t answer any questions other than to talk about religion. I didn’t realise that people from New Hyderabad believed in the true God.”

  “You do know that a fair number of the people we used to call New Hyderabad merchants were actually Allion spies, don’t you?”

  “Yes I do, but if he was from Allion, why would he flee from a station occupied by his fellows? That makes even less sense.”

  “Not unless he deserted.”

  “Then Allion could easily have shot him to pieces like they did to that other ship.” Melati still remembered seeing the debris of the explosion fly into space. There had been twenty-three tier 1 people on board.

  “Then what if the whole refugee story is fake and he is a spy?”

  “He could be, but why would he refuse to talk to us? And why would he then try to flee from our patrols?”

  Ari spread his hands. “Because it’s part of his act? To keep us guessing? How am I supposed to second-guess his or Allion’s motivation?”

  “You’re not, but I am supposed to second-guess his motivations. I’m about to read his mindbase, even if Dr Chee is always saying that the technique is unreliable for natural born people. This whole thing is just really, really strange. It makes me wonder if anything is going on at the station. Which is the reason I’m asking you if you’ve heard from the family.”

  “Well.” Ari took his hand out of an oil-stained glove and scratched his head. “All I remember is th
at last time I spoke to the station, everything was pretty much the same as usual. Uncle is fine, Grandma is fine. Auntie Dewi is worried about ghosts, Auntie Gema complains about her knees, all the usual stuff. You know, life is not easy, but we’re surviving, the same stuff they’ve pulled on us for the last ten months.”

  Yes, and she had heard the statements about family members passed onto Ari by the hypertechs. They were always disappointingly bland. People got married, people had babies. She had found those messages reassuring—if anything was really wrong at the station, they’d mention it, right?—but now she wasn’t so sure.

  “You know what I’d like?” Melati said. “I’d like you to talk to Uncle himself. It’s always the hypertechs doing the talking. What if they’re telling us lies?”

  Ari shook his head, a disturbed look coming over his face. “There is no way of knowing. Why would the hypertechs lie, though? They’re stuck in the B sector with the others. If things were not fine in the B sector, then I’m sure we’d hear about it.”

  “Would they tell us about it, though? Because they might be friendly with Kerakis. They might be given special status.”

  “Oh, come on, Melati. The fire doors are closed. No one can get out of the B sector except a couple of Allion staff who come in to bring supplies, and those people even bring guards because they’re scared of the civilians. There are a lot more of the tier 2 people than there are of the occupiers. And there’s all the New Pyongyang refugees, too.”

  “They’re not in the B sector. At least, they weren’t when we left. Who knows where they are now, and how crowded and bored everyone is? Or hungry?” Details about what happened to the New Pyongyang refugees had never been important enough to discuss during the brief periods of radio contact with the station. The hypertechs had only mentioned that the occupiers rarely came into the B sector, that the doors were down and no one could access the docks, and no one could get to work, which would be pointless anyway, because the mining ships had stopped going out at the time of the takeover by Allion. It seemed that Allion fed the barang-barang just enough resources to keep them alive.

  “I’m sure they’ll be all right. They’ll have their own gardens and chickens and all the other things that people do. They might not work, but they’ll be growing things and making things out of old store supplies.”

  “I don’t know, Ari. The station is not running well. They’ve not had any supplies or done any mining for ten months. Things are bound to have broken in the fighting or afterwards. They may have made some fixes, but some things will need off-station tech to repair properly.” And ISF had measured a marked drop in temperature of the station’s outer hull, of which no one was sure what it meant.

  Ari gave her a sharp look. “You freak me out with all this talk, Melati. I’m worried. Yes, I’m really sick of the hypertechs being in control of communication, but sitting here in this safe ship, what can I do about it? I don’t understand why no one else in the station ever put a radio together to talk to us directly. It’s not that hard. They would know where the parts are. They can figure out how to build it.”

  “Not everyone is as keen as you are about tech.”

  “You don’t need to be keen if you’re desperate. I’m thinking maybe they’ve just given up on any hope that we can help them. The hypertechs don’t answer to anyone and no one even knows if we can trust them. Probably not. And we’re just hanging around here doing nothing. It’s like ‘Oh, look at this giant warship we got here. We’re just going to use it to hang around and do nothing, because if we actually use it to bust these people’s butts out of the station that they’ve unlawfully occupied, our ship might get dirty!’ ” He spread his hands. One of his gloves floated free. He snatched it before it could wander off too far and jammed it in his pocket with an angry gesture.

  A few other engineers had stopped working and were looking at Ari and Melati. Ari had yelled quite loudly, but in B3, and they would not have understood his words.

  Melati shot them her best go back to work glare and said in a low voice, “Let’s not have that argument again. You know why we’re not attacking.”

  He rolled his eyes. “Yeah, yeah, I know their latest spiel.” They both attended the pep talk speeches that the captain held for the crew once a week. According to the captain, there was no predicting what Allion would do if the Felicity or the other ships became hostile. They only needed to open a few hatches to kill all of the civilians. A long time ago, Allion had done the same with the Mars habitats in a move whose cruelty had stunned everyone.

  Allion was not to be trusted, and not to be provoked.

  Which was true, but no less frustrating, and even though Dolchova would always come up with reasons that made the lack of action by the ship sound like a positive thing, it was becoming very wearying.

  She said, “Maybe you should try to contact Uncle again, and ask more specific questions, and if the hypertechs are in control of the conversation, ask them questions.”

  “I suppose I can try.” He didn’t sound convinced. “They’ll probably just disconnect if they don’t like my questions.”

  “Ask them, Ari, and the way they reply, or don’t reply, should also give you more information. Ask them about this ship that escaped. Who is this man?”

  “I don’t know that they’ll know him.”

  “Of course they will. He speaks B3, so he’s likely to have been in contact with them.”

  “Do you think the hypertechs will answer my questions? I’ve asked them stuff almost every time I’ve spoken to them. They never give useful replies. They have their own agenda and no one knows what that is. They could have become Allion’s people, for all I know. Maybe they’ve been Allion’s people for a long time. Maybe the hypertechs are helping Allion keep the people under control. I don’t trust them. I might have done business with them, but I’ve never trusted them. You know what? I don’t really want their answers about the station or anything that’s not our family, because they might even tell Allion what sort of questions we’re asking.”

  * * *

  Jas said that he wasn’t quite done with the BCI machine, so when Melati left the flight hall, she went back to the Research rec room. She went to get a hot chocolate from the kitchen and drank it while sitting at the benches that lined the wall, cradling the hot cup in her hands.

  She felt utterly disturbed.

  All her life, people had spoken of Allion as an anonymous enemy, an evil force somewhere out in deep space. At times, people even wondered if they existed. She had read all the history books about how Allion was the first to go to space and had sent the first people to Mars, but after a couple of wars, Allion had withdrawn into deep space and any conflicts between them and ISF had been reported based on the say-so of the people fighting those conflicts. Not that those people were lying, but there had never been visible evidence about them that came from any source other than ISF. Until New Pyongyang, but no one in authority spoke clearly about whatever had happened there. No one had actually seen any Allion troops. There was only talk about spies working for them and setting the tier 2 population of the station up against ISF and the Taurus Army.

  Living at New Jakarta, she had only heard rumours about Allion people.

  Allion people were evil.

  They were robots. They had no morals regarding the identity of human individuals. They used a type of construct called an aggregate that was half human half machine.

  They had ruthlessly killed people in the Mars war.

  And then it turned out that Allion people had been at all the stations anyway, and that she’d probably queued up at checkpoints with them, served them food in Uncle’s rumak, and replied to them when they asked the way.

  Melati had definitely not expected Allion people to be very human-looking people with dark skin, people with emotions. People who might just be trying to live their lives, who got caught up in conflicts just like everyone else. People who disturbed her, because they didn’t look like enemies. People wh
o prayed to the same god.

  The prisoner’s last words still echoed in her mind. How do I tell time and direction for prayer?

  Whatever he was, she should at least send him that information.

  Chapter 4

  * * *

  AFTER SHE FINISHED her chocolate, Melati went back down to the Correctional Department. It appeared that Jas, Tyro, Shan, Esse and Zax had gone to lunch, but also it looked like they had finished installing all the equipment. The computer was on, the screen displayed the menu of the BCI software, a chair stood in front of the desk ready for use. On the floor just inside the door stood the box with the BCI harness that would cover the prisoner’s head, with all the leads neatly rolled up and tied together. Jas even appeared to have brought down the little pillow that Melati used on her desk chair in the lab.

  She groaned. That really wasn’t necessary. She didn’t plan to stay here long. She didn’t want Lieutenant Kool to laugh at a pink seat cover with stick figure embroidery that had been done by the boys after taking basic lessons in looking after themselves, which included sewing.

  He was a nice guy, but Jas’ eagerness to please was a bit much for her sometimes.

  She picked up the box with the harness and went into the hallway to find someone to open the door to the cells. Lieutenant Kool had gone to lunch; one of the wardens sat in his office, reading on his PCD with his feet up on the desk.

  He seemed shocked when Melati appeared in the doorway, and quickly took his feet off the desk.

  “I’d like to put this on the prisoner.” Melati held up the box with the spider of cords and sticky pads that was part of the BCI machine. “I need probably ten minutes.”

  The warden half rose. “Ten minutes? That all?”

  “That’s all.”

  He grabbed his PCD off the desk and preceded her into the corridor. He opened the door to the cells with a click.

  “In you go. Here.” He handed her the PCD. “Press that to the door panel and it should open. Press zero if there is a problem.”