Certainty

By Mark Bilsborough

VENN RAND TRIED NOT TO LISTEN, but it was hard with everyone yelling at him.

“We’re not paying you to take detours,” the Acolyte said.

“Screw that, there’s salvage down there,” said Zoe.

“There are life signs,” said Sevvie, the androgynous ship’s AI.

The Priestess just smiled.

Zoe and Sevvie were crew, the Priestess and her acolyte paying guests. That didn’t mean Venn had to like them, or be polite. “Shut up and let me think,” he said.

Venn’s ship, the Diamante, was low on fuel and half way to where they needed to be, so they were in orbit round a glorified asteroid that surveyed positive for supplies. They weren’t expecting any other ships, and yet, there it was.

They all stood in a circle and stared at the image the external sensors projected in the air between them. A ship, slightly lower orbit, same trajectory. They could be in and out in a couple of hours. Ugly, squat and gunmetal. Military, obviously. But what was it doing, so far from home?

“You said this area of space was uninhabited.” The Acolyte paced, difficult in a cramped cabin with a low ceiling, particularly in a long heavy woollen robe with the hood up. He had to stoop to avoid the pipework.

“I said the place wasn’t fully settled. You should listen more.” Not for the first time in the three weeks since they’d set out, Venn wondered whether anyone would care if he just shoved the Acolyte out of the airlock. He suspected even the Priestess would carry on smiling. “There’s a small mining colony. How else do you think they extract the minerals we need to run this thing? You think there are power cells lying around on the ground like big boulders waiting for us to pick them up?”

“That doesn’t look like a mining ship.” The Acolyte tried to cross his arms but snagged his robes on the plate Venn had eaten his stale pizza off. It crashed, joining the rest of the debris on the cabin floor. He stared down for a moment and curled his bottom lip.

“There’s a hole at the back where one of the engines used to be.” Venn waved his arm and the image grew larger.

“Meteor?” Zoe said. She was short and wiry, with close cropped black hair and an intense expression on her face.

“Even more reason to be on our way,” said the Acolyte. “There may be danger.”

“What exactly is the tearing hurry?” Venn didn’t really want an answer. The religious people didn’t talk much, and mostly that was fine, because it meant he didn’t have to listen to them. They paid enough to do anything they wanted to, more or less, and that included not answering questions.

The only thing he’d insisted on was taking Sevvie with them. They protested and spouted some nonsense about how AIs represented man’s hubris for trying to play god and we were all going to hell. Only their god could create smarts, it seems, and then only in his own image. The complete lack of aliens in the universe only reinforced that belief. But without Sevvie there was no way Venn could get the ship to work, so eventually they relented, not that they were happy about it.

Zoe brought up some schematics, and stacked them on the image. “There’s still life support, though most of the atmosphere seems to have vented. But the life signs are in the cargo deck, where there wasn’t any air in the first place.”

“They must be suited,” the Acolyte said.

“Which means that whatever happened was recent,” said Zoe.

Venn turned to Sevvie. “How long?”

“Suits on a military transit have more air reserves than conventional ones. It is fair to assume that they will be well maintained with full tanks.”

“The quick version?”

“Twelve hours, give or take an hour or so depending on how much energy they use. If they stay still and don’t talk, maybe fourteen.”

“Anyone else out here?”

Sevvie shook his head. “We’re all they’ve got.”

The Acolyte looked up. “You’re going to listen to a Mark Seven robot?”

Venn didn’t know why Sevvie put up with the insults. Not worth it, probably. He and Zoe nodded at each other, and Sevvie manipulated the numbers on the display. They were going in.

***

Venn wasn’t going to risk moving the Diamante too close to the military ship so they took a shuttle and docked carefully, entering though the airlock. The Acolyte insisted on coming, but that didn’t mean Venn and Zoe had to wait for him. They were used to zero-g and the religious man evidently wasn’t. Curses through the comms relay made Venn laugh. Not very saintly.

Once they turned the corner to head for the control room they floated into darkness. Venn and Zoe switched on their head lamps. After a while, no doubt after he’d worked out how to do it, the Acolyte’s torch switched on too.

The fact that the gravity was off was a worry. A ship like this had emergency redundancies, but for some reason they hadn’t kicked in. And with the lights off, the whole place had a cold stillness about it. The corridor was cramped and low, which didn’t help, more a tube really with a flat bottom where the floor used to be, pipes and handholds everywhere. Grey. No frills. That meant this was a battle ship, built for fighting. There was air at first, but one closed bulkhead later, and they were in hard vacuum.

“What’s this ship doing here?” said Zoe.

“Refuelling, maybe. Just like us.”

“You think?”

“No.”

The door to the control room was open. Venn didn’t know much about military ships, but he knew enough to know that was wrong.

“This has been blasted.” Zoe glided over and poked at the warped metal. The door was maybe six inches of something very solid, designed to keep the control room secure even if the ship were boarded. And yet there it was, open.

“Careful.”

“Don’t worry,” said Zoe. “You’re going in first.”

The Acolyte caught up. “We need to leave.”

That was probably the only half-sensible thing Venn could remember the Acolyte saying. Now he’d had time to think about it he knew he’d been foolish to believe they could get salvage from a military ship without someone wondering where he’d got it from. But there were those life signs to consider. And the need to disagree with anything the Acolyte said. On principle.

He could hear Zoe, just behind him. “You leave then.”

“This ship has been attacked! Whoever did this could still be here!” said the panicked Acolyte.

Venn took in the surroundings. Bigger than the control room of the Diamante, which left room for more people. And there they were, slumped over chairs, floating up to the ceiling, impaled on bits of machinery. Venn counted five bodies, none suited, all with blast injuries. The central console was a pile of seared plastic.

“Sevvie,” Venn activated his ship-to-ship. “You still registering life signs?”

“Still there. Three of them. One deck down from you, a hundred metres towards the rear.”

“I need to know more about what this ship was up to. Roster, mission, that sort of thing.”

“It’s not on the database, which is unusual. Even the clandestine ships are usually listed, if you know where to look. Not this one. It’s a modified Class Five, which means it probably had a crew compliment of around one hundred, and some heavy weaponry.”

“Modified?”

“The cargo bay, where the life signs are, doesn’t match the Class Five design. There’s some non-standard equipment there. That affects the weight, so there are some structural compensations.”

“Ideas?”

“Somebody’s put a tank in there, and installed fancy tech around it. I’m registering some interesting gases in there too inside the tank itself. Mainly nitrogen but with concentrations of hydrogen and methane. Neon too, and argon. No oxygen, No hydrocarbons.”

“An atmosphere tank, then. For what?” Venn glanced across at the Acolyte. “Is it full?”

“There’s certainly something in there, aside from the atmosphere,” said Sevvie.

The Acolyte pulled him by the arm. “We have to get out of here,” the religious man said, talking rapidly.

Now that the bodies had started to pile up, Venn’s curiosity was completely satisfied, but he couldn’t just ignore those life signs. He sighed and checked his pulse pistol. Nice toy, but they’d need more. Zoe was ahead of him. She projected her viewscreen and pulled up a ship plan. She traced her finger to a point just down the corridor. “Weapons are here.”

“Can you fix the lights?”

“If we had time I could run a power patch from the shuttle,” said Zoe.

“I can do that remotely,” said Sevvie.

“Do it.”

“On it. Be careful.”

The weapons room was open. Some large gaps showed where heavy duty stuff had been hastily removed. Not all of it, though. Venn picked a large pulse rifle. Zoe went for something smaller and more manoeuvrable. The Acolyte filled his pockets with something, grenades, probably, and went for a repeating missile launcher. Venn gently pushed it aside. “You could blow this whole ship apart with one of those. Try something smaller.”

The Acolyte snatched his weapon away. Venn decided not to force the issue. They found more bodies in the corridor leading to the cargo bay. This tunnel was wider, maybe four metres across and as many high, another thing not on the standard schematics. The body count grew the closer they got to the entrance. One floated at Venn’s face, deathly with with open, staring eyes until Zoe pushed it aside.

“Firefight,” said Venn.

“I only see the guys from the ship here,” Zoe said.

“Guess they lost, then.”

The cargo door was still closed, but there was a hole carved right in it. Not quite man sized, but not small either. Venn figured that Zoe could probably make it through if she didn’t have her enviro-suit on. He pushed some bodies aside and peered through. There were bodies in there too, though he couldn’t see well enough to count them. The cargo bay was large, big enough to hold the Diamante if it needed to. In the middle was a tank the size of a truck, filled with something murky. His shoulder twitched, like it always did when he knew he should be somewhere else.

Then the lights came on.

“Good work, Sevvie. Can you get us gravity?”

“There’s not enough power for that. But I can get that door open for you. Just give me a while.”

The Acolyte’s facemask was a gold covered mirror, but close up Venn could just about see inside. A worried face looked back. Venn knew he shouldn’t, but he couldn’t resist. “What do you think we’ll find in there?”

“Venn!” Zoe said through their private channel. He didn’t need to see her to know she was scowling.

“Quiet. Having fun.”

“Obviously these men fell out with each other for some reason. Maybe fell out over their mission.” The Acolyte turned away.

“What do you think is in the tank, then?” said Venn,

“Nothing. They must be using it to test atmosphere suits.” The Acolyte sounded irritated.

“You think?”

“What other explanation could there be?”

“You certain?” Venn was goading him now.

“If you believed, you’d be certain too.”

Just then, the door opened. If there had been any atmosphere in the corridor, Venn was sure he would have heard the metal wrench and tear past the blast damage.

Inside, more bodies floated high to the ceiling. Some were in enviro-suits, some in their combat clothing Most times military men were a mix of the fit and the fat, guys in shape and guys struggling to keep up. Not these men. They all looked super-athletic, with military buzz cuts and the kind of musculature that takes serious work. A crack team, then. There was grim determination there, behind their empty eyes. Something else too. Maybe that’s what terror looked like.

“You still registering life signs?” Venn tapped his helmet when all he got back was static. “Something’s interfering with the ship-to-ship,” he said to Zoe.

“Connected with the tank, probably. Remember we couldn’t get full detail on the life signs before?”

“Maybe.” Venn hoped that was all it was. They moved closer to the gas-filled chamber, still opaque even in the full glare of the bay spotlights. The Acolyte hung back.

Zoe was up against the glass now, looking in. Venn joined her. There were shapes in there, through the gloom. Bodies. Five, maybe six. Without knowing how many limbs they were supposed to have it was hard to tell, because they were floating, tangled up like dead lovers. But one thing was clear. They weren’t human. “So, we’re not alone after all.”

“I’m not listening to this,” said the Acolyte, from the doorway.

Venn turned to Zoe. ”What do you think happened here?”

She took a few seconds to answer. “They’re wearing clothing. That means they’re probably intelligent.”

“What killed them?”

“Who knows. The firefight maybe. Or when the power went off, perhaps their atmosphere degraded.” Zoe shrugged. Even in her environment suit, Venn could see that. “First contact.”

“They have to be alive for that.”

“But we know they’re there now, right?” said Zoe.

“Tell that to him.” Venn gestured over to the Acolyte, pacing around by the door.

“See nothing, worry about nothing.” Zoe edged up the glass and peered down through the roof.

“We should leave.”

Zoe nodded. “I’ve got all this recorded. We can try and make sense of it later.”

They turned to go. By the time they reached the doorway, the Acolyte was halfway down the corridor.

Venn turned. “Hear that?”

Zoe looked at him, faceplate to faceplate. “No atmosphere, no sound. Remember?”

“Feel it then.”

“Don’t get weird on me.”

He remembered the life signs and how vague they were. He turned and headed back towards the tank.

“That’s a really stupid idea,” Zoe said.

He looked back, saw her hesitate then follow. The Acolyte was already out of sight.

Something on the edge of his vision, to the right. Then to the left. He fingered the safety catch on his weapon. Then stillness. He hoped he was imagining things.

It happened fast. A blur, far away at the back of the bay, then closer. Over him, round him, in front, closing rapidly.

Then Zoe fired her pistol, and it twitched and shifted direction. Still coming, still but spinning now. It hit him on the shoulder, hard.

Venn fell, as whatever had hit him smashed against the wall, unable to turn in the zero-g. It bounced off. Between Zoe’s shot and the impact, Venn didn’t think anything could have survived.

“You ok?”

“Yes.”

“Good. There may be more. Three life signs, remember?”

Venn got to his feet and looked around. Nothing but floating bodies and a great big tank filled with mysteries. One of the bodies, the one which had clattered into Venn, had six limbs and a tail. Zoe dragged it over.

Whatever was inside was dead now. It was small, maybe four feet in length, and wearing some sort of space suit. If he’d been a scientist, Venn would have opened it up and taken a look inside, but there was no time for that, especially if more of them were around. Besides, the helmet suggested the thing’s face was long and thin. Like a velociraptor. Some things you don’t want to see.

“Definitely intelligent then. This space suit looks more advanced than ours.” Venn peered in to the creature’s facemask.

“We put monkeys in space back in the 20th century. They wore space suits too.”

Movement.

“Over there.” Zoe indicated to her right.

Venn raised his gun, then lowered it. “One of the military guys.” The side wall was draped with ropes. He grabbed one to steady himself. The soldier was above him now, and he looked up into the faceplate. “A woman. Looks like she’s unconscious.”

“Can’t have much air left.”

Venn nodded. “We need to wake her.”

“Not here.” So they dragged her through the corridors back to the shuttle. As soon as they were through the airlock, Zoe unclasped her mask, then leaned over and unfastened the soldier’s.

“Where’s the Acolyte?” said Venn.

“Maybe one of the aliens got him. There might be another one out there, remember?”

“I don’t like the idea of a killer alien running loose. Can’t say I’m bothered about the Acolyte, though.”

“Nor me. Does that make us bad people?”

“Probably. What about her?” Venn looked down. She was young with short cropped hair in the military style. She had a tribal tattoo across her left cheek and scars on her neck and chin. And she was waking up.

***

They hurried back in the shuttle. The woman was called Evans, and she was just winded. She guessed she’d been left for dead by the creatures. “You saw what was in that tank. Their buddies came for them.”

“But they’re still there.”

“They’d been dead almost from the start. That wasn’t the plan but our scientists screwed up with the tank’s atmosphere. Missing some sort of trace element, apparently. Trouble was, we didn’t have any. So that was it.”

“Where are they from?”

“That would be telling, now wouldn’t it?”

“Need to know. And you don’t.”

Venn wanted to argue but they had to get out of there. “Then let’s go.” Zoe was already prepping the shuttle. Venn tried getting hold of the Acolyte on the short-range but didn’t get a reply. That meant either he was dead or the comms interference was getting worse. Probably both. Venn felt bad that the guy was missing but not suicidal enough to go after him. So he pulled up the flight information onto a holoimage projected in front of him, and began the initiation sequence. The engines started to whine.

The image froze, pixelated then faded and Venn found himself staring at the far wall. The engine noise dropped to a murmur. “What just happened?”

Zoe turned and frowned. Then someone started to operate the airlock—from the other side. Someone—or something—was coming in from the military ship.

“The Acolyte?” But that didn’t explain why the start-up sequence had aborted. Venn reached for his weapon. It wasn’t there.

Someone they’d never seen before dressed in combats and with the same tribal tattoos as Evans walked out of the airlock. He unclipped his helmet one handed. In the other hand he held a pistol.

The third life sign was human.

“Nothing personal,” the new arrival said, expressionless. Venn was too distracted by him to notice Evans moving fast, until she too stood in front of him, clicking the safety on a gun which should have been firmly strapped to Venn’s thigh.

Venn thought about rushing them, figured it was pointless, waited to see what happened.

But Zoe was already on the move, dropping to the ground. Both Evans and the new guy had been targeting Venn. Now they both turned. “Get moving, you idiot,” Zoe yelled. “Can’t you see they’re going to kill us?”

Venn ducked behind his flight seat. Evans kicked Zoe in the side, flipped her over and raised her gun. Venn peered up to see the military man looking down at him, gun pointed, grinning.

Venn closed his eyes and waited for the sound of the trigger.

And that’s when the room exploded

***

First the noise, then the heat, like standing too close to a jet engine. The light, too, an intense flash that forced his eyes shut. It felt like a punch to the head. But he was behind the chair, and whatever had happened was on the other side. The military guy wasn’t so fortunate. Something big and hard sliced right through him, sending him flying against the bulkhead. Venn crouched as debris flew over him, embedding itself in chunks wherever it hit. He was lucky. The blast was high, and he was low. And after a while, things stopped moving.

He got up, slowly, rubbing his eyes. His ears rang like he’d been right under a speaker stack. His body ached too. His enviro-suit was abraded, down to the cloth in places. But it was whole.

Movement from where Evans and Zoe had been. A groan.

“What happened?” Zoe.

“You ok?”

“My arm feels like it’s broken. Something wrong with my leg, too.”

“Evans?” But he didn’t need to wait for the answer. Something had impaled her, just below the clavicle. She stared, glassy-eyed. Not moving.

Dust settled, leaving a clear sight of whatever had exploded. Pieces of thick painted metal, and toughened glass. “That’s the airlock door.”

“And most of the airlock.” Zoe eased herself upright and winced.

“Clamps held, though.”

“Or we’d be dead.”

“What do you suppose happened?” Venn walked over to where the jagged remains of the shuttle’s shattered airlock door now led straight into the larger vessel.

“Remember the Acolyte stuffing things in his pocket when we were in the weapons room? Grenades.”

“You think he used one?”

“More than one. Those airlock doors are strong. Good job, too. If they hadn’t been there to absorb the force of the blast, we’d be dead as well.”

“Tried to kill us then. Destroy the evidence.” Venn turned his attention to getting back to the Diamante. He tried the ship-to-ship and cursed when he got static in return. “We’re on our own.”

“And we can’t undock the ship because that would leave a hole where the airlock was.”

“We were lucky.” Zoe rubbed her injured arm and grimaced.

“How do you figure that?”

“There was air in the section we docked with.”

And then the shuttle’s gravity switched off. “Shit.”

“Actually that’s helpful,” said Zoe. “Zero-g Makes it easier to move around when half your limbs are broken. So?”

“What?”

“Plan?” Zoe had that expectant look.

Nothing like imminent death to focus the mind. “Zoe, you still got the schema of this ship on your system?”

“Sure.”

“Does it show where the escape pods are?”

She grinned. “Genius.”

They changed suits because theirs were pockmarked and torn. The new ones were one size fits all, too loose in some places, too tight in others. Venn didn’t want to think what Zoe’s must feel like. He just hoped it didn’t chafe her injuries. They’d used a pain suppressant on both her arm and her leg but that wasn’t nearly enough. The arm was definitely broken.

The pods in the military ship were all there. It was clear that none of the crew had tried to use them. Venn shook his head. The military mind. The pods were on independent power sources, though Venn didn’t quite believe they would work until Zoe powered one up. Whatever had drained the ship had not affected the pod.

The pod had limited thruster capability and Venn managed to steer it to the Daimante. As they approached, the bulkhead door opened and a force grapple pulled them in.

***

Two hours later they sat round a large circular table in the dining area, eating hastily assembled quesadillas and drinking beer. Zoe’s arm was in a makeshift sling. Sevvie wasn’t drinking, even though he could, and neither was the Priestess, even though Venn knew that she did, back in her room.

They worked around the subject, until Venn got bored with small talk. He turned to the Priestess. “You knew, didn’t you? About the aliens.”

The smile didn’t waver. “That would be impossible. The Book is quite clear on that.”

Zoe belched and Venn looked away. Good thing he didn’t employ her for her table manners. “I saw one. Right in front of me. Six legs and a face like a crocodile. Bad breath too, probably.”

“You must have been mistaken. You were low on oxygen, correct?” The Priestess talked quietly but firmly.

Venn sighed. If the Priestess’ religion depended on man being made in god’s image, and intelligence only being possible through god’s will, then smart lizards were always going to lead to some serious cognitive dissonance. Maybe she told the Acolyte to blow the airlock. Maybe he was just using his initiative. Whatever. She wasn’t about to confess and he couldn’t prove anything.

It didn’t matter much anyway. They had video feed of the aliens and a whole container full of dead ones on the Class Five, just waiting to be picked up and dissected.

And that’s when the shockwave hit, and hit hard. Three seconds of mayhem, table scattered, Zoe thrown against Venn’s chair back, Sevvie flung to the ceiling. Then the alignment protocols kicked in and the ship righted itself.

Zoe was unconscious. Venn felt for a pulse and relaxed slightly. Sevvie pulled a piece of metal from his arm. There was no sign of the Priestess.

“What just happened?” said Venn.

Sevvie frowned and tried to activate the view-screen. “The external sensor arrays have been overloaded.”

“Guesses?”

“The Class Five. We have backup sensors embedded in the hull. I’m bringing them up.”

There was space where the Class Five had been. Debris, too, but nothing larger than a football. Maybe the Acolyte had found the self destruct. He had been carrying enough heavy weaponry he probably didn’t need it. No ship, no evidence, and no threat to the Church.

Except for Venn and Zoe. They’d seen what happened. And the Priestess must know they had video evidence. And in the confusion, she was gone.

No doubt looking for a way to kill them all.

“Sevvie, can you isolate the engines?”

“Ahead of you. It’s the logical move.” Sevvie winced. “She’s shutting me out.”

“Can she blow us up?”

“She’s already locked the sequence.”

***

Venn kicked down the door to the Priestess’ quarters. She sat on her bed, draped in purple, staring at her array’s projection.

“This ship will explode in five minutes, unless you stop it. You willing to die for your beliefs?”

“There were lies on that ship. Lies on your cameras, too. I can’t let you return to Earth to spread those falsehoods and undermine the Message.”

“How do you know I haven’t already transmitted the data?”

“Because long range communications are down.”

“Convenient. You, I suppose?”

“I had no idea you were going to bring falsehoods from the military ship. I assume it’s your robot, malfunctioning.”

“He’s not a robot.”

Sevvie pushed past Venn and bent down in front of the Priestess. He glared at her with something in his expression Venn had never seen before. Anger.

“You think I’m a robot? An unthinking machine?”

“Man created you. You’re in our image, not god’s. And only god can give life.”

“But I’m real, I’m here.”

“You have no right to exist.”

“And yet I do.” He grabbed her by the arms and squeezed.

Venn could see her face tighten. “Stop it, Sevvie. You’re hurting her.”

Sevvie’s anger turned to rage. “She deserves to be hurt. She’s going to kill us all. I’m not ready to die.”

“How can you die? You have to be alive to die,” said the Priestess.

Sevvie released her. “She’s trying to erase all traces of first contact and she’s too blind to see the evidence of it right in front of her eyes.”

Venn looked at the display. “We’ve got less than a minute.”

“And if she blows us up, so what? There are thirteen million AI’s operating in the known systems.”

“Thirteen million machines,” said the Priestess.

“Thirteen million people who have just as much right to live as you have.”

“The Book is clear.”

“The Book can be rewritten, now we know the truth.”

“Thirty seconds,” said Venn.

“Can you still be so certain?” Sevvie shook now. If he wasn’t chalk white, Venn was sure he would be red in the face.

“There can be no first contact.”

“There already has been,” said Sevvie. “You’re looking at it.”

She sat, staring at the control screen, as Venn watched the numbers tick down. Then her face fell. Venn braced himself.

She entered a code sequence then waved her arms, The viewscreen faded.

Then she buried her head in her hands and cried.

***

They sat, drinking coffee. The Priestess looked uncomfortable. Her eyes were red and she didn’t look as though she had slept. Her hair, usually tightly controlled, swept forward in an unruly tangle.

Zoe had a large bruise on her forehead and a sling over her left arm. Sevvie looked smug.

“You were never going to keep the existence of those aliens secret for long,” Venn said, sipping his coffee. “Military secrets don’t stay secret forever.”

“They’ll be back, too,” said Zoe. “Now that they know what we do to them.”

“If you want your Church to survive, you need some new certainties,” said Sevvie. “Then I might even join.”

The Priestess shifted in her seat. “What will you do to me?”

Venn laughed. “Nothing at all. You paid for passage. When we arrive we say goodbye. That’s it. What you do with your new found understanding is up to you.”

“But you’ll tell the authorities about the aliens.”

Sevvie frowned. “I don’t think we’ll have to,” he said, opening his screen up in front of them. “Remember our long range communications are down? I know why, now.”

Venn followed everyone else and looked up at the screen.

“They blocked them.”

The rapidly approaching alien ship was huge. And it was coming straight for them.

“Oh shit,” said Venn.

“Amen to that,” said the Priestess. 

Mark Bilsborough lives in London and has been obsessed with science fiction all his life. He attened the Odyssey Workshop. He is a member of CODEX writers group. His stories have appeared in “Every Day Fiction,” “Ray Gun Revival,” and elsewhere.