On the table, Brandon looked as if he was having a heart attack, writhing around so badly the tape was cutting into his wrists. Ollie ordered the slugs to pause. They were barely a centimetre inside Bandon’s feet, with blood and pulverized bone running out of the holes they’d gouged. He leant over, staring down at his captive.
‘Did you wanna say something?’
Brandon was shouting so hard he even managed to dislodge the napkin slightly.
Ollie put his finger to his lips. ‘Before I take the napkin out, I’m going to repeat the question: Where does Karno Larson live? If you say anything other than that – if you start swearing or threatening me – I won’t let you speak again until the slugs have reached your hip bones via your balls. Understand?’
A near-hysterical Brandon nodded feverishly.
So slowly it was a taunt, Ollie pulled the napkin out of Brandon’s mouth.
‘Docklands!’ Brandon yelled. ‘Karno’s in Docklands. Royal Victoria Docks, the Icona apartment block. Third floor. I promise! He never leaves any more, not since Blitz2 started. He’ll be there.’
‘Cheers, fella,’ Ollie said, and stuffed the napkin back in. He retrieved the synth slugs and dropped them back in the case. He grinned cheerfully at a weeping Mensi and walked out through the front door. He managed to take five steps along the drive before he doubled over and threw up onto the gravel.
Delta Pavonis
9th December 2206
Eight AUs beyond the star’s outer cometary belt, the rim of the circular portal glowed a rich cobalt blue as it expanded out to fifty metres in diameter. An Olyix mid-level transport ship flew out of the opening – a truncated cone sixty metres long and thirty wide, its fuselage a dark burgundy colour that absorbed what little light there was. Thin purple ion plumes gusted out of gill-like vents near the rear, and it began to accelerate at a steady one point three gees.
‘Gravitonic drive at seventy per cent,’ Jessika Mye announced cheerfully.
Sitting opposite her in the pearl-grey virtual chamber that was the Avenging Heretic’s bridge, Callum saw her lips twitch in amusement. He wondered just how much of that was real. The nervecapture routine could be adjusted for reaction sensitivity, either toning down or emphasizing every expression and tic the emotional state produced. Like Alik and Yuri, Callum couldn’t be arsed with it; faffing about with crap like that was just a higher-resolution version of choosing an expresme icon for solnet comms. He’d stopped doing that when he was fifteen.
Same with the bridge, which was as basic as you could get. Five consoles with wraparound screens, and flight controls so simple they could have come from the late twentieth century. They didn’t exist, of course; this virtual was being fed into his brain via a cortical interface. Soćko had designed it for them, warning it was dangerous. If the Olyix ever gained access to the Avenging Heretic’s network, the onemind could subvert their minds with a neurovirus.
‘So we’d better not get caught,’ Alik had replied levelly at the planning meeting; that had been eighteen months ago.
Callum watched the data on his console screen, the colourful wave motions of graphs and icons similar to a tarsus lens splash. When he focused on them, the rest of the bridge drifted away, leaving him at the centre of pure information. Space this far out from Delta Pavonis was relatively clear, confirmed by the minimal impacts against the protective distortion field around the ship. Mass sensors confirmed there was nothing other than hydrogen atoms and a few grains of carbon within a thousand kilometres of the hull. Power flow from the fusion generators into the systems seemed to be okay, and the network was glitch free.
‘Who’s first?’ Jessika asked.
The information fell back into the console screen, and Callum was looking around at the other four chairs. They were laid out in a simple pentagon, with Kandara on his right, then Jessika, Alik and Yuri. All of them had spent the last year training for the flight, trying to get their heads around the gravitonic drive and wormhole theory. Their collective age didn’t help; new concepts didn’t sit well in old brain cells. But slowly they’d come to control the simulations without screwing up too badly.
‘I’ll go,’ Callum said.
Alik laughed. ‘You owe me fifty,’ he told Yuri.
Yuri looked glum.
‘What?’ Callum asked.
‘Mr Save-the-world-twice-before-lunch,’ Alik gloated. ‘Of course you’d want to fly this fucker. Feel the glory again.’
‘Hey, I was in emergency detox for eight years, a century ago. I gave up my adrenalin junkie days when I left. I want to get this right because we have to. And I didn’t hear you two pussies racing to volunteer.’
Kandara rolled her eyes. ‘Boys, boys.’
Callum didn’t think her nervecapture routine was turned up, either.
‘Take it, Callum,’ Jessika said. She and Kandara exchanged a smirk.
The control columns on Callum’s console went active. He placed his hands on them. It was a strange feeling. He wasn’t holding the ergonomic handles, which was the vision being fed into his mind. Instead his nerves sensed patterns like slow-moving currents of water. The screen’s information closed in on him again, and he shifted the patterns, perceiving the gravitonic drive’s energies reformatting. The Avenging Heretic’s vector altered. Navigational data expanded, and he started plotting a new course, shifting a shoal of cursors by thought alone. Is my visual focus doing that?
Reassigning his perception and responses to integrate with the ship’s network was still a work in progress. Jessika had said that eventually they wouldn’t even need the bridge simulacrum; control would be an autonomic thought. Callum considered she might have
