Burnt Ice (44 page)

‘Nope. Sorry, Patrick. No ship’s
craft are allowed to de-orbit other than in an emergency. We use the shiny new
elevator, just like everyone else. And besides, it’s fun. We can lock the cabin
door and send out for room service.’

The
Basalt
crew had been
escorted to the elevator by an honour guard of the local battalion. Since the
events on 27’s planet, the attention from the fans of
Basalt’s
crew had
reached fever pitch, with each member being constantly stopped and asked for
photographs or mementos. Patrick had very sensibly had thousands of carbon
nano-tube wafers made with the ship’s silhouette and given them to the crew,
which they signed and gave away. The ACEs were furious with the prospect of no
planet time, until Michael sat them down and explained that they would almost
certainly be mobbed by everyone and in Flint’s case almost certainly abducted,
and so would have no time or space to do any of the things that they wanted to
anyway. Stephine and Veg mollified them further, saying that they were also
staying on board and that they could help in the gardens.

The escort ensured the crew made
it fairly unscathed to the departure lounge. Marko was still grumbling that all
his washing had been stolen from the sergeants’ mess, but at least he had his
dignity intact — Fritz arrived, under escort, wearing only his shorts, stinking
of sex and alcohol, beaming his lopsided smile to all his well-wishers, as he
waved them goodbye.

‘Where are your clothes, Fritz?’

‘Sold ‘em, Harry! Oh wow, it was
such an excellent few days — great music, great parties, and so many hot women!
I even had a whole bunch of guys hitting on me, as well! You slackers should
have been there, it was brilliant. When are we coming back?’

‘When did you last sleep, Fritz?’

‘On
Basalt,
Jan. Hey, I
didn’t want to miss a thing! This being a celebrity is just too good to be
true!’

Michael looked down at the little
man and wondered why they had left him alone for the four days on that planet.

The crew shook hands with their
escorts, thanking them. Michael spent a few extra moments with the MPs when the
cabin attendant greeted them and took them towards the elevator. Marko judged
that it was some twenty-five metres in diameter. Looking up through the glass
ceiling of the lounge, he decided that it was about ninety metres long. They
were all scanned, then taken to their suites, which were fitted out like a
high-class hotel, with floor-to-ceiling transparent outer walls. After the
attendant, who Fritz had been looking at lecherously, had shown them through
the suites, Harry walked her to the door, thanked her and, once the door was
closed, locked it.

Jan opened her case, then opened
panels in the lining to release stacks of tiny artificial wasps and smaller
artificial ladybugs, which gently flew into the suite to hunt out any listening
and observing devices. As they were found by the ladybugs, the wasps landed on
them, then slaved the devices to themselves — altering any marketable images of
the crew and adjusting any audio they made to render it innocuous.

Harry turned to Fritz. ‘Fritz,
you’ve disappointed me! Go take a shower, then bed. We’ll discuss things after
you’ve had a good fourteen hours’ sleep!’

‘But Harry, I want to go have a
look around the elevator. That hostess was a dish. She fancied me. I could
tell!’

‘Nope, she does not. She sees
hundreds of celebrities every week. You, son, are just another one. Shall I ask
Jan as the safety officer to strip you, shower you and put you to bed? I’m sure
that she can do it without causing you too many injuries.’

Fritz looked up at Harry, then at
Jan and the smiling Marko beside her, shrugged, dropped his shoulders and
stalked off like a petulant teenager to the ablutions. Twenty minutes later he
was fast asleep in one of the sleeping bays.

‘Well, on balance, he didn’t
behave too badly. Wiped the allowance that Patrick signed across to him, buying
drinks for hangers-on — and only tried to wrestle three MPs. Better than the
last time we let him loose.’

‘So you think that in another
five or so years he may be almost reasonable, Harry?’

‘You’re kidding, boss. Fritz will
always need minders. I must send notes of thanks to those people who supervised
him this time — he didn’t suspect a thing.’

Rising along the tether line at a
leisurely five hundred kilometres an hour, the elevator capsule allowed its
occupants superb views of the planet, then the star fields, the distant
Orbitals, the ever-present weapons barges, and the Haulers coming in system to
uplift the containers of Helium 3, then jumping back out through the LPs.
Sensors in the panoramic windows watched the eye movements of each suite or
cabin’s occupants, occluding the local star whenever it was visible, and also
protecting them from the flares off the orbiting and moving starships. Marko,
of course, wore his glasses, not using the on-demand magnification that the
windows were capable of generating. He knew that Admin would also censor
anything that they did not want too closely observed.

‘Heads up, people. New lander.
Don’t bother with the window. Tried that, failed. Sure enough, it’s a new one.
The window-generated image shows an older type. Hey, its jump-capable! Must be
a serious piece of kit — to get something so powerful that small! Shall have to
do some research on those.’

One by one, with the exception of
Fritz, they each gave a public address from the elevator’s AV suite, answering
questions from anyone on board the capsule; this performance paid for their
travel. Michael vanished for most of one night, returning with a knowing smile
and the smell of an exotic perfume. Harry ended up in the engineering space for
the better part of a full day, among those he was most comfortable with.

Fritz listened to music, worked
on his esoteric maths — and relaxed. When he had eventually awoken, the first
thing he did was to offer apologies for his behaviour to the crew, most of whom
graciously accepted them. Harry cuffed him solidly in the back of the head,
then told him to grow up. They all knew that such was asking too much of the
man. Jan smiled and handed Fritz a fresh set of clothes she’d bought for him.

Marko and Jan simply enjoyed an
atmosphere approaching domestic bliss: no demands were placed on them by anyone
or anything. Three days after they had lifted away from the planet’s surface,
they arrived at the huge counterweight space station that also serviced the
needs of non-military spacecraft. As they were about to leave the suites, Jan
sent a little message to all the artificial insects, which flew back into her
bag, leaving everything seemingly untouched. As they exited the capsule a
security detail from the station met them and, after identifying them, whisked
them off down a side corridor to where
Basalt’s
Albatross lander waited,
piloted by Veg. They entered the main airlock to see coffin-like containers
waiting for them. Michael looked up into the monitor with raised eyebrows.

Veg’s booming, cheerful voice
greeted them. ‘So, how are you all doing? Good few days away, eh? Payback time.
Sorry guys, we have reason to believe that one or all of you is infested with
something interesting. Harry, I know that you really hate insects, so the best
you can do is go to sleep. Fact is, I would suggest the same for all of you.
Open your luggage and bags, put them in the boxes on the floor, then climb into
the units. Will only take about an hour.’

‘Something that our bioware doesn’t
pick up on, Veg? New tech? Will be interested to see what it’s like. Yeah,
switch me off. And thanks for the consideration, mate. Appreciate it.’

They dropped their bags as
instructed, then climbed into the containers, which closed and sealed over
them. Marko was sure that the others would choose sleep, but as always, he was
fascinated with whatever had been created for them, so stayed alert. Firstly he
felt what seemed like thousands of tiny creatures pouring over him, examining
his clothing, then walking every square millimetre of his skin before entering
every orifice in his body and even crawling into his tear ducts. He shuddered,
trying to control the feelings — he could feel them inside his sinus, his ears
and then streaming down his throat, with a multitude going into his lungs and
down into his stomach. Occasionally he was aware of tiny burning sensations. He
assumed that the minute investigators were finding things that should not be
there. After what seemed like a very long time, they all exited his body. The
door of the container opened to reveal Veg and Stephine, smiling.

‘Marko! Should have guessed you
just had to know what it was like, eh? You’re a hard case, mate. For that I’ll
shout you a couple of best bitter!’

‘So what were they looking for?
And in my case, certainly finding?’

‘Tiny swarm components. Clever
tech, really. In time, they would all emerge and assemble into a series of
cameras and data storage units. We were tipped off about them by the picket
that arrived a few days ago with Colonel Greene’s info. Seems that the Games
Board is intensely interested in taking info — rather than paying for it.’

As Marko climbed from the
container and picked up his carryall, his companions began to wake up, asking
the same questions.

‘Sneaky fucks! That’s a nice
project for me. Then to take them over and feed the bastards whatever we want
to tell them! That gives me the shits!’

‘Yes, it probably would have,
Fritz, as you had the most planted on you, despite your lack of clothes! Don’t
worry. Stephine has isolated a whole colony just for you to muck around with,
assembled from those found in everyone’s luggage, when you feel the need. I’m
guessing that means you’ll start work on them sometime within the next few
minutes!’

‘You’re not wrong there, Veg. I
just hate being spied on by any bastard, good or bad.’

Everyone smiled as the little man
took the proffered container from Stephine and marched towards his work
station.

The major nodded at Fritz’s
departing back. ‘Well, I suppose that’s one way to keep him occupied for a good
while. I’m sure that we can spread his workload, letting him get on with the
job. I would hate to be the creator of those nanobots. I think that they are in
for a nasty surprise sometime in the future. OK, people. We have an appointment
to keep. Leave of absence for us all has been granted, so we might as well push
off. Supposedly, we are off to eyeball that extreme orbit planet we saw on our
journey to the library. Square your kit away, and everyone to their boards in
thirty minutes.’

~ * ~

The
only times, over the next week, that any of the crew saw Fritz was when one of
them either took a meal to him or frogmarched him off for a shower and a change
of clothes.

‘Fritz, mate, how ya doing? Need
anything?’

‘No, I’m great thanks, Marko. Jan
dropped down a whole lot of fruit and Stephine brought me a new juice to try.
Guava, or something that sounds like that. It’s OK, I guess. Still like my
orange juice best. Hey, pull up a chair and check this out. I’ve
reverse-engineered the whole nanotech that they coated us with. Have found the
manufacturer — and the developer as well, from the codings in the tech. All
Administration. So we were wrong to blame the Games Board. They can do a lot
more than just record and store information now. Here, watch this. Just look at
the dust in that dish, there.’

As Marko watched, a framework of
sorts slowly appeared, as a little machine created itself from the dust. He
reached into his pocket, put his glasses on, then increased the magnification.

‘Aw, Fritz! That’s excellent! A
tiny little aircraft. Cute!’

‘Cute?! You’re a pillock
sometimes, Marko. Keep watching.’

Ten minutes later, the tiny craft
lifted off under its own power. It flew around the room, before settling on top
of Fritz’s bald head, then walked down his face and onto his nose. Then it flew
back to the dish and slowly dissolved again.

‘Hey!’ said Marko. ‘That is
serious tech. I suspected it was being developed, but didn’t realise that it
had got to that stage of building itself into different formats.’

‘Yeah,’ said Fritz. ‘Well,
originally it was only a little camera and separate data storage that would
wait to be triggered to transmit its data after it had done its job. But I used
some of the alien maths and physics and reprogrammed the basic building
mechanisms. I can get it to do just about anything.’