Ephialtes (Ephialtes Trilogy Book 1) (20 page)

A hand rose
near the head of the table.  “What is it?” said Venkdt.

A man
answered, his voice thin.  “Isn’t
this .
 . . treason?”
he said.

Venkdt pulled
a weighing-things-up face.  “Well, treason is all a question
of dates, isn’t it?  I prefer to think of it as emancipation.”

“I don’t
think that, in all good conscience -”

“Listen,”
said Venkdt, “if you don’t want to be a part of this we can transfer you to
another department, another role, and you can wait the whole thing out. 
And of course, you can vote ‘no’ when the time comes.  But if the people
vote ‘yes’, as I believe they will, by acting with us you will be serving their
will.  This is a tremendously exciting time to be a Martian.  We will
be forging a new nation.  So no, it’s not treason, far from it.  In
fact, the way I see it, it’s a patriotic duty.”

A flurry of
questions followed.  Most were positive and technical, with a few cool
cynics in the mix.

“Who’s paying
for all this?” one sceptic asked.

Venkdt
replied, “I, as you know, am not short for cash.  And as Executive Officer
of Venkdt here on Mars I have control of the local company funds.  Since I
believe that independence will be overwhelmingly beneficial to the company I
think it’s justifiable to invest now in securing that independence.”

He similarly
batted away other mild objections and in doing so seemed to bring people
further and further on board.  He had obviously thought the whole thing
through with meticulous attention to detail.  His plan - the
elections and constitution - were prêt-à-porter and
the funding, timings and a thousand other details appeared to have been
considered and evaluated and accounted for.  As Venkdt had it, it was more-or-less
a demerger.  Ownership would change, the company crest would change but
the people on the factory floor would hardly notice the difference.

Mars, colony
of Earth, would simply become Mars, independent state.

The meeting
wound down and the managers filed away in little groups, talking excitedly
amongst themselves, invigorated by the intriguing developments and change in
routine.

Kostovich
hung back, pretending to work on his comdev while he waited for the last
straggler, who had button-holed Venkdt, to leave.  Eventually the
woman finished up and said a cheery goodbye to Venkdt as she left. 
Kostovich strode up to take her place.

“You won’t be
cancelling the missile system, then?”

Venkdt
laughed.  “No, I thought about it and it has to be done.  As an
independent nation we’ll need defences anyway.  We can’t let them
intimidate us.”

Kostovich
nodded.

“There’s a
provision for an army, a small one of course, in the draft constitution. 
I was going to have Maya split off half of Venkdt Security and donate it, as it
were, to the new nation as the basis for an army.  I guess they’ll need
weapons, so what the hell.”

“You made the
right choice,” said Kostovich.  “
Igitur
qui
desiderat
pacem
,
praeparet
bellum.”

Venkdt
smiled.  “That’s Latin, isn’t it, you clever bastard?”

Kostovich
smiled too.  “Yes, Mr Venkdt, it is.”

“What is it?”

“It’s from a
treatise by
Publius
Flavius
Vegetius
Renatus
on Roman military principles, written
sometime around the fourth or fifth century.”

Venkdt nodded
along, impressed.  “And what does it mean?”

Kostovich
smiled again.

“If you want
peace, prepare for war.”

Lund and her
fellow passengers had to wait for half an hour after they had heard and felt
the low
clunk
of their shuttle docking with
Ephialtes
before they
were finally allowed to board.  Releasing their harnesses and floating
freely most experienced a giddy, childlike joy at the rare sensation of
weightlessness.

“Well this is
certainly easier than it was getting in,” a colleague said to Lund, and she smiled
politely in return.  They pulled themselves along, making their way
down - maybe it was up - to the airlock
connecting them to
Ephialtes
.

Pulling
herself through the lock Lund looked up and saw the face of Commodore Deborah G
Lucero.  Lucero held out a hand, grabbing Lund’s and shaking it
firmly.  “Welcome aboard
Ephialtes
,” she said.  Lucero was a
handsome woman.  She was tough-looking, with a sparkle in her eye,
and she looked like she could achieve anything she set her mind to.  She
let go of Lund’s hand and was immediately shaking the hand of the next
person.  “Welcome aboard
Ephialtes
,” she said again.  A second
officer behind Lucero guided Lund into to a position further into the room.

“Please just
wait here,” the woman said and went back to collect her next body.  Lund
waited until the room was filled and the hatch had been closed.  Lucero
floated herself into a position at the head of the room.  “Welcome aboard
everyone,” she said.  “Before we do anything we’ll be bringing up the
AG.  This might feel a little weird, so we’ll do it slow and you might
need to manoeuvre a bit so you don’t end up piled on somebody else, or even
worse with somebody piled on top of you.”  Lucero nodded to one of her staff,
who tapped at a comdev mounted on her arm.  “Here we go,” said Lucero.

Lund felt an
odd sensation as she was gently pulled in one direction to bare a wall of the
room.  As instructed, she negotiated with her fellow passengers to find
space for herself as the pulling sensation grew stronger and heavier.  She
lay with her back against the wall and felt a force pushing down on her. 
As she lay there soaking up the sensation she heard Lucero’s voice once
again.  “And that’s that,” Lucero said, “you’re back to 1G where you were
a few short hours ago.  You can stand up now.”

Lund sat
up.  She had the feeling you might get coming out of a swimming pool after
a long swim, or fully clothed.  The pull of gravity, real or artificial,
felt burdensome after just a few hours without it.  Lund noticed clumps of
people discussing it with each other.  There were many smiles and animated
expressions.  It had the feel of a particularly exciting school trip.

“We’ll see
you to your quarters presently,” Lucero said, “but before then just a few basic
things you should know.  Firstly, this is my ship.  I am Commodore
Deborah G Lucero and I am in absolute command here.  This is a military
vessel.  We understand there will be a lot of work going on, and we will
work closely with you and support you on that, but please understand that we
retain ultimate control.  I could bore you with safety regulations but
none of you look stupid to me.  I guess you’re all here because you know
what you’re doing, so I’ll summarise the safety regulations like this; don’t do
nothing stupid, okay?”

The room
tittered, warming to the commodore.  “I’ll let you settle in and we’ll
meet up at the refectory in, say, an hour for some chow, and then I’ll give you
the tour of the ship.”  Lucero nodded to her subordinate.  “Carry
on,” she said, and left the room.

The
subordinate had shown them to their living quarters and Askel had unpacked her
few things.  Her room was small and functional with a bunk, terminal and a
small seating area.  She had lived on
Otus
before and had found the accommodation perfectly adequate.  She wasn’t
planning on spending much time in her room anyway - she had far
more important things to be doing.  When she was in there she would either
be sleeping or working at the terminal.

The chow was
good - standard fare, no better or worse than what Askel was
used to at the Helios refectories back on Earth.  She had made small talk
with the others at her table and had managed to put a few names to faces. 
Soon, Commodore Lucero appeared again, her back ramrod straight as she stood to
one side of the refectory, feet apart and hands behind her.  “Listen up,
people,” she said.  “I am about to take you on a tour of this great
vessel.  I know some of you had a hand in designing and building this great
ship, we all thank you for that, but that doesn’t count for much anymore. 
You are civilians on a military vessel, so I’ll thank you all to stay away from
any restricted areas and to refrain from interfering with the crew and their
operation of the ship.  If you need any special access, if you need to
interfere with standard daily operations, come to me and, of course, I will
accommodate any reasonable requests.  Now, if you’ll follow me, the tour
will begin.”

The
engineers, designers, software specialists and logistics experts from Helios
stood and followed the commodore out of the room.

Ephialtes
was
enormous.  It was shaped like a shallow shoebox.  Four hundred and
fifty-eight metres long, two hundred and fourteen metres wide and sixty-eight
metres deep.  Its purpose was to deliver the twenty-four dropships
it carried in its lower deck to the surface of the planet below as quickly and
accurately as possible, then offer support from above for the duration of the
mission.

The lower
deck held twenty-four chambers, known as bays, twelve on each side, which
housed the dropships.  There was room in the bays to maintain and loadout
the dropships.  Each dropship similarly had its own bays, six on each
side.  The dropships’ bays each contained a drone mech except the twelfth
bay, which contained a command drone.  The commander operated the dropship
either from within his command drone or from the cockpit.  The dropships
could be set to provide automatic flight plans and aerial support.  The
commander could simply dip in and add suggestions or requests to the AIs as and
when necessary.

The mechs
stood four metres tall and had a broadly humanoid shape; legs, torso, arms and
head, though the head was fairly squat and close to the torso.

They were
well defended and armed, with a selection of threat detection systems and
countermeasures as well as pulse weapons and missiles.  The mechs could
act autonomously or, like the dropships themselves, with partial or total
control from their commander.

The bays were
serviced from a large open hangar deck running most of the length of the ship,
stopping where it met the main engine housing two thirds of the way toward the
rear.  Here, the mechanics and mechanic droids could work on maintenance,
weapons loadouts, fuelling and the like.  It was a good space, available
for multiple uses.  The commanders were able to use it for some old-school
fitness training and it had hosted the occasional football game.

Sitting above
the lower, deep ‘ship’ deck were the upper decks.  These were the main
living and operational spaces on the ship.  At the front was the bridge,
which operated as the command and control centre for the whole operation,
dealing with day-to-day management of the spacecraft and mission
control should the dropships be deployed.

Further back
from the bridge were various rooms and sections devoted to the military nature
of the enterprise; intelligence, administration, coms and others.

Next came the
living quarters, divided into sections each with a number of individual dorms arranged
off it.  It was next to the day area, which consisted of a series of
interconnected open areas with various distractions; IVR booths, a bar, video
screens and social areas.

Finally came
the refectory, with the galley between it and the engines beyond.

The tour had
started at the refectory and moved up along the top decks to the bridge. 
The bridge had impressed with its large forward facing widows and air of super-slick
efficiency and order.  The lower decks did not have the same gosh-darn
awesome factor as the ones above but to Lund they were the most
interesting.  They were the guts of the ship, what it was all about. 
It was also where most of her alterations would need to take place. 
Internal access to the engine mountings could be gained at the far end of the
hangar deck, and the deck itself would be used as a workshop for many of the
physical alterations that would need to be made.

The dropship
commanders on board would soon be sent home.  The ship would not be
operational for the duration of the refit and they would not be needed for the
Mars mission.  For that, a select group of combat veterans was being
picked and trained back in the USAN.  Some would be returned that very day
on the ship that had bought the Helios staff to
Ephialtes
.

Lund waited
until the tour had ended before she tried to snag Lucero.  She had let
others ask the obvious or unnecessary questions as they had been shown round
the ship.  Some seemed keen to demonstrate that they were intimate with
excruciatingly fine details about the ship’s construction or operation while
others just abhorred silence and felt compelled to come up with something when
asked the inevitable ‘Any questions?’

Lund had kept
quiet and
refamiliarised
herself with the ship. 
It was the same as
Otus
, with very minor
differences, and Lund felt a childish excitement that she knew the ship without
ever having been there before.  She knew it too from the countless
schematics and production documents she had studied from her time on
Otus
and which she had recently cribbed through
again.  Lund felt a sense of ownership that she grudgingly conceded to
Lucero despite knowing, deep down, that
Ephialtes
, and what was to be
the new and improved
Ephialtes
, was hers.

As the tour
broke up back at the refectory Lucero made a quick exit, heading back toward
the bridge.  Lund had to duck and weave through the lingering crowd and
then semi-sprint down a corridor to catch up with her.  “Commodore
Lucero!” she called after her.  Lucero glanced over her shoulder,
reluctantly slowing to a halt as Lund caught up.  “Commodore, can I have a
minute?”  Lund said, panting slightly.

“Of course,”
said Lucero.  “I’m on my way to the bridge, can we walk and talk?”

“Of course,”
said Lund, but Lucero had not even waited for the reply.  She was striding
briskly off and Lund had to make a little skip to keep pace.  “I’m Askel
Lund, I’m the chief engineer on this project.”  She held her hand out and
Lucero shook it perfunctorily.

“I know who
you are, Dr Lund.  How can I help?”

Lund struggled
to make eye contact with Lucero who, with her straight back, was semi-marching
and making little effort to keep the conversation cordial.

“I was
hoping,” said Askel, “that we would be able to work together on this project,
me from the civilian end and you from the military.  I realise that it
must be difficult for you, having so many civilians on a commissioned vessel,
but it could be equally difficult for us.  Usually we’d be doing work like
this before we handed the vessel over, so we won’t be used to having your
people -”

“In the way?”

“No.  I
was going to say ‘around’.”

“But you
think we’ll be in your way, that’s right, isn’t it?

“Commodore
Lucero, I understand your security concerns, and I understand you have your
ways of doing things that we may not appreciate, but I just want this to run as
smoothly and efficiently as possible.”

They reached
the bridge.

“You do, do
you?” said Lucero.  “That’s good, I think that’s what we all want. 
The sooner we get this done the sooner you can go home and we can get on our
way.”

Lucero
stepped into the bridge.  Lund wasn’t sure about the protocol; did she
have to be invited?  She stepped in anyway and hurried behind
Lucero.  “I was hoping we could get together, me and a few of my senior
people and you and a few of yours, so we could get some of this sorted out.”

Lucero paused
before turning, perhaps sensing that Lund was not sure if she belonged on the
bridge.  Through an is-it-or-isn’t-it-fake
smile she said, “I think that’s a great idea, Dr Lund.  I’ll have one of
my people book one of the operations rooms and I’ll let you know a time.”

Lund faltered
a second.

“You
misunderstand me, Commodore Lucero.”  The bridge seemed unnaturally
quiet.  “I meant in the bar, now.”

A definitely-not-fake
grin spread across Lucero’s face.  She stepped forward to Lund, hand
outstretched.  “I like you, Lund.  You seem like my kind of
gal.”  She took Lund’s hand and shook it firmly.  “Did I shake your
hand already?” she asked.

“Yes. 
Twice, actually,” Lund replied.