Trinidad and the Angel

By Benny C Scott

Living in the 2130s, Graham McDee is an unremarkable young man who already has his fair share of internal and external challenges, and a tendency to have people and events dictate his path. Despite his best efforts, bumping along in life is overtaken by circumstances that no-one he knows seems be able to predict or interpret, let alone control.

Slowly being worn down by his own preoccupations, the world around him descends into a deadly spiral of conflict drawing his ship, the Atmospheric Research Vessel Trinidad and its crew into the maelstrom of espionage, risk and mass murder. Graham McDee wonders if something he did has made it all happen.

In the middle of everything, Graham’s employer seems to be hiding far too much, including technologies that are leaps and bounds ahead of anyone else. The Trinidad has a target painted on its hull as it gets pulled further and further into the fray.

Will Trinidad find refuge in the embrace of the enigmatic Angel Station? Let Graham tell you his story...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Benny C Scott
• Release date: Jan 17, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310459511

Benny C Scott

I have worked in teaching, care and custodial fields for over thirty years, living in six different countries on four continents. Prior to taking that general direction, I worked at a number of different jobs -and lack of jobs- which has given me a broad experience in a lot of areas. Trinidad and the Angel is my first published work and quite naturally, I haven't given up the day job. Due to the nature of my work and the clients I work with, Benny C. Scott is a pen name.

Book preview

Foreword

The basis for this story began well over twenty years ago with a working title ‘Going Mad in Trinidad’. I wanted to write a firsthand account of someone who was not high up in any organisation, not very knowledgeable, lacked confidence and was carrying around so much emotional baggage that he was bordering on becoming dysfunctional. In short, a fairly average young man who had no super-powers other than an irrepressible personality and the ability to think the worst. I also wanted to have him experience world-shattering events around him but to be an observer or a pawn rather than a king or queen on the chessboard of affairs.

Through the intervening years, I worked on Going Mad in fits and starts, often rewriting and changing huge swathes of it. Fitting writing into a busy schedule of work and other commitments meant that sometimes it would be weeks without anything being written. Consequently, the story became disjointed. Feeling it was about time it was finished, I set to one spring and summer, forcing myself to unify the story lines and work towards the ending I had planned. During this time, the title morphed to Trinidad and the Angel. It was published in 2014 but I was never happy with the finished result, feeling that I’d rushed it and I withdrew the book from sale. Off I set again, trying to work through and improve, constantly rewriting and changing things. Characters grew or faded, plots thickened or evaporated. And here we are now with the second edition. Truth be told, I’m never happy with my work and if I were to read it through again, I expect I’d change an awful lot. Proof-reading my own work for me is synonymous with rewriting.

How much of the human and psychological element in this story is based on real life I shall leave unanswered except to say that Graham is not me but is a an amalgam of people I’ve met and the challenges I’ve seen people face during my professional and personal life. None of the characters are based on a real person. OK, maybe the therapeutic horse is real.

Some of the words or attitudes expressed by the characters or entities in this book may be distasteful to some readers. They are provided to create a background and a counterpoint to the personal elements of the story and should not in any way be considered to be representative of my own opinions or points of view.

I am not a scientist or an astronautical engineer. Although I have a background in aviation, it was long enough ago that Concorde was still the future. With a bit of luck, I got close enough with the science, the technology and the maths. Please forgive the errors.

As for the ending, I hate cliff-hangers, they feel manipulative, but the story is longer than one volume and besides, I wouldn’t be able to indulge my characters’ peculiarities as much if I cut swathes out. I don’t know why but my favourite in this volume is Vince.

For those wondering, I employ British English most of the time (especially spelling and formation of irregular verbs) with some vocabulary from the East Midlands. Generally, the words are in the Oxford English Dictionary but a quick Internet search should find most of those that are not. Cultural references usually have a British slant but may be entirely fictional. I am happy to answer questions but not to engage in endless debates over Oxford commas.

Please enjoy the story and maybe identify with our protagonists. Most of us are heroes in our own quiet way; some just have history thrown across their path.

— Benny C Scott

Table of Contents

Forward

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Characters

Vessels

Excerpt

Benny

Chapter 1

The tops of the heads in the rows in front of me bobbed in time with the juddering turbulence, becoming ever more boisterous as we descended. I felt nauseous looking at them so I turned to peer out of the window again, at the fading light of our thick shroud, now racing over the top of the wing.

A transatlantic flight will give you a lot of worrying time and in a rare show of efficiency, I’d used it to the full. Yes, there’s films, sleeping and playing games but still, there are gaps for the anxious mind to avail itself of. The closer we got to our destination, the more active and focused my concerns grew. Now, as we descended, my thoughts nervously hopped from one worry to another, like a skittish bird, wanting to rest but fearing the circling silhouette above.

The sunlight leached away as we sunk into the grey miasma, the bizarre dance in front of me still matching the aircraft’s erratic lurches.

Here there be dragons, I thought. Although I may have been overstating it. Maybe not though. Would I rather face dragons?

Oh shit, has it come down to trying to analyse reality versus myth?

On the first glimpse of ground below us, anxiety dug its claws into my stomach, the plane emerging from the impenetrable clag into the slightly less murky blanket shrouding the British Isles. Half-formed features silently slipped past us in the dull grey light below. An inauspicious arrival.

Two days, that’s all I was scheduled to stay for but that return flight seemed out of reach. I sank further into a gloomy sense of foreboding, fuelled by the ominous palette of the countryside down there.

Think of something else.

Home meant visiting mum. She wasn’t expecting me so her reaction would be unpredictable.

Why are people so unstable like that? Just like the crew on the Darwin, that was hardly the best of environments. If I hadn’t been transferred out from there when I was, who knew what would have happened? This is not helping. Why does trouble always follow me? Why does going home fill me with such terror?

The aircraft hauled itself round to line up on its final approach, the shudders beating time for my anguished spasms. I had instructions, clear instructions and I ran over them time and again, anticipating things going wrong at every step.

Oh shite, just get it over with.

There was a lot of rain in the air and some of the standing water below reflected back what light there was, looking like unlikely pools of molten lead among the patchy browns and blacks of the land.

Lack of sunlight and the generally dismal appearance of England only added to the real cause of my discomfort this early morning. This was my homeland, a country that despised me for what I was and would rather I didn’t darken their door. Had I been travelling under the English passport that I used to leave this country four, nearly five years ago, the reception I would receive on touching down would have been unpleasant to say the least. Once Out, Always Out was the rule they applied to people like me. The rhetoric was of a time long-passed of glorious empire with pomp and pride. Me and my kind didn’t fit into that scene, that fiction.

My employer had insisted two years ago that I obtain Mars Protectorate citizenship and it was with the terracotta-coloured pass-book that I would now enter into the country.

Why do we still use books for passports?

They’d know who I was of course, but as a temporary visitor on a Mars passport, they’d be more likely to let me through and be glad I’d soon be gone. What a world we live in.

As the ground finally raced up to meet us, the wheels bumped and then rumbled along the runway with the slowing thump-thump-thump and the sharp roar of the reverse thrust, pushing us forward in our seats. The whole dismal scene outside the window disappeared in a whoosh of galloping spray. Now the jitters set to work in earnest. A bleak sense of having made a very serious mistake threatened to overwhelm me and I sat back in my seat, eyes closed, drawing deep breaths, trying to ease my fears.

The first hurdle, a very big hurdle: Immigration and Passport Control, where bitter and unwelcoming jobsworths dressing in silver-piped navy blue uniforms held up my passport and amused themselves pointedly comparing my nervous face against the anodyne photo, deciding my fate after subjecting me to sarcastic scrutiny.

‘Where have you come from today, sir? Brazil, is it?

‘What were you doing in Brazil, then? Is that so?

‘Work as a cleaner, do we, sir? They let you fly, do they?

‘How long are you planning to visit the Kingdom of England for?

‘Who are you meeting? You have family here?

‘How do we know you won’t try to stay in England? There’s no need for that tone, sir.

‘What is the purpose of your visit to our country?

‘What exactly is your position, sir?

‘Can you demonstrate you have adequate resources so you don’t place a burden on us while you’re here?

‘You are to leave the Kingdom of England in no more than forty-eight hours, do you understand that? Do you understand? I need you to answer out loud, nodding is not sufficient.’

Oh shit, why am I doing this; why did I agree to it? Shit, shit, shit, shit on it!

Body, bags and belongings screened, I was now in but not of the nation state with its displays of flags and hatred. I quickly caught myself scanning for potential threats like returning to an old, shameful habit—

Yes, I know, it all sounds a bit dramatic, but well, I assure you, it’s not overwrought. It really does feel that bad.

Chapter 2

Two and a half days later, I stared out of the window of a different airliner, enjoying an altogether brighter disposition, hoping for the welcoming vista of exquisite turquoise and blue with verdant green islands of my imagination that would signify that two of the most bizarre days of my life in England were a whole ocean behind me. The after-shocks would no doubt resonate for some time though.

Flying over the churning delta of the Amazon river was indeed a sight but the swirling muddy waters were shrouded in a thick ochre haze, shafted by the shadows of scattered clouds drifting in the equatorial sunlight. I’d missed that fleeting view of the privately-owned northern coastline that was still as pretty as a picture and a super-rich man’s paradise. If you wanted to live a pleasant life on Earth, you needed money by the bucket. At least, I was safe and out of reach of His Majesty’s goons, I hoped.

The Amazon elevator cable was the biggest commercial elevator in the western hemisphere, anchored near Macapá, Brazil. Known colloquially as the Porto cable, this was my stepping off point back into work, back into my undramatic, ordinary life. Waiting for me above would be a brand new ship, the ARV Trinidad.

I caught a glimpse of the elevator cable just before we touched down, a shimmering cord tying the earth to its firmament. Thousands journeyed up the magical beanstalk every week, away to new, hopeful horizons as I had done over two years ago.

Disembarking the aircraft, passing through immigration and security and boarding the tube for Bellco’s transfer complex at Porto do Céu was far, far simpler than my arrival back home in England two days before. Once I’d left the well-worn arrivals hall of Macapá International, the state-run airport, I was stepping into another world. The huge Bellco tube station dome with its vast, sun-spangled vaults, filigreed silvered arches and breath-taking arrays of tropical plants and flowers gave the impression that the heavens themselves were reaching down and beckoning weary travellers into an exotic realm beyond our own.

The covered area spanning the burgeoning transport hub was immense. Its lush appearance was a mockery of what had once been the Earth’s treasure chest. Even I knew that and I failed History and Geography. By the station entrance, exotic scents filled the air and mixed with the aroma of delicious food. I grabbed a pasty and a drink and sat on my own eating it, eyeing the multi-coloured throngs passing by on their travels, without paying much heed to any of them.

Along with the sense of relief, arriving in Brazil stirred in me an odd, mournful feeling. Home —England— was no longer home to me, no more welcoming than I suspected the ruins of Moscow would have been. Yet, there was a perception of loss hanging just out of reach. I’d felt it before when I landed in Tampa, a young man starting a new life by running away from adversity. And I’d had to leave the Darwin because of problems too, come to think of it. In fact, I hadn’t really stayed very long at anything, I always seem to attract the wrong kind of attention in the end. It doesn’t do any good to dwell on that kind of thing so I tried to dismiss the notion and finished my snack before I made my way to the tube station platforms, my surveillance team of negative thoughts following close behind.

As I stood in one of the long security lines that snaked across the bright hall, they caught up to me again and my mind kept forcing itself back to the trip to England. A lot of things had happened. My somewhat unclear ‘mission’, the discovery that mum had fled the country, dealing with the authorities in the city and at the airport and the encounter with our long-time neighbour aunty Angela.

Find something else to think about.

Just before I stepped forward to be processed by security, I recognised a couple of fellow passengers from the flight over who were in the queue next to me. They were both white and I wondered if they’d had the same trouble boarding the flight out of England as I’d had. Probably not. I caught one of them looking at me, making me feel a bit nervous again. He nodded and I thought he smirked at me and then they were gone.

Passing through to space-side, my shore leave was now officially over even if I wasn’t going up-cable for a while. First of all there was quarantine for anyone going up to Bellco’s facilities. My travel orders showed me being in Porto for twenty-one days, longer than the required fourteen but a chance to spend a little time unwinding in the recreational facilities provided for those incarcerated there as well as receive whatever medicals and training we needed to maintain currency.

The accommodation I’d been assigned was small but up to the usual Bellco standards; they knew how to keep their workers on-side even if we were ‘fat, dumb and happy’ through the perpetual lack of information. I dropped my bags on the floor by the bunk I had decided was mine —it was a double room but I was the only occupant for now.

Travelling makes me feel grimy so as a matter of urgency I shed my dirty clothes and made for the bathroom. Just as I stepped into the shower, the door chime sounded. That wasn’t at all predictable, was it? Rushing to dry, I pressed the opener. It was Mr McClintock.

‘Did you have a pleasant trip?’ he asked, walking in unbidden as I struggled to fasten the towel around my waist.

‘Mildly. Could have been better.’

‘Any problems?’

‘Uh, yes,’ I replied, sounding like a petulant teenager as I used my hands to show him I was talking about the colour of my face.

‘Never experienced it myself but it can’t be good. And you have the wand?’ Any pretence at pleasantries were discarded. I didn’t mind, I wanted to get back into the shower. Standing half-naked in front of a superior is not conducive to well-being.

‘Yes, it’s here,’ I said, diving into my carry-on bag and dragging the computer out of the tangle of other personal items still not unpacked.

‘Does it work OK?’

‘I haven’t used it, to be honest. Should I have done?’

‘No, no, it doesn’t matter. I’ll take it with me.’ He took the wand out of my hand, paused a few seconds and then added, ‘Thank you. We do appreciate it, you know. You’ll get yours back when you board.’

‘I don’t suppose I’ll ever know what I’ve actually done, will I?’

He smiled and gave an amused grunt, ‘No, not for now, anyway.’

McClintock’s departure was as abrupt as his arrival and with it, my espionage career came to an end.

Ha, espionage career!

The instructions had been simple enough, bordering on fool-proof: on arriving in England, take the train into Nottingham station, go to the King’s Rest coffee shop on the platform (no King had ever been there) and order a brie and cranberry panini with a double espresso and a frangipani sweet. Innocuous enough but it was all important for some reason, probably because it was an unusual choice and it would take time to prepare. Then I was to sit alone in the café, reading for no more than two minutes from my wand computer which I would then retract and place on the table whilst watching the trains out of the window and eating my food as if I hadn’t a care in the world. Once I’d finished eating, I would pick up the wand and carry on with the rest of my trip as if nothing had happened. The device would be swapped during the time that I spent not looking at it on the table.

‘You must be very clear that you are not to look at the wand under any circumstances,’ McClintock had insisted.

What could go wrong? I had no idea who would do the switch or how and no idea why subterfuge was needed. It must have been important because I had been made to rehearse the whole thing over and over. I would place the device on the table, a ‘casual’ distance, just beyond the plate but not so far away as to look unnatural and then pick it up as I got up to leave. They were the simplest of instructions but I had to follow them to the letter. Still, I’d never done anything like it before and despite the fact that the unsettling security man called McClintock had treated the whole business as almost of no consequence, I doubted that it would be viewed that way if I was somehow caught in the act. They hadn’t explained why the wand was important, whether the ‘lost’ wand or the ‘gained’ one was important or who it was intended for. Nothing. I was a mule, pure and simple. And I knew what happened to mules when they got caught.

Although I felt every eye in the café was upon me and keeping my cool was infinitely more difficult than in the practice sessions, it had all passed off as planned, other than some raggedy-arsed clown behind me shouting about the devil and cheese and suchlike while I queued to place my order. Mental health was becoming a serious problem the newsnets said. Well, that much was obvious. Anyway, everyone in the queue got agitated about him but he made himself scarce when security arrived and all returned to normal. As for the switch, despite desperately straining my peripheral vision, I didn’t see who made the exchange or when, which was frustrating. All my worries about participating in the little game seemed to be unfounded. Just being in the city with its horrible environment of hostile eyes and victorious gloating was not so easy —and to be honest, was what had worried me the more than silly spy games anyway. It was markedly worse than when I’d left the country. The ubiquitous flags draped from the buildings, the number of uniforms on the streets and martial music blaring out created a sinister atmosphere. We’d grown up with a lot of that but being away from it pointed up its repugnance. That living elsewhere had shown me that there were other ways to live just highlighted how stupid it all was. Anyway, I was out of it now.

I’d also had a rather interesting experience when I went home to visit mum but McClintock wasn’t going to hear about that!

Thankfully, only a day after my arrival in Porto, a new room-mate appeared to give me something useful to distract myself. Nathan was a good-looking chap from Reno, Nevada and I sort of liked him from the off. At least, he didn’t have any obvious signs of being anything other than a decent sort —apart from being a little shy and the fact that he would be a hit with all the women because of his looks. He didn’t bat an eyelid at seeing my face for the first time, which boded well. Nathan told me he was assigned to the Trinidad as a Maintenance Technician on One Shift. That meant he would be working with me, on the same ship, in the same job, on the same shift. Little wonder we’d been roomed together. Consequently, my interest in him became more than passing, we were going to be spending a lot of time together.

Because we were going to be taking out a vessel that was new to us, we had some type certification to go through. For those of us on maintenance, there wasn’t a great deal to catch up on and it didn’t involve any simulator work like many of the control, reactor and engine teams had to do. Looking at her specifications, Trinidad was a very powerful ship but there were no major innovations as far as maintenance was concerned. The engines were an upgrade of a tried and tested fusion design even if the reactor was vastly overpowered for the application. Again, this was not something that would trouble Nathan and me, or Daniella, Pete and Yolo, who were the Two Shift maintenance team. We all had to sit through a couple of lectures and then gen up on equipment specs in a room full of large-screen comms. A lot of the time was spent chatting though, since the study requirements were hardly taxing.

The facility was big enough that it was a whole week before I bumped into Ross Chandleri, who was to be my new senior on the Trinidad. Despite being in Maintenance, Ross didn’t attend our orientation sessions with the rest of the team. He never explained what he’d been doing that was so important for him to miss out on this; that was fairly typical of Ross.

I’d been part of the same crew as Ross aboard the Stellar Investigator, a ship whose name promised far more than it ever delivered. The ‘gator as we called her, was an old ship and had been taken out of fleet service after we docked at the up-cable Günter von Landau station, fate unknown. Although I had been a registered member of the ‘gator crew, for eighteen months of my two-year fresher tour and for no reason I was ever given, I had been seconded to the Darwin, another Bellco ship. We made supply runs between outer planet orbital stations and I didn’t much like the Darwin or her crew. My room-mate aboard that ship, Callum Cresley, known as CC by his cronies, had been unpleasant, thuggish and gross (I neglected to tell him CC sounded like ‘sissy’), always trying to get me to view the most obscene, undoubtedly illegal videos and then mocking me in front of his ‘crew’ when I turned away from watching them. It wasn’t because I had any great moral strength, just that what I glimpsed of the videos was revolting and degrading. Seeing them leering at Cresley’s ‘entertainment’ filled me with contempt for pretty well all my fellow crew members. Their day-to-day conversation was disgusting and even though I tried not to listen, what I heard made me think of things I didn’t want to be thinking about. As my secondment progressed, the attitude of Cresley and his group of apes towards me deteriorated and I spent the last few weeks of my time on the ship avoiding both him and a grunting thug named Dominicus Harris-Lang, aka Dom, who’d threatened to kill me over some imagined slight. It wasn’t a very good introduction to working in space and I damned near threw the towel in there and then. Fortunately for me, moving back over to the ‘gator had changed my mind. The crew of the ‘gator for the most part, couldn’t have been a greater contrast to the sullen, violent bullies on the Darwin. Even the ‘gator herself had been a more pleasant ship despite her age.

As we found out about a week before departure, delivery of our ship, Trinidad, which was brand new, had been delayed. That was an unsatisfactory state of affairs but not one I was worried about. Along with the entire crew of the ‘gator, with whom I’d spent the last six months, I had been transferred to Trinidad. There was just a handful of leavers and replacements, of whom Nathan was one.

Ross was going to become the new senior of One Shift since Jared had left us. I never quite knew how to take Ross. He was a bit harsh for my liking and he didn’t seem to have much personal respect for people even if he was not overtly hostile to me. We’d shared a room on the ‘gator but being on opposite shifts, we hadn’t seen a lot of each other and he kept himself to himself when we did cross paths. At first, I thought that I’d fallen into the clutches of yet another CC but he was just not very sociable with me. Ross wasn’t in any way comparable to anyone on the Darwin but I was unable to break through the idea that he felt either he was better than me or that I was somehow not worthy of being treated in a civil manner. But because I didn’t see a lot of him, it may have been more my imagination than reality. Well now that would change and I would find out for sure whether he liked me or not. When he did finally join us in the conversion training, he didn’t seem to be holding any kind of grudge against me other than him being the same terse person I had known before. I realised he was probably like that with everyone as he explained to Nathan and me that the Trinidad was being fitted out with a new type of navigation control system but that we’d have to go to the Donald Stevens, one of Bellco’s giant factory stations in the outer system, to pick up the ship and to receive even more crew training. As for this new enhancement, we’d find out more when we were aboard, he said, as if we were impatient children. Yet again, that was typical Bellco, not telling us. To get us to this Donald Stevens we would take possession of the Martinique, a sister ship of Trinidad, and ferry her to the Donald Stevens, whereupon she would get the same upgrade and her own crew. Because Martinique was to all intents and purposes identical to Trinidad that meant that at least we wouldn’t have to go through even more type approval training before we left Porto.

If it all sounds complicated, that’s because it was and that was pretty well how Bellco ran its business. You’d never guess from the general ignorance and perpetual state of confusion among the minions on board its ships that not only did Bellco maintain a large and diverse fleet of its own vessels but that it was at the leading edge of technological and scientific development for space travel and its associated industries.

Our ship assignment was liable to change at the last minute and until we were underway, there was no saying what we’d be on or where we’d be going.

At least still being in Porto allowed me to contact mum at uncle Clayton’s in Florida. She had left England without telling me a few weeks before I arrived on my leave. As soon as the call connected, I could see she looked a lot brighter than I remembered her being when I last saw her. Maybe a little greyer and older-looking but with a far less pronounced grimace than she’d had ever since I could remember.

Mum was a refugee now and having her brother living in Florida made it the obvious place to go. At least she’d have a warm family welcome. Florida was where I’d gone when I left England and it wasn’t instituting any racial segregation, so I hoped she’d be safe.

‘What’s your uh, legal situation?’ I asked her.

‘Clayton says I have a good claim for asylum. We put in the forms when I first arrived and it looks like it will be accepted. They’re good people here, you know.’

‘Yeah, I lived there, remember?’

‘Of course you did. I hear you went home, how were things there?’

So, she’s spoken to Angela then. I tried to read her expression.

‘I couldn’t get in the house. Auntie Angela let me stay at hers,’ I replied, feeling more than a bit uncomfortable.

‘Mm-hmm.’

She knows! I’m sure she knows what happened.

‘Mrs Turner is selling the house for me. Did she tell you that?’

‘No, I didn’t know.’

‘We won’t get best price for it but we should do good enough with it being near the hospital and the university. When it goes through, she’ll ship my stuff out to me. Yep.’

‘That’s good news. I was worried we’d lose it all.’

‘We still might. Let’s not count our chickens, Graham. When are you coming to see me? I haven’t seen anything of you for years and years.’

‘Not this trip. Maybe next time, eh?’ Totally ignoring the fact I’d just attempted to visit her as usual. Anyway, I would have loved to visit Florida again, feel the sun and the heat, swim in the pools.

‘Have you told Bellco what your new address is?’ I asked, as the thought flashed up.

‘No. It can wait.’

‘No, it’s important. You need to do it straight away, you’ll forget if you don’t.’

‘Can you do it for me?’

‘I suppose I’ll have to won’t I?’ She always asked me to do official stuff like that. I was surprised she didn’t ask me to do the asylum work.

Speaking with mum often ended as if something important was being left unsaid. I never could put my finger on what it was but ending sentences with an expectant ‘yep’ didn’t help. It was as though she were somehow disappointed in me or I’d let her down or something. I would be unsettled for days afterwards.

Mum had brought us up on her own even before dad left. It was a tough time for us, I had been expected to do so many of the tasks that dad should have done, fill in forms, look after my younger brother, be stoic. Mum couldn’t even say his name anymore and always just referred to dad as ‘him’, and that with venom.

Occasional visits from ‘uncle’ Allan Magee, a Northern Irish man who was sort of creepy and frightened me, constituted the only male contact David and I ever saw in the house. Did I miss dad? Despite his loud arguments with mum, his shouting about the house, his constant, cutting criticism of me, all of which would result in me balling my eyes out until one day I decided never to cry again, I sort of missed him. He should have been there for us but the only reason I knew he’d gone back to Scotland was because Allan Magee, who’d worked with dad, would tell mum things which David and I would eavesdrop on. The worst part of the whole sad business was that any trouble we boys got into was put down to mum being a black single parent, even before dad left. It was like there was no way we could turn out good —and of course, she was the one who’d looked after us while that bastard had neglected and then abandoned us but that never got mentioned by our accusers. Still, it was a mixed marriage and they never worked anyway, did they? That’s why they were now illegal in England. Mum had done the right thing by moving.

By the time I made my third call to mum, just before we were due to go up-cable, she said she had a lawyer who was finalising her asylum papers and aunty Angela had phoned her to say that there was already a buyer interested in the house. At least things looked better for the family but I was anxious now to get to the ship. The last thing she said was that she had some of my papers to send to me but wouldn’t elaborate on what they were. That was typical of mum, it wasn’t so much enigmatic as just bloody evasive. I told her to do it now then because I was going to be shipping out at any time. As if Bellco had been listening in, and after all the waiting around, there was a message waiting for me when I disconnected from mum. We were under an hour’s notice to be at the cable station. I forgot all about the papers but at least I’d managed to change her contact address with Bellco. She hadn’t done it.

Chapter 3

The never-pleasant, hours-long trip up the cable was made worse because we went up in a special ‘observation car’ that had a transparent shell, like a giant bubble, so that it looked like our seats were suspended in mid-air. I’d been told it was used to entertain special guests of Bellco. In reality, it was nauseating and terrifying and spectacular, all in one. I think most of us, me included, spewed at some point. I wondered what the ‘special’ guests had done to deserve that little marvel of technology.

We boarded Martinique and I led Nathan on a search for our quarters. It was Nathan’s first assignment, his first real voyage but I was now a seasoned pro, this being my third tour. As we were on a sister ship to Trinidad and the layout was the same, we’d have the same room assignments on both ships.

Once in the room, I indicated which would be my bunk and Nathan graciously ‘chose’ the one above. He secured his bag while I went over to the comm console and booted it up. I wanted to see what our departure time was and our destination —I knew it was Donald Stevens already but I had no idea where it was in the solar system other than being a long way out. Beyond Jupiter had even been suggested by Gasparo, though I doubted it was that far. Anyway, neither were available but there was a shift rota already and we were due to start at oh-eight hundred hours, ship time. That gave us about an hour and a half to get sorted so we both investigated the layout of the room before stowing our bags and arranging our personal lockers. My old wand, out of bounds while I went to England, was secured alongside the comm. That was nice of them, someone had put it there for me. We received a message from Ross telling us that we didn’t need to report for our shift at eight o’clock because we were launching soon anyway; any work that needed doing could be done under acceleration, which would be easier. He’d already checked our work station to make sure everything was secure, so no worries on that front. Efficient.

After Nathan returned, we both lay strapped on our bunks in silence for a bit, taking in the atmosphere of the ship that was to be our home for some weeks. I could hear and feel the hum of the ship and the slight hiss of recirculating air. There were occasional bumps and scrapes from people moving themselves or objects around in other parts of the vessel. I took a deep breath and allowed myself to absorb the life of a ship again. It felt good to be back on board —even if this was a new vessel to us and we weren’t going to be on it for very long.

Martinique and Trinidad were two of a series of five so-called atmospheric research vessels and were built for both space and planetary environments. This meant that the exterior lines were more streamlined and, to my eye, more graceful than a ship that spent its entire life in deep space. The need for supersonic aerodynamics demanded that. Furthermore, the ship’s internal layout and culture would be unrecognisable to a pure space crew. We could be oriented for two planes of gravity as well as for weightlessness. Built as a blended-wing design which could fly through an atmosphere if necessary and actually land on a planet surface, we would nonetheless be undertaking mostly deep space missions. In atmospheric mode, ‘down’ was towards the heat shielding and landing gear, like one of those old shuttles. The underside of the ship was like a conventional aeroplane; the wings were variable geometry to cope with atmospheric densities ranging from almost absent to that of Earth. In many ways our ship was very similar to a landing assault craft but we were smaller and had no roll-on-roll-off facility for carrying vehicles, and we weren’t armed to the teeth.

Just like ‘gator, which was also a dual mode vessel, although much older, when we were in a weightless regime or under acceleration, ‘down’ was towards the stern of the ship where the main engine nozzles were. Changing from one regime to another was done like clockwork by the crew. Tables, chairs, workstations and so forth all had to be rotated from their former location to the ‘new’ floor, at right angles to the old one. Floors became walls and walls became floors. Almost every door on the ship was large and square-shaped to accommodate being used in both regimes. The ships had been designed for this from the outset but it was quite an undertaking to be completed and double-checked before the ship accelerated or entered gravity. At least we didn’t have to change modes that often; in the time I’d been aboard the ‘gator, we’d only done it the once, that was a surface landing on Callisto, a low gravity moon devoid of atmosphere.

In space dock or any other time we were under zero g, ‘down’ remained the stern of the ship because it was the standard regime. In this mode, the ship was like a tall building with the main engine control rooms, reactors and our maintenance station in the basement, passing through accommodation, common areas, right on up to the control and executive areas of the ship at the top (or nose).

Atmospheric capability meant that these had to be sturdy ships, much stronger than those limited to deep space regimes. That strength meant that the ship could also be made a lot more manoeuvrable than a deep space ship of similar size because the structure could take the additional loads, even if the crew found it uncomfortable. Atmospheric ships of this size were among the few ships apart from military combat craft, that had g-suits for the whole crew, just in case we had to work the ship in a very high-g environment. I’d never worn my g-suit in anger so I didn’t know how well they worked or how well this or any other ship coped with being put under such a strain. I’d been up to four g acceleration for over an hour but the suits weren’t needed for that unless you were flight crew. The rest of us just lay on our bunks or in our manoeuvring seats wishing it would end soon.

Looking at the layout on the comm, I could see that this ship was divided into five sections starting at the bottom with Red, Green, Orange, Blue and then Purple at the top. Each section had its own purpose and had several numbered decks. Every room on each deck was also numbered, like in a hotel. Looking at the ship from the side as if it were an aircraft, the lower half of the ‘fuselage’, below the main deck, was dedicated to reactor mass, stores, cargo, environmental and DuPlessy bays. There was a large life-support unit at the ‘back’ along with recycling and aft water tanks. The cargo section was modular and could accept a cassette DuPlessy bay holding up to three more DuPlessy craft in addition to our two permanent ones or even additional crew quarters if necessary. Most often though they acted as a bay for mission-specific equipment packs. At least Bellco had seen fit to provide us with a wealth of information about our mount and I found it interesting to get to know what we were entrusting our lives to.

Sinking into my bunk and my own thoughts, memories of what had happened in Nottingham started to pour over me yet again. They had never been far from my mind and had overtaken the unpleasantness of the Darwin as my main cause for discomfort. I was jolted into the real world again when I remembered the message I wanted to get to aunty Angela so I sent Nathan off to explore and bring back coffee for the machine while I made the call. It was after midday in England and I got straight through to Angela’s handset.

‘Hi, aunty Angela, it’s Graham.’

‘Oh hi, Graham. Where are you?’ She smiled a little, I think because I still called her aunty.

‘I’m back at work, just waiting aboard my ship. I spoke to mum and she’s settling in very well. She told me what was happening back there.’

‘Yes, the house is practically sold. That’s good news, isn’t it?’ Before I could reply, she carried on, ‘How are you? Are you OK? Your trip back went alright?’

‘Yeah, there were no problems at all. Well, a bit of hassle at the airport before boarding but nothing I haven’t had before.’

‘I was worried when I didn’t hear from you. I mean, I knew you were OK because your mum said you were but I was a bit concerned for your… um, well, for how you were feeling.’

I was sure I could hear embarrassment in her voice. She hadn’t seemed embarrassed at the time.

‘No, I’m fine, honest.’

‘Will you keep in touch?’ she asked, changing the subject.

‘When I can. It’s not very easy once we get underway but I will try to.’

Before I’d finished saying it, she interrupted me, ‘Oh Graham, I nearly forgot! Guess what! I’ve been offered a job with Bellco as a security consultant. I’m leaving for Reno after I’ve worked out my month’s notice, which is next week!’

‘Oh wow!’ That was quick, shockingly quick, but I was pleased for her. ‘Will you be off-planet?’

‘I don’t know yet. They don’t have a very normal application procedure, do they?’

‘No, it’s a bit weird. I think they do psychometrics without you knowing about it. There isn’t a formal interview and I think they do a lot of background research. Be prepared to be poorly paid and under-informed but well-fed,’ I said. ‘Look, aunty Angela, I have to go, we’re preparing to depart. I’ll message you and then you can let me know how things go on in Reno and where you’re going to be posted. Bye.’

And with that, I closed the link and waited for Nathan to return so I could have some coffee to settle my nerves. I wondered if I’d see Angela at some point in the future. That would be interesting. I started remembering our time together and still couldn’t say whether it had been good or bad.

By the time Nathan got back to the room, the comm was announcing the departure time.

‘Is there anything more we need to do before we depart?’ Nathan asked when we were secured in our seats.

‘Nope, Ross has responsibility for making sure that the maintenance station is secure. If he needed us he would have said so. We just have to sit here and strap in until it’s time to go. You know departure procedure, I suppose.’

‘Sure. But I’ve never actually launched before,’ he said, to my surprise, ‘I’ve done it in the sim though.’

‘Didn’t you go out in the training ship?’

‘We went on board and ran some simulations but we didn’t actually leave the dock.’

‘So you’re a virgin, then?’ I joked.

‘What? Oh, I guess so,’ he replied.

‘Well, it’s not a lot different from the sim,’ I reassured him.

At oh-nine hundred hours, the first ship’s notice sounded. Chief Officer Barratt’s rich Caribbean tones instructed us to prepare for departure and take stations, then at departure minus five, the ‘stations’ gong chimed, followed by further gongs at minute intervals until we launched. The whole business was a bit of a rigmarole but it did save people from getting hurt when the ship was manoeuvred out of dock and then accelerated to one g.

Anyway, we sat there waiting to depart, me waiting to get another voyage underway and Nathan anticipating his first true space voyage. It was to be a longish flight too —if I didn’t know its exact location, I did know that the Donald Stevens was way out past the asteroid belt, in the outer system. I did know it would take at least a good few weeks to get there. Not the furthest trip we could make, but quite a good start for Nathan’s logbook.

Chapter 4

Whirrs, hisses and solid metallic clunks of the airlocks closing and the access bridges being retracted told of the ship being readied for departure. A tug trolley took us away from the docks and cast us off into open space. There was but the faintest sense of moving. We had been berthed near the huge power arrays of the Günter von Landau station, Bellco’s dedicated space port, and the ship could not just lift away from the station but had to be manoeuvred out along various taxiways by means of the tugs, which ran on tracks like a theme park roller coaster edging its excited riders to the big drop. It took an age to haul us out into open space before turning to a departure attitude. And that was it, we were on our way, pushed down into our seats as the main engines showed us what they were made of. Once the acceleration was constant, the bing-bong of the chime told us we were OK to move about the ship.

One of the odd things about departure was the way that ‘gravity’ just seemed to get switched on and stay on —one second, zero g; the next, one g. Once we were accelerating, it felt like walking around back on Earth and the mind and body adapts to it in no time as if things were always that way. The concept of the gravity being induced by the constant upward push of acceleration is forgotten. Good old Newton. When I stood up out of my chair, Nathan’s eyes were a picture of amazement but then I supposed mine were on my first flight too.

It was time to report for duty.

‘You’da thought that for such a new ship, they’da fixed all the damned loose stuff, eh!’

I could tell Ross was not happy. Or maybe he was, this was as I remembered him on the ‘gator.

‘And… And, we got this stupid hot air ducting to fix too. Why the hell didn’t they just do it at the station or route it through the regular ducts?’

He pointed up to the control section ten decks up as if goading a response. I tried to look as irritated as he was —not that I knew enough about new hot air ducts to suffer any kind of meaningful perplexity. Ross turned his back on Nathan and me and walked to the viewport and just stared out of it for a while. Then he walked back over to the work station, took three work tabs and handed us one each while connecting his own.

‘They’re updated with the work schedule but we’ll come back here and have a good look at this ducting shit before we go do that,’ he said as each machine beeped that it had logged into our personal chips.

‘How much of this stuff did you do in your training?’ he asked Nathan.

‘Most of it, I guess,’ Nathan replied.

‘I doubt that. I want you to work with G here for this trip. You know, just to get a feel for the old dear. That’s the ship, not him.’

‘That OK with you, G?’ Ross asked, looking over to me.

I nodded. I hated being called ‘G’ and he knew it; in almost six months as his part-time roommate, the only real communication we’d had was about my name and I’d only managed to convince him to use ‘G’ more, not less. We took our headsets and Ross stood by the viewport again, pushing his head over into the dome while gazing at the dark view. I’d no idea what he expected to see but half a dozen such domes were placed around the ship, allowing a view of different aspects of the vessel. The one in engineering offered a view of the upper surface of the rear fuselage and wings. The transparent dome was large enough for the three of us to fit our heads into so Nathan and I bent over and joined Ross in the glassy bowl. It felt cosy and sort of dumb us all being in there and it noticeably irritated Ross that we’d turned his solitude into a comedy scene. At the ship’s angle of departure we couldn’t see Earth or the moon; it was just stars and the smooth, pale grey surface of the ship. It was pleasant from time to time to just stand, gazing at the star field and sometimes we could see planets, moons or less often, other vessels. These would appear as a small white light that either shot by, or if they were moving in the same direction, would seem like a shadowing star until our paths diverged.

A bright flash caught Ross’s attention at the top of the view, ahead of us.

‘Look! Look at that,’ Ross said, pointing up close to where he’d seen the brief flare. Nathan and I craned our necks round to see a small, dull object, growing in size.

‘What is it? Was that a flash?’ I asked. No-one answered.

All three of us gaped and followed the dull light as it grew bigger.

‘Control deck from Chandleri,’ Ross called into his wristpad comm in a stern tone.

‘Control here. Demaniuc. Go ahead,’ came the reply.

‘Are you tracking another ship ahead of us, twelve o’clock and one point above us?’

There was a brief delay before Demaniuc replied: ‘Negative. Nothing there…’ As he spoke, there was a commotion in the background and then, ‘Shit!’

I’d never heard the emergency klaxon used in earnest before. The annunciator strips strobed red and the zero g handles popped out from the walls. I grabbed hold of one, trying hard not to lose sight of the object. Ross and Nathan did the same, all of us transfixed by the advancing grey mass. The Trinidad eased its nose away from the object, taking it up in our view as it did, the main engines increased their power and the turbines of the coolers and injector pumps increased their whine to a howling scream which fought with the klaxon to deafen us. Our maintenance station was between the two engines and any change was audible to us. As the acceleration increased I could hear someone shouting in the engine control station.

The acceleration kept increasing and it became difficult to keep my upper body in the dome; we should have lain down on the deck but we didn’t want to lose sight of the object that was threatening to collide with us. Just as it became impossible to stand anymore, whatever it was shot past us, very close. Or at least, too close for comfort. My mind couldn’t process the image in time and a huge grey blur was all I saw. There was a loud, ringing bang from further up the ship but nothing more. The acceleration died away to one g and the alarms stopped.

‘Shi-it!’ the three of us said, almost in unison. I realised my legs were shaking and I wobbled over to the control station, dropped out a seat to sit on and strapped myself in —not that it was necessary but I needed something to focus on. Nathan slid to the ground and Ross banged the desk with his fist and then started shaking his arms and legs like a runner warming up for a race.

‘Adrenalin,’ he said when he saw me watching him.

‘No kidding,’ Nathan laughed.

Ross moved to hit the comm panel but stopped himself, ‘They’ll be busy as hell up there right now,’ he explained.

‘What was it?’ I asked.

‘A ship,’ Ross said, matter-of-factly.

‘You saw that?’ How did he see that?

‘Yeah,’ he replied, expelling his breath in a loud hiss, trying to disperse his rush, ‘It was moving fast though.’

‘So why didn’t we, I mean the control deck, see it on screen?’ I asked.

‘Not transmitting.’

‘What? So close in to Earth space? Was it using stealth?’ I’d heard the term before and I kind of thought I knew what ‘using stealth’ was.

‘Not using stealth. Running dark, not transmitting or showing any kind of marker. If it was using stealth, you wouldn’t have seen it. I’d say it was in trouble.’

‘I’m glad I’m heading away from it, then,’ I stated, without considering the implications.

‘You know what was really worrying?’ Ross asked no-one in particular.

‘What?’ I felt compelled to respond.

‘It wasn’t decelerating.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Duh! No engine flare.’

Oh yeah, I’d noticed that, hadn’t I?

‘This close in, it should have been turned to decelerate, even if it wasn’t moving quickly, but that sucker was going muy rápido, far too fast for this close in.’

‘What are you saying?’ asked Nathan, joining in.

‘That ship is either going to skip or she’s going in.’

‘You mean, it’s going to crash?’ I asked, sticking to words I knew the meaning of.

‘Yeah, assuming that it’s heading for Earth,’ Nathan said.

‘Well, it could miss, but it was on pretty much a reciprocal course to us and that’s where we’ve just come from. It’s a hard target to miss…’ He looked pensive for a few seconds and was about to say something when we were interrupted by the acceleration chimes.

‘What should we do, Ross?’ I asked.

‘Stay here, stow our loose stuff and strap in. They will have worked out the course correction and will be manoeuvring us onto a new heading. It won’t be much, don’t worry.’

As predicted, the ship was gently manoeuvred to its new course with no drama this time and then we were back into a stable regime of steady one g acceleration.

Ross decided that we could all do with a sit down and something to drink. It was his prerogative to make that decision but our work pattern on board was flexible most of the time anyway. Unless a job was urgent or critical we were assigned comfortable completion times. After all, the ship wasn’t going anywhere we weren’t. We grabbed our headsets and tabs again and sent the toolboxes up to our next assignments to wait for us as we headed for the mess. I wondered what the bang was that we heard during the evasive manoeuvre.

The canteen was noisier than it was crowded; less than a dozen crew were there, debating the course change and what had caused it. Ross grabbed hold of my arm pulling me away from the others and from joining in the conversation. He indicated to us both that we should take an empty table in the lounge area and guided us to it. When we were sat, he ordered some food and drinks for us and then looked both of us in the eyes with a glint of conspiracy.

‘Don’t tell anyone what you saw,’ he said in a quiet but grave tone.

‘Why not?’ I just had to ask.

‘Just don’t, right?’

‘But they’re all talking about it…,’ I tried to object.

‘They are, aren’t they? But we saw it,’ he lowered his voice to a forceful hiss.

‘I don’t understand what the problem is,’ I protested.

‘And hopefully it will stay that way.’

As we were eating, Ross took a private call on his link, holding his hand to his ear so he could hear it better over the background chatter. I could tell it was the control deck. He was being given orders of some kind. Shutting off his link, he told us both to finish our drinks and carry on up to Orange Four to refit some loose ceiling panels. The gophers were waiting for us up there with our tools by now. Ross had somewhere to go; I suspected that it was the Captain’s office.

Nathan and I had finished securing the ceiling panel and lighting strip and we had moved on to a new job that had just come in —a sticking door in the environmental suite— when Ross returned. His stern warning earlier had given us something to talk about, although we made sure it was in hushed tones. As he returned, he looked stony-faced and instructed: ‘You two saw nothing, OK?’

‘But wha–’ I protested.

‘How many jobs have you completed?’ he cut me off, staring me down, even though I was taller than him.

‘The ceiling job on Orange Four and now this one.’

‘You need to be working quicker.’ And he turned and left us.

‘What do you make of that?’ I asked Nathan.

‘I don’t know. Is he always like that?’

‘He can be a right twat but I’ve never seen him this moody this early on. Then again, I haven’t had a lot to do with him before now.’

‘Didn’t you share a room with him?’

‘Yes, but not in any meaningful way.’

‘Perhaps we’d better get a move on then.’

‘Yeah, yeah, yeah,’ I didn’t need a new guy who was going to be telling me what to do on the first day as well as Ross.

After we fixed the door, we went back to the maintenance station where Ross was stood staring at a message on the comm screen. He dragged the job message over to the wall screen and a schematic of the ship came up onscreen with the new hot air return duct highlighted in green. Dragging and