Sister Ships and Alastair - Chapter 10

10. Red Space

After depressingly little sleep, a voice sounded in the light bulb in Cleo and Lieutenant Farthing's cell. Hammond Karg had vanished as if he had never existed. This unnerved Cleo.
"Uh...the, erm, Acting Captain's compliments, Ma'am, Miss. We're pulled up alongside the Russkie cruiser. Mr. Jenkins thought you might want to take a look at it."
Lieutenant Farthing rose from the bunk. Cleo had given up the bunk; she had not felt sleepy. Instead, she had spent several hours staring at the steel wall, her beautiful new mobile phone gripped tightly in one hand. She did not reply to the light fitting.
"Cleo", said Lieutenant Farthing, "the light fitting is talking to us."
"It's a loudspeaker", said Cleo. "It can hear us as well."
"For goodness' sake, why didn't you tell me? I might have said all sorts of things."
"You've been doing nothing but snoring for the past three hours. I don't think you snored anything valuable."
"I don't snore."
"You so do. I imagine Alastair has just had to listen to three hours of it. I feel so terribly sorry for him."
The light bulb coughed politely. "Erm, Ma'am? Miss?"
Lieutenant Farthing rubbed sleep from her eyes. "Why would he think we'd be interested in looking at the cruiser? Wouldn't Alastair, erm, Mr. Drague, have something to say about that?"
"Erm, I think Mr. Jenkins did it deliberately to annoy Mr. Drague, Miss. Annoying Mr. Drague makes him popular with the crew right now. Would you like to come with your guard detail?"
The door motored gently open. Cleo and Lieutenant Farthing shuffled forward bleary-eyed into the light, accompanied by the guards who had been assigned to guard Cleo and Lieutenant Farthing, and who were beginning to get on Cleo's nerves. Two men had been detailed - one man each - and they were impressively uncommunicative. Cleo had christened her guard Tweedledum, and the other Tweedledee, and, in an attempt to prompt them into talking, had developed elaborate life histories for them. Tweedledum had been born in a vat as a Ministry of Defence experiment to create a soldier who did not know the meaning of the words 'fear', 'retreat', 'oral hygiene', and 'encyclopedia'. Tweedledee, meanwhile, had once been a lowly monkey, and was in the process of being transformed into a man through surgery and judicious shaving. Only the Ministry of Defence Special Ugly Monkey Unit knew why, and it wasn't telling.
In the bridge, normal space was still in evidence, but was now full of a shield-shaped Russian war saucer slightly larger than the Jervis Bay. The Soviet ship was nose-on, with lights burning in its carapace. Cyrillic lettering down its bow gave it a name - Николай Ежов.
"Ah, Miss Shakespeare, Lieutenant Farthing", said Drague. "You see before you the Yezhov. Named after a particularly unpleasant head of secret police. So unpleasant, in fact, that Comrade Stalin had him liquidated."
Cleo was shocked. "Wouldn't they have to build an especially large machine for that? Wouldn't the blades need to be extra sharp to get through all the bone and gristle? And they'd never be able to use the machine to make, you know, juice or smoothies afterwards -"
She noticed suddenly that the entire crew were staring at her.
"Liquidated usually just means 'shot'", said Drague kindly. "No actual conversion of the body into liquid is involved."
"Oh", said Cleo. "Being shot's bad enough", she added.
Drague nodded. "I have always tried to avoid it. Lieutenant - I do apologize, Captain - I'm afraid that I perceive a pattern developing here."
Jenkins, thrown off balance by Drague's sudden politeness, stuttered more than usual. "Wh-what p-pattern?"
"Consider for a moment that Miss Shakespeare might actually be telling the truth. An American colony is attacked; a distress call is sent out at a time that makes sure a Russian ship responds to it. Then a Russian colony is attacked in turn; a distress call is sent out making sure a NATO ship responds."
"B-but they'd have to know we were out here", said Jenkins. "Th-they'd have to know our course and f-flight time."
"Exactly", said Drague. "And the ideal person to know that would be the one piloting the ship." His baleful green eyes burned into Lieutenant Farthing's like radium light into bone marrow.
"Now just a minute", protested Farthing. "Hey. Whoah."
"NATO and Russia flung into conflict", continued Drague. "An end to the balance of power we have been maintaining carefully for decades. Millions dead. Nuclear weapons used. Maybe even cobalt weapons. And a need for Britain and the USA to suddenly make peace with their errant colonies in space to avoid having to make war on two fronts. Who knows, maybe the two sides might even be convinced to destroy each other utterly..."
"Thank you for showing me the inside of your grubby little brain", said Farthing. "My own mind is much nicer and cleaner, thank you."
"This", said Drague, turning to appeal to Acting Captain Jenkins, "from the person who planted an explosive device on the side of a cobalt weapon."
"It was a box file I found in a filing cabinet", protested Farthing in exasperation, "sellotaped to the weapon. With a few wires I'd pulled out of a refrigerator in the crew rec room coming out of it. It had a block of cheese inside it pretending to be plastic explosive, and a desk calculator as a timer. If it explodes, mild Wensleydale is considerably more dangerous than Science has previously imagined."
"Bring us in for docking, Mr. Godrevy", said Jenkins.
There was a CLUNK as the two vessels interlocked.
"I'd send your men in in suits", said Cleo, "if you want them back. Do you have any Drano?"
Lieutenant Jenkins looked at Cleo in blank incomprehension.
"It's an American cleaning fluid", said Cleo. "It's effective against the blue goo. Don't tell me you don't know about the blue goo."
"We h-heard about the blue goo", said Jenkins. "We just assumed the S-Soviets had made it up."
"It's real", said Cleo. "It sticks to surfaces, ceilings as well as floors and walls, and hides in cracks and crevices, and it can move. If you get it on your hand, Drano and amputation are the only two ways we know of of getting it off. Once on, it will try to spread towards an orifice. It will spread fast. I don't know what happens once it gets to an orifice - luckily I've never found that out."
"And s-suits stop it spreading."
"Yes. The US Zed navy sent men in space suits into the wreck of the Xenophon without any casualties. I think it needs skin contact."
Jenkins nodded. "Mr. Kay, I d-doubt we have any Drano. What else do we have in stores that's noxious and American?"
Kay scratched his head. "Well, sir, we've got about a hundred litres of Coca-Cola."
"C-coca c-cola will k-kill anything. B-break out a litre of it for experimental purposes. S-see if we have any strong acids or alkalis, or any other ch-chemicals. Acetone, maybe, or alcohol. Does Warrant Officer Lilywhite still have his s-still?"
Petty Officer Kay assumed an expression of total lack of understanding that could have won Oscars. "I'm sure I have no idea what a still is, sir. Nor have I a clue who Warrant Officer Lilywhite is, and therefore I will be unable to mention it to him and see what he says. Sir."
"J-jolly good. Ask him for a l-litre or two. It doesn't have to be d-drinkable. And f-find out what the active ingredient of Drano is. It s-sounds like a drain cleaning solvent, so it should be something like s-sulphuric acid or s-sodium hydroxide. See if you can f-find any airtight containers. I d-don't just want to kill this g-goo. I want to c-capture it."
"Capture it, sir?" Kay's voice was one of barely tolerant amusement.
"The Russians analyzed samples", said Cleo. "It has DNA. Alien DNA. But not the sort of alien DNA that comes from New Dixie."
"So it's alive. Possibly s-some sort of b-biological weapon." Jenkins clasped his hands behind his back. "New Dixie DNA is left-handed in structure, like our own, but containing two more nucleobases."
"Golly", said Cleo. "Nucleobases."
"I s-suppose you thought I got to be an officer on a s-starship just by looking g-good in uniform", said Jenkins irritably.
Cleo shook her head. "Oh, no. I mean, not that you look bad in uniform. I mean -"
"It's all right. I'm f-fully aware I l-look like a dead chicken whose t-tailor hates it. I have l-learned to l-live with that...So they actually used the w-word DNA?"
Cleo nodded. "They did."
"Mm - then that m-means either right-handed DNA, or m-most likely DNA containing b-base pairs not seen on Earth or N-New Dixie -"
Callaway was speaking into a microphone he had flipped out of his console. "Attention, Beria-class cruiser - I'm sorry, sir, I've not been able to find the Russian phrasebook -"
"No need", said Drague. He leaned past Callaway and spoke into the microphone. "Крейсер типа Берия, это Королевский Военноморского крейсер Черный Принц. Мы отвечаем к вашему сигналу бедствия."
Callaway flipped the switch again. The same distress call as before continued to issue from the speakers.
"- Это Колхоз Красная Звезда - cccchello? Is here Krasnaya Zvyezda. Require yassistance. Over."
"That's not repeating", said Cleo.
"It's a woman's voice", said Petty Officer Kay. "Or a child's."
The voice seemed to wait for a few seconds, then added: "Gyod syave your gryacious Qveen. I like very much your Yinglish Chyallenge Yanneka. You respond please, I supply coordinates - " The rest of the sentence was obscured by a deluge of static.
"If it weren't for all that damned white noise", complained Drague, "we could hear her tell us where she's broadcasting from."
"That's not white noise", said Callaway suddenly. He began flicking switches and examining displays.
"What?"
"Components of it are regular. It's a digital signal pretending to be white noise."
"- I say yagain - coordinates are zyero north, tventy-nine degrees, five myinutes, two hyundred syeconds vest -"
"All the static gone", said Jenkins. "Well d-done, Callaway."
"I didn't do anything", said Callaway, shaking his head. "Apart from call attention to it. Someone else turned the signal off. And I think I know why. The triangulation I was able to do before the signal switched off put the point of origin somewhere inside this ship."