Birdie Down Read online

  ***

  Back in the V4’s command cabin, Bing opened the Trevon news feed to media monitors throughout the ship. Scat wanted everyone to witness whatever it was the Earth press corps on Trevon could report of their attack. It would be good for morale.

  The bomb threat and the subsequent loss of power at the Lynthax Centre were still breaking news—no surprises there: Lynthax was the major corporation on Trevon. This was their world.

  The NBC reporter provided the best coverage. She was asking questions about how the power outage was possible, while the buildings around it still enjoyed power. She interviewed a few Lynthax officials; some looking embarrassed, others shocked. A close up through a broken window of an upper floor showed a sprinkler-soaked room filled with melted PCs and blown lighting, scorched walls and buckled ceiling tiles.

  The story of the night continued to build, though chaotically. She recapped: there was a bomb threat; fireflies and fire marshal vehicles had arrived, followed by the police; overnight staffers had evacuated the building; a little later it flashed blue and then lost all power. They were extremely lucky that the sprinklers had kicked in; otherwise the place would be an inferno.

  They cut to amateur footage of the flash. The police confirmed the initial bomb threat as a hoax.

  Recap over, the story continued to develop. In the past half-hour, NBC had received reports of a shuttle hovering over the environment shield at the time of the flash. She interviewed a staff member of the Earth’s Constitutional Conference delegation, an expert in constitutional conflict and secessionist affairs. He speculated that someone had deployed a light-tug.

  The newsroom then broke away to mention the disappearance of the award-winning Greater Chinese Enterprises news crew. A minute later, they cut back to the story of the day. There was more breaking news. They could now confirm an unauthorised re-entry just before the outage. They could also confirm that is was a shuttle people had seen over the Lynthax Centre just before it blew. What they could not yet confirm were reports that the Lynthax-Maersk-V4, one of Lynthax’s largest interstellar tankers, had jumped away before receiving the last of the political deportees.

  This changed the dynamic of the story: a first-ever hijacking; a daring attack on the mighty Lynthax Corporation; the mysterious disappearance of the Asian news crew. The reporter began to speculate: was the Asian Bloc or Greater Chinese Enterprises involved or were local secessionists taking things into their own hands to protest the failure of the Constitutional Conference? Her producers decided it was time to let the viewers decide. A toll-free number appeared on the screen.

  The screen flickered, the breaking news died and the screen went blank. There appeared a T-Street feed of a traffic junction along Go Down City’s 3rd Avenue. Seconds later, it gave way to an advertisement for off-world corporate services. Finally, the spaceport hailed them. Scat flipped the speaker to mute.

  ‘Let ‘em squirm a while,’ he told the operator. ‘Bing, check the other stations. Let's see what Lynthax is saying.’

  Goosen tapped Scat on the shoulder and pointed a thumb towards a thick-legged, stocky man standing in the command cabin doorway. Scat did not recognise him. The man appeared Asiatic, possibly Middle Eastern. A guard held him in place with a hand on his shoulder.

  ‘Who is he?’ Scat asked. Perhaps he was one of the V4’s passengers.

  ‘It’s Khoffi Khan. He was most insistent, Scat. You should listen to him.’

  Scat turned to look at Khan a second time. He remembered the name. This time he noticed Khan’s eyes were bloodshot and that he was trembling.

  ‘We ain’t going to top him, Birdie. Go reassure him.’

  ‘He isn’t scared—far from it. He’s seriously pissed. You need to listen.’

  Scat shrugged his shoulders and pushed his chair away from the console.

  ‘OK. Take him into the briefing room. I'll be along.’

  When Scat arrived, Khan was sitting in a front row seat, leaning forward, head down. When he realised Scat was walking down the aisle, he stood up.

  ‘Thank you for seeing me, Mr Scat.’ He offered a hand. Scat did not take it.

  ‘OK, Khan. I know you were Trevon’s Earth Rep. What do you want to discuss—our terms of surrender?’

  Khan dropped his hand and looked at Goosen.

  ‘So you didn’t tell him?’ he asked.

  ‘Tell him what?’ Scat asked. He looked at Goosen as he took a seat across the aisle.

  ‘You wouldn’t have believed me, Scat. Best it comes from him, directly.’ Goosen offered in his defence.

  Scat turned to Khan. He was not in the mood for being messed around. He had a rebellion to fire up.

  ‘Let’s hear it, then.’

  ‘Petroff killed my son. I want to kill Petroff.’

  Brevity was not quite what Scat was expecting. The guy was meant to be a diplomat, after all.

  ‘Yeah?’

  Again, Khan was remarkably brief.

  ‘Yes. My young boy, Farrin is in a coffin on board this vessel. We were returning home to Earth—until you hijacked us. Petroff’s men killed him during a riot a couple of days ago. I sued. Lynthax had me dismissed.’

  ‘So, you want Jack Petroff dead?’

  ‘Yes. If I cannot leave it to the courts, then we’ll have justice the old-fashioned way. My people’s way. An eye for an eye.’

  ‘Even if that means hitching your wagon to our cause?’

  ‘Yes. Even if …’

  ‘You’re aware we aren’t organised?’ Scat asked.

  ‘I’m aware.’

  ‘You’ll be one of us—traitors to some.’

  ‘Yes. I’m aware of these things, Mr Scat. But family comes first, yes?’

  ‘You mean revenge comes first.’

  ‘OK, then. It is as you say. Revenge comes first. I prefer to call it justice. Justice implies civility.’

  Scat looked across the aisle.

  ‘What do you think, Birdie? Worth taking on our first diplomat?’

  Goosen stood up, put his hand on Khan’s shoulder and curled his lower lip.

  ‘He won’t be of much use to us as a diplomat, Scat. I doubt they'll let us throw a cocktail party after what we just did to the Lynthax Centre, but it’d be good to know how the other half thinks. Right now we only know what Nettles is thinking.’

  Scat thought about that. They thought they knew what Nettles was thinking—he was a local politician after all—but they already had a sense of how the independence faction worked things out. Having an Earth Rep to bounce things from could prove equally useful.

  ‘OK, Khan. Let’s take this slowly, eh? One step at a time. How would you like to help me write a speech and then appear on TV?’