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Small Acts Of Betrayal: A short story

This is one of my SF short stories.

CAUTION: The following story contains some mild sexuality and themes of a mature nature–but no explicit descriptions or language.

Small acts of betrayal
by Ashok Banker

Mirin and Helpert were enjoying a rare post-copulation moment when the starship went to Defcon 2. The sirens blared in the narrow confines of Helpert’s quarters with jarring intensity.

“Jesus!” Mirin exclaimed, sitting bolt-upright.

Helpert felt the familiar sadness that came over him at such moments. This was the only intimacy he shared with another human and it always seemed to end too soon. He reached out to touch her one last time, but Mirin had already turned away from him, out of reach.

She reached over and jabbed her thumb at the nearest scanner. They were in one of the store rooms. He wasn’t sure why, except that Mirin always came to him rather than the other way around and seemed to be more interested in the act itself rather than where it was performed.

“Bridge, what the hell is going on?” she barked at the terminal over the whinging of the siren. “What? But how the hell–All right, I’m coming up!”

His hand touched her as she shifted to get off the floor, and she recoiled: “Get a hold of yourself!”

He blinked and looked around. She was already on her feet and at the Closet. A barked command and a clingwrap sheet flung itself out around her ample shape. It began to turn opaque as she slid her feet into the gravity boots.

“This never happened, okay? Like always.”

And then she was gone, leaving him feeling he’d been used and flung aside like a cheap prophylactic.

He sighed and rose to his knees. He gathered up the sheets of clingwrap he had spread on the floor of the storage level, bundled them up and he was about to shove them into the disposal chute when an idea occurred to him.

It was a few minutes work to obtain a couple of slides from the Medical Supplies shelf. He took several smears from the sheets, just to be sure that he was getting at least one of her’s, and put the slides into a pocket of his overalls. Then he disposed of the sheets. Later, while passing Medlab, he dropped them off and told Kingston what he wanted.

“Sure, mon,” Kingston said, bobbing his head to the drone-rap thudding on his contact stereo attached to his neck.

“Anything for you, mon. You the happy-maker.” That was what Helpert always loved about Medlab techs. They had their own insular world, oblivious to the crises and politics of the starship. He resolved to slip a box of bacco plugs off the next Earth shipment and slip it into Kingston’s quarters. Kingston lived for bacco plugs.

The siren was off by the time he returned to the Level Down-5, but the ship had gone to Defcon 3 by then, and a helpbot patrolling the corridor informed him that under the circumstances, he was not required to continue with routine duties.

“Yeah, well, I got nothing else to do,” he said to the helpbot. He went into the store room. And continued labelling and packing the shipment he had been working on when Mirin had come down for her “visit”. Shipping clerks on company starships didn’t get paid to lay off during alien attacks. Even if they were balling the Captain.

He was sipping decaff in the Level Down-5 cafeteria that p.m. when he heard the news. A group of Techs were chattering excitedly about the attack. He had seen the headlines on the evening editions of the tabloids on his portable Netcomp, but he really didn’t feel like reading about inter-species warfare and the politics of third-galaxy colonisation. So he was halfway through the latest instalment of his favourite Net-serial when the group burst into the cafeteria. In minutes every diner in the place had clustered around the newcomers’ table. All except for Helpert, who sat at his corner table spooning up his Veg Supreme and trying to concentrate on dialogue over the racket. Finally, he gave up on the soap opera as well as on his dinner–they were both too cheesy today–and resigned himself to hot decaff and gossip.

“It was like, mind-splintering,” said one of the younger techs, a geeky guy named Kumar with a thick Earth accent. “The xenomorphs had the drop on us. They must have been monitoring our frequencies for who knows how long, waiting for just this situation, and when we dropped the shields and went out to fix the structural fissure, bam, they moved in, guns blazing.”

Obviously the guy had seen too many episodes of The New Cowboys, that high-rated space-adventure Net series. “So there we were, hanging off the side of the centre structure, armed with just vacuum tools, and smack in the middle of a full-scale alien attack.”

There was a flurry of questions. The only half-intelligent one came from a maintenance clerk from Helpert’s level, a mousy girl he thought was called Jain.

“How many of you died?”

Helpert couldn’t see Kumar’s face from where he sat, but from the drop in the tech’s voice level, he figured that the question hadn’t been well-received.

“Oh, that’s the thing,” Kumar replied airily. “We, like, executed an avoidance action and escaped by the skin of our teeth. But it was really hairy out there for a while. I, like, thought I was going gone for sure.”

Helpert grinned. Translated, that read simply: We vamoosed like yellowbellies. And I pissed my pants.

“And the Company would have put up a floating memorial of you,” gushed a gay male tech whom Helpert didn’t recognise.

“That would have been so romantic! You would have been a space hero!”

“Yeah,” Kumar replied uncertainly. “But I must be destined for greater things. So here I am!”

“But how did we repel the attack? I mean, if the shields were down, and we couldn’t run interference or fire back because of you techs out there, then how did we defend ourselves?”

Helpert smiled: He liked that girl, Jain. She was smarter than she looked.

“Hey, come on,” Kumar replied, refusing to allow the wind to be blown out of his sails, even if it was just hot air. “This is a Class-A intergalactic starship. It’s got gizmos and stuff you non-tech people wouldn’t understand. The point is, our good Captain hauled ass and chased those xenos back to the hole they climbed out of. Now that’s a might fine lady holding the reins up there.”

Helpert raised one eyebrow at his mug of decaff. So Mirin had jumped into an attack cruiser and led an external counter-attack against the aliens. Probably zipping around and biting them on the rear, forcing them to turn away from the starship.
Then chased them back to their home base wherever that may be. Very sharp move. With its shields down and its defense systems compromised by the presence of personnel outside, the starship could have sustained major damage in minutes, or been forced to abandon the personnel in order to defend itself. Mirin had managed to avoid both contingencies by taking quick action. Well, it was nice to know that she was as efficient in what she did on Level 1 as on Down-Level 5!

He had tired of the chatter. He rose, carried his dinner debris to the nearest disposal chute, popped it in and started toward the exit. He was about to leave the cafeteria when he overheard another comment. He paused, turning back towards the cluster of personnel. They were spread out from Kumar like iron fillings on a sheet of paper in a magnetism experiment.

“What did that woman just say?” he asked the nearest person. A middle-aged sanitation clerk he knew by face, not name. “Did she say that Captain Mirin is still missing?”

The sanitation clerk–hell, he was just a toilet cleaner–looked up at him scornfully. “Where have you been? It’s the lead story on every Netcomp channel.”

Helpert stared at him, then glanced down at the Netcomp clipped to his belt. He left the cafeteria and rushed back to the Store Room as fast as the floor would take him.

It was on all the Netcomp tabloids and news channels: STARSHIP CAPTAIN SACRIFICES SELF TO SAVE SHIP, CREW. That was an exaggeration of course. Mirin hadn’t gone out like a lamb to slaughter. She had led a very intelligent counter-move to lead the aliens away from the ship. Her intention had probably been to chase them back to their home base, and then destroy the base itself, thereby ridding her sector of that problem. Directive One of The Commander’s Manual: ‘Destroy the enemy at its source.’ But apparently, something had gone wrong during the counter-attack. The other cruisers had been unable to keep pace with her and the alien craft, had in fact lose all trace of her within minutes. And hadn’t been able to find her since.

The Net tabloids were having a field day with the story. The Galactic Enquirer asked boldly: “DID SHE SEE ELVIS OUT THERE?” and suggested that Mirin might have seen a vision of a 20th century singer in space which led her to her doom. The New York Times was more sensible: “USS ENTROPY CAPTAIN LURED BY A TRAP?” Helpert liked that story best. It propounded the theory that the aliens had in fact attacked the starship in those circumstances for a reason. Not to destroy the ship while it was compromised, but to force the ship’s Captain to do precisely what she did. Leave the safety of her command post. And having done so, they kidnapped her. Which, the Times suggested, had been their original intention. It was a good theory, and the Company refused to comment on it, which meant they took it seriously. Helpert wasn’t a betting man but if he was, he would have put some money on the Times story over the others. Not much, but some.

Confirmation came beeping on the Netcomp while Helpert was showering next morning before his first shift. He reached out of the shower and turned the screen toward him. It flashed a banner headline, the pixelated NYT roman font dancing across the paperback-sized screen with visible glee: “ALIENS DEMAND RANSOM FOR RETURN OF STARSHIP CAPTAIN”.

So there it was. Mirin. His Mirin. Kidnapped and held to ransom.

He chuckled as he dipped Oreo cookies into a cup of orange juice and crunched them up noisily, his usual breakfast. He’d chosen to stay down here in the Store Room rather than venture out into the cafeteria again. Too crowded there.

So his theory had proved correct. Of course, technically speaking it was the NYT’s theory. But the germ of it had formed back there in the cafeteria when he’d heard that geek Kumar trying to sound like a war hero–”We, like, executed an avoidance action and escaped by the skin of our teeth.” If the aliens had come to destroy, then there would have been no escape for those techs floating outside. As it was, the casualties were almost nil–one tech dead, three injured. Which was ludicrous considering the kind of firepower those alien attack ships carried. No. They had been up to more than simple Hit and Run and Helpert had guessed it all along.

It was, after all, just the strategic move he had been expecting them to make. And had been prepared for.

Kingston wasn’t at his place, but his associate Jansson was there, peering at some kind of a holographic alien DNA simulation that looked like a Watson and Crick model gone insane. She was a slender, middle-aged Hispanic from Artemis One, and had the graceful slow movements of a Lunie. “Yes,” she said, smiling distractedly at him. “Kingston left this for you.” She handed him a plastic code key and explained how he could use it to access the Clone Capsule and activate the specimen. He tucked it away securely and rode up to Level 0.

A Media Ship had just docked and the place was swarming with human as well as AI journos. They were headed for the Media Briefing Hall, but were on the look-out for anybody who could give them a quick Net byte. A couple of them spotted Helpert and zoomed in. “So how do you feel about the situation?”

He looked around blankly, slack-jawed and glaze-eyed.

“Do you think the Company should pay the kidnappers?” a floating AI rig asked.

He stared blankly at the glass eye of the rig’s camera.

“Don’t you think Captain Mirin is worth the ransom?”

He scratched his balls.

As they whizzed away, he heard one of the human journos saying to the rig. “He’s just a janitor. He probably doesn’t even know what you’re talking about!”

He smiled and rode the floor to his destination, the Personnel Office.

“You have applied for 24 hours Casual Leave,” the console said in its crisp accentless tone. “If correct, please press 1. If incorrect, please press 2.”

Helpert pressed 1.

Less than ten minutes later, he was on his way back to Level Down-Five. He returned to the store room, packed a small kit of essentials, ordered a hot dinner from the Dumbwaiter panel and ate it while watching his Net Soap.

In today’s episode, the trillionaire who lived in seclusion on his lavish orbital ranch was attempting to seduce the beautiful syce brought up from Earth to train his cross-species mutant-equestrian race animals. The episode ended with the trillionaire about to accomplish the last peeling away of her defenses–and her garments–when his neck-com unit hummed and a holographic communication formed before them: It was his Earth-based ex-wife calling to say that she was on a shuttle about to dock with his orbital ranch: “We have to talk,” she said.

Helpert sighed and switched off the Netcomp as the familiar eight-bar theme of the soap began to play over the frozen reaction shot of the trillionaire. The soap was available in 3-D with virtual lenses as well as in a holographic version, but Helpert preferred it the old-fashioned way. After all, he was a 20th century child, even if he was living in the 21st.

He made a brief visit to Medlab on his way out, using the code key Kingston’s associate had given him. The Clone Capsule was frosted with the familiar smoky obscurity of cryogenesis. He rubbed the extruded curve of the capsule with the sleeve of his grey flannel uniform. Peering in with his face mashed against the cold silicon capsule, he could faintly make out the fleshy naked female form within, the sharp hooked nose, thin lips and copper-red hair. On his way back through Medlab he stopped to drop off not one but two large cases of Texan Vixen bacco plugs, the best brand available. Kingston was ecstatic enough to want to compose a special drone-rap anthem in his honour.

Boarding the shuttle to Luna, he felt the buzz around him. Everybody was talking about the kidnapping and the deadline for ransom payment. An elderly woman sitting beside him in C Class–the best his employee rating allowed–turned to him and asked, “Whadda think? They gonna pay or what?” He couldn’t place her accent, but the ID on her breast-pocket identified her as an F&B supervisor on Level Down-Five. He mumbled a noncommittal reply then wondered if he should suggest to her that they go easy on the cheese in the Veg Supreme. He thought better of it and they spent the rest of the 3-hour flight in silence.

She was reading a V-book, and he couldn’t help glancing over her shoulder from time to time. It was one of those historical mysteries that were so popular around the 2010′s. Time travelling detectives going back to various periods to clear up unsolved mysteries. He’d never been able to understand how people could enjoy stuff like that. Give him a good soap any day.

He was woken by a flight attendant, a bot. “Please proceed to disembark,” it informed him matter-of-factly. He looked around, rubbing his eyes. The shuttle was empty. He didn’t recall falling asleep. Emerging into the gaudy orange flares of Luna One’s dome lights, he raised his hands, shielding his maladjusted eyes. Too much time spent in that custom-lit Store Room. He needed to get out more often. As he walked across the ashy dust-field, he noticed a family with two children pointing and staring up at the sky. Glancing up, he saw Terra, a blue-green specimen suspended in ink-black solution. Floating, luminous. The peninsular triangle of North America was in view. He shook his head wistfully. Never again, he said silently. I’ve said my last goodbyes to you, old woman. He detoured around the laughing, excited children, and walked on without looking up in that direction again.

His business took him to Sea of Tranquillity. Not exactly a tourist attraction. But it was where his current contact operated from. He found the agent in a seedy subterranean condominium office. An ageing man with both Oriental and African antecedents. The man didn’t look pleased to see him.

“You shouldn’t be here,” he said sharply. His accent contrasted with his appearance. Very British, with a strong flavour of Liverpool.

“I want to come in,” Helpert said.

The agent stared at him.

“I want to come in,” Helpert repeated. By way of explanation, he added: “Had enough.”

The agent leaned back in his comfort-couch. The squishing sounds of the chair adjusting itself to his body, massaging, soothing, caressing, were mildly irritating to Helpert.

“That’s not good enough,” the agent said at last. “You’re on a posting. It’s not complete.”

“It’s complete. It’s been complete for a long time. I want out. I want my pension.”

“What are you offering?”

Helpert leaned forward, feigning anger. “Damn it. I’ve been on the job a long time. Supplied a dozen feeds, maybe more. I’ve earned my retirement. Now are you getting me out or do I have to speak to your superior. Because if I–”

“Cool your horses,” the agent said calmly. “Give me a second to check your account.” Almost literally a second later, he nodded. “Looks clean.” He saw something and reacted to it. “You fed us the Washington insight?” He looked impressed, the first sign of emotion since Helpert had walked in. “That was a big one. We brought the whole Government down with that.

The last democratically elected Government in the United States.” He stared at Helpert as if seeing him for the first time. “You did that?”

Helpert shrugged. “My job.”

The agent started to say something, hesitated, chewed his lip, then changed his mind. He spoke briefly into his terminal, then turned back to Helpert. “All right. I can have you on a flight to Robinson in less than an hour. New ID, passport, complete makeover. You’ll have a new life.” He smiled. “Great artificial beach resort on Robinson. You’ll live like a Nazi war criminal in Brazil! Babes, beach, and bumming.”

“Not Robinson,” Helpert said.

“Bova then? They’ve got the best Old West town outside of Terra. You can have your own ranch too, with real horses. Well, real AI horses. Never tell the difference. Lots of cowgirls too!” He winked.

“No, not Mars either.”

The agent looked at him curiously. “So where do you want to go? There’s nothing here on Luna, but if you want it, hell, you can have it. And the orbitals are no good, they’re under Terra jurisdiction, and if they catch you, they’ll haul your ass back to Terra and you’ll be tried for treason. Hell, you’re the biggest spy I’ve ever dealt with. You’re almost famous!” He laughed nervously. “There are people down there who would throw a rope over the nearest pole–if there were still poles on Terra–and hang you till your tongue turned blue!” Obviously another New Cowboys fan.

“I have other plans. I just want out, I don’t want to be relocated.”

The agent frowned, puzzled, his couch squeaking and humming. “No relocation? But once you’re outed, you know we can’t protect you from Law Enforcement. Terra laws are so damn hard on spies that–”

“I don’t need any kind of protection. All I need is for the Company to help prove I’m dead, and dispose of the body.”

The agent leaned forward, extricating from the couch with a sucking sound of release. Helpert tried not to grimace with distaste.

“Dead? You mean, fake a death? Body disappeared, organize a death certificate, so on?”

Helpert shook his head slowly. “No. I mean really dead. This body. Genuinely, mortally dead.”

The agent was speechless.

Helpert added: “And I’d like to be buried, not cremated. On Terra. Real grave, real coffin, real funeral service. Roman Catholic, all the bells and whistles.” He paused. “And there is one more thing.” He explained. And enjoyed the look of stunned horror on the agent’s face when he had finished. It would take more than a comfort-couch to make that man relax for a while!

He was tired when he returned to the Ship. Jet lag was bad enough when travelling to and fro between a planet’s different time zones. Jetting between simulated environments was worse. He felt dried out, withered. Even the bot attendant on the shuttle back said with robotic precision: “Your blood pressure is low, sir. Kindly take precautions.”

As he rode down to Level Down-Five, he felt a peculiar sense of nostalgia. It was like coming home. For almost six Terra years, this Ship had been his only world. The Store Room, his city. Store Room #B-64 and its adjoining extensions, his home.

He looked around the large area lined with stacks of stored product of all descriptions. He would miss this place. He would miss those quick, breathless encounters with Mirin. The surreptitious sexual liaisons that had to be cloaked as a visit to the toilet to avoid the rest of the crew learning about her affair with a store room clerk! He wondered how on earth he had ever been able to attract the captain of a starship into a sexual liaison. Perhaps that archaic phrase itself was the key: How on earth. They weren’t on earth. Terra firma. Anything went in space. This was why man had ventured out here, to breast the final frontier, taste the ultimate freedom. If not here, then where?

He performed the Download later that night. After the news broke of Mirin’s ransom money being paid and her release obtained. She was to be taken to Terra for a debriefing. There was about an hour or two of tense waiting, during which he was faced by the possibility that she would be found unfit to continue her duties and a new Captain sent in to replace her. If that happened, his entire plan went to pieces. But less than two hours later, the Net-bulletin reported that she was on a shuttle back to the ship, under heavy armed escort.

The crew of the ship was invited to assemble in Main Hall for a short celebratory party to welcome back their heroic captain. All routine duties were suspended for the duration of the party. Which gave Helpert the free time he needed to complete the last technical steps of his plan. When he was Uploading his file into the clone, he heard someone come into the section. It was Kingston and his associate, the attractive MedLab Supervisor. Helpert thought they were having some kind of a sexual tryst, but he relaxed when he saw them with one of the two boxes of bacco plugs he had given them. The penalty for being caught possessing or consuming tobacco in any form was life imprisonment. The penalty for trafficking in it was death. His secret was safe with the MedLab Supervisors. He made a mental note to leave them his backroom key code before he went upstairs.

The Upload completed, he used his Clone Capsule code key to start the De-Activation sequence on the Cryogenic monitor.

The countdown display showed ten minutes to De-Activation.

He went back to the Store Room and took a last look around. Goodbye, old buddy. Time to die. As he lay down and prepared to shoot the intravenous chemical into his neck, he realised he was committing the ultimate act of subversion. What was death if not the final rebellion. He thought back on how he had spent most of his life, spying on his own people, and wondered if it had been worth the risk, the life-threat, the stress, the stigma of being called a treasonous traitor. He thought it had.

He remembered the line he had come upon in an old biography of a 20th Century double agent. “If a spy performs small acts of betrayal against the Government of his own nation in order to achieve an enhancement in the quality of life or preservation of the common folk of that nation, his acts are more than justified. He is a trustee of his nation’s pride, not a traitor.”

He thought he had done more right than wrong. And he felt okay about it. Tired, worn, weary, but not guilty.

He pressed the trigger of the chemgun and died peacefully.

Later that night, Captain Mirin returned to a jubilant welcome from her crew and well-wishers. She was none the worse for her experience as a hostage. In fact, she looked just as she had when she had left. “The bastards just wanted the ransom of isotopes, not war,” she said to a huge burst of laughter from the packed Main Hall.

She visited the toilet soon. And was in there for about five minutes. But the Captain Mirin that emerged was not the one that went in. This woman was her in every physical aspect, down to the tiniest detail. But inside her head, she still dreamed of old betrayals and a distinct memory of how she/he had once stood in the White House and recorded the conversation that would bring down the last democratic Government of the United States.

The firm did its job immaculately. The real Captain Mirin’s body was disposed of without the shadow of a doubt. And the dead body of the Store Room clerk in #B-64 hardly attracted the interest of even the Ship-net’s hourly bulletin.

After all, there were over 4,000 crew members on a Federation starship. But only one Captain.

Or so it seemed.

This entry was posted on Friday, September 2nd, 2005 at 9:34 am. It is filed under Ashok. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.