Into the Void

Chapter 5

Nate awoke to his father shaking him by the shoulder. He pried his eyes open with a groan and sat up. Polaris had offered them a room for as long as they needed it, it was a decent sized suite in one of the hotels with two beds, a pair of chairs, and a large display screen on the wall. The display screen was on and set to a local news channel. A reporter in a dark grey suit was on screen, behind her an image of Caldania spun slowly in the background.

"News from home?" Nate asked groggily.
His father nodded. "It's not good, the station did a lot of damage. But the Third Fleet destroyed that ship and now they're sending a flotilla of destroyers into Second Wave space. They think the ship came from there."
Nate shook his head. "Sure, sending a bunch of heavily armed ships into another government's territory sounds like a great idea. That won't start a war at all." he said sarcastically.
His father sighed. "Nathan, now really isn't a great time to be questioning the Alliance, there are some people here looking for you. Get dressed, they look like Void Corps Intelligence."
Nate's heart threatened to leap out of his chest, he quickly got dressed and walked to the door where two men in black uniforms were waiting for him. One was tall and thin with black hair while the other was stocky and bald. They each wore light, matte black combat plating over their chests and arms and had long sleek pistols strapped to their thighs. The guns were gauss pistols, high powered and almost completely silent. They could kill everyone in the suite and not wake up the people across the hall.
"Mr. Levin," said the dark haired intelligence officer. "I'm Officer Rook and this is my partner, Bishop. We need you to come with us."
"Why?" asked Nate with a frown.
Officer Bishop placed a hand on the butt of his gun. "We won't ask again, come with us." Nate followed the officers up to a security station where he was tossed into a room with a harsh white light hanging from the ceiling, and a stainless steel table and two chairs bolted to the floor. The officers shoved Nate down into a chair and stood looming over him.
"Mr. Levin we have some questions for you. Do you know anything about an extremist group that calls themselves the Fraternis Ferrum?" said Rook.
Nate fidgeted in his seat. "No, I've never heard of them."
"Really? I find that hard to believe, they're quite popular among station personnel" he paused for a moment, looking at Nate's prosthetic arm. "And they're often affiliated with altered people."
"Altered people? So you think I'm part of this terrorist group?"
"I don't know are you?"
"No! I wouldn't drop a station on my own planet."
Rook leaned forward. "Maybe you didn't know they'd destroy the station, maybe you just thought you could disrupt Alliance control of the system. We have quite a file on you. Lots of stuff in there, fights, Helix use, time on an unlicensed comm station, an audio sample of you claiming the Alliance instigated the Caldania conflict. We could do a lot with that information."
"This is bullshit. I think I need to speak with a lawyer."
"A lawyer? Does that mean you're guilty Mr. Levin?"
"What? No! It means I'm not talking to a bunch of spooks charging me with a fucking crime I didn't do without a lawyer here."
Bishop walked around the table, gripped Nate by the hair and slammed his face into the table. "You were in the Void Corps ever hear of the Special Investigations Amendment, asshole? So long as you're in Void Intelligence custody you don't get rights anymore. Not until we prove you're connected to the attack."
Nate spat out a gob of blood. "I didn't have anything to do with that attack!" he shouted.
"Are you sure? A poor backwater hillbilly gets his first taste of space combat, loses an arm and takes a medical discharge, he rots on a shit-hole of a station for two years, he hates his co-workers and they hate him, they give him a lot of shit over the cybernetics, and then he just so happens to buy time on an unlicensed comm station the same day a transhumanist terror cell drops in-system. The facts look pretty clear to me. Why don't you sit here for a while and think about confessing. You don't even want to know what we'll be allowed to do to you if you keep resisting."
The two agents left the interrogation room, leaving Nate alone to pace back and forth across the small room. The Special Investigation Amendment was usually used for enemy combatants, it allowed the intelligence agency to extract a confession by any means necessary. He sat back in the chair, there had to some way out of this. Patting down his pockets he noticed the agents hadn't taken his data tablet from him. There was no service inside the cell, access to the local network was blocked, there wasn't much he could with the tablet except review what was saved locally on the device. Flicking through the files on the device, he let out a bark of laughter. The call to Nick had gone to voicemail before he'd answered, the entire call was saved in the tablet's memory, it proved he'd only used Nick's comm station after the ship had arrived. Hopefully it would be enough to get him out of here.
Time passed strangely in isolation, he paced the room for what felt like hours, dozed restlessly in the steel chair, awoke and paced some more. A few hours, or a few days could have gone by before the agents returned, there was no way for him to be sure. The door at the end of the cell slid open and the pair of agents stepped through, still clad in their combat plating. Officer Bishop crossed the room in three quick strides and drove and armoured fist into Nate's gut, driving the air from his lungs and crumpling him to the floor. A boot flew into his ribs, lifting him off the ground and rolling him onto his back. He lay there, dazed, staring into the narrow muzzle of a gauss pistol, the weapon hummed as energy coursed through its magnetic coils.
"Ready to confess yet?" said Rook, standing by the table.
Nate coughed and took a deep shuddering breath. "No" he said.
Officer Rook sighed. "I really hoped you'd be more cooperative." The agent pulled a small radio from a pouch on his belt. "We need three pails of water and a battery pack in interrogation room four please" he said into the radio.
Nate's mouth went dry. "Wait," he said, his voice coming out in a panic laden squeak. "I put my data tablet on the table, there's a recording on it. It proves I only used that hacked comm station after the ship arrived. I didn't call it in, I swear." Bishop lowered his pistol and Nate scrambled backwards into the corner, pulling himself slowly to his feet.
Officer Rook found the recording and played it with a frown. "Shit!" he swore, as the recording finished.
"The sergeant's not going to be happy when she hears this." the two agents stormed out of the cell, locking the door behind them as they left.
The door slid open again after another unknowable stretch of time. A tall broad shouldered woman with mousy brown hair tied into a bun walked into the room.
"Nathan, please take a seat" she said, her voice was soft and calm, almost soothing. "I'm Sergeant Drafer. I am truly sorry my agents have treated you so poorly, the Alliance always tries to respect the rights of citizens, they overstepped their bounds."
"Bull. Shit." said Nate, sitting in the chair. "This has been a real eye-opener to what the Alliance really thinks of its people. I might as well have been a Construct in here. Your guys kicked my ass and were ready to torture a confession out of me."
"Don't be dramatic Nathan, we both know that if we thought you were a Construct we'd have shot you on sight. Now, what can we offer you to make this all go away?"
"Go away?!" Nate shouted, outraged. "You're going to try and sweep this all under the rug?"
Sergeant Drafer nodded slowly. "You're not the only one who's seen a darker side of the Alliance, there's unrest all along the frontier. We're prepared to offer you anything if you'll stay quiet."
Nate shook his head. "I can't believe this."
"I know you used to be a pilot, I have a lot of friends in high places. We could get you back in the fleet, on active duty, even a combat position if that's what you want. If you decide now I may even be able to get you on board the destroyer flotilla that's going terrorist hunting, get a little payback for your homeworld."
"So you've got connections eh? Do you know much about the group that attacked Caldania? The Fraternis Ferrum?"
"I know a little. They're a transhumanist group based on New Avalon, they believe that humanity should take direct control over its evolutionary path through cybernetic augmentation and gene splicing. They don't like the Alliance's policies against genetic augmentation, there have been a handful of skirmishes between us and them in the past."
"They're a big group then, are they? They occupy a lot of New Avalon?"Sergeant Drafer frowned. "Not particularly, there are only a few cells on New Avalon. Why?"
"One more question" said Nate. "The destroyer flotilla, are they Sedan or Kharkov pattern ships?
"I really shouldn't tell you that."
"I know, but you will if you want me to keep quiet."
The sergeant stayed silent for a long moment. "They're Kharkov Mark Fives." she said quietly. Nate ran a hand through his shaggy hair. The Kharkov Mark Five was a hellish ship, filled with gauss cannons and missile racks, it wasn't the best ship to ship fighter, but it excelled at planetary bombardment.
"Christ," he said, voice barely rising above a whisper. "They're going to bomb the whole planet. This is going to get out of hand fast and I don't want any part of it. Just let me out of here."
"We'll be watching you Nate, you let any of this slip out and we'll be forced to take extreme measures to keep this quiet."