netherspace

Bursting with intrigue and inhabited by a cast of quirky characters, netherspace is the inventive, action-packed science fiction story of near-future first contact.

Contact with alien species was made forty years ago, but communication turned out to be impossible. Kara is an ex-army sniper turned assassin who is about to learn that she can’t keep her distance from aliens forever…

On 15 April 2019, at 14:12:15 GMT, the ninety-three-kilometrewide lunar crater Copernicus turned sky blue. A minute later it changed to turmeric yellow. Forty seconds later it changed to a morbid purple-red. It was an unmistakable signal, a sign that nobody could miss. Aliens had arrived… and as it eventually turned out, they wanted to trade. No one knew what else they wanted. Communication was impossible. They showed no interest in human science, mathematics, arts or religion. Nor was there any rhyme or reason to the trade objects they wanted.

Forty years after first contact, humanity has spread amongst the stars. There are no more countries, only city states of varying size and power. Aliens are still unknowable. Humans are very much the junior partner.

Half of Earth’s population is content with the situation. The other half wants it changed, some by violence.

Something has to give.

***

It was a bumblebee with a light dusting of pollen and a purposeful air. Bombus terrestris, twenty millimetres long, buzzing through the garden at a brisk thirty miles an hour. No reason for any of the three men and two women – all middle-aged and naked apart from the sepia input tattoos on their forearms – sitting relaxed in the morning sun, to see a threat. Everyone knows bumblebees don’t sting.

The garden surrounded a two-storey house, mostly wood and glass, on the shore of a lake. Distant hills were already hazy in the heat. A smart-looking jitney bobbed comfortably at the end of a short jetty, another reminder of corporate success. The inevitable armed guards were kept out of sight; nothing threatened the fiction that this was the best of all possible worlds.

Twenty-seven miles away the woman whose mind guided the bumblebee drone cursed briefly and pressed a virtual button off to one side of her visual field. The implant stopped vibrating. The incoming message could wait. Kara Jones focused again on her targets. One of the men, as hairy as he was overweight, apart from the bald area over his forearm keyboard tattoo, noticed the bumblebee as it flew around the table. Apparently no lover of insects, he picked up a sonic repeller that promised to drive away every buzzing, wriggling, many-legged, stinging thing imaginable, and several that weren’t. This insect didn’t seem to notice. Kara watched as the man apparently considered throwing the repeller at it, changed his mind and returned to the discussion. Everyone knows bumblebees don’t sting.

The bee buzzed lazily around the group several times then flew off towards the trees and settled on a branch. A moment later it melted into an expensive cinder.

The three men and two women began to tremble four seconds after the bumblebee cyberdrone had been destroyed. The airborne toxin released by the bee was meant to incapacitate, not to kill.

Kara sat back, the better to watch all five screens, as her fingers raced over controls injected into the visual centre of her brain, visible as a glowing set of buttons and sliders in her visual field – so much easier to use than a forearm input tattoo when controlling a cyberdrone. Controlling one drone was difficult; five drones needed someone with great skill and experience.

Vespa mandarinia japonica, the Japanese

hornet that had killed fifty people in Japan the previous year. Vespa mandarinia was first seen in England in 2016 and quickly eradicated. That was about to change. Cyberdrone Japanese giant hornets, superbly mechanised, settled on each helpless human, injected large doses of enhanced mandaratoxin and flew away to incinerate themselves. Other cyberdrones carried genuine, and angry, Vespa mandarinia japonicas towards some of the guards, released them and flew off to die like their sisters.

Kara caught herself regretting the loss of her drones. “Fuck!” she muttered, aware of identifying too closely with the bots. They were only biotech – disposable creations. Some operators went into shock when their drones died, usually the same operators who gave them names and remembered their birthdays. This did not apply to Kara: the army of the English city states, the English Federation Army, had spent a great deal of money eradicating emotion from Kara’s combat persona. Infuriating how every now and then sentiment crept back. She supposed it was a civilian curse, and selected a joss that combined nicotine and amphetamine then inhaled deeply. Back in total control. Time to wrap up the operation.

One of the guards had been stung and was quivering in shock, slumped against a tree. Three dead, genuine Japanese hornets lay crushed on the ground. All the cyberdrones were now cinders, except for one large wasp – Vespa crabro – and if its compound eyes were a little larger than usual, for the moment there was no one to notice or even care. It alighted on each of the five bodies, its sensors confirming they were dead.

Kara switched from screen observation to full-meld, a small treat for a successful job. She felt the sun’s heat on her body, saw a multi-faceted world before and behind, above and beneath her in a permanent explosion of image, movement and colour. Human brains cannot handle insect sight without a computer to make sense of it all. But for a few wonderful seconds…

She sighed, switched back into screen/ observation and checked the area one last time. The remaining guards were already running towards their employers. The autopsies would confirm death by insect sting, corroborated by one hospitalised guard and three crushed hornets with no detectable biological or technological modifications.

Kara keyed in a new command and the wasp together with several back-up drones went somewhere dark to melt. High up in the trees various satellite receivers disguised as twigs – flown in at dusk a week ago by drone starlings – turned to dust. The contract had paid just under one million virtscrip and cost half that amount to set up. Had to be death by accident, had to be all five at once. Being killed in other locations, one by one, would have been far too obvious. But leave a little doubt, she’d been told, make it weird, you know? She’d understood. Nothing so simple as a plane crash – anyway, no more than two of the targets ever travelled together. Instead something so outlandish it could only be genuine bad luck – or an immensely subtle and overly complicated assassination to remind the Big Boys and Girls that something was watching them, something more powerful than they could ever hope to be.

All in all a nice, professional little earner.

Kara Jones was licensed to operate within all English city states, the lands they controlled and foreign city states bound by treaty. She took care of business quietly and efficiently, and was imaginative and flexible; precisely the type of Official Assassin the Contract Bureau valued. There were any number of unofficial assassins, but mostly they were involved with domestic and personal revenge, the sort of job the Bureau would never accept. It might have become a screwed-up world since the aliens had arrived forty years ago but standards were still maintained and anarchy confined to the areas between the city states that could be relatively civilised, basic back-to-nature or psychosis-by-the-sea, or anything in between, and where the one could become the other with disquieting ease. City state authorities everywhere fought against giving these areas a specific name since that would mean recognition. In what was once Europe and North America they were generically known as Out There and individuals would come and go, to or from the Out. Kara lit another joss, mild marijuana with a hint of opium, militarywiped her computer of all programs, data and procedures concerned with the hit, and dialled up Control, preferring to use the computer rather than connect direct via her personal implant. “Yes?” she said to the middle-aged, tired-looking man who flashed onto the central screen. “What?” “You took your time,” he complained. She was glad of the calm the joss brought. “Was working. Your job to know it.” He smiled like a man concerned with another, more important problem that Kara would never be told about. “Tomorrow, 08:30 Berlin shuttle from London Thames, arrive 10:00, due Main Reception Earth Central Euro 11:30. Have a good trip.” He clicked off before she could say anything in response. Kara dialled up Control again. “What EarthCent branch?” she asked when the tired face reappeared. “GalDiv. Don’t ask me why.” Kara crushed the joss out on the desktop. “I don’t do aliens,” she said, “you know that.”

Pick up Netherspace from Titan Books (RRP £7.99). E-book available. www.titanbooks.com