The Babylon Run

By Stephen Gallagher

In a far-off time when humanity has spread to the stars, a commercial charter makes a forced landing on the Babylon asteroid, a luxury resort for the super-rich. The relief is short-lived; with their ship damaged, the passengers and crew are dismayed to find that the complex has been abandoned due to an incoming 'something' on a collision course. And that's not even the worst of it; there's a mutiny brewing, and the Hotel Babylon is not all that it seems...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Stephen Gallagher
• Release date: Jun 25, 2024
• ISBN: 9798227245656

Stephen Gallagher

Beginning his TV career with the BBC's DOCTOR WHO, Stephen Gallagher went on to establish himself as a writer and director of high-end miniseries and primetime episodic television. In his native England he's adapted and created hour-long and feature-length thrillers and crime dramas. In the US he was lead writer on NBC's CRUSOE, creator of CBS Television's ELEVENTH HOUR, and Co-Executive Producer on ABC's THE FORGOTTEN. His fifteen novels include DOWN RIVER, RAIN, and VALLEY OF LIGHTS. He's the creator of Sebastian Becker, Special Investigator to the Lord Chancellor's Visitor in Lunacy, in a series of novels that includes THE KINGDOM OF BONES, THE BEDLAM DETECTIVE, and THE AUTHENTIC WILLIAM JAMES. Recent screen credits include an award-winning SILENT WITNESS and STAN LEE'S LUCKY MAN.

Book preview

For Andy and Helen . . . they know why

ONE

There was a hiccup in the laws of physics, and the Sparta fell out. Black hole jumping was high risk and high cost, and consequently way out of the Sparta’s league—but as Ella Desmond was later to insist, the ship was in trouble and there was no choice other than to lash up the ship’s computers to struggle with concepts they were never really intended to handle, and to hope.

It was usually the lithe, low payload ships which made the jumps, ships with navigational technology of such accuracy that they could probably drop spit onto a razor’s edge and make it balance. The Sparta, by way of contrast, had originally been a military freighter, bought second hand by the administering agents and converted to a passenger charter. She was oversized and ugly to look at, and her twin drives working together could only boost her to the middle ranges of sub-light. Depending on one drive alone, her crew would usually find it quicker to walk. In-system work with low overheads turned in the best profit for her; there was the occasional cross system haul, but these were only accepted when the agents could arrange paying cargo in both directions.

The trouble had hit unexpectedly, a shudder through the hull and then, just when it seemed that there was nothing to worry about, a raging display of so many alarms around the bridge that fuses blew down in Racks. The Sparta had spontaneously jettis­oned one of its drive tubes—no warning and no worry, just a releasing of clamps and then the explosive bolts blew to let the unit slide away. The power plant had automatically cut its output to avoid overload and the remaining tube, by means of a fail safe to prevent overdrawing, reduced its demand in proportion; the plant had then responded again, and so on until a couple of hours later when the two units had reached an acceptable compromise and feedback had dropped to a level hardly worth measuring. Unfortunately, so had the Sparta’s rate of acceleration.

Ella Desmond set her two assistant officers to reconstruct the sequence of events, but it was impossible; by the time that the spacers had replaced the appropriate breakers, most of the warning circuitry had cleared and all that Kyle and Scortia could make of what was left was that some kind of overheating had taken place. Only the dumped tube could tell them the full story, and that unfortunately was tumbling off on some unexplained mission of its own.

They were creeping between systems, and at their present speed it looked as if they’d be doing that for an impossibly long time. Porphyria was ahead and Vegas was behind, and neither was reachable with the motive power they had. There were some dead systems along the way, no use at all. They could yell for help and wait patiently as the message chugged along to its destination at lightspeed, but there was no guarantee of an answer; the Sparta wasn’t a prize that would drag a salvage man off his backside, after all. Kyle got Scortia to one side and wanted to know his opinion on a proposal. Why not put the arm on Kittivale—the vessel’s charterer, who was presently sitting in bored ignorance in the undersized and irregular ‘luxury suite’—and get him to offer a reward for their recovery? After all, it was his own neck, and when it was explained that there were no other options he’d have to agree to the scheme. He could always recover the costs afterwards with an action against the agents for providing him with a crappy ship and an incompetent captain.

Scortia didn’t like it—Kyle was always gener­ating covert plans for his self betterment, mostly touched with a light trace of slime—but under the circumstances he found it difficult to disagree. After all, it was the only way. But then he went with Kyle to put the proposal to the captain, and found that maybe there was an alternative after all.

Ella Desmond already had the spacers on the bridge—three of them, one less than the number demanded in the Sparta’s operational manual but all that the agents would allow. They mostly kept to their own areas, the Racks and crawlways that were nicknamed Rat City and which took up more than eighty per cent of the Sparta. Here on the bridge they were obviously uneasy and out of place, but still their contempt for the officer class showed through their thin veneer of silent complicity. Officers couldn’t fix things; officers got all the glory for the real work done by the spacers; officers had a soft time of it; officers were a joke.

She was asking them about the feasibility of taking the Sparta through a black hole. Cain said it couldn’t be done, and Sarrat mumbled something which wasn’t easily understood but which amoun­ted to a statement that it still couldn’t be done. Willis waited, and then said it might be possible. Willis got the job, and Kyle decided to say nothing.

Willis then reprogrammed the navigational computer and rigged a logic centre which would give it access to the extra computing power of the inboard systems when necessary. Ella Desmond, meanwhile, used what velocity they had to cut into one of the dead systems on their route and slingshot off the sun towards the most approach­able singularity in the sector. Kittivale—and his much younger escort—still knew nothing.

The plan was that Willis’ rig would take complete command of the Sparta, controlling its approach and angle of entry into the collapsar’s field. They didn’t have the programming to determine exactly where they would come out, and they couldn’t even generalise. There was no way of knowing if they’d get through in one piece; but even if the Sparta was damaged and one or more of the personnel should be lost the rig would immediately use what it could of ship’s sensors to calculate its position and head for wherever records showed the nearest settlement to be.

Scortia thought about it. Ella Desmond had worked out her plan and set it in motion, and it was too late to offer an alternative. The trouble with Kyle’s scheme was that there was no way that it could allow the captain to retain her dignity; a ship stranded without explanation, bailed out by its passenger. With a black hole jump she’d be risking the ship and its crew, but then she’d a chance of romping home to glory.

Well, Scort, he told himself, that’s what it’s all about, and when the time came he didn’t argue but followed his duties as safety officer. Couple of problems down below, Mister Kittivale. Perhaps you and the lady would just climb into the crash bubbles and inflate the linings—standard proce­dure, nothing to worry about. With a momentary flaring of inspiration, Scortia explained that there was some turbulence expected—Kittivale bought it straight away but there was something hard and unbelieving in the young woman’s eyes. Turb­ulence? What was this, a kite in the wind? So Scortia added some­thing about a strong gravity field from an object they’d be passing, which had the doubtful advantage of being halfway towards the truth. She didn’t look too happy.

But then she didn’t argue, either.

The Sparta approached Babylon with a chunk of her belly missing. She’d been too wide for the hole, and the bulge that held the planet landing gear and the utility pod had been pared away like mud from a boot. Everybody had heard it go, the agony of the super­structure and the howl of wind that preceded the automatic sealing off, then the pressure bags had blown and hardened and the air plant had stepped up production to compensate.

She lurched in sideways, doing her best to ride the landing lasers but painfully disabled. The hollowed out asteroid was ringed by access tubes with U-shaped g-force traps to hold in the atmosphere, and the Sparta managed to bang the walls a couple of times as she passed from vacuum to normal air pressure.

The Hotel Babylon greets you and wishes you a pleasant stay

The navigational computer tried to unscramble the sudden influx of helpful traffic control information, details which somehow didn’t quite match in with the feedback from its own intelligence network. Retros fired like whipcracks and pushed the ship across to the far side of the tunnel, and as laser paths were broken the warning screams from the hotel caused another over correction and another jarring bump

Please disembark from your craft and move through into the reception lobby as soon as possible

which broke a lot of glass and loosened a lot of fixtures within the hull. The courtesy bar in Kittivale’s suite was unsecured, and in less than a second the opposite bulkhead was dashed with jagged crystal. Cables along the runs in Rat City were shaken loose from their traps to land into the crawlways like dry guts. Within the crash bubbles the impact was felt as a soft thump with several follow up shakes as the metal hull resonated.

Babylon’s own pilots will move your spacecraft to one of our parking zones and supervise the transport of your baggage

The tunnel split, five different ways to five different hangars. One was offered, but the Sparta lurched for the nearest; Babylon threw up no fuss, but simply reordered its directional information to comply. The ship was obviously in distress. Fire and maintenance crews were probably standing by already.

She made it into the hangar, and even managed most of the flip that was necessary to orient her towards the docking platform. The weak thrusting drive died too late and she crumpled sideways into the metal structure. Flooring plates popped and buckled as the framework was compressed, but already the Sparta was settling and massive floor jacks were rising to support her.

They’d made it. To somewhere.

TWO

The bubbles deflated automatically when the danger was over. Kyle was first out, and Scortia followed a minute later—he’d been unable to reach his relief tube against the restraining pressure, and he’d remembered the instructor’s words from his earliest space training; ‘A crash bubble’s probably the most boring place you’ll ever find yourself. Pissing down your leg doesn’t make it any more interesting.’

Kyle’s legs wouldn’t support him at first, so he sat on the thin hard carpet of the shared quarters and tried to knead some sensation back into his trembling thighs. Unfortunately, his hands and arms weren’t fit for much, either. He wanted to throw up and mess himself at the same time, but somehow the two opposed impulses managed to cancel each other out.

There was a voice outside in the corridor, muffled and made incomprehensible by the cabin walls. Kyle was able to get around onto his knees and then, unsteadily, onto his feet; he wove the couple of steps to the bulkhead and almost fell against the contact plate by the door. Scortia was just starting to emerge when the door slid back and the announcement from the corridor speakers spilled in.

. . . to the Hotel Babylon. You are now within the territorial jurisdiction of the Babylon asteroid, the nearest orbiting object to the spectacular red sun at the heart of the dead system of Persephone. The dim fires of Perse­phone itself will warm and thrill you as you gaze down from your suite onto the boiling gases below, secure in a complex which is strengthened by the rock structures of the asteroid. No comfort is overlooked, no pleasure beyond reach; the Hotel Babylon exists only for your recreation. Please move through into the reception area, where our staff will be waiting to meet you. Welcome. . .

Kyle hit the plate again, and the door closed to cut off the repeat. Now it was Scortia’s turn to go through the agonies of stiffness that followed movement, but now there were two of them and the meagre cabin was suddenly overcrowded. Kyle shuffled around his fellow officer and dropped stiffly onto the lower of their two bunks. ‘Did you hear that?’ he asked, ‘or were you creaking too much?’

Scortia winced as he nodded; the movement of his neck was like that of a gearbox filled with gravel. ‘I heard it,’ he said. ‘Where the hell’s Persephone?’

‘I don’t know. I’m damn sure it’s nowhere we were heading, though.’

‘That’s hardly the point, is it? I mean, at least we got here in one piece.’

Kyle groaned in pained ecstasy as he lay back on the bunk and stretched. ‘Speak for