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It was his singing which drew the villagers a few hours later. He was sitting on the jetty with a bottle of home-brew vodka. The group that had gathered looked down at him with contempt.
“Demons!” Horst shouted when Powel Manani and a couple of the others pulled him to his feet. “They’ve only gone and summoned bloody demons here.”
Ruth gave him one disgusted glance, and stalked off back to her cabin.
Horst was dragged back to his cot, where they administered one of his own tranquillizers. He fell asleep still mumbling warnings.
The Ly-cilph was interested in humans. Out of the hundred and seventy million sentient species it had encountered, only three hundred thousand had been able to perceive it, either by technology or their own mentalities.
The priest had clearly been aware of its identity focus, although not understanding the nature. Humans obviously had a rudimentary attunement to their energistic environment. It searched through the records it had compiled by accessing the few processor blocks and memory fleks available in Aberdale, which mostly comprised the educational texts owned by Ruth Hilton. The so-called psychic ability was largely dismissed as hallucinatory or fraud committed for financial gain. However the race had a vast history of incidents and myths in its past. And its strong continuing religious beliefs were an indication of how widespread the faculty was, granting the “supernatural” events a respectable orthodoxy. There was obviously a great deal of potential for energistic perception development, which was inhibited by the rational mentality. The conflict was a familiar one to the Ly-cilph, although it had no record of a race in which the two opposing natures were quite so antagonistic.
What do you think?laton asked his colleagues when the door closed behind Quinn Dexter.
He’s a psychopathic little shit, with a nasty steak of sadism thrown in,said waldsey, the group’s chief viral technologist.
Dexter is certainly unstable,camilla said. I don’t think you can trust him to keep any agreement. His revenge obsession with this Banneth person is the dominant motivator. Our immortality scheme is unlikely to replace it; too cerebral.
I say we should eliminate him,salkid said.
I’m inclined to agree,laton said. Pity. It’s rather like watching a miniature version of one’s self.
You were never that gratuitous, Father,camilla said.
Given the circumstances, I might have been. However, that is an irrelevant speculation. Our immediate problem is our own security. One can reasonably assume Quinn Dexter has informed most, if not all, of his fellow Ivets that something wicked lurks in the woods. That is going to make life difficult.
So? We just take out all of them,salkid said. Out of all the exiles, the ex-blackhawk captain found the decades of inactivity hardest to handle. I’ll lead the incorporated. It’ll be a pleasure.
Salkid, stop acting the oaf,laton said. We can’t possibly eliminate all the Ivets ourselves. The attention such an overt action would generate would be quite intolerable coming so soon after the homesteads.
What, then?
Firstly we shall wait until Quinn Dexter incapacitates Supervisor Manani’s communicator, then we shall have to get the villagers to eliminate the Ivets for us.
How?waldsey asked.
The priest already knows the Ivets are Devil worshippers. We shall simply make the knowledge available to everyone else in a fashion they cannot possibly ignore.
Chapter 12
“Demons!” Horst shouted when Powel Manani and a couple of the others pulled him to his feet. “They’ve only gone and summoned bloody demons here.”
Ruth gave him one disgusted glance, and stalked off back to her cabin.
Horst was dragged back to his cot, where they administered one of his own tranquillizers. He fell asleep still mumbling warnings.
The Ly-cilph was interested in humans. Out of the hundred and seventy million sentient species it had encountered, only three hundred thousand had been able to perceive it, either by technology or their own mentalities.
The priest had clearly been aware of its identity focus, although not understanding the nature. Humans obviously had a rudimentary attunement to their energistic environment. It searched through the records it had compiled by accessing the few processor blocks and memory fleks available in Aberdale, which mostly comprised the educational texts owned by Ruth Hilton. The so-called psychic ability was largely dismissed as hallucinatory or fraud committed for financial gain. However the race had a vast history of incidents and myths in its past. And its strong continuing religious beliefs were an indication of how widespread the faculty was, granting the “supernatural” events a respectable orthodoxy. There was obviously a great deal of potential for energistic perception development, which was inhibited by the rational mentality. The conflict was a familiar one to the Ly-cilph, although it had no record of a race in which the two opposing natures were quite so antagonistic.
What do you think?laton asked his colleagues when the door closed behind Quinn Dexter.
He’s a psychopathic little shit, with a nasty steak of sadism thrown in,said waldsey, the group’s chief viral technologist.
Dexter is certainly unstable,camilla said. I don’t think you can trust him to keep any agreement. His revenge obsession with this Banneth person is the dominant motivator. Our immortality scheme is unlikely to replace it; too cerebral.
I say we should eliminate him,salkid said.
I’m inclined to agree,laton said. Pity. It’s rather like watching a miniature version of one’s self.
You were never that gratuitous, Father,camilla said.
Given the circumstances, I might have been. However, that is an irrelevant speculation. Our immediate problem is our own security. One can reasonably assume Quinn Dexter has informed most, if not all, of his fellow Ivets that something wicked lurks in the woods. That is going to make life difficult.
So? We just take out all of them,salkid said. Out of all the exiles, the ex-blackhawk captain found the decades of inactivity hardest to handle. I’ll lead the incorporated. It’ll be a pleasure.
Salkid, stop acting the oaf,laton said. We can’t possibly eliminate all the Ivets ourselves. The attention such an overt action would generate would be quite intolerable coming so soon after the homesteads.
What, then?
Firstly we shall wait until Quinn Dexter incapacitates Supervisor Manani’s communicator, then we shall have to get the villagers to eliminate the Ivets for us.
How?waldsey asked.
The priest already knows the Ivets are Devil worshippers. We shall simply make the knowledge available to everyone else in a fashion they cannot possibly ignore.
Chapter 12
Idria traced a slightly elliptical orbit through the Lyll asteroid belt in the New Californian system, with a median distance of a hundred and seventy million kilometres from the G5 primary star. It was a stony-iron rock, which looked like a bruised, flaking swede, measuring seventeen kilometres across at its broadest and eleven down the short spin axis. A ring formation of thirty-two industrial stations hung over the crinkled black rock, insatiable recipients of a never-ending flow of raw material ferried out from Idria’s non-rotating spaceport.
It was the variety of those compounds which justified the considerable investment made in the rock. Idria’s combination of resources was rare, and rarity always attracts money.
In 2402 a survey craft found long veins of minerals smeared like a diseased rainbow through the ordinary metal ores, their chemistry a curious mixture of sulphurs, alumina, and silicas. A planetside board meeting deemed that the particular concentration of crystalline strata was valuable enough to warrant an extraction operation; and the miners and their heavy digging machinery began chewing shafts into the interior in 2408. Industrial stations followed, refining and processing the ores on site. Population began to creep upwards, caverns were expanded, biospheres started. By 2450 the central cavern was five kilometres long and four wide, Idria’s rotation was increased to give it a half-standard gravity on the floor. There were ninety thousand people living in it by then, forming a community which was self-sufficient in most areas. It was declared independent, and earned a seat in the system assembly. But it was a company town, the company being Lassen Interstellar.
Lassen was into mining, and shipping, and finance, and starship components, and military systems, amongst other endeavours. It was a typical New Californian outfit, a product of innumerable mergers and takeovers; a linear extension of its old Earth predecessors which had thrived on America’s western seaboard. Its management worshipped the super-capitalist ethic, expanding aggressively, milking governments for development contracts, pressuring the assembly for ever more convenient tax breaks, spreading subsidiaries across the Confederation, shafting the opposition at every opportunity.
There were thousands of companies like it based on New California. Corporate tigers whose spoils elevated the standard of living right across the system. The nature of their competition was fierce and confrontational. The Confederation assembly had passed several censure motions on their dubious exports, and held inquiries into individual supply contracts. New California’s level of technology was high, its military products were in great demand. Companies were indifferent to the use they would ultimately be put to: once the buyer was identified, the pitch made, the finance organized, nothing would be allowed to stop the sale. Not the Government Export Licence office, and certainly not the meddlesome Confederation inspectors. With this in mind, shipping could be a problem, especially the trickier contracts to star systems operating unreasonable embargoes. Captains who took on those contracts could expect high rewards. And the challenge always attracted a certain type of individual.
The Lady Macbeth was resting on a docking cradle in one of the thirty-odd industrial stations coasting in a loose orbit around Idria. Both of her circular cargo hold doors on the forward hull were open, each showing a metallic cave of bracing struts coiled by power and data cables, load clamps, and environmental regulation interface sockets; all of it wrapped in tarnished gold foil and badly illuminated to boot.
The docking bay was a seventy-five-metre crater of carbotanium and composite, ribbed by various conduits and pipes. Spotlights around the curving walls shone stark white beams on the starship’s leaden hull, compensating for the pallid slivers of sunlight falling on the station while it was in Idria’s penumbra. Several storage frames stood around the rim of the bay, looking much like scaffold towers left over from the station’s construction. Each of them was equipped with a long quadruple-jointed waldo arm to load and unload cargo from ships. The arms were operated from a console inside small transparent bubbles protruding from the carbotanium surface like polished barnacles.
Joshua Calvert hung on a grab hoop inside the cargo supervisor’s compartment, his face centimetres from the curving radiation-shielded glass, watching the waldo arm raising another cargo-pod out of its storage frame. The pods were two metres long, pressurized cylinders with slightly domed ends; a thick white silicon-composite shell protected them from the wider temperature shifts encountered in space. They were stamped with Lassen’s geometric eagle logo, and line after line of red stencil lettering. According to the code they were high-density magnetic-compression coils for tokamaks. And ninety per cent of the pods did indeed contain what they said; the other ten per cent held smaller, more compact coils which produced an even stronger magnetic field, suitable for antimatter confinement.
The waldo arm lowered the pod into Lady Mac ’s hold, and a set of load clamps closed around it. Joshua felt a considerable twinge of apprehension. Inside the New Californian system the coils were a legitimate cargo, no matter the misleading coding. In interstellar space their legality was extremely ambiguous, although a decent lawyer should be able to quash any charges. And in the Puerto de Santa Maria system where he was going they spelt deep shit in capital letters ten metres high.
Sarha Mitcham’s hand tightened around his. “Do we really need this?” she asked in a murmur. She had left her padded skullcap off in the transparent hemisphere, letting her short hazel hair wave around lethargically in free fall. Her lips were drawn together in concern.
“ ’Fraid so.” He tickled her palm with a finger, a private signal they often used on board Lady Mac . Sarha was a spirited lover, they had spent long hours experimenting in his cabin’s cage; but this time it didn’t break her mood.
It wasn’t that the Lady Macbeth didn’t make money: in the eight months since Roland Frampton’s first charter they had landed seven cargoes and one passenger group, some bacteriology specialists on their way to join an ecology review team on Northway. But Lady Macbeth also consumed money at a colossal rate: there was fuel and consumables each time they docked; an endless list of component spares, there wasn’t a flight which went by without some kind of burn-out or a mandatory time-expiry replacement; the crew’s wages had to be met; and then there were spaceport charges and customs and immigration fees. Joshua hadn’t quite realized the sheer expense involved in operating the Lady Macbeth . Somehow Marcus Calvert had glossed over that part. Profits were slim verging on non-existent, and he couldn’t afford to bump his rates up any higher, he wouldn’t land a single charter. He’d made more money while he was scavenging.
So now he knew the truth behind the captains’ talk in Harkey’s Bar, and its countless equivalents across the Confederation. Like him they all said how well they were doing, how they only kept flying for the life it offered rather than financial necessity. Lies, all of it a magnificent, artistic construct of lies. Banks sat back and made money, everyone else worked for a living.
“There’s no shame in it,” Hasan Rawand had told him a fortnight ago. “Everyone’s in the same grind. Hell, Joshua, you’re a lot better off than most of us. You haven’t got a mortgage to pay off.”
Hasan Rawand was the captain of the Dechal , an independent trader smaller than the Lady Mac . He was in his mid-seventies, and he’d been flying for fifty years, the last fifteen as an owner-captain.
“The real money isn’t in cargo charters,” he explained. “Not for people like us. That’s just makework to tide us over. The big lines have got all the really profitable routes tied up. They operate vacuum-sealed cartels the likes of you and I aren’t going to break in.”
They were drinking in a club in the dormitory section of an industrial station orbiting Baydon, a two-kilometre alithium wheel spinning to produce a two-thirds standard gravity around the rim. Joshua leant against the bar, and watched the planet’s nightside sliding past the huge window. Sparkles of light from cities and towns sketched strange curves across the darkness.
“Where is the money, then?” Joshua asked. He’d been drinking for three solid hours, long enough to sluice enough alcohol past his enhanced organs and into his brain, giving the universe a snug aura.
“Flights which use that fancy fourth drive tube the Lady Mac ’s fitted out with.”
“Forget it, I’m not that anxious to make money.”
“All right, OK,” Hasan Rawand gestured extravagantly, beer slopping over his glass, drops falling in a slight curve. “I’m just saying that’s the nature of it: combat and sanctions busting. That kind of thing is what the independents like you and me were put in this galaxy for. Everybody makes one of those trips every now and then. Some of us, like me, more often than most. That’s what keeps the hull intact, and the radiation outside the baffles.”
“You make a lot of runs?” Joshua asked, staring into his glass morosely.
“Some. Not a lot. That’s where us owner-captains’ bad-boy reputation comes from. People think we do it all the time. We don’t. But they don’t hear about that, about the mundane flights we make for fifty weeks a year. They only hear about us when we get caught, and the news agencies blitz the networks with the arrest. We’re the perpetual victims of bad publicity. We should sue.”
“But you don’t get caught?”
“Haven’t yet. There’s a method I use, virtually foolproof, but it needs two ships.”
“Ah.” Joshua must have been drunker than he realized, because the next thing he heard himself saying was: “Tell me more.”
And now two weeks later he was starting to regret listening. Although, he had to admit, it damn near was foolproof. Those two weeks had been spent in furious preparation. In a way, he supposed having Hasan Rawand consider him for any kind of partner was an oblique compliment, since only the very best captains could hope to pull it off. And the ultimate risk wasn’t his, not this run. He was the junior partner. But still, twenty per cent wasn’t to be sneered at, not when it came to a straight eight hundred thousand fuseodollars, half in advance.
The last pod of magnetic coils was secured in the Lady Mac ’s cargo hold. Sarha Mitcham let out a soft, rueful sigh as the waldo arm folded down on its cradle. This flight worried her, but she had agreed, along with the rest of the crew when Joshua explained what it entailed. And their money situation was becoming uncomfortably shaky. Even the fleks of MF-band albums the crew always hawked around ports to the bootleg distributors were fetching minimal prices. A lot of her private stock was getting obsolete, official company distribution was catching up on her. Here on Idria she had actually bought more albums than she’d sold. At least New California was a hot system for MF culture, she ought to be able to sell the fresh recordings for another six months yet, especially on the kind of backworld ports Lady Macbeth flew to.
The money would go into the crew’s pooled account so they could finance their own cargo in a couple of months’ time. It was their one bright dream, which made the mundane tolerable. Norfolk was reaching conjunction soon, a cargo of Tears would make some real profit for them if they owned it rather than simply carried it for someone else. And then just maybe they wouldn’t have to do this kind of flight again for a long time.
“All loaded, and not a scratch on your hull,” the woman operating the waldo arm said cheerfully.
Joshua looked back over his shoulder and smiled at her. She was slender, and a bit tall for his taste, but her one-piece uniform showed a nice collection of curves below its emerald fabric. “Yeah, good work, thanks.” He datavised her console, loading in his personal code to confirm the cargo had been transferred on board the Lady Mac .
She checked the data, and handed him his manifest flek. “Bon voyage , Captain.”
Joshua and Sarha glided out of the compartment, negotiating the maze of narrow corridors down to the telescoping airlock tube that linked the Lady Mac ’s life-support capsules to the station.
The waldo operator waited for a minute after they left, then closed her eyes. The cargo pods are all loaded. Lady Macbeth is scheduled to disengage from the station in eighteen minutes.
Thank you,Oenone replied.
Tranquillity’s senses perceived the gravitational disturbance caused by the wormhole terminus opening in a designated emergence zone a hundred and fifteen thousand kilometres away from the habitat itself. Against Mirchusko’s mud-yellow immensity the terminus was a neutral two-dimensional disk. Yet observing it through an optical sensor on one of the strategic-defence platforms ringing the zone, Tranquillity received an inordinately powerful intimation of depth.
Ilex flew out of the wormhole. A voidhawk with a hull that was more grey than the usual blue. It slipped smoothly away from the rapidly shrinking terminus, yawing gracefully as it orientated itself.
Ilex, Confederation Navy ship ALV-90100, requesting approach and docking permission,it said formally.
Granted,tranquillity replied.
The voidhawk accelerated in towards the habitat, building up to three gees almost immediately.
You’re very welcome,tranquillity said. I don’t get many voidhawks visiting me.
Thank you. Though this is not a privilege I was expecting. Up until three days ago we were assigned to fleet patrol duties in the Ellas sector. Now we’ve been switched to diplomatic courier duty. My captain, Auster, is experiencing a mild notion of displeasure, he says we didn’t sign on to be used as a taxi service.
Oh, this sounds interesting.
I believe the circumstances are exceptional. And in connection with this, my captain has another request. He asks that Ione Saldana receive a special envoy from First Admiral Samual Aleksandrovich: one Captain Maynard Khanna.
You have come directly from Avon to bring this captain?
Yes.
The Lord of Ruin is honoured to accept the Admiral’s envoy, and she invites Captain Auster and his crew to dinner this evening.
My captain accepts. He is curious about Ione Saldana, the news agencies have been most effusive on her behalf.
I could tell you a tale or two about her.
Really?
And I’d be interested to hear about the Ellas sector. Are there many pirates there?
The tube carriage slid to a halt and Captain Khanna stepped out onto the small station’s platform. He was thirty-eight years old, with crew-cut sandy red hair, pale skin given to freckles if he was caught by the sun, regular features, and dark brown eyes. His body was kept in trim by a stiff forty-minute navy-approved workout each morning without fail. Out of his academy class of one hundred and fifteen officer cadets he had finished third; it would have been first but the computer psychological assessment said his flexibility wasn’t all that it could be, he was “doctrine orientated”.
He had been on the First Admiral’s executive staff for eighteen months, and in that time hadn’t made a single mistake. This was his first independent assignment, and he was frankly terrified. Tactics and command decisions he could handle, even Admiralty office politics; but a semi-reclusive universally revered black sheep Saldana teenage girl affinity-bonded to a non-Edenist bitek habitat was another matter. How the hell did you prepare motivation-analysis profiles on such a creature?
“You’ll do all right,” Admiral Aleksandrovich had said in his final briefing. “Young enough not to alienate her, smart enough not to insult her intelligence. And all the girls love a uniform.” The old man had winked and given him a companionable pat on the back.
Maynard Khanna pulled the jacket of his immaculate deep-blue dress uniform straight, placed his peaked cap firmly on his head, squared his shoulders, and marched up the stairs out of the station. He came out onto a courtyard of flagstones, lined with troughs full of colourful begonias and fuchsias. Paths led off from all sides into the surrounding sub-tropical parkland. He could see some sort of building a hundred metres away; but it was given only a fleeting glance as he stared round in astonishment. After coming through the airlock from the docking-ledge he had climbed straight into the waiting tube carriage, he hadn’t seen anything of the interior until now. The sheer size of Tranquillity was awesome, big enough to put a couple of standard Edenist habitats inside and shake them around like dice in a cup. A blinding light-tube glared hotly overhead, white candyfloss clouds trailed slowly through the air. A panorama of forests and meadows flecked with silver lakes and long water-courses rose up on either side of him like the walls of God’s own valley. And there was a sea about eight kilometres away—it couldn’t be called anything else with its sparkling wavelets and picturesque islands. He followed the arch of it rising up and up, his neck tilting back until his cap threatened to fall off. Millions of tonnes of water were poised above him ready to crash down in a flood which would have defeated Noah.
He brought his head down hurriedly, trying to remember how he had got rid of the giddiness when he visited the Edenist habitats orbiting Jupiter.
“Don’t look outside the horizontal, and always remember the poor sod above you thinks you’re going to fall on him,” his crusty old guide had said.
Knowing he had been defeated before he even started, Maynard Khanna walked along the yellow-brown stone path towards the building that resembled a Hellenic temple. It was a long basilica which had one end opening out into a circular area with a domed roof of some jet-black material supported by white pillars, the gaps between them filled by sheets of blue-mirror glass.
The path took him to the opposite end of the basilica, where a pair of serjeants stood guard duty like nightmare goblin statues on either side of the entrance arch.
“Captain Khanna?” one asked. The voice was mild and friendly, completely at odds with its appearance.
“Yes.”
“The Lord of Ruin is expecting you, please follow my servitor.” The serjeant turned and led him into the building. They walked down a central nave with large gilt-framed pictures hanging on the brown and white marble walls.
Maynard Khanna assumed they were holograms at first, then he realized they were two-dimensional, and a more detailed look revealed that they were oil paintings. There were a lot of countryside scenes where people wore elaborate, if baroque, costumes, riding on horses or gathered in ostentatious groups. Scenes from old Earth, pre-industrial age. And a Saldana would never make do with copies. They must be genuine. His mind balked at how much they must be worth; you could buy a battle cruiser with the money just one of them would fetch.
At the far end of the nave a Vostok capsule was resting on a cradle under a protective glass dome. Maynard stopped and looked at the battered old sphere with a mixture of trepidation and admiration. It was so small, so crude , yet for a few brief years it had represented the pinnacle of human technology. What ever would the cosmonaut who rode it into space think of Tranquillity?
“Which one is it?” he asked the serjeant in a hushed tone.
“Vostok 6, it carried Valentina Tereshkova into orbit in 1963. She was the first woman in space.”
Ione Saldana was waiting for him in the large circular audience chamber at the end of the nave. She sat behind a crescent-shaped wooden desk positioned in the centre; thick planes of light streamed in through the giant sheets of glass set between the pillars, turning the air into a platinum haze.
The white polyp floor was etched with a giant crowned phoenix emblem in scarlet and blue. It took an eternity for him to cover the distance from the door to the desk; the sound of his boot heels clicking against the polished surface echoed drily in the huge empty space.
Intended to intimidate, he thought. You know how alone you are when you confront her.
He snapped a perfect salute when he reached the desk. She was a head of state, after all; the Admiral’s protocol office had been most insistent about that, and how he should treat her.
Ione was wearing a simple sea-green summer dress with long sleeves. The intense lighting made her short gold-blonde hair glimmer softly.
She was just as lovely as all the AV recordings he’d studied.
“Do take a seat, Captain Khanna,” she said, smiling. “You look most uncomfortable standing up like that.”
“Thank you, ma’am.” There were two high-backed chairs on his side of the desk; he sat in one, still keeping his pose rigid.
“I understand you’ve come all the way from the First Fleet headquarters at Avon just to see me?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“In a voidhawk?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Owing to the somewhat unusual nature of this worldlet, we don’t have a diplomatic corps, nor a civil service,” she said airily. A delicate hand waved around at the audience chamber. “The habitat personality handles all the administrative functions quite effectively. But the Lords of Ruin employ a legal firm on Avon to represent Tranquillity’s interests in the Confederation Assembly chamber. If there’s a matter of urgency arising, you only have to consult them. I have met the senior partners, and I have a lot of confidence in them.”
“Yes, ma’am—”
“Maynard, please. Stop calling me ma’am. This is a private meeting, and you’re making me sound like a day-club governess for junior aristocrats.”
“Yes, Ione.”
She smiled brightly. The effect was devastating. Her eyes were an enchanting shade of blue, he noticed.
“That’s better,” she said. “Now what have you come to talk about?”
“Dr Alkad Mzu.”
“Ah.”
“Are you familiar with the name?”
“The name and most of the circumstances.”
“Admiral Aleksandrovich felt this was not a matter to take to your legal representatives on Avon. It is his opinion that the fewer people who are aware of the situation, the better.”
Her smile turned speculative. “Fewer people? Maynard, there are eight different Intelligence agencies who have set up shop in Tranquillity; and all of them run surveillance operations on poor Dr Mzu. There are times when their pursuit becomes dangerously close to a slapstick routine. Even the Kulu ESA have posted a team here. I imagine that must be a real thorn in my cousin Alastair’s regal pride.”
“I think what the Admiral meant was: fewer people outside high government office.”
“Yes, of course, the people most able to deal with the situation.”
The irony in her tone made Maynard Khanna give an inward flinch. “In view of the fact that Dr Mzu is now contacting a number of starship captains, and the Omutan sanctions are about to expire, the Admiral would be extremely grateful if we could be told of your policy regarding Dr Mzu,” he said formally.
“Are you recording this for the Admiral?”
“Yes, a full sensevise.”
Ione stared straight into his eyes, speaking in a clear precise diction. “My father promised Admiral Aleksandrovich’s predecessor that Dr Alkad Mzu would never be allowed to leave Tranquillity, and I repeat that promise to the Admiral. She will not be permitted to leave, nor will I countenance any attempt to sell or hand over the information she presumably holds to anybody, including the Confederation Navy. Upon her death, she will be cremated in order to destroy her neural nanonics. And I hope to God that sees the end of the threat.”
“Thank you,” Maynard Khanna said.
Ione relaxed a little. “I hadn’t even been gestated when she arrived here twenty-six years ago, so tell me, I’m curious. Has Fleet Intelligence discovered yet how she survived Garissa’s destruction?”
“No. She can’t have been on the planet. The Confederation Navy was in charge of the evacuation, and we have no record of carrying her on any of our ships. Nor was she listed as being in any of the asteroid settlements. The only logical conclusion is that she was outsystem on some kind of clandestine military mission when Omuta bombed Garissa.”
“Deploying the Alchemist?”
“Who knows? The device certainly wasn’t used; so either it didn’t work or they were intercepted. The general staff favours the interception scenario.”
“And if she survived, so did the Alchemist,” Ione concluded.
“If it was ever built.”
She raised an eyebrow. “After all this time, I thought that was taken for granted.”
“The thinking goes that after all this time, we should have heard something other than rumours. If it does exist, why haven’t the Garissan survivors tried to use it against Omuta?”
“When it comes to Doomsday machines, rumours are all I want to hear.”
“Yes.”
“You know, I’ve watched her sometimes while she’s been working over in the Laymil project’s physics centre. She’s a good physicist, her colleagues respect her. But she’s nothing exceptional, not mentally.”
“One idea in a lifetime is all it takes.”
“You’re right. Clever of her to come here, really. The one place where her security is guaranteed, and at the same time the one mini-nation which everybody knows is no military threat to other Confederation members.”
“So may I say you have no objection to our maintaining our observation team?”
“You can, providing you don’t flaunt the privilege. But please reassure yourselves. I don’t think she’s received much geneering, if any. She can’t last more than another thirty years, forty at the outside. Then it will all be over.”
“Excellent.” He leant forward a few millimetres, lips moving upwards into a slight awkward smile. “There was one other matter.”
Ione’s eyes widened with innocent anticipation. “Yes?”
“An independent trader captain called Joshua Calvert mentioned your name in connection with one of our agents.”
She squinted up at the ceiling as if lost in a particularly difficult feat of recall. “Oh, yes, Joshua. I remember him, he caused quite a stir at the start of the year. Found a big chunk of Laymil electronics in the Ruin Ring. I met him at a party once. A nice young man.”
“Yes,” Maynard Khanna said gingerly. “So you didn’t warn him about Erick Thakrar being one of our deep-cover operatives?”
“Erick Thakrar’s name never passed my lips. Actually, Thakrar has just been accepted by Captain Andrй Duchamp for a berth on the Villeneuve’s Revenge , that’s an Adamist ship with an antimatter drive fitted. I’m sure Commander Olsen Neale will confirm that for you. Erick Thakrar’s cover is completely intact, I can assure you that Andrй Duchamp doesn’t suspect a thing.”
“Well, that’s a great relief, the Admiral will be pleased.”
“I’m glad to hear it. And please don’t concern yourself over Joshua Calvert, I’m sure he’d never do anything illegal, he’s really an exemplary citizen.”
The Lady Macbeth is preparing to jump insystem,Oenone warned the crew. They were two light-weeks from Puerto de Santa Maria’s star, which cast a barely perceptible shadow on the voidhawk’s foam-encased hull. The Nephele was drifting eight hundred kilometres over the upper hull, yet Oenone ’s optical sensors were unable to see it.
Twenty-eight thousand kilometres further in towards the faint star, the Lady Macbeth ’s sensor clusters and thermo-dump panels were folding with the neatness of an alighting eagle.
If only everything about the Adamist starship’s flight was that neat, Syrinx wished. This Captain Calvert was a born incompetent. It had taken them six days to get here from New California, a distance of fifty-three light-years. The manoeuvres which Lady Macbeth performed every time she reached a jump coordinate were appallingly sloppy, they went on for hours at a time. Time was money in the cargo business. And if this was the way Calvert navigated on every voyage it was no wonder he needed the money so desperately.
“Stand by,” Syrinx told Larry Kouritz. “He’s lined up on the Ciudad asteroid.”
“Roger,” the marine captain acknowledged.
“The Ciudad,” Eileen Carouch muttered as she accessed the Puerto de Santa Maria file in her neural nanonics. “There are several insurrectionist cells based there, according to the planetary government’s Intelligence agency. They are pushing hard for independence.”
Attention everybody,syrinx broadcast, I want us out of stealth mode the moment we emerge. This Lady Macbeth is fitted with maser cannons, so let’s not have any mistakes. Chi, you have fire-control authority as of now. If they make one smartarse move, slice them in two. Nephele , you keep a sharp watch for approaching ships. If these insurrectionists are desperate enough to try and obtain antimatter-confinement technology they may be dumb enough to try and assist their courier.
We’ll cover you,targard, the Nephele ’s captain, replied.
Syrinx returned her attention to Oenone ’s sensor inputs. The Lady Macbeth had reverted to a perfect sphere. Blue ion flames shrank away to nothing. There was a sharp twist in space’s uniformity.
Go,she commanded.
Oenone erupted out of the wormhole terminus seventeen hundred kilometres distant from the Lady Macbeth . A blizzard of foam flakes swirled away as electronic sensors and thermo-dump panels were uncovered around the crew toroid. Fusion generators in the lower hull combat systems toroid powered up. X-ray lasers deployed. Gravity returned to the crew toroid. The distortion field swelled outwards, accelerating the voidhawk up to seven gees. It chased a sharp curve round to align on the Lady Macbeth . Two hundred kilometres away the Nephele was shaking off its stealth cloak.
Ciudad was a distant lacklustre speck, with a small constellation of industrial stations wrapped around it. Strategic defence sensor radiation raked across the Oenone .
Syrinx was aware of a curious secondary oscillation in the distortion field. Foam was streaming away from all across the hull.
That’s better,Oenone sighed almost subliminally.
Syrinx didn’t have time to form a rebuke. A transmitter dish unfolded from the lower hull toroid, swinging round to focus on the Lady Macbeth .
“Starship Lady Macbeth ,” she relayed through the transmitter’s bitek processors. “This is Confederation Navy ship Oenone . You are ordered to hold your position. Do not activate your reaction drive, do not attempt to jump away. Stand by for rendezvous and boarding.”
Oenone ’s distortion field reached out to engulf the Adamist starship.
Syrinx could hear Tula communicating with Ciudad’s defence control centre, informing them of the interception.
“Hi there, Oenone ,” Joshua Calvert’s voice came cheerfully out of the bridge’s AV pillars. “Are you in some kind of trouble? How can we assist?”
Lying prone on her couch, her teeth gritted against the four-gee acceleration, Syrinx could only glance at the offending pillar in disconcerted amazement.
Oenone covered the last five kilometres cautiously, every sensor and weapon trained on the Lady Macbeth , alert for the slightest hint of treachery. At a hundred and fifty metres’ distance, the voidhawk rotated slowly, presenting its upper hull towards the Adamist starship. The two extended airlock tubes, then touched and sealed. Larry Kouritz led his squad into the Lady Macbeth ’s life-support capsules, executing the penetration and securement procedures with textbook precision.
Syrinx watched through Oenone ’s sensor blisters as the crew toroid’s clamshell hangar doors hinged apart. Oxley piloted their small boxy multifunction service vehicle out into space, yellow-orange chemical flames propelling it round towards Lady Macbeth ’s open cargo hatch.
Joshua Calvert was marched into the bridge by two marines in dark carbotanium armour suits. He grinned round affably at the members of Syrinx’s crew, with an even wider display of teeth when his eyes found her.
She shifted uncomfortably under the handsome young man’s attention. This was not how the interception was supposed to be going.
We’ve been had,ruben told her abruptly.
Syrinx flicked a glance at her lover. He was sitting behind his console, an expression of glum resignation settling on his features. He combed his fingers back through his beret of curly white hair.
What do you mean?she asked.
Oh, just look at him, Syrinx. Does that look like a man facing a forty-year sentence for smuggling?
We were on the Lady Macbeth for the whole flight, she never rendezvoused with anybody.
Ruben simply raised an ironic eyebrow.
She returned her attention to the tall captain. She was annoyed at the way his gaze seemed to be fastened on her breasts.
“Captain Syrinx,” he said warmly. “I must congratulate you and your ship. That was a superb piece of flying, really quite superb. Jesus, you scared the crap out of some of my crew the way you jumped us like that. We thought you were a pair of blackhawks.” He stuck his hand out. “It’s a pleasure to meet a captain who is so obviously talented. And I hope you don’t take offence, but an extremely attractive captain as well.”
Yes, we’ve definitely been had.
Syrinx ignored the offered hand. “Captain Calvert, we have reason to suspect you are involved with importing proscribed technology into this star system. I am therefore cautioning you that your ship will be searched under the powers invested in me by the Confederation Assembly. Any refusal to permit our search is a violation of Confederation space regulatory code which permits lawful officers full access to all systems and records once a request has been made by said officers. I am now making that request. Do you understand?”
“Well, gosh, yes,” Joshua said earnestly. A note of doubt crept in. “I hate to ask, but are you quite sure you’ve got the right ship?”
“Perfectly sure,” Syrinx said icily.
“Oh, well of course I’ll cooperate in any way I can. I think you navy people do a great job. It’s always reassuring for us commercial vessels to know we can always rely on you to maintain interstellar order.”
“Please. Don’t spoil the effect now, son,” Ruben said wearily. “You’ve been doing so well.”
“I’m just a citizen happy to oblige,” Joshua said.
“A citizen who owns a ship that has an antimatter drive,” Syrinx said sharply.
Joshua’s gaze refocused on the front of her pale blue ship-tunic. “I didn’t design it. That’s the way it was built. Actually it was built by the Ferring Astronautics company in Earth’s O’Neill Halo. I understand Earth is the greatest Edenist ally in the Confederation? That’s what my didactic history courses say, anyway.”
“We have a common viewpoint,” Syrinx said reluctantly, anything else would have sounded like an admission of guilt.
“Couldn’t you have the drive taken out?” Ruben asked.
Joshua managed an appropriately concerned expression. “I wish I could afford to. But there was a lot of damage when my father saved those Edenists from the pirates. The refit took all the money I had.”
“Saved which Edenists?” Cacus blurted.
Idiot,syrinx and ruben told him together. the life-support engineer spread his hands helplessly.
“It was an aid convoy to Anglade,” Joshua said. “There was a bacteriological plague there several years ago. My father joined the relief effort, of course; what are commercial needs compared to saving human life? They were taking viral-processing equipment to the planet to manufacture an antidote. Unfortunately they were attacked by blackhawks who wanted to steal the cargo, that kind of equipment is expensive. Jesus, I mean some people are really low, you know? There was a fight, and one of the escort voidhawks was wounded. The blackhawks were closing in for the kill, but my father waited until the crew got out. He jumped with a blackhawk’s distortion field locked on. It was the only chance they had, they were badly damaged, but the old Lady Mac , she got them out alive.” Joshua closed his eyes, remembering old pain. “Father didn’t like to mention it much.”
No kidding?ruben asked heavily.
Was there ever a plague on Anglade?tula asked.
Yes,Oenone said. Twenty-three years ago. I don’t have any record of an attack on an aid convoy, though.
You do surprise me,syrinx said.
This captain seems to be a nice young man,Oenone said. He’s obviously very taken with you.
I’d sooner join an Adamist nunnery. And just leave the psychological analysis to us humans, please.
The silence in her mind was reproachful.
“Yes, well, that was the past,” Syrinx said awkwardly to Joshua Calvert. “Your problem is here in the present.”
Syrinx?oxley called.
The cautious mental tone warned her. Yes?
We’ve opened two of their cargo-pods. They both contain the tokamak coils listed in the manifest. No antimatter-confinement technology in sight.
What? They can’t have tokamak coils.she looked through Oxley’s eyes into the MSV’s tiny cabin. Eileen Carouch was strapped in a web next to him; several screens were covered in complicated multi-coloured graphics. The liaison officer wore a worried frown as she studied the displays. Outside the port, Syrinx could see one of the Lady Macbeth ’s cargo-pods gripped in the MSV’s heavy-duty waldo arm. It had been opened, and the tokamak coils had been removed by some of the mandible-like manipulator waldos.
Eileen Carouch turned to face Oxley. “It doesn’t look good. According to our information both of these pods should contain the confinement coils.”
We’ve been had,ruben said.
Will you stop saying that,syrinx demanded.
What do you want us to do?oxley asked.
Examine every pod supposed to hold the antimatter-confinement coils.
OK.
“Everything all right?” Joshua asked.
Syrinx opened her eyes, and manufactured a killer-sweet smile. “Just fine, thank you.”
Eileen Carouch and Oxley opened all eighteen cargo-pods supposed to contain the illegal coils. In every one they found neatly packaged tokamak coils.
Syrinx ordered them to open another five pods at random. They contained tokamak coils.
Syrinx gave up. Ruben was right, they’d been had.
That night she lay on her bunk, unable to sleep even though the body tensions due to ten days of enforced stealth routine had almost abated. Ruben was asleep beside her. There had been no prospect of sex when they came off duty, her mood was too black. He seemed to accept their defeat with a phlegmatism which she found annoying.
Where did we go wrong?she asked Oenone. That ratty old ship was never out of your sight. You followed them superbly. I was more worried about the Nephele keeping up. Its spacial orientation isn’t a patch on yours.
Perhaps it was the operatives at Idria who lost track of the coils?
They were very certain the coils had been put on board. I could accept Calvert hiding one set in the ship, there’s a lot of cubic volume there, but not eighteen.
There must have been a switch.
It was the variety of those compounds which justified the considerable investment made in the rock. Idria’s combination of resources was rare, and rarity always attracts money.
In 2402 a survey craft found long veins of minerals smeared like a diseased rainbow through the ordinary metal ores, their chemistry a curious mixture of sulphurs, alumina, and silicas. A planetside board meeting deemed that the particular concentration of crystalline strata was valuable enough to warrant an extraction operation; and the miners and their heavy digging machinery began chewing shafts into the interior in 2408. Industrial stations followed, refining and processing the ores on site. Population began to creep upwards, caverns were expanded, biospheres started. By 2450 the central cavern was five kilometres long and four wide, Idria’s rotation was increased to give it a half-standard gravity on the floor. There were ninety thousand people living in it by then, forming a community which was self-sufficient in most areas. It was declared independent, and earned a seat in the system assembly. But it was a company town, the company being Lassen Interstellar.
Lassen was into mining, and shipping, and finance, and starship components, and military systems, amongst other endeavours. It was a typical New Californian outfit, a product of innumerable mergers and takeovers; a linear extension of its old Earth predecessors which had thrived on America’s western seaboard. Its management worshipped the super-capitalist ethic, expanding aggressively, milking governments for development contracts, pressuring the assembly for ever more convenient tax breaks, spreading subsidiaries across the Confederation, shafting the opposition at every opportunity.
There were thousands of companies like it based on New California. Corporate tigers whose spoils elevated the standard of living right across the system. The nature of their competition was fierce and confrontational. The Confederation assembly had passed several censure motions on their dubious exports, and held inquiries into individual supply contracts. New California’s level of technology was high, its military products were in great demand. Companies were indifferent to the use they would ultimately be put to: once the buyer was identified, the pitch made, the finance organized, nothing would be allowed to stop the sale. Not the Government Export Licence office, and certainly not the meddlesome Confederation inspectors. With this in mind, shipping could be a problem, especially the trickier contracts to star systems operating unreasonable embargoes. Captains who took on those contracts could expect high rewards. And the challenge always attracted a certain type of individual.
The Lady Macbeth was resting on a docking cradle in one of the thirty-odd industrial stations coasting in a loose orbit around Idria. Both of her circular cargo hold doors on the forward hull were open, each showing a metallic cave of bracing struts coiled by power and data cables, load clamps, and environmental regulation interface sockets; all of it wrapped in tarnished gold foil and badly illuminated to boot.
The docking bay was a seventy-five-metre crater of carbotanium and composite, ribbed by various conduits and pipes. Spotlights around the curving walls shone stark white beams on the starship’s leaden hull, compensating for the pallid slivers of sunlight falling on the station while it was in Idria’s penumbra. Several storage frames stood around the rim of the bay, looking much like scaffold towers left over from the station’s construction. Each of them was equipped with a long quadruple-jointed waldo arm to load and unload cargo from ships. The arms were operated from a console inside small transparent bubbles protruding from the carbotanium surface like polished barnacles.
Joshua Calvert hung on a grab hoop inside the cargo supervisor’s compartment, his face centimetres from the curving radiation-shielded glass, watching the waldo arm raising another cargo-pod out of its storage frame. The pods were two metres long, pressurized cylinders with slightly domed ends; a thick white silicon-composite shell protected them from the wider temperature shifts encountered in space. They were stamped with Lassen’s geometric eagle logo, and line after line of red stencil lettering. According to the code they were high-density magnetic-compression coils for tokamaks. And ninety per cent of the pods did indeed contain what they said; the other ten per cent held smaller, more compact coils which produced an even stronger magnetic field, suitable for antimatter confinement.
The waldo arm lowered the pod into Lady Mac ’s hold, and a set of load clamps closed around it. Joshua felt a considerable twinge of apprehension. Inside the New Californian system the coils were a legitimate cargo, no matter the misleading coding. In interstellar space their legality was extremely ambiguous, although a decent lawyer should be able to quash any charges. And in the Puerto de Santa Maria system where he was going they spelt deep shit in capital letters ten metres high.
Sarha Mitcham’s hand tightened around his. “Do we really need this?” she asked in a murmur. She had left her padded skullcap off in the transparent hemisphere, letting her short hazel hair wave around lethargically in free fall. Her lips were drawn together in concern.
“ ’Fraid so.” He tickled her palm with a finger, a private signal they often used on board Lady Mac . Sarha was a spirited lover, they had spent long hours experimenting in his cabin’s cage; but this time it didn’t break her mood.
It wasn’t that the Lady Macbeth didn’t make money: in the eight months since Roland Frampton’s first charter they had landed seven cargoes and one passenger group, some bacteriology specialists on their way to join an ecology review team on Northway. But Lady Macbeth also consumed money at a colossal rate: there was fuel and consumables each time they docked; an endless list of component spares, there wasn’t a flight which went by without some kind of burn-out or a mandatory time-expiry replacement; the crew’s wages had to be met; and then there were spaceport charges and customs and immigration fees. Joshua hadn’t quite realized the sheer expense involved in operating the Lady Macbeth . Somehow Marcus Calvert had glossed over that part. Profits were slim verging on non-existent, and he couldn’t afford to bump his rates up any higher, he wouldn’t land a single charter. He’d made more money while he was scavenging.
So now he knew the truth behind the captains’ talk in Harkey’s Bar, and its countless equivalents across the Confederation. Like him they all said how well they were doing, how they only kept flying for the life it offered rather than financial necessity. Lies, all of it a magnificent, artistic construct of lies. Banks sat back and made money, everyone else worked for a living.
“There’s no shame in it,” Hasan Rawand had told him a fortnight ago. “Everyone’s in the same grind. Hell, Joshua, you’re a lot better off than most of us. You haven’t got a mortgage to pay off.”
Hasan Rawand was the captain of the Dechal , an independent trader smaller than the Lady Mac . He was in his mid-seventies, and he’d been flying for fifty years, the last fifteen as an owner-captain.
“The real money isn’t in cargo charters,” he explained. “Not for people like us. That’s just makework to tide us over. The big lines have got all the really profitable routes tied up. They operate vacuum-sealed cartels the likes of you and I aren’t going to break in.”
They were drinking in a club in the dormitory section of an industrial station orbiting Baydon, a two-kilometre alithium wheel spinning to produce a two-thirds standard gravity around the rim. Joshua leant against the bar, and watched the planet’s nightside sliding past the huge window. Sparkles of light from cities and towns sketched strange curves across the darkness.
“Where is the money, then?” Joshua asked. He’d been drinking for three solid hours, long enough to sluice enough alcohol past his enhanced organs and into his brain, giving the universe a snug aura.
“Flights which use that fancy fourth drive tube the Lady Mac ’s fitted out with.”
“Forget it, I’m not that anxious to make money.”
“All right, OK,” Hasan Rawand gestured extravagantly, beer slopping over his glass, drops falling in a slight curve. “I’m just saying that’s the nature of it: combat and sanctions busting. That kind of thing is what the independents like you and me were put in this galaxy for. Everybody makes one of those trips every now and then. Some of us, like me, more often than most. That’s what keeps the hull intact, and the radiation outside the baffles.”
“You make a lot of runs?” Joshua asked, staring into his glass morosely.
“Some. Not a lot. That’s where us owner-captains’ bad-boy reputation comes from. People think we do it all the time. We don’t. But they don’t hear about that, about the mundane flights we make for fifty weeks a year. They only hear about us when we get caught, and the news agencies blitz the networks with the arrest. We’re the perpetual victims of bad publicity. We should sue.”
“But you don’t get caught?”
“Haven’t yet. There’s a method I use, virtually foolproof, but it needs two ships.”
“Ah.” Joshua must have been drunker than he realized, because the next thing he heard himself saying was: “Tell me more.”
And now two weeks later he was starting to regret listening. Although, he had to admit, it damn near was foolproof. Those two weeks had been spent in furious preparation. In a way, he supposed having Hasan Rawand consider him for any kind of partner was an oblique compliment, since only the very best captains could hope to pull it off. And the ultimate risk wasn’t his, not this run. He was the junior partner. But still, twenty per cent wasn’t to be sneered at, not when it came to a straight eight hundred thousand fuseodollars, half in advance.
The last pod of magnetic coils was secured in the Lady Mac ’s cargo hold. Sarha Mitcham let out a soft, rueful sigh as the waldo arm folded down on its cradle. This flight worried her, but she had agreed, along with the rest of the crew when Joshua explained what it entailed. And their money situation was becoming uncomfortably shaky. Even the fleks of MF-band albums the crew always hawked around ports to the bootleg distributors were fetching minimal prices. A lot of her private stock was getting obsolete, official company distribution was catching up on her. Here on Idria she had actually bought more albums than she’d sold. At least New California was a hot system for MF culture, she ought to be able to sell the fresh recordings for another six months yet, especially on the kind of backworld ports Lady Macbeth flew to.
The money would go into the crew’s pooled account so they could finance their own cargo in a couple of months’ time. It was their one bright dream, which made the mundane tolerable. Norfolk was reaching conjunction soon, a cargo of Tears would make some real profit for them if they owned it rather than simply carried it for someone else. And then just maybe they wouldn’t have to do this kind of flight again for a long time.
“All loaded, and not a scratch on your hull,” the woman operating the waldo arm said cheerfully.
Joshua looked back over his shoulder and smiled at her. She was slender, and a bit tall for his taste, but her one-piece uniform showed a nice collection of curves below its emerald fabric. “Yeah, good work, thanks.” He datavised her console, loading in his personal code to confirm the cargo had been transferred on board the Lady Mac .
She checked the data, and handed him his manifest flek. “Bon voyage , Captain.”
Joshua and Sarha glided out of the compartment, negotiating the maze of narrow corridors down to the telescoping airlock tube that linked the Lady Mac ’s life-support capsules to the station.
The waldo operator waited for a minute after they left, then closed her eyes. The cargo pods are all loaded. Lady Macbeth is scheduled to disengage from the station in eighteen minutes.
Thank you,Oenone replied.
Tranquillity’s senses perceived the gravitational disturbance caused by the wormhole terminus opening in a designated emergence zone a hundred and fifteen thousand kilometres away from the habitat itself. Against Mirchusko’s mud-yellow immensity the terminus was a neutral two-dimensional disk. Yet observing it through an optical sensor on one of the strategic-defence platforms ringing the zone, Tranquillity received an inordinately powerful intimation of depth.
Ilex flew out of the wormhole. A voidhawk with a hull that was more grey than the usual blue. It slipped smoothly away from the rapidly shrinking terminus, yawing gracefully as it orientated itself.
Ilex, Confederation Navy ship ALV-90100, requesting approach and docking permission,it said formally.
Granted,tranquillity replied.
The voidhawk accelerated in towards the habitat, building up to three gees almost immediately.
You’re very welcome,tranquillity said. I don’t get many voidhawks visiting me.
Thank you. Though this is not a privilege I was expecting. Up until three days ago we were assigned to fleet patrol duties in the Ellas sector. Now we’ve been switched to diplomatic courier duty. My captain, Auster, is experiencing a mild notion of displeasure, he says we didn’t sign on to be used as a taxi service.
Oh, this sounds interesting.
I believe the circumstances are exceptional. And in connection with this, my captain has another request. He asks that Ione Saldana receive a special envoy from First Admiral Samual Aleksandrovich: one Captain Maynard Khanna.
You have come directly from Avon to bring this captain?
Yes.
The Lord of Ruin is honoured to accept the Admiral’s envoy, and she invites Captain Auster and his crew to dinner this evening.
My captain accepts. He is curious about Ione Saldana, the news agencies have been most effusive on her behalf.
I could tell you a tale or two about her.
Really?
And I’d be interested to hear about the Ellas sector. Are there many pirates there?
The tube carriage slid to a halt and Captain Khanna stepped out onto the small station’s platform. He was thirty-eight years old, with crew-cut sandy red hair, pale skin given to freckles if he was caught by the sun, regular features, and dark brown eyes. His body was kept in trim by a stiff forty-minute navy-approved workout each morning without fail. Out of his academy class of one hundred and fifteen officer cadets he had finished third; it would have been first but the computer psychological assessment said his flexibility wasn’t all that it could be, he was “doctrine orientated”.
He had been on the First Admiral’s executive staff for eighteen months, and in that time hadn’t made a single mistake. This was his first independent assignment, and he was frankly terrified. Tactics and command decisions he could handle, even Admiralty office politics; but a semi-reclusive universally revered black sheep Saldana teenage girl affinity-bonded to a non-Edenist bitek habitat was another matter. How the hell did you prepare motivation-analysis profiles on such a creature?
“You’ll do all right,” Admiral Aleksandrovich had said in his final briefing. “Young enough not to alienate her, smart enough not to insult her intelligence. And all the girls love a uniform.” The old man had winked and given him a companionable pat on the back.
Maynard Khanna pulled the jacket of his immaculate deep-blue dress uniform straight, placed his peaked cap firmly on his head, squared his shoulders, and marched up the stairs out of the station. He came out onto a courtyard of flagstones, lined with troughs full of colourful begonias and fuchsias. Paths led off from all sides into the surrounding sub-tropical parkland. He could see some sort of building a hundred metres away; but it was given only a fleeting glance as he stared round in astonishment. After coming through the airlock from the docking-ledge he had climbed straight into the waiting tube carriage, he hadn’t seen anything of the interior until now. The sheer size of Tranquillity was awesome, big enough to put a couple of standard Edenist habitats inside and shake them around like dice in a cup. A blinding light-tube glared hotly overhead, white candyfloss clouds trailed slowly through the air. A panorama of forests and meadows flecked with silver lakes and long water-courses rose up on either side of him like the walls of God’s own valley. And there was a sea about eight kilometres away—it couldn’t be called anything else with its sparkling wavelets and picturesque islands. He followed the arch of it rising up and up, his neck tilting back until his cap threatened to fall off. Millions of tonnes of water were poised above him ready to crash down in a flood which would have defeated Noah.
He brought his head down hurriedly, trying to remember how he had got rid of the giddiness when he visited the Edenist habitats orbiting Jupiter.
“Don’t look outside the horizontal, and always remember the poor sod above you thinks you’re going to fall on him,” his crusty old guide had said.
Knowing he had been defeated before he even started, Maynard Khanna walked along the yellow-brown stone path towards the building that resembled a Hellenic temple. It was a long basilica which had one end opening out into a circular area with a domed roof of some jet-black material supported by white pillars, the gaps between them filled by sheets of blue-mirror glass.
The path took him to the opposite end of the basilica, where a pair of serjeants stood guard duty like nightmare goblin statues on either side of the entrance arch.
“Captain Khanna?” one asked. The voice was mild and friendly, completely at odds with its appearance.
“Yes.”
“The Lord of Ruin is expecting you, please follow my servitor.” The serjeant turned and led him into the building. They walked down a central nave with large gilt-framed pictures hanging on the brown and white marble walls.
Maynard Khanna assumed they were holograms at first, then he realized they were two-dimensional, and a more detailed look revealed that they were oil paintings. There were a lot of countryside scenes where people wore elaborate, if baroque, costumes, riding on horses or gathered in ostentatious groups. Scenes from old Earth, pre-industrial age. And a Saldana would never make do with copies. They must be genuine. His mind balked at how much they must be worth; you could buy a battle cruiser with the money just one of them would fetch.
At the far end of the nave a Vostok capsule was resting on a cradle under a protective glass dome. Maynard stopped and looked at the battered old sphere with a mixture of trepidation and admiration. It was so small, so crude , yet for a few brief years it had represented the pinnacle of human technology. What ever would the cosmonaut who rode it into space think of Tranquillity?
“Which one is it?” he asked the serjeant in a hushed tone.
“Vostok 6, it carried Valentina Tereshkova into orbit in 1963. She was the first woman in space.”
Ione Saldana was waiting for him in the large circular audience chamber at the end of the nave. She sat behind a crescent-shaped wooden desk positioned in the centre; thick planes of light streamed in through the giant sheets of glass set between the pillars, turning the air into a platinum haze.
The white polyp floor was etched with a giant crowned phoenix emblem in scarlet and blue. It took an eternity for him to cover the distance from the door to the desk; the sound of his boot heels clicking against the polished surface echoed drily in the huge empty space.
Intended to intimidate, he thought. You know how alone you are when you confront her.
He snapped a perfect salute when he reached the desk. She was a head of state, after all; the Admiral’s protocol office had been most insistent about that, and how he should treat her.
Ione was wearing a simple sea-green summer dress with long sleeves. The intense lighting made her short gold-blonde hair glimmer softly.
She was just as lovely as all the AV recordings he’d studied.
“Do take a seat, Captain Khanna,” she said, smiling. “You look most uncomfortable standing up like that.”
“Thank you, ma’am.” There were two high-backed chairs on his side of the desk; he sat in one, still keeping his pose rigid.
“I understand you’ve come all the way from the First Fleet headquarters at Avon just to see me?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“In a voidhawk?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Owing to the somewhat unusual nature of this worldlet, we don’t have a diplomatic corps, nor a civil service,” she said airily. A delicate hand waved around at the audience chamber. “The habitat personality handles all the administrative functions quite effectively. But the Lords of Ruin employ a legal firm on Avon to represent Tranquillity’s interests in the Confederation Assembly chamber. If there’s a matter of urgency arising, you only have to consult them. I have met the senior partners, and I have a lot of confidence in them.”
“Yes, ma’am—”
“Maynard, please. Stop calling me ma’am. This is a private meeting, and you’re making me sound like a day-club governess for junior aristocrats.”
“Yes, Ione.”
She smiled brightly. The effect was devastating. Her eyes were an enchanting shade of blue, he noticed.
“That’s better,” she said. “Now what have you come to talk about?”
“Dr Alkad Mzu.”
“Ah.”
“Are you familiar with the name?”
“The name and most of the circumstances.”
“Admiral Aleksandrovich felt this was not a matter to take to your legal representatives on Avon. It is his opinion that the fewer people who are aware of the situation, the better.”
Her smile turned speculative. “Fewer people? Maynard, there are eight different Intelligence agencies who have set up shop in Tranquillity; and all of them run surveillance operations on poor Dr Mzu. There are times when their pursuit becomes dangerously close to a slapstick routine. Even the Kulu ESA have posted a team here. I imagine that must be a real thorn in my cousin Alastair’s regal pride.”
“I think what the Admiral meant was: fewer people outside high government office.”
“Yes, of course, the people most able to deal with the situation.”
The irony in her tone made Maynard Khanna give an inward flinch. “In view of the fact that Dr Mzu is now contacting a number of starship captains, and the Omutan sanctions are about to expire, the Admiral would be extremely grateful if we could be told of your policy regarding Dr Mzu,” he said formally.
“Are you recording this for the Admiral?”
“Yes, a full sensevise.”
Ione stared straight into his eyes, speaking in a clear precise diction. “My father promised Admiral Aleksandrovich’s predecessor that Dr Alkad Mzu would never be allowed to leave Tranquillity, and I repeat that promise to the Admiral. She will not be permitted to leave, nor will I countenance any attempt to sell or hand over the information she presumably holds to anybody, including the Confederation Navy. Upon her death, she will be cremated in order to destroy her neural nanonics. And I hope to God that sees the end of the threat.”
“Thank you,” Maynard Khanna said.
Ione relaxed a little. “I hadn’t even been gestated when she arrived here twenty-six years ago, so tell me, I’m curious. Has Fleet Intelligence discovered yet how she survived Garissa’s destruction?”
“No. She can’t have been on the planet. The Confederation Navy was in charge of the evacuation, and we have no record of carrying her on any of our ships. Nor was she listed as being in any of the asteroid settlements. The only logical conclusion is that she was outsystem on some kind of clandestine military mission when Omuta bombed Garissa.”
“Deploying the Alchemist?”
“Who knows? The device certainly wasn’t used; so either it didn’t work or they were intercepted. The general staff favours the interception scenario.”
“And if she survived, so did the Alchemist,” Ione concluded.
“If it was ever built.”
She raised an eyebrow. “After all this time, I thought that was taken for granted.”
“The thinking goes that after all this time, we should have heard something other than rumours. If it does exist, why haven’t the Garissan survivors tried to use it against Omuta?”
“When it comes to Doomsday machines, rumours are all I want to hear.”
“Yes.”
“You know, I’ve watched her sometimes while she’s been working over in the Laymil project’s physics centre. She’s a good physicist, her colleagues respect her. But she’s nothing exceptional, not mentally.”
“One idea in a lifetime is all it takes.”
“You’re right. Clever of her to come here, really. The one place where her security is guaranteed, and at the same time the one mini-nation which everybody knows is no military threat to other Confederation members.”
“So may I say you have no objection to our maintaining our observation team?”
“You can, providing you don’t flaunt the privilege. But please reassure yourselves. I don’t think she’s received much geneering, if any. She can’t last more than another thirty years, forty at the outside. Then it will all be over.”
“Excellent.” He leant forward a few millimetres, lips moving upwards into a slight awkward smile. “There was one other matter.”
Ione’s eyes widened with innocent anticipation. “Yes?”
“An independent trader captain called Joshua Calvert mentioned your name in connection with one of our agents.”
She squinted up at the ceiling as if lost in a particularly difficult feat of recall. “Oh, yes, Joshua. I remember him, he caused quite a stir at the start of the year. Found a big chunk of Laymil electronics in the Ruin Ring. I met him at a party once. A nice young man.”
“Yes,” Maynard Khanna said gingerly. “So you didn’t warn him about Erick Thakrar being one of our deep-cover operatives?”
“Erick Thakrar’s name never passed my lips. Actually, Thakrar has just been accepted by Captain Andrй Duchamp for a berth on the Villeneuve’s Revenge , that’s an Adamist ship with an antimatter drive fitted. I’m sure Commander Olsen Neale will confirm that for you. Erick Thakrar’s cover is completely intact, I can assure you that Andrй Duchamp doesn’t suspect a thing.”
“Well, that’s a great relief, the Admiral will be pleased.”
“I’m glad to hear it. And please don’t concern yourself over Joshua Calvert, I’m sure he’d never do anything illegal, he’s really an exemplary citizen.”
The Lady Macbeth is preparing to jump insystem,Oenone warned the crew. They were two light-weeks from Puerto de Santa Maria’s star, which cast a barely perceptible shadow on the voidhawk’s foam-encased hull. The Nephele was drifting eight hundred kilometres over the upper hull, yet Oenone ’s optical sensors were unable to see it.
Twenty-eight thousand kilometres further in towards the faint star, the Lady Macbeth ’s sensor clusters and thermo-dump panels were folding with the neatness of an alighting eagle.
If only everything about the Adamist starship’s flight was that neat, Syrinx wished. This Captain Calvert was a born incompetent. It had taken them six days to get here from New California, a distance of fifty-three light-years. The manoeuvres which Lady Macbeth performed every time she reached a jump coordinate were appallingly sloppy, they went on for hours at a time. Time was money in the cargo business. And if this was the way Calvert navigated on every voyage it was no wonder he needed the money so desperately.
“Stand by,” Syrinx told Larry Kouritz. “He’s lined up on the Ciudad asteroid.”
“Roger,” the marine captain acknowledged.
“The Ciudad,” Eileen Carouch muttered as she accessed the Puerto de Santa Maria file in her neural nanonics. “There are several insurrectionist cells based there, according to the planetary government’s Intelligence agency. They are pushing hard for independence.”
Attention everybody,syrinx broadcast, I want us out of stealth mode the moment we emerge. This Lady Macbeth is fitted with maser cannons, so let’s not have any mistakes. Chi, you have fire-control authority as of now. If they make one smartarse move, slice them in two. Nephele , you keep a sharp watch for approaching ships. If these insurrectionists are desperate enough to try and obtain antimatter-confinement technology they may be dumb enough to try and assist their courier.
We’ll cover you,targard, the Nephele ’s captain, replied.
Syrinx returned her attention to Oenone ’s sensor inputs. The Lady Macbeth had reverted to a perfect sphere. Blue ion flames shrank away to nothing. There was a sharp twist in space’s uniformity.
Go,she commanded.
Oenone erupted out of the wormhole terminus seventeen hundred kilometres distant from the Lady Macbeth . A blizzard of foam flakes swirled away as electronic sensors and thermo-dump panels were uncovered around the crew toroid. Fusion generators in the lower hull combat systems toroid powered up. X-ray lasers deployed. Gravity returned to the crew toroid. The distortion field swelled outwards, accelerating the voidhawk up to seven gees. It chased a sharp curve round to align on the Lady Macbeth . Two hundred kilometres away the Nephele was shaking off its stealth cloak.
Ciudad was a distant lacklustre speck, with a small constellation of industrial stations wrapped around it. Strategic defence sensor radiation raked across the Oenone .
Syrinx was aware of a curious secondary oscillation in the distortion field. Foam was streaming away from all across the hull.
That’s better,Oenone sighed almost subliminally.
Syrinx didn’t have time to form a rebuke. A transmitter dish unfolded from the lower hull toroid, swinging round to focus on the Lady Macbeth .
“Starship Lady Macbeth ,” she relayed through the transmitter’s bitek processors. “This is Confederation Navy ship Oenone . You are ordered to hold your position. Do not activate your reaction drive, do not attempt to jump away. Stand by for rendezvous and boarding.”
Oenone ’s distortion field reached out to engulf the Adamist starship.
Syrinx could hear Tula communicating with Ciudad’s defence control centre, informing them of the interception.
“Hi there, Oenone ,” Joshua Calvert’s voice came cheerfully out of the bridge’s AV pillars. “Are you in some kind of trouble? How can we assist?”
Lying prone on her couch, her teeth gritted against the four-gee acceleration, Syrinx could only glance at the offending pillar in disconcerted amazement.
Oenone covered the last five kilometres cautiously, every sensor and weapon trained on the Lady Macbeth , alert for the slightest hint of treachery. At a hundred and fifty metres’ distance, the voidhawk rotated slowly, presenting its upper hull towards the Adamist starship. The two extended airlock tubes, then touched and sealed. Larry Kouritz led his squad into the Lady Macbeth ’s life-support capsules, executing the penetration and securement procedures with textbook precision.
Syrinx watched through Oenone ’s sensor blisters as the crew toroid’s clamshell hangar doors hinged apart. Oxley piloted their small boxy multifunction service vehicle out into space, yellow-orange chemical flames propelling it round towards Lady Macbeth ’s open cargo hatch.
Joshua Calvert was marched into the bridge by two marines in dark carbotanium armour suits. He grinned round affably at the members of Syrinx’s crew, with an even wider display of teeth when his eyes found her.
She shifted uncomfortably under the handsome young man’s attention. This was not how the interception was supposed to be going.
We’ve been had,ruben told her abruptly.
Syrinx flicked a glance at her lover. He was sitting behind his console, an expression of glum resignation settling on his features. He combed his fingers back through his beret of curly white hair.
What do you mean?she asked.
Oh, just look at him, Syrinx. Does that look like a man facing a forty-year sentence for smuggling?
We were on the Lady Macbeth for the whole flight, she never rendezvoused with anybody.
Ruben simply raised an ironic eyebrow.
She returned her attention to the tall captain. She was annoyed at the way his gaze seemed to be fastened on her breasts.
“Captain Syrinx,” he said warmly. “I must congratulate you and your ship. That was a superb piece of flying, really quite superb. Jesus, you scared the crap out of some of my crew the way you jumped us like that. We thought you were a pair of blackhawks.” He stuck his hand out. “It’s a pleasure to meet a captain who is so obviously talented. And I hope you don’t take offence, but an extremely attractive captain as well.”
Yes, we’ve definitely been had.
Syrinx ignored the offered hand. “Captain Calvert, we have reason to suspect you are involved with importing proscribed technology into this star system. I am therefore cautioning you that your ship will be searched under the powers invested in me by the Confederation Assembly. Any refusal to permit our search is a violation of Confederation space regulatory code which permits lawful officers full access to all systems and records once a request has been made by said officers. I am now making that request. Do you understand?”
“Well, gosh, yes,” Joshua said earnestly. A note of doubt crept in. “I hate to ask, but are you quite sure you’ve got the right ship?”
“Perfectly sure,” Syrinx said icily.
“Oh, well of course I’ll cooperate in any way I can. I think you navy people do a great job. It’s always reassuring for us commercial vessels to know we can always rely on you to maintain interstellar order.”
“Please. Don’t spoil the effect now, son,” Ruben said wearily. “You’ve been doing so well.”
“I’m just a citizen happy to oblige,” Joshua said.
“A citizen who owns a ship that has an antimatter drive,” Syrinx said sharply.
Joshua’s gaze refocused on the front of her pale blue ship-tunic. “I didn’t design it. That’s the way it was built. Actually it was built by the Ferring Astronautics company in Earth’s O’Neill Halo. I understand Earth is the greatest Edenist ally in the Confederation? That’s what my didactic history courses say, anyway.”
“We have a common viewpoint,” Syrinx said reluctantly, anything else would have sounded like an admission of guilt.
“Couldn’t you have the drive taken out?” Ruben asked.
Joshua managed an appropriately concerned expression. “I wish I could afford to. But there was a lot of damage when my father saved those Edenists from the pirates. The refit took all the money I had.”
“Saved which Edenists?” Cacus blurted.
Idiot,syrinx and ruben told him together. the life-support engineer spread his hands helplessly.
“It was an aid convoy to Anglade,” Joshua said. “There was a bacteriological plague there several years ago. My father joined the relief effort, of course; what are commercial needs compared to saving human life? They were taking viral-processing equipment to the planet to manufacture an antidote. Unfortunately they were attacked by blackhawks who wanted to steal the cargo, that kind of equipment is expensive. Jesus, I mean some people are really low, you know? There was a fight, and one of the escort voidhawks was wounded. The blackhawks were closing in for the kill, but my father waited until the crew got out. He jumped with a blackhawk’s distortion field locked on. It was the only chance they had, they were badly damaged, but the old Lady Mac , she got them out alive.” Joshua closed his eyes, remembering old pain. “Father didn’t like to mention it much.”
No kidding?ruben asked heavily.
Was there ever a plague on Anglade?tula asked.
Yes,Oenone said. Twenty-three years ago. I don’t have any record of an attack on an aid convoy, though.
You do surprise me,syrinx said.
This captain seems to be a nice young man,Oenone said. He’s obviously very taken with you.
I’d sooner join an Adamist nunnery. And just leave the psychological analysis to us humans, please.
The silence in her mind was reproachful.
“Yes, well, that was the past,” Syrinx said awkwardly to Joshua Calvert. “Your problem is here in the present.”
Syrinx?oxley called.
The cautious mental tone warned her. Yes?
We’ve opened two of their cargo-pods. They both contain the tokamak coils listed in the manifest. No antimatter-confinement technology in sight.
What? They can’t have tokamak coils.she looked through Oxley’s eyes into the MSV’s tiny cabin. Eileen Carouch was strapped in a web next to him; several screens were covered in complicated multi-coloured graphics. The liaison officer wore a worried frown as she studied the displays. Outside the port, Syrinx could see one of the Lady Macbeth ’s cargo-pods gripped in the MSV’s heavy-duty waldo arm. It had been opened, and the tokamak coils had been removed by some of the mandible-like manipulator waldos.
Eileen Carouch turned to face Oxley. “It doesn’t look good. According to our information both of these pods should contain the confinement coils.”
We’ve been had,ruben said.
Will you stop saying that,syrinx demanded.
What do you want us to do?oxley asked.
Examine every pod supposed to hold the antimatter-confinement coils.
OK.
“Everything all right?” Joshua asked.
Syrinx opened her eyes, and manufactured a killer-sweet smile. “Just fine, thank you.”
Eileen Carouch and Oxley opened all eighteen cargo-pods supposed to contain the illegal coils. In every one they found neatly packaged tokamak coils.
Syrinx ordered them to open another five pods at random. They contained tokamak coils.
Syrinx gave up. Ruben was right, they’d been had.
That night she lay on her bunk, unable to sleep even though the body tensions due to ten days of enforced stealth routine had almost abated. Ruben was asleep beside her. There had been no prospect of sex when they came off duty, her mood was too black. He seemed to accept their defeat with a phlegmatism which she found annoying.
Where did we go wrong?she asked Oenone. That ratty old ship was never out of your sight. You followed them superbly. I was more worried about the Nephele keeping up. Its spacial orientation isn’t a patch on yours.
Perhaps it was the operatives at Idria who lost track of the coils?
They were very certain the coils had been put on board. I could accept Calvert hiding one set in the ship, there’s a lot of cubic volume there, but not eighteen.
There must have been a switch.