“True,” Ekk said. “Assuming there are no complications.”
Vex ate in silence for several bites, then placed her spork carefully on her empty plate, and laced her fingers behind her head.
“Aside from the war, General, how does it feel to be in uncharted territory?”
“Are you asking me from a purely academic standpoint, Madam Kosmarch? Or is this a personal inquiry?”
“Both,” she said.
The old officer’s eyes got a faraway look in them.
“When I was a boy,” he said, “I used to go out in my father’s buggy—the kind with fuel cells, so you can drive for hundreds of kilometers on an airless surface without needing to recharge—and stare up into space. I’m originally from Dau-Lat, you see. Everything is built underground there. We’ve got more people than most terrestrials in the Waywork. We were one of the first to be settled after the Exodus. But it does present a crowding problem. So, when a teenager wants to be alone, he takes his father’s buggy and spends a few days wandering around the craters and in the mountain valleys. Thinking about his future. And whether or not he’ll get a chance to go anywhere. Be somebody.”
“That doesn’t tell me anything you haven’t told me before,” she said.
“My apologies. I frame the following statement by emphasizing that I had more than a little wanderlust in me when I joined our military. And though I’ve traveled to dozens of stars and seen the many worlds circling them, I’ve always had a yearning to see what the universe beyond the Waywork offers. Up close, I mean. We’ve been studying the systems outside the Waywork for centuries. They’ve become objects of academic curiosity, until now. But what if we can finally explore them in person? What if the Waywork no longer contains us, the way it’s contained us from the beginning? How might this change our universe as we’ve known it up until now?”
“You speak as if you believe there is much in need of changing, General,” she said, with just the right amount of tonal warning in her voice to remind Ekk that he was speaking to a superior.
He cleared his throat, and attempted to pivot his meaning.
“I speak purely in terms of Starstate Nautilan being able to expand its efforts to virgin territory, Madam Kosmarch. Instead of liberating the other systems from the other Starstates, we could launch a whole new expansion effort. Especially if there are more clement worlds to be found! That alone is cause for much excitement. With new planets adaptable for Earth organisms, Starstate Nautilan would have no need for costly and protracted campaigns within the Waywork. We could grow above, under, and around the rest of the Starstates. Become a cocoon of control. With an unlimited number of fresh systems at our disposal, meaning virtually limitless resources!”
“Yes,” Vex said, eyeing him. “That would be a very attractive scenario, would it not? I myself foresee a great many possibilities opening before us in the months ahead. Having claimed this new system for us, I am not limiting my ambition. This new system is the fulcrum on which an ever-larger set of plans will tilt. But it won’t just be me working alone. I need men and women I can trust. Not just for their competence at what they do. But for their personal loyalty to me in particular. The other kosmarchs…will each react differently to news that I’ve expanded my domain. I will, in fact, be devoting a great deal of Jaalit’s resources to aggressively developing this clement world. Regardless of how my peers may feel about it.”
Ekk stared at her as he seemed to consider the deeper, more subtle implication of what she was saying.
“I serve Starstate Nautilan,” he said firmly. “And all of the men and women who fall under me serve Starstate Nautilan as well. If your leadership is going to be the future of the Starstate, then I will happily devote my services—indeed, the remainder of my life—to carrying out your orders. Even if there is some…ah, might I say, resistance, to a reorganization in the hierarchy of kosmarchs.”
Vex’s smile was wolfish. “Very good, General Ekk.”
“I have served other kosmarchs, Madam. Given your age, and mine, you are liable to be the last for me. My legacy is therefore tied to yours. I would see you achieve all that you desire, because I trust that what you desire for yourself will also be of benefit to the Starstate as a whole.”
“I am grateful for your service, General. Nautilan is also grateful. I am a careful student of Waywork history. I believe very much that we’ve been overdue for a dramatic shakeup. I think people who can keep their heads in the midst of profound change are needed to ensure that we take full advantage of the path going forward. Once we’ve secured this system and its potential for Nautilan, I think there will be a lot more work for you to do. Can you handle that?”
“Again, Madam, my legacy is now intertwined with yours. I will exert myself toward the accomplishment of any objective, provided you make the objective clear.”
“And if even our own people—some of whom are quite foolish—stand in the way of that objective?”
Now the air between them had turned deadly cold. But Ekk was not a fresh-faced ensign. She could tell he’d had these kinds of conversations before. And had been forced to follow through on his commitments too.
“It’s the good of Starstate Nautilan before all individual concerns,” he said carefully.
“That’s precisely what I want to hear. Thank you for visiting me for dinner, General. I am sorry three gees doesn’t agree with you.”
“In my youth,” the man said, carefully pulling himself back up with the handles on his walker. Then he shuffled for the compartment door.
Chapter 25
The outermost jovian world was a sight to behold. Garsina Oswight watched through the porthole next to the ejection pod. Multicolored bands belted the planet at different latitudes, with whorls of storms disrupting and distorting the bands—like the eyes of a massive potato. Little satellite moons drifted here and there, some of them casting shadows against the tops of the jovian cloud patterns. If the Constellar detachment had more time, she’d insist that they remain in orbit for a few days, so that a proper survey could be conducted: the satellites catalogued and a wealth of video footage obtained.
As it was, they were only entering the jovian’s significant gravity long enough to be pulled in a relatively tight curve around the planet’s orbital circumference, at which point the ship would thrust out and away into space—having attained additional velocity which would carry the starliner onward to its next destination.
She checked the rigged-up coupling to the ejection pod. For several hours, slush hydrogen had been pumped through the cryogenic hose that snaked along the deck, slowly filling what little space was left in the ejection pod’s tubular silo. When all was said and done, the pod itself would be a deep-frozen popsicle, encased in ice, then encased in a layer of frozen hydrogen. Dumped into the void, the hydrogen would begin to sublimate almost immediately, throwing off a small, thin trail of gas mixed with tiny water ice particles, much like a microsized comet.
They wouldn’t begin dumping the pods until they were well clear of the slingshot maneuver. Until then, the ship was momentarily on reaction control only. The pressing weight of two-gee acceleration was mercifully lifted. And everybody aboard seemed to be thankful for the reprieve.
Though, to be honest, Garsina felt embarrassed by the fact that a mere two gees had almost crippled her. She was a woman used to pursuing intellectual effort, not physical effort. And while the DSOD troops and some of Antagean’s more seasoned people had borne the brunt of the increased gees without complaint, for Garsina it had been an exquisitely uncomfortable experience—with the added promise that things would get much worse once they had dumped their nuclear payload, and were pushing at three gees for the next jovian.
Minute by minute, the gas giant world got larger in the porthole. Until it had filled most of the black sky.
An alert sounded across the ship’s speakers, notifying everyone aboard that the starliner had officially entered the first phase of the slingshot. Presently, the gas gi
ant’s tremendous gravity was pulling the starliner into the planet, but at an angle sufficient that the vessel would circle the planet’s waist, and break orbit on the other side.
Using the controls on the porthole, Garsina ordered the tiny camera mounted in the porthole frame to take as much high-resolution imagery as could be fed into memory. This was a world not too different from many others in the Waywork, but Garsina was struck by the fact that no humans—in Waywork history, at least—had ever seen this world up close before. There was an awe-inspiring thrill of discovery while passing over the gorgeously banded face of the jovian planet, with its swirling streams of gas tinged by the complex molecules boiling up from underneath. If the world had been half again as large as it was, it might have undergone fusion at its core. But like so many brown dwarfs in the Waywork, this gas world was a star that never happened.
Before Garsina knew it, they were out of the maneuver, and the ship’s speakers broadcast a new message, ordering everyone into their nearest gee chair—time to burn out of the planet’s gravitational embrace.
Garsina settled into the single gee chair near the ejection pod’s main hatch. Inside the pod, one of the TGO’s five-kiloton nukes had been neatly wired to the pod’s computer system, with the nuke’s detonation sequence tied to the pod’s proximity detectors. If a mass roughly on par with a Nautilan destroyer came within five hundred kilometers, the pod’s reaction-control thrusters would pop on, and push the pod in the direction of the mass. When the pod got within one kilometer, the detonation process would begin, and the pod would explode with enough force to obliterate even a very large dome habitat.
Similar devices had been used all over the Waywork since the very beginning. Both for war, and for peace. A lot of mining and excavation was assisted by thermonuclear means. Even the countless number of individual power generators which ran the lights, computers, heating, and cooling, and much else that made life possible on every world, were just sustainable forms of fusion weaponry—harnessed in a perpetual state of not-yet-going-critical. Just like the starliner’s own reactors, which powered the ship and provided it with interplanetary propulsion.
In the case of a weapon like the one inside the ejection pod, there would be precious little fallout. Not enough to notice, considering the already harsh conditions of deep space, where radiation was a way of life. Every ship, no matter how small, had to deal with it. A solar flare could be significantly more dangerous than a nuke, if the flare was not detected in time to evacuate the crew to those modules which had been specifically hardened against increased radiation. Almost all of the electronics onboard were hardened as well, so a ship near a nuclear blast—without being caught in the event itself—would not be adversely affected. Though the crew, lacking time to seek shelter, would receive a higher than usual dose. Which just upped the chances for cancer, which plagued much of the Waywork’s population to one degree or another.
Would Uxmal be different? What little was known of Earth suggested a planet with an active magma core—which had generated a substantial electromagnetic field. Planets with cool cores were typically devoid of such fields, leaving the occupants wide open for radiation. But a clement world with a strong field would have a built-in shield against all but the worst solar activity. Which again spoke of the potential for millions who could thrive happily without domes, suits, filters, hydroponics, water electrolysis for making hydrogen to power the generators, and air to circulate in the ventilation systems…a life unlike anything in which Garsina had grown up. Where even a First Family member could not escape the mundane necessities of space living.
Resting in her gee chair—not crushed, yet—Garsina imagined walking in an open field, like the kind her brothers said existed at the Constellar capital. Far skies as blue as a swimming pool, with lovely white clouds and breezes that brought delicious scents to one’s nostrils. The biosphere on the capital’s surface was, after a couple of centuries of Starstate coaxing, self-sustaining. Pumping huge quantities of oxygen into the nitrogen sky, where it freely mingled with carbon dioxide from the people, animals, and a few specific kinds of equipment. Which in turn benefitted the plants. All of which had been grown from seeds passed down from the ark-borne refugees who’d fled Earth so long ago.
Elvin Axabrast appeared, and knelt at his Lady’s side—interrupting her reverie.
“Think ye best be returning to the executive suite,” he said. “Once we’re clear of the nukes, we’re goin’ to be pushing hard for several days. It’ll be easier to bear there than anywhere else.”
“I wanted to watch,” she said, and then added, “but I appreciate the consideration, Elvin. I really do. In fact, I intend to make sure you’re accorded extra compensation when we get back, for all the work you’ve put in with Captain Fazal’s people. You didn’t have to do any of that. Lieutenant Commander Antagean is correct. They are much younger than you are. But you sweated with them all the way. And seemed to enjoy yourself doing it too.”
“Like I told Antagean,” Elvin said sheepishly, “it was good to be working with the lads again.”
She smiled at the old man, and ran an affectionate finger across his military-trimmed beard. Once, his hair had been pure brown. But now? He was silver to white everywhere.
His hand touched hers, ever so gently, and his cheeks—not covered by hair—turned a brighter color of pink.
She noticed the faded tattoo on his hand. The same one Antagean had noticed at the start of their trip. She hadn’t thought much of it over the years. Family Oswight didn’t devote a lot of time to rehashing finished business. The Dissenter problem was buried back in Family Oswight’s past. That particular squabble belonged to another time, when there had been virgin territory to carve out of new worlds—not all of whom had been settled by populations amenable to Family management.
“Why did you get so upset with the lieutenant commander?” she asked.
“Beg pardon?” Elvin replied.
“Back in the galley, the first day we came aboard this ship. He noticed your hand”—she ran a fingertip gently over the tattoo for emphasis—“and you got upset about it.”
“Complicated business, Lady,” Elvin said, demurring.
“But I’ve known you since I was a little girl. Surely there are things you couldn’t share with a stranger that you might share with me? I only know of the Dissenters based on what my father instructed my tutors to tell me. And the details often seemed glossed over. ‘We are past that now,’ the tutors would say. And then we’d move on to more recent history, and the immediate problem of Starstate Nautilan camped on our doorstep. But that doesn’t erase what happened. Elvin, how did you come to serve my family so loyally?”
The old man sighed. “Can we please return to the suite?”
Garsina said yes, and reluctantly left the ejection pod behind. For several minutes, they endured life under increasing thrust, until finally they walked—gingerly, with steps made wise to the nature of thrust-induced gravity—into their suite. The gee chairs were even more plush and comfortable than those used in other parts of the ship. Garsina settled into hers, and Axabrast his. They turned to face each other, their chins aimed at one another across the distance, while the vibrations and ambient noise of the starliner changed to reflect the fact that more thrust was being applied every minute.
“Just wanted you to know, we’re punching ’em out, now,” said a speaker voice—it had been Captain Fazal.
“Thank you,” Garsina said. “Let’s hope we get a strike. Or two!”
“Yes, ma’am,” Captain Fazal said enthusiastically. Then the speaker went dead.
“Now, please, tell me,” she said to her old friend and protector.
Elvin closed his eyes, and chewed at his lower lip, before speaking.
“It’s like this, Lady. A long, long time ago, my people—God, it’s almost a joke to say that, since we haven’t been our own thing in centuries—settled the system that is now Oswight’s. Depending on which one of us you ask, he m
ay or may not agree with the idea that Family Oswight’s appearance was a positive development. My personal opinion—and this comes down to me from my sire—is that the original Dissenters were a lousy lot. Unhappy, prone to quarreling amongst themselves, and unable to do much with any of the real estate around them, except waste it. We didn’t even call ourselves Dissenters then. We were just us. Ill-tempered refugees from the arks that settled the Waywork. No allegiance to any Starstate, because no Starstate could yet touch us. We became Dissenters the moment Family Oswight moved in, and suddenly this sorry bunch of dysfunctional complainers had a cause—something to push against, or fight for, depending on which way you saw it.
“But the point is, we Dissenters never had a chance. We were poor, because we could barely take care of ourselves and our own needs, and we never managed to cooperate amongst ourselves long enough to make a sustained stand against outside encroachment.
“So, Family Oswight came in, set up shop, and brought Starstate Constellar with them. The Dissenters fought, and died, and fought some more, and died some more, until the sane among my folk who were left realized they were dyin’ for literally nothing. Bein’ a Dissenter is not an identity. It’s a bloody joke.”
“But the tattoo—” Garsina said.
“Put there when I was too young to understand, by a grandfather who wanted his grandchildren to have at least some kind of connection to the past. Which caused me a fair bit of grief being a Dissenter kid livin’ in Oswight system, surrounded by his betters. When I was old enough, I saw my way out.”
“The military,” she said.
“Right. DSOD didn’t give a damn who you were or where you were from. They didn’t even give a damn about the First Families, if you asked some of the training cadre. It was all about Constellar proper—and the need for able young men to go fight against a real enemy who was fixing to make us all miserable, such that it would have set my Dissenter ancestors howling. Makes ye wonder why every world in Nautie space isn’t eruptin’ in civil war every hour? But then again, you keep a person down long enough, he gets used to it. His eyes never see a bigger horizon. So why get angry?”
A Star Wheeled Sky Page 19
