“We know. She’s dropped out of sight as well, but thank you. If Araminta does get into contact, please let me know.” Oscar’s u-shadow sent Mr. Bovey a unisphere access code. “Immediately, please. Time is critical now.”
“That’s it?” a bewildered Mr. Bovey asked as Oscar turned back to the capsule.
“Don’t worry, we’ll keep looking. And you might want to consider my friend’s advice about dispersing yourselves about town. I’m being completely honest with you; we’re just the first to come visiting you, and we really are the good guys.”
The capsule’s door closed on Mr. Bovey’s frown. They lifted cleanly and turned to fly above the thick river, heading back to the docks.
“So now what?” Tomansio asked.
It sounded rhetorical to Oscar. “I’m going to check in,” he told the Knights Guardian.
“Yes?” Paula asked as soon as the secure link was opened.
“We’ve found her,” Oscar said.
“Excellent.”
“Not really. She’s on Chobamba.”
There was only a small hesitation. “Are you sure?”
“Living Dream has cranked up their confluence nests, something to do with getting a decent emotional pattern to recognize. According to them, she’s on Chobamba and having a good time sharing Inigo’s dreams.”
“That doesn’t make a lot of sense.”
“How quickly can you get there?”
“Not much faster than you.”
“I hope you’ve got sources in Living Dream. If they are going to try and snatch her, she’ll need to be warned.”
“I’d have to find her first.”
“Surely ANA can track her down. Somebody must have noticed her starship arriving.”
“It would have to be an ultradrive; that means a faction helped her. But which one?”
“I was thinking of a shotgun warning.”
“Yes. That might work. I’ll confer.”
“If we know, then it’s only a matter of time before the Cat knows.”
“Yes. If she leaves for Chobamba, you’ll have to follow her.”
“Oh, crap; this isn’t what I signed up for.”
“Can you trust your team?”
“I think they’ll stick with me, yes.”
“Excellent. I’ll call after I’ve spoken with ANA. Incidentally, the Accelerators are going to be put on what amounts to a trial within an hour. They were behind the Oscean Empire invasion.”
“Shit. Really?”
“Yes. If they’re found guilty, we should see the pressure easing off considerably,” Paula said, ending the call.
Tomansio and Beckia were looking at Oscar expectantly.
“So what does your boss think?” Tomansio asked.
“Same as us: It’s all very odd. Let’s get back to the ship in case we need to get to Chobamba in a hurry.”
The slim ultradrive ship dropped out of hyperspace half a light-year out from Ellezelin. In its cabin, Valean reviewed the data provided by the starship’s sensors. She was shown the exotic matter intrusions representing the huge wormholes that linked Ellezelin to the economically subjugated planets that made up the Free Trade Zone. The scale of the wormholes was impressive, harking back to the first-era Commonwealth when the Big15 planets were the center of an economic web binding together hundreds of worlds. Reviewing the size and power rating, she was satisfied that any of them could be used for the task Atha had assigned her. The one connecting to Agra would be preferable; it was the most modern and reached the farthest.
Like most long-term Highers, Valean had used biononics to remold her body to a state she considered more functional and useful. Currently devoid of hair, she appeared skeletal, with skin that had a strange gray iridescence, drawn so tight over her bones that each rib protruded. Muscles were hard lines, also standing proud and moving like malmetal. Her face continued the emaciated theme with deep sunken cheeks and a slim nose that had nostrils resembling gills. Wide-set eyes had orbs that glowed a faint uniform pink. Her only cosmetic adornment was a circle of gold above her thorax, composed of a tightly packed cluster of threads that seemed to be moving slowly.
After ten minutes standing in her featureless cabin, the starship detected a minute distortion within the quantum fields. Another ultradrive ship dropped out of hyperspace next to hers. The newcomer was slightly larger, with streamlined bulges in its ovoid fuselage. They maneuvered together and linked airlocks.
Marius glided into Valean’s cabin, his toga suit emitting wisps of darkness that trailed along in his wake.
“A physical meeting is somewhat theatrical, isn’t it?” he inquired. “Our TD (transdimensional) linkages remain secure.”
“They do,” Valean assured him, and smiled, revealing rows of tiny burnished brass teeth. “However, it was felt that this would add more emphasis to the message.”
“Which is?”
“Your Chatfield fuck-up has produced an unwelcome fallout, the largest part of which I’m on my way to solve.”
“Paula Myo was on to him. Deploying him to Ellezelin was a simple precaution.”
“And do you have an excuse for the Cat?”
Marius remained impassive. “Her behavior can be unpredictable. That is her nature. As I recall, it was not my decision alone to salvage her from Kingsville.”
“Irrelevant. Your actions have produced unwelcome consequences at this critical time. As of now you are downgraded.”
“I object.” Even as he said it, he tried to call Ilanthe, only to find the call rejected. Still, his cool disposition remained unbroken.
The brass teeth appeared again, their sharp tips perfectly aligned. “Irrelevant. Your new assignment is the Delivery Man.”
“That joke!” Marius exclaimed.
“We approach deployment, the culmination of everything we are. Nothing can be allowed to interfere with that. He was seen on Fanallisto; find out why. What is he doing there, what are the Conservatives up to? We also need to know how the remaining faction agents will react afterward.”
“Victory is only hours away and you send me to some shitball outside civilization to track down an incompetent part-time animal. I do not deserve this.”
“Failure to comply will result in bodyloss. After the Swarm goes active, there will be no re-life available. I suggest you make your selection.”
The dark hazy tendrils exuded by Marius’s toga suit swirled in agitation. He glared at Valean, sending Olympian contempt flooding out through his gaiamotes. “The true reason for physical contact, I see. Very well. I will comply. I am nothing if not devoted to our success.”
“Of course you are.”
Marius rotated a hundred eighty degrees and slipped out back to his own ship.
“Thank you,” Valean mouthed at the airlock door after it closed. She ordered the smartcore to take her to Ellezelin.
Cleric Conservator Ethan had returned to the Mayor’s oval sanctum in the Orchard Palace. The Cabinet Security Service had downgraded the threat level, partially based on Ethan’s own conversation with ANA:Governance. The surviving ship was simply maintaining a stable orbit around Ellezelin and gathering up fragments of its vanquished foe.
His staff had served him a late supper of grilled gurelol fillets with minted potatoes and baby carrots, washed down with a sparkling white similar in taste to the one from Love’s Haven that Edeard had come to enjoy during his first life with Kristabel. It was dark outside, with few stars showing through the oval sanctum’s windows. Ethan ate by himself at a small table away from the big muroak desk, overhead a series of petal-like lines glowing a pale orange in the high ceiling. Shadows washed out from the walls, making the room seem even larger.
He was just pouring himself a second glass of wine when his u-shadow reported that Phelim was making a priority call.
Please, Lady, no more bad news tonight, Ethan thought wearily as he accepted the secure link. He was still awaiting the call from Marius’s “friend.”
“We’ve
found her,” Phelim declared.
Ethan paused, the wine not quite out of the bottle’s neck. “Who?”
“The Second Dreamer. The advanced pattern recognition routines located her for us. She’s sharing Inigo’s Eleventh Dream, would you believe.”
“Great Lady! Do you have her safe?”
“No, that’s where the problem begins. She’s not on Viotia anymore.”
“Damn. Where is she, then?”
“Chobamba.”
“Where?” Even as he asked, Ethan’s u-shadow was pulling data out of the central registry. “That can’t be right,” he said, putting the bottle down.
“My response exactly. But the routines are good. The Dream Masters running them swear that’s an accurate reading. She started sharing the Eighth Dream twenty minutes ago.”
“The Eighth?”
“Yes.”
Ethan knew it couldn’t be particularly relevant, but his curiosity about the enigmatic Araminta was overwhelming. “So why did she skip over to the Eleventh?”
“She didn’t,” Phelim said. “She’s on a linear run-through.”
“Four dreams in twenty minutes?” Ethan said it out loud, his surprise echoing around the empty sanctum. At best, he would take a couple of hours to dwell in one of Inigo’s dreams, and that was because he was so familiar with them. Some of the more devout Living Dream followers had been known to spend days in a dream, supporting themselves with intravenous feeds.
“Absolutely. That’s what convinced me this isn’t a false reading. Her mind is … different.”
“How in the Lady’s name did she get to Chobamba? It was definitely her at Bodant Park; you confirmed that.”
“Someone must have flown her there. And it must have been an ultradrive starship; there’s nothing else fast enough.”
“So one of the factions got her and lifted her offplanet. Lady damn them.”
“That’s the obvious conclusion. But it’s a strange way to hide. If she wanted to be completely secure, she should have gone to a Central world where we have no control over the confluence nests. The faction must know that. Perhaps this is a message. Though its nature eludes me.”
Ethan sat back in the chair, staring at the slim curving bands of light in the ceiling. The flowers they sketched had never been seen on Querencia or anywhere in the Greater Commonwealth. That is if they even were flowers. Edeard had always hoped to find them, but not even the grand voyages of his twenty-eighth and forty-second dreams had taken him to a land where they grew. And now Araminta was providing an even greater mystery.
“We have to have her,” Ethan declared. “It’s that simple. Whatever the cost. Without her, the only contact humanity has to the Void is”—he shuddered—“Gore Burnelli. And I think we know where he stands.”
“Justine can do nothing,” Phelim countered smoothly.
“Don’t be too sure. They are a remarkable family. I’ve been accessing what I can of their history. And I suspect there’s a great deal that was never put into any records. Gore was one of ANA’s founders, you know. There are rumors of a special dispensation.”
“So what do you want to do?”
“How long before you have her exact location?”
“She’s in a town called Miledeep Water, which presents us with a slight problem. It is somewhat isolated, and we don’t actually have anyone reliable there. The Dream Masters are going to have to visit its confluence nest to get an exact coordinate for her. It’ll be an hour before we know exactly where she is, probably longer. I’m just hoping she shares Inigo’s dreams for long enough.”
“Do we also have the kind of people on Chobamba who are capable of bringing her to us?”
“There are some very loyal followers in the movement there, people I can trust. I’d like to suggest we hire some weapons-enriched troops to back them up. It’s pretty clear she’s got faction representatives guarding her.”
“As you wish. And Phelim, I don’t want another Bodant Park.”
“Nobody does. But that is probably out of our hands.”
“Yes. I expect you’re right. Please keep me informed of progress.”
The link to Phelim closed, and Ethan looked at the rapidly cooling food on his plate. He pushed it away.
“You seem troubled, Conservator.”
Ethan started, twisting around in his chair to see where the voice had come from. His u-shadow was already calling for help from Cabinet Security.
The woman-thing walking calmly out of the shadows on the other side of the desk disturbed his sensibilities. “I believe you’re expecting me,” she said. She was naked, which only intensified Ethan’s censure; her body possessed no sexual characteristics. Her skin was some kind of artificial covering that produced a gray layer whose exact boundary was indeterminable. Far worse than that was her figure. It was as though her internal organs were too small for her frame, leaving the skin to curve in between the ribs. And her eyes didn’t help, little patches of pink moonlight that never revealed exactly what she was looking at. There was a gold circle just below her neck from which sprouted two long streamers of dark scarlet cloth. The fabric was draped across her shoulders to float horizontally through the air for several meters behind her. It rippled with the sluggish fluidity of an embryo sac.
Five armored guards burst in through the main doors, their fat weapons raised. The Higher woman cocked her head to one side while the gaiafield revealed a steely politeness in her mind.
Ethan held up a finger. “Hold,” he instructed the guards. “Did Marius send you?”
A narrow mouth opened to reveal shiny metal teeth. “Marius has been moved to other duties. I am Valean, his replacement. I am here to help sort out our mutual problem with the ANA starship orbiting above you.”
Ethan waved the guards out, suspecting they wouldn’t have lasted long against her. “What do you want?”
She walked toward him, the scarlet streamers wavering sinuously behind her. Ethan saw that her heels ended in long tapering cones, as if her feet had grown their own stilettos. “I require access to the Agra wormhole generator. Please inform the operations staff I am to be given full cooperation.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Prevent the ANA agent from retrieving any more fragments.”
“I can’t afford any kind of conflict with ANA. Some in the Senate are eager for the flimsiest legal grounds to authorize navy intervention.”
“We are expecting that any such concerns will soon be irrelevant. Rest assured, Cleric Conservator, there will be no physical clash here.”
“Very well. I will see that you have full clearance.”
“Thank you.” She inclined her head and turned for the main doors.
“Please tell your faction leaders I would prefer to deal with Marius,” he said.
Valean didn’t even turn around. “I will certainly tell them.” There was no trace of irony in her thoughts; the facade of politeness remained intact.
The doors shut behind her. Ethan let out a long breath of apprehension; he felt as if he’d finally been shown what awaited the lost souls who fell to Honious.
Preliminary sensor analysis of the debris cloud indicated there were one thousand three hundred twelve critical fragments, defined as anything over five centimeters across. When Chatfield’s starship exploded, over a third of them had been thrown down toward Ellezelin on trajectories that would see them burning up in the atmosphere within half an hour. The rest were whirling rapidly along wildly different orbital tracks. Recovery would be a bitch.
Digby was quietly pleased at the way the Columbia505’s smartcore was handling the collection operation. Modified ingrav drive emissions were pulling fragments out of their terminal trajectories; sensors had identified several particles that had exotic matter constituents and were tracking them constantly. The sleek ultradrive ship was darting about, drawing the first chunks into the midhold, where they were embedded in a stabilizer field. ANA:Governance had assured him a forensic team wou
ld be arriving within ten hours. Digby hoped so. Stabilizer fields weren’t designed to preserve exotic matter; a lot of it was decaying right in front of him, and there was nothing he could do about it.
His exovision suddenly threw up warnings he never expected to see. A very large wormhole was intruding into space not three kilometers from the Columbia505.
“What the hell?”
The smartcore tracked several chunks of wreckage tumbling down the wormhole’s throat. Then the wormhole shifted exit coordinates, reappearing five kilometers away. More junk was sucked down. Exoimage displays showed him it was the wormhole that normally linked Ellezelin to Agra. Somebody was redirecting it with unnerving skill, scooping up precious evidence. His u-shadow connected him directly into the planetary cybersphere and tried to access the generator net. “It’s been isolated,” the u-shadow reported. “I can’t even gain access to the building net. Whoever’s in there, they’ve sealed themselves in tight.”
Columbia505’s sensors swept across the generator complex on the outskirts of Riasi, seven thousand kilometers away around the curvature of the planet. A force field was protecting the whole area. “Crap.” Digby ordered the smartcore to distort the wormhole’s pseudo structure. Negative energy fluxes reached out from the starship’s drive, attempting to destabilize the wormhole’s integrity. But the planetary generators had too much power available compared with the starship. It was a struggle Digby was doomed to lose.
“Take us down,” he ordered the smartcore. “Fast.” As the starship dived down into the atmosphere, he called ANA:Governance and explained what was happening.
“I will call the Cleric Conservator,” ANA:Governance said. “He must be made to understand that he cannot act against us with impunity.”
Digby was pretty sure the Cleric Conservator knew that but held his counsel. It was long gone midnight in Makkathran2, which meant that Riasi was just slipping across the terminator line into daylight. Columbia505 was decelerating at fifteen gees when it hit the stratosphere above the Sinkang continent, upon whose northern coast the ex-capital city was sited. The ship scorched its way down through the lower atmosphere like a splinter carved from a star’s corona. It braked to a halt five hundred meters directly above the Agra wormhole generator’s force field. The hypersonic shock wave of its passage slammed past it, shattering all unprotected panes of glass within a three-kilometer radius. Nearby regrav capsules tumbled through the air like leaves in a blizzard as their smartnets used emergency power to try to right them. Local traffic control was screaming warnings at Digby on every frequency. Metropolitan police cruisers curved around to intercept. He sent out a blanket broadcast to be picked up by every cybersphere node and macrocellular cluster surrounding the force field.
The Void Trilogy 3-Book Bundle Page 153
