“Take it over?” the Delivery Man repeated.
“Good man. Call me when you get there. And don’t take too long. Marius was on Fanallisto for a reason, and given what’s just gone down, it must be a hell of a good one for him to be off center stage. He’s near the top of their hierarchy.”
The call ended, leaving a new communication icon gleaming in the Delivery Man’s exovision. “Take it over,” he said to himself. “Okay, then.”
He started to walk back down the length of the arrival hall. His u-shadow extracted information from the registry and produced a short list. There were some navy ships, including a couple of scouts, which were almost tempting, but that would require a little too much bravado, and he didn’t want to have to bodyloss anyone. Especially not now, when the navy was going to need every asset it had. Instead he picked a private yacht called Lady Rasfay.
It was cool outside, with high clouds stretching across the early-morning sky. Dew slicked the spaceport’s concrete roadways and the red-tinged grass analogue. It even deposited a layer of condensation on the taxi capsule the Delivery Man took out to pad F37, a couple of miles away from the main passenger terminal. He climbed out, shivering against the chilly air. The Lady Rasfay was ten meters in front of him, a blue-white cone with an oval cross section, like some kind of ancient missile lying on its side. He never did get why so many people wanted their starships to look streamlined, as if they were capable of aerodynamic flight. But the owner, Duaro, was clearly one who favored image.
The Delivery Man’s u-shadow had already performed a low-level infiltration of the ship’s network. Nobody was on board, and the primary systems were all in powerdown mode. A quick scan of the drive performance figures backed up what he’d guessed from the physical profile. Duaro had invested a lot of energy and mass allocations (EMAs) and time on the hyperdrive, which could now push the ship along at a fraction over fifteen light-years an hour, as good as a hyperdrive could get.
His u-shadow put a civil spaceworthiness authority code into the ship’s network, and the airlock opened. A metal stair slid out. The Delivery Man walked up it, not bothering to scan around, an act that might betray him as a guilty party. That was the beauty of a Higher world: No one really thought in terms of theft; if you saw someone entering a starship, you just assumed it was legitimate. Thanks to EMAs and replicator technology, material items were available to all; certainly a starship was hardly a possession to envy.
Not that Duaro was completely guileless. The network had several safeguards built in. After several milliseconds analyzing them, the Delivery Man’s u-shadow presented him with eight options for circumventing the restrictions and gaining direct control over the smartcore.
Dim red lighting cast a strange glow along the narrow central companionway. The yacht had a simple layout, almost old-fashioned in nature, with the flight cabin at the front, a lounge behind that in the midsection, and two sleeping cabins aft. Once he was inside, the Delivery Man’s biononics performed a short-range field scan to find a suitable point where he could physically access the network’s nodes. That was the same time he heard passionate groaning from the portside sleeping cabin.
The door flowed aside silently. Inside, the sleeping cabin’s decor was ancient teak, carved to cover every curve and angle of the bulkhead walls and lovingly polished. Two figures were in flagrante on the narrow cot.
“Duaro, I presume?” the Delivery Man said loudly.
The man squirmed about in alarm. The woman squealed and scrabbled frantically at the silk sheets to cover herself. She was exceptionally beautiful, the Delivery Man acknowledged, with a mane of flame-red hair and a face covered in freckles. She was also very young; a Firstlife if the Delivery Man was any judge.
“Did Mirain send you?” Duaro asked urgently. “Look, we can conclude this in a civilized fashion.”
“Mirain?” the Delivery Man mused out loud. His u-shadow ran a fast cross-reference on Duaro’s profile. “You mean your wife, Mirain?”
The woman on the bed cringed, giving Duaro a sulky glance.
“I can’t believe she went to this much trouble,” Duaro groused. “This is just a harmless little fling.”
“Oh, thank you,” the woman snapped.
“Sneaking on board and keeping the lights off and the smartcore dumb,” the Delivery Man mused. “Doesn’t appear that harmless.”
“Look, let’s be reasonable about this …”
The Delivery Man gave a huge smile at the magnificent, timeless cliché. “Yes, let’s. Shall I tell you what I want?”
“Of course,” Duaro said with an air of cautious relief.
“The yacht’s smartcore access codes.”
“What?”
“Non-negotiable,” the Delivery Man said, and powered up several weapons enrichments.
Paula Myo couldn’t remember being so shocked before, not ever. The emotional trauma had become physical in nature, with her heart racing and her hands trembling as if she were some kind of Natural human. She had to sit down hard on the Alexis Denken’s cabin floor before her legs gave way. The only thing her exovision revealed was a vast blank plain, which was what the Capital-class ship Kabul was seeing as it scanned the outside of the Sol barrier. Her link came directly from Pentagon II on the secure channel her status entitled her to. But there was nothing she could do, no help she could offer. She was a simple passive observer of the greatest disaster to befall the Commonwealth since the barrier around Dyson Alpha came down. That memory stirred a possibility.
“Do you have the spatial coordinates of the Swarm components when they materialized?” she asked Admiral Juliaca, who was Kazimir’s deputy and now de facto commander of the Commonwealth Navy. “The original Dark Fortress had an opening on the outside, which is how it was turned off.”
“Nice try,” Juliaca said. “That was the first thing the Kabul attempted. There is no bulge in the Sol barrier as far as we can detect, and I’ve got eleven ships out there searching now, as well as several civilian craft. It’s perfectly smooth, certainly in the areas around the swarm components we’ve scanned.”
“Of course,” Paula muttered. No fool like an old one; it was never going to be that easy. She shook herself and ordered her biononics to stabilize her wayward body. Her thoughts, though, were still sluggish, as if they were moving through ice. I thought I got rid of this nonsense when I resequenced. Even as she thought it, some small part of her mind was chiding her for being too hard on herself. But for Accelerators to bring this off successfully was a monumental failure of intelligence gathering and analysis on ANA’s part, for which she bore some considerable responsibility. Any kind of human would be perturbed by the enormity of the coup, which was what this was.
“And we’re certain the deterrence fleet is caught inside?” Paula asked.
“I’m afraid so,” Juliaca said. “There is no response whatsoever from Kazimir. If he could get in touch with us, he would. He was commanding the fleet, so logically the fleet is inside the Sol barrier.”
Paula, who had been monitoring what she could of the ANA judicial conclave, knew the Admiral was right. But … “The whole fleet? That seems unlikely. Surely there’s some craft held in reserve.”
“One moment,” the Admiral said.
A new communication icon appeared in Paula’s exovision. She welcomed the color it brought to the numbing image of the Sol barrier. As she acknowledged the call, she pushed the Kabul’s imagery into a peripheral mode. “Mr. President,” she said formally.
“Investigator Myo,” President Alcamo replied. “I’m glad you are still available. Frankly, I’m looking for some meaningful advice right now. Without ANA we’re woefully short of relevant information.”
“Whatever I can do, of course,” Paula said. “I was going to suggest to the Admiral that the remainder of the deterrence fleet be deployed to Sol to see if they can break in.”
“That’s the problem,” Admiral Juliaca said. “I don’t have any knowledge of the deterrence fleet.
There’s nothing in any navy facility, not even a contact code. And the navy network has acknowledged my authority as commander.”
“But they must be getting in touch with you?” a startled Paula said.
“Not as yet.”
“I see.” A notion was starting to fall into place. It wasn’t good.
“Paula, do you know anything about the fleet?” President Alcamo asked.
“I’m afraid not, sir, though I do know how reluctant ANA and Kazimir were to deploy it. That does suggest to me that it might not be a fleet at all.”
“A single ship?” Juliaca asked.
“It fits what’s currently happening. It is inconceivable that any remaining fleet ships would not get in touch with you in an emergency of this magnitude. We should conclude there was only one and it is trapped inside the Sol barrier along with ANA.”
“You mean we’re defenseless?” President Alcamo asked.
“No, sir,” the Admiral replied. “The Ocisen invasion fleet and their Prime allies were disabled before the Sol barrier was established. There is no other immediate external threat, and the Capital- and River-class squadrons are more than capable of dealing with any known species within range. The deterrence fleet was always there to deal with a post-physical-level threat.”
“Our threat is not external,” Paula said. “It is Ilanthe and that damned inversion core, whatever the hell it is.”
“You hadn’t heard of it before?” the President asked.
“No, sir. All we knew was that the Accelerators hoped to achieve what they called Fusion with the Void in order to bootstrap themselves up to postphysical status.” She drew a breath and started to analyze the situation, trying to predict Ilanthe’s next move. “There is one critical factor remaining which is currently outside anyone’s control.”
“Araminta,” the Admiral ventured.
“Correct,” Paula said. “The only way Ilanthe and Living Dream can get inside the Void is with Araminta’s help. Which will be coerced once they find her.”
“Can you find her first?” the President asked.
“She’s on Chobamba, and it appears as though she’s already made a deal with some faction.”
“Which one?”
“I don’t know. But their agents must have helped to get her off Viotia. I imagine they are now as shocked as we are by the loss of ANA. That might make them open to a deal. We have an opportunity.”
“Can you do that?” the President asked.
“I can reach Chobamba shortly,” Paula said. Inwardly she was disappointed. The Alexis Denken was only an hour out from Viotia, and Chobamba was five hundred ten light-years from her current position. All I ever do these days is rush from one crisis point to another and arrive too late each time. That cannot stand; there’s too much at stake. I have to up my game, get ahead for once.
“Thank you,” the President said. “When you find her, take her into custody. No polite requests. We are beyond that now. She goes with you; she does not ally herself with anyone else—that cannot be permitted. Do you understand?”
“Perfectly, Mr. President. If I can’t capture her, nobody else must be allowed to. I will see to that.”
“You’ll do that, Paula?”
“Most assuredly.”
“Thank you. Admiral, do we have any other fields of progress? Can the navy eliminate the ship that picked up the inversion core?”
“Unknown, sir. It was a large, powerful ship of a marque we’ve never seen before. And we’d have to find it first.”
“Ilanthe will want the same thing as the rest of us,” Paula said. “The Second Dreamer. She’s probably heading for Chobamba now.”
“Very well,” the President said. “Admiral, put together a task force of Capital ships and dispatch them to Chobamba. I want that ship destroyed.”
“There wasn’t much information from the Sol system before the barrier went up,” the Admiral said. “But the ship did appear to have a force field based on Dark Fortress technology. We’re assuming the Accelerators are going to use it to get past the Raiel in the Gulf.”
“Sweet Ozzie,” the President said. “Do you mean you can’t intercept it?”
“We can probably find it; our sensors are good enough to penetrate most stealth systems. But I doubt we can ever catch it, not with the kind of speed it was last confirmed traveling at. And yes, if we did corner it on Chobamba, our weapons would probably not get through its defenses.”
“Crap. So it really does all come down to Araminta?”
“It looks that way, sir.”
Paula held her own opinion in check; the few comments she might have made weren’t based on fact. “I’d advise getting in touch with the High Angel directly, Mr. President,” she said. “If anyone can get through a barrier produced by Dark Fortress technology, it will be the Raiel.”
“Yes,” he said. “That’s my next call. I will inform you of the outcome.”
The secure link closed. Paula ordered the smartcore to plot a course to Chobamba. The bright green line hung in her exovision as it awaited implementation, slicing through the astrogration display. Something made her hold off. She was sure that even if she got there in ten hours’ time, it would all be over. By now, everyone with a team chasing Araminta would know her new location. As soon as Living Dream pinned down her exact geographical coordinate, there would be a scramble to deliver local representatives into the area. Either the team guarding her would evacuate her again, or she’d leave with the strongest raider team.
The whole situation made little sense. It was obvious to any professional that Living Dream would refine its search techniques after Bodant Park. Whoever it was who’d flown her to Chobamba must have known that, even if they didn’t know how good Ethan’s dream masters were. Keeping Araminta out of sight once she was secure was the most basic rule.
So who took her there?
Half the factions chasing her would have killed her to prevent the Accelerators from gaining any advantage. Most of the others, those which had goals or ambitions similar to the Accelerators’, would have offered a deal. Yet here Araminta was, going through Inigo’s dreams, seemingly without a care in the universe.
Paula drew a sharp breath. Of course, the simplest explanation is always the most likely. She really isn’t aware of the danger, so she isn’t under the protection of any professional team. Then how in God’s name did she get to Chobamba?
She launched her u-shadow on a mission to gather every scrap of data on Araminta. Everything Liatris McPeierl had put together, the files from Colwyn City’s civic database, records from Langham on her family and its agriculture cybernetics business, financial records, medical records (very few; she had an excellent Advancer heritage), legal records—mostly her messy divorce handled by her cousin’s law firm. All of it was resolutely average; none of it made her any different from billions of other External world citizens.
But she is different. She’s a Dreamer. Something makes her incredibly special. What? Gore has become one, and that’s outrageous; there’s nobody rooted in the practical more than Gore. Yet he worked out the secret. The only theory there’s ever been about why Inigo dreamed of Edeard is because they were somehow related: family. Paula’s heart jumped in excitement. As are Gore and Justine. Shit! But Araminta dreamed of a Skylord … She growled in frustration, slapping her hands against her temples. “Come on, think!” Ignore the Skylord thing. Go for the family angle … Her u-shadow zipped through Araminta’s ancestry, correlating birth records and registered partnerships, tracking back through the generations.
A small file flashed across her exovision, part of the family tree.
“Holy crap,” she yelped. There it was, plain and beautifully simple, five generations down the line. The name simply lifted itself out of the list and shone at Paula without any help from secondary routines.
“Mellanie Rescorai,” she whispered in amazed delight. “Oh, yes. Over a thousand years, and she’s still nothing but trouble.” Even better,
Mellanie was named a Silfen Friend like her first husband, Orion. Paula remembered an encounter over eight hundred years ago, when Mellanie was paying one of her visits to the Commonwealth again. They’d both been invited to some high-powered political event; it might even have been a presidential inauguration ball. Dear old Mellanie had positively gloated about being named a Friend; it put her one up on everyone else in the room that evening, Paula especially. That was Mellanie for you: sweetly savage.
“Mellanie!” Paula was chuckling now. However it worked, however a Dreamer connected to someone inside the Void, that was the root of it: the Silfen magic, actually the most advanced weird technology in the galaxy. Ozzie had developed the gaiafield out of his friendship gift from the Silfen, and that was the whole medium for dreams. Araminta was descended from a Silfen Friend. And Inigo … well, who knew?
The paths! Paula’s u-shadow ran another search. Sure enough, there was rumor of a path on Chobamba, in the middle of its desert continent. And one at Francola Wood, right on the edge of Colwyn City. She didn’t join up with any faction; she didn’t fly to Chobamba. She walked!
That meant Araminta was still surviving on luck and smarts, just as Oscar had said, and therefore had no idea Living Dream had found her. She had to be warned, which wasn’t going to be easy given that she’d cut herself off from the unisphere.
Paula’s macrocellular clusters linked her directly to the starship’s network. There was a memory kube on board that was heavily encrypted, very heavily; she needed all five keys and a neural pathway verification to access it. Stored within were programs that had been accumulated over fifteen hundred years of investigations: programs of last resort, custom-written for the top ranks of criminals, arms dealers, politicians … Simply knowing about some of them was a crime. None of their creators would be coming out of suspension for centuries. The Paula of twelve hundred years ago would have been mortified that her future self hoarded such things. But on several occasions they’d proved rather useful. Paula activated one; it wasn’t even on the lethal list.
The Void Trilogy 3-Book Bundle Page 158
