by Brian Daley
Mason swallowed hard. "I remember the temperature falling about fifteen degrees and the wind kicking up. Farther out I could see a huge bowl in the surface of the ocean where the water had been displaced into the sky and onto dry land.
"The water kept rising until I couldn't even see the sky. It swallowed the lifter and Captain Marlon's VTOL, and streams of it—like flycatcher tongues—nailed the spotter craft and the linesman helos." Mason wiped sweat from his upper lip. "I could see bits of the craft swirling in the turbulence of the uplifted water. I thought for sure it was going to come down right on me."
Dietz studied him in quiet concern. "What did you do?"
"What did I do? I dropped to my goddamn knees, flung my arms over my head, and waited for the end."
She put a hand atop his, as if to calm him, but he continued to quiver.
"We lost half the survey team to that creature, and the entire shoreline of the juts was changed. As the senior survivor, I became the de facto commander of the Scepter."
Dietz waited a moment before saying. "The crew accepted you?"
Mason blew out his breath. "They recognized my authority. I tried to be more than a figurehead, but we were a disillusioned lot from that day on."
"Is it true that you married an Aquam woman, Administrator?"
He nodded. "Incandessa. Of the family Rhodes."
"And your second in command—"
"Boon."
Her finger touched the screen. "Eisley Boon. He's listed as killed in action. Obviously, if he was your second, he didn't die at the Styx Strait."
"That's correct."
Dietz sat back in her chair. "Then when and how did he die?"
Mason averted his eyes. "On our last night onworld."
"Yes, there are several things about your hasty departure that remain unclear." Dietz leaned forward. "Tell me about that final night on Aquamarine."
* * * *
Dextra took a roundabout route through the grounds to her study. She brought her plugphone on-line but avoided the household holo terminals, preferring to hear her backlog one item at a time rather than see it all in hyperparsed mosaic.
Ben had left a short items-waiting list.
Her first husband was suing because she had withheld his support payment pending court reappraisal of his earning power.
The High Periapt Repertory Company wanted to kick off its next season with a revival of Dextra's best known play, And on the Way, We Dropped It provided that she would grant permission to contemporize it somehow. The cordial, witty inquiry came from the troupe's new artistic director, Nike Lightner, daughter and favorite of Hierarch Cal.
Her publisher was again begging permission to issue a collection of her letters, since she had refused to write an autobiography or cooperate with a biographer.
Appended to Lyceum public information was a schedule of available seats for Hierarchs and senior staff wishing to conduct media-op and fact-finding tours of near-orbit LAW facilities, including the currently debarking interstellar vessel Sword of Damocles.
And Sinnergy had filed for sole custody of Honeysuckle.
But all those things were secondary. Foremost in her mind was the need to rally support to spring the members of the Scepter survey team from administrative detention and get public support for an AlphaLAW mission to Aquamarine.
Once in the study, she cranked up the aircirc and lit a swizzle-stick-thin cigarillo of Trinity tobakkum. The vari-morph lounger had just reshaped itself to her body when a chirp from Ben interrupted her thinking.
"Please accept my apologies for bothering you while you're working," Ben said, "but we've just received an anonymous burst transmission. Audio without visual."
"Originating from?"
"Undetermined. It seems to have simply arisen out of the municipal grid," he answered.
"Put it through."
"Madame Hierarch Haven," the caller began. "Please be advised that an inner circle of Preservationists and their LAW partisans are planning to discredit and incriminate the subjugated forces from Concordance while they're still onboard the starship Sword of Damocles." The voice was flat and artificial, obviously processed to prevent ID and stress analysis.
"The Exts?" Dextra said in guarded surprise. "Why on Periapt—"
"Chiefly to discredit you, Madame Hierarch."
Dextra understood. Over a decade earlier she had been a prime mover in the Rationalist Party's drive to change LAW policy regarding the treatment of former belligerents. The treaty that had wrung an oath of enli stment from the Exts had been one of the more high-profile fruits of her labors.
Unfortunately for Dextra and the Exts alike, Periapt had become addicted to its periodic economic rushes from star-ships crammed with resources and technological plunder. Hostilities with the Roke had slowly gained momentum as a consequence of the obliteration of two human planetary populations, resulting in a political climate very different from the one that had prevailed when AlphaLAW Commissioner Ren-quald had been told to be magnanimous in victory. In the current climate there was much less compassion for defeated annexed-worlders, especially ones like the Exts.
"Our analysis of the Preservationists' plan," the voice continued, "suggests that your combination of entry, high visibility, Rationalist credentials, and Hierarchate authority makes you the optimal choice to intervene on behalf of the Concordance forces."
"Me? " Dextra said in genuine confusion. "What can I do?"
"Consider, Madame Hierarch, that you possess an open invitation to conduct media-op tours of near-orbit LAW facilities, including the Sword of Damocles. Properly finessed, media exposure could permit the Exts to reach Periapt with at least the appearance of cooperation and goodwill all around."
Dextra mulled it over briefly. "Your answer doesn't exactly speak to my question, but I'm willing to ignore that for the moment. I do, however, demand to know to whom I'm speaking and just why you have an interest in what happens to a couple of hundred Concordances."
The voice took several seconds to respond. "Let us say for the time being that our interest in the Exts has a direct bearing on your interest in the planet Aquamarine. We who make this contact speak for the Quantum College, Hierarch Haven. You need only agree to enroll and all will be revealed."
Open-mouthed, Dextra leaned back in the lounger. Well, how now, foul Tao? she wondered.
Chapter
Fourteen
Maybe LAW understands war and the Exts never really did, Burning brooded as he stepped through a hatch at Frame 104. On the other side of the hatch a half-frightened, half-furious LAW Aerospace Forces lieutenant waited with a half dozen or so Aero Police armed with neuroprods, bumpguns, and wapround tubes.
Burning was wearing a 'baller, and so were his staffers and senior cadre. Ghost and Daddy D, bringing up the rear, stopped when Burning did. The enlisted rating who had guided the three forward into that part of Sword of Damocles saluted and made herself scarce.
"They're in there," the Aerospace Forces officer told Burning. He gestured toward a flag-status suite, its hatch decorated with the insignia of Vice Field Marshal Ufak—Vukmirovic's right hand—who was returning to Periapt for promotion and reassignment.
"I want all you growlers back in your own part of the ship in plus-five minutes," the lieutenant warned. "And counting."
Burning held himself in check. He hadn't been able to track down where or when some Periapt on Damocles had hung that nickname on the Exts, though he had gotten better at not letting his anger show. He looked at the lieutenant mildly.
"Your OD is the one who wants them ejected. If you've got such warm rads for the job, fine. Delta-V. We'll observe."
The Periapt gritted his teeth. Instead of saying anything, he pointedly held up his wrist UNEX and glared at the lapsed-time function.
Burning reminded himself that he had almost five and a half subjective years left in the traces with people like the AP. "Forget I said that, Lieutenant. We'll take care of this."
There had already been enou
gh friction between Exts and Periapts; for that matter, there had been too much between Exts and Exts. Big as it was, the starship was confining, especially for Exts, who were for the most part restricted to a few specific internal spaces. A few more months of travel, and there would have been a mutiny. He led Ghost and Daddy D to the stateroom door, then stepped into the foyer of Ufak's sumptuous quarters.
LAW moguls saw no virtue in spartan living. What with its soft lighting, thick draperies, and plush bulkhead upholstery, those quarters struck Burning as something more on the order of a Costa Hedonia love-hotel suite than a warcraft stateroom. The muted music and pretentious and obvious works of art had been plundered from Concordance First Lands nations.
The place was strewn with minor luxury items that had to belong to Ufak: gewgaws, tech novelties, and toys no Ext owned. Burning noticed one headset in particular, a slim black data-linked visor that gleamed like a crescent of polished tektite.
He sniffed the musky aromatics and wondered suddenly if he was breathing some aerosol drug. Too late to double back for a mask, he realized.
"Just another upper-caste flesh mill," Ghost said with chilling atonality.
Burning couldn't afford to stop and ask what she meant by that, and it ate at him, but she was right in specifying caste. Most LAW overlords saw personal luxury as their birthright even as they called for stoicism and sacrifice from subordinates.
He pressed through a curtain of feathery, drifting stuff into an opulent compartment carpeted in bright colors. There were varimorph couches, cushiony platforms, and strangely configured furniture that looked more like padded gym equipment or prettified torture devices.
"Makes me think of past encounters with a speculum," Ghost commented dryly.
Daddy D snorted. Burning couldn't tell whether the general was amused or pissed.
In the center of the room was a satiny little valley. A slowly shifting pile of five or six languorous bodies lay in it. There were all the sounds, smells, and cycling body kinetics of diversiform sex. Burning took a step toward them and kicked something with the toe of his soft ship boot—a small gas cartridge, color-coded for the psychotropic drug the Perries called Bong. LAW regs forbade it on the starship, but the Exts had long since tumbled to the fact that regs did not always square with reality, especially forward of Frame 104.
He gave Daddy D a hand signal, and the general grated out of the side of his mouth, "Ten… SHHUT!"
They watched with clinical interest as bodies sprang up like a basket of jack-in-the-boxes in flesh-pink, flesh-brown, and gold. The general stood with fists on hips, garrison cap pulled low. Burning's hot flush of embarrassment was plain even in the soft light.
The group sex had included two LAW liaison people, a male and a female, whom Burning ignored for the moment, having no authority over them. That left three Ext men and a woman, all from Zone's several—the sexual menage of which he was the principal.
Two of the Exts were built like Zone—lean below the rib cage with powerful sloping trapezius muscles and shoulders and veined, heavily sinewed arms. The third was burlier, with a pocked and battered face. Shaken by Daddy D's roar, Zone's severalmates were all at attention, erections wilting, nipples subsiding.
Burning glanced at Wetbar, one of the Zone look-alikes and something of a second in command. "Where is he? Sound off; I don't have time to waste on you!"
"He's in the Theater of Dreams, Allgrave," Kino, the Ext woman piped up. She was shapely and delicate-looking, bones prominent beneath her porcelain skin. She indicated an inner doorway with a jerk of her head. "The computer-assisted imagery studio."
She seemed a rather petite creature to be with Zone's circle of roughtraders. Severals were a Periapt and First Lander institution—there weren't many among the Exts—and women tended to cycle through Zone's rather quickly. Kino, a demolitions expert, had been with Zone since Santeria Corners.
"Repair to quarters!" Daddy D ordered the braced quartet. "Consider yourselves under confinement." When they began picking up their uniforms resentfully, he bellowed, "Put 'em on walking! I'd boot you up your asses if I didn't want to ruin my spit shine."
They hobbled and hopped for the suite's main hatch, pulling on what clothing they could as they went. The LAW liaison couple saw the better part of valor, excused themselves tersely, and left.
Burning crossed to the hatch Kino had singled out, with Ghost and Daddy D close behind. The general sounded abashed at having to say "I'd remind the Allgrave that even with push coming to shove, Zone's one of us. Stood with us at Anvil Tor, took the oath to serve out a LAW hitch alongside us."
"And he has his uses," Ghost added in a curiously neutral voice so that Burning couldn't tell if she was agreeing or deriding.
He opened the beautifully flocked hatch to the so-called Theater of Dreams. It seemed to be a smaller space, but it was difficult to tell because of the sound FX, the music and sub-sonics, and the flickering and flaring light effects. The room contained only two living people but swelled with a kaleidoscope of images.
The glare spilling in derezzed some of the lighting and holo illusions, so that for a moment Burning could see the couple through the mirages clothing them. It was Zone and the other woman currently in his several, an eel-thin and long-shanked gunner whose field name was Strop. Both were naked. He was standing with his knees bent, cupping her buttocks; her legs were wrapped around him. Both wore protective eyecups to avoid having their retinas burned out by the holo lasers.
The room's systemry compensated for the light spill, and the fantasy auras came up again. Walls and ceiling displayed montages of images. Burning, teeth locked, about-faced to order his sister out of the compartment, but she had already slipped past him.
Zone was a skeletal vision of death, here bleached bone and there mummified but muscular, and impossibly endowed. Strop, bucking against him in abandon, was wrapped in a shimmery overlay that gave her the body, face, and scars of Ghost. Strop's scalp was shaven and tattooed, but the compartment's computer-driven hallucinations gave her Ghost's unbound hair, Hussar Plaits and all.
Burning reached for his pistol without any clear idea of what he was going to do. One sequence of events would have him tried by LAW, he supposed, or even by his own Exts. But at least killing Zone would put Ghost beyond the reach of his dark, insidious tidal radius.
* * * *
Burning's hand got to the holster only to find that it and the 'baller's grip were covered by Daddy D's big, knobby brown one. Burning was trying to decide what to say when he felt the peripheral tingle of the general's sonics shot sweeping the bulkhead opposite with a sustained burst.
The handgun's sonics feature was effective only against animal tissue, but the computer-assisted imaging components in the Theater of Dreams were extremely sensitive and fragile. A string of glassy cracking noises, crystalline tinklings, pops, and sizzling sounds filled the cabin space. Large sections of the holo-illusions vanished, and emergency lights came up to reveal bare bulkhead, projector mounts, sensors, and aroma emitters.
Strop half warbled, half tittered, but Zone showed utter calm, lifting her free of him and setting her feet down in the ankle-high nap. Overrides shot down the imaging system, and the conventional lighting came up.
Most Exts had lost the NoMan stare during the six subjective months of the voyage from Concordance, but Zone had yet to relinquish it. The unblinking protruding eyes saw that it was Daddy D who had shot up the components and also noticed
Burning's hand coming down from his unused handgun; then they went on to lock with Ghost's.
"No oath ever gave the Allgrave any say over a bit of consensual slurp-'n-slide, Burning," Zone said with a leer. "Or aren't we Exts anymore, since you bought us a tour of duty with LAW?"
Burning knew that the misrepresentation was supposed to get him too angry to think. Certainly no military superior or Allgrave had any right of command over a subordinate's personal relations so long as coercion wasn't involved and unit effectiveness was
n't impaired. But there were strong points of common law dealing with provocation and insult as well as recognized matters of honor and personal and family pride. Therefore, Burning was on unsure legal footing. Wishing that he could lash out, he felt heat and color in his face.
Daddy D took up the slack. "Colonel, you're in a restricted area. The Periapt OD wants you out, so move."
Strop made a derisive sound but didn't quite have the nerve to say anything.
Zone wasn't at a loss, however. "If the OD'd bothered to check with Vice Field Marshal Ufak, he'd know that we were invited to use this place. In fact, Ufak's planning on joining us later. Besides, we're off duty."
Delecado's glare never wavered. "Nobody's off duty till we de-ass from this crate. LOGCOM's moved up our debarkation time. Y' got two hours to get your battalion strac, Colonel."
Zone had left his utility suit on the carpet but made no move to get dressed, waiting for them to leave. They could have either his compliance or his loss of face but not both, Burning realized. He motioned to his sister and the general.
"We've got other things to do." No salutes were exchanged as they left.
The outer compartment was empty. Burning noticed, as he passed through, that the wraparound data-link visor was gone. He hoped the LAWs had taken it; he had enough problems without having to root out petty thieves.
His thoughts shifted back to Zone. A million gold ducats worth of soldier and about a tin half pip's worth of human being. He remembered the man's almost insane heroism at the sinkhole raid and in a dozen other actions, most of all Santeria Corners.
If ever anyone had found his life's central event, it had been Zone at Santeria Corners: point-blank firefights, bloody knife-work on night infiltrations, sapper assaults, and ambushes. Twice he had called down fire support on his own position. The Exts weren't blind to his flaws and hazards, but they also appreciated his great value in specific venues, as only combat veterans could.
"You'd better see to the Discards personally about our upped debarkation," Burning told Ghost. "We don't want them trying to shove another LOGCOM sergeant's head into a med-specimen sorter."
