Keltan's Gambit: Chronicles of the Orion Spur Book 2

by Michael Formichelli

  They arrived on the roof of the Intelligent Systems tower dressed in their traveling clothes an hour later. When Ben dropped the air-car down onto the pad, Baroness Hephestia Cronus and Aurora were there waiting with the strange captain, Reika Daldon-Fukui. The sisters were half-buried in ankle-length coats dyed blue and silver. Captain Fukui had a low-cut shirt on beneath a knee-length beige jacket which was lined with some kind of fuzzy material he didn’t recognize, but that looked like it had come from an alien animal of some sort. It was unusual to see such a primal look outside of historical Cyberweb dramas, and he caught himself staring at the tracks of exposed skin between her lapels before Lina nudged his shoulder.

  “Sorry,” he muttered.

  “You are late,” Hephestia said.

  He tried to think of a response, but “Sorry, I was murdering some people” didn’t seem proper, so he remained silent.

  Aurora moved close to him so she didn’t have to raise her voice over the wind. A great pang of guilt pierced his heart when she put her sad eyes on his. She looked tired, like the exhaustion of that fateful night when he and Sophi told her they were defecting to the Mercantile Party never left her. Maybe it hadn’t.

  “There was an accident not too far from here nearly an hour ago. It’s all over the news. An air car carrying someone important malfunctioned and exploded. The local police are handling it, but it is expected that Daedalus will be sending an Abyssian considering where the accident occurred.” Hephestia stared directly at him while her sister spoke.

  He glanced at Lina. The sisters followed his gaze, then returned their eyes to him.

  “We’re leaving for Stolchem in about fifteen days. Odds are I’ll be out of contact when you get to wherever you’re going. If you happen across Ichiro, let him know I miss him.” Aurora changing the conversation surprised him. He expected her to pick up on the glancing, but he was relieved they were off the topic of his murders. Though he was trying to nurture the part of him that was proud, he didn’t want to discuss them.

  “I will,” he said.

  She leaned in closer until they were almost nose to nose. “Beware of my daughter. I fear she has too much of her father in her.”

  “Good luck in your campaign. I mean it. I know I’ve done a lot to harm you, but believe me when I say I am truly sorry. I’ll do my best to make it right.” He tried to look earnest for her, though he had no idea what he could do to help or fix it.

  “You better.”

  “Don’t disappoint us,” Hephestia said.

  “I won’t.” He rolled his shoulders.

  Hephestia nodded her acquiescence.

  “We should get moving, Cy,” Lina said.

  He stuck his head back into the air-car. Two Bens turned their pinhole eyes to look at him.

  “Remember what I told you about Sophi on the way over—um, sorry,” he flinched. Of course Ben would remember, he was an AI. “Don’t make a move on the Treasury too soon, just gather information for now. Also, I think the Cronuses might suspect something about the accident, but don’t volunteer anything.”

  “Master, I shall, as I always have, honor both the spirit and letter of your instructions. And please, do not concern yourself. My work to cover your tracks cannot be undone.”

  “Thank you, Ben. See you—er—the rest of you when we get back.”

  “Good luck, master. I hope you find what you are looking for. I shall make sure things go your way here,” the Ben in the driver’s seat said while the other got out of the passenger’s side and stood beside him.

  He found that last comment unusual, but shook it off. He couldn’t let himself worry about it. Soon he would be hundreds of parsecs away and he had to trust Ben would do things right.

  He waved goodbye to the iteration staying behind, and turned around to take Lina’s hand. “Shall we?”

  “Let’s.” She smiled.

  The captain bowed to them and led the way to the ship. As it was the day before, the craft was in stealth-mode and invisible to Cylus’ optics. The entrance appeared as a slanted rectangle of light hovering in the air. The ramp beneath it lead up into a metal chamber with nozzles and grates for decontaminating those who passed through with an aerosol nanomachine spray. At the foot of the ramp he took one more moment to wave to the Cronus sisters like he used to before all this started. They stared at him, but did not wave back. He sighed.

  He, Lina, and Ben followed the captain through the decontamination chamber into a small airlock with the Mitsugawa symbol emblazoned on the grated floor and then on into the tight metal corridors that weren’t even wide enough for him to spread his arms out. They climbed six sets of tubes lined with metal rungs connecting the decks of the ship, and through a thick bulkhead on every level. The ship’s engine vibrated the surfaces around them in pulses. Every part of the ship Cylus touched sent icy shivers went down his back in waves as he tried not to think about being vaporized or crushed to death if the engine failed.

  “Is the baron okay?” Captain Fukui asked as they ascended to the highest deck.

  Lina cast a look back at him. “He’ll be all right.”

  He frowned at her. “I’m fine, thank you.”

  “Please let me know if there is anything I can do to make you more comfortable, Baron,” the captain said.

  “Thank you,” Cylus said as they crossed the next deck and went up another set of rungs set in the connecting tube.

  They arrived at a small cul-de-sac at the end of a corridor with a circular hatch. Captain Fukui opened a narrow storage locker beside it. Cylus caught sight of the lower half of a second animated tattoo between the hem of her top and the start of the tail at the base of her spine as she removed her coat and placed it inside. From what he could see it depicted frothing bubbles at the base of a waterfall, and the shadow of something hidden by her shirt passing over the waves every few seconds.

  “That’s quite a tattoo,” he said as the captain closed the locker and faced him.

  “Thank you,” she responded.

  “What’s it of?”

  Captain Fukui looked to the side and bit her lip. “It’s a scene from an old Japanese legend.”

  “It looks very nice. The artist must be very skilled,” he said.

  “Thank you,” she responded in a small voice.

  “Cy, I think you’re embarrassing her,” Lina transmitted.

  “Um, sorry,” he said.

  “Please, don’t be,” the captain said.

  The door dilated open like a pupil, unveiling the nerve center of the vessel. It was smaller than he was expecting. The elliptical bridge was about three-meters long and shaped something like a seed with the wider end facing towards the front of the ship. Glossy-black panels lined its walls at waist-level. Two crescent shaped seats with zero-g restraints, and acceleration cushions were installed beside them on either side of the chamber. A line of small, trapezoidal windows in a wide arc before them provided a view through which he could see the city skyline in the late morning light of Kosfanter’s sun. In the center of the space was a strange silver chair. It looked like an egg with a third of its shell cut out along the long axis, and armrests protruded from either side of the opening. It rotated towards the captain as she approached. Within was a surface of the same material as the paneling around the bridge, and a padded acceleration chair in the vague shape of a human torso at its center.

  Captain Fukui took her seat and pressed the back of her head against the shell. Thick straps flowed across her torso from its inner walls, binding her in place.

  “Please make yourselves comfortable. I’m configuring the ship to transmit its command consoles to you both so you can see a bit of what’s going on. I know you will appreciate it, Heiress. Neither one of you will be able to give commands to the computer. I apologize, but it is company policy,” she said.

  He took a seat on one of the chairs, and Lina took the one next to his. Ben moved to the opposite side of the bridge and sat down with a stiff back. The egg chair was clo
se enough to Cylus that he could touch it with his foot, which made him feel like it was more of a large cockpit than a full bridge.

  “All right, tying you in now.” Captain Fukui rotated her chair forward.

  The black panels around them came alive with glowing holographic control boards, more than he had ever seen on a ship. All were written in the angular characters of Taiumigo. As the native language of Sable’s home world, it wasn’t such a great surprise to find an experimental Mitsugawa craft with controls in that script, but Cylus still hadn’t expected it. His implant should have automatically translated the text.

  “I think there’s something wrong, the controls are in Taiumigo,” he said.

  “My apologies, it has to do with the security features. One moment.” Captain Fukui concentrated.

  The controls vanished and were replaced by identical ones in standard Solan.

  “That’s better.” He nodded.

  Panels flickered and switched colors, rotating between electric blue, vibrant amber, and bloody crimson as Captain Fukui activated and deactivated features with commands from her implant. A surge in the pulsing vibration of the vessel jerked him against his restraints.

  “What was that?” he asked.

  “Starting up the main engines. Please do not worry. That was normal. Launching in three, two, one—okay, here we go,” Captain Fukui placed her palms, face down on the armrests and closed her eyes.

  A lurching sensation preceded a pressure on his entire body akin to being in a fast lift as the pulse of the vessel’s dark energy field thrummed in his ears. Through the windows he saw the top of the Intelligent Systems tower fall away, and a moment later, the rest of Ikuzlu with it. Even given the background hum of the ship, it was eerie to be flying up at such speed in such quiet. Moments later they passed through the city’s aegis with a purple flash. Everyone below them could see it, of course, but would think nothing of such an event. In a city as big as Ikuzlu, the level of aerospace traffic ensured such things occurred several times an hour.

  The eternal night of space and its dazzling array of stars soon replaced the daylight through the windows. The ship’s dark energy pulse cut out, and the sensation of acceleration gave way to one of falling. He felt his stomach complain, but knew from experience that he would get his space-legs before it really became a problem.

  “Prepare for relativistic turbine start-up,” the captain’s tone was firm and business-like. “Higgs-Boson Reducer engaged and operating at maximum capacity.”

  All ships had an HBR, and for most of his adult life Cylus wondered why something that reduced the mass of matter around it didn’t make him feel any different. He knew from the readouts on the panels that the entire ship and everything in it was now six-percent of the mass it used to be a second ago, yet he felt no change. A sound like a stiff wind filled the cabin followed by the roar of engine turbines pouring untold numbers of ions into the vacuum of space behind them. The sensation of pressure resumed, though it was feather-light by comparison to the feeling escaping Kosfanter’s gravity they felt only moments before.

  “Baron, we’re going to have to head out at least the standard twenty-AU to make sure our ERB signature remains consistent with normal traffic. The Mitsugawa protocol demands that we maintain secrecy about this vessel’s existence, so it would be unwise to engage the FTL drive from near orbit in a densely populated system like the capital,” Captain Fukui said.

  “We can go to FTL from near-orbit?” It dawned on him just how much of a change this new Mitsugawa drive system was going to make in space travel. It was probably going to alter the Spur almost as much as Zalor’s instant-travel network would. Travel times between systems without the Cephalon Spheres would be greatly reduced if ships no longer had to move out beyond the planetary orbital paths to reach an FTL ship.

  “We can do that, yes, but the navigation computer won’t let us if we’re in a heavily inhabited system.”

  A darker thought crossed Cylus’ mind. This drive system on a large warship, kilometers-long like the FTL ships, would mean a sovereignty could bring more firepower to bear a lot closer to a planet than was currently possible. If the massive FTL vessels could shed their neutronium cores and be converted into war machines they would become traveling battle stations capable of leveling entire planets. He shuddered at the thought of how that could change war.

  “Amazing.” Lina scanned the panels several times with her eyes. “The Shiragawa Zaibatsu really outdid itself with this thing.”

  An eager smile broke out on Captain Fukui’s face. “This ship has two relativistic turbines, and with the HBR operating, she moves ninety-four percent faster than a normal ship. We will cover the twenty-AU in ten days. It will be smooth, faster-than-light from there to wherever you desire.”

  “Calemni,” Cylus said.

  “I’m sorry, Baron?”

  “We’re going to the Calemni system.”

  Captain Fukui bowed her head and a star chart appeared at the center of the bridge drawn in crisp amber lines in the air. It zoomed in on a sector of the Orion Spur labeled “Contested War Zone, Travel Restricted,” then zoomed in again to focus on a small white star. A circle appeared around it, and the system’s vital data wrote itself out on the star’s right side.

  CLASS D-Q. NUMBER OF ORBITING PLANETS: 3 [GAS GIANTS-2, TERRESTRIAL-1] EXIT ZONE @35 STANDARD AU. CONFEDERATE REFUELING STATION @CALEMNI II-B. SYSTEM OTHERWISE UNINHABITED.

  “Are you certain this is your destination?” Captain Fukui looked at him.

  “The baron is certain,” Ben said.

  “My apologies, Baron. Where do you want me to put the ship in the system? There is no need to worry about the exit zone with this drive system. I can put us within an AU of Calemni II if you are not worried about detection. If this is a stealth mission, I can put us in the exit zone, or maybe even further out. Whatever you would like.”

  Lina looked at Cylus. He wasn’t sure what to do. When he thought of the system the ring of sparks appeared in his mind and a sense of doom filled him almost to his skin—yet somehow he knew that they wouldn’t really need stealth unless Captain Solus’ ship was there. If it was, though, it would be restricted to the exit zone as the Laocoon was a standard FTL vessel and couldn’t approach a planetary body. It could always have aerospace craft in orbit, however, but with the Fukuro’s stealth systems he doubted that would be a problem—or at least he hoped not.

  “Put us as close as you dare to the planet,” he said.

  “Yes, Baron Keltan.” Captain Fukui closed her eyes.

  The map zoomed in on the star and showed it at the center of three elliptical loops. Each had colored markers showing an example of the planets occupying those orbits. A red “X” appeared in a plane perpendicular to and above the second orbit.

  “It is ten-days to our jump point. This ship has a fully functional Cyberweb node. It is one of the top of the line Shiragawa models if you wish to pass the time in cyberspace. I apologize, but the accommodations on board are somewhat draconian,” she said.

  “Where are our quarters?” Lina’s French braid floated up behind her head.

  “Would you like to use the captain’s quarters?” Captain Fukui asked.

  “That won’t be necessary.” Cylus saw no need to deprive her of her bed. He was sure he and Lina could rough it if the ship was as Spartan as the captain claimed.

  “Please, it is no trouble,” Captain Fukui responded.

  “No, that’s all right, Captain. Where else can we rest?” Lina asked.

  “Deck six, Heiress. Use the room labeled ‘Crew Bunks.’ I apologize that there are not more comfortable accommodations. You may wish to wait, though. We still have a solid fifty-two minute burn to make our cruising velocity.”

  “Fifty-two minutes? Only?” It took Cylus’ aerospace shuttle nearly two-hours of on and off acceleration burns to achieve half that speed.

  “Our HBR is more efficient than those currently available, so we can accelerate at the max
imum speed our relativistic turbines can put out. We will accelerate at one-hundred and twelve gees.”

  “That’s impossible, we’ll be killed,” Lina said.

  “With the HBR functioning we only have six percent of our mass, and we still have all our structural integrity. The forces our bodies experience are reduced by the same proportion under these conditions. We can safely accelerate at a much faster rate,” Ben said.

  Captain Fukui nodded. “It is true.”

  “Interesting, I’m looking forward to it.” Lina’s eyes gleamed.

  After hearing the explanation of what was going to happen Cylus’ stomach was filling with a thousand squirming bugs.

  “Please try to relax. Starting burn—now.” All twenty of Captain Fukui’s fingers twitched.

  “Shi—” Cylus was cut off by the roar of the relativistic turbines as they thrust him back in his seat.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Ikuzlu City, Kosfanter

  41:2:24 (J2400:3151)

  Sinuthros squat down, fixing Cygni in place with his horrible, black eyes. Despite the feel of the floor on her knees, she felt like she was spinning in freefall. A haze of colors flashed continuously before her eyes, and the persistent ringing in her ears prevented her from concentrating enough to activate the shunt program. She wobbled on her knees and fell to the floor under the onslaught.

  “You are very persistent. Your friend here and I had a very long conversation about you while we waited. You would have made a wonderful ally to Baron Revenant had you just decided to play along and keep to yourself.” Sinuthros’ voice was the matter-of-fact tone of a professional doing his job, devoid of malice, which made what he was doing to her all that much more horrible.

  “I’m sorry. I couldn’t resist him. He was inside my mind,” Pawqlan said.

  Stupid Pawqlan, if he had just waited instead of rushing ahead—

  “This meeting was inevitable. Your friend only accelerated the timeframe,” Sinuthros said.

  Did he just hear my thoughts?