A House United

by Caleb Wachter

  “I do,” she nodded. “He has experienced prolonged bouts of unresponsiveness since being...infected,” she chewed on the word, “by this material. It is my opinion that this is simply the most severe example he has suffered to date, and the timing is independent of the nanotech's ceased growth.”

  McKnight nodded after a moment's consideration, then quirked a grin, “Your Standard has gotten so polished I can't even hear your accent—and your vocabulary is probably better than mine is at this point.”

  “I doubt that,” Helena said, her accent slipping back in as she returned McKnight's grin, “though I appreciate the compliment. Language seems easier for us Tracto-ans to master than it is for you Starborn.”

  “Keep me posted on his condition,” McKnight instructed, gesturing to the hard restraints which bound him to the bed, “and ensure those are secure at all times.”

  “Understood,” Helena nodded, wincing just enough that McKnight recognized the gesture for what it was: sympathy for a wounded crewman who, despite his numerous contributions to the mission and crew, had to be kept restrained out of simple ignorant fear of what was happening to him.

  It pained McKnight to keep him under lock and key, but her duty to the rest of the crew outweighed her camaraderie to Traian—at least, that had been her reasoning until now.

  But in the quiet recesses of her mind, she was beginning to doubt whether or not her logic was sound.

  “What can I do for you, Captain?” Valeria asked after McKnight entered the former Hold Mistress' inner sanctum deep in the forward hab module.

  “I'm not sure,” McKnight said skeptically. “I've got questions, but I'm not sure you've got the answers.”

  Valeria chuckled, and McKnight was briefly envious of the woman's strong, yet strikingly attractive features. The former Hold Mistress' weight was closer to two hundred pounds than one fifty, with far more of that mass comprised of muscle and bone than any woman McKnight had known during her youth, yet Valeria's proportions and everything else about her screamed femininity.

  But it was her eyes—those quick, calculating, penetrating eyes—which were her most distinctive feature, made all the more prominent as she smirked, “Good questions merely beget more questions, Captain. The value of answers is highly overrated.”

  “I'd like to say I'm surprised to hear that from you,” McKnight scoffed, “but the truth is I've come to expect such from the daughter of Kratos, and Hold Mistress of Blue Fang Pass—citadel of the ice and, many aboard this ship would say, last bastion of liberty on Tracto.”

  Valeria's exquisite eyes narrowed, and McKnight was anything but surprised when the younger woman skewered the heart of the matter with her reply, “You've come to discuss the poem?”

  “Yes,” McKnight nodded, “but honestly I have no idea what I hoped to learn.”

  “Allow me to reproduce your train of thought,” Valeria gestured to a fur-covered seat opposite her own metal, decidedly-uncomfortable-looking chair, and after the two women were seated she continued, “you wonder if such a supposed prophecy is something which I, or my father before me, manipulated for our own benefit. But then you realized who you were thinking about, and decided such subterfuge was against our base natures. This led you to suspect that we, too, had been taken in by the promise of Ice beyond the River of Stars' travails, but you dismissed that thought as well since neither of us is superstitious.”

  “So far, so good,” McKnight nodded approvingly, glad to have Valeria as an ally rather than an enemy.

  “Which brings you to the question of why such a poem might be important,” Valeria shrugged, “and the truth is that, like any other recorded idea, such a written work is little more than a spark. Without a properly prepared supply of fuel, sparks are practically worthless. They might give off a brief flicker of light, but they will do nothing to stave off the unrelenting cold of a deep winter.”

  McKnight leaned forward, “Do you mean to tell me that Blue Fang Pass was supposed to be a pile of kindling, waiting for the spark of us 'Starborn' to come down and spur your people to action?”

  Valeria laughed, “No, Captain, though I can see how one might make such an assumption. Where do I begin...” she trailed off contemplatively, “how does one know the relative merit of a given idea?”

  McKnight scowled, “I don't need a lecture from a teenager—“

  “You admitted at the outset that you had no idea what you hoped to learn,” Valeria interrupted chidingly. “Simple logic therefore dictates that you cannot have possibly known what you did not need. No?” she cocked an eyebrow challengingly, obviously relishing the moment.

  “Fine,” McKnight allowed, “I'll play along for a move or two: an idea has to be tested before its merit can be demonstrated.”

  “Such tests vary in their particulars,” Valeria nodded, “but structured inquiry, like that carried out by the scientific method, ultimately reveals the relative merits of any given idea. Blue Fang Pass was, I believe, a mistake—but not for the reasons my father likely held. I think my grandfather built Blue Fang Pass because he mistakenly believed it was the Ice described in the poem 'Th' Eternal King,' but the past few years have provided what I think is ample evidence to refute that notion. Still, I will agree with you to a point: the pursuit of individual liberty, which stood as the core of Blue Fang Pass's reason for being, did indeed serve to provide the kindling necessary for the spark of that poem to take root in the minds of my people. That poem is one of many reasons why we came with you across the River of Stars, and it is no small part of why we continue to follow you on your quest.”

  “You think the Ice is somewhere in the Gorgon Sectors,” McKnight concluded.

  “Essentially, yes,” Valeria shrugged lightly, “though it would be more accurate to say that we think we will reach the Ice at your side. Ice is cold, desolate, unforgiving and treacherous. It is made of life-giving water, but stay too near it unprotected and you risk frostbite or death. Ice is unconquerable, serene, wild, and yet it contains buried secrets waiting to be revealed. How could the Empire of Man possibly represent Ice?” she snorted. “Given the choice between staying with the oathbreaker Tremblay in such a 'civilized' place, or following you into the great unknown of these so-called Gorgon Sectors, for us that is no choice at all. We seek the Ice, Captain,” she leaned forward, her eyes alight with passionate resolve, “because we believe that, once we find it, we will have found our new home, a better home—a worthy home—where we can build a future for our people.”

  “And because it's possible we'll reunite with your father there,” McKnight added knowingly.

  At that, Valeria's expression soured, “My father's role in the course of my peoples' lives is a thing of the past. He was a mentor, provider, and leader without whom we would not be here today. But his time is past,” she said firmly. “It is my turn to lead our people into the future they deserve. Though,” she allowed, “should we meet again, I admit that it would be a more welcome occasion than I might have previously thought possible. I have learned as much from my father during his absence as I ever did in his presence.”

  McKnight sighed, “I think I'm at least as confused as I was when I came here.”

  “Then it has been a worthwhile conversation,” Valeria grinned, and they laughed together before McKnight stood from the fur-covered—and surprisingly comfortable—chair.

  “Thank you for your support, Valeria,” McKnight said earnestly.

  “We act for ourselves, Captain,” Valeria replied, “though it does give me some measure of pride that our goals have aligned as well as they have, and that we have continued to work together productively.”

  “Your people are doing good work acclimating to their new roles aboard this ship,” McKnight agreed. “We'll need everyone working together to make it through whatever awaits us.”

  “Until the Ice,” Valeria said, proffering her hand as her eyes held McKnight's gaze.

  The ship's captain took the young woman's meaning clearly: that
once they reached this 'Ice' they would disembark and pursue their own agenda. She accepted the younger woman's outstretched hand, “Until the Ice, then.”

  Chapter XXXIX: Lying in Wait

  “It's been three months already,” Tremblay scowled as he paced from one end of the secluded office where he and Guo had spent the majority of their time since arriving in their current base of operations. “This is getting tedious; we didn't come here to sit on our hands!”

  “True,” Guo agreed, diligently compiling publicly-available information streams and parsing them for meaningful data, “though my hands have been far from idle during this particular juncture.”

  Tremblay snorted, “You haven't been the only one pulling twenty hour days, Guo.”

  “Certainly not,” the other man agreed with maddening calm—once again reminding Tremblay why he valued Guo's company, counsel, and—most importantly—his cunning, “though I suspect, when the time for action is upon us, we will look back on these days with more appreciation than we presently feel.”

  One of the nearby panels beeped, causing Tremblay to check the incoming data stream before sighing in a mixture of relief and resignation, “Fisher says he passed the Purity Council's interview and is en route to the Senate floor.”

  “That narrows the possible avenues before us significantly,” Guo remarked casually. “The only thing worse than too few options is too many.”

  Tremblay chuckled at that, “Blast you and your interminable serenity, Guo.”

  Guo smirked as yet another message arrived, prompting him to briefly interrupt his previous efforts to process the missive. “Princess Bethany is...displeased,” he said dryly after reading the message and forwarding it to Tremblay.

  “You mean she's Bethany,” Tremblay snickered after confirming his conclusion from the brief, scathing message regarding Fisher's confirmation as the real Prince of House Raubach—a lie made possible only due to Triumvir Bellucci's position on the Purity Council, and her back-channel instructions for how they could modify Fisher's genetic profile to match Lynch's well enough to fool the tests. “She wants to get her Imperial nobility affirmed so she can distance herself from this operation.”

  “Which is why House Bellucci has prevented that very thing,” Guo agreed. “What your enemy desires, seek to deny him.”

  “Even if it doesn't seem to benefit you,” Tremblay smirked, completing the old game theory adage which had largely fallen out of favor in recent centuries, “and especially if that enemy is presently an ally.”

  “The Princess should not antagonize us,” Guo remarked dryly, “since, should we fail in our endeavor, she will now be convicted of high treason for attempting to place an impostor in control of an Imperial House.”

  “House Bellucci would doubtless prevent such a conviction from occurring in order to shield themselves from the fallout,” Tremblay agreed. “Better to kill us all quietly and be done with the whole mess—which is why they agreed to put us up here, of all places, and why she refuses to let us proceed with our mission.”

  “Admittedly, this apartment offers a stunning view,” Guo said, standing from his chair and stretching luxuriously before heading out toward the office's floor-to-ceiling 'window' composed of three inch thick mono-locsium. It stretched the length of the ten meter wide outer wall, and afforded them an epic view of the city below, around, and above them.

  Tremblay had to agree. Even though he had done everything possible to keep the panorama's majesty from affecting his perspective, it was difficult to gaze out on the largest city on the Imperial Capitol Planet without being awestruck—and, if he was being honest, slightly terrified.

  Zipping this way and that were anti-grav vehicles, an inordinate number—to his mind—of them bearing heraldry of the Empire of Man's various law enforcement agencies. Even the structures below and around them were built and arranged with such geometric precision that it was impossible to glimpse them even once without recognizing the message inherent to their arrangement:

  Everything conforms to the Empire's vision—and not a single detail will be overlooked.

  Skyscrapers hundreds of stories tall surrounded the one which currently housed them. Their office, just six stories down from the rooftop, was located two hundred sixty four floors above the streets below. But there were structures a few miles away that were easily twice as tall as this building, each of which seemed somehow more impressive than the last.

  The door chimed and, despite their total security to this point in the three months they had spent in the offices, Tremblay's hand went instinctively to the blaster pistol at his hip. He checked his wrist-link, which showed video of the camera placed outside the lone door leading into the office, and relaxed at seeing who stood there.

  “Let him in,” Tremblay grunted, causing Guo to nod serenely before moving to the door and deactivating the myriad security mechanisms placed there. The process took him nearly a minute, but when he was finished the door slid open and in stepped a cocky, athletic man with mousy brown hair and blue eyes.

  “You boys sure know how to live it up,” the man observed sardonically, casting a pointed look at the neatly-stacked empty meal boxes in the corner of the room.

  “Why did you accept our offer?” Tremblay asked, bypassing the preamble entirely.

  The man's blue eyes twinkled bemusedly, “How's a fella supposed to keep his place on the depth chart without a little practice?”

  “Not good enough,” Tremblay said flatly.

  “All right, all right,” the blue-eyed man sighed. “The truth is I think we might be of mutual service to each other, but you're going to have to agree to hold up your end before we go too deep into this little arrangement.”

  “I already offered more than adequate compensation for the jobs listed,” Tremblay said irritably. “Do you think I'd stiff you on the bill?”

  “We both know I'd turn you into a stiff for even trying to stiff me,” the man said casually. “Besides, I'm not talkin' about money,” he said with a dismissive wave as his eyes hardened. “I'm talkin' about tit for tat. You can keep your cash; I've got more than I could ever spend in a century of endless debauchery—not that I get off on that kind of thing, mind you, but being Number Two means keeping up appearances for all the runts scampering up the ladder beneath me.” His grin broadened into something approximating genuine emotion as his eyes remained cool and calculating, “Gotta keep the next generation motivated—after all, they're supposedly our future, no?”

  “What is it you do want?” Guo asked, though he and Tremblay already had a fair idea what the peerless mercenary was after.

  “A mutual back-scratching arrangement,” he shrugged his muscular—but far from muscle-bound—shoulders. “I help you two stack up whatever dominoes you like, and you help me use this,” he plucked a data crystal from his pocket—a crystal which was indisputably one of those which had been aboard the Rainbow prior to its departing the Spineward Sectors, “to find a way to cure my people of their—of our—sterility.”

  “What makes you think we could help you do this?” Guo asked, an unusual note of intrigue registering in his normally-unreadable voice. “We have no medical expertise, nor do we have special access to such.”

  The man snickered and waved the crystal, “With this information I doubt I'll need medical expertise so much as discretion and access to plenty of raw computing power with an untraceable hard link to the Capitol's more secure databases. You two have survived here, of all places, for three months,” he said with what seemed like genuine approval as he walked over to the massive window, “without getting caught which means you've got the untraceable hard link. And your successful tag-along from the Old Confederation to Imperial space proves your guile and skill for self-preservation. That means you two have brains and balls aplenty—but you're missing a healthy dose of brawn and beauty. Lucky for you,” he gestured to himself theatrically, “plenty of both just walked through your door. So what do you say?”

  Tremb
lay scowled as he eyed the data crystal, “I can't promise anything until I've taken a look at that data.”

  “But if, after reviewing it, you think it's in your ability...” the man pressed, making an insufferably patronizing gesture of invitation as he did so.

  Sighing in irritation, Tremblay eventually nodded, “We'll scratch your back if you scratch ours.”

  “Good man,” the blue-eyed operative grinned before spitting in and proffering his hand, “spit in your hand, shake mine, and it's an accord.”

  With more than a little disgust, Tremblay mirrored the gesture and grasped the other man's hand, “Welcome aboard, Largent.”

  Largent's grip was firm, but no more than that before he released it. “So what's first on the docket?”

  “We need you to hijack this warship,” Tremblay replied without hesitation, gesturing to a polymer sheet pinned to the wall which bore said warship's schematics and relevant details. He studied Largent's features intently as he explained, “When you do, we'll use it to frame a certain Triumvir of high treason.”

  Largent's grin, which had previously been only half-sincere, broadened like that of a child unwrapping a long-desired gift.

  “Until we have leverage—real leverage,” Guo interjected, “we are nothing but pawns in Triumvir Bellucci's game. Pawns are all-too-easily discarded.”

  “Our work can't be relegated to a backup plan in someone else's game,” Tremblay said with a firm nod in Guo's direction. “This is going to happen whether she likes it or not. We just need to buy ourselves enough breathing room to set things in motion.”

  “You're lookin' to make the back row and queen yourselves by exposing the king,” Largent said approvingly. “Ballsy...stupid, but ballsy. I like it.”

  “And you don't have a problem betraying House Bellucci?” Tremblay challenged.

  “Betraying?” Largent scoffed. “Boy, after playin' this game for as long as I have—and surviving to tell about it—you come to learn the full value and meaning of an old axiom: look out for number one...and don't tread on Number Two,” his smile turned vicious at that last double entendre. “The Belluccis are big girls who've swung their weight around as they pleased. They've earned a super-sized dose of payback for the way they've treated me and mine; it'd be a pleasure delivering a shot or two of it personally.”