No matter the voiceover's redundancy, Glithwah found pleasure in that summation.
Each message entailed a risk, however small, of interception. Encryption might safeguard content, but the UPIA had only to backtrack an incoming message to uncover Caliban base. And so, besides robustly encrypted, reports were infrequent, sent at low power, and relayed through a string of scattered, stealthed comm buoys.
The buoys also few and far between.
As Pimal gave details, the video spoke for itself. Combat robots, several octets of them, undergoing their final field trials. Weapons, of every sort from personal arms to MIRVed rockets. Secret factories humming, the Boater robotic designs instantly productive for that purpose. A deuterium refinery at full capacity. Vessels of the clan's reconstituted navy—the scoop ships reported lost and several of the captured vessels—armed, armored, and made stealthy. All concealed within roofed-over craters on the remote moon.
Over a reprise of robot duels, Rashk Pimal said, "Finalization imminent of combat chassis."
It was welcome news, but Glithwah permitted herself a moment of envy. Day after day, year after year, she was the clan's public face. She cooperated. Projected contrition. Exhibited patience. Feigned assimilation. Was seen to enforce the UP's onerous rules. Complained only enough to maintain credibility, to allay suspicions—
All the while, in the privacy of her head and through anonymity of the infosphere, planning and conspiring.
While Pimal, her tactical officer, enjoyed the freedom to act. Being believed dead had its rewards.
Among Glithwah's secrets was that the clan had a tactical officer. Carl Rowland and his UPIA lackeys would not approve. Then again, if things continued to go according to plan, the days of caring what the UPIA thought, or suspected, or knew, were numbered.
That prospect made the upcoming game of b'tok with Carl a bit more palatable.
"It has been too long since we played," Glithwah said. "Not since before your reporter friend came and left. She and I had a good meeting."
In the clamor and chaos of Ariel Commons surrounding shift change, Carl had to struggle to follow an out-loud conversation, much less to discipline his thoughts for b'tok. Given his supposed recent progress—defeat at a less embarrassing level?—Glithwah had proposed taking the competition up a notch. Championship b'tok was played amid distraction. It was yet another way that b'tok seemed Machiavellian.
Except that, to a Snake, Machiavelli was an adorable naïf and a rank amateur.
Crap. His thoughts already tugged in too many directions. More distraction was the last thing he needed. What had Glithwah commented on? Oh, right. Corinne's visit.
"We're more like old acquaintances," Carl answered, wondering whether the Interveners were as observant as Glithwah. If Interveners even existed. With each passing day, Corinne's assertions seemed more, well, fantastical. "Over the years, she and I have gone our separate ways. Apart from mooching a ride from me, we hardly saw each other this visit. Regardless, I'm glad your discussion went okay."
Glithwah sipped from a bulb of iced lovath, the Snake analogue to coffee, while, in their consensual space, a b'tok "board" took form. She asked, "Do you recognize the configuration?"
B'tok, despite its many rules, had no fixed starting point. Games employed any layout and any deployment of opposing forces to which both players agreed. That fluidity was one more reason Carl struggled. With chess, at least, he could fall back upon standard openings.
Did he recognize anything? Boats. Primitive aircraft. A few specks of land in a vast ocean. Where his game icons lacked knowledge, the topography was grayed out. Given the stylized representation of b'tok, he wondered if the simulation was on K'vith, Earth, or a fictional world.
As he pondered, three diners, deep in high-pitched, guttural conversation, finished their meals and stood. Winding through the commons, making a path through closely grouped tables, the Snakes nodded deferentially to Glithwah. One trod on Carl's shoe. All part of championship-level play.
Focus. Carl shook his head. "What is this place?"
"A part of your Pacific Ocean. The Battle of Midway. A sea-and-air skirmish from your Second World War. I set you up with the side that won."
To make his inevitable loss that much more humbling.
"Okay," Carl said. If he had the right conflict in mind, that was more than two centuries earlier. He could not remember the sides, much less a particular battle.
"Shall we begin?"
The question was rhetorical, because in a corner of Carl's netted vision, a game timer began to increment. "What's the latest word about the refinery accident?" He wanted to know anyway, and to ask might distract Glithwah.
He launched aircraft to surveil the unknown regions of the game map. Just a few of his planes, lest Glithwah's forces should take him by surprise. He sent up a few more planes to patrol around his ships, to give warning of any attack. He adjusted the deployment of his ships, dithering whether when bunched up they protected one another or just put all his eggs in one easily bombed basket. Except for enemy surveil lance planes in the distance, Glithwah's forces remained hidden.
"Metal fatigue," Glithwah said. "Tubing burst in a cryogenic coolant loop. Our engineers suspect radiation embrittlement in the..."
As Carl considered that diagnosis, and wondered whether embrittlement was a word or a coinage of Glithwah's, and as a definition popped into his mind's eye, within the game a sortie burst from the clouds. Waves of planes darted toward one of the islands. He ordered more of his planes into the air, and was dismayed at how slowly they responded.
As his supply icons disappeared in puffs of symbolic flame, as bomb-crater icons marked his runways unusable, he wondered: Who's distracting whom?
Which suggested the possibility the surprise attack, so early in the game, might be intended to divert him from Glithwah's answer. She wouldn't lie—about things he could, and would, confirm. The deuterium refinery had had metal fatigue. That didn't preclude the bad tubing being there on purpose. But sacrificing a third of the colony's energy supply in an insurance scam? That would be no small thing! Not to mention the loss of life.
Could Glithwah want illicit tech that much?
Belatedly, as he launched shipboard aircraft to drive off the attackers, one of his long-range surveillance planes radioed in the location of Glithwah's carrier group. His options and confusion expanded. Should he attack at once, with his reserves? Wait till he could refuel the planes now flying defense? Hold back planes lest Glithwah attack with more aircraft? As he weighed his choices, fighter planes from Glithwah's carriers chased away his recon planes.
"... Specialized alloys in the tubing," Glithwah continued explaining. "After a supply ship failed to appear, we had to postpone routine maintenance."
His position deteriorating rapidly, Carl reminded himself the conversation was his purpose here. What did one more embarrassing loss matter after so many?
"What's the prognosis for repairing or replacing the refinery?" Carl asked. "How long can the settlement operate with just two units before having to ration power? And can I pull a few strings for you regarding replacement parts?"
"Pull strings? I see: to expedite. Yes, that would be appreciated."
And in swooped more of Glithwah's planes, wave upon wave.
His aircraft scattered, his ships vulnerable, Carl relegated his play to reflex. As for the bigger puzzle, he saw only unpalatable answers. One: with parts unavailable and maintenance overdue, the Snakes recklessly kept a critical facility in operation. Why not shut it down, at least while their reserve supplies lasted?
Two: Glithwah, playing a longer game, making a point about dependency, wanted the refinery to go boom. She'd been pushing him to permit the settlement its own long-range ships for resupply. The accident investigation would, without doubt, report metal fatigue. But maybe Glithwah had had old tubing reinstalled, kept from past maintenance.
(One of his aircraft carriers, its flight deck aflame, dead in the wate
r, racked by explosions, began to sink. "Too bad," Glithwah said. Carl scarcely noticed.)
Or, three: the Snakes needed money, lots of it. The disaster was simple insurance fraud.
Or, four. Four was the most intriguing. The most worrisome. The hardest to know how to handle. Four was sabotage, but not of Glithwah's doing. Factions among the Snakes were nothing new, but rivalries had not yet (to his knowledge) risen to major sabotage.
But there was another spin he could put on the sabotage scenario. Suppose Snakes were indeed trying to get their talons into Boater robotics—tech that someone had long tried to keep from this solar system?
Then perhaps the Interveners had an agent right here on Ariel, among the Snakes.
Chapter 7
Alongside the banded and ringed magnificence that was Saturn, above the potato shaped, much cratered, icy moon Prometheus, against a field of diamond-sharp stars, hung Discovery: a featureless patch of black. Dark as pitch. Surface laser-ablated to a smooth finish. Details lost in the blur of its stately rotation.
A dim and ghostly presence. And ghostly the starship would remain. Because scrolling across the bottom of the strik ing image, the repeating message from the project office on Prometheus began, Media access revoked.
It might have been nice to have been told that, oh, say, a half-billion klicks earlier.
"This is nonsense," Corinne snapped, turning her head this way and that, defying anyone and anything in Odyssey 's cramped bridge to contradict her. Posturing, all of it. She had included Discovery on her itinerary to make the trip less about Ariel. Less, if the Interveners should be watching, about her connecting with Carl.
If someone else chose to take the blame for rerouting her home—great. With Saturn and Uranus on more or less opposite sides of the Sun, she hadn't yet gone far out of her way. Home sooner to Denise had its charms.
Corinne kept glowering, to keep up appearances.
"It's pretty damn rude," Grace said. "I mean, this isn't a jaunt anyone would undertake on a whim. Aren't you offended?"
"I'm sure they have their reasons." Reaching into the holo—flicking through the text, past the excuses, reading between the lines—Corinne got to a reason. "A shipboard accident. This close to scheduled departure, they'll be scurrying to clean up."
"How bad an accident?"
"They don't say."
Nor did any of the hour-old broadcasts within reach of Odyssey's high-gain antenna. So, most likely: no worlds had shattered this time. No innocents had been slaughtered. Nothing had as much as interrupted the transfer of fuel from the antimatter factory on Prometheus.
The glimpse of Discovery, so like the ship of her nightmares, still made her queasy.
"I'd be hopping mad, too," Grace said. Misreading the grimace on Corinne's face? "I mean, you're a worlds-class reporter. Near legendary. The voice and face of the Himalia Incident and of the raid to retake Victorious. If anyone has earned the right to cover a story about a starship, that's got to be you."
"Only near legendary?" Dismissing the flattery with humor.
"Well?" Grace persisted. "Tell the truth. Don't you feel slighted?"
"A bit, maybe." Well, yes, actually. "Set aside the ship's tour and the interviews I had scheduled. Any accident aboard Discovery is news in its own right. The construction crew shouldn't be turning away the media."
"And it's a free solar system.
Except for Snakes." "Except for Snakes," Corinne agreed.
"So...?"
"Okay, I admit it. I am annoyed. And curious, too. But they've revoked my access."
"Are you sure?"
"What do you mean?" More: what does your sly smile mean?
"Who's to say we got that message?" Grace gestured at the main nav holo. "Look."
In which nothing was anywhere close to them.
"So, just show up." Because who could turn them away after coming about three trillion klicks?
"That's what I'm thinking." Grace grinned. "Have I mentioned? I haven't gotten around to acknowledging the message. It'd be easy enough to clear it from the ship's log."
"They know we're coming from Ariel. If they can't reach us, they'll relay the message through Ariel."
"Then we ignore messages from Ariel, too." Grace gestured again at the nav display. "We're long gone from the neighborhood. Considering the distance, no one will think a thing about us not responding."
"Maybe." Something didn't ring true to Corinne. "I'm surprised you care so much. Don't I remember you sneering at interstellar travel as a lifestyle choice, not flying?"
"That doesn't mean I wouldn't want to see a starship. It's a flying habitat. It's my taxes at work. It's a whole freaking manmade world. "
"Uh-huh."
"Laying it on too thick? When I signed on, I was expecting a longer gig."
With a bigger payday at the end. So, okay, Corinne could see why cutting the trip short might disappoint her rent-a-pilot. That didn't make Grace wrong.
Because, damn it, she was still journalist enough to race straight to wherever people didn't want her.
And because something had struck her. The UP had an interstellar drive only because Snakes had hijacked Victorious to this solar system. Given how the Interveners discour aged some kinds of tech, maybe they weren't big fans of human-built starships.
Maybe whatever had happened to Discovery wasn't an accident.
Chapter 8
"I feel like a rat in a maze," Danica grumbled. Privately and silently, of course. Over a COSMIC ULTRA link.
In her real-time audio and video feed, collapsed into a corner of Carl's mind's eye, nothing seemed all that challenging. Then again, this world was his home. He had lived on Ariel longer than, well, anywhere else. To her, this was all new.
"Just souvenir shopping," he reminded her. Corinne's pilot had given him the idea. "If anyone asks, someone in the Commons mentioned Banak's work to you. So when you saw him on the street, you thought you'd ask about buying a piece."
The sculptor himself could be seen via public-safety cameras making his way down the pedestrian tunnel to the Snake spaceport. While he retrieved his package, Carl might get fifteen minutes to plant bugs and make a quick search. Infamous recluse that Banak was, known to hole up in his gallery/workshop/apartment for days, even weeks, at a time, they had to make an opportunity.
"I know my cover story," Danica said. "It doesn't make the corridors any less claustrophobic."
"And me being a head taller than you, it shouldn't be a mystery why you're there and I'm here."
"Yeah, yeah." In her vid feed, two Snakes in rumpled jumpsuits, perhaps cargo handlers, glided down the corridor toward her. As they passed, Danica rated only the briefest of sidelong glances. Three minutes later she netted, "We're here."
In any event, Banak was there, showing a package claim, to be waved into a storeroom by the bored-looking Snake watchman. Danica's point of view indicated she had hung back, loitering at a view port in the passenger terminal. Her job was to stall Banak if he started home too soon. "Be careful," Carl netted back. "Yeah, yeah." Ariel's entire population wouldn't fill a small town. Local security—originally, by UP insistence—was correspondingly relaxed. If Carl had known only what Danica knew, he'd have been as dismissive.
Whistling tunelessly, with one hand in a jacket pocket, Carl sauntered up to the door of Banak's gallery. A sign read CLOSED, in clan-speak, English, and Mandarin.
Along the left edge of his augmented vision, four red dots dimly glowed: security systems flagged by his gear. The low intensity denoted mere commercial-grade alarms, although to have four systems seemed excessive. Nothing his Agency gear couldn't handle with ease.
Uh-huh. And what did the Agency wizards know of Intervener tech?
Danica netted, "From what I can see through the doorway, Banak is wandering up and down the aisles of the receiving area. Maybe his package is misplaced?"
"Maybe." Or maybe Banak was also exploiting an opportunity. "Be careful."
"That
's twice in two minutes. Something you want to tell me?"
"No." What he had already shared—that Banak might be behind some of the recent sabotage—should suff ice. That the Snake might be doing it as part of an interstellar conspiracy spanning eons? That was on a need-to-know basis.
And if Danica already knew? He already suspected one Intervener agent. Why not two? All the more reason to treat today's op as routine.
Reporting success with a slight vibration, the device in his pocket overrode Banak's alarms and reset the electromagnetic lock. The door unlatched with a soft click.
Low on the hinge-side doorjamb, a circle pulsed. An app on Carl's implant, highlighting something out of place. A filament of some kind, stretched across the crack. Old school. He captured an image, so that he could restore the filament as he had found it.
"I'm in," he advised Danica.
Her avatar smirked. "Be careful."
"I deserve that."
Banak had left the overhead lights on in his gallery before leaving to retrieve his unexpected parcel. No reason, therefore, to work in the dark by the artificial tint of amplified vision. Scouting around back, in the messy, congested, workshop area, Carl found he could dispense with hardwiring his bug. Inductively self-charging cordless tools lay everywhere; Banak would never notice the sip of power the bug would take to recharge. From a deep squat, ducking his head, Carl stuck a bug far back beneath a Snake-low workbench.
In the workshop, as in the main gallery, sculptures loomed: big metallic constructions welded, hammered, and twisted into eerie, contorted shapes. A tall, skinny pyramid giving birth to a mutant lobster. An upright coffin. (Obviously not. Snakes didn't bury their dead.) A chain-link fence/snake devouring its tail.
Nonrepresentational art, even of the human kind, eluded Carl. He hadn't a clue about Snake abstract art. Half the time, he couldn't even decide whether a particular sculpture was finished. The price tags on the gallery pieces suggested that someone appreciated Banak's talent. Or maybe the prices just reflected novelty. In the Snake home system, all metal, even iron, was precious.
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