Starrise at Corrivale h-1

by Diane Duane

  They stared at her. Until now, all her interjections had been fairly gentle, leading them in the direction she had predicted for them, and in which they now intended, however unwillingly, to go. There was still a little fight left in them, though.

  Rallet said, "Naturally we will require time to prepare our people for-"

  "Sir, I think not," said the ambassador. "There are many eyes watching this affair, and delay will be seen as uncertainty. The stock markets are watching, and you all know how little time it takes the commodities and futures markets, in particular, to start becoming nervous. For all our sakes, it would be well if the formalities were concluded within no more than the next twenty-four hours. And the news of the actual settlement must be made public immediately." There, just for a moment, the voice lost its kid- glove quality. "Besides, your people are well prepared for this moment. They have been most intent on these proceedings. The commentators on both worlds' Grids, and some of those outside, have been predicting something very like this outcome- though it remains for you to stun them with the details. A few of them, of course, you will be delighted to prove very wrong about those details. Doubtless you will want to start arranging the interviews."

  The man looked in one direction and the woman in another, toward their respective staffs. Gabriel saw the hungry glint of eyes in one face, the set mouth, hard and vengeful, in the other. Both expressions frightened him, for they were wholly about personal pleasure, personal point-scoring, nothing better. Lives of thousands of millions of people would be affected by what had happened here today. Thousands (Gabriel thought, Gabriel hoped) would now not have to die. But neither of these two cared, not really. They were much more interested at this particular moment in getting back at people who had called them names or embarrassed them in public. And how many of their other moments are like this? Gabriel thought, trying hard to keep the look out of his face. How many of my brothers and sisters might have to die protecting the ambassador if these two should suddenly decide that she has embarrassed them?

  "These proceedings are therefore complete," said Delvecchio, "and the only detail remaining is your signature, sir, and yours, madam, on the instrument of agreement. And I congratulate you on becoming so notable a part of your worlds' history."

  The two bowed to Delvecchio across the table and reached out to their assistants for styli. Just a little hesitation there? Gabriel thought, but he could not be certain he had seen it. The two cart-based copies of the document were inserted into pad readers and pushed across to each of the signatories by one of their assistants. Each of them signed. That hesitation again. It was there. And then it was over.

  Delvecchio stood. The two seated delegations looked at her.

  "Thank you," she said. "This is of course the informal version of the ceremony. If you would be so kind as to inform me when you have had a chance to discuss this with your governments, I will be pleased to be at the ceremony tomorrow where this accommodation is made public. In time for the opening of the markets in the most closely involved systems, of course."

  "Certainly, ambassador. But as for the formal signing, it will take time to arrange, and in a few days we can-"

  "The fine print," said the ambassador, "says 'tomorrow.' "

  The signatories looked at her. Then silently they both bowed to her again and made their way out. Gabriel watched them go, ErDaishan and Rallet, each with his or her little soberly dressed entourage, each walking rather ostentatiously next to the other. It seemed to Gabriel as he watched them go that he had never seen two people be so far apart who had only a meter of space between them. They were entirely aware of the watching eyes, the listening ears. They were practicing their act. They would have to have it right by tomorrow after all.

  The room emptied rather quickly, as if something unpleasant hung in the air, a scent that people were anxious to be rid of in a hurry. Finally, it was as it had been the other morning: Gabriel and the ambassador-she slowly gathering up her papers and carts, he watching her, and after a moment, moving to help.

  For some minutes she said nothing, ordering her papers, looking at some of them more carefully than others, holding up one cart-the one with the rewritten agreement on it-and placing it carefully on the top of the pile. Then she breathed out, just once, a weary sound.

  When she looked up again, some of the tiredness was gone from her eyes, but not all of it. "So how did that look to you?" she said.

  "Ugly," Gabriel said after a moment.

  Delvecchio nodded. "Ours is the stepchild of the military arts," she said. "Guns are faster. Cruisers are prettier." She straightened and looked at Gabriel. "But sometimes we win the fight, and people don't die. Sometimes."

  She picked up the one last thing, her cane, and went out the door. Gabriel swallowed, for she was actually using it. She walked out carefully, looking not like a sword or a banner, but like a woman of a hundred and thirty-three. Victory, Gabriel thought, not winged, but hobbling.

  It was all very strange. He took a long breath and decided that after he was finished piling up the stripes and the bars, the Diplomatic service would have first call.

  Chapter Five

  THE PARTY STARTED fairly early that night. Normally shipboard protocol would have forbidden two parties one right after the other. But this situation was a little different, and the relief aboard-among both Star Force and marine staff-was so palpable that the captain gave her approval with very little trouble. Gabriel had one stop to make before the party. After giving it some consideration, he felt that the way to attract the least attention was to do exactly what he was supposed to be doing: delivering a message to someone in Engineering. Torine Meldrum down there was on his spatball team. He wrote her a note about the rescheduling of practice and then wrote eleven more notes to other teammates, slipping them into message boxes outside people's rooms or delivering them by hand to those he knew to be on duty. Additionally, he wrote one note not to a teammate, and as he passed by Jake on the way out of Engineering, he saw that Jake got it without anyone seeing.

  Then he changed into his most formal uniform, getting ready to go to the signing celebration. When he came out of his room, there was a folded note in his own message box. He opened it. For the one who mentioned ghosts, said the note. Deliver unlabeled. Out of the note fell a little datachip: another message, encoded.

  Gabriel, suddenly apprehensive, looked at it for a moment. All of this covert moving in the shadows and keeping secrets made him very uneasy, but he decided that he was only a low link on a long chain of authority. Surely his superiors knew what they were doing. So he went back to his desk, found an envelope into which he slipped the chip, then folded it down and activated the seal. The paper melted into itself, seamless. It was a matter of a few minutes to make his way downdecks to the second ambassador's quarters. She was not there, so Gabriel slipped the envelope into the slot of her message box and went off to the party, wondering what it had all been about.

  The partying down in the reconverted main briefing room was unusually wild, at least by shipboard standards. There was a lot more singing than usual-at least what passed for singing-and the jokes were louder than normal. Everything, movement, talk, even the eating and drinking, had a slight edge about it. The edge of the sword just sheathed, Gabriel thought. Relief. He was feeling it himself. He was a marine and liked to fight, but there was something about this particular fight that he would have found distasteful. Maybe because I've become too familiar with the details. One part of his mind immediately resolved not to get involved with the details any more. Another part denounced the first one as a coward. To shut them both up, he headed over toward the bar where he heard at least one familiar voice. Big Mil from Callirhoe was standing there having a talk with Charles, who was in front of the bar for a change. Mil was looking very amused and slightly outraged, enough so that Gabriel suspected Charles had told Mil about the Squadron Special. Some of the spatball team began to appear as well when they saw Gabriel there. All had an eye to tellin
g their team captain that he was a little too intense about what was supposed to be a sport.

  "This is the second time you've rescheduled the meeting," Torine said, having arrived a little after coming off duty. "Can't we just sort this out when we do our normal five on five game at the weekend? Don't you think some of us have other concerns?"

  "Of course he doesn't," Dietmar said, looming his blond self up from behind the bar. "In his own mind, we are all as conscientious and duty-struck as our little Gabe."

  The others made various disgusting choking noises. Gabriel rolled his eyes. "All right, all right, all of you, it can wait until the weekend! But don't you want to beat the Starfies?" "Depends on how the money goes," someone muttered.

  From around them, applause started. The group looked up and saw Delvecchio standing in the doorway- a little hesitant, almost shy. She wore a loose wine-colored robe of simple cut rather than the elegant attire she favored during the delegations. She came in, and the applause got louder. The marines and Star Force people assembled all clapped and cheered for her as they would have for a victorious captain newly returned from a successful campaign.

  She took it graciously then went to sit down. A Star Force officer brought her a drink, and the partying started to get back into its normal mode. Gabriel, though, looked at Delvecchio, looked at her face, and was not entirely sure he liked what he saw.

  Somebody tapped Gabriel on the shoulder. He turned, surprised. It was just Mil. He held out his hand.

  "What?"

  "Here."

  Confused, Gabriel put his hand out. Mil dropped something black into it. "It's your luck thing," Gabriel said. "I know. I want you to have it." "Huh?"

  "No, seriously, take it. I saw you were interested in it yesterday." "I can't take that; it's yours! Mil, really, don't. Tomorrow you'll be sorry."

  "No, I won't. Oh, go on! I'm getting tired of the thing. It keeps getting in my way, and I've almost lost it a couple times this month anyway. Doesn't matter." He grinned. "The news just came through. I'm being discharged in a month. Back to home sweet Damrak. Gonna go home and pile me up some cash. No, really, Gabriel! Take it. Every ounce I have to ship home is going to cost me big credits. I'm letting almost everything go but my discharge clothes and a sack to carry home my back pay."

  "But-"

  Mil just shook his head, closed Gabriel's hand around the black stone, grinned at him, and walked off. Gabriel looked after him, opened his mouth to say something, and then was surprised and distracted by the flush of heat coming from the little thing. The faint glow was coming from inside the stone again, pulsing gently, and as he opened his hand again he saw that the warmth kept time with the light. "Isn't that pretty," said the little soft voice from off to one side. He looked up in surprise to see the ambassador standing beside him, looking curiously at what he held. "It's a life crystal of some kind, isn't it? I've heard of them, but I've never actually seen one." She poked it gently. He offered it to her, and Del-vecchio took it and cupped it in her hand, looking at the way it echoed her pulse. "Where did you get it?"

  "Another of the marines gave it to me. Mil, over there. The big red-headed guy." Delvecchio nodded. "A few of the Verge worlds have these," the ambassador said. "It's some kind of slightly electroactive silicate, a natural 'chip,' apparently. There are beaches where you can pick them up by the thousands. Must be lovely at night." "But it only glows when you hold it."

  "So it does," Delvecchio said and glanced around, handing the stone back to Gabriel without really looking. "Well, isn't everyone having a good time?"

  Except you, Gabriel thought, but kept his peace as regarded that, even though the ambassador herself was obviously making no particular attempt to look cheerful. "Yes, ma'am," Gabriel said.

  She gave him a slightly sharp look. "You know," she said, "sometimes it's possible to be more observant than is good for you. Well, not that I haven't been tempting you to that blessed state as it is," she sighed.

  "I still wish I knew why this has happened now," Delvecchio said, very softly.

  "What?" Gabriel said after a moment. He was still recovering from the odd little episode with Mil.

  "Collusion," she said. "I said they had been talking to each other."

  "You didn't tell me that."

  "I wanted to see if you might pick it up yourself." Gabriel looked away in embarrassment.

  "No," she said, very lightly touching his arm, "don't feel bad that you didn't. I wasn't too sure myself until someone very fortuitously brought me proof. It would have been a lucky guess, no more, until about an hour before we started. And there were other pieces of information that helped me." Her eyes glinted at him. "Anyway, you did very well today. Don't stop tomorrow when they have to go back."

  iit t, ii I wont.

  "And as for me," Delvecchio said, "very early this morning we'll be returning for the signing ceremony." She sighed. "I'm sorry you won't be able to be there. It is likely to be too high-powered an event for me to indulge myself with your presence. Notice would be taken, which at the moment would be unwise. But after it's all over, I'll be coming back aboard to be ferried home again, and we'll have time to achieve closure on all this. I'll want to give you contact information for some people who'll be interested in, shall we say, this informal training period, when you get out of the service at last."

  Gabriel shook his head, a little in disbelief, a little in gratitude. "Ma'am, you've gone to a lot of trouble for me."

  "It's been mutual," Delvecchio said. "And people took this same kind of trouble for me once upon a time, when my career was new. This is my chance to pay the favor forward. I'll talk to you later in the week, then."

  She walked away.

  The rest of the party was not much different from the one that had preceded it. Gabriel left about midnight, headed for his quarters, stripped off, took a sober pill just in case-even though he had had very little to drink-and went to sleep.

  Then there was thunder. The bombs falling, ending in a sudden flash of light. But they were not the usual bombs. Or rather, there was only one explosion instead of what had become almost a monotony of crashes and rumbles, and only one light. The screams he knew, but the voices were different, and the sound faded away almost immediately so that one irrationally calm and detached part of his mind said, air first, then vacuum: explosive decompression-One voice he heard that he recognized, though not from Epsedra. As the vacuum swallowed it he thought how strange it was to hear that serene, sedate voice cry out at something that, for once, for just this once, had surprised it. But that was wrong, that was impossible. A growing feeling of how wrong all this was, the wrongness shifting swiftly into horror, It wasn't like this, it wasn't-! And the light was all wrong too. Not the repeated flashes, but just one-fading, swiftly gone like the sound, with only the burning of ice and dying fire left. Gabriel fought for breath, but there was none, only ice in his lungs. Ice sheeting over burnt skin, ice clouding and clotting eyes that could no longer blink or see. He struggled, couldn't move, couldn't-

  Gabriel flailed around among the bedclothes for a moment and found that there were no bombs, no ice, no fire, only someone pounding furiously on his door. And no light. He waved for it, staggered to his feet, opened the door.

  There were two other marines there, people whom he knew slightly-security staff with sidearms. He stared at them.

  "What?"

  "Get dressed, sir," one of them said, as if the word "sir" left a bad taste in his mouth, "and come with us." As quickly as he could Gabriel threw on his uniform, the everyday duty fatigues rather than the now wrinkled dress blues that he had tossed across the desk. He was slightly annoyed and more than a little uneasy that the two security soldiers stood in the doorway watching him the entire time. When he was ready, they took him by the arms, one on each side, and marched him to the Bridge. It was not a place where marines went all that often-even Gabriel, in his slightly privileged position, did not make a habit of going there. It was very much Star Force territory
, and the two services were careful not to trespass on one another's preserves aboard ship. It was a long narrow room, heavily shielded, since it would be the first part of the ship that an enemy would fire at in combat. A dozen or more officers monitored various screens and holodisplays, occasionally entering commands by datapad or voice relay. Despite the buzz of activity, the entire Bridge was unusually silent, subdued. The few who spoke among themselves did so in whispers. In the middle of the long narrow corridor was the center seat. It was empty at the moment.

  The straight slim shape in the Star Force uniform, standing in front of the center seat, turned to him.

  Elinke Dareyev looked down from the slight eminence on which the seat rested, gazing down at Gabriel with a face as still as that of a carved statue. She looked at him like someone who did not know him, had never known him. It was a stranger's face on the body of a friend.

  "Lieutenant Connor," she said, "do you know why you have been brought here?"

  "Captain, I-I don't know what you're-"

  She turned to her first officer. "Play it," she said and turned away from Gabriel to look at the holographic display platform.

  The air above the platform curdled into light, settled into a view of Phorcys, the white-streaked dun of the planet turning beneath. Nothing happened in that view for a while. Then a streak of silver dropped into it. The view zoomed in closer to the gleaming shape. It was a dull white rectangular box with a wedge-shaped cockpit attached to the front. One of the Star Force shuttles, heading for the planet's surface. Down and down it dropped, sliding into the haze of atmosphere- -and then came the bloom of light, sudden and eye-hurting even against the new planetary day. Glitter. Bright sparks suddenly spangled Phorcys's dun and white face and tracked on past it, up into the starlit darkness of space past the planet's terminator. A tiny but disastrous meteor burned itself out in the cold, reducing itself slowly to tiny glittering points of shattered or molten metal.