by Mel Keegan
“So Fleet doesn’t get the data, and government doesn’t see it either.” It was Ernst Rabelais, speaking in a quiet, cautious tone. He looked up around the table, and the same concern was evident in the clear blue eyes which were so like Vidal’s and Rusch’s. “Look, I’m just the newbie here. I only climbed out of the tank – what it is, Jo, three weeks?”
“Just about,” Queneau said softly. Her hand rested on his, on the table. “And it’s got zip to do with how long you’ve been in this time. You know enough about this bloody stupid century we’re assigned to live in, and you’re the only one qualified to compare it with any other time.”
“What she said,” Vidal muttered. “And before anybody asks, I’m with Ernst.” He gave Shapiro a glare. “The only people who know anything about the weapon are on the Wastrel, the Mercury and the Carellan Djerun. And we,” he said, almost a growl, “are hardly likely to share the news.”
“Rob Prendergast,” Jon Kim said thoughtfully, “recently became your step-father, Michael.”
“Only because he’s dumb enough and vain enough to marry Elaine Osman.” Vidal’s expression was laden with disgust. “You know the story? She’s an arrogant, vain, social climbing parasite without a scruple in her entire body. She’s also still drop-dead gorgeous, and men like my father and Rob Prendergast, gods help them, go down like chaff under a harvester. You think I’m going to blab to Prendergast because he let the little head do the thinking, and married Elaine Osman?”
“The thought occurred,” Kim said, amused.
“Well, think again,” Vidal snorted. “General, you want my opinion? Ernst’s right. Sure, let Barb and Mark and their people take the weapon apart six ways from Tuesday. Then bury the data. File it so deep, it takes ten ID codes to get to it. Bury it in the holographic memory in Lai’a, in fact, so the only people who can get to it are the Resalq … the folks who were on the receiving end of these weapons!”
“Make us the gatekeepers?” Mark sounded doubtful. “I’m not sure any of us would want to play the role of humanity’s social conscience.”
“I don’t suppose you would,” Shapiro agreed, “but someone, somewhere, must be the gatekeeper.” He was silent for several moments, thinking it through. “Suppose Lai’a hosted the data, as Michael suggested. Suppose it took, say, five Resalq ID codes to coerce Lai’a to give up the information. You, Dario, Leon, Tor, and Midani Kulich. All five of you were aboard at the beginning. You’ll make up most of the team that dismembers this damned weapon and makes its tech available to our generation. You’re also representative of the race that was almost annihilated by it. Who would be more qualified than yourselves to safeguard it?”
Mark was certainly not quick to dismiss the suggestion. Travers watched the lines deepen across his brow and around his eyes as he thought, and just for a moment Mark Sherratt’s vast age was visible. Midani was not much more than a boy, still filled with the zeal to experiment and explore, quite capable of being overwhelmed by events or technology or powerful personalities, even in humans. Mark was so old, Travers could barely imagine a life spanning so many centuries. Neil looked into Marin’s face, saw the same profound fascination which endured even after Curtis had been Mark Sherratt’s adopted kin, his sometime lover, for most of a decade.
“Humans would come to us, at some hypothetical time in the future, and ask for the Zunshu weapon to be released to them?” Mark frowned directly at Shapiro. “Which humans, Harrison? With what authority? And during what kind of contingency? If it should require five Resalq IDs to release the weapon, it should require at least seven human ID authorizations to validate the request. Yourself … Curtis, Neil, Richard, Michael, Ernst and Alexis.” His brow knitted as he looked into each face in turn. “Fifty years from now, if you people came to me, asking that I gather my family and summon Lai’a in a time of hazard such as has never been known before – yes, I’d do it.”
“But we won’t live forever,” Travers said slowly. “Even if we live full, normal lives, we’ll be gone eventually.”
“So we’d share the clearance codes with trustees,” Marin suggested. “It’s not the individuals Lai’a would be looking for, just the codes. It would trust us to bequeath them to people we trust unconditionally. Yes?” He looked along at Mark.
“Yes,” Mark agreed, “but I don’t think the far future will be an issue we’ll carry as any burden of conscience.” The ghost of a smile played around his mouth. “The technology behind the world-wrecking weapon is a derivative of the mines and the gravity drive. We’ve already deployed the mines at Velcastra, Omaru, Borushek, Jagreth. You don’t think there are scientists working right now, taking the mines apart as specialists at UOH were trying to fathom the magic of the device Leon tried to purloin from the campus last year?”
“Well … shit,” Vidal swore passionately.
Mark made a soft sound of humor. “Don’t distress yourself, Michael. The generation of tech available outside of Alshie’nya is decades away from being able to explain or manipulate the Zunshu technology. It won’t be a concern for forty, perhaps fifty years, and I can ask Lai’a to monitor the ongoing research, even supposing I were unable to do it myself. When the time comes, humankind might just have matured to the point where your people can be trusted with the Zunshu tech. If not … well, I’ve no doubt measures can be taken, and will be, to prevent error.”
“Computers can crash,” Rusch said darkly. “Data can be stolen and the original files erased. Prototypes can be destroyed or disabled.” She frowned at Shapiro. “Forty, fifty years.”
“We’ll be retired,” Shapiro said with a curious kind of humor, “but elder statesmen are frequently recalled from pasture in times of crisis.” He drummed a tattoo on the table with his right fingertips. “Any results from the work your people are about to do, Mark, on the deep scans of the Borushek device, remain at Alshie’nya, available only to this team and Lai’a itself.”
“I would agree,” Mark said slowly. “And I’d also advocate keeping the research on restricted access, even among our own crews. Engineers like Ingersol and Wymark will be involved. Physicists like Barb and that young fool, Teniko. They’ll be working in concert with Dario and Tor, and perhaps Sasha Tomarov and Paul Wymark from the Wings of Freedom. Others not directly involved don’t need to know.” He looked at Vaurien now. “Security protocols, Richard.”
“I’ll take care of it at once,” Vaurien guaranteed. He touched the combug in his left ear. “I should tell you, I’ve just had an update from Tully. We’re running ahead of his predictions. He’s revised his estimate to sixteen hours, pending nothing dire in the meantime. The structural damage we suffered at Oberon isn’t quite as bad as it seemed.”
“Excellent.” Shapiro looked aside at Kim. “Because the major item on my personal agenda at this moment is the transfer of power on the Omaru blockade. Alexis and I need to be there, and we can’t use the Mercury. She’s far too recognizable – she’d be impounded in an instant. The Harlequin doesn’t have the speed, and even if I were about to accept the discomforts of a courier, we don’t have one available. The Wastrel is still a registered Deep Sky commercial salvage vessel, and you can have us on the Kiev in four days. Alexis?”
She agreed without hesitation. “My old command corps is waiting for this, every moment. The plan is for the transfer of power to take place on the Kiev first. Dissenters will be placed into custody, the carrier will be at the disposal of the Commonwealth, effective immediately … and my people have discussed renaming her, to distance us from Earth. If we’re given the choice, we’d prefer the name Sark, with good reason. The city of Kiev, on Earth, is the site of Fleet Quadrant Command. Sark, Borushek, will be the site of Commonwealth Quadrant Command after the dust has settled.”
“It ought to be the defecting crew’s privilege to name their own vessel,” Rabelais said quietly. “Mind you, it’s the process I’d put to a vote, Harrison, rather than the name itself. I like it.”
“Agreed,” Shapiro said
with a faint smile. “I’d say the name of Sark would be the first chosen, if you left it to politicians like Tarrant and Chandra Liang.” He was intent on Rusch now. “I’m assuming you know who can be trusted among your officer corps. And who can’t.”
“Intimately.” Rusch took a second glass of wine as Queneau returned from the ’chef with refills for herself and Rabelais. Vidal was still nursing a tumbler of green tea with ice and sprigs of fresh mint. “With the dissidents in custody, we’ll enforce a ship-wide comm blackout before we inform the general crew of the transfer of allegiance. Dissidents can volunteer to accept custody and a transfer back to Fleet vessels at the earliest opportunity … after the war. At that point, orders will be issued to recall the battle group to a rendezvous point. We’re suggesting Bahrain, the biggest moon with the farthest orbit.
“And that,” she said with a grim fatalism, “is where the invitation to defect will be issued to the commanders and crews of every ship at once. Rest assured, gunnery officers will already have locked in firing solutions before the transmission is made.” She glanced at Vidal and gave a faint shrug of one shoulder. “We’ll be shooting to disable.”
“I know.” He pulled his spine straight. “I hate it, but I’m damned if I can see any other way to save lives. We stop them at Omaru or they fly right into the mines at Jagreth. I can tell you, Roark and Asako are going to be pissed – they have as many friends on those ships as I have. But I do want to be playing folgen with those people in six months, not talking to families, trying to explain why there’s not enough left of their kids to bury.”
Shapiro’s face was shadowed. “We’re on the same page, Michael. If we’re fast enough, we can handle this. The Kiev … the Sark … is quite powerful enough to control any ships making the mistake of turning their guns on her, or trying to run.”
Travers’s thoughts had returned to the Intrepid. The last hours of the ship haunted him so keenly, he could actually smell the tang of scorched electronics, new welds, spilled chemicals, human sweat. He was looking at Marin as he asked, “When Curtis and I nursed the Intrepid out of Hellgate, we got control of the AI using command override codes. Would there be any chance of seizing control of your battle group the same way?”
“It’s a good idea, and we thought about it.” Rusch was impressed.
“The trouble is, it must be done simultaneously across every ship, down to a fudge factor of a few nanoseconds, or every autonomous AI would raise the alarm the instant it registered the shift in the command signatures of the few we’d managed to seize. AI techs can, theoretically, get around the seizure. It takes just over four seconds to scram and reboot the core AI on any Fleet vessel, and they come back up on their primary protocols, not any superimposed command set of ours. We’d have to override them repeatedly. It’s not impossible, but with a dozen ships in the battle group the likelihood of mayhem is at least as dire as just making the very human offer of defection, and leaving it to humans to decide.”
“And there will be blood,” Vidal muttered.
“Yes.” It was Rusch’s turn to sigh. “But an ocean less than you’d see at Jagreth, Michael, if we run the battle group out of the system and let them scurry under the skirts of the London.”
Marin pushed back his chair and made his way between the table and the viewports, to the ’chef. He was punching up dessert as he asked, “And speaking of the London battle group – not to mention Jagreth! – do we know where those ships are? You said a while ago, they’ve had at least some data return from Velcastra. They’re still coming on?”
The look on Shapiro’s face would have soured a churn of milk. “Oh, they’re still coming on. We’ve been monitoring them, trying to use their heading to determine their probable target – and it might be Borushek. But we’re not letting them call any shots here.” He looked from face to face along the table. “I can tell you now, the sovereign status of Jagreth will be announced in eleven days. And we can expect the London battle group to pounce.”
An odd twist raced through Marin’s face. Travers had been watching him closely as he returned with cheesecake, fresh fruit, clotted cream. The expression was gone as suddenly as it appeared; Curtis was expert at governing his face. Travers took his hand, felt the cold of fingers that had been cradling the plates only a moment before. His voice was a murmur.
“You all right?”
“I’m fine,” Marin said soundlessly. “It’s the same picture we saw at Velcastra. You think Mick and Alexis didn’t feel a shudder? Forget it, Neil.”
In fact, Travers was hardly likely to forget any of it, but he thanked the guardian angel who seemed to stand vigil over him that Darwin’s World was so far away, so removed from the colonies of the Deep Sky, they would never come under this shadow. He clasped Marin’s hand tightly for a moment and then let it go and forced himself to listen to what Shapiro was saying.
“The Battle of Jagreth will be fought before the Lai’a expedition launches. We’ll go into Elarne knowing the result, and given what we saw at Velcastra, I’ve no doubts on that score. The Sark will remain on station for the defense of Omaru, where Captain van Donne’s Mako has already laid down the minefields. The Battle of Omaru will be fought after the Lai’a expedition has left. We’ll be half a universe away before there’s any news. All we can know is, we’ve left the Deep Sky as well defended as we know how, before we launch into transspace.”
At this, Jazinsky leaned forward. “Dame Fortune is still in our corner, so we must be doing something right. Before we came over, I tweaked the mines we’re seeding into the exit lanes around Hellgate. The original ones wouldn’t have even recognized a mechanism like the Borushek weapon. The new ones will be looking for those exact signatures, and the Harlequin will be back in the field in a few hours, reconfiguring the mines they seeded yesterday. We’re defended, Harrison. The only thing that bugs me to death is the sheer, witless bloody luck it took to cover our asses.”
“Agreed without reservation,” Shapiro said levelly, “but in the final analysis, I’d still rather be lucky than the alternative.”
“You don’t say,” she said acidly. “One more thing was starting to come out of the Oberon data, Harrison, just as I walked out of the lab to come here. I had Etienne taking it apart, projecting back into Hellgate along the thing’s trajectory.” She touched her combug and looked into the middle distance, over Shapiro’s head, listening. “Okay, Teniko, let’s hear it.” A pause, and then, “Tonio, just shut up with the horsecrap and give me the data, or I swear I’ll come over there and whup it out of you. It’s not your data to withhold!” She gave Vaurien a furious look. “He’s being a little swine. Again.” But she was listening once more, and a moment later she nodded. “Got it. Now get the hell out of my lab while you’re high as a kite. If I see you back there before you come down, I’ll put a code on the door and have Etienne lock you out!” To forestall any argument, she plucked the bug from her ear and dropped it on the table.
Bill Grant was on his way to his feet while she was still talking. “Is he high, or is he over the limit? He’s been riding the edge of overdose for the last couple of weeks. Damnit, I knew I shouldn’t have left the ship!”
“He’s all right, Bill, go back to your dessert.” Jazinsky gave Shapiro an apologetic look. “Sorry to involve you. He’s the thorn in my butt, and I got no one to blame but myself. I’m the one who took him out of the institution on Velcastra. I’m the one who brought him onto the Wastrel.”
“I made him welcome,” Vaurien added.
“And I validated his work.” Mark said dismissively. “We all knew he was unbalanced. We believed it was a stable home and a group of intelligent, sympathetic companions he needed. It was a mistake we all made. And, this data, Barb –?”
“Wake ghost,” she said succinctly. “We pinpointed the location of the Hellgate event it dropped out of. Lai’a charted it as the Orpheus Gate. With any luck at all, it’ll be our own insertion point for transspace.” She frowned sidelong at Vidal, Rab
elais and Queneau. “There’s more. Etienne knows the Zunshu command frequencies now, and it was monitoring them. We recorded a body of Zunshu comm traffic which was bumped on to Lai’a for analysis.”
“And Lai’a,” Dario Sherratt breathed, “delved deep into the Zunshu AI language when it negotiated with the core processor in the stasis chamber on Kjorin – the time we retrieved you, Midani, and Emil. Well, now. Interesting. Give Lai’a an hour, and we may get information we never expected, perhaps details of Elarne back as far as the Orion Gate.”
“The Orion Gate, which is visible from the Orpheus Gate, I believe.” Shapiro was looking at Vidal specifically.
Michael’s shorn head nodded slowly and his eyes seemed to have glazed over, leaving him blind to reality while his imagination took him back to transspace. “You can see it, clear as looking at a mountaintop on a blue-sky morning with the sun high … oh, it’s the gate at Orion 359. It’s years away, by any Weimann tech we know.” He shook himself hard and forced a smile. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be.” Shapiro studied him intently. “We know the path through Elarne, at least that far.”
“And this new data confirms what we learned from the listening device we picked up on Celeste,” Jazinsky added. “We’ve got a line to them. I can’t tell you the absolute course to fly, to take us right to the Zunshu homeworlds – and no way can I put a distance on it for you. But Mark and I are sure of this. We can get us there.”
“Even if we can’t,” Mark said with a definite fascination, “We can explore. This was the purpose for which Lai’a was designed, and it’s eager to leave. At the moment, as I told you, it’s committed to the analysis of every particle of information we have appertaining to Elarne, and the development of an effective transspace navtank, preloaded and configured for the use of human pilots. It understands the critical nature of this.”
“Then, we’re 22 days from launch.” Shapiro’s eyes closed for a moment and a trace of color faded from his face. “The Wastrel will be good to go in 16 hours; we’ll be on the Kiev in four days.” Again, he looked from face to face. “If anyone has issues, now is the time to voice them.”
