“Well, are you coming in?” he had asked. “The door is going to close on you if you don’t.”
She looked around at all the corners, floor and ceiling that she could see from the front entrance. He noticed that right away.
“Something wrong, dear?”
“I’m not your ‘dear’, Zelin.” With that, she ushered herself in and strode past him.
The house was quiet. None of his housekeepers were there. The large windows were filled with a view of the mountains to the south. She wasn’t sure how to tell him, so decided on the direct approach. “Your little celebration wasn’t exactly what I thought it was.”
“Come again, dear?”
“Stop it with the ‘dear’. You know I hate that.”
Zelin had already gone to the nearby table that contained crystal containers of various liquors and had poured her a brandy. He pointed to the couch. She looked at the drink and decided she needed it. She tossed half of it back in two gulps. French. Her favorite.
“You were just getting information from me that night, weren’t you?” she stated, her voice hard.
“Information?”
She tightened her mouth to pencil thinness, not sure why she had bothered to even explain it. She sat the glass down on the coffee table. “Don’t play games with me, Zelin. You recorded everything I said that night. And now you’re going to use it against me. Why?”
Of course Zelin was going to deny all of it. “You’re kidding, of course. I recorded you? Why on Earth would I do such a thing?”
“Because you want to ruin me, that’s why. Now that I’m going to be a Planetary Director, you want to take me down. Why?”
He tried his best to suppress a look of surprise. Somehow, she knew about the recording! So there was no use lying about it. He didn’t know how she had discovered his ruse. Perhaps he wasn’t as careful as he should have been. He shouldn’t have started reviewing the recording so quickly. At least not until she had actually left his suite. “I recorded our little… liaison so I could make sure you help me out.”
“Zelin, dear. Whatever are you saying?”
“Well, let’s just say I’ve just taken out an insurance policy. You see, if you help me with a little, er, problem I have, well, then you can have the recording.”
“If that means we’re having sex right now, the answer’s no.”
Zelin shook his head and issued a barely perceptible grin. “No, my dear. That’s not what I had in mind.” Actually, he wouldn’t have minded at all, but he had a different purpose already set in stone. He excused himself and went to the study. After he returned, he aimed the scanner at her. Satisfied that he wasn’t being recorded he decided to let her in on everything.
“I have higher aspirations than just being a well-paid manager at Kekliv,” he began. “I’d like to make sure I get something very important in the near future. Besides, you owe me. After all, it was me, my dear, that got you the Directorship.”
Inandra wasn’t sure she heard him right. Zelin had some sort of hand in her getting the Directorship? How was that possible?
He told her how he had spoken with key committee members. Gave her exact quotes from people she was sure to know by now. Then told her about Bov. About the nice quiet manager’s job that was soon to open on Rylerra. It was just a coincidence that Rylerra and Andakar were in the same double star system. A happy coincidence, he had decided.
During the next hour, while Zelin explained everything, her thoughts strayed as far from the conversation as they could. The situation wasn’t as bad as she thought. She’d get the holovid though. There was no way anyone could ever get their hands on it or she’d be ruined. He could have his little manager’s position, too. She was positive that could be arranged. In fact, her thoughts strayed even farther. Since she wasn’t a native of Andakar, she would never be able to actually run the entire planet, per se. There were local provincial managers who would be reporting to her. But that was a minor legal issue to be resolved in the years, perhaps the decades, to come. She would eventually figure out how to remove native local managers and become the sole legal overseer. She knew enough lawyers. Consortium law might be rigid but it wasn’t fixed. Somehow, she’d be able to do it.
Somehow.
Amazing what sleeping around had accomplished for her.
Chapter 11
The shuttle that Darreth had signed out was part of an interplanetary fleet. There were twenty of them. All were the same model. Darreth had flown on several missions to Rylerra in one. The H-180 shuttle was unlike cozy passenger ships though. Designed to move military personnel from ground bases to orbiting stations, or as a station-to-station transport vehicle, it could easily traverse planetary distances in a reasonable amount of time. It could hold eight people comfortably and could store up to two weeks of frozen or freeze-dried rations, along with plenty of water. It had short and long-range sensors, several comm buoys, and an advanced holofield navigation system. Although not designed to be a fighter by any stretch of the imagination, it had defensive shielding and offensive weaponry just in case. After all, it was a military shuttle.
Naylon stood in a long corridor on the space station awaiting the surface pod’s arrival. This one had fifteen passengers. One was Tann. Naylon’s face brightened as he saw Tann come in through the airlock door. “Hey. Good to see you,” Naylon told him.
“I can’t believe I’m finally here. I thought this day would never arrive,” he said with boyish enthusiasm.
“Have you been on the station before?”
“No.”
“Neither have I. It’s not as bad as I thought it would be.”
“Whadda ya mean,” Tann asked curiously as he looked up and down the corridor. Several people passed them by and two more were crossing an intersecting corridor several dozen meters up ahead.
“I thought it would be a lot more… stark.”
It was far from that. The shirtsleeve environment was a steady 22 degrees. A breeze could be felt in all the carpeted corridors. Evenly spaced windows gave the impression of an open loft space.
“Where’s Darreth?” Tann asked.
“Prepping our ride in Shuttle Bay 2. He asked me to meet you.” Naylon pointed to the bag riding on Tann’s shoulder. “You must have more than that.”
“The steward said my stuff would be routed to the right place. I hope he was right,” he said anxiously.
Apparently, baggage was being offloaded through another pressure door, Naylon guessed. “Hungry?” he asked as they proceeded through the corridor.
“I’m too excited to eat.”
“We’re going to pass the visitor’s mess up ahead. I thought you might want something for the ‘road’.”
Tann shook his head. “I’ve got some snacks in here,” he said as he patted his bag.
Naylon noticed Tann was all smiles as they took off toward the shuttle bay. He was taking in all the sights.
The station was huge. In fact, it was larger in volume than the largest cruise ship on Andakar. Dozens of people were going about their business in the wider corridors. About half of the personnel they saw were in uniform. Now that Tann had finally gotten to see the station his brother spent a lot of time occupying, he had a newfound respect for the facility and for his brother. This is what profit could provide: a station with all the latest amenities, the latest shuttle pods, and the best anti-pirate weaponry and detection systems in the entire Consortium.
Two-thirds of a kilometer further they finally came upon a row of windows that overlooked a huge gaping room. Eight H-180 interplanetary shuttles were lined up next to each other. Naylon and Tann descended an elevator to the main floor. The elevator opened to an airlock, which opened to the shuttle bay.
Tann and Naylon immediately saw Darreth with a vidPAD in hand standing outside the open shuttle door talking to a maintenance technician. Darreth handed the man the vidPAD and the maintenance man left just as Naylon and Tann approached. The shuttle’s designation was in large bold b
lack letters.
“Siaron Viper,” Tann said aloud as he touched it briefly.
Darreth smiled upon seeing his brother. “Hey, kid. How was the ride up,” he asked as he gave Naylon a quick affectionate peck on the cheek.
“Took all of twenty-five minutes.” He quickly passed right by Darreth and took a look inside the shuttle’s open door. He stepped in and looked around. Less than three seconds later he exited the craft. “This is it?” he exclaimed.
Both Naylon and Darreth turned to look at him. The shuttle bay airlock door opened at that moment, too. In walked Merek. He had a bag slung over his shoulder. He was pulling another one behind him on rollers. He had just checked out of his visitor’s room. Naylon and Darreth looked back to the still stunned-looking Tann.
“It’s a military shuttle, not a yacht,” Darreth told him.
“Where are we going to sleep?”
“The acceleration chairs slide all the way flat. They make for a very comfortable bed. Plus, they have noise cancellation fields. You knew it’s going to take a few days to get there, so don’t complain.”
Naylon grinned at Darreth.
Merek approached the two men with his baggage. “Everything’s stowed already?” he asked Naylon.
“All the equipment’s in the storage lockers. Your stuff can go in back. Need help?”
“Nah.”
An a-grav sled came out of an open door to their far right, led by a porter. On it were Tann’s two bags. The porter had Tann put his thumbprint on a vidPAD to sign for them, then deposited them at the shuttle’s door. The man guided the sled back out of the shuttle bay and was gone a moment later.
Merek was busy strapping his things down in the storage lockers at the rear of the vehicle while Tann brought his things in.
“Tann, is it?”
“Yeah,” he replied.
“Merek. I work with Naylon.” He extended his hand. Tann shook it. “I hear you’re the pilot’s brother.”
“Yeah,” Tann replied, sounding dejected.
“You don’t sound so happy,” Merek observed.
“I thought we’d get a better shuttle.”
“Better? They’re all like this one,” Merek pointed out as he looked around.
“So I hear,” he said, with a note of disappointment in his voice.
Clearance for departure was granted two hours later. Darreth was in the pilot’s chair. Naylon had taken the co-pilot seat to Darreth’s right, although he had no idea how to work any of the controls. Merek was directly behind Naylon, and Tann was behind his brother on the left. Tann’s view was through a large window on the port side. In front of him was a large display screen, but Tann was much more interested in the real view.
Darreth’s view wouldn’t be real at all. In fact, a real view would have been fatal. All interplanetary shuttles and other FTL ships had a standard holofield nav interface, which enveloped the pilot in his own bubble of sensory data. The interface gave the pilot the unique experience of sitting in an imaginary point in space surrounded with all the sensor array information the ship possessed. With voice commands and a few hand controls, the pilot could view, call up, display or otherwise interface with every computer aboard the ship and have instant access to whatever important data was needed at the moment. All of it would be projected into space in front, to the side or even to the rear of his holo-universe. Even if the pilot forgot to access specific data when required, that information would be displayed anyway.
Distances were projected using logarithmic scales in thousands of kilometers, local system AUs, or light years. Navigational stars could be labeled in the pilot’s holographic universe with their name, distance, spectral type and an array of other information that might be relevant. Course plotting was projected in front of the pilot. Weapons array levels were displayed in real time. Environmental controls, landing points: everything was viewable when necessary. It was not only a very efficient interface, it was one that gave Darreth a thrill every time he strapped in and activated it. He was in total command of the ship the moment the field was turned on. It was one of the many reasons he enjoyed what he did.
Ships were not allowed to activate their FTL drives within six million kilometers of a planet’s orbit. The reason was that wrinkling spacetime created a huge graviton distortion wave. That wave was disruptive to communications, navigational beacons and any other nearby photronic device. The waves spread out in a spherical shape from the insertion point, so it was standard to wrinkle a wedge at a considerable distance from any Inhab. Thus, they would be traveling sub-light at .46c to a point designated by the glowing red X in Darreth’s nav field. Once they were the proper distance away, Darreth would activate the FTL engine.
With all systems checked out and clearance authorized, they left the station’s shuttle bay and were out into open space. Instantly, Tann felt a thrill like he’d never felt before. His first trip away from Andakar! He intently stared out the window hoping to get a glance at anything that might pass as they cleared the docking ring. Maybe he’d see a bit of the station as they left it behind. Perhaps he’d see one of the numerous satellites in orbit around their world. Anything. But he was disappointed when the station and his world quickly receded and were only specks in moments.
Thus, Tann had to resort to sensor arrays after all. He knew how to run the display in front of him since it had a standard interface. Extreme magnification allowed him to watch Andakar recede. Within an hour, their velocity had increased enough for the planet to be too small to discern any viewable detail from the rear vid cam, even at maximum magnification.
“Okay Tann, ready to assist me?” Merek asked. Unknown to Tann, Naylon had sent a message to the heads up display in front of Merek asking him to divert Tann’s attention.
Tann looked over at Merek. “Assist you? How?”
“I need to run some diagnostics on the equipment we brought. I’ll need your help.”
“I don’t know any of your equipment.”
Merek shrugged. “I’ll show you what to do and you can tell the computer to run them.”
“Oh. Okay.”
They both un-strapped and went to the rear of the shuttle. The equipment bay was through a small door just past the entrance hatch and the head, which also doubled as an ultrasonic shower. Merek winked at Naylon just before he shut the door behind himself.
Naylon activated his internal comm. “Darreth?”
Naylon wasn’t sure he should interrupt Darreth while he was enveloped in the nav field. But it didn’t hurt to try.
Without looking at him, Darreth’s reply came appearing in his head as a fairly loud voice. “What, cutie?”
“Okay if I talk to you?”
“Sure.”
“What’s it like?”
“The nav field?”
“Yeah.”
“It’s spectacular. These shuttles are great to pilot since they’re so nimble.”
“Any bumps in the road?”
“Not a one. According to the chronometer we’re on schedule to wrinkle a wedge in two hours.”
Just short of two hours later Merek and Tann finished the diagnostics checks on all their underground sensor equipment that would be used in the field operation once they arrived. The equipment would be used to map fault lines, determine where and how sedimentary layers were deposited, perform short and long distance t-mode scans of objects beneath the ground, and do chemical as well as radiological analyses of samples. Merek ran the diagnostic on the t-mode unit himself. The t-mode or terrestrial mode unit was simply named but would perform the most important tasks. That of taking 3D underground pictures using a wide swath of the electromagnetic spectrum. It had the uncanny ability to help them determine ahead of time whether a spot was worth digging or not.
The storage room door slid open. Merek and Tann returned to the main shuttle cabin.
“Hey, just in time. We’re only a couple of thousand kilometers from the insertion spot,” Naylon told them.
Stan
dard procedure was for all personnel to be strapped into their acceleration chairs before going FTL. Although an FTL procedure hadn’t gone wrong in hundreds of years, protocol was protocol. They both sat down and strapped in.
A few minutes later Darreth counted down for them. “Insertion in 5-4-3-2-1.”
There was a slight shudder throughout the cabin, a noise from the rear of the shuttle, that of the FTL engine sound chamber engaging, and instantly the view outside the ship turned gray. Tann knew they were no longer in normal space. Even so, it was disheartening to not have a bit of a view. For the next eighty-four hours he’d have to rely on the music chips he’d brought with him, the vids he had downloaded into his vidPAD and the ships broad entertainment database to keep him company. Short-term boredom was the small price he would have to pay for the awaiting big adventure.
Darreth immediately disengaged the nav field from around him. There was no use for it as long as they were FTL.
“Whew,” he exclaimed. “I’m hungry. Break out the sandwiches.”
Chapter 12
At first, Naylon thought he’d made a mistake in insisting Tann come along. In this environment, he seemed a bit whiney. Naylon thought the James-Po family’s position would have made him a better sport. In a way, he had insisted because the boy had expressed a profound interest in visiting another planet. Well, the opportunity was right there, so why not have him come along? Yet, despite Naylon’s initial regretful observation of Tann’s demeanor aboard the shuttle, he was pleasantly surprised to see that Tann adjusted rather quickly. Yes, the shuttle was Spartan and cramped, but he ceased sounding bratty within hours. Naylon hadn’t been on a trip like this before either, but he’d been on plenty of multi-day overland road trips to various dig sites. As a seasoned adult, he never minded the dust, the rain or the long hours where he could barely stretch his legs in the transport vehicle. Luckily, though, Naylon could just barely touch the cabin’s ceiling with his middle finger when he stood upright on his toes. The cabin might have been small, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as an overland trip.
The Rylerran Gateway Page 10
