by Mel Keegan
“It was their ancestors who ran and hid.” Marin sighed. “These Resalq, today?” He shook his head slowly. “They’re half human, settled, established. Human enough to laugh at our jokes, and they tell me some of the very young ones are considering becoming gendered. Resalq women, if you can imagine any such creature!”
The general paused, in the act of shoving in his shirttails. “Oh, I can imagine it, but to say the ancestrals are appalled is a terrible understatement.”
An odd shiver took Marin unawares. “The ancestrals.”
“The survivors from the stasis chamber on Kjorin. The Kulich brothers, and before you say anything, I know ‘brothers’ is the wrong word.” Shapiro pushed his feet into soft-soled shoes and headed back to his desk. “If you’re going to Riga to consult with Mark, you’ll meet them. They’re … different.”
“Alien,” Travers guessed.
“Very.” The threedee was loaded with queued data, but Shapiro’s first priority was coffee. “Leon Sherratt’s partner has been working with them, and I have to hand it to them, they’re a quick study. They’re speaking a version of Slingo that’s good enough to make them understood in simple terms, with Roy Arlott to translate the rest. They’ve had to catch up with centuries of human history, and I don’t envy them. As traumatic as their world must have been, never more than one step ahead of the Zunshu, at least they understood that world, they were in control of it. Our world is vast, complex, hostile, paranoid – monstrously dangerous to them because they’re visibly alien. There’s no way for them to pass as human on any street, in any colony.”
“Damn,” Marin whispered. “Mark would have offered to take them out of Riga, surely? There are other places, worlds like Saraine, where the Resalq have made their own spaces.”
“Yes.” Shapiro gestured vaguely with his mug. “But the old Resalq worlds are too close to Hellgate. With the rush of colonies vanishing off the charts, even Saraine itself is being powered down. Mark has decided the only way to save it is to leave it. Shut everything down, let it run silent and cold, and not attract Zunshu attention. That way, when this is all over, he might just have a home to go back to.”
A peculiar sensation had gripped Marin, as if a steel band were cinched about his torso and tightened, then tightened again, until he could barely breathe. Travers knew, of course, and a light hand rested on Curtis’s back. “That was my home too,” he said, listening to the hoarse rasp of his own voice. “For years, while I studied. Dendra Shemiji. I just can’t imagine it shut down – cold, dead.”
“Safe,” Travers added, always the pragmatist. “Mark’s right. Don’t make a noise, don’t wave your arms around. The Zunshu don’t attack forests full of squirrels and beavers.”
“What about the archaeologists?” Marin wondered. “There was a regiment of them, working the ruins, last time we were there.”
“Evacuating at this moment,” Shapiro said bleakly. “Everything we can lock down and run silent in the outer colonies is being shut off. But you have to remember, the big colony generators take weeks to cycle down to dormancy, and I honestly don’t know how long we have. No one does. We’re making best guesses and working fast.”
His face was haunted, his eyes were filled with shadows Marin had never seen in them before, and it was difficult to look at this Harrison Shapiro – stressed to exhaustion, on the brink of becoming a fugitive – and see the same man who had pulled the old Hellgate pilot’s trick and got the jump on Mark Sherratt as well as Vaurien and Jazinsky, at Saraine –
How long ago? Time had begun to blur, and Marin was seized by a sensation of unreality as events jostled together in his memory. A month ago, a year ago, five years, all crowded like leaves torn at random from a tree and drifted together by the wind.
“You can be out in three minutes?” Travers was saying while he rubbed small circles on Marin’s back, soothing.
“Yes. So can the Riga community – or, they will be able to, given another week of preparation. At the moment, the Resalq themselves could get out, and their data is already synchronized with AIs offplanet, but they would leave behind the greater part of their art, literature, music … it would be,” Shapiro said sadly, “a cultural disaster beyond anything in human history.”
“But not in Resalq history.” Marin pulled his shoulders back and sought the ancient skills to calm his mind, slow his pulse, bring his thoughts back to chill rationale. “They’ve been through this, General. They survived then, and they’ll survive now. A week to save their art and the rest?”
“Do we have a week?” Travers asked in an odd whisper.
Shapiro’s brows rose. “Mark guesses, we do – but he’s quick to point out, it’s no more than a guess.”
“Based on what?” Travers asked, on his way to the ’chef for coffee.
“On signal degradation,” Shapiro said with a crooked smile.
“On what?” Travers shot a look at him as he handed a mug to Marin and returned to the machine for his own.
“Signal degradation.” Shapiro sank into the chair behind the desk and leaned back, let it belly under his weight with the familiar creaking sound. “And for this small insight, we can also thank Major Vidal, and Pilot Queneau.”
Marin pulled a chair up to the other side of the desk. “Mark said he was able to winkle some sensible data out of the Orpheus telemetry. He didn’t say what, only that the technical aspect would be no interest to the likes of Neil and me.”
“Or to me,” Shapiro added ruefully. “But I pinned him down a few days ago – should we be running right now, or do we have time, and if we have time, how much do we have?”
“And he said …?” Travers hooked the other chair with his foot and pulled it in, close to Marin’s.
For some time Shapiro was silent, choosing his words with all due caution, as if he must make sure he understood what he was saying. He was so far off his home territory here, he was feeling his way, like any of them. He was a Drift pilot, a career Fleet officer and a reluctant politician, not a scientist, nor an engineer.
“Just as the event which took away the Orpheus was closing,” he said carefully, “the Wastrel received a transmission, and I’ve seen the data myself. There’s no doubt that it issued from the beacon of the Odyssey. From Ernst Rabelais’s ship, which was lost in the drift centuries ago. Now, at the same time the Wastrel received a steady telemetry stream from Vidal and Queneau, and for the first time Mark had two signals to compare, and both of them issuing from the actual guts of Hellgate. You can compare signals, and apparently you can calculate the temporal distortion and the signal dropout, in an equation not dissimilar to the angular square law of the propagation of light … and you’re at the very, very limit of anything I understand. But I do know Mark was able to use the two signals to calculate a realm of data which seems to indicate the enormity of the guts of Hellgate. Elarne, as they call it. And based on the depth, or width, or size of it, and the way the temporo-gravity currents flow now, in our time zone, due to the position of the supergiant stars and the black hole, Naiobe, well, you’re looking at a signal lag for any transmission made by the stasis chamber on Kjorin to reach a Zunshu world, and then a similar lag for a device … a weapon,” he corrected, refusing to use the euphemism, “to fall back out of Hellgate here.”
“This stuff makes my ears ache,” Travers muttered lucidly.
But Marin had caught the gist of what Shapiro meant, the truths Mark had distilled from almost nonexistent data. “It gives us time,” he said tautly. “Weeks. A month, perhaps.”
Shapiro was nodding. “Long enough for Lai’a to launch into the Drift, and find them, and please God, open a dialog which will defer the assaults on our major homeworlds. Which is why,” he said quietly, “humans and Resalq should be aboard. We cannot send a machine, no matter how sophisticated, to be our emissary.”
“Especially when that machine looks like a warship,” Marin added, “and is loaded with most of the firepower of the rest of the DeepSky Fleet.” He
sat back, closed his eyes and pressed both palms to his face. “You’re going, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” Shapiro said baldly. “I have to.”
“And Mark?” Travers wondered.
“I don’t know,” Shapiro admitted. “Not yet. He has other responsibilities, just as grave. The Resalq ships are coming together into the kind of fleet which brought them out of the Zunshu firing line centuries ago. The plan is, they’re going to follow their own pathfinders, who charted regions we’ve never visited. The Zunshu don’t reach into that part of space – too far from the black hole systems which power their gravity drives. Mark’s ship found several planets which are acceptable. They’ll set up a new colony, start again.” He spread his hands, a gesture of resigned acceptance. “I respect Mark’s loyalty to his people, his commitment, his priorities. I can help them with ships, hardware, but … I have to go with Lai’a. He designed the brain, the mind, of Lai’a. Even without Mark Sherratt as part of this mission, the essence of him will be there in Lai’a.”
“But you’re hoping to persuade him,” Travers speculated.
Shapiro managed a faint smile. “Of course I am. In fact, you can sound him out yourselves, if you’re going there – and I wouldn’t delay too long. Everything is in flux, unraveling while you watch. Speaking of which –” he paused to glance at the chrono. “Will you take a brief assignment, before you leave?”
“How long is ‘brief’?” Marin said suspiciously.
“An hour. Less. And not far.” Shapiro pointed at the ceiling. “On the air park. A meeting from which I’d like all parties to walk away unharmed, which begs for security that’s equal parts Dendra Shemiji and – psychic!” He permitted a quiet chuckle. “I’ve asked Sergei van Donne and his crew, and Asako Rodman and Roark Hubler, to meet our guests. Marianna Wing and Conway Streller were escorted to the air park under guard twenty minutes ago.”
Surprise ambushed Marin, and he gave Shapiro a wry smile. “You’re trying to talk a deal? What kind of a deal?”
“One that will perhaps buy Wing and Streller their lives,” Shapiro said acidly. “We’re on a three-minute alert, because no one can be sure the Zunshu won’t descend on us faster than we can run away … and I don’t have the time, the resources or the inclination to deal with dangerous prisoners. While you were in Freespace they took another crack at my security. Destroyed three cameras, two drones, and wounded a guard before the AI could stun them. They’ve been in custody too long, and they’ve become a liability.
“With the impending battles and the Zunshu assaults, I don’t have the cryotanks to waste on controlling them, and they know far too much about all of us for me to bury them in Jackson. I have my hands full with the interrogation – the secretary, George Kiveris, the young man you fetched back from Halfway.”
“You’ve spoken to him?” Travers wondered.
Shapiro nodded thoughtfully. “He’s keen to tell what he knows, and I imagine he knows a great deal. My chief concern is to make sure he’s telling truths, not inventing or embroidering half-truths he thinks I want to hear. He’s very young, very frightened, desperate to stay alive, and I can expect him to say anything, adlibbing any data he thinks I want. I’ll be sorting wheat from chaff for days, and I have no more time to waste on the likes of Streller and Wing.”
Marin gestured in the vague direction of the lab where Frank Berglun had been interviewed. “You’ll want to stage a VR sim,” he guessed.
But Shapiro made negative noises. “I don’t have the resources at this point. The methods are going to be a great deal simpler –”
“You’re going to beat crap out of him?” Travers made a face.
“Hardly.” Shapiro gave him a look of reproach. “It never worked, Travers. Hurting people only makes them babble faster and say anything they think will stop the next blow coming. If I wanted to hear a torrent of absolute twaddle, I’d have you put on a pair of leather gloves and stand behind me, flexing your biceps, while I shone a lamp in his face! In fact, I’m going to have George Kiveris taken aboard the Mercury. It’s four days to Velcastra and he’s going to spend most of that time very, very drunk. I’ll ask the same questions on the first day and on the last. The truth, as the bard said, will out.”
“We’ll have Senator Rutherford by the balls,” Travers said with grim conviction. “And then?”
“And then,” Shapiro said softly, which was his most dangerous tone, “I’ll buy Rutherford from Ulrand, and there will be an open-court trial here on Borushek, or on Velcastra, which will make the CL-389 incident, and Earth’s culpability for it, public as far back as the homeworlds. Many humanitarian factions on Earth will rebel at the idea of a colony world being destroyed, a whole population murdered. It’s a mistake to assume all Earthers are bastards. Many of them are – and most of them seem to be prejudiced against colonials for their ‘impure’ bloodlines and racial types. But even the homeworlders who are given to prejudice would draw the line at the destruction of a colony, the murder of a whole population.”
“There’s hope for them yet,” Marin said dryly. “Do you want Neil and me to look after security around Kiveris?”
“Yes.” Shapiro stirred deliberately. “A few days, and we might have the CL-389 issue resolved. Rutherford will keep for a while. He’s one of my trump cards, in the game of manipulating the government of Earth … and as you can see, I’ve no time or patience left for the antics of Marianna Wing and Conway Streller.”
“They’ll be euthanized?” Marin guessed.
“Executed,” Travers said darkly.
And Shapiro nodded. “Euthanased, and very soon, unless they choose to join us. Even if they contract with me, as you and Mark’s and Vaurien’s people did, I don’t trust them. They’ll be chipped, bugged, and monitored by my AI, and if they show up in a place they shouldn’t be, communicating in any way with a person they shouldn’t – they’ll be terminated by the same bug that was monitoring them.”
The situation had been stewing for a long time, and Marin knew it had to boil rather sooner than later. “Do they know the Ranjipur fought at Ulrand? Do they know she ended the battle as a hulk?”
“They will soon,” Shapiro said resignedly, “but Roark Hubler’s report, after Ulrand, tells me the ship was no great loss. And I have more ships at my disposal than pilots with the skill and audacity to fly them. The question is, will Wing and Streller contract with me, the way Vaurien did? And if they do, can I trust them? I’m hoping Rodman and van Donne will take my contract, and them, I can trust, because they want to secure a place for themselves in the Deep Sky when all this is over.”
Travers’s blue eyes rolled to the ceiling. “They’re a pack of thieves, wreckers, mercenaries, who’ll deal in any commodity, up to any including human lives, and they’ll cut each other’s throats without hesitation.”
“Maybe,” Shapiro admitted, “but I don’t have a lot to lose. Hubler vouches for Asako Rodman. As for van Donne – he’s already flown for us twice. I just saw the Celeste report. He did what was asked of him, and he was badly wounded in line of duty. I’m prepared to blank his file, erase the criminal records from the central register. Call it a trade. I want his skill, his contacts all over the Deep Sky, and his ship. The Mako can go places Fleet ships can’t.” He glanced into the threedee, where data scrolled without pause, and gestured at the lifts. “If you’ll take the assignment, gentlemen, the time to move is now. Streller and Wing have been under guard on the air park for half an hour, and the Mako is on approach, with my guarantee of safe passage. Draw whatever arms you choose … and don’t take your eyes off Wing and Streller. Marianna Wing is by far the more dangerous.”
This much, Marin remembered all too well from the scenes on Kjorin. He arched one brow at Travers, and Neil answered with a nod. In the lockers opposite the lifts were a selection of weapons from sidearms to the heaviest service rifles. They chose Chiyoda, two pairs of machine pistols and several reloads for each, before stepping into Shapiro’s private elevator
, which operated only between this level and the air park.
It was very late in the afternoon – or early in the evening. The sun was low and the routine afternoon squall was still in the process of steaming off the vast plascrete fields of the Fleet compound, leaving the air heavy with humidity. A stiff westerly blew in from the Challenger Gulf, bringing the scent of the ocean and welcome coolness. Marin turned his face to it for a moment as the car opened into steel blue daylight, the glare of landing lights, and the roar of approaching engines.
“Hey, Major, amigo … mucho tiempo, sin verte.”
The voice was familiar, and Marin smiled as he saw Judith Fargo. She looked good – in shape, the black hair grown out a little and tipped in a mix of reds and golds which matched the diamond stud earrings which were the privilege of an officer. She wore lieutenant’s bars now, like Kravitz, Inosanto and Choi. All three were in the black uniform fatigues of Fleet security, but at once Marin noticed that they wore no unit badges. No identifying insignia. They took their orders from Shapiro, answered only to Shapiro.
Fargo had shifted an assault rifle into her left hand and offered Travers her right. “Long time since the Drift,” she was saying as he clasped her wrist.
“Not long enough.” Travers nodded at the others, all of them veterans of Bravo Company. “You signed with Shapiro.”
“So did you,” Fargo observed pointedly. “Turns out, there's a bigger picture. Muy bigger. It ain’t over yet, boss … but it soon will be.”
“Yeah.” Travers turned back to Marin with a rare amused look. “Where do you have Wing and Streller?”
She gestured with the rifle. “On the east parapet, under the shade sails, chained down. That’s the Mako you can hear coming in, according to ATC. You want to join the party?”
The east parapet was the quietest part of the air park, where private craft were left under the tightest security. Eight cameras monitored it from every angle, and the only way out was via the executive elevators, all of which were heavily guarded. And there, sitting in the shadows, were the prisoners who had become Shapiro’s bane.
