by Дэн Симмонс
“So you are saying that the Gabriel fought an automated engagement near this red giant sun, Admiral?”
“Within the star, Your Excellency. It seems that the Raphael turned about, reentered the star, and attacked the Gabriel within seconds of its emergence from Hawking space.”
“And is there a chance that the Raphael was also destroyed in this second engagement? The ship incinerated deep in the star?”
“A chance, Your Excellency, but we are not operating upon that assumption. It is our best guess that Father Captain de Soya then translated out of system to an unknown destination in the Outback.”
Lourdusamy nodded, his heavy jowls quivering slightly. “Admiral Marusyn,” he rumbled, “could you give us an assessment of this threat if the Raphael did indeed survive?”
The older Admiral stepped forward. “Your Excellency, we have to assume that Father Captain de Soya and the other mutineers are hostile to the Pax and that this theft of a Pax archangel-class starship was premeditated. We also have to assume the worst-case scenario that this theft of our most secret and lethal weapons system was carried out in coordination with the Ousters.” The Admiral took a breath. “Your Excellencies… Your Holiness… with the Gideon drive, any point in this arm of the galaxy is only an instant away from any other. The Raphael could translate into any Pax system—even Pacem’s—without the Hawking-drive wake warnings of the earlier, and current, Ouster spacecraft. The Raphael could ravage our Mercantilus transport lanes, attack undefended worlds and colonies, and generally wreak havoc before a Pax task force could respond.”
The Pope raised one finger. “Admiral Marusyn, are we to understand that this most prized of Gideon-drive technologies may fall into the hands of the Ousters… be duplicated… and thus power many of the Enemy’s ships?”
Marusyn’s already florid face and neck flushed more deeply. “Your Holiness… that is unlikely, Your Holiness… extremely unlikely. The steps of manufacture of a Gideon archangel are so complex, the cost so prohibitive, the secret elements so guarded…”
“But it is possible,” interrupted the Pope.
“Yes, Your Holiness.”
The Pope raised his hand like a blade cutting through the air. “We believe that we have heard all we need to hear from our friends in Pax Fleet. You are excused, Admiral Marusyn, Admiral Aldikacti, Admiral Wu.”
The three officers genuflected, bowed their heads, stood, and backed away from His Holiness. The door whispered shut behind them.
There were now ten dignitaries present, in addition to the silent papal aides and Councillor Albedo.
The Pope inclined his head toward Secretary of State Cardinal Lourdusamy. “Disposition, Simon Augustino?”
“Admiral Marusyn is to receive a letter of rebuke and will be transferred to general staff,” said Lourdusamy softly. “Admiral Wu will take his place as temporary Pax Fleet commander in chief until a suitable replacement is found. Admiral Aldikacti has been recommended for excommunication and execution by firing squad.”
The Pope nodded sadly. “We shall now hear from Cardinal Mustafa, Cardinal Du Noyer, CEO Isozaki, and Councillor Albedo before concluding this business.”
“… and thus ended the official inquiry by the Holy Office pertaining to the events on the Pax world of Mars,” concluded Cardinal Mustafa. He glanced at Cardinal Lourdusamy. “It was at this time that Captain Wolmak suggested that it was imperative that my entourage and I return to the archangel Jibril still in orbit around that planet.”
“Please continue, Excellency,” murmured Cardinal Lourdusamy. “Can you tell us the nature of the emergency which Captain Wolmak felt required your imperative return?”
“Yes,” said Mustafa, rubbing his lower lip. “Captain Wolmak had found the interstellar freighter that had uploaded cargo from the unlisted base near the Martian city of Arafat-kaffiyeh. The ship had been discovered floating powerless in Old Earth System’s asteroid belt.”
“Can you tell us the name of that ship, Excellency?” prompted Lourdusamy.
“The H.H.M.S. Saigon Maru.”
CEO Kenzo Isozaki’s lips twitched despite his iron control. He remembered the ship. His oldest son had crewed on it during the early years of the boy’s apprenticeship. The Saigon Maru had been an ancient ore and bulk freighter… about a three-million-ton ion sledge carrier, as he recalled.
“CEO Isozaki?” snapped Lourdusamy.
“Yes, Your Excellency?” Isozaki’s voice was smooth and emotionless.
“The ship’s designation suggests that it is of Mercantilus registry. Is this correct, M. Isozaki?”
“Yes, Your Excellency,” said the CEO. “But it is my recollection that the H.H.M.S. Saigon Maru was sold for scrap along with sixty-some other obsolete freighters about… eight standard years ago, if memory serves.”
“Your Excellencies?” said Anna Pelli Cognani. “Your Holiness? If I might?” The other CEO had whispered to her wafer-thin comlog and now touched her hearring.
“CEO Pelli Cognani,” said Cardinal Lourdusamy.
“Our records show that the Saigon Maru was indeed sold to independent scrap contractors some eight years, three months, and two days ago, standard. Later transmissions confirmed that the ships had been scrapped and recycled at the Armaghast orbital automated foundries.”
“Thank you, CEO Pelli Cognani,” said Lourdusamy. “Cardinal Mustafa, you may continue.”
The Grand Inquisitor nodded and continued his briefing, covering only the most necessary details.
And while he spoke he thought of the images he was not describing in detail: The Jibril and its accompanying torchships slowing to silent, synchronized tumbling, matching velocities with the dark freighter. Cardinal Mustafa had always imagined asteroid belts as tightly packed clusters of moonlets, but despite the multiple images on the tactical plot, there were no rocks in sight: just the matte-black freighter, as ugly and functional as a rusted mass of pipes and cylinders, half a klick long. Matched as they were in velocity and trajectory, hanging only three klicks away with the yellow sun of humankind’s birth burning beyond their sterns, Jibril and the Saigon Maru appeared motionless with only the stars wheeling slowly around them.
Mustafa remembered—and regretted—his decision to inspect the ship with the troopers who were going aboard. The indignities of suiting up in Swiss Guard combat armor: a monomol skinsuit layer, followed by an AI neural mesh, then the spacesuit itself—bulkier than civilian skinsuits with its polymered sheath of impact armor—and finally the web belts of gear and the morphable reaction pak. The Jibril had deep-radared the hulk a dozen times and was certain that nothing moved or breathed on board, but the archangel still backed off to thirty klicks’ attack distance as soon as the Grand Inquisitor, Security Commander Browning, Marine Sergeant Nell Kasner, former groundforce commander Major Piet, and ten Swiss Guard/marine commandos had jumped from the sally port.
Mustafa remembered his pounding pulse as they jetted closer to the dead freighter, two commandos ferrying him across the abyss as if he were another parcel to carry. He remembered the sunlight glinting off gold blast visors as the troopers communicated with tightbeam squirts and hand signals, taking up positions on either side of the open air lock. Two troopers went in first, their reaction paks throbbing silently, assault weapons raised. Then Commander Browning and Sergeant Kasner went in fast behind them. A minute later there was a coded squirt on the tactical channel and Mustafa’s handlers guided him into the waiting black hole of the air lock. Corpses floating in the beams of flashlight lasers. Meat-locker images.
Frozen carcasses, red-striped ribs, gutted abdominal cavities. Jaws locked open in eternally silent screams. Frozen streamers of blood from the gaping jaws and hemorrhaged, protruding eyes. Viscera drifting in tumbling trajectories amid the stabbing beams of light.
“Crew,” tightbeamed Commander Browning.
“Shrike?” queried Cardinal Mustafa. He was mentally saying the rosary in rapid monotone, not for spiritual reassurance but to ke
ep his mind away from the images floating in hellish light before him. He had been warned not to vomit in his helmet.
Filters and scrubbers would clean the mess before he strangled on it, but they were not foolproof.
“Probably the Shrike,” answered Major Piet, extending his gauntlet into the shattered chest cavity of one of the drifting corpses.
“See how the cruciform has been ripped out. Just as in Arafat-kaffiyeh.”
“Commander!” came a tightbeamed voice of one of the troopers who had moved aft from the air lock.
“Sergeant! Here! In the first cargo hold!”
Browning and Piet had gone ahead of the Grand Inquisitor into the long, cylindrical space.
Flashlight lasers were lost in this huge space. These corpses had not been slashed and shattered.
They were stacked neatly on carbon slabs extruding from the hull on each side, held in place by nylon mesh bands. The slabs came out from all sides of the hull, leaving only a zero-g corridor down the center. Mustafa and his guides and keepers floated the length of this black space, flashlight lasers stabbing left, right, down, and up. Frozen flesh, pale flesh, bar codes on the soles of their feet, pubic hair, closed eyes, hands pale against black carbon by hipbones, flaccid penises, breasts frozen in zero-g weightlessness, hair tight on pale skulls or floating in frozen nimbuses. Children with smooth, cold skin, extended bellies, and translucent eyelids. Infants with bar coded soles.
There were tens of thousands of bodies in the four long cargo holds. All were human. All were naked. All were lifeless.
“And did you complete your inspection of the H.H.M.S. Saigon Maru, Grand Inquisitor?” prompted Cardinal Lourdusamy.
Mustafa realized that he had fallen silent for a long moment, possessed by the demon of that terrible memory. “We did complete it, Your Excellency,” he answered, his voice thick.
“And your conclusions?”
“There were sixty-seven thousand eight hundred and twenty-seven human beings aboard the bulk freighter H.H.M.S. Saigon Maru,” said the Grand Inquisitor. “Fifty-one of them were crew members. All of the crew members’ bodies were accounted for. All had been slashed and rent in the same fashion as the victims at Arafat-kaffiyeh.”
“There were no survivors? None could be resurrected?”
“None.”
“In your opinion, Cardinal Mustafa, was the demon-creature called the Shrike responsible for the death of the crew members of the H.H.M.S. Saigon Maru?”
“In my opinion, it was, Your Excellency.”
“And in your opinion, Cardinal Mustafa, was the Shrike responsible for the deaths of the sixty-seven thousand seven hundred and seventy-six other bodies discovered on the Saigon Maru?”
Mustafa hesitated only a second. “In my opinion, Your Excellency”—he turned his head and bowed in the direction of the man in the chair—“Your Holiness… the cause of death of the sixty-seven thousand-some men, women, and children found on the H.H.M.S. Saigon Maru was not consistent with the wounds discovered on Mars’s victims, or consistent with prior tales of Shrike attack.”
Cardinal Lourdusamy took a rustling step forward. “And, according to your Holy Office forensic experts, Cardinal Mustafa, what was the cause of death for the human beings found aboard this freighter?” Cardinal Mustafa’s eyes were lowered as he spoke. “Your Excellency, neither the Holy Office nor Pax Fleet forensic specialists could specify any cause of death for these people. In fact…” Mustafa stopped.
“In fact,” Lourdusamy continued for him, “the bodies found aboard the Saigon Maru… exclusive of the crew… showed neither clear cause of death nor the attributes of death, is that not correct?”
“That is correct, Your Excellency.”
Mustafa’s eyes roamed to the faces of the other dignitaries in the chapel. “They were not living, but they… showed no signs of decomposition, postmortem lividity, brain decay… none of the usual signs of physical death.”
“Yet they were not alive?” prompted Lourdusamy.
Cardinal Mustafa rubbed his cheek. “Not within our capacity to revive, Your Excellency. Nor within our ability to detect signs of brain or cellular activity. They were… stopped.”
“And what was the disposition of the bulk freighter, H.H.M.S. Saigon Maru, Cardinal Mustafa?”
“Captain Wolmak put a prize crew aboard from the Jibril,” said the Grand Inquisitor. “We returned immediately to Pacem to report the matter. The Saigon Maru was traveling via traditional Hawking drive, escorted by four Hawking-drive torchships, and is scheduled to arrive in the nearest Pax system with a Pax Fleet base… Barnard’s System, I believe… in… ah… three standard weeks.”
Lourdusamy nodded slowly. “Thank you, Grand Inquisitor.” The Secretary of State walked to a place near the Pope’s chair, genuflected toward the altar, and crossed himself as he crossed the aisle. “Your Holiness, I would ask that we hear from Her Excellency, Cardinal Du Noyer.”
Pope Urban raised one hand as if in benediction. “We would be pleased to listen to Cardinal Du Noyer.”
Kenzo Isozaki’s mind was reeling. Why were they being told these things? What possible purpose could it serve for the CEO’s of the Pax Mercantilus to hear these things? Isozaki’s blood had chilled at the summary death sentence of Admiral Aldikacti. Was that to be the fate of all of them? No, he realized. Aldikacti had received a sentence of excommunication and execution for simple incompetence. If Mustafa, Pelli Cognani, himself, and the others were to be charged with some variety of treason… quick, simple execution would be the furthest thing from their fates. The pain machines in Castel Sant’Angelo would be humming and grating for centuries.
Cardinal Du Noyer obviously had chosen to be resurrected as an old woman. As with most older people, she looked in perfect health—all of her teeth, wrinkles at a minimum, dark eyes clear and bright—but she also preferred to be seen with her white hair—cut almost to the scalp—and skin tight across her sharp cheekbones.
She began without preliminaries.
“Your Holiness, Excellencies, other worthies… I appear here today as prefect and president of Cor Unum and de facto spokesperson for the private agency known as Opus Dei. For reasons which shall become apparent, the administrators of Opus Dei could not and should not be present here this day.”
“Continue, Your Excellency,” said Cardinal Lourdusamy.
“The bulk freighter the H.H.M.S. Saigon Maru was purchased by Cor Unum for Opus Dei, diverted from scrap recycling, and delivered to that agency seven years ago.”
“For what purpose, Your Excellency?” queried Lourdusamy. Cardinal Du Noyer’s gaze moved from face to face in the small chapel, ending at His Holiness and looking down in respect. “For the purpose of transporting the lifeless bodies of millions of people such as were found on this interrupted voyage, Excellencies, Your Holiness.”
The four Mercantilus CEO’s made a noise somewhere short of a gasp, but louder than a mere intake of breath.
“Lifeless bodies…” repeated Cardinal Lourdusamy, but with the calm tone of a prosecuting attorney who knows in advance what the answers to all questions will be. “Lifeless bodies from where, Cardinal Du Noyer?”
“From whatever world Opus Dei designates, Your Excellency,” said Du Noyer. “In the past five years, these worlds have included Hebron, Qom-Riyadh, Fuji, Nevermore, Sol Draconi Septem, Parvati, Tsingtao-Hsishuang Panna, New Mecca, Mao Four, Ixion, the Lambert Ring Territories, Sibiatu’s Bitterness, Mare Infinitus North Littoral, Renaissance Minor’s terraformed moon, New Harmony, New Earth, and Mars.”
All non-Pax worlds, thought Kenzo Isozaki. Or worlds where the Pax has only a foothold.
“And how many bodies have these Opus Dei and Cor Unum freighters transported, Cardinal Du Noyer?” Lourdusamy asked in his low rumble.
“Approximately seven billion, Your Excellency,” said the old woman.
Kenzo Isozaki concentrated on keeping his balance. Seven billion bodies. A bulk freighter like the Saigon Maru could ha
ul perhaps a hundred thousand corpses if they were stacked like cordwood. It would take the Saigon Maru some seventy thousand trips to haul seven billion people from star system to star system. Absurd. Unless there were scores of bulk freighters… many of them the newer nova class… on hundreds or thousands of shuttle trips.
Each of the worlds that Du Noyer had mentioned had been closed to the Pax Mercantilus for all or some of the past four years—quarantined because of trade or diplomatic disputes with the Pax.
“These are all non-Christian worlds.” Isozaki realized that he had spoken aloud. It was the greatest breach of discipline he had ever suffered. The men and women in the chapel turned their heads in his direction.
“All non-Christian worlds,” Isozaki said again, omitting even the honorifics in addressing the others. “Or Christian worlds with large populations of non-Christians, such as Mars or Fuji or Nevermore. Cor Unum and Opus Dei have been exterminating non-Christians. But why transport their bodies? Why not just leave them to rot on their homeworlds and then bring in the Pax colonists?”
His Holiness held up one hand. Isozaki fell silent. The Pope nodded in the direction of Cardinal Lourdusamy.
“Cardinal Du Noyer,” said the Secretary of State, as if Isozaki had not spoken, “what is the destination of these freighters?”
“I do not know, Your Excellency.”
Lourdusamy nodded. “And who authorized this project, Cardinal Du Noyer?”
“The Peace and Justice Commission, Your Excellency.”
Isozaki’s head snapped around. The Cardinal had just laid the blame for this atrocity… this unprecedented mass murder… directly at the feet of one man. The Peace and Justice Commission had one prefect and only one prefect… Pope Urban XVI, formerly Pope Julius XIV. Isozaki lowered his gaze to the shoes of the fisherman and contemplated rushing the fiend, attempting to get his fingers around the Pope’s scrawny throat. He knew that the silent guards in the corner would cut him down halfway there. He was still tempted to try.
