by Jo Zebedee
“And the reavers?”
Lotsman took a swig from his beer, and then wiped his moustache with the back of one hand. “Some of them stayed. The rest moved on.”
“Where to?”
The pilot grinned. “No one knows, Cas, no one knows. It’s all a big mystery.”
“Look it up in the data-pool,” Plessant told Ormuz brusquely. “Before Lex fills your head with rubbish.”
Lotsman gave Plessant a hurt look.
Plessant pushed back her chair and stood. “I’ll be back in a moment,” she said. She strode across to the bar and began to speak to the barman. Ormuz watched her in conversation. Whatever the captain asked, she was not happy with the answer. She scowled across the room, and Ormuz wondered why in particular Plessant had insisted they drink in the Min Ven.
He twisted and looked across the partition beside their table. Across the passage running beside Min Ven was yet another bar. It seemed very much like the one they now occupied. And yet they had come here—
An image abruptly popped into Ormuz’s head: a man, dressed entirely in black, his head a smooth metal ovoid with goggled eyes. And Captain Plessant standing before him. In some way, he was her superior and she must obey him.
Where did that come from?
Ormuz shook his head to clear it. Such a strangely dressed figure. And Plessant’s obeisance. Could he be their liege lord, Sir Borodisz demar Lewy? But why the metal head?
Wondering what had prompted the image—which had had all the strangeness and vividness of a left-over dream—Ormuz peered down at his beer and speculated whether it contained some hallucinogenic compound.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
“You seem to have developed a taste for field-work, ma’am.”
Rinharte turned her head to glare at the marine-lieutenant but knew the gesture was wasted. He could not see her eyes through the dark goggles of her air-hood. “If all you can offer is sarcasm,” she said, “I would sooner you kept radio silence.”
“Not sarcasm, ma’am, merely an observation.”
“Then keep your observations to yourself, unless they’re pertinent to our mission.”
Rinharte and Kordelasz flew side-by-side, both carrying the necessary equipment for this mission. They wore ward-room dress, comprising air-tight coveralls, but had shucked their coats for cuirass, greaves, gauntlets and chest-mounted air-packs. A borrowed marine helmet over her air-hood protected Rinharte’s head—a bill-less kepi of matt black metal, with armoured slats protecting the back of the head and neck; and various equipment hung from her webbing.
They had left a jolly boat some fifty miles from Ophavon. It was, reflected Rinharte, a somewhat more comfortable “penetration” than a night parachute jump from a speeding data-freighter. But no safer. Ophold was a well-guarded system and its three police forces were known for their efficiency.
The Tolpoliti kept careful watch on everything which approached Ophavon and investigated anything that appeared suspicious or dangerous. Rinharte had no intelligence on the capabilities of the Tolpoliti web of sensors but thought it unlikely to be sufficiently discriminatory to spot two human-sized objects. It was still a gamble, however. Even now, the Tolpoliti could be tracking the two Vengeful officers’ vector with the intention of meeting them on arrival.
Yet what had alternative had there been?
Divine Providence had arrived at Ophavon the day before, and Rinharte and Kordelasz had business with her. Arriving in disguise at Ophavon aboard an intra-system cutter was out of the question. The Tolpoliti were too thorough for such an approach to succeed. Rinharte didn’t like the plan they had been forced to follow—infiltrating Ophavon from space—but no other options suggested themselves.
Ophavon now filled the view through Rinharte’s goggles, an unimaginably large structure which stretched to either side in a ring about the planet. She was reminded of a tour of a battleship’s hull she had once taken. The launch had flown the length of the warship’s hull from stern to bow. It had seemed as expansive as a planetary surface from the boat’s scuttles. But the battleship had come to an end. They shot over her sharp prow and the star-speckled heavens filled Rinharte’s view. Ophavon did not end, it was a never-ending circle. Rinharte’s air would run out long before she circumnavigated the orbital city.
In one gauntlet, Kordelasz held a battlefield-notepad. Its glass depicted an area of Ophavon’s outer surface. They would effect their entrance through a maintenance hatch in this area. The notepad’s navigational mechanism would lead them unerringly to their chosen spot.
Rinharte flew towards a steel-grey wall. She could see neither its top nor bottom, nor its sides. The world of Ophold lay hidden behind it. They approached on the sunward side and Ophavon’s surface was brightly lit. Detail became apparent as she drew nearer: lines and shapes, the outer skin of the orbital city. She fired her reaction-tubes to slow her headlong rush.
The marine-lieutenant landed, somersaulting to hit feet-first. He straightened, held in place by the soles of his boots. His abrupt change in attitude momentarily confused Rinharte. It had seemed natural to imagine Ophavon’s side as a ceiling above her. One moment, she was flying up to meet it. The next, Kordelasz was standing upside-down as she approached. She executed a slow roll, and braced herself for landing.
Now, Ophavon was a floor beneath her. Above, stretched a dome of night-sky peppered with stars. Some of the pinpricks of light were moving, traversing Rinharte’s vision at various speeds and angles. Starships and boats. She turned to Kordelasz. He had knelt beside the outline of a hatchway and was busy subverting its control-mechanism.
With a soundless puff of dust, the hatch slid aside. A warm light shone from the rectangular opening. Kordelasz sketched a brief bow. “After you, ma’am.”
Rinharte crossed to the lip of the hatch, and looked down into a small chamber that had clearly seen little use. “That, I suppose,” she said, “is another of your ‘observations’.”
Kordelasz was unabashed. “Of course, ma’am.”
Rinharte sat beside the hatch and swung her legs into the opening. Her orientation shifted once again. She was now hanging out of a doorway in a vertical wall. Kordelasz stood at right-angles to her, disobeying gravity. She slid further into the airlock… and found herself lying on her back on a metal floor. Feeling foolish, she clambered clumsily to her feet.
It was common practice in the Imperial Navy to leave airlocks at zero-gravity and in vacuum. Chargers were dialled up to full strength as the airlock filled with air. Clearly, Ophavon did not follow the same practice.
Kordelasz appeared at the lip of the open airlock door, perpendicular to Rinharte, a ledge in the shape of a man. As she watched, he stepped… upwards… and seemed to swing to a vertical position. One boot hit the airlock floor, and he stumbled forward several steps.
“That’s the way to do it,” he said, a grin in his voice.
“And break an ankle, no doubt,” returned Rinharte dryly.
“There’s a technique—”
She chopped him off with a hand. “Mr Kordelasz, we don’t have time for lectures on marine boarding techniques. There’s no guarantee the hatch opening hasn’t been monitored.”
Kordelasz crossed to the inner hatch and fiddled with its control-mechanism.
The outer hatch slid shut, the inner hatch slid open. The airlock remained in vacuum. Kordelasz poked his head into the interior of Ophavon.
“Ah,” he said.
Rinharte looked over his shoulder. “Dear Lords.”
They had chosen an unused sector of Ophavon for their infiltration. Rinharte saw a vast open space, two miles high and two miles across. Narrow pillars stretched from floor to ceiling, their shadows cross-hatching the darkness, filling the view and making it impossible to see more than half a mile to left and right. Faint light leaked from somewhere, filling the sector with pale cobalt light, as under a green sea.It was an enormous tank, a gigantic container, buttressed on the interior.
<
br /> Not only was the section unused, it was not even fitted for habitation.
“It’s… big,” said Kordelasz.
Rinharte made no reply. She had asked the marine-lieutenant to keep his “observations” to himself.
Kordelasz glanced down at his battlefield-notepad. “We go right, ma’am,” he said. “There should be an access lock on one of the lower levels. That’ll take us into the occupied section.”
As they made their way through the empty space, Rinharte felt like a marine explorer. There was nothing natural or organic about their surroundings—naked pillars of flat, riveted metal—but the cerulean light gave everything an aquatic glow. And their mode of travel, flying weightlessly along the most direct route, aped that of underwater travel.
Once they had reached the vast bulkhead which formed the end of the unoccupied sector, Kordelasz led them to another small airlock and quickly subverted its control-mechanism. They crammed inside the chamber. Yet more fiddling with the control-mechanism and the airlock filled with air. Rinharte pulled off her helmet and air-hood with relief. The latter was oppressive to wear, being little more than a sack with goggles, breather and earphones. She shucked her backpack and began stripping off her armour.
Rinharte had never visited Ophavon before. Until Vengeful had arrived in the Darrus system en route to Ralat, she had never previously been in Makarta Province. She had researched the Opholdish orbital city before leaving the battlecruiser, but learned facts were not direct experience. She knew that Ophavon contained 350 million people in a ring 8,400 miles in diameter and averaging two miles in breadth and height. She knew that Ophavon was over five thousand years old, and its builders unknown; but its interior fittings dated only from the Old Empire. She knew that the orbital elevators which had once linked the orbital city to the planetary surface had fallen millennia earlier. And yet—
The concourse was decorated in a style no longer seen throughout the Empire. The walls were burnished metal and punctuated by great picture-windows that gave onto the planet below. Columns of red, blue, green, yellow and orange provided the only splashes of colour. The ceiling was high and fashioned in a sharp-edged three-lobed arch. Bright lights shone down from endless illumination tubes, strung on wires from the ceiling’s peak. The floor was inlaid with marquetry in varicoloured metals, depicting geometric forms and useful cartographic information. Although kept clean and well-maintained, age was apparent in every fitting and every aspect of the décor.
“Very Old Imperial,” murmured Kordelasz.
“Time to move, Mr Kordelasz,” Rinharte said.
The concourse was only sparsely populated. Rinharte and Kordelasz had deliberately chosen a less-frequented sector of Ophavon for their infiltration. Small groups of Opholdish yeomen and nobles wandered to and fro. They wore colourful clothing—too colourful to Rinharte’s unfamiliar eye. Some had prole servants trailing obediently behind them. These servants were clad in smart livery of various colours. Their exact occupations, or perhaps oath-holders, were no doubt obvious to any who could decode the colour-schemes. The proles also wore a coat of arms embroidered on one breast, rather than the more usual escutcheon at collar.
Rinharte set off behind the marine-lieutenant and caught up with him within a couple of strides. She put a hand to her sword’s hilt and frowned as she noticed a Opholdish couple some five yards ahead of them. A man and woman, nobles judging by the richness of their dress. He wore loose trousers, striped vertically in red and white and flared at the ankles, and a black waist-length cape. He had a sword on his left hip. The woman on his right bore no weapon. Her ankle-length gown of gold and bronze was liberally draped with lengths of gauzy cloth. It was not suited to wearing a sword. Rinharte spotted another woman, also unarmed. And yet another.
On Ophavon, it seemed, women did not wear trousers or carry swords. Very Old-Imperial.
“Let’s find somewhere a little less public,” Rinharte said. Her appearance had yet to draw eyes but she was afraid it would not be long before it did.
“We could get something to eat,” Kordelasz suggested.
To their right, and some five hundred yards ahead, was a cut-out in the floor. Kordelasz said, “Rizbeka,” and started towards it.
This air-shaft, rectangular in shape, was larger than the last: three hundred yards wide and over six hundred yards long. Rinharte stepped onto the yellow border about it and gazed warily into its depths. She saw with relief it was only some fifty yards deep. Six levels were visible below. At the shaft’s bottom, she spotted scattered tables and chairs. Many were taken by people clearly eating. “A food court,” she guessed.
At the bottom of the shaft, it was revealed as an enormous space stretching to the left and right and ahead. At intervals, square pillars stretched from the floor to the ceiling thirty feet above above. There were shops, barrows and cafés dotted about within the space. All had discrete signs denoting their wares. The shops had simply-arranged window-displays. Less than a handful of the tables within view were occupied.
Rinharte followed Kordelasz as he set off towards one group of tables bounded by a white picket fence some twenty yards away. Stepping through a gap in the fence, Kordelasz crossed to a free table and settled into a chair, dropping his bag at his feet and holding his sword so it did not get caught. Rinharte joined him. She unclipped the lockets on her sword and hooked the sheathed blade on the back of chair. She slid her bag beneath the chair and sat.
A waiter appeared and silently handed each of them a menu. He disappeared as suddenly as he had appeared.
“Bah!” muttered Kordelasz. “It’s all Opholdish cuisine. What in heavens is ‘Kropkerth’?”
“Or ‘Loisp’,” added Rinharte.
She touched the menu item and text appeared, describing “Loisp” as a “thick and creamy” soup whose chief ingredient was a legume unique to the Ophold system. It neglected to say what the legume tasted like. She pressed a finger to “Kropkerth: breaded cutlets of syndebuk, deep-fried and served with ert and pastinak”.
“I suspect,” commented Kordelasz, “that this establishment rarely caters to visitors to Ophavon.”
Rinharte was still wondering what an “syndebuk” was, and whether “ert” and “pastinak” were as unpalatable as their names made them seem.
“What do you recommend?” asked Kordelasz.
Rinharte glanced up. No, the remark was not directed at her but at the waiter. He now stood at the marine-lieutenant’s shoulder, notepad in hand.
“The Strudskrude, my lord,” replied the waiter.
“Which is?”
“A… bird, a domesticated bird, the staple of much cuisine from the northern hemisphere of Ophold. It is fried with spices, and served with yordskog and pastinak.”
“Ah, what is pastinak?” put in Rinharte.
The waiter looked across the table at her. “A vegetable, my lady. Shredded, pickled and served hot.”
“And yordskog?” asked Kordelasz.
“Another vegetable, my lord. The heart, served steamed and spiced.”
Kordelasz leaned back in his chair and smiled up at the waiter. “Well then, my good man, that’s what I’ll have.”
“I’ll have the same,” Rinharte said quickly, unwilling to waste time having the entire menu translated.
“And two beers,” added Kordelasz.
The waiter bowed. “My lord, my lady.” He hurried away.
“I think,” said Rinharte, reaching out and playing idly with a salt dispenser, “we need a guide-book to the system, Garrin.”
“We do if we’re going to be here any length of time and don’t want to poison ourselves.” He shook his head in wonder. “I had no notion this place was so… foreign.”
“There may be a reason for that.”
Kordelasz, hands clasped behind his head, utterly relaxed, raised an eyebrow. Rinharte could understand his ease: she felt a freedom here—as a yeoman away from the ordered society of Vengeful�
�she had never felt as a prole in Amwadina.
“Surely you’ve noticed that everyone within view is Opholdish?” she asked.
“You can tell?”
Rinharte snorted in amusement. “Come, Garrin, look at their dress. It’s almost a uniform. The men wear loose trousers and short capes, and the women flowing dresses. What few proles I’ve seen are all liveried and wear their coat of arms embroidered on their tunics. They seem positively regal in comparison with the proles in Amwadina.”
“And the reason, Rizbeka?”
“This area isn’t frequented by visitors to Ophavon. We’re off the beaten track. I should imagine that when we reach Havon Sector, where starships dock, we’ll find food more to our liking.” She frowned. “No, more to our… understanding.”
Kordelasz abruptly straightened in his chair and threw a warning look at Rinharte. She froze, not knowing what had attracted the marine-lieutenant’s attention but trusting his judgement.
Two figures, clad in uniforms of grey with white sleeves, stepped up to their table. They wore heavy truncheons on their hips. Sikkerpoliti.
“My lord, my lady,” said one, sketching a brief bow, hand on truncheon-hilt. “Your papers, please.”
Kordelasz played the effete aristocrat. Gesturing airily, he drawled, “Can’t it wait until we’ve eaten, my good man? I’m famished.”
The Sikkerpoliti officer was not amused. “I must insist on seeing your papers, my lord. Visitors are forbidden in this sector.”
The marine-lieutenant sighed heavily and loudly. He slid a hand into an inner pocket of his jacket and pulled out his identification. He proffered it to the Sikkerpoliti officer.
“Sir Garrin demar Huljan. Of Semele,” read out the officer. “You are a long way from your home, my lord. Semele is, I understand, in Craina Province.”
“It is,” admitted Kordelasz.
Rinharte had her papers ready. She handed them across.
“Lady Rizbeka demar Filhan, also of Semele.” The officer handed back the papers. “May I ask what brought you to Ophavon?”
