Supergiant (Gigaparsec Book 2)

by Scott Rhine

  Max opened his mouth and then left without responding.

  Alyssa handed Roz an apron to cover a gout of frozen flame on her inner thigh. The rosette of her underwear band showed clearly. Too embarrassed to face anyone, Roz washed dishes with the Greenbergs.

  At the peak of the party, she heard a drunk and maudlin Reuben raise his voice. “Let me at least tuck you in bed, Ivy. I miss tucking. What did I do wrong?”

  For no apparent reason, Roz felt tears rolling down her cheeks. She had her dream job, riches, and a man she was crazy about, but her whole life felt like a saucer on the brink.

  Chapter 26 – Paved with Good Intentions

  To make up for her false accusation of Deke, Roz introduced him to Jeeves the next morning. The mimic would chat with Deke through the doggie door but only after the copilot sang him nursery rhymes in Bat. Deke said, “He can reach ultrasonic range. You’re holding a Bat child in your room.”

  “No. The mimics prefer to communicate in the inaudible range to avoid being detected.” Max convinced him with a rare photo of Roz holding the sleeping alien.

  Deke agreed to be a conversation partner for the mimic to help Jeeves learn speech compatible with his unusual vocal apparatus. Then he asked Roz, “Why are you so quiet all of a sudden?”

  “Because Max has a picture of me, and my hair isn’t even brushed.”

  “Don’t worry. He has a better one of you in—” Deke fell silent when he saw Max gesture. “Look at the time. We’re due on deck for departure planning.”

  Roz blocked Max’s exit. “Show me.”

  With a sigh, he scrolled through his photos. The latest was one of her standing next to her mother in matching outfits. A spa employee had taken it for Alyssa. “I saw it on you stepfather’s dresser and asked him for a copy. Do you want me to delete it?”

  She gave him a peck on the cheek. The fact that he had snuck these photos of her spoke volumes. “No. In fact, I wouldn’t mind one of you in your tux … without the Goat disguise.”

  “Reuben may have snapped a shot of me shaking the governor’s hand on Eden.”

  They chatted and held hands until Kesh buzzed on Max’s earpiece. Max’s face fell as he listened. “I understand. I’ll get Reuben and meet you there.”

  Max kissed the hand he had been holding. “Sorry. We have to secure everything or that pilot of ours will never let us hear the end of it. Maybe you and Ivy can make that last check through the engine areas you were talking about.”

  “Sure,” Roz said, not entirely aware of what she was agreeing to.

  She suited up in her uniform and met Ivy in the hall soon after. Ivy insisted they start at the bottom of the ship and work up. Then her friend talked non-stop about interstellar commerce. When Ivy wanted to avoid romantic issues, she often bored Roz with facts. Perhaps she wanted to punish any sisters listening in. “Our next stop, Cardiam used to be the biggest heavy-metal mine in the sector, but it’s playing out now. These colonists are super rich, so they’ve shifted to building reactors and gravity plates. The gas giant in the center of the system has beautiful rings like Saturn but larger and more numerous. The rings are so big that we can see them from the next star over, blocking sunlight in strobe patterns as they pass between us and the target suns.”

  Ivy wouldn’t meet her gaze.

  “What is it? What won’t you tell me?” Roz asked.

  “Once we’ve made the jump,” Ivy promised.

  Panic gripped Roz. “Is someone dying?”

  “No. And making you worry isn’t going to help you pilot. Max and Reuben are … exploring our alternatives.”

  “Are you pregnant?” If she is, I hope to hell the father’s Human.

  “This is strictly company business. We’ll have a meeting as soon as you’re clear. I promise we won’t decide anything without you.”

  Roz cursed. “Treat me like an adult.”

  “Practice your breathing exercises while I tell you the news. Realize that military intelligence is not an exact science.”

  Roz sat cross-legged and did the breathing exercise until her annoyance level lowered. “Okay.”

  “Your dragon outfit intrigued Kesh, so he asked around. The fabric came from a Saurian merchant ship that passed through here about four months ago along the same route we’re flying.”

  “Oh, no. There’s no way we can beat them if they’re heading to the prison.”

  “The Saurian vessel might just need gravity panels or something from the shipyard, so there’s no need to get worked up,” Ivy said. “We’ll analyze data as it arrives.”

  “Then what’s Max exploring?”

  Ivy clenched her jaw. “Need to know.” She was clearly afraid.

  “They think Aviar double-crossed us from the beginning. God, did that psycho call the Saurian ship for an early pickup?”

  Ivy shrugged. “We may never know. Lord Aviar’s family has legitimate business interests up and down the trade line. It would be easy to hide a bribe inside a favorable trade transaction. Whoever sped the departure of a traitor would curry favor with the church and crown.”

  “Could we use your diplomatic contacts to get the professor pardoned?”

  “Not if the professor has already been shipped to Niisham.”

  Roz asked, “You mean it could have happened already?”

  “Max is looking for clues. If we can prove Aviar reneged, we’re entitled to a huge legal settlement thanks to the bond Kesh insisted on.”

  Roz addressed the ship’s AI. “Minder, where are Max and Reuben right now?”

  “The desert biome.”

  With several diplomatic packages, all rigged with explosives. They were trying to read the mail for future systems to get a peek at what was coming. “Forget money if it means our men get hurt.” Roz was already propelling herself through the zero-g tunnel at maximum speed.

  Ivy shouted, “Max doesn’t want you in the blast radius.”

  As soon as Roz reached the cargo level, she took a shortcut through the inner ring. Jogging past the dining area to the desert room, she found Max and Reuben couched behind a bunker. “Stop.”

  Max tried to intercept her. “You’re too valuable to risk here.”

  Furious, she said, “You obviously don’t understand the concept of a triad. If you die, Echo dies, and I’ll want to.”

  He shook his head at the comment as if it had been a slap. “What do you recommend? I should let my friends die for me?”

  She extended her probability senses and pointed. “Open the final package. Aviar is all about power. If he’s doing this to force us into a course of action, there’ll be a letter in that package gloating and dictating terms. If this scheme is to get us arrested, that should be obvious, too.”

  Max nodded slowly. “Sound reasoning. How do you propose checking this theory without blowing anyone up?”

  “We fake a radio signal from Niishamboor’s nav beacon. When the package clicks open, someone else can open it.”

  “Like who?” asked Max.

  “Like me,” Herb said from behind Roz.

  Horrified, Roz said, “I didn’t mean—”

  “I’m dying anyway,” her stepfather said. “Put me to good use. Maybe then people will stop hating me for talking to the Bankers.”

  Max said, “Even if we get the signal right, there’s no guarantee you can open the case without triggering something.”

  Turning to Roz, the friendly old man asked, “Do you want me to survive?”

  All eyes on her, Roz whispered, “Yes.”

  “Then I will. You’re your mother’s daughter.”

  The others exchanged looks. Max sighed. “Fine, but we should eject the other packages just to be safe. They might go off if they get the signals out of sequence or something.”

  Herb asked, “What if Aviar didn’t plan to renege?”

  “Then we can retrieve the crates later,” Reuben replied. “At this point we can’t afford to believe anything he told us.”

  The partner
s took a vote and agreed. Roz invented a phantom problem in the engines and applied to traffic control for a shakedown cruise around the entertainment planet’s barren moon to test the fictional repairs. The moon would block signals and mask the elimination of any unwanted matter. She plotted a course that would loop them back to the space station, in case the explosion was bad enough to injure people or the ship.

  After several tense hours, Reuben cracked the beacon code and transmitted the signal destined to greet them at the entrance to the Niishamboor system. The diplomatic crate clicked open. Inside they discovered that though the shapes were familiar, these radio components had been stamped out of gold.

  Herb unsnapped the grid framework and hefted a precious-metal cube. “It breaks down into smaller parts that are easier to transport or hide.”

  “Bribes for the local government?” asked Max.

  Herb picked a letter out of the pouch reserved for the operating manuals. “This is addressed to Shiraz.”

  “Go ahead,” she said, gripping Max’s hand tightly.

  Opening the letter, Herb read to himself and summarized. “Since we’ll have to go to Niisham to speak with our scientist anyway, he’s given us a list of ten other prisoners he wants us to rescue from the supergiant. This gold is just a down payment. With Magi stasis, we could transport all of them. He lists a ransom amount for each one that we’re able to smuggle out.”

  Max strode over, scooped up the letter, and scanned it into the ship’s computer system. He sent Herb away with their thanks.

  ****

  Max called a partners meeting to order on the bridge. “Are the people on the list criminal masterminds or rebel leaders?”

  Reuben said, “I don’t think Aviar cares as long as it causes chaos.” He brought up bios of each candidate and projected them onto walls. None of them seemed particularly violent or heinous.

  Ivy tapped a photo that stood out from the rest. “Prince Feeveerkahn was third in line for the throne. He went off his nut a few years ago and disappeared from society.”

  “What did he do?” asked Roz.

  “Feeveerkahn wanted to talk peace with the Phibs before we crushed them,” Ivy replied after consulting her sisters.

  Deke seemed embarrassed by the accusation. “What was done to the prince is wrong, but what has been offered to the Void may not be reclaimed.”

  “Yes, it can. I can get us out of that dead-end system with the improved subbasement drive,” Roz said. “It’ll work. We only need Crakik for the slightest adjustment in drift. I say we go all in, rescue people from hell, and prove the drive works.”

  “How far off course would we be if we couldn’t find the professor, or he has no idea what the fix should be?” Reuben asked.

  “More exact numbers for the precise exit vector will take hours, but if we had Shiraz’s equations on the original test, we would have only been drifting for ten to eleven years,” Echo replied. “In this event, the partners could rest in stasis. I vote in favor.”

  Max stared into Roz’s eyes. “Tell me you can make this happen.”

  “We can. Worst case, if the stasis doesn’t work, we can grow our own food and grow old … together.”

  He brooded for a moment. “I believe she can pull it off. I say we go all in.”

  And that’s why I’d follow you anywhere. She searched his face for some ripple of her own emotion. He remained a sphinx.

  Reuben and Kesh fixated on the incredible stack of gold and all the zeroes on the list bounties. Both voted for the rescue mission.

  Ivy sounded grim. “Doesn’t matter what I say at this point, but this is not going to be a cake walk. Our problems have nothing to do with whether Generala can hack subspace. We have to steal the jump-vector coordinates to the target, outrun or outgun a military outpost, and locate a needle in a radioactive haystack. Then we’ll have to make sure our raft doesn’t sink when everyone in the prison wants to climb aboard. People are going to die. If we make it out of Niisham in one piece, we have to worry about the Bankers. We’ll need a plausible cover story to explain to people how we jumped out of that system. There are a dozen ways we could end up one with the Void ourselves.”

  “So a yes with all those provisos?” Roz asked.

  “If you drop this suicidal fantasy, my employer is offering you a permanent position as a professor at the Anodyne University, including a house, bodyguards, longevity treatments, and a long list of men willing to wine and dine you.”

  “I’d never considered being a professor. That might suit me in a couple years,” Roz admitted. “Unfortunately, this mission is more important than me.”

  “Then I abstain,” said Ivy.

  “Deke?” asked Max. “We’ll free you from your contract on the other side. You can claim we forced you to participate.”

  “I took an oath to the crown. That oath included defending the prince. If his majesty is really in that prison colony, I’ll do what he orders.”

  “Can’t be more fair than that,” said Max.

  Ever the accountant, Kesh said, “We should wait as long as possible to cash in the gold. The moment we do, Aviar will know we’ve stopped being his dupes.”

  Max nodded. “Let’s return to the dock and plan our trip to the prison colony.”

  Reuben found a song from his collection and played it on the bridge speakers. The English refrain mentioned being on the Highway to Hell.

  Chapter 27 – Spin and Deception

  The men on the ship convened a strategy session on the prison issue. What would they find there, and how could they guard against it? “You’re not going to exclude me this time,” Roz insisted.

  Max sighed. “I understand, but the key here is stepping carefully. No one raises an eyebrow if the right person asks a tangential question about something they have a right to know. The Saurians have a small trade settlement near the spaceport. Our captain determined that the Blue Claw Clan has the exclusive on prison deliveries. As a former affiliate and current debtor to the clan, Kesh obtained this information casually. As a bounty hunter, I found new, high-resolution mug shots of Crakik and his cellmate in local law-enforcement databases while looking for high-priced warrants in the area.” Max showed her the police data on his arm display.

  The Bat files came with voice-prints attached for better identification, not that Roz could pick the professor out of a crowd without his glasses. The thug with him, however, resembled an alley cat that had been in numerous fights. The notch in his ear was quite distinctive. “Which means a ship with their information came out this way. This confirms that the professor passed though before us on the way to Niishamboor.”

  “Indirectly,” Max said. “I need you to examine the public database in the pilots’ lounge. Examine the records in general as if you’re planning which trade route to hire out to. While you’re reading the results, you can determine how many Blue Claw ships have gone through here recently. No targeted queries.”

  Roz nodded. “Got it. I can filter out the ones who returned through the trade loop a year later.”

  “We only want to analyze the frequency and passenger capacity of each. That way, we can try to infer the population of the prison colony. Take Ivy with you to stand guard. I trust her spycraft to keep you out of trouble.” When she took a deep breath to complain, he held up a hand. “None of us goes anywhere alone.”

  How hard can this be?

  ****

  The pilots’ lounge was packed because the entertainment hub provided free programs to flight crews while they waited. Roz had to sit in a queue while Ivy chatted up a lonely Human sales executive at the bar across the hall. I have never seen her pay for a drink or sit alone. Maybe that was part of being a spy. People tended to ignore couples.

  Once Roz gained access to the public data links, she discovered Saurian prison transports came through the entertainment hub about once an Anodyne year, but the capacity of the ships seemed too large. Perhaps most of the volume was meant for returning ore. To improve her es
timates, she went back a few decades. The ships had steadily increased in both frequency and size. To track the trend, she went back before the Gigaparsec War. Early ships had arrived every eight years and held perhaps forty prisoners, about the size of the crew. The biggest spike had occurred in the last twenty years where the ships expanded to five or six times that size.

  She had originally envisioned a high-security facility like Alcatraz Island, which had housed on the order of 250 inmates. Based solely on the upper-limit estimate, such a prison would be critically overcrowded. Roz needed other information sources to provide a lower bound on the population.

  A young pilot in a blue scarf tapped on her cube wall. “Busy,” she told him.

  This planet was an entertainment data hive, so someone must have done a news story on Niisham in the last century. Roz switched databases. The only thing the news search told her was that treason arrests happened more often, but trials were done in a secret court, with no verdicts published.

  Roz tried again with documentaries on prison overcrowding and found a public grant proposal submitted to a charitable foundation. The grant had been filed by Lasandar, some famous talk-show host and sentient-rights activist. He wanted to study the deplorable conditions at the Niisham prison, but Lasandar had disappeared mid-project. Clicking on his name for more details generated an odd error message.

  When she went to the concierge desk to get a translation for one of the messages, the blue-scarfed male stole her spot. She objected, but he waved her off with, “Busy.”

  Indignant, she stormed to the desk to complain.

  Ivy waved her over to the bar. Roz pointed to herself. Ivy nodded, smiled, and gestured more broadly. The man with her seemed excited.

  Ivy introduced herself and linked arms in order to turn Roz’s face away from the hall. “I was just telling Todd here that the secret to approaching women is confidence.”

  Behind her, police rushed into the pilots’ lounge.