Hunted lop-4

by James Alan Gardner

  But there were quick and dirty defense clouds at work in other parts of Jacaranda. The clouds purged my cabin and the Explorers’ planning room, places I might have left wandering nanites. The ship’s evac modules got a onceover too, on the theory that unattached nanites might be hiding there; that seemed to be their modus operandi.

  I hope Prope assigned a cloud to her own quarters. She should have got detoxed herself, considering how she and I had had that session of really close contact… but she just stayed on the bridge, grumbling about all the bother of sending antinanite clouds hither, thither, and yon.

  After all, the nanites were only dangerous to me.

  By 23:00 we were back orbiting Troyen, with a litter of microsatellites listening all around the globe. I sat with the others in the bridge’s Visitors’ Gallery, occasionally casting glances at Festina. She was an admiral; she got to stand out on the bridge itself, hovering over Prope’s shoulder in a way guaranteed to make the captain irritable. That was probably why Festina did it.

  We hadn’t had a chance to talk since coming back to Jacaranda… not in private, anyway. I wanted to apologize for being a clone, and ask her to explain what she’d been thinking back on the orbital. It seemed like maybe she’d figured out more about me than I knew myself; and I sort of kind of wanted to know what it was.

  Sort of. Kind of. Whatever truth she’d guessed, I was pretty sure I wouldn’t like it.

  At 23:46:22, our satellites picked up the beep. Not a real beep, of course — just a flick of radio energy at a frequency that could easily be mistaken for spillover from some electric appliance. Not that Troyen had any electric appliances working at the moment, but the navy’s equipment designers couldn’t plan for everything.

  "Where are they?" Festina asked eagerly. "Can we triangulate?"

  "Give me another second," Kaisho replied. She got to be on the bridge too, sitting at the Explorers’ station. Nobody was happy with Kaisho operating the controls — Festina was strongly inclined to lock her in the brig — but we didn’t have any other choice. It took hours and hours to program all the sensors, and everybody but Kaisho had been locked most of the day in nano detox. If we wanted to be ready by 23:46:22, Festina had to let Kaisho rig things up and run them.

  From the look on Festina’s face, I figured this was the last time Kaisho would be allowed to run anything but her own wheelchair.

  "All right," Kaisho announced in her usual whisper. "The signal came from Unshummin city — practically inside Verity’s palace."

  "What the fuck are Explorers doing there?" Tobit asked.

  Me, I was looking at the bridge’s main vidscreen where a map display showed the source of the beep. It was just outside the palace walls, on the south edge of Diplomats Row. "That’s the Fasskister embassy," I said. "At least it was. It could have got wrecked in the war."

  "Stupid spot for the Explorers to hole up," Festina muttered. "If I wanted to avoid trouble, I’d head for open country, not the very heart of Unshummin."

  "Perhaps, Admiral," said Prope, "the people from Willow are more comfortable in the city. Not everyone is from such a rustic background as you are."

  Festina glared. "Thank you, Captain," she replied icily, "I’ll take that as the compliment it was surely meant to be. As for the supposed dangers that city-dwellers believe infest the wilderness…" She waved her hand dismissively. "The most dangerous creatures on Troyen right now are the Mandasar armies, and I guarantee Unshummin palace is crawling with soldiers. No matter who’s winning or losing the war, someone will have a huge military presence there… for the sheer symbolic appeal of holding the high queen’s throne and sitting on it from time to time. If I were in the neighborhood, I’d hightail it out of town — off to some nice quiet nowhere without the slightest strategic importance."

  "Ah, dear Festina," Kaisho whispered, "suppose you didn’t have that option."

  She pointed at the vidscreen and turned a dial on her console. The map display changed to an actual overhead photo of Unshummin — a high aerial perspective with the palace in the middle and a good chunk of property all around. A big circle, maybe ten kilometers across. At that scale, the palace itself was no bigger than the palm of my hand, but still recognizable by its hive-queen shape: head to the north; claws fanned out west, northwest, northeast, and east; the body stretching back to the south, with its huge five-story brain hump and those two glass domes nestled where the tail met the torso — the venom sacs, glistening bright green from the plants in the two conservatories.

  Surrounding the palace were the canals, artificial waterways forming concentric circles that divided the city into rings; and crossing the canals by more than a hundred bridges were the radii, good-sized streets running straight out from the palace grounds. The whole layout looked like a dartboard with the high queen sitting in the bull’s-eye… which was a pretty lousy place to be when you thought about it.

  As far as I could see, the city seemed pretty much intact despite twenty years of war — the only obvious destruction was a big burned swath between the fourth and fifth canals. A fire had taken out almost the entire ring, flattening everything black; but it looked like the flames hadn’t crossed the water on either side, so the damage had been contained.

  Of course, there might have been other wreckage that didn’t show up on the picture. We’d caught the city at sunset, as long shadows stretched from west to east, jumbling up the patterns and perspectives. With all the computer gadgetry at her disposal, Kaisho should have been able to filter out those shadows and give a crystal-clear view of everything… but I guess she preferred the dramatic night-is-coming effect.

  "Unshummin palace," she whispered. The ship-soul brightened the center of the picture to make it stand out.

  "The signal source," Kaisho said. A blue pinpoint of light flared up on Diplomats Row. I squinted, trying to see if that really was the Fasskister embassy. Yes, that’s what it looked like… though the building’s front facade was missing, as if someone had mushed it in. No big surprise, I guess — considering how folks on Troyen felt about the Fasskisters, it was a wonder they hadn’t blown the embassy to rubble.

  "The perimeter," Kaisho said. A green circle-ish loop appeared over top of Prosperity Water, the fourth canal out from the middle. It sure wasn’t the perimeter of the city itself — there were ten more canals beyond Prosperity, plus a sprawl of developments that had sprouted after the original zoning plan was set up.

  "Perimeter of what?" Tobit asked. "The fire zone?" Prosperity was the inside edge of that burned-out area I’d seen.

  "You could call it a fire zone," Kaisho answered. "It’s actually a perimeter of defense. For the palace. They’ve blown up all the bridges, making the canal a moat. I imagine they burned down everything in that ring so they’d have a clear shot at anyone coming in. Because here’s where the enemy is."

  The photo blossomed with scarlet dots: thousands of them, maybe millions, covering the whole city outside the fire zone. They didn’t just block the radius roads; they were everywhere, hunkered down along the canals, at the bridges, inside buildings, sealing off every possible exit.

  A vast red deluge of firepower… and our Explorers were trapped at ground zero.

  33

  APPRAISING THE RISKS

  "Are you sure?" Dade asked Kaisho. "I mean… the sensors are just picking up heat sources right? Ones that match the Mandasar profile. So how can you tell the difference between one set of soldiers and another? How can you tell they’re soldiers at all? Those people outside the perimeter could just be civilians."

  Kaisho gave a soft chuckle. "Next picture, ship-soul." As if she’d expected him to ask precisely that question and had already set up an answer.

  The screen image split into halves, both sides showing Mandasar warriors. The warriors on the left were tucked under an urban camo awning, but the perspective came down at enough of an angle that we could see the front parts of their bodies. They all had black patches painted on their shells at the upp
er shoulders, like blobby epaulettes; for weapons they held wooden crossbows with big ugly arrows whose heads were nasty enough to penetrate Mandasar armor.

  The warriors on the right half of the picture had crossbows too, and sharp steel tips attached to their claws. No epaulettes, black or otherwise. This group was slinking along the edge of a street, keeping well into the sunset shadows.

  "The ones with black markings," Kaisho said, "are outside the perimeter. The unmarked ones are inside. And before you ask, Mr. Dade, no, I haven’t checked every warrior on both sides… but I’ve looked at enough to be confident of my sampling. The army of the black has surrounded a much smaller force based in the palace. Both sides are holding their positions rather than trying to kill each other."

  "A cease-fire?" Festina suggested. "Perhaps their leaders are trying to work out a surrender."

  "I suspect the palace army doesn’t have a leader," Kaisho replied. "Let me suggest a scenario."

  "Oh good," Tobit muttered. "Someone thinks she can explain this mess."

  Kaisho nodded, her hair bouncing slightly over her face. "Willow was supposed to find a queen. Where would the Explorers look first? Queens could be practically anywhere on the entire planet. Do you start going to every army camp your sensors pick up, asking, ‘Excuse me, do you have a queen here?’ Or do you go to a known position that’s almost certain to have a queen in residence?"

  "Unshummin palace," Festina said.

  "Exactly. It’s easy to find, and you can be sure some queen must have claimed it for her own. That’s where Willow went first; and they found a queen who was pantingly eager to go to Celestia, because she happened to be in deep shit: encircled and besieged by the Black Army.

  "I see it going like this," Kaisho continued. "Willow sends Plebon and Olympia Mell to arrange things with the queen. The queen, of course, claims she’s perfectly sentient and has never done an evil deed in her life. The Explorers believe the queen is lying; so they decide that when Willow leaves, they’ll stay behind. Never mind that the palace is surrounded — better to take their chances with the Black Shoulders than be killed for sure by the League."

  "And that’s how they got stuck," Tobit said, nodding. "They must have thrown in their lot with the palace guards — got the queen to put in a good word for them before she left. They’re not in immediate danger, but they’re still bottled up by the Black Army and waiting for the ax to fall."

  "Except that nobody’s swinging axes," Festina pointed out. "Which is damned strange. How long has it been since Willow took away the queen? Three and a half weeks? With the queen gone, the palace guards have nothing to fight for; so why not surrender? And if the guards are too stubborn to give in, why hasn’t the Black Army overrun the place? They certainly have the numbers to crush the defenders. So what’s everybody waiting for?"

  "Us," I said quietly. "They’ve been waiting for us."

  Captain Prope sat up sharply in her chair. "Us?" she murmured. "Yes… us. We’re the missing ingredient they’ve been waiting for." Her face had an I-knew-it-had-to-be-about-me expression… as if everything in the universe made sense once you saw it as part of Prope’s own story.

  Festina gave the captain an exasperated look, then turned to me. "How would they know we were coming, Edward? Even if it was common knowledge Willow left Explorers down there, no one would expect us to attempt a rescue. The Admiralty has an ironclad policy never to remove anyone from a war planet till the fighting stops. Complete quarantine. Our group can go down there because I think it’s necessary for the fleet’s sentience… but under normal circumstances, the navy would leave those Explorers to rot."

  I couldn’t argue with her, but I knew I was right. Sam told me Temperance was the last holdout against the new high queen. Temperance must have been occupying the palace, and Samantha was advisor to the queen on the other side. Now my sister was telling the Black Epaulettes, "Wait. Don’t attack. Wait."

  Sam expected I’d use Dad’s access code and order a navy ship to fly me to Troyen. Then I was supposed to land and join her in the high queen’s palace. Her very words: "in the high queen’s palace." Except that the palace was the one place Sam’s side didn’t control.

  So what would happen if me and Festina and the rest tried to land at the palace as directed? The Black Army would go crazy. They’d see the Sperm-tail flutter out of the sky, and they’d think offworlders were coming to help Temperance’s side — summoned by Temperance herself, who was last seen leaving on a Technocracy ship. The black troops would spring to the attack, hoping to overrun the palace before we offworlders had a chance to get settled; and in the ensuing fight, with battle musk as thick as smoke in a burning house, every human in the area would be slaughtered. The attacking soldiers wouldn’t hesitate a second. They’d shred our whole group in the belief we were outside mercenaries trying to meddle in Mandasar affairs.

  Isn’t that how it would go? We’d all be killed. And it would get written off as an accident of war, a sad, sad tragedy. The new high queen would apologize to the Technocracy, with all the grief in the world: "What a terrible shame. Let’s establish channels of communication so this never happens again." The Admiralty would say yes, while breathing their own sigh of relief — with Festina and me out of the way, the mess with Willow would be hushed up. Soon, the recruiters on Celestia would start operating again; maybe they’d even start a branch office on Troyen.

  In the end, everybody would be happy. Except those of us who were dead.

  I told myself there had to be something I didn’t understand. My sister would never draw me into a deliberate massacre. She must have some other scheme I just wasn’t smart enough to figure out.

  But I had a hollow feeling in the pit of my stomach, and it wouldn’t go away.

  "Do we go down or not?" Dade asked. He was looking at Festina. Everyone on the bridge was watching her — even the regular crew who were supposed to keep their eyes on their monitors.

  "We’ll try it," Festina said at last, "but just a quick in and out. Five minutes, tops… and let’s hope the people we’re looking for are right where their signal came from."

  Tobit had put on a poker face. "The second we send down our Sperm-tail," he said, "both armies will kick up a god-awful ruckus. They’ll each think the other side is trying something sneaky."

  "I know," Festina sighed. "Captain" — she turned to Prope—"as soon as we go down, I’d like Jacaranda to broadcast a message on all radio bands, saying we’re a neutral party just retrieving a group of noncombatants. Peaceful and not allied with any faction."

  "They’ll never believe it," Prope said. "It’s exactly the sort of ruse a group of invaders would try." (Prope sure seemed to have thought a lot about lies dishonest people might tell.)

  "Even so," Festina told her, "we have to deliver the message. For the sake of sentience."

  She glanced at the vidscreen. It still showed the two pictures side by side, Black Epaulettes and the palace guards, waiting uneasily. "When we go in," Festina said, "jittery soldiers are going to react from sheer nervous tension. We can hope they have enough discipline not to get carried away, but there’s no guarantee. If we can do anything to avoid triggering an all-out battle, we have to try. I admit the radio message is a weak idea — God knows, all their radios may have been eaten by Fasskister nanites. If anyone has a better suggestion, I’m happy to listen."

  She looked around the room. No one spoke. Finally, Dade cleared his throat. "Uh… does it really matter?’

  "What do you mean?" Festina asked.

  "These guys," he said, waving at the soldiers on the vidscreen. "They’ve all been at war, killing each other, right? That makes ’em non-sentient. Even the people who aren’t on the front lines, the cooks and the baggage handlers and all — if they’re helping the armies, they’re knowingly abetting non-sentient activities, which makes them non-sentient too. So from the League’s point of view, why does it matter what happens to anybody in Unshummin? I don’t want those people to die, but if
we do set off one bunch of non-sentients fighting another, the great and glorious League shouldn’t give a damn."

  "Jesus, Benny," Tobit groaned, "it’s the first fucking rule of Exploration, always assume everything is sentient till proven otherwise."

  "But it’s been proven otherwise," Dade said. "For twenty years, the armies have demonstrated just how non-sentient they are. Aren’t we justified in assuming—" "That there are no children in the palace?" I asked. "That while Queen Temperance lived there, she didn’t keep laying eggs every twelve weeks? That there aren’t other kids from all the warriors and gentles who’ve been thrown together with each other? That there isn’t a single Mandasar in the palace who just ran there for protection when the Black Army showed up? That there aren’t warriors and gentles and workers on both sides who firmly believe everything they’ve done was purely for the defense of their families, and others who may have been bloodthirsty once but now want peace more devoutly, more sentiently than any of us powder-puffs who’ve never gone through two decades of war? Is that what we’re justified in assuming?"

  Dade blushed and lowered his gaze… while I pretty well did the same thing. I’d never spoken like that before; I half thought I was possessed again, and kind of stupidly, I tried to wiggle my fingers just to make sure I was still in control. They wiggled — the words had come from me. Just a part of me I didn’t know I had.

  Festina patted me on the shoulder, then looked at the others. "Anything else?" she asked.

  Prope opened her mouth to speak… but even she was careful not to meet anyone else’s eyes. "It’s my duty," the captain said, "to make official note of your analysis, Admiral. This landing may spark two hostile factions into battling each other; if that happens, the death count is bound to be enormous." She paused and made sure we were all listening — the normal bridge crew as well as us visitors. "It could be argued this landing constitutes a non-sentient act, since it runs the risk of provoking murder on a massive scale. The Outward Fleet will not force any of you to participate in the mission against your conscience."