Hunted lop-4

by James Alan Gardner

  We listened. High over head, something was coming toward us, fast and whistling. "Fuck," Tobit groaned, "a bomb." All three of us shoved ourselves forward and dropped into the trench in front of us, ducking low as Tobit continued to grumble. "Here we are, hours away from peace, and some jerk-off decides, ‘Hey, the arsenal isn’t empty yet, let’s aim for the palace.’ "

  "If it’s a bomb, it’s taking its sweet time," Festina said. She peeked at the clouds above us. "Where the hell is it?"

  "Probably some kind of smart missile," Tobit replied, "flying in circles till it chooses the optimum target."

  "Or else…" Festina began to say.

  A jet-black shadow lanced out of the clouds: torpedo-shaped, riding an almost-invisible vapor trail. "Bloody hell," Festina said. "It’s one of ours."

  "One of our what?" I asked.

  Festina didn’t answer; she was already scrambling out of the trench, holding up her arms and waving. Tobit told me, "Navy probe missile. Black means it belongs to the Explorer Corps." Then he too began climbing, hollering at the probe as if it could hear him.

  Maybe it could. It swept in low to the ground, ejected something small that dropped at Tobit’s feet, then soared up into the clouds again. The ejected object was a black box covered with horseshoe-shaped gold insets: a Sperm-tail anchor. It hummed softly, already switched on.

  "Look alive, Edward," Festina told me. "We’re getting company." "Friendly company?" I asked. "The last Sperm-tail brought my dad and three Larries."

  "Good point," Tobit said. "Get ready to pound the crap out of anyone who doesn’t look like our kind of people."

  Ten seconds later, a Sperm-tail stabbed from the sky. It happened almost too fast to see — one moment there was nothing, and the next there was a fluttering milky tube, stretching up into the clouds. Its end lay draped across the little anchor box, like a glittery white sock laid over a footstool. Festina and Tobit lifted their fists into fighting stance and positioned themselves around the tube. I joined them, all the while hoping I wouldn’t have to hit anyone. There’d been plenty enough fighting already.

  Behind me palace guards were shouting, wondering if they should be worried about the Sperm-tail. A few came our way; others hollered, "Stay at your posts and let Teelu handle it. He’ll call if he needs help."

  Let Teelu handle it. Not a healthy attitude, leaving responsibility to someone else. When I became king for real… if I became king for real… if and when I became whatever Queen Innocence thought was best, I’d sure try to get everybody thinking more independently.

  A figure shot out of the Sperm-tail — a human wearing a white tightsuit. I waited to see if Festina and Tobit would start punching and kicking; but they only stared for a moment, then Festina leapt forward and threw her arms around the newcomer’s neck. "Ullis!" Festina shouted. "What the hell are you doing here?" She turned to me, a huge smile on her face. "Edward, this is an old, old friend of mine. Ullis Naar."

  "Hi," I said… not quite sure if Ullis was a man or a woman. All I could see were a pair of blue eyes blinking behind the tightsuit’s visor.

  "You’re Edward York?" Ullis asked. A woman’s voice. "Son of Admiral Alexander York?"

  "Um. Yes." I wished people would stop harping on that.

  "Then I’m supposed to render you all possible assistance in whatever you’re doing. We have Jacaranda, Tamarack, Bay, and Mountain Ash here in orbit. What are your orders?"

  Tobit and Festina looked at me. I looked at them, then at Ullis Naar. "Um," I said, wracking my brain for something to say. A tiny inspiration hit me. "How about starting with a status report?"

  "Certainly," she replied. "My ship Tamarack arrived on the outskirts of this system four hours ago. By then, the other three ships were already at their assigned stations. Together, we swooped in on Troyen, where we found Willow and the former Cottonwood in orbit. Willow was in no condition to do anything; Cottonwood gave us a bit of a run, but eventually we caught it with tractors."

  She glanced at Festina and gave a rueful chuckle. "The Vac-heads are annoyingly proud of themselves right now. Talking about ‘textbook operations’ and slapping each other on the back. Meanwhile, we Explorers were the ones who had to board the captured vessel. Lucky for us, there were no warriors — just a skeleton crew of gentles, who surrendered without a fight." Ullis lowered her voice. "Poor kids were scared out of their wits: all teenagers, and naive as they come. Scarcely knew Troyen was having a war. Only thing they cared about was their ship… you know the way some kids get, when they can talk for hours about optimizing waste recyclers, but have no idea what day it is."

  Tobit grunted. "Sister Samantha probably chose them for that very quality… then kept ’em isolated from the nasty realities of war, so they wouldn’t have blood on their hands. If you’ve got a starship, you want the crew to be sentient, so they won’t die the moment they cross the line. Those kids were likely raised in some sheltered environment where Sam made sure they never had a homicidal thought. And where they lived and breathed spaceships."

  "Probably raised on Cottonwood itself," Festina agreed. "Plenty of room up there, and no interference from the war."

  I thought about that. "Didn’t Sam use the Cottonwood for making Laughing Larries?"

  Tobit shrugged. "Those were built by your clone. The kids wouldn’t have to know what the Larries were — the clone could say they were something harmless… surveillance monitors or weather sensors, something so boring the kids wouldn’t ask questions."

  "I would dearly love to know what you’re talking about," Ullis said, "but first, I should see if there’s anything we need to do." She turned to me. "Do you have any orders for us?"

  "Um." I whispered to Festina, "Do I have any orders for them?"

  "Just get her to explain what’s going on," Festina whispered back. "These ships couldn’t be here now unless they set out for Troyen a week ago." She stopped and turned to Ullis. "Did you say you’re following Alexander York’s orders?"

  "Yes."

  "And those orders said you’d find Cottonwood and Willow here?"

  "That’s right. Jacaranda was supposed to drop off your landing party, then pretend to leave the system. It rendezvoused with the rest of us, and we all came zipping back to catch Cottonwood by surprise."

  Festina frowned. "Why would Admiral York want the navy to capture Samantha’s pet starship?"

  "Oh," I said. "Um."

  I remembered that night ten days ago, when I’d found myself sitting in front of Captain Prope’s terminal. That’s when I noticed someone had used the authorization codes Samantha gave me… and I was beginning to guess what the Smart half of my brain had done.

  Issuing orders to Prope. Diverting three other ships to Troyen. Doing it all with my father’s codes… and doing it pretty well, I guess, since it’d come off without a hitch.

  Good for me. Or at least for Smart Me. He must have understood what was going on long before I did — that Sam was evil, that she’d made me a king, and she intended to start the last battle as soon as we landed on Troyen — so he’d used my dad’s codes to make sure she wouldn’t get away with it. He’d secretly called in four cruisers to capture Willow and the black ship; not only did that wipe out Sam’s "fleet," it also provided hard evidence that my sister had pirated two navy vessels. The High Council would hit the roof about that… then Sam could forget any perks or concessions she wanted to beg from the Admiralty. She wouldn’t get a cent to rebuild Troyen. Quite possibly, the Technocracy would have imposed all kinds of economic sanctions, and backed them up with a heavy navy blockade. But Smart Me had done more than call in those four ships: he’d arranged with Prope to trap our whole party down on the surface. Why? I guess because he didn’t want us to have the option of running away. Smart Me was no Balrog — he sure couldn’t foresee how we’d save Innocence, or stop Sam and my dad — but he must have had the colossal arrogance to believe he’d set things right somehow. All he had to do was show up, take charge, confront his enemies
… and he’d come out on top.

  In other words, my brainy half had the same kind of ego as every Mandasar queen since the dawn of time. Like it or not, I was one of them.

  If you want the honest truth, that scared me. I didn’t want to become all clever and cunning and cruel. But what was I going to do? Push my smart bits away and keep them choked off somewhere? I’d done that twenty years ago when I’d decided I’d rather be stupid than admit the truth about Sam; and how did that help anybody?

  Time to stop hiding. Stupid or smart, it was time for me to be who I was — what I was. And if some parts of me were kind of terrifying… I wasn’t so different from anyone else.

  Twelve days later, I rode a Sperm-tail from Jacaranda down to Celestia. No strange flashbacks or conversations with other sides of myself. Just a whole lot of flip-flops in my stomach as I twisted and turned and corkscrewed.

  Festina said that was normal.

  We landed on the edge of the Hollen Marsh, within spitting distance of where my evac module had splashed down weeks earlier. Night was falling on this part of the planet — a soft summery dusk, filled with the rich smells of humus and growing vegetables.

  The Mandasars were with us, of course; but they made a big show of hurrying off to their home "to give the humes some privacy." Counselor and the rest still devoutly believed a human man and woman would nuzzle up to each other the instant they were left alone… and as soon as the Mandasars reached their domes, they settled down to watch in eager anticipation.

  "Um," said Festina with a smile. "Are you ready for this, Your Majesty?"

  "I thought Explorers called each other by name, not title."

  "King Edward the First," she suggested. "Supreme Monarch of Celestia."

  "Don’t say things like that!" I shuddered. "The government is scared enough of me as it is."

  "Scared is good," Festina replied. "They deserve it."

  For the past two days, our ship had sat in orbit while Festina argued with Celestian officials about whether I should be allowed to land. They had the idea I might be some fanatic rebel leader, who intended to organize ten million Mandasars into crazed revolt. They had a point: word was starting to leak out, what Sam and my dad had done, so it wasn’t too surprising folks would mistrust someone from the same family.

  But Celestia didn’t have much choice. Any day now, a whole passle of journalists in the Technocracy (and the Divian Spread, and the Fasskister Union, and heaven knows where else) were going to receive a communique from High Queen Innocence I of Troyen, giving precise details of the heinous acts committed by a Technocracy admiral against the Mandasar people. As of that moment, Mandasars would become a Big Important Cause at breakfast tables and in boardrooms throughout the galaxy.

  Festina told Celestia it was very, very important for their government to come down on the right side of the issue. Take all those factories, for example — the ones that cheerfully used Mandasar workers kidnapped by recruiters. Real soon now, the people who owned those factories would find it colossally unpopular for them to have brainwashed Mandasars on the assembly line. They’d be facing boycotts, protests, and much worse, disquieted stockholders who found themselves unwelcome at the usual cocktail parties. Would these rich owners take the blame themselves? No. They’d point their fingers at the Celestian government, and say, "Hey, you told us those lobsters were happy!"

  Also: how would it look if Celestia refused to allow the official ambassador from Troyen — namely, me — to land on the planet and try to set things right? That was a solid-gold guarantee that ten million Mandasars would whip themselves into crazed revolt. It was also a guarantee the irresponsible rich who usually vacationed on Celestia would give the planet a miss this year; they didn’t mind if Celestia was the home of sleazeball profiteers, but heaven forbid it should ever be considered unenlightened, or worse, unfashionable.

  So in the end, the Celestian government gave in: promised to close down recruitment operations, help rehabilitate brainwashed Mandasars by bringing them back into mixed-caste hives, and recognize me as a sort of a kind of a spokesman for all Mandasars on the planet. Not a king — they didn’t want that, and neither did I — but it was okay me being a guy who asked Mandasars what they thought, then passed the word to everybody else.

  "Well," Festina said, looking at the purple twilight rather than me, "if you’re all right here, I should head back to Jacaranda. The Celestian authorities are supposedly fixing the recruiter problem even as we speak, but someone has to keep an eye on them."

  "Shouldn’t I help you?" I asked.

  "Nah," she told me, "watchdogging planetary governments is my job. You just look after your own people."

  She’d said the same things up in the ship — couldn’t stay long, work to do, no need for me to help. Yet she’d still come to see me safely down on Celestia.

  Maybe she just didn’t want to say good-bye with Prope watching. Festina longed to nail the captain with a few good punches for marooning us on Troyen; but since Prope had been following my orders, decking her wouldn’t be fair. Instead, Festina gave Prope the cold shoulder and spent all her time with me. That probably hurt Prope way more than a simple whack in the jaw — the captain was always staring at us venomously, as if it pierced her to the heart that I’d chosen Festina over her.

  Prope obviously believed Festina and I were up to something steamy. But we weren’t: we just talked. About the responsibilities of power, and the ways of power, and the limitations of power. A crash course in galactic politics, and a whole lot of reminders not to see people as children who needed Daddy’s help.

  I think hive-queens have a gene that makes them go all condescending about their subjects. Now I had that gene too… but Festina did her best to help me get over it. Never once did we talk of judo mats. Never once, in all our trip back from Troyen, did we touch each other.

  I’d been afraid my pheromones would start acting up and make her go all crazy against her will.

  I don’t know what Festina was afraid of.

  "Okay," she murmured in the Celestian twilight. "Time to go." She stepped toward me, and just for a moment, she looked straight up into my eyes. Then she rose on tiptoe and kissed me on the cheek.

  I couldn’t help remembering that woman back on Willow, the one pretending to be Lieutenant Admiral Ramos. It made me kind of wistful that the real Festina wasn’t the one who kissed me on the lips.

  But that was just me, being stupid.

  JAMES ALAN GARDNER Q:

  Why the League of Peoples?

  I’ve seen too many science fiction universes where humans are important.

  If life is common in our universe, a lot of alien species must be way ahead of human technology. After all, plenty of star systems are billions of years older than ours; if planets in those systems had evolution working on a similar time-scale to Earth, they could have produced intelligent species whose technology is a billion years better than ours.

  That’s one heck of a headstart.

  So I imagined a universe in which humans are hopelessly outclassed by thousands of alien species, some of whom had FTL travel back when our ancestors were hamster-like things trying not to get stepped on by dinosaurs. However, I didn’t want humans in my stories to be downtrodden slaves of bug-eyed monsters with superior technology; it seemed more likely that highly advanced aliens just wouldn’t care about humans. They definitely wouldn’t want to govern us — we humans don’t want to govern earthworms, do we?

  Therefore, all my books have started with the League of Peoples: an alliance of super-powerful aliens who are happy to let us humans (and other such primitive species) do whatever we like… provided we don’t cause trouble. Specifically, the League doesn’t want homicidal creatures leaving their home star systems and traveling elsewhere — that’s like letting a disease spread. If you do have murder in mind and you try interstellar travel, the League infallibly executes you the second you "cross the line" from one star system to the next.

  Thi
s ever-present threat has influenced much of the action in my first three novels, but oddly enough, the League never directly killed anyone in those books. That all changes in the fourth book, Hunted. The League executes almost everybody on a navy starship, and the single human survivor has to find out why.

  FB2 document info

  Document ID: fbd-11b12b-326c-7346-01aa-9308-904b-aae681

  Document version: 1

  Document creation date: 11.02.2010

  Created using: Fiction Book Designer, FB Editor v2.0 software

  Document authors :

  Verdi1

  About

  This file was generated by Lord KiRon's FB2EPUB converter version 1.1.5.0.

  (This book might contain copyrighted material, author of the converter bears no responsibility for it's usage)

  Этот файл создан при помощи конвертера FB2EPUB версии 1.1.5.0 написанного Lord KiRon.

  (Эта книга может содержать материал который защищен авторским правом, автор конвертера не несет ответственности за его использование)

  http://www.fb2epub.net

  https://code.google.com/p/fb2epub/