An Honorable Defense Book 1 Crisis of Empire

by David : Thomas, T Thomas Drake

  Her mouth curled in a wry smile. Bertingas knew she was trying to be winning, and he was won over anyway. “All right,” he sighed. “We’ll make the run together. For as long as the Haiken Maru will let us. Do you have any extra ammunition for that Schlicter?”

  Mora popped the clasp on her bag, pulled out four flat-black cartridge drums and a power cell. She held them up to him with a grin. “Where are we going?”

  “Chinatown.”

  “Oh.” She slid the drums back into her purse slowly.

  Whatever a “china” might once have been—and Bertingas knew the Baseform Scatter Platter held at least 15 references or variants—“Chinatown” was now the Pact-common term for any urban concentration of aliens, especially mixed types. Chinatown had the whiff of strange spices, sundown deals, hard coinage, corruption, and naivete. It was a fringe where even dole Humans stepped carefully. The air was too thick there, and the law too thin.

  They took a monorail car headed for the southwest side of the city, across the river, where the aerial line went underground and didn’t come up again. The tube stop was called “Marlborough,” from a time when the district had been something else.

  They emerged into a swarm of bodies, Humanoid and divergent, walking, running, and waddling on two or more legs, whips, or dervish pods. Everyone around them moved three beats faster than a purely Human crowd would, with synapses closing faster.

  Tad and Mora walked in a cloud of impatient grunts, taps, and swerving bodies.

  The smells changed with each step and with every storefront and shop stall they passed: oranges, raw liquor, abraded polymers, T4 cell fuel, blasting jelly, old fish, lithium salts, fresh rubber, lubricating oil, fresh earth, bokai mushrooms, burned steel.

  Colors abused their senses: skins like chrome, or jungle leaves, or patterned carpet; clothing that fluoresced in the sunlight; in one shop, strands of meat hanging in a red lightbath and glowing with green flecks; a Messenger AID that navigated in black light and washed specks of fluorescence out of the street with its eyes; a four-armed holo-juggler whose lightshow pulsed with overtones of yellow and green.

  Buildings in this quarter were old and close together, flatblocks of three and four stories. They were assembled from slabs of foamed gray concrete—not the whiter, stronger syncrete—which had been pumped in place and tipped upright. Cableways, conduits, windows, and doorways had been cut with shaped charges, later patched over, then cut again someplace else.

  Marlborough held echoes of the original frontier city, poor and scrambling, practical and diverse, that Meyerbeer had been before it raised the monumental architecture of a cluster capital. No gardens were kept here.

  Or maybe, in alien terms, the raw garbage that lapped the street was a garden. The purplish light strobing from a fixture in the wall above it might be a nutrient spectrum. Bertingas stopped in the crowd and stared for a minute at the dull wads of fiber and scraps of colored rind jelled in a waxy binder. He was trying to see a pattern, the order of a tending hand instead of the jumble of discard.

  A foot, three toes in blue plastic sheathing, came down in the middle of it, withdrew, kicked once to shake off the debris, and hurried on. So it was just garbage after all.

  “What are you looking at?” Mora asked.

  “Nothing.” He straightened. “Our first contact is a person named Glanville. Address is 22-24 Sextet. Should be down this way.”

  The address looked like a mistake: a commercial building in an empty alley. Its entrance and lower windows were covered with panels of opaque yellow plastic, fitted flush and bolted into the concrete. The feeder conduit had been dug out, capped, and tagged with shutoff notices from both the Water Supply and Energy Supply departments. If people were living in there, they were drinking from bottles and reading by squeezelight—if they drank and read at all.

  “How do we get in?” Mora asked. “Are you sure this is the right address?”

  “It’s all the address we have. We get in when we find a way in.”

  Bertingas went to the entrance panel, spread his hands a meter apart, palms outward, and pushed. The panel flexed by about two centimeters and rebounded with a hollow drumming. It felt about half a centimeter thick. He’d need at least a drill and a saber saw, and about fifteen minutes, to cut a doorway.

  From above them came a rasping noise. They stepped back into the alleyway, looked up.

  “What do you want?” asked a voice.

  Bertingas searched the blank windows until he found one on the third floor that was cracked outward. Behind the crack was a pale face—maybe Human, probably not.

  “We are looking for a gentleman named ‘Glanville,’ ” he called.

  “No Glanville here.”

  “We have money for him,” Tad lied smoothly.

  Pause. Two. Three. “How much?”

  “More than we want to discuss out here in the street.”

  “Wait one.”

  The shadow of a face disappeared. With another rasp, the window swung wide. A beam with a pulley bolted onto its end slid out through the opening. A fiber line was paid out, snaking down to the pavement.

  “Make hitch,” the voice called from inside. “We pull you up.”

  Bertingas picked up the end and put a quick bowline in it. He looked at Mora. “This is no time for ladies first.”

  “You’re absolutely welcome to it.”

  “If you hear—”

  “I’ll run—”

  “Right.”

  Tad put his foot in the loop and tugged once on the slack. “Haul away.”

  The line went up quickly, until his head was alongside the beam. Then the whole affair was pulled back into the building on a track arrangement. He swung his free foot up onto the windowsill and stepped through, kicking off the loop before he jumped down.

  The room inside was shadowed. It echoed like empty space. The light, when it came, was from a kilowatt portable flood that blinded him. But before it had clicked on, he saw at least five biped bodies, in a semicircle, all ready for mayhem. In the glare, all he could see were scarred white walls, scraps of lumber in the near corner, and a camp chair by the window, probably for the watchman.

  “Call your companion. Make happy voice so he come.”

  “No.”

  “Won’t hurt you. We take money, for Glanville.”

  “No. You take me to Glanville.”

  “Glanville not here. Give money.” The objective lens of a jeweler’s laser settled next to Tad’s left eye.

  “What we have for him is not exactly cash. It’s in the form of a business deal . . . which will lead to money.”

  “Wait one. Are you Bertingas? From Government Block?” The voice changed, dropping some of its sourness.

  “Yes.”

  “Glanville told us about you. We will take you to him. Call your companion.”

  The floodlight clicked off, leaving Bertingas blind in the dark of the room. He turned to the window, where the early evening sky was fading.

  “Mora! It’s all right—I think. Come on up.”

  Still blinking, he felt hands on his upper arms, moving him aside so they could work the pulley. The first thing he could really be sure of seeing was the outline of Mora Koskiusko, the curves of hip and arm and shoulder, with the evening light behind her cloud of blonde hair, as she stepped through the window. She let go of the rope and dusted her hands.

  “Trouble?” Mora asked him.

  “Mistaken identity. All fixed.” He turned to the others. “Well, shall we go to Glanville now?”

  The apparent leader, a pale-skinned Human male with a broken nose and a knife scar distorting his upper lip, hesitated.

  “He sleeps now. We wait six hours, then take you.”

  “That’s a long time to wait. We’ll go about our errands, and then come back.” Bertingas made for the window and the rope end, but a hand caught him.

  “You must stay. See too much already.”

  “What have we seen but an empty room?�
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  “Faces. Our faces.”

  “I have a bad memory for faces.”

  “Pocket brains take holos.” He gestured at the AIDs both Mora and Tad carried. “Run their own games. We keep you till business over.”

  “Well, what are your accommodations like?”

  Another empty room. With a table, a cold water basin, and an airbed that wheezed mightily when Bertingas tried an experimental bounce. The room also had a thick door with a lock. It was nothing an alert AID couldn’t con, but enough to discourage casual visits around the building—or ungracious exits.

  “Well, it’s been a long day,” he said, sitting on the edge of the bed and bouncing gently. “If you count receiving the news of one assassinated High Secretary, attending an executive council session to settle issues concerning same, meeting a new Director who’s also a slimy turd, landing one busted aircar from seven klicks up, and—for recreation—enjoying a spell of target practice in my own living room. And it’s not even vespers yet; I’d call that one of my busier days. How about you?”

  Mora perched on the edge of the table, lightly.

  “Let’s see. Fighting off kidnappers at the port this morning. Running and hiding the length of Meyerbeer. Helping you and your friend with target practice. Making an unexpected visit to Chinatown. And getting hauled through the third-floor window of an abandoned building. Yeah, busy . . . I’m hungry!”

  “We can’t eat here. Chinatown.”

  “Our hosts look Human enough.”

  “I thought I saw a pair of hooves among them. Anyway, no telling what their metabolic balance is, nor their tolerances. We’ll eat elsewhere, after we see this Glanville. Meanwhile, I suggest we get some rest.”

  “Are you offering me the floor?”

  “Wouldn’t you rather use the bed? It’s big enough for two.”

  Those perfect eyebrows raised slowly, and her eyes widened, but her mouth was smiling.

  “We’ll both be fully clothed,” Tad said, “and I’ll leave a foot of space between us.”

  “Very well.” Did her smile fade by a fraction? “I am tired.”

  Bertingas dutifully rolled to the far side of the airbed. She came over and lay down, primly, on her side, facing away from him. He watched the curve of her hip and upper arm rise gently and fall with her breathing until his eyes closed.

  “Get up!” The voice entered his consciousness as part of the dream he was having. He had fallen asleep at a staff conference and his mother, with three day’s growth of beard and a knife scar across her mouth, was shaking him awake and shouting in his ear.

  “What time is it?” Mora asked, through a yawn that she barely bid with one slender hand. Her hair looked loose and breezy and still beautiful.

  “Three hours after midnight,” the watchman said. “Glanville wakes.”

  “All right then.” Bertingas sat up, and felt a muscle pull in his back like a kinked slipknot. “Let’s—agh—go.”

  Mora went over to the table and dipped into the basin of water. She touched the corners of her eyes experimentally.

  “Don’t bother,” the houseman said. “We wash you.”

  She gave him a startled look and left the table.

  He led them to a room that was fitted out like a primitive medlab—cold white porcelain and chrome-faced equipment. “Take off clothes.”

  “Oh, come now,” Mora temporized. “We’re not going to—”

  Now she was looking into that jeweler’s laser. “Glanville is allergic to Humans. You do it our way.”

  Her fingers found the clasps on the borrowed wrapshirt. It fell open on wider vistas than Tad could remember seeing in a long time.

  “What are you looking at?” she demanded.

  “Everything,” he said with a shrug and got busy with his own trouser tabs.

  Soon they stood naked and shivering on the concrete floor. Tad tried to do strategic things with his hands and forearms, but Mora just stood there proudly, wrapped in glory. The guard, who treated them like sides of cold meat, pushed Bertingas toward a man-sized cabinet. It was an ultraviolet bath, without goggles. Tad stepped in, covered his eyes with the heels of his hands, and took a hard, microbe-killing dose. Then it was a diffuse laser-flash that burned the top layer of dead cells and body hair off his skin, followed by a disinfectant shower. When he stepped out, the escort gave him a loose-fitting gown of stiff white cloth, tied at the neck but open at the back, and a pair of rope-fiber sandals.

  He felt like a mendicant on pilgrimage to the Fountains of Outre. Bertingas reached for his clothes and got his hand slapped.

  “We give later. After Glanville.”

  “At least let me take the AID.”

  “You trust own voice. Glanville speaks Lingua.”

  “It has important data that—”

  “Later.” He bundled the AIDs into their clothes and boots and stuffed them all into a sack. Mora’s Schlicter, its spare powerpack and drums of beads went in on top. The guard didn’t seem either impressed or bothered by her weapon.

  “Now what?” Tad asked.

  “Now Glanville.” The man took them back into the corridor, down to another door, opened it on a perfectly darkened room and stood back for Tad to enter. He hesitated for one second, then swallowed his misgivings and stepped through.

  Into a drop shaft with its mass cap set far too low.

  He dropped at about fifteen meters a second. Starting from the third floor of the building, he expected to reach the basement within about a second and a half. In a bone-breaking hurry.

  Two seconds into his own drop, he heard Mora call: “Tad? Ta-aa-aiiyee!” Then she was following, somewhere above him in the darkness.

  He tried to remember the drill for drop tube failure. Something about keeping your head up, flexing your elbows and knees, and trying to reach a superHuman state of relaxation while expecting a hard impact at any second.

  Four seconds into the fall, and he had stabilized at what felt like a constant twenty meters per second. At the fifth second, and counting, a repulsion field grabbed him and shoved sideways. He did a sloppy forward judo roll, flopped over on his face, and came up standing in another corridor. This one was dimly lit with blue safety lights. It was cold down here.

  Mora came shooting out of the access behind him, feet first, the white gown flaring, and struck him at the knees. They both went down in a tangle.

  “All right. All right.” She pulled herself up without his help. “Where are we?”

  “About ten stories underground, near as I can figure.”

  “Which way to this Glanville character?”

  “Forward, I guess.”

  “Then lead on.”

  He walked forward, one hand near but not touching the wall on his left. It wasn’t a made wall, he decided, but the banded sedimentary rock that underlay Meyerbeer’s valley. The stone had been bored out and fused with a plasma cutter. It sweated with the cold. The lights overhead were connected with ribbon conduit. Energy Supply was hooked up down here, if not in the shell of a building above.

  After a hundred meters they passed: a cabinet, which was locked; a dark side tunnel drawing negative air pressure down it; a desk with a guard. He either wore a grotesquely ridged helmet and breastplate, or grew his own grotesque beak and carapace. He either grew lenses instead of eyes, or wore some kind of light-amplifying goggles. He looked them over silently and waved them on.

  The corridor bent and widened, the ceiling rising until they were in a blue-lit cavern perhaps thirty meters across. It was large enough to have its own chill breezes. People stood about in small groups, all more or less facing a shelf of the native rock on the far side of the cave. As his eyes adjusted, Tad saw that the bodies were mostly alien.

  A number were hoof-footed Satyrs. Here, however, they were careless of their usual disguises. No shoes with plastic prostheses to fill in their missing arches and toes. No loose pants to hide the backward bends of hocks and pasterns. No artfully combed curls to conceal the p
oints of ears. No make-up pencil to draw away the slant of eyes. Nothing to hide the permanent smiles that creased their lips.

  Several in the crowd were the beak-and-carapace creatures, like the desk guard. It was a type Bertingas had never seen classified. They reminded him, however, of upright-walking lobsters. Their shells were mottled yellow, some shading to blue, some to green. They had subtle, articulated hands, like a multiform robot’s. They had six jointed knees for each leg. Their faces were unreadable.

  One or two in the room were green-skinned Cernians. Small, short-headed, clannish. Otherwise, they conformed to the Five-Point Process: bipedal, bilaterally symmetrical, clustered sensorium, articulated limbs, tool using. It was the usual “Humanoid” form—which had so surprised the Humans when they first encountered aliens in venturing beyond their Home Cluster.

  At the end of the room, however, was something really different.

  On the rock shelf was a shallow bowl about a meter across, covered with a glass dome. Inside, as Tad and Mora approached and bent to look in, was a sluggish liquid that bubbled slowly. A Satyr stood by with a rag to wipe off the frost that kept forming on the dome. Whiffs of vapor puffed out of the holes where the wires went in.

  Half submerged in the bath, with steel probes poking into its rind, was a cactus. Or it looked like a cactus: fluted, barrel-shaped body; stubby arms at right angles; white spines along the ridges. The disconcerting thing was its color, a more Human fleshtone than even Gina Rinaldi could manage. At the top of the body was a single fragile flower, maroon and white, reminding Tad of an origami paper lantern.

  “I am Glanville.” The voice came, not from the air, but from inside his mind.

  Tad looked quickly and saw that, behind the bowl, the leads from the steel probes were connected to an AID, which in turn was hooked into a standard telecoder. Somebody had wired up a vegetable for a joke!

  “Of course you are,” he articulated in his head, adding the muscle pulls for a mammoth sneer.

  “It would be easier for you to speak normally. And leave out the histrionic gestures.”

  So it was a smart AID. Sensitive, too. Tad still wasn’t going to believe in a talking vegetable.