by Scott Rhine
To encourage her conversation, Kesh countered with a purely defensive move. He refilled her empty drinking bulb with more fruity alcohol. “None of your priests see them?”
“No.”
“Not even mutations? Your sun unleashes a hellacious amount of hard radiation.”
“Most of our society lives underground. Brief exposure doesn’t harm us.”
Like naked mole rats. They might survive a few nuclear strikes. “Certainly there’s something different about the Loan Officer family.”
“The males can’t smell.”
A recessive encouraged by the conquerors. Spread like the Khan trait among humans.
“You ask me many questions and give little in return,” Honey noted.
“What if I tell you what your gods really are?”
“All Saurian merchants are liars.”
“I’m a warder of the Yellow Slash Clan, commissioned marshal to the Turtle Judge Jeeconus. I’m a priest like your Loan Officer.” He used the contents of his pad as evidence to wear down her doubts.
“You might lie to sway us.”
“The truth serves all,” he replied, quoting Turtle judicial doctrine. “I’ll share, and you tell me if it has the scent of a trail or the stench of scat.” He did a quick check, and Max’s Do Not Disturb light was on for comms for the next half hour. The treatments were complex.
She bowed. “I’ll listen but not ask. The topic is your own choice.”
He started with facts by describing the Out-of-Body talent common among Magi. They knew Bankers lived under ice to shield from the radiation and gravitated toward the volcanic vents for heat and nutrients. Then he painted the theoretical image they had reconstructed. The only Union analogs were coral and the microscopic immortal hydra. The idea of them living forever jibed with Teller scriptures. “They lure their food toward them like lantern fish. One thesis in xenobiology suggests they induce a mating frenzy in the school of food fish. Then they only eat part. In this way, they manage their herds, maintaining the balance and future food. Of course, the student who proposed idea this disappeared before the committee could review his paper. The copies were erased from Anodyne computers.”
She shuddered when he described the principle of pheromones. How much of her attraction to the priest was love, and how much had been manipulated by the Bankers using biochemicals?
He concluded with, “In a way, it’s a symbiosis. The Bankers can sense life at a distance and guide the schools toward the plants they enjoy to fatten them.”
“They taught us medicine.”
“No doubt they shared many developments from across your world, but always with a price and a purpose.”
Honey whispered, “The first thing our doctors did was harvest organs from the heathens to keep the High Loan Officers alive longer.”
He taught her the word “slave.”
She didn’t take it well. “You are a demon who twists words.”
“Your people have fought demons before?”
“There are many paintings on the temple walls, examples in the scriptures.”
Nodding, Kesh said, “Whole civilizations whose treasures now line the vaults of your masters. If they were truly unclean, your gods would want no part of their tainted art.”
“The Great Ones can redeem all things in their presence.”
“Ah. My mistake. So Loan Officers were your ruling class before contact?”
“No. The priests rose. Technology and wealth crushed all in their path.”
“How did the Bankers reveal themselves to your priests without stardrives?”
“Our planets both circle the same gas giant. Nivaar was our birth system as well.”
“We call that an Ideal system. They’re very rare. The best way for multiple habitable worlds to exist around the same star is for them to be moons of the same planet. Did they launch a spacecraft?”
“No. Our orbit is below theirs. At the nearest point, they dropped skystones to our world.”
He had no more room for defensive tiles, so he had to make a minor attack on her perimeter. “We call them shards, inert polyps that can speak to the parent across stellar distances.” He liked the word polyp because it reminded him of an unwanted growth removed from one’s ass. “Somehow they made a launcher that only works during lunar alignments. They spoke through these stones?”
“At first, they only made a person touching one tingle. Even then, the skystones were worshipped. They inspired poets and artists. More fell every century at the time of alignment. It took many cycles before the first Loan Officer opened the way to speak between the stones.”
Kesh imagined the military advantage for a Stone-Age tribe with instant communications spanning the globe, centuries of data, as well as telescopic overviews from above. Many of the ideas would have been impossible for the Bankers to build without opposable thumbs. As Humans would say, the ruling priests would have been mere sock puppets. Anyone with the gene could be subverted. All they had to do was make the trait attractive enough to spread. “So your people developed space travel first?”
“We made launchers to send out gold and gems to the Great Ones during the alignments.” She turned the tables on him with an all-out attack on his game stronghold. “Why have your people left Adamantine in such a hurry? Had you remained, we could have learned little of your invention.”
He decided on a small portion of the truth. “Before the war, the Phibs established a remote colony, trying to achieve independence from the ansible or the banking system.”
“Heretics!”
“Yeah. We want to reason with these folks before anyone gets hurt.”
“Magi words,” she spat. Her game assault failed.
“No argument there.”
In the interest of pinpointing “heretic bases,” Kesh pumped her for sites of known incursions into Banker space to cross-reference with the Xerxes maps. She provided some of this from her pilot training. She concluded with, “The heretics will be crushed.”
Kesh seized on the wording. “You didn’t say you would crush the heretics.”
“I’m com—” She paused to remember the word. “Compromised. The Great Ones will know I have spoken with demons. I won’t be permitted to return home or breed.”
When his turn came around, he rolled over her feeble constructions, wiping her bases from the board. Before he scooped up the tiles, he whispered, “If you decide to go back. I plan on living my whole life on a ship. Home is where your family is. Wouldn’t you agree?”
Her eyes flicked toward sick bay again. “I’m going to check on Ulang.”
His holiness wasn’t pleased when she staggered in, slurring her words. He mustered enough dignity in the hospital gown to order her to bed. She curled up in a cot next to him, snoring loudly.
29. Intercept Alpha
With hints from message torpedoes, the Magi teams improved the refueling process. Multiple tankers would be waiting a few hundred meters from the arrival point. The robots made Indy 500 pit crews look like lazy posers. All passengers remained in stasis so that the operation would flow as smoothly as possible. Soon, the hold was full to the rafters with decoys. Metal-core asteroids were the most popular building block. Ice cores were too fragile to take inside. Roz sent this type ahead toward the second and third intercept points in case the first didn’t pan out.
Out of caution, Roz didn’t hop all the way into the target system. They had exactly half their fuel remaining, just enough for a return to the mainline trade route if they didn’t encounter the fleet. If they found the enemy, other Magi ships would need to fly in supplies to rescue them after the combat was resolved. They couldn’t risk a fully operational subbasement vessel falling into hostile claws. The pilots had orders to vent all fuel and destroy the master drive ring if they failed.
Roz woke Kesh for a long-range scan from the edge of the most likely intercept point for the fleet.
His search algorithms revealed no trace of the enemy. “Fur and bones. Xe
rxes faked us out on purpose.”
“How do you know they aren’t just hiding?” she asked. “Tellurium won’t show up at range.”
“No, but the Mayflower will, as would the vapor trail of that much poorly refined fuel burning.” He reworked the calculations. “As long as we’re here, have a remote-controlled hopper check the nav beacon.”
The hopper control system took a few days to wire and test, but the Magi felt the effort was worthwhile to protect the Enlightened One. While they waited, Kesh asked Roz to show him some chicken and fish dishes that wouldn’t aggravate his stomach condition. She cooked liberally with wine, which helped to loosen her lips about the budding superscience. “When we hop, the rings inside the ship experience sympathetic resonance. They hum the same tune!”
“Like singing into a piano.”
“Exactly. They come along with us for free like drag behind a semitrailer. I wrote a paper last jump on ring harmonies, and the scientists on board are already proposing experiments.”
“Why not?”
“Too much, too fast. We haven’t nailed this science down yet.” She waved a sauce spoon as she talked.
He’d nibbled on today’s dish already, mahi-mahi.
She claimed it was supposed to taste like steak.
Vegetarians must have killed their taste buds with curry to hide the vile flavor of the food they have to suffer with. Instead, he said, “We need as big as an advantage as we can get. I’d have the rocks fly around us as far out as that resonance field stretches. That way, we have better sensors against debris and armor against any attack.”
“Maybe,” she conceded. “While we’re waiting for the beacon data, we could lay out a series of rings to test that. We don’t even need to jump to make them hum. We just send quantum charge through the main loop.”
The name of science opened a lot of doors. By the time the beacon report returned, they had the halo effect of the large ship mapped. Deep 7 pulled in hoppers up to a kilometer away with 90 percent reliability. With more comparisons and tighter coupling, the rate could be improved.
Kesh examined the beacon data with Roz on the bridge. She pointed. “This is the point where the Xerxes tanker left the system. It was heading this direction.”
He laid out the vector. “It intersects one of the black mining sites in Banker space. You have to admit that it was pretty clever having the Bankers give them to money to fund the fleet and then build it out of Banker metal. I mean, the shorter the distance you have to haul materials, the cheaper the venture.”
“You think there are more ships?”
“Count on it. If for no other reason than they need redundancy for the key aspects of the invasion.”
Roz covered her face. “Don’t you have any good news?”
“This information helps us decode some of the cryptic references in the journal we read in the Study.” Kesh reviewed his notes. “Based on what we learned here, Intercept Bravo is likely to be a mining support base.”
“Why so many refueling bases in different directions?”
“To throw us off? Reuben pointed out that the word ‘glory’ in Phib can be plural as well as singular. I don’t know. We’ll need to wake the Bankers to confirm the timing of earlier incursions into their space. The polyp will be able to tell us almost instantly.”
“How is this good news?”
“In about an hour, we’ll be able to confirm our destination is Chokepoint Charlie.” He connected several resource funnels, demonstrating convergence on a single star system.
She fidgeted with a link to a library she’d obtained at the last Convocation. “This was evidence presented against the Phibs during the compensation part of the trials. We have trespassing dates from the formal complaints issued by the Bankers.” She held the long list of infractions up for Kesh to read. She’d highlighted the one closest to their current position.”
“The dates line up. Now it’s just a footrace, which we can win.”
“We planned to skirt the perimeter. The route through the middle wasn’t in our plan. There are wide stretches with no colonies.”
“Sometimes in the endgame, a player has to improvise.”
“Engineers have to build foundations layer upon layer. I’ll need to get permission from the academy.”
Kesh replied, “You’ve been operating on your own authority since the second hop. People help you because they believe in your message, and you’re doing the right thing. Among the Magi, that counts for a lot.”
“In Banker space, we’ll need to buy the fuel.”
“I’ve got money.”
Sweat formed on her brow. “We can’t wake the ansible until we’re closer to where we started. Otherwise, they’ll be able to compute our real speed. The Bankers might cope with ten times normal speed, but the truth will freak them out.” She ran equations and circled a stop on their revised path. “We’ll also have to give them a reason why we need so much history on ship locations.”
He told her what he’d already leaked to Honey.
“You had no authority to share even that much. Give me one good reason why we don’t lock you in stasis as a security risk and thaw you for your treason trial?”
“Each new race you’ve met has held another clue to the Enigma, right? Almost as if the Forerunners wanted us to work together, but the Magi copy is damaged.”
“Sure. What does that have to do with your big mouth?”
“I traded the information to Honey for the location of an unbroken copy of your precious puzzle. Of course, the Loan Officer won’t let her talk to unbelievers anymore.” Not since I gave her a hangover.
“What do you want in exchange?”
“I think we need to experiment with fleet tactics combining the remote drones and the shuttle.”
30. Chokepoint Charlie
Under protest, the Magi shuttle practiced hit-and-run techniques behind a screen of drones. Kesh programmed sets of the torpedoes to fly in hunting pack formation similar to the way groups of Saurians herded prey. They allowed him to stay awake through three refueling stop to practice these maneuvers. After that, exercises were canceled for fear ansibles along the main trade route would report the warlike behavior.
The final chokepoint was a crossroads, just inside Banker territory, at the intersection of Bat and Magi realms. When awakened and shown the star charts, the High Loan Officer reacted poorly. “Preposterous. The Spinward Depository is the most secure location in Union space. All tributes and payments are routed through that processing center on the way to Nivaar.” His thin face was contorted in a frown. Instead of a hospital gown, he wore yellow linen robes.
The non-Magi crew struggled to convince him of the threat.
“Perhaps they’ll emerge from the nexus when your ships leave the system on escort duty,” Kesh suggested.
“Our armed vessels never leave,” the officer bragged. “Patrol ships carry food and fuel along the border to outposts where they’re needed.”
“What about the raw wealth bound to the Fortress of Nivaar?”
“We don’t discuss the convoy with outsiders.”
Kesh and Reuben locked gazes. The Ram asked, “Hypothetically, what would happen if this train of goods were interrupted?”
“Our border in that region is impenetrable.”
“Assuming the enemy could pass undetected with Tellurium?”
The officer rolled his eyes. “We control all mines large enough for such an undertaking.”
“Now. Not during the ramp up to the war.” Kesh passed over the long history of incursion complaints. “The Phibs have been picking your pockets for centuries.”
“No matter, frigates accompany the cargo to the base of the Wall.”
“Beyond that?” asked Kesh. “You don’t have cold-bloods you trust to make the long sublight trip from there.”
“Nothing alive can breach the Wall. The transports are automated. Each unit in the convoy is linked to the lead transport. The entire chain is tracked and r
emote-controlled by ansible. The instant any of them veered off-course in the slightest, every patrol ship in the sector would converge.”
Kesh pondered this. Perhaps Xerxes intended this strike as economic warfare. “It’d still take a year for help to arrive. What if the enemy didn’t want to steal the goods? Consider a scenario where they only want to prevent food from arriving on Nivaar. Your planets have populations far greater than your ecosystems can support. If a caravan didn’t arrive on time, you’d be hurting.”
“The reserves stored on the barren moon in our home system could last the honored ones a couple Convocations.”
Sixteen years worth is a huge stockpile. Kesh dragged Reuben into the hall while the Ellisons tried to convince Ulang to communicate warnings to his superiors.
“No. Each contact with the Great Ones costs me. You haven’t shown me any evidence to merit that expenditure.”
Far enough away that the pointy-eared Teller couldn’t overhear, Kesh whispered to his Goat friend. “You’re the expert on sneaky feats. What’s Xerxes up to striking this point on the border?”
“Without a few million ewes to tap, I can’t be sure, but I’ve been thinking. The Mayflower nukes couldn’t eliminate all Banker life with one strike. What if the target was really the barren moon all along?”
“The pantry?”
“Without it, the Bankers are at the mercy of any glitch in their supply chain. No FTL craft can reach Nivaar period. The inbound routes have been sealed due to their paranoia.”
Kesh nodded. “Making the wait for bulk replacement supplies over a hundred years long. Imports are their weak point, like any imperial power reliant on its colonies to survive. You scan the Study for clues about a two-phase assault. I’ll use what we know about their vulnerabilities to force the Banker military to circle the wagons.”
Once Roz had all the recommendations, she issued orders. “Every Magi ship in the area will vector to meet us. Three will appear in the target system ahead of us to scout. We’ll hop to a position just outside Charlie. Max will wake everyone, and then we’ll make the last microhop into battle.”
