Mapped Space 1: The Antaran Codex

by Stephen Renneberg

  Anything Siyarn presented would have overwhelming weight behind it, the weight of an Observer counseling the Galactic Forum.

  “I’m totally happy with that!” I said. “We’re prepared to give you everything we have, right now. I’ll be right over!” I had nothing to give, but the Mataron didn’t know that and this TC Observer was clearly hanging him out to dry.

  The Mataron Commander murmured something that didn’t translate. It sounded almost like a growl, then he said, “I remember you, human.”

  I shrugged. “You snakeheads all look alike to me.”

  “I should have killed you on Icetop.”

  So, it was that Mataron, the one Jase had winged in Sarat’s penthouse.

  “How’s the shoulder? A bit stiff?” I summoned the DNA profile my sniffer had made of the drop of blood I’d found on the ledge outside Sarat’s penthouse and DNA locked it for future reference. If this Mataron ever came near me, I’d know it was him.

  He fixed his gaze upon me, speaking in a low voice. “I am Hazrik a’Gitor and you human, slew my brothers-in-arms this day.”

  “You’re Hazrik a’Gitor?” He was the Exalted Blademaster the synthetic intelligence had been modeled on. I knew him almost as well as I knew myself. I had his memories, knew his training, could see his family. “You shouldn’t spread yourself around so much, people will talk.”

  The Mataron ignored me. His hand settled on the hilt of his Q-blade. Even though his voice was synthesized, his words were rhythmic and ritualistic. “A blood-debt now stands between us, a debt that only death will resolve. Yours or mine! So let it be known!”

  I’d had death threats before, but never from a Mataron Exalted Blademaster. I wondered how he could possibly realize his threat, but if I understood what he was telling me, one day, one of us was going to die.

  I held up the Q-blade I’d souvenired off the Mataron Honored Assassin I’d killed on the Soberano’s bridge. “Does that mean I get to keep this?”

  “I gave that sacred weapon to the one you killed. One day, I shall take it back.”

  “But I have it now and you’ll have to explain that to . . . Akti.”

  “What?” Even through his synthesized voice and alien demeanor, his surprise was unmistakable.

  “Akti a’Gitor. Your daughter . . . his widow.”

  “How do you know this?”

  “I know all about you Hazrik a’Gitor, Exalted Blademaster of the Black Sauria.” I tapped my head. “It’s all in here and you put it there.”

  The reptilian commander fell silent, wondering what I was talking about, then he spoke to Siyarn. “The Mataron Supremacy we will not press its claim!”

  The image of Hazrik a’Gitor vanished from the screen, replaced by our own optical feed of the damaged Mataron cruiser. It made a quarter turn, then bubbled and streaked away.

  I turned to Siyarn. “You figured it out.”

  “I have my suspicions.”

  “You said you had evidence.”

  “I gave the Matarons a choice and let their conscience decide. The most persuasive evidence was their decision not to press for an Inquisitorial.”

  “You bluffed them!” The Tau Cetins had us all convinced their technology was so superior we could hide nothing from them, but in reality they were running a giant confidence trick!

  “My people are among the most ancient and revered in the galaxy,” Siyarn said. “We do not bluff!”

  “Remind me never to play poker with you guys.”

  Siyarn made a gesture, a quick tilt of the head, then said, “We did not get to where we are, because we are stupid.”

  “I can see that.” The TCs might be the most advanced civilization in the Orion Arm, but they had a hidden streak of larceny in their DNA.

  “We will remember what you did here today, Captain Kade. It stands well for your people, and their aspirations.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Remember,” Siyarn said, “we are always watching.”

  The image of the TC Observer was replaced by a view of the sleek, Arbiter class super battleship. Without any indication it was preparing to move, it simply vanished.

  “We kicked their lizard asses,” Jase said defiantly, then gave me a sideways look. “Matarons have asses don’t they?”

  “They must,” I chuckled, “because we just kicked them!”

  “Did you have to show him the knife?” Marie said. “It’s bad enough he swore to kill you, but did you have to make him mad?”

  I thought about it a moment and nodded. “Yeah, I really did.”

  Laughter filled the flight deck, then I stared at the view screen, realizing we were now the only ship left in the Vintari System. We floated above an arid little world that now had only one moon. The glow in its sky was beginning to fade as the debris burning up in its atmosphere thinned. On the surface, several hundred million bronze age primitives stared in wonder at a phenomenon they didn’t understand and would never see again, unaware how close their world had come to ending.

  Perhaps in ten thousand years, we’d tell them what really happened.

  Chapter Seven : Hevelius Base

  Dwarf Planet

  Argolis System

  Outer Cygnus Region

  0.677 Earth Normal Gravity

  982 light years from Sol

  6,200 Crew + transients

  It took several weeks to nurse the Lining to Hevelius Base, named for the seventeenth century creator of the Vulpecula Constellation. Hades City had better facilities, but was much further away and Izin was so obsessed with the hole in our side, he barely slept. Hevelius was a free base, a joint venture initially established by a group of agricultural companies specializing in pressurized greenhouse farming. Their bioengineered produce flourished in the dwarf planet’s low gravity and the red giant’s starlight, turning the otherwise desolate planet into a regional food production center. The docking space was limited and the hull repair costs inflated, but with Izin watching every move the repair bots made, we’d be able to bubble at full power long enough to get to Hades City for a proper overhaul.

  Hevelius was partially built into a mountain, honeycombed with rough hewn tunnels filled with aging machinery and vast produce storage facilities. Its supply of bars and brothels was sparse compared to mining bases, but there were enough to lure Jase off the ship soon after berthing. By day, Marie would sneak off in search of trade contacts among the farmers, always refusing to give me any hint as to what deals she’d struck, while by night we made the most of our time together, knowing she’d soon be back aboard the Heureux. Neither of us were in a hurry for the repair work to be completed, although Izin badgered the maintenance engineers constantly as if we had somewhere else to be.

  When the repairs were well advanced, the ENS Nassau appeared over Hevelius. She didn’t dock, preferring to float above the dwarf planet’s wispy atmosphere tinted red by the distant star, and shuttle her crew down to the base for rest and recreation. According to the locals, no Earth Navy ship had visited Hevelius Base in fifteen years, so I knew they weren’t here just for R&R. I assumed Earth Intelligence Service agents had reported our arrival as a matter of routine, unaware how eager the regional EIS Commander was to meet with me.

  Within hours of the Nassau’s crew coming ashore, a cryptic invitation arrived for my eyes only. I waited until Marie was out drumming up business and Jake was chasing tail with a drink in each hand, then packed one of my Soberano souvenirs in a bag and headed for the base’s excuse for a red light district. The handful of bars and houses of ill repute were full of navy sailors letting off steam, and occasionally exchanging punches with contract farmers who objected to the competition for female attention.

  It didn’t take long before my threading warned I was being followed. I stopped and locked eyes on my shadow, who showed no surprise that I’d spotted him so fast. He simply nodded for me to follow him. Since I’d wiped my contact list, I couldn’t validate him, but he moved like an EIS field agent; unhurried, smiling
to the hookers, occasionally chatting with the stim dealers as if he belonged. Perhaps he’d been the one who’d reported my arrival, as a grubby little outpost like Hevelius didn’t rate more than a couple of EIS residents.

  My guide led me through several dark and dusty tunnels to a shadowy saloon called the Free Fall Bar. It was modeled on a twenty sixth century dream-den, with stim vending machines through the center of the saloon and scantily clad, perfectly sculpted body-jobs serving drinks. Sitting alone and in pairs was an uninspiring selection of working girls wearing just enough to leave nothing to the imagination. Clearly, they’d ended up on Hevelius as the last stop before unemployment.

  The far wall was a floor to ceiling pressure window looking out towards distant, jagged mountains, while floating ten clicks away above the misty surface was the gray hulled ENS Nassau. Sitting alone beside the window was a striking black woman smoking a long fume-stick that would have made Sarat envious. Her overcoat was thrown back over the chair, revealing long stockinged legs, crossed provocatively. Her pose was relaxed, as if she belonged, but her looks and bearing put her well above the competition. An intoxicated agritech approached her and asked how much. She smiled, told him she was on a break and to ask again later. He leaned forward drunkenly, with rising anger.

  “Ain’t I good ‘nough for ya?” he shouted at her. “I got money, lots of money!”

  She didn’t say a word. Her eyes focused on him as if she was drilling into his soul, then he staggered back, shocked. He turned and hurried away, glancing back once with a frightened look on his face.

  My guide stepped back into the shadows as I approached the table and took the spare seat opposite the woman. Before I could speak, a waitress approached. I swiped her reader with fifty credits and told her not to come back.

  “Moonlighting?” I asked.

  “No,” Lena Voss replied, “but I may have chosen the wrong career. He’s the sixth potential customer I’ve refused since I got here.”

  “At least you’re popular, although that breaker trick you pulled on the drunk is bad for business.”

  “I told you, I’m no breaker.”

  “I’d believe you, except you’re the only person here not armed, and the only one I’m afraid of.”

  She smiled, pleased she intimidated me, then femininely tapped the fume-stick on an ash tray. “Is it over?”

  “For now.”

  She nodded slowly. “My people went over Sarat’s penthouse on Icetop. There was no trace of the Matarons.”

  “They used our weapons.”

  She nodded, having already been briefed by her forensic team. “Did you get the merchandise?”

  “I had it. It’s either destroyed or the Matarons got it back, or maybe the TCs confiscated it for evidence.”

  “What made it so valuable?”

  “Complete astrographics of every galaxy in the Local Group.”

  She looked surprised. “Hmm, perfect bait for us.”

  “I linked with it.”

  “Really?” She said, intrigued. “How much did you get?”

  “As much as I could store.”

  She looked up, hanging on my words.

  “I got everything out to six thousand light years.” It was sitting in my bionetic memory, packed so tight I couldn’t even store a vault-key number. “Billions of star systems, planets, resources, civilizations and every gram of energized dark matter out there. Five percent of the entire galaxy!” Mapped Space just got a whole lot bigger.

  She smiled. “And the Matarons don’t know?”

  “No one knows. Not even the TCs.”

  “How did you manage it?”

  “It wasn’t me. The Codex saw what I could store, found Earth was my homeworld and used that as the reference point. I didn’t even know what it was doing until later. I was kind of busy at the time.”

  “Technically, it’s not a violation of the Access Treaty,” she said thoughtfully. “Any unclaimed novarium deposits?”

  It was the one thing we lacked, our own source of the mineral that powered starship energy plants. No matter how far we’d come, we were still dependant on the TCs’ generosity and trade with other civilizations. They helped us because keeping us in the game promoted stability for the existing interstellar order, one in which they were a leading player. Not to help us would force us to compete with them and even though we could never catch them, they wanted collaborators and partners, not competitors. So they made sure we never ran short of novarium, but we never forgot we were living on handouts. It was the problem with being last to a very old game – the main players already had all the chips. Almost.

  “There’s a rogue planetoid adrift in deep space. It’s not part of any star system.”

  Her eyes widened with interest. “How far out?”

  “Twenty seven hundred light years from Sol. Four thousand six hundred metric tons of the stuff.”

  “Tons?” Her eyes widened in surprise.

  We’d been trading a king’s ransom for a few kilograms. It was enough to power every starship we could build for millennia to come. “The density is low. We’ll have to do lots of digging, but that’s what mining bots are for.”

  “And there are no prior claims? You’re sure?”

  “All we have to do is go plant a flag on it and it’s all ours.”

  “They’d see us. They’d wonder how we got out so far.”

  The TC charts gave us safe navigation out to almost twelve hundred light years from Earth, much further than the Tau Cetins – or anyone else – thought we’d get with our technology in such a short time. It was a safe little sphere in which to contain the youngest, most energetic interstellar civilization in the galaxy, at least until we were off our training wheels.

  “Send out a hundred probes,” I said. “A thousand. Let most of them crash into dark matter or end up in dead end systems. So what if one gets lucky?”

  “Do the TCs believe in luck?”

  “I don’t know what they believe in, but there are no laws against prospecting in unrestricted space, and if they realize we got something out of the Codex, they won’t hold it against us.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “I don’t think the TCs like the Matarons much.”

  “Why?”

  “They stayed neutral during the Intruder War, when the Tau Cetin’s own homeworld was attacked. Even people as enlightened as the TCs wouldn’t forget something like that.” I leaned forward. “And I swear, the Observer I met enjoyed making the Matarons back down. They won’t take sides, they can’t, but I think they’d be amused at seeing the Matarons discover they let us out. The TCs don’t care what we do, providing we play by the rules. If we do that, we can do anything we damn well want.”

  Lena tapped her fume-stick over the ash tray thoughtfully. “You’ve done well, Sirius, better than we’d hoped for.”

  “So how do you want it?” I asked.

  “Like this,” she said, extending her fingers sensually towards me as if this was the first step in me hiring her services. Soon, she turned her palm upwards, inviting my touch.

  I took her hand, wondering how I would explain holding hands with Lena to Marie, if she saw us. There was a tingling sensation in my palm, then our two biological networks connected and perfect, detailed mappings of five percent of the galaxy flowed from me to her. I didn’t know if she’d wiped everything she had or if her capacity was greater than mine, but it took almost a minute to complete the transfer. We pretended to look into each other’s eyes, implying the offer and acceptance of sexual favors to come – although I suspected Lena was probing me. When the data transfer was complete, Lena held my hand a moment longer. Before I knew what had happened, everything the Codex had given me was gone.

  “You didn’t have to wipe it.”

  “I’m sorry, Sirius, but I can’t let you keep any of it.” She’d done it to protect our newest and most precious secret. I couldn’t blame her, although as a trader, the charts would have been useful. She
released my hand and sat back with a satisfied look, as if we’d agreed a price and time.

  “What will you do with it?” I asked.

  “Hide it. We won’t send it to Earth, that would be too visible, too many eyes watching us there. We’ll find a remote system, pretend to study amoeba or rock slime while we find out what is most useful for us. And we’ll only ever store it bionetically, never in hard technology. Very few people will ever know we have it, just in case the TCs or the Matarons or someone else decides we’re not entitled to it. We’ll use your probe idea, only we’ll launch millions of them, and every year Earth Navy Survey will issue an update, pushing the boundaries of Mapped Space out a little further.”

  “The Matarons will have a fit! It took other civilizations hundreds of thousands of years to do that mapping.”

  “I know. And thanks to you, Sirius, we got it all in just a few minutes.” She looked thoughtful, adding, “And now we know about their synthetic agents as well.”

  “They knew I was EIS. That means they’re on Earth – inside the EIS!”

  Lena nodded. “Yes. They must have infiltrated every secure system we have. It explains a lot.”

  “You’ll have to wipe them all down to raw metal, rebuild everything from the ground up.”

  She gave me a deliciously scheming look. “That’s the one thing we won’t do. Now that we know what to look for, we’ll find them and we’ll let them stay – and we’ll tell the Matarons exactly what we want them to know. We’ll use their own technology against them, do to them what they’ve been doing to us for a very long time. That knowledge alone is worth more to our security than everything you took from the Antaran Codex.” Her eyes narrowed as she focused on me. “What about the quantum blade? Can we have it?”

  I hadn’t mentioned the Mataron weapon in my report. “You took my memories as well, while we held hands?”

  “You have no secrets from me, Sirius.” She put the fume-stick to her lips, then slowly exhaled gray smoke. “We could study that blade. Its technology is–”