Counterweight

by A. G. Claymore

  Cal raced away from the alley, wanting to ensure the chase didn’t come back to haunt those who’d helped him. He pulled out another initiator charge designed to set off the relatively stable C-15 charges. The small detonators were encased in a sticky material, much like a gecko’s feet.

  It took hours to master the art of throwing the small charges. The thrower had to hold the small device so that it rolled off the fingers in the right direction. If you got it backwards when it really counted, you’d be lucky if you only blew off your lower arm.

  And it really counted now. The level above was set back from this one and one of the magisters decided to risk a broken leg and vaulted the upper railing to drop in Cal’s path. The lawman’s lips curled in an evil grin as he pulled out his weapon.

  Cal returned the grin as he hurled his own weapon. The one-inch-diameter ball left his hand without complaint and adhered itself to the magister’s tunic. The timer, initiated as soon as the device left Cal’s hand, had only four seconds on it and two of those had already passed before the lawman even realized that anything odd was taking place.

  He was just looking down when the small charge went off.

  It wasn’t as efficient as the magister’s weapon of choice but it was certainly effective.

  Cal raced past the grisly mess and ducked down a side alley he’d explored before choosing his resting place. He knew it branched off into several turns and it offered multiple opportunities to change levels. He had planned out escape routes in a number directions and this was one of the best.

  He slowed to a walk, glancing over his shoulder before taking a right turn into a branch that was wide enough for sleeping spaces on both sides and a walking path down the middle. He picked his way past the sleeping NRW’s – it was too deep into the side of the city for them to have heard the small blast – and reached the tertiary conduit trace he’d checked out earlier in the evening.

  The trace was roughly a square meter in cross-section and it was a carbon girder box that ran through matching holes in the floors, carrying power and data through the city.

  Squeezing his medium frame through the narrow spaces of the girders was difficult enough but he also needed to bend his body into the narrow interior space left between the various conduits as he pushed his way inside.

  Breathing a sigh of relief, he finally slid his head through the gap and he was entirely inside the cage. Now it was a simple matter of climbing down as quietly as possible. Few were willing to sleep directly in front of the trace for fear of the effects of electromagnetic exposure but he could still draw attention if he went clambering down the trace at top speed.

  He’d gone down two levels and was just moving below the third when he heard approaching boots. He only had seconds. As quickly as he dared, he maneuvered below a bundle of incoming conduits, edging to the adjacent side of the trace so he’d be concealed beneath the downward-curving bundle of lines.

  Peeking up between the jumble of wires and thick conduits, he could see a shadow falling across the lines above. A head pushed through between the carbon members of the girder and looked straight down at him.

  Cal remained absolutely still, not even blinking. He fought the urge to reach into his bag for another detonator and the struggle was so all-encompassing that he almost let out an involuntary sigh of relief when the head turned to look up the trace.

  Killing him here would be a clear indicator of where he’d been. If the magister failed to withdraw his head before it exploded, conduit damage would trigger an alarm, bringing a horde of eyeballs his way.

  As he watched, the magister turned his head back to the side and withdrew it through the small triangular opening.

  Cal took stock. Two magisters had been killed in this neighborhood. They’d have back-up on the way to beat the bushes. Though he was tempted to remain where he was, it would only get progressively harder to leave the area. With a quiet sigh, he emerged from beneath the bundle of cables and resumed his descent.

  Replenishment

  The Brisbane

  “Hold it there,” Thorstein grunted. “I’ll shut down the reactor and we can see if the natives have a back-up.”

  Rick frowned. A mag emitter had come loose on dropout and he’d managed to immobilize it with a registration spike. He wasn’t sure why the sharply pointed construction tool was even on the small ship but he suspected one of the Midgaard thought it could be handy for repelling a boarding attempt.

  The tip of the spike was through one of the bolt slots in the emitter housing and it was the only thing keeping the fusion reaction from spilling out and eating the ship. If the failure had occurred on Rick’s first engine watch, he might not have caught it in time, even with his pre-cog advantage.

  Almost two weeks in distortion cramped inside a small ship like the Brisbane had a way of trimming the mind. The distortion engine warped space around the ship, creating a denser gradient to the front and, in effect, moving the universe past the ship. When Rick’s existence became a small fifty-by twenty-foot chain of three compartments, he soon found his thoughts were easier to focus. Distractions failed to take hold.

  The creative faculties, the libido – both were suppressed in the artificial isolation.

  He’d even managed to talk with Freya without turning red. The risqué banter, common among the Midgaard, served almost as a reminder of a part of life that had no place on the ship.

  It had taken a conscious effort on Rick’s part, three days into the voyage, to realize that he should have been flustered when he’d walked into the crew compartment to find her suit emerging from the cleaning cubicle.

  He’d been taking a closer look at it, comparing it to the Tauhentan one he’d taken from the Foxlight II, when Freya had emerged from the adjacent shower, ready to step back into her suit.

  The Midgaard, when on active field duty, wore their suits round the clock and they saw no need for extra clothing. Why build laundry facilities into your ships if you didn’t have to?

  Accordingly, when Rick looked over at the suit’s owner, she was completely naked. “Your suits seem far more advanced than anything I’ve seen so far,” Rick told her, feeling a vague tick at the back of his mind. “Of course, I’ve only seen one planet so far…”

  “We’ve been building them for tens of thousands of years,” she explained. “Maybe we can get you one when we get back.”

  “I’d like that.” Rick rotated his shoulders. “This Tauhentan suit is very tight on the upper body.”

  “Thorstein tells me you know your way around an engine room,” she said as she backed into the open suit. The plates slid closed around her body, even as she began to move out of the cubicle. “If you want a permanent slot with the LRG, I can arrange it.” With a nod, she headed for the bridge.

  Now, in orbit and with the drive shut down, he was mildly surprised that the primary thing he had taken away from that conversation had been her offer of a place with the LRG.

  The evidence that he’d been accepted by the small crew was both thrilling and humbling. It was something he’d always been denied on 3428 but now he was left with the fear of letting the crew of the Brisbane down.

  “Hold on, Thorstein,” he urged. “If we can’t find parts down on the planet, we’ll be stuck here for gods know how long.”

  “And if that field fails, we’ll be here for a lot longer,” Thorstein replied, hand hovering over the shut-down button. “Or at least our remains will be. Our young captain won’t thank you for scattering her pretty little atoms all over the orbitals.”

  Rick grinned. “She is attractive, isn’t she? I don’t know how I didn’t notice when I came aboard.”

  “She is, I suppose,” Thorstein shrugged. “She’s not quite my type but that has nothing to do with the matter at hand. I’m shutting us down.”

  “No, wait.” Cal looked around the small compartment. “Trust me; we can tie this down.” He nodded at the wall to Thorstein’s left. “Grab that arc-tacker and come over here.”
>
  Thorstein hesitated.

  Rick gave him a confident smile. “This is more art than science Thor. Don’t worry about the read-out.” A holo-screen between them showed a thirty-percent probability of containment. If you believed the screen, then it was only a matter of time until failure.

  Thorstein grabbed the arc-tacker and approached Rick warily.

  “Get ready to lock it down.” Rick nodded at the loose emitter.

  The Midgaard engineer kneeled by the emitter ring and held the tacker to the edge of the base. “And what will you be doing?”

  Rick was testing out adjustments with his fourteen-second advantage, quickly sorting out the proper direction and amount of force needed. “This,” he muttered, nudging the top end of the spike to effect a minute adjustment of the loose emitter. “There!” he suddenly shouted. “Lock it down!”

  Hyped by his nerves, Thorstein pressed his finger down on the trigger without thought, creating a tiny arc that liquefied the metal of both the emitter base and the mounting ring. As his mind regained control of his hands, he began to move the unit along the edge of the plate, joining the two pieces of metal in a process that was an art in itself.

  He had to be careful not to let the electrodes get too close to the metal. If that happened, the arc-tacker would get stuck to the piece. Usually, you could work it loose, but when fine alignments were at risk…

  He finished and looked up at the screen. “Norns,” he cursed softly, turning to look at Rick in amazement. “Ninety-nine point eight?” He stared at the young Human, narrowing his gaze.

  “How in Niflheim did you manage that? There’s no way you could do that, unless…” His eyebrows dropped in the middle, head tilting slightly to the right. “Are you a seiderman?”

  “Seiderman?”

  “A man who practices seidr,” Thorstein replied, as though that made it any clearer. Seeing Rick’s incomprehension, he took a deep breath and framed his thoughts.

  “Seidr,” he began cautiously, “is the possession of a sensitivity to higher dimensions – the ability to see the future is one manifestation. The Norns themselves, the three maidens of Jötunheimer who tend the roots of Ydggrassill, are völur – women who practice the art.”

  His gaze slid down to the steel staff in Rick’s hand. “The word seidr refers to the distaff they used to spin men’s fates.”

  “I’ve never heard of seidr,” Rick admitted. “Is it a bad thing?”

  A noncommittal shrug. “Yes and no. Some are made uneasy by such abilities, fearing the practitioner has powers over them, and some consider it unmanly.” He grinned at the flash of anger in Rick’s eyes. “But Odin himself, our lawgiver, is a seiderman.”

  “And how do you feel about it?”

  Thorstein nodded at the containment array with a good-natured grin. “I’d say it’s a very manly art, when applied to an engine room!”

  “So our captain won’t mind?”

  “Mind?” Thorstein grunted in surprise. “She has the sight herself, though she prefers to be a warrior. That’s why she’s here on the Brisbane – learning the ropes before they give her a bigger ship.”

  “She can see the future?” Rick fought to hide his excitement. If true, then she was the first humanoid he’d met since leaving 3428 who had the ability.

  A nod. “It comes to her when it feels like it. She had us stow an extra hammock on this run but wouldn’t tell us why.” He waved a hand at Rick. “Then we get an emergency link telling us to come get you.”

  The iron spike in Rick’s hand slid through his fingers until the butt struck the floor. Freya had a different kind of sight. For her to know she’d be taking on a passenger, she would have had a pre-cognitive vision months in advance. Did she have a constant barrage of future awareness with such a huge lead time or did she get occasional flashes of insight?

  Thorstein headed for the forward hatch. “She doesn’t like to talk about it,” he warned, stopping at the still-closed hatch. “I’ve seen her break a man’s leg because he didn’t know when to shut his hole. Her family have been… strange with her since she started having the visions, so just leave it alone.”

  Nodding dumbly, Rick followed him to the bridge.

  “We’re ready to land,” Thorstein reported.

  Freya looked up and nodded. “What parts do we need?”

  “Nothing.” Thorstein grinned. “Thanks to my second engineer, here.” He jerked his head toward Rick. “He managed to get the emitter adjusted better than those worm-dung techs at the shipyard.”

  Freya frowned. “I’m no engineer,” she began, “but I’m pretty sure we don’t have the equipment for a ring calibration, let alone the room to store it, seeing as they had to remove the dorsal hull plating to do it last time.”

  Thorstein looked reluctant to explain, so Rick jumped in. He knew she didn’t care for the subject but he definitely wanted to open the topic with her.

  Even if she didn’t discuss it, he wanted her to know. “Thor seems to think I’m a seiderman.”

  Her eyes showed a brief flash of surprise but it quickly faded to something else. There was a haunted, pitying quality to her gaze.

  She turned to the helmsman. “Erik, take us down.”

  It became increasingly apparent, as they descended, that she would say no more about the matter but Rick stayed on the bridge anyway. This was his first landing on a planet and, when he said as much, Freya and the weapons officer looked at him in surprise, as he knew they would.

  “But there’s your own world,” she said, “and you went to Benthic…” She cut herself off. “Right. You don’t land on Benthic – you land at the counterweight and take an elevator.” She looked over her shoulder at him, the haunted eyes making his heart skip a beat. “What’s it like,” she asked, “riding an elevator under an ocean?”

  “It was pretty amazing,” Rick admitted, “but nothing like this.”

  Outside, the local sun took on a halo as they dropped into the outer reaches of the atmosphere.

  The ride down was relatively smooth compared to Humanity’s earliest efforts at returning to the surface of Earth. There was no need for heat shielding as the small craft made its slow, controlled descent on powerful maglev engines. Gravity was a light-weight compared to a planet’s electromagnetic field and the scout ship drifted down like a feather on a calm day.

  The settlement wasn’t what Rick had expected. Thorstein had talked about trading with the natives and he’d imagined thatched huts and primitive customs. The natives, however, were merely descendants of the first colonists, seeded there by the old Empire and then largely forgotten.

  The Brisbane put down at a ramshackle spaceport on the fringe of a small city that reminded him of the old west frontier towns he’d seen on movies in the Canal’s database.

  Concrete and metal structures had an air of neglect, as though they’d been built on a world that didn’t have the industries to repair them. Timber-framed pedways connected them above street level. Maglev vehicles shared the road with wooden carts, drawn by what passed for oxen on this planet.

  Citizens wore a bizarre mix of homespun cloth and modern textiles. Those who could afford to import new maglev vehicles were mostly dressed in modern clothing but Rick saw few of them in the low-rent area around the spaceport.

  And the place was an assault on the nose. A moldy odor pervaded the damp air – a pungent mix of dung from draft animals, hydraulics and ozone from vehicles, and tree resin from the surrounding forest.

  “The business district almost looks like a miniature of Xho’Khov,” Thorstein told him as they followed Freya and Erik into a bustling open-air-market. “Though it’s kind of seedy-looking.”

  “They depend on trade?” Rick asked absently, distracted by the dead animals hanging in the stalls on the left.

  The market was a jumbled rabbit warren of shoddily built shops. Most were simple wooden frames with corrugated steel sheets for a roof. Roughly half of them were further enclosed by walls.

&
nbsp; “Nobody even remembers why the Empire planted them here in the first place,” Thorstein said, stopping to turn a dead… something… to inspect the meat. “So the whole place would fall apart if it wasn’t on a minor shipping route. Ah, good! Emerie’s in today.”

  Rick followed Thorstein’s gaze to see Freya talking with a tall, strongly built man, possibly an Eesari, who looked to be the owner of one of the shops. Heavier carcasses hung above his counter and Rick stepped up to have a closer look, the hunter in him intrigued by the strange animals.

  He turned one of them to find an arrow hole. He looked up to find both Freya and Emerie looking at him.

  “We don’t buy off the rack,” Freya advised him in Midgaard. “Unless you’ve grown up here, your immune system won’t be able to handle the germs that grow on game meat as soon as you cut into it.”

  “Emerie keeps a clean room to service offworlders like us,” Erik explained with a nod to the doors behind the shopkeeper. “So we go out with him to make sure he’s using fresh game and not just shaving the outsides off an existing joint of meat.”

  “But what do you hunt them with?” Rick asked in Dheema, wanting Emerie to join the conversation. “It looks like you use a bow and I’m a bow hunter myself.”

  The Eesari chuckled, reaching up into the rafters of his awning.

  “He’s going to make you try his bow,” Freya warned him in Midgaard. “If you can draw it, he’ll loan you one so you can join the hunt but nobody I’ve ever heard of can get more than a few centimeters out of it.”

  She turned to Emerie, switching to Dheema. “This one’s a Human,” she advised. “You don’t need to humiliate him just to…”

  “No,” Rick interrupted. “I’d like to try it.”

  Emerie pulled the bow down, strung it, and handed it over with a wicked grin.

  Rick couldn’t hide his approval of the weapon. It was similar to his own back on 3428. It was a composite with a wood core, a layer of bone on the inside of the curves to resist in compression and a layer of sinew on the outside to resist in tension. It had a rich patina – testament to endless hours of polishing with animal fat.