The Dark Ascent

by Walter H Hunt

  "I knew, though, that if I said anything it'd be what they wanted, not what I wanted. So I kept quiet."

  "You were angry," Jackie said.

  "You're damn right I was angry."

  Jackie could see it in Barbara's face as she looked out at her heavily damaged carrier.

  "I thought, 'It's over, I'm going to die. But I'm going to take them along with me.'"

  "Could they hear that?" Jackie asked.

  "I'd guess so. Then Owen Garrett came onto the bridge and shot the—the thing that had taken the place of my watch helmsman. They'd been arguing what to do, then they went away entirely. They even stopped firing weapons."

  "That's when I stabbed Shrnu'u HeGa'u. It must've disrupted the hell out of their Sensitives."

  "All I knew was that I could move again," Barbara said. "So I moved and did an emergency maneuver."

  Jackie didn't comment but looked away, gripping the rail.

  "A credit for your thoughts," Barbara said.

  "About what they're worth, too. Look, I don't expect to be too long on this errand. I'll be back and maybe we can put our heads together to see what we've learned."

  "All right. Fair winds, and all that." Barbara sketched a salute, then extended a hand. Jackie turned and gripped it with both of hers, feeling grounded in reality.

  "Watch yourself, Thane," she told Barbara.

  "You too, Hero," MacEwan said, and walked off the bridge, on her way to her gig.

  Chapter 24

  Mya'ar HeChra generally slept soundly and well. He had long since accustomed himself to the crashing of waves on the shore beneath the sprawling diplomatic enclosure of the People on the western shore of Oahu. But tonight something had awoken him. He could not recapture the rhythms of his own Inner Peace to return to sleep.

  His gyu'u and his inner perception could just about pinpoint the time but could not find the reason. It troubled him in a disturbing, elusive way, which bothers all Sensitives: something marked but somehow not recognized.

  He donned a robe and made his way to the lanai, silently cursing the wretched gravity here on Terra. Their single moon was half in shadow and the stars were exceptionally clear and bright; even the lights of the sprawling seaborne food-gathering platforms did little to interfere with the view.

  What had woken him up, a sixteenth of a sun ago? It left him ill-at-ease, like the sentinel who looks aside for a moment and feels sure that something has slipped past his guard. He was sure it was something of the Deceiver: not the sharp tang of an insectoid alien, though there were a few on Oahu even now. (Though the emperor, esLi be praised, was protected from those—they were spies, nothing more.) No, he was sure that it was a servant of esGa'u. Newly arrived, he guessed. Perhaps it was He of the Dancing Blade himself, though Mya'ar thought it unlikely—that One reserved his plottings these days for se Jackie.

  He took a few more moments to consider and then called for his alHyu. An aircar would have him at Diamond Head in another sixteenth of a sun. There would be no more sleep tonight.

  In an elegantly furnished apartment sixty floors above the beautiful natural lagoon at Hanauma Bay, just east of the Imperial enclosure at Diamond Head, someone else was also suffering a sleepless night. But here there was no philosophical musing, no Sensitive's inner reason bringing about the insomnia; it was a matter of mundane concern.

  A bit less at ease with himself, a bit less sober than he customarily wished, Hansie Sharpe sat in a plush wing chair. He was alone, and decidedly miserable. It had been a difficult last few weeks here, though his hosts—the impossibly wealthy and punctiliously polite Natan and Aliya Abu Bakr—had continued to insist that he could stay for as long as he wished. They were off-planet at the moment, in mourning for their nephew who had been lost at the First Battle of Adrianople.

  Their generosity had gone from being a godsend, to a relief . . . to, finally, more and more of a burden. At court Hansie had tried every avenue and utilized every favor he had left, but it was increasingly obvious to him that he had no more chance for Imperial favor than any of the dozens of others who had managed to get here after the war swept them away from their own private comforts.

  "You are a parasite," he told himself. The slightly disheveled reflection looked back at him from the glass doors that gave out onto the Hawaiian night. "That's all you are. A bloody parasite."

  There: He'd said it. Far away from Cle'eru, he was bereft of his many creature comforts—no leverage, no money to speak of, no more strings to pull and no more credit to cash in. In other words, no future.

  Beyond the glass doors, the Pacific Ocean stretched off into infinity. It was a hundred and eighty meters down from here: straight down, with the low-friction surface of the Lunalilo Gevway at the bottom of the building.

  He'd never thought about suicide before; when his voice had been one that people listened to, he'd dismissed it as the act of a weakling or someone with limited creativity, unable to see obvious choices.

  He'd also never felt so helpless before, so lacking in direction. Suddenly the prospect of leaving this all behind seemed incredibly appealing.

  Something interrupted his reverie. There was a flash of light, like a phosphor surging and then going out. He stood up abruptly and turned, and to his surprise, saw someone in the apartment standing at his . . . his hosts' . . . sideboard, pouring himself a drink.

  "Who the hell are you?" Hansie wanted to know.

  "Someone who's a bit thirsty." The man—a slightly-built, almost cadaverous-looking man of middle stature, his hair cut in military fashion—turned to face him. "Can I pour you one, Hansie?"

  "Do I . . . know you?"

  "I'll take that as a yes." The stranger poured another tumblerful of liquor and walked across the apartment and handed to him. "I'm a friend," he said, adding, "I'd guess I got here just in time."

  "Meaning—?"

  The stranger again walked across the room, until he reached the glass doors. He seemed to spend a moment contemplating the moon-flecked waves of the ocean far below. "Really, Hansie, a swan dive into the gevway would be such a mess."

  Hansie almost dropped his glass. He steadied himself and took a sip instead.

  "There's no reason for that, though. This is your lucky day." The stranger took a long drink and then casually set his glass on the mantelpiece above the decorative fireplace. He reached into the pocket of his blazer and withdrew a small box, perhaps five by ten centimeters, and set it on an end table next to Hansie's armchair.

  Hansie looked from the stranger to the box and back again.

  "Go on," the other said. "Open it."

  Hansie set down his glass and picked up the little box and slid it open as if he were handling some kind of poisonous snake. (Of course, he'd never done anything of the sort in his life.)

  Inside, he found two small ampoules and an epidermal syringe. One ampoule held a pale drop of—something?—in a clear solution, with a female symbol—a circle with a cross below—on the cap. The other held only the clear solution and had a male symbol—a circle with an arrow extending outward—atop it.

  It wasn't too hard to figure out what the stranger had in mind.

  "Why me?"

  "Why not?"

  "Who's . . . ?" Hansie tapped the cap of the female ampoule with one perfectly manicured finger.

  "Does it matter?"

  "Why the hell wouldn't it? Of course it matters . . . You want some of my genetic material. I can only assume you're planning to—"

  "That's right," the stranger interrupted. "And you're going to help me do it. Frankly, no: the identity of the other parent shouldn't matter to you."

  "Why might I be willing to do such a thing?"

  The stranger named a monetary figure. "All you have to do is to use the syringe and then take this little box to a birthing-lab and deposit it. No need to worry about expense. No need to worry about the offspring, either—unless you care. I know you don't have any heirs of your own body; perhaps you'd like a son after all this
time."

  "Or a daughter," Hansie said.

  "A son," the stranger said. His face, which had held a smile just short of a smirk throughout the entire conversation, suddenly became cold as stone.

  "As generous as your offer might be, I'm . . . not accustomed to selling myself in this way. I do have a few standards left."

  "I see." The stranger walked back to the mantelpiece and took another sip from his drink. "Well, there are always alternatives.

  "Sumeria," he said suddenly, and the glass doors slid silently apart in response to the voice activation code. The faint breezes of the night, and the scent of flowers, wafted into the room.

  Hansie's stomach jolted. The keyword had been spoken in a flawless imitation of his own voice. Only Natan and Aliya and himself were keyed to have access—and perhaps still Amir, their dead nephew as well.

  "Go ahead," the stranger said quietly. "This is only a small errand. The rewards are great. But if you'd rather contemplate the alternatives—" He walked quickly over to Hansie, took the box out of his hands, and shut it.

  It took only a moment for Hansie to grab the box back from the stranger. "No. No, wait. It isn't like that. It's just—"

  "It's just what?"

  "It's . . . not about the money."

  "I see." The stranger folded his arms across his chest. "What's it about, then?"

  "I've . . . been trying to get an Imperial appointment. A diplomatic posting. A government position. God knows, I'm not particular at this point. I don't suppose—"

  The other let a smile creep back onto his face. "Oh, is that all." He reached into an inner pocket. "You want this." He handed Hansie a folded piece of Imperial stationery.

  Hansie could see the seal through the stationery, but he calmly made himself take it and unfold it. It was an Imperial order, an assignment for a minor governorship. It was dated for early next week.

  In fancy embossed letters the appointment read: sir johannes xavier sharpe.

  He almost dropped it. His hands were shaking as he set it carefully on the table and took up his glass.

  "Mohenjo Daro," the stranger said, in Hansie's voice. The glass doors closed again and it was quiet.

  "And all I have to do . . ."

  "A little bit of your genetic material. Deliver the box to Shikoku Labs in the Olympia Island Arcology near SeaTac. Half a day, round-trip. And if it doesn't touch your honor too much, you can have the money, as well. No difference to me or my employers."

  "I'll have to consider it."

  "Five minutes. I'll wait."

  In the end, it didn't take that long for Hansie to make up his mind.

  With ostrogrophic data in hand, Pyotr calculated a least-energy single jump to the system that had been left in Fair Damsel's navcomp. There was no need to take any extra risks; his flight plan placed the ship a billion kilometers from the center of the gravity well, outside the seventh orbital.

  As they emerged from jump, Dan immediately engaged the ship's defensive fields. He had gunnery slaved to the pilot's board, and was ready to acquire any target that might be waiting for him. Jackie had the gyaryu ready and in hand, but wasn't sure what to expect.

  There was nothing. Neither enemy vessels nor attacks by esGa'uYal were forthcoming.

  "All right," Dan said, after a few moments. "This is nice."

  He glanced aside to Jackie, who was looking directly at the pilot's board. "Why don't you put it away now?"

  "Seven planets," Jackie said, not answering him. "One habitable." She lowered the sword but didn't put it in its scabbard. "I'd guess we should go there."

  "I always knew you had a talent the Imperial Grand Survey could use," Pyotr said. "Habitable planet. You think we should go there, huh? Dan?"

  "All ahead one-third, and shut up," Dan said.

  "One-third." Pyotr frowned, but his heart wasn't in the argument.

  It took six hours to move into the gravity well, during which the crew of Fair Damsel had a chance to thoroughly chart the system. There were some peculiarities that the IGS records hadn't shown: For example, like most "young" star systems—Main Sequence stars with planets capable of bearing life—the system had a large Oort cloud a few light-days from the primary. Close observation showed that the cloud was active and unstable, with a higher-than-expected number of comets following long, interplanetary orbits.

  One comet was no more than a hundred million kilometers from the place they emerged—no real danger, but close enough to affect the Muir limit of the calculated jump point. The survey, almost certainly conducted by an unmanned probe, had taken no note of it.

  When they were most of the way into the gravity well, Dan and Jackie came back onto the bridge. Dan found a seat at the engineering station, leaving Sonja Torrijos in the pilot's chair.

  Pyotr Ngo and Ray Li were standing over the pilot's board, running some sort of simulation. A graphic hung in midair, showing some object describing a long arc through and out of the system.

  "Comet," Jackie said, coming down to stand beside Ray and Pyotr and noting the data annotations hanging in midair.

  "Got it in one, Admiral," Pyotr said. "That's the one that we noticed when we jumped insystem. Look at this." He touched the board at the nav station and the simulation moved. The object moved to a position well beyond the last orbital, light- minutes beyond the jump point. As they watched, it moved along the projected track.

  Suddenly Pyotr said, "Pause simulation." The object stopped, display icons popping up next to it. "Magnify one hundred."

  The object resolved to a comet-image, and the band of light expanded to show a small arc. The rest of the system faded out of view.

  A few centimeters from the position of the comet-image was a hazy red cube, marking the approximate volume of the jump point.

  "It wasn't that close when we came in."

  "No, not when we got here," Ray Li said. "But it was that close—only a few hundred kilometers from the optimal center of the jump point—at this point in its trajectory. That was sometime in January 2386, about eleven years ago. We ran this sim back two hundred years, and this is the only time it was this close. Other than this approach, it never synched by more than fifteen thousand klicks."

  "Was it pulled here somehow?" Dan asked.

  "I don't think so," Ray answered, "unless it was pulled back afterward. But the one time it coincided with the jump point, it reduced the Muir limit by two-thirds."

  "And anyone emerging from jump—"

  "You mean, if the jump field didn't evert them or blow their ship apart?" Pyotr scowled. "I can't imagine. Hull breaches, system failures. Maybe even a misjump, throwing them to some other system or even into deep space. Not too much empirical evidence for this sort of thing."

  "Looks like you've got enough material to write a paper."

  "Yeah. Great. But there's more. End simulation," Pyotr said, gesturing at the pilot's board. A planetary display sprang into view.

  "This is planet five, the orbital just beyond the habitable world. Pretty barren piece of rock, too dense to have any kind of livable gravity. Not much atmosphere.

  "Now, take a look at this. We noticed this first, which got us looking at the comet." He touched the board. "Change view to center on longitude sixty west."

  The planet rotated slowly to show a deep, irregular scar several kilometers long, stretched across the pockmarked and pitted face of the barren rock. It was as if someone had drawn a glyph on its face.

  "Magnification two hundred."

  Closer up, it looked more like a burn scar—a plasma torpedo-track slicing across the surface of the planet, forming a long, gouged canyon.

  "Magnification eight hundred."

  Even closer, at about the limit of Fair Damsel's equipment, it was obvious what they were looking at.

  "That's a ship, or what's left of it," Jackie said. "Let me guess. There's a trajectory from the jump point to the planet."

  "It was at perigee when the comet made close approach. There's a reasonabl
y straight line from the jump point to the planetary surface, right about at this area of the surface." He pointed to the other end of the track. "I made some assumptions about the ship's incoming vector; there are only a handful of values that fit the equation.

  "I'll bet you that drink I owe you, Admiral, that the ship spread across that landscape, jumped from the direction of the zor Core Stars about eleven years ago."

  "Could anyone have survived?"

  "Not aboard that." Pyotr jerked his thumb at the image. "But in a life-pod, maybe . . . But only if they reached planet four."

  "Lost Ones," Jackie said. "There are no FTL comms in a life-pod. If they were badly damaged when they jumped in, there might have been no way to comm in an emergency. Once they were in a pod it would've been out of the question."

  "This happened eleven years ago," Dan said. "There aren't likely to be any survivors."

  "This chain of speculation leads nowhere," Ray said. "Except maybe to planet four."

  Jackie put her hand on the hilt of the gyaryu. "Stone sent us here for a reason: Something is here for us to find."

  It only took a few orbits around the habitable planet for Fair Damsel to locate the settlement. It was on a continent that spanned the equator, in a hilly range near the shore of a large inland lagoon. The gravity was just over half a Standard g. A meteorological survey showed a very moderate weather pattern.

  "It's a paradise," Dan said, looking over the data. "If there are zor here, it's temperate enough to make them comfortable. The gravity lets them fly. From the scan, it looks like they've done pretty well for themselves."

  "Except for one thing," Jackie said, after a moment. "They've been here for eleven years, isolated and out of touch with the People. But here's what doesn't fit: The ship must have been badly damaged when they came out of jump and they may have had to make an emergency landing. But they should've been rescued by now."

  "If this wasn't their original destination," Pyotr said, "it would've been like finding a drop of water in an ocean. There must be thousands of systems in the IGS database—it would've taken years to find them."