—That is due right now! Agnata realized with a gulp. It was a rushed transfer, one which she’d been pulled out of her bunk to expedite. And, expected or not, she insisted that her work be invariably perfect, which is probably why the duty officer of the RFS Ladoga had interrupted her dreams of hiking in the Carpathian mountains to handle it.
Well, that and her security clearance, which was evidently why the D.O. had sent her down here without even one deck-hand to help her. She glanced at two of the cryopods, the ones that could not have been released without her direct electronic countersign. Clearly, this was not just any shuffling of near-frozen personnel.
The lights in the cargo bay’s control room strobed at the same moment that orange tabs began flashing on the main control panel: the TOCIO lighter had arrived in the approach envelope for docking at her bay. She toggled the secure circuit: “This RFSS Ladoga, bay control D-8, awaiting authorization code.”
“This TOCIO lighter, B-114. I am in your envelope and transmitting code.”
Agnata’s computer recognized the code. “Accepted. Stand by to commence hard dock.”
“Standing by.”
Agnata hit the auto-docking touchpad, split her attention between monitoring the actual process through the glass panel of her control booth and scanning the telemetry data on her overwatch monitor. The flashing red lights in the outer bay—the part of the loading platform that could open directly unto space—doubled in speed as the muted rush of evacuating air diminished. The relatively small bulkhead doors retracted, revealing a slowly widening rectangle of star-strewn space, the center of which was dominated by a roll-on/roll-off TOCIO lighter. A brief nimbus of thrust limned its stern and the craft drifted forward slowly, the pilot counting down the meters over the comm channel. When the pilot reached the one meter mark, she pulsed the forward attitude control rockets: terminal braking. The craft drifted to a halt a few centimeters away from the cargo bay’s outer coaming, from which four articulated clasps reached out and snugged the lighter against the docking sleeve. As the sleeve started inflating and the so-called “hard rim” clutched the nose of the lighter, the pilot signaled the end of the process: “My instruments show hard dock.”
“Mine also,” Agnata replied. “I shall meet you at the inner bay door.”
“We’ll be there within the minute.”
The pilot had not lied: she and her sizeable, silent cargo-handler were waiting by the time Agnata arrived to check their clearances and cycle them into the actual lading spaces of the Ladoga. She indicated the three loaded standard robopallets and then the partially loaded secure robopallet, which was framed in red and yellow stipes. The pilot strolled past the lashed-down cryopods, aiming her data-slate at each until the inventory numbers matched and showed green. However, at the secure robopallet, the screen of her dataslate flashed red. “This is incorrect,” she muttered, removing her space helmet.
Although protocols dictated that full vaccuum gear be worn and sealed at all times in both inner and outer bays, it was traditional courtesy to remove helmets and converse in real air if an exchange was going to be anything other than perfunctory. Agnata removed her own helmet. “What seems to be the problem?”
“Inventory number mismatch. These two secure cryocells: they’re the wrong ones.”
Agnata shook her head. “That is not possible. I checked the physical labels against the inventory code, and then against the order tear sheet that came in from Lord Admiral Halifax.”
“Well, the chips in both of those cryocells are not recognizing their inventory code. Unless—could the physical labels have been switched?”
Agnata started. “It is unlikely—but it is possible.” She moved forward, bending over to inspect the top surface of the first cryocell more closely. “Wait a moment. I shall check to see if the labels have been rebonded to the surface of the—”
Lightning exploded between her temples, froze her, made the grinding of her own teeth fade—
* * *
The pilot nodded to her assistant. After he removed the livestock stunner from the back of the Russlavic cargo-chief’s reddening neck, she tossed her head toward the mass of stacked containers. “Find the two cryocells we need.”
The hulking cargo-handler nodded, started to move off with the secure robopallet. “Do I refile these, or—?”
“Not where they belong. Put them in the holding cage for damaged cargo and pull their lading chips.”
“But then the manifest updating system won’t read them, will show them missing.”
“That’s the idea. Now hurry.”
The pilot ran an implant scanner over the pale, unmoving cargo-chief, detected the Russlavic-standard transponder-biorelay in her left tricep. She zipped down that sleeve, then removed a small grey container and a circular scalpel from her own breast pocket. She swiftly scooped out the device located in Agnata’s arm, and dropped it into the container, which was half filled with a nutrient medium surrounding a pulsing EM emitter. It was a sophisticated underworld method for keeping a biomonitor from signaling complete failure—until the emitter’s battery ran out, at least.
Agnata moaned softly, one hand rising toward the red hole that had been cut into her arm.
The pilot’s assistant returned with two new cryocells on the secure robopallet. “I’ll load those,” she said, “you take care of her.”
“Take care—?” He stopped, probably comprehending, but not wanting to.
“Yes. We’re going to take her with us. But it would be needlessly cruel to dump her into vacuum while she’s still alive. Take care of her with that.” The pilot nodded at the livestock stunner, started guiding the robopallet toward the outer bay, their lighter, and their rendezvous at the Slaasriithi ship.
“But I—I’ve never killed a woman.” The assistant’s massive shoulders were slumped.
The pilot rolled her eyes. “You’ll get used to it. Now get going; we don’t have a lot of time.”
* * *
When their armored shuttle came about for nose-first docking, Caine was not immediately certain he was looking at the Slaasriithi shift-carrier. Although it was clearly formed from metals and composites, it did not look mechanical. “It’s so smooth,” he wondered aloud. “It almost appears as though—”
“—as though it was grown, not built or manufactured,” Ben Hwang finished, nodding.
Sukhinin stared sidelong at the two of them. “Gentlemen, I do not pretend to have much grounding in the life sciences, but of this I may assure you: that vehicle is not some great space-plant.”
Downing grinned. “No, but I suspect Slaasriithi metallurgy—probably material sciences in general—employ entirely different processes than ours. Hopefully,” he finished, glancing at Caine and Hwang, “that’s part of the information you’ll bring back home.”
Caine nodded, looked for the complicated and diverse structures found at the bow of any human shift carrier but saw none of them. Instead, a large silver sphere capped the keel: almost certainly the command and control section. Starting just behind it was a stack of toruses which resembled a keel-enclosing column of immense, brushed-chrome donuts. They were set off at points by symmetrically arrayed metallic or composite bubbles, and even smaller bean-shaped objects.
As they watched, one of the donuts split into two half-rings. Each half was pushed outward slowly from the keel by what appeared to be self-extruding composite-filament shafts. Once at full extension, the donut halves started rotating around the keel.
Downing shook his head. “Well, that’s a different way to create a gravity-equivalent environment.”
“Look at their cargo containers,” Hwang added, pointing back toward the waist of the craft. “Like something bees would build.”
Instead of the heavily built cargo frames and docking cradles of human shift carriers, the Slaasriithi craft used various permutations upon honeycombs and hexagons. The keel was, itself, a cluster of hexagonal shafts: it was as if the Giant’s Causeway of Ireland had be
en reformed into a kilometer-long pole. Shorter hexagonal sections, probably cargo containers, were affixed along its length, reprising the keel’s own shape. The sections were subdivided into segments, each juncture joined and reinforced by a substance akin the composite which had extruded from the hull to deploy the half-donut rotational habitats. And aft, where a human ships’ drives, power plants and even fuel tanks tended to accrue in boxy agglomerations, the Slaasriithi ship was distinguished by symmetric clusters of spheres, all seamless and perfect.
“It doesn’t look real,” Riordan murmured.
“Yes,” Downing agreed. “It has a rather impressionist feel to it. Something Magritte might have imagined.”
Hwang was smiling. “I wonder what our ships must look like to them?”
“Great angular monstrosities,” Sukhinin pronounced, then pointed. “This should be interesting.”
Caine and the others followed the vector implied by his index finger. The tug carrying Caine’s and Ben’s habmod was approaching the bow of the Slaasriithi ship, cruising slowly past the fat silver toruses.
Halfway toward the large silver sphere at the bow, one of the smaller spheres began moving out from the keel. The tug angled sharply towards it, maneuvered so that the human habmod—a comparatively inelegant tin can—was poised next to the aft surface of the sphere. It held that position.
Caine scanned the rest of the Slaasriithi ship: no other motion. No ROVs or other craft were on their way to help with the attachment of the module—which was looking damned near impossible.
Until Ben Hwang chuckled. “Well, that’s an odd way to dock a module.” He pointed.
Six small, equally spaced extrusions were emerging from the rear of the sphere, reaching to make contact with the habmod.
Caine stared. “Is it growing the docking interface?”
Hwang frowned. “I don’t think it’s growing, at least not the way we’d mean it. But it seems the Slaasriithi have materials that synergize mechanical and biological properties. Look: those extrusions resemble the racks holding their cargo tubes in place: six parallel ribs projecting backward from the vertices of a hexagon, with secondary extrusions stretching between them. When they’re done, they will have woven a basket around our habmod.”
Sukhinin nodded, stood away from the gallery window. “We are nearing the point where we shall release your transfer module to a Slaasriithi tug, and I am thirty minutes overdue for my final conference with Consul Visser. Doctor, Caine: I wish you the best of luck and safe travels. Richard, you shall continue to brief me on local intelligence matters during our return trip?”
“I’ll be right behind you, Vassily.” As Sukhinin exited, Downing turned to Riordan and Hwang. “Well, chaps, I can’t say I envy you.”
Caine hooked a thumb over his shoulder. “You mean because we’re sailing off into the great unknown on the SS Magritte?”
Richard smiled. “Well, that too. But truth be told, I was thinking of travelling with Gaspard. Beastly duty, that.”
Hwang smiled. “I’m sure we shall manage.” He put out a hand. “Safe travels home, Richard.”
As Downing shook Hwang’s hand, Caine found himself unable to keep thoughts of “home” under the tight control he had exerted since being roused from cold sleep only seventy-two hours earlier. Images of Elena Corcoran—and their son, Connor—displaced what his eyes were showing him. “I’d like to get home, too. Pick up where I left off with Elena. Start being a father to Connor.” Pushing aside the sudden homesickness, Caine stuck out his hand as well, did not care, at least momentarily, that Richard Downing hardly deserved a fond farewell from him.
But when Caine mentioned the lover and son he had left behind, Richard glanced away quickly, feigned interest in the now fully-loaded—or would that be encysted?—habitation module. “They’ll be ready to launch your transfer module any minute now.” He let his eyes graze briefly across Riordan’s. “Safe travels, Caine.”
If Downing had left the room any more quickly, his stroll would have qualified as a trot.
“Odd,” observed Ben Hwang. “I wonder what troubled him?”
Caine shrugged. “His conscience, probably.”
“Yes, but why just now?”
Caine said nothing, but silently agreed: yes, why just now?
The almost mythological outlines of the Slaasriithi shift carrier loomed before them as they awaited the two-minute warning to board the transfer module that would convey them to the alien ship.
PART TWO
June–September 2120
Chapter Fifteen
Near gas giants; all systems from V 1581 to GJ 1248
The bridge of the Arbitrage was packed tight with the Lurkers’ crew. Only the two low-breed aspirants to Elevation, Jesel and Suzruzh, were absent, ensuring that the Aboriginals remained locked in their quarters. Nezdeh rose into the microgravity. “We have finalized our plans.” She nodded toward Idrem.
He activated his beltcom’s projector: eight wire-thin arms emerged from the top of the unit. A moment later, a crude, semi-flat holograph was floating a meter above it. The image was a stylized Aboriginal graphic depicting the refueling operations of the Arbitrage. “Attend. This ship was to conduct two to three more days of fuel harvesting here at V1581.4. It was then scheduled to break orbit and head for its prearranged shift point to Sigma Draconis, here.” Idrem gestured toward a pulsing cross-hairs symbol, far beyond the heliopause. “It would have taken them five weeks to reach this point at an approximate velocity of zero point two cee: a total of thirty-eight days from now. Keeping to that schedule would prevent the Aboriginals in this system from suspecting that the Arbitrage has been seized.
“However, we may no longer do so.” Idrem brought up a schematic of the shift-carrier. “In addition to minor damage that our attacks inflicted upon this hull’s fuel handling capacity, we also destroyed one of the tanker/tenders when the Aboriginals attempted to ram us with it.”
Tegrese frowned. “So the Aboriginals back at the second planet will detect and inspect this refueling delay.”
“They would notice it eventually, but we will be sure to report it before then.”
Zurur Deosketer sounded skeptical. “Will the Aboriginals trust a report that does not come from the captain of record?”
Brenlor smiled. “No, but fortunately, the Aboriginal captain will make the report.”
“The Aboriginal captain is dead.”
“His voice is not.”
Idrem expanded upon Brenlor’s response. “The Aboriginals record all communiqués. So, once we have recalibrated the comm array on the Red Lurker to emulate the Arbitrage’s, we shall send a damage report and revised mission timeline using edited clips of the voice of the dead captain. The Aboriginal force back at Planet Two will have questions. But given the transmission delay of almost twenty minutes, it will not seem unusual that some other member of the command staff would answer. Accordingly, Kozakowski will reply as we instruct.”
“Consequently, the Arbitrage shall resume her current timetable with a four or five day delay. But she shall never arrive at Sigma Draconis.” Idrem waved his hand over his beltcom: a glittering three-dimensional array of the stars within fifteen light years floated before them. He pointed toward one incarnadine chip: it pulsed as his finger neared it. “Our present location.” He moved his finger until it rested on an orange-yellow dot, which also bloomed. “Sigma Draconis; just under 8.3 light years. But our actual destination is here”—he pointed at a more distant, dual-lobed red spot—“GJ 1230. It has other names as well, all equally uninspiring.”
Tegrese squinted, frowned. “It is almost twelve light years from this system. How shall we reach it? This wretched hull can barely shift two-thirds of that distance.”
“That is true, presuming it is unaided.” Brenlor smiled. “I told you at the outset that six other Aspirants, soon to be Evolved, would join us. What I neglected to mention is what they would be bringing with them.” He swept his hand over Idrem’s be
ltcom.
A new image appeared next to the three-dimensional star map: a blocklike spacecraft, as uninspiring to the eye as the Aboriginal star names were to the ear. But the Ktor reacted as if it was an object of surpassing beauty, just as Nezdeh had known they would.
“A shift-tug!” Ulpreln almost laughed. “An old one—almost two centuries, from the look of the thermionic radiator grid—but still, that should give us ample shift range.”
“Almost twelve and a half light years,” Brenlor confirmed. “She and the six huscarls manning her are in this system already. She will rendezvous with us in four weeks.”
Vranut folded his arms. “And how is it that a Ktor tug happens to be in such a convenient location, Brenlor?”
Brenlor seemed to approve of Vranut’s cynicism. “An excellent question. And here is the excellent answer: it was part of our Earth-related operations more than a century ago.”
Vranut’s eyebrows elevated slightly. “It helped position the Doomsday Rock?”
“No, it was not part of our own House’s covert forces. The Autarchs ordered the tug to support the Dornaani Custodians in their monitoring of the Aboriginals. It was listed as lost due to shift-drive failure.”
Nezdeh waved a hand at the fuel skimmers in their berths. “Our one irremediable operational weakness is the Arbitrage’s damaged, and primitive, refueling technologies. We will expend considerable time taking on hydrogen between shifts.”
“Yes,” Vranut countered carefully, “but we will also require less time to preaccelerate, once we have rendezvoused with our tug and its anti-matter drives.”
Nezdeh nodded. “Our per-system turn around time will shrink to approximately ten days. Technical intelligence estimates that the Slaasriithi turn around is twelve days. With that two day advantage, we should be able to overtake our target and so, begin to both restore and avenge our Extirpated House.”
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