“So the crew of Red Lurker commandeered the Arbitrage and used it to shift out of the system.”
“It is the logical conclusion from the evidence before us.”
They had arrived in the commander’s oversight compartment, just off the bridge. One of the two holographs on display was a rendering of the local stellar group. Olsirkos stared into it. “But where would they go? None of these destinations are useful to them, assuming, as we must, that whoever is now in control of Lurker was also behind switching the cryocells that were delivered to the Slaasriithi shift carrier.”
“That, too, is a logical conclusion.”
Olsirkos seemed to be grinding his molars. “But how is the hijacking of an Aboriginal shift-carrier that can barely reach Sigma Draconis useful to a group that has introduced saboteurs or confidential agents into the Terran legation to Beta Aquilae?”
“That is an excellent question. But there may be other elements in play, Olsirkos, and assets of which we have no knowledge. After all, the Srina who we must now presume to be in command of Red Lurker carries one of the last viable genelines of House Perekmeres.”
“A dead house, Honored Srin.”
“Yes, it is dead—now. But for many decades prior to its Extirpation, House Perekmeres supported our observation of human space in their guise as the Custodians’ assistants. It is possible they cached assets in this region of space, and that the knowledge of them was snuffed out of existence along with their geneline. Except, perhaps, for a few clever Evolved, who formulated plans to reunite here, far away from the direct oversight of the Great Houses and the Autarchs.”
Olsirkos reexamined the star chart. “If that is true, then their shift range could be much greater than that of the Arbitrage.”
“Exactly. And with such range, they might hope to intercept the legation on its way to Beta Aquilae, or, failing that, on its return. Either way, it is such an inspired and insanely bold ploy that it is all but unthinkable. Imagine: Perekmeres renegades hijacking Aboriginals we suborned during our infiltration of Earth’s megacorporations and governments. Brilliant. But they could not have done so without the aid of a sponsor.”
Olsirkos nodded. “These Perekmeres dogs knew which persons in Aboriginal cold cells were our suborned agents. They had the authorization and confirmation codes that identified them as legitimate authorities. They probably knew of collaborators aboard the Arbitrage.”
“Yes, megacorporate collaborators who were suborned at my orders.” Shethkador took a moment to ensure that the annoyance did not manifest outwardly. “A scattered remnant of an Extirpated House does not have access to such secrets. They had a sponsor with access to the relevant intelligence, inventories, and code-words.”
“Meaning that one of the other Houses—”
“Has elected to support the resurgence of House Perekmeres covertly, or has at least promised to do so. I suspect the sponsor ultimately intends to dispose of these renegades to eliminate any evidence that this plot was orchestrated at a higher level. But I suspect that the Perekmeres’ expect that.”
“But who among the Houses would wish to undermine our operations here?”
“Whoever is not happy with them.”
“Or with House Shethkador,” Olsirkos ventured.
Tlerek nodded approval at Olsirkos’ insight, frowned at its content, and thought, All too likely.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Southern extents of the Third Silver Tower; BD +02 4076 Two (“Disparity”)
Five days after the water-striders began paralleling the group—or, as Hwang quipped, “following Captain Riordan like tame ponies”—Caine pulled wearily to the top of the first significant slope they’d encountered since commencing their downriver trek. The trees parted, revealing that the river’s course straightened as it followed along the floor of a shallow valley. The flanking hills ultimately rose up into higher peaks, which pinched the river tightly between them in the far distance. Beyond which, if Riordan recalled his brief glimpses from the shuttle’s cockpit, it was only a short march to the shores of a long inlet that led ultimately to the southern reaches of Disparity’s equatorial seas.
Salunke, a few meters ahead, shaded her eyes, then pointed toward the peak-lined gateway through which the valley had to squeeze. “There, do you see it?”
Caine, vision blurry from the effort of the sustained march, squinted, saw a vertical spark of metal down near the base of the nearest left-hand peak. “What is it?” he panted.
Nasr Eid’s voice was excited. “It is a silver object, a tower of some kind.”
The rest of the group moved to his vantage point. An eager conversational a buzz rose up. The decision to head downriver, conceded to be the best path in the absence of other information but never embraced with particular confidence, was suddenly hailed as just short of oracular in its insight. Riordan started to chuckle, but coughed instead.
Macmillan drew close, glanced down. “How are you holding up?”
Caine, head hanging as he caught his breath, nodded.
“You don’t look, or sound, so good,” the Scotsman added.
“Might be bronchitis,” Riordan offered, straightening.
Xue shook his head as he passed. “That is not bronchitis, Captain. It sounds more akin to asthma.”
“I’m not asthmatic.”
Xue shrugged. “No undiagnosed adult is ever asthmatic. Until they are.”
“Yes, well—let’s just keep focused on making progress.”
Xue paused, scanning Riordan’s face. “We will make no progress if you collapse, Captain. We should rest.”
Riordan’s first impulse was to insist that he was fine, damn it, but that would be a lie. The shortness of breath he’d experienced the day after the crash had seemed to improve at first, but was now growing steadily. If he lied about it, he’d not only set a bad example, but be seen as unreasonable, as requiring forced rest. And if anyone started to force a leader to do anything, it usually spelled doom to their authority. But if I slow down the very people I am honor-bound to save, then what the hell am I—?
Dora Veriden had drifted forward, out of her rearguard position. Macmillan frowned. “Hey, if you’re up here, who’s watching our—?”
Caine waved him to silence, looked at Dora. “Something?”
She nodded faintly. “Our new friends are back. And as shy as ever.”
Macmillan lifted his rifle slightly. “Where?”
“Other side of the river this time. At about our eight o’clock. But there are more of them now. I think.”
Gaspard strolled over. “A problem?”
Macmillan nodded tightly. “The same beasties that started following us three days ago. Same sounds, same motions.”
“And you remain convinced that they are not the same creatures that chased us at the end of the second full day on planet?” He looked directly at Riordan.
“I remain doubtful, Ambassador. We haven’t seen them or any of their tracks, so it’s impossible to assert anything definitively. But they keep greater distance and they move differently.”
Veriden nodded. “These critters are not as fast as that pack of predators when they’re moving in a straight line. But what they lack in speed they make up for with agility.”
The ambassador nodded at Dora’s confirmation but never took his eyes off Riordan. “Very well, but what do you propose to do about them, Captain?”
Etienne Gaspard had greatly improved as a human being in Riordan’s eyes, but sometimes the diplomat still said things that made him sound like an utter prig. “Well, since they’re not coming forward to be recognized, I propose we just spend a few moments ignoring them and taking in the view.”
Gaspard raised an eyebrow. “Do you really think—?”
“He means,” Dora muttered into her employer’s ear, “that right now, we should allow most of our group to rest—and stay the hell out of our way.”
Riordan couldn’t repress a smile: Veriden was a pain in the ass, bu
t she was an extremely competent and insightful pain in the ass. “Meanwhile, Mr. Macmillan and Ms. Veriden will drift toward the forest behind us, because they are bored bored bored by all our chatter.”
“Right,” said Veriden and loped back off toward the rear of the column, looking pretty bored already.
Macmillan’s brow beetled, then rose. “Oh, yes,” he said, “I’m turribly, turribly bored.”
“Off you go, Keith. I’ll give you two the signal when one of them has come close enough for you to flank it and get a good look.”
“I’ll be waiting.” Macmillan wandered off, angling to the front of the column.
“Now Ambassador, why don’t you join me over here, where we have a great view of the valley?”
Gaspard did. They gazed at the many shades of green and no small amount of orange, violet, yellow, and black. After half a minute, the ambassador commented, almost casually, “Your breathing is becoming worse, Captain.”
“I am fi—”
“Spare me your brave denials. A blind man could see it with a cane. The question is, what are we to do about it?”
“Frankly, Ambassador, we have bigger problems than my respiratory infection. We are down to our last food and water. Two days from now, most everyone in this party is going to be staggering around from the lack of both. In five days, all but a few of us will be immobile. Once we solve the food and water problem, then we can worry about my ability to keep up.”
Gaspard nodded tightly. “I cannot argue the logic of that, but—”
“Ambassador.” Riordan waited for Gaspard to make eye contact. “I’m going to keep doing my job. I’m going to get us to safety.”
Gaspard glanced away, then nodded.
Riordan looked out over the valley, keeping an ear and an eye on the situation developing behind them. Veriden and Macmillan were drifting further apart, and closer to the tree-line.
As the river descended toward the valley, it was marked by intermittent but gentle rapids. Each bank’s flood margin had become meadows dotted with rushes resembling up-twisting orange helixes. Among those bright, motionless spirals flitted examples of the region’s most common animal: a wiry creature that recalled a flying squirrel crossed with a newt. They pursued and ate various insects that hovered near the margin dividing the exogenous species from their indigenous rivals.
Most species of the two biota did not interact; they ignored each other if they came close to their own borders and rarely crossed over. But in a few noteworthy cases, the rivalry became competition and ultimately violence. In the past few days, Riordan had seen a smaller variety of the predators he’d fended off circling a multi-eyed arboreal marsupial that was vaguely reminiscent of the Slaasriithi themselves. Hissing, clattering, screeching, the two species marked their respective territories until, as if by mutual agreement, they rushed together in a sudden tangle of bodies and flashing teeth—and then sped apart just as fast, neither appearing any worse for the wear.
Having now witnessed many similar scenes, Riordan understood why Yiithrii’ah’aash insisted that the story of the Slaasriithi had to be seen, not read. The legation would have certainly understood logical explanations of what they were witnessing: slow-motion terraforming that replaced the human tactic of supplantation with cooption. But they would not have realized that they were also witnessing the core truths of the Slaasriithi in action. This terraforming was not driven by economics or grand strategy or population pressures. It was an affirmation: of life, of death, of limitless time, of integration with a reality that transcended any one species or epoch. Consequently, there were no endless committee meetings over budgetary or procedural problems, there was no desperate concern about maintaining the political will to see projects to completion, there was no perpetual need to reinform, reinsure, and reexcite a voting populace that today’s path was, indeed, the right path. And above all, there was no conflation of the Slaasriithi’s objectives and the egos of those who were charged with attaining them over the course of decades, centuries, even millennia.
Riordan, relaxing from the exertions of the trail, enjoyed a slightly deeper breath and stared out across the increasingly misty valley: a planet so superficially similar to the green worlds of the Consolidated Terran Republic, yet strikingly different from its monocellular foundations up to its most complex organisms.
Some of which were apparently still tracking them. Riordan glanced over his shoulder, saw that Veriden had retraced the last one hundred meters covered by the group. Macmillan had made equivalent progress in the other direction. That separation would be sufficient for an effective flanking move. Riordan turned to Gaspard. “Ambassador, if you will be so good to run toward the woods when I do so—”
“Me?”
“Yes, you.”
“You mean, toward the animals following us?”
“That is exactly what I mean. Trackers as cautious as these will tend to scatter if confronted swiftly and by surprise. And if Keith or Dora manage to bring one or two down, that will dissuade these creatures even further.”
Gaspard stared wide-eyed into the foliage. “But I—”
“Etienne: this is not a matter for debate. Just do it—now!”
Veriden and Macmillan reacted to Riordan’s shout by turning and sprinting straight into the tree line. Caine and Gaspard, closer to where the group had halted, and further from the foliage, were longer in reaching its shadowy outer fringes. By which time, Macmillan was shouting:
“I’ve flushed them; they’re heading your way.”
“Dora?” yelled Caine through wracking gasps for air.
No report came from her.
But up ahead in the bush and in the trees, there was a surprising amount of motion. Most of it was withdrawing toward the taller, inland stands of bumbershoots and cone trees, but there was also some criss-crossing confusion as creatures fled from one human flanker, only to find themselves confronted by the other. Through a gap between two sapling-sized ferns, Caine saw one of these trapped creatures leap from the ground into the lower branches of a frond-tree, its long-limbed torso a blur of motion—and Riordan stopped, paralyzed by a memory:
Delta Pavonis Three. He was suddenly reliving the first moment he encountered the regressed Slaasriithi of that planet, glimpsed their gibbon-like leaps into the trees— Those motions were the same as these motions, right here—
“Macmillan, Veriden, stop! Stay where you are! Don’t move! And for Christ’s sake, don’t shoot!”
“What?” Macmillan shouted back at Caine; he sounded slightly annoyed.
“Why?” cried Veriden; she sounded downright pissed.
“These aren’t animals.”
“Then what are they?” asked Macmillan.
But Veriden had obviously had an epiphany of her own. “Shit,” she said.
Deeper in the forest and overhead, the sounds—a panicked rout in the face of an unexpected charge—diminished, the noises quieting more rapidly than could be explained by dwindling into the distance.
“Now what?” Veriden hissed from almost fifteen meters away.
“Now we wait,” Caine answered with no more volume than was necessary.
Chapter Forty
Southern extents of the Third Silver Tower; BD +02 4076 Two (“Disparity”)
Akin to Riordan’s initial encounter with the regressed Slaasriithi on Delta Pavonis Three, the passage of time seemed impossibly dilatory. And when Veriden shifted impatiently, Riordan was gratified to see Gaspard make a savage gesture of cessation in her direction.
A faint movement stirred in the bush, well ahead of Caine.
“Something coming,” Macmillan muttered.
Riordan nodded. “Let it come. Lower your rifle. And stay where you are.” Caine was about to suggest that the Scotsman should also try to relax when a great wave of calm flowed through not just his mind, but his body—which Riordan reflexively resisted, much the same way he would shake off drowsiness when driving at night.
“It is not nec
essary that you use friendship spores on us,” he said calmly into the underbrush ahead.
The brush parted. A Slaasriithi of Yiithrii’ah’aash’s general physiology and size appeared. Its pelt was somewhat darker, it wore a backpack, and its finger-tendrils were festooned with numerous control rings akin to those the legation had seen used on the shift-carrier. “I believe you mean Amity spores,” said a pleasant but machine-generated voice from the Slaasriithi’s backpack, “although the meaning is similar. However, I did not project amity spores upon you. That would compromise your freedom of action and will.”
“Then what did you use?”
“A combination of relief and rapport spores.”
“Rapport sounds as though it might influence one’s will, as well,” Gaspard pointed out as Veriden and Macmillan drew closer.
“It does not. It maximizes”—the computer-generated voice uttered a set of meaningless twitters and squawks—“between species which otherwise lack a shared medium of communication. Such as our two species.”
“Yiithrii’ah’aash seems to understand us just fine without a magic box.” Veriden’s voice was sharp, cautious.
“Yiithrii’ah’aash? Is he the Prime Ratiocinator who directs the actions of the Tidal-Drift-”—more unintelligible squeaks and yowls from the backpack—“to-Shore-of-Stars?”
“Eh?” grunted Macmillan.
Caine understood. “Is that the name of Yiithrii’ah’aash’s shift-carrier?”
“Yes. I am not well informed in the matter of Yiithrii’ah’aash’s mission here or your identities, other than that you are humans who have been invited to travel on to our homeworld.”
“And that someone is trying to kill us all.”
“Yes. This also we have deduced.”
“Have deduced?” Veriden shouted. “What, wasn’t it obvious enough when ships are getting blown to pieces right over your heads?”
The Slaasriithi seemed to start backwards slightly. “Your tone is one of agitation. I am unsure what I have—”
“It has been a very trying time for us,” Caine interrupted. “Several of us who crashed in our shuttle were killed, several others wounded.”
Raising Caine - eARC Page 40
