Best regards,
Gilliam Tripsilion Nulth
Colm’s jaw dropped.
The goddamn queazel.
He stubbed out his cigarette and read the message again.
Opportunity ... compensation ...
“Dodgy as hell,” he said aloud.
The formal tone of the queazel’s written English, and its purposeful vagueness, tripped Colm’s scam radar. Actually, it might be worse than that. He had suspected all along that the queazel was a spy. What if it was trying to recruit him into some shady scheme? Catch ‘em when they’re vulnerable, make ‘em an offer they can’t refuse ...
On the other hand.
$860, and no repatriation on the horizon.
This time tomorrow, he’d be applying for a job on a fish farm, just to keep body and soul together. If he didn’t get that, he’d be queuing up for emergency life support along with the Majriti IV refugees.
The very thought sent a wave of cold horror crashing over him.
Just days ago, he’d been a gunship pilot.
A commissioned officer in the Navy.
He simply could not stand the thought of humbly accepting handouts from anyone. Least of all from the self-same Human Republic that had ended his career and confiscated his hard-earned money.
If the queazel was trying to entrap him, it had chosen its moment well. He hit reply.
*
“I’M HERE TO SEE GILLIAM Tripsilion Nulth.”
The receptionist looked him over, clearly unimpressed. Glimpsing himself in the mirror behind the reception desk, Colm was unimpressed, too. He was still wearing the worn-out jeans he’d had on yesterday, as they were the only ones he’d got, and a checked button-down that had been smart ten years ago. His eyes looked like fried eggs with Tabasco. He had not been able to shave on account of the plaster on his jaw where they’d removed his comms implant. His ginger hair bristled out from his skull like a felon’s coif.
He looked completely out of place in the lobby of the Uzizzriati embassy.
Yes, there was an Uzizzriati embassy. Learn something new every day.
It was a floating village, actually, 100 klicks out from the shore of the Regnarosa Sea. That’s why no one knew about it. On Gna, your horizons ended at the walls. Colm had had to take a water taxi to get here, using up the last of his credit.
The Uzzizellans didn’t seem to be hurting for money. A chandelier in the shape of the Uzizzriat system hung above hand-woven carpets and satin-upholstered furniture. An odd mix of people hung out on the sofas: junior executives, construction worker types, and a few hard-faced vets who had to be security contractors.
“Mr. Nulth can see you now,” the receptionist said. The other people waiting looked daggers at Colm as he was led past them by a lacquered knockout of a secretary.
Bland corporate décor. Corrugated ramps instead of stairs. All the doors had cat flaps.
“Right in here, Mr. Mackenzie.” The secretary left him in a small conference room with a window—actually a screen, of course—looking out over the sea. The lights of the embassy caught black water rippling around the tops of vent trees, the sulfide-eating beasts that grew from the volcanic vents on the sea floor. They looked like knobbly, colorless lily pads.
The cat flap slid up. “I am glad to see you again,” Gilliam Tripsilion Nulth said, climbing onto the chair across from Colm.
The way the queazel climbed the chair reminded Colm of a Slinky going downstairs, in reverse. He gazed in fascination at the little creature. Today Gilliam Tripsilion Nulth did not remind him of a cat whatsoever. For one thing he was wearing clothes: a quilted vest covering most of his length, with holes for his hands / feet, fastened down the front / underside with gold toggles. A collar set with gems sparkled around his neck, making his fur stick out in a tawny ruff framing his face. Animal or person? Ally or enemy?
Gilliam Tripsilion Nulth evidently felt no such confusion regarding Colm. He coiled his hindquarters comfortably on the seat of the chair, raised his forequarters to the vertical, and rested the front pair of his wee black hands on the table. “Emily!” he barked, in his growly, lisping voice. “Coffee! Or would you prefer tea, Mr. Mackenzie?”
“Either’s fine,” Colm said distractedly.
The queazel folded his forepaws formally. “I never thanked you properly for saving my life. Thank you.”
“I’m, well, good to see you’ve made a full recovery,” Colm stumbled.
“Oh, yes. The scars still ache a little.”
The queazel stopped talking as the secretary brought coffee and a plate of petits fours. Gilliam Tripsilion Nulth took his coffee black. Colm accepted milk and sugar. The secretary departed, her trim hips swaying. Gilliam Tripsilion Nulth watched her go, running his tongue around his muzzle. Colm hid a smile. For an alien, this queazel had good taste in secretaries.
The door shut, and the queazel resumed, “I was very sorry to hear that you suffered disciplinary consequences for your heroism.”
Colm set his coffee cup precisely on the saucer. “I wonder can you shed any light on that? I was dishonorably discharged. So was my gunner. So was the Marine captain who came back for us. So was the replacement copilot assigned to me a week later, who never even laid eyes on you—”
“But you might have told him about me,” the queazel pointed out.
“I didn’t.”
“I had nothing to do with your dismissal, Mr. Mackenzie.”
“Sorry, I wasn’t implying you did. It’s just ...”
“I wish I could arrange for your reinstatement. However, I have no influence over the bureaucracy of the Fleet.”
“That’s not what I hoped to hear,” Colm admitted. “I was warned in no uncertain terms to keep my mouth shut. I hope I’m not going to get in trouble for coming here.”
The queazel lapped his coffee like a cat, tongue flickering in and out. “I don’t think you need to worry about that. What they wish to conceal is my sojourn on Majriti IV.” The bIack-tufted ears bristled. “I had to spend the entire return voyage concealed in the commander’s quarters, a prisoner in all but name! I was not permitted comms! I had nothing to do all day but read books and play games! The food was also sub-par.”
“Poor you,” Colm said sarcastically, remembering his own voyage back from Majriti IV, an ordeal of 14-hour shifts in the Ops office.
“Oh, I am aware my suffering bears no comparison to that of others,” Gilliam Tripsilion Nulth said, still bristling. “The point is that as long as you don’t say anything about Drumlin Farm, I don’t think they will care what you do.”
“That’s good to know,” Colm said, thinking: But why? What’s the big deal about Drumlin Farm? He suddenly flashed back on the Ghost at the TDP plant. His arms goosefleshed. He bit into a petit four, blocking out the memory with the sweet taste of cake.
“And besides ...” Gilliam Tripsilion Nulth paused. “Even if you were to mention it ... you are now, I’m afraid, a discredited source. You were discharged for, er ...”
“Nuking a train that might have had civilians on it,” Colm said bluntly. “Among other things.”
“Yes. So I’m very much afraid no one would believe a word you might say.”
Colm heard a threat in the words, subtler than the military judge’s, but still unmistakable. He finished his petit four. His half-drunk coffee steamed in the cold room. “Well, on that note, I ought to be on my way,” he said, pushing back his chair. “Thanks for the refreshments.”
“Wait!” The queazel rose up in his chair like a jack-in-the-box. He actually stretched out his little hands. “Please, Mr. Mackenzie! We haven’t even discussed the opportunity I mentioned!”
“So you didn’t just drag me out here to threaten me?” Colm sat down, still poised to leave. Instinct urged him to put distance between himself and the threat. It’s what he had always done, going back to the day he first got his pilot’s license. He didn’t respond well to people who tried to manipulate him.
The
queazel made an ufff noise. “I am confident in your discretion.”
“Thanks, I suppose.”
“What I am about to tell you must not leave these four walls.”
“You have my word.”
The queazel waved at the wall. The live feed of the Regnarosa Sea vanished, and was replaced by a 3D representation of a star system, planets not to scale. The third planet was blue.
“This,” the queazel said unnecessarily, “is the Sol system.” Little ships buzzed around, representing the commercial routes between Earth, Mars, the Belt, and the Jovian moons. Streams of ships arrowed out of the plane of the ecliptic, and vanished in white flashes, going FTL. Red flashes indicated ships returning to Einsteinian space-time. More flashes, red and white, clustered on the opposite side of the solar system from Jupiter. The asteroid belt could be used as a zero-gravity point, provided Jupiter and its whopping gravity well were on the far side of the sun at the time. Any closer in and the sun’s gravity made zero-gravity field generation too dear in terms of energy.
The queazel dragged the view sideways. Colm felt a pang as Earth disappeared off the side of the screen. Now they were looking at trans-Neptunian space. Ships and drones came and went, sparkling like fireflies.
Further out.
The Kuiper Belt.
More flashes, dispersed across that vast rubble field of icy bodies, thirty AUs and more from the sun.
Colm frowned. “What are all those ships doing out there?”
“Aha,” the queazel said. He sat back and folded his paws over his vest.
Colm kept staring at the inexplicable activity in the Kuiper Belt. No one ever went out there. When you could travel to Upsilon Andromedae, what was the point of going to Pluto? But of course, you couldn’t travel to Upsilon Andromedae anymore.
“Earth has only two colony systems left,” the queazel said.
“Yeah, I know,” Colm said. And the news last night had confirmed that the Ghosts were now probing the Gliese system.
“Past experience suggests that the Trappist and Gliese systems will fall to the Ghosts within a few Earth years.”
“The Fleet will defend them to the death,” Colm said automatically, and felt irritated at himself. He didn’t need to mouth the party line anymore.
“The pattern is clear. Do you see it?” The view changed to a star map 100 light years across, with Sol at one edge. It depicted all 16 of humanity’s lost colony systems and the two surviving ones. “The first colony world the Ghosts invaded was Alpha Andromedae...”
The queazel drew a line from Alpha Andromedae to the Ghosts’ next victim. Celestial dot-to-dot. The line zigged and zagged from one star to another, getting closer to Earth.
“That’s our Star Road,” Colm said. “We hopscotched from one star to the next, using each colony as a springboard to reach the next habitable planet. It took two centuries. We had to build our own infrastructure as we went, like the Romans building roads for their legions.”
“And now the Ghosts are travelling your Star Road, in the other direction. And it has only taken them two decades. We estimate that in five years or fewer they will reach Earth.”
Colm leaned back. He suddenly became aware of the room swaying gently, as the embassy floated on the cold dark sea. Willy-nilly, he remembered the ghost in the TDP plant smiling at him. He rubbed his arms through his thin button-down shirt. “Why’s it so cold in here?” he burst out.
“We have fur,” the queazel said, blinking. “I was always too hot on Majriti IV.”
“Oh. Right.”
“Do you want a coat? Our human staff always have warm clothing around; you could borrow something.”
“I’m fine, thanks.” Colm shook his head, eyes glued to the Star Road. “I’m sure our leaders are well aware of all this ...”
“Oh, they are. I wouldn’t exactly characterize their current state of mind as blithering panic ... but then again ...”
“Blithering panic probably sums it up,” Colm sighed.
The queazel nodded. “However, some worthwhile ideas for the defense of Earth have emerged from the hysteria.”
The view switched back to the Kuiper belt. All those ships busily winking in and out of real space.
“Defense in depth. A ring of military installations around the sun.”
Colm patted his pockets. “Do you mind if I smoke?”
“Be my guest,” the queazel said, to Colm’s surprise. Colm was even more surprised when the queazel took a pack of cigarettes out of his vest and lit up with him, clamping the cancer stick comfortably in his molars. “The vices of humanity are irresistible,” he said apologetically.
“What’s the point?”
“What do you mean, what’s the point?”
“Of defenses around the sun. The Ghosts don’t use spaceships, they don’t travel through space at all.”
“But it has been repeatedly observed—by me, among others—that they attack soft targets first, and move on to larger targets only when they have achieved Stage Two capabilities. Earth itself is well-defended, heavily populated, satellite-mapped to the square centimeter. The Ghosts would have little chance of establishing a foothold there. On the other hand, your colonies on the Jovian moons, your shipyards in the asteroid belt, and your fuel depots in the outer system are scarcely defended at all. Each of them is a potential beachhead for the Ghosts. It is envisaged that these new installations will act as forward operating bases, which can swiftly reinforce any outer-system settlement that comes under attack.”
Colm dragged pensively on his cigarette. That made sense. In fact, it made so much sense that he couldn’t believe the scheme had originated with the Human Republic.
He sighed. “I’m going to be very blunt, er, Mr. Nulth.”
“Gilliam. Gil. Please.”
“All right, Gil. You’ve obviously got a level of involvement with this scheme which ... needs to be explained. Forgive me, but I don’t believe in fairy godmothers. Even if they look like overgrown ferrets and smoke like a chimney.”
“Prrrr?” The purr, on a rising note, sounded like the queazel’s version of ‘Huh?’
“Are you a spy?” Colm said, point-blank.
Gil breathed out a cloud of smoke and stared at him through it. “Why do you say that?”
“The sentrienza have never done anything other than sit around saying ‘So sorry’ and sending flowers. Some say they’re giving us technological aid behind the scenes, but you couldn’t prove it by me. If they aren’t lifting a finger to help us, why would you be any different?”
“Because,” the queazel said, “we are not the sentrienza. Isn’t that obvious, Mr. Mackenzie?”
“Well, yes ...”
Gil stubbed out his cigarette in his coffee cup. He took a business card from his vest pocket and spun it across the table. Colm read it without picking it up.
Gilliam Tripsilion Nulth
Commercial Attaché
Embassy of Uzzizel on Gna
So the queazel really was a diplomat. Huh.
“The Ring Around the Sun will be hugely expensive, and will require state-of-the-art vacuum construction technology. We are bidding for construction contracts via one of the largest Uzzizellan space conglomerates, Crasibo Lovelace. I am in charge of facilitating our partnership with the Human Republic.”
Colm smiled as the pieces finally fit together. Cherchez le cash. Now he knew what all those people in the lobby were here for. Gna had a megabucks private-sector construction industry—in fact, some said construction was Gna’s only industry. With billions of dollars on the table, the local players would be fighting like piranhas for a piece of the action. Evidently, that included resident aliens.
“Enlightened self-interest, Mr. Mackenzie,” the queazel said. “Enlightened self-interest. And that is where you come in.”
“Me?”
“I understand you’re looking for a job?”
CHAPTER 14
MEG SURFACED FROM AN exhausted sleep. Her body sai
d it was afternoon. Her infocals said nothing, because they weren’t there. She remembered that she had been dishonorably discharged from the Navy. She rolled over, burying her face in pillows as soft as marshmallows.
She’d told Collie Mack that she was going back to her hotel to watch romantic comedies, but she hadn’t. She’d messaged Tan while she was on the train, found him drinking in the red-light district of Regnar. Shortly afterwards, Axel Best had joined the party. He was already trashed and in a nihilistic frame of mind. When Meg had spoken to him earlier, he’d acted like he didn’t give a damn—after all, as the son of Philip K. Best, he had plenty of options! But now it turned out that he’d just been putting a bold face on it. He was reeling from the shock of being kicked out of the Marines. He told Meg and Tan he would rather die than go home to face his family’s scorn. From there it was a short step to actually talking about suicide.
Meg’s mother had committed suicide when Meg was a teenager. Best’s wild talk hit her right in the emotional scar tissue. She knew that he was half-joking, but he was also half-serious. In the dive bar where they were drinking on Best’s tab, he’d staggered up to the pianist and yelled at the man to play Chopin, because he wanted to listen to some decent fucking music on the last night of his life.
Tan had taken Best’s gun away. (Of course Best had his own weapon, which he had not had to turn in to the Corps.)
Meg had told him he was being an idiot. Think about the people who love you, she said. Like who? Best had said. There must be somebody, Meg had said.
They’d dragged him up to Revoukhian Park, the public garden on the top level of Loftar 2. Garden was wishful thinking, but at least there was grass. The entry fee kept the lowlifes out. As the luminous roof panels dawned, kicking off another Gna day, Best had thrown up in the shrubbery. After that he’d turned to them and said, “You guys ... you guys. I just wrecked your night, didn’t I?”
The Chemical Mage: Supernatural Hard Science Fiction (The Tegression Trilogy Book 1) Page 8
