Universe Vol1Num2

by Jim Baen's Universe

  Toward the end of his time on Coba, Kelric had lived at Varz Estate as a Fifth Level. His Quis had vaulted the already powerful Varz into world dominance, but his submerged fury had also gone into the dice. His life had been hell. Harsh and icy, the Varz Manager had been a sadistic nightmare. By that time, Ixpar Karn had ruled Coba, a young Minister full of fire. She had freed Kelric from Varz—and so provoked the first war Coba had seen in a thousand years.

  I've an analysis of your gauntlets, Bolt thought.

  Kelric put away his memories. Go ahead.

  They consider whatever you plan to do dangerous enough that you need them for your protection. However, apparently they deem your wrist guards acceptable, even beneficial, to your needs or your emotions.

  His emotions? Even he wasn't sure how he felt. He stared into the drawer. One of his armbands was missing. It had come off during his escape from Coba and probably lay buried somewhere in the ashes of Ixpar's Estate.

  Kelric gathered the bands and packed them into his duffle. Then he left for the docking bay.

  ****

  "Prepare for launch," Kelric said. The cabin of the ship gleamed, small and bright. An exoskeleton closed around his pilot's chair and jacked into the sockets in his spine.

  As the engines hummed, Bolt thought, Your bodyguards aren't here.

  Kelric didn't answer.

  Mace, the ship's EI, spoke. "Bay doors opening."

  A hiss came from around Kelric as buffers inflated to protect sensitive equipment in the cabin. The forward screens swirled with gold and black lines, then cleared to reveal the scene outside. Two gigantic doors were opening, their toothed edges dwarfing his vessel.

  Bolt's thought came urgently. You must not leave without security.

  Kelric laid his hand on the Jumbler at his hip. I have it.

  One gun is not enough to guard the Imperator.

  The ship is armed. And I used to be a weapons officer.

  Even so. You should have —

  Bolt, enough.

  With a great clang, the docking clamps released Kelric's ship. He maneuvered out of the bay, leaving the Orbiter along its rotation axis. Communication between Mace and the dock personnel murmured in his ear comm. To them, the launch was routine. No one knew he was alone. He had told Najo, Axer, and Strava he was taking his other bodyguards, and he told the others he would be with Najo, Axer, and Strava.

  As his ship moved through the Orbiter's perimeter defenses, Kelric spoke into his comm. "Docking station four, I'm switching off your network and onto the Kyle-Star."

  "Understood," the duty officerreplied. "Gods' speed, sir."

  "My thanks." Kelric cut his link to the Orbiter, but contrary to his claim, he made no attempt to reach Kyle-star, the interstellar mesh of communications designed to guide starships.

  Bolt, he thought. Download my travel coordinates to the ship.

  I don't think you should do this alone.

  I've made my decision.

  I'm concerned for your safety.

  I appreciate that. Now send the damn coordinates.

  You are sure you want to do this?

  Yes! I'm also sure I don't want to argue with a node in my head.

  Bolt paused, almost no time for human thought, but a long silence to an EI. Then he thought, Coordinates sent.

  "Coordinates loaded," Mace said.

  "Good." Kelric took a deep breath. "Take me to Coba."

  III

  Viasa

  Kelric played dice.

  His ship was traveling in inversion, which meant its speed was a complex number, with an imaginary as well as a real part. It eliminated the singularity at light-speed in the relativistic equations. He could never go at light-speed, so he went "around" it much as a hiker might leave a path to walk around an infinitely tall tree. Once past the "tree," he could attain immense speeds, many times that of light. During the trip, though, his ship needed only minimal oversight. He had little to do. So he played Quis solitaire.

  He swung a panel in front of himself and built structures on it about the Trader emperor, Jaibriol the Third. Jaibriol had only been seventeen when he came into power ten years ago, but he had compensated for his deadly lack of experience by marrying his most powerful Cabinet Minister, Tarquine Iquar. Kelric knew Tarquine. Oh yes, he knew her, far too well. While he had been serving aboard the merchant ship Corona, the Traders had captured it and sold him into slavery. Tarquine had bought him. If he hadn't escaped, he would still be her pleasure slave.

  Uncomfortable with that memory, he shifted his focus to politics. His structures evolved strangely. They implied Jaibriol genuinely wanted peace. He found it hard to credit, yet here it was, in his Quis.

  The talks had foundered in recent years. Kelric hoped Roca might sway the Assembly away from its current intransigence and back to treaty negotiations. He represented ISC at those talks, a military counterbalance to Roca. They made an effective team, she the diplomat, he the threat. But for it to work, they had to get to the peace table. If they and the Traders didn't hammer out a treaty, their empires could pound away at each other until nothing remained.

  Patterns of the upcoming Assembly session filtered into his Quis. The structures predicted an unwanted result: his mother would lose the vote. He varied parameters, searching for models that predicted a win, and found a few. They relied on her ability to sway councilors outside of the session, with a greater chance of success if he helped her. Which meant he had to attend her infernal dinner parties. That put him in a bad mood, and he quit playing dice.

  Sitting back, he gazed at the holoscreen in front of him, which showed the stars inverted from their positions at sublight speeds. He could replace the map with a display of dice and play Quis with Mace. It seemed pointless, though. He had taught the EI, and it played just like him, but without creativity. For ten years, he had done almost nothing but Quis solitaire. He was starved for real Quis. He had wanted to teach Dehya, had even given her a set of dice, but then he changed his mind. She was too smart. If she mastered Quis, she would unravel his secrets from the way he played. He couldn't trust anyone with that knowledge.

  On Coba, he had played Quis with many Calani, saturating their culture-spanning game with his military influence until the war erupted. Ixpar claimed that capacity for violence had always been within her people, that in the Old Age, queens had warred with one another until they nearly destroyed civilization. Finally, in desperation, they subsumed their aggression into the Quis. He believed her, but he also saw what they had achieved, a millennium of peace, one that ended when he came to their world.

  Kelric would never forget the windriders battling in the sky or Karn roaring in flames. In that chaos, he had stolen a rider and escaped. By then, he had known all too well why the Cobans wanted the Restriction. If he, only one person, could have such a dramatic effect, what would happen if the Imperialate came in full force? He had sworn that day to protect his children, Ixpar, and Coba.

  Which was why he had to go back.

  ****

  The preset message droned on the ship's comm. "Identify yourself immediately. This world is Restricted. Identify yourself immediately." And on and on.

  The voice was an eerie reminder to Kelric of the day, ten years ago, when he had escaped to the starport. It was the only warning anyone received, either in space or on-planet. The port was fully automated and usually empty. Cobans had no access to anything there, and ISC didn't care who landed as long as they stayed in the port. Any Skolian who entered the Restricted zone, which consisted of the entire rest of the planet, essentially ceased to exist. He doubted anyone in ISC bothered to keep track, though. It mattered only if the Cobans held someone against his will, as with him. In that case, their actions would be considered an act of aggression, subject to military intervention.

  Had ISC ever discovered what happened to him, they would have put the Cobans under martial law, prosecuted the Managers involved, absorbed Coba into the Imperialate, and never realized until too
late, if ever, that they had destroyed a remarkable culture. He had the authority now to prevent the legal actions, but he couldn't stop his family from turning their relentless focus here if anyone discovered his interest—which they might if the port recorded his landing.

  So he wouldn't go to the port.

  "Mace," he said. "Get a map of the Coban Estates from the port. Hide your presence from the mesh system there."

  "Accessing." Then Mace said, "The files are locked."

  "Use my keys." His security would top any port safeguards.

  "I have the map," Mace said.

  "We need a city-estate called Viasa. It's in the Upper Teotec Mountains, the most northeast Estate." He was fortunate the Viasa Manager had bought Jeremiah's contract. Kelric had never been to Viasa, and his inviolable seclusion in the Calanya of other Estates meant none of Viasa's citizens had ever seen him.

  "I've identified a city that fits your description," Mace said. "But it's called Tehnsa."

  "Oh. That's right." He had forgotten. "Viasa is slightly below Tehnsa, near Greyrock Falls and the Viasa-Tehnsa Dam."

  "I have coordinates," Mace said.

  A holomap formed above a panel to Kelric's left, a dramatic image of the towering Upper Teotecs. The winds in those mountains were brutal. His ship was a Dalstern scout, designed for flight in planetary terrains as well as space, but it would still need guidance. At least Coba had aircraft beacons. Although their culture had backslid during their millennia of isolation, they had redeveloped some technology even before ISC discovered them. Their windriders were small but respectable aircraft.

  "The dam has a beacon that can guide us," Kelric said.

  "I can't find it," Mace said. "And this map is wrong. We're passing over what appears to be Tehnsa, but the map places it southwest of here."

  Kelric frowned. His holomap was updating continuously, but Mace could only calculate changes as fast as the Dalstern's sensors could provide data about the mountains.

  "How are you handling the winds?" Kelric asked.

  "So far, fine. They're increasing, though, as we go lower in the atmosphere." After a pause, Mace added, "This port map is appalling. It hardly matches the one I'm making at all."

  "Can you find the beacon?"

  "So far, no."

  "Keep looking."

  "I'm getting a signal!"

  Relief washed over Kelric. "From the dam?"

  "No. It's a mesh system."

  What the blazes? "Cobans don't have mesh systems."

  "It's from Viasa," Mace said. "Not a guidance beacon. It's a general comm channel."

  Kelric toggled long range comm and spoke in Skolian Flag, a language used by his people to bridge their many tongues. He didn't want to reveal he knew Teotecan, the Coban language, unless it was necessary.

  "Viasa, I'm reading your signal," he said.

  No response.

  "Mace, can you increase my range?" Kelric asked.

  "Working."

  "Viasa, I'm reading your signal," Kelric said. "Can you read me? I repeat, I'm reading your signal. Please respond."

  Still no answer. The scout was lower in the mountains now, and peaks loomed around them.

  The comm suddenly crackled with a man's voice. But the words made no sense.

  "What the blazes was that?" Kelric asked.

  "He's speaking Flag," Mace said. "Very bad Flag. I believe he said, 'Know English you? Spanish? French?'" The EI paused. "Those are Earth languages."

  Kelric sent a thought to his node. Do I speak any of those?

  I have a Spanish mod, Bolt replied. I can provide rudimentary responses.

  Go, Kelric thought.

  Bolt gave him words, and Kelric spoke into the comm, struggling with pronunciation. The Skolian translation glowed on a forward screen.

  "This is Dalstern GH3, scout class TI," he said. "Viasa, I need holomaps. These mountains are much trouble. The wind make problem also."

  "Can you link your computers to our system here?" the man asked. "We will help guide you down."

  "Computers?" Kelric said, more to himself than the man.

  "I think he means me," Mace said. "I will make the link."

  Kelric spoke into the comm. "We try." At least he thought he said we. The translation came up as I. He continued to navigate the mountains, relying on Mace to map the terrain and feed data to Bolt. He could hear winds screaming past the ship.

  "I'm having trouble linking to Viasa's mesh," Mace said. "It's manufactured by Earth's North-Am conglomerate, which is only partially compatible with ours."

  "Figures," Kelric muttered. He wondered if anyone existed who had escaped buying products from the Allieds. Coba, though? He hadn't expected that.

  The man's voice came again. "Dalstern, can you send your data in an Allied protocol?"

  "Which one?" Kelric asked.

  Symbols appeared on his screen, sent from Viasa. He saw a problem immediately. A pattern formed in his mind, evolving like a Quis structure, and with it, a possible solution.

  "Viasa, we are maybe close to what we need," Kelric said. "Can you send the equations that transform the coordinate system you use to the one we use?" The Viasa system wasn't set up to deal with starships; they had only windriders to worry about.

  More silence. Kelric hoped his Spanish was intelligible. According to his translator, what he wanted to say and what was coming out weren't the same. It seemed close, though.

  A peak suddenly reared up on his screens. With accelerated reflexes, Kelric jerked the scout into a vertical climb. G-forces slammed him into his seat. He veered east and dropped past another crag with a sickening lurch. The scout leveled out and shot through the mountains.

  "Gods." He spoke into the comm. "Viasa, where is beacon to guide aircraft in these mountains?"

  A woman answered in terrible Spanish. "Say again?"

  "The warning beacon. Where is it?"

  "Broken." Her accent didn't mask her suspicious tone. He didn't blame her. He had just revealed he knew more about Viasa than almost any offworlder alive.

  The man spoke. "Dalstern, we have holomaps for you, but we still have a protocol mismatch. We're working on it. Please stand by."

  "Understood." Kelric wiped the back of his hand across his forehead. "Mace, how is our speed?"

  "Too fast. The deeper we go in these mountains, the more complex the terrain. I can't recalculate the map fast enough."

  Kelric leaned over the comm. "Viasa, I need maps."

  "I'm sending what I have," the man answered.

  "Received!" Mace said.

  A new holomap formed, centered on a magnificent waterfall that cascaded down a cliff. In the east, a pass showed in the mountains. Kelric changed course for that small notch.

  "Viasa should be beyond the cliffs," Mace said. "I still don't have landing coordinates."

  Kelric winced at the thought of setting down in a mountain hamlet without guidance, on a field that was probably too small. "Maybe we'll see it when we get through the pass."

  The holomap suddenly fragmented. In the same instant, Mace said, "I've lost the Viasa data stream."

  Damn! Kelric spoke urgently into the comm. "Viasa, we have problem."

  "We too," the man said.

  Sweat dripped down Kelric's neck. Mace was doing his best to reconstruct the holomap, but they needed more—

  With no warning, a wall ofstone loomed on his screens. Kelric had no time for surprise; Bolt accelerated his reflexes, and he swerved east before his mind grasped what he was doing. Cliffs sheered up on his starboard side as his ship hurtled into the pass. Closer, too close! He careened away, but that brought him too close to the other side.

  Suddenly they shot free of the cliffs. Ahead and below, lights glittered like sparkflies scattered across the mountains. The rest of the majestic range lay shrouded in darkness beneath the chill stars. Bittersweet memories flooded Kelric, and incredibly, a sense of homecoming. He had never seen Viasa, but he knew the way of life, culture, language, a
ll of it. Until this moment, he had never let himself acknowledge how much he missed those years he spent submerged in Calanya Quis. He had given up everything for that privilege: his freedom, his heritage, his way of life, even his name. It had almost been worth the price.

  "We need landing data," Mace said. "Or I'm going to crash into that city."

  "They must have an airfield." Kelric spoke into the comm. "Viasa, I need set-down coordinates."

  The man answered. "We're working on it!"

  Kelric could guess the problem. They didn't know starship protocols or astronavigation. The Cobans learned fast, but no one could jump from elementary aerodynamics to ship navigation in ten minutes. They had Jeremiah, but he was an anthropologist. Although college students learned the rudiments of celestial mechanics, Jeremiah had no more reason to know astronavigation than the Cobans.

  "I'm mapping a landing site," Mace said. "I'll try not to hit too many buildings."

  Kelric spoke into the comm. "Viasa, I have no more time. I guess coordinates."

  "Dalstern, I have it!" the man said. Holomaps of Viasa flared above Kelric's screens.

  "Received," Kelric said. He was going to careen right over the origin of the signal. "Suggest you get out of there," he added, praying he didn't hit their command center.

  A sparkle of lights rushed toward the scout, and towers pierced the starred sky. A dark area ahead had no buildings. With a jolt, Kelric realized they had sent him to the Calanya parks, probably the largest open area in Viasa, even bigger than the landing field.

  The Dalstern was dropping fast, past domes and peaked roofs. A wall sheered up out of the dark. It grazed a wing of the ship, and a shudder went through the scout. Although the collision barely pushed the ship off course, it was enough to invite disaster. Gritting his teeth, Kelric wrestled with the Dalstern, struggling to avoid the estate buildings.

  The scout slammed down into the park and plowed through the gardens with a scream of its hull on the underlying bedrock. Trees whipped past his screen as the Dalstern tore them out of the ground. A wall loomed ahead of them, and he recognized it immediately, though he had never seen this one before. A huge windbreak surrounded every Calanya in every Estate, and he was headed straight for Viasa's massive barrier.