As they arrived in the study, Munshi told the Terran that, in his honor, they would be serving one of the few Terran delicacies that refined palates throughout the Grand Alliance found irresistible. Terran Ambrosia, they called it. Soon three large pitchers arrived from the kitchen, and the three new friends sat on soft, satin pillows on the floor to toast each other and exchange insights and impressions about themselves and their cultures.
Khu’ukh of Waashkho smiled and told his hosts that he was grateful for their hospitality. He lacked the heart to tell them that he hated what Terrans called “prune juice.”
* * *
In a seedy part of town, a door creaked open and a half-drunken spacer staggered through the threshold.
“Caw! Look whut the cat dragged in.”
Cyrus McGee shot his brother a sullen, menacing look with the eye that was not swollen shut. Every bruise on his body pulsed in aching unison. His face was puffed, and dried blood caked his scruffy beard. He slammed the hotel room door and hobbled to his bed.
The room was circular and dark, lighted only by the lamp on Mason McGee’s night stand. The ceiling was tiled with grimy mirrors, many of them cracked, some of them missing. Dust covered the floor, and the musty odor of stale sweat filled the air.
Mason was determined not to laugh, no matter how pathetic his brother looked. Cyrus had warned him, in his most patronizing big brother tones, not to leave the hotel alone. Big brother deserved to come back with his face as raw as hamburger. But he knew from painful experience that, once aroused, Cyrus’ mean streak lingered for hours. Mason was not about to snicker his way into a fight. He reached into the provisions bag for some ointment to give his brother.
Cyrus snatched the ointment tubes without a word. He sat quietly on his bed and began tending his wounds. Hatred still raged in his heart. He would talk when he was damn ready, and not one second before.
Mason was about to return to his entertainment tapes when a knock came to the door.
“Room service” called a husky, female voice.
Mason grinned ravenously. “Door’s unlocked,” he howled. Cyrus grunted disagreeably.
A tall, dark woman entered the room and locked the door behind her. She wore form-fitting coveralls and a brightly colored scarf. A generous layer of powder and rouge covered most of the wrinkles on her face. Thirty years old, she looked as tired as Earth, and her eyes were weary and sad. But her deep red lips parted in a lusty smile, and the thick scent of jasmine soon captured the room.
“Sorry bein late, gents,” she shrugged, “but we’re two girls down t’night an runnin way behind.” With a flurry of short, bold strokes she shed her coveralls. Underneath she wore a pink halter top lined with brilliant blue feathers and tight fitting black slacks. Her raven black hair fell in gentle flows across her bare shoulders.
Mason, sitting on his bed and leaning against the cold, concrete wall, drooled like a lovesick schoolboy. No matter how cold and dreary they were, he thought, the hotels on Ishtar knew how to make a man feel welcome.
“What’s with him?” asked the woman, pointing at the miserable heap of flesh on the next bed. Cyrus was shaking his head and mumbling—something about Cozzies and turtle shells—but the other two couldn’t quite make it out.
Mason dismissed it with a wave of his hand. “Don’t never mind him,” he told her. “He’ll be all right by the time you leave. Just a hard night is all.” The two of them laughed.
“I’m sure he’ll come around when it’s his turn,” she leered.
Slowly, teasingly, she walked toward Mason, her eyes fixed on his dimpled cheeks and smooth, whiskerless face, her long fingers dancing along the feathered fringe of her top. The younger McGee swung his legs onto the bed and eased his head onto the pillow.
In his corner of the room, Cyrus grudgingly admitted defeat. Nothing would stop his face from aching, he told himself. Nothing but time. The lizards’ turn would come, soon enough; there was no sense wasting the present fretting about the past. He picked up a stool and moved to the center of the room, where the view was better.
My day will come again, he thought to himself. And revenge was sweetest when savored through the bitterness of anticipation. Soon, he was dismissing such thoughts from his head. He could use some cheering up, and their hostess was starting to undress.
Chapter 3
THE GENTLE WHINE of the tracking station’s generators faded under the ventilator’s steady hiss. To the twelve-man crew of the Quarter Watch it was unnoticed white noise, especially when more pressing matters commanded their attention.
“Christ, what a disaster.”
“This is getting ridiculous—eh, Chief?”
“Shut up and deal,” said Yeoman Chief Huslander, the shift leader. The Chief was in no mood for small talk. Dropping two hundred credits in one sitting to a tyro was no laughing matter. He had his reputation to think of, quite aside from his money. If he didn’t recoup his losses by watch change, he’d be the laughing stock of the base. Even Commander Ashton had never cleaned him out so thoroughly. And, for an officer, Ashton knew how to play cards.
It was a while before anyone noticed the flashing yellow light atop Monitor Six. The computer had caught a hailing signal from a Crutchtan chaser hovering barely past the Neutral Zone. Erupting into purposeful chaos, Huslander’s shift raced to their stations. The yeoman hurried to the control desk to acknowledge the signal. One crewman went directly to Number Six to engage the manual controls; the others assumed positions at the support station, trying to get a fix on the chaser’s position and watching the remaining screens.
Huslander pushed the yellow switch on his control panel, then hit the terminal’s transmit key. Instantly, a message flashed into a receiver on Starbase 117:
ATS 8—BEGIN RECEIPT ALIEN TX: MORE TO FOLLOW.
He logged the time and activated the speaker. “Commander Ashton,” he said, his voice coursing throughout the base. “Please come to the control room.”
* * *
Lt. Commander Jeremy Ashton walked briskly down the central corridor. He was a tall man, with a Ceresian’s light brown skin and tightly curled hair. As Executive Officer on the frigate R. B. Fuller, he’d let his subordinates call him “Mr. A,” at least as long as the skipper was out of earshot. A third-generation CosGuarder, and his family’s first Academy graduate, he favored an enlightened, liberal style of command, aiming to lead by example rather than intimidation. Bright and conscientious, he’d compiled an outstanding service record aboard the frigate. But upon promotion to lieutenant commander he hadn’t gotten what he wanted more than anything else. Instead of his own ship, he was given command of a tiny, lonely outpost on the edge of nowhere, with nothing but space, stars, and interstellar rubble for light years in all directions. In silent protest he’d grown a beard—short, well-trimmed, and becoming, but entirely non-regulation—and his men loved him for it.
Today, Jeremy’s mind was not on his job. He’d requested a transfer again. It was his third request, but before retiring from the service Admiral Folino at the starbase strongly hinted that Jeremy was nearing the top of the promotion list, and promotion to full commander usually meant a rotation of duty. A new posting would do much to lift his flagging spirits, he told himself. In his heart, he knew that everyone had dues to pay, but after five cosmic months in a tracking station—more than a full solar year, by the old calendar—he’d come to hate his current assignment. The change, any change, would do him good, and as long as he was dreaming, he would let his imagination soar. He’d already asked for deep space duty. A sleek, fast cruiser would do quite nicely, he told himself a hundred times. But he would settle for anything, from a rusting old freight hauler to a lowly escort, if it would get him away from here.
He still remembered his tour of duty on the Fuller, and every mistake Commander Fletcher had made. Jeremy was resolved to repeat none of them. He would have the finest ship and the proudest crew in the whole fleet, whatever its class. No sweat-shopping the crew, o
r bullying them at captain’s mast. A crew returned respect for respect, and arbitrary cruelty had no place on board a CosGuard vessel. Else, he thought, they were little better than the pirates.
The control room door was open; the station was maintaining condition green today. Jeremy passed the redshirted security guard on duty, who snapped to attention as soon as the commander rounded the bend in the hallway. Moments later, Jeremy stood looking over Huslander’s shoulder, reading the aliens’ short, routine transmission.
“An inspection transit?” groaned Huslander. “That’s the second one this month.”
“That’s their right under the Agreement, Chief,” Jeremy rejoined. He logged the request in the main computer and relayed the message to Starbase 117.
When CosGuard and the Consortium space fleet agreed on the dimensions and location of the Neutral Zone, each thought it prudent to insist upon verification, to make sure that the other lived up to its promises. So the Agreement allowed each side a limited number of crossovers—or “Inspection Transits,” in the language of Command Order 142-00437—to the end of the extended buffer zone, so that both sides could assure themselves of the other’s compliance. The Consortium made many more requests than CosGuard, mostly because all the violations seemed to occur on Terra’s side of the border.
Soon, a reply came from the starbase. Everyone knew what it would be: the Crutchtans were still below their monthly limit of three. But protocol was protocol.
“REQUEST APPROVED,” read the message on the computer screen.
“Shit,” Huslander muttered in disgust.
Jeremy laughed as he broadcast the approval across the Zone. Everyone on the border would bitch now, because all stations had to monitor the alien ship as long as it remained in sensor range, plotting its position and reporting hourly to the starbase. This turn of events would break up the monotony, but it meant more work for everybody. And it seemed that the one thing worse than having nothing to do was being forced to stop doing it.
Chapter 4
SHE GLISTENED IN THE BLACKNESS, her outer hull shining brilliantly in the sunlight, the dock supports chafing at her sides.
Dwarfed by the creation that had cost four years of their lives and more than one trillion credits, the workmen who had given her life hovered around her arching curves. Agleam to the edge of glowing, the heat shields still needed polishing; tested to the twelfth level of redundancy, the hatches and outlets required more rechecking and the power systems awaited reconfirmation; and even though her massive computers and internal relays had been cleared once a week for as long as anyone could remember, the engineers insisted on one last glitch run before approving her systems as starworthy. Large black figures started to appear on her face; before the giant vessel could leave the dock, her registry markings would need time to set. Now known as Challenger Prototype Number 3, when she left at last for Ishtar she would be “CGS 2001.” Sometime after the dock crew began to work on the next formless mass, someone else would name her.
All around, the stars burned like many-colored embers in the heavens. Below, the quiet blue planet turned silently, as it had for billions of years before its newest masters dreamed of its existence. There was only the blackness, and the stars, and the ship; and beneath it all, the tranquil world spun timelessly, as if tomorrow and yesterday were all the same.
* * *
“This is Demeter Command Traffic Control, do you copy?”
“Roger, Demeter Command, this is Transport Ten Sixty-seven, repeat, CGT One-Zero-Six-Seven, requesting departure clearance to Ishtar Command. Manifest is DCIC-321J16-CGSF-1017/T1067, Code Blue; will you confirm?”
“Affirmative, Ten-Sixty-seven. You are cleared from Loading Dock Twelve on venture route D-17, vector two to flight path I-3 en route to Ishtar Command, cc: 142-7919.7. Do you acknowledge?”
“Roger, Demeter Command, we are departing...but, Charlie?”
“Yeah, Sam...what is it?”
“What are you sending us off with? My computer comes back gibberish every time I try to check the manifest. And my orders say we’re being escorted all the way to Ishtar. What’s going on here?”
“Well, it is Code Blue.”
“Charlie....”
“Okay, okay. Wait a second, I’ll check.”
“This stuff must be solid ultrynium. The tractor’s at full power already and we’re not even moving yet. It feels like I’m pulling a neutron star, and I can’t even see all the way to the end of the train.”
“Most of it’s the usual—food, equipment. Probably some inflatable broads for the redshirts. You know the bit. But you have a dozen frigates right from the store, four to a box.
“And be careful with the last three in Section Two—they’re brand new starships, fresh from the mint.”
“The new model? The Challengers?”
“You got it.”
“Why the hell are they sending’em by transport train? Why not have the engineers putz’em over to IshCom and check’em out along the way?”
“Well, what’s even dumber is that two of them are coming right back here after shakedown. But who are we to question thousands of years of military tradition? Why do something right if you can fuck it up—eh, Sammy? Just don’t break’em, hear? Clay’ll have your butt.”
“Roger that. See you next month, Charlie.”
“Smooth sailing, buddy. And if you make it over to the planet, don’t bring back the Flu.”
“You got it, pal—and I’ve got my shots. Over and out.”
Chapter 5
“HELLO, ADMIRAL,” said Georgina Dyer, Admiral Clay’s personal secretary, looking up from her desk.
“Any news today?” barked a gruff voice with the barest hint of a Zarathustran accent.
“All’s quiet on the frontier,” she replied, “and the day’s reports are waiting for you at your desk. The ship rotations were posted at Zero Hour on all command boards, as you ordered, and I printed a copy for your review. And the new starships are finally on their way. Admiral Weatherlee says they’ll arrive in eight or ten days at the latest.
“Oh, and Admiral Pendleton wants to talk to you when you get the chance, about some proposed new Central Command directive. Apparently they want all ships to transmit their weekly reports to their home base instead of flagging their position and heading, and filing the rest when they dock, like they all do now. He’d like your opinion.”
The admiral grunted an acknowledgment of sorts, but said nothing beyond the usual.
“Thank you, Mrs. Dyer. I’ll be in my office.”
The door closed with a rush of air. The admiral stalked over the blue carpeting to his oversized desk on the far side of the room and sat down in a soft, padded chair.
Tall and vigorous, Fleet Admiral Porter Clay was an intimidating figure, even to his close friends. His white, thinning hair added a look of distinction to the alert eyes and ruggedly handsome features that found themselves at the center of the Cosmic Guard’s most taxing controversy in two centuries. His sharp baritone voice no longer barked commands to crewmen whose most important concern—aside from staying on the good side of the best, if most demanding skipper of his day—was clearing pirates from the trading corridors of eastern Terra. He had risen to command whole fleets rather than single ships, and the safety of the entire frontier now rested in his powerful, oversized hands.
But there were times, and they came often these days, when he longed for the simplicity of earlier days—before aliens and diplomats started complicating his life; before frontier politicians began calling for his head; before marching demonstrators burned him in effigy. He longed for the times when his hardest problems involved checking the flight manifests of freight haulers caught outside approved shipping lanes, and when the only excitement a ship’s skipper was likely to have was chasing after pirate raiding parties or rescuing ships trapped in interstellar squalls. Most of all, he missed the days when Central Command forgot about the Eastern Fleet for months at a time and let him run his
command as it should be run: with no interference, and without the current abundance of addle-brained experimentation.
These days, CentCom was forever finding new ways to complicate life on the frontier, he thought angrily. The desk jockeys running things obviously did not understand the realities of space exploration. Like this latest bit of nonsense: how could a starship in deep space spend the stationary hours needed to transmit across fifty parsecs or more? And they wouldn’t just be solar hours. It would take two full cosmic hours to broadcast a typical report on a low frequency band across the distances ships traveled on a typical mission. If they broadcast often enough, they might as well give the aliens their code book, for all the good it would do. It was lame-brained from the charts to the docks, and he simply would not stand for it.
Today, though, he had bigger problems on his mind. Now that the first Challengers were on their way, they needed crews and, more importantly, new captains to command them. He’d put off convening the promotions board for as long as he could, but was running out of time. No matter how much squawking Winthrop Weatherlee would put them through, they had to decide whom to promote. And that meant problems—political problems, that had no place in making command decisions.
What frustrated Clay more than anything was that Weatherlee—Old Blunderbutt they called him in the back rooms of the Eastern Fleet—had him in a corner this time. As much as Clay hated to admit it, he’d have to pass over his best cruiser commander once again. Weatherlee, the admiral in charge of Demeter Command, had raised hell all the way back to Covington when the last set of promotions had come through, even after they struck the young Isitian from the list. Now, with the peace talks still moving at a snail’s pace, the conciliatory stance Clay had taken with the Crutchtans had the frontier politicians calling for his head more loudly than ever. Even in a less forbidding climate, Weatherlee would never stand for giving one of the Challengers to a commander he wanted blackballed, not without a nasty fight. Once again, Clay couldn’t afford the heat; and once again, the talented young officer’s career—whose progress through the ranks was becoming as interesting to Clay as to his own Demetrian rival— would find itself stalled.
The Sirens of Space Page 4
