On the other side was the assayer, an isopanel that calculated market values back home for goods found on the frontier. It was the same system Jamie was working with on Ops and so the information was always a little out of date: its data could only be updated when another traveler arrived through the whirlibang with more recent commodity quotes. But at least it was a system he was familiar with.
And there was the badge, which identified him as a representative of Quaestor, a trading firm licensed by Earth, a member in good standing of the Signatory Systems. It was a golden, gaudy thing, festooned with pins and beads and clockwork that moved; Quaestor’s designers had used a chelengk, a decoration from the Ottoman Empire, as a model. Jamie thought the tacky thing would have been rejected by even the flashiest of sultans.
The designers had crafted it to be noticeable by aliens of all species, whatever their sensory capabilities: they’d left nothing out. In addition to its garish looks, a jeweled section spun for the motion sensitive and a small heater gave it a unique infrared signature. It made a little squawking sound every minute, as well as emitting signals beyond human hearing. It felt prickly, smelled like cinnamon, and tasted vaguely like lemon. Jamie could only imagine the alien who’d need to lick his badge to identify him. Oh, and the thing was slightly radioactive. Jamie thought if he tripped and fell with the badge on his chest, it would be the end of him.
He looked coldly at the badge before sighing and affixing it to his space suit for the hell of it. The thing’s little widgets immediately began spinning and dancing. “My God,” he said, thrilled the traders at Ops could not see him. Dear Selena would be laughing in the aisle.
Thump.
Jamie spun around. It was what he’d heard before. Someone else was out there!
“Welligan?”
Nothing.
He touched his earpiece. “Bridget, listen. Something’s here—”
“I’m not talking to you anymore, Jamie,” she replied in his ear. “I’ve got a job to do.”
“Protecting me is your job,” he said. “I tell you, I’m hearing something!”
“It’s probably that toy on your chest,” she said. It was peeping like a baby chick now. “I told you, I have things to tend to first. I’ll see you when I see you.” She ended the transmission.
Jamie fumed. He looked down at the badge and then around at the goods he was supposed to work with.
Screw this, he thought, pulling at the badge. But he couldn’t get a good grip on it, and its moving and poky parts seemed to almost fight back against him. “Ouch!”
Aggravated, he gave up and let it remain on his suit. He opened his naked palm and triggered the interface to his EndoSys.
His personal supercomputer, the EndoSys resided on his left thumbnail, where it maintained a wireless interface with whatever knowglobes and other databases were around. The machine’s readout appeared on his palm, the harmless work of resident pigment-stimulating nanoids injected into his system. EndoSys implants had already replaced tattoos in the twenty-second century, as humans eschewed static images in favor of becoming walking animation studios; now, EndoSys-enabled hands were replacing handheld isopanels. With a few words and a finger tap, Jamie saw on his palm the map leading back to the whirlibang. Then he requested instructions for activating the device. A reading of the details went to his earpiece.
The directions didn’t sound too difficult. I can do this, he thought.
When a ’box was at a whirlibang station, it wasn’t really a spaceship anymore. It was more like an elevator car, unable to go anywhere but where it was supposed to. Jamie knew which whirlibang loop was tuned to send ’boxes to Altair; the one he’d come in on.
Jamie wondered what would happen if he returned. Falcone might not have left any orders with the Altair whirlibang station crew regarding him. All Jamie would have to do is take one ride to Altair, and then the connecting link to Venus. He’d catch his shuttle home a few days late. And as for Quaestor’s hundred billion dollars…
…well, he’d worry about that later. It wouldn’t be his only problem back on Earth. Not by a long shot, not after his relatives found out. But back home, he’d at least have a chance of disappearing. He’d sell cheeseburgers to Czechs, lingerie in Lesotho. Anything would be better than this.
Badge peeping away, Jamie ran toward the exit. He heard the thump again, but this time he didn’t stop to look. Next stop, home!
9
“Something’s wrong with the security system,” Trovatelli said, closing the panel. “We’re locked out.”
Bridget’s eyes narrowed. “Falcone said the Regulans gave us all the codes in the sale.”
“Well, they’ve changed,” the technician said. “I think there’s an access point one level up.”
The chief nodded. Pulse weapon drawn, Bridget led the way. It didn’t seem necessary, but their destination was a room she hadn’t checked yet. Yellow rungs jutted from the wall ahead, the nearest route leading up.
“Mind if I ask a question, Chief?” Trovatelli asked the older woman.
Bridget looked back down the ladder. For the first time since Bridget had met her, the Q/A seemed less than self-assured. “Shoot.”
“You were at Overland, weren’t you?” Trovatelli followed her through the hatchway. “How — I mean, how—”
“How did I start Earth’s first interstellar war?” Bridget didn’t even flinch. Every new recruit to the team asked once they realized she was that Bridget Yang. Unless they were so clueless about the universe they lived in that they didn’t know to ask…in which case she didn’t want them on her team anyway. “A lot of things went wrong in a row.”
“I know. I did a research assignment on it in school.”
Great, Bridget thought. I’m core curriculum now.
“So I know what happened,” the Q/A said. “I just don’t know how you didn’t…well, see it sooner. I mean, you seem to try to get to know all your recruits.”
“Cause and effect,” she said, knowing exactly what Trovatelli was referring to. “You’re an engineer. You should understand that.” She looked in a side door and pointed Trovatelli toward it. “That should be your spot, if the schematics are right. I’ll check in later.”
Bridget walked ahead in silence, alone. Cause and effect, my ass, she thought. One big cause and all the rest, effect.
That had been her life since Overland. The location in Nebraska was little more than a crossroads on the Platte River: a maintenance stop for the maglev line heading east. But everyone had heard about it after the events of 2130. Eight years ago — but yesterday, as far as Bridget was concerned. She lived through it all again every time someone brought it up. . .
In deep space the hot-tempered Gebrans had at last agreed to an exchange of trade representatives. However, being Gebran, the aliens had insisted on making their own way to Earth and landing in a remote area. But no place on Earth was truly remote anymore, and Bridget’s special marine detachment had been just as capable of meeting the shuttle in the wheat fields as in the capital.
Hers had been an honor guard. But it was still a guard, and it had failed in that duty. Or rather, she had failed to spot until too late that two of her junior escorts had belonged to the radical Walled Garden movement, the last holdouts against Earth joining the interstellar community. Most of the members of the Gebran delegation had died in the assassination attempt, and while Bridget’s quick thinking had saved the ambassador, news of the event had touched off the war that threatened to undo the Signatory Pact.
Once humans began dying in battle, many people began grasping for someone to blame. Some faulted Bridget, who had initially been decorated for her role, for not having recognized Gardeners in her midst. This despite the fact that there wasn’t anything she could have done — the investigators had concluded early on that the turncoats had covered their pasts well. Reflexively, she had taken responsibility anyway — although doing so before the media had, in retrospect, been a mistake. The flak that followed
had cost her rank and commission, and ultimately she left the service after the muddle of a war ended.
She’d come to Quaestor for a job rather than redemption. Praetor, Lazarius, Osman, and the other trading firms had turned her down outright. Only a farseeing Quaestor expedition leader, realizing how much experience a small amount of money bought, had offered her a contract. Bridget had stayed ever since, running a crack surge team even as the fortunes of the expedition it was protecting faltered. Her past had convinced her that part of soldiering was making time to get to know all her new recruits and seeing what made them tick. There’d be no more Gardeners on her details.
And loyalty had demanded that she stick with the expedition now, even after bad years and Spore attacks. She’d even coped with the deteriorating quality of her new recruits, welcoming help by veterans like O’Herlihy and Dinner. This latest mission, however, had tested her loyalty to the limits.
It wasn’t just that she didn’t like Jamison Sturm — she hadn’t been friends with most traders she’d protected. The job simply attracted a type of person she wasn’t at ease with: show-offs. It made sense, of course, that sellers would have to talk themselves up, as well as their goods. It was part of making a sale. And yet show-offs in her line of work got killed. But that wasn’t the issue.
No, her real problem was that she had no faith whatsoever that Jamie could do the job at all. There was an ocean of difference between issuing sell orders at a desk on Ops and trading with other civilizations. An ocean of plasma and void separated cultures that had few, if any, common understandings. Language wouldn’t necessarily be the problem: they had the knowglobes for that, and they contained the facts learned by explorers who had gone before. It was the opposite that concerned her: that understanding Jamie might actually make anyone they met more hostile. And then the trouble would really begin.
People didn’t understand that about surge teams — or about her. Her forces didn’t cross light years for a chance to shoot at bug-eyed uglies. Mindless organisms were one thing, sentient beings something else. Her job wasn’t to start wars. It was to prevent them by keeping hostilities from breaking out in the first place.
Bridget had helped to start the Arcturo-Solar War. Now, she lived in terror of what trouble Jamie might start in the next few weeks.
Her earpiece buzzed again. This time she ignored it.
***
From where he had been thrown to the deck, Jamie looked up in panic at the silver-clad figures looming over him. He’d never seen armor like theirs. Bulky and spiked, with two large shoulder fins rising on either side of a bulbous helmet. The faceplates were as dark as ink, but he didn’t need to see faces to know their attitude. Each of his attackers held a frightening-looking weapon crackling with electricity or glowing with unreal fire.
For a moment Jamie thought Bridget had sent her goons to play a prank on him. There weren’t any bipedal species in the Signatory Systems, nor any outside that he was aware of — and this crowd certainly had two arms and two legs. Except for the skinnier one he now saw through the crowd: he had only one arm attached and was cradling the other like he was carrying a loaf of bread. That one alone wore a golden collar.
“Welligan?” Jamie asked in a small voice. “O’Herlihy? Dinner?”
His assailants parted to allow the approach of another figure from the shadows. Powerfully built, this one wore black armor instead of silver. His faceplate was as opaque as the others’. Through his armor’s public address system, the figure said something alien and unintelligible.
“Oh,” Jamie said, reaching his knees. He pointed to the decoration, still clicking and tinkling idiotically on his chest. “Um…peace? See? I have a badge…”
***
The Black Priest of the Xylanx looked down on the simpering creature. “So this is a human,” Kolvax said in his language. He glanced back at one-armed Tellmer. “Are you sure the surveillance imagers are off-line?”
“Yes, Great Kolvax. Old Liandro locked the intruders out of the system.”
“Fine.” It wouldn’t do for the humans to find them here — not until he knew how many were coming. He’d seen a weapon in the hand of the dark-haired female that entered. He didn’t expect the humans could defeat the Xylanx, but he wasn’t ready to test that belief yet.
Instead, the Xylanx exiles spent the precious minutes after the humans arrived sweeping the station to hide evidence of their presence. If the dark-hair was bringing an army, Kolvax didn’t want them to find any trace that would reveal the Xylanx’s characteristics. Here, his followers’ fastidiousness had come in handy: there wasn’t as much as a dead cell to be found in areas they’d frequented. His chapel was the messiest of all the areas, owing to his own habits, but the mess, and the spatters from Tellmer’s wound, had been hastily cleaned.
It was a lesson from Kolvax’s training with the Stalkers, the Xylanx’s ruthless paramilitary: “The longer your prey stands in ignorance of you, the mightier you become in their fears.”
And then they had hidden using the warren of vents and service corridors to move about the station. When the humans left one of their number behind, Kolvax saw the chance to act — and to learn what they were up against.
Not much, Kolvax concluded as he studied the pale face of the human. Hair on his head the color of sand, with a narrow nose and chin. And thin. So thin! The Xylanx knew of humanity; from childhood on, every Xylander learned of the great existential threat that these creatures posed to their domain. But Kolvax wasn’t impressed in the least. “His home must be a soft place for this thing to have lived,” he said.
“It’s repugnant,” Rumber said. “We should kill it before it infects us with whatever makes them waste away like that.”
“Later,” Kolvax said. He slapped a powerful hand on the human male’s shoulder and lifted him. The man howled, and Kolvax kneed him in the stomach. That stopped the howling but not the noise. The creature whimpered and mewled, clutching his midsection.
Kolvax’s followers, clearly nauseated, held their captive’s arms. Kolvax ripped the headset from the bewildered human and crushed it in his gloved hand. Then the badge caught his eye.
“I know this symbol,” Kolvax said. “It’s issued by the Signatory Systems. I gutted a few of their other members before the Dominium withdrew us from the wider galaxy. Evidently, they’ve let the humans in.” He stared at it. “They’ve advanced faster than I would have thought.”
As Kolvax started to pull off the trader’s badge, the eldest surviving member of his party spoke up. “It grows warmer,” Liandro said, looking worriedly at a gauge. “They have control of the environmental systems again.”
“We take him,” Kolvax said. He looked to his followers. “The Xylanx have a destiny. We have all sought Forrah Glay, the great unknown. This human’s coming is proof we were right — and a sign of the danger that awaits us all if we fail to act.”
He grabbed the human by his slick and disgusting hair. “You’re the sign,” Kolvax snarled at the terrified being. “And I’m taking you back to our people — now!”
***
Jamie was no xenobiologist. He wasn’t even slightly interested in the subject. Documentarians had gone wild in the days after first contact, recording millions of hours about what existed out there; some people were really into it. Jamie thought it was all noise. The beings that were out there weren’t anything he could relate to at all.
There were no humanoids with bumpy faces and extra arms, buxom females with exotic skin colors and odd-shaped ears. The old entertainment programs had lied to him. Sentient life ranged from the amorphous to the ethereal, and you could never read expressions or body language. How did the company’s traders even have anything to work with? Jamie had no idea.
Jamie also had no idea what the armored beings that carried him were, but he was sure they weren’t human. They had the requisite limbs — well, all but the little guy — but nothing about the powerful brutes or their odd barking language seemed familiar t
o him. If humanity ever opened up trade with these people, they’d need to shop from the big and tall section.
At the moment, that didn’t seem a likely prospect. Following the black-clad warrior, who was evidently their leader, Jamie’s captors dragged him through one darkened corridor after another. He could feel his limbs growing lighter as they ascended from level to level; even Jamie knew that meant they were heading toward the station’s spine, where there was no gravity. Jamie hoped that might slow them down. But those hopes ended when his captors activated the jets in their backpacks. Small gimbaled engines fired, scooting the figures along higher and faster.
Jamie twisted to see where they were taking him. Bright yellow light shone down through an opening far above. He knew where it led. The security guys on the way in had called it the Shaft, joking that Quaestor had just given it all to them. A football field’s width across and a kilometer from end to end, the Shaft was a vast cylindrical pressurized region within the station’s axis, a weightless loading dock for materials shipped in from the whirlibangs outside. Grids of metal scaffolds extended from the rounded walls, providing places where ’boxes could be secured for unloading; hatchways back into the north habitation area could be seen on all sides. In the middle of the open space, Jamie saw the supply ’box the surge team had arrived with tethered to a metal scaffold. Nobody was here unpacking.
The alien leader grunted something as the entourage entered the Shaft, and Jamie now saw other silver-clad aliens joining the group from other places of hiding. This wasn’t a small party, he realized: there were thirty or forty of the creatures here. Bridget’s Surge Sigma team only had thirty-two people. One by one, all of the figures ignited their personal backpack rockets.
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