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Castaway Odyssey – Chapter 10

Castaway Odyssey – Chapter 10

Chapter 10.

Samuel Campbell went into the cargo hold once he was sure that Tavana and Maddox were securing themselves. He still felt shaky inside; the relief that – once more – the suspension procedure had worked warred with his worry that Pearce still might not make it. It wasn’t a good place for his head to be in, but he accepted that it would take a bit to drive the personal turmoil out. These ain’t the best circumstances for keeping my distance, either.

“Hey, Xander. How’s it going?”

“Just about done, Sergeant,” the older Bird answered. “There’s a few more boxes we have to unseal and sort, but I don’t think they have rations or anything like that in them.”

“Nevermind, then. Francisco, go up front and strap in. We’re getting ready to start moving.”

“Yes, sir!” Francisco looked excited as he bounced towards the front of the shuttle. Kid still probably doesn’t grasp that even once we start moving, it’s gonna be a long time before we get to civilization.

That did, however, leave him alone with Xander, which was what he’d intended. “So, son… what’s the final word?”

Xander looked serious, then suddenly broke into a broad smile. “It’ll be a little tight, sir… but we’ve got enough to last us the full six months, maybe a little more if we tighten our belts.”

Campbell felt a huge knot loosening in his gut. He’d been even more worried than he’d realized that the long time spent rigging repairs to the little ship would have taken their chance to live long enough to reach the colony of Orado, which was the only one within any reasonable range – ten light-years off. “Well, now, that’s just great. Let’s get up to the front and strap in. I’m going to get us set for the long trip right away, then.”

Once Xander was in place, Campbell strapped into the pilot’s chair and then spun to face the little group. Kids all of them, except Pearce, who’s out and not waking up. “All right, crew. We’ve finished our repairs, we’ve retrieved our castaway. Now we’ve got one more long trek to make – so we can go home.”

There was a ragged cheer.

“Thank you, but thank yourselves. I couldn’t have done this all alone. All of you should be proud of the work we’ve all done.” He waited a moment, then said, “and now let’s get going!”

He spun back to the main console and locked the chair in position. Everything by the numbers. He checked every system, calling them off, the reds, the yellows, and the now far-more-numerous greens – enough green and yellow to get them home, anyway. “Destination, Orado colony. Distance, best as I can guess it, ten point zero five lightyears. That’ll be a haul – about six months – but we’ve got what we need to make it there. Air purifiers and oxygen reclaiming facilities show green. Water reclamation, green. We’ve got enough food. We have power. Setting course and maximum jump sequence.”

LS-88 reoriented itself, pointing now in the direction of the moderately bright K-class star that was Orado’s primary. With even the reduced velocity of their Trapdoor drive, the motion of stars was effectively zero over human timescales, so he just needed to point and drive, adjusting some when they got closer, but if he could see and line up on his target, they’d get there.

“Trapdoor drive… engaging!”

The stars wavered and vanished, the perfect blackness of the Trapdoor space replacing them, and Campbell found himself joining in the near-deafening cheer that erupted from behind. “It WORKS!” he heard Tavana shout gleefully. “Mon Dieu, it works!”

“It does indeed,” Campbell said, “And another round of applause to Xander, Tavana, and Maddox, who figured out how to rewind the darn coils.” He unstrapped. “We’ll be doing about four-hour jumps before the coils need to be recharged, which will take about eight hours. In the meantime… it’s almost dinnertime, and in honor of our successful jump back to violating the speed of light, I’ve got a little surprise.”

“A surprise?”

“When I was digging around back in storage, I found a little box that looks to me like it was a special present for someone at our destination, probably one of Tantalus’ top admins. Turns out it’s a box of Buckleys.”

“Buckleys?” Xander blinked, then suddenly his eyes lit up. “You mean, Buckley’s Space Gourmet Dinners?”

“The very same, yes.”

“Wow,” Francisco breathed. “I’ve had some of those; they’re even better than what they served at Captain’s Table.”

“That’s why Buckley retired richer than anyone else in the Europa crew, ‘cept for Baker,” Campbell agreed. “And we’ve got enough for a few special feasts. Figure this is the right time, especially since we’ve spent a couple months eating regular rations.”

The others enthusiastically agreed, and Campbell went into the cargo area and extracted five dinners from the box he’d hidden inside one of the construction machines’ casings. He shared them out and the group let the dinners’ built-in superconductor batteries warm the meals to the proper temperature.

As he was taking his third bite of buttered garlic asparagus, there was a loud ping! from the front console, and the starfield appeared again.

He barely restrained himself from swearing; instead, he locked his dinner down and started checking the board.

“What’s wrong?” Xander asked tensely.

“Don’t know. Tav, you’re the closest we’ve got to an expert. What’s going on?”

Tavana gestured for him to move out of the control seat, which he did. He continued eating, but the Buckley Dinner didn’t seem nearly as good as it had been a few minutes ago.

A few moments later, he heard a phrase in Tahitian which he knew was not something you’d say in polite company. He also knew that Tavana never swore in that language. “What is it, son?”

“It’s the windings, Sergeant.” Tavana’s voice was rough, filled with anger and at the same time on the edge of tears. “They’re not perfect, we knew that, but I thought it might be good enough… but…”

“But what, son? Are they… ruined again?” It was hard to ask; even assuming they had enough wire to re-wind the coils, the amount of time needed would be almost fatal; it would be fatal if they had to do it more than once.

“No, not ruined; the failsafes cut in. What’s happening is that the field resonance through the coils that aren’t perfectly aligned makes them heat up slowly, so eventually they get too close to the transition temperature.”

The transition temperature, of course, was the point at which a superconductor stopped being a superconductor. When that happened, all the energy stored in the superconductor was liberated pretty much instantly – an explosion, in other words. Thus, any superconductor that carried or stored significant power was monitored for temperature. “Does that mean that when it cools down, we can start it up again?”

Tavana looked a little less angry. “Well, yes, sir. But…”

“I can guess. That takes a while.”

“The coils are sealed up in enclosed, insulated spaces. Normally they don’t heat up appreciably. But now, they have to radiate the energy away, and there’s no good way to do that. We can’t take the covers off; they’re designed as part of the field resonation circuits. So… I guess I’ll have to model it and see what the optimum duty cycle is. I know it’ll take a lot longer to radiate this away than it did to build up, and it was only twenty minutes to build up.”

“Get to it, then.”

The cabin was deathly quiet as Tavana worked. Campbell wished he could think of some way to break the tension, but in all honesty, there wasn’t any way he could imagine. This was a potential death sentence, and Tavana was going to tell them when the execution would occur.

Finally, after what was probably only a few minutes but felt like forever, Tavana turned slowly to face them. From his expression, Campbell knew it was bad.

“Sir…”

“We’re all here, son. Give it to us straight.”

Tavana swallowed, then sat up. “Best case, modeling heat buildup and … well, never mind. We can run them for about five minutes every two hours.”

The words hit him like a blow. “That’s one part in twenty-four, Tavana. You sure?”

Tavana looked down, miserable. “Yes, sir. Other scenarios take longer for various reasons. It’s going to be almost ten hours before we want to start that cycle, because we want the coils to drop to as low a temperature as we can get them, and they’re hot right now.” He looked up with a slightly less miserable expression. “On the positive side… we will have plenty of time to recharge, so we gain that time back. Recharging won’t heat the superconductor, so it won’t hurt us.”

Campbell gritted his teeth, tried to relax. “Still, If I get you right… that means it’ll take eight times as long to get anywhere as we thought before.”

Tavana nodded.

From two weeks per light year, they’d now gone to four months. Forty months to Orado. Even starvation rations would never get them that far.

For a moment he was overwhelmed with a sad, sick fury. No. It’s not fair, it’s just not acceptable that we could have done so much, come this far, and just end up crippled in space. These kids have worked so hard, hardly complained – shoot, I’ve had squads of recruits who were more of a pain in the ass.

But he got a grip on himself. There has to be an answer. I won’t let there be no answer to this.

Even as he thought it, he suddenly knew the only possible way out.

“All right, son. Then we’ve only got one choice left.”

He took the controls, spun LS-88 slowly around, and then steadied the little ship, now pointing at a brilliantly blazing point of light.

“That’s the only star near enough. Just comparing its position in the sky with our little jump, I can tell it’s less than a light-year off – a lot less, maybe a little more than a quarter light-year. It’s also probably a G-class star. It might just be a barren system, nothing there for us.

“But maybe… just maybe… there’s a planet we can live on there. It’s a damn sight better chance than drifting here praying for a miracle. So what do you say?”

Xander stared at the star. “That’s the star that shouldn’t be there.”

“Right, son.”

Tavana nodded. “Like it was waiting for us.”

“I’m scared,” Francisco announced suddenly.

“So am I, son,” Campbell said quietly. “So am I. But I’m not giving up yet, and that looks like our last throw of the dice to me. If you’re sure the coils will last that long, Tav?”

Tavana bit his lip, then straightened and nodded. “If we don’t push them… yes, Sergeant. They’ll last that long.”

“Then set up the program, Tavana. Like it or not, we’re about to become explorers.”

He looked at the enigmatic point of light, blazing in the dark. You damn well better have something for us when we get there, because I’ll be damned if I’m leading these kids to their deaths.

 

Castaway Odyssey – Chapter 09

Castaway Odyssey – Chapter 09

Chapter 9.

“Do you think we have enough, sir?”

Sergeant Campbell didn’t answer at once; Tavana could see he was still carefully transferring the contents of injector after injector into a treatment pack. Finally he looked up and Tavana was startled to see the lines on the Sergeant’s face; they seemed far more pronounced now than they’d been when they were first marooned. “I wish to God I knew, son. To be dead honest with you… if it were just me and her, I’d use ’em all. But I can’t do that. There’s four more to worry about, and I’m responsible for all of you. I have to leave some in case something else happens.”

“Sir, if it’ll help, you can use any you’re saving for me –”

“Not one chance in hell, Arronax.” The gentle smile took the sting from the sharp words. “I appreciate the gesture, but I am not reducing your safety margin – or honestly, even mine. I have to assume I have as much chance to get hurt or sick as any of you, and if I’m responsible… I have to be ready and willing to treat myself.”

“So,” Maddox said quietly, floating over Tavana’s shoulder, “how many are you using?”

“Half of our supply, one hundred treatment injections’ worth.”

“A hundred injections?” Xander looked at Campbell with his eyebrow raised. “I would think that’s enough to almost raise the dead.”

Campbell didn’t smile. “That’s about the size of it, son. The dose she got? It’s already killed her, her body just hasn’t admitted it yet. The nanos are going to have to work through her body and fix stuff before it collapses, and damnation I don’t know if it can. This stuff’s customized for trauma treatment, though it has anti-rad properties too. But hell, I’m no doctor. If I was I could customize this stuff, program it specifically to fix radiation damage. Then I’d be pretty sure she’d survive. Right now… I just don’t know.”

Francisco, who was sitting next to Pearce, suddenly stiffened. “Sergeant! She opened her eyes!”

All of them immediately floated themselves to the other spacesuit, currently locked down to one of the conformal seats. The Sergeant’s grin was broad and reassuring. “Hey there, Lieutenant.”

“Chief Master Sergeant,” she said, with a slow, surprised grin; her voice was sluggish, sleepy. “So you came back for me.”

“Promised I would. Now, you’re not better yet, Pearce. Think you can help us get you outta that suit and lying down here for treatment?”

“Sure.”

Lieutenant Haley’s suit seam unlocked and split open, and she sat up. “Oh, ouch ouch ouch ouch!!”

The Sergeant looked torn between anger and laughter. “Dammit, Haley! You’ve been a popsicle for a couple months now! You can’t just sit up like that.”

Her face was pale and sweat was starting out on her forehead. Tavana realized that what she’d felt must go way beyond “ouch”. “Yeah,” she said in a whisper. “Kinda figured that out.”

“Okay, then, just let me get your back…” Tavana watched the Sergeant ease his arms around to support her in position. “We’ll have to try to move you as little as possible. Tav, unlock her suit from the seat and then with me holding her you and Maddox should be able to slide it off all the way.”

Tavana nodded and released the seat restraints; Maddox followed him to the Lieutenant’s feet, each of them taking one of the boots. “Now, Sergeant?”

“Hold on. Give her a few minutes to recover.” Haley was still pale as a cloud.

“Okay.” Tavana looked to the rear door, where he could vaguely hear sounds of Xander and Francisco moving around, digging into the last sections of cargo they hadn’t touched, performing a current inventory. It had been months they’d been in LS-88 and the Sergeant had said it was time to reassess their situation. Tavana, having noted the glances between Campbell and Xander, guessed that he wanted Francisco well out of the way when they were tending to Lieutenant Haley, just in case.

“I’m okay now,” Pearce Haley said after a moment. There was some slight color back in her cheeks, so Tavana figured she wasn’t entirely lying.

“No, you ain’t, but you’re better than you were. Right, then, kids, remember to brace yourselves properly, and pull steady and slow. I don’t want you flying off and bouncing into the walls if the suit comes off all of a sudden. Got it?”

“Yes, sir,” Tavana said. Xander nodded, taking a firmer grip on the Lieutenant’s right boot and settling his feet against the base of the seat. Tavana did the same.

“All right, I got her. Together now… three… two… one… pull!”

The suit, already instructed by Haley to be in release mode, slid free with startling ease; even with the Sergeant’s warning, the two boys found themselves drifting backwards with the suit and bumping gently into one of the other seats. An unpleasant odor filled the cabin.

“Ugh,” said Haley. “Sorry, Sergeant.”

“Don’t worry, we’ll take a few minutes to get you cleaned up before we have to put you back under, Pearce.”

She looked around, not moving her neck or body much. That sudden movement sure gave her a warning. “You said a couple months… no rescue, huh?”

The Sergeant looked grim. “None, Pearce. Not likely to be, either.” He cradled her and started towards the tiny free-fall shower. “I’ll fill you in while we get you clean. Tavana, son, you and Maddox have got a not very fun job: clean out her suit, and that means empty all the reservoirs and make sure they’re one hundred percent clean. Then restock everything.”

Tavana winced, but nodded. “Yessir.”

Maddox wrinkled his nose. “He means –”

“Yeah, everything. Even in suspension she must’ve made some waste, and maybe she did when the disaster hit.” I would have wet myself at least if I was standing in a boarding tunnel and it was suddenly chopped off and I was spinning through space. Maybe Lieutenant Haley didn’t though, she’s tough.

But not so tough that he couldn’t hear cries of pain, and an occasional sob. Tavana tried to ignore it, but he could see Maddox’ shoulders tighten. “Tav… why does she hurt so much? Is it… the radiation?”

Tav tried to grin, couldn’t quite manage it, settled for a tiny smile. “No, no. She was in suspension, yes?”

Maddox nodded, wiping out part of the interior of the suit. “Yes. And?”

“Then you know she was not moving for months. Even with nanotech maintaining you, things get stiff. Ever sat in one position for too long, then tried to get up and found it was stiff, maybe sore? Now imagine that after two months without moving even the tiniest bit. Plus she was more than asleep. She was almost dead. Shut down. So it’s like when your foot falls asleep, yes? Slowly feeling comes back, but it tingles and hurts sometimes. Make that a thousand times worse.”

Maddox’ eyes were wide, looking back at the tiny enclosure. “She’s… really tough, then.”

“Oui.”

A little while later the Sergeant came over to them and inspected the suit. “Good work. We’ll get her back into it as soon as we give her the nano doses.”

“Um… Sergeant, sir?” Maddox said hesitantly.

“Oh, for the love of… Maddox, you can call me Sergeant, or if you people insist you can call me ‘sir’, but in the name of all that’s holy don’t do both!”

For the first time that day, Tav found himself giggling, as Maddox said in a slightly panicky voice, “Sorry, Sir… Sergeant… I mean…”

Campbell cracked a smile too. “Oh, never mind. What is it, son?”

“Well, I know that Lieutenant Haley’s … well, dying, like you said, even though she looks okay, so why didn’t you just give her the treatment and leave her under?”

“Now that is an excellent question, Maddox. Good thinking. Two reasons, really. First is purely personal; last we left off, she was drifting by herself, alone in space. Some of the eggheads think that once you go all the way into suspension you don’t dream, don’t think at all, but I don’t believe that, so I wasn’t gonna leave Pearce thinking she might just be going to her death in the black, maybe dreaming a slow dream about it for months as she died.” The older man’s face was somber as he said that; Tavana realized how far ahead someone like Campbell must think, and it made him wonder if maybe he shouldn’t start doing that too. “As for the other reason… why don’t the two of you think about it while I go get her dressed and bring her back out?”

It took a few minutes, so Tavana did. Why would the Sergeant risk taking her out of suspension, speed up the deterioration of Lieutenant Haley’s body, rather than leave her in the suspension that would keep her alive as long as possible and give her the treatment that way?

After a few minutes, he thought he understood, and looked over to Maddox, whose frown of concentration had suddenly smoothed out in an expression of surprise. “You got it?”

“Yeah… yeah, I think so. Sergeant?”

“Hold on, hold on… here we come.”

Lieutenant Pearce Greene Haley looked a lot better, with color back in her face, the sweat gone, and less lines of pain written on her face, as the Sergeant carried her back. She was even moving slightly without wincing much, and was dressed in one of the one-piece coveralls that they’d found a small stash of in the cargo; the coveralls were big enough for most adults and could be adjusted to just about Tavana’s size, but they’d had to do some clumsy cut-down work to get one to fit Francisco. Still, it gave them some extra clothes. Tavana suspected that the Sergeant had used the free-fall shower to also clean and dry the Lieutenant’s underclothes; there weren’t any of those in storage, not that they’d found yet, anyway.

“So,” Sergeant Campbell said as he deposited Haley on the seat and they strapped her in, “you got an answer for me, Maddox?”

“I think we do, sir. You’re going to inject all those nanos into her as quick as you can, right?”

“Quick as possible, yes.”

“Well, if she’s awake, her blood’s circulating faster, her whole body’s going to help with transport better, right? So you’ll be able to inject it faster safely, and it’ll be distributed through her whole body a lot more efficiently.” Maddox looked up questioningly at Campbell, who glanced at Tavana.

Tavana gave an emphatic nod. “That’s my guess, Sergeant.”

“One hundred percent right,” Lieutenant Haley said with a wan smile. “Sam thought all that out before he even put me under, I bet. It’s what I would do, too.”

“You’re a surgical tech, aren’t you, Pearce? Don’t suppose you know how to reprogram these nanos to be pure anti-rad repair units?”

She shook her head reluctantly. “Not really. If you’ve made sure the standard options are all active, that’s about all I could do, at least without a full medical setup, which we don’t have.”

“Worth asking. Okay, hold out your arm.”

The infusion of even that many nanos didn’t take very long; ten minutes later, the Sergeant withdrew the injector and replaced it in the kit. “Okay, Pearce… that’s all I can do. I’m gonna have to put you back to sleep now. You okay with that?”

“Better now than I was. At least let me get myself back into my suit.”

“You sure? I don’t want you to –”

“For goodness’ sake, Sam, I’m not a china doll. I may be dying, but I’m not shattered. Let me do something before I have to go back to being a human freeze-pop.” She unfastened herself slowly, and drifted over to the newly-cleaned suit. With stiff, cautious motions, she donned the suit, sealed it, and checked the telltales. “Good work, boys. Everything checks out, and boy, does it smell better in here.”

Sergeant Campbell smiled, though Tavana could see a glitter at the corner of his eyes that said he might rather be crying. “Yeah, well, it’ll be back to stinking by the time we open it again.”

“Sergeant? Does she have to be in the suit?”

“You mean couldn’t I just have the nanos suspend her right here in the cabin? Sure I could, son, but the suit can keep her temperature as low as possible – down to around ten Celsius – which keeps the degeneration as slow as possible. The nanos can continue operating more efficiently even at that temperature than her cells can, so it’s a net gain for them, even though some will have to spend their time preventing the damage of extreme hypothermia, like thrombosis. Plus, if and when we land anywhere, she’d damn well better be in a suit.”

Sergeant Campbell helped the now-suited Haley to the seat he’d chosen for her. “Okay, Haley. Time to go back to sleep.” He gave her a quick hug, which she returned. “See you later.”

Her smile was bright, even through the filmy helmet that was now deployed. “Later, Sam.”

Her eyes closed, and a few moments later she looked almost dead, just as she had when they first brought her in. Tavana shivered; it was an eerie thing to see, even knowing that it was just a trick of modern technology. Campbell stood immobile, holding her hand, staring down at her until the last trace of consciousness had departed. Then he put her hand down gently, bent and locked all the restraints in place, and stood again.

“All right, Tav,” he said. “It’s time we got everyone home.”

 

The Span Of Empire – Snippet 24

The Span Of Empire – Snippet 24

Chapter 12

Ares system always looked odd to Tully. The star involved was a smallish red giant, so that was different from Terra’s system right away. The system had several planets but no Terra equivalent: There were two small rocky orbs near the sun, and two Jovians and a super-Jovian farther out. The smallest of the Jovians was still larger than Terra system’s Jupiter. It orbited just barely outside the liquid water zone of the system. It, of course, was not accessible by humans or Jao. However, it did have a truly impressive suite of moons, including one that was in the Triton class.

Given the name of the system, it was no surprise that the planets were given names that had associations with Ares in Greek mythology. The Triton moon was named Enyo, for the sister of Ares, goddess of war and bloodshed. The planet it circled was named Alala, for the goddess of the war-cry. The super-Jovian got the mouth-twister name of Kydoimos, demon of the din of battle, and the other Jovian was labeled Polemos, a war spirit who was another brother of Enyo and father of Alala.

The two rocks near the sun received a couple more of the mouth-twisters. The closest to the sun was named Proioxis, or Onrush, and the other was Palioxis, or Backrush.

Tully just muttered whenever he saw the display or a schematic of the system. “Why can’t they just give planets regular names? What’s wrong with naming a planet ‘Fred’?”

“Did you say something, sir?” First Sergeant Luff asked.

“No. Just muttering.”

Luff was silent for a few moments, then said, “Pity they can’t name these planets something easier to wrap your tongue around.”

Tully just chuckled.

Ares Base had been established on Enyo. Tully was surprised to see just how much it had grown since they had last been there. The view out the boarding tube viewports as he debarked the shuttle right behind Caitlin Kralik was nothing short of impressive. But that shouldn’t be surprising, he realized. The system was becoming the arsenal of the human/Jao armadas that were on various drawing boards. It was going to have to be big.

He and Luff followed Caitlin and her bodyguards down the boarding tube and through a massive double door that wasn’t quite an airlock but definitely would seal the opening off at need. At that moment, Caitlin sprinted down the hallway until she was close enough to leap into her husband’s arms.

Ed Kralik–Lieutenant General Ed Kralik, to Tully and Luff–caught his wife and held her with apparent effortless ease as he proceeded to kiss her very thoroughly. Neither one of them showed any signs of coming up for air any time soon.

Tully chuckled again as he followed the bodyguards past the fervent embrace. “Get a room, Caitlin,” he called back over his shoulder. Caewithe Miller laughed, and a couple of the human bodyguards gave snorts and sneezes that sounded suspiciously like choked-off laughs.

****

Caitlin finally released her kiss and stretched her toes down until they reached the ground. Then she snuggled into Ed’s embrace.

“Missed you.”

“Missed you,” he replied.

She leaned back and looked at her husband. Despite the warm smile on his face, there was also an air of calculation. “So, how long until we can find a bed?”

Ed burst out laughing. It was so infectious that Caitlin finally joined in.

****

Caewithe Miller arose to full consciousness slowly. After a time of drifting near the boundary of sleep, she finally opened her eyes and stretched. Her lips curled in a smile; it was nice to be off Lexington, even if the room they’d given her at Ares base wasn’t quite as nice as her room on the ship. Just four walls, a ceiling, and a floor, with a built-in bunk along one wall. But it was a different four walls, ceiling, and floor than she’d been staring at for most of the last year, so she was good with that.

Even better than that, her whole security team had been given three days’ leave. Granted, it was on Ares base where there wasn’t a whole lot to do yet, but just being able to sleep until she woke up was near-heaven, and not being on immediate call as Director Kralik’s chief bodyguard was absolute joy. She loved working for Caitlin, but it still was nice to not feel tied to her, even for as short a time as three days.

Caewithe rolled out of the bunk and padded to the fresher on bare feet, cool on the floor poured out of the usual Jao building compound. After a quick shower and passing a depilatory wipe over her arms and legs, she picked out the loudest, loosest, and least uniform-like clothes she had and headed out to find some breakfast.

According to her com pad, there was an officer’s mess down . . . there it was. Once inside, Caewithe headed for the nearest beverage dispenser and punched for a cup of Irish Breakfast tea. Hanging around with Flue Vaughan had led her to develop a taste for different kinds of tea, and she had really come to like this one. And despite what Flue usually proclaimed, she didn’t think the dispenser formulations were all that bad. She sniffed of it. Smelled like tea to her.

“Caewithe!”

Hearing her name, she turned to see Vaughan himself sitting at a table in the farthest corner with a Jao whose dark russet pelt marked him as one of Krant kochan and whose vai camiti looked vaguely familiar. He waved her over as the Jao stood and moved past her with a nod. She took her cup over and settled into a chair at Flue’s table, propping her feet up on another chair.

“Going native, are you?” Flue grinned.

“As long as they’ll let me,” Caewithe replied. “If I could, I’d be in a lounge chair out on a beach somewhere soaking up sun and drinking mai-tais one after another.”

Flue shuddered. “Barbarian. Fruity drinks with little paper umbrellas. No class at all.”

“Nope.” Caewithe grinned, then nodded toward the door. “Who was that? He looked familiar.”

“Jalta krinnu ava Krant, second in command on Pool Buntyam, and one of the best sensor techs in the fleet. We were discussing some differences between their instruments and Lexington’s.”

Caewithe felt momentarily stupid; she’d been around Jalta several times. She should have remembered him.

She looked at Vaughan. “You’re in uniform. Not taking some time off?”

“Can’t. The fleet commander has me running like I’m on a cricket pitch, one task after another.”

“Too bad.” Caewithe gave him a big smile.

Vaughan muttered something.

“What was that?” Caewithe asked.

“Nothing.” Obviously searching to change the subject, Vaughan said, “I’ve been meaning to ask you–what’s it like working for Director Kralik?”

“‘Sfunny,” Caewithe said, “I grew up thinking she was a world-class bitch, because every picture I saw of her and every story I heard or read talked about how she was always in the middle of the Jao.”

“Yeah, I saw the same things,” Flue said. “But then Aille took down Oppuk.”

“I saw her just before that happened, with that Banle guard she had. She didn’t look very happy then, and it was pretty obvious that Banle was there more to rein her in than to protect her.” Caewithe shook her head. “I started thinking about it then, and decided that maybe she wasn’t so far gone as I thought she was. Then I was there at the final showdown . . .”

“Where Tully executed Oppuk?”

“Yeah.”

Flue grinned. “Man, I wish I could have been there! I mean, I’ve seen the video, but still . . .”

“I about freaked out when that Narvo elder called Tully out to do it. Yaut didn’t have any trouble with it, though. Guess he knew Tully better than the rest of us. They call it ‘putting down’, like putting a cat or dog to sleep when they get so bad they can’t be helped.” Caewithe shivered. “That’s what Oppuk did a lot of, especially toward the end. He killed one of Caitlin’s two older brothers, and just about killed her. That’s what set Yaut off.”

“Don’t want to mess with Yaut,” Flue said.

“Carve that on a moon somewhere, man.”

They both laughed.

“Anyway, after that it was pretty clear that she was not what I thought she was, and when word got around that they were forming a guard detachment just for her, I applied for it. Didn’t expect to be the commander, but you take what you can get.”

“Amen to that,” Flue said. “So what’s she really like?”

“Just good people, Flue. About as nice as they come.”

Vaughan had his mouth open for another question when his com pad pinged at him. “Okay, got to run. My next meeting is clear across the base.”

He stood and slid the pad into a pocket. “See you tonight for dinner?”

Caewithe wrinkled her nose at him. “If I don’t get a better offer, maybe.”

They exchanged grins, and he headed out the door whistling. “Now,” Caewithe mused, “I wonder if there’s a poker game anywhere that a girl can sit in on?”

She began tapping on her com pad.

 

1636: The Chronicles of Dr. Gribbleflotz – Snippet 39

1636: The Chronicles of Dr. Gribbleflotz – Snippet 39

“They can’t wait three years? Just how much are they asking for this land?” Phillip asked.

“They tried to sell it to me for ten thousand thaler, but I’ve beaten them down to five thousand,” Casparus said smugly.

Phillip could only whistle in admiration at the audacity of the individuals. “So you’ve paid these people five thousand thaler for a bit of marshland you don’t even know exists?”

“Of course not,” Casparus protested. “I’m not stupid. Five thousand thaler is a lot of money you know. I have deposited the money with my lawyer while he checks the legal title on the land.”

Phillip did know it was a lot of money. Whoever these people were, they’d picked out their mark with care. “I think you should inform your lawyer you are no longer interested in buying the land and get your money back.”

“Why?” Casparus demanded, “I could be sued for breach of contract?”

Phillip shook his head. “I really doubt these people will want to take the matter to court.”

“You seem very sure of this,” one of Casparus’ colleagues said.

“All Herr Menius’ lawyer would have to do is insist the sellers demonstrate that they can make gold from pollen gathered on the land in question.”

“Which they can do,” Casparus said. “I’ve seen them do it.”

“But have you?” Phillip asked. “If you’d like to follow me back to my lodgings, I’m sure I can replicate what they showed you,” Phillip said.

“You can make gold from pollen?” Casparus asked.

Philip smiled. “Wait and see.”

****

Half a dozen people followed Phillip back to his lodgings. He dug out his portable assay furnace and some cupels, and his apothecary’s box and took it out to the inn’s courtyard, where he set everything up. By the time he was ready to start quite a crowd had gathered.

“Prepared to be amazed as I, Dr. Phillip Theophrastus Gribbleflotz, The World’s Greatest Alchemist, demonstrates to you, this day, the alchemical wonders of my magic pollen.”

That introduction caught the interest of his audience as Phillip removed a jar containing a yellowy-brown powder. He held it up so everyone could see. “This jar contains magical pollen I collected from rushes in a marsh near Augsburg in the light of the full moon of the evening of the summer solstice sixteen years ago.”

“Where is this marsh?” Casparus asked.

Phillip shook a silencing hand at Casparus. “Please don’t interrupt, Herr Menius.” Phillip paused to take a deep breath to get his thoughts back into line before continuing. “I will carefully measure out ten grains of my magic pollen and place it into a cupel.”

Phillip emptied the powder into a cupel. “To this I add some quicksilver, to give weight, as everyone knows gold is heavy while pollen is light.” He added a small spoonful of mercury to the yellow powder. “Now some sulphur, because everyone knows gold is yellow, and born of fire, just like sulphur.” Phillip smiled at his audience. It felt wonderful to have everyone waiting on his every word. He really should do this sort of demonstration more often, he thought.

“To this I shall also add a little salt, because according to Paracelsus, all matter is made up of quicksilver, sulphur, and salt.” Phillip smiled at his audience while he gently stirred the mixture. “Now we must add a special elixir, without which nothing will happen — the sacred Quinta Essentia of the Waters of Wine — the secret of which I was taught by a Jewish alchemist as a reward for saving the life of his son.” Phillip poured a couple of spoonfuls of alcohol over his mixture and continued to stir it. “I must expose my mixture to fire, for only fire can combine the ingredients to form the noble metal that is gold.”

Philip placed the cupel in his portable assay furnace and shut the door. “We must now wait for the furnace to get hot enough.”

“Are you really making gold?” a man dressed like a farm laborer asked.

“Wait and see,” Phillip said as he used a small bellows to boost the temperature of the fire in his portable furnace.

Phillip checked the progress of his sample regularly, until he was sure it was ready, he then used metal tongs to lift the red-hot cupel out of the furnace and poured the contents into a large iron kettle full of water. The water spat as the red-hot gold hit the water.

Phillip placed the still glowing cupel on the ground before fishing around in the kettle with his fingers for the gold. He collected several beads of gold, which he displayed to his audience. “Now to see how much gold we have made.”

Phillip was aware of the intense interest of the crowd, but he was enjoying the attention, so he drew the weighing of the gold out. “And there we have it, a grand total of ten grains of gold.”

“But you started with ten grains of pollen,” Casparus said.

There were murmurings of agreement from Philip’s audience. “Fancy that,” he said with a smile. He picked up his jar of “pollen”. “Of course, this isn’t really pollen. It is in fact pure gold, as I will now demonstrate.”

Phillip measured out ten grains of his gold powder into a fresh cupel and placed it in the furnace. Minutes later he was picking beads of gold out of the kettle again. And again he had ten grains of gold.

“But he didn’t use the magic elixir,” a stable hand protested loudly.

“That’s because he didn’t need it,” one of his companions said, “the powder was always gold.”

Casparus walked up to Phillip as looked at his jar of gold powder. “But it doesn’t look like gold,” he said.

“It is gold, Herr Menius. Lift the jar and notice how heavy it is,” Phillip suggested. While Casparus hefted the jar, Phillip continued speaking. “It is gold in a very fine powdery form. For some reason it lacks the sheen of larger particles of gold.”

Casparus laid down the jar of gold powder and looked at Phillip. “They lied to me. There is no magic pollen,” he said.

“I’m afraid not,” Phillip said. “But hopefully your money is safe.”

Casparus sighed and looked from Phillip to his colleagues. “Nothing could save me from making a fool of myself in front of my colleagues, but at least you have saved me five thousand thaler. For that I thank you. What is your name again?”

“Dr. Phillip Theophrastus Gribbleflotz.”

“And where are you headed?”

“To Jena,” Phillip said. “An old friend of mine wrote that he was applying for the position of director of the university’s botanical garden.”

“You’re an old friend of Professor Werner Rolfinck?” Casparus asked.

“Who?” Phillip looked at Casparus in surprise. “No, my friend is Dr. Michael Weitnauer.”

“Then I’m sorry to have to tell you that your friend failed to get the position. Professor Rolfinck is the director of the botanical gardens.”

Phillip was taken aback for a moment. Then he shrugged. “I’ve come this far, I might as well continue on to Jena.”

“Then I must give you my direction, for I am heading there shortly,” Casparus said.

“Just as soon as he’s found a doctor to treat his piles,” one of Casparus’ colleagues called out.

Phillip could only feel sympathy for a fellow sufferer. “I have a most excellent ointment for piles,” he said.

“Every quack has an excellent cream or ointment for any ailment,” Casparus’ noisy colleague said.

Philip had to concede that point. His natural father had been one such person. “However, I have personal experience of the ability of my ointment to treat piles.” he smiled ruefully. “I suffered a bout of diarrhea, which resulted in painful hemorrhoids. I couldn’t sit down for days, until I stumbled upon a formulation which relieved the pain, and reduced the swelling.”

“I’m willing to try it,” Casparus said.

October 1630, Jena

Phillip swirled the wine in the glass and inhaled the bouquet. With a smile on his face he took a sip. Having a wine supplier as your patron had certain advantages, he thought to himself.

A knock on the door disturbed his moment of peace. With a heavy sigh Phillip put down his glass and hurried to the door of his laboratory. He opened the door to none other than his patron. “Herr Menius, how nice it is to see you,” he said. Right now he was remembering why he preferred not to have a patron — they thought they could interrupt you at any time. “How can I help you?”

 

Through Fire – Snippet 24

Through Fire – Snippet 24

Clash By Night

I proved I was faster than most people — if not smarter — in the next few seconds, as I checked my weapons, closed the door behind me and ran after Brisbois as fast as I could.

As I got close to him, I slowed down, favoring silence over speed and knitting myself with the shadows, so as not to call his attention.

Following him, I walked down the street and into what looked like a walled open air market. The streets were more deserted than they’d been, possibly because a nighttime of burning things and looting had taken its toll. There were people asleep in the open air market, legs protruding from beneath stalls, or cloak-wrapped bodies huddled in corners. I guess looting and burning really took it out of you.

Towards the back of the market was a gate that I surmised led to loading docks. It was closed and held so by a mechanism that involved a code pad. Brisbois typed a code into the pad, and as the gate opened, stepped through. I lagged behind, trying to give him a head start, so I could step through unnoticed. As the gate started closing again, I squeezed in.

The other side was darker than the market, so dark, in fact, that I couldn’t see more than a palm in front of my face. I stopped, afraid to give myself away, and heard Brisbois’ voice coming from my left, “–Here.”

It sounded like a response to someone, and I dropped back into the shadows and looked around to find him a hundred steps away from me, no more than a glimmer of clothing and movement in the gloom. There was a suggestion of someone he was speaking to, but the someone was even more distant and lost in the gloom, visible only when he moved and only by the movement. Strangely, I was sure it was a man. I could not hear him, though. He must be using a whisper so low it was close to sub-vocalization. But it was clear that Brisbois was answering someone, as he said, “No, she’s asleep. Yes, I’m sure.”

There was a pause, as though he were listening to his interlocutor, and then, “I didn’t bring her. I followed her. It was Keeva and his plans. No, I’m sure of it. Yes, I know.”

Another pause. “I’ve tried, but short of drugging her and dragging her, I don’t know how I’d accomplish that.”

Another pause, this one long. “I see. The palace? Yes, that could work.”

I felt my hair stand up at the back of my neck, and wondered what could work and what was being planned for me. It was clear, whatever else was happening, that Alexis Brisbois was not on the up and up. Look, Simon, his supposed boss and the center of his loyalty, was in prison. He couldn’t be out here and speaking to Brisbois. But Brisbois had left the hotel room in the middle of the night to come and confer with someone in secret.

That they were talking about me was obvious. That my being here discomfited them was also obvious. I wasn’t sure why that might be, except, of course, that Brisbois knew I was enhanced and might be afraid I’d figure out what he was doing.

Brisbois was talking again, “Yes,” he said. “It would be best for the execution of the Good Man to happen as soon as possible and as publically as possible.”

I was so shocked by these words that it took me a moment to focus. It was all I could do not to run from cover, and not to shoot Alexis Brisbois. But even as my mind processed that the “execution of the Good Man” had to refer to Simon — while there were a lot of people killed, it was hard to think of a single one that could be dignified with the name “execution” particularly a planned one. Attack, maybe, or assault. But execution had to be Simon. Which meant not only that Alexis Brisbois had never been as loyal as I thought, but that he’d been playing a double game all along. Which meant…

“Yes, I think she’s behind this too,” Brisbois said, clearly answering something. “I’ll do my best to neutralize her.”

I took a deep breath. And I’d do my best to stay not-neutralized. With that thought, I reached for my burner.

I was drawing a bead in the middle of Alexis’ back, when the world exploded. I have no way of explaining it, except that way. Suddenly the area was full of sound, light, flying debris, and I was jumping backwards, out of instinct more than thought, huddling against the gate while debris pelted me. First seen in that explosion of light, was Brisbois, looking startled, shocked, and someone talking to him — a male in a dark brown suit, with a liberty cap on his head. Something about him was familiar, but in that sudden startling glimpse, there was no way of knowing for sure who it was.

And then Brisbois stumbled over me, catching at the gate to hold himself, dealing me a kick in the ribs by accident, and said, “You!”

His hand grabbed at my back between my shoulders, hauling me up, even as I heard the sound of his punching the code into the gate pad, then pushed at the automatically opening gate, forcing it open, scraping me against the gate at both sides, the opening was so small for me. How could he have fit through it, when he was much larger?

And then he pushed my back against the wall, pushed himself close to me, and bent to kiss me. His mouth sealed over mine, as I pushed ineffectually at his shoulders. His mouth tasted of wine and something sweet, and he put his arms around me, immobilizing me, turning his body just so that I could not knee him in the groin.

I struggled to free myself, but he was holding me in such a way that even my scrabbling would be invisible to anyone walking by. He was so large and had engulfed me so completely that only a trained observer would notice my reluctance. And he must be enhanced for strength because my fighting wasn’t accomplishing anything, though it didn’t stop my trying.

The glow of the explosion moved away, and the commotion caused by the people sleeping in the market rushing out, and then he pulled away and let me go.

I wiped at my mouth, glaring up at him. “What was that in the name of?” I asked, my voice close to a growl, even though it was little more than a furious whisper.

“What are you doing here?”

“I followed you!” I said.

He frowned. “Did you hear–” Then, as though realizing I wasn’t likely to tell him the truth. “Oh, never mind. What in hell possessed you?”

“Me? What possessed you? And who were you talking to, wink, wink, nudge, nudge, planning Simon’s execution?”

“Simon — What? The Good Man is not–” He gave every appearance of biting his tongue. “You just put yourself at risk for no reason. Let’s get out of here.”

“You kissed me!” I said.

“A wonderful way to hide our faces without seeming to,” he said and started pulling me along the closed stalls, seemingly without direction, but in a way that betrayed its being intentional. I tried to pull my hand from his. He held it tight.

“Your face,” I said. “Because mine–”

“Well done,” he said, and dragged me through what seemed like a little tunnel cut in a poured ceramite wall. We came up against a small gate. It was chained shut. He grabbed the chain and twisted. Then he pushed me out the gate and onto the road.

I was about to ask why that way, but instead looked the other way, towards the entrance we’d used before. There were men in liberty caps in front of it.

Brisbois muttered something that might very well have been “merde”, but he had been talking to a man in a liberty cap, himself.

I couldn’t trust him. I’d been willing to go along with his trying to protect me, to an extent, while I thought he was being blindly loyal to Simon and trying to keep me safe, stupid though the idea was. But now I wasn’t even sure he was loyal, or trying to keep me safe.

I let him lead me by the hand down a narrow lane, until I realized he was taking me back to the hotel. And then, the first time he relaxed his grasp on my hand, I pulled my hand away and ran madly into the night, taking blind turns until I was sure I’d lost him.

The last thing I heard him say, somewhere behind me, was “merde.”

 

Death’s Bright Day – Snippet 47

This book should be available now so this is the last snippet.

Death’s Bright Day – Snippet 47

The shipyard here at Newtown didn’t have enough portable magnaflux equipment to check each weld, so the bosun was using a field expedient: if the weld didn’t crack when she slammed it with her maul, the chances were that it would survive lift-off while holding a missile. To reduce stress, the missiles wouldn’t be filled with reaction mass until the ships were out of the gravity well and were accelerating at a fixed direction and rate.

“Captain Leary,” said the bone-conduction speaker of Daniel’s goggles. It wasn’t as good as a commo helmet, but it was better than shouting. “Lady Mundy has arrived at the base of the crane and wishes to speak with you.”

“Roger, Signals,” Daniel said. “I’ll join you immediately in –” he thought for a moment. “In the crane house. It’s as private as you could ask and it’s insulated against sound. Six out.”

He turned back to his companions and said, “Gentlemen, I’ve been called to an urgent matter but I was about done here anyway. I’ll be in touch with you later.”

The lift at the back of the platform had been crowded bringing the four of them up together. Daniel didn’t offer to share it with Pasternak and Ealing going down.

“What’s urgent?” Hogg asked, putting his right hand in his pocket.

“I didn’t bother to ask,” Daniel said, “but I assume there’s something to bring Adele here rather than calling. Besides, I think I learned all I was going to up there.”

I learned that I need to replace Ealing. Who his replacement should be was the tricky question.

At the door of the operator’s cab waited Adele with a man whom Daniel had not met. The fellow wore civilian clothes, but that was the only thing civilian about him.

Tovera came out of the building which she must have been scanning. She grinned at Hogg. The two servants remained outside while Daniel followed Adele and her companion into the cab and closed the door after them. Outside the lift was returning to the platform to pick up Pasternak and Ealing.

The only seat in the crane house was that in front of the control panel, but there was room for six to stand without crowding. Adele said, “Daniel, this is Major Grozhinski, our contact with our employer. If you’ll sit at the display we’ll feed you the data.”

“It won’t be resident on the dockyard system,” Grozhinski said reassuringly.

Does he think that I worry about that? Daniel thought, smiling. He didn’t have to worry about electronic security because he had Adele. Which is good, because I probably wouldn’t worry anyway, and one of these days that could come back and bite me.

Daniel scanned the summary paragraph. How the bloody hell did that happen?

He grinned. That reaction was one stage better than trying to put his fist through the screen.

He turned and stood up again. The display wasn’t the way he preferred to be briefed.

“Adele,” Daniel said. “Master Grozhinski? Will it be possible to get the missiles released to us in time to fit them to the ships here?” He gestured vaguely toward the Montclare and Montcalm without actually turning his head.

“No,” said Grozhinski. “They are Alliance missiles, after all. The Cinnabar government sent them to make its involvement deniable, but the Fleet investigators who demanded that the weapons be embargoed until they’re returned may not realize that their documents are forgeries. Equally, of course, they may be Krychek’s agents.”

“All right,” Daniel said, nodding to indicate that he’d received the information. “Do either of you know of a source for missiles in quantity, even if not the three hundred Minister Forbes provided?”

Outside, work on the freighters — which might not become missile ships after all — continued unabated. The cab’s soundproofing was good — even the double-glazed windows must damp a considerable amount of noise — but it wasn’t perfect.

“I do not,” Grozhinski said.

“Nor do I,” said Adele.

Daniel smiled. It was nice to work with professionals who provided information without hedging it to uselessness. It’s a pity that the information isn’t different, though.

“All right,” Daniel said. “Adele, can you make these freighters appear to be heavy cruisers?”

“Electronically, yes,” Adele said. She frowned. “Visually, only to a very limited degree. It’s a matter of how good the personnel crewing the Upholder ships are. The optics themselves are of adequate quality — the three destroyers are ex-Alliance and the Upholder herself was the Triomphante, built on Karst but from Fleet service.”

“One of the destroyers has an ex-Fleet crew and officers,” Grozhinski said, picking up seamlessly where Adele had stopped. Daniel hadn’t noticed a signal pass between them. “The crews of the other destroyers and the remainder of the Upholder forces generally are either locally raised or from Karst. I suppose they’re equivalent to the Tarbell navy. All major offices in the ground establishment are Krychek’s people.”

Grozhinski glanced down at his data unit. It was live in his hand, but he hadn’t been referring to it and probably wasn’t now.

“The Upholder,” he said, “is a special case. The commissioned officers are mostly ex-Fleet, though only the communications officer is 5th Bureau reporting to Krychek. The bulk of the crew has been recruited from Cinnabar’s empire, however. Most served in the Cinnabar navy during the recent war. Lady Mundy probably has better records than my organization does, but I assume they are skilled. The Upholder’s officers certainly are.”

They’re traitors! Daniel thought. But they weren’t. They were spacers who preferred naval service to merchantmen and who, while the great powers were at peace, had found a corner of the galaxy which welcomed their skills.

They weren’t fighting Cinnabar, and they weren’t fighting for the Alliance. They were spacers taking jobs with piss-pot rebels fighting a piss-pot government, and they probably figured that with a heavy cruiser they were going to come out the winners.

“The rebels are offering considerable premiums to spacers with RCN experience,” Adele said. “I suppose Krychek has agents in most major ports in Cinnabar space.”

“No doubt the pay is coming from the secret account of the First Diocese,” Grozhinski said, nodding agreement. “But without a very careful audit, there’s nothing to suggest Alliance involvement.”

“Right,” said Daniel. “Deniability, like the missiles. But how do the recruits get to Ithaca? That’s the rebels’ capital, isn’t it?”

“It is,” Grozhinski agreed. “Krychek’s Residency on Danziger acts as the transshipment point. The Residency gathers recruits in quantity and ships them to Ithaca, where they’re distributed among the Upholder vessels.”

Daniel smiled slowly. “We were caught by Mistress Sand’s care to be deniable,” he said. “It strikes me that we might return the favor.”

Adele’s smile was probably invisible to anyone who didn’t know her as well as Daniel did. Grozhinski looked from one to the other. He didn’t speak.

“Adele,” Daniel said, “what do you think about subverting the crew of a rebel heavy cruiser?”

“I have nothing better to do with my life,” she said. The joke made her smile more noticeable. “We’ll need a neutral ship.”

“May I offer the Fisher 14?” Grozhinski said. “The owner isn’t exactly neutral in this business, but his involvement would be as hard to trace as the First Diocese secret account.”

They were all three smiling. We must look like a pack of dogs about to start dinner, Daniel thought; and he smiled more broadly.

 

The Span Of Empire – Snippet 23

The Span Of Empire – Snippet 23

PART II

Into the Dark

Chapter 11

The voyage to the system containing Ares Base would take four jumps. Or rather, it was supposed to take four jumps. However, when the fleet finished arriving in the third target system of the jump series, Vercingetorix reported a problem. Caitlin didn’t try to follow the technical discussion of the engineer techs any farther than to figure out that it was a problem with the jump technology, it wasn’t major, but it would take a while to repair and the battleship wasn’t going anywhere until the repair was done.

So the fleet settled into a stable orbit around the planetless sun and waited on the fleet’s techs to get the battleship fixed. As soon that was accomplished, Caitlin summoned Fleet Commander Dannet and the other top officers of the expedition to her ready room.

It was time to admit reality. The expedition had not borne fruit in the fashion hoped for, with the discovery of more technologically able alien allies, so their primary goal was unattained. On the other hand, they had struck a real blow against the Ekhat. Of course, the Ekhat were really going to be pissed now.

Caitlin sighed. Like they hadn’t been pissed before. They’d been destroying sentient species across the galaxy for thousands of years just because they were bat-crazy. She didn’t think it was possible to make them worse.

“How long will it take to make the necessary repairs?” she asked Fleet Commander Dannet.

The big Jao flicked an ear, her jaw angled in faint-concern. “They will be done when they are done,” Dannet said.

She waved a hand at Lieutenant Vaughan, who added, “Preliminary estimate of three days, Director.”

Caitlin let her own angles go to appreciative-of-effort. The four Lleix present gazed at her with their black eyes, but said nothing, clearly unable to perceive the under-message of the moment.

“I see,” she said carefully. “Do we have any word on the prisoners yet?”

“Not much,” Tully said. “Ramt and Lieutenant Bannerji are just now managing to get them to communicate with us. So far, about the only thing they’ve been able to confirm is that the ships we defeated were under control of a faction of the Complete Harmony. Bannerji thinks that it may even be the same faction that uplifted the Jao to sentience so long ago.”

A ripple went through the room at that thought. Jao ears flicked and Jao lines slid into complicated postures.

“I called this meeting because it’s time to reassess our plans.” Caitlin moved on to the main point of the meeting. “The results of our entire exploration program, culminating in the events in our last exploratory jump, have pretty well established that it’s pointless to continue down the Orion arm of this galaxy toward its center. The fact that we ran into an Ekhat world is just one more indication that there are probably no surviving non-Ekhat species on this side of Jao/human space.”

“Certainly not within practical travel distance,” Wrot concurred. “And the possibilities of finding anyone helpful outward from us are almost non-existent.”

There was a long moment of silence. Humans nodded or looked down. Jao shifted through a variety of postures, most ending in variations of waiting-agreement.

“That’s one of the reasons I’ve ordered the fleet back to Ares Base,” Caitlin continued. “Plus we’ve been on the move for months, and after that series of battles, we need to resupply and rearm, if nothing else. One of the things that will also be done while we’re at the base is to determine the fleet’s next course of action, but I’d like some feedback and input from you right now on that thought. I realize that you haven’t had long to think about it, but give me your thoughts, please.”

Caitlin looked around the table. “Any suggestions on a new path forward?” she asked.

Krant-Captain Mallu shifted in his seat, looking thoughtful. “We could travel along the Sagittarius Arm instead,” he said after a moment.

“That would be difficult to initiate,” Fleet Commander Dannet said. “The distance between the two galactic arms is much greater than the distance ships normally jump using the Frame Network.”

Caitlin schooled her body to reveal nothing but anticipation-of-success. “Solutions?”

Mallu flicked an ear, dropping his gaze to hint at modesty. “We can retrace our jump routes back toward Terra until we find a scattering of stars in the gap that will allow us to cross. This method employs a single ship to lead the way by using the Point Locus created by the entire Fleet’s FP generators. After that initial ship makes a successful transit, it serves as the anchor point for the rest of the fleet to cross over.”

Caitlin frowned. It sounded risky. Subsequent discussion followed that theme. No one disagreed that it was conceivable, even feasible. But more than one of the ship captains indicated that the risk of loss would be higher than in their voyages to date.

Matto, the elder and larger of the Lleix Starsifters elian members with the fleet, spoke up. “There are trails of stars between the two arms. Between our records and those of the Jao and Terrans, we can identify the best route. Others will have to make risk decisions after that.”

At the end of the discussion, Tully keyed something into his pad, and looked up. “It’s either that or go home without achieving our objective,” he said.

And Jao did not honor those who tried and failed, Caitlin thought to herself, no matter how great the effort. It was important to all from Terra taif, most especially the humans on this expedition, for Caitlin and the search to do well if they wanted their taif to retain a continuing voice in the leadership of their world.

“All right,” Caitlin said, slipping into the angles of calm-assurance. “We will meet again on this after we return to Ares Base.” She moved to firm-resolution. “In the meantime, we will all study this potential course of action and see if we can find problems with it. It’s better to deal with those before they happen.”

As the others stood and headed for the door, the Lleix blinked at Caitlin with their narrow black eyes. Their necks curved gracefully. Lim of the Terralore elian gazed at her. “If we are to function as requested, we need further unrestricted access to ship’s databanks,” the Lleix said in her fluting voice.

“I thought you already had it,” Caitlin said in surprise.

“No.” Lim said nothing more, twitching a fold of her colorful robes to make them drape even more perfectly.

“I will look into it,” Caitlin said.

The four Lleix left in a single file, trooping solemnly like ducklings headed for a pond, Starsifters elian in the lead.

“What was all that about?” Tully said as the rest left.

“I don’t know,” Caitlin said. “Who would have restricted the Lleix’s access?”

“I did,” Dannet said, rising to her feet.

Caitlin let her neck bend to a subtle indication of inquiry?

“They have been prying further than their needs would seem to require,” Dannet said. “They are outsiders after all with a long history of, admittedly rightfully, distrusting the Jao. There is always the possibility at least one or more of the Lleix expedition personnel wish us and our mission harm.”

Caitlin gazed steadily at Dannet krinnu ava Terra, once of the famed kochan of Narvo. No one who had lived through mad Oppuk’s rule of Earth could ever forget that; to the humans who survived that rule, Narvo’s fame was rather infamy.

Dannet gazed back, her body perfectly still, and for once, perfectly neutral.

“Due to events in Earth’s past, I might have had good reason to wish you harm,” Caitlin said carefully, “but you know I do not.”

“You are human,” Dannet said. “Humans are prey to many logical inconsistencies, but emotional subterfuge is seldom one of your weaknesses. Once you make up your minds, you rarely change them.”

That was a compliment of a sort. Caitlin’s lips twisted into a wry smile. “Give the Lleix unrestricted access again,” she said finally, “but have a digest sent to me every day on what data they mine. I will keep an eye on them myself while the rest of the crew is making themselves of use in more practical ways.”

Dannet nodded, then shifted into the tri-partite compliance-with-command-received.

****

Repairs were made; more slowly than Caitlin had hoped, but best to get it right–a mistake could cost big later. It took four days, not three, but in the end everything that could be fixed outside of a drydock was taken care of.

Caitlin again was on the command deck when the word came that Vercingetorix was as ready to travel as she was going to be. Dannet looked to her with an abbreviated form of inquiry implied in the tilt of her head and the position of her ears. Caitlin responded with a human nod, which flowed into a simple approval. After all, she thought to herself, nothing said that every posture had to be eloquent and elegant. Sometimes simple was good.

Maybe it was just her imagination, but the build-ups to the jumps during the return hadn’t seemed as trying as the jump had been into the system where they’d eliminated the Ekhat fleet and outpost. There was probably a reason for that, but she didn’t know what it was. One of these days, she decided, she really needed to get at least the high school version of the jump science.

The ship was doing some vibrating, true, and the loud hum had built up. Caitlin watched as Captain Uldra stood behind the technology stations on the command deck, head cocked, either listening to the sounds, or waiting for the flow to complete, or both. Whatever he was waiting for, it apparently arrived because he straightened and said, “You may jump, Navigator Annen.”

There was that same infinite second that Caitlin always felt, where all her senses seemed to be short-circuited and cross-wired, then they dropped back into space. Since Ares base was connected to the Jao Frame Portal network, they didn’t have to emerge from the jump inside a star. That didn’t bother Caitlin at all. It always seemed a bit odd to her to feel relieved that she was now sitting inside a stellar blast furnace.

Moments after Lexington broke into clear space, the sensor officer announced, “Ares system confirmed. Ares Base thirty-seven degrees port from axis. Challenge received from guard fleet.”

“Announce the arrival of the fleet,” Dannet ordered, “and request orbit instructions. Let them know we will proceed when the rest of the fleet arrives.”

Dannet’s ears were flipped back, and there was a hint of displeasure about her posture. Caitlin suspected that it had more to do with having to issue specific detailed orders than anything else. But with human and integrated Jao/human crews, Dannet couldn’t rely on all crew members having wrem-fa muscle memory to know almost instinctively what had to be done.

The fleet commander stood back from the workstations, hands clasped behind her back in a human-influenced waiting position, angles otherwise sharp and clean, letting Terra-Captain Uldra do his job without her interference as the other ships appeared from the corona one by one.

Caitlin moved up beside her and adopted a similar position. After a moment, Dannet spoke in a tone barely loud enough to be heard.

“Is this going to be the end of the exploration expedition?”

Caitlin snorted. “No. To paraphrase a Terran English leader from a few generations back, ‘This is not the beginning of the end, but the end of the beginning.’ We will be going back out.”

Dannet said nothing for a long while. When she finally replied, she used only one word.

“Good.”

 

1636: The Chronicles of Dr. Gribbleflotz – Snippet 38

1636: The Chronicles of Dr. Gribbleflotz – Snippet 38

It was with great reluctance Phillip abandoned his library in favor of the tools of his trade and ran back into the laboratory. John had raided Phillip’s sadly depleted larder and had a stale loaf of heavy rye-bread in his hands. He hand it to Phillip. “We have to go now, otherwise they’ll catch us!”

Phillip added the bread to the clothes and journals he’d already bundled into the blanket and thrust it into John’s hands and grabbed his medical kit and apothecary’s box. “I’m ready. Let’s go.”

****

Phillip sat at the loading hatch of Mr. Legard’s barn idly rubbing his fingers over his lucky crystal while he watched the flames claim his laboratory. He stared at the crowd gathered around his former home, trying to identify them, but it was too far, the light was bad, and his eyes weren’t the best. Still, his eyes were good enough to count individuals, and by his calculations, over half the adult population of the village were gathered there. That didn’t bode well for his continued safety in Anlaby.

Phillip sat down in the moonlight to check what he’d managed to save. It wasn’t much. In addition to his own and his grandfather’s journals he’d managed to save a summer weight coat, a hat, and couple of changes of clothes, and a spare pair of leather boots on the woolen blanket. He also had his medical kit and his apothecary’s kit, and finally, a very stale loaf of rye-bread. He hacked off a bit with his belt knife and manfully chewed on it. It wasn’t much, but it quietened his grumbling stomach. With his stomach settled Phillip reassembled his possessions and set out for Hull.

****

Phillip entered Hull early the next morning. His mind was set on getting out of the city before the stories of him being a devil worshiper could catch up with him, but his first order of business was to get a proper meal. Only after he’d eaten did he walk over to the Holy Trinity Church where he explained to Rev Richard Perrott why he was leaving and to ask him to pass on some money to young John’s father.

“I’ll ride over to check on William and Edmund tomorrow. Then, if they’re fit, we’ll drop in on Anlaby to talk to the villagers,” Richard said. “Will you hang around in Hull long enough for me to get back, just in case we’re able to salvage anything from the ruins?”

Reluctantly, Phillip nodded. “I’ll wait.” he dug some coins from his merger supply and handed them to Richard. “Could you pass this on to John Beecroft, a shepherd in the employ of Robert Legard Esq as thanks for sending his son to warn me what was happening. I owe him my life.”

Richard counted the coins. “A pound?”

“Is it too little?” Phillip asked, concerned that he might not be adequately rewarding John Beecroft for his help. Unfortunately, he couldn’t afford much more, not after losing most of his possessions in the fire.

Richard hastily closed his fist around the coins and shook his head. “No, no. Dr. Gribbleflotz. A pound is more than adequate recompense for the service Beecroft performed for you.”

Phillip released a sigh of relief. “Thank you.”

****

Phillip had time while Rev Perrot was gone to think about where he should go next. It had helped that amongst the few things he’d save had been Michael Weitnauer’s letter. The Danes had recently signed a peace treaty with the Emperor, so it should be relatively safe to travel from Hamburg to Jena, so Jena was where he would go.

Rev Richard Perrot was only gone a day, and when he returned he had a few of Phillip’s possessions. There was his portable fire assay kit. That had probably survived the fire because it and the cupels were supposed to operate at temperatures hot enough to melt gold. Unfortunately, the same couldn’t be said for any of his fine clothes or books. They’d all been lost.

Richard made apologies on behalf of the good people of Anlaby, and asked that he reconsider leaving, but Phillip’s mind was made up.

“I have a friend I haven’t seen for over ten years who has recently taken a position in Jena. I think it’s time I dropped by to see how he is doing.”

Richard nodded his acceptance of Phillip’s departure. “The good people of the parishes of Hessle and Kirk Ella will miss your medical services.”

Phillip wanted to shout that they should have thought about that before they burned him out of house and home, but you couldn’t say things like that to a minister of a church, so instead he settled for a silent smile. Rev Perrot seemed to understand the silent message and took his leave of Phillip.

****

Phillip bought a donkey in Hamburg and set off along the main trade route south to Erfurt, a distance of some two hundred and thirty miles. A teamster moving cargo by pack animal would normally make the trip in ten or eleven days, but Phillip wasn’t in any hurry. Instead he followed his usual practice of stopping at every village to talk to the locals, discovering uses for local plants and providing his professional services in exchange for food and lodgings.

It was August, some two months after he left Hamburg, before he reached Erfurt. He found stabling for Dapple (the third of that name) and a room for himself. After washing off the dirt of the road Phillip went for a walk around the city. He didn’t need the exercise, but he was desperately in need of intelligent conversation.

He found the conversation in an inn, naturally. A group of people were talking when one of their number, a wine merchant by the name of Casparus Menius, announced that he’d been offered the chance to buy land in which a magical plant grew. The plant was magical because pollen gathered from the plant in the light of a full moon on the evening of the summer solstice could be turned into gold.

That caught Phillip’s attention and he responded without thinking. “That’s impossible.”

Casparus turned to glare at Phillip. “I have seen it,” he said.

Phillip did some rapid mental calculations. “What did you see? Did you see them harvesting the pollen?” he asked. “The last full moon on the evening of the summer solstice happened sixteen years ago.”

“No,” Casparus admitted reluctantly, “but I watched as they showed me the pollen they’d collected being turned into gold.” Casparus smiled at his colleagues before returning his attention to Phillip. He pulled out his purse and extracted a small bead of gold. “Tell me that’s not gold,” Casparus said as he placed the bead on the table.

Phillip looked at the bead. It certainly looked like gold. He pointed to it. “May I handle it?”

Casparus nodded and Phillip picked up the bead. It certainly felt heavy enough to be gold, “I’m a trained assayist and I have a touchstone with me. May I test this ‘gold’ on it?”

“Of course,” Casparus said.

Phillip pulled his portable assay kit out of his satchel and proceeded to test the bead. “It’s pure gold,” he declared, handing the bead back to Casparus.

“See,” Casparus said with a meaningful look at one of his more vocal colleagues. “I told you it was gold, Jacob.”

“But I doubt that was made from some wondrous magical pollen,” Phillip said.

Casparus turned to glare at Phillip. “How can you say that?” he protested. “You weren’t there. I saw them with my own two eyes use their magic pollen to make gold.” Casparus stared suspiciously at Phillip. “You just want to beat me to the gold.”

Phillip shook his head. “Sometimes something is just too good to be true,” he said. “Tell me, why would these people be willing to sell your this ‘gold mine’?”

That’s simple,” Casparus explained. “Their father didn’t know what he had when he collected the pollen sixteen years ago, so he didn’t collect very much, and it took years to discover how to turn it into gold.” Casparus smiled smugly. “Now they find themselves in need of money and unable to wait until the next full moon falls on the evening of the summer solstice.”

 

Castaway Odyssey – Chapter 08

Castaway Odyssey – Chapter 08

Chapter 8.

Xander watched the installation of the precious coil in his VRD, one of the gloved hands gripping the coil and the other tightening part of a not-quite visible fixture.

“There, that’s got it!” the Sergeant said. “Check the connectivity, would you?”

“Connection shows good, sir!” Tavana answered from the pilot’s seat. “We just had the Trapdoor status light go green!”

“Well, now, that’s a relief and a half.”

A tiny glint in another part of his VRD caused Xander to straighten. He murmured and gestured directions, and the remaining camera on LS-88 shifted its focus and resolution to maximum in the indicated area. Something was there, ahead and (in a relative sense) above them, tumbling slowly, showing a reflection of dim, dim starlight on something shiny.

“Sergeant, I think I’ve just spotted the Lieutenant’s piece of the wreck.”

“You have? How far off?”

“If it is her… three to five kilometers, I think, ahead, starboard one and a half degrees, azimuth two point oh-five degrees.”

“I’m on my way in, then. Get everyone strapped in, we’ll be doing some maneuvering to match up with her.”

“Yes, sir!” Xander raised his voice. “Okay, everyone, strap in again. Francisco, you can play one of your games if you want while we’re maneuvering. Maddox –”

Francisco suddenly let loose with a torrent of Spanish which, roughly translated, said how much he hated the little cabin of the shuttle, he wanted to go home, Mommy should be here, he didn’t want to play any games, and he wasn’t going to be strapped in, no!

As the tantrum gained momentum, Xander looked helplessly at Maddox and Tavana. The little boy’s voice was cracking as he spoke faster and faster, tears starting to form and break off to float like tiny glimmering diamonds through the air.

Maddox launched himself slowly towards Francisco. “Hey, Francisco, it’s okay. None of us are happy about –”

“No!” Francisco’s flailing arm took Maddox by surprise, sending the older boy spinning end-over-end in one direction and shoving an also-spinning Francisco into the back of one of the chairs face-first. The impact was a dull thud that Xander could hear several feet away, even as he sprang to intercept the stunned but still-crying boy. “Francisco! Are you okay?”

The red-haired boy had one hand clamped over his mouth, the other now gripping Xander, keeping Francisco from floating away again. The tears looked like they were also tears of pain now, and with a pang somewhere near his own heart Xander found himself reminded of Maddox, looking up at him with the same expression of pain and loss after a similar tantrum.

He reached out a little farther, hugged Francisco to him. “I’m sorry, Francisco. I really am. If we could wave our hands and fix everything, believe me, we would. Can I see your face, please? Come on, let me take a look.”

Francisco swallowed audibly, then nodded and slowly took his other hand down.

Blood dotted the boy’s hand and his lip. “Okay, Francisco, I need to take a closer look at your lip. Hold still, okay?”

“O… okay.” He winced as Xander gently pulled the lip out and examined it. Xander relaxed slightly.

“You’ll be all right,” he said, and gave the smaller boy a hug. “You know… Maddox had almost the same thing happen to him when he was a kid.”

“Oh, Xander, you’re not gonna –” Maddox caught himself, then nodded. “Y… yeah. I did. We were left on Earth with our uncle, and then Unc got sick…”

“And he threw a tantrum about pretty much everything, tried to run away, slipped, and smacked his face on the stairs,” finished Xander. “Scared me half to death when he got up crying with blood all down his face. Worse than yours; his front teeth almost went through his upper lip, had to get stitches. You’ve just got a little cut. It’ll hurt for a while – Maddox, can you see if you can get us a cold pack, get the swelling down until his nanos can get to it?”

“Sure.”

Francisco was silent for a moment, then said. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. We all feel the same way.”

“But you didn’t act all stupid and cry and yell like a baby,” Francisco said, now angry with himself.

“That,” said the Sergeant, coming in from the airlock, “is because we had plenty of years to have all our tantrums before you ever met us. Once Maddox gets that pack on, Francisco, can you get strapped in?”

Francisco nodded. “Yes, sir.”

“Good man.” Xander gave their smallest crewmember one more hug and let Maddox take over. I’m lucky I’ve got a brother like him.

As he helped the Sergeant get the gear stowed back in place, Campbell murmured, “Good work, Xander. You handled that just right – probably better than my reflexes would have.”

“Oh, they’ll listen to you a lot better than me.”

“Maybe, but partly because they’re scared of the old guy with the scars. You, it’s because you understand how to talk with ’em. Just wanted you to know I appreciate it. It’s a good thing you were on board.”

“Hey, it was our shuttle. It was a good thing you were on board.”

“Okay, good thing both of us were. Now, you get yourself strapped in; we’ve got one more castaway to bring home.”

By now, the glint was visible through the forward port without any assistance. “Gettin’ close now. Everyone strapped in?”

Securing his last strap, Xander reported, “Xander, all secure.”

“Tavana, all secure, Sergeant.”

“Maddox, all secure.”

“Francisco, all secure.”

“All right, then. Here we go!”

Xander tied into the navigation systems so he could really watch what the Chief Master Sergeant did; he could tell that Tavana was doing the same thing. Maddox and Francisco just watched the forward port.

Two quick hissing rumbles echoed through LS-88, and the little ship rotated slightly. Suddenly the tumbling, glinting object was centered in the viewport, perfectly centered and unmoving, merely growing larger. Xander was startled. The Sergeant wasn’t calculating anything; he had just adjusted their vector and alignment on the fly, and made it so they were heading directly towards the wreckage.

Now he could see clearly that it was, in fact, the broken boarding tube that they’d left the Lieutenant in, somersaulting lazily through the endless black, growing swiftly larger in the port. The forward rockets fired once, and now the approach was slow, leisurely, down from a speedy bicycle to a casual walk, the tube a hundred meters away… fifty… twenty-five…

A rippling flash of thrusters activating in a sequence too fast to follow, and abruptly the tube seemed frozen in space, neither approaching nor receding, simply rotating slowly like a model in a 3-D projection.

“C’est magnifique,” Tavana murmured. “Sergeant, you can fly.”

Campbell leaned back, a pleased grin on his face. “Guess I haven’t lost my touch quite yet. All right, I’ve got one more spacewalk to do now. For this, I do need someone else. Xander, you’re coming with me. I’m gonna have to float myself over there, unsecure her from whatever she locked herself onto, and come back. It’ll be easiest if you can haul us in at my direction.”

“Yes, sir.”

“That means that while we’re both out there, Tavana’s in charge. You two younger ones got that?”

“Yes, Sergeant!” said Maddox.

“Yes, Sergeant,” agreed Francisco.

“Okay.”

Xander felt his heart beating faster. I took all the classes, but… I’ve never actually done a spacewalk on the outside of a ship.

Suiting up and preparing was quick enough; old-style suits and EVA approaches, in the dawn of the space age, used to take a lot of time because the suits would run at much lower pressure for ease of physical motion and other issues, but modern skintight EVA suits maintained full pressure while allowing full range of motion, and were far more resilient than old-fashioned spacesuits. That suited Xander just fine; waiting hours slowly decompressing just to go outside would have driven him nuts.

The external door opened, and Xander looked out into pure darkness with scattered gems of unwinking light. Sergeant Campbell was ahead of him, blocking most of the view. “Now listen carefully, son. You will follow me out. You will lock on to each and every holdfast, guardrail, or anything else that I do, and you will do it in the exact same sequence I do. If I tell you to stop, you will stop immediately. If I tell you to go back, you will do so – in order, as carefully as we came out.”

“Yes, sir.”

“All right. When we get to the right position, I’ll tell you how we’ll handle the retrieval.”

The Sergeant clipped onto a guardrail just at the edge of the airlock, swung himself carefully out, keeping a grip on the rail, and lowered his boots to the surface. Once the older man had moved out of the way, Xander locked his suit onto the same guardrail and tried to maneuver himself out of the airlock with the same ease and grace; instead he ended up failing to stand, twisting his hand free, and bouncing off the hull and outward. Fortunately, the resilient energy absorption of his tether slowed and stopped him, so he could pull himself back down with care.

“Not as easy as it looks, is it, son?”

“Not nearly as easy as you make it look, sir.”

“You’ve learned your first lesson on real spacewalks, then: don’t try to pretend you’re the guy who’s done it all when you haven’t done any of it.”

“Yes, sir.”

Xander looked up and around. “Wow.”

He’d seen thousands of views of the stars – through ports, simulations, and the night sky on Earth. But there was nothing to compare with this.

The pure, unadulterated darkness that surrounded them made the darkest black he had ever seen look gray. Yet at the same time there was no sense of the dark that one had on earth, because everywhere were stars – not the blurred, dimmed, washed-out wavering pinpricks of light seen on Earth, but an innumerable set of intense, blazing points set against darkness, or shining brightly out within a glowing band of light and dark that he could see – really see – was a section of the Milky Way Galaxy itself, mottled with black banding of gas and dust, glowing with the light of not hundreds but hundreds of millions, billions of stars. Thousands of suns illuminated the darkness all around him – not dispelling it, or even reducing its absolute pitch-blackness in the least, but instead making it not an oppressive, threatening presence, but a backdrop of beauty.

“Yeah, I get the same reaction every time I come out. Doesn’t ever get old. Especially here, between the stars.” Sergeant Campbell was silent a moment, letting him admire the view. “All right, son, let’s move along. Follow my every move, right?”

“Right.”

They made it to the forward portion of LS-88 easily enough; the Sergeant had been out twice before, so he knew where everything was already and could make sure that Xander took the right path the first time.

“Okay, listen up, son,” he said finally. “This part of the ship we’re standing on, it’s magnetic. Stay here; nothing better than having more than one thing keeping you in place.

“Now, this here is going to be tricky. We don’t have any attitude jets to adjust the spin of that piece of junk out there. She’s only rotating at about one and a half RPM, luckily, or it’d be even tougher. If she was spinning at say five or ten RPM, we’d have to figure out a way to slow her down, and I honestly haven’t a clue as to how we’d manage that without risking LS-88. But at forty seconds per rev, we can pull this off without having to do that.”

Xander stared… up? Out? Directions were odd when there was no gravity. He decided on “up” since they were on the top surface of LS-88. He stared up at the slowly-turning tube; inside, he could make out a shape that had to be Pearce Haley’s suit. “So what do we do, Sergeant?”

“Mostly what do I do, son. You’re here to back me up. I’m going to jump across, timing it so I end up inside and stop myself around the middle. Problem is that with it rotating, I can’t have a tether on me; snap right off as it rotated, or drag me out. Other problem is that these suits don’t have real maneuver jets on ’em, just some dinky anti-spin thrusters with real, real limited delta-V, so if I make a bad mistake, I might be haring off into the black without a way to turn around.”

“But then, Sergeant…” He swallowed, then continued, “Sergeant, I hate to say it, but shouldn’t we…”

Campbell waited.

Xander felt his grip on the nearby rail tighten, but forced himself to finish, “… shouldn’t we think about, well… whether we can afford to rescue her?”

When Campbell didn’t immediately answer, he felt a spurt of shame. “I’m sorry, Sergeant, I –”

“Don’t apologize, son. You asked the hardest question there is, and it’s the right question. The question she’d want us to ask.” Campbell looked up. “Is it worth risking me – when I’m pretty inarguably invaluable for you boys’ chances of getting home – to bring her in when she might already be a goner?” He turned back to Xander, and Xander’s retinals showed Campbell’s serious expression inside the helmet. “What do you think?”

“Me? Sergeant, I –”

“Don’t back out on me now, son. You asked the question, now answer it.”

Xander felt shaky just contemplating the idea of turning away, but he made himself think about it. “Well… Sergeant, given what you see up there, and what you know about your own skills… what’s the chances that you won’t have something happen that’s so bad we can’t get you back?”

A soft chuckle. “I’d say about ninety-five percent. I’d have to screw up pretty damn bad for us to get to the point that either I couldn’t rescue myself or you manage to catch up with me somehow. I’ve done zero-G work a lot over the years. I ain’t saying this one isn’t one hell of a tricky maneuver, but no part of it’s really ridiculous for someone with the experience. It’s just not gonna be following the best practices manual.”

“And… again, from what you know… what’s our chances of getting back home without you?”

“That’s a harder question, Xander… but we’re close to finishing the coil replacement. If that doesn’t work, none of us are getting home anyway, so let’s say it works. If it does… I’d say even without me you boys have at least an eighty-five percent chance of getting home now, since you’ve got power and ship’s key systems up. With the Trapdoor at this distance, you can see the star you’re goin’ towards, and you have to drop out of Trapdoor periodically anyways, so if you just keep heading towards that star,” he indicated the star that Xander already knew was the one for Orado, “you’ll get there. And you’re pretty levelheaded; I think you’d keep ’em together until you got there.”

Xander felt a huge sense of relief. “Then I say we don’t leave anyone behind, Sergeant!”

“That’s the way to talk, son! But you asked the right questions. Now let’s cross our fingers that we stay just a little lucky today.”

“So after you get across, Sergeant, then what?”

“Then I go and unsnap Lieutenant Haley from where she’s locked herself down. Once I’ve got her hooked to me securely, then I move to one end of the thing and use my omni to time my jump back so I head back here at reasonable speed. You throw me a lifeline as soon as I get clear; I’ll probably be headed close enough to reach some part of LS-88, but a lifeline locked down to the hull will really help make sure.”

“Got it, Sergeant.”

“You understand how to throw one of these lifelines?”

“We did study that, yes, Sergeant. Throw underhanded, not too fast, and use your fingers to slow it gradually down. If you do it perfectly, the line will stop and not bounce back.”

“That’s the classroom method, but it’s like how we teach kids to do multiplication longhand when they’ll pretty much never be without an omni in real life. There’s a lot better way to do it if you know how those lines work. See, they’re wrapped in a jacket of electrorigid polymer; zap it with electricity and it stiffens, like a hose with water running through it. So what you do is throw it out in the general direction you want, and then stiffen it up so you can point it at your target. Once you’ve got it set where you want it, you turn off the juice.”

Xander looked at the shiny, looped cable. “Really? That’s a lot easier. But how do I get the electricity through it?”

“Check your settings for your gloves. The menu will give you an active option. Set the glove holding the lifeline to active and that’ll do the trick – electrify all the part of it extending away from you, as long as the other end’s clipped to your suit. It’s low voltage so there’s no danger.”

Xander drew about a meter of the line out and activated the gloves; the line swiftly straightened itself out, feeling something like a very flexible fishing rod. “Got it!”

“All right, then.” Sergeant Campbell unsnapped his short tether and wrapped it safely around him, locking it securely to his suit. “Here goes nothing.”

With a single jump, Campbell broke the connection between LS-88 and himself and floated away, directly for the remains of the boarding tube. At first Xander thought he’d badly mistimed the jump, because the entrance to the tube wasn’t even visible; but as Campbell gradually approached the rotating wreckage, the tube opening appeared and Campbell travelled straight into the ten-meter-long piece of boarding tube. “Bullseye!” he heard Campbell announce cheerily. “All right, I am now clipping myself to a holdfast and making my way up to Pearce. She’s about two meters from me now.”

A short time later, Xander could see Campbell next to Pearce’s suit. “I have reached her and… secured. Checking Lieutenant Haley now.”

A few more minutes elapsed, then his cheerful voice returned. “She’s in full suspension, suit systems maintaining her at minimum temperature. Everything looks good. She’s locked down at two holdfasts. Clipping myself to her now.” A pause. “All right, releasing first holdfast. Releasing second holdfast. Verifying secure to carry. I am secure to carry. Now heading for the end of the tube. Xander, verify you have the lifeline ready.”

“Ready, Sergeant.”

“Good. Watch the rotating end. Get a feel for where its maximum silhouette is against the stars. That’s probably where I let go. I probably don’t even have to jump; the rotation will allow it to pitch me straight at LS-88 at less than a meter per second. So before I jump, see if you can get that lifeline out there.”

Xander nodded. “Got it, Sergeant.”

He took the lightly weighted line in his fingers, remembering the simulations he’d gone through. The peak of it seems to pass just underneath those two stars, so I’ll aim there.

The throw was a little off, but as he’d thrown the line gently he had plenty of time to wait and very carefully slow it down with his fingers. When it seemed almost stopped, he activated the gloves.

The line straightened out, feeling almost like a skinny snake lazily trying to wriggle out of his grasp. He stood as still as he could, waiting for the rippling movements to fade away. Then he very, very slowly moved it to point straight at the rotating cylinder, where he could now see the Sergeant, with Lieutenant Haley in his arms, waiting. “All right, Sergeant. I’ve got it set, I think.”

“Looks good from here, son. Now just let it go inactive; unless you pull on it, it should stay right where it is, and I want it real flexible for me to catch.”

“It’s inactive.” Xander could feel the line go the tiniest bit loose in his hand, but kept stock-still.

“All right, I have moved to a nonmagnetic part of the tube, and letting my omni time my release… countdown to release in three, two, one, release!”

As the rotating part reached its apex, the Sergeant let go and was flung slowly outward like a ball released by a pitcher. Xander could immediately see that the Sergeant’s timing must have been not quite perfect because he started drifting very slowly to one side. However, he was very near to the end of the lifeline, and managed to snag it with his left hand. “Clipped to lifeline,” he announced as he slowly approached. Xander noticed the line stiffening and relaxing several times in succession; the stress in the line as it curved seemed to pull just enough on the Sergeant to reduce his drift.

“On my way in, son. Just step back and give me a little room. Remember no magnetics back behind you there.”

“Understood.”

He edged back, watching the incoming suits. Leaving the magnetic area caused him to bobble slightly, but he kept himself mostly under control and didn’t say anything.

Moments later, Sergeant Campbell rotated himself and came to a perfect landing on the magnetic section of the nose of LS-88. Xander could see Pearce Haley’s face now through the helmet, looking as though she were sleeping peacefully.

“Retrieval accomplished. Good work, Xander. Now let’s keep focused for a few more minutes – by the numbers, back to the airlock, and then we can breathe a little easier!”

Xander allowed himself to relax – just a little bit – as they made their way back. Now we just have to get home!

 

Through Fire – Snippet 23

Through Fire – Snippet 23

What Mad Universe

“How did you recognize me?” I asked.

There had probably been very little thought involved in his dragging me back to the same hotel room we’d first rented. The strange thing is that Alexis still had the codes for it. “Rented it for a week,” he explained. “I always do. It’s a habit that’s seen me through more than once.” I didn’t want to think of his past of conspiracy nor what it might mean now. Nor what he was playing at now.

I sat on the plastic-looking bed spread, and looked at him. I felt suddenly very tired, and it occurred to me that other than the catnap I’d caught while Royce Allard changed my appearance, I hadn’t slept in over twenty-four hours. But the tiredness went beyond physical. After all we’d done, after all I’d tried, we were back where we’d been when the ball had been interrupted and the palace attacked.

I realized I’d said something like that, when Alexis shook his head. “Not… exactly,” he said. “Oh, sure, we’re back here physically, but we do know more. We know that the Good Man is prisoner, we know who is in charge of this. We know–”

“We do?”

“I have a pretty good idea, at least,” he said. “That’s what I was doing in Olympus, while you were — What were you doing, precisely?”

There was a tone of amusement in his voice, as though I’d done something funny. It made me grit my teeth. “I was making preparations to rescue Simon. What else would I be doing?”

The amusement changed to something sharper edged as he said, “Perhaps being sensible. Who gave you the idea that you could do this? On your own? And … Who helped you change your appearance?”

“How did you recognize me?” I asked, heating to my theme. “Who told you where I was? Did you follow me? How did you ambush me?” And that last was more material than I could tell him, since I could hear much better than normal humans. But I hadn’t heard him.

He shrugged. “It’s stupid and suicidal,” he told me. “For you to think you can rescue the Good Man on your own or, in fact, at all. You will go back to Olympus. I will escort you off the seacity and some way on the way. And then you’ll promise me that you’ll go back. That you’ll not try to return here. That you’ll leave me to rescue the Good Man, a job for which I’m far better equipped than you are. That you’ll stay in Olympus until I bring him back safe and sound, or until we both die.”

For all I was sure — almost sure at least — that he didn’t belong to the same class as Keeva and Simon, he spoke with the sort of easy authority that assumes it will be obeyed. It was much like being a toddler and being told that I was going to be a good girl, and what being a good girl entailed. It never occurred to any of the adults that a three-year-old would not merely disobey, but say no and mean it, and set another course of action. I wondered if that was where my relationship with my foster parents had gone wrong; if that was why I’d never truly been their daughter, even if they’d had the raising of me since birth.

And now I was all set to do it again. I looked up into the dogged, homely face, and into the dark brown, confident eyes, and I said, “No.”

It took him a moment to absorb it, as though I were speaking some long-forgotten language. “No?”

“No. I will not go back to Olympus. I will not promise not to return. There is nothing I can do or get in Olympus that will help Simon. There is nothing I can say that will persuade them to risk whatever balance they think they’ve achieved to come to our rescue. And I will not go back. No one wants me there. No one wants me here, either,” I added, with scrupulous honesty. “But if I am here, at least I can perhaps do something to help Simon. I owe him that much.”

“I promised him I’d keep you safe. You owe him to let me keep you safe.”

I shrugged. “That was when the palace was attacked. He told you to keep me safe and get me out of there, both of which you’ve done, thank you. Now your duty is done. You kept me as safe as I could be kept. Now is the time for you to go and do whatever it is you’re meant to do — look after yourself or your family, or whatever. That thing you said that most people were doing: enjoying a holiday. Your job is done. Go.”

He looked as though he’d very much like to murder me. He said something under his breath. It was probably “merde.” For reasons that could make no sense to anyone, and least of all to me, his expression cheered me immensely. Perhaps it was that you don’t get that mad at people you don’t care for.

Then he sighed, and he said, in a voice of deep and heartfelt loathing, “I do not know why the Bon Dieu thought it necessary to create females, unless it is to drive men to despair. Of all the nonsensical, stupid creatures–”

He stopped sharply because I asked him a question. He frowned. “What that has to do with anything, I don’t know. Or what business it is of yours. But no, Madame. Or at least not that I ever felt any attraction to the male of the species. Which doesn’t stop me wondering why the species must be saddled with women.”

I glared back at him. “You’re not saddled with me,” I said. “You’re not obligated to stay with me. I will be fine on my own. I have been fine since I was three and able to look after myself, and if you think Earth is any stranger than the world I grew up in, then you–”

“I don’t want to discuss it,” he said. “I can’t convince you to leave, and you can’t convince me to leave you. I suggest we call a truce and go to sleep.”

I glared at him. “We’re supposed to be rescuing Simon.”

“You’ve been awake how long?” he said. “You’re supposed to sleep. I don’t care how tough or how capable you were designed to be, you’re not made of dimatough. You’re still made of human flesh, and you should go to sleep.”

We’d reached the point in the procedures when I’d have argued if he’d told me I was supposed to breathe oxygen. And there was really no good reason for it. Well, there wasn’t any reason for it, good or not. It was just that I didn’t like this man, I didn’t like that he’d constituted himself in authority over me, and I hated that he was trying to keep me safe in a way that denied me both thought and autonomy, and everything an adult is supposed to have.

All my life I’d been told I was more capable than normal human beings, and now I was being treated as though I weren’t capable of anything at all. And by a man who was a servant, a menial–

At this point in my thought, I stopped because I gurgled with laughter. You see, in its own way, the world I was brought up in was as egalitarian as the sans Culottes. It’s a different type of equality, though. Instead of a majority enforcing that everyone should be equal, it is assumed that the individual has the right to tell the majority to take a flying leap. And also the right to ignore any authority, duly constituted or not, who tries to tell him otherwise. Which meant that every citizen of Eden was equal to every other citizen in the ability to be free and take the consequences.

“I’m not more than human,” I told the very puzzled Brisbois, as he shook his head at me. “I never thought of myself that way, and certainly not in the Earth sense, and damn it, I don’t need bodyguards or servants. What I’m proposing, Monsieur Brisbois, is that you let me leave and go about what I think I must do. And then you can do what you please.”

He shook his head, in mute, stubborn refusal. “No. I was told to protect you and I will protect you.”

“What are you?” I asked, and for the second time in a very short time made an exception to my rule against rudeness, “Simon’s dog or his slave?”

His mouth contorted in a sneer. If his smile made him look younger and much more pleasant, this expression made him look older and as though he’d rather kill me than look at me, “What I am, Madame, is a disciplined fighting man. Disciplined fighting men take orders and obey their superior officers. Which St. Cyr is. If I stop obeying him, then I’m nothing but a hoodlum, a… a violent criminal. Which I was once, I grant you, but which I do not wish to be ever again.”

“Well, I am not a disciplined fighting man!”

This brought the sneer into a guffaw. “Well, no. Madame Sienna, please, stop being foolish. We’re both very tired, and nothing can be gained by us screaming at one another. You take the bed. I shall lie down on the floor and sleep. And when we wake we shall revisit this topic. I don’t think anything productive can be said or done by two people as tired and frustrated as we are now.”

I glared at him, searching for an answer, when it hit me that if I stayed awake even a few more minutes I was likely to fall on my face with tiredness. Then it occurred to me that I should offer to sleep on the floor instead, but a look at the stained carpet convinced me this was a very bad idea. So I glared at him some more and said, “Fine.”

In my mind, I was sure that while I needed sleep, I would recover faster than he did. I thought this as I lay down lengthwise on the bed and closed my eyes. I would sleep a couple of hours, then get up, step over the sleeping Brisbois and go off into the city to find out how to rescue Simon.

I woke up an indefinable time later, in utter darkness. For a moment I was puzzled as to what had woken me. Then I realized it had been the opening of the door.

I leapt off the bed, half expecting to trip on Brisbois. But he was not on the floor, where he’d laid down. And when I rushed to the door and opened it, I saw him some distance away walking down the street.