Eric Flint's Blog, page 214

Death’s Bright Day – Snippet 46

Death’s Bright Day – Snippet 46

CHAPTER 17

Newtown on Peltry

Tovera, wearing a chauffeur’s uniform, opened the door of the limousine’s passenger compartment for Grozhinski. He started to get in and only then noticed that Adele was inside waiting for him. The windows were opaque from the outside.

“Lady Mundy!” he said as the door closed behind him. “Have you been able to alert Minister Robin’s guards?”

The freighter Fisher 14 had reached Peltry orbit three hours before. Its astrogation computer had immediately sent an alert to the Residency, warning that there would shortly be an attempt on Christopher Robin’s life. The immediately following message said that the Resident should arrange for Major Grozhinski to be picked up upon landing and meet Lady Mundy as soon as possible.

“We took care of that yesterday,” Adele said. “The gunmen from Section C arrived before you did and went to work immediately. They were unsuccessful.”

“I’m…” Grozhinski said. “Well, I’m very glad to hear that. I was afraid I would be too late. As I gather I was.”

Tovera pulled into the space at the Residency. The top of the gatepost still lay in the yard. Adele wondered if she should call for brick masons in the Nabis Contingent and have them repair it. She had learned early in her association with the RCN that starship personnel included a wide variety of skills which had nothing to do with their normal duties.

Adele waited until they were within the shielded Residency to say, “I gather that communication in the other direction, from me to your organization, has been delayed also. Master Mignouri has had a stroke. I’ve been acting as your Resident myself. Yesterday I delegated those duties to Midshipman Cazelet. He’s downstairs now.”

Grozhinski stared blankly for a moment, then laughed. He seated himself at the table at the edge of the room and opened his briefcase.

“We’ve been having a run of bad luck, haven’t we?” he said. Adele took the chair across from his. “And one piece of good luck, Lady Mundy: that you’re on hand. Which seems to have been enough. Well, this next item isn’t luck. This was a very clever move by General Krychek, and it took us by surprise.”

The file appeared in Adele’s data unit. She forwarded it to Cazelet upstairs before she even opened it. This was 5th Bureau material — in a way, at least — and if Grozhinski had concerns about it being in the Residency database, it was his job to remove it.

“Umm,” Adele said as she scanned the material. “Danziger is outside both the Tarbell Stars and the Alliance. How were Krychek’s agents able to embargo the missiles?”

The missiles on which the Tarbell Stars were depending had been captured by Cinnabar — captured by Daniel himself — after the Battle above Cacique. Because they were of Alliance design and manufacture, the RCN had declared them surplus to requirements with the cessation of hostilities. Minister Forbes had arranged for their sale to the Tarbell government at the price of scrap metal.

“Danziger is independent, yes,” Grozhinski said, “but when two Fleet investigators arrived with evidence that the missiles had been stolen from Fleet stocks, the local authorities probably didn’t see any choice but to embargo them until the matter could be adjudicated. Which might reasonably be at some time after the Upholders have succeeded in conquering the Tarbell Stars.”

He shrugged. “I don’t say that no money changed hands from Krychek’s agents to the locals,” he said. “But it might not have been necessary.”

“I see,” said Adele. An independent world couldn’t risk being seen as a receiver of war stocks stolen from a neighboring superpower. Cinnabar wouldn’t regard an Alliance punitive expedition to correct the situation as a breach of the Treaty of Amiens.

The stock of top-grade missiles which Cinnabar was sending to the Tarbell Stars had permitted Robin to bypass the generation of neglect which had rotted the Tarbell Navy into a rickety joke. Freighters configured as missile ships weren’t really warships, but they would be sufficient to defeat the Upholders — and that would buy time for the Minister of War to create a real, professional navy to maintain the central government’s sovereignty against internal and external threats.

Without the missiles, the government had no time. Adele smiled faintly. It would be very tempting to add that the government had no chance, either.

“Very well,” Adele said, getting to her feet. “The next step is to bring the matter to Captain Leary. He’s at the dockyard, overseeing the conversion of the freighters Montclare and Montcalm into missile ships.”

“What will Captain Leary be able to do?” Grozhinski said as he closed his briefcase and rose with her.

“If I could answer that question…” Adele said tartly. “I wouldn’t need to talk with Daniel.”

* * *

Daniel stood beside Pasternak and Captain Ealing on the platform of an out-of-service crane, looking down on the refitting of the Montclare. Arc welders snarled as they attached brackets to the hull. Hogg stood far enough back that the actinic radiation was blocked by the floor of the platform; otherwise it would’ve burned holes in his retinas. The three spacers wore goggles.

Six teams were working on the Montclare. There were four more in the next dock on the Montcalm, another fast freighter, to add to the racket.

“The ship’s existing computer will handle missile computations easily,” Daniel said. “My people — ” Cory and Chief Missileer Chazanoff ” — are installing the necessary software, and the yard is adding missile stations.”

These were flat-plate displays rather than full holographic consoles, but they were sufficient for the present purpose. The multiple alternate tracks that a warship’s console could handle were unnecessary: the two government missile ships would only be targeting the rebel heavy cruiser, deluging her with missiles which would either overwhelm the vessel — the Upholder — or drive her from the battle.

“That’s all fine…” said Captain Ealing. “But what if they shoot back? Are you adding cannon so that we can stop incoming missiles? Right now there’s only the one gun station for pirates on each of these freighters.”

Ealing was the civilian captain of the Montclare whom Minister Robin had hired when he bought the ship for the Navy of the Tarbell Stars. Daniel had kept an open mind about whether he would confirm the appointment now that he had been put in command of the navy. However —

Anyone who thought that plasma cannon could stop missiles was probably too ignorant for any naval appointment. Skillfully used, plasma bolts could nudge a missile in a direction which would not intersect with the track which the target vessel intended to follow.

A warhead weighed over a tonne, however. Even if it were vaporized by direct hits, the tonne of vapor would continue on the plotted trajectory and do equal — if varied — damage to the target should they intersect. The trick was to vaporize divots from the warhead’s mass to thrust it out of the ship’s course.

“We don’t have time to fit plasma cannon,” Daniel said, “or to train gunners to naval standards. The missile ships will be defended by the dedicated warships accompanying them.”

He realized he was frowning. “Captain,” Daniel said. “This is a war and there are risks. It is my job to minimize those risks to the degree possible, and it is your job to carry out my orders promptly and to the best of your abilities.”

A sharp Clang! punctuated the arc welders’ pervasive nastiness, followed by another and at length a third and fourth. Woetjans was on the Montclare’s hull with a bronze maul, hammering a freshly welded bracket from both directions.

 

Castaway Odyssey – Chapter 07

Castaway Odyssey – Chapter 07

Chapter 7.

Campbell activated the shaped pad inside his suit; the sweat on his forehead and eyebrows was quickly wiped away. “All right, Tavana. I’m out.”

He stood on the dimly-visible hull of LS-88, the innumerable stars of the galaxy sprinkled across the utter darkness like frozen sparks embedded in obsidian. Low down and towards the rear of the landing shuttle, he could see the enigmatic nearby star – one he was pretty sure was less than a light-year off – gleaming steadily. He still wondered where in the name of God that star came from. It wasn’t possible for stars to materialize out of nothing.

“All right, Sergeant. The first broken Trapdoor coil is … three meters forward from your current position and, um, two point two meters clockwise around from that point – clockwise from your point of view facing the front of the ship.”

He made his way cautiously across the shining surface of the shuttle. You couldn’t rely on magnetic boots when so much of a modern vehicle was nonferrous, nonmagnetic material; you had to walk carefully, make sure you were always clipped onto a safety eyelet, and so on. In a few minutes he was floating at the described location. “I see a dark indentation; is that the right target?”

“Umm… yes, sir. That should be the only depression near you.”

People need to work on these. Where’s the handrail and lockdowns?

He muttered to his omni, which shifted spectra slightly and enhanced the view. “Ah, there we go.”

Clipping onto the now-easily-visible handrails, Campbell was now secured near the Trapdoor field coil. “Right, now display me the release sequence.”

Unlocking and removing the field coil from its proper place in the hull was a five-step process that had to be followed in precise order. Naturally the first step involved getting a specialized tool into the least-accessible spot just under the forward portion of the coil. Even with a modern flexible carbonan suit, that took some bending. “I am getting too old for this s… er, crap.”

“Are you sure you wouldn’t like one of us to do that, Sergeant?” asked Xander in a concerned voice.

“Absolutely not.” With the tension of a spacewalk and the situation weighing on him, that came out sharper and louder than he intended. “Sorry, son. I appreciate the offer. But my job’s to keep you kids safe, and I’ve spent more time in spacesuits than Francisco’s been alive. I know what I’m doing here.”

Which of course is the signal for me to screw up bigtime with some rookie mistake. Dammit, Campbell, you know better than to wave a red flag at Murphy that way!

“It’s okay, Sergeant,” answered Tavana. “It’s just… we worry about you too, scary man.”

He couldn’t keep from chuckling. “Well, thank you for that, anyway. And I’ll try to be a little less scary, okay, Francisco?”

“O… okay.” The youngest of his impromptu crew sounded like he wasn’t sure whether he could laugh, but wanted to.

He felt the first locking clamp move. “Got that part. Moving on.”

It took about fifteen more minutes to finish removing the coil, following the procedure carefully, by the numbers, one step at a time followed by rigorous double-checking. Finally he opened the case at his waist, and very carefully stowed the coil inside. “One down,” he said, and heard a subdued cheer over the comms. “How’s Operation Unwind going?”

“It is actually doing well!” Tavana’s voice held both surprise and pride. “Two motor’s windings are now unwound and we’re working on the next one.”

“What I see of this coil… it looks pretty fancy. Can we adapt something to wind it?”

“We think so,” Maddox said cheerfully. “Tav found the winding patterns in his reference books, and if we can salvage the armatures in the originals, we’ll have the right core configuration already.” A note of concern crept into his voice. “But boy, between the motors we’re taking the wire from and the ones we’re using to make the winding machine… there’s not going to be much left in the cargo.”

“Don’t exaggerate, Maddox,” his older brother admonished. “You mean there won’t be many small motors left. The main motors and drives on the machinery, we haven’t touched those.”

“That package of additional TechTools sure helped,” Tavana noted.

“Sounds great. You boys keep at it while I finish this work.”

He moved to the next location with Xander verifying his movements, then settled down to remove the second coil. Good kids. I know this is wearing on them, but they’re keeping it together so far.

The success at a coil-winding (well, currently unwinding) machine was gratifying. Unlike the others, he’d seen failures of jury-rigged repairs in the field, and they couldn’t afford failure here. The Trapdoor coils depended on some pretty demanding precision – way beyond what he thought hand-winding could ever accomplish, and even if it could, the thought of winding hundreds, maybe thousands, of turns of wire by hand onto a complex armature, then doing it twice more? His hands ached just at the thought of it.

But modern controllable motors, programmable omnis, simple actuators – Tavana, Xander, and even Maddox had figured out how they could be combined and mounted on one of the excavator machine’s supports to make a winding device.

The second coil was out. He rested for a moment, watching the unmoving stars. “Hopefully we can make ’em move soon enough,” he muttered to himself, and then went to remove the third coil. “Last one, then I can get back inside.”

Then he mentally kicked himself again. What the heck was wrong with him? Never, ever start looking forward to the end, or you start rushing! Campbell made himself go over the steps extra-carefully on the third one. He was not going to make a mistake on this last coil.

He didn’t. Finally he was done, and made his way – with exquisite caution – to the airlock. He didn’t let himself relax until he entered the main cabin and swung the lock door shut.

“Whew!” he said, letting his helmet retract. “That was a long bit of work.”

“You got them all, Sergeant?”

“All three, Tav. Guess we’ll have to cut away the old wire, then you’ll be ready to wind again?”

“Well, soon, yes. First we must finish the unwinding of all the motor wires, you know.”

“I’ll leave it to you. I’ve got just one more thing to do today before I take a break.” He moved to the pilot’s console and strapped in.

Xander looked puzzled. “What are you going to do, sir?”

“We’ve got a friend to pick up, son. Now that we’re working on what we hope is the last repair we need in order to get somewhere, it’s time we started heading towards her.”

“But… how can we find her out there?” Francisco sounded a little scared as he gestured towards the star-spattered endless dark, and Campbell couldn’t blame him.

He gestured for Francisco to come join him. Once the little boy reached him, Campbell pulled Francisco gently over to sit in his lap, and strapped him down. “Here, lemme show you. You know that in space, if you were to throw something, it’d just keep on going forever. Right?”

Francisco nodded. “Si. I mean yes, I know that, Sergeant.”

“But it’s more than that. If you throw something on Earth, or any planet, gravity accelerates it, changes its direction. Air can slow it down. Other things that it hits will change direction. But that’s not true in space. There’s no gravity to speak of out this far, a light year or more from any star; there’s nothing to hit for millions, billions, of kilometers, more – practically forever. Space is big. And there’s no air.” He looked at Francisco expectantly.

The boy wrinkled his forehead, obviously thinking hard. Campbell knew Francisco wasn’t a tech-head like the others – more an artist, from what he’d heard – but he wasn’t stupid. “So… the Lieutenant, she will keep going and going just like she was?”

“Exactly like she was. More, we know exactly how fast – and in what direction, from our point of view – she went. We were all watching, and the cameras were watching. I’ve had my omni keep the numbers current; if I’m right, she’s about fifteen thousand kilometers that way,” he made his omni generate an arrow in Francisco’s field of view. “Been drifting that direction at about eight meters per second ever since we separated.”

“That’s a long way away.”

He couldn’t keep from laughing. “Sorry, son – but for a spaceship, that’s like a baby step. If we had all our sensors running, we could still probably detect her on radar. Not like there’s anything else out here to look for. So right now, I’m going to start us back towards her. We’ve got reaction jets – the basic rockets work fine. They won’t get us home, or even let us cruise fast around a solar system, but for landing – or a slow chase – they’re just fine.”

Francisco sat still in his lap as Samuel reached for the controls. “Now, I have to turn us just like this – so we’re centered on her vector.” He triggered another program and routed it to the boy’s omni. “Watch that green dot and blue circle on your retinal display, Francisco. You see ’em?”

Francisco gave a quick nod. “Yes, Sergeant!”

“Now, you let me know when the dot’s getting close to the circle.” He could see the same display of course – and a lot more detail – but Francisco had been feeling left out of a lot of things, and he needed things to do.

“Okay, Sergeant!”

Campbell slowly started adjusting LS-88’s orientation.

“Getting closer, Sergeant… closer… it’s heading high, should it be doing that?”

“No, it shouldn’t. Good catch.” The boy did have a good eye, and he recognized when things didn’t look right. “That better?”

“Much better. Do we want the green dot right in the middle of the circle?”

“We do indeed.”

“It’s really near the circle now… touching… a little low… it’s gone past the middle!”

He slowly reversed the rotation the tiniest bit.

“Right in the middle!”

He was actually surprised. The kid’s eyes were good. His own instruments couldn’t find significant error. “Very, very good, Francisco! Thank you!”

“Now what?”

“Now we go catch her, that’s what. She’s goin’ away from us at about eight meters a second, and it’s going to take a while for us to take apart the coils and rewind ’em and put ’em back, so… I’d like to start closing with her a little faster than we separated. Stay, start getting closer to her at about ten meters a second.”

“So we need to accelerate by ten…” The boy hesitated. “No, we’re going away right now, right?”

 

“Right.”

 

His face lit up. “So we need to stop, and then accelerate by ten meters a second!”

 

He chuckled. “It’s all the same acceleration, but yes. So about eighteen meters per second all told.” He looked back. “You boys lock down everything for a few seconds – including yourselves. I’m going to start us after Lieutenant Haley.”

 

“Yes, sir! Hold on, I’ll let you know when we’re secure.” After a few moments, Xander said, “I think it’s all secure here. Tavana?”

 

“Secure, check. Maddox?”

 

“Let me look… yep, I check you! All secure back here!”

 

Campbell nodded. Good procedure, there; they hadn’t relied on one person to make sure nothing was loose. “All right, then, come up and strap in. This won’t be much of a burn, but still, best to be safe.”

 

Once they were all strapped in, he continued, “I’m just going to run her for nine seconds at a two-meters per second burn. That’ll still feel pretty massive to you, after all this time in microgravity, so be warned.”

 

If it weren’t for modern medical nanos, he’d be really worried about the effects of microgravity on health, but that should be okay, at least for now. He hoped.

 

True to his warning, the sudden force of acceleration came like a ton of lead weights dropped across his chest. He had to verify the thrust twice before he relaxed. After exactly nine seconds, it cut off.

 

Pearce, we’re on our way. And just maybe with the stuff you need. But in any case… you’re not going to drift away alone.

 

The Span Of Empire – Snippet 22

The Span Of Empire – Snippet 22

****

Glimnitz shuddered as the loathsome pink creatures dragged it back to its fellows and shoved it inside the sterile room. His fellow Trīkē swarmed him, pressing their lengths to his in a futile attempt to find comfort. Alas, there was no comfort outside the sphere of the Great Ones. There was no joy if one could not serve until the moment of the next Note and then the next. No songs existed in this terrible place. They could look forward to nothing but death.

“What do they want with us?” Solvaya asked, an undersized female. She was faulty, having torn off a leg in the battle and now had trouble walking.

“They ask questions,” Glimnitz said as the rest crowded in for comfort. “Questions and questions about the great masters!”

She limped back and forth at the edges of the group, unable to draw nearer. “Did you answer?”

“As soon as they have what they want from us, we will be spaced, you can be sure of that,” Glimnitz said. “Silence is our best protection. Tell them nothing. Eventually the Great Ones will find this ship and destroy it themselves. Then we will all be at peace, knowing we have done our best.”

****

In the event, it took nearly three days for the fleet to achieve readiness to leave. Vercingetorix had by far the worst damage, and was accordingly the last vessel to be ready.

While the fleet waited on the battleship’s repairs, Tully spent most of his time with Lieutenant Bannerji and the Lleix Ramt in the interrogations of the Ekhat slaves.

Attempted interrogations, that is.

Down on the lower deck, the squirmy Trīkē were still not talking to anyone but each other. Ramt was making progress translating their vocalizations, but not nearly as much as she would have if they would speak with her too. They weren’t like real individuals, she thought, as she tracked comments and responses around the room. What one thought, they evidently all thought. They could embellish upon a statement, modify it, expand it, but they seemed utterly unable to contradict an idea once it had been expressed.

Was that an artifact of their slave status? Ramt edged closer to the one-way glass. Had the Ekhat bred the ability to even conceive of opposition out of these pathetic creatures? She made notations on her pad, thinking how to turn this to their advantage.

She keyed the intercom on. “Report on condition!” she barked in Ekhat.

The Trīkē hesitated, clumped in the center of the detention chamber. “Master?” one of them chirped, then they were all abasing themselves, falling to the floor, squirming over and under one another.

“Report!” she said again.

“This is a dreadful place,” one, larger than the rest, said. “Take us back to the divine Ekhat! Let us serve the true song again!”

“You shall go nowhere until you report!” Ramt said, trying to evoke the hatefulness of a true Ekhat.

“It is cold here,” the Trīkē said, “and oh so very bright! Our eyes burn and there is no work. We are desolate with nothing to do.”

They could adjust the temperature and lighting, Ramt thought. Work was another matter. “Your work,” she said, suddenly struck by a notion, “your current assignment, is to converse with our new slaves, the Lleix. Teach them how to speak properly and how to work for the Ekhat.”

The iridescent black bodies stilled. “Then we will hear the next note?”

“You will hear it as soon as I do,” Ramt said, then shut off the intercom. First, she would have conditions altered more to their liking, then she would present himself inside their detention chamber and see if he had at last found a way around their all too natural cautions.

****

Even Caitlin Kralik came over from the Lexington to observe the captives. She watched Lieutenant Bannerji and Ramt work with the Trīkē, as they’d learned the sinuous black aliens called themselves.

“They may actually be quite low on the intelligence scale for species,” Bannerji said. “They don’t seem to be able to conceive of an existence where they are not slaves.”

“Then, for now,” Caitlin said, “they should consider themselves our slaves. We can worry about liberating them later.”

Bannerji stared at her. “That’s–” He shook his head. “That’s–genius. It just might work.”

He nodded at the door. “Ramt and I will try that.”

The Lleix joined him as he slipped through door. Inside the detention chamber, the Trīkē rushed to the back wall and cowered in a sinuous pile of sleek, iridescent black bodies.

****

The wretched creatures were coming after them again! Trīkē 10988, also known as Solvaya, cowered against the wall. Why did they not decently kill their captives? Trīkē had no purpose outside the divine Ekhat. Their magnificent ship was gone. The great note being composed by their masters was left unsung, choked off into nothingness before it could be broadcast. There were no Ekhat here to slaughter them for failing to win the battle as was right and needful. So it was not even left to them to die well and please their masters in that way.

The two aliens who came into the room were different from one another in many respects but alike in their stiffness. They spoke the Divine Language. The masters, Solvaya remembered from the few times he had been granted a glimpse, had been quite stiff too.

“Slaves,” the smaller one said in a piping voice, “you will speak to us.”

They piled themselves against the wall, diving under and under one another, trying to conceal themselves from the alien wrongness that had invaded their space.

“You were the Ekhat’s slaves,” the other stiff creature said. “They are dead. Now, you are our slaves and you will speak to us!”

Solvaya was forced out by the bodies of her fellows. For a moment, there was nowhere to hide. She was painfully exposed.

The smaller alien stepped closer. It had coverings of some sort draped over it, a false hide, as though it was molting. Disgusting!

The larger one prowled near. “What are your duties?”

Solvaya could not think; she was so afraid.

“Report!” the stiff ones said. “Report!”

“We run the ship,” the Trīkē said. “We service the engines, adjust the controls, but mostly we wait for the next Divine Note.”

“Good,” the smaller one said. “You are our slaves now.”

“Where is our work?” Solvaya replied in a low tone. “Will you sing one of the great notes when victory is achieved?”

“Perhaps,” the smaller one said, “if you work hard.”

“Where is our work?” Trīkē 31766 said from behind. “What shall we do to please our new masters?”

“Where is our work?” the others babbled together. “Where is our work?”

“Your first work is to talk to us in your native tongue,” the smaller one said. “Then we will see.”

“Talk?” they echoed.

“Tell us of the Ekhat ship,” the creature said. “Tell us of your duties.”

So Trīkē 10988 sat on the floor, folded her stubby arms, and began to explain.

Chapter 9

Dannet had ordered that all but a skeleton crew be transferred from Vercingetorix. If the wounded ship didn’t survive the framepoint jump, she wanted as many of the crew to survive as possible. So it was on the third day after the battle that, crew transfers completed, the fleet moved well away from the dead planet and the debris fields of the battles and, one ship at a time, activated their jump procedures and left the nameless system where long ago the Ekhat had raped a world of its life-forms, and where recently the universe had returned the favor.

Dead Ekhat floated in dead ships in space before the dead planet, almost like retributional offerings on an altar before a dead god. On the fourth planet the fragments of dead Ekhat were slowly mummifying from the cold and near-vacuum in the wreckage of their base.

The universe’s tutelage on the consequences of hubris was harsh.

Chapter 10

A starship appeared in the depths of the sun. Slowly it clawed its way from the plasma, through the corona, out into empty space.

Third-Mordent almost cringed. The dissonance! What had occurred here? Descant-at-the-Fourth had built such strong harmony in this system, and now it was gone, replaced by dissonance that shrieked. What had happened?

Slowly the small Ekhat ship moved away from the sun, slave crew lashed by Third-Mordent’s tongue and not infrequently directed by blows. Bit by bit they gathered information: no active ships in the system, large debris fields where none existed before, ship fragments slowly spinning through space.

Third-Mordent almost broke when they found the wreckage of the World Harvester. To know that Descant-at-the-Fourth, one of her own collateral ancestors, was gone . . . it almost put her own song away.

Then they discovered the planet.

Ekhat do not pale, or blanch. But Third-Mordent’s tegument lost sheen; so much so that the next-highest Ekhat on the ship sang a query.

Third-Mordent’s response was slow in coming.

“We return. This account must be taken to our harmony masters.”

For once her song was quiet. “Someone has dared to break our harmony. There will be a price for this.”

Soon the Ekhat ship left the system.

Dead ships still floated in space. Wisps of rarefied atmosphere touched lightly on rubble on a dead planet.

 

1636: The Chronicles of Dr. Gribbleflotz – Snippet 37

1636: The Chronicles of Dr. Gribbleflotz – Snippet 37

“A scientific experiment that involved cutting a still beating heart out of an animal?” William asked.

Phillip took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “You’re both educated men,” Phillip said. Both William and Edmund smiled. One could say they straightened and put on airs in response to being called educated men by the very learned Dr. Gribbleflotz. Phillip barely managed to hold back a smile. “Please, come in and I’ll explain.”

Phillip led the two country vicars into his laboratory and guided them to his work bench where he had a number of drawings of hearts laid out on its surface. He located Dr. Harvey’s book and added that to the papers on the bench. “It’s really quite simple,” he started.

****

Edmund laid down the remains of the pork chop he’d been chewing. “So what you’re saying,” he said as he wiped his greasy hands on his thighs, “is that your experiment confirmed Dr. Harvey’s contention that blood circulates around the body?”

Phillip nodded.

“But why has no one discovered this earlier?” William asked between nibbles at his own pork chop.

Philip shrugged. “That’s a very good question, and my only answer is that medical science has been blinkered by its blind adherence to the writings of Galen and his followers. It’s only by experimentation that we can improve our knowledge of how the body works.”

“That’s all very well and good, Dr. Gribbleflotz, but why did you have to cut the still beating heart out of the pig?” Edmund asked.

“That wasn’t intentional,” Phillip said a little red faced. “I’d just taken a sample of arterial blood from the heart, and I wanted to measure how much blood the heart could hold. To do that I needed to cut the heart out. It just so happened that the pig was still alive when I started to cut the heart free.” He shrugged nonchalantly. “It did come as a bit of a surprise how long it continued to beat.”

“Why did it continue to beat?” William asked.

Phillip shook his head ruefully. “You really like asking the easy questions, don’t you?”

“So you don’t have any idea?” Edmund asked.

“Not yet.” Phillip smiled at Edmund and William. “Maybe both of you gentlemen would like to assist me next time I operate on a living animal and we could investigate the problem together.”

“I’d like that,” Edmund said as he struggled to his feet. “I’d better be getting on my way then.” He turned to William. “Are we satisfied that Dr. Gribbleflotz is not engaged in devil worship?”

William got to his feet as well. “Quite satisfied.” He turned to Phillip. “It’s been most interesting talking to you, Dr. Gribbleflotz, and I too would be interested in assisting you next time you operate on a living animal.”

Phillip walked with the two men to the door and watched them walk through the village. They waved and stopped to talk to Phillip’s neighbors, no doubt reassuring them that Phillip wasn’t a devil worshiper.

A few days later

Phillip made a mad dash for the chamber pot, barely getting his pants down before he emptied his bowls, again. He wiped his bottom clean. That activity was starting to hurt. He gently felt around, and realized he had hemorrhoids forming. He’d met them in the past, on patients, so he knew how to treat them.

He carefully made his way to his workbench where he had some chopped Plantago major in hot water. The infusion was a treatment for people with diarrhea. It didn’t actually treat the diarrhea, but he’d found time and again that patients suffering from diarrhea who were given the infusion to drink did a lot better than those who just drank water or small beer. If it was good enough for the people he treated, Phillip felt it was good enough for him. He emptied the infusion through a cloth filter into a mug and stirred in the usual spoonful of honey he’d learned to add to improve the taste so patients would drink it. He sipped the infusion while he checked his journals to find a treatment for hemorrhoids, finishing his drink just in time to make another emergency call of nature.

He was getting better. Phillip reminded himself of this fact as he sat on the chamber pot. The first three days had been the worst. He’d only left his bed to use the chamber pot, or to get a drink. Food had been the last thing on his mind, then. But now he was getting better, Phillip was able to think about the cause of his discomfort. He’d met diarrhea often enough before — only in a professional capacity of course — to know the probable cause.

Usually, when he’d tried to track down the cause of an outbreak of diarrhea in the military, he’d traced it back to a common issue of food that the initial batch of afflicted men had all eaten. Phillip considered what he’d eaten in the last week. There had been the duck. He’d eaten that over a couple of days, but he hadn’t fallen ill for days after eating that. This left the pig. He’d been eating that right up until the time he fell ill. He spared a thought for Rev Garwood and Rev Wilkinson who’d also eaten some of the pork and sausage and hoped, for their sakes, that they weren’t similarly afflicted.

The wiping of his bottom was again a painful act, so the first thing he had to do was make up a soothing ointment. He compared the ingredients he had on hand with the recipes he’d collected and made up an ointment, which he promptly applied.

That evening

It was getting late, but the sun was still well above the horizon, when a child ran into Phillip’s laboratory calling out in a panicky voice. “Dr. Gribbleflotz, Dr. Gribbleflotz.”

Philip recognized the son of a former patient. “What’s the matter, John, is someone ill?”

“Papa says the village is ill,” John said.

That response lacked clarity. “Who needs my professional services?” Philip asked.

John stared at Phillip. “No, no, Dr. Gribbleflotz. No one needs your professional services. Papa says you need to escape before the angry villagers get here. A dozen people in the village have been ill these last few days and Mr. Sissons, the butcher, is claiming that you, the Devil Worshiper, are the cause. Right now he’s trying to rouse the village to march on your laboratory and burn you as a witch.” John paused to stare at Phillip. “Are you a Devil Worshiper?” he asked.

“What? No, of course I’m not a devil worshiper.” Phillip swallowed a couple of times. “Are you sure about this?”

John nodded. “I was there with Papa. Mr. Spofford and Mr. Craike both spoke up in your defense, but Mr. Sissons pointed out that both Rev Garwood and Rev Wilkinson fell ill soon after visiting you. Papa says ‘things are going to get nasty’, so he sent me to warn you.”

Phillip wanted to protest his innocence, but John wasn’t interested in his guilt or innocence. It was the crowd he had to worry about, and no doubt they would be all fired up and unwilling to listen. “What can I do?” he asked. “Where can I hide?”

“Papa says you should take what you can and hide in one of Mr. Legard’s barns. He told me to guide you.”

Phillip started grabbing things. “What is your father doing?”

“He said he would try and delay the crowd, to give you time to escape.” John hurried over to the window and looked outside. “They’re coming.”

Phillip hurried to his bedroom to grab some clothes and his valuables. He paused in front of his library. His and his great grandfather’s journals were irreplaceable, so he added those to the bundle he was creating with a blanket from his bed. He ran a finger along the leather bound books in his library, and sighed over their size and weight. He had to make a choice between taking his books or taking the medical kit and apothecary’s box that contained his livelihood.

“Hurry!” John called out. “They’re almost at the corner.”

 

Through Fire – Snippet 22

Through Fire – Snippet 22

I got the impression of other brooms, one headed away from me, and one towards me, but they were too far away for me to even be sure of the impression, much less definite about who they were and where they were, and what they looked like.

And then I spotted a space. It was behind a burned structure, and it looked like whoever had been involved in the drama of destroying it had long gone. If there had been inhabitants of the place, who’d taken off in a hurry, they were far away. And whoever had set fire to it, had long ago left, too, of necessity.

All that was left was a vast ruin, with a soaring front wall, made of dimatough, looking like a wing beating at the sky. There was a smell of burned building, which is not like the smell of burned anything else, containing, as it usually does, the scent of materials not meant to be burned. It felt acrid and unpleasant to the nose, and something crunched underfoot as I landed.

I clipped the broom — one of the little cylindrical models, with no saddle, and painful enough to ride across the ocean — to my belt, and crunched my way, cautiously, around the outside of the burnt walls. The palace was above me, and I had two choices to get there. One was to go through the roads, and perhaps come across parties of people. Royce Allard had — he thought, and I hoped — made me unremarkable in a crowd, but it still might not be the brightest thing in the world, as an unescorted woman, to meet a party of people animated by looting and inspired by a sense of righteous envy of those better off.

Yeah, I am faster, stronger, smarter. One of the things you learn early on, when you’re endowed with all of those attributes, but are also a woman, is not to lead those not as fast or as smart or as strong into temptation. You don’t present yourself as a likely and easy target, because that will just cause them to attack you and get hurt.

Likely I could take on any small party of marauders and survive. But in the scale of things, mere looters seemed almost blameless and fighting them a waste of my abilities. And besides, it would attract attention, and if it attracted attention, it could attract a larger group of people. Even my abilities were no match against a sufficiently large party.

So instead of going through the paths that led to the palace, I decided to take the route through Simon’s vast, well-manicured lawns.

The strange thing is that they were still well manicured. If one managed not to smell the fire that had taken half the palace, or to look up at the desolate ruin, one would think, from the lawn alone, that nothing untoward had happened.

Here, while the seacity burned and people killed each other, or robbed armfuls of whatever they’d coveted, the lawn was soft, cool and deep underfoot, the trees were looming, dark and green and fragrant above, casting deeper shadows where the moonlight filtered through their branches. Here, small things ran scurrying in the undergrowth as I passed.

As I went around a tree, close to the shadow, my eyes and ears open to any sign that there were humans, hostile or not, nearby, a hand shot out and grabbed my upper arm.

I had a moment to think it was Martha, but the moment didn’t last because the hand was larger and much stronger, and before I could turn to see who had grabbed me, he — had to be a he — had turned me around so that his arm went around my body, holding me fast, preventing me from moving, and his hand had covered my mouth, preventing any sound.

There is only one thing you can do in this situation, and I drew my head back, preparing to do it, preparing to hit out with my head at the nose and mouth of my captor. It’s not ideal, mind you. You will feel concussed and a bit dizzy. But a man whose nose you’ve just shoved in with your head will be in no position to take advantage of that. At best, he’ll have had his nose pushed into his brain case and will be dead. At worst, he’ll be bleeding profusely and blinded by pain.

I’d judged this man to be taller than I. It’s not one of those things you think about, it’s one of those things you feel, from the relative position of his hands and mine. It would need a little jump to hit him in the face, but it could be done. Yes, even with him holding me. After all, I was faster and stronger than even the males of the species.

Making sure my plans weren’t betrayed, not even by a sudden tenseness of muscles, I slammed my foot down into the ground, to propel me up, and threw my head back at the same time and–

And hit nothing, overbalancing. My captor had stepped back away from me, and now spun me around, all without letting go of my mouth, and letting go of my arm only as I was starting to fall, then grabbing my other arm, and saying, “Shh.”

Dazed, I looked up and into the homely countenance of Alexis Brisbois.

He said again, “Shh.” And then pulled me back with him into the shadow of a tree and put a hand across my middle, keeping me still. He’d let go of my mouth, and I wanted to speak, but before I could even figure out what to say, I heard approaching footsteps, and voices that weren’t trying to be quiet at all.

The words were in the curious patois of Liberte, and I didn’t understand them immediately, but the conditioning at the back of my mind understood them. They were talking about killing someone or other, in the tone of someone who had played a prank of some sort. There was neither remorse nor fear in the voices that sounded both male and young as they walked past. They looked male and young, too, two of them possibly juveniles, the other three probably early twenties. They also sounded drunk, or perhaps high.

I let their voices recede away from us, out of hearing distance, then their footsteps. I know I have a more acute sense of hearing than a normal person. I waited till I couldn’t hear them, which meant they couldn’t hear me, and then I said, as low as I could, “What do you mean by this? Why did you grab me?”

He shook his head. His features remained as hard to read as ever. When he answered it was in the same voice I’d employed. Almost soundless. “Remember the orders I was given. I’m supposed to keep you safe.” He made a face somewhere between disgust and anger. “It’s probably not possible now.”

I opened my mouth, but he shook his head. “Don’t. Not now. Let me try to get us to a safe place. But first you might want to take off your suit, and hide it.”

“Why?”

“Same reason I hid mine,” he said. “It’s too good, too expensive, too likely to cause someone to stop us and rob us. You can’t want that, any more than I do. I’ll hide it here, on the grounds. It’s unlikely anyone is going to comb the grounds tree by tree, unless they have reason to think they’ll find the Good Man in one, and they don’t.”

It took me a moment, but I obeyed. There didn’t seem to be anything to gain in defying him. I doubted that he wanted to get me out of my broomer suit and steal it, or something of the sort. For one, it wouldn’t fit him. For another I had a feeling I was in the presence of one of the most honorable men I ever met. I felt a reliance, a trust in him that didn’t make any sense. Perhaps, I told myself, it was only that I trusted him because Simon trusted him. Simon didn’t strike me as an idiot. And neither was I to come to rely on this man so much in such a short acquaintance.

So I removed my suit and gave it to him. He disappeared with it, around the tree, and I followed. He skirted close to a clump of tall, overgrown bushes, and then near another tree. Between tree and bush, into a dark area, he thrust the suit. Then he turned, and nodded, seeming not at all surprised to see me so near.

He extended his hand to me. “We shall be a happy couple, again,” he said.

“A happy couple in this?” I asked.

“What, you think there aren’t any?” he asked. “People might be scared and shaken, worried for their possessions, and unsure of what the future will bring, but I warrant you that they’ll also be excited and interested, and, not least of all, grateful that their normal work and duties have been interrupted, and happy that they can take the time off to be together.”

It was probably true, but it didn’t make it any more pleasant.

It was a strange situation. I didn’t know Alexis or trust him. But I knew one thing for certain, he was supposed to protect me. What part of that also meant that he was supposed to keep me from doing anything I might want to do, I didn’t know. I was very much afraid that he thought the two were sides of the same coin. And I couldn’t allow that. You see, I intended to rescue Simon.

Yes, it would be dangerous, and it was unlikely, and no one would hold it against me if I had refused to do it.

But he had given me shelter and he’d accepted me with no condition and no demur. It was not honorable nor decent for me to abandon him to his fate. And while I might not have been brought up to love or friendship, I had been brought up to honor and duty.

I put my hand forward, and let Alexis Brisbois grasp it. His hand was cold and calloused. He held me close, all the way back from the lawn to a path. We walked down it, meeting groups of people who didn’t give us more than a passing glance. So far at least, the disguise they’d given me was working.

 

1636: The Chronicles of Dr. Gribbleflotz – Snippet 36

1636: The Chronicles of Dr. Gribbleflotz – Snippet 36

What this meant was that while Phillip was distracted with his book, Robert finished grinding up the green vitriol, and having time on his hands, did a little experimenting of his own. Phillip was deeply into Dr. Harvey’s discussion of the evidence for his new theory that rather than being made in the liver, that blood actually circulated through the body when a panic laden scream from Robert burst through his reader’s trance. He looked up in time to see Robert grabbing a flask emitting a red vapor and dashing outside with it. Phillip dropped the book onto the bench top and gave chase.

By the time he caught up with Robert he’d already thrown the glass flask away. It shattered on the stone wall, splashing whatever the liquid was all over some willow branches from which the bark had been removed. Almost immediately the willow branches started to blacken. “What did you do that for?” Philip demanded. Unfortunately he didn’t stop there and wait for an answer. He exploded with more questions. “What did you do? What was in the flask?”

Robert stammered that he didn’t know and Philip went bombastic. “What do you mean you don’t know?” he demanded. He glanced at the smoking wood. He had to know what had caused that. “Haven’t I told you to record everything?” he shouted.

Phillip was normally mild-mannered, but right now he was overly excited and coming over as aggressive. Robert panicked and ran, leaving Phillip to shout curses at his rapidly disappearing back. When Robert disappeared from view Phillip walked over to where the flask had broken and examined the damage. The burns on the wood suggested the liquid had probably been acidic. He hurried back into the laboratory for some Litmus Paper.

The liquid tested positive for acid, leaving Phillip with a problem. He’d never seen any of his acids affect a piece of willow wood quite like that. He broke off a few lengths and retired into his laboratory. At the bench where Robert had been working he laid down the wood and studied the flasks Robert could have used. Nothing leapt out at him, so he carefully tested a little of each container on a piece of wood.

All that managed to confirm was that none of the acids he made was as strong as the acid Robert had created. That meant it had probably been a combination, just like how aqua regia, a combination of aqua fortis and acidum salis, was much stronger than the individual acids used to create it.

While he experimented Phillip went back to chewing on his roast duck. It was cold now, but he was used to eating cold food.

It was late, and his candles had burned low before Phillip discovered a combination that yielded a red vapor such as he’d seen coming from Robert’s flask. The beaker was hot to the touch, which might explain why Robert had thrown his flask once he got outside. Phillip dripped a few drops onto a piece of willow and waited to see what happened.

Phillip stared at the black marks that appeared where the drops had fallen in disbelief. A quick re-examination of his notes confirmed that all he’d done was add concentrated Oil of Vitriol to concentrated aqua fortis. Neither of the acids individually was as strong as the new combination, but aqua fortis was just Oil of Vitriol and saltpetre. How was it possible to make something stronger than aqua fortis by simply adding more Oil of Vitriol?

It was a question that Phillip decided would have to wait for another day as the candles started spluttering. He added his latest thoughts to his notes of his experiments before pinching the wicks out and fell into his bed, his mind awhirl as he tried to explain what he’d seen.

****

The next day Phillip returned to reading Dr. Harvey’s book. The mathematical argument was compelling. If a heart did pump about one and a quarter drachm of blood with each beat of the heart, and if a heart were to beat two thousand times an hour, then, in the course of a day the heart would pump sixty thousand drachm of blood a day. That was, as Dr. Harvey claimed, more than five hundred pounds of blood that the liver would have to produce every day. Phillip nodded his agreement with Dr. Harvey’s conclusion. There was certainly no way his liver was producing five hundred pounds of anything — he was sure he would have noticed if it did.

He laid down the book. It was all very well reading about Dr. Harvey’s theory, but Phillip liked to see his own proofs. The first thing to do was check the claimed volumes for a heart. Phillip dressed for a visit to the local butcher.

****

Phillip’s initial tests with human sized animal hearts tended to confirm Dr. Harvey’s numbers, so he moved on to the next stage. He could have tied off veins and arteries, like Dr. Harvey had, to show that veins flowed into the heart while arteries flowed out, but he preferred a much more direct approach. He bought a live pig.

It wasn’t a very large pig, because Phillip was operating alone he’d settled for an animal of less than thirty pounds, but he still dosed it with Laudanum to calm it down before he tied it down to a heavy work table. Even after a heavy dose of Laudanum it still struggled and squealed when he cut it open. Phillip bound the pig’s snout with rags to quieten it before going on to cut through the ribs to gain access to the animal’s beating heart.

He stared at the beating heart in wonder for a while before using his thumb and forefinger to pinch off in turn the veins and arteries leading in and out of the organ. By this simple expedient he was able to confirm Dr. Harvey’s contention that veins let blood into the heart while arteries let the blood out. His final test was to cut the Pulmonary artery and measure the blood being pumped out.

He counted off ten heartbeats as blood squirted into a small flask. He put that to one side before slicing through the remaining veins and arteries connected to the heart so he could remove the organ. He held it in the sunlight streaming in through the window so he could examine the still beating heart more closely. It was a suitable size for the pig, which meant it was considerably smaller than the other hearts he’d examined, so he was going to have to measure the volume of blood it could hold. He set to doing that.

A couple of days later

As a trained surgeon Phillip had the skills and the tools to butcher the pig, but it would have taken time he could better spend on his research, so he’d had the dead pig collected by the local butcher, who had cut it up and was now in the process of making ham, sausage, and bacon from it. He’d already delivered some pork chops and Phillip was chewing on one of them when there was a knock at the door. “Coming,” he called. He grabbed a cloth and wiped his hands clean as he hurried to the door. He pulled it open to reveal not one, but both local vicars — Rev Edmund Garwood from the parish of Hessle and Rev William Wilkinson from the parish of Kirk Ella.

“Mr. Garwood, Mr. Wilkinson, how can I be of assistance?” he asked.

Edmund turned to William. Their eyes met before they turned Phillip. “There is a story going around the parishes that you have been engaging in witchcraft and devil worship,” Edmund said.

“That’s preposterous!” Phillip said.

“We’re sure it is, Dr. Gribbleflotz,” William said, “but you have been observed cutting the still beating heart out of a living animal, and in the eyes of some of the locals, that signifies devil worship.”

“Who could have seen that?” Phillip demanded. Someone would have had to been looking through the windows of his laboratory to do that.

“You admit it?” Edmund asked.

“Of course,” Phillip said. He noticed the wide-eyed looks he was getting and remembered the claim of devil worship. “But it’s not devil worship,” he said. “I was merely conducting a scientific experiment.”

 

Death’s Bright Day – Snippet 45

Death’s Bright Day – Snippet 45

Daniel straightened. “Let’s get the stretcher,” he said to Minister Robin. “Then you can take the back end while we haul him to the unit.”

Daniel felt enormous relief as he led Robin through the waiting room, shoving people out of the way when they babbled instead of clearing his path. It felt good to work out some of the adrenaline surging through his system.

* * *

For the moment, Adele was alone in the Minister’s office. She sat at Robin’s desk and slipped the pistol back in her pocket; she had laid it on the desk to allow the barrel to cool.

The carnage was familiar to her by now. The four bodies lay where they had fallen. Well, all but that of the man she had shot: that corpse lay where Daniel had tossed it away from Hogg.

Daniel and Minister Robin returned; Daniel looked haggard, and the Minister appeared to be in shock. He’d seemed calm enough immediately after the shooting, but perhaps it hadn’t sunk in.

Adele smiled faintly. She was trembling a little also, but that was a result of hormones rather than anything psychological.

The only thing unusual about this room full of bodies is that I only killed one of them, Adele thought.

The door banged shut behind Robin, muting the babble of voices from the outer office. Adele looked up from the display of her data unit; she hadn’t been consciously aware of the sound, but the near-silence got her attention.

“Who are those soldiers?” Robin asked. He started toward the chair behind his desk, then realized that Adele was already sitting in it.

“They’re spacers from the Princess Cecile,” Daniel said, “under my bosun and Midshipman Hale. Lieutenant Vesey sent them here when Lady Mundy alerted her.”

He cleared his throat and added, “Ah — my people didn’t know precisely what was happening. Hale informed me that in their haste they did a certain amount of damage in entering the Ministry.”

“Knocked down doors?” Robin said, frowning. “That scarcely matters.”

“I gather it was more a matter of people who wanted discuss matters,” Daniel said. “Hale didn’t believe there were any fatalities,”

“Fatalities!” Robin said. “Well, I suppose that doesn’t matter either.”

He looked at the sprawled bodies, then looked toward the back door instead. “What was this? Do you know, Lady Mundy?”

“Dumouret was a spy for the Upholders,” Adele said. She saw no reason to lie, but neither did she intend to inform the minister of all the background. “They apparently sent assassins to kill you.”

The actual gunmen were 5th Bureau, but the impetus might well have come from the rebel leadership itself. They were acting as the puppets of Storn’s rival, but they might view themselves as more independent than Adele did.

“But how did you…” Robin said. “How did you even get in by my private door? This is all — it’s a nightmare, nothing makes sense.”

Cazelet had unlocked the door by cutting power to it while Adele and Tovera were on the way. The system’s default was to spring open, which was scarcely ideal for security even with a battery backup. Cazelet had shut the backup down also.

“Captain Leary?” Adele said. “The Nabis Contingent has been called to action stations at my request. Now that the danger appears to be over, would you care to release the personnel to liberty again?”

“Umm,” Daniel said. “No, not till I see how the recall went. I wouldn’t have done this deliberately, but it’s quite a useful test of the training, don’t you think?”

“Yes,” said Adele. She continued to scan the updates she was getting from Cazelet and both warships in the Nabis Contingent.

“Minister,” she resumed, “friends of the Tarbell Stars in Cinnabar sent Captain Leary and his staff to aid the Tarbell government in putting down the rebellion. We’re doing that to the best of our abilities, though the training mission you’ve relegated us to very nearly caused us to miss this assassination attempt. On that subject –”

Adele considered, then looked up. “Captain Leary, I would appreciate it if you took charge of the situation in the outer office.”

“Of course, your ladyship,” Daniel said. His expression had just gone guarded. “Ah, your ladyship? Your servant is overseeing the Medicomp, but Hogg isn’t in any danger. Should I direct Tovera to return to you?”

Adele felt her lips hint at a smile. “That won’t be necessary, Captain,” she said. “I can handle anything necessary myself.”

She looked at Robin. She wasn’t sure what expression she was wearing, but it seemed to disconcert the Minister of War. She was aware of the door opening and then closing by the sudden increase and cessation of babble from the outer office.

Robin said, “What do you want, mistress? That is, Lady Mundy.”

He was looking down at her because he was standing, but that didn’t increase his confidence. She wondered how much he knew about her. He knew enough to bother him when they were alone together in a room full of dead bodies, apparently.

“I want to do my job, the job Captain Leary brought us all here to do,” she said. “To defeat the Upholder Rebellion. You’re making that needlessly difficult, because you’re afraid that Captain Leary wants to supplant you.”

“That’s not true!” Robin said. “I have President Menandros’ full confidence!”

“Stop yammering,” Adele said. She didn’t raise her voice; if Robin continued to bluster, she supposed she could fire a shot into the ceiling.

Or I could just shoot him dead.

The smile that accompanied that thought shocked Robin to silence as effectively as a shot would have done. “Thank you,” Adele said.

“You’ll note that despite your interference,” Adele continued, “we’ve managed to save your life. We did that because you’re quite skilled. Captain Leary tells me that your idea to convert freighters to missile ships was a very clever use of available resources and might be enough in itself to defeat the rebels under present conditions.”

Robin seemed to relax slightly.

“Unfortunately,” Adele continued, “elements of the Alliance bureaucracy are supporting the Upholders. That means the present situation is certain to change for the worse. You personally don’t have the experience and contacts to deal with enemies outside the cluster.”

“That’s not –” Robin said, then shut up.

“Captain Leary and his personnel are capable of dealing with your new enemies on their own terms,” Adele said. “If you are unwilling to let Captain Leary do his job, I will have you killed and find someone to replace you. I may have to replace you myself.”

She felt her lips quirk. “Indeed, I may just kill you myself.”

Robin’s eyes drifted toward the bodies, then returned to meet Adele’s. He smiled back. “I wouldn’t care to have that happen,” he said. “What do you want me to do to avoid it?”

He may be buying time, hoping to kill me or us, Adele thought. But I don’t think so, and I don’t think he could plan it without my becoming aware of it.

“You can appoint Daniel as commander of the Navy of the Tarbell Stars,” Adele said. “After that, give him the resources and support he would have if you had no concern at all about him wanting to remain in the cluster after the Upholders have been defeated.”

She shrugged and added, “That’s the truth and I hope you believe it. You don’t have to believe it, though, so long as you believe that I’ll kill you if you don’t do as I direct.”

“I do believe you, Lady Mundy,” Robin said. “If you care to call Captain Leary in, I’ll make the appointment immediately. And then –”

Adele had gotten up, but she paused on her way to the door.

“– would you mind if I had these bodies removed and disposed of? I assure you, I don’t need so vivid a memento mori.”

“Yes, I don’t need them any more,” Adele said. She opened the door to the outer office.

The whole business had been quite unplanned, of course, but it had been even more useful than Daniel’s test of how well the Nabies reacted to an emergency recall.

“Captain Leary?” she called past the backs of Dasi and Barnes who were blocking the doorway from the other direction. “Will you come in, please?”

As the bosun’s mates made way for Daniel, Adele walked over to the first shooter’s pistol and picked it up. It was a powerful weapon, not a light pocket pistol like Adele’s own.

She would give it to Hogg as at least a temporary replacement for his own. He would appreciate the gift.

 

Through Fire – Snippet 21

Through Fire – Snippet 21

Against the Fall of Night

They’d equipped me, as well as they could. I had a suit that was adequate, and, for broom­back wear, a padded broomer suit, much, much better than what Alexis had procured for us. Which was good, because I had to fly long distance across the ocean on a broom of the tiny sort, that could be clipped on a belt, and had no saddle or other comforts.

The clothes were all treated in such a way that they would dry very quickly if wet, would repel dirt, would not weigh me down unduly.

They tried to prepare me for all sorts of eventualities. My boots were equally supple and likely to stay dry, and infinitely more sturdy than the palace slippers I’d been wearing.

They also gave me a first aid kit that fit in an envelope, a special pouch to carry my currency, under my clothes in such a way that I could not be pickpocketed and weapons. A couple of good knives, two burners that, like the suits, would take anything short of being set on fire, and I wasn’t sure about that.

And then Martha had seen me off, to an area from which I could take off without being noticed. She’d grabbed my arm again — it was a habit — and looked up at me and said, “I wish I could go with you,” she said. “I’d feel more confident that you would survive this, if I could. But Luce would have my hide.”

“How much does he really know of all this?” I asked.

She smiled a little. “Nothing, of course. He’s supposed to know nothing. He can’t be involved. But if I weren’t here, it would be noticed, and he would have to know something. He’d never forgive me.”

“I see,” I said, though I didn’t. It seemed to me there were more games being played than I was prepared to even understand, much less participate in. One advantage of having been raised as something apart from normal humans was that I’d never been involved in the sort of politics human friendships seemed to demand. Even in the small group of bioengineered pilots and navigators of the darkships designed to steal powerpods from near Earth, I’d stayed aloof from power plays, from guilt-inducement, from demands on me. The downside was that I’d also never experienced friendship. Love, surely, with Len, but Len was different.

Martha sighed. “It’s very difficult,” she said. “It’s almost impossible to balance the demands of our debt and our relationship to Simon, and the demands to our people and to those who have pledged themselves to our side of the revolution. We can’t put those fighting on our side in unnecessary danger. But then neither can we let Simon simply die.” She looked up at me, her intent and intense look reminding me of her twin, whom most people were scared of. “So we must count on you. You’re all we have. It’s a long shot, but perhaps you can do it. Perhaps you can bring Simon back alive.”

“I will try,” I said, feeling more doubtful of it than I had before.

She nodded, and clasped my arm for a moment. “Good luck.”

And then I’d flown off. I could remember the way. It is one of the things that was enhanced in me, beyond my genetic origins. Navigators, in Eden, were endowed with a sense of direction and a feeling for repairing machinery — not knowledge of it, precisely, possibly because as Royce said, no one had figured out how to do that, and more likely, because technology could change in the twenty or thirty years a navigator operated, and if you created people for a certain technology, they wouldn’t be able to adapt. Instead, we were given the natural talents that would make it easy for us to understand and repair machinery, with very little preparation: a look at it, a tale about how it worked.

So I knew my way to Liberte. And I’d been given some of the intelligence that Olympus had: a notion of what was going on; an idea of what and whom to avoid. It wasn’t very reliable because, as Martha had told me, it would change from moment to moment. I was to avoid someone named Dechausse, someone referred to as Madame, and I was to stay away from certain areas.

What was going on was, in a word, chaos. It was not clear whether anyone had seized leadership of the mob yet. It was unlikely from what they knew that anyone had. The mob — or rather mobs, several of them, running rampant through the city — didn’t seem to be pursuing any unified objective or even to have any unified ideology, beyond ridding the world of anyone who might possibly be genetically enhanced.

My first mission was to avoid anyone who might be preventing outsiders coming in. This wasn’t exactly as difficult as might be believed. Most people at the moment couldn’t be paid enough to come into Liberte Seacity. Even the few stories I’d heard in the public cast at Olympus, while eating a hasty dinner, had spoken of people killed, heads on stakes, general mayhem and torture, with the psychopaths that exist everywhere and every when in control of the situation and running the show.

Liberte was worried about people coming in, taking over, and stopping their revolution. They neither worried about nor organized against a single individual on a broom. What they feared was armies. The armies of the Good Men; the forces from other seacities; organized fighting men.

I might be organized, but I was a single woman, and no one would be on the lookout for me. At least, not unless I triggered their feeling that I was in some way enhanced.

So I had to land without being seen. I had to move about the seacity without arousing suspicion. And then I had to find where Simon was kept, and somehow to free him and leave the seacity with him. This involved finding out who was in control, to the extent that there was some control.

Look, I said it was chaos and it was, and the way most people were experiencing the revolution would be clashing crowds of people fighting back and forth and looting. It was the disorganization of a society that had lived for centuries under a repressive order and which had now been allowed to slip its bonds.

Without an overarching authority, without their guardians which had always prevented them from doing anything illegal or even rude, the people were doing what they very well pleased and came into their heads. Or a small number of them were, and the others were locked in their houses, possibly praying the confusion would pass them by.

But from what Martha had told me, there had to be others who were organized and someone in control of them. Probably someone left over from the old Sans Culottes hierarchy. There had to be someone in control because Simon had been taken and was held, something that would be impossible in mere chaos.

If the unorganized mob had captured him, he’d have been beheaded. Or if he escaped that fate, he’d also have escaped altogether. For him to be a prisoner, there had to be an organized enough force to keep him, an organized enough force to have a leader.

Who that leader was, and what that force looked like, or how many men strong, we didn’t know and couldn’t know. Not until I got to Liberte and looked around.

They’d told me he was kept in a prison beneath the palace, where apparently the Good Men — or, since they’d all been one man, whose brain periodically got transplanted to younger clones, perhaps it’s more appropriate to say the Good Man, St. Cyr — had kept secret prisoners for centuries. It was near impregnable and probably very well guarded. The Good Man was an asset not to let go lightly and the people in charge were smart enough to both remain invisible and in control.

They probably expected an attack on the prison and were prepared to defend it.

No one had given me instructions on how to broach that prison. No one had given me instructions on how to free Simon. I suspected they didn’t know how. At any rate, I didn’t know how either. My general plan was to find my way there, to free him, and then — somehow — to find my way out again.

Details were vague because the circumstances would change. Really change, I guessed, depending on what I found on the ground.

My first view of the seacity made me afraid of what I would find. As we’d flown off, the palace had looked charred, but now it looked like the whole seacity was on fire. Fires glowed all over, like orange wounds in the dark blue-green of the seacity. Not bonfires, but blazes that engulfed buildings.

Closer in, I could hear sounds of singing and shouts, and screams, explosions, and the roaring of the fires. The whole place seemed to be awake and restless, animated by something between a party and a massacre.

I should have landed in one of the areas at the edge of the seacity, possibly in the lower levels, the sort of semi-peopled, darkened area like the beach from which Martha had opened the tunnel into Keeva’s room. I should.

I’d had it in my mind to do just that: land somewhere away from human habitation and from any roaming murderous crowds.

And then I realized my subconscious had made a different decision. I flew closer to the center, looking for a place near the palace to land, a place that was relatively deserted. This forced me to hover over the heads of the crowd, just far enough away that I didn’t risk — too much — being seen. From the air what this revolution looked like was a looting party. I saw more people carrying as much as their arms allowed than people unburdened by possessions, or people actively hurting someone else.

But then it occurred to me to wonder if I was looking at looters or refugees. If the homes of the better-off citizens of Liberte had been broken into as the palace had, and they had time to escape, would they not leave, carrying what they could?

For whichever motive, the night was full of people running here and there, talking in whispers, carrying possessions in arms — as well as singing revolutionary songs, and attacking anyone who looked bio-improved.

The air over the seacity was relatively calm, possibly because of the habit of burning down anyone who tried to take off.

 

The Span Of Empire – Snippet 21

The Span Of Empire – Snippet 21

Six fully armed jinau stood outside the Holding Area. Tully peered into the observation window set into the wall beside the door. The aliens had been stripped of their suits, and now sprawled on the floor, entangled with each other. Their bodies were long and sinuous, and such a glossy deep black that they gleamed with iridescent highlights. They had short stubby arms and sleek narrow skulls. They were four-legged and built low to the ground. At the moment, they weren’t moving. He guessed they were still alive, but it was hard to be sure.

“Any trouble here?” he asked the closest guard, a Jao wearing Terra taif’s blue harness.

“We have watched them, but they do nothing but cower,” the Jao said with a contemptuous flick of his ear. “They are not worth the energy it would take to kill them.”

“They are slaves,” Tully said. “I don’t think they’ve ever had the chance to be anything better.”

“Slaves cannot help us,” the Jao said. “Only more and better ships; additional intelligent allies like the Lleix; beings that know how to protect themselves.”

“From their close association with the Ekhat, they might have important information vital to our struggle against their former masters,” Tully said, somewhat alarmed. “See that nothing happens to compromise their potential usefulness.”

Fortunately, though the Jao were baffled by the concept of compassion, they thoroughly understood making oneself of use. It was one of their highest values. The guard’s stance shifted into reluctant-assent. The others would take his lead, Tully knew.

Inside the Holding Area, the gleaming bodies shifted, slithering over one another in a fashion that reminded Tully all too strongly of snakes. He shuddered.

“They’re still alive?” said a human voice from behind his shoulder. “That’s a good sign.”

He turned and met the gaze of Vikram Bannerji, who had put away his gun and armor and resumed his intelligence work. “At least they didn’t pick up that particular meme from their masters,” he said. “If they were Ekhat, they’d have all killed themselves by now.”

Bannerji spread his hands on the thick observation glass and peered in. “I can’t wait to interrogate them.” Within, the clustered bodies shifted, as though aware of his interest. They buried their faces against one another’s shimmering hide. “The things this lot might be able to tell us!”

Or not, Tully thought sourly. It was entirely possible they might be no more intelligent than a St. Bernard or no more able to communicate than a great ape. “When will you get started?” he said.

“As soon as I can get Ramt over here from the Lexington,” Bannerji said with a trace of frustration. “She should be able to translate if they speak any of the known Ekhat dialects. If they have their own language, or some other Ekhat dialect, she’ll be able to learn it faster than I can.”

The young lieutenant looked around at Tully. “I think they belonged to one of the sub-factions of the Complete Harmony.” His eyes glittered behind his glasses. “They might even be the same sub-faction that upraised the Jao into sentience.”

The Ban Chao shuddered.

“What was that?” Bannerji said, looking back over his shoulder. His face paled.

“Maybe a bit of debris,” Tully said.

“Oh.” Bannerji turned back to the window. His hands shook a bit; although how he could have any nerves left after what they’d just been through, Tully didn’t know. “I thought maybe we were under attack again.”

Tully looked at the unresponsive aliens again, then clapped Bannerji on the shoulder. “Keep me posted, Lieutenant. Anything happens with these things–anything at all–you notify me ASAP.”

“Yes sir, Colonel.”

****

Tully’s pad rang with a com call just as he was almost out of his suit. One of the enlisted jinau helped him get free of it, and he grabbed the pad.

“Tully here.”

“Colonel, you might want to come up to the command deck.”

Tully recognized the voice of Shan Liang, his executive officer.

“I’ll be up as soon as I scrape the stink off.”

“Actually, Gabe, I think you want to get here ASAP if you don’t want to miss it.”

Shan’s use of his first name told Tully that whatever was in the air, it wasn’t anything very official or touching on the jinau. Curiosity intrigued, Tully replied, “On my way, then.”

Jinau and crewmen made way for Tully. He was, after all, both the senior jinau officer in the fleet and a member of the personal service of Aille krinnu ava Terra. He had to snicker when he remembered just how high he had come, and just how much trouble he had caused Aille in that rise.

When he entered the command deck, Vanta-Captain Ginta krinnu vau Vanta motioned him over to stand with him and Major Liang in front of the Ban Chao’s main view display.

“They found an Ekhat base on the fourth planet, Colonel Tully,” Ginta said. “Dannet is about to deal with it.” The captain’s body was angled in a posture Tully didn’t recognize. Not officially. But he thought that hunger-for-revenge probably expressed it. No Jao alive would not be excited to see large numbers of Ekhat removed from the universe.

Tully understood that attitude very well. Once you got through the frou-frou manners and all the funny body language, most Jao were pretty basic folks, he’d decided. At least in most respects. Like this one. As it happened, he agreed with them; the fewer Ekhat in the universe, the better off the universe would be.

Tully and Liang watched in silence as the penetrator missiles were sent into the dome one at a time. At the end of the exercise, they and the other humans on the command deck celebrated, just as all the human crew in the fleet celebrated.

After the noise died down, Ginta looked at Tully and said, “We will remain in the system long enough to make necessary repairs, then Director Kralik has ordered that we return to Ares Base.”

“How long before we jump?” Tully asked.

Ginta gave the shrug adopted from the humans. “When flow is right. Perhaps one or two of your days. Let your jinau clear the decks away.”

And interrogate the prisoners, Tully thought, or at least try to. He just hoped it wasn’t going to be like having a conversation with a malfunctioning lamp.

****

Tully supervised the interrogation of their prisoners. Or what passed for an interrogation. It looked like more of a joke to him, something like trying to have a conversation with an earthworm just before you used it to bait the hook.

Vikram Bannerji had directed the guards to separate one of their slithery guests and isolate it in a separate room. The table had been replaced with an ordinary chair for Vaughan and a bench for the Lleix, Ramt, who was to do the translating. Ramt had been observing the aliens’ interaction for hours each day, trying to absorb the scant verbalizations they uttered on their own.

She reported that they seemed to use both a basic Ekhat dialect and their own language, which of course made some sense. The Ekhat were not going to pollute their exalted minds with a slave species’ language, but the slaves would still have their own tongue.

The shimmering black beast rushed about the room, trying to find another of its fellows. Bannerji and Ramt let it run its fear out, hoping evidently that it would eventually calm.

Finally it knocked Bannerji into the wall, but that seemed to frighten it even more and it cowered into a corner.

“Slave creature,” Ramt said in an Ekhat dialect, “calm yourself.”

Tully and Bannerji both had programmed their pocket coms to translate.

The beast ducked its head and seemed to be trying to fold in upon itself.

“How is your kind designated by the masters?” Ramt said.

It did not answer, just burrowed harder.

“Answer, worthless wretch!” Ramt said. “By what name does the Complete Harmony designate your kind?”

It collapsed to the floor, quivering.

Ramt glanced over at the observation window. “Continue,” Tully said. “We can’t give up that easily. They will talk to us–eventually.”

The interrogation went on for two more hours. The slave never once made any kind of meaningful vocalization. They finally joined Tully in the observation room.

“I recommend that we put it back with its fellows,” Bannerji said, “and observe it then. Perhaps it will at least try to tell them where it’s been and what happened to it.”

“They are worthless,” Ramt said, “just semi-mindless trash the Ekhat use and then throw away.”

“They will not be worthless to us,” Tully said, crossing his arms. “I will not allow it.”

Bannerji glanced at him. “Yes, sir,” he said and snapped off a salute. “We’ll make these suckers work for us, no matter what it takes.”

Tully nodded. If they could make the rebels on Earth turn their hands to work with the Jao, they could make a few beaten down Ekhat slaves see it their way too. It was just a matter of time and persistence . . . and the right approach, he thought ruefully, rubbing his neck where Yaut used to grab him to throw him where he was supposed to be.

 

Castaway Odyssey – Chapter 06

Castaway Odyssey – Chapter 06

Chapter 6.

Xander blinked himself awake and stretched, letting the tensing of his muscles start the blood pumping. The interior of LS-88 was quiet except for the faint hum of various pieces of equipment and the murmur of the environmental systems.

It should also have been pretty dark, but there was a glow from the pilot’s seat. Probably what woke me up. He glanced around. To his surprise, not only were Francisco and Maddox asleep, but the Sergeant hadn’t woken up. Well, he had been doing an awful lot of work before we all turned in.

That plus the nearby empty seat/couch told him who was at the controls.

“What’s up, Tav?” he asked quietly, once he’d gotten close.

Tavana twitched but didn’t jump – not that his restraints would have let him jump far anyway. “Don’t do that.”

“I tried not to startle you.”

“Sorry.” As Tavana turned to face him, Xander suddenly realized how worried the other boy looked. There were dark circles under the eyes, the usually smiling mouth was drawn tight. “What’s wrong?”

Tavana muttered something in a language that wasn’t in Xander’s translation protocols; probably Tahitian, given Tav’s ancestry. Then the younger boy sighed. “The drives… they’re not in good shape.”

That was not something Xander had wanted to hear. “What do you mean by that?”

“What do you think? I mean that neither the Trapdoor or the Nebula Drive are working, and I am thinking that it’s going to take a long time to get them working.”

A long time… Xander couldn’t help but glance back at the cargo area. There was food there… but it wouldn’t last forever. And if any other systems were damaged…

“Do you think we can get them working?”

Tav gave an elaborate shrug that was partly restrained by his harness. “I am trying to figure that out now. Maybe.”

Then his fist clenched and he shook his head. “No. Not maybe. Yes. Because we have to. The Sergeant… he told us that we have to rescue ourselves.”

Xander grinned. “That’s the way to talk!” Inside, he wasn’t fooling himself; all their dedication wouldn’t make a difference if the ship was too damaged. But thinking positive was better than getting discouraged right away. “So… can you tell what’s wrong?”

“Well…” Tavana rubbed his broad chin and paused for a moment. “What do you know about the Trapdoor Drive?”

“Not much, really. It lets us go up to about seventy times lightspeed, it still has a lot of physicists arguing about it, and when it’s running we’re in some kind of warpspace, right?”

To his credit, Tav kept himself from sneering or rolling his eyes, though Xander could tell that he’d nearly done both. Instead, the French Polynesian simply shook his head. “Not really. A ‘warpspace’, if we actually could make such a thing, would be a distortion, a bubble in our own spacetime. The Trapdoor Drive drops us into a sort of parallel space to our own where we effectively travel much faster; that’s why the old Bemmies called it the Trapdoor Drive – you’d open a sort of door and drop out of sight.”

Xander nodded. “Okay, that makes sense. You’re saying it’s sort of like dropping into a lower floor and running along until you decide to go back upstairs, except that somehow you run faster on the lower floor?”

Tavana nodded. “Though my professors would hate that analogy. Or those words, really. They didn’t like the word “faster” used that way because velocity’s still supposed to be relative. Anyway, the mechanism that does this, the Trapdoor Drive, it has to be very precisely balanced and tuned to the vessel, sort of the way a good resonant antenna has to be properly tuned.”

“And something’s screwed up the tuning?”

“Worse than that.” Tavana gestured, linking their omnis. “See that? That’s a scan image of one of the main Trapdoor field coils.”

The strange-shaped coil at first looked reasonably all right to Xander, but as he studied the rotating image, he noticed what looked like small spots, asymmetries on the delicately wound wire. “There. Those –”

“Right.” Tavana stared at the image as though willing it to change. “See, the field coils have to be located in niches outside the hull; I think the rad pulse generated enough fluctuating current that parts of the coils melted.”

While mechanical engineering was his specialty, Xander didn’t need any explanation for that. If elements of a coil melted, that amounted to multiple short circuits in the actual material of the coil. “So they won’t work.”

“Not unless I can fix them.”

“But you can’t just cut out the defective parts. That would leave cuts –”

“I know,” Tav said, cutting him off. “I think … if we don’t have spares, I think we’ll have to re-wind the coils.”

Xander swallowed, looking at the gleaming shape with the multiplicity of faint lines across its surface. “That… that could take a long time.”

“Like I said. Yeah. Especially since you gotta do it right. The coil geometry’s crucial. You can do some compensating in software, but only so much.”

“What about the Nebula Drive?”

“Well… first off, even if it was running, it’d be useless for us right now. We’re in interstellar space. Theoretically the dusty-plasma sail could eventually get up near lightspeed, but out here there’s pretty much not enough light to push us. Even if there was, we’d take years getting anywhere, and I’m pretty sure our supplies won’t last years.”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“Anyway… I think the main problem there is the dust dispensers. They’re on the outside too, so the pulse probably fried them. Those should be easier to fix, though.”

“But that won’t matter if we can’t get the Trapdoor running again.”

Tavana nodded. “Yeah.”

“Did it fry all the coils?”

“No. Two seem untouched. But you need all five running to close the field. Believe me when I say you do not want an incomplete field. On Outward Initiative, they had twenty-five, and we still saw instability, did we not?”

Xander didn’t even want to contemplate what would happen if they turned the Trapdoor on without everything working right. They’d all seen what happened when the Trapdoor field intersected matter. “We did, and I understand. So we should go see if we have the stuff to replace the wire with, right?”

“I… yes, of course. I hadn’t thought that far yet. But I guess it wouldn’t hurt to find out if we’ve got stuff we can use first.”

“Exactly right, son,” said a rough voice from behind Xander.

“Sergeant! When did you wake up?”

“Few seconds ago; combination of light and you talking. No,” Sergeant Campbell raised his hand, “don’t go apologizing. You were quiet, I just spent a lotta years in places where you wake up and check every sound you didn’t expect. Now,” he looked at Tavana, “what kinda wire do we need?”

“Two kinds, really. RTSC-B7 in gauge one-two-five, preferably, plus E-M structured alloy in the same gauge.”

“A little under old-style 36-gauge. Pretty skinny stuff to work with by hand, but if that’s what we gotta do, that’s what we do. But we might be in luck. I’m sure some of the smaller motors in the equipment back in storage use thin RTSC, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s B-7.” He gestured. “Since you’re both up, why don’t we just take a look now?”

Tavana unstrapped, looking a lot less unhappy than he had a few minutes ago. “Lead on, Sergeant.”

Xander followed them both, and felt some of his tension turning to hope.