Eric Flint's Blog, page 217

1636: The Chronicles of Dr. Gribbleflotz – Snippet 31

1636: The Chronicles of Dr. Gribbleflotz – Snippet 31

“You could probably use anything that can keep the light out, but the spongy nature of horse manure provides an added measure of protection to the flask, and when one is investing a year in the production of the liquid, you really do want to minimize the chances of accidents breaking the vessels.”

Johann nodded. “So what is this five-fold distilled waters of wine good for?”

Phillip stood up straight and all school mastery. “Five-fold distillate of the waters of wine that has been purified by keeping it buried in horse manure and decanted thrice is no longer mere five-fold distillate of the waters of wine. If it has survived that treatment it has become the Quinta Essentia of the Waters of Wine.”

“And?” Johann prompted.

“If you mix the quinta essentia of any item with the Quinta Essentia of the Waters of Wine you’ll have a medicine that can cure any malady, maybe.”

“Maybe?”

Phillip gave a self-conscious shrug. “I haven’t been able to test it yet, but that’s what I was told.”

“How does this Quinta Essentia of the Waters of Wine fit in with the Paracelsian school of thought?”

“Ah, well,” Phillip said. “That’s the thing about the quinta essentia of any living thing. It’s what is left when you remove the four elements.” He walked along the racks of flasks and selected two, one in each hand. He showed the flask in his right hand to Johann. “This contains the Quinta Essentia of Plantago major, and this,” He held up the second flask. “Contains the Quinta Essentia of willow bark. If you test either of these you will find no trace of mercury, sulphur, or salt.’

Johann reached out for the flask of the Quinta Essentia of willow bark. “Can I test it?”

“Be my guest,” Phillip said as he passed the flask over.

Johann removed the stopper and sniffed the clear liquid. Then he poured a little into a watch glass and dipped a wooden splint in it and held that over a candle. Finally he turned back to Phillip. “It certainly doesn’t contain sulphur.”

“Of course not, and if you taste it you’ll discover that it doesn’t contain salt either.”

“Is it safe?” Johann asked.

Phillip nodded. “Consider what it is, Johann. It’s merely the result of the destructive distillation of willow bark. Why shouldn’t it be safe?”

Johann dipped a finger into the liquid and licked his finger. “It’s tasteless.”

“It’s as I said, no salt, no sulphur, and no mercury. It’s nothing more than the pure non-putrefying essence of willow bark.”

“But Paracelsus says that all created things consist of sulphur, mercury, and salt. How is it possible that willow bark is deficient in all three?”

“No, no, no!” Phillip shook a finger at Johann. “You misunderstand. Of course the willow bark contains sulphur, mercury, and salt. However, all of that is left behind when we destructively distill the bark to produce its quinta essentia.”

Johann nodded. “And this,” he shook the flask of the Quinta Essentia of willow bark, “when mixed with the Quinta Essentia of the Waters of Wine will give a medicine that can treat any malady?”

Phillip gave a gentle snort as he smiled. “I consider that very doubtful. However, if an infusion of willow bark is made using the Quinta Essentia of willow bark and the Quinta Essentia of the Waters of Wine, you will produce a medicine for the treatment of fevers that is much stronger than mere willow bark tea.”

“You seem very sure of that, Dr. Gribbleflotz.”

“I have run some tests,” Phillip said in a self-complementary way. “From a measured amount of willow bark, an infusion prepared with ordinary water, when filtered and evaporated, leaves less white powder than the same amount of willow bark in an infusion made from a mixture of the Quinta Essentia of willow bark and the Quinta Essentia of the Waters of Wine.”

“What is the white powder?” Johann asked.

“The essence of willow bark, of course.” Phillip smiled. “It’s a very useful powder. When bulked out with wheat flour, gum arabic, and chalk it can be turned into pills.”

“How do the pills compare with willow bark tea?”

“Well, willow bark tea is usually used to cool the heated blood to reduce a fever. An infusion isn’t inherently cooling, so the essence of the willow bark has to work extra hard. Therefore I include a natural substance that turns the pills blue, a naturally cool color, to enhance its performance. Because of this, my blue Sal Vin Betula pills are more effective than the equivalent dose of willow bark tea.

“Do you sell those pills?” Johann asked.

“Not very often,” Phillip said. “The cost of a single Sal Vin Betula pill is greater than the cost of a similar dosage supplied as an infusion of willow bark tea, so few people ask for them.”

“But do people know about your Sal Vin Betula pills, Dr. Gribbleflotz? I’m sure that people who would happily pay extra for the convenience of a pill if only they knew that it was available.”

Phillip wasn’t so sure about that. In his experience people wanted cheap over convenience. “Maybe when fuel prices come down we can look into it.”

Early January, 1623

Johann was happily working on his latest attempt at an improved distillation furnace when there was yet another knock on the door to Dr. Gribbleflotz’ laboratory. With a resentful sigh at yet another interruption he put down the firebricks he’d been carrying and made his way to the door.

“How may I help you,” he said as he opened the door.

“I’m looking for my brother.”

Johann did a double-take. The normal run of people knocking at Dr. Gribbleflotz’ door were older men — either fellow alchemists looking to procure some of his excellent acids, or ordinary men looking to purchase treatments for their various ailments. The few women who’d knocked at his door since Johann had been working for him had been mature women looking to sell Dr. Gribbleflotz various herbs and plant cuttings. Young women, especially attractive young women like the one he was currently staring at, just didn’t knock at the Doctor’s door. “Brother?’ he managed to mumble.

She smiled, and what he’d though merely a pretty face became a beautiful one as the smile lit up her face and brought a sparkle to her eyes. “Peter Hebenstreit. I understand he’s currently working for Dr. Gribbleflotz.”

Johann released a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. “Oh, him. Peter’s your brother?” he asked, just to confirm the relationship.

The girl nodded.

“Do you have a name, Peter’s Sister?”

Again she smiled. “Katrina, and you’ll be Dr. Gribbleflotz’ new laborant, Johann Glauber.”

Johann preened at the thought that such a pretty girl had heard of him. “That’s right.”

“Do you know where Peter is?” she asked.

Johann nodded. He noticed she was still waiting for an answer and quickly provided it. “He’s working all day at the university’s public anatomy theater.”

“Oh.” She nibbled at her lip before looking pleadingly at Johann. “I thought he was just sourcing dead bodies for that.”

“No,” Johann said. “He also runs errands for the audience during the demonstrations.”

“Oh, bother!” She looked appealingly at Johann. “I don’t suppose you could take him a message? I’d do it myself, but I have to get back to work as my mistress is getting married in the spring and we’re extremely busy with preparations.”

Johann sighed regretfully. “I’d like to help, but I can’t leave the laboratory.” He shrugged. “I don’t have a key with which to lock the door.”

Katarina tossed back her head and laughed.

“I don’t see what’s so funny,” Johann said.

“What’s so funny, Young Man, is the idea that anyone with any sense would steal from Dr. Gribbleflotz,” Frau Bader from next door said. “Now, lad, let the young woman give you her message and get back to work. I’ll keep an eye out on the doctor’s laboratory while you’re gone.”

Johann turned to the older woman. She was a laundry woman, with the arms and shoulders of someone used to physical labor. He could easily believe that would be thieves could be scared off by her. “Thank you, Frau Bader.” He turned expectantly to Katarina.

“Tell Peter that Elisabeth Brotbeck died less than an hour ago.”

“That’s it? That’s the message?” Johann asked.

Katarina nodded. “Peter’ll understand. Please hurry. I have to go now.”

Johann stood and watched Katarina hurry away. He was still staring down the street long after she’d turned a corner when something jabbed him under the ribs.

“That’s not getting a message to her brother,” Frau Bader said, a smirk on her face.

Johann took the hint. He removed his leather apron and hung it up before shutting the door and hurrying off towards the public anatomy theater. He arrived in good time — no place in Basel being more than a few minutes’ walk away, and knocked on the door of the theater.

It opened a little and a head poked out. “What do you want?” the guard asked.

“I need to get a message to Peter Hebenstreit. He came with Dr. Gribbleflotz.” Johann wasn’t deliberately name dropping, he was just stating a fact in the hope that it would help the guard identify Peter.

 

Through Fire – Snippet 16

Through Fire – Snippet 16

He blinked at me, in utter confusion. Then gulped and turned very red. This might have been the effect of interacting with a woman, or at least with a woman outside of an official framework. Or it might have been that he wasn’t good at personal interaction with any human being. He swallowed hard and said, “Down the street. Turn right at the clock. It’s the first building on the right.”

I thanked him and wandered down the street, with my hands in the pockets of my borrowed outfit, trying to look casual and at home. It came home to me that my looks were a real problem. Men stared at me. The more subtle of them tried not to gawk directly or at least not to stare. But the younger just looked. Women looked too, often with some malice.

The men and women all seemed to be in some form of uniform, which might be the other reason they stared at me: because I wasn’t. Also, I started wondering about something else. I’d noticed in my time in Liberte, and when interacting with people from Olympus and other seacities or territories, that they all had slightly different gestures, slightly different ways of standing, slightly different ways of holding themselves up. Which is to say, they would have stuck out as different, as strangers in Eden. I remembered when I’d first met Kit’s wife, who’d been raised on Earth, and how odd her every gesture, her way of moving seemed.

Eden is a small place. Sure, some professions — my own old profession as a navigator of darkships which came to Earth orbit to harvest powerpods, for instance — had their own slang, and their own way of behaving. But that was conscious and by choice, and not something you learned from birth to identify as the normal way to do things.

I started worrying long before I reached the bank. If I stuck out like a sore thumb everywhere I went, would there be any point in going back to Liberte? They could identify me, track me, arrest me, kill me or use me as a hostage.

In the back of my mind, I heard Lucius say “It’s a suicide mission.” I didn’t want to commit suicide. For one, my committing suicide would not help Simon. I needed to go in, fit in, bring him out.

Right then and there it seemed impossible.

The coward in me — and I’m not really a coward, I think, but there is a coward in my mind, one who tries to convince me to take the easy way every time — whispered that I should just stay here and let Liberte take care of itself. After all, I’d escaped with my life.

But it was not that easy. Year after year, I’d wonder if I could have saved Simon, and feel like I should have. It was no use telling myself it would have done no good. If I didn’t try it, I couldn’t be sure.

Like that, I was standing in front of the bank. It had never occurred to me to fear that it might be one with employees, because the only bank I’d seen was the one where Simon had taken me, when he’d established my account. And I wasn’t even sure if it normally had human employees, or if it was an exception made for him.

In any case, I must have feared it at the back of my mind, because I felt perceptible relief when I entered the swinging glass doors and found myself in a broad, polished white ceramite lobby, surrounded by row upon row of teller booths.

This was one step up from the place where you either pushed in your thumb or your credgem. The booths were usually controlled, ten to one operator, which meant they could handle more complex operations than simply withdrawing or depositing credits.

A lucky break since it had just occurred to me I needed to do some fancy financial work. If I didn’t, if I left my money in an account in Liberte, then sooner or later the revolutionaries would find a way to broach the accounts. It was an unfailing habit of revolutionaries to take the property of those they deemed had offended them. If Lucius Keeva was telling the truth, even the Usaians had taken most of his home for their headquarters.

I let that thought go, as right then the Usaian movement was the least of my concerns. Instead, I advanced to the nearest empty booth, and closed the door behind me. I checked that the door opened several times before closing it and locking it.

One thing was to lock myself in a small room of my own volition; another and completely different to allow someone else to lock me in. One of them was unpleasant, the other was crazy-making. In fact, part of the reason I had decided to stay on Earth had been that. I couldn’t stand the idea of being locked in a vehicle, alone, stranded months’ travel away from the nearest source of help. It had been fine before. But now I was aware of what it might mean.

And besides, I was tired of the ever-perpetual pressure to remarry –what good was it? Navigators married pilots. I knew every one of the single cats between my class and the current one, and I didn’t want to marry any of them. None of them would, as Len had, be able to look past my peculiarities, at my real self. If they even knew of my peculiarities. And I didn’t feel like explaining to anyone else that, yes, I was different. For one, you never knew how people would react. Look at my foster parents, who had never gotten over what I was.

So I’d had my choice between being locked in a small space with someone or alone, but it was still locked, and still away from all help, medical or otherwise.

And, yes, I do have issues that have come home carrying issues in arms. Why else would anyone run away from home to an entirely new planet?

I checked the lock on the booth door again, found it opened when I pushed it, and decided to sit down. The booth had controls, automatic, which turned on a holo of the operator, and allowed the operator to see me. I looked at the panel in front of me, for a moment, and realized that any attempt at accessing my account and getting anonymous gems off the machine, would show my face to someone at the other end.

There are times when my enhancements are useful. Beyond just being Jarl Ingemar’s clone, I had another bioengineered advantage. The world in which I’d been born enhanced those they intended as pilots or navigators of energy collecting darkships, so that the team — I wondered when the tradition of their being married had come in — had a good chance of coming back alive.

Pilots — my late husband as well as my “brother” Kit — were enhanced with eyes that allowed them to see in the dark and which gave them the nickname of “Cats” and navigators, like myself, were designed with … mechanical intuition. Electronic intuition too. There were few machines I couldn’t understand after a look. I had sense of direction, and a superhuman memory too, but right then what I needed was the mechanical ability.

I lifted the panel on the machine, gingerly, lest an alarm would sound. Found the anti-vandalism alarm as, by instinct and some knowledge of similar mechanisms, I lifted the lid of the machine and disabled it with my little finger slipped beneath the panel, then lifted the panel fully, braced should another alarm ring, and should I be trapped in here. I had my story all ready, should that happen. I’d tell them I thought the machine malfunctioned, and I was trying to fix it. It’s amazing what people will believe when said by a young woman who has mastered the art of looking innocent, or even a close approximation, as I had.

But no alarms sounded, and I supposed it was because no money transfers could take place from this machine without the intervention of the human operator, so even if you managed to break into the machine and sabotage it, you’d gain nothing.

At any rate I didn’t want to sabotage it. I just wanted to confuse it, enough that anyone operating the machine wouldn’t be able to give an accurate description of my features to anyone asking. Look, I wasn’t doing anything illegal. The money had been given to me, and it was in an account in my name, but I suspected there was more communication between Olympus and Liberte than anyone on either side would like to admit to, and when I got my money out and changed it to a portable, non-identifiable format, I didn’t want word to go ahead of me to Liberte to warn them to look out for a redhead who looked thus and so. Not the least because most people would recognize me on description.

So I tampered with the visual intake circuits just enough that the picture would waver and flicker and tremble, more or less constantly.

 

Death’s Bright Day – Snippet 40

Death’s Bright Day – Snippet 40

Under the circumstances, the villager might as easily have missed the ship itself, Adele thought. And if he’d had time to realize how badly the attackers outnumbered them, he probably wouldn’t have shot at all.

But probabilities didn’t change reality; and eventually everyone dies. Which Adele often found a blessing to remember.

Madringer had blond, curly hair, but he was developing a paunch and he seemed wrung out. He turned from the Medicomp and said, “Okay. He’s stable and he’s going to make it. The leg, well, it’s knitting and chances are most of the nerve cells are going to come back. Thing is, he lost two inches of bone. The ‘comp’ll rebuild it, but that’s too bloody much for perfect, you know?”

“Right, right,” Dasi said, bobbing his head. “Yeah, that’s okay. Good job, Madringer.”

“Yes, thank you, Madringer,” Adele said, busy with her data unit. Rather than making a voice link, she sent a text to Vesey’s face-shield: Cazelet recovering.

That was everything Adele knew with certainty, and she didn’t intend to speculate with Vesey about longer term prospects. Vesey could discuss matters with Madringer if she wished to.

“Wouldn’t of took much and we’d have whacked all the wogs when we saw how bad the kid was,” Dasi said, now looking into the past instead of at Adele. “The leg lying there beside him. Vesey wouldn’t let us, you know? And Tovera backed her, not that anybody wasn’t going to take Vesey’s orders.”

“Yes,” said Adele, wondering how she felt. She didn’t seem to feel anything.

“He’s going to be under at least six hours,” Madringer called. “Everything’s trending up, though.”

“Thing is…” Dasi said, looking sidelong at Adele. “Tovera shot the fellow who did it. Just, you know, shot him. And then she slung her gun again. She said the Mistress would understand. Is that okay?”

“Yes,” said Adele. “My skills don’t include bringing the dead back to life.”

And even if they did, I’m not sure that I would want to do so this time.

“I’m going up to the bridge,” Adele said aloud. “You’d better get your burns looked at, Dasi. You can use the unit on Level E.”

She opened the inner hatch, wondering how well the environmental system had done in clearing the boarding hold. It was at worst a minor discomfort.

Especially compared with walking for the rest of one’s life with a stiff, painful leg.

* * *

Daniel stood on the ramp of the Katchaturian and viewed the prisoners. There were about two hundred and fifty of them, placed under guard in the open not far from Beta. Men were in one body, women and children in the other.

On the horizon was a smudge of black smoke from the burning huts of Alpha. For the most part the wind whipped it off at an angle, but occasionally Daniel caught a bitter taste.

He didn’t mind that. It was useful to remind the villagers exactly what their situation was.

“Sir!” called a man in urban clothing. He stepped toward Daniel from the group of men. “I need to talk to the person in –”

The nearest guard was Evans. There was a heavy wrench in Evans’ belt, but instead of bothering with a weapon he hit the prisoner in the belly with his bare fist. The prisoner flew backward onto the ground. He lay so flaccid that he didn’t even turn his head as he vomited.

The prisoners were segregated by gender; minor children stood or squatted with their mothers. The male villagers edged away from the man who had been knocked down; their eyes were open and frightened.

“You people have raided in the Tarbell Stars,” Daniel said. His voice boomed from the speakers on the Katchaturian’s spine. “You’re pirates, and hanging is the proper way to deal with pirates, right?”

Everybody in the crowd who was old enough to understand the words began to speak; the infants bawled in response to the general outcry. A score of men and more women fell kneeling or threw themselves prostrate, but not even the ones who were blind with fear tried to rush forward. Evans had been a good teacher.

Vesey stood to Daniel’s right; on his left was Chidsey, the captain and owner of the Mezentian Gate. The merchant captain was heavy and fortyish, with healing sores on his wrists where his bonds had cut. All the freed spacers had been spending time with the warships’ Medicomps, since the freighter herself didn’t have one.

“I’m not going to hang you this time,” Daniel said, “but that’s for my own reasons. You deserve to be hanged. If the Tarbell Stars have to do this again, other people will be in command and I suspect they’ll take a different line.”

There was a burst of ringing from the Princess Cecile, where Cory was overseeing the reattachment of the Dorsal A antenna. They were bolting a new mast step to the hull with an impact driver.

The outriggers had come through better than Daniel would have expected, though Cory and Woetjans would need to check the undersides in space. He personally — as owner of the armed yacht — had gone down into the interior of both outriggers while teams resealed gapped seams with structural plastic.

Cazelet was making a satisfactory recovery. If he’d had to wait another half hour to get into the Medicomp, the recovery would have been less satisfactory.

Some of the villagers had begun shouting Daniel’s praises when he announced he wasn’t going to hang them. Others continued to wail, perhaps because they hadn’t been listening. Those who had lived in Alpha had lost everything; the smarter residents of Beta probably realized that their hovels were going to be next.

“Six, we’ve got the ships rigged, over,” Pasternak reported. He was here at Beta, but he’d sent a team of techs to prepare the pirate ships at Alpha.

Daniel started to cut the parabolic mike but instead grinned. “Blow the Roebuck at Alpha when you’re ready, Chief,” he said — to Pasternak and to the crowd below. “Hold off on these two until we’re ready to lift. Six out.”

He expected a delay of perhaps several minutes before Pasternak executed the order. Instead a bright flash appeared at once on the horizon, swelling through the sooty blackness. The ground shock made the Sissie tremble noticeably before the dull thoomp! arrived through the air.

Power Room techs had run the fusion bottle of the pirate ship to full pressure. At Pasternak’s signal they had vented the bottle into the Roebuck’s interior. The result was a fiery rupture, flinging molten bits of the hull in all directions.

The villagers hadn’t stopped wailing since they began, but the sound changed tone. Chance or extremely powerful lungs brought to Daniel the cry, “We need the ships for mining!”

“If you’d stuck to mining, you’d still have the ships!” Daniel said. “If you’d stuck to mining, you’d still have your houses! If you’d stuck to mining, you wouldn’t be hiking seventeen miles to your nearest neighbors with nothing but water and the clothes on your backs!”

He cut the microphone with a raised finger. He said to his two companions, “You’d think they’d run out of breath. Heaven knows my throat’s dry enough and I’m not trying to shout over the wind.”

“They’re shouting against fate, not the wind,” Vesey said. Her face looked as hard as Daniel had ever seen it. She’d been splashed with Cazelet’s blood when the bullet hit him. Dasi had slapped the tourniquet on the boy’s stump, but it had been Vesey who had the presence of mind to signal the corvette by bouncing a laser signal off the Roebuck’s hull.

Plasma exhaust created so much radio frequency interference, especially at low altitude, that not even microwaves would have been certain of getting through. Laser communications were less affected, but they were normally very tight beam and the Princess Cecile had been moving. Spreading the signal from a reflective surface was a brilliant way to make contact — so long as you had Adele on the receiving end.

Daniel cued the microphone again and said, “You’ll be given a meal –” from the villagers own stocks; the rest was being destroyed. “– and an inertial compass with a bearing to the nearest village. If you don’t get along with your neighbors, you should’ve thought about it before you became pirates. I figure they’ll be willing to take in slaves, but I won’t pretend I really care what happens to you after we lift off.”

 

The Span Of Empire – Snippet 16

The Span Of Empire – Snippet 16

****

Vaughan’s head snapped up to the main view screen. “Yes!” he exulted. For some unknown reason, the remaining Ekhat ships had lost their cohesion and were simply swarming toward the Terra fleet. The World Harvester was bulling its way through its own fleet in what Flue would have called a reckless charge in another situation, leaving the smaller ships to scatter in disarray and attack as they could.

The two remaining smaller Ekhat ships were pushed out of the way. Dannet, reacting in that matter-of-fact Jao manner, divided the battleships’ fire between them, and they were being hammered. One of them disintegrated in another fireball when heavy beams from one of the larger Ekhat craft caught it from the rear. Dannet shifted the fire of the Lexington to the fourth smaller craft, and it simply disintegrated seemingly at the moment those lasers hit its screens.

“Tell Krant-Captain Mallu the World Harvester is his, but he is to coordinate with Ban Chao,” Dannet ordered after bare moments of studying the plot that now occupied the view screen. “Uldra, take the north, Arjuna, the south, Vercingetorix the one that lags to the east. Subordinate squadrons; make sure the dead ships are really dead. Go.”

****

Caitlin’s knees were back under her chin, and her arms were wrapped around them. She was aware of Captain Miller standing behind her and Tamt standing by the door to the command deck; and she was aware of Lieutenant Vaughan doing his frenetic best to capture everything of note about the battle and Fleet Commander Dannet’s operation of same. But her focus was on the main view screen, which was displaying the same data as Dannet’s tactical station. The fleet was moving in obedience to the Fleet Commander’s orders, and that included the Ban Chao. Be safe, Tully, she thought.

****

Tully stood motionless, shock frame gripping his suit. He could have moved slightly if he’d wanted to, but with ramming another ship in the plan and his suit closed up, it was safest to just stay put. He kept one eye on the feed from the command deck’s tactical display that was piped to his helmet’s display, and another on the light bar that ran around the rim of the troop assembly area. The light bar was a reassuring green, so the ram wasn’t imminent–yet.

He spared a thought for his suit.

Humans as a race seemed to specialize in ollnat. That was the Jao word for it, anyway. Sort of.

What the Jao of most of their worlds thought of when they used the word “ollnat” in reference to humans translated as foolishness, or daydreaming, or time-wasting. But to Jao such as the leaders of the Bond, or those who had experienced the conquest of Earth from the “winning” side, or even the newly associated Krant kochan, ollnat, more than anything, meant innovation. And humans were made for innovation, it seemed like. Much more so than the oh-so-stodgy Jao were, at any rate.

The Jao had brought advanced technology with them when they conquered the Earth, and for the most part had made little effort to control it during the occupation years. But the continuing human low-level resistance to the occupation had made it difficult for Jao-tech-based businesses to get started until recently. In the three or so years since Aille krinnu ava Pluthrak (now Aille krinnu ava Terra) had supplanted Oppuk krinnu ava Narvo as governor of Earth, that had changed. There were now easily two dozen or more prosperous companies whose products were based on innovations from the Jao tech-base, with who knows how many startups right behind them. Half of them had the word ollnat as part of their company names.

One of the best was The Ollnat Works. It had started in the Pacific region when a Chinese engineer named Li discovered that the Jao had something they used in their spaceships that made Kevlar look like a paper towel. He teamed up with a couple of friends that he’d met in college in California–a Bengali business genius named Ghosh from Mumbai, and a marketing savant named MacDonald from Brisbane. The rest was history.

The marketing guy called their product Super-K (over the objections of the engineer) for Super Kevlar. Their first production item was fabric woven from small extruded threads of the compound. It had the weight of heavy canvas, and the bullet stopping power of a centimeter and a half of armor plate.

Tully’s experiences in the boarding action during the Valeron expedition had made him very aware that the standard Jao-designed spacesuit was, to put it mildly, not well suited for any kind of close combat. Tully’s description was considerably blunter than that. And that lack of suitability had been at the top of his list of things to fix when he got back.

He’d had a full-on rant already worked up and rehearsed and ready to deliver to Ed Kralik as soon as he could report to the general, only to discover that Kralik had anticipated him and that The Ollnat Works had teamed up with the spacesuit manufacturers to begin delivering improved combat suits for the fleet troops literally the day Tully’s feet touched down on Earth again.

Tully grinned at the thought. Let the old-school Jao think what they would about humans and ollnat. The Jao grunts who filled many of the ranks in the fleet jinau troops had embraced the new suits with the same fervor with which most of them had joined Terra taif.

The light bar suddenly changed from green to yellow.

“Command deck to assault team,” a human voice said in Tully’s ear-set over the main assault team com channel. “Target has begun deceleration to avoid entering the star. It appears to be focusing its fire on Pool Buntyam. Estimate three minutes to ram. Light will go red at minus fifteen seconds. Acknowledge.”

“Acknowledge three minutes to ram, red at minus fifteen. Tully out.”

****

Caitlyn waved Wrot over. He moved closer, and she spoke.

“What’s happening now?”

Wrot looked over his shoulder at the main view screen. “Dannet has ordered the battleships to englobe the World Harvester, and to destroy the remaining lesser Ekhat ships. This will isolate the World Harvester near the sun for Ban Chao to make their assault attempt on.”

“So when is Tully going to do that?”

Wrot didn’t miss the reference to the man rather than the ship. He looked at the view screen again. “I’d say they’ve already begun.”

****

Tully tried to shake his head, but the shock frame was still holding him. “What a hit,” he muttered.

He wasn’t sure what he had been expecting from the impact of the ram, but the actual event proved to be beyond that expectation. The kinetic energy of the Ban Chao’s reinforced bow penetrating the Ekhat ship’s hull had been extreme. None of the designers had been sure how the assault troops would experience it as they were cocooned in their shock frames. Tully decided it was an order of magnitude higher than being in a car wreck, but between the combat suits and the shock frames his troops could deal with it.

The light bar switched to blue, and the human voice from the command deck spoke over the all unit com channel again as the shock frames released the troops and began to withdraw into the floor and ceiling. “Ram completed. Front assault doors clear to open. Deploy troops immediately. Acknowledge.”

“Acknowledged. Tully out.”

Tully was positioned right behind the leading elements of Sato’s Alpha Company. He could see most of them were pulling their weapons into position and orienting themselves toward the big blast doors that were sliding apart to open the way into the assault ramp.

“Alpha Company – report.”

“All up, all ready, all go,” was the reply in the Japanese captain’s slightly accented English.

“Baker Company.”

“All ready,” came the response from Torg.

“Charlie Company.”

“Good to go, Colonel.” Lieutenant Boatright sounded a bit nervous–that was okay, because Tully was more than a bit nervous himself. But he also sounded like he was in control.

 

Castaway Odyssey – Chapter 01

Castaway Odyssey – Chapter 01

Castaway Odyssey

By Eric Flint and Ryk E. Spoor

PART I: ADRIFT

Chapter 1.

“Franky, get strapped in now!” Xander Bird said.

“You’re not my mama!” the red-haired little boy snapped back in a frightened tone. “You can’t tell me what to do! And I’m not Franky! I’m Francisco Alejandro Coronel!”

Xander closed his eyes for a moment, ignoring the lifeboat drill alerts, and took a deep breath, running his fingers through his slightly-too-long curly hair before opening his eyes again. “I’m sorry, Francisco. But you know the rules; your parents – and Tavana’s, too – were at that dinner party on the other side of the hab ring, and so they had to go to a different lifeboat. You’ve got to strap in. Your mama would want you to be a good boy, right?”

At his apologetic tone, Francisco stopped glaring, and finally nodded unwillingly and sat back into his assigned seat in LS-88, their lifeboat and landing shuttle for the starship Outward Initiative, currently bound for the colony world of Tantalus. Under Xander’s watchful eye, the eight-year-old carefully pulled the multi-point restraint harness on and locked it in place. “There.”

“Thank you, Francisco. Hopefully the drill will be over in a few minutes, unless they go to Phase II.” Xander looked over to the Polynesian boy in the next seat. “You okay, Tav?”

“I’m not a baby, of course I’m okay,” Tavana Arronax said. The sixteen-year-old’s voice wasn’t so much angry or defensive as abstracted; Xander could see that Tav’s eyes had the distant look of someone viewing data in their retinal implant displays. Reading or maybe playing a game.

“I’m strapped in and secure!” announced Maddox Bird. “Can I play Jewelbug with Tav while we wait?”

“That’s up to Tav if he wants to,” Xander said, “but I don’t have a problem with it if you guys keep it down to a dull roar.”

“Okay! Tav? Tav, you wanna –”

Tavana sighed, something which was very visible in someone that wide-bodied, but smiled. “Okay, okay. Seventh Gate Adventure, yes? We were about halfway through that one.”

“Yeah!”

Good, that’ll keep them occupied. He checked on Francisco again to make sure that he didn’t feel left out, but it looked like whatever book their youngest shipmate had chosen was holding his full attention for now. No guarantee that’ll last for more than a minute, but hey, I’ll take it.

He looked up front at the vacant navigator’s station. He had to admit that made him a little nervous; yes, the lifeboats were completely automated, with their own capable if limited AI systems that would handle even complex situations well, but still, it would be nice to have someone up front. Unfortunately, that someone was supposed to be Ariel Coronel, Francisco’s mother, and she, her husband, and Tavana’s parents were –

His thought broke off as another form dropped perfectly down through the hatchway and landed with practiced ease.

The man straightened to his full intimidating one hundred ninety-eight centimeters – eight centimeters taller than Xander himself – and his hard brown eyes, the color of dark, polished oak, surveyed the whole cabin in an instant.

As he was already strapped down, Xander couldn’t salute, but he had an impulse to anyway. “Master Sergeant Campbell!”

“Relax, son, sorry to intrude. This boat’s the closest to my position, so you’re stuck with me for this drill.” Campbell’s voice was dry, mildly humorous, but his size and the smooth, pantherish stride still reminded Xander that this was a man who’d spent two decades in military service across the settled worlds. His age showed some – there was a sprinkling of gray through his black hair, his weathered, deep-brown skin showed lines of time and strain, and one scar stretching from his chin almost to his right ear – but he moved like someone not much older than Xander’s nineteen rather than someone considerably more than twice that.

“Parents stuck somewhere else?” he asked, glancing at Francisco and Tavana.

“Captain’s Table party,” Maddox said.

Sergeant Campbell nodded. “Then if you don’t mind, I’ll take the hotseat.”

“Please, sir. It’d be an honor.”

“Leave out the ‘sirs’. I’m enlisted, I work for a goddamn living. I wasn’t ever ‘sir’.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Wiseass.” Campbell took his place at the pilot’s console and strapped in; Xander saw him touch the panel and the manual controls extruded, just as the manual required. “Outward Initiative,” he said, “this is Samuel Morgan Campbell, Chief Master Sergeant, Colonial Security. Put me down as present in LS-88, which was closest to my position when the alarm went.”

“Acknowledged,” replied the AI running the immense colony ship. A chime echoed through the shuttle. “Proceed to Phase II of drill.”

Campbell leaned back in the seat. “All right then, people; as I’m senior present and the qualified pilot, I’m your acting captain on this tub, so we’re going to do this by the numbers. Samuel Campbell present and secured. Sound off, the rest of you – in order of age, oldest first!”

“Xander Bird, present and secured,” Xander said promptly, checking his harness reflexively; it was tight enough but not too tight.

There was a pause. Sergeant Campbell’s eyes narrowed, and Xander sent an interrupt ping to the Jewelbug server. Tav, Maddox, we’re doing countoff and Sergeant Campbell’s here! Your turn, Tav!

Tav’s eyes snapped wide open and he immediately half-sat up in his urgency. “T…Tavana Arronax, present and secured!”

“Maddox Bird, present and secured!”

Xander held his breath, but relaxed as he heard a slightly accented voice say “Francisco Alejandro Coronel, present and secured!”

“Well all right then. I’d do the assigned station check-in, but Pilot Station – mine – is the only one currently manned, and everything’s green across the board. The rest of you can just relax; this’ll be over once they’ve done the random inspections and all the boats have checked in.”

“We know that, Sergeant,” Maddox said. “We’ve been through a lot of these before.”

A chuckle from up front. “I suppose you have, at that.”

“Inspection!” sang out a voice from the hatchway. A small woman – in full protective suit gear, helmet back to reveal her short-cut, brilliant-red hair and green eyes in a slightly-freckled, tanned face – dropped into the shuttle.

Random inspections my butt, Maddox sent him over their private omni link. That’s the Sergeant’s girlfriend!

“Why, hello, Lieutenant Haley,” said Sergeant Campbell with a quick grin. “Fancy seeing you here.”

“Just checking in.” She quickly examined each person’s harness, made Tav’s tighten a slight bit more, and then winked at the Sergeant before turning away. “Lieutenant Pearce Haley reporting: LS-88, all secure.” She started up the ladder, glanced back. “See you after the drill, Sam?”

“Look forward to it, PG,” Campbell answered.

Xander admitted to himself that he felt a pang of completely irrational envy verging on jealousy. Stupid. I just haven’t had the time to go dating or anything – taking care of Maddox without Uncle or Mom and Dad takes up a lot of time, plus my studies. And it’s not like the Sergeant’s getting in my way or anything.

Just as Lieutenant Haley disappeared through the hatch, alarm klaxons ripped the air; the sound of the hatchway closing was as abrupt and fatal-sounding as a guillotine. At the same time, the forward display suddenly switched to a view of the velvet-black of Trapdoor space with the exterior-lit Outward Initiative and its hab ring.

There was a chunk missing from the ring; even as they watched, another piece … faded, and then was gone, leaving a ragged gap.

“Trapdoor Field instability,” Outward Initiative reported calmly.

“Merde!” Tavana said in a panicked voice that echoed Xander’s own shock and disbelief. “Instability? How? Who’s messing with the Field? That should –”

Poison-green light flared from the screen; there was a ripping crash and Xander heard himself yelling incoherently as LS-88 spun crazily, tumbling as it plummeted into the infinite darkness of space. Lights flickered, went out, came back on.

The spinning and whirling continued, on and on, and Xander felt himself starting to get ill. “Medical options, on,” he said quickly. The omni display appeared, asking him for instructions. “Motion sickness, counter. Activate for Maddox, too.” He didn’t know what to do for Tav and Francisco; he had no authority for their omnis, let alone their medical nanos.

Sergeant Campbell showed he was already thinking ahead on that. “Francisco, Tavana, give me Omni access to you both now.”

Neither of the two argued with Campbell – not that almost anyone would. Once the anti-vertigo started to work, Xander felt some better – though he was still shaky, shocked, and honestly terrified. But at least I’m not going to puke in a free-falling, spinning shuttle. “S…Sergeant? What –”

“Don’t know yet, son. All of you stay quiet for a minute.” He did something at his board, but nothing seemed to change.

Lighting’s… off, too. Thought I saw a flicker.

“Attitude jets won’t fire,” the Sergeant said after a minute. “Automated systems completely out, but that shouldn’t be stopping the manuals. Telltales claim they’re still locked down.”

“Manual lockdown, Sergeant?” Tavana asked hesitantly.

“Looks like it. Almost as though we were still docked.”

Tavana nodded. “Maybe… maybe when we… broke free, sir, some pieces of the dock got stuck, so they’re still registering.”

“Maybe.” Sergeant Campbell shook his head. “I don’t like the rest of what I’m seeing here. No AI response. Integrated controls out; can’t access the other cameras yet, just getting the forward view. Hard to get an overall picture. Xander, you finished the freefall maneuvering course, right?”

“Yes, Sergeant.”

“All right.” He hesitated, then sighed. “Unstrap carefully and go check the hatch. See if you can see anything out there that looks like it’s still stuck to us. Take your time and do not make the mistake of thinking this is ordinary freefall. This thing’s spinning like a tumbling pigeon in a hurricane, and you’ll get all sorts of tugs and pulls on you as you move through the cabin. Last thing we need is someone slipping and bouncing through the cabin.”

“Yes, Sergeant.” Xander first unlocked the cable at the waist of his suit and hooked it to the eyelet on his chair; he saw the Sergeant’s approving nod. Then Xander carefully unsnapped his harness.

As soon as he started to rise, cautiously, he could feel what the Sergeant meant; moving shifted the forces on him, and as Xander began to slowly, cautiously make his way through the cabin of LS-88, he had to take exquisite pains to keep from being shoved or pulled from the chairs and handholds. In the chaotic whirl of the tumbling lifeboat, the journey from his assigned seat to the ladder of the hatch was like climbing a tree in a storm; he had to stop, remove his anchor cable from one point and attach it to another, then move forward a meter or so before repeating the maneuver.

Finally he was at the ladder, so he hooked to the highest rung and then climbed up carefully to the point that he could get his head up to look through the hatch window.

To find himself looking across the tiny sealed airlock straight into the frightened, wide green eyes of Lieutenant Pearce Greene Haley.

 

Death’s Bright Day – Snippet 39

Death’s Bright Day – Snippet 39

CHAPTER 15

Benjamin

Cory had lighted the thrusters as soon as Adele ordered the attack, but it was almost a minute before he was willing to tighten the sphincters. Adele felt the Princess Cecile lift as smoothly as if she had been on water. They rose vertically until they were comfortably above the lip of the swale which had sheltered the ship while Vesey’s party advanced.

The message came from a laser emitter, but it was so weak and distorted that only a system as sensitive as the Sissie’s could have received and enhanced it: “Beta Six to Beta. Cazelet down, need Medicomp soonest, out.”

Adele forwarded it as a throbbing purple text crawl at the bottom of Cory’s display. She didn’t think there was anything Cory could do about it, and maneuvering a starship at low altitude was more than most captains could have managed even without distractions. It was all Adele could do, though, so she did it.

“Command to Barnes,” Cory said on the command channel. “We’re going to open up as soon as we get down. I want your crew in hard suits so you can lay the boarding bridge while the ground’s still hot. We’ll have a stretcher coming aboard and they won’t have suits, over.”

“Roger, out,” said Barnes, the acting bosun while Woetjans was aboard the Katchaturian.

“Ship, this is Command,” Cory said, keying the general push so that everyone aboard could hear him. “We’re going in hard, so brace yourselves. Command out.”

The Princess Cecile was at a hundred feet. They had porpoised slightly when they lifted off, but Cory had held the ship steady as soon as it had built forward motion. They speeded up slightly as they slanted downward; Cory had adjusted the angle of his thrusters.

Adele switched her display to a real-time panorama, reducing her communications duties to a sidebar. Benjamin in close-up was the same gray-dun blur it had appeared from a light-minute out. Small bushes wriggled in the Sissie’s bow wave, sometimes releasing a fluff of white seeds before the plasma exhaust incinerated them.

The village — Beta — came in sight ahead. One of the huts was burning.

“Ship, hang on!” Cory repeated. The ship bucked as he opened the throttles. The Sissie was beginning to slow when the outriggers touched, first toward the stern.

There was a rending crash and one of the worst jolts Adele had ever felt aboard a starship. Automatic restraints clamped her about the waist, so that she wasn’t flung off the console. The only worse one was when a missile hit the Milton…and that wasn’t much worse.

Sand and dust sprayed up, filling Adele’s display. The Dorsal A antenna, raised as a communications mast, carried away. The butt end rang on the Sissie’s bow on the way past, certainly hard enough to dent the steel hull.

“Opening main hatch!” Cory warned. The dogs withdrew; their hammer-on-anvil chorus seemed muted after the landing itself.

The ship shuddered. There was a muted shock and the hatch began to hum downward.

Though only a few feet away from one another, Cory and Adele sat back to back. He looked at her face in his display and said, “I was afraid for a moment that the hull was so warped the hatch wouldn’t open. I don’t know what we’d have done then.”

“We’d have found a way,” Adele said. “Anyway, the hull didn’t warp. You did a good job, a remarkable job.”

“Six’ll have my commission for this,” Cory said. “I doubt either outrigger is watertight now, and the gods only know what damage the antenna did when it ripped loose.”

“Daniel doesn’t care about problems that can be solved by money,” Adele said, deliberately emphasizing her personal connection with Captain Leary. “Neither should you.”

The boarding ramp thumped into the ground. Three Sissies wearing gauntlets and the lower halves of rigging suits and one with just the suit bottom carried the boarding extension down the ramp at a dead run. The haze of dust and unquenched ions from the exhaust blurred them to ghost figures.

In a normal landing, the harbor water dissipated heat and quenched plasma by conduction and boiling; this rocky soil would be too hot to touch for hours. Four figures with jackets wrapped over their faces were trotting out of the village. They carried a cloth-wrapped figure on a stretcher made from a tarpaulin and a pair of stocked impellers.

Adele rose from her console. She squeezed the acting captain’s shoulder and said, “Cory, I’m going down to the hold. Handle communications, if you will.”

“Yes ma’am!” Cory said. Over the years he had developed more skill with communications suites than anyone Adele had met besides herself. He already sounded brighter than he had while he was thinking about the damage he had done by skidding the Sissie in to save a comrade’s life.

Adele started down the companionway. It was strange to hear her own feet on the steel treads without the sound of Tovera’s footsteps in counterpoint. It took her back to her days in the Academic Collections, though the staircases in the stacks weren’t in armored cylinders so the echoes weren’t as noticeable.

Adele’s smile was mostly in her mind; and mostly sad. She recalled a time when she had no problems except those of poverty, which really hadn’t distressed her very much.

She opened the hatchway into the main hold and staggered. The shock of the hot atmosphere full of ozone and other ions. It was like being slapped in the face with barbed wire.

Barnes’ landing crew had returned to the hold as soon as they had extended the bridge. A guard was still at the hatch, using her hands to shield her eyes as a sub-machine gun swung loose from her shoulder.

The stretcher bearers stumbled aboard. Barnes opened the internal hatch to the chamber which held one of the corvette’s Medicomps. The main hatch was already rising; when it closed, it would at least stop the influx of air poisoned by the ship’s exhaust.

People were shouting instructions. A half-suited crewman grabbed Dasi by the arm and guided him and his crew toward the Medicomp. The stretcher bearers were blind or the next thing to it; they would probably need medical attention also. Adele followed them into the inner chamber and closed the hatch behind her.

Crewmen who’d remained aboard tossed aside the jacket which had protected Cazelet’s face during the trip through Hell; they loaded him into the waiting Medicomp. Adele was glad to see that Madringer was one of them; he was an expert in the unit. Like any other machine, there were better and worse ways to use a Medicomp, even though it was designed for the lowest common denominator.

Cazelet’s right leg from mid-thigh was separate on the stretcher. Madringer arranged it carefully within the Medicomp, then closed the machine and let it get on with its business.

Adele realized that Dasi was standing beside her. The big bosun’s mate’s hands were swollen, and his red eyes looked ghastly.

“Dasi, you’d better get some help yourself,” Adele said.

“Yeah, I’ll do that,” Dasi said. His words were slurred; fumes and ozone had obviously damaged his mouth and tongue even worse than they had the tough outer skin of his hands. “But I want to make sure the kid’s okay first.”

“Yes,” said Adele. “I…”

She paused because she wasn’t sure how to continue. “Feel responsible for him,” was what she had started to say, which sounded extremely foolish when the words formed in her mind. Rene was a thoroughly competent adult who knew the risks of RCN service as well as she herself did.

“I was greatly indebted to his grandmother on Bryce, after I was orphaned,” Adele said. “She sent him to me when his parents were arrested for treason.”

“Madringer!” Dasi croaked. “How’s he doing?”

“I’ll tell you when I bloody know something, won’t I?” Madringer said, bending over the display screen and adjusting the roller control beside it.

“Hell, he’s gonna be all right,” Dasi muttered. It was more a prayer than a prediction. He looked at Adele and said, “Half a dozen of us was just going up the ramp of the Roebuck, clearing her, you know? And some wog comes out of a hut and shoots at us, from behind, you see? And then he throws his gun down — the loading tube was jammed, Sun said afterward, but he got the one slug out and it took off Cazelet’s leg neat as a snapped cable.”

 

Through Fire – Snippet 15

Through Fire – Snippet 15

Piracy Preferred

And he left me. Standing alone in the middle of his perfectly decorated room, with its white carpet, its polished pine shelves, its low, cushiony seats, its broad glass doorway facing the sea, I tried to think of what to do next.

I didn’t realize I was furious until I noticed the images forming at the back of my mind were of kicking my way out through that glass doorway to the terrace and–

And what? Plunging to the sea below? The idea made me smile, because it was so much the act of a romantic lover, and I wasn’t one — certainly not Simon’s. But what else could I do? Challenge Lucius to a fight. The thought came and for a moment there was a feeling of relief, because Lucius was definitely someone I could with impunity be furious at. If I lost control and attacked him, he’d probably stop me before I landed a single punch. He was as fast as I was, and as strong. No, stronger, because behind his enhanced capabilities were his not inconsiderable bulk and his not inconsiderable masculine advantage.

But then if I attacked him, I’d get no satisfaction either. And besides, what could I get him to do? Send a rescue party for Simon? He’d said he couldn’t, and I remembered Simon telling me that when Nat was captured and condemned to death, the Usaians had refused to help. Lucius and one of Nat’s sisters had gone in, and the young woman had died in the attempt. I remembered that story particularly because Simon had been affected by her death and seemed genuinely fond of her. He’d said she was like a little sister to him.

I took deep breaths. Lucius might have been unpleasant about Simon — had been unpleasant about Simon — in saying no, but he’d also said, and I had to believe it that his “no” was more dictated by circumstances than by his dislike of Simon. And he had to know more about what had happened in Liberte than I did. Could I swear there was no reason at all for him to say that Simon had brought this on himself? Could I even say that Simon’s intentions had been good?

I realized I’d been clenching my fists so hard it hurt, and let go.

Granted that Simon was not the best person in the world, for whatever the definition of “good” might be. I knew that he was manipulative and deceived others and possibly himself, but I also knew how he’d come to it. Whoever had said to know all is to forgive all was a child and an idiot. I could understand most crimes without in the least thinking they were forgivable. But there was a point to it. Up to a point, if you could understand how someone had got twisted and turned inside, you had to forgive them, because — what else could you do?

In Simon’s case I could see all too well how he’d gone astray — how desperate he’d been to survive. And from what I’d heard, from himself and from others, if a Good Man were taken down, it wouldn’t just be him dying, but most of his retainers and dependents. It wasn’t just sheer selfishness and desire to keep himself alive that led Simon to do what he did, to play the fool, to dissemble, to act — often — like saving his skin was the most important thing in the world.

I doubted that it had never occurred to him, Earth born and bred, that as large as this world was he could just have left Liberte, he’d have had plenty of places to hide. Perhaps — I thought — as spoiled as Simon was; as used to being in power and having everything he wanted, it would have seemed like dying for him to go away, perhaps, leave his power and privilege behind, and have to do more than sign forms for a living. On the other hand, considering how many years he’d lived with the dire threat to his life from the other Good Men, even Simon might have considered it a better option.

Then I realized if he’d gone into hiding, Liberte would have been taken over and all his retainers and servants destroyed.

Seen that way, it was almost altruistic for him to stay in Liberte and to pretend to be a fool and inoffensive.

If that was his motivation, then trying to control the revolution he knew was coming was the only thing he could have done.

I had no proof that Simon had ever done anything — much less that — for altruistic reasons. But I remembered his face, his screaming at Alexis to get me out of there. He could have found a way out. He could have disappeared. Or he could have demanded Alexis defend him and die protecting him while he made an escape. Instead he’d chosen to see me safely away.

That action alone argued in favor of a man who had been trying to do the best he could for his dependents and those who couldn’t survive without him.

And that meant–

And that meant, inescapably, that I couldn’t leave him to die.

Even if I didn’t really have a chance of saving him, I’d tried to get help, the sane thing to do. It hadn’t worked. Only the insane thing remained. I had to do it alone.

I didn’t like the conclusion. I didn’t want to go back to Liberte. Lucius Keeva had said it would be suicide, and there was a very good chance he was right. I remembered those heads on poles. Once madness sets in and crowds are out for blood, a place won’t be safe until sanity is restored, and judging from historical reports of such events, that could be years. Or decades.

The French Revolution wasn’t the model for this. The Turmoils were. They’d taken almost twenty years to burn themselves out.

And they’d only really stopped the insane killings when the Mules themselves, experienced and trained at crowd control, had taken over under a new guise again.

They’d gone on long after the mobs had killed every bio-improved person that could be easily spotted and onto killing anyone who was a little too beautiful, a little too fast, a little too smart, though not smart enough to hide it.

But Simon had been captured, and if Lucius — and Alexis — were right, then he’d be used as a bargaining chip in a power game. But bargaining chip or not, he was going to end up dead.

Right.

I realized that as satisfying as kicking out the plate glass — if it wasn’t transparent dimatough — window of Lucius Keeva’s room might be, the thing to do was to get out of here as quietly and as quickly as I could, and to find my way back to Liberte.

Fortunately, Lucius had left that option open by telling me I could go anywhere I wished in the house, provided I didn’t upset the guards.

I went back to the bedroom and found my slippers, and put them on my bare feet. They were the dance slippers I’d worn to the ball. Immensely impractical, but better than nothing. Then I tried to think through what I’d need.

Money. That was the first thing. I’d need cred gems. Preferably unmarked credgems. And I’d need weapons, and I’d need — I sighed — to get a lot of awful hair dye again and perhaps a dress even more awful than the pink one.

I had nothing to sell. Robbing Keeva seemed foolhardy, and at any rate what, other than his liquor, could bring any substantial money?

I eyed the cut-crystal decanters with their mysterious contents, and then told myself it was stupid. I had no idea what liquor was good, or even expensive, on Earth.

Then I thought that Simon had opened an account for me. Not much — at least not by his reckoning — but enough to get me immediate necessities or little luxuries if I went out shopping alone.

I’d never gone shopping alone. Unlike most women, I’d never understood the purpose of shopping for its own sake, and he insisted on giving me things before I’d even expressed an interest in them.

But I remembered there was an account with the main bank of Liberte — Finance de Liberte — and that it was coded to my genetic print.

I wondered if the revolutionaries had taken over banks. I didn’t think so. Not yet. They were still very much in the phase of breaking things and killing people, and I doubted they’d thought of more sophisticated things, like hacking into bank accounts.

So, I needed to find a bank.

I headed out of Keeva’s lodgings, in the sort of purposeful walk that makes people assume you know what you’re doing. Which, of course, is particularly important if you don’t.

I wandered purposefully down three consecutive corridors, until I glimpsed what looked like daylight. At which point I collared the impeccably uniformed and very young man guarding the doorway and said, “Pardon me, could you tell me the way to the nearest bank?”

 

1636: The Chronicles of Dr. Gribbleflotz – Snippet 30

1636: The Chronicles of Dr. Gribbleflotz – Snippet 30

Phillip grinned. “It is obvious you’ve never had to concern yourself with the economics of running a laboratory. Because if you had, you would know that the price of fuel goes up in the winter.”

“How does the price of fuel going up in winter lead to you making acidum salis and aqua fortis from Oil of Vitriol?”

“It takes as much fuel to make Oil of Vitriol from green vitriol as it does to make acidum salis or aqua fortis from green vitriol. But you can never be sure how much of any acid you need or can sell. With my new process, as long as I have Oil of Vitriol, I can make aqua fortis and acidum salis on demand. And I’ll never be left with surplus stock.” Phillip paused to glare at the furnace. “Of course, it still wouldn’t hurt for the furnace to be a little more efficient.”

Johann looked at the furnace. It didn’t look any different from the half-dozen or so other furnaces he’d seen. “Why haven’t you done something about improving it?”

“I’ve been busy,” Phillip said defensively before going on to explain what he was doing with his retorts.

Johann was interested in the idea that furnaces could have different efficiencies, but he didn’t have any time to think about that as he tried to keep up with Dr. Gribbleflotz. The Doctor was everywhere as he monitored the numerous retorts while also managing the fire in the furnace, and prepared other compounds on his bench.

“Why are you doing that? Johann found himself asking later in the day as he watched Dr. Gribbleflotz dissolving saltpetre in warm water.

“The secret of purer acids is purer ingredients,” Phillip said. “By purifying my saltpetre before I mix it with the Oil of Vitriol, I get a much purer aqua fortis.”

“Does purer saltpetre make better gunpowder?” Johann wondered aloud.

“It does,” Phillip answered. “Any variation from the standard seventy-five to fifteen to ten formulation is usually due to impurities in the ingredients, especially of the saltpetre. Usually the improvement in performance doesn’t justify the effort to make the Saltpetre purer.”

“You sound as if you’ve tested that theory,” Johann said.

“I have.” Phillip related his experiences in Augsburg during his apprenticeship, much to Johann’s delight.

“Could you make some gunpowder?” Johann asked.

“Gunpowder isn’t something to fool around with,” Phillip warned. “I’ve seen men torn apart by explosions, and I have nightmares imagining what it must have been like at Wimpfen last May when that cannon-shot blew up the magazine of the forces of the Margrave of Baden-Durlach.”

Johann was more interested in the practicalities of the situation rather than the physical injuries sustained. “How does that work?” he protested. “Surely a cannon-shot can’t set off a barrel of gunpowder.”

“No, it can’t,” Phillip agreed. “It isn’t hot enough. However, a sufficiently large cannon ball hitting a barrel of gunpowder can easily turn it into a cloud of dust and stave pieces.”

“How does a cloud of dust cause an explosion?”

Phillip looked around his laboratory. “Get that stool and place it in the middle of the room.”

While Johann was moving the stool Phillip opened a clay pot and measured some fine black powder onto a sheet of paper. “Light the candle and stand the candlestick on the stool,” Phillip directed as he approached the stool.

With the lit candle standing on the stool Phillip stepped closer to the flame and blew on the paper in his hands. The fine black powder was dispersed in a cloud of fine particles, until the first one hit the flame, then the whole lot erupted in a ball of fire. He dusted off the piece of paper and collected the candlestick. “That’s what a cloud of gunpowder can do, and all it needs to set it off is a single smoldering ember. Please put away the stool and sweep the floor,” he instructed as he returned them to the bench.

Johann was so stunned by what he’d seen that he didn’t move. “Could I try that?” he begged.

Phillip sighed and held out the candlestick. “Put that back on the stool.”

Johann took the candlestick and Phillip set about placing a small amount of fine gunpowder on the sheet of paper. By the time he’d finished and put the gunpowder away Johann was back. He handed him the sheet of paper with the small measure of gunpowder on it. “The paper needs to be about a foot away from the candle and level with the top of the flame before you blow,” Phillip said as he handed it over.

Johann set himself up relative to the candle and blew. The resulting fireball wasn’t as impressive as Phillip’s but it still brought a gleam to Johann’s eyes.

“No, you can’t do that again,” Phillip said. He ignored Johann’s protests. “Put the candlestick and stool away and sweep the floor.”

****

Phillip knew that nothing he said would discourage Johann from playing around with gunpowder. He’d have to discover the realities of just how dangerous it was himself. So while Johann swept the laboratory, Phillip wrote down clear and concise instructions of how to make gunpowder. He handed it to Johann when he finished sweeping.

“What’s this?” Johann asked as he skimmed over the list of instructions.

“That is the safe way to make gunpowder.” Phillip put a lot of emphasis on the word “safe”. “Not that making gunpowder can ever be considered safe.”

“You’re down on gunpowder because of your experiences in the war?” Johann asked as he carefully folded the sheet of paper and put it away.

Phillip nodded. He wasn’t willing to go into the details, but any enthusiasm he’d ever had for gunpowder had well and truly been lost during his time in the service of the counts of Nassau-Siegen. “I gave you those instructions because I know that the first chance you get, you’ll try and make some. And I’d rather you didn’t blow yourself or anybody else up whilst doing so.”

“I’ll be careful,” Johann promised.

“Good, now let’s get back to work. Those retorts won’t monitor themselves.”

A few days later

Phillip walked around the distillation furnace carefully checking the various retorts. He was paying special attention to the retorts at the cooler end of the furnace. Johann followed him like a shadow, and stood just about as close.

“Why are you redistilling the aqua vitae so often,” Johann asked.

Phillip turned and looked down his nose at Johann, his disappointment in his student evident on his face.

Johann looked around the laboratory. His eyes darted to the bench where retorts of aqua vitae were awaiting their turns on the furnace before returning to Phillip. “What did I do wrong this time?” he demanded.

Phillip sighed loudly, which caused Johann to blush. “What have I told you about the need for accuracy?” he asked.

Johann’s eyes darted back to the bench. “Oh,” he said as he turned back to face Phillip. “You mean I should have asked why you are distilling the aqua vitae four times?”

“That would have been much better,” Phillip said, “although you should really have asked why I am distilling it for the fourth time.” He smiled to show he wasn’t too upset. “We will actually be distilling it one more time, to give five-fold distilled waters of wine. Then I will pour it into clean containers, seal then, and bury them in baskets full of horse manure.”

“But you started with beer, not wine,” Johann pointed out.

Phillip elected to just glare at Johann before continuing as if he hadn’t spoken. “I distill it five times so as to make it as pure, and therefore as strong, as possible.”

“But you insist on accuracy, Dr. Gribbleflotz,” Johann protested.

Phillip settled his clenched fists on his hips and glared at Johann. “Johann, by the time it has been distilled five times, the distillate of beer is indistinguishable from the distillate of wine.” He continued to glare at Johann, daring him to say anything. When Johann broke eye contact Phillip continued speaking. “And besides, ‘waters of wine’ sounds much more impressive than beer, or aqua vitae.” Johann’s head shot up at the sudden levity. Their eyes met and he saw the smile in Phillip’s eyes as he continued to speak. “Now, you will no doubt be curious to know why it must be buried in horse manure for four months before being decanted into a clean flask and buried for another four months, and when that time is over, it needs to be decanted into yet another clean flask before being buried for a final four months, after which it will be decanted one last time?”

“Now that you mention it, Dr. Gribbleflotz, I would like to know why you have to do that.”

Phillip hadn’t been idle since his first attempt to explain to Dr. Michael Weitnauer back in Dalmatia why it had to be buried for a year. “Obviously the first consideration is protecting it from light while any sediment in the liquid settles. The removal of sediment is of course is why it is decanted at four monthly intervals, and we repeat the decanting to ensure all sediments are removed.”

“But why horse manure?” Johann asked.

 

The Span Of Empire – Snippet 15

The Span Of Empire – Snippet 15

Chapter 6

Vaughan captured Dannet’s orders. The battleship formation began to rotate, just as the individual ships rotated on their respective axes. It only took him a couple of second to catch on to why: to reduce the impact of the Ekhat lasers on the ships. He felt good about that realization for, maybe, half a second.

He sobered when he caught a message sent by Vercingetorix. One of their gun decks was open to space and sealed off, damaged by the collision with the last of the Ekhat ships that had attacked them inside the star. He suppressed a shudder, and hoped the crew had managed to evacuate safely. Another note was made; this time about the fact that between the battle off Valeron and this one, in two collisions two different Lexingtons had lost a gun deck, a full spine. Make sure that one gets to the design group.

The Welshman continued to watch and make notes as Dannet stood, hands behind her back, watching the view screen, head slightly tilted. He got the feeling she was waiting for something, but he couldn’t tell what.

****

“So,” Gabe Tully concluded, looking around at his jinau officers in the assault group, “we only have general guesses as to what the interior of that ship is going to look like. Fortunately, we don’t have specific objectives in mind. It’s just ram the ship, debark, create as much hell and destruction as we can, capture as many Ekhats and slaves as we can, and get out while the getting is good.”

Gabe saw First Sergeant Luff’s mouth quiver for just a moment, before he forced it into a straight line.

“Alpha Company will lead out,” Gabe continued, looking at Captain Sato Kobayashi, the Japanese-born company commander. “Sato, terminate every Ekhat you see in that space. They’re too dangerous to let get close to us while we’re trying to un-ship. If we can capture some elsewhere and drag them back to the ship, great. But any of them in the entry space needs to be turned into quivering little pieces of Ekhat meat. Anything that’s not Ekhat but is carrying a weapon also gets hammered. Got it?”

Kobayashi gave a sharp nod, and entered notes on his pad.

Gabe turned to Captain Torg krinnu ava Terra and 1st Lieutenant Richard Boatright, commanders of Companies Baker and Charlie respectively.

“Once the entry area is under control, you guys will debark. Each company will leave one fire team for entry space and ship security, under the command of Major Liang.”

Major Shan Liang, the executive officer of the assault group, looked up from where he was making notes of his own. “And where will you be, Colonel?”

“Probably with Alpha Company.”

Tully saw identical frowns appear on the faces of both the exec and the first sergeant. He held up a hand in a “stop” signal.

“Don’t start, guys. I’ve seen Ekhat in action; with the exception of Torg, none of you, no matter how experienced you are, can say that. You have no idea–you can’t know–just how insane and crazy it will be to face them.”

“I heard that from some of the troops who were with you at Valeron,” Luff said.

Tully shook his head. “And anything they told you just is nothing compared to the piss-your-pants feeling of seeing a giraffe-sized sort-of-praying mantis with too many arms and legs charging you like a racehorse with the intent desire of turning you into a smorgasbord of cold cuts and a stain on the deck.”

“What he said,” Captain Torg muttered.

“The best I can do to share the experience is for me to be with Alpha and First Sergeant Luff to be with Charlie; that’s the best I can do,” he repeated. The first sergeant’s frown disappeared at that. “And Shan,” Tully turned to the exec, “that leaves you holding the bag at the ship. If things go well, you’ll just be helping corral the specimens. If things go in the crapper, you’ll be the last-ditch defense of the Ban Chao. Don’t let me down.”

Major Liang’s face set in very determined lines. “You got it, Colonel.”

Tully looked at Luff. “What’s that old Marine motto you like to trot out, Top?”

“You mean ‘Improvise, Adapt, and Overcome’, sir?” Luff grinned.

“That’s the one.” Tully looked at his officers. “Guys, this isn’t going to be a set piece battle. Watch your sensors, watch the walls, watch your backs. Don’t trust anything. Drop communication links every time you change directions. Fall back if you have to. Yell for help if you need to. This is about breaking shit and grabbing prisoners, not about heroic last stands or forlorn hopes. Everybody clear on that?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Yes.”

“Yes, Colonel.”

Tully stood. “Good. Now go prep your troops.”

****

Vaughan didn’t catch what it was that the fleet commander saw at that exact moment. He’d have to dig it out of the recordings later. But Dannet shifted to a different posture and said almost matter-of-factly, “All battleships, Fire Plan Alpha 3. All subordinate ships, seal the edges of the zone. No one escapes.”

And with those calm orders, the second phase of the battle for the system began.

Fire Plan Alpha 3 called for the battleships to all concentrate their lasers on the same ship. It took a bit of coordination, Vaughan noted. Dannet had to issue some rapid corrections to get the Arjuna to target the desired ship, but before long all the lasers from all four battleships were focused on one of the smaller Ekhat ships. Despite the attempts of the target to evade, the Jao/human laser crews kept the heavy beams from the battleships focused on the Ekhat ship as if they had been glued there. And in truth, a multi-thousand ton spaceship just doesn’t dance around like a third-grader playing dodge ball, so it wasn’t that hard.

It only took a few minutes for the heavy lasers to overload the defensive screens of the Ekhat ship, and it was rendered into an expanding cloud of navigational hazards.

A few minutes more saw the second of the lighter Ekhat vessels also destroyed.

****

Descant-at-the-Fourth staggered as the dissonance brought by the invaders resurged as the second of her ships disappeared in a flash of light. For just a moment, her voice wavered, and Second-Strong-Cadence and the other Ekhat lost their way altogether. In that moment, the harmony disappeared.

****

Kaln krinnu ava Krant stood by Krant-Captain Mallu, since the lasers were the weapons in use in this phase of the battle. She looked up suddenly, and found her eyes locked with his.

“The flow is free again,” she said. The captain nodded.

Kaln’s head twisted in an odd direction. She left the command deck without a word. Mallu let her go without comment. Her sense of flow was stronger than anyone else’s on the ship, and if she needed to be somewhere else, he trusted her.

****

Tully watched as his jinau troops, human and Jao alike, stepped into their shock frames. There was no way around the fact that the Ban Chao was going to take one monster of a hit when it rammed into its target, and the frames were designed to keep the troops from flying all around the deck when that happened. This was the first time they would be used in combat, though, and he really hoped they worked as well now as they did in the tests he’d seen.

“Hope those things work as advertised, Colonel,” First Sergeant Luff said as he stepped up beside him, faceplate to his combat suit standing open.

“You and me, both. But five-to-one Murphy shows up somewhere.”

“No takers, here, sir. My momma didn’t raise no fools.” The sergeant’s Jamaican accent got a little stronger. “But we’ll deal with that if we have to.”

“Feel free to ‘Improvise, Adapt and Overcome’ as necessary, Top,” Tully said with a grin.

“Will do, sir, will do.” He looked around. “Looks like we’d best get locked in place ourselves.”

“Yep.” Tully slapped the sergeant’s armored shoulder. “Lead the way. It’s Ekhat killing time.”

Not a few of the troops drew some comfort of the almost identical evil grins on the faces of the two men.

 

Through Fire – Snippet 14

Through Fire – Snippet 14

Lucius Keeva frowned at the boots. “I beg your pardon about those,” he said. “But I think your feet are at least a size larger than mine.” His gaze swept upwards. “The rest fits well enough.”

I realized these had to be Keeva’s clothes, and that the two men were almost exactly the same size. How had I not noticed it before? They were very different types of men. Lucius might be scarred, but the features beneath that were regular and beautiful enough. Carefully assembled, likely. As carefully as mine had been, gene by gene and protein by protein. Alexis’ had been assembled by an unkind mother nature. Living couldn’t improve on them. They weren’t exactly horrible to look at, but they were rough-carved and only the intelligent and attentive eyes beneath the heavy eyebrows relieved what would otherwise have been a brutal aspect.

Besides there was posture. Lucius Keeva had been trained to command, and he looked every inch of his six feet six or seven, or perhaps more. Alexis, on the other hand, whatever he had been, wherever he’d come from — conspirator, condemned man, servant — would have been trained to hide his size and any appearance of menace. And he managed to project being much shorter and smaller than he was. But he was massive. No wonder he’d been able to drag me. And no wonder Simon trusted him to keep me safe.

“As I was saying,” Lucius said. “I can offer hospitality to Zenobia, and you can trust me to keep her safe as your… ah… Good Man commanded. But I don’t think I can accommodate you, at least not for the night. You can have dinner with us.”

Alexis looked like he was going to protest, but Lucius interrupted, “Through that door, there is a young man waiting. An ensign. I can’t for the life of me remember his name, they change so fast.” Tiredness again. “We send them out to fight much too early. But he’ll show you to the unmarried men’s quarters. You can make sure you have a place for tonight and then you can come back here, if you choose, for dinner or to verify I haven’t killed Zenobia. But I assure you, it’s not needed.”

Alexis looked like he was going to protest. There was a mutinous look in his eyes, and he looked like he wanted to give vent to it. Perhaps he would have, but I suspected the training to obey people who acted this way and gave orders this smoothly went bone deep. He didn’t exactly bow, and he didn’t exactly make a sound of acquiescence, but there was a suggestion of both in the way he headed out the door.

And I felt, unaccountably, bereft, as though I too couldn’t trust Lucius Keeva not to do something awful to me. Which was ridiculous, of course. I could at least trust him as much as I trusted Brisbois. As Luce had said, we’d fought side by side.

I returned to where I’d been before Brisbois had interrupted us. “Suicide?”

“What do you think it is, for any of us, the ones who look obviously modified, or at least… enhanced, to go to Liberte? If they’re hunting for those who stand out? We’d stand out just for being strangers — foreign. And what do you think our chances are of doing anything in time to free Simon?”

“I was hoping for armed men.” I stepped backwards, to let myself fall onto a chair. “So, when you offered help–”

He shook his head. “I could have got you help if you were… involved with Simon. Some help. Not personally,” he said. “Certainly not personally. My face is too well known the world over. And not Nat. If you saw him fighting on broom back, or really just fighting, you’d know his enhancements are as hard to hide as ours. Hereditary, sure. I don’t think his line has seen the inside of a test tube for generations.” He paused, as though a sudden thought had intruded and chewed at the corner of his lip, as though trying to digest an unpleasant thought. “Though I wouldn’t bet on it either. But I understand they’re going after people who inherited enhancements, too. And most of my helpers, most of my circle here, is obviously enhanced. So I couldn’t ever offer you help of that kind. But… since you’re not involved with Simon, I don’t think I can even offer you that.”

I started to say that I could lie about being involved with Simon, then I thought about the implications — this would be claiming a relationship on the level of marriage. It probably meant that if we saved Simon, I’d have to stand by it. I’d been married once. I thought of Len, of what I’d had with him. Simon was a different creature. “I’d been dreading his proposal.”

“Understand,” Luce said. “I’m not trying to be unkind, but I think that to attempt to save Simon right now is nothing more than a complex way to commit suicide unless you went in with overwhelming force, and I don’t know if we can get overwhelming force.”

I bit my tongue, but I couldn’t keep it in. “We helped when you needed it. He helped with your… revolution. But now you turn your back on him.”

He let air out through his nose with a noise like a sneeze, but infused with something like repressed temper. “No. Simon helped us when it suited him. Yes, he was part of our councils and our efforts, because he’s been a friend of the Remys since they were all very young. But Simon is himself. If he’d been a true ally, an auxiliary, our group would put itself out for him, whether there was a chance of success–” He stopped. “No. Maybe not. That’s my own quixotic impulse. The Usaians always weigh their chances of success. Or at least they did when Nat was arrested — even though he’s one of their own. This is why they’ve survived so long. But I can’t even take the case to council. I don’t know how aware you are of what brought this about, but Simon was trying to manipulate things at a vulnerable moment, and he fell on his face. If someone is shot while trying to steal something, you can’t really say that others have an obligation to risk themselves to save his life.” He must have read my confusion. He shook his head. “No, I don’t propose to explain,” he said. “It would take too long and some of it I can’t tell you because I got it in confidential reports from Liberte. But let’s say that Simon was playing with fire, before he got burned.”

“Aren’t you all playing with fire, though?” I asked. “Isn’t that the definition of a revolution?”

For a moment he looked like he couldn’t believe I’d say something so incredibly stupid. Maybe it was even true. Maybe I had violated good sense. It’s impossible to know in a different world. There are different ways; different expectations. He narrowed his eyes. “Not… in the way I mean.”

“Do you mean that he failed to conform to your ideals?” I asked, as I thought I understood his hints. “But he’s not of you. He’s not an Usaian. How can you demand he conform to your ideals, before you assist him?”

I got the impression I’d upset him. “There are,” he said, “ideals of human decency of — of being human, without which we revert to the rule of the Good Men. Or worse.” He seemed about to say a lot more, but I got the impression he was holding himself back by an effort of will. “I can’t help you, in any case. I couldn’t help you even if Simon were more closely allied with our cause. The council would never permit it.” He took a deep breath. “You’re an old battle comrade. You’ve helped me and … and us… our cause, in a very tight spot. I will extend you my hospitality as long as you wish it, and will help you find more permanent accommodation.

“As for Simon, he’s become a matter for international bargaining and international maneuvering.” He held up a hand before I could speak. “It’s not that I don’t want to help, understand me. It’s that I can’t. With all the best will in the world, I can’t even plead for the council to send someone on a suicide mission to save him from the results of his own folly. He made himself head of a revolution that meant to make all men equals, knowing he could never be equal. Things were bound to leak, and things were bound to happen. He knew my identity is out in the open and that we broadcast. He helped us defeat controls on the broadcasts. Did he think the knowledge would never make it to Liberte?” He took a deep breath and seemed to draw himself into composure by an effort of will. “And now, please excuse me. I have work to do. I do not know if I’ll be able to take time to eat, but I’ll make sure you’re served dinner. You are, of course, free to go where you please, but remember the house is a military installation, and refrain from making the guards nervous.”