Eric Flint's Blog, page 251

The Seer – Snippet 06

The Seer – Snippet 06

Might have him questioned to find out what had really happened. Innel had witnessed a number of the king’s interrogations over the years and had finally come to realize what should have been obvious all along: the king didn’t torture people to get answers, but to make sure that those watching knew how willing he was to do so.

Palace life was all about who saw what, and certainly the fewer who saw him and his burden today, the better. With that thought, he took the servant’s staircase up to the next floor. A tight fit in places, so he turned sideways.

As he walked another corridor, he realized it wasn’t just his brother’s body that stank, and wondered at the wisdom of seeing the king before cleaning up.

No. Worse to delay.

Again, his mind raced over what the king might do, the legalities involved. Innel had just killed a man directly sworn to the monarch, making Innel’s actions closer to treason than mere murder. That he was similarly sworn might prove irrelevant.

Innel could end up at the northern end of the Dalgo Rift, counting the king’s distant flocks of sheep and goats, lucky to still be in possession of all his limbs.

He shuffled forward over smooth marble floors, adjusting the balance of the heavy weight on his shoulders. This time of day, the palace ought to be bustling with servants and retainers, children of Houses and tutors rushing to make appointments. He might have a nod or a smile from a guard or aide. A moment’s conversation about matters of the day. A Cohort sibling might have words for him, plans for a game of two-head later. Whispered politics. Favors offered, demanded, bargained for.

None of that now. Everyone was clearing the way before him, watching as if he were being paraded to Execution Square, another not-inconceivable consequence. With no House to back him, carrying a dead man on his shoulders whose identity anyone could make a reasonable guess about, despite — or possibly because of — his membership in the Cohort, he could think of no precedent.

He was contagious with implication, and no one would come near him until someone told them what they should think. That someone could only be the king.

Passing the eating hall by the kitchens where the Cohort had often taken informal meals with the king, he wondered if he would see the inside of it again. If he had eaten his last meal.

Once he and his brother, not much older than thirteen and fifteen, had arrived in just this spot, late for the meal, which would earn them a reprimand from the headmaster. They had needed the time to clean up. Even so, their faces were thick with purpled bruises from the beating that five of the Cohort had given them after luring them into a deserted basement hallway.

Pohut had taken Innel’s already bruised arm in a hard grip, holding him back a moment from entering the room.

“You look like a whipped dog,” he hissed.

“A good description of us both,” Innel whispered back.

Pohut pulled him closer, speaking into his ear. “Act like it and you become it.”

“Brother, we have nothing. No House, no bloodline, no patron –”

Another shake for his attention. Innel gritted his teeth at the pain, but Pohut’s charming smile somehow gentled it, melting his anger. It was a trick that had opened many doors for his older brother.

“No House means we are freer, Innel. Lighter. A fast freighter. A pointed dirk. Beholden only to the king. We do what others cannot, say what aristos dare not. We’ll win this.”

This. Meaning Cern. The reason for the Cohort.

Innel had snorted in reply. “Your eye is purple and yellow, your toe broken. I think my forearm bone is cracked. We should tell the king.”

“Say nothing.

“But –”

“Five on two. What does that tell you, about how they fear us? Think, brother. Think.”

Innel tilted his head and considered. “That they do.”

“How many of the Cohort has the king sent home, to the dishonor of their Houses, while we two remain? One of us will be consort; believe it. We will survive.”

Survive they had, and more than that. Pohut was right: they could move and act more quickly than those with somewhere to retreat to if they failed.

Innel had never asked his brother which of the two of them he believed Cern would choose. Until last year it had been enough that it would be one of them.

The next time that those five Cohort brothers had found Innel and Pohut in that same deserted cellar hall, the brothers had been ready. They had put their attackers on the ground, leaving them there with broken bones, bloodied and bruised. One had a piercing headache that did not go away. A month later he was returned to his House.

No one tried it again.

Every year someone left or fell out of the Cohort. In one case, literally: a rooftop duel led to one boy tumbling to his death on the stone courtyard three stories below. The survivor of that duel had been sent back to his House, not because of the death, but because otherwise the two Houses would be at each other’s throats, threatening to snuff lamp oil deliveries to the entire city. Home the boy went.

By Innel’s eighteenth spring, the Cohort had dwindled to eight boys and three girls. Then Innel and Pohut were separated, sent on campaign, assigned to serve various province governors, or kept close to serve in the palace.

But not together.

Innel sent Pohut letters by messenger bird, but his brother’s replies were terse, demanding, critical. They saw less and less of each other, then not at all. Until Botaros.

A child’s screaming laughter brought him back to the moment. A naked toddler had run in front of him and frozen, forcing him to a heavy stop to avoid plowing the boy over. The boy gaped up at him, then grinned widely, drooling with pleasure, as if nothing could delight him more than this large, grimy man, a dead body slung across his shoulders.

Out into the hall dashed a head-wrapped green-liveried servant who snatched the child up into her arms and stammered apologies, darting back into a doorway. The child’s howl was muffled by a slammed door.

Innel struggled forward, keeping his expression as composed as he knew how. A colorful array of servants, clerks, and aristos in their House dual-tones stepped quickly out of doorways to line the walls to watch him go. Though it was usually a loud time of day, all he heard were his own footsteps.

Meat and bread and cheese, he thought, with sudden craving. A drink of something to clear the nasty taste from his mouth. A carafe of wine to clear the unpleasantness of his thoughts.

His brother’s counsel.

A large, stocky figure stepped solidly in front of him, one foot and then the other, the high collar of the man’s pressed red and black sharp against his doughy neck, gold trim on his neckline and down his arms catching the morning light from high windows.

“By the Eyes of the All, what have you done, boy?”

Innel felt a rush of anger at having to stop suddenly again. His shoulders ached.

More were gathering against the paneled walls to watch, quietly whispering to each other.

“Lord Commander,” Innel said, choosing his next words with care. How to keep this conversation short? “I am on my way to see the king.”

At that, surely the man would move aside. Anyone with sense would. But he did not. Lason, the king’s brother, commander of the Host of Arunkel, did not much like Innel. Had not liked either of the mutts.

“What in the seven hells is that on your back?”

“The king, ser,” Innel repeated.

Lason looked him up and down with a disgusted look.

“You’ve gone far past the line this time, boy.”

Innel bit back all the words that came to him and buried his all-too familiar desire to pummel the other man into senselessness. He could probably take him now — sixty-something, gone soft and slow since the days he had taught weapons in the Cohort by hitting them full force when they didn’t get out of the way — but it would be the last thing he did. While Innel’s friends in the military might hesitate, or even feel remorse, they would cut him down if Lason ordered them to.

Restraint, he reminded himself.

More importantly, the king.

“We will see.” he said. Then with some effort he stepped to the side and around the Lord Commander, who turned in place to watch him go.

Lason spat and loudly. “You insolent, stupid, mongrel pup.”

That would garnish the best dish of the day’s news — possibly the year’s, depending on how the rest of this day went for Innel — spreading as fast as feet could dash and tongues could twirl, from west gate to east wall. A half hour at most, he would wager, for the tale to reach everyone inside the palace walls, from royals to servants, aristocrats to soldiers, bathhouse to scullery. How Innel brought a body home and the Lord Commander had spat on him and insulted him.

Innel suspected that not much work would get done today.

For a bizarre moment, he imagined dropping the body and walking out the huge front doors of the palace and leaving. He wondered how far he’d get.

Probably not even to the doors. Far too late to change his mind.

 

Son Of The Black Sword – Snippet 35

Son Of The Black Sword – Snippet 35

Once inside the restricted collection, she fully opened her lantern. There were shelves filled with books, so it looked pretty much like the rest of the place, only dustier. She was a bit surprised how small the room was. After years of not being allowed inside, she’d built it up in her head that the restricted collection would be far more impressive. Like most forbidden things she’d sampled over the years, reality was a bit of a letdown. She locked the door so her search wouldn’t be interrupted.

It was believed that books had been common long ago, but when the demons had arrived, they’d ruined most of them. During the Age of Kings they’d started binding books again, but many of those had been lost when that age had descended into evil. Most of the works from the tumultuous time between the ages were scrolls or unbound stacks of paper. It wasn’t until reason returned and the Age of Law began that proper books had as well. Now her Order even had marvelous pressing machines that allowed them to make multiple copies of a page at a time. If Rada had her way, the world would be flooded with books and everyone would know how to read — but that was just her being silly, and she knew it.

There were shelves filled with wooden boxes and piles of paper, and unlike most of the regularly accessed parts of the library, it had been quite some time since this place had been properly inventoried and organized. This could take a while.

One nice thing about the Capitol was that the air was very dry in the desert, and since this part of the library was deep underground, the temperature never fluctuated. It was the perfect environment for preserving paper. Rada put on her soft gloves. Many of these works dated back to the first centuries of the Age of Law, and some from even before that, back when mad kings reigned, or even before, when demons rained from the sky and lived on the land, so these works would be very delicate. They would need to be handled with the utmost caution. She pulled her scarf over her mouth, because even moist breath could damage an old book. Then she put on her glasses so she could actually see.

Rada began her search.

* * *

It was easy for a voracious reader to lose track of time when given access to new books. But then her lantern ran out of oil.

“Saltwater.”

Rada had been sitting on a stool, reading Melati’s Testimony of the Prior Age when she’d been plunged into total darkness.

No need to panic. She’d spent her entire life inside the library, so ending up in the dark in a windowless room wasn’t particularly remarkable for her. The worst part was that she’d been interrupted. The book was fascinating, and the casteless question was far more complicated than she’d ever imagined, certainly more complicated that the modern judges suspected, and in fact, it was astounding that so much had been forgotten about this particular topic over the centuries. She held the delicate page between her gloved finger tips so as to not lose her place.

Then Rada realized that there was no way that she could have run out of oil already. Sure, Melati’s words were difficult to decipher because their language had evolved so much, and it was hard to sort out the truths from the myths, but she’d only skimmed about a hundred pages, so she’d not been down here that long. Why had her lantern gone out?

Blind, she slowly reached toward where she’d hung the lantern on the wall with her free hand. She was hesitant, waiting for her fingers to bump hot glass, but instead they hit something soft. Cloth? It was hard to tell through the gloves, but that hadn’t been there before. Then as she lifted her hand, she touched a face.

Surprised, Rada screamed and nearly fell off the stool, but a hand clamped onto her throat and choked off the sound. The ancient book was torn from her grasp. The fingers around her neck were like iron. She was lifted off of the floor by the neck. As she thrashed about, the man didn’t seem to care as he carried her effortlessly across the room and slammed her hard against one of the shelves. Several books fell on the floor, and she inadvertently kicked the priceless artifacts as she thrashed about, but he didn’t let go of her neck. Desperate, Rada remembered her ceremonial knife and pulled it from her sash, but her assailant swatted it out of her hand with bone-jarring force, and then he squeezed her neck, just a bit more.

She couldn’t breathe.

“Quiet, Archivist, or I’ll snap your neck,” the man said. He pulled her over, so close that she could feel his hot breath on her ear. Terrified, she began to black out. “I know anatomy like you know books. You’d be amazed how little pressure it takes to snap a neck, especially a scrawny one like yours. Scream again and I’ll kill you.”

The grip relaxed just a bit, and Rada gasped for breath. “Please don’t hurt me.”

“If and how much you will be hurt is entirely dependent upon the honesty of the answers you provide.” His voice was neither old nor young, but it was frighteningly calm. “Do you understand?”

“Yes.” She couldn’t understand how someone had gotten in. There was only one door, it was locked, and she would’ve heard it open. A wizard?

“I have magic,” he said, almost as if he’d read her mind. “So if you lie, I’ll know. What have you read so far tonight?”

“Ancient history, nothing more.”

“A history of the untouchables, yes?”

“Yes.”

“The War in Heaven? The Sons of Ramrowan? The fall of the kings and their priesthood?”

“Yes,” Rada wheezed.

“Too bad. You should have listened when your father warned you not to come here…Yes, child, the walls have ears.”

The walls have ears? That was a common saying about the Inquisition. Rada hadn’t thought she could be any more afraid, but she’d been wrong. “You’re an Inquisitor?”

“I don’t know.” His voice was a menacing growl. “Are you a witch?”

“No! I was only trying to research an assignment from the judges!” Hot tears had leapt from her eyes and were streaming down her face. “Please…”

The shadow gave her throat a bit more of a squeeze, fingertips on her artery, and it was enough to make her almost pass out. “I’m familiar with your task. That’s why I’m here, to ensure the integrity of your investigation. Now it’s too late and you know things you aren’t supposed to know, which makes me wonder if you can keep a secret. Can you keep a secret, Rada?”

Rada tried to nod, but couldn’t move her chin up and down with his iron hard fist there. “I won’t tell.”

“Good answer. My inclination is to kill you, but I have friends who hold a great deal of respect for the Lord Archivist, and they wouldn’t want the embarrassment of a daughter of the first caste hanging from the Inquisitor’s Dome. So due to that respect, you will be given one chance. One. You will never speak of this. You will finish your report, but there’d better not be any mention of these old histories. There’s no need to confuse the judges with superstition or the ravings of religious fools. Use what you have been allowed, nothing more. We’ll see what you write long before the judges will, and if my friends don’t like it, I’ll come back. Do you doubt me, Radamantha?”

“No.” She flinched as he stroked her face with his other hand.

“Good job,” he said as he removed her glasses. There was a crunch as he ground them to bits in his fist. “We’ll be watching.”

He let go of her throat and Rada sank down to the floor. The room slowly filled with light. Her lantern was glowing again.

Ancient books and little bits of sparkling glass littered the floor. She was alone and her throat was bruised and aching. The book she’d been reading was missing. The door was still closed and locked.

What have I done?

 

Raising Caine – Snippet 35

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

Raising Caine – Snippet 35

Hirano nodded, opened her pack, started checking its contents. Caine popped open his own, mostly for the theater of it: always obey your own orders.

Arguably they were already wearing their most important piece of gear: multipurpose, reconfigurable duty suits. But each pack contained important enhancements for it: a light raingear attachment, as well as a half parka with a reflective liner. There was a pony tank (he’d have preferred the Commonwealth tank/rebreather combo), as well as a short duration EVA/SCUBA shell that integrated with the exterior of the duty suit. The comestibles satchel contained four days of fifteen-hundred-kilocalorie rations and supplements, three liters of water, and a dubiously diminutive solar still that doubled as a mess kit. The signaling kit included a flasher, a flare, transponder, dye, glow sticks, and various fire-starting options. The medkit was a densely-stuffed cornucopia that, once opened, could not be repacked by mere mortals.

Consigned to the bottom of the pack were both its most and least useful components. The most useful was the lightweight but very robust multitool: knife, wire cutter, saw, screwdriver, vise; you name it. The least useful was its larger cousin, the so-called combo pioneer tool. Ostensibly combining the features of a mountaineer’s pick, hammer, a sleeve-over hatchet head, attachable shovel blade, and handle extender, it managed to succeed at none of its designated roles, but instead, failed spectacularly at all of them. Furthermore, despite its much bally-hooed nano-bonded composite carbon-fiber construction, it had the strength and durability of an origami butterfly.

Caine’s pack did not contain a firearm, but that was no surprise: only the Commonwealth and Federation packs included one in every kit. One in three of the TOCIO kits versions provided a break-down rifle which was designed so that both the barrel and receiver fit inside its hollow stock. Included in lieu of the combo pioneer tool, the weapon was chambered for the venerable — not to say decrepit or feeble — nine millimeter parabellum cartridge. A wonderful round in its day, but that “day” had begun in the early twentieth century and had ended by the middle of the next. But evidently, all that overstocked ammunition still had to be used somewhere, and each TOCIO survival rifle provided one such venue of terminal consumption, at a rate of forty rounds per weapon.

All in all, the survival pack contained about fifteen kilograms of gear and four more of garments and footwear, all of it so lightweight and flimsy that it was a wonder any of it held together long enough to be useful. Assuming that it did.

Everyone reported that their kits were complete. Four of the ten had the nine millimeter break-down rifles. So, slightly better than average. Caine glanced in the direction of the wreck. The last wisps of steam had disappeared.

He rose. “Okay, everyone, we’re heading back to the shuttle. Not because we’re expecting a rescue to team to find us there,” Caine added, seeing the hopeful look in Eid’s eyes, “but to see if it’s safe to salvage more gear. After that, we’ll set a watch and survey our surroundings.”

“Surveying the unknown always entails risk.” They were the first words Gaspard had uttered since the crash.

“That’s true, Ambassador, but total ignorance is an even greater risk. The only thing Yiithrii’ah’aash told us about Disparity is that our filter masks are the only environmental protection we need. We don’t know the length of day, the mean temperatures at this latitude and in this season, or what kind of wildlife we might encounter. However, since we needed markers for this world, it’s a safe bet that some of the wildlife might be unfriendly.

“So, first rule: when we travel, we travel in a secure formation. And everyone is going to take a turn walking point. With two exceptions: Mr. Gaspard and Dr. Hwang.”

Hwang was already glaring at Caine when Gaspard looked up slowly. “It is not right that I do not share in the risk, Captain.”

Damn it, I could come to like you. “Mr. Gaspard, you are ambassador plenipotentiary to the Slaasriithi. You are the package that must be delivered to them, and then back home, safely. That is my primary mission. I will not jeopardize it by putting you on guard duty. And Ben, before you torque up, let me ask you a question: how’s your gut feel?”

Ben’s glare faltered. “It’s — I’m fine.”

“Ben, you are a noble liar. But a liar just the same. You took that landing hard. Judging from the way you’re moving, you may have sustained some internal injuries from rapid deceleration. Or are you saying that’s impossible?”

“I — I cannot tell. But –”

“No buts, Ben. Lieutenant Xue, given your EMT and physician’s assistant certification, you are now the party medic. You will stay by Dr. Hwang’s side for the next twenty-four hours. Should our stoic Nobel laureate experience trauma symptoms that he tries to hide from us, you are to report them to me immediately. Mr. Gaspard, you will remain with them as well, and the three of you will travel at the center of our formation.

“In layman’s terms, we will be traveling in a delta formation. The three persons tasked to keep watch will be armed and occupy the points of a moving triangle. The foot of the triangle will actually be out to our front. Our rearguard occupies the single point behind us. The fourth rifle will be carried by one of the persons at the center of the group. Now, who wants to stand the first patrol?”

Keith pointedly did not take this as a cue to step forward. Good: if you’re too eager to help me, that would blow your cover. “Okay; no volunteers, then. First security detail will be Ms. Salunke on right point, Mr. Macmillan on left point, and Ms. Veriden on rearguard.” Riordan saw Dora roll her eyes. “You have a comment, Ms. Veriden?”

“No. Just wondering if you feel safe with me at the back of the formation.”

Caine frowned. “Elaborate, please.”

“C’mon, when do we talk about the elephant that’s not just in the center of the room, but bursting its walls? We heard the gunshots in the rear section; we see the people who are missing. But no one knows what happened back there; no one saw. Raskolnikov sealed the after-compartments the moment the firing started, kept it locked down until Rulaine called to tell him you were about to come aboard.”

Caine folded his arms. “There were three bodies just inside the aft hatchway: Mizrahi, Dieter, and Danysh. The arrangement of their bodies makes it forensically possible that the murderer was killed by one of his victims. It is also likely that the murderer was the same person who sabotaged the Slaasriithi shift cruiser. During our evacuation, Yiithrii’ah’aash informed me that Oleg Danysh caused the power loss that exposed us to what was obviously a carefully staged ambush.”

“It’s possible that Danysh and the other two killed each other, but it’s not likely,” Veriden insisted, staring hard at Caine.

“No, it’s not,” Riordan agreed, motioning her toward the rear of the gathering group. “But right now, Ms. Veriden, whatever happened on the Slaasriithi ship is not of primary importance. Figuring out how to survive on this world is. Part of that process means traveling safety. So get to your position in the formation. We are moving out.”

* * *

High in the neoaerie of Disparity’s Third Silver Tower, Senior Ratiocinator Mriif’vaal considered the speakers of both the cerdor and convector taxae who had come to deliver their reports in person. Their pheromones were an olfactory cacophony of uncertainty, anxiety, dismay. “The first alert of the alien craft came from the spore-shields, correct?”

“That is correct, Mriif’vaal,” asserted the cerdor, whose individual specialty was in overseeing the data interfaces and transfers between biota and mechanisms. “But the alien craft was not marked as an intruder.”

“Truly? Why not?”

“That is unclear, Mriif’vaal. The high-air spores are too simple to discern anything other than whether an object has been marked with Recognition, or not.”

“Yes, but you only said it was not marked as an intruder. Did it therefore carry the mark of Recognition, or did it somehow pass through the spore-shield without triggering either categorization?”

“I — I do not know, Mriif’vaal. The spore-shield did not dust a Recognition confirmation upon the regional ground biota, but nor did it signal an absence of Recognition marking. I suppose,” the cerdor mused, “that it must have detected a Recognition but did not transmit it.”

“That would be a dangerously uncertain supposition,” Mriif’vaal said mildly. “Besides, there is no precedent for such a mixed result. But let us turn to the reports of the convectorae. What did your foragers encounter, Unsymaajh? Did they observe the descent of the craft?”

The unusually large convector’s neck contracted slightly. “No, Mriif’vaal. They only detected the breaking of the sound barrier as it descended.”

“Did any of them send Affined sloohavs to fly in search of the place it where it came to ground and to sample the spore-change in that locale?”

“There were no sloohavs on hand to summon to that task.”

The cerdor’s eager interjection sounded like an extended chirp. “Would it not be prudent to send a rotoflyer to explore the alien’s projected region of terminal descent?”

Mriif’vaal raised a temporizing tendril. “That is an excellent idea, which we will hold in reserve.” The Senior Ratiocinator smiled within: and which you are eager to enact, given your taxon’s love of complicated machines. “But for now, we shall pursue subtler means of detection and, if deemed prudent, contact. We do not know these aliens’ capabilities or their intents. Any machines we might deploy, particularly aircraft, will be easily discerned. They are particularly susceptible to detection by orbital sensors.”

Alongside Mriif’vaal, his designated respondent and Third Ratiocinator, Hsaefyrr, stirred from her meditative absorption — and thus, recording — of the discourse. “The defense spheres are no longer actively engaged. Is it likely that hostile or unpermitted objects remain in orbit?”

Mriif’vaal’s tendrils switched once. “The absence of detectable orbital objects only means that nothing anomalous remains within the range of our sensor-cloud or the action range of the defense spheres. This descended craft might have a homing beacon. Its crew could thus establish lascom lock with extraorbital allies and transmit information. Or perhaps the forces which attacked Yiithrii’ah’aash’s ship may have seeded the space above us with sensors as undetectable as our own. So, while the current circumstances might signify that we may act without fear of report, they do not guarantee it. We may simply be unable to detect all the elements that might bring us under observation.”

Hsaefyrr swiveled her head toward the bantam cerdor. “Did you detect any radio emissions from the craft?”

“We were uninformed of its initial descent, and so were not attentive to any signaling at that time. Since it made planetfall, we have detected a few transmissions, but all are low power and very short range.”

Mriif’vaal released a few Appreciation pheromones in elderly Hsaefyrr’s direction. “Cerdor, tell me: are any of these signals known to us, either in their cyphers or physical characteristics?”

The cerdor emitted a rattle of chagrin. “I regret to say that I have little expertise in such matters. However, I may assure you that the signals are not ours, nor the Arat Kur’s, nor the Hkh’ Rkh’s.”

Mriif’vaal mused a moment. “So it may be that this ship carried the visitors that Yiithrii’ah’aash informed us he was bringing planetside tomorrow. About whose species I have some conjectures. But it is just as likely that this ship was part of the force that attacked them, and whose origins are equally unclear.”

The cerdor’s hip joints flexed anxiously. “Then what shall we do?”

“We shall send three overseers to manage this matter as it unfolds: one cerdor, one convector, and one ratiocinator. The two of you shall fulfill those roles I have thusly designated for your respective taxae. I shall find a suitable mid-life ratiocinator within the hour. You shall approach, observe, and report upon the aliens, aided by biota only. You shall make direct contact with me if the ratiocinator and at least one of you two deem it wise. You may employ whatever subtaxae you require to locate and keep track of these arrivals to our planet. In the meantime, our rotoflyers and other relevant mechanisms shall remain ready and pre-loaded with defense automata. Lastly, we will see to the distribution of spores that alert all our taxae to evacuate the area that lies along the projected route of the aliens’ advance.” Mriif’vaal stared at the luminous holograph which floated before them, offering an unusually precise view of the region in which the alien craft was thought to have descended. “Do you have any sense of their progress, yet?”

“No, but it seems likely they will follow the river downstream,” answered Unsymaajh.

Mriif’vaal bobbed agreeably. “Which will make them easy to find and follow.”

Hsaefyrr’s observation was typically sour. “Which, in turn, will make them easy to kill for any pursuers that might hunt them”

“Yes,” Mriif’vaal agreed sadly. “This is also true.”

 

The Seer – Snippet 05

The Seer – Snippet 05

It didn’t matter how many sewer pipes were installed down-city if the Houses on the hill consumed every drop for their baths and flower gardens. The palace was no better, with glassed-in gardens and soaking tubs.

The stench did not distinguish between common and noble noses; everyone gagged on entrance. Wealthy merchants, foreign dignitaries. The Houses and the king should have been embarrassed, but they simply ignored it. As soon as he and his brother gained some measure of authority, they would do something about it.

His brother.

He could still reverse direction, find a country far away, his actions this last ten-day left unknown.

Along with everything else he had labored to accomplish. A ragged mutt with nothing. Common in the truest sense.

No. He was not ready to give up.

Around him, tradesmen and clerks were rushing out into the dim light of the streets to start their day, stumbling out of his way, then staring. He had thought to attract less attention by seeming to be a trader going up-city to deliver a rolled tapestry, his soldier’s uniform hidden under loose clothing and cloak, but it was now obvious to him that a body didn’t hang over a horse’s shoulders the way a tapestry would. A lesson that, oddly, none of his tutors had provided.

In doorways, rags moved, becoming scrawny children who scrambled to their feet and called out to him, promising everything from the impossible to the unlikely. One small boy pulled off his shirt, shivering in the morning chill, rubbing his tiny chest, describing in detail what he was offering. All, he assured in his high-pitched child’s voice, for only three nals. Less, the boy cried out, as Innel passed him by.

A girl stood on the street reciting the names of tinctures at prices far too inexpensive to be sanctioned. There was something not quite right about her expression and distant stare that put him in mind of his sister, Cahlen. Would his sister and mother survive this day, if he did not? It seemed to Innel that he should care, one way or the other, but he was not sure he did.

The king’s laws were supposed to prevent children from shielding blackmarket outlaws by setting the same penalties for the young as for those who hired them, yet it was still children calling from doorways, filling the prisons, and being sold to slavers when it was clear that no one was coming to pay their fine.

There was an upside, of sorts, he supposed; Innel had studied the empire’s books and knew how much of the crown’s income could be attributed to the sale of those barely old enough to count on their fingers let alone make binding contracts. The king’s accountants were fond of joking that children were one of Yarpin’s most lucrative exports.

Except that it was true. Those backing these urchins could afford to bribe whomever they needed to. The city was soaked in such dealings, from the slums to the Great Houses. So many palms to which coin could stick.

And that was where the money went, on its way to clean the city, or to repair streets and water pipes. Another thing he and his brother would remedy when they —

Again he looked at the body in front of him.

A crow flew across the horse’s path, squawking loudly, and Innel tensed, momentarily gripping the reins. The mare stopped, and he pressed her forward again.

The scent of baking bread caught his attention, making him realize how hungry he was. Absurdly he imagined stopping for rolls and herbed butter while the challenge before him simply waited until he felt like it.

Maybe someone would steal the body from his horse while he lingered, enjoying the bustle of the morning around him.

But it was just imagination, and he did not stop.

As his horse climbed the steep hill, the foul air cleared, replaced by briny ocean breezes. The Lesser Houses rose high and wide on either side of the street. Finch and Chandler, Glass and Bell, their familial sigils worked into patterns of trim, mosaic, groundstone, the dual-color flags of their patron houses flying high and bright in the rising sun.

In this prestigious neighborhood, House patrols kept beggars and other lurkers away. One patrol watched now, not recognizing Innel as one of the Cohort. The man looked him over; the fine black horse, anonymous cloak, body across the saddle. He appeared to weigh the evidence, then nodded a little and turned away.

From the palace, deep bells chimed the hour of dawn. Perhaps he should have arrived at midnight instead of at the start of the day, which he now realized would mean far more eyes on him.

No, there was no good time to arrive with this package.

At the summit, the street opened into a huge square at the center of which was a sizable fountain. Water poured from the mouths of a hundred carved marble flowers into the open beaks of a hundred carved birds standing on rocks in the pool below.

An apt model of the convoluted House Charters, he had always thought, the many streams of water — some parallel in effort, some at cross-purposes — that assigned contracts and Lesser Houses to the Great Houses. Few could make sense of all the relationships involved, even among the Cohort, even though most of them hailed from the Houses. He and his brother, though, they —

He veered from the thought.

The side streets were lavish with rows of trees and gardens fronting the gated compounds of the Eight Great Houses, each painted and jeweled in its two-tone colors, the roof lines sparking brilliant in the sun’s first rays.

And then the palace walls, beyond which was the Jewel of the Empire, dwarfing even the Great Houses with its size, stonework, and high towers, pink and alabaster stones sun-touched and glinting. The Cohort had sometimes been tutored in those towers, using the view of the ocean and surrounding forests to discuss the crown’s history and economics, but most tower rooms were reserved as lodging for inconvenient royals, like the king’s mother, whom no one ever saw. Housing for those the king didn’t want to see but whose missteps weren’t egregious enough for execution.

Not the worst outcome, he supposed.

No, he thought. He wasn’t important enough. A mutt did not rot in the towers.

At the gate, his mare strained forward toward the promise of food, trotting to the front of the long line waiting for entrance, staring at him intently, as were the guards and bowmen two levels overhead on the parapet wall. He was recognized and waved through. One guard nodded sharply at another, who took off at speed.

Well, at least his welcome would not be overly delayed.

At the stables he dismounted. Stablehands took the reins, reached for the body.

“No,” he said sharply. “Leave it.”

With stiff fingers from the long ride and cold morning, untying the knots took frustratingly longer, but he would accept no help. He pulled the long bundle off the horse and onto his own shoulders, holding the legs and arms of the now-rigid body out to either side.

His mare was led away. Tired and hungry, but no worse for the journey.

Unlike his brother.

He met the widening eyes of stablehands. That he and his brother had left within hours of each other, very much without permission, was no secret from them. In their looks he saw them draw conclusions, step back.

Afraid. Of him. Of what he carried. Of what it meant.

A young woman rushed to the doors ahead of him. At a glance he took in the balance of her loyalty to the crown versus her allegiance to her House; dressed in the monarchy’s red and black, only the yellow trim on her boots and cuffs marked her as a child of House Elupene. She yanked open both doors, dropped back and away.

Belatedly it occurred to him that it would have been prudent to have taken off his cloak to reveal his own red and black. To do so now would mean putting his brother down. He would not.

As he walked the path from stables to the palace’s back entrance, he passed faces he knew. A green-and-cream-liveried servant. A pair of red-uniformed soldiers. A cook. A triad of scribes. All backed away, gazes flickering from his face to what he carried.

Srel, out of breath, dashed to his side.

“Ser, what. Ah –”

The smaller man fell suddenly quiet, his gaze solidly on Innel’s burden.

Innel and his brother had rescued Srel from the streets many years ago, when he’d been a scrawny, starving teen, and Srel had given them his stubborn loyalty since.

“What –” Srel began again.

“Talk later,” Innel managed. He wondered if Srel’s loyalty would survive the day.

Irrelevant, though, if he himself did not.

The door of the palace side entrance opened inward. He climbed the steps. Scullery and laundry servants stared, gape-mouthed, hastily retreating back into doorways to make room.

Innel considered the various routes through the many-floored structure that would get him to the royal wing where the king might see him.

Or might not. Might have him arrested and thrown in the dungeon to await judgment. Might have him tossed into commoners’ jail down-city.

 

A Call To Arms – Snippet 35

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

A Call To Arms – Snippet 35

Well, seventeen, technically, if you added in the group guarding Gryphon. But they were way the hell over at Manticore-B. If the Volsungs did their job properly, that force could be left out of the equation. Llyn’s spies hadn’t been able to get a complete reading on the ship types in each of the two Manticore-A groups, but the earlier report had said the larger force had a single battlecruiser, and there was nothing in this latest intel to suggest that number had changed. The additional ships in the new intel had to be small: destroyers or corvettes.

Plus the fact that all the enthusiasm in the galaxy could mount impeller rings and graduate crewmen only so quickly. Even if Llyn’s current count was off by a ship or two, the Volsungs should be facing no more than the same number of ships they themselves were bringing to the battle.

Still…

Gensonne murmured a ruminative curse. The wild card in this whole thing, and a wild card that Llyn either hadn’t noticed or had deliberately downplayed, was this damn HMS Casey. The tables listed it as a standard light cruiser, but it was clear from the specs Llyn’s spies had been able to dig out that there wasn’t anything standard about it, certainly not for ships out here in the hinterlands. From the profile alone, he could see that the Manticorans had put in a modern grav plate habitation module, a high-efficiency radiator system, and had extended the length of their missile launchers. Possibly a railgun launch system; more likely just an absorption cylinder that would minimize the missiles’ launch flares. Nothing really revolutionary, and nothing Gensonne couldn’t handle.

Still, it was far more advanced than it should be, and better than most of the Volsungs’ own second-hand and surplused ships. The report didn’t get into details about armament or defenses, but Gensonne had no doubt that Casey’s designers hadn’t neglected to pack some serious firepower aboard.

And if King Edward had had the authority, the confidence, and the cash to turn his designers loose on Casey, he might well have used that same combination to speed up the de-mothballing of those other ships.

The smart thing would be to put off the operation until Gensonne had time to send his own people to Manticore. Get a real military assessment instead of having to rely on Llyn’s paper-pushing guesswork.

But all he had here were military ships, which would raise way more eyebrows than he wanted. The only civilian spy ships he had available were way the hell back in Silesia. Getting word back there, and then getting one of them to fly to Manticore and to report to him here would take over a year.

Gensonne had no interest in putting off the operation that long. Llyn was even more adamant about the timing.

The only other option was to use Llyn’s courier ship. But couriers were generally diplomatic vessels, and one in private hands would raise nearly as many eyebrows as one of Gensonne’s military ships.

Besides, if he couldn’t trust Llyn’s spies to give him accurate data, he sure as hell couldn’t trust Llyn himself with the job.

Gensonne scowled. The ongoing mystery underlying this whole thing was what in blazes the Manticorans could possibly have that was worth this much effort. Llyn was paying the Volsungs a huge sum of money to take over three lumps of real estate on the bloody back end of nowhere. Gensonne had tried on numerous occasions to wangle that secret out of the smug little man, and every time Llyn had calmly and artfully dodged the question.

But that was all right. The Volsung Mercenaries weren’t without resources of their own…and if Gensonne still didn’t know the why, he now at least knew the who.

Llyn’s employer, the shadowy figure quietly funding this whole operation, was one of the top people in the multi-trillion, transstellar business juggernaut known as the Axelrod Corporation.

So the question now became why Axelrod would be interested in Manticore. Was it the treecats? Something else hidden in the forests of Sphinx or the wastes of Gryphon?

“Admiral?” Imbar’s voice came from the com speaker.

“Yes?”

“Captain Blakely’s compliments, Sir,” Imbar said. “He confirms hauling carcass as ordered, and anticipates fourteen hours to zero-zero.”

Gensonne checked his chrono. “Tell him that if he doesn’t make it in twelve he might as well not bother,” he warned.

“He anticipated that request,” Imbar said, his voice going a little brittle. “He said to tell you that fourteen should do just fine if you can get the loaders to haul carcass at even half the speed he’s doing it. If you can’t, he’ll just have to do it himself.” The Captain gave a little snort. “He added a Sir to that, but I don’t think he really meant it.”

Gensonne smiled. Blakely was as arrogant and snarky an SOB as they came. But he was also a hell of a scrappy fighter, and Gensonne was willing to put up with the one if he could have the other. “Tell him he’ll be losing one percent of his profit cut for every ten minutes after twelve hours he ties up.”

“Yes, Sir, that should do it,” Imbar said slyly. “I’ll let him know.”

“Do that,” Gensonne said, his attention already back on the upcoming campaign.

Standard military doctrine, of course, said that you went after the biggest ships first, taking them out as soon as you could clear away their screening vessels. But in this case, it might well be smart to seek out Casey earlier rather than later and make sure she was out of the fight. If she was the Manticorans’ modern showcase, her destruction might help convince them to sue for terms more promptly.

Which could be useful. The accepted laws of war dictated that a planet was supposed to surrender once someone else controlled the space around it, a convention designed to avoid the wholesale slaughter of civilians in prolonged combat. Taking out Casey would give the Volsungs that control all the faster, and once Gensonne had King Edward’s formal surrender document any forces that remained at large would be legally bound to stand down.

Gensonne liked quick surrenders. It saved on men and equipment, and it boosted profits. Especially since any Royal Manticoran ships that survived would become the property of the victors. That would definitely be a part of the surrender agreement, and even old ships could be profitably integrated into his existing forces. If eliminating Casey quickly helped bring that about, so much the better.

And if Casey wasn’t, in fact, anything special?

He shrugged. It was most probable the ship would have to be destroyed in the initial attack, anyway. It would have been nice to get his hands on the Manticorans’ one really modern vessel, but a man couldn’t have everything.

“Admiral, I have a response from Captain Blakely,” Imbar once again interrupted. “He sends his compliments, and says he’ll see you in hell.”

Gensonne smiled. “Tell him it’s a date,” he said. “I’ll be the one wearing white.”

* * *

“Commander Donnelly?” Chief Lydia Ulvestad called from the com station. “Signal from Ensign Plover. He and the others have left Aries and are heading back.”

“Thank you, Chief,” Lisa said, feeling yet another twinge of annoyance over this whole thing. Granted, she and the rest of Damocles’s crew had little enough to do these days. But there was still something fundamentally insulting about the RMN having to send ratings to one of their own former ships simply because the MPARS weenies couldn’t figure out how to make their new missiles work.

Especially when Breakwater had already siphoned off some of the Navy’s own people to assist them. They were the ones who were supposed to be doing this grunt work, not Damocles’s people.

“Did Plover say whether or not they got the missiles working?” she asked.

“Sounds like it, Ma’am,” Ulvestad said. “From what I heard, it sounded like an electronics problem, and Mallare and Redko are good at fixing those.” She hesitated. “I don’t know if you knew, Ma’am, but Missile Tech Townsend is aboard Aries.”

“Yes, I knew that,” Lisa said, feeling her throat tighten. Travis had mentioned that over a hurried lunch a couple of weeks ago, during one of the rare times the two of them were in Landing at the same time. He’d seemed to think that he might have had something to do with Townsend’s transfer, though he hadn’t gone into details.

But except for that brief cloud, the rest of the time they’d spent together had been good. Actually, it had been more than just good. The people who remembered Travis as “Rule-stickler Long,” and those who used the strange travesty catchword that he’d somehow been saddled with — they all missed the point. Yes, Travis was rigid when it came to rules and procedures aboard his ship; but when he was off-duty, and if he could be persuaded to relax, he was surprisingly pleasant company. He was smart, quick with a quip, considerate, and attentive.

In fact, what had begun as a dog-sitting favor and grown into a friendship was slowly blossoming into —

Lisa shook the thought away. She didn’t know where her relationship with Travis was going, and wasn’t at all sure she wanted to. She’d tried the romance thing once before, and had gotten herself thoroughly paint-stripped for her efforts. She wasn’t in any hurry to rush into that thorn bush again.

Though with Travis it would probably be different. There’d been warning signs with Rolfe, red flags which she’d ignored in the rose-colored haze, but which were painfully obvious in the cold light of day. There were no such flags with Travis.

Of course, that might only mean that there were different signs there which she was also deliberately avoiding. No one was perfect, after all, and Travis probably had a dozen habits or quirks that would make him hard to live with.

Still, she did enjoy his company.

“Signal from Aries, Ma’am,” Ulvestad said into her thoughts. “Captain Hardasty’s compliments, and her thanks for lending us Mallare and Redko.”

At least Hardasty was being polite about it. “My compliments in return,” Lisa said. “Did she give any indication that the problem has been fixed?”

“Nothing directly,” Ulvestad said. “But Plover did mention he’d heard both Aries and Taurus would be staying in Manticore orbit for a while to run some tests.”

Lisa nodded. A sensible decision — it would be foolish for the two corvettes to head directly to their new Unicorn Belt postings until they were sure their missile systems were up and running. Manticore-B might be MPARS’s stronghold, but most of the real weapons expertise still resided here at Manticore.

Unless Hardasty wanted to head in from the Belt later to Gryphon and ask Admiral Jacobson for help. Given that Aries had been pulled out of Jacobson’s Red Force before being handed over to MPARS, Lisa doubted that such help would be cheerfully given.

“Well, do remind her that we’re scheduled to leave in three hours to rendezvous with the rest of Aegis,” she said. “If she needs assistance after that, she’ll have to get it elsewhere.”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

Lisa checked her chrono. Captain Marcello would be arriving for his watch in about half an hour. Lisa would want to make sure the shuttle was properly squared away and that Damocles was ready for her departure to join the rest of Admiral Locatelli’s force.

And then it would be a trip to the officers’ mess for a quick dinner. Alone, probably. Certainly not with anyone who understood her and could make her laugh.

It really was amazing, she decided, how much she missed Travis.

* * *

“Well?” Gensonne asked drumming his fingers impatiently.

“We’re ready, Sir,” Imbar said. He listened a moment longer, then keyed off the com. “All ships are in position; all synch timers are zeroed. We await your order, Admiral.”

Gensonne nodded. Which was as it should be. All ships, all crewmen, all awaiting his order.

All ships, of course, except for Llyn’s courier. Gensonne had invited him to come along and watch the show, but he’d made his excuses and taken off, no doubt to report to his Axelrod masters. Perish forbid that someone from such a genteel, dress-suited establishment should soil his hands with something as disagreeable as actual combat.

But that was fine. Gensonne could have found something useful for Llyn and his ship to do, but he hardly needed them. All he needed was Llyn’s money, and he had the first portion of that safely in hand.

He would also make sure he had all the rest before he and his ships left Manticore. Maybe he would make a little ritual of handing over the keys to King Edward’s palace in exchange for the last set of bank chits. That would probably appeal to the little man’s sense of humor.

In the meantime, the Volsung Mercenaries had a job to do.

“Signal all ships,” he ordered Imbar. “Translate on my mark.”

And they would carry out that job with skill and precision, he promised himself. The skill and precision that Gustav Anderman had always prized, and which the old lunatic had claimed Gensonne didn’t have.

Well, the Volsungs would show him. They would show everyone.

And when this was all over, maybe Gensonne would take the new ships and crews he could buy with the money Llyn was paying and go back to Potsdam. And he would show his former chief just how skillful and precise an attack could be.

It was something worth thinking about.

In the meantime…

“Ready all ships,” he called. “Ready: mark.”

 

Son Of The Black Sword – Snippet 34

Son Of The Black Sword – Snippet 34

Rada appreciated his concern, but it was her nature to continue pushing. “That’s the problem. The newer records are incomplete.”

“Incomplete?” Those were fighting words to the Lord Archivist. “Impossible.”

“Some of the items on the catalog are missing.”

“More than likely they’re just shelved in the wrong place.”

That was insulting. That had to be the sort of thing that the warrior caste got into duels over. “Nothing in my section is ever shelved in the wrong place. I’ve checked and rechecked. They’re gone. Minutes of debates, prior studies on this topic, disappeared. And I’m afraid a few books…” she leaned forward conspiratorially, “have been defaced.”

“Saltwater!” It was rare to hear profanity out of her father, but books were her family’s life. “What kind of vile scum would harm a book?”

“Several pages were torn out of each one. I can’t say when this happened. It’s been decades since these were last inventoried, but each time the pages that were taken were related to the same topic. The only reason I found them at all was because of this assignment.”

Her father was obviously concerned. Damaging library books was a serious crime, punishable by death. “And what is this research topic of yours?”

“I’m to find if there are any potential legal ramifications for eradicating all the casteless non-people.”

It was odd. Unlike most in their Order, her father was of such high status that he actually had windows, so he had the darkest skin of any librarian Rada knew. During the summer he could almost pass for a worker. She’d never seen him turn pale before. Father looked as if he was going to be ill, and for a moment, the hands on his desk were actually being used to steady himself rather than for show.

“Are you all right?”

“I’m fine, Rada,” he lied. He was clearly not. “I didn’t know you were working on that project. I thought that was assigned to Senior Archivist Gurman?”

“Gurman’s an imbecile. He’s a political obligation because his family donated enough money to add a wing to the library. I’m not entirely convinced he’s even literate. I traded assignments with him. He’s lazy, so it was easy to convince him to swap.”

Her father took several deep breaths to compose himself. “You shouldn’t have done that.”

“I thought you’d be proud. While Gurman’s section is researching legislation pertaining to irrigation and soil erosion for some minor house court, my section is helping the presiding judge. It’s obvious which one is the more important job.”

“And on some subjects, doing a thorough job results in punishment rather than a reward,” he muttered. Agitated, he drummed his fingers against a desk. “This isn’t good, Rada, not good at all. There are plenty of scribes working on this issue. It will be enough without delving into ancient history. For your report just use what you already have. Pay no mind to the rest. It is of no concern.”

“I can’t –”

“No concern!” he shouted.

Rada flinched. Her father hadn’t raised his voice to her since she’d been a child. “Why are you yelling at me?”

“I’m sorry. Just…Finish your report. I’ll take care of noting the damage on the inventory. Stay away from the restricted collection. If the committee cares so much, they can ask the Historians.”

“But my report would be incomplete. There seems to be something dating back to the founding of the Law concerning the casteless that’s missing. As it stands, the Law mandates their continued existence, but why it requires this is confusing. I’m supposed to provide a historical context. I can’t turn in a flawed report to the judges. It’ll bring dishonor to the library.”

“That’s on my head, not yours. I’ll sign off on it.”

“That would be dishonest!” Leaving out information was the same as lying. She’d learned to be a scholar from her father, and academic honesty always trumped all other concerns, so this was a very troubling conversation. “Do you know what was on those missing pages?”

“Of course not. It was probably vandalism, nothing more…”

“It seems too much of a coincidence for it not to be sabotage.”

“You know what? On second thought, forget the report. You’re done.” Her father was extremely agitated. Normally he was a very calm and rational man. “This was Gurman’s assignment, not yours, and you were wrong to take it. I’m giving it back to him.”

“Father!”

“That’s final. Go do your report on watering plants or whatever it is. I’ll hear no further argument.”

“Fine!” She stood up and stormed away, planning on giving his office door a good slamming. And then she noticed something on the wall…

“Come back here!” Her father turned to his writing desk, and rummaged about for supplies, until he found a scrap of paper. Using a fine glass pen he scribbled a quick note. Rada became nervous. She’d never been officially reprimanded before. Her record was spotless. He passed it over but she couldn’t even read it without her glasses. “Give this reprimand to Gurman for shirking his duty, and count yourself lucky that you’re not getting one yourself. If everyone in the government did whatever they felt like instead of what they were told, the Capitol would descend into madness.”

“I’m sorry, Father.”

The Lord Archivist got up and went around his desk to her, trying to act like he wasn’t upset, but she’d never seen him so flushed and nervous before. “Now back to work, silly girl. I’ll tell your mother to expect you for dinner.”

She accepted his awkward hug, then hurried out of the office, hoping that he wouldn’t notice she’d stolen a spare ring of keys from its peg on the wall.

* * *

Rada missed family dinner that evening because she was too busy sneaking into the library’s restricted collection.

She’d thought about putting the keys back and doing as her father had instructed, but she was curious to see what all the fuss was about. All her life her father had lectured about the importance of their order putting integrity above all other concerns. Archivists took no side. The Capitol depended on their honesty and thoroughness. Good law couldn’t be built upon a foundation of bad information. So what was it about this casteless problem that could cause her father to ignore such a fundamental philosophy?

Rada working late wasn’t remarkable to anyone, especially as she often lost track of time, fell asleep between the stacks, and was found there in the morning. So she’d waited until all of the other librarians and archivists had left for the evening before going down to the lowest level. Just in case anyone else was working, she kept her lantern hood down so that it would only illuminate the steps right in front of her. As a Senior Archivist, she could go almost anywhere she wanted in the library, but it was better to avoid questions.

Hardly anyone ever descended into this section. This was part of the original building that had been added onto for hundreds of years. It was solid, but ugly, and lacked any of the fancy ornamentation now common to government buildings. She’d been told that they had once stored statues from the prior ages down here, but the Inquisition had taken them all away back when her grandfather had been nothing but a junior archivist. The only statue that was left had been too heavy to move easily, so the Inquisitors had smashed it with hammers until it was unrecognizable. But if Rada squinted just right, she could imagine the shape of the smiling fat man grandfather had spoken of.

There was a desk for a watchman, but there was no one posted there at night. The warrior caste had obligated a single old cripple to the library to serve as a guard during the day, but on the rare occasions that Rada had walked through this section, he’d been taking a nap. She put her glasses on long enough to read the visitor log at the guard post. No wonder the old soldier with one arm was usually asleep. It had been months since the last librarian had been let into the restricted section, and five years since the last outsider had signed in. Lord Protector Ratul…Never heard of him.

Rada paused at the entrance. Going past this point meant she would be breaking a rule. She didn’t think of herself as a rule breaker. If she was caught nosing around in here, she might even be questioned by the Inquisition, and frankly, those masked bullies terrified her. Rada almost turned back before she decided that she was being stupid. Nobody would know, and damn it, she was curious. She had to try a half a dozen keys from the ring before finding the one that opened the heavy lock.

 

Come The Revolution – Snippet 11

Come The Revolution – Snippet 11

Chapter Seven

“Shit!” e-Bomaan shouted the English expletive in surprise and anger, which just goes to show he wasn’t as much of a traditionalist as Gaant. None of the other five races could swear like Humans, but Varoki weren’t above borrowing on occasion. This time I was inclined to agree with the sentiment. I started to reach instinctively for the gauss pistol under my jacket but stopped, because there wasn’t one there today.

This must have been the surprise Gaant bragged about earlier. For all these people to make it back to the conference room, they had to have gotten past the entrance security and then through the whole office complex. Since there was no sign of violence, and none of the crowd seemed worked up, somebody let them in — a fair number of somebodies, come to think of it, including Munies at the security station. Gaant had people in the Munies as well as the counseling house? This was a pretty elaborate operation, more than I’d credited him with.

I did a quick scan of the room — no way out. I felt sweat tickle my sides under my armpits. I only saw one possible refuge if things turned ugly, and it wasn’t much.

“Ah-Quan, corner to your left, get ready,” I said softly in Szawa, the Zaschaan trade language. Ah-Quan would understand but I was betting nobody else in the room would. I put my hands on The’On‘s shoulders.

“If you want to trade away their heritage, you will not do so in darkness,” Gaant said to the men at the table, his voice rising in volume and taking on a more dramatic tone. This was probably his motivational speaker voice. He gestured toward the quite crowd filling the room. “Conduct your dirty business with these people as witnesses, if you have the courage. Let them see the color of your souls!”

I think Gaant had a plan as to what came next. He must have. But no plan survives contact with stupidity, and there was plenty of that going around. One of the Varoki at the back table, one of the staffers, jumped to his feet and pulled a neuro-wand from his under his jacket. So much for no weapons on neutral ground, huh?

“Put that away you moron!” I shouted. As everyone turned to look at him, the guy hit Gaant with the wand. Gaant didn’t make a sound except for a sharp hiss of inhaled breath. His whole body spasmed as every nerve in it fired at once and then he seemed to fall in slow motion, the crowd gaping, someone at the table reaching out too late to catch him, until his head clipped the hard stone edge of the table and made a sound like a melon hitting pavement. He continued falling to the floor and then didn’t move.

My knees went weak. For what seemed like a very long time but could only have been a second or two nobody moved, nobody said anything. I didn’t breath. I guess I feared — we all feared — the slightest act might break the spell and bring what came next. Then a collective gasp escaped from those at the head of the crowd as they surged forward and some knelt at Gaant’s side. Some screamed, some shouted questions from behind, others shouted back.

What happened?

The Guide is dead!

They killed the Guide!

“The corner! Move!” I screamed to ah-Quan.

More people surged through the doorway, jostling those in front. Some of those kneeling by Gaant got pushed over and cried out as the mob stepped on them, but a couple big guys managed to lift Gaant’s limp body up and over their heads, and soon the crowd passed it back, hand to hand, out of the room, his dripping blood anointing them.

Ah-Quan reached forward and grabbed Gaisanaa-la by the shoulders of her suit, snatching her up and over the back of her chair by sheer brute strength, and then he plowed through the crowd starting to fill the space to our left. I didn’t get The’On up nearly as quickly and by the time we started after ah-Quan the crowd had closed in.

A female Varoki from the crowd lunged at the staffer with the neuro-wand and he hit her with it, then started trying to drive the crowd back with it, wanding everyone in the front rank, even though they couldn’t get away through the press of bodies behind them. Screams of pain and fear and rage. Bodies twitching and falling limp to the floor to be trampled by those behind. Then a growing rumbling chorus of hatred and pent-up rage as the crowd became a mob and then an avalanche under which the staffer with the wand just vanished.

E-Bomaan and the other Varoki across the table from us were all on their feet and pressed back against the stone surface by the pressure of the mob, now tearing and striking at them. The table tipped over on its side and then onto its top and both members of the mob and their targets tumbled over it, the wave of flesh behind them surging over them.

I back-pedaled frantically, pulling The’On with me, but came up against the smooth, hard composite resin surface of the big window overlooking the river.

The’On started to drop down to the floor but I pulled him up.

“Stand up!” I shouted above the howl of the mob. I turned him so his right shoulder was against the window. “Cover your head! Shoulder against the window, not your chest or back. Otherwise you’ll suffocate!”

I saw the panic in his eyes fighting to take control but he nodded. I tried to partially cover him with my own body, my right shoulder under his left armpit, both our arms covering our heads, and then the mob hit us. Someone’s fist caught me a good one on the back of my skull that left me seeing flashes of light for a few seconds, but as the mob pressed on from behind the ones in front lost the ability to do anything but try to stay upright. The pressure grew and in just a few seconds the Varoki pressing against us went from enraged enemies to terrified fellow victims.

A shrill cry of agony sounded to my immediate left and I turned my head. I was face-to-face with e-Bomaan, his chest flat against the window, eyes bulging as the air was forced from his lungs by the inexorable pressure of the mob. His eyes made contact with mine, filled not only with pain and fear, but shock bordering on disbelief. A few seconds ago he had been one of the richest and most powerful men in the Cottohazz, and now here he was, losing the fight for life. How had this happened? How was it even possible?

Another surge from behind, even stronger than before, hit us. e-Bomaan’s ribcage collapsed against the thick unyielding composite surface of the window, the bones popping and breaking one by one, and his last exhaled groan turned into bloody foam. I turned away, spitting his blood out, and then the surge caught me. For a moment it didn’t take my breath because of my position. Then my right shoulder came out of the socket and I screamed in pain as the mass of the crowd flattened me against the window.

With a loud, sharp crack the composite resin of the window finally gave way and I was instantly weightless, surrounded by other screaming, flailing bodies tumbling through the air.

 

Come The Revolution – Snippet 10

Come The Revolution – Snippet 10

The’On nodded in acknowledgement but e-Bomaan, the Simki-Traak governor, made a disgusted sound.

“If the secret of the K’Tok and Peezgtaan ecoforms had not been revealed to the Humans,” he said, “we would have no trouble on K’Tok today.”

The’On tilted his head to the side and spread his hands. “Secrets are revealed,” he said. “Wishing it were otherwise accomplishes nothing. Revelation is the destiny of all secrets.”

“Not all secrets,” e-Bomaan said and exchanged a glance with the senior representative from AZ Kagataan, Simki-Traak’s biggest rival. The Kagataan governor narrowed his eyes and his ears tightened, as if in silent reproach. E-Bomaan colored slightly and shut up, leaning back in his chair.

Now that was pretty interesting. Those two trading houses were more powerful than most governments, and they did not play well together. Two years ago they had fought a war by proxy on K’Tok, a war Tweezaa, Marr, The’On and I had been caught in the middle of. AZ Kagataan came out a big loser. But they and Simki-Traak Trans-Stellar apparently still shared a secret, and if the shellacking Kagataan took in the war hadn’t been enough to make them want to spill the beans out of spite, it must be a real corker. Marr was a Simki-Traak governor, at least nominally, but I wondered if even she knew what that was all about.

“Capital formation,” Elaamu Gaant said from the other end of the table, making it sound like a curse. Everyone turned to him. “We formed the Group of Interest, this alliance of uneasy partners, to accomplish a goal of great ideological import, and now we talk of capital formation. What of the principles we share? Do we abandon them because of numbers posted in some money changer’s office?”

A stir ran through the Varoki on his side of the table, surprise turning to irritation, then hostility.

“We appreciate the assistance you provided as the, ah, go-between assembling the Group of Interest, Mister Gaant–” Counselor Rimcaant began, but e-Bomaan cut him off.

“I knew it was a mistake allowing you to attend this meeting, Gaant,” he said. “Everything you planned has collapsed. You failed, do you understand? This is over your head now, and it is time to let those of us who understand what is at stake here make the best of the situation.”

Gaant laughed and stood up from his chair, but not in anger. e-Bomaan had just told him he had no further say in what went on, but Gaant looked to me like a guy who still had an ace up his sleeve.

“You have forgotten what is really at stake,” he answered, and then he turned to face me. “Sasha Naradnyo, the Honorable e-Bomaan called you a criminal earlier. All of them think of you that way. Do you have a criminal record?”

I looked at him for a moment, now completely confused as to what this had to do with anything. “Not exactly.”

E-Bomaan laughed, a nasty little bark, but Gaant ignored him. “What does that mean, please?”

“I was arrested for burglary but the charge was expunged when I volunteered for a hitch with the Co-Gozhak.”

“You fought in the Nishtaaka campaign, is that so?” Gaant asked, and when I nodded he went on. “So you have no criminal record, and according to the law itself you have met all your obligations to it. But these gentlemen all still consider you a criminal and I sense you do as well. Why?”

“Well, I guess it has something to do with once having made my living by stealing,” I answered, but Gaant cocked his head slightly to the side and smiled.

“I do not think so. The Honorable e-Bomaan and these others all steal, one way or another.”

I saw a number of Varoki shift in their chairs and ears twitch over that, anger or confusion flashing across their faces and skins.

“What does this have to do with these negotiations?” e-Bomaan demanded. The voice of Simki-Traak Trans-stellar now took on a harder edge.

“Everything,” Gaant answered, and then he turned back to me. “You see, Sasha, these honorables have a philosophy,” he said, gesturing to e-Bomaan and the others along his side of the table, “a philosophy which assures them that they are bound by no standard of conduct except gain, and of course following the strict letter of the law. Morality and ethics are irrelevant, so long as they follow the law.

“Their philosophy also tells them the best thing they can do for everyone on the planet is to devote their resources to removing any legal restraint on their actions, provided they follow the law as they do so. This they do by their support for wattaaks, such as the three you see here today, men who share their philosophy and work to implement it.

“They utilize the reduced restraints to extract more money from their customers, from their workers, and from the Cottohazz itself in the form of subsidies and reduced taxes. Their philosophy tells them the satisfaction of their unbridled greed is the means for everyone in the Cottohazz to prosper, even as they systematically impoverish them.

“Sasha, you are not a criminal because you stole. You are a criminal because you did not have a philosophy.”

“What is the meaning of this, Gaant?” e-Bomaan demanded, rising to his feet. I was wondering the same thing, not that I was complaining “We did not come here to be insulted, or to listen to you flatter this murdering drug dealer.”

“No,” Gaant said, “you came here to reach an arrangement with the murdering drug dealer. In order to safeguard your own profits, you came here to trade away a part of the heritage which belongs to the entire Varokiim.

“For three hundred years you have stolen from the other races, and done so in the name of the Varokiim, and you could have done so for all eternity. Instead you stole so much from the others that they are bled dry, but the treasure must still flow, and so now you steal from the Varokiim themselves. When I was a child there were no slums between the arcs. Now you cannot see the ground for them, and most of the denizens of that place without hope are Varoki, not the other races. That is your legacy! But that stops here. It stops today.”

“What are you blathering. . .?” e-Bomaan started but then faltered. Everyone in the room froze for a moment. Gaant had made a signal to someone, a slight raising of his hand, and suddenly the soft background hum of the local jammer was gone from my ears. I immediately squinted up the access to our local float nexus in Prahaa-Riz and set up a full-feed recording of my audio and visual input, and locked a coded channel. I snapped to it before the bandwidth got swamped once everyone else in the room figured out what was happening. I must have beaten most of them to the draw because I got my channel up and running. From here on everything that I saw and heard would be out there on the float memory, and as far as I knew nobody was good enough to hunt down all those threads and erase them.

Since that was all done with eye movement and pressure, my mind and eyes weren’t on the room. As I looked up Gaant gestured again and the wide double doors to the conference room opened. First the jammers, then the door. Whatever cult Gaant was peddling with himself as a leader, obviously someone at the counseling house was on board.

The crowd we saw earlier in the atrium started shuffling in — hundreds of them, silent but curious. Some craned their necks, taking in the occupants of the room and the rich, elegant simplicity of its fixtures. Most of them watched Gaant the way I imagined people look at their messiah.

 

A Call To Arms – Snippet 34

A Call To Arms – Snippet 34

BOOK THREE

1543 PD

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

There was a soft tone from the repeater display in Llyn’s cabin aboard Score Settler. Starting awake from his light doze, he checked the readout.

Finally — finally — a hyper footprint. McConnovitch and Hosney had arrived.

Llyn rubbed the sleep out of his eyes, feeling a surge of relief. The bulk of the Volsung task force had been orbiting this uninhabited red-dwarf for the past two weeks, with only one of the battlecruisers still absent, and Gensonne was starting to get twitchy. The fresh data McConnovitch was bringing in from Manticore should allay the admiral’s lingering concerns about the particulars of the force he would be facing.

Another ping came from the board, this one marking an incoming transmission.

Llyn rolled his eyes. It wouldn’t be McConnovitch — Hosney was still a good nine light-minutes out. Undoubtedly Gensonne.

And of course, it was. “Is that finally your man?” the Admiral growled.

“Yes, I believe so,” Llyn said.

“About time,” Gensonne said sourly. “He’d better have something good after all this.”

“I’m sure he will,” Llyn said, sitting firmly on his patience. McConnovitch was a good man, and one of the best data scavengers in the business. But he tended to play a little loose with plans and timetables. Given the nature of his work, that wasn’t unreasonable.

Gensonne, unfortunately, was at the opposite end of the spectrum, treating his precious schedules like they’d been handed to him on stone tablets. McConnovitch hadn’t kept to that schedule, and the Admiral hadn’t been shy about stating his view of such sloppiness on a regular basis.

But the waiting was finally over. Once McConnovitch confirmed the RMN’s weakness, Llyn could turn the Volsungs loose and then head off to where his Axelrod superiors waited to hear that the operation was finally underway. By the time Gensonne had Landing and the Manticoran government under control, Axelrod’s people would be on their way to take over.

Or rather, the nation Axelrod had now made a deal with to “invade” and “conquer” the Star Kingdom. The handful of Axelrod “advisors” who would also be aboard those ships would be staying very much in the background, guiding the actions only if and when necessary.

And like any good puppet show, if they did their job properly, the hard-eyed critics in Haven and the League would never see the strings.

The minutes ticked down; and precisely on the nine-light-minute timetable, Llyn’s com pinged. “I’m getting his transmission now,” he told Gensonne. “I’ll send it on after I’ve decrypted it.”

Gensonne gave a little grunt.

“Make it fast.”

“As fast as I can,” Llyn promised. “But he’ll be running a semi-manual encryption, which means I’ll need to work through it partly by hand.”

“You’re joking,” Gensonne said with another grunt. “You never hear of computer encryption algorithms?”

“Sure,” Llyn said. “They’re the ones a good hacker can grab whole and use to open your whole com system to unfriendly eyes and ears. Sometimes the old classics work best.”

“If you say so. Just hurry it up.”

“I will.”

Llyn keyed off and checked the new transmission. It was a data packet, and the origination ID was indeed Hosney.

He frowned, feeling a prickling on the back of his neck. No greeting, no identification, just the data packet? That didn’t sound like McConnovitch.

The transmission ended, and the report came up on his display. Frowning, Lynn began to read.

And the prickling on his neck turned into a shiver.

Green Force One, scout unit, call-signed Janus: four ships.

Green Force Two, main Manticore/Sphinx defense unit, call-signed Aegis: nine ships, including two battlecruisers. Not one, but two.

Red Force, Gryphon defense unit, call-signed Backstop: four ships, including yet another battlecruiser.

Llyn leaned back in his seat, mouthing a curse. The ten-ship, one-battlecruiser enemy that Gensonne was expecting to meet was in fact seventeen ships and no fewer than three battlecruisers. And that didn’t even count the two battlecruisers and six other warships that McConnovitch marked as being currently in refit.

Gensonne wasn’t going to be happy about this. Not at all. In fact, he might be unhappy enough to take his ball and go home.

And given the unanticipated uptick in the RMN’s numbers, the contract Llyn and Gensonne had signed not only allowed the Volsungs to bail, but also required Axelrod to pay them a hefty cancellation fee.

There was no way Llyn was going to let that happen. Not after coming this far.

Taking a cleansing breath, he began combing methodically through the numbers.

Looked at more closely, it wasn’t that bad. Not really. Green Forces One and Two were a formidable array, but the fact that they were split into two groups meant that Gensonne should be able to take them on one at a time. Even if he couldn’t, it was still two RMN battlecruisers against the Volsungs’ three.

Even better, Red Force was way the hell over at Manticore-B. Those ships should be out of the picture until long after the battle was over. And of course, all the ships in dock for refit might as well not even be there.

No, Gensonne wasn’t going up against anything he couldn’t handle. Not with his three battlecruisers, his fourteen other ships, and his massive confidence.

There was certainly no reason to bother the admiral’s little head with silly numbers and needless concerns.

He finished his editing, then keyed for transmission to Gensonne’s flagship.

“I’ve decoded the report, Admiral. Sending it to you now.”

“Thank you,” Gensonne said. “I trust nothing has changed since your last report?”

“Nothing of significance,” Llyn assured him. “Nothing at all.”

* * *

Commodore Rudolph Heissman, commander of the light cruiser HMS Casey and the other three ships of Green Two, was undoubtedly a very busy man. Nevertheless, from Travis’s point of view at the far side of Heissman’s desk, it looked like he was taking an extraordinarily long time to read through Travis’s transfer orders. Seated beside him, Commander Celia Belokas, Heissman’s exec, didn’t look to be in any more of a hurry than her boss.

Finally, after a mid-size eternity, Heissman looked up. “Lieutenant Long,” he said, his flat tone not giving anything away. “According to this, you have great potential.”

He paused, as if expecting some kind of response. “Thank you, Sir,” was all Travis could think to say. The words, which had sounded tolerably reasonable in his head, sounded excruciatingly stupid when he heard them out in the open air.

Heissman apparently thought so, too. “You know what I hear when someone uses the phrase great potential, Mr. Long?” he asked, his expression not changing in the slightest. “I hear someone making excuses. I hear someone who hasn’t worked to reach the level of his or her ability. I hear someone who doesn’t belong in the Royal Manticoran Navy. I hear someone who absolutely doesn’t belong aboard HMS Casey.”

“Yes, Sir,” Travis said. That response didn’t sound any better than the previous one had.

“I don’t want to see potential,” Heissman continued. “I want to see results.” He cocked his head. “Do you know what the assistant tactical officer’s job is, Mr. Long?”

“Yes, Sir.” The words sounded marginally better this time. “To assist the Captain and Tactical Officer in combat maneuvers and –”

“That’s the job description,” Heissman interrupted. “What the ATO does is find patterns and weaknesses in the enemy, and avoid them in his own ship.”

He gazed into Travis’s eyes, his expression hardening. “Captain Castillo talks a lot about luck. I don’t ever want to hear you use that word aboard my ship. Understood?”

“Yes, Sir,” Travis said.

“Good,” Heissman said. “As I said, part of your job is to know the weaknesses of your own ship and find ways to minimize them. Step one in that procedure is obviously to know your ship.” He nodded to his side. “In light of that, Commander Belokas has graciously agreed to give you a tour. Pay attention and listen to everything she has to say. Afterward, you’re going to need a lot of hours with the spec manual before you’re anywhere near up to speed.”

“Yes, Sir,” Travis said. He shifted his eyes to Belokas. “Ma’am.”

Heissman’s eyebrows rose a fraction of a centimeter. “Unless, of course, you’ve already spent some time in the manual,” he added, as if the thought had only just occurred to him. “Have you?”

“As a matter of fact, Sir, yes, I have,” Travis confirmed, trying not to grimace. He’d only spent eighty percent of his waking hours during his two weeks of groundside time poring through everything he could find on Casey and her equipment. Which, considering all the bureaucratic hoops he’d had to jump through to even get the manuals, Heissman almost certainly already knew. “Just the surface information, of course –”

“In that case, you can give the tour,” Heissman said. “You’ll tell Commander Belokas everything you know, and she’ll start on her list of everything you don’t know. That sound fair to you?”

“Yes, Sir,” Travis said.

“Good,” Heissman said. “You have two hours before you’re to report to Lieutenant Commander Woodburn, so you’d better get to it.” He nodded briskly and lowered his eyes to the report. “Dismissed.”

* * *

“I trust you won’t take this wrong, Ensign,” Captain Adrian Hagros said stiffly as he floated at the back of RMN Hercules’s entryway, “but what the hell are you doing aboard my ship?”

Crown Prince Richard Winton — or more accurately, the freshly-minted Ensign Richard Winton — suppressed a smile. Not because of the question or the impudence, but because he knew full well the looks the two King’s Own bodyguards behind him were giving Hercules’s commander right now.

Which merely raised Richard’s opinion of Hagros another couple of notches. Awkward situation or not, the man refused to either shrivel or mince words. Now, more than ever, Richard was glad he’d made this decision.

“I’m an officer of the Royal Manticoran Navy, Sir,” he reminded Hagros politely. “I’m here because this is where my orders sent me.”

“Sure,” Hagros said. “And your orders didn’t send you to Invincible or Swiftsure because…?”

“Because small-ship experience is as important as big-ship duty, Sir,” Richard said. “Because Hercules is where the normal assignment rotation had scheduled me. And because I don’t want any special privileges.”

A familiar set of expressions flicked across Hagros’s face, mirroring the equally familiar thoughts likely going on behind them: first, that a broad range of experience was only necessary for a career officer, which Richard most definitely wasn’t; and second, that special privileges were practically a way of life for the Crown Prince, whether he wanted them or not.

Richard knew that was what Hagros was thinking, because it was what everyone else had thought, every frustrating step of the way.

But Richard had made it this far. He’d avoided cushy duty, he’d avoided abnormally prestigious duty, and he’d forced them to put him on a normal ensign’s track. He wasn’t about to be stopped now just because Hercules’s captain didn’t think a century-old Pegasus-class corvette was worthy of the Crown Prince’s presence.

Maybe Hagros saw that in Richard’s eyes. Or maybe he just realized that the Crown Prince’s presence here meant better people than Hagros had already tried to send him to a more comfortable posting and failed.

“Glad to hear it,” he growled. “Because you’re not going to get any here. The yeoman outside will show you to your quarters.” His eyes flicked over Richard’s shoulders. “And your men to theirs,” he added. “You’re to report to Lieutenant Petrenko in Forward Impellers in one hour. Any questions?”

“No, Sir.”

“In that case, welcome aboard, Ensign,” Hagros said, a little less severely. “A word of warning: corvettes are old ships, and their crews have to work their tails off. Be prepared to have yours worked off, too.”

“I’m looking forward to it, Sir.”

Hagros snorted as he gave Richard a sharp nod. And, perhaps, just the faintest hint of a smile. “Dismissed.”

And as Richard floated down the passageway behind the yeoman, he found himself breathing deeper in anticipation. No more arguments with his father, no more persuasion of nervous bureaucrats in BuPers, no more need to define his position and stand firm on it. Finally, finally, he had a ship.

He would work his tail off, all right. His current orders had him serving aboard Hercules for the next year. He would spend that year becoming the best damn officer Hercules and Hagros had ever seen.

* * *

“Admiral Gensonne?”

His eyes and attention still on Llyn’s report, Gensonne reached over and keyed the com. “What is it, Imbar?”

“Hyper footprint, Sir,” Captain Sweeney Imbar, Odin’s commander, reported. “Looks like Tyr has finally arrived.”

Gensonne grunted. About fraggy time. They’d been waiting on Blakely to get his butt here for four solid weeks, and the rest of the captains were getting antsy. Now, with the last of Gensonne’s three battlecruisers on site, they were finally ready to get this operation underway. “Send Captain Blakely my compliments,” he instructed Imbar, “and tell him to haul his sorry carcass in pronto so he can start loading supplies and armaments. We head for Manticore in five days, and if he’s not ready he’ll be left behind.”

“Aye, Admiral,” Imbar said, and Gensonne could visualize the other’s malicious grin. Imbar loved relaying that kind of order.

Gensonne keyed off the com, and with a scowl returned his attention to Llyn’s report.

Seventeen warships. That was what the Volsung Mercenaries were bringing to the battlefield: three battlecruisers, six cruisers, seven destroyers, and one troop carrier. There were also be the four fuel and support ships that would remain parked outside the hyper limit, but those didn’t really count. The Manticorans, in contrast, had only thirteen warships with which to counter.

 

Raising Caine – Snippet 34

Raising Caine – Snippet 34

Chapter Thirty-Two

Southern extents of the Third Silver Tower; BD +02 4076 Two (“Disparity”)

The battered TOCIO shuttle started down through the bank of clouds that threatened to obscure the coastal river valley toward which they had been descending. The cottony whiteness that swallowed them quickly became an ugly grey. “Heavy weather,” Raskolnikov muttered.

Caine gripped the edge of his seat as a cross current buffeted them, caught a glimpse of the instrument board. Three new orange lights had appeared among the ones monitoring the port side fuselage. “Have we lost airframe integrity?”

“Not yet,” Qin Lijuan said calmly. “However, stress alerts are increasing. No matter how high I keep the nose, those port-side holes are catching air, increasing drag. It does not help that some of the largest debris went in the variable-thruster intake.”

“Hard to keep her flying straight?”

“Yes, but the larger problem is that we are no longer capable of making a vertical landing. Also, the heat shielding there is no longer uniform. Even though the damage is on the dorsal surface, and even though we leveled out into a slow reentry slalom once we descended through the thirty kilometer mark, there is no way to stop the drag from widening the breaches.”

“My esteemed colleague is saying that our shuttle wants to shake apart and she is not letting it do so.” Raskolnikov punctuated his sardonic synopsis with a wide grin.

Caine mustered a smile. “Thanks: I got that. Any idea how far down this cloud cover goes?”

Raskolnikov, all business again, shook his head. “No. It may go right down — what is your expression? — to the deck. Variable wave sensing suggests it begins to thin out at eight-hundred meters, but beyond that, who knows? It might be fog, mist, mixed, raining, or clear.”

“Eight hundred meters?” Caine’s stomach tightened and descended. “That doesn’t give you a lot of time to find a good landing zone.”

“You are right, Captain: it does not. But the river beneath us had many straight stretches.”

“So: a water landing.”

Raskolnikov grinned that crazy grin again. “If we are lucky. Now, Captain, you must return to seat.” He paused. “One at midsection, please.”

Caine nodded. “I’ll make sure the others get out. I’ve memorized the emergency exits, in case the hatches are jammed.”

“Horosho,” Raskolnikov smiled. He glanced over at Qin Lijuan. “Perhaps I shall take it from here, yes?”

Egoless, Lijuan ceded him the controls. Nodding to the two of them, Caine cycled through the iris valve and moved quickly to the midsection of the craft.

He passed Ben Hwang, who opened his mouth to speak —

Caine shook his head, got into a couch across the aisle from Gaspard, who seemed to be concentrating on a deep-breathing exercise, his eyes closed.

As the three jammed windows in the passenger section darkened even more and rain began hammering down on the shuttle, Caine finished belting in — and started when Gaspard’s voice announced, so calm as to be eerie: “For the record, Captain Riordan, I consider this crisis to be the province of security management. I shall not gainsay your orders.”

Caine glanced over at Gaspard. Other than his reclosing lips, the ambassador was completely motionless, as if in a meditative state. “Thank you, Ambassador.” If Gaspard responded, Caine missed it.

His collarcom buzzed. “Riordan here.”

“Captain, this is Qin. You are strapped in?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Please push your seat’s paging button.” Riordan did. “I am activating your seat’s data link. Please put on the viewing monocle you will find in the seat pouch.” Riordan had the small video-display device settled over his ear and in front of his left eye before she had finished the sentence. The small eyepiece flickered, then showed him the ground rushing up swiftly: a jungle cut in two by a meandering ribbon of rain-speckled river. “We will make our final descent soon.”

But in the meantime, you’re trying to preemptively kill me with terror? But Caine understood the real reason the pilots were showing him the view from the nose of the shuttle: “I’ll call out the steps back here.”

“And keep watch for the best way to exit the shuttle. If we are fortunate, there will be an option other than the dorsal hatch.”

“Understood. There are three window covers jammed half-open back here. Can you unfreeze them?”

“We tried several times when we undocked. We have tried at least once a minute since then. We suspect that the sabotage created a power surge which disabled those circuits. However, those windows would only shatter if hit directly. I advise you not to worry about them.” Which was a nice way of saying: if that glass breaks, it will be the very least of your problems. “We will be down within the minute. Please prepare the passengers.”

In the data monocle, the river rose closer; in the distance, it seemed to narrow and bend. “Everyone,” Riordan said loudly. “We are making a water landing.”

“What?” shrieked Nasr. Ben Hwang released a long shuddering sigh — just before the two-toned crash landing alert started blaring.

Caine raised his voice over it. “This vehicle’s tilt-thrusters are disabled, so we are landing runway-style. But we haven’t seen any airfields or received any communications from the ground. Fortunately, we’ve got the best pilots in the business up in the cockpit and they’ve found a good stretch of river to put down on.”

“Are there rafts? Are there life-pre –?”

“You’ll find flotation packs under your seat. They clip on to your duty suits’ shoulder clasps and will auto-deploy the moment you hit water. Rafts will too.” I hope. In his left eye, the river loomed large, and then suddenly glistened: the shuttle had passed beyond the shadowing storm clouds. Faint stretches of foggy silt and rocks shone up through the translucent water. This river was shallow: maybe too shallow. The camera crept closer to the rippling water, the strange foliage speeding past on either bank. “Everyone: crash positions. I will count us down. Five meters, four, three –”

Caine didn’t see the long mass of subsurface rock at first; just the rapidly lapping wavelets it threw up as the current skimmed over its flat expanse. His mouth was open to shout a warning to Raskolnikov —

Who obviously saw it. The shuttle banked quickly to the left, rose up to hop over the rock — and inadvertently dipped the leading corner of its left wing into the river.

The sudden drag pulled the shuttle sharply to port. The engines roared as Raskolnikov fought its nose back to centerline, powering it upward. But as the wing pulled out of the water, Caine felt a transverse shiver run from the left side of the fuselage and pass under his seat. He glanced out his half-sealed window in time to see the pock-marked section of the wing buckle and then shred.

Freed of that drag, the shuttle suddenly pulled in the direction of the intact starboard wing, even as it jerked down toward the water. The starboard thruster screamed again; Raskolnikov had pulsed it to re-center the nose. Which dropped swiftly as soon as he eased off the thrust: the vehicle’s ability to glide was wholly gone. Caine had a split-second monocle view of the rushing water leaping up at him —

The impact both threw him forward against the straps and the couch-back in front of him. And then — nothing: a surreal moment as the craft skipped off the river’s surface like a stone. The fiber-optic bow camera sent a static-littered image of the nose rising, then falling again —

Toward a long, flat wave-crested rock.

The second impact was so hard that Caine’s teeth snapped together painfully. At the same instant, his whole abdomen spasmed, his viscera jumping forward against his stomach muscles. Several shrieks cut through sounds of shearing metal, splintering composites, shattering glass — all of which was loudest from the bridge and the belly of the shuttle.

Which was still skipping forward along the river, yawing as it went. Sharp jolts hammered up through Caine’s body, as if he was riding a sled down jagged marble stairs. There was a final dull thump — and then, stillness.

“Survival packs out; filter masks on!” Caine shouted. He struggled free of the straps and stepped down into rising water. Shit. “By names; sound off!”

Voices shouted back: “Hwang!” “Betul!” “Gaspard!” “Xue!” “Veriden!” “Hirano!” “Eid!” “Macmillan!” “Salunke!”

The still intact window showed water lapping along the half-amputated portside lifting surface. The remains of the wing were canted slightly backward: the tail section was in deeper water. Xue splashed forward, glanced at the emergency airlock door just aft of the bridge’s now severely-deformed iris valve. Caine nodded: “Go.”

Macmillan, the furthest in the back, calmly announced, “Smoke coming out of the engineering spaces, Captain.”

Caine, who was helping Gaspard to yank his survival pack out of the cubby under his acceleration couch, paused, sniffed. “That’s not a fire. That’s steam.”

“Not so bad then.” Eid smiled hopefully through chattering teeth.

“No: it’s bad,” Dora corrected. “This shuttle is a long range model. That means a small nuke plant for powering the MAP thrusters.”

Hirano frowned. “But if there is no leak, then –”

Caine gently pushed her toward the forward airlock Xue had opened; the air pushing in was pungent, thick. “Ms. Hirano, we’re not worried about radiation. If the plant is hot and immersed in water, the temperature differential could cause it to shatter. Violently.”

Hirano Mizuki’s eyes were wide and her gait swift as she went through the forward exit. Ben Hwang, favoring his right side, approached. “Any word from the bridge?”

Caine met his eyes. “I don’t think there is any bridge. Not anymore.” He glanced at the iris-valve. Something had struck the other side hard enough to buckle the overlapping plates in toward the passenger compartment.

Hwang nodded and followed after Hirano.

Macmillan was the last out, carrying two extra packs. “Rations,” he explained. “I could go back to the locker and –”

Looking over the IRIS agent’s shoulder, Riordan saw that the water was waist deep around the shivered door into the aft compartment, and wisps of steam were rising up from it. “No time for that. And you’d parboil yourself.” Caine bringing up the rear, they hurried out the exit.

It was a short jump down into shallows sloping up toward a marshy bank. Which was actually part of a riverhead: a stream meandered out of the frond-and-tube-weed fen in which the shuttle had buried its nose.

Or rather, what was left of its nose. The entire starboard side of the cockpit was in shreds, much of it missing. The port side had been squashed, accordioned up and back against the passenger compartment.

Macmillan put a hand on Caine’s shoulder. “We were lucky to get out. Let’s not stick around to get blown up.”

Nodding, he followed Macmillan and the others up the narrow bank and into the tangle of alien vegetation that it was tempting, but altogether wrong, to call a jungle.

* * *

The column of steam that rose up from the shuttle became thickest approximately thirty minutes after they had put a kilometer between themselves and the wreck. An hour after that, it had shrunk back to its original size. A further thirty minutes reduced it to a wispy curlicue.

Caine turned off his collarcom, gestured for the others to do the same. There was no detectable signal other than the band-spanning white noise, so calling for help was pointless. Besides, preserving the remaining battery power meant retaining the ability to communicate with each other in emergencies, albeit over very short ranges.

“So now what do we do?” asked Nasr Eid.

Riordan stared directly at Nasr. “Now, we protect ourselves and take a fast inventory of our gear.”

As the rest of the group started opening their packs, Hirano Mizuki stared around at the foliage. “Protect ourselves? From what?”

Riordan’s unvoiced reaction — Good grief: civilians! — brought him to a startled mental halt: what had happened to his self-identity as a “civilian”? He wasn’t sure where it had fallen away — and it hadn’t fully. He wasn’t enamored of imposing military discipline or having it imposed upon him. But then again, discipline and its trappings — ranks, protocols, traditions — did not define the difference between a soldier and a civilian. The difference was in outlook. Brilliant civilian researcher Hirano Mizuki stared into the shadowy reaches of alien underbrush and saw no reason for caution. Caine, on the other hand, saw an unguarded perimeter in unknown terrain with no one assigned to patrol or watch it.

Riordan smiled gently at Mizuki. “Ms. Hirano, I hope that there is nothing to fear in this brave new world. And we shall not go looking for any trouble while we’re here. But until we know we are safe, we will take precautions to deal with trouble, should it come looking for us. Am I clear?”