Eric Flint's Blog, page 306

The Savior – Snippet 04

The Savior – Snippet 04

2

He’d been right. The prisoners spoke in an extreme patois beyond even the normal Progar dialect. With concentration, it was comprehensible to a speaker of Landish, but never easy. Yet it was close enough to the Scoutish patois in which Abel was fluent that Abel could understand the captured men fully. Plus, he always had Center to fill in the gaps with his accurate grammatical extrapolation.

Abel would rather have missed watching the excruciation of the prisoners, but since no one else in Third Brigade headquarters spoke Scoutish, he must be present as an interpreter during the interrogation.

Also there was the fact that his best friend was the Third Brigade’s chief interrogator, and he wanted Abel there.

As with all things having to do with the Guardian Corps, there was specialization and professionalism in the ranks, including specialist interrogation squads. The Third Brigade interpreters were led by Timon Athanaskew. Timon had started out as Abel’s great rival at the Academy.

Law and Land, we hated one another.

Timon was First Family on both sides, and he didn’t see anything wrong with using that fact to get his way when he could. Abel was only First Family on his mother’s side of the family, the Klopsaddles. His father was the highest military official in Treville District, but this didn’t obscure the fact that Joab Dashian came from a second-tier clan. Such a taint of common blood was enough to mark Abel as lower in status to one such as Timon Athanaskew.

As Abel later came to know, Timon was not to blame for his attitude. Or at least not wholly to blame. He had been suckled on the idea that the blood of the ruling class ran in his veins. His brother, Reis, as stuck-up a prig as Abel had ever met, was a priest serving in the Tabernacle inner circle. Reis Athanaskew was a favorite of Abbot Goldfrank, the ruling cleric himself, it was said. The brothers had long planned to be High Priest of Zentrum and Commander of the Guardian Corps, respectively, one day. They considered themselves steward princes of the Land, answerable only to Zentrum.

No matter how high he might rise, Abel would always be only a soldier to the Athanaskew brothers, answerable to the priesthood and high command. In other words, answerable to them.

Abel had, at first, believed Timon just another First Family brat raised on privilege and useless when needed most. This was accentuated by Timon’s appearance. He was groomed down to the finest hair and always immaculately turned out in his uniform. Yet if he’d stopped to consider back then, Abel knew he would have realized this was impressive in itself considering that no servants were allowed to students at the Academy, no matter what status the students held in the outside world.

Timon had a first-rate mind — Abel soon saw as much in class — but despite both of them being the cream of the crop, the two hardly spoke to one another their first year. It seemed the dislike was mutual.

Then, during the second year at the Academy, Abel ran up against a cabal of cadets — his fellow students — who ran a secret game of carnadon baiting and fighting in the Tabernacle pools at night. They’d made a small fortune in barter chits taking bets on the action from locals.

Abel admired carnadons for what they were: ferocious creatures, never sated, born predators that would kill a man as easily as they could a grazing riverdak. Even so, he hated to see them suffer. The cadets doped the pool water with a scent gland cut from a carnadon female in mating state. Confined in a small enclosure and exposed to such a stimulus, the carnadon males were sure to tear one another apart.

The ring of cadets had tried to draw Abel in, offering him a piece of the action if he kept his mouth shut, but he let it be known he was opposed to what was going on with the carnadons. He gave them a week to end their stupid games or he’d turn them in.

Timon was also against the fights, but on religious grounds. The carnadon was the symbol of the priesthood, of power in the Land. They were Zentrum’s beasts, not man’s.

In the end, the cabal was outed not by Abel or Timon, but a stupid mistake of their own making. They shorted the pay of the black-market purveyor of female scent glands. He’d sent a goon squad to get the barter chits from them. The cadets had made short work of the goons, killing two of them — the cadets were Guardians in training, after all — but the bodies had to be explained. Under interrogation, one of the leaders broke and spilled the whole sorry operation. He was allowed to leave the Academy and return to the Regulars. The other leaders of the gambling cabal were ejected from the Academy in disgrace.

The remainder of the ring couldn’t believe one of their own had ratted on them. Instead, they decided that Abel and Timon had betrayed them all. In an attempt to frighten and intimidate Abel and Timon, the remaining members of the carnadon ring had announced the fact that they would take revenge out of Timon and Abel’s hides.

Bad idea to announce your intentions beforehand.

The gang caught Abel and Timon on watch duty at the lower pools one day, and attacked. Timon’s First Family upbringing included years of martial training, and he’d served as a Regular officer in Lindron’s border force. Abel had been the captain of the Treville Scouts. Both were prepared and on the lookout.

It hadn’t been much of a fight.

When it was done, four attackers were injured, two with broken limbs, and one had fallen into a pool and been torn to shreds by the Tabernacle carnadons — a fitting fate if ever there was one. After an official inquiry, Timon and Abel had been not only let off the hook for the death but also commended for trying to save the man at their own risk.

From that day on, Abel and Timon had one another’s backs. Grudgingly, slowly, their trust grew into real friendship over the next two years.

What Abel had taken for aloofness in Timon was actually a devotion to justice that Timon took to extremes. Though he was quite religious, Timon also hated dishonesty and the lies of the hypocritical faithful as much as he did slacking off when it came to the Laws and Edicts of Zentrum. Abel had to admit Timon walked the walk better than anyone he’d ever met. Yet Timon’s coldness was a fact of his personality.

Abel had not been surprised when Timon chose interrogation as his specialization during fourth year at the Guardian Academy. Being an Athanaskew, he’d gotten the assignment he wanted. Since then Timon had risen to second in command of the secretive Tabernacle Security Service, a special Guardian-priest joint force. He’d been serving there when he’d heard about the coming Progar campaign. Timon had pulled every string he could to get assigned to a fighting unit somewhere. Being an Athanaskew, his request had been granted.

Which was good for us, Abel thought.

He had recommended Timon for the position, and von Hoff, who remembered Timon from his days at the Academy, had backed Abel’s choice.

Abel had himself been ordered to a position on Guardian planning staff in the Tabernacle. It was a plum assignment, he had to admit. He’d served for a year before being appointed district military commander of Cascade upon the recommendation of his boss at planning, Colonel Zachary von Hoff. “There are a dozen senior men, but none of them have orchestrated the destruction of five thousand Blaskoye mounted riders,” he’d said. “Now go clean that place up.”

* * *

Timon, for the most part, conducted his dark business bloodlessly. Much of the pain that was his stock-in-trade was brought about by pulling bodies into unnatural positions with hemp ropes and woodblock pulleys. Abel had seen Timon use other methods, however: thin obsidian knives to jam under fingernails and toenails, and smoking hardwood sticks with red coals at the end for the puncturing of eyes.

All the stakes, ropes and pulleys, and other accouterments of the Corps interrogators had always seemed overly elaborate to Abel.

Sadistic, Raj said. But effective to a degree.

Decadent coercion is a common end product of utilitarianism social structures within autocracies, Center put in. Coercion is meant to be employed in an impersonal manner for societal purposes only. Yet individuals cannot intentionally give pain to others without personal motivation and personal cost. As the psyche is scarred, evil easily becomes an end in itself. That such practices asymptotically culminate in acts of cruelty is readily apparent within the Seldonian calculus for any who care to make the computations. These involve the integration of a Series A longitudinal for n equals any numerated inter-ethical valuation units with a latitude of Series B —

 

Paradigms Lost – Chapter 10

Paradigms Lost – Chapter 10

Chapter 10: Career Counseling

It was, at least, somewhat more comforting to be pulling into the huge, curving driveway in my own car under my own control. My prior visit had been rather informal, ending with my being shoved into Verne’s parlor while still in my pajamas. So this time I was not only here by choice, but I was also better dressed.

The door opened as I reached the landing, and I saw the impeccably elegant butler/majordomo I remembered from the last visit. “Thank you… um, Morgan, wasn’t it?”

“Indeed, sir,” Morgan replied, with a small bow. “Your coat, sir? Thank you.” I handed him my overcoat, which he took and handed to another servant. “If you will be good enough to follow me, sir, Master Verne is waiting for you in the dining room.”

The manners in the Domingo household, I had to admit, had never given me room for complaint, at least aside from the initial threats. I followed Morgan to an absolutely magnificent dining room, with an actual cut-crystal chandelier shedding a sparkling light over a huge elongated dinner table which could have easily seated fifty people. The paneling was elegant, real wood I was sure, and there were small oil paintings tastefully set along the walls.

Verne Domingo, resplendent in an archaic outfit, rose upon my entry and bowed. “Welcome to my home, Mr. Wood. Enter freely and of your own will.”

I couldn’t manage to keep a straight face, though I tried. After I stopped laughing, I spread my hands. “Okay, okay, enough. I see you have a sense of humor too. At least you have the looks to carry it off.”

“I thank you. Please, sit down and tell me how my chef has done his work. Alas, I am unable to directly appreciate such talents anymore.”

It was a shellfish dream — seven different dishes, small enough so that I could eat something of each of them without feeling like I was going to put a large number of crustaceans to waste. As it turned out, small enough so that if I felt like a pig, and I did, I could make sure no crustacean went untouched. I sat back finally, realizing I’d overeaten and not regretting it one bit. “Magnificent, sir. I haven’t eaten that well since… um… I don’t think I’ve ever eaten that well, actually. Seven dishes, four cuisines, the spices perfect, neither over nor underdone… I’m going to miss this when I go home, I can tell you that.”

Domingo smiled broadly, giving a view of slightly-too-long canines. “Excellent!” He glanced to the side. “Did you hear that, Hitoshi?”

A middle-aged Japanese man came in and bowed. “I did. Many thanks for your kind words, Mr. Wood.”

“Jason — may I call you Jason? — this is Hitoshi Mori. He has been my chef for several decades now, but he rarely has had a chance for a personal command performance. I am sure he finds it good to know his skills have not faded.”

“They certainly haven’t. Domo arigato, Mori-san.” That was admittedly pretty much the limit of my Japanese, and I suspected that both Verne and chef Mori knew it, because Mr. Mori simply bowed and thanked me again.

I glanced at Verne. “I’d guess then that your entire staff isn’t vampires? I mean, Hitoshi-san must have people to cook for?”

Hitoshi bowed. “It is true that, aside from Domingo-sama, his household needs to eat. But it is also unfortunately true that a man can become too accustomed to a routine — either the chef to the tastes of the household, or the household to the work of the chef. Only one who is new can truly permit the chef to measure his skill.”

“Well, you have my vote. I’ve eaten in top-flight restaurants that served far worse. And I’m sure that at least one — the grilled lobster with the citrus and soy sauce — was an original.”

Hitoshi looked gratified. “You are correct, Mr. Wood. I am glad that my efforts met with your approval.” He bowed again to Verne and me, and left.

“Okay,” I said, leaning back to let my somewhat overstressed stomach relax, “Let’s cut to the chase, Verne. What, exactly, did you want to talk to me about?”

For the first time, I saw Verne Domingo look… uncomfortable. Almost as though he was embarrassed. “As I mentioned, it has to do with a discussion we began the first time we met. You described your objections to my profession, I dismissed them.

“I have… reconsidered some of my statements.”

I raised an eyebrow at him. “Oh? You no longer want to argue about whether drug-pushing is an acceptable profession?”

He cast a faintly annoyed glance at me, then nodded, conceding that I had the right to phrase it that way. “Philosophically, I remain of the opinion that your government is committing an act of extreme idiocy in criminalizing these substances. In terms of morals and practicality, however, I have considered your words and realized that there was far more truth to them than I was originally willing to grant.

“While ideally I sold only to those who were both wealthy and foolish, I discovered that this was in practice virtually impossible to maintain; some of my… products were inevitably being sold down an ever-branching hierarchy of smaller and smaller distributors, eventually to be marketed to the very unfortunates I would never have intended to ensnare. Moreover …”

He trailed off, then rose from his chair, walked over to a window, and looked out into the darkness.

I waited a bit. Finally, I said, “Yes?”

He took a breath — I noticed that he didn’t seem to do that habitually, which was a subtle but definite clue to his nature — and forced himself to continue. “… moreover, I found that I was not pleased with my own behavior, when I compared it with your own, or — in truth — that which I would perhaps have expected of myself in times past. I do not think my own people — those bound to me by oaths and by the power that makes them able to share my journey through time — could ever complain of their treatment at my hands, but outside of this isolated and self-contained circle, I have not been the sort of man I originally meant to be, not in… a very, very long time.”

He gripped the windowsill, tight enough that I heard faint crackling sounds and was sure that if I went there later I’d find dents the shape of fingers in the wood. “Many things happened in the past centuries which soured me, made me less than I had been in many ways. I do not think, were I to talk with myself of ages past, that he would be proud of what I have become; in truth, I think he would pity me. I have had no true friends outside of these, my people, for a very long time indeed. I was, despite my unchanging appearance, becoming a bitter, cynical old man. I had… and still have… enemies who would consider that a triumph and amusement.” He turned to me. “I wish to try to change that. I would abandon this peddling of illegal substances, find some other venture to provide for myself and my people, and, perhaps, find a way of in some small manner rejoining humanity.”

Other people might make a speech like that for effect; but the way that he spoke, I could hear pain under the restrained and dignified words. In my business, you often make a living by guessing who you can and can’t trust. Verne Domingo, vampire and drug-runner, still struck me as a man whose word was inviolate and who would never say things like this unless they came from his heart.

I nodded. “For what it’s worth, Mr. Domingo, I agree with your philosophical position. I think people have the right to be fools, and that the criminalization of things like drugs was proven to be a failure during Prohibition. The same market forces that eliminated booze as a profitable black-market item here would pretty much eliminate the crime caused by drugs, if we just stopped making it illegal to sell them. Doesn’t mean that this wouldn’t create other problems, but I think the new problems would be a lot more manageable than the old ones.” I studied him. “But I think you called me here for more than to basically admit you’d made mistakes — although I appreciate immensely your decision, and find it pretty darn gratifying that you decided to tell me this personally. So… what do you want from me?”

“In a sense… little more than you have already given, Jason.”

“Excuse me?”

“Aside from the words you have already spoken, which eventually led to this revelation, the fact that you have known what I am, and have nonetheless chosen to leave me to myself — and have even trusted me, to assist in hiding what happened here, and to come here and speak with me, on nothing more than my word.” He was looking at me very gravely. “I have trusted no mortal with my secret for a long time, save only those who have become a part of my household. You have taken that trust and already repaid it.

“Yet I confess that there is another, more practical need I have of you.” He sat down again, looking slightly less formal than he had moments earlier. “As you can see, I live quite well; this involves the expenditure of money, for which I would prefer to have a visible source. It is undoubtedly true, however, that I am hardly a man of these times, and I have no idea what professions I could do well in.”

I blinked at that. “Mr. Domingo –”

“Call me Verne, if you would.”

“Okay. Verne, I’m not an employment agent or counselor.”

“This I understand, Jason. Yet it is true, is it not, that finding jobs, or evaluating people, could be construed to be something involving finding and analyzing information?”

I chuckled. “Well, yeah, I guess you could put it that way. I could probably do a halfassed job at those kind of things, but a professional advisor would be a lot more effective.”

“This I cannot argue with,” Verne conceded. “However, to do their job to the best of their ability, such people would need to understand many things about me — including what makes my situation unique.”

I saw what he was getting at now. “In other words, they’d have to be able to understand why you were in the position you are — most likely have to know there was something weird about you, at the least, and maybe learn exactly what you are.”

“Precisely. Now, I have already confessed that I have been a sour old man for far too long, but that does not mean that I have decided it would be wise to spread the secrets of my existence far and wide. In fact, I suspect that this is one area in which I must remain as careful as I have ever been.”

I nodded slowly. “Can’t argue that. Despite The X-Files and other similar shows, the world is not ready for real vampires as standard citizens. And the angry mob these days carries automatic weapons, Molotov cocktails, and explosives.” I dropped into my professional mode and started analyzing the problem.

“Okay, Verne, let’s take this a step at a time. I find it hard to believe that you don’t have scads of money stashed away somewhere — you’ve had centuries, and it’s pretty obvious to me, just from your mannerisms, that you’ve been used to being in the upper crust for a long time. So I guess the first question is, why do you need a job at all?”

He looked pleased. “Indeed, you cut to the heart of the matter. I do, as you surmise, have quite considerable wealth in various locations and institutions around the world. However, this is not quite as simple to access as you might think. Until recently, you see, there was little ability to examine the flow of funds from one country to another, and thus it was relatively simple for a man such as myself to move from one place to another and bring my fortune with me, needing only a rather simple cover story to explain why I had so much.”

“Gotcha. Transferring significant sums around, making formerly inactive-for-a-century accounts active, dragging in large quantities of gold or whatever, tends to draw the notice of the IRS and other agencies interested in potentially shady activities.” This was an issue I hadn’t really considered before, having grown up in an era where the government was already well in place with computers monitoring any significant transaction. Oh, it had become more pervasive in areas since I was born, but the basic idea that income was watched by the IRS had been taken as a given. Someone like Verne, who had been living for hundreds of years in civilizations which didn’t communicate much between countries and who had at best spotty ways of tracing assets, would indeed find the new higher-tech and higher-monitoring civilizations a bit daunting, to say the least.

“As you say. In addition… I am accustomed to doing some form of work. I have been many things in my time, but even as a nobleman I tried to busy myself with the responsibilities such a position entailed. I would feel quite at a loss if I had nothing at all to do.” He waited for me to acknowledge this second point, then continued. “Now, my former profession, while illegal, has the advantage of being paradoxically expected. When the government sees large sums of unexplained cash, it expects drugs are the source. If it finds what it expects, then it digs no farther. And if I can deny it admissible evidence and have… connections who pay the right people, it is unlikely to do more than try to harass the suppliers. Supplying drugs also, as I understand you deduced, has the advantage of no set hours. If I wish to be eccentric and meet people only at night, well, this is no stranger than some of the other people involved in this business.”

I rubbed my chin, thinking. “Uh-huh. You have this double problem. Not only do you have money of unknown provenance — and thus, from the point of view of any cop, probably crooked somewhere — you can’t afford to have people look at you too closely because there’s some aspects of your own existence that you have to keep hidden.

“So what you need is a job or profession which permits you to communicate with people exclusively, or nearly exclusively, during darkness hours, which has the potential to earn very large sums of money, and which you can at least fake having the talents for. Either that, or you need a way to get a huge sum of money here where you can use it openly and have an ironclad reason for getting that money.”

“I think you have summed it up admirably, yes. I also have something of a philosophical objection to the rates of taxation applied to certain sources of income, but that’s a different matter.”

“And way out of my league; finding more acceptable employment is one thing, convincing the federal government that it shouldn’t tax income is another.” Verne smiled in acknowledgement. I went on to the next item of business.

“And what are you doing about your soon-to-be-former business associates?” At a glance from him, I hastily added, “No, no, I’m not asking if you’re going to turn them in or anything. Just when and how you’re going to get out of the business, so to speak.”

“I have, in point of fact, already sent the relevant persons my decision. I will of course clarify my position to them if any of them desire it.”

I looked at him questioningly. “You do realize that some of these people may not think of retirement as an option?”

He smiled, but this smile was colder somehow, less the smile of a gracious host and more the bared-fang expression of a predator. “I am sure I can… persuade anyone who might think otherwise, Jason. Do not concern yourself with that side of the equation.”

I gave an inward shiver, remembering what Elias Klein — barely a baby by Verne’s standards — had been capable of. No, I didn’t suppose Verne would have much trouble there.

“Okay,” I said, “I guess I can give it a shot. I’ll have to think about it a bit, and of course we’re going to have to go into your skills and knowledge areas. I’d feel kinda silly giving you a standard questionnaire, so I’ll just have to talk to you for a while on that — get a feel for what you would enjoy, what you’d hate to do, what you’ve already got the skills and knowledge for, and what you’d learn easily. Also, you’ll have to confirm or deny the various limitations I guessed for your people, and how they apply to you, so I know what things are definite no-nos and which ones are ‘well, sometimes, but only rarely,’ if you know what I mean.”

“I grasp your meaning, yes. Would you like to start tonight?”

I ran over my schedule in my head. “Unfortunately, no. I’d have to leave here in about another hour anyway — I have some early clients to see — and I’d like time to just let the concept percolate through my brain. How about Thursday — day after tomorrow? I know that one was clear, since I checked on it yesterday.”

“Thursday will be eminently satisfactory. I shall expect you at the same time, then?”

“Fine with me.” I got up and extended my hand.

He shook it with a firm but not oppressively strong grip. “You have neglected to mention your fee, Jason.”

I shrugged. “This isn’t a normal job — I have no idea what to charge at this point. We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. In fact, I have a better idea. When I bring over the work-for-hire agreement, the price will be left open to your discretion. You can decide after the fact what the work was worth to you.”

“Are you not concerned I might take advantage of this option?”

I shook my head. “You’re a man of honor. You’d feel too guilty. In fact, I will probably come out ahead, since you’re likely to charge yourself more than I would.”

He laughed. “You are indeed wiser than your years would make you, Jason. Good night, then, and have a pleasant journey home.”

“After that dinner, I certainly will. Thank you, Verne.”

 

Trial By Fire – Snippet 21

Trial By Fire – Snippet 21

Chapter Eleven

Adrift off Barnard’s Star 2 C

The airlock was even smaller than it had looked from outside, barely big enough to hold the two of them at the same time. Caine kept the ten-millimeter trained on the squarish doorway that led deeper into the craft, watching for any changes in the lights on the panels that flanked it.

In the meantime, Trevor had found a knob similar to the one on the outside of the hull and was turning it rapidly. As he did, a hard-edged shadow advanced across the door, the floor, and finally, cut off all external light into airlock: the outer hatch was sealed. The red radiation icon on Caine’s HUD flickered into orange and then disappeared. The Arat Kur have pretty damn efficient rad shielding, considering there’s no sign of an operating EM grid. However, there were still radiation worries: Caine’s chronometer read 144 seconds total elapsed mission time. That meant almost seventy-five REM whole body dose for Trevor, about fifty-five for Caine. Plus the thirty REM they had picked up when their own EM grid had to be shut off yesterday, and whatever else they were going to pick up making the jump back to the Auxiliary Command Module. In all probability, they weren’t going to be feeling too well for the next couple of days.

Trevor moved over to the control panel beside the inner door, briefly inspected the lights and the glyphs beneath them. He tapped the bottom half of the panel, exploring.

Caine touched helmets. “What are you looking for?”

“This.” Trevor was now sliding aside the lower half of the panel, revealing three smaller, cruciform knobs. “Manual systems in case the power is out.”

“Won’t they be disabled or locked off?”

“Not unless there was a survivor on board who saw us coming and wanted to keep us out. You have to leave manual overrides functional during routine ops. Otherwise, if your power goes down and you’re unconscious or unable to move, rescuers can’t get to you unless they breach the hull. And I guess our adversary has learned the same lesson.”

“So since they’re not locked off, maybe that indicates there aren’t any survivors to take that precaution. Besides, survivors should have tried to effect repairs and rejoin their own fleet, particularly since this ship doesn’t seem too badly damaged.”

“Don’t judge a book by its cover, Caine, particularly when it comes to sensitive machines like spacecraft. They can look fine on the outside but can be hopelessly fubared inside.”

“I wonder how fubared this craft really is.”

“Why?”

“The rads dropped away completely when you shut the door behind us.”

Trevor shrugged, digging for a small tool kit on his utility harness. “They’re probably way ahead of us in material sciences.”

Caine shook his head. “You’d need tremendous density to stop that much particle radiation.”

“So what are you saying?”

“I’m saying that this ship might still have enough power to be shielding itself, somehow.”

“Then why didn’t our passive sensors pick up the electromagnetic anomalies?”

“I don’t know. Maybe their EM field effect is not projected, but remains within the matter comprising the hull. Sort of how active electrobonding works, only this version is designed to repel charged particles rather than strengthen the bonds between molecules in hull materials.”

Trevor was silent before replying. “Where would the power come from? Their fusion plant is cold.”

“I don’t know. Batteries, possibly on constant recharge if some part of the hull is sensitized to work like a solar panel.”

“Which would probably mean that somebody on board did survive the battle,” Trevor pointed out. “What you’re describing is not an automated emergency backup system. It would need someone to activate and integrate all those functions.” Trevor put a hand on one of the three small knobs. “So, assuming we have an enemy to meet, let’s get moving. Stand to the side and cover the door.”

Caine crunched himself into the nearest corner, took the gun in both hands, extended it out in front of himself. The first knob that Trevor manipulated activated a series of dim red lighting bars that outlined the inner airlock door. The lights flashed rapidly. Probably the knob for opening the inner airlock door, the alarm signifying that the airlock itself was still unpressurized. “I’m no linguist, but I think red is their color for danger, too.”

Caine nodded his agreement and re-centered the handgun’s laser sight on the interior door.

The next knob Trevor tried had no immediately observable effect, but after several seconds, they noticed a faint external sound: the rush of air. Trevor squeezed himself to the other side of the interior airlock door, drew a pry-bar from his tool-kit, and hefted it. Caine heard his voice over the helmet speakers. “We’ll need to use radio, now. Shift to secure channel four.”

Caine made the appropriate choice on his HUD display with an eye-directed cursor, bit down with his left molars to confirm the selection. “Radio check. Are you receiving?”

“Loud and clear.” The inrushing of air had already crescendoed and was now diminishing rapidly. “Ready to dance?”

Caine nodded, focused on the intense red dot that his weapon was projecting upon the interior door. Trevor manipulated the first knob again. This time, the door slid aside.

A passage, side-lights receding away vanishing-point style. No blast of out- or in-rushing air, either; the craft still had an atmosphere. No sign of fog or fine snow drifting in midair; the humidity hadn’t frozen out, meaning that the internal heating hadn’t failed.

Trevor stopped turning the knob. “Fresh life-support means the probability of survivors just got a lot higher. Cover high; I’m going in low.”

“Understood. Go.”

Trevor jackknifed around the edge of the doorway, swam aggressively into the passage beyond. He swooped low, hugged the floor tightly as he followed along the wall to his left.

“What do you see?” Caine asked.

“Doors up ahead, two on either side. Two rows of handles–the four-flanged variety–run the length of the walls.”

“For zero-gee movement?”

“That’s my guess. Can’t make out the end of the hall. Looks like a dark opening, but I can’t be sure. Damn. What I’d give for thermal imaging goggles right about now.”

“Should I advance past you?”

“No, just join me here. This space is too tight for a leapfrog advance.”

And I’m not good enough in zero-gee to make it feasible, anyhow. Holding the gun in his right hand, Caine pushed with his feet and let his body straighten into a slow forward glide.

Trevor hadn’t exaggerated. The corridor was not well-suited to human physiognomy. Only one and a half meters wide by two meters high, it felt cramped, vaguely reminiscent of the engineering access spaces aboard the Auxiliary Command module. The lights that receded toward the dark at the end of the corridor were more amber in color than white.

“Caine, watch how you’re handling that gun. Don’t point the laser down the hall. We don’t want to announce ourselves.”

Caine nodded his understanding and pushed himself down to a prone position alongside Trevor. “Now what?”

“We go room by room. You cover, I enter.”

Which seemed a wise plan. Trevor was ensuring that they would not leave any uncleared spaces behind them. But there was one problem with its execution. As they began low-drifting toward the first of the four doors, Caine secured the handgun’s safety and offered it back to Trevor, butt first. “Give me the pry-bar. I’ll enter the rooms. You cover.”

“Nope. We’ve got the right resources in the right hands.”

“Trevor, you’re much more qualified with this weapon than I am.”

“And even more qualified in zero-gee maneuver. Did you have any classes in zero-gee hand-to-hand combat?”

“One.”

“Then you should know what I’m talking about. Every time you take a swing, you’re propelling yourself in a new direction. Same thing every time you block a blow or duck; every movement is acceleration. Two sudden moves and you’ll be too disoriented to do anything other than try to steady yourself.”

“Okay, okay. Let’s get on with it, then.”

The first door–which was almost perfectly square–did not respond to physical manipulation. Trevor tried the buttons on the panel alongside it. On the second try, the door slid aside.

The room, illuminated by Caine’s helmet lights, was a hollow cube. Clutched in metal beams at the center was a radially symmetric collection of metal spheres, translucent tanks, and conduits.

Trevor dove in, brought himself to a halt, peered in between the tanks and tubes, drifted back out. “I’m guessing that’s life support. No one home.”

The next squarish door had irregular black smudges along two adjoined edges. Trevor ran a finger over the smudge, which erased but deposited itself on the tip of his glove. Carbon. Probably from an interior fire that had tried to lick around the door seal. The buttons on that entry refused to work and Trevor’s attempts to budge it were futile. His movements were hurried and annoyed as he drifted toward the next door.

This opened onto what seemed to be a private room of some sort. However, just beyond the doorway, the ceiling and floor pinched closer to each other, so that an individual entering the room had less than one and a half meters of vertical space in which to operate. An apparent sleeping nook that sheltered a pair of berths that looked like a mix of mechanical cocoon and fluffy sleeping bag stood out from the far wall. Other objects–furniture and implements, Caine guessed–seemed to be secured for zero-gee.

 

The Savior – Snippet 03

The Savior – Snippet 03

“Yes, sir,” Messerschmidt replied. “I’ll see they behave like Goldies.” Without another word, the corporal made his way through the barley back toward camp.

“Let’s go,” said Abel. “I’ll take point since I know where we’re going.”

The three sentries got into position quickly.

“Move out.”

Abel swung his rifle back around his shoulder and drew his blunderbuss pistol. He trotted forward, the sentries trailing after him. This would also leave a trampled path in the barley as a path for the remainder of the platoon.

Analysis of aerodynamic sonic signatures indicates an attacking group of six to eight armed men, said Center.

They concentrated their fire, too, Raj put in. Shows organization. There’ll be command among them.

Concur, Center said. Behavior indicates a trained unit.

They’ll mow us down if we try to take them head-on. Better to flank them, Abel thought.

Aye, agreed Raj.

Incoming. Center broke in without inflection of alarm — or any emotion at all.

“Down!” Abel called to the sentry nearest himself in a harsh whisper. The sentry passed the word along and then complied with the order.

But the invisible clouds of bolts were not aimed at them.

Another flurry passed over their heads. Mercifully, there was no round of screams to follow it.

Wildfire at shadows. They can’t be that well trained, Abel thought. But we are. And Messerschmidt must have the platoon advancing low to the ground. Good.

Abel waited a moment more to be sure that there was no second wave of fire intended for suckers, then rose up and moved forward another hundred paces. They were nearing the base of the small rise. He signaled to the man behind him to break to the left. They cut diagonally toward the side of the rocky hillock and trotted another hundred paces.

Grouped fire to the right, Center announced. Well away from our position, however.

They hear the platoon out there. They don’t know we’re close, Abel thought.

The ground sloped upward and the barley thinned. The soil underfoot became rocky.

There is a natural alluvial rise beneath the rocky exterior in this place. The hillock is otherwise of human origin from field clearing, Center put in. Differential soil composition and weathering patterns puts the rise at approximately 10,250 Duisberg years old.

Okay, Abel thought. Thanks for that. I don’t know how you figured it out but –

I am able to make use of the contrast ratio between the cones and the rods in your eyes — light receptors — to make analytical calculations for the chemical compositions of the pebbles underfoot. It is a process similar to x-ray spectrum analysis used in physical chemistry —

– but we have no time for this now, Abel thought. The one emotion, the one seemingly not entirely rational drive that Center possessed was an eagerness to share any and all information he had at any given moment. Abel supposed he couldn’t blame Center. Information was, after all, Center’s primary function and — if he could believe what he’d been told — Center’s very being. To expect Center to know when to shut up was like expecting a carnadon to know when it had eaten enough dakflesh.

They came out of the barley and walked on loose stone. Abel moved his extended palm up and down in a wigwag signal for those behind him to tread as quietly as possible. The sentry behind him passed the order back. They climbed the hill for about twenty paces, and then Abel cut diagonally to his right. He called a halt and motioned for a weapons check. On more than one occasion in the Scouts, he had failed to put in a priming cap, or even to load his weapon, and might have gone into a firefight essentially unarmed had it not been for his captain reminding him to double-check. He thumbed back the hammer on his own pistol and was reassured to see the gleam of the cap on its fire nipple.

He made a quick check and saw from moonlight glint that all the rifles had their bayonets fixed.

“Hammers back. But quiet,” he whispered.

Abel cocked the hammer slowly. The others did likewise with their rifles. Rifled barrels or no, these were single shot muzzle-loaded muskets. The first shots had to count. Even for Goldies, with their legendary thirty blink reloads, getting off a second shot during a charge was unlikely.

That was what the bayonets were for.

Abel led the sentries forward at a trot.

They came upon the group of ambushers from slightly behind the position of the attackers on the hill. When his group was ten or fifteen paces away, Abel signaled a halt. He motioned the sentries to move out of their staggered line and form up beside him. When the sentries had come up, the four of them stood and watched for a moment. The moonlight outlined the shapes of the attackers nicely. Several of the men were cranking their crossbows back. Another of them was standing slightly behind the group, his hands on his hips.

There’s the captain, Raj said.

Abel raised his pistol and drew a bead on the man. He knew when he fired he would be temporarily blinded by the flash. He might try closing his eyes, of course, but these weapons were hard enough to aim in daylight with eyes wide open and a steady hand. He would have to count on the flash having the same effect on his enemies as it did on his men and himself.

“Fire!” This time it was not a harsh whisper, but a shouted command. Abel pulled the trigger on his pistol. Its bang was followed by the crackle of the other three muskets.

The man with his hands on his hips crumpled to the ground. Two of the other silhouetted attackers did so as well. This was all he could make out until his pupils widened again.

Three out of four shots on target, Abel thought. Not bad. But his men were Guardians, after all. You had to be able to shoot straight just to gain admittance.

Abel tucked his pistol, still hot in the barrel, back into his belt. He momentarily considered swinging his rifle around and taking another shot, but instead drew his sword.

“Ready,” he said.

The sentries lowered their rifles to hip height, bayonets thrust forward and gleaming in the moonlight.

“Charge!”

With Abel in the lead, they rushed upon the remaining attackers at a downhill trot.

Abel detected a moonlit glint to his left. It was a line of muskets leaning against man-sized stone upslope from him.

They piled their rifles to the side while they got the crossbows ready. Too much equipment at one time would slow them down. And where are their donts?

Hidden around the back of the hill, Center said.

Abel quickly placed himself between the attackers and their muskets. The sentries rushed in. The nearest attacker turned at the sound of crunching sandals on gravel — and took a bayonet to the stomach.

A man without a crossbow saw the onrushing sentries and cried out. “Arbalests right! No, to the right, thrice-damn you!” Abel thought he detected a Progar accent. The attempted re-aiming move was too quick. The bowmen were confused. Bow met bow with a clink, and some of the attackers dropped their weapons or got them tangled up with another’s.

Metallic clinks instead of the clatter of wooden stocks.

The moonlight played upon the weapons.

Bronze and iron, Abel thought. They’re made of metal, except for the stock. Which meant the crossbows were outlawed by edict. They were nishterlaub, material used in a heretical manner as set down by the Law of Zentrum.

Metal crossbows may as well have been blasphemy.

Even though he understood what Zentrum truly was — an A.I. akin to Center — and knew that the Laws and Edicts of the Land were meant to suppress innovation and maintain an everlasting stasis, Abel couldn’t help feeling the crawling sensation in his gut that the sight of nishterlaub evoked.

It had been pounded into him in a thousand Thursday school lessons, after all. Except for permitted weapons, it was forbidden to use metals in combination or for purposes beyond cook pots and knives. To do so was horrible. It was wrong. All technological artifacts must be used in a downgraded manner.

“Nay, nay, forget it, forget it. To the donts,” called out the one who had before given the order to turn. “Fall back, you chunks of puke, fall back!”

Definitely Progar — and rural at that.

The attackers turned to run. There were perhaps ten of them still standing. And behind them —

The rest of the Friday Company platoon rose up out of the barley. The click of fifteen muskets cocking froze the attackers in their tracks. Before they could think or move, Abel rushed forward. He grabbed the man who had called out orders and clotted him with the exposed hilt of his sword. The attacker fells to his knees, blood streaming down his face.

“Surrender,” Abel called out. “Or die where you stand!”

Slowly, the other men lowered their crossbows. There was something like a collective sigh of resignation that passed among them.

Defeat.

“Mercy,” said the man at Abel’s feet. “For the love of Zentrum, mercy.”

He spoke with the thick accent of a man of Progar.

Abel shook his head grimly. Mercy? That was the last thing the man was going to get.

 

Polychrome – Chapter 01

Polychrome – Chapter 01

Chapter 1.

They’re close now.

She was astounded by the speed. Over cloudscape and through brilliant ways of the sky she had met few that were her equal and none her master; even her own father could not match her in fleetness of foot across the skies.

But these were no natural beings, not even in the sense that she, a princess of Faerie, could be considered natural. Forged from spirits of dark power and bound in chains of Faerie magic, constrained to the will of others, they were living aspects of wild storm – alive, yes, thinking, yes, but not creatures that were ever meant to be. Father had his Storm Legions, trained warriors of the heavens, and so they made their Tempests.

Despite the peril, she laughed joyously. At last I’m doing something. The waiting is over!

The clouds were valleys and hills, dark-tinted with hints of storm and rain, white with touches of sun, and she danced along them, pretending she did not see the blue-black flickers of motion in the deepest shadows, the sparking crackles of hidden lightning. They were closing in, hoping to cut her off.

As she rounded a great white-blue crested cliff-face of smoke and dreams, two Tempests flowed from within the cloud’s depths, moving on tendrils of sickly green-tinged black, the hue of tornado and destruction. “Halt –”

Instead of pausing or slowing, she gave a great leap forward, springing high, the lowering rays of the evening sun catching her fair hair and making it flame like molten gold. The Tempests were caught unprepared, not expecting her to act so decisively and dangerously, and she landed fully six feet on the other side of them and danced onward, laughing. “I halt not until I reach my destination, you poor bound stormcloud-spirits, and I have no time to play tag with you today!”

Three more leapt from a slow-curling arc of white above her, slashing with crackling lightning and jagged-edged talons of night-dark mystic cloud. More serious now, but still wearing a half-pitying, half-mocking smile, Polychrome whirled aside, turned, bent like a willow; lightning missed, cursed talons caught only air, and she dealt the nearest a gentle slap that somehow unbalanced it, sent it reeling into its fellows, gave her an opening.

I have to make it to the proper point. She had to watch now, for the time was growing very near. She repeated the words of the prophecy to herself again:

Where three cloud-castles stand and face the sun

There the Rainbow Princess ends her run;

Cloud-wall ahead, dark storms behind

At last the fated place you’ll find.

Down the Rainbow all is changed, there is no familiar ground;

Only when your name is spoken shall you turn yourself around

And when you see the speaker know your hero has been found.

It had been a job memorizing the prophecy; especially since the Little Bear would sometimes reword things when repeating it, saying that the future itself could shift. She also suspected that there were parts her father had never told her. She just hoped she remembered it all correctly now; the future of everything might depend on her getting all of the words exactly right.

Focus on what I’m doing now! She reminded herself as she barely evaded two more Tempests; there were a dozen behind her now, trying to close the distance, and failing – but not failing nearly so easily as she had hoped. There are many steps to victory, Father always said, but you can only take one step at a time, and anyone trying to take more will only trip over her own feet.

A crackling bolt of lightning hooked just past her ear, cutting a strand of her hair, leaving it to flutter through the cloud to the ground below. Black-tendriled octopus shapes loomed through the mist ahead; she ran up the side of the billowing clouds to her left, bounced down and literally danced her way over the Tempests’ stunned heads before they could react. She laughed again, the exhilaration of risk and of hope combining in a heady brew like the finest Cloudwine.

Before her clouds blazed brilliantly, reflecting the light of the setting sun… There!

Just to her left, she could see three mighty thunderheads in a perfect row, triple towers throwing back the light of the sun that, as she altered her course, was directly behind her – perfect conditions for a Rainbow. “And there surely are dark storms behind,” she muttered.

A clear space, wisps of cirrus trailing gossamer bridges; she paused in her flight, sent a shockwave of Faerie power across, the bridges shattering behind her, Tempests plunging downward; they would recover, but they had lost precious time. Not all of them, though…

Now the cloud-walls loomed up like the bulwark of the world, so she would need to crane her neck to see the top, and the Tempests were coming faster. “Father!” she called. “Father, now!”

A blaze of light appeared and grew before her, a mighty bridge of seven colors forming in midair, with a second slightly dimmer but no less spectacular arch above, a bridge that Polychrome danced onto mere inches ahead of the Tempests; but no creation of dark magic could set foot on the Rainbow, and the Tempests knew it all too well; with screeches and howls of frustration and rage like hurricanes at a window, the dark and twisted beings faded away, returning to the clouds and, Polychrome knew, eventually to their Master and Mistress in Oz.

But let’s not think on that, she told herself. We’re going to rescue them soon! Her feet knew the curve of the Bow as well as they knew the clouds of home, and she danced her way down the Rainbow. Things do look different… great jumbles of buildings like I’ve never seen… so many houses… streets… what’s all those things moving on them?

There wasn’t much time to study it, though, for her descent was fast, down the Rainbow nearly as fast as a stone might fall, to come to rest on a hard, black surface, a strange, exciting odor lingering in the air.

She landed in the middle of a ring of people, already staring even before she arrived. Of course. For them, the rainbow recedes ever away, can never be caught. It’s been… centuries? … since the last time Father’s Rainbow came to rest with one end fully in the mortal world, centuries since I set foot here. Ever since Faerie truly began to separate itself.

It was a bit of a jolt to realize how long it had been. She remembered that day well – the day her father had been told that the mortal and faerie worlds would separate for some unknown time. She herself had been younger – young enough to still have sisters that were more babies than girls, and as mortals counted time that would be a long time indeed.

The Rainbow lifted up and faded, only moments after her foot touched the black surface, and the murmur of the surrounding people increased. She looked back eagerly. Which one of these would recognize her? They all look so… strange.

It was a warm summer’s eve – though it still felt a bit brisk to Polychrome when she wasn’t moving – but even so, some of the women were positively indecent! Exposing the entirety of their legs and arms wasn’t enough, it seemed – they even had exposed their midriffs! And the men were not dressed that much differently. Shorts like those worn by boys, loose shirts… but no, not all of them were at all the same. She saw a couple of young women who had hair of a color that would have made more sense for Faerie, not for the mortal world. Another … man? woman?… was dressed so oddly, and wearing such makeup that Polychrome couldn’t even decide which he or she was. And black lipstick?

She also noticed that – however much things might have changed – there were some things that hadn’t. Many of the men in the circle were looking at her in a way she always thought of as “hungry”. It was sometimes annoying, sometimes useful… but one difference was the openness of the gazes. Gentlemen tried to conceal it – the Wizard, for instance, had been so subtle about it that it had taken some time before she was sure he even noticed. This was much more direct… and unsettling.

A somewhat more … normal looking man, wearing what appeared to be work pants with boots and a checkered shirt, stepped forward. “Excuse me… miss… did I just see what I think I saw?” His eyes only occasionally met her own, being busy surveying the rest of her.

She laughed. “Not being in your mind, sir, I have no idea what you think you saw, so I cannot say.” The laugh chimed around the huge black expanse, which was filled with peculiar brightly colored metallic shapes – carriages of some sort, she realized, as she saw some of them moving in and out of the black expanse. A quick glance showed that the black lot, covered with regular lines of a bright yellow, was in the center of a U-shape of buildings – storefronts, she decided. Some kind of a market area.

“She came down out of the sky with the rainbow!” someone else said, and that seemed to break a dam; suddenly all of the people surrounding her were talking, a babel of voices that was filled with words she couldn’t recognize, many disbelieving, some overjoyed, some hostile, and a few in tones she did not like at all: “…impossible, the rainbow can’t…” “…saw it, you can’t deny it, a visitation…” “…like me a piece of that…” “… hey, who you shoving?…”

The ring of faces began to contract around her, and for the first time she felt a twinge of… well, not fear exactly, but concern. The crowd had grown, they surrounded her five deep, six, more, and she wasn’t sure she could clear all of them in one leap if it got much deeper. And she had no idea where to go now that she was here; none of this was familiar in the least. She thought she was somewhere on the eastern coast of the country Dorothy called America, but she wasn’t even sure of that.

“…angel would have wings, wouldn’t she?…” “…care what she is, she’s hot…” “…people all sound crazy, and what the hell is she dressed in? Ought to call…”

Across the black lot she saw one of the carriages slow and turn in the direction of the crowd; her eyesight, closer to that of an eagle in some ways than of mere mortals, could make out the word Police on the side. I’m not sure I want to speak to their officials; do they even believe in faerie any more?

And then, from behind her, an incredulous voice said, “Polychrome?“

It was a warm, deep baritone voice; she liked it immediately, and her heart seemed to leap within her. At last!

A smile broadening on her face, she turned to see the speaker.

 

Trial By Fire – Snippet 20

Trial By Fire – Snippet 20

Trevor aimed behind, fired two last times, pushing him forward as the command section’s wider aftward surfaces rotated under him. It was a tricky maneuver. If he fired too soon, one of the sharp angles of the prow might slam into him as it completed its arc, doing so with enough force to shatter every bone in his body. Coming in late wasn’t quite so bad; in that event, Trevor would land a few meters off-center and aft of the command section, but that also meant a few more seconds of exposure. Caine squinted. The whiteness of Trevor’s suit had blended with the whiteness of the spinning wreck, obscuring the outcome of his final approach to contact.

But just before the top surface of the prow rolled out of sight, Caine glimpsed a flash of movement on its surface: two quick, wide-armed waves. The first confirmed that Trevor was safely down on the wreck; the second meant that it was now Caine’s turn to jump.

Caine clipped a waiting electric lead onto the end of the tether. He thumbed a stud on the lead’s handgrip. A short burst of high voltage current coursed through the reactive-composite tether, converting its malleable pith into a rigid core. He looped his suit’s mooring lanyard about the now-stiff line, clipped the end of the lanyard to a ring on his own utility harness, and exhaled. Time to go.

He leaned forward, pushed his feet back against the interior hatch, aligned himself so as to be parallel to the tether. Space loomed large above his head. He bit his lip hard and kicked.

The airlock walls rushed past and were gone. In their place was blackness and slowly wheeling stars–which were all at once directly overhead yet also beneath him. All at once, both he and the universe were tumbling uncontrollably. He tried to focus on the one object with a constant relative bearing: the enemy wreck. However, he was approaching it too swiftly according to his inner ear, even though he was closing far too slowly according to his dosimeter. The radiation icon became red.

He inadvertently blinked. When he reopened his eyes, it now appeared that the wreck was rolling toward him. The sudden change in perception brought up a swirl of nausea-inducing vertigo, just as the wreck’s cockpit blister started coming around again. But still no sign of Trevor. He closed his eyes and bit down harder on his lip.

When he opened his eyes, he forced himself to see the wreck as stationary and himself as approaching–and discovered that he was more than halfway down the tether. And had still not initiated the one-hundred-eighty-degree tumble which would turn him around and position him for a feet-first landing upon the wreck. Trevor was rising into sight again, making fast, angry circles with his hand.

Caine kicked forward slightly, felt his body begin to rotate backward, watched as the wreck seemed to fall down, beneath his feet–and was distracted by a glimmer of light just above his field of vision. He craned his neck to get a look at the source of brightness.

Caine started. A titanic hemisphere of white, ochre, and pale blue striations wheeled, wobbly, above his head. Whereas the slow rotation of the starfield had been modestly disorienting, the drunken oscillations of Barnard’s Star II were stupefying. The gas giant brushed the stars aside, half-filled his visor, seemed ready to swallow the module he’d jumped from like a whale’s maw poised to swallow a lone krill. The mammoth planet’s atmospheric turbulence sent whorls and spirals streaming into each other in slow motion, murky fractals eternally evolving. Silvery flickers backlit the clouds, telltale signs of lightning storms more extensive than the entirety of the Eurasian landmass. Caine swallowed, fought through a rush of vertigo so powerful that he felt he might spin down into a single, contracting point and vanish–

“Caine! Grab the tether! NOW!”

Caine started violently as Trevor’s voice blasted out of his radio receiver. He looked down past his feet. Only six meters below, the aft end of the wreck’s prow was rolling past. He choked down a rush of bitter vomit, grabbed at the tether, lost his grip, grabbed again, caught it only a palm’s width from the end. At this close range, the wreck’s roll rate seemed to have increased, with Trevor rotating closer at a fearsome speed–

–But I don’t have time to fear, or even think. I have to act.

Time slowed and the gargantuan emptiness of the universe seemed to shrink back–enough so that Caine could assess how much sway his frantic motions had imparted to the tether, could watch Trevor rotate past underneath him, and could gauge the best moment to “jump down” to the wreck. He felt more than calculated that moment and pushed off the end of the tether, bending and relaxing his knees, eyes riveted down between his feet.

Four meters, two. He kept his focus on the closest part of the wreck, scanned peripherally. There was a small angular protuberance rotating past, just to the right of him.

Contact. As his knees absorbed the shock, he felt the wreck rotating out from under his feet, trying to shove him away. Caine kept his knees loose instead of bracing them, let his body continue to sink toward the hull, felt it bump his buttocks as he leaned to the right and grabbed.

His hand closed around the protuberance he had spied: a curved bar. Probably a mooring point. He twisted in that direction, threw his left hand over to join his right on the bar. Caine felt pressure mount in his joints as the inertia of his old vector argued with the rotational force, the combined vectors tugging his body away from the wreck and turning it around in space until, finally, it relented. He checked his chrono as he pulled his body back into contact with the wreck and gathered his legs beneath him. Ninety-eight seconds since Trevor had started over. How time flies when you’re having fun.

There was a light bump against his head; Trevor had crawled over and tapped helmets. His voice was quiet, tight. “Are you okay?”

“I’m okay, now,” Caine answered, pretty sure he was telling the truth. “Let’s get going.”

Trevor nodded, and set out on a drifting crawl to the rear of the wreck’s command section, where he pointed to a small oval recess surrounding a slightly convex section of the hull. Caine felt the edges of the recess, discovered deep, wide grooves. “Airlock?”

Trevor nodded. “Might be. Look for a maintenance plate or manual access cover.”

Caine pushed himself back carefully with his right hand, then his left–and stopped; something was under that palm. It was another, much smaller oval recess with a convex interior, the center of which was pierced in a quatrefoil pattern. Caine grabbed hold, tugged: nothing. He tried turning and then pushing it; there was a moment of resistance, then a short downward release before the cover swung back easily.

Trevor was already beside him. “What have you found?”

A cruciform knob stared up at them. Trevor reached in, turned it, watched the large convex panel that was probably an airlock. No discernible change. He turned the knob again, again, again. Slowly, the airlock door began to slide aside and farther away, deeper into the hull. Trevor braced himself and began cranking the knob rapidly with both hands: the portal widened more rapidly. He nodded for Caine to lean closer; their helmets touched again.

“Take the gun. Safety off. Cover the entry while I finish opening it.”

Caine detached the weapon’s lanyard from Trevor’s harness, attached it to his own, and slid the gun out of its holster. He crawled to the edge of the opening airlock and aimed the weapon inside. His visor’s red radiation icon began to flash; they had exceeded two minutes of exposure. Not good; not good at all.

The airlock door slid away, apparently retracting along a curved pathway. When it was about half open, the movement stopped. A second later, Trevor was alongside Caine, touching helmets again. “I’m going to shine a light in and take a look. As soon as I do, you lean in with the gun. If you see anything suspicious, nail it. Understood?”

“Understood.” Caine exhaled. After tumbling through endless, enervating space, this activity was reassuringly finite and concrete.

Trevor scuttled around to the other side of the opening, activated his helmet lights, nodded to Caine, and looked over the edge. Caine leaned in with the gun on that cue.

Trevor’s lights illuminated a tiny cubicle, smaller than the airlock on their Auxiliary Command module. At the bottom was another oval portal, flanked by a modest control panel. Small lights, most of which were yellow-green, stared beady-eyed back at them from its surface. The vehicle still had some sort of power, even if it was only emergency batteries. Otherwise, the airlock was empty.

Caine looked up; Trevor pointed at himself, at Caine, and then down into the airlock. Caine nodded.

Like a snake sliding around the corner of a rock, Trevor slipped over the rim of the hatchway and down into the airlock. Caine double-checked that the pistol’s safety was off and followed.

 

Trial By Fire – Snippet 19

Trial By Fire – Snippet 19

Caine recited this one from memory: “‘Projectile velocity may be varied by altering the volume of liquid injected into the firing chamber. This feature allows the user to both reduce warhead speeds and makes the weapon significantly less destabilizing when fired in low- and zero-gee environments.’”

“Very good. Now we perform a piece-by-piece diagnostic of our two emergency suits. We can talk though our next action while we work.”

Caine swung his own suit out of the closet and began his own checks. “What action is that?”

“Boarding procedure.” Trevor holstered the sidearm.

Caine swallowed–a large, uncomfortable sensation–and began the visual inspection of his helmet. A worried expression stared back from its visor.

*   *   *

“I read an approximate volume of eight hundred fifty kiloliters,” Trevor’s voice announced in Caine’s earbud. “We have matched its pitch values. Yaw values are minimal. Roll rate is one full rotation every twenty-eight seconds. Do you confirm? Over.”

Caine squinted out the bow observation port in the ready room, just forward of the command center. The stark white enemy craft was completing one full roll around its long axis about once every half minute. “I confirm that estimate.”

“Approximate range? Over.”

Caine sighted the pistol at the wreck’s midship hull, activated its dual-purpose targeting laser, read the rear LED: “One hundred forty meters, closing rapidly.”

“Your range estimate confirms on-board ranging. Closing at two meters per second. Stand by for final retro burn.”

A series of slight tugs indicated a quick sequence of counteraccelerations. The distance between the two craft stopped decreasing, stabilizing at just under one hundred meters. Caine was suitably impressed. The Auxiliary Command module had not been designed for precision spaceflight, just gross corrections to its own vector. And without Trevor’s piloting skills–well, no reason to think about that. Not unless one was eager to contemplate certain death.

“I read vectors and two axes of tumble as matched. Confirm?”

“Confirmed. Nice driving.”

“Not as nice as I’d like. Every ten meters is at least three seconds of exposure when we jump across.”

“What’s the current rate of exposure?”

“Thirty REM per minute. Nice tanning weather.”

Caine’s stomach contracted. “What about the exo craft? Are you reading active rad shields?”

“Negative. No EM grid. Do you observe any lights or sign of activity? Over.”

Caine studied the craft more closely. The wedge-shaped prow had taken damage; it looked as though its chin had been chopped off. Good shooting, Hazawa. An ovate, slightly recessed, jet-black slab dominated what Caine took to be the upper surface. A hull-flush cockpit blister? Perhaps, but no sign of life in or about what Caine mentally labeled as the command section.

The craft’s amidships belly rolled into view, revealing two parallel rows of white, oval containers: fuel tankage. No sign of damage, but no sign of activity. The aft propulsion system was also slightly easier to examine, now that the prow was out of the way. Toroidal fusion pods and thruster bells were crowded atop one another, but there was less apparatus for gimballing than on a comparable human craft. The enemy evidently relied more on magnetic bias to alter the vector of their thrust. But again, no light, no movement, not even any signs of damage.

“No sign of activity,” Caine reported. “No sign of damage other than to the command module comprising the prow.”

“What about sensor clusters?”

“None observable.”

“Points of embarkation?”

“Not sure. There are a number of surface irregularities on the sides of the command module, but I can’t even guess at their purpose. Can you get a better look with our external camera?”

“Negative. If I zoom in, the wreck’s roll produces a blurred image. If I zoom out, I lose resolution. Hobson’s choice. So any greater detail is going to require eyeballing it up close. Which means it’s time for a walk around the neighborhood. I’m removing my intercom jack.”

There was a sharp electronic snick and then nothing. Caine activated his suit’s radio, sealed his helmet, and leaned forward for a final, and better, look outside. To the left, Barnard’s Star was a small, bright red disk. To the right, the alien wreck rolled lazily. Falling behind, almost completely hidden by the bulk of the Auxiliary Command module, was the arc of the small gas giant. Strange, how serene it all looks–

The head’s up display briefly painted an orange radiation icon on the inside of the helmet visor; Caine backed away from the window and leaned off to the side. Ten minutes of external exposure would cause profound sickness. Two times that was probably fatal.

Another orange light came on, but this one was next to the aft passageway: the first seal on the internal airlock door had been unlocked. Caine exited the ready room, headed aft, found Trevor releasing the primary hatch seal. The orange light became red. They entered the airlock.

After dogging the hatch behind them, Trevor leaned over until the top half of his visor touched Caine’s. Trevor’s voice was muffled and distant. “Last suit check. All green?”

“All green.”

Trevor nodded, tapped the red button on the wall. Caine heard a low rushing sound, somewhere in between a cascade of water and burst of released gas: the airlock was being depressurized.

“Give me a procedure review, Caine.”

“I wait until you reach the target and send a hand signal confirming that you have made rendezvous and that I am cleared to remotely stabilize the line. I then jump over using a line-lanyard. I maintain radio silence throughout, to be violated only in the event of emergency or upon your initiation of broadcast.”

“How much time do we have to make our jump?”

“One minute each. Any longer and our cumulative radiation exposure becomes–er, unpromising.”

Trevor nodded behind his visor. “Okay, let’s go.” He turned to face the door, opened an access panel, depressed a red handle, held it there.

The red lights flashed rapidly for three seconds and then the door started to move aside noiselessly, as if presaging the strange, ghostly silence of outer space. Or of death. Caine bit his savaged lip, used the pain to control his nerves. A widening slice of blackness and stars opened before them. Trevor drew the Unitech ten-millimeter, attached its lanyard to a ring on his utility harness, and leaned forward, allowing his feet to rise behind him. When his soles met the interior hatch at their backs, he reached out with both hands, braced himself against the edges of the now-fully open outer hatch. He contracted backward into a squatting position, legs gathered under him as he attached his tether to a mooring ring on the airlock wall. If Trevor mistimed his jump, then he’d have problems landing on the bow module, which would mean more exposure. Which in turn would mean–Caine decided not to pursue that line of thought any further.

Trevor kicked off from the inner hatch and into open space, the line unfurling in his wake. Caine moved to a position near the door to get a better view.

Trevor was already fifteen meters away and had rolled over on his back, pistol in hand. He aimed back along the path of his jump, then shifted his aim slightly above the rim of the auxiliary command module. Caine saw the muzzle flash briefly, followed immediately by a noticeable increase in the speed with which Trevor was moving away.

His course-corrective shot had apparently been a good one; he was now headed directly for the enemy craft. He somersaulted very slowly to face in that direction, his legs out in front of him. The slack eased out of the tether as Trevor passed the halfway mark–and as Caine’s heads-up display painted the now-familiar trefoil radiation symbol above the scene.

Trevor’s forward progress started to diminish, suggesting that he had now fired the ten-millimeter to both kill his forward tumble and counteraccelerate, easing himself into a slower approach. Caine checked the small green chrono at the extreme left of his HUD. Elapsed time: fifteen seconds. Coming up on five REM whole body exposure for Trevor, probably about a third that for himself.

Trevor drifted closer to the wreck as the broad top of the prow began rolling around toward him once again. He had uncoupled from the tether: dangerous but necessary. Landing on the rolling hull with the tether firmly attached would have snapped the line like desiccated string and sent Trevor spinning off into space.

 

Paradigms Lost – Chapter 09

Paradigms Lost – Chapter 09

Chapter 9: Join Me for a Bite?

It is an immutable law of nature in any business that just as you go to hang up the “Closed” sign, the phone will ring or a customer walk in. It gets to the point that you automatically hesitate for a few seconds before finally turning the lock and setting the security system, not because you’ve forgotten anything, but because you’re giving the inevitable a chance to make its appearance less painful through preparation.

This does not fool the gods, however, so just as I stopped hesitating and turned the key, the phone rang. I gave my usual mild curse and picked up the phone. “Wood’s Information Service, Jason Wood speaking.”

“Ah, Mr. Wood. It is good to hear your voice again.”

There was no way I could forget that deep, resonant voice with its undefinable accent. “Mr. Domingo! This is… a surprise.”

I hadn’t heard from Mr. Domingo in several weeks, ever since we’d finished the Great Vampire Cover-up, and hadn’t expected to ever hear from the blood-drinking gentleman again.

“No doubt. I was wondering if you would do me the honor of joining me for dinner — in the purely normal sense — sometime this week.”

Well, now, there was a poser of a question. And given that he obviously had more than enough people to call around and arrange his schedule, it must be rather important to him if he was calling me personally. “Ummm,” I said smoothly. “Might I ask why?”

To my surprise, he, also, hesitated for a moment. “There are several matters I would like to discuss, but at least one of them was touched on during your first visit to my home. In a sense, you might consider this a business meeting.”

“I’m aware of certain elements of your business, Mr. Domingo,” I said, trying not to sound overly cold despite my distaste for drug-runners. “Without meaning any undue offense, I don’t think that I could be of much assistance, given certain other elements of my own.” Such as wanting to stay on the right side of the law, for instance.

I was startled to hear a soft chuckle. “Would you be willing to take my word for it that you would find any business proposal I would make to be neither overly onerous nor morally reprehensible to you?”

I considered that. “As a matter of fact… yes, I guess I would. All other things aside, you strike me as a man who takes his word very seriously.”

“Your perceptions are accurate. Can I take that to mean you will accept my invitation?”

“Now that you’ve gotten my curiosity up? You’d have a hard time keeping me away. I can’t manage it tonight, but tomorrow night or Friday would do.”

“Excellent. Tomorrow night it is, then. I shall tell Morgan to expect you at eight o’clock. Have you a preference for a menu?”

What the hell, I knew he wasn’t hurting for money. “Since you’re buying, I have a fondness for fresh lobster and shrimp.”

“Noted. My chef rarely has a chance to show off; I shall let him know someone will be coming who can appreciate his work, as he has himself a preference for seafood dishes.”

“Great. Um, should I bring anything with me, this being partly business?”

“For this meeting, I think just your mind will suffice. If we reach a significant agreement, then we shall go into the more formal details.”

“Gotcha. Okay, see you at eight then.”

“I shall be looking forward to it. Good-bye, Mr. Wood.”

“Good-bye, Mr. Domingo.”

I stared at the phone for several minutes afterwards. “It appears I have an interview with a vampire.”

 

The Savior – Snippet 02

The Savior – Snippet 02

Which meant that there was a need for such large units standing watch here in Ingres, the less populated district that lay between the districts of Lindron and Treville. Redlander barbarians who wouldn’t set foot in Treville, at least in the past eight years after their total defeat at the Battle of the Canal, had shifted their raiding to Ingres.

“Of course, anybody who’d take on an army of Goldies would have to be crazy in any district,” another of the sergeants put in. Goldies was the familiar term for the Guardian Corps, whose colors were gold and tan.

“Or desperate,” Abel said. He took another sip of the cider and discovered that it had cooled enough to drink. He tipped the cup back and drained it. It was a bit burnt from sitting over the fire too long, but had a familiar and welcome taste from his days as a Treville Scout.

One of the other sergeants looked up and held a dipper full of cider from the pot that was boiling over the fire. “Refill, Major?” he asked.

Swiiiish.

A movement that was not wind through the barley. It came from somewhere off to the side of them.

Silverstein grunted in pain, and dropped the ladle, the cider hissing as it hit the fire.

A crossbow bolt protruded from his neck.

Crackle of barley. Someone out there in the darkness. More than one.

Multiple hostiles at thirty paces north-northeast, reported Center.

Get down, lad! Raj shouted in Abel’s mind.

The instincts of his dozen years as a Scout kicked in, and Abel dove for the ground. He immediately went into a roll to pull his musket around to the front, and ended the movement lying prone, his face staring into the darkness beyond the fire ring. He could see nothing, nothing at all.

Dust take it, I’ve been staring into the thrice-damned fire and lost my night vision.

Whiiiisk!

He might not be able to see, but he knew that sound. Arrowflight.

Whiiisk! Whiiisk!

The unmistakable thunk of more arrows hitting human flesh.

No, not normal arrows. Too high-pitched.

You were correct before in your assessment, said Center. They are crossbow bolts.

Cries of pain from two other men at the campfire. Abel glanced back over his shoulder, again compromising his night vision. Silverstein was down, grasping at his neck. One of the other sergeants rose up and pawed at his face for a moment, then his arms went limp and he pitched forward into the fire. The other hopped around clutching at his leg. It was too dark to see exactly what was going on, but Abel figured there was a bolt lodged there in his thigh.

With a cry of anger, Silverstein yanked the bolt from his neck.

“Bloody hell!” he cried, and ran for the nearest stack of rifles. Before he could get there, three more bolts caught him in the chest and legs. Silverstein collapsed in front of the musket stand, his legs twitching.

Where are they? Abel thought-spoke. Give me a direction!

As stated, to the north-northeast, Center replied calmly.

Thrice-damn it, Abel thought. How am I supposed to know which way is east in this black field?

Churchill’s to your rear, man, and she’s in the west, said Raj’s deep voice. You’re facing east. Angle to your left.

The others of the platoon had heard the sergeant’s cry. Several started up from their bedrolls and stood — and a couple got crossbow bolts in the back for their trouble. There was moaning and cursing all around.

The fallen sergeant had rolled out of the fire, and it cast its light once again.

“Sentries!” Abel called out to the edge of the darkness. “Keep your back to the flames!”

He wondered if there was anyone out there to hear him. The ambushers may have taken the sentries out first. Or they may not have known about them. Abel found one of the wider paths leading away from the fire and crawled down it as fast as he could. After reaching the edge of camp, he turned to the platoon and called back. “Stay down and get your rifles.”

He crawled several more paces into the waving barley. It was only then that he stood up, looked around quickly for any sight of the company sentries, and ducked back down. He crawled another few paces, then popped up again.

There! The silhouette of a man not ten paces away. Could be an ambusher. Abel made his way toward the form as silently as possible. As he approached, he saw the man was facing out and staring into the darkness, moonlight silvering his shoulders. One of the armed sentries, then. Abel let out a low whistle, and the man turned.

“Goldie approaching!” Abel called out in a low but clear voice.

“W-who is it?”

“Dashian,” Abel answered. The last thing he wanted to do was announce his rank to the darkness. He crawled closer.

“P-password?” asked the frightened sentry.

Abel had assigned the night’s password himself.

“Carnadon Man,” he said in a rasping whisper. He didn’t want to give the call sign to the ambushers. Then he spoke louder. “Get down. You’re making yourself a target.”

“Where are they?” the sentry said, and looked around wildly.

“They’ll find you if you keep talking!” Abel said more loudly. “Get down, corpsman!”

The sentry came to his senses quickly — he was a Guardian, after all. He sank to a knee beside Abel. And, despite his shakiness, the sentry did not fail to notice the command sash slung over Abel’s shoulder, although he couldn’t count the knots in the darkness.

“What’s the plan, Colonel?”

There’s an experienced soldier. He knows when in doubt to use the highest feasible rank.

“Major,” Abel said. “First of all, don’t look back at the fire. Keep your night eyes. I’ll lead us to those bastards, but we need to get in the other pickets if we can.”

“There’s a rally plan,” said the sentry. “But Staff Sergeant usually gives the order.”

“Staff Sergeant is down,” said Abel. “Call those pickets to us.”

“Yes, sir.”

The sentry stood up, put a thumb and forefinger together and placed them both in his mouth. He took a breath and blew hard and long. A piercing whistle erupted from the man, as loud as any sound Abel had heard coming from a human before. The sentry followed the long whistle with two shorter bursts. Then he quickly sank back down into the barley beside Abel.

“They’ll know it’s me and where to look, sir,” he said. “I’m standing east quadrant.”

Within moments, the other sentries were with them. Abel ordered them all down.

A crunching noise coming from camp. Abel turned, trying to shield his eyes from the firelight. He needn’t have bothered. Human silhouettes blocked the light. Several of the men behind had found their weapons and were walking toward them through the barley.

“Stay down, you dickless daks!” Abel shouted back at them. “That’s an order! Stay down until we –”

Whiiisk!

Another round of crossbow bolts.

Thunk. Thunk. Thunk. Bolts met flesh. Flesh gave way.

Screams in the night. A muffled cry of anguish. Then the rest of the approaching men quickly dropped on their own accord.

They’re down, but they’ll still have itchy trigger fingers, Raj said. Gold on gold fire waiting to happen, and muzzle flash to blind everyone.

“Mind your caps,” Abel shouted to them all. “Hammers down.”

He turned back to the northeast and scouted the terrain ahead.

Sonic spectrum separation complete, Center said. Running steps discernable. The ambushing group is moving away rapidly toward the rise in the direction you are facing.

Abel gazed over the tops of the barley plants. There. A low hill. He’d seen it in the daylight and had briefly pondered why it was so much higher than the surrounding terrain — he’d deliberately kept his thoughts from Center in order not to receive a geology lesson. It was a pile of rocks about a fieldmarch high. He figured the stones had been cleared from this barley land over hundreds of years and piled up in a central midden.

He stood up and spoke to the sentries. “It’s all right now. Get up. That low hill to the right of Levot — that’ll be their fallback point.”

“Yes, sir,” answered the sentry who had whistled. “Do you hear them, sir?”

Abel turned to him. He couldn’t resist. “Don’t you? They might as well be a herd of daks,” said Abel.

“Uh…no, sir.”

Don’t tease the lad, Abel. There is nothing for him to hear.

Abel put a hand to the sentry’s shoulder.

“It’s just my Scout’s ear,” he said, giving the guy a smile to put him at ease. He turned to the other sentries. “We’ll doubletime for that hill. Echelon right, keep your sightlines. No verbal unless necessary.” He turned to one of the other sentries. “You, what’s your name?” He couldn’t see faces in the darkness except for brief flashes of the eyes, but the Guardian was sitting in a relaxed position and seemed less rattled than the others.

“Corporal Messerschmidt, sir,” the sentry replied.

A Cascader. Son of a Bruneberg tanner, if he had the right man.

Correct. He was sent south from the Bruneberg selection program two years ago.

“Messerschmidt, go back and get the platoon in order. You may be the closest thing we have to a working sergeant. Bring them up behind us.”

 

Trial By Fire – Snippet 18

Trial By Fire – Snippet 18

Chapter Ten

Adrift off Barnard’s Star 2 C

Caine double-checked his survey results and sighed. So our survival depends upon my skill as a trash-scrounging sensor jockey. Great.

Trevor checked the tactical plot, leaned back, removed his helmet, and powered up the life-support systems. His words rode plumes of mist up into the chill air. “Enemy hull now crowding three gees, passing five light-seconds range–and good riddance.” Trevor swiveled toward Caine. “Time to pick through the junk. What looks best?”

Caine scanned down the list of possible salvage targets, now fallen off to less than fifty, and compared apparent mass with total thrust required for intercept. “Only one promising target remaining. This one.” He pointed. “It’s a fast mover and near the leading edge of the debris field.”

“Is that still in range?”

“Barely. We have twenty-two minutes left to initiate an intercept burn.”

Trevor looked at the fuel numbers, shook his head. “Damn, that’s an expensive intercept, Caine. We’ll burn up all of our primary thrust fuel, and we’ll have to dip into our station-keeping fuel by ten percent.”

“I know it’s expensive, but take a look at the mass and volume estimates of the other remaining targets.” Caine pointed to the depressing data. None of them were likely to be larger than six meters in their longest dimension. Most of them were probably fairly light as well. “Just hull fragments, I’d guess.”

Trevor’s misty breath fogged the computer screens in front of him. “Any possibility for new targets, ones we haven’t seen yet?” Without commenting, Caine displayed the statistics on wreckage density. Trevor saw the sharply diminishing values, then nodded soberly. “Looks like this vein is just about tapped out.”

“My thoughts exactly. So what now?”

“Now we take another look at our last, best hope, see what we can learn before we have to start maneuvering for intercept. I want to make sure it’s not another dry hole.”

Caine swallowed quietly. And if it is? Then what? Spend two days staring at the walls, waiting to slip finally, fatally, into anoxia? Or assuming they found some way to breathe, waiting for the excess rems–the ones that the EM grid and shielding didn’t stop–to build and the sickness to gather like a sour oil slick in the pits of their empty stomachs?

The sensors produced their first image of the target wreck upon which they were pinning their diminishing hopes of survival: a slowly winking patch of brightness at the center of the screen. Caine enhanced the scan sensitivity to maximum. The object’s reflected light patterns might allow the computer to estimate its structural configuration and yield a better mass estimate.

Trevor read off the results as they appeared on the screen. “Craft type and class: unknown. Mass estimate: 2455 tons, plus or minus 3 percent. Estimate confidence: 98.2 percent.” He frowned, then typed: “detail configuration.”

The screen scribed a three-axis grid. An outline formed swiftly at its center: a small wedge-shaped prow, a midsection of oblong bulges, and a confused collection of sharp angles to the rear. The confidence level indicator for the basic outline showed eighty-five percent. That initial level began increasing rapidly as planar surfaces started shading in, first in green–the high-confidence planes–then orange, and finally red: successively less certain projections. Caine and Trevor watched the object go through rotational analyses several times before they looked at each other.

Caine cleared his throat. “As a command grade officer in the USSF, it is my responsibility to be able to identify any human-built craft from a single cross-section, taken from any angle.” He looked back at the rotating image on the screen. “I am not familiar with this design, Captain.”

“I am, Commander,” Trevor replied in a tight voice. “That’s the small craft that was approaching the cutter, the one Hazawa hit with the PDF battery.”

Caine took a deep breath. “Do we make intercept?”

Trevor shrugged. “Do we have a choice? Enemy or not, that wreckage is the only chance we have of extending our survival time. If we’re lucky, its engines might still be intact, and they’ve got to be at least ten times more powerful than ours. That will give us enough thrust and endurance to angle back toward The Pearl, find if anything is left, maybe in the hidden caches, see if we can piece together some way to survive.”

“Assuming we can find a way to control the exosapients’ systems.”

“We’ll find a way, or we’ll reroute control through to our own computer. Otherwise, we’re on a short countdown to death from either asphyxiation, radiation exposure, or dehydration.” Trevor unstrapped, pushed off and drifted to the command center’s utility locker. He opened it, reached in and produced a Unitech ten-millimeter pistol. He unholstered it and started a crisp and professional inspection of the handgun. Caine raised his eyebrows slightly. “Are you expecting a welcoming committee?”

“No. But, in case I’m wrong…well, I hate going to a party empty-handed.”

Caine felt his palms grow cool. He watched the computer’s graphical representation of the unfamiliar craft spin, roll, and somersault through its three-dimensioned dissections.

Trevor reholstered the weapon, strapped back in. With a single touch to the dynamically reconfigurable screen, he wiped away the current, sensor-optimized setting and brought up the piloting set. “All systems checked and committed to computer control. Commencing intercept.”

Trevor started firing the plasma thrusters in sustained bursts, angling the module into a trajectory that would eventually allow them to stern-chase the Arat Kur wreck. “Velocity will be matched automatically, but the final eight thousand meters of approach will have to be manual.” His gaze continued to shuttle between the trajectory data and engine controls.

“How long?” asked Caine.

“Of this? Another two or three minutes. Then we coast for eight hours, at which point we go hands-on for a few sweaty minutes while we match its vector and tumble values. Then we suit up and check our gear.”

“Our gear?”

“Our weapons,” Trevor clarified, staring at him “We are going to be boarding an enemy craft, you know.”

Caine stared back. “Yeah. And you know I’m probably going to be more of a hindrance than a help. Like you said, I’m a make-believe soldier.”

“That was obligatory hazing, Caine. Besides, you’ve been shot at more today than any newb has been in the last twenty years. And as much as it pains me to say it, you showed some good weapon-handling aptitudes.”

“Mostly for heavy weapons, though.”

“Yeah, I noticed the reports. You either had one hell of a run of beginner’s luck or you’ve got a sixth sense for those weapons. But today, the weapon of choice is the handgun. How’d you do with those?”

Caine shook his head. “Not so good.”

“Well, today is your lucky day. You get to work on improving that skill.” Trevor drew the Unitech ten-millimeter, held it directly in front of Caine’s eyes. “Are you familiar with this weapon?”

Caine could not bring himself to answer yes “Read about it. Live-fired about fifteen rounds from one during the second week of training.”

“Okay, then we take it from the top.” Trevor swiftly field-stripped the handgun, laid each piece on the console in front of Caine. “Reassemble and review.”

You’ve got to be kidding. But Caine picked up the receiver, reached for the bolt, and dredged up already half-forgotten memories of a weapons-familiarization class that he had aced only two weeks earlier. “Unitech ten-millimeter selective-fire automatic handgun. This weapon uses a binary mix of reactant liquids as a scalable propellant. The two reactants are stored in separate canisters inside each magazine, which contains thirty projectiles. The standard load is fifteen antipersonnel, and fifteen armor-piercing projectiles.” And the recitation and assembly went on until Caine checked the action, secured the safety and handed the rebuilt weapon back to Trevor, butt first.

Trevor looked at it, then at Caine. “Forgetting something?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Think again. EVA ops require special systems.” Trevor took the weapon, pointed out several small nodules along the weapons frame and receiver. “Thermal regulation studs. They control the temperature of the weapon’s primary metal components to ensure constant operating temperatures across crucial interfacing surfaces, such as breech-to-barrel. Necessity in spaceside operations where thermal variations can be extreme.

“Also, the position of the trigger guard is adjustable, as is the tensile setting of the trigger spring. These two features allow the weapon to be reconfigured for a bigger handprint.” Trevor unlocked the trigger guard and pulled it forward until it almost reached the end of the barrel. “Looks odd, but it’s the only way you can use it if you’re wearing one of these.” Trevor wriggled his right hand back into one of the emergency suit gloves. He picked up the pistol with that hand; the weapon almost disappeared within the cumbersome gauntlet. “The bigger handprint allows you to fire and reload the weapon normally. But the most important EVA feature is–?”