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Cauldron of Ghosts – Snippet 08

Cauldron of Ghosts – Snippet 08

Chapter 7

The alley below was vacant, except for the usual piles of debris. Cary Condor removed her finger and let the curtain covering the window fall back in place. It was an old-style material curtain — a piece of decorated fabric — rather than a modern electronic screen. There was a screen in place also, and Cary flipped the switch to turn it back on.

“Are you really sure this is necessary?” she asked, as she turned away from the window. “It seems… pretty unsanitary.”

“The curtain?” Stephanie Moriarty looked up from the table where she was working at a portable computer. “You’d be surprised how effective a simple material block is to a lot of surveillance techniques. There’s more to the world than electrons. Besides, how is it any more unsanitary than everything else in this dump?”

Cary didn’t have a good answer for that, beyond I’m used to crappy clothes and bedding. So she shifted her objection to the curtain onto other grounds. “If somebody comes in here on a raid it’ll be a dead giveaway that we’re trying to hide something. Nobody in this day and age, not even in Mesa’s seccie quarters, uses antiques like this.”

“Oh, for — ” Moriarty took a deep breath. “Cary, if ‘somebody’ — and, gee whiz, who might that be other than security goons? — comes busting in here on a raid, explaining a curtain will be the least of our problems.”

There came a hoarse chuckle from the figure lying on a bed in one of the corners of the room. “Probably won’t be any kind of problem at all. On account of we’ll be in little bitty pieces two seconds after they come in. Both of you and what’s left of me.”

Karen Steve Williams raised her head from the pillow enough to gaze down at her legs. Her non-existent legs, below the knees. “I try to look on the bright side. At least my damn feet would stop itching.”

Moriarty’s mouth twisted into a wry smile. “Be careful what you wish for. If your no-longer-there feet can still itch, how do you know that your no-longer-there body won’t itch too, once you’re dead?”

Karen chuckled again. “Talk about a fix! Spend all of eternity trying to scratch a non-existent itch with non-existent hands.”

Cary gave her two companions an exasperated look. She did not share their amusement with silly whimsies. “Once you’re dead, you’re dead. Not there. Your body isn’t non-existent, you are. Itching is irrelevant. It’s like saying the color yellow won’t be in harmony any longer.”

“Spoilsport.” That came from Karen, whose head was back on the pillow and whose eyes were closed again. She didn’t have much energy these days. Cary didn’t think she’d live for many more weeks. The injuries the young woman had sustained making her escape — hair-breadth, hair-raising, barely-in-the-nick-of-time escape — from Mesa’s security forces after the nuclear detonation at Green Pines had been horrible.

The amputated legs weren’t even the worst of it. Karen was also missing her spleen as well as one of her kidneys and most of her liver. And there’d been some damage to her brain, too. She sometimes had trouble talking and her vision was impaired.

More to get her mind off the depressing subject of Karen’s medical condition than out of any real interest, Cary moved toward the table where Stephanie was sitting. “Any news?” she asked.

Moriarty jabbed an accusatory finger at the computer screen. “This is official Mesan news, remember? Better known as the Fantasy Channel.”

Cary ignored the sarcastic remark and leaned over her comrade’s shoulder to get a better look at the screen. The portable computer was another antique. Its virtual screen expansion had collapsed a few weeks earlier so their view was limited to the screen’s physical dimensions. Which were all of twenty-five by fifteen centimeters. It was almost like looking through a keyhole.

Cary now knew what a keyhole was, because the small apartment they’d rented actually had one as a supplement to the usual security devices. There was no key, though, which didn’t matter since the lock was broken anyway. Their landlord, as shrewd and grasping as such people usually were in slums, had quickly gauged their level of desperation, divided it by his equally-quick gauge of their resources, and provided them with the smallest and most rundown unit in his building for a price they could just barely afford.

At that, they’d been lucky. There’d been rumors of a robbery gone badly wrong in a nearby district just a day before they’d approached the landlord, and he’d assumed they were what was left of the criminal gang. It hadn’t occurred to him that their battered appearance and the two badly injured members of their party had anything to do with the Green Pines incident.

The one male in their four-person group, Firouz Howt, had died two days later. Since disposing of the body themselves would be very dangerous, they’d decided the landlord was the lesser risk. That assessment had proven correct. He’d disposed of the body for the value of the organs and tissues, and charged them nothing.

So, he’d seen the wounds that had finally taken Firouz’s life, and had had no trouble recognizing them as injuries sustained in a gunfight. The landlord had a couple of visible scars himself that showed he was no stranger to violence. But that had simply confirmed his supposition that they were criminals. And not very competent ones, so he wasn’t too nervous at having them around.

That had been just about the only good luck they’d had since Green Pines, but it had been enough to keep them alive. If they could somehow come up with the money, they might even be able to get Karen the medical treatments she needed to stay alive.

The landlord had offered to be of assistance there also, as what he called their “manager” but what he meant was their pimp. Cary and Stephanie had turned him down. Partly because the idea of becoming prostitutes was repellent, partly because it would be dangerous, but mostly — being honest — because they couldn’t possibly raise the sums necessary in that manner.

The news being carried on the channel Stephanie had turned to was the usual fare these days. Fifty percent, a relentless drumbeat on the ever-present danger of Audubon Ballroom terrorist activity; twenty percent, a relentless drumbeat on the also ever-present if not quite as fearsome danger of criminal activity; ten percent, bits and pieces involving official Mesan politics; ten percent, bits and pieces of galactic news. The remaining ten percent was distributed fairly evenly between quirky human interest stories, natural disasters — those were mostly of human origin given Mesa’s very mild climate; fires and such — and fashions.

Yes, fashions. Most of which could only be afforded by a tiny number of seccies.

Calling it “the Fantasy Channel,” therefore, was an exaggeration. If you set aside the barrages on so-called “terrorism,” anyway. Most of that was made up out of whole cloth. But the other half of the news wasn’t fabricated — although the Mesa authorities censored quite a bit of it. The problem wasn’t so much was what said as what was not said. You might be told, for instance — with perfect accuracy — that a given town had been subjected to flooding or an earthquake or some other natural disaster. What wouldn’t be mentioned was that the flood/earthquake/whatever had struck the seccie part of the town and due to substandard construction/corrupt business practices/overcrowding/whatever there had been considerable loss of life.

 

The Forever Engine – Snippet 48

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

 

The Forever Engine – Snippet 48

 

Gordon smiled for the first time.

“Yes, there is that. Very well, we will march to Kratovo today, and then we will decide how to proceed after that.”

The Bavarians weren’t happy, but then who was? The important thing was they marched, and they kept their muttered complaints in German. Less than an hour through the woods brought us to the outskirts of Pribojska Spa. The town clung to the sides of a small valley and the mass of the mountains rose abruptly behind it, like a backdrop, covered with forests the color of dusty jade. The grain of the mountains ran from northwest to southeast, and our road to the east would take us along the foothills for a mile or two and then up and across.

A bubbling spring near the road let us replenish our water without having to enter the town. There were still people in Pribojska Spa. I caught occasional movement in a window, a door moving slightly to give someone a view, but the locals kept their distance. We weren’t in uniform, but we didn’t look like we came from around here. We looked armed and dangerous. The town was large enough to at least have police, but they were either gone or hiding as well. In a way, this was good for morale. It was spooky, but the feeling someone was afraid of us made the men feel more confident.

The road meandered, following the increasingly rocky and uneven foothills. Another hour of marching took us to Banja, a narrow string of whitewashed stucco houses, barns, and outbuildings sprinkled along either side of the road. We were greeted by a musket shot at two hundred yards — obviously a warning rather than an attempt to do genuine injury.

“What do you think?” Gordon asked.

The men had spread out into a skirmish line, easily finding cover in the broken ground, and so far they had followed the order not to return fire. The Bavarians stirred restlessly, though, eager for a fight. No, they were eager for an easy fight, a cheap shot at redemption for having run the previous night. A ramshackle mountain village defended by some guy with a rusty musket probably sounded like the ticket.

“I think we skirt the village to the north. If whoever’s in the village tries something, we’ll see it coming, have the high ground.”

“The Bavarians seem anxious to prove themselves. I wonder if it might not help things if we give them their heads.”

I avoided looking at him. He wouldn’t have liked what he’d have seen in my eyes.

“Worst case, there are a dozen armed men in there who tear the Bavarians apart once they get in close, kill or cripple half of them and break the spirit of the rest. Best case? A bunch of murdered villagers, probably a few rapes. Or maybe that’s the worst case and a bunch of dead Bavarians is better. Except they’re your men. It gets complicated.”

Gordon took off his cork helmet, scratched his scalp, and squinted up at the rocky ridge north of the village.

“You think you’re so bloody superior,” he said after a moment.

“Next time I tell you a story, I’ll make sure there are butterflies and kittens in it.”

He glared at me but said nothing.

We climbed the slope and made our way past Banja. The Bavarians grumbled until we got to a promontory with a good view down at the place. I called O’Mara and Melzer over and we squatted there on the granite, picking out the barricades by some of the walled gardens, the groups of two or three armed men moving from house to house, keeping us under observation. It wouldn’t have been the easy fight it looked like from outside. That gave the Bavarians something to think about.

Half an hour later, we scrambled back down the ridge and returned to the road. The path was straighter after Banja, but after a mile it began climbing steadily and conversation died away. Gordon kept up a good pace, so he had a good set of legs and lungs, but the Marines were showing signs of wear.

“Tell me . . . a story . . . about . . . your daughter,” Gabrielle said beside me between puffs for air.

I though for a moment and then told her, my story broken into the same respiratory data packets as her request.

“Little girls look up to their older male brothers and cousins, sometimes hero-worship them a little. When Sarah was about eight, we were at a family picnic. Her cousin Rudy — he was about twelve then — came over and said, ‘Hey, Sarah, go over and pinch Joey on the butt. It’ll really embarrass him.’ Joey was a friend of Rudy’s, not family.”

“What did Sarah do?”

“She looked up at him and said, ‘Forget it, Rudy. I’m not the clown in your circus.’”

Gabrielle smiled.

Telling that story always made me smile, too, filled me with a warm feeling, a glow, but here it just left me cold and tight in the chest.

We walked in silence.

“I have no family memories,” she said after a while. “Thank you for sharing yours. Family is so important to people, I see this all the time. It gives great comfort, does it not?”

Not always.

***

With the setting sun at our backs we trudged up the steep grade. Gordon called regular rest stops, but I saw some of the Marines having a hard time getting back up again after the breaks. Gabrielle wasn’t carrying as heavy a load as most of the rest of us, but with her shotgun and ammunition, it was pretty close. She was tiring, but so was I, so were all of us. It was a hard march. She didn’t show signs of weakening, though. Nothing wrong with her legs.

There’s a reason physical conditioning is so important. Soldiers have to do things like march for hours up a mountainside with a full pack and still do their job. Their job includes staying mentally alert, keeping their eyes open, thinking about what is around them and what it means, and that’s really hard if you’ve burned through all your energy reserves and are staggering along, using all your concentration to just put one foot in front of the other.

So that’s how we walked into the ambush.

It was pretty slick, as ambushes go. They caught us where the road leveled for a stretch. The right side dropped down and away at a shallow angle, a rocky field without much cover. A sheer embankment rose to the left, about two meters tall, with boulders and scattered scrub above that — excellent cover and hard to get at, on top of that steep cut.

A voice called out in a Slavic language from ahead of us, from a cluster of rocks near the road. As soon as it did, a dozen rifles appeared to our left from the brush and rocks above the embankment, and when we looked there a dozen more appeared to our front, around the rocks — a perfect L-shaped ambush.

“He says to throw down our arms,” Gabrielle said beside me, her voice shaking with fear.

He yelled again, more insistently. I looked around, but they had us cold. No cover to our right, no real way to rush the ambush site to our left because of the embankment, no way to do so to our front except in single file, raked by fire from our flank.

“Gordon,” I yelled. “he says to drop our weapons. We better do it.”

“What language?” I asked Gabrielle.

“Serbian.”

Son o

 

Cauldron of Ghosts – Snippet 07

Cauldron of Ghosts – Snippet 07

“Yeah, they’re still mad that Haven restarted the war with Manticore before the ink on our mutual defense treaty had barely dried.” He shrugged. “On the other hand, because we made no effort to get them to join the hostilities, they aren’t that mad. Certainly not enough to take the risks involved in producing a major rupture with us. So, everyone agreed to one of the time-honored diplomatic code messages. ‘You don’t get an ambassador, you louses. Just a high commissioner etc., etc. So there.’ I think that’s aimed more at the Star Kingdom than us.”

“Star Empire,” Sharon corrected him. She ran fingers through her hair. Short hair, these days. She’d dyed it a nice auburn color since he’d seen her last and cut it back quite a bit. Truth be told, he preferred her hair longer. But that was an age-old tug of war between men and women that men invariably lost once a relationship congealed. Yuri might not be the sharpest pencil in the box when it came to romantic relationships, but he wasn’t obtuse enough to venture into that mine field.

“I think you’re probably right about Manticore,” she said. “The Erewhonese love their subtle ploys and gestures. ‘See? We made it real clear to Haven that they’re in the dog house, the rotters.’ I’m not sure how much good it’ll do them, though.”

“Might be quite a bit. The Star Empire’s current prime minister is as sophisticated as they come and he’s probably familiar with Erewhon’s somewhat peculiar mores. And for sure and certain the Winton dynasty will pay attention. They’re no slouches themselves when it comes to hints and veiled messages. You wouldn’t think a royal lineage would have that much in common with a long line of gangsters, but there it is.”

“Ha! If Victor we’re here, he’d say they were cut from exactly the same cloth — so why shouldn’t they speak the same patois?”

That brought a few seconds’ worth of silence. Then Yuri sighed and leaned back in his chair. “I still don’t like the basta — man, but I have to admit I was glad to find out he was still alive. It’s like the old saying: ‘yeah, he’s a ruthless son-of-a-bitch, but he’s our ruthless son-of-a-bitch.”

“Are you still holding a grudge, Yuri? La Martine was years ago.”

“He told them to break my nose. On purpose!”

“He sure did. That made you a bloody mess — and may very well have kept you alive.”

Impatiently, Yuri shook his head. “I understand the logic, Sharon. I still don’t like the man. He gave you a beating, too. I was madder about that than I was about my nose. Still am.”

“Are you aware that he’s been a consistent influence — no small one, either — boosting your career? Mine, too. Ever since La Martine. I’m pretty sure he’s the main reason you got this posting. Kevin Usher listens to him. So does Wilhelm Trajan, although” — she grinned, here — “I don’t think he does so nearly as cheerfully as Kevin does.”

Yuri looked a bit guilty. “Well… Yeah, I sort of figured that out a while ago. Look, I’m not saying my attitude toward Cachat is rational. It’s probably not. Okay, for sure it’s not.” Stubbornly: “I still don’t like him.”

The com unit on the wall chimed, indicating someone desired a connection.

Sharon punched the acceptance key. The screen came to life.

Seeing the familiar face on the screen, Sharon said: “Walter. I assume you called to talk to Haven’s new ambassa — ah, high commissioner and — ”

“– and envoy extraordinary and whatever other twaddle terms we need to keep up appearances.” Walter Imbesi gave Radamacher a quick, almost perfunctory smile. “Actually, no. I’d been planning to give you a day or so to — ah, renew acquaintance — before bothering you with business. But something’s come up that we think is pressing. As in really pressing.”

Both Sharon and Yuri sat up straight. “Which is…?” said Yuri.

“It seems Victor Cachat is back from the dead. Presumed dead, rather. Anton Zilwicki also. I have been asked to convey to you the government’s displeasure at not being informed of Cachat’s survival. Given that we are formally allied, they feel they should have been notified. If not at once, certainly in less time than two months.”

“The ship they used to carry the message to me was an Erewhonese vessel,” said Sharon. “Are you seriously going to claim you didn’t get the news as soon as I did?”

“I grant you we learned the fact of their survival as soon as you did. The government’s displeasure stems from your failure to formally notify them and provide any further details..”

Yuri decided to let Sharon keep handling things, even though it would normally be his job as ambassador. (Fine. Envoy extra-crispy etc., etc., but in practice it came to the same thing.) But he’d just arrived and hadn’t been fully briefed. More precisely, he hadn’t been briefed at all. Well, leaving aside carnal matters that were none of anyone else’s damn business.

Sharon obviously agreed, since she spoke without hesitation or so much as a glance in his direction. “Let’s translate that statement out of diplomatese, shall we? The triumvirate that runs the show — we’ll skip all the silly stuff about ‘the government’ — is ticked off but since they’re probably not that ticked off — yet, anyway — they sent you as their spokesman since you don’t officially have any political position or power — we’ll all agree not to collapse in riotous laughter here — and so they figure coming from you it’ll have less of an edge to it.”

Sharon shrugged. “It was Victor’s order not to divulge anything, and he’s my boss.”

Imbesi pursed his lips. “The conclusion I come to is that Cachat thought gaining a few weeks of secrecy was important enough to risk irritating an ally. Fine. The few weeks have now gone by — so we can move to the critical question, which is what did he and Zilwicki discover that warrants these extreme measures?”

He waved his hand again in a gesture which, though dismissive, was not small at all. “And please spare me the usual drivel about ‘the needs of security,’ Sharon. I’ve gotten to know Victor Cachat rather well over the past couple of years. Perhaps unusually for someone in his line of work, he’s not obsessive about secrecy.”

“Generally, no. You’re right. But in this instance” — Sharon spread her hands in a gesture that simultaneously conveyed I speak the solemn truth and it’s out of my hands anyway — “he told me nothing in the first place.”

Imbesi was silent for a few seconds. Then, pursed his lips. “You’re not lying, are you?”

He looked at Yuri. “I know what happened on La Martine, High Commissioner Radamacher. We compiled an extensive file on the affair — on anything involving Victor Cachat’s history, once it became clear how large a presence he was going to have for us. One of the conclusions I drew from the affair was that Cachat has an almost eerie sense for selecting his subordinates. The two of you — others — and then he gives them lots of leeway and doesn’t micromanage. Some people might even accuse him of recklessness, in that regard. But I don’t know of any instance where his judgment has proven faulty.”

Yuri had to fight a little to keep an expressionless face. He really didn’t like Victor Cachat. But as much as any person alive he knew just how capable the man was. Fiendishly capable, even. But Yuri didn’t doubt at all whose fiend he was: Haven’s, as sure as any law of thermodynamics.

So he was just as surprised as Imbesi to learn that Cachat hadn’t told Sharon what he’d learned and where he was going with it. They hadn’t talked about it, simply because… Well, more pressing matters arose. But he’d assumed that would be part of the briefing Sharon would give him afterward.

The Erewhonese politician’s assessment was quite correct. Cachat was supremely confident in his ability to select his assistants, and then he didn’t second-guess himself.

He hadn’t even told Sharon?

Imbesi said it for him. “So all hell’s about to break loose.” He nodded, more to himself than anyone else. “I’ll let the triumvirate know. Sharon, High Commissioner Radamacher — ”

“Call me Yuri, please.”

“One moment, Walter.” Sharon leaned forward a little. “As long as we’re on the subjects of secrecy and all hell breaking loose, when can we expect a briefing from you regarding the new relationship you’ve forged with Maya Sector? Congratulations, by the way. You’ve come up in the galaxy. You used to launder money and now you’re laundering superdreadnaughts.”

She smiled sweetly. “Seeing as how we’re allies, as you just pointed out.”

There was no reaction at all on Imbesi’s face in response to those comments. Which were obviously something else Yuri needed to be briefed on.

After a moment, Imbesi just said: “I’ll have to get back to you on that. Have a pleasant day.”

The screen went dark.

“I can’t remember feeling like such a complete ignoramus since I was twelve,” Yuri complained. “When I got called on in class to enumerate the noble gases and I didn’t have a clue what the teacher was talking about. Since when did chemical elements have an aristocracy?”

 

Cauldron of Ghosts – Snippet 06

Cauldron of Ghosts – Snippet 06

Chapter 6

“We haven’t done that in a while,” said Yuri Radamacher. His voice was barely louder than a murmur, with complex undertones that conveyed satiety, exhaustion, smug self-satisfaction, bemused wonder at capabilities thought lost forever, and, most of all — the saving grace that would keep him from ridicule or possible bodily harm — full of affection for the person lying next to him.

Who, for her part, slapped him playfully on his bare midriff. That produced a meaty sound. Yuri was not exactly fat, but he was in no danger of being blown away by a gust of wind, either.

“Don’t sound so pleased with yourself,” she said. “Of course we haven’t done that in a while. We haven’t seen each other in… what’s it been, now? More than a T-year.”

“Three hundred and ninety-six standard days. God, I’ve missed you.”

Sharon Justice rolled onto her side and propped her head up on one hand. “I missed you too. But look at the bright side — for the first time in years, it looks like we’ll be able to see each other regularly and for… oh, hell, it could be a long time.”

Yuri hesitated, tempted to raise the subject of marriage. Even the Republic of Haven’s stringent rules concerning assignments for its officials were subject to relaxation and modification when married couples were involved. But after a moment, he decided to let it slide.

He knew that Sharon was twitchy on the subject. That was not unusual, of course. The whole subject of marriage had gotten very complicated and thorny since the development of prolong. That was especially true for a society like Haven’s, which tended to be conservative on social issues despite the often radical character of its politics.

The traditional concept of marriage was that of a union between two people which was expected to last a lifetime. Many did not, of course. Still, even people who got divorced generally viewed the divorce as a failure; an unfortunate and in some sense unnatural outcome.

But the same institution now had to be stretched across lifetimes that were measured in centuries, not decades. And to make things still more complicated, that greatly extended lifespan was characterized through at least eighty percent of its duration as the lifespan of a young person. Only toward the very end of the life of someone on prolong did the aging process and eventual decrepitude start manifesting itself. That stood in stark contrast to the ancient realities of human life, in which the period of vigorous youth was a fairly brief interlude between childhood and middle age.

The traditional institution of marriage was simply not well-suited for these new conditions. Much of its stability had been provided by the “natural” aging process. As a couple grew old together, they came to rely on each other for succor and support as much as intimacy. Prosaic as it might be, sharing aches and pains did a great deal to solidify a marriage; and, on the flip side, worked against any tendencies toward infidelity.

None of that was true any longer. Even the needs and demands of child-raising, traditionally the strongest bond in a marriage, was far less important. People on prolong could bear children throughout most of their now-very-long lives, but very few did so. Most couples would devote a few decades to having and nurturing children, but no more than that. Depending on the specific star nation and its customs, they might do their child-raising early in life or they might — this was the normal practice in Manticore, Beowulf and the Andermanni Empire — postpone having children until they were well-established in their careers and in a more solid financial position. But whatever stretch in their long lifespans they chose to devote to child-raising, once that was done they did not usually repeat the process. And in the doing they had only devoted ten percent or less of their lives — as opposed to the one-third or even one-half of a lifetime that child-bearing and rearing had traditionally occupied.

Under that pressure — it might be more accurate to say, sudden removal of pressure — the institution of marriage was undergoing profound and manifold transformations throughout the human-inhabited portions of the galaxy. Those changes had already been underway as a result of medical and technological advances, and prolong drove them even faster. In some adventurous societies — Beowulf being a prime example — a dizzying number of variations on marriage had emerged and were being experimented with. But in other, more staid societies, the reaction tended the other way. The lifelong nature of marriage was insisted upon even more firmly — with the inevitable consequence that fewer and fewer people entered into marriage. Instead, serial cohabitation without formal marriage was becoming the norm; or, at least, the most common pattern.

Even child-bearing and raising was adapting. As had always been the case in matrilineal societies, prolong society had effectively done away with the concept of bastardy. The reasons were different, but the end result was much the same: people in advanced societies who would live for centuries usually had such a deep and widespread safety net — some of it public, some of it private — that a single parent or a couple simply didn’t require marriage as a practical economic matter. The laws of most star nations did require an official recognition of parenthood, but that was separate from the legal requirements for marriage. That was to protect the children. You might not be formally married to the mother or father of your child, but you were still legally responsible for the children themselves.

All of which was well and good, and Yuri understood the dynamic on an intellectual level. The fact remained that he was a Havenite, not a Beowulfer, and like most people from Haven his basic emotional attitudes were conservative and old-fashioned. The years he’d spent as a State Security officer during the Pierre-Saint Just period compounded the problem. Early on, he’d developed sharp differences with their policies. Given the nature of their regime, he’d had to hide his real opinions and keep an emotional distance from everybody. The end result had been a man who was innately friendly and sociable transformed into a lonely soul.

Dammit, he wanted to get married.

But he was almost certain that Sharon would refuse and he’d learned long ago that if you thought the answer to a question was going to be “no,” it was better not to ask the question at all. Once stated openly, “no” tended to get locked in place.

So, partly out of frustration and partly out of a sense of duty, he rose from the bed, put on some clothes and headed for the kitchen. “Want some coffee?”

“Akh!” Sharon rose hurriedly from the bed and grabbed a robe. “Yes — but I’ll make it, thank you very much. You’ll break the coffeemaker.”

“Don’t be silly.”

She brushed past him, putting on the robe and moving quickly. “Fine. You’ll break the coffee.”

“That’s ridiculous. You can’t — ”

“You can.” Sharon started working at the controls of a machine that, to Radamacher’s way of thinking, bore a closer resemblance to a computer terminal than a simple device to brew a drink that the human race had been enjoying for millennia. “I love you dearly, Yuri, but you make the worst coffee this side of a Navy mess hall.”

“That’s where I learned to make coffee in the first place.”

“I know.” She pushed buttons that did mysterious things. “For years, I had a secret belief that the reason we had such a hard time fighting the Manticorans was because of the Navy’s coffee. The deterioration that crap must have produced in the brains of our officers and ratings didn’t bear thinking about.”

The button-pushing ended with a triumphant glissando of flying fingers. Yuri had no idea what she was doing. Programming the heat death of the universe? It was a coffee maker, for God’s sake. What was wrong with letting the gadget’s own computer handle the business?

“And since I got here,” she continued, “my suspicion has been confirmed. I’ve talked to any number of Erewhonese who’ve had Manticoran Navy coffee, and they all swear it’s terrific.”

Her ritual apparently done, Sharon finished tying up her robe and sat down at the kitchen table. “Oh, stop pouting — and have a seat, will you? The coffee will take a few minutes.”

Yuri was tempted to respond my coffee gets done in no time at all but wisely restrained himself. As a friend who shared his own insouciant attitude toward making coffee had once said, “Gourmets are subtle and quick to anger.”

He pulled up a chair and changed the subject. “Speaking of the Erewhonese, I suppose you should bring me up to date. Seeing as how I’m Haven’s ambassador to Torch and — hold your breath, this takes a while — ‘high commissioner and envoy extraordinary’ to Erewhon. In the moments I can spare from being your sex toy.”

Sharon smiled. “‘Sex toy, is it? I’ll remember that.” The smile was replaced by a slight frown. “I assume the reason you didn’t replace Guthrie as the ambassador to Erewhon also is because the Erewhonese made it clear they were not too happy with us.”

 

The Forever Engine – Snippet 47

The Forever Engine – Snippet 47

 

TWENTY-EIGHT

October 10, 1888, The Lim River valley, Serbia

We’d camped in the shade of a wood which stretched up the slopes of the foothills to the north and east. The ground opened up behind us down to the river, and I had a good view of Priboj, across the river and about a mile to the southwest. Its stucco houses with tile and shingle roofs sprawled along the riverbanks and up a ridge gray with granite outcroppings. Smoke rose from the town, thick smoke from burning buildings here and there, but I saw no other movement. There might be a few people moving around down there, but there sure weren’t a couple thousand.

Refuse dotted the meadow along the river on the far bank — a cart, bundles of possessions, pieces of clothing fluttering in the light breeze, and silent lumps I took to be bodies. The number of bodies suggested a panic rather than a mass slaughter. No one stopped to bury those people, but we buried our own dead that morning.

Two of the missing Bavarians were still alive, having climbed into a tree and spent the night there. Three of the Bavarians and one Marine were dead, and their bodies weren’t in good shape. I didn’t know the Bavarians, but the Marine was the youngster named Kane, the one who took a shot at the wolves back in Uvats, and who lost his lunch when he saw the bodies in the building.

We’d started out with thirty-six people, and less than a day after stepping ashore at Uvats we were down to twenty-five. This was turning into a massacre.

And we hadn’t gotten to the bad guys yet.

Fear and depression showed clearly in the faces of the men. In my opinion, the Bavarians were finished. They’d taken most of the casualties and, between the dead buried here and the wounded sent back with the steamer, they were down to about half strength. They all had to be thinking about their chances of surviving day two of this death march.

It might have been different if Melzer were more of a leader, but he wasn’t and I didn’t expect him to suddenly “find himself” in the crucible of combat. I didn’t think there was much there to find.

Gabrielle and I ate a breakfast of tinned bacon, ship biscuit, jam, and sweet tea. The Marines cooked and shared with us, so in true British style the bacon was hardly warm. I knew it was sort of cooked before it went into the can, but it was still gross. It was nice of them to share, though, so I smiled and choked it down. Gabrielle didn’t seem to mind.

“The weather turns cold,” she observed. “We will use up fat to climb the mountains.”

From a fuel point of view, I didn’t have an argument. Other than that she didn’t have much to say over breakfast. She sat quietly with her thoughts, which wasn’t surprising. I’d given her a lot to process.

Work details recovered the abandoned weapons and packs, and we leveled the supplies between those of us still standing. Corporal O’Mara walked across the trampled camp area with a rifle in each hand, stopped by us, and held them up for me to see.

“Which one suits you, sir?”

“I’ll take the Mauser.”

“Don’t want poor Kane’s Lee-Metford?”

“Your section shot off a lot of rounds last night. Split Kane’s ammunition up between your men. I’m betting there’s plenty of Mauser ammo to go around.”

He looked at the Mauser and smiled ruefully.

“Well, you’re right about that, sir, although I wouldn’t say it too loud. The Fritzes are a bit touchy this morning.”

I took the Mauser, opened the bolt to eject the chambered round, and caught it in the air. It sure wasn’t the classic 8mm Mauser cartridge I was used to. It was bigger than I expected, fatter, and a good three inches long, most of which was brass. If it were loaded with modern propellant, this thing would shoot through stone walls, and probably break my shoulder, but I remembered the cloud of smoke over the Bavarian firing positions at the seawall and the smell of the fight last night — black powder. There was a slight neck-down in the cartridge, so slight I wondered why they bothered, and a round-headed lead slug that had to be 11 or 12mm.

The long cartridge case was rimmed, center-fire, and stamped with “MÜNCHEN” on the base along with a couple numbers that didn’t mean anything to me, maybe lot numbers.

There was no box magazine at all.

“So, how does this thing work?”

“The bullet comes out ‘ere, sir,” O’Mara said cheerfully, touching the muzzle with his finger. “Beyond that you’ll have to ask a Bavarian.”

O’Mara returned to his men, and not long after that Gordon joined us. I had the feeling he had waited until we were alone. He asked Gabrielle’s permission before sitting on the grass beside me.

“I am concerned about the Bavarians,” he said.

“Good. You ought to be. I think those animals are all that kept them from slipping away in the darkness last night. How are you going to keep them moving?”

“They are Germans, after all, a martial race bred to obedience. You don’t think they will simply follow my orders?”

I considered tackling the notion that people were bred pretty much like dogs, but what was the point?

“No, I don’t think so. Not for long, anyway.”

“What do you propose?”

I pointed across the river.

“Priboj looks deserted. I wouldn’t be surprised if the other towns and villages around here were as well. Whatever’s going on, it’s not limited to the Bosnian side of the border. Even if someone sees us, the authorities probably have their hands full. Originally we planned to move mostly at night and avoid the towns. I think we can stop worrying about running into the Serbian Army; they’ve got bigger fish to fry. You got your map?”

Gordon pulled the map from his map case and spread it on the ground. It was about fifteen miles from Priboj to Kokin Brod, most of it over a mountain road.

“We planned on moving at night and off the road to avoid detection. I don’t think we have to worry about that,” I said.

“Near as I can tell we’re less than a mile from this first town, Pribojska Spa, just past this woods. I say we push through the woods to there and pick up the road. We’re also almost out of water, so we need to find some. If spa means the same thing in Serbia as it does everywhere else, it may have natural spring water and we won’t have to boil it, but either way we find some there. Another mile to this village — what is it? Banja? — then up the road five or six miles to that last village before Kokin Brod.”

“Kratovo,” Gordon said, craning his neck to read the map.

“Whatever. That puts us almost halfway to Kokin Brod, and it’s mostly downhill from there. We spend the night there and finish the march the next day, or hold up there a day and scope things out. The thing is, it gives us an objective for the day that ends up with us under roofs and behind walls. That’s got to sound better to the Bavarians than this.”

“They might think marching back to Uvats is better still,” Gordon said.

“Well, if that comes up, you could point out that you’ve got the only translator, so good luck explaining what happened to the Jandarma when the Turkish Army shows up.”

 

Cauldron of Ghosts – Snippet 05

Cauldron of Ghosts – Snippet 05

“I don’t doubt that a lot of important managerial people lived there. But you know how incredibly tough modern construction can make buildings, Hugh — especially when they’re intended for the use of the powerful and wealthy.”

She threw up her hands, without breaking stride. “Are we supposed to believe that Anton Zilwicki was incompetent as well as murderous? For Pete’s sake, the man used to be in charge of building entire orbital stations. If there was anyone in the galaxy who’d know in precise detail just how ineffective such a bomb would be on such a target, planted in such a way — ”

She finally stopped, leaning forward with her hands on her hands. “Whoever did it set that thing off in the open.” She threw up her hands again. “In a stupid park. Most of the force of the blast would have been completely wasted! Unless your goal was to vaporize kiddies and puppies and — and — whatever else they had there. Miniature sailboats in the miniature lake, whatever.”

Hugh winced. Ruth could sometimes get so swallowed up in her calculations that she’d blurt out the most insensitive and callous things without even thinking about it.

She pulled out her minicomp. “Let me show you something.”

At that moment, the door to the suite opened and two young women came in. The one in front, much smaller than the one following her, immediately made a beeline toward Hugh and, with no ceremony of any kind, plumped herself on his lap.

The woman in the rear smiled and closed the door.

Ruth frowned at the lap-sitter. “In the long, illustrious — and very well-recorded — annals of royalty throughout the galaxy, Berry, no ruling queen I know of has ever just plopped herself on her consort’s lap in public.”

Berry Zilwicki curled her lip. The gesture was rather ineffective, since sneering did not come naturally to her.

“He’s not my ‘consort,’ first of all. He’s my boyfriend. And how is this ‘in public’? You and Thandi are my two best friends, even leaving aside her formal status as head of the armed forces and yours as assistant chief spook.”

Ruth was not fazed. “There are four people in this room. That defines ‘in public’ whenever royalty is engaged in pre-fornication. Which you so obviously are.”

Berry kissed Hugh in a manner that left little doubt that Ruth’s assessment was accurate. When she was finished, she gave the Manticoran princess as regal a look as she could manage. Which wasn’t much; Berry looked down her nose about as poorly as she sneered.

Hugh cleared his throat again. “Speaking of which, Ruth and I were just discussing the chief spook when you walked in.”

Torch’s “chief spook” was Anton Zilwicki, Berry’s adoptive father. Her expression immediately sobered.

So did Thandi Palane’s, although the big woman’s expression was usually pretty stern. Being born and raised on one of the Mfecane worlds didn’t lead to carefree and happy-go-lucky personalities.

“Specifically,” said Ruth, “I was explaining to him — since he pretended to be an ignoramus on matters of interstellar politics, which he most certainly isn’t even if he does look like a Sasquatch — that there was no way — ”

“Hey!” Berry protested. “Don’t call my boyfriend a Bigfoot!”

She and Ruth both studied the appendages in question for a moment, which was easy to do since Hugh had one of them propped up on a small ottoman.

“I rest my case,” said Ruth.

“Well… Okay, he has big feet. That doesn’t mean he’s abominable.”

Arai made a shooing gesture with his hand. “Just keep going, Ruth.”

“Yeah, I’d like to hear it myself,” said Thandi, who perched herself on the armrest of a nearby divan. The piece of furniture was sturdily built, fortunately. Palane wasn’t built along the purely massive lines of Arai, who’d been bred by Manpower to be a heavy labor slave, but she was tall, muscular, and weighed well over a hundred kilos.

“As I was saying to Hugh when you walked in” — Ruth began pacing again — “or about to show him, rather…”

She fiddled with her minicomp until she found what she wanted, glanced around the room for the location of the wallscreen, and brought the image up on what had seemed until the instant before to be a huge landscape called Bernese Alps by an ancient painter named… Ambrose Bierce, maybe. She couldn’t remember. Ruth wasn’t much interested in primitive art.

The wallscreen didn’t really fill an entire wall — not even close, given the size of the suite — but it still measured about three meters across by a little over half that in height. The image now displayed on it was pretty spectacular — and far more grim.

“That is what the immediate surrounding area of Nouveau Paris looked like after Oscar Saint-Just set off the nuclear explosion that ended McQueen’s rebellion. Notice that all of the surrounding towers are still intact? Battered pretty badly, sure — but they’re still there. That’s how hard it is to take down a modern ceramacrete tower. Keep in mind that detonation was in the megaton range. The bomb that was set off in Green Pines was piddly, in comparison. Somewhere around fifty kilotons.”

“What’s your point?” asked Berry.

“The point is that neither your father nor Victor Cachat are so incompetent that they’d use a bomb that way. If they did decide to strike that kind of blow at the Mesan elite, they’d do it differently. My guess is that they’d figure out a way to smuggle the bomb into the building with the highest number of big shots and set it off inside. The ceramacrete shell would then contain the force of the blast and concentrate its effectiveness. And while that would still kill a lot of bystanders, it would have a much better big-shot-to-kiddies-and-puppies kill ratio.”

Hugh winced again. Berry scowled. “My father would not do that.”

Ruth shook her head. “No, he wouldn’t. I was just trying to show that even if you leave personal psychology out of the equation, that bomb was not set off by your father and Victor.”

“Victor wouldn’t agree to it, either,” said Thandi mildly.

“I agree,” said Ruth. She paused for a moment. “It took me a long time to get over the cold-blooded way Victor let my security team get gunned down. But eventually I realized… I don’t know how to put it, exactly…”

“He can be completely ruthless toward anyone he considers a combatant,” Thandi said, “and Victor’s definition of ‘combatant’ can be pretty wide. That’s how he would have seen your people, especially since at the time they were at war with Haven. But there’s no way he’d ever put children in that category. And in the end, Victor’s ruthlessness always has a purpose — to defend those whom he sees as weak and helpless against those who are mighty.”

She shrugged. “Like any soldier he’ll accept the fact that in war there’s bound to be collateral damage. Except he wouldn’t use that term because he despises it. He’d call them innocent victims. And there’s no way he’d deliberately use innocent victims as the mechanism for striking down his enemies — which is what they’d be, in that scenario.”

Ruth studied the image on the wallscreen for a few more seconds before she switched it off. Oscar Saint-Just had been the man who trained Victor, sure enough, and the two men had a lot in common. But that commonality ended at a certain point. If anyone ever put together a visual track record of Cachat’s life, there’d never be a scene like that in it.

The wallscreen reverted back to resembling a painting again. Not the same one, though. The program automatically switched the image every twelve hours and whenever someone overrode it manually. Ruth hadn’t bothered to change the program because it was all pretty much the same to her. If she remembered right, this new image was another ancient painting called Water Lilies by… Claude Money. Something like that.

There was silence in the room, for a few seconds. Then Berry sighed and said softly, “I just want to see him again. And Victor too. They should be here any day. I was so happy to find out they were still alive.”

There had been a time, less than two years ago, when Ruth would have been delighted to discover that Victor Cachat had shuffled off this mortal coil. But it seemed like ancient history now.

“So am I,” she said. “So am I.”

There was a buzz at the door. “Open,” said Ruth.

One of Torch’s intelligence officers came in, a man in his fifties by the name of Shai-gwun Metterling. Unlike most immigrants, he had no genetic connection to Manpower at all, neither personally nor anywhere in his heritage. He’d come to Torch because of his political convictions.

In and of itself, that wasn’t all that unusual. By Ruth’s rough count, there were at least twenty thousand people who’d immigrated and taken Torch citizenship since the new star nation was created who’d done so purely out of idealism. What was unusual, and had immediately caught Ruth’s attention, was Metterling’s background. Most such immigrants tended to have skills and training that weren’t all that immediately useful. There were two hundred philosophers in the mix, twice that many poets, well over a thousand musicians — and a sad dearth of engineers and doctors.

Metterling, on the other hand, had been a colonel in the Andermanni Navy’s intelligence service. A well-regarded and decorated one, too, not someone who’d been cashiered. Ruth had checked, very carefully, worried that he might be a double agent. But Metterling had come through her scrutiny with flying colors.

“What’s up, Shai-gwun?” she asked.

Metterling gave Thandi a glance that seemed a bit apprehensive. “We just got word from Cachat and Zilw — ah, your father, Your Majesty.” That last was said to Berry.

Who practically sprang off of Hugh’s lap. “They’re here!”

Again, that quick glance at Palane — and it was no longer a “bit” apprehensive. “Ah. Well, no. It seems they decided to go straight to Haven.”

Thandi rose from the arm rest and stood straight up. “And aren’t going to — didn’t — stop here on the way?” she demanded.

“Ah. Well, General Palane… Ah. No.”

“I’ll kill him,” Thandi predicted.

 

The Forever Engine – Snippet 46

The Forever Engine – Snippet 46

 

After a while I stopped dreaming altogether, or at least stopped remembering my dreams.

Some people think dreams are a window to your future. If so, I didn’t have a future. Either that or the window was closed pretty damned tight. Personally, I don’t think dreams mean anything, which is probably why I don’t remember them.

Gabrielle and I woke in the predawn twilight. The fire was lower, but the sentries had fed it during the night, kept it alive. I don’t know which of us woke first, but both knew by the change in breathing of the other that we were awake. Gabrielle rolled over and faced me, eyes only inches from mine. Her face was streaked with dirt and wood smoke, her hair loose and tangled, and she frowned slightly in concentration, searching my eyes for something, I don’t know what. I’m not sure she knew.

“Are you thinking about your daughter?” she asked after a while.

“No. I was thinking about a different little girl.”

“Tell me about her.”

“She was an orphan. She was physically awkward when she was young, not very good at sports or games, and the other girls always chose her last for teams. She felt like an outsider — unloved and unneeded. She wanted friends but did not make them easily, didn’t ever really understand the ease the other girls felt with each other. It was as if everyone else had been told a secret withheld from her. Or perhaps she hadn’t been paying attention at the right time, when everyone else learned it.

“Her best friend was a doll, or maybe a stuffed animal, I’m not sure which.”

“A doll,” she said quietly.

“She found it much easier to bond with the doll than with other children. She could imagine the doll loving and understanding her, while the other children did not.

“The other girls resented the order and discipline of the convent, but she liked it. She liked its predictable, unchanging routine. She thought the nuns would value her more for that.”

“They did not,” she whispered.

“No. Maybe that’s why she left. Leaving the orderly routine of the convent must have been unimaginably hard, the hardest thing she ever did, but she did it. She had determination and courage. She grew into a beautiful, intelligent young woman, and as she did, her physical awkwardness disappeared. But she never felt as if she belonged. Even in the company of others, she was always alone.”

Tears welled up in her eyes, but I saw no other sign of emotion in her face. She wiped her eyes and sniffed.

“I have never told you this. I have never told anyone this. How do you know these things about me?”

“You think the world is divided into you and then everyone else, but it isn’t. There are lots of people who have gone through exactly what you have. It’s a mental condition. No, that makes it sound like a sickness, and it isn’t. There’s nothing wrong with you, Gabi, not one goddamned thing. You’re as close to perfect as God makes us. It’s just a slightly different way the brain is organized in some highly intelligent people.

“Napoleon had the condition. So did a lot of great people in history, and some pretty amazing people in my own time. There was a guy named Albert Einstein, he went on — will go on — to become the greatest scientific mind of the twentieth century. He had it. It’s called Asperger’s syndrome.”

“Asperger’s syndrome?” she asked. “What does it mean? Why has no one told me this before?”

“Nobody figured it out until the 1940s, and even then a lot of people weren’t convinced until decades later. But it’s real. I mentored three doctoral students with the condition, all of them unique individuals. They shared some traits, though, and their childhoods were remarkably similar. The physical awkwardness in youth, the social awkwardness throughout life, the difficulty empathizing, sometimes hypersensitivity to noise, fascination with order and routine, sometimes liking to collect things or study things in minute detail –”

“When I research a subject,” she broke in, interest growing in her voice, “I find out every detail I can. I fill notebooks, carefully organize them. I have a system I use to label them.”

“Sounds right to me.”

“Napoleon had this condition? You are certain?”

“Well, judging from what we know about his life and behavior, it’s a pretty good bet.”

“He was very lonely as a boy, was he not?”

I brushed a lock of hair from her forehead and touched her cheek.

“Yes, he was.”

“It is real, this thing?”

Is it real? My thoughts went back to a cocktail party, one of those joint things designed to bring all the humanities faculty together. Schwartz from the psych department had me backed into a corner, berating me about how there was no such thing as Asperger’s. Patel, also from psych, wandered over, his drink crowned with a small paper umbrella. The caterers did not provide those but Patel always brought his own.

“Is Schwartz on about Asperger’s again?” he asked. “One more drink and he will start in on how there is no such thing as post traumatic stress disorder.”

Schwartz turned on him. “It’s a fucking symptom cluster!” he shouted, jabbing with his index finger for emphasis, sloshing scotch from his glass. “It’s not a fucking disease!”

“Ho-ho!” Patel said, rocking back on his heels, pleased at the reaction he had provoked. “Ho-ho!”

I wasn’t a psychologist; I was an historian. What did I know about what was and wasn’t real? I knew that if only one person did something a thousand years ago, it never happened, but if ten million people did it, it was a historic trend. What was and wasn’t real depended on what we noticed, and then what we decided to call it.

Symptom cluster? What did Schwartz know? Hell, life was a symptom cluster.

“It’s as real as anything else I know,” I told Gabi.

She was quiet for a while, absorbing it all.

“There is a cure for this?” she asked finally, a tiny sliver of hope showing like a line of light under the tightly closed door of her inner sanctuary.

“Gabi, it’s not a disease.”

Her eyes wandered past my shoulder, her mind somewhere out in the glowing purple of the morning sky on the eastern horizon. Maybe even farther than that.

“I see.”

 

Cauldron of Ghosts – Snippet 04

Cauldron of Ghosts – Snippet 04

Chapter 5

“I’d miss Steph,” Andrew Artlett protested. “Just for starters. Then there’s the lousy pay.”

Princess Ruth Winton frowned. “Lousy pay? You’re being offered almost half again what you’re making here on Torch — and you’re getting top rate for starship mechanics.” After a brief pause — very brief; Ruth hated admitting to a lack of complete expertise on any subject — she added: “So I’m told, anyway.”

“Well, yeah. But going back to Parmley Station to work on this project is risky as all hell.” Stoutly: “I should be getting hazard pay. That’s generally figured as a hundred percent pay increase. Double-time, that is.”

There were so many fallacies and lapses of logic in those statements that the Manticoran princess was rendered almost speechless.

Almost. Speechlessness was a state of affairs that was probably impossible for Ruth Winton.

“What? That’s insane! Every single sentence you just said is blithering nonsense.”

She began counting off her fingers. “First off, there’s nothing at all risky for you in this deal. Your aunt Elfride, maybe –”

“Don’t call her that to her face,” Andrew cautioned. “She answers to Ganny. Or Ganny El, if she likes you.”

“I have met the woman. I was just being formal. Seeing as how this is supposed to be an employment interview.” Ruth looked simultaneously cross and a bit embarrassed. “Of sorts,” she added.

“‘Employment interview’!” Artlett said mockingly. “Oh, yeah. I can see it in the want ads now.” He mimicked holding up a reading tablet. “‘Wanted. Damn fool mechanic for desperado duties aiding and abetting Audubon Ballroom sociopaths –”

He glanced at the huge figure of Hugh Arai, who was lounging in a nearby armchair in the princess’ suite. (Ruth called it a working office, but that was the obliviousness to luxury of someone born and raised in Mount Royal Palace in Manticore’s capital city of Landing. It was a no-fooling suite, on the top floor of the finest hotel in Beacon.)

“Meaning no offense, Hugh, I’m just saying it like it is.” Arai smiled at him.

Andrew resumed pretending to read a want ad: “– and Beowulfan cold-blooded killers masquerading as biologists — ”

Again he glanced at Arai. “Meaning no offense. Just telling it like it is.” The smile became a grin.

Back to the imaginary want ad: ” — for the purpose of hunting down any and all practitioners of the slave trade, which individuals are noted — no, notorious — throughout the inhabited portions of the galaxy for their cruelty and depraved indifference to human life, including that of starship mechanics.”

Triumphantly, he set down the imaginary tablet. “Ha!”

Ruth had waited for him to finish. Impatiently, because she was impatient with silliness by nature. But she’d still waited. She knew Artlett well enough by now to know there was no point in trying to derail him when he was hell-bent on riding his broad (broad? say better, oceanically expansive) sense of humor to the end of the track.

“If we might return to reality for a moment,” she said, “your duties will keep you on Parmley Station most of the time. A construct that is not only one of the largest space-going installations within light years of its solar system but is by now almost as heavily armed as an orbital fortress.”

Hugh shook his head. “Bit of an exaggeration, Ruth. The defenses and armaments on Parmley Station aren’t designed to fight off a battle fleet.”

Andrew started to say something, probably along the lines of claiming that Arai was supporting him, but Hugh’s deep voice rode over him easily. “But they’ll squash any pirates or slavers who show up as easily as swatting an insect.”

He gave Artlett a beady gaze: “As you know perfectly well, since you were paid to be a consultant when we designed those defenses.”

“Still.” Andrew was nothing if not stubborn. He waved his hand in a gesture that might mean… pretty much anything. “Pirates. Slavers. Dangerous people, no matter how you slice it.”

He decided to fall back onto more sensible grounds. “And like I said, I’d miss Steph.”

Ruth pounced. “Why is that? I just talked to her this morning and she seemed quite amenable to relocating to Parmley Station.”

Andrew stared at her. “She… But — she told me — it was just a few weeks ago!”

Ruth waved her hand airily. “That was then, this is now. She’s had time since to gauge the real possibilities at either place. Here, on Torch, it seems like everybody and their grandmother is setting up a restaurant. The competition is brutal. The hours, long; the income…” The princess made a face, as if she had any idea of the harsh realities of trying to run a small restaurant.

Which, of course, she didn’t. But Ruth Winton never let petty details like her own ignorance get in the way of a good argument. She pressed on.

“Whereas on Parmley Station — ” The royal expression became positively beatific, as she contemplated the commercial advantages of opening a restaurant there.

“It’s a busted enterprise,” jeered Artlett. “A pipe dream on the part of my great-uncle Michael Parmley — a screwball if there ever was one — who poured a fortune into building the galaxy’s most derelict orbital amusement park.”

“That was then, this is now,” interjected Hugh Arai. “As you know perfectly well, Andrew.” He leaned forward. “Today, it’s on the verge of becoming Beowulf’s central hub for covert operations against Mesa and Manpower.”

“The best clientele you could ask for!” Ruth said enthusiastically. “Beefy commando types. They eat like horses and tip like the upper crust.”

Most of that was pretty accurate. Not all covert operations people were beefy; but they did tend to eat a lot. That was a combination of a usually high-powered metabolism with near-constant physical training.

The analogy to the tipping habits of upper crust gamblers was wide of the mark, though. Wealthy people actually tended to be on the cheapskate side when it came to things like tipping. And charity, for that matter. It had been a constant for millennia that people of average means gave a higher percentage of their income to charitable causes than rich people — especially when you factored into the equation the end beneficiaries. Average people gave to those poorer than they. Rich people usually donated their money to cultural institutions — museums, universities and opera houses, for instance — of which they or their children were major personal beneficiaries. And then named them after themselves.

There were exceptions, of course, and those individuals could be spectacular in their largesse. The Winton dynasty had a long tradition of being very generous, especially for medical causes. Ruth’s misapprehension was the understandable product of her own personal experience.

But while the analogy was off, the reality remained. Covert ops people did tend to tip generously — and Andrew knew it, from having spent a lot of time in their company over the past period.

He ran fingers through his hair, in a gesture of exasperation. “Damn it, she was the one who insisted on coming here in the first place. I would have been perfectly happy to stay on Parmley Station. Women!”

Ruth had her own opinion — well-formed; cured; tempered; hardened; sharp on all edges and corners — as to which of the two human genders was actually prone to flightiness, inconstancy and indecision. Shakespeare’s greatest play wasn’t about a princess of Denmark, now was it?

But she saw no reason to squabble over the matter, since Artlett was now clearly on the verge of capitulating to logic and reason.

“All right, then,” he said. “I’ll go. If it’s okay with Steph.”

****

After Andrew left the suite, Hugh cleared his throat. “I noticed that you left out some particulars.”

“I wouldn’t call them ‘particulars.’ Speculative possibilities is closer to the mark.”

Arai shook his head. “You’re quibbling and you know it. What you’re calling ‘speculative possibilities’ are part of the established plans for using the Hali Sowle.”

“Established by whom?” Ruth countered. “Ganny El still hasn’t agreed — and if she doesn’t, the whole deal collapses.”

“I know you didn’t learn to lie, cheat and steal at Mount Royal Palace. So where does it come from, this brazen shamelessness? This cunning deftness at misdirection and maneuver? This dazzling expertise at deceit and deception?”

“You might be surprised at what goes on in the corridors and back rooms of Mount Royal Palace, Hugh. But, no, I didn’t learn the skills there. No more than the rudiments, anyway.”

She sniffed. “Where do you think? I’ve been studying for the past three years at Zilwicki and Cachat University.”

Hugh chuckled. “Point. Speaking of which, do you think they’re really responsible for the slaughter on Mesa?”

“I assume you’re referring to the claim being spread by Manpower through the Solarian media that they set off the nuclear explosion at Green Pines. If so, the answer is ‘no.’ It’s clear they didn’t do it. We’ll get the full story from them when they arrive here.”

Word had come from Sharon Justice, one of Haven’s representatives on Erewhon, that Zilwicki and Cachat had arrived at Parmley Station a few weeks earlier. But her message had contained no other information beyond the bare fact that they were alive.

Arai leaned back in his chair and clasped his fingers over his belly. “Explain your reasoning.” His tone wasn’t argumentative, just interested.

“Hell, Hugh, it’s obvious.” She leaned forward in her own chair, sliding almost to the edge of it. Ruth was not capable of thinking or expounding anything in a relaxed position. Within less than a minute, Hugh knew from experience, she’d have risen from the chair and started pacing.

“For starters, if they were going to set off that large an explosion, why pick that target?”

“Well, according to the news reports –”

“Oh, please!” Ruth got to her feet. Hugh glanced at his watch. Seven seconds.

“That silly business about Green Pines being a residential center for the Mesan elite? Every other apartment in the complex inhabited by a Manpower big shot? That’s why it was targeted?”

By the time she finished, she’d taken five steps one way and was now reversing direction. Long steps, too; Ruth was a strider.

 

The Forever Engine – Snippet 45

The Forever Engine – Snippet 45

 

“I’ll be back,” I told Gabi.

I walked over to him. He and a knot of his men smoked their clay pipes and cast sour, resentful looks across the fire at Gordon.

“Can we talk?” I said as soon as I faced him.

“Talk here,” he answered, his jaw thrust out farther than normal.

“How many men did you lose?”

“Too verdammt many, thanks to your officer.”

The three other Bavarians with him nodded and murmured their agreement.

“How many?”

He hesitated, then looked at his companions.

“Heinrich ging unten,” one of them said.

“Gerhard auch,” said another.

“Nein, ist Gerhard hier,” Melzer answered. “Wo ist Burkhardt?”

“Corporal O’Mara has already taken roll and reported to Captain Gordon,” I said. “He is a good noncommissioned officer who remembers his duty.”

“Duty to him?” Melzer said, gesturing across the fire to Gordon.

“Duty to his men. Captain Gordon said to run to the trees and take cover. O’Mara did that, kept his men together, and in the trees found the brush and wood for this fire. He followed Captain Gordon’s orders and his men lived, except one who lost his head and kept running.

“Where did you rally your men, Feldwebel? Where did you stop them from running? The Bayerisch Garde Schützen, routed by a flock of poultry!”

The three men with Melzer shifted uncomfortably and exchanged looks, but Melzer remained motionless, his eyes avoiding mine.

“Do your head count. Find out how many of your men are alive, how many still have their rifles, how many are injured and how severely. Make your report to Captain Gordon. Do it now.”

I turned and walked away, but after a few steps Melzer’s hand on my arm stopped me. He nodded toward the darkness, and I followed him a couple steps so we were out of earshot of the others.

“You speak to me this way in front of my men?” he hissed.

“I gave you the chance to talk in private and you wouldn’t, so go fuck yourself. Next time keep your nerve, do your job, keep your men alive. Or I’ll find someone who can.”

I rejoined Gabrielle, watched Melzer do his head count and make his report, but it wasn’t long before Gordon drifted over to us. I was tired of talking, but this was one conversation that couldn’t wait.

We stepped away from the fire. He didn’t say anything at first. I guess he wasn’t really sure where to start.

“I panicked,” he finally said,

“Yeah, no shit. Don’t do that again.”

“That’s easy for you to say.”

“It’s easy to say and hard to do. So what? Someone promise you ‘easy’ when you put on a uniform?”

I leaned in close and spoke quietly to make sure no one at the fire would hear my words.

“Get those NCOs under control and remind them who’s in charge. You’ve got to get out ahead of them mentally and stay there, tell them what to do next before they think of it.

“You screwed up today. I dragged enough brush over your trail they’ll wait and see what you do next, but this is it, Gordon. One more screwup and you will never get them back and this expedition is down to me trying to make it through the mountains on my own.”

“I’ve never been in the field before,” he said. “I feel . . . I can’t explain it, exactly, but –”

“Look,” I interrupted, “back in my own time, when I was still in uniform, sometimes I’d get assigned young soldiers, first time away from home, first time they weren’t the center of attention, the center of the universe. They’d try explaining how they felt about it all, and as their squad leader I would counsel them. Know what I’d say? ‘Just do your job, kid.’

“Maybe you had a bad childhood — overprotective mother, overbearing father, whatever. I don’t care. I don’t care about your mother or your father or how you felt when your pet frog died when you were five years old. They aren’t here. You are.

“So just suck it up and do your job.”

***

When I got back to the fire, Gabrielle was curled up and sleeping on the ground, her head cushioned on her rolled ground cover and blanket. I unrolled my own ground cover and spread it behind her, then picked her up gently in my arms and slid her onto it, laid down behind her, and spread my blanket over us. Half of the group was snoring by then, the rest looking as if they were wind-up toys running down even as I watched. Fear and exertion take it out of you, burn up every ounce of go-juice you’ve got before you even realize it, and leave you dull-witted and heavy-limbed.

Just before sleep closed my own eyes like the curtain after the final act of a play, I heard Gordon come back into the light. He rousted O’Mara and Melzer and had them post sentries.

Good.

I slept a dreamless sleep. I almost always did. I can hardly recall the last time I had a dream I remembered, other than that dream I had of Gabrielle the night in Munich. People who experience combat are supposed to have all sorts of tortured, violent dreams. I knew a few guys who did and a lot more who just didn’t talk about it, so I have no way of knowing. When I first got home from Afghanistan, I had some pretty nasty dreams, but not about what actually happened. They were sexual dreams, very vivid, and very violent. Just having had them made me ashamed, made me wonder what sort of creep I really was. Those dreams went away after a while.

A few years later I used to have a dream where I was in bed and Joanne was beside me, asleep, still alive. Joanne was my late wife, Sarah’s mother. Nothing happened in the dream. I’d just be in bed and Joanne was beside me. When I woke up, she wasn’t there. I’d touch the bed where she had been, just to make sure she hadn’t gotten up to go to the bathroom or start breakfast, thinking maybe all the rest of it was the dream. But the bed was always cold. I only had that dream a few times, at least that I remember.

 

Cauldron of Ghosts – Snippet 03

Cauldron of Ghosts – Snippet 03

****

Hearing some small noises behind her, Nancy turned her head and saw that two of her people were at the hatch on her side of the cargo bay. One of them said: “We’ve got ‘em here, boss.”

Anderson turned back to the Ramathibodi‘s captain. “Okay, we’re ready to start negotiating over the pleasure units. You can transfer the credit chips, if you’re so inclined.”

Tsang gestured at one of her subordinates to take the small bag of credit chips they’d already acquired for the labor techs onto their own ship.

“Not that we don’t trust you or anything,” Tsang said to Nancy. “Still, it’s like the old song goes: ‘better safe than sorry.’”

“An ancient saw on Old Earth said it better. ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’”

Anderson and Tsang exchanged slightly derisive smiles. The derision wasn’t aimed at each other so much as at the universe in general. Slave traders have an outlook on life that a fanciful poet — or literary critic, more like — might call expansively ironic.

This sort of dickering in stages was common in their business. Indeed, it was considered politesse for the purchasing party to allow the seller to periodically move their newly-acquired funds to a safe place before proceeding.

Once the Ramathibodi‘s crewman with the bag of credit chips had left, Anderson made a motion to her own people to bring the pleasure units onto the cargo bay.

There were three of them, one female and two males. All three, as one would expect, were exceedingly attractive. Unlike most slaves, they didn’t keep their eyes down and their gaze on the floor. Their gazes were level, just… vacant.

Tsang smiled and rubbed her hands together. “Well, now!”

****

When the crewman carrying the bag of credit chips arrived on the bridge — sauntered onto the bridge, it would be better to say — his first words were:

“Hey, guys, look at this! We did better than… what the fuck?”

****

Showing a surprisingly limited lexicon for people whom a literary critic might call expansively ironic, Captain Tsang used the same words when Anderson and her two people suddenly drew their side-arms. Simultaneously, the tri-barrel mounted on a bulkhead in the cargo bay swiveled to bring its deadly muzzles to bear on the Ramathibodi‘s contingent. And — a final insult — the three pleasure units drew tiny pistols from who-knows-where on their scantily-clad persons.

“What the fuck?”

****

In the end, they captured all but two of the slavers alive.

The man whose skull had been bashed by Kabweza died eighteen hours later without ever regaining consciousness. Anderson made no criticism, though. Given the difficulty of the task and the training of Torch assault troops, having only one fatality was a minor miracle.

The lieutenant colonel was less philosophical about the matter. “I’ll never live this down,” she predicted.

“Don’t be so hard on yourself, Ayi,” said Anderson soothingly. “One fatality isn’t bad.”

“It’s better than nothing,” Kabweza replied. “But I’m still going to be the butt of everyone’s jokes when the rest of our people find out. Kindergarten playgrounds have more dangerous so-called ‘assault troops’ than we turned out to be.”

****

The death of the second slaver could not be placed at the feet of the assault troops, unless you wanted to accuse them of negligent homicide — which Anderson didn’t even consider, once the circumstances were explained to her.

When the section left the mess hall, Takahashi Ayako picked up a kitchen knife that was lying on a counter. It was just a paring knife, having a blade no more than nine centimeters long. One of the assault troops spotted her doing it, but his only reaction was amusement.

“Hey, look, I just thought she was cute,” Sergeant Supakrit X later explained to the battalion commander. “There she was, surrounded by apes armed to the teeth and armored to boot, but she still insisted on getting a weapon herself. If you can call a glorified toothpick a weapon.”

“Cute,” said Kabweza, looking disgusted.

Supakrit X made a face. “Look, Chief, I’m sorry. I misjudged.”

“Cute,” Kabweza repeated. “Glorified toothpick.”

****

The four slavers on the bridge had surrendered as soon as Kabweza and her soldiers burst in. None of them had been armed except the com officer, Ondøej Montoya, whom Captain Tsang had left in charge while she went aboard Parmley Station. And Montoya’s sidearm — in a holster with the flap closed — would have been useless against the heavily armed assault troops’ armor.

After they surrendered, Kabweza ordered all four slavers to stand against one of the bulkheads, leaning far forward and forced to support their weight on their hands. That rendered them not quite as helpless as if they’d been handcuffed, but Torch assault troops didn’t carry restraining gear because they weren’t usually given sappy, sentimental orders to take prisoners.

Still, they were pretty helpless. Takahashi obviously thought so. No sooner had the four slavers assumed the position than the freed slave screeched pure fury, raced forward and stabbed one of them in the kidney with her little paring knife.

The wound was not fatal. Given modern medicine, it wasn’t even very serious. But the shock and pain was enough to cause the slaver to jerk back, whereupon he tripped over Takahashi and the two of them went down — the large slaver on top of the small slave.

Ironically, he’d have done better if their positions had been reversed. If Ayako had been on top, she would have stabbed him with full force; very dramatically, her hand rising above her head before she drove down the blade. She would have cut him up quite nicely, but the assault troops would probably have hauled her off before she could have done any lethal damage.

As it was, with her underneath, Kabweza and her people couldn’t get to her. And since she was now driven by necessity she eschewed any dramatic stabbing and just pushed the blade as far as she could into the closest target, which happened to be the man’s left eyeball.

Nine centimeters is not very long — but the skull of a human male isn’t much more than twenty centimeters across in the long axis from front to back. Driven by the sort of rage possessed by Takahashi Ayako, the blade went almost halfway into the slaver’s brain. And then, shrieking and cursing, she twisted and drove the blade back and forth and up and down.

It took the Torch soldiers no more than four or five seconds to get the slaver rolled over and haul Takahashi off him, but by then she’d pretty well transformed a third of his frontal lobes into hash. The autopsy ‘bot later reported that she’d carved up part of the limbic system as well.

Modern medicine is not actually miraculous, although the term is often used. For all practical purposes, the man was gone before any aid could be given him.

Or as now-corporal Supakrit X put it with great satisfaction over the troops’ evening meal, “I’m telling you, that fucker was dead-dead-dead.”

He wasn’t especially upset by his lowly new rank. For one thing, he knew his demotion had been mostly done as a matter of principle, rather than because Kabweza was really mad at him. He figured he’d get his rank back soon enough.

Besides, the way he looked at it, he’d been busted in a good cause. It wasn’t like getting demoted for being drunk and disorderly.

“And I still say she’s cute,” he added. “Although you’d really want to be on your best behavior on a date.”