by Jenn Lyons
months, but I suppose that gave the whole process a certain stately elegance and seriousness. It was a grand old fleet, all very romantic. They even had immobile jump gates set up on the trade lanes, so merchant ships could devote more space to actual cargo. Places like North Point Station existed in most Sarcodinay controlled systems.
The League might station a few men at North Point, but I suspected they’d have little reason to make it a major outpost. The League didn’t need North Point Station. Eight years back a teenager with some funny ideas about mathematically modeling quantum gravity fluctuations had been transferred to the Janus Project, and shortly thereafter Nicholas Rhodes made his famous breakthrough. The League could jump into hyperspace from Terra, and hit the short side of a vid card four systems away. League starships didn’t take months to travel from point A to B. They took only as long as necessary for the navigational system to work through all that math.
When thought about in those terms, I suppose I could understand why young Emperor Kathanial, hot on the heels of his father’s stroke, had taken one look at the situation, thrown his hands up in disgust and sued for peace. It was an uncharacteristic Sarcodinay move and likely hadn’t won him any friends, but it was obvious even to those of less than genius-class intelligence that the Sarcodinay were not going to win this war. If they’d taken the threat seriously from the beginning they probably could have kept us under their control, but they made the mistake of thinking of us as cute children who posed no more danger than a pet monkey who’d been taught a few tricks.
And we most certainly did learn a few tricks.
I wasn’t sure how War Leader Shaniran felt about the impending end of war. On the one hand, Sarcodinay are proud creatures, and the withdrawal was a not-so-subtle indictment of his ability to sustain a lasting victory. On the other hand, Sarcodinay are proud creatures, and he had to be tired of standing in as Governor Tirris Vahn’s favorite scapegoat for those same loses. Once, Shaniran had been famous and popular amongst the Royal Court for his successes killing pirates, so well regarded he’d been given Right of Distinction with his name, but all that turned around in less than a decade—an overnight fall from grace by Sarcodinay standards. That debacle with his daughter, who was sent back to Sarcos for “medical problems,” came to mind, and battles against Admiral Szabo that in no way turned to the Sarcodinay’s favor. A persistent rumor whispered the only reason Shaniran hadn’t been stripped of his title was because the old Emperor, Kathosis, had grown weary of hearing about the problems with humans, and couldn’t be bothered.
Perhaps that’s why, even now, Shaniran was still on North Point Station, personally overseeing evacuations that probably could have been handled as well by lackeys. I was starting to wonder if that was the only reason. For instance, Shaniran had started out as a deep space explorer before changing careers and beginning his meteoric rise to one of the highest ranked admirals in the Sarcodinay fleet (I looked it up) but I had never heard it mentioned that he was the very man who had discovered the Sol System. You’d think that sort of thing would have had a higher spot on the man’s resume. Curious that no one had ever exploited the juicy propaganda value of his discovery. Very out of character for the Sarcodinay.
I originally worried I was going to have a hard time getting a clearance to dock without a fancy song and dance that might push my friendship with Cerberus to its limits, but the flight controllers took my shuttle identification and cleared the Aegis to land without asking any questions at all. North Point Station was packed to the rafters with League ships, as many as Sarcodinay.
Maybe Paul had been right. Maybe I was an Urb at heart. My lips thinned to an angry gash as I realized why the League people were there. The military were protection: the station crawled with Colonial mercantilists, preparing to turn North Point Station into a trade center. Oh, it made sense. It made all kinds of sense. Plenty of the races out there, including the Sarcodinay themselves, didn’t have Janus Drives and wouldn’t want to hump their way slowly out to the third planet to continue to trade with Terra. This way the colonies could take their cut the same way Governor Tirris Vahn had before, and most Urbs would never be the wiser. Heaven forfend that the Urbs or Wilders themselves would be the ones to see that profit.
The landing bay was a scene of unabashed chaos. I almost felt sorry for the poor Sarcodinay traffic controllers trying to maintain order. The Colonists were moving in, and it seemed to be of only passing concern that the Sarcodinay had yet to move out. Cargo loaders and dock workers ignored the Sarcodinay screaming directions and piled the boxes wherever they pleased.
It was a strange scene, and I stared at it for several minutes while I tried to put my finger on what was wrong with it. The humans were doing what humans always do—expanding, exploring, riding the chaos. Maybe they’d been cautious and polite when they first arrived, but now it was clear that the Sarcodinay weren’t calling in their knights to put them in their place—the very thing that struck me as wrong. The humans were rubbing the Sarcodinay noses in the withdrawal, and the Sarcodinay were letting them get away with it. It was uncharacteristic to the extreme—as uncharacteristic as a Sarcodinay who begged. The Sarcodinay had their pride. They had star systems full of it.
Between the Colonists and the League soldiers and the evacuations, security was unusually light; a few Sarcodinay warriors who looked dazed and had lost the edge of readiness. I grabbed a box off a loading bin, hiked it over my shoulder, and was inside the secure area before anyone even stopped to check my ID.
The space station was infused with classic Sarcodinay design: filigree, inlaid arabesques, glazed iridescent tiles of eye-bleeding color. Some of it was even useful—color-coding to let you know, generally, where you were—but the end result was a still seizure-inducing barrage. Most Urbs were used to the clashing colors. Perhaps they even preferred them. Somewhere out there I’d lost my taste for it.
A quick stop at a computer terminal revealed a generic map of the station—enough information for a soldier to know where the cafeteria was located or where to report to their commanders. It seemed logical that the War Leader would be in the commander’s quarters. They were the largest on the station.
I walked down the hall and encountered no real interference. I frowned at that.
“This is too easy,” I said.
“It does seem strange for security to be so lax. Perhaps they no longer think it’s important since the withdrawal?”
“With the War Leader here? No, I don’t think so.” I looked up and down the corridors. I couldn’t see any cameras, but that was no surprise. Sarcodinay monitoring was built-in, like air scrubbers and heating units. “This is a trap,” I whispered. “They’ve done everything but send out gilded invitations.”
“I advise you leave immediately.”
I edged back towards the hatch and pressed the open button.
Nothing.
I looked at the door. It hadn’t been locked originally, but that was no longer the case. This wasn’t some Wilder toy, either. It would take a while to hack. Longer, I suspected, than I had.
“I guess I don’t want to leave after all.” I swept the corridor, expecting Sarcodinay warriors to come boiling out of some side hatch at any moment. Nothing happened. I powered up my gloves. No one objected. I decided that wasn’t a good sign.
“I got cocky, didn’t I?”
“You do have a bad habit of thinking you’re always right.”
“That’s because I am always right, Deuce. Give me a complete rundown of all potential hostiles still on the station. I want to know what I’ve just put my foot in.” I walked down the corridor, opening doorways when I could, seeing who was around. No one, for the most part. Everything was suspiciously empty.
“You should know this is a very unfriendly computer, Weaver.”
“Oh, and who’s always telling me she wants to make new friends?”
“It’s better when they don’t automatically flag me as a hostile system.”
“Sweet tal
k, Deuce. It’s all about the sweet talk.”
“Huh.”
“Huh? What huh? What does huh mean?”
“For a station where the Sarcodinay presence should be minimal, marking stations are tracking a very high number of elite Sarcodinay knights. Almost a dozen.”
“Oh hell. In the station or outside? Are they in armor?”
“Inside, not in armor, although we can assume their suits are conveniently accessible. This is not a good place to have that sort of fight, you realize.”
“What do the Sarcodinay care? They’re losing the station anyway.”
“There may be more on the carrier parked outside—that would be the one that War Leader Shaniran came in on, by the way.”
“I guess someone’s expecting trouble.”
“Weaver—there’s a High Guard here.”
I stopped. “Seriously? Which one?”
“Seris-Karat Valanat. She’s been here for three days.”
“Well, well, well. Seris-Karat Valanat.”
“You have no idea who that is, do you?”
“Not a clue.” I agreed with entirely fake cheerfulness. “But I can count the number of High Guard that should be in the entire Sol System using my nose. So isn’t it interesting that the quota’s all used up here at North Point Station?”
“Perhaps Shaniran is feeling paranoid after the assassination of