What if they wanted to know the location of the wreck, but didn’t know to ask the right question of the right person?
Cormack returned to the same bin of scrap and found the damaged navigation computer he’d removed from Stoyko’s ship. Inside his shop, he plugged the navcomp into the diagnostic suite and set to work recovering the mangled database. It took him most of the night to coax a set of coordinates out of the device's buffer, and moments later it failed beyond any hope of resurrection. There were no matches in the commercial databases, and it took him the rest of the night to find a dusty, dog-eared, hand-written manual he hadn't needed for years.
“Got ye,” he breathed at last. The coordinates corresponded with an obscure smuggler’s navpoint.
Revealed to Sherman Jones’ clients, the coordinates were worth another ten thousand euros. The ship itself could be worth millions as salvage, and there was no telling what the value of the cargo might be, especially the kind carried by smugglers.
None of that meant anything if he didn't have the means to reach the navpoint or return with what he found. He certainly didn't have the resources to buy or hire a ship, and promising a share of an uncorroborated treasure wouldn't get him any farther with a salvage operator than it had gotten Stoyko with Cormack.
The captain of a fair-sized freighter, on the other hand, might be inclined to work out a deal if he received a timely warning that the skip-tracers he’d struggled so hard to avoid knew his ship’s alias and what system it was in.
TWO
Beta Continent, Nivia: 2710:01:04 Standard
Halsor Tennison remained awake after a bout of pre-dawn lovemaking initiated by his companion, who now lay splayed across his chest, sated and drowsy. His hand traced a gentle course down her body, fingertips combing fine strands of silky, jet-black hair into rows on their way to the smooth, warm skin of her lower back. The rising curve of her buttocks signaled the extent of his reach and he drew his hand back to begin the journey again.
Dayuki—his confidante, lover, and the object of his anxiety—sighed and cupped his face in her hand before drifting off again, leaving him to ponder the issue of genocide without her counsel. He’d come to rely on her sharp intellect and sound advice, but the Family’s decision to exterminate the Minzoku included her as well.
A few weeks earlier he would have regarded the Old Lady’s order as mere capriciousness and gone ahead with no intent to obey, at least in regard to Dayuki, but recent revelations regarding the Minzoku’s origins made his mother’s demand appear not only reasonable, but necessary for the continued existence of the Family itself.
The Human Commonwealth grew from mankind’s chaotic leap from its homeworld into the Milky Way, and evidence of that undocumented expansion came to light as organized exploration pushed the boundaries of known space outward. Dead ships orbiting uninhabitable planets, abandoned habitats on airless moons and the remains of those who traveled in or built them testified to a universe generally inimical to life. The massive expenses accrued locating habitable worlds often resulted in barbarous acts when unscrupulous underwriters discovered their hard-won real estate already inhabited by the descendants of earlier explorers.
More often than not the original inhabitants lacked the technological resources to resist the newcomers, and a handful of infamous incidents finally prompted the Commonwealth to establish the Colonization Board to protect the rights of indigenous populations, human or otherwise.
Wealth was still sufficient motive to circumvent statute, of course, and wildcat explorers did so by keeping their discoveries secret until they could firmly establish that no contradicting claim existed. If that assurance could be gained by the removal of inconvenient habitants, so much the better.
The Sarmak Family’s association with the Minzoku began with just such a removal, though until recently both Minzoku and Family lore had it that the Family had rescued the survivors from the gaijin who originally victimized them. The Minzoku agreed to serve in return for safety, an arrangement spelled out in the Covenant between Minzoku and Onjin, and the Minzoku operated as unskilled labor for the Onjin’s far-flung illegal enterprises for years before Hal’s grandfather consolidated operations on Nivia.
Prosperity in the years since had made factions within the Minzoku impatient, and Den Tun’s most recent attempt to win freedom for his people had instead forced the Chair’s hand. Hal had only recently learned that the Nivian government’s tolerance of Family activities was based almost solely on blackmail.
The Minzoku, as it turned out, were indigenous to Nivia itself, and more than enough archeological evidence of that fact existed on the planet’s Alpha continent to bring down the government and the Family if the Commonwealth discovered it.
The Chair ordered immediate preparations for withdrawal, and the elimination of those in Nivia’s government who were aware of the Family’s role as well as the Minzoku themselves. The Old Lady stopped just short of ordering Dayuki’s immediate execution outright, though he suspected that the reasoning behind the omission had more to do with concern that he might disobey than sympathy for his affections.
He had no idea how long the reprieve would last, and hoped that an out-of-sight, out-of-mind approach would delay the issue until he could find some way to solve it that involved neither disobedience to a direct order from the Chair nor Dayuki’s death. Compounding the issue was his fear that Dayuki might, if she learned of the Chair’s decree, decide that her life was too great a liability when weighed against Hal’s long-term interests and simply end it herself. She’d demonstrated her devotion to the Covenant once already by attempting ritual suicide to atone for the act of sabotage that had ultimately exposed the perfidious schemes of Den Tun, her uncle and leader of the Minzoku.
The Old Lady did not share Hal’s confidence, however, and an unfortunate series of earlier missteps on his part left him in no position to challenge her on this issue.
The pressures of so many conflicting loyalties left him as short on sleep this night as it had those previous; he decided that his time was better spent working than fretting over what he could not yet influence. He eased from Dayuki’s embrace and padded quietly across to the suite’s washroom to shower and dress.
The light was on when he emerged, Dayuki smoothing the bedcovers into proper order. The bruising on her arms and torso, remnants of her encounter with Terson Reilly, had faded to a degree that might not have been visible on the skin of other Minzoku, but her complexion, like the other physical characteristics of her people, had been softened by gaijin blood. The combination made her an exotic beauty to Hal’s eye, though to other Minzoku she was a half-breed of shameful conception.
“You don’t need to get up,” Hal objected. “You should rest.”
“Onjin medicine works quickly,” Dayuki replied as she slipped into a quilted kimono. The designs on the fabric, a melding of African and Asian influences, was the only traditional Minzoku clothing she wore now, having thrown her entire lot with the Onjin. “I will rest again later, if it seems necessary.”
“You will rest again later—period,” Hal amended. “The medicine helps, but you won’t be back to one hundred percent for several weeks.”
“As you wish, Hal-san.” Spoken in the off-hand tone all women used when they intended to do as they wished once the meddlesome male was out of sight. Hal knew better than to press the issue; none of the activities available in her de facto confinement were even moderately strenuous. Most days she spent glued to the suite’s hyperlink terminal, studying with intense concentration whatever struck her fancy.
The sky outside was pale blue and clear, the air calm and chilly. Hal strode along a foot-worn flagstone walk that paralleled the perimeter wall for a way, then turned inward, past residential structures toward a two-story building festooned with antennae and satellite dishes.
The ten-acre compound within the wall, the Fort, was the oldest continually-inhabited site on Beta continent and, interestingly enough, the longest-runni
ng Family enterprise as well, though its importance had waned in the last decade. The various counterfeiting enterprises Hal’s grandfather consolidated on Nivia required a large number of on-site specialists and Family administrators. They, in turn, required protection from the bands of gaijin outlaws and poachers roaming the expansive and essentially unregulated continent.
Members of the Minzoku elite had enjoyed the protection of the Fort for some years as well, until a cadre of officers had launched a plot to overthrow the Onjin. The plot failed, the officers and their staffs were executed, and no Minzoku had set foot within the walls since, with the exception of Dayuki.
Hal greeted the security personnel monitoring the command post’s entrance and walked through to the mezzanine around the sunken operations floor. Screens and monitors lined the walls, displaying the status of a number of Nivian networks that the Onjin had infiltrated and compromised over the years to better maintain their uneasy alliance with the tiny cabal of Nivian government officials who were aware of the Family’s presence.
Hal went to his office to dispense with backlogged administrative matters before turning his attention to the status of more important but slower-developing special projects. The Old Lady had acknowledged receipt of the recoverable information from the Tiger Opal project, so named by Den Tun when the Minzoku had penetrated the Fort’s network to undermine and steal the Family’s work on monoisotopic optical semiconductors. The precise production method had been lost when the Onjin destroyed Den Tun’s clandestine lab, and the single sample lay somewhere in the Great Northern Preserve on Alpha continent, guarded by Terson Reilly’s frozen corpse.
The shipment of standard indium gallium antimonide had likewise been lost in the cargo shuttle crash that Dayuki engineered to prevent Den Tun from spiriting his sample off-world. The loss set the Fort’s personnel scrambling to generate twice the amount on the next production cycle to make good on the outstanding orders. That, Hal was able to report with confidence, had been accomplished and the material sent on its way via Sorenson Exports disguised as other cargo.
Neil Sorenson, unfortunately, would never handle Family production again, as he’d been discovered to be Den Tun’s co-conspirator in the Tiger Opal fiasco and had his brain cooked by a needle-beam. The Old Lady had been unhappy at that news, considering that Neil Sorenson laundered all of the Fort’s production personally, leaving the Onjin without a shipping channel for this cycle’s production.
The Fort’s intelligence staff was searching diligently for the network tunnel Sorenson had installed between his company and the Fort to assist Den Tun. With any luck they would manage to restart the laundering apparatus without the need for Neil Sorenson.
The effort seemed a wasted one considering the Chair’s decision to abandon operations on Nivia, but certain appearances had to be maintained to keep Den Tun ignorant of the Family’s intentions. Desperation might force him to take action, and the Onjin simply weren’t ready to deal with that yet.
They were working toward getting ready, however. The Fort’s senior staff had dusted off old contingency plans and set about updating them. The first meeting to discuss direct action was due to take place first thing that morning.
He was not the first to arrive at the secure conference room, despite the early hour. The Fort’s intelligence officer, Hal’s cousin and persistent suitrix, Tamara Cirilo, was already waiting.
“You look tired,” she noted. “Trouble sleeping?”
“A bit,” Hal admitted, though he wasn’t about to do the same regarding the reason. “My back’s acting up.”
“You should have Dayuki work on you.”
Hal regarded her suspiciously. Despite her earnest expression, Tamara’s resentment of his relationship with Dayuki was no secret. She’d even reported it to the Old Lady, a betrayal that earned her an emphatic—and physical—expression of his disapproval. The period of personal and professional frigidity that followed had thawed abruptly leaving Hal to wonder if Tamara had caught wind of the Old Lady’s intentions before he’d been informed.
Still, it wasn’t like her to pass up an opportunity to gloat over the impending elimination of her rival.
Stan McKeon, the Fort’s security chief, arrived just then followed by Sergio Cirilo, the Deputy Administrator. Hal acknowledged him, but received nothing but a perfunctory nod in return. Sergio had been furious over Hal’s confrontation with Tamara, and made a dismal attempt to hide his dismay at her recent change of heart. When he took a seat next to McKeon instead of his daughter, Hal knew things weren’t going well at home.
McKeon activated his holoboard when they were ready. A cross-sectional floor plan of the Minzoku base appeared over the center of the table. McKeon used an electronic stylus to alter the image. “This isn’t to scale nor is it entirely accurate,” he explained as he drew. “It doesn’t exist on any of the blueprints or system schematics for reasons that will become obvious.” He added a tiny room to the bottom-most floor, a room pierced by a shaft of some sort that led from deep beneath the Minzoku complex to the surface.
“This portion was added prior to turning the facility over to the Minzoku,” Tamara added. “It’s totally self-contained and capable of supporting six personnel for up to a month.”
“It shouldn’t take that long,” McKeon assured them, and continued: “This shaft contains two nuclear devices. The first is a one-hundred-fifty kiloton warhead located here at the bottom, roughly a kilometer below the surface.” A blinking red dot appeared at the end of the shaft. “The second is a neutron device suspended here.” Another red indicator sprang to life halfway up the shaft.
“The detonation of the first warhead will transform the surrounding rock to magma, and the initial out-gassing will drive the neutron device up the shaft and through a thin wall right about here,” McKeon drew a circle, “where it meets an existing ventilation shaft leading to the surface. An altimeter will detonate it three kilometers above ground.
“Meanwhile,” McKeon said, returning to the bottom of the shaft, “this molten rock will contract as it hardens again. The bedrock beneath the base will collapse into a crater about one hundred meters deep. Water from the ocean will pour in after it, effectively obliterating any evidence of the base.”
“Won’t the gaijin detect the detonations?” Hal asked. “This won’t do any good if they show up in force to investigate.”
“They’ll register a temblor, certainly,” Tamara nodded, “but we can edit the EMP out of the data they receive from the satellites, so they won’t think anything of it.”
“What about us?” Sergio asked.
“We’re protected by the shadow effect of the mountains,” McKeon replied. “We’ll be in shelters as a precaution.”
“And how long will it take to prepare?” Hal asked.
“Six days, on-site,” McKeon said. “The designers did their best to make it fool-proof, but those warheads have been in there for decades. We’ll have to run diagnostics, and several of the circuits were physically disconnected to prevent accidental detonation.”
“The plan was based on Minzoku populations at the time,” Tamara said. “The neutron radiation will kill everyone east of the mountains, but there are two or three communities on this side that didn’t exist then. I’ll be working on plans for those. After that the only thing left to do is to identify specific individuals we must eliminate. Den Tun is at the top of the list, along with his ministers and, ah, others.” She didn’t need to tell him that Dayuki’s name figured prominently among them.
Hal asked her to remain after the meeting broke up.
“That was pretty slick the other day, how you explained Neil Sorenson’s death to the Old Lady,” he said.
“Why, thank you,” she grinned. “I thought you’d appreciate it.”
“That depends on what it costs me.”
“Nothing,” she told him. “Consider it my way of making amends for my poor behavior.”
“It’s easy to be gracious now that Dayuki
is out of the equation, isn’t it?”
Tamara’s smile vanished. Hal steeled himself for a taste of her vicious temper, but instead: “Dayuki and I have an understanding,” she said, “and I don’t wish her harm.”
“I appreciate the sentiment,” Hal replied, still unconvinced of her sincerity, “for what it’s worth.”
“I realize you don’t trust me, Hal. I haven’t given you much reason to; quite the opposite in fact. That I admit it deserves some small credit, don’t you think?”
“Some small credit,” Hal smiled thinly, “certainly.” The strange thing was, she had a point. He couldn’t remember a time when her every interaction with him didn’t carry at least a hint of ulterior motive. For once he’d caught a glimpse of the Tamara Cirilo that existed behind the veneer.
“I can’t disobey the Old Lady when it comes to Dayuki,” she said, “but if you can find some way to protect her without endangering the Family’s interests, I won’t interfere.”
“I’m…glad to hear that,” Hal replied lamely. Tamara excused herself, leaving Hal to think about what he’d learned.
Aboard the Embustero: 2710:01:05 Standard
Shadrack’s order to get Terson able-bodied was enough to get his wrists released, but Druski wasn’t ready to let him leave the infirmary for the better part of another ten days. Neither Shadrack nor Markland returned, and aside from the medic the only other crewman Terson met was a dark-haired, solemn-faced woman a few years older than himself who answered Druski’s summons to remove the catheter.
“This is Liz,” Druski told him. “She’s the one who kept you breathing dirtside. She’s also the one who put it in, so your modesty’s already compromised.”
Shipsuits had a tendency to fit snugly, but hers was at least a size and a half too big. Her collar was fastened all the way to her jaw. The cuffs of her sleeves were fastened so tightly they wouldn’t fit over her hands without loosening them. She wore no jewelry and her hair was unstyled and plain. “Thanks,” Terson said. “For keeping me alive, I mean.”
Embustero- Pale Boundaries Page 3