by Zieja, Joe
But then she saw that icon again—the empty chair. There was something obviously symbolic and significant about that image, but what?
Referring to the password list, and feeling dirtier every minute in more than a few ways, Vilia saw a list of obvious applications and systems, none of which were applicable to the screen in front of her. At the bottom, however, one of the passwords was simply labeled J.
Probably stands for jerk, she thought.
Shrugging, she punched it in.
The entire interface of the terminal changed from the standard Thelicosan layout to something Vilia wasn’t familiar with. Before any text or images came onto the screen, she saw a picture of what appeared to be a giant planet. She wasn’t really up to speed on her astronomy, but she didn’t recognize the planet as anything in the Thelicosan system, or any of the systems in Fortuna Stultus. Perhaps it was just an artist’s rendering of something in her imagination.
The interface finally loaded, though a warning came up saying something about having to use limited channels to route information, and Vilia was mostly just confused about what she was staring at. The whole thing had a retro look to it, like it was trying to revisit the days when information was only measured in picobytes, and keyboards didn’t use cranial electricity sensors to anticipate inputs from the user’s brain. There was even a picture of a kitten doing something cute, which was in vogue on and off every few centuries. Nearly everything on the system seemed anachronistic.
A separate messaging system, a separate file structure, separate everything. This was a closed network of some sort, not unlike the way the Thelicosan government hid their secret information, but it was clearly sending and receiving data from outside the ship. So, a closed network that rode on the backbone of the wider information net? It made Vilia further wonder how information was getting in and out with the jamming net. This whole system seemed to be running smoothly, with no connectivity issues at all.
She set the file structure to automatically start uploading itself to her personal system while she browsed the messages, hoping there would be something of value in there. The message bank was largely empty, and what was there was even less useful than the angry message database Zergan seemed to be hosting on the ship’s network. Most of these were unintelligible updates from someone, or some group, called the Pantheon. None of those messages contained any specific signatories, but there was one thing that raised Vilia’s hackles. At the bottom of every message was the same phrase that Zergan had uttered when he’d been at the sandwich bar—“Until the chairs are empty.”
A horrible idea dawned on Vilia. Was Zergan part of some cult? Some . . . furniture-making cult? A cult of carpenters, maybe, or antiquarians.
No, that was stupid. First of all, this really couldn’t be about chairs. Second, she’d never heard of any cult that was technologically savvy enough to establish their own closed network, one that could blast through a sophisticated jamming net. There was more to this than a cult.
If not a cult, then perhaps a union. She’d heard of labor unions doing some incredibly insane things in the past; the Union of Morticians on Schvink once went on strike and, with the help of a mad scientist, started reanimating the dead until their demands were met. Schvink was a strange place.
Then again, Vilia had no evidence that Zergan could do anything except be mean and kill people. She knew that warriors like him often had a soft side that manifested itself in crafts like knitting, art, or taxidermy, but Zergan didn’t seem the type. There was no evidence in the room that he’d ever seen a tree, never mind worked on complicated carpentry projects enough that it would warrant his joining the union.
So that left the other option. Which was . . . what? She dug into the messages, looking for clues. Anything that the “Pantheon” sent seemed mostly to be giving people instructions on how to send messages. Who was the Pantheon?
Finally, Vilia stumbled upon a pair of messages that seemed interesting, since they were from an actual person. At least, it looked like they were—the “from” block said SNG99, which was either a code name or a form or instruction number she didn’t recognize.
And there weren’t any forms or instructions she didn’t recognize.
The first message specifically asked Zergan for a report on the “proceedings.” The second message had only one line:
“Peace is not an option.”
Vilia froze. SNG99 could be referencing only one thing: the Meridan/Thelicosan situation. Whoever was communicating with Zergan—and appeared to be pulling his strings—was trying to deliberately create conflict between the two systems. Was this why Zergan was always pushing the Grand Marshal to attack?
Who would want war? Absolutely nobody would benefit from conflict. Not the Thelicosan Council, and certainly not the Meridans. That meant it was a third party, perhaps one of the other two systems. But what would New Neptune or Grandelle have to gain from war? Everything had been perfectly balanced for the entirety of the Two Hundred Years (And Counting) Peace; trade was booming, unemployment was down, and most reality television had been canceled once nobody had to compare their lives with someone who was worse off than them for comfort. They were in the middle of the most prosperous period in the history of the Fortuna Stultus galaxy.
So who wasn’t benefiting from that? She wracked her political brain. She’d studied governments from every system over and over again as she climbed to the top of the Thelicosan political structure in her attempts to erase her backwater Schvinkian heritage and someday petition for Council membership.
Think, Vilia. You should know this.
If it wasn’t a government, and it wasn’t a union . . . a terrorist organization? Anarchists? There were literally thousands of candidates in that department, but most weren’t organized enough to put something together like this.
The file transfer was about forty percent complete, which led Vilia to believe that either the network was slowing her down or there was a huge amount of data to sift through.
But it would have to do, because someone was about to open the door. She barely caught a glimpse of Zergan on the far wall’s security camera before she heard his footsteps outside.
Oh Newton’s apple, not now!
She’d taken too long, way too long. Snatching her data net from the terminal, she kicked the power cable out from the computer rather than waste time backing out of the closed network and making it look like she hadn’t been there. Zergan might get suspicious about that, but beggars couldn’t be choosers at this point. Vilia leapt to the side, losing all sense of propriety as she took fistfuls of Zergan’s clothing and threw them back on top of the computer to try to cover up any evidence of her trespass.
The lock beeped. The door slid open. Vilia swallowed every particle of decency she had left and dove face-first into a pile of Zergan’s laundry. Instantly, her body was enveloped in a mound of dirty clothing so large that she was pretty sure that a pressure change had just occurred. Had he seen her? She slowly began to maneuver, careful not to shift the pile of clothing, until she was sitting down and facing the terminal.
Through a small tunnel of light entering the pile of grossness, Vilia could see Zergan entering the room. He looked flustered and tired, like he’d been up all night. He’d looked like that a lot lately, but so had everyone else on the ship. The tension of the past few days had been enough to spread insomnia to just about anyone.
As soon as he entered the room, he tore off his jacket, which he actually hung on a peg near the door, and then removed his shirt, for some reason. This he threw right on top of Vilia, nearly obscuring her only line of sight to a world that was not purgatory. She drew in a slow, deep, silent breath and tried not to choke.
Her heart was cresting at one hundred beats per minute. Worse than that, there was a very small, nagging sensation in the back of her head that said she might be enjoying it. She pinched the thought between a pair of mental fingers like a filthy piece of lint and brushed it away. Life was not about exc
itement.
After grabbing a glass of something brown and alcoholic-looking, Zergan came over to the desk, which he rapidly cleared of dirty shirts with a well-practiced sweep of the arm. It was then that Vilia finally realized that not only had she broken into his room, she was staring at him half-naked. Part of it made her skin crawl—Zergan was not her favorite person—but she wasn’t blind. The man was a career soldier and special operations warrior; there wasn’t anything bad to look at if you could ignore the caterpillar plastered to his forehead and the fact that he was certifiably psychotic.
Zergan took a sip of his drink and sat down, frowning at the now-powerless terminal. Reaching down, he found the connection and reattached it, settling back in his chair while the terminal restarted. Vilia tried to keep her breathing under control; Zergan was literally five feet away from her, and if she so much as sighed he’d know someone was in the room.
She could just barely make out the screen from her angle in the corner, but it was easy enough to see Zergan completely bypass the normal interface and head straight into whatever network was allowing him to communicate with the “Pantheon.” And shortly thereafter, she heard something that resembled old machinery turning; the speakers of the terminal emitted a grinding, scratching noise that was at once very foreign and vaguely familiar.
“What is it?” a voice came from the terminal.
Thank Science! Zergan had opened a communications channel. If she’d had to sit there and watch him just write angry messages to different parts of the ship, she might have lost her mind.
“Making my report,” Zergan said.
“Why aren’t you at the usual spot?” came the voice. It was a woman, an older woman, with a deep, scratchy voice. Whatever network they were using was still having connection problems—perhaps due to the jamming—because her speech came through garbled and full of static.
“I told you it was compromised,” Zergan said. “Until I find a new location for the hardware, I’m going to have to use my personal terminal.”
“Risky.”
“Necessary,” Zergan said. “Now, if you don’t mind, it’s already been a long day and it’s not even half done. Let’s get this over with.”
“Fine,” said the woman.
Vilia listened carefully as Zergan went through the happenings of the last few days, detailing everything from the kidnapping to the cavorting that had been going on in Keffoule’s room the previous night. Vilia had assumed as much. Captain Rogers seemed like a decent sort of man, if a little dense, but he was still a man, after all. Zergan’s voice remained calm during the report, and when he was finished Vilia noticed that the calm was forced; his right hand was drumming on the desk, and his left hand was swirling the glass of alcohol back and forth. Whoever this woman was, she made Zergan nervous. And that made Vilia nervous.
“You and I have known each other a long time, Edris,” the voice said finally. “You’re not such a fool as this is making you seem. Why haven’t you killed him yet?”
Kill Rogers? Vilia thought, horrified, but not surprised. That would definitely be a speedy path to war.
“Something keeps getting in my way,” Zergan said, stumbling a bit as he spoke. “It’s just dumb luck, really. I thought I checked the doctors’ schedules to make sure I would be alone, but . . .” He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. I’ve figured out a way. He’ll be dead by morning.”
“You had better be right,” the woman said. “Things are moving according to schedule in the other systems, Edris. With the setback in Merida caused by this same idiot, we can’t afford any other setbacks. The cogs are in motion for Jupiter’s rebirth.”
Vilia nearly gasped. Jupiter? Zergan was a Jupiterian? The implications of that statement pounded on the inside of her head like a hammer. Jupiter. The lost planet, the loser of the War of Musical Chairs. That was what they meant when they said “until the chairs are empty.” They were getting their revenge!
But how? The people of Old Jupiter had supposedly scattered after the war, assimilating themselves into the cultures of the other systems. Mars, Earth, Neptune, and Saturn all had gotten whole systems to expand into when they’d stumbled upon the Fortuna Stultus galaxy. Jupiter had been left in the dust.
If Jupiter had somehow reestablished a base of operations, and had made itself strong enough to contend with the combined power of all four of the other systems . . . it was bad. Really bad. How had that happened? What was the extent of the Jupiterians’ network? This revelation brought one big answer and a million smaller questions.
Well, maybe not a million questions. Vilia didn’t like to exaggerate. But a lot of questions.
“I will make it happen,” Zergan said tightly. “Have I ever failed you before?”
The voice on the other end was silent for a moment. “This is more important than anything, Edris. My family and I have been building this plan for centuries.”
“I understand,” Zergan said. “Now, if you don’t mind, I have to start planning for tonight.”
After a few more cryptic phrases back and forth, after which they both ended with the line about chairs being empty again, Zergan disconnected. For a moment, he actually looked like he was about to stand up and start throwing things around in a rage. His eyebrow quivered; his whole body appeared to be tensing before an explosion.
But then, for some reason, he laughed. A slow, low chuckle that gave Vilia the creeps. Zergan was a dangerous, dangerous man. With a nice back.
She needed to get out of here so she could at least warn Captain Rogers that someone was plotting to kill him. She knew she couldn’t go to Keffoule directly; Keffoule and Zergan had been friends for a long time. Without any hard evidence—Vilia didn’t yet know what had been transferred—she had nothing to prove. Thankfully, it looked like Zergan was about to leave the room again; he stood and put on a clean shirt. A good thing, too—she was about to reach her limit on nearly every one of her personal standards regarding cleanliness, spying, and unexpected voyeurism.
For some reason, though, as soon as he’d put his shirt on, Zergan took it off again, threw it on the rapidly expanding pile near Vilia, and sat back down at the computer. He poured himself another glass and turned on a movie.
Vilia tried not to cry. Or breathe through her nose.
Does Stockholm Have Toast?
The feeling of having a wet, dirty blanket placed over one’s face, compounded with a phantom headache and tiny tendrils of nausea working its way through one’s stomach, wasn’t exactly unfamiliar to Rogers. With all the advancements of the last thousand years or so, they still hadn’t come up with a cure for a good old-fashioned hangover.
But, for perhaps the first time in Rogers’ life, he was absolutely, positively thrilled to be hungover.
It meant a couple of things had happened. First, it meant he’d finally gotten a decent drink. Well, ten decent drinks. Second, it meant he’d been at least temporarily absolved of enough absurd, unwanted responsibility that ten drinks couldn’t really have been considered reckless. Third, it meant he’d finally gotten a decent drink. What more could he have asked for?
Well, he supposed not having someone standing next to him banging on a gong would have been nice.
“What? What? What? What?” he cried as he sat bolt upright in bed, flailing his arms against whoever was attacking him with a giant sheet of metal. His now finely tuned ducking instincts kicked in, but since he was lying down, he just sort of shriveled back into his sheets.
It was only after he had both hands over his ears and his face buried in the mattress that the gonging stopped. A muffled voice barely broke through his hastily constructed sound barrier, too soft for him to make out what the person was saying.
Slowly, for fear that the gonging might start again, Rogers slowly unburied himself from his blanket fort to find that all of the lights in the room had been turned to full blast, piercing his eyes, his head, and his brain.
“Mother of god,” he groaned.
�
��She is absent at the moment,” came the droll, flat voice of Xan the Droopy-Faced Assistant. “You will have to settle for breakfast.”
Rogers rubbed his eyes and blinked until his vision was clear. Xan was standing next to his bed holding—unsurprisingly—a small gong and mallet. Nearby was a cart not unlike something Rogers would have seen at a fancy hotel, with a covered tray on top of it. Xan, ever the neat and stoic assistant, was wrinkling his nose.
“Breakfast?” Rogers said. “What time is it?”
“It is currently just past two in the afternoon, ship time,” Xan said.
“Ah. Well, thanks for bringing me breakfast. Was this the Grand Marshal’s order?”
Xan gave him the sort of look that sarcastically asked Rogers if Xan would have brought him breakfast in bed of his own accord.
“Ah,” Rogers said again. “Well, it’s appreciated.”
Rogers looked at the cart. The covered tray on top looked just like the one that had come by the previous night, the one that had concealed the Jasker 120. The whole time, Rogers had thought Keffoule had intended to actually, physically duel him! He almost laughed out loud. He’d expected to lift that cover and find a pistol, not alcohol. That certainly would have been dramatic!
Rogers reached forward and lifted the cover to reveal a pistol. He stared at it for a moment, then looked at Xan.
“You people are so goddamned weird.”
“The Grand Marshal, against my very adamant counsel, has decided that it would be prudent for you to have protection while aboard the Limiter.”