Heretics [Apotheosis 02]]

by S. Andrew Swann

  The ministers of a military and scientific background knew the enormity of one statement in the face of everything else. It was the acting Minister of Engineering Projects and Mining who posed the first question. “Are we certain that these wormholes tached into the outer system, or is that still someone’s hypothesis?”

  A valid point, as it already took an appalling amount of energy to accelerate a wormhole to three quarters the speed of light. To tach a mass took even more energy, as the power required was a function not only of mass and distance, but momentum as well.

  Of course they didn’t know that an entire star had been consumed to power this attack.

  “Since the last briefing,” he answered, “a scientific team has been able to analyze monitors used for traffic control. They found a series of spikes that are consistent with masses of that size and velocity taching insystem.”

  Another minister spoke up. “Has the point of origin been confirmed?”

  “Everything projects the path back to Xi Virginis.”

  The room erupted into a babble of voices. Al-Hamadi’s expression remained grave even as the being within his skin felt a thrill at seeing Adam’s machinations come to fruition.

  He had been designed by the same creatures that had created the first stage of Adam’s consciousness, for the same purposes. But while he could see the small-scale dynamics of social groups, Adam had progressed far beyond him. The outlines of Adam’s plans were dim and inscrutable even to a Race AI that at one point might have been his peer, and seeing the heart of the Caliphate begin moving in the direction Adam had dictated seemed, in fact, to be close to miraculous.

  He heard the words “Sirius” and “Centauri” cross ministers’ lips. Already the question came to him, what word had come from the Prophet’s Sword, the grand ship that had carried much of the Caliphate’s military might to claim the colonies beyond Helminth.

  “None, though it is still too soon to expect a tach-comm from that distance.” Of course, with the vast power of the drives on the Ibrahim-class carriers, and of the ships they carried, they could return just as quickly as a tach-comm signal could. The four ships that had gone to those outbound colonies each carried a hundred daughter ships and a crew of ten thousand. And each, by now, would be fully under Adam’s control.

  One of the ministers said, “We must assume that our enemies, Sirius or Centauri—perhaps working together— have already established a base of operations at Xi Virginis and intend to attack us—”

  “—have already attacked us—” someone interjected.

  “—and we must act to defend ourselves.”

  Al-Hamadi quietly said, “We have no evidence on the identity or even the nature of the attacker.” He said it knowing full well that it would do nothing to change the suspicions of the people in this room.

  Someone asked the Naval Minister what their military readiness was. “Not good,” the minister responded. “Our insystem forces were crippled by the blast—the tachyon pulse was unanticipated and most available ships had drives primed to jump in case it was necessary to evacuate the system.”

  The Minister in Charge of the Suppression of Vice snapped, “Our military was neutered in a matter of hours? This is unacceptable.”

  “It hasn’t been,” Al-Hamadi said.

  “All our active duty ships were affected—”

  “Two were not on active duty,” Al-Hamadi said, “We have two remaining Ibrahim-class carriers that were in the final stage of construction. Their drives were idle during the attack. We can reallocate personnel from the damaged ships to crew them. They are the largest and most capable vessels in the Caliphate navy, and the engineers on-site report that they can be fully operational within the next thirty hours.”

  All the ministers looked at Al-Hamadi as if he was offering them salvation from God himself.

  He was, of course.

  Just not from their God.

  <>

  * * * *

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Sanctuary

  “A situation is only as safe insofar as the risks are unknown.”

  —The Cynic’s Book of Wisdom

  “They came in search of sanctuary and found themselves a wasteland.”

  —St. Rajasthan

  (2075-2118)

  Date: 2526.6.30 (Standard)

  1,500,000 km from Bakunin - BD+50°1725

  When Styx’s horizon disappeared from the viewscreen, a little more than twenty-four days standard disappeared from the universe around the Daedalus. The sky Toni looked at now was three and a half weeks older and over sixteen light-years removed from Styx and Sigma Draconis.

  The proximity alarm started going nuts.

  “What the hell are you doing to my ship?” Karl shouted.

  Toni started muting alarms. Fortunately, none of the contacts were particularly close or on an interception vector. “We’re fine, Mr. Stavros. Nothing dangerous—”

  Karl’s son Stefan snorted, as if just being within an AU of the planet Bakunin was dangerous. He was probably right.

  “What is it?” Toni II said from behind her.

  “There’s just a lot of traffic.” Toni started looking at the transponder traffic and whispered, “A lot of traffic.”

  “How much?”

  “I have twenty-five hundred separate transponders in the immediate vicinity.”

  “What?” Toni II said. “Does Bakunin normally have that kind of traffic?” Of course, the question was rhetorical, since Toni didn’t know any more than she did.

  Karl still answered, “Bah, of course not. You’ve obviously damaged the computer with your mucking about.”

  Toni sensed her twin’s irritation because she felt it herself. “Don’t hit him,” she said.

  “Now see you two—”

  “Unless he doesn’t shut up,” Toni added.

  Karl shut up.

  Toni flipped through all the comm controls. It wasn’t a mucked-up computer. There were literally thousands of tach-ships around Bakunin, and those were just the ones within short-range scanning. No wonder the proximity alarm was going insane. It was rare to have another ship within a million klicks unless you planned it or were in close orbit.

  The transponders, if they could be trusted, showed registries from all over. However, the preponderance of the ships identified themselves as coming from nearby systems: Earth, Cynos, Banlieue, Styx. She could see a lot of chatter going on, but most of it was encrypted on some level, so she couldn’t eavesdrop. After a bit of scanning, she found a broadcast that was in the clear and powerful enough that it seemed to be directed at everyone.

  “... is expected and will be enforced. This is a general announcement from the Proudhon Spaceport Development Corporation. There is an unprecedented influx of spacecraft announcing their intention to make landfall. To assure the safety of our facilities, and the safety of the approaches to our facilities, we will only permit approach by spacecraft cleared by PSDC air traffic control, in the order which they have been cleared. If you have not been cleared to land, your spacecraft will be shot down without any further warning. You must contact PSDC air traffic control for approach clearance and time. Your cooperation is expected and will be enforced.”

  Toni leaned back. “Some anarchy.”

  “You’ve never been to Bakunin,” Karl said.

  Toni turned the pilot’s chair around and looked at Karl and Stefan glaring at her, with her double between the two holding the gun. “You have?” she asked.

  “There isn’t an owner-operator in the Centauri Alliance who hasn’t.”

  “So, what do we expect here? Is this kind of backup normal?”

  “Why should I help you, Lieutenant?” Karl reached up and rubbed the back of his head where it had struck the bulkhead. “You’ve kidnapped me and my son and stolen my ship.”

  Toni rubbed her own jaw. She still tasted blood, and her neck was just beginning to ache from Stefan’s too-enthusiastic choke hold. Toni II took the opportu
nity to answer. “The sooner you help, the sooner we’ll be out of your lives and you can go back to normal.”

  Karl snorted and looked at Stefan. “Normal, she says.”

  “We don’t want your ship, or you,” Toni said, “We just needed to get out of there. Once we’re on planet you can take off and go back to—”

  Karl laughed.

  “What?” Toni asked.

  “You two really are Styx military, aren’t you?”

  “So?”

  Karl shook his head. “A pirate would have some sense of economics. Even if my crew haven’t taken their stake in the last load and found other work, they’ll certainly have by the time we could get back. You’ve taken two months out of my schedule, so I’ve lost every contract that had been waiting for me on my normal run. Some of those I’ve been serving for seven years. You’ve pretty much destroyed my business, Lieutenant Valentine.”

  There was a long silence in the cockpit before Toni II muttered something about insurance.

  That’s when Stefan lost it, “You stupid, thoughtless bitch! Do you have any idea what you’ve done?”

  Karl looked at his son. “Stefan, please—”

  “Thirty years my dad worked! Thirty years! You know what the average time is before a sole operator goes bankrupt?”

  “Stefan?”

  “Six months! Six months!” Spit flew from his mouth to hang in a weightless constellation in front of him. “This was his life. It was just as good as putting a bullet in his brain—”

  “Stefan, stop it!” Karl snapped at his son. Toni II had lowered the gun, and Toni could see the same sick feeling in her face that Toni felt in her own gut. Karl looked between the two of them and said, “You aren’t going to shoot us, are you?”

  “No,” Toni said.

  Karl sighed. “The point my son makes is that while we’re insured for piracy, that only covers direct losses. Cargo, refueling, replacement cost of the ship if you steal it—business and personnel losses, no. As it is, after a year of arbitration I might get just enough paid out to cover my debts.”

  “I’m sorry,” Toni said.

  “At this point an apology is more amusing than anything else.”

  “An apology—” Stefan began to yell again.

  “Stefan!” Karl cut him off. “I did not raise an idiot child. Stop acting like one.”

  Toni sighed and turned around toward the communication console. “I guess I’ll request clearance to land and we can wait in the queue.”

  Karl laughed. “You don’t want to do that.”

  “What?” Toni II asked before Toni could.

  “Actually, I guess you can ask for clearance. You just can’t land.”

  Toni turned slowly back around to face the two of them. “Why can’t we land?”

  “We don’t have a contragrav, damn it!” Stefan told her. “This ship can’t land.”

  Toni II raised her hand as if she were about to backhand the kid with the gun. Toni spoke before her twin’s arm could move. “Don’t play games, kid. We know the specs on a x252 cargo ship.”

  “What about the specs on this cargo ship?” Karl asked. After a pause where both Tonis stared at him, he said, “I thought so. You had no idea—”

  “Idea about what?” Toni II practically screamed at the man. Toni wanted to yell at her to calm down, but showing any form of discord between them in front of their captives would be worse than an emotional outburst.

  “The Daedalus was customized to carry the same load as a 252 with the tach capability of an x252. That required stripping away extra mass that wasn’t part of the tach-drive or life support—”

  “Like the fucking contragrav,” Stefan interjected.

  “As well as structural components that were only required for a descent into a gravity well,” Karl concluded. “Over the years we’ve tuned the Daedalus to tow mass in excess of 125% any other 252 series cargo ship.”

  “You just can’t land,” Toni whispered. She almost wanted to laugh at how badly her first foray into piracy was going. They’d managed to steal a ship that couldn’t even make planetfall. What the hell were they going to do now? They had no resources—

  “What’s your cargo?” Toni II asked them.

  Stefan snorted and muttered something that sounded like, “Great pirates we got here.”

  Toni was inclined to agree with the sentiment.

  Karl sighed. “About half our load has been off-loaded— anything valuable, sealed courier packages and the like, were taken off first. We were waiting for a surface-bound transport to take the remaining containers.”

  “Containers of?” Toni II asked.

  “Agricultural products, tropical fruit mostly.”

  “Fruit?”

  “Fruit,” Karl said. “On Styx, the margin for exotic foodstuffs is incredible. What little growing capacity they have is dedicated to staples, no reserve left for luxury items.”

  Toni II looked at her and said, “Fruit,” as if she couldn’t quite understand the meaning of the word. Toni felt the same stunned expression on her face. She turned around and looked at one of the comm displays and called up the cargo manifest and started reading.

  “Pineapple, banana, mango, papaya, kiwi...” Four full containers of the stuff. Tons of fruit.

  Tons.

  Toni tapped on the display and realized that she hadn’t been thinking like a pirate, and it was time she started. They couldn’t land, but there would certainly be orbital stations that could accommodate the Daedalus. And, this being the free-for-all Bakunin, there had to be someone in the market for what they carried. “Mr. Stavros?”

  “Yes?”

  “I’m afraid we’re going to have to be pirates for a bit longer. We’ll be taking your cargo to finance a berth to dock somewhere in orbit, and to find passage ... somewhere. Once we take care of that, we’ll release your ship back to you.”

  “If you are going to be pirates a bit longer, my I suggest erasing the log and the cockpit surveillance video?”

  “Dad? You’re helping them?”

  “Shh, Son. Just making the best of a bad situation.”

  Toni glanced over to a small display showing the data recorder for the cockpit. She stopped it, and after drilling through the advanced menu, she found the command to purge all the recorded data.

  “What’s the point of that?” Toni II asked. “There’s still surveillance footage from the rest of the ship, and if we purge all that, they still have data from the air lock back at 3SEC—”

  “It’s just better if there isn’t a record of what happens in this cockpit,” Karl said. “When I make an insurance claim against your theft of the Daedalus.”

  “Dad?”

  Toni turned around. “You don’t want this ship back?”

  “A claim on the lost cargo will just cover my costs, not my losses. My son already explained the disruption of my business. If you really do wish to provide me some compensation, allow me to make a claim on the ship itself. I own it free and clear, and its loss would bring a hefty settlement...”

  Toni had a sudden realization, and Toni II articulated it.

  “And you’d like to combine it with the proceeds from selling it on the black market here on Bakunin?”

  “A black market implies an illegal sale,” Karl said. “That’s an inappropriate term since there are no laws here.”

  “Dad, you’d really sell theDaedalus?”

  “Actually, I was hoping that our pirates here would broker such a deal for us. Better to keep the Stavroses out of it for the sake of the insurance investigators.”

  Toni stared at the man who was, only a few subjective minutes ago, trying to kill her to defend his ship. “You’re asking us to sell your ship?”

  “I’d be willing to give a commission for a quick sale.”

  “Dad!”

  “Do we have a deal?” Karl asked.

  Toni looked up at her other self and saw the same befuddlement in her face. They both said, simultaneously, �
�You have a deal.”

  * * * *

  Karl Stavros evidently had prior experience with the environment around Bakunin. As he said in an aside to Toni, “A necessary skill for any successful operator in my profession.” As he guided her though the complex web of orbital platforms and contract negotiations, she wondered exactly what that profession actually was. He didn’t strike her as someone who made his money hauling fruit.