Enigma

by C. F. Bentley

  ENIGMA

  Confederated Star Systems #2

  Irene Radford

  Writing as C.F. Bentley

  www.bookviewcafe.com

  Book View Café Edition

  October 20, 2015

  ISBN: 978-1-61138-552-6

  Copyright © 2009 Phyllis Irene Radford

  DEDICATION:

  This book is dedicated to a number of people who keep me going

  when the going gets tough:

  For Deb and the wonderful what ifs.

  For Lizzy for the amazing dreams.

  For Bob and all the science stuff.

  For Maggie anchoring me in reality.

  For Judy for showing me a new way to pray.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Many years ago I sat on a panel discussion at Baycon in San Jose, California, on the etiquette of First Contact. This was so long ago I don’t remember much about the discussion or the people involved. But one comment stuck in my brain. “When we meet someone on the Internet, we don’t invite them to our home. We make that first face-to-face meeting in a coffee shop across town. Neutral territory.”

  I took that statement home and wrote a short story, “The First Contact Café” by Irene Radford (one of my pen names). Many thanks to John Helfers, editor at Tekno Books for including it in the anthology Space Stations; DAW Books 2003.

  When I began developing The Confederated Star Systems series, I knew I needed a space station. Since I already had one, I stole it from my pseudonym Irene Radford. Then I had to make the thing work. A little redesign and much advice from Bob Brown, a health physicist for the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, and I bring you the new and improved version of the First Contact Café.

  You can find even more stories, by multiple authors, in the anthology First Contact Café, edited by Irene Radford and published by Skywarrior Books.

  Creating a book of the scope of Enigma involves many more people than just the author. My family gets many hugs and much gratitude for putting up with me in my workaholic moods, scanty meals, nonexistent housework, and minimal conversation. My friends who read the book before I dared submit to my editor, Lea Day, Deborah Dixon, Bob Brown, and Lizzie Shannon, deserve more than I can give them for their invaluable advice. Variations and inconsistencies are mine not theirs. As always, I am in deep awe of my editor Sheila Gilbert at DAW who can always find ways to make my work more complete and meaningful.

  And last but not least I want to thank Judy Gregoire and The Dance Connection in Welches, Oregon, for providing me a place of sanctuary and refuge, and showing me that dance too can be offered as a prayer.

  C.F. Bentley

  Welches, Oregon

  December 2008

  Small rituals when combined with ancient tradition remind us day-by-day, minute-by-minute, of our connection to the Divine.

  PROLOGUE

  Freedom. Safety. Within sight. An end to this endless flight. A beginning of truth.

  The seeking, ever the seeking, will there ever be an end?

  I feel the ending in my bones and in my heart.

  If only I can survive a little longer, I will know who it is that I seek. Who can re-sanctify the rituals.

  Will the search begin again with only one new clue, or will this truly be the end?

  What am I without the search? What are we without the sacred rituals?

  CHAPTER ONE

  “Stupid, useless, sons of a Denubian muscle cat. Why can’t Ambassador Telvino and Lord Lukan just sign the damned treaty! Then we’d have access to Badger Metal and could defeat the Maril once and for all.”

  Colonel Jeremiah Devlin tossed aside the coded communiqué from Admiral Pamela Marella, the spymaster of the Confederated Star Systems. Pammy thought she should be Jake’s boss. Ambassador Telvino claimed him as well. Lord Lukan, Ambassador from Harmony, thought he belonged on his delegation.

  Jake slammed his fist into his thigh. His blow bounced off hard muscle, a side benefit from hours spent in the heavy grav gym trying to work himself to exhaustion so he could get some sleep.

  Jake rubbed his bleary eyes, and the encrypted words swam before his mind.

  The Maril are changing tactics. After their defeat at Harmony Six by the combined fleets of Harmony and the CSS, the Maril amassed a new fleet and attacked our border at Haven IV, our closest outpost to Harmony. We hold them off for the present. Prepare to depart your current assignment with six hours’ notice to rejoin our defense forces.

  Damn, damn, and damn again. If he left the space station, he’d also have to leave Laudae Sissy, High Priestess of Harmony, to the mercies of the ambassadors and Admiral Marella. None of them had the frail young woman’s best interests in mind. Only their own agendas.

  Our enemy also now makes forays to frontier worlds on the rim. Worlds beyond our protection, either by choice or by distance. We have reports that planets that surrender or put up only token resistance are absorbed into the Marillon Empire. Serious attempts are made to convert humans to their religion and culture. Rumors of DNA manipulation so they can interbreed are spotty and unreliable but worth investigating.

  Worlds that resist are wiped out, as per Maril SOP.

  Jake knew that as well as anyone. He’d lost both his parents and his brother when Maril bombs annihilated all traces of civilization on their home planet. But that was back when he was Cadet Jake Hannigan at the CSS Military Academy. Under his new identity as diplomatic liaison between the CSS and Harmony delegations on this cursed and lonely space station—after a six month stint in deep cover as a spy on Harmony—he wasn’t supposed to feel that loss.

  But he did. And the words of the memo still imprinted upon his memory, blotting all else from his consciousness.

  The Maril still seek a new source for Badger Metal. As do we. We suspect they will open a new battlefront near Harmony, the only source for Badger Metal, when they have augmented their forces with human troops.

  Returning to First Contact Café soonest.

  Seeking solace, he fell to his knees before his makeshift altar in the corner of his pie-shaped quarters. His hands folded and his head bowed automatically into respectful prayer. Unconsciously he flexed and relaxed his muscles, counting sets of seven. Ever seven, for the seven gods of Harmony and Her seven castes. Always seven.

  “Words. They fight over words while our alien enemies build new fleets and man them with our own people.” He bowed his head until his forehead nearly touched the altar, silently begging the line drawing of Goddess Harmony and her divine family for guidance. He wanted to light the purple candle stub and saucer of incense to speed his prayers. But no way would he violate the most sacred law of life on a space station by igniting anything.

  If he had a crystal, any crystal, he could make it chime and get the attention of Someone out there who could acknowledge his seven prayers.

  He stared long and hard at the crude picture. The blank eyes of Harmony, her Consort Empathy, and their children, Nurture and Unity, stared back at him almost in accusation. They embraced their stepchildren, Anger, Fear, and Greed, as part of the balance of nature that banished Discord. He’d seen the original painting in a mural deep within the funerary caves on the planet Harmony.

  Brooding about blasted memo was better than brooding about the love of his life—a woman he could never have.

  He stood up and jumped to the crossbar he’d set in his closet. Twenty-one pull-ups barely strained his shoulders. Forty-nine, he began to feel the stretch and burn.

  Fifty-six . . .

  I need you. A thought brushed his mind. A sense of distress flared within him. Then it was gone.

  The figures on the line drawing shuddered. So did the station bulkheads. Just the slightest vibration where none should be.

  Come. Now. The plea for help became mo
re urgent. It had a feminine quality.

  Jake cursed. Only one person in all the universe had that kind of hold on his mind and his heart.

  Under the mental noise of people in distress the distant keen of an alarm rose and fell.

  Which had come first?

  He swung off the bar, landing halfway to the exit hatch. Long strides took him to the circular lobby of level MG 2 in the CSS diplomatic wing of the space station. With every step the klaxon grew louder, more insistent.

  The lift, moving platforms three meters apart on a conveyor belt, rotated up to the nulgrav hub and back toward the heavygrav end of the wing in their placid rhythm. The double spiral staircases around the lift looked empty.

  Three long corridors, running between groups of quarters, stretched toward the hull. The rest of the circle showed firmly closed doors to diplomatic suites and high-ranking crew quarters.

  Each tubular wing stuck out from the vastly larger cylinder of the station core. Station spin gave the outermost ends of the wings heavier gravity and made the core appear “up” from any given location. Smaller tubes stretched between adjacent wings for stability and maintenance robot access. From outer space the entire complex looked like a tin can with twenty-seven clusters of three or four strands of spaghetti sticking out of it.

  Frightened voices, screams, bangs, and thuds at the end of the corridor directly ahead drew his attention.

  He skidded to a halt in front of a maintenance access hatch. This two-meter-diameter tube connected his wing to the living quarters of the delegation from Harmony. Designed primarily for maintenance robots, only a few highly trusted, heavily screened personnel were allowed to use it. Only one of those had a key.

  It was locked to all others. An override from Control could open the hatches in case of emergency evacuation. Otherwise, people were prohibited from using them as a shortcut.

  As special liaison and military chief of staff, Jake had keys that would open any door or hatch in the seven wings assigned to Harmony and the CSS. It had to be seven to satisfy Harmony even though they had to borrow one from another cluster. Lord Lukan from Harmony and Ambassador Telvino of the CSS also had emergency keys.

  Jake invoked special diplomatic privilege and beamed a coded signal from the comm unit strapped to his wrist to the panel. The locking mechanism took its own sweet time accepting his authorization. It wanted another password, then a thumbprint, and finally accepted a retinal scan.

  The voices behind the hatch reached hysteria.

  At last the light blinked a benign green.

  Using all of the strength he’d gained from those hours in the gym, he applied his weight to the latch. The bolt grunted and heaved as loudly as he did. Then it slid back slowly, protesting and grinding every millimeter of the way. Rust should not have developed on a new station! At last it pushed free. Then he had to spin the bolt to open the hatch.

  “Archaic, redundant, miserable . . .” He exhausted his litany of abuse on the thing before the hatch gaped a scant ten centimeters.

  Now he recognized the coded alarm in the background. Three short blasts, a long one, then three more short, repeated again and again until someone in Control could override it. Hull breach. Losing atmosphere.

  That tiny shudder of the goddess in the line drawing should have warned him. Instead, he’d ignored Her.

  A wind grew behind him, pushing itself into the crack of an opening. Atmosphere trying to equalize.

  He needed help. But first he had a wing full of people to evacuate. He prayed that the Labyrinthe Corporation had implemented full safety protocols in their hurry to complete the station before the CSS and Harmony delegations arrived.

  Bracing his feet on the bulkhead, he pulled the hatch open with both hands. The door swung free suddenly and flung Jake away. He landed against the wall and slid down hard on his butt, legs sprawled, back screaming in protest.

  He ignored the stabbing pain his shoulder blade. Dimly he knew that a free fall grip might have penetrated his skin.

  The klaxon continued. Discord! Where in the seven hells were the maintenance bots, a dozen of them in different sizes and functions, designed to flood the area and fix the damage?

  A tangle of arms, legs, and lavender clothing clogged the hatch opening. He sorted them out, drawing free first a small blonde girl, then an older, dark-haired one.

  “Suzie!” He hugged the younger girl close as he dragged Mary free of the confining tube. He inspected both girls from head to toe. No bruises, still a good sparkle in the purple circle Temple caste marks on their left cheeks. “Is Laudae Sissy safe?”

  In another life Mary and Suzie might be his daughters, instead of merely acolytes to the High Priestess of Harmony.

  “I don’t know where she is!” thirteen-year-old Mary wailed, clinging to him. “She told us to come to you. I can’t see who’s behind. Most of the lights aren’t working. Dog and Monster herded us into the tube faster than we could think.” She mentioned two of the mutts that followed Laudae Sissy everywhere, along with a clowder of cats, birds, lizards, and other critters seeking a home. She’d brought most of them with her from Harmony, then sent all but the two dogs and three cats home when they didn’t adapt to the confined life on station.

  “Easy, Mary. I need you to take Suzie so I can help the others. Can you be brave for just a few more moments?” He forced himself to speak calmly, authoritatively, to still the girls’ panic.

  Mary gulped back her tears and nodded.

  “Now, as I get people free, I need you to direct them to the central tram. Send them to the Conference wing.” He pulled another girl in a lavender nightgown free of the hatch; Sharan, the littlest, but not the youngest, of Laudae Sissy’s acolytes.

  “Trams in the core don’t work. Bulkheads closed at the top to contain the breach.” Mary spoke the unfamiliar vocabulary carefully. “Our in-wing lift stopped too. Everyone’s got to use the stairs to get to this escape route.”

  “Damn.” He checked the lift on his level. Sure enough, it had stalled with only one platform visible about one and a half meters above the deck. “Okay. Mary, I need you to bang on the fifth door down to the right. Keep banging until Ambassador Telvino wakes up and knows what’s going on. Can you do that?”

  Bella and Sarah tumbled out together, clinging to Martha’s hands. All six of the girls safe. Sissy’s girls. His girls. He breathed a little easier.

  No sign of the dogs yet.

  He hadn’t seen the briefest glimpse of Sissy’s bright purple clothes either. Nor the neutral brown of her young siblings, Marsh and Ashel.

  If she lost those two remaining of her once large family, she’d shatter, and take with her the entire Harmonite Empire.

  “Yes, sir,” Mary replied smartly.

  “Good.” He swallowed his panic. Useless emotion. “When the ambassador has taken charge, you can gather Laudae Sissy’s girls in my room directly across from the end of this corridor. The door is unlocked.” He reached into the tube and brought forth strangers in blue that matched their Noble diamond caste marks.

  A single handcar trundled along the tracks at the bottom of the tube. Jake turned his attention to check on the girls at the same time he reached into the tube blindly to assist.

  “Unhand me, you barefaced troll!” A lady batted his hands away from her august personage.

  “Sorry, Lady. But if you don’t get your Noble butt out of there quickly, on your own so others can come free, I’ll just have to drag you out,” Jake replied, clamping both hands around her swollen ankles.

  “I’ll have your head for your impertinence.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  “You can’t have my head on this space station,” he said around scornful smirk. “You left behind you on Harmony the authority to execute without trial anyone below you in rank.”

  “Uncivilized brute. Oh, it’s you, Military Jake.” She huffed and allowed him to pull her free.

  He recognized Lady Jancee, wife of Lord Lukan, the Harmonite Ambass
ador. He should have known her by her one snotty sentence. Tall, long-legged, with a magnificent bosom, this blonde autocrat was deemed the most beautiful woman on Harmony—until this latest pregnancy had swollen her entire body, not just her belly.

  Jake reserved that title of “most beautiful” for Sissy.

  “Just keep moving, My Lady. Someone up the corridor will help settle you into temporary quarters.”

  “I knew Laudae Sissy trusted you with her life for a reason.”

  Yeah, I protected my Sissy from an assassin hired by your mother-in-law, My Lady.

  Jake had kept his red square caste mark after returning from Harmony because it remained his only link to Sissy. Now it acted as a bridge between his world and hers, smoothing troubled communications.

  Lady Jancee waddled less than gracefully in the direction he pointed. She looked about six months along in her seventh pregnancy. Good reason for her to use the only handcart in the tube. He wondered briefly who had propelled it with the hand pump for her.

  He noted that the six lavender-clad acolytes had formed a sort of reception line, guiding people toward Ambassador Telvino at the staircase. They knew how to do ceremony. They’d found a familiar ritual and applied it to an emergency.

  Jake returned to the hatch. Fewer people pressing from behind now, mostly with the brown X mark of the Worker caste. They’d all been ennobled—adding a blue diamond outline to the caste mark. A couple of Professionals sporting a green triangle encircled with Temple purple, lauded medics, accountants, lawyers, and such. Then a squad of Military slid through, also lauded so they could serve Temple people. They took orders easily from Jake and deployed to communications and directing traffic. Their solid presence kept panic to a minimum.

  People came free of the hatch more smoothly now, in less haste and more orderly.

  Still no sign of anyone wearing deep purple. Or of Marsh and Ashel. The dogs wouldn’t leave Sissy.

  The next man through propelled himself easily along the handgrips at waist level along the walking ledge above the ’bot tracks at the bottom: Ambassador Lukan.