The blow was so unexpected I spun right around and went down on top of Sasaki, who had the presence of mind to grab the other guard and anchor herself so we both didn’t fall completely.
Through the roaring in my ears Lorna’s voice called out something and the Achelian made a sharp, high squeal of distress.
The rough material of Sasaki’s uniform scraped against my cheek. Same as Murdoch’s. He... no, she was saying something to me.
Open your eyes. They’re open, just can’t focus. Legs, try legs. I grabbed handfuls of Sasaki’s uniform and tried to pull myself upright. Someone held my elbows.
“Where is it?” The captain’s face shimmered into unwelcome focus. She pushed Sasaki and the guard away from me effortlessly with both her arms.
I tried to answer but my head throbbed and my mouth was full of blood. I turned my head to spit and the movement sent me staggering against the table.
“Where is it?” The captain pointed her weapon at Sasaki.
“In the old fighter dock,” said Sasaki. She reached out to take my arm but the captain growled, a note of warning.
“Level Eight,” I mumbled. Spat, and tried again. Mouth must be cut inside, whole cheek numb. “I was about to tell you.” My mouth slurred the words.
The captain cocked her head at me.
Being beaten by the Bendarl is not necessarily regarded by them as a weakness, it merely confirms their view of how the universe should work.
She slowly replaced her weapon and called her marines again. We waited while they searched, the link open. Tableau: huddle of frightened dignitaries in one corner of the room, silent Bendarl soldiers with bare weapons, the Invidi like a silver statue, Bendarl captain with her attention on the comm link. I dared not look behind at Sasaki or meet Lorna’s eyes for fear the bitter bile of defeat would rise up and choke me and I’d say something we might all regret.
Finally a response crackled from the comm link. The captain wrinkled her nose in satisfaction and turned to An Barik.
“Item secure.”
The Invidi shuffled toward the door where the soldiers were lined up.
“As the Council delegate, I protest this treatment.” Quertianus found his voice.
“Absolutely.” Stone also gained courage from the partial withdrawal of the soldiers. “I will send a full and detailed report of this outrage to your superiors and mine. Don’t think you can get away with it.”
The captain’s eyes roved over the room and I felt sick— was she going to kill us all so we couldn’t talk?
Apparently Trillith thought the same, for its color began to fade again. “I’m sure the captain has her reasons,” it said. “We must not judge too hastily.”
“They are in clear violation of at least five Confederacy laws and many regulations,” said deVries coldly, her eyes on An Barik. “Laws that the Invidi helped draft. They have no right to break them now.”
The captain ignored all this. An Barik resumed his shuffle out.
“Bring Halley,” he said. And left.
Cold claws of apprehension clutched at me. I couldn’t do anything from Confederacy custody. Once they had me in the system it would take months to get a ConFleet hearing.
Too fast, it’s all happening too fast.
“You have no right to apprehend a citizen of the Confederacy on neutral ground. Until the Council accepts or rejects our application, this station is exactly that.” DeVries stepped forward, angrier than I’d ever seen her.
“I concur with the magistrate’s position,” said Veatch. He wriggled his fingers nervously but he stepped forward beside deVries. The delegates and Trillith edged back, as though to make it clear they were not involved.
Florida dithered. “Ah, what the hell,” he muttered, and joined Lorna. “You’ve got a lot of witnesses here.” He spread his hands in a gesture of conciliation. “Why not just take the…“
“Ship,” said Lorna.
“Ship, and forget about the commander?” He smiled, totally wasted on the Bendarl.
The captain looked at me. “I order you to report to Vengeful. ”
My face throbbed. I touched the cut inside my mouth with my tongue and tasted blood. “No, ma’am. I can’t do that.”
“Then I arrest you for mutiny.”
“I hereby resign my ConFleet commission as per regulation Theta 5.3.”
“You still stand trial.”
DeVries came all the way to the table and leaned over it. Florida and Veatch followed more reluctantly.
“She is also the governor of this system,” said Lorna, “and that position holds until the neutrality vote. You cannot arrest a senior official without due process of law, which involves...”
I felt strangely detached.
The captain snarled and spun around. This time I jumped back, but she wasn’t interested in blows.
“Cannot, cannot. Look around you, little ones.” She loomed with the promise of violence.
“Take her,” she ordered the soldier closest to me.
Sasaki and the guard attempted to close in front of me but I pushed between them. “No, it’s not worth it.” I tried to catch Florida’s eye. “Dan, tell every...”
Tell everyone what happened is what I wanted to say. The words were cut off as the guard pulled me away. His hand curled around my forearm like a vise. The door shut on deVries’s and Florida’s protests. I felt a pang of sympathy for him—he’d worked so hard to bring the delegates here and now I’d messed up his dinner.
The guard shifted his grip to my upper arm. It hurt, but so did my wrist where the captain had grabbed it and my head where she’d hit it. The pain didn’t matter at the moment—it might have belonged to someone else.
The captain stalked along, growling under her breath. We followed her, two more soldiers bringing up the rear. The corridor was dark and blue, night lights only. More people, all scurrying to get out of the way when they saw the Bendarl. I kept stumbling and the guard kept jerking me upright.
An Barik’s tall form filled the corridor ahead. We overtook him rapidly.
“Wait.” I braced my heels as the captain leveled with the Invidi and the guard slowed down. “An Barik, please listen to me.” No response.
The captain growled something over her shoulder and passed An Barik.
“Please!” I shouted at him. The guard pushed me and I bumped off the wall back almost in An Barik’s path.
“At least answer a question,” I panted. In the old days, An Barik was always willing to answer questions.
The guard grabbed my arm and twisted it behind me. Bright points began to blossom in front of my eyes.
“What is question?” boomed An Barik.
I sagged with relief in the guard’s grip. He loosened his hold slightly and looked at the captain. She chopped her hand down irritably. “Hurry up.” She continued striding on ahead.
“What is question?”
The old Barik was never impatient.
“Can the Invidi open jump points wherever you want to?” I didn’t care if the guard heard. Didn’t care if the whole damn Confederacy heard. “Is that why you’re after Serat—because he did that?”
Immediate answer. “Serat work unstable.”
Did he mean Serat himself or Farseer? Unstable in what way? “What’s so special about that ship?”
“You answer your own question.”
“What...” I began, but the guard cut me off by putting a coarse hand across my mouth. What did he mean? The question about Invidi opening jumps off-network—was that why Farseer was special? It could open jump points?
“You finish,” grunted the guard.
“Yes,” said Barik.
“No...” The guard’s hot hand crushed the word against my lips and he dragged me away.
In the crawler we squished together, their armor digging into my back and hips through the thin material of the dress uniform. My arm and shoulder burned from where the guard twisted it. The pain, the heat, and the combined odors of their
breath made my head spin. Don’t faint, they’ll probably drag you along by the heels.
More corridors. Level Three? Each time I tried to look around, another tug nearly floored me.
Then we were staring out an airlock, floating through a narrow gray tunnel, no friendly EarthFleet blue here. A standard shuttle, troops saluting. Pinned immobile in an inertia net. The three-g breakoff threatened to squeeze my eyelids shut but I forced them open, desperate for one last glimpse of the white rings of home spinning against the stars.
Twenty-eight
I did all right until they stripped me.
Kept quiet when the shuttle’s rough landing threatened to scramble my insides; ignored jibes from the lieutenant in charge of escorting me to an “interview” room on the cruiser; remembered to insist I was now a civilian and to request legal counsel. They didn’t listen, of course, but it made me feel better to keep repeating who I was. It helped me delude myself that this would eventually be sorted out and we could return to normal.
Resigning hadn’t been an option until the words left my mouth. I felt unsettled, as an object placed in a cabin in free fall will nudge the same spot for a while before floating away around the room. I’d been in ConFleet for twenty-three years, mostly in the Engineering Corps, which contained few Bendarl and little military ceremony. If I’d been in other arms of ConFleet, maybe I wouldn’t have remained for so long.
As for An Barik’s words about Serat and Farseer, I didn’t know how to interpret them. He may have meant Farseer ’s combination of Tor and Invidi technology was inherently unstable, and I could well believe it. I didn’t think active Tor technology would be content to combine peacefully with any other system. Or he might have been saying that to discourage me from trying the same thing. As I’d almost contemplated when considering how to save information on Farseer.
I thought of my efforts to map Farseer ’s system—would the Bendarl have simply removed the ship with my handcoms inside? Or would they have cleaned out all evidence of human use? More damn waste of time. I should have risked frying my brains in that direct connection in the hope of getting information more quickly.
Could Farseer really open jump points, perhaps the way the Tor did? It would explain the discrepancy in the coordinates when we left 2023. We hadn’t entered the jump point already there because we’d made a new one. But that meant there were two jump points from 2023 to 2122, both of ninety-nine years’ duration. If my theory about the radiation surge on May 16, 2023, was correct, only one of those points would survive another day. But then if Calypso used the remaining point in 2027, why did its correspondence shrink from ninety-nine years to ninety-five? All our experience of the jump points says they do not change length. So Calypso should have emerged in 2126.
I wish I’d never seen a jump drive.
When the sergeant told me to drop my clothes so they could do a full body search, I lost it completely. I yelled at him for counsel, for a medical officer, for an officer of any sort. It did me no good, and instead of one of them doing it without fuss, two of them held me down so the sergeant could get at me. Nothing personal, of course, with Bendarl. They didn’t care who they hurt. Their claws scratched my skin and I cried more from the indignity and pain of their grip on my arms and legs than from the primitive medical probe they used.
After they were done, I shook with humiliation and anger in the corner of the room farthest from them, arms wrapped around myself, torso goose-bumped, knees trembling. It wasn’t cold that made me shiver—Bendarl temperature controls were set several degrees hotter than humans found comfortable. It was knowing that I had been used as a tool in some Invidi game of temporal politics. Barik’s involvement made that obvious.
Fear for Murdoch settled in a cold lump in my stomach. Had they arrested him as well?
Eventually the Bendarl soldiers hustled me, still naked, out into the gray corridors. The corridor lights glared too bright for human eyes. Every shadow showed black and distorted by the conduits and control points along walls and ceilings. Round, cramped doors marked corridor sections, designed to be easily defended or airlocked if necessary. We walked—rather, I stumbled. The Bendarl used the Invidi gravity field at slightly stronger than Earth normal. It dragged at my body as the situation dragged at my spirits.
The idea of trying to escape made me feel sick. Yet I wouldn’t get a better chance. The ship hadn’t jumped back to Central. I had worked on vessels of this class before and knew their back corridors and access networks. Only two marines accompanied me and they hadn’t bothered to restrain me—probably the ease with which they’d held me down persuaded them I wasn’t much of a threat. But once they put me in a proper brig cell, any chance of escape would vanish.
A shrill, insistent whoop made us all jump. Decompression alert. I hadn’t heard it for years, but it sent me instantly swinging around to locate the nearest spacesuit locker and emergency shaft.
One of the marines cursed and ran to a comm panel at the end of the corridor. The other, like me, looked around for the emergency locker that should be halfway down every corridor.
Forget the alarm. The guards aren’t looking at you.
I took four long strides to the closest maintenance hatch that opened, as I knew it would, with a quick twist, push, and pull. Convenient how the Bendarl mistrust new technology.
The closest marine roared with rage and charged behind me.
A tight fit—I scraped my shoulders, hips, backs of thighs on the rough edges. Convenient, too, that the Bendarl use robots or humans for maintenance work. They’d never get through that hole themselves.
In my panic to set the hatch on auto again, I slammed the marine’s stubby, clawed digits. His roar of rage turned to one of pain. I couldn’t turn properly in the shaft and had to brace my legs on both sides of the hatch and bend backward.
The marine snatched his hand away, almost opening the hatch, but I kept hold and closed it. Keyed in a half-remembered, half-habitual code scramble with shaking fingers.
Get away from this area because this was where they’d start looking. The alarm still rose and fell, echoing up the shaft from a lower level. Whatever had caused a Grade One alarm, I hoped the crew was not abandoning ship while I sat here in the dim heat, a switch digging into my left buttock.
I was perched in a small, spherical space, hemmed on all sides but one by surfaces covered with snaking connections, many of them active and glowing. The open shaft stretched down with no friendly ladder like on Jocasta. I swore under my breath and wished the gravity field to hell. They must use maglev belts in these shafts, or service bots. If I wanted down I’d have to jump or climb.
A blow on the hatch at my back vibrated through the surfaces above and below me and a couple of status indicators flickered.
I stuck my feet gingerly down into the shaft, toes feeling for a hold.
The hatch exploded in my ear. I slid, and only halted the drop by bracing shoulders and knees against the sides of the shaft. Oh, hell, hell and damnation. I shut my teeth around a scream as prickles of electricity ran between my shoulders, leaving them numb and my heart racing.
In the uncertain glow I could see the hatch was still intact, despite the noise. That stupid marine must have loosed off a shot at the controls and fused them nicely. It would take them hours to get the hatch open.
A security detail would be waiting for me wherever this shaft ended. Too much to hope they’d all be too busy with the alert to have time to track one human signal on internal sensors. Unless, and I almost laughed at the thought, unless it was an outside attack and not a problem with the ship’s systems, which was what I’d assumed. If someone was attacking, my place was back on the station, not stuck here in some goddamn tunnel.
I had to get out of here, find a uniform, and mix my sensor readings with the fifteen hundred or so individuals of whom, if the cruiser was an average ship, between five and fifteen percent would be human. Mostly in the service areas. Some pilots, too. Humans were small, expendab
le, and functioned well with interface enhancements.
A lateral shaft at last. I slid the last couple of meters down and pulled myself horizontal with a sob of relief. Don’t think about how much you hurt and what you’re going to do when you get out. Don’t think about the alarm that still vibrates around you. Concentrate on where the shaft leads and how to crawl along it without getting burned or electrocuted.
I never realized how much difference even a single layer of cloth makes between flesh and the world of syntal, glass, and wire. Right now I’d welcome even a dress uniform. I’d kill for a pair of boots. Like the ones a certain group of men in the out-town used to wear as a badge of solidarity. Most of them hadn’t worked for months or years. But they all boasted battered, heavy boots. Vince had a pair. I’d surprised him one day in the courtyard, rubbing gravel into the toes and heels to achieve that rugged look.
I peered at the ID beside a control panel and stopped, glad of an excuse to rest. Deck Twelve, Section Fifty-two. These big warships were fifteen to twenty decks deep. Deck Twelve would be crew quarters, and as far as I could remember, Section Fifty-two contained Stores or Recreation or some such low-priority area. A good place to avoid detection, and one they would hardly expect me to visit.
I could get some clothes there, and find a way to get off the cruiser before it jumped. I’d take an escape pod at a pinch, but I’d prefer something with a bit of thruster power I could steer. And go where? I didn’t know, but back to the station sounded good. Or over to the asteroid belt where I could hide for a while.
What did it matter, I just needed to get out of this tunnel.
The shaft shuddered and the jolt found every bruise and scrape in my knees, hands, shoulders. Engine hum faltered, then resumed on a higher note. They’d rerouted power through the shielded generators. We must be under attack, after all. But who were we fighting? The only threat in this sector was from organized pirates. The New Council had no ships that could seriously challenge ConFleet. Unless they’d brought the Q’Chn to fight, because all the Q’Chn needed to do was get close enough to board. But who would fight over Jocasta or the Abelar system?
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