A Prospect of War (An Age of Discord Novel Book 1)

by Ian Sales

  Lotsman wanted Riz to like him— No, he felt already that she liked him. He wanted more. Yet there were too many obstacles, of which their difference in social rank was probably the least. Above all was this war they were both fighting against the Serpent. Nothing could or should endanger that. Nor would Lotsman let it.

  He rolled onto his side and gazed out into the cabin. If he reached out, he could touch the far bulkhead. The wood was smooth and burnished from the brushed hips and rears of countless previous passengers. Lantern was not a new vessel, perhaps fifty years old. Few enough starships were built each year, and those mostly Imperial Navy. Divine Providence had first flown seventy-five years ago, although she had been in excellent shape for her age. Lotsman served an organisation that existed solely to maintain the status quo, to keep the military at the cutting-edge of production and all else behind, to preserve the distance between the peers and the rest of the population, between the fortunate few and the enslaved masses. He had never thought to question his place or his instructions. The escutcheon he wore on his collar was meaningless—Sir Borodisz demar Lewy was a fiction—but he held all that the device signified to be self-evident. Its design might not define him but the fact of its existence certainly did.

  He was too old now, and too far removed from the mainstream of his organisation’s activities, to ever be promoted to life-yeoman. He would remain a prole until he died—of old age, for preference. And on those terms, his feelings for Riz could never amount to more than sheer fantasy.

  But he was determined to enjoy them, the ups and the downs, while he could.

  Adril Tovar worried. Life, never simple, had turned very complicated in the last few weeks. It was not only the irruption of what had been routine, boring, safe… comfortable even; nor was it his current situation. His worries were more fundamental.

  Tovar had the utmost faith in his superiors. He knew his masters’ secret history, had in the past verified for himself the subtle clues and inconsistencies in Imperial history which proved the truth of their claims. For over 1,200 years, they had safeguarded the Imperial Throne and never revealed themselves in pursuance of that. They were very good at what they did.

  Now, he was no longer so sure.

  It was this situation with Casimir Ormuz. Bato had shown Tovar that young Ormuz had no intention of submitting to his masters’ wishes. Tovar wanted to believe the youth was mistaken, that his only hope lay with them. But he no longer felt that was true.

  A crewman appeared on the ramp leading down from the quarter-deck and glanced disinterestedly at the cargo-master as he hurried aft. Tovar watched him. Like all those aboard Lantern, the crewman wore black. It was… disconcerting being surrounded by people clad in black. It was the colour of authority, after all. Tovar wondered at the wisdom of Ormuz accepting Inspector Finesz’s protection.

  The wardroom was little more than a niche in the passage. It was filled almost entirely by a table, with just enough room around three sides for a bench-seat. The bulkheads were panelled in wood to head-height and bare metal above. Tovar shifted about the table, the better to see down the gangway, but the crewman was not to be seen. Perhaps he had taken the ramp to the engine deck below.

  Boots on the quarter-deck ramp drew his attention. He turned to see another crew-member come into view, boots first, then black-clad legs, tunic… Inspector Finesz. She halted at the foot of the ramp and gazed at Tovar. “Good morning,” she said.

  He acknowledged the greeting with a curt, “Ma’am.”

  “Where’s Casimir?” she asked.

  “Asleep in his cabin.”

  She frowned. “Oh well. It’ll have to wait.”

  Tovar frowned. “Can I ask a question?”

  “Uhm?” Finesz glanced across at him. “I can’t guarantee an answer.”

  “What exactly are you investigating? Why did you follow us from Darrus?”

  “That’s two questions. Still, I suppose there’s no harm in telling you. I was trailing Merenilo.”

  “The regimental-lieutenant who attacked us on Darrus?”

  She nodded. “You know why he was on Darrus?” Her tone indicated that she knew herself or, at the very least, had made a very good guess.

  Tovar nodded. “To assassinate Cas.”

  “Because the— Cas tells me you call him the Serpent? Because the Serpent wants him dead.”

  Tovar nodded again.

  “Why does the Serpent want him dead?” asked Finesz. “It’s hardly customary for nobles to slaughter their bastards when they reach maturity.”

  “I don’t know,” Tovar admitted.

  “Do you know who his father, this Serpent, is?”

  “No.”

  “How did Merenilo know to find you on Darrus? It wasn’t on your usual route.”

  “I don’t know.”

  Finesz crossed her arms and gazed sternly at Tovar. “Perhaps,” she said lightly, “it’s something similar to the way in which Casimir knows things he shouldn’t by rights know.”

  “Oh no, I very much doubt that,” Tovar said. The idea that the Serpent learnt information through his dreams was ludicrous… Although that did not explain why Ormuz could.

  “You know how he does it?” Finesz asked, fixing Tovar with a narrow-eyed stare.

  He turned away, embarrassed. He believed Ormuz had indeed dreamt things he could, and should, not know, but Tovar could hardly admit as much.

  “Don’t you think you should tell me?” Finesz insisted. “It is important, you know.”

  “It’s not up to me. Ask Cas.” It was a feeble return and Tovar knew it.

  Finesz shrugged. “Perhaps I will.”

  She slapped the wardroom table lightly. “Perhaps I’ll go and see if he’s awake.”

  Tovar watched her head down the gangway.

  Murily Plessant raged in the privacy of her cabin. She couldn’t pace—there was not enough room to do so. She clenched her fists and set her jaw. She stared at the bulkhead fixedly. She had lost her ship. It was true Divine Providence had not really been hers and the role of data-freighter captain had just been a part she played at the behest of her masters… But she felt the loss of the vessel keenly. She mourned. She had been Captain Murily Plessant too long. She no longer felt like Lady Murily dem Plessant, yeoman pretending to be a prole.

  Plessant was a life-yeoman. It was one of the reasons she had been given command of the data-freighter. Having been brought up a prole, she had the background to play the role demanded of her. At times, it had almost seemed as if her elevation in social rank had never happened, the initiation ceremony and oath she had sworn no more than a vague dream, the secret history of her organisation a fancy of her own imagination.

  She raised her hands, laid them flat against the wood panelling of the bulkhead before her. She knew she had made a mistake. Possibly an unforgivable one. She felt no guilt or worry over the consequences. Only more anger.

  Marla Dai hugged her shins tighter and directed a scowl at her knees. She sat wedged into a corner of her cabin. There was nowhere else to sit but on the floor—there was not enough clearance above the bunk to sit upright. It was not a comfortable seat but she was not in the mood for comfort. She didn’t know who, or what, to mourn the most: Divine Providence, a blasted wreck on Bato; or her captain, whom she had trusted for a dozen years to order and control her life, only to watch Plessant wracked with anguish as everything slipped through her fingers. Dai knew Plessant, knew her moods and could make accurate guesses at her thought-processes. She would not be taking this latest setback well. And so neither would Dai. She could not offer solace—it was not her role; nor, she was all too sadly aware, would it be welcome.

  There had been something comforting about life aboard Divine Providence. Dai had not chosen to become a ship’s engineer but she had come to enjoy the work. She had especially appreciated the freedom that came with membership of a data-freighter’s crew. Yes, it was a life filled mostly with routine
, but there was solace to be found in that on occasion. When she considered how others of her organisation lived, she could only be grateful for the part she been chosen to play. The freedoms, necessary for her role, had been privileges but now felt like rights. They had gone up in smoke with Divine Providence. She was a ship’s engineer no longer.

  Dai could not relish the future awaiting her. On Kapuluan, Plessant and her crew would be reunited with their masters, would once again be directly answerable to knights and lords. And the Involutes. Egalitarianism was anathema to the Empire but, having tasted the nearest proles ever came to it, Dai found the prospect of its loss something to fear. She hugged her shins tighter and dropped her chin onto her knees. She wondered if she should pay the engine deck a visit. It would take her mind off Kapuluan…

  Casimir Ormuz watched his cabin dissolve about him. Light bled from the bulkheads, grew brighter, eye-searing bright, until all detail, all form, had vanished. A shift of perspective and he was there. Black points swirled together into galaxies, the milky diffuseness of nebulae, ebon stars all about, above, below and beyond. He spun, arms flung wide, and laughed.

  And abruptly it was there.

  A featureless and sexless blue figure hovered before him. It aped its previous pose, arms held out, feet pointed, head up, crucified against a backdrop of black stars. The head lowered. Its gaze, if it had possessed eyes, fastened on him.

  Tell me about the nomosphere, Ormuz demanded. About this place.

  The figure cocked its head. What would you know?

  What is it?

  There are laws written into the fabric of space-time, the substrate of the universe. Here, they have substance. Here they manifest.

  I don’t understand.

  You will. The figure spun slowly about.

  Who are you? Ormuz asked.

  The figure suddenly stopped its twirling. When the time is right, you will know that too.

  The knowledge, the data, the things I can find here… where do they come from?

  No one knows.

  Ormuz frowned. They don’t?

  Those with the knowledge and insight to understand the nomosphere do not have the ability to enter it; those with the ability to visit it… The figure pantomimed a theatrical shrug.

  But what is it? insisted Ormuz.

  Information: can you see it? touch it? feel it? Here, you can. In the real universe, it has value, it is the life-blood of the Empire. Here, it is free… But only to those who share our ability.

  Ormuz was shocked. All information, all data? From anywhere in the Empire… I have access to it?

  The figure nodded. Once, it added, there were many like us. Now only few remain. And our powers are not so pure.

  But, said Ormuz, thinking aloud, we can only access the nomosphere from within the toposphere? You’re aboard a starship, like me? Dreaming?

  Dreaming? No. I do not need to dream my way here. Aboard a starship in the toposphere? Yes. Only during topologic travel is the barrier to the nomosphere weak enough for us to penetrate.

  Which world are you travelling to? Ormuz asked.

  The blue figure did not answer.

  A thought occurred to him: the blue figure was clearly not aboard Lantern, but elsewhere in the Empire. Perhaps clear across it. Faster-than-light communication. People such as the blue figure and Ormuz himself could use the nomosphere to carry information instantaneously from world to world.

  You could be anywhere in the Empire. If I told you something, a fact— He briefly considered what “fact” to use as an example—

  I have a “fact” for you, the blue figure interrupted. Divine Wind, your sister-ship, has been destroyed.

  Divine… ? Destroyed? By who? And, immediately afterwards: You saw this in the nomosphere.

  Yes.

  Who destroyed her?

  Divine Wind: gone. Captain Sirje Tora: dead. Ormuz had never met the man but he had heard much about him from Lotsman and Tovar.

  A battlecruiser.

  Commanded by a woman with a shaved head?

  The blue figure nodded.

  Why? Ormuz demanded. What had Divine Wind’s crew done to deserve destruction?

  She was told Divine Wind was Divine Providence. She sought your destruction.

  Why? demanded Ormuz a second time. The answers might well be in the nomosphere, but finding them would be close to impossible.

  She believed you to be her enemy. She was informed you were her enemy.

  Who by?

  Your enemies. They could not guarantee the regimental-lieutenant would succeed, so they laid alternate plans. Simply because the information can be found in the nomosphere, that does not make it true.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  From orbit, Kapuluan appeared entirely landless. Its islands were too small and too far apart from each other to be visible at high altitude. Lower, they became apparent: a random sprinkling across the sea. Some claimed to see patterns in the arrangements of islands, much as people had in star-spattered night skies. They had named those patterns. The bulk of Kapuluan’s population inhabited the islands about Dagat Sea. The islands were known as the Earl’s Crown; and Lungsod, the capital, was the jewel in that crown. The resemblance to a coronet was thin at best and perhaps more historical than geographical: the earl had once ruled from the Castilio on Lungsod. The string of islands known as the Sword, far to the west, with the world’s second city, Bayan, sitting at the centre of the cross-piece, at least vaguely resembled its namesake.

  Describing a meandering line about the world, just inside the northern tropic, the islands all shared the same benign near-tropical climate. No one knew precisely how many there were. Conservative estimates put the figure at two million, ranging in size from Lungsod’s twenty-five square miles to mere humps of rock which only just broke the ocean-surface. The sea all about them was shallow and a pale blue. The islands were mostly rounded sugarloafs, those that were uninhabited festooned with lush greenery.

  On the islands boasting a population, the cities of Kapuluan covered every square yard of land, spilling down the mountain-sides and overgrowing the seashore. Some even spread out into the placid bays and lagoons on floating rafts. Wide bridges on sleek cantilevered pylons formed a web of highways between cities, stitching them into one vast megalopolis. Of all the islands, Lungsod was the largest. Twenty-five millions lived there, squeezed onto a rough rectangle some six miles long and four miles wide.

  Lungsod’s starport, Paliparan, was a floating construct, a tethered boat-shape five miles long and two wide, flat-topped, and moored five miles off-shore in the Dagat Sea. The islands of the Earl’s Crown protected Paliparan from the worst of the weather and the sea-state was never more than mildly choppy. Paliparan could move under its own power but it made slow laborious progress, less than one mile an hour. The starport had not moved from its current position for more than a century.

  The OPI sloop Lantern entered her final approach vector over the ocean hundreds of miles north of Paliparan. She was twice the displacement of a Barko S-Type data-freighter such as Divine Providence but still capable of atmospheric landings. She had lost the velocity she had gained during her dive from orbit and now flew over the ocean at 1,200 mph. She was not as manoeuvrable as an aerocraft but she did not need to be: she was first and foremost a starship. With her double delta-wings fully extended, she threw a shadow of conjoined arrowheads onto the waves. Gas-rockets in streamlined pods hung from her wings, lowered from the bays they usually occupied. Twin tail-planes had lifted into position at the rear of the hull. A sleek spaceship, Lantern had transformed into an ungainly aerocraft.

  The Earl’s Crown drifted over the horizon, as if Lantern were standing still and the islands sailed the seas. Visible first was the crown of Mount Bundok, highest of Lungsod’s three peaks. Perched squarely on its peak was the Castilio. Once, this had been the home of the Earl of Kapuluan but he had moved his palace to the island of Batasa centuries
before. The Castilio now contained the offices of his seneschals and governing agents. A skirt of buildings and streets ringed the Castilio, draped in folds about Mount Bundok and its two sister mountains, carpeting the entire island.

  Other islands in the Earl’s Crown poked their heads above the sea-surface to either side of Lungsod. Flashes of light above the water resolved into the decks and pylons of the intra-island highways. Sheltered coves and tranquil lagoons, tucked into the sides of islands, became visible. And everywhere grenery or the sun-glazed white of buildings spilling down the sides of islands. The broken circlets of sandy atolls dotted the surface of the water. Small water vessels appeared at the heads of long, trailing wakes. The decks of the highways were populated with rushing traffic.

  In the wardroom, Ormuz watched the sloop approach Paliparan, informed by his reading on the world in Lantern’s data-pool (surprisingly less comprehensive than Divine Providence’s). He had detached the entertainment-console’s glass from the bulkhead and propped it up on the table before him. He saw the floating starport centred in the view, its deck painted with runways. Along one edge stretched a line of terminal buildings, the two hundred yard-high needle of the control tower midway along this line. The other edge of the starport held row upon row of parked spaceships. Ormuz leaned closer to the glass but he could not make out enough detail on the parked craft to clearly identify their types.

  A grinding noise and a thump echoed throughout Lantern. The undercarriage had deployed. Paliparan now wholly filled the glass, an expanse of grey metal patterned with yellow guiding chevrons. The view abruptly shifted upwards as the sloop flared before landing. Ormuz saw only sky. He held his breath: they were mere feet above the runway. There was a moment of vertiginous calm…