by Diann Read
“And the areas have been properly sanitized?”
“To unclassified, sir.”
“Thank you, Major.” The governor gestured. “You may come, Tristan.”
The major escorted them down a corridor with tiled floors that echoed underfoot, past doors with markers that read Operations Planning, Advanced Warning, Communications, Command Post. He stopped at the door to Operations Planning and fingered a rapid code. As the door clicked open he called, “Room, atten-tion!”
Tristan heard movement—abrupt, and stilled as suddenly as it started—and then silence weighty with expectation. He followed the governor into a room full of empty tables, blank wall screens, and a crystal pillar in the center so large it would take four people with outstretched arms to encircle it. But his vision came back to the soldiers.
They stood motionless. Stiff. Expressionless. Unblinking.
“They look dead,” Pulou said at his shoulder.
The governor surveyed the soldiers and smiled. He strode about the room among them, glancing at ribbons and gleaming boots and faces with shorn hair. Following him, Tristan studied eyes that wouldn’t meet his own and saw tension in hands curled at trouser seams.
Renier said, “Carry on.” The soldiers relaxed, almost as one, and the governor nodded to their officer in charge. “Commendable, Colonel.” To Tristan he said, “In wartime, this room is used to develop battle plans and campaign strategies.”
He moved to the pillar in the center of the room and touched a switch at its base. Images appeared inside, a globe that Tristan recognized as Issel, orbited by two moons and several smaller objects.
“What are those?” he asked, pointing at the small objects drifting around it.
“Orbital stations,” said the governor. “Most of those near this moon are smelting plants where the ore is purified and tempered and loaded aboard freight ships as carmite for trade with other worlds. The rest are defense posts. Some are bases for fighter squadrons, others are maintenance depots. They are all directed in wartime from the Command Post at the end of this hall.”
Renier touched the buttons. A three-dimensional astral map replaced the planet.
Tristan leaned up to the column, searching. “What are these worlds?” he asked. “Is my father at one of them?”
More buttons clicked. The rest of the starfield vanished as one system magnified and focused on the planets circling its yellow star. “He’s at the one in the center,” said Renier. “Sostis. My motherworld.”
“Sostis.” Tristan stared into the holotank, fixing its position in the astral map in his mind.
“This way,” the governor said behind him.
They went from Ops to Communications, a cooled room equipped with vidphones of different colors, a row of comms terminals and printers—all idle or covered at the moment—and receiver banks with headsets hung on hooks. More soldiers, standing at stiff attention, guarded the equipment.
“All information that enters or leaves this system passes through this center,” the governor said, but Tristan felt someone watching him. He glanced around, over his shoulder—
—into the face of a man with skin as black as a midnight sky and NIEDDU on the patch over his uniform pocket. He couldn’t have been any older than Captain Weil, but something ancient and dangerous burned in his eyes. Tristan drew back, curling one hand in warning.
* *
When the governor’s party had gone and all the equipment came back on line, Tech Sergeant Nieddu returned to his terminal keyboard.
His name wasn’t really Nieddu—it was Ajimir Nemec—and he wasn’t really a tech sergeant in the Isselan Space Forces. In fact, as a commander in the Unified Worlds Spherzah, he outranked the officer in charge of the Comms Center.
Spherzah Research had put meticulous effort into developing his alias and getting him a tour of duty at the Command Post on Issel II. Providing him with an Isselan military ID—even creating a complete military record for him and slipping it into Issel’s central military database—had been relatively easy. But Spherzah Research provided far more than that for its deep cover operators. Nemec had spent months learning the dialect and culture of his “native” region on Issel, learning the customs and courtesies of Isselan military forces, and memorizing the details of all his “previous assignments,” from descriptions of the bases as they had been at the time to the personnel he had “worked with” and the places they had frequented off-duty. Anyone who had served tours at any of the locations would be able to corroborate the details. His cover—his very life—depended on it.
Memorizing secure frequencies and call signs had been easy by comparison.
Keeping one eye on the OIC as he moved about the room, Nemec set up a directional transmission, which would evade the Command Post’s myriad receivers, and typed out a cryptic message:
URGENT
021247L 9 3307SY
TO RELAY RACER
FM CHAMELEON II
T O P S E C R E T
GOVERNOR RENIER COMPLETED AN UNSCHEDULED INSPECTION TOUR OF THE ISSEL II COMMAND COMPLEX APPROXIMATELY ONE STANDARD HOUR AGO. DURING THE INSPECTION THE GOVERNOR WAS ACCOMPANIED BY A MAMMALIAN HUMANOID ALIEN AND A YOUNG MAN APPARENTLY IN HIS LATE TEENS WHOM THE GOVERNOR ADDRESSED AS TRISTAN. NO FURTHER INFORMATION IS AVAILABLE ON THE IDENTITIES OF THE VISITORS OR THE REASON FOR THEIR PRESENCE. CONSIDER THIS HIGHLY UNUSUAL. WILL CONT TO REPORT. DNT ACK.
E N D O F M E S S A G E
Nemec glanced once over his shoulder when the MESSAGE RELEASED line blinked on his monitor and let out his breath. A few more keystrokes deleted the record of his message from the terminal’s log.
Eight
“Here, Tris.” Larielle placed a flat box on the table, barely longer than Tristan’s hand, and opened its lid to reveal a monitor and a compact keyboard inside. “This is my Pocket Tutor,” she said. “Let me program it to respond to your voice and then I’ll show you how to use it.”
The dishes of their midday meal had been cleared from the table in the governor’s sitting room and Tristan leaned on it with both arms, observing without speaking as Larielle touched the Tutor’s “on” button and watched its monitor to light up. As it did, a distinctly masculine voice said, “Identify user for access.”
“Larielle Renier,” said Larielle.
“Voice pattern of Larielle Renier recognized,” said the Tutor. “You may continue.” A menu appeared on the monitor.
Glancing at Tristan, Larielle indicated the first item and said, “Expand work parayards.” When a new menu replaced the first, she pointed at the fourth item. “Identify additional user for access.”
“Please enter voice pattern for additional user.”
Larielle turned to Tristan. “Say something now, Tris.”
He stared at the monitor for several moments, his mind gone suddenly empty. “What should I say to it?” he asked at last.
“Start with your full name,” Larielle said, “and then tell it something else about yourself, enough for it to establish a voice pattern.”
Tristan nodded and returned his attention to the monitor, half wondering if the owner of the masculine voice stared back at him from behind it. “Tristan Lujanic Sergey,” he said, and paused. He caught sight of Pulou napping under the table. “Pulou is my brother, and we live on Ganwold.” After another pause, he shot a desperate look at Larielle. “I can’t think of anything else to say.”
“That’s probably enough,” she said, and requested, “Please confirm identity of additional user.”
“Additional user is identified as Tristan Lujanic Sergey,” said the Tutor.
“Good. Now then, Tris,” Larielle said, “let’s see what we can find for you to read. . . . Open library, please. Show titles available.”
Three columns of titles filled the monitor, from right to left, and a line at the bottom read SCROLL DOWN FOR ADDITIONAL TITLES.
“These are my university texts,” Larielle sa
id. “I bought the memory chip versions for this Tutor but you can get them by online subscription as well.”
She must have realized when she glanced up that her explanation didn’t mean a thing to him. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Would you like to try some history?”
“All right,” Tristan said.
“Open ‘A Concise History of the Great War,’” said Larielle. “Begin at chapter eighteen, with dictionary and discussion options on and audio play option off.”
As the titles list disappeared and the requested text came up in its place, she pushed the box over in front of Tristan. “Start from the top,” she said.
Eyeing the screen full of characters, Tristan shook his head. “I don’t know those words!”
“Sound them out, one word at a time,” Larielle said. “After you read a little, we’ll put on the audio option and you can listen as you follow along. . . . Now then, what’s that?” She pointed at the first word.
Tristan furrowed his brow, cocking his head at the characters glowing on the display. “El-e-men-ta-ry.”
“That’s right,” Larielle said. “Every character makes a whole sound, or syllable. Just put the sounds together, one after the other.”
Tristan nodded, but his hands gripped the sides of the Tutor tightly. He’d never seen some of these characters before. The Standard language had over seven thousand characters formed of various arrangements of basic marks and shapes, and the characters formed words much longer than those his mother had taught him to read. Some had five or six characters instead of two or three, and almost none of the words held any meaning for him. He drew a breath like a sigh and started again: “Ele-men-tary log-ic suj-ges-ted—”
“No.” Larielle stopped him. “That’s sug-gested. That’s a different character.”
“It is?” Tristan questioned her with a scowl. “How is it different?”
“The tail here is slanted. See?” She pointed out the difference on the display.
“Oh.” Tristan eyed it. Sighed his frustration. “My mother didn’t have things like this,” he said, waving at the Tutor. “All she had was sand and her finger to write with, and the characters didn’t all look square like this.”
He glimpsed sympathy in her eyes. “You’ll get used to it,” she said. “It just takes practice. You’re doing fine. Go on now.”
He shifted forward, planted his elbows on the table, put his chin in his hands. “Elemen-tary logic sug-gested that it was—what’s that?”
“Sound it out one character at a time,” she coached.
He furrowed his brow. “Es-sen-tial?” He glanced sideways at her, cocking his head.
“That’s right.” She smiled. “Essential.”
“Essential,” Tristan repeated. “But what does it mean? I don’t know what any of this means!”
“Ask the Tutor,” said Larielle. “The dictionary option is on, you know.”
“Dictionary?” said Tristan. He wrinkled his nose.
“That gives you the defi—the meaning—of words,” she explained. “Like this: please define ‘essential.’”
“Essential,” said the Tutor. “Of great importance. Necessary; requisite.”
In the outer office beyond the living area, the servant Avuse said, “Sir, Captain Krotkin, officer in charge of the Malin Point mine, is here.”
Tristan looked up in time to see the governor, seated at his desk, nod acknowledgement. “Admit him, please, Avuse.”
Tristan watched as Krotkin came in. Studied him briefly as he stood inside the office door with his jowls tense and hands clenched white-knuckled on his cap, before Tristan returned his attention to the Tutor.
“Captain,” he heard the governor say, his tone cool but cordial as he rose from his desk. “Come in and be seated.”
“Go on, Tristan.” Larielle touched his arm.
“Ele-men-tary logic sug-gested that it was es-sential to the . . .”
Krotkin approached the chair facing the governor’s desk, sidling as if to keep his back to a wall. “Thank you, sir. Thank you.” He stayed at attention even seated, his spine rigid, and kept wringing his cap. “There’s a good explanation, sir, actually.”
The governor moved behind his desk, out of Tristan’s line of sight through the doorway, but not beyond his hearing. “Please make it then, Captain.”
“Yes, sir. Yes.” Krotkin kneaded his hat. “It’s the new line of workers, sir. When they proved to be unmanageable as a unit, we divided them among the other lines.”
“And now they’ve stirred up the others, too,” the governor said.
“Yes, sir.” Krotkin nodded. “Exactly, sir. In fact, last week the guards over the oh-eight-hundred Chi line moved in to discipline a couple of them—some big men from Thrax Port, sir—and they’d sabotaged the supports to make them collapse. It knocked one guard senseless and practically buried the rest of the line before reinforcements got there.”
“How many casualties?” The question fell without emotion.
“Seven injured, sir. Four seriously, including the guard. There were no fatalities.”
A moment’s silence. “There should have been several,” the governor said. “The ones who were caught under the cave-in.”
Tristan stopped reading and looked up.
“But, sir, they weren’t the ones who caused it,” said Krotkin.
“It doesn’t matter. It would’ve caused second thoughts for anyone else considering such a tactic.” The governor paused. “Put the men from Thrax Port and any other troublemakers through a disciplinary shift. They don’t have to survive it. And cut rations for the rest of the Chi shaft lines—or double their shifts—until they’ve cleared it and made it workable again.”
“Keep going, Tristan,” Larielle said urgently beside him. “That was very good.”
He glanced at her, actually startled to find her still there.
Her eyes bore a confusion of emotions dominated by fear and shame. “Please,” she said, “just keep reading.”
“But, sir,” the captain said, “the production level will drop even further.”
“Krotkin, Malin Point’s attrition rate is even lower than its production rate. Fear of being culled promotes diligence and prevents collusions. If you doubt me, talk to Captain Sylte at the Firnis mine. He turns over the equivalent of two lines per month but his tonnage is increasing.”
The governor had risen. He paced, crossing past the doorway as if oblivious of the two young people beyond it. “You won’t lack for replacements,” he said. “I recently had to stiffen the sentence for rioting in three regions on the primary.” He shook his head, hands interlaced at his back. “Ungrateful young people! They’ll learn what it means to work for the good of their motherworld if they don’t put an end to their troublemaking!”
“Yes, sir,” said Krotkin.
The governor paused in his pacing and faced the officer. “Malin Point will see an improvement of twenty-five percent or better within the month. There are smelting quotas to be met.”
“Yes, of course, sir.”
“You’re dismissed, Captain.”
“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.” Krotkin snapped to his feet, saluted, and withdrew in haste.
Tristan jumped when Larielle touched his arm. He shifted the Tutor between his hands, thumbed its scrolling button over and over, but his concentration had evaporated. He heard the silence, deliberate footsteps coming across it, and his pulse pounding in his ears. He looked up.
The governor stood in front of the table. “Please forgive the interruption,” he said, drawing out a chair. “How is your reading, Tristan?”
From the corner of his eye, Tristan saw Larielle’s hands clench in her lap, her lips press into a firm line. He traced the characters embossed on the Tutor’s cover with one finger and said, “I wasn’t reading. I was listening.”
The governor shot a swift look at his daughter—she met it, her face unreadable—and he said, “Well,
listening can also be instructive.” He interlaced his hands on the table. “What did you learn from listening, Tristan?”
He looked directly into the governor’s eyes. “Do frightened people really work harder?” he asked.
He saw Renier’s mouth purse. “In a labor camp, yes,” he said. “They can always see the consequences of disobedience.”
“Why are the young people—ungrateful?”
“They’re unhappy at the measures we’ve had to take recently,” Renier said. “I can’t blame them entirely, but their strikes and marches won’t resolve anything.” He sighed. “They don’t remember the War. They don’t remember when Sanabria was a city of charred shells, or what my generation sacrificed to rebuild it and our other cities.” He lowered his head. “I’m sorry so many have had their educations interrupted to fill the shock forces in the factories, but it can’t be helped just now. Other goals must be reached first. It’s very hard, young one.”
Tristan cocked his head. “Why?”
Renier sighed again. “I was installed as Sector General during the Great War,” he said. “Issel had already been devastated. While the young men of Sostis were conscripted and its industries utilized to support the Dominion war effort, I revitalized Issel’s mining guilds. Under my governorship, the carmite in this system was used to finance Issel’s reconstruction and rebuild both worlds’ economies.
“Then the Dominion’s back was broken at Enach with the attack on its orbital command station and the assassination of its leadership by the Spherzah. All Dominion-sponsored trade ended. We were pariah to the Unified Worlds for the role I had played. . . .” His voice trailed off, his jaw tightening. He stared for a long while into some bitter distance of time before he shook his head again.
“Issel finished reconstructing alone,” he said at last, to the tabletop. “It’s been difficult. We’ve struggled. We’ve known starvation, deprivation of all kinds.” He made a loose gesture with both hands. “I understand the young people’s unhappiness, but unlike most of them, I know their real enemy.” He lifted his gaze and looked directly at Tristan. “We’re in a position to stand up to that enemy now. The mines are paying again. We’ve signed new trade contracts sufficient to raise the standard of living and our levels of defense, and we’ve made new alliances.”