Empery

by Michael P. Kube-Mcdowell

  A light winked on the terminal before her, and Sujata roused herself from her gloomy ruminations. The check-in was fairly routine. In less than fifteen minutes Ten Ga’ar highlighted the contents of the main dispatch, being transmitted on the high band in compressed mode directly to Wesley’s library.

  Evanik came on to outline the research unit’s current projects, and to inform Sujata that Garrard had finally made good on his threats to resign, taking a position with the Council’s sociometric division. Vice Chancellor Abram Walker came on to offer his usual empty assurances that everything was in hand and running smoothly.

  There was nothing in any of their messages for Sujata even to respond to with more than a grunt and a nod until Ten Ga’ar came back on at the end.

  “I wanted to remind you that this is the last opportunity for you to send a dispatch forward to Wells,” she said, “something that’ll be waiting for him when Charan comes out of the craze. The majority opinion here is that you need to take the offensive, because he’s sure to. He’s virtually certain to take the fact that you’re right on his heels as a threat.”’

  “I’m afraid I’m going to side with the minority, Wy,” Sujata said, shaking her head. “Wells has to act before I can react. What he’s done so far isn’t enough to support coming down on him—if it was, we’d have gone through the Committee. Even though we’re afraid he intends to, he hasn’t crossed the line yet. I see no reason to force him to that point any sooner than necessary. I don’t want to comer him into having to disobey an order.

  “He’ll hear through normal channels that I’m coming to Lynx, and the official reason for it. Beyond that, I’m content to let him wonder. Hitting him with an order to ground the Triads, or some such, isn’t going to make him feel less threatened. Just the opposite—all it would do is spook him. I need to sit down with Wells and have this out before he does anything irreversible. I can’t do that from here any better than I could from where you are. It’s just going to have to wait until I catch up with him. Which won’t be long now.”

  Ten Ga’ar received those words with a neutral expression, which confirmed for Sujata that the “reminder” actually had been someone else’s idea. As the years had slipped by, the number of people willing to talk to her directly had dwindled to three. Sujata understood—she was a stranger to most of her own staff, a sort of technological oracle giving three audiences each year. In a recent nightmarish dream her face had appeared on terminals throughout Central, but no one had known who she was or wanted to talk to her.

  “We understand your perspective, Chancellor,” Ten Ga’ar was saying. “What you said parallels some of our discussions here. Is there anything else we can do for you today?”

  “No,” Sujata said. “Nothing you can do.”

  “Then I guess the next time we talk, you’ll be out of the craze for good and inbound to Lynx. Our best to all of you until then. Central out.”

  “Wesley out,” Sujata said, leaning back in her seat and rubbing her eyes. No, nothing you can do to help me, Wy. And that’s about the hardest part to accept—

  The sound of exuberant cheering was still ringing in Harmack Wells’s ears as he settled into a chair in the office of Andrew Hogue, the governor of Lynx Center. Barely an hour ago Wells had led the crew of Charan out of the disembarkment tunnel to a reception that made the send-off from Central fifty-two days ago seem restrained.

  “They really love us, don’t they?” Captain Elizin had whispered. He was standing beside Wells on the cargo sled that had been pressed into service for the processional through the streets, which were thronged with thousands who had come out to welcome them.

  Wells had nodded agreeably, but he did not take the acclaim personally. He took it instead as a sign of how badly the people wanted a champion, a hero. He accepted it graciously at the same time he discounted it, because he understood their need to find release from fear.

  This is not for what we’ve done but for what you hope we’ll do, he had thought, looking out at their faces. I will try to do justice to your faith.

  Across the room, Onhki Yamakawa, the senior member of the Strategy Committee traveling with Wells on Charan, stood studying a directory of Lynx Central. “I am afraid that I will have no better luck finding a proper Japanese meal here than I had trying to coax one from Charan’s synthesizer,” he said mournfully.

  Before Wells could commiserate, the door opened to admit two men, both Lynx natives. The first through was Hogue, a broad-chested man with a pleasant face and fair hair that was so closely cropped, he almost seemed bald.

  “Governor,” Wells said, coming to his feet and offering his hand.

  “Very glad to meet you at last, Commander,” Hogue said as they shook. “Sorry about all the commotion on the way over here. I thought it was best if we simply got that behind us all at once.”

  “Perfectly understandable,” Wells said. “I’m sure the crew appreciated it.“Hogue introduced his companion, a rangy young man with darting eyes that never seemed to look straight ahead, as Colonel Philip Shields, chief of the Defense Intelligence Office, Lynx Annex.

  “I know this has already been a long day for you,” Hogue said, “but Mr. Shields thought it important that you be put in the picture as quickly as possible.”

  “I agree entirely,” Wells said, settling back into his chair. Hogue took the seat to Wells’s right, and the others dragged chairs across the carpet to form a small circle.

  “Did you have a chance on the way in to begin reviewing the news abstracts we sent over?” Hogue asked.

  “A few minutes, no more.”

  “Then you know at least the good news: the Perimeter is quiet; the political situation is stable, and the Triads are on schedule. However, there are a couple of wrinkles that I’ll let Mr. Shields discuss.”

  “What about Wesley?” Yamakawa interjected. “What’s her status?”

  “Due in thirty-eight days from now.”

  Wells wrinkled his brow at hearing that. “She was only supposed to be twenty-one days behind us. What happened? What delayed her?”

  With a meaningful glance Hogue deferred to Shields.

  “Commander, Chancellor Sujata and Ambassador Berberon are aboard Wesley,” Shields said. “Wesley’s been pogoing in and out of the craze, which accounts for the slippage in her arrival time.”

  “This is bad,” Yamakawa muttered. “Very bad.”

  “Why are they coming here?” Wells asked with honest puzzlement.

  “Sir, I do not know. The official purpose is to observe. Our sources inside the Chancellery report that Sujata has described the situation on the Perimeter as ‘critical.’ ”

  “Even so, I don’t understand why she should consider her physical presence necessary,” Hogue said. “Communications with Unity haven’t even been close to going down.”

  “Does anyone have any ideas?” Wells asked. “Colonel?”

  “The one possibility I’ve considered is that she may wish to align herself more strongly with the pro-defense faction and thereby secure her own position.”

  “She’s coming to meddle,” Yamakawa said firmly. “She is coming to insinuate herself into matters she knows nothing about.”

  “Does that seem reasonable to you, Commander?” Hogue asked.

  “No,” Wells said. “She’s kept her distance, and at the same time she’s been very accommodating to our interests and concerns. I don’t believe that she would suddenly decide that she needed to become more intimately involved.”

  “Unless something happened to make her lose confidence in the senior Defense administration,” Yamakawa pointed out. He had been preparing to say more, but caught an admonitory glance from Wells and fell silent.

  “Are there any messages waiting for me from the Chancellor?” Wells asked, turning to Hogue.

  “None that I am aware of.”

  Wells frowned and shook his head. “This seems to me to be no cause for concern. Certainly Chancellor Sujata has every right to exercis
e oversight in person,” he said. “Assuming that this is one of the wrinkles the Governor mentioned, what’s the other?”

  “I think you will find this a more serious matter. There is about to be a violation of the Perimeter. Not by the Mizari,“Shields added quickly. “By one of our vessels—Munin, sir. Hijacked from the Unified Planets Museum at Arcturus.”

  “Hijacked?”

  “Yes, sir. It gets stranger. The person responsible seems to be Merritt Thackery. As far as we’ve been able to determine, he’s the only one aboard. The investigation showed that he had two accomplices at Cheia, one a Museum employee and the other one of our people, a Colonel Ramiz. Both served time, but that hasn’t helped us get Munin or Thackery back.”

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” Wells said, settling back in his chair. “Where’s he headed?”

  “At first we had no idea. But after we made clear we knew who was on board, he filed a formal flight plan giving his destination as the Corona Borealis Cluster.”

  “I’m afraid I’m not familiar with that astrographical feature.”

  “No reason why you should be, sir. It’s a galaxy cluster, one of the richest—more than five hundred of them, mostly ellipticals. Sir, that cluster lies more than a billion cees beyond the edge of our Galaxy. But he’s in no hurry, considering how far he thinks he’s going. Munin hasn’t crazed since he made his getaway.”

  “Munin may not be crazed, but there seems ample evidence her pilot is,” Yamakawa said. “Why was the ship not intercepted?”

  “No Sentinel was in a position to do so,” Hogue said.

  . “If Triad One had been on-station, would it have been able to intercept?” Wells asked.

  “I don’t think anyone has worked it out,” Hogue said. “My suspicion is yes, it would have.”

  “What is the point of entry into the Mizari Zone?” Yamakawa inquired.

  “Indeterminate. Munin will not enter the Cluster proper. In fact, her general heading is carrying her away from the more sensitive areas. She’ll cross the Perimeter somewhere in the Boötes-Corona Borealis area. Here’s an odd note: He’s been changing course to pass through or near systems which haven’t yet been surveyed. He relays back the data collected by the ship’s scientific instrumentation—or tries to.”

  “Tries to?”

  “Munin’s communications gear was not updated for advanced error-checking. We lose a portion of his transmissions to interference.”

  “Then we are in contact with the ship?” Yamakawa asked.

  “After a fashion. He’s never answered any dispatch directed at him,” Hogue said.

  “Interference again?” Wells asked.

  “Possibly,” Shields said. “Possibly intransigence. I agree with Mr. Yamakawa—whoever he is, this man is not stable. And he is about to compound what is already a very serious list of offenses.”

  “Seems to me as though he has little to fear in the way of retribution,” Wells said lightly. “Was there anything else, Governor?”

  “No. Nothing of comparable urgency.”

  “Fine,” Wells said. “I’ll sleep on both these matters and take them up with you again tomorrow. I also want to tour the yards tomorrow and take a look at Triad Three.”

  “I’ll arrange it,” Hogue promised.

  “Not too early,” Wells added as he stood up. “Onhki? What do you say we go try to see what Lynx does have to offer in the way of civilized fare?”

  “The effort should be made,” Yamakawa said. “But I hold out little hope for fresh seafood.”

  Over a Daehne-style platter of sectioned fruits, seared meat cubes, and seasoned raw dough, Yamakawa and Wells continued the discussion.

  “Are you truly concerned about the Munin matter?” Yamakawa asked.

  “Why do you ask?”

  Yamakawa twirled a meat cube in a cup of mustard sauce.“The ship is two hours west and twenty degrees south of Alcor. Colonel Shield’s alarm seems excessive.”

  “There’s a lesson in what happened,” Wells said. “The fact that we couldn’t prevent Munin from leaving means that in that same time frame we couldn’t have prevented a Mizari ship from entering. It underlines the importance of getting the Triads on station.

  “Still, to answer your question, no. I’m more concerned about Sujata. Why did you say what you did about her losing confidence in us—in me?”

  Yamakawa chewed thoughtfully before answering. “As you well know, there are certain sensitive matters on which she was not fully informed. If she were to have been appraised of them, she would be forced to consider the Mizari threat more seriously than she was previously inclined to. At the same time she could well conclude that in order to have full and honest knowledge of the situation, she would have to be more directly involved. Either or both would account for her coming here.”

  “How do you imagine she came to be ‘appraised’ of those sensitive matters?”

  Yamakawa shrugged. “This decision was clearly made in haste, after we sailed. The window of opportunity was small, the number of candidates limited.”

  Wells ticked them off on his fingers. “Captain Hirschfield. Mr. Rice and Mr. Scurlock of the Strategy Committee.”

  “And Farlad.”

  “Yes.”

  “Three of whom had access to that information for several months before we sailed,” Yamakawa observed. “Surely if it were one of them, they would have acted sooner.”

  “So you think it was Teo?”

  “I do.”

  Wells stared at Yamakawa for a long moment, then shook his head. “Why would he do it? Why would he betray me that way?”

  “The motives of traitors and cowards are not particularly subtle. Money. Self-aggrandizement. Misplaced loyalties. Fear. Does it really matter?”

  Wells laid down his fork, the food suddenly tasteless in his mouth. “I suppose not.”.“He will have to be disciplined, of course.“Wells did not answer. How many years must you wait? he was thinking. How well must you know someone before you can be sure of him!

  “If there is doubt in your mind, all four can be presumed guilty—” Yamakawa began.“I want him out,” Wells said harshly. “I want him gone.” Nodding, Yamakawa went on. “It is a court-martial offense. Even a capital offense. But difficult to prove. And atrial would be awkward, due to the Chancellor’s involvement, s We may wish to find other means to settle the account.” Wells was not listening. An old adversary, thought vanquished, had returned to the board, and he was busy assessing her position. She can only be coming to stand in my way—if she believed in the cause, she would have stayed on Earth. She seeks to harry me, to distract me, to place her collar and leash around my neck. But to do that she will have to catch me—

  Despite a night of restless sleep and what he had told Hogue, Wells was up early the next morning, impatient to see at last the fruits of his labors. Wells had defined the mission, but he had been obliged to entrust the engineers with designing the ships themselves. He knew only the generalities; he was eager to learn the specifics.

  The final contract had awarded Triad One to Boötes Center, Triad Two to Perimeter Base, and Triad Three to Lynx. The decision had turned not on politics or economics but on time. Any one of the Service’s Earth-orbital shipyards could have built a Triad twenty percent faster for thirty percent less. But the price of those savings was an extra seventeen years journeying to the patrol circles located from eight to fifteen cees beyond the Perimeter.

  Lynx Center’s shipyard was an integral part of the station, occupying the equivalent of its nine lowest levels. Most of that volume was devoted to an enormous enclosed work bay with a one-tenth strength gravity held that was upside down in relation to the rest of the station. The inverted field, which turned what should have been the ceiling into the floor, was an innovation peculiar to the Lynx Center. It was necessary because the real floor was a multisectioned door several hectares in total area and quite complicated enough without gravity ducting.

  Nearly one third of that door was a
t that moment retracted, and from the foreman’s lookout where Wells was first taken he could see why: One of the Triad’s two lineships was being towed away from the yard by a small tug. Wells knew at a glance that the ship under tow was part of the Triad. Its peculiar profile said it could be nothing else.

  Each Triad ship had not one AVLO drive, but two—an axial drive with forward and aft field radiators, just as any deepship, and a translational drive, with a second set of radiators amidships oriented at right angles to the primary hull. The transverse hull gave the lineship the appearance of a flying Iron Cross.

  Turning his attention inside the work bay, Wells saw that the effect was even more pronounced with the carrier. Its transverse hull was nearly as large as the primary in order to accommodate the cradles for the massive DDs, one on each side.

  “I don’t see how you shoehorned them all in here,” Wells said to his guide. “The bay looks crowded even with one of them out.”

  “There hasn’t been much room to spare since the hulls were completed,” the guide agreed. “Ready to go aboard?”

  “You bet I am.”

  Though the physical elements that made up the interior were familiar to anyone who had ever spent time on a Service deepship, the Triad as a whole had an alien feel to it. Most notably there was no bridge to speak of. Where Wells would have expected to find it, he found instead a ring of second-generation battle couches burrowed in among the hardware of the drives, each at the end of its own cavelike ejection chute.

  The arrangement afforded the crew the maximum physical protection, but it also meant that they would go into battle fragmented, psychologically alone. They would never look across an open bridge and see dying and injured mates, but they also could never look out and catch a thumbs-up or a reassuring grin.

  Absent a bridge, the largest “open” spaces aboard were the immersion tanks forward and aft. The tanks were there to protect the off-shift crew against the neck-snapping lateral accelerations that would come as the ship evaded incoming fire. The translational drive was nearly as powerful as the main. Test crews had opined that even with the couches and I-tanks, the brutal translational maneuvers—combining snap rolls and abrupt sideslips—were more punishing than taking fire would be.