The Castle in Cassiopeia

by Mike Resnick

  ALSO BY MIKE RESNICK:

  The Fortress in Orion: Dead Enders Book One

  The Prison in Antares: Dead Enders Book Two

  Starship: Mutiny

  Starship: Pirate

  Starship: Mercenary

  Starship: Rebel

  Starship: Flagship

  The Buntline Special—A Weird West Tale

  The Doctor and the Kid—A Weird West Tale

  The Doctor and the Rough Rider—A Weird West Tale

  The Doctor and the Dinosaurs—A Weird West Tale

  Ivory: A Legend of Past and Future

  New Dreams for Old

  Stalking the Unicorn

  Stalking the Vampire

  Stalking the Dragon

  Published 2017 by Pyr®, an imprint of Prometheus Books

  The Castle in Cassiopeia. Copyright © 2017 by Mike Resnick. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, digital, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or conveyed via the Internet or a website without prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  Cover illustration © Dave Seeley

  Cover design by Liz Mills

  Cover design © Prometheus Books

  This is a work of fiction. Characters, organizations, products, locales, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously.

  Inquiries should be addressed to

  Pyr

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Resnick, Michael D., author.

  Title: The castle in Cassiopeia / by Mike Resnick.

  Description: Amherst, NY : Pyr, an imprint of Prometheus Books, 2017. | Series: Dead Enders ; 3

  Identifiers: LCCN 2017003048 (print) | LCCN 2017007936 (ebook) | ISBN 9781633882317 (paperback) | ISBN 9781633882324 (ebook)

  Subjects: LCSH: Imaginary wars and battles—Fiction. | Space warfare—Fiction. | Human-alien encounters—Fiction. | BISAC: FICTION / Science Fiction / Military. | FICTION / Science Fiction / Space Opera. | GSAFD: Science fiction.

  Classification: LCC PS3568.E698 C37 2017 (print) | LCC PS3568.E698 (ebook) | DDC 813/.54—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017003048

  Printed in the United States of America

  To Carol, as always,

  And to twenty-two young men and women who are going to be shaping the field of science fiction for years to come:

  Nick DiChario

  Ron Collins

  Alex Shvartsman

  Lou J. Berger

  Larry Hodges

  Martin L. Shoemaker

  Alvaro Zinos-Amaro

  Robert T. Jeschonek

  Ken Liu

  Brennan Harvey

  Brad R. Torgersen

  Tina Gower

  Marina J. Lostetter

  Andrea Stewart

  Kary English

  Sharon Joss

  Lezli Robyn

  Leena Likitalo

  Laurie Tom

  Liz Colter

  Jennifer Campbell-Hicks

  Sylvia Spruck Wrigley

  CONTENTS

  PROLOGUE

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  APPENDIX 1: THE ORIGIN OF THE BIRTHRIGHT UNIVERSE

  APPENDIX 2: THE LAYOUT OF THE BIRTHRIGHT UNIVERSE

  APPENDIX 3: CHRONOLOGY OF THE UNIVERSE CREATED IN BIRTHRIGHT: THE BOOK OF MAN

  PROLOGUE

  “How soon can you and your Dead Enders be ready for another assignment?” asked General Cooper. “An urgent one?”

  “It depends on what the problem is,” said Nathan Pretorius, as he entered the office and sat down opposite the general’s desk.

  “Do you remember the Michkag clone, the ringer you installed in Orion last year?”

  Pretorius frowned. “Oh, shit!” he muttered. “They discovered what he was and killed him?”

  “Nice guess,” said Cooper. “I only wish it was that easy.”

  “Oh?” said Pretorius, arching an eyebrow.

  “The bastard has turned!”

  “Turned?”

  “He decided he likes being the most powerful general the Coalition’s got,” growled Cooper, “and he’s not going to help us defeat his own race. He’s a brilliant strategist, and thanks to being raised here he knows more about our equipment, and about how we think and react, than any other alien in the whole Coalition. It turns out he’s been feeding us false data for months.”

  “Does he know that we know?” asked Pretorius.

  Cooper nodded his head. “He does now. We had the bastard surrounded out by the Bellermaine system. Had him outnumbered twenty-to-one.”

  “And he escaped?”

  Cooper grimaced. “He didn’t even try to escape. He destroyed every last one of our ships. Nothing survived, not even any records of how the hell he did it.”

  “I’m impressed,” said Pretorius.

  “We’ve got to eliminate him,” continued Cooper. “Kill him, capture him, whatever it takes.”

  “You had a shot at him,” said Pretorius. “You blew it.”

  “And that operation began before he knew we were onto him,” growled Cooper. “He’s currently the best-protected being, human or alien, in the whole Coalition, probably in the whole damned galaxy. We’re not going to get him with sheer force; they’ll spot us coming, and if they don’t think they can beat us they’ll move him before we start getting too close.”

  “Somehow I can intuit what’s coming next,” said Pretorius dryly.

  “You and your Dead Enders are going to have to take him out before he costs us this goddamned war!”

  “Where is he?” asked Pretorius.

  Cooper waved his hand in a gesture that encompassed roughly half the galaxy. “Out there somewhere,” he said. “All we know is that he’s not in Orion anymore. He’s probably not even in Coalition territory.”

  Pretorius frowned. “That’s not much to go on.”

  “It’s all we’ve got.”

  “And I have to point out that my team isn’t exactly up to speed. We lost Felix and Circe on the Antares mission.”

  “What, exactly, have you got left?”

  “Three women and an alien. And me.”

  “And what do you need?”

  “I won’t know until—”

  “You attack him?” interrupted Cooper.

  Pretorius shook his head. “Until I figure out, first, how we’re going to find him, and second, how we’re going to get to him once we know where he is. In that order. There’s no sense hunting for weaknesses in his defense until we know where to find him.”

  “How soon can you be ready to go?”

  “It’ll take a couple of days to gather my team, and then as long as it takes to get actionable intelligence on Michkag’s where
abouts.”

  “If we had any actionable information, I’d have given it to you weeks ago.”

  “I know,” said Pretorius.

  “Then what makes you think can come up with anything at all, regardless of the time frame?” demanded Cooper.

  The ghost of a smile crossed Pretorius’s face. “I don’t go to the standard military sources.”

  “All right,” said Cooper. “Let’s get this show on the road. How much money will you need?”

  Pretorius shrugged. “Beats the hell out of me.”

  Cooper nodded. “Okay. I’ll give you an open line of credit for—”

  “Forget it,” said Pretorius. “We have to assume he’s not in the Democracy, at least not yet. And lines of credit to Democracy banks aren’t going to honored almost anywhere else. So we’ll want every form of human and alien cash.”

  “And if you need more?”

  “Pick a neutral planet, stick a box of various currencies there—”

  “Under heavy guard,” said Cooper.

  “Under unobtrusive guard,” Pretorius corrected him.

  Cooper nodded his head. “And what else?”

  Pretorius shrugged. “I probably won’t know until we need it.”

  “And that’s all?” demanded Cooper.

  “You’ve already proven that outnumbering him isn’t the key to stopping him,” said Pretorius. “But if you’d rather try again . . .”

  “Shut up,” said Cooper irritably.

  “You’re sure you wouldn’t prefer to—?”

  “Shut up and get out!” snapped Cooper. As Pretorius walked to the door of the general’s office, he added, “And bring me back the head of that goddamned clone!”

  1

  “I get so damned tired of bailing you out,” complained Pretorius, as the robot accompanied Snake to the front desk.

  “Hi, Nathan,” she replied. “Somehow I doubt that you’re using your own money.”

  “Hell, you’ve been jailed so many times I couldn’t afford your bail.”

  “We now remand Sally Kowalski into your custody,” said the robot in a grating monotone.

  “I have no idea how this goddamned system works,” growled Pretorius. “You’ve been caught so often your bail ought to be much higher.”

  She smiled and shook her head. “I get caught because no one else can do what I do. They take one look at the results, know it was me, and come get me, and none of them has to work very hard. I have never been arrested during a theft.”

  “Then why the hell don’t you pull a heist that anyone can do?”

  “Because I’m an artiste,” said Snake.

  “I suppose we’ll put that on your tombstone,” replied Pretorius as he led the small, wiry woman out onto a slidewalk.

  “Unless you’ve moved from that fortress you laughably call an apartment we’re heading the wrong way.”

  “No, we’re not.”

  “But there’s nothing up ahead except the military prison.”

  Pretorius smiled. “You should be used to prisons by now.”

  “Which of the team members are you bailing out of there?” she asked.

  “We’re just visiting.”

  “Right,” she said. “And you paid thirty thousand credits to bail me out so I could visit another jail.”

  “Another prisoner, anyway,” said Pretorius.

  “And it’s one of our Dead Enders?”

  Pretorius shook his head.

  “Okay, I give up. Why am I going to be thirty thousand credits worth of fascinated to meet whoever it is?”

  “Circe was our empath,” replied Pretorius. “With her dead, I have no one who can read minds or emotions. I’m hoping you’re just criminal enough to tell me what he’s thinking and whether you think he’s lying?”

  “What who is thinking or lying?”

  “Michkag.”

  “‘Our’ Michkag? I thought he was out in Orion somewhere, leading the Coalition into one trap after another.”

  Pretorius shook his head. “The original Michkag.”

  “What’s he doing—leading some kind of prison revolt?”

  “As far as I know, he’s obeying the rules and minding his own business,” answered Pretorius.

  “I haven’t seen him since we captured him and delivered him here,” said Snake.

  “Neither have I.”

  She frowned and stepped off the slidewalk. “Okay, this is as far as I go until you tell me what the hell this is about.”

  Pretorius also got off, and stared down at her.

  “It’s the clone,” he began.

  “Shit!” said Snake. “He got himself killed, and now you’re wondering if it’s safe to make a deal with the original and put him back.”

  “I wish it was that easy,” said Pretorius.

  “Oh?”

  He nodded. “Let’s get to the prison. I don’t want anyone to overhear what I say next.”

  She stared at him, frowning. “It’s that big?”

  “Just get back on the slidewalk.”

  She got onto it with no further argument and was silent for the last half mile, until they got off and entered the prison.

  The instant they were inside she took his arm and led him to a corner of the lobby.

  “Okay,” she said. “Now I want to know what’s going on.”

  “The clone has turned.”

  “He’s on their side now?”

  “That’s right.”

  “So what’s the problem?” she asked. “We got to the real one. Surely we can get to the phony.”

  “He’s not a phony,” replied Pretorius. “He’s a clone.”

  “Same thing. He’s an imitation Michkag.”

  “Michkag was the best general—hell, the best anything—that the enemy had. We tell the public that he fought us to a draw, but the truth of the matter is that he was beating the shit out of us.”

  “I know.”

  “So we found ourselves a turncoat, paid him to come over to our side with a skin scraping, and cloned the original Michkag.”

  “I know,” she said irritably. “I was there, remember?”

  “Right, you were there,” he said as they approached the prison. “And you and the rest of my Dead Enders sneaked him out to the fortress in Orion and made the switch.”

  “So tell me something I don’t know.”

  “What you don’t know is that the clone is every bit as bright as the original, and that he’s decided he likes being the general of an army and navy numbering more than five billion. Because he was raised within the Democracy, he had years to study us, to look for weaknesses, and because he was the property of the military he learned how the military thinks. How our military thinks. And of course he was trained to know how the Coalition military thinks, because he had to pass as the real Michkag.” Pretorius stared down at her. “You beginning to understand the problem?”

  “What do you think you can learn from the original?” asked Snake, as they continued through the heavily guarded building. “And why should he tell you a damned thing? If they were winning with him in charge, then surely they’re winning with an even brighter, better-trained version of him in command.”

  “I don’t know what we can learn,” admitted Pretorius.

  “Then why are we here?” demanded Snake.

  “I don’t care how brilliant you are, how exceptional your comprehension of military tactics is, how cleverly you improvise under pressure, if you rise to the position Michkag had you’ve also got to be more than a little bit of an egomaniac.” He paused. “Maybe he’ll be jealous of another Michkag capturing all the glory.”

  “Jealous enough to help us?” asked Snake dubiously.

  Pretorius shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ll tell you one thing, though.”

  “What?”

  “We’ll never know if we don’t give him a chance.”

  A uniformed guard approached them. “Your purpose, sir?”

  “I’m here to speak with the pri
soner Michkag. My name is Pretorius; General Cooper will clear me.”

  “And her?” asked the guard, indicating Snake.

  “Sally Kowalski,” said Pretorius. “He’ll okay her too.”

  “One moment, sir,” said the guard, heading off to a different room.

  He returned a moment later. “Follow me, sir and ma’am.”

  Pretorius hoped that Snake wouldn’t make a fuss about being called “ma’am,” and fell into step behind the guard.

  They entered an airlift, floated up three levels, and emerged into a narrow corridor. They proceeded down the length of it to the end, past a number of barred doors, until they came to what seemed like a completely open room.

  “See that line on the floor?” said the guard. “No farther.”

  “Force field?” asked Pretorius.

  The guard nodded his head. “Of course.”

  “Overpowering or lethal?”

  “Lethal,” was the answer. “We don’t play guessing games with how much an alien can take.”

  “Okay, thanks,” said Pretorius.

  “I’ll be at the far end of the corridor, where we stepped out of the lift,” said the guard, pulling out his burner and setting it to lethal.

  Pretorius turned to look into the cell. A large, powerful-looking member of the Kabori race was seated on a chair that was clearly built to handle his size and weight. He was a little over six feet tall, with a prehensile nose, more like that of a proboscis monkey than an elephant. He had two very wideset eyes, earholes but no ears, and a sharply pointed chin. His arms were the length of a gorilla’s, and just as heavily muscled. His feet were almost circular. His head and body were devoid of hair, and his color, top to bottom, was a dull red. He stared expressionlessly at the two humans.

  “Hi, Michkag,” said Pretorius. “Remember us?”

  “You and the rest of your motley crew dominate my every waking thought,” said Michkag bitterly.

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “Someday I will escape and reclaim my empire. Then you will know the meaning of the word ‘sorry.’”

  “Not gonna happen,” said Snake.

  Michkag glared at her for a long moment. “You think you can stop me?”

  “I don’t have to,” she said with a smile. “You’ve already been stopped.”

  “You mean these walls and this force field?” said Michkag, waving his arm contemptuously around at his surroundings. “Sooner or later my forces will come and set me free.”