A skinny man with a stringy moustache stood.
“Have you people reached a verdict?”
“We have.”
“Will the Defendant rise?”
They looked toward the empty spot on the table where Redfire was supposed to be sitting.
“O.K., what did you do with the defendant, mon?”
The clerk of the court signaled to a deputy, who shrugged. At that moment, another deputy came in through the door at the back of the room, whispered to the first deputy. The two of them together then went to the front of the court to confer with the clerk.
“Clerk!” Judge Braithewaite repeated, louder this time, “Where is my defendant!” The clerk of the court looked highly embarrassed. “I regret to have to inform this court that Commander Redfire has…umm…”
“… has what mon?” Judge Braithewaite demanded.
The clerk, a large man, as big as a Sapphirean and with a shaved head, gathered himself and answered. “TyroCommander Redfire has escaped.”
C h a p t e r T w e l v e
Pegasus – The UnderDecks
“John Hunter,” – not his real name – descended the long ladder that connected the air processors (the lungs of the ship) to the primary pressure locks that lined the deck beneath the electromagnetic launch rail system that ran the length of Pegasus. He was dressed in black coveralls and carried a pack on his back in which was contained everything a man needed – and only what a man needed – to survive in secret in the vast empty UnderDecks of the Great Pathfinder Ship; a day’s supply of food, two liters of water, a tool-kit, two changes of underwear, a datapad, a gun and a towel.
John Hunter was a stowaway. Pegasus was designed to support a crew (or “shipboard community,” the Republickers called it) of 35,000 people, but was launched with a crew (shipboard community) of less than 7,000. The designers reasoned the mission was multi-generational, and so allowed room for growth.
They never imagined there would be people like John Hunter lurking in the utility areas of the ship’s underside, which were never intended for inhabitation. Then again, they also never imagined that a disillusioned technician would make a tertiary wastewater tank into a happening nightclub either.
When Pegasus had cast off from the Republic Out-system, there had been nearly two hundred people hiding in these UnderDecks. Some had come to be part of ‘the Greatest Adventure of All Time,’ some had come to sabotage that same adventure, and some had been sent to capture them. Although rumors of stowaways filtered among the regular crew, great lengths had been gone to keep their presence secret.
The secrecy would have bothered the crew, so the secrecy itself was kept secret, and so it went. Official policy was that any stowaway caught in the UnderDecks would be put into stasis and sent back to Republic, or dropped off at the next Way-Station. Discovery at this late date and this great distance, (440
light years from home), might have invoked the better nature and sense of the regular crew, who might have made some accommodation for including the stowaways in the ship’s life. Executive TyroCommander Lear, and her secret force of Centurions, would make sure that no opportunity would arise to offer such clemency.
At EdenWorld, Hunter had chanced on an opportunity, kidnapped the Executive TyroCommander’s son, intending to use him to gain an audience with the ship’s Commander, a reasonable man Hunter was sure he could deal with. He sincerely and deeply regretted the whole episode, now. It had been a horrible miscalculation. The boy had escaped, and the Centurions had cracked down as never before. A lot of people had been frozen in the last two years, most of whom would not be missed. Nevertheless, it had made life in this secret sub-culture all that much harder. Some, on the verge of starvation, had just surrendered to the Centurions, and put in the great icebox for the thousand-year journey home. Hunter doubted there were more than thirty stowaways left in all the UnderDecks.
The secret to survival was to keep moving. He had hiding places throughout this shadowy realm – in spare escape pods, in empty holding tanks, behind conduits – and he moved between them constantly.
The Centurions had gotten clever about monitoring the food storage bays, but John Hunter had found a way around that. His was not the healthiest diet, but it sustained him.
He dropped the last few feet of the ladder, hitting the deck solidly, but nearly silently. He turned around and found himself face-to-face with a man wearing the uniform of the ship’s Watch.
An adrenaline rush electrified his system. Surprise caught him, struck him immobile, and so was the Watchmen. So far as Hunter knew, regular security never came this far below, only the Centurions. His mind raced. Could he bluff his way out of this? Passing himself off as one of the crew was unthinkable —
the beard was a dead giveaway. Someone from the planet? He had to think of something, had to stall long enough…
The Watchman had no such hesitation. He raised his arm and a pulse of bluish light leaped from his palm that struck Hunter with the force of a lightning bolt, jolting every nerve, muscle, and organ in his body. He was knocked him against the back wall with the force of an explosion.
Before he blacked out, Hunter had almost enough time to think, Watchmen don’t just shoot people like that…
Winter – Habi Zod
Chief Inspector Churchill stood over the heavy door from Redfire’s cell, which had blasted across the cellar, charred black and still smoking slightly. Lambrusco and Brickbat were also there, and another Watchman, Specialist Phoenix Sukhoi, was assisting him. Sukhoi, a lanky man, with a thin face and thinner hair, surveyed the inside of the cell, which was smashed, but not burned. Redfire’s chair and desk were blown to splinters, his hammock hung in shreds.
“So, how did he blow the door off?” Churchill demanded of the two detectives.
Brickbat answered. “We’ll have to work on that. Redfire was an explosives expert. We can see what was in his cell, as one of the ship’s…”
“Forget it. We’ll ask him when we catch him,” Churchill growled. “The means of his escape are not relevant. Where he went is more important, now. We do know that he does not carry a tracking sliver implant. Damned Sapphireans.” He strode through the scene of the crime, the rather primitive cell that had held the ship’s chief tactical officer. It had never really been anything more than a small room with thick stone walls and a heavy ironwood door. Without force fields or tracking devices, it was amazing it had held Redfire as long as it had. “Where were the Guards?” Churchill asked Lambrusco.
“Both burned, beat-up pretty bad but they’ll make it.”
“When they’re conscious, I want to talk to them. We’ll begin by figuring out how far a man can get on foot since he was put back in his cell. Meantime, quarantine this area. No ships leave the surface until Redfire is captured. If I were he, the first thing I’d try to do is hitch a ride back to our ship. How many Aves are on-planet now?”
Sukhoi answered him. “Four… three here… one with Prime Commander Keeler, but that’s 2,200
kilometers from here.”
“I don’t think Redfire can run that fast,” said Church, drily. “Are any vehicles missing from the grounds?” Churchill demanded.
“We’re working on that,” said Brickbat.
“Work harder,” Churchill ordered.
“Now, just hold on…” Lambusco protested. “That man was our prisoner. This is our investigation.
He belongs to us.”
“Then, you ought to take better care of your possessions,” Churchill returned.
Before Lambrusco could respond, Sukhoi entered the ring. “Orbital sensors are being realigned for a life-signature search of the surface. We can bring down additional manpower… unless Enforcer Lambrusco thinks his resources are sufficient.”
Lambrusco knew he was beaten. “Just remember who’s in charge, okay?” Churchill studied him. “All right. Let me tell you what I would like to do. I would like to establish a perimeter. I would like to use aerial surveillance c
raft and ground-based sensors to probe every centimeter within that perimeter. I intend to search every house, building, structure, cave, hole, tree and rock within my perimeter. I would like to secure my perimeter so that TyroCommander Redfire cannot go outside of it. I would like to use TyroCommander Redfire’s psyche profile to determine what he is most likely to do and where he is most likely to go from here. I intend to find TyroCommander Redfire and immobilize him in a stasis chamber, and then deliver him to the courtroom to hear his verdict. Now, if you have any objection to this thorough and well-considered course of action, I will be pleased to return to my ship, with Guardian Sukhoi and all of our equipment, and let you two men search for TyroCommander Redfire, if that is preferable to you?”
“We can agree with your plan,” Lambrusco said. “All I’m saying is work together. Cooperation could benefit both of us. Our people know the lay of the land a lot better than you.”
“Fine, we’ll work together,” Churchill said. “Just stay out of my way.” Winter – The Alcazar of General Ziang
Keeler returned to the sitting room, where General Ziang was serving another round of coffee, pastries, and dried fish. “Sorry, minor crisis back at the Fun Factory. Murderer on the loose. Nothing to worry about.”
Ziang was seated in one of set of large, high-backed, red leather chairs arranged in a shallow parabola in front of his fireplace. Night had fallen, quickly as it did on this world, and outside the glow of the fire, the room was quite cold. Queequeg was curled up, the picture of contentment closest to the fire, which was fueled by deep underground deposits of methane. Ziang’s estate happened to be positioned over the planet’s largest reserve of fossil hydrocarbon fuels, and he had made quite a fortune exchanging it with the other Lords and villagers.
Blade Toto sat in one chair, dozing and occasionally snoring. Goldenrod sat on the rug at Keeler’s feet.
Earlier, she had tried to pet the cat, but he swatted at her until she stopped. When Queequeg did this, she turned her attentions to the Commander, stroking his thigh and playing with his feet. Of course, Keeler had just one thing on his mind, “So, General Ziang, you were just about to tell us about the Third Crusade.”
Ziang leaned back in his chair and looked toward his ceiling, which was dominated by a massive gold dome decorated with constellations of tiny silver stars, as though the story was written there. “The peace established after the Second Crusade, the Futura Accords signed on the ashes of Li Shen Major and Li Shen Minor lasted for barely two generations. By this treaty, the Inner Colonies of the Commonwealth had all become ostensibly neutral, but in the end, they found a means to carry on the war through their surrogate colonies.
“A swath of worlds in the Eta Carinae arm of the galaxy were under the control of a cabal of overlords known as the Red Committee. Thirty-two colonies ruled by absolute terror. Do you want to know why they were called the Red Committee?”
“Why were they called ‘the Red Committee?” Live Keeler asked.
“Because they styled themselves after ancient human vampire myths. They believed they could become immortal by consuming fresh human blood, or so they said. They chose for their homeworld a small planet called Draconis, which orbited a binary pair of red dwarf stars not much brighter than two full moons and appeared in the sky like a pair of blood-red eyes. The Red Committee feasted on blood and hearts torn from live human victims. They sprayed the clouds with iron oxide so it would appear to rain blood and turn the planet’s rivers red. On Draconis, they built a whole city from the bones of their victims and called it Ossaria.”
Dead Keeler said nothing, but mouthed a scatological reference to male bovine ruminants.
“The Third Crusade began when the Chaldean resistance attempted to take back the colony Alia, under the banner ‘There Is No God But Jehovah.’ The Red Committee, tipped off to the attack by its agents on the Inner Colony world Pacifica, massacred the force, and shipped the banner back to Malachi with the last two words cut off.
“Insulted and enraged, a coalition of colonies mounted another expedition, with four times as many men and backing from the Christian Fleet. Three hundred ships departed from a secret base within the Tarantula Nebula. Most of them were corvettes, compact ships that looked much like the assault rifles our armies carried into battle with them. They came along with the battle cruisers, which had three great star-drive engines mounted in a trimaran arrangement around the primary hull. Finally, they were led by three dreadnoughts, which were massive vessels, shaped like swords with great guns protruding forward and aft and scores of one-and two-man fighters swarming around them like clouds of flies.”
“Were the small fighters capable of interstellar travel?” Live Keeler asked.
“No, but the Dreadnoughts could generate a field large enough to take them into hyperspace. They had to hold tight to the Dreadnoughts, though. When they entered hyperspace, it was like a cyclone of energy unleashed.”
Goldenrod yawned. “You know, this man-talk really isn’t doing it for me. Z, darling, mind if I, you know, give you a hearty slap on your mud-flaps and call it a night?”
“Of course, you may retire now. Br’aaq will show you to your room. Br’aaq!” The and/oroid Thean stepped forward from his chamber. “You may show the woman to her chambers now, Br’aaq.”
Without any gesture of acknowledgement, the machine led the way. Goldenrod followed, pausing only long enough to turn around and give Keeler a wink and a toss of her ringlets.
Ziang seemed put off by the gesture, but returned to his story. “The fleet departed, led by General Wu in his flagship, the Dreadnought War Emblem, but at the last moment, fearing he would be betrayed again, General Wu told his navigators …” at which point General Ziang took a deep breath, rolled his eyes into his head and let loose with a series of high-pitched squeaks and clicks.
“Excuse me?” Live Keeler asked.
“The Navigators were Cetacean. At the time, all fleet officers were fluent in the cetacean… or most were anyway.”
“The cetaceans came from Earth, too,” Live Keeler said, more for the purpose of making notes in his recorder than anything else. “We have none on Sapphire.”
“If God meant us to squeak and click, he wouldn’t have given us translation matrixes,” Dead Keeler snarled. Then he grumbled, “Stinking show-off.”
Ziang sighed, repeated his squeaks and clicks, and then translated. “Set course… for Ossaria. He had had a vision, in which the Angel of the Lord told him that the Red fleet was lying in wait at the colonies at Reyhan and Alia, Leaving Draconis vulnerable. The Angel told him to strike at Draconis and the Lord would be with him.”
This sounded more like the stories of the Crusades Live Keeler was used to hearing.
Ziang went on. “His crew thought he was mad, and nearly mutinied against him. He warned that any ship that broke formation would be fired upon and destroyed. They were going to Draconis, and all the vengeance of God was going with them.”
Ziang leaned forward, gesturing with his hands to describe the movement of the fleet. Shadows danced in the firelight, as though demons and the ghosts of those warriors were coming forth to listen to their stories being told again. “The standard tactic of the time was to hold back part of your fleet in reserve, to exit hyperspace in three or four or five waves, to wear down the enemy and make it difficult for him to count your numbers. Instead, Wu brought them all out at once, and unleashed all the fury their weapons could deliver.”
“The battle was pitched and fierce and lasted for several long hours. The Red Committee’s fleet was small, but it contained the best ships, and the most die-hard soldiers in all the Red Horde, as their army was called. The Red Horde fought without pity or remorse. When the battle was all but lost, they rammed their ships into Wu’s fleet. In desperation, they imploded their reactors, bathing the planet in deadly radiation even as they immolated parts of our own fleet.
“By the end of the battle, Wu had lost many of his ships. Of his three Dreadnoughts,
only Green Dragon survived. However, the Red Guard had been completely destroyed. Wu ordered a last assault to lay waste to the cities of Draconis, and to pound Ossaria to dust such that no living thing would survive.
When his bombardiers had done this, and Ossaria was nothing but a smoking crater, he pulled his fleet out, knowing that the rest of the Red Fleet could return at any moment.
“They set a course for Reyhan, and Wu fasted for three days to thank God for his victory. As he prostrated himself, the Angel of the Lord reappeared, and told him to return to Draconis.
“Wu, exhausted from the battle, protested. ‘I have lost a third of my ships and men. How can I take on the whole of the Red Fleet?’
“The Angel of the Lord grew incensed. ‘Who are you to question the Will of God?’ The Angel became a great flash of light, and Wu was struck blind.
“Wu made his way to his Bridge, and ordered the whole fleet turned back toward Draconis. Again, his men thought he was mad, but they saw the mark of the Lord upon him, and they obeyed.” At this point, Dead Keeler interjected. “Wu was blind and disfigured at this point, but somehow no one thought to attribute this to, I don’t know… radiation poisoning! ” Live Keeler was shocked at his ancestor’s impudence. The Dead Guys never questioned the Divine Nature of the Crusades. Not that such questioning would not have been permitted because of the Sapphirean devotion to free debate, but only social deviants like Queeg Rockshadow ever seriously engaged in such pseudo-intellectual poseury. The Crusades were as close to sancrosanct as anything got on Sapphire.
Ziang yawned, took another strong drink of coffee, and continued. “Wu returned to Draconis, and caught the Red Fleet by surprise. Another long battle raged, and when it was over, he had lost another third of his ships. But, the Red Fleet had lost twice as many before Wu was forced to withdraw.”
“More significantly, when the Draconis was first attacked, the Red Committee had sent a distress call to their compatriots at Alia. So, both Alia and Reyhan were left with only light defenses. The Second and Third Fleets were able to retake both easily.”
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