by Mel Keegan
“We should be saying that to you,” Rabelais said with a certain cynicism as he came to the tank, eyes sweeping through it, taking in the graphical display and the raw datastream.
His hands closed on the side of the tank, he seemed to brace himself. Marin was about to ask if the hyper-Weimann ignition caused some physical effect when a peculiar wrench coursed through his belly and his middle ear protested. A moment of nausea, a falling sensation, then it was gone and he was aware of no more than a heavy burr through the deck.
“Transspace drive is right on the numbers,” Jazinsky said from the flatscreen where engine data cascaded faster than Marin could have followed it. “Nice, smooth startup. Not a ripple in performance.”
And Lai’a was already plunging into the Odyssey Tide, whether diving or soaring into it, Marin was unsure. With the speed of a machine, the profound constancy of Resalq artificial intelligence, it danced across, around, between the temporal currents as few human transspace pilots were ever likely to.
“Odyssey Tide insertion,” it reported. “Ebrezjim Lagoon acquired.”
“Ebrezjim Lagoon?” Jon Kim had begun to get a chokehold on the terror for which Marin could not blame him.
“The dark sea where dead ships fetch up – a freefall lagoon. The Odyssey, the Orpheus, the Ebrezjim and a thousand others found their way there. We’ve got to give it some name on the charts.” Jazinsky was done with the navtank calibration. “Lag time is down to about two seconds, Richard. I can live with that. Lai’a, estimated time to reach the energy barrier at the horizon of the lagoon?”
“I will reach the driftway around the lagoon in 118 minutes.” Lai’a paused. “Human navigators may be interested in consulting the deep scan. The Orion Gate is intermittently visible at this time.”
Vidal drew together with Rabelais and Queneau, the three human veterans of Elarne. “I told you I’d seen Orion 359.” He looked up at Mark. “I didn’t imagine it.”
“I never for a moment thought you did.” Mark had said nothing since Lai’a dove into the freefall passage. His eyes were vast, golden, filled with the witchfires reflected back from the tank and displays. “This is … you’ll forgive me if words are elusive. The last of our people to fly this sky were on the Ebrezjim. All my life, I’ve dreamed of this.”
In a threedee off to the left of the main navtank the deep scan image swam like a seething, roiling mass of chaos which now and then resolved for a second or two. In the moment when the image made visual sense, the eye could pick out the shapes and forms of actual objects so far away in terms of normal space, Mark’s ships had traveled at high speeds for five years to reach them. Orion 359 was a black hole very similar to Naiobe, and at this time its orbit had swung it close enough to two supergiant stars to create the familiar lattice of gravity wells where matter and energy, space and time were confused.
It was another Drift, a fiendish twin sister of Hellgate. “And we’re going there,” Travers said hoarsely, gazing over Marin’s shoulder into the threedee. He looked away then, as if his eyes or brain could take no more.
“But first,” Dario Sherratt said darkly, “the graveyard where wrecked ships fetch up. You heard Lai’a – less than two hours. Mark, I’m going to go break out the armor and run a full diagnostic series.”
“Take your time,” Mark advised. “We’re not going to rush into this. That ship has waited almost a thousand years for another Resalq to walk its decks. It’s not going to fly away.”
“Especially since its engine deck is parked back at Alshie’nya,” Rabelais said brashly, “Arago-tethered to the Orpheus-Odyssey.” He was glaring into the tank as if Elarne were his personal demon. “You can chart it as the ‘Ebrezjim Lagoon,’ and giving it a name seems to make it less bizarre. More accessible. Don’t let a name fool you. It’s a bad place. Treacherous. The freefall environment makes it survivable, but – like Mark says, we don’t want to be rushing anywhere.” He paused. “Bottom line … trust Lai’a.”
“You mean, trust it to know it can get back out, as well as getting in?” Shapiro guessed.
“That’s exactly what I mean.” Rabelais was frowning at Vidal now. “All the power you could squeeze out of the engines of the Ebrezjim wasn’t enough to get us back through this – this energy barrier, like a radiation storm right at the horizon of the wasteland.” He shuddered visibly. “We ought to be safe enough till we get there. I’m going to go unpack my gear and get settled in. Coming, Jo?”
She had been looking into the tank as if hypnotized by the display, and stirred with an obvious effort. “Yeah, sure.”
The AI’s voice was a tenor murmur in the background. “I am receiving phantom signals. An automated distress call from a ship identifying as the Sāgara Pavana.”
The name meant nothing to Marin, and Vaurien seemed no more familiar with it. “Joss, run the Merchant Astra Commission registry,” Richard prompted. “Somebody lost a ship in the Drift. Sāgara Pavana.”
For a split second the AI was busy, and then, “Merchant Astra Commission registry lists the Sāgara Pavana as a drone freighter out of Omaru, carrying cargo bound for Velcastra and Borushek. It was scheduled to cruise the safe passage around the Bronowski Reef and was posted as lost when twenty days overdue.”
“When?” Vaurien‘s brows arched as he looked over at Jazinsky.
“Date of insurance claim, 2542,” Joss supplied.
“That’s way over a hundred years ago.” Vidal’s voice was hushed. “Lai’a, can you infer anything from signal degradation? How long’s this message been bouncing around?”
“Extreme signal degradation suggests the message is an echo.” Lai’a was unmoved by the mystery.
“Very different,” Jazinsky observed, “from the distress call you received from the Orpheus, which took you to the lagoon of dead ships in the first place.”
“Very different,” Lai’a affirmed. “Reporting a .004 fluctuation in number 3 hyper-Weimann field regulator.”
“Can you compensate?” Vaurien asked sharply. He gave Mark and Jazinsky a hard look. “I’d ask if Lai’a wanted to cut engines and recalibrate, but from what I understand, when you’re riding the gravity express you can’t drop out, not till you reach next exit to a stable driftway, and they only come up every few hours. That’s plenty of time to get into serious trouble.”
“This is correct,” Lai’a agreed. “However, the fluctuation is nominal. The field regulator can be realigned once transit has been executed. The region designated Ebrezjim Lagoon has long-term stability.”
“You’re sure of that?” Shapiro stepped closer to the tank.
“Data retrieved from the Orpheus flight computer confirms the stability of the region,” Lai’a told him. “Would you care to review it?”
A faint chuckle issued from both Mark Sherratt and Mick Vidal, as if they shared the same thoughts. “Trust it to know its business,” Vidal said with acid, rueful humor. “This is the natural environment of a driftship. Nobody knows it like Lai’a. The only entity that’ll ever know it better is a successor of Lai’a, redesigned around the same technology, using what we learn right here, right now.”
“Lai’a,” Mark said quietly, “is quite capable of upgrading itself. It can learn. It was given good judgment.”
“Even the engine tech?” Leon studied his equero closely.
It was Jazinsky who answered. “Technically, Lai’a has the capability to refine its own engine design. It could – I say could – develop a whole new engine concept, deploy its drones to mine a field like the Bronowski Reef, and use its fabrication ships to build and install, well, anything.”
An odd shiver took Marin unawares. “You mean, it can reproduce?”
“That’s … a rather creepy way of putting it,” Jazinsky mused, “but essentially, I suppose it’s right.”
“Then Lai’a,” Roy Arlott said, “isn’t an it. Is it? Lai’a has to be a she.”
“Mark?” Vaurien was pleased to pass the question in Sherratt’s direction.
“A human might think in those terms,” Mark admitted. “It’s rather sentimental, and there’s only tenuous correlation between Lai’a and any biological system that ever existed. Moreover, Lai’a identifies itself as Resalq. And we,” he added pointedly, “can all carry and birth offspring. We have no female gender – and no need of one.”
Vaurien turned his back on the navtank for the first time since the Ops room had powered up. “Barb, pull up the stats on the field regulator that’s slipping. And somebody get a ’chef set up in here.”
“Coffee?” Jazinsky offered.
To Marin it seemed the ship settled down as surely as the Wastrel, the Mercury or even the Carellan Djerun which, as a civilian science ship and a Resalq vessel, was a law unto itself. Vaurien’s command was subtle. Marin could scarcely remember him ever raising his voice – Richard did not need to. He was the first into Ops and the last out of it, and no one knew more about the business of ship, crew, and complex operations.
Forty meters aft of the Ops, the drones had deposited their baggage in a double cabin which was still bare, impersonal. The threedee was idling, the bed was strewn with familiar bronze sheets, but it would be days, weeks, before they put their mark on it, Marin thought. Unlike the stateroom they shared on the Wastrel and their quarters on the Mercury, this one had no viewport. The hulk of the cruiser was thickly shielded; any viewport would have looked out onto a wall of Zunshu armor, and even if they had been able to see beyond, the storm of Elarne was enough to challenge a man’s sanity.
The mattress was Fleet standard, smart, conforming. Marin did not even have to try it, but sat on the foot of it and watched as Travers threw open the cases, hung up an assortment of clothing, set out personal effects that looked sparse, meager.
“Should have packed more,” Marin observed. Even now, the two of them owned so little.
“Like, what?” Travers shoved the empty cases into the bottom of the closet. “Christ, you remember the broom-cupboard that called itself a cabin, my cabin, on the Intrepid? Sergeant’s privilege – six square meters of claustrophobic privacy.”
“The first place we made love,” Marin said, indulging himself in a little gentle self-mockery.
“Exactly.” Travers dropped onto the foot of the bed beside him. “This is five times the size, with a proper bed.” He paused, drawing a caress around Marin’s face, making him look up. “What?”
But Marin shrugged off the restless mood. “Nothing. Jitters. We’re in Elarne – we know the gravity express Lai’a is flying! We’ve flown it ourselves, twenty times. More.”
“And crashed it fifteen of those times,” Travers reminded. “We’re a long way off getting the transspace pilot’s ticket.” He glanced at his chrono. “There’s a lot to do, if we want to make ourselves useful. I’ll give you odds, Jo and Ernst are down there right now, breaking the simulator out of storage, setting it right back up.”
“You want to fly it again?” Marin looked sidelong at him, one hand splayed over Travers’s broad chest.
“Want to? No. Need to? Oh, yeah.” Travers’s hand closed over Marin’s, holding it there for a moment. “It just hit me, hard – what Mick’s always been saying. Lai’a is one pilot. Anything goes wrong with it … Christ, Curtis, think about where we are.”
“I am thinking,” Marin said grimly. “I’m thinking, we must be bloody insane.”
Yet the ship was operating as smoothly as ever the Wastrel did. The hull thrummed with power on another level – the vibration was not stronger, but different, Marin thought. The air felt different too, almost as if he could feel positive ions effervescing in the back of his brain, as if a thunderstorm were approaching on high winds. Humans and Resalq would soon grow accustomed to it. Operations was comfortably familiar, companionably dim, filled with the rush of data, the scents of coffee, cinnamon, taccali, and quiet voices. Further down the body of the habitation module the Resalq were setting up labs, Jazinsky and Teniko were arguing, Judith Fargo and Bravo Company were bickering amiably over accommodations, who got which bunk, and how their gym should be arranged. Travers watched them for some moments, amused, indulgent, before he followed Marin to the crew lounge where Leon and Roy were configuring a pair of autochefs, one for the human palate, one for the Resalq.
Of Jon Kim there was no sign, but at one end of the long mess table Shapiro was methodically paging through what seemed to be an immense document. The adrenaline rush of launch had spent itself and he looked tired. Marin glanced over his shoulder and saw a transcript of numerous verbal sources which had been collated to bring out the gist of the intelligence from Velcastra – the last such briefing he would receive before Lai’a returned to Hellgate.
“Get me a coffee, would you, Curtis?” Shapiro gestured with the handy. “The Velcastra transmission makes interesting reading … if you enjoy the sensation of spiders scurrying up and down your spine.”
“Anything classified at a level we can hear?” Travers pulled out a chair.
“None of the covert nonsense matters anymore,” Shapiro said unconcernedly. “It’s fair to say we’re not even in the same universe any longer, and it’ll all be history by the time we return. This? Well, the Jagreth Secret Service did manage to capture several agents, and after the battle it seems two of those agents decided where their loyalties or priorities lay. Saving lives is the only mission that counts for a damn now. They put up their hands, defected, offered to share what information they possessed.”
“And we trust them?” Marin asked doubtfully as he set a mug down at Shapiro’s left hand.
“After the battery of tests those people endured, I would say so. President Prendergast’s specialists were … thorough.”
“They were tortured.” Travers’s face clenched.
“Not really – though unpleasant situations certainly took place in simulation. You recall the Frank Berglun interrogation?”
“And Jo Queneau.” Travers lifted one brow at Shapiro.
“Yes. Prendergast’s defectors suffered several of those sims, none of them easy; one was especially brutal. Prendergast’s people had to be sure, and no physical injury was done … and remember, secret service agents are trained to shrug off what would challenge an ordinary person. They can disregard abuse, especially simulated abuse, which would destroy you or me. It goes with the job, and they only do the work because they’re good at it.”
“Fair enough.” Travers looked up at Marin, who had taken green tea and come to rest with a view of the Resalq painting of the solar sailor. Even now Marin knew a great deal more about security work than Travers did, and he nodded a mute affirmation of Shapiro’s case. The Confederate agents who had defected would have expected no less, and they endured what they must to validate the defection. When it was done they would be treated well, and eventually they would be free. Liberty was worth the price.
“This information is six or eight weeks old,” Shapiro was saying, “so it’s of limited value but, as I said, it’s interesting. The Avenger was originally assigned to Borushek. Given ‘success’ on Velcastra – measured as forty million dead and the biosphere so badly damaged it would take moderate terraforming to repair it – and ‘success’ on Jagreth, measured in similar terms – the Avenger was assigned to quash the insurrection on Borushek. The mission profile was to arrest anyone suspected of Daku affiliations and place an occupation force in charge of both the Fleet installations and the civilian spaceport, both groundside and at Sark High Dock, in orbit.”
“Meaning, tens of thousands of casualties and prisoners, followed by a great many trials and firing squads.” Marin said bitterly.
“But the planet was to be recovered with its biosphere intact.” Shapiro sighed. “Borushek is useful. Fleet Sector Command. So, no bombardment, no irradiation, no atmospheric or biological weapons.” He set down the handy and took the mug between both palms. “With Borushek back under control, the Avenger’s next assignment was me.”
“It was get Harrison Shapiro,” Tra
vers said in sour tones.
“It’s the way the game is played.” Marin pulled out the chair beside him, turned it, straddled it. “Back in the time of the World Wars, the first half of the twentieth century, they used to call it the Great Game, or the Game of Empire.”
“As if conquest and military domination was the greatest ideal to which civilized people could aspire,” Shapiro said in a voice as sour as Travers’s. “Six centuries later, little has changed in the homeworlds. The playing field is infinitely more vast but the motivation is the same – and it dates back to the dawn of human history, millennia before Imperial Rome.” Deliberately, he turned off the handy. “Well, my part in their ridiculous game is over. I was never a politician – if Chandra Liang can make sense of this, he’ll write himself into history as the peacemaker, but I’ll give you fair warning: the way history is recorded in the homeworlds, and the way we write it in the Deep Sky, will be two different stories.”
“Out here,” Marin made a gesture with his cup which embraced the frontier, “we fought for our freedom, protected millions of lives, saved the biospheres of at least two worlds, won ourselves the chance to hunt Zunshu … long-term survival for all.”
“Back there,” Shapiro went on, “they’ll say the military mutinied, the civilian community rose up, we were responsible for the deaths of twenty thousand Fleet servicemen and tens of millions of tonnes of shipping – we’re murderers and thieves. Brigands, no better than the rogue Freespacers with whom we’d allied ourselves. We ought to be brought to justice for crimes against humanity. And incidentally, by the time those agents defected on Jagreth, the arrest warrants had already been issued for myself, Chandra Liang, Alec Tarrant, Mark, Richard, Alexis and others.” His brows rose. “If we’re apprehended, it’ll be the old fashioned kangaroo court and a swift, efficient firing squad.”
“Meaning, you’ll live the rest of your life surrounded by a platoon of bodyguards.” Travers looked away. “Damn.”