by Mel Keegan
“Nothing, Captain.” Lai’a paused. “Sublight engines are available. A Weimann solution for the Zunshu Drift is calculated; departure is at your discretion.”
Bill Grant beckoned the hoverchair, which had been parked right outside the suiting room, and Richard subsided into it with a groan. “You gotta rest, boss,” Grant said with grim disapproval. “Zero-gee, four or five hours, minimum, starting right now.”
This time Vaurien did not argue. Marin watched as he made his way out, and wondered where he found the resilience. His own body was tired to the bone, but the Sherratts, Jazinsky and Rusch seemed to have found some second wind. The loop whispered with sounds of industry from the lab where they were running the Veldn data. He guessed they would work until they were insensible, and they would not consider it work.
“Hey.” Vidal draped one arm over Travers’s shoulders and the other over Marin’s. “You guys want to celebrate?”
“We have plenty of reason to.” Marin looked along at Travers. “You’re not allowed to party, Mick. Not yet, by a long shot.”
“Doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy a vicarious thrill,” Vidal said blithely.
“You mean, we get snockered and you binge on happy memories?” Travers made disdainful noises. “You’d do better to jack in and get some serious veeree time.”
One blue eye winked. “Don’t mention it to Rick, but it wasn’t just dope Tonio packed aboard. He had Abelard and Zenobia 4.2.”
It was vaguely familiar. Marin hunted for it through a cluttered collection of adolescent memories. “Not the one with this woman who gets abducted by Freespacer trash, and her useless boyfriend rides to the rescue, gets himself into the kind of trouble John doesn’t get out of without coming home as Jane –”
“And she’s so kick-ass, she winds up queen of a barbarian Freespace empire,” Travers chuckled, “and one fine day the slimes haul in the tribute demanded of the subjugated worlds, and guess who’s there on his – her! – knees, in gold chains, at the feet of Zenobia?”
“The game can play out that way,” Vidal said smugly. “It can also play out backwards and sideways, ten other solutions.”
“And it’s contraband.” Marin ducked out from beneath his arm. “Version 2.0 was banned on Jagreth for being wall-to-wall sex and violence with wicked addictive properties.”
“And Tonio,” Vidal added, “was at level 14 in Version 4.2. I just haven’t figured out which character he was playing … or how the hell he got off level 6.”
For a moment Marin blinked at him, and then laughed. “Knock yourself out. Just don’t let Richard know Teniko had highly addictive contraband. There’s a thousand legal games out there, most of which he could have downloaded right off CityNet.”
“You know Tonio,” Vidal sighed. “He had a taste for the outrageous, and he habituated to anything in half an hour. The thrills always had to get wilder and nastier, or it wasn’t fun anymore. Rick used to say he was his own worst enemy.”
“And I’m beholden to him,” Travers finished. “Richard’s only alive, and so am I, because of the little twerp.” He slid an arm around Marin’s waist. “And you’re stuck on level 6.”
Vidal snorted rudely. “I’ll figure it out. I might have to drag Roark and Asako into it – but I’ll bet you the pay vouchers of this expedition, Roo Kravitz knows the cracks, or where to get ’em.”
“Be careful,” Marin told him, mock sternly. “Richard only just started thinking fondly of Tonio again.”
“You mean, don’t sully the kid’s memory with more crap?” Vidal sobered, nodded. “Tonio was hard to like, but I have a lot of respect for what he did. Rick asked me to go through his things, which is how I found the veeree player in the first place … there’s family back on Lushiar, apparently. Mom and Pop don’t know it yet, but they’re rich. Tonio’s back pay and full bonuses for the Lai’a expedition –? It’s the kind of money ordinary people never see, and Rick’ll make sure they get it.”
“Welcome to a salvage crew.” Travers stretched his spine and indulged in a yawn.
He was starting to relax while Marin remained tight-wound. “Later, Mick,” he said easily, steering Neil out of the suiting room.
“Hey, you want to fly the simulator?” Vidal called after them.
“Want to?” Travers echoed. “Wouldn’t be quite the term I’d use. Need to. Can’t stay away from it, like another game you can’t stop playing. When?”
“I’ll give you a buzz,” Vidal promised.
The lights dimmed in their quarters, and Travers was dropping his clothes on the way to the bathroom while Marin picked up the bottle of McLachlan’s, twelve years old, the color of amber and the consistency of rocket fuel. A billow of steam issued from the bathroom as the water began to run scalding, and Neil groaned in pleasure as it hit his back.
Undressing leisurely, drinking right from the bottle, Marin followed his lead and leaned both shoulders on the pale blue-gray tiles. Travers sampled the whisky, drank again and passed back the bottle. The dark hair was streaming while the heat fetched a flush to his cheeks. Marin set the McLachlan’s on the floor outside the stall and spread both hands over Neil’s broad chest. Travers tipped his head back, let the water race over his face and shoulders, and then looked down at Marin with a sultry half smile.
“Now, what’s going through that mind of yours?”
“Home,” Marin told him. “The Deep Sky ... the Wastrel.” He shuffled further under the water and moaned as Neil’s hands began to travel every part of him they could reach. “It’s over. We’re – free, for want of a better word.”
“The whole Deep Sky is free,” Travers added against Marin’s left ear, where lips and tongue were working a kind of magic. “We seed Hellgate and systems on both sides of the frontier with comm buoys transmitting the deactivation code, and we can forget the Zunshu ever existed.” He lifted his head away, regarded Marin with a frown. “Two Rhammee ships unaccounted for, for six centuries.”
“The Veldn have the situation under control.” Marin laced his fingers at Travers’s nape. “Their tech is ahead of ours.”
“Not by much. And not after Lai’a and Mark and Barb have taken the data transfer to pieces. Data sharing – you gotta love it.”
“They do.” Marin felt the first lick of relaxation waft through him. “So, loverboy.”
“So?” Neil put his head down, left a bite-brand on Marin’s shoulder.
“Richard’s headed out,” Curtis groaned, “before Earth can smuggle bounty hunters into the Deep Sky.”
But Travers shrugged off the threat. “It’s got to be months in the future. There’s no rush, not yet.” He reached around and flicked the faucet off. “On the other hand, there’s more pressing matters.” He gave Marin a bump with his hips to illustrate the point.
“Pressing?” Marin echoed, and reached down between them to assess the situation.
“One might say … something more urgent came up,” Neil suggested, and groaned again as Marin’s long fingers did unspeakable things to his nerve endings.
They separated to arm’s length as the hurricane of hot air stormed through the shower stall. Marin turned his head, felt it whip at his hair, a sensation almost as intensely sensual as Travers’s hands on him. Almost. In minutes they were dry, and he let himself be manhandled to the bed, dumped onto it, before Neil’s weight pressed him down. The lights dimmed to a deep gold glimmer, and Travers breathed the air right from Marin’s lungs.
The rest was a haze of pleasure on the line where reality blurred into fantasy and, looking back on it, Marin would never be able to tell one from the other.
Chapter Twenty-one
Lai’a, Naiobe Gyre
“Bill, I’m fine – enough.” Vaurien fended him off for the third time in as many minutes. “You took all these readings yesterday. You’re just being paranoid.”
“Maybe because my finals are coming up,” Grant said testily, “and if the captain of my own ship falls flat on his face, it’ll stuff up a
ny chance I have of qualifying. Shut up and keep still while I get brain chemistry levels … boss.”
With an exasperated sigh Vaurien stood with fists on hips, letting him collect his data. “You see what I have to endure?” he demanded of Travers, who had come in with Vidal minutes before.
Sitting on the side of one of the beds, playing with a handy that was configured for medical service and made little sense to him, Travers cast a critical glance over Vaurien. “You’re so pale, you look like an apparition,” he said without mercy. “You’re thin – I’ve never seen you so thin. You scare me. Let Bill get his numbers.”
“What he said,” Vidal agreed, “and this, from the company ghost.” He was waiting for his shots, killing a few minutes looking at the progress report on his organs.
They were maturing well. Just ten more months, Grant promised, and Travers knew Vidal was counting every day. He set aside the handy and cocked his head at the Lushi. “So, Billy … you’re coming with us?”
Done with the scans, Grant stepped back. “Where to?” he asked, preoccupied enough with his work to miss the opportunity for the coarse joke Travers had expected.
“Heading out,” Vidal guessed. “Other side of Freespace … see what’s there, find ourselves a world like home, better than home, start over. Stay four or five jumps ahead of the bounty hunters, like Rick says,” he added. “Neil?”
“We’re in, Curtis and me,” Travers told him. “Harrison too. He said something about ‘nothing to go back to.’” He looked away. “He’s missing Jon a lot; blaming himself.”
“He’ll do that, as long as he lives. Et vraiment, mes amis, c’est la vie.” Vaurien pushed hands into pockets and frowned down at Grant. “Satisfied?”
“For now.” Grant turned off the handy and set it on the only free corner of his cluttered desk. “Fair warning: I’ll drag you back in here, in two days.”
Vaurien stretched both arms over his head – careful with the left, as always. Just three days before, synthetic neural bridging had reconnected the nerves in the arm and leg and he was feeling everything, right down to fingertips and toes. The measure of how recovered he was, Travers thought, was that Jazinsky had ceased to fret. The mended limbs were stiff; he was stretching and working them, rebuilding a little of the wasted muscle, but he was out of the Infirmary, sleeping in his own bed, with a partner beside him who had ceased to hover as if she feared he would relapse.
“Two days?” Richard was saying. “We’ll be home by then. Alshie’nya.”
Home. The word taunted Travers. Lai’a was well beyond Orion 359 and riding the gravity express. Ahead was the Ebrezjim Lagoon, the Odyssey Tide back to the Naiobe Driftway – Hellgate, and Travers mocked himself with the realization he was looking forward to Hellgate, welcoming it as a haven.
“You call Alshie’nya home?” Grant demanded.
“No, but the Wastrel’s there.” Vaurien ambled toward the Infirmary’s wide, open doors. “All I want right now is my own deck under my feet. Lai’a has its next assignment – it’s already manufacturing comm drones loaded with the deactivation code. It’ll cruise Hellgate, the frontier – working over into Freespace, and the Deep Sky, laying down chains of them … not without refurbishment,” he added. “The Cerberus is still mining the Bronowski Reef, but the Commonwealth will be picking up the tab for this. And you know politicians will try to wriggle out of it, or talk the bill down so far, we end with a deficit!”
“I also know,” Vidal said with a definite smug satisfaction, “Liang, Tarrant, Prendergast and the Daku won’t let them wriggle far.”
“Right.” Vaurien indulged himself in a familiar crooked smile. “Not that it would matter too much if they did. We own the patents on Zunshulite and the processes required to work the stuff. We own the patent on the transspace drive, come to that! We could try to patent the Zunshunium top fuel, but the Commission would argue – and they’d be right. Zunshunium occurs naturally, we didn’t invent it! But,” he added, as self-satisfied as Vidal and enjoying it, “no law says we have to divulge the information about where the lode is. There’s only one lode we’ve identified as yet, and it’s ours. It’s also well inside Hellgate –”
“Where nobody but us dares to tread,” Travers finished, and allowed a chuckle. “Lai’a could probably locate several other lodes.”
And Vaurien nodded. “This is one of its priority assignments, and it knows the likeliest places to look. It can survey for Zunshunium lodes and at the same time aid the Veldn in the search for the two Zunshu ships that remain unaccounted for. In fact, Lai’a should be back in transspace in a few weeks, after the initial chain of comm buoys is laid down – and it’s eager to return. The surveying assignment is very much to its taste.”
“Its taste?” Vidal echoed. “It has a choice about what assignment it’ll take? Which prompts me to ask a question nobody’s asked yet.” He lifted a brow at Vaurien. “Who owns Lai’a? You know the Commonwealth’s new bean counters are going to want to know who paid for it, what it’s worth … where it is, who it’s working for, what it’s doing, and why, and who’ll bank the profits earned by its activities.”
“All good questions,” Vaurien agreed. “Watch yourself, Mick – I could hear your father’s business sense in every word there. Start thinking that way, and they’d be delighted to turn you into a corporate executive!” Vidal was shuddering animatedly as Richard went on, “Who paid for Lai’a? The hulls of the Intrepid and the Apollo were legitimate salvage. The Wastrel did the work; Harrison funded part of it from Fleet appropriation funds, but the truth is, Mark and I picked up a large balance. If these bean counters harass us, we’ll serve the bill. A consortium of human and Resalq interests discovered the transspace fuel element, mined and refined it; and it’s the same story on the funding. The Commonwealth can have the bill for funds outstanding there, too.
“The habitation module is sheathed in Zunshulite, to which we own the patents on material and process … and here’s where it’ll start to get expensive. The bill would hurt, and we haven’t even reached transspace engine design, manufacture and test, much less AI development, which was done on Mark’s dime, or ordnance, some of which was salvaged from Fleet wreckage – but much was manufactured using patented processes. Not to mention lives lost, injuries suffered.
“But – who owns Lai’a?” Richard’s face was a study in amused exasperation. “Try giving it an order it doesn’t fancy. Try sending it on an assignment it considers inappropriate. It wants to survey Drifts around the galaxy; it wants to join the Veldn in the search for those two Zunshu ships, and some hypothetical colony founded by them.”
Vidal was watching Grant fiddle with his nano. “A professional bean counter back there in the Commonwealth is going to look at it and see a warship. They’ll almost certainly want to assign it a patrol, closer to the Deep Sky, tell it to cruise back and forth, guarding our borders.”
“Good luck with that.” Vaurien actually laughed. “The fact is, I don’t think anyone owns Lai’a. It was delighted to work in concert with us, and it looks forward to collaborating again. It did as we asked, which is very different from following orders or loading up a program. Its universe is extremely different from ours. Transspace. Speaking of which, Mark and I have been discussing outfitting other driftships. By now we understand the technology well. Take an asteroid miner hull – think of the Cerberus, in fact – add Zunshulite armor and a derivative of Lai’a, not so unspeakably brilliant, and much less self-aware. The transspace drive.” He rubbed his palms together slowly. “A habitation module, with much better armor.”
“We underestimated that part,” Vidal said shrewdly. “We know now, there’s a five percent chance we can get squished during a bad transit on any gate.”
“But we can armor against it,” Vaurien added. “We will, next time.”
“Next time?” Travers echoed.
“New assignment.” Vaurien stirred with an obvious effort, pulling his thoughts back to the present. “The Resa
lq want to get a team together to go study Zunshu 161-D – the planet, not the people. We downloaded the computer core, and where it failed, the Veldn filled in the blanks. There’s enough Zunshu data to keep scientists busy for a decade. And as a species the Zunshu are not just harmless, they’ve actually become dangerously vulnerable.”
“If they don’t get their act together inside one more century,” Travers mused, “that city of theirs will have deteriorated past the point of salvage. It’s in bad shape. I saw some of the data – Mark was running it. Two or three machines out of a hundred are still running.”
Richard seemed philosophical about it. “The wages of sin? There used to be a saying about the ‘sins of the father’ being visited on future generations. Their last machines go down, and they’ll be back to living on the sunny uplands of the algae beds, in the kelp forests where they started out, hunting the big cephalopods for food and playing with buoyancy and chemistry, as their ancestors did ten thousand years ago.” He sighed, a sound of resignation. “But their planet is an incredible chemical engine. I don’t think I’ve ever seen one so rich. 161-D didn’t make the Zunshu as intelligent as they are, but it did gift them with the means to go to space, and to transspace. It’s a beautiful, beautiful place. If you’re a planetologist or a chemist.”
“So Lai’a will be taking a science crew out there.” Travers’s brows rose. “Soon?”
“Before it heads out on a transspace cruise, looking for a new Zunshunium lode,” Vaurien affirmed.
“Risky?” Vidal shared a frown with Travers. “Anything happens to Lai’a,” he speculated, “anywhere out there, and if it doesn’t come back the science team is marooned.”