The Parafaith War

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  “Going to a Farewell and then where I’ve been called.”

  The other nodded, handed two large bags to the crewman, and walked forward. Trystin handed over his single light bag.

  “I wish we got more of these,” said the crewman with a smile.

  “I wish I had more to put in it,” countered Trystin. He turned and walked forward into the cramped passenger compartment. As on the transport he had taken on his way to Orum, the seats were clean, but old, with scratches in the heavy plastic parts polished over.

  Trystin sank into a seat and waited, trying to ignore the burning and buzzings that spread from his implant through his entire body, still trying to puzzle out Orr’s game … and the role the Farhkans had played. It almost seemed as if Orr had wanted him to succeed after the mess in the Temple, yet Orr had been ready to drag him in for interrogation beforehand.

  What did the Farhkans get out of it all? One assassination more or less couldn’t have concerned Rhule Ghere in the slightest. Yet the Farhkan had claimed he was Trystin’s patron, whatever that meant.

  Trystin had played prophet for a religion he didn’t believe in, helped by an alien who’d stolen the open-weave net keys without ever offering the slightest guidance—except … had the Farhkans played with his mind? Could they do that?

  He winced, and the buzzing in his head got even worse, and, again, he struggled with pure physical pain, almost a relief after the moral questions.

  69

  “Can violence and the use of force to effect change upon the universe be left to the young? Do they see what was, what is, and what might yet be? Have they suffered, watched evil fall upon the good, or good upon the evil?

  “Or should the burden of violence be left to those who can bear it most lightly—upon those who have closed their minds or their feelings? How then can they understand the suffering that they must inflict?

  “Should the burden of force be laid upon the shortlived, who will not see the consequences of their actions? How can they dispense force with compassion if they can escape the knowledge of what they do? …

  “The greater the force brought to bear, the older and wiser must be the entity who wields it. Wisdom allows sorrow. Age allows experience, and knowledge reinforces wisdom and experience … .

  “Those who would bear the burden of force must be those who are strong and do not seek it, for those who seek force would misuse it, and those who are weak would shy from what they must do … .”

  Findings of the Colloquy

  [Translated from the Farhkan]

  1227 E.N.P

  70

  Ignoring the faint buzzing that had hovered in and around him since well before the translation from the Jerush system to the Braha system, Trystin blotted his forehead with the handkerchief that had become almost as damp as the sodden white shirt under his white suit coat. Sitting more than three hours in the poorly ventilated transport had left all the passengers looking wilted.

  He blotted his forehead again, wondering how much longer before the transport would dock at Braha station. A flicker in the ship’s system tingled through his implant, and the burning through his nerves intensified fractionally, then dropped. Was that part of the penalty for becoming an assassin, or just an inadvertent by-product? Assassin … he still didn’t like the term, but he’d done it, and whether Jynckla had been an admiral or not, killing him in the Temple had been different than in a perimeter battle. Trystin just hoped his modifications had made it worth more than a meaningless assassination.

  The minute fluctuation in the artificial gravity signified some power change, hopefully the final deceleration into the station. Trystin took a deep breath. Since messages had to be carried between systems, it looked as though he actually had a good chance to escape—unless a fast courier were right behind the transport.

  Once more he blotted his face as the ship’s net revealed the approach to the orbit station. He massaged his forehead in an effort to reduce the throbbing in his temples.

  The transport shivered with a faint thump, and Trystin straightened in his seat.

  “We have docked at Braha station. Before leaving your seat, please collect your belongings. Then move to the baggage bay behind the rear of the cabin to claim your bags before leaving the transport. Please make sure you have all your belongings.”

  Trystin unfastened the harness and eased to his feet, nodding politely at the middle-aged Revenant in the seat across the aisle. He walked stiffly back to the baggage bay, arriving behind two other men. As they took their bags, Trystin grabbed his single bag and lifted it off the rails. He staggered when he went through the lock into full station gravity, but caught himself. His hip throbbed from the sudden lurch.

  “Careful there, ser.”

  “Thank you.” Trystin forced himself erect. Pursuit or not, there were limits to how far he could push himself. He needed something to eat, something to drink, or he wasn’t going to have the energy to do anything, or the ability to think through anything.

  He dragged himself toward the main corridor.

  The Eatery wasn’t much more than four tables and a counter dispensing rehydrated food and juices, but Trystin didn’t care as he leaned against the counter.

  “The pasta, please.”

  “Rough trip, Brother? What do you want to drink?”

  “Some limeade and some water. It was hot. It seems like it gets hotter every time.”

  “That’s what a lot of people say. Sit down. I’ll call you.”

  Trystin slumped into a plastic chair at a plastic table bolted to the plastic-covered station deck. In the corridor outside, a string of people walked briskly by, intermittently, some in uniform, others in shipsuits. A few men wore white suits, and a few women wore checked dresses.

  “Pasta’s ready.”

  Trystin stood and handed over the credit strip.

  “That’ll be fifteen.”

  He winced at the cost, not that it mattered in a way.

  “Everything has to come up by shuttle, Brother.”

  “I know, but—”

  “You’ve got to eat.” The counterman smiled sympathetically. “You get to leave. I’m here all the time. This is my off-shift job. Takes two to make ends meet, these days.”

  “Sorry.” Trystin had been hearing that a lot.

  “We all do what we have to.”

  “Right.” Trystin juggled the squarish plate and the two plastic tumblers over to the small table and began to eat. The pasta had a consistency somewhere between soggy paper and rubber eggs, with a taste combining the best of each. The sauce tasted like glue flavored with lemonade. Trystin ate it all, and drank all of the bitter limeade and the large glass of water.

  The worst of the headache began to subside even before he finished the pasta, but the burning that ran from the implant throughout his body only receded to a tingling. Maybe he just needed rest—and quiet—but it was going to be a while before he got that.

  He sat for a few minutes after he finished, but only for a few minutes. Then he picked up his bag and headed for beta three and the Paquawrat. The courier/trader was supposed to be waiting. He hoped it was. He was tired, and it probably wouldn’t be too long before a courier arrived at the station with a pickup order for Wyllum Hyriss, or anyone looking like him.

  He shifted the bag from his right hand to his left and kept walking along the gently curved corridor.

  Beta three seemed deserted. The seals across the lock door remained intact. Trystin glanced in both directions and walked straight down to the lock, using the implant to open the ship’s lock.

  Crack!

  The seals splintered as the lock opened partway.

  Trystin stepped up to the lock, then paused and turned as a faint vibration, barely sensed above the renewed burning and static from the implant, warned him.

  “What are you doing there, Brother?” The Security Guard lumbered toward Trystin, the stun rifle pointed in his general direction.

  “Nothing. Came down he
re to find a friend … .” Trystin held up his hands. He should have guessed the Revenants might have had at least a cursory watch on the Paquawrat. “I was standing here. I was just standing here. See?” He pointed toward the partly open lock door. “It just opened.”

  The guard’s eyes flicked toward the door.

  “Peace be with you.” Trystin accelerated and used his speed to rip the rifle out of the guard’s hands and to turn it on the guard.

  Thrum.

  His arms burned as he set the rifle beside the unconscious guard. But he had no time to waste as he cranked open the lock door manually, just wide enough to slip inside. His guts wrenched upward as he left the station gravity and entered the almost null gee of the ship.

  He ignored the stale air and his tendency to float away from the lock mechanism, but he didn’t know how long before the alarms would bring another set of guards or soldiers running. So he jammed his feet under the hold bar and kept cranking. Then he slammed the manual locks in place and float-stumbled into the cockpit, where he used the remaining power in the accumulators to start the fusactor.

  Once the fusactor was running, he put on minimal gravity and hurried back to the lock to release the mechanical holdtights. That left the ship held to the station only through the magnetic holdtights.

  He stood behind the pilot’s couch and stripped off the still damp and smelly white suit, shirt, and Revenant undergarments, even while he used the implant to begin the departure checklist. After pulling on dry undergarments and a dry shipsuit, he dropped into the pilot’s couch and completed the checklist.

  His headache had returned—not the best of signs—but he needed the speed and reflexes. He checked the representational screen and the ship’s position.

  Once everything seemed in the green, he pulsed the station. He might as well try to do it openly. He called up the canned flight profile that outlined the flight from Braha to Alundill.

  “Braha Control, this is Hyndji ship Paquawrat. Request clearance for departure this time.”

  “Hyndji ship Paquawrat, this is Braha Control. Request flight profile. Interrogative flight profile.”

  “Braha Control, Paquawrat, profile follows.” Trystin pulsed the profile to the station control, then demagnetized the holdtights, watching the screens. Even without thrusters, the ship should slowly begin to separate from the station.

  “Roger, Paquawrat. Request pilot clearance code.”

  Trystin mentally fumbled with Svenson’s pilot code, then answered, “Braha Control, pilot number is S-S, that is Sierra, Sierra, one, four, five, four, two, Cat. Sierra, Sierra, one, four five, four, two, Cat.” He wiped his forehead, not liking the pilot number request. While it wasn’t that untoward, his briefing materials indicated that number requests were seldom made for outbound vessels, and Svenson was only on file as a backup, which could raise other flags.

  “Paquawrat, please stand by.”

  Mental alarms went off, and Trystin gave the attitude jets and the thrusters the faintest of pulses to orient the ship clear of the station and perpendicular to the system’s ecliptic.

  “Hyndji ship Paquawrat, this is Braha Control, do you read? Do you read? Request your intentions this time.”

  “Braha Control, this is Hyndji ship Paquawrat. Awaiting clearance this time. Awaiting clearance this time.” Trystin watched the gentle separation from the station, hoping his minimal single-time use of thrusters and jets had gone unnoticed and that he would have adequate clearance before Braha Control realized what he was doing.

  “Roger, Paquawrat. Request you stand by.”

  “Roger, Braha Control.” Trystin could sense almost twenty meters had opened between the Paquawrat and the station.

  “Paquawrat, request you return to beta three this time.”

  “Braha Control,” stalled Trystin, “Hyndji ship Paquawrat berthed at beta three.” The separation was now thirty meters and had to be obvious to Braha Control.

  “Paquawrat, request your immediate return to beta three this time. You are not cleared for departure. I say again. You are not cleared for departure.”

  “Roger, Braha Control, proceeding with departure this time.” Trystin pushed the thrusters up to five percent—close to the safe limit so near the station—and the Paquawrat began to accelerate away from the system.

  “Hyndji ship Paquawrat, return to Braha station immediately. Return to Braha station immediately.”

  “Braha Control, say again your last. Please say again your last.” The trader continued to move away from the station, and Trystin eased in more power, trying to keep the thrust as high as possible without bringing the cutting range of the thrusters close to the station.

  “Paquawrat, return to Braha station. If you do not return, you will be fired upon. If you do not return, you will be fired upon.”

  Trystin upped the thrust to thirty percent, waited, and then went to eighty percent. He scanned the screens, especially the EDI indicators, for signs of Revenant warships.

  The EDI remained unchanged, and he added full thrust through the implant, again massaging his head at the burning that resulted.

  Three minutes passed, then five, and Trystin waited as the Paquawrat barreled toward the upper fringe of Braha system perpendicular to the ecliptic. No matter where the Revenant ships were, no matter how fast, they couldn’t get an angle on the Paquawrat. It would be a stem chase all the way.

  Trystin didn’t want to think about the translation error he was going to pile up, not at the moment.

  Two points of light flared on the EDI—bright bluewhite—and dotted tracks flared from off the fifth planet.

  “Scouts,” he muttered to himself, as he checked their speed. Both were already running at slightly over a hundred-percent normal flank speed.

  “Hyndji ship Paquawrat, this is Braha Control, do you read? Do you read? This is your last warning. Request you return to Braha station. If you return, you will not be fired upon. I say again, if you return you will not be fired upon.”

  Great to be so popular, reflected Trystin. Still … maybe—just maybe—his plan had worked. There were only two scouts on his tail, and that was standard for an unidentified commercial ship. Then again, they didn’t need more than two for an unarmed ship, although they wouldn’t have known that the shields were military strength.

  His body burned almost continually now—clearly the result of overuse of his implant and high reflex and metabolic rates.

  The EDI traces showed the steady closure of the scouts. Trystin checked the dust density. Still too high for translation, but thinning rapidly.

  Another ten minutes passed, and the two Revenant ships were closing, even as the Paquawrat had begun to warp the time envelope, ever so slightly.

  There were no further transmissions from the Revenants, just the steady closure of the two scouts.

  Trystin’s thoughts seemed crystal clear beyond the pain, yet he knew he wasn’t thinking clearly. What would happen when he returned? If he returned? He recalculated the closure rates and plotted them against the dust density. Close—it would be close.

  Too close. He upped the fusactor to one hundred ten percent and clicked off the time. Basically, he had five minutes at that level before he started to degrade the system, and he should have applied the additional acceleration earlier. The apparent clarity of his thoughts was a definite illusion.

  The scouts inched closer on the representational screen; the dust density edged downward; and the minutes passed.

  After four minutes and fifty standard seconds of one-hundred-ten-percent power, Trystin dropped the fusactor output to one-hundred-percent normal rated maximum output.

  The rate of closure had grown smaller. Had the Revenants strained their systems too much in the beginning?

  If he did make it back, to what could he look forward? Would it be a suicide command in the Parvati system? Or a quiet disappearance? The subject of riots in Cambria every time he stepped outside? Would the Revenants launch some sort of all-out attac
k? Would he be the scapegoat for it? Had he jabbed at their religion too hard? Or would anyone care? His lips tightened as he thought about the key to the Temple … .

  The dust density dropped to the point of allowing emergency translation. Trystin checked the ranges. The Revenants were still out of max torp range.

  He kept calculating—range versus dust; dust versus range.

  “Initiate translation sequence.” Trystin pulsed the order to the system.

  “Sequence initiating.”

  As he monitored the power buildup, another thought struck him. There had to be holos of him in the Temple, and the Service would want to know how he’d gotten there. He swallowed, and another spear of pain lanced through his skull. What could he do? Surprisingly, words flashed through his mind, old words. “There’s a rumor. If you slew the ship and apply power just as you translate—it increases the translation error severalfold, maybe more.”

  Trystin applied full power to the thrusters, and thanked Ulteena, knowing he probably wouldn’t see her again, or perhaps anyone he had known in the Coalition, and regretting that. He hadn’t realized how much he would miss her, how very much. There was a lot he hadn’t realized.

  His fingers were shaking, and each computation seemed to take longer, and longer. Strings of equations danced along his fingers, and rings of light surrounded everything his eyes rested upon. Every movement of his head burned, and if he turned quickly his booted feet twitched.

  Just before he pushed the translation stud, Trystin remembered to touch the false stud and flick the thruster tuning switch. He hoped it wouldn’t be that critical with the translation error he was piling up. Then again, he was headed to Farhka, and who knew how they felt about time?

  He slewed the Paquawrat and triggered translation …

  … and black became white, and white black … and for that endless moment the ship was in translation, he was bathed in ecstasy, the pain gone, pleasure running through him with the black light.

  Thud!

  With the drop into real time, the haze of burning red pain returned—intensified—as the Paquawrat thrust through normal space outside Farhka … somewhere … somewhen.