by Rick Partlow
I scanned the crowd as we stood in the doorway of the Home. It was a typical spacer bar, with the usual scattering of independent and corporate freighterjocks, merchants, cargo bums and drifters. There were some Tahni mixed in with the humans, which Kara had told me was common closer to Earth. The more remote colonies still resented them for the damage done in the war. No prostitutes here---we'd purposely chosen one of the bars farther toward the center of the station, away from the more touristy areas, with their casinos and sex shops.
We moved on inside, not bothering to look for our contact---he or she wouldn't be here for another half-hour. We just found a table, sat and signaled for drinks. We'd popped out of T-space at the edge of this system nearly twenty-four hours ago, used fake ID codes to signal the Instel comsat and relay a recorded message to General Murdock's office. Since we obviously couldn't send a message like that in the clear, I'd used the private code the 'Boys had come up with during the war to use when we didn't want the brass listening in. Supposedly, "the brass" included then-Colonel Murdock, but I think we all knew he could break it if he wanted to.
We'd asked the General to send someone he trusted to meet with us, detailing the time and the place, then used Deke's highly illegal equipment to change the Dutchman's registration, and cruised in. I think I was more than half afraid we'd find a squadron of Patrol cutters waiting for us, but things had gone smoothly, except for the incident with station security. Maybe if we'd offered them a larger bribe...
I looked from Kara to Deke and back again. They hadn't said more than two words to each other since we'd left the Predecessor outpost, and I can't say I'd encouraged them. I wasn't sure if I was genuinely suspicious of Deke, or if it was just the tension showing through, but it was something of a relief to have Kara to act out my paranoia without making me the bad guy.
"Who do you think he'll send?" Deke asked me in hushed tones, glancing around self-consciously.
"Someone we'd recognize," I guessed. "Who we'd feel like we could trust." I shrugged. "Some of us didn't leave the military."
I left it at that, as the service dolly rolled up with our drinks. Deke slipped it a credit spike and it released our glasses from its holders. As it rolled away, I ran an active and passive scan of the bar, searching for hidden weaponry or security monitors, but found only a single video pickup behind the bar.
Not much had changed from the time Kara had been here, years ago---it was almost as wide open as it had been during the war. There would probably be DSI or Patrol undercover agents sprinkled through the rocks, according to what Kara had told us, but even if one saw us and happened to recognize us, he or she would be so far from any kind of backup that we would have met with our contact and left before we'd be in any real danger.
I sipped my Margarita and eyed the crowd, hoping that whoever showed up would be on time...hoping that someone would show up at all. I didn't want to think about what we would do if the Colonel...I mean, the General...wouldn't help us. Things were just too big for us to go on alone, and, as I'd told Deke, there was nowhere in the Commonwealth that we could hide for long.
I chuckled mirthlessly to myself. Maybe I could get Rachel and Pete and we could try to find the Northwest Passage, leave the Cluster. Or we could just head out on impellers, in suspension. It would only take us a couple hundred years to reach the nearest habitable off the Transition Lines catalogued by the big telescopes on the frontier. Hell, Pete could bring his latest girlfriend and we could found our own colony.
But even that fantasy was unfeasible. If the Corporates had control of the Predecessor technology, they'd probably find a new method of interstellar travel and spread their influence a lot farther than we could possibly run. This could only end with the Corporates' defeat or our deaths.
I took a second to wonder why this had happened to me. It was something I hadn't really considered up till now---there'd been less philosophical things to worry about---but it was a worthy question. I'd long ago given up my nurtured beliefs in a puppet-master God that planned out every step of our lives, and the war had destroyed any image of a benevolent deity interested in the welfare of mankind.
So what did I believe? A universe birthed in blind chance and ruled by chaos? That idea had gone in and out of vogue in scientific and philosophical circles several times in the last few centuries, but I found it unlikely. Some kind of universal mind made up of all the life forces of every creature in the universe, perhaps? Seemed a bit impersonal, given the ironic twists of which life was full.
Maybe it was some kind of karmic wheel of fate---a cosmic version of "what comes around goes around." If so, I must have built up a lot of bad karma in another incarnation, 'cause I'd been dropped into the biggest war in human history at the tender age of twenty-one, and now I was embroiled in some kind of grand conspiracy on an interstellar scale. Maybe fate just has a way of putting the right people in the right place to achieve what needs to be done.
Or maybe, I sighed, gulping down a swallow of alcohol, there was no way to know and I should concentrate on surviving. I could always become a priest when I retired.
A movement from the bar entrance caught my eye, and I glanced around, trying to look casual. Stepping into the establishment was a tall man with a face that spoke of distinction and nobility, and skin the color of carbon graphite. He was powerfully built, but the rangy lines of his two-meter frame and the loose, baggy-sleeved grey garment he wore concealed his true strength. I tried not to look into his eyes, not wanting to be too obvious, but they drew my gaze to them, as they always had in the 'Boys. They were swirling singularities; black diamonds that crowned a distinguished, regal face fit for the ruler of a nation.
Mat M’voba was the oldest son of Secretary Charles M’voba, leader of the Organization of African States, the second-largest collection of affiliated nations on Earth. He was being groomed to follow in his father's footsteps when the war broke out, and he had shocked his family by volunteering for the Commonwealth Service Academy. Then, on a fateful day in 2,198, he had officially "died" in the Tahni attack on the training vessel Thatcher, during the confusion of the Battle for Mars, and he had volunteered once again, along with the other student survivors, to become the core of Special Operations Group Omega. Mat had been our field commander, second to Colonel Murdock, and I'd always wondered how he could be so much more mature than the rest of us at nearly the same age. Of late, I had heard that he was General Murdock's aide-de-camp.
Mat glanced carefully around the bar before walking casually up to our table.
"This seat taken?" he rumbled like faraway thunder with a voice so deep into bass that I felt it in my chest.
Deke waved at the table's one vacant chair. "Be our guest, bud."
"Nice to see you fellows again," Mat said, nodding to Deke and I as he sat down.
"Nice to be seen," I returned, not in the least sarcastic.
He stared unabashed at Kara. "Interesting company you're keeping."
"Maybe we should go someplace private," Deke suggested, "and explain our situation."
"Don't take this personally," Mat said, shaking his head, the braided dreadlocks whipping gently back and forth, "but none of us is leaving this table until I'm satisfied that all three of you aren't the traitors, thieves and murderers everyone in my neck of the woods thinks you are."
He didn't say another word, but we understood the unspoken implication that, if he was unsatisfied with our explanation, the three of us wouldn't ever be leaving this table.
"All right," I acceded. "It'd probably be easier and faster if I just dumped it to your headcomp."
He nodded silently, and I downloaded the last few weeks of my memory, transmitting it through my neurolink to Mat's RAM. I saw his eyes glaze over for a moment as he assimilated the data. When he focused back in on me, a kind of a sad frown settled in on his face, and I thought for a horrible minute that he had decided our actions---that my actions hadn't been justified. But then he sighed, nodding almost imperceptibly.
"What's
happened to you," he said, "fits in with what we know."
"Just what the fuck is going on, Mat?" I wanted to know. "We've been working pretty much in the dark."
Mat seemed to consider it, eyes flicking from side to side, obviously wondering if he should say anything here.
"I suppose," he finally decided, "that I wouldn't be telling them anything they didn't already know." I didn't bother to ask who "they" were. "We should start with a little history lesson. You've probably heard some of this in school, but the rest isn't so widely known. When the old Republic discovered the wormhole jumpgate in the Solar asteroid belt back in the mid-Twenty-First Century, unified government was a new thing, forced on the nations of Earth by the devastation of the Sino-Russian War. The countries of Earth only cooperated because they were forced to by the situation, and by the current President of the United States, which was the only nation not directly effected by the radioactive fallout.
"A result of this was, when we encountered the Tahni, who had been politically and economically united for the last two centuries, we were at a distinct disadvantage. By the end of the war---actually that's a bit misleading, since the war never really ended---the Republic had turned into the Commonwealth, and the industrial giants of that day had merged to better supply the military buildup during the period between the two wars. That, as you know all too well, was the origin of the Corporate Council.
"They were given exemption from the current antitrust laws, and the different regulatory agencies were instructed to be extremely lenient with any safety or pollution control violations they discovered---after all, we were at war. The Corporate Council Executive, not being ignorant and certainly not lacking in ambition, made the most of this situation, using their special position to seize control of most non-defense related industries. They also cultivated a close relationship with the newly-formed Department of Security and Intelligence," he shot a glance Kara's way, "and became involved with many top-secret government research projects---including the one that led to our creation, by the way.
"It seemed a perfect set of circumstances for the Council. With the wormholes' positions known and easily defensible, the cold war between the Commonwealth and the entrenched Tahni Empire could have dragged on forever, with the Council's power constantly growing. But then Teller and Fox discovered the warp effect, and the Transition drive threw a huge monkey wrench into the works. Carefully cultivated borders fell apart overnight, and almost anyone who could afford a fusion reactor could begin privately colonizing any world in the Cluster---including those claimed by the Tahni.
"The Tahni, quite naturally, didn't like this and bombed quite a few of these 'squatter colonies' to vapors, sparking the outbreak of the Second War. This one didn't end in a truce, however. The Tahni Empire was overthrown, and the Corporate Council was suddenly left without an enemy to justify their existence. In the last ten years, there've been no less than fifteen separate pieces of legislation introduced to take away the Council's antitrust exemption. Three of them have been passed by the Senate, but President Jameson is in the pocket of the Corporates, and he's vetoed all of them.
"I don't know if any of you've bothered to register, but there's a Presidential election at the end of this year, and it's nearly a sure thing that Jameson's going to lose. There's a lot of populist opposition to the Council, because of their abuses of colonial sovereignty---and don't think they can't read the handwriting on the wall." He smiled coldly. "They've tried various political dirty tricks to fix the election, but the military top brass is tired of the Council's interference and we've been keeping them in check. But in the past year, they've been way too quiet, and we've suspected they've been up to something. Maybe now we have a better idea of what it is." He took a deep breath, settling back in his chair with a thoughtful look on his face.
"Well," Deke prompted, "don't keep us in suspense---what are the bastards planning?"
"And what does it have to do with...what I found?" Kara put in.
"Not now," Mat said, still staring distracted into space. "I need to contact the General. He'll want to talk to you himself." He looked back at us. "Meet me at the entrance to the public docking bay in three hours." He stood abruptly, turned on his heel and left the bar without further comment.
We sat in surprised silence, just looking at each other and glancing at the direction M’voba had walked off to.
"Well, Mat's as stiff as he ever was," Deke said, breaking the silence. "Fucker always had a ramrod up his ass."
"He's been in the military a long time," I mused. "Must be a Colonel by now, I'd guess."
"That was the Mat M’voba?" Kara asked in a hushed tone, a hint of awe in her voice.
"The one and only," I replied.
"My God." She sat back in her chair, eyes wide. "He's a legend in the DSI---my boss used to say that Mat M’voba was the biggest pain in the ass since they cured hemorrhoids."
Deke, who had been in the middle of taking a drink, sprayed a mouthful of alcohol halfway across the table as he sputtered with uncontrolled laughter.
"Easy," I cautioned him, trying not to bust up myself.
Kara tossed down the swallow that remained in her glass. "So, what are we going to do for the next three hours? Sit here and get shitfaced?"
Deke wiped a few drops of liquid off his chin, still chuckling quietly. "Well, as appealing as that sounds, I feel like doing a little gambling." He rose from his chair, tugging the bottom of his jacket down. "I'm heading to the casino---I'll see you in three at the docks."
"Be careful." I tossed him an offhanded salute as he started to walk away.
Kara shot me a grin. "Just you and me. Three hours---time enough to have a little fun, if you've changed your mind."
I smiled, rising from my chair. "Thanks, but how about finding some real food? I've had enough reprocessed shipboard shit to last me a century."
She stood, taking my proffered arm. "You know, that sounds almost as good as sex."
A quick interrogation of one of the bar's human employees gave us the name and location of the lone restaurant on Belial that served real meat. In stations such as this, and on more crowded worlds, beef was a luxury; but after growing up on an agro colony, I wasn't quite ready to give it up for soy products. The place was halfway around the curve of the side wall and toward the docking bay, which amounted to about a kilometer's walk through the most built-up areas on Belial.
I have to admit, even with everything else we had to think about, I couldn't help but be fascinated by the sights that greeted me at every corner of the pleasure station. Never had I seen such a monument to the varied lusts and perversities of humanity, not even on Thunderhead. Of course, being raised by the Church of Canaan may have colored my opinion, but all I could think as we passed ViR sex parlors, pleasure-doll rental shops, Kickshops, etc., was that mankind had reached the stars, had achieved such a level of technological sophistication that we were able to manipulate the very fabric of space itself, but we still clung to the same toys, the same kind of vices that the race had embraced since its inception. Oh, the way we indulged them was more sophisticated, with fewer dangers, but the motivations were the same: a desire to escape reality, a desire to avoid paying the price for pleasure that made it worth having.
We wanted sexual pleasure without the commitment, even the commitment to have to deal with a real person, and without the spiritual closeness that made the whole process worthwhile. We wanted the feeling of well-being and invulnerability that drugs and illegal ViR brought without the actual accomplishment and joy that brought those feelings naturally. We wanted to have our cake and eat it, too, like humans always have. I wondered if we'd ever change.
The lines of demarcation between the sectors of the station were well-defined by a series of "no-man's-lands"---long, maintenance access corridors lined with storage bins, vats of chemicals and locked access hatches down into the lower-level maintenance shops. The crowd began to thin as we approached the corridor, and by the time we entered i
t, there was only one person behind us, hanging back far enough that I didn't think to be nervous about it.
"So," Kara was asking me, still holding my arm, "what was the real Mat M’voba like to serve with?"
"Mat was the only one of us who didn't seem too effected by the implant treatments," I told her, remembering an image of him in an immaculate cadet uniform back in the Academy. "He knew exactly why he was in the military, and everything he did was ordered around that. He was a soldier because he felt he owed a debt to the Commonwealth, and he felt that he needed to pay that debt in full before he could follow in his father's footsteps.
"He was always the consummate professional. Whether he was going to be a bridge officer on a cruiser or a commando humping through a swamp on some nowhere outpost, he was going to do his duty. He held us together through some rough times, times when we were ready to kill each other."
"Sometimes," Kara mused, "I thought that war would never end. It seemed like..." She trailed off, frowning as her gaze settled on something to our front. Looking up, I saw a pair of tall, long-coated figures approaching us through the corridor.
"What?" I asked, disengaging my arm from hers.
She glanced behind us before answering.
"There's one in back of us and two in front of us," she said tightly, still walking, slipping the pair of monomolecular-edged daggers out of their sheaths under her jacket. She held the blades with their non-sharpened sides back, concealed by her forearms. "They're DSI Cadre---I can tell from the thermal signature."
I nodded, not letting my expression change, unobtrusively palming my vibroshiv. I took my first good look at the two approaching from the front, still about twenty-five meters away. They were both tall and lanky, with the look of men born in a gravity field of no more than three-quarters Earth standard, but I could see the bulge of corded muscles through their coat sleeves. One was bare-faced, with long, dark hair pulled back into a pony tail, while the other was bearded with a brown Mohawk. I audited my memory of the glance I'd spared the one behind us, noting that she was a female, shorter than her fellows and dressed in spacer's jacket and boots, her blond hair cut short.