“Huh?” The youth behind him sounded confused. His jacket was an opulent mixture of synth-leather and goretex fibers, accentuated with LED lights at the waist and shoulders. As the youth moved, various parts of it contracted and billowed, reacting to the environmental conditions—heat, light and airflow—around him.
It was the sort of jacket that most of the pirates, merchants, and smugglers in the Trader’s Belt worlds would kill for, and then sell for enough money to live off for a couple of months.
It was also about two sizes too large for the youth, and therefore incongruous.
“Father, please, I just need a little charity!” the youth hissed quickly, seizing onto the fast-stalking Eliard’s Shahasta sleeve. “Just tell ’em I’m one of your acolytes, or something!” The youth gasped as the captain’s sleeve was dragged back to reveal the iridescent blue, green, and purple shell of the Device that covered Eliard’s right forearm, wrist, and hand like a cocoon. “What the—” The youth let go of the robe, staggering back.
“You little slub!” Eliard hissed, snatching the robe over his hand just as behind the youth rose two of the friendly bubble-white drones, now flashing a warning orange and whose underbellies were opening, to reveal the small mounts of the needle-missiles that no doubt were about to be fired at the youth. Eliard had once been shot by one of them as punishment for a prank at the Trevalyn Academy. It was no joke, as it had felt like he was being punched in the back by an elephant, and woke up two days later feeling sick, woozy, and with a head ringing like a bell.
He hadn’t learned his lesson then, either.
“What is that? Are you infected with something?” the youth stammered. The two drones were now racing down the green towards them.
“You didn’t see anything, right?” Eliard growled at the youth. “Now I’d run, if I were you…”
“Please! It’s not what you think. I’m a Welwyn citizen, I’m not an illegal, I just need…” the youth managed to say, just as the two security drones arrived.
“Attention! Stand back, Citizen Father Olan!” both drones declared in perfect unison. Even their precision made Eliard want to swear.
“Please, Father—” the youth said again, his face aghast.
“Easy, kid. I seem to have been getting on the wrong sides of machines a lot recently, and it won’t matter so much if I add two more to that list…” Eliard cleared his throat and raised a thin, wavering voice up to the drones. “Excuse me? What on earth do you think you are doing? This, uh, boy is my acolyte. What is the meaning of this?”
A momentary blip of the drone’s orange lights. “There is no record that you have been traveling with another companion, Citizen Father.”
The captain was prepared for this. “But there is no record that I haven’t either, correct?” Eliard knew that one of the main problems with machine intelligences wasn’t only their complete lack of humor, but also their insistence on taking things very literally, and as he knew that ‘Citizen Father Olan’ only came into existence a few hours ago, as a digital persona created by Ponos to allow him to travel into Imperial Coalition space, he was fairly sure that there wouldn’t be any information on who this priest was traveling with, or why, or where from.
“Correct,” the drones stated. “However, Freddie Oberman is a known criminal of Welwyn, and is not permitted in open citizen areas…”
The captain presumed that he was talking about the youth at his side and made a jump. “Freddie Oberman is my acolyte! He is engaged in a period of spiritual and scholastic training at the Shahasta Retreat!” Not for the last time, the captain realized quite how well thought out Ponos’s plan had been—forcing him to disguise himself as a traveling holy man at precisely the right time that there would be lots of such traveling holy men and women going in and out of Welwyn.
The drones bobbed up and down and seemed unable to compute such a change of spiritual status.
“Acolytes are expected to undertake a rigorous course of study, and their debts are absolved by Shahasta!” Eliard cried out in an impassioned, almost fanatical voice. He had no idea if it would work, he wouldn’t believe him, but he gave it his best effort all the same.
It appeared to work.
“Citizen Oberman’s status has been changed. The Bank of Shahasta has been charged for his crimes. May you have a wonderful day, Citizen!” The drone’s serious tones suddenly changed to that of chipper enthusiasm. “Is there anything else that I can help you with today?”
“Ugh…” The captain shook his head, turning smartly on his heel to seize Freddie Oberman’s shoulder to haul him behind him, ignoring the drones as they floated back to one of the many entrance buildings as if nothing had ever happened.
“Right, kid.” Eliard stopped when they had rounded the corner and the path took them through a well-sculpted wood. “You’d better explain what is going on, and who you are, and why they wanted to shoot you full of tranquilizers!”
Freddie looked at the Citizen Father dubiously. “You don’t talk like a priest…” Freddie said.
“No, I guess I don’t. Call it the church of hard knocks. Now talk.”
“It was only a drone-racer,” Freddie said miserably, crouching against one of the trees. The pair had moved off the road and into the relative obscurity of the copse as the youth explained his indiscretions. “I bet it wasn’t even worth that much money.” He snorted. “But it was fast,” he said with a reckless grin.
“You remind me of me,” the captain grumbled. He could still remember that thrill of racing his father’s Mercury Blade. The speed, the danger, the never quite being in control, but still feeling like a god anyway. His flights with the Mercury Blade now came close, but they never recaptured that feeling entirely.
Maybe it’s having all the people usually shooting lasers and blasters at me now, he thought.
“I grew up here, in Welwyn, but after I stole the racer, I was sent downstairs,” Freddie said mournfully.
“Downstairs?” Eliard’s ears pricked up.
“Yeah. Welwyn isn’t all sweetness and light, you know,” the youth said miserably. “All this…” He raked a gloved hand through the leaflitter and dirt. “It’s hiding something ugly, and dark.”
“The processing units,” Eliard breathed. “I know of them.” Like all house nobles, he had a basic familiarity with the layout and operation of a habitat like Welwyn, and he also knew, in a distant sort of way, that underneath all of this glory and splendor would be the machines, factories, and vast automated wastelands that made all of this possible. It was no surprise that these ‘under places’ were kept out of sight from the delicate sensibilities of the in-space Imperial Coalition nobles.
As it went, what had at first been deemed an eyesore to the Imperial Coalition later became a useful ploy. Even with all of their wealth and safety, there was no way for a successful society to develop without acts of radicalism, violence, or supposedly criminal behavior. It was a part of human nature to rebel, after all, as much as it was a part of it to conform. The captain knew what happened to the more serious criminals—they were either forced to enlist in the Armcore navies or they could be exiled, but in a society as vast as the Imperial Coalition, a lot of regional variation in crime and punishment was to be expected, and many habitats like Welwyn discovered that there was another class of undesirables: Citizens who were petty crooks or small-time criminals, or else too young to realize the glory of the Imperial system, and thus committed petty acts.
As they were full citizens, then it was deemed improper to just exile them, or to force them into a lifetime of service—they could save that option for the hardened criminals, after all—but there was something that they could do.
The term used to make the idea of slavery agreeable to the rest of the full citizenry was ‘Indentured Recompense,’ which was a very polite way of saying years, or even a life, of hard labor until your cost to the Imperial Coalition had been paid off, with the added upkeep and expense of your time spent at their leisure, o
f course.
The captain curled his lip in disgust. Not that he cared one way or another what the Imperial Coalition did to its own, but he didn’t like the idea that they were hiding the fact of what they did. At least in the non-aligned worlds, if you annoyed a fellow smuggler, they would come after you with a knife, or if you were deemed responsible for a debt then you better pay it. But after those scores were settled, that was that.
No, he thought. The Imperial Coalition seemed to like to pretend that they were civilized, but really, they were just as nasty as the rest of the universe.
“How long you been down there?” he asked.
“Seven years,” Freddie responded.
“What?” The captain was shocked. He didn’t look that old right now. “But that means that you stole the drone-racer…”
“When I was seven, going on eight.” Freddie shrugged. “I had two years as my sentence, plus another year and a half for my payment of being held down there in the first place…” The captain watched the young man wince. “But then I got into a fight with one of the overseers. A really nasty drone that didn’t even have a name, just a designation: Regional Head C9.” A smile managed to crawl its way over his features. “I ripped its audio output straight out.”
Eliard laughed. He was beginning to like this kid. But that didn’t change matters, he had to admit as Freddie continued.
“Another ten years added for the damage to Regional head C9, and I was getting into fights with the other inmates, adding a few more months here and there to my sentence.” He looked up at the captain. “I’m fourteen now, and I wouldn’t be looking to get out until I’m almost thirty, with the fines and time owed.”
Well, in his situation, I would probably do the same, Eliard thought. “But you managed to escape? How?”
“I can’t tell you about it.” The youth clammed up in an instant, groaning as he slowly stood up and extended his hand to shake the priest’s. “I gotta say, it’s been awful nice of you to absolve me and all that, and I swear that if I ever get some money, I’ll donate a bit to the Church of Shahasta…”
“Don’t waste your money,” Eliard said, almost without thinking.
Freddie Oberman looked at the older and taller man quietly for a moment. “I know that I’ve been out of the loop for a few years, but unless the religion’s changed, then you are the strangest Shahasta priest I have ever met…”
“You bet, kid.” Eliard nodded. “Now, I helped you out of a tight spot, so I want you to help me. Take me back to the place you escaped from. It can’t be far from here, right?”
“What? Are you crazy!” Freddie said in alarm, starting to back away.
“Uh-uh, Freddie.” The captain shook his head and grinned his wolfish smile. “You’re a smart kid. What do you think they’re going to do to you when they find you wandering around Welwyn without your own beloved Shahasta robes and priest?”
“Don’t matter. I’ll tell them it didn’t work out. That my soul is too crooked.” Freddie took another step backward.
“And you think the drones will believe that?” Eliard said reasonably. “I might have convinced them to drop your debt, but I bet sure as supernovas go bang that they’ll keep all of your details in their database. It won’t be long before they stop and check you in case you’ve fallen back to your old ways.”
Freddie’s face fell. He could see as well as the captain could just how true that was. That was the thing with machine intelligences, they might not have a humorous chip in their systems, and they might be very literal, but they also had absolutely no compassion whatsoever. Freddie knew that they would keep on stopping and searching him or generally interrogating him forever.
He had been to the downside. He had seen the belly of the beast. The powers that be couldn’t allow for that, could they?
“Ugh!” Freddie turned to kick the trunk of the tree, with just the smallest grunt of pain.
“There we go, lad, but I’ll tell you what, you help me out while I’m here—act as a sort of unofficial guide to Welwyn for me—and I might be able to get a friend of mine to wipe your records.” Eliard thought of the Armcore intelligence Ponos, somewhere far away but capable of incredible things.
“What? You could really do that?” Freddie said suspiciously. “What, you’re friends with some hotshot bishop or something?”
This kid isn’t the sharpest tool in the box, the captain thought. “Or something. Now, lead me to the quickest route to the downside and keep me away from as many security patrols as you can,” the Captain snapped.
Freddie Oberman just looked at him a little funny, before nodding. “That way. But you’re still the strangest Shahasta priest that I’ve ever met…”
3
Interlude: The Dreams of Dane Tomas
Many hundreds of thousands of light-years away, a very different figure was wondering whether he needed a priest, not that there were any Shahasta or Solian or other form of religious personnel allowed on board the planet-sized, metal globe that was Amrcore Prime.
The center of the Armcore military empire was not so far away as to be in frontier space, not even so far as to be in non-aligned space, but was in fact situated in a private, quiet, and over-all secure area of the near galactic empire that was the Imperial Coalition.
It was a busy place, despite its high levels of secrecy. There were always a constant flight of diplomats, trade-ambassadors, and nobles being called to attend the meetings and conferences, diplomatic talks, and negotiations that were held every few regular earth orbits. It was either the best or the worst-kept secret in the entire Coalition. Best, because the exact location of Prime was always scrubbed from the navigational computers of “visitors” and only allowed to exist on Armcore-only vessels. It was also the worst-kept secret as well however, as everyone in the Coalition knew that it existed, and even what it looked like.
A metal world, the size of a small moon, surrounded by an exorbitantly expensive energy field held in place and maintained by a ring of defense-grid drones, each bristling with attack lasers. Outside of that grid would be parked the waiting armadas, fleets, and commissions of Armcore, ready to be dispatched at a moment’s notice at the behest of the noble houses, or else sold and their services “hired” as planetary defense, trade protection, or personal support craft.
Armcore had the money. Armcore was the richest organization in the entire galaxy, and it was managed by only two beings: one was the CEO of the company, an inherited position from his father, Senior Dane Tomas, and the other was the most advanced machine intelligence of its age, or so the stories went: Ponos.
Currently, however, these two intelligences were having a creative difference.
“No. I do not give you permission to track Alpha,” Senior Dane Tomas stated once more. The senior was still a young man, barely into his forties, but with the body of a much older man. He was overweight, his hair was greasy and receding, and his features—or so his late father had always told him—were “compacted.” He was still wearing his opulent red and gilt brocade jacket, open over the shirtless bulk of his chest, and his black trousers on his skinny legs. He lounged in the chair of his private ‘contemplation chamber,’ a room that he had commissioned and designed himself when the old man had died and he had gleefully taken up his inherited position. The chamber was long and high, mostly dark with vaulted ceilings, and a red carpet that stretched from the large petal doors to the black marble steps that climbed up to the alcove under the stained crystal-glass windows, each of which could also act as projected screens when he wished to examine the reports that always needed correcting.
Tomas was the sort of man who liked the way that this room impacted his visitors. The generals and diplomats, even the nobles, were faced with the long and lonely path to the steps, where their eyes would inevitably climb up to the distant command chair—he had to remember not to call it a throne—upon which he would be sitting.
The senior was also a very tired man, currently. He had fallen aslee
p in his contemplation chamber once again, for the umpteenth time this earth-cycle. Was there something wrong with him? Did he need another medical examination? He fretted a little.
No, he avoided the doctors’ examinations, preferring only the scans and diagnosis of Ponos, his machine intelligence, his pet. You can never trust a biological, just in case they decide to poison you or slip a knife between your ribs.
That was one of the many problems of being arguably the most important man in the entire Coalition. I have so many enemies. So many people want to see me dead. It wasn’t just the different races, from the Duergar to the Ghalees, but also the countless number of insurgent groups and space mafias who would like nothing more than a Coalition without Armcore. Those ill-wishers weren’t even the most dangerous of the man’s enemies, although they probably were the most obvious. No, the senior was more concerned with the semi-legal mafia gangs of the Imperial trader guilds, and then the noble houses that resented the fact that they had to hire his protection, his soldiers, his boats. The CEO knew that any of these enemies could probably hire a disgruntled soldier, physician, or lowly messenger from his own employ and bribe them with enough Imperial credits to act on their behalf.
So, the senior sat here, surrounded by defenses, and always watched and studied every move he could of his assumed and presumed enemies.
“Senior, I really believe that it is imperative that you give me access to the data harvested by the Endurance,” the voice of Ponos sighed from the recesses of the dark.
He’s sounding more human, the senior noted, and wondered if this was a new affectation of the military intelligence, a carefully calculated algorithm that it had reasoned would give it a higher chance of success. But still, the senior preferred dealing with Ponos than with any human. At least he knew that everything that came out of the machine’s speakers was directed towards victory.
“I have taken personal control of the situation,” the senior snapped once more, dragging a hand over his features. Why was he so tired all the time? It was those stars-be-damned dreams, wasn’t it? He had been shaken awake by them just a moment earlier, and he could have sworn that he still could taste the ash in his mouth.
A. I. Uprising (Valyien Book 4) Page 3