“Who were the Falcons?” said Cassandra.
“A mercenary company,” said March. “And a big one – they had their own fleet and army, and they used cloning technology left over from the Fifth Terran Empire to grow their own soldiers. One of the radical factions hired the Falcons to win the civil war. The Falcons looked at the Raetia system, realized it had a lot of natural resources and that Raetia III was a fertile planet, and decided to take over. They wiped out the other four factions, executed their employers, and declared the Falcon Republic. They’ve ruled Raetia and its colonies ever since.”
“Sounds like Oradrea,” said Cassandra with a shudder.
“Not quite,” said March. “The Falcons are just as ruthless as President Murdan and his secret police, but they’re not as repressive. The Falcons control the Republic and decide who will win elections, but laws about personal behavior on Raetia are…loose. Drugs and prostitution and pretty much everything else is legal after the age of eighteen.”
“It sounds like a weird mix of…of ruthlessness and libertinism,” said Cassandra.
“Basically,” said March. “Raetia’s a dynamic, dangerous place. You can make a fortune there, and you can be knifed in the gutter for your phone. They have the best medical technology in human space, and they use it to make armies of cloned soldiers. Their doctors regularly conduct human experiments that would get them shot on any other planet. Their corporations make fantastic amounts of money, and criminal gangs control half the cities. The cloned soldiers in their military are some of the best soldiers and starships crewers anywhere, but the Falcon Republic has lost wars against all of its neighbors. Yet every attempt to conquer them has ended in disaster. They’ve wiped out two pantherax hordes and have a constant low-level war against a half-dozen different Kezredite sultanates.”
“Who really controls the planet?” said Cassandra.
“The Falcon high command,” said March. “The Republic has a President and a Parliament, but their job is to not embarrass themselves too much in public and to draw attention away from the Falcons. Usually one of the generals or the admirals is running the show, and internal power struggles can mean the Republic suddenly declares war on one of its neighbors.”
“Sounds chaotic,” said Cassandra.
“It is,” said March, “but the Falcons are good enough soldiers that the Republic can’t be conquered easily, and the Republic is a major power.”
“Why did the Falcons give asylum to a man like Roger Slovell?” said Cassandra, shaking her head. “I read about what he did. It’s…grotesque. On Oradrea, he would have been publicly executed for it. Unless he was a friend of the Murdans.” There was some bitterness in her tone. “Then he could have probably done whatever he wanted.”
“Spite, mostly,” said March. “At the time, the Falcons were hostile to Calaskar, and they wanted to annoy the Kingdom. Some of it is their civilian population’s emphasis on total personal liberty. They think Calaskaran society is too puritanical, so they welcomed someone like Slovell as a martyr for his art.” He snorted. “As well to welcome a snake, I suppose.”
“I watched one of Slovell’s movies after I got this assignment,” said Cassandra. “One of the last ones Slovell made before he fled Calaskar. It was so…dreary. It’s about this middle-aged man who starts having affairs behind his wife’s back. They’re all horrible people and deserve each other. In the end, his wife finds out, so the man decides to kill himself to get back at her. His suicide scene takes like five minutes, and there are shots of his various lovers weeping.” She shook her head. “It was really gratuitously bad.”
“And Slovell probably forced himself on half the actresses in that movie,” said March.
“Nine of them, actually,” said Cassandra. “I looked it up.” She shook her head again. “Don’t get me wrong. I do think Calaskaran society is a little…rigid at times. But I also think it says a lot of about the Falcon Republic that they were willing to give asylum to a criminal just because he makes dreary movies about adultery and suicide.”
“You’ve lived on Calaskar for nearly two years now,” said March. “What do you think of it?”
Cassandra blinked. “Is…that a question for the Order?”
March laughed. “No. I’m not Calaskaran, either.” He flexed his left hand. “I grew up on one of the worlds the Machinists conquered. It wasn’t anything like Calaskar.”
“I suppose not,” said Cassandra. “Given what the Final Consciousness does to the worlds it conquers.”
“I’m a Calaskaran citizen,” said March. “So are you, too.” Cassandra nodded. “But up until about a year and a half ago, I never spent all that much time on Calaskar itself. Or even any of the Kingdom’s other core worlds. It is…a very different culture from the one I grew up in. Better, in many ways. But still alien.”
“Then you’re curious about what another outsider thinks of it,” said Cassandra.
“I suppose I am,” said March.
“Well,” said Cassandra. “On the surface, it’s not all that different from Oradrea. Everyone is very formal and very polite. On Oradrea, though, it’s different. It’s worse. Everyone is polite because they’re afraid of getting denounced to the secret police. People will screw you if they think they can get away with it. There’s…less of that on Calaskar.” She shrugged. “I have to admit, I wasn’t prepared for how religious Calaskaran society is.”
“Oradrea is officially atheist,” said March.
“It is,” said Cassandra. “I knew I would have to be baptized into the Royal Calaskaran Church to join the Silent Order and the University of Calaskar. I was kind of nervous about it. I was worried…I don’t know, that if I went outside without my hair covered or if someone saw my ankles I would get stoned to death.”
“Calaskar isn’t Kezredite,” said March.
“No,” said Cassandra. “And…well, it hasn’t been that bad. Without the charitable services the Church provides, I think Calaskar would grind to a halt. Though I have met many men and women on Calaskar who are very enthusiastic about Jesus and want me to be very enthusiastic about Jesus, too.” She snorted. “I cannot decide if it is endearing or exasperating.”
“A little of both, I suppose,” said March.
“What about you?” said Cassandra. “Do you believe in God? I cannot decide if I do or not. That was one of the things that worried me, but so long as I attend church at least once a quarter and don’t speak out against it, no one bothers me. The existence of God seems unlikely…but I would like it to be true.”
“I’m pretty sure there is a God,” said March. “I’m not sure what I think about him, though. I think I’ve seen too many things to believe the universe is just.” He paused. “Has life on Calaskar been difficult, then?”
“What?” said Cassandra, her dark eyes widening. “Oh, no, no, no. It has been strange, yes…but honestly, I’ve never been so happy. The work at the University and Project Exorcism been fascinating. I have more friends than I ever did on Oradrea. And…you grew up in a Machinist labor camp, so you understand. There are no secret police on Calaskar. I spent all my life living in fear of them, and to be free of them at last…it is wonderful. If I could choose between Oradrea and Calaskar, I would choose Calaskar every time.”
“I once talked to a Machinist agent,” said March, “who couldn’t understand why I had abandoned the Final Consciousness for Calaskar. Calaskar isn’t perfect…but it doesn’t have the horrors I’ve seen on Machinist worlds.”
“And it’s nothing like Oradrea,” said Cassandra. “Which is high praise, I think. Though there is one thing that’s annoying.”
“What’s that?” said March.
“People keep asking when I’m going to get married and start having children.”
Despite himself, March laughed.
“I’m serious!” said Cassandra, though she smiled too. “Most Calaskaran women my age are on their third baby, and they all like to listen to the Queen’s speeches about motherhood
and go to the mothers’ groups at the churches. I never thought about having children. Seriously, can you see me with a baby? All I like to do is to talk about dark energy physics. You cannot talk about dark energy physics with an infant. I suppose since you are a man you would not understand.”
“No,” said March, still amused. “But I can’t have children even if I wanted. Too many genetic alterations. I couldn’t, ah, fertilize a normal human woman.”
“Oh,” said Cassandra. “I’m sorry.”
March shrugged. “Don’t be. I never thought I’d live this long.”
“And it doesn’t matter for me,” said Cassandra. “I am not attractive enough to find a husband.”
March snorted. “Now you’re lying to yourself.”
“Really?” said Cassandra.
Truth be told, March had found her attractive when they had met, and two years of regular exercise and living on Calaskar had done wonders for her. She seemed like a healthier, more vibrant version of her previous self.
“If you wanted to get married,” said March, “I doubt you would have any trouble finding a husband.”
“Oh,” said Cassandra. “Since we are asking each other personal questions now…can I ask you one?”
“If you want,” said March, wondering if he had made a mistake. She had propositioned him once before, and she had accepted his polite refusal graciously. What if she wanted to ask him again? March wasn’t going to betray Adelaide like that, and if Cassandra took offense…
“How long have you been seeing a woman?” said Cassandra.
March blinked several times.
“How the hell did you know that?” he said, his mind sorting through the conversation. How had she figured it out? Had he given himself away? Had she been spying on him? Had Censor told her? That didn’t sound like the sort of thing Censor would do…
Cassandra grinned. “I knew it! Well, I didn’t know it, but I thought I knew it. The last time we met, you were like…” She trailed off, her hands making gestures in the air. “Really wound up, you know?”
“Considering the last time we met a lot of people were shooting at us,” said March, “that might be understandable.”
“Yeah, but that’s different,” said Cassandra. “You’re different now. It’s…” She trailed off, and then smiled. “Huh. I guess women’s intuition really does exist. I always thought the idea mathematically inaccurate.”
“I’m not going to tell you anything about her,” said March. “You know why.”
Cassandra nodded. “Operational security. What I don’t know I can’t accidentally give away.” Or have tortured out of her, but March didn’t want to say that. Besides, she already knew that. “But you seem…better now. Calmer. Less like you want to hit someone.”
March didn’t say anything. For years after joining the Silent Order, March hadn’t thought about anything but the next mission, and the mission after that, and the mission after that.
Then he had met Adelaide, and he had started thinking about other things.
“Maybe,” he said at last.
Cassandra nodded. “I thought to myself, once I heard that we would be working together again, that I needed to find you a girlfriend.”
“You’re a physicist, not a matchmaker,” said March.
“It would be an interesting project,” insisted Cassandra. “I could calculate the exact parameters of a woman who would make a good match for you, and then search the public records on Calaskar for a suitable match…”
“For God’s sake,” said March. This wasn’t the strangest conversation he had ever had, but it was getting closer.
Cassandra laughed. “I am only teasing a little. You did save my life. And, er…when you turned me down, I really think it was for the best. I was still jittery from what had happened aboard the Alpine. I don’t think we would be a good match, and I wouldn’t want a…short-term dalliance. Or a one-night stand.”
“Peer pressure must have gotten to you,” said March.
“What does that mean?” said Cassandra with a frown.
“If you’re thinking about a long-term partner,” said March, “then maybe you’re ready to become a mother after all.”
She gaped at him, and March smiled.
“If you’re teasing me,” he said, “it’s only fair that…”
“You’re awful!” said Cassandra, but she laughed as she said it. “Jack…it is good to work with you again. I don’t like field work at all. But if I have to leave Calaskar, I am very glad to have you watching my back.”
“I’ll admit I don’t think you have the skill set for this mission, but it is good to see you,” said March. “And I’ll be glad to have an Eclipse device along. I can think of a few times over the last two years when a quantum entanglement and dark energy detector would have been useful.”
“Oh!” said Cassandra, reaching for her suitcase. “Would you like to see the prototype of the next-generation model?”
“You fit it into your suitcase?” said March. “I thought you would have to build one once we reached Raetia.”
“We’ve made improvements in the last two years,” said Cassandra. “The new unit can fit in a backpack. Though in a planetary gravity well it will only have a range of twenty-seven kilometers.”
“How did you miniaturize it enough to fit into a backpack?” said March as Cassandra opened her suitcase and withdrew a flat black device about the size of a laptop computer and the thickness of one of Adelaide’s larger hardback books.
“Well,” said Cassandra, “the sticking point was the detection grid. We had to increase the diode density for the sensors by a factor of twelve, and…” She waved a hand. “You’re not interested in all that math.”
“Go ahead,” said March. He didn’t have anything better to do and establishing a good rapport with Cassandra might be vital to the success of the mission.
She gave him a suspicious look. “Are you humoring me?”
“Do you care?”
She blinked and then grinned. “Not really. Now, the key turned out to be the dark energy detection regulator…”
###
The four days of the trip to Raetia passed quickly.
March and Cassandra played the part of business travelers. Whatever his misgivings about this mission, March had to admit that their cover identities had been chosen well. Acting as a suspicious, watchful bodyguard came naturally to him since he was suspicious and aware of his surroundings anyway. Cassandra could expound about physics for hours on end, which fit her cover story as a professor visiting the University of Raetia. He noticed that she used that as a defense mechanism to get out of conversations with strangers, talking at length about dark energy matter/radiation conversion rates until the chattier passengers’ eyes glossed over and they made polite excuses to be elsewhere. At first, he thought that Cassandra was maintaining good operational security, but while that might have been part of it, she was still shy.
People could only change so much.
On the other hand, sometimes people could change a great deal, which March discovered when Cassandra asked him to spot her in the starliner’s gym. She had added a great deal of sleek, lean muscle to her arms and legs, and to his surprise, she could now deadlift her body weight. Cassandra brought her tablet to the gym, and he saw that she had recorded every single workout she had done and every single calorie she had eaten for the last two years. He had only given her a few lessons on how to lift weights properly, but she had run with them.
“I used to hate exercise,” said Cassandra, red-facing and breathing hard as she paced in a circle between sets of squats. She was wearing a black tank top and exercise pants, and March had to admit they fit her a lot better than they would have two years ago. “But then I realized it was all mathematical. You can calculate everything, and you can do everything according to a precise formula. It’s really rather relaxing.” She rolled her shoulders. “I’m way less nervous about everything than I used to be, too.”
&nbs
p; “Have you taken up running?” said March.
“Oh, God, no. Using a treadmill is like running in a hamster ball.”
Between exercise sessions, they discussed their plan for the mission. Once they arrived in Northgate City on Raetia, they would make contact with Elizabeth Winter and her branch of the Silent Order. After they established a base of operations, they would start surveilling Roger Slovell and monitoring his activities. Slovell had built a production studio near the Northgate City branch of the University of Raetia, and he regularly visited the University itself to recruit media students for his organization. In such a crowded place, it would be easy to follow Slovell, and it would also be easy to conceal Cassandra’s modified Eclipse device and track dark energy signatures or quantum entanglement effects.
Maybe they were chasing shadows.
But if the Machinists had a triple-theta radiation weapon, and if they were using Slovell to test it before deploying it against the Royal Calaskaran Navy, then perhaps March and Cassandra would have a chance to save many lives.
And to give the Final Consciousness a bloody nose in the process.
March just hoped he could do it while keeping Cassandra alive.
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