“No! Do you even know how to fly a search pattern?”
I scanned the controls. “I assume that the navigational computer does most of the work.”
“No, it doesn’t! This isn’t fun, Mr. Mask. Don’t waste my time.”
On the scope, I could see why the Enceladus’s contingent was having trouble seeing where the Blut’s ship had gone. Thanks to the arrival of all the diplomatic vessels, some of which orbited the warship’s hulk, what would normally have been empty space was full of traces and microscopic particles, hiding the ion trail which would otherwise have been as visible as a neon tri-tennis ball in the snow. Other black shapes, the craft belonging to the ambassadorial visitors and their attendant protective ships and fighters, intermittently blotted out distant stars as they traversed from one to another and, not incidentally, creating still more ion trails. Still, we joined the chase, following traces until they petered out or we determined that they belonged to an identified craft in the landing bay or a visitor’s vessel. Comparing the traces took time, which meant we had a window in which to talk.
“No, you are correct,” I said, re-establishing my assumed character, while my inner child beat its fists and feet on the floor in frustration. “Pray impart your information. Why was it necessary to make contact now, in the midst of this very sensitive conference?”
“That’s exactly why it was necessary,” Dolly snapped. “There’s an impostor among the diplomats. Word came through covert channels that there’s a plot to disrupt the conference.”
“How cunning. In what way?”
“Blowing it up. All the attendees and the ship, too. Maybe take out all the visitors’ vessels as well.”
Even my inner child looked up at that statement. Imperium safety, indeed!
“They can’t do that!” I declared. “How would they manage to smuggle enough explosives on board to cause such a catastrophic explosion?”
“Figure it out, Mr. Mask,” Dolly said dryly. “Diplomatic ships. People come and go from them all the time. No one searches the vessels or the personnel, out of mutual courtesy. A stupid custom, just begging to be corrupted. All those beings, dozens of representatives from every major power in this part of the galaxy, all wiped out in one blast. The blame would fall on the Imperium.”
My inner child lowered its tiny brow in a frown.
“What do you need me to do?”
“Find it and neutralize it,” Dolly said, steering beneath a faint trail that showed in blue on the navigation scope.
“Who is the spy?”
“A human. This is what I got from a contact who knows a contact who knows someone undercover.” A file popped up on the scope, replacing the forward view. I peered at it. It was a short digitavid of a human with hair the color of my cousin Erita’s—in other words, a dirty blonde, but apart from a faint impression of complexion—medium light—I could gain no insight into its identity, not height nor body mass nor gender. Luckily, I did not have to tease out such fine details to pick out the would-be assassin. I compared the image with the complement of diplomats and crew. From the crowd of visitors whom I had met or seen on board, this almost certainly had to be a member of the Trade Union delegation.
The image had been enhanced many times until it became a series of minute colored blocks, shifting as the person in it shifted, but the real identifier was a snatch of voice, a low alto or high tenor, with the thick accent typical of the TU central systems. I played the brief excerpt over and over, trying to hear what the operative was saying.
“…Device… undetec—… no… failure…”
“Is this all you have?” I asked in frustration.
“I suppose you want a whole Infogrid file with vacation pictures?” I could hear the sneer in Dolly’s voice. “This is it. We haven’t been able to re-establish the chain back to the original source to get more information. We’ve got to assume that that person’s been neutralized.”
The final word chilled me by its depersonalized character.
“But what is the substance of their complaint? Few would go to the trouble of violently disrupting a meeting if they did not have a serious grievance against our government.”
“Is this a test? Because I’m not putting up with it!” Dolly growled.
I put on my very best Parsons hauteur.
“Good Croctoid, there are many problems which come to the attention of the Covert Services. Do I need to run through a list of the serious matters that erupt and disturb the serenity of our realm so you can tell me if I am ‘hot’ or ‘cold’?”
“Good point,” Dolly said, with grudging admiration. “It’s Maxwellington-5, otherwise known as Drixol. Manufacturing and mining. Plenty of good jobs, or up until the last year or two. The protesters are angry with the government for letting corporations run the place just on the edge of the law. They’re running sweatshops, where they haven’t pushed out human workers entirely, cheating suppliers, replacing good materials with cheap stuff, fixing prices. A bunch of bad apples.”
“Why isn’t the government of Drixol stepping forward to uphold the law?”
“I don’t know.” Dolly put the fighter into a hard turn and hared off to follow another faint trail. The cold of space began to permeate the pilot’s compartment, but the real chill lay in my belly. “But it’s getting bad. Drixol has been gathering supporters in a private file on the Infogrid to secede from the Imperium. They’re up to over a hundred thousand.”
I rocked back in my seat, shocked to the core. I knew the governor. Like many of the highest officials, she was a member of the noble family. “Lady Margaretha Kinago Tan Dunwoody Olathe is my third cousin. She’s terribly responsible. She would never let corporations act in such a clear violation of ethics. I cannot believe such a tale!”
Dolly snorted. “Your cousin? You have ties to the Imperium family?”
I pressed my face into a thin smile. “All humans are somewhat related.”
“Well, you all look alike to me,” Dolly said, turning the fighter to return to the landing bay of the Enceladus. “You’ve got the data. The mission is up to you now. I must return to my ship and join the cohort retrieving your other agent.”
“He will be all right,” I said, wondering if by now Parsons had managed to lock up all the Bluts and was at this moment steering their ship back toward our location. “Thank you for your service, Dolly.”
“That is not the correct countersign,” Dolly admonished me.
I nodded. “Oh, look! A panda wearing a hat!”
“You never know who is shopping in these places,” Dolly said. “Bah! Whoever created these exchanges should pay more attention to context.”
“I imagine that the very incongruousness of the phrases makes them useful,” I said.
Dolly snorted. As soon as we landed, he ordered me out of the cockpit without any further pleasantries, not only typical Croctoid behavior, but appropriate as an operative moving in deep cover. The backwash of air as he departed made me stagger. I removed my helmet, wiping the eucalyptus fug from my eyes.
“Hey!” shouted a flight deck manager, running toward me. “Who was that? Something’s wrong with his fighter’s transponder!”
“I know,” I said, with a cool Parsonian gaze that brought him to a halt. “He will return for repairs as soon as the crisis has ended.”
Insurgency! My mind had been racing ever since Dolly had told me about the suspected explosive device. The very thought made the Hesperiidae resume dancing in my stomach. The Imperium had been calm for so many centuries, it was easy to take peace for granted. With my family as figureheads, citizens had been inclined to cooperate and band together. I knew that the bonding was a matter of genetic manipulation with my family at its core. To see the Emperor’s face was to instantly wish to please him. The rest of us possessed that charisma to an extent, the reason that our family was constrained not to mate or even to interact with the general population more than was strictly necessary. All other Imperium citizens were the produc
t of a different kind of genetic manipulation that made them obedient to us. I wondered what had gone wrong for Margaretha that her people were able to rebel against her. In the meantime, I had to identify the perpetrator. A lesser being would be daunted by plunging back into an environment that might be on the edge of exploding, but I was a noble of the Imperium house. It was my duty to help protect and further the Emperor’s cause.
I would inform the captain as to the potential calamity, but was there anything that I could do to shorten the process of finding the impostor and gleaning the location of the bomb? I did not fear death, but the very thought of searching kilometers of ship for anything that seemed out of place bored me beyond words, even assuming we had the time to find it. I wished I had Parsons there beside me. He would be able to take command of this situation and weed out the bomber and get to the bottom of the situation in short order.
But, he was still on the Blut ship, somewhere in the darkness. I could not rely upon his common sense and shockingly keen intelligence to unwrap this riddle. The chill in my belly annoyed the butterflies. The best being for the job was far away, out of reach.
No, I realized. I had someone better—someone who could compel the truth from any Imperium-born soul. I had me.
Running for the inner airlock, I clicked into my private channel via the viewpad on my hip.
“Coffee, meet me in the landing bay lavatory. Bring cold cream.”
* * *
“Lord Thomas!” Captain Ranulf was the first to spot me as I sauntered down the corridor from the washroom with my valet trundling along at my heels. “You’re safe!”
Anstruther detached herself from her conversation and ran toward me, beaming. Even at the distance, anyone could see that her pupils spread wide. I recognized that involuntary response as a sign that my natural appearance had been restored, although serving members of the military were treated with a system that suppressed the obedience impulse. It prevented me or my relatives staging a shipbound mutiny, which on the whole was a good thing, considering our somewhat frivolous natures. Other human beings, whether or not their genealogy had been subjected to alteration, exhibited a similar pleasure-response. She clasped my hand, a number of unspoken questions in her eyes.
“All shall be revealed,” I promised her.
Then, I was surrounded by well-wishers who wanted to slap me on the shoulder or shake my hand. Lord Steusan came forward to exchange happy expressions with me. The Wichu representative lifted me off my feet in a massive hug. Even the petite Donre ambassador left off haranguing his interpreter to kick me in the shins, a sign of cordial approbation among his people. Several of the Trade Union representatives milled about, offering pleasantries.
“Very happy to see you safe,” Ambassador Cheutlie said, beaming. I assumed she was the ambassador. The chorus line of nearly identical aides smiled. I kept my expression bland, trying to match the tone of Dolly’s recording with his voice. Similar, albeit not identical.
“Where did they take you?” Ranulf demanded.
“Oh, out there.” I gestured with a vague hand. “I had some stern things shouted at me, I must admit.”
“Well, you’re back,” the captain said, looking infinitely relieved and not a little impatient. “I don’t know what I would have said to your mo—I mean, to Commander Parsons.” She looked around. “Where is he, by the way?”
“Detained,” I said, leading her aside and dropping my voice. “I have information, er, obtained by Commander Parsons that there is a credible threat to this ship.”
Her eyes went wide.
“What threat?” she asked, lowering her own tone. “My security chief has not informed me of any potential attacks.”
I reduced my volume still further, in case any of the visitors, who had now resumed their private conversations, had eavesdropping technology. I explained the data that Dolly had given me.
“A bomb?” she squeaked. It would have taken a monolith not to let out an ejaculation of concern, but it was without a doubt a squeak. She shot a wary glance toward the party at my back. “And one of the… those… are responsible? How are we going to figure out which one is the spy without causing an interstellar incident?”
I smiled, although I admit the expression might have been a trifle insufferable.
“By asking them,” I said. I turned to Cheutlie and the entire Trade Union contingent. They regarded me with pleasant, blank countenances.
I had not really taken in on my first brief introduction to them that they were rather a handsome group, for commoners. Their shades of hair varied from deep amber to lightest honey gold, and their wide-set eyes from dark green to pale blue. The skin tones, however, came close to being identical, the pale-brown shade of ground mustard seeds. None of them could have been distinguished from the general gene pool from which they had sprung. The traitor among them had clearly been chosen for his or her resemblance to the ambassador’s preference. Anything that did not fit the mold could have been altered. But at base, the mole from the Imperium would still bear the genetic hallmark of his or her birth. I fixed them with a flirtatious expression, doing my best to appear as adorable and approachable as I could.
“Kiss me,” I said. I admired the set of their squarish jaws, and lips with a pointed cupid’s bow that parted faintly at my request. I would have been happy for any one of them to kiss me. But it was the young man on the end, with amber hair and green eyes, who stepped forward and placed a shy peck on my right cheek. He withdrew, blinking, as if shocked at his own action. His fellows stared at him in open astonishment. I turned back to the captain. “Ask him.”
The captain was baffled, as I knew she would be.
“Ask him what?”
“Where he planted the bomb,” I said.
“What?” the ambassador demanded. “You accuse sabotage from one of my people?”
“He’s not one of yours,” I said. “His DNA on my cheek will prove it.”
Alas, but my words broke the spell. The young man realized that he had betrayed himself, though not how. He bounded forward and shoved me backward. I fell over Coffee, bowling over the security personnel in my wake. The spy leaped over me and fled around the corner.
“Stop him!” I shouted.
The captain spoke into her viewpad.
“Security! Seal the doors on level 22 between the conference center and the landing bay!”
I sprang to my feet and set off in pursuit.
The heavy metal doors should have been slamming closed all along the high, square corridor. Ahead of me, I could see a bright-blue light in the spy’s hand, no doubt a device to prevent the portals from obeying. I had to catch him.
A brief glance over my shoulder told me that two security personnel had joined the chase, weapons drawn. They wouldn’t be fast enough. I opened out my stride.
I am swift on my feet, but the impostor must have been genetically crossed with an eland. The airlock doors stood ajar, wreathed in red as alarms blared shrill warnings. The spy passed through them, and the blue light in his hand blinked. The glass portals began to slide shut. I measured the narrowing gap with my eye. I had to make it through. With every ounce of strength I had, I dove in between the panels.
I landed on the cold metal floor beside a couple of pilots on break, with coffee cups in one hand and their helmets in the other. They scrambled to help me to my feet.
Ahead of me, the spy bounded toward a small craft where a pilot was just mounting the boarding ladder. With a leap far from one of which an ordinary human was capable, he shoved her off the platform and jumped in. The canopy dropped, and the small craft shot off into the darkness.
“Excuse me,” I said. I plucked the helmet out of the arms of one of the pilots and dashed toward another craft preparing to launch. I jumped into the second seat behind the white-furred aeronaut and popped on my protective headgear. “Follow that fighter!”
“Aye, sir,” the Wichu pilot said.
We rocketed off the bay floor. Rings of lig
ht danced around the exit to the flight deck. I assumed that the spy’s device had prevented his ship from being remotely disabled.
Thanks to my excursion with Dolly, I knew the geography of Enceladus and the general area around her. Emerging into darkness, the heads-up scope showed me a hot new ion trail that led up and over the hulking body toward the tail. If memory served, that was the direction of the last jump point through which Enceladus had emerged. If the spy succeeded in passing through it, we would lose him.
Over the intership communications link, I could hear the captain giving orders.
“…Find that fighter and bring it back here! I repeat, tail number EHX-80. We need the pilot unharmed and conscious, if at all possible. Give all aid and assistance to Lieutenant Kinago in EHX-67. He is in pursuit. I expect a running report. Captain out!”
We attained a point of vantage as we crested the bulk of the ship. I spotted a couple of small craft who had been engaged in either perimeter patrols or seeking out the Blut ship. Out on the far edge of the scope was a receding dot that had to be the spy’s craft. He had not disabled the telemetry, so the code numbers scrolled up underneath the computerized image. I pointed.
“There it is! Top speed!”
“I got him, sir.” The small craft veered sharply away from the Enceladus and shot toward the small dot. I had struck lucky. Wichu were natural space pilots. They never suffered disorientation or motion sickness, and their nimble hands were surprisingly fast on the controls.
“Good soul!” I said absently, chafing in frustration as the bright dot receded ahead of us. She was being too direct in her approach. We were going to lose him! “I… I didn’t get your name.”
“Lieutenant Wagelev,” she replied. “We’ll get him.”
The spy wove a skilled dance among the crowd of ships floating in space in between us and the jump point. Without needing the computer to plot it, I saw a series of angles that would bring me out in front of him.
Infinite Stars Page 46