Void Contract (Gigaparsec Book 1)

by Scott Rhine

  “Why didn’t you call your people for rescue?”

  “Our research must remain secret until I can tell our fellow researchers in person.” By definition, Bankers could hear everything broadcast over the ansible.

  Max put down his cup on a second end table and made an educated guess. “Your research could threaten the eleven day rule.” Since no one could reach another inhabited star system in less than eleven days, banks only broadcast their account updates every eight to save money and ansible bandwidth. They turned down all loans to companies and governments who even investigated those areas of physics.

  When she clamped her lips shut, he changed tactics. “How did this end in the death of your triad mates?”

  “After years of drifting, we reached a dead-end star with signs of activity. The outer perimeter had the skeleton of a ship and an asteroid mining operation.”

  “Operated by the Blue Claw Clan,” Max guessed, based on their cargo.

  “The miners didn’t respond to our distress calls, but we needed fuel. So we approached the processing site with caution.”

  “The place was automated?”

  She nodded. “With proximity mines to protect against thieves. Shrapnel did irreparable damage to my female partner. She was the medical expert.”

  He winced.

  She struggled to finish her story. “My male … placed me in the only working stasis chamber before attempting repairs.” She stared at the floor. “From the logs, he was unsuccessful. Instead of persisting, he comforted the female in her dying moments and then succumbed to the cold.” Tears filled her eyes.

  “Why didn’t he let you out so you could join them in the Union?”

  “Because the results couldn’t die with me or her death would have been in vain. The Saurians erased our navigation history from the main computer to keep the base location a secret. There may be vestiges of the data in other systems that I locked ahead of time. I dare not check, or he’ll know.”

  Another question for the captain. Max embraced her. “Surviving sucks.” Her physical frame felt thin, even for a Magi. “How long were you in stasis?”

  “Since the reign of the Black Ram Xerxes.”

  Over a hundred twenty years ago. “He died in 271 AF. He didn’t like the Bankers either. MI-23 hinted he died under suspicious circumstances. I don’t doubt that he had vices, but someone led him to that den and prevented the ambulance from arriving in time to help him.”

  She gripped his arm hard. “Bankers have spies everywhere.”

  As he stroked her arm to soothe her, he could feel the bite scars. “You need to eat and exercise or you’ll atrophy.”

  “I’ve watched you and Reuben exercise. I—I don’t want to run. That would be too much like the hunt.”

  “Zrulkesh hurt you.”

  Gina nodded. “The nightmares are the worst. Once, the wounds became so infected that I was too dizzy to work.”

  “I won’t let him hurt you again,” Max promised.

  “You can’t save me.” She stroked his face.

  Nothing physical. “Actually, I’ve been reading up on hormone bonding therapies. I could be your triad male, if only until we return you to your people.”

  She shook her head. “You can’t even see me Out-of-Body. How would we bond?”

  “I could become CU positive for you.” He referred to the blood-type designation for the 90 percent of humanity who carried the Collective Unconscious talent. A CU negative recipient could have extreme, adverse reactions to transfusions of CU positive blood, including convulsions and insanity.

  “I appreciate your offer, but I can’t ask you to change who you are. You are unique and precious the way you are. You wouldn’t be able to comfort me for long. Without a female, you’re incomplete.”

  “What if I found a woman?” Max asked.

  “Perhaps. These things are sacred and not to be rushed.”

  He drained the rest of his cup. Gina stood to pour more tea into his cup. “How does a man such as yourself know the secrets of MI-23?”

  “I know a lot of secrets. I worked for Turtle Special Forces, and I’ve even shaken hands with the Llewellyn,” Max said, referring to the head of what amounted to the royal family of Anodyne. He didn’t mention the medals and commendations. “Churchill Llewellyn arranged the scholarship for my graduate work in med school when I left the Union Navy after the war.”

  “You were named a Llewellyn friend?” Gina raised both hands, palms up at shoulder height, and inclined her head again. In Magi, she intoned, “We uplift one another.”

  “Why does everybody do that? He’s just a star pilot and a regular guy.”

  Sitting beside him, she leaned forward eagerly. “Tell me how you met.”

  Max blanched and stared at the mirror behind her. He avoided those memories whenever possible, but he couldn’t refuse Gina anything. He did his best to skirt what happened on the planet’s surface. “Originally, I worked with Rescue Corps, extracting dignitaries and civilians from a combat zone.” He rubbed the back of his neck. Telling this was harder than he anticipated.

  “You saved the Llewellyn?” she prompted.

  “No.”

  “Then who did you save?”

  Max recalled a kid’s head being used as a soccer ball by a group of laughing Phibs. He couldn’t inflict these images on another person. “A handful of orphans on Mnamnabo.” He rubbed at his right temple.

  Gina turned him to face away from her and kneaded his shoulders. “You tell what you are able, and I will work out the knots.”

  Stiffly, he explained the academic basics, avoiding the smoke and blood. “Space battles aren’t what they’re made out to be in the cinema or manga. They’re like a Game of Life where each move takes a decade. Strategies can cause an empire to grow or be inhibited. For years before violence broke out, the Earth oligarchy blocked Phib ships from the star lanes through bureaucracy, slow downs, and outright sabotage. Battles are about intelligence and choke points. Everything hinges on predicting where the enemy would be months from now and taking alternate routes to get there. If you arrive in a system first, you can block a small number of opponents by shooting them as they arrive at the known nexus point.” He groaned as she worked out a kink in his shoulder muscle.

  “As an astrogator, I’m familiar with graph theory and stellar node networks.”

  “When the Turtles joined the war effort, they bottled up half the Phib Empire by seizing six nodes. Turtles took out the primary fleet construction site before anyone even knew they were in the war.” Turtles had a reputation for overkill. They never committed until they could kick ass with no losses.

  She moved her fingers in small circles that made his head tingle. “They are a cautious race.” Humans required four extra engines on a starship for adequate safety. Magi ships required double the minimum to enter subspace, whereas Turtles had four times. Conservative was an understatement.

  “Yeah, they sure don’t screw around once they make up their minds. Well the Phibs did two things we didn’t expect. First, they already had most of their ships gathered in one fleet, over a hundred and thirty.”

  Gina stopped massaging. “What would anyone do with such an unprecedented assemblage?”

  “That was the second surprise. We originally thought they were heading to Anodyne, and Union command shifted to block that. Too late, we heard from the Bankers that the fleet was converging on Mnamnabo. They had picked up messages from four scout ships already harassing the Goats’ home system.” He struggled to control his breathing.

  Gina frowned. “Mnamnabo was already in enemy hands. Removing them from so many aquatic regions would have taken years.”

  “Yeah, Goats had been migrating to safer locations since the time of Xerxes. Still, Mnamnabo was a nightmare.” He struggled to keep the focus in space. “The advance ships killed millions, but the fleet wasn’t stopping there. With Magi ships covering Anodyne and your home world, a narrow lane had opened up through your territory cl
ear to the Carousel.” As the heart of the Bat trade empire, the carousel was a cluster of six stars that could reach almost anywhere. With control of such a resource, as well as the systems they passed through, the Phib war machine could spread through every realm but those of the reclusive Turtles and the Bankers, each of whom clung to the edges of the gaps between the spiral arms of the galaxy. Magi didn’t really have warships, and the allies couldn’t go faster than the Phibs on the same gravity lines.

  She put her hand over her mouth. “Tell me they didn’t break through.”

  “Rescue Squadron had one stealth ship in the system. We couldn’t hope to fight back, but we gathered as many survivors from the orphanage island as possible. The Phibs had landed there first to wipe out all trace of the Black Ram lineage.”

  “Stealth? You rode in the Llewellyn’s inversion fortress, Sanctuary? With proper care, that ship would last over ten thousand years. Your race risked its uplift gift for another?”

  Max nodded. “It wasn’t enough. Over a hundred thousand survived the bombings and the first wave of Phib marines. We only rescued 825 people. Our environmental systems were so overloaded that there was no biomass left when we reached Shangri-La. Everyone was hungry. Hell, we barely made it to the exit lane in time.”

  “In time for what?”

  “Black Ram Xerxes’ secret weapon. He had several observation platforms orbiting the two stars in their system, allegedly for monitoring gravity fluctuations and flares—a navigational aid for those coming into the system on that thread.” Max nodded. “But that drunken philanderer had foreseen everything. The headmaster of the orphanage school had the key codes and had already activated the failsafe. The Phibs killed him too late.”

  Gina knelt in front of him. “What did the device do?”

  “Detonated the smaller sun. If Goats couldn’t have the planet, nobody could. The nova sacrificed everyone still in the system.”

  “He blew up his own star?”

  “He changed the gravity equations, leaving nowhere safe for the enemy fleet to arrive. I think the Phibs landed in the center of the remaining star.”

  He paused, unsure of his own feelings regarding the event. “The brass hailed it as a major strategic victory. In gratitude for this sacrifice, the Goats had their loans reduced by the amounts in frozen Phib bank accounts. After that, it was just a matter of ‘cleaning up’ the stragglers. Trust me, there’s nothing clean about that. Freeing New Hawaii alone took another six years. I had mustered out by the time they cleared the first world. We had to bring in the orcas to help. Phibs think of themselves as alpha predators, but they’re pikers compared to a pissed-off killer whale guided by our Dolittles.” Some on Anodyne with a deep link to the Collective Unconscious could communicate with higher mammals. In exchange for their efforts, the slaughter of any whale became illegal.

  After forty more years, the Phibs responsible for triggering the war were finally dead. For so long, I was the weapon of revenge. Now what am I?

  Gina looked at him with a pity which shifted slowly into love. Then in a breathy voice, she uttered her signature line from the movie, the one that had haunted his dreams. “You got us all through the day, sailor. Let me get you through the night.”

  When she wrapped her warm body against him, it wasn’t sex that he took. He wept and let her soft clothing soak up years of grief.

  Chapter 13 – Spoon Fu

  After the ship docked at Jotunheim orbital station, Max wandered into the cargo bay area where Reuben and Hans were sipping coffee. “Hey,” Max said casually.

  Hans shrieked in surprise and flung his coffee up with a reflexive jerk.

  Reuben blotted hot, brown liquid off his shirt. “Stop doing that, please.”

  “Sorry. Distracted. Do you have your shopping list?” If an enemy didn’t kill him in port, Max felt certain he would end up murdering at least one Saurian by the end of this journey.

  Hans excused himself. “I need to unload the stuff from the staterooms.”

  “What cargo are you taking on here?” Reuben asked.

  Shrugging, Hans replied, “Fuel and infopacks.” The data bundles included a wide range of generic cultural information not worth transmitting by ansible: library updates, magazines, newspapers, nanofabricator templates, and entertainment that could be decades out of date. Whenever a port found a more recent update to subscribed items, it sent the newest version on to the nearest planets for a small fee. The data took storage room on the main computer but no extra physical space.

  Reuben transmitted his wish list to Max’s wrist unit along with a line of local credit.

  Max reviewed the requests and nodded. “I’ll do what I can. If I don’t come back, I left everything to Gina in my will.”

  “Echo,” Reuben corrected.

  In English, Max said, “Research pilots.” The biggest hurdle on Eden would be getting off again. To do that, they would need a trustworthy starship pilot.

  Reuben nodded, agreeing to search the station’s data sphere for candidates. “Are you at least going to grab a bite to eat in the galley first?”

  Max wrinkled his nose. “No.” I want something I can identify. He still had a few Blue Giant brand hydrogen coins on him from the Special Forces days. Anywhere in Human space, the coins could be exchanged for hydrogen fuel, the common need for every space vehicle. As such, they were portable and untraceable.

  Two Saurians guarded the ship’s entrance, eyeing Max suspiciously as he waved. Carrying no weapons, he presented his passport at the gate and wandered onto the station, which spun to maintain a partial gravity. The air was fresh but chilly. When Max mentioned this, the customs agent replied, “Cool weather stimulates activity.”

  An aphorism he probably heard at his father’s knee.

  The farther Max traveled toward the rim, the more he weighed. He passed the expensive shops to reach the trading bazaar. Here, he bargained at several shops to obtain food and personal items for Reuben. When the merchant demanded too much, he sauntered to the next stall, where the next seller was eager to offer a better price.

  Max smiled at offers like, “First sale of day, I give you good deal.” None of the people were from Jotunheim, but they made their living haggling with those who traveled through.

  In an obscure corner, while he searched for a custom screwdriver tip to remove the access panels in his stateroom, he discovered a set of lock picks. With several hydrogen coins, Max procured the illegal tools. The dealer didn’t give change.

  When the smell of cooking reached his nostrils, Max couldn’t ignore his stomach. He found a modest noodle shop and spoke to the man at the counter. “How much for just broth and noodles? No meat.”

  “You need meat to stay strong. My meat’s the best. No dog, no rat,” insisted the owner.

  A very specific list. What is he leaving out? “I’m coming off a long fast, and I can’t take meat or added sugar.”

  The noodle man considered for a moment. “You want the Buddhist shop at the end.”

  Max continued to the tiny but clean shop at the end of the aisle with only three stools for customers. A bulbous, amphibious alien, older than water, took two of the seats at the counter. Max repeated his request to the new merchant. The drab-colored, wrinkled Phib perked up and croaked in perfect English, “A fellow pilgrim?”

  “Denial for the sake of another. My … girlfriend is very spiritual,” Max adlibbed, taking the empty seat.

  The shopkeeper grinned as he placed a bowl on the counter. “Women and religion are the same thing. Each demands our complete devotion, requires strange rituals we cannot understand, and causes younger men to ridicule us. Yet we persevere because they bring incomparable peace to our chaotic lives.”

  Oops, no more hydrogen coins. When Max reached for a credit stick, he remembered that it had been drawn on the Vegas bank and would be unusable here. “I’m so sorry. I neglected to visit the credit changers.” He debated borrowing what little remained on Reuben’s credit line to pay.
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  The overweight and baggy Phib held up a hand. “On me. Not many of your kind would tolerate my presence.” His breathing was labored and slow.

  “Thank you,” Max said.

  By the third spoonful, the Phib had gathered enough energy for more words. “My name is Doma Isolchar. Few of my own people will eat with me.”

  Doma was their equivalent of a mayor or Italian Don. “Did you give something back to the people they stole from?”

  The Phib burbled a chuckle. “Not far from the truth. I am a cleric in the restitution movement.” He paused to breathe noisily through his mouth. Phibs this old preferred to be submerged in water to breathe through skin and gills. Water also relieved the burden on excess mass. “I relocated my people peacefully from an entire planet. They blame me. Not all my people have given up the dream of glory.”

  “Speaking as one weary of killing, I thank you.” The onion in the soup was particularly sweet, probably caramelized. Eating slowly took self-control. “What are you doing so far from your reservations? I thought one of you needed a license and a responsible sentient to monitor you.”

  “Responsible is an overstatement.” Isolchar tilted his head and tightened his external eardrums. This was classic preparation for combat, the sensing of an adversary. “Through a sizable bribe, I’ve attached myself to the entourage of the new governor of Eden, but he’s in no hurry to assume that post. Since his fall, he relinquishes the comforts of power reluctantly.”

  “Eden?” Wary of coincidence, Max peered into the polished chrome of the store front. A man with his back to the nearest pillar watched them both with his right hand under his coat.

  “I’m on a pilgrimage to the Turtle embassy to visit the survivor, Sanderjee.”

  The one egg I saved. I never knew her name.

  Max flipped the spoon, ready to use the square, metal handle as a pithing tool at the base of the Phib’s brain. The shop owner noticed the transition and backed away. The Human watcher strode purposefully toward Max’s left elbow. He could see the bulge of a handgun as it emerged from under the stylish, thin coat—too expensive for a cop and better suited for rain than temperatures favored on Jotunheim.