Bo was staring at Sarat, deep in thought, then he offered me his hand and another piece of Confucian wisdom. “Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising every time we fall.”
“That’s the spirit,” I said, shaking hands.
“I would like to make you an offer, Captain Kade,” Bo said. “I propose to pool my vault with yours on the understanding that we share the Codex, should you win.”
Was that why he hadn’t betrayed me to Sarat? He’d decided he couldn’t beat Vargis alone and was keeping me as his insurance policy. “When you say share,” I said, “who gets to hold the Codex?”
“If you bid without my help, you do. If you bid with my help, I do, but you may accompany me on my ship.”
It was the old rule, the last money to the deal called the shots. “I’ll think about it,” I said turning to Sarat, aware Vargis was now watching me intently. “Is there a problem if Bo, Marie and I combine our–”
“Since when did I agree to share?” Marie demanded.
“Since you got eliminated and your only chance of getting a slice of the action is to pool your resources with Mr Bo and me.” I turned to Bo. “Right?”
Bo Qiang nodded. “I am willing to share with Captain Dulon, on the same terms.”
“Is a collective bid acceptable?” I asked.
“All Ani-Hata-Ga cares about is the final price,” Sarat said. “Side deals are not his concern.”
“That was not part of the arrangement!” Vargis snapped.
“Syndicates are not explicitly prohibited,” Sarat said. “You yourself represent the Consortium, which is a very large syndicate.”
“But they have been eliminated already!” Vargis said, glancing at Marie and Bo Qiang.
“Captain Kade makes the bid. How he comes by his funds is not my concern.” Sarat sucked on his fume-stick thoughtfully. “From what I know of the Irzaens, they’re not a sentimental people. They’ll welcome the highest possible bid.” Vargis fell silent, scowling, then Sarat continued, “The final round will commence in thirty minutes.”
I gave Jase a look, inviting him to follow me away from the others. When we were out of earshot, I said, “We need to find a way to contact Izin – fast.”
“Why, you’re doing great!”
“I’m about to get my butt kicked, unless Izin can find a way to fix the result.”
Jase sobered. “Sarat’s guards aren’t going to let us anywhere near their comm system.”
“I know. Think you could take one, unarmed?”
Jase grinned. “Hell yeah! Two of them – three if I was drunk!”
Probably not, but I liked his eagerness. “Try to avoid getting yourself killed or letting Sarat know what you’re doing, but if we don’t find a way to rig this game soon, we won’t even make shuttle fare off this ice cube.”
* * * *
When we met in the meeting hall for the final round, I took Bo and Marie aside to give them the bad news. “Much as I appreciate the offer Bo, I’m going it alone.” Bo simply nodded agreeably, barely disappointed. “Do we have a problem?” I asked, code for was he going to blow my cover?
“No, we would have lost anyway,” Bo replied fatalistically.
“If you felt that way, why make the offer?”
“I’m a curious man, Captain Kade. I wondered if the Irzaens really want the highest bid.”
“You don’t think they do?” Marie asked, surprised.
Bo glanced uncertainly at Sarat. “I do not know, but this game is not what it appears.”
“If we had to share it,” Marie said when I turned to her, “we’d just fight over it. I’ll tell the Society they didn’t give me a big enough bankroll.”
“I’ll vouch for that.”
“As if the Society trusts you!”
We turned to the end of the hall as the floor and ceiling holo plates glowed and the Irzaen trade representative appeared beside Sarat.
“Greetings good customers,” Ani-Hata-Ga began formally, “welcome to the rewarding stage of decision. Let us begin bidding the final.”
With all eyes upon Vargis and me, no one noticed Jase’s absence. Outside the gray clouds had turned black and the howling wind was driving snow horizontally past the long window, threatening to overpower its pressure field. Before we started bidding, the guards lowered the large rectangular metal shutter over the window, sealing us off from the outside world.
Sarat motioned to the Earth Bank auctioneer. “Captain Kade, you have the honor of bidding first.”
I stepped up to the Earth Bank device, slid Lena’s digital-vault key into the slot and bid one credit. There was no point betting the limit, because I already knew that wasn’t enough, so I decided to test whether the entire process really was machine controlled. The auctioneer accepted the bid without any judgment on the amount, then I rejoined Marie and Bo.
“Finally, we can get this over with,” Vargis said irritably when it was his turn to bid.
“Don’t pay too much,” I said, knowing that if he won, I could tell him if he bid more than two credits, he’d overpaid.
* * * *
“All systems are controlled from a room on the west side of this level,” Jase said when we met beside a shuttered window in the lounge after bidding was complete. “One guard out front, maybe more inside.”
Taking those guards head-on would be difficult. If it turned into a bloodbath, it would be impossible to get the Codex out quietly. “Where are they getting their power from?”
“It comes up through a switching room behind the elevator, from the fishing fleet’s support base below. It’s locked, but unguarded.”
“Could you break in?”
“Shouldn’t be too difficult.”
“OK. Cut the power for five minutes only at exactly six o’clock this evening. If the power doesn’t go out at that time, I’ll assume it’s not going down.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Find out how well Sarat’s guards see in the dark.”
* * * *
The lights went out right on schedule. With the storm shutters closed, the entire penthouse was immersed in darkness, temporarily blinding everyone except me. My DNA sniffer painted the usual identifiers over the heads of the guards, telling me who they were, while the bionetic filaments in my optic nerves detected enough thermal traces to paint infra red ghosts in my mind’s eye, showing me where they were. Those I couldn’t see, I heard blundering around in the darkness, stumbling and yelling to each other.
It wasn’t perfect but in the land of the blind the threaded EIS agent is king.
I slipped past red ethereal images of guards feeling their way helplessly along the walls until I reached the control room. The guard outside was better trained than most. He was as blind as the others, but he remained in position in front of the door waiting for the lights to come back on. I approached him silently, knocking him off balance with a leg sweep and drove his head hard against the wall. There was a sickening thud of skull bone on rock, then I caught his body and lowered him to the floor before feeling for the control room door. Being in constant use and guarded, it wasn’t locked, but when my hand passed over the door sensor, nothing happened. No power to the lights meant no power to the doors, so I had to slide it open with both palms pressed flat against it.
My threading detected two guards inside, one seated, the other feeling his way along the wall towards the entrance. I took a step towards the standing guard’s red ghost and kicked him more or less in the kidneys. There was a grunt as he doubled over in pain and surprise, then I finished him by slamming his head down into my rapidly ascending knee. I let the second guard hit the ground as I turned to take out the seated guard, but he was already on his feet and moving towards me.
“Ritter, what is it?” the third guard demanded warily. He’d heard the door open and his companion hit the floor, and was smart enough to realize there was someone else in the room.
I darted towards him, driving a punch for his throat, but he stepped si
deways so I only brushed his neck. The guard instinctively lunged into the darkness, catching me with a glancing blow – not enough to slow me down, but the contact told him where I was. He swung his other hand in a roundhouse punch that struck the side of my head. It was a lucky hit, giving me no chance to block. I was airborne before I even realized what had happened, then I crashed onto the rock floor. Momentarily dazed, whirling stars danced with threading symbols before my eyes. Disoriented, I rolled away, making far too much noise but buying a few seconds to clear my head.
The guard’s red ghost moved to the left, trying to flank me, knowing I was down. He launched a balanced kick into the darkness, narrowly missing my face. I knew from the way he snapped his leg back, without losing his balance, that he was well trained. My threading gave me the advantage of limited vision, but he’d got in the first blow and I had no time to recover. There were only seconds left before Jase restored the power. Once the lights came back on and the guard could identify me, I’d have no choice but to kill him – not something I wanted to do.
I slapped the floor loudly with my right hand and rolled silently away to the left, climbing to my feet. The guard immediately fired at my hand slap, illuminating his position with the electromagnetic muzzle spark of his gun.
I kicked towards his wrist, with my balance still off from his lucky punch. The kick wasn’t perfect, but the force was enough to break his arm and send the gun spinning away into the darkness. The guard didn’t utter a sound, but immediately swung his good arm at my head. I caught his wrist and turned, pulling him towards me and catching his ankle with my foot, throwing him face first to the floor. Before he could move, my knee crashed into his back, paralyzing him as the lights came back on. The guard tried to turn, but my elbow struck the back of his head like a hammer, driving his face into the rock floor with a sharp crack. Thankfully, his body went limp, saving me from having to break his neck.
I exhaled slowly, patting the back of the unconscious guard’s head. “That might of hurt, but it was better than the alternative.”
I climbed to my feet, still a little groggy, and felt the bulge on the side of my head. Luckily, it was hidden beneath my hair. If it had been on my face, my cover would have been in tatters.
I dragged the guard lying in the corridor inside and closed the door, then studied my surroundings. The control room was filled with communications and weather monitoring equipment, as well as screens viewing every room, including our sleeping quarters. Ignoring the surveillance system, I activated the direct comlink to Tundratown and selected the channel I knew Izin would be monitoring.
“I’m receiving you,” Izin replied, careful to avoid words that would identify either of us, should anyone be listening. “Your signal isn’t encrypted.”
“I know. I haven’t much time. They’re using an Earth Bank auctioneer to manage the bidding. You need to make sure I win.”
“It’s impossible to break Earth Bank encryption, even if I had access to your location.”
The penthouse’s control system was manually isolated from the maintenance facility below as a precaution during the auction. With the flick of a switch, I reconnected the penthouse to the local datanet, giving Izin a backdoor. “How’s that?”
“I can see their systems now, but they will see me connect.”
“No one will see you, but me. Do it now.” A moment later, the screen in front of the communications console illuminated with an external request for secure access, which I immediately accepted. “How’s that?”
“I have full access.”
“Good. Now hide yourself. You’re on your own.”
I quickly deleted all recorded vision from the security system for the last hundred hours and switched off the surveillance system. Satisfied no one would see me leave, I stepped through the door and hurried back in my quarters, where I was soon soaking the swelling on the side of my head in freezing cold water.
Getting Izin through the back door was the easy part. If he couldn’t find a way into the most secure financial device man had ever invented by the end of dinner, Vargis would have the Codex. A few hours later, it would be safely inside the battleship Soberano.
Getting my hands on it then would be virtually impossible.
* * * *
Sarat apologized for the power failure at dinner, making no mention of my visit to the control room, although security became noticeably tighter. The butler-guards no longer tried to conceal the weapon bulges beneath their jackets, and the guards at the elevator now openly carried assault weapons. Under this pall of armed security, we gathered to wait for the Earth Bank auctioneer to finish its validations and discuss the one thing on our minds, the Codex.
“Considering it’s alien-tech,” I said, “how do we use it?”
“There is no ‘we’, Captain Kade,” Vargis said. “I won’t be sharing it with you.”
“One cannot share what one does not yet possess,” Bo observed dryly.
“Thank you,” I said, turning to Bo. “Confucius?”
“No, Bo Qiang.”
I toasted Bo with my glass. “To the great Bo Qiang, sage of the galaxy!” Bo inclined his head, accepting the compliment, then I turned back to Sarat. “Assuming the issue is undecided . . .?”
“The Codex has a universally adaptive interface which allows it to communicate with any computing technology,” Sarat said. “All it requires is conductive contact and access to data storage. It will do the rest.”
“Smart little box of tricks,” Jase said from his position between Vargis and Bo. His absence during the blackout had gone unnoticed because he’d made it back to our room before the surveillance system had been reactivated.
“I take it the Codex was constructed by the people who built the ships now wrecked in the Antares System?” I said.
“Yes, the Kireen. According to Ani-Hata-Ga, they were an ancient civilization from the Norma Arm of the galaxy. Highly advanced, but dangerously divided. They were frequently in conflict with themselves. The graveyard monument in the Antares System is the only one of its kind in human Mapped Space, although I understand there are others scattered throughout the galaxy.”
“Considering how old the Codex is,” Marie said, “won’t the Kireen want their property back?”
“Sadly no,” Sarat replied. “Their civilization collapsed millions of years ago. They’re not extinct, but the worlds the survivors live on are insufficient to allow them to reestablish themselves.”
“They destroyed their own homeworld?” Bo asked.
“The word Ani-Hata-Ga used was ‘exhausted’. Their homeworld survived entirely on resources brought from off world. When it lost access to those resources, its industrial civilization could not sustain itself and their off world colonies could not survive alone. Imagine Earth in a few thousand years. Its minerals are already depleted. It’s only a matter of time before Earth will be entirely dependent on off world resources. ”
“Earth wouldn’t survive without the Core Systems now,” Vargis said a little pompously, “but we’d survive without Earth. We did it before, we could do it again.”
“Much of our technology and industrial production still comes from Earth,” Sarat countered. “Without Earth, we’d be crippled.”
“That’s what Earth wants you to believe,” Vargis said. “There are some in the Core Worlds who’d like to see an end to Earth Council meddling in our affairs.”
“And they’re the people who’d get the whole human race in trouble,” I said sharply.
“Why doesn’t someone trade with the Kireen?” Marie asked. “Without the novarium the Tau Cetins gave Earth to power our starships, we wouldn’t be where we are.”
“The Forum made a Fifth Principle ruling against the Kireen.”
The Extinction Principle requires Treaty members to take any action within their power to prevent another species from becoming extinct, irrespective of the wishes of the species or its rulers. The preservation of life was quite simply more important than a
ny other consideration because it allowed future generations the opportunity to progress beyond the mistakes of their ancestors. When a species became extinct, there were no second chances.
“So to stop the Kireen wiping themselves out,” I said, “no one in the galaxy is allowed to trade with them?”
“Exactly. The Forum decided that giving the Kireen what they needed to rebuild their civilization would only hasten their extinction – not something they could permit.”
“Because genocide is the worst possible Treaty violation,” I said. “Lucky they didn’t block mankind on that basis.”
“They nearly did,” Sarat said. “Fortunately, there were centuries of peace after the Tactical World War, so the Forum gave us the benefit of the doubt.”
“It’s a twisted legal argument,” Vargis said with obvious distaste, “isolating an entire species so it doesn’t destroy itself.”
Sarat shrugged. “Perhaps, but the Kireen are not extinct. They still make war on each other, only instead of using fleets of starships they now use stone tipped weapons. I guess some evolutionary lines become dead ends, even among interstellar civilizations. So you see, the creators of the Antaran Codex will not come asking for their property back. It really is just a piece of salvaged alien-tech for sale. Speaking of which,” Sarat said rising, “shall we conclude our business?”
“You said there would be a demonstration?” Vargis asked.
For once we were thinking alike, although for different reasons. He wanted to confirm he was buying the genuine article and I wanted to know what that article was.
Sarat nodded, “Of course, Senor. This way.”
We assembled in the hall, now filled by the muted scream of the wind outside the metal shutters, then Ani-Hata-Ga’s three dimensional image appeared.
“Greetings good customers,” the Irzaen said. “Welcome to the joyous moment of transaction, to which all our efforts have been focused.”
“Esteemed Principal,” Sarat said, addressing the Irzaen formally, “a demonstration has been requested.”
Mapped Space 1: The Antaran Codex Page 12