by David Nabhan
Three circuits around the track were required before a pilot made his headlong “dive” to the finish line, a checkered holographic tape floating above Kepler’s Arch. Nerissa and Demetrius confronted each other again and again over the three laps, frittering away both speed and distance in the lead in an astounding number of tangles, only diverting attention from each other when the pack caught up with them. The two best pilots in existence then broke away, gained a comfortable margin, and resumed another series of feints, blocks, pushes, and crashes.
Rittener was out of the race. Oh, he’d made it out of the scrum in time and was still alive, technically. But he was flying way out of his league. He had never really had a chance and was pleased that he’d been able to maintain a decent position in the middle of the pack that chased after the front runners. The spectacle Nerissa and Demetrius were putting on helped him in a way. Their aerial dogfights were enough to take Rittener’s focus off the burning lactic acid building up in his arms and shoulders.
The two combatants reached the terminus of the third lap a fraction of a second apart. This was bad news for Demetrius; no pilot dived like Nerissa. As a matter of fact, not even Nerissa was supposed to be able to fly like Nerissa. Her hallmark dives were nothing less than superhuman. Both pilots skimmed the absolute virtual inside boundary of the race course at the third lap post. Both wheeled to dive and tangled wickedly, like two raptors locking talons in mid-air, whirling and falling. Demetrius broke away and effected a near-vertical swoop for the finish line. For Nerissa’s fans, banking on her patented sprint, disaster struck. She wasn’t sprinting, she wasn’t diving, she wasn’t even flying. She was gliding down in a gentle, defeated spiral, barely pumping her wings. She was quite obviously injured.
DEMETRIUS SEHENE FLEW THROUGH the finish line like a peregrine falcon, to the accompaniment of a furious cascade of booing that rose up from the city and reverberated off the Dome. A throng of Borelians crowded around the panel of judges, crying foul and gesticulating angrily. The referees were making a good show of ignoring them, leaning in together for consultation. They decided quickly. The holographic torus turned red again indicating that the race was over. There is no “second place” in piloting, or any other place, only winning. “Demetrius Sehene: WINNER!” was flashed across the race course now emptying of dozens of also-rans, in letters as high as terrestrial skyscrapers.
Rittener glided to solid ground at Alpha, so spent he could barely summon the energy to shake out the pools of sweat that flooded his eyes, blurring his vision. Giant, lethargic drops of perspiration—bloated by the lunar gravity and falling in slow motion—came flying off him in every direction as he shook out his sweat-soaked hair. When he could finally focus he saw the scene before him was almost pandemonium. Borelians, almost always reserved, could react very emotionally once pushed to their limits. The makings of a riot were all around him. Even the attendants were ranting and raving, oblivious to the fact that someone ought to have helped unbuckle Rittener’s wings. He didn’t really care, and just stood where he landed, panting, his arms quivering. Security officers were roughly pushing and threatening a path through the mob, half-dragging an exhausted Demetrius Sehene through the opening they created. Nerissa was herself surrounded by a cordon of security and medical staff. She was rubbing her left shoulder with one hand, but used the other to wave off the solicitous physicians who seemed determined to attend to her.
Suddenly they made eye contact. Their gazes locked for quite some time. It wasn’t the face of dejection or defeat, nor did it radiate pain or anger. Clinton Rittener had saved millions of lives and had sent millions of others to their deaths by reading faces.
He was an expert at it—if anyone was. But Nerissa’s left him at a loss.
CHAPTER TWO
IN THE SERVICE OF THE TERRAN RING
CLINTON RITTENER’S DANISH FATHER was the European Union’s ambassador to the Asian Alliance, his mother an English heiress whose dowry came in money so old its provenance was difficult indeed to identify, but at least going back to the early 21st century. He might have grown up fat, spoiled, and lazy, but even as a child he seemed marked for greatness. His aptitude for mathematics and languages was both stunning and inexplicable, for it was said that he never spoke a word for the first three years of his life. He made up for that later with more than a dozen languages both Eastern and Western, and spoken with such fluency that he could play native in more than a few of them. He had mastered trigonometry by the age of ten, calculus by twelve, and had set the Earth’s scientific academies on their heels when he published a proof of Galean’s Eigenvector Conjecture—which ran in the peer-reviewed journal Aegis . . . on his twenty-first birthday! It took a battery of nanocomputers several weeks to find the errors in his proof, but the sword had been drawn from the scabbard nonetheless, and it was plain to see that the blade was sharp indeed.
NO ONE COULD HAVE guessed, though, what fate had in store for Clinton Rittener. The whole world was taken by surprise when the Fifth Planetary Depression let loose Armageddon. Ten million people were killed in Shanghai alone in the opening days, along with both his parents, when mobs stormed the embassy. He was dragged half-dead from his previously cosseted world into the hinterlands of China by a faction loyal to the European Union. There he spent the next six years of his life fighting in the horrific Great Eastern War, rising to the rank of yuan shuai, high marshal, over a coalition of fierce irregulars. He never spoke a single word of it—to anyone, ever—after the armistice. But it is certain that the pyramids of severed heads, the thousands of miles of crucified bodies that lined Asia’s roads, and other unspeakable atrocities, changed him forever. The stories they tell about his cruelty and brutality are hard to verify and almost surely exaggerated. It is true, though, that he most certainly was as ruthless and cold-hearted as any of the soldiers in that planet-wide bloodbath. Both the Asian Alliance and the European Union offered him high military commissions when the war ended. He declined, took the remnants of his lost inheritance, and bought passage when the first maglev up the slopes of Kilimanjaro became operational again, into orbit and onto the Terran Ring, and then straight off for Mars. He never set foot on Earth again.
About the next years spent on Mars, with forays into the depths of the Outer Solar System, not much is known except for one thing: Rittener learned how to fly on Mars. And, as some whispered, he learned unutterable piloting talents on Titan. Mars still is a fairly wild place, and the perfect locale to lose oneself in the “underground,” in every sense. Anything goes on Mars, and most of it is going on under the surface, including piloting. It’s so much harder to fly on Mars that it’s a good thing it’s done within kilometer-long corridors that slope gradually down into the planet’s interior. Pilots get pulled down by gravity a little more than twice as strong as Luna’s, so it’s just as well that Martian pilots fly inside and not from cliffs. Flyers on the Red Planet, though none too skilled in maneuver, are some of the most physically chiseled athletes in existence. In contests on the Moon, they could be serious contenders if only because of their stamina advantage.
Rittener joined a select corps of crack former soldiers at this strategic borderline between the Inner and Outer Solar System, many of them amateur pilots. These men—part tactician, stateless warlord, and émigré condottieri—formed an elite pool of mercenaries. A shadowy zeitgeist played out below ground on Mars, as assassins, spies, pirates, and agents attracted from everywhere, toward every purpose, were drawn to this free-wheeling, subterranean gloom land. It was here where Clinton Rittener was enlisted by the Terran Archonate itself when the miners on the Asteroid Belt revolted.
THE TERRAN RING HAD more or less sat out the recent planet-wide war, happy to see their economic and military rivals below annihilate themselves. Earth would, of course, never be the same again. Most historians were already marking this as the great turning point, the watershed when the Terran Ring in quick, successive stages became the cultural and political seat of humankind. Earth, ha
ving finally pushed her powers of recuperation past the reserve, degenerated into an insatiable market and a limitless labor pool lying beneath Terra, a supine, fallen colossus. A great renaissance was ushering in Terra’s moment in the Sun and they were determined to take advantage of it, and, at present, just as adamant to put down the incipient insurrection dampening the hosannas being sung for the new age dawning.
Ethan Van Ulroy, aide-de-camp of the Chief Archon, the highest office on the Ring, was sent to negotiate with the defiant mining colonies. Mars was the half-way point between the Ring and the Belt, so it was the perfect place for the conference and Van Ulroy the ideal choice. He was the quintessential Terran—tall, well-built, pure business, utilitarian demeanor, and possessing a quality which most high-ranking functionaries on the Ring lacked: charm. The Terran Ring was an impossible feat of engineering, courage, brains, muscle, and determination; here was one of the men who had built it.
“You need not concern yourselves with your prior contracts with consortiums on Earth. As you well know, they’re war-weary and undependable.” Van Ulroy arched one eyebrow higher to chide the fact. “Earth needs some time to catch its breath. A fourth of the population is either dead or wishes they were. The kind of insanity that produced that result must be confined to the planet. We’re here to sign an accord that will provide security, peace, and prosperity for all of us into the far future.”
William Byrne, representing the hundreds of mini-states of the Asteroid Belt, thought that figure high. “One in four on Earth dead? That many?” Byrne’s lilt told everyone he was Scottish. Everything else—his calloused hands, radiation-beaten complexion, enlarged joints—was proof of his profession: He was a miner.
Van Ulroy condoled. “We share profoundly in Earth’s difficulty in this time of grieving.” With the mother planet in a state of near-chaos and a sizeable fraction of its population swept away, the Terran Ring was enforcing a stewardship for Earth. This was seen as a kindness, almost a filial duty—by the Terrans themselves, of course.
“The Ring is going to see to deliveries of all metals to Earth, or anywhere else in our ‘sphere of influence,’ as is deemed necessary.” Byrne openly winced at the phrase “sphere of influence.”
“The mineral exports of the Asteroid Belt to the Inner Solar System,” the Archonate’s envoy made clear, “should in future transit through the Terran Ring.” The words were easy to say; difficult to comprehend. What it meant was that the staggering output of iron, nickel, copper, aluminum, magnesium, gold, silver, and all the rest—all of it—would be bought exclusively by Terra. All that the miners of the Belt needed to know was that the final destination for their goods was the Terran Ring.
Van Ulroy’s insincere smile fell off and vanished immediately after speaking, his demeanor now much like Byrne’s unblinking, sullen expression.
“How considerate it is of Terra to trouble itself to simplify our lives.” Byrne thrust his jaw forward, getting straight to cases. “But do I understand correctly that Terra is proposing to pay roughly half the pre-war price?”
“Well, it’s not half. It’s something higher than that,” Van Ulroy corrected. “But, it’s fair, and it’s an open-ended purchase order, into the far future.”
“Into the far future, you say?” Byrne openly mocked his words. Now he pressed even closer into Van Ulroy’s personal space, the heavy eyebrows lowered and threatening, the eyes florid and matching his cadmium red, faultlessly trimmed chin strap beard. “There are some back on the Belt who doubted that Terra would force a contract to bankrupt us and then have the temerity to extend the terms of indentured servitude into perpetuity. They sent me here to put those rumors to rest. But I do have one unanswered question.”
“And that would be?” Van Ulroy asked, frowning.
“Have the powers that be on Terra lost their minds? I’ve never given any credence to slanderous fables about strains of Terran venereal diseases that play havoc with faculties, but this certainly won’t help to dispel those rumors.”
Ethan Van Ulroy’s renowned charisma wasn’t working with William Byrne. “I can tell by looking at you that you’re a decent, reasonable man, Mr. Byrne, so I’m going to ignore that.” Van Ulroy wasn’t going to ignore it. He was already making up his mind to act on it.
“And I can see the kind of man you are as well.” Byrne leaned back in his chair and in the calmest of tones gave the aide-de-camp a quiet, deadly serious warning. “But, if you’re planning to make a meal of us you’ll find that we don’t break up into bite-sized chunks.” He gave a faux-friendly nod and wink of the eye. “Of that, Mr. Van Ulroy, you can be sure.”
AT FIRST THE MINERS just laughed, repeating Byrne’s insult to Van Ulroy and adding others just as offensive. When they finally realized that the Terran Ring meant business, outrage set in. Depending on whose envoy was speaking and in which interplanetary forum, there was quite a divergence of opinion about what sort of control Terra legally had over the Asteroid Belt. Several more attempts at compromise broke down, and in the end the miners stubbornly just walked away, in Terra’s eyes turning to open rebellion.
It would be a very nasty business to wage a war on the frontiers of the Solar System in the vacuum of space, against the sparse settlements that clung to city-sized blocks of metal and rock that meandered between Mars and Jupiter. It would no doubt be viewed as immoral and illegal by Terra’s rivals. Worse still, though, would be the severe withdrawal pain that Terra was desperate to avoid should the unending transports of ore cease to arrive. Dozens of settlements in the Belt were either threatening or had already enacted embargo. While neither side was going to find this pleasant in the least, Terra only focused on ending it. What the Ring was looking for was a quick fait accompli that could be presented to everyone, and one that gave them the option of plausible deniability if they needed it. Tactics were to be purposely left broadly and vaguely described. Those that wouldn’t knuckle under “should be militarily convinced.” Not many had any real idea what was happening half a billion miles from Earth out past Mars. If a few scruffy, unwashed misanthropes living on the edge of existence in the dead of space were to disappear, well, had they ever really even been there in the first place? Miners on the Asteroid Belt were as difficult to make out as shadows on Pluto. The Terran Ring had the right man for the job too. Clinton Rittener accepted a quasi-military commission, was given his privateering marque, duly signed and sealed by the highest body on Terra, the Archonate, and sent to put down an uprising that had echoed from the conflagration on Earth. He was told to bring them around, move them off, or wipe them out—whichever were easiest.
And here, even more than before, is where he made his name.
THE PEERLESS WAS WELL-NAMED. She was fast, reliable, and armed to the teeth. The ship was a hybrid-class destroyer, built to patrol the space between Earth and the Jovian System. No one knew what kind of swath she cut, but according to rumors that leaked in from listening posts at the far edges of the Solar System, her Quarrie superconducting ports sucked in so much of the solar wind that she cast a shadow as far out as the moons of Saturn. She was engineered to be constantly accelerating for the most part, and fast. But if her journey from Terran orbit out to the Asteroid Belt was to be a quick one, once there she kicked into another gear. Her fusion reactor, fed by helium-3 from Borealis, was capable of ingesting and spitting out absolutely anything. She fed on the detritus she was meant to patrol, ejecting stupendous quantities of ionized flotsam that had been broiled down to pure nucleonic matter. In theory, once within the confines of the Belt, there was no limit to her speed or her range. The same reactor powered her armament and defenses; both were terrifying. Peerless would be an incredibly hard gnat to swat, as she was impervious to laser and particle beam salvos, in the short-run anyway.
She could go anywhere she pleased, at speeds and ranges that were quite impressive, fairly immune from attack unless by multiple opponents, and with the offensive power to erase planetoids from existence. Peerless was ar
med with twin punches: a high-powered electron laser capable of melting through twelve inches of steel in less than a second, and a particle beam accelerator that emitted tremendous bursts of protons at just under the speed of light. The beam pulses could shred mountain-sized chunks of pure titanium. Little wonder that the Terran Ring sent only one ship, under one captain, to bring the miners on Valerian-3 to heel. It was not only all that was required—it was overkill.
THE PEERLESS SLIPPED OUT of Earth orbit riding the inertia of the half-kilometer-long steam piston that catapulted the ship from the Tycho Brahe Bay. The Moon was new, on the other side of Earth, so Borealis might literally have been in the dark concerning its departure. As far as Terra was concerned, any glimmer of light shed on this operation would be too much. The mission was under the highest secrecy protocols. Rittener, seated in the captain’s swivel, noted the comforting green streaks across the virtual console of the Peerless.
“Valid indications across the board, First Officer,” Rittener said in a monotone. Lieutenant Andrews responded in the same flat timbre.
“Valid indications, roger,” he said.
The ship’s fusion reactor was up and running.
“Engineering?” Rittener called out in shorthand.
“All in, Captain. Ready to initiate spars on your mark,” Ensign Gutierrez answered.
Peerless’ spars unfurled, splaying open like a giant umbrella around the axis of the ship itself. Within an hour the superconducting segments, kept frigid by the vacuum of space, had telescoped out to form kilometer-long spokes radiating out from Peerless. The enormous electric flux pumped through them from the ships reactor created a magnetic sail that extended much, much farther out, bouncing back a wide enough swath of the million-mile-an-hour flood of alpha particles in the solar wind to constantly accelerate the ship to close to half a g. Duty on the ceaselessly accelerating Peerless felt a lot like standing still on Mars. If the rare glitch were to have occurred, things would have gone awry by now, so Rittener confidently put the ship’s system on autopilot.