by Gorg Huff
A grin twitched Le Wong’s face as he looked back at Emperor Kenneth, Prince Nave, Count James of Drakar City, and Lady Angla of Golden, whose bow was now pointed in Le’s general direction. Le liked his young cousin, who was bright and at least reasonably willing to put up with the royal folderol.
His grin was only a twitch, though, because if the Cordobas were actually planning on integrating the bugs into their population, it would give them a massive boost. The Pamplona Sector was only lightly populated by the Sol System standards of a few centuries ago. There were billions of Parthians, and their integration would give the Cordobas a population of seventeen billion. That was almost half again as many people as the Drakes had. And the Parthian tech base was impressive, if not quite up to human standards.
“Then, Your Majesty, I must draw you out of the garden for a few moments.”
Emperor Kenneth Drake looked at him, sighed, and waved his playmates away. He followed Wong out of the garden and down the hall to a secure office.
“The Cordobas seem to be making a play for control of the sector,” Wong said as soon as the door was closed.
At eleven, Kenneth was just at five feet tall, and thin. He had golden hair. Not blond. Golden. Golden brown skin, and his greenish-gold eyes had just a touch of elongation of the pupil. Not cat’s eyes, but a bit cat-ish. Kenneth was as enhanced as any of the prime Cybrant lines but was also educated from birth to be a ruler. He had, in theory, all the traits to make a great leader.
Wong knew it wasn’t Kenneth’s fault that he was spoiled. Kenneth had been fawned over for his entire life, while it was also made clear to him that he was not allowed to follow his own interests.
“What does Father say?” Kenneth asked.
“This is a government matter. Not something to bother Chairman Drake with.”
The emperor of Drakar snorted. “In other words, you’re not sure enough to take it to my father. Okay, what have the Cordobas done?” Kenneth went to one of the chairs in the secure conference room and flopped down on it.
“They released a ship to the Parthians.”
“Give me the dump.”
Wong plugged the memory stick into the room’s net and let Kenneth absorb the data electronically.
“I don’t know, Le. You know how corrupt the Cordobas are. Couldn’t it just be that one of the families got careless or needed a bit of cash?”
“That was our initial assessment, but note subsection C. Two of our top agents in Cordoba space have met with so-called accidents that were fatal in the last month. Both of them were deeply involved in keeping track of Cordoba Combine policy toward Parthia.” That was what really upset Wong, the combination of events.
“Could be coincidence,” Kenneth said.
“I don’t believe in coincidence, Your Majesty.”
“All right. I’ll take it to Father.” The emperor considered. “But he’s been concerned with the free traders, smugglers, and the gray colonies, so he may not pay much attention to this.”
Location: Yagan 3, Cordoba Space
Standard date: 02 16 630
Admiral George Cordoba-Davis waved his former aide into his office. “How did it go, Allan?”
“It got a little messy, sir. He was better trained than we thought.” Allan didn’t pause in the doorway or even hesitate as he entered the private office, but George didn’t ask any other questions until the door was closed and the security systems engaged. Those security systems turned off the holo panels, turning the pleasant, airy space into a white-walled vault.
George went to his desk as he asked, “How much better trained?”
Allan’s face was grim. “He was enhanced, sir. Had to be. He was drinking heavily, and the plan was to have him ‘trip’ going down the stairs. But he avoided the throw and almost brought down our operative.”
“Sit, sit. Then tell me about it from the beginning,” George said, a bit more harshly than he intended. “Are you sure he was enhanced? Couldn’t he have just been lucky? There is no way someone at that level in the Jackson-Cordoba organization should have that level of enhancement. And a clerk, even if he was enhanced, shouldn’t have that sort of enhancement.”
Allan sat but didn’t relax. “I wondered the same thing, sir. I got a tissue sample and had some friends do a genetic analysis. He had most of the Cybrant Iron Line mods and a couple of the Bronze.”
“No way that Tobin Jackson-Cordoba would go along with that,” George said.
“I know, sir. That’s what has me concerned. I think we hit a Drake agent.”
“What the hell is a Drake agent doing pushing the Jackson-Cordoba claims to the Canova system?”
“I don’t have a clue, sir.”
George Cordoba-Davis looked at his long-time friend but didn’t see him at all. The factions within the great families of the Cordoba Combine were becoming more and more polarized, and the gap between the great families and the Spaceforce was even worse. Could the Jackson-Cordobas have sold out to the Drakes? He wouldn’t have thought that of Tobin, but who knew what was going to happen in the next shake up.
Location: New Argentina
Standard Date: 02 16 630
Tobin Jackson-Cordoba stepped out of the theater with what might be called a firm step. If one was prone to understatement. He scanned the street for his limo and checked the time with his internals. It was seventy-three seconds since he signaled for the limo to meet him, and his mouth tightened in irritation.
Tobin appeared about forty to the eyes of a pre-space, pre-genetic engineering human, but you could add a standard century to that and still fall short of the mark. He was dressed in New Argentina formal attire. Not for Tobin the fad of dressing down. His jumpsuit was of Candahar silk, a blend of the red, blue and violet black. It glowed royal purple in the sunset. The joint bands that circled the jumpsuit’s limbs at wrist, elbow, shoulder, hip, knee, and ankle, were gold. His old fashioned “space helmet” hat followed the motion of his head without ever touching his perfectly coiffed auburn hair.
Tobin liked live theater when it was done well, but he walked out on this play five minutes in. An over-ambitious and under-talented playwright attempted to update Romeo and Juliet to the Pamplona sector. Utterly ridiculous. You might as well try to update the melancholy prince. Tobin was a realist. The notion that a fully realized, genetically enhanced human would fall into the sort of emotional morass the unenhanced stumbled into wasn’t just silly, it was actively insulting.
Like the play in question, the Pamplona Sector was indeed ruled by two great houses. The Drakes and Cordobas evolved from family businesses into corporations, then into governments, in response to fluctuations in the political and economic landscape. They controlled, between them, most of the trade in the Pamplona Sector. Through that control, they directed most of the planetary and system governments. Both families were genetically enhanced, logical, and pragmatic.
Either family would have jettisoned Romeo and Juliet through the airlock without a second thought.
Each had done things much more severe to erring family members. Tobin Jackson-Cordoba himself did worse when the situation demanded it.
∞ ∞ ∞
There was his limo. Finally. He strode down the steps and the chauffeur barely got the door up in time. Tobin settled into his seat and sent a message to Conrad to meet him at the palacio.
∞ ∞ ∞
Conrad was there when Tobin arrived, and if he was looking not quite as neat as he might, Tobin decided to let it pass this time. “What’s the status of Canova?” Tobin asked.
“The court rejected Barbra’s final appeal.”
“I know that,” Tobin snapped. “I want to know if any more action is going to be necessary.”
“No, Uncle. The Parthian’s tech is different enough that most people don’t recognize it for what it is. Certainly Barbra Canova . . .”
“Barbra Billingsley,” Tobin snapped again. He was in a snappish mood. But that wasn’t all. It was important to maintain
the position that Barbra Billingsley Canova was not, in fact, a member of the Canova family. That there were no Canovas still alive, because only then did the contracts between the Canova family and the Jackson-Cordobas go into effect.
“Excuse me, Uncle, but why the sudden concern?”
“Because in a few minutes I’m going to call that idiot bitch Angela Cordoba-Davis and tell her she’s talked me into supporting her position on New Kentucky, in exchange for her support. . . . Don’t shake your head at me, boy.”
“Sorry, sir, but the wealth of the Parthian industrial base will . . .”
“I know that, but I have a solution.” Conrad was talking about the danger that as soon as they started to truly exploit the industrial base of the Parthian home system, the Cordoba Board was going to notice and react. Probably send in the navy and take the bugs’ system for the Combine.
“Sir?”
“I was thinking about it while that hack butchered the play by trying to update it without taking into account the fact that we are practical people, not romantic fools. Our solution is Admiral Lord John Charles Huffington.” The Drake admiral was a hot head and had all the subtlety of a bull in a china shop, but he was an effective naval commander.
“I don’t understand.”
“The Ambrosius route.” Tobin said referring to a gray route that the Jackson-Cordoba Trading Company used to smuggle goods from Parthia into Drake space. It was common knowledge that it was there, but its precise location was closely held. On the Cordoba side, it came out on the route between Parise and Ferguson. “Huffington will go after Parise, but it will be a plausible threat against Canova. Once we have the forts in place, we’ll be in a position to use the bugs as a labor force. We won’t have to worry about the chairman of the board ordering out the navy. Not against forts, not when he’s already dealing with a Drake incursion. We’ll have decades to put the proper controls in place and ramp up production. With the bugs churning out war goods, the rest of the Two Hundred will have to fall in line.”
“It’s risky, Uncle. Once we give Huffington the route, we lose it. If he gets his ass handed to him, we give up the route for nothing.”
“Make sure the commander at Parise is not the best we have. You’re right that we need Huffington to have at least initial success.”
“The board?”
“Petros Cordoba wants the chairmanship.” Tobin filled a snifter about a quarter full of cho-ki brandy, swirled the deep blue liquid around in the snifter, lifted it to his nose, and inhaled the scent of the Parthian liquor. He took a sip, then turned back to his nephew. “He won’t get it, but we can make it look like he might, and that will tie Susan Cordoba’s hands. At least long enough.”
“That might push the Chairwoman to supporting the spaceforce’s demand to vote the space force shares.” The Cordoba spaceforce was supported by the dividends from a large block of stock. If the spaceforce was allowed to vote it, they would instantly become a power in the selection of the Cordoba Board.
“No.” Tobin shook his head. “The rest of the board would never go for it.”
“And the Drakes?”
“Nothing for now, but once we have control of the Cordoba Board . . .” Tobin considered. “The boy will have to go, but we will need to make sure none of our gene scans are anywhere near that, because we won’t be imitating the Montagues. We’ll follow the example of the Habsburgs instead.”
“Ah, happy Austria,” Conrad quoted, “other royal houses commit war while the Habsburgs commit marriage.”
“But all that is decades away. First we must gain control of the Cordoba Combine.”
“Actually, I was worried about what the Drakes are going to be doing in the meantime,” Conrad said.
“You mean you think they’ll follow up on Huffington’s gains?” Tobin shook his head. “No. Ferdinand Drake is too cautious for that. He won’t be happy about Huffington’s actions and he’s going to suspect the military of trying to gain support for a coup. The first thing he’ll do is purge their ranks of anyone competent. The Drakes aren’t the danger.
“The danger is what it’s always been. That someone other than ourselves will see the use that a race of natural born slaves can be put to in the building of empire.”
Chapter 5
The political ramifications of fold space and the jumps it makes possible are subtle and often misunderstood. Fold space doesn’t simply provide shortcuts to travel between the stars. In broad terms, it transforms what is commonly thought of as the desert of deep space into a multidimensional swamp, full of hidden routes and hiding places. So many hiding places that effective policing becomes prohibitively expensive.
Each new jump point is a new hiding place for criminals, and the patrol and other police organizations have no hope of catching up if the number of jumps continues to increase at present rates. Some means of limiting jump discovery must be put in place if effective control of the system polities is to be achieved.
Classified Memo to Drake Combine from Chief of Security
Standard Date: Lìuyuè 7, 548
Location: Pandora, in orbit off Concordia station
Standard Date: 01 29 630
“W
ell, this is the ship.” The captain bared its—no, his—teeth. Which Checkgok knew was supposed to be an indication of joy. “There is no question we needed the job.”
Checkgok looked around. There was a shabbiness about the Pandora that bothered it deeply. The dark green decking was scuffed, the once pale green bulkheads were worn, scratched, and in need of a new coat of sealant. Even the overheads, once probably yellow, were faded and drab.
“That’s Tony,” Captain Gold said, pointing at a squat box on four rollers with two mechanical arms. It was a drone of sorts, but not like they had on the Fly Catcher. This one had an unpainted weld on one of its surfaces, and there were wires attaching the vise grip-style hand to the arm, and a bolt as well. Even Checkgok, who knew virtually nothing of mechanics, could tell that they weren’t designed to fit the arm.
Pandora spoke. “Drone T 83 was damaged off Chaco. We were forced to rebuild it from scavenged parts.”
“It works okay. It just needs supervision,” Captain Gold insisted.
This was Captain Gold’s clan home. He owned nothing on his home world. As Pan told Checkgok, part of the agreement that gave him the ship was that he relinquish all properties and endowments he was entitled to by virtue of his birth. He really was a new clan.
Checkgok, like it or not, was now a worker of that clan. It really didn’t like it much, now that it was sober and in its right mind. It wasn’t prejudiced, but humans really were pretty disgusting.
They continued their tour of the ship while either the captain or the ship itself described what they were seeing. Cargo holds, empty except for scraps and the cargo transhipped from the Fly Catcher. The hydrogen tanks were full now, from Clan Zheck’s goods sold here. The fusion generator banks, a massive tube that ran down the center of the ship from just behind the bow to the stern, surrounded by panels so black that no hint of light reflected off them. Plasma tubes, one at the base of each wing mast. It was like, and yet unlike, the Fly Catcher.
They reached the core chamber for one of the twelve main wing engines. It was a ten meter wide coil of half-meter wide superconducting cable. The cable was a muddy green coil, thick enough that you couldn’t see the walls of shieldgold used to contain and focus the magnetic field. Shieldgold wasn’t actually gold, though it weighed about the same. It was an artificial element that was unstable unless held in a matrix of carbon balls. It had the property of reflecting magnetic fields and was essential for the operation of the hyperdrive. It was in good repair as far as Checkgok could tell, but there was still that feel of wear.
They reached the crew’s quarters, where Checkgok was given a room and the captain left it there to talk with the Pan about the cargo and where to take it.
Location: Pandora, Concordia Free Space
Standard Date:
01 30 630
The Pan pulled away from Concordia Station with a couple of gentle flaps of her magnetic wings. The drive system on an interstellar ship was what was once called “dirty magnetic sails.” It was mostly a movable magnetic field, but it was injected with plasma, both to extend the field size and because using the flapping of the magnetic wings, turning the field off and on at the right time in the cycle, could thrust the plasma away at speeds very close to that of light. It was what some wit called “the largest nozzled rocket motor imaginable.” The thrust plasma was pushed away from the ship at speeds approaching the speed of light, but over so wide an area that someone floating directly behind the ship wouldn’t even get a sunburn.
Pan’s magnetic wings flapped hundreds of times a second and passed the plasma between them in a complex dance that produced a neat and orderly aurora borealis of thrust. It was a beautiful sight and one that Danny greatly loved. Now he watched through the ship’s sensors and felt with Pan as she thrust against the very fabric of space with her magnetic wings.
One of the mods of the Gold Line was the natural interface that allowed Danny to tie into a computer without even the minor surgery that most humans needed. So he stood on the bridge of the Pan, one hand on the back of his accel couch, barely aware of his body, while his mind felt the space through the feedback of the wings. It was like flying, he thought. Not like floating in zero-g. Like flying. The wings pushed against space and were pushed against by space. He felt more than saw Concordia Station receding in the distance as they began their acceleration toward one of the jump points near the station.
Danny stayed on the bridge for almost an hour as Pan moved away from Concordia Station. By that time, they were moving at good speed and far enough away so that there was no need for a bridge watch.
An hour out of Concordia, he finally pulled out of the virtual reality of the ship’s sensors, patted the accel couch, then turned and went out the hatch, and down the corridor to his cabin. He lay on the bunk and used a routine he was taught as a child on Cybrant to put himself to sleep.