"In my opinion, the single greatest service ever performed by a zor High Lord was to commit suicide and take three enemy ships with him. Nothing else they do, or say—even if you could understand it when they said it—contributes materially to the war effort. And when we win this war, as we undoubtedly shall, the emperor will have something to say about non-cooperative 'allies.' Then we will see what becomes of their 'autonomy.'"
She opened her mouth to provide an angry retort. Hansie hurried on, forestalling her: "This is wartime, Admiral Laperriere. Fortunes are made—and lost"—he placed his hand on his breast and gave a little bow—"in this climate. If you wish to throw away a seemingly promising career to work with lukewarm allies who do not even have the honor to support their protectors and patrons, I can only pity you. If you choose to continue your military career, I can only applaud you. In any case, I will not bother you anymore." He gave another bow and backed away into the maelstrom of formalwear and dress uniforms and was presently lost to her sight.
Almost as soon as she lost track of Hansie, Dan McReynolds surfaced nearby. She must have looked upset because he looked concerned.
"What's the problem, Jay? I saw you talking to that little parasite; what did he want?"
"He wanted to educate me, I guess." She straightened her uniform jacket a bit at waist and cuffs. "He believes that the zor are holding back, that we're going to brush this invasion aside and then take away the autonomy of the High Nest."
"I'm not surprised. I've had my ears open: Nobody seems to think of this war as anything but a scheme by the military to keep its funding up. It's surreal, Jay."
"They don't know what's going on out there. If they did, what could they do about it?"
"Panic."
"Damn straight, Dan. How could any of these people, except the emperor perhaps, face down the idea that in a few months, or years, everything could be gone?"
"Fiddling while Rome burns."
"It's worse than that. It reminds me of Ur'ta leHssa, the Valley of Lost Souls. Especially in the outermost parts, the Lost Ones move about, continuing to do what they have always done, unable even to lift their heads to see the Fortress of Despite above them. The ones in the Center know their fate—they can see the Icewall, but can't bring themselves to pierce it, so they become like statues with nowhere to turn but within. But on the edge, they don't even know that they're trapped."
"I'm not sure I understand the comparison, but I assume you know what you're talking about."
"Yeah." She set her drink on a side-table. "Georg Maartens said he'd detach you to be my shuttle service, huh?"
"I can show you a private message he prepared in case you asked."
"There may not be a safe place even with the sword," she said. "I can't guarantee anything."
"Nobody asked for a guarantee, Jay."
"All right," she said after a moment. "Tell your partners that I accept their offer. Let's get the formalities over with down here, and then I'm expected out at Langley."
Chapter 16
Trebizond made six jumps with its escorts, starting at Denneva and ending in the zor Core Stars. Rich Abramowicz had no idea where they were headed; Barbara MacEwan, his only contact with the ships guarding his own, wasn't about to provide that information.
The first jump transit was from Denneva to Schumann, a heavily populated system fifty-odd parsecs from Sol System. It had a large shipyard well away from what was now a war zone.
Schumann had three Earthlike worlds circling a K2 orange star, each slightly different, all beautiful. It was a prime shore-leave destination for Navy crews headed for R&R.
Trebizond had eight hours in Schumann System—time to skim the gas giant, refuel and line up for the next jump. All information was delivered in a brief, precise comm-squirt from Duc d'Enghien, and was executed forty-five minutes later, down to the millisecond.
The second jump transit took the ships from Schumann to Kiu Ho, Mu Herculis, a G5 star less than ten parsecs from the homeworld. It was almost at the limit of Trebizond's jump range to travel so far in a single transit—more than sixty parsecs—but the ship emerged on the exact tick of the ship's chrono. Kiu Ho had extensive naval facilities even though itwas far into the Inner Sphere; it had been settled by one of Old Earth's larger countries well before the War of Accession and had retained its military base through the constant efforts of its representatives in the Imperial Assembly.
Jumping to Kiu Ho made Abramowicz wonder whether they were ultimately headed for Sol System itself. He hadn't attended the Naval Academy there; he'd been promoted up from OCS outside the Inner Sphere. Like most Imperial citizens, he'd been born and raised elsewhere—Sol System was a place on a stellar map, written about in history books, not a place to which people actually went.
At Kiu Ho they weren't even permitted to fly to the gas giant: their scoops were kept stowed, and an unmanned oiler came alongside to provide them with enough fuel to make their next jump. Abramowicz's hopes for a tour of the home system were quickly dismissed as he received orders for the next jump.
From Kiu Ho they jumped to Harrison System, on the other side of the Inner Sphere. Harrison was another world that had been settled before the War of Accession. It was a system with two large industrial worlds and wasn't much of a place to visit; they didn't stay more than a few hours—just long enough to refuel and line up the next jump. Once again, there were oilers out at the edge of the system.
By this time they clearly were expected at each destination. Aboard Trebizond, nerves were frayed and tempers were short, particularly with the unspoken message the escorts sent Someone's an alien. And somehow, somewhere, there was somebody who could tell the difference.
They next arrived at Escorial, a full-member world in the Solar Empire, sixty-one parsecs away from Harrison. A century ago it had been at the Solward edge of what had been called the New Territories: systems captured from the zor during the wars of the late 2200s. By this time, there were betting pools in the wardroom and in every mess aboard the ship, for where they were headed and when they'd get there.
At Escorial the two Emperor Ian-class ships and two Broadmoors were detached and replaced by four zor naval vessels, so that only they and Duc d'Enghien remained as escorts for Trebizond. By the time they emerged at A'anenu, at the edge of the Antares Rift, it was obvious where they were headed: the zor Core Stars, only twenty-five parsecs across the Rift.
What awaited them there was anyone's guess.
The Langley complex covered a vast area of Callisto, etched silver and black, lit by the eerie swirling light of Jupiter hanging in the sky. Imperial Intelligence was a vast, largely unseen labyrinthine bureaucracy that the Navy knew well but didn't trust much. Jackie's gut feelings were still based on her original career experience; reaching the center of the hidden machine might have made her uneasy, except that the last few months had taken much of the fear away . . . but not the wariness.
She stood on the bridge of Fair Damsel and felt, more than heard, the soft hum from the gyaryu as she watched Langley resolve itself on the ship's forward screen. She didn't know the true origin of the name, but in the Navy, "Langley" meant "spooks": warrant officers with no apparent duties; Sensitives with no military discipline; mysterious packages and sealed orders. When she had taken command at Cicero there'd been an intel guy stationed there, but a few months afterward he'd received transfer orders to another posting, as there was nothing going on at that end of the Empire.
Jackie smiled inwardly. It's always good to know that the spooks are fallible. She remembered what se Sergei had told her within the gyaryu before she'd left Zor'a: "What is likely, is that you will learn more from what they do not say than by what they do." They couldn't all share the bigotry and tunnel vision of a Hansie Sharpe, but she was still probably better informed than they were.
Don't give anything away, she thought to herself. What was the famous expression? "Better to be silent and be taken for a fool, than to open one's mouth and remove all do
ubt." She'd only gotten this far by being underestimated.
A small four-person shuttle transported her from Fair Damsel to the surface. It was driven by an unsmiling and uncommunicative MP who acted like he was under 3-V surveillance during the entire trip. After a few fruitless minutes of trying to initiate pleasantries, Jackie sat back and convinced herself to relax, becoming a passive observer for a short time. The gyaryu lay across her lap in its tooled scabbard, and even without communicating with the inhabitants she could feel the hsi within it like a living, palpable thing.
When she emerged from the shuttle airlock, a rashk was waiting for her. In her long career in the Navy, she'd met very few of the heavyset, bucolic reptiles; they mostly stuck to their three homeworlds in Vega System. The ones that left were usually merchants and traders. They didn't join the military services, and even Jackie's exoculture and exobiology courses at the Academy hadn't dealt with them very much. But here she was, and here he—she—it?—was, in front of her, standing nearly two meters high. It was an upright-walking blue-green lizard with six limbs, and a broad tail that curved up at the end; a wide, horny head with a three-nostril snout; three elongated, bleary eyes and a wide, toothy mouth that showed a perpetual grin. The rashk was wearing something that looked like a tent-sized purple silk bathrobe, with the Imperial Intelligence emblem over the breast; no doubt it satisfied some color sense of the being, but to Jackie it clashed horribly.
"Gyaryu'har Jackie Laperriere, are you," the rashk's voder rumbled. The device, perched over where a human's sternum would be, allowed the rashk to form human sounds which would normally be beyond its vocal range.
"Honored," she said.
"M'm'e'e Sha'kan," it replied, pointing to itself and bending at about the level of the bathrobe's sash. Its tail curled up behind. "For you a guide M'm'e'e has come to be, questions to answer and ask. Welcome here at Langley you must be made to feel, to M'm'e'e the director has said, and this dictum follow M'm'e'e shall!" The rashk clapped its hands, making a loud, moist sound. "Sorrows for the predecessor to you; with him, M'm'e'e have had many talkings. To the Three he has gone, yes?"
"He has . . . transcended the Outer Peace," Jackie replied. "You knew si Sergei?"
"Much known was he to M'm'e'e Sha'kan!" the rashk answered at once—so emphatically that it seemed like the response to an accusation. "We were friends of greatness, indeed, as shall you be to M'm'e'e when we have come better into each other's knowledge. Ha ha ha." This last exclamation, which the voder rendered the best it could, sounded like three sharp coughs, but seemed to be laughter.
This is a test, she thought to herself, and the gyaryu seemed to murmur assent. "M'm'e'e Sha'kan," she said, "I am pleased to make your acquaintance. I have come some distance in hopes of asking some questions that you might be able to answer."
"Answer questions shall M'm'e'e!" the rashk said.
He, the gyaryu offered on its own: the first question she'd wanted to ask in the first quiet moment.
"But first, refreshment for the guest provide must M'm'e'e. Come this way, ha ha ha," he said, clapping his hands and sweeping down the accessway, leaving Jackie no choice but to follow.
Once the initial surprise had worn off and she'd accustomed herself to his speech patterns, Jackie actually found M'm'e'e quite charming. He was young for a rashk away from home: The rashk were a long-lived race, and "young" made him almost twice her age. He had "emerged from the Three"—hatched, she supposed—a few years before Marais' death, when the relationship between the People and the Solar Empire had only recently changed. As the scion of a rashk diplomatic clan, he had been drawn to apply to the Intelligence Academy and was one of the first of his race to serve in the Agency. While the Agency itself was hide-bound and peculiar, as an institution it apparently was a good judge of talent; after twenty-seven Standard years in the Intelligence Service, M'm'e'e had achieved his current position of Third Deputy Director. He seemed particularly proud of this "happy circumstance," as he put it: "the most auspicious of omens."
He had known Sergei for nearly twenty years, though they had mostly met on neutral ground at court at Oahu, that fertile breeding-ground of diplomatic intrigue. Somehow, a three-hundred-kilo lizard in a purple bathrobe didn't seem like the sort of person capable of engaging in "intrigue"; but the universe had already done a good job of convincing Jackie how strange it could be.
After a considerable amount of forced reminiscences and small talk, M'm'e'e suddenly charged toward relevance with the speed and determination of a Cicero snow-ox.
"Here come you, information for the High Nest to get," he said abruptly, slapping his two upper left hands on the table. She had been about to set her drink down, but thought better of it. "And talk is all M'm'e'e do can!"
Too bad you didn't reach that conclusion half an hour ago, she thought to herself. She smiled, though, knowing that she'd enjoyed hearing him talk about himself almost as much as he had enjoyed doing it.
"Information to get you must have, questions to ask, questions to ask," he said. "By the Three, time wasting it is, though this phrase to M'm'e'e means little: Perhaps Gyaryu'har Jackie Laperriere explain to M'm'e'e it can. What like to know you would?"
She reached into an inner pocket of her tunic and drew out a comp. M'm'e'e pointed to a pad in the table with his two left hands and she placed it there. The image of Thomas Stone formed in the air about a decimeter above the table.
"I want to know as much as I can about this man."
The rashk's nose wrinkled and one eyebrow drooped in an expression that, on a human, might have been quizzical. He leaned back in his chair and folded his hands across his chest—once, then twice, in sequence—and said, "You have data references with you brought?"
"It's all in the comp."
M'm'e'e casually extended one right hand to the table and tapped it near the pad. Controls appeared, configured in a splayed shape and pattern she didn't recognize.
Built for a rashk, she realized after a moment. A service record appeared below the picture, rotating until they could both read it.
"From the war era," M'm'e'e said. "Old news, this is. Undoubtedly back to the Three this individual has gone."
"Don't bet on it"
"Clarification?" the rashk replied, the other eyebrow drooping. "Why in this old service record interested are you?"
"I believe that there's more information on him here at Langley. I want to see it."
"Not the source of service records are we," M'm'e'e began. "Countless persons have there been, and not enough storage could we possess to, tabs upon whom keep, as you say might."
"Look him up."
"Happy to oblige is M'm'e'e," he answered. "But dubious is M'm'e'e also." He began to key in a request. A reddish patch glowed in midair below and to the left of the service record. "Intriguing," he said at last, and leaned forward, resting his huge head on his two pairs of hands.
"What does it mean?"
"Death of an agent, symbol represents," he said, nodding toward the red patch. "More to this there is," he added, and continued to key. A series of images flashed by: a holo of a pistol; a figure shaped like a human mummy; an arcology complex seen from afar; a 3-D graph of some sort—
"Wait!" Jackie said. The graph, which had been undulating back and forth, became still. M'm'e'e looked up at her. "I can't absorb it that fast," she added.
"Apologies must M'm'e'e tender!" he said, and gestured to split the 3-V image into several pieces. The series she had seen appeared in sequence, along with a few images she'd missed.
When it all had been displayed, she leaned forward. "Is this all attached to Stone's record?"
"Indeed is it. More to this than the nose could first sniff is there, ha ha ha," he said. "Official investigation, but closed was it by Imperial edict.
"Usually accessible is it not," he continued. "Well-informed you are," he added.
"What's it all about?"
"Slowly, slowly," M'm'e'e said, leaning back and folding his hands
again. "Information with price comes."
"Price?"
"Give and take, take and give. Price. Exchange of information there must be, se Gyaryu'har. Even to se Gyaryu'har, free comes nothing."
"I'm not sure I understand."
"Dissembling does se Jackie Laperriere, Gyaryu'har; more than she says is she knowing. To understand that knowing, M'm'e'e wants to know also."
"Information for information."
"Give and take, take and give. Record—" He gestured toward the series of images. "No record found would be, unless Stone particularly queried was. Knew you to ask, database answer provides. How knew you to ask, clever se Gyaryu'har! Sword question gave, answer to get?"
She tried to read the rashk's expression and took a moment to send out a quick call for help to the sword that hung by her side. What does he want?
Information. Sergei's voice came into her mind, clear and calm. M'm'e'e is a trader, like most of his race. He won't tell you what he knows until you tell him what you know. Remember, se Jackie—what they do not say is perhaps more important: This matter is obviously significant.
"You say there was a death involved. An agent," Jackie said to M'm'e'e. "That doesn't seem like a good-enough reason for an Imperial edict There's more to this than you're saying, isn't there?"
"Give and take, clever se Gyaryu'har. Take and give"
"All right." She leaned forward, folding her hands on the table. "The service record shows Stone died in 2307 after having gone missing during the last war. What would you say if I told you that I spoke to him less than three weeks ago?"
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