The Kassa Gambit

by M. C. Planck

  “I don’t know. My father was a baker. He never went more than fifty kilometers from the apartment block he was born in. She was a traveler…”

  She had been a spacer, a wanderer, a free spirit that flitted unanchored through the galaxy, working her passage on an endless succession of stray freighters and liners. Something about Prudence’s father had caught her, and she had fallen for the last time into the gravity well of a planet, to bud and seed like a tumbleweed taken to root.

  Within a year she was dead.

  Prudence had been the only thing her father had left of his beautiful star-crossed bride. He had married again, because that is what people do. He had loved his new wife, and the children they made; he had been a dutiful husband, a loving father, a good man. He had built a normal life. When he tried to tell Prudence the stories her mother had told him, the places she had been and the sights she had seen, it was as if he was relating a fairy tale that he had read in a book. Only when he had shown her the medallion had it become real to her. Only then had she seen the memory of grief in his eyes.

  A few stories, a medallion, and the legal status as half off-worlder were all the inheritance he could pass on to Prudence. The thing she envied the most, the time that he had spent with that wonderfully exotic person, could never be shared.

  When his homeworld of Strattenburg had burst into self-immolation, Prudence had fled in helpless despair. Only her status as half off-worlder had let her escape the clutches of a mad bureaucracy. Only the invisible beacon of her mother’s world had given her direction, kept her moving on an uncharted course instead of drifting aimlessly.

  “You found Baharain, from a sliver of glass. Can you find her world from this?” Prudence didn’t dare hope, but she had to ask.

  “No,” Jandi said. He put a data cube on the table. “I was going to trade you this, for your sliver. It is a copy of the university’s star compendium; every fact, observation, and rumor we’ve collected over the last hundred years. To buy it would cost a fortune, and undoubtedly break a law in the process. So I thought it would be a fair trade, but now I am in your debt again. The most I can tell you is that nothing vaguely like your artifact is described in that cube. I cannot guess how the medallion came to you, yet no other technology followed.”

  Prudence had thought long and hard on the problem. “Maybe a node failed. Maybe we’re cut off now, the okimune split in half. Or still connected, but by a roundabout way, and it’s just taking this long for knowledge and tech to work its way through node-space.”

  Jandi shook his head sadly. “There are a thousand maybes, Prudence. War, disease, stellar collapse, or even aliens could have nipped this flowering in the bud. Or maybe they just don’t care. Maybe the gods are jealous. Prometheus is still bound to his rock; perhaps no other chose to join him.”

  “I thought Hercules set him free.”

  A twinkle of dark humor in Jandi’s eyes. “You believe in heroes? But of course. You are full of hope, as the young should be. Even a tired old man like myself can look at the edge of your knife and see possibilities. Take this cube, Prudence, and continue your quest. I lay only this charge upon you. When you find another university that has not heard of Altair, share the contents of the cube with them, even if they refuse to share theirs with you. We academics have learned to overlook petty stumbles in the march of knowledge. When you’re so far away from here you can’t gain any profit from it, then give it away, as I gave it to you.”

  Prudence probably couldn’t gain any profit from it now. She already had a database of the local stars, and it was undoubtedly more up-to-date on current commercial issues. Kassa’s sudden change in buying patterns, for example.

  But for a person intent on traveling beyond common knowledge, it might be of considerable value.

  “Thank you,” she said. “I will.”

  “If you can bear it,” he added softly, “you might update the entry on Strattenburg. We chose not to slander based on rumors. But you know the truth.”

  She would have to think before she made that promise. Carrying his data cube like pollen to a distant flower was one thing. Bleeding her heart into it to make it richer was something else.

  “I’m going to update the entry on Baharain first. By going there.”

  “I advise differently, my dear. I advise you to run without looking back. You cannot materially affect the collapse of this world, and why should you try? Your fate does not lie with us, child. We strangers cannot ask this of you.”

  Coming from a man who had just announced his intention to commit state-sponsored suicide, this paean to self-interest was unconvincing.

  “It’s what I must do,” she parroted at him. “For my own sake, Jandi. I can’t flee without at least trying to help.”

  He sighed. “You should. You would serve us better as a pollinating bee, not a warring wasp. One sting more or less will not matter to the bear who raids our honeyed chambers. At least promise me you won’t surrender completely to vainglory, to the point of thinking your death will matter. I know mine won’t; I offer it only because it is already so immediate. The advantages of decrepitude—one has nothing left to lose.”

  More lies. It was obvious that Jandi would have picked a fight with the League at any age. Courage was as integral to his character as the sharp eyes and deft fingers.

  But would he have endangered a wife and children? Would he have stood up to the authorities if he had a family that depended on him, children who needed him, innocents they could threaten with destruction?

  There was a reason the heroes of legend were never married. There was a reason so many people on Altair stood by silently and did nothing. It was the same reason that so many on Strattenburg had done nothing, until it was too late. Only the people without attachments could afford to risk everything. And if they weren’t attached to the world, why would they care what happened in it? Prudence had kept herself free of attachments since the day Strattenburg had burned them all. Or tried to; people kept creeping inside her defenses, like Jorgun and Jelly and Kyle and now Jandi. She had been running away out of self-protection, but now she found herself too detached to fear and too attached to flee.

  Jandi pushed the cube into her hands. “I can give you two days’ head start. Go and see, but don’t touch. And don’t come back! The danger that they linked us together will be too great. On that cube is a list of scholars you can trust. Send them the results of your investigation by parcel post, and then abandon us to our fate. It is no more than we deserve.”

  She left that night. No point in trying to find a cargo. Altair had stopped all outgoing shipping. The planet had become a black hole of commerce. Goods poured in, but the only thing that could escape the pull of the government’s gravity was that mass-less, ephemeral substance known as debt. Theoretically it was self-regulating. The physicist Hawking had proven that the virtual particles that leaked out of the event horizon of a black hole would eventually evaporate it. But physicists were not known for their financial acumen.

  She had to kick a dent in Garcia’s door to wake him. He was too drunk to understand the dangerous course she was setting, but he refused to leave the ship. It was a choice, of sorts. As much as she could give him at the moment.

  Melvin’s network contact was now listed as “unregistered.” When she went to his stateroom, intending to pack his belongings into storage at the spaceport, she discovered it was already empty.

  “Yeah,” Garcia mumbled, when she confronted him again. “I forgot. Melvin bailed on us. Bastard didn’t have the guts to face you. He waited for days for you to leave the ship so he could clean out his locker. Don’t know why. He won’t need any of those surfer clothes now.”

  “Why not?” she asked, wondering what terrible fate she had consigned her crewman to when she had chosen to land on Kassa, instead of running away.

  “He enlisted. Can you believe it? Fleet took him. Him! Earth-fire, he even tried to get me to enlist.”

  This war was sucking her clean.
Credits, crew, cargo—everything she had that wasn’t nailed to the deck. They only left her with the broken bits, the simpleminded Jorgun and the incurably dishonest Garcia.

  No, she thought, not even the broken were hers to keep. Kyle Daspar had been something she might have repaired, an old cracked vase that she might have found value in, but the League had taken him too.

  In the early hours of the morning, when Fleet finally gave her clearance to approach the node, she felt something warm on her feet. The shoes had melted, turning dull gray and soft. They were no longer pretty.

  FOURTEEN

  Stakeout

  He exploited the kid shamelessly.

  The company gave Kyle a few days off to recover. He spent the time hatching a plan. To get outside the dome, you needed official documents. To do anything on this cursed planet required documents, because then they could charge a fee for it. Kyle began to miss simple bribery. At least it generated less paperwork.

  The only open ticket for wandering around the planet’s surface was a prospector’s license. Money wasn’t enough, though: you had to pass exams to qualify. Kyle’s employment card got him past the pressure-suit exam, and his Altair documents let him waive the driving test for an explorer buggy, but there was no way he was going to learn enough about mining in the next few days to get a prospector’s license.

  That’s where the kid came in.

  The day after the accident, Kyle ambushed him after work, falling in step beside him outside the RDC complex.

  “You coming back soon?” the kid asked hopefully, clearly still blaming himself. That made Kyle feel guilty for what he was about to do, but he reminded himself he was doing it for Kassa, too. If he could tell the truth about what was going on, the kid would volunteer anyway. So really, it wasn’t trickery, just basic security procedure—“need to know” and all that.

  “I got a better idea,” Kyle answered. “Here, let me buy you a beer.”

  Three drinks later, Kyle had him convinced. Now that they were partners, Kyle decided he should start thinking of the kid by name, instead of as that gangly young idiot.

  “Bobby, right? My friends call me Kyle. It’s a nickname.” Kyle was still using his fake identification from the storage locker, but he felt Bobby deserved to know his real name.

  They shook hands and agreed to meet tomorrow. Then the kid went home to study some more. Kyle spent the rest of the evening trying not to feel dirty. Since everything on Baharain was perpetually dirty, he failed.

  Bobby was waiting for him when he got to the examination office. Kyle had come early; Bobby had come even earlier. He looked nervous.

  “Worried about passing?” Kyle was. He needed this kid’s help.

  “Nah,” Bobby said. “I can do it.”

  Kyle shrugged questioningly.

  “I didn’t tell my parents. Sent a letter last night, but I didn’t tell them.” Bobby was morose. At the end of the week there wouldn’t be a paycheck to forward to them.

  Kyle forced himself to grin. “Don’t worry, it takes days for a letter to get there and back. By the time they can ask, we’ll be staking our own claim.”

  “Sure,” Bobby said, but he still looked green.

  Kyle took him inside and paid the fee. It cost half the credits he had left. Then he went to spend the rest of his money renting equipment.

  “You didn’t get a plasma torch?”

  Kyle pointed at the camera in the cargo bay of the buggy. “I figured we’d just take pictures, for our first trip.”

  Bobby shook his head. The prospecting license had stiffened his backbone. Now that he had a piece of paper, he seemed to think he was in charge.

  “We need a plasma torch, too. Look, there’s a rental store right next to vehicle air lock twenty-seven. We can stop on the way out.”

  Bobby hadn’t questioned why they were leaving for a field trip in the middle of the afternoon. The kid was too eager to get his new career started. Kyle pulled over when they got to the equipment store, and shelled out some more credits. For now, he needed to keep Bobby fooled.

  They swiped their papers and the air lock let them through. Once you got your documents, the government seemed to lose interest. Probably because there weren’t any more fees to be paid.

  Outside, in the harsh light, Kyle accelerated, putting distance between themselves and the dome. Not giving the kid a chance to get cold feet.

  Bobby spoke first, shouting over the noise of the buggy and the rattle of equipment. He wasn’t using a radio link. “We’re not really prospecting for metals, are we.” It wasn’t a question.

  “No,” Kyle admitted. “I’m after something else. But I needed you to get me out here. Look, you can go back to work in a few days. They’ll still need you.”

  “How do I know you aren’t bringing me out here to kill me?”

  Kyle laughed, a short bark that was more anger than humor. “A little late to worry about that, isn’t it?”

  “That’s why I made you get the plasma torch.”

  Kyle noticed that Bobby had the fuel tank on the floor between his knees. His right hand rose up out of concealment, holding the nozzle.

  “If I wanted you dead,” Kyle explained, “I wouldn’t have left in the same vehicle through the same air lock.”

  “Maybe you were gonna fake an accident. You know, some kind of karmic revenge.”

  “Then all I had to do was leave you alone. A kid as stupid as you, somebody is going to clean you out sooner or later. You told me your life story before you knew my name.”

  Bobby was silent for a minute.

  “Well … I’m learning.” He hefted the plasma nozzle again.

  Kyle grinned. “Yes, you are. Now put that thing down before a bump in the road fries us both.”

  “It woulda looked suspicious going out prospecting without one, you know. We had to get one anyway.” Bobby dropped the nozzle and put his foot on the fuel tank, to stop it from bouncing around.

  “Good call. Okay, here’s the plan. We’re going to mess around until nightfall. Then I go into sector E-3. You’ll wait outside in the buggy. I’ll come back for you, and if I don’t, then you take the buggy and go on home. If they ask you questions, tell them I lied to you.”

  “Why?”

  The less he knew, the better off he was, but Kyle needed to build some trust. If Bobby thought he was out here to plant a bomb or perform an assassination, he might abandon Kyle the first chance he got.

  “I want to take some pictures of the chief executive officer of RDC.”

  “Blackmail … I bet that pays better than prospecting.”

  The kid wasn’t so innocent after all.

  “No, Bobby. I won’t be asking him for money. I’ll be taking the pictures back to Altair, and asking them to arrest him.”

  Bobby stared at him.

  “I think he had something to do with Kassa,” Kyle said.

  They rode in silence for a while, anger radiating from Bobby’s gangly frame.

  “I’m going with you,” the kid said. Not arguing, not asking, not whining. Just a statement.

  War made people grow up fast. Too fast. Kyle almost turned the buggy around and took the kid home, but he knew it was too late. The young man had a right to strike back at the people who had destroyed his home. There was a war on, and Kyle had made his first recruit.

  The sun finally approached the horizon, and their suits started cooling off. As hot and uncomfortable as it had been, it was about to become even worse. The heat you could at least shade yourself from, but the cold would reach you no matter where you hid.

  “They don’t even allow flybys over this sector.” Bobby knew way too much about Baharain security, and he kept telling Kyle why their mission was impossible. “What if they have guards?”

  “I looked, but I didn’t see any ads for external security staff. If they had outdoor guards, they would have to hire new ones on a regular basis. Nobody could do this job long term without quitting.” Running security patrols i
n a place where the greatest danger was the air around you was the definition of a dead-end job.

  “Cameras?”

  “That’s why we’re going over at twilight. The rapidly changing contrasts should confuse any automated surveillance. I doubt they have people watching the entire border.”

  They didn’t even have a fence. What they did have was a bright orange post stuck in the ground, with a warning sign. The sign was so old it was illegible. Kyle could see another post a hundred meters to the left, and assumed there would be one to the right somewhere.

  The buggy’s navcom lit up, telling them they were on the edge of a restricted area. Kyle told it to shut up. He’d already cut off the buggy’s communications with the dome. Although the vehicle was equipped with satellite tracking, it was only for the driver’s convenience. It didn’t automatically report their location to some central headquarters. The government respected the typical prospector’s paranoia about being followed by their competition.

  Kyle drove past the signpost and tried not to flinch. This would be a good place for anti-vehicle mines, but he didn’t really expect any. The insurance liability would be too great for a corporation to stomach. Only governments could leave a piece of ground fatally armed for decades. That was one of the weaknesses of government, in Kyle’s view.

  They crept through the growing dark, sticking to the valleys and low-lying patches. There was no vegetation to shield them, but the rock formations were complex and jumbled. In the fading light, they almost looked like trees or houses.

  A glow from ahead told him they were getting close. The reflected light from the domes hovered like a halo in the sky.

  He stopped the buggy at the foot of a small hill.

  “I’m going up on foot to see if I can get a clear line of vision. You wait here and cover our line of retreat. You can drive the buggy, can’t you?” he asked as an afterthought, cursing himself for forgetting to check that detail.

  Bobby shrugged. “Sure,” he said. He was a terrible liar.

  Lugging the camera and its telescopic lens, Kyle clambered up the steep slope. The hill was treacherous, carved with pits and sinkholes. It resembled a coral reef more than a lump of rock.