by Martin H.
“What stopped you?” Luis wanted to say What stopped you, since you have a fortune to spend?
She shrugged her narrow shoulders. “Who would see it under this suit?”
Luis drew his lips into a thin line, decided to change the subject, but only just a bit.
“They’re mined on Earth mostly, but they’re not from Earth. Not originally.
Diamonds are from the stars, though a lot of geologists still argue that point.”
She sat next to him on the cooled tile floor, her leg brushing against his. Reah was still examining the crystal.
“Black diamonds,” Luis continued, “What you’re holding are called carbonados, made of space carbon. Stardust. Dying stars release stars into the solar systems around them. Some of them release carbon that is embedded into meteorites, which strike planets and embed the chips there. It’s the extreme heat and pressure that transforms that carbon into diamonds.”
“The conditions that exist here,” Reah said.
He nodded. “Geologists know that many diamonds on Earth are more than three and a half billion years old. That means the carbon in them predates animal and plant life by nearly three billion years. Proof, really, that diamonds weren’t created on Earth.
They really are Stardust.”
“And you have further proof here.” Reah replaced the crystal and selected another.
“I don’t care about the proof.”
“Just the diamonds,” she stated. “The Stardust.”
“There is nothing more brilliant in the universe than a cut diamond, especially black diamonds like these. Not even the stars come close. Not even the dying ones. The way the light hits their facets, bends and reflects, creating a rainbow. No other jewel has the luster of a polished diamond. So rare and precious.”
“And so valuable.”
He nodded. “Maybe as valuable as any new element your father might be discovering this trip.”
“Your family…”
“… has been involved with precious gemstones for centuries,” he finished with a considerable amount of pride. “My great-grandfather is the one who suggested that diamonds came from space. He theorized that chondrites, that’s a…”
“I know what a chondrite is. A class of meteorite.” She set down the crystal and studied Luis’ face instead. She saw excitement there, his breath coming faster as he explained his passion and heritage.
“A chondrite is filled with an incredible concentration of tiny diamonds. They’re seeds, essentially. When they crashed into Earth in ancient times, the chondrites planted these seeds, and larger diamonds grew around them. The volcanoes thrust them close to the surface, where people discovered them. They discovered diamonds on Mars, too, though the deposits were mined out quickly.”
“And now you’ve a new source and a new way to mine them.”
“Exactly.”
“And you’ll be richer.”
Luis’ shoulders sagged. “Money’s not what it’s all about, even though it sounds that way. If it was just about money, my family would make synthetics. We did it late in the twentieth century. A machine, small-only thirty-five cubic meters. It squeezed a diamond shard, nearly a million pounds of pressure, and cooked it at about fifteen hundred degrees centigrade. Add a bit of graphite and some other catalysts to stimulate carbon grown around the shard. A couple of days later, you’ve got a diamond approaching two karats. You could tell the difference, of course, but not with your eyes. It takes a good jeweler’s scope. People bought them, paid about as much as for a natural stone. So it’s not money.”
“What, then?” She had moved even closer, raised her small hand and wiped at the sweat on his forehead.
“Pursuit,” he said after a moment. “Of the purest diamonds. The largest.”
She drew her hand back and stood, attempted to smooth away the folds of her suit.
“We’re a bit alike, you and me. You into diamonds because of your family, just like I’m into sun-mining. Rich, and getting richer. And all in pursuit of the next, glorious find.”
“Its not about the money.” He didn’t hear her leave, she was as quiet as a cat.
However, he heard the chime echo through the bay telling him the cool-down period was over and it was time to venture into the oven again.
They’d mined NGC7078 for five days before the pirates came.
Reah was shining, displaying crack piloting skills as she guided the huge and bulky Mire away from the dying sun and the three fighter ships laying a line of laser-fire behind it. There was a big mining ship behind them, moving into the position vacated by Melka’s ship.
“Damnation!” the captain hollered, as he paced back and forth in the tail cargo hold.
His eyes were maniacally wild. “They weren’t shadowing us!” One of the crewmen had suggested that, believing that one of the fighter ships had been in their last spaceport and followed them, radioing for support and the pirate mining ship.
“If they were shadowing us, they would’ve chased us off earlier. Wouldn’t‘ve let us get the choicest elements. They weren’t shadowing us. Someone radioed out and notified them where we were going. It took them five days to reach our position.”
He stormed from the bay, face red from NGC7078 and his anger. He found Luis sorting through his uncut stones. Melka surprised him, dragged the smaller man up by the collar of his suit, holding him so only his toes touched the floor.
“So you paid me to mine for you. And the pirates paid you to reveal my stars. I ought to kill you. Toss you out the air lock and watch you explode.” Spittle flew from Melka’s lips, and his eyes held Luis‘, freezing the smaller man.
Luis couldn’t speak, overcome by the madness and fury in Sean Melka’s eyes. He tried to swallow, but found he couldn’t manage that either. All he could do was sweat and listen to the pounding of his heart, the sound thunderous in his ears.
“Dad!” It was Reah’s voice, and it was followed by a high-pitched whine.
The captain crumpled, stunned. Grateful and flabbergasted, Luis picked himself up off the floor and staggered back a few steps, thanking her. Captain Melka’s chest rose and fell regularly, but his eyes were closed. He was unconscious.
“You stunned him good,” Luis managed. The words were hoarse, and he worked to get some saliva in his mouth. “I owe you my life.”
A generous smile was splayed across Reah’s porcelain face. Her eyes were locked onto Luis‘. Unblinking, they reminded him of her father’s.
“I didn’t notify any pirates,” he began, wanting to explain his innocence to someone.
“I don’t know any pirates. He thought I did. He told me where we were going just before we left the port. And thought I… But I didn’t. I wouldn’t.”
“I did.”
He saw something else in her eyes at that moment, a wildness, a madness. He opened his mouth to say something else, but stopped himself and tried to put everything together. What could he say? Why was she doing this? What next?
“Its all about money, really.” She answered his unspoken questions. Her voice was ice. “The raiders pay me well, money I don’t have to share with my father. Still, I don’t call for them until he’s mined plenty-the cream from the dying sun. Money from them. Money from Dad’s mining.” She shrugged. “Besides, it makes his old age more interesting, running from pirates, looking over his shoulder. I’m helping him in a way, giving him a thrill, keeping him from getting complacent in his last years.”
“Agitated like a dying star,” Luis mused. “But he thinks I…”
“Of course he thinks you called them. And I’ll tell him he was right. Tell him you were pulling a laser on him.” She did that then, replaced the stungun and tugged a small laser pistol from her pocket, aimed it at her father and lanced him in the leg.
His body quivered in response, but he remained unconscious. “I rushed in here trying to warn him, but you shot him before I could do anything. And so I retaliated.” She turned the weapon on Luis, and he looked a
bout for something to hide behind.
“Y-y-you’re mad!” he stammered, backing up toward a tall crate.
“The stars do that to you.” Her voice was still cold. She thumbed the trigger and a small white beam shot forward and stabbed at Luis’ chest, burning through the suit and the skin beneath, finding his heart. She fired again and again, though he was dead before he hit the floor.
She turned to regard her father. “I’ll get the men to carry you to the medtent,” she said, knowing he couldn’t hear her. “Tomorrow we’ll find another dying star. One, I think, that has diamonds.”
THE END
KEEPING SCORE
by Michael A. Stackpole
Michael A. Stackpole is an award-winning game and computer game designer who was born in 1957 and grew up in Burlington, Vermont. In 1979 he graduated from the University of Vermont with a B.A. in History. In his career as a game designer he has done work for Flying Buffalo, Inc., Interplay Productions, TSR, Inc., Hero Games, Wizards of the Coast, FASA Corp., and Steve Jackson Games. In recognition of his work in and for the game industry, he was inducted into the Academy of Gaming Arts and Design Hall of Fame in 1994. He’s the author of The New York Times best-selling series of Star Wars™ X-wing novels, and the fantasy novels Once a Hero and Talion: Revenant, and The Dark Glory War.
The ambush seared scarlet light through the mauve jungle. Sara had felt it coming a heartbeat before beams flicked out-things had gotten too quiet for a second. The enemy fire manifested as full shafts of light instantly linking shooter and target, then snapping off, since light traveled far too fast for even the most augmented eyes to see it as tiny bolts. Ruby spears stabbed down from high branches, or slanted in from around the boles of trees, here and there, as the Zsytzü warriors shifted impossibly fast through the jungle.
Sara cut left and spun, slamming her back against the trunk of a tree. Her body armor absorbed most of the impact, and she continued to spin, then dropped to a knee on the far side of the tree and brought up her LNT-87 carbine. The green crosshairs on her combat glasses tracked along with the weapon’s muzzle, showing her where it was pointed. The top barrel stabbed red back at the ambushers, burning little holes through broad leaves and striping trunks with carbonized scars. Fire gouted from the lower barrel as chemical explosives launched clouds of little flechettes at the unseen attackers.
Next to her, Captain Patrick Kelloch, the fire-team’s leader, laid down a pattern of raking fire that covered their right flank while she concentrated on the left. Flechettes shredded leaves and vaporized plump, purple lotla fruit. She thought she saw a black shadow splashed with green, and hoped one fewer laser was targeted back at her, but the Zsytzü were harder to hit than she’d ever found in virtsims.
Bragb Bissik, the team’s heavy-weapons specialist, stepped into the gap between the two human warriors. Un-derslung on his massive right forearm were the eight spinning rotary barrels of the gatling-style Bouganshi laser cannon. Into each barrel was fed a small lasing cell, consisting of a chemical reagent that released a lot of energy really fast. The cell converted that energy into coherent light of great power and intensity that blazed for almost a second once the reaction had been started. The cannon whined as the barrels spun. The red beams slashed in an arc, nipping branches from trees and burning fire into the jungle’s upper reaches.
The weapon spat the smoking lasing cells out into a pile at the hulking Bouganshi’s feet. The brilliant red beams bathed him in bloody highlights. Hulking and broad-shouldered, the Bouganshi could have been a demon from any number of human pantheons, and Sara hoped the Zeez would find him purely terrifying.
As Bragb’s fire raked the higher branches, two beams stabbed out from the ground to hit the Bouganshi’s broad chest. Sara shifted her fire right, intersecting it with Kell’s assault on the origin point of one of those beams. A purple wall of foliage disappeared in a cloud of smoke and mist. Something screamed, then something screeched, barely heard above the thunder of the fire-team’s weapons. Red beams winked off from the Zsytzü line, then never appeared again.
Kell raised a hand. “Hold fire. They’ve run, I’m thinking.”
Sara remained in her crouch as burned leaves fluttered down and smoldering twigs peppered the ground. “Makes no sense for them to run. They had us.”
“Close.” The Bouganshi slapped with a three-fingered hand at the smoking black scars on his purple-and-gray, camouflaged body armor. “Heat, no crust.”
She checked her armor and saw a couple of dark furrows melted in it. “Likewise, toasted not burned.”
“Better than I was expecting.” His azure eyes bright, Kell gave her a nod. “Bit different than simming. It is, isn’t it?”
Sara tucked a wisp of blonde hair back up under her helmet. “In sim they’re relentless. They never break off like this.”
“That’s because, lass, you’re using Qian simware. Much as they hate the Zeez, they grant them a bit more honor than in reality.” Kell thumbed a clip free of his 87 and slapped a new one home. “For an honorable kill, you need an honorable foe. Only simZeez act that way.”
Sara Mirke frowned. “I’m not clear on your meaning, Captain.”
“Qian like order in their Commonwealth, hate mystery, and hate dishonor. They don’t like to acknowledge it exists. Quirky, our masters.” Kell rose and waved the others forward. “Let’s see what we got.”
Still covering the left flank, she moved out in Kell’s wake. Bragb came behind, watching their rear. They went up a slight slope and over the splintered remains of underbrush, on the other side of the crest the land sloped down into a tree-choked ravine, through which ran a small stream. Halfway down the hillside a body lay against a tree, twisted against itself, with a gray-green rope of intestines pointing back uphill.
Kell nodded. “One less to play with.”
“Too bad it wasn’t the Primary.”
A gruff chuckle humphed from the Bouganshi’s throat. “Too much Qian virtsim.”
“Better to take the juniors first, Sara.” Kell knelt by the body, emphasizing just how small the black-furred Zsytzü was. In life, it would have looked like a crossbreeding between a chimp and a wildcat, with tufted ears rising high. It had a long black tail which Sara knew was not prehensile, though she checked herself on that assumption. Most of the stuff I know comes from virtsim, so is subject to that Qian programmer bias. The closed eyes should have been rather large, the closed mouth should have had nasty fangs, and the hands should have ended in savage claws, but as nearly as she could see they remained sheathed.
She shivered. The dead creature looked like nothing so much as a school child dressed up in some elaborate costume. “It’s like we’re making war on children.”
“More so than you know.” Kell produced a knife from a boot sheath, turned the Zsytzü‘s head to the left, and cut up along the neck and behind the ear. He exposed the skull and dug out a small, cylindrical device that had been inserted into a hole behind the right ear. The thing trailed two wires. “The Primary will be severing the link, but intel will want it.”
Sara looked away from the body and busied herself plucking a stray flechette from a tree. “We continue on the patrol, or head back?”
“We push on.” Kell smiled over at Bragb, who reciprocated, exposing a mouth full of serrated white teeth. “We’re ahead in the game, and they need to know that.”
“I’m not sure I understand.”
“I know, lass, which is why you’re out here with us.” Kell waved the Bouganshi forward. “Take point, I’ll get the rear. We’ll let Lieutenant Mirke continue her learning experience.”
“Point.” The Bouganshi hefted his weapon and marched along the ridgeline, then down into the game trail they’d been following before the Zsytzü had hit them. Bragb moved off at a pace that Sara thought was less than prudent and when she turned back to complain to Kell, she saw he’d slung his LNT by the strap over his right shoulder.
“This has got to be a game because you two
are playing by rules I don’t understand.”
“War’s not really a game, at least, not from the Qian point of view. Same can’t be said of the Zeez, which is why the Qian hate them so much.” Kell tipped his helmet back, exposing a lock of brown hair pasted to his forehead. “You know the Zeez only allow males to act as warriors, and that males come in two flavors. Juniors are born five or so to a litter, along with a Primary. They’re augmented these days so the Primary can give them direct orders but, for all intents and purposes, the little hoppers are the mental equivalents of five-year-olds. The juniors can remember a command or two and carry them out, but without the Primary, they’re very limited.”
“I know, which is why killing the Primary is so important.”
“That depends, Sara. If you’re killing the Primary right after he’s given his brothers an order to get some sleep, well then, well done and more of it. If, instead, he’s just told them it’s time to kill the enemy, and he’s been a bit vague on defining enemy, you have little homicidal beast-ies roaming about.”
“Omni-cidal, Kell.” The Bouganshi glanced back, flashing a white curve of grin. “If understanding of Terran is correct.”
“I’m corrected, Bragb.” The team’s leader smiled easily. “The Zsytzü seem to have a view about this conflict with the Qian Commonwealth that isn’t quite clear to the Qian. Being as how the Zeez are augmented, fight differently, and have an annoying habit of being hard to kill, the Qian really want little to do with them.”
“Which is why we’re here.” Sara sighed. The Qian Commonwealth had approached Mankind at a period when Men had only moved to a few of the other planets in the solar system. The Qian took humans in through something of a protectorate program, giving them faster-than-light travel- which they suggested humanity would eventually discover- and integrated them into their galaxies-spanning empire.
Humanity contributed what it could, and some of the better exports were soldiers. A few were even seconded to the elite Qian Star Guards, with all of them serving in the Black-star company.