Ballistic

by Marko Kloos

  “It’s not your father, Miss Ragnar. May I come in? Something awful has happened.”

  Solveig gestured at the door to allow him access, and it retracted silently. Cuthbert walked into her suite and past the bar nook into the living area, where he activated the information system and opened a screen that filled the wall on one side of the room completely. He dismissed the hotel’s courtesy service feed and brought up several news feeds, then flicked them to arrange the screen into quarters. All showed variations of the same visuals: a large, roiling cloud rising into the sky, and a huge building on fire. The scenery was unfamiliar to Solveig, but the planetary background looked like Rhodia—fields of volcanic rock and gravel, and low, barren, snow-capped mountains in the distance. Text updates were scrolling past at the bottom of each screen quarter, too fast for Solveig to try to make sense of the Acheroni script.

  “What is going on, Cuthbert?”

  “Someone dropped a nuclear weapon on Rhodia, Miss Ragnar. It’s all over the Mnemosyne. It hit one of their arcologies.”

  “Gods,” Solveig said. She put down her wineglass and walked over into the living space. Cuthbert was furiously working the text-entry field on his comtab in between glances at the news feeds.

  “I’ve summoned the others to your suite, Miss Ragnar. I hope that is all right. You have the biggest space.”

  “That’s perfectly fine, Cuthbert. Now what in the worlds is going on? Who would drop a nuke on the Rhodians? The war’s been over for five years.”

  “I don’t know who would do such a thing. I just know that it happened. And that it’s very, very bad news.”

  That sounds like the understatement of the decade, Solveig thought as she looked at the news feeds with growing horror. As she watched, Cuthbert changed the feeds and their captions to Gretian. TENS OF THOUSANDS DEAD OR MISSING, Solveig read. STATE OF EMERGENCY DECLARED FOR ALL OF RHODIA.

  Cuthbert looked like he was expecting an impending assault on the city any second. He closed the blinds of the panoramic windows, then paced in front of them like a restless predator, still reading messages on his comtab and firing off his own into the Mnemosyne.

  “I don’t think we’re in danger here,” she said. “Rhodia is a hundred million kilometers away. And Papa said the cities on Acheron are safe from ballistic missiles because they’re never in a fixed place.”

  “And the Rhodians have the best ballistic missile defense system in all of Gaia,” Cuthbert said. “This city is ten kilometers across, Miss Ragnar. If someone wants to hit it, there’s a way.”

  And how will you protect me from a nuclear strike? Solveig thought. The Acheroni didn’t even let your security detail bring sidearms into the city. But she recognized that falling back on his basic job functions made Cuthbert feel like he had a little bit of control over the situation, so she kept the thought to herself.

  They watched the news feeds as the other members of the Ragnar delegation trickled into the suite: Solveig’s assistant, Anja; Gisbert’s bodyguard, Fulco; and his assistant, Inga. Gisbert himself was still passed out in his suite, and Solveig had no desire to send Cuthbert to try and get him to his feet because she knew he’d be worse than useless in his current state.

  He’s going to wake up with a beast of a hangover and find that the world has shifted under his feet while he was out, she thought.

  Even with instant transmission of information across millions of kilometers, the networks could only report what they got from the scene, and after a little while, the images on the screen started to become repetitive to the point where Solveig could begin to predict the angle changes of the limited variety of high-altitude shots.

  The information text scrolled across the bottom of the screen: RHODIAN FLEET ON FULL ALERT STATUS, MINISTRY OF DEFENSE EXPECTED TO INVOKE ALLIANCE TO DECLARE SYSTEM-WIDE MILITARY EMERGENCY.

  “Are we going to war with Rhodia again?” Anja asked. She looked shaken and afraid, completely unlike her usual put-away professional persona.

  “We aren’t,” Cuthbert said. “Not as far as I know. We don’t even have a fleet anymore. But it looks like someone is at war with them.”

  He nodded at the screens, which were showing the footage of the dark, roiling mushroom cloud rising into the sky above Rhodia again from several different angles.

  An incoming message chirped on his comtab. He scrolled through it, then softly muttered a curse.

  “What is it, Cuthbert?” Solveig asked.

  He looked at her, and in the moment he appeared even younger than he usually looked, all wide-eyed anxiety.

  “The Alliance has just announced a full blockade of Gretia, effective immediately,” he said. “They’ve halted all incoming or outgoing traffic until further notice. All inbound ships are ordered to hold station or make for alternate destinations.”

  “They can’t do that,” Fulco said. “That will bring the economy to a halt. Ours and theirs.”

  “Ours more than theirs,” Solveig said. “They can still trade with the rest of the system. We can’t trade with anyone off-planet.”

  “Well, they just did that.” Cuthbert pointed at the display, where the summary of the Gretian blockade announcement had begun to scroll across the screen, framing the foreboding footage of the nuclear detonation and the burning arcology.

  “So does that mean we can’t go home?” Anja asked.

  “Not unless they lift the blockade by the time we’re done with the Hanzo talks. Looks like we may be here a little longer than intended,” Cuthbert replied.

  Good, Solveig thought. That will give Papa’s anger some time to cool.

  Solveig immediately chided herself for her selfishness. Somewhere on Rhodia, tens of thousands of people were dead, wounded, or missing, and her first reaction after the initial shock was relief at the prospect of not having to return home soon to face her irate father.

  As if our family fight is more important than the fate of two planets. Gods help me if I am starting to think like Papa after all.

  She walked over to the bar and picked up her wineglass again, but the visuals unfolding in front of her had made her lose all taste for the indulgence. She poured the contents of the glass into the bio-recycler. Getting drunk wouldn’t help her go to sleep any better. She’d just feel as bad as Gisbert in the morning.

  “What do we do now, Miss Ragnar?” Anja asked. Solveig looked up to see that everyone in the room was looking at her.

  Now you act like I’m in charge, she thought.

  She looked past them all and at the window, where Cuthbert had left a small crack in the alignment of the blinds. The scene outside was unchanged, brightly lit city streets busy with late-night crowds. If there were nukes headed for Acheron and Coriolis City, the blinds wouldn’t shield them, and nothing would matter anymore. And if there weren’t any nukes, then it didn’t matter either, not in the moment.

  “Let’s act as though all the worlds will still be turning tomorrow,” she said. “We have talks to resume in the morning. If the blockade isn’t lifted when it’s time to go home, we figure it out then. But for now, we should probably all go to sleep and go ahead as if nothing has changed.”

  She could tell that they weren’t entirely convinced of the wisdom of her suggestion, but nobody else had any alternatives, and she was glad to see that things were at the point where not even Cuthbert wanted to contradict her openly.

  They all filed out of her suite again one by one. The last to leave was Cuthbert, and from the anxious look on his face, she was almost convinced he’d take up station just outside her door and sleep in the hallway. After she closed the door behind him, she walked into the living space and extinguished all the screens with a wave of her hand, already tired of the repetitive coverage of the very limited information everyone had so far. Tomorrow they would have more data, enough for her to make better decisions. Staying up and trying to keep on top of the incoming news would be a waste of time right now, time that was better used to let her brain reset for whatever was
to come.

  She did her nighttime ablutions and slipped into bed. Outside, Coriolis City was still humming with people and activity, unaffected by the drama that was unfolding a hundred million kilometers away on Rhodia. Solveig felt a strange sense of calmness as she listened to the faint sounds of the busy city outside her suite’s windows. It was oddly freeing to finally have some bigger worries than her father’s disapproval.

  CHAPTER 23

  ADEN

  The bar was called Halo 212. The directions Tess had sent him led Aden to one of the superslender Coriolis City towers that jutted into the sky underneath the dome like needles. Aden’s stomach lurched a little when he stepped onto the skylift platform in the atrium of the building and realized that the number in the bar’s name stood for the floor where it was located.

  When he walked into the lobby of the 212th floor only a minute later, he understood the complete logic behind the name. Halo 212 was a circular platform that wrapped around the building and jutted out high over Coriolis City. The effect was unsettling and breathtaking at the same time because the bar was constructed almost entirely out of transparent material.

  After a moment of hesitation, Aden stepped out onto the floor, which afforded a clear view of the cityscape below. The ring that made up the bar was cantilevered on a thin frame of what looked like titanium and graphite composites, but the wide spaces between the thin spokes of the load-bearing structure were filled in with long slabs of Alon that looked to be at least thirty centimeters thick. Aden knew the properties of the material, but even the knowledge that a slab of that thickness would stop an antiship missile didn’t entirely mollify the primitive part of his brain that objected to walking out into seemingly thin air. He hadn’t kept up with the current price of Alon, but he had a good idea that the cost of this bar’s materials constituted a fair percentage of the building’s total construction bill. They had aligned the thermal welds of the Alon slabs with the spokes of the frame to make the floor look as seamlessly clear as possible, and the end result was frighteningly effective. He knew they could have simulated the same view at a much lower cost and effort with viewscreens in the floors, so the whole thing was an ostentatious display of extreme wealth and engineering prowess.

  Drinks in this place are going to start at fifty ags, he thought as he walked out into the middle of the transparent floor.

  The walls and ceiling were almost entirely transparent as well, with only the most minimal concessions to the need for a visible support structure. The floor jutted out from the building for thirty meters, and the farther Aden got out into the ring, the more complete the illusion of floating in midair became—the streets below, the dark night sky above, all in a grand panoramic vista that was only occasionally broken by a razor-thin composite spar between the massive slabs of Alon.

  It took a little while to spot the other members of the Zephyr crew, which gave Aden a bit of time to adjust to the feeling of being suspended high above the city streets.

  “This is an interesting spot for a bar,” he said when he walked up to his crewmates, who were sitting in a group of skeletonized chairs by one of the windows on the outer edge of the bar. There were two empty chairs in the group, and he sat down on one very carefully, dubious that the thin latticework of the furniture could hold his weight. But it did so with ease, and it was far more comfortable than it looked.

  “Isn’t it?” Tristan said. “I love this place. Even if it is an overpriced tourist trap. But you can’t beat the view.”

  “No, you sure can’t,” Aden said. He looked down at the space between his feet, which gave a clear view of the plaza in front of the building. “How high up is the 212th floor?”

  “Eight hundred fifty meters, give or take a few,” Maya said. “That’s a thirteen-second free fall in one g, in case you’re curious.”

  “I’m sure he could have done without that information,” Tess said.

  “It’s fine,” Aden assured her.

  “Have a drink or two, and you’ll enjoy it much more,” Tristan said. He was leaning back in his chair, one leg crossed over the other. His white linen shirt was unbuttoned to a point just under his sternum, and there was the light-gray stubble of a three-day beard on his face. He looked supremely relaxed, sipping an amber liquid from a bulb-shaped glass.

  “How does one go about doing that in this place?” Aden asked.

  “There’s a bartender station every ten meters on the inner wall,” Tristan pointed. “Or you can summon the live waiter, but that’ll cost you fifteen percent extra.”

  “I’ll do the station,” Aden said. “At least until I know how much they charge for a drink here.”

  He walked over to the nearest bartender station and selected the cocktail menu on the service screen. It wasn’t quite as bad as he had feared, but the place didn’t give anything away either. They had been allowed alcohol in the prison arcology, but only beer, wine, and cider. He still wasn’t used to drinking anything stronger, so he selected a local brew. The service station produced an ice-cold aluminum bottle a moment later, and the screen told him that the ten ags for the beer had been subtracted from his ledger.

  “You got yourself some new clothes,” Tess said to him when he had returned to the group and reclaimed his chair.

  “I did,” he said. “It felt like I’d been wearing nothing but that flight suit for three months.”

  “It’s a good look. Not that you look terrible in a flight suit.”

  “Thanks,” he said and took a swig of his beer to give himself a second to deal with the unexpected compliment.

  The light in the bar was dimmed to enhance the effect of the entire space appearing to float in the night sky, so when someone a few seating groups away opened a screen on their comtab, it was noticeable. Aden looked over in annoyance only to see several more screens opening all over the room. The low din of the conversations in the room picked up, and even though Aden couldn’t understand the Acheroni coming from the seating groups on either side, he could tell that their tone had changed. A tense mood seemed to roll gradually across the bar.

  “Something is going on,” Maya said.

  She flagged down a passing server and engaged in a quick-fire conversation in Acheroni, then turned back to them with a disturbed expression as the server rushed off.

  “Check the networks,” she said and pulled out her own comtab.

  “Which one?” Tess asked as she did likewise.

  “I don’t think it matters,” Maya said. “It’ll be on every one of them. She said there’s news that someone dropped a nuke on Rhodia.”

  That revelation stunned them all into shocked silence. Aden took out his own comtab. Almost everyone in the room had a comtab out and a viewscreen open now, bar etiquette temporarily put aside.

  “Shit,” Tess said softly when she read her own screen.

  The news reports were frantic and repetitive, but they all conveyed the scale of the incident. Aden’s stomach twisted at the sight of the footage of what was unmistakably the mushroom cloud of a nuclear detonation in the clear blue sky of another planet. He knew the scenery well after looking at it for five years, even if he was unfamiliar with the shape of the arcology that was ablaze with hundreds of fires.

  “That is insane,” Henry said. Aden had never seen a hint of fear on the Palladian’s face since he joined the crew, but he looked afraid now.

  For the next few minutes, they all watched the news feeds and exchanged low-voiced commentary among each other, all variations of the same Oceanian rote invectives reserved for shock and disbelief.

  “That puts us in a bad spot,” Decker finally said when the reality of the event had settled in. “A really bad spot.”

  “We gave the Rhodies what we had,” Tess said. “That wasn’t anything we did.”

  “Someone just nuked an arcology on Rhodia,” Henry replied. “Not even a week after we hand-delivered a black-market nuclear warhead to the Rhodian navy. There aren’t that many nukes floating around out
there.”

  “It doesn’t even matter if our nuke is connected to that one somehow,” Decker said. “The Rhodies sure as hell are going to assume they were. The minute we cross back into Rhodian space, they’ll reel us in. If only to make sure they have every bit of information they can squeeze from our brains about that bad client.”

  I used up all my good luck with that Rhodian commander a few days ago, Aden thought. If we cross paths with the Rhodies again, there won’t be any acts of mercy or forgiveness. Not for a former Blackguard.

  “Odds are we weren’t their only supply line.” Tristan picked up his drink and slugged the contents of the glass. Then he grimaced and scratched his head with his free hand. “Nice load of shit we took on with that quarter-ton container.”

  “It happened. We all agreed to take it on. And then we all voted to take it to the Rhodies. Now we have to live with the fallout,” Decker said.

  “So what do we do now?” Tristan asked. “Once we have the ship out of overhaul. Do we just avoid Rhodian space for the next few years? Half our contracts come from the Rhodia-to-Pallas route.”

  “I don’t see how we can go back there,” Aden said. “Not until the Rhodies figure out who dropped that nuke. Because I am pretty sure they won’t just take our word for it that it wasn’t us.”

  Maya got to her feet and snatched her empty bottle off the glass table in front of the chairs.

  “Before we vote ourselves into another disaster, let me get another drink. Maybe something stronger this time.”

  “No rush,” Decker told her as she walked off. “We’re not going to decide anything tonight. Ship’s docked for another two weeks anyway.”

  When Maya returned, someone else was with her. Aden looked up from his comtab to see a handsome, lean man with short black hair by her side. His first thought was that she had met a local friend or maybe picked up someone on her way to the bartender station, but when he saw her stiff expression, he knew that something wasn’t right. Across the table, Henry’s body language shifted into an alert posture, and seeing the Palladian’s hand creep close to the hilt of his kukri set off all kinds of alarm bells in Aden’s head.