Ace of Thralls (Freelance Courier Book 3)

by Lawrence M. Schoen

  Aushthack bowed his head. He ran his fingers to the fluorescent tufts of his clown-like hair, the actions providing the time he seemed to need to compose himself in response to Gel’s question.

  “We had hope, once. We expanded our underground compound and made contact with others throughout our world. For the past three generations my clan has worked tirelessly to restore the fabricators and produce a small fleet.”

  “You have a spaceship factory?”

  Aushthack nodded slowly. “At first, we’d hoped it might be our salvation. But though we possess the vessels, my people are unable to leave.”

  “Why is that? What’s keeping you there?”

  The Tosh spread his arms wide, looking in that moment like a tragic clown who has lost everything it ever held dear.

  “We are as we were made to be,” he said. “Resistance to even the smallest of Clarkeson whims was bred out of us. Any tendency toward independence was culled. We are genetically predisposed to worship and revere our masters. Clans like mine only exist because we have been breeding ourselves for so many generations to lessen those traits.”

  “But… if that’s true… then how are you here?”

  “I am an outlier,” said Aushthack. “I don’t know how else to explain it. I feel only a fraction of the yearning to serve my Clarkeson masters that the other members of my clan know. Even that was almost insufficient. My clan placed me aboard one of our vessels, bound me in restraints, and programmed my departure from our world. By the time I’d freed myself, I had passed beyond our atmosphere. My attempts to gain control over navigation failed. I was locked out until my vessel completed its programmed course. That saved me. I would have turned it around if I could, I was so wrenched with the need bred into my people by the Clarkesons. I fell into withdrawal and my body nearly shut down. Though the members of my clan had managed to satisfy our compulsion to serve the Clarkesons with our efforts to preserve and rebuild our ancestors’ work, in that moment I needed their influence, their control, even if it was just some bit of evidence of their overall neglect. I would have given anything to be reminded that I was less than an insect in their eyes. But I was trapped in my vessel as little more than cargo. Days passed and by rights I should have died, but I was kept alive by automated devices that fed and watered me. I suppose I must have gone mad for a time, wracked with anguish at failing my masters. I passed in and out of consciousness, weeping constantly and lying in my own filth until the ship’s prearranged navigation had completed its program and flung me beyond the reach of my enslavement.”

  By this point Aushthack was breathing heavily, caught up in his retelling of the experience, and not even the soothing effect of the reflected light of Finiskifel was enough to calm him. Gel handed him her glass and he gratefully drained it, regaining some composure in the act.

  “Among the treasures my clan had uncovered was the knowledge of the portal they’d created for the outbound Clarkesons. It had hung unused at the edge of our star system, but my ship had been programmed with its location and the codes to access it. I passed through it, emerging inside the upper reaches of a gas giant. It was the distance that freed me.”

  “I don’t understand,” said Gel.

  “I’m not certain I can explain it either. It may be part of what makes it possible for the cells of the Clarkesons to be sapient. The hold they built into the Tosh is like a psychic tether. It pulls us to them, binds us. But like a physical connection, it has its limits. In going through that portal, I had snapped mine, and their hold over me was gone. I was alone and adrift, not just cut off from my clan and my race, but severed from those beings who for countless generations of biology that had convinced my people that the Clarkesons were the source of everything.”

  “Where were you?”

  “I didn’t know. For seventeen days my vessel’s devices tended to me as I slowly recovered. On the eighteenth I arose, cleaned myself, and absorbed the full impact of my situation. I had lost even the most tenuous urge to return home. The lords of my world no longer pulled on me, and my ship, having completed its programmed course, no longer locked me. With full access to its controls I rose up from the pull of the gas giant and worked out just how far across the galaxy I’d come. I didn’t know what would happen if I went back through that portal, if my connection to the Clarkesons would return, and I didn’t want to find out. But my ship’s sensors had detected other portals before I’d climbed out of the atmosphere. I returned to one of them and, armed with the algorithms from my ancestors’ records, generated the activation code that allowed me to pass through. I emerged in what you know as the Hesblif system. More specifically, in the atmosphere of a different gas giant. That system contained one habitable planet and I guided my ship there. It teemed with life, a variety of beings I had never even imagined existed. They called it Hesnarj, and I would come to learn it was a mourning world, a place where the end of lives are celebrated and death is enshrined. I embraced that as a metaphor of my own situation. There were more than a hundred different races there and I lost myself among them. I didn’t speak any of their languages but I quickly learned. I immersed myself in the wonder of it all and soon realized that I possessed the same hunger for novelty that had driven the Clarkesons to leave my world. Perhaps it was a trait they had acquired from my people when they used us as templates for their own physicality. In any case, that hunger was sated on Hesnarj and I began to make plans. Many of the peoples I met were wary of me. They acted like they knew me or knew of my kind, which of course was impossible. I was the only Tosh to leave my world so how could they possibly recognize me?”

  Gel smirked. “Well, the Clarkesons have a pretty distinctive appearance.”

  Aushthack smiled. “Or as I would have said, most of the rest of you look fairly bland. But of course you are right. They mistook me for a Clarkeson, one of those who had long ago left my world. And though relative to the many many worlds of the galaxy they were few in number, they had had vast amounts of time to establish a legacy among the other races. A legacy that everyone I met assumed applied to me.”

  A Plan Revealed

  “I spent years absorbing everything about everyone and everywhere,” said Aushthack. “I knew that my ancestors had possessed keen and hungry intellects, and those abilities which had gone dormant in us after the Clarkesons no longer had a use for us came back. I soon realized that it was not simply the Tosh who had regressed, but that our state was tied to the decline of the planet-bound Clarkesons.”

  “What do you mean decline?”

  “The Clarkesons you know are actively engaged with the other races of the galaxy. They have purpose, interests, drive. Those who remained on my world lack these qualities. They existed merely to exist. Unmotivated, they maintained their consortiums purely to argue within themselves. Those arguments reflected their despair and depression. Imagine a world where those in power simply no longer cared, about anything. What few needs they had were tended to by the servitor race they had groomed for that purpose from the beginning and whose constant fawning they had always enjoyed and accepted as their due. And even that no longer interested them. At the time I left, their consortiums had become so bored with their existence that they had returned to the sea.”

  “Returned to the sea? What does that even mean?”

  “Most had opted to shed their humanoid shapes, dissolving into amorphous layers only a single cell thick. They’ve abandoned their temples and palaces, as well as the cities built to accommodate their servants, but those servants still attend them along inland lakes or at the ocean’s shores where our overlords float like blissful algae, oblivious to the world around them.”

  “If they’ve lost interest in all things, doesn’t that include the Tosh? Aren’t you free now?”

  “The attention is not what ties us to them; it is our biology. Millions of Tosh, required by their bonds to the Clarkesons, now live like animals spread out along those same shallows. These environments have little impact on the Clarkeso
ns, and they have shown no concern if the harsh conditions result in the death of some portion of their underlings. They can simply summon more.”

  “That’s all very graphic and disturbing, but you haven’t explained why you went to all the trouble and expense to bring me here. What do you hope to achieve? Why reach out to me? And most importantly, why did Randolv Greyce think I could help?”

  “No Clarkeson has left my home world in untold years. The attribute to do so doesn’t exist among those who remained. They are devolving and they are taking my people with them. I’m the only Tosh to ever leave, and the effort to do so came close to killing me. But once I did, I was no longer enslaved. That’s what I want for my people. I want to move the Tosh.”

  “Move them? Where?”

  “If my people are to be free, if we are to avoid following our Clarkeson overlords in their self-destructive spiral, they need to move to a new world.

  “So… what, you want me to help you emigrate thousands of Tosh to other planets in the galaxy?”

  “Not thousands,” said Aushthack, “but upwards of ten million. And not to any other worlds. Though the Clarkesons may be fewer in number in the galaxy, they are well known and easily recognized, and almost always encountered as individuals appearing as singular humanoids to those who don’t know any better. You quite understandably mistook me for a Clarkeson when you first saw me. The same would be true for the Tosh if they relocated to inhabited planets.”

  “That seems likely, yes.”

  “Given the Clarkesons’ reputation for meddling in the affairs of other races, do you think their lookalikes would be welcome in any world, even if spread out to only a hundred on each?”

  “Well, no, I agree that that seems like it could be a real problem,” said Gel. “But if you have to leave your home world, and you can’t go to any known worlds, what option does that leave you?”

  “A fresh start on an unknown world. I believe Randolv Greyce sent me to you, because you already knew about the hidden network of portals set in place when the Clarkesons first left their home, such as the one I used that took me to Hesnarj.”

  “Right. Smaller portals, hidden in the murky atmospheres of a hundred gas giants that share their respective star systems with mourning worlds.”

  “There are more,” said Aushthack.

  “More what? Mourning worlds? I think you’re mistaken. There are only a hundred. They’re sometimes also called mausoleum worlds, so that may be what’s confusing you. But they’re all ancient and they’re very well documented.”

  “Not more mausoleum worlds, more portals.”

  “How do you know this?

  “I have a map detailing them. I’ve been using all my resources to pass through these other portals. Many of them have not been used since the early days of the galaxy. Some have opened onto star systems where other races have since colonized worlds and built up a significant presence. I imagine the Clarkesons of the galaxy have abandoned those portals because the traffic by traditional means is sufficient for their own use. There is no need to risk the discovery of their own network. Other portals from my map open onto lifeless systems where once habitable worlds have been destroyed, where no organic life could survive today.”

  “Destroyed how?”

  “I have no idea, nor did I linger to find out. But what is important is that there was one star system where the gas giant containing the exit portal possessed a viable moon.”

  “Viable? As in habitable?”

  “Yes, and I believe my people have the technology from earlier generations that could, over time, make it a suitable home for the Tosh.”

  “Well, that sounds great. So it’s just a matter of moving your people there. And you said you have ships. It’s still a colossal undertaking, but it’s just a matter of logistics then, isn’t it?”

  “There are complications. The system with this moon was once inhabited, but the race that lived there went mad.”

  “Mad?”

  “They should never have left their planet of origin. In time, each of them succumbed to such terrible homesickness, it led them to destroy the worlds they’d colonized in other systems and to desperately return to their origin.”

  “Holy crap! You’re talking about the Bwillers!”

  “You know them?”

  “I’ve been there,” said Gel. “To Bwill, I mean. Several times.”

  “A fact which Randolv Greyce surely knew. And as you have been there, you know how difficult it is to reach that world. The only portals connecting it to the rest of the galaxy’s network are private constructions owned and operated by the Cliveden and they control who may come and go through them.”

  “I’ve only dealt with them a couple times, when I traveled to Bwill. They weren’t particularly friendly.”

  “The word you’re too polite to use is xenophobic,” said Aushthack. “It’s my understanding they have laid claim to the systems long since abandoned by those from Bwill, and the portals they have to those places exist mainly to allow traffic for mining operations and treasure hunters who pore over the remains of those shattered worlds. Only occasionally do the Cliveden allow other vessels to use their portals to reach Bwill, skipping quickly past the empty systems, and only in exchange for a hefty fee.”

  “So, the problem is that you can’t afford to bring your people through the Cliveden’s portals?”

  “No, I don’t need their portals. As I said, there is a Clarkeson portal in the atmosphere of the gas giant that holds the habitable moon. My concern is that if my people arrive on that moon, the Cliveden will all too quickly discover our presence, and two things will be apparent to them. First, that this moon, which previously had no sapient life, has somehow become home to ten million humanoids who show no record of transit into what they consider their space. And second, as we are obviously not Bwillers, and thus have not even a pretense of prior claim to the world, we will be ejected.”

  “So you don’t just need to move your people to this moon, you need to move the Cliveden out of the entire star system and prevent any future access.”

  “That is essentially right.”

  “And setting aside the logistics of how you’re going to move all of your people, how do you propose to resolve the problem with the Cliveden?”

  “I can envision a simple way, and it is this which is why I think Randolv Greyce sent me to you.”

  “What way?”

  “I need your help to shut down their portal.”

  Entanglement and Manipulation

  Gel staggered backward a step. Shut down a portal? That was insane. Even if it was a private one that the lizards had made and positioned themselves. Just the idea of it, of doing something so ghastly, so heinous — there was probably no greater crime known to sapient life in the galaxy.

  For most of the races using them, the portals had always existed. As each race developed to the point where they could leave their home worlds and venture into space, that network had been the means to connect them to the rest of the greater galaxy. Establishing new connections between star systems could take centuries. They were constructed in pairs, quantumly entangled, such that passing through one meant emerging from the other, regardless of the distance between. But the only way you could increase that distance was to physically push the portals further and further apart, and that took time. You couldn’t cheat, couldn’t move an entangled portal through an existing portal without disrupting entanglement. The only way to move them into position required traveling through space the old fashioned way.

  Her stepfather, Amadeus Colson, had been doing just that, carrying one end of a portable on board ship into uncharted and unclaimed territory hoping to expand the boundaries of Human space. He’d been far more successful than he could have hoped. An anomaly had sucked up his ship, and thrown it further along that vector than he could have reached in many lifetimes and marooning him in deep space. The Plenum who found him and saved his life offered him a deal that resulted in his own pla
net.

  Now this alien, this thrall to the original Clarkesons, wanted her to help him destroy a portal? Never mind that the things were nearly indestructible, built to withstand starships accidentally crashing into them. Nor did it matter that this one wasn’t technically part of the ancient network freely available to all. That was evident by its placement — Tiggly’s report indicated that it was positioned midway between the orbits of the local star, not stacked above and below it — a hallmark of Cliveden portals, who very definitely saw it as their property and as such had the sole right to profit from its use.

  “Even assuming that could be done — and I’m not saying that it can be, or should be. And maybe you haven’t been away from your home world long enough to realize the full criminal extent of what you’re proposing. You want to give your people a new home, but if the Tosh were implicated in this, there’s no shortage of other races that would wipe you out entirely on the grounds that you’ve demonstrated a willingness to destroy one portal and therefore had the potential to do it again. Even destroying an entire race, and ten million sapient beings, however regrettable, would be a justifiable response.”

  “Wait,” said Aushthack.

  But Gel cut him off. “No, you wait. Even if the Cliveden don’t know you exist, they would eventually push a new portal back into that system. First, simply to figure out what had happened to their original one, and then to resume operations there. What will they find maybe one hundred or two hundred years from now, when they finally are able to come and go to that system once more?”

  To say that Aushthack looked unhappy was a profound understatement. “They’d find us.”

  “Yeah,” said Gel. “They’d find you. They’d find a moon inhabited by ten million people in territory that once belonged to a race that invented fish poetry, an area of space they had a plausible claim to from having established mining operations along the line of other former Bwiller star systems on either side of it.”