Ace of Thralls (Freelance Courier Book 3)

by Lawrence M. Schoen

  “It is a complicated situation, I admit,” said Aushthack. “Perhaps my solution is not a workable one, but there has to be a way to make it happen. Randolv Greyce sent me to you, because they were convinced you could solve this problem.”

  “Yeah, about that. I’m not so sure. That’s the least part of it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You didn’t listen to that message before you delivered it?”

  Aushthack stiffened. “That’s too offensive to even respond to!”

  Gel ignored the Tosh’s reaction. “Randolv Greyce is dead.”

  “Dead? That’s impossible. The consortium identity of Randolv Greyce is not a singular being like you and I. They can’t simply die.”

  “Turns out, they can. Something about helping you goes against a fundamental Clarkeson precept. Maybe it’s because you know the location of the Clarkeson homeworld or you threaten the status quo there with the idea of liberating your people. Either way, while Randolv Greyce supported you, it’s the last decision they made. Their consortium disbanded. They’re gone.”

  “Gone?”

  “That was in the message he sent you to pass on to me.”

  “I’ve… I’ve killed a Clarkeson?”

  The pain in Aushthack’s voice surprised Gel. Randolv Greyce was of the same race that had enslaved his people from the very beginning, had biologically hardwired them to revere and serve.

  “You didn’t kill anyone,” said Gel. “Randolv Greyce made their choice and knew that a possible outcome of that decision would be worth the immediate consequence. Everything I know about Clarkesons says they like to poke at situations, tinker with variables, and then see what the outcome will be.”

  Aushthack nodded. “Yes, that’s true. That’s a part of the curiosity the Tosh share with them.”

  “Yeah, well this time, the tinkerer won’t be around to see the outcome.”

  “All the more reason for you to help,” said Aushthack.

  “How do you figure?”

  “They obviously intended you to be part of the plan.”

  “That doesn’t necessarily follow—”

  “No, no, clearly it does. They could have asked for your assistance, involved you without telling you that helping to liberate my people would lead to suicide. You didn’t need to know that. Unless…”

  “Unless?”

  “Unless they felt having that knowledge would make a difference.”

  “I don’t see how that follows.”

  “The identity of Randolv Greyce had been alive for many millennia, and the trillions of sapient cells of their body even longer, in other configurations, other consortiums, other identities. They saw this as a goal worthy of their total sacrifice. Think about that, a trillion people—”

  “I don’t know that I’d call them ‘people,’” said Gel.

  “What you call them doesn’t matter, a trillion living minds made up that consortium and died for their choice. Do I have that right?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “And now, it’s your turn to honor that choice, so their sacrifice will not have been in vain.”

  Gel shook her head. “That’s the kind of emotional manipulation and blackmail that Clarkesons excel at.”

  Aushthack shrugged. “Where do you think I learned it from? So, are you onboard? Can I hire you as Randolv Greyce suggested I do?”

  Commitment and a Question

  Gel sighed and turned to stare out the lounge’s wide window. The station had continued rotating, granting another deck with an unobstructed view of Finiskifel. Even so, she wondered if enough of its soothing light was still reaching her to scramble her brains and cloud her judgment. If she prodded Aushthack and asked why he’d arranged for her to meet here, would she find that it had been Randolv Greyce’s idea from the beginning? Was the Clarkeson still meddling in her life despite being dead?

  “The first thing I need to do is visit this moon of yours.”

  “Really? Why?”

  “I… have my reasons. And I’m not always going to be able to explain them to you. Look, I don’t mind you asking, but if I tell you I can’t answer, then I can’t answer, and that’s when you need to stop asking. Got it?”

  “But—”

  “No ‘buts.’” She cut him off again. “This is a condition of my taking the job. Remember, I’m a courier; that means I transport things from one place to another. Well, right now you’re the thing I’m transporting and the place I’m taking you to is this moon of yours.”

  “But I don’t need to go to the moon.”

  “I didn’t say you did, but that’s how we’re going to start.”

  “And you can’t tell me why?”

  Gel sighed again. Technically, she could tell him, but it wouldn’t make sense. Aushthack assumed she was human, and while Randolv Greyce may have suspected she was more than that, or other than that, they seemed to have died without conclusive proof. And it didn’t seem like they’d shared any of their suspicions with Aushthack. She wasn’t about to explain that she was a Plenum, and that while she could move objects from any place in the galaxy, before teleporting something to a specific point she needed to travel there herself and effectively soak up the coordinates. That had been part of the motivation of becoming a courier in the first place. Traveling around, system to system, world to world in Tiggly, allowed her to lock in an ever widening catalogue of teleportable destinations. If she was going to take on this gig, it only made sense to add Aushthack’s moon to her list.

  “Let’s just say I want to get a feel for the lay of the land.”

  “It’s a gas giant’s moon. It’s nearly the size of your home planet.”

  “Your point?”

  “My point is there’s no ‘lay of the land.’ It has multiple continents, different climate zones, mountains and deserts, rain forests and open plains. It’s a fully realized and complex ecosystem. There’s no place on it where you can stand and encompass the entirety of it.”

  “That’s a good point,” said Gel. “Objection noted. So, when can we leave?”

  “You still want to go?”

  “Oh yeah, that’s never been a doubt. We’re definitely going.”

  “It will take me some time to make arrangements.”

  “Why?”

  “We’ll need a ship. I was only able to meet you here because I had arranged one way transportation on a vessel that was stopping over. To reach the moon we’re going to have to use a private craft, so as not to publicize the existence of the Clarkeson portal network.”

  “That’s not a problem. In fact, it’s probably one of the reasons Randolv Greyce sent you to me. I already know about the portals.”

  “You know about the portals that link to the one hundred systems that also contain mausoleum worlds, not to the smaller, even more secret network.”

  “I didn’t before, but I do now. You told me about them, and if that’s what we need to utilize to reach your moon then you’re going to have to share locations and access codes with me.”

  “But—”

  “But the good news is we can take my ship. Tiggly’s already been into the atmosphere of several of these gas giants and successfully passed through these smaller Clarkeson portals.”

  Despite the facial coloration that made him look like a grinning clown, Aushthack managed a frown. He slumped against the table, folding in upon himself. “That’s all true. Maybe it’s just my biological programming, but it feels like a betrayal to me.”

  “Refocus,” said Gel. “It’s not a betrayal to the Clarkesons from your home world who don’t even know you’re out here. Rather, it’s acting in accordance with the wishes of Randolv Greyce, the last Clarkeson you were in the presence of. Does that help?”

  The Tosh appeared to consider this and his posture changed again. He straightened, head back, chest out, and managed to smile.

  “You know, it actually does.”

  “Well, there you go. Now you have a new strategy that you ca
n use whenever you’re uncertain.”

  “A new strategy?”

  “Yeah, a simple question you can ask yourself. Come on, let’s head to my ship. We’re burning daylight.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense. We’re in space. It’s all daylight.”

  “It’s an expression.”

  “Fine, fine, but you haven’t said what the question is. What should I be asking myself?”

  Gel slipped her arm through his and tugged in toward the exit, determined to get them moving to the docking ring where Tiggly awaited. “Oh, it’s simple. W. W. R. G. D.”

  “I still don’t understand.”

  “What would Randolv Greyce do?”

  Two More Wafers

  Finiskifel was located in the Laurel star system, which contained only two portals. Both had been built by the Hreshresh, an alien race long since departed from the galaxy. Before vanishing, they had been quite famous for pushing their portals over extremely long distances. It wasn’t a practical choice for most races. Pushing portals between the stars took real time. By all accounts, the Hreshresh had started early and made it their race’s purpose, sending generation ships armed with entangled portholes off in all directions. While portals did allow for virtually instantaneous travel between the sides of each pair, in most cases crossing the galaxy still required popping through one portal in a system only to immediately access a second portal there to emerge above yet another star repeating the process over and over before attaining one’s destination. But a well positioned Hreshresh portal could bypass hundreds, even thousands of light years, and at some point in the distant past this now extinct race found it important to be able to visit the paradise world of the Trelniki.

  Gel wasn’t even sure if the garden world had existed back then, but it was a hugely popular destination now. There was nothing else to speak of in the Laurel system, and the Trelniki liked it that way. None of that mattered; people still came. The Trelniki rarely allowed anyone to land on their world and the ring of stations they’d constructed above Finiskifel were booked years in advance. The lines to access either of the inbound Hreshresh portals stretched for days, and these were located in nearly equally obscure systems.

  For the outward bound route, Gel guided Tiggly through one of the Hreshresh portals, skirting past the line of of vessels eager to visit Finiskifel and cut across to access a different portal that in two days’ time allowed her to transit into Arconi space, where she then had access to one of the more efficient and tightly knit systems that race had created. That led to several days weaving a route through four other portals before reaching the destination that Aushthack had provided, the Randee system, home to Sereg, one of the galaxy’s mourning worlds. And as Gel had learned, wherever there was a planet dedicated to the dead of all of the galaxy’s races, there was also a giant ball of hydrogen that contained one of the Clarkeson’s secret portals.

  “I’m not picking up anything close to the habitable moon you described,” said Gel.

  Tiggly had cleared the portal and traffic was mild. Gel took advantage of the opportunity to mentally lock in coordinates so that anytime in the future, if she so chose, she could teleport something there. One never knew when her mutant Plenum ability might be useful and the entire process required seconds. Meanwhile, scans of the system had revealed only three planets, a Chthonian planet in close orbit to Randee, the mausoleum world of Sereg with its dizzying array of tombs and cenotaphs, and the gas giant no one had bothered to name. None of them had moons, and once that was clear she’d called her client to the bridge.

  “You misunderstand,” said Aushthack. “Our destination lies on the other side of a portal buried in the gas giant. You indicated you’ve traveled through such Clarkeson portals before.”

  “Fine.” As it happened, Sereg’s orbit was on the other side of the star from its gas giant. Gel set a course that over the next three days carried them through the system and past the massive planet, at which point she doubled back, putting the bulk of the planet between herself and anyone who might be tracking her ship from elsewhere among the system’s inner planets. She again summoned the Tosh to the bridge, and once he’d arrived there she plunged the ship into the swirling thickness of the atmosphere.

  “If there’s a Clarkeson portal here, I don’t know its codes. This isn’t one of the few that Randolv Greyce had shared with me. You said you had coordinates and codes for all one hundred of them associated with mausoleum worlds. Now would be the time to share some of that information.”

  “Of course, said Aushthack. “As I told you, I’ve made a point of transitioning through every portal in both of the Clarkeson networks.”

  He withdrew a memory wafer from a pocket of his jumpsuit, one seemingly identical to the one he’d given her earlier with the Clarkeson’s final message to her.

  “This contains the locations, repeating beacon patterns, and access codes for the one hundred portals spread out to systems bearing mausoleum worlds.”

  Gel plugged the wafer into her console and, as the data came up on a screen, searched for the Randee star system.

  “Got it. The portal here connects with a gas giant in the Wijeratne system, where, not surprisingly, there’s another mausoleum world.”

  “That is correct. But you will also find a second portal hidden in the depths of that gas giant. And from there to yet another. You could, eventually, visit all one hundred systems in this way.”

  “Please tell me we’re not going to transit through one hundred different portals of the Clarkeson network.”

  “No, of course not.”

  “Then how many?”

  “Six all together,” said Aushthack. “The route is on the wafer. With only a few exceptions, every gas giant in this network contains only two portals. When we emerge from the fifth portal from here we’ll be able to make use of one of those exceptions.”

  “Where will that one take us?”

  The Tosh smiled, but Gel thought it was a nervous smile.

  “Home minus one.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “The home system of the Clarkeson origin world contains only a single portal, but that portal opens into a super-massive gas giant which contains entry points for all the portals in the Clarkesons’ other network of some sixty portals.”

  Aushthack held up yet another memory wafer. “That’s when you’ll need this, beacons and codes for all the portals there. You will be looking for the one that connects to the Danita system.”

  “And that’s the former Bwiller system where we’ll find your moon?”

  “It is.”

  “Does that wafer contain the specifics for getting to the Clarkeson homeworld?

  Aushthack paused before answering though both knew the question was merely pro forma. A memory wafer with all the portals of the Clarkesons’ even more secret network must surely contain the way home.

  “Yes.”

  “Good,” said Gel. “Because you know, we’re going to have to go there as well.”

  Gel hadn’t thought it was possible for Aushthack to grow paler, but he did, just ever so slightly.

  “I know.” And that was all he said before exiting the bridge and returning to the cabin Gel had provided to pass the days that lay ahead.

  Gel settled into the resulting in silence and focused her attention, navigating through the soup that passed for Randee-III’s atmosphere, instructing Tiggly to scan through the electromagnetic static and noise all around them. Somewhere in there would be a repeating string pattern that marked the location for the Clarkeson portal that was their next destination. These portals, as Gel had discovered after taking on Randolv Greyce’s retainer, were much smaller than the main network of portals that serviced surfing the galaxy, reflecting the tendency of Clarkesons to travel alone — if a consortium made up of trillions of individuals could be thought of as alone — in much smaller ships than the massive cargo haulers that frequented other portals

  It was part of what had kept t
he Clarkeson network safe since they’d been constructed. Locating one of them by accident was several orders of magnitude more difficult than the proverbial needle in a haystack. Possessing the string of the portal’s beacon helped somewhat, but the strength of that signal was weak and of limited range. The location information of Aushthack’s wafer would help, but after so many years within the swirling miasma of a gas giant’s atmosphere, she suspect that the portals might have drifted a little. Gel constructed a search grid centering on the data provided to her. Spiraling outward, mapping a portion of the gas giant with an overlay hexagonal pattern, she began the search process. With a little bit of luck, they’d find that first portal without having to exhaust every hex on the map. When they did, she’d trigger the portal using the codes the Tosh had provided, fly through to emerge in a similar but different soup of another gas giant, and start the process all over again.

  At the front and back end of each portal, she’d lock in the coordinates in her mind, though for the life of her she couldn’t imagine any circumstance where she’d want to teleport something into the atmosphere of a gas giant that had only been used by, at best, a few thousand Clarkesons over so many millennia. Still, jumping in and out of portals wasn’t all that different from most of her jobs as a courier, though the endless swirls of gas filling her display screens was both dizzying and exhausting. She much preferred the view of star fields, each one different from the others, reflecting the point of view of the system containing the most recently traversed portal. Here all she saw was gas, arguably different concentrations and compositions, but gas all the same. Still, it could be worse. Though, in that moment, Gel wasn’t sure how.

  Approaching Dawn

  Aushthack’s blended scent of violets and spearmint had been especially strong when he’d first boarded Tiggly, more so than back at the orbital station above Finiskifel, which had her thinking it a natural secretion rather than an artificially applied cologne. If that was the case, did it represent something unique to him, or was it more generally another difference between Tosh and Clarkesons — she didn’t recall Randolv Greyce ever having smelled like much of anything.