Ace of Thralls (Freelance Courier Book 3)

by Lawrence M. Schoen

  “How?”

  Gel shook her head. “I can’t tell you. Courier trade secret, proprietary techniques and all that, and I would probably have to obtain permission to use those techniques, but at the moment, I can’t think of any reason that would compel the people in charge to grant authorization.”

  “So I’m doomed on both fronts.”

  “Oh, not at all,” said Gel.

  “But the problems you’ve detailed—”

  “Are just problems. And problems are simply a framing of a set of circumstances in search of a solution.”

  “And if no solutions exist?”

  “Then we reframe the problem.”

  “Can we do that?”

  “Well, I certainly intend to find out.”

  Gel hid Tiggly inside the atmospheric cloak of the gas giant for two days before accepting the likelihood that Manager Srin had not followed them with any automated crafts. She’d long since located the Clarkeson portal and guided Tiggly to its location, transmitted the appropriate codes to activate the device, and guided her ship through. The gas giant on the other side greeted them with a fierce storm that began buffeting Tiggly from side to side the instant they emerged, altering her momentum and almost causing her to graze the inner circle of the portal. But only almost. An instant later they were well clear.

  Gel set the ship to scanning for the beacon string that would take them back to the Cliveden’s home system, going more slowly than before because while the portals could be likened to needles amidst meta-haystacks, there were still upwards of sixty needles, and it wouldn’t do to accidentally run into one while she was searching for her target. Part of what made the gas giants such an excellent place for hiding portals was the limited detection range allowed by the atmospheric soup.

  “Explain why we are going back?” said Aushthack. “It seems risky.”

  “Why? Because you fear falling under the influence of the Clarkesons again?”

  “That, among other things.”

  “Well, I give you my solemn word, that should that happen, I will nonetheless see that you are able to leave the world again.”

  “When?”

  “When I do.”

  “And how can you guarantee such a thing?”

  Gel simply smiled.

  “Is this another courier trade secret?”

  “You got it. Besides, there are two other important reasons you need to return.”

  “Oh? What?”

  “Well, on the one hand, the fact that you missed the size limitations of the Clarkeson portals in your design considerations has me wondering what other blindspots may have crept into your plans. No, no, don’t take offense. You started off with those plans before you even left the world and stumbled upon the hidden Clarkeson network. I just think it might be helpful for me to see what’s available to you, what resources and technologies your people have managed to save or develop or expand on since your Clarkeson overlords have lost interest in any such advancements.”

  “That makes sense, I suppose. Was there something else though?”

  “Oh, yeah. Probably the most important piece of it entirely.”

  “What’s that?”

  “If we’re going to find a way to do any of this, your people will need a leader, an inspirational figure. Someone that they see as proof of what’s possible. Someone who has not only thrown off the yoke of being a thrall to the Clarkesons, but who has gone off into the greater galaxy, encountered many other races and discovered the status of the Clarkesons who left your home world long ago. An explorer who has found them a new home where they can live free.”

  “You’re talking about me? That’s not an entirely accurate description of what I’ve been doing all these years.”

  “I’m sure I’ve left a lot out,” said Gel. “But the essential pieces are true. And more importantly, they describe who you need to be if your people are to leave their world and start fresh.”

  “Why does it have to be me?” asked Aushthack. “Anyone in my position would have had the same motivations, could have accomplished the same things.”

  “All right, but you were the first Tosh to leave, and as far as you know, no other has left since. Sure. Maybe it’s true that all of your people have the same potential to do these things and that can be part of your message, but you’re the one who’s done them, who has left and learned and now is coming back.”

  “So?”

  “So that’s what makes you a hero,” said Gel. “And even if we solve both of the two overriding problems between us and your goal, your people are still going to need a hero.”

  A Hypothetical Gauntlet of Death

  When Tiggly emerged from the portal of the Clarkeson’s hidden network, it was not into the swirling atmosphere of yet another gas giant. This portal, the very first constructed by those Clarkesons who had departed their planet of origin, hung in empty space, making it more like all the other portals of non-Clarkeson origin throughout the galaxy. Like, but not the same. One by one as their makers had maneuvered them into position, those other portals had been stacked above and below the system’s star, facilitating access to the system’s planets regardless of where they were in their orbits around the primary. The Clarkesons had left their lone portal at the edge of the star system, requiring anyone who might choose to use it have to cross as wide a span as possible before reaching their homeworld.

  “This doesn’t make a lot of sense to me,” said Gel. “If anything, it’s downright inconvenient. The whole point of portal technology is to lessen the actual distance a ship has to travel. Why did those original Clarkesons make it harder on themselves to leave your world?”

  “I couldn’t say,” said Aushthack, “but maybe you’re looking at it the wrong way.”

  “What other way is there to look at it?”

  “Maybe they wanted to maximize the amount of time someone on the planet would have to detect and prepare for any new arrivals.”

  Gel grunted softly and double checked Tiggly’s defensive systems.

  “Are you suggesting that the Clarkesons didn’t welcome visitors?”

  “I know of no record that any other races ever arrived at my world. Nor am I aware that we ever, even at the height of our technology, developed any planetary defenses to protect against unwelcome guests.”

  “But it’s possible?”

  Aushthack shrugged. “All things are possible, but if the Tosh ever did create such defenses, we’ve long since stopped manning them.”

  “But there could be automated defenses?”

  “Unlikely, but, possible, both at the planetary level and strewn throughout the system for that matter.”

  “So we could be running some kind of gauntlet traveling to the planet.”

  “Again, it’s possible but I didn’t encounter anything like that when I left.”

  “Because you were leaving?”

  “I suppose.”

  “Okay, so not to let my imagination run wild but it’s not out of the question that going from this portal to your homeworld is an enormous, one-way killing zone.”

  “That seems extreme, don’t you think?”

  “As you say, maybe, but I’m gonna withhold my apologies until we reach the planet. I can’t think of any other explanation for why in such a long recorded history you haven’t had any other visitors.”

  “I can. Take the time to have your ship do an astrogational scan to determine where we are in the galaxy?”

  “Why?”

  Because no one else has ever parked any portals in this system. The aliens you imagine might have visited and met with some devastating reception would have had to come a very, very long way without any idea what awaited them.”

  Gel instructed Tiggly to perform just such a scan, selecting a number of visible stars, identifying them according to their spectral characteristics, and matching them against her astrogation database and relative positions. She built up an ever more confident map of where they were in the galaxy when an
answer came in. Gel could only stare at her display.

  “Oh,” she said. “So you already knew this?”

  “No. It hadn’t occurred to me to work it out back when I left. Why would it? I’d never been anywhere else. I hadn’t thought about other portals or other races or really even the significance of the distance between stars in the galaxy, and I’ve not been back here since.”

  “But you inferred it from everything you’ve seen and learned since then.”

  “Yes. And it’s nice to see that supposition confirmed.”

  The Clarkeson portal hung at the extreme edge of the system belonging to a star cataloged by an ancient survey given a name composed of glottal stops and clicks and possibly phonemes that Gel couldn’t even hear properly. It came up as E*ki’#si’meel*o# — which she mentally simplified and renamed as ‘Eskimo.’

  There were no indications that anyone had actually ever visited this star, which was scarcely a surprise. Eskimo lay on the distant edge of a different spiral arm of the Milky Way galaxy, well removed from most of the billions of stars in the region Gel called home. Nor was she aware, from either her courier work or her studies of Plenum spheres of influence, of stars close to Eskimo with habitable worlds and sapient races, let alone beings who traveled between those stars in ships of their own.

  To the best of her knowledge, while the network of portals that she used on a regular basis as a courier stretched all the way back to the galactic core, no one had pushed any portals into a different spiral arm, let alone down that arm far enough to reach Eskimo. Not even the Plenum had extended their reach that far.

  “So why didn’t they just pick another star system in this part of the galaxy? Why cross all the way over to mine?”

  “Yours?”

  Gel shook her head. “You know what I mean.”

  “I couldn’t say. Possibly some spatial fluke made it advisable. All I know is that’s where the Clarkesons’ portal leads to. I suspect they worked together to set this first portal in place, and then after hanging one end of more than one hundred other portals in the gas giant it connects to in your spiral arm, other star systems all the way to the galactic core.”

  “That would have taken thousands and thousands of years, maybe hundreds of thousands of years.”

  “What would that matter to the Clarkesons? Each consortium is effectively immortal. Each individual ship, basically a generation ship. At least initially, they had the wonders of the galaxy to study on their journey outward. Hopefully that lasted until they reached an acceptable destination before they got bored.”

  “So you’re suggesting that given your homeworld’s relative isolation, they didn’t bother with automated defenses.”

  “That’s how I imagine it, yes.”

  “Well, that makes sense,” said Gel. “On the other hand, I’m not ready to bet our lives on your imagination. So we’re going to keep our eyes open and take our time as we travel in-system to reach your world.”

  “I have no objections to this plan,” said Aushthack.

  The Founders’ Finding

  In the end the hypothesized gauntlet of death proved to be a fiction, or if it did exist, either failed to identify them as a target, or regarded them as a friendly vessel, or most likely had simply succumbed to the ravages of time and failed to activate.

  As Tiggly came within final approach of the Clarkeson homeworld, Aushthack produced yet another wafer with maps of the surface, saying “This is Stefnal.”

  “Stefnal?”

  “The name the Clarkesons gave to our world.”

  The maps confirmed Tiggly’s scans. It was a watery world without any continents, though it did possess four very large islands, two above the equator and two below, all nearly equidistant from one another so precisely as to suggest they had been moved into position. Smaller islands circled each of these four, distributed around them like a geographic representation of planets orbiting a star. That analogy continued to the arcs of still smaller archipelagos that surrounded many of the smaller islands.

  “This whole thing looks contrived,” said Gel.

  “It is. All the land you see was originally part of a single supercontinent. As the Tosh evolved, our overlords expressed the desire to redesign our world. The Clarkesons decided they didn’t like being that crowded, didn’t like their respective thralls having to mingle with those of another Clarkeson.”

  “So, what, you broke off pieces and simply moved them?”

  “That, but also introduced undersea eruptions to produce new islands to our specifications. In time, each Clarkeson had their own demesne on an island of an archipelago, or shared one of the smaller islands with only one or two neighbors, or for the large island no more than ten. But remember, this happened long before the Clarkesons you know had left this world. When they did, more than a few of the island demesnes were abandoned.”

  “What became of the Tosh they left behind?”

  “If there was another Clarkeson on the island, they were absorbed into that demesne. Else they would have felt compelled to seek out the protection of another overlord. Likely most were successful, though some may have failed and succumbed to despondency if they could not leave.”

  “What does that mean, succumb to despondency?”

  “They would have surely died,” said Aushthack. “Lost to despair when the lord they had served throughout all their generations had capriciously abandoned them in their own eagerness to leave the world behind.”

  “The departing Clarkesons wouldn’t have taken some thralls with them? I mean, it seems like a natural thing to do. How would they know to get along without their servitors?”

  “The records I’ve studied show the size of the vessels those Clarkesons utilized. There would have been no room for even a handful of Tosh, let alone the tens of thousands of thralls each Clarkeson left behind.”

  By this time Tiggly had established orbit above Stefnal, and they watched in silence through the main display window as the planet rotated beneath them.

  “There,” said Aushthack after a few moments as one of the smaller islands of a southern archipelago came into view. Gel directed Tiggly to zoom in and the image of the indicated island filled the window.

  “That’s home?”

  “It was,” said Aushthack. “Originally, it was home to four Clarkeson overlords, but shortly after the Tosh had developed the tools to move and create the islands some of the Clarkeson invented the idea of warfare, and in their eternal quest to alleviate their boredom they battled one another.”

  “Battled?”

  Aushthack nodded. “Which of course is to say each of the Clarkesons participating had their servitors battling the servitors of other Clarkesons. In the case of this island, two of the Clarkesons developed the novelty of building an alliance, and in this way overpowered first one and then another of their ‘foes.’”

  “What became of the two Clarkesons who lost?”

  “Their consortiums were sundered and their individuals absorbed by the two winning Clarkesons. The surviving Tosh were allocated to the victors’ demesnes, which had doubled in size. The two remaining consortiums developed the new tradition of traveling several times each year between the temples and palaces of their original home and those newly acquired. On these journeys, the Clarkesons would travel with thousands of servitors, portions of whom they would leave behind when they returned, allowing them to mingle with the existing population. This pattern continued long after the Clarkesons began their decline, dragging along their thralls whom they scarcely paid much attention to by this point. Originally, the trip took less than a day, utilizing fantastic vehicles the Tosh constructed for their overlords. But in time those were abandoned and the journey occurred on foot and required a much longer period.

  “It was on one such trek that a small group of Tosh lagged behind. Some of them couldn’t bear the yearning to return to the vicinity of the overlord, and as the yearning grew stronger as the distance increased, they abandoned their kin,
slipping away unannounced and rushing to rejoin the original group. They had all known of this possibility, and though they were not strong enough to remain apart, they had all agreed never to speak of those who had managed to stay behind.”

  “And the ones who stayed behind,” said Gel, “they became the core of the group that you’re descended from?”

  “Exactly. There were a few among them who in previous years had made the trek between demesnes, and they had noticed in passing suggestions and signs, long overgrown markers pointing the way to an access point in a swamp.”

  “Access to what?”

  “One of the underground fabrication centers that the Tosh had constructed to serve the needs of our overlords without cluttering up the beauty of the cities themselves. The route taken by their overlord’s caravan to its secondary demesne went around the swamp. Those who had successfully split off from the other Tosh entered the swamp, searching for millennia old signs that would guide them to the entry point of the underground facility.”

  “I take it, they found it.”

  “They did,” said Aushthack. “That is where my home is.”

  “Then that’s where we’re going, though I’m not keen on my landing Tiggly in the middle of a swamp.”

  “There’s no need,” said the Tosh. “There is firmer terrain nearby.”

  He pointed to an area of the island and Gel zoomed in, and then zoomed in again.”

  “This is the swamp.” He indicated a spot in the southeastern quadrant. “This is where the access point is located.” He drew a diagonal from there to the edge of the swamp and just beyond. “Land your vessel here and it should be fine. From that point we can simply walk into the swamp and continue until we find the gateway inside.”

  “Walk into the swamp?”

  “Exactly.”

  Gel glanced down at her bright pink cowboy boots and sighed. “Lovely.”

  Gravel From Another World

  Despite Aushthack’s assurances, the landing site was barely adequate, a tiny rocky outcropping large enough to contain Tiggly’s footprint with no room to spare. Still, it was higher than the surrounding terrain and appreciably drier. Gel and Aushthack exited the vessel and trudged through the progressively damper marshland in the direction of the swamp which lay roughly a kilometer away, its soggy border less clearly defined in reality than on the tortuous map.