Fleet of Worlds Read online

  She dashed to Long Pass’s cargo bay. Her wrist beeped softly and she took one last video image. Then she activated her transport controller—

  And stepped into Explorer’s relax room.

  “Kirsten’s back!” Eric said, presumably for Omar. “What happened?”

  “I took a quick look around.” She handed him the primitive picture in its wooden frame. “Impulse buy.”

  Omar appeared at the doorway. “Kirsten, what were you thinking?”

  She projected the newest image in her communicator. The holo showed a small portion of the cargo hold, a stepping disc, and a nearby fifteen-digit label. “I was thinking that with this address and Explorer for course matching, we can board our ancestors’ starship at will.”

  22

  Thousands of humans swarmed the wide boulevard, waving placards and chanting slogans. Tens of thousands more shouted from behind barricades. Golden spheres the size of a grapefruit floated overhead: copseyes. The remotes carried sonic stunners; the beams they emitted were invisible, but not their effects.

  The crowd grew frantic as more and more people fell. Then black-armored ARMs surged into the holo, shoulder to shoulder, rank after rank. The crowd stampeded, trampling anyone unfortunate enough to lose his footing. Soon the avenue was empty but for a few broken bodies and abandoned signs. A hand-lettered banner fluttered by, folds and tangles obstructing much of its message. “Bir . . . otteries Justic . . . eople.” Sirens wailed, Doppler effects differentiating police vehicles in pursuit of the protestors from ambulances on approach.

  “Where is this?” Nessus finally asked.

  “Kansas City, Missouri.” His holographic avatar must have conveyed incomprehension, because Ashley added, “That’s a middling city in North America.” She had come alone this trip, perhaps reassured by the knowledge that Nessus would only meet her over hyperwave relay.

  “How many dead?” Nessus told himself these few had been sacrificed to spare countless more. Before spending months with only Colonists for company that rationalization might have quelled his guilt.

  “Twelve in this incident.” Ashley squinted at him—at his avatar, anyway. “Why exactly is birthright policy so important to you?”

  “How many worldwide?”

  “Hundreds.” She tossed her head, and her Mohawk quivered. Today it was bright orange. “Nessus, why are we doing this?”

  “Conscience seems inconvenient in your line of work.” Or his own. Nessus blanked the holo of riot coverage. “Never mind. The important question is: Has the ARM been diverted?”

  “Some. Look, Nessus, Miguel and I had no idea you meant to stir up so much trouble.”

  Bribery, intimidation, and rumormongering raised no objections. It was comforting somehow to see his minions exhibit traces of conscience. “The right to have children should not depend on your political connections.” Stealing a glance at a holo of Nike, Nessus wondered whose political system he questioned.

  “Why don’t we just focus on our business,” Ashley said at last. A brittle tone conveyed her disapproval.

  That was fine with Nessus. He had questions about several of Miguel’s recent reports. How credible was the coerced information? Had new prey been made aware of incriminating deposits made in their names? Had spying devices been planted as Nessus had requested?

  It all seemed to be unfolding according to plan. Sipping carrot juice, Nessus asked, “What news about that item I want to purchase?”

  “It took most of your five million to be sure, but we feel we can acquire it.” Ashley straightened in her seat. “Forty million more. Half up front, half on delivery.”

  “How soon?” he asked.

  “Give us a month.”

  “Agreed.” Nessus transmitted bank codes. “You and your colleague do excellent work.”

  “I guess we’re done. Same time, next month?”

  “Yes.” Even a smuggler’s ship, capable of doing thirty gees, needed time to reach the fringes of the solar system. He could not expect his Earth minions to come so far any more frequently. As Ashley reached out, likely to sever their hyperwave radio link, a new thought occurred to Nessus. “Wait.”

  Her hand paused in mid-air. “All right.”

  There were more ways to stir the pot. “The problem we have highlighted is that a few of the politically connected have bought birthrights. Perhaps we should separate the political and financial aspects. Surely the ability to make money is a proven survival characteristic. Why not sell birthrights legally?”

  “You’re kidding, right?” she said. “If that notion gets out, we’ll have class riots, too.”

  “If you don’t care for my money . . .”

  Ashley swallowed but said nothing.

  “See to it.” Nessus had still another idea: gladiator fights. Winner gets a birthright; loser dies. Everything balances.

  It turned his stomach, too. Maybe he would wait to bring that up. “I’ll see you in a month.”

  BUT FOR HIS piercing, dark-brown eyes, the figure in the holo was unimposing: short and thickset, middle-aged, and moonfaced. His dark hair was thick and wavy, and a thin mustache was just growing in. The man paced in a small and cluttered office. He wore a jet-black business suit, doubly stark for being worn on Earth by a native, a flatlander.

  His name was Sigmund Ausfaller, and he was the enemy.

  Miguel’s report, no matter how often Nessus reviewed it, never got better.

  UN officials were no less corruptible than anyone else. If it were worth doing the calculation, Nessus thought he might find they were more corruptible. That this holo video had found its way to him proved that venality reached deep within the world government.

  One problem with paranoids, of course, was that they assumed any temptation was a trap. Ausfaller had shunned all attempts to compromise him. At least, Nessus thought, the incorruptible ARM was on occasion within view of officials with fewer scruples.

  Nessus returned his attention to the surreptitiously made recording. The holo had been taken by someone standing in Ausfaller’s office doorway. The video caught an oblique view of the Bureau of Alien Affairs logo that shimmered on the surface of the open door.

  “Sigmund is being secretive about his work, even by his standards.” The comment was presumably dubbed after the video. “Maybe his computer display will tell you something.”

  Nessus zoomed in on the 3-D scatter plot that hung above Ausfaller’s desk. Once he had reoriented himself to the human convention of showing galactic north on top, the holo looked like a star chart of Human Space and its immediate neighborhood, centered on Sol system. Almost certainly it was an information-free privacy image, popped up when Ausfaller heard footsteps approaching.

  He fidgeted with his mane. Almost was not certain. “Match image with onboard navigational data,” Nessus directed.

  “All star positions match,” the bridge computer answered. A useless report—or was it? “Star positions match. Do the indicated stellar attributes differ from your records in any way?”

  “Colors differ for some stars,” the computer replied.

  “Exaggerate color differences.” Nessus craned his necks, eyeing the holo from all sides. The revised image muted most stars to a common dimness while brightening a few scattered suns. It still told Nessus nothing. “Which are the populated solar systems?”

  Several stars grew pale haloes, both among the faint majority and the highlighted few that might be of interest to Ausfaller. Nessus still did not understand why. Perhaps Ausfaller’s present obsession had nothing to do with the Concordance. The brighter dots clustered near the center and at the top of the map.

  If the stars told Nessus nothing, perhaps starships would. The reports that had brought Nessus here said Ausfaller was investigating missing starships. “Computer, correlate this graphic with public records of interstellar travel.” Such data was a very small part of what his minions had provided.

  It was an expansive request. Nessus stared at the frozen image of Ausfa
ller as he waited for a response. “What are you looking for?” he warbled softly. The holo was as unforthcoming as the man.

  “Computer, are all color discrepancies the same?”

  “Yes.”

  This was getting him nowhere. Perhaps the star chart was merely a paranoid’s meaningless decoy for the benefit of passersby. Am I not insane enough, Nessus thought, without inventing new reasons?

  “I have a match,” the computer interrupted Nessus’ musing. “The falsely colored stars correlate with selective reports of human hyperdrive-ship disappearances. The selection criterion appears to be disappearances unassociated with incidents of warfare.”

  Nessus twitched. So much for his hope the display could be dismissed. “How many such ship disappearances have there been?”

  “Twelve.”

  Humans had had hyperdrive for about four hundred years. Twelve ships gone astray in that time . . . excluding known Kzinti “incidents”. . . weren’t many. Why was Ausfaller looking at this?

  The cluster near Sol system made sense: human traffic concentrated here. Whether by equipment failure or pilot error, logically most accidents would happen nearby.

  Why was there a second cluster?

  “How recent are the three events near the top of the display?” Nessus asked.

  “This one”—a dot momentarily flared—“two Earth years ago. The others, this year.”

  Suddenly Nessus realized why those dots bothered him. These recent ship losses appeared to involve exploration to the galactic north just beyond Human Space—

  In the general direction of the Fleet of Worlds.

  NIKE REFUSED TO identify the scout responsible. Abstractly Nessus respected that. Who hardly mattered. What did matter was the bad judgment involved.

  Not very long ago Nessus had by reflex almost triggered a deep-radar scan of Sol system. Such was not only his engrained habit. Most pilots—of all species—did it, certainly whenever they entered a new solar system.

  The intelligent species of Known Space prized similar worlds, orbiting similar suns. The biological requirements were like enough and colonizable planets rare enough to have engendered wars, most recently between humans and Kzinti. Knowing which solar systems would most quickly draw explorers, Nike’s unnamed scout had set traps in the wake of the Fleet.

  The bait was elegantly simple: large masses of neutronium orbiting the most appealing planet of the most suitable solar systems. Neutronium occurred naturally only in the core of a neutron star—the collapsed remains of a supernova. Neutronium was incredibly dense. At one-hundred billion metric tons per cubic centimeter, a neutronium sphere a mere few meters in diameter was an enormous mass.

  Arriving pilots, conditioned to scanning each new solar system with deep radar, would see what appeared to be a stasis container abandoned since that ancient war of extermination. Pilots could hardly be expected to wonder whether a compact opacity seen in their deep radar scans might be neutronium.

  The lure would be overwhelming.

  When an unsuspecting ship too closely approached the tiny moon, the gravitational attraction would be likewise irresistible. No ship. No report. No likelihood of exploration yet further into the unknown, and with it the possible chance discovery of the Fleet.

  They had failed to consider what a few such disappearances could reveal to a paranoid like Ausfaller.

  Nessus pawed restlessly at the cabin deck with a forehoof—but where could he run? Ausfaller could not be bought. He could not be coerced. And not even Earth’s worst civic unrest in centuries had distracted the man.

  Perhaps it was time to eliminate Ausfaller. For enough more money, Nessus’ minions might well undertake that. Succeed or fail, how could that not raise suspicions? What sort of in-the-event-of-my-death message would someone as paranoid as Ausfaller have arranged?

  Nessus pawed again, and with feeling, at the deck. He knew just where he had to run: toward danger.

  The situation was not irremediable, not quite. He thought he saw one way out. It required that he have help—very specialized help—and not the sort of service Miguel and Ashley were qualified to provide at any price.

  He would have to go deep into the solar system and enlist just the right physicist.

  23

  Burning profligately through their energy reserves, Kirsten eased Explorer through the atmosphere of NP4. The ship’s thrusters whined in protest and strain.

  Explorer was matte black and radar stealthed, the better to scout in secrecy. Its traffic-control transponder, silenced since their unauthorized return to the Fleet, remained off. Their deliberate, energy-gulping descent eliminated the fiery heat and ionization trail of a normal reentry. The only way their return might be detected was visually. Over the remote expanse of ocean she had selected, and at night, that risk was vanishingly small.

  The ship settled into the water with a splash. Protective force fields activated by the impact squeezed Kirsten momentarily. “Is everyone all right?” she asked.

  “In a mildly bruised way,” Omar answered. He occupied the other crash couch on the bridge. “You, Eric?”

  “I’m fine.” Eric’s answer came by intercom from the engine room.

  Explorer wallowed in the swells, the undulating ocean surface sparkling by NP light. Clouds rose and fell in the view ports. Kirsten tuned out her queasiness to focus on status readouts. “The main thrusters are a bit warm, but that’s the only off-nominal condition I see. Is everyone ready to submerge?”

  “And get off these waves?” Omar looked pale. “I’m definitely ready.”

  “I will be once you release the refueling probes,” Eric said. The probes were emergency equipment, little more than self-propelled stepping discs fitted with filters. They would transmit deuterium and tritium from seawater directly into Explorer’s tanks.

  Kirsten ejected the probes, and imagined she could hear the splashes. Their hydro-jets started on command. “Probes away and reporting normally.” There was no alternative to a low-power radio link for monitoring and directing the probes. “Down we go.”

  She pressed the bow into the water with maneuvering thrusters, and then engaged more thrusters to drive Explorer slowly beneath the surface. Air-filled, the ship was very buoyant; it slewed disquietingly until it slipped completely underwater. She increased thrust, driving them toward their target depth of three hundred feet. They hoped to be invisible there, even under daylight conditions.

  I’m in an indestructible hull, she kept reminding herself.

  “This is really eerie,” Eric said from the corridor just outside the bridge. He stood in a slight crouch, the better to peer through the bridge view ports.

  Kirsten looked up from her instruments. Through the deepening gloom she caught glimpses of ocean life, more often due to its bioluminescence than because it approached the hull.

  Hearthian ocean life, she thought, surprised at a sudden rush of bitterness. What animals teemed in the seas of her ancestral world? If Long Pass had carried any specimens, she knew of none that had been introduced into the oceans of this world.

  A bevy of creatures fluttered past, their maneuvering more reminiscent of Hearthian birds than the—humanistic?—freshwater fish Kirsten knew from Arcadia. She squinted, grasping for detail before they swam out of sight. She had to settle for impressions rather than a clear image. Webbed tentacles, undulating. Bioluminescent patches, in purple and gold. Ropy integument. With no way to measure the distance and nothing to use for scale, the swimmers’ size was unknowable.

  “Approaching three hundred feet,” Omar said, watching the radar readings. “The sea bottom is down another four hundred feet.”

  “Thanks.” Kirsten adjusted thrusters to just offset their buoyancy, and then cautiously engaged the autopilot. This was their first opportunity to test the software she had retrofitted to manage underwater hovering. Explorer wobbled and weaved as she lifted her hands slowly from the controls. Tilting and surging unpredictably, the ship jittered about the position w
here she meant it to stay. Kirsten tweaked program parameters until their orientation stabilized—which was, unfortunately, long after Omar had vomited explosively.

  “I’ll clean this up,” Eric told Omar. “Change your clothes. Wash up. Do whatever you need to do.” Omar smiled wanly, and left to comply.

  After scrubbing and wiping down the area, Eric settled into the empty crash couch. He pulled up status holos. “The probes are working properly, and we’re getting fuel. In a few days, we’ll be adequately fueled for flying around the Fleet.” His expression seemed to ask where she thought they might go next.

  Omar’s return spared her from speculating. He had replaced his soiled ship’s suit with formal attire. “I look forward to getting onto dry land.” He swallowed hard as the ship trembled in its hover. “Solid land.”

  Kirsten adjusted her own garb until she judged it suitably casual for her next stop. “Eric, will you be all right here by yourself?”

  He nodded.

  She checked the content of her backpack one last time. “Then Omar and I will be on our way. Take care.” She hugged Eric hard.

  She walked with Omar to the relax room. He paused beside a stepping disc. “Join me when you can, Kirsten. I’ll message you with the coordinates. Encrypted, of course.”

  Then Omar was gone.

  Her communicator was preset with another address. Kirsten activated it and stepped—

  To the public square nearest the Colonial Archives. She was thousands of miles from Explorer, and a string of suns hung near the horizon. Barring emergency, it was past working hours here.

  Her “chance” meeting with Sven Hebert-Draskovics, seemingly so long ago, had not resulted in an exchange of communication codes. The publicly available code for the archivist connected her only to his voice mail. Rather than leave a message, she went inside the archive building and accessed the lobby directory.

  Using a public communicator and a name randomly chosen from Custodial Services staff, Kirsten called Sven’s home. The little boy who answered listened uncritically to her story of a plumbing leak in the archive building and sent a location code for his father.