The Neutronium Alchemist

  “This cavern’s only fifteen years old, actually. Ayacucho was the second Dorado to be settled after Mapire. But you’re right, I enjoy the view.”

  Alkad nodded, taking in the large office; its size, furnishings, and artwork chosen to emphasise the occupant’s status rather than conforming to any notion of aesthetics. “And you have prospered, too, Captain. But then, that was part of your mission, wasn’t it?”

  She watched him slump down into a chair behind the big terrestrial-oak desk. Hardly the kind of dynamic magnate who could build his T’Opingtu company into a multistellar market leader in the fabrication of exotic alloy components. More like a fraud whose bluff had just been called.

  “I have some of the resources we originally discussed,” he said. “Of course, they are completely at your disposal.”

  She sat on a chair in front of the desk, staring him down. “You’re straying from the script, Captain. I don’t want resources, I want the combat-capable starship we agreed on. The starship you were supposed to have ready for me the day the Omuta sanctions ended. Remember?”

  “Look, bloody hell it’s been decades, Mzu. Decades! I didn’t know where the hell you were, even if you were still alive. Mother Mary, things change. Life is different now. Forgive me, I know you are supposed to be here at this time, I just never expected to see you. I didn’t think …”

  A chilling anger gained control of Alkad’s thoughts, unlocked from that secret centre of motivation at the core of her brain. “Have you got a starship which can deploy the Alchemist?”

  He shook his head before burying it in his hands. “No.”

  “They slaughtered ninety-five million of us, Ikela, they wrecked our planet, they made us breathe radioactive soot until our lungs bled.

  Genocide doesn’t even begin to describe what was done to us. You and I and the other survivors were a mistake, an oversight. There’s no life left for us in this universe. We have only one purpose, one duty.

  Revenge, vengeance, and justice, our three guiding stars. Mother Mary has given us this one blessing, providing us with a second chance. We’re not even attempting to kill the Omutans. I would never use the Alchemist to do that; I’m not going to become as they are, that would be their ultimate victory. All we’re going to do is make them suffer, to give them a glimpse, a pitiful glimmer of the agony they’ve forced us to endure every waking day for thirty years.”

  “Stop it,” he shouted. “I’ve made a life for myself here, we all have. This mission, this vendetta, what would it achieve after so much time?

  Nothing! We would be the tainted ones then. Let the Omutans carry the guilt they deserve. Every person they talk to, every planet they visit, they’ll be cursed to carry the weight of their name with them.”

  “As we suffer pity wherever we go.”

  “Oh, Mother Mary! Don’t do this.”

  “You will help me, Ikela. I am not giving you a choice in this. Right now you’ve allowed yourself to forget. That will end. I will make you remember. You’ve grown old and fat and comfy. I never did, I never allowed myself that luxury. They didn’t allow me. Ironic that, I always felt. They kept my angry spirit alive with their eternal reminder, their agents and their discreet observation. In doing so, they also kept their own nemesis alive.”

  His face lifted in bewilderment. “What are you talking about? Have the Omutans been watching you?”

  “No, they’re all locked up where they belong. It’s the other intelligence agencies who have discovered who I am and what I built. Don’t ask me how. Somebody must have leaked the information. Somebody weak, Ikela.”

  “You mean, they know you’re here?”

  “They don’t know exactly where I am. All they know is I escaped from Tranquillity. But now they’ll be looking for me. And don’t try fooling yourself, they’ll track me down eventually. It’s what they’re good at, very good. The only question now is which one will find me first.”

  “Mother Mary!”

  “Exactly. Of course, if you had prepared the starship for me as you were supposed to, this wouldn’t even be a problem. You stupid, selfish, petty-minded bastard. Do you realize what you’ve done? You have jeopardized everything we ever stood for.”

  “You don’t understand.”

  “No, I don’t; and I won’t dignify you by trying to. I’m not even going to listen to any more of your pitiful whining. Now tell me, where are the others? Do we even have a partizan group anymore?”

  “Yes. Yes, we’re still together. We still help the cause whenever we can.”

  “Are all the originals here?”

  “Yes, we’re all still alive. But the other four aren’t in Ayacucho.”

  “What about other partizans, do you have a local leadership council?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then call them to a meeting. Today. They will have to be told what’s happening. We need nationalist recruits for a crew.”

  “Yes,” he stammered. “Yes, all right.”

  “And in the meantime, start looking for a suitable starship. There ought to be one in dock. It’s a shame I let the Samaku go. It would have suited us.”

  “But there’s a Confederation-wide quarantine …”

  “Not where we’re going there isn’t. And you’re a member of the Dorados council, you can arrange for the government to authorize our departure.”

  “I can’t do that!”

  “Ikela, look at me very closely. I am not playing games with you. You have endangered both my life and the mission you swore to undertake when you took the oath to serve your naval commission. As far as I am concerned, that amounts to treason. Now if an agency grabs me before I can retrieve the Alchemist, I am going to make damn sure they know where the money came from to help you start up T’Opingtu all those years ago. I’m sure you remember exactly what the Confederation law has to say about antimatter, don’t you?”

  He bowed his head. “Yes.”

  “Good. Now start datavising the partizans.”

  “All right.”

  Alkad regarded him with a mixture of contempt and worry. That the others would falter had never occurred to her. They were all Garissan navy.

  Thirty years ago she had secretly suspected that if anyone was destined to be the weak link it would be her.

  “I’ve been moving around a lot since I docked,” she said. “But I’ll spend the rest of the afternoon in your apartment. I need to clean up, and that’s the one place I can be sure you won’t tip anyone off about. There’d be too many questions.”

  Ikela recouped some of his old forcefulness. “I don’t want you there. My daughter’s living with me.”

  “So?”

  “I don’t want her involved.”

  “The sooner you get my starship prepared, the sooner I’ll be gone.” She hoisted the backpack’s strap over her shoulder and went out into the anteroom.

  Lomie glanced up from behind her desk, curiosity haunting her narrow features. Alkad ignored her, and datavised the lift processor for a ride to the lobby. The doors opened, revealing a girl inside. She was in her early twenties, a lot taller than Mzu, with a crown of short dreadlocks at the top of a shaven skull. First impression was that someone had attempted to geneer an elf into existence her torso was so slim, her limbs were disproportionately long. Her face could have been pretty if her personality wasn’t so stern.

  “I’m Voi,” she said after the doors shut.

  Alkad nodded in acknowledgement, facing the doors and wishing the lift could go faster.

  All movement stopped, the floor indicator frozen between four and three.

  “And you’re Dr Alkad Mzu.”

  “There’s a nervejam projector in this bag, and its control processor is activated.”

  “Good. I’m glad you’re not walking around unprotected.”

  “Who are you?”

  “I’m Ikela’s daughter. Check my public record file, if you like.”

  Alkad did, datavising the lift’s net processor for a link to Ayac
ucho’s civil administration computer. If Voi was some kind of agency plant, they’d made a very good job of ghosting details. Besides, if she was from an agency, the last thing they’d be doing was talking. “Restart the lift, please.”

  “Will you talk to me?”

  “Restart the lift.”

  Voi datavised the lift’s control processor, and they started to descend.

  “We want to help you.”

  “Who’s we?” Alkad asked.

  “My friends; there are quite a few of us now. The partizans you belong to have done nothing for years. They are soft and old and afraid of making waves.”

  “I don’t know you.”

  “Was my father helpful?”

  “We made progress.”

  “They won’t help you. Not when it comes to action. We will.”

  “How did you find out who I am?”

  “From my father. He shouldn’t have told me, but he did. He’s so weak.”

  “How much do you know?”

  “That the partizans were supposed to prepare for you. That you were bringing something to finally give us our revenge against Omuta. Logically it has to be some kind of powerful weapon. Possibly even a planet-buster. He was always afraid of you, they all were. Have they made the proper preparations? I bet they haven’t.”

  “As I said, I don’t know you.”

  Voi leaned over her, furiously intent. “We have money. We’re organized. We have people who aren’t afraid. We won’t let you down. We’d never let you down. Tell us what you want, we’ll provide it.”

  “How did you know I was seeing your father?”

  “Lomie, of course. She’s not one of us, not a core member, but she’s a friend. It’s always useful for me to know what my father is doing. As I said, we’re properly organized.”

  “So are children’s day clubs.” For a moment Alkad thought the girl was going to strike her.

  “All right,” Voi said with a calm that could only have been induced by neural nanonic overrides. “You’re being sensible, not trusting a stranger with the last hope our culture owns. I can accept that. It’s rational.”

  “Thank you.”

  “But we can help. Just give us the chance. Please.” And please was obviously not a word which came easy from that mouth.

  The lift doors opened. A lobby of polished black stone and curving white metal glinted under large silver light spires. A thirty-year-old unarmed combat program reviewed the image from Alkad’s retinal implants, deciding nobody was lurking suspiciously. She looked up at the tall, anorexically proportioned girl, trying to decide what to do. “Your father invited me to stay at his apartment. We can talk more when we get there.”

  Voi gave a shark’s smile. “It would be an honour, Doctor.”

  ***

  It was the woman sitting up at the bar wearing a red shirt who caught Joshua’s attention. The red was very red, a bright, effervescent scarlet.

  And the style of the shirt was odd, though he’d be hard pressed to define exactly what was wrong with the cut, it lacked … smoothness. The clincher was the fact it had buttons down the front, not a seal.

  “Don’t look,” he murmured to Beaulieu and Dahybi. “But I think she’s a possessed.” He datavised his retinal image file to them.

  They both turned and looked. In Beaulieu’s case it was quite a performance, twisting her bulk around in the too-small chair, streamers of light slithering around the contours of her shiny body.

  “Jesus! Show some professionalism.”

  The woman gave the three of them a demurely inquisitive glance.

  “You sure?” Dahybi asked.

  “Think so. There’s something wrong with her, anyway.”

  Dahybi said nothing; he’d experienced Joshua’s intuition at work before.

  “We can soon check,” Beaulieu said. “Go over to her and see if any of our blocks start glitching.”

  “No.” Joshua was slowly scanning the rest of the teeming bar. It was a wide room cut square into the rock of Kilifi asteroid’s habitation section, with a mixed clientele mostly taken from ships’ crews and industrial station staff. He was anonymous here, as much as he could be (five people had so far recognized “Lagrange Calvert”). And Kilifi had been a good cover, it manufactured the kind of components he was supposed to be buying for Tranquillity’s defences. Sarha and Ashly were handling the dummy negotiations with local companies; and so far no one had questioned why they’d flown all the way to Narok rather than a closer star system.

  He saw a couple more suspicious people drinking in solitude, then another three crammed around a table with sullen sly expressions. I’m getting too paranoid.

  “We have to concentrate on our mission,” he said. “If Kilifi isn’t enforcing its screening procedures properly, that’s their problem. We can’t risk any sort of confrontation. Besides, if the possessed are wandering around this freely it must mean their infiltration is quite advanced.”

  Dahybi hunched his shoulders and played with his drink, trying not to look anxious. “There are navy ships docked here, and most of the independent traders are combat-capable. If the asteroid falls, the possessed will get them.”

  “I know.” Joshua met the node specialist’s stare, refusing to show weakness. “We cannot cause waves.”

  “Sure, you said: Don’t draw attention to yourself, don’t talk to the natives, don’t fart loudly. What the hell are we doing here, Joshua? Why are you so anxious to trace Meyer?”

  “I need to talk to him.”

  “Don’t you trust us?”

  “Of course I do. And don’t try such cheap shots. You know I’ll tell all of you as soon as I can. For now, it’s best you don’t know. You trust me, don’t you?”

  Dahybi put his lips together in a tired grin. “Cheap shot.”

  “Yeah.”

  The waitress brought another round of drinks to their alcove. Joshua watched her legs as she wriggled away through the crowd. A bit young for him, mid-teens. Louise’s age. The thought warmed him briefly. Then he saw she was wearing a red handkerchief around her ankle. Jesus, I don’t know which is worse, the horrors of possession or the pathetic dreams of the Deadnights.

  He’d received one hell of a shock the first time he accessed the recording from Valisk. Marie Skibbow possessed and luring naive kids to their doom. She’d been a lovely girl, beautiful and smart, with thoughts as hard as carbotanium composite. If she could be caught, anyone could.

  Lalonde strummed out far too many resonances.

  “Captain,” Beaulieu warned.

  Joshua saw Bunal approaching their alcove. He sat down and smiled. There wasn’t the slightest sign of nerves. But then as Joshua had discovered while asking around his fellow captains, Bunal was overfamiliar with this kind of transaction.

  “Good afternoon, Captain,” Bunal said pleasantly. “Have you managed to acquire your cargo yet?”

  “Some of it,” Joshua said. “I’m hoping you were successful with the rest.”

  “Indeed I was. Most of the information was quite simple to obtain. However, I am nothing if not assiduous in any freelance work I undertake. I discovered that, sadly, what you actually need falls outside our original agreement.”

  Dahybi gave the man a hateful glare. He always despised bent civil servants.

  “And will cost … ?” Joshua inquired, unperturbed.

  “An additional twenty thousand fuseodollars.” Bunal sounded sincerely regretful. “I apologize for the cost, but times are hard at the moment. I have little work and a large family.”

  “Of course.” Joshua held up his Jovian Bank credit disk.

  Bunal was surprised by the young captain’s swift concession. It took him a moment to produce his own credit disk. Joshua shunted the money over.

  “You were right,” Bunal said. “The Udat did come to this star system. It docked at the Nyiru asteroid. Apparently its captain was hurt when they arrived, he spent almost four days in hospital undergoing neural trauma treatment. When it
was complete, they filed a flight plan for the Sol system, and left.”

  “Sol?” Joshua asked. “Are you sure?”

  “Positive. However—and this is where the twenty thousand comes in—their passenger, Dr Alkad Mzu, didn’t go with them. She hired an independent trader called the Samaku, and departed an hour later.”

  “Flight plan?”

  “Filed for a Dorado asteroid, Ayacucho. I even checked traffic control’s sensor data for the flight. They were definitely aligned for Tunja when they jumped.”

  Joshua resisted the impulse to swear. Ione was right, Mzu was running to the last remnants of her nation. She must be going for the Alchemist. He flicked another glance at the girl in the red shirt, her head tipped back elegantly as she drank her cocktail. Jesus, as if we don’t have enough problems right now. “Thank you.”

  “My pleasure. You should also know, for no extra charge, that I’m not the only one to be asking these questions. There are three access requests logged on the Civil Spaceflight Department computer for the same files. One request was made only twenty minutes before mine.”

  “Oh, Jesus.”

  “Bad news?”

  “Interesting news,” Joshua grunted. He rose to his feet.

  “If there is anything else I can obtain for you, Captain, please call.”

  “Sure thing.” Joshua was already walking for the door, Dahybi and Beaulieu a couple of steps behind.

  Before he reached the exit, people watching the AV pillar behind the bar were gasping in shock; agitated murmurs of conversation rippled down the length of the room. Perfect strangers asking each other: Did you access that? the way they always did with momentous news.

  Joshua focused on the AV pillar’s projection, allowing the hazy laserlight sparkle to form its picture behind his eyes. A planet floated below him, its geography instantly familiar. No real continents or oceans, just winding seas and thousands of medium-sized islands. Patches of glowing red cloud squatted over half of the islands, concentrated mainly in the tropic zones—though on this world tropic was a relative term.