‘It happens,’ Captain Ronark said gravely. ‘You did a perfect job, nobody could do better. I’m proud of you. But this is the way it is in Makkathran these days.’
‘Thank you sir,’ Dinlay and Macsen murmured sullenly.
Ronark flashed them all an anxious expression, debating with himself if he should say more. ‘This will be useful to you,’ he said. ‘I can imagine what you think of that right now, but next time you’ll know what to do, how to be extra careful gathering evidence, and we’ll nail that little bastard good and proper.’ He nodded at Chae, and walked down to talk with Master Vosbol.
‘Buy you all a drink,’ Chae said. ‘I know how bad this hurts, believe me. I’ve had smartarse lawyers get scum off on worse charges than this.’
‘A double of something illegally strong,’ Macsen said. The others nodded in grudging agreement. They looked at Edeard.
‘Sure,’ he said.
Arminel saluted him with two fingers to his forehead. His smile was gloating.
Edeard quashed his impulse to dive across the court and smash his fist into the man’s face. Instead he winked back. ‘Be seeing you,’ he whispered.
7
The unisphere had never been a homogenous system, nor was it designed along logical principles, which was quite an irony considering the purely digital medium it dealt with. Instead it had grown and expanded in irregular spurts to accommodate the commercial and civil demands placed on it by a proliferating interstellar civilization. By definition the unisphere was nothing more than the interface protocols between every planetary cybersphere, and they were incredibly diverse. Just about every hardware technology the human race had developed was still in operation across the Greater Commonwealth Worlds, from old-fashioned macro-arrays running RI programs, to semi-organic cubes, quantum wire blocks, smartneural webs, and photonic crystals, all the way up to ANA, which technically was just another routing junction. The interstellar linkages were equally varied, with the Central Commonwealth Worlds still using their original zero-width wormholes, while the External Worlds used a combination of zero-width and hyperspace modulation. Transdimensional channels were becoming more common especially among the latest generation of External Worlds. Starships were also able to link in provided they were in range of a star system’s spacewatch network. The massive gulf between technologies and capacities within the unisphere meant the management software had swollen over the centuries to accommodate every new advance and application. With effectively infinite storage capacity, the upgrades, adaptors, retrocryptors, and interpreters had accumulated like binary onion layers around each node. They had the ability to communicate with every other chunk of hardware to come on line since the end of the twenty-first century; but with such a complex procedure dealing with every interface, the problem of security increased proportionally. It was relatively easy for a specialist e-head to quietly incorporate siphoning and echoclone routines amid centuries’ worth of augmentation files. The problem was one which every user got round by using their own encryption. However, in order to decrypt a secure message, the receiver had to be in possession of the appropriate key. Ultra-secure keys were never sent via the unisphere, they were physically exchanged in advance, a common method for financial transactions. A less secure method was for a user’s u-shadow to dispatch a key using one route, then call on another. Given the phenomenal number of (randomly designated) routes available within the unisphere, most people (who even considered it) regarded that as sufficient. It would, after all, require a colossal amount of computing power to monitor every route established to a specific address code for a key, then follow up by intercepting the message.
Of course, that assumption had been made in the early centuries, prior to ANA. For any individual downloaded into ANA, access to that quantity of processing capacity was an everyday occurrence. The Advancer Faction routinely ran a scan of all messages to ANA:Governance to check if any of its own activities had been noticed and reported.
When the Faction’s monitor routine detected a starship TD connection established to Wohlen’s spacewatch network downloading a key fragment to ANA:Governance’s security division an alert was flagged. Over the next two point three seconds, the remaining seven key fragments arrived via routes from seven different planets, and the monitor acknowledged that someone was trying to establish a very secure link. Nothing too out of the ordinary in that, it was the security division after all. However, all eight planets were within twenty-five lightyears of the Advancer Faction’s secret manufacturing station. That bumped the alert up to grade one.
Three seconds later, Ilanthe’s elevated mentality was observing the secure call itself, placed through the ninth planet, Loznica, seventeen lightyears from the station.
‘Yes, Troblum?’ ANA:Governance asked.
‘I need to see someone. Someone special.’
‘I will be happy to facilitate any request in relation to Commonwealth security. Could you please be more specific?’
‘I work for the Advancer Faction. Make that “worked”. I have information, very important information concerning their activities.’
‘I will be happy to receive your data.’
‘No. I don’t trust you. Not any more. Parts of you are bad. I don’t know how far the contamination has spread.’
‘I can assure you, ANA:Governance retains its integrity, both in structural essence and morally.’
‘Like you’d say different. I can’t even be sure if I’m talking to ANA:Governance.’
‘Scepticism is healthy provided it does not escalate into paranoia. So given you don’t trust me, what can I do for you?’
‘I’m entitled to be paranoid after what I’ve seen.’
‘What have you seen?’
‘Not you. I’ll tell Paula Myo. She’s the only person left that I trust. Route this call to her.’
‘I will ask if she will be willing to listen to you.’
Fifteen seconds later, Paula Myo came on line. ‘What do you want?’ she asked.
‘There’s something you need to know. Something you’ll understand.’
‘Then tell me.’
‘I need to be certain it’s you. Where are you?’
‘In space.’
‘Can you get to Sholapur?’
‘Why would I want to?’
‘I’ll tell you everything I know about their plans for fusion, all the hardware they’ve built, all the people involved. All that, if you’ll just listen to me. You have to listen, you’re the only person left who’ll deal with it.’
‘With what?’
‘Come to Sholapur.’
‘Very well. I can be there in five days.’
‘Don’t stealth your starship. I’ll contact you.’
The connection ended.
As ANA and its abilities were to the unisphere, so there were hierarchal levels within ANA. Discreet levels of ability surreptitiously established by a few of the humans who had founded ANA. Abilities only they could utilize. They couldn’t corrupt ANA:Governance, or use the Navy warships for their own ends. That magnitude of intervention would be easily detectable. But there was a backdoor into several of ANA’s communication sections, allowing them to watch the watchers without the kind of effort which the Advancers had to make for the same intelligence. And as they were there first, they had also observed the Advancers and other Factions spread their monitors into the unisphere nodes as their campaigns and reach grew. They knew which messages the Advancers intercepted.
‘Ilanthe is going to go apeshit over that kind of betrayal,’ Gore said.
‘At least we know Troblum is still alive,’ Nelson replied.
‘Yeah, for the next five seconds.’
‘Until he gets to Sholapur at the very least. And never ever underestimate Paula.’
‘I don’t. If anyone can collect him in once piece, she can.’
‘So we might just be able to sit back and relax if Paula does bring back information on what the Advancers are up to. Hardware,
Troblum said. That has to be the planet-shifting ftl engine.’
‘Maybe so,’ Gore said. ‘But he was offering that as a bribe to make sure Paula listened to something else, something big and scary enough to get him really worried. Now what the fuck could that be?’
Marius sprinted down the corridor. It wasn’t something the universe got to see very often. With his Higher field functions reinforcing his body, the speed was phenomenal. Malmetal doors had to roll aside very quickly or face complete disintegration. His dark toga suit flapped about in the slipstream, for once ruining the eerie gliding effect he always portrayed. Marius didn’t care about appearance right now. He was furious.
Ilanthe’s brief call had been very unsettling. He’d never failed her before. The implications were terrible, as she managed to explain in remarkably few words. He only wished he had time to make Troblum suffer for his crime.
He streaked through the three-way junction which put him into sector 7-B-5. Some idiot technician was walking down the middle of the corridor, going back to her suite after a long shift. Marius charged past her, clipping her arm, which broke instantly from the impact. She was spun round, slamming into the wall. She screamed as she crumpled to the floor.
The door to Troblum’s suite was dead ahead, locked as of two minutes ago with Marius’s own nine-level certificate to prevent the little shit from leaving. The suite’s internal sensors showed Troblum sitting at a table slurping his way disgustingly through a late-night ‘snack’.
Marius began to slow as his u-shadow unlocked the door. It expanded as he arrived, and he coasted through. Troblum’s head lifted, crumbs of burger bap dropping from the corner of his mouth. Despite bulging cheeks he still managed a startled expression.
A disruptor pulse slammed into him, producing a ghost-green phosphorescent flare in the suite’s air. Marius followed it up immediately with a jelly gun shot. He would obliterate the memorycell in a few seconds, then that would just leave Troblum’s secure store back on Arevalo.
Instead of disintegrating into a collapsing globule of gore, Troblum simply popped like a soap bubble. A rivulet of metal dust spewed out from the wall behind the table where the jelly gun shot hit. Marius froze in shock, his field-scan functions sweeping round. It hadn’t been Troblum. No biological matter was in the room. His eyes found a half-melted electronic module on the seat, ruined by the disruptor blast.
A solido projector.
Marius was perfectly still as he stared at it.
‘What happened?’ Neskia asked as she strode into the suite. Her long neck curved so her head could see round Marius.
‘It would appear Troblum isn’t quite the fat fool I’d taken him for.’
‘We’ll find him. It won’t take long. This station isn’t that big.’
Marius whipped round, the wide irises in his green eyes narrowing to minute intimidating slits. ‘Where’s his ship?’ he demanded.
‘Sitting in the airlock,’ she replied calmly. ‘Nobody enters or leaves without my authorization.’
‘It better be,’ Marius spat.
‘Every centimetre of this station is covered by some sensor or other. We’ll find him.’
Marius’s u-shadow ordered the smartcore to show him the airlock. The Mellanie’s Redemption was sitting passively at the centre of the large white chamber. Visually it was there, the airlock radar produced a return from the hull. The umbilical management programs reported a steady drain of housekeeping power through the cables plugged into its base. He queried the ship’s smartcore. There was no response.
Marius and Neskia stared at each other. ‘Shit!’
Four minutes later they walked into the airlock. Marius glowered at the long cone-shaped ship with its stupid curving tailfins. His field scan swept out. It was an illusion, produced by a small module on the airlock floor. He smashed a disruptor pulse into the solido projector, and the starship image shivered, shrinking down to a beautiful, naked young girl with blonde hair that hung halfway down her back. ‘Oh, Howard,’ she moaned sensually, running her hands up her body, ‘do that again.’
Marius let out an incoherent cry, and shot the projector again. It burst into smouldering fragments, and the girl vanished.
‘How in Ozzie’s name did he do that?’ Neskia said. There was a hint of admiration in her voice. ‘He must have flown right past the defence cruisers as well. They never even saw him.’
Marius took a moment to compose himself. ‘Troblum helped design and build the defence cruisers. Either he infiltrated their smartcores back then, or he knows a method of circumventing their sensor systems.’
‘He compromised the station smartcore, too. It should never have let the Mellanie’s Redemption out.’
‘Indeed,’ Marius said. ‘You will find the corruption and purge it. This operation must not suffer any further compromise.’
‘It was not me who compromised this station,’ she said with equal chill. ‘You brought him here.’
‘You had twenty years to discover the bugs he planted. That you failed is unforgivable.’
‘Don’t try to play the blame game with me. This is your foul-up. And I will make that very clear to Ilanthe.’
Marius turned on a heel, and walked back to the airlock chamber’s entrance. His dark toga suit adjusted itself around him, once more giving off a narrow black shimmer that concealed his feet. He glided with serpentine poise down the corridor towards the airlock chamber which contained his own starship.
His u-shadow opened a secure link to the Cat’s ship.
‘It’s so nice to be popular again,’ she said.
‘We have a problem. I want you to find Troblum. Eliminate that shit from this universe. In fact, I want him erased from all of history.’
‘That sounds personal, Marius dear. Always a bad thing. Messes with your judgement.’
‘He’s heading for Sholapur. In five days’ time he will meet with an ANA representative there, and explain what we have been doing. His ship has some kind of advanced stealth ability we didn’t know about.’
‘Gave you the slip, huh?’
‘I’m sure you’ll be more than capable of rectifying our mistake.’
‘What do you want me to do about Aaron? He’s still down on the planet’s surface.’
‘Is there any sign of Inigo?’
‘Darling, the sensors can barely make out continents. I’ve no idea what’s going on down there.’
‘Do as you see fit.’
‘I thought this was all critical to your plans.’
‘If Troblum exposes us to ANA there will be no plans, there probably won’t be an Advancer Faction any more.’
‘The strong always survive. That’s evolution.’
‘Paula Myo is the representative ANA is sending to collect Troblum.’
‘Oh, Marius, you’re too kind to me. Really.’
*
It should have been tempting. Alone in a small starship with three amazingly fit men, who would probably have been honoured to got to bed with him. Oscar had been delighted when Tomansio had introduced his team. Liatris McPeierl was his lieutenant, a lot quieter than Tomansio, with a broad mouth that could flash a smile that was wickedly attractive. He would handle the technical aspects of the mission, Tomansio said, including their armaments. Gazing at the pile of big cases on the regrav sled which followed Liatris about, Oscar had his first moment of doubt; he didn’t want to resort to violence, though he was realistic enough to know that wasn’t his decision. Cheriton McOnna had been brought in to help because of his experience with the gaiafield. There was nothing about confluence nest operations which he didn’t know, Tomansio claimed. Oscar was slightly surprised by Cheriton’s characteristics, they were almost Higher; he’d altered his ears to simple circle craters, his nose was wide and flat, while his eyes were sparkling purple globes, like multifac-eted insect lenses. His bald skull had two low ridges reaching back from his eyebrows over his cranium to merge together at the nape of his neck.
‘Multi-ma
crocellular enrichment,’ he explained. ‘And a hell of a lot of customized gaiamotes.’ To prove it he spun out a vision of some concert. For a moment Oscar was transported to a natural amphitheatre, lost in a sea of people under a wild starry sky. On the stage far away, a pianist performed by himself, his soulful tune making Oscar sway in sympathy.
‘Wow,’ Oscar blinked, taking a half step back as the vision cleared. He’d almost been about to sing along, the song was familiar somehow – just not quite right.
‘I composed it in your honour,’ Cheriton said. ‘I remember you told Wilson Kime you liked old movies.’
Now Oscar remembered. ‘That’s right. “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”, yeah?’ He took care to reduce his gaiamotes’ reception level. Cheriton had produced a very strong emission. It made Oscar wonder if the gaiafield could actually be used in a harmful way.
‘Yes.’
The last member of the team was Beckia McKratz, whose gaiafield give-away made it very clear she’d like to bed him. An equal to Anja in the beauty stakes, and minus all the neurotic hang-ups. Oscar wasn’t interested. Not even that first morning when he stumbled out of his tiny sleep cabin to find all four of them in the main lounge stripped to the waist and performing some strenuous ni-tng exercise. They moved in perfect synchronization, arms and legs rising gracefully to stick out in odd directions, limbs flexing. Eyes closed, breathing deeply. From their gaiafield emanations, their minds seemed to be hibernating.
Aliens teleported into human bodies, and carefully examining what they could do.
It was all very different to Oscar’s wake-up routine, which normally involved a lot of coffee and accessing the most trashy unisphere gossip shows he could find. And that was the whole non-attraction problem. All this devotion to perfection and strength didn’t seem to leave them much time to actually be human. It was a big turn-off.
So he crept round the edge of the lounge to the culinary unit, snagged a large cup of coffee and a plate of buttered croissants, and sat quietly in a corner munching away as he watched the strange slow-motion ballet.