If Nessus started their way, they had maybe 30 seconds to get off the bridge and down the other corridor to the hold before he would see them. Decision time. Confrontation meant losing whatever help Nessus might willingly provide. Get out now, Sigmund thought, before Nessus can truly know he has been spied upon.
Nessus picked up something and walked out of the relax room.
“Kirsten! Start your cleanup!” Sigmund hurried to the nearest hold, moving as quickly as he could without making noise. He stepped through to the relax room. Nessus would be halfway to the bridge by now.
Sealed packages sat on a shelf beside the synthesizer. Sigmund couldn’t read the labels, but he guessed these were emergency rations. Puppeteers would have backup synthesizers and presynthed food in case the backups had problems.
What they were didn’t matter. Sigmund swept several packages to the deck.
In the stone-silent ship, the splats were deafening.
When Nessus found the mess, he’d think he bumped the shelf. Wobbling packages that took a moment to topple was surely an easier explanation than intruders. They could come back the next time Nessus met with Sabrina.
Sigmund stepped back into the cargo hold. He called Kirsten on her comp. “Check the monitors. Did Nessus turn around?”
“Yes, he went back to the relax room. What’s the mess you made?”
“The cargo hold. Now.”
“Yes, boss,” she said.
They rendezvoused in the hold. Sigmund waved Kirsten through first. Sigmund flicked after, emerging to find Eric and Kirsten hugging.
Sigmund could not help thinking of Penelope—but nothing had changed. New Terra needed him to be him, and Penelope deserved someone . . . normal. “We’re no closer to Earth than before,” Sigmund said bitterly.
Kirsten slipped free of Eric’s arms and turned. Inexplicably, she was beaming. “On the other hand, Sigmund, the trip wasn’t a total loss.
“I found the Outsider ship Nessus visited.”
68
“Time is up.”
Baedeker flinched at the intrusion. Few knew the access codes for his lab. Fewer still would arrive here unannounced. He turned and confirmed his fears. “Hello, Achilles.”
Achilles gazed about at rows of lab instruments and computers. His mane coif was more elaborately garish than ever. “We have not stinted on resources for you.”
The subtext was hardly subtle: Any lack of success will be blamed on me. No matter that generations of Concordance researchers had feared even to try reverse-engineering the drive technology.
“We’ll be more comfortable there.” Baedeker motioned toward his small office area. The short walk, a little settling-in time, offers of refreshments . . . it all took time. Achilles had come unannounced like this to rattle him—and had succeeded.
He needed to gather his wits.
He had learned a few things about the drive. The underlying technology did tap zero-point energy. The energies involved were extraordinary. Beyond that, he had dared to perform only a few noninvasive scans. The readouts hinted elliptically at far more than they revealed.
Baedeker guessed at quantum logic—and he quailed at the consequences of disturbing it. If he was correct, an unknowably complex real-time computation channeled and directed vast energies. Every probe he undertook risked collapsing the computation into an unintended state. What would happen then . . . ?
This was frighteningly far beyond Citizen science.
Achilles waited for Baedeker to settle onto a mound of cushions—and remained standing. “The situation with the ex-Colonists requires resolution. Your reports have been less than forthcoming. Have you found a way to remotely disable their planetary drive?”
“Respectfully,” Baedeker began, “the energies involved are—”
“Answer the question.” Achilles’ undertunes pulsed with impatience.
Baedeker stood, setting his hooves far apart in a confidence he did not feel. He wanted to flee. But the forces with which Achilles was so eager to meddle made flight meaningless. . . . “I found no remotely accessible controls.” Nor had he found any unsuspected weakness that he might exploit. How could he, when so little of the design made sense?
“That is unfortunate,” Achilles warbled. “The Hind-most has decided we will wait no longer.”
“Because of the ship that flew past the Fleet?”
“That is not your affair,” Achilles snapped. “Because of your failure, it appears we must disable their planetary drive another way.”
Baedeker plucked at his mane. The other way was bombardment. The more he learned of the drive, the more the notion terrified him. “That could mean genocide.”
Achilles craned a neck to more closely study a small decorative holo. “Provoking the Outsiders would mean genocide. Ours. Something unexpected happening on our old colony? That would be merely unfortunate.”
Somehow, the casual apathy rang false. Baedeker allowed himself to hope. “There may be another option.” Most of his recent investigations had been directed to finding something—anything—safer to attempt.
“Oh?”
Baedeker heard the faint grace note of interest under the feigned indifference. “We had thought to disable the planetary drive by surprise, making the New Terrans’ ships too precious to use against Hearth. What if we turn the plan on its heads? What if we destroy all their ships by surprise? They would be defenseless. Then, a threat to damage their planetary drive might suffice.”
“Interesting,” Achilles whistled. “If you have a way to destroy all their ships.”
Baedeker bobbed heads vigorously. “We need only generalize how we can destroy individual hulls. Imagine a network of stealthed comm buoys deployed around New Terra. At an opportune moment, those satellites beam the ‘power-plant off’ command to every General Products hull on the surface or in nearby orbit.”
Achilles’ eyes gleamed. “Opportune?”
“We would act when all their ships are located. If I recall correctly, they were left with very few ships under the agreement of separation. General Products will have the records. If we know how many ships there are, we concentrate on finding them.” Baedeker had in mind remote sensing.
“Oh yes,” Achilles chanted. He seemed, suddenly, very happy. “We have ways to locate the ships. You may have done it yet again.”
IN THE MAIN bridge display of Remembrance, a world shimmered.
Sparkling blue oceans. Continents rich with forest and fields. Swirls of white cloud. Round it all circled tiny suns, like necklaces of brilliant yellow topaz.
For most of Achilles’ life, this world had hung in the sky over Hearth. As it would once again—only he would not see it. He would be on it, ruling. His reward. Nike had promised.
Achilles stood tall. “Ready?”
Baedeker fidgeted on the other command couch. For all he had scanned his console obsessively for much of a shift, he checked everything again. “Three ships on the ground, at their main spaceport. Two ships in synchronous orbit over Arcadia.” There was a flurry of whispering to his console, and five small holos formed. Each centered on a remotely viewed General Products hull. “All five accounted for.”
As his spies had reported. “And are you prepared to take them all out?”
A hoarse, bass whisper. “Yes, Achilles. All buoys have target lock. I am ready at your command.”
At my command. I can get used to that.
Stealthed, Remembrance was invisible except to hyperwave radar—a technology the humans lacked. He felt like Zeus, ready to smite the puny humans below with his lightning.
Perhaps, when his reign began, he would change his name.
Achilles opened a sixth small image. It centered on a ship also stationed to guard the human continent, for all the good it would do them. This target was freighted with significance: the old ramscoop with which the Colonists had extorted their—fleeting—freedom. This hull had not come from the factories of General Products.
“On my co
unt,” Achilles sang. “Three. Two. One. Now.”
The laser sliced through the old hull. Ululating with joy, Achilles retargeted on the largest fragment . . . and the largest after that . . . and after that. . . . Eventually, he hit the small onboard supply of liquid hydrogen. It flashed to gas and plasma, exploding the ruptured tank. Most of the debris was invisibly small, but it rocked the larger wreckage.
Beside him, Baedeker gaped. In his displays, from the subtle touch of five stealthed comm buoys, five hulls had vanished.
Three irregular heaps slumped across the tarmac. Smoke billowed from one heap, from who knew what cargo set aflame. It was impossible from this distance, especially through the smoke, to characterize the rubble, but Achilles’ imagination offered details: decks and interior walls, cargo and supplies, thrusters and hyperdrive shunts, life support. . . . And a few bodies, doubtless.
As for the suddenly hull-less ships in orbit, air pressure had burst every interior partition. Clouds of debris surrounded the wrecks. Every loose or ruptured part had gotten a little push from air escaping as the hulls came apart.
The rebels’ fleet destroyed in a moment. The Fleet once more safe. A world—his world—left with no option but to submit.
Basking in Olympian invincibility, Achilles broadcast the Concordance’s ultimatum to the planet beneath his hooves.
69
Among the legacies purged from New Terran culture was poker. Digging deeper, Sigmund found that the New Terrans had no games of chance. Mentions of “bluffing” and “shell game” had gotten him only blank stares.
With luck, the concepts were as foreign to Puppeteers.
Even as a chemical payload billowed into a smoke screen over Arcadia’s main spaceport, his handpicked crew assembled, flicking across the world unseen.
SECRETS FASCINATED SIGMUND—and to uncover secrets, one studied how others hid theirs.
He knew of no better example than the years-long clandestine development of the atomic bomb. With only his (hacked-at) memory as a resource, he had merely the broad outlines to guide him: a secret so closely held that scientists and technicians never learned what Project Y was until they were escorted to their new jobs, in a place where no one would think to look, amid desolation where nobody lived.
Centuries and light-years distant, in the midst of the First Atomic War, that had meant deep in New Mexico’s mountains. A whole town built in the wilderness, too remote to approach without raising suspicions, its very existence denied. The babies born there during the war shared a post-office box in another city as their official place of birth.
His Los Alamos was a system of caverns, in the side of a cliff, in the vast sunken basin at the desert tip of Elysium, in a desolation shunned by Citizen tourists and émigrés alike. After the unavoidable first visit by aircraft, everyone and everything came by stepping disc—if they knew how.
Like transfer booths, stepping discs could absorb only so much kinetic energy. Discs handled more energy, but still not enough for transoceanic jumps. Without orbiting relays, Colonists were kept on Arcadia, where they could not surprise or discomfit Puppeteer tourists.
But relays at sea worked just as well, and “oceano-graphic research” was a credible cover story. The oceans of New Terra remained preserves of Hearthian sea life. The ships now deployed were ostensibly to investigate whether plankton, krill, and other earthly biota from Long Pass’s cargo could be introduced, as part of a longer-term plan to add still-frozen fish eggs.
The public disc network had no record of shipboard relays or the endpoint discs on Elysium. The very few Arcadian discs that knew those secret addresses were tuned to different frequencies than the public network, hidden inside secured buildings, and responded only to classified access codes.
MAKING BABIES TAKES time. Sigmund never expected the registration of births to become an issue. Today’s events proved him correct.
Half a world apart from the sneak attack, Sigmund watched with pride as his crew flicked from cavern to starship. The ship glittered before him, its plasteel hull hopefully immune from whatever attacked GP hulls, its mirror coating proof for at least a few seconds against lasers. Every part—plasteel panels, thrusters and hyperdrive shunt scavenged and disassembled from a grounded decoy at the main spaceport, control consoles, life support—had come through the secret disc system. Everything was assembled in haste, by teams working around the clock. Just days earlier, the ship had passed a pressure test: two atmospheres of pressure within, simulating one atmosphere with vacuum outside. Supplies were still coming when the Puppeteers struck.
His communicator crackled. He recognized Eric’s voice. “We’re ready, Sigmund.”
“Be right there.” Sigmund looked once more about the cavern, then signaled to the ground crew to remove the giant camouflage tarps that hid the cautiously enlarged opening. He took two paces to the nearest stepping disc, flicked aboard, and strode to the bridge.
Eric and Kirsten looked at him expectantly. Sigmund nodded. “Let’s do this.”
With the eerie silence of thrusters, the great ship floated from the cavern floor and drifted sideways into the mountainous basin. It hovered there for a moment, as Sigmund waited to be struck down.
Nothing happened. Maybe the Puppeteers didn’t know about shell games. “Engage,” Sigmund said.
The New Terra starship Why Not leapt skyward at maximum thrust. In hours, it had left the planet’s singularity and vanished into hyperspace.
70
Achilles had an epiphany: He had confused reigning with governing.
Reigning was pomp and privilege. Governing was annoying detail. Once he had imposed order on the ground, he would import administrators. Vesta cared about such trivia—let him handle it. Let him handle her.
In the bridge display where Achilles had so recently enjoyed the destruction of Long Pass, a woman earnestly and endlessly prattled. “I have a team of my best people working on it,” she said. Sabrina Gomez-Vanderhoff exuded an obsequious sincerity. Doubtless, she thought to make a spot for herself in his court.
As though he would forget who had led these rabble during their independence.
Let her imagine whatever she wished about her future. For now, he needed on-the-ground cooperation. If only he could keep her on-topic. “All that will wait,” Achilles snapped. It made his brain ache that all her minutiae would come back. “Focus on the matter in our jaws.” On surrender, quickly accepted, but never quite implemented. “What of the planetary drive?”
“I apologize, Achilles. A moment.” She leaned out of the field of her camera for a whispered consultation. “I have dispatched technical personnel I consider extremely trustworthy. They will assume responsibility from the custodial staff. There is a problem first.”
There always was. “I do not like problems,” Achilles shouted.
She averted her eyes submissively. At least she remembered how to behave around Citizens. In more conversational tones, he prompted, “What is the problem?”
“Securing the drive. The staff at the drive facility refuses to relinquish it. We know they have stunners, stolen from an office of Public Safety. We will remove those who resist, but it may take time. The drive is on Atlantis, beyond stepping-disc range, so it will take a while to get sufficient loyal staff to Atlantis by boat.”
Of course the drive facility was off Arcadia. No sane Citizen would have permitted even tame humans free rein on the same continent as a planetary drive. Only now even the pretense of docility was gone. Now, suddenly, onetime caution had become a problem.
Below the view of his camera, Achilles pawed at the deck in frustration. All human spaceships were destroyed. Victory was in his jaws. That insubordinate humans might damage the drive now was intolerable. “Proceed with caution,” he said. “But once that is done, I expect action.”
Her head bowed. “The question is . . .”
“Is what?”
Her shoulders slumped and her voice fell. “The question is, What then? What do w
e do with the controls? Match course and speed with the Fleet? Slow down, or stop, and let the Fleet catch up with us?”
Comm delay made every exchange that much worse. Remembrance remained stealthed, because (as Baedeker was so quick to remind Achilles) ground-based lasers were a threat if humans spotted the ship. Lest Remembrance be revealed, transmissions went through a relay of stealthed radio buoys. What an annoyance a minute could be.
“This would be much easier in person,” the woman said. “Is that possible?”
Was it? On the ground, stealthiness was no defense. Lasers would really be a threat. Concussion from a big-enough explosion against the hull could mash him, even while the hull remained intact. So: no landing for now. Remembrance could hover just close enough for this woman and perhaps a few of her staff to step aboard. That seemed possible—
Until he remembered Sigmund Ausfaller hiding a bomb inside a GP hull to coerce Beowulf Shaffer. So many years ago, the ploy had amused Achilles, then regional president for General Products on We Made It.
Would he gamble with his life that another human would not conceive the same trick?
No. Baedeker must first assemble isolation booths of hull material, and equip them with sensors, before anyone from New Terra could come aboard. “Soon, Sabrina. I am making arrangements.”
Ausfaller! The man plagued him even in death.
THE UNIVERSE HAD gone insane.
Nessus listened to Nike’s message, over and over. Each time, he hoped to glean some positive element. Each time he failed. His own frantic communications hyperwaved to Sabrina went unanswered.
New Terra had been attacked, its paltry few ships destroyed. Achilles poised to take over—or to destroy New Terra’s planetary drive if thwarted.
It was madness. Nessus tore at his mane, waiting now for Omar to respond.
And then a reply from Omar finally did arrive. . . .
Sigmund gone to meet with the Outsiders. They knew where Earth was. The repercussions were beyond imagining. But Sigmund did not know exactly where the Outsiders were. It would take Sigmund time to find them.