“What happened then, Admiral?”
“We jumped immediately to Lucifer System, Your Excellency. There we recycled under twelve-hour automated resurrection. Many of the resurrections were unsuccessful. By combining the successfully resurrected crew members from all three ships, I was able to crew the Uriel I left the other two starships in passive but automated defensive trajectories while I commenced searching for the Gabriel and the Raphael I found neither. But a final beacon drone was soon discovered on the far side of Lucifer’s yellow sun.”
“And the beacon was from …” prompted Lourdusamy.
“Mother Captain Stone. The beacon held the downloaded history of the Gabriel’s combat recorder. It showed the battle that had taken place less than two days before. Stone had attempted to destroy the Raphael by plasma and fusion weapons. The attempts failed. The Gabriel then engaged Father Captain de Soya’s ship by deathbeam.”
There was silence in the tiny chapel. Isozaki watched the red light of the flickering votive candles painting the pained face of His Holiness, Pope Urban XVI.
“The outcome of that engagement?” said Lourdusamy.
“Both crews died,” said Aldikacti. “According to automated instruments aboard the Gabriel, the Raphael completed automated translation. Mother Captain Stone had ordered her crew to resurrection crèche battle stations. She had programmed the Gabriel’s ship computers to resurrect her and several of the essential crew members on an emergency, eight-hour cycle. Only she and one of her officers survived the resurrection. Mother Captain Stone encoded the beacon and accelerated to the Raphael’s former translation point. She was determined to seek out and destroy the ship, preferably before de Soya and his crew completed resurrection … if they were in their crèches at the time of the deathbeaming.”
“Did Mother Captain Stone know which system this translation point would open upon, Admiral?”
“Negative, Your Excellency. There were too many variables involved.”
“And what was your response to the beacon’s data, Admiral?”
“I waited twelve hours for a working complement of the crews on the Mikal and the Izrail to complete resurrection, Your Excellency. I then translated all three of my ships through the jump point indicated by the Raphael and Gabriel. I left a second beacon for the archangels I was sure would be following from Tau Ceti System within hours.”
“You did not find it necessary to wait for these ships?”
“No, Your Excellency. I thought it important to translate as soon as all three of my ships were combat-ready.”
“But you did find it expedient to wait for the crews of these two ships, Admiral. Why did you not give chase immediately with only the Uriel?”
Aldikacti did not hesitate. “It was a command combat decision, Your Excellency. I felt that the probabilities were very high that Father Captain de Soya had taken the Raphael to an Ouster system … quite possibly one more heavily armed than any Task Force GIDEON had encountered. I also felt it probable that Mother Captain Stone’s ship, the Gabriel, had been destroyed by either the Raphael or Ouster ships within the unknown system. I felt that three ships of the line were the minimum force I could take into this unknown situation.”
“And was it an Ouster system, Admiral?”
“Negative, Your Excellency. Or at least, no sign of Ousters were discovered in the two weeks of investigation following this incident.”
“Where did the translation point take you, Admiral?”
“Into the outer shell of a red giant star,” said Admiral Aldikacti. “Our containment fields were, of course, activated, but it was a very close thing.”
“Did all three of your ships make it, Admiral?”
“Negative, Your Excellency. The Uriel and Izrail survived exit from the star and containment field cooling procedures. The Mikal was lost with all hands.”
“And did you find the Gabriel and the Raphael, Admiral?”
“Only the Gabriel, Your Excellency. It was discovered floating free some two AUs from the red giant. All systems were inoperative. There had been a breach of the containment field and the interior of the ship had melted into a single molten mass.”
“Were Mother Captain Stone and the other crew members found and resurrected, Admiral?”
“Unfortunately, no, Your Excellency. There was not enough discrete organic material remaining to pursue resurrection.”
“Was the slagging due to emergence in the red giant or attack from the Raphael or Ouster unknowns, Admiral?”
“It is still being determined by our materials experts, Your Excellency, but the preliminary report suggests an overload due to both natural and combat causes. The weapons used would have been consistent with the Raphael’s armament.”
“So you are saying that the Gabriel fought an automated engagement near this red giant sun, Admiral?”
“Within the star, Your Excellency. It seems that the Raphael turned about, reentered the star, and attacked the Gabriel within seconds of its emergence from Hawking space.”
“And is there a chance that the Raphael was also destroyed in this second engagement? The ship incinerated deep in the star?”
“A chance, Your Excellency, but we are not operating upon that assumption. It is our best guess that Father Captain de Soya then translated out of system to an unknown destination in the Outback.”
Lourdusamy nodded, his heavy jowls quivering slightly. “Admiral Marusyn,” he rumbled, “could you give us an assessment of this threat if the Raphael did indeed survive?”
The older Admiral stepped forward. “Your Excellency, we have to assume that Father Captain de Soya and the other mutineers are hostile to the Pax and that this theft of a Pax archangel-class starship was premeditated. We also have to assume the worst-case scenario that this theft of our most secret and lethal weapons system was carried out in coordination with the Ousters.” The Admiral took a breath. “Your Excellencies … Your Holiness … with the Gideon drive, any point in this arm of the galaxy is only an instant away from any other. The Raphael could translate into any Pax system—even Pacem’s—without the Hawking-drive wake warnings of the earlier, and current, Ouster spacecraft. The Raphael could ravage our Mercantilus transport lanes, attack undefended worlds and colonies, and generally wreak havoc before a Pax task force could respond.”
The Pope raised one finger. “Admiral Marusyn, are we to understand that this most prized of Gideon-drive technologies may fall into the hands of the Ousters … be duplicated … and thus power many of the Enemy’s ships?”
Marusyn’s already florid face and neck flushed more deeply. “Your Holiness … that is unlikely, Your Holiness … extemely unlikely. The steps of manufacture of a Gideon archangel are so complex, the cost so prohibitive, the secret elements so guarded …”
“But it is possible,” interrupted the Pope.
“Yes, Your Holiness.”
The Pope raised his hand like a blade cutting through the air. “We believe that we have heard all we need to hear from our friends in Pax Fleet. You are excused, Admiral Marusyn, Admiral Aldikacti, Admiral Wu.”
The three officers genuflected, bowed their heads, stood, and backed away from His Holiness. The door whispered shut behind them.
There were now ten dignitaries present, in addition to the silent papal aides and Councillor Albedo.
The Pope inclined his head toward Secretary of State Cardinal Lourdusamy. “Disposition, Simon Augustino?”
“Admiral Marusyn is to receive a letter of rebuke and will be transferred to general staff,” said Lourdusamy softly. “Admiral Wu will take his place as temporary Pax Fleet commander in chief until a suitable replacement is found. Admiral Aldikacti has been recommended for excommunication and execution by firing squad.”
The Pope nodded sadly. “We shall now hear from Cardinal Mustafa, Cardinal Du Noyer, CEO Isozaki, and Councillor Albedo before concluding this business.”
“… AND THUS ENDED THE OFFICIAL INQUIRY BY the Holy Office pertaining to the events on the Pa
x world of Mars,” concluded Cardinal Mustafa. He glanced at Cardinal Lourdusamy. “It was at this time that Captain Wolmak suggested that it was imperative that my entourage and I return to the archangel Jibril still in orbit around that planet.”
“Please continue, Excellency,” murmured Cardinal Lourdusamy. “Can you tell us the nature of the emergency which Captain Wolmak felt required your imperative return?”
“Yes,” said Mustafa, rubbing his lower lip. “Captain Wolmak had found the interstellar freighter that had uploaded cargo from the unlisted base near the Martian city of Arafat-kaffiyeh. The ship had been discovered floating powerless in Old Earth System’s asteroid belt.”
“Can you tell us the name of that ship, Excellency?” prompted Lourdusamy.
“The H.H.M.S. Saigon Maru.”
CEO Kenzo Isozaki’s lips twitched despite his iron control. He remembered the ship. His oldest son had crewed on it during the early years of the boy’s apprenticeship. The Saigon Maru had been an ancient ore and bulk freighter … about a three-million-ton ion sledge carrier, as he recalled.
“CEO Isozaki?” snapped Lourdusamy.
“Yes, Your Excellency?” Isozaki’s voice was smooth and emotionless.
“The ship’s designation suggests that it is of Mercantilus registry. Is this correct, M. Isozaki?”
“Yes, Your Excellency,” said the CEO. “But it is my recollection that the H.H.M.S. Saigon Maru was sold for scrap along with sixty-some other obsolete freighters about … eight standard years ago, if memory serves.”
“Your Excellencies?” said Anna Pelli Cognani. “Your Holiness? If I might?” The other CEO had whispered to her wafer-thin comlog and now touched her hearring.
“CEO Pelli Cognani,” said Cardinal Lourdusamy.
“Our records show that the Saigon Maru was indeed sold to independent scrap contractors some eight years, three months, and two days ago, standard. Later transmissions confirmed that the ships had been scrapped and recycled at the Armaghast orbital automated foundries.”
“Thank you, CEO Pelli Cognani,” said Lourdusamy. “Cardinal Mustafa, you may continue.”
The Grand Inquisitor nodded and continued his briefing, covering only the most necessary details. And while he spoke he thought of the images he was not describing in detail:
The Jibril and its accompanying torchships slowing to silent, synchronized tumbling, matching velocities with the dark freighter. Cardinal Mustafa had always imagined asteroid belts as tightly packed clusters of moonlets, but despite the multiple images on the tactical plot, there were no rocks in sight: just the matte-black freighter, as ugly and functional as a rusted mass of pipes and cylinders, half a klick long. Matched as they were in velocity and trajectory, hanging only three klicks away with the yellow sun of humankind’s birth burning beyond their sterns, Jibril and the Saigon Maru appeared motionless with only the stars wheeling slowly around them.
Mustafa remembered—and regretted—his decision to inspect the ship with the troopers who were going aboard. The indignities of suiting up in Swiss Guard combat armor: a monomol-D skinsuit layer, followed by an AI neural mesh, then the spacesuit itself—bulkier than civilian skinsuits with its polymered sheath of impact armor—and finally the web belts of gear and the morphable reaction pak. The Jibril had deep-radared the hulk a dozen times and was certain that nothing moved or breathed on board, but the archangel still backed off to thirty klicks’ attack distance as soon as the Grand Inquisitor, Security Commander Browning, Marine Sergeant Nell Kasner, former groundforce commander Major Piet, and ten Swiss Guard/Marine commandos had jumped from the sally port.
Mustafa remembered his pounding pulse as they jetted closer to the dead freighter, two commandos ferrying him across the abyss as if he were another parcel to carry. He remembered the sunlight glinting off gold blast visors as the troopers communicated with tightbeam squirts and hand signals, taking up positions on either side of the open air lock. Two troopers went in first, their reaction paks throbbing silently, assault weapons raised. Then Commander Browning and Sergeant Kasner went in fast behind them. A minute later there was a coded squirt on the tactical channel and Mustafa’s handlers guided him into the waiting black hole of the air lock.
Corpses floating in the beams of flashlight lasers. Meat-locker images. Frozen carcasses, red-striped ribs, gutted abdominal cavities. Jaws locked open in eternally silent screams. Frozen streamers of blood from the gaping jaws and hemorrhaged, protruding eyes. Viscera drifting in tumbling trajectories amid the stabbing beams of light.
“Crew,” tightbeamed Commander Browning.
“Shrike?” queried Cardinal Mustafa. He was mentally saying the rosary in rapid monotone, not for spiritual reassurance but to keep his mind away from the images floating in hellish light before him. He had been warned not to vomit in his helmet. Filters and scrubbers would clean the mess before he strangled on it, but they were not foolproof.
“Probably the Shrike,” answered Major Piet, extending his gauntlet into the shattered chest cavity of one of the drifting corpses. “See how the cruciform has been ripped out. Just as in Arafat-kaffiyeh.”
“Commander!” came a tightbeamed voice of one of the troopers who had moved aft from the air lock. “Sergeant! Here! in the first cargo hold!”
Browning and Piet had gone ahead of the Grand Inquisitor into the long, cylindrical space. Flashlight lasers were lost in this huge space.
These corpses had not been slashed and shattered. They were stacked neatly on carbon slabs extruding from the hull on each side, held in place by nylon mesh bands. The slabs came out from all sides of the hull, leaving only a zero-g corridor down the center. Mustafa and his guides and keepers floated the length of this black space, flashlight lasers stabbing left, right, down, and up. Frozen flesh, pale flesh, bar codes on the soles of their feet, pubic hair, closed eyes, hands pale against black carbon by hipbones, flaccid penises, breasts frozen in zero-g weightlessness, hair tight on pale skulls or floating in frozen nimbuses. Children with smooth, cold skin, extended bellies, and translucent eyelids. Infants with bar coded soles.
There were tens of thousands of bodies in the four long cargo holds. All were human, All were naked. All were lifeless.
“AND DID YOU COMPLETE YOUR INSPECTION OF THE H.H.M.S. Saigon Maru, Grand Inquisitor?” prompted Cardinal Lourdusamy.
Mustafa realized that he had fallen silent for a long moment, possessed by the demon of that terrible memory. “We did complete it, Your Excellency,” he answered, his voice thick.
“And your conclusions?”
“There were sixty-seven thousand eight hundred and twenty-seven human beings aboard the bulk freighter H.H.M.S. Saigon Maru,” said the Grand Inquisitor. “Fifty-one of them were crew members. All of the crew members’ bodies were accounted for. All had been slashed and rent in the same fashion as the victims at Arafat-kaffiyeh.”
“There were no survivors? None could be resurrected?”
“None.”
“In your opinion, Cardinal Mustafa, was the demon-creature called the Shrike responsible for the death of the crew members of the H.H.M.S. Saigon Maru?”
“In my opinion, it was, Your Excellency.”
“And in your opinion, Cardinal Mustafa, was the Shrike responsible for the deaths of the sixty-seven thousand seven hundred and seventy-six other bodies discovered on the Saigon Maru?”
Mustafa hesitated only a second. “In my opinion, Your Excellency”—he turned his head and bowed in the direction of the man in the chair—“Your Holiness … the cause of death of the sixty-seven thousand-some men, women, and children found on the H.H.M.S. Saigon Maru was not consistent with the wounds discovered on Mars’s victims, or consistent with prior tales of Shrike attack.”
Cardinal Lourdusamy took a rustling step forward. “And, according to your Holy Office forensic experts, Cardinal Mustafa, what was the cause of death for the human beings found aboard this freighter?”
Cardinal Mustafa’s eyes were lowered as he
spoke. “Your Excellency, neither the Holy Office nor Pax Fleet forensic specialists could specify any cause of death for these people. In fact …” Mustafa stopped.
“In fact,” Lourdusamy continued for him, “the bodies found aboard the Saigon Maru … exclusive of the crew … showed neither clear cause of death nor the attributes of death, is that not correct?”
“That is correct, Your Excellency.” Mustafa’s eyes roamed to the faces of the other dignitaries in the chapel. “They were not living, but they … showed no signs of decomposition, postmortem lividity, brain decay … none of the usual signs of physical death.”
“Yet they were not alive?” prompted Lourdusamy.
Cardinal Mustafa rubbed his cheek. “Not within our capacity to revive, Your Excellency. Nor within our ability to detect signs of brain or cellular activity. They were … stopped.”
“And what was the disposition of the bulk freighter, H.H.M.S. Saigon Maru, Cardinal Mustafa?”
“Captain Wolmak put a prize crew aboard from the Jibril,” said the Grand Inquisitor. “We returned immediately to Pacem to report the matter. The Saigon Maru was traveling via traditional Hawking drive, escorted by four Hawking-drive torchships, and is scheduled to arrive in the nearest Pax system with a Pax Fleet base … Barnard’s System, I believe … in … ah … three standard weeks.”
Lourdusamy nodded slowly. “Thank you, Grand Inquisitor.” The Secretary of State walked to a place near the Pope’s chair, genuflected toward the altar, and crossed himself as he crossed the aisle. “Your Holiness, I would ask that we hear from Her Excellency, Cardinal Du Noyer.”
Pope Urban raised one hand as if in benediction. “We would be pleased to listen to Cardinal Du Noyer.”
KENZO ISOZAKI’S MIND WAS REELING. WHY WERE they being told these things? What possible purpose could it serve for the CEOs of the Pax Mercantilus to hear these things? Isozaki’s blood had chilled at the summary death sentence of Admiral Aldikacti. Was that to be the fate of all of them?
No, he realized. Aldikacti had received a sentence of excommunication and execution for simple incompetence. If Mustafa, Pelli Cognani, himself, and the others were to be charged with some variety of treason … quick, simple execution would be the furthest thing from their fates. The pain machines in Castel Sant’Angelo would be humming and grating for centuries.