Torch of Freedom

  The star system's original survey team had obviously possessed a somewhat perverse sense of humor, given the names it had bestowed upon Torch's system bodies. Torch's original name—Elysium—was a case in point, since Kare could think of very few planetary environments less like the ancient Greeks' concept of the Elysian Fields. He didn't know why Manpower had renamed it "Verdant Vista," although it had probably had something to do with avoiding the PR downsides of turning a planet named "Elysium" into a hot, humid, thoroughly wretched purgatory for the hapless slaves it intended to dump there. Personally, Kare was of the opinion that "Green Hell" would have been a far more accurate name.

  And it would have suited the local wildlife so well, too, he thought with a mental chuckle. The chuckle faded quickly, however, when he reflected upon how many of Manpower's slaves had fallen prey to "Verdant Vista's" many and manifold varieties of predator.

  Another little point the bastards might have wanted to bear in mind, he reflected rather more grimly. People who survive this kind of planetary environment aren't likely to be shrinking violets. Given where their settlement pool is coming from in the first place, the locally produced generations are probably going to be an even uglier nightmare for those bastards. Pity about that.

  "Well," he said after a moment, "TJ and the rest of the team and I have already taken a pretty close look at the data you people have been able to provide. Obviously, you didn't begin to have the instrumentation we've brought with us, so we weren't actually in a position to reach any hard and fast conclusions about what we have here. One thing we have observed, however, is that the terminus' gravitic signature is quite low. In fact, we're a bit surprised anyone even noticed it."

  "Really?" Du Havel leaned back in his chair and crossed his legs. Kare looked at him, and the prime minister shrugged with a smile. "Oh, this certainly isn't my area of expertise, Doctor! I'm fully prepared to accept what you've just said, but I have to admit it piques my interest a bit. I was under the impression that ever since the existence of wormholes was first demonstrated, one of the very first things any stellar survey team's done is look very hard for them."

  "That they do, Mr. Prime Minister," Kare acknowledged wryly. "Indeed, they do! But, as I'm sure all of you are aware, wormholes and their termini are usually a minimum of a couple of light-hours away from the stars with which they're associated. And what somebody who isn't a hyper-physicist may not realize is that unless they're particularly big, you also have to get within, oh, maybe four or five light-minutes before they're going to show up at all. There are certain stellar characteristics—we call them 'wormhole fingerprints'—we've learned to look for when there's a terminus in the vicinity, but they aren't always present. Again, the bigger or stronger the wormhole, the more likely the 'fingerprints' are to show up, as well.

  "What we appear to have here, however, is a case of pure serendipity on someone's part. My team and I have looked very carefully at Torch, and we've determined that it really does have most of the 'fingerprints,' but they're extremely faint. In fact, it took several runs of computer enhancement before we were able to pick them out at all. That's not entirely surprising, given Torch's relative youth. Despite their mass, F-class stars are statistically less likely to possess termini at all, and when they do, the 'fingerprints' are almost invariably fainter than usual. That means nobody should have been looking for a terminus associated with this star in the first place, and, in the second place, that they shouldn't have been looking just sixty-four light-minutes from the primary. That's ridiculously close. In fact, our search of the literature indicates that it's the nearest any terminus associated with an F6 has ever been located relative to its associated primary. Coupled with how faint its Warshawski signature is, that suggests to us that whoever found it in the first place must have almost literally stubbed his toe on it. He sure shouldn't have been looking for it there, at any rate!"

  He paused and shook his head, his expression wry. In a properly run universe people like Manpower wouldn't have the kind of luck it must have taken for them to stumble across a discovery like this one.

  Although, he reminded himself, I could be wrong about that. I'm pretty sure Manpower has to be gnashing its teeth over the thought that the goody they found has ended up in the clutches of a batch of anti-slavery "terrorists" like the Torches. So maybe what this really represents is the fact that God has a particularly nasty sense of humor where "people like Manpower" are concerned.

  That possibility, he reflected, was enough to warm the cockles of his heart.

  "In addition to making it hard to find in the first place, the faintness of this terminus' Warshawski signature, coupled with its unusually close proximity to the primary, also indicates that it's almost certainly not especially huge. Frankly, despite the rumors to the contrary, I'll be surprised if there's more than one additional terminus associated with it—it looks a lot like one end of a two-loci system, what we call a 'wormhole bridge,' unlike the multi-loci 'junctions' like the Manticore Junction. Some of the bridges are more valuable than quite a few of the junctions we've discovered over the centuries, of course. It all depends on where the ends of the bridge are."

  The Torches at the table nodded to show they were following his explanation. From their expressions—especially Du Havel's—the prediction that their wormhole was going to connect to only one other location wasn't exactly welcome, though.

  "Even in a worst-case scenario, most wormholes are significant long-term revenue producers," Captain Zachary put in. Obviously she'd seen the same expressions Kare had.

  "Unless the other terminus of this one is somewhere out in previously totally unexplored space—which is possible, of course—then it's still going to be a huge timesaver for people wanting to go from wherever the other end is to anything close to this end," she continued. "It's only four days from here to Erewhon even for a merchant ship, for example, and only about thirteen days from here to Maya. And from Erewhon to the Star Kingdom's only about four days via the Erewhon wormhole. So if the other end of your wormhole is somewhere in the Shell, anyone wanting to reach those destinations is going to be able to shave literally months off of her transit time. I'm not suggesting you're going to see anywhere near the volume of traffic we see through the Junction, of course, but I'm pretty sure there's still going to be enough to give your treasury a hefty shot in the arm."

  "Maybe not a goldmine, but at least a silver mine, you mean?" a grinning Queen Berry asked.

  "Something along those lines, Your Majesty," Zachary agreed with an answering smile.

  "Which probably wasn't exactly a non-factor in Mr. Hauptman's thinking," Kare added, and chuckled. "From what I've seen and heard, he'd probably think backing this survey was a good idea even if it wasn't likely to add a single dime to his own cash flow. On the other hand, I understand he's going to be showing a nice long-term profit on his share of your transit fees."

  "I think it's what's referred to as 'a comfortable return,' " Du Havel said dryly. "One-point-five percent of all transit fees for the next seventy-five years ought to come to a pretty fair piece of change."

  Several people chuckled this time, and Kare nodded in acknowledgment of the prime minister's point. At the same time, the hyper-physicist really did feel confident Hauptman would have backed the survey effort, anyway. It was obvious to Kare that Klaus Hauptman regarded not making a profit for his shareholders whenever possible as a perversion roughly equivalent to eating one's own young. He supposed no one became as successful as Hauptman without that sort of attitude, and he didn't have any particular problem with it himself. But anyone who bothered to take a look around the Torch System would have been forced to concede that Hauptman also put his personal fortune's money where his principles were.

  Anyone who knew anything about Klaus Hauptman and his daughter Stacey had to be aware of their virulent, burning hatred for all things associated with the genetic slave trade. By any measure one cared to use, the Hauptman Cartel was the Star Kingdom's single larg
est financial contributor to the Beowulf-based Anti-Slavery League. Not only that, the Cartel had already provided the Kingdom of Torch with well over a dozen frigates. No serious interstellar navy had built frigates in decades, of course, but the latest ships—the Nat Turner-class—Hauptman had delivered to Torch were significantly more dangerous than most people might have expected. Effectively, they were hyper-capable versions of the Royal Manticoran Navy's Shrike-class LAC but with about twice the missile capacity and a pair of spinal-mounted grasers, with the second energy weapon bearing aft. Their electronics were a downgraded "export version" of the RMN's (which was hardly surprising, given the fact that they were going to be operating in an area where the Republic of Haven's intelligence services had ready access), but the Turners were probably at least as dangerous as the vast majority of the galaxy's destroyers.

  According to official reports, the Hauptman Cartel had built them at cost. According to unofficial (but exceedingly persistent) reports, Klaus and Stacey Hauptman had picked up somewhere around seventy-five percent of their construction costs out of their own pockets. Given that there were eight of the Turners, that was a pretty hefty sum for even the Hauptmans to shell out. And according to the last word Kare had picked up before leaving Manticore for Torch, the Torch Navy had just ordered its first trio of all-up destroyers, as well. Even after they were completed, Torch would scarcely be considered one of the galaxy's leading navies, but the kingdom would have a fairly substantial little system-defense force.

  Which just happened to be hyper-capable . . . which meant it could also operate in other people's star systems.

  And the fact that Torch has officially declared war on Mesa isn't going to make those Manpower bastards feel any happier when they find out the sort of capability the Torches are building up out here, the hyper-physicist reflected with grim satisfaction.

  When he'd mentioned that thought to Josepha Zachary on the voyage here, she'd nodded emphatically and added her own observation—that Torch obviously had a well thought-out, rationalized expansion program in mind. It was clear to her that they were using the frigates as training platforms, building up a cadre of experienced spacers and officers to provide the locally trained (and highly motivated) manpower to systematically upgrade their naval capabilities as time, money, crewmen, and training permitted.

  "At any rate," he said out loud, "and returning to my original point, that's why TJ and I were both a bit surprised that anyone ever managed to pick it up at all. Which, I suppose, could explain why Mesa apparently hadn't gotten around to surveying it yet. They may have had enough trouble finding it in the first place that they simply hadn't known it was there long enough."

  "I hadn't realized it would have been so difficult for them to detect, Doctor," Jeremy said. "On the other hand, the fact of its existence had become sufficiently common knowledge that Erewhon, at least, knew all about it over two T-years ago. And, frankly, the Ballroom knew about it for at least six months before anyone in Erewhon realized it existed. Given what Captain Zachary's just said, I'm a bit surprised someone like the Jessyk Combine didn't get a survey crew in here sooner. If anybody in the galaxy would recognize the potential value to shippers, I'd think Jessyk would."

  "Yes, TJ and I have kicked that around a good bit, too," Kare replied, "and he's come up with a theory for why they might not have surveyed it even if they'd known it was there all along, if anyone's interested."

  "I don't know about anybody else, but I am!" Queen Berry said, and cocked her head at Wix.

  "Well," Wix rubbed the mustache that was a couple of shades lighter than the rest of his rather unruly beard, "I hope nobody's going to confuse me with any kind of intelligence analyst. But the best reason I've been able to come up with for Jessyk and Manpower's trying to keep their little wormhole quiet is that they didn't want to draw any more attention to what they were doing here on Torch."

  Faces tightened all around the table, and Du Havel nodded thoughtfully.

  "I hadn't really considered that," he admitted, "and I should have. It's the sort of propaganda factor the ASL's tried to keep in mind for a long time. But you may well have a point, Dr. Wix. If this wormhole had started attracting a lot of through traffic, then there'd have been a lot more potentially embarrassing Solarian witnesses to the mortality rate among the members of their planet-side slave labor force, wouldn't there?"

  "That's what I was thinking," Wix agreed. Then he snorted. "Mind you, that's a pretty sophisticated motive to impute to anyone stupid enough to be using slave labor to harvest and process pharmaceuticals in the first place! Completely leaving aside the moral aspects of the decision—which, I feel confident, would never have darkened the doorway of any Mesan transtellar's decision processes—it was economically stupid."

  "I tend to agree with you," Du Havel said. "On the other hand, breeding slaves is pretty damned cheap." His voice was remarkably level, but his bared-teeth grin gave the lie to his apparent detachment. "They've been doing it for a long time, after all, and their 'production lines' are all in place. And to give the devil his due, human beings are still a lot more versatile than most machinery. Not as efficient at most specific tasks as purpose-built machinery, of course, but versatile. And as far as Manpower and Mesans in general are concerned, slaves are 'purpose-built machinery,' when you come down to it. So from their perspective, it made plenty of sense to avoid the initial capital investment in the hardware the job would have required. After all, they already had plenty of cheap replacement units when their 'purpose-built machinery' broke, and they could always make more."

  "You know," Kare said quietly, "sometimes I forget just how . . . skewed the thinking of something like Manpower has to be." He shook his head. "It never would've occurred to me to analyze the economic factors from that perspective."

  "Well, I've had a bit more practice at it than most people." Du Havel's tone was dry enough to create an instant Sahara . . . even on Torch. "The truth is that slavery's almost always been hideously inefficient on a production per man-hour basis. There've been exceptions, of course, but as a general rule, using slaves as skilled technicians—which would be the only way to make it remotely competitive with free labor on a productive basis—has had a tendency to turn around and bite the slaveowner on the ass."

  He smiled again, chillingly, but then the smile faded.

  "The problem is that it doesn't have to be efficient to show at least some profit. A low return on a really big operation still comes to a pretty impressive absolute amount of money, and their 'per-unit' capital costs are low. I'm sure that was a major element in their thinking—especially when you consider how much capital investment in slave-production facilities Manpower would have to write off if it were even tempted to 'go legitimate.' Not that I think it would ever occur to them to make the attempt, you understand."

  "No, I guess not." Kare grimaced, then gave himself a shake. "On the other hand, whatever the Mesans' motives for leaving this particular wormhole unexploited, it gives me a certain warm and fuzzy feeling to reflect on the fact that when it starts producing revenue for you people, that cash flow's going to find itself being plowed into your naval expansion."

  "Yes," Thandi Palane agreed, and her smile was even colder than Du Havel's had been. "That's a possibility I've been spending quite a bit of my own time contemplating. We've already managed a couple of ops I'm pretty sure have pissed Manpower off, but if we can get our hands on a few more hyper-capable ships of our own, they're going to be very, very unhappy with the results."

  "In that case," Kare replied with a smile of his own, "by all means, as Duchess Harrington would put it, 'let's be about it.' "

  Chapter Fourteen

  "So what's on the agenda today?" Judson Van Hale asked cheerfully as he walked into the office.

  "You," Harper S. Ferry replied repressively, "are entirely too bright and happy for someone who has to be up this early."

  "Nonsense!" Judson gave him a broad, toothy smile. "You effete city boys simply ha
ve no appreciation for the brisk, bracing, cool air of dawn!" He threw back his head, chest swelling as he inhaled deeply. "Get some oxygen into that bloodstream, man!" he advised. "That'll cheer you up!"

  "It would be a lot less strenuous to just kill you . . . and a lot more fun, now that I think about it," Harper observed, and Judson chuckled. Although, given Harper S. Ferry's record during his active career with the Audubon Ballroom, he wasn't entirely certain the other man was joking. Pretty certain, but not entirely. On the other hand, he figured he could rely on Genghis to warn him before the ex-Ballroom operative actually decided to squeeze the trigger.

  Unlike Harper, Judson had never personally been a slave. Instead, he'd been born on Sphinx after his father's liberation from the hold of a Manpower Incorporated slave ship. Patrick Henry Van Hale had married a niece of the Manticoran captain whose ship had intercepted the slaver he'd been aboard, and, despite the fact that Patrick had been young enough to receive first-generation prolong after he was freed, he'd still had the perspective of Manpower's normally short-lived slaves. He and his new bride hadn't wasted any time at all on building the family they'd both wanted, and Judson (the first of six children . . . so far) had come along barely a T-year after the wedding.

  Both Patrick and Lydia Van Hale were rangers with the Sphinx Forestry Service, and, although as a citizen of Yawata Crossing Judson had scarcely been the backwoods bumpkin he enjoyed parodying, he had spent quite a lot of his time in the bush during his childhood. His parents' employment explained most of that, and Judson had fully intended to follow in their footsteps. In fact, he'd completed his graduate forestry classes and his internship in the SFS when the liberation of Torch changed everything.