Chaos Quarter (13 page)

“Boundary is a protectorate of the Terran Commonwealth,” Rex explained. “We provide a defense capable of handling any threat you’re likely to find in the Quarter in exchange for several islands and a trading station in orbit. Every trade good coming from the Quarter into the Commonwealth goes through here,” Rex said, his voice souring toward the end.

“You don’t approve?” Lucius asked, noting the tone.

“It’s mercantilist. Trade would be much more efficient and cost-effective if you could travel direct paths. But the government makes a killing off taxing trade through Boundary, and the military is worried about thousands of ships crossing our borders without inspection,” Rex explained.

“I can understand their concern,” Lucius spoke.

“Paranoia,” Rex grumbled. “Plus the ruling elite on Boundary are known to give huge campaign contributions to our congressmen, so it’s not likely things will change any time soon. Both sides are getting too rich off the status quo!”

Rex sighed and ordered, “Focus on Tharej.”

The image zoomed in, closing on an island just north of the planet’s equator. A sizeable military installation dominated the island’s eastern shore, surrounded by a suburb.

“Only sovereign Commonwealth ground in the Quarter,” Rex explained, “There’s a base there the EID uses. We should be able to drop our dead guy.”

“EID?” Lucius asked.

“External Intelligence Division, the people that the fleet so
generously
loaned me out to,” Rex said, voice thick with sarcasm.

Lucius looked back to Second.

“Should you speak of such things in front of her? If she were to be recaptured and they asked—”

“Don’t worry,” Rex said. “Half the people in the Quarter know we’re there. Her people probably know already. Your people certainly do.”

“Former people,” Lucius noted.

“
A large ship has been detected
,” the computer stated.

“How large?” Rex asked, perking up.

The island disappeared, replaced by the rough outline of a ship.

“It looks like a whale with arms,” Rex remarked, cocking his head numerous times to see it from different angles. Lucius raised an eyebrow in confusion.

“Does this match any known design?” Rex asked.

“
No nation known to the Commonwealth has ships of this shape
,” the computer replied.

“Can you get a better picture?”

“
The scopes are at maximum magnification
,” the machine replied.

“Keep an eye on—”

Rex paused and spun his chair around. Second remained in her customary spot, staring blankly at the projection.

“Do you recognize this ship?” Rex asked.

“I do. It is not a ship. It is a War-beast,” she replied.

“What is a War-beast?” Lucius asked.

“A line created for combat and long-distance travel in a vacuum,” she replied.

“It’s
alive?
” Rex asked.

“Yes. It is a semi-conscious organism,” she spoke.

“If it’s only semi-conscious, why is it moving through space and making jumps?” spoke Rex.

“It follows the commands of the Masters assigned to fly it. Non-organic components are surgically implanted into the War-beast’s body to replicate gravitational pull and facilitate travel through hyperspace,” she spoke.

“And why is it here?” Lucius asked, his dark look revealing that he already knew the answer.

“Most likely to regain the body of the ambassador,” she replied. “The Hegemony does not allow its dead to—”

“Hegemony?” Lucius interrupted.

“Is that your homeland?” Rex asked. “The people that created you?”

“Yes,” she replied simply. “The Perfected Hegemony.”

Rex swiveled back toward the viewscreen, Lucius doing the same. Rex rubbed at his forehead.
Well Rex, you wanted to find them and now you have
. He had no idea how an organic ship was even possible, but that didn’t matter right now. There were nearly three hundred light-years between himself and Boundary. That wasn’t a distance he could travel without stopping. They’d need to stop and buy food and new rounds for the cannons. He’d wanted to get patch-steel for the armor and see if there was a doctor skilled enough to make sense of Second’s brain.

And now he had to do it with a warship following him. His mind tried to juggle his mess of thoughts. Any examination or operation on Second would take time, time they now didn’t have. Bringing her back as she was meant not knowing if she’d become the person she should have always been or a mere intelligence resource to be utilized then tossed away. Stopping for repairs wouldn’t be a short break, either.

He exhaled heavily.
How the hell did they find us?

The answer came to him quickly. It was right out of basic tactical maneuvers: engine trace. Somehow, probably at Cordelia, they’d discovered that his ship had something to do with their man’s disappearance, if the body in back could even be called a
man
. From then on it was just a matter of examining the color of his engine exhaust. A good engineer could run that through a computer, or whatever it was this ‘War-beast’ used, and identify the proton patterns his anti-matter drive belched out behind him. Find that pattern, and you could trace a course.

It wasn’t a problem he’d expected to run into out here. Half the ships he met were held together with duct tape and staples. He’d even found a few that didn’t even use anti-matter outside of atmosphere, just agonizingly slow nuclear thermal rockets. He silently chastised himself for getting complacent and dropping his guard. Then he turned back to the image of the whale-shaped projection.

“Focus rear scopes on the image,” Rex said. “Try to derive a speed from the apparent change in size as it moves. Make sure to take our velocity into account.”

The computer didn’t respond, but he knew it was working. A moment passed.

“
The vessel is estimated to be travelling at .11C
,” it spoke.

Rex immediately stomped on the accelerator panel.
Long Haul
pressed forward through the void, creeping upward toward its maximum speed. When the viewscreen flashed .1C, he removed his foot.

“They’re faster than us,” Rex spoke.

“Not by all that much,” Lucius replied. “We should be ready to jump before they get close enough to fire.”

“They’ll trace the distortion in space and follow us wherever we go. It’s what I would do,” Rex spoke.

Lucius nodded, saying, “I probably would as well.”

“My jump drive recharges in six hours. That’s good, but military models can beat it. If this ship is a warship—”

“War-beast,” Second interrupted.

“
Whatever
—it probably can top mine. They’ll catch us eventually, well before we get to Boundary,” Rex spoke.

“Second spoke of how the ship’s jump drives were mechanical additions, not consistent with its organic nature. This might indicate that they do not have advanced mechanical technologies. Their jump capabilities may not match those of our homelands,” said Lucius.

“Possible, but too great of an unknown for us to gamble on,” Rex replied.

“So what do we do?” Lucius asked.

Rex rubbed his jaw. Stubble brushed against his fingers. He thought of his engines, his reactor and fuel especially. An idea came, also straight out of basic tactical manoeuvres.

“We hide,” he replied, “In plain sight.”

“What?” Lucius asked.

“Computer, what was the name of that refinery that the Cordelians did business with?”

“
Helvetia
,” the machine replied.

“How far are we from it?”

“
Five point eight light-years. It is in a neighboring system
.
”

“Continue on course until the jump drive has recharged, then change our course. We’re making for Helvetia.”

* * *

The War-beast made a chirping noise. Blair’s consciousness barely registered it at first. But it didn’t go away, slowly dragging him from sleep.

He arose from the bed-platform, the warm undulations of the giant muscle cradling his form as he shifted. He pulled his arms from Flynn’s body, letting him sleep on.

“What is it?” Blair grumbled.

“A jump has occurred,” a raspy voice wheezed through a nictitating membrane on the ceiling of their sleeping cavity.

“Detect their path and jump after them. Continue doing so unless given further orders. Do not wake me again,” Blair snapped.

He slumped down on the bed, idly trailing his fingers over Flynn’s breast. Flynn’s body fit up against Blair’s more masculine form nicely, its smooth curves as comforting as they were enticing.

“I’m trying to sleep,” Flynn said with a sleepy smile.

His fingers ran down Flynn’s stomach, past his stiffening member and then into the warm juncture behind it. A contented moan escaped Flynn’s lips.

“Sleep later,” Blair whispered.

Primitives do to space what they did to Earth. They infest it. They spread everywhere, live everywhere, build everywhere! They exist only to enforce their flawed and archaic will on a universe that was perfect long before their arrival. On Earth itself, the only living world that managed to arise naturally in a universe of gas and rock, they beat down all that was different from them. They rebuilt it in their image.

They build machines that can transform entire planets, and then do it again and again, a thousand times over. They lack the knowledge to know better or do better. They lack the will to take the steps necessary to take advantage of life’s perfection. They revel in their imperfections, dooming life and this galaxy to a violent and chaotic existence.

-Master Alexus of Rapanui, at the founding of The Perfected Hegemony

What, have you been living under a rock?

-Common remark to people living in remote asteroid settlements; etymology of term traced to pre-space civilizations of Old Earth

Helvetia was not a planet. It was a fusion of metal and stone. The asteroid that made the bulk of it was a potato-shaped lump of brown rock eighteen miles long, covered in craters and lumpy protrusions. Mined out decades ago, the abandoned tunnels had been taken over, pressurized, and then crammed of with machinery and people. Over the decades it had expanded in both directions. More and more of the rock was hollowed out of the asteroid, while at the same time vast scaffolds of metal protruded farther and farther into space.

It was also busy. If the information from Cordelia’s computers had been correct, this industrial rock smelted and cured all metals for twenty light-years. A half-dozen systems sent ores here for sale, and a half-dozen outfits furiously bid for the metals as they came in. Helvetia’s refineries would in turn clear it of impurities, smelt it into useful alloys, then sell it again to whoever wanted it. Out here demand for quality material never ceased.

And while it called itself a refinery, it functioned more as an industrial park for this region of space. Factories clung to the rock to be close to the source of metals, cutting down shipping costs. Rex had no idea what they produced and didn’t much care. He was interested in the other major industry this rock specialized in: ship-building.

He could see a dozen construction docks extending like scaffolding from the gray-brown surface of the asteroid’s colonized end. They would have the equipment he needed.

His plan was remarkably simple. If this strange organic ship was reading the proton patterns of his ship, he simply had to change the patterns and then lose them before they could discover
Long Haul’
s new engine exhaust. This was as simple as swapping out his current stash of hydrogen fuel for a new batch and tweaking the matter inversion generators. A small shift in how his ship converted hydrogen to anti-hydrogen would change the number of protons spat out per second. It would cost minor amounts of speed, but he figured it was worth it if it would shake their pursuers off the trail. He didn’t think the extra two hundred miles per hour would make all that much difference anyway.

His fuel was a different matter. He still had six months of fuel left from the initial amount he’d taken aboard when leaving Venus. The frozen hydrogen in his tanks had impurities, elements that weren’t hydrogen. The matter inverter had been designed specifically to work with hydrogen, so it would filter the impurities out beforehand and shunt them out a vent between the engine nozzles. Any proton trail left behind would be laced with these elements, helping to further give him away.

So he’d buy new fuel, with new impurities from wherever the locals got their hydrogen. Then he’d take off and lose his pursuers in local ship traffic. They’d find themselves confronted with so many conflicting trails that it would be impossible to find him. That, and the changes in his engine exhaust, should be enough to shake them.

Yet as he watched the fast approaching asteroid, his cynical side couldn’t help but put its two cents in.

Or maybe it will just delay the inevitable
.

* * *

Second was eating a protein bar as Rex walked into the common room. He looked over to Chakrika, who was stirring a large pot of much tastier food.

“Why waste the good stuff on her when she can’t enjoy it anyway?” Chakrika said, reading Rex’s look.

“Did you give Lucius your list?” Rex asked.

“Yes,” she replied, exasperated. “I’m staying here, not opening the ship doors for anyone, and keeping my gun on me at all times.”

“I’m serious,” Rex replied. “Just as many lonely men here as the last rock we stopped at. Don’t go out alone.”

“I said I would stay,” Chakrika replied a little too forcefully. “Can’t leave the baby for Second to watch.”

Second perked up at this, looking to Rex.

“I am capable of caring for juvenile primitives—”

“He’s
not
primitive!” Chakrika interjected. “He’s a
baby
.”

Second returned to gnawing on the protein bar. Chakrika frowned at the sight.

“I’m guessing there’s nobody here who could help her,” Chakrika spoke.

“Unlikely. Won’t get much more than patch-job doctors out here,” Rex replied. “But if this works and we shake the bastards, we’ll have plenty of time to find some world with a decent surgeon.”