Erebus (22 page)

“I am well aware of the relevant legislation,” Jonas said with a slick smile.

“So you are also aware that covering up a major archaeological find would leave Red Star vulnerable to some pretty harsh sanctions?”

“Red Star is a vast organization. No one person can know every little nuance of our business,” Jonas said, his oily demeanor not slipping for a second.

“Grant,” Hanley held her hand up to Jonas, “you are quite correct; however, to clarify, we considered that we had an obligation to give full disclosure of just what we had found, which, of course, is impossible until we could figure out exactly what it was we had.”

I could see the loophole they were going to try to exploit here; it was the same one we were using for not providing full disclosure of the same artifact to all and sundry. She was telling us she was going to let us know—but only after they had extracted every advantage they possibly could out of whatever the hell it was.

“The courts can decide later whether you fulfilled your obligations or not,” Vance took over. “Right now we have a fugitive on the run who is responsible for the destruction of the artifact and the moon it was on. We need to know why.”

Hanley leaned back in her chair. She steepled her fingers, and a considering look drew her face tight. She pursed her lips, then looked at Jonas, and nodded.

“Red Star is willing to fully cooperate and disclose what we know,” Jonas said smoothly. “We would consider that the fulfillment of our obligations under the OST. The question is, would you?”

The double-talk was obvious. They wanted a deal. Red Star would cop to what they knew if they got immunity from prosecution for any breaches of the treaty.

“We’ll have to get back to you on that one. Perhaps while we’re ruminating about that, you can start by telling us about Sonia Drayton?” Vance said. “Let’s call it an act of good faith.”

“Sonia Drayton?” Hanley replied, the flicker of confusion that broke through her mask was just that, a flicker. She covered it up quickly. “She’s with you. I understand she was the Red Star operative we assigned to the task force.”

“She was,” I took over again. “That was before she decided to run off with our chief suspect.”

“I see,” Hanley pursed her lips. “That is…interesting. Grant?”

“What can I say?” Jonas said then cleared his throat, a confused look on his face. It just might have been genuine. “Drayton’s a fixer. She’s been corporate all her working life. She spent her first few years on the Helios graduate-entry scheme. Our HR department headhunted her after spotting her at a futurology symposium where she postulated some ideas that fit in with work Red Star was doing at the time. She’s worked through various departments. High corporate loyalty, hence her assignment on oversight of the Eston Mons facility. She was destined to go places.”

“Well, it seems she had a better offer from somewhere,” I said. “Well, that or—” I began.

“Inspector, that find was the mother lode. Why would we ever want to destroy it?” Hanley asked, her voice hard. “If that’s what you’re implying.”

“Not at all,” I smiled. “Yet. Perhaps when you send up the information on the facility, Drayton’s full dossier wouldn’t go amiss either.”

Hanley’s eyes were locked on me. She wasn’t a happy woman. She gave the slightest of nods.

“Right,” Vance said, standing up. “I think I have some calls to make pertaining to your full disclosure and legal obligations.”

***

The bridge looked dull to me: a central holotank surrounded by chairs where her crew members worked, manipulating consoles and controls that would appear only to them. Captain Vasily generously allowed me to slave my HUD to his briefly, and the bridge came alive.

The torrent of information was unbelievable. The plain surfaces of the bridge became awash with information. Status displays and readouts of every description were everywhere. God knows how the crew managed to interpret it, but I guess that was why they were the dashing crew of an explorer vessel and I was a cop. In the end, I shut down the link, contenting myself with the image in the holotank.

Gagarin
shot toward the rendezvous over Earth. She was going to loop around our home, picking up her new cargo, a detachment of soldiers, all of whom were on the Interstellar List. This was a list of highly trained volunteer troops from treaty nations who had committed to undertake interstellar missions at a moment’s notice even though such missions would probably skip them forward decades into the future.

I watched on the holotank as two sleek, deadly looking assault shuttles rose up to meet us. Each of those Hawk-class shuttles was armed to the teeth and had been configured for “opposed space boarding” operations. They were what we were going to use to take back
Erebus
. They spun deftly, thrusters firing, and clamped onto
Gagarin
. I heard the faintest of thumps reverberate through the hull.

“Layton?” Captain Vasily called, looking at me through the holotank. “Would you care to come greet our new crew members?”

“Of course.”

***

“Fancy seeing you here,” Ava Phillips said, the slightest of smiles on her face.

“You, too,” I replied. She looked as good as ever, and I noticed new rank slides on her fatigues. Someone had decided to give her a well-deserved promotion to major. “And nice shiny new crowns, by the way.”

“Finally.” She gave a dismissive wave of her hand. “I passed the board a year ago and have been left hanging ever since. After Sahelia, someone thought they should rubber-stamp it. Not that I get to enjoy the position, of course. You’ve roped me into another job, one involving aliens and conspiracies at that.”

“Ha,” I snorted. “Well, Major, you volunteered for the list. Don’t you be blaming me. Why the hell you would put your name down in the first place anyway is beyond me.”

“Ha,” she scoffed back at me with a casual shrug. “I just wanted the three weeks continuation training in orbit every year. Who knew they would actually send me anywhere? Anyway, maybe us lonely old spinsters and lifelong bachelors appreciate that we are going to get paid, what? Sixteen years’ salary?”

“Yup, sixteen,” I nodded, my stomach giving another lurch.

“Sixteen years’ salary for a few days’ work.”

She was both right and wrong. If this job went smoothly, subjectively for us, we would be simply nipping through the gateway, boarding
Erebus
, apprehending Frain and Drayton, and then coming home, this time with a bunch of commandos. Each and every one should be a match for Frain, and we had ten.

The problem was that the gateways didn’t work quite that simply. We would fly into one and be digitized. Then, by some process to do with quantum physics, which was best described as magic by a layman like me, the gate would literally beam us as information to the other end of the gateway eight light-years away. The problem was that information could only be transmitted at light speed, so objectively, we would be gone for sixteen years, there and back.

“Yeah—speaking of which, I think I need to transfer my meager savings into a high-interest account. I here compound interest is akin to magic,” I replied.

“A good idea.” She smiled warmly at me before taking a serious look. “How have you been, after Sahelia?”

“I’m fine,” I responded.

“It’s always hard losing someone on a job.”

“Yeah. First time for me,” I said.

“If you need to talk about it, Layton…”

“Thanks, Ava, but I’m good.” I didn’t want to talk about it. I just wanted to find Frain and figure out why.

“Right,” Major Phillips nodded, her concerned tone slipping into a more authoritative voice. “Anyway, to business. I need you to send any data you’ve acquired on what you think this Frain’s capabilities are. I’ll also need you to send HUD playbacks from anyone involved in engaging with him. I want to know what we’re dealing with here and—”

With a mental command, I brought up the file I had ready. A flashing envelope of a HUDmail appeared in my view, and I sent it over to her. “Already got it here for you.”

“You are the picture of efficiency,” Phillips said, nodding at me and accepting the transfer.

“We’ve managed to squeeze Red Star for more information,” I said. “The briefing docket you had included a HUD download from Drayton, right?”

“That’s right.”

“It turned out she was holding out on us. We’ve just received the rest. Want to watch it with us?”

“So, what now?” Drayton asked Delaney. They were still seated in the forward operating cabin at Eston Mons. The buzz centered around the transit of the probe through the gate had receded into the murmur of scientists and technicians analyzing the readings they had picked up from the gate’s activation.

“What do you mean?” Delaney said distractedly, poring over the sensor data that had come in as the probe had flashed away. “Oh, we need to compile the sensor readings from the transit and see what we can learn from this.”

The probe that they sent through had a return module and servitor robot. Once it arrived at its destination, it would gather sensor data, and if possible, the servitor would activate the other end of the gateway and send the return module back through the gate. The problem was that, without knowing where the other end was—or if it still existed, for that matter—they would have no way of knowing when it would return. If the other end was five light-years away, it would take ten years for it to come home.

“The readings spiked in some different ways from our gateways,” Delaney murmured. “The sub-atomic positioning arrays, for example, seem to have worked much faster than ours.”

“Are we going to be looking at incremental developments or seed changes from this?”

“Sonia,” Delaney said testily, finally stopping examining his readouts and looking at her, “we sent the probe through five minutes ago. At least let me look at the damn readings.”

“Okay, okay,” Drayton said, holding her hands up in mock surrender. “I’ll go file the initial report to Ms. Hanley.”

“You do that,” Delaney said, turning back to his readouts.

***

“Drayton, come back to the ops, now.” Delaney looked nearly frantic on Drayton’s HUD. Without anything more, he cut the Link.

Groaning, Drayton swung her legs off the uncomfortable bunk where she had been writing her log for the bosses back home. She pulled on her boots and started walking in the low gravity of Io down the umbilical tubes toward the ops cabin.

“What’s up?” she asked Delaney, who was talking animatedly with his technicians.

“Look,” he said, waving his hand vaguely at the plate window up front, the alien pagoda a hulking outline in the darkness beyond.

Stepping forward, she looked down at it and started in shock. The return module was lying on the human-installed mesh decking just outside the gate entrance. It was surrounded by a swirling mist from the atmospheric differential of where it had come from and where it now was.

“Talk to me,” Drayton said, turning to look at Delaney. “Is this a malfunction or what?”

“No, not at all. It went through, gathered the first load of data, then returned.”

“The other end of the gateway can’t be far away, then,” Drayton said.

“Oh, I think it is,” Delaney said, standing from the console he was hunched over.

“It
has
to be nearby if it returned so quickly. In system, hell, probably in the Jupiter system,” Drayton said. Delaney just ignored her and carried on reading his console. Finally, Drayton walked over and looked at the clip that was playing on the screen.

“Is that what I think it is?” she asked, shock evident in her voice.

Delaney rubbed his chin. “As far as we can tell, yes. Sensor readings are all what we would expect in that…environment.”

Drayton looked again as the playback looped. The probe arrived at the other end in a bright flash, a low golden light, not enough to see detail. The flood light on the front of the probe lanced out. From what they could see, the probe was in a cavernous chamber. As the camera played around, it revealed a vast metallic-colored dome. It looked ancient, abandoned, the only light coming from above. Behind the probe was another pagoda, similar to what lay in front of them, light still pulsing along its flanks.

The probe’s camera panned upward to reveal a large rent in the dome, the source of the light.

Beyond was a swirling spiral of red and gold glowing matter. The matter would only actually move over epochs, yet the eye played tricks and filled in the movement, making it seem like they were watching a spinning whirlpool with a black speck at the center.

“A black hole?” Drayton leaned toward the image. “There isn’t one anywhere even close to Sol.”

“None that we know about,” Delaney added. “Definitely none that are in the process of devouring a substantial amount of matter like this one is.”

“So where the hell is it?” Drayton asked.

Delaney gave a shrug. “Thousands of light-years away. At least.”

“Oh shit,” Drayton said realizing the full implications.

“That’s right,” Delaney grinned. “That gateway not only goes farther than any of ours, but it does it faster than light.”

“Oh shit,” Drayton repeated.

“This could change, well, everything.” Frampton practically hopped around the mess as he vibrated with excitement after watching the HUD upload from Hanley.

Drayton had known what she was doing when she held back the little detail that they had discovered a faster-than-light gateway. She’d fed us just enough information to keep us off her back and ensure we kept her on Concorde rather than shipping her back to Earth…or worse, sending her with Cheng.

Sihota was somewhat more somber than Frampton upon the recently released revelations. “It may well do. The balance of power everywhere would change overnight and not in a predictable way.

“Agreed,” Vance cut in. “Interstellar commerce, as fledgling as it is, for example. Even the Alpha Centauri research stations are an eight-year round trip at the moment. For the systems that are actually worth trading with, it’s even longer.”