Hidden Empire (15 page)
Cesca understood what he was implying. Years before, she had betrothed herself to Ross Tamblyn, a long engagement that they
had taken on faith. Ross diligently worked to meet the conditions he and Cesca had agreed upon. Everything had seemed acceptable
in the joining of two strong clans, even if Ross was something of a black sheep. Most Roamers enthusiastically endorsed the
union. The Blue Sky Mine would be a strong foundation for an expanding family, even without old Bram Tamblyn’s support.
But that was before she had gotten to know Jess, and the spark between them went far beyond straightforward political and
economic considerations. It wasn’t something they could explain to anyone else, or even to themselves.
“If we follow the Guiding Star, some problems should never arise in the first place,” Cesca said.
“Nevertheless”—Jess boldly took the last step to her, closing the distance, refusing to think about what he was doing—“it
happens.”
He kissed her then, surprising her, pleasing her… and terrifying them both. Cesca responded for just an instant, clinging
to him as if they were teetering on the precarious edge of a precipice. Then, in unison, they broke away and took an awkward
step apart.
“Jess, we shouldn’t even—”
“I’m sorry.” He blushed furiously, stumbling backward, gathering his notes and recordings. Jess shook his head, immensely
ashamed and baffled by his own actions. He felt like a traitor to his brother. “What was I doing?” He could only picture Ross,
an innocent bystander in their mutual attraction.
“Jess, we don’t dare even think about this.” Though deeply unsettled, Cesca wasn’t angry with him. “It never happened.”
He readily agreed. “We’ll forget about it. That’s what we should do.”
But the memories only burned brighter for both of them, month after month. How could anyone ever forget?
As Jess’s ship swept out of the planet’s shadow and into the full blazing day of the roaring sun, the sudden glare and buffeting
heat rocked them from side to side.
“We’ll need to map out a recommended safe approach,” Kotto said, noting Jess’s difficulty piloting in the solar storm as if
it were a mere detail to add to his proposal. “We can take advantage of the planet’s shadow for bringing in most of the big
supply haulers.”
Jess increased the filter density on their viewing windows. “Your bigger problem is going to be shipping off the processed
metals. They’ll need to be taken far from here before we can market whatever we don’t use for ourselves.”
“Oh, of course,” Kotto said. “The Big Goose would never even come within sensor range of the planet. They might get a blister
on their delicate skin.”
Though the Hansa would not look twice at a rough, hot world like Isperos, such places were acceptable enough to the Roamers,
who had already established themselves in many remarkable habitats, such as Rendezvous itself.
The seed of their society had been started by the generation ship
Kanaka
, named after the brilliant explorer of Vallis Marineris on Mars. The
Kanaka
crew and passengers had boarded the eleventh and last vessel to leave Earth, fleeing hard times. By that point, funding for
the brave and optimistic colonization project was nearly gone, and equipment and supplies were sparse. Still, this group had
envisioned themselves as tougher than the others, true survivalists.
What the
Kanaka
passengers lacked in raw materials they made up for by bringing eccentric and innovative geniuses who could create habitable
environments in the harshest of places. Before setting out from Earth, these people had lived in arctic wastelands and set
up mining stations on the moons of Jupiter. They operated under the assumption that if a standard method did not work, they
would find another alternative, or simply invent one.
During decades of travel, while the
Kanaka
searched for a planet to colonize, the passengers had built a self-contained society. At one point, their resources stretched
and dwindling, they had stopped off in a rubble-strewn debris cloud around the red-dwarf Meyer to scavenge water ices, minerals,
and metals from the asteroids, enough supplies to last them for another few decades.
There, some of the innovative colonists ran calculations, floated designs, and convinced themselves they could use the large-scale
construction and mining equipment carried aboard the
Kanaka
to build and survive in an artificial substation among the rocks, close to the weak crimson radiation of the tiny star. The
Meyer belt offered enough raw materials to give the small group a fighting chance, and decreasing the population aboard the
generation ship would help all the other passengers.
The
Kanaka
remained around the red dwarf for a decade, making sure that the hardy Meyer volunteers would find the means to grow food
in underground asteroid chambers and gather power from the dim light of the sun. Though to any other settlers it might have
seemed hopeless—a fledgling colony on a desert island in space, doomed to dwindle and die—yet this place they named “Rendezvous”
was their choice, and the volunteer families gambled on this small chance.
That colony had survived, and thrived, eventually forming the foundation of Roamer culture. Who was Jess to say that these
resilient people could not be just as successful on a hellish world like Isperos? Especially with Kotto Okiah running the
show.
Trapped in an electromagnetic loop, gouts of stellar material rushed upward like an incandescent locomotive, spewing hard
radiation more insidious and more destructive than the heat itself. Cancerous sunspots looked like black oases on the star’s
surface, but they were just as dangerous as the hotter chromosphere, anchor points for the violent eruptions.
Jess fought with the ship, not wanting to think of the hull damage they were incurring. “Kotto—”
“I’ve got the data I need.” The engineer sounded pleased with himself. “We should return to Rendezvous now, so I can put together
my analyses.”
Jess looked down at the stress readings edging toward overload. “Yes, that would be a good idea.”
Streaking away from the churning sun and its blistering planet, Jess thought of Cesca again, hoping she would be back at the
asteroid cluster by now. Even as they fled the solar storms and entered the cold of space, Jess found that he was sweating
more than ever.
E
ver cautious, Cesca Peroni piloted the space yacht on a leisurely course through several star systems en route to Rendezvous.
She doubted Reynald, the future heir of Theroc, would follow her, or that any Goose security ships had placed spy tracers
on their path, but Roamers covered their tracks out of habit.
For a century and a half, they had kept their hideouts from the prying eyes of other humans. All the clans remained concerned
by the power exerted by the Terran Hanseatic League. Lately, the machinations of Chairman Wenceslas to tighten control on
ekti processing had forced the Roamers to grow even more suspicious.
“How will the clans react to Reynald’s ideas?” she asked, glancing away from the yacht’s control panels to look at the lean
face of her mentor.
“Long ago, the Ildirans gladly turned over the operation of their skymines to us Roamers, but we ourselves have always been
too insular to trust anyone.” The old woman stared at the starfields that changed subtly and slowly as the yacht covered vast
distances. “On the other hand, it never hurts to consider possible allies.”
Cesca nodded. “Reynald made a good case.”
“For marriage?” Jhy Okiah raised her eyebrows.
Cesca recognized the old woman’s teasing tone, but she still blushed. “I meant his business suggestion. The Therons have kept
their independence and held their green priests outside of Goose control.”
“We have much in common.” Jhy Okiah pursed her wrinkled lips, and her voice grew more serious. “Unfortunately, we simply do
not need anything the Therons have to offer.”
Cesca recalled the numerous feuds and disagreements Jhy Okiah had resolved during her time as Speaker. Not long ago, the angry
Rand Sorengaard had pulled away from Roamer restrictions in retaliation for new Hansa tariffs. “What is to stop us from taking
what we deserve? The Goose is as lawless as we are!” But Rand had garnered little support beyond a handful of restless bullies
more interested in adventure than justice.
Sorengaard had been a second cousin to the Peroni clan, though Cesca did not like to speak of that connection, because the
pirate was such an embarrassment. Jhy Okiah had often said it was only a matter of time before the EDF dealt with him. And,
according to the news delivered by Reynald, she had been right. “Even though Rand has been brought to justice, the Goose won’t
let their punishment stop there. All Roamers will end up paying more than the tariffs that were imposed.”
“And we’ll find ways to improve our situation and come through stronger than before,” Cesca responded with sincere pride.
“If we have to.”
After extreme measures, hard conservation, and many gambles, the Roamers were mostly self-sufficient, though they still required
certain vital supplies from the outside—supplies on which the Hansa had now placed heavy taxes: foodstuffs, medicines, special
equipment and instruments, as well as numerous convenience and luxury items.
Jhy Okiah viewed the expected lean times as an incentive for the Roamers to find other ways to become autonomous. During the
clan gathering, her voice was dry and raspy, yet it contained an emotional power that she had developed over many years.
“If the Hansa can hurt us by cutting off the supply of a material, then they have too much power over us… and we are too dependent
on that thing. Either we must give up our dependence, or find a new supply. We are Roamers. Have we not the ability to discover
alternatives? We can build our own equipment, manufacture our own circuitry webs, and learn to do without comforts and conveniences.
Let the Roamers have the last laugh by proving we don’t need to buy from their merchants. We’ll cut off that income stream,
and the Big Goose will be weaker.”
With those words, she had managed to stem the tide of other dissenters after Rand Sorengaard had stormed off. An open rebellion
against the Hanseatic League would bring about severe reprisals. The Speaker considered Sorengaard’s raids to be a crime.
Worse, she feared his activities would draw too much outside attention to the Roamers. The Roamers were accustomed to living
in harsh environments, but not as hunted renegades.
Now, sitting beside Cesca in the space yacht, Jhy Okiah said, “We dare not let the Goose snoop around for fugitives, or they
might discover some of the shipyards, colonies, and facilities that our clans would rather keep hidden.”
More than two centuries earlier, after leaving behind the tiny fledgling colony in the rubble belt around the red star Meyer,
the generation ship
Kanaka
had continued on its way in search of a home, passing through nebular clouds and scooping up gases, which the people used
for fuel and filtered for other resources. Brilliant scavengers, not only did the explorers make do, they also made progress.
The
Kanaka
was the last of the generation ships to be retrieved by Ildiran search teams 180 years ago. Instead of remaining on a single
vector as the other large ships had done, the
Kanaka
had wandered, pausing in several places, straying far from the original plan.
The benevolent Ildirans had taken the
Kanaka
to a hospitable planet named Iawa, a world ripe for colonization and not needed by the Ildiran Empire. Settling on a terrestrial
planet was quite a change for the colonists aboard the
Kanaka
. Iawa’s open skies and broad continents seemed like a paradise, with all the land the settlers could imagine after living
for generations within cramped, limited quarters aboard an old ship.
At first, taming an amenable planet seemed a simple matter, but some colonists were concerned that all of their innovation
and survival skills were being lost in only a few years. Iawa was such a drastic change that they thought they might have
been better off self-sufficient and roaming among the stars.
Within five years, though, just as agriculture began to take off on Iawa, as towns were built and crops were planted on cleared
lands, the planet turned against them. In a single season, a horrible native blight attacked all terrestrial plant organisms,
wiping out the grains and vegetables and trees they had planted. The Iawan Scourge fed on Earth-based plant matter, developing
an appetite for all transplanted species. Suddenly, the isolated colonists had only meager stores of food and little hope
that the situation would improve, because this blight was endemic to the native biosphere.
Starvation loomed, but the people had remembered the austerity measures practical aboard a crowded generation ship and had
set enough aside to survive. The Iawan settlers finally returned to the derelict
Kanaka
, the huge empty vessel they had left in orbit. They pulled up stakes and went back to the way that had been successful for
them, roaming among the stars in search of other niches and new homes. “We are not a planetbound people,” had been the chant.
