Hidden Empire (54 page)
“Transmitting my authorization now.” He sent a garbled burst signal that lasted barely two seconds. Then, activating his enhanced
engines, the unidentified Roamer captain accelerated away from Mars faster than the Remora interceptors could hope to catch
him. The speed with which the cargo ship moved astonished the EDF personnel, who expected only clunky, barely functional spacecraft
from the gypsy traders. Tasia knew better.
“What the hell was that?” said the watch commander, bleary-eyed, rushing into the control room. “Tamblyn?”
“I don’t know, sir.” She looked helplessly at her fellow soldiers.
“It was a Roacher ship,” said Patrick Fitzpatrick. Somehow, she always drew shared duty with him. “Ask Tamblyn.”
“That signal was similar to one the pilot transmitted at the moonbase,” Tasia said, knowing that if she hid that fact it would
only make them wonder more. “Can’t figure out why, sir.”
“Probably some kind of spy signal,” Fitzpatrick said.
The watch commander said, “A coded message? Get it decrypted, pronto!” He looked at Tasia, then at the other Eddies in the
communications center. “Put our best cryptographers on it. I want to know if that Roamer contacted a spy or a mole in our
midst.”
Tasia’s skin crawled, realizing what everyone must be thinking, but she sat stony-faced, bearing it. If she protested her
innocence, it would only make her look worse. “He went to the moonbase first, sir,” Tasia pointed out, “then came here. Maybe
he’s looking for someone.”
“Well, for the sake of the human race, let’s hope that Roacher turncoat didn’t find whoever he was looking for.”
Tasia bit her lip to stop herself from defending the captain. They had no proof that the Roamer intended anything that might
harm the Terran war effort. She sighed. She had worked so hard to demonstrate her loyalty, preparing to avenge Ross as soon
as an opportunity presented itself, but even as she made progress, something cost her all the ground she had gained. She might
have to punch a few more noses next mealtime if the kleebs got too obnoxious or rowdy.
Whatever the Roamer captain had wanted here, it was the last thing in the universe Tasia needed.
EA waited two full days, according to the command instructions in the coded transmission. Then the dutiful compy approached
Tasia as discreetly as possible.
Tasia had offered her personal robot for the performance of vital EDF duties, but EA still devoted part of her time to watching
over her owner. This shift she and Tasia had been assigned together to a red-walled storage bunker to take inventory of cold-environment
garments for the Martian surface. The small compy worked diligently at her side, and Tasia was comforted just by the Listener
robot’s presence.
EA hummed, as if scanning. “There are no eavesdroppers. It is safe for me to speak.” The voice that came out of the compy
was eerie and familiar. “Tasia, I’m so glad I found you. I have to give you some terrible news, and this was the only way
I could manage it.”
It was Jess’s voice! She whirled, but only the little robot stood there playing her recorded message, reminding Tasia of a
demon-possessed person speaking with a different personality.
Jess’s voice continued. “Roamer compies have special programming, Tasia, and I activated it by sending a coded signal. EA
knows to engage protective measures if she is ever in danger of being captured by an enemy, and she has instructions to find
a time when she can talk with you. We didn’t know if a message would get through by regular channels.”
Tasia’s mind ran through many possibilities. What would Jess ask of her? What bad news did he bring?
“Tasia… Dad is dead,” Jess said through EAs vocal speaker. “He suffered a stroke the night of Ross’s funeral, the night you
ran away. He never recovered. We searched for you, but you had already gone.”
Tasia reeled. Her vision blurred with sudden, stinging tears.
Jess paused, and his voice took on a grimmer tone. “You’ve got a decision to make, and I can’t really help you out now. There’s
been another attack on a Roamer skymine, just like Ross’s. The facility at Erphano was completely destroyed, all hands lost.”
Now his voice sounded poignant and beseeching. “You’ve got your own obligations and responsibilities. I understand that. But
only you and I are left in the family. Our uncles are already running the water mines, as it should be. I’m helping where
I can, but I need you here, little sister. Can you come home? You’ve made your point by joining the Eddies. You don’t owe
the Big Goose anything.”
Tasia stiffened to hear this, because in her heart she did owe them loyalty. She had
chosen
to enlist in the EDF, had taken her vow of service, had trained with them. And she knew that without her, the inept recruits
had little chance against the enemy. She thought of the kleebs she practiced with and how poorly they treated her… but that
didn’t mean she could just desert the military forces now. Wouldn’t that prove they had been right about Tasia all along,
that she was unreliable, not to be trusted?
Her head reeled with the sudden shift in her world. She thought of the cold but familiar ice shelves on Plumas, the water
mines, the liquid geysers gushing toward pumping stations on the ice caps.
“Tasia, come back if you can,” Jess repeated. “Or find some other way to make our family proud. I trust you to do what’s right.
You can figure it out for yourself.”
Tasia swallowed a lump in her throat. She stared at EA’s placid metal face and imagined the features of her brother overlaid
upon it.
“Shizz, I can’t leave now, Jess,” she said. When no further words were forthcoming from the recording, Tasia said sharply,
“EA, do you know how to get a message back to him?”
“Back to whom, Tasia?”
“Back to Jess, in response to the message.”
“What message, Tasia?” EA asked.
“The one you just played.”
EA paused, as if reassessing her memory. “I have no recollection of any message, Tasia. We have been here, performing inventory.”
Jess must have appended an erasure command to his recording. Ingenious, but typical. She couldn’t even listen to his voice
again, no matter how much she wanted to. Her brother was being very careful, knowing EA was in the vicinity of many troops
who might not have Roamer best interests at heart.
“Oh, never mind, EA,” she said, and looked up at the sealed containers of insulated gloves waiting for her inventory check.
Her mind spinning, her heart heavy, Tasia plunged into the task with redoubled effort.
G
aping red canyons cracked open like raw wounds, stretching from the EDF Mars base in all directions. From the spherical observation
cockpit of the broad-winged glider transport, Basil Wenceslas scrutinized the razor-edged canyons that accented a mercilessly
rugged landscape.
Beside him, personally piloting the craft high in the vanishingly thin Martian atmosphere, General Kurt Lanyan considered
the canyons to be a challenging but necessary obstacle course. Like a school of silver minnows, mismatched fighters—standard-model
Remoras as well as modified private yachts recently absorbed into the fleet—streaked along. The pilots angled around sharp
goosenecks, roared down blind gorges, and at the last moment pulled up to shoot straight toward the twilight of open space.
“Troop training is progressing with all due urgency, Chairman Wenceslas,” Lanyan said. “We’ve had a handful of accidents so
far, but certainly an acceptable ratio, considering the number and variety of nonstandard civilian vessels we’ve incorporated
into the EDF.”
“How many accidents?” Basil asked as he watched a pair of ships perform a breathtaking maneuver in a narrow gorge below, like
two daredevil fighting fish.
“Eleven, sir.”
“Fatalities?”
Lanyan gripped the glider’s controls, uncomfortable for a moment, then turned to Basil. “Mr. Chairman, sir… this is Mars.
In any accident, fatalities are always encountered. The ships and crews were completely lost.”
They continued to observe the rigorous military maneuvers while they discussed the growing crisis. The heavy fleet buildup
had required a retooling of many Hansa industries. The EDF had been forced to scrape raw materials and finished components
from widespread human colonies. The Hanseatic League had already levied higher taxes and tariffs in order to continue expanding
the military. Everyone had been called upon to pull together and show the strongest possible face.
The aggressive deep-core creatures had struck again, and again.
“I could engage a much more effective preparation for this impending conflict if I had some intelligence—even basic data—of
our adversary,” General Lanyan said forcefully. “Have we received any communication yet from the enemy, any parley or demands?
Do we even know what they
are?
Why they attack us?”
Basil shook his head. “They’ve left no survivors.”
“Is it true they attacked a third Roamer skymine?”
“Yes, but we haven’t generally released that report yet. No warning, no mercy. Complete destruction, same as before. If the
Roamers are afraid to continue harvesting ekti, we’ll run into fuel shortages.”
Lanyan grumbled, “Maybe now those aloof gypsies will join with the rest of the Hansa. Have they requested EDF protection?
Military escorts at their remaining skymine facilities?”
Basil frowned. “Not in so many words, but they will eventually. The Roamers have never been keen on asking us for help.”
“Let them scrape by then.” General Lanyan descended to a wider valley where they watched spacesuited marines performing ground
exercises. The glider maintained too much altitude for Basil to see details other than silvery shapes moving about on the
red sands. “After executing Sorengaard’s corsairs, I suspected that the Roamers might present certain difficulties of their
own. These aliens might keep them in line.”
Basil scolded him. “Don’t let prejudice color your thoughts, General. The Roamers have never committed overt violence against
Hansa settlements. Rand Sorengaard himself seems to have been an anomaly.”
“A deceased anomaly,” the General said.
“We have no need of scapegoats. The Roamers have lost three skymine facilities with no survivors. We
need
ekti, General, and if the Roamers stop providing it, we don’t have alternative sources readily available. Neither do the
Ildirans.”
Lanyan nodded grudgingly as he watched the soldiers moving about in the impossibly dry valley of the waterless world. Basil
suspected that, like himself, the General was mainly bothered that the Roamers operated as they pleased, without any Hansa
oversight. Tariffs and taxes were imposed on ekti deliveries, but the actual skymines went unregulated, unmonitored. The space
gypsies provided stardrive fuel and other resources desperately needed by Hansa colonies, so Roamer eccentricities had to
be tolerated.
As a military man, though, Lanyan was concerned. “I just don’t like the existence of such a large and independent group of…
guerillas. Nobody knows what they’re doing out there, or even where they all live. Consider the potential risk they represent.”
Basil said, “General, I myself have been troubled by certain inconsistencies. You are not aware of this, but I had my expediter,
Mr. Pellidor, obtain commercial records for the past fifteen years and instructed a team of my best population statisticians
to make projections of the size of the Roamer population, based upon the resources they purchase from Hansa suppliers. At
first glance, the number seemed relatively small, comfortably insignificant.”
“About what I expected.” Lanyan guided the glider, waiting for the other shoe to drop. “But?”
“But I discovered that the Roamers have been gathering their own resources—perhaps quite extensive resources—to supplement
what they purchase from us. That changes all the parameters.” He drew a deep breath. “Therefore, since they do not depend
entirely on the Hansa, Roamer settlements and populations could
be far more extensive
than we imagine.”
“Damn,” General Lanyan said, his face reddening. “How many, exactly?”
“They could have hundreds, even thousands, of undocumented colonies. All self-sufficient, none of them paying Hansa taxes.”
“Impossible! We would know!”
The ethereal winds of Mars buffeted the glider, and Basil continued. “I’ve assigned discreet spies to keep track of Roamer
ships trading with Hansa outposts, compiling a catalog of all their known vessels. When I finally began to look at the collated
information, I was amazed at how many different vessels the Roamers are using. They seem to be building their own ships—lots
of them.”
“And they’ve lost three skymines to the enemy aliens,” the General said.
“Three
that we know of,”
Basil pointed out. “But out of how many? We don’t know how many skymines the Roamers are operating, or where they are. Originally,
they purchased a dozen old ekti-harvesting facilities from the Ildirans, but since that time they have built plenty more.
How many? The Roamers don’t report to the Hansa each time they put a new one into operation. In fact, the facility that was
destroyed at Erphano was completely unknown to us.”
