The Commonwealth Saga 2-Book Bundle (243 page)

“I’m not a Starflyer agent,” Ozzie said meekly. “You can’t really think that.”

“You’re either a friend of Johansson’s like you said, or a Starflyer agent. Those are the only two reasons for stopping the Far Away cargo inspections, because both groups need to get their equipment through without drawing any official attention. Right now, Johansson is out of contact on his way to Far Away, so I can’t confirm your story short of a memory read. I don’t want to do that, even if we had the time—which we don’t. So for now, I’m doing what any good friend would do, and quarantining you. When Johansson gets back, he’ll be able to vouch for you. I’m sorry, Ozzie, but we’ve learned the hard way just how deep the Starflyer has penetrated our society. I’m even partly to blame for that. I let that sonofabitch Alster fool me, which is going to take some serious piety on my part to recover from. And we both know how hard that will be.”

“You really mean this, don’t you, Nige; you’re not going to let me go.”

“I can’t. If this was reversed, you wouldn’t either.”

“Oh, man. This is the only chance we’ve got to save our souls. We can’t commit genocide.”

“We have to.”

“Look, will you at least tell the captain to take a flyby of the generator?”

“Sure thing, Ozzie. We’ll do that.”

Ozzie knew that tone, Nigel was just humoring him. “You son of a bitch.”

Nigel stood up. “You and your friends will stay here until this is settled. I can’t give you unisphere access, but if there’s anything you want, just ask.”

Ozzie
almost
told him where to stick his hospitality. “All the data on the generator. I’m going to look at it anyway.”

“Fair enough, Ozzie.”

“And if I find a way of fixing it …”

“I’ll bend over and you can kick my ass into orbit.”

“Damn right I will. Oh, and Nigel, get the boy a girl, will you? A sweet one, not some fifth-lifer.”

Nigel gave him an irritated glance. “Do I look like a pimp?”

Ozzie smiled.

“This is only going to take a week,” Nigel said. “He can wait.”

“Hey, come on, man, we could all be dead by then. The kid’s never been laid. Now you’ve gone and flung him in jail. Five-star, sure, but it’s still the pen. Give him a break.”

“Ozzie—”

“If you can’t call out for a hooker, send one of your wives along. They’re all about his age anyway.”

“You can’t annoy me into doing this.”

“Just do it, Nige, show some humanity here. I’ll pick up the tab if it bothers you that much.”

“Whatever.” Nigel went out of the door with a fractious wave of his hand.

“Fuck you very much,” Ozzie shouted after him.

Eight hours into the flight to Port Evergreen, and the Carbon Goose passengers were finally starting to relax. There was a general feeling among them now that they might actually make it to the wormhole generator after all. Tail winds had picked up as they crossed the ocean. Wilson had announced their projected flight time was another hour and a quarter at most.

Paula wasn’t anything like as optimistic as the others. The Starflyer only needed a five-minute lead on them through the wormhole. Even with their reduced flight time, it was going to get close on forty minutes. Apart from a couple of hours spent in a fitful sleep, she’d spent her time reviewing contingency survival plans. There were plenty of scenarios loaded into the avionics, mostly connected with the plane being forced to ditch in the ocean. Given that each Carbon Goose carried emergency food packs, and there were more stores at Shackleton and Port Evergreen, she estimated that they’d have enough to eat for between seventeen to twenty months. It would mean returning to Shackleton where the other planes were parked, but they weren’t facing instant doom. Power and warmth were certainly easy enough; the micropiles could supply them with electricity for decades.

She walked back through the top passenger deck, which everyone had settled in. The Guardians regarded her with expressions of suspicion and hostility. Not that it bothered her; open animosity was a near constant companion in her job. Cat’s Claws simply ignored her, while the three remaining members of the Paris team smiled warmly as she passed. The stairs at the back of the cabin took her down to the next deck, which had its lights down low. She could just see the horizon through the small circular windows, a fuzzy pink line separating the black ocean from a star-filled sky. Flashes from the neutron star sent a broad livid blue shimmer across the water, leaving a purple afterimage on her retinas. They were just keeping ahead of the dawn, which was scheduled to catch up with them twenty minutes after they reached Port Evergreen.

Four more sets of stairs, and two pressure hatches put her in the lower cargo hold, where all their vehicles were stowed. The turbine noise was loudest here, almost as if there was some kind of combustion engine operating somewhere close by. Even with Wilson turning the heating on full, it was chilly in the big compartment. She zipped up the black and lavender fleece that had been in her CST executive travel pack and walked to the center, where Qatux was spending the journey. They’d managed to find half a dozen emergency heaters, which now ringed the large alien blowing warm air on its dark gray hide.

Nobody knew anything about Raiel physiology, so Paula couldn’t tell if its occasional shivering was the same reaction that humans had to cold, or a manifestation of its little dependency problem. Two of its smaller tentacles quivered as she approached.

“Paula, you are most welcome,” it sighed hoarsely.

“Thank you.”

Tiger Pansy was sitting on a crate beside Qatux, wearing the contents of two travel packs over her skirt and blouse. For once she’d abandoned her heels to use a pair of boots, then pulled some fur-lined travel slippers on top of them. She still looked miserably cold, her gloved hands cupped around a mug of tomato soup.

Adam and Bradley had also pulled up some crates. Their expressions remained neutral as she sat on the corner of the crate that Tiger Pansy was using. For whatever reason, Bradley had never gone in for reprofiling or genetic modification; he was still maintaining his mid-thirties age, though she’d never been able to track down which rejuvenation clinic he used. A tall man, especially compared to her, with his fair hair shading almost to silver-blond, contrasting with the darkest eyes she’d ever seen, his handsome features rose with a welcoming smile, not in the least triumphant, merely polite. Bradley was genuinely pleased to have her with them, though she would not forget nor forgive the terms that had brought her on board.

Adam couldn’t be more different from the founder of the Guardians; much squatter than Bradley’s athletically lanky frame, with muscle bulk that had been added since their last confirmed image of him on Velaines. Most of the Paris office would have walked right past him without a flicker of recognition, but after so long Paula could identify his face anywhere no matter what reprofiling he gave himself. Indeed, after so many changes there was now a severe limit on any new alterations. This new rounded face that alluded to youthful middle age was a strong warning against so much economic self-applied cellular reprofiling. His cheeks and chin were leathery, and afflicted with what appeared to be a mild form of eczema. The collar of his semiorganic coat was plagued by strands of dark hair that was dropping out like a radiation victim’s.

“Shaving must be painful,” she said.

Adam’s hand went halfway to his face before he became conscious of it. “There are suitable creams, thank you for your concern. You don’t look too hot yourself right now. Travel sick, Investigator?”

“Just tired.”

“Please,” Bradley pleaded.

“I’ve been assessing our food supplies should we be stuck here,” Paula said. “We should be all right for some time, but I came to ask what Qatux eats.”

All five of the Raiel’s eye stalks swiveled around in unison to focus on her. “Your concern is touching, Paula. There is no need for alarm. I will be able to digest human food. I estimate I will consume as much as five human adults per day. With the exception of curry. It does not agree with my digestive process.”

“Hey, me neither,” Tiger Pansy chirped in.

“Are you all right?” Paula asked her. “I can spell you if you want to sleep.”

“That’s real kind. I’m okay, though. I grabbed a few hours in here a while back.”

“Do you and Mr. Elvin intend to argue with each other?” Qatux asked. “You have been adversaries for many years now. I would find such contrary and emotional discourse to be most elating.”

“I’m not looking for a fight,” Paula said stiffly. “This is a new situation, for both of us.”

Adam looked up at the Raiel. “The enemy of my enemy is my friend. Old human saying.”

“Do you really set aside old battles so easily?”

“Put it into context with the threat of humanity’s extermination, and you’ll understand,” Paula said.

“It’s kinda sweet,” Tiger Pansy said. “That we can all just get along, you know.”

“Thank you, my dear,” Qatux said. “That was a most impressive feeling of sympathy and, I believe, camaraderie.”

“That’s why I get the big bucks,” she said, giggling. “Not!”

Paula turned to Bradley. “The good news is that if the Starflyer does close the wormhole behind it, we will be able to survive.”

“You might, my dear, but for me such failure will be worse than death.”

“I understand. I’d like to know now, what exactly are your plans. I might be able to help.”

“Plans,” Bradley murmured sadly. “I had grand plans, Investigator. Once. Today, things have become somewhat
fluid.
All we can do is hope that our friends on Far Away find some way of preventing the Starflyer from going through the wormhole until we arrive at Port Evergreen. That way we might still manage to corner it and kill it. Dreaming heavens, I cannot believe it has come to this.”

Paula glanced over at the Volvos lurking in the gloom around her, their tops nearly touching the roof of the cargo hold. “So what are they carrying? What have you been smuggling to Far Away all these years?”

“Don’t look at me.” Adam grunted. “I’m just the hired hand who arranges shipment.”

“Bradley?” Paula asked.

“I had devised a scheme to give the planet its revenge. It requires a great deal of sophisticated force field technology to implement.”

“How does force field technology kill the Starflyer? Do you trap it inside one?”

“Oh no, the planet’s revenge is designed to destroy the
Marie Celeste.
I intended to release it when we knew the Starflyer was on its way back. Without its ship, it will be truly marooned on Far Away. It can’t go home, and it can’t return to the Commonwealth. We can hunt it down and kill it.”

“So if it does get through the wormhole to Far Away ahead of us, will the Guardians be able to release this revenge scheme?”

“Possibly; though without the equipment we’ve brought it will be weaker than I would like. And of course the data you and Senator Burnelli retrieved from Kazimir is extremely important.”

“As far as we could determine, it was just meteorological information from Mars.”

“You determined right, my dear. We intend to channel Far Away’s weather at the
Marie Celeste.
As well as being extremely effective against that brute machine, it is fitting to give Far Away the chance for retribution. It was the flare bomb released by the
Marie Celeste
which came so close to totally annihilating the entire planetary biosphere.”

“Weather?” Paula frowned, even she couldn’t work out the variables in that puzzle. “You’re going to use the weather against a starship?”

“Yes. Did you know the Halgarth Dynasty commands the lion’s share of force field sales in the Commonwealth because of the systems given to them by the Starflyer in the guise of Institute research?”

“I know they’re the market leaders, yes.”

“It was inevitable, really. The
Marie Celeste
traveled through space at near relativistic velocity for hundreds of years. It had to have superb force fields to survive such a punishing environment. That makes it extremely difficult for us to attack. It would certainly be impervious to fusion bombs, even if we wanted to employ them on Far Away. The kind of modern, sophisticated weapons powerful enough to break the
Marie Celeste
’s force field are essentially impossible to obtain. They are simply not available on the black market. Their manufacture would be even more difficult. The Commonwealth has an effective monitoring network in place for dual use manufacturing systems, which even Adam would have trouble circumventing.”

“So how do you use weather when our best weapons are ineffective?”

“We generate a superstorm, and use force field–derived mechanisms to steer it. Far Away is blessed with a rather unique meteorological system, partly due to its size, partly its geography. A major storm evolves out over the Hondu Ocean every night, and blows in across the Grand Triad. That will become our powerhouse; we have evolved a mechanism to amplify that and direct it onto the
Marie Celeste.
In theory, I should add. Nobody has ever put such an idea into practice before.”