The Evolutionary Void (20 page)

He settled back on his couch and watched the Delivery Man hurry over to
the ultradrive starship.

The Delivery Man stood underneath the starship and tried not to let his
exasperation short-circuit the verification process. Understandably, the
authorization procedure to gain flight command of the ultradrive’s smartcore
was thorough; the ship was a hugely valuable asset, and the Conservative
Faction wasn’t about to leave it vulnerable to anyone.

He hadn’t been able to sleep for the whole flight, nor had he eaten. The
Lady Rasfay
was so damned slow compared to the ships he
was used to. That, coupled with the stress of losing his family, of Araminta
giving everyone the slip again, and his not really knowing who the “executive”
was or if this really was some kind of Accelerator ensnarement, hadn’t done his
nerves any good whatsoever.

Finally, the smartcore admitted he was on the approved list of people
allowed to fly the ship and granted him flight command status. The Delivery Man
breathed out heavily and ordered the airlock open. Directly above him the base
of the starship sank inward and produced a dark cavity. Gravity inverted, and
he slipped up into the small spherical chamber. The floor contracted beneath
his feet, and the apex opened. He rose into the hemispherical cabin.

Systems came back on line as the smartcore readied the ship for flight.
Everything was functional; the formidable armaments were all ready. The
Delivery Man ordered a single fat chair for himself and sat down gratefully as
it extruded from the floor. With the ship under his command, he was a player
again; it bestowed a lot of confidence.

He called the “executive” on a secure link.

“You made it, then,” his unknown ally said.

“Sure.”

“And Araminta’s skipped off down the Silfen paths. You know, I’d
genuinely like to meet her one day. She’s made complete idiots out of the most
powerful organizations in the Greater Commonwealth. You’ve got to admire that.”

“She’s been lucky,” the Delivery Man commented. “That’s going to run
out.”

“People make their own luck.”

“Whatever.”

“Is the ship ready?”

The Delivery Man took a moment before answering. “I’m sorry, but in the
end my family is all that matters to me. I think it would be best if I went
after Marius.”

“He’s already left Fanallisto. His ship took off about fifteen minutes
after
Lady Rasfay
launched. You maybe see a
connection there, supersecret agent?”

“I’ll find him.”

“Not alone, you won’t. Besides, I’m the best chance for your family’s
survival.”

“I don’t know what you are or where your loyalties lie.”

“I said I would give you proof, and I will. Here are the coordinates.
Come and get it.”

The Delivery Man studied the data that arrived. “The Leo Twins? What’s
there?”

“Hope. And maybe just some salvation thrown in for good measure. Come on,
sonny, what have you got to lose? It’s going to take you a few hours at most to
get there. If you don’t like what you find, then you’re free to turn around and
launch yourself into your whole honorable quest thing. I think you owe the
Conservative Faction this much, don’t you?”

The Delivery Man regarded the ridiculous coordinate for a long time. The
only possible thing at the Leo Twins would be some kind of secret Conservative
Faction facility. After all, he reasoned, they had to make their ultradrive
ships somewhere.
In which case, why would they need this
ship back there?
“Can’t you just level with me?”

“Okay, then: As far as I know, I’m the only one with a valid plan to save
the galaxy from Ilanthe and the Void.”

“Oh, come on!”

“Does ANA have a plan, or, rather, did it? Does the navy? Do any of the
other faction survivors? Maybe you wanna go bold and ask MorningLightMountain?
Release the big fella from behind that barrier and it’ll certainly wipe us out:
Problem solved if you’re looking at the overall big picture. Or … oh, no, don’t
tell me you think the President and the Senate will produce a way out. You’re
going to entrust the fate of the galaxy to politicians?”

“Who the fuck are you?”

“Just stop whining and get yourself over to the Leo Twins. You’ll have
your answers there, I promise.”

“Just tell me.”

“Can’t. Don’t trust you enough.”

“What?”

“The stakes are too high. I can’t predict what you’ll do at this stage.
And I do have other options if you fail me. Not as good as you, though. That
means the best chance your Lizzie and the kids have is you and me teaming up.
Something you might want to think on.”

The link closed.

“Shit!” The Delivery Man thumped his fist against the chair’s resilient
cushioning. He knew he didn’t really have a choice. “Take us to the Leo Twins,”
he told the smartcore.

From a nightside orbit, Darklake City was a blaze of light over a hundred
fifty kilometers across, infested with strange lightless sections where the
lakes and the steepest mountains had repelled any attempts at development
throughout its nearly fifteen-hundred-year human history. Sited in the
subtropical zone of Oaktier, the capital was a monument to both progress and
classicalism. Its ancient core district of crystal skyscrapers and
vermilion-shaded condo-pyramids had flourished as the world became Higher, with
individual buildings maintained or expanded as new materials and techniques
became available. Residents from the first-era Commonwealth would still have
recognized the center, even though the scale of the structures had increased
dramatically. Outside the old hub, newer suburbs reflected the whimsey of
modern architecture and a lack of industrial or commercial districts, producing
stretches of parkland where homes and various community buildings sprawled amid
the vibrant flora. Citizens continued to celebrate their original Pacific Basin
ancestry with strong traditions in seasports and enthusiasm for the planet’s
ecology. Such factors gave Oaktier a reputation of being altogether less
conventional and formal than the majority of Inner worlds, where Higher culture
seemed to be nothing other than an endless series of seminars and debates on
public policy. As such, Oaktier tended to draw a fair proportion of new
citizens from the External worlds as they began their inward migration and
transformation to Higher.

Somehow, Digby didn’t think his adversary was beginning the conversion to
Higher culture. The starship he’d followed from Ellezelin sank through the
upper atmosphere, heading down to the smallest of Darklake City’s three
spaceports. The craft had come out of hyperspace without any stealth and filed
a standard landing request with the planetary spaceflight authority.

By contrast, Digby kept the
Columbia505
a
thousand kilometers above the equator and employed its full stealth suite to
ward off the local defense agency’s sensors. The planetary government, in all
its thousands of local committees, had come to a uniform decision to go to a
grade one alert status. Three River-class warships were in patrol orbit half a
million kilometers out, ready to respond to any perceived threat. Fortunately,
they hadn’t detected the
Columbia505
, either.

“The Accelerators must have an active team down there,” Digby reported to
Paula as the Accelerators’ starship landed. “Do you want me to contact our
local office for support?”

“We’re long past a tussle between enriched agents to achieve our
objectives,” she told him. “You’ll have to follow the ship’s pilot through
scruitineers in the planetary cybersphere. That will leave you positioned to
apply firepower from orbit to achieve our objectives.”

“We have objectives?”

“Yes. One. And it’s very simple: No one else must acquire Araminta. No
one. No matter what the cost.”

“Ozzie! You want me to shoot into an urban area?”

“If that’s what’s required. Hopefully, it won’t come to that. I don’t
believe she’ll ever come to Oaktier.”

“Then why is the Accelerator agent here?”

“Laril, Araminta’s ex-husband, is currently on the inward migration. He’s
living in Darklake City.”

“Oh. And you think she’ll make contact?”

“She already has. I’ve analyzed his node logs. They’ve had a couple of
chats. The last one was interrupted by my shotgun on Chobamba.”

“Ah.” Digby ordered his u-shadow to run a search through local records.
“There’s no history of a Silfen path on Oaktier.”

“No. But if Laril is the one she’s turning to for advice, I imagine the
Accelerators are going to snatch him and apply some pressure.”

“That’s logical. Did your u-shadow track her new unisphere address code?”

“She doesn’t have one. She’s been accessing the unisphere manually,
through nodes. No records.”

“Clever. Do you think the Silfen will shelter her?”

“Not a chance.”

“Have you got any contacts there?” That was almost a stupid question, but
he’d learned a long time ago never to underestimate his great-grandmother.

“I’ve had occasion to join the Motherholme communion, but you never get
anything definite out of the Silfen. Unless you’re unlucky enough to bump into
one of them called Clouddancer—then you get a whole load of bad-tempered
information.”

“So there’s no telling where she’s going to come out?”

“No. But when she does, we need to be ready.”

Digby accessed the spaceport sensors, watching the Accelerator emerge
from her ship. She wasn’t wearing any clothes, though her gray skin was more a
toga-suit haze than anything living, and it looked as though it was
constricting tightly across her small skeleton. Two long streamers of blood-red
fabric flowed out horizontally behind her, fluttering as if in a breeze. As she
looked around, her eyes glimmered with a faint pink luminescence. “Valean,” he
said ruefully. “I might have guessed after what happened on Ellezelin.” She
made Marius look subtle by comparison. The Accelerators used her only when they
needed extreme measures.

“That just emphasizes how important Araminta is to them,” Paula said.
“You are going to have to keep a very tight watch. She cannot be allowed to
reach Laril.”

“Shall I just target her now? She’s outside her ship defenses.”

There was a slight hesitation. “No,” Paula said. “We don’t know the rest
of the Accelerator team on Oaktier. Once you’ve identified them, we’ll discuss
direct elimination.”

“Okay. I’m on it.”

Mellanie’s Redemption
accelerated smoothly up
to fifty-two light-years an hour and held steady. Troblum’s exovision was
completely full of display graphics, allowing him no glimpse of the cabin. His
secondary routines twinned the new drive’s management programs. With his
mentality expanded to maximum capacity, he effectively
was
the ultradrive, feeling the exotic energy flow, sensing the quantum fields
realign into standard hyperspace configuration. Fluctuations were tremors along
his hull/flesh that were countered and calmed instantaneously, leaving only the
phantom memory of disturbance. Within the body/machine, power flooded along
specific patterns, twisting and compressing into unnatural formations that
collapsed spacetime. Functionality was absolute, flowing so smoothly and
effortlessly that his consciousness was elevated to Zen levels, making his
world seem perfectly ordered.

With great reluctance he shrank away from the drive, designating it to an
autonomic monitor routine. Now he was simply aware of the system and its myriad
components in the same way he knew his heart beat and lungs inhaled. The
sensation of loss was nearly physical, as if he were coming down off a sugar
high.

A servicebot slid over, carrying a plate of caramel-coated pecan
doughnuts and a coffeepot. He put a whole doughnut into his mouth and chewed
thoughtfully. Catriona Saleeb sat in the chair opposite, long legs folded
neatly to one side, which had pushed her shorts up to the very top of her thighs.
Her slack top with its tiny straps shifted to show off even more cleavage as
she leaned forward.