The Parafaith War (43 page)

The profile slipped into place-the trading company, Altus, Limited, and the specific microtronics, the flight schedules, the office manager… even the alternate backup identity-thin, but better than nothing in an emergency. The pieces clicked into his mind and his implant. “One down … now …”

Another light novaed through Trystin, making the first seem pallid by comparison. His whole body spasmed for a moment, and his eyes felt like knives had been rammed through them.

Then the memories flashed through Trystin’s head-the mission to Soharra, and the thin men with veils who opened every door and shut it when they saw his brown square-suit; the holo pictures of the Temple in Wystuh, with the eight four-pointed spires and the angel of the Prophet hovering there in shimmering gold; the cold of the Prophet’s asteroid ship, and the small scout that was his, and the triumph of taking Bokara. … “Good take …”

Trystin winced, fighting the images, as the tech slowly folded back the apparatus. For a time, he just sat there. Finally, he sat upright and swung his legs around until his boots touched the stone floor.

“Don’t fight them,” offered the tech, a thin man with a brush mustache. “They’ll fade, but you can call on them if you need them.”

“And you will need them,” added the commander. “Let’s go. You can sort it all out on the way.” “Where?”

“To Braha, Brother Hyriss, and the enfolding of the Prophet.”

Trysts forced himself to walk erect, although he felt almost crushed by the weight of Brother Hyriss’s pseudomemories. The underground corridor seemed to stretch forever, but they walked less than a hundred meters before they reached a small tube-shuttle. “First seat.”

Trystin took the first seat of the dimly lit tubetrain. The doors closed and the shuttle dropped into the tunnel and whispered through the darkness for nearly ten minutes, according to Trystin’s implant.

One thing he did understand-sort of-was the need for Farhkan approval, because his return flight, assuming he made it that far, required refueling at the outer Farhkan station. There was also a blunt warning about not crossing the orbit of the sixth planet. But why Farhka? What role were the aliens playing? The questions swirled through him, and the pseudomemories pressed at his entire sense of self.

Why … why … why … ? That was the question that no one was answering.

The shuttle emerged into another underground station, deserted except for two technicians armed with stunners and shockers. Trystin carted himself and his bag up another ramp where he found himself looking out at the atmospheric shuttle port where he had entered training.

“Your orbit shuttle will be here in less than an hour.” The commander sank into a chair and pulled out a portable console.

Trystin sat, and called up the mission profile-but try as he could, there was no information on his departure point-or the coordination with the Farhkans. Everything started with his arrival in Braha. “Where am I headed?” he finally asked. “To your staging point.”

“Why is it necessary to go through Farhka on the return?”

“Even if you are followed, the trail ends there. They don’t let revs near their systems. One of the few benefits of cooperating with those gray bastards. That’s all, Major.” The commander’s eyes glazed over as he used his implant to interface with the small console he held. Standing without answers, Trystin took a deep breath.

He had no real choices, did he? And the commander knew it, the sadistic bastard! Trystin could undertake the mission and defect-and he had no doubts the revs would squeeze his mind dry and kill him. Or he could do the mission and try to survive-and that probably meant surviving Revenants, Farhkans, and the Service… if he got that far.

Deep inside, he was even more pleased that he’d never told the Service about his keys to the Temple. Keys to the Temple? He swallowed. To what degree was the entire Service being manipulated by the aliens? Or was he being used to manipulate the Service?

Salya had been right about Farhkan studies and piloting. Oh, how she’d been right. He took another deep breath and began to sort through the pseudomemories.

What else could he do? As Ghere had said, he had to find the answers’ and he didn’t like it one bit.

Trystin shifted his weight on the hard plastic chair. While the seat wasn’t comfortable, at least the gray pilot’s shipsuit that had been waiting on the courier was. A second one was folded in his bag. In the commercial world shipsuits were for ship wear, period.

“Where are we? How will I translate out from here?” Trystin asked the major who sat in the tiny mess room with him, watching the single visual screen as the courier eased toward a dark blob in the middle of darkness that appeared to be his destination.

“You don’t need to know. The coordinates are in your ship’s translation system, and they’ll burn out at your first translation.”

Trystin nodded. The profile had him returning, via Farhka, to outer orbit control in Chevel, or Safrya, as an

alternate. That was why he’d needed Farhkan approval, and that explained some things. If the Farhkans were willing to let Intelligence cover ships’ return to their systems, they favored the Coalition in some ways-or they wanted something very badly. But what? And why? He still hadn’t figured that out.

He could also understand the secrecy about his departure point. He couldn’t very well betray what he didn’t know, and he really didn’t know anything that any Service officer wouldn’t know, except that there was a total-immersion system for training spies, and that some spies were assassins.

He didn’t know exactly where any of the Intelligence bases were, nor even what officers ran them. He laughed. The Revenants could take him apart and learn very little that they didn’t already know. Much simpler than providing suicide devices or organic explosives.

The assassination angle still bothered him. Yet … the commander had been right. Trystin’s hands were already covered in blood. The assassination of an admiral, while perhaps cowardly, was scarcely terrorism or the murder of an innocent.

The major, who, like all the other Intelligence types outside of Service Headquarters, wore no name badge or decorations, gave him a puzzled glance, but said nothing.

“Need to know. I could spill everything I know, and it wouldn’t be of much use to the Revenants.” “We’d prefer you didn’t.” The major’s tone was dry. “So would I, but you people didn’t leave any clues for anyone to use against you.” “I hope not.”

The small station looked more like a chunk of rock than a station. In fact, it looked like a Revenant asteroid ship. Trystin and the major waited as the courier was grappled into an interior lock. “Power changeover.”

Instead of full gravity replacing ship gravity, minimal grav did, and Trystin’s stomach momentarily lurched upward.

Trystin picked up his fabric bag and followed the major out of the courier-he had never seen the pilot or crew-and into the station, careful not to bound in the low gravity. Only a single tech, wearing armor with a one-way faceplate, remained by the courier.

Once they left the hangar deck, Trystin staggered as he stepped into the corridor and full gravity.

“First stop is the tech shop,” announced the major. “They’ll do a final fitting on your space armor-it’s standard commercial, authentic Hyndji. We could have used Argenti, but the Hyndji is more common and suited to your mission.”

One technician waited in the large shop. The armor was laid out on an empty workbench.

Trystin pulled it on slowly, checking each section, particularly the seals and the fittings. Then he picked up the helmet, frowning.

“I know. Brother,” said the technician. “Only bad feature about the Hyndji helmets is the field of vision.”

After testing the armor, and after the technician made minor adjustments, Trystin took it off and packed it into the carrying case. Then he marched after the silent major toward another hangar lock where a bulbous ship, apparently massing more than a corvette and less than a cruiser, rested in minimal gravity on a flat carriage. Two rails ran under the carriage and toward the lock door.

“It’s a standard Revenant trader, manufactured by a Hyndji firm to Revenant standards, with a few slight modifications for our purposes.” The major gestured, and another technician, also in nondescript browns, appeared. “Would you show the brother through his ship?” “Yes, ser.”

The major inclined his head to Trystin. “A pleasure meeting you, Brother, and I wish you well. Take whatever time you need to become familiar with the ship. The technician here will answer any questions you have. When you’re ready to launch, just use standard control frequencies and tell them you’re ready.”

Clearly, Trystin had seen as much of the base as he was going to. “Food, necessities?” “The Paquawrat is fully stocked.” “Crew?”

“Traders this size run with one pilot. Multiple-pilot safety rules apply only for larger ships with passengers.” The major inclined his head. “Peace be with you,” Trystin said. “And with you.” The technician waited.

“Show me what I need to know.” Trystin offered a smile. “More than I’d be knowing. Brother, but we’ll give it a shot. We’ll start with the thrusters and translation system.”

Trystin followed the technician aft, trying not to bounce much in the low gravity. He watched and listened as the man ran through what was essentially an elaborate preflight before they returned to the cockpit, a cockpit with two couches, but with manual controls only before the left-hand seat.

“… standard controls here, and you can switch to manual if you want. The low net’s real simple, compared to either Revenant or Coalition standards. You want a full net, just use the command ‘FULLNET.’ It won’t respond except to a Service implant.” The technician laughed. “Good thing all the Service implants are all organic or organic density. You won’t set off any alarms. Ex-Hyndji military pilots are always doing that.”

The technician pulled on his chin. “The specs are on the low net.”

“Anything else?”

“One thing.” The technician in the nondescript brown coveralls flicked what appeared to be a rivet beside the right-hand screen and a small panel dropped, revealing a single switch. The top position was labeled “B,” the bottom “G.” “Brother, this is the most important gadget on this scout.” Trystin waited.

“In the blue position, the thrusters are tuned to revvie scale; in the green position to Coalition scale. Don’t forget this.”

Forgetting that could get Trystin cooked, and he touched the stud, fingering the switch and concentrating on the concept. Finally, he flicked the stud to the lower position. Then he frowned and flicked it back up, but left the panel open.

“That’s all I can think of,” said the technician. “Except take your time, and review the systems.” “I will.”

Trystin escorted the technician back to the ship lock, then closed it after the man stepped onto the hangar deck. He opened the armor’s carrying case and stowed the armor in the rack on the back wall of the cockpit, placing the case in the locker underneath. Then he went back to the tiny quarterdeck and took his clothes bag to the minuscule cabin, placing it in the net restraints.

After that he went to the galley, and looked for the samovar. There wasn’t one. While the water heated in a pot, he decided to check the cargo bays.

After ten minutes, he stopped, shaking his head. The cargo appeared to be what he’d been briefed that it would be-microtronic components, but all the cases were sealed and stamped with Hyndji break-nots.

He closed the seals to the cargo spaces, and went back to the galley, where, sipping herbal tea, he rehydrated a de-hydrated meal. The beef was still dry and too heavy, but his stomach felt better when he returned to the cockpit and plugged into the net.

According to his implant, he’d spent nearly three hours before he felt halfway comfortable with the ship and the systems-although they were similar to and far simpler than either those of a training corvette or of the Willis.

Finally, he went through the checklist, as far as he could go in an interior lock.

“Control, this is Paquawrat, Ready for departure.” “Paquawrat, reduce ship grav to nil.” “Ship grav is nil.”

“Opening lock this time. Do not initiate thrusters or attitude jets until instructed.”

“Understand no power on thrusters or jets until instructed.” “That’s affirmative.”

Trystin used the sensors to watch as the outer lock door slid open. Then the carriage on which the Paquawrat rested slowly edged the ship toward the darkness of the open lock.

“Electrorepulsion beginning.”

Trystin’s stomach heaved at the gentle pressure of the directed grav fields, but he kept his attention on the net and the sensors as the trader slowly floated upward from the asteroid station. Then the lock door closed.

“Hyndji ship Paquawrat, you are cleared to proceed.” “Roger, Control.” Trystin almost had used “Stet” instead of the “roger” used by Revenant pilots. He shook his head as he slowly eased power to the thrusters.

The representative screen showed a dead system-not a single EDI trace. Within minutes, he would have been hard-pressed to relocate the asteroid base.

With a deep breath, he slowly added power until the thrusters were at seventy-five percent, the most any commercial pilot would use, given the massive fuel consumption and stress placed on the fusactor system by higher thrust loads.

As the Paquawrat accelerated toward the dust-free translation zone, Trystin continued to range through the ship’s networks-high and low-trying to ignore the same nagging question: Just how was an assassination of a senior administrative admiral going to help the Coalition?

How would even several assassinations help stop the endless flow of troid ships and tanks and military missionaries committed to overrunning the Coalition?

Then, again, he reflected ruefully, if the continued comparative military successes of the Coalition hadn’t stopped the Revenants, maybe trying anything was better than losing while winning almost every battle.

He, frowned. A successful assassination attempt on the enemy’s capital planet-how likely was a safe escape? Did the Service really care?