The Princess of Caldris (10 page)

“
If I can find him, he’ll
talk to me.”

Herbivore had pushed the
rules of war to their limits. “Rules of war”--such as they are, the
protocols of mass murder.

Hammerstein’s faith in his long ago
friendship with the old “black devil Herbivore” was a ghost of a
ghost. Strangely, I felt in many ways these ghosts were made of
things more real than much of the universe mankind concocted…

The monument to the lost ships of the line
in the Baal incident is not at the capitol as one would expect, but
at Cooper River Valley where the main city fades away to the
highlands. The planet’s greatest city, Cooper Trans, built on trade
and shipping rather than governing, dissolves into patterns of less
dense and dense buildings on bluffs overlooks the shipyards where
the ships of the line had been built. The shipyards can be seen
spilling out and out into the sea where the underwater and floating
habitations predominate.

On the bluff an artist had
been commissioned whose answer to the design problem was a series
of symbolic vanes resembling the command and communications towers
of the battleships. They are striking obelisks, smoothed in places
like a Henry Moore work from the 20th century, and laced with
holograms like a Sanj Moghul from the 29th.

It was the greatest loss
of life ever experienced by the Caldris Royal Space Naval Forces.
At the end of the sculpted obelisks there are a number of human
scale figures looking back. The first group represents the bridge
crews of the surviving ships who witnessed the tragedy. They stare
back forever in shocked disbelief. The second group represents the
commandos who raided back. In is a strange yin and yang, this
duality of man-the first group idealistic and traumatic, the
second-grim justice personified.

-Princess Clairissa
Maggio.

Kanaafutura to Langley
Stay

There was room enough in
the Kanaafutura hold for Coco-butter Parsons’ Hammerhead which
delighted him to know end. He took command of piloting with a
flourish and the lot of us made for deep space. Fort Oort fell away
and Parsons brought the flight plan vertical to the stellar plane
negotiating the easier clear of the cloud.

On the holo screens and main piloting cabin
I watched a holo model of the Caldris system. It shrank and the
stellar configuration of fifty light years appeared with the
Caldris system highlighted. Then that configuration shrank, and
three times was replaced with various magnitudes of scale, until at
last the gap between the Orion and Sagittarius arm of the galaxy
appeared.

A system was highlighted,
there in the gap. Langley Stay, Void’s End

Coco-butter was MERGED with
his new toy, happily playing music, when he broke into hyper. A
platoon of Rangers was milling about the quarters and playing cards
and eating on the ship’s cruise. The Detective and his assistant
were conferring and reviewing forensic data in the officer’s
mess.

A droid was serving co-pilot to Parsons. Mr.
Gibbon’s by my side, it occurred to me were smaller mirrors of the
two. We watched the Caldris system fall away in a simulation on one
of the screens. We were moving at incompressible speeds, but the
simulations mastered those speeds and recreated them with accurate
models.

Kanaafutura was a charger. Faster than any
ship I’d ever been on. Even my father’s racing yachts were no
match.

I reached into the hyperstreams and felt for
bad intent. There was, however, nothing but the epochal spaces
expanding with their radiant energies since the bang of our
universe. Forces, vectors, molecules in the deep streams, beyond
the edge now since we rode the hyperstreams.

No more assassins. For now.

Days came and went aboard
ship. The routine of hyper space. Since Star systems were full of
gravity wells, the best courses avoided them until one arrived at
the destination system. We made for the space between the galactic
arms-the void. Very few systems in the voids.

It was my first venture
outside the five or six star systems around Caldris, beyond the
Royal Hegemony.

My head ached and my body
was wracked with sudden pains after a time. Thoughts of the missing
Princess had taken a toll. There was, however, small solace or
retreat.

The warmth old Hammerstein
granted was a comfort-but the continual hustle and bustle in
strange environs, the attacks as well, battered me. The Kanaafutura
streamed through the hyper dimensions and I tried to gather my
strength in my bunk.

Who to trust-and whom was sharpening their
knives to plant them deep in our backs?

It would only get worse, I knew, at Langley
Stay. Light years away I could sense that system like a tangled web
of intrigues looming in the void. I glanced at Mr. Gibbons, always
watching, and was glad for him-a faithful friend in a universe of
treacherous rogues.

The ruins of New Haven
City were particularly disturbing. Here the bold colonists had
dared reclaim the best in mankind's dreams only to have it come to
this. Here they had carried their cherished ideals and set out upon
the uncharted with dash and brilliance, and here too the meaner
aspects of human vice had ground those hopes once again to nothing.
The genius of their architecture-once soaring, deft and Dexter-sad
relics.

My team and I negotiated the strange
landscape of horrors with a curious confusion, unsure at all times
the realities that lay behind the war. CCCE claimed always the
Colonials had built an armada planning attack-but such was not the
character of the colonists to take by force that which they earned
by creativity and dogged work. The macabre landscape told of an
ultimate betrayal. A betrayal of an ideal, nay-a betrayal of all
that was ideal in mankind.

My eyes must have been a frightful
sight.

Later, underneath the Capitol, I chanced
upon a disk in the transportation hub and wondered. It contained
the transportation logs of the entire city the week before the war.
I could recreate that week in it's ordinary prelude to the tragedy.
How strange that would be.

-Princess Maggio,
Caldris.

VII

Langley Stay, Void's
End

Tokushima was at the helm
when the Kanaafutura signaled Langley Stay system. The edges of the
Sagittarius Spiral Arm of the galaxy, the world was an anomaly
among the Outwords in a number of ways. It had been a spearhead
settlement at a time when the ancient nation state of "America" had
still existed before Earth itself became just one more world in the
Imperium. From there, the Americans and various affiliated nations
had settled the Arcturian Colonies, then Langley had too fallen
into Imperial hands, and in a final twist won a sort of defacto
independence after the war when the Imperials abandoned it. In the
thousands years since, with the rise of the refugee Outworlds, now
it was important again but it's culture was entirely
untamed.

We were being hailed. Systems were
responding to autoscans when holos of Security officers from their
system police appeared. "Processing registrations" one of the holos
said, with a sudden widening of the eyes when he realized it was a
Royal Warship from Caldris.

"Caldris Royal Envoy." Tokushima informed
him.

"Officer Tokushima on
official business." "Yes, we see. Rather large warship, officer.
What is the nature of your business in system, and what is your
anticipated stay?"

"Two criminal acts of extreme violence
against law officers-one at Caldris, and one near Fort Oort. We
traced the vessel to a possible source and wish to confer with same
in system" she replied coolly. "A week perhaps."

I smiled. Police, they stick together no
matter what star system they were from. An unwritten code-police
were attacked, you have to let us hunt down the buggers.

"Registration confirmed,
keep us updated weekly. The warship is to port at system security
station main. You have shuttles down-world we presume?"

She hesitated, "One Hammerhead."

Now they hesitated. The holos looked back
and forth at each other, finally one shrugged-the cop code
prevailed- "Yeah, well, alright, please confer any suspects before
engaging fire."

"Absolutely." She smiled.

Now she owed them one, but
we were in. In for a long docking protocol at the security station
and finally after red tape, tiddly winks, dirty looks, and berthing
fees, they let us take the Hammerhead downworld with a bit of
finger wagging and "if there is any untoward activity please...no
interplanetary incidents!" Don't kill any bad guys, leave that for
us. Hammerstein nodded and nodded and nodded and sighed and finally
Coco-butter got his music playing and we were airborne over the
bright arc of the planet, "Going down, baby!" Coco-butter informed
us as if the whole brilliant planet in front of us was
invisible.

"So we are...." Hammerstein smiled.

Coco-butter looked at him
expectantly, "Any place in particular...Sir?"

The Hammerhead was heating
up and I sensed Coco-butter Parson's flight instincts easing the
gravity repulsion field to counter the pull of the planet. He
played with the controls a bit and the craft turned into a huge
spiraling corkscrew slowly down.

From Hammerstein came a
flood of memories.
Herb arriving at the
fleet after the enemy wormhole massacre. Herb's glassy-eyed orders
for the counter strike. Herb's surprising declaration after the
counter strike's success, "All those men and women-on both sides,
dead. For what?

Some piss-ant real estate?
Look around, kid. the universe is overflowing with worlds and
resources. At the end of the day, when people go about killing each
other, it's because someone somewhere simply WANTS to. I didn't
sign up to be a butcher for fools and monsters. I'm out, after this
tour, I'm out...you can take the King's Navy and--"

Hammerstein's thoughts
raced back across the decades to the present, "There, where the
Yellow Seas meet the delta. Take the flight pattern over there.
You'll find a city." They hovered over a vast spread of warehouse
blocks serviced by canals, the fjords shouldering the sea. The city
was built into the rock of the cliff sides, canals carved through
solid stone bluffs. On the pinnacles of stone buttes, spires and
domes proliferated. Air transports buzzed about, some in streams,
others freely. A metropolis carved into and piled on the limestone
crags.

We put down in an open fish
market at the delta which included some flats with waterships dry
docked, busy wharf and a number of small transports such as
ourselves.

I reached out to the ether,
as it were. I sensed no malice or subterfuge. We were barely
raising notice. We were just another transport at a busy port. I
felt a couple of the fishermen’s thoughts take small ire at a
military vehicle taking up space in their work areas, but that was
mere annoyance.

It seems we had arrived on world and none of
the police at the station forewarned any criminals-a good sign they
were an honest bunch.

Peering from a window I got my first look at
Langley Stay for myself. It was as the stories said; everyone was
wearing masks….

We made due with flight
helmets. I felt quite ridiculous, Tokushima, Hammerstein, and
myself making our way casually onto the wharf and open spaces…with
flight helmets on. Not even the possibly stylish MERGE helmets, but
second rate crash helmets.

“
We need to buys masks.”
Hammerstein declared the obvious.

“
Shopping! On assignment.
At the edge of the Outworlds. This promises to be…different.”
Tokushima snarked.

Hammerstein’s flight helmet turned and I
didn’t need to be a psychic to feel that vibe.

“
Sorry, Sir,” she
retreated.

We did, in fact, look ridiculous.