Maki Gruter smiled in gratitude as his credit disk registered the financial bonus. “My pleasure.”
Jenny Harris came in a minute after the transport manager left. A thirty-year-old ESA lieutenant, on her second off-world mission. She had a flat face, her nose slightly crooked, with short dark ginger hair, and a slim figure which belied her strength. Ralph had found her a competent officer in the two years she’d been on Lalonde, if a little bit too rigorous in applying agency procedure to every situation.
She listened attentively as Ralph repeated what Maki Gruter had told him.
“I haven’t heard any word on unexplained hardware appearing upriver,” she said. “Just the usual black-market activity, selling off the gear which the spaceport crews lift from new colonists.”
“What assets have we got up in the Schuster area?”
“Few,” she said reluctantly. “We mainly rely on our contacts in the Sheriff’s Office for reports on contraband, and the boat crews fill in a bit more of the picture. Communication is the problem, naturally. We can give our upriver assets communication blocks, but the Confederation Navy satellites would spot any transmissions even if they were prime encrypted.”
“OK,” Ralph nodded. It was an old argument, urgency against exposure risk. At this stage of its development nothing on Lalonde was considered urgent. “Do we have anyone going upriver?”
Jenny Harris paused as her neural nanonics reviewed schedules. “Yes. Captain Lambourne is due to take a new colonist group upriver in a couple of days, they’re settling land just past Schuster itself. She’s a good courier, I use her to collect reports from our in situ assets.”
“Right, ask her to find out what she can, about the missing families and whether or not there’s been any unexplained equipment appearing up there. In the meantime I’ll contact Solanki, see if he’s heard anything about it.” Kelven Solanki worked at the small Confederation Navy office in Durringham. Confederation Navy policy was that even the humblest of colony worlds was entitled to the same degree of protection as any of the developed planets, and the office was supposed to be visible proof of that. To underline the fact, Lalonde received a twice-yearly visit by a frigate from the 7th Fleet, based at Roherheim, forty-two light-years away. Between visits, a flock of ELINT sensor satellites watched over the star system, reporting their observations directly to the navy office.
Like Ralph and the ESA, their secondary role was to keep an eye out for pirate activity.
Ralph had introduced himself to Lieutenant-Commander Solanki soon after he arrived. The Saldanas were strong supporters of the Confederation, so cooperation as far as locating pirate activity was concerned was a sensible arrangement. He got on reasonably well with the commander, partly due to the navy’s mess, which served arguably the best meals in the city, and neither of them made any mention of Ralph’s other duties.
“Good idea,” Jenny Harris said. “I’ll meet with Lambourne tonight, and brief her on what we want. She’ll want paying,” she added in a cautionary tone.
Ralph requested Lambourne’s file from his neural nanonics, shaking his head ruefully when he saw how much the woman cost them. He could guess how much she would ask for this fact-finding mission upriver. “OK, I’ll authorize it. Try and keep her under a thousand, please.”
“Do my best.”
“Once you’ve dealt with her, I want you to activate an asset in the Governor’s office, find out why the Honourable Colin Rexrew thinks it’s necessary to send a marshal to investigate some missing farmers no one has ever heard of before.”
After Jenny Harris left he datavised the list of new arrivals into his processor block for analysis, then sat back and thought about how much to tell Commander Solanki. With a bit of luck he could drag out the meeting and get himself invited to dinner at the mess.
Twenty-two thousand kilometres ahead of Oenone , the tiny blue ion-manoeuvring jets of the Adamist starship Dymasio were consumed by the interstellar night. Syrinx watched through the voidhawk’s optical senses as the intense pinprick of light dwindled away to nothing. Directional vectors swirled away at the back of her mind, an unconscious calculation performed in conjunction with Oenone ’s spacial instinct. The Dymasio had lined up on the Honeck star system eight light-years away, the alignment checked out perfectly.
I think this is it,she told thetis. Graeae , her brother’s voidhawk, was drifting a thousand kilometres to one side of Oenone ; the two voidhawks had their distortion fields reduced to a minimum. They were operating in full stealth mode, with minimal energy expenditure. There wasn’t even any gravity in the crew toroid. The crew hadn’t eaten any hot meals, there had been no waste dumps, all of them peeing and crapping into sanitary bags, and there was definitely no hot water. Blanket webs of heat-duct cables had been laid over Oenone ’s hull and crew toroid alike, then smothered by a thick light-absorbent insulation foam. All the starship’s waste heat was siphoned off by the blankets and radiated away through a single dump panel, always orientated away from their prey. Holes had been left for Oenone ’s sensor blisters, but that was all. Oenone kept complaining that the covering itched, which was ridiculous, but Syrinx held her peace—for now.
I agree,thetis replied.
Syrinx felt a shiver of trepidation mingling with a release of pent-up tension. They had been following the Dymasio for seventeen days, keeping twenty to thirty thousand kilometres behind as it zigzagged between uninhabited star systems on a totally random course designed to spot and shake off any possible pursuer. A chase of that nature was demanding and difficult, putting a strain on even Edenist psyches, let alone the twenty-strong Adamist naval marine squad they were carrying. Seeing the way their hard-pressed captain, Larry Kouritz, had maintained discipline throughout the mission had sparked a rare respect. And there weren’t many Adamists who rated that.
With the final coordinate insertion manoeuvres complete, she could imagine the Dymasio retracting its sensors and thermo-dump panels, configuring itself for the jump, charging its patterning nodes with energy. Ready?she asked Oenone .
I’m always ready,the voidhawk replied tartly.
Yes, she would be very glad when this mission was over.
It had been Thetis who persuaded her to sign on with the Confederation Navy for a seven-year tour, Thetis with his strong sense of duty and commitment, goaded by a wilful zest. Syrinx had always intended to put in a naval stint, Athene had often told her rumbustious children of her service days, painting an enticing picture of gallantry and camaraderie. She just hadn’t anticipated it to be quite so soon, three years after she and Oenone started flying.
With their power and agility, voidhawks were an essential component of the Confederation Navy, employed by Fleet admirals as ideal interception craft. After being fitted out with both offensive and defensive combat systems and an extensive array of electronic sensors, then undergoing a three-month procedural-training course, Oenone and Graeae had been assigned to the 4th Fleet, operating from the Japanese Imperium capital Oshanko.
Although the Confederation Navy was a dedicated supranational organization, voidhawks always had Edenist crews. Syrinx had kept her original crew: Cacus, the life-support engineer; Edwin, in charge of the toroid’s mechanical and electrical systems; Oxley, who piloted both the multifunction service vehicle and the atmospheric ion-field flyer; Tula, the ship’s generalist and medical officer. And Ruben, the fusion-generator technician, who had become Syrinx’s lover a month after he came aboard, and at a hundred and twenty-five was exactly a century older than her.
It was like Aulie all over again, an aspect which made her feel incredibly girlish and carefree, almost an antithesis of her responsibilities as captain. They slept together when ship’s schedules permitted, and spent all their shore leave ranging across whichever planet, habitat, or asteroid settlement they were visiting. Although well into middle age, Ruben, like all Edenists, was still more than capable physically, so their sex life was pretty reasonable; and they both shared a delight in exploring the different cultures flourishing within the Confederation, marvelling in their sheer variety. Through Ruben, and his seemingly inexhaustible patience, she had learned to be far more tolerant of Adamists and their idiosyncrasies. Which was another reason for accepting the Confederation Navy commission.
Then there was also that familiar miscreant thrill to be had from the way everyone regarded their relationship as mildly scandalous. Given their life expectancy, large age gaps were common among Edenist partners, but a hundred years was pushing the limits of propriety. Only Athene didn’t make the mistake of objecting, she knew Syrinx far too well for that. In any case, the relationship wasn’t that serious; Ruben was convenient, uncomplicated, and fun.
The final crew-member was Chi, who had been posted to Oenone by the navy to be their weapons officer. He was a career Confederation Navy man, as far as any Edenist could be in an organization which demanded staff officers renounce their national citizenship (hardly practical for Edenists).
Oenone and Graeae had spent four years of patrolling uninhabited star systems, providing occasional random escorts for merchant ships in the hope of engaging pirates, exercised with the Fleet on full-system defence attacks, taken part in a marine assault on an industrial station suspected of building antimatter combat wasps, and making innumerable goodwill calls at ports throughout the 4th Fleet’s sector. For the last eight months the Admiralty had assigned them to an independent interception duty, under the command of the Confederation Naval Intelligence Service. This was the third chase flight the CNIS had sent them on: the first ship had been empty when they reached it; the second, a blackhawk, managed to elude them with its longer swallow range, much to Syrinx’s extreme chagrin. But the Dymasio was undeniably guilty; the CNIS had suspected it of carrying antimatter for some time, and this flight proved it. Now the ship was preparing to enter an inhabited system to make contact with an asteroid separatist group. This time they would make their arrest. This time! Oenone ’s cabin atmosphere seemed compressed by the prospect.
Even Eileen Carouch, the CNIS lieutenant who was liaising with them, had picked up on the Edenists’ expectancy. She was strapped into the couch next to Syrinx, a middle-aged woman with a bland, unmemorable face, the kind Syrinx supposed was ideal for an active agent. But the personality behind it was resolute and resourceful; discovering the Dymasio ’s hoarded cache was proof of that.
Right now she had her eyes tight closed, accessing the datavised information Oenone was providing through bitek processors interfaced with their hardware equivalents, allowing all the Adamists to see what was going on.
“Dymasio ’s ready to jump,” Syrinx said.
“Thank heavens for that. My nerves can’t stand much more of this.”
Syrinx felt a grin on her lips. She always found a slight edge of tension in her dealings with Adamists on an individual basis; them and their emotions locked inside impenetrable bone, you never knew quite what they felt, which was difficult for the empathic Edenists to handle. But Eileen had turned out to be amazingly blunt with her opinions. Syrinx quite enjoyed her company.
The Dymasio vanished. Syrinx felt the sharp kink in space as the ship’s patterning nodes warped the fabric of reality around her hull; to Oenone the distortion was like a flare. One that was totally quantifiable. The voidhawk instinctively knew the emergence-point coordinate.
Let’s go!syrinx broadcast loudly.
Power flooded through the voidhawk’s patterning cells. An interstice was torn open. They plunged into the expanding wormhole. Syrinx could feel Graeae generating its own wormhole away to one side, then the interstice closed behind them, sealing them in timeless oblivion. Imagination, twinned with genuine voidhawk sensorium input, provided a giddy rushing sensation for the couple of heartbeats it took to traverse the wormhole. A terminus opened at some indeterminable distance, a different texture of negation, seemingly curving round them. Starlight began to pour in, bending into a filigree of slender blue-white lines around the hull. Oenone shot out into space. Stars became hard diamond points again.
The event horizon had evaporated from the Dymasio ’s hull, depositing the starship five light-days out from Honeck’s sun. Its sensor clusters and thermo-dump panels emerged from the hull with the timidity of a hibernating creature venturing out into a spring day. As with all Adamist starships, it took time to check its location, and scan local space for stray comets or rock fragments. That crucial time lapse allowed the tremendous spacial flaws accompanying the opening of the voidhawks’ terminuses to remain undetected.
Ignorant of his invisible followers, the Dymasio ’s captain activated the starship’s main fusion drive, heading towards the next jump coordinate.
“It’s moving again,” Syrinx said. “Preparing to go insystem. Do you want to interdict?” The thought of antimatter being carried into an inhabited system disturbed her.
“What’s the new destination?” Eileen Carouch asked.
Syrinx consulted the system’s almanac stored in Oenone ’s memory cells. “It looks like Kirchol, the outer gas giant.”
“Any settlements in orbit?” She hadn’t quite grasped how to pull information from Oenone the way she could from hardware memory cores.
“None listed.”
“It has to be heading for a rendezvous, then. Don’t interdict it, follow it in.”
“Let it into an inhabited system?”
“Sure. Look, if it was just the antimatter we wanted, we could have boarded any time in the last three months. That’s how long we’ve known the stuff was on board. Dymasio has visited seven inhabited star systems since we started monitoring it, without threatening any of them. Now my agent confirms the captain has found a buyer with these separatist hotheads, and I want them. This way we can wrap up both supplier and destination. We could even come out of it with the location of the antimatter-production station. Commendations all round, so just be patient.”
“OK.” Did you catch all that?syrinx asked thetis.