Exodus, page 89
Ellie sat on the couch in the owner’s quarters, snuggled up next to Finn. They’d been silent the whole time the latest feed had played. Someone had managed to get close to one of the internment camps that had sprung up to accommodate all the additional prisoners now that the planet’s penal farms were full beyond capacity. According to the official statement released by the Custodian’s Office, the people in the camps would build a series of new penal farms, which they would then occupy.
“Lies,” a woman sobbed over the feed. “It’s all lies. Look! Look what they’ve done to them.”
The camera that had captured the scene didn’t have good resolution. The image shook—though from a drone or a patch on a trembling hand, it was impossible to tell. It showed a line of andys carrying people out of the camp gates. They didn’t resist. None of them even seemed capable of walking; most were curled up in a fetal position. The andys were loading them into the back of a pickup van, where they lay mostly immobile. Occasionally a leg or an arm would move, and several of them were crying loudly.
Ellie’s first impression was of an adult infant. It seemed she wasn’t wrong.
“They shot them with a YouBuster,” the woman wailed. “They’re gone; the people they were are dead. Now they’re just sending living corpses back to their families. What did we ever do to suffer like this? What—”
Ellie switched it off. The pair of them stared, destitute, at the blank screen. “She sounded very young,” Ellie said eventually.
“Uh-huh.”
“I can’t believe they’re doing this. It’s like an atrocity the Old Earth regimes practiced.”
“I was going to use one, once,” Finn said in an emotionless voice.
“Use what?”
“A YouBuster. We were on a mission—a corporate raid. We were going to shoot the executives with a YouBuster rather than kill them. That’s why I agreed to do it. I thought it was benevolent.”
“Shit, Finn.”
“They were not good people, and they’d annoyed other bad people. So that was that. What the fuck was I thinking?”
“When was this?”
“The night we met.”
“And did you? Did you shoot them with a YouBuster?”
“No, because they were smarter than the bad people I was working for. It was an ambush, and I walked right into it.”
“Oh. Actually, thinking about it, a YouBuster would have been preferable to getting chucked out of an aircraft.”
“Would it? I don’t know anymore.”
She held him just a bit tighter. “It sounds like you were in a war.”
“Not a war. Just a disagreement between savage, greedy people.”
“Both sides were armed and knew what they were doing, though. You knew there was a risk accepting the job.”
He nodded solemnly. “Yeah.”
“Nobody in that camp did.”
“The general had them arrested because they are suspected criminals.”
“I don’t care what they might have done,” she said. “Nobody deserves that. It’s inhuman!”
“So are Celestials.”
“What?”
“They’re not human. We just see them as taller versions of us because that’s what their ancestors were, once. But they’re not human anymore—nothing like. Our ancestors gave birth to monsters, and we’re paying the price.”
Ellie knew him now, knew the body language, the bitterly restrained tone. Underneath that stoic mortification there was real anger. Ever since Otylia came on board and they started picking up the pirate broadcasts from Gondiar, that other personality of Finn’s—the eccentric distraught one—had been appearing again. He’d go into rages, slamming things across the owner’s quarters and shouting. Those episodes were getting worse, too, as each new atrocity was played across the Diligent’s network. It didn’t help that they were also picking up Leader of the Rebellion speeches from Josias, which were pure provocation—to humans and Celestials alike.
“Are you sure you should be doing this?” she asked gently.
Finn gave her a puzzled look. “Doing what?”
“Shifting Dolod’s orbit.”
“Asteria’s arse, I can’t believe you just said that! It’s all we’ve got left, Ellie. The only way we can hurt the Celestials. They have to know we are not helpless, that they can’t just oppress us with impunity.”
“I just don’t see how it’s going to help Gondiar.”
“Taking Dolod away from Celestial enterprises will have long-term consequences, and you have to think long-term in the Cluster. It’s the only way to survive.”
“Okay, but what about the Diligent? What will the Celestials do when you change Dolod’s orbit? They’ll know it was us.”
“I’ve been talking that over with Gyvoy. We’re going to have the Diligent fly past Dolod a lot farther away than we were planning before. Two or three million kilometers at least. That’s no distance for the drop ship; it’s still got four grams of antimatter on board. Then once we’ve left, the Diligent keeps accelerating so you’re even farther away when we get back—eight or nine million kilometers probably.”
“Right,” she said cautiously. Not so long ago, he would have talked it all over with her before even going to Gyvoy. He was shutting her out again. “Finn, you will be careful on Dolod, won’t you?”
“Of course. I’m going to take the Daves with me, in case there’s any trouble in the station itself. They’ll be okay in that gravity field.”
Ellie nodded thoughtfully. “Good.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
The Aeacus finished its deceleration burn to position itself in the same orbital track as the Infinite Totality, trailing behind it by a hundred twenty thousand kilometers. Three days before, and after delving into Makaio-Spirit’s experience of pursuit missions, Terence had switched the starship from direct fusion drive to a neutral-emission exhaust, then activated the fuselage null-spectrum shroud. He’d also taken the precaution of authorizing the CI to run an autonomous defense response sequence. There were a lot of rumors about the Arcadia’s Moon. None of them confirmed, but…archons are a paranoid lot.
The signal from the tracker was showing the Infinite Totality remained in the same place, drifting along its orbital path. Without that, they wouldn’t have known it was there. It was inert, devoid of any excess thermal signature, and not emitting any kind of sensor pulses. His immediate suspicion was that the ship had surrounded itself with invisible shells of passive detectors. So he wanted the Aeacus to respond instantly to any emerging threat; he certainly wasn’t confident in his own ability to react correctly.
One day before the deceleration burn ended, the Aeacus started ejecting micro-satellites with high-resolution sensors. They soared along a trajectory that would take them past the Infinite Totality.
An hour after Aeacus came to rest relative to the Infinite Totality, they received a secure feed from the first micro-satellite. The four of them frowned in unison at the image that popped up on the lounge’s screen.
“Is that it?” a nonplussed Jimena asked.
“It looks like an angry alligator,” Vanilda decided.
Terence agreed with his daughter. The object emitting the tracker signal did resemble the jaws of an alligator, hinged apart at just over ninety degrees.
“Oh, crap,” Medusa grunted. “Ship, give us an image of the Infinite Totality from the Malakbel system. Match scale and show it side by side with the feed.”
“Confirmed.”
A picture appeared on the screen, taken by one of Neusch’s drones as the Infinite Totality left its bay on Cherag Harbor: a cone whose base had flared out into a big sphere. Exactly the same as the micro-satellite feed, except here the structure had split in half and hinged open. There was nothing inside. The Arcadia’s Moon was nowhere to be seen.
“Combat status,” Terence ordered the CI. His muscles tightened in reflex, expecting the missing ship to open fire on them. Several seconds went by. Nothing. “Go to full active scan.”
The Aeacus couldn’t find any object within fifty thousand kilometers.
“So what do we do now?” Vanilda asked.
“There has to be a reason they abandoned the Infinite Totality disguise,” Medusa said. “They need that to travel through a Gate of Heaven—especially now that all the archons know that Toše is on board.”
“I expect they’ll be rendezvousing with the Diligent,” Terence said. “There’s nowhere else for them to go. This is what Neusch wanted to know, if Gyvoy was going to meet up with Toše and Liliana.”
“Yeah,” Medusa said grudgingly. “That makes sense.”
“Where’s the Diligent now?” Jimena asked.
“All ships coming through an egress Gate in the Crown Dominion are supposed to file a flight destination with the navy monitor satellites,” Terence said. He put his hand on a contact bulb. “Do we know what destination the Diligent filed?”
“Yes.”
“Show us, please.”
The four of them stared at the astrogation map the CI projected in front of them. The old arkship’s course was a purple line curving away from the Oxanotol egress Gate, around the star, then back out to the ingress Gate for Lidon. “I wasn’t expecting that,” Terence exclaimed as he studied the map. “It’s going to fly past Dolod.”
“So?” Vanilda asked.
“Give me a real-time sensor feed,” he told the CI. “Can you detect the Diligent’s exhaust plume?”
It took the CI several minutes, but eventually the Aeacus’s optical sensors found a tiny spark of fusion plasma on the course that the Diligent had filed. “So we’ve got the weird iron exotic planet a fortnight short of the point where the Archimedes Engine is going to make its orbital maneuver,” Terence said. “At the same time, the Diligent will be just a couple of million kilometers away from it.”
“Probably the Arcadia’s Moon, too,” Medusa said.
Terence nodded slowly. He could feel discomfort emanating from Makaio-Spirit that gusted over his skin like an icy mist. “And the Wynid Royal Fleet is here early for navy exercises.” He ordered the Aeacus CI to add the Royal Fleet course vector to the projection.
All four of them stared at the curving lines that intersected around Dolod’s blue tag.
“That cannot be coincidence,” Jimena said quietly.
“It isn’t,” Terence said.
Vanilda’s face was crinkled with a frown. “But…what are they going to do there?”
“I’ve no idea,” Terence said. “But we need to find out. Take us to Dolod,” he ordered the CI. “Now.”
* * *
—
The Verak Navy’s Twenty-Third Squadron decelerated at three gees to rendezvous with Thyra’s Royal Fleet. It consisted of fifteen frigates, each of them a broad delta shape, their fuselages wrapped in geometrical webs of energy bands shining a potent violet. They were in a protective formation around the sixteenth ship, an attack carrier. Its blunt cone shape was designed to aerobrake through a planetary atmosphere then land on the sea just offshore, enabling it to launch an amphibious assault battalion of Knights. The seventeenth warship, a light frigate trailing to one side of the squadron, was one of Wynid’s own, the Tyr. As soon as it had reached its position in the giant Royal Fleet formation, it launched an auxiliary shuttle, which flew directly over to the Dracaenae.
Thyra received her chief archon in her private quarters; the only other person in attendance was Lord Bekket. Even the princesses had been dismissed.
As soon as the door closed behind Lord Ualana-Shoigu, the three of them gripped each other’s hands, forming a triple connection.
Thyra greeted Iuntin enthusiastically. His self-perceptual thoughts were a turmoil of excitement and trepidation. As well they might be.
“She went for it, then?” Thyra asked.
“Oh, yes,” Iuntin replied. “Our dear empress thinks she’s gaining credibility points with the other queens by sending that oaf Avone-Valerio. I could barely stop myself from laughing in front of her whole court when she announced she’d chosen him to restore order on Gondiar.”
“He certainly seems to be living up to his reputation,” Bekket observed.
“Absolutely,” Iuntin agreed. “Have you accessed the latest reports? He’s rounded up so many petty criminals there’s no room left for them in the penal farms, so he’s having to use YouBusters on them. The humans are naturally outraged. I honestly think they’d be less upset if he’d just shot them. Making the families take them back and nurse them is close to sadism. It’s certainly stupid for someone who’s supposed to be restoring Imperial rule to the letter of the original settlement constitution.”
“And Josias Aponi is doing his best to stir up that anger toward Celestials,” Bekket said. “That was a clever play by Dagon and Liliana; his pirate broadcasts are reaching across the whole Kelowan system. Now the resentment is starting to build on Anoosha as well.”
“Some of my agents are even reporting that our fellow Imperial Celestials are finding Avone-Valerio’s action distasteful,” Iuntin told them in amusement.
“Good,” Thyra said. “Now what about Lady Asahi-Iryna? Has she eliminated that rogue human agent, Terence Wilson-Fletcher?”
“Ah, no,” Iuntin said. “Not yet. She was closing in on him in the governor’s mansion, where he’d been hiding—which shows some balls on his part—but he eluded her. We suspect he had help.”
“Help?” Thyra asked indignantly, then she picked up on his doubt. “You don’t mean from a Celestial?”
“Someone reinforced the routines Terence’s CI was deploying to shield him from detection—a very sophisticated reinforcement. No human could achieve that.”
“That wasn’t part of the plan.”
“No plan withstands contact with the enemy,” Bekket said sadly.
“We need to find who’s helping the humans,” Thyra insisted.
“It’ll be Gahiji-Calder or one of his agents,” Iuntin suggested. “Neusch is quite high on my suspect list.”
“Who’s that?” Thyra asked.
“One of Makaio-Faraji’s sons from his last spawn. He was on board the Alumata when his father was assassinated. It left Gondiar orbit immediately after. Sometime later it went through the Lidon ingress Gate, and according to Kelowan’s navy records, it has returned to Kelowan, arriving not long after the Infinite Totality. I conclude Neusch is following it.”
“Where is the Alumata now?”
“I don’t know, but the family is on alert for it. However, we have a more pressing problem; before he left Gondiar, Terence sent a report to Lady Asahi-Iryna, informing her he discovered Gyvoy Enfoe’s body.”
“Why the hell would he do that?” Thyra asked.
“Ironically, it would seem he is a good and loyal archon’s agent for Wynid, and he was doing his duty to the last by warning us. Makaio-Faraji trained him well.”
“Sweet Goddess!”
“It gets worse.”
“Go on.”
“Terence also sent the report to Archons Olomo and Sahdiah.”
“You are joking!”
“Regrettably not. Somehow he’s acquired the secure message code for communicating with Olomo. We think he was acting in tandem with Sahdiah’s agent Medusa.”
“How did he get Makaio-Faraji’s secure communication code?” Bekket asked. “And how could he use it? It’s neural.”
“Quite. It is something of a puzzle.”
“Find him,” Thyra said. “I want him eliminated.”
“Lady Asahi-Iryna is already working on the problem, as are our family’s agents. However—” Iuntin’s thoughts became agitated. “Makaio-Faraji’s reserve ship, the Aeacus, departed High Rosa a day after Asahi-Iryna missed Terence in the governor’s mansion.”
For a moment Thyra thought she’d misunderstood. “Are you telling me a human is flying an archon’s ship?”
“Yes.”
“How is that possible?”
“We don’t quite understand how he’s doing it. Makaio-Faraji must have modified it.”
“Terence has to be stopped,” Bekket insisted. “He certainly cannot fall into anyone else’s hands. That would be damaging, to say the least.”
“To stop him, we first have to find him,” Thyra pointed out. “Those archon ships are almost impossible to detect, even with military sensors.”
“But we do know where he’s likely to be heading,” Iuntin said.
“Where?”
“His life has completely collapsed, so all he has left is his mission objective: finding the fake Gyvoy. And Terence knows he’s on the Diligent.”
* * *
—
Under Thyra’s order, the Dracaenae’s internal compartments rearranged themselves once more. The door of her personal quarters opened, allowing her to step directly into the command compartment. Everyone stood to attention as she walked in, followed by her entourage.
Her hand waved languidly. “As you were.” She settled into her acceleration couch. Lady Clavissa hustled the princesses to the back of the compartment, away from the dreadnaught’s officers. “Admiral, a status report if you will.”
“Ma’am, the Twenty-Third Squadron have integrated into the fleet formation and are following our designated flight vector.”
“Excellent.”
“And the Royal Fleet of Queen Luus-Marcela has arrived. They came through the Bassa egress Gate of Heaven nine hours ago.”
“She’s early. Such bad manners.” Thyra didn’t bother concealing her smile. She turned to the princesses and raised an I-told-you-so eyebrow. They giggled and practiced looking superior.
“I’m sure she’ll be happy to know our fleet will be at the rendezvous coordinate to welcome her,” Thyra mused. “I wonder if we should invite her on board for a banquet. In her honor, of course. Daughters?”
