A Night Without Stars (53 page)

“Excuse me?”

“Every planet here is home to a belligerent, untamable species. The Void saw all of us as a danger. But some are a lot more dangerous than others.”

“Oh, crudding bollocks, are you saying Valatare is worse than the Fallers?”

“No, not if I'm right.” She couldn't keep the smile from her face. For the first time she actually began to feel hopeful. “I just have a theory, that's all. But it changes everything. Come on.” She hurried back toward the farmhouse. Her u-shadow called Florian and Ry, telling them to come to the dining room.

“What are we doing?” Kysandra asked.

“We need a new plan. Because, let's face it, just asking the government for help is fairly pathetic.”

Fergus and Valeri followed Florian and Ry into the dining room.

“What's happened?” Florian asked, looking intently at Paula's face.

Paula made an effort to rein back her exhilaration. She sat down and took a moment as the others reclaimed their chairs. “Two things. First, an emergency survival option. If the Fallers do launch their mass attack against humans, we need to evacuate as many people as possible.”

“Evacuate?” Florian asked. “You mean, to Byarn?”

“No, I mean to Aqueous.”

“How are we going to get there?” Ry asked.

“I may be able to open the wormhole in the palace vaults. If I can, we send boats through for people to live on. We'll take mostly children with some adult guardians. They'll need to be Eliters, and we provide them with all the files we have. We also send through all the equipment from here. My hope is that a colony nucleus can elevate themselves up to a level that can at the very least build an ultradrive starship, one capable of making it back to the Commonwealth with a message. It's not a great plan, but it does save Bienvenido's humans from complete extinction.”

“I can imagine the price Adolphus will demand for giving you access to the wormhole,” Kysandra mused.

“If he comes with us, then so be it. He will not be in charge when we get there. That is something he will have to accept.”

“You'll be admitting to the government that the situation is hopeless,” Ry said bitterly. “That even you can't stop the Fallers.”

“Not quite. I'm hoping all Aqueous will ever be is a contingency. We need to open the wormhole to Valatare.”

“Valatare? What the crud is on Valatare?”

“The theory behind this star existing is that the Void banished all the planets here because the species living on them inside the Void were either a threat or refused to submit to the Heart. Right?”

Kysandra nodded. “We're here because of the quantumbuster. The Vatni are as obstinate as Uracus; they always refused to be guided by the Skylords. The Prime—well, we all know about them. And whoever was on Macule, they were clearly hugely antagonistic; they blew themselves up once they regained their industrial technology base.”

“Trüb and Asdil we're not clear about,” Paula said ticking them off on her fingers, “but they don't seem to have any active aliens. Same goes for Fjernt, which is unscathed.”

“Laura assumed the Fjernt species managed to build starships and went home,” Kysandra said.

“Reasonable,” Paula said. “Because you'd have done that if it weren't for the Fallers. Which leaves us with Valatare. As far as I'm aware, the Commonwealth never found a native sentient species in any gas giant. There are various microbes in the atmosphere of some of them, but a sentient evolving there—it's not impossible, but it's very unlikely. And Valatare's gravity is wrong, which implies it's artificial.”

“Artificial?” Ry barked. “A whole planet?”

“Not a planet,” Paula said. “A prison.”

There was silence in the dining room. She looked around at all of them, resisting the impulse to smile at their surprised expressions. “There is one other species that we know is extremely hostile to the Void: the Raiel. So hostile they've kept a million-year vigil to prevent other aliens being ensnared by the Void. And so enraged that the Void's expansion could one day consume the entire galaxy that they sent an armada of their greatest warships through the barrier to destroy it.”

“The armada was defeated,” Demitri said.

Paula cocked her head to one side and smiled at him. “Exactly. And where does the Void send its beaten enemies?”

“Oh, crudding Uracus,” Kysandra whispered. “You think they're in Valatare?”

“The Void beat them, yes, but the Raiel warships are formidable. I know; I've been on one. Yes, it sent them here, but the distance back to our galaxy is nothing to the Raiel—a moderately inconvenient few decades of flight, if that. So to be sure they never posed a threat again, the Void imprisoned them. That's what I believe Valatare to be. Underneath the atmosphere, there's some kind of barrier, holding them in.”

“The gravity gradient,” Fergus said quickly. “It's like a miniature Void barrier.”

“It probably works on the same principle,” Demitri said. “It's just the scale that is different. The Void consumes stars to power itself; Valatare consumes the hydrocarbon atmosphere.”

“Good,” Paula said. The ANAdroids couldn't come up with ideas of their own, but set them a problem and they'd use logic and a process of elimination to force-compute a solution.

“Will they still be alive after a million years?” Florian asked apprehensively.

“I suspect they won't be a day older,” Paula said. “A major component of the Void's internal spacetime was the variable temporal flow. Humans were living on Bienvenido for three thousand years, yet out in the galaxy only two hundred years went by. The Void wouldn't want the Raiel to be active inside their prison, not with the resources available to those warships. They'd probably manage to find a way to break out. I may be wrong…”

“But you're not, are you?” Kysandra said softly. “There's a file on you in the smartcore Nigel left behind.”

“Checking up on me?” Paula inquired.

Kysandra smiled thinly. “Very thoroughly.”

“Would the Raiel help us?” Ry asked.

“They will help us,” Paula assured him. “Even if it wasn't us breaking them out, they'd help. That's what they're like. Besides, they owe me a few favors.”

Kysandra poured herself the last of the dessert wine. “I'll bet they do,” she mumbled.

“So how do we do it?” Florian asked eagerly. “How do we jailbreak the armada?”

“With difficulty,” Paula said. “Are we absolutely sure there's no more Commonwealth technology left? Valeri, your memory showed me nothing apart from the wormhole under the palace. What else did the Captains hang on to? Is there anything else left of
Vermillion
's cargo?”

“Effectively nothing,” Valeri said. “The wormhole Laura Brandt reactivated is still there, but codelocked. All the others were cannibalized to repair it and the two floaters. There are no synthesizers or extruders left.”

“Nigel cleared all the quantumbusters out of the armory,” Kysandra said. “I helped him do it. The medical modules the Captains hung on to broke down twenty-five hundred years ago. All that's left now are some components the section seven advanced science division is scratching its head over. I have an asset in that department, who has supplied us with an inventory, but if you're looking for something to bootstrap our manufacturing base up to Commonwealth levels, it's not in the palace.”

“Three colony starships came to Bienvenido,” Paula said calmly. “
Vermillion
landed to found Varlan. What happened to the other two?”

“The
Verdant
splashed down in the Gulf of St. Ives, seventeen kilometers off what is now New Angeles,” Fergus said. “They salvaged what they could, which wasn't much; it took them months just to build wooden-hulled boats back then. That was more than thirty-two hundred years ago. There's nothing left of it now.”

“And the
Viscount
?”

“Nobody knows.”

Paula checked the faces at the table, startled at how they all seemed perfectly content with that statement. “The starships the Brandts built for this colony attempt were a kilometer and a half long. How can they
not know
what happened to one?”

“According to the Landing Chronicles, they never found it,” Ry said. “Their auxiliary flying craft carried on working for up to a fortnight after they arrived, so they managed to gather everyone together at the
Vermillion
's landing site. Once that was done, they made some overflights of the islands, but there was no sign of it.”

Paula rested her elbows on the table and tented her fingers. “If
Viscount
had left orbit for another star, they would have seen it go. I take it there have been expeditions to all the landmasses on Bienvenido?”

“Yes,” Fergus confirmed. “In the first couple of centuries the Geographical Association sent expeditions to every landmass on the planet. They never found a crash site.”

“It has always been assumed
Viscount
came down in water,” Valeri said. “Presumably the Eastath Ocean; it is the largest.”

“No tsunami? And nothing ever washed ashore?” Paula asked. “Ever? If it broke up on impact there would have been thousands of tons of debris that floated. If it didn't break up, the crew would have had time to escape.”

“So where is it?” Florian asked.

“There's only two places it can be,” Paula said. “One of the polar continents.”

Fergus and Valeri looked at each other, then at Kysandra.

“Logical,” Fergus conceded.

“Which pole, though?” an intrigued Ry asked.

An image taken from the Captain's Cartography Institute slid up into Paula's exovision. “The southern polar continent, Lukarticar, is the larger. It also has an unmapped interior, so those ancient expeditions probably only charted the coastal areas. That makes it the more likely.”

“Lukarticar is unmapped because it's big and desolate,” Kysandra said. “If the
Viscount
did come down there over three thousand years ago, it'll be underneath at least fifty meters of snow and ice by now. How are we going to find it? This is needle-in-a-haystack territory.”

“Your semi-organic synthesizers can still produce ge-eagles,” Paula said. “Fabricate a new batch with upgraded sensors and communications and take them to Lukarticar. They'll find it.”

“That's quite an expedition,” Kysandra said with a sly smile growing on her lips. “Too big for the sub. We'll need a proper ship. And I just happen to know an obliging captain.”

Chaing was surprised by how small Port Chana was. Given how prominently it featured in his life—with the endless rumors of its status as the capital of radical Eliter activity, the probable hometown of the Warrior Angel, and the final destination of the underground railway—he'd been expecting something altogether more grandiose. The buildings were made from thick granite blocks to withstand the winter winds blowing in off the sea, which made them imposing but hardly significant. Industry was mainly warehouse storage for all the farm produce harvested across the rich lands of the county to the west, and the docks, where bulk cargo ships competed with the rail freight companies to ship all that food out to the rest of Bienvenido.

The PSR office was on Haigal Avenue, a commercial street that ran back directly from the waterfront marina where all the smaller, more prestigious stores were clustered. Buses roared along it, belching out thick fumes, elbowing their way among the cars and vans. Unlicensed food stalls cluttered the pavement, tipping pedestrians over into the dedicated cycle lanes, creating a constant chorus of angry bells. The pace of life here was more like one of the larger cities, Chaing decided, everybody busy and rushing.

He made his way carefully across the pavement. Most people moved out of the way when they saw his uniform and crutch, but some had to be stared away. There were several youths strolling along in their outlandish clothes; he'd noticed them about the city, inevitably in their twenties, dressed like colorful tramps with long unkempt hair, looking like they were high on narnik half the time. Talk in the PSR office was that they did it in reaction to the strictness of their regiment service.

Port Chana's temperature was lower than in Opole, so he'd felt the chill in his customized uniform with its thin cloth. Today, his third day, he'd worn a sweater under the jacket—which had to be cut to fit over the cast. But at least he'd finally got rid of the eye patch and dressing on his face.

Decent vision allowed him to see the taxi with its green “for hire” light on sixty meters away. He raised his crutch. The taxi shot over two lanes with other vehicles tooting angrily. It wasn't much bigger than an Opole tuk-tuk, but it had four wheels and two passengers could fit in the back. Just.

Chaing climbed in and told the young driver to take him to Empale Street. He couldn't drive himself, and he'd politely turned down all Director Husnan's offers of providing a car and driver. Officially he had a room at the Raffiat Hotel on the waterfront and he didn't want the local office knowing different.

He spent most of the journey pulling on an ankle-length raincoat. As disguises went it was pretty ineffectual for a man with an arm in a cast and using a crutch, but it would cover the fact that a PSR officer was going into a house on Empale Street every day.

The section seven safe house was a typical Port Chana two-story, three-bedroom fisherman's cottage, one in a long row of similar homes with tiny backyards making up the winding street that rose up a gentle slope. Chaing paid off the taxi and waited until it had driven around the corner before crossing the road and walking back five houses to number 37.

Jenifa was in the ground-floor living room, jacket off, sleeves rolled up as she read through reports. The long table was covered in files, as were most of the chairs.

“Good news,” he said, and dropped the thick briefcase down on the table in front of her.

“What?”

“More reports.”

She gave him a sour look. “Funny.”

Under Stonal's direction, every PSR office on Lamaran was now running an investigative analysis operation, compiling reports of “unusual” commercial or engineering activity. Stonal was hunting any clue that might indicate the Commonwealth girl was building something. So far a team of Port Chana investigators working under Captain Fajie had found nothing. But that wasn't good enough for Stonal, so every evening Chaing would bring back the team's reports, and he and Jenifa would go through them all again. In addition to that paperwork, Corilla was supplying them with any suspicious cargo invoices she could find from the railway yard, where she'd been placed in the handling office.

“We're not getting anywhere, are we?” he said.

“No.”

“I just wish I could come up with a new angle.”

“Section seven has been hunting the Warrior Angel since the Great Transition,” she said. “We've been here three days.”

“I know, but the situation has changed now.”

“Are you going to tell me you can ‘feel' it?”

Chaing gave her an annoyed glance, wishing she'd keep barbs like that for the bedroom. “I'm acting on instinct
and
logic,” he said patiently. “This is the most likely place she'll be.”

“Have you seen anything to suggest Stonal is right about the local office being compromised?”

“No. Director Husnan doesn't like me being there, but that's to be expected. And Fajie is a straight arrow; her team is doing their best.”

Jenifa pushed the paper away and leaned back in the chair, yawning. “I don't like it here.”

“Take a break; I'll make some coffee. Then we can go through the rest of this crud together.”

“No.” She stood up, stretching. “I'll get the coffee. I don't want you in the kitchen.”

“Okay.” Chaing couldn't judge the tone. Was she saying she didn't want him to risk a boiling-water accident because he had his arm in a cast, or that he couldn't make decent coffee? It was strange. Each night they went up to the bedroom and had the best sex ever, but the rest of the time it was almost as if she didn't like him. He was always slightly on edge around her, never forgetting her suspicions about the whole Castillito incident. While he was in the hospital, recovering from the explosion, he'd had the most vivid dream of her taunting him.

The smart thing would have been to leave her behind in Opole, but he just couldn't bring himself to make the break.

Chaing shook his head to clear it.
Just concentrate on getting the job done.
He sat down at the table and opened the briefcase. Two dozen files spilled out.

Florian had a fast shower in the small en suite, then put on a toweling robe and went back out to the bedroom. It had been a long day, with the whole farmhouse a bustle of activity. He'd taken part, of course; the ANAdroids always found some task for him, though he suspected they could do it themselves in a tenth of the time. Today they'd had him making up lists of food to take on the expedition. He'd quite enjoyed that, even though it wasn't fancy food. The farmhouse's smartcore had catalogs of every supplier in the county on file, so after the lists were compiled, he'd gone on to place orders. They couldn't be large orders, nothing that could attract attention, and they had to be shipped to a warehouse company on the edge of Port Chana, sometimes via intermediaries. There were a dozen different bank accounts, false invoices, different delivery firms, never the same route. The farmhouse had a secure cable down to the town's three telephone exchanges, wired in to circumvent PSR monitors. He'd thought about putting on different voices on the phone, but that was taking it a stage too far. Besides, his false accents were seriously cruddy.

It had been a rewarding day; he'd achieved a lot. Probably not as much as everyone else, but they wouldn't starve on the trip. And now there was going to be sex.

He hopped onto the bed and looked expectantly at the half-open door. Lots of sex. Great sex. Like every night since he'd arrived, and sometimes during the day, too. Kysandra was so utterly divine. He didn't even think about the risks facing them on the expedition, how the Faller Apocalypse was going to come crashing down on them very soon now; nor did he care that Captain Chaing had arrived in town to continue his hunt. Those things were just intervals between his times with Kysandra, endured and enjoyed as much as filling in all those eternal warden office reports.

“Florian,” Kysandra's voice called from the landing.

He smiled in anticipation and rolled over on the bed, feeling his erection growing. “In here.”

“I've got a surprise for you.”

“Is it that little black lace number, the one that makes you look really hot and dirty?”

“Er…”

“Hello, Florian.”

“Mum!” Florian yelped in horrified surprise as Castillito peered around the door.

“Oh, Giu, you really are here.” There were tears in her eyes.

“Mum.” He hurried over and hugged her—still blushing furiously. He saw Kysandra standing on the landing, an unreadable expression on her face. Then her lips twitched and she gave him a little finger wave. A link opened from her u-shadow. “See you later,” she told him.

Then his mother was stroking his face, needing the reassurance of touch. He was surprised she was so anxious. She'd been such a force of stability and calm throughout his life, always supportive, always encouraging, understanding, and tolerant with his coding obsession. She hadn't even shown any disappointment at him signing up for the warden service, though he knew it was a bitter blow to her. She'd aged, too, which shocked him. It had only been seven years. Guiltily he realized his letters home had gradually become fewer and fewer.

“They told me the PSR had arrested you,” he said.

“Captain Chaing himself,” she said with what sounded suspiciously like pride. “I was the one who gave him a black eye.”

Florian remembered Chaing walking toward them at Hawley Docks, wearing an eye patch. “Really? That was you?”

“I guess we've both surprised each other.”

“I didn't visit you in Opole,” he blurted. “I wanted to keep you safe from the PSR.”

“I know. I guessed you'd be with Terannia.”

“I was. They smashed up her club. And they arrested her as well for a bit. I really messed up.”

“Silly boy. You made it here.”

“And you,” he said in wonder. “How are you here?”

“Underground railway, of course. I've dispatched enough people along it. It was an interesting experience. Not exactly first-class the whole way.”

“You're safe; that's all that counts.”

“Safe from the PSR, for now. From what I understand, that isn't going to last for long.”

“No, it probably won't.”

“The Warrior Angel said you'd tell me what's going on.”

“Oh. Did she?”

“Yes. It was quite overwhelming, finally meeting her. Such a pretty girl, too.”

Florian gave his mother a curious look. She'd never used that teasing tone on him before. “Yes, she certainly is.”

“Well done, you,” she pinched his cheek playfully. “So what has been happening? Why was the entire PSR going crazy hunting you?”

“Let's go downstairs. I'd like you to meet Paula. And you're going to need a drink.”

The log fire in the lounge was still blazing away, so they sat on the sofa and chatted away in a fashion that surprised Florian. He tried to tell his mother everything that'd happened without bragging too much, but she seemed genuinely impressed by what he'd done. She actually stumbled over her words when he introduced her to Paula, which she never did.

“So,” he said when his story was over. “Do you know where Lurji is? They'll be looking for him now.”

“Lurji is fine,” Castillito said. “And you're an uncle, by the way. He has a daughter: Zoanne. She's eighteen months old.”

“Really? That's amazing.”

“Yeah. He calmed down a lot after he left Opole; I think burning down the mayor's residence made him realize how he'd run too wild. He lives on a farm about a hundred kilometers away. I'm going to visit him next. I want to see my grandchild before—” She sucked on her lip.

“Not going to happen,” he said, gripping her hand for emphasis. “Paula is amazing. And the team here…equally cool. We'll find the
Viscount,
don't you worry.”

“My son,” she shook her head ruefully. “Always the quiet ones.”

“Tell Lurji hello from me.”

“Will do.”

“And, Mum. Who's my father?”

“Oh, Florian.”

“This is the end coming, Mum. Either we die in the Faller Apocalypse, or the Raiel will take us home to live in the Commonwealth like we always dreamed of. Either way, I deserve to know.”

“You do, yes. His name is Salvatore.”

Florian was surprised by his own reaction: He felt nothing. The name was just some syllables; it didn't mean anything. He'd been expecting it to resonate somehow, to connect him. “Thank you, Mum. Is he still alive?”

“I honestly don't know. We agreed not to stay in contact—to protect you and Lurji.”

“When this is all over, I want to find him.”

“You want to ask me why, don't you? Why we split up? Why I never told you? Why I never registered your father at the birth?”

Florian nodded meekly, keeping his gaze away from his mother's face.

“Well, don't worry; we weren't one of those couples who split up and are so bitter we can't stand each other afterward. It's actually rather special. You see, your father's grandmother was Dionene.”

“But—” There was only one person he knew called that, and he didn't need his secondary routines to run a file search for that, either. “She…I don't…No! Really?” His heart was beating faster. “
The
Dionene?”

Castillito was smiling sheepishly. “Yes, Florian. Your great-grandmother is the youngest daughter of Captain Philious. She escaped the revolution and Andricea's psychotic massacre of her family. That makes you and Lurji the direct descendants of the Captains of Bienvenido. The last of the line.”

“Crudding Uracus!”

“Which means there are quite a few people, not just in the PSR, who would like to exterminate you simply because you exist.”