Edward M. Lerner (29 page)

“That ‘achievement’ would kill an innocent crew of captive Centaurs. Would we be starting a war with the species we
know
has antimatter and interstellar travel?”

“How will they—”

Art cut off Swoboda’s question. “Of
course
they’ll know. T’bck Fwa, their local trade agent, may already know. Do you doubt that an AI can deduce such secret matters from the public infosphere? Remember, the Snakes arrived already knowing about the antimatter program on Himalia. There’s no reason to think T’bck Fwa is any less skilled at data mining. You can be certain he’s noticed the plunge in value of Centaur credits.”

For a while, the only sound was someone’s pensive tapping on a tabletop. Good, he had given them something to think about. It gave
him
time for some deep breathing, and to superimpose over the harsh, confining reality of the room a translucent image of cloudless blue sky and Illinois cornfields stretching as far as the inner eye could see. As a bit of the tension drained out of him, Art cleared his throat. “One final point: The Centaurs distrusted us even before this whole incident.”

“Explain, Doctor,” Khan said.

Human/Centaur misunderstandings dated back almost to the dawn of InterstellarNet, but basic math was a lot less esoteric than old trade disputes. “We’re their nearest neighbor: From Alpha Cen to Sol system is four light-years. The Centaurs made their first interstellar journey to Barnard’s Star. That’s
six
light-years. Why—besides distrust—would they add years to their travel time?

“Put yourself in the Centaurs’ place. Their starship is stolen. The K’vithians bring it here and the UP very publicly agrees to refuel it in trade for the
Centaurs’
interstellar-drive technology. Everything since then just looks like a falling out among thieves.”

The
Donald Rumsfeld
was among the biggest ships in the UP fleet, and Adm. Khan’s personal suite was spacious—but not at all what Art expected. The private office to which Art, Carlos, and Helmut had been summoned was sparsely furnished, with a sound-synched holo waterfall, delicate black-lacquered table and chairs, and a short bookcase of antique leather-bound volumes. Khan was studying a holo of the still-gathering forces, her back to the door, as Capt. Swoboda escorted them in. “This is, by far, the largest massing of UP military forces within my career. Do you know why?”

I requested a meeting, Art thought. She’s talking to me. “Revenge, I assume.”

“Nothing so simple, Doctor.” She turned toward them. “Try again.”

“So you do hope to rescue the prisoners?”

“We will if we can, but hope is too optimistic a verb.”

“Then
why
?”

“We’ll attack, and pay a terrible price, to make a point. Revenge, gentlemen, is not strategic, but too many civilians”—and there was a derisive undertone to the label—“think in those terms. Someday, the UP will reconstruct the facilities destroyed at Himalia. Someday, human scientists will develop an interstellar drive. There is one course of action we can undertake now to head off true interstellar war then. We must cause the Snakes enough pain that the
public
feels avenged.”

“But we may instead be provoking the Centaurs!”

“It may be, Doctor. Your realization of Centaur involvement has complicated our planning considerably. I’ve been pondering just that factor since your briefing.” Khan shrugged. “If Centaurs feel the need for revenge, their fight will presumably be with two species. That’s another reason to even the score with the Snakes up front. I’d rather not have two enemies.”

“Realpolitik,” netted Carlos. “I don’t know whether to be impressed or terrified.”

Art tended toward terrified. “Admiral, does it change the equation if the Snakes don’t have antimatter technology?”

“They have it now, stolen fair and square. We must assume everything they’ve learned has been radioed home.” Art’s expression was evidently more scrutable than he hoped, because she continued, “Okay, Dr. Walsh. What else haven’t you shared?”

“I’m skeptical they relayed any technology,” Art answered. “We may be dealing with renegades.”

“Again: How many tidbits have you kept to yourself?”

Just one, for now, besides this one. “Are you familiar with the Snake Subterfuge? The trapdoor hidden—”

“I did my homework,” Khan interrupted. “Know your enemy. Biocomps derive from Snake genetic material, which was incompletely understood when first adopted. The technology the ICU licensed over InterstellarNet contained an unrecognized trapdoor, which Interstellar Algorithms Consortium used to try extorting a fortune. The Snake agent was convinced it was against species interests to let one corporation act that way. The UP was given the genome decoding, after which a tailored biovirus fixed the problem. Old news.”

“Pretty much,” agreed Art. “That said, the standard text, ‘Their agent was convinced,’ seriously downplays the crisis. It was in the ICU’s interest to minimize a very close call. Pashwah threatened to disable biocomps across the solar system. As a demo, she crashed and restarted enough ICU computers to be credible.

“Before the pay-or-else deadline, one of my ICU predecessors transmitted the whole extortion scheme to ICU trade agents hosted by all other InterstellarNet species. Disclosure of the plot—hence the discrediting everywhere of Snakes as trading partners—was automatic absent recurring ‘wait’ messages from Earth. The UP suddenly disappearing from InterstellarNet would have been compelling corroboration. Pashwah sacrificed Interstellar Algorithms Consortium to avoid losing the Snakes every other market.”

Khan nodded. “Interesting. How does this relate to our present happiness?”

“The diplomatic mission has a sequestered clone of Pashwah. We call her Pashwah Two. After the recent overt attack, she shared something. There’s no way to prove it, but she claims the clan behind Interstellar Algorithms Consortium was Arblen Ems.”

“Can we borrow a display, Admiral?” At a nod, Carlos linked in a vid. “The ‘Snake’ you see Art and me interrogating is Pashwah Two. These are highlights.”

The Snake Subterfuge was more than a breathtakingly audacious attempt at extortion. There was a political dimension, some undisclosed plan to exploit what would have been an unprecedented fortune on K’vith. Pashwah Two speculated Arblen Ems, then one of the eight Great Clans, intended to buy enough allies to seize total power.

With the collapse of the extortion attempt, Arblen Ems was unmasked rather than enriched. All other Great Clans united to attack the schemers, and the survivors fled to the fringes of their solar system. The remnants were believed extinct, last seen retreating into deep space in a damaged experimental habitat.

“
Victorious
.” Khan drifted, eyes closed in thought. “Or so we are to believe. Carlos, what reason is there to buy into this fairy tale?”

“I’ve never interrogated an AI
or
a Snake. Obviously, we’re dealing with an avatar; the mannerisms are all synthesized. They could be meaningful, or entirely for effect. Complicating things further, we’re often discussing what Pashwah was supposedly told, not things from her direct experience. I can truthfully say her story is self-consistent and compatible with everything we know—which is a far cry from proof.”

“And you, Doctor? Do you concur?”

Yes, but. “Here’s another supporting factor: the pattern of resupply efforts. The Snakes ordered no supplies when they first arrived. They bought a few things after the media blitz, after they earned a little money. Whole convoys of supplies began coming only after the Centaur credits started flooding the market. So the indirect corroboration—not proof, I agree—is the absence of evidence Snake funds paid for resupply. It all fits with a crew of desperate and impoverished Snake exiles. Would you agree, Carlos?”

Carlos shifted uncomfortably. “Post-Himalia, I’m very shorthanded. Still, some local suppliers and banks have cooperated. For those who haven’t, we’re starting to get subpoenas. And data from outside Galileo is beginning to trickle in. The agency has yet to trace any shipments to
Victorious
to known Snake-controlled bank accounts. Again, Admiral, that’s suggestive, not conclusive.”

Khan had drifted away from them. With an adept nudge against the ceiling, she floated back to the table. “So, Doctor, let’s see if I properly grasp this fable. Mashkith’s clan is cast out when their domestic power play collapses. They are first to an incoming Centaur starship, perhaps because they’re hiding deep in the cometary belt. The starship is good for only one more trip, because it can’t make its own antimatter. So, knowing about our top-secret antimatter program—how is that again?—these exiles spend twenty years getting here in hopes of conning us out of our technology.”

“That’s the scenario.” When Khan made no response, Art answered her other question. “Pashwah found the secret project on Himalia long ago. We can believe her that the discovery resulted entirely from adept data mining, or we can keep looking for her anonymously engaged human spies—but either way, believe it. Why else would
Victorious
have headed for Jupiter? Arblen Ems was a Great Clan when the Himalia program got reported back to K’vith. It makes sense they would have gotten Pashwah’s report.

“Absolutely, the whole scheme sounds extreme and desperate—if Arblen Ems had other options. If we accept Pashwah’s story, an interstellar gamble might have been their best bet. Theoretical dangers twenty years out are pretty trivial compared to real immediate peril. They had those two decades to prepare. And a final thought … just from having interacted with Mashkith, I wonder how much of this is personal. He’d be getting a second shot at the humans who foiled his clan’s plans, and from that, a second shot to rule K’vith.”

“That third eye creeps me out.” Khan blanked the holo. “Suppose these suppositions and inferences are, incredibly, all correct. There are Centaurs aboard. The antimatter genie can still be bottled in this solar system. That doesn’t really change anything, if we don’t have the forces—which realistically we don’t—to defeat the Snakes before they’re beyond our reach.”

Carlos gave Helmut a gentle push forward. “That, Admiral, is why my uncommunicative new colleague came along on this trip.”

Eva Gutierrez stumbled, one flailing arm meeting a wall of the tube connecting airlocks. Her head throbbed from whatever gas had incapacitated the human prisoners. Through the clear material of the tube, polished stone plains stretched overhead and underfoot. Scale alone suggested
Victorious
; the crowd of Snakes watching from a nearby control room settled all doubt. She guessed they were beneath the spin-decoupling docking platform on which the UP mission’s ships had always landed. Docking “inside” made sense: Her space suit was heavy and down was aft, so they were under significant acceleration. Spin gravity would not be in use.

“Everyone, go inside now.” The voice was a translator’s. She could not tell for which captor it spoke. It hardly mattered.

Two by two, the prisoners cycled through an airlock into
Victorious
. Finally, she and Corinne Elman had their turn. Sidearm-wearing K’vithians awaited them. Corinne peered up and down the gently curved corridor. “Did you ever have a sense of déjà vu?”

Ambassador Chung shot Corinne a keep-it-down look. His attention remained on the airlock until the lifeboat’s K’vithian crew emerged. “Lothwer, I demand to see the Foremost.”

They seemed in a weak position to demand anything. If something were to be demanded, O-two appeared to Eva to be the higher priority. No one had planned for hours drifting with the lifeboat airlock gaping open. Of course, no one had planned to be kidnapped at all.

“All right,” Lothwer agreed. (“Ironic smile,” Joe added. Why?) “Everyone will go see the Foremost.”

Flanked by guards, they followed the Snake officer down wide corridors to a cargo elevator. It descended rapidly. No mission report Eva had seen covered this part of the ship. It enraged their captors when they used an encrypted radio channel, so she was reduced to tapping Corinne’s shoulder. If Corinne correctly interpreted Eva’s hand gestures, and Eva properly interpreted the answering shrug, the reporter had not been in this section of
Victorious
either.

“Everyone inside.”

They had come to another airlock, this one able to accommodate four at a time. Why the interior airlock? When Eva’s turn came and the far hatch opened, a bio-preserve stretched before her.

The spiky plants were a thousand shades of blue-green, the colors more suggestive of a mallard duck’s head than chlorophyll. Bulbs and growths—were those fruits and flowers?—in a riot of colors festooned the trees(?), shrubs(?), and vines(?). Creatures from the scarcely visible to the size of her fist flitted and floated and glided everywhere. Ponds, streams, and even little waterfalls sparkled beneath blessedly normal lighting. The place was too orderly for a park and too disordered for a farm, but still it had some unifying wholeness she struggled to grasp. Was it more like a giant vegetable garden, or an English countryside maze too long unattended? Beneath the foliage was a hint of a Japanese rock garden, or perhaps of a coral reef on land.

An elbow interrupted her vain grappling with the scenery. She turned to see Corinne had removed her helmet! A second elbowing checked Eva’s frantic scanning of her suit gauges. She looked up again, and saw four—Centaurs.

There was no mistaking the creatures emerging from the bushes, if only because furry green teddypods had been wildly popular toys at least since Eva’s parents were toddlers. In person, humanity’s closest neighbors were stately and dignified, their eight-limbed ambulation liquidly graceful.

“What is going on?” Chung asked in wonder.

Armed K’vithians in darkly tinted goggles had just cycled through behind them. Lothwer pointed at the leftmost of the approaching Centaurs. “Ambassador, here is the original Foremost of this vessel. I believe, (“hearty ironic laugh”) you will find much of interest to discuss.”