Forsaken Skies (7 page)

Lanoe took a deep breath. Then he picked up his glass and put his entire drink down his throat. It looked like he was about to get up from the table. “We're not just here to reminisce, are we?”

Valk considered his words carefully. “Part of this,” he said, gesturing at the table between them, “is about me getting to meet a legend. I've been thinking up polite ways to ask for your autograph. But then there's also my job.”

“Orbital traffic control,” Lanoe said. He leaned forward. Tapped the little display in the middle of the table where you paid for your drinks.

Valk pushed his hand away. “I'm responsible for every ship that comes through this system while I'm on duty. I make sure they get where they're headed in one piece. That includes that yacht. Not to mention the freighter I dismantled so you two didn't get smeared. You forget about that?”

“No,” Lanoe replied. “No, I haven't. You told me there were people on that thing.” His mouth turned down at one side. “Anybody get hurt?”

“Couple of stowaways in a cargo container,” Valk said. “They might have got banged up a bit, but nothing serious.”

“Stowaways? Interesting.”

Valk didn't like the look on his face at all. Clearly Lanoe had something up his sleeve. Something he wasn't about to share.

“I'd like to talk to them,” Lanoe said.

“Oh?”

“To, you know.” Lanoe made an equivocating gesture with one hand. “Apologize for nearly killing them.”

“Uh-huh.”

Valk wasn't done asking about the yacht, but he could see it was going to be a while before he got a straight answer. Well, introducing Lanoe to the stowaways might help resolve
their
mystery. It would give him another chance to pester them for information, at the very least. He set his glass down on the table. Then he reached over and tapped at the display, charging the drinks to his personal account.

“Let's pay them a visit,” he said.

“You understand,” Maggs said, “this is not a bribe. Earth has the Navy fighting two different wars right now, one against DaoLink, another against ThiessGruppe on a planet called Tuonela. With the fleets stretched thin, sending ships to Niraya will require a considerable outlay. Centrocor normally pays for mercy fleets but they're the ones requesting more evidence. I'll use the money to personally outfit a carrier group and we'll have this sewn up before the bureaucrats even finish filing their preliminary reports.”

“I'd almost given up hope,” the old woman said.

“Our lives are in your hands,” the girl said. The old woman shot her an icy look but the girl's open-faced optimism lit up the table.

Maggs smiled at them both. “It's going to be all right. Did you, ah, bring letters of credit, or—”

A withered old hand reached inside the satchel and took out four black plastic chits. The old woman let them fall to the table, each with a tiny click.

Maggs couldn't suppress a tiny intake of breath, not quite a gasp. “Those are Terraforming Authority chits,” he said. Each of them, he knew, would have a tiny diamond inside, inscribed with the encryption keys that would allow the bearer unfettered access to Interplanetary Development Bank accounts. No questions asked.

“When Niraya was first settled Centrocor provided us with a handful of these in exchange for an unlimited monopsony on our exports,” the old woman said. “We use them to pay for yearly terraforming services.”

“We were going to get some low-energy cometary impactors this year, and a new license on a strain of oxyculture lichens,” the girl pointed out.

“Roan here is studying to be a planetary engineer,” the old woman said.

“Quite. Let me see if I understand,” Maggs said. “By giving me these chits, you'll have to cancel four years of development for your planet. Is that really what you want to do?”

“Our planet is very poor, Warden. This was the only way we could afford the price you named. It's a hardship for us, yes. If the entire population is wiped out, though, it won't matter if the planet is habitable or not,” the old woman said.

“Of course,” Maggs replied. He reached across the table and gathered up the chits. His hand didn't shake nearly as much as he'd expected.

Once they were safely tucked away in a pouch at his belt, he looked from one of them to the other.

“So,” he said. “Will you be returning to your world immediately, or will you stay at the Hexus a few days and take in the sights?”

There was a chance—maybe—that Valk could save his job. If he could file solid reports on the missing yacht and the stowaways from the freighter, he might be able to spin things so he came out looking blameless.

He had to admit to himself, though, that he was plain old-fashioned curious, too.

He pinged his computers back at traffic control and got a location for the two stowaways. The system didn't normally keep track of visitors to the Hexus—there were far too many of them for that to be worthwhile, especially since most of them were just passing through. Centrocor had a financial interest in the Nirayans, though, so microdrones had been dispatched to watch them at all times.

He'd been confused enough already that day. So when it turned out they were having dinner at one of the station's most expensive restaurants, the strangeness barely registered. For all he knew the two of them were slumming trillionaires who thought it would be funny to ship themselves from star to star in a cargo container.

Though from what he'd seen of them, that felt unlikely.

“Religious types,” he told Lanoe, as the two of them caught a passing miniblimp on a high platform. This close to the axis of the cylinder, gravity was just a suggestion. They kicked off the platform and grabbed for the blimp's straps, then pulled themselves up onto the exposed seats. Valk sighed in relief as he let his legs dangle over the side. “Looked like they'd never had a bit of fun in their lives. They probably spent the whole trip here praying to their god or something.”

“Hmm,” Lanoe said. He seemed deep in thought.

“You'll like them, though. They're just like you—stubborn asses.”

The old pilot didn't even reply. He just looked down at the platforms drifting by below, as if he expected to see someone else he recognized.

The view from the blimp could be a little disorienting. Down on the platforms, on the lower levels, Vairside felt almost like a city on an actual planet. You could forget you were inside a cylinder spinning fast enough to generate earthlike gravity. Up at the axis, though, you saw the whole thing. You could see how the walls curved up to meet you and close over your head. You could see all the platforms jutting out at crazy angles, a three-dimensional maze of buildings and parklets and the mirror surfaces of the ponds and the narrow rivers, all lit up by countless streetlights. Because Centrocor had built Vairside, the whole thing was made of interlocking hexagons, but it was only from up here that that became obvious, each little zone of vice or leisure or commerce constrained by the six other zones that surrounded it.

Their destination lay clockwise around the cylinder, about sixty degrees up the wall. Valk tapped a control pad on the arm of his seat and the blimp obligingly swiveled on its axis until their feet dangled over the roof of the restaurant. The airship vented gas and sank through a haze of advertising drones, startling a couple of bats that had been roosting underneath the machines. Lanoe tracked them with his eyes, and Valk wondered if he was working out firing solutions on them.

“Maybe I should talk to them alone,” Lanoe said as they stepped down onto the roof. A spiral staircase brought them back down into real gravity.

“Not a chance,” Valk told him.

They headed down onto the restaurant's platform. Valk's suit chimed and a blue pearl in the corner of his eye told him the stowaways were moving, heading out of the restaurant. They hurried down the stairs and Valk caught sight of them right away. They stood out from the crowd because their clothes were so drab and modest, compared to everyone else. When he called out to them they turned to look but then the elder's eyes narrowed. Valk knew this wasn't going to be a friendly reunion.

“Have you come to arrest us, finally?” the old woman asked.

“No, no! Nothing like that,” Valk said. “Elder McRae, I wanted to introduce you to my friend here, Commander Lanoe.”

“I was one of the idiots who nearly hit your freighter,” Lanoe explained. “I wanted to apologize for that, and maybe talk to you about something else.”

“No one was harmed, M. Lanoe. There's no need for apologies,” the elder replied.

“That's very kind of you,” Lanoe said. “It could have gone badly.”

“One should never grow attached to might-have-beens. Now, will you excuse us? I'm afraid we don't have much time. We need to head back to Niraya as soon as possible.”

“Hopefully not the same way you came,” Lanoe said. He turned to look at the girl. “Aleister Lanoe,” he said.

“Roan,” she replied, and shook his hand.

“Just Roan?”

The girl smiled. “I gave up my family name when I became an aspirant,” she replied.

Valk looked from Lanoe to the girl to the elder. He was starting to lose his patience with all this.

“I'd like to suggest a better way for you to get home,” Lanoe said.

“Oh?” the elder asked.

“Will you forgive a little plain speaking? If you couldn't afford seats on a liner while coming here, I doubt you can afford them for the return journey. As I put your lives in danger, I'd like to pay off my debt to you by chartering a small starship and flying you home myself.”

“That's really too generous,” the elder said.

“It would let me work off some karma,” Lanoe said, with a knowing smile. “It would also give us a chance to talk further.”

“I'm not sure what we would have to speak about,” the elder said, glancing over at Roan.

Too damn much,
Valk thought. Clearly all of them were playing games and he wasn't going to get to see any of their cards. And when exactly did Lanoe become so eloquent? He'd barely said a handful of words to Valk since they'd met.

“Please,” Lanoe said. “It would mean a great deal to me.”

“In our faith humility precludes accepting lavish gifts,” the elder pointed out.

“I assure you,” Lanoe began, “as an officer of the Navy, my honor would be stained if I allowed you to be harmed on your return journey.”

“Just stop this already,” Valk said, softly.

“I suppose,” the elder said, “if your honor is at stake, then—”

“Stop!” Valk said, almost shouting.

It worked.

They all turned and looked at him. Valk had never much cared for being stared at, but right then he was furious. “None of you are going anywhere until I have some answers. I'm going to lose my job if I don't get to the bottom of this. You,” he said, looking at Lanoe, “need to tell me what happened to that yacht. And you, Elder, need to tell me why you came to the Hexus in the first place.”

“We had business here, as I told you before,” Elder McRae replied.

Valk shook his head from side to side. “Not good enough. Who were you meeting with? What kind of business? Answer me now or I will detain you, legal niceties or no.”

The old woman looked taken aback. She raised one hand to her throat. But at least she kind of answered his question. “We were asked to keep our business discreet. I suppose, however, that you can simply consult some drone camera or other if you want to know who we dined with this evening. It was a man named Auster Maggs. His identity can hardly be considered a secret, considering his position.”

Valk had never heard of him. He glanced over at Lanoe but didn't see any recognition in the old man's face. “What position is that?”

“He's the Sector Warden for all the planets served by the Hexus, including Niraya. I thought you would know such an important person, M. Valk.”