Paradox (34 page)

Yes, get to the point.

“—a lone assassin carried out a startling crime. As you can
imagine, proctor and astymonia investigations since then have been both thorough and widespread.”

Fear crawled across Tom's skin.

He knew from Elva's summaries that security forces of all descriptions were clandestinely hunting, primarily in this sector, for Oracle d'Ovraison's killer. It was not a very public inquiry, for revealing the fact of an Oracle's murder might perturb the status quo, but it was indeed a thorough one.

I'm vulnerable.

Too many people in the LudusVitae organization knew about him. Yet he had thought himself safe…unless one of those people was undercover, a paid informant.

But here was a different motivation. If the investigations were so wide-ranging that it was affecting the syndicate's less than legal activities, then it would make perfect business sense to give Tom up to the authorities.

“I can imagine.” He kept his voice level, disinterested.

“Can you, my Lord? Every single cargo pod, every shuttle, torn apart in the search for forensic traces. And, above…”

Cold, now. This was worse than he had thought.

“…drones scouring the landscape. The best technicians analysed the crime site, autopsied the victims.”

Mother.

“After the bodies' dissolution, though, it became possible to amend the DNA-profile record of one of the victims. It seemed the expedient thing to do.” Master Tang raised his hand. “And some discarded personal effects were discovered.”

He waved his hand, and the floating black box opened.

Two tiny objects, in an area of hundreds, maybe thousands of square kilometres. The search was
that
detailed?

“They were eaten away by acid.” Master Tang was referring to the self-destruct capsules embedded in both cape and mask. “Almost totally.”
Scraps of rag, twisted pieces of shrivelled membranous film.

Blackmail.

“What is it,” asked Tom carefully, “that I can do for you?”

He waited, every sense alert.

“Oh, no.” Master Tang feigned shock. “Please”—pushing the box gently in its lev-field, towards Tom—“this is for you. All that remains. Think of it”—very formally—“as a gift, my Lord.”

A trap? Am I under surveillance of some sort?

But taking the box was not an admission of guilt…though not reporting it to anyone later would be.

Tom gently closed the lid, tugged the box from the field and placed it beside him on the chair.

“If I can be of any assistance, Master Tang…”

“Perhaps, under the aegis of LudusVitae, my Lord, it might be possible that your group and ours could work more closely together. In areas of specific expertise and tactics.”

“May I speak bluntly? Anyone with contacts inside such an investigation has no need of assistance.”

“Perhaps so.”

“Using contacts, though, who might talk to their superiors—among the proper authorities, I mean—at any time.”

A tiny shake of the head. “Our people are not known for lack of loyalty.”

“No—”

Remembering:
the girl, Feng-ying, bowing her head as the white explosion came.

“—I suppose not.”

Master Tang stood.

Puzzled, Tom followed suit. “Do you have details of the…areas of expertise we're discussing?”

“Oh, no.” Again, the feigned shock. “I am not important enough to go into such weighty matters, my Lord.”

Picking up the black box, Tom gave Master Tang his most courteous bow. “That surely cannot be the case, most esteemed Master Tang.”

The youth returned to the room.

“Ah, Younger Sik-chun. Please escort his Lordship out.”

“
Heptomino One, advancing.
”

The blue dots moved through the semi-transparent tubes: shaded amber in their current position, but dangerously red nearer their destination.

“Heptomino Two. Stable.”

Another pattern, deeper blue: cobalt, perhaps. The dots were moving, but holding the same general position.

“Acknowledged. Tumbler, are you holding?”

Third pattern.

“All quadrants secured.”

“May I?” Tom leaned over Skolnar's shoulder, indicating a triconic lattice.

“Go ahead.”

He pointed, and the information unfurled: durations and vectors, battle plans and probability-weighted contingency tactics, dependencies and alternatives mapped in detail.

Behind Tom, Elva murmured: “Too far.”

They were in a wide, elliptical chamber with outward-curving walls: pink-white nacre, which under ordinary circumstances would have shimmered; tiny silver-winged statues in decorative nooks. Normally genteel-looking, the place was shrouded in shadows, glowclusters deactivated. Around the room's edges, seven, no, eight support staff moved, working at their displays. None of them paid attention to Tom.

He checked the teams' itineraries.

“For Fate's—” he began, but stopped as he realized that Skolnar,
pale and intense, was concentrating on his eyes/ears-only data being lased to his retinae, coherence-resonated on his timpani. Tom's eyelids flickered.

Fragments of Sun Tzu's
Art of War
flashed in his mind's eye, triggered partly by intuitive understanding, partly by the beginnings of a metavector analysis which mapped real-world attributes quantitatively into tactical predicates.

“You can't afford to lose all three team leaders,” he said.

Skolnar turned round and glared. “We won't.”

Tom glanced at Elva. She knew: they had advanced too far, too fast.

It was Tom's first chance to observe command-and-control on a paramilitary op, and so far his reaction was ambivalent. The comms links seemed first class—femtosecond-bursts of minimal data, by line-of-sight, then bounce-relays—but the intelligence background info's validity was unknown, lacking probability analysis, while the actual manoeuvring was without finesse.

The teams had two objectives between them: to duplicate arachnargos-manufacturing femtospores from the growth site, and plunder the business-history archives for shipment data. Twin targets alone suggested high-risk complexity.

Tiny white spheres bloomed in the display.

“Security forces,” said Elva.

Not like you to mention the obvious.

It was a sign of her nervousness.

Tom had not met Skolnar before, but he shared Elva's lack of confidence in him. In the display, there were white clusters above and below the target volumes, as well as on the flanks. Some tunnels were still clear. But were the apparent escape routes real or decoys?

“Rajesh is in the relief group.” Elva pointed to a small, blue cluster off to one side, waiting to move in and help the primary teams to escape. “With six Brown Panther enforcers.”

“Raj—? Oh, Dr Sukhram. Fate.”

Confused voices echoed in the elegant chamber, a cacophony of tactical confusion as all three teams came under attack at once.

“
Heptomino Two, executing gamma-reversal.
”

“
Tumbler, we're under—
”

“
Heptomino One, it's not looking—
”

“
Fate damn it!
”

“—
heavy fire, returning—
”

“—
not have the objective. Repeat. Objective not attained
.”

“Tumbler, Tumbler.” Skolnar. “Move to your—”

Skolnar choked as Tom's fist, gripping his tunic, twisted his collar into a tourniquet-like hold.

“Cut comms,” Tom said.

Skolnar's eyes bulged. Some of the support staff reacted as Skolnar struggled futilely, but Elva was faster than them all. Graser pistol out, she gave the order in a calm, icy voice. “Do what he says. Cut it.”

Comms fell silent. The tactical holodisplay shivered into stillness.

“Ah,” Skolnar gasped as Tom released his grip.

“Sorry.” Tom shook his head. “I had to get your attention quickly.”

“Mad bastard…” Rubbing his throat, Skolnar glared at Tom, then looked around for support.

“Your communications were compromised.” Tom gestured at the display. “Couldn't you tell?”

“What?”

“The security forces were too well co-ordinated, and they shouldn't have anticipated Heptomino One's manoeuvre.”

Still holding his throat, Skolnar shook his head and waved the support team back to work, though the update-feeds were gone. But some of them, galvanized by Tom's words, were already delving into tac-modelling phase-spaces, working furiously.

“How could you tell?” Skolnar addressed Elva, who was returning her graser pistol to the sticky-tag on her hip.

“I couldn't.”

“But—”

“I trust Tom implicitly.” She looked at Tom and shrugged.

Progress on the egalitarian front.
Tom would have smiled, but he was carefully watching Skolnar.
First time Elva hasn't used my title in company.

“Without comms, they'll revert to working as autonomous cells,” he said to Skolnar. “Am I right?”

“Er, yes. That's standard.”

“Good. Then they'll have a chance.”

Elva was examining the static complex of mapped tunnels and caverns. “What about Rajesh's group? Any way we could give them coded instructions to help the others?”

Skolnar span in his seat, looked intently at the schematic, then at Tom.

“I want them back alive.” He swallowed, his expression serious. “Tell me what to do, Tom, and I'll do it.”

“Well”—Elva gave a half-smile—“that's a start, anyway.”

Blood-red arterial transparent tubes hung in the vast cavern system. Tens of kilometres in extent, the ceilings glowed skylike, peach and orange. Here and there, great sweeping pillars of cream and gold connected ceilings to cavern floors.

Free-floating drones looked like insects. In the transport tubes, dimly glimpsed shadows moved.

“I like it here,” Tom murmured to Elva.

“Very impressive.” It was Elva's first visit to Lady V'Delikona's demesne. “Oh, here comes Jak. I'll cover for you while you're gone.”

They were on a wide balcony, halfway up the statuette-encrusted cavern wall, overlooking a small piazza across which several Lords and their retinues were walking briskly.

“My Lord?” Jak seemed slightly out of breath. “I've done my prep for the trade meeting, but I'd rather run over my conclusions beforehand.”

“I trust you, Jak. Go with your instincts.”

“But—”

“Just a quick look.” Tom was wearing a heavy silver bracelet. He held out his hand so that Jak could insert an infocrystal into the bejewelled socket. “This is your summary?”

The triconic lattice was small, and Tom scanned rapidly, drilling just one level in on each major point.

“Looks good to me.” He gestured the display away, and held out his hand for Jak to remove the crystal.

“I'm a bit unsure about the presentation…”

“You've got Felgrinar, haven't you? Elva, why don't you attend as well? Offer some moral support.”

“My Lord.”

Tom nodded in dismissal then, and watched as Elva and Jak went inside together. The corridor, glowing gold and royal blue, led to a suite of conference halls. Though he had missed this year's Convocation—and the first anniversary of his elevation to Lordship—Tom had no real excuse for missing these local-demesne discussions. They were much smaller than a Convocation; still, there were plenty of people around. A short absence would not be noticed.

He used a servitors' tunnel, moving quickly, to head out of the conference complex. As he walked, he took off his brocade-trimmed cape, reversed it, and fitted it once more around his shoulders. It was now dark grey and a little shabby.

Tuneable smartfabric would have been easier, but he could not take the chance of a sensor web noting the presence of smart-tech.

Crimson wings unfurling, flames licking—

Holoflash. He stopped abruptly.

He had come out into a labyrinthine knot of spiralling ramps and transparent-walled tunnels in which stevedores and cargo pods and drones moved through an intricate dance of loading and unloading, departing and arriving. Beyond a small group of people, a lone woman watched silver ovoid cargo vessels being kicked from launch platforms into scarlet-filled transport tubes. Like pulsing blood, the scarlet fluid spat the transport vessels along the tubes.

She moved only slightly, but Tom picked up the gesture and walked up. He stopped nearby, head turned away from her.

“To your right, high up,” she murmured, “there's an arrival.”

“I see it.” The shadowy outline was sliding into view.

“Take a stroll up that ramp”—the tiniest motion of her chin—“to watch. It's due to depart empty. Be on board.”

“I—”

But she had already turned away and was walking with tiny, mincing steps towards the nearest exit.

Clangs and shaking. Tom sat with his back against the wall, arm clenched around his knees, hoping this was not going to be too rough.

Jolt. Then a rocking sensation as the cargo vessel stabilized in the flux, followed by a sudden tug of acceleration which rolled Tom over like a lightball.

Then the trajectory smoothed out, and Tom laughed out loud, surprising himself.

The invitation, sent to the higher echelons of LudusVitae but specifying Tom by name, had followed soon after the botched attempt at raiding the arachnargos-manufacturing complex. Though the mission's objectives had not been achieved, Tom's primary goal had: every cell member had returned alive.

Not a deliberate test, of course, but his performance seemed to have triggered some decision among the Strontium Dragons' unknown leaders.

Abrupt deceleration. Tom tumbled, unhurt, across the cold deck. Then a side hatch melted open. Cold air flooded in.