The Evolutionary Void (15 page)

“Pull what off?” But he was obscurely heartened by the “executive”
knowing about the starship. It meant that the thing was genuine or that the
entire Conservative Faction was a broken joke; if it was the latter, the
Accelerators wouldn’t be toying with him like this. That wasn’t how they
worked.

“One stage at a time. Go get the starship.”

The Delivery Man reviewed the spaceport’s network again. “The commercial
lines are shutting down all their scheduled flights. And not just here by the
look of it.” His u-shadow was tracking data from across the Commonwealth.
Nobody wanted to be flying when the Accelerators were out there unchecked by
the navy.

“Boo hoo,” said the Conservative executive. “You just claimed you were
prepared to use any method necessary.”

“To get me back with my family.”

“This will, like nothing else. Now think: Where are you?”

“I don’t understand.”

“You’re in the middle of a spaceport with three hundred and seventeen
starships currently on the ground around you, according to its official
registry. Pick a good one, take it over, and get your ass back to Purlap.
You’re a secret agent, remember? Earn your double-O status.”

“Take it over?” the Delivery Man repeated.

“Good man. Call me when you get there. And don’t take too long. Marius
was on Fanallisto for a reason, and given what’s just gone down, it must be a
hell of a good one for him to be off center stage. He’s near the top of their
hierarchy.”

The call ended, leaving a new communication icon gleaming in the Delivery
Man’s exovision. “Take it over,” he said to himself. “Okay, then.”

He started to walk back down the length of the arrival hall. His u-shadow
extracted information from the registry and produced a short list. There were
some navy ships, including a couple of scouts, which were almost tempting, but
that would require a little too much bravado, and he didn’t want to have to
bodyloss anyone. Especially not now, when the navy was going to need every
asset it had. Instead he picked a private yacht called
Lady
Rasfay
.

It was cool outside, with high clouds stretching across the early-morning
sky. Dew slicked the spaceport’s concrete roadways and the red-tinged grass
analogue. It even deposited a layer of condensation on the taxi capsule the
Delivery Man took out to pad F37, a couple of miles away from the main
passenger terminal. He climbed out, shivering against the chilly air. The
Lady Rasfay
was ten meters in front of him, a blue-white
cone with an oval cross section, like some kind of ancient missile lying on its
side. He never did get why so many people wanted their starships to look
streamlined, as if they were capable of aerodynamic flight. But the owner,
Duaro, was clearly one who favored image.

The Delivery Man’s u-shadow had already performed a low-level
infiltration of the ship’s network. Nobody was on board, and the primary
systems were all in powerdown mode. A quick scan of the drive performance
figures backed up what he’d guessed from the physical profile. Duaro had
invested a lot of energy and mass allocations (EMAs) and time on the
hyperdrive, which could now push the ship along at a fraction over fifteen
light-years an hour, as good as a hyperdrive could get.

His u-shadow put a civil spaceworthiness authority code into the ship’s
network, and the airlock opened. A metal stair slid out. The Delivery Man
walked up it, not bothering to scan around, an act that might betray him as a
guilty party. That was the beauty of a Higher world: No one really thought in
terms of theft; if you saw someone entering a starship, you just assumed it was
legitimate. Thanks to EMAs and replicator technology, material items were
available to all; certainly a starship was hardly a possession to envy.

Not that Duaro was completely guileless. The network had several
safeguards built in. After several milliseconds analyzing them, the Delivery
Man’s u-shadow presented him with eight options for circumventing the restrictions
and gaining direct control over the smartcore.

Dim red lighting cast a strange glow along the narrow central
companionway. The yacht had a simple layout, almost old-fashioned in nature,
with the flight cabin at the front, a lounge behind that in the midsection, and
two sleeping cabins aft. Once he was inside, the Delivery Man’s biononics
performed a short-range field scan to find a suitable point where he could
physically access the network’s nodes. That was the same time he heard
passionate groaning from the portside sleeping cabin.

The door flowed aside silently. Inside, the sleeping cabin’s decor was
ancient teak, carved to cover every curve and angle of the bulkhead walls and
lovingly polished. Two figures were in flagrante on the narrow cot.

“Duaro, I presume?” the Delivery Man said loudly.

The man squirmed about in alarm. The woman squealed and scrabbled
frantically at the silk sheets to cover herself. She was exceptionally
beautiful, the Delivery Man acknowledged, with a mane of flame-red hair and a
face covered in freckles. She was also very young; a Firstlife if the Delivery
Man was any judge.

“Did Mirain send you?” Duaro asked urgently. “Look, we can conclude this
in a civilized fashion.”

“Mirain?” the Delivery Man mused out loud. His u-shadow ran a fast
cross-reference on Duaro’s profile. “You mean your wife, Mirain?”

The woman on the bed cringed, giving Duaro a sulky glance.

“I can’t believe she went to this much trouble,” Duaro groused. “This is
just a harmless little fling.”

“Oh, thank you,” the woman snapped.

“Sneaking on board and keeping the lights off and the smartcore dumb,”
the Delivery Man mused. “Doesn’t appear that harmless.”

“Look, let’s be reasonable about this …”

The Delivery Man gave a huge smile at the magnificent, timeless cliché.
“Yes, let’s. Shall I tell you what I want?”

“Of course,” Duaro said with an air of cautious relief.

“The yacht’s smartcore access codes.”

“What?”

“Non-negotiable,” the Delivery Man said, and powered up several weapons
enrichments.

Paula Myo couldn’t remember being so shocked before, not ever. The
emotional trauma had become physical in nature, with her heart racing and her
hands trembling as if she were some kind of Natural human. She had to sit down
hard on the
Alexis Denken
’s cabin floor before her
legs gave way. The only thing her exovision revealed was a vast blank plain,
which was what the Capital-class ship
Kabul
was
seeing as it scanned the outside of the Sol barrier. Her link came directly
from Pentagon II on the secure channel her status entitled her to. But there
was nothing she could do, no help she could offer. She was a simple passive
observer of the greatest disaster to befall the Commonwealth since the barrier
around Dyson Alpha came down. That memory stirred a possibility.

“Do you have the spatial coordinates of the Swarm components when they
materialized?” she asked Admiral Juliaca, who was Kazimir’s deputy and now de
facto commander of the Commonwealth Navy. “The original Dark Fortress had an
opening on the outside, which is how it was turned off.”

“Nice try,” Juliaca said. “That was the first thing the
Kabul
attempted. There is no bulge in the Sol barrier as
far as we can detect, and I’ve got eleven ships out there searching now, as
well as several civilian craft. It’s perfectly smooth, certainly in the areas
around the swarm components we’ve scanned.”

“Of course,” Paula muttered.
No fool like an old one;
it was never going to be that easy
. She shook herself and ordered her
biononics to stabilize her wayward body. Her thoughts, though, were still
sluggish, as if they were moving through ice.
I thought I
got rid of this nonsense when I resequenced
. Even as she thought it,
some small part of her mind was chiding her for being too hard on herself. But
for Accelerators to bring this off successfully was a monumental failure of
intelligence gathering and analysis on ANA’s part, for which she bore some
considerable responsibility. Any kind of human would be perturbed by the
enormity of the coup, which was what this was.

“And we’re certain the deterrence fleet is caught inside?” Paula asked.

“I’m afraid so,” Juliaca said. “There is no response whatsoever from
Kazimir. If he could get in touch with us, he would. He was commanding the
fleet, so logically the fleet is inside the Sol barrier.”

Paula, who had been monitoring what she could of the ANA judicial
conclave, knew the Admiral was right. But … “The whole fleet? That seems
unlikely. Surely there’s some craft held in reserve.”

“One moment,” the Admiral said.

A new communication icon appeared in Paula’s exovision. She welcomed the
color it brought to the numbing image of the Sol barrier. As she acknowledged
the call, she pushed the
Kabul
’s imagery into a
peripheral mode. “Mr. President,” she said formally.

“Investigator Myo,” President Alcamo replied. “I’m glad you are still
available. Frankly, I’m looking for some meaningful advice right now. Without
ANA we’re woefully short of relevant information.”

“Whatever I can do, of course,” Paula said. “I was going to suggest to
the Admiral that the remainder of the deterrence fleet be deployed to Sol to
see if they can break in.”

“That’s the problem,” Admiral Juliaca said. “I don’t have any knowledge
of the deterrence fleet. There’s nothing in any navy facility, not even a
contact code. And the navy network has acknowledged my authority as commander.”

“But they must be getting in touch with you?” a startled Paula said.

“Not as yet.”

“I see.” A notion was starting to fall into place. It wasn’t good.

“Paula, do you know anything about the fleet?” President Alcamo asked.

“I’m afraid not, sir, though I do know how reluctant ANA and Kazimir were
to deploy it. That does suggest to me that it might not be a fleet at all.”

“A single ship?” Juliaca asked.

“It fits what’s currently happening. It is inconceivable that any
remaining fleet ships would not get in touch with you in an emergency of this
magnitude. We should conclude there was only one and it is trapped inside the
Sol barrier along with ANA.”

“You mean we’re defenseless?” President Alcamo asked.

“No, sir,” the Admiral replied. “The Ocisen invasion fleet and their
Prime allies were disabled before the Sol barrier was established. There is no
other immediate external threat, and the Capital- and River-class squadrons are
more than capable of dealing with any known species within range. The
deterrence fleet was always there to deal with a post-physical-level threat.”

“Our threat is not external,” Paula said. “It is Ilanthe and that damned
inversion core, whatever the hell it is.”

“You hadn’t heard of it before?” the President asked.

“No, sir. All we knew was that the Accelerators hoped to achieve what
they called Fusion with the Void in order to bootstrap themselves up to
postphysical status.” She drew a breath and started to analyze the situation,
trying to predict Ilanthe’s next move. “There is one critical factor remaining
which is currently outside anyone’s control.”

“Araminta,” the Admiral ventured.

“Correct,” Paula said. “The only way Ilanthe and Living Dream can get
inside the Void is with Araminta’s help. Which will be coerced once they find
her.”

“Can you find her first?” the President asked.

“She’s on Chobamba, and it appears as though she’s already made a deal
with some faction.”

“Which one?”

“I don’t know. But their agents must have helped to get her off Viotia. I
imagine they are now as shocked as we are by the loss of ANA. That might make
them open to a deal. We have an opportunity.”

“Can you do that?” the President asked.

“I can reach Chobamba shortly,” Paula said. Inwardly she was disappointed.
The
Alexis Denken
was only an hour out from Viotia,
and Chobamba was five hundred ten light-years from her current position.
All I ever do these days is rush from one crisis point to another
and arrive too late each time. That cannot stand; there’s too much at stake. I
have to up my game, get ahead for once
.

“Thank you,” the President said. “When you find her, take her into
custody. No polite requests. We are beyond that now. She goes with you; she
does not ally herself with anyone else—that cannot be permitted. Do you
understand?”

“Perfectly, Mr. President. If I can’t capture her, nobody else must be
allowed to. I will see to that.”

“You’ll do that, Paula?”

“Most assuredly.”

“Thank you. Admiral, do we have any other fields of progress? Can the navy
eliminate the ship that picked up the inversion core?”

“Unknown, sir. It was a large, powerful ship of a marque we’ve never seen
before. And we’d have to find it first.”