The Timeweb Chronicles: Timeweb Trilogy Omnibus (3 page)

We need to get to know one another again
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His dark gaze flickered around the room and settled on a scroll attached to the wall. It was his Document of Patronage from Doge Lorenzo, the legal instrument attesting to the fact that Saito had been elevated to the status of a nobleman, even though he had not been born to such a station. Saito’s entire corporate empire rested upon that piece of inscribed tigerhorse skin, and upon the ancient political system that supported it.

My son should receive this some day.

Like other merchant princes, Saito believed that a strong son could carry on the family traditions in ways that a daughter could never do. Francella had been trying to fill that role, but something had been missing. The Prince knew it, and she must as well.

Canopa, one of the wealthiest Human-ruled worlds, was dominated by CorpOne, the mega-company owned by Prince Saito Watanabe. Under grant from Doge del Velli, the Prince owned industrial facilities on more than a hundred moons and planets, including distant Polée, a mineral-rich but sparsely populated world that generated immense profits. With a wide range of operations, Watanabe was especially proud of his medical laboratories, which had developed remarkable products to extend and improve the quality of life through “cellteck”—advanced cellular technology.

In recent years, Noah had become wealthy in his own right as Master of the Guardians, demonstrating considerable business acumen. The young man’s operations were on nowhere near the scale of the Prince’s, but nonetheless they showed great ability. In sharp contrast, Francella had never done anything on her own. She just whiled away her time as an officer of the firm, without showing any creative spark of her own.

An eruption of gunfire brought the old man out of his thoughts. As if in a bad dream, he stared in shock at the outbreak of violence and pandemonium outside. Guardian forces were attacking CorpOne! He could not believe that his own son would commit such an atrocity against him, no matter the differences they’d had in the past. They were the same blood, the same heredity, and the Prince had sought a reconciliation with him. Was there no honor in Noah, no familial loyalty?

Dark fury infused Saito Watanabe, the raw, unforgiving rage brought on by deception and betrayal. Somehow his son’s Guardians had disabled the building’s electronic-pulse security system to gain entry!

Why would Noah do this?

All hope for rapprochement between the two of them exploded. A gloomy darkness settled around the Prince. Prior to this, he had been reconsidering his entire business philosophy, wondering if his son’s environmental activist position might have some merit after all. Saito had wanted to suggest to Noah that perhaps CorpOne’s polluting factories might be dismantled or redesigned after all, no matter the cost.

Now they would never have that conversation.

The door of Watanabe’s office burst open, and his silver-uniformed security police rushed in. Their faces were red, their eyes wild. “This way, My Prince!” one of them shouted, a corporal.

The police formed a protective cocoon around the big man, and rushed him out into the corridor.

Chapter Five

The noble-born princes have too much time on their hands.

—Doge Lorenzo del Velli

General Mah Sajak stood impatiently while an Adurian slave put a clean red-and-gold uniform on him, replacing one that was covered with fresh purple blood stains. The General had been torturing a Mutati with an evisceration machine, and the prisoner of war had not died well.

The next time, Sajak would stand in a different position while supervising the interrogation and punishment process, to avoid being splattered with the filthy alien fluid. Sometimes when he got excited and stepped too close to a captive this sort of thing happened. It was all part of the job, he supposed, but he didn’t like it. A stickler for decorum, he wanted everything clean and tidy, both in both his profession and his personal life.

“Hurry up, hurry up,” Sajak admonished the slave, for the General was anxious to get back to Regimental HQ and take care of other business.

The captive Adurian was a male hairless homopod, a mixture of mammalian and insectoid features with a small head, bulbous eyes, and no bodily hair. His skin, a blotchy patchwork of faded colors, poked out around the wrinkled but clean rags he wore. He perspired profusely as he worked, and made the mistake of leaving spots of moisture on the General’s new uniform. Because of this, Sajak marked him for death, but would keep it a secret until a suitable replacement had been trained, and administered the necessary psychological testing.

This one should have received a perspiration test.

“Sorry, sir,” the Adurian said, as he noticed the sweat dripping from his own wide forehead onto the clothing. “Shall I get another jacket?”

“No time for that now,” Mah Sajak growled. “Do you really think I have time to wait for such things?”

“No, sir. It’s just that … “ The slave’s oversized eyes became even larger from fear, and he perspired even more, a torrent that ran from his brow down his face.

Grumbling to himself, Sajak left the nervous alien and stepped into the hot, silvery light of a security scanner that identified him and allowed him to pass through to a corridor. His body and uniform glowed faintly silver, and would until he reached the next security checkpoint.

A slideway transported him through a long series of corridors in the Gaol of Brimrock, past dismal cells, torture chambers, and body handling rooms. Unpleasant odors seeped into the hallways, mixed with sweet disinfectant sprays that never quite masked them. Other officers, guards, and civilians passed by, all glowing with metallic illumination that indicated which checkpoints they had been through. Here and there, through tiny windows, he caught glimpses of another world outside, the blue waters of the Grand Canal and the glittering buildings of the opulent city.

The officer barely noticed any of it, however, so engrossed was he in his own concerns, which were extremely important. Mah Sajak—in his oversized uniform and cap—took seriously his duties as Supreme General of the Merchant Prince Armed Forces. Eleven and a half years ago, he had dispatched a military fleet to attack the Mutati homeworld of Paradij, where the Zultan lived in his ostentatious citadel. That fleet should be arriving soon.

I’d like to hoist Meshdi’s fat carcass onto one of my interrogation machines
, the General thought, and he considered the wide array of torture devices at his disposal—automatic, semi-mechanized, and manual. Each had a specific, deadly purpose, and worked to great effect on the Mutati race.

Beneath the small, bony-featured officer, the slideway squeaked as it flowed forward jerkily. He gripped a shimmering electronic handrail that moved alongside.

So much responsibility on his shoulders, and sometimes it weighed heavily on him. Especially now, with the climactic moment approaching. The “Grand Fleet” of MPA fighter-bombers was aboard a bundle of vacuum rockets that had been traveling through space at sub-light speed for all those years, moving inexorably toward the Mutati homeworld of Paradij. He expected complete military success, but there were always little nagging worries that kept him awake at night.

The General had assured the Doge that all would go well. The renowned Mutati-killer, Admiral Nils Obidos, headed the task force, a man who had won two important military victories against the shapeshifters. He had selected more than twenty-four thousand of the finest men and women in the armed forces, including the top fighter-bomber pilots in the Merchant Prince Alliance. In addition, all ships had redundant mechanical systems and even a backup crew of the finest sentient robots from the Hibbil Cluster Worlds … intelligent machines that could operate the whole fleet without Human involvement, if necessary. In some respects the General considered them better than Humans; if he told them what to do, they did it, without delays, complaints, or questions.

Doge Lorenzo del Velli was so convinced of a huge victory that he had begun preparations for a gala celebration on Timian One, with the exact date to be announced. It was widely known that there would be a festival, but the Doge had not told anyone what the occasion was. Rumors spread like fire on oil. The best entertainers—Human and alien—would be brought in from all over the galaxy. Even Mutati captives would participate. Under the high security of a huge containment field, terramutatis, hydromutatis, and aeromutatis would perform shapeshifting acts in a golden amphitheater.

At Sajak’s thought command, he felt the tiny computer strapped to his wrist imprint his skin with a nubraille pattern, telling him what time it was at that moment. The device, containing a vast encyclopedia of information that he could access, required only that he think what he wanted to know, and the message would be received almost immediately. Now it was early evening, and in the zealousness of his interrogation he had neglected dinner.

During the first six years in which merchant prince fleet had been advancing toward the enemy, General Sajak had received coded nehrcom transmissions from the task force admiral informing him that the operation was progressing well. Nehrcoms (invented by Prince Jacopo Nehr) were audio-video signals transmitted across the galaxy at many times the speed of light … an instantaneous communication system in which messages were fired from solar system to solar system at precise angles of deflection, using amplified solar energy. Nehrcom Industries, with a monopoly on the system, had installed transceivers in key sectors of the galaxy—sealed units that would detonate if anyone tried to scan or open them, thus protecting the priceless technological secrets. But the inventor still worried about military and industrial espionage by military enemies and business competitors, and refused to install transceivers in locations he did not consider secure.

And, although the remarkable transceivers could transmit instantaneously across space, they only operated to and from land-based facilities … for reasons known only to the secretive Nehr. The General and his staff had discussed sending status reports via messengers on board podships … but it had been known from the beginning that this would be an unreliable, dangerous method. Podships operated on their own schedules, often following circuitous routes with numerous pod station stops—thus risking detection by Mutati operatives. The mission planners agreed that it would be better to transmit no messages at all than to take such chances.

So, during the more than five years that the fleet had been beyond nehrcom range, the General had heard nothing at all. His huge task force was taking the long way to the Mutati homeworld, approaching it from an unexpected, poorly patrolled direction. If the Grand Fleet encountered Mutati forces, they would only be small ones, easily crushed.

The arrogant Jacopo Nehr irritated Sajak, for more reasons than one. The self-serving inventor should be forced to share his technology with the Merchant Prince Armed Forces, so that military strategists could employ it more effectively. It might even be possible to improve the system, so that it was no longer dependent upon land-based installations.

The Supreme General sucked in a deep breath. That would be a tremendous advance. But Nehr would not give up the information easily. Attempts had been made—through friendly persuasion and otherwise—and all had failed.

Jacopo Nehr and Prince Saito Watanabe were often seated beside the Doge during torture sessions that the General conducted. For Sajak, this created an awkward situation. Born to a noble station, he secretly resented princely appointments such as the ones received by the two business tycoons, and would prefer a return to the old ways. While Sajak had done well personally through his own efforts, many of his relatives and noble friends had suffered setbacks—having been supplanted by the new breed of entrepreneurs and inventors that the Doge favored. Even worse than his father, Doge Paolantonio IV, who started all of this foolishness, the merchant prince sovereign was surrounding himself with scientists and industrialists, upsetting the old, proven ways of doing things.

Someday the General would do something about that. It was one of his vows, and he always did what he set out to do. From an early age he had been that way. The trick was to conceal his desires from persons more powerful than he, so that they could not prevent him from achieving his goals. Fortunately for him, that list was quite small now, and one day it might not exist at all. He didn’t mind taking orders from a commander in chief; but he had to respect the commands, and their source.

General Sajak stepped off the slideway and strolled through a short corridor, then paused at another security check point. This one scanned him with golden light and left him glowing that color when he left. He made his way down a short set of steps through a hallway where the lights were not functioning, and his own glow cast an eerie illumination on the walls. He took another slideway in a different direction.

At a casual wave of his hand, a red-cushioned seat popped up beside him on the conveyor, and he sat upon it. The transporter went through a long tunnel that sloped gently downward toward the Military HQ complex, a heavily fortified bunker deep underground.

In a few moments, he saw a cavern of bright white light ahead, and presently he was immersed in a scanner, this one with a rainbow of metallic colors that left him without a glow. Despite the security checkpoints, one could never be too careful when your mortal enemy was a race of expert shapeshifters.

Robotic guards greeted the General with stiff salutes as he stepped off the slideway and strode through a wide entrance into the War Chamber. Each of the mechanical sentinels was a weapon in itself, featuring a destructive array of guns and explosives that the General could set off at a thought command.

The machinery and personnel of tactics and strategy filled the immense War Chamber. Officers in red-and-gold uniforms rose stiffly and saluted as he entered. Those in his way stepped aside, enabling him to reach the red velvis command chair on a dais at the center.

“Give me a full report,” General Sajak said, as he sat down and gazed about impatiently.

His adjutant, Major Edingow, was an angular, square-jawed man who favored single malt whiskey and the camaraderie of officers’ clubs. He had halitosis, and to counteract it often chewed mints. This time he seemed to have forgotten his manners.

Irritated, Sajak stepped back to escape the stale odor.

Oblivious to the offense he was committing against his fastidious superior, the Major activated a telebeam bubble—a bright light that floated in the air—and moved it to a comfortable distance in front of the General. In a wordless broadcast, data flowed from the bubble into a receiver implanted in Sajak’s brain, and from there traversed the circuitous neural pathways of his mind. He felt a soft hum inside his skull. The facts unfolded in an orderly fashion, and he considered them.

Concerned about the obsolescence of military technology in the eleven-year old attack force that he had dispatched, General Sajak had sent advance men to the Mutati homeworld, covert agents who were assigned to sneak in and commit acts of sabotage against Mutati infrastructures and military installations, softening them up for the bigger attack. Now he learned the results of the most recent forays, that many agents never got through, and that some were missing and possibly apprehended.

At the edge of the glistening data bubble, Sajak saw his staff officers watching him alertly, ready to comply with his commands the moment he issued them. At a snap of his fingers, the bubble popped and faded away.

Ignoring the faces that were turned toward him expectantly, General Mah Sajak considered the new information. For a century and a half—since galaxy-spanning podships first appeared mysteriously and began to increase contact between the races—Humans and Mutatis had been in an arms race, with huge research teams on both sides striving to make quantum leaps in military technology. He did not know what the Mutatis were working on now, but hoped it was not significant.

A career soldier, it had been frustrating for him to deal with the limited cargo capacities of podships, which had prevented him—and the enemy—from mounting large-scale offensives. He needed the element of surprise to work in favor of his forces … but gnats of worry reminded him that the Mutatis might have their own surprise in store for him.