Horizon Storms (57 page)

moras. As soon as she landed in the Palace District, uniformed escorts met her and led the way. No doubt while she was gone they would scan her ship, ransack it for valuable information, perhaps even plant tracers. But she had code-scrambled all useful data aboard, implanted it with self-erasure worms; she could easily detect and shed any tracking devices. She carried duplicate datawafers of the images from Hurricane Depot as she went off to her meeting.

Thanks to the strange simultaneous warning transmitted through the wentals, the Roamers knew about the destruction of Hurricane Depot much sooner than even the EDF could have expected. That was Cesca’s ace in the hole. Maybe they hadn’t managed to prepare all of their lies and excuses yet.

King Peter had always seemed reasonable and compassionate. He was married to Reynald’s sister Estarra, and Cesca hoped that he had a streak of fairness in him—more than Sarein did.

Guards ushered her into a private meeting room within the Whisper Palace, and she sat in the chamber marshaling her thoughts and rehearsing her words. She had plenty of time to do it.

When a compy servant opened the door, she stood promptly to greet the King—only to see that it was not Peter at all, but Chairman Wenceslas.

“You have quite an unorthodox means of arrival, Speaker Peroni. I’ve been meaning to send you a message, but Roamers are rather difficult to find when they don’t wish to be found.”

“I’d say Hurricane Depot was quite a clear message.” Her voice was brittle and defensive, and he showed a flash of surprise that she knew about the attack already. “Where is King Peter? I asked to see him.”

“I am the man in charge. You can talk to me.”

“Then you are also the man to blame? The man responsible for repeated, unprovoked, aggressive actions against Roamer ships, facilities, and citizens?” She held out the datawafers that contained test results.

“These are the analyses of the wreckage of a Roamer ship, which was clearly destroyed by EDF weaponry, but not before its cargo of ekti was confiscated.” Cesca pushed the files toward him, but Basil just looked at them as if they were bits of spoiled food.

“And these show your unprovoked attack on Hurricane Depot.” She activated a flatscreen player to show the images Nikko had taken. The Jug-

gernauts and Mantas were unmistakable as they commandeered the fuel-transfer facility, removing anything of value before using brute force to knock the station out of its stable orbit. “When I brought the problem to your attention, we received no reply whatsoever from the Hansa.”

The Chairman gave her a metal-hard smile. “Surely our answer is clear?

Hurricane Depot is our initial response to your illegal embargo, and I will authorize additional military actions until you capitulate. The Hanseatic League cannot allow you to cut us off from the stardrive fuel we need to survive.” He folded his hands together and sat down. “Now, then, Speaker—enough of this nonsense that hurts both of us. We can work out acceptable terms.”

“Terms? Our terms were simple enough in the first place, Mr. Chairman. But instead of solving the problem, you have only made it worse.”

She tapped the flatscreen player. “With these images of your unprovoked attack on Hurricane Depot, no one can possibly doubt our claims.”

Chairman Wenceslas still did not look disturbed. “Really? In the past month, our media networks have been full of stories about Roamer unreliability, Roamer treachery, and Roamer selfishness. With the snap of my fingers I can produce any number of experts who will state that these images were amateurishly faked. Everyone will see it as grandstanding on your part to justify your embargo—which has already been portrayed as a ploy to raise ekti prices.”

The Chairman leaned forward. “In fact, allow me to share with you a declaration that King Peter is about to sign.” He activated the tablescreen to display neat words. “Once we cut away all the flowery diplomatic and legal language, this decrees martial law against the Roamer clans and explicitly revokes any implied right to self-government or independence.”

He toggled to another page. “And here is a facsimile of the original treaty signed by all generation ships, including the Kanaka, which guarantees that none of the colonists, crew, or any of their descendants will take any action that harms Earth—which your embargo does.” He switched to a third document. “And this is a formal demand that Roamers surrender all ekti stockpiles for distribution throughout the worlds of humanity according to the greatest need.” He looked at her with a thin smile, showing just a glimpse of teeth. “I can print you a copy for your own records.”

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Cesca actually let out a laugh. “This goes so far beyond the pale that you can’t hope to withstand any legal challenge.”

“Oh, there will be no challenge. In fact, this is what a majority of the Hansa citizenry demands. Would you like to see polling numbers? Roamer clans are currently considered hostile to the human race. When you petulantly cut off our ekti supply, you declared war on Earth, Speaker Peroni.”

“You never had the right to one hundred percent of our ekti output.”

“Yes, we did. King Peter declared it himself. And you’ve given us no choice but to take drastic action. Your facility at”—he scanned down until he found the name on Nikko’s images—“Hurricane Depot is only the first of several possible acquisitions we have planned.”

“Acquisitions?”

“A handful of asteroid settlements, mining facilities, and delivery ships—all are vulnerable. Believe me, if you insist on forcing my hand, then I will give the EDF standing orders to take anything they find, by whatever means possible.” Now he gave her a maddeningly “reasonable”

look. “This conflict will drag on only as long as you allow it, Speaker Peroni. Surrender your ekti and settle into the greater family of humanity.

Then we can get down to business.”

Given how swiftly and easily the EDF battle group had raided and destroyed Hurricane Depot, the Chairman obviously expected Cesca to bow to the ultimatum. But he didn’t know her, and he didn’t know exactly what he was dealing with. She could never return to Rendezvous with terms like those. The Roamers would throw her out the nearest airlock and pick a stronger Speaker.

“And now that you have me here, I suppose you’ll simply hold me hostage? A political prisoner?”

The Chairman cocked his head in surprise. “I would never do something so clumsy and crude, Speaker Peroni. Too many people witnessed your arrival, and it would be extremely bad diplomatic form for me to lock you up. Then I suppose the Roamer clans would be even more disorganized than usual, and I’d never get a resolution to this issue. Would you like to capitulate now and save us all a great deal of time and discomfort?”

She stood, and her voice was as calm as his. “I made an error in believing that you were a rational leader, Chairman Wenceslas. This is little more than extortion, and the EDF is composed of your henchmen. As

Speaker for all clans, I reaffirm that commerce between the Roamers and the Hansa remains at an end. No further ekti, or any resources whatsoever, will be made available to you.”

Basil looked annoyed. No doubt, he was convinced that Cesca’s response would make the whole problem last longer and force him to devote his dwindling resources to the matter.

“We will hunt you down,” he said, still seated, showing her no cour-tesy at all. “We will seize all of your assets.”

She strode to the door, startling the guard who waited out there.

“Waste your time and send your warships wherever you like, Mr. Chairman. We will vanish like smoke.”

975KOTTO OKIAH

Distant sunlight gleamed from the diamond hull of the hydrogue derelict in the rings of Osquivel.

Kotto wanted to do everything at once. He had a thousand tests to run, and nearly as many theories to prove or disprove. But most investigative routines were doomed from the start by poor planning, haphazardness, misguided enthusiasm, and muddled protocols. He didn’t intend to let that happen this time. The responsibility was too heavy, and he didn’t want to waste a moment.

Kotto let the programmed compy pilot do the flying because his own distractibility and fascination with this project might cause him to crash while he stared out the window. The silent compy pilot guided the ship through the obstacle course of drifting rocks out on the fringes of the thin ring. The two Analytical compies, GU and KR, sat patiently, waiting for the work to begin.

“Step one,” Kotto said aloud, “is to perform a general visual assess-

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ment of the sphere’s complete exterior. Of course, if we can’t figure out how to get inside, then the outside is all we’ve got.” Attentive GU diligently recorded his every word like a mechanical lab notebook.

By plotting its orbit and calculating drift, Kotto made an accurate assessment of the derelict’s mass, from which he could derive an average density. That gave a few clues (but not many) about the thickness of the diamond hull and what the interior contained.

As the lab shuttle cruised in overlapping circles, spiraling closer to the alien ship, Kotto stared at it, looking for flaws or asymmetries, but the spiked globe seemed absolutely perfect. He could determine no top or bottom. He saw no indication of a hatch.

“So how do the drogues get inside those things? Quite a puzzle.”

For hours he used the full suite of spectral scanners. The derelict was cold, and Kotto could not pinpoint any engines, exhaust ports, or propulsion tubes. If he could figure out the basics, Roamers would have a field day developing secondary inventions from the technological principles.

But he was getting ahead of himself. Obviously, it was impossible to crack the ship open with brute force—at least not by any means Kellum’s crew had at the shipyards. The Eddy military had used their most powerful weapons against these vessels to little effect.

Besides, Kotto didn’t want to damage the thing. He needed to find a different way to get inside.

Holding the lab shuttle steady, he dispatched GU and KR with handheld nondestructive evaluation apparatus. The small robots cycled through the airlock, took their equipment, and applied sensors to the curved diamond skin of the dead hydrogue ship. Then they proceeded to run another complete protocol of tests, sending signals and pulses of light at specific wavelengths known to interact with carbon-carbon bonds.

Finally, Kotto used physical vibrations. GU applied a thumper pad that oscillated like a masseuse, thrumming against the side of the enemy globe.

He manipulated the steady vibration, changing the amplitude along a regular progression, hoping to find a perfect resonance. By recording the transmission of acoustic waves, Kotto expected to gather information about the material structure and the derelict’s internal arrangement.

He was surprised when a specific vibrational mode caused a previously invisible hatch to appear, like a circular line scribed on a glass window.

Within seconds, as the vibration continued, the hatch disengaged completely and was flung away like a bullet disk at high speed, barely missing the lab shuttle.

The suddenly venting atmosphere from within the hydrogue ship acted like a rocket exhaust, propelling the small sphere away in a tumbling trajectory. A backwash jet of misty air caught one of the research compies and sent it spinning, arms flailing, high up out of the plane of Osquivel’s rings, while the derelict reeled off in another direction.

“Go after it!” Kotto shouted.

The compy pilot looked at him. “Unclear referent. Should I pursue the hydrogue vessel or the compy?”

“The derelict! Oh, and transmit to the compy—is it GU?—that we’ll come back and get him in just a few minutes.”

The lab shuttle raced off in pursuit, but the drogue derelict was out of control, tumbling and wheeling like a Chinese fireworks display. The diamond globe collided with an orbiting rock in the ring and ricocheted, changing trajectory as it whipped about. The escaping atmosphere continued to churn out as if it would never stop. Kotto realized that the internal pressure must have been incredible—equivalent to the deep core of a gas giant. “Ah, that explains the overall high density of the globe itself.”

But now that there was an opening in the hull, the atmosphere streamed out in a jet of gas like a full tank of rocket fuel, and Kotto calculated that it could continue to do so for a long time. He grabbed the comm system and called for help from the shipyard workers. “It’s getting away!

You’ve got to come and help me corral the hydrogue ship.”

The derelict careened into another floating rock and continued unharmed like a wild pinball. Kotto’s lab shuttle barely had sufficient velocity to keep up with its madcap course.

It took over two hours for a small group of shipyard workers to seize the derelict ship, by which time all of the contained atmosphere had belched itself out. Along the way, they also rounded up a battered GU, who was drifting helplessly in space.

Embarrassed, Kotto issued quick but sincere apologies. He thanked Kellum and his men for rescuing the derelict and bringing it to a halt—now far from the ring plane and high above the gas giant. “This will do 364

right where it is. No need to drag it back into the rings. We’ll just do our work way out here.” He rounded up his compy assistants.

“The farther away from our shipyards, the better, by damn,” Del Kellum said. He and his workers returned to their duties.

Kotto stared hungrily at the now-open derelict and rubbed his hands together. He couldn’t wait to see what was inside.

985PATRICK FITZPATRICK III

In the engineering bay’s background drone, Fitzpatrick felt he could speak confidentially with his fellow prisoners. So long as he and his EDF

comrades appeared to be working, the Roamer supervisors allowed them to fraternize.