Authors: Kevin J. Anderson
As she always did on missions that put her face-to-face with the drogues, Tasia thought of all the casualties suffered thus far in the unnecessary war. Her brother’s death on the Blue Sky Mine had given Tasia her first incentive to join the Earth Defense Forces. She had fought the damned aliens in the clouds of Jupiter after their murderous emissary had delivered his ultimatum and killed Old King Frederick. She’d also been at Osquivel, where the EDF’s largest battle force against the hydrogues had been utterly trounced. And Robb had been lost.
By igniting Ptoro, she meant to give the hydrogues a black eye for a change. She leaned forward. “Shizz, that’s going to be the biggest campfire anyone’s ever seen.”
Her navigator, Elly Ramirez, said, “I hope someone brought marsh-mallows.”
“They are too complacent.” Anwar Zizu, her weapons officer, leaned closer to inspect the tactical screens. “If I were a hydrogue, I’d never let an EDF ship get this close.”
“If you were a hydrogue, Sergeant, I would kick your ass off my bridge.”
Tasia sat back and silently ordered the butterflies in her stomach to stop their unruly fluttering. “Enough chitchat. Launch the torpedoes from our end. No sense giving the enemy time to pack their suitcases.”
The Manta’s modified weapons ports fired a group of silvery cylinders adapted from Klikiss designs found on Corribus. Here it comes. Sensor screens showed the small torpedolike generators descending into the clouds.
“Tell Yarrod to have his engineers ready on the scout ship. As soon as our anchors are in position, I want that neutron star on its way here like a cannonball.”
Rossia communicated the information through the tree network.
Elly Ramirez frowned at her nav screens. “I expected to see the drogues barking and snarling by now.”
“You complaining?” Her eyes glittering with determination, Tasia clasped her hands together. “In a minute they’ll have other things to worry about than chasing after us.”
38
Ptoro looked so harmless down there, so uninteresting. She wished this could have been Osquivel, as payback for what the drogues had done to the EDF there. She felt the familiar hollowness at the thought of Robb and all the other EDF casualties. Hell, she even missed the obnoxious Patrick Fitzpatrick III. She’d always wanted the spoiled bastard to get his comeuppance . . . but from her, not the drogues.
“Anchor points in position, Commander Tamblyn,” Zizu announced.
“Open the conduit. Let’s send them a present.”
Rossia relayed the instructions through his treeling. He kept his large eyes closed, as if he didn’t want to see what was happening. Everyone on the Manta’s bridge waited in silence. The rest of the escort ships sent queries, but Tasia didn’t answer them. Not yet.
The green priest looked up. “It is done. Yarrod reports that the wormhole is opened and the neutron star is gone.”
Tasia brightened. “On its way. Fire in the hole.”
She looked at the huge gray planet, but saw no change. As soon as the neutron star arrived, fusion fires would begin deep within, but the initial shockwave would rush up through layers of the atmosphere faster than thunder.
Tasia packed all the vengeance she could squeeze into her low voice.
“Go on and burn.”
125PATRICK FITZPATRICK III
He never grew tired of voicing his frustration. “Damned Roachers!”
Patrick Fitzpatrick had repeated it often since he’d recovered from his injuries in the hydrogue attack—several times daily, in fact.
Inside the big, echoing asteroid chamber that Del Kellum’s people used as a storage facility, burly Bill Stanna commiserated. “Yeah, I signed
up to fight drogues. Didn’t know I was gonna waste my time held hostage by space trash.” Though dedicated to the EDF, Stanna had no sophisticated specialties, no particular skills the training sergeants could identify.
He was just a regular grunt, willing to do what he was told and ready to fight. “I’m not gonna do any more work for them.”
Fitzpatrick sat stubbornly on the hard stone floor, combing his reddish-blond hair back in a never-ending attempt to keep it neat, even under these circumstances. “Damn right! And don’t think you have to, Bill.”
Though he was tall, Fitzpatrick had an average build. Owing to his good breeding, he had handsome features and a strong jaw, but his nose was a little too sharp. His forehead showed a permanent crease between his hazel eyes from too many skeptical or disapproving frowns.
“They can’t force us to work,” said Shelia Andez, a weapons specialist who had survived in a lifetube when her Juggernaut was destroyed over the Osquivel rings. She paced the claustrophobic room, looking at the haphazardly stacked crates of supplies. The rest of the EDF hostages had been sent out on other make-work details, and most of them were also refusing to cooperate. “Isn’t there a Geneva Convention or something? If we’re prisoners of war, the Roachers have to follow certain standards of treatment.”
Fitzpatrick felt disgusted. “Even if there was an agreement like that, they probably couldn’t read it.” Stanna burst out with loud laughter, as if this was the funniest thing he had heard in a long time.
“When we don’t do the work, our captors simply have the compies do it,” said Kiro Yamane, a cybernetics expert. He was a bit of an odd duck because he wasn’t a formal member of the Earth Defense Forces. Yamane was, however, a genius with an intuitive knowledge of robotics after working under Swendsen and Palawu in the compy-manufacturing centers on Earth. He had signed aboard the Osquivel battle fleet so he could assess the performance of the new Soldier model. “I can’t tell you how angry it makes me to see them use our sophisticated compies for . . . for grunt work.”
“Better them than us.” Stanna plopped down next to Fitzpatrick. The two men stared at the crates they were supposed to move and rearrange.
Thirty-two EDF survivors had been rescued when the space gypsies descended like parasites on the ruined ships in the Osquivel battlefield, 40
and they’d been held as hostages in the hidden Roamer shipyard for over a month now.
Fitzpatrick’s mind raged at the injustice of it. By now, his parents, both of them ambassadors, should have filed protests and demanded that something be done. His grandmother, the powerful old political battleaxe, should have sent an investigation committee or a rescue squad. His whole family should be in an uproar at what had happened to him.
But then his stomach sank. He was deluding himself. Yes, the Fitzpatricks would be outraged, but after hearing of the carnage in the rings of Osquivel, when so few EDF ships had limped away and gotten to safety, no one would suspect that he—or any of the others—might still be alive.
The Roamers had their prisoners wrapped up in a package that was all so neat and tidy.
Over the weeks as he’d observed the activities here, he was astounded to learn of the huge spacedocks where ships of all sizes and designs were constructed. Clan Kellum had smelters, fabricators, assembly lines, a whole infrastructure—over a thousand people living and working here.
When the EDF battle group had come to attack the hydrogues, no one had seen any signs of such a complex hidden in the rings. These Roachers were slippery, deceitful, and devious; a cancer quietly growing between the stars.
The asteroid’s rectangular airlock disengaged with a coughing hiss, then rattled aside. While Stanna struggled to his feet, as if caught sleeping on duty, Fitzpatrick and Andez pointedly remained sitting on the floor.
“You don’t need to pretend you were working, Bill,” Fitzpatrick said. “I want them to know I’m not lifting a finger to help.”
A slender young woman with long black hair stepped inside with a grace that showed she was accustomed to living in low gravity. Zhett Kellum, whom they had all met before, had huge green eyes that could sparkle with either mirth or displeasure. Fitzpatrick had seen her quirk her full lips upward in a combination of annoyed disappointment and mischievous humor. “I don’t know how this sort of thing works among the Eddies, but in Roamer clans, we generally chip in and work for our dinner. Don’t expect a free ride month after month.”
“In the Hansa,” Fitzpatrick replied acidly, “our families generally don’t take hostages and prevent them from going home.”
Andez added, “Hey, if you don’t like the quality of our work, then feel free to fire us and we’ll be on our way.”
Arching her eyebrows, Zhett gestured toward the large sealed door. Her body seemed as flexible as spring steel. “There’s the airlock. You can walk out anytime you like . . . but it’s a fairly long hike.”
“Couldn’t you at least give us a spaceship?” Stanna said.
Fitzpatrick jabbed him with his elbow. “She wasn’t serious, Bill.”
Zhett approached the four EDF captives. “I wouldn’t make assumptions like that if I were you, Fitzie.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“Oh, it’s just a pet name.” She smiled at him, and he gritted his teeth.
“I wasn’t kidding about expecting you to pitch in. My father thinks you’re more trouble than you’re worth . . . and I’m starting to agree with him.”
“You expect us just to be complacent and cooperative?” Yamane said.
“We are being held here against our will.”
“We also saved all of your lives.” Zhett tossed her hair, which drifted slowly in the low gravity as if under water. Fitzpatrick couldn’t help noticing that her Roamer jumpsuit was well fitted to show her long, slender legs.
“Considering that all your Eddy friends turned tail and ran, leaving you to the drogues, I can’t see why you’re so anxious to go back. You’d all be better off if you just got used to living among the Roamers.”
All four of the hostages responded with an angry outburst. “Never!”
Zhett just sighed and shook her head. “That’s the trouble with you Eddies. You seem incapable of learning to roll with the changes. Believe me, if we could think of a way to get you back to the Big Goose without giving away our trade secrets, I’d do it in a heartbeat.”
“That would be just about fast enough for me,” Fitzpatrick said with a scowl.
Zhett instructed some compies to finish stacking the crates, and pitched in herself, while the prisoners sat idly watching. The Roamer girl ignored them, apparently immune to their surly stares and happy to prove her superiority. Fitzpatrick tried not to let it get to him.
42
The old woman drifted in a sling chair connected to the rock wall. The former Speaker looked like a collection of dried bones held together with sinew, leathery skin, and sheer force of will. She’d been retired for six years and had not left the Rendezvous asteroids in all that time; her eyes were still bright as black skypearls.
“Now that you have clear evidence against the EDF,” she said to Cesca,
“what does your Guiding Star tell you?”
Cesca closed her eyes. She had carefully schooled herself never to show vulnerability or indecision, but here behind closed doors in consultation with the only person who could truly understand her predicament, she let down her walls. “How am I supposed to see the Guiding Star when I’m buried deep inside solid rock—both literally and figuratively?”
Jhy Okiah smiled with her parchment lips. “You have to make decisions for yourself, child.”
The Speaker’s office was one of the first chambers that had been hammered out by the settlers from the Kanaka. When the old generation ship had dropped off a fraction of its colonists here, the people had by no means been assured of their survival. But those predecessors of the Roamer clans had been tenacious and resourceful. The colony had survived and grown, eventually becoming a thriving base.
Roamers made their own decisions and survived—not relying on the blessings and gifts of others, but on their own ingenuity. Kotto Okiah was a perfect example: Even after his high-risk metals-processing settlement on a near-molten planet had failed, he had immediately begun work on a su-percold frozen world from which he was sure he could wring vital resources.
Cesca needed to remember that and remind the other clan members.
“I wonder how many of our predecessors sat in this same place, facing similarly difficult decisions. When you first became Speaker, did you require so much advice?”
“Of course I did. We all do.”
Cesca shook her head, unable to imagine that this strong and decisive woman could possibly have experienced self-doubt. “So how did you manage? Tell me the secret.”
“The secret is to realize that despite your worries, you are still the best-qualified person to make these decisions. The Roamer clans chose you.
They believe in you. And when you do your best, that’s the best the Roamers have to offer.”
Cesca made a wry expression. “Then maybe the Roamer clans are in trouble after all.” She turned to the former Speaker and a hard look entered her eyes. “The Big Goose stole our cargo, killed our people, then pretended nothing happened. We have something they want, and they seem to assume that a war gives them the right to just take it.”
“The Hansa is a formidable enemy—should the clans provoke them?”
“We can’t just ignore their acts of piracy.”
“No. The Big Goose has treated us with disdain for years. This is nothing new except for the level of violence. Remember that whatever you do will have tremendous repercussions.”
“Some of our hotheaded clan leaders might get incensed and forget about that. They can outvote me. I only speak for them—I can’t coerce them.”
“Worse, most of them are men, and therefore prone to the need to prove themselves.” The old woman slowly shook her head.
Cesca paused for a long moment. “If they take the obvious option, I dread the consequences for all of us.”
“Every decision has consequences. You’re the leader of the clans. It is your job to make them see wisdom, make the best decision, then follow through with solidarity, no matter what. We are all Roamers.”