In Earth's Service (Mapped Space Book 2) (31 page)

“Ouch!” I said. “Never seen that before!” It
occurred to me a bubble was fragile in highly curved space, but could be a
deadly weapon in flat space.

“No damage,” he said without any data displays
appearing.

“The four snakeheads in the airlock will wonder
why they’ve lost contact with their ship.”

Vrate didn’t answer.

“We could take them prisoner and hand them over to
the Tau Cetins,” I suggested, thinking it wouldn’t take the TCs long to probe
their minds.

“Why would I do that?”

“Oh, I don’t know, because you’re a good galactic
citizen and you want to make the Tau Cetins mad at the Matarons.” That was
certainly my motivation.

“I am not a good galactic citizen,” he said
ominously.

The bubble dropped, revealing empty halo space
around us. The distant red point marking Solitaire’s position was now dozens of
light years away. The visual feed from the airlock appeared in front of Vrate
showing the two closest snakeheads firing at the inner door.

“How long before they blast their way in?” I
asked.

“Long enough,” he said, then the airlock’s outer
door snapped open, hurling all four Matarons into space.

“Blowing their scaly asses out the airlock wasn’t
exactly what I had in mind,” I said, disappointed I’d lost the chance of
handing the reptilians over to the Tau Cetins for questioning.

Vrate turned the bow of his ship toward the four Black
Sauria operatives drifting helplessly in space. They were still alive,
protected by their suits, although they wouldn’t survive long stranded in halo
space. One by one, they began firing at us in a futile act of snakehead
defiance. From the bow of the ship, four rapid energy blasts flashed out, shattering
the Matarons into a million pieces.

“Neither was vaporizing them with your cannon!” I
muttered, realizing he hadn’t simply killed them, he’d summarily executed them for
their crimes. I could hardly blame him for that.

In silence, we watched a cloud of Mataron droplets drift
away into the transgalactic void, then Gern Vrate turned and fixed a cold stare
upon me. “Now … tell me what you know of Kesarn in cryostasis?”

* * * *

“Three Kesarn disappeared in your part of
the galaxy,” Vrate explained after I finished recounting my experiences on the
Merak
Star
. “I was sent to find them.”

The tiny red solitaire
glowed in the distance, our nearest companion in the halo void. Even if the
Matarons had extrapolated our course and were searching for us, Vrate assured
me they couldn’t penetrate the Tau Cetin masking technology now hiding his ship.

“What led you to me?” I
asked.

“The Matarons discovered
I was asking questions. Hazrik a’Gitor offered me information in exchange for a
condemned human who’d killed a member of his family. You.”

“It was self defense.”

“What humans and
Matarons do to each other is of no interest to me.”

“OK,” I said slowly.
“Obviously, the Matarons took your people. You could lodge a protest with the
Forum.”

“The Kesarn are not
members, haven’t been for a long time.”

For two millennia we’d
been told the only way to be granted interstellar access rights was to join the
galactic political system and commit ourselves to the principles that had governed
interstellar relations for eons. Refusal would force the Tau Cetins to take
back their astrographics data and neutralize the precious novarium we needed to
power our ships, trapping us in our scattered systems. Yet somehow, the Kesarn
had found a loophole, been allowed to follow a different path.

“How can you not be
members?”

“We were once, for
hundreds of thousands of giran, until the Intruder War.”

The war had been fought centuries
before mankind had developed interstellar travel, lain waste to many worlds
beyond the Orion Arm and made Izin’s people the pariahs of the galaxy.

“What happened?”

“They invaded our
homeworld in the Perseus Arm, fortified themselves behind massive shields we
couldn’t penetrate, then swarmed our planet with robotic armies and millions of
their kind. We couldn’t match their technology and even if we hurt them, it
made no difference. They breed so fast, casualties mean nothing to them.”

“But they do to you.”

“We are individualists,”
Vrate said. “Our numbers are small.”

“The Forum couldn’t
help?”

“They were driven from
the Perseus Arm, leaving us to fight alone. Vastly outnumbered, we could not
win.”

“Why’d you stay?”

“It is our way,” he
said, as if that explained it all. “We raided and spied upon the Intruders, but
always, they found us. The Tau Cetins changed that. They gave us what we needed
to evade Intruder sensors, to became the eyes of the Alliance in enemy controlled
space. With Tau Cetin technology, our ships reached the Intruder home cluster,
established contact with conquered races, scanned Intruder ships and brought
information back to the Alliance. We even warned the Tau Cetins when their homeworld
was about to be attacked.”

“So why don’t the
Matarons keep your TC-tech for themselves?”

“Because they can’t use
it. No one can, but us.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Nothing is ever simple
where the Tau Cetins are concerned. They are peaceful and old and deceptively
cunning. They gave us their technology to use, not to understand. They were
desperate for information we could provide, but not so desperate as to advance
our civilization millions of years even when theirs faced destruction.”

“That was thousands of
years ago. Your ship looks new.”

“It is. The Tau Cetins
gave us machines to produce the equipment we needed to spy for them, but there
were conditions.”

“There’s always a
catch,” I said.

“We provide the raw
materials the Tau Cetin fabricators need … including ourselves.”

“Yourselves?”

“We are a solitary
species. We travel alone, we mate infrequently, have few children, just enough
to survive. The Tau Cetins knew this. Everything the fabricators produce is linked
to one of us – only one. It is the price we pay. I was present when my ship was
formed. When I die, so does my ship. I can never be further than a light second
from the siphon or it will destroy itself. The same is true for every Tau Cetin
component aboard. If the siphons are separated from their Kesarn imprint, or if
any attempt is made to disassemble them, there will be a very contained, very
Tau Cetin annihilation.”

“That’s why you have to
touch the control spheres.”

“I must be one with the
ship. No other can fly it, not even another Kesarn.”

“And you’re still using
the same construction machines – fabricators – the TCs gave you during the
Intruder War?”

“The Tau Cetins build to
last and we have taken great care to preserve them, much better care than the they
expected.”

“I’m surprised they let
you keep them.”

Vrate was slow to
answer. “They owe us.”

“Because you helped save
their homeworld?”

“Because they didn’t
save ours. The Intruders destroyed my homeworld when they discovered we were
spying for the Tau Cetins. They couldn’t subdue us, so they exterminated us. It
is a debt the Tau Cetins can never repay.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It was the price of our
freedom. Now we go where we please, we answer to no one, although we continue
to respect the law.”

“So they don’t sanction
you, and the Tau Cetins turn a blind eye because they feel guilty.” They might
be the shrewdest super-intelligent birds in the galaxy, but I found it
reassuring that they were capable of remorse.

“They are patient. They hope
we will rejoin one day.”

“Will you?”

“No. The Tau Cetins continue
to inform us of galactic affairs, but we keep our distance. They are how I knew
of the tension between humans and Matarons. Hazrik a’Gitor’s claim that he was
settling a blood feud with a human seemed plausible, and as Matarons cannot use
our Tau Cetin technology, there was no reason to suspect I was his target.”

It was a double win for
Hazrik, capturing the Tau Cetin technology and taking his revenge on me in one
operation, although I was simply icing on his snakehead cake.

“So why are the Matarons
giving your energy siphons to us humans?”

“I don’t know. Humans
lack the technology to utilize limitless energy. Even we Kesarn would have no
need of the siphons if not for Tau Cetin star drives.”

“And it all works,
providing you’re alive,” I said thoughtfully. “Cryostasis is not dead.”

“We have never put it to
the test, but … I believe you are correct.”

“The siphons must be
needed to power some other alien-tech in human hands. It has to be the tower they
loaded aboard the Merak Star, and Hazrik’s snakehead scientist is there to show
them how to plug it all together.”

“The Matarons could tell
your people any lie about that technology and they’d never know.”

Considering the scum of
humanity’s propensity for self interest, they’d believe anything they assumed was
to their advantage. They might well have no idea what that tower’s real purpose
was!

“Your missing people
will be where that tower is. If you take me back to my ship, I’ll lead you to
it.” Izin had already told me where the tower was headed, but I didn’t trust Vrate
enough to tell him, not while I was still his prisoner.

“The Kesarn and their
technology are to be returned to me. The humans are your problem.”

“And the Matarons?”

“Them, we will share,”
he said menacingly.

“Deal,” I said, offering
my hand. Vrate glanced at my hand curiously, making no move to shake, then I
withdrew it awkwardly remembering shaking hands was an ancient Earth custom
from the era of sword fighting – a meaningless gesture to the Kesarn.

“We have an agreement,
Sirius Kade, but that does not make us allies.”

He stepped onto the
piloting platform, placed his hands on the control spheres and turned his ship toward
the Milky Way’s great spiral disk. A moment later, the biconal bubble formed around
the Kesarn ship, sending us hurtling back down into the galaxy.

Gern Vrate might not be my ally, but he’d referred
to me by name for the first time, signaling he was no longer my enemy.

* * * *

We docked with the
Silver Lining
without Izin or
Jase becoming aware of our presence. Izin’s hull crawlers had removed the
shackle drone’s thruster assembly and a crawler now clung precariously to the
drone’s tail, reaching into its interior.

“There are no other human ships nearby,” Vrate informed
me as he removed his hands from the control spheres and escorted me to the
airlock.

“Will you deliver a message for me?” I asked as I
stepped into the airlock, past black scars burnt into the bulkhead by Mataron
weapons fire.

“I’m not a courier.”

“It’s to your advantage as much as mine.”

“What message?”

“There’s an Earth Navy ship waiting in the Paraxos
System. The message is for Lena Voss. Tell her to come to the Duranis System
with everything she has.”

“Paraxos … Duranis … these are human names. They
mean nothing to me.”

“I’ll enter the Tau Cetin coordinates of Paraxos
into my autonav, then delete it, then enter Duranis. You can read them both before
we bubble.”

Vrate gave me a noncommittal look as the inner door
sealed shut between us, then I cycled through into the
Silver Lining
and
hurried to the flight deck.

“Skipper!” Jase exclaimed with an astonished look
as I appeared in the open hatchway. “Where have you been?”

“To halo and back,” I said with a wry grin.

He gave me a puzzled look. “Where?”

“Later,” I said, shrugging off his question. “How
long until Izin disarms the shackle drone?”

“Soon. A crawler’s working on the self-destruct
now and two more are standing by with a skin-patch as soon as we push it off.”

“No sign of the Drakes?”

“Not yet.” He nodded to a timer counting down on
the screen. We still had an hour and forty three minutes left. “That’s assuming
they’re waiting at Acheron Station. If the Drakes jumped out to listen, they
could be here anytime.”

They didn’t know which way we’d gone, so they’d
have to disperse a lot of ships to find us early. More likely they’d wait for
our signature to reach them, then come out with overwhelming force. “We’re getting
underway as soon as Izin gives us clearance.”

I left Jase watching the sensors and hurried to my
stateroom to skim the
Merak Star’s
log. She’d rendezvoused with the
Cyclops
and other Brotherhood ships every six to eight weeks for several years,
delivering munitions and often receiving nothing in return. Only three times
had she picked up return cargo, including the transfer on Novo Pantanal. Nazari
had simply logged it as ‘sealed containers’, his cryptic way of describing kidnapped
Kesarn and their stolen tech. The common denominator was every voyage started
and finished in the Duranis System.