2

 

 

IND Ana Vereine

‘955.01.19 EN

0805

 

The main screen was empty.

Roche stared at it for a few moments, expecting it to suddenly clear and fill with... what? She had no idea what she expected to see out there. She had no idea where the Box had even taken them.

When it became apparent that the screen wasn’t about to change, she swiveled around to check the others on the bridge. Cane had freed himself from his restraint harness and was assisting Maii back into her seat, their movements in the unnatural silence oddly loud and unreal. When he stepped away from her, Roche saw that the girl’s head was bleeding slightly from her fall. Haid, the hand of his new arm resting on a touch pad, was still staring quizzically at the view that Roche had just turned from.

Then it struck her: the drive was no longer audible. But the Ana Vereine hadn’t completed its slow-jump. It had just... stopped.

“Uri,” she asked, her voice booming in the quiet. “What’s going on?”

The holographic projector in the center of the bridge flickered. Kajic’s image appeared through the static, the light brown skin and black hair of his old body looking as composed as always. His expression was serious, but not concerned.

“Minor damage,” said the ex-captain. “We weathered the stress well.”

“How long until we can see where we are?”

“My sensors are gathering some unusual data. The Box is checking to see if the irregularities are due to instrument malfunction. When its diagnosis is complete, vision will be restored.”

“I have partial telemetry readings,” said Haid from the weapons console. After a moment he reported: “No targets. No sign of the point-source, either. We must have left them all behind when we jumped.”

“We did jump, then?” Roche asked Kajic.

“Well, we certainly entered hyperspace,” said Kajic.

“But have we left it?”

“I didn’t think an open-ended jump was possible,” Haid said.

Kajic’s image shrugged. “You’ll have to ask the Box. I just did as it told me.”

Roche put her palm on the arm-link of her chair, intending to access the raw data herself, but changed her mind before she did so. Better to remain distant for a moment rather than dive in headfirst. She needed to maintain a measure of objectivity if a quick decision was required.

“There appears to be a planet nearby,” said Kajic. “That much I can tell you. A medium-sized gas giant if its mass reading is accurate.”

“Try cross-referencing it with the navigation records of Palasian System,” said Roche. “A match would at least confirm where we are.”

Kajic dissolved in a burst of static that lasted a few heartbeats. When he re-formed, he said: “There’s a ninety-nine percent chance the planet is Voloras, the outermost planet of Palasian System. If so, that places us well inside the cometary shell and the third dark-body halo.”

Roche searched her memory for what she knew about the system. “Wasn’t there a refueling base around Voloras?”

“Guhr Outpost,” confirmed Kajic.

“Any signals?”

“Apart from some strong crackles on the hydrogen band,” said Haid, “we aren’t getting a thing on any frequency.”

“Try elsewhere,” Roche said. “This far out, we should be able to pick up hyperspace transmissions.”

“Already tried,” said Haid. “Nothing; not even the beacon of the local anchor point.”

“That can’t be right.” Roche frowned. “We’re near the N’Kor border, and the Kesh have warning stations every few light-years—”

“I’m telling you, Morgan,” said Haid, glancing over his shoulder. “There’s nothing there.”

“How could all of those beacons be blocked?” Roche could feel her confusion gradually developing into frustration. “Uri, could it be instrument failure?”

Before Kajic could reply, the Box cut in:

“It is possible, Morgan. And the fact that it has happened confirms my hypothesis quite neatly.” At that moment, the main screen cleared. “Welcome to Palasian System.”

Roche studied the screen. Initially she saw nothing but darkness—not even stars. Then the view changed, and a single red speck slid into view. Increased magnification made the speck a bright circle. The image was too fuzzy to make out any detail, but there was no mistaking what it was: against the unnaturally black background, one solitary sun burned.

“It can’t be,” she muttered, standing. “Hintubet is a calcium star—”

“And should be on the green side of yellow,” the Box interrupted. “I am aware of that fact, Morgan. The difficulty in reconciling the emission spectrum of this star and that which Hintubet’s should be was the main reason I delayed giving you this information. Now that I have had time to collate the data and to extrapolate from historical records, I believe I can say with certainty that this is Hintubet, albeit with a wildly altered photosphere.”

“The star has changed?” asked Haid. How?

“The precise method is unknown at the moment; the archives lack specifics in that regard, although the general principles are clear. Until we dispatch probes to study Hintubet in more detail, we are limited to the data we can scavenge from this distance.”

“Which isn’t enough,” said Roche. She faced Kajic. “Uri, I want high-speed drones launched to the sun and any planetary bodies we can find.” She turned back to the screen. “Speaking of which, any sign of Voloras?”

The red star shrank and slid out of view. Seconds later, the crescent of a large planet appeared, red-tinged due to the sun’s baleful light. The image of the planet came to rest in the center of the screen, its dense atmosphere swirled with gray bands.

“I have dispatched a probe,” said Kajic. “The base line is already large enough for us to detect four moons.”

“Voloras has five,” said Roche.

“The fifth may be occluded,” said Kajic. “The sizes of the four we can see match COE records.”

“How long until the probe can get a decent look at the base?”

“One hour and fifty minutes. Guhr Outpost is on the missing moon.”

Roche nodded. “Until then, we can’t afford to take anything for granted. Give us a heading that will take us by Voloras, with the option to use it as a gravity-whip if we decide not to stop. Leave a drone behind to relay the data from the probes. I want the ship camouflaged, too, just in case someone saw us arrive and is waiting for us there.”

Kajic’s image winked out as he went to work.

Roche slumped back into her chair with a sigh and rubbed at her temples. They appeared to be in Palasian System, just as the Box had promised they would be. But it wasn’t quite what she had expected: no hyperspace transmissions, a profoundly altered primary, and no stars in sight.

The first and last details suggested that the system had indeed been encapsulated within some sort of barrier. But what? She knew of no process that could hide an entire system from view and account for the warped space outside.

Or did she? The change in the sun’s appearance did ring a faint bell. A name she had heard back in her days on the moon of Bodh Gaya, when she had been studying for her Armada exams, returned to her...

“Asha’s Gauntlet,” she said aloud.

“I’m impressed, Morgan,” said the Box. “I didn’t think you would work it out so—”

“We’re picking up a transmission!” Haid broke in.

“Where?” Roche swiveled to face him, automatically linking with the weapons system. If life remained in the system, the chances were good that it belonged to the Sol Wunderkind. And if he was signaling them, then he knew where they were.

“It’s not directed at us.” Haid was skimming through the various diagnostic tools that enabled him to enhance a weak signal. “It’s a wide-beam microwave from in-system. I’m picking up echoes off several objects near the source; the slight delays should give us a fair triangulation.”

Roche let herself relax slightly. The signal must have been sent some time ago, given the distance at light-speed to the inner system.

“What about the content of the transmission?” she said.

“It’s in some sort of cipher,” Haid told her, then shook his head. “Haven’t broken it yet, which isn’t a good sign. They either crack immediately or take forever.”

“Box, have a go at it,” she said. Haid’s refinement of the signal’s source proceeded while she watched. The area containing a probable location of the transmitter gradually narrowed on a diagnostic display, until a single point flashed once and turned green.

“Got it,” Haid said.

Roche overlaid a navigation chart. “It’s the same distance from the primary as Jagabis would have been. And Jagabis has moons.”

Haid nodded. “That’d give us the echoes.”

“Uri, do we have confirmation of a planet in this area?”

Kajic’s image returned at the mention of his name. “Not yet. It’s off to one side of Hintubet, and I haven’t searched that area in any detail yet. Now that I’m looking, it shouldn’t take long to find—” He stopped, smiled. “In fact, there it is. Give me a little longer and I’ll be able to estimate its mass.”

“It has to be Jagabis,” Roche said. “Someone’s alive there.”

“The signal could be a beacon,” Haid suggested.

“In cipher? Unlikely,” said Roche. “Besides, Jagabis was the innermost gas giant in the system. If I remember correctly, the main spaceport and colony were on one of its moons.”

“Correct,” said the Box. “The moon is called Aro, the colony Emptage City.”

“Right,” said Roche. “So if there are survivors, that’s the first place to look.”

“I can get us there in two days,” said Kajic. “Faster if we flyby Voloras.”

Roche nodded. “Plot a course, but don’t do anything definite until we decipher the message.”

Cane stirred, speaking for the first time since their arrival. “It could be a warning,” he said. “Or a trap.”

Roche looked over at him. “For whom? It couldn’t be us. We weren’t even here when that message was transmitted.”

“True,” Cane said. “But I find it disturbing nonetheless. The impression I get is that someone is still fighting.”

“That’s a good sign,” said Roche. “That there’s the slightest resistance left in the system is something of a miracle.”

“Which is precisely what bothers me.” The bridge’s light glowed in his unblinking eyes. “I would never have been so careless as to leave any survivors.”

Roche met his calm expression uneasily, his words reminding her of the ruthlessness of the adversary they were hunting—and of Cane’s ancestry.

“It’s worth checking, at least,” she said after a moment. Then, turning from Cane, turning from the thought, she said: “Have you sent a probe, Uri?”

“I have dispatched five so far,” Kajic reported. “Three are under way to Hintubet, Voloras, and Jagabis; the other two are heading to Cartha’s Planet, the innermost world, and Cemenid, the largest. There are four planets outstanding: Herensung, Gatamin, Kukumat and Murukan.”

“The last two being the double world?” Roche asked.

“That’s right. There are also some sizable rocks in the dark body halos that might be worth exploring, but they’re not a priority at the moment. I’ll let you know when we have the system mapped.”

“Okay.” Roche visualized the bulletlike probes crossing the system under accelerations that not even the Ana Vereine’s protective fields could negate, thereby traversing the empty space more quickly than they could ever hope to. Even so, it would be hours before they started getting any data. At light-speed, the lag across the system was appreciable.

“That transmission just ended,” said Haid.

“Box?” Roche said. “How’s the deciphering coming along?”

“Completed,” said the AI. “However, the translation is proving difficult. It appears to be in a language with which I am unfamiliar.”

“Show me.”

Several lines of standard alphanumeric script flowed across the screen. Roche studied it for a moment before admitting that she too was stumped. “It’s definitely a language, not another cipher?”

“Without sufficient text to analyze, I am unable to do more than guess.”

“Fair enough. Keep guessing, then, Box, and let me know if you come up with anything.”

“Certainly.”

“Uri, how long until the Voloras flyby?”

“One hour and thirty-seven minutes.”

Roche sat back with a weary sigh, running a hand through her cropped hair. She was already impatient with the delay in obtaining information. Being trapped in this system without any idea of what was going on or even where the clone warrior might be filled her with anxiety.

“I don’t suppose there’s any way you could hurry things along?” she said wryly.

“Not unless you know some way to circumvent the barriers of light-speed, Morgan,” said Kajic.

Roche smiled tiredly.

“There is,” said Cane.

Roche looked over to him. “What?”

“Thought is not constrained by the physical laws of the universe,” said Cane.

Roche sat forward with a start. Maii! If the girl could contact the minds of the people behind the transmission, Roche would have the data she needed immediately.

Only then did she realize that the reave had neither moved nor spoken since shortly after the Ana Vereine had arrived in Palasian System. Roche turned to see what the problem was.

The Surin girl sat motionless on the edge of her seat with her hands clasped together in her lap. A thin line of blood had trickled down from the gash on her forehead, staining red the white material of her blindfold.

“Maii? Are you all right?”

There was no response.

Roche moved over to the reave, squatting down in front of her to examine the small lesion on the girl’s forehead. It seemed to Roche to be nothing more than a superficial cut, and yet...

“Maii?” Still no reply. She touched the girl’s shoulders and tried again: “Maii, can you—?”

Startled, Maii jumped back in her seat, pushing Roche’s hand away.

<Maii, it’s me!> Roche fought to restrain the reave’s flailing arms. <Maii! It’s Morgan!>

After a moment, the girl’s panic subsided and her breathing eased.

<Maii?> said Roche. <Can you hear me?> <I—I am here, Morgan.> The words were barely a whisper in Roche’s mind.

<Are you okay? You’re very faint.>

<So are you.> There was an edge of confusion to her words. <I couldn’t sense you at all. There was nothing. I was afraid you were all dead.>

Roche winced as a wave of images and emotions washed into her mind: fear, loneliness, darkness, panic... She concentrated, doing her best to hold the mental inrush at bay while trying to radiate reassurance to the Surin child. When the torrent of emotions ebbed, Roche continued.

<We’ve been here all the time, talking unshielded as we always do. Surely you picked up something?>

<Only Cane,> replied the reave. <But nothing specific. I just knew he was there—somewhere.>

Roche searched the girl’s blank face. The blood on her cheek stood out against pale skin and hair. <Could it have been the blow to your head?>

<No. It’s nothing like that. Your thoughts are being... smothered. It’s like only the ones specifically directed at me can get through, and even then only if their source is nearby—as you are now.>

<Smothered?> Roche repeated. <By what?>

<I don’t know.> Almost imperceptibly, Maii shrugged. <All I can tell you is that it started when we arrived at the point-source. But it didn’t become severe until we slow-jumped>

<So whatever’s causing it must be somewhere in the system with us.> Roche rocked back on her haunches as she considered the reave’s words. Another ominous sign. <Is there anything I can do to help?>

Maii nodded slowly. <Physical contact strengthens an epsense link. If you were to keep touching me...>

Roche’s understanding filled the void of the Surin’s unfinished sentence. The thought of Maii locked in the darkness of the blind and deaf-mute easily overrode her reservations—even though it meant having the girl constantly at her side. The last person to have depended on her so totally had killed himself to save her—

She stamped down on the memory. The last thing Maii needed right now was to have both of them dwelling on Veden’s death.

<Thank you, Morgan.> The girl half smiled. <I can read you clearly, but will respect your privacy.>

“Is she all right?” Cane called out from his station. “She will be,” Roche replied, then said to Maii: <Can you stand?>

<Yes.>

<Good. If we can’t use you to hunt for survivors, then you can help me brush up on local geography instead.> Taking one of Maii’s hands in her own, Roche raised the girl to her feet. Together, with Maii’s hand on her arm, they moved across the bridge to Roche’s seat. The reave remained standing when Roche sat, her hand resting on the older woman’s shoulder.

<Are we really in Palasian System?> Maii asked.

<The Box brought us here after the Armada ships attacked,> said Roche.

<How?>

<That’s a little hard to explain. Hang on. I’ll see if we can get the Box in on this conversation. The others might like to hear, too.>

Triggering her implants, Roche spoke aloud: “Box, if you’ve got the time, I’d like to talk to you about Asha’s Gauntlet.”

“Of course, Morgan.”

“We studied them under Weapons Conventions in Military College,” she explained to the others. “The idea is to turn a star into a giant hypershield generator or something. Is that right, Box?”

“Essentially,” replied the Box. “A primitive ‘solar envelope,’ as it was originally known, was designed by the Eckandar Trade Axis several thousand years ago. Two prototypes—called K’mok ni Asha, which translates as ‘Asha’s Gauntlet’—were built in the 38th Millennium by the Kesh government. They tested one on a frontier system, but the experiment was a failure. Because of the disastrous results the second prototype was never used. It was rumored to have been dismantled, although this was never confirmed.”

“I remember,” said Roche, nodding. “The Gauntlet was supposedly designed as a means of protection for a system against attack, but the one experiment they conducted ended up completely destroying the system.” Roche looked at the screen, and the sky empty of stars—all but one; the reddened Hintubet now occupied center stage again. “And now it seems we’re inside one.”

“At first,” said the Box, “I was reluctant to accept the possibility that Palasian System had been encapsulated in such a fashion—even though the data suggested as much. It wasn’t until we arrived at the point-source—the external manifestation of the Gauntlet’s boundary—that the evidence became too conclusive to ignore.”

“How does it work?” asked Cane.

The Box explained: “By manipulating a star in precisely the right fashion, it is possible to create and sustain a Riem-Perez Horizon large enough to enclose an entire system.”

“That’s the same sort of shield COE Intelligence HQ uses, isn’t it?” said Roche.

“Correct,” said the Box. “And the Ana Vereine, and most other ships large enough to power one.”

“But we couldn’t see the system from the outside,” Roche said. “A hypershield isn’t the same as camouflage—”

“No; hypershields are used as barriers against hyperspatial attack rather than to hide something from view. However, scale comes into play for Riem-Perez Horizons greater than two thousand cubic kilometers in volume. Space-time can only tolerate such a disturbance on a small scale; any larger and the enclosed area is parceled off and lifted to hyperspace.”

“Where we are now,” finished Roche.

“Thus the area of space contained within the affected area cannot be seen, because it simply no longer exists in the ‘real’ universe,” said the Box. “The anomaly—which is a boundary effect—is all that remains.”

“That explains why the engines stopped in mid-jump,” said Kajic. “The jump was literally open-ended—across the boundary and into the space within.”

“In a sense, we are still jumping,” said the Box.

Cane moved closer to the screen, studying the image with fascination. “It’s a remarkable concept,” he said. “To move an entire system—”

“No distance at all, really,” said the Box. “It has no vector relative to the real universe, and will not travel in the same way this ship slow-jumps.”

“So I assume it will return when the Gauntlet is switched off?”

“No,” said the Box.

“That’s where the original Kesh experiment went wrong,” added Roche. “It can’t be switched off.”

“The process is extremely energy expensive,” explained the Box. “The sun’s fuel is exhausted in a matter of weeks, during which time the Gauntlet gradually collapses back to a point. The system is destroyed in the process.”

Cane tilted his head. “Then employing a Gauntlet to defend a system would be a pointless exercise.”

“Which is why the Warfare Protocol forbids its use.” Roche nodded at the screen. “It’s no use at all for defense, and would make too destructive a weapon.”

<So why does Palasian System have one?> asked Maii, using Roche’s neural implants as an interface between her and the Box.

“I can think of only one possible explanation,” the AI said. “Any attempt to cross the external boundary of the Gauntlet without simultaneously slow-jumping back to the real universe will result in complete annihilation. Similarly, any attempt to use a hyperspace drive while within the space contained by the Gauntlet will render the drive useless.”

“So if the Sol clone warrior has no access to a hyperspace drive,” Haid cut in, “or doesn’t know how to employ one properly in the Gauntlet, he’ll be unable to leave the system.”

“Exactly,” said the Box.

“A trap, then.” Cane nodded. “And one which is not immediately lethal. But why go to so much trouble?”

“And who laid the trap?” asked Haid.

“Whoever got their hands on the second prototype, I guess,” Roche said. “Which could have been almost anyone, depending on where the Kesh stored it.”

“At least we know one thing,” said Kajic. “It probably wasn’t the Sol Wunderkind.”

“Don’t be so sure about that,” said Haid. “We’re trapped in here, too, remember?”

“Not ‘trapped,’” said the Box. “We can leave any time we wish, simply by crossing the boundary the correct way.”

“But the boundary is shrinking, right?” said Haid.

“Yes—”

“And we can’t signal for help if we get into trouble.” Haid grimaced. “That makes us a little more vulnerable than I like to be.”

“As long as we do not employ our slow-jump drive while inside the Gauntlet, we will be able to leave.” The Box sounded weary of the argument. “And even so, the natural collapse of the boundary is relatively slow. Should something go wrong, we would have several weeks to find another means out.”

“Your confidence is admirable,” said Haid, “even if I find it slightly naive.”

Roche decided it was time to change the subject. “Uri, how long now until the first probe arrives at Voloras?”

“One hour and fifteen minutes. That’s when you can expect the first decent pictures, anyway.”

“Good. I suggest we get back to work until then. We might need to move fast, depending on what we see.”

Haid scratched his scalp with his new fingers as he swung back to the weapons console. “Chances are it won’t be a welcoming committee.”

 

* * *

 

For Roche, finding something to keep herself occupied while the probe was in transit proved to be easy. With repairs still to be completed, the transmission waiting to be translated, and small amounts of long-distance data still trickling in, there was more than enough work for a crew of several dozen. Even with the Box and Kajic both able to perform multiple tasks at once, running a ship the size of the Ana Vereine under such conditions would never be straightforward.

Nevertheless, Roche had the opportunity to double-check her memory of Palasian System’s records against the data the ship-bound detectors had collected.

The COE navigation register had been updated during the last survey, in ‘850 EN. Since then, few changes had been appended to the record. Palasian System had never been fully colonized; given its lack of a planet with a breathable atmosphere, that wasn’t surprising. The innermost world was a rocky ball boiling under the glare of the F2 primary and was home only to an automated solar research facility. The remaining seven planets were gas giants, two of them bloated with hydrogen. All possessed numerous moons; two had extensive ring systems, but it would take more than pretty scenery to attract colonists. As it was, only the system’s proximity to a Kesh border had earned it an Armada base and a refueling station. Not even the presence of three mineral-rich dark-body halos around the sun had tempted more than a cursory mining presence, an arm of the same company that had run the operation—and the penal colony—on Sciacca’s World: Dirt & Other Commodities, Inc.

Still, Roche told herself, almost half a million people had called Palasian System home—at least temporarily. And she had to admit that there was plenty to look at. In all her travels for COE Intelligence, she had never had the chance to see a double-jovian before.

Part of her had hoped that when Kajic finally located the pair on the far side of the system, it would look somehow different from the other faint blobs he assured her were planets—but it didn’t. All she saw was another dot, tinged red by Hintubet’s new color.

With Maii at her side, she returned to mapping the locations of the planets and planning contingency routes between them.

<The population was certainly spread thin,> the reave commented at one point. <It’s hard to see how an army could have killed them all>

<It doesn’t make our job any easier, either,> Roche responded. <If survivors are unable to communicate, we’ll have to turn the system inside out to find them.>

<Unless, as you think, they’ve regrouped at Jagabis. It would make sense to pool resources.>

<Or to present a united front.>

<One last stand?>

<Perhaps.> Roche shrugged, trying not to dwell on the ramifications of that thought: had such a battle been lost... ? <Whoever sent the message, Emptage City and Aro Spaceport are the first places we have to go, right after we flyby Guhr Outpost. If we don’t find anything in either of these places, then we’ll try the Armada facility around Cemenid; Geyten Base would have been the next most likely place to mount some sort of counterattack.>

<What about the research station?> Maii asked, indicating with a mental prompt the installation orbiting the double-jovian.

<According to the records, Congreve Station was abandoned some decades ago. Unless that changed, it would have been empty when the Sol Wunderkind arrived.>

<What were they studying there?>

<I don’t know, exactly. It says ‘xenoarchaeological research’ when I ask. But planetary evolution seems more likely.>

<I guess.> Roche felt the reave’s attention drift elsewhere, studying the files vicariously through Roche’s senses. <DAOC are here, I notice. Does Ameidio know that yet?> Roche shook her head. <Not that I’m aware of, and I’d rather he didn’t find out until it’s necessary.>

Dirt and Other Commodities Inc. had been the main target of Haid’s underground resistance movement on Sciacca’s World. Roche would understand any lingering resentment he might still feel after so many years spent fighting them. At the same time she didn’t want it to get in the way. She would attempt to rescue DAOC employees just as she would anyone else—if there were any remaining in the system...

<The asteroid belt and innermost dark-body halo—the Mattar Belt and Autoville—were mined by prowlers, not people,> said Roche. <So chances are they won’t be a problem. The others were untouched.>

<I’ve never liked prowling mines,> Maii said with a mental moue. <They’re just a small step from planet-wreckers.>

<At least they’re civilized, not like outriggers.>

<All robots are civilized,> said Maii. <I just don’t happen to enjoy their company.>

“The probe’s rounding Voloras,” announced Kajic, breaking the silence on the bridge. Roche cleared the vision in her artificial eye and looked up. The screen showed a close-up of the swollen arc of the gray gas giant’s banded atmosphere. Purple haze tinged the view as the probe used the planet’s magnetic field to brake.

“Seen anything yet?” Roche asked.

“Not much,” Kajic replied. “The other moons appear to be untouched. The change in Hintubet’s radiation has raised a few storms in Voloras’s outer atmosphere, and there’s a little more rubble in closer than the records say there should be. But apart from that, the planet is as expected.”

“Still no signals?”

“All quiet,” said Haid. “I can try provoking something, if you like.”

“Best not to at this stage.”

“I’ve no problem with that.” Haid absently tapped the console as he talked. “Nothing’s obstructed the probes so far, but that’s not to say it won’t happen. They’re not exactly subtle, the way they accelerate.”

“As long as no one traces the tightbeams back to us, we’ll be okay.” Roche gestured at the screen. “How long until the moon comes into view?”

“A few seconds,” said Kajic, his image facing the screen from the center of the bridge. “When it does, I’ve programmed the probe to begin its survey automatically. There’s enough of a delay to make direct control tricky.”

“So it might already be seeing the moon?” asked Roche.

“Or even have been destroyed,” said Kajic. “Although I...”

He stopped before he could finish the sentence. “Wait. Here it comes. I’ll enhance the image as much as I can for the screen, but it might be better through your implants.”

Roche put her hand back onto the link and slaved her vision to the probe’s data, at the same time shutting her right eye to prevent overlap. Instantly she found herself hanging over the surface of the gas giant, spearing through space with a magnetic storm roiling around her. Ahead and just over the bulge of the horizon, a reddish dot had appeared.

“That’s it,” said Kajic. “We’re lucky it’s not eclipsed by the planet; the image would have been much weaker.”

“Can you make anything out yet?” Roche asked.

“Nothing definite. The albedo matches, except for a dark patch on the southern hemisphere. You’ll see it as the probe gets closer. It doesn’t appear on the maps, so it probably isn’t a surface feature.”

“It isn’t the base itself?” asked Haid.

“Refueling bases are always around the equator,” Roche answered. “Orbital tethers won’t work anywhere else.”

“Of course.” Haid’s tone was apologetic. “It’s been a while since I last saw one.”

The image sharpened as the moon came closer, becoming a gibbous disc. Its surface was smooth and gray, like its parent, covered with a thick layer of ice. The unusual patch Kajic had pointed out dominated the bottom left quarter: a drop of ink on a circular bloodstain.

“It looks like a shadow,” said Roche.

“I think it might be,” Kajic agreed. “A shadow at the bottom of a crater.”

Roche took a deep breath at the implications of that thought. As the probe swooped closer for its first pass, the details became clear all too quickly. Something had struck the moon’s southern hemisphere with the force of a large asteroid. The resulting impact had torn a sizable chunk out of the moon and rung its cold core like a bell. Deep fault lines ran from pole to pole, where the brittle, icy crust had fractured. In infrared, the heat at the shadowy bottom of the crater was obvious, glowing like a red pupil in a dead, gray eye.

“Whatever it was,” said Haid, “it hit hard.”

“Is there any way to tell how long ago it happened?” asked Cane.

“My guess would be sometime in the last six weeks,” said Kajic. “But probably no earlier than a month.”

“Agreed,” added the Box. “The rubble the probe encountered in the orbit of the moon is clearly ejecta from the impact that has not had time to disperse; that makes the impact fairly recent. But the crater floor is no longer molten, indicating that some time has passed. Between four and five weeks ago is my estimate.”

“Any idea what it might have been?” asked Haid.

“At this point, no,” the Box said. “But my intuition tells me it was most likely a ship of some description. It would have been much easier to cause a ship to crash than to give an asteroid the vector required to make it impact in such a way.”

“Is it worth looking for survivors?” asked Roche.

“No.” The Box sent an icon darting into the view, pointing out details Roche had missed. “Here you can see the fallen cable of the orbital docking facility; this fragment here corresponds to part of the base itself. You can also see how a major fracture line runs directly through the site of the main installation. This last detail must surely have been fortuitous—no one could have predicted exactly how the moon would fault—but I doubt that anyone would have survived the impact alone, anyway. The seismic energy released must have been tremendous.” The icon disappeared. “It would have been over in seconds. A very effective blow against the Armada presence in this system—both in terms of resources and morale.”

“It was deliberate, then,” Haid said. “It couldn’t have been an accident—a coincidence?”

“Possible,” said the Box. “But unlikely.”

Roche listened to the Box with a growing sense of unreality. The destruction of an entire Armada refueling base was still something she could hardly believe possible—even though the scant reports COE Intelligence had received from the system had intimated far worse. And now she was seeing it.

The destruction of Palasian System was no longer a morsel of information to gain leverage with COE Intelligence; it had actually happened.

<The Sol Wunderkind did this?> asked Maii, her voice relayed by Roche’s implants and broadcast over the bridge speakers.

“We don’t have any other suspects,” said Haid.

<How many people were on the base?>

“Three hundred,” Roche replied. “Plus whoever was on the ship when it crashed—if it was a ship, of course.”

“Either way, that’s a lot of dead people,” said Haid grimly.

“Whether there was one person or a thousand, the actual number is irrelevant,” said Cane. “The only thing of importance to the clone warrior was to ensure that no one was left alive.” He glanced over at Roche. “Assuming, of course, we have correctly interpreted my sibling’s motives.”

Roche studied Cane through the ghost image of the planet in her artificial eye. “Even more important than the base’s strategic value?”

He paused before answering, his features contorted as though he was fighting conflicting emotions.

“Yes,” he said finally, then turned from Roche back to the screen. “The primary objective would have been to destroy as many people as possible as efficiently as possible. The drive for efficiency would have necessitated an early strike against this base, yes, but if it had been automated, that need would have been reduced. Where there are no people to command them, machines can be inefficient in battle.”

“So he would have attacked Aro Spaceport first?” Roche asked.

“Yes, had the refueling base been uninhabited.” Another pause. “I’m sorry,” he said, again facing her. “I do not like thinking this way. It is too easy for me.”

Roche nodded, even though she didn’t truly understand how his mind worked and therefore could not empathize with his feelings. When he used his genetically modified abilities, he was terrifying to watch. That he had not used them against her was something for which she’d be forever grateful—and therein, she thought, lay the paradox. Of the two Sol clone warriors at large in the Commonwealth, only one was obeying its natural instincts. Cane was not. But why?

Because he doesn’t want to. That was the only answer she could supply. He had said as much himself. And if the part of him that wanted to kill indiscriminately had been subsumed by the part of him that didn’t—which perhaps not even the Sol geneticists could have suppressed entirely—then she hoped it stayed that way. Especially now that she had seen what he could have done.

She rubbed her eyes, breaking the link and killing the image of the planet in her left eye. Fatigue, which she had successfully kept at bay since her abrupt awakening, was numbing her limbs and pressing at the backs of her eyes.

She was sufficiently aware of her inner feelings, however, to suspect that something more than fatigue was at work.

“The base is dead,” she said, letting the issue slip for the moment. “The how and the why can wait until later. Uri, set course for the Voloras flyby and get us on the way to Jagabis. I want to see what’s left of Aro Spaceport before we start making any decisions.”

“The probe will be there in approximately ten hours,” said Kajic. “We’ll be past Voloras in four, and well on our way by the time data arrives.”

“Good. I’ll leave that side of things to you and the Box. As long as I’m kept informed, the two of you can run the ship for a while.”

“Where will you be?” asked Kajic.

“In my room, catching up on some sleep.” To the others on the bridge, she added, “ I suggest you do the same. In thirteen hours we’ll have much more data on our hands than we have now, and we’ll need to be alert to deal with it.”

<I’ll stay here with Cane,> said Maii, <if that’s okay with you, Morgan. I can sleep on a couch.>

“Make sure she does, Cane,” said Roche. “I know you probably won’t need to rest, but she does.”

Cane nodded.

“That goes for you too, Ameidio.”

“I’ll do so as soon as I’ve finished here,” said Haid, his hands busy over a console.

“Okay,” Roche said. “Unless something happens, we’ll meet back here in twelve hours.”

She stood and led Maii over to Cane. The reave’s hands briefly linked Roche with Cane, and in that instant Roche received a mental flash of Cane’s mind. The impression was short-lived, and carried with it no actual thoughts, but it left her with the impression of rapid motion. Even after the contact had been broken, she couldn’t shake a mental image of a gyroscope spinning, perpetually on the verge of toppling over but never quite doing so.

“Wait,” said Kajic as she started to leave. “I’m picking up another transmission.”

Roche continued toward the exit. “I doubt we’ll learn anything new,” she said. “Unless we work out the language—”

“It’s not from Jagabis, this time,” Kajic said. Roche stopped and faced Kajic’s flickering image. “We’re picking up the fringes of a tightbeam, probably reflected off the source of the first transmission. Whoever’s sending this one must be doing the best they can with a fairly low-tech outfit. Hang on—we’ll see if we can decode it.”

“It’s not in cipher,” said the Box. “It is a standard text message. No voice, no images.”

“Display it,” said Roche, curious despite her exhaustion.

The view of Hintubet faded from the main screen. Now in its place were several lines of text:

 

I DO NOT RUN FROM YOU,

BUT NEITHER WILL I RUN TO YOU.

I DO NOT REQUIRE YOUR AID.

 

WHEN OR IF I DO NEED ANYTHING THAT YOU POSSESS,

I WILL TAKE IT.

YOU WILL NOT STOP ME.

 

I AM NOT YOURS TO COMMAND.

 

Roche read it once, then again. “That’s it?” she asked after a third and final reading.

“The same message is repeated twice,” said the Box.

“And it’s not encrypted?”

“No.”

“But it was sent on a tightbeam.”

“Yes.”

“Then that tells us something. I’ll bet the reason we’re picking up the fringes of the beam is because it’s been through a number of relays to prevent triangulation of the source. Whoever sent it was less concerned about the contents of the message than keeping their location a secret.”

Haid nodded. “That would make sense.”

“And judging by the content, I’d say there’s only one person who could’ve sent it.”

“My sibling,” said Cane, meeting her accusatory stare.

Roche nodded slowly. “He’s alive.”

“And kicking,” said Haid. “I’m glad I’m not in the shoes of whoever he’s talking to.”

“The fact that he’s talking at all is interesting,” Roche mused. “In fact, it sounds like he’s bluffing.”

“You think so?” said Haid.

She shrugged. “If he’s hiding, he’s vulnerable.”

“I guess we’ll find out soon enough.” Haid returned his attention to the console before him. “I’ll see if any of the probes picked up the signal and try to pin down a source.”

“Good. Any more, Box?”

“The transmission has now ceased,” said the AI.

She considered whether she should stay on the bridge to see if anything else came in, but decided against it. The communication from the Sol clone warrior was important enough to warrant further examination, but not informative.

Again, without further data, she would only be speculating wildly.

“The situation’s unchanged, then,” she said. “I’ll keep my implants open for any further developments. Don’t hesitate to call me.”

“I won’t,” said Kajic. His image dissolved at the same moment Roche stepped from the bridge.

 

* * *

 

Back in her cabin, Roche lay on her bunk, going over the data they had collected so far. Detailed images of the rained Guhr Outpost came as often as the probe—now orbiting the small moon—passed by. All that remained of the refueling base were fragments twisted beyond recognition. Sensors detected high levels of radiation in the heart of the crater, which supported the theory that a ship, not an asteroid, had crashed there, but no remains of the ship had been found. Given the force of the explosion, Roche didn’t expect any. The ship must have been fully fueled to have caused such a blast. Only time would tell how greatly the moon’s orbit around the gas giant had been disturbed.

The remainder of the probes, now on their way to every major body in the system, were still too far away from their destinations to provide any new perspectives. The earliest she could expect data would be from the probe heading to Gatamin, six hours away; the latest, from the probe aimed at Kukumat and Murukan, the jovian pair, at over twenty hours.

Determined not to let frustration get the better of her—there was, after all, nothing she could do to change the speed of light—she tried instead to focus her thoughts on what she did know about Palasian System.

First of all, the COE Intelligence data appeared to be accurate so far. There had been a battle of some sort that had cost the Armada at least a refueling base.

Second, the system was suspiciously silent, apart from one unintelligible signal emanating from near the major port around Jagabis and another whose source was in hiding.

Third, the sun had been transformed into a cosmic hypershield generator by a weapon used only once before, over a thousand years ago. The last government known to have had access to the sole remaining Asha’s Gauntlet prototype was the Kesh.

Fourth, Maii’s mind-riding abilities had been negated by a mysterious “smothering” effect.

Fifth, the system had been cordoned off on the outside by three Armada vessels acting under direct orders from General Ramage, commander in chief of the COE Armada.

And that was all. Roche was fairly confident that the Sol Wunderkind was trapped in the system, but beyond that she didn’t want to speculate too far. It was tempting to write off the epsense-dampening phenomenon as another of his extraordinary talents, but that seemed unlikely. Apart from the occasional suggestion from Maii that Cane possessed a strong but latent epsense ability, there was no indication that he possessed any such talents. Nevertheless, Roche was wary of closing off any avenues of exploration too early. Not while the matters of the Gauntlet and the Armada flotilla were still to be explained, anyway. She had learned from experience that especially where conspiracies were concerned, the major factor preventing the truth’s being discovered was the observer’s unwillingness to explore connections between facts that on the surface seemed unconnectable.

She leaned back into the pillow, pushing her knuckles into her aching, tired eyes. There was, in short, enough to make her cautious, but not enough to provide her a definite focus for her fears.

And that, in a sense, only made it worse.

You will not stop me, the second transmission had said. Could she have stopped Cane, had he chosen to attack rather than to aid her? Was he even on her side? I am not yours to command, the message had said. The words made Roche wonder whether he had ever truly been...

 

* * *

 

She didn’t realize she had fallen asleep until the alarm on her door buzzed.

In the dream she heard the hiss of a predator. She jerked forward on her bunk and called out in the dark, clutching at the fringe of the dream even as she was wrenched from it. She had been back on Ascensio, trying to lure a viridant out of its burrow by offering it a dead rodent. The lizardlike animal had been suspicious, but she managed to encourage it by repeating the offer several times. She had no intention of giving it the bait, though; her only intention had been to gain its trust—and then to strangle it. Only too late had she seen the glint in its eye and known that she was the one being lured. Her hand had lashed out, and the viridant had snapped its jaws around it, pulling her into its burrow...

The door buzzed again. She shook herself from a daze and spoke into the intercom:

“Who is it?”

“It’s me,” Cane answered. “The data from the probes are due soon. I would like to discuss something with you before then, if it’s not inconvenient.”

“Wait a moment.” She ran her hands over her stubbled scalp and wiped her face. Her skin was greasy and coarse at the same time—a grim reminder that she was overdue for a shower. After a moment she said: “Lights; door open.”

The room brightened at her command. Cane stepped into the cabin.

“I’m assuming it’s not an emergency,” she said, “or else Uri would’ve called first.”

“Little has changed,” said Cane. “We have received another transmission from the same source as the first, but that’s about it. Kajic posted details of it to your buffer, marking it as a low priority. If you were asleep, you wouldn’t have seen it.”

She checked her implants out of habit; sure enough, the message was there. She also learned that she had been asleep for seven hours. It felt more like four.

She stayed on the bed and offered Cane the chair. “So, what can I do for you?”

“Everyone is resting,” he said. When he sat he folded his hands in his lap, making him look uncharacteristically unsure of himself. “I thought I’d take advantage of the situation to talk to you alone.”

“About?” she prompted.

“The transmission from Jagabis.”

“What about it?”

“I can translate it.”

She studied him suspiciously. “The Box said it wasn’t in any language that it recognized.”

“I know.”

“But you recognize it?”

“I didn’t at first,” he said. “Only after reading through the raw text for some hours did it begin to make sense. And even then, not all of it.”

“I’m not sure I follow you.”

“I am not certain what it means, but I do understand it. I know how odd that sounds, but the situation is as confusing to me as it is to you. And that’s why I wanted to talk to you first rather than the others.”

“You’ve kept this from Maii?”

“She knows I’m hiding something, but she won’t learn what it is unless I let her.”

Roche nodded. “So what does the transmission say?”

“It is a call to arms,” he said. “It is also a plea for help. And a request to negotiate. And an order to retreat. And an offer of assistance. And—”

She cut him off: “I don’t understand. How can it be all these things at once?”

“The message is composed of fragments. Some make sense, but a lot don’t. The bits that don’t are just meaningless, but there is still a resonance in the words—as though they have been engraved in my mind, that I might never forget them.”

She suddenly grasped the implication. “Are you suggesting that this is some sort of language used by the Sol Apotheosis Movement? That you’ve been programmed to understand it?”

“Nothing else can explain why I know what some of the fragments mean, and respond to them”—he put a hand on his stomach—”here, almost before I have time to realize.”

“Are they dangerous? Could they make you do things you don’t want to do?”

Cane shook his head. “Whoever is broadcasting the orders doesn’t know what they are doing. The fragments that make the most sense are the most emphatic, of course, but they are often the most inconsistent, too. The fragment repeated most often, for instance, is a request to trade information that is not relevant in exchange for supplies that no one in this century would need.”

“Why would anyone broadcast something like that?” Roche wondered. “And where did they find the code? It wasn’t in any of the records I accessed.”

“I don’t know, exactly,” Cane said. “Perhaps the source is a beacon, after all.”

“One the Sol Apotheosis Movement left behind, perhaps?”

He shrugged. “It may have successfully summoned my sibling here, then malfunctioned.”

“That wouldn’t explain why he bothered to reply.”

“Unless the beacon is an AI,” Cane suggested. “Or we have it the wrong way around. Perhaps the Sol transmission is from my sibling, and the reply from someone else entirely.”

Roche thought this over. The first transmission had come from Jagabis, their current destination. “If so, that means we’re heading into trouble.”

“I know.” Cane’s dark features remained expressionless. “It appears that being able to translate the transmission, even in part, has only made the situation worse.”

“It’s not your fault, Cane,” Roche said. “This whole system is a mess.” She rubbed sleep from her eyes with the heels of her hands. “Besides, you can’t help what you are,” she went on, sensing that he wanted something more from her than just acting as a confessor. “Your lack of motive worries me sometimes, but you’ve convinced me that you don’t mean me any harm—for what that’s worth. Just because you’re a weapon, and you’ve been designed to do certain things that might harm a great number of people, that doesn’t mean you will. There’s a big difference between design and intent, after all; I try to keep that in mind.”

Cane nodded slowly. “Thank you, Morgan. I was worried that the reminder of what I am might cause you to rethink our association.”

She smiled vaguely. “I’m glad you told me. At the very least, we can get the Box onto it and see whether it can’t translate the rest.”

“You would like me to tell the Box?”

“I can’t see why not. Having some understanding of a high-level Sol language will probably come in handy one day.” She went on: “When you have the time, go over the text of the transmission, pull out the bits that you can translate and see what the Box can come up with. It may be no more of a linguist than you or I, but it must be able to run basic statistical checks. Something’s bound to come up.”

Cane stood, his muscles flexing smoothly with the movement. “We’ll begin immediately.”

“I’ll be down to review your results soon.” She stood, too, and followed him to the door. “But don’t let it get in the way of mapping the system. That’s our first priority at the moment.”

The door slid closed behind Cane, leaving Roche with yet another mystery to ponder. She wondered how many more this system would throw at her before finally surrendering some definite answers. And how much longer she could juggle the conflicting trust and suspicion she felt for Adoni Cane.

When she made it to the bridge almost an hour later, the first wave of information had begun to arrive. The probe aimed at the sun had announced that it had data to send within moments of Cane’s return. Since then, the Box, Cane, and Kajic had been fully occupied, paring back the packets of data to the ones most relevant or likely to contain answers to Roche’s many questions. As a result, the mystery of the possible Sol transmissions had been placed on hold.

“Okay,” she said, settling into her seat. Maii took a place next to her, apart from a hand on her shoulder keeping carefully unobtrusive. “Let’s see what we’ve got.”

“Pictures in visual spectra, mostly,” said Kajic. “And, according to the Box, the mechanism underlying the Gauntlet.”

“Show me.”

The main screen blossomed to reveal a bloated red giant, magnified to fill one third of the view. Cooler patches had been dimmed by compensators to appear charcoal black, giving the star’s surface a cracked appearance. Massive disturbances, clearly visible despite the blur of distance, flowed sluggishly from each pole to the equator, skewed east by the star’s rotation.

Roche winced at the sight. “You’d never guess that until a month ago, that used to be a green dwarf.”

“Precisely,” said the Box. “The change in its composition goes much deeper than I thought.”

“How deep, exactly?”

“To the core. Look closely, Morgan.”

‘The view zoomed forward, closer to the star. Gases bubbled like magma from an unimaginable interior, casting a baleful red light through the bridge. A green ring stood out on the screen, highlighting a darker point. As the ring swung past, Roche realized that the point at its center was an object orbiting the star, deep within its chromosphere. She had no reference points against which to estimate the object’s size, but the way it disturbed the gases around it, leaving a deep, roiling scar in its wake, suggested enormous size or mass, or both.

“That can’t be a ship,” she said.

“It isn’t,” said the Box. “It is one of sixteen quark breeders in high-speed orbit, firing pellets of strange matter into the heart of the star.”

“You can tell that just by looking at it?”

“Not entirely, Morgan. If you watch carefully, you can see the pellets strike the photosphere.”

Roche looked more closely at the image. Sure enough, every few seconds or so, a bright spark of blue light flared at the base of the wake.

“Why strange matter?” asked Haid.

“Strange matter is super-dense,” Roche said before the Box could reply, “and it can be moved more easily and more precisely than neutronium. With it, you can alter the workings of a star’s core. Once you control the core, you can play with its electromagnetic and gravity fields.”

“This, clearly, is how the Riem-Perez Horizon is generated,” added the Box.

“Overkill,” said Haid.

“The Gauntlet is a grotesque example of just that,” the AI agreed. “If its designers had stopped to consider what they were doing even for a moment, they would have realized that what they hoped for simply wasn’t possible.”

Haid shrugged. “You have to admire them for trying, anyway.”

The quark breeder continued to plow its way through Hintubet’s wounded chromosphere, as implacable as the physics that foretold the star’s death.

“What would happen if we destroyed them?” Cane asked.

“Disaster,” said the Box. “The nuclear processes inside the sun would spiral out of control until the reactions sustaining the Riem-Perez Horizon ceased. The boundary would become increasingly chaotic until, within a very short period of time, it collapsed entirely.”

“Any idea who planted the breeders?” said Roche.

“Detail is sparse at this resolution,” said the Box. “I cannot tell if the breeders display any markings. However, only one nation in this region manufactures breeders of the sort required for such a macro-project as this, and that is the Eckandar Trade Axis.”

“Do you think they might be involved?”

“No. The devices have been available for many centuries; the array is probably that belonging to the original Gauntlet prototype, not one manufactured recently.”

“That’s good to know. I hate to think why anyone would build them today.” Roche mused to herself for a moment. “If this is the prototype, and it’s being used to entrap the Sol Wunderkind, then it must have been kept somewhere nearby. Allowing time for the weapon to be dusted off and programmed, then put into place and activated, that doesn’t leave much for transport.”

“Do we know when it was activated?” asked Haid.

“Not before the twenty-sixth of last month,” said the Box. “That was when the Armada Marines investigating the system were ambushed. Presumably the system was open at that point.”

“Is there any way to pin it down further?”

“I have been observing the rate of decay of the boundary. If we assume that it originally extended to cover Palasian System’s cometary halo, then that gives us an activation date somewhere between the thirty-seventh and fortieth.”

“So that means the people behind the Gauntlet had a little more than one week to get it here,” Roche said.

“How would they have got it past the clone warrior?” asked Haid.

“One assumes the breeders were slow-jumped as close to the sun as possible with a large relative velocity,” said the Box. “Once they were captured by Hintubet’s gravity and safely inside the chromosphere, there would have been very little the Sol Wunderkind could have done to interfere with them.”

“He wouldn’t have known what they were, after all,” said Roche.

“They would have demonstrated no overtly hostile behavior,” added Cane. “And there may have been more pressing matters demanding his attention.”

“That makes sense.” Roche turned her attention away from the sun and the device crippling it. “What else have we found?”

“We have a probe orbiting Cartha’s Planet,” said Kajic. “Everything seems in order there. Wight Station—the automated solar research installation—has not been damaged.”

“Because it was no threat,” Roche said. “Go on.”

“The same probe examined the Mattar Belt as it flew through,” Kajic went on. “There is evidence of activity on several asteroids, although only one prowling mine was observed in situ. Likewise, it had not been interfered with.”

“Any sign of people?”

“No. The inner system appears to be uninhabited, except by machines.”

“Perhaps we can use them to our advantage, then. Box, as we get closer, I want you to make contact with the AIs on Wight Station and the prowling mines. They may have recorded information that will help us plot the movements of the Sol Wunderkind.”

“I will do so,” said the Box. “If other installations have been attacked in the same manner as Guhr Outpost, the explosions should have been noticed by one or more of these observers. We may be able to pinpoint the exact time each attack took place.”

“Let me know what you find.” Roche turned to Kajic. “Any news from Jagabis?”

“The probe will be in position, relative to us, in about an hour. All transmissions ceased from that region twenty-five minutes ago, corresponding almost exactly with our arrival in the system.”

Roche mentally approximated the time it would take data traveling at light-speed to cross the system twice; as Kajic had said, it did match the time required for someone on Jagabis to observe the arrival of the Ana Vereine, then for the immediate cessation of transmissions to be observed by Kajic.

“So someone knows we’re here,” she said somberly.

“They knew where we were,” said Haid. “We’ve been camouflaged since we arrived, which still gives us some element of surprise.”

Roche nodded. “Have the other probes found anything?”

“Two used Gatamin as a gravity-whip, but neither reported anything unusual,” said Kajic. “Again, that planetary system was uninhabited.”

Roche took a moment to study the images of the smallish, once blue-green gas giant, third most distant from the sun. Apart from its remarkable rings, it was easy to overlook.

“Herensung likewise appears untouched,” Kajic went on, “at least from a distance. There were a few orbital communication relays that are now silent, but until the probe arrives we have no way of knowing what has happened to them.”

“That leaves Cemenid, and the double-jovian.” Roche was curious to see both. Cemenid, the largest planet, had been home to a COE communications base; Kukumat and Murukan were simply mysterious, on the opposite side of the system.

“Cemenid is a couple of hours away,” said Kajic. “The double will be at least another twelve.”

Roche couldn’t complain about that; she already had enough data to keep her occupied for days, and would soon have more. The double jovian was simply a bonus.

She applied herself to the information with a will and Maii’s help, trying to find any evidence of the Sol clone warrior’s passage. Occasional details surfaced from the growing files—wreckage of satellite here, an ion afterwash there—but no actual sightings. Wherever the Wunderkind was, he had been effective in hiding himself—so far. When the data from the other major planets arrived, she hoped to know where he was not, at least. Then it would become a more difficult quest, through the gulfs between planets or in the mess of dark bodies known as Autoville between Cemenid and Gatamin. She didn’t like to think that he might have hidden any farther out than that; Mishra’s Stake, the second dark-body halo, extended in a band one and half thousand million kilometers wide almost as far as Voloras. If he was hiding in there, he would be impossible to find.

The only consolation was that if he was in there, he would be effectively unable to surprise them. Which is why Roche felt safe ruling it out. He would never have allowed himself to reduce his options so severely, assuming Cane’s behavior was anything to go by.

<He will watch patiently until he has sufficient information,> said Maii, <then strike. It won’t be in his nature to act unprepared, or to wait too long. As soon as he knows how to destroy us, he will do so without hesitation.>

<There’s a cheerful thought,> Roche responded, still acutely aware of what had happened to Guhr Outpost.

<We just have to be ready for him, and make sure he doesn’t force us into any mistakes.>

Roche pondered this. <We may already be making a mistake by rushing into the system before the probes have had time to report.>

<I don’t think so,> the reave said. <Even in-system the distances are large enough to give us an edge, given the power of the Ana Vereine. And besides, where are we now?>

<Inside the orbit of Gatamin.>

<The inner system doesn’t really start until Cemenid. That gives us plenty of time to change course if the remaining probes do find anything.>

<But between Gatamin and Cemenid is Autoville, and there could be anything in there.>

<True. Then we’ll just have to keep our eyes open.> Roche smiled at the irony in the blind Surin’s words, but she kept the thought carefully to herself.

“We’re picking up something unusual,” said Kajic. “From Jagabis?” Roche asked, pushing the data she had been studying to one side and focusing her attention on the main screen.

“No. It’s a tightbeam from roughly the same direction, though.”

“Contents?”

“A request for ID on a COE band. That’s all.” Kajic paused. “The transmission is coming once every minute, and we’re only picking up the fringes of it. Also, it’s blue-shifted, indicating that the source is moving toward us.”

Toward them? Roche stiffened in her seat. “A ship?”

“That seems likely, although I haven’t detected any emissions yet.”

“Keep looking. Show me the message in full.”

A window on the main screen opened, displaying four brief lines of text:      -

 

VESSEL ENTERING PALASIAN SYSTEM 0805

ID REQUESTED

RESPOND ASAP

QUOLMANN

 

“Who’s this ‘Quolmann’?” asked Haid.

“It’s not a who,” said Roche. “It’s COE Intelligence shorthand for ‘Trust me; I’m an ally.’”

“And should we?” asked Haid evenly.

“That depends,” said Cane. “If the code is common knowledge, then we should treat its use here with suspicion.”

“It’s not well known,” said Roche. “Otherwise it would have been changed. But I’m disinclined to trust someone even if they are from COE Intelligence.”

“So what do we do?” Kajic asked. “Ignore it?”

“We can’t afford to,” said Roche uneasily. “The message was sent to us. They may not know exactly where we are, given that we’re only picking up the edges of the tight- beam, but they do have a rough idea.”

“They could be sending the message to several likely locations,” suggested Cane.

Roche quickly dismissed the idea. “No, the ship is still coming in this direction.” She thought for a moment, then said: “We’re being predictable. Uri, I want to change course slightly; swing us away from the sun and to a wider approach. I know it’ll mean taking longer to get to Jagabis, but I think we have to do it—at least until we know how far away this ship is. At the same time, send a remote to reply to the tightbeam on our original course. Give it half an hour before sending our ID and the ‘Quolmann’ code word—that’s all. Keep the probe on our old heading until it receives a reply. It can relay any messages without putting the Ana Vereine at risk.”

“Consider it done,” said Kajic.

Roche read the text of the message again. “It’s almost as though they were expecting someone from COE Intelligence to come,” she mused.

“And have nothing to fear from them,” added Cane.

“That puts them in a minority,” said Haid wryly.

“The Jagabis data is being processed,” announced Kajic.

“Finally.” Roche prepared herself for another inrush of information. “Okay. Let’s see it.”

The probe had inserted itself into a polar orbit around the innermost jovian world of Palasian System. Even under Hintubet’s stark, crimson light, Roche was struck by the beauty of the planet. Its bands and vortices were manifold and varied, ranging from thick jet streams to thin wisps; its pole was a region of intense electromagnetic activity, the atmosphere constantly erupting with flashes of lightning. Its rings were small relative to those of some of the other planets, but they were there, framing a large number of moons—fourteen known, Roche recalled from the COE files. The largest of them, Aro, was also the largest solid body in the system; for that reason, plus its more hospitable distance from the sun, it had been chosen over Cartha’s Planet for the system’s permanent civilian base.

She studied the data intently, eager for—and yet simultaneously dreading—her first sight of Aro Spaceport and its close neighbor, Emptage City. Although she knew that the probe “had sent this view some hours ago, she couldn’t help but feel nervous about what she might see, as though she were more intimately involved than a mere observer. What if the Sol Wunderkind were to be attacking Aro at the very moment the moon came into view? What would she do? She fought to suppress the discomforting notion, because the truth was, there would be nothing she could do. They would be helpless to defend the base      

The probe changed course as it crossed Jagabis’s north pole. Its tiny but powerful thrusters fired to insert it into an equatorial orbit intersecting that of Aro. Roche waited impatiently as the minutes ticked by until, finally, the red dot of the moon appeared over the bulge of the distant horizon.

The dot became a disc. The probe’s thrusters ceased firing; momentum and the pull of Jagabis’s gravity would complete the maneuver. The last leg of its approach would be conducted with as few emissions as possible.

The disc swelled steadily. A hazy atmosphere, rich in methane and sulfur, softened its edges. The hemisphere facing the probe was mostly in shadow, making details hard to discern, and Hintubet’s bloody glare in the background only complicated the matter. Roche watched as Kajic tried various enhancement routines on the image, methodically refining the picture.

“I can’t see the orbital tower,” Roche said.

“What’s that in the southeast quadrant?” Haid pointed. “Another crater?”

“No,” said the Box. “Remember the scale. An impact that large would have cracked the moon in two.”

“The COE maps have two methane seas listed,” said Roche. “That must be one of them.”

“It’s a little hard to make out at the moment,” said Kajic, “but I think you’re right, Morgan.”

“We’ll soon find out,” she said.

The moon expanded until its shadowed image filled most of the screen. Red sunlight glinted on an object in orbit around it, startling Roche until she realized that the telemetry data was still empty of signs of technological activity. An abandoned satellite, she guessed. Or wreckage. Whatever it was, it caught the light twice more before vanishing from view. Kajic’s display showed several other unidentified and inactive objects, invisible to her limited senses, also in distant orbits, and she followed them instead to pass the time. A similar display on Haid’s console revealed that he too was tracking them, ready to respond if one of them made any move at all—or showed signs of life.

The probe slid neatly into a geostationary orbit above Aro Spaceport and turned its instruments downward.

“Radar has located the main launch field,” said Kajic intently. “No other clear landmarks, yet.”

“The main dome?” asked Roche.

“I have something that might be an outline, but...” He shook his head. “It’s not clear. The dome might be down. There’s no way to be sure until the sun rises.”

“How long will that be?”

‘Ten minutes or so.”

“Try infrared,” she suggested. “If there are survivors, they’ll show up as hot spots.”

“I’m not finding anything, Morgan,” Kajic said after a moment. “It’s uniformly cool down there. Even the launch field.”

“No fires?” asked Haid. “Traces of explosions?”

“Aro has an atmosphere and weather,” said Kajic. “Excess heat will dissipate relatively quickly.”

“But there’s no evidence of the sort of damage we saw at Guhr Outpost, is there?” Roche studied the image on the main screen in detail, clutching at anything that would justify optimism. “There might still be a chance.”

“Underground,” said Cane.

“The main dome was fully exposed,” said Kajic. “In fact, it was built in the walls of an old crater, so it needed only a roof.”

“But the spaceport might have subterranean facilities,” said Roche.

“The only way to check would be to go down there.” Haid glanced around the bridge. “Any volunteers?”

“Let’s see if we can’t contact them first.” Roche swiveled away from the screen. “Uri, have the probe broadcast a brief message asking for ID. Use the ‘Quolmann’ code. There may be a connection between survivors here and the ship signaling us.”

“The people speaking the Sol command language?” asked Haid.

“Speaking it badly,” Cane put in.

“Whatever,” said Haid. “I’d be wary of letting them know we’re anywhere near them just yet—if they’re even there at all, that is.”

“I know,” said Roche. “That’s what the probe is for. Send the signal, Uri. Repeat it once.”

“Done.” Kajic’s image shifted within the hologrid. “And now we wait. We’ll see a reply in about five hours, if there is one.”

“Damn it.” Roche cursed the situation—and herself for forgetting the light-speed delay. “I guess that’s all we—”

“Hold it!” Kajic barked as something flashed across the screen. “The probe—something’s firing on it!”

Roche slaved her implants to the data-feed. The hazy radar outline of the spaceport jerked once, then disappeared entirely from view. In the visual spectrum, the view slued wildly as the probe fought to stabilize itself. Damage readings scrolled down the borders of her field of view, suggesting that the probe had been struck on one side.

“Uri? What the hell is—?”

“I’m getting a fix on something,” Kajic interrupted. The probe steadied, its cameras pointing toward the horizon of the moon. Light flashed from something metallic. “It’s a derelict.”

The view zoomed closer. The ship had once been a freighter, but now had a hole in its side that could have housed one of the Ana Vereine’s scutters. It was traveling in an orbit above and at right angles to that of the probe.

A cloud of escaping gas flowered briefly from the shadow of the ship’s hole. A second later, it happened again.

“I’m picking up very low electromagnetic readings,” said Kajic. “Almost undetectable. Hardly a life sign, and nothing like any weapon I’ve ever seen.”

The view jumped again. Red warning indicators began to flash in the probe’s telemetry display.

“I can’t tell what’s hitting it,” Kajic said with some frustration. “And neither can the probe.”

“Why isn’t it doing anything?” asked Haid.

“It doesn’t know what to do,” Kajic responded. “It can’t even run without knowing what it’s running from.”

Roche leaned forward as inspiration struck her. “Does the probe have anti-meteorite shields?”

“Of course; they’re standard in anything designed to travel at speed in-system—”

“What about when it’s not at speed’?”

“They shut down to conserve power...” Sudden understanding stopped Kajic short.

On the main screen, the probe’s cameras caught a glimpse of the derelict ship. Red sunlight flashed on its pitted hull more strongly than before. Dust was still puffing out of the shadow in its side, as regular as a metronome. Then the image shook and disappeared again, the probe clearly having difficulty maintaining its attitude with so much damage interfering with its systems.

“It’s a gas-gun,” Roche said. “Probably a chemical thruster modified to fire slivers of metal or plastic; they’re not hard to jury-rig. All that’s needed is a small amount of power to run a targeter or a receiver, and no one will ever know it’s there—until it’s activated, anyway. And then, before you know it, you’ve been hit by something with enough kinetic energy to punch a hole right through your hull.”

“The presence of the probe must have been enough to set it off,” said Haid, nodding. “Just being there. Imagine what would’ve happened if it had sent that signal.”

“Are there other derelicts in orbit?” Cane asked.

“I have plotted the orbits of at least a dozen small masses,” confirmed Kajic, “many in similar orbits to this one—high and at extreme angles to anything around the equator.”

“Thereby maximizing the relative velocities of the slivers,” said Roche.

“So it’s likely that all the derelicts are similarly armed,” Cane said.

“Why bother?” said Haid.

“It’s a trap, “ said Roche.

“But for whom?”

“For us, I guess.”

“No,” said Cane. “This would have taken time to prepare. There must have been another target.”

The probe shuddered again as another of the slivers struck it toward the rear. This time, the damage was severe. The feed died for a second before flickering back to life.

“We’re going to lose it,” said Roche, cursing under her breath.

“Soon, yes,” said Kajic. “But not immediately. The probe knows it’s been profoundly damaged, but it has been programmed to complete its mission before allowing total shut down. See? It’s already changing orbit.”

Roche followed the changing telemetry data. “What was its mission, Uri? I thought it had already accomplished it by getting there.”

“Not quite. We needed to know what happened to Emptage City; that’s its ultimate objective.”

The probe’s trajectory steepened at a frightening rate, accomplished by the faltering push of its thrusters and the steady drag of Aro’s gravity. Roche fought the urge to grip her armrests as the atmosphere of the moon rushed toward the probe—and her, according to her senses.

Then clouds were sweeping past, red-tinged with sunrise. The radar image of Aro Spaceport expanded to meet her just moments after dawn broke across the surface of the moon.

Roche started slightly as the probe struck and the screen flashed with high-speed bursts of data. Then it went black.

“The feed has ceased,” said Kajic.

“What did we get?” Roche managed, breaking the link to her implants.

“A number of partial images,” the Box said. “I am reconstructing them for you now,”

The main screen scanned through a number of blurry views of the surface of Aro. The first three contained scenes that could have been anywhere—too dark to make out details—but the fourth was surprisingly sharp. It showed the landing field of Aro Spaceport with a resolution down to three meters.

There were three ships parked in its dry docks. All were lifeless and gutted, with black holes along their spines indicating that they had been fired upon from above.

“Orbital laser-fire,” said Haid. “Or bombardment of some sort.”

“Maybe more pieces of derelict ships,” Roche agreed. The field itself was pockmarked with circles—craters left behind from shots that had missed. The buildings of the landing field had been similarly destroyed.

“There’s nothing here,” she said. “Anything else, Uri?”

“One other clear snapshot,” Kajic said. “The probe managed a course-change before it crashed and flew over the edge of Emptage City. There’s just enough light to pick out fine detail.”

“Let’s see it.” The spaceport vanished. In its place appeared the curved rim of an eroded crater wall, its lip blackened and jagged. From the point of view of the probe, Roche was unable to make out the dome that had covered the colony.

“Can we see any closer?” she asked.

The crater wall rose to meet them as Kajic magnified the image.

“We were fortunate, in a way,” said Kajic, “that the sun had only just risen. The incident light was striking at such a low angle that shadows revealed details we would normally have missed from above.”

“I see them,” said Roche, her stomach sinking.

The shattered base of the dome stood out clearly in the image, as did the bases of the struts and girders that had once held it in place.

“He cracked it open.” Haid’s words were steeped in awe and disbelief.

“That’s all he needed to do,” said Roche. “He let the air out, and everyone died.”

“No,” said Cane. “See the area around the base of the dome? It’s blackened, as though by fire.”

“But it’s a methane atmosphere—” Kajic began, then stopped.

“Methane burns in the presence of oxygen,” Cane finished.

“He punctured the dome, then started a fire.” Roche could picture it all too clearly. “Then he left it to burn. It might have taken days.”

Roche detected a mental frown an instant before Maii’s voice intruded into her thoughts. <Why didn’t he finish them off when he had the chance?>

“Because he didn’t need to, Maii,” Roche explained. “The gas-guns in orbit would pick off anyone who managed to survive and get off-planet—along with anyone who tried to mount a rescue, for that matter. Before the dome over Emptage City finally collapsed, he was probably on the other side of the system, attacking somewhere else.”

“A very efficient strategy,” said Cane.

Roche glanced at him, but was unable to tell from his expression exactly what he was feeling. Approval? Admiration? Respect? She herself felt nothing but sickened by the cruelty with which the warrior had acted.

“What are the odds that someone could still be alive?” she asked of no one in particular.

“Minimal,” replied the Box. “There may still be airtight chambers in some of the buildings, or underground as Cane suggested; small numbers of people may have taken shelter within them. But how would we go about rescuing them?”

“The gas-guns are easily avoided—” Roche began.

“True. Without the element of surprise and against appropriate shields, they would be ineffective. We could even destroy the derelicts before assuming orbit, thereby neutralizing the threat entirely. But the problem lies in locating the survivors quickly enough to mount a rescue attempt—survivors who have no way to communicate with us and may not have even the most basic of pressure suits to survive exposure to the atmosphere. Any rescue attempt would be complicated, time-consuming, and risky.”

“With the Sol clone warrior still out there,” said Haid grimly. “Laughing at us.”

“Or hunting us,” the Box added. “We cannot allow ourselves to be distracted. Our mission is to track him down.”

“I know, I know.” Roche sighed. “I just feel we should at least try.”

“It’s an honorable thought,” said Cane softly, “but not one we can entertain at this moment. It’s what he will expect us to do. Perhaps later, when we have the time.”

Roche straightened in her chair, trying to regain the appearance of the staunch commander. “Perhaps. For now, though, we’ve lost our probe at Jagabis. Uri, how long until another can take its place?”

“A few hours.”

“Do it. I don’t want any blind spots.”

“Understood.”

She stood. “I’ll be in the captain’s office for a moment.”

Maii lightly squeezed Roche’s shoulder. <I’ll come with you,> she said.

Roche considered arguing, but knew it would create a scene—and that was exactly what she was trying to avoid. She couldn’t meet Haid’s eyes as she and Maii crossed the bridge and entered the smaller chamber at its rear. When the doors slid shut behind them, Roche let herself sink into a padded chair aid put her head in her hands. Acutely conscious of Maii’s thin-boned hand on her shoulder, she drew a heavy veil across her thoughts.

To no avail.

They’re all dead...

<It’s harder than you thought it would be,> said the reave, her mental voice a gentle breeze blowing between their minds.

<Much,> said Roche, kneading her temples with her fingertips.

<There is too much unknown, and too much at stake,> Maii continued. <You have to confront the Sol Wunderkind before it escapes this system and destroys another; but how can you confront it without sufficient information to guarantee that you will not fail like the others who tried before? The more you look, the more death you see, and the less likely it seems that you will ever succeed—but that only makes it all the more important that you keep trying. You might be all that stands between the clone warrior and the rest of the Commonwealth.>

<Look, Maii,> said Roche sharply, <I don’t need this right now.>

<No,> the reave soothed. <You don’t. And yet you continue to torture yourself with it.>

Roche smiled to herself. <I suppose I do, don’t I?>

<I don’t know,> said Maii. <I’m guessing, not reading.>

Roche removed the girl’s hand from her shoulder, and held it in her own. <Maii, this is the first thing I have ever tried to do on my own. And I guess I’m just a little... scared. Not of the Sol Wunderkind escaping or anything, but of—>

<Failing,> said Maii, finishing what Roche was reluctant to express.

<I mean, I know I’m not really on my own, with you and the others around to help me, but COE Intelligence isn’t there issuing the orders for once, and that makes it so important not to screw up in any way at all...> She stopped, realizing that she was close to babbling, and sighed. <I just need time to get my head straight.>

<I understand,> Maii said. Her face was expressionless but the waves of sympathy she offered were real. <There have been many moments since Veden died when I wondered how I could even think of going on without him. But here I am. I have no choice but to do so. The alternative, as they say, is far worse.>

Roche smiled. <And better to try and fail than to go back to COE Intelligence or give up entirely. At least it’s my failure, not theirs.>

<I’m sure they’d be keen to contribute,> said Maii, her words stained with amusement.

<I’m sure they would.> Roche’s mood sobered as an image of the ruined city on Aro returned to her. No doubt the killer of almost half a million people would have something to say, also.

With a fizz, a full-size image of Kajic appeared, standing opposite them with his hands respectfully behind his back.

“Apologies for intruding, Morgan. I have detected the emissions of a vessel on an intercept course with the relay probe we left to follow our previous course.”

Roche took a deep breath. “The ship that hailed us earlier?”

“I assume so. It’s still several million kilometers away, and I am unable to discern its class or origin, but I can tell you that it’s small. Maybe a mini-shuttle or singleship.”

“Occupied, I presume?”

“It is accelerating within the physical tolerances of a living being, yes.”

The ghost of a thought came from Maii: <But what kind of being is it?>

It was with some unease that Roche realized that the Surin’s words echoed her own suspicions: A singleship. One person. Who else could it be?

“Send something to meet it. An armored—and armed—probe, this time.”

“To destroy it?”

“Not yet. Just to let the pilot know we’re not taking any chances.”

With a slight nod of acknowledgment, Kajic’s image disappeared, leaving Roche alone with Maii once more. She could feel the girl’s hand on her shoulder, but couldn’t decide whether the firmness of the grip was an attempt at reassurance or an indication of Maii’s own fears.