Cardenas (Findlay IV), Findlay System, Eriuman Republic
On the other side of the door from where all the noise had been seeping was a cavern, buzzing with industry and people. The door had been close to soundproof, so the volume that leapt when Sang pushed open the door startled Khalil.
The place may have started as a cave, once upon a time, although that simple description had been left behind. The same cutters that had made the stair walls smooth and strong had carved out a cavern with high vertical walls and a flat roof far overhead. Pillars of native rock had been carved in place and these had been used to divide the open cavern into areas of use.
Somewhere unseen, farther back in the cavern, metal was being hammered. Machinery hummed, engines roared, punctuated by pneumatic hisses. This, then, was the engineering section.
Sang touched Khalil’s shoulder, drawing his attention, then beckoned. Sang moved along the side of the cavern, where a path had been left clear. People were using the path, farther ahead, to traverse the cavern, then stepping off the path into the section they wanted.
Of the many people walking about the cavern that Khalil could see, going about their mysterious business, only about half of them were native Eriumans. There were many people with undefined genetic markers, which meant they were most likely free staters.
Khalil’s curiosity rose. What was she doing?
Farther along the wide path, there was an open area, where people were training. Khalil recognized the movements as pure Bellona-Xenia style combat, but Bellona was not there. The instructor lifted a hand in acknowledgement when she saw Sang and Khalil. Sang waved back.
The training area was well lit by the daylights blazing from the adjacent area. Long rows of waist-high benches held green, growing things. Food for the workers, that could not grow on the surface. Robot gardeners rolled up and down the rows, tending the plants.
The end of the long cavern was on the other side of the greenhouse, while the path continued, burrowing through a door-shaped hole in the wall and turning into a tunnel.
The noise dropped.
“How many people are here?” Khalil asked, catching up with Sang.
Sang glanced at him and shook his head. “You know I can’t tell you that.”
So. He had been granted a qualified access. For now, it would do. Khalil contented himself with keeping his eyes open, instead.
The tunnel was featureless and long. There were doors on the right-hand side only and few of them. Khalil kept count.
Sang stopped at one of the doors and put his hand to the wall. The door opened and Sang waved him ahead once more.
This room was larger, yet just as plain and simple. It had two other doors, one to the right and one to the left. Sang shut the main door behind them and moved over to the right-hand door and tapped on it.
“In a minute, Sang!”
Khalil drew a breath. It was Bellona’s voice.
There were no chairs in the room. No desks, no furniture that hinted at the use of the room. There was a single cupboard and there was a samovar and cups sitting on it. Steam rose from the spout of the samovar.
Sang poured a cup of the wine and gave it to Khalil. “I whisked you away from your last cup. This will take the cold from your bones.”
The door opened and Bellona moved into the room. She looked as though she was a match for this place. The boots and pants and workman-like shirt were appropriate. The ghostmaker on her hip looked natural. Her gaze came to rest on Khalil. “Was he scanned, Sang?”
“He has a knife in his right boot and a miniature ghostmaker in his pocket. I didn’t bother removing them.”
Bellona glanced at Sang. “You would rather watch me have to do that?”
“Very much so,” Sang said with relish. “You would not be gentle, if he tried to use them.”
Khalil sighed. “I am here on peaceful business.”
“Not if you are here to dangle my brother’s killer in front of me,” Bellona replied. She crossed her arms.
Khalil put the cup back on the cupboard. “I could give you the name of the responsible party, but you would not believe me. So I must pave the way. Would you indulge me that much time?”
“I don’t have the time to spare that you would need to redeem yourself,” Bellona said.
“I am not here for that,” Khalil said shortly. “I merely need you to believe me when I tell you the name. To do that, I must account for myself since I left Cardenas.”
Sang smiled. “You joined your brother, Benjamin Arany, on the Bonaventura. You have been there ever since.”
Khalil didn’t bother hiding his surprise. “You’ve been tracking me, Sang?”
“Then Sang was right,” Bellona said slowly. “You didn’t go back to the Bureau.”
Khalil spread his hands. “I told you I was done with them.”
Bellona remained silent and still. The stillness was a new quality. She was holding everything inside her. Weighing it for herself, instead of spilling her emotions about like a fountain.
“Go on,” she said at last.
“Last month, I met a bureau field agent on Laurasia. It was a purely accidental meeting. It was also an awkward one. He spoke much and said very little, and looked longingly toward the door in between. There was one thing he said, though, that stayed with me.”
Both Sang and Bellona were watching him carefully, assessing every word. They did not interrupt with questions.
“He said the prostitutes were prettier on Laurasia.”
Sang’s eyes narrowed.
Bellona touched Sang’s arm, as if she had felt his sudden attention. Then she looked at Khalil. “His name?”
“He wouldn’t have travelled under that name.”
“You know what aliases he uses?” Sang asked, using the remote, unmodulated tone that said he was thinking digitally, tapping into networks and sifting data.
Khalil gave them. “I have already tracked them as far as I can,” he added.
Bellona’s smile was small. “Sang and Connie can track more between them. You knew that. That’s why you’re here.”
Khalil held his jaw together. Then he frowned. “Who is Connie?”
“You know her. It. The AI in the Karassian yacht that Sang bought to Kachmar.”
Sang was standing perfectly still, staring at nothing.
“She?” Khalil said.
“I call her that,” Bellona said. “It makes things easier.”
“Isn’t the yacht impounded by the Navy, somewhere over the city?”
“Which is why she’s bored. Connie likes to talk to Sang.”
Khalil considered that. “Connie is a Karassian.”
“She’s an AI with limited experience,” Sang said, his voice as remote as his gaze. “She is a child. A gifted one with access to data pools I could not reach myself. War is a concept she has not yet grasped.” He frowned. “This is getting interesting…” he murmured.
Bellona moved away from Sang and gestured for Khalil to shift over to the far side of the room with her. They stood next to the samovar.
“You already know where this trail will end, don’t you?” she asked him.
Khalil sighed. “If I’m right, then the trail will end on Antini. So will one or two other Bureau people’s trails.”
Bellona was still showing no emotion. “The Bureau killed Max? Why?”
“I don’t know for sure, although I do know how they work. Do you remember when I told you about their search for a hero?”
“Isn’t Arany the hero they’ve been waiting for?” Bellona asked. “He’s a leader, visible, committed…”
Khalil nodded. “There were hundreds of potential candidates. Ben was one, yes. So was Xenia. I thought I had convinced the Bureau that you were not a viable possibility anymore. Xenia had gone.” He spread his hands. “What if they didn’t believe me?”
“What would they do if they dismissed your analysis?”
“They would have Ben, they would have you, and who knows how many others. The Bureau likes to work with certainties whenever they can arrange them, to offset the statistical predictions they play with most of the time. Every analysis and projection they have run in the last two generations has pointed toward the emergence of a leader, someone who would massively impact the known worlds, who would institute change at a level a simple war would never achieve. If the Bureau itself is to survive that upheaval, then they would have to identify the hero as early as possible and find a way to stay within their sphere of influence.” Khalil met her gaze. “Maybe they wanted to force the issue.”
“By making their choice the hero?” Bellona frowned. “Could they do that? Would they?”
Khalil grimaced. “I’ve seen them arrange matters to suit themselves. In the past, the changes they made were benign. A nudge here, a tweak there, for a more favorable outcome. I’ve seen them buy stocks, rig votes, sully reputations…it was all minor and the outcome was always positive…”
“Until now,” Bellona finished.
Khalil rubbed his temples. He’d had little sleep in the last week of frantic, extended travel. On top of his exhaustion, even considering what he was about to say made him feel ill. “You were entrenched in your family’s homebase, Bellona. Xenia was disappearing from the public’s memory. Your father was boxing you in with suitors and expectations. What if the Bureau…” He swallowed. “What if they decided to change that? A hero needs pressure to emerge. What if they added that pressure? Say, by slipping your father a discrediting file about me, to get me out of the picture? Then, by murdering the one ally you had left in the city?”
“Max,” Bellona breathed. Anger grew in her eyes. “Only, I came here,” she said flatly.
Khalil nodded. “Proving that the pressure wasn’t quite enough yet for you to pick up even a metaphorical sword. However, if they let you know how you’d been manipulated, say, by giving me just enough information to start me down the path to the truth…?”
Bellona’s lips parted. “They’re manipulating you, too.”
“I think so, yes. That’s how profoundly elegant their plan is. It doesn’t matter if I know. I would have come here, anyway. The fact alone was enough to push me into this.” He sighed. “I had no choice but to tell you. They knew it.”
Bellona looked at him for a long, silent moment. Then, without turning her head, she said, “Sang?”
“Still confirming, although it is looking more likely by the minute,” Sang said.
Bellona nodded. “Come with me,” she told Khalil. “I have something to show you.”
* * * * *
At the far end of the passage, there were two openings. One was a rough hole in the rock face. From farther inside the hole the hum of drilling equipment could be heard. Bright work lights shone deep inside the burrow.
Bellona nodded toward the burrow. “There is a huge water basin a hundred meters below us. The water filters down from the surface. On the way through it leaves behind minerals and salt. The money we raise from exporting them gives us the raw materials we can’t produce ourselves, although we’re very close to self-sufficient here. The holes left behind by the mining become new living spaces.” As she spoke, she palmed a pad next to the other door, then tapped out a pattern.
The door unsealed with loud thud of solid locks shifting.
“You developed all this yourself?”
“There was already a mine operating when Sang and I got here, although it was a sporadic and badly organized operation. Sang sorted out the operation while I convinced the miners that my way would be better.”
“And your way is what, exactly?”
Bellona pushed on the door and it opened with the slowness of an airlock door moving on sluggish hinges. As it opened, lights came on in the area beyond.
Bellona stepped over the sill and held the door open for Khalil. He followed her in.
It was another large cavern, at least as long as the passage on the other side of the wall, which explained why there were no doors on the left side. The cavern was wider than it was long, creating a floor space of at least several hectares. Despite the size, the whole cavern was taken up by a single ship, sitting silently in the middle, with its boarding ramps down.
Khalil sucked in a shocked breath. “That’s a Karassian frigate…”
Bellona crossed her arms. “It’s a full scale replica. You could punch your fist through the bulkheads if you wanted to. The layout inside is identical to the real thing, though. It took us months to build it, but we had to have it for training purposes.”
Khalil thought of the people he had seen on the way in, completing personal combat exercises. “Training for what?” he asked. “Why would you want a mock-up of a Karassian ship, unless…” He turned to look at her for confirmation. “You’re going to steal one.”
She smiled. “We are.”
Khalil walked over to the ship. It was huge, the blunt nose sitting many meters above his head. “The only reason to need a Karassian ship is because you intend to travel through Karassian space and don’t want to be waylaid, or even noticed.”
“That is certainly the ideal, but that is not the ultimate reason for stealing a Karassian ship.” Bellona walked over to the nearest boarding ramp and put her hand on the support strut. “With this, we can get down on the surface, unquestioned.”
Khalil thought it through. “Using the ship’s own registration to get past sentries?”
She nodded.
“Where are you going?”
“Kachmar.”
Khalil drew in a sharp, surprised breath. “You’re going back to Ledan.”
Bellona looked up at the belly of the ship. “I’m going to get them all out, Ari. Every single one of them.”
His heart gave a little squeeze at the name. Flashes of memory, of times that only seemed peaceful and content, flickered through his mind, barely seen, although they provoked the anger, anyway. Even though he had known what Appurtenance Services Inc would do to him, the sense of betrayal had been huge. He had used his outrage to free her from that place. Bellona had been held inside the dream for ten years. Her anger was so much greater than his could ever be.
“You don’t want them to be lied to anymore,” Khalil said.
Bellona’s smile was warm. “I knew you would understand.” Her smile grew. “As you can see, I’m picking up the sword.”
He moved away from the nose, back toward the door, where he could see all of the ship at once. “So you steal the ship, land on Ledania, take everyone off with the help of your mining friends…then what, Bellona?”
“Once everyone is out of that place, then I will tell the known worlds what the Karassians have done. I will stand next to my friends and we will expose the Homogeny as the monster it really is.”
“And then what?”
Her smile faded. “One step at a time.”
“You don’t know. You haven’t thought beyond releasing them and exposing Karassia.”
“Isn’t that enough? I’m not your Bureau’s hero, Khalil.”
“And if you learn that the Bureau really did kill Max?”
“Then I will have my next step.”
“Even if you are doing exactly what the Bureau want you to do?”
She considered that. “It appears I will have as little choice as you. I will have to act, even knowing that is what they want.”
“So, first Karassia, then the Bureau. What then of Erium?”
Her brows came together. “Erium has done nothing but defend itself.”
“Your father and your family are the perfect representatives of Erium. Look at what they did to you. Look at where you stand. Can you still say truthfully they have done nothing?”
“It is I who no longer fits Erium. It isn’t their fault. They behaved naturally, which collided with my differences, that is all.” She came closer. “What is it that you want of me, Khalil? You want me to be the hero the Bureau are searching for? You want me to take on everyone, even Erium?”
“I want you to see yourself for what you really are.”
“What am I?”
“You think you are a lost soul in search of meaning. I see a leader rescuing her tribe.”
“Yet you told the Bureau I was not one, that Xenia had gone.”
“Xenia is gone,” Khalil said. “Although that was the only truthful thing I told them.”
Bellona turned away, hiding her reaction. She kept her back to him. “I accept none of it,” she told him. Her voice was strained. “I’m not a hero. I’m not even a leader. I just want to help my friends. That’s all.”
“Very well,” Khalil replied. “If you would permit, I would like to help you with that. They were my friends, too.”
She glanced over her shoulder. There was a pleased expression in her eyes. “If you do, you will be declaring your loyalties for the worlds to see. Your brother…”
“Will understand,” Khalil said. “We two have walked different paths since we were taken off Revati and he was given to a family on Cerce, while I remained on Atticus.”
“You won’t be able to cling to the shadows the way the Bureau does, not after this.”
“Every step I’ve taken since I woke up in that Kachmarain gutter has led to this,” Khalil said. He tried to sound calm, even though his heart was racing. “This is my next step.”