EIGHTEEN

 

“With me,” Treth said. “Move.” She started off down the passage. Then another bang, metal on metal – a door thrown open? But this sound came from in front of them. They were boxed in.

“We cannot go in either way,” Jules said, weaving about uncertainly on his mech-legs. “Those Ghost-Spex will find us here. What will they do? Will they be mean and unpleasant?”

Zenn wanted to tell him it would be OK. But she didn’t really believe that. She saw Treth checking the remaining charge in Pokt’s plasma stick.

A husky voice called to them from the dark.

“This way, groomish.”

Charlie was gesturing from a gap in the bulkhead a dozen feet behind them. Zenn was surprised they hadn’t seen this passageway when they passed it. Then, once they’d all squeezed through the opening, Charlie slid a metal panel into place, sealing off the gap behind them.

“A secret and hidden passage,” Jules said to Zenn. “This is an element of paper-novel mysteries! Although generally there is a moving bookcase activated by a handle on the fireplace. It is very clever thinking, Mister Charlie.”

“Gotta be sharp, don’t we?” Charlie said. “Gotta keep the crab-heads guessing! And I know how. Oh yes, I go here and there.”

With Charlie leading them at a brisk trot, they continued down the narrow service passage, their path illuminated by one of the lights that Charlie wore.

“Charlie,” Treth said after they’d put some distance between them and their pursuers. “How have you avoided them, the Khurspex, all these years?”

“Hid, didn’t I? Down deep in the deeps. Down in the Belle’s nether-hold at first. Down in the hard, cold places. Not even the crab-heads could catch me there.”

“And you were by yourself, all that time?” Zenn asked.

“Years, by myself. No talking, no one listening, you see?” Zenn could tell the Loepith had paid a price for those solitary years of running and hiding. As they went, Charlie explained that the ship they were on, the Nova Procyon, was attached on one side to the Prodigious, a Vhulk starship taken some eight years ago. The Prodigious was a “crusher ship”, designed for inhabitants of planets with high atmospheric pressures and temperatures. Accordingly, surface pressures inside it were staggering, with interior temperatures kept at a searing level, just short of the boiling point of water.

Charlie didn’t seem to know much about the ship on the other side of the Nova. All he’d been able to learn was that it was an alien craft filled with a toxic cocktail of unbreathable gases.

Beyond the Prodigious and its hellish environment was another Earther-class ship, the Symmetry Dancer, which was in turn attached to the Benthic Tson, built for sea dwellers and filled stem to stern with vast reservoirs of fresh and salt water. Next in line after the Tson was the Delphic Queen. Beyond that, the Ghestan Star and then Charlie’s original ship, the Belle Savage. That was as far as the Loepith’s knowledge extended.

“But what about internal scans of the ships, and patrols?” Treth asked. “How did you escape detection?”

“I keep all my eyes on em. Keep outta their way,” Charlie said. Then he pulled open one side of the dirty vest he wore and glanced down at something that lit his face with a faint glow. Before Zenn could see what he was looking at, he closed the vest again. “Besides, Spex don’t use scans so much, don’t hardly need em. All the many-many are stuck in their own ships. Can’t move around. So the Spex don’t care about scans. Why should they?”

Like the Nova Procyon, Charlie said, each ship was connected on either side to ships with incompatible environments. As a result, no passengers from one ship could survive the conditions of the ships attached to it. This apparently negated the need for the Khurspex to keep close tabs on their prisoners.

“You talked of the Benthic Tson,” Jules said, quickening his pace to come up alongside Charlie. “Are there living ones aboard it?”

“There are. Some in the water still,” the Loepith told him. “Can’t say how many.”

“But why?” Zenn asked. “Why keep everyone here at all?”

“Need em, don’t they? Spex gotta keep every ship’s systems up and ready, and they need crews for that. That’s their plan. Keep the big chambers going, keep those stoneponies comfy. But not so comfy now, are we? Spex are getting sick. Can’t keep systems up with their skin coming off, with stumbling around half blind.”

They came to a steep set of stairs and Charlie led the way down.

“But this is like the Ghostly Shepherd story,” Jules said. “Maybe these ones are those Shepherds in the writings.”

“No. I think not,” the Groom said. “I clearly wounded one. The true Shepherds are immortal. Their flesh incorruptible. They cannot be harmed by such weapons as mortals possess.”

“And did you see their heads?” Jules said. “They had colorful lights moving inside them.”

“It’s how they talk, those crab-heads. Use skin colors.”

“Talking with colors,” Jules said. “Can this be true?”

“Well, yes, I suppose so,” Zenn said. “There are cephalopods on Earth, like cuttlefish, that use color to communicate. They have microscopic chromatophores under their skin – tiny sacs of pigment. They expand or contract the sacs to create patterns. The Khurspex could be doing something like that, only more complex.”

“Thank you, Doctor Knows-Way-Too-Much,” Liam said.

“But the Khurspex are getting sick?” Zenn said.

“Oh yes. Skin comes off. Thinking goes bad to worse. They gotta leave soon or they all go offline. Dead, that would be.”

Had the Khurspex evolved a reproductive behavior like Earther salmon, Zenn wondered, crossing vast ocean distances to return to their home stream to spawn… and die?

“But the other side of the galaxy – that must be at least a hundred thousand light years away,” Liam said. “Indra ships can’t tunnel near that far, can they?”

“No,” Treth said. “At least, not in our experience. The Indra in all our ships have proved unwilling to travel beyond the Outer Reaches of the Local Systems Accord. We assumed they were simply incapable of venturing farther. It is clear now that our understanding of stonehorse abilities is… incomplete.”

“And all those other Indra, they are still held within their ships, correct?” Jules asked. Charlie nodded. “So, where is the Helen of Troy’s Indra?”

“They put her in the big trip-ship. In the middle. All the other ships in a big ring around it.”

“So the ships surrounding the one in the center, those are all the disappeared Indra-drive starships, right?” Liam said. “But how did they all get here?”

“Wormy bio-mech,” Charlie said, undulating his hands in a wavy motion. “Part alive, part machine. They put em into the ponies’ heads. It makes em jump over here, then they hook em all together.”

“Bio-mech controllers, I would say,” Treth said. “The device that burned its way into my chamber and attacked my stonehorse. They must force the Indra to tunnel.”

“Bio-mech,” Liam said. “I didn’t think Skirni had that kind of tech.”

“They do not,” Treth said. “They must be in league with others, those with access to advanced capabilities. Or the funding to purchase it.”

“But who would team up with Skirni?” Liam asked.

“Is it not evident?” Treth said. “Those with a motive to take stonehorse ships. Those with a reason to stand against the Procyoni and the groom’s union.”

“You mean… the Cepheians?” Zenn said, resisting the idea, but unable to ignore the evidence: Ambassador Noom’s species had the motivation and the money to buy whatever tech they needed.

“The Drifters have made clear their intention to secure more Indra ships by any means.” Treth said.

“But would the Cepheians do that?” Zenn asked. “Make a deal with the Skirni to hijack Indra ships? Just to get control of the space lanes?”

“The trade routes are worth trillions. And why else would they be so secretive about their dealings with Earth? They obviously have something they wish to keep to themselves. The so-called negotiations with the Earth Authority could be a distraction to mislead us,” Treth said, dark eyes flashing, her anitats throbbing violently up and down her arms.

“It seems an incredible thing,” Jules said. “The Cepheians scheming with Skirni-types to steal Indra craft. This would be wild and reckless behavior. I am having difficulty believing it.”

“Oh? Are you? There is one thing more,” Treth said. “Just before the Helen was taken, the Drifter claimed she was recalled to Earth, correct?”

“Yes. Stav said Ambassador Noom told him she had new orders, at breakfast that morning,” Zenn said.

“This is an unlikely coincidence. To be summoned away just before the Helen and all aboard her were taken. The scheming Drifter merely employed this ruse as a convenient way off the ship. The timing cannot be happenstance.”
 Zenn hadn’t really put the pieces together before. But she had to admit that, at this point, it seemed to fit. Noom herself said the Cepheians wanted to break the Procyon monopoly on Indra ship routes. Equally suspicious: at the costume party the ambassador seemed very interested in Zenn’s identity, that she was an exovet novice. And Noom appeared to know all about the Ciscan cloister on Mars. Of course, there could be other reasons she would know this. But when added to the other facts, it seemed to fill out the disturbing picture Treth was painting. Could Noom actually be working with Pokt? If so, Noom’s was the unidentified voice she’d heard at the party when she linked with the mudlark.

The implications seemed logical. The Authority on Earth was sincere about wanting to rejoin the planetary community of the Accord. It was the Cepheians and Skirni using Khurspex tech to take the Indra ships, and being used in turn, as they all schemed to advance their own ambitions.