Cerce City, Cerce Prime, Cerce
By the time the Alyard dropped into normal space over Cerce, with Connie and the stash of ghostmakers and mines in its otherwise empty cargo holds, most of the remnants of Arany’s fleet had already returned and departed again. Perhaps they did have genuinely urgent business elsewhere, as the governor elegantly explained.
“They’re ducking Bellona,” Fontana said dryly. “Cowards.”
“It wasn’t cowardly, taking on four cruisers and actually destroying one,” Thecla pointed out, her tone just as dry. “None of their ships are advanced models. They’re all old and held together by wishful thinking. Even Eriuman vessels out-gun them.”
“Taking out any vessel and alerting them to our presence on the planet was not part of the plan,” Khalil said. “Of course she is upset with them.”
“Probably just as well they buggered off,” Fontana said. “There’s not enough ghostmakers to share, anyway.”
There was one ship that still lingered. The Yoxall’s captain, Natasa Garza, agreed to meet in the Governor’s building in Cerce City.
Bellona asked Khalil and Sang to go with her, plus Fontana, who had once been a free-stater and looked normal, while Thecla and Hayes with their biobot implants, tended to unsettle the free-staters. She would have preferred to have a nominal Karassian among them, only Vang made anyone uneasy if they weren’t used to him, while too many people bothered Aideen. Retha was a free-stater, but was as enclosed and challenged as the other two.
Connie dropped them down to the surface, chattering all the way about her friends on the Alyard. Sang had only recently released the AIs on the ship after vetting them one by one and adjusting their leashes. He let Connie interface with them and she was thrilled to have the company, even the dubious company of Karassians, who often puzzled her with their responses, for she did not fully understand the difference between artificial intelligence that was smart enough to learn and sentient computers, who were self-aware.
They landed on the roof of the Governor’s village building and were shown to the drop shaft that lowered them down through the crop fields at the top level, the garden below and the markets beneath. The shopping mall level was busy. Heads still turned to look at them as they drifted downward. Shoppers whispered and murmured to each other. Bellona had been recognized.
The apartment blocks were separated by parks and gardens. One complete floor was a giant pool, dotted with tiny islands and floating docks, where swimmers could rest when they wanted. Divers at the deep end peered through the transparent walls at them as they descended. One of them waved. Bellona didn’t wave back.
The governor’s administration took up two whole floors of the vertical village, the lower one opening out onto the rest of the city. The sub-floors housed food processing levels, manufacturing and industries, with their environmental wastes absorbed and reprocessed by scrubbers and filters at the very bottom of the building.
As the transparent walls of the village absorbed sunlight and generated energy, the building was completely self-sufficient and had minimal impact upon the urban landscape.
They stepped out of the drop shaft on the second floor and the guide took them to the Governor’s office, threading though administration rooms and hushed waiting areas.
Governor Alberda greeted them personally, in the antechamber outside his office. “I heard you raided the Eriuman supply depot on Criselda,” he said, with a warm smile. He was a robust man with a full head of gray hair and a full beard to match. His eyes twinkled. They were a nice dark brown, the eyes of a much younger man.
“The raid was not without its problems. Did the person who told you about it mention that?” Bellona asked.
“Captain Garza is in my office,” Alberda said. “She barely escaped the venture. Shall we go in and discuss it?”
Bellona’s gaze was caught by the view through the walls behind Alberda. It was late afternoon and the white sun was almost touching the horizon. It was a mild, crisp day here. She moved toward the window.
The first time Governor Alberda had invited Bellona to call on him, he had toured her through the village, pointing out its features like any proud parent. She had found this view from the window of his office more distracting. Cerce City, like most of Cerce itself and any of the free states she had so far visited, were completely unlike settled, sedate Cardenas and the Eriuman worlds.
There were no roads anywhere on Cerce. The city, which had begun life as a village, had not stepped outside the original footprint of the village. Instead, they had built upward, creating vertical villages that were self-sufficient, adjoined by parks, paths and numerous waterways featuring the black, still waters of Cerce. Flitters and the tiny little personal pods the Cercians called dragonflies were the only form of private transport. Everyone else walked, or if they needed to arrive more quickly, used the link pods—light rails lifted a foot above the grass, with two- or four-man pods attached to the links that anyone could step into anywhere along the routes.
The still, glittering canals and pools ran through a green landscape that looked almost untouched. Towers rose above them, some of them dripping with greenery, too. Almost buried among the bushes and tall grasses were individual buildings. Most of them were municipal in purpose. Toward the outskirts lay the single-family dwellings that made up the original village. They were being gradually replaced by vertical villages.
It was a peaceful scene that reminded Bellona, as it had the first time, that appearances were often deceiving. Cerce City was the principal city of Cerce. Cerce itself was a leader among equals. Most of the free states followed Cerce’s lead. That made Governor Lin Alberda more than a simple governor. He held sway over the free states.
And now he was hosting Natasa Garza and her remnant captains.
Alberda stood politely to one side and Bellona gave him a stiff smile. “The view is spectacular.”
“Far more interesting than the vast wastes of space, I’m sure,” Alberda said, just as politely. He stepped back and waved her toward his office.
Natasa Garza was on her feet, waiting for them in the cavernous room. She was a petite woman who crackled energy. She kept her red-blonde hair in a short, precise cap. Her tall spacers’ boots were strapped, matching the double strapped holster on her thigh that normally held her one-handed ghostmaker.
She had an air of competence and contained impatience that rarely shifted. Bellona found her to be a hard but realistic decision maker. She had been Ben Arany’s right hand man for a decade. It had been sheer luck she had been dirtside elsewhere when Arany and his people had been destroyed by the Karassian city killer device on Shavistran.
Since then, Natasa had poured her considerable energy into rounding up the few surviving ships and crews, trying to build a second fleet to replace Arany’s. The destruction of Shavistran, though, had removed the bravest and smartest captains in three fury-filled minutes. Natasa was fighting the odds.
She was still a good person to have onside. Her fleet was small and ailing, yet it was more than Bellona could currently call her own. Bellona nodded at her.
Natasa threw out her hand. “You didn’t say the Eriumans would hunt us down!”
Bellona paused from selecting a seat among the many comfortable ones arranged around the low table. “Good afternoon, Natasa,” she said mildly.
“Natasa,” Khalil said in acknowledgement.
Natasa nodded at him. “Khalil Ready.”
There were three other people already seated and waiting. Two of them Bellona remembered from previous meetings. The men were both from Natasa’s own ship, the Yoxall. They wore the typical spacers uniform—leather jacket, high boots, short hair and holsters for weapons, all of them currently empty. Nothing about their features hinted at their home worlds. The third person was a woman with long legs neatly crossed, golden hair severely fastened to the back of her head and lovely, rare, blue eyes. An ugly, thick red scar ran over the corner of her eye, drawing it down and marring her prettiness. She stared at Bellona, even when Bellona met her gaze. She did not look happy. None of Natasa’s people did.
Alberda guided everyone to a chair each, his hand on shoulders and backs. He was a smooth host. Soon, everyone was seated. Alberda didn’t prolong the matter by offering refreshments. He pressed his hands together. “I offer you the neutrality of my office to discuss this matter. There seems to be a difference of opinion.”
“If you call running off and abandoning us on the surface of Criselda with a cache of stolen weapons on us as merely one’s opinion, then yes,” Bellona said. “We differ by a large degree.”
“You said we wouldn’t be spotted,” Natasa said hotly.
“You weren’t spotted,” Sang said. “Not until you opened fire upon the Titus. What did you think they would do? Wave at you?”
Natasa scowled. “Our mission has always been the preservation of free space. Eriuman cruisers and destroyers are counter to that mission. You really think I would give up the opportunity to take one out, when it was sitting right there in front of me?”
“The raid on Criselda was not your mission,” Bellona shot back.
Natasa drew in a breath that made her nostrils flare. “I don’t take orders from you.”
“You agreed to help with the raid. You didn’t help.”
The two men sitting behind Natasa stirred. The one with no chin and large teeth spoke up. “Does that mean you won’t give us our share of the ghostmakers?”
Bellona hesitated, caution flooding her. “I can spare five of each.”
“Five?” Natasa repeated. “Out of five hundred? What are you going to do with four hundred and ninety-five ghostmakers? There’s maybe a dozen of your Ledanians. I have a dozen ships and they all have crews.” Her mouth curled down. “I was warned not to trust you. I should have listened.”
Khalil leaned forward. “Who told you not to trust her?” he asked, his tone quiet and reasonable. “Karassians? Eriumans?”
“I did,” said the blue-eyed woman. Her voice was a pleasant contralto.
“Who are you?” Bellona demanded.
Natasa waved her hand impatiently. “Isabelle Lykke.”
“A name means nothing,” Sang said.
Lykke smiled. There was no warmth in it. “I am from Alkeides.” Her gaze came back to Bellona. “You’ve heard of the system. I know you have.”
Bellona frowned. “I’ve heard the name.”
Sang pressed his slender fingers against her forearm. It was a silent warning. “The Homogeny annexed Alkeides, two standards ago.”
“It’s called Felis now,” Lykke said. Her blue eyes, so wonderfully different from the browns and blacks most humans had, glittered like hard jewels. “Thanks to you.”
Bellona’s guts tightened. “Me?”
“She means Xenia,” Khalil said.
“Xenia was a Karassian construct,” Sang said, his voice almost strident. “She was artificially imposed upon Bellona’s memories. The Karassians are who you need to thank, Isabelle Lykke. Bellona had nothing to do with your worlds’ misfortunes.”
Lykke’s gaze didn’t shift away from Bellona. Bellona reconsidered the scar on her face. Its origins were obvious, now. “It was very bad for you and yours, then,” she said.
“Bellona, no,” Khalil said quickly. “Don’t engage. Don’t take this aboard. It wasn’t you.”
“What did Xenia do?” Bellona asked Lykke.
Lykke blinked. “You don’t remember?” For the first time, something other than hostility showed. She was surprised.
“I just finished saying that,” Sang said dryly.
“You fired the rockets,” Lykke said. “I watched you do it.”
Bellona breathed, striving for calm, while her heart slammed in her chest. “You actually saw me…fire rockets?”
Lykke licked her lips. “At the power plant. We were winning. Beating the Karassians back.” Her mouth curled down in a moue of disgust. “They are useless fighters when they’re not hiding behind the hulls of their ships. On the ground, we were in control. Then you came along.”
“Xenia came along,” Sang corrected. “Bellona doesn’t even look like Xenia.”
“You deny it was your hands holding the knives, that cut up my comrades?” Lykke demanded.
Bellona swallowed. “I remember none of this.” Sweat prickled on her back and under her arms.
Khalil’s gaze was steady. There was a silent warning in his dark eyes. She couldn’t read it, although she could guess what he was not saying. She was letting control of this meeting slip away from her. She had walked in here with the upper hand and indignation on her side. Now, she was the enemy in the room.
Fontana was watching her with pity in his eyes. He, at least, understood. So did Khalil. They had both been part of the Appurtenance Services Inc’s Ledania program. Their memories had been minced, too.
It would be smarter to shift the subject. A positive outcome was not possible here, for she had been Xenia and was guilty of the acts Lykke had witnessed. “Why did I fire rockets, if I was already winning against your resistance?” she asked, instead.
Lykke shook her head. “You only won for a while. Only, you were one, against the dozens of us holding the line, preventing you from entering the Chairman’s palace.”
“Wait,” Fontana said sharply. “You just said there were Karassian ground troops. Weren’t they fighting with her?”
Lykke glanced at him. It was the merest flicker of her eyes. “They hung back.”
“Of course they did,” Fontana said, disgust rich in his voice. “Xenia had to go it alone and when your greater numbers began to tell, she used the rockets on your local power generator, instead?”
Lykke nodded. “The reactor was our only source of power. Without it, we were doomed. You knew that. You used it against us.”
The pattern of a new settlement was the same for any world. There was always a Landing, a first village, that was more temporary camp than permanent location. Reactors were cheap and quick to assemble. They supplied power for the first hundred years or so of a world’s history, while more permanent power sources from hydro and geothermal sources were developed. As soon as a world and its cities could build self-sustaining, dispersed sources that drew power from temperature variations and solar collector windows and walls, and could manufacture the power cells to store it, they could stop draining the natural resources.
It was a common development pattern that everyone understood. Xenia had used it against the Alkeidians.
Bellona could remember none of it.
“The fallout ruined the city,” Lykke added. “It forced us to evacuate to the mountains, which are unscalable. The Chairman surrendered two days later. And now we are Felis.” Her mouth turned down again.
“I’m sorry,” Bellona said.
Khalil shook his head.
“You have to understand…it was not me who did those things to your people,” Bellona added.
Lykke’s expression didn’t change. “Yet you ask us to trust you.”
Natasa had her arms crossed, a scowl on her face. “Free-staters would be better off returning to their ship cities and staying there. We all prospered when we were just explorers looking to plant the next null-space marker.”
Alberda stirred. “I happen to like living dirtside and if we descend into the old arguments, we will be here all day. Natasa, if your family had not settled on Atticus, they would all be dead next to Ben Arany. So would you.”
“Ben wasn’t on his ship when they used the city killer on him,” Natasa said flatly.
Even Alberda could not direct the meeting, Bellona realized. There were too many hard feelings swirling the room. Most of them were built upon philosophical differences that had calcified into rich prejudices.
She sighed and got to her feet. “I think we should halt this now. No one is listening properly. Natasa, I can give you seven ghostmakers and a dozen mines. Take the offer, for it is a full half of the stash we took off Criselda. The information you gave us about the supplies was wrong.”
Natasa’s mouth opened. She didn’t speak. Her brows rose high.
“Isabelle Lykke,” Bellona added. “You have had a hard time of it lately. Considering me your enemy is a waste of time. Do your research. Look up a Karassian enterprise called Appurtenance Services Inc. Khalil will give you some resources to get you started if you ask nicely. That will point you toward who you can really blame.”
“The Eriuman news feeds said you took five hundred ghostmakers!” Natasa protested.
“I should ask a Bureau puppet for reliable sources?” Lykke added.
“He’s one of them, too,” Natasa added, glancing at Fontana.
“Ledanian?” Lykke said, shocked.
Khalil sighed.
One of Alberda’s aides hurried into the room and bent to murmur in his ear. He frowned.
Natasa nodded. “What I would like to know, Bellona Cardenas, is what gives you the right to speak on behalf of us? You’re Eriuman and you fought for the Karassians. You sleep with the Bureau. Yet you say you are fighting to preserve the free worlds. And you ask us to trust you. Why should we?”
Sang lurched to his feet, heated indignation making his jaw flex and his eyes to glitter. Natasa swiveled to confront him. “Android?” she enquired with a polite tone.
Alberda raised his hand. “A moment,” he said mildly.
Everyone looked at him. Alberda indicated the aide. “The news just broke. Erium has annexed the binary system of Ashima and pronounced it a new Eriuman territory.”
Bellona met Natasa’s eyes. “You’re running out of time. There is no one else who can do what I will do to hold the Homogeny and the Republic back. There is no one who has my resources.” She waved toward Khalil, Sang and Fontana. “My understanding of the enemy is unique. So are my skills. That is why you should trust me.”