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Chapter Twenty-Nine


Spin One


Although Janusz Lasko was a big man with long legs, even he had to increase his pace to keep up with Colonel Murphy’s long strides.

As they entered the evidence locker, Murphy warned, “We don’t want to spend a lot of time in here.”

Janusz blinked in surprise. “Why, sir? Is the air bad in this compartment?”

“No, but my whereabouts are clocked. So if we’re here too long, and somebody gets access to my locator records, they could wonder if we’re on to them.”

“‘On to them’?” Janusz repeated helplessly.

“Starting about half a year ago,” Murphy explained as he began checking the labels of the numbered boxes lining the grillwork shelves, “Vat started monitoring Lost Soldiers who displayed significant increases in wealth.”

“But sir, we have no money. Only goods.”

“Yes, but if you’ve dropped by any of the floating poker or crap games, you’ll see that there are always some people who can stake big pots with high-value goods.”

Janusz frowned again. “I thought that was just what they’d already won.”

“Eventually, yes, that’s how they line their pockets. But those pockets had to be deep enough to make their first big bets. We need to know why they had more to start with.”

“Sir, with all due respects, though I am not a gambler, I know this: by every report, it is Vat himself who has always had, as you say, the deepest pockets.”

Murphy smiled. “Indeed he has. And still does. That’s why he’s been the best person to watch the others. He’s got his hands in a lot of shady deals, and even more I’m sure I don’t know about. But either way, if it involves wealth, he hears about almost everything sooner or later.”

“So, you are setting a thief to catch a thief?”

“Something like that. Besides, Vat owes me. But none of the others who have those deep pockets owe anything to anyone . . . so far as we can tell. And that makes them a threat to our operations.”

“In what way, sir?”

Murphy shrugged. “Gamblers tend to have a high toleration for risk. Most seek it out, whether consciously or not.”

Janusz shook his head, perplexed as to the colonel’s point.

Murphy stopped checking the boxes and turned to face him directly. “Janusz, a person who’s willing to bet away the few goods they own is also more likely to take loans to fund those gambles.”

“Ah: you are worried that there are loan sharks among us.”

Murphy turned his head slightly—not a complete rejection of Lasko’s conclusion, but it foreshadowed a major caveat. “I’m not worried about loans among the Lost Soldiers; we could always control that if we have to. My concern is that some may be accepting help from the SpinDogs.”

Janusz let out his breath in a slow, taut sigh. “So, you are worried that one of the local factions might have, er, leverage over some of the men. Could pressure them to work as informers.”

“Or, conceivably, as saboteurs.”

Janusz frowned. It seemed impossible. He knew all the Lost Soldiers. Granted, few were devout, and fewer still had lofty consciences. But traitors? He shook his head. “Colonel, I find that hard to believe.” Or maybe my father was right: that I am too idealistic. Or as babunia said while patting my head, I am a good Catholic boy. But still . . . 

Janusz straightened. “There is not one of them who would stoop so low as to betray us.” He frowned. “Except for Vat, maybe. He is very clever, but he is also very . . . ” Jan struggled to find a tactful word, but gave up. “He is very selfish. And he often lives beyond the edge of our group because of his, er, preferences.”

Murphy stopped checking the contents of two of the boxes against the list he held. “You have a problem with Vat’s ‘preferences’?”

Janusz shrugged “His body is his business. I did not grow up thinking that way, but over the last several years—well, nothing else makes sense. So, no, sir. My only concern is this: How do you know Vat doesn’t build his wealth by taking things from this very locker?”

Murphy smiled at the younger man. “This is why I wanted you here, Janusz: because I knew you’d understand that if Vat is intentionally filing things here in misnumbered bins, those could be goods he’s impounded while investigating possible black marketeers.”

“But who are these black marketeers?”

“That’s need to know, Janusz.”

“Understood, sir. Where do we begin?”

* * *

Before they left the evidence room, Murphy had rummaged through most of the boxes and pulled contents from six of them. Janusz dutifully loaded the goods into the two duffel bags he’d brought for that purpose.

It was an odd assortment. Three weapons with copious amounts of ammunition but all of different types and calibers. There were also long-duration rations and jewelry that had originally come from the towns and even bodies of both R’Baku and surveyors. In one case, Murphy took an entire backpack filled with odds and ends ranging from compasses to mountaineering equipment to old magazines that went back as far as World War II. Janusz thought it a pity that the magazines would not last long; the paper on which they were printed had been aging rapidly ever since being liberated from the “super cosmolene” that had kept them intact for over a century and a half.

Murphy also pulled four—or was it five?—suits of cold weather survival clothing, one more suited for the desert, various sizes of web gear and boots, two different kinds of flares, six cartons of cigarettes, and an array of dried pharmaflora that were all reputed to increase one’s speed of thought, hands, and limbs.

Murphy frowned deeply when he discovered almost a dozen ampules of morphine. They had probably been taken from torpedoed Liberty ships that the Ktor had kept afloat long enough to ransack.

“This is very strange, sir,” Janusz said, glancing from one duffel bag to the other as they retraced their steps.

“How so?” asked Murphy as they reached the lockup’s secure hatch.

“Well, sir, black marketeers usually do not bother with individual items. Their profit is in securing a few large lots of identical goods. What you have taken is all very different and all in small numbers. How does Vat, or anyone else, expect to make a profit?”

Murphy nodded approvingly. “First, this is just a sampling to confirm or disprove the possibility of theft from this locker. But if anyone had contraband in that kind of bulk, they’d be very obvious. I suspect that the culprit has smaller lots and is selling individual items periodically. No one transaction generates a great deal of profit but, over time, that constant trickle could put a lot of wealth in someone’s pocket.”

Janusz lifted one eyebrow. “‘Someone’? So Vat isn’t the only suspect.”

“Not at all.”

Janusz frowned. “How many suspects are there?”

“Well, let’s see . . . Roughly how many Lost Soldiers are there right now?”

“I do not know exactly, sir, but not more than one hundred twenty.”

Murphy nodded. “That’s a very good guess. So, that makes about sixty suspects.”

Half of the men might do this?” Janusz breathed, amazed and horrified.

“No: half of them could do this. We just don’t know which one, or ones, are behind it.”

Janusz shook his head. “I am very glad I do not have to think through all these details the way you do, Colonel Murphy.”

Murphy smiled. “Well, there are perks. Now let’s close up and get out of here. I have a meeting with our number one suspect in half an hour.”

* * *

Murphy rapped his knuckles against the coaming of the recovery ward’s hatch. He leaned in with a smile. “I’m told the professor wants to speak with me?”

Vat was sitting up straighter in the bed, only a few bandages still plastered on his face. “Yes, but before we get to that, I want something.”

Murphy folded his arms. “No promises, but I’m all ears.”

Vat looked off into the distance, as if he could see some grand vista. “I want you to call me ‘Indy’ from now on.” He turned his head slightly so that his chin was at an oblique angle.

Murphy squinted before he discovered what he was supposed to see: a scar, almost exactly where Indiana Jones’s had been. “Well, I’ll be damned!”

“Well, you might be, but I certainly am damned to live with this face from now on. However, I’ll admit that, despite the rest of the carnage, this one little flaw is acceptable.”

Murphy shook his head. “I’ll only call you Indy if you change your name. Legally.”

Vat dropped the multiple folders he held at the ready. “Are you kidding me? You can’t even give me that?”

“I can, if you change your name.”

“Yeah . . . but damn it, my name isn’t Vat, either!”

“No, it’s not. So are you saying you want me to go back to calling you Victor Allen Thom—?”

Vat recoiled, palm upraised. “Okay. All right. No ‘Indy.’ Damn, you drive a hard bargain, Colonel.”

Murphy shrugged, moved to stand alongside the bed. “So what do you have?”

“A whole hell of a lot more than you did.” Vat had clearly not forgiven Murphy just yet. “There are, in point of fact, seven different character sets, two of which have major variations—enough so that you could almost call them separate languages.”

Murphy nodded. “I knew you were the guy for this job.”

“You didn’t know half of it,” Vat said, proud but also a little dismissive. “Do you care to guess how many languages are here?”

“I don’t dare,” Murphy replied.

“You’re damn right you don’t!” Vat exclaimed. “Ten! Ten different languages, each of which is represented or transliterated in at least two different character sets. One shows up in five!”

“How the hell did you even figure that out?”

“See,” Vat sighed, “this is why they don’t allow line grunts—even those wearing metal doodads on their shoulders—to get near the really important and complicated things. Like intelligence.”

“Vat,” Murphy said calmly, “intelligence was my subspecialty.”

Very ‘sub,’ I’ll bet,” Vat quipped.

Murphy raised an eyebrow.

“Okay, okay! Look, Colonel, think of me as a leopard. All my snark? Those are my spots. And I don’t always manage to hide them.”

“Apology accepted,” Murphy said his eyebrow creeping even higher. “This time.”

Vat clearly didn’t find any reassurance in Murphy’s largely unchanged expression, so he turned to the documents. “Getting back to how I figured everything out: you don’t want the full answer to that, Colonel—believe me. The short version is that after many very frustrating hours I came to the realization that three of these character sets mean the same things but are pronounced differently.”

“You mean like Mandarin and Cantonese?”

“Huh!” Vat exclaimed, genuinely surprised. “Maybe they do teach you something in intelligence school, after all.” He put up his hands in response to Murphy’s resurgent frown. “Sorry, sorry—that came out before I could call it back.”

“Then you’d better develop faster spot-hiding reflexes. Right now.” Murphy had no trouble maintaining an icy tone.

“Yep. Yes, sir. I get it. So anyhow, I then realized that some of the other character sets are ideograms and that what look like variations were later attempts to recover lost languages. Or at least what people during some eras thought were lost languages because they didn’t have access to all of the different scrolls and ancient tomes that I have.”

He stared at the folders and binders piled high around him. “I gotta tell you, Colonel, this is like some kind of archaeological mother lode, here. Who had the intelligence . . . Excuse me: who had the inspiration to make sure all this got saved, instead of being burned or turned into rolling paper?”

“Captain Cutter.”

Vat nodded soberly. “Not surprising. He’s a levelheaded guy. Slightly archaic ideas about sexual identity and choice but, for his time, pretty broad-minded. Anyhow, we owe him a huge debt of gratitude, because all this is laying out a story that’s pretty wild. Hell, I hardly know where to start.”

Murphy grabbed a chair and sat. “How about this: you start at the beginning.”

“Sir, I am not being a smart-ass . . . but I’m not sure where the beginning is, just yet. And I sure as hell don’t have the whole story. I’m not sure I ever will. That’s what happens when you’re working with languages where you only have a smattering of what was written in them, filled with forgotten references and layer upon layer of emendations.

“But this much is clear: there wasn’t just one group—eh, Exodate—of Ktor who came here. There were three. The last, which landed on Kulsis, was roughly six hundred and fifty years ago and their descendants are its current ruling class. Before that there was a much smaller group that came to R’Bak instead, because the First Exodate had turned Kulsis into an industrial powerhouse with comparable technology. In short, it was too strong for the Second Exodate to conquer.”

“Any indication when the First Exodate arrived?”

Vat shook his head. “See? The further back you go, the fuzzier it gets. As far as I can tell, it could be as little as twenty-five hundred years ago, or as much as five thousand. Maybe more. Maybe a lot more. But here’s the crazy thing: in every account, there are already humans on both Kulsis and R’Bak when the first Ktor arrived. And those native populations had already been here for a really long time.”

“At least you seem certain of that.”

Vat nodded. “Because that’s where over half the languages come from: back in those bygone days. There aren’t many details—mostly map fragments, references to other maps, things like that. But R’Bak had empires that rose and fell multiple times before the first Ktor ever set foot here.”

Murphy stared at the array of documents Vat was shuffling through: all completely incomprehensible to him. “Any idea how those first humans got here?”

Vat shook his head. “That’s another poser. From what I can tell, those native humans believe they came from here. Well, most of them did. But some of the really early scholars weren’t so sure. And they had good reason not to be.”

“Last time, you asked me to be more direct. Now, it’s you who’s being oblique.”

“Guilty as charged,” Vat snapped, “but when I do it, we call it ‘coy.’ And besides, it looks better on me.” He surveyed Murphy briefly. “Well, everything does.

“Anyhow the early scholars spent a lot of time referring to other races. I think they believed the whinaalani were intelligent.”

Murphy nodded. “That’s pretty much the vibe a lot of our guys got while working with them.”

“Yeah, but these old sages were convinced it goes beyond high animal intelligence. Way beyond really clever dogs, or even dolphins or apes.”

“Why do you say that?

“Because, according to the oldest documents, the whinaalani were called the Rememberers.”

“Sound like the pre-Ktoran humans used them as some kind of memory banks.”

“That’s as good a guess as any. But I don’t think it was the early humans who gave them that name. There’s another group of intelligent beings that are referred to and I don’t think they’re simply another alien race. They’re called by several names, but the two most frequent are ‘the Watchers’ and ‘the Visitors.’”

“So . . . ancient astronauts came to R’Bak?”

“No, Colonel. I think these aliens were the first beings that lived here. But they always remained apart from the others.”

Murphy started at Vat’s unequivocal use of the plural. “How many races are we talking about?”

“I’m not sure. In some documents, you can’t tell whether the author is talking about an intelligent or nonintelligent species. But that’s not the case with the Visitors, which suggests that even they weren’t native to R’Bak. And it seems they were called the Watchers because that’s what they did; they observed the other species.”

“Okay, but why?”

“Colonel, with all due respect, I’m doing a pretty good job as an amateur translator of ancient alien documents. But I’m no soothsayer; hell, I don’t even have a crystal ball. Because that’s what I think I would need. Although this”—he held up the sheet that Ogweln had left behind with Murphy—“has been the next best thing. Particularly when it comes to the Exodates.”

“So,” Murphy sighed, crossing his arms, “now that you’ve told me how much we don’t know, tell me what you do know about these three Exodates.”

“Well, actually, the Ktor have visited one or both of 55 Tauri’s stars at least four times. There may have been others, but if so, they weren’t mentioned. But one time wasn’t an Exodate: it was a pogrom.”

“What? Why?”

“You know how the Hound-Dogs are always warning about the all-wise and all-knowing ‘Death Fathers’?”

“Yes.”

“Well, that’s just what they are. But they’re real.” Seeing Murphy’s uncertain frown, Vat held up a hand. “I’ll explain that soon, but let me put the Death Fathers in order with the other Ktor arrivals, okay?”

Murphy nodded.

“So, ‘in the beginning,’ there were humans here and on Kulsis. They had a hard time getting beyond the Bronze Age, apparently, because back then even more and larger rocks got shoved in-system when the two stars approached periapsis. However, they’d clawed their way up to something approaching World War One technology when the First Exodate arrived here in a slower-than-light colony ship.

“My best guess is that they arrived between four thousand and three thousand years ago. They went straight for Kulsis and took it over in a matter of years.”

“Not hard to do when the people on the planet beneath you can’t reach you to fight back.”

Vat nodded. “That pretty much sums up what happened. A lot of the bigger cities got smacked with space rocks and the smaller ones cried ‘Uncle.’ Pacifying the locals and establishing their ‘dominion’ took a few centuries, though. And then they had a bunch of inter-Family wars—just because they’re Ktor, I guess.

“So it took a long time for the First Exodate to sort out who was in charge, which was necessary before they could redevelop their space tech to the point where it was practical to explore R’Bak. It’s unclear when they first got here, but it’s very clear when they discovered the almost magical pharmaflora.”

“I’m betting that made it into all the history books, both as an economic driver and a source of trade wars.”

“Intelligence school for the win, Colonel. And at some point those wars boiled over and they blasted themselves back to something like the Renaissance. They recovered pretty quickly, but once again, it was a long, hard climb back up to space.

“Sometime after they achieved that—say, between eight hundred and a thousand years ago—the forerunners of our very own Hound-Dogs show up.”

“The Second Exodate.”

“Yes, but it’s much, much smaller than the first one. Either that or not as many survived. At any rate, it seems they spent a while reconning the planets around Jrar and decided to avoid the rebooting shit show there.”

“Interesting choice,” Murphy mused.

“Yeah. On the one hand, it’s pretty clear they were far less numerous and had little, if any, technological edge. Reading between the lines, I’d say they were hoping to boost their tech to hold off the Kulsians. But something went wrong and less than three centuries after arriving here, the core Families of the Second Exodate either left R’Bak voluntarily, were pushed out, or some combination of the two.

“Meanwhile, back on Kulsis, the race to achieve dominion led the Families to start ignoring the Death Father edict never to use any technology that generates inter-system radio signatures.”

“Enter the Death Fathers,” guessed Murphy.

Vat touched his nose with his index finger. “It took about two centuries for them to show up, and it seems the Death Fathers don’t come to punish violators personally—they send their young-turk sons and daughters. Who descended like a school of marauding space-sharks on both Kulsis and R’Bak.

“Apparently, they didn’t use many nukes, if any, but they destroyed every political entity worthy of the title, and left just before the Searing that had been approaching. Which, in the absence of industrial era organization and mitigating technologies, finished the job they started.”

Murphy held up a hand. “Back up. What happened to the Second Exodate?”

Vat smiled. “Excellent question. Answer: not really sure. It was small, so maybe it was missed? Or maybe that’s where the Hound-Dogs learned to be so good at hiding?”

“Or the only ones who survived were those that already had those skills?”

Vat nodded. “Or the ones dirtside got whacked and the ones spaceside got overlooked. Frankly, it’s not entirely clear how much time separated the Death Fathers’ pogrom from the arrival of the Second Exodate. But at the end of the day, both systems were left in bad shape and Kulsis didn’t resume Harvesting until about eight hundred and fifty years ago.

“Two centuries later, the Third Exodate arrived. They had a decent population and an overwhelming edge in technology. They also brought a renewal of actual Ktor culture and genetic know-how, so they became the new nobility of Kulsis.”

“A little like the Mongols taking over the Chinese Empire.”

Vat nodded. “They reinitiated the Harvester fleets, built power, and promptly started waging war on each other. However, this bunch let the old local lords—their ‘satraps,’ now—shed most of the blood. After a generation or two, the descendants of the Third Exodate stabilized their power in the form of the oligarchic club known as the Overlords: the heads of the Families that prevail there today. Or so documents left behind by earlier Harvesters indicate. And thereby hangs the tale.”

“And it’s quite a tale.” Murphy nodded respectfully. “Thank you, Vat.”

Vat ran a hand through his hair. “Like I said, I’m still trying to get more than a basic understanding of the prevalent languages and a crude timeline assembled. Other than that, you now know just about as much as I do.”

“I doubt that very much,” Murphy said as he stood. “Which is why I’m going to get Timmy Uggs in here with a recorder before the week is out.”

“What for, sir?”

“So you can dictate everything down to the last detail, along with annotations indicating how confident or not you are of your different translations.”

“Why? Are you afraid I’m going to hold out on you?”

“No,” Murphy said. “I think this could prove to be crucial intelligence even to the people who left us here, including the Dornaani. If they had any of this data, it certainly didn’t shape how they prepared us for surviving in this system, and they were pretty damn serious about maximizing our chances. So I doubt this is general, or even restricted, knowledge among them. So it’s too important not to be recorded. Just in case.”

Vat nodded. “Ah, so you’re afraid that I’ll have an untimely demise.”

“Vat,” Murphy sighed, “I live every day fearing that fate is imminent for every single one of us. And now, for the SpinDogs and RockHounds as well.”

Vat’s eyebrows straightened and the facetious lilt went out of his voice. “Yes, sir. I’ll help Uggs every way that I can.”

“Thank you, Vat; I’m counting on it. Before I leave, did you turn up anything useful regarding contemporary R’Bak?”

Vat nodded, shuffled through his folders, extracted one. He extended it toward Murphy. “It seems there’s one other permanent dirtside facility besides R’Bak, but it’s not clear if it’s actually controlled by the Kulsians. It’s located on the narrowest part of the isthmus that connects the large northern and southern continents. It also provides direct access to both the Great Eastern and Great Western oceans. Being equatorial, it’s kind of like the Panama Canal meets Straits of Malacca. We heard it mentioned while we were in Ikaan-tel, and my Russian pal Artyom dubbed it Novy Malacca, which stuck.

“The heat there is punishing at the best of times and deadly during the Searing. The jungle around it grows like a thatch of giant weeds. It’s never been fully explored, and there are very few native tribes. Some are said to have devolved to the point where they’re no longer fully human.”

Murphy reached for the folder, but Vat held up his hand and imitated a late-night product hawker. “But wait: there’s more! As in: ruins. Really old ruins with deep caverns. There’s speculation that at some point, the Kulsian built a base down into them. Sure would make the Searing more livable. What’s less clear is who’s in control of it now—if anyone.”

He let the folder slip into Murphy’s hand. “Sir?”

“Yes?”

“Every once in a while, could you please call me Indy?”

Murphy shook his head slowly, walked to the hatchway, turned back. “Sorry, but I can’t do that . . . Indy.” He left.

As he passed the sentry that was Vat’s current guardian, he heard a muffled exclamation from the recovery ward behind him.

It sounded a great deal like, “Yesssss!!!!”


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