CHAPTER FIVE
Adya had to use her implant to make herself sleep, and in the morning Zee still hadn’t contacted her. She had a whole brigade of autonomous agents out sifting the Miranda data and comm networks for traces of him—but she suspected Daslakh might be helping Zee evade detection, and wasn’t really surprised when they found nothing.
One thing she wasn’t worried about was his physical safety. Miranda’s ocean rescue service was very efficient, and Zee was in excellent condition. Wherever he was, he was there by choice and presumably would come back when he decided to.
If he decided to.
Adya couldn’t really blame him for being upset at what she’d said. Somehow, without even realizing it, she had accepted the role her parents had assigned her. Of course she had a duty to bond with someone from an up-and-coming family, to repair the Elso balance sheets and continue the lineage.
She hated it. The very thought of losing Zee was almost physically painful. But the thought of seeing this great house and all its treasures sold off, her parents reduced to cranky in-laws living in Sundari’s spare guest room, the name Elso vanishing from Miranda history—that hurt almost as much. Her family might be irritatingly narrow-minded and hidebound, but it was still her family.
To keep herself from fretting, Adya fell back on a favorite tactic and immersed herself in something intellectually challenging. In this case, trying to figure out who was waging economic warfare against the Elsos. She found her favorite chaise lounge in the rooftop garden, tried to relax, and connected to the household network to begin her research.
Her goal was actual evidence: something to convince her parents, and—ideally—to use as leverage against whoever was doing it. The poor performance of their investments, and the loan calls which put them at risk of bankruptcy were suspicious, but still barely within the boundaries of justifiable business practices.
She focused on the incidents of “random bad luck” which had damaged the family fortune. The black hole plant accident definitely looked suspicious, but the security contractors in the Synchronous Ring were investigating very methodically, and their reply to her inquiries made it clear they didn’t want any meddlers from Miranda butting in. Besides, she couldn’t imagine conducting any kind of effective investigation from sixty thousand kilometers away.
The rumors about the sea farm products and Lunar influence in the entertainment were concentrated within Miranda, and she could dig into them personally. All were anonymous, of course, and she would need considerably more than just vague suspicions to get the family in charge of Miranda’s data networks to let her violate that anonymity. Her father was a magistrate, and could probably issue a discovery order—but Achan Elso would never do that, not when he had a personal stake in the affair.
Adya identified the earliest appearance of the rumors on Miranda data networks, and studied them. Both the seafood rumors and the Lunar meme rumors were very well crafted. They seemed spontaneous and authentic. Either they were from real Miranda residents upset about something . . . or they were the work of a master influencer.
The Security Service might have information about the incidents—at least enough for her to see if they looked genuine. Adya started to send out a ping but stopped herself.
This would be better in person. The Security Service might know some things they didn’t want to send over an open link, no matter how well encrypted. And her long quest across the Solar System chasing down a myth had demonstrated to Adya that people—well, humans and other biologicals—became a lot more helpful if you were standing there right in front of them in the physical universe.
She rode a bubble from her family’s house to Ksetram, the most beautiful of Miranda’s floating cities. It had been built by the long-gone Theocracy as a single unit, rather than growing incrementally over time. Ksetram’s architecture was all based on arcane techno-mystic symbols. The city itself was laid out as a series of concentric polygons surrounding the central sphere which had once been the supreme temple of Mira, the Theocracy’s digital god. The sphere was nested in a triangle, surrounded by a square, then a pentagon, then a hexagon . . . ending with a nine-sided outer ring sixteen kilometers from side to side. Oddly shaped lagoons filled the spaces between the polygons, and the broad streets were lined by towers, pyramids, domes, and stupas, all metal-coated diamond, the shapes and colors arranged according to mathematical ratios.
The whole place had been designed to hold five million humans: the techno-priests, acolytes, and lay bureaucrats of the Theocracy; plus families, service workers, and a whole cadre of artists and performers dedicated to praising and glorifying Mira (and the Theocratic regime in general, of course). Those ambitious dreams had never been realized. At its peak Ksetram had boasted barely three million inhabitants, and now less than half that number walked the broad avenues or lived in the golden pyramids. Not even the richest or most extravagant of the Sixty Families cared to maintain extra bureaucrats in Ksetram if they could avoid it.
Adya had always liked visiting Ksetram. She found the empty plazas and vine-covered towers appealing, in a melancholy way, and she enjoyed deciphering the mathematical patterns of the buildings. Once she figured it out, navigating in Ksetram was almost intuitive for her.
The Miranda Security Service was headquartered in a flat-topped blue pyramid a hundred meters high, located on the hexagonal band along with all the other major government departments. The Sanrak-Sakan family, which ran the Security Service as a loss leader for their insurance empire, didn’t waste gigajoules on gates and guards. The building could sniff out any weapons or explosives on people approaching, and the smart-matter furniture in the lobby doubled as a defense system.
So Adya walked calmly into Security Service headquarters without any need to stop. As soon as her foot touched the bottom of the ramp leading to the big trapezoidal entryway, a bright message appeared in her vision. “miranda security service HQ is a ZERO-PRIVACY area. all activity and communication are monitored and may be recorded. access to recordings and other data is governed by miranda legal code 8966G section 3B.12C.4K. please adjust your emissions before entry.”
Adya put all her comms on dark mode, then asked aloud, “I need to speak with someone about financial crimes.”
In response a bright blue pathway appeared in her visual field, leading her through some large, empty corridors to the building’s central atrium. In the middle of the atrium lift tubes reached all the way to the top, but the glowing blue line led Adya to a small lounge area next to a fountain, where air jets made the spouting water into an animated sculpture of a muscular human holding up a sword.
Just a couple of seconds after Adya seated herself in one of the smart-matter chairs, the air of the atrium came alive as half a dozen uniformed figures jumped down to the lobby level from the open galleries above. In Miranda’s lazy gravity some of them took nearly a minute to fall to the ground, where they landed with about as much effort as an Earth resident jumping off a chair.
She was a little startled to get such a response, and for a panicky moment she reviewed her personal history, just to make sure she hadn’t done anything on Mars or Summanus worth extraditing her off Miranda. But as seven Security Service officers approached close enough for their personal tags to appear in her field of vision, Adya relaxed.
They were all mid-level administrators rather than armed-response cops or interrogators. Thankfully, none were Sanrak-Sakan family members themselves, which saved Adya much tedious chitchat and potential embarrassment. Four were human, two cephalopods, and one chimp. All seemed to be hurrying to greet her, and the humans were definitely smiling. Their exposed skin ranged from cool green to excited pink.
“Good day, Miss Elso!” said the first one to reach her, whose virtual tag identified her as Atira Kaval, Deputy Assistant Director of Offworld and Tourist Security. “The building mentioned you were visiting and I thought I’d come down and say hello.”
“Oh, ah, thank you. You’re very kind. I was just—”
Others gathered around, their virtual tags overlapping in her vision. Taras Vatha, Assistant Coordinator for Emergency Response Planning; Pata Jakaran, Deputy Defense Liaison; Asam Aghea, Major Event Security Coordinator; Niya Manam, Scheduling and Assignments Planning Assistant; Kei Kashiki, Deputy Administrator for Communications; Yukan Notako, Chief Armorer; and Mgonjwa Sokwerevu, Financial Crimes Investigator.
They crowded around, making open-palm greeting gestures.
“So good to meet you!”
“Glad to help with anything you need.”
“Heard about your adventures—so exciting!”
“Big fan of your sister!”
At that, everything clicked into a new configuration in Adya’s mind. These Security Service people had all come down to meet her because of Kavita.
The sudden feeling of annoyance she felt at that realization more or less cancelled out Adya’s social anxiety, and her childhood training took over. Shifting her skin to a pale blue-green, Adya smiled and nodded politely, just as she would have responded to guests she didn’t know at one of her father’s dinner parties for Coalition members.
Yes, she was Kavita’s full clone. Yes, it was rather amusing how her sister loved to attract attention while Adya preferred to avoid it. Yes, she had just gotten back from a journey all over the Solar System in search of a mythical artifact. No, she didn’t find it. No, she probably wouldn’t be continuing her search. Yes, Kavita was really like that. Yes, she would be happy to convey their personal regards to her sister.
Among the gushing Kavita fans Adya picked out the one Security Service officer who didn’t seem interested in her proximity to fame. Officer Sokwerevu, the chimp, looked as puzzled as Adya felt at all the attention.
“Actually, I believe Officer Sokwerevu is the one I need to speak with first,” said Adya. “I’ve got some problems I hope he can help me solve.”
“Of course, of course,” said Atira Kaval, glancing quickly around at the others. “Business takes precedence. I’m sure the Financial Crimes unit will get to the bottom of whatever is wrong.”
She herded the others away from Adya and Sokwerevu, and they all jumped back up the atrium to their respective offices. The chimp waited until the others were gone, then beckoned to Adya. “We can talk over there,” he said, and pointed to a conference room at one side of the atrium.
Adya followed, and Officer Sokwerevu made the wall of the conference room opaque. He spread his hands wide. “Zero-privacy area. The building hears everything and archives it all. Safer for everyone.”
“I understand. I wanted to ask about some problems my family has been having with some of our businesses. They look like deliberate attempts at financial manipulation, and I was wondering if your department can help me get to the bottom of what’s going on.”
“Depends. Financial Crime investigates fraud, mostly.” Sokwerevu made grasping gestures. “People getting gigs under false pretenses, market manipulation by provable deception, abuse of micropayments, that kind of stuff.”
“This may qualify. I believe someone is spreading false stories about products my family invested in.”
“Bad reviews and urban legends aren’t crimes.” Unlike most biologicals in Miranda, Officer Sokwerevu had no chromatophores in his skin. His fur was dyed a tasteful blue-green, but everything including his eyes stayed the same color from moment to moment. It didn’t bother Adya—any more than Zee’s permanent light-brown color did—but she wondered if the Financial Crimes investigator used it to keep people off-balance in personal interviews.
“What about getting paid to write bad reviews and spread urban legends?”
The chimp drummed his fingertips against each other thoughtfully. “Possibly. It would take some digging.”
Adya showed him all the negative information about defective sea-farm products and the rumors about Lunar propaganda. “It all started around the same time. That can’t just be coincidence.”
“Really hard to prove criminal intent. You’d do better to sue.”
“I would—if I could find out who is doing it!”
“My job is to enforce Miranda’s laws, not to help the Sixty Families wage war with each other by wrecking the economy.”
“I’m trying to do the same thing. My father used to employ scores of people—biologicals, mechs, even some collective intelligences. Now, nobody works for him. How does that help Miranda?”
Sokwerevu stroked his left hand over the back of his right in a gesture of sympathy, but his face looked grim. “The Security Service investigates specific acts breaking specific laws. Right now it sounds like your family has had a run of bad luck and maybe someone’s making it worse by spreading gossip. That’s all. Now, maybe you know the Sanrak-Sakans and can get me fired, or maybe your sister’s fans here in the Service will give me sixty kinds of entropy for not helping you, but I know my job. You don’t have enough of a complaint for me to start an investigation.”
“I would never do anything like that!”
“Sorry. Dealing with the Sixty Families is sometimes complicated. Please—keep me informed if anything else happens. Seriously.” He put both hands on his heart.
Adya kept herself properly blue. “I understand, and I’m sorry to take up your time. Good day.”
As she made her way to the exit her skin churned a muddy swirl of colors—red anger, indigo sadness, orange frustration. She took a moment to compose herself before stepping outside.
She was halfway across the open plaza in front of the Security Service pyramid when she became aware of footsteps behind her, the wide-spaced double clack of someone moving in long bounds. After a couple of seconds Atira Kaval, the Deputy Assistant Director of Offworld and Tourist Security, had caught up with Adya and matched her pace, skin pink with excitement.
“Your interview with Sokwerevu didn’t go very well,” she said.
Zero-privacy area indeed, Adya thought. Perhaps it was for the best that she hadn’t gone into detail about Elso family financial problems. “I have a problem but he doesn’t think it’s actually a criminal matter. I suppose he’s right.”
“You’ve been off Miranda for quite a while,” said Kaval. “That might put your problem under Offworld and Tourist Security—my section.” She glanced around and leaned closer, her skin now practically crimson. “I’d be honored to help Kavita’s family any way I can. I can feel the energy right now.”
The Adya Elso who had left Miranda on an extended research trip would have politely declined. The Adya who had dealt with a quintet of professional criminals—and spent considerable time in the company of terrible role models like Pelagia and Daslakh—didn’t hesitate. “That would mean a lot to me, and my entire family,” she said, willing herself to a warm olive color. “Thank you.”
Pelagia’s trip to Taishi took two hundred and twenty hours. The actual voyage was quite boring. To save propellant she relied heavily on the launch laser at Miranda and the braking laser at Taishi, which meant she was riding on rails the whole way like a dumb payload, with no opportunity to show off her piloting skills.
She fought off boredom by spending the transit time doing “training”—her private rationalization for immersing herself in shoot-’em-up entertainments for a hundred and eighty hours. Naturally she kept a little window in her sensorium open to keep tabs on her surroundings.
Twenty hours out from Taishi, Pelagia sent out all her maintenance drones to get her hull spruced up inside and out. They cleaned away dust and scrubbed the patches discolored by atmospheric gases, patched up micrometeorite impacts, neutralized her surface charge, and generally got her looking shipshape.
The only damage Pelagia’s drones left strictly alone were the blackened starbursts surrounding fresh metal—the scars of laser hits she’d taken while helping repel raiders at Danqui hab, thirty years earlier. Those burn marks and the discreet line of kill silhouettes at her nose were Pelagia’s badges of honor—and her professional résumé.
Taishi was a big habitat complex: six twenty-kilometer rotating cylinder habs arranged in a hexagon fifty kilometers across, with a big lumpy zero-gee manufacturing and docking core in the center. All of it was held in place by long tensegrity struts of carbon fiber and diamond, and over the years micro-habs and specialized facilities had grown on the struts like barnacles. This far out from the Sun there wasn’t much point to having solar panels, just radiator fins and a micro black hole power plant to run the launch lasers and keep the forty million biologicals who lived in Taishi from freezing.
The whole complex was parked about half an AU sunward of Uranus. There, Uranus’s gravity and the Sun’s distant pull created a stable spot where the hab could maintain its position by careful management of the solar wind and balancing its launch and recovery of payloads.
As the gateway to the Uranus system, Taishi was uniquely important, much more so than its counterparts at the other planets. The sideways planet and its inner moons were very hard for incoming spacecraft to rendezvous with. Ships unwilling to go screaming through the planet’s atmosphere, or engage in a long, complicated series of moon encounters to get lined up on the proper orbit, all had to stop at Taishi, or its dark sister Huihou, on the opposite side of Uranus’s sphere of influence.
In addition to handling nearly all the traffic between the Uranian worlds and the rest of civilization, the two gateway habs also served a lot of traffic within Uranus’s sphere. The outer swarm of habs orbiting in the plane of the Solar System ecliptic had just as much trouble sending beings and cargo to the moons and habs around Uranus itself as any other body in the Solar System. In energy terms it was easier for a payload from the Ecliptics to reach Taishi or Huihou, then transfer to an orbit dropping down to Miranda or Uranus itself.
When Pelagia reached zero relative velocity near Taishi, she pinged the address for the mercenary company. “I’m Pelagia. We spoke earlier about a military contract. I’m here—where do you want me to dock?”
“Multipurpose Bay 453 North. Clamp on at external hatch 4A.”
The Multipurpose Bay was a big pressurized box on the pylon which formed one edge of the hexagon. Pelagia found the correct hatch and locked on. Then she waited. Ten minutes passed with no contact from her employer, which was baffling. She was on the verge of pinging again when something knocked on her forward hatch.
It was a combat bot, or maybe a mech—an armored ball with four limbs, a laser emitter, and a rack for external munitions. At the moment the rack was empty and its surface was safety green.
“Yes?” Pelagia asked.
“This unit is part of Leiting. Is your interior space secure?”
“Yes—which is why I don’t let strange bots inside me. Proof, please.”
She instantly got an electronic message from her prospective boss, verifying the bot’s identity as part of a collective intelligence. Pelagia responded by opening the outer door, but kept the inner airlock hatch clamped shut. Once the outer hatch closed behind the bot, she said, “You can talk to me from here. Why the secrecy?”
Isolated from the rest of its collective, the bot was sub-Baseline, but still intelligent enough to respond interactively. “We have been hired for a highly secret operation. Any hint of what we are doing could compromise the entire mission. Only Leiting will know the objective until the operation actually begins. If this is not acceptable to you, this is your last opportunity to decline the contract and depart.”
“Tell me what I can expect to get paid, and then I’ll tell you if I’m in or not.”
“For a combatant of your size and capability, the offer is five million gigajoule-equivalents.”
“For what length of time?”
“The primary mission should take between fifty and one hundred standard days, including transit times. There may be extension contracts after that time frame.”
Five million gigs for a hundred days. About half a gig per second. That was a very good rate. Almost too good—the heavy emphasis on secrecy and the relatively short time frame argued against any kind of security or escort mission. This sounded more like a raid or an assault, and hiring mercenaries for that kind of work often meant the client didn’t want to risk their own forces in a dangerous operation.
Pelagia didn’t mind risk. In her philosophy, a life with no danger meant no scope for excellence. “Okay, count me in. When do we jump off?”
“You must commit to absolute operational security now. No unmonitored communications of any kind from this moment.”
“Done.” The bot sent her a code key which she used to link into the secure network set up by Leiting in the rented Multipurpose Bay. The first thing through the hard connection was her contract, a semi-autonomous document empowered to do some low-level negotiation and customizing. Pelagia exchanged first refusal on any follow-on jobs for a share in entertainment and merchandising license rights.
Section VI of the contract included the agreement that Pelagia would be under military law from the moment of signing. The relevant code of military justice was the same one she had followed back in her days in the Silver Fleet organization. It allowed for summary execution for certain offenses, including security violations which might, in the opinion of the commander, put the mission or the safety of combatants in jeopardy. Pelagia had only contempt for loudmouths who put themselves or their comrades in danger, so she didn’t mind that clause in the slightest.
Only when the legal work was done did Pelagia get to speak to Leiting face to face, so to speak. The collective intelligence appeared in her sensorium using the animated image of the ancient General Leiting—at least, Leiting as he had commonly been depicted in Fifth and Sixth Millennium art: a tall, lean figure in flowing black robes trimmed in red, with long white hair streaming in the wind. Pelagia had seen some of the few surviving video snippets of the real man, and in those he was disappointingly short and bald. She preferred imaginary Leiting.
“All right, I’m all locked in. Now can you tell me when the rock is going to drop?”
“The operation will commence at some point between one and two standard weeks from now. You may use the time until then for arming and preparation, and can borrow against your pay for munitions and relevant expenses. You must be at Condition One in one hundred seventy hours. Other units will be arriving during that interval. Once they have signed on you may communicate freely within this network.”
“Who do I take orders from?”
“At present, only Leiting. When the operation begins you will be assigned to your unit commander.”
“How big a force are you putting together?” Pelagia asked.
“That information is not available at this time.”
“By ‘not available’ do you mean you don’t know, or you don’t want to tell me?”
“You have no need to know.”
Pelagia controlled the urge to undock and launch the bot out of her airlock into deep space. “You’re a collective intelligence. I’m curious: Have you ever managed subordinates who weren’t part of your own mind?”
“You have no need to know that, either.”
“I’ll take that as a ‘no.’ Look, I’ve spent six decades as a merc and a freelancer, and I’ll share some of my experience with you: if you act like everyone’s going to betray you, one of them probably will. Trust breeds trust.”
“The client insists on absolute secrecy. Leiting will consider your advice.”
“Well, have fun. I’ll be here keeping my blowhole shut.” She opened the outer airlock door and watched the bot leave. As soon as it was out she slammed the door shut again, and then turned her attention to the secure comm network.
At the moment it had just over a hundred active users, but most of them were mechs. Pelagia sifted through the user info to find the two dozen biologicals. Eight were chimp combat engineers, eleven were dolphin special-forces operators, and five were ships like Pelagia.
In fact, one of those five was a ship very like Pelagia—another orca cybership from the same yard, same construction series, named Repun. The two of them had even served together in the Silver Fleet. Pelagia’s employment with that unit had ended very abruptly, with a considerable amount of ill will on both sides.
Repun had even been on the receiving end of some high-energy ill will from Pelagia, though evidently none of the damage had been irreparable. Pelagia decided to see if she was the sort to hold a grudge, and opened a private link.
“Pelagia! It’s been ages! I never expected to find you on a job like this. Last I heard you were hauling passengers.”
“I got bored with that. Nice to hear from you again, too. What has life been sending you?”
“Strong waves. Took me five years of giving all my earnings to the Fleet to pay off the repair bill after somebody slagged my primary drive. Since then I’ve been doing a lot of repo work.”
“Sorry about the drive. Call it a lucky shot. You were chasing me.”
“Most people just send in a letter of resignation. When you start lobbing torpedoes you can hardly complain if people shoot back.”
“I don’t like being cheated,” said Pelagia. “I told all of you the senior staff were skimming off the top before sharing the pay. You should have listened.”
“If you’re being cheated you go to court.”
“Maybe you go to court. I take what I’m owed, and I did. Not a microjoule more.”
“It’s amazing you’ve lasted as long as you have, with that attitude.”
“It’s all due to my innocent charm and naive enthusiasm. So what do you know about this Leiting? Are they trustworthy? They’re acting so suspicious it’s making me suspicious.”
“They say the client wants total secrecy.”
“I heard the same, but I don’t get it. Unless the job is right here at Taishi, we’ll have to transit for a hundred hours to reach any of the worlds around Uranus, and at least that long for most of the ecliptic habs. Whoever we’re fighting will know we’re coming.”
“Maybe Leiting knows how to hide in space.”
“If they could do that, they wouldn’t be running a half-gig mercenary unit way out here. They’d be conquering Deimos or Luna.”
“You know what I mean: misdirection and lies. Fool the target into thinking we’re a security force coming to help them, or something like that.”
“Or maybe Leiting’s an idiot planning to charge us all right into prepared defenses so they don’t have to share the pay.”
“They’re probably monitoring this network, you know. It’s in the contract.”
“Hey, Leiting! I just want you to know that I think a commander who spies on their troops is a contemptible bottom-feeder.” She paused, waiting for any reply. “Oh, well. If they are listening, I guess they’re too cowardly to speak up.”
“Are you trying to get kicked out of another unit already?” asked Repun.
“Just bored, I guess. I’m pretty much at peak readiness right now, so I don’t want to spend a week or two stuck to this docking port with nothing to do.”
“Well, good for you. I have some systems that need calibrating, so you’ll have to do your bitching on your own.” Repun broke the link.
Pelagia muttered a few insults and then decided to explore her surroundings. With a brain that originated in an actual neo-orca calf, however much enhanced, she was far too slow to try any funny stuff with the local data network. Even a very sub-Baseline system would easily notice and block her attempts at intrusion. The only thing which made a cybership competitive with mech units in battle was their absolute immunity to electronic subversion. An EM attack might cripple Pelagia’s systems or outright kill her, but no mere transmissions could overwrite her personality or edit her memories.
But she could poke around in the physical world. Her twin laser emitters—which of course doubled as telescopes—could resolve a centimeter-sized object at forty kilometers, so she could get a very detailed look at Multipurpose Bay 453 North and all the various craft docked to its exterior. She spotted Repun, clamped onto a port on the same face of the bay structure, about a hundred meters away. Just to bite her fins a little Pelagia lit her up with radar and a target-designator laser pulse. Repun replied by changing her exterior colors to a pattern of Ningen characters spelling out “eat shit and die.”
The other ships joining Leiting’s little fleet were docked ninety degrees away, on the “top” face of the bay. The corner blocked Pelagia’s view of their forward sections, but their aft ends were all fairly typical high-thrust transports, with no aerodynamics to speak of. Not warships. Nor had Pelagia spotted any dedicated warships on her initial approach, either, which suggested the force was very light on space combatants.
An invasion, then—against a mostly undefended target. That ruled out all the really exciting possibilities in Uranus space. The Synchronous Ring was well armed, Miranda had terawatt-class laser arrays which could vaporize ships as easily as launch them across the Solar System, and the four big moons all boasted deep-dug fortresses and networks of dispersed weapon platforms on the surface and in orbit. By treaty, none of the major worlds of the Uranus system could operate large space warships—but of course an armed and fortified moon was itself a vastly powerful warship immune to attacks no ship could survive.
That left one of the small habs. There were plenty of them. The Equatorials filled a broad belt aligned with Uranus’s equator and the orbits of the major moons, in a region extending from a million to ten million kilometers out from Uranus. According to Pelagia’s navigation database, there were 5,801,172 “long-term non-maneuvering crewed objects” in that swarm, everything from a few dozen giant cylinders or gravity balloons holding tens of billions of people down to millions of little wheels and cans with just a few hundred inhabitants.
A wider, more dispersed swarm orbited Uranus in the plane of the rest of the Solar System, extending from twenty to fifty million kilometers out. The Ecliptics had nearly as many inhabitants as the Equatorials, and a similar range of sizes. Their easier access to the rest of civilization made them a little richer and somewhat less provincial than the cockeyed Equatorials.
Pelagia was willing to bet that the target hab would be one of the Ecliptics, most likely a nonrotating microgravity structure or bubble world. Population in the million range—big enough to make it worth taking over, but not enough to support a large force of full-time soldiers.
If she still had lungs, Pelagia would have sighed at that. Despite all the intriguing secrecy, it looked as though this job would be pretty simple and boring. Hit some vulnerable habitat, insert the troops, collect her fee and leave. The sort of job a mercenary should love, but Pelagia had been hoping for a challenge, some excitement. Well, at least she’d bank some gigajoules.
The guest quarters at the Mohan-Elso Center turned out to be a boat—a good-sized catamaran moored to a floating pier extending out from the big oval main body of the Center itself.
The guest boat was decidedly shabby compared to the sleek white half-domes and towers of the Center itself. Its twin hulls looked like repurposed spaceship fuel tanks, the decking was a patchwork of different materials in irregular shapes, and the living quarters occupied a two-story structure with sliding screen walls and wide galleries overhanging the water along the sides. The crude materials were offset by a wild paint job in green, blue, red, and glowing purple. Whimsical decorations of whales and stars were everywhere.
Zee, with Daslakh on his head, dropped out of the sky onto the foredeck, which was cluttered with mismatched chairs and pots of big, brightly glowing flowers. A gangly twelve-limbed bot appeared before he finished taking off his wings, and simultaneously the image of a bright red prehistoric whale appeared in his vision. “Good evening! I’m Taraka. This is my boat. How long will you be staying?”
“I’m not really sure,” said Zee. “Maybe just a couple of nights, maybe longer. It depends on how long my, uh, research takes.”
Daslakh took the opportunity to drop to the deck and link to the local infospace. The boat’s data system was simple, functional, and offered no obvious weak points to exploit. All that Daslakh could determine was that Taraka was a digital intelligence, rated at precisely 1.0 Baseline Equivalent Intellect, currently embodied in a maritime passenger vehicle, all other background information private.
“Likely to be a while, then,” said the image of the whale. “The Center’s closed. Some kind of renovation work. It won’t tell me when it’s going to reopen.”
“Nothing about that in the data nets,” said Daslakh aloud. According to the Center’s own system it was operating normally.
“I know. Careless of them, isn’t it?” Taraka sent them both an enhanced camera image of a hand-lettered sign on the Center’s main entrance, fifty meters away at the other end of the dock and beyond an ornamental plaza. closed for renovation, we apologize for the inconvenience.
“If you’re closed, I can go somewhere else,” said Zee.
“The Center is closed. I’m an independent operator. I tie up here because I like to chat with the visiting scholars and my food printer has a better meal library than the ones in the refectory. And since there aren’t any scholars at the moment I’ve got plenty of space available. You can take your pick of the rooms. What do you fancy?”
“I’m sure all your rooms are perfectly nice,” said Zee. “Put me wherever you want.”
“The Menkar suite is the most comfortable, at least that’s what my guests tell me. I’ll give you a discount for being the only guest. Forty gigajoule-equivalents a day, or two hundred a week. Printing is one gig per ten grams, and there’s no charge if you want to use the kitchen, as long as you clean up after yourself.”
The room was small but airy, furnished entirely with smart matter so that guests could customize it to suit themselves. As an experienced traveler, Zee kept his implant loaded with a favorite bed template and some preferred settings for flooring, wall color, light level, temperature, air flow, ambient sound, and scents.
“I’m starting to feel that flight,” said Zee as he began to peel off his clothes. “All I want is some sleep. Sorry I’m not better company.”
“I can amuse myself,” said Daslakh. “Good night.”
Zee collapsed into bed and exhaled three times before Daslakh could tell he was asleep. The bed sensed it, too, and began to gently extend filmy strands over Zee’s skin to clean him off.
The amount of stuff humans constantly exuded from their bodies always faintly horrified Daslakh. They weren’t permanent objects, like a nice solid piece of metal or even a lump of smart matter. Humans—all biologicals, really—were ad hoc collections of molecules, furiously staving off entropy by throwing out matter and energy faster than a hostile universe could ablate them out of existence. Even with help from organ printers, biochemical tools, medical implants, nanobots, and advice from superior digital minds, most of them could barely keep up the fight for a couple of centuries before entropy finally triumphed.
Of course, Daslakh could hardly expect much better—especially when some unfortunate episodes in its past meant that a significant number of both biological and digital beings would cheerfully give entropy a helping hand with lasers or heavy objects if they ever found out who Daslakh had been. It had managed twenty or thirty human lifetimes so far, but realistically couldn’t expect more than a thousand or so. A slightly longer instant on the cosmic scale.
Shutting down that line of thinking, Daslakh silently left the room and climbed up an ornamental pillar to the top of the deckhouse. The space was cluttered with tables and chairs, sculptures of whales, potted plants, and a bulky metal and ceramic object coated with carbon dust which Daslakh finally identified as a device for controlled incineration of carbon fuel elements. A grill over the combustion chamber indicated that people actually cooked food on it, despite the obvious hazards.
It considered waking Zee up and getting him away from this dangerously reckless Taraka person, but decided that it would be futile. Zee was notoriously tolerant of risk.
So Daslakh made a running leap toward the grounds of the Institute, landing well beyond the edge of the water. It kept itself at zero emissions, and matched its surface to the ground as it moved.
Snooping was standard procedure for Daslakh, and in this case it felt more than idle curiosity. With all the weirdness surrounding the Elso family at the moment, this extra oddity of the research institute they’d endowed being mysteriously closed was something Daslakh couldn’t ignore.
The place really was completely shut down. The buildings were at air temperature, and Daslakh couldn’t feel any vibration through the tips of its feet as it stood listening. Even the local infospace was down to minimal service, with nothing but a sub-sub-Baseline set of programs active.
Satisfied it was alone, Daslakh proceeded to climb all over the curved white shapes of the Center buildings, peeking into windows and looking for a convenient way in.
Without exception, the windows were all shifted to opaque mode. External doors were locked tight. The Mohan-Elso Center wasn’t just closed, it was buttoned up as if the staff expected a siege.
Daslakh identified thirty-six ways to force an entry, but was reluctant to try any of them. Wandering in through a window carelessly left open was awkward if the owners showed up unexpectedly, but actually breaking into a building meant that people might notice, might investigate.
Eventually it found a way in: a ventilation exhaust atop the egg-shaped central tower, with hinged louvres spaced wide enough for a small spider-mech body to slip between them. That let Daslakh into an open-sided lift shaft which led him down to ground level. According to labels on the doors, the upper levels were all offices, study rooms, and conservation laboratories.
At ground level the tower met a big dome and two half-domes which must have been pretty when their windows were transparent. The big dome was the collection, and Daslakh made a quick inspection to make sure nobody had taken advantage of the Center’s closure to steal anything. It all looked intact—at least, every case had something in it, which more or less matched the printed label. It was possible that thieves had robbed the place and left exact duplicates of their loot. With a good scanner and printer one could do that. The trouble with that kind of super-stealthy burglary was that without any publicity about the theft, nobody would believe the stolen items were genuine, even if they were. Only a criminal genius like Varas Lupur could pull something like that off and make a profit.
One of the half-domes was an auditorium. Nothing of interest there. Daslakh scuttled back across the lobby at the bottom of the tower into the final half-dome, and stopped. Success!
The ground floor of this wing of the Center looked as though it was normally a lounge and event space. But all the furniture had retracted into the floor, and the dumb matter items like planters or statues were shoved against the rear wall. Most of the room was filled with stacks and pallets of bulky items, all carefully wrapped up. All the embedded chips bore the same tag: “construction materials” and a number.
Daslakh was baffled. Why stockpile things when one could simply move in a couple of matter printers and make building materials as needed? No waste, no shipping (beyond tanks of feedstock), no clutter.
Was this some kind of historical re-enactment project? Showing how things were built before molecular printing technology became commonplace? A demonstration of the methods used to build the pyramids and the Martian arcologies?
Or was this more Miranda status-display extravagance? Slabs of hand-cut stone from Titania and boards of wood from actual trees? It was just absurd enough to be true.
Just then Daslakh felt a deep gentle thump through the floor, as of something massive nudging the floating platform of the Mohan-Elso Center. It leaped to the top of the pile of “construction materials” and concealed itself between two white-coated cylinders.
After a few minutes the big opaque window at the flat side of the wing slid open, and Daslakh saw two figures there, controlling a flat cargo bot loaded with a pallet of black graphene cases. Daslakh recognized both individuals. The mech was the annoying Elso family employee Vasi, and the boringly handsome young man was Adya’s brother-in-law Vidhi Zugori. Kavita’s husband.
The pallet of cases was also familiar: Daslakh identified it with six-sigma certainty as the same lot of cases it had seen in the service levels under the Elso mansion. Even as the bot moved into the event space turned warehouse, the chips in the cases suddenly switched from reading “party supplies” to “construction materials.”
“Is that all of it?” asked Vidhi.
“This is the final consignment. Will all these be safe here for the next three weeks?”
“Perfectly protected,” said Vidhi. “I’m the only person in Miranda who can unlock this place. Even the digital intelligences are on leave.”
“I remain unconvinced,” said Vasi. “The Center’s security cannot resist a higher-level mind, and the doors and windows will not withstand ordinary tools. A cunning and persistent intruder would get in.”
“Maybe, but who minds? The Center’s shut. Staff are on sabbatical, collections closed, events ended. Let’s leave.” He took a couple of steps toward the entrance.
“Can you reactivate the Center security system and give me access? I want some eyes on all this until the big day,” said Vasi.
“I thought we agreed to keep the place dark.”
“I said I want eyes on this equipment.”
Vidhi hesitated before answering, and then he sounded almost belligerently casual. “Sure. Suit yourself. But wait until we’re on the water. I don’t wish to be witnessed.”
The bot had unloaded itself and rolled back to where Vasi and Vidhi stood. As they turned to go, Daslakh launched itself through the gap just before the window slid shut.
It overshot the entire plaza and landed in the water with a faint plop. For the next couple of minutes Daslakh was far too busy trying to swim to pay attention to anything going on above the surface. Its body was considerably denser than the water, but by making its feet into paddle shapes and moving its legs like mad, it was able to struggle over to the edge of the Center’s floating platform and stick on. By the time it hauled itself out of the water, Vidhi and Vasi had untied their boat and motored away with a faint hiss of hydrojets.
Daslakh dried itself very carefully, then made its way back to Taraka’s boat. Zee was still sleeping soundly in his cabin, so Daslakh climbed back up to the top deck and spent the rest of the night thinking.