Charles Gannon - Raising Caine

Nezdeh leaned back. Nine persons, and two of them Low Bred, with another six to be added after the first phase of their mission was complete. So, altogether, fifteen renegades of the purged House Perekmeres against the might of the Hegemons of the Great Houses and the juridical authority of the Autarchs, whose ostensible neutrality was a farce. Autarchal decisions almost invariably aligned with the interests of the Hegemons. If Nezdeh’s small band could contend with those daunting odds, it would be a story worth telling — if any of them lived to tell it.

When Brenlor finished his oration, Nezdeh stood slowly. “We all know what must be done. We have excellent intelligence on our first target, and it is utterly unsuspecting.” She glared around the table. “But do not underestimate the Aboriginals. The Arat Kur and Hkh’Rkh did and they are now paying for it.

“We cannot afford such payments. We have no place to which we may retreat, for there is only one outcome that does not end in our death: absolute victory. So, no bravado. We cannot afford it. No unnecessary destruction. Again, we cannot afford it. No wasted time. Yet again, we cannot afford it. When those who shall carry our restored genelines into the future speak of this battle, they shall recall it not as an arrogant gamble, but as a precise, clinical operation. That shall be our legacy and the source of our glory.”

The eyes around the table had kindled to her words, whereas Brenlor’s had left them merely smoldering. She was speaking the truth, and they knew it.

Nezdeh pushed back from the conference table. “Report to your stations.” She checked her wrist-comp. “We are in position. It is time.”

Jorge Velho, acting captain of the SS Arbitrage , cursed as the navplot stylus slipped out of his hand and — surprisingly, in his experience — fell to the deck. Granted, the speed of its fall was nothing like Earth norm. It was more like a stone sinking to the bottom of a pond, but still, it tricked his space-trained senses. He associated bridge duty with either free-fall or micro-gee, unless the engines were engaged. However, the Arbitrage ’s proximity to the gas giant that bore the chart label V 1581 Four allowed it to exert almost a quarter gee on them.

Velho’s XO, Ayana Tagawa, lifted an eyebrow but said nothing. However, his helmsman, Piet Brackman, emitted a sardonic snort. “Need a lanyard for that, sir?”

Jorge tried to turn a stern gaze on Piet, but couldn’t keep a straight face. “Just steer this barge, you réprobo . You have little room to talk. You bounced off two walls in the galley before you found your footing, yesterday.”

“That is not a fair comparison,” Piet complained. “The toruses were still rotating then. I had gee forces in two directions.”

“As did the rest of us who were in the toruses. And who did not fall down.”

“Eh, go back to Belém. Sir.”

“Right after we drop you off in Pretoria. From orbit.”

Ayana may have sighed. She often did when the two old friends began chiding each other. Her eyes had not strayed from the navplot: a 2-D representation with a faux-3-D “deep screen.” “Sir, we will need to reduce our velocity by four meters per second if we are going to stay within the optimal retrieval envelope for both our tanker-tenders.”

Jorge Velho glanced over her almost elfin shoulder. “Is Deal One lagging again?” The pilot of the lead fuel barge was a rather annoying perfectionist, her many minute corrections accumulating into noticeable delays.

“No, Ms. Ho is right on schedule. The difficulty is with Deal Two.”

“Piloting errors?”

“No, sir. Mr. Vindar reports that the starboard fuel transfer umbilicus seems loose. He has been taking extra care attaching and detaching from the skimming drogues. He fears that any imprecision during those maneuvers may torque the mating rings and tear the umbilicus free of Deal Two.”

Jorge nodded, checked the feed from the long-range camera that was tracking Deal Two. The tanker-tender, shaped like a bus half-transformed into a lifting body, would have to initiate a fuel-costly burn in order to keep its rendezvous with one of the Arbitrage ’s four smaller, flatter skimmers. The skimmers were remote-operated vehicles designed to move deep into a gas giant’s exosphere and lower a drogue into the predominantly hydrogen soup below, drawing it up via pulsed electromagnetic tractoring. Any delay in transferring the harvested hydrogen meant a delay in them returning to their next run, and so on and so forth, causing the logistical dominoes to fall ever further and faster.

“No,” Jorge decided. “We’re cutting our losses. Bring Deal Two back now. Inform Deal One that she is to finish her current fuel transfer from skimmer three and follow Deal Two back to the barn.”

“Sir, that will seriously impact our projected refueling time.”

Jorge nodded. “Agreed, but tell me: if we lose one drogue’s load, how much will our mission be impacted?”

Ayana returned his nod. “Yes, sir. You are correct: the time it would take to replace the umbilical would be worse.”

Piet shook his head. “Much worse. I’m not even sure we have a spare umbilical in stores.”

Jorge stared at the deck, was suddenly struck by a mental image of the pale, jaundiced gas giant looming far beneath his feet. “And CoDevCo managed to blank much of that data before Arbitrage was impounded for use as a military auxiliary.”

Ayana looked at Velho out of the corner of her eye. “Kozakowski might know.”

Yes, indeed he might, Jorge allowed, but I hate having that man within ten meters of me. Aloud: “Kozakowski might know, but I’m not sure he’d tell the truth.”

“So what’s new?” Piet asked sourly.

Jorge smiled. “My point exactly. Mr. Kozakowski’s loyalty is to the Colonial Development Combine—”

“—which makes him a traitor,” Piet supplied.

“—and he has not been forthcoming, despite being granted immunity from prosecution.”

Ayana had finished sending the new orders to Deal One and Deal Two. “What exactly did he do, more than any of the other executives, that helped the invaders?”

Jorge shrugged. “I am not sure. Any specific charges were suppressed by the time the Auxiliary Recrewing Command forwarded his dossier to me.” But there was scuttlebutt, as there always is between captains, military and civilian alike. And I would not be at all surprised if the rumors are true: that Kozakowski had been a CoDevCo liaison to, and factotum for, the Arat Kur, and maybe even the Ktor. Although it was hard to see how a human would have come to serve the Ktor, who were reputedly ice-worms that traveled about in environmental tanks that resembled oversized water-heaters on treads.

Kozakowski had been CoDevCo’s master aboard (but not captain of) the Arbitrage when she was intercepted by a Russlavic Federation cruiser, so it was quite probable that he knew if spare fuel transfer umbilicals were in the ships’ stores. But still—

Piet Brackman jutted his prominent chin toward the ventral view monitor: the ever-approaching rim of the gas giant seemed to be fading away, being consumed by the blackness of space itself. “Approaching the terminator, Captain.”

“Ten minutes to loss of lascom and line of sight back to the fleet assets near planet two,” Tagawa added.

“Very well.” Protocol dictated Velho’s next orders. “Ms. Tagawa, initiate contact with provisional CINCSYS and advise them we are about to go dark. Attach the estimated time we shall emerge from planet four’s comm-shadow. Request immediate confirmation of receipt of our transmission, and pending day-codes. And—” Velho paused: Tagawa turned, obviously sensing how his tone veered toward hesitation rather than finality.