Дэн Симмонс - The Rise of Endymion

“Ah, yes,” said Father Captain de Soya.

He could imagine the Mercantilus buying up entire worlds, but he could not imagine the trading group allowing a rival to gain such power in the few years he had been out of Pax news. It did not matter. He turned to Admiral Marusyn.

“One last question, sir.”

The Admiral glanced at his comlog chronometer and nodded curtly.

“I have been out of Fleet service for four years,” de Soya said softly. “I have not worn a uniform or received a tech update in all that time. The world where I served as a priest was so far out of the mainstream that I might as well have been in cryogenic fugue the whole time. How could I possibly take command of a new-generation archangel-class starship, sir?”

Marusyn frowned. “We’ll bring you up to speed, Father Captain. Pax Fleet knows what it’s doing. Are you saying no to this commission?”

Father Captain de Soya hesitated a visible second. “No, sir,” he said. “I appreciate the confidence in me that you and Pax Fleet are showing. I’ll do my best, Admiral.” De Soya had been trained to discipline twice—once as a priest and Jesuit, again as an officer in His Holiness’s fleet.

Marusyn’s stone face softened. “Of course you will, Federico. We’re pleased to have you back. We’d like you to stay at the Legionaries rectory here on Pacem until we’re ready to send you to your ship, if that would be all right.”

Dammit, thought de Soya. Still a prisoner with those damned Legionaries. He said, “Of course, sir. It’s a pleasant place.”

Marusyn glanced at his comlog again. The interview was obviously at an end. “Any requests before the assignment becomes official, Father Captain?”

De Soya hesitated again. He knew that making a request would be bad form. He spoke anyway. “Yes, sir… one. There were three men who served with me on the old Raphael. Swiss Guard commandos whom I brought from Hyperion… Lancer Rettig, well, he died, sir… but Sergeant Gregorius and Corporal Kee were with me until the end, and I wondered…”

Marusyn nodded impatiently. “You want them on new Raphael with you. It sounds reasonable. I used to have a cook that I dragged from ship to ship… poor bugger was killed during the Second Coal Sack engagement. I don’t know about these men…” The Admiral looked at Marget Wu.

“By great coincidence,” said Admiral Wu, “I ran across their files while reviewing your reinstatement papers, Father Captain. Sergeant Gregorius is currently serving in the Ring Territories. I am sure that a transfer can be arranged. Corporal Kee, I am afraid…” De Soya’s stomach muscles tightened. Kee had been with him around God’s Grove—Gregorius had been returned to the créche after an unsuccessful resurrection—and the last he had seen of the lively little corporal had been after their return to Pacem space, when the MP’s had taken them away to separate holding cells after their arrest. De Soya had shaken the corporal’s hand and assured him that they would see each other again.

“I am afraid that Corporal Kee died two standard years ago,” finished Wu. “He was killed during an Ouster attack on the Sagittarius Salient. I understand that he received the Silver Star of St. Michael’s… posthumously, of course.”

De Soya nodded tersely. “Thank you,” he said.

Admiral Marusyn gave his paternal politician’s smile and extended his hand across the desk to de Soya. “Good luck, Federico. Give them hell from the Raphael.”

The headquarters for the Pax Mercantilus was not on Pacem proper, but was located—fittingly—on the L5 Trojan point trailing behind the planet by some sixty orbital degrees. Between the Vatican world and the huge, hollow Torus Mercantilus—a carbon-carbon doughnut 270 meters thick, a full klick wide, and 26 kilometers in diameter, its interior webbed with spidery drydocks, com antennae, and loading bays—floated half of Pax Fleet’s total orbital-based firepower. Kenzo Isozaki once calculated that a coup attempt launched from Torus Mercantilus would last 12.06 nanoseconds before being vaporized. Isozaki’s office was in a clear bulb on a whiskered-carbon flower stem raised some four hundred meters above the outer rim of the torus.

The bulb’s curved hullskin could be opaqued or left transparent according to the whim of the CEO inside it. Today it was transparent except for the section polarized to dim the glare of Pacem’s yellow sun. Space seemed black at the moment, but as the torus rotated, the bulb would come into the ring’s shadow and Isozaki could glance up to see stars instantly appear as if a heavy black curtain had been pulled aside to reveal thousands of brilliant, unflickering candles. Or the myriad campfires of my enemies, thought Isozaki as the darkness fell for the twentieth time on this working day.

With the walls absolutely transparent, his oval office with its modest desk, chairs, and soft lamps seemed to become a carpeted platform standing alone in the immensity of space, individual stars blazing and the long swath of the Milky Way lighting the interior. But it was not this familiar spectacle that made the Mercantilus CEO look up: set amid the starfield, three fusion tails of incoming freighters could be picked out, looking like smudges on an astronomical holo. Isozaki was so adept at gauging distances and delta-V’s from fusion tails that he could tell at a glance how long it would be before these freighters docked… and even which ships they were. The P.M. Moldahar Effectuator had refueled by skimming a gas giant in the Epsilon Eridani System and was burning redder than usual. The H.H.M.S. Emma Constant’s skipper was in her usual rush to get her cargo of Pegasus 51 reaction metals to the torus and was decelerating inbound a good fifteen percent above Mercantilus recommendations. Finally, the smallest smudge could only be the H.H.M.S. Elemosineria Apostolica just passing spindown from its C-plus translation point from Renaissance System: Isozaki knew this from a glance, just as he knew the three hundred-some other optimal translation points visible in his part of the Pacem System sky.

The lift tube rose from the floor and became a transparent cylinder, its passenger lit by starlight. Isozaki knew that the cylinder was transparent only from the outside: in it, the occupants stood in a mirrored interior, seeing nothing of the CEO’s office, staring at their own reflection until Isozaki keyed their door open.

Anna Pelli Cognani was the only person in the tube. Isozaki nodded and his personal AI rotated the cube door open. His fellow CEO and protégé did not even glance up at the moving starfield as she crossed the carpet toward him. “Good afternoon, Kenzosan.”

“Good afternoon, Anna.” He waved her toward the most comfortable chair, but Cognani shook her head and remained standing. She never took a seat in Isozaki’s office. Isozaki never ceased offering her one.

“The Conclave Mass is almost over,” said Cognani.

Isozaki nodded. At that second his office AI darkened the bubble walls and projected the Vatican’s tightbeam broadcast. St. Peter’s Basilica was awash in scarlet and purple and black and white this morning as the eighty-three cardinals soon to be sealed in the Conclave bowed, prayed, genuflected, knelt, stood, and sang. Behind this terna, or herd of theoretically possible candidates for the papacy, were the hundreds of bishops and archbishops, deacons and members of the Curia, Pax military officials and Pax civil administrators, Pax planetary governors and high elected officials who happened to be on Pacem at the time of the Pope’s death or who were within three weeks’ time-debt, delegates from the Dominicans, the Jesuits, the Benedictines, the Legionaries of Christ, the Mariaists, the Salesians, and a single delegate standing for the few remaining Franciscans. Finally there were the “valued guests” in the back rows—honorary delegates from the Pax Mercantilus, the Opus Dei, the Istituto per Opere di Religione—also known as the Vatican Bank, delegates from the Vatican administrative wings of the Prefettura, the Servizio Assistenziale del Santo Padre—the Holy Father’s Welfare Service, from the APSA—The Administration of the Patrimony of the Holy See, as well as from Cardinal Camerlengo’s own Apostolic Chamber. Also in the rear pews were honored guests from the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, the Papal Commission on Interstellar Peace and Justice, many papal academies such as the Pontifical Ecclesiastical Academy, and other quasi-theological organizations necessary to the running of the vast Pax state. Finally there were the bright uniforms of the Corps Helvetica—the Swiss Guard—as well as commanders of the Palatine Guard reconstituted by Pope Julius, and the first appearance of the commander of the hitherto secret Noble Guard—a pale, dark-haired man in a solid red uniform. Isozaki and Cognani watched this pageant with knowledgeable eyes. Each of them had been invited to the Mass, but it had become a tradition in recent centuries for the Pax Mercantilus CEO’s to honor major Church ceremonies by their absence—sending only their official Vatican delegates. Both watched Cardinal Couesnongle celebrate this Mass of the Holy Spirit and saw Cardinal Camerlengo as the powerless figurehead he was; their eyes were on Cardinal Lourdusamy, Cardinal Mustafa, and half a dozen other power brokers in the front pews.