B00BFVOGUI EBOK Page 3

  Members of the species known as the Xylanx, Kolvax and his band of followers had been exiled to the rotating space station by rulers with a cruel sense of humor. How else to explain it? The Severed stood for many things, but chief among them was disdain for the unclean. This end of the galaxy was a menagerie of creatures with strange forms; precious few had two arms, two legs, and a head like a being should. The Severed had sought to keep the Xylanx apart from all that.

  So the members of the ruling body, the Dominium, must have thought it hilarious to banish Kolvax and his troublesome band to a run-down, strange-smelling station abandoned by the very filthy aliens they despised.

  If so, their joke missed the mark in one respect they would never know about. Kolvax didn’t believe his “truths” at all.

  “Give me the spritzer,” he said, leading Tellmer into the office.

  “Yes, Great Kolvax.” Awkward in his bulky space suit, slight Tellmer fumbled under the strangely shaped desk — the stars only knew what kind of creature it had been built for — and found a cylindrical container. Kolvax took it and began tending to his tree.

  Sitting on the counter behind his lectern, it was the only personal effect they had let him bring: a puny, barely green cutting that had failed to thrive, no matter how much attention the Great Kolvax gave it. It would have done better in one of the great habitats back home, where the Xylanx did not wear their full armor; carbon dioxide and moisture circulated more freely there. But not wearing helmets here would run counter to the sanitary beliefs of the Severed. Kolvax had kicked himself for starting a movement with such views. Next time, he thought, I’m going to start a religion based on public drunkenness.

  If anyone could pull it off, he could. Kolvax was a communicator, a politician, a general, a pontiff. Among the Xylanx, those could be the same things — but Kolvax was an unlikely candidate. He didn’t have the right look for it. The face inside his helmet wasn’t quite the same as the faces of the other members of his kind. His forehead was just a bit too high, his smeller just a bit too narrow. His fingers weren’t as meaty as the others’. And while he loomed over Tellmer, he was short compared with other Xylanx. He still had just as much muscle in that more compact frame, as many of his enemies had learned. But he wasn’t the perfect Xylanx specimen, by far.

  They were small things, and in this would-be era of enlightenment, they had not impeded his rise. As all their people were required to, Kolvax had served with the Xylanx militia known as the Stalkers — and had fought well, rising to a generalship at a young age. But whether because of the old prejudices or his own mouth, he had gone no further. The Dominium was made up of people of lineage; no one else need apply. Kolvax had battered his bald dome against the wall long enough to realize that.

  Fortunately, he had other talents. The booming voice that had driven his soldiers to fight with abandon was just as capable of moving minds. Ironically, his enemies in power had handed him the weapon. Media posts were just another sop to the military, sinecures to keep rivals at bay. Few Stalkers could form a sentence after a decade of being blasted and patched back together. But Kolvax was intact and intoxicating to his listeners — and with the eyes of a warrior, he’d found an unprotected flank.

  No one was speaking for the purity of the species, so he did. He didn’t look like the Xylanx ideal, but that simply inspired the thread about aliens and their diseases. In habitats across the region, Xylander veterans began wearing every day the armor they’d once saved for away missions. And why not? Behind their opaque face-masks, everyone could be the ideal. That idea had been a huge draw. Kolvax sometimes had trouble restraining his laughter at some of the hideous uglies his cause attracted. He was doing the galaxy a service by keeping them out of sight!

  But Kolvax couldn’t earn his way into power, and he couldn’t bargain for it, either. As soon as the Severed began setting themselves apart in serious numbers, the Dominium had moved against him. Kolvax was too popular to murder, but he could be neutered. First his followers were scattered to far-flung outposts — and finally, so was the self-titled Black Priest himself.

  For two miserable years, it had been only Kolvax and his most loyal followers in this disgusting place. All alone, with a twig that seemed to respond to nothing. Kolvax drenched it again and gave up. He cast away the spritzer. “Cancel today’s confessions, Tellmer. I’m going to take a—”

  “Wait!” Tellmer stood in the doorway to the office, looking out into the so-called chapel. “You there!” Tellmer yelled out. “Guards! Stop them!”

  Kolvax heard a scuffle — and then the electric whine of a shockpulse. Now what? He reached behind the counter for his ceremonial bludgeon, used with increasing frequency these days to settle doctrinal disputes. Arriving in the doorway, he saw fighting in the chapel. Half a dozen Xylanx believers charged in, overpowering his guards. All were armored, Kolvax’s trademark golden collars ringing their necks beneath their helmets.

  Tellmer rushed into the fray, armored arms waving. “The Black Priest is in contemplation! He cannot be—”

  One of the intruders lashed out with a whirling fire-bolo that caught Tellmer just beneath the elbow. A sizzling flash later, and Tellmer was screaming on the ground, right next to his detached arm.

  Kolvax looked not at his howling assistant but at the weapons he thought he’d hidden away. So they’ve been into the armory. It had amused the Xylanx rulers to supply the exiles with weapons; they expected exactly this.

  “Pick up your arm,” Kolvax said, stepping over Tellmer to enter the chapel. He could see the anger in the rebels’ faces — which meant something all on its own. “What goes on here?” he yelled, slapping the rusty club against his gloved hand. “I can see your faces, adepts. You know facial screens should be set to opaque in this holy place!”

  “Holy, my ass,” the lead invader said. Kolvax recognized him as Gerrok, one of his more annoying pests. “This ‘holy place’ of yours was a counting room for a bunch of tentacle-heads,” Gerrok snarled. “And it still reeks of it. I can’t take off my helmet even in private — and we’ve been so long without a supply visit that our filters are clogged!”

  “True cleanliness is in the—”

  “Enough!” Gerrok shouted as he fired the shockpulse cannon in his hand. The blast struck the lectern just to Kolvax’s left, blowing it into pieces.

  Kolvax looked drily at it. “Fine. You have grievances?”

  “We live in grievance,” Gerrok’s female companion said. “We’ve heard enough of your sermons! You’re a prattling has-been. I can’t believe we let you lead us into treason!”

  “Into exile,” another said. “Into prison!”

  “Into oblivion!” Gerrok yelled.

  Kolvax set his faceplate to transparent. It was better for them to see him now, his dark eyes. “Do you recall when you took the pledge to join my sect?” He pointed to the modest yellow ring at Gerrok’s neck. “Do you recall when I affixed those collars to your uniforms?”

  Gerrok moved menacingly closer. “If you’re about to ask what the collars mean to us — forget it! We’re loyal to the ideals, Kolvax. We have no attachment to you!”

  “That’s not what I was going to say.” With his free hand, Kolvax touched a control on the wrist holding the bludgeon. “I was going to explain that they’re not for decoration.” He looked at the six rebels. “Right now, the emitters inside your collars are generating microscopic laser beams. That would be that stinging feeling you’re experiencing.”

  Kolvax watched Gerrok’s eyes freeze. One after another, the other intruders dropped their weapons and began pawing at their necks.

  “Don’t worry about the sensation,” Kolvax said. “As the deflectors within the collars come online, an energy field develops, much like the ones we use in our prison doors — our real prisons, mind you. And that should be the end of your problems.”

  Eyes bulging, Gerrok raised his weapon high and began to move…

  …and then his helmeted head tumbled of
f his shoulders. Around him, five more heads followed, bouncing on the floor of the holy chapel. The bodies followed, gushing geysers of vital fluids.

  Kolvax looked down at Tellmer, writhing nearby. “Now they’re really the Severed,” he said, grinning.

  Tellmer didn’t laugh. He pawed anxiously at his own collar with his surviving hand. “Are all our collars like this?”

  “Don’t worry, Tellmer. If I didn’t kill you over your cooking, you’re immortal.” Kolvax turned back to the office. He stopped by the doorway and picked up Tellmer’s oozing left forearm. “Here,” he said, pitching the limb into his assistant’s lap. “Take an hour off. See what the medic can do with that. But I want dinner on time. And it had better be good.”

  “Thank you, Great Kolvax,” Tellmer said, beleaguered. Before his master stepped out of sight, he dared an addition. “There will be more.”

  “What’s that?”

  “There will be more,” Tellmer said, looking back on the dead. “It’s been too long. True Xylanx can’t live like this — hidden away.”

  “Our forebears knew a lot about hiding,” Kolvax said. “But don’t worry. Something will happen. I have faith.” With that, he returned inside for his overdue nap.

  5

  The human era of interstellar travel had started three years before Jamie was born, but he knew the story like everyone else. Observers had detected an oblong object hurtling into the Solar System on a wide arcing path. As it headed for the inner planets, many worried that an unknown Kuiper Belt body had been knocked sunward. Calculations of its size only worsened fears: 2103 BH7 was the size of a railcar and twice as wide. As it continued its approach, however, it became clear the object posed no collision threat to Earth.

  But it could have if it’d wanted to — and that was the new wrinkle. Because its trajectory changed not once, but twice, angling to catch up with Venus. Long before it began orbiting the cloudy planet, searchers for extraterrestrial life who’d buzzed for decades over unexplained signals knew they had their quarry.

  Researchers quickly roused the nearest thing to the visitor, an Indian Venus probe inactive since the 2090s. Its cameras, used to looking downward, saw the alien craft — for it was one — unfold into a space platform. Two weeks later, one similarly sized box after another materialized at the Solar System’s edge. All made their way to Venusian orbit, where they attached modules to the growing agglomeration.

  The resulting contraption resembled an amusement park ride in space: a circular track half a kilometer in diameter, connected via several spokes to a central hub. When the structure was complete, a single boxy module began moving inside the track, accelerating as if in a centrifuge. And then the container simply vanished in a greenish flash. It all happened in silence, without explanation.

  A hastily arranged manned international mission reached Venus in December, its arrival coincidentally timed two hundred years after the Wright Brothers’ first flight. The investigators got there just in time to witness another flash and the appearance of a new vehicle, decelerating to a stop within the alien station’s rings. This time, its occupants had something to say.

  The Regulans’ first words, once communication had been established, were of greetings and peace. Their second words were to offer the Earthlings a fine deal on Hordugan cheese tapestries. Oh, and, by the way, did humans have anything to sell?

  Humanity learned the transit station — dubbed a “whirlibang” after a popular ride at Funworld Mumbai — exploited a loophole in physics permitting faster-than-light travel. The hub served a packet of matter to a twin device tuned to receive it, parsecs distant. Traveling without a receiving hub in place was possible but incredibly dangerous; hence, the unoccupied probe’s arrival and the device’s initial test run.

  The first thing trailblazing merchants sent into an uncharted system was a way to get home.

  Events moved swiftly. The first human voyage to Regulus was the following May, intentionally scheduled three centuries after the day Lewis and Clark left for the West. Finding the stellar neighborhood absolutely teeming with life, humanity responded with interest. More travelers followed by the hundreds — and then thousands. Jamie Sturm was born to an Earth with almost limitless horizons.

  Sure, the mechanism of travel had disappointed those imagining colossal starships and tiny vessels warping through space. The universe accepted nothing larger than a ’box through its loopholes, and transporting anything smaller consumed prohibitive amounts of energy. Ships and stations had to be assembled from building blocks. But humanity was good at building, and container traffic was something Earth merchants understood. Whirlibangs paired with other stars were constructed. By 2138, the opportunity was open to most anyone who wanted to go.

  Jamie had never wanted to go, but that didn’t stop his escorts from shoving him into the ’box preparing to depart from Charlie. They’d manhandled him the whole way, sneaking him back into the transport Falcone had arrived in. They hadn’t even let him pack a bag.

  “I don’t want to do this,” Jamie said, grasping for a handhold in the zero gravity. “I’ll just go home, like I was supposed to. Falcone can square things!”

  “Forget it, man. You’re going.” O’Herlihy’s frame blocked the exit — not that Jamie would have been able to get there if he tried. He was having enough trouble staying off the ceiling.

  The interior of the passenger ’box was spare. Where the commercial modules the tugs took to and from Earth had dozens of seats, this one had only eleven — including one at the front, near a control panel. At the controls sat a brown-skinned woman in her sixties, dressed as his escorts were.

  “This the guy?” golden-haired Geena Madaki asked, glancing back at Jamie for only a second.

  “Yup,” O’Herlihy said.

  Madaki saw Jamie swimming against the ceiling, desperately trying to make it back to the seats. “Good God,” she said. Observing that O’Herlihy and Dinner were casually strapping themselves in, she activated the door seal.

  Jamie had recovered his bearings against a wall when a metallic clang reverberated through the compartment, sending him sideways. He’d seen it a hundred times from the outside: the container was in the queue and ready to be loaded onto the whirlibang’s energized track. Nocked like an arrow. There wasn’t much time!

  Finding a surface to press against, Jamie shoved himself toward an empty chair just behind Madaki. Hurriedly strapping himself in, he glared back at Dinner. “Thanks for the help.”

  “My pleasure,” Dinner said.

  Jamie gulped as the ’box lurched again. A noisy clack, and the container began to move in the tracks. Slowly at first but quickly picking up speed. The trader felt the pull now, the floor of the cabin hugging the outside of the colossal wheel of rails. Gravity had been simulated centrifugally on Ops, but this was increasing swiftly. “How fast will this go?”

  “Don’t fear,” Madaki said, punching a button. “As we speed up, the pulse generators rip us a nice hole through space — our angular momentum goes off into another dimension. Then it’s smooth sailing.”

  Jamie looked back behind his guards. For the first time, he noticed their HardSHEL suits, secured in transparent lockers. But there were only two. “Shouldn’t I have a space suit or something?”

  “There’s one under my seat if we need it,” Madaki said. “Which we won’t.”

  “What about me?”

  “You’re out of luck,” she said. She glanced back at O’Herlihy. “This child fret all the time?”

  “I can shut him up if you want,” the bruiser replied.

  “No problem,” the pilot said. She looked back at Jamie. “We’re already in the rift,” she said. “Good and easy. You can breathe.”

  Jamie looked at his hands. His fingers had crushed indentations into the armrests. “Oh,” he said.

  But he didn’t let go.

  * * *

  Jamie knew the calculation by heart. In traversing twenty-four light years, one day would pass in
normal time — and one hour, for those aboard the ’box. Forty minutes passed in the cabin during transit, time in which the security guys snored. There was nothing to look at: for his benefit or not, Madaki had shuttered the forward viewport. They didn’t need to see to travel anyway. A ’box was a speeding bullet while in transit — with just as much control.

  The trader had almost begun to relax when the cabin shook with a noisy, crashing jolt. The breath went out of Jamie’s lungs as the ’box returned to normal space — and a rocketing spin around the rings of another whirlibang. He choked a comment. “Good and easy?”

  Madaki gave Jamie a sly look. “Didn’t say anything about stopping. That’s the ‘bang’ in whirlibang.”

  The Altair whirlibang rings drew energy from the ’box, slowing it to a gliding stop. The compartment detached from the tracks, and Jamie could feel the robotic arms attaching the engine mount, transforming their vessel into a small shuttle. Madaki triggered the forward viewpanel to open.

  Staring through the filtered screen at Altair, Jamie looked on light from another sun. Only this one was twice Sol’s size, with a spin so fast it had become a squashed tomato of energy. One of Earth’s closer neighbors, in the G Cloud with Alpha Centauri, Altair had been one of the earlier outposts for Quaestor’s merchants. Most had moved on to more lucrative territories; it was precisely why Jamie had chosen the system’s base for his scheme. Overbuilt and underused. Who’d notice?

  As the newly created shuttle soared toward Alabeyd, the asteroid home of the Altair expedition, Jamie felt his heart pounding. He’d told Falcone the truth: he’d restored all the merchandise he’d traded from here. And somewhere, in a warehouse on the other side of that massive rock, was his treasure. He was glad he’d come, now. Falcone would realize the best thing for his career was to feign ignorance — and Jamie would be able to send his profits home as planned.