Starcross
                                By Tom Gordon
1. CLAY

     "God help me." A final screech of ravaged metal proclaimed,
unfortunately, the alternative.
     The entire hexagonal series of plastic paneling, last layer of the
protective onion-skin shell that was once the hull of the Parena, bulged
inward like wet cardboard and shot off with an explosive bang! into the
overwhelmingly black void, exposing the interior of the aged freighter, at
last, to unceasing space. Clay's body was wracked with vibrant pain as his
capillaries burst in the icy rush of vacuum. At that moment, his mind as it
had existed in the past hour ceased to be. The crew, Knox, and even the
whereabouts of Isabel dissipated from his thoughts, to be replaced by the
base drive of survival. The abyss beckoned for him, crushing his lean form
in a bonechilling embrace, with only an iron handlegrip and Clay's clenched
fist to stand in its unrelenting way. Even so, he knew he had a little under
six seconds of useful consciousness, and about ten, maybe eleven seconds
total, before the pressure deferential ended his life. There was nothing he
could do except wait for the end, and hope that the disaster investigative
team would find his magnetic glove, along with whatever remained of his arm
and hand afterward, still linked to the disintegrated ship. The cold dropped
off too suddenly (or was it the numbness of an oxygen-starved brain?) and
Clay's vision narrowed to a pinprick, his body beginning to shut down. The
only incongruity to the process was the inexplicable voices, sonic and
wavering, tinged with crude static.
     "Get an iso field set up fast, we've got one-"
     "I know. Just did it. It's the pilot. Big guy."
     "Oh-two flood. His vital signs are low."
     "Roger."
     "What's the ETA on Chau Trans?"
     "Seven minutes. If they nab this anony, he's a dead man... assuming, of
course, he lives."
     "He's a dead man either way. You think we're gonna be any easier?"
Indistinct chatter momentarily filled the hollow silence.
     "Spotter says three Chau Enforcers en route."
     "Enforcers? Jesus. They're freakin' serious."
     "Get a move on and pack the clown in. I'm not gonna be the first human
to see what those monsters can do."
     "Heard that."
     "What? You don't seriously think that they'd-"
     "All I know is that I'm not going to be caught in the middle here. They
just don't send Enforcers to every interplan incident. Something big just
went down here, and legally, it's Chaumirran jurisdiction. They could kill
us all, just for interfering like this, and you won't hear a single
complaint from the greedy data-pushers in NY-B. Not a peep."
     "Nathaniel Clay, his ID says. Pilot. Yep, he's the guy."
     "He's awake. He may have been, the whole time."
     "Pump him full of Uridine. I doubt he's gonna want to remember much of
this nightmare."
     Clay managed to pry open his eyes, observing five blurred silhouettes
crouched aside and over his splayed body. The green glow of a hemispheric
isolation field resonated behind them, separating the team and Clay from the
exposed-to-space section. He could slowly sense the pressure of the
biological counters on his forehead, an oxygen tube running over his long
mustache into his nostrils, and the sudden jolt of an epidermal upon his
arm. The words were staggered and brief, but coherent;
     "W-who are you?"
     "Relax, Mr. Clay. We're from Earth Transit. My name's Billy," spoke the
nearest figure, a stocky, dark composition of circles and bulges. "We'll
have you off the Parena soon."
     "Is...Isabel..."
     "Not now. We've got to get you off this wreck before the Chaumirrans
arrive. Grulo?"
     A thinner figure drew near, holding some whirring instrument close to
Clay's mouth. "Nathaniel Clay, do we have your authorization for law
jurisdiction, as defined by Article 7, Section 128 of the Thurmann
Resolution? Just say yes or no, okay?"
     "Y-yes... but-"
     "Okay. That's all. Just relax." And, after another jolt on the same
arm, Clay's vision became eclipsed by a thick gray shroud.

2. LOPEZ

     The news reports, written, visual, and extrasensory, were trickling out
from all over the Yamatsuka MediaNet and all the descriptions were decidedly
grim. Catching the full brunt of the informational ripple of the disaster
was New York-Boston, an extended cathedral of technology, diplomacy and
every conceivable form of commerce, and one of the very few places left on
Earth where the rules and doctrines of the ever-growing Brotherhood of
Progressive Nations had thoroughly failed to gain acceptance. Even after two
bitter centuries of complaint, unspoken threats and random rioting, NY-B was
still the voice of the human race, still the continual meeting place of a
thousand worlds and twelve interplanetary civilizations, and still the
legal, ideological and financial reminder and remnant of a nation that had
long since dissipated into the stagnation of mass rule. Yet the ever-present
tension remained in her streets. Other cities and countries of the
Brotherhood looked to NY-B's shining skyscrapers and prospering industries,
then at their own dirty hovels and burned-out shells, and demanded change;
"change" being, of course, NY-B's "voluntary" membership in the
Brotherhood's planned economy and government, and the Brotherhood's voice to
be finally recognized interplan. As the particulars of the disaster at
Chaumirra became widely available, especially those concerning the intended
purpose of the Parena and it's location of origin, there came yet more
self-righteous urgings for Brotherhood "governing" of NY-B, including, in
some of the Brotherhood's more militant locations, an armed invasion of the
defiant metropolis. Dread once again became etched upon the faces of NY-B.
     And there was no place the dread was more pronounced than in the sparse
press room of TransGalax Shipping, where TransGalax press secretary
Francesca Lopez began to address the conference of interplan journalists and
confused stockholders. Noisy hubbub at Lopez' appearance and mosquito-buzz
of several dozen hovering news drones served to emphasize in deadly terms
the magnitude of the incident.
     "Quiet, please. Attention. Please be quiet." Despite her diminutive
size, Lopez' voice was firmly audible and informal, and some of the
murmuring faded away immediately. However, in the pits of the new silence, a
cry rose up from the back of the conference room.
     "Exploiters! Rapists! Unity is the way, pigs!" Lopez tilted her head
sharply downward, dark curls maintaining the new inertia, and with her
gesture, a couple of burly security guards escorted the vitriol-spouting
individual from the room.
     Francesca gazed at the individual as he thrashed about, spittle and
loose drool flying from his lips, like a rabies-infected dog of yore. Her
heart sank as she reflected on her new future, as embodied by this
particular personage, and who would doubtlessly be referred to as "a brave
voice of defiance" by the smirking group before her. From the first moment
she saw a starship rise in electromagnetic triumph, she knew that shipping
was her life. Francesca had spent her early childhood on the NY-B loading
platforms of TransGalax with her father, discerning between the streamlined
hulks of the various ether-freighters and jumpers, memorizing the operations
codes, learning the terminology of the loaders, studying the transit
regulations. In school and computer communications, all her study was
oriented to the eventual objective of working for TransGalax. And one day,
she pulled some strings and managed to single-handedly pilot a jumper to the
Moon, and back, clearly violating several planetary codes, as well as a few
child-labor laws. She was only 12. The press condemned her as an
obsessive-compulsive product of "dysfunctional NY-B education", but
TransGalax's president, Ellis Onizuka, felt rather differently, flattered at
the notion that his business could inspire a child so, and he immediately
offered the girl a job.
     Initially it was a mere Matrix trading stint. Francesca would virtually
work with TransGalax contacts across the globe and on Chaumirra, obtaining
jobs and contracts. The beauty of it was that none of them would ever see
her as she really was, a mere teenager, but as an nameless executive,
computer-modeled in TranGalax colors, hovering about the trading grid. As
she grew older (and more legally acceptable), she moved up to transit
controller, then as public relations correspondent, and then spent seven
years simultaneously pursuing an engineering degree at MIT and serving on
TransGalax as operations consultant for the Chaumirra division. And on the
day of her graduation, Ellis Onizuka took time out from his exceedingly busy
agenda to attend. The old man walked up to her afterward, his wrinkled face
beaming, and inquired,
     "Francie, I want you to be TransGalax."
     She smiled. "How do you mean, Ellis?"
     "Since that little stunt twelve years ago, you've personified every
principle and every ideal I've ever stood for. Independence. Determination.
And the drive to do what you want to do. And I'm not the only one who has
noticed. The public, whoever the hell they are, have, too. I would like you
to be TransGalax's press secretary, and the most visible representative of
the company."
     "Press secretary? But-"
     "Yes, I know. Believe me, I know you would rather not. It's dull and
boring, having to deal with people who just don't understand, or worse,
won't understand, how much the concept of interplanetary shipping means to
you. But I can't think of anyone else who I would rather have to embody this
company. It's you, Francie. Only you." The tone of his voice was earnest,
almost pleading, and it seemed at that moment, he had grown thirty years
younger.
     "I would be honored, sir." A few days later, Onizuka would be killed by
a terrorist bomb outside the TransGalax dome.
     That was the keystone to a whole series of minor disasters. Without
Onizuka's guiding hand, the company was thrown into chaos, and hundreds of
the company's workers were shuffled about under ever-changing and ever-inept
leadership. Lopez' debut at a Chaumirran convention was met with ridicule
and distasteful speculation about her working relationship with the late
Onizuka, and the focus of the company, under the authority of one of the
more "socially concerned" presidents, had gone from legitimate NY-B
/Chaumirra goods and cargo to hazardous waste from developing Brotherhood
countries. Francesca felt trapped, watching the organization she had loved
so being reduced to a menial garbage collector, and having to justify and
explain such incompetent policies to inquirers.
     And now... this. It was the end. The end of TransGalax, another soapbox
for the rest of the world to grandstand upon, and, if what she had heard
earlier was true, possible war between Chaumirra and Earth.
     What fool had ordered Earth Transit to interfere? And what fool, what
moronic son of a bitch had been piloting the Parena?
     "Now, then, I will be taking questions..."

3. KNOX

     It was such a thrill. Such a beautiful thrill. His hand was wet against
the cold steel of the pistol, and sweat trickled freely through his long
blue-gray hair, but he hadn't noticed. He was looking, once again, at the
tear-stained face of the pleading, poor young thing on the Parena. Well,
he/she/it should have known what would have happened when they played by the
rules of the Oppressors. Oh, what was his/her/it's words?
     "Please... Don't... Let me live..."
     He rolled the words back and forth over his tongue, enjoying their
succulence, their blind naivete. And then he was there again, like a
photograph, like a Joseph Cornell box sculpture, relishing the rich emotion
and baroque nostalgia. And the barrel leveled off at his/her/it's forehead,
and the whimpering ensued.
     Lovely.
     And then the real sound! A panorama of violence and reassuring chaos!
The soft orgasm of the exploding head and skull and brains, coming apart, on
him and the hex panels, intermingled with the loud explosion! Irony!
Duality! And the spatter was almost artistic, contrasted with the strict
procedure of walls of Oppression. It was so...dirty... and...
     Individualistic!
     Not self-serving, or selfish, or self-involved, but individualistic,
like saying "nuke New York-Boston," or pissing on the Venus de Milo or
something else that was great, in a cool, rebellious way. Or like killing
someone for no reason at all.
     Oh, wait, there was a reason.
     Yes, but can't call it a "reason". That's Oppressive, like spelling all
words correctly and whatever. It was an impulse, an united impulse
throughout the world, hell, the universe! Like pissing and hunger and sex.
One just does it. Have to. Need to. Like an animal. But it was a good
impulse too, because it's going to help poor people and people who aren't
Oppressive.
     The head exploded again, in his mind. And again. Then a blur of blood
and then the view from the shuttle window, watching the big pig of a ship
fall apart and disassemble over the green and black half-sky, the big chunks
holding refuse falling into the green and burning brightly. A
spectrally-inverted head-explosion. Too bad there was no sound, but that's
space. No sound! But no stopping the impulse!
     Clay?
     To hell with Clay, he said, and then there was that texture again,
still on his fingers. Of her soft, pliable flesh. Like the Venus de Milo's,
if one could grope her and if she was a real woman.
     I love her, he thought.
     And she's mine, once this is over and the impulse takes over. And then
time to take a ship, and be impulse-ive.
     "Knox."
     There's her voice. She asks him how he could be so cruel, how he could
do this to the crew (including he/she/it) and her Oppressive lover. How he
could have sent a fully loaded waste freighter to burn over the largest
population center of Chau (A.K.A. the alien Oppressors-in league.) He tells
her of his dream. Of a new universe. Without the exploitation and ignorance
and hatred and selfishness and greedy, Oppressive things like money and NY-B
and Chaumirra and TransGuillotine. A universe where we are all the same and
no one is better than anyone else. A Brotherhood of Progressive Worlds
through impulse-ive revolution and the cleansing of Oppressors. She coughs
and spits bloody phlegm on him.
     Mordecai Knox laughs, the dirty gray curl of a goatee comically echoing
the leering grin, turns, and taps away at a few nearby buttons, disengaging
the shuttle engine, wiping away the low murmur, plunging the cabin into
silence and darkness.
     Then he approaches her, and she cries, unable to discern his movements,
but fully aware of his intentions.
     "My dear Isabel, this is not over yet."
	 
4. BABBAGE

     The Enforcers were monoliths, the trio of them, together, taking up
most of the videoscreen's area with Chaumirran technology and piercingly
blue-green ether intakes, projecting their otherworldly light upon the
dark-skinned, thick face and thicker spectacles of the Earth Transit
navigator. William Babbage could only gape at them, while taking place in
history as the first human witness to the ancient civilization's military
might. His immersion in fearful speculation was curtailed by the commander's
sharp order.
     "Billy! Hit the flamers!" Babbage hobbled, his rotund body jiggling in
haste, to the Nav station, groped at the Op cubby and withdrew the card,
lined by cable to the console. He inserted the piece of plastic into the
back of his neck, and his line of sight became superimposed with the control
systems, the multicolored ellipses and squares incongruently flat and
weightless against the chaos of reality. It took only seconds of his coded
thought to set the flamer panel to Maximum, and on cue, the Earth Transit
vessel vibrated and rocked as spots of orange sprouted from its protruding
belly, detaching itself from the orbiting wreckage of the Parena like a
satiated leech. The generous golden oblongs of Enforcers on the green
Chaumirran horizon, not more than several miles away, immediately changed
tactics, two veering away to secure the remnants, the remaining warship
accelerating towards the uninvited guest. A flickering yellow light trembled
within a hollowed pit on its jewellike, beetle-sleek architecture, as
Babbage observed, and noted to his compatriots, stunned.
     "They're charging their weapons... I-I can't believe it."
     "I told you, damn it! Go to eth on my command. This is gonna be close."
Sweat began to fester upon the commander's naked head.
     "But they'll be able to follow us! The visual indicates ether
capability. Look at that glow!" Babbage poked at twin, parallel blue-green
embers on the hull of the Enforcer, his fingers leaving wet tracks on the
vid.
     "We'll have to chance it! Plot the course. You're an eth navigator.
You're not being paid to-" Suddenly a violent concussion wave rocked the
vessel's superstructure, leaving the groaning of overstressed metal and
jarred occupants in its wake. Thin traceries of amber light ejaculated from
the Chaumirran Enforcer like a dragon's breath, and played across the dome
of the Earth Transit vehicle, inscribing several fiery gashes.
     "Status!" The disheveled commander barked. Babbage accessed the hull
schematics and diagnosed the damage, his heart racing. A second later, there
was an exhale of relief.
     "Hull integrity's stable. That first blast ate away a lot, though.
We've lost the detection array and some of our oh-two reserves."
     "Get us out of here, boy!"
     "Yes, sir."
     The ether charts, in all their splendid complexity, abruptly forced
their way into Babbage's optic nerve, and the binary thoughts that five
years of extremely specific Institute training had long burned into his
memory, came into being. The computer complied all too easily, despite the
considerable anxieties that wracked the conscience of its user. It was
Babbage's second month in the Transit, and already he had gotten way more
than he bargained for; first all this salvage-and-rescue business, getting
inexplicably sent to nasty accidents and wrecks like an accursed paramedic,
and now caught in the middle of some big interplan military confrontation
with Chaumirrans, of all people! He had read, back in Institute days, of the
Chaumirran civilization, of their exceedingly hedonistic but peaceful ways,
and how the Alliance had been an almost symbiotic relationship. With
humanity initially providing new means of high technology and production to
the scientifically stagnating Chau, and the Chau opening the mysteriously
esoteric door of ether-locomotion to humanity, expanding the reach of space
travel, both parties had benefitted enormously. The first blasts Babbage had
witnessed marked the end of that relationship, and the dawn of something new
and terrible.
     And why, he wondered, had they been given specific orders to claim
Nathaniel Clay and his crew? Politically, this was akin to pouring salt into
Chaumirra's terrible wound! Doubtless, within a few days the word would be
out; NY-B had surreptitously sneaked out the perpetrator of the catastrophe
from the confines of Chaumirran authority, and thus violated interplan Code!
If Clay had perished on the Parena or by the hands of Enforcer ships or a
Chaumirran tribunal, at least some warped sense of justice or revenge would
be served, and the matter would be brought to a conclusive, albeit bloody
end. Instead...
     The course had been plotted, a carmine streak upon the hypnotic mosaic
of the ether charts. Babbage engaged the accelerators, and a high-pitched
shriek ensued. The Earth Transit ship was immersed in luminescent sparks,
instantly becoming a foaming conglomeration of tiny blue-green embers that
dispersed quickly amongst thick waves of unoccupied ebony space, high above
Chaumirra. Moments later, the attacking Enforcer battleship similarly
vanished.
     From behind lolling mountains of technicolored clouds, the Earth
Transit vehicle rose, a more substantial and modern Flying Dutchman, though
spatially distorted at any given moment, like an indistinct reflection on
water dispersed by tidal shifts or rippling wind, simultaneously alternating
between transparency and solidity in the process. The Chaumirra etherial
bypass was typical for the course, an ever-changing, nostalgically
psychedelical metamorphic space unfathomed even by the most active
imaginations of Matrix world designers; variating in color and form, a
three-dimensional exercise in chaos. Crystalline strata congealed like
feasting ant colonies, faded away to pale, ringed vapor which eventually
built up into a bulky satin wave of arcane liquid, bursting into spiralling
flame, starry illuminati and less predictable things.
     The very nature of etherial travel required the dual discipline of
well-reasoned, absolute clarity of thought (so not to be swayed into
hysterical confusion at the ever-confusing surroundings) and an unrelenting
imagination (to mentally move the craft to its destination). Babbage had
obtained both, through tireless training, and could perform same with
considerable mastery, but looking out upon the quickly-changing etherial
terrain (or lack thereof) from the video-opts, he never failed to experience
a raw twinge of awe-inspired fear.
     With the Chau in certain pursuit, that twinge had exacerbated into a
full-fledged gnawing in his gut. His head felt cold, and only dimly did he
realize it was free-flowing sweat.
     "Navigation! Enforcer breaking ether at oh-nine-five!" The spotter's
words had the characteristic erratic reverse-echo effect attributed to the
etherial wave-warp, but it could not filter out the terror in the voice.
     "No," murmured the commander.
     "I told you!" Babbage halted his thoughts long enough to take a second
look at the vid. The Enforcer vibrated into existence, distorted and
ghostly, but no less imposing. Or deadly.
     The ET craft, eth engines flaring mottled gas, suddenly tilted sharply
upward and rolled, the narrow arc of its flight expertly dodging the precise
yellow blasts of the Enforcer. It was the best Babbage could hope for, to
dodge and evade until coming out of ether. Ship-to ship battle was still
possible; the ET ship held considerable armament, but the Enforcer was a
military vessel and could probably outclass her by tenfold. And he
remembered hearing at the Institute something about the usage of diffusor
weapons within ether. How diffusor-beam behavior and potency were highly
unpredictable given skewed etherial physics, and how there had been certain
rare, yet tragic occasions where the beam would inexplicably set off an
atomic chain-reaction within the eth...
     The voice of the weapons prep suddenly burst through the boy's
earpiece, ragged and frantic. "The cannons are charged. Do we engage or
not?" Babbage looked over at the suddenly-too-morose commander, and shook
his head. "Too dangerous, inter-ether and otherwise."
     The commander glared at him. "What do you mean? They've just fired at
us!"
     "They are Chaumirrans, remember? They probably have ether-capable
weapons, being who they are." It was logical. Babbage had known certain
planet technologies had been withheld, in the past, for "security" reasons.
"I'll pull off evasive tricks until we reach interplan space. Then they'll
have to give it up." The ship rocked as another blast detonated in close
proximity. The Enforcer had dipped low and rotated along its vertical axis,
closing in upon the miniscule craft, cutting off the possibility of an
extended chase. An audiovisual forced its way into the craft's
communications system; first the Chaumirran Defense logo, and then the
feline-face of an imposing Chaumirran with brillantly orange fur, tinged
with gray. Its dull green manecap and shellrobe ornamented quite heavily
with silver stones, indicating high rank.
     "Attention, Earth Transit ship. This is Togg Korba, Dalcern Influential
of the Chaumirran Enforcer Lemsted." Korbo's copper eyes burned brightly as
he spoke in very streamlined AngloSpan. You are in clear violation of
several Chaumirran Transit codes, and you have unlawfully penetrated
Chaumirran space. You will drop out of ether now or you will be destroyed."

5. KORBA

     Togg Korba stared at the addled, awkward face of the Earth Transit ship
commander, ignoring the younger, obese fellow in the distance. He made a
twisting gesture with his paw to Serent Jola, the teenaged gunner. From the
Lemsted, another small golden pulse of electrostatic made its way to the
tiny Earth ship, detonating just meters short of the hull.
     "This is the minimum amount of persuasion that I will resort to." Korbo
droned to the ET commander in the circular monitor. "The next blast will be
decidedly closer."
     The ET commander muttered at something in the distance, and the
transmission was cut off.
     "Fools!" Korba shouted in harsh Chaumirran. "Do they seriously think
they can escape us?" Jola turned from the strategic holo, closed his eyes
for a moment and opened them, the Chaumirran equivalent of a shrug. Korba
paced the bridge, his exposed footclaws musically clanging against the
chromore elevated platform.
     "This is intolerable! As if unrestrained warfare were a preferable
option!" He stopped, bracing himself against the spiralling railing.
     Jola looked at him, inquisitively. "Dalcern, surely you realize that
this is the first time we have fought hukumi."
     "Bah! The hukumi keep asking us why we are presently so sedentary and
soft. They don't realize that it was our only alternative to killing and
destroying. We had to gave it up because we had become so good at it, and if
they want to find that out the hard way, it will be my pleasure to oblige."
Togg Korba abruptly spun around, his fur bristling, and stared directly at
the cub. "Open fire!"
     The Lemsted, bearing down on the tiny craft like a hungry shark, poured
forth several scintillating volleys of devastating light, which, under
normal circumstances, would have completely obliterated the vessel were it
not for Babbage's wildly unconventional tactic of immediately rushing the
hulking battleship head-on, and strafing the full length of her hull,
narrowly evading the diffusor blasts. Korba almost backed away in sudden
terror as the craft flashed by, several feet from the ships main viewport.
The ET ship cleared the Lemsted's rear flamer exhaust, spun out into the
ship's etherial signature, and was violently propelled forward at a much
faster velocity in the process.
     "Clever." Korba muttered, annoyed at the sudden delay of the
inevitable. "Hold, my gunner. Engineer Lomptid, cut the ether accelerators
and turn the ship around." He stared at the diminishing speck thrusting
through the color-shifting soup and seethed. "But that little stunt will not
work again, hukumi."
     As if fixed on a gigantic pivot, the frontal nose of the now-stationary
Chaumirran warship swept to one side, the path of it indelibly transcribed
upon the ether like an enormous paintbrush laden with incongruent pigments.
At a point approximately halfway through the 180-degree turn, the Lemsted
began to accelerate again, a sizable plume of vapor lashing at its sides.
Within range of the ET craft, Korba ordered the accelerator rate lowered to
match their opponent's speed, and the tables had been turned, with the
slowly-moving Lemsted's cannons trained on the rear end of the tiny vehicle.
There could be no escape from such a predicament.
     "Fire!" Korba barked.
     Bright bolts of diffusion energy spat from the Lemsted and lanced
through the ether. The first shot penetrated the ET ether intake, and
exploded brightly. But before the second bolt could inflict further damage,
the ET craft faded away, leaving the remaining blasts to momentarily
illuminate the ether with their pyrotechnic light.
     "Good shot." Korba snarled at Jola, in embittered sarcasm. "Trace their
dropoff signature, Lomptid. We may still be able to-" Jola turned and
interrupted, his eyes wide. "Dalcern! Another ship is breaking ether behind
us!"
     Behind the Lemsted, not too far from where it had made its initial
turn, materialized a wedge-shaped, black-plated monstrosity, almost twice
the size of the already considerable Enforcer. No venting ports or
observation windows could be seen on the monotonously dark ship, save for a
few dim slits of light upon a conelike appendage rising slightly from the
jagged architectural angles, a nipple in comparison to the rest of the
vessel.
     "Yes, it's almost certainly the Golgodd," Korba started, not bothering
to look out from the viewport. "I told Dalcern Zonrell to follow up. Open
the ship-to-ship-"
     "Negative, Dalcern Korba. The visual-recognition and profile does not
match that of an Enforcer."
     "What? Cross-reference it with the Chaumirra archives. Let me take a
look." The cub tapped at a few gemstone buttons, observed the holo, and
shook his head while Korba rose and looked out the viewport at the hulking
jet-black silhouette. "What is that?" he murmured, astonished.
     "Nothing similar in Chau Defense... or-" Then, as if a giant switch had
been flipped, every chemical illuminator and holo on the Lemsted flickered,
the abruptly-dim bridge briefly illuminated by the etherial visual
turbulance shining through the viewport. And, as a ripping metallic screech
wracked the Enforcer, the ether melted away to black space, plunging Korba's
ship into true darkness.
     Korba could hear Jola's frantic, blinded voice as he groped about,
trying to find the emergency lantern. "...Dalcern! We have been forced out
of the ether!"
     "Your recognition of the stupidly obvious is much appreciated, my
gunner, but I'm afraid it will not remedy the situation." Korba growled, his
paws at last clutching the familiar loop-and lever. He flicked the lantern
on, bathing the womb of the bridge with new, green light.
     "But... but my Dal...Dalcern, how?" Jola was never very good at
concealing his fear, Korba thought. But now it could be justified.
     "It appears that we have had our Churnn power plant drained by some
means. Without the ether accelerators and without any power, we've slipped
out. We are presently defenseless and drifting, Jola." He hoped direct
recognition would ease the cub, but even he was afraid. The Lemsted , his
home for so long, was now only so much dead metal. "I want you to find
Engineer Lomptid and make your way to a jettison pod. Take any crew members
you find along the way with you, but remember, each pod may only hold a
hundred of us."
     Korba handed him another lantern. Jola nodded, reluctantly. "What about
you, Dalcern?"
     "I must continue to speak as the voice of this ship until due cause,
Jola. You know that."
     "Yes, Dalcern, but-"
     "Go, cub. This is not the time for debate or sentiment. Go."
     Jola paused, regret etched upon his face, and shuffled off.
     Looking from the viewport at starless space, Korba fumed. Standard
procedure required that the Dalcern remain until his vessel began to suffer
significant damage. Although the Lemsted may have been damaged coming out of
ether, without any power systems, there was no way of him to tell, and no
evidence to show his superiors. To abandon the ship without "due cause"
could mean his life or imprisonment. And though the ship's designers had
made it as easy as possible for Korba to leave at a moment's notice- his
jettison pod placed close to the bridge- nevertheless he had never cared for
the Chau Military's strict doctrines of behavior. After some time, he
watched the tiny eggs of jettison pods begin to detach from the Lemsted's
superstructure and breathed a sigh of relief. As long as the ship's thousand
crewmembers were safe, he was safe.
     Then, from the blackness, a bright blue line of light lashed out and
scythed through one of the drifting capsules, the penetration followed by an
enormous cloud of vapor as the reservoir fuel and Chaumirran bodies burned
up.
     "NNOO!" Korba screamed in horror, shock, and impotent rage, as he made
the grim realization that the unidentified black ship had stayed with them.
Deranged with grief, he beat his clenched paws against the transparent
surface, unable to pry his eyes open and witness the dark executioner fire
upon another helpless pod.
     And another.
     And another.
     With each consecutive flash of light shining through his lids, Korba
descended another level into hell. So quickly, everyone he had known in the
past five seasons-his mate, his friends, Lomptid, Jola and the rest of the
crew- systematically were being slaughtered.
     And he could do nothing.
     The death knell of the tenth flash left him a motionless heap on the
floor. And then, with a distant moan, suddenly the Lemsted's systems and
power came back online. Korba opened his tear-filled eyes, looked at his
revived bridge, and roared. He ran over to Jola's post, and tapped all the
gemstones, furiously trying to fire every weapon of mass destruction on
board the Lemsted at the black ship.
     Nothing happened.
     The black ship remained on the strategic holo, untainted.
     And on the circular monitor, a face appeared.
     Human. Middle-aged. Long dark gray hair and goatee. Unkempt. Olive
skin. Korba burned his image forever onto his memory.
     "Hello, Chaumirran scum. I hope you've enjoyed my little fireworks
show. Your crew burns oh, so brightly, don't you think?" The voice was a
petulant whine.
     "I'll kill you..."
     "Oh, I hardly think you are in any position to threaten me. It was no
small feat to cripple an Enforcer. I grant that your destruction will be far
easier."
     "Why have you done this?"
     "That dirty little partnership with the devil that your people have,
for starters. I'm here to re-educate you. To bring you out from the abyss of
fear and ignorance and into the utopia of enlightened, correct thought."
     "By killing."
     "Oh, how narrow-visioned you are. Free your mind. Earth and Chaumirra
must be a truly united brotherhood of peace and love, not rivals provoked by
material gain and hateful exploitation. Don't you see? Don't you see it,
brother?"
     "All I see," Korba hissed as he quickly charted the Lemsted for a
direct collision course with the black ship, "is your twisted, charred
corpse."
     He punched the acceleration gemstone.
     Nothing happened.
     "I'm sure you are discovering," the human chimed, "that certain
functions on your ship remain inoperative. Your ship is now under my
command, just as the Parena was."
     "You... you did-"
     "Oh, absolutely! I do tend to overdo things, but I suppose the more
deaths, the more angry and hungry for justice your people will become. In
time, Chaumirra will declare war on Earth, and New York-Boston will be
reduced to so much rubble. Then we will rise up and take control from the
inept, greedy leadership that supposedly created the disaster-of course, you
and I know better, now, don't we?- The Brotherhood of Progressive Nations
will make the necessary overtures of peace, and it will be over. We will
propose our new agenda of universal harmony and make it a reality,
interplan. But I'm afraid you won't be able to witness this glorious new
future."
     Korba stared for a long time at the dulled eyes and sneering face of
the human. The words came slow, but the moments of silence did not dilute
his sincerity.
     "I... swear on all I hold sacred that you will die for this atrocity. I
will spend the remainder of my life searching for you. And when I do finally
find you, and I will find you, then I will kill you."
     The human smiled, waved.
     "Goodbye!"
     Then the image of his face became swallowed by a snowstorm of white
noise.
     In a few seconds, Korba knew, the black ship would open fire on him. He
twisted the archival dial on the control array nearby. A small wafer of
crystal slid out from a nearby slot. Korba grabbed the wafer and ran to the
Dalcern's emergency pod bay, below the bridge.
     The mysterious ship, like a cautious surgeon, began cutting away at the
bulk of the Lemsted with its blue-white blades, marring the golden vessel
with graffiti of flame, concentrating the blasts at the rear end of the
humbled juggernaut. After repeated pummelling, the entire rear section broke
off and vaporized in a gargantuan white-hot explosion. The horrible blast
set off incendiary chain reactions at the stump of the intact frontal
remnant, and like a hungry, gargantuan amoeba, the fireball instantaneously
spread and devoured the giant ship.
     Within the orange sphere of churning plasma shot out another egg-like
capsule, scorched and blackened but otherwise functional. Were it not for
the spectacular surrounding spray of debris and great smoldering chunks of
Chaumirran architecture to obscure its passage, it might have met the same
fate as its brethren. But the black ship, evidently satiated with the
horrendous destruction and apparently oblivious to its existence, roared
away, with only the dull yellow tremor of flamers to reveal its ominous
sepulchral presence.
     "...I'll find you..." Korba droned, tears flowing freely from his eyes
as he fondled the wafer protectively with his great paws.
     "...I'll find you..."

6. JUDGEMENT DAY

     Within the packed confines of the Global Court at the World Trade
Center in New York-Boston, the eyes of billions, human and otherwise, peered
at the electronically scrambled televised face of Nathaniel Clay, reduced to
a crude mosaic by an obscura field. With bated breath they awaited the
jury's verdict.
     "We the people, in the case of the Interplanetary Alliance versus
Nathaniel Henry Clay, have found the latter guilty of criminal mischief and
negligance in the Parena/Lemsted incident. We recommend the most severe
sentence, in respect to the heavy loss of life as suffered by our Chaumirran
brothers." The representative stepped down from the podium as the vast
majority of the audience burst into salvos of cheering, hooting and
whistling. Francesca Lopez was not one of them. She stared in somber silence
at the obscured defendant, still numb with shock over the complete and utter
destruction. The press conference, typically, had been the place where she
had gotten the most up-to-date information, with Smity Kubrick, reporter for
the NY-B Declaration, and his snide inquiry to her about "supporting the man
who killed a thousand Chaumirran soldiers." From the Dzakowsky-Darrow Stock
Exchange came the financial death knell for TransGalax Shipping, their
market share reduced to a minute thousandth of its original value. The
debacle of the press conference became an excuse for the otherwise
incompetent Onizuka-less Board to inexplicably unite under the banner of
Francesca Lopez's resignation.
     Today, she had transmitted her compliance with their wishes, ending her
career with the corpse that had been TransGalax.
     Now she looked at the image of Clay, trying to reconstruct his
appearance from the extrapolated squares. A Caucasian with blonde hair,
which left her with about twelve billion eligible suspects, not discounting
clones or offworld workers. She had read his record prior to the disaster
and the subsequent NY-B sanctioned wipe. Clay had been a superlative pilot,
even by TransGalax's strict standards; he had accumulated more than one
hundred and fifty thousand hours of space flight in his twenty-seven years
of service, overseeing some two hundred frieghters and jumpers with a cargo
loss percentile of .002 and all flights arriving early or on time. His
performance rating with the company had been AAA1, and it was clear to Lopez
that in TransGalax's seventy-six year history (and now lifespan), Clay
ranked among the best of its pilots. If circumstances had been different,
she would have liked to have met him. Not that she hadn't tried, regardless;
the TransGalax roster listing for Clay was classified, an order of Onizuka
himself.
     She couldn't bother with the question of "why", presently. The idea had
been floating around her head since Onizuka's death, and now she was free,
more or less, to pursue it. The money could be found or created, somewhere-
in the Dzak-Dar, the Mars Rush, the Belt Mines, the possibilites were still
limitless, as long as NY-B and individual freedom still existed, but she
would have to work fast to fill the void. She would have to find the
investments, ships, machines and minds herself, and even at this moment,
those belonging to TransGalax were being bought out by the most incapable of
NY-B's entrepreneurs. It would be difficult, Francesca thought to herself,
but it couldn't be much more difficult than witnessing the events of the
past week without bursting into tears. What was the alternative? Watching
the space-shipping industries fall apart in the fearful hands of amateurs,
simultaneously terrified of the conceivable Chaumirran blockade and the
similarly dangerous home-grown actions of those in the Brotherhood? If NY-B
was going to die, it would die on her terms; standing defiantly against the
steel and flame of those that would destroy it, not slowly rotting away,
huddled in a dark corner. A death of drama, not stagnation; and Starcross
Cargo, under her command, would be the last of the foot soldiers to go.
     The obscura silhouette quickly shifted colors. Clay had turned his
head, the gold-brown hair-squares yielding to the pale bronze grid of his
face to Francesca. She wondered who he was looking at, as silence descended
upon the interior of the Global Court, the gathered mob less anxiously, even
sullenly, waiting for the sentence from the Dakari judge. The appointment of
a Dakari as arbiter of this particular interplan legal dispute had brought
wide disfavor with most in the Brotherhood of Progressive Nations, and even
among some Chaumirrans, despite the fact that the Dakari had reigned in this
particular profession for decades, by virtue of their high intelligence and
unshakable objectivity. Francesca became puzzled during the past week,
looking at the various mainstream features in the MediaNet, why
instantaneously so much attention had been abruptly focused on "The Dakari
Domination of the Courts" and the "Moral Crisis of Dakari Legal Philosophy"
as soon as this particular judge had been appointed for the Clay trial.
There had been no debate, no outcry about their "domination" or this
"crisis" before.
     The Dakari judge stepped down from the higher podium, wiry stilt-legs
supporting a bulky, black-draped torso like a headless ostrich. Protruding
forward from the torso was the large dull gray ellipse of flesh, adorned
along the circumference by a jagged geometric tattoo. A Dakari brain was
encased in the torso, while the protrusion was in fact an organic lump of
clay, able to be shifted into an endless variety of complex forms; for
manipulation, digestion, and excretion, the Dakari tended towards a trio of
hollowed tentacles. Creating a facsimile of a mouth, tongue and air intake
for purposes of communicating with humans had been a fairly simple task for
Dakari compared to actually learning the language and conveying it properly,
but the years of study had converted the Dakari flatulating rasps into a
sinuously musical drone, which seemed strangely satirical as the faceless
lips conveyed the punishment.
     "Nathaniel Henry Clay, you are hereby sentenced to twenty years, hard
labor, in Interplanetary Prison." An angry rumble swept through the rowdy
crowd; this was not to be expected, to them, this was an incorrect,
immorally light sentence. The Dakari continued, unswayed.
     "Your time will be served on the Olympus Mons Penal Colony, Mars. This
trial is concluded." The gray lips faded.
     Francesca Lopez was jostled violently as some angry members of the
crowd began shouting, cursing and lifting the levitchairs. "Injustice!
Injustice!" The Dakari backed off as several chairs went flying through the
air, at him and at the seated Clay. The balliffs and Trade Center security
guards quickly advanced upon the unruly groups in the audience, who
reciprocated by coming to blows. Lopez, in the riotous confusion, heard the
distinct high-pitched whine of an electrostatic pistol behind her, the sound
scything her eardrum like a sword. The retina-scarring blue-white serration
lashed out, striking the base of Clay's podium. Immediately the shouting and
yelling advanced to screams of terror as the mob panicked. Lopez looked at
the obscured Clay running from the podium, turned to face the assassin. But
there was only the mindless jumble of fleeing spectators, lunging for the
exits. An previous thought crossed her mind in the chaos, and, taking
advantage of the riot, she rushed to the stage, to Clay. Pushing her head
through the obscura field surrounding his body, she stared at him.
     He was a hulking man, much larger than the distorting device put forth.
The deeply-etched, angular bronze face was stretched with lines of fear and
surprise, also conveyed by the subtle twitching of his long gold moustache
and the widened green eyes behind rectangular lenses. A richly dark bruise
stained his broad forehead, a decompression wound from the Parena. He raised
a thick, bone-laden hand.
     "Stay away from me!" he barked.
     "I'm Francesca Lopez, from TransGalax." she whispered, trying to store
his physical characteristics for future reference.
     There was a moment where his eyes glinted, in sudden recognition of the
young woman, but that was the only connection that he would allow to her.
     "I can't talk to you." His voice and manner had changed, becoming
calmer and more forcefully deliberate in its controlled restraint.
     "What happened? With the Parena?"
     "I can't tell you."
     "Was it on purpose? Did you detach the waste intentionally?"
     "I didn't do it." The response was involuntary, like a small dam
bursting, but the look on his face after he had said it was one of immediate
regret, as if he had not meant to state the truth.
     "You didn't do it?"
     He shook his head and muttered, "It doesn't matter."
     "Yes, it does!" Francesca was incredulous. "You were one of our best
pilots! Now you're willing to sacrifice your future for something you didn't
even do?"
     "Look, I don't have any choice. You don't understand, Franci-Ms. Lopez.
He was going to stop at nothing to get back at me, at everyone-"
     "Who was? Who did it, Clay? Who? This may be the last time you'll be
able to tell someone who can actually do something about it!" Francesca
glanced behind her; the riotous group was being dispersed too efficently,
and it would only be a matter of time before she would be noticed and carted
away by the security guards. She looked back at him, the hard stare
emphasizing her impatience as she added, "There won't be any eager ears on
Mars."
     "I'm sorry, but there's nothing I can tell you." and abruptly he firmly
pressed his palm to the back of her hand, in a vague comforting gesture,
then quickly drew it away as if he had touched flame. The apologetic tone of
his voice seemed at odds with a twisting motion of triumph in his face, but
Francesca had not yet comprehended the reason why.
     "Nothing at all?" she pleaded.
     "No, Ms. Lopez," he said, a smile breaking through his beaten
countenence. "There's nothing I can tell you." Then he shifted his attention
towards a security remote, hovering behind Francesca.
     "Get away from the prisoner." snapped the drone operator. "Now."
     Francesca Lopez backed away from Clay, anger, frustration surging
through her mind as the drone led her away from the field. Her last vision
of Clay was that of his right eyelid dropping down, then rising, and the
mocking upturned mouth. Then there was only the perplexing checkerboard of
obscura, as puzzling as that which it hid.

7. INCONVENIENCE

     The armored paw bolted out from the darkness, bringing its weight to
bear against the already well-swollen jaw of Togg Korba. Rich, colorless
Chaumirran blood had already made its way through his thick orange fur,
congealing into greasy tangles that could only partially hide the heinous
distortion of his now-ravaged snout and cheekbones. Yet he had no
acknowledged Triad Kogull Pell's vicious blows of discipline with sharp
gutterances. Instead, he only laughingly wheezed, coughing up some more
blood and persistent chips of teeth long departed. The contents of his lungs
came up, glittering violently in the unrelenting spotlight shining on the
rough-hewn dias, the lone levichair and its hunched over, unclothed
occupant. As the paw withdrew into the surrounding black of the chamber,
Korba, awaiting the next blow, impatiently and cynically snorted.
     "In... Interesting... how the times have... changed... Ten... seasons
ago... I'd still... be clear... headed..."
     "Silence!" Pell bellowed, the heavily accentuated voice flavored with
frustration. The three straight days of interogation of the Dalcern of the
deceased Lemsted had been more than just fruitless; Korba had the audacity
to stubbornly insist upon his ludicrous story, backed up by an obviously
manufactured archival crystal containing the audiovisual transcript with the
human on Korba's supposed "black ship." The Chau Military Triad had analyzed
the evidence, and Korba's testimony of the incident, but the absurd
allegations (a device that could wrench complete control of another ship's
operations? The isolationist Brotherhood of Progressive Nations on Earth,
which had no ether-capable technologies or spaceships, indirectly involved
in an inter-ether conflict?) strained his credibility. Earth Transit's
rescue of Clay at the shattered carcass of the Parena, as witnessed by
Dalcern Zonrell of Enforcer Golgodd, Dalcern Sarreto of Enforcer Ministrix,
and even Korba himself, had already confirmed NY-B's deep involvement. What
was needed now before the Triad could take action was Korba's refutement of
his fantastical testimony, and the Triad Kogull had been charged with this
duty. Wiping Korba's blood from his gauntlet, he continued.
     "You have said that Earth Transit was at the scene when the Lemsted,
Golgodd and Ministrix arrived, correct, Dalcern Korba?"
     Korba took in another heaving breath, preparing for the eventual blow.
"Yes. I have."
     "Do you know that Earth Transit is New York-Boston's oldest interplan
bureau, the police force that was founded after NASA's breakup and
privatization? Some two hundred fifty Earthyears ago, in fact?"
     "It... has occured to me."
     "Silence!" Pell did not strike, however. Fear was a tool that had to be
used sparingly.
     "Your archive, however," he continued, "indicates that the Parena's
actions and the destruction of your ship were committed by a hukumi follower
of the Brotherhood of Progressive Nations. He goes on into some detail about
how and why he committed such actions. Why do you think he would tell you
about it?"
     "He's...insane."
     "Irrelevant! WHY?"
     "Because...he thought..I was as good as dead... That I
could...not...escape."
     "Yet how convenient that he did tell you, and that you did escape! His
testimony absolves NY-B of the destruction of your ship AND the Parena
jettison, and shifts it to the Brotherhood! Were it not for Earth Transit's
presence, which you strangely confirm, I would be inclined to think that a
conspiracy had taken place! Amazing! Tell me, Dalcern Korba, do you have any
knowledge of the hukumi history? Specifically, recent history? From the
Brotherhood's formation on?"
     "No... I don't.... Do... tell-"
     "Insolence!" One gauntlet pulverized Korba's left mandible, another
continued further, retreated, claws bared, and sheared the right. Pell
barely rose from the darkness, a black-maned mountain of muscular bulk
restrained by an imperious shellrobe. He took the slumped Korba by the neck
and lifted him from the levitchair, until their eyes met.
     "Very much like our own Isladajunn-Chau Schism many seasons ago.
Separatism by minor ethnic, sexual, and economic factions evolving to
eventual civil war. Those splinter states spreading elsewhere in their own
curious way, eventually unifying. The Balkanization of the nation that NY-B
had once belonged to was the birthplace of the Brotherhood. For that reason
alone, the two states have been enemies. Enemies, Korba. They have been
enemies for two hundred Earthyears. Do you know that?"
     "...Is... there a... point?"
     "OF COURSE YOU KNOW THAT!" Pell shrieked into Korba's face. "In case
you have not been briefed, the hukumi pilot Nathaniel Clay was just
convicted by the Interplan Court a few minutes ago! His plea was no contest.
Where is his affirmation of your story? Nowhere! The point, you lying,
traitorous morg, is that I think you were bought off, by NY-B, or Earth
Transit, to fabricate this cover-up story, complete with a synthesized
archival crystal, moving the blame to followers of their oldest enemy. Who
knows? Maybe you even went so far as to kill your own crew-"
     "You spawn of a..." Korba rammed a knee into the Kogull's chest, and
Pell doubled over with a low moan.
     "I... did NOT kill them!" Korba shouted at the supine Kogull, kicking
him as he did so. "HE did! The hukumi Brotherhood did! You call me a
traitor! Hah! YOU... are playing right into his hands, you stupid fools!
What's next, I suppose? War with Earth? That's exactly what he wants you to
do! Can you hear me?!" Korba looked up into the light, and the monitoring
eye within. A hidden door in the darkness retracted with a metallic screech,
sending a shaft of blue illumination across the chamber. Three Chau Military
soldiers in dull gray shellarmor bolted from the portal and restrained
Korba, while a fourth, handling a slithering, slimy yellow tentacle with
gloved paws, spat, "Hold him still!" He inserted the tentacle into Korba's
swollen ear, and seconds later, the battered Chaumirran fell unconscious, a
limp mass in the hands of the soldiers.
     "Impressive work, Kogull Pell," the tentacle-wielder sarcastically
remarked. "Good thing we had sensamorine on hand or he might not have left
us much to save-"
     "Be quiet!" Pell roared, caressing his bruised abdomen. "Get this
excrement out of here. He has been absolutely uncooperative." The three
soldiers carried Korba through the portal, and disappeared in the blue
light, leaving Pell alone with the security commander. "And give me a
PathLink. I must make my report to the Triad. Our alternatives have been
narrowed considerably."

     "That will certainly enthuse them to no end." his companion droned,
handing him a folding spider of thin, curved plastic plates.
     "Save the commentary. Without his revision, I am going to have to
recommend execution. That's the only way we can keep a unified front."
     "Have you considered the not-so-improbable possibility that he might be
actually telling the truth?"
     "The truth, eh?" Pell wrapped the spider around the back of his head,
adjusting some of the legs to contact more precise nerve endings. "Would you
like to tell the people of Chau Urbana something contrary to the fact that
NY-B had intentionally dumped eleven thousand tons of toxic material upon
them? Have you seen the images, my friend?"
     "Yes, I have. But-"
     "The scarring? The burns? The deaths? What's it up to now, six
thousand?"
     "Yes-"
     "You try explaining something other than the plainly obvious to the
families and mates of the dead and damaged and see how far you get. And
something based on the word of a morg like Togg Korba, with a history of
disobedience and disloyalty. Just see." The PathLink chattered to life,
overriding Pell's nervous system to transmit the triple image of the
Chaumirran Triad to his optic nerve all at once, each member located at
equidistant points across Chaumirra, each uniformly dressed in black
shellrobes and white manecaps, each intentionally positioned in low light to
further obscure their individual traits.
     "Hodo, Kogull Pell," grunted the first, a barotone indistinctly glossed
over with phlegm. The Triad were Chaumirra's most influential and oldest
citizens, possibly over a thousand years in age. "I trust you were able to
extract a more concievable version of the truth from Dalcern Korba?"
     "Unfortunately, negative. He has maintained his story, even under my
persuasions. I am left with little choice but to take secondary measures,
unless the Triad should so desire to take him up themselves."
     "That will not be necessary," boomed the third, as Pell had predicted.
The secrecy that was maintained about member's whereabouts and identity was
justified; the Triad controlled the Chau Military, the Chau Military
indirectly dictated policy to the figurehead Legislature, and there were
many legislators who wanted to see true democratic workings on Chaumirra,
without the puppeteer's cajoling hands. "We are concerned, however, with the
implications put forth by the Lemsted's archival crystal."
     "Data can be falsified. As the Triad should know."
     "Yes," said the second, an ineffectual bureaucrat's whine. "but this
particular piece of data has been masterfully synthesized. I doubt Dalcern
Korba has the technical prowess to create such convincing footage,
particularly with such an obscure means of storage as a Chau Military-issued
storage crystal. Would you not agree?"
     "No, I would not. I would recommend your reviewing Korba's transcript
before accepting his fabrication, specifically his Semphinian sympathies
forty seasons ago, not to mention some basic hukumi politics."
     Pell saw that he struck a nerve with the group, who shifted uneasily in
their respective seats. While the Chau Military had wisely stayed clear of
the interplan arena since the Alliance, their control over planetbound trade
and media remained unprecedented, and some of Chaumirra's citizenry had been
predicting the day when it would clench down upon the less palatable goods
and ideas that flowed in from offworld. Specifically the latter.
     "What... are you implying, Kogull Pell?" The first member's voice was
hard with dread.
     "Only that Korba could easily have persuaded one of his associates on
the Lemsted," the Triad straightened, relieved, "to carry out his command,
however unethical and traitorous. For a nonparticipatory subscriber to
Semphin's drivel, this is a meager task. Earth Transit and NY-B have access
to Chaumirran personnel databanks; they may have figured this into their
equation for a coverup." Pell smiled, to himself and to the Triad. Casting
Korba as an unrepentant Semphinian sympathizer would force the Triad to give
him free reign over what action to take, while they prepared the Legislature
for war. They knew what action Chau Military wanted, and so did he. Finish
it.
     "Yes... yes, of course," grumbled the first member. "I suppose this
matter should be best left in your very competent hands, Kogull-"
     "Just one moment, fellow members," interrupted the second, and Pell
cursed to himself. "Aren't we being too hasty here? Although I would like to
see Korba silenced as much as you do, there are certain fundamental
principles of Chaumirran civil rights that would be compromised if we allow
the most eager Kogull Pell here to do as he pleases, merely for
convenience's sake."
     "Jasnel, I thought I explained this to you!" exploded the third,
infuriated.
     "Yes, yes, but I cannot allow an unjustified and illegal murder,"
groans ensued from the remaining members, "of one of Chau Military's upper
echelon to prevail in my conscience. I will not stand for violation of due
process to even the most homicidal and subversive of Chaumirrans."
     "You stupid old imbecile! Chaumirra has no time for your moral qualms!
Accepting even one of Korba's claims is tantamount to-"
     "Enough, my compatriots." interrupted the first. "Since it seems that a
concensus is apparently impossible here, I would propose a different route,
in the interest of time and impending legislation." Pell fumed. Korba was
going to live, after all. There was no halfway between life and death.
     "What is your proposal?" Pell muttered.
     "Ship Togg Korba offworld, before we enact the blockade, preferably far
away from Chaumirran interests, and with standard deletion procedures."
     "Deletion is immoral." chimed the second. "Knowledge is not a crime."
     The third member shrunk in his seat, shaking his head. "Oh, for Chaa's
sakes..."
     "Fine! Without deletion! And if knowledge were a crime, Jasnel, you'd
be perhaps the most innocent Chaumirran living!"
     "Good shot, old friend!"
     "Thank you. Kogull Pell, you have your orders. No deletion! Remember,
Dalcern Korba's departure must be financed within the Sub-Triad department.
We can arrange transport and appropriate ether dispersion through that
bureau, and without the possibility of the transaction showing up in an
audit. The public is still unaware that there were survivors from the
Lemsted."
     Pell was incredulous. With his memory intact, Korba would continue to
be an all-pervasive threat to the Triad's war measures, whether he was on
Chaumirra or Johalihad 6, the most distant of Chaumirra's colonies! His
allegations could easily make their way back to the Legislature and the
public. That an undisclosed survivor was intentionally shipped offworld
alone would be enough for conspiracy charges to be raised. "But-"
     "Are you challenging our authority, Kogull Pell?"
     "Not at all. Yet I must make the prediction that Korba will impede the
blockade's passage regardless of his location. Even J6 is not sufficently
isolated for his voice to be stifled."
     "Nevertheless, we can only resort to our colonies. To send him outside
Chaumirran jurisdiction without authorization would break the Code."
     "Did Earth Transit consider this when they interfered?" Pell smiled,
and he knew that at least two of the Triad were smiling as well. ET's
illegal presence was perhaps the only certainty in the incident, and the
opportunity to return the favor had come at last. Payback.
     "Very good, Kogull Pell. In your opinion, what system would be best
suited for Korba's... stay?" The third member inquired only as a formality.
They all knew his decision.
     "Remember that blockade?" started Pell.

8. FOUNDATIONS

     William Babbage eased up on the collective, and reduced the speed,
locking his Ford-Valdez into a soft hover, the emengine's drone a murmur
compared to the earlier cacophony in the Quad-State skyway. What was that
fellow in the helicopter thinking, anyway? Hudson-El finally lolled into
view, the chandelier of her floating skyline almost as breathtaking as the
taller, older one to her immediate east and a thousand hundred feet below,
on the ground. Peering through his lower left windshield, Babbage tried to
make out the spires of the World Trade Center and the Valdez Tower, but
those candlelit relics were drowned out by the thousands of lights from the
smaller Manhattan-El over Central Park and some newer groundhugging
additions. Babbage had always wondered why his attention was inevitably
drawn to the older historical structures rather than the majestic,
gravity-scoffing splendor of NY-B's Elevated boroughs that he had known all
his life. He felt they were technical underpinnings, like the skeleton and
ether accelerators of a freighter that made everything else thereafter
possible, but which, over time, grew to be taken for granted. The old
skyscrapers were the necessary intermediate step between an expanse of
uninhabited forest and a partial elevated megalopolis of two hundred million
people, and the illustration of such incredible evolution never failed to
fascinate him, like watching a young bird make its first attempts at flight.
     The jury-rigged monitor set into the dashboard was suddenly alight with
green text, as Babbage brought the FV into Hudson-El airspace. Somewhere in
the floating mini-city, his vehicle was being scanned and appropriate fare
was being deducted from Babbage's toll account. And, Babbage knew, some
gunner had a bead on him, with orders to shoot him down at the slightest
provocation. The Els were favorite targets for ambitious kamikazes and
suicide bombers, all fatally misled to believe that their act will be the
one that brings the platform to crash to earth, a remote possibilty, since
the city's reprivatization. Doubtless however, the frequency of terrorist
attacks was bound to rise... and then it all came back to him once again.
     Following the distress call Babbage had put out, Karkian reconnaissance
teams had quickly located the damaged ET ship just shy of the
Murdole-Smithard orbitals, a stroke of cosmic luck, considering the
dangerous game of Russian roulette that always occured when an accelerator
was impaired inter-ether. The Lemsted's final shot had completely reduced
the intakes to molten slag, and the power surge had cost Babbage some
expensive-to-replace neurons, but the rest of the crew and their precious
cargo had survived. The first problem came when the Kark authorities relayed
a single transmission from ET-HQ in New Washington through ET's port
division at Murdole-Smith, a transmission that had left the crew in stunned
incomprehension, and Babbage's commander white with fear.
     "Personnel of ET-C-367, who the hell gave you the authority to violate
Chaumirran space and illegally export a suspected criminal under the
auspices of the Thurmann Resolution? Your orders are to remain at M-S, while
we negotiate security measures with the Karks. TransGalax's dispatched a
courier, along with a load of mercenary escorts, for your retrieval. Our
NY-B division had a pending warrant for Clay's arrest. Now it's active.
Needless to say, you guys are in a world of trouble." The message seemed to
drastically contradict what Babbage's commander had stated in the briefing
prior to the rescue, a briefing that distinctly painted a rosy picture of an
anxious, humanitarian Earth Transit, fully authorizing them to covertly save
Nathaniel Clay from an enraged Chaumirran Military. Babbage confronted him
with this fact.
     "What's the deal? I thought this entire rescue was authorized."
     The commander's glaze of terror quickly melted into a downturned scowl
of indignance. "Well, after your brillant performance back there, they've
apparently changed their minds."
     "What are you talking about, my brilliant performance?"
     "It's your fault, Billy!" The commander shrieked, pointing a finger at
him. "You botched the entire procedure! If it hadn't been for your mediocre
ether-navigation skills none of this would have happened!"
     "If it hadn't been for my 'mediocre skills' we'd all be etherial
debris! You said we were ordered to enter Chau, find the Parena, rescue any
survivors, and head back to interplan space. Case closed."
     "Covertly, damn it! What the hell were those Enforcers that you kept
saying wouldn't fire on us? I told you this was to be done covertly! "
     "And I told you then that this was going to be impossible to do without
attracting Chaumirran attention. At least I bothered to run the Enforcer
scenario by you. But you didn't want to listen. You gave me the 'don't
question my authority' nonsense and told me to shut up. I did, figuring that
the Parena was a simple wreckage deal and that TransGalax simply wanted to
save some bucks on export fees. Did you see that ship? Did you surf the
Yamatsuka? The Enforcer's attack was more than justified! It's a disaster,
and if I had known, if you had told us what was going down, I would have
quit Transit on the spot!"
     The commander smiled with the fluidity of a creeping vine. "I'm glad
you feel that way, Babbage. Your little tirade has made this easier for me.
Fine! You're out. You're off. You're fired! And my report will certainly
emphasize your dismissal, accordingly. Rogue officers can be such a burden."
     "You aren't going to evade responsibility on this one, commander. I'll
counter every allegation you can throw at me. I'll go to internal affairs,
if necessary. There's transcripts somewhere, I'm sure, and the crew'll back
me up. They were there at the briefing."
     "Good luck."
     Babbage was roused from his thoughts as the dull tone of confirmation
by the scanners rang from the car's speaker system, followed by the
static-laced voice of one of the Hudson-El operatives, or a computer.
"William Babbage, you are cleared to land." The indecisive timing of the
voice and shifting chords of emphasis soon confirmed the latter. "Please
avoid strafing above the redline. Welcome to Hudson Elevated." With a breath
of relief, Babbage lowered the wheel casings, dipped the craft toward the
drunkenly swaggering canyon of skyscrapers along Branden Avenue, surveyed
the street for an unoccupied stretch, noticing Earth Transit's holosign for
a split second, and touched down in partial automotive drive, a reckless but
not yet illegal action on his part. The Ford-Valdez skidded, comically
bounced and rolled like an enormous pinball once or twice, the sharp descent
cushioned by its gradually diminishing repulsors, and finally settled as a
groundhugger a block shy of Earth Transit's division building, a shroom with
an oversized, almost umbrella-proportioned dome. Babbage thought the shape
to be strangely appropriate, as he made his way to its lobby. The subtle
wave of fear that swept over him as he stepped beneath the gargantuan dome
paralleled the fear he felt anticipating what lay inside its offices. Both
held the same fate in the worst of cases; if the building's levitation
system collapsed and the entire dome came down like a gigantic foot and
annihilated him, so too would a word from one of the high-ranking
supervisors to the Labor database. He continued to dwell on his
circumstances as he slowly rose in one of the building's old-style
elevators.
     When the TransGalax courier finally arrived at Murdole-Smithard, twelve
days after the incident, Babbage thought he had seen it all. The
overwhelming majority of the crew had apparently acquired selective amnesia,
undoubtably encouraged by his former commander's efforts at revisionist
history, backed by threats of dismissal or just blind sevitude. He had
gotten bits and pieces of it here and there, mostly from Grulo, his
still-loyal assistant, and the story seemed to be built around an
out-and-out lie; the ET ship merely 'assisting' the Chaumirrans in a
grandoise gesture of goodwill, and Babbage, in a fit of psychotic defiance
or uncontrollable navigation skills or both, somehow violating his orders,
bringing the craft into ether and thus provoking the chase. He had asked
Grulo to testify on his behalf when the courier reached ET-HQ, and Grulo had
reluctantly agreed. Twelve hours later, Babbage was informed by one of the
Kark security officers that a rendered cloud of Causian innards was
discovered about five miles from M-S, and a DNA trace had tentatively
identified the remains as those of one Asdeeth Grulo. Their investigation
had concluded that one of M-S's airlocks had blown in Grulo's vicinity,
sucking him out into space, where he subsequently combusted. Babbage could
only speculate on the implications of Grulo's death, but nevertheless
purchased a diffusor pistol and holed up in his cubicle, ransacked by three
days of futile, semi-hysterical scouring for surveillance devices, until
notification of the courier's arrival.
     And as Babbage and the crew had watched the courier come into docking
approach, the magnitude of the situation hit him with one visual image, that
of the twenty or so motley, soiled battleships, the mercenaries, that
TransGalax had paid to defend the relatively small vessel. They were there
for one reason and one reason only, to keep the Chaumirrans or their
sympathizers from killing him and his ex-shipmates, and the thickness of
that protection proportionally reflected the interplan public's desire for
their deaths. Babbage turned to glare at the blank, expressionless face of
his ex-commander, while from all over the orbitals there materialized an
onslaught of Karkian security guards to intercept the rogue's gallery of
heavily armed and armored semi-pirates and warriors pouring out of the
various airlocks. He felt his hand clench into a fist, the blood rush to his
brain, overriding all of the discipline and self-control backups placed by
the Institute long ago, and before he could regain his composure he found
himself staring down at the gagging, bug-eyed commander's bruised and
battered face, heard the phlegmatic, sputtering gurgle, and felt his own
hands throttling the fatty neck. When his crewmates and the Karks finally
pried him away, the commander, a scarlet trickle pouring from his split lip,
laughingly grunted to the crew, "See, men? See how stable he is? Who really
screwed up?"
     Babbage said nothing, shook off the restraining arms and tentacles, and
walked quietly to the courier's airlock.
     The voyage back to Earth was uneventful, as it should have been. The
courier docked at one of the original NASA space stations(!), "Freedom" or
something, a decrepit, cramped and G-less old piecetogether that rightly
belonged in a museum, but had been temporarily reserviced for the sake of
secrecy. Babbage and the crew were transferred onto an orbiting shuttle, and
from there a beeline was made towards New Washington, to ET-HQ in Seattle.
There, Babbage stated his case to the investigation commitee, provided
testimony for Internal Affairs, including the circumstances of Grulo's
death, checked ET-HQ's communications opticals for any transcripts relating
to the confrontation, and was cross-referenced to West America's and NY-B's
Earth Transit divisions. Both divisions, he knew, had combined databases, so
there was only the matter of which to visit. He flipped a coin, then made
arrangements for his return to NY-B by subsonic, which he concluded was
probably the wiser choice, given the dangerous and expensive gamble of
having a black marketeer smuggling him across the former Union (including
Marx City!) to WestAm. The Lockheed subsonic unfortunately made a stopover
in East America, as there were reports of fuel-airring on the Amafrika
border, which undoubtedly had meant that New Illinois would make a similar
gamble soon enough; the three states, though they were all members of the
Brotherhood of Progressive Nations, were only 'brothers' in print. Rather
than wait for Lockheed's military escorts and be subject to notorious EastAm
hospitality ("Where do the loyalties of all 'African-Americans' really lie
now?" as eloquently stated by EastAm's president), Babbage bought a quaint,
two hundred-year old groundhugger from some ragged soul foraging around the
decrepit airport, and drove to the Atlantic Federation border. As he passed
through one town after another, Babbage felt like he had been thrown back in
time, an illusion no doubt assisted by the ancient machine he was driving.
There were crude packs of poorly constructed huts and cottages dotting the
countryside and built upon the shattered and cracked shells of
twentieth-century shopping malls, their interiors illuminated with the
reddish, flickering light of campfires or candles. The only vehicles that
Babbage passed on the deteriorating roads were animal-drawn carriages of
cannibalized trailers, draped over with cloth like the covered wagons of the
Old West. Faces popped from every visible niche and darkened orifice, to
stare at Babbage as he drove past. Some of the faces were numb and
apathetic, others were curled in twisted motions of pain or hatred, others
were gaping in amazement, as if he were some king or diety thrown upon the
earth for them to witness. He only fully understood their reaction as he
neared the border. The border patrol had looked at him quizzically, and for
a moment Babbage thought he was going to be arrested for violating the
Brotherhood's environmental directives with his dirty, evil old (but
miraculously functioning!) automobile, but then one of the soldiers
dispelled it all, with one sentence, spoken in reverance and awe,
     "I ain't never seen anything move that fast without mule or a horse.
Yeah, bud, you can come on through."
     Babbage's relief was tempered with an undercurrent of horror that he
could only fully grasp when he reached the abandoned, overgrown remnants of
Interstate 93. The border guard not only did not know about the
Brotherhood's environmental policies, he had never seen an working
automobile before. And the gasoline-drinking, slowly rolling groundhugger
vehicle Babbage was driving was, technologically speaking, a complete and
utter corpse! Did the guard know anything about repulsor technology, that
had brought an economical end to the law of gravity's reign? Or about the
emengine, that provided unprecedented levels of power and speed using only
water and ever-plentiful deposits of electromagnetic, atmospheric energy?
Did he know that there were people now living on other planets, going into
their third or fourth generations? That there were not-quite people living
on other planets who we had come into contact long ago? That Babbage himself
was one of the first products of that same interplanetary exchange, an
Earthborn, human eth navigator? He suppressed a shudder. Babbage had heard
the rumors of arrested development in the Brotherhood nations, and had on
occasion read an angry article or two in the Declaration, usually written by
one of the old NY-B guard, railing on wistfully about reunification, but he
had always assumed that it was merely a gap of years, rather than centuries.
From what he had seen in EastAm, even a concept of "development" was
debatable; time was running backward.
     AF was slightly more civilized, there were intermittent encounters with
other automobiles on the aged throughfares, becoming more and more frequent
the further north Babbage got, but the cities and populated areas were
crumbling, anarchic wrecks; there were armed AF and Neo-Confederate troops
at every street corner, and an occasional gunship of indeterminate
classification cruising over black, bombed-out skyscrapers! Babbage was
shocked. Who had done this? AF had let Illinois secede by arbitration, it
became a dictatorship afterward, when Vernon took Chicago, and his interests
lay west. The Neo-Confederacy? Aside from her presence on the streets, along
with AF forces, who had turned away US armies two centuries ago, and
recognized her? Atlantic Federation was the only reason NY-B had not nuked
the Neo-Confederacy and that bastard Hoag into oblivion. And NY-B? Any
action on her part was the equivalent of attacking all of the Brotherhood.
In Richmond, confronted with the most dramatic of ruins, Babbage had pulled
over, and fielded his question to one of the omnipresent security officers.
     "Excuse me, officer."
     "Yeh, whaddya want, brah?"
     "What's happened here?" Babbage pointed to a scorched structure. "Looks
as if a bomber dropped a load on this block."
     "Deurb work."
     "Huh?"
     "Richmond's being exported."
     "What do you mean?"
     "Too many people. B-hood wants an even spread. They're dismantling the
city, starting up camps, some farms, maybe a base."
     "You gotta be kidding me. What the hell?"
     The officer's facial expression was blank, but a small tremor in his
cheek gave a slight indication of emotion. His uniform had an old-style
eagle and shield insignia on the sleeve, with the words "Richmond Police." A
local.
     "ECOC doesn't like big cities, brah. Haven't you noticed? Too hard to
manage, and even harder to stop rebellions. Less people, the better."
     "Where are the people going to live, those that are on this block?"
     He shrugged. "Probably PanAsia. ECOC's doing the same over there,
bringin' em here, stands to reason. Some'll try for NY-B. Won't get far,
heard some big space thing's going on, and they're walled up like us. Double
trouble."
     "I'm... from NY-B."
     "Really?" The officer brightened, and became strangely younger, in
appearance and demeanor. "Never met a neeber before. Thought you guys all
use flying cars."
     "Yeah, I had a flight from New Washington, but it got stalled in
EastAm. Just decided to drive, the old fashioned way, and see the rest of
the world."
     "Whaddya think of the B-hood, so far?" The officer asked, frowning.
     "It's... uh... different... I'm not one to judge." Babbage was afraid
to answer truthfully, a two-word response that could land him in jail for
some trumped-up charge, probably his pollute-o-matic groundhugger.
     "Different. Yeah, you got that right. You guys shouldn't have let this
happen. You shouldn't have taken our guff."
     "I don't understand."
     "You think everyone in the Federation wanted this?" He gestured at a
blackened skyscraper, a gigantic, half-spent matchstick. "My grandfather was
a fool, choosing Andrei Hoag and the B-hood over you. I've seen some pirate
broadcasts, I know the kinds of things you guys are doing now, that's," he
drew closer, lowered his voice to a whisper, "that's why I'm playing this
goddamn security game for now. It's the only way I can get to the border."
     "You're gonna hop the border? Isn't that dangerous? Why don't you just
apply for emigration? I read somewhere that the Brotherhood started some new
policy-"
     "New policy!" The policeman snorted. "I inherited an application! My
father applied, forty years ago. The B-hood's got a lot of people who want
out, probably more than NY-B could ever guess. But there's always some red
tape bottleneck. I don't know how many have been able to leave, but I figure
it can't be a lot with a waiting list since the turn of the century. I'm not
waiting for ECOC's bureaucrats. You need a form in triplicate just to blow
your nose around here, and they'll probably turn you down besides, with some
line about ecological ramifications. Incidentially, don't sweat it about the
car. Only the Union and the MEAM fanatics go for that stuff."
     "Oh, really?" For a moment, Babbage had wanted to tell him his
experiences with the EastAm denizens, but the police officer had caught a
sidelong glance from one of the green-garbed Neo-Confederate soldiers, and
his face had resumed the stiffness of authority, as if that suspicious stare
had turned him to stone. "You'd better get going now."
     "Thanks. Good luck with that security thing."
     "Goodbye."
     South Wall was a hubbub of activity, especially on the side it had been
ordained to keep out. Streamlined shapes of repulsor tanks, gunships and
emcrafts in New York-Boston tricolors were prevalent in the skyscraper-laden
skies over the razorwire and pulsa embankment, visual evidence of fear over
possible Brotherhood adventurism, but Babbage was able to pass through with
a minimum of hassle; standard stripsearch and scan, and was relieved to see
the white glimmer of healthy, unburdened thought again. He had sold the
groundhugger to one of the professional infantrymen, anxious to try out a
newly-rigged heavy electrostatic, but did not stay to watch the results; his
trusty FV, roused from its roost in Providence, arrived twenty minutes after
his beckoning, and the journey had ended here, at last, at Earth Transit's
NY-B division at Hudson-El.
     The elevator's doors retracted at level one twenty-five, Interplan
Communications, and an icy gust poured through the portal, slightly frosting
over the metallic bars of the elevator cage with a haze of film. Babbage
shivered and adjusted the heat radiance setting on his clothing, which
quickly compensated for the chamber's required optical preservation
temperature. Rows and rows of green-chromed vacuum drawers lined the narrow
corridor, each carrying terminals to access the millions of dime-sized disks
held within by preset criteria, including date and position of exchange.
Babbage thumbed through his chip case, found an corresponding card, and
inserted it into his 'slot', circumventing the tedious buttontapping he
loathed and had made sure to avoid way back at the Institute. There was the
fraction of a second where the gray flash weaved its way through his spinal
cord and temporarily interrupted his brain's functioning, as he had
expected, encountering a new system. What he had not expected was that his
commander was also familiar with this same accessing
hesitation-blindness-seizure, having closely served with Babbage for the two
or so months in his Earth Transit career, and would take advantage of it,
given an opportunity to silence him. The commander stepped from the drawers
from which he had been hiding, and fired a voltage tether at Babbage. But
the second-long fit had also worked in Babbage's favor. His random movements
dodged the thin copper lancelet, and the tether was embedded in the opposite
drawer behind him. The commander had mistakenly thought to the abrupt shake
to be a wince of pain, and sent sixty-two million volts down the cord. There
was a clap of sparks and a flush of ozone that shot through Babbage's
nostrils and he immediately deaccessed, fearing neural damage. Dazed, he
stared at the blue-white ball behind him, followed the burning line from its
depths, looked forward, and caught the commander's fist on the broad expanse
of his cheek. Babbage fell forward, then was lifted and a knife was thrust
into his lower abdomen, which he did not feel until some time later.
     "You little maggot. Stand against me?" the commander snarled, twisting
and withdrawing the blade, inserting it again into the same wound. "A
pleasure to kill you."
     Babbage grunted and spat into the commander's eyes, easily pried out of
the knife's path, and using the lubrication of his own blood, twisted the
commander's arm away. The commander gasped, slipped and rolled, lost his
equilibrium, and fell onto the blazing tether. His first shriek was
high-pitched, like a woman's, as the barrage of electricity hit him,
throwing his body into convulsions, the second was a punctuated gurgle.
There was no third, only the ozone-burning flesh smell and a heavy fog of
vapor hanging over a dark, twitching, sparking skeleton.
     "Ugh."
     Babbage fell to his ground, shivering as his blood-soaked suit had let
the icy air in like a floodgate. He forced his mind into order, forced out
contemplation of recent events and exerted Institute controls, lowered his
heart rate at once, to curtail the flow of blood around the wound. He sent
an onslaught of coded thought to his implanted conditional subprocessor,
immediate inquiry of bodily damage, and simplified physiological charts were
superimposed onto the crackling corpse and smoke-filled corridor. One
blinking red spot, below lower left ribcage, lower stomach, indicated the
knife wound, while a yellow spot trembled at cheekbone, slight fracture. The
subprocessor advised what he had already done by default, leaving Babbage to
wonder, cynically, what exactly had justified its purchase in the first
place. Then he remembered that the card was still in his slot. He went back
to the Interplan Comm opticals, and requested ET-C-367's transcribings,
Chaumirra, July 25, this year.
     There were no transcripts in the drawers around him.
     NY-B and WestAm's opticals were united by satellite link. It took
approximately thirty seconds to relay the same inquiry to Las Vegas. And ten
seconds for the same response. Nothing. Babbage tried again, using differing
criteria and reworded requests, and then by single keywords. The result
remained the same.
     Babbage tried to comprehend why his commander had erased the
transcript, and then tried to kill him. Why bother? The first act rendered
the second superfluous; Asdeeth Grulo's death could be percieved (quite
wrongly, Babbage knew) as chance. Babbage's death, even by recreating a
fatal power surge, introduced only complications and cast more suspicion
onto whatever scheme dear departed commander had. Good riddance,
nevertheless.
     Then Babbage heard the shocked gasp, saw the pale face of an young
officeworker and decided now was as good a time as any to fall unconscious.

9. CATCH-22

     "...and, since Chaumirra has determined the recent murderous actions of
certain corporate agencies of Earth to be an indirect declaration of war to
her peaceful inhabitants, the Legislature requests a formal vote on economic
embargo and blockade. In favor?" There was a loud, growling consensus.
"Opposed?" A few voices broke a too-sudden silence. "So it is. The embargo
and blockade has been passed, and all measures therein as specified by the
Ber Proviso are now interplan law. As of this moment, all etherial bypasses
are once again Chaumirran property and influx of goods between Earth and her
allies and Chaumirra, etherial and otherwise, will be stopped. The
Chaumirran Military will be charged to enforce-"
     Wyatt Jarvik's angular, faceted face was further cut by a smile as he
shut off the Yamatsuka's broadcast of the Chaumirran Legislature's emergency
session, while Francesca Lopez cursed and buried her head in her hands.
"Well, we appear to be in quite a predicament, fraulein Lopez. In a matter
of seconds and a short bluster of hot air from some Chaumirran
anal-retentive, we have now become smugglers. Cool!" He opened the oval
portshade, exposing the conference room to the stunning gray pockmarked
landscape of the Moon, the alabaster, endomed towers of Tycho and the bright
aquamarine crescent of Earth rising like a scythe of light.
     "It's not funny, Wyatt." Lopez muttered, angrily. "They're Chaumirrans,
damn it! They stand to lose just as much by a blockade as we do. Only for
them it's long-term. I mean, I knew the blockade was a possibility but had
to dismiss it. Now I can't. Don't you know what this means?"
     "Yep," Jarvik chuckled, idly tangling a finger in a tightly-wound
strand of red hair. "It mean's we'll have to invent some slur to offend the
delicate sensibilities of our fine furred former friends. Slang-invention is
a hobby of mine. Let me see; 'Chaumirra.' I suppose the 'chow' sound we
could work on first, along with their semblance to certain dirtsider
animals. Incidentially, I invented 'dirtsider', I'll have you know."
     "Sorry if I can't make a people's arrest. I'm not from the Brotherhood.
They have speech codes. And what could I call you, anyway? Lunacentric?
Lunatic?"
     "Moonies. Or Terran-Lunan-Humans as expatriates from your world wish to
be called here, as I remember. They're quite militant about it, too. Nothing
like a hyphen to give you a sense of elevated worth. I figure in a few years
we won't have names, just a chronological list of ethnicities."
     "Cute." Lopez sighed. "What am I going to do? I can't start Starcross
in this climate! Without ether travel, everything is paralyzed. The
Yamatsuka transmits by etherial waves. Without the Yamatsuka, no more
interplan information or communication. We would have to wait centuries just
to get a goddamn message to Pax Centauri with pre-ether technology!
Rockets-hmph!"
     "True."
     "And what about our colonies? Mars is three years away again, and
that's the closest! So much for terraforming! Adios Belt Mines! And any
colonist whose homeworld Chaumirra decides to block is going to face
starvation inside one year. Or...or cannibalism... God..." She trembled.
"NY-B's not going to let that happen. And neither is anyone else. And when
they do try, all that will be in the future is... is..."
     "War. Interplanetary war. Between Chaumirra and whoever decides to
violate her sacred claims to the ether, that 'whoever' dwindling to just
Earth as the rest of the galaxy, hungering for etherial travel, races to
Chaumirra's side. I suspect, as you do, that NY-B will be the first to defy
the blockade. And that will be the end, certainly the end of NY-B, and
probably the end of the Earth and the human race, save those stranded
colonists across the galaxy."
     "What do you mean? Chaumirra might destroy NY-B, but they would never
resort to destroying an entire planet! Look how they reacted to the deaths
of their own people."
     "You are correct in assuming that the Chau would find mass
extermination reprehensible. But there is another factor that you have
failed to take into account."
     "God, not the Brotherhood!"
     "No, no, no. The Brotherhood wants this blockade. Aside from the fact
they think space travel is 'cosmic rape,' they would love to see Chaumirra
do their dirty work in wiping NY-B off the face of the Earth. But I'm sure
they would take an instant disliking to anyone converting their precious
planet into another asteroid belt. Hell, they go ballistic when somebody
illicitly pees in a bush. Remember MEAM's castrations? I saw those
treeloving thugs in action when I was only five years old; I'll never forget
it."
     Francesca bowed her head. She had forgotten that Wyatt had grown up in
the virtual heart of the Brotherhood.
     "Some poor friend of my uncle's; he did'nt know anything 'bout New
Cali. Went to take a leak, and bam! Twenty eco-waifs come out of nowhere,
beat him senseless, and I'm sure you know the rest. It was the trendy thing
to do at that time; 'Mother Earth Above Man' in its true context. Fraulein
Lopez, that was one of many reasons why I came to work and live here, on the
Moon." He pointed to the grey Lunar plains, and the distant crystals of
Tycho City. "Here, at least, I can develop and create to my heart's content,
without being detracted as a so-called 'exploiter of nature's resources' or
as one of 'Gaia's rapists'. You'd be surprised how much more productive a
person can be when the fashionable, noisy complaints of Earth's
self-righteous masses are curtailed by thousands of miles of vacuum." Jarvik
sat down behind his desk, and added, with a sober smile, "Or perhaps it
would not surprise you. Otherwise you would have gone to someone else for
assistance."
     "No, it wouldn't have." Francesca had known his reputation well. Wyatt
Jarvik was one of the Moon's foremost industrialists and freedom fighters,
though not necessarily the most respected or most predictable. It was Jarvik
Development that had single-handedly lifted the Lunar colonies from their
embittered hundred-year slumber and economic depression. The Moon's
position, far away from Earth's costly gravitational pull, was cherished in
the days of kinetic, rocket-propelled space travel. But etherial locomotion
long ago had rendered Tycho City's multi-billion dollar spaceport obsolete,
and without her number-one industry, the colonies fell on hard times. The
Lunar-born population, soft and permanently adapted to her low-grav
conditions, were unable to outmigrate to other planets without expensive
equipment and medical assistance; and most Moonies, at that time, could not
afford even the price of a shuttle ticket. Relief efforts were nonexistent;
Tycho City and the other colonies were established by the old United States
of America; that ownership was later deferred to EastAm, and shortly
thereafter to the Brotherhood of Progressive Nations, around the same time
when Chaumirra introduced etherial travel. Countries that could offer the
most assistance, such as Hong Kong or NY-B, were forbidden to interfere in
Brotherhood "governing" of the Moon, despite the fact that the Brotherhood
had virtually outlawed all forms of space travel, and that the lone
representative of the Brotherhood's jurisdiction was a brutal dictator in
bureaucratic clothing.
     Eventually there came a revolution, and the Moonies, led by Wyatt
Jarvik and other scientists, kicked out the Brotherhood and declared their
independence, a rather simple task (cutting off the oxygen flow to the Lunar
Ministry, cracking open the garrison dome with makeshift explosives) but
monumental nevertheless. Jarvik quickly negotiated with NY-B for admittance
as a commonwealth, and the first foray of Jarvik Development was the
establishment of theme parks, hotels, housing, brothels and gambling casinos
for the swarm of curious tourists flowing up from Earth. Later, when the
influx of millions of Earthlings, from visitors looking for an opportunity
to be photoscanned next to Armstrong and Aldrin's flag, prospectors anxious
to study the frontier's unceasing rock for valuble metals, to engineers
seeing the opportunities of a low-gravity environment for mass production,
required new outposts, Jarvik patented transportable domes and
oxy-extractors, as well as cheap, Lunar-built rovers, freeing the growing
population from the packed confines of Tycho City and her smaller neighbors.
     Then he did something so wildly unexpected, even the newly prosperous
Lunar citizenry took exception; Wyatt Jarvik founded the Institute of
Etherial Study, more commonly known as the Institute.
     Etherial travel was more than a mere fusion reactor cross-linked to an
artificial ether anamoly with intake and acceleration apparatus, more than
the sum product of easily-manufactured gadgetry. Without an eth navigator to
correctly and accurately harness that power, a freighter might as well be
piloted by an infant. Until the Institute came along, that occupation had
been entirely reserved for Chaumirrans, and the overwhelming demand across
the galaxy did not correspond to the supply of trained navigators.
     Jarvik's solution was simple. He flashed an exorbitant amount of cash
to the best navigators, and made his pitch. Jarvik Development would supply
them with the best and most up-to-date instruction equipment, it would be
their job to turn students at the Institute into full-fledged eth
navigators, with Chaumirran accreditation.
     Of course, there were many difficulties. To the denizens of the Moon,
the word Chaumirra struck a sore nerve. After all, it was their accursed
revelations about etherial travel that had transformed Tycho City from the
Earth's crown jewel to a delapidated slum. The fact that they had finally
made their way out from that abysmal pit did not diminish their burning
resentment. Chaumirrans, in contrast, objected to what they termed the
'commercialization' of their dual art and science, which was a glossed-over
way of saying 'stay out of our racket.' Indeed, as in basic economics, a
scarce supply and large demand for navigators had sent prices skyrocketing,
and Chaumirra had grown quite rich from the arrangement. Other problems were
more substantial; many alien races lacked the cerebral sophistication
required to learn and perform the trade; the ratio was something like twenty
to one. And in the case of humans, where the majority of the Institute's
student body had drawn upon, expensive cybernetic fittings and core
processing were eventually required for that same elite.
     Wyatt had made enemies among his neighbors and the Chaumirrans, but the
Institute was a resounding success, and easily he had become the richest man
on Luna.
     Francesca had come with this in mind, expecting his possible investment
in Starcross Cargo, perhaps even a partnership. TransGalax's fragmentation
had left the Lunar market wide open, and the profit made there could propel
even a fledgling company into the big time. But the start of that discussion
had been cut off by the Yamatsuka's emergency broadcast, and suddenly she
found her prepared persuasions rendered obsolete. With her operations based
in NY-B, the Chaumirran etherial power-grab left Starcross' fate in limbo.
     "I'm sorry for wasting your time, Wyatt. I'll be returning to Earth at
once; a much longer trip, undoubtedly. Give my best to Helga and little
Winston." She walked to the archway leading back to the main dome.
     "Not so fast, fraulein Lopez," Jarvik stepped forward and stood in her
path. "I meant that crack about being smugglers. Yes, your proposition seems
even more appealing now that the, uh, Chowies have thrown down the
gauntlet."
     "Chowies?" She shook her head and sadly chuckled. "Needs work." Jarvik
shrugged and gave her a crooked, goofy grin. "Wyatt, I can't do it. Besides
the fact that any ships I commission may be blown to bits, there's that
'destruction of Earth' thing you touched upon-"
     "Yes. Some other time, perhaps. Fraulein Lopez, have you ever studied
space law? Perhaps you can see the loophole in the equation. Given; Earth
has been blockaded, all etherial transport lines cut off. Any etherial
freighter caught bound for Earth or allied planets will give the Chowies the
initiative to level NY-B, New Washington, Colorado, Hong Kong, WestAm, the
big five free states, in that consecutive order. They might also hit Liberia
and Central 'Nam, and move on to other systems. Smuggling from the
Brotherhood is out of the question, suicidal. What then? How do you get
goods and material to and from the colonies?"
     "I suppose, if you can organize the ships and carriers from all the
Allied planets, you could launch a heavy assault against Chaumirra, destroy
the Military-"
     "Ach! That would necessitate usage of the Yamatsuka MediaNet, an
etherial-based communications. They would hear every word! By the time this
purely theoretical army reached Chaumirra, the entire Chau Military would be
assembled and waiting, legions upon legions of Enforcers. Perhaps we would
win, but the cost would be billions of lives, and Chaumirra would become a
radioactive ruin. Then what?"
     "Okay, okay, I get the point! What about using the Moon as an
in-between. Technically, you have not been affiliated-"
     "The Moon has been a commonwealth of NY-B since before you were born.
In addition, all the planets, planetoids, and resident naturally occuring
phenomena of the Sol system are classed as Terran property. When Mars, the
Belt, and Venus declare independence in about twenty years, optimistically
assuming the blockade does not impact; a ridiculous notion, those
inhabitants will be something else, but their loyalties to Earth will still
remain, Abdul Nyugen's rantings aside."
     That left the entire solar system as Earth's jurisdiction. There seemed
to be no way around it. If there were a way to hasten the colonies
independence... impossible, she thought. Sans ether, Mars and the others
would not survive, and that was exactly what the Chaumirrans wanted. Their
embargo was punishment for the deaths from the Parena jettison and the
Lemsted, and the stated objective was to reduce Earth to pre-eth
development.
     "Then there is no hope, unless the Chau somehow soften up. But they
won't. We're doomed."
     Jarvik sighed, and tapped a few keys set into the desk. Three red,
green, and blue-lit probes telescoped into the air, the components of a
holographic projector. The twin triangles of Jarvik Development's logo
phased into being. "There have been two projects of mine that presently
coincide in this new, uncertain situation, along with the resources at your
disposal. How many ships have you obtained thus far?"
     "Conventional or etherial?"
     "Etherial."
     "About four hundred and fifty, with supplemental crews. I only have a
few eth navigators, though."
     "Okay. I'll tell you the answer, and how we are going to get around
this embargo. The first project was the Institute. I saw Chaumirra's
etherial monopoly as a potential threat in the future. You may call this the
old Lunar hatred if you wish, but if it hadn't been for the Institute, we
would have had no options at all. The second project was not as public." The
triangles flew away, and a simplified map of the galaxy had taken its place,
a miniature cloud of shimmering blue points with smaller clouds within,
indicating zones of planetary jurisdiction. One of these moderate-sized
clouds was yellow-hued, and at its nucleus was a point marked Chaumirra.
Another was larger still, and its red coloration designated the zone
controlled by the vast Semphinian Hegemony. In the remaining space there
were thirteen white pinpricks, spread evenly apart from one another,
including one very close to Earth.
     Francesca approached the cloud, and stared at the white points in
astonishment. "What are they?"
     "Space stations. Thirteen of them, to be precise. Except for
Methuselah, over there in the Quabarr system, they are all used depot
orbitals, partially reconditioned, dating way back to before the Chaumirran
first contact, some built just after NASA was privatized. They were
ether-towed to their present locations about ten years ago."
     "But they're all obsolete."
     "For the purpose for which they were originally built, yes, they are.
But they have been refitted and refurbished, to accommodate newer ships,
including ether freighters, such as those," he smiled, "that you have
reserved for Starcross Cargo. My original intention was a chain of trade
centers, like M-S, but without that ridiculous Karkian evacuation. They're
not docking ports and they certainly are not Murdole-Smithard, but in an
emergency situation..." Jarvik's voice trailed off into a question mark.
     "But these orbitals were constructed by humans. That makes them
extensions of Earth jurisdiction, doesn't it?"
     "Are you, perchance, calling the space station, a marvel of applied
mechanical engineering and manufacturing craftsmanship, a 'naturally
occurring phenomena'? I doubt that would stand in any interplan courtroom,
though I'm sure the Chowmooes will raise the same exact charge when they
discover my little... kingdom."
     Then it hit her. Space stations were artificial. It was possible to
build a space station and legally secede from your home planet, forming your
own independent, private domain. Indeed, some of NY-B's corporations did
just that, to avoid taxes and other detrimental side effects of planetbound
business. But just one space station was a sizable investment in time,
money, and resources. To overseer a chain of them, spread throughout the
galaxy, was an enormous task. A great task.
     Wyatt Jarvik passed a datatablet to her. It held the stated terms for a
contract. Starcross Cargo would move base of operations from New York-Boston
to the independent orbital confederacy of 'Jarvik Land' and the 'state' of
orbital Catch-22, located on the dark side of the Moon. Jarvik Land was in
no way, shape or form, in allegiance to Terra or her colonies, and with her
allied systems, but was open to free and open trade. In addition, Jarvik
Land refused to recognize three existing organizations; the Brotherhood of
Progressive Nations of Terra, the Semphinian Hegemony, and especially the
Chaumirran Military and her components.
     Francesca laughed out loud, as she added her thumbprint to the
document.

10. PEACE, LOVE AND HAPPINESS

     There was a sharp, inconsistent hole in the lumpy mountains of
poisonous violet-black clouds communing over the dark-grey, uniformly bleak
tombstones of structures unenthusiastically rising from the surrounding
swamp of gathered waste matter, predominant terrain of the great malignant
sludgeball that was the planet Semphin. A jagged, gargantuan ship, built
like a lethal butterfly of black razors, broke through, and circled over the
condensed city, reducing in speed as its spirals grew closer and closer to
the planet's surface. At about a hundred feet from the peak of the highest
tower, a short whitewater of energy rained over its obsidian hide, and
revealed the barostatic field dome that protected the gloomy metropolis from
the ever-prevalent toxic substances in the air and on the ground. Safely
within the shield, the black ship's speed dropped to nil with the ceasing of
flamers, and it began a very slow descent straight down, powered by
repulsors, finally coming to a gentle landing on an octagonal, unornamented
stone outcropping at the base of a windowless structure. From that same
structure a large vertical panel of indeterminate stone, facing the ship,
detached and rose into the air, and the neck of a crude crane emerged form
the narrow orifice like a starving dinosaur. A capsule, similar to that of a
modern elevator car, was at the crane's head.
     From the lighted protuberance on the black ship, a near-invisible
hatchway opened. A single figure stepped out, slender and effeminate in
manner of movement. His body was bound in the drab brown variant of
trenchcoat so favored by the poorer inhabitants of the Brotherhood of
Progressive Nations, a group which this individual did not exactly qualify
for. His wasted, green-hued face was framed by greasy tangles of black-gray
hair, the inconsistent growth of a goatee clung onto his chin like a weak
cancerous moss, trickling down into the exposed, vein-lined neck. From
behind tinted circular lenses came the burrowing relentlessness of his
red-patched eyes, the pupils a lifeless monotonous hazel bolstered by the
widened, ruthless hunger of his gaze, directed towards the hatchway.
     "Well?" Mordecai Knox's mouth snapped, like an impatient child,
exposing the uneven amber clutter of teeth. "Isabel? Today? Time is
important. There are things to be done. The future will not wait for you."
     "You and your glorious future can go straight to hell, you monstrous,
murdering bastard!" The contoured oval of a woman's head broke the
hatchway's circle of shadow. Her brown hair was bound, tied into a loose
bun. Her face was beautiful; alert green eyes, a broad, gently tapering
nose, and thick pouting lips, miraculously placed, rose from a curvilinear
canvas of clear pink flesh, flushed at the cheekbones and marred only by an
ugly blue bruise at the straight-edged chin, left by Knox at the start of
his covert operation.
     Knox sneered, and violently thrust his arm into the darkness.
     "Let me go!"
     "Come, girl," he growled in a voice rich with malevolence, and yanked
her from the hatchway, into the dismal purple light. She was still wearing
the Parena's bulky space suit, adorned with the TransGalax serials and
insignia, but there was a noticeable splash of dried blood on her upper
breastplate. The capsule had touched down on the black-plated bulkhead, and
dragging Isabel behind him, Knox threw the woman into the car, stepped
inside himself, and closed and clamped the door. Isabel's plated fist bolted
toward him, Knox caught it and wrenched it backward, and brought a sharp
backhand across her nose, sending a new spray of blood across the interior
of the car. Isabel crouched to her knees, holding her nose, while Knox
absently examined the interior of the cubicle, as though nothing had
happened. The crane lifted and pulled back, carrying the occupants of the
car into the interior of the nearby structure.
     The innards of the building was a honeycomb of rooms, exposed along one
wall to the gap required by the heavy crane's movement. The car was lifted
higher and higher, until set down at last upon one of the large cubbyholes,
where a single alien lifeform stood in anticipation.
     A Semphinian.
     Approximately three meters tall, with an elongated, anthropomorphic,
matchstick anatomy, the turquoise-complexioned creature's body remotely
resembled a humanoid fish; its six bony fingers were separated by thin
webbing, the skin was glistening with scales and looked clammy, while dark
blue bellows along the crooked arms could conceivably pass as gills. But the
sparse economy of the being's body was overwhelmed by the enormous spherical
mass of the head, taking up almost a third of the being's height, and
circumscribed several times by those same curious gills. The extremely
narrow, crescent-shaped face seemed tacked on to the great head, with a
slash of a mouth, two tiny black, glassy eyes and twin specks for nostrils.
From the forehead, a forklike appendange, like a decapitated hand, rose;
it's bony 'fingers' were longer and similarly webbed. The creature had been
fitted into what amounted to a open, shirtless robe, decorated with
elongated ovals and an intricate series of rectangular metal bars that
clanged against each other as it walked toward the open door of the lift.
     "Where the hell is our transport back to Gaia, Mudred? You think we
appreciate this intolerant violation of the cosmos? This sacrilege? Where is
your cultural sensitivity? There is a new era to begin!" Knox complained,
recklessly approaching the creature so closely his nose barely touched its
chin. His attempt at intimidation proved futile; the giant held his ground
with a fixed inquisitive expression, while the two nasal dots rapidly
retracted and expanded, expelling AngloSpan that was more rippling snort
than voice, deep, raspy and uneven.
     "The transport is making its way down from the upper level, but
priority belongs to the placement of the Void prototype. Phase gate
generation and The Hegemony comes first." Far below, a tiny elliptical ring
of white light had appeared on the inner wall visible from all the
honeycombs, and enlarged. This ring's enclosure revealed the black ship just
outside on the platform, as though a child's scissors had miraculously cut
through several feet of heavy stone. With soft repulsors, slowly the Void
was floating into the superstructure, passing through the 'phase gate'.
     "Here is the transport, now." the creature added as a moderate-sized
finned pyramid, an etherial shuttle, descended from above and began to set
down, close to the crane lift. "Did our prototype accomplish the task?"
     "Oh, who cares about your stupid, dirty machine? Technology is nothing
less than brutal, materialistic domination of the natural world! Yes, yes,
the weaponry was more than sufficient for the Chaumirran trash. Who cares? I
don't. The only thing I care about is returning to my sisters and brothers
with the parasite and ushering in the revolution. Your Semphinian leader
promised a rigged broadcast as well! Where's the equipment I need? Humanity
must embrace the impending Nirvana."
     "All necessary apparatus is on the transport ship. Subactivity has
seized an etherial transmitting relay -"
     "Whatever! Spare me your tedious oppressive jargon! Isabel, I have had
enough of your games! Out, now!" Knox spun around and glared at his
prisoner, still huddled on the car floor and clutching her face, shoulders
heaving with the force of apparent sobs. Snorting with disgust, he returned
his attention to the giant alien and made a gesture with his thumb. "You can
handle this, for a change, Mudred." The blue pumpkin head bobbed in
acknowledgement. The wiry Semphinian marched over to the prone human, while
Knox desealed the shuttle's bay door, and carted out a trolley loaded down
with communications equipment. He hunched over the transmitter and, back
turned to Mudred and Isabel, fumbled over the switches. "How the hell am I
supposed to-"
     From inside the lift, there came a shriek of an electrostatic burst,
and the heavy thud of a body crashing to the ground, a body clearly not
human-sized, from the sound. "Oh, Jesus-" Knox's hand bolted inside his
trenchcoat, and gripped the tiny Gauss pistol so adequately used on the
Parena crew. He whipped around and spurted a molten salvo of hot metal,
shredding apart the lift car into a fiery spatter of plastic and blackened
ceramic. He had miscalculated. Isabel had already moved quickly and had
taken cover behind the unconscious Semphinian. A new blinding white arc of
energy, obviously set at a much higher, deadly setting, shot from the
shelter of the great head, devoured a chunk of ceiling, and had Knox not
frantically dived behind the trolley, would have surely cut through his body
like a hot knife. Knox panted in terror, huddled tightly behind the cubical
pile of equipment as his sweating, trembling hands fumbled for the reset
switch on his steaming weapon.
     "Isabel... What are you doing?"
     "You think I'm an idiot, Mordecai?" Isabel rose, hair unbound and
disheveled. Her bloodstained face shifted with an angry smile, as she
emphasized her answer with three more volleys, digging away painfully close
along both sides of the trolley, and inches over Knox's cringing head. "I
built this electrostatic long before we got to Semphin, and I should have
used it on you long ago, but I had to get the big picture first." Isabel lay
down another round of suppressing fire as she sidestepped toward the
shuttle. "When I get to Nathan and Lopez, you're finished! I'll let him have
the privilege of ending your miserable worthless life! Your death'll be a
interplan holiday, scumbag!" Already she had slipped inside the bay door and
before Knox could rise and return fire, had sealed the hatch.
     "NO!" he screeched, but his relentless staccato blasts were curtailed
by the heavy bass of repulsor fields. The shuttle's flamers ignited and the
hovering pyramid dipped low, toward the Void and its exposed phase gate.
Catching only two bursts of diffusor fire from the Semphinian ground crew,
Isabel shot through the light-fringed hole and out of the structure.
     Knox's gun had run dry; the repeating flashes from its barrel had been
replaced by only a low whirring sound, but he remained frozen in time, mouth
agape, eyes unblinking, as though Isabel's escape had suddenly rendered the
universe inactive, an illusion dispelled only by the several larger,
truncated pyramids of Semphinian destroyers from the lower honeycombs,
similarly passing through the gate some minutes later, in ill-prepared
pursuit. It was Mudred's nearby writhing, coming out of electrostatic shock,
that finally thrust Knox from the catatonic state, allowing him to vent his
frustrations on the wounded alien.
     "You incompetent fool! That girl was my ace in the hole, the ensurement
of a new Gaia built on peace, love and happiness! Onizuka would not have
dared risk her life for something so outmoded as his own selfish agenda! If
she gets to Clay, the secret will be out, and the alliance of hate will be
reborn! I'll not accept Chaumirran Enforcers over the skies of my
Brotherhood, or pillaging rapists of NY-B, vilifying the soil with their
dirty, meat-eating, nature-enslaving weapons of egotistical oppression!" In
his unfocused rage, Knox sadistically ground the metal-tipped spike of his
boot into Mudred's head as he yelped in indignance, the petulant rantings
joined by thick bolas of saliva. "I demand-"
     Knox's dulled senses could not have perceived the swiftness of Mudred's
movement pattern, but even the most vigilant of humans could not have fared
any better. The Semphinian's body scrunched up longitudinally into a stumped
ball, and was propelled several feet into the air. Where the great sphere
would have come down to bounce before Knox, instead it ground to a halt, and
the body retracted into standing position. Mudred's gangly right arm drew
back, and there came a distinct click. The outstretched hand lanced forward,
and abruptly stopped inches from Knox's exposed neck. Knox looked down at
the poised extremity, his face still fixed in blind rage and oblivious to
his dance with death; protruding from Mudred's bony blue fingers were a
black set of serrated hooks, previously hidden in their burrowlike sheaths.
Mudred's dark pits for eyes surveyed the human with calculating scrutiny, as
his nostrils flared a retort,Ę"You have been allowed one allotment of
Semphinian tolerance, divisive Knox. The Hegemony has just exclusively
granted you this reprieve, and I have complied fully and accordingly.
However, if you commit another act of agression against another of The
Hegemony, that representative, myself or another, will now have, at his
discretion, the option to cease your biological automation. Surely you
comprehend?" It had been buried deep in euphemism and legalistic
terminology, but Knox quickly latched on to the threat.
     "O-of course, Mudred. I-I was most insensitive." he replied in a voice
saturated with fear. Then, as if a switch had been thrown, Knox instantly
flipped back to his oblivious, perpetually offended posturing. "But of
course, humanity has always been a most cruel and warlike race! It's
certainly not my fault if I have been instinctually indoctrinated by my
culture to resort to brutality when your faulty security measures-"
     "The divisive Isabel DeVries is of no immediate consequence. It will
not take long for us to trace the shuttle's etherial signature. When she has
been located, we will use the Void and its equipped parasite to drain the
shuttle accelerator systems. A most simple procedure."
     "Oh, but how long will that take, Mudred?" Knox snapped, unconvinced.
"Isabel's an ethnav; don't you think she'll have some goddamn contingency
plan in mind to reduce that signature long enough to escape the Hegemony?
Then what, I ask you?"
     "The margin of error is sufficently-" Mudred started.
     "Screw your margin of error! The last time I had probability statistics
run by me was when Ellison bailed back in twenty one-thirteen. All my
toadies told me 'nope, no way, uh-uh. The dude's dead. Margin of error is
negative'-whatever. They paid big time when I found that bastard in NY-B.
Likewise, your scientific estimation and mathematical masturbation is worth
diddly-squat to me. As far as I'm concerned, she's giving her testimony
right now at the World Trade Center. Then what?" He glared in triumph.
     The Semphinian seemed almost to sigh as it admitted its uncertainty.
"Then... there may be a problem."
     "Excellent. Now, was that so hard?" Knox turned around and walked over
to the wire-strangled cube of communications equipment, only faintly stained
by electrostatic oxidation. He toggled and yanked on the myriad of levers
and switches of an oversized, overcomplicated machine that had been built by
essentially enslaved twentieth-century minds to accomplish a distinctly
twenty-third-century task; transmitting archaic radio waves to a Semphinian
dish suspended in ether, and relaying those accelerated radio waves to
specific geographic zones upon the Earth; the membership of the Brotherhood
of Progressive Nations. Its quick construction by otherwise ponderous
Brotherhood-run industries proportionally reflected Mordecai Knox's
political pull and the extent to which frightened heads of state would go to
ensure their future with the vast, globe-spanning commune that Knox had
shaped long ago, before they had even been born.
     Since its violent birth, Knox had taken it upon himself to be the
guiding, faceless voice of the Brotherhood's ideals, and that voice had come
in the form of anonymous radio broadcasts, once or twice a week. His voice
became more and more frequent during the civil war; as the emps from New
Colorado and New Washington reduced the Brotherhood's televisions, computers
and nets to useless plastic, as libraries of books and diskettes burned in
the fires of bombs and enthusiastic rallies thrown by groups united in their
struggle against literary racism, sexism, and exploition of tree flesh, and
as illiterate, apathetic generations of Brotherhood citizenry eventually
forgot their selfish, dysfunctional desires for more engaging entertainment
and settled for any scraps of psuedointellect thrown their way.
     Knox spoke on many issues of the day, in a moderate, collected voice,
like the blended voices of the mass which he spoke for, combined and uniform
in its lack of distinctiveness, and his words gave tangible form to the
abstract ideas of the Brotherhood, in the down-to-earth language of the
common man. For those devoted to his concepts of altruism and tolerance,
Knox's broadcast was a vindication, the loudly declared praise made them
feel good about themselves and gave them an air of faint superiority. While
suspicious dissenters were subtly converted by lofty sociological argument
and persuasion invariably climaxing with the accusation; if you are not part
of the solution, you are part of the problem.
     Of course, nobody wanted their neighbors and friends to think they were
part of the problem. Soon the Brotherhood's self-conscious billions echoed
and obeyed the voice's sentiment: Capitalism is oppression. All judgement is
arrogant imposition. Humanity is one harmonious family. We are all the same.
No one person is better than another. Individual achievement is inefficent
and ultimately destructive. The rich get fat off the labor of the poor.
Technology is exploition of Gaia. NY-B is a decadent, festering hole of
greedy businessmen. Think of your children's children's children. Space
travel is materialistic violation of humanity's naturally intended borders.
     The last principle seemed self-evident in the earliest days of the
Brotherhood; it was humankind's irrevocable linkage to Gaia and her
unflinching preservation that compelled Knox's environmentalist armies to
seize Portland, and establish the People's Union, to unblinkingly carry out
his every whim, including the assassination of Union turncoat Ellison
Onizuka. Knox assumed that the first contanct with Chaumirra would lead to
inevitable interplanetary war, given the obselete economics and tawdry,
unprogressive philosophies of NY-B.
     He had gravely miscalculated. That contact, and the unfettered exchange
of Chaumirran and Terran products and ideas, quickly transformed the space
between the two planets into a galactic free-enterprise zone, later expanded
etherially to include the thousand planets of the Alliance. And although the
insulated subjects of the Brotherhood had been kept in the dark by layers of
propaganda and selective eliminations, Knox's error was forever laid clear
to the one person he could not evade or kill.
     Himself.
     Thus began the steady progression of his schemes, formulated to
artifically induce enmity between Earth and her offplanet neighbors, as
reality failed to conform to his predictions of mankind's evil nature. His
past three days were the culmination of nearly a hundred years of work; and
yet it was all too simple; an interplanetary equivalent of those horrific,
ancient outrages that planted the seeds of the earthbound Brotherhood; Love
Canal, the Exxon Valdez, Three Mile Island, the San Diego crash. A single
waste frieghter, plunging into the atmosphere of an inhabited planet.
Burning away from the friction like a meteorite. And the resulting toxic
cargo generating a massive cloud of death to descend upon the hapless
inhabitants. Scarred but smarter, Chaumirrans would come to realize the
error of their ways, and in a very short time they would come to recognize
the long-existing, much larger "alternative" to murderous NY-B and her ilk.
     And then the bright new age, the Brotherhood of Progressive Worlds,
would begin.
     Knox laughed out loud, and then flipped the final switch of the radio
cube. The Chaumirran side was primed, and now it was time for his own human
brethren to warm up to their new comrades across the stars. Time to back
away from his policies of isolation and initiate them into the ranks of the
truly enlightened, the truly spiritual, at peace not just with the Earth,
but with the universe.
     Mudred was right, of course. Isabel did not stand a chance, which was
really too bad because she had been a great lay; it was doubtful that she
faked things on the Void, and if she did, it was a masterful performance.
Poor incarcerated Clay certainly had not given her what she really wanted.
He should have recorded the voyage. Then he could have sent the disk to
Olympus Mons, and Clay could learn some new techniques, some that Ellison
never taught him, on his new Martian boyfriend. Or vice versa. Most
definitely vice versa.
     The gray eyes glazed over, as always, when the buzz of static from the
speaker indicated his on-air status, and as an audience of billions awaited
the next syllable. A final thought hovered in Mordecai Knox's mind, high
over the hasty, cybernetically amped stream of his prepared sermon:
     I shall rule.
     "Hello, my brothers and sisters. It is time that we start to
contemplate something much higher than our family, much higher than the
confines of this planet that we pulled from the abyss. I speak of the stars,
of space travel, and the desperate voices millions of miles away, that cry
out for our benevolence..."

11. VENDETTA

     Five thousand Chaumirran Enforcers clustered at the outer fringes of
Chaumirra's atmosphere, over the dark side of the planet, their metallic
hides nevertheless illuminated by the opposing sunlight, rendering the
Chaumirran armada as a dense galaxy of lethal stars. They were the first
advance of the Chau Military in the wake of the Ber Proviso, and as such
their crews were responsible with carrying out the first of its
declarations; the seizure of the etherial bypasses, and elimination of all
interceding traffic by any means necessary. The Chaumirra-Earth etherial
bypass was by far the most densely populated, and the Chau Military's show
of force reflected that fact. Elsewhere, lesser troops were also preparing
to take control of other bypasses, some linked to Kark and Causi Two, others
at Pax Centauri. But in general most of the Chau Military's operations were
centered upon the isolation of the Sol system, the origin of the Parena and
her poisonous load now dispersed amongst the peoples of Chau urbana.
     Unbeknownst to the legions of military personel, or otherwise
disacknowledged altogether, buried deep within the cloud of eth vessels, was
a small Chaumirran transport ship. It had taken bureaucratic wriggling on an
epic scale to move it to its present location and to allow it to travel
along with the armada. That amount of effort expended had moved Lerseid Pell
to assume ship operations personally, along with the skeleton crew necessary
to maintain synch with the formation and to keep watch upon the rogue Togg
Korba, securely bound and placated in a storage compartment. Yet as the
Chaumirran Military patiently awaited the arrival of several more
commanders, boredom had begun to settle within the claustrophobic confines
of Pell's ship, and most especially with Pell himself. The gigantic,
sable-haired Chaumirran made his way to the cargo hold, anxious to kill the
remaining time with his reviled pariah. Two grayshelled guards shivered at
his presence, sheepishly crawled away from his path, and desealed the bay
hatch without question, fearing the provocation of a Kogull's legendary
wrath. Togg Korba lay unconscious on an outthrust of bulkhead, coiled by
vine and writhing with exhaustion
     "Remove the sensamora." Pell ordered, and almost immediately the length
was drawn out of Korba's ear. Korba's eyes snapped open and bored into
Pell's with copper ferocity and undisguised contempt.
     "Where is your gauntlet today, Pell? What else do you want me to tell
you?"
     "You will address a Kogull in the proper fashion, morg."
     "I would not malign the Old Kogull by granting your request, Pell. Your
ascendancy can be attributed only to the Triad's new interpretation. My
standards, and my memory, are much different."
     "Hah!" Pell cackled. "Your 'standards'! Whatever outdated trash you
stand for has no relevance now. The hukumi scum shall soon feel the
unleashed might of Chaumirra and they will pay for their unrestricted piracy
of Sarommo-"
     Korba turned away, an amused smile flashing through the clenched snout
and jaw, and Pell, realizing the outburst after the fact, stopped
mid-sentence.
     "The Triad speaks through your mouth, Pell." Korba murmured. "And
mirror your stupidity. Sarommo no longer belongs to Chaumirra alone. They
cannot turn back time. The hukumi Jarvik has seen to that. Your Triad is
destined for oblivion, and all Chaumirra will rejoice when it goes."
     Trembling in blind, humiliated anger, Pell ignored him and tried to
change the subject. "Do you wish me to tell you where you are going to go,
Korba? Do you know what converts you can expect to find for your 'standards'
and that conspiracy lie of yours?"
     "I do not care. Vindication is mine, tomorrow or eons after I have
died. Believe me, Pell, when I tell you that your scheme, and you, do not
concern me in the slightest. To think of you is to waste a thought."
     Pell smiled, and leaned close to Korba.
     "I shall tell you, anyway. Your new home will be a nondescript asteroid
in the Sol Belt. The piece of rock that you will inhabit does not even have
a name, outside of the encoded number which it has been given by the hukumi.
A number with fourteen digits, to give you some clue about how destined for
obscurity you are." Korba suddenly became alert, a new light flickered in
his eyes, and Pell was disappointed at the reaction. "Well," he barked,
"what do you have to say about that?"
     "I am flattered beyond comprehension. You thought this news would
incite such discomfort as to make me grovel at your feet for mercy?"
     " You still don't understand, do you, morg? Perhaps the sensamora still
resides in your vacuous head? You are not merely leaving Chaumirra, you are
leaving the entire managerial zone under Chaumirran-"
     "-Jurisdiction," Korba interrupted, contemptuously. "Yes, yes, I heard
that part, you moron. But if my so-called 'conspiracy lie' is such an
obvious falsehood, then why am I not bound for Johalihad 6, with the rest of
the Triad's disfavored?"
     Korba stared. Pell sputtered at first, then said nothing.
     "Oh, oh, yes! Now I know!" he continued, his voice laden with sarcasm.
"The Legislature doesn't know about me, correct, Pell? They think I perished
with the rest of the Lemsted and the Triad doesn't want my 'conspiracy
lie'Ęto be studied any further, do they? Otherwise that might have put a
damper on the blockade they wanted so badly! What ship are we on, I wonder?
Are we not traveling with the armada right this very minute? You are so
sickeningly obvious, Pell. And you are a bad interrogator, as well. It would
seem that I am asking all the right questions, while you and the Triad are-"
     "Silence!"
     "-trembling over the hukumi-"
     Pell started to lash out at the defiant Korba, but held himself back,
remembering his allegiance to the Triad, and their specific orders; that his
prisoner must not be harmed. He gestured to the accompanying guard, and the
vine cut off Korba's angry words like a thrown switch.
     "Kogull Pell,"Ęthe cargo-hold intercom sounded, "we have been given
go-ahead clearance by Chau Command." Pell nodded to one of the shellrobed
guards, an eth navigator, who then proceeded to the control center of the
transport. Pell then crouched down, and put his snout forward, close to
Korba's twitching own.
     "You listen to me, Korba," he murmured, his voice a deliberate
monotone. "When I put your filthy form down upon that asteroid, and depart,
that will not be the end for you and me. I am obliged to follow the Triad's
orders regarding your physical condition, incomprehensible as they may be.
But once I have carried them out, to the best of my ability, I'll be back,
on my own personal time."
     He lifted the gauntlet to Korba's flashing, rolling eyes, and a
metallic screech ripped through the cargo hold as the ether-accelerators of
the transport ship engaged.
     "To finish you."
     Over the eclipsed black void of Chaumirra, the cloud of stars grew
brighter, merged into a blue-green fireball, and dissipated away, lost in
ether.

12. ELEVENTH HOUR

     The moon was in chaos.
     Cut off from the convenience of etherial travel, now suspended by the
worried boardrooms of all the commercial Lunar companies, the quarter or so
of Luna's population that was comprised of Earth tourists had been thrown
into a panic. The three centuries since the founding of the colonies had,
despite unprecendented technological and medical advancement, failed to
solve the root of this present hysteria: the moon's low gravity that
threatened to make these same tourists permanent space residents; physically
unable to return to the monstrous gravity well of Earth. In the early years
of the colonies, when space travel was a much more complicated and
time-consuming matter, commuters had to rely on centrifuges and constant
exercise to stay fit for the far-off, mathematically-calculated return to
the mother planet. Etherial travel had eliminated this necessity, along with
the Terran concern for irrevocable physiological change; the appeal of the
Moon to Earth-dwellers became its inherent Moon-like qualities so vivid from
the ancient Apollo age: to bounce, fly, explore craters and caves, careen
down the grey maria by rolligon, and gaze at the Earth. To insist upon their
toilage within a spinning, "indoor" cylinder that simulated their home
gravity was more than merely boring, it was unfair.
     Now the situation was reversed: Francesca Lopez could hear the low
grumble among angry Terran passengers and tourists cramming Armstrong Park
in the heart of Tycho City. They were now quite loudly lamenting their
misfortune and venting their frustrations upon the few available public
representatives of the Lunar government; demanding why the present
administration had not seen fit to force upon them the same toilage they
once opposed. The Tycho City peace officers met their derision with iron
indifference, and that only stirred further the emotions of the crowd. How
long would this continue? Lopez thought. Would Tycho City and the other
Lunar pressures be prepared for the ugly ramifications of civil disorder and
all it entailed? The native habitants of the Moon had learned to live with
their home's harsh conditions and barely-managed anarchy: these Terran
sightseers did not.