- All you need to know is that the planets are the location.
- Really? Indeed. And how can that be?
The little gascraft rose up into the air above the dent-seat.
- Because your wormhole portals are inside your planets,
Setstyin, Fassin sent calmly.
The Dweller froze, then opened one last drawer. 'But that's ridiculous,' he said aloud.
'Right in the centre,' Fassin continued, also speaking out loud now. 'Probably of every single gas-giant you guys inhabit. There were only - what? - two million when the List was drawn up, that right? But that was long ago, and it was a historical document even then. I wouldn't be at all surprised to hear you'd connected up every last Dweller planet by now.'
'I'm sorry, Fassin,' Setstyin said. 'You wouldn't convince a child with this. Everybody knows you need a flat region of space to make a wormhole portal work.'
'Ah, that's the beauty of it. The very centre of a planet is flat,' Fassin said. 'Right in the very centre of a planet, of any free-floating body - sun, rock, gas-giant, anything - you're being pulled equally in all directions. It's just like being in orbit round a world and feeling weightless. The only problem, of course, is keeping a volume of space open in the core of a planet or a sun or whatever in the first place. The pressure is colossal, almost beyond belief, especially in a gas-giant the size of Nasq., but in the end it's just engineering. Hey, you guys have had ten billion years to get good at that sort of stuff. Anything that isn't impossible you learned to do easily when the galaxy was a quarter of the age it is now.
'So you don't need to position portals in space where anybody could see them or use them or attack them, you don't even need to leave your own planet to access them, you just head for some well-hidden shaft that leads you down to the very centre of the world. Maybe at the poles. That would be an obvious kind of place. And if you've got somebody aboard your ship who might be keeping track of where you're going somehow, you just throw in all these crazy spirals and flash some screenage of space into wherever you're keeping them, so they never can tell they've gone down, not up, and have sunk into the core, not flown out into space.'
'Ah, here we are,' Setstyin said, and pulled out a large handgun. Suddenly perfectly steady, he aimed and fired before the little gascraft could react.
The beams tore the arrowhead apart, slamming through it and sending it whirling back against a stack of library crystals and then somersaulting over and over as Setstyin kept firing the gun, spreading fire and scattering wreckage all over the library floor. Wildly spinning pieces of debris were sent shrapnelling across the glittering stacks, cracking spines and smashing crystal pages to powder. What was left of the little craft crashed into the windows by the balcony, shattering the diamond as though it was sugar glass. Setstyin stopped firing.
Debris pattered down. Smoke drifted, gradually sucked towards the shattered window.
The big Dweller roted carefully over to the broken window, keeping the gun trained on the smoking remains of the little craft as he approached.
'Sir?' his servant called over the house intercom. 'Sir, are you all right? I thought I heard—'
'Fine,' Setstyin called, not shifting his attention from the wreckage as he drew closer. 'I'm fine. Be some cleaning up to do in due course, but I'm fine. Leave me, now.'
'Sir.'
A warm breeze ruffled his robes as Setstyin floated out of the window and drew up almost on top of the guttering wreck. He prodded the ruined gascraft with the muzzle of the gun. He prised part of the craft's upper shell away.
He peered inside.
'Fucker!' he screamed, and whirled back into the library, tearing through the gas to the desk. 'Desk! SecComms, now!’
Aun Liss watched the man as his little craft, his second skin, was destroyed.
Fassin winced just the once, twitching as though pained.
Aun thought he did not look well. His body was thin inside the borrowed fatigues and he was trembling slightly but continually. His face looked much older than it had, pinched and drawn, eyes sunken and surrounded with darkness. His hair, looking crinkled and thin, had grown a little while he'd been inside the gascraft. His eyes and the edges of his ears and nostrils, plus the corners of his mouth, were red from the effects of coming out of the shock-gel - and having the gillfluid come out of him - after all this time.
He turned to look at her. She was glad to see there was a twinkle in his eye, despite it all. 'So. Still think I'm crazy?' he asked.
She smiled. 'Pretty much.'
They sat in the bright, if cramped, command space of the Ecophobian, a Beyonder shockcraft, a medium-weight warship half a light second out from Nasqueron, linked to the now-defunct gascraft via a twin of the eyeball-sized microsat which had been exactly where it was supposed to be a day earlier, when Fassin had pinged it from the high platform in Quaibrai.
They were, amazingly, still receiving basic telemetry from the shattered gascraft, though no sensory content. The machine had been very thoroughly blasted.
On a side-screen, they had a freeze of the last visual that the little gascraft had sent: Setstyin levelling a sizeable handgun straight at the camera, a tiny sparkle of light just starting in the very centre of the weapon's dark barrel. Fassin nodded at the image. 'I hasten to add that that does not constitute standard Dweller hospitality.'
'I'd guessed. Sure it wasn't because you just wouldn't shut up?'
'I'm serious.'
'You're serious? What do you call the guy with the big fuck-off gun?'
'Aun,' Fassin said, sounding tired now. 'Do you believe me?'
She hesitated, shrugged. 'I'm with your belligerent friend; I believe you believe.'
The gascraft telemetry cut off.
The Chief Remotes Officer leaned in, manipulating holos above one of the displays. 'That wasn't the gascraft totalling,' she told them, 'that was the microsat getting fried. Fast work. Suggest hightail promptly.'
'Hold on to your hats,' the captain said. 'Sit well back.'
They were thrown, pressed, then rammed back into their seats as the ship accelerated, the command officers shifting to control by induction rather than physical manipulation. The whole gimballed command sphere swung to keep the gee-forces pressing on their chests.
'Were you serious, Mr Taak?' the captain asked, her voice strained against the clamping power of the acceleration.
'Yuh,' was the best Fassin could manage.
'So there's a secret network of ancient Dweller wormholes linking - what? - every Dweller gas-giant?'
Fassin took the deepest breath he could and forced out, 'That's the idea.' Another breath. 'You send all we ... got from the . . . gascraft to ... your high command?'
The captain managed to laugh. 'Such as they are, yes.'
'Shit,' said the Defence Officer, his voice strained. 'Lock on.' They heard him breathing hard. 'It's fast! Can't outrun. In fourteen!'
'Fire everything,' the captain said crisply. 'Ready Detach Command. We'll risk adrifting, hope the Impavid's local.'
'Need to yaw before the Detach or we'll be hit by the debris spray,' the Tactics Officer said.
'Copy,' the captain said. 'Shame. Always liked this ship.'
The ship wheeled wildly, Fassin blacked out and never felt the explosive detach.
The joltship Impavid picked the command sphere up three days later.
*
'Taince,' Saluus Kehar said. He grinned. 'Hey. So, so good to see you again.' He came up to her and put his arms round her.
Taince Yarabokin had succeeded in producing a smile. She'd chosen an old-fashioned formal cap as part of her uniform and so had the unspoken excuse that she needed to keep this clamped between her elbow and her side for not being able to hug him back with any great enthusiasm. Sal didn't seem to notice anyway. He pulled away, looked at her.
'Been a while, Taince. Glad you made it back.'
'Good to be back,' Taince said.
They were in a hangar in the G
uard Security Holding Facility Axle 7, a triple-wheeled habitat orbiting 'glantine. Saluus had been held there for the past couple of months while the authorities had decided whether they really believed him about having been kidnapped rather than having run away or even turned traitor.
He'd consented to and undergone dozens of brain scans -more than enough to put the matter beyond any doubt in an ordinary case, and of course he had connections and friends in high places who would normally have been only too happy to have discreet words in probably quite receptive ears. But there had been a feeling that this was an exceptional matter, that Sal was rich enough to have afforded technologies or techniques that would fool the brain scans, that the Starvelings themselves might have been able to implant convincing false memories, and - anyway - such a fuss had been made at the time when Saluus had, seemingly, gone over to the invading forces that to let him meekly out just because it looked like he was blameless somehow didn't seem right.
When Saluus had disappeared, apparently turning traitor, there had been strikes and attacks on Kehar family and commercial property and he'd been denounced by every part of the Ulubine Mercatoria in terms that owed as much to finally having something understandable to hit out at as to any moral indignation. People who had called Sal a friend and been regular guests at many of his family homes had decided that they owed it to the popular mood and their intense personal sense of betrayal - not to mention their future social standing and careers to compete in out-vituperating each other in their condem-nation of his odious perfidy. The calumnies heaped upon Sal's absent head had amounted to a thesaurus of despite, an entire dictionary of bile. In the end he was kept incarcerated as much for his own safety as for anything else.
- When the Starveling forces left and the Summed Fleet arrived, the general feeling of relief and euphoria pervading the Ulubis system meant that news of Sal's shocking innocence traded rather better on the floor of the public's perception, and it could be announced that he was to be released in due course. Most people chose to recant their earlier expressions of hatred and condemnation, though it was still felt best for all concerned if Sal's return to public life and rehabilitation was gradual rather than abrupt.
Taince had volunteered - pulled rank, indeed - to pilot Sal from the Holding Facility back to the original Kehar family home on 'glantine.
A Guard-major got Taince to sign Sal out of custody.
Sal watched her signature on the pad. 'That's my freedom you're writing there, Vice Admiral,' he told her. He was wearing his own clothes, looking slim and casual and bright.
'Glad to be of service,' she told him, then looked at the Guards officer. 'Is that us, Guard-major?'
'Yes, ma'am.' He turned to Saluus. 'You are free to go, Mr Kehar.'
Saluus reached out and shook the Guard-major's hand. 'Med, thanks for everything.'
'Been a pleasure, sir.'
'No clothes or anything?' Taince asked, looking at his empty hands.
Sal shook his head. 'Came with nothing, taking nothing away. No baggage.' He flashed a smile.
She tipped her head. 'Pretty good at our age.'
They walked to the small cutter squatting on the shallow curve of hangar floor. 'I really appreciate this, Taince,' he told her. 'I mean I really do. You didn't have to do this.' She smiled. His gaze flicked over her insignia. 'It is okay to call you Taince, isn't it? I mean, I'll call you Vice Admiral if you like
'Taince is fine, Sal. After you.' She showed him up into the little cutter's tandem cockpit, settling him into the seat in front of and below hers. She fitted herself into the pilot's seat, clipping on a light flight collar and waking the small craft's systems. The Facility's flight control cleared them to leave.
'So you're, what? System Liaison Chief?' Sal asked over his shoulder as they were trundled under a door into a sizeable airlock.
'Yes, well, it's pretty much all ceremonial,' she told him. The door behind them closed, the lights in the lock dimmed. 'Receptions, dinners, tours, addresses, you know the sort of thing.'
'Sounds like you're just loving every minute.'
'I suppose somebody has to do it. Serves me right for being Ulubine.' Pumps thrummed, a rush of air and a deep hum at first, then after a while just the hum, sounding through the fabric of the cutter. 'No real fighting to do, anyway. Just clean-up stuff. I'm not missing much.'
'Any news on Fassin?' Sal asked. 'Last I heard they thought he might be alive again. If you know what I mean.'
The outer door opened silently to the stars and a great silvery-fawn slice of 'glantine.
'Just give me a minute or two here, will you?' Taince asked. 'Been a little while since I did this . . .'
'Hey, take as long as you need.'
The cutter edged its way out of the lock, stowed its gear, rolled very slowly and drifted away on little whisper bursts of gas, heading towards the atmosphere.
'Yes. Fassin,' Taince said. 'Well, they're still looking for him.'
'I heard he'd been lost in Nasqueron and then reappeared.'
'There have been rumours. There were always rumours. If you believed them, he's been all over Nasqueron for the last half-year, never left, or been in the Oort cloud for the last few months and just returned, or even wilder stuff. Plus he's been declared definitely dead at least three times. Whatever the truth is, he's still not here to tell it himself.' Taince rotated the cutter, lining it up for entry.
'You think he is dead?' Sal asked.
'Let's just say it's odd that he hasn't made himself known by now, if he is still around.'
They met the atmosphere a little later, pressed against the seat restraints, a pink glow building then fading around the canopy, the small ship whistling in across a sequence of thin clouds, deserts and shallow seas, hills, scarps, lakes and low mountains.
'Taking the scenic route, Taince?'
She gave a small laugh. 'Suppose I'm just a sentimentalist at heart, Sal.'
'Good to see the old place again,' Sal said. She watched him lean to one side, looking down. 'Is that Pirri down there?' - She looked, checked the nav. 'Yes, that's Pirrintipiti.'
'Looks like it always did. Thought it might have grown a bit more.'
'While since you've been home, Sal?'
'Oh, too long, too long. Kept meaning to, but, you know. Must be ten or twelve years. Maybe more. Feels more.'
They were high over the edges of the thin polar-plateau ice cap, crossing into darkness, falling all the time. They could see stars again.
She saw him looking up and around. 'You forget how beautiful it is, eh?' Sal asked.
'Sometimes,' Taince said. 'Easy enough thing to do.'
The glow in the sky faded around them. She watched the canopy up the brightness, exaggerating the incoming light until they could see the starlight on the North Waste Land, the great long streaks of coloured sands and outcrop rocks, silvery ghosts, coming closer all the time.
'Ah, right,' Sal said quietly.
She tapped a few display icons, dimming the screens.
'Thought we'd take a pass,' she said. 'Hope you don't mind.'
'Old times' sake.' He sounded thoughtful, even resigned. 'Well, why not?'
Taince checked the nav again, lined the craft up and cut its speed a little. A light was blinking urgently on one of the displays. She turned that one off too.
'I certainly haven't been back here since that night,' Sal said. She thought he sounded sad now. Perhaps regretful. Perhaps not.
The ruined ship showed up ahead, a little off to the right. Taince started the cutter on a long starboard curve, levelling out as she did so.
Sal looked side-down at the desert, rushing past seventy-metres below as they banked. 'Wow,' he said. 'Quicker than that flier I borrowed from Dad.'
'One of your own ships, Sal,' she told him.
'This little thing?' He laughed. 'Didn't realise we made anything this small.'
'It's old.'
'Ah. One of Dad's. More money in the big stuff.'
&
nbsp; They zapped past the great dark hulk. Its exposed ribs clawed at the sky.
'Woo-hoo!' Sal shouted as the black wall of hull slid past twenty metres away.
Taince zoomed, looped and rolled, levelling out again, approaching the wrecked alien ship once more for an even nearer approach.
'Who-hoh-hoh!' Sal said, seeing how low and close Taince was taking the cutter this time. Taince rolled the craft so that they were upside down. 'Sheeit! Wow! Taince! Yee-ha!'
Right to the end she hadn't known if she'd actually do it or not. She didn't really know the truth of what had happened, after all. She only had her suspicions. She could, despite everything, just be plain wrong. It wouldn't be the first time somebody had taken the law into their own hands and been proved to be hopelessly wrong, once all the facts were known. Fuck, that was what justice was supposed to be all about, that was why you had laws and everything that went with them, that was one of the things that made a society a society.
But still. She did know. She was quite sure. It was his time. And if she was wrong, well, Sal had had his share. It wasn't like killing a child, or a young woman with her life before her. It was still killing, still wrong, but there were gradations in all things, even circles in hell. And, frankly - right or wrong - at least she'd never know.
It was her time. She knew that.
She'd really thought there would be tears, but they stayed away. How strange not to know oneself, after so long, at such an extremity, and so close to the end.
What else? Well, she'd thought of telling him, of confronting him, of bringing it all back up again, of listening to him rage at or plead with or scream at her. That had been something she'd rehearsed a lot, that had been something she'd thought through time after time after time as she'd played and replayed this scene in her head over the years and decades and centuries, taking both her part and his, trying to imagine what he'd say, how he'd try to explain it, how he'd imply she was mad or mistaken.
Ultimately Taince had just got bored with it. She'd heard it all before. There was nothing more to say.
She was taking a man's life on circumstantial evidence, on a hunch. She ought to give him the chance to appeal. She ought at least to allow him to know it was about to happen.