The United System Alliance’s covert construction of a hard-sited base on Andrion 2 and the covert exploitation of the mineral resources of that planet, which is in ConFree vac, is clearly a violation of treaty as defined in Para 18 of the USICOM-ConFree Interstellar Agreement on Sectors and Trade, as well as a violation of all accepted norms of common interstellar law. The Confederation of Free Worlds regards this incursion into ConFree space by DefCom forces as unprovoked military and economic aggression by the System, and we warn USICOM and the System itself that the severest consequences will ensue. The people of the Confederation of Free Worlds will not permit aggressors to launch military adventures into ConFree space, to kidnap natives of ConFree worlds, or to introduce dangerous animal species from another world. The System’s reckless actions in this case reveal its cynical contempt for all civilized norms of interstellar conduct and for solemn interstellar treaties signed by its own representatives.” Commander Two Three One, Val, our downside chief exec, was reading a demarche from Starcom. Lowdrop, the downside mission commander, sat beside him. I suppose we were showing contempt by having our exec read the demarche instead of Lowdrop. The negotiations had begun, and we were stating our position. It was not diplomatic, but it was certainly clear.
“The System’s attempted seizure of ConFree territory endangers the current suspension of hostilities between the System and the Confederation. I am authorized to state for Outvac Sector Command that force will be met with force, and that further aggressive acts by DefCom forces will meet with immediate reaction. It is entirely up to the System whether or not its aggressive actions will escalate into another interstellar war. I only wish to assure the United System Alliance that the Confederation of Free Worlds will react immediately to all attacks on its sovereignty.”
I studied his face as he continued. It was a stony mask, no emotion showed. Val was a tall, rangy, handsome Outworlder with curly, reddish-brown hair. The Systies despised Outworlders; they hated having to deal with us. They would have preferred exterminating the Outworlder race, but they had tried that once and it hadn’t worked. Now we were strong and free, and hostile to them. It drove them right into the Sun.
We faced the Systies across a massive oblong table in a Coldmark conference room. Our side was lined with black uniforms. The various Systies races wore khakis and blues and whites and dark reds and greens, depending on their unit. We Outworlders had pale eyes and light skin burnt dark by the stars, and bronze Assidic skin, the mark of the Conqueror.
Across the table, greenish, pale-skinned Mocains dressed in DefCorps khaki regarded us through hooded eyes. Beside them, in USICOM blue, were Ormans from the Inners, a stunted race from a lost world, clinging to life and power like parasites, surviving by guile and deceit, riding to the stars with the Mocains. They controlled USICOM, and functioned as reliable political advisors to the Mocain.
Also present were a host of mortals from conquered worlds: Luytenians and Pherdans and Dardans and Elidians and many others, wearing DefCom khaki and USICOM blue and STRATCOM red and Starfleet white and Alliance gold.
Coldmarker USICOM officials refereed the encounter. The racial tension in that room was palpable.
“We demand a public apology from the System for this blatant act of aggression, and an immediate explanation for these unprecedented actions. We also demand reparations from the System for all damage done to Andrion 2 as a result of its aggression, and an immediate exchange of prisoners.” Val hated the Systies. He was from Angaroth, a world savagely brutalized by past Systie atrocities, and that was all the reason he needed.
We sat on steeply banked rows of seats opposite each side of the long conference table. The room was packed. Information flunkies from both sides snapped away with their solscans, and vidmons recorded the procedures. After today, we would all have files opened on us by DefCom Information. I did not care; I was only there for one reason.
I glanced over at Gravelight, a pale princess clad in black, with hair like golden sunlight. Some of the Legion girls had worked on her prior to the meeting. Gravelight normally did not worry much about her appearance, but the conference was a big psywar opportunity for us. Our delegation was projecting immortal youth and beauty and raw, confident Outworlder power. We were everything the System desperately wanted to crush, a direct threat to the corrupt, dead heart of their petrified interstellar empire. We wanted to make sure the message got out. Oblivious, Gravelight coldly glared at only one person, a sallow Orman girl with stringy black hair and a weary face. That would be one of the Systie psychers, and a silent battle would be raging between those two as the negotiations continued.
“Take a good look, Thinker,” Coolhand said softly. “We don’t often get to see these people so close while they’re still alive. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.” He smiled cheerily.
“I really feel privileged, Coolhand. This is indeed an honor. Those Greenies make my skin crawl.” We called the Mocains Greenies because of the faint green tint of their pale flesh.
“Scope out the giant at the end of the table. That’s an Inner from Picos. If I was his size, I wouldn’t let any Greenie push me around.” Coolhand held a datascreen. There was so much information flashing around that room that I half expected our screens to start blowing out.
Psycho leaned toward us, interrupting. “Coolhand, can I shoot that slimy bald Greenie with the gold on his shoulders? Can I?”
“Now settle down, Psycho. We’ll tell you when to start shooting. Not yet!”
“Please? Just one guy, the green slime. Just one, tenners?”
“Keep your voice down.”
“Have you girls heard enough of this nonsense? If so, we’ve got work to do.” Snow Leopard seemed anxious to get moving. Gamma had already filed out. Every move we made had been planned in advance. If we accomplished nothing else, we would keep a lot of Systies very busy. The negotiations would continue for days, maybe weeks. Beta and Gamma would be busy elsewhere.
Outside, our aircars hovered right at the entrance to the Government Center, metal skins shining silver in the sunlight, armored plex all black.
It was a bright, clear day. Crowds of scruffy Coldmarkers lined the tall wire mesh fences surrounding the compound, and a ragged shout went up when we appeared. Coldmark militia stood around nervously, armed with local SG clones, while DefCorps troopers stood guard by the doors, whispering into their wristcoms.
We entered the first car and Gamma took the second one. As I got in, two more Legion aircars flashed across the sky, followed moments later by two Systie aircars. Our day had begun.
Redhawk grinned at us from the pilot’s seat. He was the only troopie I knew crazier than Psycho. The assault door sealed shut abruptly. “Strap in, kiddies, or you’ll be sorry!” Redhawk slammed the thrust forward and we shot away from the compound at blinding speed, powering up into the sky at a steep angle. Since nobody had strapped in yet, this caused us some distress. Warhound landed on my face, and all our loose equipment shifted position immediately to the rear.
“Will you kindly remove your knee from my throat?”
“Sorry!”
Redhawk laughed madly. He hit the sounds, and the cabin filled with wild lektra music, shattering our ears. “They’ll never catch us!” he screamed over the music. He arced the aircar into a steep dive.
“Strap in, girls!” Snow Leopard ordered. We knew Redhawk, and we didn’t mind his driving. We knew he was the best. I settled into a seat and strapped in. Psycho found a seat next to me. He always enjoyed these little rides.
Now we flashed at treetop height right over Coldmark City, only there were no trees and it wasn’t much of a city. As the aircar bounced and shuddered through rough air and sunlight exploded across the darkened plex, the entire panorama of Coldmark slid by below. We saw a seemingly endless slum, hundreds of thousands of squalid little shacks constructed from trash, wood and plastic and metal scraps, set in a smoky, cratered wilderness full of slow-moving people, looking up in surprise as we flashed overhead. A city of mud and burning garbage, inhabited by slaves. Down below, a bewildering variety of groundcars bounced over rutted roads, and in the middle, a tiny child ran gleefully away from a furious old lady shaking a broom.
We flashed over a polluted green canal. It looked like people were urinating and defecating on one side and washing clothes in the other. Off in the distance, Government installations rose from the sea of shacks like islands, surrounded by high wire-mesh fences.
Snow Leopard sat next to Redhawk, shouting into his ear. “Can you turn down the music!”
“What?”
“The music! Turn it down!”
“What?”
“Turn down the bloody music!” Snow Leopard’s face was bright red.
Redhawk pointed to his earphones, and leaned over close to Snow Leopard. “I can’t hear you! The music’s too loud!”
Grimacing, Snow Leopard turned it down himself. We were so low I thought we were going to collide with some of the shacks. We darted over a sea of mud, full of naked laughing children, chasing a ball through the filth. Priestess tapped my shoulder. She sat just behind me, and she was upset. “Thinker…how can they live like that? What kind of a world is this!”
“It’s a world of rich and poor, Priestess. You read the sitrep. This is just what it said.”
“But I…but…I didn’t think they would live like this! In filth! What is the matter with these people? Don’t they know about public sanitation? Or personal hygiene? Isn’t anyone watching over those children?”
“Doesn’t look like it.”
Priestess trembled, glaring out the plex. “This is criminal! What kind of a government is this! They don’t care! It’s treason! High crimes against humanity! Nobody should treat human beings like this, not even mortals!”
“Keep that Manlink away from her, Psycho.” I did not know what else to say.
“You want me to kill somebody for you, Priestess?” Psycho was no help at all. He loved to drive people over the edge.
“Filthy scum! We should put a strike in on every one of those Government compounds. Antimat the lot!” Priestess really meant it, I could tell. “Kill them all! Blow away all those wire fences and let the mob in to tear them apart! They’re subhumans, Thinker! Subhumans!”
“You got that right!” Her fingers dug into my shoulder. She stared fixedly out the plex, convulsed. She came from a Legion world, a very sheltered existence.
“Is anybody back there?” Snow Leopard asked the pilot.
“Oh, yeah. Big ten on that. We got one Systie aircar way, way back there, still on us. But not for long! Hang on!” Redhawk whipped the aircar around in a wicked tight turn. The gravs pulled at us as the car arced dizzily in a great circle.
“Hey, we were just here!” We ripped over the field full of children again. They waved wildly at us, frozen briefly in mid-stride. Redhawk put her even lower, right along the stagnant canal, booming past the line of Coldmarkers at their communal toilet. We passed so close to the surface that we sprayed water all over them.
“That guy fell into the canal!”
“What a way to go!”
“You’re heading right for the aircar!” The Systie aircar was rapidly approaching, a flashing red light on the console.
“That’s a ten! I’m locked on!” Redhawk had a wild look in his eyes. The sensors were shrieking. Redhawk eased the controls back and we arced upwards into the sky. I saw it coming, right at us, a speck, a dot, a dart, an aircar! It flashed past so fast and so close it was just a silver blur, and an ear-shattering sonic boom rattled our car. Redhawk shrieked with laughter as he slammed the controls forward and we dived for the deck once again.
“That should slow him down just a tad.” Redhawk gave us his craziest grin as he stood the car on its side again and the world came rushing at us from above. It would have slowed me down, I knew that. I would at least have wanted to change my pants before continuing the pursuit.
We found a river, dotted with ancient wooden fishing boats powered by ragged sails, and followed it upstream, almost on the surface. The water rippled in golden sunlight, a river of diamonds sailed by black phantom ships. A morning shower sparkled in the sunlight, raindrops vaporizing against the skin of our aircar. “They’ll be on us again shortly, but the first target is right ahead.” Redhawk had settled down. He liked to fool around, but he always got the job done.
We gained a little altitude, left the river, hurtled over a line of rocky hills, then straightened out, booming laser-straight over flat marshy lowlands.
“There it is.” The sensors lit up again. I could see it now, a sprawling complex, metallic fences glittering in the sun, a series of low, windowless buildings, bristling with antennas. Redhawk put it on max, and we shot right over them, trailing another sonic boom.
“Good morning, Systies!” The Government complex vanished behind us as Redhawk whipped the aircar around, heading for the next target.
“Did we get everything?” Snow Leopard asked.
“Looks like it,” Merlin replied. He sat up front, checking a data screen.
“You think we’ll learn anything?”
“We’ll learn a lot. I don’t know if we’ll learn whether or not Valkyrie is there, however. Without her c-cell she’s going to be hard to spot.”
“Well, we’ve got to try.”
“Tenners-we’ve got to try. And, who knows, maybe we will spot her. This is hot biotech.”
“Second target coming up!”
“There’s another aircar on our tail.”
“I predict he’s going to be more wary than that other guy.”
We pointed the aircar’s nose right at the second target. All over Coldmark scores of Legion aircars were doing the same, and sending the data straight to the Spawn, while the Coldmarkers and Systies were scrambling, trying to monitor our activities.
We did not know if Valkyrie was here or not, but we would certainly do our best to find her.
“All right, Gravelight’s next. Where’s her cube?” Commander Val moved around the assault craft contacting just about everybody, gathering info and issuing orders at the same time. I had been elected to carry his personal starlink. It was heavy. I knew we weren’t going to get any sleep that night, and I was glad I didn’t have his job.
“Right here,” I said. We paused at the open door to Gravelight’s cube. Gravelight sprawled across her bunk, a wet towel covering her face. Quarters were crowded in the assault craft, and only VIPs rated a cube. The cubes were molded around the bunk. A desk and commo gear formed one wall, with a mini kitchen unit. A tiny, body-sized closet served as a toilet and shower. You couldn’t move without bumping into one of the walls or the ceiling. The heavy gravity seemed odd. We were downside, docked in Coldmark Port, and nobody liked it.
Val hesitated in the open doorway, his features hidden in shadows, as I hovered behind him. Gravelight was motionless, lying on her back, her face concealed by the towel. Gravelight had stripped off her boots and litesuit pants and abandoned them on the deck. She wore only panties and a ripped litesuit blouse. She’d apparently torn open the blouse and then collapsed onto the bed. She wore a flesh-colored bra under the blouse.
Gravelight breathed shallowly, her throat faintly rising and falling. I guess we were both taking it all in. She was certainly lovely. Val was silent. Stunned, maybe. I could have told him it would never happen, not with a psycher. Some things are not meant to be.
“Eighty-Eight…” Val finally spoke. Eighty-eight was her number. We hated to wake her, but there was much work to do. Important work.
“I’m awake.” Gravelight pulled the towel away from her face. Her eyes remained closed. Little drops of moisture trickled down her cheeks to her neck. I wondered whether Gravelight had been reading our thoughts. Her eyes flickered and opened, focusing on the overhead. She did not look at us. Her face appeared splotchy and strained. She raised one hand to her forehead.
“Oh, no. It hurts. Oh, no.” She closed her eyes again, stiffening.
“Can I do anything?” Val asked.
“Water. Water, please.”
Val punched a frosty cup of ice water from the kitchen console and touched it gently to Gravelight’s lips. Her hands grasped the cup. She sipped it slowly, and the color gradually returned to her cheeks. Val slipped one hand behind her neck, tangled in golden hair, to steady her head. I stood in the doorway wondering how to gracefully disappear.
“Thank you,” she said.
“It’s nothing,” Val replied.
She struggled to a half-sitting position, then collapsed back onto the pillow. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I feel really bad.”
“It’s a ten. Can you answer a few questions?”
“Yes. Yes, sure. Fire away.”
“I know you’re tired, but we need a report. Did you pick up anything in the conference, anything good?” Val triggered his recorder.
“I picked up a nasty headache. That was the high point, I’m afraid.” She made another effort to ease her back up onto the pillow, and was partially successful. Her eyes focused on Val. I might as well not have been there, but I’ll admit to being curious how one went about debriefing a psycher.
“There must have been something else,” he said.
“Yes, sure. Sure, sure, sure. All right, let me see…” She found the soggy towel and wiped her face with it. “Well, that Orman slut was the psycher. Only one. She was good, but we very quickly got tired of fencing. I concentrated on the Systies, and she went after you people. I went into a lot of heads, but couldn’t find anything intelligible about Andrion 2. The whole delegation only knows the negotiating position. Surely you don’t want to know about that. They don’t seem to know anything substantial about the unitium mines.”
“You’re using words like ‘intelligible’ and ‘substantial’. We’ll take anything we can get. Did you get any hints?”
“No…no. I’m hedging because I need more time to get in deeper. But they’re not stupid. I think I’m wasting my time in there. You should take me for a stroll past Systie HQ here, wherever that is. I might pick up something there. They’re not going to send anyone to the negotiations who knows anything.”
“Did you get anything on Valkyrie?”
“If I had picked up anything on Valkyrie,” she said, “I would have leaned over and told you about it during the conference.”
“Sorry…I know you would have. I had to ask.”
Gravelight rolled her head back and forth. “It hurts. I need more rest. I’ll get more for you tomorrow. We still have time.”
“Yes,” Val said softly. “We still have time.”
“And we need to travel,” Gravelight said sleepily. “We need to move around…” Her voice faded. “I’ll find her…I’ll find unitium…we need more…more…”
Gravelight fell asleep. Val gently took the empty cup from her grasp. She did not wake. He took a blanket from the drawer under the bunk and covered her. Such beautiful legs, I thought, such a sweet, innocent girl. Awake, she was trapped in a never-ending nightmare. I wondered what psychers dreamed about. Strange dreams, from alternate worlds. We quietly left the room and Val palmed the door shut behind him. In the corridor, he leaned against the wall and sighed. He ran one hand through his curly, reddish hair. Light from the overhead lit up his features.
“A shame,” he said.
“That’s a ten,” I replied.
“She’s just a kid.”
“Yeah.” Gravelight was doomed, like all psychers. But she’d find Valkyrie for us, I was convinced. She had not even met Valkyrie, but it wouldn’t make any difference. If Gravelight could not find her, nobody could.
“You’ve got a starlink call,” I said. The link glowed red. There was to be no peace for Val or me. The nights here were too short. We had a lot to do before tomorrow.
“Val here,” he said wearily into the link.
“She’s not there. I’m sorry.” Merlin turned away from the datascreen, discouraged.
“You don’t know she’s not there! Spawn doesn’t know! Nobody knows!” Boudicca insisted, her face flushing.
“Right, we don’t know. But it’s ninety-nine percent that she’s not there. You can’t get better readings than this. And Spawn says the Preference is clean.” Merlin was calm and logical. He knew how to handle Boudicca. The Legion scout had flashed past the Preference so close there had almost been a collision, and it had set off an immediate spastic run of red alerts throughout the System fleet. The Preference had been dosed with enough biotech to identify every life form on board. And Spawn told us Valkyrie was not there.
“And what about that one percent?” I asked.
“The only way we’ll know is to board her,” Boudicca insisted.
“Right,” Merlin replied. “Tenners. You ask Cubes, I’ll suit up.” Boudicca could try the patience of an Inner. She knew an attack on the Preference was one of our final options. At any rate, it appeared very doubtful Valkyrie would still be there. We were in the lounge of the assault craft, downside, docked in Coldmark Port, sitting at a table overflowing with datascreens. It was very late. We all should have been asleep, renewing our strength for the next day. But we were munching on mags and I knew there would be no sleep for Beta, or Gamma, that night. We had too much to do.
“Take a look at these anomalies, gals.” Snow Leopard dumped a fresh load of datacards on the table. They spilled over onto the floor. Spawn had cranked it out. Her sensors and probes mapped all of Coldmark, and anything that did not compute was highlighted for human attention. There were a whole lot of things that did not compute.
“Thanks, Snow Leopard. I was wondering what to do this evening.”
“Anybody want any dox?”
I slipped another card into the screen and went back to work, mechanically, hardly thinking about it.
“Look at this.” Priestess slid her screen over to me. A view from above, a rocky field, a half-naked girl lying on her belly, stones scattered all around her. A ragged circle of Coldmarkers surrounded her. One of them had an arm back, ready to hurl another stone.
“It’s not her,” I replied. “The hair color is wrong, the…”
“I know it’s not her,” Priestess insisted. “But look at those people! Stoning! What kind of subhumans are they? How can people act like this?”
I did not answer her. I slid her screen back to her, and continued scanning my own. If they tried to do that to us, I thought, we’d burn them alive. Much more civilized than stoning.
“In my world,” Priestess said, “the strong protect the weak. In my world, you can walk in the night without fear. In my world, we worship life, and protect it. And if you’re a ConFree citizen, you need fear only the Gods. And if you’re with the Legion, you don’t even need to fear the Gods.” Priestess scanned her screen, talking as she worked. Nobody else said anything. The faint clicking of fingers on control tabs continued, and the flickering of light from the screens, and Priestess’s voice, almost hypnotic, wove a spell around us all.
I knew she came from a Legion world. People like that were different. I never set my standards that high.
“In my world, we enforce justice, not laws. In my world, people care for each other. And if you call for help, everyone comes. Everyone!” She punched another image onto her screen, her face pale, her eyes blazing.
“It all flows from the past,” Priestess said quietly. “I could shoot before I could read. I didn’t understand it then, but I do now. First things first, my father said. We had an arsenal full of weapons. Every family had an arsenal like that. We didn’t need it, but it was there. If the situation ever changed back again, to the way it used to be, somebody would have to deal with a lot of armed and angry citizens.”
“Was that a Legion world?” Warhound asked.
“Yes. It didn’t used to be. We had an elected government, once, that decided they didn’t want to step down from power. They had made our world a paradise for criminals and lawyers. Finally they tried to disarm the citizenry that had elected them. My father told me about it.”
“What happened?”
“The people stormed the capitol and the Government called out the troops. That’s what it came to in the end. The citizens against the army, on the steps of the capitol. But it was a people’s army. They refused to fire on the people, and the people stormed the capitol, and killed every last one of those treacherous political rats. Then they went after the lawyers and the judges. They killed them all. All of them. Now we’re a Legion world. Criminals and lawyers know better than to target us.” Priestess was definitely Legion. I began to realize why she had left her quiet, safe, perfect little Legion world. She would have looked up to the stars, breathing cold air, and made a vow.
“So why’d you leave?” Psycho had to ask.
Priestess hesitated. It was almost like asking why she had joined the Legion. Finally she replied. “I wanted to help. I just wanted to help.”
Psycho did not pursue it. Even he could tell that she was sincere. But Boudicca spoke up. “You are helping, Priestess. We all are. It won’t make much difference to this trash world, but it will make a difference to Valkyrie, when we find her. And we will!” She said it with such absolute, fierce conviction that she almost had me convinced.
We went back to our screens.