Starshine Page 11

  For the moment he had no choice but to operate under the assumption the ship was clean….

  So how the hell had they found him? And more relevantly, why had they been so eager to vaporize him on sight?

  12

  ATLANTIS

  Independent Colony

  * * *

  Matei stepped through the wide doors and into the foyer of the ballroom.

  His position was two-thirds of the way down the receiving line for the dignitaries, a prelude to the final gathering of the Trade Summit. It was the appropriate station for a junior member of the Senecan delegation—after the diplomats and CEOs, before the administrative personnel.

  The disguise wasn’t perfect. There were limits to what even glyphed cybernetics could do, the most significant one being they couldn’t alter bone structure. That had been one of the factors in choosing the victim though, so it wasn’t a major issue. Silica-cellulose injections added sufficient depth to his cheekbones and prominence to his chin; block-heeled shoes added the extra four centimeters.

  His skin had darkened two shades, eyes hued to light green and hair tinted to a chocolate brown and cut to match Candela’s style. Foam padding beneath the borrowed clothes provided the extra thirty pounds to his lean frame.

  A friend or family member of Mr. Candela wouldn’t be fooled—but the man had no friends among his coworkers, and his family was kiloparsecs away.

  Matei had made public appearances over the course of the day only when necessary, during which he remained quietly invisible among the Summit attendees. Here, he had positioned himself in line between two Alliance officials; he would not be expected to speak to them.

  As the line continued its slow procession forward, the polite greetings and repetitive small talk began to rise above the low din of those who forewent the receiving line. The line was an odd, anachronistic formality, a tradition he thought had perhaps become malformed somewhere along the way. Nevertheless this night it was to his advantage, for the man he impersonated would not otherwise be allowed to get so close and he might have been forced into a more risky strategy.

  The woman in front of him took another step, and he entered the critical zone. He didn’t look around—not for security or agents, nor for cams or sensors. He knew where they were and had factored them into the plan.

  In the next step he triggered the release of nanobots into his bloodstream which secreted a specially formulated epinephrine compound. It heightened his senses by twenty-two percent and sped his physical reaction times by thirty-six percent above already genetically and biosynthetically enhanced capabilities.

  He spotted Mr. Nythal sitting at a table to the right, his eyes a little wide as they scanned up and down the receiving line with a drink in hand for easy access. If the man spooked security with his vaguely panicked expression, they would have…words.

  The next advancement brought him to the Atlantis Governor. He smiled politely and shook the woman’s hand. His voice, though not loud, was clear and crisp so as to be easily overheard and later recalled by those in the vicinity.

  “A pleasure to meet you, ma’am. Chris Candela, Seneca Trade Division.”

  She smiled as all politicians do, possibly with a tad greater warmth than most since she oversaw a resort world. “I hope you’ve enjoyed your stay here, Mr. Candela.”

  “Very much so, thank you.”

  The Senecan Trade Director was occupied talking up the trophy wife of a Senecan dignitary and didn’t even glance at him as they shook hands. All the better.

  Without altering his gait or demeanor he stepped face to face with Alliance Trade Minister Santiagar and extended a hand in greeting.

  “Chris Candela, Seneca Trade Division. It’s an honor, sir.”

  His eVi activated the virus which had been quarantined in his data cache for the last week and directed it through his cybernetics into his hand. As he shook Santiagar’s hand, he shifted his grip so his index finger made contact with the Minister’s index finger on release.

  Like every person in society above the poverty level, the Minister’s index finger contained the conductive fibers necessary for interaction with a variety of screens, panels and the millions of other electronic devices which pervaded the world around them. The fibers at a minimum connected to the man’s eVi, which at a minimum connected to his brain.

  In Santiagar’s case, the files indicated his body contained a reasonable amount of additional cybernetic enhancements. The minimum would have sufficed, but the enhancements removed all chance.

  There wasn’t even a vibration or tingle when their conductive fibers made contact and the virus passed from his fingertip into the Minister’s cybernetics. He smiled, dipped his chin in appreciation and moved on.

  He made a point to have his pace appear aimless while winding between the milling guests toward the plain door in the right wall.

  The first gasps of horror and panic began to echo behind him as he slipped through the door.

  METIS NEBULA

  Outer Bands

  * * *

  Caleb frowned at the Evanec screen again.

  Static wasn’t something one commonly encountered in the twenty-fourth century. Yet static was precisely what he was looking at.

  Upon entering the golden-blue wisps of Metis this morning, communications had begun to deteriorate. First the exanet feed had stuttered for a few minutes then died. Being cut off from the endless avalanche of media populism and celebrity gossip and pseudo-political intrigue was mostly a welcome respite, but it did nag at him that if anything of actual import were to happen, he’d remain ignorant of it for a time.

  Next the Evanec had started to flicker in and out, and after an hour the ship couldn’t establish a connection to Senecan security channels or anywhere else. It shouldn’t be a problem, seeing as he wasn’t expecting to be engaging in ship-to-anything communications deep in the void of space…though the static was a bit unnerving.

  Finally, his eVi’s communication system fell silent. Locally stored messages remained, but any attempt to send or receive a message or ping the network resulted in a chilling response:

  Connection unable to be established. System is not connected to exanet infrastructure. Messages will be queued until able to be delivered.

  Well. Should Division feel the need to alter his mission, he wouldn’t get the memo. Should they need him for a more urgent mission, he wouldn’t get that one either, which bothered him a marginal amount more. If something happened to Isabela and he didn’t know…but he’d only be here for a few days. It would be fine.

  His gaze drifted to the viewport. The Nebula’s luminous, misty haze formed an eerie, even ghostly environment. Not frightening as such; only dust, gases and the charged particles of the pulsar wind inhabited the sky, and they wielded neither sentience nor intentionality. Rather, it created the impression one had crossed over into an ethereal, incorporeal plane of existence—an effect without a doubt magnified by the disconcerting silence of a formerly ever-present and quite loud civilization.

  He assumed the particular makeup of Metis’ EM signature interfered with transmission protocols, both governmental and commercial. Given communications were ‘classified as a critical system,’ he imagined the VI might be somewhat concerned about the matter.

  “VI, do you know the reason for the interference in communications?”

  “Though no single emission is strong enough to interfere with our systems, the overall EM makeup of this region is nonetheless diffracting all external signals to the point their integrity is lost.”

  “How so?”

  A pause, far longer than normal. “I cannot determine the precise mechanism at this time.”

  Though cognizant it consisted solely of qubits, he felt a strange urge to reassure the VI. “It’s fine, it doesn’t matter.”

  “I will continue to analyze the problem.”

  Wave diffraction was a common enough occurrence, if not often to such damaging effect. Space in its natural stat
e did not always cater to human preferences. On his return he’d submit a log of the interference, and within a few months the Senecan security protocols at least would be adjusted to counteract it. So long as the region stayed uninhabited, the exanet purveyors weren’t likely to give a shit.

  He played with the Evanec settings for a while, but refining the bands merely seemed to make the problem worse—not that ‘null’ could really be made worse. Resigned to the fact he did not possess the ability to improve matters, he relaxed in the pilot’s chair and surveyed the situation.

  Whatever the source of the anomalous readings which had sent him here, it was a solid day to day and a half away based on the rate of increase in the signal strength. The probe had traveled more than a hundred parsecs farther into the Nebula than his current location.

  Still, for obvious reasons he took things slowly. This was unfamiliar territory with unknown factors at work and no safety net should something go wrong. While he would be the first to go in with guns blazing where the circumstance called for it, this one did not. So he moved carefully, scanning and recording for future analysis by those more scientifically minded than he.

  He was standing up to go make a sandwich when the physical sensor blinked an alert. He eased back into the chair and magnified the screen.

  Buried in the shadow of backlit clouds, 0.01 AU away, floated a small planet. The initial scan indicated moderate gravity and a reasonable atmosphere, albeit one consisting of toxic air and volatile weather patterns, which didn’t come as a surprise. What star did it belong to? The pulsar? It wasn’t common for pulsars to have planets, though it did happen. Perhaps it was a rogue, ejected from orbit in the eons-past supernova explosion.

  He called up his astroscience files, projected them to an aural and scrolled down them in an effort to recall—

  —a flicker…no, an absence, a dark gap in the nebular clouds, caught the corner of his eye. In a breath he shifted to full alert.

  There was no logical explanation for why his senses were instantly hyper-focused and nanobot-aided adrenaline already rushed through his veins. But preternatural instincts was one reason the government paid him a rather generous salary.

  He swung around to sweep the area in a broad arc, and came up empty. The sensors detected only the noise Metis radiated. Yet a moment later a well-defined void was distinctly silhouetted against a dense fog of dust, illuminated by the pale golden glow of the Metis interior. He checked the scans again. Nada.

  The sensors told him the region was empty. His eyes told him otherwise. His ocular implant strained to zoom in and focus on the distant shadow; he would have a headache later. He tensed as the silhouette solidified in his vision into the outline of an artificial construct. He’d call it a ship, but….

  Then it whipped about and accelerated toward him and he decided it was most definitely a ship. Aerodynamic and tinted an inky black, it resembled nothing so much as a bird of prey preparing to swoop down upon him.

  “Son of a bitch!” How the bloody fuck had those mercs tracked him here? This vessel was supposed to be stealthy. It was stealthy. The scans of the ship had come up squeaky clean. No bloody fucking way could they have tracked him—except for the fact they very plainly had. He slid into the heavier gas clouds to his right, using the visual and EM cover to strafe to the side of his adversary.

  Based on the trajectory and speed when the ship had been visible, he estimated the amount of time until it drew even. With a jerk across the controls he emerged from the clouds and fired on where it should be.

  His instincts served him well; the other ship tacked away as an explosion blazed bright against its hull—it plummeted and swerved into a dense clump of dust—

  —the laser lost tracking. Terrific. It must have one hell of an aversion shield.

  No time to ponder it, for he promptly became the target of the return flare of a pulse laser—silver-white in hue, suggesting ytterbium crystal construction. Not a particle beam…and Alliance-produced? Odd.

  In a smooth motion he accelerated in an arc up and over the attacker and entered a wall of thick nebular gases. He strafed horizontally before sinking down into the cover, hoping to sneak around and catch his adversary from underneath.

  He exited the cloud to find the enemy due ahead and waiting for him.

  Didn’t see that coming.

  He jerked up at a fifty degree angle and away—

  —but it was too late. The ship quaked beneath his hands from the impact of point-blank pulse laser fire.

  He managed to get off a staccato of fire while in full reverse, though it was unclear if any of it hit. The attacker’s weapon did not lose tracking. A relentless pulse stream tore through his shields, then the outer hull. The rear of the ship plummeted into a wild spin as alerts flared across the HUD bank.

  Letting loose a string of curses in half a dozen languages, he wrenched out of the spin and set a trajectory for the nearby planet. It had obviously been placed here just so he could crash on it.

  He surrendered the controls to the CU long enough to pull on the environment suit and carry the helmet back to the chair. The helmet annoyed him; it cut off his senses and narrowed his perspective, and he wasn’t putting it on until it was required to continue living and breathing.

  On retaking the controls he worked to approach the planet at an angle which stood a marginal chance of not turning the ship and him to flaming meteoroids. Concentrated as he was on flying a vessel which seemed to have lost most of its tail section, it took a few seconds for him to realize the incoming fire had ceased—possibly on account of the fact he was clearly already dead.

  The turbulence of the planetary atmosphere sent the ship into violent convulsions. He threw everything into holding her steady, but he was fighting a losing battle.

  Then the HUD went dark.

  Then the aft section of the ship exploded.

  Goddamn pain-in-my-ass mercs…with a groan he pulled the helmet on and secured the seal to the suit, punched the evac and dove for the hatch.

  It went without saying that there were no atmosphere corridors onto the small, barren planet buried within Metis.

  Alex fought to maintain control of the damaged Siyane in the buffeting atmospheric forces. Visually she was blind, for the viewport revealed only the whirl of an impenetrable caramel-colored dust. She relied on the bank of displays to track altitude and angle of descent and to search the topography for a safe place to land. She needed to inspect the damage, and she just wasn’t crazy enough to open the engineering hatch while in space when she was fairly certain the lower hull had been blown wide open.

  The fiery bloom of an explosion thirty degrees to starboard cut through the dust and haze. A harsh breath escaped between gritted teeth. She should feel satisfaction at the attacker’s destruction. Bastard had the gall to shoot her ship!

  But extinguishing life wasn’t actually something she routinely—or ever—did, and deep down it hadn’t been her goal. She’d merely done what was necessary to defend herself. It was one of many lessons her father had impressed upon her once she was old enough to comprehend them.

  Alex, if an attacker means you harm, you cannot hold back. The attacker will seize advantage of your attempt to preserve their life. They will take yours.

  The simple and stark truth was the other ship fired first, giving her no choice but to destroy it before it destroyed her.

  Still, her heart leapt of its own accord when a pinpoint blip appeared on the radio, mid-infrared and electronic sensor screens. The pilot had escaped prior to the vessel’s disintegration and currently plummeted toward the planet’s surface. Presumably they wore a suit and a chute and would land intact, for all the good it would do them.

  Her initial relief at the sign of life dissolved into dismay. Without a way off the planet or any rescue incoming—assuming their communications capabilities were as nonexistent as hers had been since entering the Nebula—whether in two days or two weeks, the pilot was as good as dead.

&n
bsp; “Gavno!” This person had tried to shoot her down, and would doubtless have left her to die had they succeeded. Likely a merc, assuredly a criminal and clearly dangerous; in all probability a killer who deserved to die.

  But not by her hand.

  She wasn’t a killer…though for perhaps the first time ever she almost regretted it.

  Groaning in exasperation at an obstinate conscience, she yanked the ship into a rough trajectory toward where the pilot should be landing. It took some doing; the ship gyrated like a teenager on a chimeral high at a rave. When the opportunity came to inspect the hull she expected to find a royal shit-ton of damage.

  But for now the exterior plasma shielding continued to hold. She forcibly drove the ship downward, weaving a path toward the projected impact point. She had to dodge the wreckage of the enemy ship twice as it cavorted wildly and wrenched apart from the pressure of the atmosphere and the pull of gravity.

  Finally the air cleared—so to speak. Sand-saturated winds whipped through the sky, and physical visibility increased only to meters. She zeroed in on the weak electronic signature of the pilot’s suit while keeping an eye on the ground sensor; given the presumed damage to the lower hull there was no guarantee the collision warning still functioned.

  She had slowed almost to a stop before the vague outline of a tensile-fiber chute billowing in the wind came into view.

  Last chance to bail, Alex. Land beyond that hill on the topo map there and make sure you have basic functionality. Then hobble to Gaiae, repair your ship and get on with your life.

  She rolled her eyes in annoyance and settled to the ground with a modicum of grace. After scanning the system monitors to make certain nothing threatened to go critical for the moment, she stood and pulled on her environment suit. She grabbed the Daemon from the cabinet and primed it prior to activating the hatch. Twenty seconds later she stepped onto a rather rudely unwelcoming world.