Leviathan (Asher in Ordered Space Book 2) Read online

  She must have hurried to catch him, because he hadn’t been walking particularly slowly and his legs were much longer than hers. She was alone, although he saw that a Coin-Op merc was casually leaning against the wall at the end of the hall, keeping an eye on her. Putting that together with the other merc he’d seen in the conference room, he realized that the Cythrans had hired themselves a company of bodyguards.

  “Asher, can you speak for a moment?” Qwadaleemia asked.

  “Sure. Can we go on to the mess, though? I’m starving.” He had said this more or less as a way to control the conversation, but he suddenly realized that it was perfectly true. He had last eaten, lightly, aboard Dalian several hours before the meeting. He kept walking down the hall, with Qwadaleemia hurrying along beside him.

  They didn’t speak much while they walked or while Asher stood in line for his meal. Cythran communication was largely visual, relying on movements of the tendrils that grew from their faces, so it was not the easiest language for Asher’s net to translate while the speaker was on the move. Once Asher had his food and they had found a place in a quiet corner of the mess hall, they were able to speak in earnest.

  “Why the hell have you come back out of hiding, Qwadaleemia?” asked Asher. “I know you’ve got Hokozana where you want them—for now,anyway—but this will get out. DiJeRiCo will learn about you, and the other megacorps. I’m sure they all want their very own pet Cythran geniuses by now. Not to mention what may happen when word gets back to the Ferethers. You know they’ll have no qualms destroying Lutetia to take you out.”

  “All too well,” said Qwadaleemia. “We took a risk when we reached out to your people. A carefully-considered risk, but not an insubstantial one. We know this as well as you.”

  Probably better, Asher thought, but he said nothing.

  “Still, while the risk is great, the reward may be greater still. Just think. The Ferethers want us dead because they suspect we were engineered as a weapon to destroy them. This computer may tell us whether or not that is true. If it is not, perhaps we can convince them of it. Perhaps we can come out of hiding for once and for all.”

  “And if it is true,” Asher interjected, “maybe you can figure out exactly how you’re supposed to destroy the Ferethers and get on with it, right?”

  Qwadaleemia gave him an appraising look. “I admit that the thought has occurred to us. The Ferethers destroyed our homeworld and tried their best to destroy our species. Millions of us dead—including many of my own friends and family. Of course we have thought of vengeance. Who would not?”

  “And you want me to help you somehow, I take it.”

  “You are no fool, Asher, despite the mask of carelessness you assume at times. Of course we want your help. When I said in that meeting that we trust you, I meant it. We think of you and Kaz as friends. We wanted you here because a conflict is brewing and we do not have the kinds of knowledge that will be needed to resolve it.”

  “What conflict?” Asher asked. “You mean between you and the Ferethers? That’s well beyond my capabilities to deal with.”

  “Something more immediate, Asher, right here on Lutetia. Word about us has not yet escaped—at least we do not think so—but others have learned about the computer system. The fragile peace that has reigned here for the past few months will break soon, and we would have your expertise on our side when the non-corp bandits—or worse, other corporate soldiers—come looking for the prize.”

  Asher thought about that. The Coin-Op mercs all had a look of competence about them, but there were only about twenty or so operatives in the company. From what he’d heard, there were hundreds of non-corps in the roving gangs beyond the rampart. If someone paid the bandits enough to join together to hit them in force, they’d have a hell of a time holding out here. As Qwadaleemia said, the arrival of a larger mercenary corp or a corporate security force was an even worse prospect. Some of the large corps could field thousands of trained operatives. “You need to figure out some kind of defense contract with Hokozana,” he said.

  Qwadaleemia whirled her tendrils in what his translator interpreted as confusion. “We may be able to, but I had hoped you would stand with us, Asher. I am disappointed.”

  “Not for me, Qwadie. If the non-corps come at us here I’ll give whatever help I can, and so will Chuck. I meant you need to figure out something to defend orbital space. Dalian is up there with two destroyers, which is a good start, but you’re gonna need more firepower than that if a big corp gets involved. Do you have the money for that?”

  “We have almost nothing left. Taking over Meridian took all we had.”

  “Then all I can suggest is forming an affiliation of some kind. I know the folks at Hokozana wanted you for operatives, but they would love to have you as partners or exclusive contractors as well. You need to offer them something to make defending this place worth their while.”

  Qwadaleemia sat in silence for a time. After a while, she said, “I see what you mean, Asher. I think you may be right. I must talk the matter through with my creche-mates, of course.” She got up to leave. “It is good to see you again,” she said as she turned away.

  “Wait a second.” Asher reached out a hand to keep her from leaving. “Before you go, I want to know how you managed to get me assigned here. I’ve been thinking about it, and I can’t think of anyone at Hokozana whom you could reach out to and who would have the pull to get me reassigned after the stunt I pulled.”

  “You forget Miraneeria, Asher, as you conveniently forgot to mention her to us before. She is deep within Hokozana and has daily contact with many important personages including—most materially in this instance-your father.”

  “But—” How could they even know about Miraneeria, much less contact her? Was she saying that his father was working with the Cythrans?

  “Your father, like many tech-savvy people across Ordered Space, makes use of the Dark Wave at times. We have cultivated him for months under an assumed identity. I confess, he thought we were a Hokozana Intel operative for a long time. Through him we contacted Miraneeria, and she convinced him that this possibility to learn the secret of our origins was worth the risk of sending you here.”

  “So— my father—” Asher stumbled over the concept. “My father is working with you?” He just couldn’t picture Maxim Asher as a spy. The man was as stiff and by-the-book as they came. It was one of the things that always came between the two of them. Maxim was always disappointed in Asher’s recklessness, particularly when it came to his career prospects. Asher had risen as high as a Three-Bar before, but he’d always contrived to get himself disgraced and demoted. Star-Cluster Maxim Asher, who had never once fallen off the promotion ladder, didn’t know what to make of that, and seemed to think it reflected poorly on him, as if his son’s failings might derail his own carefully constructed career somehow.

  Qwadaleemia wriggled her tendril in a Cythran laugh. “Maxim is a good man, Asher. This strange rivalry between you two, is it ordinary in human creches?”

  “I suppose,” said Asher. He knew there were other family units in Hokozana who got along much better than he did with his father, but there were others that were far more dysfunctional as well. “We’re pretty average, I guess.”

  “How odd. We Cythrans do not have this dynamic. Children are raised by the creche, and we function together as an economic and social unit. Smoothly, for the most part. You humans and your conflict. It explains so much about your species.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Dark came slowly on Lutetia. The planet was far from its star—which was a small, pale orb that gave mediocre light at best—and it rotated quite slowly. The orangish setting of Archibald lasted several standard hours. A day on Lutetia, all told, was nearly fifty standard hours, and Old Archie, as the locals called the star, was normally up for twenty-seven or more of those hours at Archon’s longitude during the current season, local summer.

  When night finally did fall, it brought numbing cold with it. Tempera
tures quickly plummeted to well below freezing. All of the Meridian and Coin-Op operatives retreated to the warmth of their barracks or—for those with higher rank—private dormitories. Two mercs remained at the station on the rampart. They lowered clear plastic sheeting that enclosed the space and spent their evening in a well-heated tent.

  Asher and Chuck were billeted together in their rather rickety hut. Its pallet-built walls were chinked with concrete and covered with a spray-on foam shell to keep the cold out. Even so, they had to turn the heater up to its maximum setting to fight the chill of the desert night. They lay on cots at opposite side of the room, both still in their skinsuits and with their weapons easily to hand. Asher had told Chuck about the threat that might arise from the non-corp gangs, and they were determined to be prepared. They had thought of setting a watch, but Asher had decided to trust the Coin-Ops for the time being.

  “Why are you doing this, Asher?” Chuck asked, after they had lain there for a time in silence.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, why are you planning to help the Cythrans when you know it may go against Hokozana’s wishes, and your own career prospects?”

  Asher thought about that. “I don’t have much direction from Hokozana here. Besides, you heard them, they tricked us into a contract. There’s not much I can do about that.”

  Chuck sat up and looked at him intently. “You know that’s not what I mean. Even without direct orders, you know that it is in the corp’s interest to take the Cythrans in. I am sure there are people in Exobio and Intel who could convince them to void the contract and join us.”

  “And disappear? Is that it? You think that I should turn them over to the dark-and-secret desk to be poked and prodded until they give up their contract and get swallowed up by a corp that thinks of them as nothing more than commodities, like living computers?” Asher was a little worked up. He sat up on his cot and returned Chuck’s stare with a bit of venom.

  “Perhaps,” she replied evenly. “I’m not sure that living with the non-corps is better than what would happen to them if they joined us. You speak as if we would turn them over to torturers, but we are not monsters. We can offer the Cythrans money, a position, labs and computers, archives from which to learn. That does not sound so bad to me.”

  She did have a point. He was talking about Hokozana like a black corp, like the vicious organizations that operated as little more than quasi-legal mafias. He knew that that wasn’t really fair. Certainly, there were people in Intel and Admin and Marketing who were quite capable of dirty tricks, and the bean-counters could justify near-atrocities like the attempted seizure of a Ferether ship, which had destroyed the ship and killed many Ferethers and Hokozana operatives in the process, but the corp was far more ethical than most. After the Cierren Cythra debacle, it had come to light that DiJeRiCo had performed medical procedures on some of the Cythrans, going so far as to murder and dissect them. The Ferether that Jaydrupar had kidnapped from that ship, Asher’s father assured him, had died of its wounds before it could be placed in a modern medical bay. The subsequent exploration of its biology had been part of a necropsy, not a vivisection. The truth was that corps were all, to greater or lesser extents, amoral. Perhaps that was what Asher resented. He had been brought up in Hokozana. His father was the great Maxim Asher, Sector Director for Exobiology, and his mother had been a Fleet officer. Maybe all he wanted was to see the Cythrans, whom he liked and admired, have a chance to make a life free of the megacorps.

  Chuck was still speaking. “You do know most people thought you were wrong to let the Cythrans go in the first place, don’t you? That it was disloyal?””

  “I know that.” He had known that even before he had done it. He had had no explicit instruction about what to do with the Cythrans, but it was clearly understood that he would take them to rendezvous with a Hokozana ship. When he and Kaz had exited the Cythran ship and sent Qwadaleemia off to make her own way, they had had no illusions about what they were doing. “What do you think?” he asked.

  Chuck sat in silence for a time. “I think— I think that without our Loyalty Oaths we are little more than pirates ourselves.”

  Asher had no reply to that.

  “Anyway,” said Chuck, “you need to think what you will do tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow?”

  “If Popescu asks us to apprehend the Cythrans.”

  “That seems unlikely. Not with the Meridian people and the Coin-Ops here, anyway.”

  “Does it? It seems a real possibility to me.” With that, Chuck laid back on her cot and closed her eyes.

  CHAPTER NINE

  The first attack by the non-corp bandits came in the early morning. Asher woke to the sound of a medium-caliber rail gun firing from somewhere not far away. He and Chuck were both through the door in moments, their long guns to hand and their handguns in hip holsters. As they left the hut, Asher could see the top of the rampart glowing red where the particle stream had begun to erode the concrete.

  Coin-Op mercs were pouring from the barracks and dormitories. Most headed toward the observation post on the rampart. Others manned a sandbagged revetment near the administration building. That must be intended as a last hardpoint in case the rampart was breached or taken. Asher, not having a role in the defense of Archon, instead ran to the concrete bungalow which housed the rest of the Hokozana team. Chuck was right on his heels.

  When he arrived, he found that Popescu and the two exobios had armed themselves and were, rather ridiculously, trying to use their overturned cots as cover for firing positions. He got them up and took them out into the open landing pad area. “Where’s Minter?” He asked Popescu.

  “What?”

  “Where’s Minter?” The sound from the particle stream striking the rampart was impressive. He had to yell near the top of his lungs to be understood.

  “At the computer,” was the shouted response.

  So Minter had gone to look at the alien computer and the Shamblers. Presumably, one or more of the Cythrans would be with her. A far as Asher knew, the computer was still in the tunnel where it was discovered, which meant it was out in the open-pit mine. He had no idea whether or not the bandits would know to go there to look for it, but he had to assume they would. He turned to Chuck. “Get these three into the admin building and harden a room. I’ll go for Minter.” As soon as he could tell that she had understood, he turned and bolted for the narrow railway that led from the Archon settlement to toward the mine.

  Behind him, the particle stream spattered to a stop. The Coin-Ops sporadically returned fire from the rampart.

  ***

  The Archon open-pit technetium mine was about a kilometer across and over one hundred meters deep. It was a huge, tiered amphitheater that descended in twenty-meter steps down to a small pool of sickly green water. The automatic excavators, still operating despite the bandit assault, were crowded together along one wall of the mine near the bottom of the bowl. The railway that Asher had followed from the Archon settlement descended along a wide spiraling ramp to end near the excavators. A line of self-propelled ore cars waited there for the next load of material to be transported to the processing facilities.

  Asher scanned the benches and highwalls, and finally spotted a small opening, about thirty meters down on the western side of the mine, perhaps seven hundred meters from his position. There was a scatter of equipment at the mouth of the tunnel and an electrical line led into the opening. Clearly, that was the way into the subterranean lab.

  Asher tried to contact Minter on her neural net, but something was blocking the signal and giving him feedback through his subnet implant. Perhaps the bandits were interfering with communications between their opponents within Archon. Powerful subnet/EMF scramblers could reduce their communications to line-of-sight only, but it was surprising that any ragtag gang of non-corps would have access to that kind of tech.

  Asher jogged toward the opening, but to get to the tunnel he had to run more than two rounds—mayb
e three kilometers—of the spiral ramp. He set off at a steady pace, breathing in deeply and breathing out with each step.

  He was brought up short during his second circuit of the mine by a pulse wave that disrupted the highwall about twenty meters ahead of him. Boulders and debris rained down on the ramp. Asher went down into a one-knee firing stance and trained his own pulse gun on the rim of the pit in the direction the wave had come from. He fired three pulses, sending up a spray of gravel and dust along the rim. He couldn’t see who had fired at him.

  “Operative Asher, this is destroyer Fire-and-Forget. Do you require assistance?”

  “Hell yeah,” said Asher into his subvocal transmitter. “Someone’s taking potshots at me.”

  “We have identified three unknown subjects on the rim of the mine approximately seven hundred meters from your present position. Subjects classed hostile. Firing in three, two, one—”

  On one, a bright beam of energy lanced down through the clouds and played along the rim of the mine in the area from which Asher thought the hostile fire had come. The hardbeam tracked back and forth for perhaps ten seconds, then vanished. “Hostiles neutralized. Have a nice day,” said the voice from Fire-and-Forget.

  “Thanks,” said Asher. “Any word on the attack on the rampart?”

  “Wait one, Asher,” the voice said. After a pause, it continued. “Memnon has neutralized a rail gun and two ad-hoc ground vehicles. The attack appears to be over for the time being. We have routed Operative Chukwudi to your location. Be advised that some of the non-corps are wearing scramblers. We are having a hard time tracking them all. Be on guard.”

  “And the science team?”

  “Secure in a hardpoint controlled by the local mercenary corp. They should be fine, except for Operative Minter. She and at least two of the Cythrans are in the tunnel you are headed toward. Advise you continue present course of action.”