Threading was one of mankind’s
most closely guarded secrets, designed to be indistinguishable from normal
human DNA so even alien-tech scanners wouldn’t detect it. I could wipe it clean
with a single thought and if I died, automatic safeguards would purge my
bionetic memory before its data could ever be read. Even the Matarons, our one
truly committed adversary, seemed unaware of our bionetics. They were so far
ahead of us, they could break through any tech defense we had – and frequently
did – but they were also complacent in their superiority. The EIS had waged a
covert war against them for centuries, adopting unconventional methods to hide
our innermost secrets. Of course, the Matarons might know everything and were
just letting us think we had secrets. There really was no way to know.
When the data transfer finished, Lena
let my hand go and studied me with genuine concern. “Are you OK?”
I breathed slowly, taking time to
integrate my thoughts with the swirling array of threaded inputs assaulting my
mind. “Yeah, just like bouncing off bulkheads in zero gravity. You never forget
how.”
“Are you ready for the mission
briefing?”
I felt oddly exhilarated at the
threading input flowing seamlessly through my mind. It was something I thought
I’d never experience again, something I’d convinced myself I never wanted, but
now that I was active again, I felt strangely whole.
“I’m ready.”
Chapter Two
: Hades City
Subterranean Habitat
Star HAT-P-5
Outer Lyra Region
0.91 Earth Normal Gravity
1,105 light years from Sol
1.2 million inhabitants
After we dropped the p-grams and
supplies at Macaulay Station, we backtracked to Indrax – a small Indian
Republic trade hub – and picked up deliveries for Hades City. The completion
bonuses barely covered the cost of the flight, but they gave me a reason to go
to Hades where Lena’s fish was waiting to be hooked.
Hades moon was the largest of
seven natural satellites and was tidally locked to a hot Jupiter, a gas giant
orbiting close and fast to its star. The approach was tricky, requiring a fast descent
into the giant planet’s shadow to avoid getting fried by the star’s plasma wind,
while timing our run to intercept the moon as it orbited around to the giant
planet’s dark side. Scary anytime, but with the
Lining’s
military grade bleeder shield, we were better protected
than most.
There were three ships ahead of
us when we arrived, orbiting a safe distance out from the star. Two made it
down first time, while the third had to go around for a second attempt. When
our turn came, I rolled the
Silver Lining
into the guide beam and throttled up. Our flight deck’s curved view screen
wrapped around us on three sides, giving the impression we floated in space above
the star’s boiling surface. With no windows anywhere in the hull, the optical
sensors were our eyes, automatically filtering the star’s blinding light down
to tolerable levels. A digital overlay across the center of the screen showed
our position in the guide beam and updated critical parameters as we dived
towards the star.
Below us, drifting like a tiny
dot above an ocean of superheated plasma was the gas giant. It appeared as an
insignificant blue fleck against the star’s immensity, growing rapidly in size
as we followed the guide beam down and our shield’s temperature soared. It was
a race to reach cover before solar heat overloaded the shield, exposing our
hull to the star’s full ferocity.
“The shield’s bleeding at sixty-two
percent,” Jase reported tensely, clearly more worried about the approach than I
was. He was usually full of bravado and humor, but with the big G-type so close,
he was unusually on edge. “It sure is hot out there!”
“Nervous?” I asked, letting him
know I enjoyed seeing him squirm.
Jase stiffened. “Only of your
flying!”
I grinned. “You’re smarter than
you look!”
He didn’t know this wasn’t my
first landing at Hades and I wasn’t about to spoil the fun by telling him. I’d
spent the last few days feeding him horror stories – all true – of catastrophic
landing attempts on the hot Jupiter’s moon, neglecting to mention they were all
before Earth engineers had installed new landing control systems. The canyon
floor beyond the city doors was littered with wrecks, all hundreds of years old,
testimony to poor judgment and even poorer conditions.
Soon, the gas giant began to fill
our screen, hiding us in its shadow and allowing the
Lining’s
shield temperature to stabilize. Several tiny black marbles
floated above the planet, the largest of which was the near-Earth sized Hades
Moon. It quickly swelled to a spherical airless world strewn with jagged
mountains, ancient craters and deeply shadowed valleys, all seared black by the
star’s fiery breath.
When we entered the moon’s
gravity, the autonav rolled the ship and slammed on the brakes while I gently
feathered the engines to imply they were overdue a maintenance cycle or two. We
could have gone in faster but it never paid to advertise, especially as Raven
spotters were everywhere. If they targeted us, I didn’t want them knowing what
the
Lining
was capable of until our
lives depended on it.
Soon the glow of our engines lit
up the blackened landscape, casting sharp shadows across the surface, then we
thrust vectored hard into the long, straight canyon that led to the city’s
entrance.
“I’m reading closed doors,” Jase announced.
“I was afraid of that,” I said,
feigning apprehension. “The door guy’s a known stim-head.”
“There’s a door guy?” Jase asked,
wondering why the city’s outer doors were manually operated. “And he’s a
stim-head?”
“He must be psycho-dreaming
again. I hope he doesn’t forget to push the button.”
“What button?”
When I saw the stunned look on
his face, I chuckled, knowing the doors would snap open automatically moments
before we were pulled down into the vertical docking shaft.
“Very funny,” Jase said, realizing
I was joking.
Hades City had been doing this
for over fifteen hundred years. A thousand of those years had been during the
Embargo, when mankind had lost its interstellar access rights, and Hades handled
only their own local interplanetary craft. Like every other human settlement, Hades
City had been forced to survive for ten centuries, cut off and alone, because a
group of thirty-second century religious fanatics – opposed to contact with non-humans
– had attacked the xenophobic Matarons. At a stroke, the fanatics not only created
a formidable enemy who would accept no apology, but they set our civilization
back a millennium.
The Galactic Forum had had no
choice but to impose the Embargo. The Access Treaty was the basis of Galactic
Law and we couldn’t avoid its first and most important principle, the Responsibility
Principle:
that every species is responsible
for the acts of all its members
.
Responsibility was not just for law
abiding citizens, but for every member of the species – no exceptions, no
excuses.
For most species it wasn’t a
problem. For mankind it was a nightmare, because we had a special genius for
producing crazies who thought they knew better than the rest of us. The Embargo
had been intended to give us time to learn to govern ourselves, while also
placating the enraged Matarons. Now that we had only fifty years to run on our
second five hundred year probation, no-one – not even pirates and criminals who
obeyed no other law – dared risk a second violation, because the next Embargo
would be ten times longer than the first.
No sane human dared contemplate
what ten thousand years of isolation would mean, yet there were still a few lunatics
who desired nothing more than a second, vastly longer Embargo. It was why no
mercy was shown to any who might put at risk mankind’s interstellar freedom.
When we were ten clicks out, we
reached the charcoal black graded flyway with its single line of lights leading
to the city doors. Ragged cliffs raced past on either side as we skimmed fifty
meters above the ground on thrusters and momentum alone.
“
Silver Lining
, your approach is within safe operating limits,”
Hades Control informed us reassuringly.
“That’s what he thinks!” Jase
said, irritated by my feathering of the engines.
“At least they’re not waving us
off,” I replied lightly, knowing my flying had been deliberately borderline incompetent.
If prying eyes were watching, they’d underestimate me as much as my ship.
The autonav threw a sensor read
of the catcher’s mitt onto the screen. It was a circular net of magnetic fields
strung between the canyon’s cliff walls. With the mitt looming large ahead of
us, I let the ship have its way. At the last moment, the
Lining
rolled until our maneuvering engines were pointing at the
magnetic field, then she threw hard G’s at our inertial field, killing our
velocity. For a moment we hung motionless, almost dead center of the mitt’s
sweet spot above two massive horizontal slabs of bleached white armor set into
the canyon’s burnt floor. The enormous doors shielded an entrance wide enough
to accommodate the largest ships and made the
Silver Lining
look like an insect by comparison.
The City’s docking system snatched
us out of the vacuum and hurled us at the doors like a feather. The white armor
slabs raced toward us, then a moment before we struck, they snapped apart just
enough to let us in. We plunged down into a deep vertical shaft hundreds of
meters across as the doors crashed together above us with enough force to cut a
ship in half. Protected from the star’s heat, our shield cooled rapidly as a
conveyor of docking fields carried us down past rock walls illuminated by two
opposing rows of white lights. The autonav sensed the magnetic fields now
enveloping the ship and cut power to the engines and thrusters, automatically
passing responsibility for ship safety to the spaceport’s docking system.
“
Silver Lining
to Hades Control,” I said, “we are engine stopped and
mag
-locked. She’s all yours.”
“Hades Control to
Silver Lining
, confirmed. We have maneuvering responsibility.”
Verbal confirmations hadn’t been
needed since the trickle of new Earth-tech had become a flood after contact had
been restored centuries ago, but old habits die hard, especially those drummed
into you from age four by a hard headed old man determined to turn his sons
into first class pilots. Even though I trusted the tech, I still felt uncomfortable
unless I heard the controller’s confirmation.
Five kilometers beneath the
surface was the spaceport’s central cavern. It was connected to four large
subterranean hangers by horizontal tunnels equally spaced like spokes on a
wheel. The docking fields carried us into one of the spokes, past black rock
walls punctuated by horizontal windows, to a well lit cavern and a berth that could
have accommodated a much larger ship. Our landing struts lowered automatically,
then the docking field dissipated and a tubular pressure bridge extended from
the cavern wall, sealing itself over our starboard airlock.
I had to admit, the Hades moon
moles had done a good job from the moment they’d plucked us out of the sky
above their doors until they’d tucked us into our berth. Not bad for a free city
over eleven hundred light years from Earth.
“Hades Control to
Silver Lining
, you are locked and
docked.”
“Thanks Hades Control,” I said
with just the right amount of relief.
“Log your manifest with the Port
Authority before disembarking. Payment of docking fees and taxes is required
before transferring personnel or cargo. Failure to make all payments in full
will result in your cargo and ship being impounded until all debts are paid.
Acknowledge this contract.”
Being trapped for a thousand
years in one of the least hospitable systems humans inhabited had made the
Hadians good at their job, but somewhat lacking in the social graces. “Contract
acknowledged.”
“Hades City is a lawful
enterprise complying with all Earth Council directives. As such, infringements
of the Access Treaty are punishable by death,” the Controller added in a bored
monotone, obviously a message he repeated to every arriving ship. It was a
warning I’d heard many times in many systems – and they all meant it. The
Hadians took their Treaty obligations seriously because, in spite of their miserable
location, they were prospering.
After the Embargo had been lifted
four hundred and fifty years ago, it had taken nearly one hundred and twenty
years for Earth to discover Hades City had survived. Many similar outposts had
not. Once Hades was back on the map, trade resumed and a trickle of new Earth-tech
began to reach them. Within a decade, the navy sent engineers out to set up a repair
base for new-gen starships, turning Hades City into a key logistical center at
the outer edge of human settlement. Hades remained a free city, but a welcoming
port to Earth Navy ships operating far from home. Once the navy came to stay, the
money flowed – lots of money. Little wonder they executed anyone who threatened
their lifeline to the rest of humanity.
Mankind had learned the hard way
that access to interstellar space was a privilege – not a right – a privilege
that could be revoked in the blink of an eye.
I cut power to the shield,
causing it to collapse rather than gradually de-energize. Anyone watching would
believe the
Lining’s
shield had
barely survived the extreme heat outside, concluding we were equipped with an
ablative shield, rather than the much tougher bleeder type.
Jase threw me a sideways glance.
“You’ll upset Izin doing that.”
I smiled mischievously as Izin’s
voice sounded through the intercom.
“Captain, I remind you there are
maintenance protocols for shield deactivation.”
“Thanks Izin, must have slipped
my mind.” He was a smart little tamph and would know I was lying.
“I know you like playing games,
Skipper,” Jase said, “but I think you’re a little paranoid.”
“Paranoid . . . cautious – no
difference. I’m still alive. That’s what counts.”
Out here, low life informants
made a healthy living selling out traders to anyone with a few credits and an armed
ship. In the Outer Lyra region, it was to the Ravens, although there were other
Brotherhoods, each with their own territory, all loosely affiliated. I
preferred making their job as hard as possible, which was why I kept my aces
hidden and my weapons ready.