TW05 The Nautilus Sanction NEW (20 page)

The odds had evened out now. Land knocked one man into the water, charging him as he reloaded.

Finn disarmed one man, ran another through with his sword and, seeing reinforcements arrive, Martingale dropped the corpse he had been using as a shield and joined them on the offensive. He fought in a style the pirates had never encountered before, saber-fencing combined with martial arts. They were no match for trained commandos and, now that they no longer outnumbered their intended victim, they took flight.

Martingale took a deep breath as he watched them running off down the beach into the darkness.

“Thanks,” he said. “I thought I’d bought it for sure.”

“See you’ve used a katana at one time,” said Finn, remarking on his style with the sword. “What happened?”

Out on the water, the pirogues had seized the boats and were now pulling toward the
Valkyrie,
intent on boarding her.

“Gambi’s men,” said Martingale, ripping a section of cloth from the shirt of one of the dead men and using it to stanch the flow of blood from his shoulder. “They came at me so fast I didn’t have a chance.”

“Here, sit down,” said Lucas. “Let me see that wound.”

“I’ll live,” said Martingale. “I’ve had lots worse. Lucky for me those clowns couldn’t shoot straight.

Watch this, they’re in for one hell of a surprise in those pirogues.” As the canoes drew closer to the
Valkyrie,
keeping spread out to minimize the effects of cannon fire if the ship opened up on them, there seemed to be no resistance from the ship. Then a sharp, bright beam of coherent light lanced out from the bow of the
Valkyrie
and hit one of the canoes. A second later, it was followed by a blast of white hot plasma as the auto-pulser, locked in by the laser-tracking circuit, systematically began to pick off the pirogues. One boat became awash in searing light, then it was gone, leaving nothing but smoke and some residual flaming plasma burning out upon the surface of the water.

The screams of Gambi’s men echoed across the bay; the remaining pirogues turned and pulled for their lives, but nothing could save them.

“If Gambi’s lucky, he died out there,” said Martingale. “Quicker and cleaner than what Lafitte will do to him if he survived. Guess he saw an opportunity to seize a ship and a nice cargo of slaves, to boot.

Too bad he picked the wrong ship.”

“That bullet’s going to have to come out,” said Lucas, examining Martingale’s shoulder. “I can’t do it here.”

“We’ll go out to the ship,” said Martingale. “There are medical supplies aboard. Besides, someone’s got to go out and get that boatload of blacks. It’s drifting.” One of the other boats containing slaves had been hit by the auto-pulser from the ship. The remaining boat was slowly being carried away by the current, the blacks aboard howling in fear, not knowing what to do.

They helped Martingale into a boat and rowed out after the slaves. Martingale cursed. “We lost several men. Maybe von Kampf, too. Drakov’s going to be furious. Our own fault. We should have been more careful, knowing Gambi was around.”

“What are the slaves for?” Finn said. “Damn it, Martingale, you’d better start leveling with us right now.”

“Same thing slaves have always been for,” Martingale said. “Cheap labor. Drakov needs them at the base.”

“Where
is
the base?” said Lucas.

“Small island off the coast of Papua, New Guinea, in the early 19th century,” said Martingale.

“Visitors are discouraged by the slaves Drakov buys from Lafitte. The area is known for having cannibals and even though Drakov’s slaves aren’t, they play the part real well.”

“If you’ve known where it is all along, why haven’t you done anything?” said Finn. “Why hasn’t the Underground reported it to us?”

“It’s not that simple,” Martingale said. “The timing must be right. The Doctor will explain it all.”

“That’s another thing,” said Lucas. “Who is the doctor?”

“His name is Dr. Robert Darkness,” Martingale said. “He’s the inventor of the warp grenade.” Martingale sat on the edge of the table while Lucas bandaged him. Two men stood guard on the deck of the
Valkyrie
while Count Grigori von Kampf, who had been slightly wounded in the battle of the boats, led the others in a search for the slaves who had escaped during the fight. Martingale had been wounded in several places. Two bullets had been lodged in his body and he had sustained several sword cuts, but he carried on as though such injuries were a part of his daily routine. While Lucas worked, only an occasional grimace or grunt from Martingale gave evidence of his feeling any pain.

“So the mysterious inventor of the warp grenade joined the Underground,” said Finn. “Christ, no wonder they’ve classified everything about him, including his name.” Martingale shook his head. “You’ve got that wrong,” he said. “Darkness isn’t part of the Underground. He isn’t part of
anything.
Years ago, he just split the scene. Took off for some remote corner of the galaxy. He’s real strange, Delaney. All he ever wanted was to get as far away from people as it was possible to get, but he wanted it both ways. He wanted to be able to deal with people when he felt like it, only on his own terms.”

“Sounds like what a lot of people want,” said Andre.

“True,” said Martingale, “only Darkness did it. He was working on temporal translocation around the same time Mensinger was, only he was going at it from another angle. He started out working on voice and image communication by tachyon radio transmission.”

“That isn’t possible,” said Finn.

“Hey, don’t tell me, I’m no scientist,” said Martingale. “Tell the Doctor. He’s been doing it for years.

What he came up with was a means of communication at a speed six hundred times faster than the speed of light. That still meant a delay in transmission, though. A five-second time lag over thirty-six hundred light seconds or a one-year delay in messages at a distance of six hundred light years. He wanted it to be instant. He got involved in some very obscure mathematics, working from the Georg Cantor theory of transfinite numbers. He discovered a solution. He found a way to make his tachyon beam move more quickly by sending it through an Einstein-Rosen Bridge. Instantaneous transmission. Going from Point A to Point B without having to cover the distance in between. Only he wasn’t satisfied with just having achieved instant tachyon TV communication. He wanted to travel.”

“Wait a minute,” Lucas said, pausing in his ministrations. “You’re telling us he did all this
before
Mensinger invented the chronoplate?”

“I don’t know if it was before or about the same time,” said Martingale. “It was certainly before the chronoplate was perfected.”

“And no one
knew
about this?”

“How would anyone know unless Darkness told them?” Martingale said. “He didn’t give a damn. He just took off for deep space like some Flying Dutchman and started living life according to his own rules.

But he still wanted to be able to keep in touch, so he started working on a process by which the human body could be turned into tachyons which would depart at 600 C along the direction of the tachyon beam through an Einstein-Rosen Bridge. His chief concern was that conversion to tachyons would violate the law of uncertainty.”

“How do you mean?” said Finn.

“Well, the way he explained it to me was that if you take one hundred eighty pounds of human being and one hundred eighty pounds of bacteria and put them into a genetic blender, the result would be indistinguishable. His main concern was whether the RNA and DNA would reassemble themselves in the appropriate order at the appropriate time and place.”

“Same thing Mensinger was worried about in terms of chronoplate transition,” Finn said.

“Exactly. Because if they didn’t, what might materialize would be a blob. He was also worried about the reassembly process itself, since there wouldn’t be a receiver. He solved this by incorporating a timing mechanism into the tachyon conversion, which reassembled him at the moment of arrival based on time coordinates of transition. He focused the beam by means of gravitational lenses scattered throughout the galaxy. But while the uncertainty principle didn’t trip the Doctor up, it didn’t turn out as he imagined, that he had invented the ultimate form of transportation. Mensinger did that. Darkness discovered instead that the taching process was ultimately restrained by a little known law of physics, called the law of baryon conservation. While he arrived “in corpus,” he was unable to move. He appeared much like a holographic projection or a distant ghost seen underwater. A figure frozen in time and trapped by the laws of the universe.”

“You mean he’s insubstantial?” Andre said.

“Well, no, though he
can
be, if he wants to. He can project an image of himself or actually tach himself, but he can’t move from one spot. He’s trying to work on a way to do more than talk and wave his arms and stare at people, but he hasn’t got that one licked yet.”

“Why can’t he simply use a warp disc or even a chronoplate?” said Andre.

“Because his body has been tachyonized,” said Martingale. “Something about the way the process has altered his subatomic structure won’t let him clock. He can transmit objects, but he can’t clock himself. It makes him angry as hell. Mensinger perfected the device that would allow him to do exactly what he wanted all along, only he can’t use it. He said once that after twenty years of scientific research, consulting thousands of libraries on hundreds of worlds, he still can’t duplicate the beaming process envisioned over one thousand years ago by some television writer. He hates that writer.”

“Now let me get this straight,” said Finn. “He can teleport, much the same way we can, only he does it through an Einstein-Rosen Bridge via tachyon beam and he can’t move once he gets there?”

“He can move some, but he can’t leave the spot he materializes on,” said Martingale. “Sort of like a hologram with substance. I wouldn’t get too close to him if I were you. He may be a genius, but he’s unbalanced, sort of. He just might grab you.”

“And this guy is supposed to
help
us?” Andre said.

“That graft you gave me,” Lucas said, “it’s a device for him to home in on?”

“Essentially. I’ve got one, too. Don’t ask me how it works, though. I haven’t got the faintest notion.

The Doctor comes up with stuff most scientists don’t even understand. Like the warp grenade. He had a brainstorm one day and designed the thing, then didn’t know what the hell to do with it. So he tached over to the Temporal Army Ordnance Chiefs and laid the plans on them. Just like that.”

“Well, if it’s all the same with you,” said Lucas, “you can keep your little tachyon homing device or whatever, but I think I’d feel better getting rid of mine. Long as we have the medical kit here, we’ll do a bit of minor surgery. Finn, give me a hand with the local.”

“Don’t waste your time,” said Martingale. “You can’t remove it.”

“What do you mean, I can’t?”

“You remember feeling a sort of burning, tingling sensation when you put it on?” said Martingale.

“Yes?”

“That was the device bonding itself to you.”

“
What?”

“It’s fused with your atoms, chum. Become a part of your chemical essence. Unless you can figure out some way to get a body transplant, you’re stuck with it, permanently.”

“You mean anytime this spaced-out scientist wants to find me—”

“He finds you and pops in for a visit.”

“You son of a bitch! Why didn’t you
tell
me?”

“Because you wouldn’t have done it if I had,” said Martingale. “The Doctor told me to make sure one of you guys got terminaled. That’s what he calls it. When Darkness says to do something, you do it.

You don’t argue with a guy who’s liable to materialize a warp grenade between your legs and make it go boom.”

“That’s just great,” said Lucas. “I should have just let Gambi’s men cut you to ribbons.”

“Yeah, but then you wouldn’t have received any answers.”

“Well, the answers stink.”

“Sorry. You should’ve thought up better questions. Look, the Doctor might be a little weird, but he knows what he’s doing. Your superiors knew what they were up against and what the odds were. That’s why they asked his help.”

“The Referees are in contact with him?” Finn said.

“More like the other way around,” said Martingale. “Nobody can contact the Doctor. Nobody knows where he is. It’s how he likes it.” Martingale put his shirt back on, being careful of his bandaged shoulder. “He does things his own way. I guess he decided to mobilize the Underground. He put the word out for us to try to infiltrate Drakov’s group. Of course, we didn’t know who they were then. It’s sort of funny; Darkness makes your people so nervous, they’ve classified his existence, but we’ve known about him for years.”

“So you’re the only one who’s managed to get close to Drakov?” Lucas said.

“There were several of us,” said Martingale, “but I’m the only one who made it.”

“How often do you see Dr. Darkness?” Andre said.

“He just shows up sometimes,” said Martingale. “It’s pretty spooky. He can move faster than light, but he can’t move when he arrives. So he can sort of arrive without materializing completely. You can’t see him. That’s how he knows if I’m alone. It’s an eerie feeling.”

“If he can do all that, you’d think he’d be more involved in what’s going on. Why hasn’t he been?” said Andre.

“Why don’t you ask him? Better yet, let Priest or Delaney ask him,” Martingale said.

“Why?”

“The Doctor doesn’t much like people,” Martingale said, “but he doesn’t like women, in particular.

Now, unless there are any more important questions, I think we’d best be getting back. Drakov’s going to want to know about what happened, if he hasn’t heard already. I feel sorry for any of Gambi’s crew left alive. If they have any sense, they’ve left Barataria. I sure as hell would, rather than face Lafitte.” The men stood lined up on the beach in the early morning sunshine. The survivors of Captain Gambi’s crew, and Gambi, himself, had been quickly rounded up. Lafitte’s men had moved fast.