Among the varied bubbles and towers of business on City
of Light, two friends were studying each other as only old
adversaries could.
"You understand this is not company business," Anthony-
Bettner Galza said.
"Yes, yes, yes, I understand." Jacob-Martin Quinn was
fast losing his patience. "Now what is it you have to tell
me?"
"This information does not leave this room."
"Of course," agreed Quinn, for the third time.
Galza stood at his desk, arms folded across his chest,
and nodded solemnly. "All right."
He touched a panel which had been built into the
desktop, simultaneously dimming the lights in his office and
activating a wall screen. "These images haven't been
catalogued, for security reasons. I can't tell you where
they are, either, but you can probably guess."
An asteroid glowed into being on the wall. The
photograph had been taken while sunlight illuminated most of
the side facing the camera, and though the range must have
been extreme, the resolution was more than adequate. Quinn
noticed this for the brief half-second before he recognized
what had been built into the rock.
"Mother of God, Tony," he said, unable to look away.
"This is illegal."
"It's a technicality of degree, Jac." Galza had sat
down, trying to conceal his anxiety. He had known how
Quinn. "Any astro can build his own loneboat and outfit it
with all the armaments he wants--"
"That's not true. And it's irrelevant." Quinn snapped
his head around. "How many of these have you built? Where?"
Galza had said everything he was willing to say. He
stared blankly into the shadow which obscured Quinn.
"Christus." The silhouette slumped down, cursing his
own intelligence. "How the hell did you get the stuff
through Customs?"
"We didn't."
"Why tell me now?"
"Leefield."
Quinn looked at his friend for a moment, then laughed
out loud. "And McBride?"
"No, that's her own project." Galza smiled cautiously.
"But McBride isn't stupid."
"And you thought it would be more gentlemanly to tell
me yourself."
"Jac, less than a hundred people know about this. I'm
telling you this as a private citizen."
"That line seems to get thinner all the time." Quinn
pulled himself up. "How the hell are you keeping these
things hidden?"
Galza narrowed his eyes. "It's a big Solar System."
Quinn stared back for a moment, considering his own
position.
"Okay, suppose I don't say anything now. What about
later? If someone else finds out, then I look like a co-
conspirator."
"You make it sound like something bad."
"Goddammit, Tony, it's criminal! There are ten
different international laws against this, not counting the
three treaties!"
"This is for our own good!" Galza stood angrily,
launching himself toward the ceiling in a slow arc. "Are you
going to let the UN tell us what to do forever, Jac? When
do we get to start making our own decisions?"
"You assume that everyone will be as reasonable as you
are," replied Quinn. "Are those things safe? Did you test
them at all?"
"Of course we tested them!" Galza slapped the desk, and
the lights flashed on. Both men blinked. "Four gees for
ninety seconds will take anyone well outside the safe zone.
That's less than an old Space Shuttle launch. And the rocks
are all solid."
"How much power to the beams?"
"Enough." The blue eyes were cold.
"What about the plutonium?"
"We take precautions, Jac."
Quinn nodded, slowly. "I trust you, Tony. That doesn't
mean I like this."
"We might need them someday."
"I hope to God we don't."
A few hundred thousand kilometers away, four other
people were finishing dinner and adding their voices to the
low rumble of Void Palace, Huann Fa Point's most celebrated
international restaurant. In fact, it was the only real
restaurant in the Torus, with tables and waiters; most other
eateries were automated or scaled down to accommodate the
limited contiguous real estate.
Kyle Jemison turned his gaze from a portly, well-
dressed gentleman arguing socialism at a neighboring table
and smiled at his wife. She grinned back, teeth gleaming
white beside her dark skin. "Nothing to add, Kyle?"
"Hmm?" He scanned the table. Leonard McBride and
Carolyn Leefield were watching him with strangely expectant
looks. "Sorry, I missed the topic."
"Irrigating the Valles Marineris," Leonard said,
straight-faced.
Carolyn poked him in the ribs. "We were talking about
Anderson."
"Oh." Quintex security officer Michael Anderson had
announced his intention to sue Quintex for a breach of his
employment contract, based on the company's failure to
inform him of the possible dangers in providing escort for
the Ariane convoy to Skyscraper Point. "Old Man Quinn's
going to settle out of court, isn't he?"
"They're thinking about it." Leonard studied his water.
"Thinking, hell." Kyle hurled himself into the
conversation. "They can't risk Anderson leaking any
information, intentionally or not. Quinn's going to settle
for a few million and ship him off to a monitoring station
past Jupiter."
"Meanwhile, we're off to stake out Saturn." McBride
winced at his own clumsiness, but he didn't want to lie to
Kyle any more than strictly necessary.
"Sounds like fun." Carolyn folded her arms and leaned
toward Leonard, brown hair waving gently. He tried not to
stare, but a smile tugged at Delia Jemison's lips as she
noticed his failure. Her hand moved naturally to cover her
husband's, chocolate on coal.
"You know what we're going to find," baited Kyle.
Leonard nearly sighed, though no one could tell it was
a sigh of relief. "A bunch of bored telescopers?"
"Aliens."
Carolyn grinned involuntarily. "Aliens?"
"What did you think? Flatfoots? Earth isn't stupid."
"Not collectively," she agreed, "but there are some
people..."
"Even if they are, they wouldn't be this stupid." Kyle
leaned forward, raising a finger to point at nothing. "Look,
they stole three Ariane shuttles, and didn't bother to
repaint them. That's dumb enough by itself. Then they
attack a convoy being escorted by six 'fenders."
"They killed five of those men," Leonard interrupted,
darkly.
"Yeah, but flatfoots don't think in terms of vacuum
craft. Atmospheric vehicles are better if they're smaller;
an F-24 can kill a cargo plane, no problem. But the way
loneboats and 'fenders are flown, the fusion drive is the
best weapon, and the bigger the better. We don't use
missiles, because our ships are missiles. An Earther
wouldn't think that way."
"Shaky argument," Delia remarked.
Kyle turned to give her an indignant look. "I thought
you were on my side."
She shrugged. "This is more fun."
He laughed, put his arm around her, and planted a kiss
on her temple. Leonard and Carolyn glanced at each other
furtively.
"Is that all you have?" Leonard asked.
"One more point." Kyle's pale eyes, set in a brown face
made even darker by the eternally sunlit Torus, moved over
each of them as he spoke. "Why go to Saturn?"
"So they can hide in the rings," Carolyn said, as if it
was obvious.
"No good!" He jabbed a finger across the table. "There
are over two hundred telescopes observing the area around
Saturn. The moons, the shipping lanes, the rings, you name
it. It's the second most well-monitored planet in the solar
system. Anybody who had bothered to research the Torus
would know that we can cover every visible centimeter of any
path from here to Saturn. We'll know exactly when and where
those ships come out of the rings. They've trapped
themselves."
"Unless they believe they can escape us." Leonard
raised his hands, palms upward. "We don't know anything,
least of all what information or technology they might
have."
"How do they plan to escape four loneboats?" Kyle
challenged.
"They know how to fight," Leonard retorted. "Ariane
learned that the hard way. Whoever they are, they've
obviously been well trained in FVC." The art of Free
Vehicular Combat was a relatively new one, with its adepts
confined to the United Nations Space Fleet and the Torus.
"The convoy wasn't expecting a fight." Kyle felt
Delia's hand squeezing his. "We'll be ready."
"I hope so," Carolyn said, softly.
Kyle turned and looked straight into his wife's eyes,
dark pools of reflecting tar. He thought of those same
eyes, set in his daughter's face, staring down at him while
Mary floated in the open area at the center of New Montana.
He could hear her tiny voice, her burbling laugh; he
remembered how gracefully Delia would catch Mary when she
drifted away, trying to walk in zero-gravity. He knew how
free and happy he'd been for the past five years, watching
and helping his daughter grow up, slowly realizing how much
she meant to him.
He turned away, and there was a momentary emptiness in
his face. Leonard noticed.
Tony Galza wanted to leave for Saturn as soon as
possible, and so the chase party assembled at City of Light
the next morning. Quinn, McBride, Jemison, Price, Warlow,
and Golino arrived together, and Galza introduced them to
Andrei-Kolchov Tabowitz, the only pilot who had survived the
raid on the Skyscraper convoy. A cabin fire had scorched
the right half of his body, and that side of his face was
the pinkish color of artificial skin.
The group moved their supplies into a cordoned hangar,
where four of Quintex's newest loneboats had been assembled
and were being upgraded by Ariane technicians. Triply
redundant power systems, high-power lasers, and titanium
shielding joined more mundane equipment being grafted onto
the hulls. After stowing their crates in a storage area,
Galza led his seven companions into an adjacent conference
room for a briefing.
"Our enemy fights well," Tabowitz told them in a steady
voice. The wall behind him glowed with a tactical diagram
of the raid. "They do not employ standard FVC tactics, but
they use the same types of maneuvers. Here you can see the
main thrust of their attack-- a classic hourglass
convergence, coupled with slow thruster spins. The
precision is remarkable."
The briefing continued for an hour or so, as Tabowitz
explained the exact details of the battle with a calm,
professional attitude. Despite an unflinching voice,
Leonard could see Tabowitz's hand shaking as he pointed to
the paths cleared by dead Ariane defenders, and everyone
took note of the fire burning behind his steel blue eyes.
Tabowitz had resigned his UN Space Fleet commission-- he had
been one of their first patroller captains-- to join
Ariane's colonization vanguard, but he was clearly still a
warrior in his heart.
When Tabowitz had finished, they began to formulate a
final plan of action. Leonard looked around and knew that
Quinn and Galza would be the clear leaders of this
expedition. Even though they had all been released from any
professional hierarchies of rank, it was difficult not to
think of Jacob Quinn as "The Old Man," who was responsible
for most of the industrial development in the Torus. It was
a comparable impossibility to see Anthony Galza as anything
other than the Ariane Monarch, who had led their drive to
Mars and beyond, against the protestations of many
governments and philosophers. These two were legends in
their own time, and the rest would never be equals.
For a moment, McBride wondered if it was a bad idea for
Quinn and Galza to personally go chasing after a hostile
power of unknown size, origin, and intent. He recognized
the misgiving as the result of several centuries of
organized human society, with all its ranks and titles and
chains of command. Each of the eight people in the room
excelled in some skill, but was not totally ignorant in all
other disciplines-- living in the Torus meant being fully
cognizant of one's own abilities, since the tangled webs of
social support which existed on Earth were notably absent.
McBride knew the Old Man was a capable administrator,
thinker, and leader, especially under pressure, but this was
not the same game. Leonard wondered, as he studied his
flight plan, if Jacob Quinn had ever killed anyone.
"This is ridiculous."
Tabowitz stood with his hands on his hips, shaking his
head but barely able to suppress a smile. Jemison, carrying
several cans of paint, had climbed onto the loneboat
assigned to him and Price, and begun throwing bright
splotches across the length of the vehicle. A few meters
away, McBride was painting green fire on the side of another
loneboat.
"Look," Jemison shouted down as he opened a can of neon
blue, "we've got three hours until the launch window.
Everything's been checked and triple-checked, and we're just
waiting for the backup batteries to charge up before
installing them. Besides, this is fun."
Rivulets of glowing blue arced over the airlock door.
"You could read a book," Tabowitz yelled in reply. "Or get
some sleep. Something more productive than--" he waved his
left arm-- "this."
"This is art!" Jemison cried, throwing his arms up and
letting the empty can fly across the hangar. As he headed
for the rear of the loneboat, his boots tracked rainbow
swirls through the already chaotic patterns.
McBride looked up and chuckled. "Productivity is not
necessarily measured absolutely."
"I know." Tabowitz walked over to examine the emerald
blaze. "I am used to military vessels-- grey, or black, or
white. Nothing like these."
"Ancient traditions." McBride switched brushes. "Space
is much bigger than most people imagine. Radar is more
dangerous than the possibility of a random visual sighting.
These ships are too small to mark anyway."
"True enough. It is merely unfamiliar. No Earther
would go into battle in that," remarked Tabowitz, pointing
at Jemison's fluorescent pastiche.
"Think of it as psychological warfare."
"Of course. They will think we are crazy."
At 1030 hours, the chase party paired off and boarded
their loneboats, seated in a launch corridor facing the
outer solar system. McBride and Quinn boarded the first
spacecraft, its nose now an ornate, beryl-green "Q" which
trailed flames of a similar color. Warlow gave Jemison a
strange look before entering the latter's mobile tribute to
Jackson Pollack. Galza and Tabowitz spoke in low tones
while approaching their vessel, which Tabowitz had decorated
with geometric shapes in black and white. Finally, Golino
and Price closed their airlock door, fitting it back into
the middle of a roiling thunderstorm that enshrouded the
hull.
The hum of the air conditioners filled Jacob Quinn's
ears as he buckled the safety harness around him and settled
into the co-pilot's chair. McBride was starting the pre-
launch checks, and Quinn examined the cabin again. It had
been a while since he'd actually piloted a loneboat, and the
modifications made to this one were slightly disorienting.
The familiar bubble viewport curved above them, webbed with
clear polymer struts which belied their strength. A
daunting array of display panels and control surfaces
covered the entire forward and side sections of the dash,
with a large astrogation and monitor island situated between
the two seats.
Several panels had been replaced or moved, and Quinn
noted that the technicians had marked these with luminescent
nameplates. Behind them, the equipment lockers had been
stocked with extra pressure suits, fire extinguishers,
reactionless sidearms, and hand lasers. More spare and
replacement parts filled the aft compartments, along with
enough food to last them ten weeks. Galza wanted the
loneboats to be as self-sufficient as possible; any contact
with other stations in the Torus increased their chances of
being detected by the enemy, and it might be a long wait
once they reached Saturn.
Quinn swiveled in his seat, fitting his hands over the
touch-sensitive keypads built into the armrests. He
wouldn't be using those. He might be the second richest man
alive, but he had no illusions about his lack of manual
dexterity. Elocution, on the other hand...
"Is the AI on-line?"
"Yah." McBride nodded and pointed to a small bump above
the dash. "Voice command is activated by saying `Abby.'
Stop." The console beeped twice, then thrice. "End every
sequence of orders with `stop,' or `stop stop' for
emphasis."
"What if I'm saying `Stop the boat'?"
"Parsing is context sensitive. She scans our speech
continuously for meaningful phrases. We've come a long way
since lex and yacc..."
Quinn interrupted before McBride could give a lecture
on linguistic theory and the history of computing. "Funny
how we still personify vessels as female."
"Not always." McBride flipped on the laser ignitor, and
a familiar whine vibrated through the walls. "Vince and
Rob's 'puter is Benjamin. And Dr. Galza's boat is the
Bartholomew Enninger."
Quinn shrugged as he checked the transponder. "We can
drop the formalities, Leonard. I'm not your superior now,
and Tony never was."
Leonard looked at him, nodded. "Sure thing, Jac."
Jacob grinned, feeling inexplicably free. "How's
Golino?"
"Better." Leonard studied the blinking navigation
console. "Breaking up is hard to do."
"Don't sing," came the swift warning. "And Kyle?"
"I still wish we could have told him about--"
Quinn raised a finger in warning. He didn't need to
speak.
Leonard sighed. "I don't know if he should be doing
something this dangerous."
"We need him, Len. He knows that. And why are you so
fatalistic now?"
"Just a theory," was the reply, which Jacob understood
all too well.
At 1100 hours, the Abigail Maitland drifted from City
of Light's metal-ribbed underside, firing her fusion drive
after moving a safe distance from the asteroid. Three other
loneboats followed, each one illuminating a painted hull
with ghostly blue as it accelerated toward Saturn. Kyle
piped Wagner's Die Walkure over the common band, following
it up with a Canadian polka. Tony Galza warned against any
further outbreaks of questionable musical taste.
The four loneboats grouped themselves into a deformed
rhomboid, with the Benjamin Banneker heading the formation
and Bartholomew Enninger bringing up the rear. Twelve
magnetic fields wavered, and eight miniature stars glowed
behind the spacecraft, pushing their acceleration to just
over two gravities. Sixteen eyes blinked as their vision
blurred for a moment, and eight minds braced themselves for
the long calm before a possibly deadly storm.
Over a billion kilometers away, six significantly
different minds went about their business, blissfully
ignorant of the impending confrontation. A blind,
burning Sun, both unfeeling and benevolent, watched over
them all.
Copyright © 1996 Curtis C. Chen. All Rights Reserved.