Fear the Future (The Fear Saga Book 3) (17 page)

She had sacrificed her ship to Fral even as she sent it careening right into Elder Pulujan’s path, forcing him into an ever-weaker position relative to his younger sister.

Shit, thought Elder Pulujan, as did every other combatant for him. It was, they all knew, too much for Other Pulujan to resist, and his hull felt the hot sting of her metal not a moment later.

“I guess that leaves us, Other Pulujan, and Fral,” said Marta, shaking her head as Elder Pulujan’s sister did what they all knew she would, emptying two full broadsides into her brother’s bow before he could even return fire. They would fight for a while longer, but ILyo had forced Elder into a hopelessly weak position, and it was all but over for the so-called Pulujan alliance.

The rest of the battle was one of jockeying and long strategy. Fral, excited after his victory over the devilishly good ILyo, would be undone by his own cleverness as he became entangled in one of his own shoals, to be dispatched with long volleys by the other two remaining ships.

And so it would come down to a shooting match between Other Pulujan and Marta, and here Marta’s greater restraint and skill shone as they came together in a long, deadly dance.

- - -

“A good battle,” said Marta loudly, trying to calm the laughter and embittered talk as they all debated the flaws in each others’ strategies, “but if I may …” she raised her voice even higher over the din, “if I may!”

The room calmed down, most smiling, some, most notably ILyo, looking very sore though. For she had ended the match with no kills, despite her inspired move to damn Elder Pulujan, and now wore the uniform of a conscript, a landlubber. It was poor luck, especially for someone of her skill in the chess game that was battle under sail. But it was what it was. She not would have faired much better under Other Pulujan’s flag, who Marta and Ralfy had finally dispatched with rare skill in a battle that came down to hand-to-hand combat on the burning decks of both ships.

But the fires were out now. They sat in a restored captain’s cabin aboard Marta’s ship, with a traditional meal being served them, soused and doused as it should be, the Bay drifting over the horizon in their wake as they sailed away into the night.

“We have a lot to discuss, so I want to thank you all for coming, and particularly Fral for setting all this up, and for arranging for this very pleasant, and I am sure very secure, place to meet,” said Marta.

They all nodded, knowing the subtle lengths he had no doubt gone to in order to make the space as immune to prying eyes and ears as possible. Not from outside the Alliance, spying from without was made all but impossible by the Arbite. But from within. For these six not only stood against their race in their plans, but against many of their own Nomadi brethren.

They discussed each of those peers in turn, updating each other on conversations they’d had, comments they’d heard, progress they’d made. Navigating the political landscape, even within their own ranks, was a painstakingly slow process. It must be. All care must be taken to ensure that they did not rush the wrong person or reveal themselves too soon. But they must seek to bring as many of their fellow Nomadi trading houses on board as possible, both to save those houses in the coming conflict and to bolster their own ranks during the final war.

These six made up the core. They had been the first. Or rather a mysterious first traitor had started the conversation with a doubtful Fral, who had in turn recruited Ralfy, then they had each recruited Marta and the rest over the years that preceded the launch of the Armada. They all knew each other, there was no getting around that, so anonymity was pointless here. But they had protected the greater conspiracy from themselves with their own ignorance, guiding it but deliberately distancing themselves from its details in case any of them were caught.

Now they were but ambassadors for the cause, trying in these last years to bring in some more of their kin whose resolve might be faltering.

“How goes our favorite representative?” asked Fral of his friend Marta. In truth, they all liked Shtat. He was, after all, eminently likeable. But he was here for a purpose. He was here to be a puppet, as cruel as that seemed, and it was his very ineptitude for the role of Representative to the Council that made him so good a buffer for the real purpose of the Nomadi’s biggest houses.

Marta told them all of her most recent conversation with Shtat Palpatum. “It was not a pleasant sight, I can tell you, and it gets ever harder to convince him to support the war, harder and more counterintuitive.” Several faces showed concern and surprise at that, but she gently lifted one of her shoulders to dismiss their fears. “No, no. He still supports the war to all intents and purposes, don’t worry. And I suppose we should be happy that he has doubts. He will be all the easier to bring over to our side when we are finally forced to show our hand.”

“Well, maybe,” said ILyo. “If he can forgive us for keeping him out of the loop for so long.”

“No,” said Other Pulujan, “he is very dedicated to Marta, I see it whenever I speak to him. He trusts you, Marta. As long as it comes from you directly, and not from some other source, we should be able to count on him when it comes time to declare and turn tables, as I imagine we are going to have to do at some point.”

There was silence for a moment as they contemplated this, and then Marta spoke once more, asking Ralfy about his work with their only potential ally outside their own race.

“No more news there, I am afraid,” said Ralfy. “I continue to study with the Hemmbar, and continue to explore ‘possible futures’ with them, including, in very small doses, of course, talk of what would happen if the Armada became divided. They remain noncommittal, but maintain that their focus would be, as always, on maintaining the integrity and detail of the record and of their ability to codify it. It is a nice way of saying they will look out for themselves if and when it comes to blows, which is either good or bad for us depending on how you look at it.”

Ralfy’s conversation with Theer-im-Far had been recorded and analyzed by the Arbite, of course, thus its need to remain hypothetical and convoluted in nature. But the Hemmbar were famous for their brutal pragmatism and few in the six doubted that they would pick sides based primarily on one factor: who was winning.

They discussed this point for a while longer, as they had many times before, and then Fral changed tacks. “My systems tell me we are getting close to translation back out of hyperspace. If we are done with updates, I believe we only have one more topic to cover before we return to the banquet?”

The question received replying shakes of arms from all the gathered and Fral nodded to Marta, who as victor held the chair of the meeting. She blinked quickly to say for him not to be silly and just speak, but he was insistent so she spoke up once more. “Very well. Friends, the time until first possible contact with the IST at Earth is only days away.”

They all became somber at the thought. While the rest of the fleet eagerly awaited news of their prize, the Nomadi were hoping for silence. Either total silence from an inactive IST or for the relay to be sending signal but not receiving anything to actually relay from the satellites. Satellites which the Nomadi conspirators had been told should be destroyed by now if whatever had been planned to stop the advanced team had been even remotely successful.

They ended by discussing their plans in the worst possible case scenario: should the satellites not only be alive and well, but should they be sending news of whatever plan had failed on Earth, and the Nomadi’s part in it. Suicide, they knew, would be their only recourse then. Suicide in spectacular fashion, and doing as much harm as possible in the process in the hope that they did enough damage to cover their tracks and stop news of their treachery reaching Mobilius. For if the worst did, indeed, happen, they could only hope to minimize the damage to the houses they represented, to their families and their friends.

It was not an easy topic, but it was also not a new one. They were all still firm on their course, and once they had covered that, Fral stood, taking control of the proceedings once more. “If we are all done, my friends, my very good friends, I have prepared one last treat for the six of us before we go back to sit with the people we are so very utterly betraying. If you will all follow me on deck, please.”

And he stepped boldly past them to the hatch.

So much of the ship would have felt familiar to a human. Its lines were formed by the same forces that ruled the oceans on Earth, as they did on every planet that either race would consider habitable. The guns were formed by the same discovery of explosive gunpowder.

The decks were necessarily a bit taller to accommodate the loping gait of the powerfully legged Mobiliei, and thus their navies would have been able to carry far less tonnage of weaponry than ours, but the great ship still looked strikingly similar to any ship-of-the-line as we would have seen on Earth’s high seas in the latter part of the last millennia.

But there was one notable difference: they had no steps or ladders, only hatches through which the six agile captains of industry now leapt. Stairs were for the elderly and infirm, and neither condition existed in the ether, or would have been tolerated at sea during the great era of sail.

Once on deck, they walked forward and gathered on the bow of Marta’s ship, gazing out at a horizon on which a sun was even now setting. The sun was, Fral now told them, a faithful representation of Alpha Centauri B, the second star in this cluster, and the next stepping-stone in their journey to Earth.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” said Fral over the song of the ship’s great rigging. “I give you our next translation point!” he said, waving toward the distant star. “But first,” he said, glanding Light into his veins and encouraging his friends to do the same with the handing out of goblets of long ale, “we must depart this one!”

And with that, he stepped to the bow’s edge and pointed to the horizon. They all followed his stare to the distant line. But as they stared they saw it wasn’t distant at all, it was close, and it was getting closer.

“In celebration of the impending edge we have all chosen to jump off together,” said Fral, speaking with the primal excitement of a leader sending his troops into battle, as indeed he was, “I give you the edge of the world!”

They all saw it now, and gasps of surprise escaped their lips. As they looked on, the edge now came into focus, the sky above them quickly turning a dusky purplish black as the great firmament of stars resolved above and in front of them, the galaxy spreading out in all its majesty. It was a galaxy that their world’s leaders had dreams of conquering, and may still, if they could only be convinced to do it in a more diplomatic fashion.

The cheer became frenzied as the great ship approached the line, which could now be seen to be a massive waterfall extending off to either side as far as the eye could see.

“To hell or victory!” shouted the Pulujans suddenly, and the rest of the group shouted it back, screamed it really, as the ship heaved up and over the edge of the world-spanning waterfall, a great roar of creaking wood running along its length as though it was joining in their shouts of laughter and surprise. They felt as the deck reared up under them and their individual bodies began lifting from the planking as the huge ship and its six tiny passengers were all inexorably drawn over into the waiting abyss.

It would have been utterly terrifying if it weren’t all but a wonderful conceit, but it still tugged at a primal fear, and they clung to each other and the ship at first, laughing and shouting with surprise as they were pulled free and began tumbling over and around the great ship that was suddenly falling with them.

As they fell past the false planet’s elliptic, the ship slowly inverted above them and began to disintegrate, the underside of the world they were still falling away from revealed itself to be the star they were even now departing. The sight of the disc, watery above, now fiery below, was magnificent and momentarily stunned most of them into silence.

But it was a fleeting respite from their adrenalin pumping fall, and as they turned in air to face down, they saw the fleet’s coming translation flying up at them, represented by the great banquet floor even now resolving far below, the million-strong crowd emerging themselves from the light of the Upper World Translation Party or the darkness of the Under World, depending on their fancy.

The six dignitaries and their ship fell toward them.

To the other partygoers it would appear that the six arrived with the same sudden translation into the banquet as the rest of them had, but to the six conspirators it was nothing so pedestrian. It was as if they were plummeting right into the mass of people, bringing with them a thousand tons of wood, iron, and canvas.

At the last moment the ship simply vaporized and they all came to a mind-bendingly sharp stop, upright and seated, their clothes straight and their expressions demure, blinking into the sudden serenity like a bewildered sleeper waking after a vivid dream.

Marta looked over to where Fral now sat at another table. She smiled and shook her head but he merely winked, a serene look on his face and a devilish twinkle in his eye. So she looked around for and found Ralfy, who was now at another table altogether, laughing in disbelief.

She shook her head again. Well, if you were going to go, you might as well go in style, she thought, and she turned with a polite smile to her fellow dignitaries and officials of the great Mobiliei Armada.