The Engines of Dawn (32 page)

Now Fontenot had his hands full trying to quell the unrest caused by the editorial staff of
The Alley Revolutionary,
who were running pernicious lies about the administration, campus security, and the Enamorati. An editorial entitled "Mr. Fontenot's Hand Job" seemed to have been the cause of Mr. Fontenot's enforcement zeal. Rausch was therefore doing everything he could to keep track of Mr. Fontenot's progress throughout the ship.

As if that weren't enough, Rausch now saw on his monitor that deep within the Enamorati compound several vital communications cable clusters had been severed. If optical and transit-portal fibers were being severed, so too were the tubes and pipes carrying basic environmental necessities such as water, electricity, and the like. Something terrible appeared to be unfolding deep inside the Enamorati compound and there was a good possibility that only he knew about it.

Lisa Benn hovered over Rausch at his board. "What the hell are they doing in there? Tearing the walls out?"

Rausch opened the com. "Captain Cleddman, are you there?"

Captain Cleddman was back in his personal quarters under a mild form of house arrest: a dour-looking muscle-builder stood outside his door. Cleddman could come and go as he pleased, but his burly guard would go with him.

"Yes, Mr. Rausch,"
came Cleddman's voice.
"I'm here."

"I've got indications on my board of some sort of massive malfunction happening on two decks in the Enamorati compound. Water, power, and sewage has been severed and I've rerouted what I can from here. Has Fontenot said anything to you?"

"This is the first I've heard of it,"
the captain said.
"Have you heard from the Kuulo? Protocol at their end requires him to contact either me or President Porter if there is some sort of problem."

"If he's spoken with anybody about it, sir, they aren't talking to me. That's why I called you. I'm not showing any kind of communications traffic from the Enamorati compound."

"Hmm,"
the captain mused.
"Could be that Kuumottoomaa is dealing with it on his own."

Rausch's crew looked at one another apprehensively. Rausch said, "Sir, our instruments indicated that the safety systems kicked in automatically. Our alarm here was automatic. It's possible that
nobody
knows what's going on in the Enamorati compound, not even the Kuulo. If that's the case, then the whole ship could be endangered."

"Contact Mr. Fontenot and see if he knows about this systems failure in the Enamorati compound. He won't talk to me, but he will talk to you. At least I
think
he will."

"All right," Rausch said. "Stand by."

Rausch touched a command switch. Under normal ship circumstances, Lieutenant Fontenot would be one of the most easily accessible individuals on the ship. Rausch had a direct line to Fontenot's com on his main board, but quickly discovered that Fontenot was inaccessible.

He touched another button. "Campus security. This is Ship-Corn," Rausch said. "I wish to speak with Lieutenant Fontenot, please. It's an emergency."

"Captain Fontenot is unavailable,"
said a deadman. "/
will take a message."

"Take a message? This is an emergency. I want an open channel to Mr. Fontenot now."

The late-shift deadman would have the AI enough to recognize Rausch's voice patterns, and it would, as a consequence, clear a channel to Fontenot.

"Please stand by."

Rausch had to wait only seconds for Fontenot to get back to him. He was available to campus security, but was
not
available to ShipCom. To Rausch that could only mean that Fontenot was somewhere in the ship where he did not want to be found.

"Mr. Rausch,"
came the voice of Lieutenant Fontenot.
"What can I do for you at this hour?"

"I am required to inform you that we have a major systems failure deep inside the Enamorati living quarters. We've got loss of all environmental services to two floors. Captain Cleddman wanted me to-"

"Mr. Cleddman's authority on this ship has been temporarily suspended,"
Lieutenant Fontenot said.

"That's why he had me call you," Rausch countered angrily. "He thought you'd want to know about this since you're the captain now."

"Thank you for the information, Mr. Rausch. I will consult with the Kuulo and will get back to you if it is necessary."

"Shouldn't we notify the fire department and the physical plant about this? We may have to go in there and-"

"Yes, Mr. Rausch. We will handle it from here. Thank you. Out."

"Ix," Rausch muttered.

He quickly went over his board and traced the source of Fontenot's call. "He's operating out of the room that houses the Hollingsdale discontinuity breeder reactor controls," he told his staff.

Cleddman, who had been listening in, said,
"That's probably going to be the new command center for the ship. His people have been in the process of rerouting all command functions to that location for most of the day. I wouldn't be too surprised if the Kuulo isn't with him."

"And you're going to let him get away with this?"

"/
have no say in the matter. Neither do you."

"Why wouldn't he just assume command on
your
deck?" Rausch asked. "That's what it's there for."

"/
have no idea,"
the captain said.
"But it does locate his people closer to the Auditors and the Enamorati compound. They would be within walking distance of one another, whereas the command deck is two thousand linear feet in the opposite direction."

"Makes sense," Rausch said.

"One other thing, you're going to have to be very careful to whom
-" the captain started.

Bang!
Something struck the outer door to ShipCom. Lisa Benn jumped in her chair, and Rausch was on his feet at the sound of it.

A long sword blade ripped an incredible gash in the metal of the door, tearing a seam straight down to the floor. Another swipe, then another of the same sword, and the door fell away in razor-sharp shreds. Boots kicked the remaining shards back in razor-sharp curls. Several people came in through the gap.

The first two were not people. The others were, but not the first two. These were Enamorati. All wore armor and all had swords at the ready.

Lisa Benn screamed and the other members of the crew fell back against the far wall.

"Captain, we've got company!" Rausch said into the still-open com.

Rausch sized up the situation instantly. Two Enamorati. Two men from campus security. And two Ainge Auditors, also carrying swords.
Good heavens,
Rausch thought,
Ainge Auditors ready to do battle!

However, a different scenario appeared in Cutter Rausch's mind: Instead of these six invaders, he saw
an assassin breaching the walls surrounding the Kobe Gardens. Kendo master Yoshubi Takamitsu is taken by surprise. Rausch, the novitiate from America, is meditating nearby. Rausch hears the song of a ninja's sword blade. The eighty-year-old national treasure of Japan is dead. There is only one thing left to do. It will mean exile, from the Kobe Gardens, from Japan, and possibly even the Earth. But it is the only
honorable
thing left to do….

Rausch moved into the center of the room as his crew watched with undisguised terror. Two armored Enamorati of a caste Rausch had never seen before. Two Ainge Auditors. Two men from campus security. One man against six.

"Cutter, don't!"
Lisa Benn shouted.

Cutter Rausch did then what he had done only once before in his life, in the Kobe Gardens of Japan. He
acted.

It was how he got the nickname "Cutter."

Of all the Bombardiers, only George Clock had any sort of decent piloting skills. He came from a family whose wealth had been derived from providing vehicles for space construction firms. Clock could fly most kinds of EVA vehicles. In fact, since he had bombed out of Eos University's aerial photography and mapping program, he had been seriously considering a career in construction. The money was good and it took him places. A Ph.D. from Eos University would have been a nice shingle to hang in an office somewhere, but construction wasn't a bad life.

All of his piloting skills were needed now. Lifepod 27 was plummeting helter-skelter away from Eos, down toward Kiilmist 5 with either a spear or axe of impossible sharpness stuck in a dead starboard gravity engine. Clock wrestled the pod away from Eos's giant Engine nacelle, but he needed the onboard computer to help him land the small craft. He didn't know if lifepods could fly on one engine.

As Clock extruded the glide wings from the pod's oblong body and raised the tail assembly, Ben and Tommy Rosales attended to Jim Vees and the Avatka. Jim gulped pure oxygen from an emergency tank nearby and he was slowly coming around. Wisps of Enamorati atmosphere clung to his hair and filled the pod with its stench.

The Avatka, unfortunately, wasn't doing nearly as well. A human couldn't have survived a slash such as the one the Avatka had received. He was now drifting in and out of consciousness with every breath he took. It was impossible for any of them to tell how long the alien had to live.

"Where are we going?" Jim asked, pulling away the oxygen mask,

"Down," Ben said.

"Why?"

"Why?"
George Clock shouted over his shoulder. "Because there's an axe in one of our engines, thanks to you."

"Me?" Vees said.

Ben looked at his friend. "I thought you said no one knew what you were doing with your machine."

"I guess I was wrong," Vees admitted.

"Now you tell us," Tommy Rosales said.

"We're in real deep shit, pal," Ben said. "You know that?"

Rosales added, "Just think of the human race as
all
Bombardiers. The Enamorati Compact is about as dead as you can get."

Jim gave Ben a look he had never seen before. Revelation? Surprise? Fear?

"Listen," he said to them. "I was
in
Orem Rood's mind. Mazaru is coming to us! The Auditors have been taking turns, around the clock, calling out to him for months now. Rood believes he is coming!"

"Look, stupid," Ben said, edging close. "We found you in a room surrounded by four of those Accusers and each one of them had a sword. I think they had every intention of killing you when they were done with you."

"So Mazaru is real?" Tommy Rosales asked.

"Who cares if Mazaru is real?" Ben snapped.
"This
is real. Right here. Right now."

Jim looked at Tommy. "I would have never believed it in a thousand years. Maybe Ixion Smith
was
onto something."

Vees swiveled around in his chair and noticed that they had an Avatka with them-one that didn't look well at all.

"What's he doing here?" Vees asked.

"He helped us find you," Ben said. "It turns out he's the guy who destroyed the Engine. It was this guy in the photographs we took from the last probe we made."

The Avatka was straggling to speak. "You should have left me back there. I might have been able… to do more,…"

A bony claw of a hand seemed to reach for something the Avatka thought was attached to his belt, but it came away empty. The strange "gun" that had been used to fire the
vehenta
had been dropped during their retreat.

"Look," Ben said. "You never told us
why
you had to destroy the Engine. Was it about to explode?"

"No," the Avatka said in a very strained voice.

"Then why did you do it?" Ben asked.

"Because… you had to find this planet, this one planet," the Avatka said. "The rest you would have figured out on your own. But I had to get you here."

"What are you talking about?" Ben asked.

"The truth," the Avatka said. "The truth that will set you free."

With that, he lapsed once again into unconsciousness.

38

The last time Eve Silbarton had gone tunneling, she had been eight years old, newly arrived at Tau Ceti 4 with her parents, who wanted to live in a more stable environment than was present on the Earth at the time. On the balmy southern isle of Tooele grew immense trees with convoluted tunnels in which she and her little friends played after school like woodpecker kin or squirrels. That sort of tunneling had been fun.

This
sort most decidedly wasn't.

With the captain more or less under house arrest, Eve and her team had taken the initiative of setting up the six stardrive units throughout the ship. This entailed crawling through ducts and tunnels no one, outside of servicing robots, had been in for at least a century. This was the only way to reach the center shaft of the giant vessel. But what was once fun to an eight-year-old was now a regrettable chore to a woman in her sixth decade. Besides, it was cold and filthy.

She, Dr. Harlin, and two graduate engineering students had just crawled fifty yards through a maintenance shaft, trailing wires and optical fibers behind them. A small antigravity float platform held the sixth and last of the drive assemblies. Others of her group were setting the other drives in place roughly three hundred yards along the ship's core.

With Cutter Rausch's assistance, they had managed to circumvent the various security systems that protected many of the tunnels, but that was the easy part. What they had to do now was bolt the drive systems to the ship's core and get them synchronized. If they could get that far, they might have a chance of getting out of the Kiilmist system to a system closer to home, preferably one with facilities enough to sort out the legal mess the various human factions had gotten into with each other, to say nothing of the various charges the humans-united or not-were going to throw at the Enamorati. For Eve's part, all she wanted was to get back to the H.C. worlds of the Alley, and away from the Enamorati.