The Rise of Earth (24 page)

“Oh, it was all such fun at first,” she said, shoving a mislaid battery into the proper pile. “Huff would sweep in with silks and jewels, flinging livres around and regaling everyone with his latest adventures. When Johannes gave the crew leave, we'd be off to Ganymede—or Huff would send tickets for a liner and tell me to meet him on Vesta, or even Mars. But the waiting? That wasn't so much fun. Saying something and waiting for your husband to hear the words and react? Or sending a message into the void and fearing there would never be a reply? No, that wasn't fun at all.”

Slap slap slap
went Elfrieda's hands on the counter. She flung the empty box aside, heaved another one onto the counter, and smacked its magnetic release.

“Huff wasn't there when your aunt was born, did you know that?” she asked. “Or your mother. It was me and a pack of flea-brained nurses and governesses—all of whom thought I was the luckiest woman in the solar system to be wed to a dashing pirate. The luckiest woman in the solar system, sitting in a hole on Callisto.”

She stopped and looked down at the batteries scattered across the counter, her anger momentarily spent.

“Is that why you left?” Tycho asked hesitantly.

Elfrieda looked up and Tycho wondered if she'd forgotten he was there. Then she laughed, a curt bark without a trace of humor.

“Oh, I left a few times. But yes, you could say that was why. Do you know the worst part? In a terrible way, I was glad when your grandfather came home after 624 Hektor.”

She stopped for a moment, drumming her fingers on the counter, then shook her head and continued.

“He was so badly injured that the doctors on Ganymede said he might not live unless they turned him into a brain in a tank—some experimental procedure the scientists had in mind. I told them no. I knew he'd rather die than become like that. I prayed for him to live, and he did. And I thought at least I had half a husband back, after all these years of not having one at all.”

Elfrieda looked down at her hands, the box of carbine batteries forgotten.

“He lived—and then he went back into space,” she said. “Not to be captain, not to be anything. Just to be on that ship of his.”

Her eyes scanned the little kingdom of her depot.

“Your brother packed his gear a month before his birthday, do you remember that?” she asked, smiling faintly. “He was that excited—told everybody he was sure he'd get to fly the ship on his first day. And I saw what the rest of my life would be like. I'd sit in that hole with a shattered daughter and two more grandchildren who'd grow up counting the days until they could go into space themselves. And then I'd wait for two of them to come home bitter and broken, if they came home at all.”

Tycho just stood there, stomach churning and cheeks hot. He'd been too young to remember Elfrieda at Darklands, but he did remember many childhood afternoons he'd spent asking adults about the day he'd get to leave,
or telling them the amazing adventures he'd have once he did. Then he
had
left, and his family's ancient homestead had become a place to endure, an interruption of life aboard the
Comet
. And he'd rarely if ever thought of those for whom the fractured plains of Callisto represented normal life.

Elfrieda shook her head. “I couldn't do it, Tycho. Not even for another day.”

“I understand,” he said, while knowing that wasn't really true and never could be.

T
ycho had just reentered the Southwell when his mediapad began to trill. He looked down and saw it was his father. He thought about not answering—he'd be back in the Jovian fondaco in a couple of minutes, after all—but then reconsidered.

“I'm almost there, Dad.”

“Almost where? I hope you don't mean here, because you're wanted elsewhere.”

Tycho came to a stop, forcing a burly man in a freight
hauler's uniform to perform an awkward pirouette to avoid crashing into him.

“I can't figure out what that means,” Tycho said as the freight hauler departed with a shaken fist.

Mavry chuckled. “It means you're wanted at the consulate.”

“Ugh. All right. I'll be there in a minute and we can all walk over.”

“Oh, we weren't invited. Just you. Mr. Vass requested you specifically.”

“For what?”

“Seems like a logical first question for the minister, kid. Anyway, the rest of us are going to relax over bowls of hominy and gossip about the Titan scandal.”

“Terrific,” Tycho said with a sigh.

“We'll see you at the
Comet
. Oh, and Tycho? Give the minister our fondest regards.”

Vass's office was near the apex of the Well, guarded by a Gibraltar Artisans cyborg who turned his mirrored eyepiece in Tycho's direction.

Tycho stopped when the soldier's weapons system powered up. Sparks shot from the electro-prod clenched in his left fist, and lights blinked on the console in his chest armor.

“I have an appointment with the minister,” Tycho said, annoyed and a little frightened.

“You are armed,” the soldier replied. His voice sounded gravelly, as if from disuse.

“I'm a Jovian privateer. I'm not going to shoot one of our own ministers.”

“You are armed,” the man repeated, taking one step to the side so that he blocked Vass's door.

“And you're repeating yourself. I had business beyond the Westwell—I needed to be armed.”

The soldier just stared at him, and Tycho wondered what Gibraltar Artisans' technologists had done to his brain in augmenting him for bodyguard duty. Did the man think, feel, and dream like he always had, with an additional layer of threat awareness through which he could view his surroundings? Or had the human part of him been removed? The thought made Tycho suppress a shudder.

The door to Vass's office opened, and the minister tried to peek around the cyborg's bulk.

“What's this, then? Ah, Tycho. Come in, come in.”

The soldier blocked Vass's way, his eyepiece fixed on Tycho.

“He is armed.”

“That's perfectly all right,” Vass said. “Tycho isn't a security threat. You may stand down.”

The soldier's expression didn't change, but after a moment he stood aside, the sparks from the electro-prod vanishing.

Inside his office, Vass was standing behind his desk, looking up at the black bulk of Attis suspended overhead.

“Interesting thing, working beneath one's own sword of Damocles,” he muttered. “Sit down, Tycho.
Thank you for coming. It's already a busy morning—we're trying to figure out where those livres missing from Titan wound up.”

“Yeah, I heard about that,” Tycho said as he perched on one of the plastic chairs in front of Vass's desk. “I apologize, Minister, but I need to be at our ship by 1000.”

“Ah yes. The hunt for the shipyard. Good work there, Tycho. We hadn't considered the idea that Earth was seizing ships to use in construction.”

Tycho nodded. “Thank you, Minister. But we're looking for the shipyard
and
the
Nestor Leviathan
.”

Vass waved that away. “All things considered, the loss of the ship is merely an embarrassment. The shipyard is far more of a concern.”

“You'll forgive my family if we see it a little differently.”

“Of course,” Vass said, then hesitated.

“What is it, Minister? Do you have new information that might help us?”

“Not exactly. We have some promising leads—the Securitat has identified and interviewed a number of workers who returned from the shipyard, and is collating information in hopes of pinpointing its location. But that method brings no guarantee of success. Which is why I asked you to come in today. I wonder, Tycho, if you've made use of all the sources that might be available to you.”

“I don't know what you mean, Minister.”

Was it his imagination, or did Vass look embarrassed?

“I believe you have a . . . friend who is highly placed in Earth's community here.”

Tycho stared at Vass.

“The two of you haven't exactly been discreet, Tycho.”

“Kate doesn't know anything. Her father brought her out here to see the solar system. She's not part of any of this. She's innocent.”

“I'm sure that's true.” Vass got to his feet and stood by the curved window of his office, staring down into the Well's web of girders and wires. “But through her you might discover information about Earth's operations that we desperately need.”

Tycho folded his arms. “You're asking me to use my relationship with Kate to spy for you,” he said, his voice turning hard.

Vass turned from the window and locked eyes with Tycho. “Yes, that's what I'm asking you to do.”

“I won't,” Tycho said, staring back at him. “And you should be ashamed for asking me, sir.”

“Tycho, the only scenario that fits the facts we have is that the craft nearing completion in that shipyard is an Earth warship. And you know as well as I do where this leads—to an Earth shipyard and possibly a military base. Both on our side of the Kirkwood Gap.”

Vass's gaze crept upward again, to the enormous rock above them.

“Distance, Tycho, is the only real defense we have against the economic and military might of Earth. If
that's taken away from us, our very survival is at stake. So no, I am not ashamed about what I'm asking you to do. I would ask you to do far more.”

“And you'd get the same answer. I said no and I meant no. Good day, Minister.”

Vass watched silently as Tycho rose from his chair and thumbed the control to retract the office door. As Tycho passed the cyborg soldier, he caught sight of his distorted face in the man's mirrored eyepiece and turned away in disgust.

When Tycho climbed the ladderwell to the quarterdeck, his mother was waiting for him. She inclined her head for him to follow and led the way aft, not turning until they'd passed the equipment bays that opened on either side of the passageway.

“Go back belowdecks,” she said. “You and Carlo are on duty reading the hands in for this trip.”

“It's Carlo's and Yana's turn, not mine.”

“You're going to take your sister's turn anyway. I don't know what your problem is with your brother, but I'm tired of seeing you staring laser beams at him, so the two of you are going to work it out in the fifteen minutes or so before the crew ferries start arriving. Is that clear?”

Tycho hung his head.

“Use the aft ladderwell,” Diocletia said, already striding back toward the quarterdeck.

Tycho passed the larder, auxiliary magazine, and head, following the passageway where it curved around
the closed ladderwell that led from belowdecks to the
Comet
's dorsal gun turret. He reached the aft ladderwell and climbed down, emerging in the narrow passageway between the port and starboard holds.

Carlo was waiting at the port airlock with his mediapad. From his unhappy expression, Tycho could guess that their mother had taken him aside too.

“Guess it isn't Yana's turn after all,” Carlo said.

“Guess not,” Tycho grumbled, taking out his own mediapad and getting ready to record which crewers were present and fit for duty. He knew he couldn't blame their mother. He and his siblings had arguments and resentments like in any other family, and there was no way Diocletia could know that this was something far larger—something that couldn't be fixed by a captain's order to get an uncomfortable conversation over with.

It was Carlo who broke the silence first.

“So are you going to tell me what I did?”

Tycho stopped tapping on his mediapad. The smart thing—the
sane
thing, really—was to say nothing, to stand in uncomfortable silence next to his brother until it was time for the
Comet
to fly.

But he was tired of saying nothing.

“You already know what you've done,” Tycho said. “Your problem is that I know it too.”

“I have no idea what you're talking about,” Carlo said, but his face had gone pale.

“There was no sign walker,” Tycho said, surprised at how calm he sounded.

“Are you calling me a liar?”

Tycho jabbed his finger at his brother's face.

“It's not just that you're a liar—it's that you're a
bad
one. The solar system's chattiest sign walker, standing in a tunnel telling everybody where Earth freighters are going to offload cargo? In an area of space prowled by privateers? You couldn't do better than that?”

“Back off or Mom will have a bigger problem to handle. Since you know everything, Tyke, tell me what it is you think I've done.”

Tycho hesitated, kicking angrily at the deck beneath their feet. Then he leaped. He knew it was a terrible idea, but he had to see his brother's face when he was confronted with what he'd done.

“The Securitat
gave
you that ship,” he said. “Told you where it would be and when. They gave it to you as a gift, and you took it to help your chances of being captain. I just hope you asked them what they'll want in return. Did you ask them that, Carlo?”

Carlo stared at Tycho, his mouth hanging open.

“The Securitat?” he stammered. “What would they know about Earth freighters?”

“Don't play dumb. It's their job to find out stuff like that—and to use it.”

“You're crazy,” Carlo managed. “Crazy and paranoid. That thing Yana said about you catching up with me has got in your head, and now you're imagining things.”

“Maybe I should try imagining a sign walker,” Tycho said, trying to ignore the little voice in his head
reminding him that he'd imagined a lost mediapad well enough when he was the one who'd talked to the Securitat.

Carlo swallowed, and his hands balled into fists. Then Tycho saw him forcing himself to relax.

“Listen to me,” Carlo said, his voice low and harsh. “I know what we need to do to survive as a family. I see how to get there, and I'm the only person to lead us. I'd rather do that with your help than without it, Tycho—but I'll do it either way. I'm not going to let anything stop me—particularly not some crazy fantasy you've concocted.”

They stood in silence for a few moments. The bells clanged five times. It was 1030, just about time for the ferries full of Comets to start arriving.

“You know what, Carlo?” Tycho asked. “I believe you when you say you know what we need to do, and that you think you're the right person to get us there. I just can't believe that you, of all people, would sacrifice your honor to make that happen.”

Carlo said nothing for a moment, his face expressionless. It frustrated Tycho that he couldn't figure out what Carlo was thinking—but then, he'd rarely been able to do more than guess at how his brother's brain worked.

Then Carlo simply turned his back on him, his shoulders sagging.

“Obviously you'll believe whatever you want to believe.”

When Tycho and Carlo returned to the quarterdeck, neither bothered pretending that they'd patched up their differences—their mother was harder to fool than that.

As Grigsby bellowed out orders belowdecks, Carlo flopped into his chair and strapped himself in, then immediately started testing the piloting linkages. Behind him, Tycho reviewed their course and marked communications channels for the other Jovian privateers taking part in the day's sweep. Diocletia studied her sons, face impassive, then turned to look out through the viewports at the arc of docking ports and ships.

“Piloting systems check out,” Carlo said.

“Course to our long-range tanks is locked in,” Tycho said, wincing as Huff leaned forward from beside the ladderwell to tousle his hair too roughly.

“Got it,” Carlo said. “We're ready to roll, Captain.”

“Tycho, raise traffic control and get us a departure slot,” Diocletia said.

“Aye-aye,” Tycho said. “Cybelean Traffic Control, this is the
Shadow Comet
in Berth 33A, operating under Jovian flag. Requesting immediate clearance for departure on vector twenty-six-niner.”

“Stand by,
Comet
,” a controller replied, her voice tinny and modulated.

A tense silence hung over the quarterdeck, and Tycho found himself mourning that the family ship had become an unhappy one. Was that his brother's fault, or his? Or was it bigger than either of them—a consequence of everything at stake here at Cybele?