This Alien Shore (39 page)

One station to be destroyed, for the crime of setting Lucifer loose in the galaxy. The other to quiver in fear down through the millennia, as the dust of their neighbor and cohort circled endlessly through the system, as a warning. Now
that
was a lesson he could never have managed on his own.

They
were
guilty. He was sure of it. And even if they weren't ... it didn't really matter, did it? The only thing the Guild would see was the data search, and what came of it. And he was in charge of that. How closely would they question his report? How little work would it take to add a small fact here or there, and seal the fate of the Isolationists forever?

He passed by a picture of the Prima and saluted it, a tight smile twitching across his face.
Thank you,
he thought to her.
For all of this.

Power was such a sweet elixir.

T
he ambassador from the New Terran Front was predictably hostile. They were always hostile. They considered it an affront to be asked to share the same air as a Variant, and their speech and manner and expression all showed it.

“Our station space has been invaded.”

Varsav had started the meeting sitting, but quickly rose and began to pace. They did that to him, these Isolationists, overriding even the calm that his med programs could produce, driving him to a frenetic display of wasted energy. God, how he hated them.

“Invaded, you say.”

“Yes.”

He snorted with what he hoped was suitable disdain. “By what? Tourists? A harvester? Some poor little transport jarred off its course, that came within a million miles of your outer ring?” He'd heard all those complaints before and dealt with them as his duty demanded, but that didn't mean he had to like it. Or pretend that he liked it.

There was fury in the man's eyes, but for now he was keeping it under control. “A pod.”

“A pod?” He stopped pacing and faced the man. Did he sound as incredulous as he felt? “And you came to my office to complain to me personally because this pod, this tiny thing, passed within ... what? A million miles of your station ? Two million?”

The answer came between gritted teeth. “Six thousand.”

Six thousand miles. Really. That was actually a legal offense, he mused, and not just some instance of Isolationist paranoia. Unusual.

“A pod, you say.”

The man held out a sheet of plastic. Varsav took it from him, resisting the impulse to make physical contact as he did so. God alone knew what the man would do if he did, probably go home and have all the skin removed from his hand, for fear of some dreaded Variant infection. Maybe they'd even kill him when he went home, just to keep the station pure. Damn it, the moment was tempting . . . but he refrained from making contact. Duty above pleasure. Maybe next time, he promised himself.

Varsav looked over the figures recorded on the sheet, and frowned as he did so. This was not good. Not good at all. Something really had come into the Front's station space, and that meant he had to do something about it. The law was the law. “How long ago was this?”

The ambassador hesitated. “Nearly two Earth days now.”

Varsav snorted derisively. “And you expect me to do what now? Track the thing?” Oh, he could see them wasting two days, all right, while the intruder made his merry way home. A grand council meeting or two to discuss how to deal with such a threat, followed by a host of committee meetings to decide if it was worth sending one of their own into Variant-controlled space, followed by a long discussion of who ... if there ever was a war between Earth and her Variant offspring, and if this station was any example of Terran competence, Hausman's children had nothing to fear.

Which was not true, and he knew it. The Terrans had invented terrorism as a strategy of war, and if hostility between Earth and its descendants ever flared into open conflict, he did not doubt they would use it to their advantage. Whereas Variants were raised to consider terrorism an unacceptable strategy under any circumstances . . . the result of lifetimes spent on space stations, where a million lives might be lost in the wake of one well-placed explosion. That would be an ugly war indeed, he thought.

“We
expect
you to defend the sanctity of our station space. As our station treaty says you will.”

For a moment he said nothing. His fingers, already exploring the surface of a statue near his desk, gripped it tightly. “Very well,” he said at last. “You're quite correct. Your space was invaded. Did this ... this pod do anything to damage the station?”

“No.”

“Did it hinder your communications in any way?”

“No.”

“Did it do anything else you are aware of, which might have harmed your station or any of its people?”

The fury on the man's face was unmistakable. “It could easily have spied on us. Intercepted transmitted data. Half a dozen things that we would never find out about. That's your job to determine, isn't it?”

Varsav scraped his nails along the statue. Scratch marks joined a hundred others already there. “Did you attempt to trace it? Backtrack its trajectory.”

“We did what we could,” the man said stiffly. “The figures are there.” His very tone said they hadn't accomplished much. That wasn't a big surprise. They might have the equipment to track things through Guild space, but he doubted they used it often enough to be very adept with it.

“Very well. As you say. I will investigate.” He paused. “Is that all?”

The man drew in a deep breath, and was obviously struggling not to let loose what he was really thinking. Which might even prove refreshing, Varsav thought, if he did let go. He could shut down his own speech inhibitor programs and let loose on the man with the kind of language he would
really
like to use. That could be ... interesting.

But the man backed down. With a look in his eye like a wary dog, he muttered, “Yes. That's all.” And added, “There's an eddress there for your report on the matter.”

“Of course.” He glanced down to note where it was, and nodded his official attention to the matter. The man glared at him but could find no concrete cause for further confrontation, so at last, like a snarling dog being forced to give ground, he backed, scowling, out of the door.

Varsav wanted to chute the damn report and the Terran Isolationists along with it, but he knew that he couldn't. The Front would have been within their legal rights to shoot down any intruder who came in that close to their station space, and if they hadn't done that, Varsav was sure it wasn't due to any sense of mercy for whomever was inside the pod, merely the fact that they didn't have guns pointed in the right direction at the right time. Well, he was sure that was being corrected right now. In the meantime the Guildmaster had better just be grateful that he was dealing with a two-day-old complaint about an off-course pod, rather than the press closing in because some innocent tourist strayed off course on his holiday and was shot down by extremists. That had happened once off Destiny Station, and it was a scene he hoped never to repeat.

If only you could demand that people were
civilized
before you let them settle in outspace....

With a grunt he called in his aide and gave him the sheet of data specifications. Let him see what he could find out now, two days after the fact. He suspected the thing was far gone, probably on a station somewhere, or maybe out of the node entirely. Two days was a long time in outspace. Oh, well, they'd try. And he'd file a report for the Front and they would bitch and moan . . . in short, business as usual. These Isolationist stations from Earth might be nasty and hellishly dangerous, but they were certainly predictable.

As for the pod, it was probably some teenager out for a joy ride.
Buzzing
a station, they called it. Each generation had its own particular stupidity, and the current one seemed to encourage reckless behavior when it came to transit law. He'd check the records from the educational circuit and see what the young ones were being arrested for these days. Maybe add a class or two on
Why I Should Not Annoy Isolationists.
Or even better, he thought darkly,
How Not to be so Stupid In My Youth That I Will Never Reach Adulthood.

Maybe he could force all the would-be hackers to take that class, too. Some of them could use it.

I
t was his downshift when the message came. That was all right. He didn't mind his sleep being interrupted, if it was for a reason.

He tapped the com and muttered, “What?”

“You wanted to know as soon as we got something off the Front's station,” a voice said hoarsely. It was his Director of Programming, and his long hours of labor sounded clearly in his voice. “I think we just did.”

He was awake at that, and putting on the headset. Magnetic contacts snapped into place and the start-up icons filled his field of vision. He brought his interface online and said, “Let me see what you've got.”

It came directly into his head, and spread itself out across his field of vision. He shut his eyes to make it clearer.

TROUBLE COMING. THE ENEMY SEEKS CHILDREN. SEND ALL HOME ASAP. LUX AETERNA.

Sleep was gone from his brain in an instant. His hands on the coverlet flexed and unflexed, as he read the message again. And again. Damn, but it looked promising.

“Where did you get this?” he demanded.

“Being sent out from the Front's main processor.”

“Do you know where it's going?”

A pause. “We have the codes. We're working on them. I thought you would want to see this right away.”

“You're right. I did. Thank you.” Jesus Christ, they'd caught the bastards at something, at last! Was it Lucifer? The signature certainly implied that.

If so ... he drew in a deep breath, feeling the flush of impending triumph flood his system. He'd watched two pilots killed by this thing. One of them had died in his arms, struggling against the plasteel bonds that kept him from tearing out his own throat. Varsav had sworn vengeance upon the maker of Lucifer, above and beyond anything the Guild might seek. Those were
his
people who were killed, outpilots supposedly in
his
care, for whom he was responsible. The man who had attacked them attacked him as well.

And now perhaps they had a way to take the bastard down.

He read the message again. There was no mistaking the conspiratorial tone. And it had come up in response to one of his search clusters for Lucifer ... he glanced at the date and time to see just when the original message had been sent. With the monumental backlog of correspondence his people had to sort through on this project, it could have been hours ago. Days, even.

He looked at the date given for transmission. It was some time ago, all right. Nearly two days. Long enough for the data trail to be stone cold ... as if they could follow it anyway. The Front wasn't likely to let him search their station computers, not without a warrant from the Prima, and even then they'd fight about it.

Two days . . .

A thought nagged at him. He tried to ignore it, focusing once more on what a pleasure it would be to prove that the Isolationists were connected with Lucifer. What if they were the ones who had launched it in the first place? What if he could find evidence of that? Or perhaps ... create evidence of that?

Two days.

He tried not to remember the man who had stood in his office only hours ago, complaining of a pod in the Front's station space. He tried to ignore that, because it wasn't at all connected to this.

Was it?

With a muttered groan he flashed up a general control icon and called for his personal files. The Front's complaint was there, waiting for him. He read it again, and looked for the part that told when the spatial transgression had taken place.