Endymion

20

The surviving members of Sergeant Gregorius’s squad are Corporal Bassin Kee and Lancer Ahranwhal Gaspa K.T. Rettig. Kee is a small man, compact and quick in both reflexes and intelligence, while Rettig is tall—almost as tall as the giant Gregorius—but is as thin as the sergeant is massive. Rettig is from the Lambert Ring Territories and has the radiation scars, skeletal frame, and independent bent so stereotypical of ’stroiders. De Soya has learned that the man had never set foot on a full-sized, full-g world until he was twenty-three standard years old. RNA medication and serious Pax military exercise has toughened and strengthened the trooper until he can fight on any world. Reserved to the point of muteness, A.G.K.T. Rettig listens well, follows orders well, and—as the battle on Hyperion showed—survives well.

Corporal Kee is as voluble as Rettig is silent. During their first day of discussion, Kee’s questions and comments show insight and clarity, despite the brain-fogging ’effects of resurrection.

All four of the men are shaken by the experience of death. De Soya tries to convince them that it gets easier with experience, but his own shaken body and wits put the lie to these reassurances. Here, without counseling and therapy and the welcoming resurrection chaplains, each of the Pax soldiers is dealing with the trauma as best he can. Their conferences on the first day in Parvati space are interrupted frequently as fatigue or sheer emotion overcome them. Only Sergeant Gregorius is outwardly unshaken by the experience.

On the third day they meet in Raphael’s tiny wardroom cubby to plot their final course of action.

“In two months and three weeks, that ship is going to translate into this system less than a thousand klicks from where we’re station-holding,” says Father Captain de Soya, “and we have to be certain we can intercept it and detain the girl.”

None of the Swiss Guard soldiers has asked why the girl’s detention is required. None will discuss the issue until their commanding officer—de Soya—raises it first. Each will die, if necessary, to carry out the cryptic order.

“We don’t know who else is on board the ship, right?” says Corporal Kee. They have discussed these items, but memories are faulty for the first few days of their new lives.

“No,” says de Soya.

“We don’t know the armament of the ship,” says Kee, as if checking off a mental list.

“Correct.”

“We don’t know if Parvati is the ship’s destination.”

“Correct.”

“It could be,” says Corporal Kee, “that the ship is scheduled to rendezvous with another ship here… or perhaps the girl means to meet someone on the planet.”

De Soya nods. “The Raphael doesn’t have the sensors of my old torchship, but we’re sweeping everything between the Oort cloud and Parvati itself. If another ship translates before the girl’s, we’ll know at once.”

“Ouster?” says Sergeant Gregorius.

De Soya raises his hands. “Everything’s speculation. I can tell you that the child is considered a threat to the Pax, so it’s reasonable to conclude that the Ousters—if they know of her existence—might want to grab her. We’re ready if they try.”

Kee rubs his smooth cheek. “I still can’t quite believe we could hop home in a day if we wanted to. Or go for help.” Home for Corporal Kee is the Jamnu Republic on Deneb Drei. They have discussed why it would be useless to ask for help—the closest Pax warship is the St. Anthony, which should be, if de Soya’s orders were obeyed, in hot pursuit of the girl’s ship.

“I’ve tightbeamed the commander of the Pax garrison on Parvati,” says de Soya. “As our computer inventory showed, they have just their orbital patrol craft and a couple of rock jumpers. I’ve ordered him to put every spacecraft they have into cislunar defensive positions, to alert all the outposts on the planet, and to await further orders. If the girl was to get past us and land there, the Pax would find her.”

“What kind of world is Parvati?” asks Gregorius. The man’s bass rumble of a voice always gets de Soya’s attention.

“It was settled by Reformed Hindus not long after the Hegira,” says de Soya, who has accessed all this on the ship’s computer. “Desert world. Not enough oxygen to support humans—mostly C-O-two atmosphere—and it was never enough of a success to terraform, so either the environments are tailored or the people are. Population was never large—a few dozen million before the Fall. Fewer than half a million now, and most of them live in the one big city of Gandhiji.”

“Christians?” asks Kee. De Soya guesses that the question is more than idle curiosity; Kee asks few random questions.

“A few thousand in Gandhiji have converted,” says de Soya. “There is a new cathedral there—St. Malachy’s—and most of the born-again are prominent businesspeople who favor joining the Pax. They talked the planetary government—a sort of elective oligarchy—into inviting the Pax garrison here about fifty standard years ago. They’re close enough to the Outback to worry about the Ousters.”

Kee nods. “I just wondered if the garrison could count on the populace reporting it when the girl’s ship lands.”

“Doubtful,” says de Soya. “Ninety-nine percent of the world is empty—never settled, or gone back to sand dunes and lichen fields—with most of the people huddled around the big boxite mines near Gandhiji. But the orbital patrols would track her.”

“If she gets that far,” says Gregorius.

“Which she will not,” says Father Captain de Soya. He touches a tabletop monitor, which brings up the graphic he has prepared. “Here’s the intercept plan. We snooze until T-minus three days. Don’t worry—remember, fugue doesn’t have the hangover time of resurrection. Half an hour to shake the cobwebs out. Okay… so T-minus three days, the alarm goes off. Raphael’s been looping out to here—” He taps the diagram at a point two-thirds the way around the ellipsoid trajectory. “We know their ship’s C-plus entry velocity, which means we know their exit velocity… it will be about point-zero-three C, so if they’re decelerating toward Parvati at the same rate they left Hyperion…” The trajectory and timeline diagrams fill the screen. “This is hypothetical, but their translation point is not… it will be here.” He touches a stylus to a red point ten AUs from the planet. Their own trajectory ellipsoid blinks its way to that point. “And here is where we intercept them, less than a minute from their translation point.”

Gregorius leans over his monitor. “We’ll all be going like a crossdamned bat out of hell, pardon the language, Father.”

De Soya smiles. “You are absolved, my son. Yes, velocities will be high, as will be our combined delta-v’s if their ship commences deceleration toward Parvati, but relative velocities for the two ships will be almost nill.”

“How close will we be, Captain?” says Kee. The man’s black hair glistens in the overhead spots.

“When they translate, we’ll be bearing down on them at a distance of six hundred klicks. Within three minutes we’ll be able to throw a rock at them.”

Kee frowns. “But what will they throw at us?”

“Unknown,” says de Soya. “But the Raphael is tough. I’m betting that her shields can take anything this unidentified ship throws at us.”

Lancer Rettig grunts. “Bad bet to lose.”

De Soya swivels his chair to look at the trooper. He had almost forgotten Rettig was there. “Yes,” he says, “but we have the advantage of being close. Whatever they throw at us, they’ll have a limited time to throw.”

“And what do we throw at them?” rumbles Gregorius.

De Soya pauses. “I’ve gone over Raphael’s armament with you,” he says at last. “If this were an Ouster warship, we could fry, bake, ram, or burn it. Or we could just make its crew die quietly.” Raphael carries deathbeam weaponry. At five hundred klicks, there would be no doubt of their effectiveness.

“But we’re not going to use any of that…” continues the father-captain. “Unless we absolutely have to… to disable the ship.”

“Can you do that without danger of hurting the girl?” asks Kee.

“Not with a hundred percent assurance of not hurting her… and whoever else is aboard,” says de Soya. He pauses again, takes a breath, and continues. “That’s why you’re going to board her.”

Gregorius grins. His teeth are very large and very white. “We grabbed space armor for all of us before leaving the St. Thomas Akira,” grumbles the giant happily. “But it’d be better if we practiced in it before the actual boarding.”

De Soya nods. “Three days enough?”

Gregorius is still grinning. “I’d rather have a week.”

“All right,” says the father captain. “We’ll wake up a week before intercept. Here’s a schematic of the unidentified ship.”

“I thought it was… unidentified,” says Kee, looking at the ship’s plans now filling the monitors. The spacecraft is a needle with fins at one end—a child’s caricature of a spaceship.

“We don’t know its specific identity or registration,” says de Soya, “but the St. Anthony tightbeamed video that it and the Bonaventure took of the ship before we translated. It’s not Ouster.”

“Not Ouster, not Pax, not Mercantilus, not a spinship or torchship…” says Kee. “What the hell is it?”

De Soya advances the images to ship cross sections. “Private spacecraft, Hegemony era,” he says softly. “Only thirty or so ever made. At least four hundred years old, probably older.”

Corporal Kee whistles softly. Gregorius rubs his huge jaw. Even Rettig looks impressed behind his impassive mask. “I didn’t know there ever were private spacecraft,” says the corporal. “C-plus, I mean.”

“The Hegemony used to reward high-muck-a-mucks with them,” says de Soya. “Prime Minister Gladstone used to have one. So did General Horace Glennon-Height…”

“The Hegemony didn’t reward him with one,” says Kee with a chuckle. Glennon-Height was the most infamous and legendary opponent the early Hegemony ever had—the Outback’s Hannibal to the WorldWeb’s Rome.

“No,” agrees Father Captain de Soya, “the general stole his from the planetary Governor of Sol Draconi Septem. Anyway, the computer says that all of these private ships were accounted for before the Fall—destroyed or reconfigured for FORCE use and then decommissioned—but the computer appears to be wrong.”

“Not the first time,” grumbles Gregorius. “Do these long-range images show any armament or defensive systems?”

“No, the original ships were civilian—no weapons—and the St. Bonaventure’s sensors didn’t pick up any acquisition radars or pulse readings before the Shrike killed the imaging team,” says de Soya, “but this ship’s been around for centuries, so we have to assume that it has been modified. But even if it has modern Ouster standoff weaponry, Raphael should be able to get in close, fast, while we hold off their lances. Once we’re alongside, they can’t use kinetic weapons. By the time we grapple, the energy weapons will be useless.”

“Hand to hand,” says Gregorius to himself. The sergeant is studying the schematic. “They’d be waiting at the air lock, so we’ll blow a new door here… and here…”

De Soya feels a prickling of alarm. “We can’t let the atmosphere out… the girl…”

Gregorius shows a shark’s grin. “Not to worry, sir. It takes less than a minute to rig a big catchbag on the hull… I brought several with the armor… and then we blow the hull section inward, scoot in…” He keys a closer image. “I’ll rig this for stimsim, so we can rehearse in three-D for a few days. I’d like another week for sim.” The black face turns toward de Soya. “We may not get any fugue beauty sleep after all, sir.”

Kee is tapping his lip with a finger. “Question, Captain.”

De Soya looks at him.

“I understand that under no circumstances can we harm the girl, but what about others that get in the way?”

De Soya sighs. He has been waiting for the question. “I’d prefer that no one else dies on this mission, Corporal.”

“Yes, sir,” says Kee, his eyes alert, “but what if they try to stop us?”

Father Captain de Soya blanks the monitor. The crowded cubby smells of oil and sweat and ozone. “My orders were that the child is not to be harmed,” he says slowly, carefully. “Nothing was said about anyone else. If there’s someone… or something… else on the ship and they try to get in the way, consider them expendable. Defend yourselves, even if you have to shoot before you’re certain you’re in danger.”

“Kill them all,” mutters Gregorius, “except the kid… and let God sort them out.”

De Soya has always hated that ancient mercenary joke.

“Do whatever you have to do without endangering the girl’s life or health,” he says.

“What if there’s only one other on board standing between us and the girl?” says Rettig. The other three men look at the ’stroider. “But it’s the Shrike thing?” he finishes.

The cubby is silent except for the omnipresent ship sounds—expanding and contracting metal from the hull, the whisper of ventilators, the hum of equipment, the occasional burp of a thruster.

“If it’s the Shrike…” begins Father Captain de Soya. He pauses.

“If it’s the wee Shrikee,” says Sergeant Gregorius, “I think we can bring a few surprises for it. This round may not go so easy for that spiked son of a bitch, pardon my language, Father.”

“As your priest,” says de Soya, “I will warn you again about the use of profanity. As your commanding officer, I order you to come up with as many surprises as you can to kill that spiked son of a bitch.”

They adjourn to eat their evening meal and plan their respective strategies.