Death's Bright Day: Chapter Five

Bergen and Associates Yard, Cinnabar

    Adele settled comfortably at the signals console of the Princess Cecile. Because the ship was well overstrength, every seat on the bridge was taken. Tovera would normally have been in the striker’s seat on the back of the signals console; for this voyage she was on a jumpseat against the aft bulkhead and Midshipman Hale shared Adele’s console.

    The Sissie’s bridge was more of a home to Adele than the library of Chatsworth Minor was…though when she thought about it, she didn’t think of anyplace as “home” in the sense that other people seemed to do. She lived in her own mind.

    That had been as true while Adele was growing up as the child of a powerful Senator Lucas Mundy as it was now as a respected member of the crew of the Princess Cecile. In the years between she had lived hand to mouth as an orphan and a penniless scholar. During that time her ability to ignore external reality had been a valuable survival tool.

    “Testing thrusters One and Eight,” a voice from the Power Room announced over the PA system and the general channel of the ship’s intercom. Adele didn’t think Pasternak himself was speaking, but the sound quality was too poor for her to be certain.

    Two of the eight thrusters lit, shaking the ship and blasting iridescent plasma into the water of the slip. Their nozzles were flared open to minimize impulse; even with the leaves sphinctered down to minimum aperture, two thrusters weren’t enough to lift the corvette from the surface.

    Adele brought her display up and began sorting communications inputs. There wasn’t any reason to do that here and very little benefit to the practice anywhere else, but it was Adele’s habit to know as much as possible about her surroundings. Not because of possible dangers, but simply because she liked to know things.

    A tell-tale showed her that Hale was echoing Adele’s display. That wasn’t a problem — if Adele had wanted privacy, she would have enforced it — but it reminded her for the first time that her console mate was a colleague who in theory she might be training.

    Adele pinned a small real-time view of her face to Hale’s display; the top register of her own display already had images of all the personnel seated at consoles. On a two-way link to Hale she said, “I intercept signals as a matter of course and put them through a mechanical sort. If we were on another planet, even if it weren’t a potentially hostile one, I’d give a quick look at the findings in case I saw something that the algorithm didn’t.”

    The Power Room continued to announce thruster testing, working in pairs through the set. The big pumps in the stern throbbed, replenishing the reaction mass tanks from the harbor. The same tanks would be distilled to provide drinking water: impurities mattered very little when the fluid was being stripped to plasma and spewed through the thrusters.

    The impurities mattered even less when the mass was being converted to anti-matter before being recombined with normal matter in the High Drive motors. The High Drive was more efficient and provided much higher impulse, but it could only be used in the near vacuum of space: in an atmosphere, the inevitable leakage of antimatter which had escaped recombination flared violently and devoured everything nearby, including the hull.

    “Do you have any information about Jardin beyond the Sailing Directions which might be useful, ma’am?” Hale said. Though their faces were only about forty inches apart on opposite sides of the immaterial barrier of a holographic display, only the intercom made it possible for them to communicate without shouting. “I don’t mean restricted information, just…anything that would let me do my job better.”

    Since they were able to see one another, there was no need for the ponderous communications protocols which the RCN drummed into its signals personnel. Adele had no training: she was in civilian life a librarian whose skills fitted her for far more subtle uses of electronics than remembering to mutter “Over” and “Go ahead” and similar procedures.

    “Yes,” Adele said. She brought up an image of Cuvier and Cuvier Harbor on Jardin; Hale could manipulate the scale and orientation on her own display if she chose to. The harbor would have been an open roadstead, dangerous in a storm from the west, had it not been narrowed by moles from each headland. There was a passage through which surface vessels could enter.

    “We’ll be landing here at the capital?” Hale said.

    “We’ll land at Cuvier because it’s the only starport on Jardin with proper facilities,” Adele said, highlighting twenty-one points in and around the city; she had to increase the scale slightly to capture two outliers. “It’s the capital by convenience, but Jardin really doesn’t have a government, just a management reporting to the First Families who own the planet. Each family has a house near Cuvier though many of the principals live on distant estates. Here they are.”

    “Closing main hatch,” Vesey announced. She was in charge of lift-off from the armored Battle Direction Center in the stern. Personnel at the duplicate controls there could control the ship if the bridge were out of action; or as now, when Daniel Leary at the command console was explaining procedures to his bride in the striker’s seat.

    The Princess Cecile’s main hatch clanged. A rapid-fire ringing followed as bolts dogged it tight. Other hatches were still open, including two on the bridge itself. Ozone from the thruster exhaust made Adele’s eyes water, but she was too used to the experience to be consciously aware of it any more.

    “The Sailing Directions didn’t say anything about political problems,” Hale said.

    The Sailing Directions for each region of the human universe were compiled by Navy House for the guidance of spacefarers. The RCN personnel doing the work paid no attention to planetary sensitivities: if in the opinion of Navy House a ship landing on Jardin risked being caught up in a revolution, the Sailing Directions would have said so. That was true even for worlds within the Cinnabar empire, let alone neutrals like Jardin.

    Hale added, “I’d think a setup like that was a bomb waiting to go off.”

    “Perhaps if Jardin were more crowded it would be, Hale,” Adele said. “The First Families have a tradition of service to the community. Ordinary citizens have a high standard of living, and Jardin doesn’t allow immigrants. Agriculture and the service industries are largely staffed by foreigners, but they’re on two-year contracts which are rigidly enforced. I gather the workers — ” laborers and whores ” — are also well treated and well paid, but so long as they’re shipped off promptly, that isn’t important.”

    “It sounds like paradise, doesn’t it?” Hale said.

    “Perhaps,” said Adele dryly. “There are no libraries that I’ve found in the records.”

    Jardin was ideally placed to gather information. Ships came from all portions of the human universe, bringing the rich and powerful to relax. The logs of those ships contained unique information which could be compiled into an unequaled database.

    No one on Jardin was interested in doing that. Adele felt her lips quiver. Despite what she’d said to Hale, it was possible to gain Jardin citizenship by the unanimous agreement of the First Families. Perhaps Lady Mundy could arrange that on her retirement from the RCN.

    “Ma’am?” Hale said. “Ah, you’re smiling?”

    Was I? Apparently she had been. Aloud Adele said, “I expect to be dead when I leave the RCN, Hale. But it seems to amuse my subconscious to consider what I might do if I remained alive.”

    She paused thoughtfully and added, “Of course that leaves the question of providing for Tovera.”

    Thinking of her own retirement was a grim joke. Imagining that Tovera would survive was more of a farce.

    “Ma’am?” Hale said.

    “Sorry,” Adele said, realizing that she had drifted off in the middle of an exposition. “The daSaenz family — ” she focused down on a highlight immediately to the north of the city and harbor ” — isn’t very politically active, but it’s among the wealthiest of the First Families. They own the Starscape Caves in the limestone under their mansion.”

    She continued to increase the magnification on a courtyard building perched on a peak. It was almost a rectangle, but the angles had been adjusted slightly to allow for the contours of the ground. The end overlooking the city was a four-story tower, but the other walls were only two.

    The slope immediately below the building was forested. Scattered city housing continued some distance up from the water, but the straight terminus implied a boundary line.

    “Mistress Leary’s father spoke with enthusiasm about the caves, so Daniel –” should she have said, “Captain Leary?” Too late now. “– contacted the present head of the family to be sure that he’d be able to take Miranda through. She’s Carlotta daSaenz, and she was very gracious.”

    Hale’s image was frowning. “Six — ” the captain’s call sign and the crew’s usual nickname for Daniel ” — sent a communications ship to Jardin?”

    “There’s enough traffic between here and Jardin that he didn’t need a dedicated vessel.” Which would have been enormously expensive, even for Daniel. “An admiral taking his family on holiday to Jardin carried the message there as a favor, and Lady Carlotta sent her reply by a returning yacht — a favor to her. It arrived two days ago.”

    All eight thrusters were alight together. Though their nozzles were flared, the corvette bucked and pitched. Plasma vaporized divots in the slip, and water surged in from the harbor proper to replace it. The Sissie’s hull and outriggers responded to the flow. Hydraulic rams closed the bridge hatches, but other hatches remained open. The sting of ions became sharper, and there were occasional sparkles in the air.

    “These caves weren’t mentioned in the Sailing Directions,” Hale said, indicating both that she was listening and that she wanted to hear more. Active damping kept ambient noise from overwhelming their conversation, though loose objects were jouncing against every surface.

    “There are animals in the caves which give off light,” Adele explained. “Metazoans, which I suppose means insects — multicelled creatures, anyway, but they’re spread in flat patches on the walls. They glow in the dark, which is why it’s the Starscape Caves.”

    She shrugged, though she wasn’t sure that the gesture was visible on the tight head shot she’d put on Hale’s display. “It doesn’t sound very interesting to me,” she said, “but it impressed Captain Dorst. And I’m sure Daniel will be pleased to see the animals for himself. I forwarded all the information I found on them — ” which wasn’t very much ” — but I don’t understand any more than I’ve told you. If that.”

 

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    “Ship, prepare for lift-off!” Vesey said.

    “Ma’am,” Hale said. “Thank you. And thank you for getting me this opportunity to serve with Captain Leary.”

    “Lift-off!”

    Vesey sphinctered the thruster apertures to minimum diameter. The mass flow was already at full, so the concentrated jets began to lift the corvette in a bubble of steam and free ions.

    Adele settled onto her couch. Plasma thrusters didn’t crush people down, but the Sissie could exceed two gravities once it had overcome inertia. She was thinking about Hale’s words.

    Adele had met Hale, an out of work midshipman, and had suggested to Cory that he tell his former classmate that Captain Leary was hiring crew to take a freighter to Corcyra. Hale had applied and signed on as a common spacer. She had been an asset for that voyage, and she was aboard the Princess Cecile now as a midshipman.

    That had certainly been what Hale wanted, but Adele wasn’t sure it had been a favor to the young woman. Service on a warship was dangerous even in peacetime, and there was rarely peace where Daniel Leary took the Princess Cecile.

    Everyone dies, Adele thought as the ship roared and trembled into the sky. Which means that we’re all racing on the way to our deaths.

    She smiled.

 

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The Matrix: between Cinnabar and Jardin

    Daniel walked out on the hull of the Princess Cecile ahead of Miranda. He wore a rigging suit, armored against knife-edged fractures and hawsers worn into bristles of spearpoints; Miranda was in an air suit of tough fabric.

    The Matrix, a panorama not of stars but of universes, flared above them. The Sissie was in a bubble universe of her own. The sails stretched on her four rings of antennas blocked Casimir energy and shoved her from one bubble to another. It was impossible to exceed the speed of light, but constants of velocity and distance varied among universes. By using those variations a starship could travel great distances in the sidereal universe, making a series of relatively short voyages in other universes.

    Getting used to a stiffened hard suit required practice; until then the user was both uncomfortable and clumsy, which increased her danger. An air suit was safe for any regular use except running up and down the rigging to clear jams or to splice cables, and even for those tasks it was sufficient for anyone who was careful. A rigger in a crisis couldn’t be careful, not and do his job.

    Daniel worried about Miranda, but — he grinned within his helmet — he was going to do that anyway. He didn’t hold Miranda directly, but he gripped the safety line which connected their suits. So long as one of Miranda’s magnetic sandals was planted on the steel hull, she should be fine; but it was her first experience outside a starship, let alone a starship in the Matrix.

    The Sissie would continue on her present course for the next seventeen minutes, so the antennas and yards were motionless; there was no chance of a broken sheet whipping anyone off the hull. The riggers on duty — the starboard watch under Dasi — were at their scattered stations.

    When hydro-mechanical equipment changed the area and aspect of the sails, the riggers watched to be sure that the result was what the semaphores indicated that the astrogational computer had intended. If a cable jammed or a gear didn’t rotate by the right number teeth or if any of a myriad of other possible things went wrong, the riggers corrected the problem with whatever tool was required.

    Daniel stopped ahead of the Dorsal A Ring antenna on the Sissie’s bow. He waited until Miranda halted beside him, then took out the thirty-six inch brass communication rod which the tool shop of the Bantry Estate had manufactured to his specifications. He placed one end against Miranda’s helmet, then moved his own helmet against the other end and said, “This is all existence.”

    He swept his free arm across the pulsing ambiance. The dense liquid filling the sealed rod vibrated to carry his words to Miranda without the awkwardness of touching helmets. An electrical impulse impinging on the sails, even a low-powered radio wave, could send a ship in the Matrix wildly off course. Riggers used hand signals — and experience — when a problem required coordination.

    “These are every universe which has ever existed. This is the cosmos,” Daniel said. He took a deep breath and added, “This is paradise.”

    He smiled, though Miranda couldn’t see his expression while he was facing forward. Perhaps she could hear the flush of contentment in his voice.

    Miranda took her end of the rod to connect them firmly. “I can’t take it in,” she said. “I suppose that’s as it should be, since it’s well, everything. Each of those dots is a universe?”

    The Matrix was a wash of pastels, the color of each bead varying according to its energy state relative to that of the universe in which the corvette was travelling at present. The astrogation computer of a starship could plot a practical course between any pair of points entered into it.

    A really skilled astrogator, however, could shave hours or days off a course by studying the Matrix and choosing subtle gradations which better suited the ship’s purposes than the one-size-fits-all course which the computer provided. Daniel had been trained by his uncle, Commander Stacy Bergen, who had opened more routes than any other single explorer since the Hiatus in star travel had ended a millennium before.

    Daniel had heard himself described as his uncle’s equal as an astrogator, which he knew was not true. He liked to think that Uncle Stacy wouldn’t be embarrassed by his nephew’s abilities, however.

    “Daniel?” Miranda said. “You know you’re famous. Do you think about that?”

    Daniel felt his stomach tighten. Does she know what I’ve been thinking?

    But of course she didn’t, and anyway she hadn’t asked whether he was proud of his skills. She’d asked how famous he wanted to be.

    “I don’t think about fame at all,” he said. “Well, that’s not really true — I’m human, I like to be praised, I like to be able to get seats when we go out no matter where we go. But I’ve never done anything because I thought, ‘People will praise me for this.’ Never. I’ve done things because I thought they were the right things to do.”

    Or maybe because they were in front of me and I thought I’d try them. Much the way I used to pick up women at parties… Daniel didn’t say that, though it wouldn’t have surprised Miranda to hear.

    He turned his head so that he was looking out his right sidelight toward Miranda. Hardsuit helmets were fixed to the torso piece and did not rotate with the wearer’s neck.

    “Love,” Daniel said, “it’s like money. I like it and I like to spend it; but I spent money when I didn’t have it, so nothing much has changed there. As for power, I never wanted any except the power to run my own life.”

    He grinned again, broadly. “I actually have less of that now than I did when I was a cadet,” he said. “There’s thousands of people that want a piece of me; at the Academy I only had to worry about my instructors and the cadre.”

    The void before them was gradually turning green though the shade was barely bright enough to be called a color. The Princess Cecile would shortly transition into another universe. Since there was only a slight energy gradient, even a complete newbie like Miranda would be safe on the hull. Daniel intended to get her inside nonetheless.

    “What about friends?” Miranda asked.

    Daniel had been about to suggest they return to the forward airlock, but the question stopped him. “I…” he said. “Miranda, yes of course friends matter, more than anything else, I guess.”

    He wasn’t sure that was true: a lot of things mattered to him, duty and Cinnabar and Miranda and the Leary name and a score of other things that were now fluttering around in his mind. But certainly friends.

    “Having, well, being famous,” he said, “hasn’t brought me more friends, not real ones. It doesn’t work that way, you know that. The only real peer I have now is Adele. She doesn’t care what I’ve done for her or what I might do for her. None of the things that other people look at matter to her.”

    “But at the reception…?” Miranda said.

    The yellow-green ambiance was becoming more saturated, though it was still so faint as to be almost subliminal. Daniel shrugged mentally and said, “Vondrian and Ames and Pennyroyal, you mean? We knew each other at the Academy and knocked around together afterwards whenever we were all in Xenos — sitting in Navy House waiting for an assignment, often enough. We didn’t really spend a lot of time together.”

    He felt a tingling as the corvette neared the boundary layer. “There in the kitchen,” Daniel said, “when we tied one on…that’s the closest I’ve come to carefree friendship since I was promoted. It’s not exactly that we were carefree at the Academy. We worried about grades and promotion and money, all that sort of thing. But we were mates, and getting drunk with mates is…there’s no strings on it. And it’ll never be that way except maybe once in a while, like at the reception.”

    “Let’s go inside,” Miranda said, her voice very soft. She released her end of the commo rod and hugged him carefully.

    Daniel led the way back to the hatch. The Sissie was already pulsing as they began the transition, but they would be inside before real discontinuity.

    He closed the airlock behind them. Air pressure began to build, but before the light indicated it was safe to open the inner lock he leaned his helmet against Miranda’s. He said, “I keep thinking of Lord Anston, darling. An old man, frail and alone. But he was the greatest fighting captain the RCN ever had, in his day.”

    “You won’t go that way, Daniel,” Miranda said. “You won’t be a lonely old man.”

    Then she said, “One way or the other, my love, you won’t be that.”