Accepting the Lance, page 15
part #22 of Liaden Universe Series
The scene changed. The general theme was the same—too many bodies tangled together, the clear sounds of mischief being done—but on a different street. The first had been Blair Road; Miri thought, Pat Rin’s territory. This was Hamilton—Penn Kalhoon’s territory, and if there was anything Penn Kalhoon didn’t allow on his streets, it was mayhem.
The scene switched again—Vine’s street this time, same song and dance. Vine didn’t mind a little excitement now and then, but he’d been leading the way in cleaning up his streets, mostly because his territory abutted the port and he stood to profit from presenting a clean, safe Surebleak experience to anybody who ventured outside the gates.
The scene changed again—different street, more of the same—and it was Andy Mack’s garage, right here in the port that she was looking at, and a flicker of what might’ve been live flame, before the scene changed and it was the Portmaster’s Office, and a crowd yelling so loud you couldn’t hear the words…and there came Port Security, sticks out and peacemakers on stun…
“They are not soldiers,” Nelirikk commented from behind her.
“No, just streeters,” Miri said, frowning.
“Why do they…riot now?” Nelirikk asked.
Miri sighed.
“That’s a good question. Let’s hope the Watch gets hold of somebody who has the answer.”
Jelaza Kazone
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
“Will you go to stores at once?” Val Con asked Emissary Twelve, as they crossed the brown lawns to the main drive.
“I think,” she replied slowly, with a certain note of surprise in her voice, “that I will visit the Elder Tree. That seems…necessary. For an hour.”
Ah, indeed?
Val Con sought the Tree’s presence, and found it, lurking with some amusement.
Do not, he thought at it sternly, break the guest.
Laughter greeted this, and the impression of having his cheek kissed roguishly. He sighed.
“Certainly, if the Tree requires you, there is nothing I may say,” he said, aware again of the Tree’s laughter. “Ask Mr. pel’Kana, the butler, to find me for you, when you are returned and ready to explore stores.”
“You are generous with your time. I am in your debt.”
“Not at all,” he said politely.
He received Emissary Twelve’s bow with an inclination of the head, and watched her walk away toward the garden before he entered the house.
Mr. pel’Kana met him at the door, rather pale of countenance.
“Sir,” he said breathlessly. “There is, perhaps, an—emergency.”
Val Con paused. Mr. pel’Kana was not prone to overstatement.
“Very well. May one know the nature of the emergency?”
“It is…Jeeves, sir. He is—he is on the drive, and I believe—I believe you ought to attend him. Sir.”
“I will do so at once,” Val Con said, which did not seem to soothe the butler noticeably. “Please, take a few minutes to calm yourself. I’ve found that Mrs. ana’Tak’s raisin cakes have great restorative powers.”
That sally produced a half-smile.
“They do, indeed, sir. They do, indeed.”
* * *
Had he continued with Emissary Twelve down the driveway, he would have seen Jeeves at once, poised as it were, very near the Clutch vessel. His attitude was…unusual. If one might say that a man-high metal cylinder with a glowing ball situated at the apex was standing too still, then Jeeves was standing too still—preternaturally still.
There was also the matter of the headball itself, which most usually glowed orange, occasionally blue, or pale red. At the present it was a dull and grubby white, barely aglow at all.
Val Con took a breath. He had seen something like this, many years ago. The low energy display indicated that all nonessential functions had been assigned to a particularly large task.
That Jeeves stood here, now, in this state, was—unsettling.
Jeeves was house security: he controlled the gate, the shielding, and life support. As Val Con was well aware, there were backup systems, even unto tertiary backup systems, woven into Jelaza Kazone. Even if—unthinkable!—Jeeves should become incapacitated, the house would be protected.
However, one would, naturally, very much like to know if Jeeves were incapacitated.
Val Con approached the too-still cylinder with its grubby headball.
“Jeeves,” he said quietly.
Silence. There was a single dull flicker…and Jeeves spoke.
“Working,” he said in a flat, mechanical voice.
“Working,” Val Con repeated, walking forward. “Working on what, I wonder?”
Jeeves’s headball flared orange.
“Master Val Con, please return to the house. The shields are going up.”
Val Con blinked—and bowed.
“I will be in the delm’s office and will receive your report when it is ready.”
* * *
The amber light was lit.
Val Con paused. The amber light was the dedicated channel for the Bosses of Surebleak, and it was seldom used. The Bosses of Surebleak preferred to meet face-to-face every ten days local, as a demonstration that peaceful meetings could not only be maintained, but produced useful results.
Between meetings, the preferred method of communication between Bosses was comm call and, rarely, letter.
For the channel to be put into use…something must be wrong, Val Con thought, and recalled Jeeves, standing on the drive…
Shields are going up.
Val Con sat down and touched the channel button.
Violence exploded onto the screen—rioting, he saw, not military action; the few uniforms were Watch jackets, and it was notable that the crowd melted away from those jackets, rather than attacked.
The scene changed, showing him in quick succession Hamilton Street, Blair Road, Joppa…
…and the port.
There was a noisy crowd at the portmaster’s door, armed with rocks, which were ineffective against the blastcrete walls. Port Security was moving in there, and the one face Val Con saw clearly before the feed moved on was decidedly not amused.
The Emerald was next—there were flashbangs in play there—and just down the street, the office of the Road Boss, and a particular optimist throwing himself against the door.
Val Con drew a breath, his hand moving toward the comm just as it chimed.
“Miri,” he said, as the inner office unfolded before his mind’s eye. “There is a man trying to break into the front door.”
“Wish him luck with that,” she said calmly. “We’re locked in all right an’ tight. McFarland says to stay put, which don’t seem a bad notion.”
“Not a bad notion at all,” Val Con said, blinking away the office at the port in favor of the feed on his screen.
“There are several blocks in the city engaged,” he said, “though it seems as if the Watch is making its will known.”
“Good,” Miri said. “Funny thing about all those different parties—Cheever thought so anyway, and so did I. They all started at the same time—like somebody hit the start-shift bell, he said.”
Val Con frowned. “One would have supposed we would have heard of something so…uncharacteristically organized.”
“You would, wouldn’t you?” She took a breath. “So, we got a pro organizing.”
“It may be so. There are, after all, pros on-planet.”
“That’s so. But you gotta ask, why now?”
“Yes,” Val Con said softly. “That is the question. Answer it, and we will know which pro, and the ultimate goal. If it is local, then the Bosses have more work to do.”
“And if it’s the DOI…”
“This seems rather…small for an operation planned by the Department,” he murmured, eyes on the feed.
Definitely, the various actions were breaking up. The Watch was mopping up. Port Security, with the assistance of Scouts on duocycles, were clearing the crowds.
“The entrance to the Emerald has been cleared,” he murmured, “and also the door to the Road Boss’s office. Those who targeted Andy Mack’s garage are inclined, it seems, to hold—no. A duocycle has made a compelling argument, and there is nowhere to run. Hands are extended for binders.”
“Hope some of those people know something useful,” Miri said.
“In—” He drew in a sharp breath at the new screen.
“What’s wrong?”
“Shan’s building site has been bombed,” he said. “I—”
He had seen devastation among the equipment and stockpiled supplies, nothing that seemed to be a body—
Opening a subscreen, he slapped up the schedule and breathed a sigh of relief.
“There was no one scheduled on site today,” he told Miri. “We have something more—Melina…”
Melina was Boss Sherton, who held the territory behind their own land—and even as his fingers moved over the keyboard, seeking more information, he remembered that it was Melina who had control of a property that might solve Lady yo’Lanna—
“Melina’s been bombed?” Miri asked worriedly.
“No, your pardon. Some abandoned mining and farming rigs spontaneously woke and are moving toward the village.”
“Were moving toward the village.” Jeeves’s voice came from the ceiling, sounding a little thin still. “Master Val Con, I regret that my concentration on that solving caused you concern. I am quite well and in no danger; merely, I had reallocated my resources in order to halt the machines before they reached the village. This has been done.”
“How?” Val Con asked, feeling Miri’s concentration sharpen.
“A simple matter of finding and transmitting the correct command codes. Unfortunately, in this case, simple did not mean easy. There were many sets of command codes for the particular machines that had waked. I needed to establish the exact machine identification, locate the proper command codes and, ah, insist that I was a key-holder empowered to transmit those codes.”
“What influenced them to wake, I wonder?” Val Con murmured.
“I am investigating that now and will report when I have information.”
“Thank you. Are you aware that Shan’s property has been attacked?”
“Yes. I am reviewing the feed and querying the port for ID.”
“Thank you,” Val Con said again. “And the shielding?”
“I believe that I may drop full shielding, though I will remain on alert.”
“Thank you, Jeeves,” Miri said. “How’s Emissary Twelve?”
“She and the Tree are in rapport. Emissary Twelve has her hands against the Tree’s trunk in the classic stance. I believe that she may—yes, I see on the grass the remains of a seed pod she has been given to eat.”
Miri groaned. Val Con laughed.
“It’s funny?” she asked him.
“Possibly.”
“Okay, then. How about I’ll come home, so we can figure out just how funny it is.”
“McFarland told you to stay where you are.”
“Well, he did, but all I’m seeing on the feeds is cleanup, like you said. And, yanno, there’s something streeters say sometimes that’s pertinent here.”
“And that is?”
“Cheever McFarland ain’t the boss of me.”
Val Con laughed.
“A useful phrase. I shall remember it. May I ask that you and Nelirikk undertake not to get killed on your way home?”
“We’ll be careful,” she told him, and said, gently, in Liaden, “Until soon, Val Con–husband.”
“Until soon, cha’trez.”
The comm light went out.
He glanced at the screen; the feed showed calm streets with Watch uniforms here and there. People were boarding up broken windows, sweeping up glass, righting overturned carts, and testing kicked-in doors for hinge damage.
There was some residual smoke on Blair Road, and a cluster of volunteer firefighters taking care of it. That seemed the worst problem still ongoing.
The riots had stopped as they had begun, at very nearly the same moment.
And, thinking of that…
“Jeeves, how many territories were involved in today’s action?”
“Five confirmed small riots in the territories of Boss Conrad, Boss Kalhoon, Boss Vine, Boss Threadle, and Boss Wentworth. Targets at the port were the Portmaster’s Office, Emerald Casino, the office of the Road Boss, Andy Mack’s garage, Tantara Floor Coverings.
“It remains uncertain if the action against the village under Melina Sherton’s protection was part of that larger action.”
“The machines—what roused them?”
“A remote command; much the same as that which put them back to sleep,” Jeeves said. “I had hoped to discover an operator signature in the logs, but whoever transmitted the codes left nothing behind.”
So, Miri had not been wrong, Val Con thought. They were dealing with a pro.
He shivered.
Surebleak Orbital Influence Zone
Northern L5 Limits
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
“The stink of space,” some called it, and in this system it was more of a stink than in others, according to Win Ton, who had handled the recovery of the first two derelict spacecraft and had far more prior experience than Kara.
To her, the odor was of hot metal and ozone, surprisingly sweet. The scent permeated the deck as Kara opened the faceplate of the light-duty suit, pleased to see that the venerable ion propulsion units on this relay unit weren’t dust-crusted or pitted. The failure that had put it out of service was elsewhere—perhaps something as simple as a suspend-service order from a frugal, departing, mission control agent.
For all that it was potentially functional, the thing was, to Kara’s eyes, ugly. The columnar-framed bus was similar to one of the other units they’d brought in, the brain stage wrapped in a very basic honeycomb micrometeor shield while the modular propulsion systems were wrapped in foil, pulse magnets hanging—or protruding, anyway. In space, they wouldn’t look so odd, but here the craft was cradled so she could get at it without hazard.
“Model? Serial Number? Builder?” asked Joyita, which was the data required for each craft they took on board, with identification and the condition of each.
Though they had not yet received the portmaster’s acceptance of their written proposal, Theo said that they should proceed as if it had been accepted, which was only reasonable in Kara’s opinion.
Kara climbed around the cradle, nose, and sensor units, seeking signs of chemical leakage while her eye, trained by ghosting after Win Ton’s exploration of the other units, was quick.
“The bus says it is a Remco-Carresens Mark II, Margate Zone Works. This is engraved on a plate, with a number: four zeroes leading and…perhaps it is one-kay-zero-one-seven. Do you think that Margate Zone Works truly built a thousand of these units?”
Joyita stifled a laugh.
“The engineer does not approve of the equipment?”
“Not entirely…”
“Regarding your question,” Joyita said. “The unit we found at Libration Point Four was one-kay-zero-zero-six, behind four zeros. I think, if there were thousands of them, these are not proof! I suspect that the Gilmour Agency bought buses and used them to drop in whatever they needed.”
“This bus is more than adequate for its purpose,” Kara said. “A good shop might well have turned these out between larger jobs. I am made unhappy with the tie-ons and mixed equipment—such as we have here—which have not been duplicated in any of the other units. It is as if each one was cobbled together from the spares bin! Clearly, the parts were not expected to serve long, but the bus will outlive its tie-ons, as it is quality-built.”
“I’m relieved you consider the bus adequate,” Joyita said, with a half-smile. “You’ll find Margate Zone Works plates in several locations on this ship, which was plainly built for the ages.”
“My point,” Kara said, picking up the hand-scanner. “Margate Works undertook smaller projects when there was nothing larger to hand, but they did not stint on quality.”
Joyita suddenly frowned down at one of the screens on his desk.
“Do a quick sweep,” he said. “Bechimo has located a dense ball of dust, which is giving off—peculiar signals. Theo is taking us in close, to investigate. All hands are called to the bridge.”
* * *
Kara settled into her station, watching the screens. The dustball was odd; the signals it was emitting even odder. Bechimo’s approach was, of course, cautious. Theo was first board, utterly concentrated on her screens and, so Kara feared, also on an internal dialogue with her ship.
“How do you find our newest capture?” Win Ton asked from third screen. It was not idle curiosity, nor boredom which prompted the question, Kara thought. Win Ton had trained her, and he therefore held a teacher’s interest in her work.
Kara turned her chair slightly to face him.
“The newest is much the same as the first,” she said, “a sturdy and well-made bus burdened with makeshift monitors.”
She sighed.
“I believe that what we are discovering is that each of the libration points was…somewhat properly monitored at the beginning of the Gilmour Agency’s residency on Surebleak. At first, they simply launched what was required from Surebleak orbit since—as the records indicate—they were doing a significant amount of prep work. Later, they used company ships to pop things off near where they were wanted and allowed the survey work to stand as status quo.”
Win Ton moved his hand, inviting her to go on.
“Yes, well, here we have the rest of the repeating story. The monitors were left hanging in orbit, abandoned, though they might have been retrieved and repurposed. However, the Gilmour Agency, from the records provided by the port, seems to have cared little for economy.
“Today’s capture is dirty, of course, but like the others, it can certainly be cleaned. I wish for more hands aboard, if you will have it, so that we might refurbish the buses. Surebleak can surely find a use for them.”
