Glory Point (Gigaparsec Book 4) Read online

  “Lower?” Kesh choked on the indignity. “I need to use my bridge to send a copy of my will and get a copy of my new Yellow Slash ID.”

  “It isn’t your ship anymore,” she pointed out. “The academy paid you well for returning Echo, including all fuel expenses incurred in the last few years.”

  He checked his bank balance on his computer pad, something he hadn’t had time for in weeks. Someone had deposited hundreds of millions of credits in his local account. “This is too much.” Words he never thought he’d utter.

  She shrugged. “Since Max and I are Magi by marriage, we can’t profit. As a representative of his government, neither can Reuben. That leaves you. Head back to your room and relax for a few minutes while I talk to the scientist caretakers.”

  “Why can’t I tell them in person?”

  She stepped into the lift unimpeded. “They won’t allow non-Magi to see them.”

  “But you’re Human.”

  “I got a promotion,” she said cryptically as the lift door slid shut.

  In his room, Kesh paged through financial updates. After spending a hundred years accruing a vast portfolio of investments, he was shocked by how much his financial success now bored him. At the top of his field, his life’s work had been rendered trivial by the Magi payment.

  An hour later, Roz tapped on his door, dressed in more comfortable Human clothes. However, she still wore the gem on her forehead. “Hey. We reached a compromise. Their pilot and I will switch off shifts until we dock at Bright Frontier. During days, my support crew can assist me on the bridge, but the hatch to the officers’ deck will remain locked. I’ll be the first to enter the deck and the last to leave.”

  “I suppose they’ll decontaminate the room in between?” Kesh joked.

  She glanced down in embarrassment.

  “You’re serious?”

  “They don’t want to end up sick like Echo.”

  Kesh swiveled his head as if searching for prey. The Magi superiority complex irritated him. “Because of the rush, we won’t be trading. You’ll rarely need me on the bridge. What’ll I do with my free time? The slow spiral to the jump point will take us two weeks.”

  She shrugged. “Cross-train like everyone else. Learn new skills. Max is in his hammock. Maybe he’ll offer some suggestions. If you’ll excuse me, I have to wake Echo and convince her to prolong her suffering for the sake of a race that wants to destroy us.”

  He stomped off to the maple forest. He found all three male mammals camped there, even the tan, pointy-eared Bat.

  “What’s with the tent?” Kesh asked.

  Unrolling his sleeping bag, Reuben explained, “I’ve been kicked out of my room. All the officer quarters have been taken by Magi.”

  “Sorry,” Max repeated from his perch in the hammock.

  “’S okay,” the Goat said philosophically.

  Kesh whispered, “Why is Roz still wearing that headband?”

  Max rolled his eyes. “The other Magi defer to her when she has it on. By contrast, they treat me like a low-functioning Down Syndrome child.”

  “Magi have that?” Reuben asked, tightening a rope attached to a tent stake.

  “Even with genetic engineering, one in a million is missing a link to the Collective Unconscious. They call them the Unfortunate.” No longer in a lounging mood, Max climbed out of the white-canvas sling. “When scientists eliminate these undesirable traits from embryos, their immune systems stop working. So the Unfortunate are tolerated, treated as handicapped, and hidden from the Union in shame.”

  Aware that Max disliked bigotry, Kesh changed the subject. “Any suggestions what I can do for the next two years since I’m no longer captain and chief trader?”

  Reuben said, “I can train you to target the antimissile turret.”

  “I’ll work with you on hand-to-hand,” offered Menelaus.

  Kesh snorted. “I’d snap your scrawny arms with a single tail swipe.”

  “I’ve been practicing with a neural staff for the last six months. I might surprise you.”

  Max mused for a moment. “I can teach you about ancient literature to help you polish your English. I have a feeling you’ll enjoy Machiavelli.”

  “That will cover the first six weeks. What then?”

  “How do you want galactic society to remember you?” Max asked.

  “I feel an obligation to future generations to share the fruits of my mind more than that of my loins the way my father did.”

  “Your father had a great mind,” said Menelaus. “His treatise on wrestling and its metaphors helped me to master Saurian society.”

  Kesh considered this. “My students at the strategy college will need a new textbook for the postwar era. I’ve toyed with the idea of a game-theory analysis of Union economics.”

  “You could include anecdotes on how you beat the Phib stock market,” Max suggested.

  “Yes. I could frame it as a history of the last century and demonstrate the changing models.” Suddenly, two years to plan his legacy didn’t seem long enough.

  3. The Need for Speed

  Each day, Kesh trained at hand-to-hand combat. If nothing else, the physical conditioning kept him from getting a tree-possum belly. Fortunately, daily meal runs had kept his leg muscles in shape, even in low-g. “Why am I doing push-ups?”

  Max turned the question back on him. “What’s you’re weakest weapon in a wrestling match?”

  “Arms, but they’ll never be stronger than my tail.”

  “When you’re in a spacesuit, what’s the most effective attack?”

  “Sword. Ah. Against the boys and their shock staves, I’ll spend most of my time blocking. The push-ups build my endurance for sparring.” After a few more shaky repetitions, Kesh noted, “You realize most combats are over in seconds.”

  “Against several ships worth of opponents, you’re going to be running a marathon. The first person to get tired dies.”

  He continued the exercise without grumbling. Max was the last surviving member of an elite team that had hunted war criminals. If he asked you to do something, you swallowed your ego and listened.

  When Kesh’s arms tired, he rested them and lifted his bodyweight with his tail. The crew watched him with admiration while Max lectured. “If he can lift his bulk with that muscle, think about how far he could throw you. Aim your sonic stun guns at here to stop a charge.” He borrowed the staff to touch a spot near the basal ganglia on Kesh’s lower back.

  “What about a knock-out blow to the skull?” asked the Bat.

  “They usually have a helmet plus thick bone plating to shield that area. Go for the imminent threat first. If he pulls a gun, aim for this joint. Prewar armor won’t cover it, and he’ll drop his weapon. He’ll consider surrendering once he’s out of options.”

  Kesh’s main sparring handicap was the mild short-sightedness that all members of his race had. During a hunt, they relied on smell, thermal trace, and hearing to zero in on prey. Within a meter, if he could see it, his teeth or claws could snatch it. However, Max used a wooden staff with practiced ease to hold him at bay. When the medic attacked, it wasn’t like the hate beatings Kesh had received outside bars. Max would warn him to keep up his guard and then demonstrate the weakness with a sharp rap to a sensitive point.

  By the end of the first week, he’d made enough progress that he changed opponents to Reuben. Max made constructive comments to each combatant. He told the Saurian, “Elbows are excellent weapons, but don’t get them in range of a Phib’s jaws.”

  Kesh nodded, embarrassed by the slip. Strong legs couldn’t be used to their fullest in low-g for fear of floating away. Teeth anchored the attacker to the victim while rear claws gutted him. In turn, he gave a tip to Reuben. “You can keep the staff out all the time, but don’t draw your practice blade until you’re about to use it.”

  “That gives you the advantage,” Reuben complained, using the wooden sword anyway.

  “When you bare steel, it’s an insult,” Ke
sh said, unsheathing his own blade.

  “Why?” The Bat asked.

  Max explained, “If a being has your respect, you challenge him to a wrestling match.”

  Reuben crossed his weapons to block an overhand blow.

  While all the weapons were in the air, Kesh did a tail sweep on his opponent’s legs.

  The Ram hit the deck hard.

  Max gave him a hand up. “The sword is for dispatching things that are too foul to eat or touch. When pointing a sword at a Saurian, you equate him to trash. Once you issue that insult, you’d better finish him. Work on striking the pain points I taught you.”

  Knowing the target made defense easier. Kesh decided the best way to counter mammal agility was paradoxically to hold still. They would wear themselves out dancing around and sweating in even light gravity. The longer the battle lasted, the more Reuben showed up in infrared, a bold contrast to the background.

  At the right moment, Kesh moved faster than his opponent could follow. He grabbed the extended sword arm and yanked it forward. Then Kesh spun, and his tail propelled the Ram into a wall.

  Daisy rushed in to examine the loser.

  Max announced to the audience, “If you let them lure you into tail range, you’re toast.”

  “Nothing broken,” she announced.

  “The criminals we’re facing won’t pull any punches.”

  Raising his hand, Daisy asked, “What if we find ourselves facing multiple opponents?”

  “Run,” Max said matter-of-factly.

  “That’s the same thing you say for every combat.”

  Kesh added, “Lead them to a chokepoint, and face them one at a time. If you’re lucky, the dead body will block the others while you escape.”

  Menelaus bowed. “Thank you, teacher. This is good advice. Can we spar now?”

  “When you’ve beaten the Goat and prove yourself worthy.” Kesh was exhausted, and the Bat seemed far too eager.

  Holding his skull, Reuben said, “I think we’re going to need grenades.”

  “Fragmentation grenades would hole your suit and the ship,” Daisy replied.

  “What about glop grenades—that stuff that expands in air.”

  “Like antitorpedo foam.”

  “Bingo. We use it to pack fragile cargo or plug two-meter hull leaks. It takes a minute to harden, but if it sucks into space, the stuff freezes solid.”

  Kesh nodded. “I’ll spring for a crate. Everyone in the fight should carry a couple. If you find a bunch of sleepers, you can seal them in their cryo units without killing them.”

  “You both throw like a girl,” Reuben jeered. “You’d end up gluing yourselves to the deck.”

  Rather than take offense, Kesh said, “Okay. We’ll get launchers to practice with.”

  Max shook his head. “Too many things to carry. In combat, avoid complex gear with limited charges. It’d be better for us to add an atlatl bracket to the end of your staff.”

  “Like a jai alai scoop to make balls go faster?” Kesh asked. He’d seen games on the low-tech world Eden where the ball reached speeds 300 kilometers per hour. “Good idea, but we’ll have to practice a lot. Make it a few crates.”

  ****

  On day twelve of the nexus approach, Echo called a crew meeting in the dining hall to discuss her estimates. Kesh volunteered to watch the sensors because the frail Magi cringed whenever she saw a Saurian. The zero-gravity bridge adjusted to his preferences, converting the dome to a full-sky view. The interfaces on the ship were holographic and customizable. By comparison, Saurian tech was sticks and stones. He accessed the map Echo was sharing and listened to the intercom with half an ear.

  Echo explained, “Magi space stretches 512 parsecs in every direction, a perfect cube.”

  What is their fanatic fixation with threes? Kesh wondered. In the base 8 numbering system used by the Union, the decimal 512 was eight to the third power, written 1000.

  “In all that space, the Magi have inhabited a mere 512 worlds,” Echo said. Granted, this was over ten times the Human planetary count but still sparse.

  He glanced at the cross-section view with their starting point at the edge of the tear-shaped Goat region. He’d forgotten how small their domain was compared to other species. Their destination, Nivaar, was represented as a vague circle to the left. The Magi had promised not to share the exact location of the Banker homeworld with other races.

  Between the two, Magi space bloomed with a network of fine cracks. As she zoomed onto the ship’s meandering route, the image reminded him of an aerial view of a river through the desert.

  The Magi continued, “Deviating from the straight line to refuel will increase our flight time to over sixty hops. To reach Nivaar, we’ll also need to travel hundreds of parsecs spinward.”

  Roz minimized the problem. “If you measure along the hypotenuse, that’s a couple more hops—noise.”

  Max lobbied not-so-subtly against the mission. “We’re still in the 760-day range in the worst case, thirty days past your estimate for D-Day.”

  “Less than 5 percent error,” Roz said. “I can reduce our subbasement turbulence to allow longer dives and decrease our fuel consumption. That’ll make up the difference. I simply need to jettison some big things we have no need for.”

  “Like Reuben’s ego?” Echo joked.

  The Magi’s amiable mood meant Roz had persuaded her to linger for this last mission. Kesh could smell the pheromones, a sign Roz had won the navigator over with sex appeal. Mammals always seemed to be in heat. That was a common way they passed their spare time. Perhaps it was because they were so fragile and limited to one child at a time instead of a clutch of eight to twelve. Kesh scribbled notes on his pad for the alien psychology part of his treatise.

  Roz said, “One of the mathematicians at the presentation noticed something. When we lost Icarus drives from the missile attack, the fuel use per jump decreased more than anticipated. I think external Icarus fields act like giant rubber rafts, pulling us up toward subspace.”

  “Because of the buoyancy, we have to plunge even deeper to stay under for the required distance,” Echo restated. “We could test the theory by turning off all the active fields before this jump. The fields will take sixty minutes to fade, but it’s worth the effort for my favorite pilot.”

  Get a room, Kesh groaned to himself.

  Roz said, “We could sell the excess drives at Filangis.”

  “No spares?” Echo asked in a worried tone. Anything less than a safety factor of two frightened the long-lived Magi.

  “With the subbasement drive, the Icarus engines are just window dressing.”

  “We need the old engines in case the subbasement drive breaks,” Echo said with the insistence of a three-year-old.

  Roz rolled her eyes. “If you keep clinging to the old ways, we’ll never make progress. How about the required one hundred twenty-eight Icarus engines plus four spares?”

  Echo balked at the daredevil attitude. “Twelve spare if our experiment proves the reduction generates significant savings.”

  “Done,” Roz agreed. “The asymmetry caused by the yacht clamped to our hull is also wreaking havoc with the flow equations.”

  “It’s not my fault. The Magi shuttle is taking up the cargo bay,” Reuben replied.

  “We’d have a lot less mass and eight fewer engines to worry about if we left the Ram’s craft at Filangis Station.”

  Reuben burst out, “All my belongings are in there! State secrets.”

  “And booze,” said Max. “Since that shuttle belongs to the Goat government, we shouldn’t take it into Magi space, let alone get it blown up in the Banker borderlands.”

  “I’ll need the yacht’s computers to dock with the Library of Xerxes in orbit around Mnamnabo and retrieve the information.”

  “Fine,” said Roz. “Leave that albatross at the Goat refueling station on the other side.”

  “Tansdahl Scrapyard,” Reuben said. The asteroid belt close to the border jump nexus w
as a dumping ground for garbage from across the galaxy. Every gram of matter was reused or recycled by the resource-poor Goats. “They trade trash for fuel.”

  Roz said, “Right. Once we enter Magi space, I want to see how much we can increase our max jump distance.”

  This started another argument, and Kesh turned the volume down.

  As Deep 6 executed an automated turning maneuver, a distant star winked at him from the peak of the bridge’s dome. Outside the atmosphere, stars didn’t twinkle—unless something in between blocked that light. What worried him was that the blink had occurred in the part of the main viewer known as the dead spot on Saurian vessels, hidden by the crosshairs. Fortunately, Magi didn’t use crosshairs.

  They could be flying into an ambush. The energy sensors showed no Icarus field signatures, but those could be turned off if a crew didn’t mind drifting. His father had used this tactic against rebellious Phibs during the war.

  Kesh couldn’t be certain without pinging them with radar and giving away the element of surprise. Instead, he queried the navigation beacon with a point-to-point laser. According to the navigation beacon’s log, a convoy of three Blue Claw Saurian ships had jumped out a few hours ago. The Blue Claws hadn’t been happy about the loss of their exclusive mining contract for Niisham. Thanks to his team, the Bat prison world had been granted independence at the Convocation.

  He engaged solar filters and stared at a sunspot that didn’t change shape or size. Even at full magnification, he couldn’t be certain.

  Over the intercom, Kesh summoned the Ellisons.

  When they arrived, he announced, “I can’t prove it yet, but I’d bet my left index finger a Blue Claw ship is lurking by the nexus. The other two in its convoy will provide it with an alibi if something happens to us.”

  Roz sounded doubtful. “Blue Claws specialize in physical labor. They aren’t the brightest bulbs.”

  “They don’t need to be in order to block us from the nexus,” Kesh replied.

  To disprove his theory, Roz tweaked the ship’s path ever so slightly. The fuzzy ship outline moved back into the screen dead spot within seconds. She cursed. “What do we do?”