Empire from the Ashes Read online

  "Well, sure," Sean said. "But why do you need them?"

  "I don't. What I need is to get you inside White Tower with this." He extended the pen. Sean took it with a baffled air, and Colin smiled unhappily.

  "That's not exactly what it looks like, Sean. You can write with it, but it's actually a relay for my own sensors. With that in your pocket, I can carry out a full-spectrum scan of your surroundings. And if you take the L Block elevators, you'll pass right through Geo Sciences on your way upstairs."

  "Oh ho!" Sean said softly. "In other words, it'll get you in by proxy?"

  "Exactly. If Dahak is right—and he usually is—somebody in Geo Sciences is in cahoots with the mutineers. We think they're all Terra-born, but whoever it is may have a few items of Imperial technology in or near his work area."

  "How likely is that?"

  "I wish I knew," Colin admitted. "Still, if I were a mutineer, I'd be mighty tempted to give my buddies a leg up if they need it. There're a lot of fairly small gadgets that could help enormously—test gear, micro-tools, mini-computers, maybe even a com link to check in if they hit a glitch."

  "Com link?"

  "The Imperium hasn't used radio in a long, long time. Give your boy a fold-space link, and you've got totally secure communications, unless somebody physically overhears a conversation, of course."

  "I can see that, but do you really think they're going to leave stuff like that just lying around?"

  "Why not? Oh, they'll try to keep anything really bizarre under wraps—I mean, the place is crawling with scientists—but who's going to suspect? Nobody on the planet knows any more about what's really going on than I did before Dahak grabbed me, right?"

  "There's that," Sean agreed slowly. "And this gizmo—" he waved the "pen" gently "—will let you pick up on anything like that?"

  "Right. Unfortunately—" Colin met his brother's eyes levelly "—it could also be picked up on. It doesn't use radio either, Sean, and I'll be using active sensors. If you pass too close to anyone with the right detection rig, you'll stand out like a Christmas tree in June. And if you do..."

  "I see," Sean said softly. He pursed his lips and drew the relay slowly through his fingers, then smiled that same slow smile and slid it neatly into his shirt pocket. "In that case, you'd better jot down that 'note' of yours in case Major Simmons wants to see it, hadn't you?"

  * * *

  The sentries carried slung assault rifles, and artfully camouflaged auto-cannon covered Sean's old Caddy as he braked gently at the security barricade's concrete dragon's teeth. The last major attack by the Black Mecca splinter faction of the old Islamic Jihad had been over a year ago, but it had killed over three hundred people and inflicted a quarter-billion dollars' worth of damage on ConEurope's Werner von Braun Space Control.

  The First World had grown unhappily accustomed to terrorism, both domestic and foreign. Most of the world—including the vast majority of Islam—might condemn them, but Dark Age mentalities could do terrible amounts of damage with modern technology. As Black Mecca had proven when it used a man-portable SAM to knock down a fully-loaded ConEuropean Valkyrie just short of the runway... onto a pad twelve minutes from launch with a Perseus heavy-lifter. Terrorism continued to flow in erratic cycles, but it seemed to be back on the upsurge after a two-year hiatus, and the aerospace industry had apparently become Black Mecca's prime target this time around. No one knew exactly why—unless it was the way aerospace epitomized the collective "Great Satan's" wicked, evil, liberalizing, humanizing technology—but Shepard Center was taking no chances.

  "Good morning, sir." A guard touched the brim of his cap as he bent beside the window. "I'm afraid this is a restricted area. Public access is off Fountain Boulevard."

  "I know," Sean replied, glancing at the man's neat NASA nameplate. "Major Simmons is expecting me, Sergeant Klein."

  "I see. May I have your name, sir?" The sergeant raised an eyebrow as he uncased his belt terminal and brought the small screen to life.

  "I'm Sean MacIntyre, Sergeant."

  "Thank you." Klein studied his terminal, comparing the minute image to Sean's face, then nodded. "Yes, sir, you're on the cleared list." A raised hand beckoned to one of his fellows. "Corporal Hansen will escort you to White Tower, Mr. MacIntyre."

  "Thank you, Sergeant." Sean leaned across to open the passenger door for Corporal Hansen, and the guard climbed in and settled his compact assault rifle carefully beside him.

  "You're welcome, Mr. MacIntyre," Klein said. "And may I extend my condolences on your brother's death, sir?"

  "Thank you," Sean said again, and put the car back into gear as Klein touched his cap once more.

  The remark could have been a polite nothing, but Klein had sounded entirely sincere, and Sean was touched by it.

  He'd always known his brother was popular with his fellows, but not until Colin "died" had he suspected how much the rank and file of the space effort had admired him. He'd expected a certain amount of instant veneration. It was traditional, after all—no matter how klutzy a man was, he became a hero when he perished doing something heroic—but Colin had been one of the varsity.

  Colin's selection as the Prometheus Mission's chief survey pilot had been a measure of his professional standing; the grief over his reported death, whether it was the loss felt by his personal friends or by men and women like Sergeant Klein who'd never even met him, measured another side of him.

  If they only knew, Sean thought, and barely managed to stop himself before he chuckled. Corporal Hansen would not understand his amusement at all.

  * * *

  The corporal guided Sean through three more checkpoints, then down a shortcut through the towering silver domes of Shepard Center's number two tank farm, where vapor clouds plumed from pressure relief valves high overhead. The distant thunder of a shuttle launch rattled the Bushmaster's windows gently as they emerged on the far side, and White Tower's massive, gleaming needle of mirrored glass loomed before them. Clouds moved with pristine grace across the deep-blue sky reflected from its face, and not even the clutter of communications relays atop the tower could lessen the power of its presence.

  Sean parked in the indicated slot, and he and the corporal climbed out.

  "Take the main entrance and tell the security desk you're here to see Major Simmons, sir. They'll handle it from there."

  "Thanks, Corporal. Are you going to get back to the gate all right?"

  "No sweat, sir. There's a jitney heading back in about ten minutes."

  "Then I'll be going," Sean said with a nod, and strode briskly through the indicated entrance and its metal detectors. A trefoil-badged holo sign on the wall warned of x-ray scanners, as well, and Sean grinned, appreciating Colin's reasons for recruiting him for this task. Even if no one recognized him, his various implants would undoubtedly give the security systems fits!

  The security desk passed him through to Major Simmons. Sean and the major had met before, and Simmons shook his hand, his firm grip a silent expression of sympathy for his "loss," and handed him a clip-on security badge.

  "This'll get you up to Captain Yamaguchi's office—it's good anywhere in the Green Area—and she's already pulled Colin's personal data for you. Do you know your way there, or should I assign a guide?"

  "No, thank you, Major. I've been here a couple of times; I can find my own way, I think. Should I just hand this—" he touched the pass "—back in at the security desk as I leave?"

  "That would be fine," Simmons agreed, and Sean headed for the elevators. He walked past the first bank, and punched for a car in the L Block, humming softly and wishing his palms weren't a bit damp as he waited. A musical tone chimed and the floor light lit above the doors. They opened quietly.

  "Here we go, kid," Sean murmured sotto voce. "Hope it works."

  * * *

  Colin lay back on his brother's bed, hands clasped behind his head, and his unfocused eyes watched sun patterns on the wall. He hated involving Sean—and hated it all the more b
ecause he'd known Sean would agree. The odds were tremendously against anyone noticing the scanner relay... but humanity's very presence on this planet resulted from a far more unlikely chain of events.

  It was a strange sensation to lie here and yet simultaneously accompany Sean. There was a duality to his senses and his vision, as if he personally rode in his brother's shirt pocket even as he lay comfortably on the bed.

  His implants reached out through the disguised relay, probing and peering, exploring the webs of electronics around Sean like insubstantial fingers. He could almost touch the flow of current as the elevator floor lights lit silently, just as he could feel the motion of the elevator as it climbed the hollow, empty-tasting shaft. Security systems, computers, electric pencil sharpeners, telephones, intercoms, lighting conduits, heating and air- conditioning sensors, ventilation shafts—he felt them about him and quested through them like a ghost, sniffing and prying.

  And then, like a bolt of lightning, a fiery little core of brighter, fiercer power surged in his perceptions.

  Colin stiffened, closing his eyes as he concentrated. The impression was faint, but he closed in on it, tuning out the background. His immaterial fingers reached out, and his brows creased in surprise. It was a com link, all right—a fold-space com, very similar to the implant in his own skull—but there was something strange about it... .

  He worried at it, focusing and refining his data, and then he had it. It was a security link, not a standard hand com. He would never have spotted it if Dahak hadn't improved his built-in sensors, but that explained why it seemed so similar to his implant. He insinuated his perceptions into the heart of the tiny device, confirming his identification. Definitely a security link; there were the multi-dimensional shift circuits to bounce it around. Now why should the mutineers bother with a security link? Even in a worst-case scenario that assumed Dahak was fully operational, that was taking security to paranoid extremes. Dahak could do many things, but tapping a fold-space com from lunar orbit wasn't one of them, and no one on Earth would even recognize one.

  He considered consulting with Dahak, but only for a moment. None of the mutineers' equipment could tap his link with the computer, but that didn't mean they couldn't detect it. The device he'd found had a piddling little range—no more than fifteen thousand kilometers—and detecting something like that would be practically impossible with its shift circuits in operation. But his implant's range was over a light-hour, and that very power would make it stand out like a beacon on any Imperial detector screen on the planet.

  He muttered pungently, then shrugged. It didn't really matter why the mutineers had given that particular com to their minion; what mattered was that he'd found it, and he concentrated on pinning down its precise location.

  Ahhhhhh yesssssss... . There it was. Right down in—

  Colin sat up with a jerk. Cal Tudor's office?! That was insane!

  But there was no doubt about it. The damned thing was not only in his office but hidden inside his work terminal!

  Colin swung his legs shakenly off the bed. He knew Cal well—or he'd thought he did. They were friends—such good friends he would have risked contacting Cal if Sean hadn't been available—and the one word Colin had always associated with him was "integrity." True, Cal was young for his position, but he lived, breathed, and dreamed the Prometheus Mission... . Could that be the very way they'd gotten to him?

  Colin could think of no other explanation. Yet the more he considered it, the less he understood why they would have picked Cal at all. He was a member of the proctoscope team, but a very junior one. Colin put his elbows on his knees and leaned his chin in his palms as he consulted the biographies Dahak had amassed on the team's members.

  As usual, there was a curious, detached feeling to the data. He was getting used to it, but the dividing line between knowledge he'd acquired experientially and that which Dahak had shoveled into a handy empty spot in his brain was surprisingly sharp. The implant data came from someone else and felt like someone else's. Despite a growing acceptance, it was a sensation he found uncomfortable, and he was beginning to suspect he always would.

  But the point at issue was Cal's background, not the workings of his implant. It helped Colin to visualize the data as if it had been projected upon a screen, and he frowned as the facts flickered behind his eyelids.

  Cal Tudor. Age thirty-six years. Wife's name Frances; two daughters—Harriet and Anna, fourteen and twelve. Theoretical physicist, Lawrence Livermore by way of MIT Denver, then six years at Goddard before he moved to Shepard... .

  Colin flicked through more data then stiffened. Dear God! How the hell had Dahak missed it? He knew how he had, and the nature of his implant was a factor, for he'd never realized how seldom Cal ever mentioned his family.

  Yet the information was there, and only the "otherness" of the data Dahak had provided had kept it at arm's length from Colin and prevented him from spotting the impossible "coincidence." Dahak had checked for connections with the mutineers as far back as college, but Cal's connection pre-dated more than his college career; it pre-dated his birth! If Dahak had a human-sized imagination (or, for that matter, if Colin had personally—and thoroughly—checked the data) they would have recognized it, for Cal's very failure to mention it to one of his closest friends would have underscored it in red.

  Cal Tudor: son of Michael Tudor, only living grandson of Andrew and Isis Hidachi Tudor, and great-grandson of Horace Hidachi, "the Father of Gravitonics." The brilliant, intuitive genius who over sixty years before had single-handedly worked out the basic math that underlay the entire field!

  Colin pounded his knee gently with a fist. He and Dahak had even speculated on Horace Hidachi's possible links with the mutineers, for the stature of his "breakthrough" had seemed glaringly suspicious. Yet they obviously hadn't delved deeply enough for reasons that—at the time—had seemed good and sufficient.

  Hidachi had spent twenty years as a researcher before he evolved "his" theory and he'd never done anything with his brilliant theoretical work. Nor had anyone else during the course of his life. At the time he propounded his theory, it had been an exercise in pure math, a hypothesis that was impossible to test; by the time the hardware became available, he was dead. Nor had his daughter shown any particular interest in his work. If Colin remembered correctly (and thanks to Dahak he did), she'd gone into medicine, not physics.

  Which was why Dahak and Colin had stopped worrying about Hidachi. If he'd been a minion of the mutineers, he would scarcely have invested that much time building a cover merely to produce an obscure bit of mathematical arcanum. He would have carried through with the hardware to prove it. At the very least, the mutineers themselves would scarcely have allowed his work to lie fallow for so long. As it was, Dahak had decided that Hidachi must have produced that rarest of rarities: a genuine, fundamental breakthrough so profound no one had even recognized what it was. Indeed, the computer had computed a high probability that the lag between theory and practice simply resulted from how long it took the mutineers to realize what Hidachi had done and prod a later generation of scientists down the path it opened.

  But this—!

  Colin castigated himself for forgetting the key fact about the mutineers' very existence. Wearisome as the passing millennia had been for Dahak, they had not been that for Anu's followers. They could take refuge in stasis, ignoring the time that passed between contacts with the Terra-born. Why shouldn't they think in generations? For all Colin and Dahak knew, the last, unproductive fifteen years of Hidachi's life had been a simple case of a missed connection!

  But if, in fact, the mutineers had once contacted a Hidachi, why not again? Especially if Horace Hidachi had left some record of his own dealings with Anu and company. It might even explain how a man like Cal, whose integrity was absolute, could be working with them. For all Cal might know, the mutineers were on the side of goodness and light!

  And his junior position on the proctoscope team made him a beautiful choi
ce. He had access to project progress reports, yet he was unobtrusive... and quite probably primed for contact with the same "visitors" who had contacted his great-grandfather.

  But if so, he didn't realize who he was truly helping, Colin decided. It was possible he was wrong, but he couldn't believe he was that wrong. Cal had to think he was working on the side of the angels, and why shouldn't he? If the mutineers had, indeed, provided the expertise to develop the proctoscope, then they'd advanced the frontiers of human knowledge by several centuries in barely sixty years. How could that seem an "evil" act to someone like Cal?

  Which meant there was a possibility, here. He'd found exactly the connection he sought... and perhaps he could not only convince Cal of the truth but actually enlist him as an ally!

  Chapter Eight

  "You should let me go."

  Sean MacIntyre's stubborn face was an unhealthy red in his Bushmaster's dash LEDs, and despite the high-efficiency emission-controls required by law, the agonizing stench of burning hydrocarbons had forced Colin to step his sensory levels down to little more than normal.

  "No," he said for the fifth—or sixth—time.

  "If you're wrong—if he is a bad guy and he's got some kind of panic button—he's gonna punch it the instant he opens the door and sees you."

  "Maybe. But the shock of seeing me alive may keep him from doing anything hasty till we've had time to talk, too. Besides, if he does send out a signal, I can pick it up and bug out. Can you?"

  "Be better not to spook him into sending one at all," Sean grumbled.

  "Agreed. But he's not going to. I'm positive he doesn't know what those bastards are really up to—or what they've already done to the human race."

  "I'm glad you are!"

  "I've already gotten you in deep enough, Sean," Colin said as the Caddy snarled up a grade. "If I am wrong, I don't want you in the line of fire."

  "I appreciate that," Sean said softly, "but I'm your brother. I happen to love you. And even if I didn't, this poor world will be in a hell of a mess a couple of years down the road if you get your ass killed, you jerk!"