A Star Wheeled Sky Read online

  “Do you believe that’s what’s happening now?” Zuri asked.

  “I think it’s a distinct possibility,” Ortteo said enthusiastically.

  “The Prophecies have all been interpreted and reinterpreted to mean many sorts of things,” Zuri reminded him. “A lot of the time, whether the specific interpretation is correct or not depends purely on how willing the listener is to subjectively ignore the parts in the passages which don’t fit our present reality.”

  “Quite true, Admiral,” Ortteo said. “But I remain an optimist. After all, we are participating in something historic, are we not? A doorway has been opened, yes? I can’t ignore the similarities and still call myself faithful to the Word. On some level, it all has to be true somehow. Regardless of whether or not our interpretation is correct.”

  “So,” Zuri said, “does that make us the ‘righteous’ from that story, or do we get to be the other guys?”

  Chaplain Ortteo laughed heartily.

  “I am hoping God is charitable with Starstate Constellar.”

  “Let’s both hope that,” Zuri said, and patted the religious officer on his shoulder.

  Arriving at the beltway’s end, Admiral Mikton led the way to the third of five different lifts, each ascending up a separate clipper gantry. The lift car was vacuum-proofed, its double doors opening with a slight hiss—as the pressure in the car equalized with the pressure at the gantry’s base. The lot of them could squeeze into the car, but just barely. When the doors shut, Admiral Mikton felt her stomach jolt, as the lift car shot upward. Her stomach jolted again when the car quickly stopped, and then she was exiting through the double doors into the pressurized gangway leading across to the hatch of the clipper itself.

  A space-suited orderly was waiting for them, and saluted as the admiral approached.

  “We’re fully fueled and ready to fly, ma’am,” he said.

  “Any problems with the clippers which have taken off so far?” Admiral Mikton asked.

  “Not so far as I know, ma’am. We’re coming up on our window for launch, so if you’ll allow me to show you to your seats, we’ll be on our way.”

  Like almost every spacecraft in existence, both large and small, the clipper was constructed in the manner of a building—its decks stacked perpendicular to the engines, like the floors of a skyscraper. When under thrust, the ship and its crew would experience a comfortable facsimile of gravity. For launch, however, both crew and passengers would be restricted to gee chairs. In the case of passengers specifically, those gee chairs were equipped with quick-deploy shrouds, so that no one catching a lift to orbit need bother with a clumsy suit. If the clipper depressurized, the shrouds would deploy and maintain individual atmosphere for every occupant until help arrived, or the crew—who were in suits—could get the clipper to a safe harbor.

  Admiral Mikton took her seat with the rest of her staff, buckling herself in tightly. Each gee chair was angled forty-five degrees to the plane of the deck, ensuring that when the engines kicked off, blood would not rush dangerously from any heads. Small lap tables, with attached display screens and keyboards, could be deployed from the sides, swinging around to rest over a passenger’s knees. Zuri used hers to call up a real-time chart showing the number of clippers which had already departed, and those yet to go. Inquiries from the ships in orbital dock had already begun to funnel into the Task Group command team message queue. While the rest of the passengers got settled, and the countdown to liftoff wound down, Admiral Mikton flagged those items she needed to attend to personally, and deferred the rest to her deputy, who would answer as he was able.

  For the first few minutes of flight, there wouldn’t be much to do except hang on tight.

  Just before the flight deck signaled the all clear to light the engines, Zuri switched her screen to show a perpendicular view out the side of the clipper’s nose. She could see the other clippers being readied in their gantries, and the smooth surface of the tarmac terminating in the far distance, against a backdrop of jumbled rock, further backed by jagged hills. The sky over those hills was beige, fading to rust red, which faded to black—with Planet Oswight’s main sun casting stark shadows to one side of the irregular mountains. For a brief moment, Zuri wondered if she would ever return to see that barren landscape again.

  Then the clipper was shaking and roaring—its cluster of fusion-rocket motors blasting a mechanized dragon’s breath down into the ducted baffles beneath the clipper’s launch stand. An audible thunk-a-thunk announced that the clipper’s gantry had cut loose, and the clipper began to rise. Slowly, but only for the first few seconds. Then, with increasing vigor—the acceleration pressing everyone aboard into the ample cushioning of their gee chairs.

  In her officer candidate days, Zuri would have given a whoop and a holler. Now, she simply smiled to herself. Enjoying the muscular, robust feeling of the clipper defying Planet Oswight’s gravity, as the ship climbed faster and faster for orbit. The view on her screen gradually revolved and tipped over, until the landscape was gone altogether. Just the stars showed—bright and perfect.

  Zuri had experienced such launches countless times, but she never ceased to wonder how it must have been for the first human beings—far back in the mists of a different age—who’d gone into space. Had they been terrified? Exhilarated? A combination of both? How had the gravity of ancient, lost Earth compared to the worlds people now inhabited? The modern clipper used a hydrogen-fusion powerplant design which had not changed in hundreds of years. What had the very first spacecraft used? Chemical rockets? Solid fuel? Had the first spacefaring human beings, cocooned within the earliest spacecraft designs, been confident that their vessels would survive launch, and return?

  So much about that era was eternally buried behind the wall of ignorance known as the Exodus. The home world of all humans, their star, and the other planets which surrounded it, were phantoms of legend—sources of endless speculation, some of which ran wild. Had the people of Earth been supremely long-lived and intelligent, possessing unfathomable wisdom and technology?

  Or had they been more like the humans of the Waywork?

  The fact that the Exodus had happened at all seemed to be ample evidence for the latter scenario. The war which had driven humanity from its birthplace must have been terrible indeed. Though very few details of that war remained. The survivors had escaped in slower-than-light arks—mammoth vessels more akin to mobile asteroids than the spacecraft used in the Waywork today. With no Keys nor any Waywork to utilize, the arks crept through interstellar space at a snail’s pace. For generations. Desperately seeking clement shores, on which to build new lives, and new civilizations.

  All the arks which had eventually reached the Waywork had been subsequently cannibalized or destroyed. Like Earth, they lived now only in legend. As did the other arks which had presumably gone wide of the Waywork. Stranded forever in the vastness of interstellar night? Settling isolated colonies forever cut off from the rest of those who survived? Perishing—voiceless—amidst the timeless immensity of the galaxy itself?

  The new system, waiting for Zuri’s Task Group, would hopefully answer some of these questions.

  Chapter 6

  Wyodreth Antagean suppressed the feeling of flightiness that dominated his senses. The experience of perpetually falling was a shock to his system after months spent living in Planet Oswight’s comfortable gravity. Now that he was crossing the clipper gangway to one of the three Antagean starliners which had been drafted into Constellar military service, Wyodreth left himself a mental note to get out and see the company’s orbital operations more often. It wasn’t good to get soft.

  “Sir,” said the Antagean-uniformed civilian flight officer on the other side of the ship’s hatch.

  “Everything’s still ‘go,’ Miss Wef?” Wyodreth asked.

  “We’ve had three other clippers dock, transferring personnel and cargo,” the flight officer replied. “Yours is the last of the day.”

  “Any problem interfacing w
ith the Task Group ship-to-ship network that Admiral Mikton is running?”

  “Once the military installed their special encrypt-decrypt units in our communication module, things got better.”

  “Good. How’s Captain Loper, and the rest of the team?”

  “Other than being fantastically annoyed at seeing his vacation cut short? Fine. The rest of us are just happy to hear about the nice bonuses.”

  “You oughta be,” Wyodreth said, smiling. “Even I was impressed with the DSOD’s offer. Hopefully none of you will have to be earning that money the hard way.”

  Wyodreth patted the flight officer on her shoulder, and began to pull himself past her. He was anxious to get to the command module, where he’d be able to get onto the Antagean intranet and talk to the other two ships he was shepherding for this trip.

  “Sir?” she said.

  “Yes, Miss Wef?” Wyodreth said, pausing his movement.

  “Do you really think it’s going to be dangerous?”

  “I honestly can’t say,” he admitted. “It’s not like any of us have ever done this before. Not even the DSOD. It’s a chance to literally go where nobody has ever gone. What that entails for us, in terms of risk, is difficult to gauge. I certainly hope that Captain Loper—and the other captains—put out my message to all three crews. Anybody who’s not up for this can say so. I won’t fault anybody for staying behind. Though, you’d be fools to pass on the cash.”

  “Oh, we love the kick in the paycheck!” Miss Wef exclaimed, smiling. “It’s just that…well, having all these military people around—they were putting lockers full of weapons into one of the cargo modules—sorta makes me nervous.”

  “Don’t sweat it,” Wyodreth said to her. “Having military people around makes me nervous too.”

  He tugged at the hem of his one-size-too-big DSOD mustard-yellow topcoat, for emphasis.

  Wef, along with several nearby Antagean employees, all broke out in laughter.

  “Come on,” Wyodreth said to them all, “let’s get our visitors strapped down and taken care of, right? We’ve still got my father’s reputation to uphold. We may be under Admiral Mikton’s command for now, but Antagean delivers first-rate service, before anything else. No matter who our passengers are.”

  The crew chorused their understanding, and began to politely herd the people coming in behind Wyodreth, to their respective seats.

  Like the clippers which had come up from Planet Oswight, each of the Antagean ships was built more or less like a high-rise, with thrust delivered via nuclear-fusion motors on the ground floor. Unlike the clippers, the starliners each had huge storage tanks for the slush hydrogen which was used as both reactor fuel and reaction mass—a necessary encumbrance, considering the vast distances each starliner needed to cover in a very short span of time.

  Not that crossing over the Slipway would require a great deal of fuel. The Key consumed the equivalent of a strategic hydrogen bomb during the instantaneous interstellar voyage. Which ate up just a fraction of the total hydrogen stored aboard.

  No, the bulk of the mass would be eaten up pushing each ship out to the distant Waypoint, and back again.

  Which reminded Wyodreth of a problem nobody had yet properly addressed. How were any of them supposed to tank up once they reached the other side of the mystery Waypoint? The standard starship facilities used to store and transfer slush hydrogen had been in existence throughout the Waywork for many centuries. Every significant outpost had them, along with the attendant manufacturing industry.

  The Task Group’s destination—presumably—had no such amenities. And while there were ways to distill the necessary slush hydrogen from raw materials at the destination, such a process would be messy, and protracted.

  With full tanks, each of the Antagean ships had enough fuel and reaction mass aboard to make a couple of full transits of a given system’s planetary plane—end to end. But no more. If suitable natural reserves could not be easily found or accessed, the entire Task Group might find itself stranded.

  “Figure it out as we go,” Wyodreth muttered under his breath, as he packed into a lift car that ran up and down a tube at the spine of the ship. He waited patiently while various civilian and military personnel got off at different levels—the civilians doing most of the directing, and the military people obediently going where they were told—then he was stepping off at the lift alcove within the command module proper.

  Captain Loper was there to greet his boss.

  “Another thirty minutes,” the captain said, his graying hair forming a half wreath around his shining, bald head. “Then I think we can button up, and join the formation that’s already taking shape a few thousand kilometers out from dock.”

  “Any problems with the cargo Admiral Mikton’s ordered aboard?”

  “We gave them precise specifications,” Loper said, “but they still sent up too much. Their own quartermaster officers have had to work it out, deciding which crates and lockers to keep, and which to send back with the clippers. I gather they didn’t get a lot of prep time themselves. DSOD is usually pretty good about not overdoing it, or underdoing it for that matter. But on this job? Nope.”

  “Well, if anyone had told me this morning, that I’d be doing any of this by dinner,” Wyodreth said, then let the thought hang in the air between them.

  Captain Loper merely grunted. A lifetime civilian pilot, he was nevertheless one of the most experienced men on the Antagean payroll. He’d been one of Wyograd’s first hires upon founding the company—before Wyodreth himself had been born. When Wyodreth had been a young man, sent to space to learn the ropes, Captain Loper had been a patient teacher. He’d since become one of the few people Wyodreth actually considered to be a friend.

  The two men trusted each other.

  “Congratulations,” Loper said, pointing at the new pin on Wyodreth’s collar.

  “Thanks,” Wyodreth said. “Temporary.”

  “Betcha you keep it, if we get back in one piece.”

  “You’re that optimistic, eh?”

  “Your dad hired me for my sunny side.”

  “And a good thing too. Look…Captain, I meant what I said. Nobody is under any company expectation to participate in the mission. Not even you.”

  “Are you kidding? By the Waymakers’ Ghosts, I wouldn’t miss this. We’re about to create history. I can tell my grandchildren all about it. Or, at least, somebody can tell them.”

  “Yeah. Well, before we go writing our collective epitaph, let’s ensure that we keep the Antagean end up. Some of these lifer DSOD people don’t take too well to being passengers only. Be courteous, but be firm. If anybody gets out of line, and won’t take no for an answer, you let me know, and I will make them take no for an answer. We’re being paid, sure, but we’re not getting enough to be treated badly.”

  “You think there will be fighting on the other side of the Waypoint?”

  “I think we’d be foolish to assume that Starstate Nautilan is not sending its own expeditionary force over their Slipway. Admiral Mikton, and that delegation from Family Oswight, are sure to bring some diplomatic clout to the table. But if the Nauties decide to shoot first and ask questions later, we might wind up caught in a nasty situation out of which there is no clean escape route.”

  “Speaking of the delegation,” Loper said, after clearing his throat uncomfortably.

  “Yes?” Wyodreth asked.

  “There was a bit of a switch-up during travel to orbit. Lady Oswight is currently making herself comfortable in the ship’s executive suite. Her, and that old bruiser who’s along to keep an eye on her.”

  “You’re joking.”

  “No.”

  “Why, by the Exodus, are they here? They’ve got their own ship for this voyage!”

  “Something about the Lady Oswight demanding to be part of the crew that’s going to be exploring the planets orbiting the target star, versus riding back and forth across the Slipway while they bring over fighting spacecraft from t
he security flotilla.”

  “What about her helpers and other staff?”

  “They went to the Family ship. Just the Lady Oswight and her bodyguard are with us. Oh, and one other unexpected guest too. He was on the clipper that docked right before yours did.”

  “Who?”

  “You ever hear of Zoam Kalbi?”

  “No…wait, yes. Yes. God, he’s that infotainer. Right? What is he doing onboard?”

  “Last-minute addition,” Loper said. “He cited Article Thirty-six.”

  “I didn’t even know he was in this system,” Wyodreth admitted.

  “Apparently, he was already here, doing some freelance work on an entirely different story, when he got word about the new Waypoint.”

  “So much for DSOD confidentiality!”

  “Inevitable,” Loper said. “Every Waypoint pilot—civilian or military—can see the new system on their charts now. Across the whole of the Waywork. There was no way this wasn’t going to become a very big deal, very, very fast. We’re just the ones who happen to be closest. The other Starstates will be chewing down Constellar’s front door, begging for an opportunity to cross Constellar space and see the new system.”

  Wyodreth massaged his forehead with a meaty palm, then slowly slid that palm down over his face, his fingers scraping the stubble which had accumulated on his cheeks during the day.

  “Dealing with a royal pain in the ass from a First Family is bad enough,” he said. “But carting along an infotainer too? I am amazed Admiral Mikton permitted it.”

  “Article Thirty-six is fairly broad,” Captain Loper said, then smiled wickedly. “You’re DSOD. You know that infotainers have been present and accounted for during every Constellar engagement going all the way back to the beginning of the war. Plus, the discovery of a new system is just the kind of story that could make any infotainer drool.”

  Wyodreth stared at nothing, his head tilted forward. The Antageans had no love for infotainers, nor the First Families for that matter. Dealing with both had been a necessary evil since the birth of the family business. But that didn’t mean Wyograd, nor his son after him, had to like it. In Wyodreth’s experience, infotainers and Family folk alike tended to have an overinflated opinion of their own importance. So far as Wyodreth was concerned, the fact that the former had the ears and eyes of the public, while the latter had the money and the traditional social standing, didn’t immunize either party against being complete pains in the collective Antagean ass.