The Web and the Stars Read online

  Subi Danvar greeted Gio in the main cavern, near one of the makeshift barracks. “You want to grab a beer?” the portly adjutant asked. He grinned. “You’re the only ‘machine’ who will drink with me.”

  “I was going to take a shower, but what the hell. That can wait, eh?” Gio patted Subi on the back, and they trudged off toward the drinking chamber that the Guardians had named the Brew Room.

  The bar inside the dimly lit space was a conversation piece in and of itself. The elongated, silvery shell of a decommissioned Digger machine sat on huge treads that were now bar seats on two sides, fitted with dirty pillows and mattresses to ease the discomforts that even heavy drinking could not mask. Thinker had devised a mechanized method of serving drinks, with glasses of beer popping out of openings all along the hull of the machine onto little platforms that formed tables in front of each seat.

  As the two men climbed on a tread and sat down, Gio felt he was making good progress toward getting close to Danvar, who had taken charge of the Guardians in Noah’s absence. Already Gio’s strong personality had gained him an important position in charge of ongoing construction activities at the base, and he expected further personal gains. That goal was much easier to achieve now that he had gotten rid of those two troublesome boys, Acey and Dux, by drugging them and dispatching them into space. He smiled, thinking about the confusion they must have felt upon waking up inside a cargo box in some distant star system, and not knowing who did it to them … although they must have had some suspicion. No matter, they were far away now and couldn’t get back anyway, because podship travel had been shut down.

  Just then a squat, female Tulyan entered the chamber. Zigzia was one of the few of her race who worked as a Guardian. Like Eshaz did before his departure, she performed ecological recovery and inspection operations. Now, she went to Subi and spoke to him briefly about an environmental-impact class she was starting for younger Guardians.

  While ordering a beer, Gio adjusted his armor so that he was more comfortable. He rested his arm on one of the machine’s nonfunctioning drill bits, a rough metal bar wrapped in padded cloth. Subi did the same with the drill bit beside him.

  The beer flowed while men and women in Guardian uniforms chattered noisily around them, drinking and telling stories, using alcohol to relieve the stresses inflicted on them by the continuing war against the combined forces of the Doge’s Red Berets and the corporate army of Francella Watanabe.

  In the midst of that conflict, Noah’s Guardian forces had been substantially restored on Canopa, and now amounted to thousands of Human and machine soldiers and equipment. All were housed in an elaborate network of underground burrows and large caverns that had been hollowed out by Digger machines that the Guardians had reclaimed. For the past month they had been raiding both Red Beret and CorpOne storehouses, and had also made a number of successful guerrilla attacks against troop barracks, weapons depots, and other military installations.

  “I find it amusing and ironic,” Gio said to Subi, “that we inhabit a warren of tunnels and caverns deep underground, with much of it directly beneath Noah’s old ecological demonstration compound.”

  “By design, my friend,” Subi said. He finished his fourth beer, then shoved the glass under a tap and watched it refill. “Noah chose this place right under the noses of his enemies, where they would not think to look.”

  “We lead a dangerous life,” Gio said, “though we do have a multifunction scrambler system that masks our heat, sound, and visual signatures.”

  The adjutant nodded. He had set the system up himself, with Thinker.

  Suddenly Subi Danvar felt the hum of machinery, but in a place where he hadn’t expected it, in the Digger bar itself. With a series of percussive clicks, the drill-bit armrests retracted and the tread began to move, propelling the entire bar slowly to Subi’s right. All along the tread, Guardians cried out and jumped off. Beer spilled.

  Subi swore, using the most choice selections in his colorful vocabulary. He jumped up on a platform, then noticed that Gio was walking on top of the moving tread, going against the motion and holding onto his glass of beer.

  After traveling a few meters to one side, still a good distance from the cavern wall, the mechanism stopped, and drill bits popped back out, still with their padding.

  Calmly, Gio placed his beer on a drinking platform that was directly in front of him now, and sat down again on the tread. Looking over at Subi, he said, “A little musical-bar-stool trick we added,” he said. “I suggested it to Thinker, and he thought it was a fine idea, to keep the Guardians alert to anything.”

  “They look more than alert now,” Subi said, resuming his seat beside Gio. “In fact, I’d say they’re in an ornery mood.”

  “Drinks are on me!” Gio said, as he watched people wipe dirt off their uniforms. “Set ’em up.”

  Actually, none of them had to pay for beers. It was one of the fringe benefits of their dangerous jobs.

  Gradually the word got out about what Gio Nehr and the machines had done, and nervous laughter erupted in the Brew Room.

  “When will it go on again?” a man shouted, as he climbed back up onto the tread.

  “When you least expect it,” Gio said.

  * * * * *

  Beer and hard drinks flowed, while Subi turned the conversation to the one that had grown closest to his heart, the whereabouts and safety of their missing leader, Noah Watanabe.

  “I’d like to break him out,” the adjutant said, “But we have conflicting reports on where he is.”

  “I’ve been on two of the recon missions,” Gio said.

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “Thinker got all the data, and doesn’t think our chances of finding Master Noah are very good, since there are too many possible holding places for him. This is a very large planet.”

  “No matter,” Subi said. “We’ll keep sending out robots and people like you. I promise you, we’ll find him no matter how long it takes. Some reports have him in one of the fifteen prisons on Canopa, or in one of the smaller jails, or even underground. I don’t think they took him off-planet, not with the cessation of podship travel and the slowness of other means of space travel.”

  “Sounds like you’ve analyzed every detail yourself,” Gio said.

  “I have, and I’ll never give up until we find him.”

  “I know you won’t. None of us will. At this very moment, Thinker is undoubtedly assembling all available data on where Noah could be, and running probability programs. Unfortunately, the Master’s captors have covered their tracks, and have dispersed many false clues as to his whereabouts.”

  As the buzz of conversation died down, Gio excused himself and walked wearily out into the main chamber, to the barracks there. Most of the other Guardians did the same, but Subi remained behind, nursing his last glass of dark ale.

  Whatever method the Guardians used to rescue Noah, it would have to be a guerrilla strike … in and out quickly, like the successful attacks they had been making against Red Beret and CorpOne facilities. The Guardians, even with the inclusion of Thinker’s small army, did not have the force necessary to fight their powerful foes any other way. They had to use cunning and subterfuge.

  Finally, Subi trudged back out into the main cavern, moving slowly and purposefully through the low illumination. As he climbed the stairs of the barracks, his thoughts drifted back to Giovanni Nehr.

  While Subi was impressed by the man’s energy and ideas, he was troubled that he could not quite figure him out, could not quite get a comfortable handle on him. At times, Gio could be smooth and erudite, while on other occasions he mixed easily with the lowest ranks, the grunts and trainees. He certainly was an independent sort, with potentially strong leadership qualities. But something troubled Subi about him, something he couldn’t quite grasp.

  In bed, he lay awake thinking about it. The teenage cousins had not liked Gio, based upon their prior relationship, but so far those details had not surfaced … and probably nev
er would, now that they had gone AWOL. Before that he’d asked the boys and Gio for more information, without receiving any satisfactory answers. Acey and Dux had probably gone off to join another treasure ship, or they were on some other space adventure. They were known to have talked about such things on the night before disappearing.

  Gradually the calming effects of alcohol sank in, and Noah’s loyal adjutant drifted off to sleep.

  Chapter Seven

  By their very nature, secrets are invariably contained in imperfect vessels that crack and leak, given the right set of circumstances.

  —Lorenzo del Velli

  On the strangest morning of General Jacopo Nehr’s life, he awoke to hear alien voices jabbering inside his bedroom, as if people had seeped through the walls from somewhere outside. But as he sat up and yawned the voices drifted away, and finally fell silent.

  Swinging out of bed, he shambled to a bay window, thinking it must have been a dream. Still, the voices had seemed to come from somewhere around here. At a window seat, he pushed a mobile nehrcom transceiver out of the way and sat down to gaze out toward the front walkway of his forested estate.

  Rubbing sleep from his eyes, Nehr saw two of his blue-uniformed security men working with a large black dog, doing training exercises. The men did not appear to be concerned about anything, and Jacopo had observed this sort of activity many times before. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary.

  A fuzzy, staticky noise near his leg caused him to jerk, before he realized it was the shiny black transceiver he always carried, which he had forgotten to turn off. But it never made that sort of noise, because nehrcom transmissions were always crystal clear, even when made across great distances of space.

  Perplexed, he lifted the unit and fiddled with the digiscroll settings. He heard a static pop, followed by voices again, this time unmistakably alien. Jacopo did not understand the rapid-fire words, but felt a sinking sensation. The way he had set up the nehrcom installations around the Merchant Prince Alliance, all under Human control, he should not be hearing anything but Galeng—the common galactic language—and clear signals.

  Something was terribly, terribly wrong.

  Perspiration formed on his brow as his mind whirled. If aliens had taken over a nehrcom station and figured out how to transmit and receive, the signals should still be clear. It didn’t make sense. The system was unproblematic the way he had set it up; it couldn’t possibly go out of adjustment. It was either completely on or completely off, and trouble-free either way. Jacopo knew the technology well.

  He also knew the security system. As the nehrcom inventor and the appointed Supreme General of the MPA Forces, this information was etched indelibly into his mind.

  The secret workings of nehrcom transceivers were protected by internal explosive devices that would go off if anyone scanned or tried to open them. The booby traps were common knowledge, and there had been widely publicized explosions and deaths. They were not ordinary blasts either, because they left absolutely no evidence behind about the original composition of the transceivers. Every piece was left unrecognizable, with even the cellular structures changed. He had devised an extraordinarily clever method of protecting his priceless secret.

  Nonetheless, something had gone dreadfully wrong.

  Jacopo locked on to the mysterious signal and sent a tracer, bouncing the nehrcom transmission back to its source. A holo-image of one of the galactic sectors popped up from the transceiver, and floated in front of the astonished inventor’s eyes.

  The signal was coming from one of the Mutati strongholds, the planet of Uhadeen!

  Utterly impossible. He rechecked, and rechecked. No doubt of the source, and he found additional transmissions going back and forth between Uhadeen and Paradij, the capital world of the Mutati Kingdom.

  But how could that be?

  A nehrcom unit could not be moved from its original place of installation, unless one of two people personally deactivated the detonator. No one knew how to do that except him and his daughter Nirella, whom he trusted implicitly. The two of them worked closely together, so he would need to confer with her about this disturbing situation.

  Jacopo was developing an intense headache. His clothes were drenched in perspiration. He couldn’t stop shaking.

  The holo-image shifted as the transceiver tried to pick up a visual of whoever was talking on the other end. Nothing came across, no matter how much he tuned it, just static.

  One unmistakable conclusion occurred to him. The Mutatis now had their own version of the system. But how did they accomplish that? They didn’t seem to have perfected their version yet, since it was making static sounds. He recalled having had that problem himself early in the development process, and then figuring out the solution.

  Another voice came out of the transceiver. This time it was in Galeng, but with a whiny Adurian accent, complaining that the Mutatis had no access to podships anymore, and could no longer launch “Demolio attacks” against merchant prince planets.

  Demolio attacks?

  Jacopo’s pulse was going crazy. His thoughts could not keep up.

  Thinking back, struggling desperately to comprehend, Nehr remembered one unfortunate leak in security two months ago. On that day, Doge Lorenzo’s Royal Attache , Pimyt, marched into Nehr’s office and showed him a holo-image of the internal workings of a nehrcom transceiver. Nehr had been startled half to death, but felt immensely relieved when Pimyt promised not to reveal the secret—and ruin him—if Nehr just performed a few innocuous tasks for him. Discreetly, Nehr had launched an investigation to determine the source of the leak, but nothing had turned up.

  It was blackmail, to be certain. But the penalty had not seemed too great. Nehr only had to send occasional communiqués—provided by the Hibbil—to all planets in the Merchant Prince Alliance. The messages had been about corporate and military matters, the moving of business assets and war material around.

  Nehr had been adhering to their secret agreement. It seemed to be some sort of war-profiteering scheme that Pimyt had come up with, a way of boosting his government salary. Nehr had seen countless examples of greed in the Alliance, and he had learned to look the other way more than once.

  As for Pimyt, he was beyond reproach from a security standpoint, having once served as the Regent of the Merchant Prince Alliance, during a brief period when the noblemen could not agree upon the election of a new Doge. If he made some extra money during wartime, that just made him like so many others in the government.

  And now, Demolio attacks against merchant prince planets? Nehr would have to discuss the matter with Lorenzo. Perhaps … probably … it had something to do with the MPA planets that had been destroyed.

  But he couldn’t discuss any of this with Lorenzo. Pimyt had threatened to ruin him if he revealed their little arrangement to anyone, and the little Hibbil had mentioned the Doge by name. Beyond that, Pimyt had insisted that Noah come to him first if anything unusual happened involving nehrcom transmissions. This certainly qualified.

  Demolio attacks.

  Nehr and Lorenzo knew the Mutatis had a terrible planet-buster weapon—was it called a Demolio?—and the Doge had taken steps to block it. Steps that had worked only too well, cutting off all podship travel in Human and Mutati sectors. But should Nehr keep this new information from him? Having made his bargain with Pimyt, Nehr had no choice. If any of this got out, he could be charged with treason, based upon an accusation that he had sold nehrcom secrets to the Mutatis.

  He thought of his younger brother, how he had vanished. Could Gio have contacted the Mutatis and told them something about nehrcom technology? No, it wasn’t possible. Gio had not been privy to the information, and besides, the two of them were brothers. At times Jacopo wished they had been closer, but it hadn’t been in the cards. Now Gio was gone … probably killed on one of the destroyed merchant prince planets. So many deaths in this war. So many innocent lives lost.

  Nehr cursed at the situation in which he was caught, a
nd shut off the transceiver. The resulting silence held no answers for him.

  Chapter Eight

  There is great skill in concealing your feelings of antipathy from someone you must deal with on a regular basis.

  —Jacopo Nehr, confidential remarks

  Throughout the Merchant Prince Alliance—on the seven hundred ninety-two surviving planets—there had been no appearances of podships whatsoever. On every one of those pod stations, sensor-guns were ready to fire, but they remained silent. People expected something to change at any moment, something big to happen. Time went by slowly and painfully for everyone, as if the clock of the universe had a sticky mechanism.

  On every planet the citizens felt isolated, that they would never see distant loved ones again, and would never again be able to journey to their favorite places around the galaxy. It was like a cruel, galactic-scale version of an old party game. Wherever a person happened to be when the podships stopped was where they remained, perhaps for the rest of their lives.

  When podships first appeared long ago, Humans and other galactic races had been hesitant to trust alien craft that they could not control, especially since they had no idea how they worked and couldn’t gain access to their inner workings without causing violent reactions. But as decades and centuries passed, and podships (left to their own devices) kept transporting the various races safely to far destinations, the races had come to trust them. The sentient spacefarers became familiar to everyone, as their regular appearance at pod stations became a fact a life and of the heavens … like the sun seeming to rise in the sky each morning.

  For a long time there had been talk of improving other space-travel technology, and recently there had been a rumor that Doge Lorenzo was calling for a massive research and development program to do so. Even barring that, it was still possible for people to travel on factory-made ships. But the hydion drive engines transported them so slowly in comparison to podships that it wasn’t even worth comparison. It might be decades, if ever, before engineers came up with comparably fast vessels.