Blood of the Cosmos (70 page)

Admiral Haroun was a quiet, dark-haired man with a soft voice and an analytical mind. He definitely had the intelligence and book learning to rise high in CDF officer's school, but Keah doubted that Haroun had nerves of steel in a crisis. That would have to change.

His Juggernaut, the
Okrun
, was named after a twenty-second-century Earth military genius who had broken the back of a fanatical religious empire intent on plunging Earth back into the dark ages. Shortly after Okrun's victory, humanity had built its eleven huge generation ships and launched them to seek new homes among the stars. General Keah was surprised that Admiral Haroun himself knew so little about the man for whom his ship was named. She intended to instruct him during their journey to Rakkem.

Haroun graciously gave her the
Okrun
's command chair when she arrived on the bridge, while he stood back as her new first officer to watch and learn from her. It was the sort of respect that General Keah expected him to display, but she was disappointed he didn't push back even a little about relinquishing command. He knew his place in the CDF hierarchy, which was good, but he also needed a stronger spine.

While on the journey to Rakkem, Keah rallied the CDF soldiers and gave them the pep talk they would need. She riled them up against the horrific medical experiments, the baby mills, the flesh bazaars, and all the people who had died from false hope and dangerous treatments. It wasn't difficult to inflame them; the soldiers were glad to face an opponent they could understand, and one they could trounce. Admiral Haroun struggled to control his emotions behind a stony fa
ç
ade, his expression full of obvious disgust toward Rakkem.

The
Okrun
and the fifteen Manta cruisers arrived like a stampede at Rakkem, where they spread out in orbit and imposed a blockade. General Keah broadcast on all frequencies, announcing an interdiction and demanding the planet's complete and immediate surrender “for a thorough inspection of suspect activities.”

Many unmarked ships in orbit fled as soon as they saw the CDF ships arrive—either black-market biotraders or nervous customers who didn't want to be caught. Keah launched two hundred Remora fighters to enforce order, but instructed them not to pursue the escaping ships. She had bigger fish to fry.

“Who is your planetary leader?” she transmitted from the
Okrun
's bridge. She had taken time to put on her full dress uniform, and she assumed an attitude that would remind the Rakkem people of a Valkyrie.

Overlapping communications burst across the comm, none of them directed at her. Haroun's comm officer shook his head. “They're trying to rally defenses down there, General, but there seems to be no unified planetary security. I don't even know if they've got a real spokesman.”

“On to Phase Two, then. I want Remoras in the skies and troop transports on the ground, boots marching through those streets.”

By ordering this action, the King and Queen might have stuck their hands into a hornets' nest, offending independent planets that were not part of the Confederation. Keah decided to get enough images of the despicable Rakkem operations to dispel any sympathy or moral outrage.

“General,” Admiral Haroun suggested, “with all those dangerous biologicals, it would be wise for our troops to wear decontamination gear. Just in case someone is desperate enough to release a plague out of spite.”

“Damn right, Admiral—good suggestion.” She could just imagine some unscrupulous black-market warlord infecting the troops and then trying to make a bargain by offering the vaccine in exchange for safe passage from Rakkem. Keah did not intend to let that happen.

After more than fifteen minutes of repeated transmissions and confusing delays, a round-faced man with short blond hair and spectacles (surely, an affectation) appeared on the screen. “I am Aldo Cerf, one of the business leaders on Rakkem. This world is not part of the Confederation, and you have no authority here. This is an act of war.”

“This is an act of necessity,” Keah said. “You have harmed or killed countless Confederation citizens, and King Peter and Queen Estarra have issued orders for this interdiction. Your work is dangerous and unregulated. You will not be allowed to prey upon helpless Confederation citizens.”

Cerf scowled. “We offer them hope when they are dying.”

Haroun growled, interrupting General Keah, which surprised her. “You offer them false hope! You prey on people who are too weak to see through your scams.” She hadn't asked him for details, but Haroun was clearly incensed by what he had seen in the Rakkem records. Perhaps his wife had also gone there.…

The General glanced at her status screens, saw that troop transports had been dispatched for the surface; Remoras already filled the skies of Rakkem. She turned back to Aldo Cerf. “Your treatments are risky, unproven, sometimes useless, sometimes deadly. We will impound all records, seize assets, and make reparations to anyone you have harmed—provided we can track them down.”

“Provided any are still alive,” Haroun added.

Cerf's objections of “You have no jurisdiction here!” and “We are independent from the Confederation!” began to sound repetitious.

General Keah responded by transmitting the stomach-turning archival records of the flayed victims wailing in pain as they oozed their lives out onto a surgical table. “We have plenty of testimonials from your customers, Mr. Cerf. Victims—duped, tortured, betrayed. It's our mission to be sure this doesn't happen again.”

After the troops landed and Remoras continued to block any ships from escaping, the CDF soldiers impounded the cure warehouses, the organ-replacement banks filled with arrays of lungs, livers, hearts, and sheets of fresh skin taken from “volunteers.” They found archives of deadly diseases, some of them weaponized, a biological arsenal that could destroy entire populations—everything for sale. Perhaps worst of all were the gestation warehouses filled with factory wombs: pregnant women hooked up to euphoric drugs, artificially inseminated so they produced baby after baby.

The General had intended to go down to the surface herself, so that she and Admiral Haroun could take a victory lap. She wanted to stand by the CDF soldiers and look at the unconscionable black-market cesspit they had put out of business. But when she saw the images piped up from the ground troops, heard their appalled outcries, and stared at things that made even the worst records in Deputy Cain's report pale to insignificance, she doubted she could stomach it, even after everything she had seen in her career.

She thought of the people who had given up their financial resources, who had come here desperate for any kind of treatment, only to be left destitute and dying just as fast, or faster. “We did a good thing here,” she said. “It had to be done.”

A tear trickled out of Admiral Haroun's eye. “We did.”

There was very little resistance in the face of the military crackdown. Many biomerchants were caught destroying records and incinerating samples. She thought of the continuing threat of the Shana Rei, but said, “This one little victory is still important—I'll take it.”

 

CHAPTER

121

TASIA TAMBLYN

Tasia Tamblyn had never seen such an uproar among the clans—and Roamers were not known for their calm, sedate discussions. Even though she had caused the outcry herself, she did not feel guilty about it, not a whit. She stood in the convocation chamber next to Robb, Orli, and DD, waiting for the noise to die down.

No, she thought,
she
hadn't caused this outrage—Lee Iswander had brought it upon himself, by placing ruthlessness above genius.

After making her accusations and listening to the growing reactions in the chamber, Tasia saw the look of speechless astonishment on Iswander's face. He seemed completely taken aback that he'd been caught. Such arrogance! With an operation of that size dumping so much stardrive fuel on the market, it was as if he had never imagined that his harsh activities might be exposed! The destruction of the Duquesne operation and Elisa Enturi trying to destroy the
Voracious Curiosity
just because they had wandered into the wrong area—did he really think no one would ever notice?

“This is … not possible,” Iswander said.

Fuming, Tasia gestured to Robb. “Not possible?”

He held up a transfer datapack. “Speaker Ricks, can I play this on your wallscreen? A picture is worth a thousand accusations.”

“And proof against a thousand denials,” Tasia added.

“By all means!” Ricks actually sounded cheery. “This is a convocation hall. We have a full projection system.”

Iswander looked out of place among the Roamers in his business suit, and now he glanced from side to side, pale and astonished. He didn't seem to know what to say. “This can't be possible,” he said again, as if trying to convince himself.

For a moment—just a moment—Tasia wondered if he really wasn't aware of what his own people were doing. Then she dismissed the idea.

DD presented the datapack to the Speaker, who installed it in the projection system in his podium. Ricks smiled as he waited for the files to be loaded.

As the images appeared, Orli explained to the group, “I encountered one of Iswander's extraction fields, and I received medical attention there. Garrison Reeves was also with me.” She looked around at the Roamers. “Some of you may know him.”

Ricks fiddled with the controls, trying to find the proper files. DD assisted him.

“We know clan Reeves,” someone called back.

“And he's the one still alive,” Orli said. “At the time, we didn't know what the ekti operations were. I was sick, on the edge of death, and Garrison just wanted to take his son away to safety.”

“
What
operations?” someone else shouted. Tasia recognized the matriarch of clan Beauvais, who operated two traditional skymines. By the expression on her face, she was out for blood.

Iswander seemed dazed, but a flare of indignation went through his voice. “The method of harvesting ekti-X is my proprietary development, but I didn't kill anyone. I destroyed no other competition. This is absurd!”

In blatant contradiction, damning images were projected in the convocation chamber: the wreckage of Duquesne ships with clan markings prominent on the shattered hulls. Everyone could see that a disaster had occurred there. Next, DD played the log clip of Aaron Duquesne shouting angrily at Elisa Enturi, before she set off the massive cascade of bloater explosions.

The Roamers in the audience were appalled and outraged. Tasia looked at Lee Iswander, trying to gauge his guilt, and she was surprised to see that he looked thunderstruck. Something wasn't right.

She faced those gathered in the chamber. “You all know me as the daughter of clan Tamblyn and also as the acting administrator of Kett Shipping, along with my husband. Even though we distributed a lot of ekti-X, Iswander Industries never revealed the source even to us—but as a shipping company, we don't like distributing commodities if we have no idea where they come from. So we placed a tracker on his representative's ship and we followed the flight path to the site of the Duquesne massacre and to Iswander's main operations.”

Next, she played their images of the much larger extraction yards, the industrial equipment, the administrative and habitation complex, the tankers, the pumping ships, the bloater cluster, the ekti-X arrays, and all of the drained husks. “This is where Iswander gets his stardrive fuel. Ekti-X comes from those nodules. Bloaters.”

Tasia didn't care that she was blowing the operations wide open. The disruption in stardrive fuel distribution would harm Kett Shipping's bottom line, but it would harm the company even more to keep doing business with the murderous industrialist.

“By the Guiding Star, I've seen those things out in empty space!” said one of the Roamers. “Never knew what they were, but they're cropping up like weeds.”

“They're filled with raw ekti-X,” Orli said.

Tasia added, “Now watch what happens when the Iswander employees realize that we've discovered their operations.”

Security ships flew out, threatening them, led by Elisa Enturi. Even when Robb obviously tried to surrender, Elisa opened fire on them with the clear intent of destroying their ship. Roamers in the chamber gasped and grumbled. “We barely escaped with our lives. Good thing Robb and I have combat flying experience.”

“I never gave those orders,” Iswander said. “I never wanted…”

Sam Ricks was grinning. “We'll see about that. You've been criticized before, Mr. Iswander. Roamer clans share advances and technologies. But you would kill to protect your business operations…” Ricks spat out the rest as if it were the foulest insult he could imagine. “You are worse than Chairman Wenceslas.”

“Who's going to make reparations to clan Duquesne?” called one of the clan leaders. “How many people were killed?”

“We never should've turned from traditional skymining. Look at the cost of that ekti-X,” said the Beauvais clan leader.

Other Roamers had more practical questions. “So … that's all there is to it? Find those bloaters and drain them dry? Fill tank after tank with ekti-X? No wonder Iswander's been producing so much fuel.”

The audience buzzed with excitement, inflamed with the possibilities, much more concerned with the easy wealth than about the shocking crimes.

“But I never gave Elisa those instructions!” Iswander wrestled with either taking responsibility or throwing his employee to the wolves. He seemed so stunned and shaken that Tasia actually believed him, but not to the extent that she felt sorry for him.

“There was a large concentration of bloaters drifting toward Ikbir,” Orli pointed out. “Someone might want to set up extraction operations there.”