Mapped Space 1: The Antaran Codex (10 page)

When we reached the ground floor,
I took his weight, then we stumbled between the gambling tables to the front
entrance. Several security guards glanced at us, but thinking we were a pair of
drunks on our way, made no move to stop us. Once outside, I carried Jase to the
tube back to the spaceport, hoping there wouldn’t be a long wait for a launch
window. We weren’t scheduled to depart, so if the traffic was heavy we could be
stuck waiting for clearance for hours – enough time for the city authorities to
stop us leaving. I wondered how much it would take to bribe the port controller
to bump us up the list, but figured once word got out there were two dead girls
in the Slot, the bribe wouldn’t stick. Unfortunately, the city’s blast doors
were strong enough to withstand a small asteroid impact, making it impossible for
us to shoot our way out.

Hades City might have been a
molehill, but if we didn’t get moving, it would soon become a rattrap.

* * * *

Back aboard
the
Lining
, I poured Jase into his
bunk to let him sleep it off, requested the first available launch window from
port control, then went to my stateroom to find out where we were going. Before
I read Sarat’s data chip, I called Zadim.

“Sirius, did you find your little
ratman?” Zadim’s voice asked as his plump face appeared in my holo display,
blinking back sleep.

“He found me, but that’s not why
I called. Someone working for you doesn’t know how to keep a secret.”

“How do you know this?” Zadim
asked suspiciously.

“A competitor found out about my
interest in Sarat.” It was the only way Vargis could have known I was trying to
buy into the game. “Now that we’re blood brothers again, Ameen, I thought you
should know.”

“I will attend to it at once,” Zadim
said with a heavy tone. “It is most regrettable when one cannot trust one’s own
relatives. Safe voyage, my friend. I look forward to your return, and our
future ventures together.”

Zadim’s face disappeared from the
space above my desk, then I scanned Sarat’s disk and watched as an Earth-sized
world appeared in its place. Astrographic data floated either side of the
planet’s image, giving me
its
vital statistics at a
glance. The northern and southern hemispheres were almost identical, covered in
white sheets of snow and ice. A thin band of blue ocean separated the two
frozen hemispheres, marking an equatorial zone seven hundred kilometers wide,
where temperatures remained barely above freezing year round. The equatorial
ocean was filled with icebergs and a few island chains, while in the western
hemisphere, a thousand kilometer long strip of green marked the northern tip of
the only continental land mass not entirely buried beneath ancient glaciers.

I could scarcely believe my eyes.
It was the same planet Marie had been searching for contracts to at the Exchange.
Now I knew why she was in Hades City. She was either a bidder in Sarat’s
auction, or she was going to steal whatever he was selling!

I stabbed the intercom. “Izin!” I
yelled in a rage, wishing just this once, she’d trusted me enough to tell me
what she was doing.

“Yes, Captain?” Izin replied as calm
as ever. If he could tell I was angry, his artificial voice showed no sign of
it.

“Has
Vandray’s Promise
left port?”

There was a moment’s silence as
he checked if Marie’s disguised ship was still docked. “Yes, Captain. She
undocked three hours ago.”

“Where’s she headed?”

Another brief silence as Izin
processed my inquiry. “Her flight plan indicates she’s headed towards the Arkina
Nebula.”

“The hell she is!” There was
nothing in the Arkina but H-miners and Ravens. “Any word on our launch window?”

“We’re eighth on the departure
list,” Izin replied. “Launch is scheduled to occur in one hundred and forty
three minutes.”

I switched off the intercom and
stared at the bleak world floating in front of me. It resembled a spinning top
of snow and ice, where the richest scum in Mapped Space were gathering for a
black market auction that put at risk mankind’s future as an interstellar
civilization.

It was a world known throughout Mapped
Space as Icetop.

Chapter Three
: Icetop

Marginally Habitable World

Creshan System

Outer Lyra Region

1.03 Earth Normal Gravity

1,204 light years from Sol

42,000 inhabitants

The voyage to Icetop was one of the
riskiest a human ship could undertake. It was located four light years beyond the
astrographic data gifted to mankind by the Tau Cetins over two thousand years
ago, data covering half of one percent of the galaxy. The TC navigational charts
enabled human ships to travel safely out to twelve hundred light years from
Earth, giving us a freedom we could never have achieved alone. Approximately a
quarter of all mass in the universe was dark matter, slow moving and practically
undetectable by Earth-tech, yet with enough gravitational influence to
catastrophically collapse fragile spacetime bubbles. The faster a ship
travelled beyond the speed of light, the more extreme was the curvature of
space caused by its bubble and the greater the risk of gravitational collapse.
At the
Silver Lining’s
top speed of one
thousand three hundred and fifty times the speed of light, ambient spacetime
curvature caused by local gravity would collapse the bubble in an instant. It was
why dark matter posed a constant threat to navigation, which the Tau Cetin charts
solved by identifying the locations of billions of dark matter hazards with
infallible precision.

Those same navigational hazards
had disrupted the expansion of the very earliest interstellar civilizations
eons ago, trapping them in small, isolated pockets for hundreds of thousands of
years. Initially there were few spacefaring species, but slowly their numbers
grew, each exploring their immediate parts of the galaxy, often at great cost
in terms of lives and ships, all the time improving their technology. When the
early civilizations eventually encountered each other there were occasional conflicts,
but in time they learnt to coexist and eventually to share their knowledge,
completing the great collective work of mapping the galaxy and founding a true
Galactic Civilization.

It was not an empire ruled by
one, but an immensely heterogeneous association open to all. The members were
often vastly unequal in achievement and markedly different in character, yet
all were equally protected by Galactic Law. As probationary members of the
Access Treaty, mankind was entitled to half a percent – no more, no less. It
was a promise of what full membership would bring and while it sounded tiny, it
gave humanity access to millions of star systems – provided we played by the
rules.

That was our biggest challenge.

In fifty years – when our second
attempt to qualify for membership ended – we’d get a major increase in status
by gaining a permanent seat on the Galactic Forum, alongside tens of thousands
of other, older civilizations. It was just the first step in gaining access to a
little more of the galaxy and having a voice – albeit a very small voice – where
it mattered most. There were many levels of sharing, each one had to be earned,
but for now our focus was simply to qualify for that first, most junior level
of galactic citizenship. Unlimited sharing was a very long way off. By the time
mankind was a senior member of the Forum, our civilization would have vastly
transformed and our species would have moved on to the next stage of evolution
beyond
Homo sapiens
, so immense were
the time scales involved. They were time scales set by those who’d already trodden
the path and knew the extraordinary length of the journey – a journey without short
cuts.

For a species who’d been using
stone tools a mere twenty thousand years ago – less than the blink of an eye in
cosmic terms – the enormous time scales were daunting, but it was also a fair,
rules based system, where every advance was earned and no one could deny what was
rightfully due. Its fairness was why the great panoply of civilizations throughout
the galaxy, from young to old, from primitive to incomprehensibly advanced, all
supported it – and why they united against any who threatened it.

The Tau Ceti gift had been an
inducement, not a prison – proof that the benefits of joining the system and playing
by its rules far outweighed opting out. We could send our ships beyond the
limits of the TC charts if we wished, but the risks became unacceptably high
the further out we went.

Consequently, Mapped Space
defined the physical extent of Human Interstellar Civilization, and it grew as
we explored.

Icetop was four light years
outside the TC charts, further than was generally practical to go given the
navigational hazards, and the limits of our technology, but we’d explored it
ourselves, making it one of the few human contributions to Mapped Space. We’d only
gone to Icetop because the promise had seemed so great. Astronomical
observations had detected a planet in the Creshan System of approximately the
right size in roughly the right orbit for a human habitable planet. It orbited
a G-type star of about the right age, offering the hope of a new Earth. We
could have reached it in relative safety using a bubble at sub light velocity,
but even at half the speed of light, the journey would have taken eight years.
We needed to get there fast to make it assessable, so over a hundred and fifty
years ago a navy survey team had been given the job of finding a way there. It
took seven attempts with robotic probes before they finally succeeded. The
first six probes were destroyed by dark matter gravitational effects that each
subsequent probe avoided, so through trial and error, a path was found to the
Creshan System. Once the navy knew where the dark matter was, a painstaking
study of each hazard’s gravitational effect allowed the navy to predict its
trajectory. The danger was there were other dark matter anomalies wandering
slowly out there that the navy hadn’t detected, and which would inevitably
drift into the charted space lane. It hadn’t happened since the path to Icetop
had been opened, but one day it would, with disastrous consequences.

It was why every flight to Icetop
was a gamble.

When the navy finally surveyed
the hoped for new Earth, they found a planet fourth from its star, in an orbit
skirting the outer edge of the zone where liquid water could exist. More than
seventy active volcanoes dotted the frozen wastes of Icetop, adding enough
greenhouse gas to keep the equatorial region marginally habitable, but not to
roll back the ice covering the four southern continents or to expose the vast
northern ocean. Abundant oceanic life had generated a breathable atmosphere while
the strip of exposed land at the equator permitted subarctic agriculture. It
was, however, the iceberg filled oceans offering fishing grounds potentially as
rich as any seen on Earth where Icetop’s future wealth lay. Those frigid waters
had attracted sizeable Core System investment to fund seeding the ocean and
building the infrastructure required for commercial fishing.

It was precisely because Icetop
was a spinning ice cube that it had escaped colonization by other civilizations
– a lucky break for us. If we ever decided to warm it up, it might still become
a new Earth, but that was a long way off. Earth Council habitually baulked at
the cost and risk of terraforming any planet, especially one outside Mapped
Space. Even so, they’d placed a small settlement on Icetop to establish our
ownership rights. After all, it may have been a cold windswept hell hole, but
it was lawfully ours.

Landing on Icetop was a simple
insertion. With no traffic or orbital debris to dodge, we jumped onto their
Landing Control’s guide beam and simply dropped into the freezing atmosphere. The
vacant lot that passed for a spaceport normally received less than a ship a
month, although we soon discovered we were the seventh ship to land in less
than forty eight hours. Minutes after engine shut down, a transmission arrived from
Mukul Sarat with directions to the meeting place.

When the dust cleared, our external
optics gave us a clear view of the other six ships already parked on the paved
landing ground. The massive
Soberano
took up the entire southern end of the apron, four clicks away, while Marie’s
Heureux
was only a few hundred meters east
of us. The other ships were all strung out to the north. The closest was a
small, disk shaped yacht that reeked of money. Further north, a utilitarian PFA
container carrier, that was little more than a cube shaped skeleton with rectangular
compartments for crew and propulsion, stood alongside a small intersystem ferry.
At the northern end of the spaceport, parked as far away from the other ships
as possible, was a rugged looking half cylinder with suspicious black scars along
its sides.

“The yacht is from the Core
Systems,” Izin said as he joined Jase and I on the flight deck. As usual, he’d
digested the port registry in the horizontal blink of his amphibian eyes. “She’s
the
Ariel
, owner’s name withheld. The
freighter is from Chengdu
Xin
. It claims to be carrying
machine parts, although it’s unloaded no cargo since landing. The ferry belongs
to Mukul Sarat and that last ship is supposedly a bulk ore carrier called the
Cypress Vale
.”

Izin’s amphibian face never revealed
his emotions but his words describing the last ship revealed his skepticism. The
‘ore carrier’ was obviously an old Earth Navy Vigilant class cutter. It had to
be at least two hundred years old and looked as if it hadn’t received hull
maintenance for decades. The Vigilants used to carry a single heavy weapon and
a respectable shield, although the navy would have stripped her down before
selling her. Even so, whoever rescued her from the
scrapyard
could have refitted her with black market gear.

“Who’s is it?” I asked.

“The port registry has no other
data,” Izin replied.

“I don’t suppose the port authorities
have questioned its class designation?”

“No.”

Either they were grossly
incompetent and couldn’t tell a bulk ore carrier from a garbage scow, or they’d
been paid to look the other way.

 
“It’s got to be a Raven,” Jase said. “Look at
those hull scars!” It had taken Jase half the flight out from Hades City to
recover from the stim bomb Sarat had pumped into him, and the second half for
me to convince him not to go looking for payback.

“When it’s dark, send a hull
crawler over there. Find out what she’s armed with.” I glanced at the other
ships curiously. “Check them all.”

“I’ll prepare a crawler this
afternoon,” Izin said.

I switched on the autonav’s holo emitter
and fed in Sarat’s coordinates to see where we were going. All Jase and Izin
knew was that we were here to acquire an illegal item I had a buyer for. Any
profit would be split three ways after expenses, as usual. “Jase is coming with
me. Izin, you’ll stay aboard. This is no place for you.”

“I would need a heavily insulated
thermal suit to survive out there,” Izin agreed. Tamphs found cold climates
unpleasant and exposure to freezing temperatures fatal.

A glowing marker on the western
edge of Fjordheim, the only continent not buried under ice, highlighted where
we were. A high mountain range cut across the middle of the land mass, spawning
deep river valleys that fed fiords along both coasts. The
Silver Lining
had landed outside Tundratown, the only sizeable
settlement, which served as both spaceport and seaport. A small village had
also been established at an anchorage on the eastern side of Fjordheim for
emergency repairs and crew swaps. The band of exposed ocean linking the two coasts
was dotted with islands, mostly uninhabited although some were used by the
fishing fleet as distant support bases. A third of the way around the equator
from Tundratown was a string of dots marking the only archipelago on Icetop in
the equatorial ring.

“That’s where we’re headed,” I
said, pointing to the tiny island chain. Sarat’s message had given the latitude
and longitude, and the
Lining’s
astrographics data base revealed their name: the Dragon’s Teeth.

Jase peered at the hologram
curiously and shrugged. “Why come all the way out here and then fly a third of
the way around this
iceball
to do this deal?”

“Because there are no eyes out there,”
I said.

Icetop had only three aging
communications satellites in equatorial orbit and a tiny UniPol station in
Tundratown with no global surveillance capability. Considering the navigational
hazards, no Earth Navy frigate would risk coming out here unless they were
going to bombard the planet. If enforcement was required, the navy was more
likely to send expendable grunts out in a freighter. Several times a year, a
naval liaison officer came out with the regular supply ship for an inspection,
but that was the extent of Earth’s reach. Icetop was as remote a place as a man
could go and still find a trace of human civilization.

Whatever Sarat was selling, he
was taking no chances with the law.

* * * *

Sarat had reserved a seat for me on a
transport flying out to the fishing fleet’s base in the Dragon’s Teeth Archipelago.
A fisherman, who suddenly developed an acute affinity for my credits, vacated
his seat for Jase while a small gratuity to the pilot ensured no objections
from the flight crew.