Mapped Space 1: The Antaran Codex (16 page)

“I’m a curious man, Captain Kade.
I wondered if the Irzaens really want the highest bid.”

“You don’t think they do?” Marie
asked, surprised.

Bo glanced uncertainly at Sarat.
“I do not know, but this game is not what it appears.”

“If we had to share it,” Marie
said when I turned to her, “we’d just fight over it. I’ll tell the Society they
didn’t give me a big enough bankroll.”

“I’ll vouch for that.”

“As if the Society trusts you!”

We turned to the end of the hall
as the floor and ceiling holo plates glowed and the Irzaen trade representative
appeared beside Sarat.

“Greetings good customers,”
Ani-Hata-Ga began formally, “welcome to the rewarding stage of decision. Let us
begin bidding the final.”

With all eyes upon Vargis and me,
no one noticed Jase’s absence. Outside the gray clouds had turned black and the
howling wind was driving snow horizontally past the long window, threatening to
overpower its pressure field. Before we started bidding, the guards lowered the
large rectangular metal shutter over the window, sealing us off from the
outside world.

Sarat motioned to the Earth Bank auctioneer.
“Captain Kade, you have the honor of bidding first.”

I stepped up to the Earth Bank
device, slid Lena’s digital-vault key into the slot and bid one credit. There
was no point betting the limit, because I already knew that wasn’t enough, so I
decided to test whether the entire process really was machine controlled. The auctioneer
accepted the bid without any judgment on the amount, then I rejoined Marie and
Bo.

“Finally, we can get this over
with,” Vargis said irritably when it was his turn to bid.

“Don’t pay too much,” I said,
knowing that if he won, I could tell him if he bid more than two credits, he’d overpaid.

* * * *

“All systems are controlled from a room on
the west side of this level,” Jase said when we met beside a shuttered window
in the lounge after bidding was complete. “One guard out front, maybe more inside.”

Taking those guards head-on would
be difficult. If it turned into a bloodbath, it would be impossible to get the Codex
out quietly. “Where are they getting their power from?”

“It comes up through a switching
room behind the elevator, from the fishing fleet’s support base below. It’s
locked, but unguarded.”

“Could you break in?”

“Shouldn’t be too difficult.”

“OK. Cut the power for five
minutes only at exactly six o’clock this evening. If the power doesn’t go out
at that time, I’ll assume it’s not going down.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Find out how well Sarat’s guards
see in the dark.”

* * * *

The
lights went out right on schedule. With the storm shutters closed, the entire penthouse
was immersed in darkness, temporarily blinding everyone except me. My DNA sniffer
painted the usual identifiers over the heads of the guards, telling me who they
were, while the bionetic filaments in my optic nerves detected enough thermal
traces to paint infra red ghosts in my mind’s eye, showing me where they were.
Those I couldn’t see, I heard blundering around in the darkness, stumbling and
yelling to each other.

It wasn’t perfect but in the land
of the blind the threaded EIS agent is king.

I slipped past red ethereal
images of guards feeling their way helplessly along the walls until I reached
the control room. The guard outside was better trained than most. He was as
blind as the others, but he remained in position in front of the door waiting
for the lights to come back on. I approached him silently, knocking him off
balance with a leg sweep and drove his head hard against the wall. There was a
sickening thud of skull bone on rock, then I caught his body and lowered him to
the floor before feeling for the control room door. Being in constant use and
guarded, it wasn’t locked, but when my hand passed over the door sensor,
nothing happened. No power to the lights meant no power to the doors, so I had
to slide it open with both palms pressed flat against it.

My threading detected two guards
inside, one seated, the other feeling his way along the wall towards the
entrance. I took a step towards the standing guard’s red ghost and kicked him
more or less in the kidneys. There was a grunt as he doubled over in pain and
surprise, then I finished him by slamming his head down into my rapidly ascending
knee. I let the second guard hit the ground as I turned to take out the seated
guard, but he was already on his feet and moving towards me.

“Ritter, what is it?” the third
guard demanded warily. He’d heard the door open and his companion hit the floor,
and was smart enough to realize there was someone else in the room.

I darted towards him, driving a
punch for his throat, but he stepped sideways so I only brushed his neck. The
guard instinctively lunged into the darkness, catching me with a glancing blow
– not enough to slow me down, but the contact told him where I was. He swung
his other hand in a roundhouse punch that struck the side of my head. It was a
lucky hit, giving me no chance to block. I was airborne before I even realized
what had happened, then I crashed onto the rock floor. Momentarily dazed, whirling
stars danced with threading symbols before my eyes. Disoriented, I rolled away,
making far too much noise but buying a few seconds to clear my head.

The guard’s red ghost moved to
the left, trying to flank me, knowing I was down. He launched a balanced kick
into the darkness, narrowly missing my face. I knew from the way he snapped his
leg back, without losing his balance, that he was well trained. My threading
gave me the advantage of limited vision, but he’d got in the first blow and I
had no time to recover. There were only seconds left before Jase restored the
power. Once the lights came back on and the guard could identify me, I’d have
no choice but to kill him – not something I wanted to do.

I slapped the floor loudly with
my right hand and rolled silently away to the left, climbing to my feet. The
guard immediately fired at my hand slap, illuminating
 
his position with the electromagnetic muzzle spark
of his gun.

I kicked towards his wrist, with
my balance still off from his lucky punch. The kick wasn’t perfect, but the force
was enough to break his arm and send the gun spinning away into the darkness.
The guard didn’t utter a sound, but immediately swung his good arm at my head.
I caught his wrist and turned, pulling him towards me and catching his ankle
with my foot, throwing him face first to the floor. Before he could move, my
knee crashed into his back, paralyzing him as the lights came back on. The
guard tried to turn, but my elbow struck the back of his head like a hammer,
driving his face into the rock floor with a sharp crack. Thankfully, his body went
limp, saving me from having to break his neck.

I exhaled slowly, patting the
back of the unconscious guard’s head. “That might of hurt, but it was better
than the alternative.”

I climbed to my feet, still a
little groggy, and felt the bulge on the side of my head. Luckily, it was
hidden beneath my hair. If it had been on my face, my cover would have been in
tatters.

I dragged the guard lying in the
corridor inside and closed the door, then studied my surroundings. The control
room was filled with communications and weather monitoring equipment, as well
as screens viewing every room, including our sleeping quarters. Ignoring the
surveillance system, I activated the direct comlink to Tundratown and selected
the channel I knew Izin would be monitoring.

“I’m receiving you,” Izin replied,
careful to avoid words that would identify either of us, should anyone be
listening. “Your signal isn’t encrypted.”

“I know. I haven’t much time.
They’re using an Earth Bank auctioneer to manage the bidding. You need to make
sure I win.”

“It’s impossible to break Earth
Bank encryption, even if I had access to your location.”

The penthouse’s control system
was manually isolated from the maintenance facility below as a precaution
during the auction. With the flick of a switch, I reconnected the penthouse to the
local datanet, giving Izin a backdoor. “How’s that?”

“I can see their systems now, but
they will see me connect.”

“No one will see you, but me. Do
it now.” A moment later, the screen in front of the communications console
illuminated with an external request for secure access, which I immediately accepted.
“How’s that?”

“I have full access.”

“Good. Now hide yourself. You’re
on your own.”

I quickly deleted all recorded
vision from the security system for the last hundred hours and switched off the
surveillance system. Satisfied no one would see me leave, I stepped through the
door and hurried back in my quarters, where I was soon soaking the swelling on
the side of my head in freezing cold water.

Getting Izin through the back
door was the easy part. If he couldn’t find a way into the most secure
financial device man had ever invented by the end of dinner, Vargis would have
the Codex. A few hours later, it would be safely inside the battleship
Soberano
.

Getting my hands on it then would
be virtually impossible.

* * * *

Sarat
apologized for the power failure at dinner, making no mention of my visit to the
control room, although security became noticeably tighter. The butler-guards no
longer tried to conceal the weapon bulges beneath their jackets, and the guards
at the elevator now openly carried assault weapons. Under this pall of armed
security, we gathered to wait for the Earth Bank auctioneer to finish its
validations and discuss the one thing on our minds, the Codex.

“Considering it’s alien-tech,” I
said, “how do we use it?”

“There is no ‘we’, Captain Kade,”
Vargis said. “I won’t be sharing it with you.”

“One cannot share what one does
not yet possess,” Bo observed dryly.

“Thank you,” I said, turning to
Bo. “Confucius?”

“No, Bo Qiang.”

I toasted Bo with my glass. “To
the great Bo Qiang, sage of the galaxy!” Bo inclined his head, accepting the
compliment, then I turned back to Sarat. “Assuming the issue is undecided . . .?”

“The Codex has a universally adaptive
interface which allows it to communicate with any computing technology,” Sarat
said. “All it requires is conductive contact and access to data storage. It
will do the rest.”

“Smart little box of tricks,” Jase
said from his position between Vargis and Bo. His absence during the blackout
had gone unnoticed because he’d made it back to our room before the
surveillance system had been reactivated.

“I take it the Codex was
constructed by the people who built the ships now wrecked in the Antares
System?” I said.

“Yes, the Kireen. According to
Ani-Hata-Ga, they were an ancient civilization from the Norma Arm of the galaxy.
Highly advanced, but dangerously divided. They were frequently in conflict with
themselves. The graveyard monument in the Antares System is the only one of its
kind in human Mapped Space, although I understand there are others scattered
throughout the galaxy.”

“Considering how old the Codex
is,” Marie said, “won’t the Kireen want their property back?”

“Sadly no,” Sarat replied. “Their
civilization collapsed millions of years ago. They’re not extinct, but the worlds
the survivors live on are insufficient to allow them to reestablish themselves.”

“They destroyed their own homeworld?”
Bo asked.

“The word Ani-Hata-Ga used was ‘exhausted’.
Their homeworld survived entirely on resources brought from off world. When it
lost access to those resources, its industrial civilization could not sustain
itself and their off world colonies could not survive alone. Imagine Earth in a
few thousand years. Its minerals are already depleted. It’s only a matter of
time before Earth will be entirely dependent on off world resources. ”

“Earth wouldn’t survive without
the Core Systems now,” Vargis said a little pompously, “but we’d survive
without Earth. We did it before, we could do it again.”

“Much of our technology and
industrial production still comes from Earth,” Sarat countered. “Without Earth,
we’d be crippled.”

“That’s what Earth wants you to
believe,” Vargis said. “There are some in the Core Worlds who’d like to see an
end to Earth Council meddling in our affairs.”

“And they’re the people who’d get
the whole human race in trouble,” I said sharply.

“Why doesn’t someone trade with
the Kireen?” Marie asked. “Without the novarium the Tau Cetins gave Earth to
power our starships, we wouldn’t be where we are.”

“The Forum made a Fifth Principle
ruling against the Kireen.”

The Extinction Principle requires
Treaty members to take any action within their power to prevent another species
from becoming extinct, irrespective of the wishes of the species or its rulers.
The preservation of life was quite simply more important than any other
consideration because it allowed future generations the opportunity to progress
beyond the mistakes of their ancestors. When a species became extinct, there were
no second chances.