Star Road (33 page)

He sprang to his feet, grabbed Annie by the throat, and spun her around, so they were both facing Ivan.

The gun pressed into the back of Annie’s head just above her right ear.

Ivan’s voice was low and measured. “Mr. Nahara. We
know
it was you. And we also know why.”

Nahara was silent, but his expression said:
Oh, do tell.

“Put down the gun, and we’ll talk.”

Nahara snorted.

“You won’t get much farther without your pilot.”

“We have the copilot.”

Annie looked calm, even with the gun pressing hard against her head.

“I know my brother,” Ivan said.

“Your brother?” Nahara said, stunned.

Ivan nodded. He didn’t want to have to act. Things could get messy with bystanders so close. “I know what Kyros wants and is capable of getting ... especially from someone like you.”

~ * ~

The gun metal felt hard against Annie’s skull.

She knew, if Ivan went for a shot, a quick spasm in Nahara’s hand could no doubt squeeze the trigger.

Her brains and fragments of her skull would decorate the wall.

I’m getting a bit tired of having guns pointed at me,
she thought.

But Nahara’s eyes, wild and wide, stayed on Ivan.

Theory number two is looking pretty damned good about now,
Annie thought.

“I don’t know anything about your brother or what he might want. I—”

If there was an opportune moment to make a move, Annie knew this was it.

She lurched forward—dropping her head—and swung her arm around where she knew the gun would be.

With a quick chopping motion, she brought her forearm up, sweeping Nahara’s hand. Ivan stepped around Annie, knocking her aside as he closed his hand around Nahara’s, putting his thumb between the trigger and the trigger guard.

“No shooting today,
compadre.”
he said evenly.

With a quick twist of his wrist, like he was removing a bottle cap, he gave Nahara’s hand a sharp turn. Something in Nahara’s arm snapped, and the gun dropped free.

With a grunt, Annie saw Ivan push Nahara back into his seat.

The man let out a loud puff of air when he landed. He gripped his wrist, which had gone limp.

“You broke my damn wrist!”

“Be grateful that’s all I broke.”

Annie straightened up and brushed herself off. Composing herself.

“Collar him?” Ivan asked.

“No other choice,” she said.

She walked over to the compartment by the cockpit entrance, opened it, and grabbed the neuro-collar.

When she returned, Ivan had his hand closed around Nahara’s throat, pushing his head back against the headrest.

“Just restraining him until you get him collared,” he said, even though he looked like he was ready to twist Nahara’s head off his neck.

Nahara stared at him, bug-eyed.

His tongue hanging out of one side of his mouth like a thick, pink slug wedged between his teeth.

Annie wrapped the collar around Nahara’s neck and snapped it tightly. Then she activated it. A green light came on, and Nahara sagged in his seat like a sack of potatoes, instantly immobilized.

“All righty, then,” Ivan said, turning back to Nahara. “Let’s see what you’ve got that my brother wants so badly.” A glance back to Annie. “Am I violating any passenger’s rights or anything?”

“Violate away,” she said.

Ivan turned back to the immobilized man.

“I already have a pretty good idea what it is …”

And Annie stepped back as Ivan started patting down the Road Authority officer, rifling through his pockets and patting his body up one side and down the other, all the way to his shoes.

Ivan stopped.

And grinned.

“Bingo,” he said softly.

~ * ~

32

THE DATA CRYSTAL

Annie watched Ivan rip open
the hidden pocket sewn into the left leg cuff of Nahara’s pants.

A small, transparent cube dropped into the palm of his hand. Grinning broadly, he straightened up and then handed it to her.

“I’m guessing you don’t have to worry about any lawsuit from him,” he said, looking at Nahara. “What’s the jail time for smuggling?”

“All depends on what’s on that data crystal,” she said, taking it from Ivan.

“Then let’s go look.”

~ * ~

Back in the cockpit, with Jordan watching and Ivan leaning against the door frame in the entryway, Annie held the data crystal up high, between her thumb and forefinger, and rotated it slowly.

It glistened like a wet diamond; but its surface was curiously cold and dry.

“I’m guessing this isn’t just
any
data crystal. Can you—”

She kept staring at the smooth, clear crystal, studying it... watching the light play along its facets, fragmenting into shimmering rainbows that danced across the cockpit walls and ceiling.

“Take a look?” she said. “Sure—”

Leaning over the console, she slid the crystal into an empty port near the SRV’s systems screen.

She passed a hand over the console, and the stream of information about the SRV’s engine—the waves of energy coming off the Road, all the temperature and atmospheric readouts that monitored every inch of the ship—all vanished.

And in its place, the logo of the World Council appeared.

Another wave, and the logo vanished, replaced by a data dump that flashed by before she could make heads or tails of it.

“Whoa. Do you
know
what you just did?” Ivan asked.

Annie shook her head.

“Unless I’m wrong... I think you just accessed World Council proprietary code without a password.”

“That’s not possible,” Annie said. She looked at Jordan.

“It is if you alter the crystal,” Jordan said. “And for a World Council data crystal, that’s a felony with a mandatory life sentence.”

The data was still streaming by, incomprehensible numbers and figures.

But Annie made no attempt to stop it.

“Okay. What’s it about?”

Before anyone even could hazard a guess, the data stream suddenly stopped, and the screen filled with the World Council logo and the words: “Star Road—O/S 3.5.”

Annie’s hand was trembling as she reached out and brushed aside the screen floating in front of her.

A flickering flash of light, and then something amazing happened.

The cockpit of the SRV-66 disappeared, and in its place a three-dimensional display veined with tiny white lines floated above the console and then spread out to engulf them. It shimmered and sparkled with an undulating white glow.

Some of the lines were straight. Others curved in wild parabolas that weaved in and out of each other. Some ended in large knots that pulsed in regularly-timed beats.

The lines were moving subtly, and along some of the strands, tiny white blinking dots were moving.

“What the hell
is
this?” Annie looked around in wonder. All of the lines eventually terminated at glowing orbs.

With a sweep of her hand, she brought a section of the map—if that’s what it was—closer. And then, in an inspired moment, she leaned over the computer console and entered her SRV transponder security code.

Immediately, a faint beeping sound began, and a single red dot on the fringe of the ball of intertwining lines began to blink.

“Is that what I think it is?” Jordan asked.

“It’s us,” Ivan said, leaning closer. The shimmering lights played across his face and body.

Annie nodded. She had the beginning of an idea ... of what this was.

Jordan craned his head back to see the display better. He reached up as if to grab the tangled strands that spiraled above their heads, but the projection filtered through his fingers like water.

“Then here... this is Omega Nine,” Jordan said, indicating a tiny orange dot.

No one said or did anything for a full minute.

Until, finally, Annie realized what made this all so amazing.

What they all had to be realizing.

“It’s the entire Star Road system,” she said quietly, staring in awe at the amazing complex of interesting and diverging lines and dots. “At least it’s all of the
known
parts. Some segments simply end, as if a chunk of the map was missing.”

“And here, at Omega Nine. Look. It’s on the extreme fringe of what we know ... what’s been mapped so far.”

“Yeah, but there are a lot of spurs, loops, whole chunks of Road I’ve never seen or even heard of before.” Annie locked eyes with Ivan. A thrill ran through her.

Think of the possibilities.

“There’s a lot here that the World Council never told us about.”

“You—and everyone else,” Ivan said. “Only a fraction of the routes open to vehicles? Which is exactly why we want total freedom of the Star Road.”

Annie couldn’t stop looking at the vast web of silvery lines radiating outward in what she saw now was an elaborate fractal design.

Fascinating and beautiful.

“So this is the entire operating system?” Jordan asked.

Annie nodded. “A copy, at least. And Nahara was going to deliver it to your brother.”

“Dangerous stuff. And notice that Earth is nowhere near the center.”

“So who mapped all of this?” Annie asked.

“Whoever—or whatever—made the Roads,” Ivan said.

“Why are you using the past tense?” Annie said. “You so sure that they’re not still out there? Not still making Roads?”

“Maybe you should join up with our Seeker back there.”

“Not my type,” Annie said, letting her gaze linger for a moment longer than necessary on Ivan.

Ivan laughed, ever the cool Runner. But it was clear that when he looked around inside the map, he, too, had experienced a feeling of awe and wonder.

“Incredible to see the full scope of it all.” Annie’s voice was hushed.

Another slight brush of her hand brought forth a silvery spray of light... a near-infinite tangle of intersecting lines. At the fringes, they ran off into dense blackness, where they ended as though abruptly cut off.

“God,” Annie said, still awestruck. “Where do they all go?”

Ivan used a swipe of his hand to bring the map back to show a close-up of the segments that connected their route to Omega Nine.

“This is ... almost scary,” Annie said.

“And incredibly valuable,” Ivan added. “Think of it. Whoever has this OS can keep track of everything... all the traffic on every branch of the Star Road.” He took a deep breath. “In the wrong hands ...”

The thought stuck in Annie’s mind as she tried to grasp just how serious this matter was. Even knowing that the OS existed with all these “secret” Roads would be a felony.

“It’s a blueprint of the Star Road system ... all the known routes ... the cutoffs ... the short cuts.”

Ivan glanced at Jordan and said, “You could organize quite an attack - even an invasion, given the men, time, and equipment.” He took a breath. “Like I said, dangerous stuff.”

Annie nodded. “And it looks to me like this isn’t the whole enchilada.”

“That’s clear. A full map would be immense. Maybe incomprehensible.”

“Infinite ...” Annie said quietly.

As if the power and implications of what she was looking at finally became too much to take, Annie reached over to the console and—with a few pinches of her fingers—shrunk the holographic image down to a more manageable size. The mass of Star Roads was now a small, luminous ball.

Then she pushed it back onto the flat screen.

Less unnerving that way.

Another brush of her hand across the screen, and the ship’s data systems popped back up.

She took a breath.

Good to have that gone.

Ivan reached forward to remove the crystal, but Annie’s hand shot out and clasped his wrist. With her other hand, she quickly took the data crystal from its port.

“We have to get this back to the World Council immediately.”

“Hang on. Think it through,” Ivan said. “Where did they get this? Where did the council, the Road Authority, get the technology to run this entire navigation system?”

“We...
they,
I guess, found a terminal on Pluto, and they explored it and ... and they developed it,” Annie said.

She winced, hearing how rote it all sounded, like something she memorized in pilot school.

Her voice betrayed her doubts.

“Sure,” Ivan said. He looked at Jordan, who was carefully following this discussion.

“And so you never wondered about the astonishing quantum leap in technology? All of a sudden, in the span of—what? A bit more than fifty years? And all of a sudden we have new nav systems and communications that can cross impossible distances of space—message pods, and ships— that let us use the so-called ‘Star Road’?”