The Elysium Commission (19 page)

I tried to go to bed early on Mercien evening. I didn't sleep. Not immediately. Half-formed thoughts swirled through my mind, and most dealt with the Elois, except for a phrase Siendra had said. Even half-asleep, I recalled it exactly: “Neither of weakness nor of indecision.” Why that phrase?

I drifted into an uneasy sleep, with those words reverberating somewhere.

Three hour and a quarter.

I shuddered awake. I hated getting up when it was dark, especially when it was going to be dark for another three stans. A quick hot shower helped, as did a mug of SpecOps Sustain. It was legitimate to buy it, but who would want to, the way it tasted? It was good for jumpshifting a sluggish metabolism. Mine was, at least when jolted out of settled routines. I put on the gray flight suit last, along with the flight boots.

Before I headed down to the nightflitter, I ran a quick news scan, sifting through the stories.

Just what we all needed—another mathematical model that treated individuals as discrete volitionless lumps, as if one model or one size applied equally to all.

Was that the result of whatever the Elois and Maraniss were doing at the Classic Research center at Time's End? Was what they were doing linked to Odilia's decision to flee? Or was I just jumping to unwarranted conclusions?

Either way, I'd had enough. I cut off the news feed.

I couldn't just flee to Firenza on suspicion. Jumpship passages to places like that cost as much as a good dwelling in the area where Krij lived. Even what I could get for my villa would only have paid for a handful of passages.

After making a last check of the systems integrated into my gray flight suit, I walked along the inside corridor from the villa's kitchen back to my study. From there, I took the circular staircase hidden behind the bookcase down to the lower level. I went to the hidden locker that held all the gear I'd kept saying for years that I wouldn't use. I'd thought about calling it my inner sanctum, but it was really a lower sanctum, and that didn't roll off the tongue. It just sounded vaguely vulgar.

I selected the enhanced opticals, the vibrodetects, and two dayration paks. No weapons. Not for this mission. Not this time. Then I crossed the red-lit hangar to the nightflitter, squinting for a moment as the shifting light patterns from the craft's curved angularities tried to twist my eyes away from its twenty-meter length.

After storing equipment and rations in the small locker beneath the pilot's couch, I eased up and into the cockpit. Once I had my helmet on, I checked all the links, then lowered the visor and ran through the checklist.

Light-off one.

One online.

Number one generator brought all the flitter systems online.

Once the hangar doors irised open and the lights went out, I taxied the flitter up the ramp and out the courtyard. This time, I requested a departure vector from ACS to Vannes via Carcassonne.

Suggest routing through Lyons via Carcassonne.

Accept.

Cleared to lift off.

Shadow-one, lifting off on departure vector.

Cleared to ACS boundary on departure vector two six three, immediate climb to one thousand AGL.

Accept-affirm.
I lit off the second engine, then fed all power to the diverters. The nightflitter rose vertically until I was clear of structures, particularly my villa, when I nosed down slightly and transitioned into forward flight, I turned just south of due west to hold my vector, climbing and leveling out at my cleared departure altitude.

This time I waited until I was well clear of the ACS boundary before I went stealth, banking into a descending turn and steadying on 020, angling back to the western end of the Piedmont Hills. The lights of the various towns and villages to the north of Thurene were dimmer. A thin ground fog was forming. It often did in late fall and early winter.

Within minutes I was nearing the west end of the Somme Valley. There the ground fog was thicker. I stayed just above it even after I turned north toward Time's End.

At that moment, for an instant, the detector system flared. Whatever it had been had passed over or by me. I ran the signal back. It had come from above, either from a superstrat recon or a satellite, but it hadn't lingered long enough for a lock. More of a random sweep. Those were always possible.

Even so, I angled west for the next several minutes, then dropped even lower, almost hugging the treetops. Once I left the lower ground near the river, the fog thinned. Another twenty klicks, and I swung back northeast, keeping just above the treetops and using the terrain to shield me from the surveillance sensors at Classic Research until the very end.

Then I slipped the flitter around the east side of the tallest hill on the Rothschild Thierry lands—several klicks north of a light I thought might be an RT field station—and eased down into a cleared area on the north side. Most of my emissions would have been masked by the nightflitter's stealth capabilities, and even Special Ops would have had a hard time locating me from minimal emissions for such a short period.

Even so, I was cautious. I shut down one engine immediately. While I waited, I used a burst-bounce relay to amend my flight plan, canceling the last legs and claiming that I'd set down in Villedumont. That way, no one would be asking why I hadn't shown up in Vannes.

After ten minutes, I shut down both engines, damped all emissions, and used the fuel cell to power the single passive detector that monitored all freqs and energy sources. For the next two hours all I had to do was watch the detector. That, and think.

Bergerac's smoky red light lent a surrealistic sheen to the curved angularity of the exterior surfaces of the nightflitter. Voltaire was but a crescent in the western sky and would set before dawn.

I took a deep breath and concentrated on the detector.

I still wondered what my subconscious was trying to tell me with the perseverating repetition of the phrase Siendra had used. “Neither of weakness nor of indecision.” All she'd meant was that the Elois hadn't been operating out of weakness or indecision. I knew that. What else was there in the words?

I pushed the question away. I'd wrestled enough with the phrase. My subconscious had brought it up, and my subconscious was either going to resolve it or forget it.

I was dozing, dreaming of Magdalena, when the message jolted me—most rudely—from that bliss of secondary sensuality.

Ser Maraniss…Ser Maraniss…Director Eloi would like to see you in the operations center immediately.

I jerked up into a sitting position, trying to reorient myself in the darkness of the bedchamber, but no light broke where no sun shone. There was no low golden light from the skies, confirming that I was indeed at Time's End and not in Elysium.

Time?

Five fifty-three, ser.

What did Legaar want? He was sadistic, but not without purpose. He also wasn't exactly prone to rising before the sun, and his presence in the operations center so early suggested more trouble because the Frankan forces couldn't have arrived even well beyond the system in the time since we'd last discussed matters.

Should I consider my alternatives?

Not yet. I feared not the working world of the Elois, nor their flat synthetic souls and blood.

I pulled on a singlesuit, gray and wrinkled, but clean, and splashed cold water on my face. I was almost out the door before I realized I was barefoot. I added socks and boots, then made my way down to the maglev. I only saw one sleepy nymph—red-haired and as blowzy as a naked yet shapely figure could be. She was about as far from my tastes as possible. I missed Magdalena's compliant elegance.

Legaar was waiting in the Research operations center, pacing in a long oval path, his boots pounding the resilient floor. He looked up, even more disheveled and tired than I felt, stuffed as he was into an off-blue singlesuit. His boots were scuffed and gray, and he was unshaven and bleary-eyed.

“Someone's out there spying. They're less than a klick from the perimeter. The monitors detected another anomalous burst of energy at four fifty-seven. There was the faintest trace of elevated thermal radiation. Now…there's nothing. They're just waiting.”

What was I supposed to do about that? His system and people were in charge of security. “Elevated thermal radiation for a short time? It could be a flitter engine shutting down. Or it could be some foresting or logging crew opening a bunch of thermal-pak meals.” Or a lightning strike fire fizzling out, or…

“It doesn't match any of the parameters except a flitter engine, sers. It is a military-style flitter.” The system ops voice was well modulated, far too well modulated to be human so early in the morning.

“Where is it?” I finally asked.

“I told you,” snapped Legaar. “Less than a klick beyond the perimeter, on a hilltop that offers a line-of-sight view of the dwelling complex and a direct access to the front of the research center.”

“That won't show anything, not with passive observation, and if they use energy-based scanners, the shields are more than adequate. Let them look. Nothing's going to happen for days, and it could be longer than that.”

“I don't like it, not after that military flyby earlier.”

“Are you sure it was military or Special Operations? Could it be the Fox clone? Or the shadow? Could he be a covert agent of the sisters?”

“Later today, I can check. We can't wait for that, though. I'm sending out a surveillance team once they're assembled.”

“Onto RT lands?”

“RT won't ever know.”

“Like they didn't last time?” I shouldn't have said that. I was still sleep-fogged.

Legaar glared at me.

I managed an apologetic shrug.

He kept glaring, and that suggested that I needed to say something. “Won't that reveal that we're hiding something?”

“They wouldn't be out there if they already didn't know that.”

“They might be trying to provoke us into revealing the importance of Time's End.”

“That could be, but if whoever's watching doesn't return, it doesn't matter.”

What he was leaving unsaid was that he didn't want to unleash the RPFs again, or not so soon, against a target on Rothschild Thierry lands. Using his personal commando unit would be far less obvious, no matter how it turned out. Also, if the Civitas Sorores or Assembly Special Operations were involved, if the commandos didn't use proscribed weapons or equipment, that would make it more difficult to obtain an inspection warrant, without a lengthy and obvious process that could become politically rather difficult for the authorities.

“There's not much else I can do right now,” I pointed out.

Legaar scowled. Then he nodded. “There'll be more for you later, Maraniss. Go get some sleep.”

His words were more order than concession, but, for the moment, it didn't matter.

Over the next stan, as I waited in the darkness in the nightflitter and monitored the detectors, there were no untoward energy emissions, and no launches of RPFs from Time's End. My earlier foray had produced an instant attack-response. The lack of a response suggested that my approach and landing had not triggered those defenses.

I kept monitoring the detectors, but they indicated nothing.

My thoughts kept returning to my other two unresolved commissions.

Why Terrie McGerrie remained hidden was more than obvious. Why someone wanted to find her, yet not be informed, was less than obvious. Far less, unless they had full access to my systems, and with all that I'd expended on security, that seemed unlikely. Honest concern? I snorted. Unlikely. Jealousy? A desire to know she was worse off? More likely. I hated taking credits under those conditions, but…my expenses were considerable.

Why wouldn't someone like Stella Strong wish to come forward and claim a substantial bequest? Or were there terms in it that had not been made public? If so, what were they? If not, why was everything so shrouded in secrecy? Who really was behind the facade that was “Nancy”? What was hidden behind the overt agenda suggested by Seldara Tozzi's inquiry? Why hadn't I asked those questions before?

In the dimness of the cockpit, I reflected. Most of my commissions before this had involved seeking obscure information or in dealing with unsavory individuals whose locations and motivations had been relatively transparent. Or in finding “lost” children, missing spouses, or properties mislaid as a result of multiple spouses and subsequent deaths and readjustments. A few times, I'd been retained merely for the sake of appearances. Once or twice, I'd actually been in real danger.

My thinking had gotten sloppy, and I hadn't even realized it as I'd relied on easy access to convenient information and upon my physical training and talents.

That burst of realization was bitter, and I couldn't push it away easily. Was that why I haunted the shadowed streets of Thurene? Because I needed to prove, if only to myself, that I provided some service of worth and value?

Slightly before dawn, I left the flitter and headed for a particular tree on the south side of the cleared area, a sycamore—adapted, of course. They kept their leaves later, but they also were easy to climb, provided I didn't go too high into the crown. The wood was softer and weaker than oak. Even so, at close to twenty-five meters above the ground, I looked down. I decided not to do that again. How I could fly aircraft and yet worry about how high I was in a tree was a paradox I deferred exploring. Until I was out of the sycamore, anyway.

I settled into place, straddling a limb, with my back to the trunk, and began training my optical and other passive detection gear on Legaar's estate to the north. Passive detection gear had the advantage of not revealing the observer through energy emissions. I was hoping that a longer surveillance might tell me more than what I knew. Data and system searches, aerial surveillance, and everything else I'd done only went so far. Whatever was happening—or about to happen—involving Legaar Eloi and Judeon Maraniss was going to occur at Time's End. I
knew
that. Proving it was another matter. Even getting a hint of what it might be was going to be difficult.

Before I completed setting up and focusing my gear, the sun had climbed just above the seemingly endless expanse of mixed forest that extended both east and west of me—a canopy of green, dotted with yellow, orange, and red. I had a relatively clear view of Time's End from my near-hilltop vista. I could see the operations center directly, and to the northeast, the west side of the main mansion, as well as sections of the pleasure pool beneath and to the southwest of the main structures. So soon after dawn I didn't expect to see anyone moving around.

Except for a brief glimpse of one naked nymph, I didn't. There was no motion around the flat front of the Classic Research structure or in the grassy expanse to either side.

I settled back to wait. It was likely to be several standard hours before activity at Time's End picked up, and I probably had a long and boring day ahead. Still…what else could I do? The passive energy detector registered a high level of damped emissions from the research center and a lower but significant level from the mansion complex. Neither was unexpected, and the readouts didn't show increases in the energy levels from the fusactor power plant that was somewhere to the north of the two complexes. The baseline level remained high enough to be disturbing, and I had trouble believing that no one else had noted all that power being generated. How had the Elois explained it? Or had anyone even asked?

I'd only been watching for a short time when I caught sight of movement around the pleasure pool. That was almost at the limit of clear range, even with enhanced opticals.

Maraniss—or someone very like him—was walking away from an irregular patch of darkness, most likely an artificial cave. He was wearing a very unstylish singlesuit and boots. Had he spent the night with one of the shapely nymphs?

Given his clothing, I didn't think so. Rather, he looked as though he'd had a long and hard night at something else. As for the cave, it had to be an entrance. My guess was that the cave concealed some sort of transit system from the mansion to the Classic Research facility. Probably a small maglev to cover the three klicks. The combination of hidden transport and a tired Maraniss suggested I might not be waiting long for something to happen. I hoped I was wrong.

Less than half a stan later came a
bleep
on the passive comparator, suggesting limited energy usage. I focused the opticals on the area indicated by the comparator. The ground seemed to waver, if slightly, and the passive detector kept showing energy usage just above background. Someone was using a concealment screen, and moving southward across the low grassy area that marked the perimeter of the estate.

Another energy shift marked the point when the estate's defenses were shunted around the concealed vehicles. By studying the grass behind the concealment shield, I could make out traces of at least two wide-tired vehicles. Tires were far quieter than using ground effect vehicles. All of them were headed in my direction.

Much as I would have liked to continue surveillance, it was time to depart—quickly. Climbing down a large sycamore takes time. That is, if you're carrying equipment that can be traced back to you if left behind and if you intend to walk away from the trunk of the tree under your own power.

Eloi's team was less than two hundred yards away by the time I scrambled back into the nightflitter. At that moment, the entire Time's End complex bristled with energy and active surveillance. Someone was waiting for me to take flight.

I paused for a moment, thinking. I should have thought more and sooner.

I didn't light off the engines, because, I realized, if I did, I'd likely be a grounded loon, if not cooked or fried. Eloi knew about where I was. He'd shown no reservations about destroying the landscape of his neighbors. His team was close enough that they'd easily see and hear a liftoff—perhaps even lighting off the engines. They were also doubtless armed with missiles or other items likely to be rather hard on the nightflitter at close range. The flitter's shields would only be partly effective on the ground. That didn't even count what Legaar might launch or direct at me from Time's End.

Reluctantly, but quickly, I climbed out of the cockpit and dropped to the ground. The gray flight suit held the same attributes as my shadow grays, and I hadn't brought personal weapons. My own attributes and training would only be good at close range. That assumed Eloi's team wore “standard” nanite-reinforced uniforms and helmets.

After leaving the canopy just barely ajar, I slipped beside one of the wheels, standing in the shadow. My upper body was concealed in the wheel well, and my legs blended into the undercarriage. The best idea was to take out the team—if I could—quietly, and then lift off. It wasn't a very good idea. But then, I hadn't expected close to a two-hour delay in response, either. Or how frigging long it had taken to climb down the tree.

As soon as the nanite camouflage barrier—now looking like pine undergrowth—appeared at the edge of the clearing, someone opened up with a slug thrower. He had to have been using fragmenting osmiridian shells—or some generic equivalent. One long burst shredded the cockpit area.

The idiots hadn't even bothered to check the flitter.

By then, I was moving into the trees. I dropped behind a large-trunked fir and peered over a ridged root back toward the doomed nightflitter. Much as I hated to do it, I sent a quick link to the self-destruct system. I was close enough that the flitter system acknowledged the arming signal.

The firing patterns disrupted the projection shield enough that I could make out the team from Time's End. There were only four Classic Research commandos on two TCs. Technically, the vehicles were full terrain capable or VFTCs. At higher speeds, they were terrain choppers. That name had stuck years before, despite all the military efforts to change it.

Another burst from the weapons type on the leading TC took out the aft section of the nightflitter.

The two TCs were within fifty yards of the craft, getting ready to fire more of the fragmenting shells. At that rate, there wouldn't be any arming system left.

Shadowflare Omega.
I flattened myself behind the roots of the fir even before I finished triggering the self-destruct system and activating my personal nanite shield.

Whummptt!

The ground shuddered. Energy and pieces of all manner of objects sheeted above me. Large and heavy projectiles slammed into me.

So did darkness.

When I woke up, I could feel a burning sense of agony—and immobility—in my left forearm. It was pinned under a small log. Maybe it was a limb from a nearby oak. It was heavy enough that I couldn't budge it. From where I was sprawled, I couldn't get my legs or shoulders under it, either.

The nanite shield had protected me from the worst before it had gone semipermeable, then burned out. That was a limited consolation in the position in which I found myself.

In the end, by contorting myself and using a small belt knife, I dug enough in the way of needles and dirt from underneath the arm to free it—after I passed out from the pain that had been blocked by the compression of the arm against the ground. I thought I heard a whispering somewhere, but the only sounds that remained when I regained consciousness were those of insects, and rough cawinglike sounds, except they sounded more like “kaugh.” Even in my state, it sounded raw and ugly.

Obviously, no one else was alive nearby—except for an unkindness of ravens and more than a few insects, including a persistent deerfly. The ravens were busy enough that they paid me little heed. The deerfly paid me far too much attention.

Almost another half stan passed before I managed to immobilize the arm between two lengths of fir and tie strips of the flight suit's sleeve into a sort of sling.

When I did manage to get to my feet and peer around the tree, I swallowed. The entire clearing was a mass of shredded and tangled wood, vegetation, and shredded composites. Thurenan Arms had clearly designed the self-destruct mechanism to assure that nothing usable remained anywhere close to the nightflitter. At least, nothing usable except to the ravens and eventually the carrion beetles.

That suggested that I depart immediately. At the same time, I couldn't help but wonder why a follow-up team hadn't been dispatched. Maybe Eloi only had one team on standby. Still, remaining seemed unwise.

If…if I recalled correctly, there was some sort of RT station around three klicks south. Time's End was closer, but that wasn't an option.

I swallowed and started walking away from the devastation. My steps were cautious. I couldn't afford to trip or fall.

Sometimes, my arm throbbed. That was when it hurt less. I kept walking.

I'd gotten to the other side of the hill and found what once might have been a path, when I realized that something about the uniforms worn by Eloi's commandos nagged at me. They hadn't worn insignia, and the colors had been forest camouflage, but…the cut, the design…something.

I couldn't figure what it might have been.

Despite the intermittent cool gusts of wind, and a patch or two of frost in the shade under a few trees, I didn't feel that cold. My mouth was dry.

I kept walking.