The Rise of Earth (26 page)

He swiveled idly in Kate's chair, the sumptuous leather beneath him creaking faintly as he turned his back on the musicians. The computer console was a state-of-the-art model. Tycho's knee bumped the desk and the touch screen lit up, open to a data stack labeled “Homework.” Behind it, other stacks were grayed out.

Tycho looked from the screen to the door, then back. Thoughts chased themselves in his head. The
Comet
pursuing the
Gracieux
, bearing away from the Jovian convoy and into disaster. The blazing engines of the
Nestor Leviathan
shrinking as her captors bore her off. Vass staring up at the bulk of Attis, warning about an Earth shipyard and military base on Jupiter's doorstep.

He got up from the chair, walked through a perturbed-looking violinist, and opened the door, leaning out into the passageway.

“Kate?”

There was no answer. He shut the door, politely stepping around the holographic musicians, and sat down again.

He imagined the
Leviathan
being reduced to a metal skeleton by a swarm of spacesuited workers. In his vision another ship sat nearby—a military vessel, with workers shuttling parts from one to the other. He thought about the dry docks of Earth, suspended in space above an impossibly blue world, their questing metal arms
cradling warship after warship, all nearing completion.

Tycho extended a finger toward the monitor. He closed the data stack holding Kate's homework. The stack on the top left of the screen said Flight Operations.

He hesitated, then reached for it.

It'll be locked. Please please please let it be locked.

It opened.

The screen now displayed rows of substacks within Flight Operations. He found Flight Logs in the third row.

Tycho tapped Flight Logs, and there were Captain Allamand's files, organized by month. He opened this month's file and saw a long list of navigational entries—an exact record of everywhere the
Gracieux
had traveled, when, and for how long.

“Tycho?” Kate called, making him jump. “Do you want milk?”

“Yes please,” he said, reaching forward to close the flight log, to navigate back to her homework stack.

“It's coming up. I'll need a minute—I can never find where our cook keeps things.”

Tycho reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out his mediapad. He tapped the connect icon, telling it to look for nearby computers it could exchange information with. He hoped it wouldn't find any, while knowing that it would.

His mediapad beeped, confirming it was connected. Tycho leaned forward and tapped the last two months' flight logs, selected the Copy command, set his mediapad as the destination, then confirmed the command.

Copying records: two minutes remaining
, the screen read.

Tycho closed the flight logs, then backed out of Flight Logs and then Flight Operations. He tapped on Homework, shut off the touch screen, and slipped his mediapad back in his pocket.

The cellist seemed to stare reproachfully at him.

The door opened. Kate handed him a cup of tea. It was hot and he drew his hand hastily away, sloshing tea onto his pants and the leather cushion on the seat.

“Oh!” Tycho said. “Sorry!”

“Did you burn yourself?”

“No, I'm fine. But the chair . . . I'm really sorry.”

“Tycho, it's a
chair
—don't worry about it,” Kate said with a smile. “I'll just get a towel.”

She returned and sipped her tea while he dabbed grimly at the spilled tea, unable to meet her eyes.

His mediapad beeped and he almost spilled the tea again. The file transfer was complete.

“What was that?” Kate asked.

“Incoming message or something. Probably just junk.”

“Good,” Kate said, settling back on his lap and leaning forward. Her lips tasted sweet from the sugar in the tea.

His mediapad beeped again—and kept beeping, filling the cabin with long trills of sound. The holographic musicians looked over questioningly.

“Oh, why don't you smash that stupid machine?”

“I can't—that's an immediate recall order,” Tycho said dismally. “From my captain. I have to go.”

“No,” Kate said, burying her head in his shoulder. “Oh, Tycho. Please no.”

“I'm really sorry,” he said, gently moving her off his lap and getting to his feet, reaching for his jacket. “It's . . . it's my duty.”

T
ycho was the first member of his family to arrive at the gate reserved for the
Comet
's gig. Through the thick glass he could see the gig sitting on the landing field, and workers in spacesuits dragging a flexible umbilical corridor over to its stern.

He pulled out his mediapad and called up the files he'd copied aboard the
Gracieux
. Part of him hoped they'd been secured by some code that hadn't been apparent back in Kate's cabin—perhaps they could only be read
within a few meters of a specific location, for instance.

But the flight logs opened immediately. Tycho scanned the list of coordinates the
Gracieux
had visited in the last month, looking for an entry that showed up multiple times. But there wasn't one. He frowned, then realized he'd neglected to account for orbital mechanics—like every other celestial body, 65 Cybele was in constant motion, slingshotted around the distant sun by gravity.

He scrolled to the bottom of the list and saw that the last entry had been time-stamped just a few hours ago. Those coordinates had to be 65 Cybele. But he couldn't make sense of the rest—there were too many numbers and he was too agitated to detect any patterns. He'd have to wait until he could take advantage of Vesuvia's computing power.

“Hey, look who's the first one here,” his father called out as he arrived with Diocletia and Carlo. “Guess Tycho gets to ride up front.”

Mavry was grinning, but Diocletia and Carlo looked anxious. Tycho wondered where his sister and grandfather were.

He nodded hello, then looked back down at his mediapad and the list of coordinates, trying to will some insight into being. Would the
Gracieux
have made multiple visits to wherever the
Leviathan
was stashed? Just one? Or none at all?

“So what's the mission?” he asked his father.

Mavry shook his head, looking around the terminal suspiciously. “Not here. Let's get into space.”

He glanced at Tycho's mediapad. “Crunching numbers, kid?”

Now it was Tycho's turn to shake his head—and look sidelong at Carlo.

“More intel from our friendly neighborhood sign walkers?” Tycho asked his brother.

Diocletia raised a finger in warning. “Belay that. Like your father said, let's get into space.”

Carlo gave Tycho a murderous glance and headed down the now-inflated umbilical to warm up the gig's engines.

By the time Yana and Huff appeared at the end of the corridor, Tycho was grimly certain that Carlo had been given another gift by the Securitat. What else could have inspired his mother to order a return to space just hours after they'd landed? He scanned the list of coordinates again, hoping something would match the various courses he'd set for the
Comet
recently and only half remembered.

“We're coming, we're coming,” Yana said, seeing that her mother had her hands on her hips.

“Arrr, these legs are built for endurance, not speed,” Huff complained, wiping sweat from the living half of his face.

The Hashoones strode down the umbilical to the gig, then up the gangplank. Carlo was already buckled into the pilot's seat, prepping for takeoff. The interior of the little ship seemed nearly as cold as space; breath wreathed the Hashoones' faces, and Yana's teeth chattered.

“Why do you always forget to turn on the heat?” she demanded as the whine of the gig's engines rose in pitch.

“You'll live,” Carlo said. “We'll be on the quarterdeck in three minutes.”

“Unless Captain Allamand has an errand he wants to run,” Mavry said.

The gig's gangway clanked shut behind them.

“I want the
Comet
flying as soon as we're crewed,” Diocletia said. “No grace period for stragglers. Tycho, are you planning to strap yourself in?”

“Right. Sorry.”

He tucked his mediapad under his leg and buckled his harness, then looked around at his family. In a couple of minutes the
Comet
would be preparing for flight, with everyone's attention focused on whatever Carlo had discovered. The time to speak up was now.

He took a deep breath.

“I have the
Gracieux
's flight logs.”

Everyone—even Carlo—turned to look at him.

“
What
did you say?” Diocletia asked.

“I said I have Captain Allamand's flight logs. I copied them to my mediapad. There's a record of everywhere he's been in the last two months. That should show us where the shipyard is. Probably the
Leviathan
too.”

Nobody said anything. Then Huff began to laugh.

“Arrrr, the biggest scoundrels are always the ones yeh had pegged as honest,” he purred, reaching back to give Tycho a bone-jarring clap on the shoulder.

“And how exactly did you come by this information?” Diocletia asked.

“Well,” Tycho said, then paused. His vocal cords seemed to have stopped working.

“I can't wait to hear this,” Mavry said.

“Um, so . . . I've been, well, I guess the word would be
dating
Captain Allamand's daughter. Only we had nowhere to go after they said I wasn't allowed in Earth's fondaco anymore, and everywhere else on Cybele was freezing, so Kate invited me aboard the
Gracieux
—we just wanted a little privacy—and there was no security on the console in her cabin. So while she was making tea, I looked through the files and there were the flight logs.”

Everybody just kept looking at him for a moment.

“We're talking about Captain
Allamand
's daughter,” Diocletia said. “The commander of Earth's privateers.”

Tycho just nodded.

“And you got the logs from the computer aboard his ship.”

Another nod.

“Oh boy,” Yana said, as Huff began to laugh again.

“Well, you've certainly been busy,” Mavry said, shaking his head. “I hate to tell you this, Tycho, but we already know the location of the shipyard—the Defense Force found it. That's where we're headed, along with four other privateers. I just hope we're in time.”

His father said something meant to console him,
about how he was certain the information would still be valuable. But Tycho barely heard him. He had betrayed Kate's trust for nothing.

While Carlo and Yana read in the crewers belowdecks, Tycho plotted a course to the coordinates the Defense Force had given them. He nodded when his father reminded him to prioritize speed over fuel efficiency. Vesuvia double-checked his calculations. And then he had nothing to do but stare at his computer screen.

He wondered what Kate was doing. Was she still in her cabin—maybe doing homework? Had she returned to Earth's fondaco? And was there any way she'd discover what he'd done?

“Tycho?” Diocletia asked. “Is our course locked in?”

Tycho looked up guiltily. “Plotted and verified.”

“And have you set up communications links with the list of Jovian ships I gave you?”

He nodded. “I was going to go through the
Gracieux
's logs and see if anything stands out.”

“You'll have to make it quick. This is a dangerous mission, Tycho—we all need to be focused.”

She turned back to her own console, and Tycho activated his headset and selected the channel reserved for one-on-one communications with Vesuvia.

“Vesuvia, I'm uploading two files to you. I need you to plot the coordinates in them against the orbits of charted celestial bodies. Ninety-five percent confidence interval.”

“Acknowledged. Beginning calculations. Shall I plot the positions on the main screen?”

“My console will be fine.”

His monitor filled with a spaghetti of lines plotted against a map of the solar system. A sequence of straight lines led into the tangle from the inner solar system, while a loop headed out toward Jupiter. Tycho saw immediately that the initial sequence of lines represented the
Gracieux
's trip from Earth to Cybele, with a refueling stop at Vesta, while the loop marked the trip on which Captain Allamand had rescued the cargo hauler taken by the Hashoones as a prize.

He zoomed in on the tangle of smaller lines and found a flurry of trips that began and ended at 65 Cybele, each position slightly different as the asteroid followed its clockwork path around the sun. He knew that a graph of the
Comet
's recent journeys would look much the same.

“Vesuvia, exclude everything more than a week before the intercept of the
Nestor Leviathan
. Then zoom in on what's left.”

“Do you want me to delete those coordinates from memory?” Vesuvia asked as the bells clang-clanged—it was 2100.

“No, don't do that,” Tycho said, rolling his eyes. “Just take them off the screen.”

“Greater specificity in formulating requests would make this process more efficient,” the AI replied.

Tycho ignored that, peering at the screen. His eyes jumped to 65 Cybele, surrounded by loops of various
lengths. The results looked vaguely like a child's drawing of a flower.

“Now, highlight the coordinates where the
Leviathan
was intercepted.”

“Acknowledged.”

Boots rang out on the ladderwell, and Carlo climbed up to the quarterdeck.

“Eight stragglers, Captain,” he said. “Do you want to give them more time?”

Tycho stared at the blinking cross on his screen where the Jovian convoy had been disrupted.

“No,” Diocletia said. “It's time to fly. My starship.”

“Aye-aye,” Carlo said, heading for his own chair. Yana's head appeared in the ladderwell.

“Show me any coordinates from the twenty-four hours after the intercept,” Tycho told Vesuvia, then glanced at Yana. “What's wrong?”

Yana aimed a furtive glance at Diocletia.

“It's Immanuel,” she said in a low voice. “He didn't report.”

“Him and seven others,” Tycho said, glancing from his sister back to the screen. “Crewers are late sometimes.”

“We were together when the recall order came,” Yana said. “He said he had to run back to his quarters to get his gear. He should have only been a couple of minutes behind me. What if the crimps got him?”

“Worry about the crimps, then. Mr. Sier can take care of himself.”

He wanted to say something more to reassure his sister, but there simply wasn't time.

“Yana, I need you up on sensors,” Diocletia said, and Yana spun away from Tycho in agitation, flinging herself into her own seat.

Tycho looked at his monitor. Two hours after the intercept of the
Nestor Leviathan
, the
Gracieux
had intersected the orbit of an asteroid whose sole designation was 124996.

“Vesuvia, show me every time the
Gracieux
intersected the orbit of 124996,” Tycho said.

The Earth frigate had been there three times—its most recent visit coming four days ago.

“Highlight 124996's current position, and also plot our course to the shipyard,” Tycho said. He leaned forward, eyes fixed on the mysterious asteroid's location, expecting to see their current course end at the same point.

“Vesuvia?” he asked after a moment. “I asked you to plot our course—”

“The requested course has been plotted,” Vesuvia said.

Diocletia turned in the captain's chair. “Tycho, contact traffic control—we need clearance for departure.”

“Will do, Captain,” Tycho said automatically, turning back to his console. “Vesuvia, zoom out on that view.”

“Do you think I mean next Thursday, Tycho?” Diocletia snapped. “Do it
now
.”

Now he could see their current course. And its endpoint—the site identified as the shipyard by the Jovian Defense Force—was nowhere near 124996.

“But Mom—” Tycho began.

“But Mom what?” Diocletia demanded.

“I plotted the course data from the
Gracieux
. She's never been to the site the Defense Force thinks is the shipyard.”

“We don't have time for this, Tycho. We'll assess the information you found later, but right now we have a mission. And that means I need you to follow orders.”

“Aye-aye,” Tycho said reluctantly. He erased the tangle of courses and orbits from his monitor and hailed traffic control. A few minutes later, the
Comet
accelerated away from 65 Cybele and Attis in a graceful arc, attached to her long-range tanks with a shiver, and raced toward her target.

Flight time was less than half an hour; given the tension on the quarterdeck, Tycho decided not to revisit the puzzle of the
Gracieux
's course data. The
Comet
and four other privateers—Garibalda Marta Andrade's
Izabella
, Morgan Theo's
Berserker
, Dmitra Barnacus's
Banshee
, and Zhi Ning's
Jin Chan
—converged and hurtled toward an oblong asteroid named Zephaniah.