The Timeweb Chronicles: Timeweb Trilogy Omnibus (44 page)

“We must return to Canopa and tell the Doge what we have seen,” Noah said. “Sadly, there are bigger enemies than Lorenzo or my sister. I fear a plot against all of humanity.”

The eyes of the miniature woman widened. “Are you crazy? Lorenzo will kill us.”

“I intend to go along. Remember, I am somewhat difficult to kill.”

“Alone? You’d leave me in control of this podship?”

“Yes. Contemplating the worst, I’ve also left Subi Danvar in charge of the Guardians … he understands the possibility that I might never return.”

“Don’t say that!”

“At a time like this, I need to be realistic. My Guardians are important, even critical, but I must give the Mutati threat an even higher priority.” He paused, and added, “You may take the helm now. Just drop me off at the pod station.”

“I hope you know what you’re doing,” she said.

Without responding, Noah relinquished his mental hold on the craft. He watched Tesh move into position in the sectoid chamber, and heard her utter the ancient
benedictios
of her people, like magic words.

The sentient spacecraft lifted onto the webbing, then came around like a galactic sailboat and pointed back the way they had come, toward Canopa.

With his mind separated from Tesh, Noah wondered if she had penetrated his thoughts moments ago, the inner workings of his mind, especially his intentions. He had been unable to read her thoughts at all, even though they had shared images of the cosmic web, and information from it. He hoped she could not read his mind, because if she could, she would not be pleased with what he intended to do. Noah had omitted certain key details from the plan he had related to her.

With the Merchant Prince Alliance surrounded by Mutati warships, Noah’s ability to remote control podships was not enough. He could only pilot one of the sentient vessels at a time in that manner, while the shapeshifters were poised to load their superweapons into different podships and strike from hundreds of directions at once. To counter that, Noah had to take drastic action.

His podship sped toward Canopa. He just watched, anticipating that he could take control of the vessel away from the Parvii woman again if necessary, even if he was not physically on board it. But it occurred to him now, as it had before, that she might have new ways to block him, more than she had shown him before.

Noah had never felt entirely comfortable with Tesh, and didn’t think he ever would. She and her people harbored secrets that went far beyond the brief time that he had been formulating his own.

Chapter Eighty-Six

Our universe is in chaos.

—From Eshaz’s timeseer report to the Parviis

To avoid attention, Tesh brought the podship into one of the secondary docking bays of the Canopa pod station, where fewer vessels went and the walkways were not so crowded. As they connected to a berth, Noah saw no sign of the Doge’s Red Berets.

Wearing a khaki tunic and dark, billowing trousers, Noah disembarked and passed through an airlock to the sealed walkway. He waited for Tesh to leave, then strolled to the other side of the pod station, making no attempt to conceal himself. Instead, he marched right up to one of the red-uniformed officers, identified himself, and demanded to see the Doge.

Within seconds, Noah was surrounded by uniformed men. They searched him for weapons and bound his wrists behind his body with electronic cuffs.

As they completed the arrest, Noah was startled to see the Doge Lorenzo del Velli emerge from an unmarked grid-copter just down the platform, leading an entourage that included the blonde Princess Meghina and a Hibbil attaché.

Just then, Francella Watanabe stepped onto the walkway from another vessel, and walked briskly to join the royal entourage. Suddenly she saw her twin brother, and stopped dead in her tracks.

* * * * *

No one noticed the young man in the dark blue cape who stood off to one side, gazing about furtively.

Anton Glavine had a lot on his mind, much more than the personal safety of Tesh Kori. Over the years he had seen Lorenzo del Velli at public appearances, without knowing that this powerful man was his own father. Anton had seen holo-images of his mother as well, Francella Watanabe, and had also been completely unaware of his own connection with her. At the moment, he stood only a few meters away from both of them.

His heart pounded as he watched his parents approach the prisoner.…

* * * * *

“I am going to say something that sounds unbelievable,” Noah said, “but I ask you to hear me out.” He looked at the Doge as he spoke, then at his scowling sister.

“He’s a madman, sir,” one of the soldiers said, keeping hold of Noah by the arm. “A raving maniac. Shall I take him away?”

Lorenzo the Magnificent held up a hand. “Just a moment.” And to Noah, he said, “You have two minutes.”

“I can see far into the galaxy,” Noah said, “into the very heart of the cosmos. Danger lurks out there … Mutatis lying in wait in vessels that look like merchant prince schooners, planning some kind of an attack. They have terrible planet-buster weapons. That’s how they destroyed Earth, Mars, and Plevin Four.”

“Your words fall short of proof,” Lorenzo said. The muscles on his face tightened, smoothing over some of the wrinkles.

“The entire galaxy is interconnected,” Noah said, “in ways I never imagined. Somehow it allows me to travel mentally through deep space.” Leaning close to the Doge, he exclaimed, “I can pilot podships!”

The soldier jerked Noah back and slapped him hard across the face. “See what I mean, Sire? A complete lunatic.”

Flashing his gaze at Francella, Noah said, “Do you think I’m a madman, too, dear sister?”

As if thinking he had a weapon concealed somewhere and that he could still get to it, she slipped behind one of the Red Berets, and peered around the man at her handcuffed brother.

“I have bad news for you, Francella,” Noah said. “I was near death and received a special healing treatment that changed me … it made me immortal.”

With that, the Doge and Francella laughed, as did the uniformed men with them.

“I think he’s rather cute,” Princess Meghina said, stepping forward and passing a hand through Noah’s curly, reddish hair. “I’ll bet I could kill him with love.”

Narrowing his eyes, Noah smiled and said, “I’d have to be crazy to take you up on that offer, Princess. I hear your husband is quite a jealous man.”

“Sometimes he is, and sometimes he isn’t.” She tossed her long blonde hair over one shoulder, and shot a bittersweet smile at the Doge.

Noah knew something about the dynamics here. Meghina and Francella despised one another, and were in competition for the affections of Lorenzo. The Princess was legally married to him and had born his daughters, but she was a famous courtesan, the lover of many noblemen. He had only married her for political reasons, to join the assets of two great houses. Reportedly his true affections were for Francella, but Noah couldn’t understand how anyone could love
her
. Even Lorenzo deserved better.

“How about a little lie detector test?” Francella asked. With a sudden movement, she grabbed a puissant handgun from the holster of an officer and pointed it at her brother. The bright yellow energy chamber on top of the barrel glowed as she activated it, showing it was ready to fire.

“Go ahead and shoot,” Noah said.

A soldier ripped open Noah’s tunic, revealing that he wore no body armor.

“Mother, don’t!” someone shouted. All eyes turned toward the young man in the blue cape and liripipe hat, who had gone unnoticed until now. He raised his hands in a halting gesture.

Two soldiers tackled him, knocking him to the deck.

Francella hesitated, and looked closely at Anton.

Noah could only imagine what his loathsome sister was thinking. She had never gazed upon her son before, not even when he was a newborn. But she might be noticing something familiar in him now, wondering if he could be the one she had left with foster parents. For a fleeting moment, Noah thought he detected a mother’s love on Francella’s face. Then she turned to stone, and ordered the soldiers to place Anton under arrest.

Coolly, Francella looked back at Noah.

“I don’t think you should shoot him,” Princess Meghina said, stepping between the brother and sister. “After all, he is a nobleman’s son, and deserves a fair trial.”

Francella’s eyes turned feral. She shoved Meghina aside and fired a bright yellow charge at Noah’s chest, ripping through flesh and searing a ragged, bloody hole. He fell back on the walkway, shuddered, and stopped moving. The electronic handcuffs sparked, and lifeless hands flopped loose.

Meghina and Anton cried out, as did several travelers who had gathered to see what was going on. One of them quipped facetiously, “You don’t want
her
mad at you.”

Francella glared in that direction, then looked down at her brother, with fascination burning in her eyes. An officer knelt to check the victim’s carotid artery, and announced, “He’s dead. Shot straight through the heart.”

Slipping the gun back into the officer’s holster, Francella said, “Just tidying up a little family business.”

Doge Lorenzo grunted in amusement, then pointed down and exclaimed, “Look! He moved!”

On the walkway, Noah felt his own body regenerating, and the intense, burning pain of the chest wound fading. His cellular structure repaired itself more quickly than before, fusing bones and organs together and sealing the injury with new skin, while leaving blood on his clothing. In less than a minute, he rose to his feet and smiled stiffly at his sister. He still had nasty, bright red scars on his chest, but they were changing with each passing moment.

With a squeal, Francella stumbled backward, as if she had just seen the devil incarnate.

“I guess he passed his lie detector test,” Princess Meghina said. “Bravo!”

“For your own good, you’d better listen to me,” Noah said, stepping toward the Doge. “We need to set our differences aside and work together on this.” The pain of the wound was already gone, lingering only as an unpleasant memory.

Reluctant to touch Noah, the soldiers did not attempt to intervene. Everyone stared in disbelief as the scars on his bare chest continued to smooth over and fade.

In his bloody, ragged tunic, Noah stood face to face with Lorenzo, and said to him, “I want you to send nehrcom messages to every planet in the Alliance. Tell them to fit every pod station with customized sensors to detect arriving podships, and guns to blow them out of space the instant they appear. This needs to be done fast!”

Noah glanced over at the Doge’s Hibbil attaché, who had been attempting to conceal himself in a forest of much larger onlookers. “I understand there are Hibbil machines … hibbamatics … used for entertainment in every royal court. Can those machines be set to manufacture what we need, in a hurry?”

The Royal Attaché shot an uneasy glance at Lorenzo, but received no response from him.

“I think he can arrange it,” Noah said to the Doge. “Have the sensors set to blast every podship to oblivion. Don’t let anyone disembark, and don’t let them off-load any ships—especially not any merchant schooners. The Mutatis have planet-busting bombs aboard them.”

“This is preposterous!” Lorenzo said. “I will do no such thing. The Merchant Prince Alliance needs the podships; we can’t destroy them. If the Mutatis have a scheme, we must deal with it in a different manner.”

“There is no other way!” Noah shouted.

“The podships are living creatures,” Lorenzo said. “If we start killing them, they will signal their brethren, and they will no longer serve our transportation needs.” He stared with wild fascination as Noah’s body continued to heal itself, eliminating the scars.

“Podships have already died,” Noah said, “one in each planetary explosion.”

“Then we should capture the disguised merchant ships,” Lorenzo said. “The moment each podship docks at a pod station, we move in and … “

“We don’t know how much time elapses between the arrival of a podship and the destruction of a planet,” Noah said. “Maybe the Mutatis don’t wait for each podship to dock.”

Without warning, Noah felt a change of air pressure, and heard a firm click. A podship floated into one of the docking bays and connected to a berth.

Hanging over the walkway, a glyphreader panel flashed, calling for all Timian One passengers to board.

“Your ship, Sire,” one of the officers said.

Lorenzo did not move.

Noah was agitated at the podship’s arrival, and hoped that he had not given his warning too late. Were there any Mutatis aboard?

The passengers began to offload through an airlock, while vessels in the cargo hold slipped into the docking bay. There were no schooners, and no signs of Mutatis. But the shapeshifters were tricky, and might have disguised the vessels he had seen earlier.

Just then, a Red Beret lieutenant ran from the Doge’s grid-copter, which had remained in a protective position, with its weapons activated. Reaching the Doge, the officer said, breathlessly, “Timian One has been destroyed, Sire! No one knows how.” He held a mobile transceiver in one hand. “The planet and its pod station have been wiped out, leaving only space debris. We have eyewitness reports of people who barely escaped with their lives. The crew of a conventional spacecraft saw a huge explosion from outside the star system, then went to our nearest base to make a report.”

“Sire, issue your commands to all planets!” Noah said. “Set up defensive perimeters at the pod stations!
Now
!”

Reluctantly, the Doge nodded. “Fire off a nehrcom message to General Poitier,” he said to his Royal Attaché. “Tell him I need sensor-gun specifications, exactly as Mr. Watanabe described.”

The dispatch was sent, and a short while later the reply came, with the needed information.

Suddenly animated, Doge Lorenzo barked orders to the Red Berets. All over the pod station, uniformed soldiers jumped into action. Urgent messages were relayed to the Canopa nehrcom station and dispatched all over the Merchant Prince Alliance. The podship floated out on its regular schedule, and Noah watched it disappear in a glimmer of green, into another dimension of Timeweb. Without the Doge or his entourage.

Noah hardly noticed his sister slinking away.

A short while later, the Doge’s troop transports arrived, eerily silent in the vacuum of space. Hundreds of soldiers disembarked.

Soon the Royal Attaché was operating a hibbamatic to create the necessary sensor-guns, and furry little Hibbil technicians hurried to install them around the perimeter of the pod station, set to pick off any podships automatically as they came in. Merchant prince warships moved into positions in orbital space, near the station.

Noah felt a terrible emptiness in the pit of his stomach. Timian One! Billions of people had been killed.

* * * * *

Only moments after the defensive mechanisms were set up, a podship emerged from deep space in a burst of green light. The defensive units opened fire and the sentient spacecraft broke apart, scattering thick pieces of the fleshy hull in orbit, along with passengers and fragments from on-board vessels.

From the pod station, Noah gazed out on scattered particles and broken bodies floating in the airless vacuum of space. What looked like a merchant prince schooner floated by, with its hull split open to reveal gleaming alloy tubes and a dead Mutati pilot. Soon, two more podships appeared, and were blasted away. Then they stopped coming.

Almost oblivious to Red Beret guards beside him, Noah felt immense pain and sadness for the loss of life, but knew he could not have taken any other course of action. As a galactic ecologist, he hated having to interfere with the podships in this way, but he was convinced that the measures he recommended would save more of the beautiful creatures than they would harm. The same held true with regard to the members of other races who had to be sacrificed. Many more of them would die if he did nothing.

Noah’s corporeal future was as uncertain as that of the rest of the galaxy. He expected to be taken into custody and blamed for the huge economic fallout that would result from the cessation of podship travel. Through their political wiles, Doge Lorenzo and Francella would spin the facts to make it look as if the entire crisis was Noah’s fault. He didn’t know exactly how they would fabricate the story, but knew they would.

Deep in his psyche, a part of Noah no longer concerned itself with such details, for he was evolving into something unique in the annals of history, changing moment by moment.

The End