15
NEW CALIFORNIA
It was surprisingly hard to find SueLin, which argued that the “resistance” organization was larger than Sloan had suspected. Perhaps, Sophia’s chief of intelligence suggested, it was organized into cells, each with no direct knowledge of most of other cells, so that the people who had been interrogated had said nothing useful because they didn’t know anything useful. If so, that suggested a sophisticated level of organization. But, then, organization was what Peregoy worlds did. But not what SueLin did. She was pawn, not queen.
At any rate, the resistance no longer topped Sloan’s list of concerns.
Captain Ananya Batra said, “Approaching the New California-Polyglot gate, sir.”
Sloan sat behind her and the copilot on the tiny bridge of Sloan’s personal ship, the Acropolis. Class6A vessels were unarmed—mostly—and modified as the owners wished. Sloan’s included two cabins, crew quarters, and a common area with small galley, all of it comfortable but not luxurious. With him were a multilingual translator and six elite bodyguards, augmented and so well trained that they did not need to carry weapons. Of course, neither bodyguards nor weapons were allowed where he was going, but they were comforting on the trip and useful when conducting business on Polyglot, although Sloan did not intend to do much of that. He had a mission here.
He had not left New California in two decades. Sophia often visited New Yosemite, but mostly Sloan relied on his network of corporate vice-presidents and planetary operation officers, chosen with supreme care and monitored constantly. Sloan was, after all, almost ninety, and rejuv could do only so much. Still, he was pleased that he had stood so well the trip from New California to the orbital port. Rising up the gravity well had hurt, but not broken, his old body.
This trip to Polyglot was imperative. The Peregoy fleet had violated Polyglot neutrality by taking the gate between Polyglot and the primary Landry world, and the Polyglot Council of Nations was furious. The presence of Sloan Peregoy himself wouldn’t be enough to mollify them—even though it was the Landrys, not the Peregoys, who had started this war. Polyglot didn’t care who started the war. The Council of Nations cared only that war not violate their neutrality. However, Sloan planned on adding considerable sweeteners to his explanations. He was going to turn a violation into a negotiation, and negotiating was what he did best.
Captain Batra exchanged terse communications with the one Polyglot cruiser on this side of the New California-Polyglot gate, as well as with a Peregoy cargo ship approaching the gate from Sloan’s left. He watched the cargo ship, the Quasar III, as it disappeared into the shimmer of the gate. He hadn’t realized how much he missed seeing that shimmer. A holoview was not the same. The gate was beautiful, insubstantial silver lace in the blackness of empty space.
Batra said, “Entering the gate, sir.”
A brief moment of suspension, and then they were through. Polyglot lay below them, green and blue, its generous continents sparkling with evening lights. If Samuel Peregoy had had such a world, if he had reached this planet first instead of the lunatic who had discovered the first gate and indiscriminately opened settlement to everyone, the Peregoy empire might now rule all eight worlds. If—
The copilot gasped.
Sloan leaned forward in his seat, trying to see over the copilot’s shoulder to the datascreens. The copilot stared, rigid. Batra frowned deeply. For a long moment, Sloan didn’t see what was wrong: no alarms sounded, no other ship appeared on the viewscreen, nothing fired at them. Then he realized it was not what was present that mesmerized both pilot and copilot, but what was absent.
The Quasar III had not emerged from the gate.
“Captain Batra…” Sloan began, and was ignored. Batra was giving rapid, incomprehensible orders. Screens flashed with data and with panning views of space. Finally the copilot said, “She’s gone, ma’am. No debris, no residual radiation, nothing. She wasn’t destroyed on this side of the gate.”
Sloan said sharply, “The cargo ship was destroyed inside the gate?”
Batra said, “It would appear so, Director.”
“Do you know of anything that could do that?”
“No, sir.”
“A new weapon then? A Landry weapon?”
“Unknown.”
Cold filled Sloan’s belly. If the Landrys could destroy ships inside gates…catastrophe. Not only would warships be lost, but communication scouts and cargo vessels. Commerce among the Peregoy Corporation worlds would be crippled.
But…wait. He was on the Polyglot side of the gate. The Council of Nations would be just as outraged as he was. In fact, next to this Landry violation, the Peregoy taking of the Polyglot-Galt gate would become less important. Sloan could use this, exploit it, to enlist Polyglot on his side in the war. He had personally witnessed this war crime against a civilian ship. The Acropolis might just as easily have been the victim of this new weapon. Perhaps that was even what had been intended, and the Quasar III had been unwittingly attacked instead. Innocent lives lost…
“On,” he said to his wrister. “Crew list for the Quasar III, with pictures and brief bios.”
With any luck, at least one of the dead would be young, attractive, and sympathetic. That would be the image to present to the Council of Nations. He or she might even be—have been—a Polyglot citizen. With any luck.
Sloan’s ship dropped toward the planet.