That looks like five ships signed up, Joshua said to his crew.
Big operation, Dahybi Yadev said. He drained his beer glass and sat it down on the table. Starships, combat-boosted mercs, enhanced troops; thats a long, expensive shopping list. Big money involved.
Lalonde cant be paying, then, Melvyn Ducharme said. It doesnt have any money.
Yes, it does, Ashly Hanson said quietly. A colony world is a massive investment, and a very solid one if you get in early enough. A healthy percentage of my zero-tau maintenance trust-fund portfolio is made up from development company shares, purely for the long-term stability they offer. Ive never, ever heard of a colony failing once the go-ahead has been given. The money may not be floating around the actual colonists themselves, but the amount of financial resources required simply to initiate such a venture runs close to a trillion fuseodollars. And Lalonde has been running for over a quarter of a century, theyd even started an asteroid industrial settlement project. Remember? The development company has the money; more than enough to hire fifteen independent traders and a few thousand mercenary troops. I doubt it would even cause a ripple in their accountancy program.
What for, though? Sarha Mitcham asked. What couldnt the sheriffs handle by themselves?
The Ivet riots, Joshua said. Even he couldnt manage any conviction. He shrugged under the sceptical looks the others gave him. Well, there was nothing else while we were there. Marie Skibbow was worried about the scale of the civil disturbance. Nobody quite knew what was happening upriver. And the number of troops this Smith character is trying to recruit implies some kind of ground action is required.
Hard to believe, Dahybi Yadev muttered. But the actual mission objective wont be known until after theyve jumped away from Tranquillity. Simple security.
All right, Joshua said. We all know the score. With Parris Vasilkovsky backing us on the mayope venture we have a chance to make macro money. And at the same time, with the money we made from the Norfolk run we certainly dont need to hire on with any mercenary fleet. He looked at each of them in turn. Given the circumstances, we can hardly take Lady Mac to Lalonde ahead of the fleet. Ive heard that Terrance Smith has ordered a batch of combat wasps from the McBoeing and Signal-Yakovlev industrial stations. Hes clearly expecting some kind of conflict after they arrive. So the question is, do we go with him to find out whats happening, and maybe protect our interest, or do we wait here for news? Well take a vote, and it must be unanimous.
Time Universes Tranquillity office was on the forty-third floor of the StCroix starscraper. It was the usual crush of offices, studios, editing rooms, entertainment suites, and electronic workshops; a micro-community where individual importance was graded by allocated desk space, facility size, and time allowance. Naturally, given the make-up of the habitats population, it had a large finance and commerce bureau, but it also provided good Confederationwide news coverage.
Oliver Llewelyn walked into the wood-panelled lobby at ten thirty local time the day after the Gemal had docked. The receptionist palmed him off on a junior political correspondent called Matthias Rems. In the composite-walled office Matthias used to assemble his reports he produced the flek Graeme Nicholson had given him and named a carriage fee of five thousand fuseodollars. Matthias wasnt stupid, the fact that the Gemal s captain had come direct from Lalonde was enough to warrant serious attention. By now the entire habitat knew about the mercenary fleet being assembled by Terrance Smith, though its purpose remained unknown. Rumour abounded. Lalonde was immediate news; plenty of Tranquillity residents would have LDC shares sleeping in their portfolios. First-hand sensevises of the planet and whatever was happening there would have strong ratings clout. Ordinarily Matthias Rems might have hesitated about the shameless rip-off fee (he guessed correctly that Llewelyn had already been paid), especially after he accessed the company personnel file on Graeme Nicholson; but given the circumstances he knuckled under and paid.
After the captain left, Matthias slotted the flek into his desktop player block. The sensevise recording was codelocked, so Graeme Nicholson had obviously considered it important. He pulled Nicholsons personal code from his file, then sat back and closed his eyes. The Crashed Dumper invaded his sensorium; its heat and noise and smell, the taste of a caustic local beer tarring his throat, unaccustomed weight of a swelling belly. Graeme Nicholson held the fragments of a broken glass in his hand, his arms and legs trembling slightly; both eyes focused unwaveringly on a tall man and lovely teenage girl over by the crude bar.
Twelve minutes later a thoroughly shaken Matthias Rems burst in on Claudia Dohan, boss of Time Universes Tranquillity operation.
The ripple effect of Graeme Nicholsons flek was similar to the sensation Iones appearance had caused the previous year, in every respect save one. Ione had been a feel-good item: Laton was the antithesis. He was terror and danger, historys nightmare exhumed.
We have to show a sense of responsibility, a twitchy Claudia Dohan said after she surfaced from the sensevise. Both the Confederation Navy and the Lord of Ruin must be told.
The AV cylinder on her desktop processor block chimed. Thank you for your consideration, Tranquillity said. I have informed Ione Saldana about Latons reappearance. I suggest you contact Commander Olsen Neale yourself to convey the contents of the flek.
Right away, Claudia Dohan said diligently.
Matthias Rems was glancing nervously round the office, disturbed by the reminder of the habitat personalitys perpetual vigilance.
Claudia Dohan broke the news on the lunchtime programme. Eighteen billion fuseodollars was wiped off share values on Tranquillitys trading floor within quarter of an hour of the sensevise being broadcast. Values crept back up during the rest of the afternoon as brokers assessed possible war scenarios. By the end of the day seven billion fuseodollars had been restored to pricesmainly on astro-engineering companies which would benefit from armaments sales.
The Time Universe office had done its work well, considering the short period it had in which to prepare. Its current affairs channels usual afternoon schedule was replaced by library memories of Latons earlier activities and earnest studio panel speculation. While Tranquillitys residents were being informed, Claudia Dohan started hiring starships to distribute copies of Graeme Nicholsons flek across the Confederation. This time she had a small lever against the captains, unlike Iones very public appearance; she had a monopoly on Latons advent and they were bidding against each other to deliver fleks. By the evening she had dispatched eighteen starships to various planets (Kulu, Avon, Oshanko, and Earth being the principals). Those Time Universe offices would in turn send out a second wave of fleks. Two weeks ought to see the entire Confederation brought up to speed. And warned, Claudia Dohan thought, Time Universe alone alerting the human and xenoc races to the resurgent danger. A greater boost to company fortunes simply wasnt possible.
She took the whole office out to a five-star meal that night. This coup, following so soon after Ione, should bring them all some heady bonuses, as well as boosting them way ahead of their contemporaries on the promotion scale. She was already thinking of a seat on the board for herself.
But it was a hectic afternoon. Matthias Rems (making his debut as a front-line presenter) introduced forty-year-old recordings of the broken Edenist habitat Jantrit, its shell cracked like a giant egg where the antimatter had detonated. Its atmosphere jetted out of a dozen breaches in the five-hundred-metre-thick polyp, huge grey-white plumes which acted like rockets, destabilizing the cylinders ponderous rotation. The wobble built over the period of a few hours, until it developed into an uncontrollable tumble. On the outside, induction cables lashed round in anarchic hundred-kilometre arcs, preventing even the most agile voidhawks from rendezvousing. Inside, water and soil were tossed about, acting like a permanent floating earthquake. Starscrapers, weakened by the blast, broke off like rotten icicles, whirling away at terrific velocities. And all the while their air grew thinner.