The Hunt

[Mr. President]

No-one was supposed to be in the West Tunnels. On sub-basement level seven of Academgorodok base there was an entrance, but the authorities had never thought to put up a “Keep Out” sign. Going in was unthinkable. Built in years past, nobody knew where the tunnels even went.

Someone was in the process of finding out. In total darkness, he pounded through the dank hallway, breath rasping in his lungs. He could not know that the police officers had long since dropped out of the race; a phantom pursuit still breathed down his neck. Yet it was no less a baleful breath, seeming imbued with animal aggression and brimming with the feral rage of ages long dead. On and on the man ran, now and then banging his knees or ankles on some forgotten artifact, never pausing though the pain surged up into his torso.

A smell came to him, fresh and clean, different from the odor of test tubes and books that permeated the University territories, an odor which most citizens did not even notice. They knew that the air inside was different from the air outside, but made no other distinctions. But to a man such as he who had spent much time in other places, other bases, it was easily discernible. He was almost safe now! Just a little further. His legs burned from hours of non-stop, high-speed running, but now he could see light ahead in the distance.

The rusted door, inscribed with writing in an archaic dialect of University English, was easy to wrench open. The man activated his breathing filter and stepped out into bright sunlight. Casting his eyes about frenziedly, he tried to gain his bearings. It was afternoon, and a brisk wind blew through a nearby grove of ancient elm trees, planted in the very year of the University’s foundation. To the west, Alpha Centauri A sank quickly towards the Morgan territories. Eastwards the pursuit would be massing. He could just make out a two-mile-distant mag tube humming with traffic in and out of Academgorodok. It was the commercial hub of the University, and the roads were crowded at almost all times of day with businessmen and scientists, tourists from as far afield as the Sunset Islands. The situation was exacerbated now, with the space program moving ahead at figurative lightspeed. The engineers assigned to that particular project were as busy as bees, and the Restricted Area of the city was under heavy guard.

If the man struck out now, he might have a chance of making the border before security forces arrived to capture him. First, though, he checked a very large pocket, more a built-in bag, in the side of his grey work jacket. The disks were still safe. Reassured, he zipped the pocket and moved away, slower than before, but watchful, eyes darting rapidly, alert for signs of pursuit.

The man, to his dismay, had gone little more than a half a mile when the lifter cleared the trees ahead of him. Rotors spinning rapidly, it hovered about twenty feet in front of him and fifteen feet above the ground. A stentorian voice issued from a loudspeaker, ordering him to lie on the ground. To reinforce the ultimatum, the vicious muzzles of large wing-mounted chaos guns swivelled ominously, aiming at his chest.

Reluctantly, the man raised his arms high above his head. He knelt slowly, and was resigned to rapid capture or death, when he saw something move out of the corner of his eye . . .

[Mr. President]

. . . “Down!” someone shouted, almost inaudible over the din of the helicopter. The man turned his head to the left and saw a red streak arrowing upwards. Hurling himself backwards as best he could from a kneeling position, he hit the ground just as the surface-to-air missile slammed into the University lifter. A great red flower burst forth in a cloud of smoke and flying machine parts. He looked up.

Two figures, a man and a woman, approached through the smoke. They were dressed nearly identically, in long coats and hats bearing a wave and compass logo. The man had a three-foot-long tube slung over his shoulder. “Christ,” the fugitive said. “Attract a little more attention, why don’t you?”

The newly arrived man smiled. “You’re welcome, Bialkevich,” he said. Almost on cue, a piece of landing gear hit the ground less than five feet in front of him and skipped away with a clatter. “Let’s get moving before the other helicopters get here.”

Bialkevich frowned. “Other helicopters?” he said worriedly.

“Forget it,” the woman said. “Here, put this on. The pants aren’t great, but they’ll do.” She tossed him a sea-blue overcoat and cravat. “We’re Nautilus contract workers now, out of Morgan Hydrochemical.”

“Hydrochemical,” Bialkevich mused. Counting on his fingers, “One, two, three . . .sixty miles from here?”

“We’re on leave,” the man with the missile launcher snapped. “Put the damn jacket on already.”

Bialkevich put the jacket on, transferring the precious disks to an inside pocket he conveniently found. “Ready when you are,” he said.

“The rover’s not far,” the man said. “Let’s go.”

Smiling, the fugitive followed as the pair walked to the southwest. “You buccaneers think of everything, don’t you?”

They hiked nearly a mile through the lightly wooded landscape. It was a Longday, the Secondary rising just as the Primary vanished. The shadows shifted and then changed directions, a disconcerting effect for those unaccustomed to it. Inside the bases people would still be entering the night cycle. National business in the University used a metric clock, causing large discrepancies with other factions and the planet alike. Covered in shrubs was a nondescript four-man rover, originally designed for private use. It was dirty blue, spattered in mud and remnants of fungus, thankfully too small for any significant reactions with the larger neural network. As he opened the door and climbed into the backseat, Bialkevich thought he spied a rifle leaning against the front passenger seat.

The Nautilus woman drove, the rover clattering quickly over rocks and shrubs. Alert for other vehicles, she swung the rover onto the magnetic-strip highway and sped off, towards the Morganite lands.

* * *

Important News Alert
Citizens are advised to be alert for a fugitive, Peter Bialkevich, former employee of University Star Labs. His description is as follows: Height: 1.77 metres. Weight: 76 kilograms. Eye color: Brown. Hair color: Brown. DO NOT APPROACH THIS MAN. He is to be considered armed and extremely dangerous. Citizens are asked to report him to authorities if they see him.


All across the University, television stations interrupted programs to show a three-year old photograph of Bialkevich while the monotone warning blared. But it was too late. He was no longer in the country.

[Mr. President]

Dead of night, a time any seaman worth the clothes on his back would say was the wrong time to sail. Yet the Nautilus Pirates did it all the time, particularly when smuggling University defectors into Safe Haven. The advantage was that the aquatic city was near the Morgan coast. The disadvantage was that it was near the Morgan coast. Tensions had peaked several years before, and at the height of hostilities the Pirate capital had been pounded by vicious Zarathustra surface-to-surface rockets and strafed by gravships. Despite Svensgaard having driven military spending ever upwards in the preceding years and decades, bringing the Nautilus to the brink of economic collapse, his needlejets were no match for the fast-moving Morganic craft.

Peter Bialkevich could see the city’s dome illuminated from within as he stood at the middle of the small boat. There were no external lights or searchlights, and for a moment he wondered how incoming aircraft landed. But he quickly realized that there were practically no commercial flights into Pirate territory any more, and domestic tourists all travelled by ship. And any external lights would make the city that much of an easier target for the Morganic navy and air force.

Now that Bialkevich was closer, he could see where holes in the pressure dome had been patched with synthmetal or, in some places, intel-ceramics which molded themselves into the shape of the gap. The Pirates had clearly bounced back from the Morganic conflict in some fashion. He would be interested to see what they had in the way of scientific infrastructure.

“Get ready to dock,” the rover driver shouted to him. Bialkevich nodded and walked towards the front of the boat. Its small headlights barely illuminated the water directly in front of them. The great dome of Safe Haven loomed ever larger in the sky, blocking the end of a Longday from the former University man’s view. The dome looked rather haphazard, with bubbles rising from some areas where internal pressure had suddenly increased due to oversight or other reasons. Repairs had clearly been somewhat slapdash since the day Svensgaard’s escape pod fell from the sky. It was drab and functional, but it beat University Base.

The son of a career diplomat, Bialkevich was born in the Morgan Corporate HQ base and had lived the first seven years of his life there. It was during his early adulthood that he had first felt the University’s restrictiveness. Generation after generation of inhabitation by scientists and their support staff had bred a race single-minded and slow to laugh. His father had been just like that; his mother better, yet even she had problems expressing such feelings in public. Where Bialkevich’s personality had come from remained a mystery to him. Between the ages of thirteen and eighteen he had written stories in a notebook, fantastic tales of dragons and knights and mindworms and space travel, filling all but three pages before his father packed him off to the Physics Academy. He never saw the book again.

A large door at sea level opened. Bialkevich wondered how the bay remained usable as seawater sloshed into it, taking the boat with it. Then he realized it was indeed in use correctly. The great portal creaked shut behind them, yet the water kept flowing in through massive pumps, lifting the small boat many feet towards a pier that he could only see the bottom of. The city of Safe Haven was taking water aboard to bring the boat to dock. Bialkevich imagined that the Pirate capital must be riding very low to pull off such a feat.

The Mathematics Forum at U.N. Planetary Trust had been a real eye-opener for him. Until then he had never known that university campuses had recreation facilities, clubs and societies, plant life and ambient atmosphere. He never realized that there were students in the world who wore clothes other than pale worksuits, who played sports and read non-science books, who spent less than four hours a day studying. When the time came to leave, Bialkevich was strangely sad, though at the time he did not know why.

Two Nautilus officials were waiting on the dock, two men almost identical in size, coloring, and dress. “Greetings to you, Mr. Bialkevich,” one of them said. “Captain Svensgaard requests your company at a special meeting immediately.” Nodding to his escorts and the boat’s small crew, Bialkevich stepped onto the pier and followed the men into Safe Haven. Even at this hour, the streets were packed with people; raucous sounds assaulted the University man’s ears. A pair who, judging by their clothes, were police officers on a night shift, laughed as two youths circled each other with fists raised, blood dripping from several wounds. A young woman attempted to fend off the attentions of a sailor; he eventually doubled over, clutching his stomach, provoking laughter from bystanders even as the girl scurried away. Bialkevich hurried after his escorts.

[Mr. President]

“Show him in.”

The door opened, hydraulic drivers straining mightily. Peter Bialkevich walked through, slightly ahead of his escorts. Had he been paying attention, he would have noticed that the room was a treasure trove of wealth from the four corners of Planet. Intricate sculptures made of pale Gaian wood mingled with duroplast mechanical toys from Morgan Entertainment. An authentic piece of a Hiverian electric fence hung from the roof, with a sign that probably said something like “High Voltage” in the Underground Tongue still dangling by a corner. In one corner stood a Datatech mainframe. Useless on its own, it would be ideal for hacking operations when connected by pre-sentient modems to several others, as they would share their hard drives, making it difficult to pin down the exact location of the offending program. Such devices had once been the bane of other nations’ hi-tech sectors.

But he did not notice these, as he was gazing upon the face of Ulrik Svensgaard, perhaps the most notorious resident of Alpha Centauri. The pirate king’s age struck him. Whenever a picture of Svensgaard was printed in a magazine or shown on television, they dug up something that depicted him as young and athletic, building up a romantic image of a Robin Hood who opposed the evil money-grubbers of Planet. Bialkevich remembered one he had seen many times, in which the captain swung from a rope while stormclouds roiled and seethed behind him. More than a few young women dreamed of being swept away in his arms to a secluded cove. The man behind the planetwood desk had left his rope-swinging days far behind him. His ponytail was thin and greying, and his hands showed more than a hint of arthritis, and Bialkevich reckoned he would be waiting until after dark to sweep the girls away. Svensgaard’s good eye, though, still darted and shone with energy.

Noticing the scientist’s entrance, Svensgaard nodded to the young woman who was pointing at something on a page. “Leave it here, Marit,” he said. “I have an important meeting.” She brushed past the University man, and he caught a whiff of perfume as her hair swirled past his head.

“Cute, isn’t she?” the Pirate rasped. Dismissing the guards, he gestured for Bialkevich to sit in almost the same motion. “So. You are the famous Peter Bialkevich.”

“I wouldn’t say famous,” he replied.

“Don’t be so modest,” Svensgaard said. “I’ve heard so much about you. They say you are one of only five people on this planet who know what Kalciate is, and where to get it.”

“I had heard four.”

The aged buccaneer smiled. “Our scientific infrastructure is probably not what you’re used to, friend, but I think you will find the experience very . . .rewarding.”

Bialkevich nodded. At last the thorny issue of payment had come up. The Nautilus side had danced around the question of money in previous negotiations.

“What is your price, friend?” Svensgaard’s eye studied the man intently.

“Fifty-five thousand Morganic dollars a year.”

The Nautilus leader smiled. “I’m not sure we can spare that much, friend. You see, we have many enemies -”

“People you plunder, you mean,” Bialkevich interrupted. “You must have a million dollars worth of goods in this room alone.”

“Times are hard, Peter.” Svensgaard’s smile was fading. “I can barely afford to patch holes in the pressure dome. In a few years we’re all going to be in danger of suffocation. And you want fifty-five thousand dollars a year, Morganic?”

“You think I like betraying my country?” Bialkevich hissed, leaning over and staring straight into the Pirate’s good eye. “You have asked me to turn over above-top-secret knowledge. You’d better make it worth my while, or I can find someone else who wants to fly to the stars.”

For a moment the words hung between the two men like a cloud of fungal spores. Then the spell was broken. “Consider it done,” Svensgaard said. He pressed a button on a panel in front of him and the guards re-entered the room. “They will show you to your quarters. Be ready to leave again in three days. The project’s home is Parrot Landing.”

[Mr. President]

The siren roared into life around midnight. It was quickly followed by the sound of the world ending.

Bialkevich scrambled out of bed, fully clothed. He had fallen asleep the previous night reading a book he found in the sparsely furnished room, some boring diatribe comparing the liberated life of seafarers and the decadent luxury of landlubbers. In the distance he heard voices and running feet, muffled by the thick metal door. He listened intently.

He heard explosions and crashes, and fought the urge to run for it. A faint and unmistakable humming could be heard; gravships were flying low, dropping deadly payloads on the city below. Of the three nations that possessed the deadly aerial war machines, the Peacekeepers were far away and the Morganites had no reason to violate the Treaty of Karakas.

But the University had plenty of reasons to be angry, specifically at him . . .

He opened the door to his room and glanced up and down the hall. To the left, someone was lying on the floor. At this distance Bialkevich could discern neither their gender nor their state of consciousness. He slipped out the door, wished he had a weapon of some kind, and hurried off down the hall.

Half-running, half-falling down the rusting fire escape, the University man hit the ground and lay flat as a bomb punctured the pressure dome with an enormous crack! It fell on a house only a street away, obliterating the structure and sending an enormous shockwave washing over the streets. The building he had just vacated shuddered mightily, dislodging the fire escape. Bialkevich scrambled towards the front as the ancient staircase clattered threateningly into the space he had just vacated. People were running everywhere, panicked screams filling the rapidly escaping air.

Through the shadows Bialkevich saw helicopters hovering just above the massive crack in Safe Haven’s dome like hunting angels. Unearthly half-light behind them illuminated an even more terrifying sight: ropes dropped through the hole, and black-clad soldiers shimmied down . . .

The defector hurried away through the chaos. Behind him gunfire pierced the silence. Nautilus security officers were responding to the invasion – and going down hard by the sounds of it. Unconsciously, Bialkevich found himself moving towards Svensgaard’s office building.

He burst through the door and was hit in the face by a large bundle of papers. Gingerly touching his bruised nose, he glared angrily across the room. Svensgaard and his blonde assistant emerged from a nearby entryway. “Make sure you get them all,” the pirate said. Bialkevich noticed for the first time the people shredding documents, igniting what they could not shred, tearing to pieces what they could not ignite. Captain Svensgaard also noticed him.

“Did those guys I sent find you?” the Nautilus leader asked.

Bialkevich cocked his head to one side. “Guys?” he replied.

“Never mind,” Svensgaard said. Turning to the blonde woman, he said, “Get him out of here, Marit. Take the lower docks. I’m staying here,” he said over her attempted protest. “Hurry!”

“Come on,” said Marit, running for the door. Bialkevich followed. Outside they slowed their pace, moving through the shadows and trying to make little noise. The gunfire was closer now, and several Nautilus police and soldiers passed them running in disarray. Things did not look good for the Pirates.

Low in Safe Haven was an alley, at the end of the alley was a fake wall, beyond the fake wall was a long dark hallway, after the long dark hallway there was another pier like the one Peter Bialkevich had arrived at. Sleek-looking, camouflaged boats were tied there. A series of dull booms echoed far above them. “Get on,” Marit ordered him. It was the first time he had noticed her voice, and the sound was surprisingly pleasant. Three of the guards joined them, and the dock crew hastened to undo the moorings and lower the water level.

Behind the boat the tortured vista of Safe Haven rose like a fiery mountain. It was lit from within by burning buildings and vehicles and from without by searchlights. Gravships and helicopters wheeled and circled above, now and then releasing small fiery packages on the city below. With a thunderous sound audible even at that distance, the pressure dome finally gave way. It fell, burying many Pirates and University men, civilians and soldiers alike, and the carefully controlled atmosphere within dissipated and was blown away on the winds.

The hunt was truly on.

[Mr. President]

The boat’s motor buzzed as it cut through the dark water. But above deck, there was silence. At length the small craft slowed. Turning to face east, the direction of the now-ruined city of Safe Haven, the crew rose and saluted. For several minutes they stood there. Fireballs intermittently burst from the horizon, flashes of light in a world of darkness.

Bialkevich rose as well, and faced east, though he did not salute. Even had he known how, he could never truly understand what the Pirates were feeling. Safe Haven was more than just a city to the Nautilus. It was, on a smaller scale, what Earth was to humanity as a whole. An ancient progenitor. A living myth. A psychological fixed place in an ever-changing universe.

The University man strode softly to the front of the ship. Looking up at the stars, he traced out the familiar constellations with his eyes. The Hunter. The Mindworm. The Scythe. The Firecracker. Judging by the gleam of Pholus rising in the east, they had been sailing most of the night.

He was another night further from the life he remembered. He envied the Nautilus for their Safe Haven, the Gaians for their High Garden, the Believers for their Almighty Lord, the Cult of Earth for their Blue Planet. If used properly science could enrich humanity, both on the individual and the national scale. But there was more to life than textbooks and circuit boards, than smoothly oiled machines and obtuse mathematical sigils. Since the day he set foot in U.N. Planetary Trust, Bialkevich’s eyes had opened wider with each passing moment. He no longer felt at all comfortable in Zakharov’s scientific utopia. But where then was his home? Not in the chaos of Safe Haven. Not, now he thought of it, in the libertarian socialism of the U.N. faction. They were almost as bad as the University.

Perhaps someplace, there would be a place for . . .

“Unidentified vessel,” a monotone voice blared. “You have entered Spartan waters! You have one minute to either set a course out of Spartan territory or prepare to be boarded!”

“Not again,” Bialkevich muttered as he stood upright, peering into the night ahead. Dawn was breaking behind the Pirate boat, and the suns were assisted by searchlights that flicked into life ahead in the west. The lights were attached to Spartan patrol boats, helicopters above them. Bialkevich swallowed hard as he recognized the model from plans stolen by University “Freedom Of Information” agents. The SR-55 Razorwing was the deadliest rotor-propelled killing machine on Planet. Incredibly fast, almost silent, bristling with guns and worse than guns. Four specimens approached cautiously, ready to smash the boat to splinters.

“Never!” Bialkevich turned and saw Marit brandishing a harpoon. “You’ll have to kill us all!”

“Don’t give them any ideas!” the University man exclaimed.

Marit smiled the bleak, humorless grin of a woman about to die. “You’re a funny man, Bialkevich. Grab a weapon or hit the water!”

[Mr. President]

Flame rained from the sky. Peter Bialkevich leaped overboard as a blue lance struck the boat amidships, dashing the metal deck to pieces. Jagged shards flew in all directions. He saw the Pirates leap for the water as the chaos bolt hurtled into the ship’s engine room, igniting the machine oil and syntho-diesel fuel there.

A great orange ball filled the University man’s vision as an enormous shockwave lifted him bodily from the water. Bialkevich arced through the air, striking the surface with bone-jarring force. As his vision faded, he was vaguely aware of a Spartan flag somewhere above him, and the noise of a boat’s motor.

Then strong hands dragged him in a non-descript direction, and darkness fell.

***

He woke to find three people staring down at him. Two he did not recognize: a doctor with a clipboard in his left hand, and a tall man in a black uniform. The third was the woman who University media pundits had affectionately dubbed the “Butcher of Pendelhaven”, Corazon Santiago. Her face was immaculately expressionless.

“Good morning,” the tall man said. “What is your name?”

Bialkevich tried to move his head, and found that it hurt to move. Then he realized that it also hurt to breathe and to think. He tried to say his name. When they did not understand, he gritted his teeth and forced the words out.

The three Spartans exchanged glances. Santiago spoke next. “What were you doing on the ship?” Her voice was not loud, but hard as agnate and the paranoid mind would have heard a dozen threats under the surface.

The University man weighed up his options. Legends of Santiago’s atrocities during the FTL wars were rampant, but most were probably untrue. But Bialkevich had little doubt that they had ways of making him tell the truth. All this on top of the fact that he was tied down. So he told them that he was on his way to Parrot Landing. That at least was true.

Just as he had resolved to pass himself off as a Pirate, the tall man spoke again. “What is a University scientist doing on a Pirate ship?”

What indeed. “My job?” Bialkevich said weakly.

His vision blurred again, and he realized distantly that the doctor was speaking. “He’s losing consciousness again. We’ll have to continue this later.”

“I hope so,” Santiago replied. “We must know what he knows. Keep an eye on him, Dr. Bonaventura. We don’t want - ”

[Mr. President]

There were few things harder than walking blindfolded. One of those was walking blindfolded in the dark, as Peter Bialkevich was now. He had no idea where in the Spartan base he was. When the guards had first removed him from the cell, he had tried to keep track of the twists and turns. But the path had meandered around and around, up and down, until Bialkevich lost all sense of time and direction. The walk might have taken fifteen minutes or several hours for all he knew.

“In here,” the guard’s voice said. The scientist was bundled through a doorway. He winced slightly as his injured arm banged into the frame. A hand jerked the blindfold roughly from his forehead and bright light flooded his eyes. As Bialkevich’s eyes began to focus, he glanced around the small room. The walls were drab and grey. In the middle of the chamber was a steel table, at which sat a Spartan officer. His chest bore an array of medals, none of which meant anything to Bialkevich. In the shadows in the far corner, a tall man leaned against the wall, gazing intently from hidden eyes.

The synthsteel door clanged shut. “Have a seat, Mr. Bialkevich,” the man at the table said. Reluctantly, he did. The Spartan sensed his unease and smiled coldly. “Relax,” he said in what was clearly intended to be a disarming manner. In Spartan interrogation rooms, ‘disarming’ was a relative term. “I just want to ask you some questions,” he continued, “about the ship.”

Bialkevich swallowed hard. “Our records,” the Spartan said, “show that you are wanted in the University. On charges of espionage and treason.”

Another uneasy silence. The interrogator’s eyes narrowed. “Are the charges true, Mr. Bialkevich?”

He did not answer. “Under the U.N. Charter’s second revised edition, I can send you back to University Base on those charges, Mr. Bialkevich,” the Spartan said predatorially. “Once they pull a confession out of your cerebral cortex, you’ll make a very nice genejack.”

In spite of himself, Bialkevich showed visible signs of fear. University law was merciless in the field of subversives. Normal procedure involved psychic probing followed by behavior-altering gene therapy. Subjects had been known to lose several scores of IQ points and the power of speech.

The threat hung in the air. Bialkevich desperately tried to figure out what he feared more: torture by his countrymen or whatever fate the Spartans had in mind. There was no assistance in the interrogator’s icy dark eyes.

“Maybe, though,” the interrogator said abruptly, “I don’t have to send you back. Perhaps – officially - you died in that naval battle. Unofficially . . .”

“Unofficially?” the University man blurted out.

The Spartan smiled again and gestured to the man in the shadows. “Lieutenant Kessel’s department has prepared your new documents. You can make a clean break. And start again. By working on Project Snowbird.”

Lieutenant Kessel strode out from the corner. He was an intimidating figure, tall, muscular, and tanned, dark hair cropped short above steely eyes and emotionless face. Throwing a pile of paper on the table, he gazed levelly at Bialkevich.

“And if I refuse?”

“Let’s just say that we’ve perfected techniques that make Zakharov’s therapy farms look like a picnic in Arboria.”

Bialkevich looked directly at the interrogator. “If you apply your techniques, you’ll never get your Project Snowbird.”

“The project is almost complete as it is.” Kessel’s voice was even and calm. “But we lack a reliable source of Kalciate. We’ve been hearing about your expertise in that field.”

Silence fell again. Bialkevich stared hard at the floor. When he glanced up again, he saw the interrogator removing an instrument from his breast pocket. It was small and metallic, with three long prongs at one end. The interrogator pressed the buttons idly, turning it over in his hands like a seashell.

Glancing up, he newly noticed the sweat beads on the University man’s brow. “Have you made up your mind yet, Mr. Bialkevich?”