"Relax," said Ge'Sirn. "It's just... cosmetic."
N'Drask continued to stare out of the viewport. The Hazari rendezvous point was a purpose-built docking station, set into a small asteroid on the fringe of an uninhabited star system. Beneath armoured domes of white cerametal, docking bays had capacity to hold dozens of Hazari ships. The design of the station was bright, clean, functional, all silvery-white surfaces and plain lines....
In the middle of one docking bay, Ge'Sirn's ship stood out like a sore thumb. The hull of the vessel was covered in a shimmering polychromatic sheen, like oil on water, and the metal bulged out in places, in spots that looked like the outbreak of some kind of disease. "What happened?" N'Drask asked again.
Ge'Sirn sighed. "It's just a side effect. We had to overload the new holo-emitters to generate a photonic fleet and chase off the Vaadwaur. Some kind of subspace harmonic modified the crystal structure of the outer layer of the hull. It's harmless. And believe me, it was one hell of a good test for the holo-systems. Should be a lot easier to sell, now we can prove they work."
N'Drask shook his head. "Not going to be easy to sell people on that, though."
"So my ship broke out in coloured warts. So what? The Vaadwaur ran, N'Drask, that's what counts."
N'Drask shook his head. "I hope so. I hope so.... How many others are coming?" He craned his neck, peering around the other docking bays, more than half of them full already.
"I'm hoping for at least seventy ship captains," said Ge'Sirn. "That's enough prestige and financial clout to form a serious consortium. We can develop this thing, exploit it, work on other avenues of research -"
"Have you thought about -?"
"I am not doing a deal with the Federation. You'll just have to go back to them and say you've made a good-faith effort. They're supposed to respect that, right?"
"They're supposed to do a lot of things. But I don't trust 'em. They're tricky. I'm not sure they're just going to sit around and wait for me to get back."
"Have you seen anything? Spotted any sensor traces?" An urgent look came into Ge'Sirn's eyes. "Did they follow you here?"
"I don't know. Oh, nothing turned up on my detectors, but -" N'Drask's shoulders hunched. "Sometimes, you know, you just get a feeling. I'm getting one now. Like, there's a bunch of stuff all on, well, a collision course. And this might be where it's going to hit."
"But nothing definite?"
"Maybe, maybe not. There's been a Kazon heavy raider hanging around - I know, I know, those things are everywhere, they're like vermin. But I'm almost sure it's the same one."
"Kazon raider against seventy-odd of our ships - yeah, that'd work." Ge'Sirn snorted. "Well, anyway. Time for me to go do the really scary stuff."
---
"The beauty of this system," Ge'Sirn declaimed, "is that it makes its own rules. Normally, holograms interact with real objects according to the standard laws of physics, and in those, the odds are stacked against the hologram - it's inherently more fragile, easier to destabilize, than a physical object. Our actualizer, though, sets up subspace harmonics which not only reinforce the hologram's structure, they allow us to program in whole sets of novel interactions with normal spacetime. You can easily create exotic weapons with energy types that will bypass an enemy's shields - I'll be submitting combat records which show this - or novel chemical structures based on unreal periodic tables, which has all sorts of interesting research uses."
His mouth was dry. Above him, as he stood on the presentation dais next to the device, serried ranks of Hazari faces looked down on him. Were they interested? Were they convinced? It was hard to tell.
"What sort of uses?" called out Y'Nadan. He was one of the oldest, most experienced Hazari owner-captains. If he could convince Y'Nadan, Ge'Sirn thought, he could convince anyone.
"We've had some success," he said, "with holographic kironide. Now, you know that stuff is hard to handle and hard to predict. But we can create a substance, using the actualizer, that technically isn't kironide, but works just like it. The implications of that -"
"Psi powers are unpredictable anyway," someone muttered. Not Y'Nadan; his mouth was firmly closed, his expression blank.
"It's one avenue of research," Ge'Sirn said firmly. "There's plenty of others. Biology, for instance." There was a stir among the watching audience. Had he touched on something interesting? Ge'Sirn wondered. "That was why we contacted the Kadirians for field tests. Their holograms, for safety reasons, were already running biological systems, but with an invented biochemistry behind them. Adding our actualizer -"
"Had certain unanticipated side effects," said a snarling voice from behind him. Ge'Sirn whirled round.
His first thought was of N'Drask's description, of a black hairy thing with teeth. But this creature - though it had teeth, and very prominent ones - was not black, so much as blue. And while one of the armed and armoured figures behind it was visibly human, others were quite clearly Klingon, or Gorn -
"Who the hell are you?" It was Y'Nadan's voice.
The creature swaggered up to the presentation dais. "Rrueo-Captain, Rrueo-Thinker, owner and master of the IKS Brathana. Rrueo has had questions for some time, and it seems that this toy -" she laid one hairy hand on the actualizer "- is key to the answers." She turned to face Ge'Sirn. "Will you give them complete information, or shall Rrueo do that?"
"How did you get here?" Ge'Sirn spat.
"Rrueo and her associates tracked your partner's vessel. And Rrueo made a private deal with the portmaster here, to bring the Brathana into dock. Rrueo knows that the Hazari are to be trusted in the matter of contracts. Rrueo suggests, though -" she turned to face the audience "- that you know what you are buying."
"I'm telling them everything!" Ge'Sirn shouted.
"Rrueo suspects you do not know everything." Ge'Sirn felt an immense urge to punch the interfering Alphan right in her furry face. He restrained himself. Never mind the armed guards - the creature looked quite capable of tearing him apart by herself.
"What do you know, Alphan?" Y'Nadan demanded.
"Rrueo knows how this device achieves its no doubt impressive results. It infuses holograms with minute quantities of protomatter, using the protean qualities of that substance to bolster and sustain them -"
"I told them that! I'm being honest with them!" Ge'Sirn yelled.
"What you do not appreciate is that the protomatter effect is prone to become elaborate, and in unpredictable ways. In the Alpha Quadrant, it was used, once, in a machine called the Genesis Device. A nebula was transformed into a class M planet - one with hypertachytelic evolutionary processes, one with a burgeoning vitality that even brought one man back from the dead. An asset of considerable value - for the short time before it exploded."
"Nothing's exploded here!"
"Not yet. But when your Kadirians spoke to a Kobali colony, the protomatter amplified some aspects of their entirely fictional biochemistry - it extrapolated, almost, from simulations of the Kadirians' antibodies, a holographic analogue of the virus that ravaged the Kadirian homeworld. That holographic virus lasted long enough to infect the Kobali colonists. There were no survivors."
"That's absurd!" said Y'Nadan. "The virus would have had to continue existing even outside the field of the holo-emitters -" He broke off, stared hard at Ge'Sirn.
"They can," Ge'Sirn muttered. "Our amplified holograms can persist, sometimes for hours -"
"Sometimes days, in a low-energy environment," said Rrueo, "such as the Oort cloud of a star. Rrueo was perturbed to find ghosts in space... but now Rrueo knows what they were; remnants of holograms created by this device - and left there when the emitter was destroyed, by the enemies who want it. Rrueo assumes you are aware that the Vaadwaur are seeking this device?"
"The Vaadwaur?" someone asked.
"The Empire and the Federation are not your enemies," said Rrueo. "We are willing to negotiate, to come to some arrangement that will - suppress a potentially disastrous line of research. The Vaadwaur, on the other hand, are not noted for being reasonable. Rrueo puts it to you that an agreement should be reached, and swiftly."
"No!" Ge'Sirn shouted. "Damn you! The whole point is to build up our resources, push you damned Alphans back to your own side of the galaxy!"
"Your point," said Y'Nadan grimly. "Not ours, necessarily."
Ge'Sirn stared at him, fury throbbing in his temples, his fists clenched at his sides. How had this situation got so far out of his control? He felt physically sick, light-headed, dizzy -
Then he realized. It was not just a feeling.
The human with Rrueo, a cold-faced, light-haired female, spoke. "Something's wrong with the gravity plating." She checked a device in her hand. "Main power levels are plummeting all the way through this installation -"
From all around, there was a click and a hiss. The station's public address system. A voice spoke - one Ge'Sirn recognized with a sudden rush of horror.
"Your attention. This is Tuarak of the Vaadwaur. You are to surrender the Hazari Ge'Sirn and his intriguing apparatus. My forces are taking control of this facility now, and we have established a wide-area tetryon field to negate your power sources. Please, feel free to offer resistance. My troops will relish the entertainment."
No comments:
Post a Comment