begin to answer Booty’s question. What did the Thrakies hope to gain? And which Thraki were behind the attack since their society included at least two opposing groups. The Runners and the Facers. There was no way to know.
One thing was clear, however, her uncle might be targeted too, and she needed to warn him. “I’ll need a ship . .. the fastest one you can find.”
Booly smiled and dropped a robe over her shoulders. “I’ll put someone on it. In the meantime, you might want to consider some clothes.”
Chapter 2
Holy Bible, Exodus 20:3
First printing circa 1400
Somewhere Beyond the Rim, the Confederacy of Sentient Beings
One moment they were there, thousands upon thousands of shimmery spaceships, all seemingly motionless in space, then they were gone, absorbed by the strange dimension called “hyperspace,” and launched toward a distant set of coordinates.
The Sheen fleet was comprised of approximately 1,300 separate vessels, all controlled by the computer intelligence known as the Hoon, and, with the exception of a human named Jorley Jepp, a navcomp called Henry, and a robot named Sam, was entirely crewed by nonsentient machines. Not that Jorley Jepp and the AIs who attended him could properly be referred to as “crew,” since their actual status hovered somewhere between “prisoner” and “stowaway.” A situation that Jepp sought to exploit, since he viewed the fleet as the manifestation of Divine Providence and the means by which to enact God’s plan. Well, not God’s plan, since it was difficult to know what that was, but his idea of what God’s plan should be.
All of which was fine with the Hoon so long as the human continued to support the computer’s overriding purpose, which was to find the Thraki and eradicate them. Why was anything but clear. Not to Jepp anyway. Still, why worry about something when you can’t do anything about it?
The prospector cum messiah straightened his filthy ship suit, stepped out onto the improvised stage, and raised his arms. Like the ship it was part of, the onetime storage compartment was huge and stank of ozone.
Jepp’s first convert, a nonsentient robot named Alpha, sent a radio signal to more than a thousand of his peers. All of them bowed their heads. It was more dignified than the shouts of adulation that Jepp had required of them the month before. He was pleased and the sermon began. The world called Long Jump was pleasant by human standards, having only slightly more gravity than Earth did, plus a breathable atmosphere, a nice large ocean, and plenty of raw unsettled land. Real estate, which like vacant lots everywhere, was available for a reason. This was partly due to the fact that Long Jump was not only on the Rim, but on the outer edge of the rim, which meant that goods such as grain, refined ore, and manufactured products would have to be shipped to the center of the Confederacy where they would be forced to compete with similar commodities that were more expensive to produce, but had a shorter distance to travel. A competitive reality that the citizens of Long Jump had never managed to compensate for. All of which helped to explain why Fortuna, the only city of any real size, was home to thieves, prospectors, renegades, bounty hunters, organ jackers, drug smugglers, stave traders and every other sort of villain known to the broad array of sentient races.
It was like so many frontier towns, a city of contrasts in which mansions stood shoulder to shoulder with sleazebag hotels, animals toiled next to jury-rigged robots and the often muddy streets wandered where commerce took them.
But Fortuna was civilized, and, like mostly human civilizations everywhere, was host to a complex social structure. The very top layer of this society was occupied by three different beings, all of whom liked to think that they owned the very top slot, although none of them really did. One individual came close, however, and his name was Neptune Small. The fact that he weighed approximately 350 pounds was an irony of which he was well aware, and no one chose to joke about. No one who wanted to live.
Small’s offices were located over one of the restaurants he owned, which was rather convenient, since he considered it his duty to sample the establishment’s wares at least four times a day. So that’s where he was, sitting at his favorite table, when a functionary named Hos McGurk left the city’s dilapidated corn center, ignored the pouring down rain, and ran the three blocks to the aptly named Rimmer’s Rest. He could have called, could have asked for Small, but the businessman didn’t like corn calls. He preferred to deal with people face to face, where he could see their fear, and smell their sweat. McGurk pushed the doors open, ignored the robotic hostess, and headed for the back. All sorts of junk had been nailed, wired, screwed, or in at least one case welded to the walls. There were nameplates taken off long-dismantled ships, a collection of alien hand tools, the shell from a five-hundred- pound land mollusk, a mummified hand that someone found floating in space, and a wanted poster that not only bore Small’s somewhat thinner likeness, but announced the possibility of a rather sizeable reward. Some of the clientele thought it was a joke—others weren’t so sure.
McGurk had started to pant by the time he arrived in front of Small’s table. The entrepreneur, as he liked to refer to himself, always wore immaculate black clothing, and affected a specially made cane The handle resembled the head of an eagle and the shaft doubted as a singleshot energy weapon. It leaned against the table only inches from it owner’s well-dimpled hand. Small dabbed his fat puffy lips, raised an eyebrow, and spoke in what amounted to a hoarse whisper. “Good afternoon, Hos—what brings you out on such a miserable day?”
Thus encouraged McGurk began to babble. His eyes bulged with pent-up emotion, his hands washed each other, and the words emerged in spurts. “Ships! Hundreds of them! Maybe more! All dropping hyper.”
