Radiant

my ears were blasted with a mechanical voice. 'Explorer Youn Suu, come in. Explorer Youn Suu, come in. Explorer Youn Suu, come in…'

Pistachio’s ship-soul on autorepeat. I stepped away from Festina and tongue-switched to transmit. 'Youn Suu here,' I said. 'Go ahead.'

There was a pause while the computer notified my caller that I’d finally responded. Five seconds later, Captain Cohen came on. 'Glad you’re there, Youn Suu. We were worried. Tut’s suit sent a signal it was executing an emergency evac, then your suit sent an autodistress call half a second before going no-comm. Everything all right?'

'No, sir. But we don’t need assistance.'

'You’re sure? I could contact the Cashling authorities…'

'They’d just get in the way. We can handle-'

Ambassador Li broke in. 'Explorer, where the hell are you? Ubatu and I are ready to go.'

'There’ve been some complications, Ambassador.'

'What complications? I told that damned Balrog to leave, and it did. Just goes to show, aliens may act cocky, but they’ll knuckle under if you take a hard line. That’s what diplomacy is. Now I intend to use the same approach on the Cashling government — fly straight to their capital, point out how I saved their city, and demand some juicy trade concessions. If you aren’t back to my shuttle in five minutes, you’re on your own.'

'You might as well leave now, Ambassador. I don’t know where Admiral Ramos and I will go next, but it probably won’t fit your schedule.'

A silence. 'Admiral Ramos? Admiral Festina Ramos?'

'Yes, Ambassador.'

'She’s here?'

'Right in front of me. She’s taking a call that will probably lead to work for both of us.'

'You and Festina Ramos?'

'Yes, Ambassador.'

I could guess what Li was thinking. With Festina on the scene, no one would believe Li and Ubatu had any part in expelling the moss from Zoonau. People would assume Festina had been responsible… though, strange to say, it was actually Tut who’d done the most to make the spores leave.

But if Li had no chance of taking credit for the Balrog’s departure, he could still boost his prestige by being seen with the admiral. Any photo op, any joint appearance in front of witnesses, and Li could capitalize on it for months. ('When Admiral Ramos and I were together on Cashleen… I happen to know Admiral Ramos believes… my good friend Festina wants me to say…')

So I wasn’t surprised when Li told me, 'We aren’t in that much of a hurry, Explorer. If I or my shuttle can provide any assistance…'

I looked toward Festina. She was still talking, facing away from me. 'Ambassador,' I said, 'Admiral Ramos can’t be disturbed right now, but we might need a ride very soon. Probably back to Pistachio. Could you come and get us? We’re on top of the central ziggurat. I don’t know the nearest shuttle pad, but Zoonau’s air traffic control can tell you where to land.'

'To hell with air traffic control,' Li said. 'I’ll pick you up where you are. Five minutes.'

I winced as he cut the transmission. Thirty rope walkways ran at various levels over my head. I doubted Li had the piloting skill to weave his way through all the cat’s cradles… and if he broke even a single rope, the Cashling government would howl themselves hoarse over 'thoughtless human hooligans' laying waste to 'irreplaceable urban transitways.'

On the other hand, if Li wanted to create a diplomatic incident, that was his problem. Maybe he liked diplomatic incidents. They were his form of job security.

Festina continued to talk on her comm. I kept my distance so she wouldn’t think I was eavesdropping. Once she turned in my direction and asked, 'I assume you’re here with a ship?'

'Yes, admiral. A Model D frigate named Pistachio.'

'No Class One duties?'

'We’re strictly Class Five.'

'Not anymore.'

She turned back to her conversation while I pondered her words. Class One duties were 'crucial to the survival of the Technocracy and the Outward Fleet' — which generally meant missions required to placate the League of Peoples. A ship with Class One duties was sacrosanct; nobody could interfere with it until it finished its mission. Furthermore, Class One duties were so vital that the crew had to be informed of exactly what was going on. Less important missions might operate on a need-to-know basis; but with Class One, nobody was kept in the dark for fear that ignorance would lead to mistakes. I was therefore certain we had no Class One jobs in the offing… unless Festina was about to give us one.

Any admiral could commandeer navy ships to carry out Class One jobs at any time… after which, only the High Council could reverse the decision. Since the High Council wouldn’t dare overrule the illustrious Festina Ramos, she’d have free rein to make Pistachio her own. (Most admirals commanded flagships already, but not Festina; she’d lost hers to a saboteur some years earlier and had never asked for a replacement. According to rumor, she preferred to travel incognito on civilian vessels — usually ones operated by aliens, who were less apt to recognize her famous face.)

Therefore, it came as no surprise when she waved me to her side a few minutes later. 'Call your captain, please. Say I’m invoking my Powers of Emergency and making your ship my flag. Class One mission. Verify authorization through Starbase Trillium. Prepare to leave orbit as soon as we’re on board.'

'What destination, Admiral?'

'A planet called Muta.'

I’d never heard of it. She gave me a set of coordinates. Only fifteen light-years from Cashleen, but in an unexpected direction. 'Isn’t that Greenstrider territory?' I asked.

'Used to be. The Greenstriders sold it to the Unity.'

I stared at her. 'The Greenstriders sold it?' Greenstriders were aliens with extreme territorial instincts — extreme to the point of lunacy. Once Greenstriders took mates, all they wanted was to claim a chunk of property and live there the rest of their lives. They wouldn’t travel… not even to move to bigger, more prosperous holdings. Greenstriders bonded with their land for better or worse, and never willingly left their homesteads more than a few hours at a time. I said, 'Greenstriders wouldn’t sell a square millimeter of ground to their own grandmothers. They’d never sell an entire planet to outsiders. Unless the place is utterly uninhabitable…'

'No,' Festina said, 'Muta is apparently superb — 9.7 on the Habitability Index. Perfect for colonization. Nevertheless, the Greenstriders sold it to the Unity ten years ago.'

'And now?'

'Now the Unity has small settlements there. One of which just sent a distress call.'

'What kind of distress call?'

'A nonspecific SOS. Someone just pressed a MAYDAY button, and now isn’t answering the comm.'

'So let me guess,' I said. 'The Unity tried to call everyone else on Muta to see if anybody knew the reason for the Mayday. None of the other settlers responded.'

'Exactly. Muta’s gone completely silent. We have to find out why… and try to save any survivors.'

'Why us?' I asked. 'Doesn’t the Unity have ships in the area?'

'No. The Unity only has a dozen ships in their entire fleet — huge damned things called luna-ships because they’re the size of small moons. Mostly, the lunas keep to the core of Unity space, making short trips between well-populated planets. Muta’s a long way off from other Unity holdings — and it only has a few thousand colonists, so it’s not worth visiting often. A luna-ship drops by two or three times a year. The rest of the time, Muta is on its own.'

'What about the Greenstriders? Even if they sold the planet, it’s still near their territory. Don’t they have ships within a few light-years?'

Festina shook her head. 'From what we can tell, the Greenstriders give Muta’s system a wide berth… although they do have a number of unmanned observation posts nearby.'

I rolled my eyes. 'That says a lot, doesn’t it?'

Festina nodded but didn’t speak… like a professor at the Academy, waiting for me to explain, though she already knew what I meant.

'There’s something bad on Muta,' I said. 'Bad enough to scare off the Greenstriders. Or more likely, the bad thing killed every Greenstrider colonist, since I can’t imagine Greenstriders leaving their land, no matter how frightened they got. The Greenstrider government wrote off Muta as too dangerous for further settlement, so they sold the planet to the Unity. Even then, the Greenstriders didn’t want to turn their backs on whatever had killed their people… so they built unmanned observation posts as an early-warning system in case the bad thing on Muta started to spread.'

'My thoughts exactly,' Festina said. 'And the Unity?'

'Full of themselves, as usual. They only colonize high-quality planets, which are never easy to come by. So they bought Muta, even though they must have known the Greenstriders had run into trouble. The Unity is famous for believing it can succeed where others have failed. They founded some settlements on Muta, probably filled with elite survey teams on the lookout for danger… but obviously they weren’t as good as they thought.'

'That’s the way I see it too,' Festina agreed. 'Lucky for us, we don’t have to live on Muta. Just go in, rescue survivors, and get out.'

I looked at her. 'It won’t be that easy.'

She sighed. 'I know. All this' — she waved her hand at the city around us-'the Balrog did this for a reason. It had advance knowledge that we’d be called to Muta, and it decided to come along.'

'Inside me.'

'Inside you.'