Heat

The codes were accepted, an ironic reminder that Tagen was neither first-rank nor sitting on the council, and yet here he was, watching the Jota Prime Gate power up to admit him. He felt the sickening lurch as the Gate gripped him, and then he was pulled forward and into the dizzying spray of stars that lit up all the fathoms of folded space between two worlds. The star cruiser, its engines sleeping for the jump, began to vibrate and then to buck. Tagen heard a low, anguished groan rattle its way through the whole hull, and he had just enough time to calmly think that he had solved the mystery of E’Var’s disappearance and was, in fact, about to be spread across the same corner of the galaxy, when he suddenly punched through the glowing Gate and into Earth-space.

Immediately, his audio cha

The Far-Reacher’s records, which he had been reading as he listened to his N’Glish language discs, had been very clear on the point that humans were in their technological infancy. At the time of the quarantine, only a few of their hundreds of civilizations had even mastered the process of alloyed metals. To broadcast sound into space required transistors and electricity at the very least.

Tagen’s sense of unease only grew when his ship brought him close enough to see the garden of debris in orbit around the human homeworld. Logic tried to tell him these were the leavings of smugglers, but he could see nothing that looked to be of Jotan make. The So-Quaal, then. He was less familiar with their designs and he knew that human slaves had a way of contributing to the So-Quaal’s endless quest for what they called ‘research’.

Perhaps the smugglers who preyed on this planet were responsible for the radio noise as well. Some sort of monitoring system, perhaps. It had to be so. No one went from laboring to forge alloyed metals to launching satellites in five hundred years. All the same, Tagen found himself deeply unsettled and he did a thing any other Jotan might find unthinkable: He sca

There were laser defense arrays and nuclear reactors in low orbit all around the planet, but none of them were sca

Tagen considered the matter, idly capturing a few images of the planet spi

It could have been caused by a meteor, he knew, or be any falling chunk of rubble that decayed out of the orbiting mass of like wreckage, but (and he might as well admit the possibility), it could have been left in the wake of a stolen prison transport vessel.

Until now, Tagen had not really considered the possibility of E’Var’s survival. The prison ship had been a tremendously old one, and the Gates themselves were showing the evidence of time. Mid-Gate failures were becoming more common, much as the council might like to deny it. It was far easier to believe that E’Var had met with his well-deserved death in one fiery instant than to face the unpleasant prospect that a Fleet officer had, for whatever reason, aided him in his escape.

Looking at the dimly-etched ionic distortion, Tagen grimly realized that he was going to have to investigate Earth as though E’Var were really on it. Out of the hundreds of thousands of human life-forms walking around on Earth, Tagen was going to have to try and find one Jotan. On foot.

Damn it all, why had he ever joined the Fleet?

Oh yes. Because his father told him to. Well, as long as that was settled.

Tagen powered down for entry, tracking the faint smear of disrupted particles down through the layer of aurora and ozone, until it vanished under the sudden blast of Earth’s climate. He continued along the direction the trail had indicated, aiming for the surface and making his landing quick. It was broad daylight on this side of Earth, and even though the planet was not well-populated, that did not give him an open ticket to attract attention.

There was a vast forest below him, which in itself was significant. Most of Earth was covered with an eerie, blue ocean. That the ion trail seemed to lead to land was a coincidence that smacked heavily of deliberate steering. The forest was good cover for a predator like E’Var, too. It was spotted here and there with small outcroppings of human habitation, but not so much that one couldn’t travel undetected.

On foot, Tagen reminded himself sourly.

He found an empty place to touch down and then only sat there with the shift-shield on, invisible to the physical eye. He had never been alone in the field before and he hated the idea of leaving a Jotan vessel on an alien planet while he marched around the woods looking for a fugitive. From a purely mechanical standpoint, he knew it could be done. The ship’s power cells could support the prime computer systems and the shift-shield for up to five years, undisturbed. Provided his locator didn’t fail, or that he remembered where he parked if it did, Tagen had plenty of time in which to execute his investigation. There was nothing he could do but trust that no humans would come along and bump into it before he returned.

Hell, and that raised another problem. If E’Var was here, and if Tagen did take him into custody, how exactly was he supposed to find E’Var’s stolen ship and tow it back through the Gate to Jota? He couldn’t just leave the fool thing on Earth, if for no other reason than because it was Fleet property and they’d want it back. And there was no way Tagen’s star cruiser could drag a second ship up through Earth’s gravitational pull, even assuming that E’Var were amiable enough to simply tell him where it was. What did that leave? Well, he could blow it up. That would go over well back at Fleet Headquarters.

Ah, the glamorous life of a sek’ta. Just knowing that any decision he made would be the wrong one and everyone back home expected him to die anyway made his whole life worthwhile. He didn’t even need the extra sixty crona increase in pay. His work was its own reward.

Tagen strapped his pack to his waist, holstered his stu

He stopped right there, his hand still on the locking panel, and drew in a slow breath as though he could physically taste the temperature.

A cool planet, the Far-Reacher’s notes had said. Widely-divergent eco-systems, but generally quite cool.

Without moving from the airlock, Tagen pulled his pack off and looked closely at the contents. A full medical pack, vey Venekus had promised, and thank the gods, he had delivered. There were eighteen suppressants in a pouch strapped right to the lid of the pack. Eighteen. Surely the same overcompensation that had inspired the scientist to pack five doses of a sedative Tagen should not, in all likelihood, need to use. But it was nice to see it all the same. Tagen chewed one and then took a swallow from his canteen to wash the bitter taste from his mouth.

He hit the lock at last, and shut the ship away from any curious eyes. The sound of the door locking into place was the last indelible cue. He was on duty. It was time to represent.

A plan. That was what the name of Pahnee was famed for, after all, meticulous pla

First, the facts. A straight course along the ion trail would put whatever had left it somewhere in the area of Tagen’s own ship, give or take thirty kilometers. A Jotan could comfortably cross overland at a speed of eight kilometers an hour. Kanetus E’Var had a lead of five Jotan days, which translated roughly into three of Earth’s.

And now the assumptions. Tagen would assume first that E’Var was, in fact, on Earth. That would make his mission here slightly more bearable. Secondly, he would assume that Kane was on foot, and perhaps expecting pursuit. He would assume Kane could travel for an even hundred kilometers a day, forgoing sleep in favor of distance. It would be an extraordinary feat considering the current temperature, but it was remotely possible and so it gave Tagen a solid outside number on which to pin his expectations. So, begi

Hm. All right, step back and try again.

At the outside, E’Var could be six hundred and sixty kilometers away, and he was probably not wandering aimlessly. In Tagen’s experience, men in the wild had a tendency to follow the sun. If E’Var had landed at night, he might be traveling east, pursuing the rising star he had first seen. If he had come during the later day, he might be headed west.

Tagen scowled as he hunkered down to sketch his figures in Earth’s dry soil. He’d hated math when he was a boy and he hated it now, but despite his great childhood conviction that he would never need to learn how to solve his schoolwork in the real world, here he was: A ship leaves High Court on Jota Prime at two of the bells traveling nine hundred kilometers an hour. If he maintains his speed and pilots the most direct course, what time will it be on Earth when he lands at these coordinates?

He was getting a headache. Already. Gods.

So, all right. It would be the middle of Earth’s night. So. In all likelihood, E’Var was aimed east and Tagen was three Earth days behind him. He would have to manage better than one hundred kilometers a day in order to overtake the prisoner, and he would have to do it on foot, on an alien world, in temperatures in excess of one hundred degrees.

As he moved into the woods under the blistering eye of Earth’s sun, Tagen found himself hoping he really did find E’Var somewhere on this miserable planet.

He’d hate to think he was having all this fun for nothing.

*