Звезда Пандоры

The garage was filled with crates. A bench running along the back was lined with tools that were being cleaned. They were very old-fashioned ones; Hoshe couldn’t see a single power tool among them. He picked up a screwdriver and gave it a close examination while Kareem activated the garage door. The plyplastic closed up with a quiet slurping sound. “Are you an antiques collector? I didn’t even know they still made manual screwdrivers.”

“No, man.” Kareem gave a shifty grin. “This is my survival gear. Ain’t no electricity where I’m going.”

“Where’s that, exactly?”

“Silvergalde, man. I’m gonna live with the elves, me and my girl. They’ll protect their own planet from the Primes. This fucking government won’t, we haven’t even got a force field to cover Darklake City.”

“Right.” People like Kareem were getting wider coverage in the media recently. It was hyped as the Exodus by excitable reporters, though the actual numbers were so small governments didn’t even register them, no more than a few thousand from each planet, and most of them first-lifers. But together there were enough for CST to have to triple the number of trains running to Silvergalde. “What about the navy?”

“Ha! What, like both ships? Fat lot of fucking use they’re gonna be when Hell’s Gateway blows open above Earth, and ten thousand flying saucers carry the demons down to massacre us. They don’t call the giant wormhole that for no reason, you know. Johansson’s Guardians are right, we’re in deep shit, and our corrupt politicians don’t help.”

Coincidence, Hoshe told himself sternly, though it was an unsettling one. “Okay, so are you leaving tonight, or can you help me out?”

Kareem waved a hand at the crates. “I haven’t got everything yet. There’s a lot of medicine and shit I need. Books, too. The paper ones are hard to get hold of these days, and expensive. Did you know Ozzie’s got a library of all human knowledge printed out and stashed away somewhere on his own planet? That’s one guy who’s ready for the apocalypse.”

“So you can help, then?”

“Depends what you want, man.”

“Giscard told me you’re the man to come to for software fixes.”

“Yeah. Maybe. I know some moves. Place I work at, we got us some private teams for solving private problems, you catch?”

“Caught. I’m paying too much tax.”

“Ho, brother, we all do.”

“I own a company that imports spare parts for the auto trade, and the government is killing me for it. I’m just trying to earn a living, feed my family, but those bastards…”

“Yeah, right!”

“What I need is a fix that covers over some of my trading. If I could just shift ten or fifteen percent of my stock without them penalizing me for it I can keep afloat. What I need is some safe encryption that can resist the Revenue Department’s audit engines so I can run the money through offworld accounts.”

“Sure, I can do that. Hell, I don’t even need to bring the guys in. What accountancy software are you using?”

Hoshe held up a memory crystal disk. “System and network is all in here.”

“Excellent. A man who is prepared, I respect that.” Kareem took the memory crystal and smiled. “That’ll be a grand for a full fix, payable in advance.”

“Two hundred now.” Hoshe slapped the notes into his hand on top of the crystal. “The rest when the installed fix is running.”

“Okay, man, I’m cool with that.” The notes were shoved into the back pocket of his jeans. “Must be my lucky week. This is the second private contract I’ve had.”

“Oh, really?”

…

To the Commonwealth’s general public, it was as if their new navy appeared by magic. One day President Doi announced its formation, and within a week it had become a physical reality. Ships were already being put together over at High Angel; planetary security teams started assembling wormhole detectors on the worlds closest to the Prime threat. Things were safely under control. Even Alessandra Baron was moderately complimentary on her show, though possible tax raises received a detailed analysis.

Admiral Kime was surprised by how smoothly the transition went. Of course, it helped that the personnel and equipment from Anshun had all been transferred to High Angel while he was flying the scouting mission to the Dyson Pair. That left him free to concentrate his staff on the huge expansion of capacity and capability that turning the Agency into the navy entailed. In fact, precisely the kind of large-scale managerial role that had taken up ninety percent of his adult life.