C. J. Ryan - Gloria VanDeen 1 - Dexta

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Dexta

C. J. Ryan

Contents

Title Page

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

About the Author

Preview for Glorious Treason

Copyright Page

For Cedric and his humans

Chapter 1

“THE BEST OF TIMES, ASSUREDLY,” LORD Dunsmore agreed. He was always eager to agree

with anyone whose opinion was worth noting, and in this instance, he could have found no

reason not to agree had he pondered the matter for hours. His host, although only a regional

manager for GalaxCo, was related to the Mainwaring family by marriage and therefore had to

be considered knowledgeable and, to a carefully measured degree, influential. “By any

standard,” Lord Dunsmore said, “clearly, the Empire is at high tide.”

“But Herbert, dearest,” his wife protested, “surely a high tide implies the coming of a low

tide. You seem to suggest that the Empire’s fortunes shall soon be on the wane.”

“Not necessarily, Lady Dunsmore,” their young host, Richard DuMont, quickly responded.

“Here on Mynjhino, we have three moons, you know. One high tide may be quickly followed

by another, which may be even higher. Rather a complex business, I fear.”

The lad was clever, Lord Dunsmore decided, although perhaps a bit presumptuous to

contradict his wife in such a bold fashion. Contradicting his wife was a prerogative Lord

Dunsmore embraced for himself, and it was one of his more satisfying pastimes. “It was, in any

event,” he pointed out, “merely a figure of speech. What I meant, of course”—he looked

toward Lady Dunsmore with a peremptory glare—“was that the state of the Empire is

satisfactory in nearly every respect. Young Charles is growing into his office in a most splendid

fashion, and peace and prosperity are the order of the day. I confess, I had my doubts after that

dreadful business three years ago—I suppose we all did, what?—but one can hardly gainsay his

performance since then.”

“Oh, indeed, Lord Dunsmore, indeed!” young DuMont responded, raising a glass of wine.

DuMont nodded toward one of the waiters to summon another bottle. “However,” DuMont

continued, “I, for one, never had any doubts about the qualities of our new Emperor. You see, I

knew him briefly when we were in school together, and just after. Did I mention that already?”

“Five times, at least, dear,” his wife, Rosalyn, reminded him. She was quite attractive in a

rather obvious way. A bit of a tart, it seemed to Lord Dunsmore, with her High Imperial

pretensions. Her skimpy attire was nearly transparent, which seemed a bit much merely for

Tuesday afternoon tennis and drinks at their club. Still, she presented distinct possibilities for

this evening. He was not likely to find better on this isolated rathole of a planet.

The waiter arrived with a fresh bottle of wine, preceded by an unpleasant waft of

pungency. The creature was about five feet tall and covered head to foot in short, rather greasy

yellowish-brown fur. Naked, it seemed. It had long, sharply pointed ears jutting outward from

its skull at a forty-five-degree angle, and large, liquid brown eyes set wide above a short, blunt

snout. It looked like an animated teddy bear or a tall koala, perhaps, and was not unpleasant to

behold. But it stank. Lord Dunsmore turned his head away in search of fresher air while the

creature did its duty. He stared out from their table on the veranda across the tennis courts and

toward the lush green of the plantations in the distance. When the wine was poured and the

creature was gone, Lord Dunsmore looked back at his host.

“It’s a wonder to me that you can stand the stench.”

“One gets used to it, in time, my lord,” DuMont replied. “But I do apologize for it.”

“Oh, no need for you to apologize, Richard, dear,” Lady Dunsmore responded with just the

right touch of airy condescension.

“Still,” said Lord Dunsmore, “one would think that at a private club such as this, one might

find some relief from the locals. Can no humans be found to provide services? Or failing that,

robots?”

“Robots might be preferable,” DuMont conceded, “but importing them would be a

problem. No local construction facilities, of course, and our concession agreement is rather

restrictive in that area. We aren’t to put the little fellows out of work, if we can avoid it. And as

for humans, well, my lord, good luck in finding one to serve you your dinner. They are all out

in the hills on the Western Continent looking for gems and ores, or overseeing the plantations

here on the Eastern Continent. There are fortunes to be made on a world such as this—or at

any rate, there is always the hope of a fortune. No one comes this far at such an expense just to

be a menial.”

“I suppose.” Lord Dunsmore reluctantly nodded. “Still, one would think …”

“There are only ten thousand of us here, my lord,” Rosalyn DuMont pointed out.

“Yes,” her husband agreed, “there’s always a shortage of human labor on worlds like

Mynjhino. Spirit knows, GalaxCo has its problems finding adequate staff out here. We’re 862

light-years from home, and we must compete with hundreds of nearer, better-established

colonies. And you are aware that Imperial policy is to make use of local labor, where it exists.”

“Imperial policy? Dexta policy, you mean!” Lord Dunsmore sniffed. “Damned bureaucrats.

If I have any complaint at all with our new Emperor, it is with his constant truckling to that

knave Mingus and his grim, gray army.”

“Oh, they aren’t all that bad, dear,” Lady Dunsmore objected. “We know some perfectly

fine people at Dexta. And as for the Emperor, well, one mustn’t forget that his wife—or I

should say, ex-wife—is at Dexta. At a rather low level, I gather, but perhaps she still has some

influence over him.”

“I knew her, as well,” DuMont couldn’t keep himself from mentioning. “Perfectly stunning

woman, and smart as a whip.”

“If she was so stunning and smart as all that,” Lord Dunsmore said with a trace of

contempt, “I rather fancy she’d still be his wife instead of some drone in the Department of

Extraterrestrial Affairs.”

“Oh, but it was she who dropped him,” Lady Dunsmore reminded her husband. “Of

course, that was five or six years ago, before he had any prospect of ascension.”

“And as for being a drone”—DuMont laughed—“well, Glory was anything but that. I even

took a run at her myself, back in school, but that was before she met Charles. And before I met

Rosalyn, of course,” he added, with a quick, reassuring glance at his wife. Rosalyn returned his

smile mechanically.

Lord Dunsmore was becoming annoyed at being contradicted so frequently. Young

DuMont forgot himself, and even if his tart of a wife was a Mainwaring, he might do well to

keep in mind that Dunsmore was a nonvoting Board member of GalaxCo. That was the only

reason he would even consider coming to this drab little world, or being hosted by such

unctuously common young functionaries. Spirit be praised, he only had to spend a week here,

making the obligatory tours of the plantations and processing facilities. His eyes roved to the

flimsy togs and pert young body of Rosalyn DuMont, and he made up his mind that he would

bed the bitch before the week was up. It would be small enough compensation for such a

tedious sojourn.

“What say to some more tennis?” Lady Dunsmore asked.

“Boys against girls, this time!” cried Rosalyn enthusiastically.

Her suggestion was greeted with a long moment of frosty silence by the Dunsmores. Lords

and Ladies were seldom referred to as “boys and girls,” certainly not by commoners, no matter

how rich or well connected. Lord Dunsmore’s face registered his disapproval. A slow

consciousness of her blunder began to dawn on Rosalyn, and her features fell into a grimace of

embarrassment and horror. Lord Dunsmore said nothing as his wife let the girl suffer a few

seconds longer than was really necessary.

“Women against men, my dear,” she said, breaking the tension while doing little to make

Rosalyn feel any better. “A battle of the sexes, then,” she added, eyeing Richard.

Lord Dunsmore didn’t really want to play any more tennis, but he supposed that it would

be preferable to sitting here and being insulted. “Very well,” he said to Richard, ignoring his

desolated young tart for the moment. “Have that—creature—fetch our rackets, if you would.”

Richard raised his arm, snapped his fingers in the direction of one of the Myn servants and

called, “Rackets!”

The nearest of the Myn servants seemed not to notice. It stood rooted in place, its head

tilted upward toward the heavens.

DuMont sighed in frustration. “You see what we have to contend with here, my lord,” he

said to Lord Dunsmore. “The Myn are so damned dreamy and distracted, forever communing

with their departed elders instead of keeping their pathetic little minds on the task at hand. It’s

hardly a wonder that the Home Office is dissatisfied with production in the plantations.”

“Indeed,” said Lord Dunsmore.

“I hope you’ll make a point of mentioning it to them when you return home, my lord. If

one hasn’t actually seen the Myn, it’s difficult to understand how truly impossible it is to get

anything done in this place!”

“So it would seem,” said Lord Dunsmore, gazing at the immobile Myn. “Can’t you get its

attention somehow? Perhaps a good swift kick?”

“It would hardly help, my lord,” said DuMont. “Ah, one of them, at least, seems to have

gotten the message.” He nodded toward another of the Myn approaching their table. But Lord

Dunsmore noted that it appeared to have picked up the wrong case. It didn’t even look like a

case for a tennis racket.

It wasn’t. The Myn stopped ten feet away from the humans, opened the case, and stood

there in front of them holding what appeared to be an automatic rifle of some sort. It looked to

Lord Dunsmore like something he had once seen in a museum in Edinburgh. Curious,

thought Lord Dunsmore, that such an antiquated device should turn up here.

It was the last thing Lord Dunsmore ever thought.

Chapter 2

WHEN THE ROBOTIC COURIER FROM MYNJHINO burst back into normal space just inside

the orbit of the asteroid belt and slightly below the plane of the ecliptic, Gloria VanDeen, Level

XIII Dexta bureaucrat and Coordinating Supervisor for Division Beta-5, Sector 8, was staring at

her computer console and trying to concentrate on the next Quarterly Resource Allocation

report. The Dexta offices on the five worlds of Beta-5, one of which was Mynjhino, had already

made their needs known to the five System Coordinators at HQ, and they had dutifully

reported their desires to Gloria, whose task it was to sort the wheat from the bureaucratic chaff.

As usual, everyone had asked for much more than they needed in the faint hope of getting

what they actually required. Pecos, a prosperous planet with a growing population, had

requested authorization for eight additional Rated Staff and thirty Unrated Staff positions.

Gloria skimmed the too-lengthy justification offered for the increase and arbitrarily cut the

numbers to four and sixteen. By the time the QRA wended its way upward through Sector and

Quadrant, Pecos would be lucky to wind up with two and eight—which was probably about

what they actually needed. And as for the small, dismal mining colony on Gregson’s Planet,

just why, she wondered, did anyone there think they would get approval for a new node on

their Orbital Station?

Gloria sighed, leaned back in her chair, and rubbed her eyes. The QRA was one of the more

tedious scraps of bureaucratic effluvia that regularly came her way. But, she reminded

herself—not for the first time—that she knew the job was tedious when she took it. This was

routine, meat-and-potatoes stuff, and normally she cut right through it, but today she was

having trouble staying focused. Her mind was elsewhere.

Specifically, it was in Rio. And the Emperor’s Levee. For Spirit’s sake, what could Charles

have been thinking?

“His Imperial Highness, Charles V, is pleased to request the honor of your company …”

Gloria shook her head slowly in lingering disbelief at the invitation. People had been known to

kill for an invitation to a Levee, or, failing to get one, to kill themselves. Gloria’s reaction to the

invitation was not quite so extreme; she merely dreaded it.

They hadn’t seen each other since she walked out on him, what seemed a lifetime ago.

What did his Imperial Smugness want? And why now? And why did he think she would

come?

And yet … Gloria felt some indefinable tug in her gut when she thought of Charles. It

hadn’t been all bad, and there were times when …

No, she told herself, it would definitely not do to think about that. Not at all. What she

really needed to think about was the truly pressing issue of how many new cargo docks were

actually necessary for the Gregson Orbital Station. Gloria returned to the QRA with a will.

MEANWHILE, THE COURIER FROM MYNJHINO oriented itself, then squirted out a

high-intensity signal crammed with information, directed at the nearest Repeater. An hour

later, having received confirmation of receipt, it used the last of its fuel to bend its trajectory

away from the Sun and off toward interstellar space. Assured now that it posed no further

threat to traffic in the inner solar system, the courier obligingly blew itself up, and its debris

continued onward and outward at 92 percent of the speed of light.

Traveling at the speed of light, the courier’s original signal, amplified by the Repeater, soon

arrived at the receiving antennas of Central, a vast complex of such antennas hovering at a

stable Lagrangian point in orbit above Earth. There, the signal was rerouted and beamed to

another orbital complex and down to the waiting antennas of the Department of

Extraterrestrial Affairs, stationed in a stunted meadow in northern New Jersey. A final change

of direction allowed the information to complete the last twenty miles of its 5,000-trillion-mile

journey, and it arrived at Dexta’s offices in midtown Manhattan, where it was routed to the

desk console of Level XIV System Coordinator Zoe Zachary, announcing its presence there

with a loud, annoying electronic trill.

Zoe Zachary was currently busy elsewhere, in the women’s restroom, but outside her

office, Level XV staffer Gordon Chesbro heard the trill through the open door. Hidden by the

low walls of his cubicle, Chesbro didn’t hesitate, and, with a few deft but officially forbidden

keystrokes, quickly violated at least three of Dexta’s sacred IntRegs and transferred a copy of

the message to his own console. The pudgy young man munched on a candy bar as he read the

message, becoming the first person on Earth to learn of the deaths of Lord and Lady

Dunsmore, along with fourteen other humans, which had occurred three days earlier on the

distant world of Mynjhino.

Mynjhino was Chesbro’s bailiwick, and no one in Dexta knew more about that planet and

its inhabitants than he did—not even his boss, Zoe Zachary, whose responsibility they were.

Zoe had other things on her mind much of the time, but Chesbro had no other function in

Dexta—and barely any other function in life—than to absorb, process, and understand all that

could be known about that rather odd planet, more than three-quarters of the way to the

frontiers of the Empire. He could honestly say that he was not completely surprised by the

news, although some of the details included in the report gave him pause.

Chesbro had only been in Dexta for three years, but he had already internalized the

fundamental Dexta staffers’ response to any piece of news that came their way from anywhere:

What does this mean for ME? For Chesbro, in this case, it meant that his frequently written and

universally ignored memos on the subject of unrest among the Myn had been proven correct.

Sixteen lives seemed to him a small price to pay for such spectacular confirmation of the

soundness of his expertise and instincts. Smiling as he licked crumbs of candy from his lips, he

called up a particularly well crafted memo he’d written on the subject two months ago,

enjoyed rereading it, then shot it over to Zoe’s console, tagged to the incoming report.

He sat back in his chair and peered over the cubicle’s modest walls to await the return of

Zoe Zachary while congratulating himself on his foresight and good luck. Out of 2643

inhabited worlds in the Empire, Lord and Lady Dunsmore had managed to die on his, Spirit

bless them! Things were going to start happening now.

He watched happily as Zoe Zachary returned to her office. She was a trim-looking woman

of about thirty, and Gordon often had fantasies about her. She was no Gloria VanDeen, but

then, who was? Zoe was of medium height, medium build, medium beauty, and there were no

frills about her. She wore a very standard gray shirt, gray skirt, and gray jacket, covering what

might possibly be outstanding breasts that Gordon had been sweatily dreaming about for the

two years Zoe had been System Coordinator for Mynjhino. Of course, he was just a Level XV,

and she was an exalted Level XIV, but a man’s dreams should exceed his grasp, else what’s a

heaven for? He stared at her appreciatively for the three or four seconds it took her to enter her

office and close the door behind her.

ZOE PAUSED INSIDE THE DOOR, SURPRISED and concerned by the alert signal

wavering from her console. She knew what it meant, although it was a sound she had never

heard before. It might be just some nervous bleating from that idiot of a Governor, Rhinehart,

but Zoe doubted it. Couriers were expensive, and even Imperial Governors whose brains and

bladders were as weak as Rhinehart’s didn’t expend them casually. In any case, it was much

more likely that the alert had been issued by Imperial Secretary Melinda Throneberry, or her

Undersecretary for Administration, Brian Hawkes, both of them reliable and competent

people.

She sat down in front of her console and read the news, along with the self-serving memo

Gordon Chesbro had foolishly attached to the bulletin. Chesbro had tapped into her console

again, just to show how clever he was. Clever and intelligent, certainly; smart—never. If

nothing else, his repeated violations of IntRegs had given her all the ammunition she required

to dispose of him if the need ever arose. It might be wise to remind him of that salient fact. For

now, though, he was valuable, if annoying. In an age when nearly everyone looked attractive

and healthy, Chesbro had contrived to be neither, and his interpersonal skills bordered on

nonexistent.

The bulletin itself was troubling, but Zoe wasted no time feeling sorry for the sixteen dead

humans on Mynjhino. She was more interested in the manner of their death, which apparently

involved thousand-year-old antique weaponry that was nevertheless several centuries beyond

the capabilities of either the Myn or the Jhino. When humans had first arrived on their planet

eighty-five years ago, the Myn and Jhino were engaged in a war that relied on sailing vessels

and primitive gunpowder projectiles, roughly equivalent to the technology employed in the

Seven Years’ War on Earth. The Empire had quickly ended their little war and set about

civilizing and integrating the planet. The place was an oddity in that there were two separate,

though related, intelligent species living on it. That circumstance presented complex but

manageable problems for the Empire, and the colony had been relatively peaceful and even

marginally profitable for decades.

Yet now, somehow, the Myn had acquired automatic weapons—machine guns, Spirit save

us!—and were using them to kill humans. The report from Throneberry, with an uncredited

rider obviously added by Hawkes, was as thorough as possible under the circumstances. The

attack at a GalaxCo corporate club had been carried out by at least five and possibly as many as

seven Myn, some of them posing as menials. Every human in the place had been slaughtered,

and the eyewitness reports from the Myn workers—none of whom had been harmed—were

predictably vague and contradictory.

The club was five hundred miles upcountry from the Myn capital city of Dhanj, the largest

metropolitan center on the planet, with a population of about a million Myn. All told, there

were about 100 million Myn on the Eastern Continent, and about as many Jhino on the

Western Continent. The Jhino tended to be more focused and productive than the vague and

dreamy Myn, yet it was apparently the Myn who had launched the bloody and unprovoked

attack.

For some time, reports from the planet had mentioned the activities of a nativist movement

among the Myn, known as the Myn-Traha. The movement seemed to draw most of its support

from among the plantation workers who tended GalaxCo’s corporate fields. Some of the unrest

could be ascribed to the usual labor problems that could be found on almost every colony with

an indigenous population. The people at GalaxCo could be remarkably obtuse and insensitive,

even where their own best interests were concerned, but in that they were no worse than any

of the other Big Twelve. But GalaxCo was the major operator on Myn, and would be an

obvious focus for the resentment of the Myn-Traha. Imperium, Ltd. confined most of its

operations to extraction activities on Jhino, and had encountered fewer problems than

GalaxCo. Servitor was active on both continents and seemed minimally affected by the

nativists. None of the remaining Twelve maintained more than a token presence on the planet.

Not a great deal was known about the Myn-Traha. Ricardo Olivera, the young

Undersecretary for Security, had been on the job less than a year and had yet to show any sign

of exceptional competence or ability. His predecessor had attempted to establish a network

among the Myn nativists, but with little apparent success, and the situation had not improved

under Olivera. Zoe remembered a memo from Hawkes a few months earlier in which he

mentioned having established a contact among the Myn-Traha, but there had been no

follow-up.

The Myn-Traha had been no more than a vague and poorly understood irritation until now,

but the real mystery was how the hell they had managed to acquire automatic weapons. They

could have manufactured them domestically, although the Jhino, rather than the Myn, were

the ones who had developed meaningful industrial skills. It hardly seemed likely that the Jhino

would be supplying their ancient rivals with weaponry that was, by local standards,

sophisticated. That left smuggling, which would make it a matter for Internal Security. But Zoe

had seen no reports from the Bugs suggesting any such activity in the Mynjhino region, or, for

that matter, anywhere inside the Beta-5 jurisdiction. Still, maybe Gloria knew something that

she didn’t. Zoe was only responsible for Mynjhino, although she tried to keep up to speed with

developments in the other four systems entrusted to Beta-5.

Zoe read over the report again, then quickly scanned Chesbro’s smart-ass memo that had

more or less predicted trouble on Myn. She hit the Condense & Extract function, and seconds

later the ten-page memo was pared down to a single page. She read over it, made a few

changes, deleted Chesbro’s name and inserted her own, then sent the whole package on to

Gloria VanDeen.

She sat quietly at her console for a few minutes, considering what was likely to happen

next. It seemed a real possibility that she would be dispatched to Mynjhino herself, an

attractive opportunity for a System Coordinator. It was a chance to be Noticed, and nothing

could be more important to an ambitious Level XIV. Being Noticed, however, carried with it

the very real possibility of winding up holding the short end of something she would rather not

be holding at all. Still, that was part of the drill at Dexta, and Zoe accepted the risks.

Mynjhino was just under nine days away for a Dexta Flyer. If Zoe got the call, she would be

allowed to take along an assistant, which meant either Gordon Chesbro or Elaine Murakami.

The thought of being trapped in a tiny Flyer for nine days with Gordon Chesbro was nearly

enough to make her gag. Granted, no one knew more about Mynjhino than Chesbro, but that

was a plausible reason to leave him behind to mind the shop. Elaine Murakami, then. She was

smart and a little too obviously ambitious—a Gloria VanDeen in the making, minus the

money, connections, and overwhelming physical presence. But Elaine made the most of what

she had, and would surely try to show her up on Mynjhino. That didn’t worry Zoe; she could

handle Elaine. If it came to that, she thought, she might even be able to handle Gloria.

ZOE WALKED DOWN THE CORRIDOR TO THE office of Beta-5 Coordinating Supervisor

Gloria VanDeen, Level XIII, and confronted Gloria’s principal assistant and gatekeeper, Petra

Nash, Level XV. Petra was a compact, mousy-cute young woman still learning the ropes at

Dexta. It remained to be seen how long she would survive, but Gloria seemed to like her, so

Zoe trod more lightly with her than she might have with another Level XV. Anyway, Zoe

liked her too.

“Gloria’s going to want to see me in about two minutes,” Zoe told Petra.

“Then why don’t you sit down and wait for two minutes?” Petra asked her politely.

Zoe smiled, and Petra smiled back at her. Zoe didn’t appreciate being blocked by Petra, but

two minutes hardly mattered. “And how has your day been?” she asked.

“Just fine, Zoe. And yours?”

C. J. Ryan - Gloria VanDeen 1 - Dexta

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