Transcendence

Zacharias looked at me, studying my face as his fingers filled a pipe with brown shreds. I wondered where he got his tobacco. The others were downstairs playing cards with his men, he had brought me upstairs to show me a book after we had made a deal with him. He is one of the most wanted men in the galaxy and he lives in the shadow of the capital building. He sat down across a table from me and watched as I paged through the book, a mystery novel from midway through the Common Era. I regretted not being able to read it then and there.
“A woman like you is wasted on the edges. You should be here, set up and running things right. Too many in our profession are...” he waved his hand dismissively. “Those Runs you are doing are below your talent.”
The praise was surprising from this hard, taciturn man. It also implied that he had been researching me, which is concerning. I shrugged. “There is always something new out there.”
He nodded. “Truth. You’re missing things here. Important news.” He did not continue immediately, but watched the interest I was trying not show. Testing me. He lit his pipe, guiding flame into the bowl with his dark tan fingers. “Have you heard of Dorado Sublime?” I shook my head, and he nodded. “I assume you know the history...Alpha, Primos, Hadrian, Michaela, all in a row, the past half century? Four complete systems, viable suns, multiple planets. A boon to mankind.” His voice twisted with sudden sarcasm. “They have us believe that it was intentional, that science allowed us to make it so...easy. If it has been that. In truth, they know it to be luck.”
“You speak of conspiracies. They? Luck? I—"
“I mean the men and women who set us on this path to the stars, the corporations that keep us here. And no matter how you feel about luck...theirs has run out.”
In his dark eyes I could see the desert skies of his ancestors, of all our ancestors. I saw bright fires burning in the night, something ancient stirring in his voice. “There are no more systems like these, none we can travel to in a lifetime. There are planets we could settle, but they are as rare as our Earth once was.”
“Don’t we have enough planets?” At this Zacharias leaned back, his mystery diminished as he became once more a hunted man, turned to cynicism by his struggles. “You and I might think so. The men of Noxxe and Tempel-1 might think so, but the governments, the corporations with the coin...they will never stop. They are eager and greedy and will always want more. Remember what Mars almost became?” In the early days, Corps had hand-selected settlers, sending wealthy relatives to create a insular, high-class society. Zacharias seemed impatient. “It took thousands of protesters, countless lawmakers...just to ensure an equal chance at the skies. No one cares about that now. No one even knows. The old Corps, the biggest-you know which ones- they have set their sights on Dorado Sublime.”
“What is it?”
“A planet. Small rock, but viable. The next in line for terraforming. The public believes we’ll continue settling Michaela, but the Corps will abandon humanity to the dry dust of it’s new home. It is privately owned, core to crust. That, my friend, is the way of the future. There are no more open systems, no more frontiers. Private colonies, perfectly controlled: New Roma, Washington 5, San Kyoto, St. Waltonberg. There will be no more freedom in the heavens.”
I was light-headed from the smoke, and his voice was laden with suggestion. I understood suddenly how this man commanded so many others, how he had become such a persistent rust-spot in Fed chains.
“This is the point, `Aalim Scout, wherein you ask what there is to be done about it. Their plan is not yet set in steel. Were the mission at Dorado to fail, I believe that their attention would be diverted. Not permanently, of course, but for a time...”

“The end of expansion” I finished for him, my voice a whisper.

“It would take far more resources than I have available. And my connections are...considerable” he said lightly, all casual business once more. The man could change as quickly as an engine flare. “It would be a matter of the right people at the right time. So goes the course of history, do you not agree? Such events have always shaped the course of worlds. What would have happened if someone had stopped Mission Evollo, or the founding of Target City? What if Xylos had not been destroyed?”
He knew, he must. How much? Rigon, Michlun, Ulysses? Jamieson and Whisp? Xylos had changed the way space stations were built, and guarded. One job gone wrong shaped things for a lifetime.
“History is always made by phantoms, by the ones who slip beneath the sensors and place themselves as spines in the side of—"
“Progress?” I interrupted for the first time. “There is no way to stop progress. You’d be a fool to try.”
“Of course. One cannot stop the progression of time, one can only influence how it is used.”A smile played on his craggy face. “Think nothing of it. I was merely sharing information with a fellow...historian.”

We both knew the word he had truly said.

Phantom.