by Kal Spriggs
My head was spinning from the impact. That’s one way to test the structural integrity of the ceiling, Shadow laughed at me. Be careful, don’t forget that you’re not the only one who shares this head of yours.
I had quite the welt rising on the top of my head, but my hair had cushioned the hit somewhat. Still I needed a moment to get my bearings.
I looked over at Kiyu, “Feel free to take the lead.”
She snorted, “I’d rather you find all the hazards first, thanks.”
I couldn’t help but laugh at that. I realized it was the first time I’d every had the opportunity to talk with her without the threat of listening ears. On impulse, I asked, “So why have you helped me?”
Her smile faded, “In truth, Will, I haven’t done much to help you. Were I free to do so, I might have helped you more than you realize.”
“Oh?” I asked.
“I might have forced Wessek to let me walk you out of his facility and directly to the spaceport. Or, more recently, when I saw you check into the barracks to join the Drakkus Military Institute under Vars’ name, I could have done the same.”
“You knew that early?” I asked in surprise.
“I knew when my father had me review the security footage of ‘Vars’ betrayal of Wessek,” she told me. Someone who didn’t know you, who hadn’t met you and seen how you move, how you stand, could be forgiven for not realizing it was you, but there is a certain spark to you, Armstrong, something I recognized then.”
“Huh,” I thought about that. “In that case, how come you didn’t help me get out?”
“Because my father would not have allowed it and because in all likelihood, I need your help,” she answered honestly. “You are an unknown. My father doesn’t even know who you really are. My cousin thinks you are a mindless brute or a clever schemer… he would never suspect you’d ally with me. Imperial Intelligence thinks you’ll serve as an adequate informant. The only one who knows your identity is Hayden.” She made a moue of distaste. “But you seem to have won her friendship, so she’s unlikely to expose you.”
“You see me as an ally?” I shook my head. “After admitting that you could have got me home and chose not to?”
“I had no choice in the matter, as I said,” she admitted. “But, yes, an ally of necessity if nothing else. You care for your world. If mine and my father’s efforts succeed, then I may well have the means to protect your world and dozens, possibly hundreds of others, from conquest.”
“The Erandi?” I asked.
“Them and… others,” she said, choosing her words with care.
“Playing games with what you choose to tell me is not a way to earn my trust,” I warned her.
“Again, there is not much ‘choice’ on my part. Some things are not mine to tell, by oath and by blood. Are there not things that you would not tell me, Armstrong?” Her green eyes bored into mine and it was my turn to look away.
“Fine,” I said after a moment. “What do you think House Mantis is doing down here?”
“I have no idea,” she admitted. “I hope it is something minor, they do all manner of kidnapping and smuggling operations out of the spaceport. But they are bound by law to keep those to the Barrens and not violate the Heart.”
“And alien pirates are totally going to follow the law,” I snorted.
“They are bound, Armstrong. Bound in ways that would lead to their total destruction if even rumors got out that they had violated their word. Whatever they are doing, it must be extremely vital for them to risk it.”
“Okay,” I mused. “Can you just,” I wiggled my fingers, “you know, get a message to your dad and have him do something about this, once we know what ‘this’ is?”
She didn’t answer for a moment. “That, I will say, has an answer that you won’t like.”
“Let me guess, that’s a no?” I sighed.
“The answer is that it depends. If it is vital to the survival of Drakkus, yes, I could. And my father could take action. In doing so, he’d reveal resources and allies he has built up over thirty years. My uncle, Crown Prince Abrasax, would become aware of those resources and allies. He would be forced to take action against my father, to acknowledge him as a possible threat.”
“You’re talking civil war?” I asked.
“My father wouldn’t let it come to that. He’d probably surrender immediately, but a consequence of that would be his execution, followed shortly by mine, both of which I would like to avoid,” she said it so calmly, so matter-of-factly, as if she were noting that she really didn’t like condiments on her meal and she’d prefer one without.
“Right, then,” I pushed myself away from the wall and gestured down the tunnel, “Let’s go see what this is all about then, huh?”
***
When Lokka next slowed down, he held up one paw, “Quiet from here. Dim lights.”
“Hunters?” I asked breathlessly. I tried to tell myself that was from running, but I knew it was as much from fear as exertion.
“Normal guards,” Lokka reassured me. He wrinkled his muzzle, his expressive little face showing disgust, “Lazy, dumb. Human.”
“Thanks,” I muttered. He didn’t apologize.
“This way,” he worked his way along a corridor and then paused at a wall, scaling it quickly into a vertical shaft and then into a branching tunnel three meters or so up.
“Is there another way?” I asked, eying the climb. It was a pitted stone wall, I thought I could climb it, but I’d really rather not have to risk falling and making noise.
“Only way, unless you want to fight,” Lokka told me.
I grimaced, but I started climbing. Kiyu came behind me. The narrow tunnel I climbed into was tight and I had to inch along, crawling on my stomach and biting my lip every time my rifle clattered off the walls or ceiling of the narrow space.
Soon enough, though, it opened out at the back of a small room. I eased out into it, noting the dim lights that someone had hung from the ceiling. The far end of the room had a pair of rusted iron doors that were closed. I looked around and spotted two stacks of crates, both of them heavy, metal-sided ones. They looked oddly familiar in shape and it nagged at me that I couldn’t figure out why.
I got to my feet, moving over to the nearer stack. Each crate had writing across the top. Property of Drakkus Imperial Research Institute.
My frown deepened as I flicked the hasps off the top crate in the first stack and then tilted the lid back.
Inside was… junk. Bits of metal wire and twisted chunks of what looked like steel. Pieces of what might be jewelry. All of it laid in foam with spacers to keep it all separated and big numbers next to each item.
Kiyu had come up next to me and was staring at it with equal confusion.
Then something clicked in my brain. I knew then why the boxes looked so familiar. “Archeology… this is from some kind of archeology site.” I looked at the crates again. That was why they looked so similar: my parents had used crates just like this. They were stackable and Nelson’s University had provided dozens of them for artifact transport.
Kiyu looked at the lid and then up at the ceiling. “Of course. DIRI, the Imperial Research Institute. By my best guess, it’s above us, just in the shadow of the Military Institute’s spire.”
“They’re stealing this junk?” I asked in confusion. I looked at the lid of the crate, noting the number, and then walked to the second stack of crates. The crate on top had the same number. “No… they’re trading it out.” I opened the box. The contents looked the same: twisted bits of wire. Chunks of what looked like steel, and some of what might be ugly jewelry.
Not the same… identical, Shadow noted. She brought up side by side images on my implant. The numbers, the shapes, the contents matched exactly.
I went back to the first box, picking up a piece of wire. “What’s so valuable about this junk?” This was the kind of detritus found at countless archeological sites. It wasn’t valuable, it didn’t show much about the
civilization that had produced them. It wasn’t whole technology or some kind of art, it just looked like junk.”
“These must be from the archives,” Kiyu mused, moving down the row, taking the lids off more boxes. All of them seemed similar. On one side was the originals, presumably, and on the other were matching copies, in identical crates. All of them were filled with tray after tray of metal junk.
I lifted the bit of wire, confused, what was so special about it? I frowned as I caught how it gleamed in the light. It was a bit too shiny, almost like silver, but there were no signs of tarnish. In fact, none of the metal showed any signs of rust or oxidation at all…
Quicksilver. I wasn’t sure if the thought came from Shadow or from me. Even as I thought it, I reached out with the commands that I’d copied over from my dad’s datapad.
The wire turned molten in my hand, a room-temperature liquid that flowed across the palm of my hand before reforming into the bit of twisted wire.
“Hock,” I gasped. This was all quicksilver. The expense, the value of it hit me, first. My parents had found a few scraps of it. They’d figured out what made it up, and they’d had the combination. It included a lot of rare and precious metals, assembled at a nano level that was energy intensive. The stuff was incredibly expensive to manufacture and this was… well, it was a huge stockpile of it.
I moved over to the first crate and picked up another piece of wire. Sure enough, when I sent my father’s command codes, it melted before my eyes.
“Quicksilver,” I looked up. “All of it. This is a fortune of it. Enough to buy a starship, maybe.” I shot Kiyu a look, “Did you know your people had this?”
She shook her head. “We’ve found quicksilver, yes, but it was a more recent discovery. The backbone of much of our nanotech, in truth.” She patted her rifle, “It’s how Tyvek Arms developed their munitions. But that happened in the last twenty years or so. This,” she waved her hand at the crates, “Some of these codes are among the oldest that IRI uses. That means they were the first excavations. Back at the founding of the Empire.”
“And this stuff has just been sitting in an archive somewhere?” I asked softly. It was everything I could do to keep my voice down. The idea that they’d been sitting on such a profound discovery for centuries offended me.
“They lacked the technology to exploit many of the things that they discovered in those first digs,” Kiyu told me. “At the time, my people were the survivors of a civil war. The Cult of the Dragon had emerged victorious, but they could still only barely feed themselves. They stumbled on ruins in the lower tunnels under the mountain, under what is now the Imperial Palace…” She shot me a look. “Alien ruins, similar to those your parents found on Century.”
“Similar how?” I asked with a frown.
“The same species. I’ve compared written symbols from both sites, they’re identical,” Kiyu answered. She tapped a tray of quicksilver, “And if we had any doubt, the signal you had from your parents at their site worked on artifacts from this site.”
That was a linkage I hadn’t even thought about. In fact, given how technology shifted over time, the idea that the exact same code would work on two different samples meant that either their technology had been relatively stagnant, or else these samples were from the same time period. I mean, I couldn’t even use an old datapad on the planetary network back home if I missed three or four security updates…
“Same aliens… so that explains some of your people’s interest on Century, but what about House Mantis, what are they doing?”
Shadow answered me, there’s a lot of data on the samples on the left. And by a lot, I mean an incredible quantity of information. All of it encrypted.
“Some of the quicksilver we’ve found has contained data,” Kiyu unknowingly confirmed what Shadow had told me. “That’s how we first learned that the ruins on your homeworld might be linked, we translated some of the unencrypted data into a set of coordinates that roughly matched with the Century system, or where it would have been a million years ago or so.”
“Only Century?” I raised an eyebrow.
She didn’t answer that. At least she wasn’t going to lie to you, Shadow grudgingly noted.
Can you read the information? I asked her.
It’s encrypted. Highly encrypted. In an alien code. And I don’t speak the language in the first place, Shadow told me. I’ll whip it up in thirty seconds…
I transferred her the translations I’d got from my parents notes. Get started. But see if you can copy the data. I looked at Kiyu. “They’re swapping these out. Quicksilver artifacts with data for those without or maybe with bad data,” I didn’t want her to realize I could read it. Not yet.
She nodded. “They don’t want us learning what is here. Which means I need to let my father know…” Her expression hardened. “But they could get these moved out at any time. They’re doing a last comparison, making sure everything physically matches up.”
“They’ll have these out of here in the next day or two,” I nodded. “Your people at this research place, will they even notice?”
She shook her head, “These crates were in the deepest archives. They probably have no idea what they even have. I can tell my father, but these are already gone. We’ll have the physical quicksilver, but we’ll lose the data.”
Shadow? I asked.
That thirty seconds quip was sarcasm, little brother, she told me, I can’t begin to copy all this data over onto your implant. There’s not remotely enough storage. I can get a small but appreciable amount into the quicksilver in your body, but I run the risk of maxing out your storage seeing as I’m sharing that space. I’d really rather not erase myself on accident.
Copy what you can, safely, I told her.
“How about we swap them back,” I mused, looking between the crates.
“They’ll have marked the boxes,” Kiyu noted. “Not in a way we’d notice, but so that they don’t get them confused.”
“Yeah, but swapping the artifacts?” I asked.
Kiyu pinged me a countdown straight to my implant. We were running low on time.
As if I needed that reminder. Not only did we need to resolve this, but there was also the whole issue of Daewa Tong, Jerral, and their plan to have us killed by House Mantis’s Hunters.
“Okay,” I mused. “How do we get all this quicksilver swapped over in limited…” I looked down at the bit of it in my hand and it when liquid and then reformed with just a command. “Well, that’s just cheating, I love it.” I gestured at her to get out of the way and then concentrated. Shadow, I need your help, there’s a lot of this stuff to control.
She split my focus off without even acknowledging the request. I reached out dramatically and the quicksilver began to flow out from both sets of crates. In my head, dozens of me oversaw the flow, herding the stuff along and swapping out the crates in a matter of minutes.
“Okay,” I said, even as my focus snapped back into just me. I gave Kiyu a smirk, “Aren’t you glad you’ve got me as an ally?”
She cocked her head. I could see questions behind her eyes. I could also see that she realized that any questions she asked, she’d better be prepared to answer a few of her own. She gave me a slight nod, “You’re a worthy ally to have, Armstrong. But what do you suggest we do about getting out of this alive?”
My first impulse, on checking my chrono, was to wonder if I had time to make it to the spaceport. I still had the falsified pass codes for my implant. If I rushed, I might be able to catch up to the renegade entrants. I could go home.
Realism came crashing down on me, though. If I didn’t return, Jonna and Kiyu would both face increased scrutiny. From the sounds of things, Jonna probably wouldn’t survive that. And Kiyu… well, it sounded like she was almost as constrained, though by other factors. And time was fleeting. Even if I ran, I was unlikely to get there before they linked up with Vivar’s uncle, ditched their weapons, changed clothes, and slipped through security. Trying to slip
through security with my Institute-issued black fatigues would make me stand out and might well draw suspicion on the others.
What a waste, I thought. I’d been so set on escape, so hopeful. Now the passcodes did me no good.
In fact, even having them could put me at danger, if someone scanned my implant—
I began to smile. It was not a pleasant, friendly smile. “I have an idea.”
***
Chapter 15: Not The Welcome Back I Hoped For
Two instructors shoved me down into the hard metal chair. I couldn’t see where I was, what with the black back over my head, but I could hear the slam of the door behind me. My hands were cuffed behind me, so I couldn’t exactly pull it off. Instead, I sat there, thinking about how I’d come to this point. Tong had ordered us seized even as we came off the elevator. I’d been taken to the ground, my hands cuffed behind my back and a black bag pulled down over my head before I could so much as say a word.
They’d dragged me here and they hadn’t been gentle about it. I’d literally been dragged by my feet for a good portion of the way and someone had kicked me a few times in the process. I’m so glad I didn’t go with the escapees, just now…
“Well, young Vars, it seems that our lives would be much, much simpler had you only listened to me,” I recognized Institor Mikhail Dyer’s dry voice. “I did warn you that while clever people are useful and therefore know their place, that intelligent people often overstep their bounds and therefore…” He gave a slight tisk. “Well, here we are.”
He pulled the black bag off my head and I found myself staring across the table at him. I had to squint against the bright light from above. Dyer’s black uniform merged into the darkness of the interrogation room. He wore a pair of black gloves, too, so he almost looked like a disembodied head.
“Sir,” I began, “May I ask why I’ve been arrested?”
“Polite,” he noted, “at least still you have your manners.” He shook his head, “Entrant Hayden and Entrant Drakkan have been detained for failure to follow orders. Meanwhile you have been arrested for disregard of a superior officer’s orders. A much more serious charge… but then again, you don’t have the connections that your companions do. Thus, while they might get off with a beating or perhaps even a flogging, well…” He gave me a smirk. “I’m afraid your fate will be rather more harsh, Vars.”
