Antagean snapped his heels together formally, and dipped his chin to his chest.
“Wait,” Garsina said, despite herself. “Don’t leave yet. I didn’t realize your being called up for this expedition was a source of personal crisis.”
“It is,” Wyodreth said, coming to parade rest.
“That I can understand, Lieutenant Commander. I suppose I’ve been so completely focused on this opportunity to do additional research on the Waymakers, I didn’t bother to consider how the lives of others were being disrupted. You don’t want to be here, do you?”
“Not really, to be honest. No.”
“Not even for the chance to make history?”
“Lady, I am a practical man. I’d have been content to observe the results of this mission from the desk in my father’s office. Antagean is proud to serve Starstate Constellar, no question. But as you may have noticed, Captain Loper is more than capable of running this detachment. I, on the other hand, should be back home, running the company in my father’s absence. The longer we’re here, the more difficulty my sister will encounter. And if something happens to us, and I don’t return, the future of Antagean Starlines will be in doubt. My father built the company from the ground up, and unless I am there to see his directives carried out, the company could crumble. That’s not fair to my sister. And it’s especially not fair to our employees. Some of whom, like Captain Loper, have devoted their lives to the business.”
Garsina considered. In an unexpected way, the situation—as described by Lieutenant Commander Antagean—mirrored that of Family Oswight. Just on a different scale. In both their cases, their parents were depending on them to carry on the family name. An obligation neither she nor Wyodreth had asked for, but which had been placed on them regardless. Purely through an accident of birth.
She noticed again that Antagean seemed to have premature wrinkles around his eyes.
“You don’t enjoy giving orders,” she said matter-of-factly.
“Enjoy it, Lady Oswight? Why would any sane person enjoy the burden? I always tell this to my new employees, who constantly gripe about how things could be run better: everyone thinks they can do the boss’s job better than the boss is already doing it, until they themselves are suddenly on the hot seat—then it becomes a whole other question entirely. Management is not something I aspired to, yet it’s come down to me in time. Just as a military career was not something I aspired to. But my father felt it would be good for me—for the family name—if I put in my time.
“In spite of what I’ve said to you about what I think of the First Families, the Antageans are patriots. We believe in the Starstate. We also believe in the Council. We want to do everything we can to keep Constellar free. But that doesn’t mean I, personally, get a kick out of giving orders. Just the opposite, in fact. Giving orders means taking responsibility—both for good, and for bad. My mistakes affect other people’s lives. Now, more than ever. That’s about the furthest thing from ‘enjoyment’ I can think of.”
In that moment, Garsina felt something stir. Deep down within herself. Being surrounded by First Family apparatchiks who endlessly aspired to greater degrees of authority and influence, she’d come to assume that all men craved the same. But here the lieutenant commander was, plainly stating he did not want the authority, and for reasons which made perfect sense to boot. Remarkable.
Now it was her turn to laugh. Just a little.
“What’s so funny?” he asked.
“You and me,” she said. “My father begged me not to come. And you? You’re here against your will. How ironic is that?”
“I suppose it is,” Wyodreth admitted, smiling slightly. “Do you ever catch yourself daydreaming about a time when owing things to your parents won’t have to be a primary consideration?”
“Parent,” Garsina replied. “My mother is dead.”
“I’m sorry about that. Mine too,” Wyodreth said.
She looked at Wyodreth carefully—at that unbidden smile, and the premature eye wrinkles—and thought him handsome. Not in the polished manner of the many and sundry suitors who’d lately come calling on Family Oswight seeking a power marriage. But in an essentially masculine way. And not just because of the quality of his voice. He was, apparently, a man who did what he had to do, because he had to do it. This resonated with her. And she found herself glad for the revelation.
“Apology fully accepted, Lieutenant Commander Antagean,” she said formally, matching his unbidden smile with one of her own. “I think both of us could afford to be more charitable with the other. Let’s make that part of the mission, yes?”
Now it was her turn to click her heels together, and dip her chin to her chest.
“Yes, Lady,” he said, somewhat startled. “Very magnanimous. I appreciate your willingness.”
With that, he spun on a heel, and strode off purposefully toward the exit.
In the back of Garsina’s mind, she could almost hear her mother tsk-tsking at the fact that Garsina had allowed his candor to disarm her. But then she quickly dismissed the matter, and breathed a great sigh of relief. She took no pleasure in maintaining an adversarial relationship where none need exist. Because the honest truth of it was, Antagean was right. She did have to trust him. And he had to trust her. If both of them were going to escape from this adventure in one piece.
Chapter 18
Just as thrusting out to the Oswight system’s Waypoint had taken the better part of two weeks, descending to the center of the uncharted, new system was also going to take the better part of two weeks. Some of that journey would be spent with the reactor nozzles aimed at the stars, and some of that journey with be spent with the reactor nozzles aimed at the sun. All along the way, each of the Task Group captains would have to carefully monitor fuel and fluid levels—the two being synonymous in the age of high-efficiency hydrogen-fusion motors. One of the first things Admiral Mikton set about doing, while the search for the Daffodil continued, was conduct a survey for nearby comets which might be harvested for distillation of hydrogen—or one of its several isotopes. All of the Task Group ships, even the Antagean starliners, had the necessary distillation equipment. Assuming one or more suitable comets could be located, and nudged into a trajectory which more or less matched the Task Group’s own. All of the ships could slowly replace their fuel and fluid losses. But finding a comet to do the job required additional expenditure of resources. And while both the Gouger and the Tarinock were specifically built for long-range scouting, they were also the only two ships—other than the Catapult—capable of mounting a defense if the need arose.
So, Mikton dispatched them singly, confident that positive results would come back, if only the scouts kept looking. Meanwhile, the first of several ships from Commodore Iakar’s security flotilla arrived on the scene. And Mikton could devote her mental energy to devising what seemed like a coherent defense strategy. Because the grace period of merciful silence—no foreign vessels yet arriving—would end eventually.
At approximately twenty-eight hours post-arrival in the new system, with three more ships moved over from the security flotilla, word finally came back from the Antagean ships that the Daffodil had been located. She was responding with message laser only, in reply to the wider radio hails that all the Task Group ships had been sending. When Admiral Mikton finally had the captain of the Daffodil on-line, she reassured the man that no hostile forces had arrived on the scene, and that they could afford to have a detailed conversation.
As it so happened, the Daffodil was less than a light-minute distant, orbiting the outermost jovian planet—by which the Antagean detachment was soon to pass. Daffodil had been running dark to avoid potential detection, but now happily greeted friendly forces and began relaying information.
The planet-finders in Oswight space had been correct. All of the new system’s basic data—on star type, and the total number of planets—had been correct. But the exciting part was the discovery of a potentially clement terrestrial. Daffodil’s
crew had performed a flyby. The images they were uploading to Mikton’s Task Group were stunning: huge water seas, majestic whorls of white clouds covering what appeared to be several significant land masses, and thousands of smaller islands. Spectroscopic analysis indicated an abundance of both nitrogen and oxygen in the atmosphere. If such a planet had been discovered within the Waywork itself, it would have been a jewel of almost limitless value. People had taught themselves the trick of living on harsher worlds, yes. But to make a nation thrive—with booming populations, and an outlook to match—you needed planets which would foster growth. Naturally fertile land for farming. A sky not domed over with plastics and metals. The kind of free acreage where a hearty soul could sink a shovel into the soil and begin creating anything from nothing.
“Ours,” Zuri Mikton murmured to herself, savoring the idea of claiming this world for her country.
“Perhaps, but not quite,” remarked Lieutenant Commander Antagean over the Task Group’s tactical net.
“What do you mean?” Zuri snapped, taking her eyes off the imagery of the clement planet, and aiming them at the broadcast picture of the former civilian.
“Check your data from the Daffodil,” he simply said.
“He’s right,” the captain of the Daffodil—face filling a different square—said reluctantly. “We picked up ordinary radio broadcasts coming from the coast of the second-largest continent.”
“What do you make of them?” the Admiral asked sharply.
“Not sure, ma’am.”
“Could it be alien in origin? Possibly even Waymaker?”
“They’re repetitive. Looping over and over. Audio only. It sounds like human speech, albeit a form of human speech I’ve never heard before. Doesn’t match with any dialect myself or my officers have ever heard.”
Admiral Mikton used her controls to quickly capture audio feed being sent over by the Daffodil. The captain was right. The somewhat distorted sounds were definitely not familiar to her. She amplified them over the Catapult’s command module speakers, and each of her people shook their heads negatively. Nobody had any clue what was being said.
“So, we’ve found a lost colony,” the Admiral opined. “With people who may or may not be friendly to our cause?”
“More than that,” Daffodil’s captain said. “We got as close to the planet as we could, with the time and fuel afforded to us, and had some clear air over the source of the broadcasts—no clouds to obstruct our view. Our telescope footage shows us something quite remarkable.”
Zuri snagged the graphics being fed into her ship’s computer, and set several streams of images flowing, until she jabbed out a finger and stopped the feed on a particular picture which made her mouth hang partly open.
It been a vessel, once. Gargantuan. Its titanic metal ribs rose like stone arches high into the sky. Given the limited resolution, scale was difficult to determine. But the ship was practically beached on the shoreline of the second-largest continent. Nearby, an even larger object projected mightily into the air—at least two kilometers? Maybe more? The pyramid was smooth sided, save for a barely discernible pattern of repeating, geometrically uniform lines crisscrossing each of the four faces. Which presented a stark contrast to the crumbled, skeletal hull of the vessel.
What appeared to be highways randomly spoked away from the pyramid’s base. There even seemed to be buildings of roughly square and rectangular construction nestled among the roads. Though these also seemed to share the disused and deteriorating quality of the beached ship.
Whoever lived there—had lived?—they weren’t doing much to keep the place up.
“Look like anything out of any drydock you’re familiar with?” Lieutenant Commander Antagean asked from his own ship’s command module.
“No,” Zuri admitted.
“She’s far bigger than anything we could ever hope to build in a reasonable commercial manner,” the younger officer said, his thumb absently rubbing at the edge of his lower lip. “In fact, I’d say whatever size it was at the start of its service life is probably larger than this imagery can tell us. Time took a toll. The spaceframe has partially collapsed under its own weight. Possibly sinking into the wet ground? Or maybe it washed out with the tide? There’s a sizeable moon orbiting the world, and the moon itself seems to have a moon too.”
“What’s your back-of-the-envelope guess? Final ship’s size,” Zuri asked.
Antagean considered, then said, “Figure, one-third to one-half again as large. With huge fusion thrusters and reaction mass tanks to get it down to the ground.”
“But why land anything of that magnitude?” Zuri asked. “You’d never get it back up into the sky again. Much less reach orbit.”
“They probably never intended to take off again, ma’am.”
“So…whoever landed on that world intended to stay for keeps?”
“I think that’s a fair assumption.”
“They landed, maybe partially dismantled their ship—for materials, tools, computers, and other things—then built the pyramid?”
“Negative,” the Daffodil’s captain said, shaking his head.
“Explain,” Zuri demanded, her eyes darting from one man’s image to the next.
“Ma’am, the radio repetitions seem to be coming from the shell of the downed ship, but we get nothing off that pyramid. Nor are we entirely sure what it’s made from. Spectroscopy isn’t telling us anything. It’s not metal. It’s not stone. It’s not a polymer, nor anything artificial like we could make in a Constellar lab. Until we land and try to gouge out a sample, I think we have to conclude that humans—if they’re down there at all—didn’t have anything to do with the pyramid.”
“Alien,” said a new voice. The Lady Oswight had spoken not at all to that point. Merely listened. But now the picture of her face was set in a stern expression. “Undoubtedly Waymaker in origin.”
“How do you deduce that, if I may please ask?” Zuri said, being careful to temper the commanding tone in her voice when addressing the Family heir.
“Consider the Keys themselves,” Garsina said. “We’ve never been able to figure out how they were built, or what they were built from. I’m going to bet that we’ll have the same problem trying to analyze the pyramid’s construction. The Waymakers used materials far in advance of anything men ever learned to make. That’s probably why the ship landed where it did in the first place. They saw their chance to examine a significant Waymaker artifact, and they took it.”
“And it cost them…how much?” Lieutenant Commander Antagean asked, his voice grave. “For all we know, the whole site is now an open-air mausoleum. We’re not getting anything like what I’d call a live transmission. Just the repeating, automated radio broadcast. And while I can’t make out a word of what the lone voice is telling us, I’m going to wager it’s a warning.”
Zuri considered, eyeing the grainy images of the pyramid—and the broken hulk of the vessel resting next to it, with spars trailing off and down into the crashing waves of the sea.
Suddenly, the Catapult’s automated threat board lit up. A dull bong-bong-bong-bong sound began to fill the command module.
“Status,” Admiral Mikton said, sitting up straighter.
“Signals coming in from the Waypoint,” said one of the junior officers. “Unidentified vessels emerging into space. Not broadcasting Constellar identification codes.”
“Damn,” Zuri said, closing her eyes. “Didn’t take them long, did it?”
For a moment, Zuri Mikton flashed back to Cartarrus. The achingly futile feeling of retreat. Watching ships—and people—die, so that other ships and people might live. All the while, losing a whole system which had proudly flown the Constellar flag since its settlement. A population crushed beneath the heel of Starstate Nautilan’s bottomless hunger for total domination of the Waywork. Relentless. Unyielding.
“No,” Zuri whispered to no one in particular. “Not this time.”
“Ma’am?” asked Daffodil’s captain, his t
one edged with fear.
“We’re going to stand our ground,” Zuri ordered.
“But—” Lieutenant Commander Antagean began to say, and was cut off.
“Let the word go out to every single soul in every single ship in the Task Group. Now that we’re here, we’re not leaving. Not while there is a Constellar citizen who still draws breath. If Nautilan is going to take this discovery from us, they will be made to pay a price. Give them a lesson in what the final war is going to be like. The war for home. It begins now. Am I understood?”
The command module was silent.
“I said,” Zuri repeated, projecting from her diaphragm, “Am I understood?”
The entire command module crew chorused their affirmatives. As did the captain of the Daffodil, and the other officers from the other ships on audio only. Leaving Antagean to say it last, and not without reluctance.
Urrl’s right, Zuri thought, that one has never fought. But now we’ll see how he handles himself.
“How many?” Zuri asked, as Commodore Urrl began relaying battle instructions to the three Task Group ships and four security flotilla craft, presently standing watch at the Waypoint’s periphery.
“Uhhhh,” the Catapult’s captain said, unsure of the readings on his display.
“Come on, come on,” Zuri snapped. “We need to know what we’re dealing with.”
“They’re stealthing us,” the captain complained. “If it weren’t for the scouts and their advanced sensors, we couldn’t get any readings at this distance. But, uhhhhh, I think we’re looking at half a dozen ships. No, correction. Just over half a dozen. Say, destroyer size. We’d be able to tell more if we were in visual range.”
“If we were in visual range, we’d probably be dead by now,” Zuri said, thinking furiously. If it was Nautilan—and she had no reason to believe otherwise, given the fact that the Jaalit system was the only other system in the Waywork to present a Slipway to the new system—they hadn’t come with as many ships as Zuri had expected. Whoever was running the Nautilan side of things was eschewing traditional Nautilan attack-and-overwhelm doctrine by employing such a downsized force.
A Star Wheeled Sky Page 13
