"Then you're not the outlaw we supposed you to be?" Trevino was amazed beyond words. Apologies flooded to his lips and remained unspoken. What apology could there be to this innocent man he had all but sent to his death?
"No—I'm not, but I knew there was no way of proving it to you," replied Conrad. "At least not until Raballa Colony was reached and I could prove my affiliation with the Office of Special Investigations. With my friends, here, I followed your trail. We heard the sounds of fighting far ahead. When we found you attacked by outlaws, I knew it was my chance to save you and prove myself."
“OSI,” Roberts said with a shake of his head. “Should have known. You guys are everywhere.”
“And nowhere,” Conrad smiled up from the ground where he sat. “And you didn’t see me, and I was never here.”
"You’ve certainly proven yourself!" exclaimed Trevino warmly. "But what about Gwog Kalach and Decir?"
"Actual pirates. They thought Conrad was the leader they'd been told to watch for," interrupted Roberts spiritedly. "Plain as day, isn’t it, Luther?" He turned to his comrade for a confirming nod. "There's your man!"
Isaac Roberts pointed at me where I sat on the ground, collecting my wits. I knew that I had been caught red-handed. Denials were useless.
"Tyrell Bergmann?" exclaimed Trevino in surprise. "But he's the last man I'd suspect."
"Just the same. He's the man you thought Conrad was," persisted Isaac. "He put green flares in your campfire ashes so we could follow you."
"How did you Sector Command officers come to be with the outlaws?" asked Conrad, a bit confused by the surprising revelations he had heard.
"The authorities at Raballa have suspected this gang for quite a while," replied Thompson. "Isaac and I were assigned here a few months ago to find out. We're much obliged to you and the glimn, Conrad."
Trevino confronted me. "What have you to say for yourself, Bergmann?" he asked grimly.
"Nothing," I grumbled, rubbing an aching head. "There’s no use in a place like this." I nodded in the direction of Roberts and Thompson. "Horgav Olab was warned against strangers. He was a fool for not listening, and I was a bigger one for following him."
"Then you admit Conrad is innocent?" queried the captain, seeking the confession which would irrevocably clear the accused man.
"Yes. He's innocent. Decir and Gwog Kalach never knew me. I sent my instructions to them through Conrad, leaving messages where they believed he'd left them. When we left Third Earth, I recognized Decir and Gwog Kalach right off. For secrecy's sake, they weren't supposed to talk with the man they took orders from. I took advantage of this fact by placing my article of identification in the possession of Conrad."
"The jacket you loaned me!" exclaimed Conrad, realizing the mode of his undoing.
"After I'd given it to you, I was afraid of something going wrong before Horgav Olab and his men picked us up. I blew out the radium repellors of the Pride of Trinidad and planted some evidence in Conrad's room. I knew if anything happened, Gwog Kalach and Decir would identify him as the man from whom they took instructions. That left me a loophole."
"That wraps it up nicely, Bergmann." Trevino's face was stern and set. "You're the one who's going to be shot this time, and there won't be any chance of body armor, either."
"Just a minute," interposed Isaac, thrusting back the angry captain. "We've got a say here. Sector Command brass wants this man. He's got more information than he's given today. There are some other affairs he can talk about. Like it or not, he's going back with us."
Trevino didn't argue the matter. It was beyond his authority. Besides, if I received my just dues, he cared little where I was executed . . . not that Sector Command was inclined to such acts. They placed me under strong guard on the outlaw ship, and we flew back to Raballa. Knowing me for the clever, resourceful criminal that I pride myself on being, Roberts and Thompson personally conducted me to their base in the Molonov sector. There, I was given a brief examination and more than a few interrogations by Conrad himself.
At present, I find myself in the interplanetary penal colony on the asteroid orbiting the planet Burkid where I am being held for reasons peculiar to both Sector Command and the OSI. In the meantime, I spend much of my numbered hours gazing out of my prison into the realms of space. The rotating sphere of Burkid stands prominent against starlit skies. Occasionally, I see its companion moon, Kadass. Beyond the transparent facing of my prison cell stretches an airless void. I know now there is but one escape. I await the time when it can be used to my advantage, absorbed in fatalistic reflection of what brought me to these walls that grow ever closer by the day.
THE END
Where Crimson Banners Still Wave (2364)
Chapter 1
As the last members of the harvesters came through the large gate surrounding the citadel of Artemis, Colonel Riath Galen gave the order to close the doors. The members of his team, some twenty men who were all in their prime harvesting years, removed their thick, centuries-old helmets. Unlike his people, Galen watched through his helmet’s enhanced eye slits and waited until the doors were fully closed, his biorifle primed and ready for anything that might chance trying to breach the momentary opening in the otherwise-impenetrable citadel’s defenses. His finger lay softly against the trigger until the twin doors rolled together, separating the harvesters from the onslaught of the howling sandstorm that had caught them off guard minutes before.
Normally blown clean after each excursion, the floor of the gate room was covered in several centimeters of sand. Galen kicked at the loose material under his feet, watching for the telltale depressions from sand snakes, one of the many constant menaces that plagued them. His team eyed him cautiously as he stepped lightly across the sand-covered floor, his gun fanning slowly out in front of him as he scrutinized nearly every grain of sand.
“Galen?” Arsino, his childhood friend and second in command asked nervously.
The colonel was silent a moment. Then, as he caught movement out of the corner of his eye, he abruptly stopped in his tracks. “We’re not alone, my friends.”
Taking a cautious step back, Galen level his weapon at an otherwise-miniscule dune. Arsino, his ragged beard choked with sand, licked his dry lips as he attempted to see what his friend had surveyed. Then he saw it. Almost imperceptibly, the dune undulated once. Then twice.
“Take care, men,” Galen said calmly. “The situation is under control. You have nothing to fear from our little friend.”
“It’s a bloody sand snake,” one of the men—Marus—whispered anxiously. “That thing could kill us all.”
“Calm yourself, Marus,” Galen said, and although his men were unable to see it, Arsino knew that the colonel was himself smiling.
Kneeling down, Galen pushed the tip of the rifle forward until it impacted with the ankle-high dune. Immediately, a slithering green form the length and diameter of a man’s arm shot out. The four petals of its razor-lined mouth opened wide and engulfed the muzzle of the weapon. The sand snake, one of the few creatures to survive the great event of two centuries ago, was nothing to be trifled with. Its bite was excruciating, and the poison it injected was always fatal. It bucked and jerked, trying with all its might and ferocity to devour whatever it could grab on to.
“No dinner for you tonight, my little friend,” Galen said just before pulling the trigger. A bolt of green energy raced into the sand snake, blowing free whatever chunks of the body the blast hadn’t vaporized. A large portion hit the wall beside Arsino, sliding down the smooth face with a scrape of bone on metal. Galen’s second in command regarded it for a moment, then turned to scowl at the colonel.
“Are there any more of them?” Marus said in a panic, his own rifle quickly panning around the floor.
Galen took off his helmet, savoring the gentle breeze of the recirculated air as it blew through his short hair. “No.”
Arsino stepped up beside him. “Someday one of those things is going to be the death of you.”
“All those years as a child spent hunting them after school was time well expended, old friend.”
Arsino nodded slowly, contemplating Galen’s words. He lowered his voice to barely above a whisper, keeping the conversation strictly between the two of them. “True enough, but even as children we were never so foolish as to invite the kind of risks you take.” When he noticed that the statement had taken some of the smile off Galen’s face, Arsino gave a respectful—albeit muted—bow, and ended with “sir.”
Galen reached out a hand and grasped Arsino’s shoulder, the plates of armor covering his biosuit tapping one another in a staccato rhythm. “Let’s get the tetralyte ore to the processing station. I have a feeling we’ve got people waiting on us.”
There was a beating of drums just beyond the closed doors leading from the foyer into the citadel, a sound that Arsino was only now becoming aware of. It did not surprise him to hear it, and in fact it brought a certain sense of finality to their recent outing into the wasteland. The people of Artemis had gathered to salute the victorious harvesters, just as they had done for countless centuries across countless worlds. A hero’s welcome for the ones bringing back much-needed materials, a warrior’s funeral for those who did not.
As Galen reached out to pull the lever that would open the inner door, a voice called out to them from the darkness above.
“Hold, Galen.”
The harvesters had no need to look up to see who was speaking. They all knew the deep, commanding voice well, as if he had been with them all their lives. All bowed in honor, save for Galen himself. The colonel simply nodded his head. “General Vod.”
Slipping down a nearby staircase with all the grace of a practiced diplomat, General Vod, wearing the same biosuit as the rest of the men—save for his helmet, which was predictably missing—approached the colonel with an outstretched hand. Grasping one another at the wrist, Vod’s imposingly tall form smiled down at Galen nearly half a meter down. “You have done well, Colonel?”
As was often with Vod, it was not truly a question.
“We did what was required of us, sir.”
“And what have you to show for it?”
Galen turned and nodded toward the small cart hovering slightly above the sand. “Nearly a ton of tetralyte,” he said, wishing there was more to show for five days of searching, three days of digging and the loss of one man’s life.
“You sound as if that is so small a number as to be miniscule,” Vod’s voice dripped. “You have done well, Colonel.”
“We lost Tethis, sir.” Tethis, whose father was a farmer and his mother a seamstress, was one of the newest members of the team. He had been killed in a completely avoidable accident involving a cave-in at the dig site. Foolishly rushing in to save a handful of the rare mineral they were sent to retrieve, he had been crushed to death. Is this what we’ve been reduced to? That we should so tempt fate for a handful of rocks?
“Regrettable,” came Vod’s reply, although Galen knew better than to expect any such real sympathies from the general. “He will be honored at the Feast of the Fallen tonight, I assure you.”
Galen bowed his head slowly. “Of course, sir.”
“And as for you all, you are heroes,” Vod said, raising his arms above his head as he addressed the men grandly. “Rise to your feet, harvesters, and take your rightful place.”
One by one, the ten harvesters rose to their feet, the armor of their suits clicking with each movement, the built-in motors effortlessly humming to life to move the otherwise unruly contraptions to a perfect standing position. Vod looked upon them with satisfaction.
And why shouldn’t he? The assembled harvesters were, in Galen’s opinion, quite simply the best people who had ever donned these suits, and there had been many hundreds. They were the best, most well-trained, handpicked from childhood to bear the honors that were about to be bestowed upon them. Each of these men would give his all, just as Tethis had, to ensure the longevity of their people. And it was their responsibility, and theirs alone, to shoulder it. The council made policy for the people, the general laborers made sure they were clothed and that they had homes to live in, the botanists in the Great Arboretum made sure the people were fed, but only the harvesters were trained to gather tetralyte—that rare material used to provide power and heat, the fuel that kept the lights on and the water purification systems running. It kept the library computer running, ensuring that future generations, under the tutelage of seasoned instructors, would grow up wise. Without the tetralyte, they would surely die. Without the harvesters, all would be lost.
General Vod took up his place ahead of the men, and would be the first person to be showered with praise for the material that he himself hadn’t retrieved. Such was his way, and had always been his way since he was endowed the position by the council nearly eight years ago. He would make the report to the council about the materials gathered, and he alone would receive the praise from Councilman Speros. So much the better. Galen had long since grown tired of the councilman’s rhetoric about the eventual return of their leaders—those who had abandoned their own people centuries ago. The same sermons, given countless times, grated on his every nerve. All Riath longed for was to see his wife and son, and to hold them in his arms for as long as possible until the next harvest was scheduled.
With a grand wave of Vod’s arms, the great inner doors opened to Artemis, and the harvesters were greeted by the main thoroughfare awash in cheering spectators waving banners of crimson, streamers drifting down from balconies tens of meters above them, and lavish words of exaltation coming from every direction. Chants of “all hail the victorious” and “welcome home the harvesters” were sung by the dozen as the men made their way through the narrow street leading to the ore processing station half a kilometer away.
Galen had long ago stopped searching the crowds for his wife, Taci, and his ten-year-old son, Jaison. He knew they were waiting patiently at their home in the Southern Quadrant for him. It was at times like this he wished he could shuck his responsibilities, take off in a sprint, and be with them. However, duty and tradition were the order of the day, and he knew full well Vod would have none of it. To do so would not only bring disgrace to the general, but it would be an insult to those of the population gathered here for the celebration. Galen loved his family, but he loved his people, too. They were joyous for the first time in months, and he would do what he could to let them hold on to it . . . at least until the tetralyte began to once again run dry. Until the next harvest was scheduled. But that was in the future. Today was a day of celebration. The people—his people—deserved it.
Chapter 2
With the valuable mineral in tow, the harvesters slowly made their way down the street. The sound of popping explosions drew Galen’s and the others’ eyes to the sky. There, in the rust-orange expanse, pyrotechnics exploded in succession, showering the heavens in sparks of red and yellow. It was then that Galen’s eyes were drawn to the west—to the old loading docks of the Industrial Quadrant. Stepping past a series of tall buildings, Galen knew full well the clearing he was about to enter would give him an unobstructed view of it. He had visited it many times as a child, and only now—as an adult—did he fully understand its implications . . . and its many dangers. As the buildings fell away, Galen locked his eyes on the west, and the Survivor came into view.
Old—even when it was said to have first landed planetside some two centuries ago—the vessel, or what could be discerned of it from Galen’s current vantage point, looked to be just another part of the decaying cityscape. The angular bow—which the colonel knew contained the main control room—jutted over several smaller buildings that had been built in its shadow long ago. Artemis’s chief scientist, Dr. Rylan, had long ago taken over the responsibilities of watching over the vessel—Artemis’s only remaining starship. The last time Galen and Rylan had spoken—which hadn’t been at length in some years—he was told the vessel was purported to be in flying condition. Although wo
efully inadequate to ferry the entire city’s population from the planet, it could be outfitted to take a small percentage of them offworld. Of course, no one had fired off the main drive engines in nearly a century. There simply wasn’t enough tetralyte to fill the holds required by the ship’s systems, and even if there were, where would they go?
Where would we go? It was a question Galen had often asked himself as a small boy when he had gazed upon the hulk in wonder. The simple question had a thousand answers, and they were all in the library computer. What little time Galen had sat at the machine, he had learned of hundreds of worlds that had been seeded and harvested by the leaders. The crimson banner of their people, it seemed, stretched for hundreds of light-years in every direction. All one had to do was go forth. Galen often wondered if, like Artemis, there were pockets of life that the masters had abandoned as they had this one. Perhaps not, he would muse. Perhaps they had thrived where Artemis had failed, and the people of this world had simply been forgotten . . . lost in the bureaucracy of an ever-expanding frontier.
Of course, leaving Artemis was all but impossible. Aside from the tetralyte rationing that had been put in place for the last century, any attempt to leave the planet—or to even mention the idea of doing so—was considered profanation by not only the religious leaders, but by their pseudo masters, the Council of Artemis. A young Galen had received ten lashes for asking questions in his teenage years. That had put an end to his verbal curiosity. Still, as he studied the great ship, Survivor, in the far distance, he allowed his mind to wander to the distant places of the galaxy his body was denied.
A moment later, the vista of the starship was covered by the spire-like administration building—the seat of the council, and the one place in all of Artemis that Galen felt truly out of place.
Beta Sector- Anthology Page 12
