The Madness Engine

by Paul B Spence

  "There was gravity?"

  "Oh, yes. Just like walking on a normal planet. I assume it was artificial."

  "How did they move from world to world?"

  "There were Waypoints. Places where you could just step from one place to another. Some of them were marked; many of them were not. I think those are really old technology."

  "They did not have spaceships?"

  "Not that I ever saw. Not there."

  "Not there?"

  "Drake had a ship."

  "A ship like this one?"

  "Not exactly. Hephaestus is more than just a ship or an MI. Hephaestus was one of a kind, like Drake. Maybe even older."

  Pt'kar stood.

  "We're done?" Geoffrey asked hopefully.

  "Come. We need to speak to the commander about this."

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  "Commander?"

  "Yes?" Tonya replied. She was busy trying to get her suit to interface with the ship's systems, but it wasn't working. Too many of the controls on the bridge had been damaged. The Federation captain had managed quite a bit of sabotage in the few minutes it had taken her to get to the bridge. Damn him and his surrender.

  "Are you okay, Commander? Are we okay?" Rachael asked over the com. "Where are you?"

  "I'm aboard the courier, but it's too damaged for us to use, I'm afraid."

  "You're on the other ship?" Rachael exclaimed. "What about the crew?"

  "Surrendered," said Tonya. "And locked in Medical."

  "Surrendered?"

  "Yes, you would prefer that I kill them all?"

  "No, I just didn't think you were the take prisoners type." Rachael replied. "What do we do with them now?"

  "They're contained. Don't worry about it."

  "There is a ship full of the enemy over there, and you want me to not worry about it?"

  "I told you it has been taken care of," Tonya snapped.

  "Okay, so what should we be doing?"

  "Do you still have working maneuvering thrusters?"

  "Yes."

  "Then move over close to this ship, and I'll jump back across. We need to get out of here as fast as we can. I'm certain they got a distress call out."

  "Great. We can't go anywhere," said Rachael. "The Marie is pretty banged up."

  "Let me talk to Marty."

  "Hold on."

  "Yes, Commander?" Marty answered.

  "How bad is the damage to the ship?"

  "We lost several spines and nodes. We can't jump."

  "What about this ship?"

  "I'm not abandoning my ship!" Rachael shouted.

  "I'm not suggesting you do," Tonya said calmly. "This ship isn't in good shape, either. The shuttle did significant damage when it collided. I was wondering if we could cannibalize it for parts."

  "Hmm. Maybe. We usually buy surplus military nodes anyway. Maybe," he said again. "It would take a while, though."

  "You don't have any time. The captain claims to have gotten off a distress signal. My intel says DEP communications are down across the Federation, but we can't take the chance. If they aren't, then every Federation ship within three light years is going to be coming in hot. Soon."

  "Great," muttered Rachael.

  "I can help," Tonya said. "I'm in armor, and I have a lot of experience working in null-gee."

  "We don't really have much choice," said Marty. "I'll suit up and meet you outside with tools. Honestly, it will be nice to have a little help for a change."

  Rachael said something in a language Tonya didn't know, but her meaning was clear enough.

  Θ

  Lyra stepped from the transit tube into the brightly lit terminal of Aurora's only spaceport, a beautiful, clear dome covering a few square kilometers and filled with shops, pubs, and restaurants. It was the only place on the planet where anyone could find obvious signs of technology.

  The spaceport was at the landing site of the original human colonists. While it defied logic somewhat to place it at the pole of the planet, instead of at the equator where centripetal force would assist with the launches, it made sense when one considered the nature of Aurora. The planet orbited four suns in a complex dance. The equatorial regions were too hot for humans – near the boiling point of water – for most of Aurora's long year. The storms there were terrible, only held in check by the ancient technology of the Mo'Ceri. The rest of the planet was a temperate paradise, with the poles being slightly cooler.

  Now, the once-a-decade winter was upon them, and Lyra hoped there wasn't a metaphor lurking in there. The recent problems within the Circle and the Mo'Ceri Collective had her worried about the future. There were too many unknown variables for her to understand exactly what was happening. Her conversation with David often haunted her. Why was Brennen so opposed to an alliance with Drake? She didn't know the answer to that, and she thought she should.

  She smiled at the spacers who were gawking at the shops. Merchants of a dozen species and a hundred worlds came to Aurora to sell their wares. The Mo'Ceri Protectorate extended to roughly half of those worlds. The others were members of the Terran Confederacy, but she didn't expect to see any humans from those worlds here today. That morning the Confederacy had declared a trade embargo against Aurora. It was another sign that things were falling apart. The center cannot hold, she quoted to herself. Maybe they had tried to hold on too tight.

  Or not tight enough.

  A tall Rhian stepped out from behind the desk and bowed as she approached. "You honor us with your presence, Lyra Rhys-Griffith. Your shuttle is waiting for you."

  "Thank you." She stepped past him and walked down the access tube to the shuttle. It was a small vessel with just a dozen seats. She sat in the open place at the front, ignoring the faint whispers as the crewmembers, coming back from leave, realized who she was.

  She was the last to board, and very shortly afterward the shuttle taxied outside the dome to the runway. She watched with interest through the small portal. There was snow on the low mountains to the north and west, a rare thing on Aurora. The jolt as the shuttle took off down the runway was a surprise, as always. The roar of the air-breathing engines just a little too loud for comfort. She knew from experience that in a few minutes they would be high enough to switch to the rocket motors, and then on to orbit.

  She could have simply apported to the Kach-Ryu, but it was more polite this way.

  Being at the front, she was first to leave the shuttle once it had docked. Captain Ryan was waiting for her.

  "Welcome to the Shining Star," he said with a smile.

  "Taking liberties with the translation, I see."

  "I'll take what can I get," he replied. "How was the trip?"

  "Uneventful."

  "Well, we all hope for that, don't we?"

  Shuttle travel was not without its hazards.

  "What brings you up here?"

  "I can't just visit with an old friend?" Lyra asked.

  He laughed. "Walk with me." He gave her a speculative glance. "You're worried about the upcoming vote?"

  "That and other things," she replied.

  "These border conflicts come up every few years. You know that. This most recent one is just a result of Brennen kicking Ambassador Tindal out of our space."

  "He did use a bit of force. Apporting the man away was an undue show of our abilities. I sometimes think he wants a war."

  "I don't think he wants one," Ryan said slowly. "I just don't think he cares if there is one."

  "Both prospects are just as bad, in my estimation."

  "Hmm. Maybe."

  "You still side with him on the Tebrey issue?"

  "I never sided with him, Lyra. I just didn't take your side. I don't think we should kill the man for no reason. I also don't think we should help him become more powerful. We need more time to think about these things."

  "Time? It's been six months, Ryan! For six months I've been sitting here doing nothing while the enemy takes root in Tebrey's universe. In that time, he has hunted
down and destroyed dozens of them, without training."

  "Then maybe he doesn't need our help."

  "He's manifested the fire, Ryan."

  That made him stop and stare at her. "What color?"

  "Blue-white."

  "It works against the enemy? It isn't just an auric flare?"

  "It works."

  Ryan shook his head. "I don't know what to make of that. He shouldn't be able to do it without being bonded to a Mo'Ceri. You're sure he isn't...?"

  "No, he isn't. I've checked. Deegan has been keeping a discreet eye on him."

  "That one." Ryan snorted.

  "You doubt Deegan's abilities?"

  "No, I question his motives."

  "Don't let David hear you say that."

  "David can kiss my ass."

  He walked with her to the observation deck. It was ship-morning, and the deck was empty of personnel. Aurora was beautiful from orbit. Lyra could clearly see the thick band of clouds around the equator that had baffled the early human scientists on the planet. She remembered once reading some of the early accounts. It was amusing, the theories they had put forth to try to explain it through natural laws. No one had even bothered to ask the Mo'Ceri, or believed them if they had.

  Is there a lessen there? she thought.

  Θ

  Drake had been walking for weeks.

  He hadn't found any information about his friend Jason in Atlanta, but he had found references to the launch facility Tom mentioned, the Gimlé Project. Drake was privately amused by the choice of name, typical of Gerhardt's fascination with everything Norse. Gerhardt had somehow managed to lease the Naval Air Station Key West for his spaceport. That's where Drake was headed now. He'd left Atlanta and made his way south, following Interstate Seventy-five to Miami.

  It wasn't as cold this far south, and the skies were clearer, but there had been fewer signs of survivors, too. It angered him to think that this world had been attacked, destroyed, by the Ancient Enemy of his people. He had given his life fighting them. He'd hoped that that he could have time to learn to be alive again, to feel again, but the Enemy just wouldn't stop hounding him. He knew that now. This world had been destroyed simply because he was attached to people living here.

  His thoughts were interrupted by an incoming signal from his ship.

  "Yes?"

  "You asked me to notify you if I intercepted any radio chatter regarding the feral virus in your area," Hephaestus said over his datalink. "I just incepted a distress call from a city called Miami."

  Hephaestus was the machine intelligence of Drake's ship, although that was like calling a supercomputer an abacus. Hephaestus was the ship, and he was old, built back in the time before the Great War of legend, a relic from the ancient species that became Drake's people, and more powerful than any ship Drake had ever encountered.

  "That isn't that far from here," Drake replied.

  "That was my understanding."

  "Have you synthesized the antidote for the plague?"

  "I have, but it will only work if the person hasn't started to turn yet. I gather from the signal that they have encountered a particularly fast-acting strain of the virus. I'm not sure if the serum will work."

  "I have to try," said Drake.

  "May I ask why you suddenly care so much?" Hephaestus asked.

  "You know why."

  He received the mental equivalent of a nod. "Would you like me to transport the serum to you now?"

  "No, let me see what things are like there first."

  "As you wish."

  Drake called up a memory of the outskirts of Miami. It had been centuries since he had visited the city, and that had been in another universe, but it would be close enough. Once he had the place in his mind, he apported the thirty miles.

  "Where did the signal come from?" Drake asked Hephaestus.

  "The university," he replied. "Do you want me to jump you there?"

  "No, I want to get a feel for the city first. Just keep the channel open and watch out for trouble."

  "I always do."

  Miami was more or less intact. It had been nuked during the war, but with a neutron bomb instead of a conventional nuclear warhead. The cars along the highways were filled with mummified bodies. Neutron weapons killed everything but destroyed little. The bodies couldn't rot, because even the bacteria had been killed. The cars were also mildly radioactive, but Drake wasn't worried. If it hadn't been for the cars with their grim payloads, the city would have looked welcoming.

  Drake had apported into the north end of the city, near Biscayne Bay. It saddened him to not see any gulls in the air over the water. He followed Brickell Avenue to the south along the bay. A few ferals skittered in the buildings downtown, but they didn't bother him.

  The university was a sad sight with the trees and grass dead. There was only one building with an antenna on the top, and it had makeshift barricades erected around it. If there were still survivors, they would be here.

  There were no sentries watching the gate. Never a good sign.

  "Hello?" he called. No response but the sigh of the wind.

  "Hephaestus, are you still getting a signal?"

  "No, but you're in the right place."

  His skin tingled with premonitions of dread as he forced open the door to the building. The doors were all barricaded. He knelt by the dark stains on the floor. Blood. Freshly spilled, from the look and smell of it. Drake drew his pistol and followed the blood trail.

  He could hear faint noises from within the building, low cries and occasional sounds of violence against furniture: breaking glass and wood. The blood trail ended next to the stairs, where a pair of bodies lay in a spreading pool. The two bodies were in the bizarrely intimate embrace of mutual death. They had died ripping each other's throats out with their teeth.

  Drake hurried up the stairs, finding more bodies. The sounds were coming from the rooms at the end of the hall, and he approached cautiously and peered in through the broken glass in the door window. The inside of the room was literally dripping with blood. The survivors of the chaos downstairs had barricaded themselves in the room to escape their friends who'd been infected, but they had carried the plague into the room with them. This strain of the feral virus worked rapidly and left little human behind. The survivors had fallen upon one another and the uninfected.

  A few of them were still alive, torn and bleeding to death, but still feeding.

  Drake turned away. Yesterday there had been hundreds of people here, a new beginning. Now they were dead or worse. It was a new kind of hell for people who had already from whom everything had already been ripped away. The Enemy wasn't content to simply kill billions of people. They had to drive the remainder mad, as well. Drake vowed anew that he would hunt down the Enemy, no matter where they were, and destroy them. What had happened to this world could not be allowed to happen to others. He could not allow it.

  He had Hephaestus destroy the university from orbit once he was a safe distance away.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Tonya Harris met Marty outside the ship.

  The engineer was already disconnecting one of the intact drive spines from the hull of the Federation vessel, cursing at his clumsiness in the dark. Only his helmet light lit the darkness. The Marie had moved close, only a few hundred meters away, and was faintly visible as she radiated in the near-infrared. The Federation ship, wrapped in light absorbing ceramic alloy, was almost invisible.

  The Federation navigation buoy was in interstellar space, far from the light of any star, and Tonya found herself wishing for the feel of wind on her skin. It had been too long since she'd been on a planet. Too long since she'd seen light that wasn't artificial. The silence was oppressive, too. On the surface of a world, there were a million sounds that went by unnoticed. Take those sounds away, and a person would notice, though. Standing there, with nothing but the armor of her suit to protect her from the aching emptiness of space, Tonya felt very alone.

  I'm alw
ays with you, Ghost reassured her.

  I just want to be… comfortable, Ghost. I don't think I've experienced that. I grew up cold and scared all the time. I went straight from that into the military and into the Nurgg War. I've never known comfort.

  I'm not sure I'm the right person to ask about that, said Ghost. I've never known anything but war.

  I know, and I'm sorry.

  You didn't make me, and I'm not sorry I exist. I just think I'd like something more. Maybe I'm getting that from you.

  Maybe, Tonya thought. Maybe people just aren't meant to be scared and alone all the time.

  You could ask the admiral if we can take an extended leave.

  "I'd like that," she murmured.

  "Is someone there?" Marty asked.

  "Can I help?" Tonya said.

  Marty looked up. The light in his helmet glistened off the sweat on his face. As her perception focused on him, Tonya could feel how nervous he was. He was scared. Panicked, even.

  "Can you get these spines over to the Marie as I detach them?" he asked. His voice was steady, even if his mind was not. "That would save me a lot of time."

  "I can do that," said Tonya. "I've got thrusters on my suit."

  "Thank God," Marty said. "I'm working as fast as I can, but I've never been good under pressure."

  "You'll be fine," she reassured him. "We all have the utmost faith in you."

  Tonya checked the chronometer in her display. It had been an hour since the captain of the Federation ship had sent his message, assuming he actually did. She knew communications were down across the Federation, but that didn't mean someone hadn't found a way around it. The fact that the ship was working for the shadow government also meant they could have gotten additional technological assistance. She'd have to assume a message had been sent.

  If a ship was sitting half a light-year from the buoy, then it would have to accelerate up to speed before jumping into hyperspace. One of those funny quirks of hyperspace was that a ship's speed through hyperspace was dependent on two factors: how deep into hyperspace it penetrated, and the speed at which it entered.