Shadow Stars (Universe on Fire Book 2)

by Ivan Kal

  The two emissaries looked at Anthony in silence, attempting to intimidate him, but Anthony had spent a lot of time practicing ignoring such maneuvering. He had spent years as the liaison between the United Earth Council and the Qash’vo’tar’s administrator on Earth. He knew most of their tricks.

  Seeing how their tactics had little effect, both the emissaries switched gears.

  “The Fourth Accord would have a tremendous benefit for humanity,” Jahija told him.

  Anthony nodded. He was aware that it would. The Fourth Accord was one of the seven accords which made up the Compact. While only the Qash’vo’tar and the Zhal Confederation had signed all seven, they had made sure that most of the star nations in their neighborhood had signed some: the First and the Second Accord, most importantly.

  The First Accord concerned travel through the neutral zone, the ravaged remains of the Zhal’Qash Empire. All those who signed it agreed that they would not make stops inside the zone on their travels across it. The Second Accord concerned the technological remnants of the ancient empire: all who signed were required to inform both the Zhal and the Qash’vo’tar of any retrieved technology and then give that piece of tech to the two great powers.

  Humanity had signed those two accords, albeit with some caveats. Earth was located in the middle of the neutral zone, and as such Earth had demanded the right to expand. The neutral zone was off limits for colonization, but the Zhal and the Qash’vo’tar had been taken off guard when humanity had given them the proof of their enemy’s return. They had managed to get a deal which allowed them to colonize the zone, albeit in a supervised fashion. So far Earth had only two colonies, and both were being overseen by the Qash’vo’tar and the Zhal. The two did not want Earth to get its hand on any tech left behind by their precursor empire, though, and because of that the two were actively stalling Earth’s expansion. The two colonies were barely outposts, as the two forced Earth to “go slow.”

  In any case, it was widely known by the star nations in this area of space that those two accords were the ones most often broken. The two great powers patrolled the neutral zone, but they couldn’t hope to patrol all of it. Scavengers risked their wrath often in order to retrieve anything that might be worthwhile. Those that then recovered the contraband tech either kept it for themselves, hoping that the tech would make them powerful, or they sold it to one of the great powers secretly in order to curry favor. Both the Qash’vo’tar and the Zhal Confederation kept up appearances, but they had been engaged in a cold war for centuries.

  But now all of that had changed with the return of their ancient enemy.

  “Earth has no need of the Fourth Accord. We are willing to sign the Third, but signing an accord that requires us to share our technology has no appeal to us at this moment in time,” Anthony said.

  The Qash’vo’tar and the Zhal had been trying to get their hands on Earth’s tech for a long time, both individually and together, as their latest attempts proved. The Fourth Accord was an accord about sharing technology—and while the Qash’vo’tar and the Zhal made appearances about sharing tech, Anthony knew that Intelligence Service had intel that suggested otherwise. But the two were powerful enough that they could keep such secrets. If Earth signed, there would be no hope of them hiding anything, and their magi-tech was their only advantage.

  “We have many technologies that you lack, in all scientific areas. Even the lowest of our technology could improve human lives tenfold, to say nothing of what our industrial technology could do for your expansion,” Gork said.

  “We are managing well enough as it is,” Anthony added, turning to look at Jahija. “We have been taught the value of patience and to take the time to consider our actions carefully by our Qash’vo’tar friends.”

  He got a tiny bit of satisfaction seeing her wince, but he didn’t press it, and they dropped the matter. The rest of the meeting continued in the usual manner, with the two exchanging information and making plans for expansion of their search for the Val’ayash in the neutral zone.

  Several hours later Anthony returned to his quarters and checked his mail. A high-priority message from Earth had jumped to the top of his queue and he quickly read through it. After he finished, he leaned back in his chair and sighed. After a few moments he opened a comm to the station control and arranged for a seat on the first transport back to Earth.

  ***

  Three days later Anthony was escorted through the former UEC hall, which was now the UTS council hall. After they had liberated themselves from the Qash’vo’tar and came to an agreement with them and the Zhal, Earth had undergone a change in structure. The United Earth had become the United Terran Systems, in preparation for the future expansion beyond Sol. The United Earth Council remained in the same form, only having been renamed to United Terran Systems Council. As Anthony walked through the hall, he couldn’t help but remember a moment which seemed to have taken place oh-so long ago, but had in fact occurred not even five years prior to today. The moment the council had asked him a question, and the moment he had answered. His answer had ignited the fight, had saved Earth and changed everything. But it could’ve just as easily spelled doom for humanity. Even now, years after, he still woke up from nightmares where the retaking of Earth hadn’t gone according to plan—where Earth had burned because of his answer. He knew that it wasn’t logical, that everything had gone well, but he couldn’t help it. It was a hard thing, bearing the weight of a world’s fate.

  A staff member led him to double doors and opened them, letting him inside. Anthony walked into a large office occupied by two people. To the side next to a large bookshelf was a man he did not recognize. Dressed in a black suit, he had a serious air about him. And on the far wall behind a desk sat a Latin woman, Councilor Isabella Rodriguez. She was in her seventies, but with the advances in medical technology she looked far younger. She was a beautiful woman, with long brown hair and hazel eyes, if with somewhat stern face. Anthony walked over to the desk and stopped in front of it.

  “Emissary Smith,” she greeted him.

  “Councilor,” Anthony responded.

  She gestured to the man next to the bookshelf. “This is Mr. Grimm, from IS.”

  Anthony raised an eyebrow as the Asian man nodded in greeting, and Anthony returned the nod. He wondered what an intelligence agent was doing here, but he knew that he would soon have an answer. So, he decided to remain quiet and wait.

  Councilor Rodriguez met Anthony’s eyes and spoke. “Take a seat.” Anthony did so, and then she continued. “We need your help.”

  Anthony glanced at the man in black and then back to the Councilor. “What kind of help?”

  Councilor Rodriguez looked to the man and nodded, and the agent walked over and took a seat next to Anthony.

  “How much do you know about what the Prometheus brought back from its mission?”

  “I assume that you are not referring to the footage of the Val’ayash ship?” The man shook his head. “Then only that they found something in the temple. I was not briefed on what they found.”

  Mr. Grimm nodded. “They found a Val’ayash version of a datachip, or rather a Zhal’Qash version, as both of them used the same technology at that time.”

  Anthony was taken by surprise—to his knowledge, most things recovered from the war were pieces of technology, derelict ships or pieces of ships, and it was extremely rare for any kind of records to be recovered. “And the database was intact?”

  “Some of it was corrupted by age, but it is in a workable condition. It took us a long time figure out their language and then decrypt the data, once we got around the block the Zhal’Qash put in their bio-implants. As it is we haven’t yet managed to get much data that is useful to us. Most of it is ancient Val’ayash religious texts and such. But the datachip looks to be some kind of a record of last resort, a database in case of a cataclysm. Besides the history of Val’ayash, it holds locations on points of interest and caches hidden by the Val’ayash.”

 
“Caches of old tech?” Anthony asked.

  “Some holding tech, others something else. We’ve checked the locations we’ve found so far against the Zhal and Qash’vo’tar maps available to us, as well as a few scavenger maps we have acquired over the years. Most of the locations were completely destroyed in the war, others had already been found and recovered or scavenged. But a few weeks ago we found one location which isn’t mentioned in any of the maps we have available to us. There is a possibility that it is still intact.”

  “Do we know what kind of tech is stored there?” Anthony asked.

  Councilor Rodriguez shook her head. “Unfortunately that part of the data was corrupted, but anything from the ancient Empire is valuable. We need every advantage we can get. We will not be able to keep our magi-tech out of the hands of the Zhal and Qash’vo’tar for much longer.”

  Anthony nodded in understanding. “They are pressuring me to convince you to sign the Fourth Accord.”

  “That’s not all,” Mr. Grimm said. “They’ve been attempting to steal pieces of our tech for months now.”

  “What?” Anthony asked.

  “We’ve had two assaults on our factories in the last three months, and several hacking attempts. Of course all those involved are human, criminals hired by anonymous backers. The Zhal and Qash’vo’tar think us inexperienced because we’ve only recently reached space, but we’ve been playing this game for a long time, too, and I think that they’ve only just now started to realize that. It didn’t take us long to figure out who exactly hired them,” Mr. Grimm said.

  “They failed. That’s why they must’ve started working together,” Anthony said.

  Councilor Rodriguez stood up and turned around before walking over to a window. Looking outside, she spoke. “They’ve been distracted so far, and afraid. They had enough trouble accepting that the Val’ayash are back, and they’ve glimpsed our tech in action. They can’t go to outright war with us, as they don’t trust each other enough to be truly allied. If one side tries to gain our tech, the other would retaliate immediately. And they have no idea what exactly we have; the only thing they know is that we pushed out the Qash’vo’tar and that we destroyed a Val’ayash warship. That had been enough to halt their hand. But now… They are growing desperate, as we have refused all their offers to sell our tech or exchange it. And they’ve been growing suspicious about our trading with other star nations.”

  Anthony grimaced. “Kotarium,” he said.

  Councilor Rodriguez turned around and looked at him. “Yes. Earth has no kotarium ore, and the Qash’vo’tar had done a thorough scan of the planet. They don’t know about the portal to Ethorria, or our deals with the Ethorrians. Without knowing about the portal, they could only assume that the Qash’vo’tar had missed something in their scans, a belief that we’ve been encouraging. But…” She shook her head. “We’ve been using large amounts of kotarium in our shipbuilding and selling it to other star nations, and there is limit to what they would believe they had missed. We are running out of time. The portal, Ethorria, magic—it will come out soon, and we need to have something that can ensure our freedom. The moment they find about the portal either one of them or both together will want to control it. So far attacking us has not been worth it, but the prospect of an entirely new universe? Of resources available over there? That will outweigh any price they will need pay.”

  “We already have magi-tech ships,” Anthony said. “I don’t see what more we can do. We can’t out-build them, and just one of their true fleets can crush us. We always knew this.”

  “Yes,” Councilor Rodriguez said. “Which is why we have been improving our magi-tech as fast as we possibly could. And why we need to retrieve the Val’ayash cache.”

  “Even if we find a powerful piece of tech, can it really be enough?” Anthony asked.

  “It will have to be,” Mr. Grimm said.

  Anthony sighed. “What do you need from me?”

  “We can’t send any of our warships in Sol to check out the cache, as the Qash’vo’tar and the Zhal are watching them—our merchant and cargo ships as well. The only ship we can send is the Prometheus,” Mr. Grimm said.

  Anthony frowned. The Prometheus was Earth’s first warship, the ship that had saved Earth. But it was not in Sol; its first mission had it pose as a private ship in the neutral area of space, and it had continued acting as a privately owned vessel to this day. It was all a fiction, of course, as most of the star nations out there didn’t know the truth about Earth, about the United Terran Systems. They believed that they were another great power from somewhere beyond known space. In the areas where Prometheus operated, they didn’t really care much where they came from or what they were doing.

  But the Zhal and the Qash’vo’tar knew that Prometheus was operating on behalf of the UTS—they just didn’t say so out loud.

  “The Zhal are watching Prometheus as well, and they know that it is gathering information for us,” Anthony said.

  “Of course they do,” Mr. Grimm said. “And we know exactly how they are doing it. That is where you come in.”

  Anthony raised an eyebrow as Mr. Grimm pulled out a small rectangular box. “We need you to smuggle this onto the station and plug it in your computer.”

  “What is it?” Anthony reached out and took it in his hands.

  “It is a datachip with a worm on it. We can’t get it on the station as anything brought in from outside needs to be declared and scanned. But you, as the Emissary, can pass through without as much scrutiny.”

  Anthony opened the box and saw what looked like a simple pen. “I am scanned every time I get on or off the station.”

  Mr. Grimm nodded. “This will not get picked up by the scanners, as the pen casing is masking the datachip.”

  “And what is its purpose? I don’t think that we can afford getting caught with something major,” Anthony asked.

  “We need to send Prometheus to the cache location, and as you said yourself, the Zhal are watching it. We know the manner in which they are doing this: they have a device that can read wormhole signatures. In essence, they can see where Prometheus goes. So far, they’ve been sending a few of their faster ships ahead of the Prometheus to keep an eye on it. What we want to do is make them think that Prometheus is coming back to Sol. Outside traffic to Sol is restricted, so if they read that the signature shows Prometheus opening a wormhole to Sol, they won’t send anyone to follow.”

  “I still don’t see how that will help us, as going from here will not be any easier. There are even more eyes here.”

  “That is where that worm comes in: it will hack into the sensors of the station and show that Prometheus did in fact enter the system.”

  “I don’t understand,” Anthony said, confused.

  Mr. Grimm smiled. “We have a cargo ship in Jar Allera ready to come to Sol, and the worm will make sure that the station’s systems read its IFF as that of the Prometheus. In the meantime, the Prometheus will be going to the location of the cache.”

  “But what about the watchers? They will read the destination from Prometheus’s wormhole.”

  Councilor Rodriguez coughed. “Well, this is classified, so you are not to repeat this to anyone else, but we have found a way to open a wormhole exit early.”

  Anthony looked at her, shocked. To his knowledge, that was impossible. The wormholes connected two points in spacetime—you couldn’t exit the wormhole early.

  “It is a magi-tech discovery, so it is doubtful that anyone out there thinks it is possible. Prometheus will open a wormhole to Earth—it just won’t arrive. The Zhal will certainly send word that the Prometheus is headed here, and the cargo ship will arrive at the approximately correct time so that the Zhal don’t get suspicious.”

  Anthony glanced at the pen in the box on his palm. “I understand. I will do it.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  Captain Aiko Nishimura sat in her chair on the Prometheus’s bridge and waited as her ship prepared to exit the wormhole. T
he Prometheus was a part of a six-ship convoy, and was acting as the escort for the other five merchant ships. Her ship was hired to protect cargo ships carrying supplies and new colonists to a young mining world on the outskirts of settled space. The company that hired them, Darus Mining Company, had a mining operation on the world, but the world itself wasn’t claimed by any star nation, and that meant that they were prime targets for pirates.

  “Exiting the wormhole in five minutes, Captain,” Commander Jasmine King, Aiko’s executive officer, reported.

  “Notify Captain Reinhart that I want the squadrons ready to deploy as soon as we exit the wormhole,” Aiko ordered.

  Jasmine nodded and turned to her screen, speaking into her headset before turning to look at Aiko. “Captain Reinhart reports that both squadrons are ready for deployment.”

  Aiko’s lip curled in a half smile, then turned her attention to the screens and the holo in front of her. The five cargo ships were behind the Prometheus and they would arrive only a minute after her ship. It would give them enough time to scout out the situation.

  The reports she had received from the DMC indicated that the probability of an attack was high. Their last convoy had been attacked as well, and they had lost one cargo ship. The nature of space travel meant that the only points where ships were vulnerable were before exiting a star system and after arriving in one. Wormholes couldn’t be created close to planets, and while most colonized star systems had enough patrols across a system to be able to act quickly, the poorer or newer systems weren’t as lucky. And their destination was not only a new system, it was also one on the outskirts of civilization. The DMC was not a wealthy company; their colony had only a single cruiser as a defense force, and it was required to stay in their planet’s orbit to provide protection for the colony. That left any incoming convoy vulnerable from the moment they entered the star system to the moment they reached the planet.