Dying World

by Chris Fox

  That was the way of it with vessels like this. Who knew how old they really were? Some stretched back to planetfall, and judging by the musty smell from this one I wondered. Dozens of diverse owners had likely kept the Remora flying.

  A bit of fire activated the missive, and the scry-screen’s edge pulsed red while it waited to connect. The process would probably have been faster had I used Quantum, but listening in on missives was much harder to achieve, and I had a feeling whoever was behind this would be monitoring all communications to the prime minister’s ship.

  The missive finally connected, and my mother’s near-bloodless face filled the monitor. Her composure was back, the professor, but the evidence of her grief remained. She’d been through a lot, and I could only guess at the causes.

  “Hey, Mom.” I smiled at the holo and took a step closer, almost touching it. “I know you’re probably dealing with the evacuation. I just need a minute. You want the good news or the bad news first?”

  She gave a tremendously exaggerated roll of her eyes, and then stuck her tongue out at me. Twenty years vanished from her face, and for possibly the first time in her adult life my mother grinned. Not smiled. Not smirked into a hand. She was grinning.

  “Are you serious? You are the good news. When I heard about the train…well that doesn’t matter.” Relieved tears flowed down her cheeks as she extended a holographic hand that couldn’t really caress my chin. It retracted quickly, and the tears were hastily blinked away. Back to business. “I can’t believe you’re alive. If there’s more good news, let’s save it. What’s the bad news? It can’t be any worse than what we’re already contending with.”

  “You know this attack on Kemet was orchestrated,” I began. I wasn’t sure how to convey everything I’d learned in an efficient way. “The piece you might be missing has to do with the lurkers. When we retook the Remora, this ship, from a band of lurkers, one of the prisoners claimed that there was a power shift a few years back. Lurkers used to be mostly harmless, but then someone with serious funding showed up and started weaponizing them. They’ve been hitting every vessel that comes near the Vagrant Fleet, including the one I was on. That’s why salvage has dried up over the last few years.”

  My mom cocked her head and adopted a contemplative expression as I spoke, and I had the sense I was filling in a missing piece for her.

  “This makes a morbid kind of sense.” She glanced off screen, then back. “I’ll tell the minister as soon as we’re done. She thinks the Inurans are behind the whole thing. Not just the destruction of our world, but also Bortel and his ‘contest’. It’s not just a way for them to gain legions of mercenaries at a cut-rate price. If our world is destroyed, then our government will answer to those who survive.”

  That hit me like an asteroid.

  “If the Inurans control those legions,” I reasoned aloud, “then they effectively control the popular vote for all Kemet citizens. They can control what information those people have access to, and tell them whatever they want.”

  “And you can bet,” my mother added, “that we’ll have an Inuran prime minister by the end of the week. What I don’t get is what they gain out of all this? What makes this worth all the effort?”

  Even as she spoke I remembered my conversation with the dreadnought. A dreadnought more advanced than anything I’d seen or even heard of. More advanced than anything the Inurans could produce today. “The Vagrant Fleet itself. We’ve been wrong about the hulks for centuries. Our people think of them as salvage, but some of the dreadnoughts are still functional. If someone could bring them back online you’d have one of the most powerful fleets in the sector…overnight. They’re killing us for our ships.”

  My mother’s horrified expression spoke volumes. “I can’t believe even Matriarch Jolene is that monstrous, but I don’t see another plausible scenario. We just signed a deal that offered the fleet as collateral if we don’t hit a specific financial target when the trade moon arrives. If your lurker intel is right, then this is their endgame, and we’re playing catch up while our world comes apart.”

  I gave a frustrated nod. I hated that we didn’t even know who we were fighting.

  “I’ve got a theory I want to investigate in the fleet.” I don’t know why I didn’t tell her everything about my armor, maybe because someone else could be listening. “Are you guys okay for now?”

  She nodded, and again glanced offscreen. “I have to go. We’re fine, but the minster is trying to find a way to evacuate the academy. They’ve used their magic to hold that part of the world together, for now at least. All of our greatest cultural artifacts…our libraries. Not to mention the minds who bring all that to life. It’s all going to be gone if we can’t pull some sort of miracle out of nowhere.”

  I desperately wanted to cheer her up. I could see her crumbling under an impossible weight, and could only guess what her staff was demanding of her and the prime minister.

  “There was more good news.” I gave her my best smile, and she blinked expectantly back. “Dad helped get me out, and he’s piloting as we speak. Dag the Slayer is…in rare form.”

  Her eyes shone, though she mastered herself before real tears fell. “That’s amazing, sweetie. Your father deserves better than…what I thought you both got. I love you, Jerbear. Stay in contact.”

  “I will. Love you too, Mom.” I reached out to the holo, then killed the connection.

  It was time to take the fight to the people who’d been manipulating us, and now I knew right where to hit them.

  Interlude IV

  Jolene clasped her hands behind her back as she moved to stand at the far end of her office. The entire sitting room had been designed to impress, and the aft wall had been made invisible so the viewer appeared to be dining in space.

  It afforded a wonderful view of Kemet’s demise, and Jolene had to admit that she enjoyed the world’s death struggle quite a lot. Streamers of rocks and debris flowed from many points now, and the planetary fragments were beginning to drift apart. If not for the mages at their precious academy, that part of the world would already be gone.

  Fitting, that they should understand what it meant to struggle impotently against much greater powers. Powers as she’d once wielded. Much had been taken from her recently. Her position. Her title. Her divinity, brief as it had been.

  In destroying Kemet, Jolene had proven, to herself at least, that she still possessed power. She still mattered. Unfortunately, she’d conducted a good deal of self-examination lately, and had come to a troubling conclusion.

  Her mind was eroding, just as Kemet eroded.

  Jolene had lost all the trappings of godhood. All the power, the omniscience, and the immortality…gone. She had, however, retained the very worst part of divinity. Hubris.

  She was incapable of perceiving the universe as a mortal. Taking into account political niceties now seemed alien. When dealing with Bortel, blunt force had appeared the wiser course. In her mind she was still a god, and therefore her followers should listen. Should know what to do without being told.

  That was folly. Today she would rectify that, if such a thing was possible.

  Jolene waved a hand, and elsewhere on the ship a fire mage powered the scry-screen. That mage generated a missive, which was sent to Bortel, aboard the very last ship Jolene had been able to procure before she’d fled the Consortium.

  The missive connected, and Bortel’s ghostly face was superimposed over the invisible wall, the fleet still visible behind him.

  “Yes, Matron?” The words were meek, and the man’s expression was deferential, yet he couldn’t mask his aversion. Not fully.

  She considered the merits of an apology, but decided that would only make matters worse. She would address the issue, nothing more.

  “How are things proceeding with the contest?” She unclasped her hands from behind her back, and folded them over her chest. The gesture made Bortel flinch.

  “Well enough.” Bortel stroked his goatee, and struggled to
make eye contact. “I suspect we’ll end up with eight workable legions, and two trash reserve legions. We’ve got everything from hovertanks to adult Wyrms jockeying for position. They’re already forming their own ranks, which will make our job easier in the long run.”

  “Excellent.” Jolene forced herself to relax, and lowered her arms to her sides. “You’ve passed every test. I understand you don’t know why some are administered, and they may seem like madness, but I assure you all were necessary, and that someday you will understand my actions.”

  Bortel paused, and looked up then. Naked animosity blazed in those eyes, even if only for an instant. “It isn’t necessary that I understand them. I follow orders, matron, and I will do so both swiftly and unerringly until the end of my contract. I can assure you of that.”

  “I’m sure you will. That will be all, Bortel.”

  He gave a curt nod, then the missive cut. Bortel was important, in his own way, but not nearly as important as her work in the Vagrant Fleet. It was time to check on that directly. She hadn’t risked contacting her people, even with magic, but time was short and she needed answers.

  This time Jolene cast her own missive. She raised a hand, and sketched a fire sigil in the air, the light blazing as the magic coalesced, heat rolling off the symbol. She added a dream sigil, then another fire, and then concentrated as the missive completed.

  The scry-screen lit, and when it connected it showed the bridge of an unfamiliar vessel behind her chief operative. The walls were forged from a dark alloy that reminded her uneasily of the black ships Talifax had ordered the Inurans to create.

  The holo lit and an Inuran man of unremarkable beauty offered a curt nod, though he didn’t bother to hide his displeasure at the interruption. “The work will proceed more swiftly without needless oversight.”

  “I will be brief,” she promised, though she hated the meek tone. It ill suited her, but in this instance the expediency outweighed any cost to her pride. “As you haven’t reported in, I assume the candidate failed?”

  “You assume correctly.” Valat’s eyes narrowed dangerously. “And before you ask, yes, we recovered the Heka Aten. No, they cannot be used to control other ships. Each is linked to its parent vessel.”

  Jolene closed her mouth, as he’d just answered her next two questions. She had a third. “How long will it take to train another candidate?”

  “It’s not that simple.” Valat added a frown to the already narrowed eyes, like a feline that had been cornered. “We need a mage who understands both magical theory, and the historical context of the Guardian. In short, they need to think like it thinks. I suspect the reason our last candidate failed was because they were not adequately prepared.”

  Now it was Jolene’s turn to narrow her eyes. She needed this man. For now. “For which you blame me. Very well I will accept that blame. I ordered the attempt before the candidate was ready. We will not make that mistake again. Have you considered entering yourself? You are the most qualified candidate, are you not?”

  Greed and fear battled, but the light in his eyes said that fear had won. Valat shook his head. “The risk is too great. If I fail, then there is no one to train additional candidates, and your research stalls.”

  “I agree with that assessment.” And she did. Jolene licked her lips, and forced civility. “Get another candidate up to level 2 in the armor as quickly as possible. This ship is the most important. If we can’t bring it online, then none of the others matter.”

  “I am aware of the stakes.” Valat raised a hand to rub his temple. “I will do all I can. Please do not contact me again. I will let you know when I am ready.”

  “You have twenty-four hours,” she countered, using the sector standard measurement for a single day. “I will contact you tomorrow for a status update, and hope to hear progress. Don’t disappoint me, Valat. My patience is not infinite.”

  Valat paled, all resistance suddenly gone. Apparently word had spread about Bortel’s underling. Maybe that had been the right choice after all. “Of course, Matron. I will speak to you then.”

  21

  My next move was half intuition, but I felt like I was onto something. The ship my armor was connected to, the dreadnought I’d been aboard but whose name I’d yet to learn, was still functional. I knew life support worked in at least part of the ship.

  What I didn’t know was whether or not the engine, or engines, were functional. My whole plan fell apart if they weren’t. It would be damned near impossible to ride to the rescue if the ship wouldn’t, well, ride.

  There were a lot of problems to solve. A lot of possible roadblocks. A lot of unknowns. But that was the shape of my plan, and I was going to find a way to hammer it into reality.

  I’m not attached to much, but every last one of my positive memories growing up came from the academy. I’d fallen in love there, and gotten my heart broken. I’d learned to cast my first spell, and to control the magic living inside me.

  More than that the academy was the both the past and future of our people. The past in that it contained the armory, which housed all of the most powerful weapons we’d saved during planetfall. The future in that thousands of cadets in various stages of training called Highspire home.

  I’d be damned if I was going to let that all be sucked into the sun.

  So I walked my inspired ass down to the brig. I passed Arcan, who glared at me from behind his cell’s blue energy barrier. I walked by a curious-looking young man, about my age, with a scruffy beard and frightened eyes.

  He strongly resembled Vee, the last cell’s occupant. Right down to the shade of auburn in his beard and hair. I moved to his cell, and tapped the red button removing the barrier. I repeated the gesture at Vee’s cell.

  Both prisoners stared at me as the prospect of freedom dawned, clearly expecting some sort of trick.

  “We need to talk,” I began, then moved to lean against the wall opposite their cells. “I don’t know what life was like among the lurkers, but you’ve seen holos about the academy, right? You know about Highspire and the armory?”

  Vee nodded. Her brother said nothing, and his gaze kept shifting between me and the ramp leading up to the mess.

  “I went to school there.” I shifted a few steps to the right to block brother’s path up the ramp. He flinched, and settled back onto his bench. “I have friends there. Family. And it represents all that remains of three hundred millennia of continuous culture.”

  “Why are you telling us this?” Vee rose from her bench, and stepped into the hallway, face to face with me. “Are we free to go now?”

  “If you help me, then yes.” I folded my arms and resisted the urge to draw my sidearm. I was taking an awful chance here, and I knew it. “The dreadnought you originally took this ship on…could you find your way to the bridge?”

  “Yes,” her brother said, though he didn’t leave his bench. He cowered there, avoiding eye contact. What had they done to this poor guy? “I can lead you there. No need to bring Vee.”

  “I’ll need you both, I think.” I drummed my fingers on the suit’s forearm, but it did nothing to dispel the nervous energy. “If we can repair the ship’s propulsion system, and make sure the life support is stable, then I think we can save about seventeen thousand kids who are about to sucked into the sun, plus what’s left of our best weaponry, which I have a feeling we’re about to need. What do you guys say?”

  “And if we help?” Vee demanded. She folded her arms, mirroring me.

  “Then you’re full crew,” I offered. This was an answer I’d been prepared to deliver. “You both get a full share of all profit, and participate in crew discussions. At the end of the day, though, you accept me as captain. You support my decisions, and agree not to screw over other crew members. Simple enough?”

  The pair’s gazes met, and something unspoken passed between them. It ended with the man shrugging, then Vee turned her attention back to me.

  “I’m in.” Vee gave a ghost of a smile, and it l
it her face in a way that provoked very unprofessional thoughts. “I thought you were going to ask us to do something dastardly. If you want to get that beast flying, then Kurz and I are your best bet. We grew up making fleet tech work long past its expiration date.”

  I tried not to seem overeager, but was reasonably certain I came across like a cadet with their hand raised in their very first class. “Do you have any idea what that thing uses for engines? I didn’t see anything external, and it would take a lot of power, or magic, to move something that large.”

  “Gravitic Spelldrive,” Kurz said, quietly, and without raising his eyes from the deck. “We can tell more when we see the bridge, but we’ll probably need a mage, or mages, linked to the engines. That’s the way all the capital ships were.”

  “How do you know so much about them?” I asked. We were short on time, but I like to know the people I work with. Plus, it sounded like this guy had access to data I’d never seen back at the academy. No one there could tell us how these things flew, though I didn’t tell him that of course.

  “Oral tradition,” he explained, and finally looked up then. He had clear blue eyes, like his sister’s. “Every lurker clan keeps the secrets of their ships, and our religion teaches that each clan originated from their own dreadnought, I mean…if you read between the lines.”

  “Kurz!” Vee gave a startled gasp, as if Kurz had just revealed something vital. “We do not speak of the maker’s accord. He’s an outsider.”

  “He’s the captain, and do our traditions not also say to give the captain your allegiance so long as they honor the clan?” Kurz’s eyes flashed up from the deck again, this time focused on me. “The old ways are merely remnants of whatever came before. Forgotten procedures that became traditions, and eventually commandments. We don’t even remember the name of the god we served, whatever the captains say, yet we still offer him souls.”