“Is that even possible?” Rogers asked.
“Obviously,” Morgan said grimly. “We were digging into a Precursor site here, after all. A biotech Precursor defense system would still be entirely functional.”
“Why would they have fought to cover the retreat of the pirates, then?” Nguyen asked. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
“I agree, which suggests we don’t have anything near all of the information,” Morgan agreed. “Braddock, keep dissecting. Be careful. A natural organism probably doesn’t have anti-tampering mechanisms, but an artificial organism…”
“Understood, sir,” the pilot replied. “I’ve managed to get a few close-range scans of the ship that show useful data, too. I’m sending those back, and I think I’ve located the main plasma sac. It’s…well, it’s four times the size of one of our fusion reactors.”
“And from the heat signature, it basically is one of our fusion reactors with a passive magnetic containment,” Nguyen interjected. “Lesser Speaker, if you cut that open, it will explode in your face. Pull back. Let’s put together a plan before we poke at something that combines the worst attributes of a fusion power plant and a stomach.”
“Agreed,” Morgan said. “Bring our toy into Beta orbit with us and we’ll consider what to do with it as we bring the evacuees on board.”
She shook her head.
“If I was remotely comfortable putting it in our cargo bay, I’d say we should haul it home,” she admitted. “Somehow, though, I don’t trust a biologically created passive magnetic containment unit to hold forever.”
“I agree completely,” Rogers said. “Let’s dissect the thing around the plasma sacs and get as good a feel for what we’re dealing with as we can—and then if we need open up the sacs, we can do it with a laser from a couple thousand kilometers away.”
“I have to admit, sir, that part sounds much less stressful,” Braddock told them.
“Tow it into orbit, Speaker,” Morgan ordered. “My understanding is that we have some of the Imperium’s top experts on the Precursors in this system. Let’s see what they say about lab-grown warships.”
Chapter Fourteen
Morgan greeted most of their rescuees individually as they were brought aboard Defiance, shaking appendages and giving reassurances as each sentient left the shuttle. The prisoners didn’t get the same respect, though she watched as Vichy’s Marines offloaded them.
Between two systems and two battles, they now had a grand total of twenty-one prisoners. Unfortunately, Morgan didn’t have any interrogation specialists aboard. It wasn’t a skill that a ship on survey duty on the far end of the Imperium ever expected to need.
Vichy and Susskind both had some of the training, at least, but minimal experience using it. They’d do what they could, but she suspected they wouldn’t get many answers until they got back to Kosha.
The Marine CO himself was on the last shuttle up, accompanying the two senior scientists from the expedition. Morgan was familiar enough with the A!Tol to know that Administrator !Lat wasn’t going to be any use to anyone.
She hadn’t seen that dull shade of black on one of the squids before, but the unchanging nature of the A!Tol’s skin shade and the degree to which the two Marines escorting him were guiding him suggested that !Lat was in terrible shape.
Dr. Rin Dunst, on the other hand, was far more aware. A dark-skinned man of average height who looked like he’d make a good pillow, he was studying everything around him in the shuttle bay with a sharp, assessing gaze.
He also clearly recognized Morgan the moment he saw her and made a beeline for her, dragging Vichy in his wake. The Captain had a very clear impression of a perfectly coiffed French poodle—the full-sized war-trained man-killer kind, yes, but still a French Poodle—being dragged along by a big, friendly mutt with more than a bit of mountain dog in it.
“Captain Casimir!” he greeted her. “I wanted to thank you personally.” He gestured around the bay. “We lost seven people, but dozens were hauled away to be slaves and the rest of us were prisoners here.
“We owe you our freedom at least and likely our lives. Thank you, again and again,” he insisted. “If there is any way my people can assist you, you have only to ask.”
“First, you can be good passengers for the ten cycles it will take us to reach Kosha,” Morgan suggested. “With an extra hundred-plus people and the cargo we pulled from the raiders’ ship, things will be more cramped than you’re used to.”
Dunst threw his hands up in an expressive shrug.
“You overestimate our transport out here, Captain,” he told her. “I believe we will be fine—and I will make sure of it, yes.” He paused. “You and I must speak in private, I think, on matters of security.”
“I agree,” Morgan told him. “We’ve found a few damned odd things out here that I’m hoping you can shed some light on. Not least your captors. Do you know anything?”
“Nothing. I hope the computers Battalion Commander Vichy’s people found will be of use once your people get into them,” he said. “I have a few cyber-archeologists who could probably be helpful at that, if you want. We don’t like to draw too much attention to it, but the people who can crack alien hardware and operating systems are pretty good at encryption and security, too.”
“I’m not turning down any help today, Dr. Dunst,” Morgan replied. “We’ll put your people in touch with our cyber team under Speaker Murtas once they’ve settled in.”
“Of course, of course. If I may impose on your time more quickly, though?” Dunst asked.
“Shouldn’t you rest, Doctor?” Morgan asked.
“The moment I stop working, Captain, I am going to have to process quite a bit of trauma, and I’m not certain how helpful I’ll be for a bit at that point,” Dunst replied. “Better to get the use out of me now before the last day or so breaks me.”
That was both a fascinating and disturbing level of self-awareness.
“All right. Vichy? Meet with Susskind and start on the interrogations,” she ordered. “I’m probably going to have to read you in on a few more classified items before we’re done, but I’m going to try to keep things secret if I can.”
“If you insist, ma Capitaine,” Vichy said. Somehow, despite having just spent ten-plus hours in power armor, the man’s hair was still perfect. “I serve at your pleasure.”
“Then get to work,” Morgan ordered. “Vite, if you please, Commander.”
To her surprise, throwing one of his French drop words back at him actually got her a small laugh from the Marine.
Morgan poured coffee for both herself and Dunst, sliding the cup across the table as she considered him.
“System, seal the room under Lost Dragon Protocols,” she ordered calmly. She felt the Faraday cage close, and a green light on her desk confirmed the room was sealed.
“We’re now isolated from the ship,” she told the archeologist. “I’m aware you’re cleared for Lost Dragon. I presume you’re cleared for a number of other Dragon Protocols, and we could spend ten minutes sorting out what both of us know and don’t know about the Precursors and the Imperium’s blatantly illegal-by-galactic-law research into them.”
“Is it illegal if the policeman who wrote the laws has retired?” Dunst asked. “Have you seen a Mesharom recently, Captain?”
She snorted.
“From my conversations with Interpreter-Shepherd Adamase before the Mesharom command ship left Imperial space, I don’t expect to see another one in my lifetime, Dr. Dunst.”
Adamase had been the Mesharom in the region. As Shepherd, they’d been tasked with responsibility for a large chunk of this arm of the galaxy. The failure of the Mesharom involvement in the Taljzi Campaigns had gutted their Battle Fleet. The Frontier Fleet units once used to enforce most of the treaties the Mesharom had convinced the rest of the galaxy to sign had been pulled back to Mesharom space to guard their worlds and borders.
Morgan wasn’t sure how long the twelve-kilometer-wide Mes
harom war spheres took to build, but she did know that the Taljzi had lured a fleet of forty of them into a trap and wiped them out. Reading between the lines, that had been something close to half of the Mesharom Battle Fleet, a force the galaxy’s “wise elders” had never expected to lose.
Many of the treaties the Mesharom had once enforced were still backed by most of the Core and Arm Powers, creating the foundation of “galactic law,” such as it was. The ones around studying Precursor tech, though…those Morgan suspected weren’t being given more than lip service by anyone.
“Without the Mesharom, there is no one to prevent the Imperium from investigating Alava sites,” Dunst told her. “We do so in secrecy, just in case, but those weren’t even treaties the Imperium voluntarily signed.”
Twenty-plus years earlier, while Morgan’s stepmother had been pregnant with twins, Annette Bond had negotiated with the Mesharom to receive technology in trade for surrendering a Precursor scout ship to the Mesharom.
The alternative had, explicitly, been the destruction of the planet the ship had crashed on and humanity’s fledgling first colony. The Imperium’s technology then had fallen far short of the standard necessary to stand against any Core Power, let alone the oldest of them.
Twenty years had changed that, but even now, the Imperial Navy would hesitate to challenge the Mesharom.
“I think that’s how most of the Arm Powers feel,” she agreed. “The Mesharom and the Core Powers forced a lot of treaties on us without really asking our opinion. Now, well…the larger Arm Powers like us are joining the Core in enforcing the ones we agree with.”
The A!Tol Imperium and the Kanzi Theocracy were the two major powers of the spiral arm of the galaxy humanity lived in. Morgan knew humans had visited most of the powers in the galactic Core and even into several of the other spiral arms by now, but that was individual ships at most.
“Hence covert security protocols on an archeological dig,” Dunst concluded. “This is a mess, Captain Casimir, and one I’m not sure how best to handle.”
“Right now, I’m taking all of you back to Kosha,” Morgan told him. “That’s not up for discussion, not even by you.”
“I am merely the deputy administrator, Captain,” he demurred.
“Bullshit,” she said calmly. “You’re flagged in my files as a Category Two Asset, Doctor. That’s an ‘all aid possible will be rendered, to be extracted from threats at significant danger’ classification. You’re not merely the deputy administrator.”
Dunst was silent, taking a sip of his coffee as if lost in thought.
“I am the expedition’s premier expert on the Alava,” he finally conceded. “I am updated and cleared on, so far as I know at least, all of our information on them.”
Morgan sighed.
“We’re getting into the realm of things I don’t officially know,” she admitted. “You’re one of four people we most readily refer to as the Precursor subject-matter experts, the ones cleared for everything we know if not necessarily how we got it.”
She held up a hand as he opened his mouth.
“I’m not officially cleared for that,” she reminded him. “So, don’t tell me about the others.”
None of the others were human. Rin Dunst was the only Precursor expert who wasn’t a member of the Imperial Races, a telling sign of both humanity’s involvement in the whole mess and the trust they now held in the Imperium.
“I’m unsure on what you are cleared for, Captain,” Dunst said levelly.
“I, at least, am more sure of what you’re cleared for,” Morgan said cheerfully. Dunst had seen the Mesharom files on the Precursors, a massive archive of history and technology, but didn’t know the source.
Morgan knew the source of those files—she had been the source of those files, arguably—but had never really had an opportunity to go through the Mesharom Archive before it was locked down.
“We were out in this corner of the galaxy because we knew the Precursors had been out here and we believed there were intact, unsterilized sites,” she continued. “This was supposed to be a local admin center, yes?”
“It’s more than that,” Dunst told her. “Alava—Precursor—historical files are messy. I don’t know the source of the archive, you’re right, but it’s very clear that it’s mostly archeological data and third-hand stories.
“Putting together the pieces of the puzzle occupies a lot of very clever people. What I and one of those other experts you mention identified is references to what appeared to be a rogue Alava state. Not one opposed to their central Hegemony but one that the Hegemony had written off as a distraction.
“No resources flowed either way, but it looked like there were about a billion Alava and ten billion from the subject races out here, at least. A tenth of that was supposed to be here, but our scans and research so far suggest otherwise.”
“Define otherwise, Doctor,” Morgan said slowly.
“This was their original colony site out here, their admin center,” he told her. “But it was maybe two hundred million people. We’re missing a billion Precursors, and without the star projection, we can’t even ID their local systems. The maps we have from the central Hegemony are off in many key ways.”
He shrugged.
“If nothing else, they’re from far enough away that they appear to be missing entire stars.”
Morgan shook her head.
“The concept of rogue factions in a race whose local security detachment around Arjtal chopped up three star systems to build and supply a shipyard makes me nervous,” she noted. “I’ll admit to the occasional feeling of relief that they’re dead.”
So far as their research stretched, the Alava had been the ruling race of the multistellar and multispecies Hegemony the modern galaxy called the Precursors, with another dozen not-quite-slave-races underneath them.
The A!Tol, who had shown up with a fleet and forcefully vassalized humanity before uplifting them, were friendly parents handing out free candy in comparison.
“I have studied them more than any other human, at least, alive,” Dunst said quietly. “I can’t argue with that relief. These strangers, though…” He sighed.
“We had located the star projection in one of the secondary military bases on Beta,” he told her. “It was destroyed by the raiders. Or taken; it’s hard to be sure.”
Morgan grimaced, tapping a command on her desk. A hologram duplicating a portion of a far larger model appeared above the smooth slab of wood.
“This is what we have for this sector from their files,” she noted. “You say it’s wrong?”
“Out of date at best, but some of our research now suggests that the faction out here was actively lying to the Hegemony,” Dunst told her. “What I have learned here that wasn’t in the Archive is that the faction was working on their own megastructures, something different than the rest of the Alava.”
“Biological?” Morgan asked. “Like the thing on Arjtal?”
He exhaled.
“I wouldn’t have drawn that conclusion from what I’ve seen so far, but it would fit what little we’ve got,” he admitted. “Other than the cloner, we haven’t encountered much Alava biotech, though.”
“We did here,” Morgan told him. A few commands brought up the scans of the ghost ships. “When the raiders’ last ship fled, biological warships covered their retreat. Twenty-eight of these attacked Defiance. We took a lot more damage than I’m admitting to the rest of your people, Dr. Dunst, which is why we’re returning to Kosha.”
He studied the teardrop shape.
“I swear I saw that shape in some of the diagrams we found,” he told her. “But the raiders had my notes and artifacts.”
“And once we crack their files, you’ll have theirs,” Morgan said. “I don’t suppose that’s going to give us any new answers?”
“I don’t know,” Dunst admitted. “I don’t know what was going on out here or what these people wanted.
“I do know that there were eleven billio
n Precursors here when they died.”
He paused, as though unsure how to continue.
“They had the nervous-system implants out here as well, I presume?” Morgan said delicately. “They died?”
The Alava and all of their servant species had used internal cybernetic systems to a far greater extent than any modern race Morgan knew of. The Mesharom had resisted…which was why the Mesharom had survived.
The Alava had built their technology around one set of laws of physics…and in an attempt to accelerate their FTL drives, they’d set up a massive experiment to change the laws of physics.
They’d carefully avoided most things that would impact living creatures, but they’d been aiming at things like conductivity—and they’d broken it. Suddenly, universal laws of electrical resistance and hyperspatial resistance had changed. All of their technology had stopped working, including the device that had changed the universe…and the implants tied into the autonomous nervous systems of every Alava and their subjects.
“They died,” Dunst agreed heavily. “I didn’t know you were cleared for that.”
“I’m cleared for Fallen Dragon, but that’s mostly because the people setting it up knew I already knew about it,” Morgan told him. “The Mesharom told me. My knowledge of a lot of this mess predates us neatly dividing it all into buckets we could individually classify, Doctor.”
“I see,” he allowed. “It’s rare for me to be able to have a mostly open conversation about this, Captain Casimir.”
“I know the feeling,” she with a smile. “Do you have any idea what was going on with the raiders?”
“They’d been on Beta before. They knew where to look for us and what was going on.” He shook his head. “I think…two things. I think Lost Dragon itself was breached and someone told them we were there.
“I also think the Dragon Protocols overall may have been breached a long time ago. I suspect they were investigating these sites years before we were. I don’t know what they found, Captain Casimir, but they seemed prepared to die to protect it.”
Relics of Eternity (Duchy of Terra Book 7) Page 9
