Heretics

by S. Andrew Swann

  “This is a general announcement from the Proudhon Spaceport Development Corporation. All approaches into planetary airspace are closed until further notice. Any unauthorized spacecraft attempting to make landfall will be shot down without any further warning. PSDC air traffic control will announce when it will again start clearing arrivals. The PSDC will not grant clearance to approaching aircraft until these restrictions are lifted. There will be no exceptions. Your cooperation is expected and will be enforced.”

  Parvi stared at Kugara, trying to come to grips with the announcement. The PSDC had shut the planet down. She hadn’t heard of anything like that happening before. Not since—

  Not since the Confederacy, Parvi thought.

  Kugara let her go, leaving her floating in the center of the cockpit. She turned around and started back to the console. “Now if you’ll pardon me, I need to do something about the people back there. I got fifteen thousand ships out there, and someone’s going to let us use a medbay.”

  “Fifteen thousand?” Parvi whispered.

  Mallory pulled her over and righted her, guiding her over to the nav station on the side of him opposite Kugara. Parvi shook her head. “Did I mishear that?”

  “No, we have about fifteen thousand active transponders in the immediate area. From everywhere, Acheron to Waldgrave.”

  “You said there was a war?”

  “Yes.”

  While Kugara tried to find a friendly ship, Mallory explained what they knew about what had happened in the forty days they had been in tachspace.

  As he talked, it sank in to Parvi how long they had been gone. Their tach-jump in this ship had taken forty days from the universe around them. But it had been eight months since they had begun Mosasa’s ill-fated adventure.

  The resistance on Rubai only lasted eight months.

  Eight months was more than enough time for a war. More than enough time for governments to collapse.

  More than enough time for everything to change.

  Mallory and Kugara had been in the cockpit for several hours now, trying to find someone to help with their injured. While they contacted ships and orbital habitats, they also had a news feed running from the Bakunin Mercenaries’ Union; or more precisely, a feed from some orbital repeater that mirrored the ground-based BMU servers. Kugara told Parvi, somewhat ominously, that transmissions from the surface appeared to be limited to the PSDC no-fly warning.

  The BMU feed, even old and secondhand, was the only source Kugara knew of as trustworthy, and they hadn’t the time to filter through the mess of information on their own.

  Mess was the right word, with thousands of potential news sources, in addition to the flotilla of ships filling the system with their own chatter.

  What came over the BMU feed was not encouraging. In Mallory’s words, “We have not escaped him.”

  The wormhole network was gone, at least every part of it where word had managed to travel back as far as Bakunin. All accounts suggested that, approximately thirty-nine days ago, every wormhole in the network had been targeted by another alien wormhole coming at it at close to two thirds the speed of light. In every case where there was data on the incoming wormhole, the source was identified as Xi Virginis.

  “Where Xi Virginis was,” Mallory explained. “The star itself must have fueled the attack.”

  Suddenly, the attack on Salmagundi seemed minor. Almost an afterthought. If Mallory was right, it meant that Adam had spent decades planning a coordinated attack across the entire core of human space.

  And the attack was devastating. Not because the wormholes themselves were used for goods and travel—they hadn’t been for centuries. It was devastating because when the wormholes were annihilated, their destruction released waves of tachyon radiation that severely damaged any active tach-drive and tach-comm in the vicinity.

  The wormhole network was densest in the longest-established, most populous, and most advanced systems. The capital planets, Cynos, Occisis, Khamsin, and Earth itself, were the most affected, with communication completely cut off and entire fleets immobilized.

  Absent specific knowledge about the source of the attack, the subsequent movement toward war was predictable. Each state determined that the attack more than likely originated within the plans of their historical rivals. Sources in the BMU confirmed that the governments of the Centauri Alliance and the Sirius Economic Community were arraying against the Caliphate, spurred on by the details of the Caliphate’s new monster carriers, and its adventures out toward the vicinity of Xi Virginis.

  Every place about which information was available had planetary governments seizing every source of interstellar communication and transportation that were available. More than half the ships in the Bakunin system were here avoiding the nationalization of their vessels.

  The others were escaping the aftermath.

  The most recent news was from Ormolu, the nearest inhabited planet to Bakunin. The fastest tach-time from Ormolu with a standard engine was twenty days. The new Caliphate drives could make it in less than a week.

  Ormolu was part of the Sirius Economic Community, which meant that the Caliphate historically thought of it as a rightful part of their own territory, dating from the time when Sirius and Epsilon Eridani formed a single political entity. Of course, the same could be said about all of the planets in the Sirius Economic Community. Ormolu was isolated, however. It was light-years beyond the outside range of a standard military tach-drive from anywhere in Caliphate-controlled space. Since it was beyond the tactical sphere of any potential attack, it was lightly defended, with only a few ships and a single planetary tach-transmitter. And since the system was one of the few in the Sirius Economic Community without a wormhole, the presence of both working tach-comm and tach-ships increased its strategic significance.

  One of the massive Caliphate warships had tached in and within a few hours had effectively annexed the system, causing a logistical and communications bottleneck for Sirius.

  Mallory rubbed his eyes, looking exhausted, and said in a weak voice, “The Caliphate may have seen itself as under attack, and this was a relatively bloodless defensive move. No one else will see it that way—it looks like part of a coordinated attack. Which is what Adam wanted, I’m sure. Wars and rumors of wars.”

  He rubbed his face. “Adam planned this. Like Mosasa, he manipulated everything. Salmagundi and Xi Virginis are so far, so remote . . . We actually outran my tach-comm transmission from Salmagundi, and given what’s happened, I don’t even know if anyone will receive it. And now that forces are moving, I don’t know if it will do any good.”

  Parvi looked at his ashen face and lost expression, and said, “You’re the one who needs to go back and rest.”

  Mallory nodded and pushed himself up from the chair. “Help Kugara find some assistance.”

  “I’ll do that.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Mission

  “The wait is the most dreadful time of any adversity.”

  —The Cynic’s Book of Wisdom

  “Don’t worry, they’ll start shooting soon.”

  —DATIA RAJASTHAN (?-2042)

  Date: 2526.7.17 (Standard) 1,500,000 km from Bakunin-BD+50°1725

  Shortly after waking up, Toni pulled herself down into one of the Daedalus’ cargo holds to fight the pernicious effects of two and a half weeks without gravity.

  Two and a half weeks, and their prospects for docking anywhere had only gotten worse. The PSDC had gone from restricting approaches to completely barring access to the planet, going as far as defining a no-fly zone from synchronous orbit on down. So far at least three ships had unsuccessfully tried to breach the blockade and found out the hard way that the Proudhon Spaceport Development Company had the firepower to enforce its restrictions.

  Meaning the population of ships floating out here had exploded. And the orbital habitats were completely overwhelmed.

  Toni, as “Lieutenant Valentine” and the ranking pirate, had been callin
g the shots ever since Karl had surrendered, and it was beginning to wear on her. Her twin sister, Toni II, “Corporal Beth,” did what she could to ease the burden, but in the end, Toni was the one in charge, the one with the responsibility. She didn’t even have a threat of mutiny to distract her. Karl had made the decision that it was in his best interest to follow along, and while his son despised her, Stefan would do anything his father asked of him. And if that meant kissing the ass of two sibling pirates, he held his nose and did his duty.

  So that left Toni with little to do but establish a routine and dwell on exactly what they were going to do. Part of that routine was establishing an impromptu exercise yard to deal with the effects of zero-G. In a space normally filled by a cargo container, Toni had tethered one of the ship’s powered hardsuits that normally was used for loading. By calibrating the joint resistance on the thing, they had a functional substitute for the exercise machine she had back at her old station.

  Unfortunately, it came with no VR capability, so she had to run in place, looking at a dingy bulkhead.

  As she methodically pumped her legs and arms against the suit, she tried to think of a proper course of action. The Daedalus was fortunate in that it had significant reserves of air, power, and food. Four people could survive on board for three months before resource consumption became an issue. That was largely an accident, resulting from departing with a less than minimal complement of crew.

  Fully manned, the Daedalus would have been in the position of a lot of ships out here, looking at a resource window of weeks, or in some cases, days. Tach-ships, especially cargo vessels operating on small margins, did not carry much reserve life support.

  That wasn’t an issue, but the consequences of that wasn’t lost on Toni. There were thousands of ships insystem now, and many were armed. It wasn’t hard to see coming, especially in the lawless orbit of Bakunin, that once those armed vessels became desperate, they would turn on the unarmed ships that still had spare resources. Why would a warship out of food risk a run of the PSDC gauntlet, or take on a fortified orbital, when they could seize the Daedalus, whose one defensive weapon consisted of a single slugthrower?

  Combined with the immediate responsibility of the safety of herself, her sister, and their two hostages was the existential dilemma of what to do about the attack and her traitor CO. All the information coming in seemed to confirm the suspicion that the wormhole attack was vast and complete.

  And while everyone seemed to assume the Caliphate’s hand in the attack, it didn’t make sense. The attack was advanced beyond anything she could see the Caliphate managing. The people in control, responding to this, had to know that.

  But the Caliphate was attacking Sirius, and that was a pretext for a long-brewing war, whatever else was going on. Whoever or whatever Colonel Xander was working for.

  And given the chaos they had tached into, trying to transmit the small slice of intel they did have to someone who might be able to use it was like pissing into an ocean. Everyone in range of an RF transmission had their own problems to deal with, and superhuman agents in the Stygian intelligence community were low on their priority list.

  They kept up the transmissions, though, because there was nothing else they could do—aside from using the last of the power reserves to tach somewhere that, if it wasn’t in the midst of a shooting war, would have more interest in enforcing laws against piracy. Here, at least, they could talk to people, most of whom were in a similar situation.

  At least there’s a food surplus we can use for trade, she thought, just not for what we need, docking rights.

  She was halfway through her exercise routine when her ghost sister transmitted down to the suit’s radio. “Lieutenant Valentine? You down there?”

  Toni stopped her exertions with a grunt and activated the transmit button with the chin toggle. “What is it?”

  Somehow they had fallen into the aliases even after Karl and Stefan knew their back story. It was just easier for everybody for the two of them to be the twin sisters Lieutenant Valentine and Corporal Beth, even though the demotion seemed unfair to Toni II.

  But, as Toni II said, “it’s not like the rank means anything to anyone else at this point.”

  “You need to come up here. We’re getting a transmission we need to make a decision about,” Toni II radioed over the link.

  “Can I shower first?”

  “I think these people would appreciate an answer now.”

  “Okay, I’m coming up.”

  “This is Captain Vijayanagara Parvi, pilot of the dropship Khalid. We are requesting emergency assistance. We have six severely injured people. We have exhausted our limited first aid supplies and are running low on life-support reserves.”

  Toni listened to the transmission and shook her head. It was an increasingly common theme, as more ships came insystem, finding there was nowhere to go. She looked at Toni II and wondered why she picked this transmission out of the hundreds of other desperate calls for assistance. Before Toni could ask the question, Toni II tapped the display and said, “Look at this transponder.”

  Toni did, and her eyes widened a bit. “A Caliphate troop transport?” Not only that, but it bore a ship designation she had never seen before. Karl chuckled from behind her and she looked back at him.

  “It’s more interesting than that,” he said.

  “Yes,” Toni II said, “he pointed it out.”

  “Pointed out what, exactly?” Toni asked.

  “Vijayanagara is not a common name in the Caliphate officer corps,” Karl said. “No matter how cosmopolitan they claim to be.”

  “He suggested we query the BMU database.”

  “The what?” Toni asked.

  “The Bakunin Mercenaries’ Union,” Karl said. “You see someone from the Indi Protectorate flying Caliphate hardware with battle damage into Bakunin space—well, that’s the first organization I think of.”

  Toni was still getting her head around Toni II’s comment, “BMU database? There’s a military organization that has a publicly accessible database—”

  “More like classifieds,” she answered. “Jobs available, folks for hire. That sort of thing.”

  “They have to find jobs somehow,” Karl said.

  “I suppose so,” Toni said. “So did you find anything?”

  “You won’t believe it. After spending an hour to hunt up a working orbital datalink for the BMU, I got her resume.”

  Toni looked at the holo display she pulled up and saw a long list of data. Captain Parvi was a pilot who had flown fighter aircraft for the Indi Protectorate on Rubai and for the Federal counterinsurgency after the Islamic Revolution. How’d she end up piloting a Caliphate drop-ship? There were a list of scores along various axes that probably meant something to someone who was in the business of hiring soldiers of fortune. The most recent employment history that wasn’t redacted was for something called Mosasa Salvage Incorporated.

  Toni nodded. “Okay, I see, this Mosasa company ‘salvaged’ a dropship from the Caliphate and got shot up for the trouble. Do we want to get involved in that?”

  Karl snorted. “Some pirates.”

  “Look what I found when I searched for what Mosasa Salvage Incorporated was hiring for.”

  Another page of data appeared on the holo.

  Toni gasped.

  Even before she read the whole thing, two words leaped out at her: Xi Virginis.

  “Karl?” Toni asked after the shock had subsided.

  “Yes?”

  “Do you have a medical bay on this ship, or did you gut that for weight too?”

  Parvi sat alone in the cockpit. Five hours ago, Kugara had finally admitted she needed rest. Parvi needed rest too; she had been operating on as little sleep as Mallory or Kugara. She had been exhausted even before breaking out of her cell on the Voice.

  The thought of sleep was intolerable.

  Her eyes ached, but every time she closed them she saw the face of the nameless woman who had come to let h
er out of the interrogation room. Over and over she told herself it had been an accident, an understandable reaction . . .

  Was I just assuming they’d meet me with deadly force, or was I even thinking that far ahead?

  Was I thinking?

  Given the time to dwell on it now, and a mind stumbling in drunken, sleep-deprived circles, Parvi realized that she had been thinking. And her reaction had more to do with her feelings about the Caliphate than they had to do with escape.

  That woman, that nameless corpse, had died because of what the Caliphate did on Rubai. Parvi had taken that woman’s blood for that sin, even though the dead woman had probably never set foot on Parvi’s homeworld, even though the dead woman was a maintenance tech who probably never fired a weapon in anger.

  I don’t need to be thinking of this right now . . .

  She transmitted robotically, requesting aid from ship after ship where silence seemed to be the kindest response. Meanwhile the millstones in her exhausted mind kept grinding finer and finer.

  How much innocent blood is on my hands?

  She flew fighter missions, first for the Expeditionary Command, then for the resisting Federal forces. Those missions weren’t only air-to-air against known hostiles. She had fired missiles into spaceports and orbital platforms, she had taken out supply depots and communication centers, and she had sent penetrating antimatter bombs into command and control bunkers. The Revolutionary forces had never been in the habit of locating such things away from civilian populations.

  The harder the target, the greater the collateral damage, and she had gone after very hard targets.

  Her hands shook.

  She stared blurrily at the control panel in front of her. Is this why I agreed to work for Mosasa? The real reason?