by David Ryker
“Damn.” Loreto chewed on the word.
This wasn’t fear anymore; this was dread. This wasn’t about him; this was about everyone. This was about the oath. He’d sworn never to let an invader past the Pale and here he was, staring down two sides fighting a war on his border. It didn’t matter who they were; he couldn’t allow them in.
“Fighters out!” he shouted. “I want every one of those dart bastards blasted out of the sky now!”
Loreto staggered backwards, trying to take in everything at once. The thin frontier established by the human fleet. The flimsy shield protecting the Federation was all he had. The darts split around the Vela, aiming straight for the Navis. The Wisps rushed out to engage them. They’re not fighters, Loreto realized. They’re scouts.
“Everybody!” Hertz yelled. “Brace for impact!”
Loreto watched as the scimitars opened fire. Their cannons shot indiscriminately into the cluster of fighters heading toward Federation space, straight for the Vela, and Loreto’s fragile frontier. The darts turned red and vanished, gaps in their formation opening and allowing an energy blast to rifle through.
“Oh da–”
The curse drowned in the chaos. The whole ship rolled for a second before righting itself. A hit so big the shields desperately sucked energy from the gravity drive, lifting Loreto in the air and crashing him against the cold hard deck. His knee buckled and he screamed out in agony. His ears rang. Loreto slapped himself around the face and dragged his battered body upright.
“Get me data!” he shouted, his voice a distant, muted echo in a still-ringing world.
The shadows moved. Medics and petty officers struggled to pick themselves from the deck and get the ship running again. The shields, Loreto realized. They’d be recovering; they wouldn’t be ready for another hit.
“Shields!” He called for the section leader.
Loreto looked up at his battle map. The swarm of darts hurtled toward them. Five Wisps flurried around the scouts, shepherding them away from the Navis. They’d get a medal for that, he’d make damn sure. But the Vela was an unmoving, easy target.
“Shields!” Loreto’s throat tore itself to shreds. “Shields!”
He saw Hertz nearby, limping on a rolled ankle. The captain seemed brittle, Loreto knew, but they didn’t build toughness like that anymore. If he was down, the rest of the crew would be knocking on death’s door. I’ve got to do it myself.
The pain shot up his body, as though someone was hammering scalding steel spikes into his knee. But he ignored it—he had to. He stumbled forward, looking up at the back wall, searching for the shield section. In the projection, the ghostly swarm moved toward them.
Footstep after footstep, Loreto lurched. The emergency lighting flicked; steam whistled from the walls. He fell forward and landed on his knee; his vision blurred, his mouth dried. Soon, the pain would overpower him. But the projection glimmered. He saw the Vela perched on the Pale, a swarm of darts crashing toward her. Colossal battleships fired indiscriminately into the crowd.
His brain coughed. He blacked out, dreaming he saw himself from above. An out-of-shape old man knocked to the floor by the first fight he’d faced in years. Loreto felt disgusted. The guilt hauled him back to reality and forced him to his feet. He dragged himself forward at a glacial pace, an ice sheet screeching against the valley sides; every millimeter toward the ocean-bound oblivion hurt more than the last.
Just get there, damn it. Stop thinking about the pain.
It wasn’t just the knee; it was the mission. An entire life spent protecting humanity, and now—Loreto looked up at the projection, the swarm almost on them—it was about to go up in flames.
One oath. One mission. Protect the Federation. You’re going to fail, Richard Loreto. You’re going to fail. Another broken promise. They’ll damn well remember your name and your failure.
Loreto looked again. Those dart-shaped ships were so close, maybe ten seconds away. They held their course. The swarm was too big, heading straight for the Vela. The plan had failed. He forced another wounded step, almost arriving at the shield console. Unconscious bodies lay all around him.
“Medic!” he yelled to anyone listening.
Loreto flung himself onto the shield console, desperate to take the weight off his leg. He glanced back at the projection one last time. The choice was hideously simple: Put up the shields and survive the swarm, leaving them at the mercy of whatever-the-hell came next. Or overload the engine, blow the Fleet out of the sky, and take as many of them with him as he could.
Once these invaders passed through the Pale, into the trace gates, they’d never catch them. The projection turned crimson, warning of impact. The alarms boomed. Loreto’s fingers wrestled desperately with the console controls. He drove all the power into the shields, starving the engines, the guns, and everything else.
“Brace for impact!”
The lights dipped and Loreto felt his weight float upwards in slow motion. It took the load off his knee, at least. He looked at his ruined bridge. So many people around him, all desperate to live. The sadness brought all the weight right back and dragged him down. The whole Vela rocked as the swarm clattered into her thick shield shell. Bodies rolled, tossed around like rag dolls.
Loreto clung on to a chair and watched the projection. They were in the eye of the swarm. The full-strength shield insulated them from the impact. He could see the darts clashing into the Vela and obliterating. He’d tucked the turtle into its shell, a rookie trick. The rocking stopped and the swarm flew past them, accelerating into the void.
His anxious eyes scoured the projection. The rest of the First Fleet was still there, as were three of the Wisps. The invaders hadn’t given a single damn about them; they’d just been searching for a way to escape. Escape from what, though? Loreto stood up; the agony in his knee was nothing compared to his own immeasurable self-loathing. The swarm had escaped into human space.
The admiral spun around, looking at his Vela as she was drawn on the map. An alarm sounded again; something was approaching. He turned to see one of the defending ships, one of the colossal scimitars, moving in fast.
The groaning and the weeping on the bridge was dulled by the sprinting footsteps and the throbbing alarms. Loreto turned to look closely at the projection. The gigantic ship slowed to a crawl in front of the Vela. It halted and considered the humans, like a god staring at grains of sand.
What the hell have I done? Loreto asked and fell to the ground, exhausted.
7
Hess
Inside the hollowed-out tomb, the Alcázar’s ornate hallways screamed grandiose imperiality. They reminded visitors how inconsequential they really were, standing forever in the Federation’s shadow. With the Senate in temporary recess, the aides, politicians, lobbyists, and all the attendant scum had vanished, leaving the president and his people to rule alone.
Walking quickly, Hess led them through the arteries of power, his mind dominated by a single question. Why on Earth did I just do that?
Certain sections of Saito’s inner circle would want him hanged. But if he had the chance again, Hess wouldn’t change a thing. That moment of panic and pain on the president’s face; right then, he’d held all the power. Now, however, he actually had to work for Saito and plans began to coagulate in Hess’s mind.
He halted as marching feet approached from behind. A squadron of armed guards clattered down the hallway, rattling the antiques hanging on the walls. Hess and Alison stepped aside to let them pass. The last man broke from the group and removed his helmet to reveal a sweaty, blotched face.
“Sergeant Patterson.” Hess tapped the name on his tongue like a gavel knocking out a sentence. “Going anywhere nice?”
“Sorry for the bother, sir,” the man lisped, bloated and panting. “Trouble out front. We’re short of men right now and–”
“I’m sure you can deal with it.” Hess flashed a reassuring smile.
Standing taller, Patterson replaced his helme
t. The visor hid the top of his face, turning the out-of-shape man into a cold, faceless enforcer. He slid an electrified baton from its holster, dispensed a curt nod, and jogged off in pursuit of his fellow guards.
“Oh, Sergeant,” Hess called.
Patterson stopped, his blank face turning back.
“Remember what we said about showing mercy.” Hess mimed a truncheon swing. “Don’t be afraid to crack a few skulls, eh?”
The sergeant grinned and led his guards away. Hess ushered Alison back to his office, closing the doors and sealing them inside. He walked to a mahogany cabinet by the window, tapping it with a knuckle and producing a dull, expensive knock.
“Do you know how much real wood costs these days?” he asked. “The actual stuff, from Earth?”
She watched as Hess touched an unmarked spot on the cabinet. A hidden door opened to reveal a collection of crystal glasses. Into each, he tipped two fingers’ worth of unmarked liquor from an etched decanter.
On the way to the desk, Hess paused at the window and saw the protesters still gathered around the ancient oak in the square, flanked by distant sphinxes and terracotta warriors. Sergeant Patterson approached, his men swinging their batons.
A man at the head of the demonstration glanced up at the Alcázar, his face magnified by the computerized window pane. Hess turned a dial on the wall and the window became opaque. He turned it again and the window became clear. He did this three times until the man nodded and encouraged the demonstration toward the guards. Fists flew and cries of terror rang out from below, familiar sounds in the heart of the Federation’s greatest city.
Occasionally, Hess walked up to the top of Providence, keeping his hands tight to his body and zip-sealing his pockets. Children snuck from the alleys of the Warrens with wet wrists, their touch like a rain drop against an ocean. They were masters of their art, as much as the men who hammered anti-gravity drives into shape or who boiled the rubber bonds for the inside of the terraforming towers.
As often as possible, Acton Hess walked the dirtiest streets of Providence as a reminder that Earth was not an entirely lost cause. He could walk up to the cusp, the point where the great bowl of the city met the land, and he could look down into the depths.
Ever so far away, he saw the pyramid of the Alcázar and pictured the oak tree planted in its courtyard. He saw the neon high-rise towers, stolen from dead cities, which circled the government building, full of expensive penthouses and cut-glass Earthbound accents. He saw the suburbs, built on top and under and next to one another, winding through Thracian tombs and the bomb-blasted Buddhas of Bamiyan, apartment walls leaned up against their guts.
And then the Warrens, a three-dimensional puzzle of a place. From the cusp down, rings and rings of slums sank into the earth. The very cheapest houses were the closest to the ruined sky, pressed up against the Chinese walls and recovered dams around the cusp, the ground above not fit for habitation, the result of Spartan attacks no one remembered. We did worse to them, the Earthbound assured themselves. They'd won in the end, Hess admitted, but they'd paid the price. The rise of the Senate cost the Earth its sky and its oceans and those in power were determined not to lose anything else.
No matter how hard he stared, he could never see past the Alcázar. He could never see the world below the government building, the place where the Senate really tightened the reins of its rule. Down there, in the pit of the pyramid, thousands of nameless people poured through ancient cultural artefacts. They combed through books and films and newspapers and anything which they collected from across the ages of human civilization. They digitized and encrypted everything, storing it for safekeeping.
But they were not historians. Their goal was to create a common human history, approved by the Senate, one which reminded everyone off-planet of the centrality of Earth in the species’ existence. To do this, they reached into the past and collected idioms, metaphors, and ideas. They discovered wild goose chases and red herrings, ideas of hell and heaven and God and angels. Armed with these concepts, they sprinkled them into new media and political speeches and other communications. On the colonies, people discussed never forgetting to ride a bicycle or the necessity of breaking eggs in order to make omelets. These people had never known the mechanics of a pushbike, nor tasted an egg or seen a chicken. But they used the words anyway.
This rule by language was created in the basement, right at the nadir of the Senate’s control. They wanted colonial citizens to remember the old world and to remember the old words. It tied them, subconsciously, back to the past and tethered their loyalties to Earth every time they used a throwaway phrase. Nostalgia was a powerful whip.
Hess admired the Senate’s cunning, their dedication to centering the entire universe around themselves. But it made him all the more certain that the system could not last and that he was the only one who knew enough to bring it all crashing down.
Hess walked behind the girl and watched the pip on her neck dancing up and down as she stretched; the glass bead, half the size of a grain of rice, buried in the flesh of every colony kid, filled with more computing power than the earliest rocket ships. He felt a pang of soreness in his own neck, paused, and waved his page over her skin. He would parse the data later but he trusted his instincts. Collecting the glasses, he laid a drink on each side of the desk. She sat and looked at the liquor.
“I don’t drink.”
“Neither do I.” He leaned back, allowing the complicated chair to cradle his body. “But sometimes, needs must.”
The sounds of the protest filtered up. A few more minutes and it would blossom into a real riot. Hess pinged a fingernail against the crystal and felt satisfied. For the first time since the election, he felt as though he had a purpose.
“Do you know what this sound means, Alison?”
The chime reverberated. Hess read once that the tenor varied, depending on the cost. The higher the note, the higher the price. She shook her head.
“It means nothing.” Hess stole a sip. “And that’s exactly why it’s important.”
Shaking her head, her hair still squeezed into a tight knot, Alison drank. Hess was impressed with how well she hid her distaste. The liquor was inconceivably expensive and the flavor was miserable. Like everything else in the office, it indicated success to anyone who entered.
“You hear the riots?” The fighting had truly broken out. “What do you think that means?”
“Nothing?” The girl was quick.
“And that’s exactly why they’re important.”
“But I don’t understand any of this.” Alison rested the drink on the table, pushing it slightly too far away. “Why did you take the job? Are we celebrating? Why are there riots? And you still haven’t answered me from before.”
Hess closed the window and the violent sounds died a little.
“Alison,” he asked. “Why do you think the protestors gathered around this particular tree?”
“It’s the most obvious spot in Providence.” Her face betrayed her thoughts, unimpressed by the question. “Where else would you protest?”
“But they’ve been arrested. And beaten. As always.”
“So why do it at all?”
“Exactly.”
Hess enjoyed surprising her with new information. For too long, he realized, he’d kept his ideas bottled up and private. In the space of an afternoon, she’d become something of a release valve for his frustrations.
“They’re not alone, you know?” Hess waited for a reaction.
“The protestors?”
“Their anger isn’t hard to spot. Even during the campaign, I found it everywhere. People are furious, Alison. They just don’t know it yet.”
“I’ve heard things,” she admitted, her tone sheepish. “On Mars, I mean. Rumors about people fighting. But there’s always rumors, people always want to fight against something.”
Every colony had its rebellious thoughts. The Senate did a good job of stamping down wherever the whispers tur
ned into open conversation. People were shifted from planet to planet, thrust into cells, or simply disappeared. It wasn’t hard to silence a single voice.
“Rumors?” Hess smiled. “There have been Senate plants in every rebellion I can remember. And with how they control all the media? They know how to hand colonies enough rope to hang themselves.”
Alison’s dark skin flustered. No one talked like this, Hess knew. Not openly, at least. It was not a conversation topic for polite society. It was a conspiracy theory or a bedtime story, told to colony kids to make them feel better. Telling her was a test and he wanted to see how she reacted.
“You’re saying…” Alison treaded carefully. “—that the government controls these rebellions?”
“No, Alison. That would be ridiculous. But they kindle the fires. They let those of a more… disobedient persuasion make themselves known. Why, even those poor souls currently receiving attention from Sergeant Patterson, they needed a little encouragement.”
“From you?”
He chimed the glass again.
“I wanted to give Saito something to sully his first days in office.” He shrugged.
“They’re getting beaten right now.”
“For a cause they believe in, I assure you.”
“You don’t believe in it?”
“Not as such. Certainly not on a street level.”
She paused and considered Hess. This was raw, valuable information, not something to be shared with someone an hour after an introduction.
“You’re saying… there are more artificial riots like this, all across the galaxy?”
Hess kept his face flat, revealing nothing. This could be a trap or it could be the truth or it could be both.
“I’m trying to tell you, Alison, that there is a very real, very palpable anger, a furious faction of colony brats – just like us – who want something different. They might not know it yet, but they’re out there.”
“All across the Federation?”
