by David Ryker
Hess rubbed his neck and felt the hard, reassuring ground below him. The smoke wafted through the shadows of the Alcázar hallway. The general didn’t need a long drop to hurt anyone.
What do I tell him? Hess asked himself and rubbed his neck, buying time. How much does he know?
“I met with Saito.” Sticking to the truth seemed easy. “We discussed a meeting with the Spartans.”
The old man took a lazy draw, inhaled the smoke and allowed it to sit a moment in his lungs and then unleashed it all through his nose in a smooth waterfall flow.
“The Spartans.” It wasn’t a question. “You arranged for him to meet with the Spartans.”
Not quite what I said, Hess noticed. He’s testing me.
“We discussed a meeting.” He let Van Liden loom large over him. It would be harder to drop him over the balcony if he was already on the floor. “The president is worried about Fletcher’s reports. He would like to talk to the Spartans.”
“They’re traitors.” Another long drag. “Scum.”
“They build the best ships, General. If there was trouble brewing near the Pale, we would be wise to have them on our side.”
This was all true. Certain… details were omitted but Van Liden would not be able to detect an untruth if there weren’t any lies.
Besides, Hess assured himself, Van Liden was just a tool. A blunt instrument. A length of metal pipe wielded and swung and used to beat down any opposition inside the Alcázar. He was part of the whole wretched system; from a rich Earth family, desperate to preserve the Senate and all its flaws. He was, therefore, an enemy.
As Hess fantasized, Van Liden puffed on the cigarette, thinking. When I take over, he’ll be first up against the wall. Or in the cells. Maybe I’ll use cells. The trailing smoke dissipated, each cloud worth more than most colony people made in a week.
“He listened to your ideas?” Another drag. “Why?”
“Perhaps he values my input.” Hess wiped imaginary dirt from his clothes and, finally, stood up. “Listen, General. This is a good move. The president will increase his political capital, gain a valuable ally and potentially a new fleet of ships, and we’ll be better prepared to deal with whatever Fletcher’s issue is out on the frontier.”
“When’s the meeting?” Van Liden barked.
“We haven’t set it yet–”
“Make it sooner.”
Hess had to stop himself from smiling.
“Of course. Any reason why?”
“What do you mean?” The general looked up at Hess, his sunken eyes full of accusation.
“Oh, nothing.” Hess held out his hands. “Just wanted to know if we had to work to any set deadlines.”
Van Liden grunted.
“Listen, Hiss. Saito’s job is not to make people happy. It’s to make people money. Remember that. Now, Fletcher’s latest message. You hear it?”
“No.” Hess hadn’t heard anything that important. “Not yet, anyway.”
“You don’t have the clearance,” Van Liden scoffed. “What Fletcher’s found. It’s not good. We’re still waiting for the transmission in full. But a fleet of Spartan ships would help.”
Hess nodded.
“I’ll set the meeting.”
“No.” Van Liden looked over the balcony, up toward the distant gray light. “Make it an envoy. A diplomatic mission. Make it big, grandiose. This needs to happen.”
Hess bowed and smiled and began to walk back toward the shadows. The general flashed out a hand and wrapped it around Hess’s arm and wouldn’t let go.
“Remember, Hiss.” Van Liden pulled him in close, squinting. “I won’t think twice about ending you. Be careful. Extra careful.”
The general’s putrescent breath stifled the air. With his best smile, Hess began to pluck the clasping fingers from his arm one by one.
“I look forward to working with you, General Van Liden.”
He kept his back straight as he walked away, making sure not to let the general know that his entire body trembled and ached.
Hess reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and found his messaging device, the page. As it lit up, his finger found the familiar presses and he held it to his mouth.
“Alison,” he began, “accelerate everything.”
He sent the message and hastened his step through the corridors. The limp and the bruises did not slow him down. He felt the universe changing and not for the better.
Luckily for me, he added, I might be the smartest man in all of Providence.
But not the strongest, he knew, as he limped back to the shadows.
10
Loreto
“Have you tried it yet, sir?”
Loreto shook his head. A day earlier, he’d assumed that humans were alone, just like everyone else. It was a fact of life, like gravity and sunsets. Now, there were two warring species right on his doorstep. Two species, he told himself. One of them had handed him a gift. The other had killed Eddie Pale.
“It’s funny, Hertz,” he thought aloud. “We thought our world was old. And it was. Until we found out we weren't so alone.”
As the captain nodded along, Loreto remembered that Hertz was one of the few people on the ship who’d actually fought before. He’d faced uprisings and rebellions; not quite total war, but they left their scars all the same. What seemed like cowardice or pessimism to others, it came from a dark place. It was why he trusted Hertz to tell him if he was acting out of line.
“You’re going to look inside?” Hertz eyeballed the codex suspiciously. “It’s amazing how they made one just like ours.”
Hertz’s skepticism was tangible. Almost like ours, Loreto thought. Almost. A fine copy of the data transfer devices but there was something just… off about it. The material glistened and the design didn’t feel ergonomic. Wrong by nanometers. Not built for human hands.
“If I’m going to open it…” Loreto wanted to look inside. “But I’m not the only one on this ship.”
“You are the admiral,” Hertz reminded him.
The office was filling up after Loreto had asked for his trusted team to assemble. Hertz had arrived already, then Menels. The young gunnery kid Cavs sidled in, a last-minute addition. Then came Chavez and Aly Hi, the first and second helmsmen, always in competition with one another. Eliot from the data team with his cybernetic arm. The first engineer, Kurt, who had once had a drinking problem. Siren command officer Yeats, who read more than most and she always let him know.
He felt proud as they walked into the room. A team he’d assembled, one he trusted. They were too skilled, too snarky, too uncouth, or had too much of the colony stink on them to make it in the other fleets. They were his crew.
Without much furniture, they parked themselves in any available space. Aly Hi and Chavez fought for the remaining chair. It would take a mining laser to shift Hertz from his spot. Menels lurked in the corner and his frittering eyes surveyed everything. Yeats watched the map and Eliot lurked and eventually sat on the floor. Cavs leaned himself against the wall, his first time in the office.
“Sir.” Cavs spoke up first. “What’s that on your desk?”
Loreto had been waiting to address the aliens and—he was glad—it was Cavs who broke the ice.
“This”—he held up the codex—“came from the Exile ship. It should be able to interface with our technology.”
“So why are you holding it?” Aly Hi gazed at the material. “It’s made of wood. Can I touch it?”
“No, you can’t touch an alien artefact,” Chavez chided. “Obviously not.”
Loreto smirked. They didn’t need to know how strange it was to touch, how uncanny it felt against his skin. They only needed the barest of facts. He told them about the meeting on the ship, about what the aliens had told him, even their strange, fractured speech.
“So the question is—” Loreto placed the codex back on the desk. “Can we trust it? Eliot?”
All eyes turned to the man sitting cross-legged by the door.
“I… I mean… I don’t think so.” The data officer pushed his long hair back. “I don’t want any foreign object in our system. We’re fragile right now.”
“And if it saves lives?” Yeats asked from the back. “What if this lets us track the Symbiot ships? We can get to them before Fletcher. We could save the colonies.”
Loreto nodded, letting the crew play out his own thought process. Each of them represented a different faction of his thoughts.
“But we’ve seen their tech,” Eliot argued. “Stuff we’ve never dreamed of. Let that in my system? Nuh-uh. Too risky.”
“You think we can trust them, er, the aliens, I mean?” Kurt was risk averse. He didn’t like people and that extended to the Exiles. “Only just met them.”
“That’s the question, Kurt. Do we trust these Exiles?” Loreto asked. “What if trusting them meant saving lives? What kind of risk is that?”
“You sound like you’ve already decided, sir.” Hertz adjusted himself in the seat, smiling.
“We’re talking it over, Hertz. Everyone gets a say.”
“We’ve given you… reasons.” Eliot unfolded his legs and stood up. He didn’t wear a skin over the machinery of his arm. All the gears were visible. Working. He kept them finely tuned. “It’s a foreign object. You wouldn’t introduce a Spartan codex into the system. Would you?”
“Would it save lives?” Loreto stayed seated and picked up the device, removing it from the reach of the data officer. “The ship is already ruined, Eliot. I might well be retired soon enough.”
“You have already decided,” Hertz accused, half-joking. “He’s already decided. We might as well not bother.”
Hertz had known Loreto too long to be wrong.
“I’ve got a good feeling about them, Hertz,” Loreto said. “A gut instinct.”
“Well, sir, you spent the most time with–”
“I don’t trust them,” interrupted Cavs.
Loreto looked at the kid.
“Why not, Cavs?”
“Don’t know,” the young officer said. “I just don’t.”
Loreto examined Cavs closely. Is he disagreeing with me because he’s trying to look good in front of the other officers, or because he resents me dressing him down earlier, or because he’s genuinely unsure? He wasn’t sure about this officer, but something about the boy intrigued him.
“He’s right,” said Hertz. “You trust them because of a five-minute meeting?”
“The way they talked, Hertz.” Loreto’s eyes lingered on Cavs. The kid was still a mystery. “They were scared of this Symbiot species. You saw the way they destroyed them in that battle. A resounding victory but they were still scared. They trusted me, I could feel it. Same way I could sense how it was different when they talked to Fletcher.”
“It’s against regulations. Has to be.” Eliot laid his prosthetic hand on the table. “I can’t condone it.”
“Noted, officer.” Loreto nodded. “The rest of you?”
Mumbling and disquiet. He hadn’t sold them either way. He’d worked with them all long enough to know they respected his decision—and that they hated Fletcher. In most situations, he’d dismiss them. Let them stew. Have Hertz work them over in the canteen and tenderize their minds and then drag them back here and they would all agree that he was right. But there was no time for that.
“We sit here, make the repairs, babysit the aliens. Do exactly what Fletcher says.” Loreto baited the hook. “Or, we try and find out what’s on this codex. If we can track them, we can send the data to Fletcher and carry on doing the same anyway. If it breaks the ship, well, that’s more repairs we’ve got to do. If nothing happens, we follow orders. Right?”
The mumbles were less disquieted.
“Think of the people on those colonies. Olmec. They won’t stand a chance if the Symbiot finds them. A bunch of innocent miners. They don’t know what’s coming. You saw what those aliens did to us. What do you think they’ll do to some poor colony folk?”
“You don’t know that.” Cavs spoke with real concern. “You can’t be sure they’d just attack. We don’t even know where they are. You’re risking the whole ship.”
In his gut, Loreto knew. The Exiles considered the Symbiot a roving band of savages who brutalized everything in their path.
“You don’t know that I’m wrong,” Loreto told his friend. “And we can’t take that risk. Take the numbers, Hertz.”
Reluctantly, the captain called the vote. A tie. Eliot, Hertz, Menels, and Cavs against. The more risk averse officers, Loreto thought, and Cavs.
“Which means…” Hertz stroked his beard with the back of his hand. “You have the casting vote, sir.”
Loreto smiled. He was aware. The only dissenting vote that bothered him was Cavs. That kid is up to something, he thought. He’s still angry at me. But this was no time for trivial matters.
He placed the codex flat on a particular part of the desk and the table lit up. A glowing circle grew out and around the codex.
“See,” Loreto narrated. “Just like one of ours.”
Silence; the crew was caught up in the moment.
“Remember”—Loreto readied the data transfer to the Vela’s network—“you’re free to leave at any time.”
They all stood up and craned their necks to get a better look. All except Cavs, Loreto noticed. He leaned up against the wall, waiting, shaking his head.
“I’m sorry for anyone who disagrees,” Loreto said, finalizing the transfer. “But we have to do something. We can’t fail again.”
He activated the transfer and held his breath. Everyone craned closer. Nothing happened.
“Eliot”—Loreto didn’t dare move his eyes from the desk—“did I do something wrong?”
The data officer desperately fumbled with the page fitted to his machine arm, keeping himself in contact with the most intimate details of the ship.
“No, sir.” He spoke more confidently with a machine in his control. “She’s struggling, but she should be able to handle a simple codex transfer.”
Loreto rumbled. The Exiles must have failed somehow. He’d invested heavily in the belief that an alien race would be able to replicate human tech just by scanning a few old encyclopedias. And in front of the crew, too. He looked foolish.
“Here, then.” Loreto reached to pick up the device. “Have a team work on–”
The codex didn’t move. Loreto strained. It was fixed to the desk. Standing up, he put the weight of his body behind it.
“What is it, sir?” Hertz asked. “Something wrong?”
Straining and grunting, Loreto was as angry as he was confused. He’d placed it there a second ago. But he couldn’t shift the codex even a millimeter.
“Sir.” Eliot looked up from his page. “Something’s happening.”
Loreto could feel the adrenaline coursing through him.
“What?” he asked. “What is it?”
“I think…” He squinted at the page. “I think it wants a password?”
Damn, Loreto thought.
“What kind of password?” he gasped.
Eliot’s fingers were a blur.
“A long one. A phrase. It’s programmed with human language, at least.”
Our language, Loreto thought. They’re trying to tell us something. He remembered back to the Exile ship, back to the aliens. His mind was a blank.
“I think I know, sir,” Yeats stuttered. “But I don’t know if…”
“Tell me,” Loreto said calmly, though it was a clear order.
“Well, you were saying about their…” Yeats walked to the shelf where Loreto kept his collection of ancient books. “It’s just… if…”
She selected a text and flicked through the pages. Loreto knew better than to rush her.
“Where is it, where is it?”
Yeats nervously pulled her page from her pocket, tapped in a few words and then buried her face in the book, smiling.
“Here, try this,” she said, showi
ng the last page. “If it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men.”
Yeats snapped the book shut with an air of satisfaction while Eliot tried the password. Everyone watched in awe.
“How did you know…” Loreto began but his thoughts drifted.
Yeats was about to answer before Eliot punched the air.
“It worked!”
People slapped Yeats on the back and Loreto could see the mix of pride and discomfort in her face. I’m lucky I’ve got clever people, he thought. Fletcher’s men wouldn’t have a chance at this stuff. They’d be too scared to try.
They all turned their attention to the codex but nothing happened. An awkward silence. Loreto sat in front of the device, willing it to do something, anything.
Then, the machines began to whir and buzz. Eliot scanned the desk with his cybernetic arm as Loreto tumbled backward, afraid to touch anything.
“Eliot, what’s happening?”
“I… don’t know.”
The lights in the office dimmed. The codex hummed and vibrated. Loreto panicked. He tried to rip it away but it was hot to the touch. Too hot. His hand flinched.
Hertz lofted a boot on to the table. He kicked the codex with his heel. It didn’t budge. The room fell into total darkness. The device hissed, Loreto felt steam and oxygen surging and seeping into the office.
The crew were shouting. Some tried to open the door. It was locked. Some tried to move the codex. They failed. Only Cavs watched, Loreto noticed, and did nothing. And then, it stopped.
The light returned, the dim setting favored by Loreto dialed up. They blinked at one another. The admiral looked at his crew. Panting and sweating and helping one another to their feet. A moment of panic lasting all of ten seconds.
On the desk, the codex had melted. Its once-precise edges had liquified and the black slab lay in the center of an untidy puddle, fused to the surface.
“What the hell was–”
“Sir.” Eliot cut across Hertz before he could finish. “The ship, sir. The power levels are soaring…”
