by Terry Mixon
Armand stood outside the hatch with a stunner strapped to his waist.
“I’m going in to talk to them,” she said without any preamble. “Alone.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea, ma’am. There are three of them and only one of you. Even with a stunner, they could take you.”
She smiled. “That’s why you’ll need to be down at the other end of the corridor, so you can shoot them as they come out.”
Veronica held up her hand when he started to object again. “I’ve made my decision, Commander. By all means, keep Graham here with you. If I call for help, you can come in. Carefully.”
“At least allow us to make sure they don’t jump you,” Graham said. “You know, push them back into a corner.”
“Fine. Just try not to shoot anybody. I want to talk to them.”
At Armand’s nod, Graham set the supplies on the deck and opened the hatch. The three prisoners sat around the filthy conference table.
When they started to rise, Veronica stepped into the compartment, her stunner raised. “Up against the bulkhead, gentleman. I’d rather not have to stun you again.”
The two marines looked to the cutter pilot for guidance. When he raised his hands slightly and stepped over to the bulkhead, they grudgingly followed.
Veronica glanced at her men. “Bring the cleaning supplies inside and put them on the table. Wait outside. If I call for assistance, come in shooting. Stun everyone, including me.”
Once Graham had placed the box of cleaning supplies on the table, Veronica closed the hatch.
She smiled at the three men. “I realize we’ve gotten off to a terrible start, but I think we have a lot to discuss. I’m Commander Veronica Giguere, in case you hadn’t guessed.”
“We’re not going to tell you anything,” the pilot said with a stony face.
“Oh, I think you will. First, I’m going to tell you a story. Then you can explain to me what it means.”
The men glanced at one another. “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” the pilot said after a long moment.
Veronica pointed to the box. “This place is a mess, and you’re going to be here a while. Take the supplies and start cleaning the other end of the compartment. While you do, I’ll pass on a story that I just read. I think you’ll find it fascinating. It’s about a man who fought the AIs.”
She moved a chair to the corner and sat. “Let me introduce you to Frank Beaumont. He grew up on a farm. Maybe it’s just me, but that sounds like a dirty, smelly place. Anyone here know about that?”
When they shook their heads, she launched into his story.
22
Annette decided that riding out a flip on Persephone’s hull was even worse than when she’d hidden in her fighter while they invaded the Dresden system.
The Raider ship’s lower mass provided almost no protection. Even with her implants, it took her almost a minute to regain full control of her stomach.
Still, she understood why they had to go through like this. Audacious was too large to go through the multiflip point, so that meant they’d had to strap the fighters onto Persephone’s hull.
If they were going to make a habit of this, Annette was going to get Carl Owlet to design some magnetic clamps the pilots could release from inside the cockpit. In fact, that wasn’t a bad idea at all.
It took a few minutes for the crewmen in vacuum suits to release her fighter. She used her grav drive on its lowest setting to edge away from the ship. They released the other five fighters over the next fifteen minutes.
That definitely wouldn’t work if they needed to do this again.
Once her scouting group had formed around her, they headed deeper into the Pandora system. Fighters were hard to detect—even when traveling quickly—so they could accelerate faster than a larger ship.
According to the plan, Persephone would monitor the system via her probes while Annette scouted the planet where the signals originated. If there were any trouble, the princess would come hauling butt and give them some cover.
The probe that they’d originally sent to the alien world had provided an interesting mix of information. The majority of the planet wasn’t industrialized. The night-side view showed very little in the way of alien-made lighting, even inside what were obviously major cities. Electricity was uncommon, it seemed.
Yet there were those troubling transmissions.
She took control of the probes that Persephone had just launched and sent them ahead. They’d arrive in planetary orbit several hours before her. She could task them to look at anything they determined to be interesting once she arrived.
Annette brought up a map of the planet over her implants. She started studying the rough layout of the major cities and trying to determine what political entities they might fit into. If these people were as underdeveloped as they appeared, the odds of them having a single planetary government were nonexistent.
A closer examination of some of the urban centers brought something unusual to her attention. They’d laid one of the larger cities out in a very unusual pattern. It wasn’t near a river, either. She couldn’t imagine why they’d put so many people there.
It wasn’t prudent to send a signal to the probe from this far away. The risk of detection was too high. She’d have to send one of her probes to take a closer look when they got there.
Frankly, she had no idea what she’d find.
As much as he wanted to focus on the search for the escaped prisoners, Talbot had other problems that desperately required his attention. They had to relocate the prisoners from the orbital to the planet’s surface. That meant the construction of the shelters was on a very tight schedule.
Unfortunately, the crews he’d brought to the surface were slowing things down. He needed to get them moving again if he was going to meet Kelsey’s deadline.
He took a pinnace from the search area to the island they’d selected for the primary construction. The landmass was about as far away from the original villages as possible. He didn’t want the female population here causing a war with the all-male original settlers.
As he’d expected, no one was working when he landed.
Talbot settled his light armor, checked his stunner, and motioned for his escort to follow him down the ramp. He didn’t need a lot of backup, but he wanted to make a point.
It seemed as though the construction personnel had elected one of themselves as their leader. The tall, heavily muscled man had a bird of some kind tattooed on his arm. He showed Talbot a smug expression as the marine walked toward him, but said nothing.
Talbot stopped about two meters away. “Are we really going to do this?”
The other man smiled, showing a lot of teeth. “I’m not sure what you mean.”
“Oh, don’t be coy. You think you’re going to stand there telling me that you and your people aren’t going to do the work. I’ll complain that you’re delaying everything. Then you tell me what you want before you get back to work.
“That isn’t going to happen. All you’re doing is putting yourselves into a hard spot.”
The man’s grin widened, and he spread his hands. “If I’m wrong, tell me what’s going to happen. The way I see it, you Fleet bastards don’t have a lot of choice. No buildings? People are going to freeze.”
“That’s about what I expected you to say. Here’s where things go south for you. We’re going to keep bringing people down no matter what you do. If you want to screw your own people, go right ahead. Anything that happens from that point forward is on you.”
The man looked uncertain but didn’t say anything.
Talbot turned on his heel and headed back into the pinnace. Either these idiots would get back to work, or they’d have to deal with the crisis they’d created.
The weather wasn’t terrible. Chilly was a more appropriate description than cold, so no one was in serious physical danger. He’d provide more than enough cold-weather gear to keep them alive no matter what the idiots did.
>
That didn’t mean they’d be happy, though. Not his problem. He needed to get back to the search.
Raul spoke with Justine Bandar far longer than he’d intended. The woman was fascinating. Just as arrogant as anyone he’d met from the higher orders but delightfully easy to converse with.
And very informative. She’d shared what he considered classified information with wild abandon. All he had to do was get her complaining about either her daughter, her ex-husband’s bastard, or the situation she’d found herself in.
It was easy to manufacture the compassion required to get her rolling. Once she started talking, there didn’t seem to be any governor on what she’d discuss. By the time they’d been together just a few hours, he had a good overview of this supposed New Terran Empire.
Thankfully, even with all the ships that Veronica had seen, it didn’t appear that these people were as great a threat as he’d feared. They only occupied a small area of space, and their population was sparse. Their basic technology level was also far inferior to the Empire.
Best of all, he had the name of their capital: Avalon. He had no doubt that he’d be able to locate them on a map. Once the Empire knew where to send their warships, they’d end this problem in very short order.
He walked down the cutter’s ramp, leaving the woman under guard behind him. He’d already made the decision to house her separately from the other prisoners. He didn’t want them convincing her to shut her exceptionally pretty mouth.
It took about twenty minutes to locate Veronica. She was working in one of the compartments inside the old base. She seemed to be cleaning what had obviously been personal quarters, so perhaps she was arranging a less dusty place to stay. Smart.
He rapped on the hatch to get her attention. When she’d turned her head, saw who he was, and set her rag down on the table, he stepped inside.
“My apologies for interrupting,” he said. “I’ve completed questioning the woman. Her story is very interesting.”
Veronica nodded. “I’m sure it is. We’ve discovered a few things too. One of the tablets had a journal. It covered about fifty years from start to finish, so we’re far from being able to say that we’ve read every word, but it has raised some disturbing questions.”
Raul picked up the rag and cleaned off a handy chair. He settled comfortably and crossed one leg over the other. “Surely you’re not going to tell me that it implicates the lords as being homicidal maniacs bent on human domination.”
She stepped over and closed the hatch. “That’s exactly what I’m telling you. The story was from five hundred years ago, written during the events in question. The account paints a very different picture of the old Empire too.
“I need to be frank. The old emperor doesn’t sound at all like the despot they taught us about in school. In fact, I’m convinced the people that captured us are more correct than we are about the AIs.”
He kept his expression pleasant, but his mind was racing. Their circumstances were dire. He couldn’t afford to have this kind of disruption in the middle of an already chancy escape.
“I’ll need to read the relevant journal entries myself, but let’s assume that you’ve interpreted them correctly just for the sake of the discussion. So what? The past is done. We can’t change it.
“We have to live in the world as it exists. The lords are our masters. Did they do terrible things to gain that mastery? Perhaps. Nevertheless, they are the ones we serve.”
Her eyes narrowed. “I’m a Fleet officer. I know where my loyalties lie, but have you been playing some kind of game all this time? Do you security people already know all of this? I just want to know.”
Raul laughed, though there wasn’t much humor in the situation. “Oh no. I’m hearing this for the first time. If anyone in the Empire knows, I’m not aware of it. Perhaps I don’t have the clearance.
“I do know this, though. It changes nothing. These people want to destroy our way of life. Worse yet, even if they offer a better society—and I’m willing to provisionally entertain the possibility—they don’t have the military force needed to overthrow the AIs. Not even with everything that they’ve captured at Dresden.”
Veronica sat in another of the chairs. “Tell me what you know.”
“The woman’s name is Justine Bandar. She’s the mother of the woman who greeted us on the carrier. The ex-empress of the supposed New Terran Empire. She’s given us everything we need to stop these people. We just have to find a way to get the word back to our superiors.”
He considered her for a long moment. “I sympathize, Veronica. I truly do. There are many things wrong with the Empire. Things I wish worked differently. Perhaps in time we can change them.
“If our former captors told us the truth as they saw it, the AIs can obviously learn. Things have improved since they overthrew the old dictatorship. If that’s even the right word.”
When she didn’t add anything, he continued. “Obviously, terrible things were done, if their stories are accurate. But do you truly believe these people can create change for the better? Or would it just be for the worse? If the AIs are as bad they told us, then they will react very strongly to this threat.
“And not just toward the New Terran Empire. Do you really want to have them repress our people too? That’s a real possibility.”
He leaned back in his chair and watched her. She obviously had mixed feelings. The question was, would she end up supporting him and the Empire, or go in the direction he suspected her heart tugged her?
He’d have to watch her closely. He’d regret it if he had to act against her as he had Commodore Murdock and the rest, but he knew his duty. Hopefully she was smart enough to know hers.
23
I have some more information,” Carl said.
Kelsey looked over from the main screen where she’d been examining some of the images the aliens were transmitting. “Give it to me.”
The young scientist stood and walked over. “We’re still working on the language, but I can tell you that there are less than a dozen transmission sites.
“They’re not transmitting continuously, either. Sometimes signals last for a couple of hours, but other times only for a few minutes. I don’t think they’re news programs or even entertainment.”
“What are they?”
“I think this is message traffic. Back on Terra before they had the ability to transmit radio signals, everything had to go through something called telegraph lines with physical wires.
“If you needed to get information to someone a long distance away, you’d deliver a message to a transmission station, and they’d send it on. It might need to go through several retransmissions to reach the final destination, but the recipient eventually got it.
“I believe we’re seeing something very much like that. The delivery style and the fact that the transmissions only take place intermittently indicate they’re only communicating when there’s something to say.”
Kelsey considered that. “Once Annette gets on station, she should be able to help clarify the situation.”
“Agreed,” he said. “None of the transmissions have had a human being in it. That may mean there are no humans on this planet.”
She certainly hoped that wasn’t the case. It would be a lot easier if they could find a representative of these elusive ghosts to negotiate with. If they chanced across one of their ships in space, there was the very likely possibility that they’d shoot first and never bother asking questions.
“I understand that I’m asking you to guess, but do you think it’s worth our time and effort to contact these people?”
Carl considered her question for a moment. “Honestly? No. I’d say these people are preindustrial. Perhaps even feudal. Of course, they’re aliens. It might not be that simple.
“Would they make good friends? Possibly, but we’re not out here to make friends. We have to get the information we have back to the Empire. That has to be our first priority.”
That�
�s about what she’d thought, but she’d wanted to hear someone else say it.
“How long until Annette is on station?” she asked.
“Less than an hour now.”
“Keep going through those transmissions. I’d love it if you could figure out some type of translation program.”
He gave her a skeptical look. “That’s not likely. The language isn’t even close to Standard. I’ll need better understanding of common words and concepts to develop a translation program. These transmissions have people talking but no context. The video shots are just of the people speaking.
“The individual we call Omega was different. He’d interacted with humans before and had a lot of computing power to throw at improving his translation code. Just being able to speak to these folks is going to prove impossible in the short run, I suspect.”
Omega hadn’t just known humans before. He’d known Carl. Several of him, in fact. True, they’d come from alternate realities, but that had to give the alien some insight when it came to interacting with this one particular human.
The station that Omega was part of had been a gateway to other universes. He’d become part of the ring they’d discovered in the Nova system so that he could facilitate the evacuation of his species to avoid extinction at the hands of their errant star.
Something about the nova—not just in their universe, but also in numerous others—had somehow linked many of the stations in ways that she didn’t understand. They’d become one on the inside. Omega was the same in all of those universes. A living bridge between them.
The idea of other realities boggled her mind. Yet one more thing she didn’t have time to distract herself with.
“I know you’re probably right, but how often do we meet an alien species?” she finally asked. “Even counting Omega, this is only the second time. And no offense to him, but he’s only a single being trapped on a station in an extremely inhospitable system.
“Pandora is a planet full of people. Think of how much we could learn from them. Not technologically obviously, but this is important. Perhaps it’s not our most pressing issue, but I don’t want to let this opportunity slip past.”
