The Memnon Incident: Part 4 of 4 (A Serial Novel)

by Marc DeSantis

  More broke the silence. "You performed well, both of you. We would never have made it out of Memnon but for you two."

  "I'll miss Bill Calder," Heyward said. "He was a good man."

  "I served with him in the Gulf," Carey said. "None braver."

  "A wife and two children," More noted. "Then there is his crew. Two hundred dead. We had casualties on other ships too."

  "Don't beat yourself up over this, Andrew," Heyward said. "There were no good options here."

  "Matt's right," Carey said, pointing to several of the ships inside the base. "Those wouldn't have made it back except for you."

  "Morrigan was not what we expected when we displaced into Memnon," Heyward added. "She changed everything about the mission."

  "In the end, she did not want to be found," More said. "She's gone now, but we've been left with a war. Tartarus is in control of Memnon. The Great Sphere thinks we wasted the RMN. They're calling me a war criminal."

  "That's nonsense," Carey scorned. "We couldn't let Memnon take Morrigan. We had to fight. Now we can't allow the Armada to have Memnon," Carey said. "It's too close."

  "The Sphinx is using the the 'Memnon incident' as a pretext to establish his own protectorate over the system," More said. "We should have done that, but we were outgunned."

  "This won't stand. We'll get to the bottom of who was behind this," Carey promised. "Then we'll push Tartarus out of the system."

  "Come," Heyward said. "Let's get something to eat."

  Cardiff Yard, High Orbit, Halifax

  Howell found Silas Gates in his office. The older man was poring over schematics of the Star Eagle. There had been significant progress in the months that Howell had been gone.

  "Bah! Don't flatter me!" Gates protested. He waved his arm disgustedly at the ship. "She's been harder than my worst nightmare. Everything's short now. With so many of our ships needing repairs, or to be refitted for service against Tartarus, materials will be even harder to obtain."

  Howell sat down heavily in the chair beside Gates' desk. It was covered with blueprints and other papers, and he moved these carefully to a table off to the side. Gates' expression softened. "Where are my manners? I'm sorry, Julius, I've been overwhelmed with work. I'm glad your back. Let me get you something to drink."

  Gates poured Howell a cup of Balass tea and placed it before him. "I hear that you had quite an adventure in Memnon," he said.

  "You could call it that." Howell closed his eyes. "I don't know if I would."

  Gates sat down at his desk and leaned forward. "What was she like?"

  "She?"

  "Yes, the ship! The Atlantis class. She's called Morrigan, correct?"

  Howell was stunned. "How do you know that name? Your contacts in the Navy?"

  Gates laughed. "Oh Julius, my dear boy, you don't know? Word came here a day ago by courier ship. Seems that your good Captain More stole Morrigan from Memnon, ambushed the Memnonian Navy when it came to get her back, and then sent Morrigan to attack Tiryns. The Memnonians died bravely defending their system, and then drove off Morrigan. The Armada of Tartarus then generously stepped in to defend the integrity of Memnon's borders from Halifaxian imperialism."

  Howell blinked twice. "You can't possibly believe that, Silas."

  "Of course I don't! But a sizable portion of the Great Sphere likely does by now, or will. There are loud calls for Captain More's head from the Memnonian and Tartarean diplomats stationed on Halifax. The Tartareans are saying he struck them after agreeing to leave the system peacefully."

  "That is not how it happened."

  "No it is not," Gates said. "I'll never believe that a Republican naval officer would behave that way. Still, Tartarean propaganda is playing it up for all it's worth."

  "They're using it as a cover for a grab of Memnon. Tartarean ships are now just two weeks travel time from where we sit." Howell took a deep breath. "I would not be surprised if Tartarus was somehow behind everything that happened. They have advanced their suzerainty all the way to Memnon."

  "Suzerainty?" Gates mused. "That's a big word."

  "I do read now and again."

  "Okay, go on."

  "Tartarus has gotten us to fight Memnon, and now plays the hero to that system and to other states in the Sphere."

  "Your captain would never have stayed so long but for Morrigan. So tell me. What was she like?"

  Howell considered his time on the grand ship, the technological wonders he had seen aboard her, and the experience that he had of the tormented - soul - that was Morrigan, a warrior who regretted her actions in an ancient war. She was a vast and unfathomable intellect who could not forgive herself for the lives she took in a war so far gone that its name had been forgotten by time. He considered telling Gates all this, but then he thought of the sad woman who had sacked the city of Ancona, only to find that each time there was nothing that she could have done to avoid the massacre that ensued. That story would have to wait for another day. Howell too needed some time to digest what he had witnessed in the blackness surrounding a distant star.

  "Morrigan was unforgettable," he said and left it at that.

  Chapter Forty-Three

  The Royal Palace, Darien, Tartarus

  Admiral Otis was ushered into the inner sanctum of King Evander by the Royal Guards, his exalted rank earning the medal-bedecked admiral only the most cursory of inspections as he strode down the hallway to the king's private office. Within his coat's breast pocket he carried a snub-nosed gauss pistol. It was a marvel, this weapon. It had been found in a dig on Andrea IX some years ago, and presented to Otis as a gift. It was as powerful as a full-sized battle rifle, but with scant recoil, the internal kinetic compensators reducing the felt kick to a slight tremor in the hand.

  It would be enough to kill the man who called himself Evander. The charade had gone on for too long. Otis and his like-minded fellow officers had been content to let the strange man who appeared out of nowhere one day over thirty years ago with an audacious plan to pretend to lead, all the while knowing that they held the true power of the Monarchonate in their own hands. They had been gratified at Evander's bestowal of increased funds on the armed services. It had been high time to revitalize the military, which had been allowed to decline over several centuries. A new ship had not been constructed for the fleet in over five decades before the Concord was built in orbit above Tartarus with money supplied by Evander. She had been the first in a series of destroyers that allowed Tartarean naval officers the opportunity to command something larger than a corvette. Otis recalled the day he had stepped aboard the bridge of the Amity, his first command. He had felt like a master of the stars as he stood on its bridge, ready to bring death and destruction down upon the marauders who menaced the star lanes between Tartarus and the nearest suns.

  In those days, pirates had made travel to Candle, one of the closest systems, virtually impossible. Interstellar trade had slowed to a trickle. Tartarus, a poor world, had become even poorer as it could not export what little it produced or import the many things its economy needed. Diseases that had been thought banished by medical science had made a comeback as conditions in the decaying urban areas gave them room in which to take root and fester. Measles, polio, and even the bubonic plague, had struck at the impoverished inhabitants of Tartarus' cities. Darien had not been spared. Otis had been born and grown to manhood here. He remembered the fearful toll the plague had taken among the lower classes, and how the rudimentary government-run medical services had been overwhelmed within days. Millions had died before the disease had burned out.

  Halifax had been slow to respond to Tartarus' crisis. The whole of the Great Sphere had done little to help the insignificant little world. The other planets of the Tartarus system were even less developed than the world of Tartarus, being little more than outposts and mining colonies, and could not be of assistance. The Tartareans buried their dead and moved on, dreading the next appearance of the plague.

  Soon after the last outbrea
k, Evander appeared. He was so different from the useless politicians that had mismanaged the planet for centuries. Tartareans were a hardy folk, but their leaders had brought them nothing but corruption and misery. He was evasive about his past and spoke little about himself, but never hid his claimed origin among aliens in the distant stars.

  Otis had never believed him. It was nonsense, all of it. It just had to be. In the seventy thousand years that humankind had traversed the stars not a single, intelligent, non-human species had been encountered. Oh, there had been rumors of such contacts. The vids were saturated with programming that asserted that aliens were everywhere and had been interacting with humans since the days of Lost Earth, waiting patiently for the right moment to reveal themselves.

  If the aliens were around, Otis thought, they were certainly taking their sweet time to let everyone know about them. What were the chances that this man calling himself Evander had had actual contact with a non-human species? So close to none, he reasoned, that it was impossible for it to be true.

  But Evander did have much to offer in those early days three decades ago. When the plague broke out the next time, not long after he had made himself known in political circles, he had the cure ready to hand. Deaths were a tiny fraction of what they had been during the last visit of the disease. People began to listen to him. He won a seat in Parliament not long afterward.

  He had other gifts to give. Superior fusion reactors replaced the nuclear fission units upon which Tartarus had relied. The major cities of Tartarus were connected with gravlines and its dilapidated spaceports were renovated. Trade improved, and then flourished. The boondocks world in a forgotten corner of the Sphere began to make itself known for more than poverty. Industry grew rapidly, and Tartarean exports became highly-sought after, carried to interstellar markets in Tartarus' expanding merchant marine.

  Otis had been a newly-minted ensign in the Tartarean Navy, which was renamed the Armada of Tartarus by Evander when he was elected prime minister. The money started to flow to the fleet, and it was at the forefront of the campaigns to unify the Tartarus system, and then the nearest star systems. Everywhere the Armada had success. Its ships, fitted with technology that Evander had bestowed on it, were bigger and better than those of the local warlords who had troubled Tartarus for many centuries. Otis was happy that his nation was expanding, and rose steadily through the ranks. Things were good.

  Then someone tried to assassinate Evander. The people of Tartarus, horrified that their savior had been almost stolen from them, protested little when Evander dissolved Parliament, which he called a useless 'debating society,' and took sole control of the government. Within a year, the Republic of Tartarus had been renamed the Monarchonate of Tartarus, and Member of Parliament Evander had become King Evander.

  Otis had done little to stop this progression from democracy to tyranny. He had never been a committed democrat personally. What had democracy ever done for Tartarus except allow it to remained mired in failure? The Monarchonate brought even more rapid advancement to Tartarus as the sclerotic structures of the old establishment were cut away and able ministers and attendants, appointed by Evander, oversaw the machinery of government. As a captain of the Armada, Otis had little to do with the day-to-day activities of the Tartarean state. Instead, he was involved in every victorious campaign among the stars. There were great moments, such as when the Candle system, long cut off from Tartarus by pirates, was brought within the fold of the Monarchonate. Otis had been promoted to admiral not much later. Many other worlds were either captured or joined the Monarchonate voluntarily. Tartarus was at last secure and prosperous. As he took his place in the highest circles of the Armada's command, and then as head of Military Intelligence, he could not have been more pleased with the direction of Tartarus.

  The Ajax War caused Otis to rethink everything. He hated the Ajaxians with a passion. In the old days, before Evander had come among them, the Ajaxians had mounted slave raids on outlying colony worlds in and around the Tartarus system. Those whom they could not capture, or thought not worth enslaving, were put to death. Corinth Station, an artificial world lying between Orb and Zara, had been sacked and the corpses of the murdered were left to rot in its bloodslicked corridors. Ensign Etienne Otis had seen the carnage firsthand, and had vowed that one day, he would make the wicked Ajaxians pay for their crimes. In several clashes, first as captain of the Amity, and then as that of the heavy cruiser Vision, he had dueled and defeated a dozen Ajaxian warships, scattering their ashes across the void.

  But those had been minor clashes with an enemy that had to be taught that it could not push Tartarus around anymore. The war with Ajax was very different. It had been deliberately sought by Evander. The Ajaxians, brutal and undiplomatic at the best of times, had been allowed to provoke Tartarus into a conflict that could have been avoided through negotiations. The Eleven Minutes Battle saw Ajax's navy wrecked. Everyone had been shocked by the speed with which a major power of the Great Sphere had been knocked out cold. The people of Tartarus were jubilant. If they had known what Otis knew, they would not have been so happy.

  Just before the victory celebrations had been held, Evander had called a meeting with his service chiefs. As head of the Armada at that time, Otis had been present when the king laid out his future plans for them. Evander's goal was nothing less than the total conquest of the Great Sphere, to be followed in time by forays across the Gulf into the galaxy at large. "My plan," Evander had stated, "is to reunite all humanity under the banner of a Fifth Empire."

  A fifth empire? That would take some time, Otis and the other chiefs thought. Centuries under the best of circumstances. Was the king serious? More immediately, there remained the matter of the other powers of the Great Sphere. The Sellasian League was formidable, and of course, the Republic of Halifax was still significantly stronger than Tartarus. Evander insisted that he had a plan and was following it through.

  Otis had not signed on for perpetual war against all others. His desire was straightforward - to ensure the security of Tartarus and its people. That had been achieved. He had no desire to risk it and the lives of his sailors on a quixotic venture to establish another galactic empire. Who knew what dragons lurked amid the galaxy at large? A safe Tartarus was more than enough.

  That war was to come with Halifax was made abundantly clear by Evander's handling of the Ajax crisis. Eventually, there would be an incident with the Republic as the sphere of interest of the expanding Monarchonate butted up against that of Halifax. War was not just likely, Otis and many of his brother officers understood, but certain.

  This had to be avoided at all costs. The best way to bring a civilization crashing down was to pummel it with nukes. The cities might be protected by stout shields but an entire planet could not be so defended. The use of nuclear weapons had been banned by treaty for millennia, and had largely been adhered to, even by the barbarians of Ajax. What would happen though if Halifax, its back against the wall, felt it had to do everything within its power to stave off an attack by Tartarus? Otis had no wish to see Halifax crushed. There was so much about it to admire. What he did not care for was the inability of its democratic government to plan ahead and take action to protect itself from incipient threats. It too had fought a war with Ajax but had allowed it to end prematurely before it had dealt a crippling blow to Ajax's fleet. Democracies were like that. They had little stomach for war, even when justified. The Ajaxians had been let off easy, and had continued to expand into other systems, just not along its border with Halifax. That expansion had finally come to an end with the Eleven Minutes Battle.

  The prospect of endless war made Otis and others queasy. It also made them reconsider their support for the king. They had never forgotten that this man had wandered into Tartarean life with no past to trace and an unbelievable story of traveling across the galaxy with aliens. Otis was a Tartarean patriot. The defense of his world was what mattered to him, not the unification of humanity at large into a 'Fifth Empire.' Eve
n if such a ridiculous project should succeed, the result would not be good for Tartarus. Instead of sitting at the apex of a handful of systems, Tartarus would quickly decline in importance as the attention of the king settled elsewhere.

  The king, now what was he? None had believed his story at first. Otis still didn't. Yet he had seen the man often over the years, and he never seemed to age. The alien traveler story had to be nonsense, it had to be. But what if Evander was functionally immortal after all? If he had, as he often said, 'all the time in world,' then perhaps his plan to conquer the whole of the galaxy was not a fever dream but something that he intended to carry out, no matter how long it took him. The children of Tartarus, their children, their children's children, and so on, would be at war forever, their blood spilled to win worlds and systems that no one had yet heard of for Evander.

  That was when the Group formed. It was Otis and just a few others at first, united in their dissatisfaction with the king's policy. Then their grumblings became active plotting. They dared not move yet against the king directly. A coup had little chance of success while Evander was everywhere triumphant. No, Evander had to be seen to fail, and this could not come via officers of the Armada. He had to be checked, hard, by an outside power.

  Ajax had been worsted in battle and was no match for Tartarus, but Halifax was very strong. A war with the Republic would be enough to demonstrate to the people of Tartarus that their ruler was a fallible man after all. Then Otis and the others could move against him.

  How to bring about a war with Halifax while the Republic was still strong enough to inflict a stinging defeat on the Monarchonate? Very carefully, that was how. As one of the top officers of the Armada, and as head of Monarchonate Military Intelligence, there was little he could not get done with the funds at his disposal. His oversight of ancient dig sites gave him access to recovered antiquakraft that opened up possibilities for getting a war going with the Republic. As a democracy, Halifax was slow to go to war. It would also be, Otis gauged, eager to secure a peace once it had shown that it was not to be regarded lightly. The admiral had no wish to see Tartatus ruined. Halifax could be trusted not to fight the war to the death, and so Tartarus would be spared direct harm when the shooting started. All that was needed was for King Evander to be humiliated and thereby weakened to the point where he could be taken down by Otis and his conspirators.