Precursor Revenants (The Precursor Series Book 1)

by Cain Hopwood

  After a minute that seemed like ten, she let out a soft scream of frustration. “Give me something here Jon.”

  He gave the tiniest of shrugs. “It doesn’t seem right to me.”

  “No. It doesn’t. But on the flight the VP came up with an interesting analogy.”

  “I’ll bet he did.”

  “Well, it made me think. I told him you weren’t motivated solely by money. Then he said, if Jon was on an operation in the Amazon, and he saw natives using a common herb for healing. Would it be wrong for him to bring a sample back to you?”

  Jon gave a snort. “He’s a slippery bastard this VP. But, I can kind of see his point.”

  Annelise straightened up. “That doesn’t mean it’s right. That hypothetical herb belongs to the hypothetical Amazonians. Or if not them it belongs to the world. Everyone should benefit from it, not just some fat corporate cats.”

  “That’s more like the girl I love. Did you tell him?”

  She lowered her head. “Of course not, he’s my boss. And I’m a coward.”

  Jon took her in his arms. She felt almost childlike as she snuggled in. After a moment she spoke. “Also he had something else to say. He said something big is going down. And, that the regiment will be deployed soon.”

  “How soon? To where?”

  “He didn’t know any more. Though, he thought flying me up here at a moment’s notice was a favor you might appreciate. And, hopefully, remember. Anyway, I’ve done my duty and passed on what they brought me here to tell you.”

  “You have. If it helps, you can tell this Don character I’ll consider his message seriously. And add that I have moral reservations.”

  “I will,” she said. “Though, he’ll just think that’s a negotiating tactic.”

  “Let him. Remind me again why you work for these lizards?”

  She poked him in the chest and then graced him with one of her smiles. “You know why you big dumb lump of muscles.”

  “Of course, how could I forget,” he said theatrically. “Space, the final frontier.”

  “You know it. Since NASA folded fifty years ago, and the ESA pruned back operations in the thirties, the corporates are the only game in town. Still, it could be worse. I could be running here and there, doing who knows what, at the whim of back stabbing politicians.”

  Jon screwed up his face in mock pain. “Ouch.”

  It was a running joke between them that they both worked for dubious masters. Her for the largest corporate orbital transport supplier, and him for one of the more shadowy arms of the North American Union government. She helped the mega corps develop industries outside the scope of earthly regulations, while he helped further the government’s political agendas abroad. Usually at the point of a gun.

  Neither was proud of who they worked for, but it wasn’t all bad. While the colonel’s regiment had been to dubious places on dubious missions, they’d also done good peacekeeping work. As for Annelise’s corporate masters, their motives may have been mercenary, but they pushed mankind’s presence off the planet. So as far as Annelise was concerned that was a good thing.

  And maybe that was enough, thought Jon as they relaxed on his balcony and took in the lights of Trenton.

  The secret broke in the middle of the night. While Jon and Annelise were snuggled up in bed, an English astronomy student at Oxford was analyzing the results from his mid term spectrographic assignment. Or trying to.

  For the assignment he’d chosen the new ‘comet’ that had appeared in the skies that week. His frustration stemmed from the fact that even though he’d run the experiment twice, the assignment’s deadline was only days away and he was yet to get a usable result.

  The first time he’d run the spectrograph, it had been with one of the department’s small automated scopes. But something had gone wrong. At least he assumed something had gone wrong. The spectrograph should have looked similar to the sun’s, possibly with a few extra emission and absorption lines. Most of the light from comets was, after all, just reflected solar radiation. But it didn’t look that way at all.

  Because his first spectrograph was so far from what it should have been, he marked it down to a bad instrument, or light contamination. So he discarded it and booked another on a different scope. But when that one came up the same, he got desperate.

  With his assignment deadline looming he went hunting for spectrographs of the comet online. If he were caught he’d fail the subject, his professor considered that cheating, but without a result he’d also fail. That was when he hit his first speed bump. There was nothing online. No spectrographs, no photographs, nothing.

  Every other discovered comet had reams of data, but not his. He couldn’t even find any details of its orbit. All he had was its ascension and declination, just enough data to point a telescope in its general direction.

  So that’s what he did.

  But, instead of seeing the fuzzy disk of a comet, or the smaller sharper disk of a planet, all that he could make out was a super bright pinprick of light. The comet wasn’t a comet at all. Instead, it was something almost as bright as a planet, except much, much smaller.

  He popped a question, and an image of the object into his feed, hoping another student could make something of it. The other students thought he was hoaxing them, and a small flame war broke out. Then, in an attempt to quell the flames, and denounce him as a hoax, several others also photographed the comet. They used a variety of scopes, some small, some large. And they all got the same images.

  Someone took the question to the dean who flatly refused to discuss the issue. And that might have quelled it. But it was too late, the news had spread to the astronomy students at Cambridge, who jumped at the opportunity to discredit their rivals at stuffy Oxford.

  Which they were completely unable to do.

  The dean of course knew exactly what the object was, and he was petrified that the leak would be traced back to Oxford. He didn’t want his grants and scholarships to vanish. So he had a quiet chat over a pint with one of the more senior figures in the faculty of English, a professor who was known to help out the BBC when they needed an authority on the language.

  Without saying exactly why, he got across that it would be in some journalist’s best interests to have a chat with the students at Cambridge. Specifically, the ones kicking up a stink about this new comet, and how it was not quite what the government said it was.

  That was at lunchtime. By three the feeds were alight. And when the BBC, and every other media organization, steadfastly refused to put the story on any of their feeds or bulletins, it gained even more momentum. The public smelled a rat, and silence on all the official channels only fueled the story.

  The Eurocrats went into damage control, which comprised passing the problem on to the North American Union government. Who, promptly crumbled under the pressure and admitted that yes, we were no longer alone in the universe.

  So while the rest of North America were freaking out over their breakfast cereal, Jon and Annelise were discussing the news casually.

  “Listen to this one,” said Annelise as she took a bite of a piece of hot toast. She flicked a message to Jon.

  He listened, it wasn’t long, then cocked his head. “Seems genuine enough. Who’s this George? Is he a friend of yours?”

  Annelise snorted. “Hardly, I had to look him up in the university year book. I think we shared a class one semester about ten years ago. Though you’d think from that message that we were best friends.”

  “He fooled your filters huh?”

  “It’s not hard,” she said in a resigned tone. “If there is a confirmable connection, I have to accept the message. There are just too many customers with my contact details for a really aggressive filter set.”

  Jon was flicking through his own feeds. They were, as usual, empty. The regiment kept a tight reign on its comms, which was usually a source of frustration, but in this case more of a blessing. If there were any requests from outside, they hadn’t made it
to him. But Jon also pulled in a variety of public feeds to make up for that lack, and they were all buzzing.

  “It looks like someone’s got wind of the unscheduled launch of the colonel’s shuttle and they’ve put two and two together,” he said.

  “That explains all these messages. They’re all trying to leverage any connection they can find at McDonnell Orbital, hoping to find a soft touch who will tell them something.”

  Jon winked. “This George fellow doesn’t know how close he came.”

  “No,” said Annelise in a distant voice. “I’d better dial that filter up though. I’ve got too much to worry about without having to deal with unsolicited calls.”

  Jon popped the last fragment of toast in his mouth swigging it down with the dregs of his coffee. “Are you ready? We’re due at the base shortly.”

  A nod from Annelise was all he needed. He shut the terrace door, making sure it was secure, strapped on his H&K and messaged the building’s garage to have his volantor lifted to the communal rooftop pad.

  By the time they’d locked up, fetched Annelise’s overnight bag, and made their way to the roof, the volantor’s turbines were flight ready. Her interior though was still chilly, and Annelise snuggled in close to ward off the chill.

  “To the base please Vee,” said Jon.

  “Expedited clearance and priority routing has been granted. Do you wish to execute a minimum time flight?”

  Jon looked at Annelise and raised an eyebrow. “Interesting, usually Vee needs a minute or so to get clearance.”

  Annelise just shrugged, so Jon gave the word and Vee lifted into the light morning traffic. She passed through the slower air cars, vans and bikes like a sea eagle through a flock of seagulls and was soon at the reserved emergency flight level.

  It didn’t take the fleet little volantor long to make the flight to the base. But, as she arrived at the base’s boundary she didn’t slow and feed into the usual security clearance lane along with the volantors and flyers of the other off base personnel. Instead, she overflew the checkpoint at speed and headed straight for the regimental headquarters where she alighted, with what Jon swore was a flourish, on the colonel’s dedicated roof top pad.

  Before Jon could reach for the canopy release, Vee popped it. “Please expedite egress, another priority arrival is expected in twenty seven seconds.”

  “We’ve been told,” said Jon, grabbing Annelise’s bag. He vaulted out of the cockpit and then turned to help her onto the solidity of the pad. The volantor’s turbines continued spinning, buffeting them left and right.

  The second they were clear Vee lifted off with a howl, then she banked sharply and dropped out of sight.

  “We’d better get out of here, I think Vee was in a hurry,” yelled Jon over the noise. As they jogged off the pad, he looked over his shoulder and noticed a military flyer coming in fast over the base and heading straight for the pad they were on.

  He tapped a canine twice to connect to the rapidly departing Vee. “Head back to the apartment building Vee, I’ll call for you when I’m coming home.”

  Vee’s reply fed straight into his mastoid audio implant. “Understood.”

  He turned to Annelise, yelling over the air traffic noise. “Where are you headed?”

  She held up a hand until they’d descended into the rooftop stairs and were in the relative quiet area in front of the lift. “Sorry, I couldn’t talk out there, I don’t have your voice for yelling over gunfire. I’ll be in hangar six all day with the shuttle prep team. You?”

  “Don’t know yet, I need to check in with Pascale, then wherever I can find quiet to work on this plan. Unless the colonel re-tasks us.”

  “Have you heard from him?”

  “No, at least the XO hasn’t told anyone. Frankly I’d say he’ll be a while in Washington, everyone there will want their pound of flesh out of him.”

  Annelise’s brow creased. “I wouldn’t count on that. Our VP seemed to think the colonel would be back here soon, within the day.”

  Jon shrugged. The lift arrived, and he gave her a quick kiss. “See you tonight hopefully, I’ve got no idea how this day will pan out.”

  “We’ll see,” she said in a thoughtful tone. “We’ll see.”

  — 8 —

  Katona’s combat boots were supposed to enable him to move silently in any environment. But whether he walked fast or slow along the walkway to the centarch’s chair, the walkway treads always creaked and cracked like old trees in a light breeze. Idly, he wondered if the noisy walkway was a part of the security design of the nexus, maybe something Shaiken had added himself. Then the walkway shifted under his feet and it occurred to Katona that the creaks and groans might be just another symptom of the deteriorating fortunes of Stetlak conclave.

  He set his mouth firm as he approached the chair. Stetlak would recover, conclave fortunes always went in cycles. He would focus on completing this task. If he did well, he would be able to return to his retirement and the hatchlings he was training.

  The centarch’s misty white sound field was up when Katona reached his usual spot on the walkway. So, he stood at parade rest and waited. The centarch’s hands moved over his master control board in a graceful dance that connected him instantly to any of the starship’s subsidiary stations. At that board he was the very heart of the huge ship’s control systems.

  After a few moments the centarch leaned back, then seemed to notice Katona. He tapped a control on his board and the sound field dissolved.

  “You have your flight harness on admiral,” the centarch said in an amused tone. “You plan to return to the human world?”

  “I am, patron. My staff have been handling the details and liaising with the humans. The fast auxiliary transport Kondray will join Spear in orbit around the human world shortly.”

  “Are you anticipating trouble?”

  Katona paused, his staff had reported that the humans had been co-operating, but were expressing doubts. “There is some hesitation on their part, so I am going to join Spear in case.”

  The centarch gave a slight bow of his head. “That is wise. But remember, this could be a negotiating ploy, it is common in their dealings.”

  “A ploy? Are they not creatures of honor?”

  It was now the centarch’s turn to pause. After a moment he spoke, almost tentatively. “They are honorable, in their own fashion. Though they are first and foremost a mercantile species. The accumulation of resources is their prime concern. If they believe they can get more from us, they might force a delay.”

  “Your insight is helpful patron. Should they balk at committing the required forces, do you have any suggestions on courses of action?”

  “We are already offering a great deal of value for their troop and materials outlay, at least in their terms. We should stand firm, otherwise they will keep delaying.”

  “And if their concern is genuine?”

  “The humans put a lot of value in their people, though you wouldn’t think so from the way they fritter them away in their endless internal conflicts. They will want to know we will return them when their work is done.”

  Katona’s mouth opened in shock. “We have said we will return them. I have sworn so on my honor to the human colonel.”

  “And so we will,” said the centarch in a smooth assuring tone. “But they may not believe it. You should offer to leave several technicians and translators to help them integrate the new power systems and technology.”

  Katona blinked. “And that will convince them?”

  “Without a doubt. Hostage exchanges are old traditions with them. Once they have our people, they will be reassured that we will return for them, and in so doing return their own people.”

  “What a curious convention. But a low cost form of guarantee I suppose. I’ll detail the appropriate personnel from the Kondray to act in that capacity, should it be required.”

  The centarch nodded. Then he transfixed Katona with his eyes. “There is something else isn’t there a
dmiral.”

  “You have a keen nose patron. I am concerned that we seem to be unofficially annexing the human society. How will we honor our agreements with them in the future?”

  The centarch touched a control and for a moment his ever present clima-field shut off, and the scent of amusement filled Katona’s nostrils. Amusement and, something else. But before he could pin the other mood down, the centarch’s clima-field snapped back into place and his mood pheromones faded into the background hum of the general Ka-Li presence. “I am pleased, and amused, at your concern Katona. Let me assure you that this little species are not the first unofficial annexation.” The centarch held up a claw to forestall any argument on Katona’s part. “There is no protocol for such an annexation, but it is not unknown. As long as we are careful, and involve certain Stetlak officials, there will be no trouble.”

  “I have to admit patron that this is new to me, what precautions do we need to take?”

  “We need to find the survey probe monitoring the human world and destroy it. Based on the imagery from the last one, it will most likely be on their moon.”

  Katona reached for his com pod. “Very well, Spear has the firepower, and it is close to that moon.”

  “No, no, no,” said the centarch in an amused tone. “Firstly, Spear does not have the sensor suite to even find such a passive device, monitor probes are pure precursor technology. Furthermore, it would be best if the probe fell victim to a, seemingly, natural event.”

  The admiral thought for a moment. “An asteroid strike?”

  “That’s the usual way.”

  “We will need an auxiliary with plenty of power, and a class one sensor suite. A minesweeper would suffice. Shall I draft the orders?”

  “I think it best if I do that,” said the centarch in a slow measured tone. “This is not something you want to sully your hands with. Besides, you need to be on your way.”

  Katona inclined his head. “Thank you patron. My ships are yours. If a minesweeper is what you need, your best choice would be the Mondrian. She is large and outfitted for extended duty.”