“That’s a lie,” the bearded man groaned. “It was the sins of men like you that cursed the world.”
Cassius ignored him and continued, “With Earth literally crumbling, that foolish man who dreamed of the stars was the last hope for humanity. His five completed Solar-Arks were the only chance of survival, but instead of being sent out to grasp at stars, they would become the threads upon which humanity endured. Their cargo holds were packed with the materials needed to construct more Conduit Stations, and each one was sent out, crammed with survivors, to the different Cells of our Solar System.
“The new Conduits were built to house the remnants of humanity, except those chosen to operate the Solar-Arks and distribute resources—water, food, gases, minerals, and, of course, Gravitum. We became addicted to the element. Why waste centuries trying to find worlds that may not exist when, with Gravitum, the Earth’s pull could be simulated wherever we wanted? Why adapt to low-G? Why allow space to be the uninhabitable vacuum it is? The Circuit was formed, reliant always on the Earth, which had spurned humanity as if it were no more than a bunch of insects.
“Stop,” the bearded survivor said. “Just stop talking. You’re insane.”
“So were the men whose creations saved the human race from extinction.” Cassius reached out and grasped the man by his lean jaw. “You will help us complete their work. These chambers were originally intended to completely freeze humans for their century-long journeys, but that desire was forgotten. Now they’re used merely to slow the progression of the Blue Death. But the original programming remains somewhere in this vessel.”
“Just kill us,” the man groaned. “Please.”
“It is time that they are returned to their true purpose, and all of you will help us test these chambers until they work perfectly. You should be honored. So few of us have had a chance to walk with the Ancients.” He released the man’s face.
“Shall This Unit begin the examination of the chambers?” ADIM asked.
“No. Unfortunately we have other more pressing matters to tend to,” Cassius replied. “For now, this one will begin the studies for us while the others begin work with the Gravitum.” He nodded at the damaged android, who immediately began strapping the three groaning humans into their respective cryo-chambers.
Truthfully, Cassius had no idea how long it would take to complete the work of the Ancients. He would have used the still-living bodies of Keepers if he had them, but he didn’t want to risk the Blue Death claiming them all first. He wasn’t even sure if they’d ever work as intended, so he didn’t want to waste time while he had a war to orchestrate. But, as he looked at ADIM he remembered how much he always seemed to look forward to their projects. He didn’t want to disappoint him with such honesty.
“Pressing matters?” ADIM asked.
“These incredible vessels have one additional capability. Come ADIM, we must send a message to the Circuit. All of it.” Cassius led ADIM down the hall toward the command deck of the Ark. “Then it is time that we finally pay a visit to the Ceresians.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN—TALON
The Legend Endures
Captain Larana’s move to escape the Tribunal ships hunting them worked flawlessly. For a day or two, scanners picked up a scout ship here and there, but all of them were hundreds of thousands of miles away and searching aimlessly. After that they were nowhere in sight, no doubt focusing all their futile efforts on a course toward Uranus.
Talon couldn’t help but be slightly impressed. The Captain told him that the systems being so old made the Monarch hard to detect with high-tech Tribunal equipment. He found it ironic. His people spent all their time struggling to keep up with the Tribune just in case, and here they were in a century-old, rusty ship evading a Tribunal Fleet as if it were run by no more than a bunch of blind old men.
They were about a week into their journey, and according to Kitt they’d reach Kalliope soon. He took his word for it. They hadn’t been together long, but Talon had come to realize that the Vergents were masters of space, and apparently of recreational games as well. They played a game called chess, moving sculpted pieces of rusty metal across a checkered board. If Talon had anything left of value, he would’ve been cleaned of it the first day.
Talon was presently locked in a match with Kitt in the Monarch’s galley. He stared down at the board, dumbfounded. Kitt was still in his teens, but he had what they called Talon’s “King” surrounded. It wasn’t anything like the card games Talon was used to playing back in Kalliope, winning hand after hand from brutes and friends. It was a game of strategy, concentration, and silence.
“Checkmate,” Kitt said.
“Again,” Talon sighed. “Wait until you get to Kalliope. I’ll show you a Ceresian game.”
“Lookin’ forward to winnin’ in that too.” Kitt looked up from the board with a wry grin, and then cleared it. “Again?” he asked.
“I think I’ve taken enough of a beating for today,” Talon said. “My arms are getting tired.” Kitt looked down at his blue-veined hands with concern, and when Talon did the same he understood why. He wasn’t used to everybody knowing about his affliction. “Don’t worry, I’m kidding. Just need to rest my head.” Rest or not, his limbs were always sore from the Blue Death. There was no use in complaining about them.
“Insiders,” Tarsis laughed. Being amongst his old people seemed to have him as high-spirited as he could be under the circumstances. He patted Talon on the back and motioned for him to get up. “I’ll show you how it’s done!”
Tarsis’s bulky mechanical suit nearly kept him from fitting, but he was able to squeeze in so that the lip of the table was pressed firmly against his chest. He was able to move better thanks to Kitt performing some much needed repairs on his suit. The boy was far more skilled with the wrench then Talon ever would’ve expected from a Vergent.
While they played, Talon walked over to a small viewport tucked into a corner by a pair of cabinets. There was another member of the Monarch’s crew sitting there as well, staring out into the void. She was a woman in her early thirties, and she didn’t acknowledge Talon’s presence at all.
It wasn’t an insult. Talon had come to understand that most of the Vergents didn’t feel obligated to converse unless they had to. They mostly kept to themselves, and two Vergents could even go an entire game of chess in complete silence. It was unnerving for the first few days, but having Tarsis around helped him through it. His years on the Solar-Ark had clearly changed him into something more closely resembling an “Insider.”
“Drifting through space for your entire life cooped up in a ship will do that to you,” Tarsis had said earlier when Talon asked why his people were so quiet. “Imagine that they already know everything about each other that they’ll ever need to know. Why waste oxygen? Back in the early days of the Circuit, it could be hard to come by out in the fringes of the Circuit.”
It made enough sense to him, although it made him long for the playful jabbing that was commonplace between him and his mining buddies. Talon sighed toward the stringy, pensive Vergent sitting beside him and turned his attention to space. His heart sank. Being amongst a real crew reminded him of his friends. He’d led two of them to their deaths. He didn’t force them to raid the freighter with him, but maybe if they’d spent less time joking around with each other they would’ve known his real history with the Morastus Clan. Surely if they’d known the kind of missions he’d run for Zargo Morastus in his prime, they wouldn’t have followed him.
As the faces of his fallen friends flashed through his mind, he opened his eyes as widely as possible to try keeping them dry. An object floated past the viewport. He leaned into the glass and tried to get a good look when suddenly a body slammed against it. He would’ve fallen out of his seat if the Vergent next to him didn’t stick out an arm to brace him.
“Fucking, Ancients!” he shouted. “Did you see that?”
The wide-eyed Vergent beside him nodded.
“What is it?” Tarsi
s asked, barely looking up from his intense bout of chess with Kitt.
“There’s a body out there!”
Tarsis’s hand slipped over the top of the piece he was about to move. This time he turned his full attention from the game. “A body?”
“I think.” Talon tried to get another look, but, whatever it was, it had bounced clear around the aft of the ship.
Kitt got up to his feet and nimbly bounced across the room to join him at the viewport. “I see nothin’,” he said.
“Definitely no rock,” the other Vergent added.
By the time Tarsis was able to lug his mechanically-aided frame over to the viewport to join them, Captain Larana’s voice spoke through the ship’s com-system.
“Kitt, bring the Keepers up,” she said, sounding increasingly distressed with each word. “They’ll want to see. We’ve reached Kalliope…”
Kitt’s brow furrowed. “I set the route. Should’ve been another few hours.” He hurried out of the galley, forcing Talon and Tarsis into a jog to keep up.
From what Talon had learned about Kitt in their short time together, he was an even more skilled navigator of drift charts than he was a repairman. He was so confident in his abilities, in fact, that being even a few hours off meant something had to be wrong. Talon could see it in his face.
Kitt flew through the ship’s corridors as if he were gliding. They could barely keep up. When they reached the command deck, however, they found him standing petrified in the entrance.
Debris was scattered throughout space—pieces of rock and metal that were impossible to distinguish from one another in the darkness. All of it, however, floated in the shadow of a chunk of rock one hundred times the size. It was hollowed out in patches, with visible walkways and structures built into the crags. They were squeezed and distended in places, but they remained intact enough for Talon to know exactly what everything was. It was surreal. As if a doctor had taken a scalpel to an entire asteroid colony, sliced it open, and preserved half of it as a diagram which said, “This is how Ceresians once lived.”
Not even a light was flickering, but the Monarch’s spotter left little room for doubt. Talon denied it as long as he stood there in silence, until Kitt raced past him to take control from Larana and carefully guided the ship close enough for him to see the distorted shell of the Elder Muse. It was crumpled up like a sheet of paper, but he’d recognize the entrance anywhere. That was when he first noticed the countless bodies floating betwixt the wreckage as if that was all that they were. Some of them wore full mining suits; others were in their boiler suits as if they’d been torn from their beds.
Of all the horrid scenes Talon had walked into in his life as a mercenary, this was the worst. He leaned over the empty chair next to Larana and swallowed the contents of his stomach trying to force their way out. All of the faces he’d seen drinking and gambling in the Elder Muse for years were swollen and unrecognizable—dumped like garbage into the great black vacuum. The first person he thought of was Julius, but he knew that he wasn’t up for another shift in the mines for two months. Lucky for him, at least.
“Guessin’ it wasn’t like this when you left?” Larana inquired.
“No,” Talon said.
Tarsis stepped up beside him. “Must’ve been one hell of an accident. Fusion Core probably overloaded.”
“Place ran on a small core that might cook the inside of it, but no way it would break it open like this. Besides, nothing’s slagged. It’s all cold, like it was snapped in half by a giant. I’ve never seen anything like this.”
“He’s right,” Larana said. “Grav generator maybe? I’ve seen ’em get overloaded in old ships and rip ’em apart without a spark.”
“No, you’d need a generator the size of Ceres to break open solid rock like that,” Talon stated firmly. He’d been there once when the colony’s old gravity generator went off, and all that happened was a few broken limbs and cases of the Blue Death, his being amongst them. Some walls here and there were torn down, but the damage to the facility was minimal.
Talon’s fists tightened, and for a moment he imagined the place had gotten what it deserved for taking everything from him. Then the limp arm of a body in space brushed across the cockpit’s translucency and snapped him out of it. Only fools blame rock and space, he told himself, reiterating words Zargo Morastus had once said after the incident.
“I’ll have suits prepped. Might be survivors,” Kitt spoke up. He reached out to switch on the ship-wide com-system.
“No,” Larana swiftly replied. “Attacks on Solar-Arks. A mining Colony split open. Somethin’ tells me it’s all connected. We shoulda never come here, and we shouldn’ linger.”
“But—”
“That’s an order, child!” Larana growled.
“She’s right,” Talon said sullenly. “There’s no one left anyway. The life support systems were over half-a-century old. If anyone managed to lock themselves up safely, they’ve suffocated by now.”
“Can you get out of here without hittin’ anything?” Larana asked Kitt.
“Of course,” Kitt said. The idea of a new challenge was apparently enough to distract him. He leaned forward and gritted his teeth as he maneuvered the Monarch around a hefty slab of metal, likely the remnants of a residential block. The move brought them closer to the chunk of Kalliope, and as he plotted their course the console in front of Larana suddenly beeped.
“What’s that?” Talon asked nervously.
“Weak transmission. Comin’ from Kalliope. Com-System must still be somewhat operational.”
“Survivors?” Kitt questioned. His face lit up.
“I…” As she scanned the data coming in through the console Larana’s cheeks went paler than it had when she was staring out at the floating graveyard. “It’s relayin’ through Kalliope from outside. Signal’s broadcastin’ to all known frequencies in the Circuit and makin’ sure that’s known—Tribunals, Ceresians, Keepers, us…everyone.”
“Can’t be,” Kitt said. “Only a Solar-Ark has access to all—” He gasped as he realized the answer to his question.
Talon edged as close as he could. Larana switched on the transmission. The question that had been on all of their minds since the moment the Solar-Ark Amerigo was hit was seemingly about to be answered. The message was coming in full of static, but not enough to squelch the potent voice which began speaking.
“People of the Circuit, this is Cassius Vale,” it said. Hearing the name sent a chill up Talon’s spine.
“Can you trace the origin?” Larana paused the message and asked Kitt.
Kitt plugged away at his station. He shook his head. “Solar-Arks can broadcast without showin’ their location. Layers of encryption only Ancients’d understand. Signal is bouncin’ off every settlement and ship in the Circuit. Comin’ from and to everywhere. It’s meant to keep ’em safe from attack.”
“Apparently that wasn’t enough,” Talon chimed in. Nobody seemed amused.
“Keep workin’ on it.” Larana reached out and set the transmission to resume. Talon knew it was a lost cause but he didn’t say anything. If the legendary Cassius Vale didn’t want to be found, then he was the type of man that would make sure he wasn’t.
Cassius continued, “Soon word will reach you all of recent affairs, but I will not wait for the truth to be twisted by the Council of the New Earth Tribunal. It is no secret that I was once a member of that revered assembly, and that I fought to establish the relative peace we share today. I have remained loyal since I stepped down from that position, but no longer.
“Recently, I discovered their plans to test a prototype weapon on the mining asteroid 22-Kalliope. Their hope was to strike fear into the Ceresians in retaliation for continued acts of terror throughout their dominion and the commandeering of six transport freighters. Even more deplorable than that, they have slowly been bribing the Keepers of the Circuit with workers and luxuries in order to bring them under their complete influence. This is a deliberate attem
pt to forsake the ancient oath our ancestors took that the guardians of Earth must continue to provide the Circuit with ample Gravitum and other required resources—that no matter the circumstances, the human race must go on.”
There was a short pause. Enough time for Talon to take in what he was hearing. The Tribune’s bribery of the Keepers came as no surprise to him, though the Vergents in the room looked appalled. The idea of a prototype weapon, on the other hand, had his heart beating against his ribcage. If that was true, then they were witnesses to its destructive capabilities. Even bombs built using nuclear fusion didn’t have the capacity to so comprehensively break apart a large asteroid, and destroying a perfectly operating settlement was something neither the Tribune nor the Ceresians were ever keen on doing.
“When I threatened to disclose these secrets, my former comrades attempted to have me killed. Their attack of my home on Titan has left Edeoria in turmoil, and I barely escaped with my life. Tribune Nora Gressler wasn’t so lucky…” Cassius cleared his throat. “By the time this message reaches all the corners of the Circuit, 22-Kalliope will likely have been reduced to a few floating hunks of rock. My attempts to disrupt their display of power have failed, but the Tribune, along with those who side with them through these atrocities, will pay. I have commandeered the Solar-Ark Amerigo. Only when the Tribune admits their role in the desecration of Kalliope will I allow it to reassume its true purpose. Also, if the other Arks are kept from their roles as equal providers for all factions in the Circuit, then I will destroy the Amerigo and hunt down the rest of them. I leave it in their hands.”
Progeny of Vale Page 8
