On Galaxy's Edge: Ascendance

by Alex T. Kolter

  “And your useful information is what, exactly?”

  “Um, I know how their organisation works, captain, and how they made their money. Qiameth. That was their main source of income. They smuggled it onto the planet, and sold it.”

  “Ah. So you do have some information, then. Tell me. Where is qiameth made?” The captain didn’t expect this alien to know, but he did enjoy watching others squirm. A fearful look came over the alien’s features as it figured out how to answer, its mouth opening and closing a couple of times. The captain stood and watched the process.

  “Er, I think, er, one of my suppliers, erm...”

  “Leave it, alien. We’ll deal with it. Congratulations; you’ve kept your head, for today. You may yet be useful. But let me be clear - you are to assist us, in any and every way you can, or I will become... displeased. Is that understood?” The alien nodded, not trusting itself to speak, and the captain walked away, leaving the guards to escort the alien back off the bridge. He stood in front of the window again, arms clasped behind his back, and looked out on the stars speeding past the ship.

  Another armoured man quietly walked up to stand next to the captain, after the alien had been removed from the bridge. He stood there silently for a minute, also watching the stars go by, before finally speaking.

  “Is it worth the effort, dealing with this organisation? I don’t even recognise the planet.”

  The captain continued looking out of the window, with the lieutenant an intimidating presence next to him. “Two decades ago, we had trouble on an outer edge planet,” he said after a moment. “Me’ryn, if I’m not mistaken. It was a small place, with no more than five billion citizens, but some got it into their puny minds that they could distance themselves from the CSG. They started off by stealing from their government to fund their organization. We ignored this, of course. These outer planets have little value for us.

  “But this spread. The resistance got bigger, and at some point they overthrew the entrenched government. Our government. It was a mistake to let things get that far. We couldn’t tolerate insubordination like that, so we bombed the planet. Killed every resident, to ensure that... disease... was eradicated. It was a messy business. I do not want this situation to arise again.”

  “Would it have affected the central systems?”

  “It may have done, given time. It may not have. But it is risky to let these things fester. And this organisation on Dimora has the same troubling signs. This needs to be stamped out, before there is any real trouble.”

  The lieutenant looked at the captain, once again silently cursing the full-face helmets they wore. They were useful, but meant that facial expressions couldn’t be read. “Very well, captain. I shall assemble some infiltration units immediately.”

  “Do that, lieutenant.”

  Knowing when he was dismissed, the lieutenant snapped a brief salute. “Comandante e la gloria,” he said.

  “Comandante e la gloria,” the captain echoed, as the lieutenant turned and walked down the stairs that led from the bridge, leaving the captain alone with the few pilots at their stations.

  The vast deep-space military cruiser continued on its journey into the outer reaches of the galaxy.

  ****

  Ami rolled over to face him, the bedcovers only covering her from the waist down. Nero couldn’t help looking at her, and Ami watched, a slightly amused expression on her face. He looked back up into her eyes, his thoughts again returning unbidden to Abia.

  “What’s the matter?” she asked, concern written clear on her face now.

  “It’s nothing, Ami,” Nero said, annoyed with himself for letting his emotions show so obviously. He didn’t want to bother Ami with things like this. He just wanted to enjoy his time with her.

  “It’s something, Nero. I wish you would talk to me. You’ve been reticent - even more than usual - for days now. What’s going on?”

  He looked away, to stare out of the window of the apartment. The sun was just rising, turning the whole apartment a sort of bloody red in colour. He looked away again. “I lost a friend, the other day,” he said, rolling over himself to sit on the side of the bed. The covers fell away from him, to reveal the black metal limb augmentations, fused to his body.

  Ami sat up too, and moved over to sit next to him. “Why didn’t you tell me that before, Nero?” she said, putting an arm over his shoulder.

  “It wasn’t relevant. It isn’t relevant,” he replied. “I shouldn’t let it get to me.” He stood up, brushing her arm away, and walked over to stare out of the window, on the city streets far below them. A silver shuttle flew past the window, heading to the adjacent Scraper.

  “What do you mean, it isn’t relevant? Of course it’s relevant, Nero. He was a friend.”

  “Casualties are inevitable in my line of work, Ami,” he replied, turning around to face her again, noting that she was now completely naked, sat on the side of the bed. “And there’s other things to be getting on with.”

  “That’s a load of crap, Nero. Just because there are risks doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be affected if you lose someone. If they’re important.”

  “Yeah, well...” There was silence between them for a time, as Ami stood up to look out at the view with Nero. Another shuttle flew by in the distance, this time. A factory owner, going to visit his property, perhaps.

  “You know, you’ve been like this ever since that cruiser crashed into the city,” she said, glancing at Nero. “That wasn’t...?”

  Nero turned to look at her. “Nothing to do with me. You know I’m in the trading business.”

  “Of course. And it’s a good job you didn’t have anything to do with that. There’s been a lot of talk recently, about who was responsible for the crash. They know it wasn’t an accident, and there were lots of reports of two shuttles seen leaving the cruiser, just before it hit the ground.”

  “And the point is, Ami...?”

  “The point, Nero? There’s talk about people in high positions - very high positions - taking an interest in the cause of the crash. Higher even than my father.” A slightly dark look clouded her features when she mentioned him. “Whoever did cause the crash needs to be careful, is what I’m saying. But since that has nothing to do with you, we can leave it at that, can’t we?”

  “Indeed,” Nero replied, thoughts swirling through his mind. They again lapsed into silence for a time, before Ami wandered off to the bathroom.

  “Coming?” she asked. Nero turned and followed her in, but not before taking a qiameth pill from the packet beside the bed.

  ****

  Talyah looked at the time. Thirty minutes late. Abnormal, but she decided she’d wait a few more minutes before doing anything. She looked up at the sky. There wasn’t a cloud in sight, and the morning sun was streaming rays of orange-red light over the city, only slightly obfuscated by the smoggy atmosphere. The massive Scrapers, so often hulking dark monoliths, appeared to glow red this morning. It was quite a sight.

  Another ten minutes passed, with still no sign of the expected ship. Talyah was about to give up, and head back to base to sort things out, when one of the ships approaching the spaceport caught her attention. It wasn’t the usual freighter that she was expecting, but the design was familiar to her. It was hard to place, though.

  Then it hit her. She’d seen the ship before when she’d had cause to visit Kaza'ona a year ago. Except, back then it had been sparkling clean, and in perfect condition. This ship nearing her now was scorched, as if it had been in a battle, and the engines seemed to be emitting some sort of vapour. This didn’t look good.

  Talyah waited patiently while the small ship slowly descended, heading to the landing pad where she was waiting. On the final phase of landing, the ship’s engines rotated to face downwards, bringing the ship to a steady hover a few centimetres above the landing pad, and then it lowered itself to the ground. The pilot cut the engines, cutting off the strange vapour that was being produced, and the boarding ramp descended
from underneath the ship’s nose.

  Talyah walked over to the ship, her curiosity now well and truly roused. A single figure stumbled down the ramp to meet her.

  “Are you alright, signore?” Talyah asked, when the man stopped in front of her, a slightly bleary look filling his eyes. It took a moment for him to comprehend that someone had spoken to him.

  “What? Um, yes, fine. I’m fine.”

  “Where have you come from?” Talyah asked, authority in her voice.

  “Kaza'ona. Are you...?”

  “Talyah. I’m waiting for the shipment, but instead of pills I find you. Perhaps you could explain this?”

  “Not really,” the man said. Talyah was about to say something, when the man continued. “I don’t know what happened. But we were attacked. The city. It was destroyed.”

  “Destroyed?” Talyah demanded.

  “I think. I ran, took this ship,” he said, glancing up at the ship he’d arrived in. “They fired at me, but I escaped. I escaped. And I came here. I didn’t know any other places, and I’ve flown shipments here before. For you.”

  Talyah watched the man, who appeared to be about to fall over. “Okay, I am going to take you back to our base, to talk with Nero, yes?” The man nodded in response, and Talyah carefully led him to her shuttle.

  It only took a couple of minutes before they arrived at the base, where Talyah took the man to a seat, and left him while she went to find Nero. When she returned a few minutes later, though, the man had lapsed into unconsciousness.

  “Hey, wake up!” She shook his head, but it didn’t seem to have any effect. “Is Zea around?” she asked Nero, who was now stood next to them.

  “No, but I’m not sure he could help anyway. This guy looks pretty badly injured, if you ask me.” He glanced at some of the man’s wounds, to see blood still seeping from them. “Besides, who is he exactly?”

  Talyah glanced up at him. “I don’t know. But he’s from Kaza'ona, and apparently the city was attacked.”

  “Attacked?”

  “Yes, but by who, or how badly, I don’t know. We didn’t get this week’s shipment, though. So there’s something gone wrong.”

  Nero looked back down at the man sprawled on the chair. “His wounds don’t even look that bad. What caused them?”

  “He didn’t say,” Talyah replied. “But they look like they may have been caused by shrapnel. Perhaps he was caught in an explosion. Maybe he has internal injuries.”

  Nero nodded in agreement. The wounds certainly weren’t caused by a laser weapon, and nor did they look like a blade had been the cause. “In which case, there’s really nothing we can do for him.” Nero sighed. “I'm gonna have to go out there myself, aren’t I? See what’s going on.”

  “That seems likely,” Talyah agreed, whilst she felt the unconscious man’s neck, searching for a pulse. She couldn’t find one. “I think we’ve lost him, Nero,” she said, looking up.

  “Well, at least he made it here to warn us. Get rid of the body, Tal. I’ll find Nate.”

  ****

  They sighted the planet as the shuttle emerged from the space-between-space, the now-familiar grey ball floating in the blackness of space looming up in front of them.

  Nero looked around, seeing no other signs of life. No ships were visible, and the shuttle’s sensors weren’t picking up anything out of the ordinary. They were alone.

  “So we’re not under attack yet?” Nate asked, sat in the copilot’s seat. “That’s good. What are we even expecting down there, Nero?”

  “I don’t know,” Nero replied, adjusting their course to bring them to the single city on the planet. “So be prepared for anything.”

  The planet rapidly filled their field of view, as the ship flew towards it. Nero brought the speed down as they entered the atmosphere, to allow the heat dissipaters to dispel the vast amounts of thermal energy that were being produced. The ship shook slightly as they descended through the atmosphere, the anti-inertial dampers doing their best to keep the vehicle steady.

  He glanced at the map that was being fed to his holodisplay, in his peripheral vision. The city should be almost directly below them. Keeping the ship descending almost vertically, they soon broke out of the dark layer of clouds they had been travelling in, to see the vast sunken city of Kaza'ona stretching out before them.

  Nothing seemed too out of the ordinary as Nero brought the shuttle down, to land on one of the vacant landing pads on the giant building’s roof. They got out of the shuttle, and stood there, fighting the wind to stay upright. In the distance, on another landing pad, Nero could just make out a smoking hulk of a shuttle. Otherwise, the roof was deserted. There weren’t even any security guards to come out to meet them.

  They fought their way through the biting wind to one of the entrances, noting the lack of guards again. They climbed down, and into the building, emerging into a darkened corridor. Nero turned on the lighting strips integrated into his jacket.

  “Shit!” Nate said, now they were out of the wind. “Something’s happened, then. Did you see that other shuttle?”

  “I did,” Nero agreed, saying nothing more. He walked along the corridor, finally emerging into one of the major thoroughfares, illuminated by the giant light-well shaft that ran through the centre of the building. It was deserted.

  The last time they had been here, the place hadn’t exactly been heaving, but there had been a lot of activity going on. Humans running a shop, an alien delivering something, a child running down the corridor. Now, the place just had a strange atmosphere, as if they were in a morgue, or some other place where death lingered.

  “Well, shall we go and see if Heldine is still around?” Nate said, his usual jovial tone gone for the moment.

  They walked through a couple of kilometres of corridor, not seeing anyone, but occasionally seeing blackened marks on walls, or the floor. Nate bent over to investigate one of the marks, and it looked very much like scorching from laser weapons. Nero had never seen weapons that could produce such a large area of scorching, though.

  Finally, they came to the lab that Heldine, their contact on the planet, had worked in. Before they even entered, Nero and Nate knew what they found inside wasn’t going to be good. Outside the door was a much greater concentration of the blackened scorch marks, and the entry panel had been completely melted.

  Nero slid open the unsecured door, and the scene that greeted them was one of devastation. All of the lab equipment, on the work surfaces and on the shelving units, was utterly destroyed. The floor was a sea of shattered and melted plastics. There were also three bodies lying sprawled on the floor, each with massive holes in their torsos.

  “Fuck me,” Nate muttered, walking up to the nearest one, and flipping the body over onto its back. Neither of them recognised the victim, and the same held true for the other two bodies. All of them, however, had the same, slightly horrified expressions etched onto their features.

  They then tried the door to Heldine’s office, at the back of the lab. Again, like the other door, the locking mechanism had been completely melted, and the door was half open. Nate slid the door the rest of the way open, and sitting in the chair behind the desk, facing the door, was Heldine. The top half of her head had been blown clean away, leaving a cauterised wound at about the level where her nose would have been.

  Nate walked over to her body. “No other wounds,” he reported. “Looks like she was killed instantly. I guess whoever did this didn’t want to question her.”

  There was nothing else of interest in the office, so they walked back out again, sparing the bodies another glance as they left. “Why would someone do this?” Nate asked when they were out of the lab again. “What’s the motive?”

  Nero thought back to what Ami had said before he’d left, but immediately dismissed it. “I don’t know, but this was professional work.” He looked around them again, noting how any bodies had been removed from the main corridors. “And who would go to the bother of all this just to get to
us?”

  “It’s a valid point,” Nate said. “Maybe it was retaliation against these people. Maybe their governatore slept with some woman he shouldn’t have, eh?” Nate laughed as they walked along, heading back in the direction of their shuttle.

  They walked through the corridors for a time, occasionally looking at the view out into the giant shaft that shot down through the centre of the building.

  “I think the pressing question for us,” Nero said after a time, “is where the hell are we going to find more qiameth now? This was the only place I know of that made it.”

  “You never heard of any others?”

  “Nope. These guys kept it pretty secret. I don’t even know if anyone else knew how to make it.”

  Nate glanced at Nero as they walked along. “I dunno, I did hear some rumours...”

  “Rumours...?”

  “Yeah. I was in a bar with these guys. Well, girls, if you must know, and I managed to overhear a conversation at a nearby table. See, these guys struck me as interesting, at the time. Maybe they were another gang, or something. Anyway, I ambled over, and they were talking about little red pills, you know? I figured they were talking about our merch, but then, they mentioned some guy I hadn’t heard of as their source.”

  “And when were you going to tell me about this, Nate?” Nero asked, exasperation in his voice.

  “Didn’t seem relevant at the time. And I never heard it mentioned again, so it sort of slipped my mind. But it’s an avenue to look into, ain’t it?” He flashed Nero a winning smile. Nero sighed.

  “Look into it when we get back. We’re going to have to act quickly here.” Nero wasn’t sure how much stock of the drug they had, but at the rate they sold it, their surplus supplies weren’t going to last very long. They needed a new supplier.

  “Sure thing boss.”

  ****

  The sky was dark as they approached the old warehouse on the outskirts of the city, and the rain was hitting the shuttle’s windscreen relentlessly. The world around them seemed abandoned and miserable, almost like Kaza'ona. But further away, light could be seen streaming out of the Scrapers, illuminating the sky above them in a multitude of colours.