Ghost of an Empire (Sentinel Series Book 3)

by Richard Flunker

  “Ghost?”

  It was an unusual thing to say; it didn’t make sense in the context. The man was about to collapse without bones and he calls her a ghost. He shook it off and finished writing the script. He recorded it in ten minutes then aligned it up with the finished video and let the computer get to work. He sat back with satisfaction, knowing that with the relay boost, he’d have his work to GNN far before anyone else. That was the problem with reporting on wars and battles. After said battle, satellites were down, there was wreckage in space playing games with signals and the victorious fleet was always jamming and sniffing signals. With a boost relay, he could link up with another relay outside of the warzone and send out his stream then. He wouldn’t be able to do anything till Allo came back with it though.

  Time to make himself busy.

  “You need anything?” Hosha asked Jainka “Work is done. Gonna go out and see if I can find a semblance of food on this tundra.”

  “You know this planet is one of THE most fertile that mankind knows? More food comes from here than nearly all other planets.”

  “Blah, blah, blah,” Hosha said. “Yes or no? Need something?”

  Jainka looked down then back up in defeat. “Fine. Yes. Something with meat would be great.”

  Hosha gave her a two finger salute and left the ship.

  Emma Temma space station was the civilian port in the capitol, and only one of two civilian space ports on the planet. In comparison to one of the twenty military space ports on the surface, it was quite small. The noble families had their own private space ports and there just wasn’t that much civilian traffic to and from the planet.

  Hosha found the tube transport into the city but found guards posted at its entrance. It was damaged and only for use by the Queen’s military. That didn’t matter. It didn’t take him long to find a paid ride into the city.

  The streets had been shoveled of all the snow, and that’s probably what was hiding so much of the damage from the battle. Smoke still smoldered from all over the city, but large swaths had escaped much, if any, damage. Either the Queen’s forces were merciful, or the old Dominion’s troops had fled in a hurry. The driver of his vehicle said that it was both.

  Meanwhile, the city continued to operate as normally as it could. The whole southeastern corner of the city, virtually untouched by the battle, had taken in a large amount of refugees from other harder hit sections of the city. Camps were hastily set up, under the supervision of some of her forces as well as city police and Secundaria planetary engineers. It came as no surprise to him that the restaurants in that portion of the city were packed.

  After walking in and out of a few jammed spots, Hosha swallowed his pride and waited in line for a tiny booth in a corner restaurant that offered a wide assortment of meals. The wait in the cold was horrible and the tiny place was loud to the point he couldn’t hear his thoughts, but when the food arrived at his table, and the fragrant steam hit his nostrils, he knew it was worth it. That there was hot food from what appeared to be fresh sources was a testament to what the rebel Queen was trying to accomplish. She needed these systems as unharmed as possible. Plus, it was easier to rule over people that were fed than over those who were starving.

  Hosha took out his tablet and tried unsuccessfully to link up to any local network. He looked around while waiting for his food and noticed that few, if any, people were having luck with their communication devices. The attacking forces probably hit the networks hard and those, certainly, would take some time to bring back up. So Hosha just observed and listened.

  Other than the increased amount of human traffic, it seemed to be just another day on Secundaria. Hosha had been here on the capital city about six years in the past to cover a military parade, one of many the Dominion held every ten years or so. It was mostly just to put up a good display for their enemies, and GNN loved every minute of it.

  He ate his food with gusto and then ordered two more meals, packed them up, paid, and left. The sun was out and the snow was melting, creating a slosh of ice and mud everywhere. He stopped a few times on the way back to the ship to take pictures. He would never know which he’d find useful for his eventual memoirs. Certainly, this day on Secundaria was one for the history books. He was rerouted out of the refugee section and took a detour back to the space station, but when he got to the transport tube, it was out of commission still. As he looked around, this time there were no cabbies. He brought up his map, saw the distance back to the ship, shrugged, and began to walk.

  With his sunglasses on and his coat snug tight, he walked down the road that led towards the station. Thousands of other men and women, and many children, flowed in the same direction. The city was being emptied and a few million people were heading out to tube stations outside of town, where they would take transport all across the mostly land planet. In time, the city would be rebuilt, and the majority of these people would return, but not all.

  After walking nearly three miles, Hosha’s tablet beeped. He took it out of his pocket in surprise, and saw a very tenuous connection, but one nonetheless. He tapped the screen and saw Jainka’s face.

  “Yes?”

  “Allo is back. He has the gear setup and ready. Where are you at?” she asked. The video on the tablet broke up a bit, the image kept freezing up and filling up with artifacts.

  “There’s no tubes up and running, so I’m walking back. It’ll be a while.”

  “What do you want us to do?”

  “Drop a link to the ship. I’m gonna stop here while I have reception, and I’ll start the transfer remotely,” he said.

  The image froze with Jainka mid nod, then blacked out. Hosha saw the direct link to the ship, and fished through his files until he found his report. He confirmed the threaded link, and sent the file. In a few hours, the data packet would be going through threaded stream towards Sol. In a few days, he’d be even more famous than ever.

  The sun went away for a while, as light gray clouds traced the sky. Another winter storm was scheduled to move in by the evening, and he hoped to be back in the warm ship before then. Despite the fact the Queen had tried her hardest not to completely raze the city, it was still suffering the after effects of a large scale battle. Power was intermittent, and plenty unfortunate souls were going to freeze to death tonight if they didn’t find shelter.

  As he continued walking, Hosha came across a large commercial block. They were empty, no business being run that day, but next to the tall buildings, were a series of museums and historical buildings. He remembered from scanning the maps earlier that amidst those buildings was the Secundaria Genetic Archive, a historical museum for the Dominion’s historical DNA. He took a quick look at the time, and dashed through the slowly moving crowd until he reached the large parking area before the buildings themselves.

  Without a working tablet, the reporter wandered from building to building, reading the signs. They were empty, and probably wouldn’t have any visitors for some time. Finally, he found the one he was looking for, and walked up to its large wooden doors. He pushed them and was a bit surprised to find them open. As the door swung open, a blast of cold air and snow swept into the building. From a ways into the building, he heard someone shout out, “CLOSE THE DOOR!”

  Hosha pushed against the heavy door, closing it. As he turned, he was greeted by a short, old woman with a set of thick glasses. She walked amazingly quickly for a woman who at least appeared to be quite old.

  “Wasn’t expecting any visitors today,” she said in a creaky voice. She walked up to Hosha and looked up to him, “especially not any foreigners.”

  Hosha walked past her and looked into the breadth of the building. It reminded him of the historical libraries of Earth. One cavernous central room was lined from floor to ceiling with books, while several hundred more rows of bookshelves lined the floor themselves. The air inside was reasonably warm, dry, if anything. At the far end, an enormous statue reached from the floor up to the very top. Its arms were extended on
to the third floor. The second and third stories opened up in the middle, and while standing there looking up, Hosha was impressed by the intricate colored glass windows that were the roof. As he watched, the colors phased and swam, mixing and separating in a hypnotic pattern.

  “Is this the DNA archive?” he asked, a bit perplexed.

  “This is the house and register for all the bloodlines of the Dominion, from the first Dominar, Ergos the First, to our current Dominar, Calavan Minas,” the woman spoke eloquently, her elderly voice vanished under the praise of her Dominar, “and the walls are lined with the bloodlines of all the families of royal name, in all of the Dominion’s systems.”

  Hosha followed the old lady as she walked towards a central kiosk.

  “There’s no one here. Aren’t you a bit worried? With the battle?” Hosha asked.

  “This isn’t a target.”

  “Sure, but looters? The rebel soldiers?” Hosha asked. He tried to express concern, but he really was just trying to read the old lady. He had been half hoping to find the place empty.

  “These rebels? They are Dominion blood. They would no sooner attack this building than they would their mother. This Queen of theirs? She is come from one of the oldest bloodlines in our history. She knows the significance of a place such as this,” she said, proudly and unphased.

  “Do you mind if I take a quick look? Maybe take some pictures?” he asked. The more he looked, the more he thought there was nothing here for him. In a modern world, they had kept records on paper, just asking for a fire or a bomb to wipe it all out.

  “This is what we are here for,” she said, her elderly voice returning with a smile. “Is there anything I can help you find?”

  “No,” Hosha began, when something else came into his mind. “Actually, have you heard of the term ghost before?”

  The old lady gave him a one eyebrow raised look.

  “Ghost? Like the spirits of the dead returned?” she asked.

  “Well. I guess, maybe.”

  “I suppose I could find something about that somewhere, there are many books here. But it would be just some passing reference to fiction. Why ghost?”

  Hosha thought a bit. “Yeah. Well, would there be any other meaning for the word ghost?”

  A quizzical look took over the old lady’s face. She scratched her temple, then began walking back behind her kiosk.

  “Well, maybe. Let me bring something up,” she said, sitting on a small chair. The seat floated up, lifting her up to his height. A small screen slid out from under a wooden console and she began typing. Hosha leaned over, and saw her pulling up digital samples of books.

  “The books are in digital form?” he asked.

  She guffawed. “Of course. We aren’t barbarians,” she said, typing away.

  Hosha stepped back and looked again at the library that would rival any in the known galaxy. All for show, so typical of the Dominion.

  “Ok. Here,” she said. Another screen slid out from the side of the kiosk where Hosha stood, and began to display the same information she was working on. “There is something about a ghost referred to in an old colonial log book from the old caliphate.”

  “Caliphate?” Hosha asked. He had heard that word before, but didn’t understand its context.

  She looked up momentarily from her typing to look at him. “How well do you know your history of Coran Mr. foreigner?”

  “I know about the first Dominar, and the expansion wars.”

  “No, I mean, before the Dominion.”

  “There was a before the Dominion?” Hosha asked, intrigued for the first time. It wasn’t always there was something he didn’t know.

  “There was. The initial wave of colonists on Coran were Mussilmen. When they reached Coran, they named the planet, and established the caliphate.”

  Now Hosha was confused. He didn’t know any of this and he thought his history knowledge was top notch.

  “Wasn’t that some old world religion?”

  “It was. A powerful one at that, until constant wars and lack of progress relegated the belief to a mere cult. It was this small but powerful group that first fled Earth and landed on Coran. The first home for mankind outside of Sol.”

  He did not know any of this. He scanned the information on the console as the librarian brought it up. This religion was known for its militarism and strict code and guidelines. Unlike most religions of old Earth though, it had never adapted well to the growing changes. They fled Earth and found Coran, but even here they didn’t survive. The Coran system was a target for nearly all of the first colonists from Earth. This Caliphate, a kind of theocracy, found itself flooded by millions of immigrants, and fading once again into irrelevance. Space travel and the discovery of life on other planets, along with the ever evolving cultural and societal needs, had poked so many holes in its theology that it began to crumble within itself.

  Within forty years of landing on Coran, the Caliphate was no more. Hosha scanned the records a bit more closely, and noticed a five year gap, between the fall of this religion and the formation of the Dominion. There were a lot of missing records in this five year period, something about a calamity that plagued the people of Coran. It was during this period that many people fled to Secundaria and Mequa and established those colonies.

  “What happened here?” Hosha asked, pointing at the time period.

  “War? Civil or otherwise?” the old lady said, “We don’t have any good records of that time, probably due to whatever conflict arose there. We do know that from that fire the Dominion arose.”

  Hosha nodded. The more he read about this Caliphate, the more resemblance he saw with the Dominion. Strong military drive, conquest and expansion, a strict patriarchal system, but also a general lack of technological progress. Except, of course, for the Dominion’s genetic prowess. This ability had come seemingly from nowhere, something Sol had a hard time believing. Hosha thought that was just jealousy speaking. A lot of history’s greatest scientific breakthroughs came from seemingly nowhere. Of course, the true source of this discovery was the Dominion’s greatest secret. Rumor held that only the Dominar and the elder circle knew, and no one else.

  Rumors made for great reporting.

  “Ok, I found it,” the old lady shouted out. Her cry of joy was enough to startle Hosha out from his concentration.

  “There is a reference to a ghost problem among some merchants sometime during that dark period. An automated caravan of some sorts started going haywire, and drove the poor human souls inside towards a completely different city.”

  She scanned the data over to Hosha’s console and he continued to read. The malfunctioning caravan stopped in the city of Pagoya, and within a day, machines throughout the city were ‘acting up’. Lives were lost and some rituals were attempted on the machines, for the fear was that ghosts had taken them.

  “Ghost in the machine?” he asked out loud.

  “Ghost in the machine,” she confirmed. “You Solars call it something similar. Ghost in the shell.”

  “These machines were taken over by AI?” Hosha asked, scanning the dates in his mind.

  “I have no way of knowing,” she said, “These records are far too sparse to know for sure, and I don’t read anything about the result of these machines going awry, but the terminology is there. Your ghosts that aren’t dead people.”

  The development of AI came long after the colonization of Coran, and by the time the technology spread to the Dominion seat, it would have been several hundred years after the references in the document.

  “Doesn’t make sense,” Hosha continued to talk to himself.

  “What doesn’t? Maybe there was just some kind of glitch in the machines, or most likely, some kind of sabotage. Either way, it just provides further proof of man’s fear of their metallic children. Even long before the Machine Wars, man put a word that strikes fear, ghost, into the thought of machines taking over.”

  “Would there be any reason, here in the Dominion, for a
nyone to call a person, a ghost?” Hosha asked, sheepishly.

  The old lady gave him another raised eyebrow look.

  “I suppose if you call a person a ghost, it’s because you think they’re dead. Right?” she shrugged.

  Hosha nodded and looked back down at the console. “Do you mind if I copy this all?”

  She agreed and he transferred the documents to his tablet. He continued to scan other documents from the same era, copying everything over to his tablet. He scanned as much as he could until he realized he had been there for some time. After thanking the woman, he left the library and its coffin of paper and embraced the cold of the outside.

  “Hmmm.” The sun had gone down, and darkness had added an extra chill to the already cold night. In the distance, the dark grey clouds left a tiny hint of the setting sun. He picked up his pace and joined the moving crowd which hadn’t diminished in size despite the incoming storm.

  Rebel troops were among them now, on their loud horns, urging everyone to get inside for the night, anywhere. They were handing out personal heaters and food items, and directing people towards shelters or buildings. Behind him, he saw a steady stream of people headed towards the commercial buildings next to the historic section. He could feel the temperatures dropping, and he needed to get to his ship as soon as possible.

  As he reached the edge of the development, a large troop transport caravan came driving through, slowly parting the way through the crowd. As they drove past, rebel troops called out to those still walking to climb on board, and that they would get a ride out to the tube stations. The space port was in that same direction, so Hosha took up on that offer.

  He climbed up into the back of the Centipede, the multi-wheeled transport that could easily sit a hundred. It was nearly full of rebel troops, mostly wounded. He asked the soldier, a giant of a man, sitting at the rear of the hatch if he could take pictures. The soldier looked towards the back of the transport and called out something into his comm. Another large soldier came walking down the aisle of the transport, clearly an office of some sort.