Ghost of an Empire (Sentinel Series Book 3)

by Richard Flunker

  It would be years, if not decades, till that very change held any real effect. Only then would the new empire would truly take shape.

  Each system would be a part of the Union, and as new noble family members wished so, they could colonize a new system, and thus become part of the union. Free worlds would also be allowed to join the Union in a similar fashion, but this was another step far into the future. That statute, though, clearly allowed for existing Dominion systems to forgo their allegiance to the old ways and join the Union, without much change.

  Those were just the barest of details. Hundreds, if not thousands of committees had gathered in even more meetings to hash out the details. The military, the economy, citizenship of billions, nearly hundreds of billions, high level laws, judges, all of these things were being hashed out, and would likely continue to be hashed out for years to come. Whether this new Union would last or not, or if the Dominion would somehow find a way to rise from its putrid ashes or not, Hosha didn’t know. What he did know, though, was that freedom had really arrived to so many that had lived under slavery.

  The Queen had made it explicitly clear that slavery was abolished. The very first Union law she signed assured that no being would be forced to work for another under threat of harm or death. On many planets, the labor windfall had caused economic crashes, but in others, where brilliant members of noble families had stepped forward, the turnabout was amazing. But one side effect of the end of slavery was the return of many people to their planets of origin, many from outside the Dominion.

  Hosha had already filmed the huge crowds that the newly reopened Commonwealth embassy was hosting every day. On Coran only, it was said that of the three hundred million slaves freed, more than half were from the Commonwealth, or had ties to Sol. Each individual had to be identified and confirmed before the Solar government would allow anyone back. It was a process that would take years, and already, the strain was showing. Officials had urged people to keep working and living, but many had simply left their homes and walked or ridden to the consulates all over the planet. Shanty towns rose up and the conditions were deplorable, despite everything the Queen tried to help with.

  “There!” Hosha shouted again, but Allo was already on it.

  “Boss, that footage is crazy,” Jainka said over the comm.

  Hosha shook his head in agreement.

  A riot had broken out in the courtyard of the embassy. The converted temple had a large walled section, and at some point in the morning, thousands had managed to open the gate, demanding something or other, and a riot had broken out. Solar troops tried holding the mass back, but they were sorely outnumbered. Union forces, including a small pod from the newly minted First, were on hand at the city, and intervened, and for the first time since their liberation, these former slaves had to watch as their own liberators acted against them.

  It wasn’t pretty.

  Three were dead, likely from being trampled, and hundreds were injured. The Union troops had pushed the rioters back out of the courtyard and beyond the wall, and the grassy area was now a makeshift camp for the hurt. As part of the press, and now an exceedingly popular reporter for GNN, Hosha and his crew had been given access to the courtyard. As they walked about, talking to people, the main gates to the courtyard had come under attack by the rioters, who had reformed and decided to push again. The giant metal gates came crashing down and a second rush of people came spilling back into the courtyard. People ran past injured men and women, knocking them off their cots or simply stepping on them.

  Hosha and Allo held firm as the crowd surged towards them, despite Jainka calling in their ears to get out of there. It was a sea of desperate humanity. Hosha found it funny, for a great majority of these people weren’t even born in the Commonwealth. Perhaps their parents or grandparents were, but they had lived their entire lives as slaves, and had dreamed so much of the world their parents had come from, that now, they wanted so badly to return to it. Little did they know that, other than Earth, Mars, and Eridiani, and maybe Eta Cassiopeia, Commonwealth systems were a dump. They might be fleeing labor slavery here, but would be most likely stuck in corporate slavery back in the Solar worlds.

  The second riot was stopped momentously with the arrival of the mechanized soldiers of the First. Crashing down from a hovering transport, the twenty feet tall knights were a truly awesome sight, and Hosha got it all on camera. With their terrifying presence they were able to avoid a much greater carnage. Within an hour, the mass of people had retired back to their shanty town outside of the walls. The pod of the First then took their place among the Union troops, and would remain there as long as they were needed, which, by the number of people that kept coming to the city, would be a while.

  Hosha went among the Union soldiers, trying to get quotes and interviews, but few spoke to him. They liked him, he knew it. Most back in the Commonwealth viewed the Queen as just another token Dominion ruler, albeit, a woman. They weren’t seeing the changes taking place, and Hosha was trying hard to show them that this was an entirely new player in the ballgame. His positive portrayal of this new empire, while blowing his ratings through the roof, didn’t exactly endear him to many back in Sol. But those that saw his reports here on Coran, understood and thanked him. They just weren’t allowed to talk to him.

  But he saw someone that would.

  “Commander Ogho,” Hosha shouted out, running up to the giant of a man.

  The soldier turned about and smiled as he saw the reporter running up to him. His interview with the earth man had been popular, not only on GNN, but among fellow Union soldiers. He had turned into a mini celebrity overnight, one that had earned him a face to face visit with the Queen.

  “That’s First Tennant Ogho,” he said.

  “Hey, congratulations on the promotion,” Hosha replied, “And, the new arm!”

  Ogho swung his new arm around. He flexed once, twisting and turning the arm like the proud owner of a new toy.

  “They offered to grow me a new arm. But these new cybernetic ones are really quite good.”

  He pulled down his sleeve, and then pulled away at the synthetic skin, showing the metal underneath, still covered by a light layer of moist lube.

  “Did it come from your Queen?” Hosha asked.

  Ogho smiled proudly. It was all the answer the reporter needed.

  “Then it’s very likely the best there is. Word is, she is a genius with technical things,” Hosha said.

  “She is a genius with everything,” Ogho corrected.

  Hosha laughed. “Yeah, THAT’S actually the rumor. So how did you get stationed to guard duty? I figured a pod of the First would have much greater tasks at hand.”

  “Luck of the draw. We just finished up another mission and we were headed back to base when we got a call in on this one.”

  “What mission was that?”

  “I’m not going to say.”

  “Of course you’re not.”

  Hosha turned around and motioned for Allo to stop filming, then turned back to the giant.

  “Better?”

  Ogho pointed back at several transport craft landed on the far side of the courtyard.

  “They are full of tech. Queen has us going out all over the planet looking for all these hidden caches of tech.”

  Hosha dug out a packet of pecans and handed them to Ogho. The reporter knew of the super soldier’s love for the Earth nut, and always had some with him just to offer them to his giant. Ever since the interview, Hosha had met up with Ogho three more times. Each time, off the record, Hosha got a good view into what was going on behind the scenes with the First and the Union military. The more he heard, the more he wanted to report on all of it. The news of what the Queen was finding would have shot him off into even greater stardom, but he was a reporter after all, and greatly respected his sources. Besides, having Ogho in his pocket was important. The super soldier was the closest he could get to the Queen.

  “Find anything interesting?”


  “No. Techs just transferred thousands of pentas over while we sat and watched,” Ogho replied, tasting each and every nut one at a time. They looked like tiny specks of sand in the giant man’s mouth. His giant fingers could barely hold onto one piece, but even with his size, he was incredibly dexterous.

  “Rumor is she’s looking for something specific.”

  Ogho nodded. “Couldn’t tell you what. As far up as I can go, no one knows, but she certainly is looking for whatever IT is.”

  Allo grinned from behind the two. He had always found it funny, the two men together. It was like a man and his little son, although, physically speaking, they were about the same age.

  “How long are you here for?” Hosha asked.

  “Just till tomorrow. They have another Union unit coming in to replace us,” Ogho replied, “it got messy here huh?”

  “People desperate for something new.”

  “There will be much new here. Why won’t they stay?”

  “Would you stay where you had been enslaved?” Hosha asked.

  “I was a slave to the warlords. I am staying for the liberator.”

  “You know, for a big dumb giant, you can be pretty smart with your words.”

  Ogho laughed. “Technically, I am mentally smarter than you. They made me that way.”

  The reporter frowned back. “Yeah, well, at least I have pecans.”

  “You win.”

  “Where are you headed back to? Base?”

  Ogho nodded.

  “Do you think you can ask whomever is in charge if we could ride back with you? I’m sure I can write up something good for GNN as payment.”

  “Seeing as I’m the one to ask, that is fine by me.”

  On the short flight back to the First’ base, Hosha did as he’d promised, and interviewed a small group of techs, asking them about their part in the war, about their families, their lives after the military, what they thought of the Queen and the new Union. It was as generic as it would get, but a fine story nonetheless. He would still have to edit it and get it transferred up, which would be next week by the way things were busy, but he had done his part.

  The new base the First was establishing was just south of the Holy Seat, the now ruins of the old Dominion. It was the base of the former First, now being rebuilt and redone for the Queen’s personal army. While the Union military would be separate and part of each system, the First would answer directly to the Queen. Plenty had found that a little off-putting. It gave her a significant amount of power, not that anyone was going to say anything about it.

  The base was a city in of itself. It housed nearly all thirty thousand men and women, including the super soldiers. A city was being built along the base to house the families of the support network, along with a brand new space port. As they flew in, Hosha could see a new transport tube being laid out to lead into the city that still had no name.

  Jainka had the ship just a day’s transport south, and really could have picked the reporter up at the consulate, but Hosha wanted to get eyes on just how much the Queen was doing up at the temple. Crews still worked every hour of the day to remove remnants of the old Dominion from the enormous complex of the temple, while simultaneously destroying it. He would have loved to get a good look at the work, but that area was strictly off limits, on the ground and in the air. Even Ogho wasn’t spilling anything about it.

  Hosha wasn’t surprised though. Nearly a thousand years of history were buried in that temple, a wealth probably far greater than the minerals and energy stored and left behind by the old Dominion. His stories would pale in comparison to whatever was found in that rubble.

  He received a small tent for the night and Jainka would come get him in the morning. At the very least, it wasn’t cold in this part of the planet. In fact, it was a bit too warm. That night, he woke up to find himself drenched in sweat. For a man who grew up on Mars, where it was never warm, at all, this was an unusual sensation. Instead of trying to sleep, he got up and walked around. There were guards everywhere, so he left his camera, and his snoring partner, back at the tent with his gear, and just walked. A large wall, remnants of a glorious era long in the past, dotted the northern edge of the base. With permission, he walked up onto the wall, and walked its crumbling edge.

  They would soon completely demolish the wall. There was no reason in the modern age to have a wall, other than glorious ego and delusions of past wars. But for that moment, as the breeze hit him and cooled him off, if only just a bit, it offered Hosha an uninterrupted view north towards the old temple.

  What a world he lived in. He had seen pictures of the temple, many times, but only recreations. No actual images of the building were allowed, and having such images was an offense punishable by death. The extremes of the Dominion. Now that crumbling temple lay in heaps just like the empire that it was built upon.

  The Dominion. The thorn in Earth’s side. Evil and tyrannical. The people of Earth would make it seem as if they were the good and the Dominion the bad. Hosha knew better.

  The corporations of Sol were no better than the families of the Dominion. Their word was power, as was their wealth. They ruled planets and systems unopposed, and their so called freedom and liberty were words used to disguise their own form of slavery. His people needed a revolution as well, but while the Queen had met some opposition here among these worlds, it would be nothing compared to what the corporations would do in the Commonwealth.

  And the Alliance and their claim of true freedom was just one crazy psychopath from Anarchy. Each system was only as strong as they could to fend off pirates and bandits. Only once in his reporting life had his ship ever come under attack, and that was in Alliance space.

  Hosha raised his cup of water up in salute to the Queen, who must be somewhere in the temple ruins. It was said she didn’t sleep at all, so why not. As he lowered the cup to his lips, it slipped out of his hand and went tumbling down the side of the wall.

  “SHIT!”

  In the dim light of the night sky, he could barely make out where the plastic cup had landed. The wall was just twenty feet tall, but crumbled and fallen in so many sections. The cup was on pile of stone and rubble just ten feet down, and the reporter wanted his cup back. He lowered himself down, but completely misjudged a notch in the rock, and slipped. As he tumbled over, he caught the cup out of the corner of his eye go spinning by. Problem was, it was he who was spinning.

  He never saw where he hit his head upon.

  He woke up to the face of two helmeted mechs looking down at him. At that painful moment, he felt incredibly small. No matter what they told him, he felt like an idiot. At first, he had to explain what he was doing outside of the walls. Even with his popularity, there were increasing security factors the soldiers were dealing with. Ogho finally showed up at the infirmary where Hosha was being looked after and vouched for him. Seventeen stitches later, and a whole heaping of skin sealer, Hosha followed Ogho back to a small building, where the giant had to write up an official report for the mishap.

  “Paperwork,” Ogho complained, “tons of it. Every day.”

  Hosha apologized, but Ogho would have none of it. Instead, after finishing up the report, he looked down at the reporter and asked him if he wanted the greatest story of his life. Hosha wondered for a moment where that had come from, but he didn’t care. Yes was and would always be the answer to that question.

  “What are we talking about here?” Hosha asked.

  “Let’s go for a ride.”

  The reporter sent a message to Jainka, who was already inflight, informing her that he was going out for a story, but didn’t receive an answer before he left. Allo was allowed to come along to record everything, but neither of them were allowed to have any form of live comm units of any sort. His tablet was coded to be off the network and his was thoroughly checked over by techs for any other recording devices. Although inconvenient, all that really excited the reporter. If they were taking such great measures to ensure he couldn’t communic
ate real time with anyone, whatever he was going to see was huge. Could only be.

  His excitement only grew from there. He sat next to Ogho and two other soldiers in a smaller tracked transport and they were followed to about twenty other soldiers from the Thirtieth Pod on two more large transports. They exited the base and turned north, and there was only one thing in that direction. The ruins of the temple he had gazed at just the previous night. He exchanged wide eyed glances with his camera man. He loved having the right friends.

  The temple was truly in ruins, but even the rubble was a glorious sight. The main throne room had collapsed unto itself, as well as the two towers behind it, the entire garrison barracks and the flight port on the far northern edge of the temple. In fact, there was really only one building that had remained completely untouched. It was small, almost like a storage depot of some sort, on the far eastern edge of the complex, up against the remains of the stone fence that once surrounded the temple. Just two hundred feet separated the edge of the stone fence there and the quickly ascending mountains of the Arafar, a dramatic geographical monument that was the very edge of yet another mountain range.

  “What are we doing here?” he asked what felt like a hundred times.

  They entered the small depot, where First engineers had setup a whole living station, as well as a warehouse and storage area. Three large haulers were being loaded with large cylinders by engineer mechs, while many more ran around scanning crates and moving them around. He still wasn’t allowed to record anything here, but he made plenty of mental notes. It was like the staging grounds for something he just couldn’t put a finger on.