Kajic waved distractedly at his second in command for her to give the order.
“Commence countdown,” she said. “The Ana Vereine will jump in four minutes.”
“All systems green, Commander,” telemetry announced.
“Good.” Then, perhaps sensing that something was amiss, Makaev approached the podium. “Captain, is everything in order?”
“I’m not sure.” Kajic called into being a window in his hologram, not caring that it opened where his chest normally was. “Do you recognize this face?”
Makaev studied the picture for a moment, then shook her head. “No, sir. Should I?”
“No, I suppose not. I certainly didn’t.”
Makaev waited a moment, then prompted, “Sir, I’m not sure I follow—?”
“His name is Adoni Cane. Or rather, it was. According to shipboard records, he disappeared over two thousand years ago after ordering an attack on a civilian colony that resulted in the death of nearly four million people.”
She glanced at the picture again. “Forgive me for saying this, sir, but: so what?”
“I took his picture this afternoon, down in the warren.” Kajic bestowed a wry smile upon his holographic image. “At least when we have ghosts, we have ghosts with class!”
For a long moment, she said nothing. Then, uncertainly: “I see, sir.”
“What’s the matter with you?” He leaned closer, bringing the picture in his chest with him. “I’ve found our ghost! I don’t know what any of it means, but at least we know who it is.”
Finally she moved. With a disapproving frown, she raised her eyes to those of his hologram and said evenly: “What ghost?”
He stared at her, dumbfounded. He wasn’t sure exactly how he had expected Makaev to respond, but certainly not like this. Not with blank incomprehension.
Before he could reply, the red alert warning sounded. The Ana Vereine was about to jump. Filled with a sudden and overwhelming fear that something had gone terribly, terribly wrong, he turned to face the bridge crew. “No—wait!” he cried.
return to Szubetka Base
Fighting his built-in prompts every step of the way, he sent his mind deep into the ship’s programming, trying to halt the ship’s departure.
“We can’t—!”
priority gold-one
But it was already too late.
With a soundless rip, the Ana Vereine tore through the fabric of the anchor point and entered hyperspace.
* * *
“What’s /
/ happening /
/ to /
/ me /
/...?”
<1 said, don’t fight it!> The voice burned into him like a brand, the words stabbing at the very core of his soul.
Kajic suddenly realized what had happened: he had broken down at last. First the mysterious glitch in continuity, then the matter of the “ghost” that Makaev had known nothing about, and now this. The strain had finally been too much for him.
In a way, the knowledge came to him as a relief. What point was there in fighting madness?
Then—
Light.
He opened his eyes—or attempted to. Eyes? No; that was an old habit, one he’d thought long forgotten. He tried again, this time sending the impulse through the proper channels.
“Translation completed,” said a voice. Memory attached it a label: telemetry.
priority gold-one
He was on the bridge of the Ana Vereine.
“Atalia?” He felt his hologram fraying around the edges as he tried to regain his grip on reality. He remembered something about voices, but nothing definite. His memory of the moments preceding their arrival was hazy.
“Yes, Captain?” His second in command stood beside him, watching him.
“Weren’t we...?” He felt dizzy for a moment, but fought the sensation. “Before the...” He could remember nothing that had happened during the jump. “Weren’t we talking about something?”
“I don’t think so, sir.” She leaned closer. “Is anything wrong?”
He pulled himself together at last. “No, nothing.” He didn’t want to ask about jump time; instead he glanced at the main screen, which showed him nothing at all. “We’ve arrived?”
“Residual effects clearing,” said telemetry. “Local space will reconfigure in sixty seconds.”
“Very good. Contact the commanders of Paladin and Galloglass to confirm our safe arrival.”
“Yes, sir.”
As the telemetry officer went about the task, Makaev leaned unnecessarily close to his image. “Are you certain you’re feeling all right, sir?”
He glanced sharply at her, suppressing any hint of confusion in both his voice and image. “Are you questioning my competence, Commander?” he asked coldly.
She took a step away from his image, her face flushed. “No, I—”
“Sir,” said telemetry. “I am having difficulty contacting Galloglass and Paladin.”
“What sort of difficulty?”
“They’re not responding at all, sir. I am picking up some coded traffic, but it’s not our code.”
“Whose, then?” asked Kajic.
“It’s not our code, sir,” telemetry repeated with a shrug. “I am unable to translate it.”
Beside him, Makaev stiffened. “An ambush!” she hissed.
“Impossible,” Kajic said. “Only a fool would attempt an attack anywhere near Szubetka Base. How long until those screens are clear?”
A pause, then: “Fifteen seconds, sir.”
“Maybe then we’ll know what the hell is going on.” Kajic glanced again at his second.
priority gold-one
“Ten seconds, sir.”
“I have a bad feeling about this, sir,” said Makaev without moving her eyes from the screen. “To have something go wrong now—”
“A little faith, Commander,” he said, and heard his own unease creep into his voice. “Everything will be fine.”
“Three seconds, sir.”
“It has to be.” This, barely a whisper to himself.
“Two seconds,” said telemetry. “One second, and—we are scanning local space now, sir.”
Kajic watched anxiously as the screen began to fill with data: visual light first, followed by the more exotic spectra, then by particle sources. All he saw in the initial moments of the scan were stars; only later did nearer, more discrete energy sources appear.
Three ships, not two, appeared in the void, and one very large installation less than a million kilometers away. Two of the ships were angling in toward it on docking approach; the third was leaving, arcing up and away from the Ana Vereine’s position. As more detail flooded in, Kajic made out the nestled shapes of ships already docked—hundreds of them, all angular and angry, sharp-pointed sticks to hurl at the indifferent stars.
“Those aren’t our ships,” he said, his mind’s eye narrowing.
“And that’s not Szubetka Base!” rasped Makaev.
A chill enveloped Kajic.
“No,” he said, his voice sounding hollow even to his ears. “No!”
“That’s COE Intelligence HQ!” Makaev turned to face him, shock naked in her eyes. “What the hell have you done?”
Kajic reeled under the force of her attack. “I—”
“You incompetent fool!” She whirled away from him and darted for her station.
“Atalia!” he snapped, desperate to regain some control over his escalating panic and confusion. “What are you doing?”
“I’m assuming command!” she shouted back. “You have betrayed us!” Then, over her shoulder at the rest of the crew: “Someone get us out of here while I deal with him!”
Even as her words reached him via the microphone at her console, even as her face loomed large in the camera facing her chair, even as she reached for the twin datalinks waiting like snake mouths to accept her hands—he realized what she was about to do.
He froze, unsure whether he had the right to stop her.
priority gold-one
By the time he realized he couldn’t, it was too late anyway. The commands input via her datalinks were already being processed.
priority override sequence “Kill-Switch” #1143150222
He screamed, feeling the words cut into his mind, tearing him apart
disable core command
piece by tiny piece
disable ancillary processors
flaying him
disable support memory
layer by layer
disable MA/AM interface
stripping him
disable primary database
of his delusions
disable cognitive simulators
of his command
disable life-support
of him
disable
of him
disable
of him
disable...
* * *
When it had finally finished—then, and only then, was he free.
18
DBMP Ana Vereine
‘954.10.38 EN
1595
Consciousness parted the thick, dark clouds as Roche opened her eyes. She found herself in a fairly small room, one decorated solely in gunmetal grey. The only piece of furniture it contained was the bed she lay upon. The single door to the room was shut, and the absence of any handle on her side suggested that it was intended to stay that way.
A cell of some sort, she guessed. And judging by the compact surgeon strapped to her chest, obviously a hospital cell in particular. But where?
When she tried to sit up, a familiar weight attached to her left arm dragged her back.
Again, silence.
“Hello?” she called, aloud this time. Seeing stereoscopic cameras watching from opposite corners of the room, she removed the surgeon and stepped toward one of them. The unblinking lenses followed her every movement. “Is anyone there?”
When the echo of her voice had faded, silence reclaimed the room as impenetrably as before. There was no sound beyond the cell, either. To all intents and purposes, the ship she was in—she could tell that much from the vagaries of artificial g—appeared completely dead.
But until someone came to talk to her, she had no way to tell where she was. The surgeon looked the same as they did everywhere, the standard Eckandi design found on that side of the galaxy. The room itself could have been on any Pristine vessel, except—she sniffed the air—it smelled new. How many recently built ships were there in either the Commonwealth or the Dato Bloc? And why would they send one to collect a single AI?
What had she missed?
She shook her head. She didn’t have enough information to guess what had happened to her. And the last thing she remembered was the battle on the top of the MiCom building: the flyers, the mortar bombs, the Dato trooper, and—
Cane.
The return of that memory stung. One hand rose automatically to touch her temple where he had struck her unconscious. No pain. No pain anywhere, in fact: in her ribs, her shoulder, or her recently shaved head. Physically, she felt better than she had for days.
After a few minutes, something finally broke the deathly silence. She heard, distant at first, but growing nearer by the second, the sound of footsteps in the corridor outside her cell. Two people, she guessed, marching in perfect time.
Seconds later, the door of the cell hissed smoothly open. A pair of Dato troopers stood outside, framed in the doorway like statues. Reflections glistened disconcertingly across their grey, ceramic shells as, in unison, they took one step forward into the cell. Two black faceplates stared impassively at her as she waited for their next move. Neither one, she noted, was armed.
“You are to come with us, Commander,” one of the troopers said, the voice issuing a little too loudly from the suit’s massive chest.
“Why?” The defiant tone was automatic.
“Your presence is required elsewhere.”
“Where?”
No answer.
She sighed. What was the point in resisting? Even unarmed, two troopers were more than a match for her. She would do better to save her energy for the interrogation that was surely to follow. At least that way she’d find out exactly where she was.
A large part of her suspected that she wasn’t going to enjoy the process of finding out.
* * *
The troopers led her through a maze of passages and elevators, heading deep into the ship’s infrastructure. If she hadn’t already guessed that the ship was new, the short journey would have convinced her. Apart from a few small signs of Human occupation, the bulkheads and floors were virtually untouched.
Yet, despite the occasional evidence of life, the ship seemed more deserted than ever. She heard no voices, no footsteps besides hers and her escorts’, none of the small mechanical whispers that betrayed a presence nearby. After a few minutes, even the presence of the two troopers began to unnerve her; they might have been machines for all the sound they made.
Eventually they arrived at a door, coming from the other side of which she could hear voices—and heated ones, by the sound of them. But the door remained closed, and neither of the troopers moved to open it.
“Well?” she asked, glancing from one impassive visor to the other, not really expecting an answer. “Are we going to stand out here all day?”
As though her voice had prompted a response, the door slid open and the troopers ushered her inside, taking positions on either side of the entrance.
The room was ten meters across, circular with a high, domed roof. The carpet was a plush burgundy pile, and the fixtures lavish for a military spaceship. At the opposite end of the room was a drink dispenser; low tables held a variety of finger food on glass plates; a quartered ring of comfortable armchairs faced a central holographic display. A meeting hall of some kind, or a senior officers’ mess.
At the opening of the door, the argument had ceased in mid-sentence and three heads had turned to stare at her. She stared back, trying not to let her face betray her surprise.
“Well, Commander,” said Burne Absenger, COE Armada’s Chief Liaison Officer to the Commonwealth of Empires’ civilian government. A big, middle-aged man with thick locks of orange-red hair firmly slicked back in a skullcap, his voice was warm and well polished but not quite able to hide an edge of irony. “It would seem you’ve been busy.”
“And we’d like an explanation,” snapped Auberon Chase, head of COE Intelligence. Rakishly thin and bald, he wore his uniform irritably, as though discomfited by its loose fit. His eyes burned without dissembling, anger naked for all to see.
Beside him was the head of Strategy, Page De Bruyn—a tall woman with shoulder-length brown hair who, it was rumored, held more power in COE Intelligence than her boss, Chase. She studied Roche with a quiet fascination.
For a moment R
oche was unsure exactly how to respond. Confronted by three of the Armada’s most senior officers on a Dato ship, in which she herself had only recently woken with no recollection of how she had come to be there, she felt at a total loss. And they wanted her to explain?
Then, for the first time, she consciously noted the contents of the viewtank. Her breath caught in her throat. COE Intelligence HQ. A massive structure reflecting the light of distant suns and nebulae, it was duty’s focus for the millions of Armada officers like herself—and a sight she had come to believe she might never see again. Even if the view was at maximum enhancement, the station had to be close—probably no more distant than the Riem-Perez horizon of its hypershield, the closest point to it that any vessel could jump.
We’re right on top of it, Roche concluded. Then: This is a Dato ship! What’s it doing so close?
“Well, Commander?” prompted De Bruyn, her voice a dangerous purr.
Roche swung her attention from the tank and faced the woman’s steely gaze. “I’ll answer your questions as well as I’m able to, but I’m afraid that most of this is beyond me.”
“Perhaps you should let us be the judge of that.” De Bruyn smiled thinly. “When you’ve told us how you learned about the Palasian System, and why the information could not flow through the normal channels, then we’ll decide.”
Unsteady as it was, Roche stood her ground. “Apart from what I’ve seen on IDnet, I know nothing at all about the Palasian System.” De Bruyn’s eyes narrowed, but Roche plowed on, choosing her words with care. Regardless how she had come to be in this situation, one wrong word could end her career. “What has led you to believe that I do is something of a mystery to me.”
“Don’t play the fool with us, Commander,” exploded Chase, stabbing a long bony finger in her direction. “First you turn up at HQ in the new Dato Marauder, a vessel regarding which we have only the vaguest intelligence, then you demand—not request, mind you, but demand—an immediate audience, here on the ship, to discuss a security matter so grave that it threatens the entire Commonwealth.” He snorted as though the very idea offended him. “And now you have the nerve to tell us that you don’t even know what we’re talking about! Why we even agreed to this meeting at all is—”
The Prodigal Sun Page 33
