Zero Star

by Chad Huskins

  Ruhne shook his head. “Sorry, not so easy. We may employ certain EMP bombs to test them, but we’re pretty sure the mechanicae are as rad-hard and EMP-protected as our own equipment, maybe more so.”

  Ruhne waved his hand again, and another holopane came up, this one showing a dozen or so cruisers of older design. “Here’s something you will not have read in your sit-reps, because it just came through the wire,” he said. “We are expecting a bit of support. It won’t be much, just a few cruisers and a couple of destroyers to help us with patrols. They come courtesy of the Brotherhood of Contrition.”

  There were a few grumbles from all around. Lyokh managed to hide his dismay.

  “The Brotherhood comes by invitation of Senator Holace Kalder. They have volunteered a small task force, and you may receive ground support from them in a pinch.” Ruhne looked at them all. “I know how some of you feel about the Brotherhood, and I could say a lot about beggars being choosers, not looking a gift horse in the mouth, all that, but you’re all adults and I expect you all know of our need in these days.”

  Kalder. There was that name again. It was the third time it had come up. Lyokh thought it odd. Just who the hell was this guy, and why did it feel like he had his fingerprints all over everything?

  The captain of Raptor Wing raised her hand.

  Ruhne’s oculars buzzed as they focused on her. “Yes, Captain?”

  “I understand a contingent from Tenth Fleet will be coming,” she said. “Bringing this senator from Monarch?”

  The Prefect nodded. “They will, but it will be a small contingent on a political escort mission. They won’t be joining the fight, only defending their man Kalder if it comes to that.”

  The captain of Devastator Wing spoke up, “Why is Kalder coming here?”

  “Apparently, there’s been some interest in the scroll that Captain Lyokh found in the Kennit sepulcher,” Ruhne said.

  A few heads turned towards Lyokh. They appraised him. And did some of their eyes happen to drift down to the medal hanging from his left arm? He thought so.

  Lyokh said nothing, remained focused on the proceedings. If they had questions for him later, he would tell them all the same thing. He knew as much as they did about Kalder.

  “The fleet will rendezvous with the Brotherhood of Contrition here,” Ruhne said, conjuring the map of the Widden-Suns system back up. He pointed to the four moons of Widden. There was Honagher, the smallest moon, a pale-white orb with nothing but a crater-pocked surface of rock. Ruz’th was a red moon coated in regolith dust, with runnels of lava sketched jaggedly across its surface. Dor’fahn was a ball of pinks, whites, yellows and reds, all swirling in artistic patterns. And then there was Rah’zen, a monster of a moon, bigger than the other three combined and its surface a deep blood red.

  On all of these moons, it was easy to see the clearly defined geometric shapes that were drawn by roads and channels. They crisscrossed at exact angles, with whole blocks darkened by industry. Each one had been used to mine one resource or other. Phanes was a flourishing system. Left alone, it would probably flourish for tens of thousands of years. But the Ascendancy was knocking on its door. Like all star systems, Phanes could not remain off-limits forever. Civilizations craved resources, and as all nations had discovered, it’s usually easiest, if immoral, to move into a system that already had infrastructure in place and take what was needed.

  This pattern had repeated itself for ages, dating back before humans had dispersed through the stars and joined the cosmic community. They had found the galaxy teeming with desperate nations, some adrift and searching, some of them the remnants of one despot or other that had been overthrown a thousand years before in a war in some star system near the Galactic Core.

  Lyokh recalled being a boy on Timon and learning about the immensity of the universe. In just the Milky Way alone, there were 300 billion stars. That meant that if you visited a new star every second for a hundred years, without stopping, that would still leave 296 billion stars not visited. It was impossible to see them all in a single lifetime, even if you stocked up on regens for a thousand years. There was no telling what was waiting out there, let alone what might be hiding in other galaxies. Indeed, some believed the Milky Way had already been visited by intergalactic invaders, which might explain the nine separate Unknowns Wars.

  Prefect Ruhne was just wrapping up the details about dispersal when he looked around the table and said, “It is imperative we all do our jobs with exactitude here. In the Senate, the Corporate Arm is getting serious about expansion, a victory here could mean new negotiations between Widden and the Republic. If that happens, it could be a fresh jolt of much needed trade. If we fail, the Restorationists will have one more reason to argue that we retreat to Sol. Typically, I keep my own politics out of this, but I think that, at the very least, even if we do fall back to Sol, we can’t totally abandon places like Widden. We need their resources, plain and simple. And whether they admit it or not, they are our cousins and they need us.”

  There was a general consensus of nods from around the room.

  “General Quoden, I hand it back to you,” Ruhne said.

  The General stepped back up to the head of the table. “Thank you, Prefect Ruhne. All right, folks, there you have it. The situation as it sits. We will be translating back into normal space in exactly…” he checked time on his imtech lenses, “…two hours, fifty-seven minutes. I expect muster to be completed an hour before then, as well as a quick review with all of your people as to the order of battle. Hoy up!” he said, knocking thrice on the table.

  “A-HOO!” they said as one.

  Chairs moaned and boots clomped against the floor as they all pushed past one another to go make ready.

  LORD ISHIMOTO’S ILL-LIT passages were bustling with activity. The crew were making all final checks. The Orphesian mechanics were putting in their last orders to the fab room for supplies. Bots rushed to their power stations and hooked themselves up, ensuring they could make themselves available in an emergency. Engine crews moved through clouds of vented steam to make sure the A-drive and reactor core were showing green. The halls were clogged with soldiers moving around sailors, bots, and officers. The only ones missing in the throng of sweating bodies were the ship’s vorta, who had all but disappeared: it was never clear to anyone where the vorta went when they weren’t working, though most people thought they slept in vents or behind circuitry panels.

  Lyokh moved through a corridor with broken, flickering lights, then stepped into Deck 3’s embarkation bay and hustled over to the Nova-140/s drop ship where his people were assembling. The deck officer was organizing weapons distribution. Lyokh’s gear harnesses were already assembled and waiting for him. He double-checked his spare ammo hoppers, slung his rifle over his shoulder, and sheathed the field sword on his back.

  Heeten and the other warhulk pilots were there, checking and rechecking each other’s loadout. She caught his eye, and gave him a wry look.

  Lyokh hid his smile, and walked over to Meiks, who was looking over the men in formation. “How is everything, Meiks?”

  “We’re good, boss man,” he said, and glanced over at Heeten. “But not as good as you, I suspect.” He smiled at Lyokh.

  “Shut up.”

  “Seriously, there’s this glow about you—”

  “I said shut up.”

  Meiks snorted out a laugh. “Ishi is a big ship, but she ain’t that big. Folk hear things, then they tell others. You know, fraternizing is strictly forbidden, but I suppose there are exceptions at the Fall of Man—”

  “When I said shut up, that was an order.”

  “Hey, so, an optimist asks a Harbinger for a blowjob, right? The Harbinger says, ‘We don’t have much time.’ The optimist goes—”

  Lyokh sighed and shook his head. “Muster the men, Meiks.”

  “Can do. Hoy up! Here’s the boss man!”

  The others turned to listen while they finished their last weapon inspections and formed th
eir lines.

  “You guys have been working hard,” said Lyokh. “Too hard. But that’s what your nation has asked of you, that’s what you promised you would do in the face of overwhelming odds, and it’s what you have done. After all that you people saw in Kennit, you guys are proven survivors, exemplars of this age, the Fall of Man.

  “We’re about to go into another shitstorm, but I do believe you guys can handle it. I know you can, because I’ve seen it. You’ve done it. Now this mission may turn out to be nothing more than a patrol-and-go, and let the politicians build on what progress we make in reaching out to the High Priestess and her thanes. But if it’s more than that, if it turns out the Ascendancy wants to throw the kitchen sink at us, I want you to find what it was you discovered about yourself in the hellhole on Kennit, and throw it right back at them.”

  “The wall!” hollered Paupau at the back. He pumped his sword in the air. “Paupau!”

  People chuckled and thumped their chests.

  Lyokh nodded. “The wall.”

  Takirovanen directed Gold Wing over to the rear of the Nova, where they waited with two other wings for the pilot to lower the ramp. Vehicles went on first, the warhulks, then six Ravager tanks. At the far end of the bay, Reyes and his Tamers were readying Thrallyin. Lyokh caught sight of Artemis of Artemis climbing onto its back, and taking up residence inside the shielded tamer-box along its spine.

  Lyokh caught Heeten’s eye and waved her over for a private talk. They walked past grime-streaked Orphesians who were directing a crane of missiles that swung from a mobile gantry overhead. A group of service bots were attaching them to the Nova’s wings.

  “You okay?” he asked Heeten.

  “Yes, sir, handsome sir,” she said, and gave him one of her patented winks. “Are you okay?”

  He nodded. “I’m good. Listen…we need to keep the command coterie solid, so we—”

  “We can’t make this awkward. Not a problem. I’m solid, handsome.”

  Lyokh nodded. “When this is over, maybe…”

  She smiled. “Maybe what?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe things can be…” He shrugged, and she smiled wider at his own awkwardness. “In any case, will you watch after them while I go take care of some business?”

  “Sure. What kind of business?”

  “I just have one more thing I need to check on before I leave.”

  Heeten gave a salute. “Don’t take too long. Don’t want us to leave without you.”

  Lyokh went up one deck level, fighting against a tide of humans going the other way. He made one last visit to his billet, making sure everything was in its place. If everything went well on Widden he wouldn’t be back here for a while, he would be billeting down there in the Dexannonhold. Cleaning bots might make the occasional visit, but besides that his bunk would remain empty.

  And there was something he didn’t want to leave behind.

  The scroll was where he left it, wrapped in a towel and kept inside a duffel bag. Lyokh took it out, gave it a look, and turned it over in his hands. Over the last few weeks he had stared at the thing, wondering about its origins.

  Lyokh winced. Something had just occurred to him. The runes have shifted.

  It hit him out of nowhere. But he was sure of it. He had been staring at the thing long enough to know…

  The runes had elongated, widened, fragmented, and in some cases disappeared entirely. And if he didn’t know better, he would say that, where it had been cool to the touch before, it was now slightly warm.

  Lyokh ran his fingers over the runes. He felt a tingling sensation, something he had never felt before when fondling it. The sensation was not wholly unpleasant. It begain in his palms, then radiated up his arm like a thousand tiny hands crawling up to his shoulders…

  All at once, Lord Ishimoto’s klaxons shrieked. Lyokh started so bad he nearly dropped the scroll. The standard lights went out, replaced by red emergency-action lights.

  A voice came blaring over the ship’s loudspeaker: “General Quarters! General Quarters! All hands to battle stations! Repeat, all hands to battle stations! Enemy contact is imminent in T-minus fifteen minutes!”

  What the hell?

  Suddenly, Lyokh forgot all about the scroll. He tossed the it back under his bed and dashed into the hall, running past people asking what was going on. No one knew. He shouted, “Down ladder!” as he slid down through the porthole and onto Deck 3, then bullied his way through corridor after corridor until he returned to the embarkation bay. Soldiers were scrambling to their ships, no longer moving calmly, but now double-timing it. A deck officer was shouting at them to move, move, move.

  There was Heeten, about to climb inside her warhulk, but now rushing over to him, her green eyes as intense as he had ever seen them. Behind her, all units were rushing into the Novas and packing themselves tight, including the warhulks.

  Klaxons were screaming all around them. Bots and Orphesians were racing out of the way.

  “What’s happening?” Lyokh asked.

  Heeten started to answer, but before she could, the deck officer shouted over a loudspeaker: “Fleet translating out of FTL in thirty seconds! Incoming distress from Widden! The entire system is under attack! Enemy force numbers unknown, but is believed to be large! Prepare for combat!”

  Lyokh looked at Heeten.

  “That’s crazy timing,” he said. “They hit Phanes, then back off, then attack it again just when we’re getting here?”

  Heeten nodded. “They were waiting on us to get here before they started a fight. But why?”

  Lyokh could think of only one good reason.

  He recalled what he had heard Prefect Ruhne say during the briefing, about how they could be facing the Machinist Ascendancy resurgent, how there was no telling just how large their forces had become in the decades since they retreated to parts unknown.

  The only reason the Ascendancy would have waited until this very moment was because they were so confident in their size and power that they were sure they could destroy two birds with one stone. They had attacked Phanes the first time not as a test, but as bait. They had wanted the ruling parties of Widden to call the Republic for help. They had lured two great enemies together.

  Dear god, what have we walked into?

  : Widden

  The walls rumbled. The first bombardments had begun. Thessa could feel the vibrations coming up through the floor, through her feet and knees, into her chest. The deep thrumming of orbital bombardment was a new kind of defilement to Widden’s surface.

  The delakostrik was a dark room atop the Dexannonhold, lit only by the braziers that burned near the menacing statue of Mahl, who loomed over them with eyes blazing with malice. Arrayed around the High Priestess were her remaining daughters. Only thirteen now lived to see their world attacked for the first time in its history. There had been uprisings of the lower class, a civil war in Karakirk Super-district, but never an attack from outside their solar system.

  Privately, Thessa mourned that her other daughters had not waited for another day to try and overthrow her—I could use their wiles and strength now, she thought.

  The walls rattled slightly. They heard a distant boom.

  The Order Guard stood sentry, their long glaives held tight in each of their four hands. Their large, black, serpentine bodies undulated as they watched her. The nakkta tendrils on their backs rippled in excitement. Beside these aliens stood human men and women, their bodies pierced, carved, scarred, tattooed and twisted in the most heinous ways. These were the Iniquitous Incarnate, priests in charge of keeping Mahl’s word sacred in all cities beyond Vastill.

  The High Priestess was also joined by her thanes, who stood watching her, fidgeting with their fat fingers and elegant robes, both afforded them by Widden’s bounty, from the world that Thessa’s family had wrought. And to think, they all wanted her dead. Not because they had learned the wisdom of Mahl’s treachery, but because they represented the people’s will, trying to instill a demo
cracy that Thessa was determined to never let take root.

  Thessa wore layers of all-black robes, with necklaces and bracelets of silver hanging from her, each one glittering with rubies and opals and diamonds. The robes had been ripped in random places—defilement to please Mahl. And, of course, she had the Item. It was sealed insde the pocket of her innermost robe. Thessa felt its power radiating through her breast and into her fingertips.

  Another distant boom. Another impact.

  “They will all die,” she told them, her voice echoing off the cobblestone floors and the compristeel walls. “I can promise you this. They will all die. But Mahl willing, they shall die slowly, in agony, long enough to see their own bodies being defiled by the Sin Eaters. This is what Mahl wants, for he has told us.”

  “Mahl has told us,” they intoned.

  Another boom sounded. This one was closer than the others. The ceiling rattled, and dust fell on their heads.

  “Obriden, if you would begin please?”

  Thane Obriden stepped forward, and waved a trembling hand at a projector at the center of the room, conjuring up a holopane that showed the danger they were in.

  “We received word from our mining stations at the far end of the system only an hour ago,” the thane said. “We immediately responded by sending in Haruspex and Dudarattai to intercept. Dudarattai has been destroyed, and Haruspex was forced to retreat. We sent the message to the Republic, and their Second Fleet is moments away from entering the system.”

  Evalli the First Traitor said, “Mother, I think we can stop the majority of them at Rah’zen.”

  Thessa turned the Face of Mahl on her. “The majority of them?”

  “I believe so, yes.”

  Thessa glared at her, then turned and stormed over to the nearest window, opened the curtains and threw open the shutters. Outside was a darkening sky, with Rah’zen looming behind Dor’fahn and fields of stars surrounding them. And, crashing down from the sky, there came the flaming balls of fire that were Machinist drop pods. Each pod smashed into a different sector of Vastill, crumbled statues, and exploded in the streets. People could be heard screaming all over the city.