Zero Star

by Chad Huskins

  “Tell me, eldest daughter, what matter is it if we stop the majority, when the minority is sufficient to destroy us?”

  One of the pods smashed into the Ritenkattan beside the Dexannonhold. The Ritenkattan was an enormous statue of her late father’s uncle, who had first encountered the aliens that had brought them the religion of Mahl. The drop pod bounced off the statue and dragged columns of smoke down to the streets, where it crashed into a crowd of too-late evacuees, annihilating them. Stone pyramids crumbled. Flaming tapestries fluttered down the streets.

  Defilement was good, but only when it was being done by the Defilers of Mahl.

  A dozen more drop pods were on their way. Thessa could see them. Little tongues of flame breaching atmosphere and rocketing towards Widden’s surface.

  Gunfire was in the streets. Laserfire. Rocketfire. The city guard were doing what they could, but the word from the captains in the street was that the mechanicae were fast, nimble, and came with advanced weaponry that annihilated whole groups in seconds. Thessa could already see charred bodies from here, and felt a pang of indignation welling up inside of her.

  Her father had wrought this place. Only Mahl could defile it.

  “My Lady of Mahl’s Will,” said Thane Budrick, stepping forward. “We still have time to call all our ships back here to defend—”

  “We must be patient. The Republic’s Second Fleet is imminent. Patience, Thane Budrick.”

  “You should evacuate—”

  “Do not tell me what I should do.”

  “If we were to lose you, it would be disastrous beyond—”

  His stomach swelled, then popped like a balloon as his entrails spilled out onto the floor, and puddled around the High Priestess’s feet.

  “Is there anyone else who believes I should leave the world my family wrought?”

  Thessa turned and looked at their white faces. Faces she had terrorized for decades with her unknowable power. Surely they all despised her and her power, and that was good. For many years, she had exercised more restraint with the Item, but just now she did not need anyone asking too many questions or doubting her. They were all finding out that the High Priestess would not be trifled with any longer.

  Soon, the Machinists will learn that lesson, too.

  “Then let us leave the naval battles to the Republic when they get here, while we deal with Vastill’s protection.”

  Just then, Curlenna, the Fourth Traitor, touched her ear, and stepped forward. “Mother, I’m just getting word that they are at the inner-city gates.”

  Thane Ril gasped. “They’ve made it this far already?”

  “We know this city better than they do. So let them come,” Thessa said, feeling the power of the ancients welling up inside of her. “Let them look upon the true face of Mahl and despair!”

  : Asteroid Monarch

  He listened from the spider’s corner. The Senate was in session and the Two Consuls had rapped their rods on the stone floor, to signal commencement of the day’s agenda.

  “The 18,307th convening of the Republican Senate is called to order,” said Horace Belmont, First Consul of the State, as he glanced at the notes an aide had waved over to his private holotab. “The provisional agenda for this meeting is threats to interplanetary peace, and the evolving dangers detected in civil disobedience on core worlds.”

  Kalder looked around the room, observing the faces of his fellow senators, all of them aglow with the terminals at each of their seats. Some of them sat with service bots by their side. The bots interpreted for them, since not all senators present were from worlds of the English Standard Tongue.

  “Before each of you is a list of today’s speakers, those members who would like to address the rest of this august assembly with their concerns, in accordance with Rules 23 and 25 of the Senate’s provisional rules and procedure, as well as previous practice of this assembly in this regard.

  “The full list of the Document’s co-sponsors will be reflected in the record of this meeting,” he said. “The essence of Item 1, being Document S-998427-B, is as follows: To look at the legislation put forth by the Restorationists, and supported by a petition of a number of Corporatists, that would discourage the interplay between human and corpus alienum cultures. The Xeno Nonconformist Act’s principle author is Senator Holace Adamik Fuller Kalder, and is supported by Senator Walther Jayn den Pennick. If there are no objections, debate on this topic will commence at this time.”

  Belmont banged his iron rod against the floor.

  That bang was all Kalder needed to know that his legislation would pass. It had made it this far, on Pennick’s promise alone, despite heavy opposition from the Liberty Arm, who felt the Act would step on human civil liberties and damage relations between the Republic and alien cultures.

  Kalder did not even wait around to hear it discussed, he merely stood up and left, already focused on his next order of business. He sent Julian a message saying he would like an update on the situation at Widden. No one had heard anything yet, but Second Fleet was due to arrive in Phanes any minute.

  As he left the Assembly Hall, Kalder could hear Pennick behind him, already taking up the call to arms against xeno influence across the galaxy, the need for a return to traditional values for all humanity, and all the while pointing out the influence of alien religions on socieities such as Widden, how the cultism of that world had made it reject its Earth heritage and started it on a path of isolationism.

  Many things were coming together rather nicely.

  WE MIGHT BE sure that a mind laid bare will reveal, in its naked constituents, the very pieces that bring it no end of pain, Kalder read from Zero, one of the oldest tomes ever written on Zeroism. It had been a while since he’d read it, and found its reminder of the basics comforting. There would be the components of anxiety and lust, of course, fear and uncertainty, love and hate. Or might we find that these are not constituents separate, but each one the result of other, smaller components, emotions and thoughts without name or origin that merge to synthesize larger, more noticeable emotions with more manageable names? Anger. Jealously. Love. Were we capable, we might wish to divest the mind of some of its least admirable attributes, mightn’t we? But what might happen if we discovered, in this moment when our minds are laid bare like an engine broken down to its most basic pieces, that the newly missing component has robbed us of being who essentially we are?

  Kalder sat with that a moment, considering that he might be missing out on some essential nugget to humanity by depriving himself of what he perceived as ruinous emotions. He read on, scrolling down his holotab:

  A rational mind, so divested, might inevitably find itself gearing towards its own destruction, perhaps even craving it, in some mad search to find its missing component. Or it might simply collapse, the way a building will if a key portion of its foundation is removed, or the way Man itself has collapsed by forgetting what its essential core values once were.

  This is the dilemma of any Zeroist. While it is true that any good Zeroist understands that it is in their best interest to remove pesky interferences from their mind—such as zealousness, fear, adoration, cravings, even humor—it is also true that they might, in their thoroughness, be excising the most necessary pieces of their mind and personality. Components and tools that have long served Man, and kept him safe on the savannahs of Earth Cradle, can be problematic in a society based on a galactic blueprint, but it might also be exactly what it is needed.

  Kalder leaned back in his seat. Many times he had read these words, and each time he came away with something different.

  Someone bumped into his chair. A drunken man, half naked, stumbling through the Forum aimlessly. The man uttered an apology, Kalder ignored him.

  Across from him, the lobbyist from the Tulfghan Caliphate sat sipping tea. The Forum was bustling with throngs of people dislocated from their normal lives. They had seen great horrors, been driven from worlds and stations they had spent their entire lives on, and the des
pondency was writ large on their faces, in their hollow eye sockets.

  The Caliphate lobbyist had heard that Kalder liked to drink tea here, and that he would permit anyone to sit with him and chat. The rumor his supporters told was that it was because Kalder was a man of the people who liked to listen. His critics said it was because Kalder was a Zeroist, and Zeroist’s forced themselves to endure the common public because he generally viewed them as imbeciles, and thus learning to tolerate them was an exercise in toughening his mind and spirit.

  His critics were more right.

  The lobbyist was prattling on about something, a need to reach the Senate and tell them about Allah’s glory, but Kalder was vexed on the page he had just read, and the riddle of how to wash oneself of pesky human emotions without losing the edge that those emotions imparted.

  The key, Kalder thought while taking another sip of his tea, is to utilize those component emotions like sensors on a starship. Permit them to work as they normally might, feeding you information you might otherwise have missed, but do not let them define your overall strategy.

  “…Allah’s children can contribute much to your Crusade,” the Caliphate lobbyist was saying. “And you know our mining operations are now reopened through newly secured spacelanes…”

  As the Caliphate lobbyist continued to speak, Kalder wondered if the Strangers, too, had wrestled with these emotions. He imagined they had wrestled with much in their ascension, and even more during their fall or retreat from this galaxy. The Strangers must have gone through much soul-searching, just as Man now was. And where had the Strangers gone? Into the deep black depths between galaxies, perhaps, to slumber amid the stars and refrain from interacting with the proceedings of the Milky Way ever again.

  Moira’s work in Zhirinovsky, as well as the word he had received of this Lyokh soldier who had come out of the Kennit System with another Scroll, had Kalder’s mind working on his obsession, even as he listened to the lobbyist and nodded.

  “…can’t know the mind of the Brood except through Allah’s word,” the man was saying. “The Corporate Arm understands this, and they have listened. I only ask that you listen now.”

  Kalder glanced over at a vidscreen that had been set up beside the tea shop. The station’s main news outlet was little more than shouting heads. Few media professionals had survived the fleeing to Monarch in the beginning, but a few new ones did show up every month. Right now, one of those talking heads was reviewing the effects of prolonged military engagements on a shrinking economy. Kalder watched a vid of himself being interviewed by that talking head only a week ago.

  He turned away from the vid and addressed the Caliphate man.

  “The Corporatists have listened to you,” Kalder told him, “because your Caliphate has controlling interest in the helium-3 mining companies of Diego’s moons. If you told them your cousin was the owner of Dutoni Avionics, or that you were the presider over a major trade company, they would worship your left testicle if you said it was necessary to get your business.”

  He looked at the man seriously.

  “I know you heard that things have gotten extremely religious on Monarch, but you’re mistaken if you think the Senate will be swayed by one more fanatic. There are enough of you wandering the halls, six or seven are always outside my office, hoping to be the ones to convert me and give themselves a footing in the Senate.” Kalder fixed him with a look. “We all know that you managed to get your home system to accept your beliefs as the state religion, and that you would love nothing more than to have the Senate someday mandate that all the Milky Way bow down to your god. The Christers have tried the same, as have others. I assure you, I will not let it happen.”

  “I hear that the Brotherhood of Contrition bent your hear,” the man said in an accusatory tone. “Clearly you don’t turn all fanatics away.”

  “Not if they can offer me something useful.”

  “Such as?”

  “Lending support to Second Fleet in the Phanes System.”

  The lobbyist’s expression went neutral. “We will not lend our forces to commit more war.” He pointed at Kalder’s face on the vidscreen. “I thought you learned that in your little interview. Too much war on a shrinking economy creates a death spiral that—”

  “What I’m hearing is that you have no army to commit. Is that right?”

  “We don’t,” the lobbyist said. “At least, not for your purposes.”

  “Then I’m afraid I have no use for you or the Tulfghan Caliphate. At least not now, I’m afraid.”

  A cloud fell over the lobbyist’s face. “Then we will hold protests. We will march with the message that the Crusade is a waste of resources. You know how we’ve organized before, protesting until the Senate’s ears bled—”

  “Let’s be frank, protests never do any good, they’re just government-sanctioned complaining. The politicians don’t hear it, and any reasonable man knows this. You’re only allowed to do it so that we all keep up the illusion that change is within the common man’s grasp. It isn’t. It is only within the grasp of powerful men. But if it makes you feel better and keeps you busy enough, please, protest to your heart’s content.”

  The lobbyist shoved himself away from the table, and started to stand.

  “However,” Kalder added, “once I have more things lined up, more resources in position, I may call in a favor from you. If you deliver, I may—may—have an ear for you. Until then…here comes one woman I can use more immediately.” He waved at Moira pushing through the crowd, and gestured her over to him. Then Kalder looked at the lobbyist, and made a scram motion with his hand.

  “This isn’t over,” the man said as he stood and disappeared into the crowd.

  “It never is,” Kalder said.

  The stellarpath watched the Caliphate lobbyist stalk away, and took a seat across from Kalder. “What was that about? The guy looked pissed.”

  “Another lobbyist who wants to bring legitimacy to his dying religion by reaching out to the Senate during mankind’s weakest hour,” he said, sipping his tea. “They flock here like fanatics on a pilgrimage. Somehow, they all sensed it at once.”

  “Sensed what?”

  “That the Fall of Man gave them exactly the narrative they had always been preaching about. A coming end to civilization. They hope to influence members of the Senate, maybe even get one or two converts over to their side, which, should mankind survive this slump, would put them in a fine place to become the official state religion. A fine plan for forward thinkers. At least it means they have hope there will be a future worth being the tyrant of.”

  “That reminds me,” Moira said. “There was a guy out here yesterday, said he represented someone with a giant serpent?” She shrugged. “He’s the tattooed guy that’s been hanging out outside your office. A man named Thulm?”

  Kalder took another sip of tea. “There’s no end to them,” was all he said on that.

  Moira shrugged. “Well then, let’s get to business. Are we all set to leave?”

  “Almost. I have managed to get as much as I can ask of the Senate, your itinerary is exquisite, and a few ships from Tenth Fleet are set to escort us to Phanes, we just lack the final word from the Brotherhood.”

  Moira was nonplused. “Then why did you call me here if we’re not ready to go?”

  “There’s someone I want you to meet,” Kalder said. He drank the last of his tea and set the cup down, along with a couple of doms. A server bot came to collect them. He gestured for her to follow, and they made their way through the New Forum in silence.

  As they walked, a Harbinger stepped toward them, drew back his black hood, and said, “It’s all coming to an end, don’t you see?”

  “Not if I have anything to do with it,” Kalder replied calmly, and handed the man a dom.

  DESH HAD CLEANED up well enough. When Kalder led Moira into his office, the newly-appointed Captain of the Crusade stood in a black uniform that was just slightly too tight for him. His belly pressed ag
ainst his jacket, but was suitably contained. His face was clean-shaven, and his hair was washed, though it had not been trimmed and still hung partially in his eyes like a curtain. Kalder gave him an appraisal, and figured he seemed fit enough. Julian stood behind Captain Desh, giving his mentor a look that seemed to say Are you sure about this one?

  This was their team, the core group of individuals that would be in charge of their expedition.

  “Make yourselves comfortable,” Kalder said, gesturing towards seats. Julian had moved the office chairs, as well as his desk, away from the corner because a new leak had sprung in the ceiling directly above where the furniture usually sat. “Would you two like anything?”

  “No, thank you,” said Moira.

  “No, sir,” said Desh. Then, “Ah, fuck it. Why not?”

  Kalder took his seat and waved at the holo-projector between them, bringing up an old image of Dwimer, sixth planet of the Eaton System. It was a harsh-looking world, part of it coated in a fine red regolith, the other half a swirling mix of bright yellows and whites. The coloration on the latter half was due to materials deposited by extreme volcanism, silicates such as orthopyroxene, and sulfur and sulfur dioxide. Sulfur dioxide frost across large swaths of land gave the yellow surface its white tinges.

  “Julian, if you would please, pour the captain and I a glass of Old Staz’s Reserve.”

  “Yes, sir.” His assistant brought the drinks over in goblets.

  “Much obliged,” said Captain Desh, who downed his in one go.

  Kalder sloshed his around, watching the light play in the amber liquid. “The Eaton System is near the very edge of our galaxy, at the tip of the Norma Arm. Neither of you have ever been out that far, is that right?”

  Moira and Desh exchanged glances, and shook their heads.

  “Forgive me,” Kalder said. “Where are my manners? Moira, this is Captain Predor Desh the Third, who will be my co-leader of this expedition, helping me to talk to the military heads. Captain Desh, this is Moira Holdengard, a stellarpath of the College of Interstellar Pathfinding and our resident navigator.”