“I am not the one who will save your world,” the old man said. He looked back at Victor. “He will.”
Victor crossed his arms. “I thought I wasn’t the man you needed.”
“You weren’t the man I needed,” the old man said, “back then. But, after all this time, after all you have done, I think that’s changed.”
“I doubt it,” Victor said. “I’ve spent the last few years killing people for money and the promise of revenge. I failed at the revenge and helped a man just as bad as Magnus Lacano rise to power. A man who’s about to destroy another world.”
“That is not your fault,” the old man said.
“How is it not?” Victor asked. “If it wasn’t for me, Holace Quill wouldn't have built his Alliance—”
“You give yourself too much credit,” the old man said. “The threat of the Lysandran Empire made the Alliance possible, not you. You merely made it easier for Holace Quill to form it. And, besides, if the Alliance hadn’t been formed, Emperor Magnus would likely be scourging Mustang from orbit in order to intimidate the rest of the Free Worlds into surrender.”
“I still didn’t help matters,” Victor said.
“How could you? You’ve just been one man with a small ship and a motley crew,” the old man said. He looked past Victor. “No offense.”
“None taken,” Cormac said. “Tell me, are you an AI?”
“Why do you ask?” the old man asked.
“Because it was said the First Civilization created fully aware AIs, patterned after human minds. The primary way those AIs would interact with people was through holographic projections of the pattern-donor.”
The old man smiled at Cormac. “No one has better preserved the knowledge of the First Civilization’s technology than the starchildren. Which is unsurprising, considering their star cities are among the last functioning examples of First Civilization engineering. Yes, I am an AI.”
“So who was your pattern-donor? I don’t recognize you from any known First Civilization figure,” Cormac said.
“That, I’m afraid, is not something I wish to discuss,” the old man said. “And, besides, we have more important tasks to attend to.”
“We need to stop the Alliance from destroying Lysander,” Victor said.
“No, you need to do that,” the old man said.
“How?” Victor asked.
“With one final sacrifice,” the old man said.
“This is not a good time to be cryptic, old man,” Victor said. “What exactly do you need me to do?”
“I’m sorry, Victor. But what you need to do…” The old man sighed. “It’s better that I show you. Please follow me. I’m taking you to right to the core of the Excalibur.”
“Fine,” Victor said. “Lead the way.”
The old man nodded and turn to walk away with silent footsteps. Victor followed with the others close behind. The old man led them to a bank of elevators. He then strode up to one, and the doors quietly slid open.
Gesturing at the elevator with a wrinkled hand, the old man said, “Going down.”
Victor walked inside and turned around as the others stepped in. Lysandra and Cormac were both wide-eyed as they studied the interior of the elevator. Gaz seemed bored. He clearly was not as impressed with the Excalibur as everyone else.
Then the doors closed, and the elevator descended.
“The old guy’s not comin’ with us?” Gaz asked.
“Hologram,” Victor said.
“Oh, right,” Gaz said.
After a few seconds of descent, the elevator’s doors opened, revealing the old man waiting on the other side.
“Follow me,” he said.
Victor shot Gaz a knowing look and then stepped from the elevator.
A short time later, the old man stopped in front of a large, heavily reinforced hatch. He gestured to the hatch. “And here we are.”
“You took us to the bridge?” Victor asked.
“No,” the old man said. “The bridge is forward of here. This is the vault.”
“And what’s in here?” Victor asked.
“What you need to control the Excalibur,” the old man said.
The hatch swung open silently, revealing another brightly lit room on the other side. Standing on a dais was what looked like a formidable suit of armor.
Cormac gasped. “A warsuit!”
The old man nodded. “Yes.”
“It just looks like a suit of power armor,” Lysandra said.
“It’s more than that,” Cormac said. “At least from what my people know. The warsuits were supposed to allow one person to control a large starship and make them powerful combatants in their own right.”
“That and more, yes,” the old man said. “What else do you know, starchild?”
“That is the extent of it,” Cormac said. “For the most part, my people only know what First Civilization technology could do, not how it worked.”
The old man turned to face the warsuit. “Well, that suit can, indeed, allow one person to control the Excalibur.” He turned back to face Victor. “Specifically you.”
Victor stared at the armor, filled with an unshakable sense of familiarity. “It looks like a big action figure.”
“I assure you, that is no toy,” the old man said.
Victor glanced at the old man. “So you want me to put that on?”
“Yes,” the old man said.
“Can I take it off?”
“You won’t want to,” the old man said.
“You’re being cryptic again,” Victor said. “Will that suit change me?”
“Yes, on a fundamental level,” the old man said.
Victor looked at the suit, feeling a chill form in his stomach. “So I won’t be human anymore.”
“That will be up to you,” the old man said.
Victor turned to face the old man. “You said ‘one final sacrifice.’ That implies that I’m losing something when I put on that suit.”
“You will,” the old man said. “Your life as you know it will be over.”
Victor grunted. “So not much of a sacrifice then. But that’s why I’m here, isn’t it?”
The old man nodded, his face contrite. “You’re a man who has lost so much that there is little else to lose. Along with your many years of fighting experience, it makes you the perfect candidate to put on that suit.”
“Then let’s get started. We have a world to save, after all,” Victor said. “What do you need me to do?”
“Step inside. Everyone else should wait here,” the old man said.
Victor nodded and drew his variblade, holding it out to Gaz. “In that case, I should leave this here.”
Gaz took the variblade from Victor’s hand. “I’ll keep it right here till you come back out.”
Victor nodded. “I have no doubt of that.”
“Are you certain we cannot watch from inside?” Cormac asked. “I would very much like to see how the suit works.”
“I’m sure you would,” the old man said. “But the suit can…disorient a new user, especially one who hasn’t had any training for it. It would be safest for everyone to wait out here.”
Victor reached up to place a hand on the starchild’s thin shoulder. “Don’t worry, Cormac. I’ll let you know what it’s like.”
Cormac nodded. “I appreciate that, Captain. And good luck.”
“Victor,” Lysandra said.
“Yes, Princess?”
“I just wanted to say thank you, for what you’re doing. I know it wasn’t easy forgiving my world for what we did to yours.”
Victor shook his head. “I haven’t forgiven your people for killing mine, Princess. Nor will I ever.”
“Then why try to save them?” Lysandra asked.
“Because I can’t let another world suffer the same fate as Savannah. Not if I can stop it,” Victor said.
Lysandra nodded. “Then you are even nobler than I thought.”
“I don’t know about that,” Victor
said, turning around and walking through the hatch. As soon as he crossed the threshold, the heavy door swung shut.
The old man appeared in front of him.
“You like doing that, don’t you?” Victor asked.
The old man shrugged. “It’s more efficient than walking.”
Victor looked at the warsuit standing on the dais. “So how do I put on that thing?”
“I would take off your pressure suit. But you can keep your lighter clothes on,” the old man said. “The suit can absorb them.”
“Absorb? Is that what’ll happen to me?” Victor asked.
“Not quite. The suit will merge with you, making you a part of it. And it a part of you. Like stepping into a new body,” the old man said.
“A new body, huh?” Victor asked. He looked down at his artificial hand and flexed its black fingers. “Well, this one has seen some wear and tear. I suppose an upgrade wouldn’t hurt.”
“You can think of the suit as an upgrade, yes,” the old man said.
“So how many people actually wore these suits during the First Civilization?” Victor asked.
“Not many,” the old man said. “Only a few dozen were active at any given time, ready to spring into action during times of crisis.”
“I suppose this qualifies,” Victor said. He removed his pressure suit.
When he was done, the old man said, “Traditionally, before entering the suit, the candidate is made to recite an oath.”
“I hope it’s a short one,” Victor said.
“It is, but that’s not all,” the old man said. “The candidates would also give up their names and assume a title in their place.”
“A title?”
“Yes. Like I said, there were never many, so titles were more than enough for one warsuit wearer to be differentiated from another. I could show you examples if you want.”
Victor stared at the suit. He realized why it looked familiar. “No,…no, I think I have a title in mind.”
“Then here is the oath,” the old man said, the text appearing in glowing blue letters in the air beside Victor. “Recite it and say your title.”
Victor silently read the oath, noticing two blanks. The first was presumably for his name, the second for his title.
He cleared his throat and straightened his posture, then read the oath out loud. “I, Victor Selan, do solemnly swear to pledge my life to the Charter of the Interstellar Union; that I will defend Mother Earth and all her daughter worlds against all enemies, wherever they may come from and whatever they may be; that I will carry out my duties loyally and faithfully until the day I die. And, from this point on, I shall be the Guardian.”
“Guardian? Not the most original but appropriate,” the old man said. “Why?”
Victor, the Guardian, smiled fondly. “It was the name of a toy I gave my son. My last gift to him.”
The old man’s eyebrows shot up. “You named yourself after a toy?”
“I did say the suit looked like an action figure,” Victor said.
The old man sighed. “If you wish. I would recommend not sharing that piece of information though. It would diminish your mystique.”
“I’ll be discreet,” Victor said. He turned around and walked up the dais.
When the suit’s arms shot straight out to its sides, Victor flinched back. “Whoa!”
The arms weren’t the only things to move. Along previously invisible seams, the chest, arms, legs, and helmet swung open.
Victor got the strange feeling that the suit was welcoming him.
“What’s that coating the insides?” Victor asked, pointing at the smooth gray material that didn’t quite look like padding.
“Interface gel,” the old man said. “It will merge your body with the warsuit.”
“I see,” Victor said. “Will this hurt?”
“Yes,” said the old man. “But only for a moment.”
Victor took a deep breath, his heart pounding. He then turned around and backed into the suit.
The gel felt cool against his flesh, the texture almost like clay.
“Okay, wha—”
The suit cut off his words as it closed on him.
For a few terrifying seconds, Victor couldn’t move or breathe. He struggled as he suffocated inside the thousand-year-old suit of armor.
Then the pain came, sudden and powerful, like a billion needles puncturing every cell of his body.
Afterward the pain vanished. In its place…was power.
***
Lysandra stood as the heavy door cracked open with a hiss, then swung out silently.
The old man walked out, followed by a large armored figure.
“Behold, the Guardian!” the old man said.
“The Guardian? Is the captain in there?” Gaz asked.
“I am,” the armored figure said. The voice was not of the mercenary captain’s but a deep metallic rumble. The voice of a war machine.
With more than a little trepidation, Lysandra approached. “Why did he call you the Guardian?”
The helmeted head turned toward her until she could see her reflection in the lenses of the eye slits. “Because that is who I am now.”
“Wait? What do you mean?” Lysandra asked.
“Captain Victor Selan was an honorable military officer, a husband, and a father,” he said. “I stopped being that man the day Savannah burned.” He looked to Gaz and Cormac. “Captain Victor Blackhand was a mercenary obsessed with revenge against one man. But he ceased to have a purpose once the target of his vengeance died. Now I am the Guardian, because he is who I need to be to save Lysander and every other world in the galaxy.”
“Every world?” Lysandra asked. “What do you mean by that?”
Victor, or the Guardian, as he was now referring to himself, returned his armored gaze to her. “There’s a terrible truth, Princess Lysandra. A terrible truth I have known for years but chose to ignore due to my own selfishness. What happened to Savannah, what is about to happen to your world, is not unique. Hundreds of other worlds have met the same fate in the millennium since the Fall of the First Civilization. And it’s only getting worse.”
“I heard rumors of a few planets being destroyed, but hundreds?” Lysandra said. “Is that really true?”
“Very,” the Guardian said. “The First Civilization had settled thousands of worlds in its heyday. And ever since its Fall, those worlds have been murdering each other. It’s my job to stop it.”
“That sounds all very good,” Lysandra said, “but, as impressive as the Excalibur is, I only see one of her. Can she stop a fleet of five thousand ships by herself?”
“No,” the Guardian said.
“Then how do you plan to stop them?” Lysandra asked.
“With the terrible truth that I just told you,” the Guardian said, “and…with one very big lie.”
Chapter 32
The last jump point before the Lysander system approached fast. Victor fired the Excalibur’s retrothrusters to slow the battlecruiser to a jump-safe velocity.
Wrecks of Lysandran starships littered the system, either in highly elliptical orbits around the small red star or on their way from the system at speeds several times the system’s escape velocity.
The Alliance fleet had plowed straight through what meager resistance the Lysandrans had put in their path, destroying anything within range of their weapons and completely ignoring targets not falling along the most direct route from one jump point to another.
Victor had been on the bridge for three days straight, never leaving his seat as the Excalibur blazed through space at accelerations he never thought possible for a ship her size.
He didn’t get hungry; the suit nourished him. Nor did he need to use the head; the suit processed waste as well. He still needed to sleep but not the sleep he was used to. He had no feeling of tiredness or gradual decay into oblivion. He basically “switched off” when his scheduled sleep cycle hit and switched back on as soon as his cycle ended or if something
came up that required his attention. And that wasn’t even the part that took the most getting used to. It was waking up and remembering everything that had happened both inside and around the Excalibur while he slept. He could access all the warsuit’s information as if his own memories.
One of the first things he learned was that, by the standards of the First Civilization, the Excalibur was not exactly state of the art. She was a Durandal class battlecruiser, built in the fleet yards that had orbited between Mars and Jupiter, where the long-depleted asteroid belt used to be.
She had almost fifty years of active service before she was given a final refit and then sealed inside the Stone as part of a trial project to scatter some of the Interstellar Union’s reserve fleet to remote systems where they would be safe and ready for use should some disaster affect the solar system. Unfortunately that disaster happened when only a few dozen caches were set up. The Stone was the only one with a functional warship inside.
But that wasn’t all. The warship’s data included the activities of the people inside the Excalibur. Cormac tirelessly explored the Excalibur, learning as much as he could about the starship’s systems. One of the first things Victor had done as the Guardian was give Cormac full security clearance. Not just because Victor trusted Cormac; also because of the information on starchildren that both Victor and Cormac now had access to.
Having starchild engineers in their crew was common on Interstellar Union starships, and Cormac was every bit as competent as his ancestors.
Gaz spent most of his time examining the weapons in the Excalibur’s armory, such as the SR-23 standard infantry weapon and the SP-11 standard infantry sidearm. Several hundred of the weapons were in storage, and Gaz seemed intent on testing out each and every one of them in the Excalibur’s internal range. Despite spending a thousand years in storage, all the self-maintaining weapons seemed to be in good working order.
Princess Lysandra spent most of her time aboard the Daisy Mae as it remained berthed in the Excalibur’s hangar, no doubt to spend time with Lena in the relative privacy of the freighter.
Victor had been too consumed by his own depression to see that the two women were together. After becoming the Guardian, he found it curious and mildly amusing. The princess and the smuggler—like something from an adventure story.
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