“My spies acquired this data at great risk and expense. Fortunately the humans who seized Xanadu System were left in a state of confusion and disorganization that enabled us to retrieve it. Some of what you saw came from sensor readings from a number of Lhan Arkh vessels. A single craft tore through its ranks with impossible ease. An ancient craft from a dead race of warp demons. Those beings were no legends, Giga-Proxy. Their culture once dominated the known galaxy and wreaked untold destruction during their reign. And a few months ago, until the ancient ship was destroyed, those demons lived again. Humans brought them back, and are well on their way to becoming just like them, or worse. At that point, the Unity is doomed. The sophonts of the galaxy will be only united by misery and death. We only have one chance of stopping a new Dark Age the likes of which has not been seen for two hundred millennia.”
“Tell me more,” Quinta said, forgetting to use the Princeps’ title in her shock.
He made no note of it, but kept talking.
* * *
Giga-Proxy Tenacious Quinta’s support of the Triumvirate Emergency Measures played a vital role in their passage, ensuring the financial support of both military and diplomatic measures designed to win the ongoing war. She did so willingly, but with a heavy heart, for she feared that they might not be enough to stop that terrible future the Princeps had shown her.
She no longer felt any hope for Unity. Only death. But she would do everything she could to stamp out the Human threat.
Three
Aboard the USS Humboldt (CA-931), 167 AFC
Fromm blinked away the warp-induced nightmares he’d endured for what seemed like an eternity. His body felt different, almost alien. The canned air inside the Humboldt, the pressure of the safety straps holding him to his seat, the noises navigation and control systems made to announce their readiness – all those sensations were familiar, but only as something dimly remembered after years of absence.
He hated long jumps.
According to their ship’s chronometers, they’d spent seventeen hours inside null-space, or what their guide liked to call ‘the Starless Path.’ Subjectively, the trip had lasted more than long enough for every Marine Fromm had led to his or her death to make an appearance and curse him for his failures. More than long enough for dead children from several species to stare him down, mutely reminding him that their blood was on his hands. Plenty of time to relive his biggest mistakes. The shame and self-loathing that accompanied those memories still weighed on him. He’d relived the shock and pain of learning of Sergeant Obregon’s death, the revulsion that had seized him the first time he’d taken a life, the loss of his father, days after they’d exchanged angry words during Fromm’s first leave on Earth.
If there was a Hell, it couldn’t be much worse than that.
Heather was sitting not too far away, behind a sensor workstation. Her welcoming smile matched his own.
“We made it,” she said via private comm. “Check out the screen. It’s not every day humans arrive to an unknown planetary system.”
The images on the ship’s main screen weren’t particularly informative. Their starship had made a stealth emergence, appearing very close to a gas giant a light hour away from the system’s blue-white F-Class star. At the moment, the visual horizon consisted of a near-featureless pea soup-green surface, broken here and there by swirling storms on the massive planet’s surface. The Jovian’s gravity well was strong enough to mask a single vessel’s warp jump, unless the enemy had facilities orbiting around it.
The USS Humboldt shut off all non-essential systems and thickened its force fields to hide its thermal signature, becoming invisible to anything but a close-range graviton scan. The survey vessel, using just enough power to prevent the gas giant from dragging it down into its interior, stayed in orbit as its passive sensors observed the rest of the system. If the locals seemed too dangerous to approach, the ship would fall back into warp and return the way it had come.
More images appeared on the screen as the Science Department techs catalogued all major celestial bodies around them. So far, everything seemed to match Major Zhang’s claims. She had helmed the ship during its seventeen-hour transit, guiding it to the right place and time to make a covert entry. Navigators could only do that when they had extremely precise information about a star, but the fighter pilot had performed the maneuver flawlessly.
The fact that the system didn’t show up in any Starfarer records wasn’t all that remarkable. Even after millions of years of interstellar travel, nobody had a complete map of the ‘known galaxy,’ which itself comprised a small fraction of the Milky Way. Despite their FTL-drives, Starfarers were like ants crawling on a continental mass, unable to fully grasp its size. Finding new warp valleys took a great deal of time, and many stars had never been explored because no pathways to them had been discovered. Thousands or most likely millions of inhabitable worlds, some a few dozen light years away from densely populated systems, remained fallow because without a warp line travel there wasn’t practicable. Additionally, astrogation data was often lost during times of upheaval, requiring new voyages of exploration to rediscover it. In this case, the system owners had kept its existence a secret, and when they disappeared from galactic history some two hundred thousand years ago, so had all information about it.
Fromm had never given such matters much thought until he’d spent some time on Xanadu, where even a casual poring of records going back a third of a million years showed him how ignorant the current crop of galactic upstarts were, humanity chief among them. Starfarer civilization was in recovery from a dark age that had lasted for millennia – a dark age precipitated by a species with warp travel abilities not unlike the ones humans possessed.
“Think we’ll find something here?” he asked Heather, trying to set aside the gloomy thoughts that threatened to overwhelm him.
“Hopefully. Lisbeth is sure this trip is worth the trouble, and she managed to convince the top brass. From what I hear, her dog and pony shows were pretty darn impressive.”
Major Lisbeth Zhang had returned from a long vacation on a detention facility in Sol System, bringing galactic coordinates leading to this forgotten world and new orders for one Captain Fromm and his worse-for-wear C-Company. There was only enough room for about two hundred Marines in the cruiser, and his unit’s upgraded equipment and experience with unconventional operations had gotten them the assignment; Zhang’s recommendation was also a factor; the jarhead pilot seemed to think highly of Fromm’s unit. He didn’t feel particularly honored, but nobody had asked for his opinion.
“Looks nice enough,” he said as data kept coming in.
A projection appeared on the upper right quadrant of his field of vision, showing him the planets and other celestial bodies orbiting the pale blue star, transforming the information from the Humboldt’s sensors into graphics-rich diagrams.
There were seven rocky planets within thirty light-minutes of the star and three gas giants further out, including the one they were orbiting. Initial scans only offered some basic information on the size and composition of the inner worlds, but two of them seemed to be roughly the size of Earth, and both were in the Goldilocks zone where water in liquid form could exist, making them candidates for habitation and the best places to start their search.
There was also a thin asteroid belt within ten light minutes of the star, which was somewhat unusual. The debris was also within the Goldilocks zone, and it had probably belonged to an inhabitable planet before it had been shattered into rubble.
One thing was clear, however. Nobody was home, at least nobody with any tech level of note. The American flotilla wasn’t picking up any gravitonic or electromagnetic emanations anywhere within the system. Either they’d never held high-tech civilizations, or they no longer did. At first glance, the Humboldt had made a long trip for nothing. The ship had gone further beyond Earth than any other human. They had reached the outer edge of the Orion-Cygnus Arm of the galaxy, looking for the remnants
of a civilization that had disappeared from the annals of Starfarer history before Homo Sapiens walked the earth.
All of which was nice, except there was a big-ass war going on in the known part of the galaxy, and their expedition had left only a few months after the disastrous news at Drakul System. The Galactic Imperium was steamrolling over the Wyrms and would soon be in a position to threaten American space. Unlike previous attacks by the Vipers and the Lampreys, the Gal-Imp invasion had been delayed until the enemy was sure they had amassed enough force to do get the job done, and by all indications they were right. The chances that some research mission in the galactic boondocks would produce anything useful before the US was defeated were slim. On the other hand, a survey ship, a handful of scientists, and a Marine company weren’t going to change the correlation of forces in any meaningful way. If Lisbeth Zhang’s claims were real, they might just find a miracle in one of those empty worlds.
Miracles did happen, if by miracle one meant vanishingly rare occurrences taking place at exactly the right time and place. Fromm hated depending on luck to save the day. Lucky streaks always ended. All his life he’d believed that you made your own luck, by training and hard work. Improvise, adapt and overcome. There were things beyond his ability to control, however, which meant having to rely on the kindness of a cold and uncaring universe.
“We’ll do what we can, Peter,” Heather said. “And maybe that’ll be just enough.”
“Reading my mind?” he asked lightly.
She shook her head. “I don’t have to, not that I would. My fancy implants don’t quite work that way, and telepathy is… messy.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Being inside my own skull is enough of a pain in the ass. Definitely wouldn’t want to go poking around in other people’s heads.”
“If t-wave tech becomes widespread, we’re all going to have to learn how to deal with it. And it’s going to be tricky.”
“We’re halfway there anyway, with implants that can record our every waking moment and that can be shared with anybody. We learned to deal.” The war between transparency and privacy had been almost as nasty as any of the interstellar conflicts of the post-Contact era, and the solutions had been far from perfect. These so-called tachyon implants would just open up a new battlefront in that war.
“I’m picking up something from the fifth planet, by the way,” Heather added. “It’s pretty faint, thought. Like whispers you can’t quite make out. But there’s something active down there.”
Fromm knew what that meant. Sooner or later, he and the reinforced Marine company the Humboldt had brought along would have to go down there to keep the scientists and spooks safe while they went on their fact-finding mission.
When his Marines were involved, diplomacy had turned out to cause a great deal of bloodshed. He had little hope that archeology would be any different.
* * *
“So far so good, Major Zhang,” Captain Spears said. “Looks like nobody is home.”
Major Lisbeth Zhang, USWMC, nodded and forced herself not to grin. Her smile made the Navy officer nervous. He sounded positive and confident, but he couldn’t conceal his doubts and fears from her.
“The previous owners called it the Redoubt, more or less,” she said. “One of their earlier conquests, and their last refuge when the wheels came off.”
In her mind, she pictured the view from the cockpit of a Corpse-Ship as it emerged from the Starless Path, an incomprehensibly long time in the past. The ship was heading towards the sixth planet from the star, a heavily-populated world, surrounded by half a dozen massive orbital installations, each artificial moon sheathed in gleaming black armor and emitting tachyon wave transmissions intense enough to kill the weak-minded. She blinked and tried to match the past and present. One big difference was readily apparent: an asteroid belt had replaced the fortified planet from her vision.
“That’s a big ‘oopsie’ right there,” she mumbled to herself.
“I beg your pardon?” Captain Spears said.
“Sorry. Thinking out loud. My apologies, Captain.”
The bridge crewmen were giving her sidelong glances. Without meaning to, she caught bits and pieces of their thoughts: Bitch be crazy was the most popular phrase going through their minds. This cruise is going to suck ass was in second place. The poor bastards weren’t just right about her and their mission, they didn’t know just how crazy she was, or how bad things were going to get. That thought almost made her giggle, but she stopped herself.
People got downright terrified when she started giggling.
The urge was hard to resist, because the cartoonish image of Atu the Pooh kept showing up without warning. Her invisible friend appeared behind Captain Spears and started making obscene gestures behind him. The hallucinations or visitations or whatever were a big reason they’d kept her locked up in Venus until she convinced her handlers that there was some method in her madness.
“We’re not picking up any emissions,” the Tactical Officer reported. They’d been hiding in the shadows and using passive sensors for a few hours, long enough to ensure a hostile fleet wasn’t waiting for them.
“Initiate active scans.”
The American ship started bombarding the system with a steady stream of graviton waves that would provide a detailed analysis of everything they encountered – and would announce the ship’s presence far and wide. The Humboldt was made for this sort of mission, however; nimble, stealthy, and armed heavily enough to give any enemies a bloody nose before leaving them in the dust.
Once upon a time, Lisbeth Zhang had been an up-and-coming Navy officer. She might have ended up commanding something as impressive as this starship if her career hadn’t been ended by a handful of Lamprey space times. Her career, and the lives of everyone under her command.
“Vampires!”
Lisbeth turned to the Wildcat’s Tactical Officer and began to shout orders – “Warp shields!” – but the mines had already fired the grav-thrusters that turned them into missiles. One hit was all it took: the world dissolved in flames just as she realized how badly she had failed...
She shook her head to banish the relived memories and concentrate on living in the moment like a normal human being. The Humboldt crewmembers ignored the gesture; they’d learned to pretend not to notice her occasional ticks.
“The Kranxans lived on three planets,” she said. “After they terraformed them to suit their biology. Their biochemistry was Class Two, fairly compatible with our own.”
“They don’t seem to be around anymore,” Captain Spears said. “And only one planet shows signs of life.”
The readings confirmed his words. The innermost planets were superheated airless rocks, slightly smaller than Sol’s Mercury and even less hospitable. Redoubt-Four was the right size and distance from the sun to harbor life, but it had a thick, hot and inhospitable atmosphere, worse than Venus, which was saying something. A flash from another time and place showed her the same planet, green and rich in life; now it was a hellhole where no Class Two organism could survive.
The destruction of Redoubt-Six might explain what had happened to Four: debris from the shattered planet might have struck it in a cataclysmic meteor shower. Enough large impactors could have triggered all kinds of climate changes, undoing centuries of terraforming in a few hours. The thermal readings showed a surface temperature somewhere in the hundreds of degrees. There might be some microscopic life in deep crevasses somewhere, but that was about it.
That left the fifth planet. Its biosphere hadn’t been destroyed – its orbit must have kept it far enough away from the other two to avoid their fate – but the initial sensor pass only revealed a few ruins buried beneath massive forests and jungles.
One out of three, and it looks like they either packed up and left or died out.
Lisbeth consulted with the records she had absorbed from a Corpse-Ship back in Xanadu. According to them, the main Marauder Armada had been stationed on Redoubt-Six. If any Corpse-Ships ha
d survived, she would have expected them to be there. Except there was no ‘there’ anymore.
She knew how long a shot all of this had been, but striking out a few hours after their arrival made her want to scream and break things.
“Don’t give up just yet, Christopher Robin,” her invisible friend said. The hallucination was floating right over Captain Spears’s head. It winked at her. “Try listening for a change. You might hear something useful.”
Lisbeth nodded, and luckily the gesture was aimed at the Humboldt’s skipper, so for once she didn’t look quite so crazy.
“We’ll take it nice and slow,” the Navy officer said, unaware of the alien spirit’s presence. “Do a detailed scan of both worlds and the asteroid belt. We’ll figure out our next step t after we have more information.”
As he spoke, Lisbeth tried listening. There might not be graviton or electronic emissions coming from Redoubt-Five, but there was something else out there. It was the stuff they were calling tachyons or t-waves, because it sounded a little more scientific than juju or bad mojo, and never mind that most physicists wanted to tear their hair out when they heard the name of their beloved theoretical particle taken in vain. By whatever name, people like Lisbeth could sense t-waves, and Redoubt System was positively lousy with them.
“I told you,” Atu said, and tried to thumb its nose at her. Which was funnier than it should have been, since it didn’t have a nose, or any sort of breathing organs on its face for that matter.
She thought about telling everyone, but figured she was getting too much of a reputation as a weirdo. Instead, she drafted a text message and sent it privately to the skipper. Captain Spears would listen to her. The officer wasn’t a fan of the ‘weird Navy’ – a term that covered everything from the eccentric Warp Navigation departments on which FTL travel depended to the more recent fighter pilots – but he was a pragmatist. If relying on hunches and black magic worked, then he’d make use of them.
In Dread Silence (Warp Marine Corps Book 4) Page 9
