Silent Order: Eclipse Hand

by Jonathan Moeller

  March shrugged. “You realized the truth, and you ran for it. That’s braver than most people can manage.”

  “Maybe,” said Cassandra.

  “Help me reattach this cowling,” said March. She nodded and picked up the other end, and together they slid it back into place over the hyperdrive.

  “Well,” said Cassandra, straightening up, “now I suppose there’s nothing left to do but wait to see if we’ll starve to death or if the President’s secret police will find us.”

  “Or you could show me your Eclipse device,” said March.

  Cassandra frowned. “Why...why would you want to see it?”

  “Because I’m curious,” said March. “People tried to shoot me and blow up my ship for it. That makes a man curious. Also, I think you would like to tell someone about your research.”

  That made her light up. “You...want to hear about my research?”

  “Since it seems to be the source of our current problems,” said March, “yes.”

  “Oh. Well...certainly, then.” Cassandra straightened up. “Can I set up in your cargo hold?”

  “Yes,” said March. “If you don’t mind the smell.”

  “Smell?” said Cassandra. “What smell?”

  “The smell in the cargo hold,” said March. “I’m hauling a few thousand drums of Rustari algae protein. It’s gotten a bit ripe.”

  “Oh, that’s what the smell was,” said Cassandra. “I just assumed that you didn’t clean up very much, since you’re a man living alone and all, and...” She turned red again. “Oh, I’ve put my foot in my mouth again.”

  “That’s all right,” said March. He put the laptop and the tools away. “It’s better than getting kicked in the face, believe me.”

  She gave him a puzzled look and then laughed. “I get it. I don’t think I’ve ever met someone like you.”

  March shrugged. “Let’s be grateful for small favors.”

  They left the engine room and descended to the cargo hold. Cassandra unpacked her trunk and assembled the equipment within, lecturing at length on the underlying mathematics as she did so.

  Nearly all of the math was over March’s head, but he came away convinced of two things.

  First, Cassandra Yerzhov was a genius, an actual genius in her field. Had she possessed a little more force of personality, she could have made a tremendous amount of money working for Oradrea Drive Yards, or at least held out for higher rank at the University of Oradrea. But he could tell that she liked to please people. She kept looking at him for approval during her description of the mathematics, and she lit up with a smile every time he nodded and looked thoughtful and pretended to know what the hell she was talking about.

  Second, he suspected she would have been happy doting upon a crop of small children, but her intellect left her bored with anything other than complicated mathematics, and it had also left her socially isolated. Else it would have been far harder for her to leave Oradrea. Her intellect had also led her to stumble across a dangerous secret that might get them both killed. Yet it had its compensations. As she talked, both her cringing manner and her timidity vanished, and she looked transformed, almost like a musician caught up in the throes of a song.

  It took her about an hour to thoroughly explain the mathematics behind each component and the practical engineering reasons for the configuration. March didn’t mind. He had nothing better to do anyway, and he suspected talking about her work kept Cassandra’s mind from dwelling upon the dangers. Likely she was prone to anxiety and depression, and he didn’t want her trying to commit suicide in the guest cabin.

  “All right,” said Cassandra once she had settled the final component into place. “Let’s turn this on.” The finished Eclipse prototype looked like a meter-high cylindrical framework with a variety of hyperdrive components and sensors joined together by nets of wiring. Cassandra connected a computer tablet to the device with a thick cable and tapped some icons. The Eclipse powered up with a low hum, and the tablet’s screen went black.

  “Did it crash?” said March.

  White text and numbers appeared on the black background.

  “No,” said Cassandra. “I didn’t get around to adding a graphical interface to the software. But the command line is so much more elegant and efficient, don’t you think? If you have a math package installed, you can enter the commands for the Eclipse entirely as mathematical functions. And...yes, we are online. Look.” She pointed at a row of numbers that meant nothing to March. “It’s detecting the dark energy emanations of both the Tiger’s hyperdrive and the resonator coils. The resonator coils are operating properly.” She frowned. “The hyperdrive is showing power fluctuations, but I suppose we knew that already.”

  “No quantum entanglement effects nearby, I hope?” said March.

  Cassandra sighed. “No. Which is a good thing, I suppose. But if we were next to a tachyon relay on an industrialized planet, the display would look very different.”

  March nodded. “How far of a range does that thing have?”

  “About a hundred and fifty kilometers, more or less,” said Cassandra. “It depends on the amount of power available and the size of the dark energy detection array. If you gave me three or four billion credits, I suppose I could build one large enough to cover a city.”

  March said nothing, watching the numbers change on the tablet screen. A functional quantum entanglement detector would have been an interesting bit of scientific esoterica, if not for the Machinists and their Wraith devices. March had once been forced to kill a man under the control of a Wraith device. If he had possessed an Eclipse machine, he might have been able to realize the danger, might have been able to find the Wraith device and free the enslaved man before it was too late.

  “It is possible,” said March, “that this might save a lot of lives, Dr. Yerzhov.”

  Cassandra frowned. March wondered if that had upset her, but some of the numbers had just changed on the tablet screen. “The detector array must be glitching.”

  “Why?” said March.

  “I’m reading a source of dark energy in the cargo hold,” said Cassandra. She squinted at the tablet and then pointed. “From somewhere over...there, I think.”

  She was pointing at the strong room door.

  “No,” said March. “No, it’s not malfunctioning.” He cursed himself as an idiot. The Eclipse had a dark energy detector, and he should have expected that the damned artifact of the Great Elder Ones was putting out a dark energy signature. “I do have a source of dark energy in there.”

  Cassandra’s eyes got wide. “What is it? It...wait. It’s one of those alien artifacts you were telling me about. The ones the Machinists can use to create their mind-control machines.”

  “Yeah,” said March. “Or something close to it, anyway. I took it from a Machinist agent on my last assignment, and I’m taking it to Calaskar to hand it over to the Silent Order.”

  “Could I see it?” said Cassandra.

  “I don’t think that’s wise,” said March.

  Cassandra shrugged. “I’m already in pretty deep.”

  “You are,” said March, “but if you’re taken prisoner, you can’t be tortured into revealing something that you don’t know.”

  “That’s...a really good argument,” said Cassandra. Some of the numbers on her tablet changed. “But that relic of yours is giving off a weird dark energy signature. I’ve never seen anything like it. And...”

  The numbers changed again, and her dark eyes went wide.

  “What is it?” said March.

  “That...that relic,” said Cassandra. “It’s giving off an intermittent quantum entanglement reading.”

  “Is that dangerous?” said March.

  “No,” said Cassandra. “And it’s not even complete. It’s like it’s trying to...start an entanglement effect. Like it’s looking for a target. Or like it’s a computer waiting for input.”

  “If it’s waiting for input,” said March, “better not to see it or
look at it.”

  Cassandra shivered. “That is an excellent argument, Captain March.”

  The next morning March awoke early to guide the Tiger through its next jump transit. They flew through another uninhabited system without incident and entered a new hyperspace tunnel without any trouble, but the power surges in the hyperdrive kept getting worse. He thought the hyperdrive would hold out until they reached JX2278C, but he doubted the regulator would last any longer. Hopefully, Captain Torrence and the Alpine were waiting for them.

  If not, March would have to put out a distress call and wait. JX2278C was close enough to Calaskaran space that March had no doubt a ship would arrive long before he and Cassandra ran out of food, but he knew that Oradrea’s secret police would not have given up. For that matter, the Machinists would be looking for the Eclipse device, Cassandra, and the relic March had taken from Simon Lorre on Rustaril.

  He hadn’t intended to have so many high-value targets aboard a ship with a failing hyperdrive, but it had worked out that way.

  Still, for the moment they were safe in hyperspace, and there was nothing March could do about any of their problems, so he changed to a T-shirt and shorts, went to the gym, and started his exercise routine. Likely he would finish before Cassandra awakened. He did a six kilometer run, worked through a set of deadlifts, and then switched to military presses.

  He was holding the barbell over his head when the door opened behind him.

  Reflexes demanded that he turn and see what was happening, but he was holding a lot of damned weight over his head. March carefully lowered the barbell, keeping his form correct, and eased it back down to the floor.

  He turned, breathing hard, and saw Cassandra standing in the door, staring at him, her mouth hanging open a little. She looked mortally embarrassed, but also fascinated as if she liked what she had just seen.

  That could be a problem.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m really sorry. I didn’t mean to interrupt. I heard a thumping noise,” that would have been March dropping the weights back to the deck, “and I went to see what it was. I thought the air handler might be failing, and...”

  March waved a hand. “It’s all right. I thought you would still be sleeping.”

  “Um. Well. I was. But then I got up.” She didn’t seem to know where to put her eyes or what to do with her hands. For her sake, March was glad he had worn a T-shirt. He didn’t like anyone to see his scars, but the poor woman was blushing to the roots of her hair. “And then I heard the noise, and you...”

  “Can you do me a favor?” said March, thinking of something to deflect her discomfort. Cassandra bobbed her head, looked at him, looked away again. “Could you check the hyperdrive? See how much more the regulator has crystallized.”

  “Yeah,” said Cassandra. “I can do that.” She turned towards the door, hesitated, and then turned back to him. “Can I ask you something?”

  “Sure.”

  Bafflement replaced embarrassment. “Why are you doing that?”

  It was his turn for confusion. “Doing what?”

  She waved a hand at the gym. “Just...lifting heavy things. It sounds like a lot of work.”

  “It is.”

  Her frown widened. “It can’t be fun.”

  “It isn’t. But enjoy it anyway.”

  “That doesn’t make sense.”

  March shrugged. “Sometimes a man likes a challenge.”

  “But why do it?” said Cassandra.

  March shrugged again. “Any number of reasons. Take your pick. The human body wasn’t intended for spaceflight, so it’s good to stay fit. I find myself in violent situations more often than I would like, so I need to be strong and quick. It helps maintain optimal health. It also clears the mind. Shakes out the cobwebs, I heard someone say.”

  “Those are all good reasons,” said Cassandra. “But it’s not for...for...”

  March waited.

  “Vanity?” said Cassandra. “Just so you’ll have big muscles.” Her eyes went wide. “Not that you don’t have muscles. I mean, you do. And they’re nice.” Her eyes went even wider. “Oh, God, I’m making an ass of myself.”

  March laughed despite himself.

  “Now you’re laughing at me,” said Cassandra.

  “Yes,” said March. He tapped his left arm with his right hand. “See this?”

  “It...is kind of hard to miss,” said Cassandra. “I didn’t want to ask about it. I figured you had lost the arm in an accident or something.”

  “Or something,” said March. “It left a lot of scars. So lifting weights for vanity would be a waste of time.”

  “I guess,” said Cassandra. “I just...when I was in school, I hated physical education, you know? I was always so clumsy. And the other girls made fun of me all the time for liking math and physics. I could never do anything right. And they spent so much time exercising so they would look pretty. I didn’t want to do that. My most valuable thing is my brain. That’s what I focused on, and my body was just this...this stupid thing I had to deal with.”

  “Maybe you’ve got it backward,” said March.

  “What do you mean?” said Cassandra.

  “Your brain is part of your body, whether you like it or not,” said March. “People like to think that their brains are in control of their bodies, but is usually the other way around. How many times have you been cranky because you were hungry, or made mistakes because you were tired?”

  She nodded.

  “If you want to think clearly,” said March, “it helps to take care of yourself.”

  “I never thought of it that way,” said Cassandra. “Could you show me?”

  “Show you what?” said March.

  “How to lift weights.”

  He blinked. “What, right now?”

  “I don’t have anything better to do,” said Cassandra. “And...I don’t think you would make fun of me when I screw up. Not the way the gym teachers did.”

  “That would be counterproductive,” said March. “All right. Let’s start.”

  So, he showed her how to lift weights, explaining and demonstrating the proper forms for deadlifts, presses, and squats. Cassandra tried gamely, though it was clear that she was unused to physical exertion of any kind. She was underweight, and she didn’t have much in the way of muscle tone. Nevertheless, she powered through a few practice sets using the lightest weights that March had, and when she was done, she was red-faced and wheezing, sweat stains marking her jumpsuit.

  “Wow,” said Cassandra. “Just...wow. I’ve never done anything like that. Just...I’m really out of shape, aren’t I?”

  “Yes,” said March. “I imagine research doesn’t leave much time for exercise.”

  She put her hands on her hips and blew out a long breath. “No...no, it really didn’t. God.” She gave him a wobbly grin. “But I think I see why you like this.”

  “Yeah?” said March.

  “It’s so hard to breathe right now that I can’t worry about anything else,” said Cassandra.

  “It’s better for you than getting drunk,” said March. “Why don’t you go clean up, and then we’ll check the hyperdrive again. The sanitizer booth in your cabin can clean your clothes as well. Just change the knob on the wall.”

  “Okay,” said Cassandra. “I might...yeah...that’s a good idea. Then I might sit down.” She grinned at him. “Thank you, Captain March. I think that’s the first time I ever enjoyed a gym class.”

  He inclined his head, and she left the gym and headed for her cabin.

  March frowned as the door closed. It was clear she was becoming infatuated with him, and that could be a problem. The psychology of it was obvious enough. She was alone and terrified with dangerous foes pursuing her, and he had swooped in with guns blazing to save her life. This was her first experience of violence, and it was understandable that she wanted to latch onto a strong protector. The pattern had been repeated in war zones throughout human history.

  And it had been a
long time since he had been with a woman, and he did find her attractive. She might not have been in shape, but she was pretty. Part of him wondered just what it would be like to kiss her, what her naked body would look like, what it would feel like to take that body into his arms...

  No. He was on a mission, and an entanglement like that would be a dangerous complication. For that matter, Cassandra was alone and frightened and desperate, and some part of him was revolted at the thought of using that to seduce her. The Royal Calaskaran Church taught that it was immoral for an unmarried man and an unmarried woman to sleep together, though March’s faith in God varied depending on the day. Sometimes he was sure that God existed, sometimes he thought that God did not exist, and in his blacker moods he thought that God existed but hated humanity and wanted mankind to suffer. What else explained the Final Consciousness and men like Paul Murdan and the labor camps of his childhood on Calixtus? Why else did mankind repeat the same mistakes of dictatorship and collectivism and enslavement over and over?

  But a priest March had met on Calaskar had said that when God had given mankind dominion over primeval Earth, that meant God had also given mankind the duty to do good works on His behalf. March didn’t know if that was true or not. Though he suspected that if he prayed and asked God for help, if God replied it would be to say that He had given March a brain, a strong back, a well-stocked armory, and a good starship. What the hell more did he need?

  March shook his head and put all thoughts of women and theology aside. No, he would not seduce Cassandra, and even if she was infatuated with him, he doubted she would work up the courage to approach him about it. Some women preferred to make the first move, but he was sure Cassandra was not one of them.

  There was also the possibility that she was a superb actress and a Machinist agent attempting to recover the artifact in the strong room. It seemed very unlikely, but stranger things had happened.

  March completed the first round of his workout, adjusted the gravity, and repeated it.