Murphy's Lawless: A Terran Republic Novel

by Charles E. Gannon

  The view in Downing’s holographic visor changed. The station was now a tiny, discorporating smudge of debris, black against the surface of the planet near which the battle was being fought. If you could even call it a fight. The local craft, interlopers from the main world in 55 Tauri’s primary system, were attempting to flee but being unerringly slaughtered before they could make any significant progress. The closest of them—a long truss-work keel with engines at one end, a hab-ring at the other, and cargo and docking frames in between—was swarmed by motes that, had the view not been coming from one of those same drones, would otherwise have been invisible.

  Dully gleaming bursts of ellipses marked where the enemy ship’s point defense fire batteries were releasing streams of projectiles at the small attack platforms. Futile: the swarming drones’ ability to crowd gees rapidly and along very different vectors made nonsense of maneuver projections and intercept algorithms. In reply, the teardrop-shaped harriers swung in wide arcs, their micro-second megawatt-level UV laser bursts carving and shearing away the struts and modules of the fleeing ship. Occasional explosions and tongues of flame marked where they found rarities such as oxygenated fuel or missile racks.

  Trevor grunted. “Got to hand it to the Dornaani; they sure can put on a show. Considerate enough to make sure that the visors are synced with their lasers’ wavelength.” He shared the calm observation as one of the crew modules attached to the stricken ship’s ring habitat sparked as it was rent, and then sent out a weak rush of flame and a litter of writhing stick figures.

  “I am glad you appreciate the proximal viewpoint,” added a voice from behind.

  Downing removed his visor, turned, stared at their fellow traveler and captain of the alien ship to which they owed their continued existence. “How much longer, do you think, Alnduul?”

  The Dornaani’s two large, pupilless eyes nictated twice, rapidly as he thought. “Not more than three minutes. We have taken care to interdict the enemy craft on vectors that would have brought them out from behind the local obstructions blocking line-of-sight communications to their home system. The remainder are collected at the center of the lee of the combined masses of this system’s sun and the planet below.”

  “And scratch one more,” added Trevor. “That transport, or whatever it is, just vaporized. A hit on its drives. Damn, those drones are fast. And how do you Dornaani pack so much punch in those short focal-length lasers?”

  “You know I will not answer that question, Captain.”

  “Never hurts to try. And here comes the local cavalry to clean up what’s left.”

  Downing put his visor back on.

  A new perspective, closer to the planet: a hazy mix of greens, blues, and a wide equatorial belt of dusty ochre. In the foreground, the spindly craft of their allies were bearing down upon the last enemy ships. With the exception of one or two craft designed for planetary interface, they didn’t have fuselages at all. All struts and tanks and modules, they were held together by spiderweb frames: partly gridwork, partly geodesic cradles. Not sturdy, but fast and spare—and loaded with missiles. Which they released in coveys toward the comparatively sluggish enemy hulls.

  The comms crackled slightly on the sender’s side, then a woman’s voice was in their earbuds. “Lee to Olsloov.”

  Alnduul nodded to Downing, who replied, “Olsloov Actual. Go, Captain Lee.”

  “Please switch to secure five.”

  “Done, Captain. What’s troubling you, that you don’t want our allies—well, co-combatants—on the channel?”

  “Sirs, this is—this is wrong. We’re not breaking off to assess, as per the opord you and the locals agreed upon.”

  Downing frowned. He did not know a great deal about Captain Mara Lee, other than that she was USAF and, so to speak, a woman out of time. Far out of her time. They had reanimated her from cold sleep because their new allies’ leader was not just a woman, but furnished with what sounded like a hereditary title: Matriarch. And in their first broken exchanges, that leader intimated that she would prefer another female as the liaison to her people. So, they had reanimated Mara “Bruce” Lee: USAF helicopter pilot who had last flown—and last lived—133 years ago, like the rest of the Lost Soldiers being towed along (so to speak) behind Olsloov.

  Downing nodded even though she had no visual of him; since she had to keep communicating through the radio of a local ship, the locals couldn’t be prevented from hearing if they wanted to. “Details please, Captain.”

  “Sir, I have asked when the flight leader intends to inform the enemy ships to cut thrust, stand down, and prepare to be boarded.”

  “And?”

  “And he has not replied.”

  Trevor glanced over. “Don’t like the sound of that.”

  Lee sounded like she was speaking through clenched teeth. “Neither do I, sir. This is…wait, what the—?”

  The comm channel terminated with a sharp snap, replaced by the hiss of static. Downing glanced quickly at Alnduul.

  The Dornaani’s mouth flattened. “Transmission terminated at the source.”

  Downing glanced quickly at the tactical holotank; all the aqua-colored motes—friendly forces—were still there.

  Alnduul murmured, “Changing visual feed.”

  Eyes refocusing on the visor, Downing saw their allies’ ships angling in toward the enemy craft. Their weaker lasers, still picked out by the spectrum-scanning Dornaani visors, played over the fleeing ships. The beams tore rents in fuel tanks and caused small, dense, wildly spinning clouds of debris to jet out from the sides of cargo and crew modules.

  Silent, the two humans and the Dornaani watched the ruthless and efficient slaughter unfold until the last of the orange motes denoting enemy craft had vanished.

  Downing wet dry lips before commenting, “Well, I suspect that whoever cut off Captain Lee’s comm channel no longer has anything to hide. Can we raise her?”

  Alnduul waved a hand of falling fingers at one of his bridge crew, who manipulated her control surfaces. She stared at them a moment, her gills closing slowly. “No reply.”

  Trevor cleared his throat. “Richard, I think I know why.”

  As Downing re-centered his attention on the scene in the visor, Mara Lee’s voice arose from the bridge’s sound system as an amplified whisper. “Olsloov, send pulse to confirm you receive me.”

  Alnduul nodded at his crewperson, exchanged glances with Downing. “The captain was not to use our secure comm bud except in case of emergency.”

  “I think Trevor is watching that emergency unfold,” Downing answered, swallowing.

  In the visor, their allies’ ships had begun to counter-boost, slowing their approach to the debris field. In it, a number of escape pods were flashing their location. Space-suited individuals were waving glove-mounted lights.

  Mara Lee’s voice, back as an even fainter, huskier whisper, reported. “This ship is still weapons-free, sir. So are the others, from what I hear. And now—oh, shit!” Her voice became a muffled, pressure-hose hiss. “Shit! SHIT!”

  The allied ships’ own, more modest point defense fire systems began sending short bursts of two or three rounds at the blinking lights that marked the locations of the survivors. And, one by one, those lights went out.

  All of them.

  * * *

  Fifteen minutes later, their allies restored normal comm channels. Mara Lee was breathing heavily as she reported.

  “Killed every one of them. Every. Single. Fucking. One of them. They straight-up lied to us, sirs.”

  “Yes,” Downing answered, “they obviously did. And it will make our next conversation with them quite difficult.”

  “You think so?” Mara Lee caught herself, then added, “Sir.”

  “Yes, I do ‘think so,’ Captain, and you will watch your tone.” Downing waved at Olsloov’s comms operator, who signaled that they were now connected on their secret link. “Captain, are you receiving through the Dornaani comm bud?”

  “I hear
you, sir. Loud and clear.” Lee had to keep her replies consistent with the communication on the main link, or their “allies” would realize she was receiving a transmission they could not hear.

  “Good. Put a stopper in that rage so you can see the bigger picture. Vengeance may be part of their motive, but that doesn’t explain what they just did.”

  “Waiting on your next send, sir,” Mara muttered bitterly.

  “They just lost the opportunity to interrogate the survivors, as well as collect salvage they could have used from the ships they gutted.” He switched to the normal comm channel. “Have our allies offered any explanation for their departure from the opord?”

  “Haven’t heard any yet, sir.”

  Downing went back to the Dornaani channel. “Here is what I suspect. They killed the survivors so that we couldn’t talk to them. Our allies have been hiding in this system for centuries, so they are genuinely in fear for their existence. But if they are interested in keeping parts of their own past hidden, particularly from before they went into hiding, allowing survivors to talk is a risk they might not be willing to take. At this moment, they still have absolute control over the narrative of who, what, and why they are here.” He went back to the normal channel. “We’ll see what explanations they offer when we meet them later today.”

  “Roger that, sir. Although it’s hard to imagine any need, any level of caution, that would explain what I just saw. Sir.”

  “I agree. Downing out.”

  Alnduul’s eyelids cycled slowly, somberly. “It is indeed difficult to understand why they would need such absolute measures. They could have simply restricted your access to the survivors.”

  Trevor pulled off his visor. “Yeah, but you’re forgetting something, Alnduul.”

  “And what is that, Captain?”

  “In this system, everyone is a descendent of the Ktor.”

  Alnduul’s mouth tucked in. “Yes. There is that.”

  * * *

  To use one of Mara Lee’s most colorful profanities, from the moment Olsloov had shifted into the 55 Tauri B system, it had been one “shit show” after another.

  Emerging slightly above the ecliptic, the Dornaani had scanned for the classic signs of a space-faring civilization—pinpoint radiant energy sources, broadcast or microwave activity, small objects on unusual vectors or maintaining usefully close and regular orbits—and found nothing.

  Nothing nearby, that is. The primary system—an F 7 main sequence star with three planets—was a riot of just such activity and emissions. Most of it was centered on the third planet, but there were also noticeable signatures clustered near planet two. There were also plentiful thermal blooms along trajectories that were consistent with either high-energy transits or Hohmann transfers between the various planets and their satellites and, by conjecture, space stations. However, as expected and as they had encountered elsewhere since entering what was nominally Ktor space, there were no high-power broadcast or radar emissions. To use those, or a Faster Than Light drive (a misnomer that everyone used, anyhow), was to invite the retributive attention of the Ktoran Sphere, from which they had been exiled.

  The readings emanating from the high-energy transit vehicles were consistent with nuclear thermal rockets. The plenitude of artificial objects in space indicated a highly industrialized population, probably in the billions. Which made the comparative silence of this secondary system all the more puzzling. Olsloov approached the apparently biogenic third planet for a better look.

  Within the hour, a handful of small objects were detected maneuvering in the vicinity of, or in orbit around, that planet. However, the planet itself showed no radiant energy sources nor even the weakest of radio signals. Surprisingly, those signatures came from asteroids .7 AU distant from the green world, out beyond the fourth orbit of the K 3 main sequence secondary star. The signatures were unusual in the type and degree of spectral diffusion they evinced, and if it had not been for the extremely advanced nature of Olsloov’s sensors, would have probably been completely overlooked.

  The reason for the strange emissions was quick in coming. The asteroids shared an unusual characteristic: a very slow roll around their long axis. Their surfaces were also unusually dark, as if any reflective points had been dulled to a matte finish. Trevor’s frown had signaled doubt even as he asked the question: could that be a result of natural phenomena?

  Alnduul answered that while nothing was impossible, the selective kind of abrasion that would be required to create such a non-reflective surface had never been observed in nature. Rather than pass these mile-long objects, (and thereby risk putting Olsloov between the two points of local activity) it was decided to make for the longish asteroids and get a better sample of the very weak, brief radio bursts that were emanating from them and/or nearby.

  The explanations came quickly. The heavily encrypted bursts were handily decoded by the Dornaani computers, which identified the underlying language in a moment: a devolved form of Ktoran as it had been spoken at least 1,400 years ago. Hardly surprising. Since Olsloov had begun fleeing from both human and Dornaani pursuers as it also searched for missing friends—Caine Riordan and the self-styled Crewe that had followed him into distant space—Ktoran linguistic roots had been the norm in every system with a human population. What made this one unusual—and useful—was its size and level of technological sophistication. If peaceful contact could be established, then Olsloov’s almost completely depleted consumables could be restored and the mission to find Caine and company could continue.

  The only real debate was over whether the locals had also inherited their Ktoran ancestors’ cultural (and arguably, encoded) predilections for aggression and domination. However, caution was counterweighted by desperate need.

  In the end, the green world’s lack of development was taken as a moderately hopeful sign. It was difficult to foresee how or why a culture that had inherited the Ktoran reflex toward conquest would have left such an obvious prize uncolonized and unutilized. Instead, the population of the primary system appeared to be avoiding contact with the third planet, choosing instead to observe from near space and create asteroid habitats at some remove. The only logical conjecture was that the Ktoran instincts toward dominion had either diminished or had been actively rejected and replaced with a more compassionate and conscientious value system.

  Made hopeful by having seen other systems which had made such a choice, Downing and Alnduul agreed that, given their rapidly dwindling supplies, they had to risk making contact. And here, at the binary system’s furthest inhabited edge, was the best and safest place to do so. Using the Dornaani computer to translate their words into the local Ktoran patois, a greeting was sent using the only sure means of reaching the locals: broadcast.

  That was the moment at which the shit show did not merely begin, but exploded into full-blown chaos.

  All radio emanations from the asteroids ended instantly. Previously undetected small craft activated drives and sped out of the green world’s Trojan Point asteroids toward the outer system. The ships that had been observed around the planet itself reacted promptly, crowding gees on what were clearly intercept courses. The perplexing, even contradictory activity became clear only when one of the few ships not giving chase rose toward the ecliptic, high enough to send a quick, high-energy broadcast burst back toward the primary system. The Dornaani computer promptly decoded it and spat out the translation: “Investigating local anomaly; stand by for details. Confirm lascom coordinates for subsequent comms.”

  Downing prided himself on being hard to confuse, disorient, or surprise: qualities that had served him well in the SAS before medicaling out. But he spent a full minute experiencing all three. It took that long to figure out that the “local anomaly” was not Olsloov or its radio message; it was the small craft which were clearly fleeing the inner system. Which meant that the asteroid habitats were not facilities owned and manned by persons from the primary system, but were, instead, hiding from its forces. And
Olsloov’s broadcast signal had spooked them into fleeing for home.

  The realizations tumbled out quickly after that. Those asteroid habitats were very large, and as scans continued to pick up low energy signatures scattered throughout the outer system, it became clear that these space dwellers had led a secret existence for a very long time. But how?

  It was Trevor who saw the reason: the primary and secondary system achieved perihelion only once every eighty-eight years. Even for a nuclear thermal rocket, the median distance between them—26 AU—would be a long, expensive trip. And if, as now seemed the case, the local culture had retained a great deal of the Ktor’s impulse toward aggression and absolute control, then they might very well choose not to found a permanent colony on the world, lest it break away and become a rival. So they probably made the trip only when the systems neared perihelion, the peak of which was approximately six years off.

  All of which meant that Olsloov’s one message had put the entire population of the second system at imminent risk of subjugation or extermination.

  After that, there was not enough time to examine any one of the cascading decisions too long. Swift action was necessary if the damage was to be contained and controlled. Identification and offers of help were sent to the asteroid habitats. Olsloov’s impressive comms and electronic countermeasures suite initiated full-bandwidth jamming of the ships from the primary system. Dornaani drones were launched toward the green world, crowding gees so high that Downing was startled; their acceleration and duration outstripped anything human technical intelligence analysts had imagined possible, let alone possessed by another species.

  The foresight of that move was not long in being felt. Shortly after the interloping vessels were jammed, several of them began altering course to get out of the shadow of the combined mass and interference of the planet and the system’s star. The only logical reason: to initiate line-of-sight communications to the main system and report.