James Wittenbach - Worlds Apart 07

by Yronwode

  Prime Commander Keeler woke up in a Midian Hospital bed. Of course, Alkema was there. “Good afterdawn, Commander,” Alkema greeted him.

  Keeler looked at Alkema and the strange woman standing next to him and tried to raise his arm. There was a needle sticking in it attached to a tube that was dripping some kind of fluid into his bloodstream. “I don’t remember this being here before,” he croaked.

  Then, he collapsed into a coughing fit. Alkema handed him a tube of water, and waited until the seizure had subsided before speaking to him. “Sorry, sir, their technology is somewhat basic. That device is apparently putting nutrition and medication into your bloodstream. I also infused you with some of my protein and life energy when we recovered you from the site of the battle.”

  “I hope I made you buy me dinner first,” Keeler coughed out. Alkema handed him another tube of water, which Keeler drank with only mild disappointment.

  When he finished, Keeler said, “I had a dream where I was riding a dragon and leading a barbarian horde on a path of pillage and conquest.”

  “That wasn’t a dream,” Alkema told him.

  “I was afraid of that,” Keeler told him back.

  Alkema went on to explain, “That battle was three, almost four, days ago. It’s been twenty-six days since your ship crashed in the wilderness.”

  “Twenty-six days!” Keeler’s vitals jumped momentarily, then subsided. He stared up at the ceiling. “So, what did I miss?”

  Alkema answered. “Over the last 25 days, you’ve apparently killed eleven leaders of various Xirong phalanges, then united the phalanges into a an army that tried to invade Midian. You somehow managed to take control over the planet’s prisoner containment system and turn it against the Midians, and you fought an apocalyptic battle to the death with… um… Eddie Roebuck.”

  Keeler’s eyes widened. “Really?”

  “Za.”

  Keeler sighed and looked again at the needle and tube in his arm. “What the Hell was wrong with me?”

  Fortunately, Doctor Goodbar was on hand to explain that. “It wasn’t entirely your doing. You were being manipulated.”

  “How?” Keeler asked.

  Goodbar showed him a chart with some squiggly lines and Midian script that meant nothing to him. “You had been given large amounts of a drug we call XP-2002.

  It’s a strong stimulant and hallucinogen, and it makes the subject highly suggestible.

  We typically find moderate amounts in the bodies of Xirong missile pilots. It’s also that rare substance your landing gear wasn’t able to detoxify. You had a rather large amount in your system. It’s taken us most of two days to detoxify you.” Alkema added. “The drug ultimately burns up all the cognitive synapses in your brains. A few more days at those high levels of exposure would have killed you or turned you into a drooling moron.”

  Keeler was quiet for several moments, then apologized. “I’m sorry, I don’t know whether to go for the Panrovian joke or the Republicker joke.”

  “Fortunately, the Midian High Council has decided not to pursue war crimes charges against you, since the Xirong were manipulating you. Apparently, the drug was given to you in the water they forced you to drink.” Doctor Good explained to him.

  “Bang!” Keeler remembered.

  “Bang?” Alkema asked.

  “Bang was the name of the woman who was manipulating me. She was always giving me water and telling me what to do.” There was remorse in his voice for what he had done under her orders, though.

  Doctor Goodbar filled him in. “Her real name is Anastasia Clear. She was a Midian, a former student at the Xetares School before she dropped out to live among the Xirong. Many of our young people go through a period when they romanticize the Xirong. The perpetual struggle, the ruthlessness holds a certain fascination for them.

  Mostly, they outgrow it, but she unfortunately did not.”

  “What happened to her” Keeler asked.

  Alkema tried to explain it as gently as he could. “After Pegasus ended the battle, what was left of the Xirong Army retreated to Nimali. Two few days after the battle, the Midians sent equipment into the Demilitarized to clear out the debris left behind by the Xirong attack. Apparently, Bang tried to prevent the operation from going forward. She placed herself in the path of an armored ground-mover. Details about what happened next are in dispute… but she did not survive.”

  Keeler was surprised to find that he did not feel sad.

  “That poor deluded girl,” said the doctor.

  “She was not deluded,” Keeler said quietly. “I was deluded. She knew exactly what she was doing.” He coughed a bit more and asked. “So, what was the deal with the dragons again? I think I missed that part.”

  Alkema explained it to him. “The dragons were part of Yronwode’s prisoner containment system. Why the ancients chose dragons, I don’t know, but somehow, you were able to manipulate them. I suspect it was through your battlestaff.”

  “My staff,” Keeler exclaimed in near panic.

  “It’s here,” Alkema told him. “It was in your hands when we found you on the battlefield. If I recall my Human History, the Theans were supposedly able to manipulate human technology at will.”

  “That’s right, they could do that,” Keeler remembered. “But it’s never acted like that before now.”

  “It’s never been interfacing directly with Commonwealth technology before,” Alkema said.

  “What about the StarLocks,” Keeler protested. “I’ve taken it to the StarLocks.”

  “They were built after the Crusades,” Alkema reminded him. “The Ancients probably hardened them against Thean manipulation, but this planet was set aside as a prison world during the Crusades.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Keeler said. He was beginning to wonder if he should ask for more sedatives. Then, he came to his senses and realized he should definitiely ask for more sedatives.

  Before he did so, Alkema began another question. “When you were leading the Xirong, you called yourself ‘K-Rock.’”

  “I did?”

  “Za, I wondered if you could explain that,” Alkema told him.

  Keeler groaned, and then admitted. “I must have taken it from an old legend.

  One of those stories of the old commonwealth we don’t know is real, or just a tale. But it was a pretty lame story, so I assume it’s true.”

  “You should rest,” Dr. Good advised him, then left to tell a nurse to bring Keeler some sedatives.

  Keeler lay back in the bed and closed his eyes. “When can we leave?”

  “Pegasus, is coming back tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow?” Keeler scowled, keeping his eyes closed. “Where did they go?”

  “They’re in orbit, but we can’t get to them because of the containment system,” Alkema explained. “They have to come down to us. Both of our Aves were wrecked, but we’ve managed to salvage enough from both ships to create one flight-worthy ship.” Keeler’s eyes snapped open as he remembered a detail. “Is Toto all right?”

  “He’ll be okay,” Alkema told him. “Stratos, too. They’re both going to make it. We didn’t lose anybody.”

  “I could also use some attention!” a voice called from the other hospital bed.

  “For those keeping score, I was on the side of good in this apocalypse. Remember that.”

  “Who the hell is that?” Keeler asked.

  “That’s Eddie,” Alkema told Keeler. “They found him a few meters away from you on the battlefield when it was all over. The Midians put you in a room together so they could keep both of you under guard. They’ve been stretched pretty thin by… by the events of the last few days.”

  Eddie threw aside the curtain from around his bed. “Unlike you, I remember everything. I remember waking up in big sandy mud puddle. I remember waking up and having all the power the Starcrossers had been saving up for hundreds of years gone! I remember being put into one of those thopter-ambulance things, and I remember that Meek guy telling me I was never
really Pontifex, that the real Pontifex just gave me her power because she knew the battle was coming and she didn’t have the strength to fight it.”

  Eddie was sitting up in his hospital bed, looking not much the worse for wear.

  “Also, if Pegasus hadn’t shown up, I would have won.”

  “Not bloody likely,” Keeler shot back. “You wouldn’t have stood a chance against the combined strength of a thousand dragons.”

  “It was only a hundred,” Alkema told him.

  “Nevertheless!” Keeler insisted.

  “By the way, when you were K-Rock the Barbarian, you tried to blow up a whole city with a Hammerhead missile,” Eddie added.

  “I did?” Keeler asked, then, he remembered. “Oh, crap, I did.” Roebuck looked around the room. “Davey, could you close the door for a minute? There are things you guys need to know, things that were revealed to me when I was the Acting Pontifex.”

  “Such as?” Alkema asked.

  “Close the door first.” Alkem did as Eddie asked, although by this time, he was so used to the Midians spying on him, it really didn’t matter.

  Eddie leaned back on his arms. “Remember when they told Commander Keeler that Earth was a barren wasteland with nothing there, and no reason for anyone to look for it? They lied.

  “It’s written in the Fifth Compendium of Orenda, after the Ninth Crusade, Earth was recolonized by the Old Line Colonies. One of the things they established was a Research Institute. Their best research engineers were sent to conduct experiments in what they called ‘Transcendant Metaphysical Technology.’ They were working on ways for humans to manifest the basic forces of the universe, to become like gods.

  “When the Tarmigans attacked, the technologists of Earth accelerated their research into creating the means for humans to have powers equal to the Tarmigans, to fight them off to resist them.

  “The Starcross Adherents believe that if the Tarmigans had not attacked, humanity would have destroyed itself, because the Transcendant Technology Experiments would have provided us with god-like powers that we were not ready for.”

  “You read all that?” said Alkema disbelievingly.

  Eddie shook his head. “Neg, but Archonex Meek knew it and, when I had powers, I sucked it all out of his mind. He also likes to be spanked by Mrs. Archonex Meek.”

  “I didn’t need to know that,” Alkema said.

  Eddie continued, “The point is, the Midians think Transcendant Technology may still exist. If it does, it’s on Earth. And we have to find it before anyone else does.”

  “Like the Aurelians,” Alkema said.

  Eddie protested. “Not just the Aurelians. If anyone else besides us finds it first, they can finish the job the Tarmigans started, and wipe out the entire human race.” Eddie looked to their faces for a reaction, then intoned, “Dun-Dun DAH!” Our second incursion into Yronwode’s atmosphere was more successful than the first. I had been somewhat concerned that the anti-incursion system would have adapted since our last incursion, but apparently it decided to leave us alone. I anticipated that we might have done significant damage to the containment system in our first attempt, and perhaps the system had not yet fully recovered. It is impossible to know from here, and no way in Hell are we going back down there.

  We commenced our descent precisely five planetary days after our first atmospheric incursion, with Jesus on the Helm controls and Change on primary navigational inputs. Like the previous time, it was smooth until we reached 90,000 meters, and then the electromagnetic field began interacting with our hull and primary data and power systems. A huge charge built up and Atlantic sent it back into one of the pseudo-poles the ancients had built on the planet. After that, we were smooth most of the way down.

  Well, pretty smooth. We were completely sensor-blind between 60,000 and 10,000 meters above the surface, but Change relied entirely on her instincts to get us down to the right altitude where we could recover our crew.

  The Aves that brought the landing team back from the surface was a real piece of crap. They were attacked by the planet’s defensive systems on ascent even through we were below 10,000 meters (probably some kind of failsafe). It wasn’t dragons this time, but some kind of missile. We were able to cover them with Accipiters and mid-range weaponry.

  Zero loss of life has to be considered a successful mission, compared to usual.

  Pegasus —–- Main Bridge

  “How did you manage to defeat the containment system,” Alkema asked Change as he relieved her to take his first watch since regaining the ship.

  “We had help,” Change reluctantly conceded.

  “Yo!” insisted a voice from the level of Alkema’s knees. He looked down to see a gray and black cat, with a white bib and toes, staring up at him.

  “You?” Alkema sighed.

  “Me,” Queequeg answered. “And I am very proud of myself for doing it.”

  “Why is that, kitty-cat?” Alkema asked, feeling vaguely like a kiddie show host.

  “As a cat, I feel proud of myself for everything,” Queequeg asserted. “But this time, I outdid myself.

  Alkema knew he was going to regret asking, but he had to know. “Tell me about it.”

  “That ancient system was flawless,” Queequeg explained with a tone of genuine admiration, rare for his species. “They didn’t want anyone leaving that planet, ever. No backdoors, no cheat codes, no sneaking in through low-priority systems. It was amazingly thorough, and it had an AI in it that adapted to every trick I tried to get it off-line. I tried to get it to accept a system upgrade, but it refused. I tried to put the whole system in diagnostic mode. No luck there, either. I tried to structure a cascade system sequence that would give us an opening to get in and get out. No dice.”

  “But you must have beaten it,” Alkema said. “The Kariad beat it.”

  “I’d love to know how they did it,” Queequeg told him. “I never figured it out.”

  “So, how did you defeat it?” Alkema asked.

  “When cleverness failed, we simply defaulted to brute force,” said the cat. “We figured the system was designed to prevent incursions and break-outs, not all-out attacks. So, we staged an all-out attack.”

  Changed picked it up. “We decided to see exactly how it worked in action. We launched a lot of probes at it. We lost most of them. When the system engaged the probes, we studied how it reacted. We timed its responses. We studied its tactics, scanned its weapons. We traced the way energy flowed around the planet. We figured out how to harden Pegasus’s shields against the plasma blasts. We also located the system’s control nodes. They have nodes embedded in the planet, three thousand meters deep at 112 locations. Each one acts like a pole for the planet’s magnetosphere, but the two stronggest nodes are at the planet’s natural poles. They feed the system energy through the planet’s magnetic field. We couldn’t destroy them, but just as Pegasus began its descent, we detonated Nemesis warheads set to electromagnetic pulse over several of them. We also staged incursions at two other points on the planet using the Burning Skies and Doom Patrol Flight groups, to further confuse the system.”

  “Wow,’ Alkema said. “All that… just to rescue us.”

  Change seemed less than totally happy. “It was not without cost. The feedback damaged several systems, not to mention the weapons, probes, and fuel we had to expend.”

  Queequeg seemed happy though. “The Ancients never believed anyone would be stupid enough to bring a ship this large into the lower atmosphere. We showed them!”

  Alkema pettedQueequeg on the head, which set the cat to purring. “Do you have any theories on how the Kariad escaped?” he asked.

  “An instantaneous transition to relativistic speed might have defeated the system,” Queequeg suggested. “But it would have to have been much faster than anything we could accomplish. Given enough time, I think we could have cracked the system.”

  “You did good enough, kitty-cat,” Alkema told him, scratching him behind the ears. “You got us home.
”

  Change was not quite so optimistic. “Unfortunately, we burned through a fourth of our remaining tritium fuel reserve to do it. We’re below 20% reserve now, and our prospecting in the outer comet belt was unsuccessful.”

  “That’s still almost two years worth of fuel, if we initiate conservation protocols and avoid heavy combat,” Alkema said.

  “It took us over two years to find this planet,” Change reminded him.

  “Replenishing our tritium fuel reserves has to be our next priority.” I have been working with TyroCommander Navigator Change to locate a source of tritium. Planets with deep oceans would be good, as well as certain types of gas giants. Astronomical survey is completing spectral scans of nearby nebulae to search for extractable quantities as well.

  In the meantime, most of the returning landing team members have been spending time in social settings.

  Pegasus – Alkema Family Quarters

  A joyful homecoming party had taken place in the Alkema family suite, which now occupied and entire deck-section of their residential cluster. The Alkema clan had grown to become one of Pegasus’s larger families. David Alkema and Pieta had three children of their own, and they provided living space to Max and Sam Jordan as well.

  Pieta had put on a little weight over the past two years, enough to make her rounder and softer. The table of trifles and hors d’oeuvres she had set out suggested how this had come to pass. She met their guests at the main hatch holding Alkema’s infant son, Daniel. Two toddlers, Halo and Sally, hung close to her skirts.

  When Dave Alkema had returned, she had hugged him madly. The twins, had all but pulled the pack off his back, singing, “Did you bring us pleasants?”

  Alkema smiled and opened his bag. Of course, he had. “Here, these are called sweet rocks. It’s a kind of candy Midian children like. And this is a stuffed drangle, which is an animal they keep as pets.”

  “Do they talk?” Halo had asked, the recipient of the gift.

  “Neg, and this is for you, Sally.” He handed her a doll. “It’s name is Lorna. I found it in a shop in Xenthe city.”