Shroud of Eden (Panhelion Chronicles Book 1)

by Marlin Desault

  Blyds’ eyes widened with incredulity. “You want to convince Tanner to join a mutiny? Christ, that would take some doing, even with a lot more proof than you have. There’s no way I can change his mind with such a preposterous story.”

  “I have an idea that may persuade him.” Scott locked a steady gaze on Blyds and leaned close. “Think about it. Even with his Marines, Tanner won’t get Prometheus from the Niobians. They’ll never hand it over to him. In fact, they’ll do everything they can to prevent him from getting it.”

  “Oh? From what I understand, that lieutenant... what’s her name... Zirkel, told Tanner the Niobians won’t fight. It’s a cultural trait or something.”

  Scott stepped over to the view port and, with a motion of his hand, invited Blyds to join him. A nearly full blue-green orb of Niobe streaked with wisps of clouds, loomed large in the view. He tapped the port with his finger. “Look there. Niobe, smaller than Earth, but it’s still large and with ten thousand Niobians. You’re right, they won’t take aggressive action, but they don’t need to. They’ll hide Prometheus where Tanner will never find it. Even if he takes hostages, they’ll never tell him where it is.”

  Blyds tilted his head to the side. “If what you say is true, there’s one argument that might swing Tanner.”

  “And that is?” Scott frowned in mild curiosity.

  “You have to understand him. He doesn’t particularly care for Camus, but he has a healthy respect for him. And Tanner is ambitious, no more than the rest of us, but he’d like to wear admiral’s insignia someday. It’s a long shot, but if we told him... if we could persuade him that the Senate would applaud him as a hero, if he helped us stop Camus from carrying out a coup d’état, he might join us.”

  Scott cupped his chin. “There’s another reason he’d respond to our argument.”

  Blyds arched his brows. “That is?”

  “Presuming we stop Camus’ coup, we still have to stop the CB2 alien threat. If we suggest to Tanner that he could play a significant part in a major victory, he’d be doubly proclaimed a hero.”

  Blyds’ eyes darted around the room as if searching the air for an answer. “Sure. We play on his ambition and ego.” Again, he hesitated. “All right, for the sake of discussion, suppose I went along with you, and I’m not saying I will, how would we go about it?”

  Scott returned to the table and laid his palm down on the duroglass surface. “You have to get a message to Admiral Delmar for me.”

  Blyds followed and sat across. “I can’t do it using Aurora’s Entangled Comm Center. If Tanner found out he’d have me in the brig with you.”

  “I’ve thought of that. You have to get access to the Pegasus and send the message from her ECCO equipment. That way there’ll be no record of a transmission in Aurora’s comm system.”

  Blyds leaned away from the table and crossed his arms. “Not so fast. There’s a rumor that Camus has a spy in Entangled Comm Center back on Earth. His spy may destroy the message or give it to Camus.”

  “There’s a way around that. Camus’ spy won’t divert a routine message. I’ve written up a message that appears as a commonplace, operational message, but buried in the text is a duress code.”

  “A duress code?”

  “Yes, Delmar and I prearranged an innocuous phrase. If he receives a message with that phrase in it, he’ll know I’m acting under duress, and he can make an educated guess as to why, or at the very least he’ll try to contact me.”

  Blyds cocked his head for a long minute. “All right, I’ll go as far as sending the message.” He exhaled sharply through pursed lips. “But I won’t have any part of a mutiny, at least not until I have a lot more proof that Camus is really going to dissolve the Senate and set himself up as dictator.”

  Before Scott could answer, a Marine guard stepped into the cabin. “Ambassador, the Captain wants to see you.”

  Scott and Blyds stood.

  Scott marched in front of the guard to the Aurora’s combat deck.

  Blyds discretely made an oblique exit into a separate gangway.

  Scott marveled at the Aurora’s combat deck. She was one of the new Aldebaran class strike cruisers. The area for the helm alone dwarfed the entire habitable space of the Pegasus. The brightly lit instruments filled the bulkhead and cast a soft glow across the deck. Two nav stations worked with visual displays twice Scott’s height. The scene gave him the impression he was floating in space itself.

  The guard smartly saluted Tanner. “Captain Tanner... the Ambassador.”

  “Over here, Scott. There’s something I want you to see.” Tanner pointed a laser beam on the main tridimensional display where an image of a small, stubby-winged craft, trailing a plasma plume, moved across the screen. “We’ve been watching the Niobians all morning. They’ve been running small, orbital vehicles back and forth from the surface of their planet to that outer moon we’ve designated as Luna two. What do you think they’re up to?”

  Scott’s eyes followed the craft as it sped towards Niobe’s outer moon. “That’s the moon they call Petra.” As he spoke, a much fainter but similar image traced a return path toward Niobe’s surface. “My guess is they’re setting up a weapon, probably Prometheus. From that moon, they’ll have a greater area of fire. Your ship will only be safe from its beam on the far side of Niobe. Looks like they’ve picked a good spot to defend their planet.”

  “I thought as much,” Tanner replied with an angry glare. “This development might help us get what we need.”

  Scott paused, carefully considering how much information he’d give Tanner. “The Niobians don’t have deep space capability. The size and range of their spacecraft aren’t much greater than what you see on your displays.”

  Tanner crossed his arms and replied with a skeptical tone. “If they’re setting up Prometheus there, it’ll be easy to take it. I have a company of Marines ready to deploy to Luna Two, or Petra, whatever you want to call it. We launch as soon as the shuttle traffic stops. My orders are to take the weapon intact.”

  Scott crossed his arms and pinched his hands in his armpits. “You’ll destroy any chance of friendly relations if you do that. If you don’t find the weapon there, you’ve lost your chance. You’ll never find it on the planet.”

  On the service deck, the personnel liftevator opened and Blyds stepped out. He sauntered across the metal deck to the docking cabin portal. On the other side, a tunnel led to the Pegasus. He casually greeted a technician who busied himself collecting a few scattered tools. The tech raised an eyebrow at the unusual sight of a senior officer on his deck.

  Blyds greeted him with an “as you were” and as inconspicuously as possible made his way to the hatch, where he entered a code on the icon pad next to the airlock. A moment later, the tunnel pressure equalized with the docking cabin, and the hatch opened. Hand over hand, he clambered along the grips of the tunnel leading to Pegasus.

  Damn. He entered the tiny ship and waited for his eyes to adjust to the dim light. How did these exploration crews spend months in such cramped quarters? Give me a cruiser any day.

  Fighting back mild claustrophobia, he searched out the communications compartment and found it bathed in soft, standby illumination. Seconds later, the ECCO transmitter completed its self-checks and came online. From his pocket, he retrieved the e-coder Scott had given him and plugged it into the panel slot. The transmitter brightened, and the screen displayed the sent icon. He removed the e-coder and the panel lights winked out.

  When he returned through the docking bay, the technician had finished and left the area.

  Earth

  ~~~

  Behind a translucent panel in his command booth overlooking Exploration Command’s Operations Center, Admiral Jestin Delmar settled into his high-back chair. From the commanding view, he scanned the activity swarming over the floor below. A muted cacophony filled the room as reports filtered in from ships scattered through the explored reaches of the galaxy. From this vantage, he viewed the activity where
ver his ships operated. With a simple order, he could zoom in on detail hundreds of light years away.

  Three semicircular rows of control stations arced out from the central tridimensional display, each manned by officers and warrant officers of his command. The floor-to-ceiling display space filled the far side of the room. Delmar scrutinized the symbols in the display space searching for the icon representing the Demos, as it surveilled the region surrounding the Coma Berenices Cluster for renewed activity from the CB2 aliens.

  Delmar leaned over to Eisler. “What’s the status of the ships sent to help Demos?”

  Eisler paused and spoke softly into his microphone. He gave a silent nod as the answers sounded in his ear. “Admiral, from our Command, we have two scouts, Phobos and Skylla, set to arrive in the Khepri frontier in five months.”

  “Pass that on to Demos. They are to continue on station and report any renewed Khepri activity, but if she comes under attack again, her standing orders are to pull out at flank superluminal. Give Phobos and Skylla the same orders when they arrive. Their light weapons are no match for those hellhounds.”

  “Unprecedented,” Fitzsimons announced to the Senate Committee for Home System Security. “An actual encounter with a hostile alien force. Admiral Delmar, just what in the name of dark energy happened?”

  Delmar straightened in his chair and squared the doc-projector on the table in front of him. “Sir, one of our scouts, the Demos, reported she came under attack by directed energy weapons in the Mell 111 cluster, the Coma Berenices Cluster. This happened after they detected and homed on the source of an EM signal. The signal emanated from a planet orbiting a star designated as CB2. Demos determined the signal was from sentient alien beings—”

  “We weren’t notified of the signal or the encounter until after the attack,” Camus bellowed without waiting for Delmar to finish, “and have no responsibility for the consequences.”

  “Yes, yes, Admiral Camus.” Fitzsimons waved the back of his fingers at Camus. “No one is suggesting that your Command did anything wrong. Admiral Delmar, please continue. Did we sustain any loss in personnel or equipment?”

  “As I was about to say, the attack damaged Demos, but the crew is safe. The damage to her superluminal capability was light and they have affected temporary repairs, and are now fully operational. When she arrives at the repair docks on Base Ganymede, we’ll glean what we can from forensic analysis of the damage itself, and debrief the crew in person. By way of ECCO, Demos did send us a recording of the alien signals she intercepted.”

  Fitzsimons furrowed his brow and shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “Admiral Delmar, did Demos fire first? Did they make any attempt to communicate with these aliens?”

  “The answer to both questions is no. Captain Saville, in command of the Demos, reports she had no chance to either communicate with or fire on the aliens before she was actually struck by a directed energy weapon. The attack appears totally unprovoked.”

  “Good Lord, what kind of aliens are these to launch an unprovoked attack on a small scout ship?”

  Delmar referred briefly to his notes. “SIGINT ah... that is Signal Intelligence, has studied the intercepts for possible motives for the attack. Admiral Camus has their results.”

  Camus cleared his throat and leaned forward on the table. “Mister President, we can’t be sure, but SIGINT has formulated a few possible scenarios, two of which seem plausible. These aliens may have been attacked by another alien race at some time in the past. With that experience behind them, they would likely be motivated to attack any vessel they considered alien and in the vicinity of their home system. In this scenario they would be prone to fire first.”

  Fitzsimons pinched his brows and peered skeptically across the room at Camus. “A second race of hostile aliens? Who would these other aliens be? We’ve had no word of such aliens.”

  “The second scenario on the table may be the more reasonable one. It speculates, for reasons I’ll present later, that the CB2 aliens are a hive-like race, and that they may resemble a colony of sentient creatures that have evolved by eliminating all other species on their planet.”

  “Incredible. You’re saying we’ve encountered a colony of highly advanced, hostile ants?” Fitzsimons shook his head in disbelief. “And you have reasons to believe this bizarre explanation? I must say you’ve stoked my curiosity. Please continue.”

  Camus nodded. “Well, sir, SIGNT analysis of their communication signals show several symbols that repeat. One of which resembles a Khepri--”

  “A what?” Fitzsimons blurted out.

  Delmar glanced up from his projected e-document. “A Khepri, a scarab, something you’d see in Egyptian hieroglyphs.”

  Fitzsimons rubbed his brow and eyed Delmar. “This... Khepri symbol.... Does it have any meaning?”

  “SIGINT ran the intercepts through their quantum computers. We only have a smattering of knowledge about their language, but there is one symbol and several variations of it that repeat.” Delmar continued. “The root symbol bears a crude resemblance to the aforementioned Khepri. The analysts believe that’s what the CB2 aliens call themselves.”

  Delmar pulled his projected e-text close, read over his notes and continued. “The variations of that symbol and the structure of their communications imply they have several body forms with specialized functions, such as workers and soldiers and possibly brood keepers. The analysts also note what appears to be abstract symbolic communication, where a behavior is used to represent and convey specific information.”

  “God Almighty!” Fitzsimons bellowed. “We’re fighting a planet of damn beetles and losing?” His voice shrilled as a series of wrinkles formed on his forehead.

  “Mister President, it’s only a symbol.” Delmar paused and glanced across at Camus. “We don’t know exactly what they look like.”

  The President threw his hands in the air. “All right then, how big might these things be?”

  “We know the approximate size of their ships and estimate they may range from half a meter to a meter long,” Camus said. “That makes the larger ones more than half the average height of a modern human. The size is not unreasonable if you consider insects on early Earth. Our analysts conclude the Khepri home planet has a high level of oxygen.”

  Fitzsimons shook his head several times. “I sure don’t want to be in the same room with one of these bugs.” Muffled laughter sounded across the chamber.

  Admiral Delmar glanced around at his assembled staff. “Vesper arrived a week ago and her heavy weapons have fallen short of our expectations. Heaven help us, it took her seven months to get to Coma Berenices, and all we learned is that the Khepri have better weapons. What’s her status today?”

  Before the projected presentation, Eisler stood on the dais and briefed his Admiral. “She left CB2 space right after the battle. The Khepri unexpectedly retreated and gave her a good head start, but the damage she sustained has temporarily slowed her to fractional light speed. She reports she expects to regain superluminal capability in a matter of hours.”

  Delmar stroked the light stubble on his chin. He’d remained close to his post all night. “I told Camus that Vesper was under-gunned. We were damn lucky. I can’t figure out why the aliens retreated. They clearly outgunned Vesper. Now that Phobos and Skylla have joined Demos, have them keep a sharp eye out. I want to know if the Khepri attempt to break out of their local space. Camus will have more heavy ships on station in another few months, although I don’t see what good they can do.”

  “The cruisers can harass the Khepri a bit.” Eisler rubbed his hands together and glanced back and forth from Delmar to his display. “It’s possible the aliens retreated because Vesper damaged one their ships, or they don’t have the range to follow. We just don’t know.”

  Struggling to regain his composure, Eisler inclined his head toward Delmar and whispered, “Admiral, two messages have arrived from Pegasus. Do you want them now?”

  “Damn right I do! If Drumond can
get that Niobian weapon, we can turn the tables on these cursed beetles.” Delmar read through the first message on his private screen. All it said was that Drumond had docked Pegasus to the Aurora. With a stroke of his finger the second message appeared. “Christ, not now.” In the midst of all this Drumond sends a duress code. “Get Admiral Camus on the private channel.”

  Eisler pointed to his ear. “Admiral, I can’t get Camus, but Commander Schwartz says he’ll take a message for the admiral.”

  Delmar tapped the Comm icon. Schwartz’s image appeared on his screen. “Eisler, tell Admiral Camus I want to know what the hell is going on with the Aurora.”

  Half a kilometer away, Admiral Andre Camus sat in his own aerie overlooking his Defense Command operations center when the call from Admiral Delmar came in.

  “Schwartz, if that’s Delmar, stall him. I don’t want to talk to him right now.”

  “He left a message for you, sir. He says he has word that the Aurora has some sort of trouble. He may be referring to the fact that Tanner is holding Drumond prisoner.”

  Camus thumped his fist on the worktable. “Damn it all to Skorpio, another screw up. My orders were to hold Drumond incommunicado. Don’t tell Delmar anything.” He glanced around to make sure only his trusted subordinates were within earshot. “Put Operation Orion’s Sword into action immediately. If Delmar realizes we imprisoned an Ambassador and tells the Senate, my plan for reshaping the Panhelion will be in jeopardy. Are our attack squadrons in position yet?”

  “Just about. Hesperus is on station over the Martian settlements. Astræus is maneuvering into position to cover settlements on the Jovian moons.”

  “What about Earth, Schwartz?” Camus demanded. “Earth is the prize. Have we secured orbits over Earth?”

  Schwartz blushed. “Sorry, Admiral, but not quite. The cruisers Crius and Eurybia require another twenty minutes to drop into proper orbit in order to gain full attack coverage of both Earth and the lunar settlements.”