by Rupert Segar
“If you are asking for a parlay, you should be talking to me alone,” said Vice Admiral Putin, annoyed at the breach of etiquette or possibly just grumpy at being forced out of his bunk.
“Oh, I don’t know, when you’re facing death and destruction, I think everyone deserves a say,” said Art. “Any one of you can surrender to avoid severe damage to your vessel.”
“You are our prisoner, your ship is forfeit, and we are towing you back to Chimera One,” said Putin. “You are in no position to make threats.”
“Oh, well, don’t say I didn’t warn you,” said Art, holding up the index finger of his right hand. “Here’s a small consolation for you all to consider: one of your vessels will be left operable. That warship will take an important message back to the Imperial Fleet.”
Art placed his finger on the pad in front of him, cutting off the comms link. “OK, Ship, do your stuff.”
Art got up out of the pilot’s chair and went round to the circular table to join the others. Yelena had insisted she was present and was on one side of the table propped up on a medical cot. Art leant over and gave her a kiss on the cheek as he sat down next to the two nurses, Ethel and Evie. Carole Porter, the former Imperial sub-lieutenant sat the other side of the nurses. A sixth figure blinked into existence sitting on the last chair, it was Sy Chang in human form. Yelena, was pleased she appeared as herself. Having a centaur in the cabin would make things a bit cramped, she thought.
“Are you sure this is wise,” said Gill, “Taking on one of the new Nemesis class battleships?”
“The Ship defeated the entire Royal Fleet at Chimera One,” said Yelena. “They don’t stand a chance.”
A triple layered hologram, like a multimedia pyramid, sprang into existence floating above the table. The top layer was more of a tetrahedron. Each face showed a scree of figures. The second layer was a wide cylinder showing the relative positions of the three Imperial warships above the planet. The largest layer on the bottom displayed a close up of the ship caught between the two cruisers in a cage of tractor beams.
“I think I need a bit more detail,” said Art, leaning back against the headrest of his seat and engaging his widgets.
“He’s such a show off. The big boy in the sensorium,” said Yelena with a smile.
“He is very good in there, I know,” said Sy pouting her lips. Both the women laughed.
Stuck fast between the two cruisers, the Ship began to expand its defensive shield. The mirrored surface moved slowly but inexorably outwards. The metal ingots were pressed even more firmly against the force field. It looked for a moment as if they were going to dent the silvered surface but it proved no more than an optical illusion. The cage of tractor beams began to buckle. The two cruisers desperately fired their lateral thrusters but they were drawn in towards the small alien Ship. Almost simultaneously, all the metal ingots broke free from one or other of the beams holding them in place. The cruisers found themselves under assault from their own ingots. It was then the ship fired three missiles at each of the cruisers.
The response was immediate. All three Imperial warships fired a barrage of missiles and ion cannon directly at the alien vessel.
“That’s a big mistake,” said Yelena, who had played a leading part in devising their strategy. “All that firepower, someone could get hurt.”
Under intense assault, the ship’s mirrored defence shimmered with excess energies. Huge arcs of plasma stretched out in all directions. Given the fireworks, the enemy commanders could be forgiven for missing the build-up of flux inside the silver shield. What they could not fail to notice was the ship’s disappearance.
The alien Ship folded itself inside a hyper sphere made of normal space wrapped in a piece of the Upper Realm. The ship and the space immediately around it were effectively reduced to a point singularity. The defensive silver shield collapsed leaving the two cruisers firing directly at each other. Both ships sustained serious damage before they could cease fire.
In his seat at the circular table, Art leant forward, so disengaging from the Ship’s sensorium. He shook his head.
“The Ship says inside a hyper sphere, we can’t detect a thing,” said Art, disgruntled. “All I can see in the sensorium is the state of the Ship’s plumbing. Everything else is a big blank.”
“That’s what happened when we were ambushed at Cygnus Prime,” said Yelena. “There was no way of detecting what was happening outside the hyper sphere.
“Isn’t that when you nearly destroyed your ship by crashing into a gravity engine?” said Gill.
Evie, the nurse, looked alarmed, Ethel, the nurse with a damaged cyber unit, just gawped.
The striped holosphere winked into existence at Yelena’s side.
“Theoretically, there is a way of seeing outside,” it said. “We will work on the problem.”
“In the meantime, you need to be careful, Ship,” warned Yelena, “especially during the next phase of our assault.”
“Time to get back to work,” said Art, leaning back and re-engaging his widgets.
The hyper sphere evaporated and the alien Ship reappeared in normal space. The mirrored defence shield was already fully formed. On each of the three Imperial ships, an image of Art appeared on the command deck vid-screen. Imperial comms officers were left speechless when their section head or captain demanded to know how Art had commandeered their communications. In the cabin of the alien Ship, the three Imperial commanders and Art all appeared side by side. Both cruiser captains sat among the wreckage of war, with repair technicians and fire fighters trying to bring order. There was a much closer shot of Vice Admiral Putin glowering at the vid-camera. Art looked like a holographic cartoon and he was grinning widely.
“OK,” said the image of Art from the sensorium. “Now, I’ve got your attention, are you prepared to surrender?”
The ship began accelerating towards the kilometre-long battleship.
“Fire!” screamed Vice Admiral Putin.
The alien ship disappeared less than 100 metres from the prow of the battleship. Seconds later, the nose cone shaped prow crumpled and a 20-metre-wide tunnel was formed down the axis of the warship. Plasma bolts fired, debris and gases vented into the vacuum, several large explosions blew holes in the ship from bow to stern. In less than a half a minute, the battleship was wrecked. The command deck had been distorted and smashed. A bent over bulwark had severed one of Putin’s legs. He was looking at the stars through jagged hole in the wall by his command post. He just had time to register his injury before an emergency containment field collapsed and he was sucked out into space.
Five kilometres past the battleship, the alien ship reappeared wrapped in it protective mirrored cocoon. A tractor beam latched onto the end of the smouldering wreck. All five humans felt the vibration as the ships gravity engines laboured.
“We estimate a fatality rate of 40%, another 30% will have serious injuries,” said the striped holosphere.
“How many were on board?” asked Gill.
“More than one thousand people.”
Carole was glad the entity had not called them marines, navy officers or technicians. She felt grief at so many deaths. Is this the cost of treachery? She asked herself.
Art disengaged from the sensorium and leant over towards Gill.
“Both the Ship and I try to avoid unnecessary deaths. We had to inflict a crushing defeat on the battleship, if the strategy is to work.”
“The warship has reached a velocity of 90 metres a second relative to the portal. Estimated interception in 1 minute,” said the holosphere.
Art reached over and held Yelena’s hand. “Which vessel delivers the message?”
“The one with the female captain. She looks a reasonable human being. The other one is just a ‘yes’ man.”
The hologram pyramid showed the ship accelerating back towards the two cruisers. Art got up and re-took his seat at the pilot’s console.
A split screen appeared in front of him, it was also sh
own at the circular table. The two captains looked thoroughly disheartened.
“Your final chance,” said Art.
“We are not in a position to oppose you,” said the male captain, a youngish man with a beard. “Nevertheless, I must tell you we will resist any attempt to board us. If necessary, I will use the self-destruct.” The officers behind the bearded man looked visibly alarmed.
“No need to make the ultimate sacrifice, captain,” said Art. “We’ve detected two of your three gravity propellers are inoperative. Bear with us, we will tow you back to the portal. Out.”
The image of the male captain disappeared. At the circular table, the bottom layer of the hologram showed the battleship beginning to enter the engorged portal. A holotag next to the image said the wrecked warship was in transit to Chimera One.
“And you’re view of where we are?” said Art to the young female captain, who was actually smiling.
“We surrender, of course,” she said giving a hard stare at the vid-camera. “Are you the same ship that trashed the fleet at Chimera One?”
“Yes,” said Art. “But there are many more of us.”
“Really?” said the captain clearly not believing Art. “What is the message you want me to take back to the Empire?”
“After your colleague goes through the portal, you are to follow him back to the fleet at Chimera One. You will tell Fleet Admiral Cumnock that Chimera 6 is a Forbidden Planet.”
The female captain looked serious and nodded.
“You know what that means?” said Art.
“Yes, I am aware of the myths, I just never expected to experience such a legend and escape alive.”
“Tell the Fleet Admiral to spread the word. Chimera 6 is a Forbidden Planet, on pain of death.”
Chapter 14: Old Earth
From the Moon, it looked as if the old Earth had borrowed a ring from Saturn. Approaching the cradle of humanity, it soon became clear the girdle encircling the planet was no sparkling ring of ice. The circlet, with a diameter of slightly more than 84 thousand kilometres, was a patchwork of dented metal and old plastiform sheets. For the most part it was a curving corridor less than half a kilometre wide and twenty metres high. In places, the cladding was gone and all that was left of the habitation ring was a grid of steel girders. Once the ring connected three large, city sized space stations. Now only one was occupied.
Colonel Garth stood by the viewing window in the Viceroy’s waiting room. If it were not for the distraction of looking down on old Earth, he would have long ago shot the receptionist and pushed most of the Viceroy’s retinue out of the nearest air lock. The window worked like a quaint toy from a bygone era. Colonel Garth swore it even smelt ancient. Looking out the window he could see Africa directly in front of him and, up above, Europe. If he gripped a certain portion of the rail in front of him, the plastiform screen – he hoped it was plastiform – overlaid his view of the two continents with names of cities and countries. Each name was a button linking the screen to more information about the places.
Garth recalled a similar screen he had used when he was at school. His mother gave him the toy and it had provided a lagoon of escape in an otherwise distressing world. Garth’s childhood was one of rejection. His father refused to have anything to do with his son. At the age of eleven, Garth tried to protect his mother, when his father started beating her. Garth was bludgeoned by his father’s large fists. Still with black eyes and bruised ribs, he was sent off to cadet school. Discipline was strict in the boarding school. The younger children had to ‘fag’ for the seniors. Garth fell under the protectorship of a particularly unpleasant cadet, ordinary seaman Chun Teak. The cadet was a bully who enjoyed inflicting pain on others. Garth was forced to take part in torture rituals. Teak would force other cadets to submit to excruciating penalties like having razor cuts on their back rubbed with salt and sand. Garth would be the fag who had to administer the punishments. Despite an initial reluctance to inflict pain on others, Garth began to enjoy the administration of chastisements. He felt the power he had over others was immense, even though it was his master, ordinary seaman Teak, who was the one in charge. Teak began forcing girls to have sex with him. Garth was made to watch. The ordinary seaman began demanding all sorts of deviant sexual practices from his victims. Garth found the more perverse the sex, the most aroused he became. After Teak had finished with a girl, Garth would abuse her himself. Garth had been corrupted.
The only link Garth had with younger, more innocent self was when he spent time on his screen. The stories and tales contained within were a link with his pre-school childhood. There were heroic tales of bowmen saving kingdoms and histories with noble princes and romantic princesses.
One day he was summoned to the Admiral’s office. The head of the cadet school told him his mother had died. His father had disowned him. He was now the property of the Imperial Navy. Garth showed no emotion and made his way back to his dormitory. There, in complete despair, he smashed the screen on the floor.
Recalling the innocent pleasures he had experienced with his old screen, Garth reached up and pressed the name Rome. He remembered it was the seat of the first truly great Human Empire. The viewing window showed a series of pictures of Rome. Mostly it was stills of dusty crumbling buildings covered by plastiform domes. Garth touched the image of the Coliseum. The boring picture of a red stone amphitheatre was replaced by a Technicolor extravaganza of gladiators fighting lions while Roman troops massacred Christians.
“Our history is one of continual violence,” said the grey haired duffer, the Sergeant at Arms, who had been appointed to look after Garth. “Earth suffered from conflicts between tribes and religions, we had the World Wars between nations, followed by the Technology Class Wars, the last of which left the surface our mother planet an irradiated wasteland. This window is as close as most visitors get when they return to the ancient home world.”
“I am sure you’ve seen enough,” said the old man wearing gold chains and medals of office, but whose clothes looked unwashed and faded. “The view of the Americas was much more, shall we say say, stimulating. But no-one’s been on Space Station Yankee in generations. Anyway, I don’t know why I’m burbling on, force of habit I suppose. What was it I was going to say? Oh, yes. The Viceroy will see you now.”
The throne room was of classic design to Garth’s eye. He had entered the chamber through some of the tallest double doors he had ever seen, at least fifteen metres high. The cathedral ceiling was vastly higher still and sloped downwards precipitously towards the back of the room. There, raised on a dais, was the Viceroy. The trick of perspective made the frail, grey haired woman look large and powerful, as befitting the absolute ruler of the Terran Empire.
Garth ascended the broad steps until he was just one from the top. The Sergeant at Arms had been very clear about the etiquette. Garth knelt down on both knees and bent his head and waited. He had to wait for at least two minutes while the aged Viceroy shuffled about in her overlarge seat and rustled bits of paper. He heard sighs and tuts coming from the woman who, it seemed after an age, finally spoke to him in a frail voice.
“You are most welcome, Colonel Garth of the Kindle Empire. We have heard of the renown of your great leader, the King of Ten Thousand Worlds, and we send him our salutations.”
“My liege sends felicitations to you, Viceroy. He begs a favour,” said Garth, full in the knowledge that the request had really come from the Brood King.
“Where exactly is the Kingle Empire?” said the Viceroy fumbling a piece of paper between arthritic fingers. “It says here you are from the Sagittarius region of the Crux-Scutum spiral arm, but that is the other side of the galaxy. That cannot be correct. It would take generations to travel all the way here.”
“We have discovered new ways of traversing the galaxy, your highness,” said Garth smiling. “We would be happy to share these technologies with your scientists but, in return, we would like to access some of the histories of the Technology Wars.”<
br />
The Viceroy was silent for a while, staring at Colonel Garth as she sucked her teeth.
“Then it seems your remarkable journey is an exercise in futility. Look around you, Garth. This is all that is left of the once great Terran Empire. We sent the best of our offspring, our most energetic sons and daughters into the vast expanse of the galaxy.” She paused, sucking her teeth.
“But your records of the Technology Class Wars, they still exist?” asked Garth.
“Dry as dust, there are no secrets there, Garth, but you are most welcome to examine the archives for yourself. They’re in the Great World Library on the Moon, you know. It’s the only repository left after the destruction of all the archives on Earth, including the Great Interstellar library at Alexandra. The Moon is the safest place to keep humanity’s memories. The Sergeant at Arms will issue a pass for you.”
+++
The building looked more like a gothic cathedral than a library. Sitting in the middle of the Sea of Tranquillity, the Great World Library was encased in a giant vaulted transparent dome. Inside the air was at Terran normal as was the gravity. The bluish tinted sands had been fused into block paving concealing gravity plates. Garth wondered why they bothered; he was quite a fan of low gravity.
Garth and his First Officer had left Imperial Valliant at a largely deserted space dock several kilometres away. They had travelled to the library on board a subterranean gravity train. They had been the only passengers in the single carriage, which had seats for over a hundred. Clearly, sometime in the past, the Great World Library had attracted thousands of tourists and academics. Garth suspected the last time the library had been busy was centuries ago. As he and his XO crossed the concourse to the main doors, they were the only people in sight.
