The Pathfinder Trilogy

by Todd Stockert

  “I told you that there were two reasons why things have changed and Noah’s people are finally sharing the lowest level of their technology with us,” Kaufield reminded her. “The first reason is obviously because our arrival in Wasteland space somehow triggered the escalation of the war.”

  He could tell that she was now fully vested in knowing everything. “And the second reason…?”

  “Our involvement allows us to test this very same technology for use in furthering our own interests,” he replied with growing confidence. The military officer in Nori was returning fast as she finally allowed herself to hear what he was telling her. “You know full well that there is a growing movement of people who do not want to stay on this planet. There are many who came here only out of a necessity to escape from the tyranny, the bomb damage and the radiation – people who will never consider this planet in this galaxy their home…”

  Her intuition supplied her with the remaining piece of the puzzle. “We volunteered to test this new implant technology because you’re field-testing it and then planning on using it to go after the Brotherhood of the Dragon,” she gasped, realizing what was at stake. “You want to retake the Earth.”

  “Quite possibly,” admitted Kaufield cautiously. “We have several long term contingencies outlined, but nothing definitive is in the works for many years.” He turned toward the southwest and studied the sun as it climbed higher into the sparsely clouded blue sky. “Nevertheless, the fact remains that the longer we stay away, the longer we do nothing, the more time that the residual radiation will continue to cause irreparable damage to Earth’s environment. Part of the technology that Noah is willing to share with us is a method to eliminate the excess radiation there. However, we only brought a limited number of plants and animals with us on Pathfinder… many types and species back home are in danger of dying off, if they haven’t already.”

  “We also have seeds and frozen embryos for thousands of species in storage,” she reminded him. “The Pathfinder was designed to carry most of Earth’s ecosystem with it, so that we could potentially clone those embryos and populate another world. We were to be the vanguard of space-based colonization.”

  “I know,” he agreed tenuously. “The damage to Earth is extensive… some of those bombs that detonated in Western nations were deliberately designed to be dirty. The Brotherhood, if we persist, still has much to answer for. It’s not revenge we’re aiming toward… but the pursuit of justice toward those who killed indiscriminately and the simple act of reclaiming what was forcibly taken from us.”

  “Good God,” Nori sighed, seating herself in the grass and crossing her legs. “You’re using the Wasteland as a test environment? That’s utterly astonishing.”

  “I know,” he said, risking a brief smile. “Adam, Thomas, Glen and Dr. Simmons are working hard to determine specifically which pieces of the new technology work best. As you well know, the best way to find out if equipment of a military nature is effective or not…”

  “…is to actually use it in a combat environment.”

  “Affirmative.” He canted his head toward the left and regarded her thoughtfully. “Can you understand? Can you try to understand why we chose to do what we’re doing? If we succeed, we can drastically alter the course of the war in the Wasteland… maybe even put an end to it. That’s a pretty optimistic assessment at this point, but I’ve always been an optimistic kind of guy.”

  “All right. You’ve convinced me on your first point,” she declared with clear reluctance. “I understand why we’re involved and why Adam chose to go on this mission.” There was silence for a moment as both of them reviewed their thoughts and tried to reassess the status of their decades-long friendship. “You do realize that we’re kind of playing God in the Wasteland by intervening,” she concluded.

  “Yes,” Kaufield acknowledged. “But to simply stand back and do nothing accomplishes the exact same thing that will happen if we fail. Failing to make a decision is itself a decision. It is a decision to do nothing.” He sat down next to her and ran his fingers through the soft green grass. “But I am not God and never will be,” he continued. “Can you possibly forgive me, too?”

  For the first time in a long time, Kaufield saw Noriana Roh actually smile at him. “Not quite yet. But since you dragged your enormous butt all the way over here, why don’t you come inside for a few minutes and I’ll make you a cold glass of fresh lemonade.”

  Somewhere in the Wasteland…

  Adam Roh spent more than an hour just getting to know his four new friends. Tran Wuu did indeed have nine children, as he initially claimed. Most of the soldiers in the Wasteland were proud fathers of multiple children… the constant warring between adversarial clans took its toll over time. Replacement warriors were badly needed, all young men were trained for combat and sent to the front lines as soon as they were able to handle themselves in a crunch. Big Cren Hollis was building a small army all on his own. The large, long-haired brute proudly told Adam that he was married to two women who had borne sixteen children in all. Arte Kasik clocked in with a trio of wives and eleven more children. Janney Stox was reluctant to give out much personal information about his background. He continued to be skeptical of Adam and his claim to be a friend after having pointed out that all tricks were magicians’ tricks, easily explained, once one discovered the truth.

  “How do you keep all of your families safe?” wondered Adam incredulously. “That’s a lot of mouths to feed, not to mention the fresh water they must consume along with clothing and the need for shelter. There’s hardly a decent yellow star left in this corner of the galaxy, and no doubt a severe lack of habitable planets.”

  “Why must you ask these questions?” wondered Stox irritably. “If you are not Crasel, then you are an enemy.” He studied Adam carefully. “How is it that you fight among us, but know nothing of our ways?”

  Adam responded by raising his right arm and firing the invisible wrist gun strapped to his forearm. He cut loose just enough of a pulse to blow Janney Stox completely off of the mattress he was sitting on. Flopping awkwardly backwards, his feet flew upward and he landed with a startled grunt on the metal deck plating. “Can you read the writing on the wall yet?” Adam asked the astonished warrior curiously.

  “Mott’s Ghost,” gasped Stox in wonder, sitting up and shaking himself violently to chase away his body’s stunned confusion. “If that isn’t magic, then what is?”

  “Keep your lads quiet,” snapped one of the sleeping Zaketh angrily, opening one eye long enough to glare fiercely at the five newcomers from his lower bunk. “If you have ale among your rations, then by all means share it. Otherwise keep the drunken slobs under control or I will.”

  “I need to know,” Adam persisted, turning his attention to the others. “How do you keep large families of the sort that you describe safe and well fed?”

  Cren Hollis glanced toward his feet and thought carefully before answering. “Most of us have lived on ships of some sort our entire lives,” he replied crustily. “Mining or transport ships are used, mostly they form small colonies that hide well behind the front lines and the protection provided by our military vessels. We park them on dead moons or fragments of planets that survive the quashing of a star. Shock waves from ‘the weapon’ almost always destroy most of the inner planets and moons, but asteroid belts and satellites much farther out in orbit tend to survive. Many of them still have the raw materials needed to produce the things we need… bullets, rifles, refined metals. Asteroid belts, in particular, are the perfect places to hide.”

  “Aye,” agreed Janney Stox. “If you keep all electronics off and maintain a status of emissions quiet, no one will ever know you’re there.” He winked at Adam. “Except for those of us who left them there, that is.”

  “Do these colonists watch for signs of enemy activity? Do they have the equipment necessary to watch for intruders… other ships?”

  “Of course,” nodded Arte Kasik with a wry grin. “One does no
t survive long in this war if he can’t detect ships that are not where they’re supposed to be. Once in a while an enemy slips in behind the front lines.” He rubbed his thick, graying beard thoughtfully. “If they feel they’re in danger, civvie Captains will promptly send out a request for help and one or more of our military vessels will transit right to them. We usually keep a PTP-capable transceiver at each major colony. They fire an emergency beacon through a transit portal right to us.”

  “Interesting,” Adam mused, watching the craggy, age-lined face of the other man. The long scar that ran along the front of his face from just below the edge of his left eye to the top of his lip was obviously a permanent souvenir left over from a long ago knife wound. Kasik’s explanation supplied quite a few answers to questions that had plagued him for years as his memories from ten years ago abruptly resurfaced.

  During its initial exploration of the Wasteland, someone located on an isolated moon had sent out a signal betraying the Pathfinder’s presence. And whoever had done so was so well concealed that even the starship’s complex detection systems failed to notice its presence. Speculation over the years tended to classify the moon as some sort of secret military base, but it now seemed to Adam that there could just as easily have been civilians hiding there. Panicked at seeing an unknown vessel close by, they would immediately have called for help, assistance that was provided very swiftly by a ship equipped with the PTP technology needed to transit directly into attack range. Only quick thinking, determination and lots of experience had saved the Pathfinder on that frightening day. Both passengers and crew were left terrified.

  “I begin to understand something about what must motivate you to fight so hard for survival,” continued Adam softly.

  On the other side of the large rectangular room, seven of the Zaketh soldiers appeared fast asleep while three others remained awake and were busy playing some sort of card game. The cards themselves were crude, broken pieces of wood with handwritten symbols scrawled on them. Occasionally one of the men would laugh uproariously and slap another on the shoulder. Except for the nearest man, the one who had shouted at them, the remainder snored loudly on, oblivious to the world around them and so exhausted from fighting that it would be tough to rouse them even with a good shake of their shoulders.

  “I can understand how there would be metallic ores to mine along with other raw materials on leftover planets and moons. But what about food, water, clothing, medical supplies…? To manufacture those types of resources requires something significantly greater than a few ships and the residual presence of a dead moon or asteroid field.”

  Tran Wuu chuckled softly in response. “What we cannot make, we steal from our enemies,” he declared, watching his new friend raise an eyebrow at the comment. “As one clan diminishes, ours grows stronger.” Then he glanced down at his boots and remembered their status. “At least, that is how it is supposed to work.”

  “Where do your enemies get that food and fresh water?” prompted Adam curiously, scratching his sweaty-haired head with the fingers of his right hand. “This war defies everything in my world’s known history – it should not be possible for it to have continued for thousands of years in this manner virtually uninterrupted.”

  Feeling recuperated enough to stand, Janney Stox glared defiantly at Adam and actually took a step toward him until the former Pathfinder crewman raised his right arm again in a crystal clear warning. “Clan Crasel is small but noble,” Stox told the human proudly. “We may not have access to the same types of resources that larger clans develop, but our people have survived nonetheless. We take what we need and do not apologize for it. To question our actions in any way would weaken us and guarantee the deaths of our loved ones. All of us would gladly die before we let that happen.” He turned heatedly toward Wuu. “At least I thought we would.”

  Nodding with respect at the man’s statement, Adam remained puzzled. “Your explanation still doesn’t make any sense,” he insisted, shaking his head with unrestrained doubt. “This ‘weapon’ of yours destroys entire stars along with any habitable planetary bodies within each solar system. Your enemies should not have access to these resources either.” He gestured in the general direction of the sleeping Zaketh warriors. “Look at the rifles your people use to fight each other, at the body armor and helmets. That type of weaponry requires a very sophisticated manufacturing facility. It is comprised of irreplaceable parts that should have broken down years ago.” His eyes flashed between the faces of the other four men. “The PTP transit engines used by your ships require very complex electronics, as would this mysterious weapon that quashes entire suns.” He studied them closely. “Has your clan used it… have the Crasel destroyed stars?”

  “Yes,” admitted Cren Hollis. “In my lifetime we have obtained three weapons and used each against other clans who were trying to gain a foothold in star systems along the perimeter of the Wasteland. As Janney Stox has told you, we are a small clan with limited resources. We must therefore choose our battles wisely and hunt primarily for food and water. That means fighting smaller clans that our forces can safely defeat. Occasionally in the past we were fortunate enough to acquire an unused weapon, but we do not deliberately seek them out. We have never had that option.” His eyes were haunted and dim from battle fatigue. “Obviously, we cannot allow other clans to gain an advantage over us. They respond in kind.”

  “The perimeter of the Wasteland continues to expand as stars there are destroyed,” continued Tran Wuu thoughtfully, his own perspective shifting slightly due to the points Adam had made. “Other clans with more ships than we possess have the option to send some of them out there, risking everything in search of yellow stars with one or more planets in the habitable zone. As the size of the Wasteland increases, it has gotten easier to find them if you’re willing to venture all the way out onto the rim. Keeping a conquest safe is another matter entirely.”

  “We tried only once to colonize, long ago, before any of us emerged into the light. My great grandfather once told my father that everything they labored hard to build on that planet was destroyed. Clan Crasel spent years and expended countless irreplaceable ships and equipment in a futile effort to gain a foothold on a new world. But if even a single wireless transmission leaks out or a ship is followed back to that sanctuary, our enemies swiftly mobilize. It took only five or six years for my grandfather’s generation to make a mistake. Someone eventually made the inevitable error and gave away our location. We were promptly attacked and the star destroyed.”

  “Good God,” sighed Adam, his face paling at the mere thought of that kind of destruction leveling an inhabited world… leveling ANY habitable world, for that matter.

  “No,” Janney Stox countered instantly. “Mott’s Ghost, it was. Those who are not strong and brave enough are delivered to his kingdom before their time.”

  Except for the three men still cheerfully playing cards, silence temporarily reigned in the room. Adam took a moment to mentally review everything that his new friends had told him. Even if Thomas was not currently using his implant to communicate or listen in, everything that he was seeing and hearing was nonetheless instantly recorded and transmitted back to the Science Lab on Tranquility.

  “We’re missing something,” he insisted forcefully. “The rifles, the body armor, ships, weapons, edible food and drinkable water… these kinds of things don’t simply appear out of the ether.”

  “We’re as lost as you are, mate,” shrugged Arte Kasik with a crude laugh. “We just fight to live.”

  “I understand,” Adam acknowledged with a light laugh in response, his mood lightening only slightly. He tapped the edge of the dirty mattress on which he sat. “I appreciate you fellows doing your best to answer my questions. However, there is one more thing that I would like to know before we lie down on these terrible mattresses on this enemy ship of theirs in order to get some rest.”

  “And what would that be?” wondered Tran Wuu curiously.

  Adam shot a c
ocky smile at the wounded Crasel soldier. “Tell me about the Yakiir,” he suggested.

  “I’m afraid we cannot help you there,” Arte Kasik replied cursorily after a prolonged pause. “Crasel territory is such a small, narrow corridor of the Wasteland that no one currently alive has ever encountered the Yakiir. Other clans, fortunately, have acted as a buffer between us.”

  “But there are rumors,” noted Cren Hollis softly. “It is said that they possess magic and many quashing weapons – everyone knows that they are not to be trifled with. If our warships ever encountered them, we would think twice before attacking. Resources are too scarce these days.”

  Another voice unexpectedly interrupted their conversation. “Why would you ask about the Yakiir?” wondered one of the three Zaketh soldiers playing cards. He had obviously overheard at least some of their conversation and threw down the rotting, dog-eared pieces of wood in his hand before turning to face them. He made some sort of religious or warding gesture with one hand before continuing. “Why would wounded Crasel survivors seek information about the darkest clan in the Wasteland?”

  Adam studied the Zaketh man with interest. “We are curious,” he suggested. “Times are tough.”

  “It’s not us who want to know,” growled Janney Stox in response, pointing at Adam Roh sternly. “This is the man who foolishly ventures onto topics where other men dare not tread.”

  “I have heard rumors that the Yakiir threaten all the clans,” shrugged Adam, eager for information regardless of its source. He watched the three card players carefully, but the other two were content merely to watch and listen. “Surely they must have gained a foothold on at least one perimeter world.”