Empire of Bones

by Terry Mixon

  “Wow,” Stone said. “He’s got some kind of artificial implant in his brain. Three processors of some kind attached to the skull itself and ultra-thin wires branching throughout the brain matter.”

  “What do they do? Why would anyone do that to themselves? And how could they do it without killing themselves?”

  “I have no idea.” Stone expanded the view on his head until the filaments loomed large. “It looks like some kind of graphene derivative.”

  “Graphene?”

  Stone nodded. “It’s an old material, discovered on pre-spaceflight Terra. An engineer could tell you more, but it’s a crystalline allotrope of carbon that has 2-dimensional properties. It’s basically an atom thick lattice of carbon. Conductive and twenty times stronger than steel.

  “They used it in all kinds of equipment, and so do we. That’s what makes communicator screens so thin and flexible. It’s a lot more useful than silicon electronics.”

  The doctor examined the thin strand on the screen. “I never imagined it could be used inside someone’s brain, though. I don’t think this is exactly the same material, either. How did they even get it in there?”

  She shook her head. “There’ll be time enough to research that. The rest of his body looks normal enough. Let’s look at a few more people before I call in some of the scientists to help explain this.”

  Stone had her orderlies take the man’s body out and they brought a woman to replace him. Kelsey saw that the woman had the brain implants, but she also had extensive modification to the rest of her body. Her arms and legs especially. It looked like she had thick bands running through the muscles of her limbs. She had a cylinder behind her lungs, and inserts under the lenses in her eyes. There were things inside her ears and nose, too.

  The doctor expanded the view on one of the woman’s legs. The bones also had a thin coating of something that seemed impermeable to the scanners.

  “This is a lot more invasive,” Stone said. “These look like artificial muscles woven into her real musculature. Her bones have some kind of coating. Probably to reinforce them. I’ll wager she could kick like a grav lifter.” Stone checked her notes. “This woman was found wearing an armored body suit. Maybe she was a marine.”

  Kelsey shuddered. “That’s awful. She was like a machine.”

  “More like a cyborg—part machine-part human. Enhanced. These brain implants might allow for a better interface with something. Maybe each other, if there’s some kind of transmitter in there. I’d better call in the science teams before I open one of them up.”

  “They can come back in the cutter I’m taking over to Best Deal, if it’s all the same to you. I’d rather not see the inside of someone.”

  Stone nodded and smiled. “No problem. We’ll need to examine more of them to be sure exactly what we’re seeing. It’s not a pretty sight. Do you want the final report?”

  “Please. This might tell us a lot about them. Thanks for the invitation to come down.”

  Kelsey thought about what the brain implants meant all the way over to Best Deal. They almost had to be interfaces of some kind. Why they needed them was something of a mystery, though that probably explained the lack of nametags. They could recognize one another, even if they’d never met. They might even have been able to access some kind of biography on the fly. She’d have to think about the implications of that on a society for a while.

  A number of Fleet crewmembers got off the cutter with her and an equal number of scientists waited to board. They chatted enthusiastically about how they were going to look into the brain implants.

  Kelsey resisted another shudder and made her way to the labs. She only got lost three times. What she found was a huge room with lots of tables. Each had an assortment of objects covering it and there were a few dozen lab coated men and women examining things and making notes on their tablets.

  Doctor Cartwright was among them, so she wandered over to his side. “Thanks for inviting me over, Doctor.”

  The older man looked up and blinked in surprise. Then he smiled. “I’m sorry, Ambassador. The time got away from me. I’d meant to meet you in the docking bay.”

  “No need to apologize. I came over a little early. I couldn’t wait to see what sort of things you’re finding. And call me Kelsey.”

  He looked as though he didn’t think that was a good idea, but he nodded. “As you wish. Please, call me Zephram. What we have here are many ordinary items and a few mysteries. They haven’t removed any of the larger artifacts from Courageous yet. The half-dozen small fighter craft in a bay amidships has the Fleet people quite excited.”

  The older man gestured to the tables around them. “We have items ranging from tablets to toothbrushes. All appear slightly different from those we use. Oh, and weapons. The vacuum has preserved everything in an almost pristine state.”

  “What kind of weapons?” The marines had taken her to their shooting range. She wasn’t anywhere close to being an expert, but she at least knew the general classes of weapons.

  “A number of projectile weapons and some that defy a precise explanation. Come take a look.”

  He moved to a table across the room where they’d laid out a number of pistols in neat rows. At a glance, Kelsey could see two models. One had an opening for a projectile and an exceptionally thick barrel. The second had no opening at all. The barrel looked like a thick canister half again longer than the projectile weapons and a little thicker than the weapons themselves.

  “Are they safe to pick up?”

  “Yes. Both kinds used power packs that have completely discharged over the years. Still, do an old man a favor and don’t pull the trigger. Just in case.”

  She picked up one of the projectile weapons and searched for the release to the magazine. There was no slide on the barrel, so it didn’t look like it ejected a casing. That alone made it different from the marine weapons.

  Once she had the release identified, she pointed the weapon at the floor and pressed the catch. The magazine resisted, but finally came free. The bullets inside weren’t bullets at all. They were metallic darts with fins in a clear gel-like blob. The blobs seemed all melted together, but Kelsey wagered they were once separate.

  “Do you have a knife?”

  “There are some on one of the other tables, but I have a plastic pick. That should do.” He stepped away and came back with little tool that would do the job.

  “Thanks.” She used the pointed end to pry out one of the bullets. Doctor Cartwright had put thin gloves on and held them cupped to catch it.

  He held it up after it came free. “Interesting. No propellant. It looks like a tungsten alloy. With a power pack and this thick barrel, the weapon may use electromagnetic propulsion. I’d imagine it discards this gel sabot in flight almost at once. The small fins would provide admirable stabilization for the projectile.”

  “Wow! That sounds very high tech. How fast do you think it could go?”

  He shrugged. “We’ll be able to make an educated guess once we disassemble one of these. Certainly fast enough to be effective. Perhaps five time the speed of sound. Maybe more. This metal almost certainly armor piercing as well.”

  “You might want to have one of the marines consult. Their armorer has quite an extensive knowledge of projectile weapons.”

  “An excellent idea.” He put the bullet into a small bag and set it on the table. He then picked up one of the other pistols. “This has no way for a projectile to be expelled. The thick barrel suggests some kind of electromagnetic force, but it isn’t a laser. We use those in our labs and this is not the magical hand-held laser pistol. Whatever it does can’t be good, though. Otherwise, why make it into a weapon?”

  “True enough. Did they have larger weapons?”

  “Certainly. We have some on the next table. The projectile weapons look similar to the pistols here, but there is something new.”

  He led her to the next table and showed her examples of the two rifles. One looked like the projectil
e pistol, but the other had an exceptionally wide barrel. Almost a like a rocket nozzle from the early space program.

  She found the magazine and ejected it. The bullets looked more like metal pellets rather than projectiles. There was no way they could be aerodynamic enough to do much damage, especially with a barrel as open as this was.

  Cartwright picked the pellet up and examined it closely. “Tritium. We use small pellets of a similar nature to conduct plasma experiments. It’s put into a chamber and converted to a high energy state by lasers.”

  She wasn’t about to stare down the barrel of an unknown weapon, but she looked inside the bell from an angle. “If it converted to plasma, what would happen to the barrel?”

  “It would be destroyed. So would anything within a few meters of the unfortunate soul.”

  Kelsey whistled soundlessly. “Let’s assume for the sake of argument that the makers of this weapon wanted to keep the person firing it from being turned into a cinder.”

  The older man felt the bell. “This might be resistant, but it can’t survive direct exposure to plasma.” He then made her heart shoot into her throat by staring directly into the barrel. “There are some projectors in here. Half are lasers and the other half are unknown to me. The interior of the weapon appears coated in iridium. That would help.”

  “Zephram, could you not point the deadly weapon at your face.”

  He blinked at her for a moment and then smiled a little. “That wasn’t the best choice, eh? I suppose you could say I lost my head.” He put the weapon back on the table. “Assuming this is a plasma weapon, perhaps those other emitters are similar to the screens their ships used. Perhaps it focused the expanding plasma toward the target. If so, that would have a devastating effect.”

  “How devastating?”

  “It would probably incinerate an armored man and melt the bulkhead behind him. This would be a most lethal weapon. They tell me there are armored suits, but one has not yet made it over. I’ll be able to determine how resistant it would be to this kind of weapon when it arrives.”

  The sophistication of the weapons, and their raw destructiveness, shocked and amazed her. Men armed with these would be virtual killing machines. Add in the heavy modifications the marines seemed to have and they would be unstoppable. Except they had been stopped.

  Cartwright wandered over to the next table and picked up a combat knife. She’d seen something similar in marine country. They all seemed to have a fetish for sharp objects. “This looks relatively normal, but even it has some improvements.”

  She took it from him and examined it closely. The blade didn’t appear to be steel. It was matte black, even along the edge. Holding it with the white tabletop behind it, she could see it had a wicked edge.

  “What kind of metal is this?” she asked.

  “I believe it might be similar to what is used on their hull. If so, it would be almost impossible to dull and probably take far more strength than a normal person possessed to break it. I’d imagine a strong man could drive it into the table without damaging the weapon. It might even be capable of harming someone in armor.”

  She was impressed. “I’m certain some have already made their way back to Athena, then. No way would the marines pass up the chance to have something like this.”

  The old scientist smiled. “I’d imagine not. Luckily, there are many of them left over to study.” He gestured at the three or four dozen on the table. “Oh, I can think of one other oddity you’ll appreciate.”

  They walked over to a table piled high with headsets. However, unlike normal headsets these had no headphones or built-in microphones. Instead, they fit over the top of the head in three places. They had circular pads that pressed against the skull.

  She picked one up and pulled the pad back enough to see some kind of plate under it. Kelsey frowned as she considered how they would sit on the head. The spacing seemed just about right for these pads to go over the unknown implants in the dead Fleet personnel. The table had more than fifty headsets. She’d wager there were many more over on Courageous. Perhaps enough for everyone on board plus some spares.

  “Zephram, I think you’d best send some of these over to Doctor Stone on Athena. The Fleet personnel seem to have some implants in their heads that would correspond to these locations at the ends. I also think you’d better bump these up in priority. Captain Mertz is going to want to know about them.”

  “Implants, you say? How intriguing! I will certainly do so. Perhaps a direct inspection is in order. Meanwhile, we have much more to examine. We still have to study their tablets. We’re quite hopeful we can recover data from these units once we decipher how the power cells work.”

  She followed him, although her mind was preoccupied…thinking about the brain implants they’d discovered. What would the headsets allow them to do? That seemed like one of the most important things they could figure out. No one had mentioned anything like this after the Fall. Perhaps it had been a closely guarded secret.

  If so, it was one she was determined to unravel. It might be the key to everything.

  Chapter Seventeen

  The news about the implants interested Jared, but it got him no closer to solving the riddle of getting home. The probes had scoured the system and only found the one other flip point. No other weak flip points were present. Perhaps they really were rare.

  He’d decided the science teams could continue examining Courageous for samples of technology to take home while Athena probed the next flip point. If there was trouble on the other side, it was better to go without the freighter. That increased his options somewhat and kept the non-combatants out of danger.

  He sent two probes back to the other side of the weak flip point. One would wait for anyone to come into the system, transmitting a distress beacon. It had the full logs for the mission thus far, encrypted of course. They could send other probes back to update it as they learned more, as long as they were close by.

  The second probe was on its way back to the Empire. It had to make two flips to get to an occupied system. Its distress signal would draw help from Fleet. If it made it all the way. Baxter wasn’t certain it would. And even if it did, it would be over a month before help could arrive.

  He reluctantly pulled Kelsey off Best Deal to go with them as they explored further. If he’d had his way, she would’ve stayed where she was, but orders were orders. He did leave a couple of lieutenants to restrain the scientists from doing anything truly foolhardy. He hoped.

  They’d also continue the inquiry into Carlo Vega’s death. Since the investigating officers didn’t know his suspicions about the source of the poison, they’d conducted an exhaustive set of interviews centered on the freighter’s galley. As he’d expected, they’d determined there was no reason for the suspect substance to be anywhere near the food preparation area.

  Two labs had some for experiments, but security was somewhat short of Fleet expectations. They couldn’t even be certain any was missing. Jared would bet his salary from the entire exploratory mission they’d never officially identify the source of the poison. Or the poisoner.

  Those thoughts occupied his time until Kelsey strapped herself into her unofficial seat on the bridge. She watched the two ships shrink on the screen until they were indistinguishable from the stars behind them. Only then did she turn her attention to him. “It’s unbelievable. I never expected to find people like this…just bodies. It puts a completely different light on this kind of mission for me. I feel like a vulture.”

  “I can understand that point of view, but it’s wrong. None of the people who died on Courageous would begrudge us taking them home or salvaging what we could. In fact, their Captain gave us his explicit permission. In their shoes, I wouldn’t mind. Would you?”

  She took a deep breath. “I suppose not. What do you think about the implants?”

  “Since none of the Fleet or marine personnel survived the battle of Avalon, they could’ve all had them and the civilians would’ve been non
e the wiser. The survivors had other priorities. I’d wager if we exhumed their bodies we’d find similar equipment. There’s so much we don’t know about the old Empire.”

  He went over the exploration status with Kelsey for the next four hours. It helped to pass the time in transit and made sure that they were on the same page.

  Just short of the flip point, he order a probe sent through with a short return time. The probe popped back out as they were slowing to a stop. Zia began pulling the data and transferring it to the screen. One thing was immediately clear. The system on the other side had occupants. Communication sources popped up all over the other system. Hundreds. Perhaps thousands. It was as busy as Avalon.

  “This puts a new spin on things,” he said. “There aren’t any ships in range of the flip point, but we won’t be able to move anywhere without someone seeing us.”

  Kelsey nodded. “It doesn’t change the fact we have to go.”

  “No, I suppose not. It’s also probable that they’re less advanced than we are, even though they obviously have spaceflight.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Because they’ve never come through to explore Courageous. They couldn’t have missed the distress beacon. That means no flip drives.”

  “How do we know that the next system isn’t full of old Empire automated transmitters?”

  “No distress beacons. I’m not sure what’s transmitting, mind you. We need to process some of the traffic to figure it out. Without knowing the transmission protocols, all we have are signals. Zia, can you get us any of that in a format we can understand?”

  The tactical officer nodded. “I’m working on a strong signal now. I don’t think it’s encrypted, but the formatting is…wait…got it. Going on screen.”

  A man sitting behind a desk replaced the system schematic. Jared instantly recognized it as a news program. There wasn’t any audio, but the images behind the man’s back seemed to be of some sporting event.