by Rick Partlow
But of course, they didn’t know exactly how old it was because it was an automated replay of a recording. The recording was 423 years, seven months and three days old, but the transmission itself could have been years later. And years at the speed of light meant light-years of distance, which they had all been finding out to their chagrin over the last few weeks.
“I am thinking…” Kammy answered his question with the absent-minded tone of someone concentrating hard on something besides talking, trailing off for a moment before he turned to Jonathan with a huge smile splitting his huge face. “None. This is it.”
There was a surge of humanity across the bridge—Hell, it feels like across the whole damn ship!—towards the navigation screen, the whole bridge crew and Jonathan and Lyta all staring at the giant yellow arrow pointing through the system to a black and rocky world. Too far from the too-dim orange dwarf star at the center of the system, the world roamed alone, moonless and seemingly dead.
“It’s Terminus,” Nance breathed the words like a prayer. “It has to be.”
“Let’s not jump to any conclusions,” Jonathan warned, trying to look deliberately unexcited, afraid to be optimistic for fear he might jinx it. “It might just be a signal repeater.”
“Way to kill the buzz, fearless leader,” Osceola said, glaring at him from behind Kammy’s chair. “How about giving everyone a minute to celebrate before trying to bring us all down?”
Things had been tense between the two of them since the “conversation” in the gym, but Jonathan had been trying his best to act as if it hadn’t happened, which seemed to suit Osceola fine.
“Sorry,” he said, grinning as he raised his hands palms-out in surrender. “For the sake of morale, I’ll allow ten seconds of unrestrained cheering.”
“Well, when you put it like that,” Osceola griped, “I’d feel silly cheering.”
Kammy didn’t care; he whooped loudly, pounding a palm on the control panel hard enough to make the image on the screen waver, then jumped up and picked Petty Officer Nance by the waist and tossed her into the air. The woman shrieked but laughed through it, and the whole bridge crew was laughing with her, even Lyta.
Has it been that long of a trip? he wondered, trying not to stare at her for fear of the smile running away. Or has being with Osceola changed her?
“Okay,” he said into the echoes of the laughter and applause, moving up to the Communications console, “I think that’s ten seconds. Time to make the rest of the ship happy.”
He hit public address, trying to imagine his mech company down in the cargo bay, working on maintenance with Chief McKee, Katy running simulations with her flight crews, all looking up at the sound of his voice.
“Wholesale Slaughter,” he said into the audio pickup, “we have reached the system of origin of the signal, and we are going to be maneuvering into a deceleration burn in approximately two minutes. Secure for maneuvering, and once the braking burn starts, you’re going to have two hours to prepare for orbital insertion.”
He paused, eyeing Lyta and remembering what she’d said about delegating authority…and then recalling how it had felt walking into the Quonset hut and finding Marc Langella’s body. He switched the intercom to another feed and continued.
“Drop-Ship One crew, prepare for launch. You’ll be carrying a heavy platoon of mecha and a platoon of infantry, plus a research crew.”
“Cover One will be flying overwatch.” That was Katy’s voice and it wasn’t a question. His first instinct was to argue, but then realized it would only be delaying the inevitable.
“Yes, you are, Lt. Margolis. Prep your shuttle for takeoff.”
He grinned, imagining her frown at the lack of an opportunity for an entertaining verbal tussle.
“Aye, sir,” she replied curtly, signing off.
Another switch of channels.
“Terry,” he said to his brother. “You’re up. Get your team to Drop-Ship One and bring whatever gear you think you’ll need.”
“Got it. We’ll be there.”
Terry sounded eager, excited, which was an improvement over the glum introspection he’d been stuck in for weeks after the fight with the Jeuta and what had happened with Wihtgar. He hadn’t tried to talk to his brother about it, hoping Terry would come to him.
“And who’s going to be leading the landing party?” Lyta asked him, suspicion strong in her voice and in her expression.
“I am,” Jonathan told her, then went on, not waiting for her inevitable objections. “This is the holy grail, Lyta, the end of the quest. The decisions to be made, the information I’ll need to make them, it’s all down there.” He gestured at the view screen, at the image of the planet below. “It’s where I need to be.”
“Yes, it is,” she agreed, and it was all he could do to keep his mouth from dropping open in shock. She spread her hands as if accepting the inevitable. “Mission first. It’s one of the most important things they teach in Ranger school.”
“Everybody hold on tight,” Osceola warned, both to those on the bridge within earshot and over the intercom to the whole ship. He screwed a lid onto his spit bottle. “Things are about to turn upside down.”
Aleksandr Kuryakin hadn’t even bothered to leave his cabin for this jump. He had a moral conviction they wouldn’t find the Shakak until the last possible moment, which was still one more drone-drop and four possible jump-points away and he preferred handling the post-jump nausea he’d always suffered strapped into his bunk with the lights off. Laurent could handle the disappointment of one more dry hole, could try to massage Captain Kessler’s ego and listen to her whining and moaning about maintenance schedules and refueling and leave schedules.
Kessler was as bad as his wife. Holy Bull of Mithra, how Giovanna had ranted and raved about retirement and getting away from the backstabbing and politics of the capital, how she didn’t want to be married to a minister, how she’d waited all these years for him to give all this up and move out to one of the more sedate colonies.
He’d told her he would be back when he would be back and that was it. If she didn’t care for his career choices, she was free to move back in with her trash parents on their dirt farm and give up the cushy job as a civilian employee at the Supremacy Military Command. It wasn’t the best way to part, but their children were grown and gone, and maybe it was time to make a clean break.
“Damn,” he murmured to himself. What was the use sitting here in the dark to avoid the drama on the bridge when he kept reliving his own drama inside his head? He was about to unstrap and sit up when the alarms went off and he gritted his teeth and braced for the jump.
He knew some people felt nothing during the transition from one universe to another, and he hated those people with the fire of a thousand suns. When it came, it was the metaphysical equivalent of his intestines trying to leave his body through his navel without the benefit of an incision. It involved pain, but not the sort felt in the nerves; this was the pain of losing a child, a parent, a beloved pet. It was the pain of heartbreak and loss and despair rolled into the point of a knife and rammed through the guts with the weight of a universe behind it and no researcher or doctor or physicist had ever been able to explain the “how” of it, much less the “why.”
It lasted forever, yet it was over instantly, leaving a residue of psychic slime smeared over his soul. He moaned softly, opened his eyes and let the muscles of his neck unclench. And he’d had to go through this shit fifteen times in the last three weeks.
“Bugger me.”
He yanked the zero-g restraints on his cot loose as he felt the fusion drives kick in, pushing him into the cushioned mattress with about half a standard gravity of acceleration, and sat up.
Maybe his wife had a point.
“Sir, are you there?” It was Laurent because of course it was. Another report on another disappointment, another system filled with the burned cinders of once-habitable worlds.
“Where the hell else would I be, Ruth?” he asked, ti
lting his head up toward the overhead speakers even though he knew the audio pickup was on the wall beside his bunk. “Get it over with, give me your report so we get to repeat all this again.”
“Sir, we’ve found them!”
Kuryakin nearly fell back to the bunk with relief, but forced himself to pop up from the mattress instead. He slipped into his ship boots, grabbed his tunic from the locker built into the bulkhead of his private cabin, and headed out the hatch before he even had the shirt completely fastened. Crewmembers not currently on duty were making their way out into the passageways to take advantage of the thrust to get some food or exercise. He weaved his way through them, earning curious glances and more than one whispered conversation.
He didn’t wait for the lift car, pounding down the spiral staircase of the hub instead, not slowing for upward traffic, forcing his way through by the power of his rank and his urgency. He ran his hands through the regulation cut of his hair before he hit the hatchway to the bridge, a moment’s concession to the necessity of not looking like a wild-eyed madman in front of Captain Kessler and the bridge personnel.
“Situation!” he snapped, barging through the open hatchway into the kaleidoscope of multicolored displays and screens at the heart of the ship’s control systems.
Captain Kessler made a face like a dog sniffing a rival and said nothing, but Ruth Laurent was already hustling forward, gesturing with a laser pointer at the tactical sensor displays.
She brought a damned laser pointer with her on this mission. I can’t decide if that’s dedication or just Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder.
“They’re in this system, sir,” she told him, her eyes lit up like a child at Yule, weight shifting from one foot to another as if she were about to break into a spontaneous dance. “They’ve moved into orbit around one of the interior planets, this one here.” She highlighted the world on the sensor display with a touch of the laser. “We think they’ve been in-system at least a few hours, maybe as many as twenty or thirty; long enough to have made it from the jump-point to orbit at least.”
Kuryakin squinted at the readout next to the computer-enhanced image of the world, comparing the spectral analysis to the brown, lifeless appearance of the planet. He chewed at his lip, leaning up against the Tactical console, ignoring the way the Navy officer crewing it leaned away and gave him a dirty look at the intrusion on his personal space.
“There can’t be any life on that world,” he declared. “What the hell do they want there?”
“We’re picking up a repeating signal coming from somewhere on the planet,” the Communications officer reported, stepping on Laurent before the woman could give him the news herself. “It’s…” The man was young and fresh-faced and excitement glowed in his eyes, replacing the resentment and boredom the whole crew had sunken into over the last few weeks. “Here, let me play it for you, Colonel.”
At the touch of a control, the image of the planet on the main screen was shunted to one of the smaller, side displays, replaced by the lined, worn-down face of a man. Even before he spoke, Kuryakin could tell he was a military officer. He’d been in the military, and in the business of Intelligence long enough to read the clues written across the hard edges of the rough-hewn features, the resolve behind the tired sag of the dark eyes.
“I am Colonel Walken Zeir,” he said, tired and resigned yet still with an underlying strength and dignity the exhaustion couldn’t quite erase, “of the 403rd Imperial Ordnance Battalion. My unit has been stationed here on Terminus for the last three years.”
Terminus. Holy shit, Terminus!
There were murmurs across the bridge, not shocked or surprised as they’d seen the recording before he arrived, but excited or confused, with one crewmember explaining the old legends to another.
“When I came here,” Colonel Zeir went on, “there seemed hope we could yet pull the fragments of the Empire back together. Now with the Jeuta invasion of the Homeworld, that hope is dead."
“That’s over four hundred years ago,” Laurent added sotto vocce, as if he couldn’t remember his military history classes from the Academy.
"I’m going to send this message on a continuous loop as long as the generators hold out. I'm directing it towards the human worlds farthest away from the Jeuta incursions in the hopes rebuilding will begin there. It won’t be in time to save us, I’m afraid.” His face fell, his voice becoming even grimmer and more hopeless. “Food stores have been stretched to their limit and there is barely a two-month supply left. We have sent the few ships we have to search for outposts, for Imperial outposts or ship, but those who have returned report no living worlds remaining within a hundred light years. I will not starve to death, and neither will the rest of us. We have decided to end our lives with dignity before it comes to that.” Zeir’s shoulders shuddered with a steadying breath as he visibly collected himself.
“If anyone hears this... if there's anyone left who can, and who can reach us, this system has yet to be discovered by the enemy. There is safe haven here, and weapons to take the fight to them, if you have the personnel to use them and the ships to carry them. And if no one comes, if there is no one left, then this message is simply a grave marker. If there may yet be any other life in this universe besides humans, and if they ever hear this, let them know we died doing our duty to the Empire, and to all humanity.”
The man straightened and saluted, fist to chest.
“Ave, Imperator, morituri te salutant.”
The image froze on the salute and the Commo officer wiped it away with a swipe of his finger across the control screen.
“After that, it just keeps repeating,” the man explained.
“It’s been repeating endlessly for four hundred and twenty three years,” Laurent jumped back into the conversation.
“Why haven’t we detected it?” Kuryakin demanded, feeling light-headed and grabbing at the edge of the tactical console to steady himself. “It’s been pointed right at us for centuries.”
“The signal attenuates severely past a few dozen light years,” the Commo officer explained. “By the time it reaches Dominion space, it’s too weak and corrupted to separate from all the other ancient radio signals left over from the Empire.”
“The Guardianship was able to figure it out somehow,” Kuryakin mused, eyes clouding over, the planet on the screen losing focus in his vision as he let his thoughts travel back along the path of the message, watching its leavings sputter their way into Spartan space. “I’d bet it’s one of their universities. The Guardian’s younger son is an astrophysicist, and he’s convinced old Brannigan to pour ridiculous amounts of funding into orbital observatories and the software and computer systems to analyze them.”
“This is why they’re here, sir!” Laurent was gushing. “If the weapons and military technology this Colonel Zeir was talking about are still on Terminus, it could permanently shift the balance of power in the Dominions! We have to get there and take control before they do!”
“Thank you, Captain Obvious,” he said with strained patience. He turned to Kessler, who still seemed skeptical about the whole business. Imagination has never been her strong suit, though. “Get the drop-ships loaded, every mech, every pilot, every Marine we have. We’re going to go down in history, Captain Kessler,” he assured the ship’s commander with a broad smile. “This will be the day we reunite the Empire, under the banner of the Starkad Supremacy.”
Forget the damned Ministry, he thought, the possibilities racing through his brain like a drug. Perhaps it’s time Starkad came under new guidance. Even Lord Aaron wouldn’t be able to stand against the technology of the Empire.
Emperor Aleksandr the First. It had a nice ring to it.
13
The Sentinel swayed ponderously, a grizzly walking on its hind legs down the broad ramp of the drop-ship. It all seemed unnatural to Jonathan Slaughter, as if he had switched bodies with someone much taller and heavier. It was the first time he’d piloted the Sentinel outside a simulator and
even with the neural halo on, he could still tell the difference between real life and virtual training.
He’d heard the old stories about how the Empire had virtual reality so advanced it was impossible to discern it from waking life, but the thought didn’t appeal to him, no matter how useful it would have been for training. Some things needed to be lived through to experience.
The Terminus Cut was one of them. They’d seen it from orbit and known immediately it was where they had to land. Two thousand kilometers long and over a hundred wide, it was nearly ten kilometers deep at its lowest points. Terry had thought it might have been formed by tectonic or volcanic activity at some point in the distant past, but there were side channels formed by water, still filled by lakes fed by what had to be underground rivers.
The planet’s atmosphere was too thin and cold for liquid water or human habitation everywhere except the deepest parts of the Cut, where they’d seen the greens and blues standing out like a searchlight among the lifeless browns and blacks of the world. It could have been natural, but he doubted it, not deep inside the Shadow Zone. The worlds in the heart of the old Empire were terraformed as a matter of course, even when it only gained a few thousand square kilometers of habitable ground.
The transmitter lay outside the Cut, but none of their scans indicated any means of accessing its power source from the surface there, so the drop-ship had touched down near the headwaters of the largest of the finger lakes, where the sensors had detected a spike in temperatures, a heat source deep underground. It might have been volcanic activity, but nothing else about the geology indicated an active core and he was willing to bet it was a big-ass fusion reactor still powering the signal, even after all these hundreds of years.
The walls of the canyon were dozens of kilometers away on either side of their landing zone, but he could see them even without his mech’s optical magnification, like mountain ranges peeking through the wispy clouds hanging like a ceiling over the canyon. The light would have been dusk-dim even if the world hadn’t been just past the edge of the habitability zone, with the cyclopean rampart of the front edge of the canyon looming ahead of them less than a kilometer away, like the edge of the world. Blue-green moss coated every rock, boring its way and breaking down the outer surface for nutrients, eroding the crenellated cliff face, wearing away grooves and recesses in a silent war that would someday bring the wall crumbling down.
