Chapter 10
“Here we sit,” said Laguan, sipping his brandy, “two flag officers without a single ship, enemies within and without, reduced to observers.”
“There are the commtorps,” said Detrelna. The two men sat at a small table on the blue-tiled patio overlooking the waterfall, two glasses and a crystal decanter of Satanian brandy between them. Below, the mist from the tumbling water prismed artificial sunlight into a rainbow.
“What, the ones Implacable launched coming in?”
Detrelna nodded.
“Line,” asked Laguan, “what’s the status of those commtorps?”
“All but one is intact, Admiral.” Line’s voice cane from beside the table. “They can be activated only upon signal from Implacable. Absent Implacable, they can’t be.”
“Surely the signal could be duped?” asked Detrelna.
“Authentication signals of a Laal-class cruiser—indeed, of most Imperial battleships—to any of its indigenous equipment is codebased upon the matrixset of jump drive impulses unique to that particular vessel,” said Line primly. “The chance of our successfully emulating it is absurd.”
“Thank you.”
“And what good would it do?” said Laguan, looking at the commodore.
“The people would rise. Fleet would join them, and Combine Telan—its bases, its ships, its agents—would disappear overnight. They’re large, but they can’t hope to stand against an aroused people backed by their military.”
“Chaos is what you’re describing,” said the admiral. “Our ships scattered, our cities burning, fighting in the streets—just as the AI invasion force sweeps in.”
“Perhaps. So what to do?”
“Wait,” said Laguan. “If there’s an invasion coming, it’ll come out of Blue 9. Automated pickets are at all jump points leading from there toward the Confederation. When and if they come, we’ll know.”
“I made a deal with the mindslavers,” said the commodore. “They’re waiting in Blue 9, ready to take on the AIs.”
“In return for concessions from us,” said Laguan. “I know. If they can stop the AIs—and survive—those concessions will probably be honored. But chances of that are slight.”
“So we’ll just sit it out, sir, safe in the heart of Line?”
“The Fleet of the One would make short work of even this sanctuary.” He sat looking at the waterfall for a long moment. “I’ve been careful to not confuse boldness with desperation. But we’ve only desperate moves left.”
“I didn’t know we had any moves left.” Detrelna stared glumly into the tropical twilight falling over the jungle glade.
“Let’s be thankful we survived today,” said Laguan, rising. “I’m going to bed. You might do the same.”
“Admiral,” called Detrelna.
Laguan turned.
“Thank you—for getting me out.”
Laguan shrugged. “How many times have you and Implacable saved our lives, Detrelna?”
“You’d have gotten me out if I were a first-year ensign.”
“‘Leave none behind,’” said Laguan, quoting an old Fleet maxim. “Good night, Jaquel.”
“So, Line,” said Detrelna after the admiral disappeared, “what are our chances?”
“The situation’s more complex than the admiral cares to believe. If all factors now in play are resolved in our favor, we will win. If even one of them isn’t, we lose. Forever.”
“And what are those factors?” Detrelna poured himself a fresh glass as Line spoke. “The captured battleglobe must reach AI space and foment revolt. The Margrave of Utria must find Syal’s last citadel and retrieve the recall device. The last fleet of the House of Syal must be recalled from the stasis in which it’s snared and triumph over our enemies Combine Telan and all its minions must be destroyed, chaos or not. And lastly …”
“There’s more?” he frowned, glass to his lips.
“The Emperor must return.”
“You crazed harpy!” shouted Natrol into the pickup. “You can’t keep pushing her like this—she’ll tear apart!” Behind him in engineering, the high-pitched whine of tortured machinery near breaking point filled the air.
“You really love this old hulk, don’t you, Engineer?” said Atir with a vicious little smile. The smile vanished. “Final jump point by watchend, or I start spacing your people.” The commscreen went blank.
“Line,” said Detrelna, setting down his empty glass. “What do you think of Admiral Laguan?”
“A classic noble patriot. He might have stepped out of the Empire, battle flags snapping in the breeze behind him. His conduct during the Biofab War was impeccable. A childless widower, the service is his life.”
“And now?”
“His position as Line Duty Officer is one of seeming impotence.”
“Seeming impotence?”
“Neither the Grand Admiral nor I are out of this game.”
Chapter 11
“Standby to jump,” said Syatan, watching the tacscan data thread across Dawn’s main screen. Devastator hadn’t moved, remaining off Terra as though nothing had happened.
Lonar, the first officer, glanced at his complink. “Jump plotted and set. Engineering reports …” He stopped, staring at the small screen. “Captain, the jump coordinates have been changed!”
Syatan had turned from the screen. “I know. I changed them.”
“But this will take us away from Kronar, not toward it,” protested Lonar.
The bridge crew were all watching, uneasy at having disobeyed Captain Poqal, uneasier still at the way the senior officers’ conversation was going.
Syatan lowered his voice. “I’ve received special orders regarding this contingency.”
“How?” said Lonar. “Devastator took out the skipcomm buoy.”
All eyes followed Syatan as he walked to where Dawn’s first officer stood, beside the tactics station. “You will jump this ship, Mr. Lonar,” he said. “Or you will die.”
“As soon as you answer my question, Captain,” said Lonar, folding his arms across his chest and looking resolutely into Syatan’s cold blue eyes—a resolution that changed to shock as the captain’s eyes blazed red.
“How did you get the message?” asked a different voice. Ignoring the sudden shriek of an alarm and the rasp of blasters being drawn, an attractive blonde in a white jumpsuit stepped up to the two officers, and Zahava behind her, blasters leveled.
“Scotar,” said Syatan, facing Guan-Sharick. He turned to his crew, who stood with blasters leveled at the blonde. “That’s a Scotar,” he said, pointing. “A biofab. Kill it!”
Lonar’s eyes had only briefly left the captain’s face. “And you’re an AI.” He drew his sidearm. “Where’s the Captain?”
“A long time dead, probably,” said Guan-Sharick. Her gaze went from face to face. “As you’d all be the instant you made that jump to his waiting ship.” A small pistol appeared in her hand, pointed at Syatan. There was a triangular device set in the weapon’s grip, a single blue eye set in each corner of it, parallel black lines in its center.
Syatan stared at the weapon, then at the blonde. “Guan-Sharick,” he said, shaking his head. “Impossible. You’re less than dust. I saw your ship blown apart in the Revolt.”
“Time’s been less cruel to me than it will be to you,” she said.
The alarm fell silent as the crew watched the strange tableau. “You call it, Commander Lonar,” said the engineering tech, eyes and blaster shifting between Syatan and the blonde.
“Reset jump coordinates for Kronar,” ordered Lonar.
“Not necessary now,” said Guan-Sharick, glancing left as the bridge doors opened, admitting John and Zahava Crossing the deck, John placed a black, walnut-sized crystal in the blonde’s outstretched palm. “Drive nexus,” he said.
The crystal vanished, flicked elsewhere by Guan-Sharick. “Return to Terra, Commander Lonar,” said the Scotar.
“A diversion,” said Syatan to the blonde. “You
were a diversion while your friends pulled the drive nexus.” He fired, red bolts flashing from his eyes only to dissipate inches from that perfect blond hair.
Guan-Sharick squeezed the trigger, making Syatan a statue in the middle of Dawn’s bridge. “Where is it?” she asked Lonar.
The first officer looked at Syatan for an instant, nodded curtly and went to the captain’s station, keying a combination on the complink’s touchpad. A small panel slid open on the console pedestal. Lonar removed a square black cube, handing it to Guan-Sharick. “What about … it?” He nodded at Syatan.
“Put him somewhere, dust him now and then,” said the Scotar, pocketing the portal device. “He’s in an irreversible stasis field, perceiving, thinking, unable to move. Eventually he’ll go mad.”
Lonar looked at the AI. Syatan stared unblinking at where Guan-Sharick had stood, eyes red with frozen flame. “How long … ?”
She looked at the young officer, her eyes blue and distant. “Till the stars wink out and we’re all just an ethereal memory. And a better fate than he deserves—he reeks of old treacheries and innocent blood. Luck to you, Commander Lonar.” The drive nexus reappeared, falling to the deck.
The Scotar and the Terrans were gone.
“Come,” called Atir as the door chimed.
Natrol stepped into what had been Detrelna’s old office.
“Yes?” said the corsair, looking up as the engineer crossed the carpet.
“We’ve entered the Ghost Quadrant and are proceeding on course toward the Rift,” said Natrol, stopping in front of the big traq desk and the deceptively small woman.
“So?” said Atir, returning to the desk’s complink and the ship’s status report. “You think I need a progress report from you to know where we are?” She looked toward the door, frowning. “Where’s your escort?”
“Vigilantly guarding my cabin door,” said Natrol. “I used the ventilation and light conduits.”
“How tedious.” Atir pressed a commkey. “Two crewmen to my quarters. They’re to remain outside unless called. What do you want, Natrol?” said the corsair, leaning back in the big chair.
“May I?” He jerked his head toward the sofa.
Atir shrugged.
“You’ve cleared last jump point,” said Natrol, sitting. “You’re within easy range of some of the Empire’s lost colonies—Dalin, notably. You can gang-draft people there, run them through forced training. So even if you don’t rescue Kotran or anyone else, you can still crew this ship. I think you’d rather chance the inconvenience of training a bunch of groundies than risk our hatred for our experience. Am I right?”
The corsair looked at Natrol with new eyes, silent for a moment. “I keep underestimating you, Engineer. I used to think you were a brilliant, misanthropic tech officer. Yet you’ve held your men together and you’ve anticipated me.” She nodded. “I don’t need you or your crew anymore. You’re all going to take a short jump into hard vacuum at first watch.”
Natrol’s face betrayed nothing. “I have a deal for you, Atir.”
“Dead men don’t deal, Natrol,” she said, reaching for the door tab.
Natrol moved quickly, reaching across the desk to stop her hand as it touched the switch. “Spare my crew and I’ll get Kotran back for you.”
Atir looked at the blunt, competent fingers circling her wrist. “You have clever hands, Engineer,” she said, brown eyes meeting his. “Can you do something with them besides fix jump drives?”
“What did you have in mind?” said Natrol, letting go and stepping back a pace.
Atir stood and nodded toward Detrelna’s bedroom, just the other side of the bulkhead. “I’ll show you,” she said and turned for the connecting door, unfastening her tunic as she walked.
“What about my deal?” said Natrol, not moving.
“We’ll discuss that while you work, Engineer,” said the corsair. She turned to face him as the door hissed open. “Coming?” Her breasts were small, firm and tanned, with large dark areolae, her belly hard and flat.
“I’m not a piece of meat, Atir.”
She smiled coldly. “You’re what I say you are, Natrol. And if you don’t fix me right, Engineer, we don’t talk a deal.”
“I suppose I could look at your problem,” he said, and followed her into the commodore’s bedroom. If Detrelna finds about this, he thought, he’ll burn the bed.
“Detrelna’s still asleep,” said Line.
Laguan nodded, staring out at Kronar, hands clasped behind his back. He stood in the asteroid’s observation bubble, a small black pip on the jagged surface. Above him, Kronar rose, its eastern hemisphere turning to meet a new day.
Laguan turned from the view. “Will you redeploy as prescribed by your prime directive?”
“Of course,” said Line. “When so ordered by the Emperor in his capacity as Supreme Commander.”
“There is no Emperor. Merely the possibility of one. Right now there’s just a few of us against a universe of AIs.”
“Wrong,” said Line as Laguan stepped toward the lift, tired of their familiar exchange.
Chapter 12
The monument had no name. Time had wiped it from the memory of Utria as slowly and as inexorably as the stiff winter winds off the lake had rounded the obelisk’s sharp edges. A dark weathered shaft, it rose above the choppy night waters and its own dim, uncertain reflection, a testament to forgotten men and causes.
The old man stood in front of the monument, looking out on the lake, then up at the Stalker, just rising in the west. Wrapping his thick winter cape tight against the chill, he turned toward the monument and the village beyond.
“Blood moon,” said a voice.
The old man turned. A man in Fleet uniform stood beneath the monument, the starship on his collar reflecting the Stalker’s ocher tint.
“My Lord Margrave,” said the old man with a slight bow.
“Freeholder Ksar,” said Lawrona, walking over to the other. “It’s been too long.” He held out his hand. “Well met, Freeholder.”
The old man gave a thin smile as he took Lawrona’s hand. “Well met, My Lord. I’d hoped you’d have been back long before now. We need you.”
“War,” said Lawrona, looking at the monument. “It never ends. We defeated the Scotar, now it’s the AIs, one the precursor to the other.” He looked up at the stars, toward Quadrant Blue 9. “They’re coming.”
“And you’ve nothing to stop them?” said the freeholder.
Lawrona looked into eyes deep-set beneath the high forehead, a face seamed by decades of care. “Millions of ships the size of the Stalker,” he said. “Backed by millennia of carefully nurtured hate. We’re responsible, it seems, for all the AIs’ failures since the Revolt.”
“How convenient for them. It must take a great deal of time and hate to build a hundred million battleglobes.”
“You still have friends in Fleet Intelligence.”
An even stronger wind buffeted them from the lake, sending leaves swirling around the monument. Ksar hooked his arm through Lawrona’s. “Walk me home, Hanar. I promise you a good meal, a better brandy and a warm fire.”
A few moments and they were crossing the village plaza. What Lawrona recalled as a bustling marketplace was a row of gutted shops, windows smashed, broken glass set in congealed duraplast puddling the scorched paving stones. Fires flickered among the ruins, people huddling around them, eating quietly from Fleet survival packs, not looking up as freeholder and margrave walked by.
“What happened?” asked Lawrona.
Ksar shrugged. “The usual. When what was left of the Fleet fell back and the Scotar landed, we fought. We lost. Then they started conscription, mindwiping about a third of the survivors, using them to produce war goods in retooled factories. Now the Scotar are gone, and we’re left in ruin—physical, mental, spiritual. Fleet does what it can, but there are so many worlds, so much need …”
They reached the little stream whose venerable bridge was now just a heap of ha
nd-hewn blocks. Someone—Fleet engineers, Planetary Guard—had thrown a field span across it, twelve meters of gray duraplast strung with hand cables. Crossing the bridge, the two followed the footpath where it forked into the forest—a primeval forest of thick-trunked trees whose high canopies cloaked the Stalker and the stars. They walked in silence, leaves crunching beneath their feet, Hanar delighting in the crisp cold air of home again filling his nostril and lungs.
“And here we are,” said the freeholder at last as the familiar outline of a tall wood-beamed house rose out of the night, a single light in one of its lower windows. The footlights flanking the pebbled path were dark, the garden overgrown. The remembered sanctuary of Hanar’s childhood, always bright and welcoming, no matter the weather, had a forlorn air to it. The sadness touched him. “When are they going to get the power grid back on?” he asked as Ksar fumbled with the lock.
“When an Emperor sits on the Sceptered Throne again,” groused the old man. The door clicked open and they stepped into the house.
It was the same room Lawrona remembered from before the war, but darker, shrouded in deep shadows that danced to the flickering light from the oil lamps and the hearth—a long, wide room of broad-beamed ceiling and broad wooden floors that swept on into the dining area and the darkened kitchen beyond.
“If you’ll tend the fire,” said the freeholder, “I’ll get the stew. It should be ready.” Not waiting, he moved into the kitchen, turning up the oil lamps along the way.
Throwing the hardwood logs on the fire, Lawrona replaced the mesh screen and stepped back, rubbing his hands. As the wood crackled, he saw the char marks burned into the floor in front of the stone hearth. They were small, perfectly round and patterned into two rough clusters beside each other, the marks a blaster set low would leave.
As the flames rose and the heat grew, Lawrona unfastened his jacket and folded it over the back of a sofa. Finding the brandy decanter in its usual place on a side table, he was pouring two glasses when Ksar reappeared, wheeling a small serving cart.
“Let’s eat here,” said the freeholder, unfolding a pair of floor trays and setting them before two chairs to either side of the hearth. “The dining hall’s cold, dismal and filled with ghosts.”
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