by Dan Worth
‘Were in charge, yes. They succeeded in unearthing what they correctly assessed to be a military installation of some kind. Within it, they found an archive of records which have been successfully translated and decoded at this very facility. They have given us certain insights into the Shapers’ methods and tactics. Naturally we’d like to keep the findings to ourselves, and I’m afraid my superiors don’t trust those two as much as I’d like them to. Academics are notably poor at keeping secrets, wouldn’t you agree?’
‘Yes sir,’ said Chen in amused agreement.
‘Nevertheless our efforts continue apace and hopefully there is much that we can learn from these records. However, our findings so far backed up by the results of our intelligence gathering and our strategic assessments have led us to following conclusion: This would an ideal time for the Shapers to engineer another Maranos incident, another war with a foreign power or a political crisis. We must be cautious Admiral Chen, now more than ever. Threats may appear both from outside or within our own societies’
‘There has been a great deal of opposition to the President of late,’ Chen ventured. ‘The allegations about his financial dealings have mired the administration in scandal.’
‘Yes, but I suspect that that opposition is just healthy democratic processes in action,’ Mentith replied. ‘Ah, Admiral Chen. Always the authoritarian, eh?’ She couldn’t believe it, he was teasing her! Mentith continued. ‘Rheinhold’s mistakes are his own, and I suspect they will end his career, but the Commonwealth will continue much as before if he steps down. It’s time for a change don’t you think? He has been in office for fifteen of your years now.’
‘Perhaps. So you think that this overstretch is what the Shapers intended? That they engineered the war?’
‘Very possibly, however it is my belief that their plans did not go smoothly. Their plan to re-activate the Maranos portal and use the Banished Ones to devastate the surrounding systems and destroy our respective navies was unsuccessful. Furthermore, had the coup within the Empire been fully successful and the republican factions seized power, the K’Soth would have emerged far stronger and more able to resist the Commonwealth, prolonging the war for much longer, or at least leaving a credible threat on the Commonwealth’s borders and possibly drawing us in as well eventually’
‘A successful coup would have eliminated the infighting and poor leadership within the upper echelons of their command structure and created a more meritocratic hierarchy,’ said Chen.
‘Exactly. Unfortunately, the Shapers appear to have miscalculated the sheer level of fanaticism among the loyalists,’ Mentith replied. ‘As it is, the coup only partially succeeded. The republican leader, Lord Ironscale, was assassinated before he could consolidate his power base after the Emperor was deposed. It is fortunate that the Commonwealth were able to obtain a ceasefire before this occurred and his opponents were able to concentrate on defeating him.’
‘And I suppose the various factions are too busy fighting over what’s left of the Empire to even think about attacking us.’
‘It would seem so. Now that the K’Soth capitol at Polaris belongs to the republicans and the K’Soth home world belongs to the loyalists, the Empire is tearing itself apart.’
‘It’s what they deserve,’ Chen shot back.
‘Perhaps. Though I doubt the civilian populations caught up in the fighting between the great houses would agree with you,’ said Mentith pointedly.
‘You said that the Shapers were behind much of this.’
‘Yes.’
‘Presumably the members of clan Steelscale we extracted from the Empire have provided you with such information?’
‘More than either of us realised Admiral. They have been most useful to us. The surviving members of clan Steelscale have of course been housed here for the meantime. They will be safe, though of course we will keep a close eye on them, just in case.’
‘I was aware that they had definitive evidence of Shaper involvement in both the war between the Commonwealth and the K’Soth and the ensuing civil war within the Empire. That is, after all, why we got them out.’
‘Just so. Admiral, I think that it’s best if I show you in person what it is that they brought with them. If you’d care to follow me?’
Mentith got up from his chair and strode towards the door. Chen followed him out into the corridor and thence to another transit tube. Mentith selected his destination and appeared to enter some sort of security code before the capsule began to move. There was no feeling of motion as the walls outside the capsule whipped past as blinding speed.
‘Does this have anything to do with that sarcophagus that the Steelscale clan were hauling around with them?’ Chen queried. ‘I was rather curious as to what was inside, especially since the K’Soth usually cremate their dead.’
‘Yes it does have something to do with it,’ Mentith replied. ‘All in good time Admiral, you’ll see.’
Chen crossed her arms and sat back in the chair which was slightly the wrong shape for her human physiology, and reflected upon her current position. Working for Special Operations Command was very different from her regular Navy days. She still had command of her own ship, she still had a crew to lead, but she wondered if this shadowy world of cloak and dagger operations and ancient galactic secrets was really for her. So far she hadn’t even been given any information as to the other Commonwealth ships under SOC command. Consequently at times she felt like she and her crew was operating almost in isolation. One ship against the encroaching darkness. Doubtless there were others out there fighting such lonely, secret battles that no-one would ever hear of. She couldn’t deny that what she had learned in these three years since Mentith had signed her up in the aftermath of the Maranos incident had fascinated her, as much as it had terrified her. But she found herself constantly frustrated by the layers upon layers of secrecy, hidden moves and covert agendas that seemed to cloud her view. She trusted Mentith, and doubtless he and his superiors had their reasons, but her natural curiosity got the better of her time and time again. Things used to be so much more straightforward. Perhaps ignorance really was bliss after all? Perhaps not, she corrected herself.
The capsule came smoothly to a halt and deposited them in a corridor not dissimilar to the one they had just left, with the exception that most of the doors leading off it were heavily guarded with automated security systems. Mentith led her down the corridor to where it terminated in a heavily armoured and shielded door, guarded by two sentry drones, whose snake-like metallic bodies uncoiled at their approach. Sensor clusters like compound eyes watched them unflinchingly as Mentith produced his credentials and stepped into the security field for scanning. This done, the door irised open and he motioned Chen inside, into a small chamber similar to an airlock in its construction, with further sets of monitoring and scanning equipment inset into the roof panels. With the first door closed and the scanning cycle complete, a second door opened at the far end of the chamber, leading into a secure laboratory area.
‘I don’t suppose,’ said Mentith. ‘That I really need to explain just how secret the contents of this chamber are?’
The laboratory was a large, white, square room, filled with the best computer and sensor technology the Arkari were able to provide. The sheer level of computing power present in this single room was probably greater than that present in the entire Commonwealth. Chen felt uneasy, it felt as if… as if the room had noticed her enter and had turned to watch her. It was a feeling she had encountered aboard Arkari vessels before, one that made the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end.
The centre of the room was dominated by an armoured containment vessel, a transparent cube five metres or so to a side with large, square pillars at each corner. The pillars were emitting a dull humming noise. It was what was inside the tank that caught Chen’s eye. The body of a K’Soth male lay there, floating in an immobilising field of some kind as if held aloft by unseen hands. The body appeared intact, but the head had been o
pened up, the front of the cranium entirely removed to reveal what was inside.
Silver nano-threads plunged into the opened skull from an array in the ceiling of the tank. Other, thicker threads ended in small globular tips that appeared to form some sort of field projection array, focused on the opening. Chen stepped closer to the tank, enthralled as well as horrified. This must be the body that the Steelscale clan had brought with them! She peered through the transparent walls of the tank into the dark recesses of the K’Soth’s skull… and saw something move.
She recoiled instinctively in horror, composed herself, and then looked again. Something was writhing within the K’Soth’s brain cavity, it was black and grub-like, its hard, segmented surface slick with fluids. She had seen this before, three years ago on Maranos when Mentith had shot a local priest and had revealed a similar vile parasite within his head too. That priest had been the one to lead those two foolish archaeologists, O’Reilly and Cor to the Progenitor portal device within the planet. That portal had provided the catalyst for war between the Commonwealth and the Empire and had unleashed other, more terrible things from the Arkaris’ murky history that had destroyed the ships under her command and killed the man she had grown to love.
It was a creature of the Shapers, a vile, manipulative parasite that made its home inside the skulls of key individuals, devoured their minds, absorbed their knowledge and personality and masqueraded as them to further the Machiavellian plots of its masters Now they had a live one to interrogate.
‘Do we know how they move between bodies, how they… infect their victims?’ said Chen.
‘Unfortunately we’re still not sure. The body showed no sign of external trauma before it was operated upon, so I’m told. One theory is that the parasite enters the body as an egg of some kind or at least a much smaller version of itself, then grows to full size as it devours its victim from the inside.’
‘How nice,’ said Chen, her face wrinkling with disgust.
‘Yes, isn’t it just? I’m afraid their method of travel or dissemination is still a mystery to us, though.’
‘What are the pillars for?’ said Chen, gesturing at the four, gently humming columns. ‘Shield generators?’
‘Partly. They also function as hyperspatial dampening fields.’
‘What, there’s a possibility that this thing could just jump out of here?’
‘Well… one can never be too careful. As I said, their method of travel is largely unknown to us. However unlikely it may seem one must consider all possibilities. These creatures are, after all, more technologically advanced than either of our species by the order of several billion years. No, the real reason was that as soon as we released the body from the stasis field within the sarcophagus it was brought here in, that thing started broadcasting through hyperspace. We had to place it back in stasis until this chamber could be properly shielded. It seems that they are able to communicate as individuals much in the same way that our ships do, although via a more refined version of the technology.’
‘It was calling to others of its kind.’
‘Almost certainly. Hence the boosted levels of security you witnessed around the base. Whether its call was heard is unknown of course.’
‘So, is this one of them, is this a live Shaper?’
‘Probably not. The studies of the organism conducted so far have revealed it to be entirely artificial, but it isn’t actually a wholly independent artificial intelligence, more like an avatar or a puppet. It has limited survival techniques and a rather limited mind of its own, but without a connection to its masters it is essentially helpless.’
‘The Shapers have a hive mind then? Like terrestrial bees or ants?’
‘Possibly, we simply don’t know for sure.’
‘There they sit, on their dead worlds, yanking our strings as though we are puppets.’
‘A rather unsettling thought isn’t it? If there were more of these things inhabiting the bodies of key K’Soth nobles, I think we can safely assume that it was they who were responsible for the current state of affairs.’
‘Did clan Steelscale not notice anything, any change in their leader’s behaviour? If it was possible to pin down when he fell victim…’
‘Apparently he was a covert critic of the regime for some time and had several meetings with the future leader of the coup, Lord Ironscale, even before the war. His family noted that afterwards he became for more aggressive and outspoken in his criticism, and also that he hardly seemed to sleep.’
‘So Ironscale was the source?’
‘No, oddly. Ironscale was acting of his own volition. The body was inspected after death as part of the post mortem investigations and no trace of any foreign object was found, save for the bullet lodged in his brain that killed him. It is possible that Ironscale was merely supported by the Shapers, rather than being a direct tool of theirs.’
‘Has anyone tried communicating with it?’
‘Yes, on many occasions. It merely responds with a stock selection of threats and dire warnings. After a while it starts to repeat itself, that’s when it acknowledges the presence of its questioners at all. The cybernetics team here are currently working on ways to probe its memory banks and extract any information that they might contain, that’s if it hasn’t wiped them itself already. I am told it may be some time before that is possible however.’
She eyed the repulsive creature, writhing within its prison of energy fields. Its head, if it truly had a head, appeared to be straining to look at her. Its glassy compound eyes and sensor cilia were fixed squarely in her direction.
‘Would you mind if I tried to talk with it?’ she said.
‘Be my guest,’ said Mentith. ‘Though I doubt you’ll get any more sense out of it than the rest of us.’ He walked over to one of the control panels nearby and moved his fingers across the filigreed surface. ‘It can hear you now,’ he said.
‘Yes, I can,’ came the voice. It was soft, sibilant, at once reasonable and threatening, like the purr of a cat.
‘I am Admiral Michelle…’
‘I know who you are Admiral. Have you come to make good on your pledge?’
‘What pledge?’ said Chen.
‘You promised to join us, remember? Surely you must remember, you said you would help us.’
‘What!?’ said Mentith, sharply. ‘What do you mean by that?’
‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ said the voice. ‘Has the Admiral not been entirely honest with you? During the… incident on the planet Maranos, we made a rather reasonable offer to Admiral Chen, via one of our servants. If she promised to help us, we in return would grant her all the power she could ever wish for, immortality, godhood in effect.’
‘What sort of help?’
‘Don’t listen to it!’ snapped Chen, in desperation.
‘I said, what sort help did she have to grant you?’
‘Why, to deliver the entire human race to us, of course. Naturally, she readily accepted.’
‘Lies, as always’ said Mentith.
‘Oh, she tries to deny it,’ said the voice. ‘But we all know how seductive the promise of power is. She tries to fight the urge, but deep down, she knows that she wants it, more than anything.’
‘Shut it off!’ snapped Chen angrily. ‘Just shut it up!’
Mentith moved his hand over the panel once more, cutting off the soft sounds of chuckling coming from the creature.
‘Is there any truth in what that thing just said?’
‘I’m sorry sir, but there is.’
‘You’d better tell me everything,’ he said, firmly.
They were back in Mentith’s office. The old War Marshal sat behind his desk once more, whilst Chen slumped in the auto-moulding seat in front of it. They had travelled back from the secure lab in silence.
‘It was after my ship, the Mark Antony was destroyed,’ Chen began. ‘We crash landed on Maranos in one of the escape pods. Most of the others in that pod were fine, but my XO, Commander Ramirez was badly inj
ured. He… he was going to die if we weren’t rescued. I sent some of the others to look for help, but we were attacked and captured by a raiding party of those things that came through the portal.’
‘The Banished Arkari.’
‘Yes. We were rendered unconscious. When I awoke I found that we were deep underground inside the machine itself. One of the Banished began to interrogate me, it explained that they were in league with the Shapers and it offered me a choice: my allegiance for Ramirez’s life. I… I couldn’t refuse them. I just wanted to buy him some time, so that I could save him! I didn’t mean a word of what I said! Then they disappeared back through the portal. Their technology was the only thing that was keeping him alive, and he died in my arms….’
‘I am sorry Michelle. You and he had a relationship that was more than professional?’
‘Yes.’
‘You never told anyone about this before?’
‘Al and I kept our relationship secret from the crew for obvious reasons and I’ve never told anyone about that nor about the offer that was made to me. Do you really have to wonder why? You would have doubted me.’
‘Perhaps. But I wonder if I would have acted any differently in a similar situation. Yours was a selfless act, and you attempted to deceive our enemy to save a comrade and a friend. That’s good enough for me.’
‘But for a moment, just a moment, I did want the power that they offered me.’
‘Well, who doesn’t?’
‘I thought the Arkari were above such things.’
‘We like to fool ourselves into thinking that we are, but lust for power is a base instinct and seductive to all sentient beings. I hope, if nothing else, you learnt that lesson.’
‘Do you trust me?’
‘Do you think you’d still be sitting in my office if I didn’t?’ Mentith replied, matter-of-factly.
‘You do have a point, sir.’
‘Yes I do. Now, there was something else that you wished to tell me.’
‘Yes War Marshal, there is,’ Chen replied, attempting to compose herself. ‘It concerns the freelancer we used for the Steelscale extraction mission, Captain Caleb Isaacs.’
