Renegades (The Progenitor Trilogy, Book Two)

by Dan Worth

  ‘Fucking answer me!’ she screamed and shoved the Nahabe with the flat of her hand, it floated backwards a few inches then returned to its original position.

  ‘No,’ it said. ‘We did not know, and the disposition of the Churchill’s recon wings at that moment should not have allowed them to witness the attack. The Churchill was too far around the limb of the moon to have witnessed it herself and the gas giant Beatty would have obscured the site from the recon flights they had deployed as well as the other Navy vessels in the system. We chose that time precisely because it offered the best cover and we made sure of their dispositions before you were given the go signal to jump in.’

  ‘So what happened then?’ Isaacs said, cutting in. ‘Did a civilian vessel happen to jump in above the moon and relay our position?’

  ‘No, although we did consider the possibility when the attack occurred,’ the Nahabe replied. ‘However, our sensors registered a number of tight beam hypercom transmissions directed towards a number of the Churchill’s recon vessels. They appear to have been relaying sensor information to the ships in question, essentially allowing them to witness the attack in progress and thus alert the Churchill in time for the carrier to respond. We triangulated the source of the hypercom signals through hyperspace and found that they originated from the dig site on the surface of the moon. However they are most definitely not of human origin. Such subtle hacking can only be the work of a high level AI. I doubt that the personnel on board the Navy ships were ever aware that their vessels’ systems had been compromised.’

  ‘It was that ship, wasn’t it?’ said Katherine. ‘It has to be…’

  ‘You are correct Doctor O’Reilly,’ The Speaker replied. ‘Forgive my rudeness, for I have not yet had the opportunity to welcome yourself and Professor Cor to our humble outpost. Yes, the Shaper vessel is indeed fully intact and is only faking its inactivity. Its core systems are in fact fully operational, though it appears it is capable of masking this fact from the less sophisticated technologies available to your civilisation.’

  ‘We went inside that thing,’ said Rekkid. ‘It had an old human vessel buried inside it. The damn thing was using the ship’s former captain as some sort of… component for its systems until Katherine here took the initiative and killed him. Believe me, it was a mercy.’

  ‘Yes we had guessed as much. What readings we could take of the vessel had indicated to us that there was some sort of regular structure buried within. Doubtless it had used his memories to navigate its way into Commonwealth space. This suit that encases me is the legacy my kind carries from a previous time when we were subject to the attentions of the Shapers. Now we watch for them constantly. Alas your own government is not so prudent, which is why we avoid contact with your military as much as possible. We have reason to believe that they have been compromised, as I have already explained to Captain Isaacs here.’

  ‘What about the Arkari?’ said Rekkid. ‘My people are usually pretty good at this sort of thing. War Marshal Mentith may a pain in the arse, but I can’t deny that he’s thorough.’

  ‘So far we believe that the Arkari government and military have not been penetrated by the Shapers, at least we possess no evidence that they have been. In any case, I hope yourself and Doctor O’Reilly will be able to fill us in on what you know of the situation in this system, as well as share your other experiences with us.’

  ‘Perhaps, once you’ve proven who you are,’ said Katherine. ‘How do we know that we are on the same side? We only have your word for it.’

  ‘Ah, your prudence is admirable. In time you will learn to trust us.’

  ‘If you don’t mind me asking,’ Anna interjected. ‘How do we know we can trust those two? Just who are these people?’

  ‘The answer to your first question is of course that I discreetly scanned our guests as soon as you all entered the chamber. The answer to your second question is that Professor Cor and Doctor O’Reilly are archaeologists of some renown who have prior experience of the Shapers and who are currently in the employ of Special Operations Command.’

  ‘You’re working for Admiral Chen? Fuck…’

  ‘No Anna,’ said The Speaker. ‘They are working for her superiors, and though this may surprise you, Chen is not the enemy. She was merely responding to an attack upon a naval facility and does not appear to know what has been transpiring in this system.’

  ‘I wouldn’t say we were close,’ said Katherine. ‘Chen’s not exactly what you’d call a people person. That said, she’s one hell of a fighter. Personally I’m surprised anyone got away from your raiding party alive.’

  ‘Hey, we have some good pilots here,’ Anna retorted.

  ‘Really? Look Anna, Rekkid and I are only still alive because of her,’ said Katherine. ‘She fired the first Commonwealth shots of the war, took on what seemed like half the K’Soth Imperial Navy and she came out fighting. Haines didn’t hesitate to enlist her into his and Mentith’s pet black ops outfit once she’d proven herself, and she has a grudge against the Shapers a mile wide. You do know it was they who engineered the outbreak of hostilities, don’t you?’

  ‘We had guessed as much,’ said The Speaker quietly. ‘You have proof?’

  ‘We certainly do,’ Katherine replied. ‘Mentith fried one of those brain larva things of theirs right in front of us on Maranos. It turned out to be the very guy who’d instigated our work on the planet in the first place. What we uncovered kicked the whole thing off.’

  ‘We had heard rumours,’ said The Speaker. ‘Ancient engines buried inside the planet… a great battle with a terrible alien force… The reports were garbled but all pointed to you having found a relic of Those Who Went Before, the ones you call the Progenitors.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Katherine. ‘It’s all true. We found a wormhole device that opened a gateway into the far future. Both sides began the war over it, and the technology that it promised us. We’ve never encountered a Shaper vessel before though, nor have we yet seen one of them in person, only their creatures.’

  ‘I have,’ blurted out Isaacs.

  ‘I’m sorry?’ said Rekkid.

  ‘I said I’ve seen them, in the flesh. Not that you could ever call it that. I’ve been inside one of their ships before… I was lucky to get out alive. That’s why I agreed to go on the mission once I saw what the Hidden Hand were planning to destroy. That damn ship has haunted my dreams…’

  ‘It seems that we have much to discuss,’ said The Speaker.

  The group had moved into the shade of a small grove of trees where they sat upon a collection of mismatched garden furniture that had been left there, the leftovers from some haul or other. Katherine and Rekkid sat with Isaacs and Anna and after listening to the Nahabe tell them the history of its people, they in turn told about how the war had begun, what they had seen and experienced and how they had been the unwitting tools in the great cosmic game that the Shapers were playing.

  Now was Isaacs’ turn to tell his side of the story. Katherine saw the man’s face change as he gathered his thoughts. He acquired the thousand yard stare that she had seen before on the faces of those who had endured terrible suffering, or had seen past the tiny pockets of civilisation and glimpsed the cosmic horrors that lay beyond. Sometimes she saw that look on her own face when she looked into the mirror, staring at her own reflection in the small hours of the morning when what she herself had seen stopped her from sleeping.

  ‘It was just a routine training run,’ said Isaacs at last. ‘I was still in training, flying bombers for the Navy and we were using asteroids as target practice somewhere out on the south western reaches. The fucking system didn’t even have a name. Anyway, we got a distress call from a freighter and our squadron leader took us in to investigate. It was just some independent hauler with a poor maintenance record, or so we thought.’

  He paused for breath, then continued.

  ‘As soon as we jumped in we know something was up. The freighter captain claimed that his crew had seen so
mething right before they lost power: another ship. We started to check out the area and picked up all sorts of weird readings from the space around the freighter. Then the alien ship… a Shaper ship, just like the one on Rhyolite, it… it just appeared from nowhere.’

  ‘It just appeared? What was it using, some sort of cloaking technology?’ said Rekkid.

  ‘I don’t think so, it was like it just faded into existence, as though it was a predator lurking right below the surface of a still lake and had chosen that moment to reach out and grab us. Our ships died right there and then. That thing just sucked the power right out of them and dragged us inside. I think it stunned us into unconsciousness then. I don’t remember anything else until I woke up inside the ship… and I could never forget that.’

  ‘Go on,’ Anna urged him. ‘You know it does you good to talk about it.’

  ‘Yeah, well. Anyway when I came to I was inside the ship. I was held in some sort of restraining field, surrounded by instruments. The chamber was made of this weird, crystalline material: it moved and reshaped itself like it was alive somehow. We were all lined up in a row with me right at the end. The Shapers had already got to work on the others… they… they just took them apart. I don’t know how… there was no blood or anything, but I saw them dissect the others. Jesus, they were alive the whole time… it was like they just opened them up and took them apart like you’d take apart an engine or something. They wanted to know how we worked. The ones that died right away were the lucky ones… some of the others… they burrowed into their heads and did things to their brains. They took Carlotti’s brain right out of his head and I swear he was alive the whole time! Jesus I can’t forget the screaming… and the smell…’

  The others had fallen silent with shock and disgust. Even Rekkid’s normally composed features had turned a shade paler.

  ‘I didn’t see the Shapers straight away. At first it was just the room that was doing the work, whip like tendrils and blades that grew from the ceiling, floor and walls. The whole fucking room was alive! Anyway after they removed Carlotti’s brain they must have made a mistake or something because two of them came into the chamber to inspect what was left of him. At least I think there were two them, it was difficult to tell. They weren’t exactly solid, more like a co-ordinated swarm of glittering insects or intelligent smoke. I… I can’t really describe it; they just sort of coalesced in front of me. There was no definite outline, but they had eyes. I know because one of them looked right at me. It was like looking into the mouth of hell. I think it tried to communicate with me. It spoke, after a fashion. The sound was like the buzzing of a million bees inside my head. I couldn’t do anything, I couldn’t reply. I thought that this was going to be it, that I’d end up in pieces on those glorified butcher’s slabs… but I didn’t.’

  He looked at Rekkid

  ‘Your people saved me, Professor Cor. I don’t know how but they must have taken the Shapers by surprise, though I doubt it’s a mistake the Shapers will make again. Right at that moment I felt something hit the ship and it all went dark. The Arkari must have gotten a boarding party into the ship somehow and they grabbed me as I was the only one left alive. From what I heard the Arkari even managed to destroy the ship but I didn’t see it. I woke up in the medical facility aboard the Arkari vessel, the Star Ascendant. Eventually I got shipped back home to my unit, but I couldn’t cope with what I’d seen. I dropped out, drifted and ended up as a freelance captain.’

  ‘You never received any help?’ said Katherine.

  ‘Not really, the whole thing was classified. They debriefed me and offered me counselling, but I couldn’t talk about what I’d witnessed. From what I gather the Navy searched the entire system and found nothing.’

  ‘It seems strange that the Arkari weren’t more concerned,’ said The Speaker. ‘

  ‘Yeah well, maybe they figured that they ought to leave me be. After all, I had no idea what had just happened to me. I didn’t find out who that ship belonged to until I came here. Maybe explaining what had occurred was too great a risk.’

  ‘They weren’t interested in the fact you had seen the Shapers?’

  ‘They never asked me much. I never heard the word mentioned, that was for sure.’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Rekkid. ‘They didn’t really appreciate it themselves. From what I gather, not all of the Arkari Navy are party to all intelligence on the Shapers. Maybe the captain of the Star Ascendant just listed the encounter as ‘unknown alien ship’ and left it at that. After all, exploratory missions from other arms of the galaxy have been encountered from time to time in our history and not all have them have been friendly.’

  ‘So the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing, is that it?’ said Anna. ‘So much for the superiority of the Arkari civilisation.’

  ‘Yes well, take it from me it just enables us to bugger things up more spectacularly,’ Rekkid replied. ‘Let’s face it; given the size of our navy, it’s hardly surprising. Unfortunately in this case it meant that Mr Isaacs here was denied the opportunity to provide them with useful intelligence and didn’t get the help he needed. The only person known to have seen the Shapers first hand and survived to tell anyone about it and they let you slip through their fingers. You should come with us, meet with Chen. She needs to hear about this.’

  ‘I think that’s what she’s here for,’ said Isaacs. ‘She said she wanted to talk.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ said The Speaker. ‘But we must proceed with caution. We do not know that this Admiral Chen is reliable, that she herself has not been tainted. In time we will contact her.’

  ‘In time?’ said Katherine. ‘And when would be a good time? When that thing on the planet stops playing dead and does whatever it came here to do? We need to speak to her right now!’

  ‘Not yet,’ said The Speaker firmly. ‘First we require a copy of all data that you have in your possession on the Shapers. We must fully analyse the current situation before we make a move. We would also like to know as much as possible about Admiral Chen, her personality and motives, your own observations of her character and…’

  ‘Alright!’ snapped Katherine.

  ‘Good grief,’ said Rekkid. ‘You people really are over cautious. Ever hear about the concept of taking risks? Making quick decisions?’

  ‘No,’ said The Speaker. ‘It leads to errors. Errors lead to contamination.’

  ‘So does failure to act,’ the Arkari retorted. ‘You have to let us leave. I promise to you that we will not divulge the location of this base… not that we even know where we are anyway. We appreciate the assistance you have given us, but time really is of the essence!’

  There was a commotion behind them, the sound of hurried feet on the gravel path into the glade. Anita strode quickly into the centre of the group. She wore a shocked expression

  ‘Have you heard?’ she blurted out. ‘On the news channels, just now. President Rheinhold’s been arrested!’

  ‘What!? When?’ asked Katherine, bewildered.

  ‘It was on the hypercom feed that we leech from the system net. It’s all over the news channels. They’ve arrested him and several members of the cabinet for corruption and embezzlement.’

  ‘You see?’ said The Speaker. ‘Your institutions are riddled with corruption. Mistrust, dishonesty and personal ambitions are the preferred tools of the Shapers. No doubt your politicians provide them with rich pickings. We cannot deal with the Commonwealth. The risk to the Nahabe is too great if we do so.’

  ‘You must have known about this!’ said Anna, rounding on The Speaker. ‘You didn’t think it worth mentioning!?’

  ‘I was still attempting to verify the truth of the matter,’ the Nahabe replied.

  Anna shook her head derisively as Anita unrolled a small screen and held it out. The others huddled around it to see, though The Speaker remained floating in the same spot. The images were grainy, and were overlaid with the words ‘Breaking News’ and the logo of one of the Solar System’s principle n
ews networks. The recording was shaky as though shot via a hand held recorder or a remote at extreme range and was further rendered an air of unreality due to the night vision apparatus enhancing the images. It showed the presidential summer residence beside Lake Geneva, the columns of white marble glowing softly in the moonlight and the flashing lights of the police AG cruisers that dotted the broad, smooth swathe of lawn. The view focused in on the main entrance of the building, where a group of uniformed men emerged with an unmistakable figure in their midst. His grey hair for once out of place, President Rheinhold nevertheless appeared defiant as he was ushered into the back of one of the cruisers. The recording ended and was replaced by the immaculately manicured features of a news presenter, her brown skin shining under studio lights.

  ‘Shocking images submitted to us just moments ago and which are still being checked for authenticity but which at this moment appear to be genuine and appear to show the President being escorted from his residence by CIB agents and the police. Rheinhold and his cabinet have of course been the subject of numerous financial investigations in recent months, following the disclosure of massive campaign donations by a number of leading defence contractors and mining corporations, the existence of large slush fund created from anonymous donations and the further revelations that Defence Minister Mannheim and Foreign Secretary Andreyev failed to disclose a number of personal donations made to them a mere six months before the outbreak of hostilities with the K’Soth Empire. We are getting reports that these two individuals have also been taken into custody. As yet we have no word from the Vice President but we understand that the military is being placed on a higher state of readiness. We’ll have more news as we get it…’

  Anita killed the display and put it back in her pocket.

  ‘You think he really is guilty?’ said Katherine. ‘You think Rheinhold allowed himself to be manipulated?’

  ‘Who knows?’ said Isaacs. ‘I trust politicians about as far as I can throw them, most of the time.’