Darkness Beyond (Light of Terra: a Duchy of Terra series Book 1)

by Glynn Stewart

  They’d traded long-range emails and such since, but she hadn’t had a live conversation since then, and she hadn’t known they’d been appointed Shepherd of their region.

  Shepherd was an odd title. The religious overtones of the English translation weren’t quite right, but it got the message across. A Shepherd was assigned a region of space outside Mesharom territory that they were responsible for. They commanded the intelligence networks and Frontier Fleet units in that area and generally acted as an ambassador slash sector governor.

  For a region the Mesharom didn’t control.

  “How may I assist you, Interpreter-Shepherd?” Annette asked carefully.

  “You could speak truth, which it seems you have not done in some time,” the Mesharom told her.

  Annette sighed and laced her hands together on the table as she met the alien’s multifaceted eyes.

  “Why don’t you tell me what you think I’ve lied to you about?” she asked. “I am the leader of a world, director of a corporation that is developing a dozen more, and direct vassal to the Empress of a thousand stars. There are a thousand things I can’t tell you about and a thousand more I would be required to lie to you over.”

  “You dance well, Duchess, but the game is over,” Adamase told her. “I now possess the sensor records from our escape pod of the engagement between Bellerophon and the Unknown warship. Hyperspace missiles? Tachyon sensors? Self-motile armor?” The alien’s limbs snapped back and forth sharply, creating a nerve-wracking chittering sound.

  “How much of the Precursor ship did you steal?”

  Annette paused to marshal her thoughts, then shook her head at them.

  “We duplicated tachyon sensors based on scans of your own ships,” she pointed out. “The concept of a self-motile matrix to support our armor was taken from the Precursor ship, yes, but we developed our own technological basis for it. We based the hyperspace missiles on scans of your weapons in action, and our comparable weapon is immense.”

  “And your other hyperspace weapon?”

  It seemed all of their secrets were out. Annette sighed again.

  “The Gold Dragon missile system did require technology based on the Precursor ship, yes,” she admitted. “We failed to duplicate the gravitational singularity plant, but we managed to find a comparable form of shielding that allowed us to create a contained hyperspace portal.

  “The only physical component of the Precursor ship we kept was a small sample of the hull matrix. We did keep all of our scan data on the vessel. We promised you the ship, Shepherd Adamase.

  “We did not agree to hand over our data and samples. You took it upon yourself to destroy those…and we took it upon ourselves to protect them.”

  “The destruction of all data from the Precursor ship was an assumed part of the deal,” Adamase replied.

  “Then you should have included that in our discussions,” Annette replied. “We have scans of the ship, yes. We also have scans of you, the Laians, and the Wendira in action. Alpha Centauri was and is home to a massively powerful distributed sensor system.

  “Those, combined with other scraps of technology acquired by the Imperium over the decades, allowed us to build Bellerophon and her sisters. We did not break our agreement, Shepherd. If there was an instruction we were not given, whose responsibility was that?”

  The dangerous chittering accelerated.

  “You know why we guard the technology of the Precursors,” they snapped.

  “Yes,” she agreed. A long, long time ago, the Mesharom had had a relationship with the Precursors equivalent to the relationship humanity had with the A!Tol. Then the Precursors, in a grandly misguided attempt to make their ships more efficient, had built a device that had broken the laws of physics. All of their technology had failed…including the ubiquitous neural implants the Precursors and their thralls had used.

  Annette had been sworn to secrecy on that and had kept her oath.

  “I know why,” she repeated. “And I gave our scientists enough information for them to know we could not rely on any of their tech to work as we had seen it. Since we had to rebuild from sensor data and base principles, I can guarantee you that none of our new technology is a close-enough match to theirs to risk the death of worlds or stars.”

  She was glaring at the Mesharom now.

  “The research was in my star system, Adamase. How insane do you think I am?”

  The chittering had slowed.

  “You should not have done it,” they told her.

  “That is not your decision to make. It is not your directive to give. The A!Tol Imperium must guard our borders, must protect our citizens. The Laian and Wendira attack on Alpha Centauri only proved that we needed the strength to stand against the Core Powers. We are not your toys or your children.”

  Adamase was silent now.

  “What you have done is sufficient for me to order the destruction of your research facility,” they warned her after several long seconds. “Research into the Precursor technologies is forbidden. It is what the Frontier Fleet exists to stop.”

  “We didn’t research Precursor technology,” she pointed out. “We researched our own technology to see if we could duplicate effects the Precursors once commanded.” Annette snorted. “We weren’t successful on a lot of things. I know your ships have singularity cores, Shepherd, but we have not mastered that yet.

  “And we now face an enemy who has. Did you see the latest report from Bellerophon?”

  “I have,” Adamase allowed.

  “Can any of the Core Powers duplicate what these rogue Kanzi have done?” she asked.

  “No.”

  The translated word hung in Annette’s office like an anvil.

  “Could the Precursors?”

  “I don’t know,” Adamase admitted. “It is…possible that such might have been within their capabilities. It is possible that such a technology could still function after all they did…and, perhaps, be repairable by people who had studied Precursor tech.”

  “Wait.” That rang a bell in Annette’s mind. “Didn’t the Kanzi fight a civil war? One where you provided the A!Tol a star killer to make sure one side was defeated… because they were studying Precursor tech?”

  “Yes.” Adamase considered. “That would…compute, Duchess Bond. But for your sake, I hope there is another answer.”

  “Why?”

  “The Kanzi would rule all other races that match their image of God. The Taljzi planned to exterminate them.”

  “Would you let them?” she asked.

  “Whoever these Unknowns are, they have destroyed a Frontier Fleet squadron and are clearly abusing Precursor technology,” Adamase told her. “All that I can authorize has already been done. The First Triumvirate must now decide our final course.”

  “And what have you recommended?” Annette swallowed her fear. The First Triumvirate ruled the Mesharom, three individuals with the combined authority to commit the entire Core Fleet to war.

  It had never happened. If the Mesharom went to war, the galaxy would change forever.

  “For now, that we deploy limited elements of the Frontier and Core Fleets,” Adamase explained. “We must know more of these strangers before we go further…but I have also recommended that we begin awakening the Reserve.

  “If they are the Taljzi and they have the force to threaten the galaxy again, then aid and allies will not be enough. In the hands of the Taljzi, Precursor technology is an untold danger.”

  Every claw snapped shut on Adamase’s legs with a single harsh snapping sound.

  “We have not watched the galaxy dig itself out of the Precursors’ ashes to watch it be burnt down by murderers. We will act.”

  “I want Fleet Lord Tanaka informed that the Mesharom are fully aware of just about everything we were hiding under the Dragon protocols,” Annette told an emergency gathering of her Council later that evening.

  “Shouldn’t we run that by the Imperium?” Villeneuve asked. The gaunt old Admiral rema
ined, as always, the voice of reason on her Council.

  “We will also inform A!To, but I am not giving the Fleet Lord orders,” Annette pointed out. “Using the Gold Dragon–tier technology aboard the Bellerophons with her is at her discretion. This information simply changes what might qualify as ‘her discretion.’”

  “I agree. I just want to be sure we’re not pissing off our superiors as well as the Mesharom,” her old friend told her.

  Annette chuckled.

  “I believe we have accrued an account of sufficient depth with A!Shall to protect us from most issues there,” she pointed out. She looked around at her Council.

  “The Mesharom are more concerned about what Vong’s people found aboard the stranger ship than with our own games around the Precursor ship,” she told them. “I was hoping to buy us some grace with Bellerophon having partially avenged their ships, but it was easier than I expected.”

  “The cloning process we’re postulating is crazy; I can see why the Mesharom think it’s Precursor tech,” the petite white-haired Asian woman at the far end of the table from Annette told them all.

  Doctor Her Royal Highness An Sirkit was the Councilor for Health Affairs. The job had been unkind to her, and the Thai princess looked like she’d aged forty years in twenty. She’d also managed to get Imperial medical technology distributed to every part of the globe…a success generally credited with keeping An Sirkit merely a princess and not Queen of Thailand.

  Her parents, after all, were far older than she was.

  “Some of the Core Powers could, maybe, do some degree of mass-production cloning,” she continued. “None of them have done so, because it’s not a particularly efficient technology. No one has ever, in the literature we have access to, force-grown a clone to adulthood in five years.

  “The closest thing I’m aware of is Wendira drones, who normally mature in about seven years.”

  “Without knowing what kind of technological platform they have access to, we don’t know how powerful this enemy could be,” Zhao said slowly. “Even from a small base population, that kind of technology would have allowed them to grow immensely. And we don’t even know what they started with.”

  “Adamase has a suspicion,” Annette told them. “He mentioned the Kanzi civil war and a name I’m not familiar with: the Taljzi.”

  “Minds of God,” Leah Bond interjected. The Council had been called by hologram, but Annette’s Heirs were there with their parents.

  Everyone looked at the teenager, who flushed but continued at a gesture from Annette.

  “Kanzi means ‘faces of God,’” she explained. “Taljzi means ‘minds of God.’ They were a splinter sect of their core church, three hundred and some years ago. They managed to push a reform movement, similar in public impact to the Protestants in our own history.”

  “I’m guessing it didn’t end as well,” Zhao noted.

  “They fought a civil war. At the same time the Taljzi picked a fight with the A!Tol. We decided we didn’t want a genocidal army as neighbours and deployed a star killer at their core shipyard system, wrecking the balance of power and allowing the Kanzi to defeat the Taljzi.”

  Leah shivered. Unlike the rest of the Council, she had been born after the Annexation. Her use of “we” referring to the A!Tol Imperium didn’t even sound off, even if it was something the older members of the Council probably wouldn’t do.

  “Anyone who wouldn’t convert was killed,” she said quietly. “Some must have fled, if Adamase is worried.”

  “Genocidal?” Sirkit asked.

  “That’s what Adamase said as well,” Annette agreed. “That the Kanzi seek to conquer but the Taljzi seek to destroy.”

  The room was silent.

  “What do we do?” Carol asked from beside her sister, her voice very small and very young.

  “We prepare for war on a scale I hoped would never be seen in your lifetimes,” Annette replied. “Elon, Villeneuve—how many single-portal HSM launchers do we have in Sol?”

  “We have sixteen Thunderstorm-D–class cruisers, each carrying a single S-HSM battery. One portal, six launchers,” Villeneuve said calmly. “All of our Bellerophons are currently deployed forward. A resupply of S-HSMs is on its way to Asimov to meet with Bellerophon.

  “We also have twenty-two automated defensive platforms based around the same S-HSM battery, scattered throughout the system,” he continued. “We have approximately, I’d have to confirm the numbers, two thousand D-HSMs in our stockpiles. We don’t have very many launchers for them, but most of our ships can strap a D-HSM or two to their hull, or we can simply launch them from deep space.”

  “That’s it,” Annette concluded. “Twenty-eight top-line weapons, two thousand second-rate missiles. The rest of our arsenal isn’t meaningless, but the ability to shoot our enemies before they reach us is important.”

  She looked at Zhao.

  “Zhao, how much money can we actually field if we need to?”

  The massive Chinese treasurer grinned at her. Despite the grin, he looked exhausted. Annette realized she’d probably woken him from resting after one of his intermittent seizures and shook her head apologetically at him.

  “We are a Duchy of the Imperium,” he noted. “Which means that not only do we have access to our own resources, but we have access to the Imperium’s resources. Not, perhaps, immediately—but sufficiently that no one is going to argue if I start borrowing money with a pledge of Imperial reimbursement.

  “I’m not sure what you’re thinking, Your Grace, but I guarantee you we’ll run out of industrial capacity we can redirect before we run out of money to spend.”

  Annette laughed quietly and nodded.

  “Thank you, Li Chin Zhao,” she told him. “As always, you enable me.”

  “I enable what needs to be done,” he replied. “You always seem to know what that should be.”

  “Elon.” She turned to her husband. “I need you to get on the channels with Raging Waters and DragonWorks. Every empty slip, every construction yard we can throw together needs to have a Bellerophon keel laid in it by the end of tomorrow. How many can we start?”

  He looked thoughtful.

  “I think we have ten slips in the system that are empty right now,” he admitted. “That doesn’t sound like enough to me, so I’ll get in touch with my people. We may be able to repurpose a number of the battleships under construction to be basically Bellerophons, though they may look a bit odd.

  “Some of those ships are on order to the Imperial Navy,” he warned.

  “Most of the ships we’re about to build are going to go to the Imperial Navy,” Annette replied. “If it’s Imperial and we can recut it to become a Bellerophon or a Thunderstorm-D before completion, do it.

  “From this moment forward, we do not lay a keel in this star system that is not going to carry tachyon sensors, hyperfold cannons and S-HSMs, people. We need to start mass production of those systems, because as much as possible, I want them retrofitted into every ship under construction—ours, the Imperium’s, hell, even the ships for the other Duchies.

  “Nothing leaves Sol that cannot fight these Taljzi—if that’s who they are—toe to toe. We’ve been hiding our upgrades for a decade. That stops now. If an enemy is going to come at us from nowhere with Core Power–level tech, then I will do everything in my power to meet them with Core Power–level tech.”

  She smiled fiercely.

  “A!Shall says humanity was one of the best things to ever happen to the A!Tol Imperium. Let’s remind the galaxy why you do not fuck with our friends.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  President Washington was in the second wave of super-battleships to enter the Avida System, which meant that Harold Rolfson already knew what was waiting for him when his flagship entered normal space in Kanzi territory.

  It was a familiar darkness, every electromagnetic signal gone silent in death. He’d seen it in Powell and in Lelldorin. Now he saw it in Avida…and he really, really wanted a drin
k.

  “My god,” Ling Yu breathed. “The planet…it’s burning.”

  Harold followed his ops officer’s gaze and swallowed. Avidar, the sole habitable planet in the Avida System, had been a world of some five million souls, about half and half Kanzi and slaves. Intelligence said the world had been marginally habitable when the Kanzi had arrived, but the cataclysm that had destroyed much of the biosphere had also created deep layers of petroleum.

  Avidar was effectively a planet-wide tar sand, and even a modern galactic economy had a billion and fifty uses for hydrocarbons. Most of those uses were far more valuable than merely burning the stuff, so Avidar had been about half mines and half refineries, producing vast quantities of plastics and other products for the Kanzi Theocracy.

  Those mines and refineries were gone now. The planet itself had been bombarded hard enough to expose hydrocarbon layers across most of its surface…and then they’d been ignited.

  Eventually, the fires would run out of oxygen. A habitable planet had a lot of oxygen though, and by the time the fires on Avidar died, the world would be permanently uninhabitable.

  “That wasn’t an accident,” Harold pointed out as he studied the wreckage that had been a living, if unpleasant, world. “They targeted fracture lines and hydrocarbon deposits with intent. Someone came here to end a world and kill five million people.”

  He had more sympathy for the slaves than for the smurfs, but the world beneath him had been home to more people than any of the human colonies he’d seen burned to ashes. There was also at least the possibility of innocent Kanzi, he supposed.

  “Link our sensors into the rest of the fleet’s and keep everyone updated,” he ordered. “Maybe someone will see something I don’t, but it sure as hell doesn’t look like the Kanzi fleet is here.”

  He shook his head.

  “I guess the only real question is if they died here.”

  Avida had been home to a massive amount of spaceborne heavy industry: asteroid mining facilities, orbital ore refineries, cloudscoops, the works. The system hadn’t been a major supplier to the Theocracy, but it had been wealthy enough to register on the government’s radar.