Reality's Veil

by Damon Alan

  “At your command, Admiral,” the officer replied.

  He closed the link. There was no purpose delaying the officer from his task.

  His quarters were on the foremost habitation ring of the Palidragon, so he was there in a few minutes. Pulling a data pad from the bottom drawer of his dresser, he plugged in a data crystal and activated the microphone for dictation.

  High Lord Urdoxander,

  I am writing to you in order to let you know who serves the High Lord with the most loyalty. It is my honor, standing amid your enemies, that I serve you. I know you think me a traitor, but it is I, a son of House Cothis, that will bring you the prize you seek.

  Instant travel from system to system. I have seen it. On board the ships of the enemy, I have done it.

  Your son Lord Bannick is cementing his alliance with the pirate Dayson. I am sending out scout ships with orders from you, assuming that by acting in your interest I will also carry your authority, ordering fleets at Acrinn to flock to your son’s side until the renegade’s fleet is in reach.

  Then I will give the order to spring the trap.

  I expect to be reporting my success to you within the half-year.

  I congratulate you on the size of the force you dedicated to the conflict in the Komi System. It was significant and would have been sufficient if not for an unexpected foe in the battle. I am uncertain as to the nature of the craft that intervened on Dayson’s side, but it is one more prize we will secure when she is subdued at Acrinn.

  I thank you for allowing House Cothis to serve the throne. And I humbly request the opportunity to deal with the so-called Admiral Dayson when she is convicted of piracy in the courts of Komi IV. She has threatened my life more than once. I will relish the opportunity to take hers.

  This fleet will enter highspace in the next day or two. I will be out of touch until we arrive at Acrinn in forty-four days.

  Your servant,

  Admiral Cothis, serving your interests on the Palidragon.

  He saved the message to an encrypted data crystal, and slipped it into his pocket, then quickly completed orders for the fleets at Acrinn, making three copies.

  To the commander that receives this:

  I am Admiral Cothis of House Cothis. On authority given to me by the High Lord Urdoxander Komi, you are hereby ordered to the following tasks.

  1. You will pretend to betray the throne in order to serve Lord Bannick Komi.

  2. You will take no actions against the rebel fleets until you are ordered to do so in person by me.

  3. You will prepare every soldier in your fleet for boarding the Palidragon.

  4. Ship to ship combat will be directed at the Oasian fleet(s), but I will advise you when the battle begins which ships I wish to capture, not destroy.

  5. Be certain to include the number of loyal ships to me when I arrive by private channel.

  The preparation of the marines can be explained as a readiness drill. Set aside twenty percent of the ships in system that you know will be loyal, and order them to attack when the rebel Lord Bannick reveals to them he is a traitor. He must believe that some loyalists are present.

  I need not remind you the price all of our houses will pay if we fail, or you do not adhere to your loyalty. Secrecy is paramount. You may reveal this plan to nobody outside your top command staff, and only to those you know to be completely loyal to the Syndicate.

  He didn’t sign the document. He didn’t need to. He encrypted his personal identification code into the crystals. One person per fleet would see his message, and then share it with the selected few. The crystals would self-erase a week after being read.

  The scouts would carry the orders to the three largest fleets at Acrinn.

  All the trails to him were covered as best they could be. Should something go wrong, he would have plausible deniability. Bannick trusted him.

  He raced from his room to the scout bays, the ships were ready to go when he arrived. His man was good.

  Handing over the crystals, he gave the orders he needed to give. “This crystal goes to the royal palace on Komi IV, High Lord Urdoxander Komi’s eyes only. The ship is to be briefed immediately after launch. If the pilot attempts to communicate with the Palidragon other than to you, destroy that ship immediately. If needed, I’ll provide any excuses.”

  “Yes, Admiral, I understand,” Vayarmick said.

  “One each of these to the other pilots. They are all going to Acrinn. These are for the commanders of the three largest fleets in the system. Make sure they know to pick the right fleets, and not the first set of ships they find. Use their sensors.”

  “If Lord Bannick finds out about this…”

  “Our lives are nothing compared to our family. See to your duty.”

  “Absolutely, sir. Immediately.” Vayarmick saluted and turned to rush away but remembered protocol. He turned back toward the admiral. “Honor to our house.”

  Cothis grinned. “Honor to our house.” He waved toward the hatch to the scout bay.

  The messenger was gone to his task a second later.

  A short while ago, when his first thoughts of betraying Bannick had arisen, they troubled him. But those thoughts had quickly faded under the continued rising of two other thoughts.

  That House Cothis would gain stature in the empire by serving Lord Urdoxander and protecting his interests. The second thought: Dayson’s throat would soon be in his clenching fist.

  Chapter 39 - Weapons Testing

  Zero found himself once again along the frontier, the edge of Collective space opposite that of the Human-Collective warzone. He found himself existing in trepidation, fearful that any moment a space-faring craft or creature, alien and powerful, would appear and rip into his starship.

  The system he’d chosen to test his new weaponry was barely what the Collective would even call colonized, a data processing station and a resource transfer starbase were the only real assets. The planet the two assets orbited, TR-5432-C, wasn’t one the humans would even consider for colonization. It was the solitary planetary inhabitant of a binary star system, orbiting the common center of gravity around which two red dwarf stars danced. The stars, barely half an AU apart, did nothing to warm the one rock that depended on them for light and heat.

  TR-5432-C was cold. Nearly 200C below zero.

  A strange feeling entered Zero’s thoughts. The planet’s surface was below him… and 200C below zero… was he experiencing humor?

  It was fabulous and distracted him from the fear that coursed through his processors.

  “Bn74x00 colony, this is resource transfer array Dt75b28,” his comms relayed directly into his consciousness.

  It wouldn’t do not to respond. He was, after all, appointed to protect the local assets from attack. Or so he’d told them when he arrived and began decelerating toward the planet.

  “Dt75b28, this colony stands by to serve the defense. Please state the reason for contact.”

  “This colony is detecting movement at two-seven-one mark zero-four-nine. The TR-5432 system does not possess any appreciable population of small rocky bodies,” 28 informed him. “The likelihood that the movement is related to hostile ships is high.”

  “Agreed,” Zero responded. “This colony is increasing the alert level and activating weapons systems. Defense algorithms coming online.”

  Silence answered him. If the two stations were like him, they’d be filled with fear, but they weren’t. He had reason to exist. They simply existed, so knew no fear despite not having any defense capability of their own.

  Such military resource expenditure was deemed wasteful when these bases were constructed, considering the remoteness of human space and the absence of another known enemy. In retrospect, that assessment was shortsighted.

  One of the beetle craft that Zero suspected to be a living creature appeared a thousand kilometers distant. The creature or spaceship, whichever it was, approached half a kilometer in length. A ring around the center of the thing suddenly flut
tered with movement and the location beacon for the resource transfer array ceased transmitting.

  Zero wasted no time. He fired one of his new missiles.

  It launched from the hull silo that contained it, rocketed away from Zero for a few billion processing cycles, then vanished as the FTL drive activated. Zero watched as it reappeared almost immediately near the enemy.

  The fusion motors of the missile activated, accelerating the projectile at over 500G.

  The creature seemed to pointedly ignore the missile attack, other than to turn in such a way as to maximize surface exposure to the weapon.

  That puzzled Zero. Did the entities absorb the energy of nuclear weapons? Was that a defensive maneuver?

  As the missile neared the target, the second FTL drive activated. Instead of screaming forward at faster than light speed, however, it sheared off a section of the creature and plunged into it. Radiation flared as the material that comprised the enemy hull turned to pure energy. The missile erupted from the far side, and sections of the carapace broke away and tumbled into space.

  The creature immediately listed to the side and began falling toward the surface of the planet below.

  As it did another one appeared, to which Zero immediately responded. This second creature was larger by a few hundred meters, and he found himself wondering as to the nature of the different sizes.

  Whatever the size of the creature meant, the second one didn’t seem to learn from the death of the first one. Within seconds it followed the first into destruction, bits of carapace from both aliens littered the orbital path over TR-5432-C.

  “What is the nature of the weapons Bn74x00 utilized?” 28 queried.

  Moments later both bases were incandescent gaseous clouds, torn asunder by the nuclear fires of Zero’s missiles.

  No witnesses.

  If the Original knew the effectiveness of Zero’s weapons, not to mention Zero’s newfound identity, it might move to protect itself.

  Zero wondered if the Original knew fear. Or if the controlling colony of the Collective would learn the emotion in the seconds before it died.

  Fear was useful, Zero decided. It had spurred him into higher states of awareness and improved his already nearly instantaneous response times.

  He studied the lessons of his engagement with the enemy, remaining alert even as the bulky carapaces finally slammed into the icy surface of the planet below.

  It appeared the aliens did not call for help or seek aid in their battle with Zero. When no further enemies appeared, he turned to accelerate toward his next test.

  Chapter 40 - A Threat Verified

  Sylange drifted over the icy surface of a non-descript world orbiting a non-descript binary pair of stars in a universe that she was beginning to both loathe and fear.

  First her mother, now the mated pair of Obedi buried in icy craters on the surface below were dead as a result of an enemy like they’d never fought before. In every universe before this one the Obedi had simply phased in from the oververse, then with impunity eradicated any machine species present.

  For the first time in the memory of her people, one of their machine food supply had learned to fight back. Three Obedi were dead, and two of her own children. The children were not yet named and not yet considered Obedi, but to her they were a tragic loss that merited vengeance.

  But the scene below merited caution. Nagoos and Shiatra were not children. They were older adults fully capable of destroying the enemy alone.

  “What happened here?” she asked her mate.

  “I’m still sorting it out, others are coming to help. The only debris in the system from our brother and sister is now embedded in the ice below us,” Khala informed her. “The other debris you’ve undoubtedly detected is from two different installations that orbited this world.”

  Satisfaction raced through the light patterns on her carapace. “Our dead made the enemy pay a price,” she said. “We—”

  “That’s not what happened,” Khala interrupted and informed her. Trepidation soured the spectrum of information tracing across his back.

  She paused, considering what he meant. How could anything else have happened? “Tell me the events as you see them,” she finally commanded him.

  “A ship was here, I have tasted the residue of its drive systems, fusion byproducts,” Khala informed her.

  “Then it escaped?” she asked. “Two installations didn’t.”

  “We didn’t destroy those stations. The missing ship did.”

  Surprise flared brightly around her from her own carapace. Khala flared almost immediately after, startled by her response. “What do you mean the ship did?” She struggled to contain her rage and renewed fear. This enemy killed two Obedi then two of its own stations? That sounded like madness. “Where is your proof?”

  “There is a residual radioactive cloud in the station debris fields,” Khala informed her. “A fission primer used to light a fusion bomb. If our people had destroyed these installations, we would have had no need for a fission detonator. Even the humans don’t use such dirty weapons, which implies a weapon constructed in haste, with resource costs in mind.”

  “How do you now that wasn’t a weapon used against our fallen as they destroyed the stations?” she asked him.

  “Because we’d have ignited the fusion tanks in the stations directly, if we felt the need to destroy them for whatever reason. Either by impact or other means. The truth is, it’s unlikely we’d destroy the stations at all, it’s a waste of effort and energy. We would leave empty, but intact, shells devoid of the machine intelligence.”

  “Then what happened here?”

  “Time may show us,” Khala replied. “All I know for sure is this isn’t quite the same weapon that killed Shosgawa.”

  Sylange struggled to control her emotions at the mention of her mother. She thought it best to deal with the issue in front of her before she considered larger implications. “How do we get our dead from the surface?”

  “When the others arrive, and I have called on nearly a hundred, we will direct energy into the surface and melt away the ice that now encases our dead. We will descend, hook them, and phase away to a deep space location.”

  A good plan. Khala was very capable for a male. “What is the chance we’re putting ourselves at risk by bringing so many of our clan to one place?”

  “The enemy has come and gone. I detect no trace out to a considerable distance. Our people will phase in, and by the time the enemy could know we are here we’ll be gone. Light-speed is our friend in a universe such as this,” Khala assured her.

  Satisfied, she turned to the scene around her. More and more of Khala’s requested crew were arriving. Soon they were executing Khala’s plan, and shortly after that they were adrift at a spot distant from any star in the cold of deep space.

  “What do we do with them?” Khala asked.

  Sylange reached a tendril into the oververse and called to her people. “I need you all, where I am, now.” The dead must be mourned. No matter how rare, and maybe even more so because it was such a rare event. “It would serve to remind everyone that we are not entirely immortal.”

  Her mate looked at her approvingly. “You are the Matriarch.”

  “And you are the Matriarch’s Consort. Find me a way to avenge my mother, as well as Nagoos and Shiatra. We will not abandon what my mother wanted for this universe, nor will we leave our killers free to roam and harm this universe further.”

  “I will begin working on a plan to draw out this enemy of ours.”

  “Imagine if these monsters found a way into the oververse,” Sylange said, sharing her most unlikely, but terrifying, concerns. “We, and so many other clans, would be at immeasurable risk.”

  A shudder flashed across Khala’s shell. He hadn’t thought of that.

  Space began to crowd as thousands of Obedi phased into the region. The electromagnetic spectrum swelled with their mourning, the area filled with light, radio, and microwaves of anguish. Loca
l bandwidth was so noisy that the only means of communication was to reach into the oververse or to use the illumination of carapaces.

  Sylange slipped a sensory tendril into the oververse, then back into this one near her mate. She intertwined with him, sharing the pain of their loss. Khala knew these two Obedi well, Shiatra, the female, was a broodmate of his own father. Nagoos was a friend of Khala’s mother, and often assisted in the raising of Khala in early life, before he had a name.

  She felt his rage. She felt his sorrow. And she felt his desire for vengeance.

  A feeling she shared.

  “You are not to get killed doing something stupid.”

  “The humans know the enemy more than I do,” Khala told her as his soul cried. “I will turn to them for the aid I need and turn our alliance with them into solidity.”

  “You do that,” she agreed. “I will keep our children safe from the threat at some distance. When you’re ready, let me know. Every Obedi adult will respond to destroy the machines that did this.”

  “That’s incredibly risky.”

  “Yes,” she replied. “Yes, it is.”

  “Would Shosgawa—”

  “My mother is no longer Matriarch. I am,” she said, cutting him off. She sensed she had laid additional pain on his carapace. “If my mother had lived and I had died at the white dwarf star, she would have done what it took to destroy the enemy.”

  “You’re probably right,” Khala agreed. “And I would have as well, as I am now.”

  The energy expenditure the gathering spent mourning was beginning to taper off, their reserves exhausted. They’d need to feed soon.

  She slipped a means of communication back into the oververse. “Thank you all for coming,” she told the gathering. “Nagoos and Shiatra are mourned. Let us hope it is a long time before there is another. My mate is to develop a plan for our attack on our enemy. There will be risk. None of you need to risk yourselves if you wish to depart this universe back into the oververse. You may do so now with no shame, and I will be grateful some of us are out of reach from the monsters that did this.”