Empire of Bones (17 page)

“Zephram, could you not point the deadly weapon at your face.”

He blinked at her for a moment and then smiled a little. “That wasn’t the best choice, eh? I suppose you could say I lost my head.” He put the weapon back on the table. “Assuming this is a plasma weapon, perhaps those other emitters are similar to the screens their ships used. Perhaps it focused the expanding plasma toward the target. If so, that would have a devastating effect.”

“How devastating?”

“It would probably incinerate an armored man and melt the bulkhead behind him. This would be a most lethal weapon. They tell me there are armored suits, but one has not yet made it over. I’ll be able to determine how resistant it would be to this kind of weapon when it arrives.”

The sophistication of the weapons, and their raw destructiveness, shocked and amazed her. Men armed with these would be virtual killing machines. Add in the heavy modifications the marines seemed to have and they would be unstoppable. Except they had been stopped.

Cartwright wandered over to the next table and picked up a combat knife. She’d seen something similar in marine country. They all seemed to have a fetish for sharp objects. “This looks relatively normal, but even it has some improvements.”

She took it from him and examined it closely. The blade didn’t appear to be steel. It was matte black, even along the edge. Holding it with the white tabletop behind it, she could see it had a wicked edge.

“What kind of metal is this?” she asked.

“I believe it might be similar to what is used on their hull. If so, it would be almost impossible to dull and probably take far more strength than a normal person possessed to break it. I’d imagine a strong man could drive it into the table without damaging the weapon. It might even be capable of harming someone in armor.”

She was impressed. “I’m certain some have already made their way back to
Athena
, then. No way would the marines pass up the chance to have something like this.”

The old scientist smiled. “I’d imagine not. Luckily, there are many of them left over to study.” He gestured at the three or four dozen on the table. “Oh, I can think of one other oddity you’ll appreciate.”

They walked over to a table piled high with headsets. However, unlike normal headsets these had no headphones or built-in microphones. Instead, they fit over the top of the head in three places. They had circular pads that pressed against the skull.

She picked one up and pulled the pad back enough to see some kind of plate under it. Kelsey frowned as she considered how they would sit on the head. The spacing seemed just about right for these pads to go over the unknown implants in the dead Fleet personnel. The table had more than fifty headsets. She’d wager there were many more over on
Courageous
. Perhaps enough for everyone on board plus some spares.

“Zephram, I think you’d best send some of these over to Doctor Stone on
Athena
. The Fleet personnel seem to have some implants in their heads that would correspond to these locations at the ends. I also think you’d better bump these up in priority. Captain Mertz is going to want to know about them.”

“Implants, you say? How intriguing! I will certainly do so. Perhaps a direct inspection is in order. Meanwhile, we have much more to examine. We still have to study their tablets. We’re quite hopeful we can recover data from these units once we decipher how the power cells work.”

She followed him, although her mind was preoccupied…thinking about the brain implants they’d discovered. What would the headsets allow them to do? That seemed like one of the most important things they could figure out. No one had mentioned anything like this after the Fall. Perhaps it had been a closely guarded secret.

If so, it was one she was determined to unravel. It might be the key to everything.

The news about the implants interested Jared, but it got him no closer to solving the riddle of getting home. The probes had scoured the system and only found the one other flip point. No other weak flip points were present. Perhaps they really were rare.

He’d decided the science teams could continue examining
Courageous
for samples of technology to take home while
Athena
probed the next flip point. If there was trouble on the other side, it was better to go without the freighter. That increased his options somewhat and kept the non-combatants out of danger.

He sent two probes back to the other side of the weak flip point. One would wait for anyone to come into the system, transmitting a distress beacon. It had the full logs for the mission thus far, encrypted of course. They could send other probes back to update it as they learned more, as long as they were close by.

The second probe was on its way back to the Empire. It had to make two flips to get to an occupied system. Its distress signal would draw help from Fleet. If it made it all the way. Baxter wasn’t certain it would. And even if it did, it would be over a month before help could arrive.

He reluctantly pulled Kelsey off
Best Deal
to go with them as they explored further. If he’d had his way, she would’ve stayed where she was, but orders were orders. He did leave a couple of lieutenants to restrain the scientists from doing anything truly foolhardy. He hoped.

They’d also continue the inquiry into Carlo Vega’s death. Since the investigating officers didn’t know his suspicions about the source of the poison, they’d conducted an exhaustive set of interviews centered on the freighter’s galley. As he’d expected, they’d determined there was no reason for the suspect substance to be anywhere near the food preparation area.

Two labs had some for experiments, but security was somewhat short of Fleet expectations. They couldn’t even be certain any was missing. Jared would bet his salary from the entire exploratory mission they’d never officially identify the source of the poison. Or the poisoner.

Those thoughts occupied his time until Kelsey strapped herself into her unofficial seat on the bridge. She watched the two ships shrink on the screen until they were indistinguishable from the stars behind them. Only then did she turn her attention to him. “It’s unbelievable. I never expected to find people like this…just bodies. It puts a completely different light on this kind of mission for me. I feel like a vulture.”

“I can understand that point of view, but it’s wrong. None of the people who died on
Courageous
would begrudge us taking them home or salvaging what we could. In fact, their Captain gave us his explicit permission. In their shoes, I wouldn’t mind. Would you?”

She took a deep breath. “I suppose not. What do you think about the implants?”

“Since none of the Fleet or marine personnel survived the battle of Avalon, they could’ve all had them and the civilians would’ve been none the wiser. The survivors had other priorities. I’d wager if we exhumed their bodies we’d find similar equipment. There’s so much we don’t know about the old Empire.”

He went over the exploration status with Kelsey for the next four hours. It helped to pass the time in transit and made sure that they were on the same page.

Just short of the flip point, he order a probe sent through with a short return time. The probe popped back out as they were slowing to a stop. Zia began pulling the data and transferring it to the screen. One thing was immediately clear. The system on the other side had occupants. Communication sources popped up all over the other system. Hundreds. Perhaps thousands. It was as busy as Avalon.

“This puts a new spin on things,” he said. “There aren’t any ships in range of the flip point, but we won’t be able to move anywhere without someone seeing us.”

Kelsey nodded. “It doesn’t change the fact we have to go.”

“No, I suppose not. It’s also probable that they’re less advanced than we are, even though they obviously have spaceflight.”

“Why is that?”

“Because they’ve never come through to explore
Courageous
. They couldn’t have missed the distress beacon. That means no flip drives.”

“How do we know that the next system isn’t full of old Empire automated transmitters?”

“No distress beacons. I’m not sure what’s transmitting, mind you. We need to process some of the traffic to figure it out. Without knowing the transmission protocols, all we have are signals. Zia, can you get us any of that in a format we can understand?”

The tactical officer nodded. “I’m working on a strong signal now. I don’t think it’s encrypted, but the formatting is…wait…got it. Going on screen.”

A man sitting behind a desk replaced the system schematic. Jared instantly recognized it as a news program. There wasn’t any audio, but the images behind the man’s back seemed to be of some sporting event.

The man himself was dressed in a colorful tunic shirt with some kind of emblem on his left breast. His hair was dark and tied back in a loose ponytail. Whatever he was saying, he looked cool and confident.

“I think we’ve tapped into the evening news vid,” Kelsey said. “That speaks for a relatively high social and technological standard right there. As opposed to some of the entertainment vids I’ve seen at home.”

He laughed. “True. If the first thing an alien civilization saw about us was the strange reality vids making the rounds I wouldn’t blame them for dismissing us as primitive savages.”

“The audio is somehow tied into the video,” Zia added. “The signal is complex and redundant. Definitely not primitive. I can probably figure it out with a little more time.”

Jared considered his options. At the very least, nothing was near the flip point. Going over was a slight risk, but the more powerful passive scanners on his ship could draw down a lot of data fairly quickly.

“Pasco, move us into the flip point and recover the probe. We’re going over.”

“Aye, sir.”

The ship assumed a position in the center of the flip point and as soon as they recovered the probe, he ordered the flip.

Thankfully, it was a normal transition and nothing like the terrible flip that brought them into this sector of space. Everyone recovered in a few moments.

Then the alert klaxon went off. “Missiles detected, Captain,” Zia said crisply. “Ships in motion on the gravitic scanners. About an hour away at maximum acceleration. No immediate danger to us.”

“Put the system diagram on screen.”

The basic system layout appeared. The weapons fire was located clockwise around the plane of the ecliptic from
Athena
. The gravitic scanners were getting data on the ships and missiles. They were nowhere near danger.

“Stand down from battle stations, but keep us on alert status. Where are the major communication sources?”

Five flashing yellow dots appeared. One of them was at the point of the battle.

“There were no transmissions from that location earlier, sir,” Zia reported. “They must’ve started as soon as the battle began. There were no indications of ships in motion there earlier. I’m picking up non-Fleet distress beacons. I’m also detecting numerous vessels accelerating at high speed.”

Operations had already began mapping them on the screen. “Do we have any feel for who is shooting who?”

Zia tapped her controls. “There are a large number of missiles being fired from hundreds of ships leaving the general area. I believe there is a flip point and the fleet of vessels transitioned less than ten minutes ago. Probably just before our probe returned. I’ve designated them force alpha.”

“Where are those ships going?”

“Their course suggests they are moving toward the strongest transmission source in the system.” Zia highlighted another communications hub in the system. “ETA just over three hours. There is a large fleet of vessels moving from there to intercept them. I have designated them force bravo.”

“What’s happening?” Kelsey asked. “Obviously a battle, but who are the good guys?”

“I doubt we’ll be able to figure that out while the shooting is going on. Zia, can you crack any of the transmissions? We could use some audio now.”

“Working on it, sir. I’m only detecting encrypted transmissions from the battle scene. Also for force bravo. I’m not picking up any transmissions from force alpha.”

The man they’d been watching earlier replaced the images on the screen. He now showed a video of scores of ships appearing in space and opening fire with missiles. They blasted a huge space station, knocking massive holes in its hull that gushed atmosphere and debris. Intense counter fire wiped out a number of the attacking ships before the feed they were watching died. The battle scene faded back to the man’s image.

The audio suddenly kicked in. The man spoke Terran with a strange accent, but his words were clear enough. “That was the scene in the interdiction zone just fifteen minutes ago. This station’s observation vessel went off the air and we must assume it lost with all hands. We salute our brave reporters and mourn with their families.

“Royal sources tell us that a significant invasion force managed to break through, but that Royal Fleet Command remains confident that all will be destroyed before they become a danger to the Kingdom. However, we urge all citizens to retreat to their shelters for the duration of this emergency. This station will continue to transmit news of the attack as it comes in.”

Zia muted the audio and turned in her seat. “I’m picking up several vessels moving in our direction at high acceleration, sir. They’re coming from the area they called the interdiction zone.”

“Have they spotted us?”

“I don’t think so. It looks like two of the attacking vessels have split off to pursue another ship.”

The absolute last thing he needed to do was get involved in a local war. “What can you tell me about those ships? And how long do we have to flip back before they could reasonably expect to detect us?”

The officer shrugged. “Without knowing the quality of their scanners, I couldn’t say. We wouldn’t detect a stationary ship like ours at this range for another forty minutes or so. The first ship has an audio only transmission. I’m putting it on the overheads.”