The Prodigal Sun (34 page)
Authors: Sean Williams,Shane Dix
Tags: #Science Fiction, #Fiction, #Space Opera
<1 said, don’t
fight
it!> The voice burned into him like a brand, the words stabbing at the very core of his soul.
Kajic suddenly realized what had happened: he had broken down at last. First the mysterious glitch in continuity, then the matter of the “ghost” that Makaev had known nothing about, and now this. The strain had finally been too much for him.
In a way, the knowledge came to him as a relief. What point was there in fighting madness?
Then—
Light.
He opened his eyes—or attempted to. Eyes? No; that was an old habit, one he’d thought long forgotten. He tried again, this time sending the impulse through the proper channels.
“Translation completed,” said a voice. Memory attached it a label: telemetry.
priority gold-one
He was on the bridge of the
Ana Vereine.
“Atalia?” He felt his hologram fraying around the edges as he tried to regain his grip on reality. He remembered something about voices, but nothing definite. His memory of the moments preceding their arrival was hazy.
“Yes, Captain?” His second in command stood beside him, watching him.
“Weren’t we...?” He felt dizzy for a moment, but fought the sensation. “Before the...” He could remember nothing that had happened during the jump. “Weren’t we talking about something?”
“I don’t think so, sir.” She leaned closer. “Is anything wrong?”
He pulled himself together at last. “No, nothing.” He didn’t want to ask about jump time; instead he glanced at the main screen, which showed him nothing at all. “We’ve arrived?”
“Residual effects clearing,” said telemetry. “Local space will reconfigure in sixty seconds.”
“Very good. Contact the commanders of Paladin and
Galloglass
to confirm our safe arrival.”
“Yes, sir.”
As the telemetry officer went about the task, Makaev leaned unnecessarily close to his image. “Are you certain you’re feeling all right, sir?”
He glanced sharply at her, suppressing any hint of confusion in both his voice and image. “Are you questioning my competence, Commander?” he asked coldly.
She took a step away from his image, her face flushed. “No, I—”
“Sir,” said telemetry. “I am having difficulty contacting
Galloglass
and
Paladin
.”
“What sort of difficulty?”
“They’re not responding at all, sir. I am picking up some coded traffic, but it’s not our code.”
“Whose, then?” asked Kajic.
“It’s not our code, sir,” telemetry repeated with a shrug. “I am unable to translate it.”
Beside him, Makaev stiffened. “An ambush!” she hissed.
“Impossible,” Kajic said. “Only a fool would attempt an attack anywhere near Szubetka Base. How long until those screens are clear?”
A pause, then: “Fifteen seconds, sir.”
“Maybe then we’ll know what the hell is going on.” Kajic glanced again at his second.
priority gold-one
“Ten seconds, sir.”
“I have a bad feeling about this, sir,” said Makaev without moving her eyes from the screen. “To have something go wrong now—”
“A little faith, Commander,” he said, and heard his own unease creep into his voice. “Everything will be fine.”
“Three seconds, sir.”
“It
has
to be.” This, barely a whisper to himself.
“Two seconds,” said telemetry. “One second, and—we are scanning local space now, sir.”
Kajic watched anxiously as the screen began to fill with data: visual light first, followed by the more exotic spectra, then by particle sources. All he saw in the initial moments of the scan were stars; only later did nearer, more discrete energy sources appear.
Three ships, not two, appeared in the void, and one very large installation less than a million kilometers away. Two of the ships were angling in toward it on docking approach; the third was leaving, arcing up and away from the
Ana Vereine’
s position. As more detail flooded in, Kajic made out the nestled shapes of ships already docked—hundreds of them, all angular and angry, sharp-pointed sticks to hurl at the indifferent stars.
“Those aren’t our ships,” he said, his mind’s eye narrowing.
“And that’s
not
Szubetka Base!” rasped Makaev.
A chill enveloped Kajic.
“No,” he said, his voice sounding hollow even to his ears. “No!”
“
That’s COE Intelligence
HQ!” Makaev turned to face him, shock naked in her eyes. “
What the hell have you done
?”
Kajic reeled under the force of her attack. “I—”
“You incompetent
fool
!” She whirled away from him and darted for her station.
“Atalia!” he snapped, desperate to regain some control over his escalating panic and confusion. “What are you doing?”
“I’m assuming command!” she shouted back. “You have betrayed us!” Then, over her shoulder at the rest of the crew: “Someone get us out of here while I deal with him!”
Even as her words reached him via the microphone at her console, even as her face loomed large in the camera facing her chair, even as she reached for the twin datalinks waiting like snake mouths to accept her hands—he realized what she was about to do.
He froze, unsure whether he had the right to stop her.
priority gold-one
By the time he realized he couldn’t, it was too late anyway. The commands input via her datalinks were already being processed.
priority override sequence “Kill-Switch” #1143150222
He screamed, feeling the words cut into his mind, tearing him apart
disable core command
piece by tiny piece
disable ancillary processors
flaying him
disable support memory
layer by layer
disable MA/AM interface
stripping him
disable primary database
of his delusions
disable cognitive simulators
of his command
disable life-support
of him
disable
of him
disable
of him
disable...
* * *
When it had finally finished—then, and only then, was he free.
18
DBMP
Ana Vereine
‘954.10.38 EN
1595
Consciousness parted the thick, dark clouds as Roche opened her eyes. She found herself in a fairly small room, one decorated solely in gunmetal grey. The only piece of furniture it contained was the bed she lay upon. The single door to the room was shut, and the absence of any handle on her side suggested that it was intended to stay that way.
A cell of some sort, she guessed. And judging by the compact surgeon strapped to her chest, obviously a hospital cell in particular. But
where
?
When she tried to sit up, a familiar weight attached to her left arm dragged her back.
Again, silence.
“Hello?” she called, aloud this time. Seeing stereoscopic cameras watching from opposite corners of the room, she removed the surgeon and stepped toward one of them. The unblinking lenses followed her every movement. “Is anyone there?”
When the echo of her voice had faded, silence reclaimed the room as impenetrably as before. There was no sound
beyond
the cell, either. To all intents and purposes, the ship she was in—she could tell that much from the vagaries of artificial g—appeared completely dead.
But until someone came to talk to her, she had no way to tell where she was. The surgeon looked the same as they did everywhere, the standard Eckandi design found on that side of the galaxy. The room itself could have been on any Pristine vessel, except—she sniffed the air—it smelled new. How many recently built ships were there in either the Commonwealth or the Dato Bloc? And why would they send one to collect a single AI?
What had she
missed
?
She shook her head. She didn’t have enough information to guess what had happened to her. And the last thing she remembered was the battle on the top of the MiCom building: the flyers, the mortar bombs, the Dato trooper, and—
Cane.
The return of
that
memory stung. One hand rose automatically to touch her temple where he had struck her unconscious. No pain. No pain anywhere, in fact: in her ribs, her shoulder, or her recently shaved head. Physically, she felt better than she had for days.
After a few minutes, something finally broke the deathly silence. She heard, distant at first, but growing nearer by the second, the sound of footsteps in the corridor outside her cell. Two people, she guessed, marching in perfect time.
Seconds later, the door of the cell hissed smoothly open. A pair of Dato troopers stood outside, framed in the doorway like statues. Reflections glistened disconcertingly across their grey, ceramic shells as, in unison, they took one step forward into the cell. Two black faceplates stared impassively at her as she waited for their next move. Neither one, she noted, was armed.
“You are to come with us, Commander,” one of the troopers said, the voice issuing a little too loudly from the suit’s massive chest.
“Why?” The defiant tone was automatic.
“Your presence is required elsewhere.”
“Where?”
No answer.
She sighed. What was the point in resisting? Even unarmed, two troopers were more than a match for her. She would do better to save her energy for the interrogation that was surely to follow. At least that way she’d find out exactly where she was.
A large part of her suspected that she wasn’t going to enjoy the process of finding out.
* * *
The troopers led her through a maze of passages and elevators, heading deep into the ship’s infrastructure. If she hadn’t already guessed that the ship was new, the short journey would have convinced her. Apart from a few small signs of Human occupation, the bulkheads and floors were virtually untouched.
Yet, despite the occasional evidence of life, the ship seemed more deserted than ever. She heard no voices, no footsteps besides hers and her escorts’, none of the small mechanical whispers that betrayed a presence nearby. After a few minutes, even the presence of the two troopers began to unnerve her; they might have been machines for all the sound they made.
Eventually they arrived at a door, coming from the other side of which she could hear voices—and heated ones, by the sound of them. But the door remained closed, and neither of the troopers moved to open it.
“Well?” she asked, glancing from one impassive visor to the other, not really expecting an answer. “Are we going to stand out here all day?”
As though her voice had prompted a response, the door slid open and the troopers ushered her inside, taking positions on either side of the entrance.
The room was ten meters across, circular with a high, domed roof. The carpet was a plush burgundy pile, and the fixtures lavish for a military spaceship. At the opposite end of the room was a drink dispenser; low tables held a variety of finger food on glass plates; a quartered ring of comfortable armchairs faced a central holographic display. A meeting hall of some kind, or a senior officers’ mess.
At the opening of the door, the argument had ceased in mid-sentence and three heads had turned to stare at her. She stared back, trying not to let her face betray her surprise.
“Well, Commander,” said Burne Absenger, COE Armada’s Chief Liaison Officer to the Commonwealth of Empires’ civilian government. A big, middle-aged man with thick locks of orange-red hair firmly slicked back in a skullcap, his voice was warm and well polished but not quite able to hide an edge of irony. “It would seem you’ve been busy.”
“And we’d like an explanation,” snapped Auberon Chase, head of COE Intelligence. Rakishly thin and bald, he wore his uniform irritably, as though discomfited by its loose fit. His eyes burned without dissembling, anger naked for all to see.
Beside him was the head of Strategy, Page De Bruyn—a tall woman with shoulder-length brown hair who, it was rumored, held more power in COE Intelligence than her boss, Chase. She studied Roche with a quiet fascination.
For a moment Roche was unsure exactly how to respond. Confronted by three of the Armada’s most senior officers on a Dato ship, in which she herself had only recently woken with no recollection of how she had come to be there, she felt at a total loss. And they wanted
her
to explain?
Then, for the first time, she consciously noted the contents of the viewtank. Her breath caught in her throat.
COE Intelligence HQ.
A massive structure reflecting the light of distant suns and nebulae, it was duty’s focus for the millions of Armada officers like herself—and a sight she had come to believe she might never see again. Even if the view was at maximum enhancement, the station had to be close—probably no more distant than the Riem-Perez horizon of its hypershield, the closest point to it that any vessel could jump.
We’re right on top of it, Roche concluded. Then:
This is a Dato ship! What’s it doing so close?
“Well, Commander?” prompted De Bruyn, her voice a dangerous purr.
Roche swung her attention from the tank and faced the woman’s steely gaze. “I’ll answer your questions as well as I’m able to, but I’m afraid that most of this is beyond me.”
“Perhaps you should let us be the judge of that.” De Bruyn smiled thinly. “When you’ve told us how you learned about the Palasian System, and why the information could not flow through the normal channels, then we’ll decide.”
Unsteady as it was, Roche stood her ground. “Apart from what I’ve seen on IDnet, I know nothing at all about the Palasian System.” De Bruyn’s eyes narrowed, but Roche plowed on, choosing her words with care. Regardless how she had come to be in this situation, one wrong word could end her career. “What has led you to believe that I do is something of a mystery to me.”
“Don’t play the fool with us, Commander,” exploded Chase, stabbing a long bony finger in her direction. “First you turn up at HQ in the new Dato Marauder, a vessel regarding which we have only the vaguest intelligence, then you demand—not request, mind you, but
demand
—an immediate audience, here on the ship, to discuss a security matter so grave that it threatens the entire Commonwealth.” He snorted as though the very idea offended him. “And now you have the nerve to tell us that you don’t even
know
what we’re talking about! Why we even agreed to this meeting at all is—”
“Auberon,” interrupted De Bruyn sharply, shaking her head. Then, more smoothly, she added, “Let the girl speak.”
“Yes,” put in Absenger. “We’ll never get anywhere if you carry on like this.” Fixing Roche with a warm but exaggerated smile, he said, “Clearly this situation is of no benefit to anyone, Commander. So please, let’s see if we can’t sort everything out.”
Roche opened her mouth, about to protest that it wasn’t the outburst of the head of Intelligence that caused her reticence but a simple lack of knowledge. Before she could, however, someone spoke up behind her, from the entrance to the conference room.
“She’s telling the truth.”
Roche turned. Standing in the doorway was Ameidio Haid. With the faintest nod in her direction, he strode confidently into the room, his calm demeanor generating an air of authority.
“We used her image to make that call,” he said as he approached. “Seeing she was unconscious at the time, we had no choice.”
“What?” Chase’s eyes flickered from Haid to Roche, searching for the connection between the two. “What’s going on here?”
“That’s entirely up to you.” Haid took a seat on the opposite side of the room and crossed his legs, to all appearances completely at ease. Roche noted the tautness of his muscles beneath the simple black uniform, however, and suspected that he was far from relaxed. “What’s your preference?” he said. “An honest and open discussion, or a witch hunt?”
“This is preposterous,” the head of Intelligence spluttered. “I refuse to be a part of any discussion involving someone of your ilk, Haid. A criminal, a barbarian, a
traitor—
!”
“You remember me, then,” Haid interjected with some amusement. “But don’t kid yourself, Auberon; we really aren’t that much different from one another.” Before the man could respond, Haid’s expression became grave, the humor draining from his tone. “Let’s skip the pleasantries, shall we? We have a few things we need to discuss.”
Chase’s face turned grey with rage.
“Of course.” Burne Absenger took a position around the holographic tank, his heavy frame sinking easily into the contoured chair. Page De Bruyn hesitated a moment, then followed his lead, although her posture remained stiffly upright. Roche sat opposite Haid, where she could watch him through the hologram of Intelligence HQ. Chase remained standing until Absenger caught his eye and gestured sharply for him to sit.
The head of Strategy sank into a seat at random. “Do we have any choice?”
“To be honest,” said Haid, “no, not anymore. However, the choice to come out to meet us was your own. Ours was merely an invitation.”
“You have an interesting way of greeting your guests,” said De Bruyn dryly.
Haid shrugged. “You
were
asked to come alone. And unarmed.”
De Bruyn snorted. “You couldn’t expect us to simply walk onto an enemy vessel without any protection.”
“Nor
you
expect
us
to allow an armed platoon to march aboard.”
“Which your troops dealt with easily enough,” said Chase with more than a trace of bitterness. “What are they? Mercenaries like yourself?”
“No. They’re drones,” Haid explained. “Or remotes, if you like.” He gestured to the nearest Dato trooper, who instantly raised a gauntleted hand to open the black visor.
The helmet inside was empty.
Haid’s smile widened at the response from his small audience: the in-drawn breaths and sudden stiffening of postures.
“Eyes and ears in the service of the one behind that message we sent. The one who sent me here—to clear the air.”
Roche stared at the empty armor in amazement, then turned to face Haid. “You mean the Box, don’t you?”
“Who else?” he said. “Who did you think was running this ship?” He laughed lightly. “Certainly not me.”
“I’d assumed the Dato—”
“They’re currently in the main airlock holding bay with De Bruyn’s squad, waiting to be shipped to HQ.” Haid shook his head. “Did you really believe we’d join forces with the Dato Bloc to betray you and the Armada? Morgan, we despise
them
almost as much as we despise the three people sitting with us now.”
That brought an immediate response from Chase, but one less vicious than Roche had expected.
“How much do you know?” asked the head of Intelligence, studying Haid narrowly.
“Enough,” said Haid. “Enough to see you face a court-martial, Chase. Not that I have any faith in the Commonwealth’s judicial system.”
“Wait a minute,” said Absenger, raising a hand. “You’re going much too fast for me. When you say that ‘the Box’ is running this ship, surely you can’t mean the AI attached to the commander’s arm here?”
“Why not?” said Haid. “It’s perfectly suited to the task.”
“But how? I mean, it seems hard to believe that...” Absenger glanced at De Bruyn. “Surely this Box is nothing more than a communications AI commissioned to replace one in the Armada network?”
“The Box is much more than a ‘communications AI,’“ said Haid, “no matter what you say. It’s designed with the express purpose of infiltrating and ultimately corrupting Dato intelligent systems, such as those that run this ship, or the combat armor you see before you. That’s what you ordered from Trinity, and that’s what they built.” His gaze shifted suddenly. “Isn’t that right, De Bruyn?”
The head of Strategy looked uncomfortable for a moment, then exchanged another glance with Absenger. “We wanted something that could infiltrate Dato security from the inside.”
Haid nodded. “And that’s what you got—and more.” He looked at Roche and noticed the slight wince on her face. “Don’t feel too bad, Morgan. I didn’t work it out myself, either. When you let me open the datalink, I had no idea what I was getting myself into. That damned machine is a maze of security probes and countertraps; given a century, uninterrupted, I
might have
come close to guessing what it was for. In the end, I didn’t crack the Box;
it
cracked
me.
It needed another ally, and I was the one it chose.”