“Yes,” Vex said. “My destroyer group carried just one aerospace plane. Its destruction will be interpreted as catastrophic by the commanding general of the squadron. There is now no way for him to retrieve anyone from the surface, nor send down additional reinforcements to replace our losses. His only choice will be to ready and launch the missiles, per his orders.”
“How long?” Kalbi asked, the pistol now dangling limply in his hand at his side. His eyes had turned entirely to the sky.
“Minutes,” Vex said. “Depending on how long it takes for General Ekk’s tactical officers to correctly analyze what has happened, and report.”
“Isn’t there anything you can do?” Kalbi demanded, walking over to the kosmarch.
“Without wireless to orbit? This place—those Waymaker devices—seals our fate, as much as General Ekk’s orders from me. It would take me thirty seconds to confirm that I am alive and well on the surface. Ekk will only see the imagery of the destroyed camp.”
“Is there anything you can do?” Kalbi said, turning his attention back to Lethiah.
“What do you suggest?” she asked.
“Make those…things, stop blocking the wireless!”
“The problem is not the machines, but the Temple itself,” Lethiah said.
“We have to signal them! Tell them to stop the attack!”
“If there had been more time,” Vex said, “we were planning to set up a message laser at the landing site. But that’s not going to be a problem now.”
Kalbi’s frantic anxiety was almost comical, except for the pistol he still held in his hand. He waved it about erratically, not caring who he swept with the barrel. Elvin and Wyo both kept wincing every time the little weapon went anywhere near Lady Oswight, or themselves.
“So that’s it,” Wyo said, looking up into the blue sky. “As soon as your destroyers are in position, they launch. And this entire place—the wreck, the ruins, and pyramid—gets glassed.”
“Essentially,” Vex said.
“It’s such a waste!” Garsina said, sitting on a small pile of baked mud bricks, still holding her wound with one hand. “We came here to learn about the Waymakers, and we found so much more. To just throw it all away seems maliciously stupid.”
“Especially if what Lethiah told us is true,” Wyo said. “We need this place—need her knowledge—to get ready for the big war.”
“What are you talking about?” Vex asked.
“If you’d talked to Lethiah at all, you might know. She’s found evidence that something is coming into this part of the galaxy. Something that might tear the Waywork apart. It’s enough to make even these machines sit up and pay attention. But that doesn’t matter anymore, because the pyramid is soon going to be a radioactive hot potato. And the one person who seems to know more about all of it, than any of us, will be dead. Lethiah, you said you worked very, very hard to convince the machines that they should create new Slipways to the Waywork. I am afraid we—the Starstates—have done you wrong.”
“You’ve done yourselves wrong,” Lethiah said flatly. “In many ways, my life ended a long, long time ago. When I first came to this place, and we learned there would be no future for humanity here. I’m not worried about me. I am worried about what will happen if the Starstates refuse to unite against a common enemy.”
Wyo and Elvin maintained their guard. But the looks on the faces of the Nautilan soldiers said it all. They knew what was going to happen. No ability to fight. No time to run. Kalbi may have devolved into a nervous wreck, but those troops…not so different from DSOD personnel, Wyo thought. There would be no histrionics. The men of Starstate Nautilan would die with dignity.
Vex herself seemed like an ice cube. Her eyes saw everything through a lens of dispassion. There was a calculating mind behind those eyes. Wyo had sat across from people like her during contract negotiations. She would seek the path of maximum corporate benefit, but if she felt there was nothing to be gained from concessions, she would happily sink the entire deal.
“Let me see the Anchor,” Lethiah said to the kosmarch.
“The what?”
“She means the Key,” Garsina said.
“Why?” Vex asked, holding the object tightly between two palms.
“In your hands, it’s useless. In my hands? perhaps there is still a chance.”
“Like what?” Kalbi demanded, waving the barrel of his gun in her face.
“Give it to her,” Wyo ordered, motioning to Vex with the barrel of his rifle.
“No!” Kalbi said, turning his pistol on the lieutenant commander, and pulling his trigger. This time, the hammer felt like it hit Wyo in the sternum. He stumbled backward, trying to keep his rifle up, but all the wind had been knocked out of him for the second time in the same hour. He thudded to the ground, his face to the sky, and thought he heard Axabrast shout, “Enough of this!” and then there were other gunshots—and not just Kalbi’s.
There was an intense pain in Wyo’s chest. He reflexively took one hand off the rifle, and reached it up to his chest, seeking the blood. But there was nothing to feel. His armor had absorbed the small pistol’s energy, though there would be a wicked bruise on Wyo’s chest, to match the one he already had on his back.
“Dammit,” Wyo croaked, and rolled onto all fours. He raised his head to see scuffling. Axabrast, with Lethiah, and the kosmarch, rolling on the ground. Kalbi simply lay nearby, trying to take breaths through a mouth filled with blood. There was a hole in his stomach that pumped blood into the dust around him, and his pistol lay safely out of reach.
Garsina had her carbine up—safety distinctly off this time—aimed at the Nautilan troops, who kept their hands up, and backed away from the three people rolling around on each other in the dirt. Wyo tried to make himself bring his own rifle up, but the pain in his chest was too intense, and without being able to breathe, his only thought was on trying to draw air into lungs which had decided to momentarily not work.
Suddenly, Lethiah rolled out of Golsubril Vex’s grasp, and leapt to her feet. The Key was in her hands. She raised it over her head with one hand, and the Key immediately illuminated from within.
The Waymaker machines clustered around Lethiah, attentive.
Like all Keys, this smaller one became translucent when activated, with a still smaller sphere of glowing geometric patterns within. Lethiah barely blinked as she focused all of her attention on the Key, and the sentinels seemed to focus all of their attention on Lethiah. When the kosmarch got to her feet and tried to intervene, one of the Waymaker machines blocked her, so that the sentinels closed in around Lethiah, until only Wyo, Garsina, and Lethiah were within the sentinels’ circle.
“What’s she doing?” Garsina said, lowering her carbine, and going back to one knee. If her ribs hurt half as much as Wyo’s sternum, it was a wonder she could even stand at all.
Wyo struggled to his feet, feeling air return to his lungs, and watched. Lethiah didn’t move. The Key merely took on an added intensity, as the light coming from inside it brightened perceptibly. The Waymaker machines were silent. If they thought or planned anything, it was impossible for Wyo to tell. They had been faceless and implacable since he’d first seen them, and as long as they did not try to directly harm anyone, he wouldn’t worry about them.
But something was clearly happening for Lethiah. Her eyes had gone wide now. So wide that the whites were fully exposed all the way around her pupils. But she wasn’t looking at Wyo, or Garsina. She wasn’t even looking at the sentinels. She was somewhere else. Her mind bent on other matters.
“Can she hear us?” Garsina asked.
“I don’t think so,” Wyo said.
“Keep your distance, lads,” Wyo heard Axabrast say, outside the circle.
The muscles along Lethiah’s neck strained to the point Wyo thought they might snap.
Then, Lethiah exhaled slowly, and said, “I think it’s worked.”
“What worked?” Wyo asked her, staring at the illuminated Key sti
ll in Lethiah’s hand, raised high over her head.
“The Anchors aboard their ships in orbit…I was able to use my connection to the machines to convince them that the Anchors posed a threat. The machines still don’t have any regard for themselves, as individual entities. But I convinced them that the Anchors currently orbiting this planet were threatening the larger picture, regarding the shadow that is growing on the Others’ Overspace. They elected to terminate those Anchors.”
“Terminate…a Key?” Wyo said. “How is that even possible?”
“It’s not, for us,” Lethiah said. “But for the machines, Keys are just another kind of machine. When a machine stops functioning correctly, and becomes dangerous, you destroy it.”
“But that doesn’t do anything to the ships,” Wyo said. “Or does it?”
After a few more moments, several bolides appeared in the sky overhead. Followed by several more. And then, a host of burning daylight meteors appeared, each one more brilliant than the next.
“What happened?” Garsina said, looking up at the spectacular morning fireworks display.
“Whatever the Keys did—when they terminated—it seems they took the destroyers with them. Those are pieces of ships burning up in the atmosphere.”
“The Anchors store a lot of energy, even when not in use,” Lethiah said. “Terminating an Anchor releases that energy.”
Wyo stared at the old woman, framed against the backdrop of the arched ribs of her former ark down by the shore. Then he turned back to stare at the pyramid, where untold power still remained. Dangerous power, with disastrous potential? Or, not. Much depended on who used that power, and for what, and why.
For the first time, Golsubril Vex let out a moan—watching the chunks of her ships enter and burn up in Uxmal’s upper atmosphere.
Lethiah slowly lowered her arm, and the Key returned to its dormant state.
The Waymaker machines also parted company, allowing Lethiah to step between them as she pleased. Wyo followed her, helping Garsina to her feet, and they came up behind Axabrast, who held the remaining Nautilan soldiers under guard.
“What do we do now?” he asked the lieutenant commander.
Wyo thought about it. If the destroyers—formerly in orbit—were gone, that meant the risk for Captain Loper and his starliners was gone too. But they didn’t have any way to notify Captain Loper of this change, nor did they have any way to reach orbit. More seriously, the dangerous nature of Uxmal itself remained. How might their proximity to the pyramid be damaging their bodies? Specifically, testes and ovaries? Lethiah had said she didn’t know how long it took, before sterility was permanent. Did Wyo want to live the rest of his life without being able to have kids? For that matter, did Lady Oswight? She—above them all—had a vested interest in continuing the family line.
But they wouldn’t know for sure until they’d actually gotten off the surface, and could see a real doctor.
Meanwhile, the kosmarch was still his prisoner. If Nautilan was moving—or had moved additional assets into Uxmal system—he’d have to use her for leverage. Either buying time until Starstate Constellar could rally enough forces to break Nautilan’s hold on Uxmal interplanetary space, or brokering some kind of arrangement, with Vex serving as currency. Surely a kosmarch carried high value with Nautilan military planners? They’d think twice about trying to take Uxmal again, as long as they knew Vex was in Constellar’s custody.
“I think we need to find out who—if anyone, from Captain Fazal’s group—we have left,” Wyo said. “Then, we’d better see if Lethiah is willing to let us use her home back at the ark, for both temporary headquarters and a temporary brig. I think we’re going to be here for a while. At least until Captain Loper—or Admiral Mikton, or somebody else from Starstate Constellar—can send additional ships.
“But I am getting ahead of myself. Mister Axabrast, how good are you at bandaging ribs?”
“As good as I need to be, lad,” the old man said, looking at Lady Oswight—whose hands were wrapped around Wyo’s supportive arm.
“As good as I need to be.”
Epilogue
It was a full week before the Oswight yacht returned to Uxmal space. When she did so, she brought with her a dozen small frigates, corvettes, and one aerospace carrier ship, which had all been hastily shunted to Oswight space, once word got out that Admiral Mikton had gone over the Slipway to secure the new system. If they had been expecting immediate Nautilan resistance, they found none. Nor did they find any trace of Admiral Mikton, or her command. They passed through the outer reaches of Uxmal system, noting the various signs of battle, and leaving several of the corvettes to begin salvage operations—specifically looking for the Keys which had been scattered through Uxmal space like pearls.
Once arrived in orbit around Uxmal proper, they found three Antagean starliners in good working order, and a grateful Antagean captain, who’d been driving himself to distraction over the fact that he had no way to bring any of the people on the surface back to his ships. Nor had he been able to communicate with them, despite the fact that the Nautilan destroyers which had been guarding Uxmal against all comers had disappeared.
The site of the pyramid had been under constant surveillance since the Antagean ships had returned from their exile in orbit around the big jovian world near the system’s sun. They’d sent down as much equipment and as many people as they could, using emergency pods, and the one or two drop modules they could manage to return to serviceability. But with wireless completely out, once anyone dropped to the surface, there was no way to know anything. No status report from below.
When three aerospace planes did depart—laden with people and supplies—they carefully flew over the entire pyramid site, noting the scorched crater where the prior Nautilan landing site had been, and chose instead to put down well far of the pyramid itself, on a flat stretch of exposed rock that formed a low cliff overlooking the sea on the far side of the huge, old wreck which dominated the beach opposite the pyramid.
Lieutenant Commander Antagean was there to greet them when they dropped their boarding ramps. As were a small handful of other DSOD personnel, some of them TGO by the looks of their weapons. There was also a crusty old former colour sergeant—pressed back into duty at the lieutenant commander’s behest—bossing the enlisted.
Captain Loper, of Antagean Starliners, was the first man down, almost running to greet his boss at the edge of the makeshift landing field.
He hugged Wyodreth—whom he’d known since boyhood—until the lieutenant commander begged off, citing recent injury to his chest, which still hadn’t fully healed.
“Damned glad to see you,” Captain Loper said enthusiastically.
“Not nearly as glad as I am to see you,” Antagean said.
“I’m sorry I didn’t come down sooner. Did the stuff we sent—with the people—help?”
“It all helped,” Wyo said. “But I think we might have a bigger problem on our hands. It’s not safe here, Captain Loper. Not for any human. What’s more, the one person we’ve been relying on to give us answers—about this place—is dying.”
“Dying?” Captain Loper said. “Not Lady Oswight!”
“No, not her. But Lady Oswight’s been working with the dying person around the clock, to try to absorb as much knowledge as she can before the end.”
“Who is this person?”
“Somebody older than you and me put together, times a hundred,” the lieutenant commander responded. “Would you believe me if I told you she was the lone human survivor we found on this world? And would you believe me if I told you she was from Earth?”
“No,” Loper replied.
“Well, there’s time yet for you to be convinced, like I was. I just hope Lady Oswight is successful learning what she needs to know.”
“What’s so important about that?” Loper asked. “We’ve got time to study this place now. Really dig in, and find out what’s what.”
“Not nearly as much time as you think,
” Wyo warned, “and then Lady Oswight may be the only one left who will know how to make the connection.”
“Connection to what?”
Lieutenant Commander Antagean’s arm and finger pointed back to the land—at the slab-sided, sharp-angled, pristine pyramid.
Acknowledgments
Book Two Syndrome. My mentor Mike Resnick talks about it. My editors at Baen suffered through it with me. This book began on one military deployment, and has since been finished on yet another. A lot of my struggle stems from the fact I was a short fiction guy before I successfully tackled long work. Retooling for long form has been—and continues to be—a process. I learned a lot while doing A Star-Wheeled Sky. I hope my fans from my previous Baen novel—and my continued short fiction output—have enjoyed what I’ve done here. Star-Wheeled contains a lot of ideas packed into a single volume. So many ideas, in fact, I worried endlessly that the ideas might swamp the characters. Similarly, I worried that characters who organically grew over the creation of the story, would become so prominent as to dwarf others. Ultimately, I vacillated most on deciding where to stop. Because there is a lot more “there” there. Having peopled the stage, and set the drama in motion, where does it all go? I hope you will be with me to find out.
Meanwhile, I want to acknowledge friends and family who’ve been essential since 2015. Larry Correia, Mike Resnick, Mike Kupari, Dave Butler, Kevin J. Anderson, and Sarah A. Hoyt—for being my inspiring and encouraging colleagues beneath the Baen banner. Annie O’Connell-Torgersen, and Olivia Torgersen—the best wife and daughter a Book Two Syndrome sufferer could hope for. Dave Doering, Blake Casselman, and DawnRay Ammon—for always making me feel at home in the Intermountain West genre convention scene. And to Martin L. Shoemaker, who has been my colleague in the pages of Analog magazine—a man who somehow knows just the right thing to say, at just the right moment when I need to hear it. Thank you, everybody.
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