Imperial Echoes

by Eric Thomson

  IMPERIAL

  ECHOES

  Ashes of Empire #4

  ERIC THOMSON

  Imperial Echoes

  Copyright 2021 Eric Thomson

  All rights reserved.

  This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living, or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Published in Canada

  By Sanddiver Books Inc.

  ISBN: 978-1-989314-36-4

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Imperial Echoes (Ashes of Empire, #4)

  — 1 —

  — 2 —

  — 3 —

  — 4 —

  — 5 —

  — 6 —

  — 7 —

  — 8 —

  — 9 —

  — 10 —

  — 11 —

  — 12 —

  — 13 —

  — 14 —

  — 15 —

  — 16 —

  — 17 —

  — 18 —

  — 19 —

  — 20 —

  — 21 —

  — 22 —

  — 23 —

  — 24 —

  — 25 —

  — 26 —

  — 27 —

  — 28 —

  — 29 —

  — 30 —

  — 31 —

  — 32 —

  — 33 —

  — 34 —

  — 35 —

  — 36 —

  — 37 —

  — 38 —

  — 39 —

  — 40 —

  — 41 —

  — 42 —

  — 43 —

  — 44 —

  — 45 —

  — 46 —

  About the Author

  Also by Eric Thomson

  Sign up for Eric Thomson's Mailing List

  PART I – A FADING ECHO

  — 1 —

  ––––––––

  Agonized screams echoed off the interrogation room’s slick, plasticized walls as the prisoner, strapped to a metal table, bucked and spasmed, an expression of utter horror on his haggard face. A black-clad Sister of the Void Reborn stood beside the table, hands joined in front of her, eyes closed, head bowed, as she focused on her victim’s mind. The Sister, a truth-sayer and interrogator, was skilled at releasing a subject’s own inner demons from the darkest corners of the soul, where he’d tucked them away.

  Crevan Torma, a muscular, short-haired man in his early forties, watching from the observer’s gallery, fought to suppress shivers of fear in sympathy with the man he’d arrested on charges of subversion, a capital offense in the Wyvern Hegemony. Like every other senior Guards State Security Commission officer, he’d endured a mere hint of the horrors the Sisters could liberate from a subconscious mind’s deepest recesses as part of his training and understood the power of their talent. He fought to keep his square, angular face, dominated by hooded eyes framing a hooked nose, from showing any hint of emotion.

  His prisoner, a starship captain who’d sailed beyond Hegemony space without permission to engage in illegal trading on former imperial worlds devastated by the Retribution Fleet generations earlier, would see the edge of madness. And then he would understand cooperation meant a clean death. He’d tell Torma everything — who chartered his expeditions, who furnished him with trade goods, who purchased the things he brought back, his deepest desires, and his family’s most closely guarded secrets.

  Torma wasn’t exactly comfortable with the State Security Commission’s classified interrogation procedures, the ones only a small cadre knew about. But interrogation drugs sometimes caused idiosyncratic reactions, to the point of damaging a subject’s mind if they didn’t kill him or her outright. They also often caused the consciousness to drift, making the process a lengthy chore for the questioner with no guarantee of obtaining correct answers.

  Yet the Sisters were human lie detectors, and the psychic torture he routinely witnessed wasn’t necessary with ninety-nine out of every one hundred prisoners. However, the Commission wanted absolute certainty when it concerned crimes against the state. That meant those arrested on such charges suffered a Sister’s intrusions. Afterward, even those few capable of outfoxing truth-sayers wouldn’t dare think about lies or obfuscation.

  The prisoner, seized at New Draconis’ cargo spaceport after the Commission received an anonymous tip, let out one last shriek and went limp, panting like an overheated dog. The Sister, a tall, lean woman whose short red hair framed a pale, narrow face dominated by sharp cheekbones, raised her head and looked at Torma with icy blue eyes.

  “He is ready, Colonel.”

  Torma inclined his head as much in thanks as to avoid the Sister’s unnervingly direct gaze at this intensely uncomfortable moment. Even now, he still didn’t understand how a human capable of touching other minds could use that talent to cause such anguish. Surely the Almighty in the Infinite Void would disapprove, but what did Torma know? He was neither a religious nor a particularly spiritual man. Few in his position could afford belief in a higher power.

  Yet the Order of the Void Reborn had served the Wyvern Hegemony almost since the latter’s founding in return for being the sole religious authority recognized by the government. The Order’s supreme leaders, who’d taken on the title Archimandrite, considered themselves second only to the Regents who ruled over the tiny remnant of the once vast human empire and inspired enough reverence that no one would dare gainsay them.

  “Thank you, Sister.”

  “Shall I stay and monitor his feelings?”

  Much as Torma would prefer she left after what he’d witnessed, interrogating someone accused of subversion without a lie-detecting Sister present would raise eyebrows. And that was the last thing he wanted in such an unusual case. The answers he obtained must be irrefutable.

  “If you would.”

  Torma entered the interrogation room via a connecting door and approached the table. Jan Keter, erstwhile master and sole crew member of the starship Callisto, seemed lost in a trance-like state, his gaze empty though his breathing remained heavy. A tall man, craggy, dark-haired, with a lean, yet powerful physique, Keter bore more than a passing resemblance to his captor. Yet strapped to the interrogation table, he seemed the furthest thing from an all powerful senior Commission officer.

  “He is conscious,” Sister Ardrix said, laying a hand on Keter’s forehead. “Though still struggling to send his demons back whence they came.”

  The merchant spacer spasmed at her touch, though whether it was because of another mental intrusion or out of revulsion at physical contact with her, Torma couldn’t tell. He activated a control, and the table swung up so that Keter was vertical.

  “Jan Keter, you stand accused of subversion, contrary to the laws of the Wyvern Hegemony. The penalty for this crime is death. How you die depends on your cooperation. The Sister offered you a foretaste of hell. Answer my questions honestly, and I shall make your execution painless so you can merge with the Infinite Void. Lie, and you will suffer in this life and for all eternity.”

  How many times did
Crevan Torma speak these words to doomed men and women who thought they could escape the Hegemony’s retribution for violating its laws? The galaxy was a harsh place, more so since the empire self-immolated on the pyre of the Ruggero Dynasty’s overweening conceit. Only four star systems inhabited by humans capable of navigating the wormhole network and crossing space at faster-than-light speeds remained.

  They were holding off a long night of barbarism that might otherwise drive their species to extinction. It was a task with no margin for error and no tolerance for anything that might threaten Wyvern and her three companions, Arcadia, Dordogne, and Torrinos. The Barbarian Plague, long ago, remained the most potent proof that Hegemony laws and their ruthless enforcement were an unquestionable necessity. No one left Hegemony space without permission. No one.

  Torma fished a cylindrical device from a tunic pocket, a shiny metallic tube that fit comfortably in his hand. He held it in front of Keter’s eyes and, with a flick of the thumb, extruded a blade so sharp it could cut through base metals.

  “Where did you get this medical instrument? It isn’t of Hegemony manufacture, though clearly made by humans. Analysis tells us its manufacture is as advanced, if not more, than anything we produce. Yet, no human worlds beyond our own are capable of anything more than pre-industrial technology, if that.”

  Keter, shivering, licked his lips nervously. When he spoke, his voice came out as a broken croak.

  “Hatshepsut. Thirty-one wormhole transits beyond Torrinos. Traded railguns, solar power pack chargers, slugs, and plenty of household items for the instruments and finer tools than I’ve ever seen. Old imperial artifacts too. They can’t produce power weapons on Hatshepsut. At best, they use chemical propellant stuff. Crude and inaccurate as hell, so I got good trading value from the guns.”

  If Keter wasn’t a dead man because he smuggled tech beyond Hegemony space, the admission of gun-running would have sealed his fate. Torma glanced at Sister Ardrix, who nodded once.

  “Well, the instruments clearly weren’t manufactured there. Where did they come from?”

  “No idea. The seller didn’t say, and I didn’t ask.”

  Ardrix nodded again. Keter was telling the truth.

  “What about the other advanced tech items you bought on Hatshepsut?”

  “Same.”

  “Why were they selling tech they presumably bought at great expense from other traders?”

  A faint smile creased Keter’s face.

  “Power weapons, packs, and ammo are more useful than medical instruments when you fear barbarian intrusions. They’d sell me their firstborn in exchange for crew-served plasma guns and a year’s worth supply of ammo. That’s how nasty it is out there.”

  Another nod from the Sister with the expressionless eyes.

  “Other than Hatshepsut, what worlds beyond the Hegemony did you visit?”

  Keter rattled off half a dozen names, then said, “Don’t worry. None of them showed a trace of this mythical Barbarian Plague. Didn’t even remember what it was. I found a few antimatter cracking stations still operational after all this time. Enough to re-establish trade routes. The old empire built tough stuff.”

  That attitude was precisely why the Hegemony strictly controlled traffic. Historical records indicated the plague, one hundred percent deadly, had emerged from the far frontiers and spread through the wormhole network like wildfire until it died out short of what was now the Hegemony just as mysteriously as it appeared.

  Yet, no one knew whether the pathogen still lay dormant on nearby worlds decimated by the Retribution Fleet. But a determined trader with a ship capable of crossing interstellar space at faster-than-light speeds to a wormhole junction that was not under the Guards Navy control could sail across the former empire at will. If they had a sponsor or an owner with sufficiently deep pockets, connections in the government, and access to an antimatter fueling station whose staff wouldn’t ask questions of a ship taking on five or six times the standard fuel load. And if Keter found automated stations still in working order, generations after they were abandoned...

  “Who paid for your expedition?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Torma looked up at Sister Ardrix, who nodded. Keter was telling the truth.

  “How was your ship chartered?”

  “Anonymous contact. In certain circles, I’m known as someone who takes risks if the money is right. They gave me funds and trade goods, an itinerary, access to refueling stations in the Hegemony and told me they wanted intelligence about the worlds I visited, not just profits.”

  “Did those trade goods include the weapons?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you sell them on other worlds?”

  “Only Hatshepsut. The others either didn’t have the minimal industrial base to produce ammunition or didn’t even know what ranged weapons were. Chemical propellant slug throwers, on the other hand? Any pre-industrial place can handle them.”

  Except the Hegemony didn’t manufacture that sort of ordnance. And since the government tightly controlled the weapons industry, the guns traded by Keter were likely stolen from a Guards depot. Or sold by a corrupt official. Torma would eventually find out and ensure more subversives merged with the Infinite Void, along with the manager of whichever fueling station supplied Keter and forgot to log it as required by law.

  “How did the anonymous shipper contact you?”

  “Darknet.”

  Keter’s reply didn’t surprise Torma. No matter how hard the State Security Commission tried to kill it, the darknet remained indestructible. New nodes sprang up whenever existing ones died, and new administrators appeared whenever previous ones went into hiding or into the Commission’s cells. The darknet’s decentralized nature just made matters more complicated, not only among the Hegemony’s star systems but within them.

  “Any identifying markers?”

  “The usual letter and number string. Sorry. Can’t remember it now, no matter how hard the Sister tries.”

  Torma glanced at Ardrix, who shrugged. She was an experienced Commission auxiliary and knew better than to speak during an interrogation.

  “Where did you take on antimatter?”

  “Torrinos Eight.”

  Torma’s eyes narrowed. The State Security Commission Groups in each of the systems operated almost independently, though their commanders answered to the Chief Commissioner, Guards General Cameron Bucco. It ensured cross-jurisdictional investigations became politicized. Few in the three subordinate star systems enjoyed doing the bidding of the Wyvern Group, which technically oversaw the entire Commission as well as the Hegemony’s homeworld. But the Consuls governing Arcadia, Dordogne, and Torrinos, every one of them retired four-star flag officers, liked it that way. It allowed them more control over the Commission units operating in what they considered their private satrapies.

  However, Torma had no choice but to see that the Torrinos Group arrest Antimatter Fueling Station Eight’s manager and determine how he was bribed or coerced into topping off Keter’s magnetic reservoirs. He questioned Keter for a while longer until it became clear the man knew nothing more. Whoever chartered the expedition made sure they would stay anonymous.

  At Torma’s orders, a pair of uniformed Guards privates assigned as jailers dragged Keter off to a cell in the basement of the Commission’s brooding stone headquarters, where he would remain until his trial, in case Torma thought of more questions.

  With Keter gone, he bowed his head at Ardrix, repressing once more the urge to ask how she could meddle with another’s mind and not seem affected by her acts.

  “Thank you, Sister.”

  She returned the gesture. “We serve the Hegemony.”

  “Indeed.”

  — 2 —

  Major General Ishani Robbins, head of the Wyvern Group’s Anti-Subversion Unit, which dealt with political and criminal matters affecting Hegemony security, put on
a thoughtful air after Torma related what he heard from the unfortunate and now doomed Captain Keter. In her mid-fifties, fit, with a narrow, angular face framed by short dark hair, Robbins studied her subordinate with deeply set brown eyes that conveyed less emotion than the two silver stars on the collar of her black uniform tunic.

  “Are you saying the rumors that reached us long ago about another human star system retaining advanced technology might be grounded in reality? Our historians are convinced they belong to the realm of myth.”

  Torma, wearing a black uniform like his superior but with a colonel’s crossed swords and three diamonds on the collar, ran splayed fingers over his skull, ruffling black hair tinged by the first hints of gray, and shrugged.

  “It’s the only way I can explain the items Keter brought back from Hatshepsut. They’re clearly meant for human hands and weren’t manufactured in the Hegemony. Our analysis proved they were made of alloys devised far from our home stars.”

  “The records tell of non-humans with hands very similar to ours.” Robbins sounded dubious.

  “They also tell us that non-humans capable of faster-than-light travel in this part of the galaxy fared badly even well before the empire’s collapse. Besides, we’ve not heard of any coming through the wormhole network in a long time. No, General. Humans with advanced tech capabilities made those items, which means the rumors are true. And they evidently roam the network or perhaps even cross interstellar space faster than light.”