by Eric Thomson
“I see.” Ardrix sat back, eyes on the display as silence settled over the CIC.
One by one, the shuttles circled their target ships, studied it from up close until the officer in charge chose the best ingress point. Then they settled on the hull. Several minutes later, space-suited figures emerged from the crafts’ airlocks, a spacer in each boarding party carrying a spherical remotely operated probe roughly the size of a human head.
Ardrix watched with fascination as hidden access hatches popped open beside the designated airlocks and armored arms reached inside to release the mechanical latches. Airlock after airlock opened, three of the five venting a brief burst of atmosphere, proving they’d been under pressure.
One boarding party member per team, carrying a probe, entered. The outer doors closed, and the primary display’s video feeds switched over to five helmet cameras showing the claustrophobic confines of pressurization compartments. According to the labels, the three larger ones were those of the cruisers while the rest belong to the frigates.
New telemetry appeared on side displays, showing ambient temperature, pressure, or lack thereof beyond the inner doors, emission levels, and, surprising no one, the lack of artificial gravity aboard. The latter would make it easier for the probes to move about. But it would be more challenging for the follow-on humans.
Those who’d entered quickly found the inner latch releases and opened the doors, three to a brief rush of air filling the small compartment; the other two, a cruiser and a frigate, were unpressurized beyond the airlock, though to what extent wasn’t immediately apparent. One by one, the globular probes floated out the airlocks and into darkened passageways, their lights catching details here and there. Then...
Ardrix let out a soft gasp. The form on the deck of a pressurized cruiser had clearly been human, long ago, but was now nothing more than a desiccated mummy with wisps of hair still clinging to a mostly bare scalp. And so it went, ship by ship as the probes found mummified bodies, many showing signs of injury. They saw charred clothing, blackened holes, in a few cases split skulls and limbs twisted at odd angles, when they weren’t missing altogether. Nearby black stains on decks and bulkheads could only have been made by human blood.
“It looks like they fought each other,” she said in a subdued tone. “Perhaps that was the dark aura’s echo I sensed.”
“A battle group, or the remains of one whose crews mutinied during Dendera’s downfall, perhaps?” Torma asked. “Some wanted to head for Wyvern and either attack or defend the seat of empire while the rest were opposed?”
Watanabe shrugged.
“Possible. Without recovering the logs, provided their computer cores haven’t decayed, we’ll likely never know.” He tapped the arm of his command chair with his fingertips, then turned to his chief of staff. “Boarding parties shall enter, make full recordings, and see if they can retrieve the computer cores. The configuration shouldn’t differ greatly from ours. At this point, we might as well take the time to investigate what occurred here. Do you concur, Colonel?”
He tossed the last sentence over his shoulder at Torma.
“I do, sir.”
“Excellent. Then I suggest we leave our people to do their thing and reconvene in four hours?”
“As you wish, sir.” Torma and Ardrix stood.
Once back in their quarters, Torma dropped into his by now accustomed chair and exhaled.
“Can you imagine? A crew divided against itself, locked in mortal combat until no one remained standing. I’ll bet the two ships without an atmosphere were depressurized on purpose. Murder on a grand scale, as it were.”
“When passions are roused to a fever pitch, be they because of political, religious, or social disagreements, our species acts without a shred of humanity against those it perceives as being on the opposite side. We consider them not simply wrong but fundamentally evil.”
He nodded.
“Dendera’s Retribution Fleet being the most glaring example.”
“There were equally horrifying instances during our long history. For example, formerly healthy nations self-immolating due to irreconcilable visions of what their societies should be.”
Torma let out an indelicate snort.
“Considering what we know of the divide between our ruling caste and those of us who believe in the Oath of Reunification, do you think the Hegemony could head along that path?”
“Certainly.” She studied him for a few moments. “Many among us believe the Wyvern Hegemony as it stands has no future. It is merely a last and rapidly fading remnant of the long-dead empire, one slowly dying from its own internal contradictions.”
Torma gave her a wry grin.
“Thanks for cheering me up, Sister.” Then he frowned. “Wait a minute. Just many rather than all? I thought the Void Reborn was of one mind.”
“Hardly. The Order is as split along philosophical lines as any large organization. However, those of us who find no future along the current path are considered by a few as heretics of a sort, seeing as how the Void pledged itself to support the Hegemony’s government and its policies.”
He exhaled loudly.
“So, you see no future along the current path. Wonderful.”
“Nothing is set in stone, Crevan. But steering the Hegemony on an alternate course, one which might give it a real future will need courage, vision, and faith. And boldness.”
Her words, as well as her almost ethereal voice, sent involuntary shivers down Torma’s spine as if she’d given him a glance of what could be. Not an echo of the imperial past but a rebirth.
PART II – FALSE DAWN
— 14 —
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A short, deeply tanned teenager wearing a fisher’s breeches and vest hopped off a rusty bike and carefully leaned it against the priory’s granite walls before racing into the courtyard fronting the infirmary, his calloused, bare feet slapping against worn flagstones. Though partly ruined during the empire’s collapse long ago, the ancient, solemn complex built with black basalt carved from the island’s cliffs had housed the Order of the Void’s mission to the Republic of Thebes for the last three years and still awed the youngster.
He poked his head through the open door and blinked a few times as his pupils, shrunk by the dazzling tropical sun, adapted to the cool, dark interior. Spotting the Sister on duty, he stepped in and bowed at the neck.
“Pardon the intrusion. Aswan Trader just passed the end of the mole, and she raised the signal for severely wounded crew aboard. The harbormaster asks if you can send a medic team.”
“Certainly.” The lean, equally tanned woman with a narrow angular face framed by black hair climbed to her feet and shook out her loose, khaki tropical robes. “Let me gather my people. You may tell the harbor master we’ll be there when she docks.”
He bowed again.
“Yes, Sister. Thank you.”
The boy vanished, leaving Sister Gwen to call for her fellow healer, Sister Renelle, and the two Friars trained as physician’s assistants, Basam and Achar. She warned Prioress Hermina so the locally hired medical staff and trainees could prepare their small hospital. Then, Gwen gathered her field kit, a backpack containing medical equipment and drugs more advanced than the sort last produced on Hatshepsut almost two centuries earlier, before the Mad Empress’ Retribution Fleet destroyed the local abbey and its dependencies.
The Thebes Priory, now home to the Void’s missionary team from Lyonesse, was the least damaged of the old Order’s houses, just as the Thebes archipelago, a minor district of Hatshepsut, was the least damaged of the planet’s subdivisions. That made both eminently suitable as Lyonesse’s beachhead in this star system.
Sister Renelle, dark-complexioned, gray-haired, and stocky, appeared in the infirmary seconds before the Friars, who seemed cast from the same mold. Both were square-faced, muscular, and middle-aged, with short silver-shot hair and bear
ds. They too wore loose khaki clothes suitable for the torrid climate rather than their Order’s standard black.
The four Brethren, along with three more Sisters and an equal number of Friars, were volunteers from the Lyonesse Abbey. They’d left the only home they knew aboard one of the Republic’s newest Void Ships three years earlier and settled on Hatshepsut with the understanding that it might be for the rest of their lives. However, since their work would be for the greater glory of the Almighty and humanity's reunification, none of them felt any regrets at leaving everything behind. In time, more Brethren would join them as the mission expanded beyond Thebes. Then, eventually, the Lyonesse Defense Force would establish an outpost that would grow into a full garrison with the amenities of home. But that might not happen in their lifetimes.
Gwen made sure her three companions carried sealed packs, then led them into the glare of an equatorial mid-afternoon. The priory sat on a hilltop above the town of Thebes, a major seaport spread out along the three sides of a broad bay. From that vantage point, they could see the nearest of the republic’s over one hundred islands and the countless dun-colored, single-masted sailboats of the fishing fleet bobbing on the calm, shimmering waters just beyond the harbor.
One ship, however, caught their attention as they hurried along the gravel road leading into town, a three-masted merchant barquentine slowly shedding forward momentum as its crew hauled in the sails. One of dozens operated by Theban traders, the ship carried an auxiliary Stirling engine which took over, propelling her at a stately pace toward one of the long wooden piers jutting out from a stone quay.
“Anyone know where Aswan Trader went on this trip?” Renelle asked, her voice steady even though they moved at a half walking, half running pace.
“I believe she planned on circumnavigating Aksum,” Basam replied, naming the medium-sized, oddly shaped continent fifteen hundred kilometers west of the Thebes Archipelago, parts of which largely escaped the worst of the Retribution Fleet’s wrath.
Friar Achar let out a grunt. “Pirate waters.”
“Nothing that can outrun or outgun one of the trader barquentines. But let’s hope their people weren’t hurt during an engagement with Aksumite or Saqqaran pirates because it would mean the ship’s medic has been dealing with them alone for a week or more, if not longer.”
“It would have been worse before we equipped the merchant fleet’s sick bays properly,” Gwen said. “But let’s not borrow trouble. Sailors sometimes fall from masts in a gale and break sundry bones, and there was a storm out over the ocean to the southwest yesterday.”
The four entered Thebes proper at the base of the hill, hurrying past a mix of sagging imperial-era buildings and more recent construction. They took one of the broad avenues connecting the port with the large island’s interior, where farms produced much of the republic’s primary food exports.
By now, whenever the locals saw one or more Brethren moving at speed while carrying an easily identifiable medic pack, they stepped out of the way, just as their ancestors would have yielded to ambulances equipped with flashing lights and sirens back when ground cars still existed. Nowadays, all that remained were animal-drawn carts and the odd Stirling engine-equipped carriages, and the Brethren yielded to them rather than risk being run over by an inattentive driver.
They reached the quay just as Aswan Trader’s crew tossed her mooring lines to the stevedores waiting on Pier Two. By the time they were alongside, both a gangway and the ship’s captain had appeared. The latter waved the Brethren aboard with urgent gestures. After three years, Gwen knew the merchant shipmasters by their first names and dispensed with formality as she stepped onto the wooden deck.
“What happened, Lars?”
“We were attacked by pirates aboard a swarm of small, fast boats in the Central Passage five days ago, just before we could clear the last of those infernal islands. Buggers are upping their game, if you ask me. Had to fight them off because wouldn’t you know it? Someone sold them slug throwers. Not accurate at a distance and on the water by any means, not like ours. But put enough of them into action, and the odd shot will find a target. Three of mine took hits before we sank the bastards and their damned weapons. No survivors that we could see, thankfully, so they won’t try that again. Doc extracted the slugs, but they’re doing poorly.”
“Call for a Stirling engine carriage and prepare stretchers. We’ll examine them, perform any necessary first aid, but if they’re doing poorly, it’ll be a hospital bed at the priory.”
“That’s my thought as well.” Captain Lars Fenrir, a man whose tanned, weather-worn features surrounded by sun-bleached hair and a short beard screamed master mariner, gestured at a sailor hovering behind him. “Take the Brethren to sickbay, Matty.”
“Aye, aye, Skipper.”
“While you check them over, I’ll make the arrangements.”
Gwen and her colleagues followed Matty below decks and forward to Aswan Trader’s sickbay, a tiny compartment that would be overcrowded with three injured. The barquentine’s medic, whose primary responsibilities were as a master’s mate — in a ship with a crew of fewer than forty souls, most men shouldered more than one job — met them at the sickbay’s door. He was in his early twenties, barely out of apprenticeship, and one of those trained by the priory. The Brethren knew him as a steady man, conscientious and hard-working.
He bowed his head.
“Sisters, Friars. I’m overjoyed to see you. I fear my patients are on the decline even though I tried my best.”
“Penetrating wounds can get tricky, especially abdominal ones.”
“And that’s the case with two of them. I removed the slugs, stitched them up as well as I could, and gave them antibiotics, but I fear sepsis might set in, nonetheless. They’re sedated and have been since they were hit, but I’ve run out of sedative and most medical supplies.”
Friar Basam let out a grunt.
“Gut shots are always bad. Now stand aside, lad, and let us be at it.”
“Of course.”
Gwen and Renelle headed straight for the two abdominal cases, squeezing in between cots, while Basam took the leg wound. All three pulled medical sensors produced by Lyonesse’s finest supplier from their packs and scanned the victims. In the meantime, Achar rifled through the sickbay cabinets and inventoried the remaining stocks so Aswan Trader could be resupplied before she headed out again. The ship’s medic stayed in the passageway, there being no room left for anything larger than a cat.
“You did as well as possible,” Gwen tossed over her shoulder after examining her patient’s injuries. “He’s in a rough shape, but the odds favor him. Once we get him in our hospital and I reopen the wound, we’ll know for sure.”
“Ditto with this one,” Renelle said.
Basam looked up from his patient.
“Mine will limp for a while, but he’s lucky. A millimeter further left, and the slug would have nicked this boy’s femoral artery. Unless someone receives immediate medical attention, that sort of wound is usually fatal.”
“Then I shall offer a prayer of thanks to the Almighty,” the ship’s medic said in a subdued tone.
Fenrir’s voice came from behind him. “Stretchers are ready, and a Stirling engine carriage is on the way, Sister Gwen. What’s your assessment?”
“The leg shot should pull through without complications,” Gwen replied. “But both gut shots will need further surgery, so I make no guarantees, but your men are strong, Lars. Their will to live might make the difference.”
“From your lips to the Almighty’s ears, Sister. We are at your command.”
“Let’s bring them up one at a time, but slowly and carefully.”
Once the injured lay on the deck near the gangplank, Gwen thanked those who produced the sedatives back home on Lyonesse. Maneuvering stretchers through narrow passageways and up steep ladders wasn’t for the faint of heart or those who could still feel the
ir serious injuries even though they were unconscious.
Thankfully, the crew had erected a midship awning that provided vital shade, so neither patients nor healers suffered under a harsh sun waiting for one of the rare self-propelled conveyances with sprung axles and rubber tires. They alone among ground vehicles wouldn’t add to the unconscious men’s suffering by bouncing over every bump and pothole between the port and the priory.
When the carriage, a box on four wheels with an open aft deck covered by a striped canopy, finally trundled down the pier under the impulse of its primitive engine, Gwen felt an unaccustomed longing for the air ambulances of a home hundreds of light-years away. They could whisk dangerously injured patients to the nearest hospital swiftly and in absolute comfort, cared for by the best trauma healers in the known galaxy. Here? It was no different from bringing sick livestock to the nearest veterinarian, one who didn’t make house calls.
Would that she lived long enough to see this place regain its ancient birthright, so the good people of Thebes and elsewhere on Hatshepsut enjoyed the same existence as those on Lyonesse and the first few worlds it had reclaimed.
But once they were aboard the conveyance and moving through the town, Achar leaned toward Gwen after making sure the driver couldn’t overhear.
“Sister, there may be a problem with Aswan Trader’s sickbay stocks. Not the consumables, but the instruments. Half of the inventory is gone. The medic must have constantly been cycling his remaining pieces through the autoclave without a break, or not sterilizing, period.”