A nearby panel slid away to reveal a corridor beyond, and Qaz’s eyes immediately adjusted to the lower light in that passage. “What is this?” he asked warily.
“It is your future,” the Crafter said intensely, “and it is the means of our justice.”
The holograms vanished, leaving him alone in the nearly lightless chamber. Qaz gripped his chain axe and moved into the corridor beyond the open door. The passageway hooked to the left, and after a few meters he came to a closed door.
This door bore the faintly glowing image of a bull’s head at Qaz’s eye level. He looked closely at the image, and when his horns came within a few inches of the door the eyes of that image began to glow red.
A burst of light from those eyes nearly blinded him, and when his vision cleared the door was open and the chamber beyond was as bright as the daylight outside.
The chamber’s outer walls were sloped inward, and were obviously the outer hull of what was now clearly the pyramid-shaped ship. Light streamed in as though the hull panels were made of a golden-hued glass, and arranged throughout the long, narrow chamber were four perfectly identical, meter-wide spheres made of some sort of dark material.
Each sphere was suspended between a pair of spires, and Qaz walked around the chamber only to find that the chamber appeared to wrap completely around the pyramid-shaped ship’s outer hull. Each of the four outward-facing chambers, which combined to form a square, held more of those dark, identical orbs suspended between a pair of spires. In all, there were twelve of the strange devices, and after he had walked completely around the connected chambers he came face-to-face with the Crafter’s image.
“What are these?” he asked.
“Fuel,” the Crafter replied simply.
“For what?”
“For a weapon which Asterion and I spent years constructing—a weapon which Asterion foresaw would put an end to this entire conflict.”
“What kind of weapon is it?” Qaz asked with genuine interest.
“It is a star killer,” the Crafter said with both relish and reverence. “But it can only be used once. With it you will put an end to this conflict before it claims any more lives than are absolutely necessary. You will bring peace, Asterion’s Heir, and that peace will endure long enough for this region’s inhabitants to stand for themselves.”
Qaz was far from convinced, “You cannot see the future.”
“Asterion knew you would say that,” she said pointedly.
A panel thrummed to life nearby, displaying strange characters on the screen above it. Qaz focused on that screen for several seconds before realizing he could read the writing. The writing said, “Belief is less important than action—Asterion.”
Qaz glared at the screen after reading its unnecessarily vague message. He then turned his smoldering look on the hologram, “What would you have me do?”
“I would have you exercise your freedom,” the Crafter’s image said. “Take this ship—and its crew—and do with them as you will.”
“My ‘crew’?” Qaz repeated skeptically.
“They have been waiting for you,” she explained a few seconds before the unmistakable sound of metal clanking against metal filled a nearby corridor. The rhythm made it sound as if there were eight of them, and sure enough eight spindly-limbed droids entered the room. “They have been programmed to carry out your commands without fail, and with them you will have the means to impose your will upon the universe.”
“My will?” he snorted. “You claim that Asterion’s visions led you to this course, and now that I am here you think you know my will?”
“Each of our lives has a pre-written destiny,” the Crafter’s image said grimly. “And I suspect mine is drawing to a close even as you speak with this limited reproduction of my consciousness.”
“Destiny?” Qaz snarled. “If my ‘destiny’ was to suffer so that I could play some part in this game of yours then my enemy is not whoever it is you think it may be—it is destiny itself!”
The image cocked its head quizzically, “I do not understand. I was not programmed to participate in this line of conversation.”
Qaz chuckled darkly, “Then it would seem that my ‘destiny’ has already begun to unravel—just as I desire.” He turned to the nearest droid while pointing to the Crafter’s hologram, “Destroy that apparition and prepare for takeoff.”
The droid’s vaguely humanoid head nodded and it moved to interface with the holo-projector’s control panel. “You must not do that,” the Crafter’s image said in a tone that was both warning and pleading. “I am here to help guide you and answer your questions. You will need me!”
“I am simply exercising my freedom,” Qaz sneered an instant before the Crafter’s image vanished. “I need no guide for that.”
“We are ready to receive your commands,” a nearby droid said in its monotonous, mechanical voice.
“Good,” Qaz growled, “leave this star system as soon as possible.”
“Yes, Lord,” the droid acknowledged, and the ship rose up from its perch atop the stone pyramid.
“’Lord’?” Qaz grunted before a wicked grin spread across his massive, taurine features. “I could get used to that.”
Chapter XXX: Silent Echoes
“There,” Kongming declared after reviewing the decryption program, “that should decipher the Crafter’s message.”
It had been days since the Unthreadable Needle had departed the Eye, and Kongming had spent every waking moment attempting to decrypt the data slate which the Crafter had left.
“This should work,” he muttered, and after a silent prayer to the Ancestors he activated the decryption program and saw the data begin to unpack on the slate’s local storage system.
Several seconds passed before the process was complete, and when it finished the slate’s screen was filled with the image of the Crafter’s face. Except there was something different about the Crafter’s facial geometry; somehow, the Crafter appeared to be slightly more feminine in this particular image. And her voice seemingly confirmed this difference as she spoke.
“I despise all of this cryptic foolishness,” the Crafter began, “but after three months on the run from the Combine’s security forces I have come to learn the value of such measures. Whoever you are that is receiving this message, I have been assured by Asterion—who I trust implicitly—that your goals and mine are largely aligned. We both wish to protect the inhabitants of the Border Zone from incursions, but it seems that neither of us can succeed alone.”
The Crafter paused, drawing a deep breath as she tapped commands into something just below the pickup.
“I have devised a retrovirus which will permanently alter my neural makeup and remove my memory—all of my personal memory, unfortunately. Doing so will make it more difficult for the hounds at my heels to locate me, and it will minimize the risk of revealing the details of my plan to the Combine if they should find me before my work is done. But if Asterion was correct in his dying assertions,” the Crafter continued with a hard edge to her voice, “then a few decades after recording this message I will be able to entrust the operative portions of that plan—as well as a means to employ it—to Asterion’s Heir, who I will work diligently to prepare for the coming conflict precisely as Asterion was prepared. I take no pleasure in this,” she said tremulously, projecting a far different image than the one with which Kongming had grown familiar, “but it is a task which must be completed or Asterion’s death will have meant nothing. I cannot allow that to happen.”
A data file sprang into being beside the still-playing video, though Kongming could not read the strange letters or symbols describing them.
“Enclosed are Asterion’s final medical scans, which he said you will find useful,” the Crafter continued. “By now, I…or whoever I have become,” she amended darkly, “am on my way to do whatever I can to convince the Combine to rescind the policies which will thoroughly desolate and ravage the Border Zone if left unchecked.”
Kongming had no idea what the Crafter meant by her repeated use of the term ‘Border Zone,’ but his earlier suspicions were all but confirmed: the Crafter was indeed affiliated with, or an actual member of, the human faction whose technological traces he had detected in the Prichtac translator and other technology.
“It will likely be of small comfort to Asterion’s Heir and even less relevance to you,” the Crafter continued, “but I do what I do because I love life in all its forms and expressions. The variety, the ingenuity, the symmetry…the struggle,” she said with obvious passion. “All of it—every last bit—is precious beyond reckoning and deserves to be preserved. It is for that reason that I have decided to arm the inhabitants of the Border Zone with the means by which they might defend themselves. I harbor no illusions as to their individual abilities to turn back the rising tide which threatens to drown them with its darkness, but I cannot allow their diversity—their stories, which are well and truly our stories—to be erased by such cold and brutal policies as those which have brought us to the precipice of this abyss. There,” she said with a short nod, “I’ve said it, and now I am content to let posterity judge my actions. I sincerely hope you will take up this cause as Asterion said you would; much depends on your efforts. Farewell.”
The file finished playing, and Kongming settled back to loudly exhale. It seemed that every one of his suspicions had been borne out, but for the first time in his life he was far from happy about correctly assessing the situation with limited available information.
“You were right, Kongming,” he whispered through clenched teeth before cursing himself, “damn you for always being right.” He saw a new set of coordinates in the first file which had been attached to the Crafter’s message, and he quickly raised Primarch Nail on the com-link, “Primarch, I think we should discuss a possible course revision.”
Chapter XXXI: Reinforcements
“Inbound hyper footprints detected, Captain,” Hephaestion reported twenty eight hours after the conclusion of the fight with Admiral Edelweiss. He paused for several seconds before finishing, “Twenty one total signatures registered; they’re positioned on the orbital plane at the one hundred sixty degree mark.”
“Good,” Middleton nodded, since his fleet had been positioned almost exactly opposite the newcomers. “That gives us time to form up.”
“New hyper footprints detected,” Hephaestion said urgently, “located at the star’s polar north. Total signatures in the second arrival group…twenty one.”
Middleton set his jaw, “Ok…now we can expect a group to arrive directly opposite that one.”
“Confirmed, sir,” Hephaestion reported a few seconds later. “Twenty one additional signatures detected at the hyper limited directly on the southern pole. Total inbound bogies: sixty three.”
“Fancy jumping,” Toto growled with what sounded like grudging respect.
“We’re closest to the polar south arrivals: focus sensors on that group first,” Middleton ordered. He then pulled up an overlay of the star system which showed the locations of all registered warships, along with the Void Hunter traps which had been prepared some twenty hours earlier. Thankfully, the Void Hunters had positioned themselves well for the coming engagement with nearly forty percent of the felines’ five hundred small craft in positions which would interdict the most likely courses the Imperial ships would take.
Everyone in the star system knew what the Imperials’ first priority would be: establishing tactical control of the populated second and third planets. They would also doubtless be interested in re-acquiring the warships Admiral Edelweiss abandoned, but Middleton expected that man’s superior to be made of even sterner stuff than the surprisingly capable and perspicacious Edelweiss—who presently sat in a max-sec cell on the second planet’s surface.
Edelweiss had not panicked when it was obvious he had walked into Middleton’s trap. He had calmly and methodically done everything he could to damage the AG Fleet while also maximizing the recoverable Imperial hardware—hardware which his superior would recover, much to Edelweiss’s personal detriment since he had lost it in the first place. That Middleton had caught him by surprise multiple times in the engagement had made it a clean, almost perfect victory for the AG. But Middleton suspected his bag of tricks was soon to be emptied.
He ground his teeth at the prospect of facing sixty three Imperial warships. He had hoped for a group of forty or so, which even if they had been heavily-tilted toward the capital end of the spectrum would have been a winnable engagement.
But sixty ships, even if they were largely Destroyers, would be capable of outmaneuvering his ships significantly—and since they had the advantage of distance to begin with, it would be difficult to nullify their maneuverability advantage.
“What’s the status of my shields, Chief?” Middleton asked as calmly as he could manage after raising Garibaldi on the link.
“Number two generator’s back online and near spec,” Mikey replied, “but number four is fried. We’re going to have to run without it for at least four days.”
Middleton closed his eyes and took a steadying breath. The last battle had been tough on the Prejudice, but he had hoped Mikey would be able to put her to rights before the enemy arrived. With only three out of his four shield generators functioning, this battle was going to be significantly more stressful than it would have otherwise been.
“P2p to the rest of the fleet commanders,” Middleton said after contemplating his ship’s condition and arriving at a conclusion, “tell them to provide updated readiness reports immediately. It’s time to give these uninvited guests a proper welcome.”
“Each group consists of two Battleships, six Cruisers and thirteen Destroyers, Captain,” Hephaestion reported as soon as the information came back on all three Imperial formations.
“Speed-heavy,” Middleton hissed through briefly-clenched teeth. “There’s good and bad in them being generally lighter than a standard fleet makeup would allow…but since this time we’re the ones defending and they hold the high ground, the good is easily outweighed by the bad.”
“It also suggests that they are a vanguard force,” Hephaestion correctly surmised, once again demonstrating his considerably improved—and improving—tactical diagnostic skills, “and that they were expecting trouble when they arrived. Could it be that there is a ComStat system in play nearby?”
Middleton shook his head, “The ComStat technology is uniform; Kongming’s detection protocols aren’t picking up any carrier frequencies out here.”
“Which means that they either received word of our victory some other way,” Hephaestion mused before arriving at what Middleton thought was the correct conclusion, “or that they were predisposed to enter this star system in an aggressive posture.”
“I’m guessing the latter,” Middleton explained, taking the opportunity to think aloud even though he was already well-committed to the plan he had set in motion. “This system represents a perfect forward base with pre-existing infrastructure, human populace, and proximity to no fewer than two dozen inhabited systems. Even though most of those ‘inhabited’ systems each have fewer than ten thousand sentients who call them home, from here the Imperials could advance or retreat without endangering the next two star systems which I’ve identified as key strategic points in these sectors. But trillium is a problem out here,” Middleton continued, “which means that these ships—most of which are deep-range Destroyers with jump engine designs that maximize the efficiency of trillium consumption per light year crossed—just might have taken the bulk of their fleet’s available trillium in order to reach here.”
Hephaestion nodded, “Which is why you were surprised to find the Imperial ships already here.”
Middleton nodded, steeling his nerves as he described the magnitude of the coming battle, “If we can bring this Imperial task force down in this system, and prevent most of them from escaping, we just might be able to halt the rest of the Empire’s advance long enough for us t
o repair and reform our ranks.”
“The enemy Admiral will no doubt be aware of the situation’s importance,” Hephaestion said with a grim look at the plotter as the Imperial ships finally, after several hours of waiting, began their advance toward the system’s interior.
“As well he should,” Middleton agreed as he finalized the p2p orders intended for the Void Hunters and forwarded them to Hephaestion’s station. “Send that to Mrr’shan, along with my best wishes for her peoples’ success.”
“Yes sir,” Hephaestion acknowledged before sending the message.
“Message the fleet,” Middleton straightened as he saw the polar north Imperial formation, designated Imperial Three, and Imperial Two at the polar south begin their advance toward the third planet. Imperial One, situated opposite from Middleton’s Battle Groups on the planetary orbital plain, did likewise with all three Imperial Battle Groups moving toward the third planet—which had ten times the population of the second planet. “The Stalwart Group is to advance on Imperial Three while the Void Hunters are to mirror Imperial One’s movements.”
“And the SLL?” Hephaestion asked.
“Tell the League to hold position for now,” Middleton replied. “We’ll need them to support us soon enough.”
An hour later, after the light delay elapsed and Middleton received updated sensor data, he saw that Imperial Group Three reversed course and began to pull back while Imperial Two on the other side of the star bored on toward the third planet.
Middleton’s Stalwart Battle Group, already nearly halfway from its starting point and Imperial Three’s present position, was therefore ill-prepared to deal with Imperial Two and was also considerably slower than the Imperial formations. Thankfully Middleton had predicted this very maneuver and immediately called, “Establish p2p: have the Stalwart move to the third planet and have the League move their ships to intercept Imperial Three. Tell them to maintain a constant least-time intercept vector on approach and, if the Imperials reach firing range, the League is to give ground before suffering significant damage.”
The Middle Road (Spineward Sectors: Middleton's Pride Book 7) Page 28