Veil of Shadows (Book 2 of The Empire of Bones Saga)

by Terry Mixon

  He gestured toward the ceiling. “We gave up hope of seeing anyone from the Empire centuries ago. Until last month. Those explosions in orbit were you, right?”

  She nodded. “It’s a long story, but yes. They drove us back out of the system, but we’re back now.”

  A sound behind her made her turn. Talbot had returned with the Lieutenant. Talbot stayed at the door and Reese strode to her side.

  “Mister da Silva, allow me to introduce Lieutenant Reese. The senior military officer in this party.”

  Reese removed his helmet and rested it comfortably in the crook of his arm. “Mister da Silva. I assume that you’re responsible for suppressing our communication channels. Might I inquire about your intentions?”

  Da Silva smiled. “Our intention was to make certain that this facility was not inadvertently revealed to the rebels in control of this planet. We just want an opportunity to talk. You’re the first people that have given us any hope that this terror might end, so allow me to assure you that we intended no offense.”

  The marine officer nodded. “I can certainly understand your caution. Hopefully, you can understand mine. Not only am I responsible for this exploratory mission, I’m responsible for the safety of Princess Kelsey. I ask that you drop your communication shield in exchange for my word that we will not reveal your presence here to anyone on this planet by a stray transmission.”

  Da Silva nodded solemnly. “I can agree on one condition. I ask that you meet our leadership and discuss the matter further before we do so. Again, I assure you of your complete safety and ability to depart at any time.”

  He looked at Kelsey. “Pardon me, but are you a Princess?”

  “I am, but it didn’t seem relevant at the start of our conversation.” She turned to Reese. “We need to meet with their leadership, Lieutenant. I realize that there’s some danger, but the opportunity this presents is too great to let pass.”

  The marine smiled wryly. “Believe it or not, Princess, I do understand. This is a diplomatic matter.” He speared da Silva with a look. “However, if this doesn’t turn out as friendly as you say, we’re going to have a problem. Am I understood?”

  The man held his hands up, palms out. “Clearly. We shall provide hostages for your people’s safety. I have a dozen unarmed men and women in the next chamber who will stay with your men.”

  Kelsey shook her head. “That will not be necessary.”

  Reese gestured to Talbot. “Bring your team, Senior Sergeant.”

  Talbot brought in his men, but they didn’t take off their helmets. They formed up around Kelsey and their commander as da Silva led them deeper into the facility.

  A large open area waited for them on the other side of the hatch. A dozen unarmed men and women stood waiting, all dressed in blue jumpsuits.

  There were more weapons pods at the back of this room, but they did not seem targeted on her or the marines. If the Pale Ones attacked this facility head on, they could expect to suffer heavy losses.

  A wide corridor to the rear led into a large lift. The heavily armored door slid ponderously aside at their approach. Inside, it was large enough to hold all of them without any crowding. The marines took up one side while da Silva stood alone on the other.

  “Level Hotel, authorization da Silva five zero three.” The lift doors slid shut with a thump of finality. The lift dropped like a stone, but the man didn’t seem concerned.

  “Our leadership council is waiting below. The conference room is right outside the lift, so you won’t need to go much deeper into the facility.”

  “If you don’t mind my asking, roughly how many people are sheltered here?” Kelsey asked.

  “Quite a few. After five hundred years, we’ve pretty well filled the facility up.”

  The lift came to a halt and the doors slid open. Half a dozen armed men stood in the corridor just past the first set of hatches. Da Silva walked to the door and gestured for her to go inside.

  She squared her shoulders and stepped into the room. The massive conference table could hold dozens of people and the chairs all around would seat hundreds more.

  Half a dozen men sat on the other side of the table from her. They came to their feet as she entered. The man in the center didn’t look like he could stand at all, due to his advanced age, but he straightened slowly.

  “I never believed I’d live to see the day that rescue came,” he said in a quavering voice. “Be most welcome here among us. I am Reginald Bell. Allow me to introduce you to the leadership council of Erorsi.” He introduced each man and woman in turn.

  “I am Princess Kelsey Bandar of the Terran Empire. This is Lieutenant Reese, commander of my marine detachment.” It was perhaps a bit much to call his detachment hers, but it was the simplest explanation for the moment.

  Uncomfortable with making an old man stand, she gestured to the chairs in front of her. “May we sit? Better yet, will the chairs support our weight?”

  He chuckled. “I’m not certain that they’re up to the task of supporting combat armor. My apologies for that. If you don’t mind, I’m somewhat old to stand on ceremony.” He gingerly resumed his seat. The rest of the leadership council sat again.

  Bell studied Kelsey carefully. “As you’ve no doubt surmised, the people inside this facility are the descendants of those who hid from the rebels during the invasion. It’s been a long and frustrating time, as you might imagine, so we’re delighted to make your acquaintance.”

  The older man gestured at the walls around them. “This facility was originally a planetary defense center. We attempted to hold off the rebels, but they obliterated the orbital defenses in less than an hour and used kinetic strikes to take out every spaceport on the planet. We only managed to shoot down one enemy ship.

  “Perhaps it was cowardly of us, but we went silent. We shielded ourselves from detection and watched in horror as the enemy ground troops destroyed everything. In less than ten days, there was no more organized resistance. Since then, we’ve been waiting for relief. We’d hoped to see Terran forces in a matter of months. Then it became years. Decades. Centuries. We feared it might be millennia. Or never. Yet here you are. And you cannot imagine how eager we are to hear your story.”

  Kelsey had no idea how they’d kept from going mad in all those years of waiting. All the generations of people born in hiding, living their lives, and dying, never having known freedom from fear. Hopefully, those days were almost over.

  She told them the story of how Avalon had survived the rebel attack. How the Emperor had sent his son to safety with them. They sat enraptured as she went through the adventure of their discovery of the weak flip point leading to this area of space. Of the battle against the Pale Ones. The near destruction of Athena and the almost miraculous resurrection of Courageous.

  Bell’s eyes widened as she finished. He breathed an almost reverent sigh. “As I live and breathe, that is one of the most amazing stories I’ve ever heard. I thought you must come from a reconstituted Empire, but never in my wildest dreams did I imagine how far you’ve traveled to reach us. To save us.

  “And to think, after all these years Courageous once more serves the Empire. After she drew off the remaining enemy ships, I thought the rebels had destroyed her. I can’t begin to tell you how deeply glad I am to have been wrong.”

  Kelsey allowed herself a small smile. “You almost sound like you were there.”

  The old man smiled. “Perhaps I should more fully introduce myself. Ensign Reginald Bell, probationary tactical officer from HMS Courageous, at your service.”

  She took an instinctive half step back and consulted her implants. And there before her she felt the presence of another set of implants.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  They made it to the correct level, but took heavy fire as soon as they opened the hatch into the corridor. The marine corporal in charge of Jared’s detachment exploded in a cloud of gore just as Jared rolled out of the stairwell.

  Two Pale Ones with flechet
te rifles howled and charged. Jared shot the first with his pistol, insanely grateful that his implants helped him target the thing’s head quickly. The savage dropped while his companion exchanged fire with the rest of the marine guards. It died, but so did they.

  Owlet grabbed one of the fallen rifles and shot another Pale One coming from the other direction. The automatic weapon bucked in the boy’s hands, but the Pale One staggered and fell. It hadn’t been armed.

  “We have to get to the computer center,” Jared shouted. “Come on.”

  They ran to the primary computer room and sealed the door behind them. Unlike on the other shipyard, this one appeared new and almost unused. It had no chairs or other accoutrements that humans normally accumulated, but the panels were operational and the lighting was good.

  Owlet added Jared to the command and control file. As soon as he did, Jared accessed the control interfaces. Just like the other computer system, this one wasn’t set up to keep them out. He isolated every active computer and ordered them into standby mode. That took away the self-destruct option. Hopefully.

  “Owlet, can you bring up a systems schematic? If we can find a way to take all these Pale Ones out of the picture, I’d like to do it before they kill all of us.”

  The young computer scientist moved his way through several displays. “It doesn’t look like they have any anti-boarding equipment, other than the self-destruct charges. If everybody’s vacuum suits are intact, we could vent the atmosphere. This station is designed like Courageous and has huge panels that open to dump all the air in less than a minute.”

  “Do it now.”

  Owlet tapped the console. “Venting atmosphere.”

  Jared monitored his suit’s readout and watched the pressure drop to nothing in less than a minute. Reports came flooding in as the Pale Ones stopped fighting and started dying.

  It took a couple of minutes for the marines to sort things out. It turned out that Coulter was still alive after all. He’d taken a glancing hit to his helmet that knocked out his radio. He was lucky the flechette hadn’t taken off his head.

  Unfortunately, there were plenty of dead marines to supply replacement parts. The Sergeant reported to Jared in person a few minutes later. He looked as though he’d been doused in blood.

  “We have control of the shipyard, Captain. But we lost a lot of men taking it. Sixty two dead and twice that wounded. I’m afraid that the Pentagaran marines took the brunt of the losses. I sure hope this was worth the price we paid.”

  “Me, too, Sergeant. Me, too. Take the Pale Ones to the large airlocks and put them all inside. We’ll deal with them once everything is settled. Our people go into one of the pinnaces.” He moved to stand behind Owlet. “See if you can find anything in the system to isolate where the controlling AI is on the planet.”

  The young scientist nodded his understanding. “Accessing communications logs. It looks like there’s much more recent communication to this station. Only about half an hour before we initiated our attack.”

  “What was it trying to do?”

  The young man frowned. “I’m not entirely certain. There are some instructions here in old Empire machine code.”

  “Is that like the old Empire programming language?”

  Owlet shook his head. “No. It’s more basic than that. It’s not really even human readable. It’s as if the AI was attempting to reprogram some of the basic functionality of the computer system. It’s going to take me some time to track down exactly which systems we’re talking about.”

  “What about the source of the transmissions? Can you narrow down the location of the AI at all?”

  “Possibly. Based on the time the transmission came in, it had to come from the same continent that the Princess is exploring. That may not narrow it down very far, but it does rule out a large swath of the planetary surface. I’ll see if I can find anything in the logs to refine that.”

  “Finding out what the AI was doing is more important. Focus on that first. And bring up a schematic of the self-destruct charges on the center monitor, please.”

  He turned to the marine Sergeant. “Have your teams disable the self-destruct charges. I think we’ll all feel a lot better if the station isn’t going to explode all on its own.”

  The noncom nodded and began examining the information Owlet brought up. “Aye, sir. Based on what we saw on the other shipyard, it should be fairly straightforward.”

  “Keep me informed.” He gestured to the new men assigned to babysit him and began exploring the shipyard. It was just as bare bones as the other one. It also had one amenity he hadn’t expected: a large observation deck looking out into the construction bay. Battle damage had breached this section on the first shipyard.

  Why Pale Ones would want or need to be able to see what was happening with the ships under construction, he couldn’t imagine. Perhaps they built it according to the original plan. He might never know.

  The view was spectacular, though. He could see every area of the open bay clearly. The sun was over the curve of the planet and illuminated everything. He could also see the planet below as they passed over it.

  Standing there gave him time to focus on the communications logs he’d uploaded to his implants. They contained literally thousands of contacts spanning the last three years. He imagined that was when it came online. Each was time stamped and had some details about what was said. It also noted how long the communication lasted. Surely, that had to be of some use.

  He frowned and let his attention refocus on the view into the construction bay. Something there was nagging for his attention, but all he saw was the slow motion of the planet.

  Jared’s eyes widened. That was it! The orbit of the shipyard was a known factor. It took almost ninety minutes to complete one orbit. The communications with the surface would be line of sight. Plugging in each of the start and stop times would give him a visual map of where the AI was located. Or at least narrow it down to a more searchable wedge.

  He’d loaded the orbital data before they’d launched so that he could keep track of when they would be able to signal the Princess, if need be. Putting it together in his head gave him a very narrow slice of land that could contain the AI. He projected that as a globe in his mind. The implants made visualizing it easy.

  The area wasn’t that far away from the Princess, relatively speaking. No more than a thousand kilometers. It didn’t include the mountains. He added small markers for all the ruined cities they’d mapped from orbit. Three fell into the target zone. Of course, there was no guarantee that the AI was located in one of the old cities. They’d need to examine the zone more closely.

  His suit communicator pinged. “Mertz.”

  “Owlet here, sir. I found something you’ll want to see.”

  The tone in his voice told Jared it wouldn’t be something he liked. “On my way.”

  Owlet looked up from the console when Jared came in. “I tracked down the altered machine code. It overwrote the controls for the maneuvering grav drives.”

  “This thing can maneuver?” The shipyard was huge, so he couldn’t imagine how.

  The scientist made an ambivalent gesture. “Sort of. It has enough capability to alter its course for debris avoidance. The updated code overrode the automatic settings and put it into a decaying orbit. It’ll start heating up in the atmosphere in a day or so. It won’t last long after that.”

  “Can you override the new programming?”

  “Probably, but I’ll need to recover the original code from the other shipyard.”

  “Make that happen.” He turned to the marine NCO. “I think I’ve done everything I can here. I’ll leave you and your people to finish up. The pinnace will ferry me back to the ship.”

  “Yes, sir. If it’s all the same to you, I’ll have my people see you back aboard. Nothing personal, but the Lieutenant gave me specific orders.”

  “I hardly think that’s necessary for a trip straight back to the ship, but I’m not going to counterman
d his orders. Keep me informed of your progress. And Sergeant? Pass my gratitude to the men. Taking this shipyard whole just might mean the difference between getting home and not. We paid a terrible price, but I couldn’t be prouder.” He looked at Owlet. “That goes for all of you.”

  His team formed up and they made their way directly back to the airlock they’d breached. They passed far too many bodies in Fleet or Pentagaran combat armor. The dead would keep those already in his dreams company.

  Once he was back on board the pinnace and his implants had access to the systems, he uploaded the data he’d collected on the transmissions. The pinnace’s computers refined the area of possibility even more closely. The pinnace had also been scanning the surface as they orbited, looking for any transmissions, so he had a fair bit of data to add to his rough map of the zone.

  There were no large ruins in the narrowed target area. In fact, there wasn’t much of anything. A few rises that someone might charitably call hills and a substantial lake rounded out the landmarks. They’d need to vector the drones into that area to get more detailed readings.

  The pinnace detached and backed away from the shipyard. Jared opened a line to the flight deck. “How long until we have line of sight with the search area the landing team is covering?”

  “Five minutes, Captain.”

  “Raise them for me as soon as you can.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  He watched the planet below as they sped toward Courageous. It looked so pristine. Untouched. Yet the Pale Ones had desecrated it in the foulest way. Not only had its people been slaughtered, they’d been perverted into monsters. Even now, they probably swarmed the green surface.

  How many Pale Ones were down there? How many unmodified humans driven to savagery? He might never know the answer. If there were many Pale Ones, would it be better to isolate them and allow them to die off?

  Could they reverse the process? Courageous said it the Empire had done so before it fell. Doctor Lenard seemed to think it was possible with the machine they’d recovered. If they could wipe the viral code, perhaps they could also deactivate the hardware. Then the poor bastards could live out their lives in whatever peace they could find.