by David Ryker
They plunged into the storm and shapes began to appear. The swirl of the sand hid the terraforming towers but Loreto knew they were there. Every colony sat in their shade. Even the layout of the settlement was familiar. Find a flat piece of ground, set up an out-of-the-box colony, same on every planet. Only thing that changed was the suns and the stars above.
Homes and stores and workhouses rose up like shadows between the sand, but no one appeared. No corrupted bodies and no survivors. Every step closer to the comms station helped to harden the guilt Loreto felt. He’d failed these people; they were dead because of him. He’d let the Symbiot through.
Pulling the mask tighter, he led the party forward and didn’t stop to watch doorways or streets. He knew the town was dead; he could feel the lack of life radiating out from the buildings as though they were on fire and he was feeling the heat on his face. They burned with vacant shame.
The sand scraped against the wind, a thin and scraping sound. A wiry drone that whistled in the ear and wore down the senses until there was nothing left.
Loreto heard a real sound. Clunking and wrenching. Metal limbs moving. Vanis and Tach raised their rifles. A robotic sentry tumbled out of a doorway and spluttered and tried to hold them in its sights. It collapsed before anyone could fire a shot, crumpling into a pile of loose wires and charred metal. These were the only defenses the colony folk had. It hadn’t been enough.
The admiral kicked the wreckage as they passed. There were scorched scars across the body plates and a spreading black corruption that he’d seen on the desiccated bodies. They’d tried it on machines, too.
They found dead humans, their bodies too ravaged for the corruption to take hold. Loreto paused to consider burying or burning the deceased but moved his men forward. Better to focus on the living and the message he could send to keep them that way.
There should have been more, Loreto knew. The colony had been fully populated. The Symbiot had taken them away. Assembling an army by infecting the already conquered.
Vanis gasped through his mask and everyone stopped and turned to him. His rifle sagged and he adjusted his goggles as the sand pinched at their collars. He pointed at something.
To the side of the street was a great shadow. Taller than two men, shaped like a human, it struck a pose with one arm in the air and another stuck defiantly on its hips. Loreto knew it too well. He ignored it and moved on.
An out-of-the-box statue for an out-of-the-box town. Someone in the universe was making a fortune selling low quality statues of King Assadias to low quality colonies. Not just selling them the statue, Loreto knew, but selling them the dream of defying the Senate. The distant dream of potential insurrection, a blank slate onto which they could project their ambitions.
None of them knew the real story. None of them cared. It was all black and white to the people who put up the statues. Loreto understood the intricacies and the color of Red Hand’s story. He’d made it his business to understand. But no one wanted to listen to a man’s desperate attempts to absolve his ancestor. They wanted the dream instead. They wanted the legend. They wanted the statue.
Loreto waved them on before Vanis could get a good look and they came to the comms station not long after. He kicked open the door without much effort and pulled off his mask as he stepped inside. Stale air slipped into his lungs.
Winding through the corridors of the building, they came to the terminal and found a screen warning them of a message not sent. Loreto played it and heard the shrill screams in the background as an official-looking man begged for his life and for the Senate to send help. He didn’t even get to the end of the message. It hadn’t sent.
With a quick finger, Loreto erased the dying man’s message. He didn’t want to hear the screams. They were all his fault.
Without rehearsing, he recorded his own message. Not like the ones he’d sent from the shuttle. This was shorter. Sharper. Hammered into shape on the anvil of self-loathing.
Be warned. Be ready. The Symbiot are stronger than we imagined. They have greater numbers than we feared. Do not be rash. Do not be weak. Kill them all.
Loreto entered his credentials and sent the message out, broadcasting it to every high-ranking official he could find. Someone would listen, even if Fletcher ignored it.
There was no confirmation that the messages had been received. All that came through was a generic message from Fletcher, summoning every human vessel to Istria under his command. But no confirmation, no indication that he had received Loreto’s plea. I wonder who will actually follow him.
“What do we do now, sir?” Vanis asked. “Join up with Fletcher?”
“Commander Fletcher,” Loreto corrected him and sank into his own thoughts.
A rallying cry had been issued by the head of the military, summoning every ship in the Fleets. The man was planning a showdown, a great battle. He had no idea what was waiting.
But Loreto had been told to guard the Exiles, to make sure those strange beings stayed outside the Pale. Deal with one and then the other, that was Fletcher’s way. Assigning them a babysitter was just the commander’s way of sidelining the First Fleet and seizing a monopoly on the glory.
The message was sent. There was nothing more Loreto could do to warn Fletcher. Should he make the jump through the trace gates and meet up with Fletcher and lend his hand? If the Symbiot were still a few hundred ships, the humans should crush them without the Vela’s help. If their ranks had been swelled by the dead, the Vela would be just another victim.
I’m missing something, Loreto thought. There’s information I don’t have. I don’t know enough. I can’t make these decisions. I’ve already failed because of how little I know. I have to learn more.
“We go back to the shuttles,” he told the two men, a plan forming. “Back to the Vela, back to the Pale.”
“We’re not joining Fletcher, sir?” Vanis pulled on his mask.
“Commander Fletcher gave us our orders.” He ignored the man’s disrespect. The feeling was mutual. “We’re going to see the Exiles.”
A thought hounded him constantly. The Exiles knew more than they had told him; they had something they were holding back. Information, a weapon, a solution. They had to have something.
Loreto pulled up his own mask and prepared to step into the storm.
14
Hess
14Hess
The presidential ship owed more to ancient galleys than modern technology. They had been sailing through system after system for twenty hours and Hess hadn’t slept. The trace gates threw them along the clean, authorized corridors. On the inside of the ship, the only sound was a slight hum that never altered in pitch. Where other travelers found themselves clogged in the veins of Federation bureaucracy, clotted around the customs ports and having their pips relentlessly scanned, Saito’s entourage was waved through without a second glance.
Few people were permitted to enter the Spartan system. According to the Senate, these uppity people were simultaneously a backwards, degenerate colony and master ship builders. They were uncouth and distant and idiotic, yet they were the greatest threat to the Federation anywhere in the universe. This was the great Spartan lie and one that took years to unlearn.
Hess reclined in his seat and tried to explain the situation to Alison. He couldn’t help but glance around at the fittings in their quarters. They occupied the smallest cabin, though it was still lined with nanometer-thin gold plating and antique furniture infused with modern technology. His chair floated, held in place by a minute anti-gravity system which rocked him back and forth with a regular rhythm.
“We’re the only two people not from Earth,” he said again. “That’s why they’ve stuck us with the smallest cabin.”
Alison shook her head, waiting for more information about the Senate’s control of the Spartan reputation. But Hess didn’t want to dismiss the idea. As a ranking government official, he should have been awarded better quarters than the guards from Providence. Another slight agai
nst his colony origins, but he put his complaints to the side.
There was an idea of Sparta, Hess explained. One peddled throughout the Federation, in literature and films and everywhere else. It was the idea Alison held, of a rough and barbaric culture, the same idea Hess had believed himself until only a year ago.
After countless rebellions, after their senators abstained from their seats, after their continual attempts to convince other planets to rise up against the Federation, Sparta had been cut off. The trace gate into the system was the most heavily policed; no media or citizens were allowed in or out. The only reason they were not simply obliterated was their engineering skills, so superior were the ships they built.
Such limited access to the system allowed the Senate to craft an image of Sparta. An uproarious, disgusting place; the source of constant sorrow and concern; the root cause of every problem plaguing the colonies. By providing people with someone to blame for their troubles, the Federation simultaneously sidelined their most disruptive subjects and brought their loyal colonies closer together.
Alison pressed him for more information, but the journey was too short and the subject too corrosive to discuss at length. Silently, he pointed around the room. The violent run-in with Van Liden had been a reminder that few people in the upper echelons of the Federation had his best interests at heart. Everyone hated Sparta and feared them. Thus, meeting with their leadership would have been suicidal for any hopeful presidential candidate. For the first colony candidate to even consider the idea was tantamount to treason.
“I don’t even know what a trace gate is,” Alison said, exasperated.
“It’s just a portal.” Hess adopted his lecturing voice. “Two distant points between which intergalactic travel can be accomplished unencumbered. No stray planets or moons or occasional comets to knock into. It’s the safest pathway and allows ships to travel between galaxies without running the risk of hitting any debris or asteroids or anything like that. Obviously, it costs money to pass through and the Senate takes a tax on that, and they scan the pip of everyone who uses them…”
Hess had researched the question. Not many people actually knew what the gates were and he enjoyed doling out knowledge. Alison just stared at him.
“That’s not an explanation.” She frowned. “Where do they come from? Who invented them? Why can’t I just travel between systems anyway?”
“You’d hit something,” Hess began. “No one wants to collide with even a tiny meteor when travelling at–”
Alison waved her hand.
“Details,” she dismissed it. “How does it even affect our plan?”
Hess smiled, relishing another chance to show off his connections.
“I messaged a contact of mine on the Spartan trace gate. It’s the only way into their system; you won’t find a more heavily policed port in the Federation. Anyway, I happen to know that his sister is being held in a cell on Inca for smuggling. I pulled some strings, arranged for her to be released, and he allowed a few messages through on my behalf.”
“You did all this while we were travelling?” Alison eyed him suspiciously. “I haven’t seen you move.”
Hess tossed his page up and down in the air.
“Some of us can change the universe while sitting still, Alison. Oh, and one more thing—” He remembered the words Van Liden had snarled while hanging him over a balcony. “Maybe do something to cover up your… that on your neck?”
She sat back in her chair and laid a self-conscious hand across the birthmark, a pang of guilt hitting Hess in the gut. I can’t risk exposing her to whoever’s watching, he thought, and that mark does make her stand out. Just wait till they find out who her father is…
So far, he had moved heaven and Earth to make this meeting happen. Hess knew she was impressed but didn’t want to admit it. Having an accomplice, someone to see behind the curtains while he plotted, made him feel good. Finally, another person could see the genius he saw in himself, divorced from all the internal self-doubts.
As they burst through the final trace gate and into the Spartan system, Hess crouched over his page. Aloud, he espoused on the potential orders needed for a new Fleet, of potential trade deals he hoped to conjure. Silently, his fingers plotted, sending coded messages to contacts he had never met.
Arriving above the planet’s capital city, Agios-Nikon, they prepared to board a shuttle and sat in the departure bay while Saito and his underlings readied themselves. A limited selection from the Star Chamber had been selected, including armed guards led by Van Liden, a throng of diplomats to argue on the president’s behalf, and a few of the thicker-skulled generals.
Hess recognized Neko, a spindly man the wrong side of middle age. Rumors abounded in Providence that he sought the company of women and never kept his hands to himself. Hess placed himself between the man and Alison at every opportunity. He knew how certain men of Earth treated girls from the colonies.
They boarded the ceremonial shuttle, a Spartan design sprung from storage as a diplomatic gesture. A stupid move, thought Hess, which had Saito written all over it. It reminded everyone of the superiority of the Spartan ships compared to the dreck produced elsewhere and weakened the president’s hand on arrival.
As they descended, Hess ran a finger along the pin stuck to his breast. It felt odd to arrive on a colony, finally, with the weight of the Federation at his back. This was what he had always wanted, he reasoned, what he had always promised his mother. But he was not arriving as a liberator, ready to throw off the shackles of the Senate. He was travelling under Saito’s order, demoted to the role of facilitator.
When the shuttle landed, Hess stroked the pin one last time and asked for his mother’s forgiveness. He hoped the Spartans would notice the trinket, even with all of the modifications he’d made.
The doors opened and Alison shielded her eyes while the guards formed two columns outside the ramp and awaited their president. Saito held himself back in the shuttle for a moment, running a fingernail through his hair and adjusting his clothes, carefully constructing a grand entrance in his mind. He stepped out into Sparta with his generals beside him.
They were alone.
“Where are they?” Saito stopped and turned to his generals. “Why is there no one here? Is it a trap?”
Alison’s eyes widened and her mouth hung low. The world was not the wasteland of the Senate propaganda.
They stood on a terracotta-tiled floor on a circular shuttle pad in the center of a vast, emerald lake. Lilies and vines wrapped around the edge of the platform, connected to the distant land by a straight stretch of road. Two suns shone above, birds sang, and a gentle breeze wafted floral scents toward them.
At the end of the bridge was a sheer cliff face. Dark mountains watched over the empty lake, hundreds of meters high. As far as Providence drilled down into the Earth, these columns rose up above Sparta, more sheer and straight than any on Earth, like stone fists punching up toward the heavens. They each wore resilient crowns of snow in spite of the fierce twin suns passing overhead.
“It’s beautiful,” Alison sighed. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Hess held a hand out in the breeze and felt it blowing upwards. He stepped closer to the edge, nudging aside lilies with his expensive shoes, expecting to see a ripple twinkle below. But there was only a void. He toppled backwards, staggered, scared of falling over the edge.
“It’s not a lake,” he told Alison. “We’re high up. Really high.”
Trying to regain his composure, Hess oriented his body. They hadn’t landed on the surface of the planet. They were in the upper reaches, looking over a long drop. The silence told him how far it was to the ground. He straightened his collar and noticed the generals laughing at him.
“Come on,” he asserted and began to lead the party along the terracotta pathway toward the cliff face. “Agios-Nikon is this way.”
The presidential party shrugged and followed him, Saito huffing and blowing at the great insult
of not being met on arrival. As they reached the cliff face, two people appeared. One of them held a page in her hand while the other controlled a camera drone. Media figures, trying to interview the president. Hess urged them away before Saito said a word. If details of the meeting leaked, it could create a public relations nightmare throughout the Federation. Van Liden stepped forward and smashed the camera, and the guards threatened the reporter until she fled.
Hess smiled as they reached solid land. The disruption was his handiwork; the reporter alerted in advance as a sacrificial lamb. A way to convince Saito of his loyalty by removing the prying media from the president’s presence.
They walked through a tunnel bored through the mountain itself, lit softly by strips of illuminating material stitched between the tiled ground. A long, winding walk which took all of twenty minutes. After being aboard the president’s ship, all polished metals and slick surfaces, the natural curves and bumps of the Spartans’ construction felt warmer.
The tunnel ended and they found themselves in an open space, surrounded on all sides by towering stone faces. Two rows of pitch-black mountains created a steep valley and the party leaned back and tried to see the peaks. At one end of the valley, a network of dark tunnel entrances led—Hess presumed—to other landing sites. At the other end was a sheer set of tiled stairs, cut into the face of the tallest crag, littered with trees and plants, with birds toppling and twisting joyfully through the thin clouds. The steps disappeared up into the heavens and they stood on the floating tiled walkway and wondered which way to turn.
Saito and his men complained again of not being met while Alison gaped and prodded Hess in the elbow and pointed toward the birds that loped and dipped between the branches of the trees.
There was no other option, seemingly, but to climb the stairs. Hess led them forward, growing more worried by the second about the reception. I’ve staked my reputation and my plan on this meeting, he thought. A way to unravel Saito by giving him what he wants. He’d never considered how the Spartans might let him down. When he’d told them of the meeting, they’d seemed enthusiastic. Not enthusiastic enough to meet up at the landing site, he thought.