by Dan Schiro
The freyan and durok survivors murmured prayers in old languages, as their races had once thought the Engineers gods. One of the great apes, whose people boasted some of the leading Engineer-focused scholars, wept. Zovaco, Mervyn, and the rest of the Union officers muttered to each other in hushed voices, while the Briarhearts fidgeted with their hands near their weapons. Even Orion’s crew seemed awed. Kangor’s wolfish nose twitched as he sampled L’yak’s strange floral scent, and Aurelia stared at the temple guardian unblinkingly, no doubt seeing L’yak in a different spectrum of reality altogether. Commander Vanlith maintained her flinty composure, and Bully trotted up and licked L’yak’s hand like a long-lost friend, which the temple guardian allowed with a bemused smile.
“Orion says you can send us to the Maker Rings,” Vanlith said, raising her voice to silence the rest of the crew. “No ship, no manacite drive, no ether route. Is this true?”
L’yak nodded and smiled softly. “We called the ‘Maker Rings’ something else, but yes. If they still spin, I can send you there.”
To Orion’s surprise, Mervyn spoke up from the back where he leaned on Zovaco’s thin frame. “How do you know… where we will… appear?” His voice came out slow and halting through the gauze of painkillers. “Not feeling well enough… to get cut in half.”
“Mervyn is correct.” Zovaco face strained as he supported the weight of the burly old great ape. “How do we know we won’t materialize inside a structure that’s been built in the thousands of years since the Maker Rings have been discovered? And the fourth ring is without atmosphere or power, despite our best restoration efforts. What if we appear there?”
“Good point,” Costigan grunted, turning to search out Zovaco in the crowd with his remaining eye. “And I suppose we’re traveling using E-tech older than recorded history? Don’t know if that ride sounds safe.”
The crew muttered with a fresh wave of uneasiness. “People, people,” Orion said, raising his open hands. “Relax, I asked all of these questions. L’yak, tell them what you told me, short version.”
L’yak sighed and turned a penetrating gaze to Zovaco. “You still have custodians on ‘your’ Maker Rings, correct? Silent, brown-green, three limbs?”
Zovaco blinked his weary eyes. “Yes, though we call them tripods.”
“The Maker Rings were the beating heart of our empire,” L’yak said with a nod. “We had scores of jaunt ponds on each of the rings, and the custodians would not have allowed you to build over them. You could try, but they would scrub your flimsy structures away until you quit trying.” S/he turned to Costigan. “And those same custodians would see to it that each jaunt pond remained in working order, whether you saw them maintaining it or not.”
This time Orion let the survivors argue it out amongst themselves for a few moments. Then he raised his hands again. “Look, it comes down to a simple choice.” He waited a second, and the others quieted. “We can try to scrape together the materials to build an ether dish, true, and the Star Sentry probably has what we need somewhere. But remember — we don’t just need to find the raw materials.” He scanned the dirty faces clustered on the temple floor. “We need to find tools and engineer the dish, too.”
“Hate to say it, but he’s right,” said Quartermaster Clynn with a bitter nod. “Melting the palladium and shaping the frequency coils would be the real problem. That’s usually done in a clean room.”
“We need to decide, people,” said Vanlith. “The Union likely thinks we were killed mid-ether route, and even if they didn’t, finding this planet is quite literally like finding a grain of sand on a beach.” She gazed thoughtfully at the faces of her crew. “There’s an element of risk in using this jaunt pond, of course, but I’m inclined to take that risk rather than stay here. However, I won’t — I can’t —order anyone into something we don’t understand, something beneath the ether.” She took a deep breath as what was left of her crew beamed at her. “If anyone wants to stay here in hopes of rescue, your commander will stay with you.”
Orion shot her a nod. “Well said. L’yak, what’s the procedure to fire up this jaunt pond?”
L’yak stepped back from the center of the concentric circles and made a sweeping gesture. “Those that wish to depart can simply step into the circle. I assure you, the temple says the jaunt pond is in perfect order.”
After a moment of silence, Zovaco made his way to the center of the circle, Mervyn of Claddaghsplough limping along beside him. “I’ve got an election to win,” he told the room simply.
Aurelia and Kangor swaggered into the circle next. “It’s rare, at my age,” said Aurelia, “to get the chance to try something new.”
“What’s the worst that could happen?” Kangor chortled. “Death?”
This drew laughter from some of the other survivors. Costigan and the Briarhearts joined them in the circle, as did Quartermaster Clynn, who muttered under his breath as he stepped carefully over the silver glyphs. Then the other freyans and the duroks came, and then the great apes. The rest of the SpaceCorps officers trickled into the middle of the temple floor until the decision appeared unanimous.
“Good,” Vanlith said, joining the others in their tight grouping. “We’re all in this together.”
Orion turned to L’yak. “You’re sure there’s nothing more I can say to convince you? Come with us, L’yak. I promise you’ll be very, very popular.”
“Popular.” L’yak’s electric blue eyes seemed to twinkle with repressed sadness. “That might be interesting, but I cannot. There must be some of my people left, somewhere. I must find them. I must find out what happened to the Chosen.”
Orion raised his hands in surrender. “I understand.” They walked together to the stone font, Bully sticking close to Orion’s side. “But you should know, you’re not alone in this crazy new galaxy. You’ve got a friend.”
L’yak’s gaze seemed to burrow into him. “I have no doubt I’ll see you again, Orion Grimslade III, somewhere down time’s river.” L’yak’s spellblade rippled forth to form a spiked gauntlet, and the ancient creature dipped the clawed fingers into the clear liquid of the font. “I have a feeling this is but the first chapter in your story. Now, be silent and go.”
Orion and Bully joined the rest of the survivors between the gleaming glyphs while L’yak stood at the font, head bowed and eyes closed. The group waited quietly, their muscles tense, some sweating. For seconds that seemed to stretch on interminably, nothing happened. Then certain symbols that made up the circles around them lit blue, red and yellow. Different hues emerged in quick bursts, and soon dozens of symbols across the rings glowed with a full spectrum of colors. The palette of luminous paint bled across the stone floor, and soon it seemed as if they stood atop the gently rippling surface of an incandescent pond. Then came the flash.
In that nauseating nowhere of white light, Orion felt like he was falling, but only for a few seconds. Unlike traveling through the folded space of the ether routes, it didn’t take them days to cross millions of light years — they were just suddenly there. Blinking his dazzled eyes, Orion realized that “there” happened to be the central floor of the Grand Chambers, home of the Union Parliament on the Maker Rings.
Apparently, they had appeared in the middle of a legislative session. Nine of the 12 Members of Parliament sat at their elevated seats behind a curving ivory table on one side of the floor, and galactic representatives filled some three-fourths of the bowl-shaped stadium seating that faced the MPs. Banners bearing the Union’s iconic navy-and-white galactic swirl hung behind each MP, and the smaller, more colorful flags of sovereign planets dangled from the high ceiling. The Grand Chambers looked just as it always had when Orion had watched sessions broadcast on the datasphere, except for the floor beneath them. Concentric rings of ancient glyphs had burned through the Union’s galactic swirl to match the pattern of L’yak’s jaunt pond.
For a moment, the surp
rise of seeing the survivors appear out of thin air shocked the Grand Chambers into pin-drop silence. Then the hundreds of representatives roared with indignant questions, while the MPs bellowed into their microphones for quiet or order or security or all three. Union Legionnaires armed with glimmering lightshields and multi-fire assault rifles rushed in and surrounded the survivors, their blue-accented white uniforms extra crisp next to the scorched navy rags of the Star Sentry’s crew.
“Whoa, whoa!” Orion quickly raised his hands in surrender and stepped forward from the huddled group. “Don’t shoot, don’t shoot. We’re not here to cause trouble, everyone just relax.” Orion held his breath for a moment. He could feel the quivering gun barrels trained on him, but the bio-modified soldiers did not fire.
“Okay,” Orion breathed, lowering his hands but keeping them plainly in view. He looked up and addressed Parliament directly. “Um, greetings, good sirs and ladies, your eminences.” He winced. “We didn’t mean to startle anyone, so sorry about that, and, ah, well… this is going to sound really strange. We’re the survivors of the Star Sentry.”
Again the Grand Chambers echoed with complaints and exclamations. This time, the longest-standing MP, Grand Chancellor Claudio the Venerable, flipped on his microphone. “I will have silence,” the silver-haired great ape bellowed in his commanding bass.
“Thank you, sir,” Orion said hastily when the room quieted. “Anyhow, to make a long, crazy story somewhat short, we got shipwrecked, and we’ve got some hurt people here.” He hooked a thumb over his shoulder at the other 47 survivors. “But we were lucky enough to happen upon some Engineer technology that, if you can believe it, used a sub-ether portal to drop us here.” He smirked, selling the insane story the best he could. “Of all places, huh?”
The cycle repeated — representatives clamored to be recognized, and Claudio thundered a demand for quiet. “This session of Parliament is now closed,” Claudio said sternly when the reps had quieted. “All legislative actions will be tabled until proceedings resume tomorrow.” With great finality, Claudio banged an ebony cudgel three times on his high ivory table.
The representatives complained in a steady stream of sound, but they seemed to respect that Claudio’s decision was final. They filed out of the stadium seats for a few minutes. Then the survivors of the Star Sentry were alone with Parliament, the hardened Legionnaires surrounding them like a firing squad. Orion wasn’t sure if he should continue trying to explain, but the Grand Chancellor spoke up before his mouth could get away from him.
“You’re claiming,” said Claudio, “that you used undocumented — unauthorized — E-tech to appear here? On my floor?” He glared down at Orion.
Orion nodded with a cringe. “I know it’s a lot to swallow, but—”
“By the Eternal Fires of the Deep,” said Grobor Gish, a lockhovven known as the “Tentacles of Justice.” “It’s him… here!” He pointed a long gray tentacle down at the floor. “It’s him!”
Orion straightened up a little. “Well! I’m more than a little flattered that you recognize me, sir. I wouldn’t have thought my reputation preceded me in such lofty circles, but—”
“No one cares who you are, you twit,” said Jiminia Pau, a tiny briophyte MP perched in the head of a massive exoskeleton. She was often called the “Little Queen,” a comment on her imperious nature that she embraced. “Him,” she said, the arm of her mechasuit ratcheting forward to point. “The trislav, Zovaco Ralli.”
Kangor moved in to support Mervyn, and Zovaco stepped forward, straightening what remained of his ragged gray suit. “Your Honors,” he said with a slight bow. “Believe me when I say this is not the way I wanted to ‘make it to Parliament.’”
Zovaco smiled in his humble, winning way, but the quip fell on deaf ears. The MPs looked down at Zovaco with a strange mix of uncomfortable emotions playing across their faces, and Orion felt an unnamed dread turn his stomach.
“Zovaco Ralli,” said Claudio the Venerable, handling the name carefully. “By the power vested in me as an elected Member of Parliament and Grand Chancellor of this Galactic Union of Sovereign Planetary Systems, I place you under arrest.”
For a moment, the survivors of the Star Sentry were too shocked to offer an immediate response, Orion included. Then they complained loudly and all at once, having been through too much in the last few days to suffer one more unforeseen twist of fate quietly. Zovaco, of course, looked up at them unflinchingly.
“You’ll have to forgive me,” Zovaco said when the others quieted. “I’ve been a bit out of the loop. Under what charges?”
Claudio leveled his gray, apish eyes at Zovaco. “Charges of treason, espionage and collusion with the terrorist network known as Dawnstar.”
While Orion and the others gaped, Zovaco simply tipped his head and looked up at the MPs with a slight widening of his three eyes. “And… what is it that you think you have as evidence?”
“Do not play the fool,” said a voice from one end of the curved ivory table. Orion looked over to see Curkas Dur Trag Curkar, the one-horned durok MP who Zovaco Ralli was trying to unseat. “We found ample evidence of your betrayal on Jutera-4, at the Dawnstar compound that your hired gun so helpfully tracked down for us.” He aimed a dismissive nod of his single horn at Orion.
“Yes, yes,” added Grobor Gish. “Data transfers from your cube to the terrorist leader, records of siphoned funds, manifestos for misappropriated weapons…” His tentacles seemed to droop with disappointment.
“And they recorded you, old boy,” said an MP called Trevelyan of the People, a handsome freyan man with immaculate red-feathered wings. “An authenticated hologram of you taking part in silly rituals with that fat Kalifa. For blackmail or posterity, who’s to say?”
Tiny Jiminia Pau shifted her mech forward and raised her amplified voice. “We assumed they destroyed the Star Sentry because you had been compromised.”
Mervyn laughed, his sarcastic chuckle laced with pain. “That’s a load of trumped-up phantasloth manure,” he spat at Claudio. “If you’re stupid enough to believe that, Claud, I should have never helped you get elected all those years ago.” He gritted his teeth. “Dawnstar was trying to kill the man!”
“You say that now, Kingmaker.” Claudio settled back in his chair and glowered. “But you won’t when you see Zovaco Ralli bowing to the idols of the Luminous Path with your own eyes. You’ve been fooled, old friend. The assassination attempts were merely… misdirection.”
Quiet until now, the lost ship’s commander finally stepped forward. “Your Honors,” said Commander Vanlith, steely and straight despite her shabby uniform and the soiled sling that held her arm. “I am Commander Katherine Van—”
“Yes, we know who you are, Commander Vanlith,” said Trevelyan of the People. “I would strongly urge you to not further distinguish yourself here in the Grand Chambers.” He offered a rakish grin. “You’ve done quite enough already, don’t you think?”
“You’ll face a full martial inquiry, Commander Vanlith,” added Curkas. “Standard procedure when a Union starship is lost without proof of destruction, of course.”
Claudio pointed a thick finger down at the trislav in the ragged suit. “Legionnaires, take Mr. Ralli into custody… and let no one obstruct justice.”
Orion felt the surrounding Legionnaires tighten up on their weapons, and for a split second he wondered if he should — or could — fight his way out of the Grand Chambers. But Zovaco raised his hands and laced them behind his head, turning his back to the elite soldiers. He gave a slow shake of his head to Orion that said very clearly: don’t fight this. Not now, not here.
As the guards snapped high-density plastic handcuffs over Zovaco’s thin wrists, Orion looked up at the Members of Parliament. When he saw Curkas smiling, he snapped. “This is a set-up,” he shouted. “Zo’s not a terrorist, and you corrupt bastards all know it!”
“That’s qu
ite enough, Mr. Grimslade,” bellowed Claudio, his old, dark eyes burning with the rage of a king. “You’d do well not to slander a house of governance that predates your people’s written word.”
Orion cringed and found he couldn’t meet Claudio’s angry gaze. “This is wrong,” he said quietly as the guards led Zovaco Ralli away. “This is not the way it’s supposed to go.”
“As for the rest of you,” Claudio said, glaring down at them with his thick gray brow furrowed. “You’re not under arrest… yet. But you can be certain that I’ll exercise the right of this elected council to detain you for questioning for a solar cycle, as permitted by the Adjacent and Incidental to Terrorist Activity Act.” A deep scowl settled on his wrinkled simian face. “I trust you’ll go quietly.”
It wasn’t a question.
Chapter 25
“Well, you look like five miles of hammered crap,” said Koreen Dur Kordak as Orion, Aurelia and Kangor dragged themselves through the frosted-glass doors of the AlphaOmega office.
“Thanks, Koreen,” Orion sighed. Bully lumbered past him to lick the hand of the old durok who so often saw to his needs. “A day-long interrogation can do that to a guy.”
The secretary rose from her well-polished desk and patted Bully’s face roughly. “Yeah, yeah, I missed you too, fart machine.” She came around and stalked across the Martian-marble floor, narrowing her yellow eyes as she inspected the three of them. “So, I hear our meal ticket’s been arrested.” She propped her hands on her hips. “Do we still get paid?”
“You still get paid, Koreen,” Orion sighed as Bully trotted across the lobby to flop down on the long leather couch. “You’re an employee, not a partner, so your salary is taken care of. But no, it doesn’t look like we’ll be getting that bonus on Election Day.”
“There must be some way we can clear his name,” Kangor said, his huge fists clenched. “And not for the money. The man could do much good.”