James Wittenbach - Worlds Apart 03

by Bodicea

  By my estimation, the date is December 27, 10135 A.S

  Returning to a system was something Pegasus had never been intended to do.

  But anything is easy to find once you know the way, Lt. Navigator Change put us less than one tenth of a light day from the rim of the system.

  From there, we crept (if one-tenth the speed of light can be called creeping) into the system and hid our ship in a low orbit of the seventh planet. The commander wanted us to learn everything we could about the Aurelians, because they were the enemy now. In ancient times, humans would have dissected them, studied their brains and entrails. The commander’s approach was not nearly so intimate. He wanted to study them, observe their activities from a distance, hiding behind a blind and documenting their movements like that mental female who went off in the Arcadian wilderness to study gongos.

  From afar, our sensors gave us some idea of what the Aurelians were doing, but we had known all along the only way we could do this was to send out Aves, heavily armed, hidden behind holoflage shields.

  Edward got the call to make the first probe into the heart of the former Bodicéa system. Her pilot insisted. A piece of Aurelian shrapnel had gouged her dorsal hull in the earlier battle.

  Freshly repaired, Edward was ready. It launched with a crew of fourteen, including six Marines.

  They first flew to 10 255 Vulpeculus Six, to confirm what their sensors had given them some inkling of. When Pegasus had first come to this system, the sixth planet had been a great ball of rock, small for a planet, too large for an asteroid. Before they had left, it had been shortly after the Aurelians had begun bombarding its surface with thousands of missiles.

  These missiles had contained self-replicating machines, designed to chew up the resources of a planet, create more machines, and reshape the planet into a form that pleased the Aurelians. They swarmed across the surface of the lifeless world like insects, termites or worker bees transforming a dead tree into a nest.

  Now, upon their return, they saw that nearly a quarter of the globe had been carved away, transformed into almost a wireframe design. Inside, layers and layers were being gouged out and shaped. The planet cast strange, enormous shadows over the invisible ship as it passed its far side. It had become a skeleton, like the body of seafarer lost on the ocean floor, his body picked clean by micro-organisms.

  From the shape of the skeleton, and the completed parts, the form and purpose of the machines was clear. Soon, the Aurelians would have another world-ship.

  Edward came out into the blinding, faintly coppery glare of Bodicéa’s home sun. Some of the material from the sixth planet’s mantle was being kicked out into space, ingot shaped hunks a kilometer or more long. A trail of them stretched between the sixth planet and the fifth.

  They followed the trail of the ingots inward toward the next planet, Bodicéa. Almost like an illustrated diagram, the hunks of metal became more shaped, more finished. By the time they reached Bodicéa, they had taken the form of a ring of completed assault ships orbiting above the equator.

  They were also building another invasion fleet.

  Honeywell called Miller over to this sensor station. “Commander, something to show you.” He switched the feed.

  A few million kilometers off his ship’s curse, a blasted wreck twisted and rolled, an Aurelian Destroyers. “One of our trophies,” Honeywell told the Lt. Commander. .

  “Only one?” Miller grumbled.

  “There’s a lot debris out here, actually. Most of it is unrecognizable, and a lot of it has dispersed since we’ve been gone.”

  “How many years have passed?” Miller asked.

  “Eight local years, sixteen Sapphirean, fourteen and a half Republic or something like that,” Honeywell answered.

  Miller turned his attention back to his own station, as Bodicéa grew larger and more detailed.

  Her atmosphere was more teal than before. Dust, smoke, and water vapor concentrations were nine times higher than at Pegasus’s first visit. Across her two great continents were a number of craters and spots.

  “Looks like they’re rebuilding,” said one of the techs. He zoomed in on a construction underway in the middle of a great savanna in the eastern peninsula of the northern continent.

  A huge circle was being excavated.

  “Any sign they’ve detected us?”

  “Negative, commander. The holoflage shields are holding.” Edward passed underneath the fleet of Assault ships and the parade of shadows they cast as the sun came around again. The Aurelians paid them no mind. They kept remarkably level, as though the invasion ships were a natural planetary ring system.

  All of a sudden, the ship seemed to dip. Miller and Honeywell reached for the “oh-shit” handles and steadied themselves. “Ironhorse!” Miller called up to the command module.

  Ironhorse’s voice, deep, firm, unperturbed, came back as though he had begun to speak before opening his comm link. “… just increased by 3,400 kilograms.”

  “What increased by 3,400 kilograms?”

  “Our mass, Commander. Our mass just went up 3,500 kilograms or something. Like something just latched on to the top of our hull.”

  “Honeywell,” Miller demanded.

  “Already on it, sir. It looks like something locked onto the auxiliary dorsal hatch.”

  “What is it? How did it get this close without us detecting it?”

  “It was in stealth mode,” Honeywell told him. “It’s one of our Shrieks.” He showed Miller the monitor. On the back of the ship, a third butterfly shape was nestled just behind the command module.

  “I have compensated for the additional mass,” came Flight Lieutenant Ironhorse’s voice.

  “Stabilized.”

  “Where did it come from?”

  “It’s one of ours. It’s one of the ships we left behind.”

  “They should have all been destroyed.”

  “It’s sending out… an extremely low frequency message. If we weren’t in direct contact with its hull, we would never detect it.”

  “What is it?”

  “It’s a message…I think. It’s… it’s not making any sense.” Strange characters were scrolling across the screen, lining up in rows, clustering in packs.

  “Aurelian?” Honeywell asked, before realizing that made no sense at all.

  A Marine, large and strong, came forward. He was thirty-ish, with a younger face, red-brown hair falling in gentle crests around his face. “I know the language,” he said, with seeming reluctance.

  Miller turned to face him, “Marine…”

  “Modano,” he said quietly. He took the station adjacent to Honeywell.

  “What language is that?” Honeywell asked.

  “It’s an Arcadian dialect.” He moved as though to shield the display from anyone else’s view. “They are coordinates on the surface of the planet.” Miller studied the actions with interest. He knew that Sumac had devised a secret language, known only to his followers, that had never been seen by outsiders. The Marine finished quickly, then blanked the display. “Surface coordinates to the planet.”

  A technician called up another display, a map of the world. Marine Modano put in the coordinates. They highlighted a spot on the northern hemisphere. He then overlaid the map with a geographical relief hologram. “A little box canyon, deep in the wilderness.”

  “Scan the area,” Miller ordered, and then ordered Ironhorse to bring the ship down closer, so an active scan would be more difficult for the Aurelians to detect. The ship descended into the atmosphere.

  “No structures. No life forms apart from native plant and animal life,” the technician said.

  “Same on my scans,” Miller added . “I say we go in anyway.”

  “Could be a trap,” Honeywell said.

  “It’s definitely a trap,” Miller told him. “Let’s just see what’s in it.” Flight Lt. Ironhorse, was undeterred by the thick overgrowth the narrowness of the canyon walls, or the intense cross-winds that buffeted the sh
ip on descent. He drove his Aves down so hard and so fast even Miller was scared. “Easy, Killer.”

  Ironhorse answered him with his deep resonant baritone, as though Miller might have been thousands of kilometers away. “We will be over the coordinates in eight seconds.”

  Miller hit the ground maps. The terrain was covered with old growth forest and thick underbrush. Local climate was just shy of subtropical, hot, humid summers and mild winters.

  It was a warm day in late spring, and it might rain later.

  “Do we have a landing zone?”

  “There’s a clearing… exactly where the coordinates indicated.”

  Miller had an urge to tell Ironhorse how much he hated this, but knew the Ironhorse was in no mood to listen. Ironhorse had possibly loved his wife even more than he did.

  As they descended toward the surface, Miller double-checked and confirmed his suspicions. There was no way Basil could have glided to this valley from its last known position without power. Was this a trap, or was there hope for something he had not let himself hope for. He did not know which was more likely. Nothing short of a miracle could have saved Basil, but the Aurelians could have learned enough from the assimilated crew of Hector, or secret information from Sapphire, to set this up. Then, what if the crew of Basil could have ejected, survived, and then somehow sent the Shriek to contact them. They could be alive, but then, this could still be a trap. Why would the Aurelians go to such trouble? Then, there was the message, in Sumacian, which they could not possibly have known, unless Tamarind had survived the crash and the Aurelians had extracted it from his brain. For every thought that gave him hope of survivors, another thought darkened his hope. He was leaning toward survivors, but keeping his hope subdued.

  The clearing was just large enough to accommodate an Aves if the pilot was very, very good. The wingtip Shrieks on Amy had to brush aside the boughs and branches of several large coniferous trees, and the nose crunched against a waist-high rock formation.

  A pair of Marines stood on either side of the side-hatch as it slid open on a dense glade.

  They swung out pointing weapons and trackers. They painted the trees and underbrush with their trackers. “Commander,” Honeywell called. “There are people out there. I am reading two figures… human… just inside the tree-line.”

  Miller moved forward, his own pulse cannon and tracker covering the space ahead of him.

  A Marine pointed toward a break in the trees, Miller directed his tracker toward the spot. The outline of two figures were plain. They were human, but they were carrying Aurelian-type weapons. They began moving out from the bushes.

  Miller felt sweat trickle between his shoulder blades. Every muscle, every sense was tense.

  Alive or dead, whoever was in those bushes knew. In a second, someone would either be shooting at him, or welcoming him. In the dense humid air, not even a breeze whispered.

  Miller and both Marines snapped their pulse cannons to ready. He heard the Marine next to him draw in a sharp breath, about to bark out a command, a demand for identification. He raised his arm in a gesture to keep silent, while his hand cannon draw a targeting reticle on each of the figures.

  The humans stepped into daylight. They were both male, smaller than Sapphireans. The younger one had the smooth, feminine features of a million other Bodicéan males. The older one looked familiar, a face had seen only a few months earlier, and sixteen years ago.

  Miller stepped forward, “Tobias.”

  Tobias kept his weapon leveled. “Is it really you?!” He demanded, his voice still had that high-pitched, keening quality he remembered, but sounded toughened. “If this is another Aurelian trick, I’ll blow your dambed head off.”

  Miller moved forward. “It’s me Tobias… Lieutenant Commander Phil Miller of the Pathfinder Ship Pegasus.”

  “We’ve heard that before!” Tobias called, coming closer still. “Aurelians are really, really good at faking identity. You’ve come here before, Miller. You sent a fake of my own daughter to betray me. You’ve built simulated Aves.”

  This was not the Tobias Miller remembered. The Tobias he had left on Bodicéa had been a toe-sucking sissy-boy. This was almost like coming home to find a pit bull where a poodle was supposed to be. “How can I prove that I am the real Lt. Commander Miller?”

  “What team won the Planetary Quoits Championship in 10 082?”

  “Who cares?” Miller answered.

  “Who is the most over-rated Sapphirean artist of the last century?”

  “Kirby Brainhammer.”

  Tobias stepped forward slightly. “What is the wingspan of a Migratory Arctic Swallow?” Miller took a step forward. “Borealan or Carpentarian?”

  Tobias flushed with relief. “By Tamarind, it really is you?” By Tamarind? Miller thought to himself.

  “Just as he prophesied, you have returned.” He leaned to the man in front of him, whispered something in his ear that sent him running back through the forest. “Quickly, this way, back to the camp. “

  Without waiting for them, Tobias turned and began marching. Miller, Ironhorse, and a pair of Marines followed. The others stayed behind to guard the ship.

  The underbrush was dense, and the stench of the trees and the rotting duff on the forest floor was as powerful as nerve gas. Tobias led them forward, eyes trained on a seemingly invisible path, that navigated through the only spaces between the trees large enough for a group of men to pass.

  “So, …” Miller began, but found himself unable of knowing where to continue the thought.

  Tobias picked it up for him. “We were told Pegasus was destroyed in the battle for our planet. He told us not to believe it. He told us you would return.”

  “He being Tamarind?”

  “He is Tamarind, yes.”

  “How many on the people of Basil survived the crash? How many are still alive?” Tobias nearly missed a step on the muddy ground. “All of them,” he confided quietly.

  This hit Miller like a slap in the face, like falling out of bed into a pool of ice water and having a shark thrown in afterwards. He had not dared hope for this, but at the same time…

  “Did she blame me?” he asked.

  “Who, your wife?”

  “Za?”

  “Blame you for what?”

  “For sending her ship to rescue you… instead of bringing her back to Pegasus.”

  “She blames the Aurelians,” Tobias said, almost angrily, as though he resented being asked the question. “Your wife was always a woman of practicality. She accepted her circumstances better than most of us. She was … strong.”

  “Why do you speak of her in the past tense?”

  Tobias did not turn and look at him. In the years that passed, he had gotten much older than Miller, become hardened, no doubt, in the battle to survive, and yet he retained a child-like petulance.

  “Is she alive?” Miller demanded.

  “She is, but she is not the wife you left behind here.”

  They passed over a steep gulley with water at the bottom of it. The bridge looked like nothing more than a pair of fallen trees until you examined it closely. On the other side, there was a small clearing, and beyond that, obscured by a ring of trees, was a cave. Two men stood guard outside, a short Aurelian, and a tall man, who must have been from Pegasus.

  Miller approached and addressed the tall one. “You are one of the survivors from Basil. ” The guard showed little emotion, although it was roiling inside him so strongly Miller could sense it. “Aye, Technician Second Class Yak Hewlett,” he answered.

  Miller nodded. “It’s good to see you. We have a Medical Technician back at the ship. He can check you out.”

  “Respectfully, sir, I am in no need of medical attention. He is waiting for you in the cave, sir. Please do not keep him waiting.”

  Miller was taken aback. He had not had time to envision how he would feel reuniting with lost shipmates would work out, but he never would have guessed ‘creepy.’

  Sil
ence followed. Miller could hear birds in the trees, and insects buzzing around the first blossoms of spring.

  Tobias gestured toward the cave. “This way… now.”

  “I want to see my wife.”

  “You will,” Tobias told him, “but you will see him first.” Miller turned toward the cave. The main cavern was quite deep inside, down a long passageway lit by luminescent globes salvaged from Basil, and jury-rigged Aurelian devices.

  They walked along a narrow ledge above the stream that had carved out these caverns, and cooled them still. Finally, they came to a bridge, across from what had to be the Command Center.

  Tamarind’s set-up impressed them all. The equipment was improvised, salvaged bits of Aves and Shriek connected to what had to be Aurelian processors, display devices, and communication links. Ten men and women sat at their stations, all dressed in black jumpsuits, hair cut short, weapons at their sides.

  They did not recognize Tamarind until he stood. His neat brush-cut hair had gone all white. His face, still placid, had the lines of a man more than sixteen years older, and the top part of one of his ears was missing. He smiled when they approached. “Lt. Commander Miller, welcome to Defiance Cell Two.”

  “Nice place,” Miller answered. “I like what you’ve done to it.” Tamarind gestured up and around himself. “The valley is protected by a number of holoflage transmitters we salvaged from the Shrieks, and in some cases, constructed from Aurelian components we have been able to recover after various actions. This entire canyon is bathed in low-intensity holoflage waves. It helps our life signs blend in with native animal life.

  Everything here is constructed of native plants or hidden deep in the caves. It is a secure redoubt,” Tamarind said.

  “Tobias said the Aurelians have infiltrated it before.”

  “They have come in, but they have never made it out alive,” Tamarind reassured him.

  “This is but one cell of the Defiance. There are twelve others hidden across the planet. Destroy one and another will take its place. Do you want to know what happened after Pegasus left the battle?”

  “We didn’t know you were alive,” Miller said, defensively.