The Princess of Caldris

by Dante D'Anthony

  Candy’s eyes darkened with a slightly wicked intent.

  Hammerstein glowered, “Wormhole strikes were a wickedly unpredictable affair. Herb’s uncanny skill with them was about to get him dissected and analyzed by Intelligence Science Division, I figure, but the war ended and Herb went off the grid. Not just off the Planetary grid but Galactic.”

  Candy interjected and more shadows moved behind her deep recollections, implications of intrigue, “Herb and his covert ops teams could get behind enemy lines, wreak havoc, and then be back before Command knew they had left. Herb had lost faith in the government’s rationale for the war, this one and others. He was, in all reality, on his own.”

  On his own…with wormholes.

  “He liked Hammer, though. Like a son.”

  Somehow this embarrassed Hammerstein, his ancient granite façade pulled down and his bushy haired cadet revealed underneath.

  “Yeah, I was assigned to escort him from the flight deck after he struck back after the Baal incident. They had drawn blood; Herb hit back-and hit back hard. Laid waste to a portion of Baal’s Northern hemisphere with a nasty comet dump. Ba-Booma: the sky opened above an enemy division and suddenly a rain of cometary material wormholed down, going from below zero to high temperature in a sudden furious explosion with such relentless and persistent mass most of the personnel shields were fractured and collapsed.”

  There was a grim satisfaction behind the story for him-Herb had delivered payback to the enemy. At the same time, that “enemy” who paid was in all reality just a bunch of grunts and guys and gals like himself-people who really didn’t want to be there, no matter how much machismo they mustered, and who had absolutely no say in either the orders to attack in the first place.

  Candy took Hammerstein’s pause as an invitation to finish, “The shields that did hold, well, that did them no good either. Suddenly buried under tons of molten cometary rock, shielded or not they weren’t going anywhere.

  Surely it was a more merciful fate to go quickly.

  Herb and his covert team rode down in the debris hidden in faux boulders that passed any air and space born defense scans. They assumed control of the region, planting themselves atop the cooling cometary debris and making sure no rescue arrived for any buried enemy units.

  He pushed the rules of war right to the line between battle and atrocity, to that ugly grey area nobody likes to think of.”

  The two of them dropped silent and I realized then the bond they shared-the Baal incident had been their first combat experience. The mass and sudden death, the dislocation from the romantic notions of youth directly to the reality and banality of war with its ugly evils; they had lost their innocence together. Not in some romantic fairy tale love story set in opulent gardens and universities, but in the sights and sounds of the war.

  “And you think Herb masterminded these attacks and the kidnapping of the Princess?” I asked, sorting through their emotions. Candy, curiously dark, Hammerstein suddenly revolted.

  “Herb is an arms dealer. A used starship salesman. Expensive curious-contraband. He is no longer a mercenary or master assassin. He would, however, know a great deal of such men. I believe Herb can point us in the right direction,” Hammer said crisply.

  Candy filled with a dark humor, “The trick will be finding Herb. Langley Stay is an Outspace world, its cities carved out of solid stone in endless canyons, and interlaced with labyrinths of canals. A lynchpin between the refugee worlds of the Sagittarius Arm of the galaxy and the Orion Arm, any Imperial order is purely pastiche-it is a smugglers’ and mercenaries’ world. They will not hand over their own to some Royal request from Caldris.”

  “If I can find him, he’ll talk to me.”

  Herbivore had pushed the rules of war to their limits. “Rules of war”--such as they are, the protocols of mass murder.

  Hammerstein’s faith in his long ago friendship with the old “black devil Herbivore” was a ghost of a ghost. Strangely, I felt in many ways these ghosts were made of things more real than much of the universe mankind concocted…

  The monument to the lost ships of the line in the Baal incident is not at the capitol as one would expect, but at Cooper River Valley where the main city fades away to the highlands. The planet’s greatest city, Cooper Trans, built on trade and shipping rather than governing, dissolves into patterns of less dense and dense buildings on bluffs overlooks the shipyards where the ships of the line had been built. The shipyards can be seen spilling out and out into the sea where the underwater and floating habitations predominate.

  On the bluff an artist had been commissioned whose answer to the design problem was a series of symbolic vanes resembling the command and communications towers of the battleships. They are striking obelisks, smoothed in places like a Henry Moore work from the 20th century, and laced with holograms like a Sanj Moghul from the 29th.

  It was the greatest loss of life ever experienced by the Caldris Royal Space Naval Forces. At the end of the sculpted obelisks there are a number of human scale figures looking back. The first group represents the bridge crews of the surviving ships who witnessed the tragedy. They stare back forever in shocked disbelief. The second group represents the commandos who raided back. In is a strange yin and yang, this duality of man-the first group idealistic and traumatic, the second-grim justice personified.

  -Princess Clairissa Maggio.

  Kanaafutura to Langley Stay

  There was room enough in the Kanaafutura hold for Coco-butter Parsons’ Hammerhead which delighted him to know end. He took command of piloting with a flourish and the lot of us made for deep space. Fort Oort fell away and Parsons brought the flight plan vertical to the stellar plane negotiating the easier clear of the cloud.

  On the holo screens and main piloting cabin I watched a holo model of the Caldris system. It shrank and the stellar configuration of fifty light years appeared with the Caldris system highlighted. Then that configuration shrank, and three times was replaced with various magnitudes of scale, until at last the gap between the Orion and Sagittarius arm of the galaxy appeared.

  A system was highlighted, there in the gap. Langley Stay, Void’s End

  Coco-butter was MERGED with his new toy, happily playing music, when he broke into hyper. A platoon of Rangers was milling about the quarters and playing cards and eating on the ship’s cruise. The Detective and his assistant were conferring and reviewing forensic data in the officer’s mess.

  A droid was serving co-pilot to Parsons. Mr. Gibbon’s by my side, it occurred to me were smaller mirrors of the two. We watched the Caldris system fall away in a simulation on one of the screens. We were moving at incompressible speeds, but the simulations mastered those speeds and recreated them with accurate models.

  Kanaafutura was a charger. Faster than any ship I’d ever been on. Even my father’s racing yachts were no match.

  I reached into the hyperstreams and felt for bad intent. There was, however, nothing but the epochal spaces expanding with their radiant energies since the bang of our universe. Forces, vectors, molecules in the deep streams, beyond the edge now since we rode the hyperstreams.

  No more assassins. For now.

  Days came and went aboard ship. The routine of hyper space. Since Star systems were full of gravity wells, the best courses avoided them until one arrived at the destination system. We made for the space between the galactic arms-the void. Very few systems in the voids.

  It was my first venture outside the five or six star systems around Caldris, beyond the Royal Hegemony.

  My head ached and my body was wracked with sudden pains after a time. Thoughts of the missing Princess had taken a toll. There was, however, small solace or retreat.

  The warmth old Hammerstein granted was a comfort-but the continual hustle and bustle in strange environs, the attacks as well, battered me. The Kanaafutura streamed through the hyper dimensions and I tried to gather my strength in my bunk.

  Who to trust-and whom was sharpening their knives t
o plant them deep in our backs?

  It would only get worse, I knew, at Langley Stay. Light years away I could sense that system like a tangled web of intrigues looming in the void. I glanced at Mr. Gibbons, always watching, and was glad for him-a faithful friend in a universe of treacherous rogues.

  The ruins of New Haven City were particularly disturbing. Here the bold colonists had dared reclaim the best in mankind's dreams only to have it come to this. Here they had carried their cherished ideals and set out upon the uncharted with dash and brilliance, and here too the meaner aspects of human vice had ground those hopes once again to nothing. The genius of their architecture-once soaring, deft and Dexter-sad relics.

  My team and I negotiated the strange landscape of horrors with a curious confusion, unsure at all times the realities that lay behind the war. CCCE claimed always the Colonials had built an armada planning attack-but such was not the character of the colonists to take by force that which they earned by creativity and dogged work. The macabre landscape told of an ultimate betrayal. A betrayal of an ideal, nay-a betrayal of all that was ideal in mankind.

  My eyes must have been a frightful sight.

  Later, underneath the Capitol, I chanced upon a disk in the transportation hub and wondered. It contained the transportation logs of the entire city the week before the war. I could recreate that week in it's ordinary prelude to the tragedy. How strange that would be.

  -Princess Maggio, Caldris.

  VII

  Langley Stay, Void's End

  Tokushima was at the helm when the Kanaafutura signaled Langley Stay system. The edges of the Sagittarius Spiral Arm of the galaxy, the world was an anomaly among the Outwords in a number of ways. It had been a spearhead settlement at a time when the ancient nation state of "America" had still existed before Earth itself became just one more world in the Imperium. From there, the Americans and various affiliated nations had settled the Arcturian Colonies, then Langley had too fallen into Imperial hands, and in a final twist won a sort of defacto independence after the war when the Imperials abandoned it. In the thousands years since, with the rise of the refugee Outworlds, now it was important again but it's culture was entirely untamed.

  We were being hailed. Systems were responding to autoscans when holos of Security officers from their system police appeared. "Processing registrations" one of the holos said, with a sudden widening of the eyes when he realized it was a Royal Warship from Caldris.

  "Caldris Royal Envoy." Tokushima informed him.

  "Officer Tokushima on official business." "Yes, we see. Rather large warship, officer. What is the nature of your business in system, and what is your anticipated stay?"

  "Two criminal acts of extreme violence against law officers-one at Caldris, and one near Fort Oort. We traced the vessel to a possible source and wish to confer with same in system" she replied coolly. "A week perhaps."

  I smiled. Police, they stick together no matter what star system they were from. An unwritten code-police were attacked, you have to let us hunt down the buggers.

  "Registration confirmed, keep us updated weekly. The warship is to port at system security station main. You have shuttles down-world we presume?"

  She hesitated, "One Hammerhead."

  Now they hesitated. The holos looked back and forth at each other, finally one shrugged-the cop code prevailed- "Yeah, well, alright, please confer any suspects before engaging fire."

  "Absolutely." She smiled.

  Now she owed them one, but we were in. In for a long docking protocol at the security station and finally after red tape, tiddly winks, dirty looks, and berthing fees, they let us take the Hammerhead downworld with a bit of finger wagging and "if there is any untoward activity please...no interplanetary incidents!" Don't kill any bad guys, leave that for us. Hammerstein nodded and nodded and nodded and sighed and finally Coco-butter got his music playing and we were airborne over the bright arc of the planet, "Going down, baby!" Coco-butter informed us as if the whole brilliant planet in front of us was invisible.

  "So we are...." Hammerstein smiled.

  Coco-butter looked at him expectantly, "Any place in particular...Sir?"

  The Hammerhead was heating up and I sensed Coco-butter Parson's flight instincts easing the gravity repulsion field to counter the pull of the planet. He played with the controls a bit and the craft turned into a huge spiraling corkscrew slowly down.

  From Hammerstein came a flood of memories. Herb arriving at the fleet after the enemy wormhole massacre. Herb's glassy-eyed orders for the counter strike. Herb's surprising declaration after the counter strike's success, "All those men and women-on both sides, dead. For what?

  Some piss-ant real estate? Look around, kid. the universe is overflowing with worlds and resources. At the end of the day, when people go about killing each other, it's because someone somewhere simply WANTS to. I didn't sign up to be a butcher for fools and monsters. I'm out, after this tour, I'm out...you can take the King's Navy and--"

  Hammerstein's thoughts raced back across the decades to the present, "There, where the Yellow Seas meet the delta. Take the flight pattern over there. You'll find a city." They hovered over a vast spread of warehouse blocks serviced by canals, the fjords shouldering the sea. The city was built into the rock of the cliff sides, canals carved through solid stone bluffs. On the pinnacles of stone buttes, spires and domes proliferated. Air transports buzzed about, some in streams, others freely. A metropolis carved into and piled on the limestone crags.

  We put down in an open fish market at the delta which included some flats with waterships dry docked, busy wharf and a number of small transports such as ourselves.

  I reached out to the ether, as it were. I sensed no malice or subterfuge. We were barely raising notice. We were just another transport at a busy port. I felt a couple of the fishermen’s thoughts take small ire at a military vehicle taking up space in their work areas, but that was mere annoyance.

  It seems we had arrived on world and none of the police at the station forewarned any criminals-a good sign they were an honest bunch.

  Peering from a window I got my first look at Langley Stay for myself. It was as the stories said; everyone was wearing masks….

  We made due with flight helmets. I felt quite ridiculous, Tokushima, Hammerstein, and myself making our way casually onto the wharf and open spaces…with flight helmets on. Not even the possibly stylish MERGE helmets, but second rate crash helmets.

  “We need to buys masks.” Hammerstein declared the obvious.

  “Shopping! On assignment. At the edge of the Outworlds. This promises to be…different.” Tokushima snarked.

  Hammerstein’s flight helmet turned and I didn’t need to be a psychic to feel that vibe.

  “Sorry, Sir,” she retreated.

  We did, in fact, look ridiculous.

  Neil Thacker

  As it turned out, not for long. Hammerstein quickly rooted out a shop of masks and what a shop it was-much to Tokushima’s chagrin, the place was a wonder of fabulous items. I chose a Ripjackle mask-a particularly fierce beast from Opa-locka’s world. Hammerstein selected one of Mercury, the Roman god of travelers, merchants, and thieves. Tokushima found one bearing a stylistic feel for Japan, and we made a quick return to the Hammerhead to lose the flight helmets and bore the weary look of Parsons.

  He was wise enough, however, not to say anything.

  Then we were off along the canals again, masked and ready. No one spoke, Hammerstein trolling on sorting his distant memories against the realities of the present. Things are always smaller or bigger in our memories.

  He was heading for a waterfront nightclub. The masks didn’t cover one’s mouth, so if we wished we could even eat and drink with them on, such was the custom of the place.

  It wasn’t long before the sight of a bare face would have been shock-when in Rome, as they say.

  It was day so the club was virtually empty. There were all manner of arched and carved ways and rooms, decorative plants
, hologram art. A bunch of screen with games from the Empire. Various hypercasts. It was a small galaxy, it seems. I knew some of the channels.

  We sat and were promptly approached by a bejeweled and masked waitress. Supple-beautiful, and centuries old I realized-a cloner, this was her third clone incarnation. Somewhere behind her mask, and behind the frivolously attractive clone lay a personality of a woman from worlds away, and generations before.

  I was, in my way, suddenly awed. Behind an ordinary façade, an extraordinary history.

  “Welcome,” she offered brightly, placing chilled water glasses and bread before us, “I’m Sasha.”

  The table glowed presently with images of food for us to choose from.

  Fish, fish, and more fish.

  Tokushima selected a bread soup.

  “I’ll have the fish” I said, “Caldrisian Salmon. With a garlic butter, and crab cakes on the side.”

  Hammerstein selected a steak.

  We ate quietly. Waiting for something to happen.

  When it happened, it was a balding slight of a man, dark skinned and masked with a strange golden happy Buddha face.

  “Travelers from a far?” he hovered and swayed in a faux attempt at grace and light heartedness he did not feel. He was a trader, eager to overcharge tourists.

  “Indeed. Indeed. Very far.” Hammerstein was always like a well oiled trap ready to snap.

  “My name is Hugo,” he smiled behind the Buddha, “if there is anything I can do to assist while you stay here at…Langley Stay?”

  He said it like a question even though it was an incomplete sentence that wasn’t a question.

  Now Hammerstein smiled beneath the Mask of Mercury,“Indeed. Indeed. We need an aircar. But not just any aircar, no, no. We require an exquisite ride of early model, retrofitted with the most contemporary appointments and technologies, security of course being no small issue for my wife and son.”