Calling Tower (The Calling Tower Saga Book 1)

by Josh Leone

  The only option had been to find an investor willing to pay for the supplies and have them delivered in exchange for a significant share of future profits. The investor was easy. Lots of people had made vast fortunes investing in colonies that had come upon hard times, so there were always plenty of credits looking for just such an opportunity. Getting the supplies to the colony was the tricky part. No legal delivery company would risk exclusion by de-clawing a Primacy penalty. Freelancers who wouldn’t mind the risk were the only option.

  Seth opened a link on the public q-net. The site that came up was simple and, by all appearances, harmless. It was a little mom-and-pop type store offering a selection of hand-carved collectable figurines. Seth clicked on a figurine of a mother holding a newborn baby. Then he waited for exactly twenty-six seconds before clicking another figurine, this one of a man fishing. Six seconds later, Seth clicked a quick series of other pictures and pieces of text. Seth’s screen changed to show a grid of random, meaningless symbols. In the center space was a grinning skull whose mouth opened and closed at precise, two-second intervals. Each time the skull opened its mouth Seth tapped two of the symbols surrounding it until he’d entered fourteen pairs of the symbols. This was his personal password and it allowed him to access the Under-net.

  The Under-net was as old as the public q-net, maybe older. The origins of the Under-net were shrouded in mystery and went back centuries before the emergence of the Calling Tower. Some stories held that the Under-net had become the primary method of communication and trade on Earth during, and in the decades following, the near extinction of the human race. Due to its ancient origins it had insinuated itself into the public q-net at the very start, and had subsequently become impossible for even the Primacy to control. No one knew who actually ran the Under-net, but the prevailing rumor was that a conclave of independent A.I.s kept it functioning. There were even a handful of A.I. worshipping cults who considered the Under-net a virtual holy place.

  Seth cared nothing about net-cults or the mysterious A.I. gods they worshipped. He only cared that the Under-net allowed people like him to buy and sell without having to dodge the Primacy’s net-police on every transaction. The particular supplier Seth liked to work with was on the high side in pricing but had a solid reputation. The ID tags on each part were always meticulously scrubbed, the merchandise itself was usually new or had been refurbished to factory quality, and Seth had never heard of a customer being given up to the authorities.

  That last bit was vital. Lots of shops on the Under-net made a habit of dodging ruin by giving up a name here and there. Jen’s Quality Figurines had been in business for more than a century without giving up a single name. Rumor had it that the matriarch of the family, and eponymous owner of Jen’s Quality Figurines, Jennifer Cardin, had connections in the Ministry, the Legion, and the Civil Authority. The Cardin family was diversified, having a finger in most of the spicier pies served on the Under-net. Seth knew he was dealing with drug dealers, slave traders, and all manner of darkness when he dealt with the Cardin family, but there was little choice if he wanted to keep his ship flying. Legitimate merchants did not do business with someone on the lists.

  Seth placed his order and selected one of the Cardin’s secure drop-points from which he could pick up the parts at his convenience. The drop-point was located in Vodule territory. The Vodule were happy to allow certain groups to operate inside their borders. The losing side of a war could often make much better use of thieves, smugglers, and pirates than could the winning side. So long as the privilege was not abused, the Vodule allowed criminals and freelancers to conduct business with the understanding that on occasion said rogues would be called upon to act in the Vodule’s interests.

  The Enduring Journey had once been tasked with delivering a hive-queen from a world about to be destroyed by the Primacy, to another that was safely behind Vodule lines. Seth and Vig had had almost bought the farm when they’d attracted the attention of a Primacy cruiser. They’d managed a few unexpected maneuvers, one of which had left the Journey limping, but the queen had been delivered safe and sound. In gratitude, the Vodule had repaired the ship and even upgraded a few of its systems. After that, Seth and Vig could almost always rely on the Vodule for a job when other markets ran dry.

  Working with the Vodule was the one time it actually helped Seth that he’d gotten himself on the lists by decking a ministry data pusher on behalf of a friend. The Vodule were very social and very loyal, not only to their own egg clutch, but to all Vodule. The Vodule considered their entire species to be a single family. Every Vodule soldier or worker was a brother, every queen was a mother. Until the Vodule had encountered its first intelligent alien species, centuries before humanity developed heavier-than-air flight, they’d had no concept of ‘stranger’ or ‘enemy.’

  Seth closed the Under-net connection and made ready to open a gate. He oriented the Journey in line with the plotted course and accelerated to .25 of C. There was no rush. The phase engine powered up, ejected the primary mass, and shot its non-light beam. The gate opened on cue and the Journey entered.

  ◊

  Iyanna called in the location of the Enduring Journey. She could have done it the moment she’d arrived under full cloak, but there was no point in punishing the locals by denying them their cargo and bringing a Legion presence down on them. Her ship floated in space and she watched them through high-rez scanners. The Journey’s crew delivered the cargo and enjoyed the resulting festivities. She’d watched as the one named Seth Okan refused the bonus. She had no illusions about why he’d done it. She’d been in business long enough to know all about reps and good tidings. Granted, the people Iyanna usually worked for cared little for heroes, being more interested in a contractor’s ability to get the job done as quickly and efficiently as possible.

  What did interest her was the fact that Okan actually seemed uncomfortable with the attention he received. Most smugglers Iyanna had met were glory hounds that gladly indulged in every excess offered. Okan had accepted his due with grace, and certainly he had chosen well from among the scores of willing locals when he’d ‘relaxed’ after the party, but he was polite, respectful of the colonists, and… Iyanna supposed the best word to apply would be, ‘genuine.’ He wasn’t her type really, despite that he was quite handsome, but she had to admit that she could, under other circumstances, like the man.

  She watched as the Enduring Journey accelerated and entered phase space. A blip at the farthest reach of her scanners showed another vessel incoming. The energy readings were massive, too massive to be a ship. The readings were more like what she’d expect from an entire battle fleet or a large city on a core world. Yet there was only a single blip on her screen. Whatever it was, Iyanna decided she didn’t want any part of it. She plotted a course and opened a gate. She was gone by the time the blip entered the star system, casting a shadow over the entire colony as it went by.

  ◊

  Alarms. All of them. Every alarm on the Enduring Journey was screaming. The ship itself was shaking and the gravity polarizers were having trouble deciding which way should be up. Seth turned off the master alarm, and immediately wished he hadn’t. There were other noises that made the alarms seem like happy sounds. There was the sound of hull braces being strained, the sound of electrical conduits shorting out – that one also had a smell - and a slew of other sounds, most of which were even more frightening.

  “What the hell is happening, Vig!?” Seth was doing his best to hold onto a release latch built into one the storage panels in the main room while his body was hit by everything not wielding down. One look as the door to Vig’s quarters slid open told Seth that he was not getting the worst of it.

  The engineer was on the floor of his cabin, his body wracked with spasms. His mouth was frozen in a silent scream. Vig had been sleeping without a shirt so Seth could see skin blackening as the man burned from the inside out. The burns were clustered on his torso, his neck, and around his wide open yellow eyes. Smol
dering fabric showed that his left leg was also suffering. Anywhere the man had any kind of cybernetic implant, the components were super-charging and burning the surrounding flesh.

  The problem with phase space was that while some rules still applied, others did not. It was said that real space was mostly empty. While that’s not exactly true, compared to phase space it may as well be. Peculiar light emanated from all points in phase space equally. That light, that strange phase energy, was why all windows in a ship had to be darkened and why shields had to be set high and in constant use, so a ship might slip through the light as a fish slips through the water. The shields of the Enduring Journey were failing, letting that energy in, and everything that conducted electricity was paying the price.

  “But that’s not possible!” Seth said out loud, knowing he was the only one to hear it. Or he would have been, had not the sounds of his ship dying been so loud.

  Seth new the basic science involved. Such knowledge was imparted to every student in the Legion PoPros. He knew that while it was bad news if a ship’s shields failed while in phase space, it was also highly unusual for such a thing to happen to a properly maintained ship. There was nothing to run into in phase space and phase energy was a constant, utterly without variation. In other words, if your shields were working when you entered phase space, they would stay that way until you exited.

  Yet the Journey’s shields were failing. Seth had only the most minimal of convenience implants. He’d never been entirely comfortable having tech mated into his body. He only had a medical diagnostic chip and a phone. The chip hurt, burning his palm as though he’d held his hand over a small flame. The phone, though, that was real pain, like hammering a nail into his skull. Seth was kind of glad the gravity was going wonky. It made it easier to ignore his own complete lack of balance.

  The pain grew but Seth kept his eyes on Vig. The engineer was no longer having spasms and his burns were not getting any worse. There was a heavy smell of burnt meat wafting through the air. Seth tried to ignore that. Vig’s eyes were not open, though it was hard to tell given the blackened skin around them, but his lips were moving. Somehow, the man was trying to speak. Seth focused his attention on what his friend was saying, figuring they were last words the man would ever speak.

  It was just a whisper, but as the last of the Journey’s system failed, there came a sudden and very frightening silence. Seth strained to move past his own pain, grabbed at various available handholds to get closer. Finally, he was able to hear what Vig was saying.

  “Forcing us out of phase space!” Vig kept repeating those words.

  Seth knew what his friend meant. Someone, somehow, was actually pushing the Enduring Journey back into real space. All the science said such a thing couldn’t be done. There wasn’t a ship flying that had enough spare power to detect a ship in phase space, much less disrupt phase space itself. That kind of tech was used to secure planets and required dedicated generators that might otherwise power millions of homes.

  Just before he passed out from the pain, Seth realized there actually were, in fact, three ships he knew of that could manage it. His last thought was a hope that something had simply gone wrong with the shields and that he and Vig were about to die from a freak accident. The alternative was worse.

  ◊

  Iyanna’s curiosity had been irresistible. She had to know what that blip had been. She made certain to stay at extreme range, knowing her scanners were the best available. As soon as she got a good read on the blip, she knew her gear was scrap compared to what she was seeing.

  The blip was a ship, sort of. Iyanna’s mind tried to refuse that classification. It was just too huge. The ship was essentially a stack of two dozen discs joined together by a central spindle. Each disc measured approximately thirty-five kilometers in diameter and was nearly a half a kilometer thick. Each disc was separated from the others in the stack by a span measuring approximately three-hundred meters. The telltale shimmer of overlapping shields covered the entire ship. Within each gap between discs there swarmed a hoard of shuttles, maintenance-bots, supply haulers, and everything else that would be needed to run several cities.

  Once Iyanna got past her initial awe, she recognized the ship. Everyone in the Primacy learned about it in the general PoPros and studied it in detail the Legion PoPros. Stores sold models of it and children played with toys made in its image. It was a world-ship, one of only three, the largest vessels in known space. This particular world-ship was named Judgment.

  Iyanna had seen enough, her curiosity replaced by fear. World-ships did not go anywhere without terrible purpose, usually involving lots of fire and death. There is a reason they were named Judgment, Consequence, and Wrath. Iyanna wanted nothing to do with any of them.

  She plotted a jump, accelerated, and entered the gate. Or rather, she would have if one had formed. Iyanna checked her instruments. Everything was green. She re-plotted the course, tried to open another gate, and failed. The machinery was working but the gate just would not form. Something was interfering with the process. The answer was obvious. It was floating in space in all its gigantic glory. The Judgment was doing something to surrounding space, making it impossible to form a gate.

  Her proximity alarm went off, alerting her to a squadron of Legion fighters incoming. Iyanna debated making a run for it but she knew it would be futile. The Judgment could send anything required to chase her down or blow her to pieces. The Gathering Storm was fast but a missile was faster. She powered down and tried to look non-threatening.

  “Ship designated Gathering Storm; you are in a no-fly zone. Follow us.”

  “Legion flight leader,” Iyanna responded. “I had no way to know this was a no-fly zone. There were no beacons. I can leave your space at top speed.”

  “Negative. You will follow us to a docking bay onboard the Judgment. Any deviation from the transmitted course will result in your destruction.”

  Iyanna knew she was well and truly screwed. The best she could hope for was that her citizenship would protect her. Perhaps whoever was in charge would decide that it wasn’t worth the data shuffling required to hold her.

  The Judgment had hundreds of docking bays, some large enough to hold a full-sized cruiser. Anything larger could be enclosed by mechanized superstructures that folded neatly against the world-ship’s hull when not in use. The bay Iyanna flew into was relatively small but very well equipped, and very, very clean. The Legion was big on cleanliness, obsessive really. A junior officer was waiting when Iyanna exited her ship.

  “You are Iyanna Twill?” The officer couldn’t have been much older than Iyanna. Normally Iyanna had a problem with authority, but in this case she decided that being a smart-ass was not the way to go.

  “Yes, and a citizen of the Primacy in good standing.” Maybe it would help to remind him of that.

  “What did you observe before you were hailed by the fighters?”

  “Uh, just this big, damn ship.”

  “Did you note anything unusual?”

  So that was it. That’s what the fuss was about. Whatever the Legion was doing, they didn’t want anyone else to know about it.

  “No.”

  Iyanna tried to sell it but her efforts were made pointless as the officer set his eyes on something behind her. She turned to see a tech team arrive. She knew they would check her computer and see that she’d tried and failed twice to open a gate.

  “Now that you mention it, I do recall some difficulty in opening a gate, but I assume that was just mechanical failure. Touchy things, those phase engines.”

  But the officer was ignoring her. Two armed guards took positions on either side of Iyanna. By the time her mind registered the guards’ presence, she’d already been stunned. She would have fallen had the guards not grabbed her arms. As she lost consciousness, she heard the young looking officer give an order that made her want to weep.

  “Scrap the ship.”

  ◊

  Seth opened his eyes and immediately w
ished he hadn’t. Light blasted through his brain like a null-g car at maximum velocity. He waited until the car crumpled against the back of his skull before forcing his eyes open again. The second time the pain was less, only just enough to make him want to throw up. He resisted the urge, just barely, and managed to make his eyes stay open against the pain. His eyes didn’t focus immediately, but he was able to hear voices.

  “What’s his condition?”

  “He’ll survive. He was lucky. Minimal implants.”

  “The other one?”

  “Not so lucky. Major tissue damage, second and third degree burns, several organs damaged to failure, swelling on the brain. We can keep him alive on life support, but without massive surgical intervention he’ll never recover.”

  After the voices left, Seth slowly and very carefully sat up. If his head had fallen off and rolled away he wouldn’t have been at all surprised. But it stayed put, so Seth looked around.

  He was in a holding cell. He knew by the décor. Walls, ceiling, and floor, all painted the same shade of boredom. Metal toilet, cot, and sink, all immovably fused to the walls and floor. The real giveaway though was the tight grid of transparent tubes replacing one of the walls. The tubes were no thicker than Seth’s little finger but they hummed slightly and the spaces between gave off an occasional blue shimmer. Shielded.

  He went to the sink and splashed cool water on his face. After several minutes he began to feel like himself again. Once he’d regained command of his senses he was able to take a good look around. Nothing to see in his cell. He knew there were cameras watching his every move, but they would be too small to see.

  Seth went to the shielded bars, careful not to make contact with them. He was in enough pain as it was. Beyond his cell was a hallway decorated in the same prison-standard style. Several of the cells Seth could see were occupied, but not nearly as many as one might expect given that the population of a World Ship could run into the millions. Of course, this was only one of many such prison facilities in the giant ship. Each of the ship’s twenty-four discs was a city all by itself. Each disc served a particular purpose - manufacturing, food production, docking bays, living quarters, etc. The Judgment was, in essence, an entirely self-contained, artificial world. A very well armed world. By itself the Judgment could engage almost any size enemy force and stand a very good chance of winning.