Winter

by James Wittenbach

  “Exactly,” Hunter told him.

  “That is positively insane.”

  “Not really,…. Well, actually really.”

  “How do we stop?”

  “You can’t, we’ll have to jump for it when we reach Section 10-7, otherwise we’ll slam into the bulkhead at Section 10-6. Your call.”

  Constantine could not find words. Hunter was not about to wait for him. “On me,” he ordered Ghost.

  He took a running start with her holding his hand. They leaped as one into the tube, the maintenance sled underneath them, Ghost on his back. The instant they hit the electromagnetic wave, they shot down the tube and vanished.

  Constantine grabbed his board. He realized with absulute certainty that he was going to die. If he managed to survive this insane ride, he would be killed by the intruder, or die when the missile was fired.

  If death were inevitable, he decided, there was no reason to fear it. He ran for the tube, holding the board to his chest. He leaped in the air.

  The next moment, he was bulleting through several hundred meters of Pegasus in the space of seconds, the intraship tubeway flashed by in a blur of light and metal. He calculated it would take about 3.7

  seconds to reached the jump off, and even with the mental discipline to dilate time, it was an impossibly brief moment to measure. When it passed, Constantine did not jump, but simply let go. The maintenance sled shot away from under him and he rolled to the side, landing in a ball at the side of the trench. His head banged to the side, almost hard enough to knock him unconscious, but with the thoroughgoing pain inflicted by the lance already slow-roasting his body, he barely noticed it.

  He rolled and looked up at the two figures staring over the lip of the trench at him. Hunter reached his hand out. “Stop fooling around, Connie. We have work to do.”

  Constantine grabbed it, let himself be lifted up. Blurrily, behind Hunter, he saw a panel indicating they were on Deck 13. Hunter and Ghost had made it.

  “The scanners should have detected you,” Constantine muttered.

  “They look kind of disabled,” Hunter told him. Constantine tried to focus, blurrily, he saw the bank of sensors and interfaces was greyed out. Deactivated, probably with his Sliver and datapad. If the intruder had his codes, he could disable whole sections of the ship’s intruder detection systems, without being reported to Technical Core. He would have groaned, but that would have hurt his head too much.

  “Now what?”

  “We go to the hatcheries, and we find him,” said Constantine.

  “Which one,” Ghost asked. “There’s over a hundred?”

  Constantine took a painful breath. “Our intruder is definitely from outside the ship. He or she has spent much more time gathering information, disguising as a Watchmen, these are things one of you trolls would not bother to do. Therefore, the intruder is from the planet, or an Aurelian, or unknown.”

  “Why does it matter, Connie?” Hunter put in, but Ghost, shushed him.

  “An Aurelian won’t commit suicide to take us out. I don’t think the people on the planet would either.”

  “Unless they’re insane.”

  “Right… I have to factor in that, but if it is an Aurelian, which seems likeliest, then our intruder must have an escape plan. He won’t go down with the ship. So, I think I can narrow down which of the hatcheries he’ll want to use.”

  “Then, Bellisarius has rubbed off on you,” Hunter said. “In more ways than one. Then, by all means, lead on.”

  C h a p t e r T w e n t y - O n e

  Winter – Near Shipwreck

  Peckwad drew up close to a black, stone-shot shoreline, from which a deck of fine, wispy fog was lifting as the sun approached noon-time. “There,” said Ziang.

  Rising from the sea, about a hundred or perhaps one-hundred fifty meters from the shore was a huge black-metal trapezoid nearly eight hundred meters high, the biggest man-made object on the planet. It was narrow at the top, wider at the bottom, then tapering again on the underside, essentially, a huge box enclosed by a sturdy latticework of metal. It was held up by four great legs that were now almost entirely beneath the waves except for some metal pillars.

  Keeler recognized it immediately and was so overwhelmed he almost fell overboard. “That’s a colony pod!”

  “Indeed,” Ziang said levelly. “This is where we have gathered all the maps, all the records, all the shipping routes that were the legacy of the Commonwealth. Everything is there.” Keeler barely heard him. An image came to Keeler’s mind of the ancient colonizer ships, nothing more than huge assemblies of metal scaffolding with star-drives on one end and command centers on the other to which dozens of colony-pods were attached. At habitable planets, the pods were fired off to form the cores of colonial settlements. Each was self-contained, generated its own power, purified its own food, water, and air, and could support 20,000 people.

  On Sapphire, these pods were systematically dismantled over the first century of inhabitation as the population spread over the planet. On Republic, they became the cores of that planet’s mega-cities. Keeler had never supposed to find one intact.

  Slight problem, they were usually designed to be put down on land. “Why did they drop a colony pod into the sea,” Keeler asked.

  “The sea wasn’t here when it landed,” Gilligan explained. “I tried to warn them that the sea was rising, but they didn’t believe me. They thought I was trying to trick them.”

  “Who are they, exactly,” Keeler asked.

  “The villagers of Shipwreck,” Ziang confirmed. “The shoreline here used to extended several kilometers further than it does now. As time has passed, the landscape has changed. The sea has risen here. The village lies beyond it, on the shoreline.”

  ‘Village’ was a generous description. ‘Outpost’ would have done only a little more justice to what looked like three small buildings, little more than stone huts, well-weathered by the constant battering of the sea and wind.

  “It looks like a very small village,” Keeler commented.

  “Population – seven,” Ziang told him. “The library is guarded by the seven. They were stranded here thousands of years ago.”

  “By me,” Gilligan clarified.

  Ziang continued. “They will not let anyone pass without solving a complex series of puzzles, each more fiendishly diabolical than the one before it. Navigating their challenge will be as challenging and intricate as a game of chess among world masters.”

  Keeler looked toward the pod again. In the thin light that filtered between the clouds, he could see that its top-most levels were laid bare and ragged, exposed to the elements, and imagined chunks of hull plating breaking free and splashing into the sea. “Well, if they’re on the land and we’re on the sea, I don’t see a problem,” he said. “Let’s skip the diabolical series of puzzles and sail right out to the library.”

  “Or, we could do that,” Gilligan agreed.

  Ziang smiled mysteriously, as usual. “Then you have past the test. Any man who would submit himself to an unnecessary challenge is too much of an idiot to be entrusted with all the knowledge of the ancient Commonwealth.”

  Gilligan spun the ship’s wheel, and set them on a course to the looming black structure.

  Winter – Somewhere

  After climbing up for what seemed like a thousand meters, Mercuria commanded Redfire to stop.

  Exhausted and starved, he doubted he could have gone on anyway. He crawled across another punched-metal floor, which was cold and lightly frosted. Without his landing gear, and its built-in heating, he had begun to shiver uncontrollably.

  Mercuria seemed to revel in his vulnerability. “Time’s almost up,” she purred, crawling off the ledge and joining him. She stood. Redfire could make out nothing in the darkness, but she knew her way around easily. She opened a side-locker and pulled out a long metallic weapon with several sharp, pointed tips.

  “Are you going…” Redfire heaved, needing another breath to finish, squeezin
g the words past a parched, dried throat, “…to kill me.”

  “That all depends,” she told him. “This weapon isn’t for you. I have to kill someone else… very soon.

  Don’t think you’re the only thing on my plate. I’m a very busy wand.” Setting the weapon down, she freed a hand to caress his forehead. “You’re hungry, cold, tired, and thirsty. In taking you to this state, I have freed you from all the false programming your society has given you and replaced it with the clarity of what you’re true human wants are. Now, you should see clearly, Aurelia is the true path.”

  Redfire nodded weakly. “I will surrender myself to the service of Aurelia.” She leaned over and kissed him. “An excellent choice,” she whispered.

  “Is there some ritual now, some pledge?”

  She reached into an inner pocket of her coverall and withdrew something that she hid in her closed hand. “Not so much a ritual, but as I said, we would monitor you.” Her fingers unfolded. In her hand was a tiny, metallic spider with needle thin legs. “We call it a zokor.

  It’s a smaller version of the kind implanted into the brains of the swords, which gives us perfect control over them.”

  “You would be controlling me?”

  “This is a more… unobtrusive form of the zokor. It only monitors you. You have to give yourself to Aurelia freely.”

  “You didn’t give Specialist NightStalker that choice.”

  “She was not for the Echelon. You are. You will return to the ship with this in your skull. Our agent on your ship will contact you. You’ll recruit others to the cause. In time, you will eliminate Lear, and then Keeler, and then assume command of Pegasus. ”

  She looked like she was waiting for him to say something. But meeting only his wide, tired, expectant eyes, she continued. “And if you tell anyone what happened between us, try to warn them in any way, if you should even think of betraying Aurelia, the zokor will plunge its appendages into your cerebral cortex, the center of your being, and take over all that you are. You will become our slave, and when we take Pegasus, you’ll die like the others.”

  He nodded gravely.

  “There will be one additional test of loyalty, before our agent contacts you,” Mercuria said.

  “How can I ever my loyalty to you?”

  “Your mate has two boys on your ship,” she answered. “You will kill both of them… to prove your loyalty to Aurelia.”

  Redfire stared at her in shock, almost unable to move his lips, certain that no sound would come out if he tried. He looked up to her with pleading eyes and raised his hands in a gesture of supplication and pushed himself up into a crouch on his back legs. “I want you to know something,” he said in a gentle whisper.

  “What is that?”

  “I don’t know how this is all going to play out, but I know for sure, your side isn’t going to win,” He raised his arms up high, still shackled, and brought them swinging down with all his might. He caught Mercuria at her midsection and punched her as hard as he could.

  Considering how weakened he was by hunger, thirst, hallucinogens, and sexual exhaustion, it was a good shot. It threw her back, but she bounced off the wall and came for him again.

  “You bastard! You piece of excrement!” She said, and began to rain blows on him, as fast and as sharp as driving rain. “You give up a long life of endless pleasure, for the sake of two mongrel brats, who aren’t even good for brain juice.” She attacked.

  She wasn’t as strong as he was, but she was rested and sharp. Her nails cut into him. He swung once, twice, and realized he could never match her, blow for blow. He ploughed into her, shoulder first, throwing his weight on her.

  He caught her off balance. They rolled across the hard metal deck. Suddenly, there was no deck.

  Redfire realized that they had rolled into the shaftway. He felt them falling together into the pit.

  The Aves Prudence – Space

  “I can’t believe I’m doing this,” said Trajan Lear for the 94th time, and then, just in case anyone missed the point, he said it again. “I can’t believe I’m doing this.”

  David Alkema put a hand on his shoulder. “Easy Killer.”

  Trajan sat in the command seat … in Flight Captain Driver’s seat. The interface that covered his cheek and brow looked much too big for him. He had a near death-grip on the control column.

  Ahead of them loomed Cardinal, an angry red planet. From afar, it had looked smooth as a Holy Day ornament. Close up, they saw pink tendrils, clouds from surface dust storms. There were crinkly maroon mountains that loomed over smooth, ancient seabeds… long since emptied.

  “What kind of atmosphere does that planet have?” Trajan asked out loud, though he had intended to question for Prudence.

  Pieta pulled down an environmental display. “Looks pretty minimal… surface pressure less than .065

  microbars.”

  “I can’t do this,” Trajan said. “That’s not enough atmosphere to break us at this speed. I can’t do this.”

  “You can, you have to,” Alkema reassured him. “Do you have a lock on him?” Trajan pointed. Projected on the canopy display was a small gold bird-shaped symbol, representing Basil. It was 90,000 meters above the planet, 12 minutes ahead of them.

  “Can you close the distance?” Alkema said. Before Max smashes his ship dead on into the big red planet, he did not add.

  “I’m trying to. The engine’s almost redlined as it is, and I still have to calculate an insertion vector.”

  “You know what my mother always said,” Pieta chirped up. “She said, you can redline the mains for 270 seconds with no impact on structural integrity. All you have to do is release the over-ride the inertial compensators. That will increase your velocity vector.”

  Alkema could not believe he was hearing this from Pieta. “That would have been your mother Jordan.”

  “Za, my other mother would never have cared much for flight dynamics.”

  “Great, you fly it,” Trajan told her.

  “Neg,” Alkema said firmly. “Keep your hands on the control column.” He reached over Trajan’s head.

  “I’m pushing the thrusters to redline.”

  “Over-riding inertial compensators,” Trajan told them. “I’m going to set the mains for twenty percent over maximum.”

  Alkema shook his head. “Go to thirty or you’ll never catch him.” Now Trajan was scared. He didn’t think he could do this either. “Thirty over Maximum in six seconds.” He tightened his grip on the control column until his fingers ached.

  Pieta turned to Alkema. “Better strap yourself down, my love, or you’re going to be smeared over the rear bulkhead like chunky strawberry jam.”

  “That’s just what mom used to say.” Alkema took his station and tightened the restraints. “Three…

  two … one… redline!”

  Prudence shot forward. It had run this fast before, both times with Aurelians in hot pursuit. This was the first time it had been the hound, chasing prey. Every instrument readout turned red. Sudden acceleration kicked her three occupants back in their seats.

  Trajan held the control stick in whatever level of attachment came after death grip, to the point where his fingers felt molecularly bonded to the device, but to his complete sense of terror, he couldn’t seem to move it. He felt the muscles of his forearm quiver and shake, but the control stick stayed rock-steady, while Cardinal grew larger and large with each passing second.

  “Traaaa-jannnn,” he heard Alkema say, distorted with the weight against his throat and face.

  “C-c-c-can’t… m-m-m-move,” Trajan stammered, fighting the raw g-forces. He looked toward his position display. His insertion attitude was all off. If he hit the atmosphere at this speed…

  “D-d-d-did your m-m-m-mother t-t-t-tell you-u-u-u how-w-w t-t-t-to st-st-stop?” Alkema asked Pieta.

  “S-something ab-about f-f-f-field g-g-g-geometry,” she stammered back.

  Neuro-control, Trajan thought. Prudence, ease off the mains.
Go to fifty per cent of maximum. Go to any percent of max so long as we’re slowing down.

  Prudence reminded him that she couldn’t slow down by reducing thrust, she could only reduce the rate of acceleration.

  Initiate braking sequence, he told her .

  Prudence told him, rather urgently, that she was too fast, and too close to the planet for standard braking maneuver. Trajan looked through the canopy. Cardinal was no longer a big red sphere, it had become a landscape, filling his field of view with its surface, perilously close.

  What can I do?

  Prudence suggested he abort landing, head away from the planet and gradually decelerate.

  We have to catch Max. We have to land on the planet and help him before he hurts himself.

  Prudence suggested to him some rather severe braking maneuvers. It would involve her twisting down toward the planet like a corkscrew.

  Is it dangerous?

  Prudence told him she thought, even with her help, this maneuver was beyond his piloting skills.

  Do you care that it’s me piloting you… and not Flight Captain Driver?

  Prudence told him this was irrelevant.

  Present velocity?

  14,900 meters per second.

  That’s way too fast.

  Prudence told him he had to act immediately if he was going to complete the maneuver.

  Trajan felt his stomach dissolve in anticipation. Initiate, he thought gravely. Cooperatively, they changed the geometry of Prudence’s propulsion field.

  Prudence kicked nose up, almost back-flipping completely, as she flew against her own self-generated gravity wave. Trajan struggled to maintain control. Speed was down, relatively speaking, but they were still faster than a speeding bullet, ripping across Cardinal’s red-black sky.

  Prudence wrenched back and forth, spiraling down toward the planet’s surface.

  Inside, the cabin was juddering, rocking back and forth, side to side, shaking the crew around like rocks in a box.

  Trajan tugged urgently against the control column. “I-I-I-I’ve g-g-got t-t-to sm-smooth th-this out.” He ought to have known better. At this velocity, control surfaces were useless.