Haze and the Hammer of Darkness

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  As a believer in visible technology, he checks the charge meter on the butt of the sidearm. Empty. He knows it had been fully charged when he took the bridge, and he has only used it once … without effect. He tries to persuade himself that he has seen nothing and talked to no one, but after a few units he touches the commweb.

  “Communications? Captain Ellerton here. Send Commander Sirien to the bridge.”

  Whoever, whatever, Martel is, his logic, flame it all, is unassailable.

  lxiv

  —Excerpt from Act II, Home Divided

  Yves N. Dorben

  lxv

  Martel paces across the porch, one quick step after another.

  Both the problem of arrogant gods, himself among them, and an arrogant Viceroy, whom he has created, remain.

  The real Empire is the Regency, not New Augusta, and its power lies in the Viceroy. The time of the Brotherhood has come, but unless both the Empire and the gods are vanquished, one will re-create the other.

  “Götterdämmerung,” he whispers, and it is a promise.

  Not only to himself, but to his followers, for he can no longer escape them. Declared or not, gods of human societies are created in part by their worshipers, which is what Apollo has known and feared for a millennium.

  Martel pictures the thousands who thronged a small black temple on Karnak, and all of the small shrines on Aurore where shadows are cast.

  “Perhaps the forbidden fruit is best,” he says to no one, for no one is with him, now or ever. He looks down at the silver triangle upon his black belt, then touches the glistening black thunderbolt pin that holds his cloak. Both are appropriate.

  Can he do what he plans?

  He does not know, for no one has ever tried. At least, it is nowhere recorded.

  Colossal arrogance, Martel … colossal arrogance …

  He agrees with his thought, gathers the darkness around himself, and removes himself to a point in space where he can watch the planet which is not a planet, but which is called Aurore, as if the name were the answer to everything.

  First … to remove the base of power of the gods.

  Second … to scatter the gods.

  Third … to destroy the Fleet as the basis of power for the Viceroy.

  Fourth … the Viceroy.

  To begin, he looks upon Aurore, looks upon the planet that should not be, in a way that none of the gods before him has. He understands why the forty-nine percent of the human scientists who have studied Aurore and who insist it is not a planet are correct.

  Or, rather, why Aurore is more than just a planet.

  He imposes, for to impose is the only way to describe what he does, the imprint of darkness across the upper reaches of the golden-hazed energy field that is, that surrounds, Aurore.

  ANGER!

  A ray of golden haze gathers itself from the field and arrows out from Aurore toward the point of blackness, within the wider darkness, that is Martel.

  Four demigods hovering around a certain sacred peak feel their powers abruptly waning and move themselves to solid ground, their faces nearly as white as the snow that caps the peak they had soared above.

  The E.W. officer of the Viceroy’s lead scout gulps as his power registers, focused on Aurore, peg off the scale. He hesitates, then jabs the commweb with one hand while defocusing his receivers with the other. He is not fast enough, and the power amplifiers for the last intake screen sag into molten plastics, ceramics, and metal.

  Martel calls shadows from beneath the here and now, from beneath the past, and from a future that may never be, drawing as he never has, knowing that without all that he can focus, he will not be able to deflect the raw force that the field which is Aurore has directed at him.

  The cold of black fires shimmers around him, both blinding and swallowing light, one and the same. And the black fires build, and build to an intensity that will befuddle astronomers across the galaxies for so long as the energies carry.

  “Flamehell! See what I see?” asks the Scout Captain, who is but a subcommander.

  “I think so.” That is his navigator, who sees it all through unpowered screens, the forces are so great.

  Both know that what they see has long since transpired, and that lends to the wrenching at their guts.

  In a series of flashes, one after another, bolts of brilliant yellow flare from the “nightside” of Aurore, each one somehow brighter than the last, until each rivals momentarily the brilliance of the sun unseen by Aurore’s inhabitants. Each energy bolt, millennia into the future, will confuse and confound astronomers, those few who are looking as the light recording the phenomena slips through their system, throughout the Galaxy.

  Each bolt strikes the black dot, englobed in black fire, which stands in space. Each fails to splash or to penetrate, but disappears. Disappears, and with each disappearance the blackness grows, becomes more deeply luminescent.

  With the energy he has summoned, and with that he has gathered, Martel does two things.

  The first is a gentle nudge, enough to shake a few buildings, to raise foot-high waves on the stillest ponds, to the celestial body called Aurore.

  The second is a cast of darkness around the planet that has not known it in millennia, perhaps in eons, since it was created by the energy field that has made Aurore what it is.

  Apollo stands upon the portico of a vacant pale golden and marble villa west of Sybernal, where he seeks some sign. As he stands the sky dims, and dims further, until the gloom resembles twilight.

  Martel, he thinks, though he knows not why, except that the darkness itself calls to mind the one whom Thor had thought vanquished, and who, Apollo knows with cold certainty, is not vanquished. Who may be triumphant. Who will triumph, the sun-god fears.

  STOP!

  Apollo reels under the force of the projection.

  The transmission is not a word, but a massive concept rolling outward from Aurore and bouncing back from the wall of darkness which Martel has drawn around the golden sphere that has been called Aurore.

  STOP!

  Martel knows what he must do, if he can, and girds himself.

  Apollo watches from the villa as the golden haze above the sky thins, flows in ebbing sheets eastward until it coalesces into a golden ball, a dim second sun.

  The western sky is black and starless, and the sungod who was shivers.

  The new-formed golden-haze sun contracts, brightens, and elongates into a wedge, pointed against the darkness, finally launching itself toward that darkness.

  The sky of Aurore is jet-black where the sun-god stands, and for the first time since man has been on Aurore, darkness falls. Falls like thunder, but with no flash of lightning to break the black depths that are the sky.

  Martel smiles as he views the energy field that was Aurore, that created Aurore, flee the planet it built. He parts the darkness to let the golden and white glittermotes flee their planet and the energy-sucking darkness that he has fastened upon it.

  From his dark heights, he tosses darkness at the golden wedge, black lightning thrust after lightning thrust. Then, as he chevies the ancient ones on their way, he opens a tunnel, a tunnel in time, back to when a certain FO star was younger, and without a planet.

  The circle is complete. What is, is.

  The field, the glittermotes, will remember, and when they do, they will build the planet they remember, the one human astronomers will claim is impossible.

  Which it is, but that’s beside the point.

  Without the field, the place that is now just a planet called Aurore will not be habitable. For that reason, Martel has already nudged Aurore toward its ultimate destination. In the meantime, the cloak of darkness, which will thin over time, will protect it and its cargo until the planet reaches that stable orbit which Martel has planned for it and for the delicate organisms that inhabit its surface.

  Martel, drawing on his powers of darkness again, twists time, so that what will be done is done. He withdraws the curtain of protection.r />
  And Apollo beholds the first sunrise on Aurore and weeps. That is, before the shadow of the Raven catches him and before he is swirled back through another tunnel of time to a back-distant place where he will be worshiped.

  The Smoke Bull, standing upon the heights on the far side of the Middle Sea, observes the approaching sunset and anticipates the darkness that will fall. Before this occurs, another darkness descends upon him and carries him back to the time when he will see sunrises above a wine-dark sea and bring his own darkness to those who will cause his name to remain a symbol of fear for well beyond the years he has left without the energy field upon which he once relied.

  In turn, the shadow of the Raven falls across the fallen gods and demigods of Aurore, and they are dispatched to generate the legends from which they sprang. All but two.

  One is Martel, the Raven, the undeclared god.

  The second he will deal with later, for now he must meet the third challenge. The Grand Fleet, discounting the reports of the scoutship, draws near, intent upon reducing Aurore to a cinder.

  Martel, in his cloud of darkness, sighs, and rises once again into the night.

  He ignores the genuflections that accompany his departure.

  lxvi

  Martel debates but a moment before drifting through time and space to meet the Grand Fleet before it nears the new orbit of Aurore, which is now merely a planet, albeit a technically impossible one with a slightly tilted axis and a too-circular orbit.

  Should I have given it a greater axial angle than a mere seven and a half degrees?

  He shrugs. For all the powers he has mastered, he has never learned orbital mechanics, nor the mathematics necessary. As for the distance from the sun that should be planetless … that was merely the matching of energy flows. The “year” will be longer, much longer, and the architecture will have to change with the introduction of nights, cold winds, seasons, and chill.

  Aurore will lose much of its attraction as the resort of endless day and home of the gods and source of gods and demigods. Two called gods remain, and Martel knows he is not a god, but merely an immortal with godlike powers in some limited areas.

  Gods are omniscient and omnipresent, and Martel is neither. That is why he must crush the Grand Fleet before it splits, and before either the Marshal or the Viceroy realizes he is the last defender of Aurore.

  Space fleets are not awe-inspiring. The longest line of battle cruisers, cruisers, corvettes, and scouts, even with all screens flaring, flooding the emptiness of the night sky beyond Aurore with squandered energy, is less than a needle in that sky.

  All the energy contained in the metal and composite hulls of the Grand Fleet is less than a small percentage of that represented by the smallest sun, and the combined life spans of the captains and commanders and subcommanders and officers and crews are but a fraction of the life span of the briefest star. And all the energy marshaled by one immortal called a god is insignificant against the total energy of even a small corner of a small galaxy.

  Nonetheless, large enough to render a certain large fleet less significant, thinks Martel, guarding his thoughts while recognizing that few are left with the power to monitor them, and none with the power to stop him.

  Old habits die hard.

  Martel waits in darkness beyond the new orbit of the still-impossible planet of Aurore, waits and watches, perceptions extended, as the Grand Fleet emerges from its subspace tunnel and wedges toward the FO star that is the ships’ destination.

  A thousand ships, fifty thousand men and women, and all because you play games with the Viceroy you created.

  Martel acknowledges the debt, wondering how he can avoid the slaughter that looms before him.

  The obvious strikes him.

  What’s good for gods …

  He waits … waits as the Grand Fleet regroups.

  Two basic formations, those are the options the Marshal for Strategy must consider: the Force Wedge or the Flying V to a Point.

  Both formations have advantages. The wedge concentrates defense screens and firepower at a relatively localized point in space, while the Flying V brings all the Fleet elements together at the last possible moment for such concentration, and thus requires any enemy to spread his defensive forces.

  Since the number of gods on Aurore must be finite, reflects the Marshal, and since the power he had already seen can be terribly concentrated, he advises the Fleet Commander of his recommendation, the Flying V to a Point, and his reason.

  CONCUR, prints the screen from the command bridge, and the decision has been made, and the Grand Fleet spreads from its subspace breakpoint.

  Marshal Reitre feels a chill wind at his back, dismisses it as imaginary, but rechecks his laser sidearm all the same.

  The lead scouts sprint toward the growing image of the star, toward the star and its single planet, where waits a god of darkness in darkness.

  Here’s where the myth came from!

  The far lead scout sees the blackness, the darkness deeper than that through which it travels, and attempts to reverse its momentum.

  “Captain! No indications ahead!”

  “Full reverse!” commands the Lieutenant, but as he does the stars in the scout’s screens wink out.

  A black-shaded rainbow coruscates across the controls and is gone.

  The stars, rather another set of stars, reappear on the screens.

  Buzz!

  “Navigation null!”

  The Lieutenant scratches the back of his head. The star on which they are closing is not the FO type on which the Bassett had been centered instants before.

  The navigation banks contain enough data to reconstruct virtually any locale within ten thousand lights of Karnak and have come up blank.

  The Lieutenant wipes his forehead.

  “Proceed,” he creaks out, hoping they can discover where they are, somehow.

  Back in another time, Martel refocuses the tunnel that he has willed into existence and picks off the rest of the lead scouts.

  Leaves 985 to go.

  On the command bridge far out from the FO star in question, the screen makes the reports, one after the other, sometimes separated by moments, sometimes by close to half a standard hour.

  LOCALIZATION AT 10.0. ABNORMAL ENERGY CONCENTRATION OBSERVED AT TARGET.

  PROCEEDING. RATE 1.5 AND CONSTANT.

  PROCEEDING. TARGET AT 9.5 RATE 1.5 AND CONSTANT.

  SPATIAL DISCONTINUITY, CLASS 8. INBOUND RADIAN 0.

  Marshal Reitre raises his bushy eyebrows. Class-eight discontinuities were only theoretical. Six is the greatest ever observed outside an actual nova. Reitre wonders whether the Fleet Commander understands what he is getting into.

  The second advance line consists of three spread chevrons of corvettes, 120 in all, and Martel prepares to spray them all into the past after the scouts.

  TARGET AT 8.5.

  SPATIAL DISCONTINUITY. CLASS 9.

  SQUADRON 7. REPORT.

  SQUADRON 7 DOES NOT REGISTER ON MASS DETECTORS. RADIATION NIL. DRIVE DISCONTINUITIES NIL.

  REGROUP AND CLOSE LINE.

  REGROUPING COMPLETE.

  PROCEEDING. TARGET AT 7.0 RATE 1.5 AND CONSTANT.

  SQUADRON 5 DOES NOT REGISTER ON MASS DETECTORS. RADIATION NIL. DRIVE DISCONTINUITIES NIL.

  PROCEEDING. TARGET AT 6.0.

  SQUADRON 4 DOES NOT REGISTER ON MASS DETECTORS …

  Marshal Reitre’s hand reaches for the commweb.

  ABORT MISSION, he signals, knowing the Regent will have his position and possibly his head for the override of the Fleet Commander. But the transmission from the command bridge screen tells him what he does not want to see.

  NEGATIVE. CLOSING AND CONTINUING, the signal returns.

  Reitre sighs, wonders if he should use the sidearm on himself, hopes against hope that something, somehow, somewhere will save the Grand Fleet, for the squadrons are disappearing faster than the screen can script, and of the Fleet the Viceroy has dispatched to Aurore nothin
g will return to Karnak. Of that the Marshal is absolutely certain. He returns his eyes to the screen to watch what he fears will happen.

  The remaining flanks of the Grand Fleet are beginning to curl away from Aurore, and for that reason Martel concentrates his attention on the right flank, the heavy cruisers commanded by the Duke of Trinan, who certainly would not have minded being the next Viceroy.

  You can be Viceroy wherever you are. No one will be there to tell you no.

  Martel does not count, only continues his tunnels to the past until a single ship remains, waits until the light cruiser Eltiran turns and reenters its subspace tunnel back to Karnak.

  The critics were right. A thousand ships didn’t fall across the skies of the past. Only 999, and none of them before the time of the first flight from old Home. That would not have been fair.

  Martel pauses.

  Though who’s to say what’s fair?

  He has one other task, perhaps the hardest, yet to do.

  Martel hangs in the darkness, suspends himself, juggles his thoughts and the long-buried feelings he knows churn beneath.

  He turns toward Aurore. His planet. His impossible planet and the home of his impossible dreams.

  lxvii

  Midnight cloaks the Petrified Boardwalk … true midnight, moonless, for Aurore has never had a moon, with the stars only for light. For who had ever thought to provide outside lights for a planet that had never seen darkness?

  The polished stone walks are deserted, and Martel can sense the fear. For darkness was accepted only when it was rare and isolated, but now that night has fallen, truly fallen, not a few of his worshipers are having second thoughts.

  Let them.

  He shrugs and surveys the low waves that still break across the night-silver sand.

  Tonight there is no Emily to rescue you.

  Nor Rathe.

  Nor even a Marta Farrel to recall.

  Hollie and Gates Devero shipped back to Halston, what—nine standard centuries ago? They’re doubtless dust, or buried in some family vault.