The Eternity War: Pariah

by Jamie Sawyer

  The Jackals fell quiet. The idea of a few hours’ free time aboard North Star Station? Even I could recognise the appeal, given that we would be sealed on this crate for Christo knew how long…

  “My squad can be trusted,” I said. Under full hypno, I doubted that my answer would be the same: I was aware that the response wasn’t entirely truthful.

  Sergkov nodded. “I hope so, Lieutenant. My business on North Star is essential to this mission.”

  “Understood.”

  Major Sergkov made himself scarce as the briefing ended, leaving me with a plethora of unanswered questions. Carmine, to her credit, waited behind, wearing her own confusion like a badge.

  “I didn’t know, Keira,” she insisted, as we left the briefing room. “I … I didn’t know that he was your objective on Daktar.”

  “No reason that you should, Captain,” I said. “It’s above your head.”

  “So I’m ‘captain’ again now?”

  “There are crew around,” I answered, shrugging. “Like you said.”

  “We’re friends, Keira,” Carmine said. “I mean that. I’m not keeping anything from you.”

  My use of her formal rank seemed to irk Carmine, just a little, and I registered that. I’d worked with Military Intelligence before. They were a shadowy organisation, and I didn’t trust them. As for Carmine? Her reaction to my words suggested that she was genuine. Even though I hadn’t seen her in years, I thought that I could still read her well enough. I slowed my pace so that she could keep up, the rap-rap-rap of her stick on the deck a reminder that she had seen brighter days.

  “I expect that Military Intelligence deliberately kept the agencies in the dark about the full extent of the Daktar operation,” I said, thinking this through. “I doubt that you were in the ‘need to know’ category.”

  “There was nothing in the media to indicate that Major Sergkov had been on Daktar. We’ve been pursuing the Black Spiral for the better part of six months, but they’re a big organisation…”

  “I know,” I insisted. Put a hand to the back of my neck and rubbed, realising how bizarre this whole situation was. “I believe you.”

  Carmine seemed relieved by that. “Good. I’ll be on the bridge, if you need me.”

  “Copy that. Are you coming aboard North Star?”

  “Not if I can help it,” Carmine said. “I’m too old for that shit.” She raised her thin eyebrows, nodded back down the corridor. “I could do with some more hands in Engineering, if you can spare them. We’re still a day out of port, but we need to get this ship ready to dock again.”

  The Jackals trailed behind us. They bickered and argued among themselves, comfortably oblivious to the implications of what we’d just been told. Only Zero was absent, no doubt back in the SOC. Only she really knows what war means, I thought bitterly.

  “They’re still green enough that they remember Basic,” I said. “Some makework won’t do them any harm.”

  I called the squad to order, and put Riggs, Feng, and Novak under the captain’s command.

  “Follow Lieutenant Yukio,” Carmine said. “She’ll show you what needs to be done.” To her own crew: “The rest of you need to get this ship inspection-ready for when we dock with North Star.”

  I nodded at Feng, Novak, and Riggs. “You heard the lady. Jump to it.”

  “Copy that, ma’am,” Riggs said.

  The Jackals disappeared into the ship. That left Lopez and me alone in the corridor.

  “Hey,” she said, almost furtively. “Can I speak with you, ma’am?”

  “Trooper to CO?” I asked, somewhat surprised. “Or Lopez to Jenkins?”

  “A little of both, maybe.”

  “I’m not sure that I like the sound of that, but we’re alone now. You talk and I’ll listen.”

  Lopez squirmed slightly. She fiddled with a ringlet of dark hair as she spoke. “I just wanted to say sorry. About how I’ve been acting.”

  “Go on,” I said, slightly enjoying Lopez’s uncomfortable presentation. Lopez had been acting like a brat, but at least she seemed to realise it.

  “Back on Unity,” she said, starting again, “I know that I was being a bitch. I … I shouldn’t have reacted to this mission like I did.”

  “Damn straight. You’re a trooper, Lopez. You’re in the Army now.”

  “Yeah. I know.”

  “Sometimes we get asked to do shit we don’t want to.”

  I felt a lot like I was talking to a kid, but I chided myself when I saw the holo-badge on Lopez’s chest. She had seven measly transitions under her belt, and no prior military experience. If I was angry with anyone, it should be with General Draven for giving me command of this outfit. Lopez wasn’t much more than a kid.

  “Things were different back on Proxima,” she said. “My father … he didn’t exactly agree with me signing up.”

  “Senator Lopez?”

  “He’s an okay guy,” she replied. “Sometimes, at least.”

  I shook my head. “I’ve wanted to ask you a question myself, Lopez. If your old man is so against the Programme, why are you here?”

  Lopez grinned sheepishly. “My father wants—wanted—me to follow in his footsteps.” The way that she corrected herself made me think that perhaps Gabriella Lopez wasn’t so keen on a career in politics. “He wanted me to go into government, like him. Only way you can hold those posts is by doing civic duty.”

  “Right,” I said, understanding a little more about the girl now. “And I guess you chose the wrong civic duty, at least so far as Senator Lopez was concerned?”

  “That’s right. He wasn’t keen on me joining the Army, but it was what I wanted.” She paused, and pulled a plastic data-clip from the breast pocket of her fatigues. Showed it to me. “Before we left Unity, he tried to contact me. Novak and Feng might think that I tried to pull in some favours, but honestly: I didn’t.”

  I sighed, slowly. “Senator Lopez offered you a way off the squad?”

  “That’s right. He didn’t contact me directly, but then again he never does. He has people to take care of that.” She laughed, an acid sound. “His office left me messages—lots of messages. They promised that, if I wanted it, they could get me a REMF position in the Core.”

  REMF: rear-echelon motherfucker. This was a different side to Lopez, maybe one that I hadn’t appreciated before.

  “You weren’t tempted to take his offer?” I asked.

  “No, I wasn’t. You look surprised by that.”

  “No disrespect, Lopez, but you haven’t exactly made a secret of the fact that you don’t want to be on the squad…”

  “I didn’t even answer the messages.”

  Her face had taken on a hard expression. More Lopez that I hadn’t seen before, and I kind of liked it. The senator had been most vocal about closing down the Sim Ops Programme. But his daughter, small and dark-eyed and anxious, was of a different breed. What she’d just told me chimed in some ways with my own history. Ol’ Teddy Jenkins had wanted me to be Army, but he’d been equally disapproving of my decision to go into Sim Ops, insisting that it wasn’t proper military. I had a newfound respect for Gabriella Lopez.

  “You didn’t need to tell me that,” I said.

  “I did. I’ve been a bitch, and I know it.”

  I shrugged. “I can take it. I’ve got broad shoulders, and I’m your CO.”

  “I wanted to tell you now,” Lopez said, “because I figured that I can’t be sure what we’ll discover out there.” She waved at the wall beside her, indicating space outside. “We could be walking into another media shitstorm.”

  “I get you,” I said. “Thanks for the heads-up.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  NORTH STAR STATION

  Over the next day or so, we made a series of quantum-jumps through the Former Quarantine Zone. The ship’s AI declared that we were about to jump, and the two-minute warning siren filled the air. Boom. We delved deep into the quantum. Less than a second later we were back in real-space, and lig
ht-years had passed. That’s the reality of a Q-jump engine.

  Into the Drift. Closer to the Maelstrom.

  The Jackals collected on the Santa Fe’s bridge, watching our progress. The squad was eager to get off-ship, even if it wasn’t going to be for long.

  Small and cocoon-like, the bridge sat at the Santa Fe’s nose. It had a half-dozen crew stations, equipped with holo-screens and viewer modules that looked like they were the product of the First Space Race. Padded flight couches, of the type used during launches under high-G, lined the walls. A tactical display filled the crew-pit, showing computer-generated graphics of space around us.

  “Hey, boss,” Novak started. He rose from his chair with a creak, his tattooed head almost grazing the deckhead. “I lose drone now, yes?”

  Novak’s drone had recommenced recording as soon as Sergkov’s briefing had ended, and it continued to follow him everywhere.

  “Are you ever going to get tired of asking that question?” Riggs asked. “I’d say that the universe is a safer place with your every move being tracked, lifer.”

  “I ask again,” Novak said, staring levelly at Riggs.

  “No, trooper,” I replied. “You’re not losing the drone. You know the rules.”

  “I guess Novak’s grand plan of escaping from Alliance custody while we’re on North Star has been scuppered,” Lopez joked.

  Novak didn’t see the funny side of it at all.

  The surveillance drone hovered just beyond his reach. The machine had received its fair share of abuse, but Novak well knew that if it were damaged, or if it otherwise became inoperable without my permission, he would be in breach of his military contract: would suffer a penalty against his remaining sentence.

  “How long do you have left on that sentence anyway?” Lopez goaded.

  Novak scowled. “Not your business. Need more transitions.”

  “Do you know how many you’ll have to do before they release you from the contract?” Feng said.

  “Is many,” Novak grumbled. “Is too many.”

  “Approaching North Star,” Carmine said. She sat in her command throne, surrounded by a nest of screens plugged into the ship’s mainframe. “Bring us in nice and slow.”

  “Aye, ma’am,” said another officer. “Cutting thrust control.”

  “Get me a visual, if you will.”

  “Sending it to your console, ma’am.”

  North Star Station appeared on the tactical display.

  “That’s it?” Lopez said. “Hardly looks like the last bastion of humanity that people make it out to be…”

  “Who says that about North Star?” Carmine asked. “Because I can tell you, there’s very little humanity down there.”

  North Star was a military bunker floating in space. At first, its black hull was barely visible against the dark, but as we got closer I made out more detail. It was a vast, sprawling mess. Structures had grown from the flanks of the station proper: a shanty town of space habitats, linked together with air-tunnels and atmospherically sealed corridors, enlarging the base’s footprint. The station’s stamps of ownership—an Alliance Army emblem, together with a United Americas flag—had long since faded. Words had been printed over them: LAST STOP BEFORE THE MAELSTROM. REFUEL, KICK BACK, AND CHILL OUT.

  “Someone has a sense of humour,” I said.

  “Place used to be a listening post, during the war. Now, military discipline is a little more lax.”

  Sergkov stood at my shoulder. The guy had a thing about sneaking up on you; I hadn’t even heard him enter the bridge.

  “Major,” I said. Went to salute.

  “Stand down. No need for the formalities any more. You’re in Mili-Intel now.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  North Star had numerous docking bays, and dozens of starships swarmed around the station. Most were older-pattern Alliance vessels—I noted a United American vessel, and at least one ancient Pacific Pact sun-jumper—but others were so ancient that I couldn’t identify their ownership.

  “The station has an official military garrison of thirty-five Alliance Military Police officers,” Zero reeled off. “They’re supported by an unlisted number of corporate marshals.”

  “When the war finished,” Sergkov said, his hands pinned behind his back as he glanced down at the display, “ownership of the station was handed over to the North Star Corporation. Hence the name.”

  “What was it called before then?” Riggs asked.

  “It didn’t have a name,” Sergkov said, without looking up. “Just a numerical designation.”

  “That figures,” Lopez said. “That’s one ugly base. It makes the Santa Fe look beautiful.”

  Carmine glowered. “The Santa Fe is beautiful!”

  “Just keep telling yourself that, Carmine,” I said.

  “The aesthetics are irrelevant,” Sergkov countered. “We won’t be here for very long.”

  The Shard Gate—North Star’s reason for existing—filled the display now. Not physically, because this Gate wasn’t spatially large. Instead, it threw exotic particles across near-space like an acid shower on a wet SoCal afternoon. The Fe’s scopes and sensors were going haywire, trying to compensate for the background noise that the Gate generated. I could feel my temples pulsing, the beat of some distant alien drum driving me onwards.

  “That Gate doesn’t look much like the one at Daktar,” Riggs said, his voice dropping.

  “Very few of them look the same,” Carmine said.

  Zero rocked on her heels in a sort of trance. “The Gate’s official designation is NS-756. When they first found it, during the war, Sci-Div thought that it was a natural phenomenon.”

  “They thought that was natural?” Lopez asked.

  Zero shrugged. “So they say. Lots of the Gates work that way. Hidden in plain sight. It’s the best camouflage, I guess.”

  From a distance, NS-756 looked almost stiletto-thin: a vertical slit in reality. It was surrounded by a dozen or so heavy frigates, ships tasked with protection of our end of the Shard Network.

  “The Gate isn’t the only thing out here we need to be wary of,” Carmine said. “Ensure that navigation’s tracking those rocks.”

  “Aye, ma’am,” Yukio said. We were in a vast asteroid belt, and the tactical display was alight with thousands of new objects. “We’re also picking up several unregistered civilian vessels in the Drift. Do you want those flagged as well?”

  “Don’t bother,” Carmine said. “Not unless they get too close.”

  “What are those ships doing out there?” Feng asked. “Mining the asteroids?”

  “They aren’t mining,” Carmine said. “Didn’t they teach you anything in that Directorate crèche?”

  “I’m not Directorate,” Feng said, the annoyance clear on his face.

  The old captain either didn’t register Feng’s anger, or if she did, she simply didn’t care. Distractedly, continuing to direct the docking procedure, she said, “It’s what they find out there, in those rocks, that keeps bringing them back. There are Shard remains in the belt.”

  “Surely not actual Shard?” Lopez asked, wide-eyed.

  “Of course not!” Carmine said. “You really are quite vacant, aren’t you, my dear?”

  “Cut it out, Carmine,” I said. “You’re enjoying goading my people a little too much.”

  Carmine smiled to herself. “The prospectors are looking for xeno-tech, my dear. Alien weapons. Explorers go out there in little asteroid-jumpers, nothing more than powered boats. Usually, all they find is barren rock.”

  “But just sometimes,” I picked up, “they find more. When the Shard disappeared from this end of the Milky Way, they left behind a lot more than just the Gates.”

  “And whatever they find,” Carmine said, “they get to keep.”

  “Has anyone ever found anything valuable?” Feng asked.

  “Not likely,” Carmine said, with a chortle. “Bits and pieces, sure, but nothing significant. I doubt that they ever will.”
/>   I hope they never will, I echoed.

  Sergkov brooded beside me. “No one has found anything that helps us understand who, or what, the Shard really were,” he said, his voice a bass rumble across the bridge. “That’s the real question.”

  “But more than enough civilian prospector teams have died trying to find out,” I said, “before anyone gets any ideas about going on their own little treasure hunt.”

  Riggs grinned. “Wouldn’t dream of it, ma’am.”

  I’d been avoiding Riggs for the better part of the journey. This was possibly the longest time we’d spent in the same room since we’d boarded the Santa Fe, and I noticed his lingering eye contact: like he expected something from me.

  “We won’t be there long enough for that,” Sergkov said, putting a formal end to any such suggestion.

  “UAS Santa Fe,” a console crackled, “this is North Star Station Traffic Control.”

  “We read you, NSS Control,” Carmine said. “Adopting standard holding pattern.”

  “We’ve got your signal on the grid,” Control said. “Business or pleasure?”

  Carmine snorted. “Since when is there any pleasure this far from the Core?”

  “I hear that, Santa Fe. I hear that. Just make sure that any tracking software is offline while you’re in that holding pattern; don’t want any fireworks on the way in.”

  “Copy that.”

  “You’re cleared for docking in Bay Twenty. Have a better one.”

  A few minutes later, the Santa Fe docked directly with North Star Station, and parked up in an empty berth. The Jackals and Major Sergkov left behind the Navy crew, and boarded the station.

  North Star’s arrivals hall was an open concourse crammed with gaudy market stalls, selling everything from prospecting supplies to narcotics to chemical enhancers. The scent of so many unwashed bodies mixed with that of fried foods and liquor, a wall of odour that was nearly overwhelming. Many of the crowd bore religious symbology—from the robes of dedicated Gaia Cultists, to the ominous icons of Singularity Preachers.

  “Isn’t the Church of the Singularity supposed to be banned?” Lopez asked, almost naïvely.