“They might be small stings, but there are hundreds of them,” Eliard said, his mouth starting to open into a smile.
“Captain!” Ponos’s alarmed digital voice broke his amazement as the man-droid reached over his shoulder and quickly turned the ship’s wheel a few degrees so that the Mercury Blade avoided another satellite tower.
“Oh right, sorry.” Eliard shook his head and continued to fly as the battle raged on in digital visuals in front of him.
Battle, he corrected himself. This isn’t a battle. This is a victory…
There was a sudden snarl of brilliant light, and the bleed of purple, red, and blue colors as Alpha initiated its own multiple warp engines. Eliard saw a handful of the OEC attack craft disappear as they were caught up in the burst of warp plasma, and he wondered if that had been the Alpha-vessel’s intention.
No, a helpful side effect, he considered, feeling his stomach lurch to one side as the gigantic vessel tore reality and vanished.
“Captain!?” Irie sounded near frantic at one end of the ship’s communicator. “What do you want me to do? We’ve got enough juice to take us to Alpha Centauri, I think…”
“Hold it,” Eliard said, on the spur of the moment.
“Captain, can I enquire as to what you are doing?” Ponos appeared equally as confused by the pirate’s actions, but Eliard knew in his heart that what he was doing was the right thing.
“Computer? Open a channel to the OEC Comms,” Eliard said, lifting the Mercury Blade higher into orbit around the platform that was itself orbiting the Earth.
Communication Link Established.
“This is Captain Eliard Martin of the Mercury Blade, and I would like to hand myself in to the Coalition authorities,” he said with a massive grin on his face.
You know what, he thought as a number of tracking spotlights flashed from the nearby platform buttresses on his ship, owning up to my crimes has never felt so good.
7
New Titles and Old Friends
“Are you seriously going to tell me that you think this was a good idea?” Irie said dourly from where she stood just a few feet away from the captain.
He didn’t really think that she had a right to complain, not after their lives had been saved by the OEC defenses, but he guessed that currently having the magnetized handcuff links around her wrists was enough to make anyone a bit peeved.
“Because, boss, and you know I respect you, but I’m telling you that your good ideas need a lot of work…” she grumbled once again.
They stood in a hallway that was split in half by a steady-state meson field, glittering blue. On their side, the floor and the walls were comprised of a gridded, industrial paneling, whereas on the other side of the meson field, the floor and walls were made of smooth metal tiles, along which stalked a line of guards in heavy tactical suits.
“Trust me, Irie. This is going to work out,” Eliard said confidently.
To which his chief engineer only replied, “Just like it worked out for him?” She flicked her secured hands towards the floating plinth following them, atop of which lay the prone form of Ponos. “And after everything that we went through to wake that stars-damned thing up!” She shook her head, and the captain rather thought that it wasn’t the loss of Ponos per se that was annoying his engineer, but the fact that she had spent so much time on Ponos, and the Mercury, and now both were impounded by the Coalition.
“Well, he is supposed to be the Armcore house intelligence, right?” Eliard conceded. When Armcore had effectively declared war on the rest of the Coalition, then he could understand why the OEC would taser Ponos as soon as he walked into their docking port.
From there, the Old Earth Coalition guards had sized up Irie Hanson and Eliard Martin down the barrels of their heavy blaster rifles, before performing a weapons search, restraining them, and corralling them into the ‘detainee’ avenues of the OEC platforms.
Old Earth takes its detainees VERY seriously, Eliard thought when he saw the extreme amount of energy and industry that had gone to creating parallel walkways and one hundred percent surveillance, and no chance of an escape.
But maybe that, too, Elaird could understand. The OEC were supposed to be the heart of the empire, the very hub from which the rest of Imperial Space radiated like spokes. Instead, it had become a bureaucratic anomaly—an annoying piece of red tape uselessly holding people back. Or so many of the noble houses privately believed.
The houses each had their own territories. They had their own navies which, although small and laughable in comparison to the massed might of Armcore, were loyal and dedicated. Usually they were family members themselves, distantly related, and trained at the Trevalyn.
The noble houses didn’t need Old Earth anymore, not to function inside their own sectors of space, and Armcore certainly didn’t want to have to obey the regulations that this center imposed on them all.
The OEC is a relic from a bygone age, and they know it, Eliard considered. This was why they had become what they were: a ball of metal surrounding the dead or dying planet Earth, stuffed with defenses, waiting for the inevitable rebellion, civil war, or insurgency.
“The OEC has a lot of enemies,” Eliard considered out loud as the guards on the other side of the glittering blue, and entirely deadly, meson field nodded them forward again. And I bet they have a lot of traitors, too.
“Yeah, and I think I can see why…” Irie said miserably.
The OEC had become paranoid in their dotage, but paranoid for good reasons.
But Eliard couldn’t stop from smiling. Why hadn’t I thought of this before? He shook his head.
“What’s made you so jovial all this time? Is this some reverse hostage psychology thing?” Irie scowled. Again.
“No. Or at least, if it is, I’m not intending it to be,” the captain said happily. “Remember what the sleeping tin-man here told us back on Epsilon G3? That Alpha had fought the noble houses, and then that Armcore had thrown its lot in with Alpha?”
“Yeah… Why is that such a good thing?” Irie looked at him doubtfully.
“Well… Who else but the bastion of Old Earth, in the entire Empire, has any kind of fortress to match Armcore Prime?” Eliard lifted his shoulders in a pleased sigh. “If there is anywhere that might be able to defeat Alpha and Armcore together, then it has to be here. It has to be the noble houses.”
Irie looked at him as if he had lost his marbles, just as there was a sudden shuffling of the guards on the other side of the meson field, and Eliard turned to see that each one had fallen to one knee.
Standing in their midst was a very small, middle-aged woman in a golden metallic gown, with a tall headpiece.
Oh crap. It’s her, he had a chance to think.
“I’m glad to hear of your faith in us at last, Captain Martin,” the woman said in a cracked, ancient voice. “Or should I be referring to you as Lord Martin?”
The Recorder was a woman with a prodigious reputation, and an even more ferocious intelligence. That much was clear as she commanded their cuffs to be deactivated and for the two prisoners to be seated in an elegant hall with high crystal-glass windows stained a myriad of colors, and an ancient, real-wood circular desk and chairs.
“I can trust that Lord Martin and Chief Engineer Hanson won’t escape or try to endanger me, guards,” she scoffed at the Old Earth Coalition sergeant who appeared to be outraged at this development.
“They know that we are each other’s only hope against a far greater enemy,” the woman said seriously, nodding for the sergeant to be dismissed.
“But, Recorder, ma’am, what about the, uh…” The sergeant’s eyes flickered to the floating drone-plinth upon which lay the electrocuted form of the mecha that housed the original Armcore intelligence, Ponos.
Eliard watched as a shadow of uncertainty crossed the woman’s face, to be replaced by a slightly cruel glee. “Oh, just leave it there for the moment. I want to talk to these good people without Ponos trying to interfere
in everything like it always does.”
“Well, it seems like she knows Ponos for sure!” Irie muttered to Eliard as she settled into her seat beside him.
“Yes, I have, uh…had run-ins with the Armcore intelligence before, I guess you could say.” The woman smiled thinly over steepled hands. From this distance, Eliard had a chance to really study her, and found himself doing so as a gambler might assess his competition.
She was mature, deeply wrinkled but still with good skin the color of burnished copper. Her hair was black and fairly short, and her eyes sharp. She had set aside the gigantic headdress of her station, revealing that the only other adornment on her head was a very discrete iridescent node just behind the eye and in front of the ear on her right temple.
A data node, Eliard thought. Those things were expensive and very rare, and he had only met a handful of people who’d had them installed. They were actually micro data computers, capable of transmitting and receiving the information encoded into quantum data-space, and often used either by lawyers, accountants, or historians.
Eliard presumed that she must be the latter of those groups, but she had the air of the former and the calculating gaze of the second.
“I am known as the Recorder,” the woman in the rich metallic-orange robes that almost matched her umber skin said. “Which, in case you are unaware—”
She is talking for Irie’s benefit, Eliard realized, finding himself starting to like the woman. He knew what she was and who she was, as his own father Lord General Martin had warned him of her many years ago. But he listened and watched as the Recorder introduced herself to them both, without singling either himself or his chief engineer out as one who ‘wasn’t in the know.’
“It’s an honorific title. Ridiculous, really. Dating back to old, old, ancient Earth, when certain cities had dignitaries whose official job it was to remember city ordinances, disputes, and the like.”
“You remember laws?” Irie frowned.
“Yes.” The woman smiled.
Irie pulled a face. “I, uh… I’m not quite sure that this Alpha vessel is going to obey a court injunction, ma’am.”
“Ha! You’re funny. I like you.” The Recorder smiled. “Luckily for everyone here anyway, I do not just record and remember laws, but also military strategy, tactics, negotiations, trade deals… In short, I remember history.”
“You’re House Archival,” Irie said, half-accusingly, half-hopefully, and the mixed tone of regret and hope made Eliard’s heart ache.
Cass had been House Archival, he remembered. She had been the beautiful, deadly blonde woman who had gotten them all mixed up in this mess by downloading and stealing the Alpha intelligence from Armcore in the first place.
Or, I guess you could say that she had helped to save the galaxy for a little while… Eliard thought sadly, but fondly.
He had been smitten with her, he knew. Smitten and angered and betrayed and made foolish by the House Archival agent—a deep spy that had been sent to infiltrate Armcore and stop precisely what it had been attempting to do all along. Partly it was because of her guts and her pride, Eliard thought, and partly it was the way that she had died.
Cassandra Milan had been, for but a short while, on my crew. Eliard felt that familiar gut-kick of pain. He was responsible for everyone on the Mercury Blade, of that he was certain. Perhaps he was unlike many other pirate captains in that respect. Maybe it was a holdover from his Trevalyn days, but all that Eliard knew was this: that if the crew couldn’t depend on their captain to keep them alive, then what sort of ship was it?
My family may be small, and it may be entirely made up of the people who have crewed the Mercury Blade, Eliard recognized, but they were mine.
“I see that you know of us.” The Recorder inclined her head at the gales of emotions that had swept over the two faces in front of her. “You know what it is that we do, and you know what it is that we work towards.”
“You’re historians,” Irie answered. “Your entire house is trying to record the history of the galaxy or something like that…”
“Correct.” The Recorder smiled. “There are various schools of thought, however. There are those that specialize in the history of the Duergar, or the history of flora and fauna. I, however, used to specialize in the history of humanity, which I believe is why I was called upon to become the Recorder of the OEC.”
Which is as close as one comes to a president in the Imperial Coalition, Eliard knew. Not that the Coalition had leaders. It was supposed to act as a Council of Noble Houses, but this woman was the officiator, who, with all of her intricate and nuanced learning of the history of the entire Imperial Coalition, naturally had acquired lot of power.
“You are both aware, as well, of the current state of affairs in the Imperial Coalition?” the Recorder asked.
“Which state of affairs?” Eliard said a little dryly. He liked her, but that didn’t mean that he had to trust her.
“Very funny. The war. The insurgent movement. The invasion.” The Recorder’s tone was deadly serious.
“I take it that you mean Alpha and Armcore?” Eliard said. “Because I’m not quite sure I would call it an insurgency.”
“When a group internal to society decides to take up arms to overthrow the heads of that society then yes, that is known as an insurgency.” The Recorder’s clarity was exacting and inarguable. “However, this situation can also be described as an invasion, thanks to the creature known as Alpha, which is itself representative of a foreign power.”
“A long-dead foreign power,” Elirad had to point out.
“Really?” the Recorder said. “In all of my research and studying, I have learned many things, but none more so pressing than this: never, ever think that you know all the ways of the universe. Not yet. The galaxy and beyond will always surprise you.”
“Outstanding. So you think the Valyien aren’t dead?” Eliard’s voice rose a notch. That was all that they needed right now. For a moment, his mind flickered back to that warp gate hidden under the ice of Epsilon G3-ov, and the strange movement that he had seen inside the light. He was sure that it had been a figure…
No. Impossible. Nothing can survive in quantum space. Not like that.
“No, I have no evidence to assume that they weren’t destroyed, or killed off, or became extinct a long time ago,” the Recorder said. “However, since we have very little information of where the Valyien came from—we have no archaeological record of their beginnings, for sure—then we can only assume that they came here from afar. Logically, it stands to reason that if we cannot predict where a thing begins, we also cannot adequately predict where and when it ended.”
“Your logic is crushing,” Eliard managed to congratulate her. “But you don’t seriously believe, do you, that…”
The Recorder cleared her throat. “All I am saying, Captain, is that given some recent observations, it would be best to maintain an open mind.” She flicked her hand, and the central panes of the crystal-glass windows behind her flushed dark, and then there was projected a very different scene. It was a tiny, flickering light gradually growing lighter and lighter in the frame, until it illuminated a person standing in front of a ball of dancing light.
“What!” Eliard shot to his feet. “What is the meaning of this? Is this some kind of sick joke?”
The person behind the ball of floating plasma light, looking serious and steadily out of the center of the recording, was none other than the dead House Archival agent, Cassandra Milan.
8
The Return
“Explain yourself!” Eliard leaned forward to point his one good hand at the Recorder as the double-doors behind him hummed open, spilling OEC guards that had been summoned by the outburst.
The Recorder’s face was impassive as she stared up at the captain. “You do not need me to tell you, of all people, who that person on the screen behind me is,” the Recorder said. “That is Cassandra Milan, Cassie, or Cass, one of my best agents.”
&nb
sp; “I saw her die,” Eliard said. I helped her to die. His heart thumped.
The memory rose in his mind like a shark from the deep, threatening to rob him of any semblance of control. They had been attacked by the mutant Q’Lot hybrid things. He didn’t know if they were some sort of weapon of the Q’Lot itself, or more likely to be an Armcore creation, merging the difficult, mutable genome of the ancient Q’Lot with human or other animals.
They had been attacked, and Cassandra had fallen. The only option had been to either let her die, or to take her back to the nearest medical facility or try some of the rare Armcore Q’Lot serum to keep her alive. The Blue Serum was supposed to be used for super soldiers that the Armcore was going to develop, infusing their body with an organic, natural viral version of the recovery nanobots. A virus that wouldn’t attack your system but would rebuild it.
The Blue Serum had failed. Cassandra had died.
No, Eliard forced himself to admit.
The Blue Serum had killed her. He had watched as her body had reacted to it, and the mixed toxins and poisons of both the serum and the mutant Q’Lot’s attacks had killed her. She might still be alive if he hadn’t decided to treat her there, lightyears away in the middle of nowhere.
And all because I couldn’t face handing myself over to the nearest medical facility, and thus getting apprehended by the Coalition or by Armcore, Eliard thought bitterly. Back then, at the start of this crazy adventure, he had been even more of a fool than he was now.
I had been certain that I was special. That I was the best pirate captain in all of non-aligned space, Eliard thought. That my reputation was worth so much, that I had convinced myself that Cassandra Milan wouldn’t want me to give ourselves up for her.
But now, it appeared, that she was in fact alive. But how could that be? How?
Valyien Boxed Set 3 Page 7