Zero Star

by Chad Huskins

Kalder wondered if that first moment of wonderment betrayed any particle of his Zeroist teachings, because, just for a second, the fleet was all he could see. Every nuance of it, every tiny gray, silver, and white blip. Some of them, such as the Saber-class ships, were painted bright red to reflect the blood spilt in the Beta Wars, where they had earned their reputation for speed and fast death.

  They were all there. Indomintable-class frigates, built fat and tough, with many-layered compristeel hulls and honeycombed flexible struts sandwiched in between each layer. Scimitar-class supercarriers, capable of launching a dozen waves of drone starscreamers. Rapier-class destroyers, carrying thirty-two rail guns firing tungsten shells with depleted thuranium-12 cores. Greatwyrm-class dragonships, wrapped lovingly by greatwyrms that encircled and coiled, merging with the secreted-resin shell, with an antimatter launcher, a complement of skyrakes, and a one-of-a-kind impeller-wave inducer.

  As soon as Tenth Fleet began to spread out, its ships spilled wyrm flocks from their bellies. The long-winged serpents coiled and uncoiled in space, their bodies undulating as they spread their wings, gathered solar energies, and induced their dorsal drives.

  “You did it, Senator,” Hayg said to him, marveling alongside him. “I didn’t think you could do it, but you did it. You have gotten approval from a spiteful Senate to conduct your Crusade.” He looked at Kalder. “You’ve come a long way.”

  The ships continued to appear and find their formations. Forty-three of them, fanning out across the void, giving each other enough space to maneuver, for each ship required miles to turn. They spread around the two asteroids, silent little snowflakes scattering across a perfectly black tablecloth.

  “It truly is a sight,” Hayg said. After a while, he added, “But it’s a far cry from this feat to undoing what’s been done to the galaxy. What’s still being done. It’s a far cry from ending the Brood, or pushing back against the Ascendancy, or staving off the Fall.”

  “You’re right, of course.”

  Hayg looked at him seriously. “Kalder…I must ask. What is it you hope to find out there in the stars? More Stranger artifacts?”

  “There are many sites left unexplored throughout the galaxy,” Kalder said. “Many of them left on worlds where other alien life-forms built their societies and then vanished, but the Strangers’ works often remain unharmed and in situ. Like the chamber that my stellarpath rediscovered. I think there are things yet to be found that might be helpful.”

  “Do you…do you think there’s a chance of some hope? Is this prophecy of the Scrolls…real? Is any of it real? Can we survive this Fall?”

  In that moment, Kalder saw that his old ally and fellow veteran had been holding something back. A hope he dared not speak, because it might wither once taken out of its protective shadow and shown the light of reason. He wanted to be mollified. He wanted to know the mad scheme of Kalder the Dreaded had some merit.

  Kalder mulled it over. “It took a lot of work to get this fleet under my command, just as you said, Marshal.” He looked at Hayg. “But before I arrived here, I first had to get halfway. And before that, a quarter of the way. And before that…” Out of reflex, and before he could stop himself, he touched Hayg companionably on the shoulder. “I was told you would help me in this endeavor. Can I count on you to lead my Crusade?”

  Hayg nodded. “It would be my honor, old friend.”

  “Good. Then I will be in touch.”

  Kalder turned and gestured for Trix to follow him out of the sublimation rooms. Once they were inside the lift, he addressed the bot. “Were we followed the whole time?”

  “Yes,” Trix said, in his usual monotone voice. “A tail dressed as a factory worker. He did not get on the lift when you and I got off, and he remained no more than fifty yards away from us at all times.”

  “Did you get a lock on any communiqué frequency?”

  “Yes. However, the message is encrypted, Master, and I apologize that I cannot determine the contents.”

  “Did you pin a destination?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where?”

  “The Grand Marshal. The signal was going to Hayg’s personal imtech.”

  “And its origin?”

  “The upper levels of the asteroid,” Trix said. “The office of Senator Callum.”

  A Corporatist. And an old friend of Hossel’s.

  Kalder sighed, and used his holotab to bring up Julian’s face.

  “So?” his assistant said.

  “It’s as I thought. Hayg had us followed, and he was receiving communiqués from people friendly to Hossel while we were speaking. Hayg’s old connections to Hossel have made him uncertain of my motives or capabilities, perhaps both.”

  “What do we do now?”

  “I need an executive officer I can trust, but we cannot go with an old dog of war—their roots in the service are too deep, I feel. They’re too likely to be concerned with their political careers. Men like Hayg will ally themselves with a surer bet. I’m doing well with the Senate now, but everyone senses that this is my last endeavor, I’ve pulled in every favor and endorsement for this. After I have my fleet and I’m gone, I will not be a viable political ally, especially since I won’t be around to maintain relationships. Everyone’s already looking for a better deal, and I suppose Hayg has found his.” Kalder thought for a moment. “So then, we go with Desh.”

  Julian made a face. “Desh has been out of the military almost a decade, sir, and he hasn’t held a command in at least twelve years. He also lost every single ship he ever commanded because he went headlong against the Brood without much forethought. He’s a disaster, a failure by every measure.”

  “Which is why we can expect him to have no political agenda.”

  Julian shrugged as if to say that didn’t mean much. “I’ll try and locate him. He’s probably somewhere in the Bowery. Is there anything else, sir?”

  “Yes. We need to find a way to get Second Fleet some type of reinforcements. Pennick suggested Phanes might be a rout.”

  Julian shook his head. “What else can we do? Almost every fleet is lost, occupied, or cut off from us.”

  Kalder gave it some thought, then said, “The lobbyists waiting outside of my office. Wasn’t there one from the Brotherhood of Contrition?”

  Julian thought for a minute. “Yes, now that you mention it. Along with the kook who says he represents someone named d’Arhagen and his World Serpent, and a rep for the Mining Guild, and—”

  “Arrange a meeting with the Brotherhood,” Kalder said.

  “They’re a cult made up of penal colonists, led by priests who worship the Three Goddesses of Mercy.”

  “They also have a small army, and a small navy made of the ships of pirate converts,” Kalder pointed out. “It isn’t much, but they’re only about twenty light-years away from Phanes. They may be able to send forces in time. That is, if I can convince them of the greater good of Man and all that.”

  Julian seemed to struggle with a thought. He said, “That’s a long shot. And few people trust the contrite brothers. And what if they refuse to help?”

  “They will not refuse.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  “Because,” Kalder said. “Ours is a mad quest, and for a mad quest you require madmen.”

  KALDER FOUND DESH drinking alone in a tavern deep beneath Monarch’s surface, close to its mined-out core. The tavern had no name, but it was tended by two bots, a man, and his seemingly inbred daughter. The daughter had two cyberware arms that rattled as she served drinks and food, and her left eye had been replaced by an oculator that appeared not to focus on anything.

  Predor Desh III stayed down here, in the Bowery. That’s what they called these deep levels. The streets pushed through narrow leaking tunnels, pipes steamed and leaked both overhead and underfoot, creating slushy pools of brackish water that one had to wade through. Vehicles, bots, and even people lay motionless in the street. Some had drowned. The funk of death and rust and burning wires
made a unique mélange that would have offended lesser men’s olfactory nerves. Hungry eyes watched Kalder from the sahdows as he descended each shaky set of stairs, but Trix’s presence kept the owners of those eyes at bay.

  These tunnels were a labyrinth, left over from days when platinum had been extracted by bore drones. The hollowed-out interior had supplied housing for maintenance workers that fixed the drones, and had created a loose infrastructure of roads.

  But all those roads led to the surface, where the family habs were, where windows gave the wealthy a better look at the nothingness.

  Kalder knew he could find Desh here because he had been keeping up with the disgraced captain for many years. He did not like to lose track of desperate men, for often they were the only allies that a political hardliner could trust. The disenfranchised, the conspiracy theorists, the lowborn, and the impoverished, these were the only tools that a man with an extreme agenda could use to achieve his goals.

  In his Notes on the End, Narhach’i had extolled the many virtues of the uneducated poor, among them being a willingness to do things that would never occur to a person living a life of privilege to do. Desperation bred creativity, and creativity was what was needed right now.

  Desh was a tall, slim man, still young and without need of regens just yet. He was bare-chested, revealing a slight gut, and his long, unwashed hair was draped on his shoulders. He scratched his scraggly beard and belched as Kalder approached.

  “I have only one question,” Kalder said, taking the seat across from former captain. “Answer it right, and we might be good friends and your fortunes will change. Answer it wrong, and I’ll leave you alone in these depths, and you can go about nursing your woes.”

  Rheumy gray eyes peered from behind a curtain of black hair. “Who are you?”

  “If I could give you command of a starship task force, right now, this very day, would you take it?”

  Desh straightened. He looked Kalder up and down, reexamining his robes, registering who he was. He might even have a set of NUI-capable imtech lenses. His eye-flicking suggested he was using facial-recognition and accessing LOG to make the connection. Then, those eyes, gray as storm clouds, cleared for a moment. “Kalder. You’re Kalder. The one they say—”

  “Yes or no, would you take command of an expedition force?”

  “I would.”

  “Even if it meant you were forced to share it with others, such as the Visquain of Second Fleet, and myself?”

  “Yes.” There was a drink of some kind in a filthy mug that was next to Desh’s hand, and right now that mug seemed all but forgotten.

  Kalder nodded, and leaned forward, resting his elbows on the edge of the table. “I’m helping to lead a Crusade, one that will take us across many star systems, and likely put us up against the Brood, the Machine Ascendancy, and possibly other dangers we haven’t even discovered yet. Now, if any of that concerns you—”

  “You had me at the Brood,” Desh said, a smile splitting that ratty beard of his. “But what is this? Why me?”

  Honesty was a virtue of a good Zeroist, so Kalder leveled with him. “Because you are low, and I would raise you high,” Kalder said. “People tend to be loyal to those that have taken them out of a place of seemingly no return. Your flesh is pale. Too long have you been down here. It’s time to ascend again, Captain Desh. I think it’s time. Do you agree?”

  Desh nodded. “I do.”

  “I need a liaison, someone who will translate what the Visquain and the Primacy are asking of me. A military policy expert of sorts, you understand.”

  “I understand.”

  “I’ll also require your expertise with the Brood, should the need arise.”

  Kalder could tell by the way Desh nodded that he dearly hoped the need would. “I can do that,” he said.

  “Good. You’ll report to my office tomorrow.” He slid a small piece of slinkplast across the table with his information written on it. “We will discuss the details then. In the meantime, clean yourself up, look as presentable as possible for a formal meeting. Do you still have any of your old uniforms?”

  “I’ve got two,” he said.

  Kalder nodded. “We will be speaking with my stellarpath and others, going over everything.”

  He stood up to leave.

  Desh called after him. “Just what the hell are we crusading for?”

  “Prophecies foretold in the Moon Scrolls and others,” he said.

  Desh cracked a smile. And, as Kalder left the tavern with Trix in tow, he heard Desh’s mad cackling behind him.

  “DID HE SEEM…amiable?” Julian asked, as he set the tea down on his mentor’s desk.

  “He seemed receptive,” said Kalder. “And that’s all I care about at the moment. Is the contrite brother waiting outside?”

  “He is, sir.”

  “Send him in.”

  Julian opened the office door, and waved inside a man in a long gray robe with chains wrapped around his wrists, forearms, legs, and ankles. The chains were symbolic of his station, how he was bonded to the Three Goddesses of Mercy and would eternally do their will. On his neck was a ten-digit number, tattooed there by the penal colony he had come from.

  The contrite brother’s face was sallow, a little weary, but his eyes were filled with a fire that only the truly worshipful and reverent could convey. He walked over to Kalder and bowed low. “Senator Kalder. Many thanks for admitting me through your door. Your trust in this lowly prisoner is humbling.”

  “What is your name?” asked Kalder, waving him to a seat.

  “This prisoner’s name is Soreniz,” the brother said, taking a seat. “And I am grateful for the trust you put in me by allowing me to sit in your presence.”

  The Brotherhood of Contrition had been taught stringent manners. Indeed, it was the first thing they were taught when they were shipped from their penal colonies and indoctrinated, that they were forever lesser than other law-abiding citizens. They were indoctrinated to believe that their crimes, being so heinous, should have expelled them forever from society, and that common folk were right to fear and mistrust them. Thus, anyone who invited them in or broke bread with them was to be thanked profusely.

  “You were a patient man, Brother Soreniz. You’ve been waiting outside my chamber for weeks.”

  “Months,” the contrite brother corrected. “But for one who is less than nothing, a few months in a dusty hallway is not so much to bear.”

  “I imagine you’ve seen worse.”

  “I have,” the contrite brother assured.

  Kalder looked the man over. His hands were thick and strong, but also crisscrossed with myriad scars. Privately he wondered how many of those were self-inflicted, and how many had come from his taskmasters.

  “You are the envoy of the Repentant Designate?”

  “I am. And she sends me with an offering of assistance in Monarch’s time of great need.”

  “Then I’ll cut right to it,” Kalder said. “I know that you have been sent to ask for more funding. My assistant Julian tells me you’ve been to almost every other senator and governor on Monarch, but that they’ve all turned you away. I was your last choice.”

  “It is so,” said the contrite brother. “I apologize if this offends, but I did not think you would be as, ah, receptive as others. I believed, perhaps wrongly, that the Brotherhood of Contrition would be welcome here, as there seems to be a shortage of people handing out foodstuffs, and mechanical problems with the hydroponics on Monarch, and so on. We contrite brothers are very handy. We’ve had to be, in order to keep our own ships in order.”

  “I take no offense to being your last choice. Indeed, I come to you now only out of utmost desperation, myself.”

  The brother lifted an intrigued eyebrow. “Oh?”

  “Yes, but first tell me what it is that the brothers wished to happen when they sent you here.”

  Brother Soreniz nodded obsequiously, indicating he was grateful for the opportunity to be allowed to speak
to a man of Kalder’s stature. “The Repentant Designate tasks me with roaming the fractured galaxy, and requesting audience with the leadership of all worlds, offering our assistance in humanitarian aid.”

  “In exchange for…?”

  “The most meager of repayment, just enough sustenance to keep us going. Not even enough to sate our constant hunger.”

  Kalder tilted his head quizzically. “Constant hunger?”

  Brother Soreniz smiled in a way that said he was slightly embarrassed by the misunderstanding. “Yes. It is a new rule instituted by the Repentant Designate. A single meal a day of minimum calories. She believes it is important that we suffer eternal hunger for our sins. The hunger drives us, but also reminds us of what we’ve done. However, we are allowed two meals on those days when we are assigned hard labor, but even then the calories are low, and it is a tasteless gruel.”

  “Your Repentant Designate is a very strict woman.”

  “She is.”

  “But she is not here now,” Kalder observed. “You’ve been on Monarch for months without supervision. I have to ask, have you partaken of many meals while here, or perhaps…other activities?”

  Brother Soreniz smiled again. “I have other brothers here watching me, and I watch them. I assure you, I am painfully hungry even now.”

  Kalder nodded. “Well, I hope your Repentant Designate will allow your people many meals in the days ahead, for I have need of ships, and an army, and hardworking men and women.”

  The contrite brother looked confused. “I came offering help in feeding the hungry.”

  “And I’m not asking for that. I’m asking for something else. You’ve been turned away by every other elected official, and now you are sitting across from Kalder, who requires an army and a navy.” He opened his hands, offering the logic of his argument. “My time is short, and I would require an answer soon.”

  A puddle of brackish water came bubbling up from the rock beneath Brother Soreniz’s feet, and he absentmindedly moved his feet to avoid it. “We have only a small fleet, a paltry group of former pirate ships.”

  “I’d heard that your numbers had swelled,” Kalder said. “From the stories I hear, your group originated from a penal colony world. The warden became a staunch believer in the Three Goddesses, raised you all up, and overtook the ships of a few criminals that came to the colony to break out syndicate leaders. The warden apparently found another nearly forgotten penal colony world not thirty light-years away, and discovered they were somewhat technologically advanced. Ever since then, you’ve had your own small shipyards.”