Zero Star

by Chad Huskins

  “I’m sure you have a theory.”

  “I think he wants it all. I don’t know, I just got this feeling. I think he wants it.”

  “When you say all, what do you mean?”

  Desh looked over at another holo-projector, where there was a map of the Milky Way on display. The news story concerned recent movements of the Brood through interstellar space. Desh waved his hands at the galaxy. “All,” he said. The server bot refilled him again, and he downed it fast.

  Moira figured he was probably good and drunk by now, probably just rambling. Still, he seemed open now, receptive to new ideas. So, she ventured a little.

  “Kalder told me something about Dwimer,” she said.

  “Oh?”

  “He said that he believes there are spirits there. The restless undead.” She watched the captain closely, gauging his reaction.

  Desh’s face went from puzzlement to denial, and arrived finally at enlightenment. “Huh. Makes sense.”

  “What does?”

  “He’s a religious guy who rails against fanatics. He adheres closely to Zeroism. Or at least he says he does. But he also knew about the Taka-Renault problem.”

  Moira raised an eyebrow. “So you do think he knows something about it.”

  “Please!” he said, waving a hand daintily. “He was way too ready with a fucking plan. He knew you were going to find something along the way. A man like that? Sure, he did. Also, he employed a bunch of different stellarpaths before you, am I right? To try and find the Worshipper site in Zhirinovsky?”

  Moira nodded.

  “Well, there you go. How many stellarpaths has he probably gone through, looking at all the possible itineraries that can take him to the Eaton System? You’re telling me it only occurred to him when you showed up?”

  Desh shook his head, then stood up, staggering.

  “By the way, you repeat any of this to anyone, I’ll deny I ever said it. He’s the boss. He may be a man playing a big fucking game and using me as a pawn, but I’m a willing fucking pawn. He’s the boss. Got that?” He’d slurred it all out, but it was understood.

  Moira nodded. “Got it.”

  An hour later, Moira was sitting at the edge of Florence’s bed, staring at ancient accounts of people being rescued after being stranded on a planet. She and Florence had gone at it in the sheets, and now Florence was snoring blissfully. Moira scrolled and scrolled, searching for more details concerning the man rescued from Tuhhbis by the Delphine’s Hammer. LOG yielded nothing else. It was as if the rescued man had never existed before the date of his deliverance, and had ceased to exist the day after Around the Spiral had chronicled his story.

  A search for Tuhhbis yielded nothing, either.

  This might all just be fiction, she thought. There might never have been a rescue. It was entirely possible. Over thousands of years, many parody news sites had been created, and many fiction writers had created sites that were made to look completely real, to lend their incredible stories some authenticity. Might Around the Spiral have been one of those fictions?

  She ran a search-merger again, this time focusing on any old message boards that might have been archived from any past incarnations of the pubnet. Maybe somewhere, someone had talked about this story on a random social networking site…

  A chime went off, distracting her from her work.

  “Attention, all crew and passengers,” a voice said over the intercom. “This is the XO. We are translating into the Phanes System in five minutes. Please strap yourselves in if you are able.”

  Moira waited in the silence for the transition to happen, felt the wave of nausea come over her, then stood up, got dressed, and walked out of Florence’s billet. She went up two flights of stairs to the observation deck, making way for any sailors rushing past. Kalder and Julian were no longer on the observation deck, but Moira was not alone. One Orphesian mechanic and a pair of vorta were there, looking at the blue-and-white gas giant that was currently the size of a coin held at arm’s length.

  Dutimeyer. She had her lenses in, and her imtech was already giving her a rundown of the gas giant and its eighty-seven moons. Floating between them and Dutimeyer was a single outdated destroyer. With a few eye-flicks she highlighted it and did a LOG search. Some decommissioned vessel from back when the Republic had just been the Aligned Systems.

  A Brotherhood vessel, no doubt.

  It was an instant reminder that Kalder had helped create this victory. They had only just entered the system, and already they were facing a member of Kalder’s machinations. And how would he spin such a decisive and winning maneuver?

  I think he wants it all. Captain Desh’s words came back to her.

  A finger tapped her shoulder. Moira turned to find herself facing an unknown petty officer. “Moira Holdengard?” he said.

  “Yes, that’s me.”

  He handed her a piece of slinkplast. “This just came for you over QEC. I couldn’t send it to your personal holotab because there are protocols for civilian terminals mixing with ours. So I printed it.”

  “Wait…what? You mean someone used a quantum-entanglement communicator to get in touch with me? Are you sure you have the right person?”

  “You’re the resident stellarpath, yes?”

  She nodded.

  The petty officer shrugged. “It’s for you. Rather strange, though. Hope you don’t mind, I had to read it.” He nodded curtly and spun on his heels to leave the deck.

  Moira looked down at the flimsy piece of slinkplast in her hands, and read it:

  Miss Holdengard,

  I hope you had a chance to speak with Senator Kalder about what we discussed. Please let him know that d’Arhagen is currently cut off from the Phanes System by a large cloud of the Ecophage, or else he would have come to the aid of the Republic. Please do tell the senator this, if you are still engaged with him. I’ve tried reaching out to the senator many times since we last spoke, but it appears my messages are being dismissed by his assistant. Be safe out there, Miss Holdengard. I have a fondness for fellow travelers.

  -Thulm

  Thulm. She had nearly forgotten about the strange zealot she had met in Monarch’s Forum.

  What the hell was he talking about? Cut off by the Ecophage? And who the hell was d’Arhagen, and why did he want Kalder to know he had wished to help in the Phanes campaign?

  She looked up at the Brotherhood ship as they were passing it. She saw tiny fireflies dancing around it. It was the glow of plasma torches switching on and off. The ship had suffered damage in the battle and her crew was commencing repairs.

  Moira folded the slinkpast and put it in her pocket, and had pretty much forgotten about it by the time Dutimeyer had swelled to fist size.

  : Widden

  “I don’t know if anyone’s told you,” Takirovanen said, “but you can stop beating yourself up now, doyen.”

  Lyokh shuffle-stepped back from the sim ghost, pulling up his field sword to defend against the phantoms surrounding him. He had been using his visor’s sim setting for training for the last week to take his mind off of things, squeezing in the Forty-Seven Steps as often as he could.

  “What are you talking about?” he panted. He shot to his right, barely avoiding a killing thrust from one ghost.

  “I can see it in your eyes. You’ve been trying to avoid it, but it won’t leave you alone. You think you could have done better.”

  “I could have done better,” he grunted.

  “Maybe. But we won.” Takirovanen sat on a steel crate, eating an apple grown from a local orchard and watching Lyokh train. “You led us to victory.”

  “I led you to slaughter,” he huffed, batting his sword at the air. His visor picked up on the motion, and counted it as a block against the ghost rushing his flank.

  “A slaughter that would have had no meaning had we not won. Victory forgives all mistakes.”

  “Where did you hear that?”

  “From a man who raised me.”

  “Your f
ather?”

  “To my knowledge, I never had a father.”

  Lyokh waved his hand and paused the sim ghosts in mid-attack. He tossed his sword onto one of the supply crates that First Tactical and Medical Wing had dropped off the day before. “What do you mean, you never had a father?”

  Takirovanen took a bite of his apple. “Ever heard of Farseen?”

  Lyokh shook his head.

  “It’s a planet in the Norma Arm. The Brood destroyed it. I was raised in a sewer there, in a small town called Rotomba. I don’t know if the man who lived with me in the sewer was my father, but he didn’t look much like me, so I don’t think he was.” He took another bite, and shrugged. “I just called him Juruk, and he called me boy.”

  “He never called you by your name?”

  “I didn’t know my name. Said he would tell me my name someday, if I did everything he said. I must’ve helped him trick fifty people into sticking their heads into that sewer culvert, where he and I robbed them.” Another bite, this time without the shrug, but his voice had a shrug in it. “He said he was a veteran, and that his old CO told him that victory forgives all. That’s where that comes from.”

  “Jesus,” Lyokh said, returning to his desk and attacking the stacks of slinkplast and computer messages landing on his desk regularly. Abethik walked in every few minutes to give him more updates on the wounded and the other logistics of their occupation of the massive city. “Sounds like a horrible childhood.”

  “I’m sure there are worse.”

  “Is that what led you to join the service? Get away from all that?”

  Takirovanen nodded. “More or less.”

  “Whatever happened to the guy?”

  “Someone killed him. I just came back to our little culvert one day after a bit of dumpster diving, and there he was, lying dead, throat opened from ear to ear. Best thing that ever happened to me. I wandered the streets alone, got picked up by constables, wound up in an orphanage. Finally got me a name. Went through school, graduated, joined the service, and here I am.”

  “That’s…wow.” Lyokh shook his head. “How did we get on this topic?”

  “You were saying you could’ve done better. I was telling you things could be worse. And they could, doyen. But you have to let it all mean something. The victory, the deaths. So, don’t regret it. I don’t. I’d much rather be with you here than in that sewer with him. I’d rather die here than in some culvert.”

  Lyokh sighed, and nodded towards the door. “So, all that destruction out there, you think it means we can rebuild from here? You think we can negotiate some kind of deal with these Widdenians that’ll turn our economy around, save us all, give us the resources we need to stop the Brood and all our enemies? You think it’s all uphill from here? Be honest.”

  Takirovanen gave it some thought. “I don’t usually like quoting the Harbingers, but they have a saying I think fits here. ‘We thought we had hit rock bottom, then we heard someone knocking from below.’”

  Lyokh blinked. “Well, that’s bleak.”

  “You said to be honest. I believe we have to make all of this destruction mean something, yes, but that doesn’t mean that I think it’s clear sailing from here, doyen.”

  Lyokh nodded thoughtfully. “You’re right. No need to despair, no need to celebrate. Thanks, ’Vanen. I think maybe I needed the reality check. You know, this is the most I’ve ever heard you talk.”

  Takirovanen finished his apple without another word.

  For a moment, something nagged at Lyokh. It started when he tried to imagine Takirovanen’s life story. It had something to do with how little he knew about the people he commanded. He hadn’t even gotten to know Heeten, or her story of why she joined up. Who was she? Who were any of these people that he led into battle, these people that trusted him with their lives? How many widows and widowers had he helped make? What could he have done differently to send them back home safely to their loved ones?

  For a moment, for just one second, he almost felt himself lose control. That way lies madness, he thought. Don’t think about it. War isn’t for thinking. Lyokh thought that could be the name of his memoirs.

  Looking at the stacks of slinkplast and the messages waiting to be answered, he realized he needed to get back to it. There were a lot of people dependent upon him. The Visquain had sent down Major T’luk to help run things on the ground, but a lot of responsibility was still on Lyokh and the other wing commanders’ shoulders. He was having to coordinate with forty-three of them across the planet, most of them here in Vastill, some of them scattered up in the poles, guarding ice factories.

  In front of him, Lyokh had tactical reports and daily patrol summaries, supply requests for civilians, damage reports, requests for resupply of ammo, and records of new warhulk deployments. He answered a few of them, contacting the wing commanders in the other three major megalopolises of Widden with little more than assurances they hadn’t been forgotten.

  There was more. Always more. It had kept him up at night, the reports of the recently deceased, the suggestions from medics on which wounded were and were not viable for regens, requests for bot parts that needed to be prioritized by him and his staff and sent up to Lord Ishimoto’s fab room. Lyokh could not possibly deal with anything else added to his workload.

  So, naturally, here came Abethik through the door with more to add to his workload. “Morning, doyen,” he said, barely pausing at the door to fire off a quick salute. He nodded at Takirovanen, and handed Lyokh a new stack of slinkplast. “More reports from the patrols. So far, all clear. Reyes says one of the wyrms may need to be put down—far too much cranial damage, the vets are seeing a lot of hemorrhaging. And let’s see…supply requests, MRE shortage…oh, there’s word from the scouts in Sublevel Three, Quatemal District. That signal that showed up on their EM trackers? They tracked it and found a trio of mechanicae down there.”

  Lyokh accepted it all with a sigh. “How did the sweep go when they found them?”

  “They sent in SenseSpheres, but the bastards self-destructed as soon as they saw the drones. No casualties.”

  Just like the few starships that had been left behind, he thought. Rather than be boarded and taken prisoner, the Machinist Ascendancy activated the self-destruct of all troops and matériel left behind.

  He flipped through the other reports, and paused when he saw the one showing that Thrallyin was going out on a patrol, but was short a couple of gunners.

  “This’ll get us out of the hosue for a while,” he said. “Takirovanen, suit up. After I read through these and make my report to Major T’luk, you and I are going with Artemis to conduct a little patrol.”

  “Sounds good, doyen.”

  “Also,” Abethik said, “the Novas are saying they’re seeing larger prayer circles gathering throughout the city as the people pray to Mahl for the High Priestess’s recovery.”

  “How is she? Have you been by her tent?”

  “Her eyes have been fluttering and she’s mumbling, sir. The docs say they expect her to wake up soon.”

  MAHL WILL BE pleased.

  That was her first thought upon waking and seeing the destruction. Thessa had only just opened her eyes and looked out the open tent flap, past the two med bots standing in attendance. She could see Vastill, ravishing in its defiled state. Her ancestors would be both horrified and stricken by such hideously perfect beauty.

  Her second thought was to the Item. She clutched her chest, finding herself not in her normal garb. But for a thin shift, she was naked. Panic seized her. The Item! She shot to her feet. That was a mistake, for her brain bobbed like it was in the ocean, and the world tilted.

  “My lady!”

  It was Myelic, rushing to her side. She knelt at Thessa’s feet and clutched her hands.

  “You mustn’t try to rise, my lady. The soldiers have medics, and they attended you. They’ve said that you have a concussion, and that you are severely dehydrated.”

  “The Item…the…”

>   “I have it here.” Myelic rushed off, dug through a chest at the far end of the tent, and returned quickly with the Item in her hand.

  Thessa seized it jealously, and held it close to her breast, feeling its warmth spread throughout her body, into her extremities, her hair, her ovaries, her clitoris, her fingernails, her teeth, everywhere. She sighed a quivering sigh, grateful that the thing that had helped her defend the Dexannonhold for days on end had not been lost, for it was the last, most important artifact of her world’s history.

  “Help me to stand, Myelic,” she said.

  “My lady, you shouldn’t—”

  “Now, Myelic.”

  “Yes, my lady.”

  Every joint in her body was stiff. Pain radiated throughout her body. Her body had been defiled by Mahl’s power, by the power of the Item. That made it okay. That made it worth enduring.

  Thessa waddled awkwardly over to the tent’s flap, and stepped out, squinting, into the sunslight. Tupenda was out in full force, while Reta was half hiding behind Rah’zen, peeking out cheekily.

  This isn’t right, she thought. Rah’zen wasn’t due to occult Reta for at least a month.

  “How long have I been out?”

  “Three weeks, my lady.”

  Three weeks.

  She had thought the stiffness in her bones was attributable to her overexertion of the Item’s power against Widden’s foes, but it turned out that was only part of the reason.

  Just as she was stepping outside, a pair of Republican skyrakes went streaking over Thessa’s head, disappearing around the side of the Dexannonhold, which had stopped smoking, but its banners were still burnt. Good, she thought. It suits it. Defilement pleased Mahl for a variety of reasons, but foremost was that it showed what a person, place, or thing had endured, or was willing to endure. If scarification was good for Mahl’s followers, then his cities must also reflect his dark wisdom.

  There were followers waiting outside for her. Men and women who came tearing their clothes off, kneeling naked at her feet and crawling on all fours to show their subservience as Thessa began a slow, slow tour of the makeshift military base she now found herself in.