Zero Star

by Chad Huskins

  Lyokh was a little astonished at himself. When the captaincy was thrust on him, he had been uncomfortable with it. When he had led the ground forces to the Dexannonhold, he had felt a crushing burden like that of a ship that’s lost arti-grav and was hitting nine g’s. When he had been helping Major T’luk to organize the occupation and fortifications of Widden, he had stressed each day over the minutiae of the operations. Now, though, as he was being forced to put all that burden behind him, he found himself fighting against it.

  That was because he found something down there. Lyokh didn’t know what. He probably wouldn’t be able to say for many years to come, if ever. Perhaps if he survived long enough to retire, to some countryside no-place on some forgotten planet, he would be able to reflect in front of a fireplace and remember this moment and how he felt. Maybe even write it down in a book. Perhaps through the lens of retrospect he would be able to say what it was he had found. For now, all he knew was that it was profound, and it had something to do with leading these men and seeing their work come to some kind of fruition.

  If he ever wrote that book, certainly Heeten would have a chapter. And Lucerne. And all of them. It would be a long book. The Book of the Dead.

  She had died down there. A woman he had known intimiately, briefly. He saw a flash of her green eyes, winking at him. She had saved his life on Kennit. God knows how many other times Lyokh had been saved by people like her. As he had told Gold Wing when he first assumed command: God only knows how many times the dead saved our lives.

  This was Heeten’s place. Her sacrifice needed to mean something. And he needed to be here to make sure it did…

  “You’re thinking like a soldier,” Takirovanen said, invading his thoughts. “You’re in the game of politics now. Time to make that adjustment. The others will follow.”

  Lyokh looked at him. “What are you, a mind reader?” He suddenly remembered asking Heeten the same thing, when they had met more formally in the hangar bay after Kennit.

  Predictably, Takirovanen ignored the joke. “You’re worried what you’re going to tell them. Trust me, doyen, only a few of them will care. True soldiers who live to fight. The rest? They will do what they’re told, or else will embrace the chance to become elevated to hero status. Hero status means their lives will actually have made a difference, that someone will write down their story someday.”

  “I just feel like…”

  “Like there’s unfinished work here.”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s because there is. But you need to get used to this. In fact, I would have thought you were used to it by now. How many times have we left something halfway done? How many missions would you say we actually completed one hundred percent? I can think of only two.”

  Takirovanen had a point there. He always did. Lyokh was beginning to see what Meiks found so annoying about him.

  “You’ve left other wars behind. You’ll learn to leave this one, too.”

  Lyokh wanted to believe him. But somehow, he got the sense that something had changed here. Some kind of loss they would never get back, that went beyond just the many lives destroyed.

  “Come on,” said Lyokh. “Let’s go tell the others.”

  MOIRA TOSSED A treat over to Pritchard, then shooed him out of the way. She looked at the face hovering a few inches away from her wall. “Are you certain about that, Scott? You’re absolutely sure?”

  Scott Mansier looked exactly like he had their first year at the College, with the cool blue eyes and the moppy black hair that all the women used to joke they’d love to run their fingers through. He had a touch of silver now, and was wearing it like a badge of honor. His smile looked a bit more tired, though, like becoming the head of whatever expedition he was on had changed his mind somewhat about his career choice. Moira knew the feeling, which was why she had gone mercenary.

  “I’m as sure as I can be,” Scott said. “Besandra went off on this errand, hired by someone—she wouldn’t say who—and as far as I know never came back. We’ve still got a spot open for her on the Trailblazers Council, but she’s not been to a meeting in a couple of years.”

  “How long ago was this?”

  “Almost six years ago now.”

  “And you’re positive she was studying Trevor’s Cluster? You’re certain?”

  “That’s all I remember her talking about, but she never presented any actual work. I never saw one of her itineraries on the matter.” Scott gave her a look. “Why are you so interested in this, Moira?”

  There was a feeling in the pit of her stomach. Long ago, she had learned what that feeling meant, but she was still in denial.

  Moira sighed, and tossed Pritchard another treat. “Trevor’s Cluster was given its name by Trevor Sidalta. He was one of us. He graduated from the College five hundred years ago. The cluster he found was a bunch of stars unusually close together, forming the Fidhar System, the Cropulakit System, and the Taka-Renault System. I just put Taka-Renault on our itinerary.”

  “I heard about that. We’ve all been reading about it. A possible Romulus and Remus situation. Very exciting stuff, the Crusade. How did you land that gig, if you don’t mind my asking?”

  “I’m not sure, really. Kalder apparently called around to a few of my previous employers, and even spoke to Dannings about me. I didn’t call Kalder, Kalder called me.”

  “Interesting. Well, congratulations. You certainly earned it. I remember all the hard work you did in cartography, how we stayed up all night trying to solve…what was it, backtracking stellar drift?”

  Moira shrugged. “I forget now. But listen, can you put a wave out through the College’s channels, see if anybody’s heard from Besandra? I want to know who hired her to search Trevor’s Cluster, and where she went afterward.”

  “I sure will. In the meantime, try to enjoy yourself. And good luck out there, young lady. You really struck gold with this Crusade. You’re going to get a lot of good experience. I know a hundred other stellarpaths who are so jealous, saying things like, ‘Why her?’ But I tell them why. ‘Because she’s the best of us.’”

  Moira smiled big. “Thanks, Scott. That means a lot.”

  “I’m glad Dannings knew it, too. He could be a real ass, but at least he did one good thing for you before he bit it, right? Oblivion awaits,” he said with a shrug.

  Moira’s smile suffered an immediate death. “Wait…what did you just say?”

  “About what?”

  “About Dannings. Did you just say Dannings is dead?”

  Scott cocked his head to one side. “Sure. You didn’t know that?”

  “No. When did that happen?”

  “A few weeks ago.”

  Moira did the math. “I was on Monarch. Been kind of out of the loop. What happened to him?”

  Scott winced. “Tragic, really. He was just stepping off a shuttle at a spaceport. He was on Sicobia, a world he had never been to before with high gravity—I think maybe three-and-a-half g’s? The theory is, he wasn’t familiar yet with how to move in the high gravity, his balance was a bit off. He stepped wrongly going down some steps.”

  Moira didn’t know what to say. She was stunned.

  “He grew up on Earol, if you recall,” Scott went on. “Only half a g, and he was always a brittle man. Anyways, it looks like someone’s security bot bumped into him. He slipped, fell down the stairs, and broke his neck.”

  “Jesus,” Moira breathed. She imagined the man she had known. The professor that had been so kind and yet so caustic at times. She tried to envision that man falling down the stairs.

  It didn’t really fit in her mind. He was old, sure, just like Scott said, but he had been to countless worlds during his travels, had charted quite a few new worlds. Most of them had been just useless lumps of rock, but he had also been to quite a few Stranger sites, inside their Watchtowers, on worlds with even higher g’s. It seemed strange he would slip at a spaceport’s stairwell, especially since there were probably handrails for him to use.
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  Moira remembered a cautious man. A man who understood his frailty and accounted for it.

  She tried to imagine him falling down a set of stairs. Tried to fit him into a narrative that led him to that fate.

  Didn’t fit.

  The feeling in the pit of her stomach grew to something wholly unpleasant.

  “Scott?”

  “Yeah, Moira?”

  “What kind of bot was it?”

  “A security bot, like I said.”

  “Yes, but what kind? What model?”

  Scott shrugged. “I don’t know. No one ever said.” He looked off screen. “Hey, look, sorry to cut this convo short, but I’ve got a load of theses to read through and grade by week’s end. You be careful out there, Moira. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

  “Impossible,” she said, and smiled at him.

  He smiled back.

  And for a moment, she was sure he was remembering their semester together, the one spent on the beaches of Dothwana. When Scott signed off, Moira was still smiling. And staring. She pressed her fingers to her lips. A problem had presented itself.

  Besandra had disappeared while investigating Trevor’s Cluster, where Taka-Renault was just a few light-years apart from neighboring stars. Just weeks ago, Dannings had been died in a freak accident.

  Moira’s guts were now entangled. Sensing her distress, Pritchard stood on his hind legs and put his fore paws on her knees, whimpering slightly. She gave him some love, and wondered if she ought to contact the spaceport where Dannings had died, maybe get a security camera’s angle of his last moments, just before he took his spill. But Moira believed that recording would somehow never get to her.

  And she didn’t need the vid to tell her what the feeling in her gut had already told her. She didn’t need to watch the vid to know it had been a TRX security bot that had bumped Dannings.

  Suddenly her room felt small. The entire ship felt small.

  I saw him kill with his own hands, she thought, seeing Kalder clearly right in front of her, standing over the body of the dead assassin.

  Pritchard whimpered.

  Moira lay in the floor with the Vac Hound, and took him in her lap. As she stroked his fur, she closed her eyes, breathed deeply, and tried to think what to do next.

  THE WAITING WAS an insult. Thessa knew it was meant to be. That made it all the more outrageous. That they would put her to one side, in a little room to herself, with so many amenities and a window to view the operations around her world. It was all pretense. A power play. She sat in stern silence. Beside her, Myelic was cutting her arm, slowly, defiling her flesh to show her devotion and hoping it would appease the monster she sensed was growing inside her lady.

  Thessa watched the blade move down Myelic’s forearm. She watched blood bloom from her pale-white flesh, leaping from it at times, almost in anticipation. It could be meditative, watching someone else defile themselves for her. But just now, it did little to appease.

  One of the uk’teks shuffled. She looked at her Order Guard. The two of them stood rigid, their upper bodies unmoving, their lower serpentine halves undulating just slightly, like snakes suffereing unsettling dreams.

  When the door finally opened and someone stepped through, Thessa remained seated. If this was a game of power plays, they had made their move by making her wait. And she made her move by not rising to greet her guest.

  He moved very well for a man of his advanced age. Thessa couldn’t tell how old he was, just as easily call him sixty as ninety, but with regens he might be even older. Indeed, if Thessa was any judge, she would guess by his eyes that he was older. Much older.

  Thessa’s first thought was that someone had sent their shabby manservant to summon her. But then she looked at the man’s bearing. Square-shouldered and disciplined, almost soldierly. His chin slightly upward, used to looking down on people, used to commanding people. A leader, then, though one unlike she had ever seen, and one who looked at odds with the clean, sleek look of the rest of the ship.

  She was not afraid to admit that an unfamiliar shiver went down her spine when she looked into those gray, deepset eyes. He did not smile. The man did not indulge in flattery or pleasantries. That, at least, was a mercy. He stood erect and proud, which was strange for a man who looked like a pauper. He was barefoot and had on the shabbiest brown robe Thessa had ever seen. Dressed as a pauper, carried himself like a king. A study in both dichotomy and duality.

  Myelic stood, though it was not to receive the old man. She stood, arm still bleeding and dribbling on the floor, next to her lady in a defensive move. The uk’tek did not budge, but their many eyes went to him.

  “Thessa Zane den Uta,” he said. “I am Senator Holace Adamik Fuller Kalder, and I—”

  “You will address my lady by one of her proper titles, out of respect for her,” said Myelic. “She is the High Priestess of Mahl, the Prophet of Phanes, Venerator of the Void, Arch-sorceress Supreme of the Faith, Arch-duchess of Vastill, Scrivener of Souls, Wardeness of Widden and Governor of the Phanes System. Be wise and venerate her.”

  “Governor Zane, then,” Kalder said, looking dead at Thessa and giving Myelic no more than the glance one might a minor scratch on a windshield, something not to be thought about until a later time, perhaps never. His face flashed no sign of annoyance.

  Thessa found herself suddenly taken aback by the man’s control. There was something about his face and features, something more than just his bearing. Everything with him was measured, precise. Now that she thought about it, this must be the first time he was looking upon an uk’tek in the flesh, yet he showed not an ounce of fear, as any normal person did when seeing their hideous visage for the first time. However, there was just a moment, a flicker of something registering in his eyes. Thessa was sure she saw it, there and gone, as quick as a thought. It looked like distaste. Even revulsion.

  Also, he hadn’t shown a single sign of deference or reverence for her station as Wardeness, or High Priestess, or ruler over billions.

  Suddenly, Thessa was angry at the man’s lack of pretense, his lack of real etiquette when speaking to a better.

  That’s when it hit her. He did not see her as a better. Not even as an equal.

  This man…actually sees himself as above me.

  The insult was not to be borne, but Thessa had to be careful to maintain control of herself. This was a military that had come to her world’s rescue, and even though they had sent this shabby old relic to palaver, insulting her by prolonging her wait to speak to someone with real authority, she would have endure. She could at least remain seated and make him speak to her, as though giving his words as an offering to her. A small win for her, but a win.

  “Senator Kalder,” she said. “It is good to finally speak to someone. I have been made to wait, and I don’t mind saying that I am very eager to get the political gears moving, so that we can mourn as a people and begin to rebuild what has been lost.”

  “Apologies for the delay, Governor,” the man said flatly, in a tone that said he was not sorry at all. His tone said he wasn’t anything. “But there have been many items leaping to the fore, even as we have tried to make time to meet with you.”

  “I am sure the burdens on your shoulders are many, but please understand that my shoulders are also heavy.”

  “I understand completely.”

  “I have only just woken, so my maidservant has done her best to bring me up to speed. She tells me almost all evacuees have been returned.”

  “Yes, but there are millions who are homeless, due to the levels of destruction. Some of it, unfortunately, was committed by the Republic, so we completely agree that we bear some responsibility in the rebuilding. There are camps set up for the dislocated, and there are relief efforts underway to make sure they get all they need.”

  “It seems the Republic’s generosity goes farther than just our defense.”

  “It does,” Kalder agreed.

  “Does this also mean that the Republi
c’s interest in us goes farther?” Thessa tested.

  “It does.” Said without hesitation, or any attempt to belabor the point of this discussion. “We can discuss what all that entails at a later date, if you prefer, but for now it will suffice for us both to lay our cards on the table. You are a follower of Mahl, the Deceiver and the Defiler. I am a Zeroist, one who would rather cut through deception and speak plainly, and as a member of the Senate’s Restoration Arm, I am opposed on principle to defilement.”

  Thessa looked at him, smiling patiently.

  Kalder nodded to Myelic’s bloody arm. “We do, however, have common ground when it comes to our determination to endure pain, setbacks, and injury, as well as self-inflicted trials that test us.”

  “At least we have that,” she said. “I suppose it is a start.”

  “Not much of one. Our greatest commonality at the moment is our need of each other.”

  “I know that the Republic has need of supplies. Your economy is dwindling, just like the light of Man. But here, life flourishes, and you hope to take advantage of our more cautious and well-planned society.”

  “Cautious and well-planned?”

  Thessa smiled as though to a child, hoping her condescension would rile him. It didn’t. Not even a smidgen. She might as well have provoked the compristeel walls.

  “We have created our own utopia. We are self-sufficient. We do not overextend ourselves. We do not try to gobble up land beyond our system. We do not create enemies—”

  “And yet enemies found you,” Kalder said.

  Her own smile almost wavered. She was not used to being interrupted by anyone besides her daughters, and even her daughters knew—had known—the time and place for it. The re-realization that all her daughters were dead shook her to her core. She still had not wept and given Mahl his due credit for deceiving her and killing her family, but she would later.

  “You understand that you can no longer remain alone out here, on the fringes, cut off from the rest of humanity,” Kalder went on. “That’s not how civilizations thrive in this galaxy. Together, we stand a chance. Separate, we will fall to the Brood, or the Ascendancy, or any other horrors that emerge from the abyss.”