by Chad Huskins
“You think you are still a ruler here, that you hold as much sway as the rest of us. Allow me to disabuse you of that illusion. You have joined this Crusade at my invitation, and in my Crusade you rank eleventh. Eleventh! Behind myself and the other four people in this room, including my assistant Julian here. You rank below my assistant, you haughty witch. You rank below the six-man committee to which I answer to.
“Only after all those people have been conferred with, only after I have spoken with each and every one of them, will I deign to ask you for your opinion on the fucking weather. Do you understand me?”
Zane started to open her mouth.
But before she could, Kalder shot up out of his seat and smashed his hands on the table, surprising even himself with the outburst. He hadn’t had an eruption like it in decades. He leaned in at her, and saw, for the first time, a flicker of fear in her eyes. “Before you give sound to a single utterance, remember what you’ve seen us do for you. Remember what you’ve seen me do,” he said coldly. “Now, I ask you, one last time—and think carefully before you answer, Governor—do you understand me?”
In Zane’s eyes, he saw a silken rage that was so pure it had probably been born in the first purifying fire of the birth of the universe. When she spoke, it was with measured pride. She enunciated every syllable, and kept all fear from her voice. “I understand, Senator.”
“Good. Now leave this table, and do not speak another word as you do.”
The others watched as Zane rose, an evil promise glimmering in her eyes, and walked out of the room. Once the door was closed, Kalder lowered himself back into his seat. He looked around at all of them. “You should all try the pie. I understand it’s the chef’s specialty.”
“YOU WERE A soldier?” Lyokh asked, looking over at the senator. The other two, the rough-hewn captain and the shy-faced stellarpath, had stepped away to the far side of the stateroom and were having a conference around a holo-projector, looking at current pycno counts. The stellarpath was talking about the resource-gathering stops she had planned along their itinerary, where the fleet could pause for gathering up asteroids or sending down mining drones to the surface of planets barely harvested.
As far as Lyokh understood it, the stellarpath had scoured old records kept at her College and designed the itinerary specially for Kalder, for the Crusade. Lyokh noticed the woman keeping her eyes strictly away from him. No matter how much he looked at her, she vehemently kept her gaze away. Or was he only imagining her aversion?
“I was a soldier,” Kalder said in answer to his question, clasping his hands behind his back. “But that was a very long time ago.”
“How long, may I ask?”
Kalder looked at him. Lyokh detected ancient experience in his eyes. He had seen fake soldiers in his lifetime, men and women who claimed to have fought in faraway wars just to gain favor, get something for free. He also had met people who exaggerated their roles in the military for the same reasons. Lyokh knew immediately that Kalder was neither a liar nor an exaggerator.
“Do you know, this painting came with the room,” said Kalder.
Lyokh looked where he was pointing.
They were taking a turn about the room, pacing over to a wall, where a painting hung on the wall. The room was meant for diplomats, so Lyokh was not surprised to discover it had come nicely furnished. The painting was of a lonely ship, cast out against the permanent darkness of space. It was an old-model ship, one with a solar sail, which had ballooned out in front of it, accepting the solar winds and pulling the ship out across the cosmos.
“It has the sense of adventure, doesn’t it?” said Kalder. “Of entering the unknown.”
Lyokh nodded. “I suppose it does.”
“And where do you suppose he’s going?”
“Who?”
“The traveler in the painting.”
Lyokh looked at the ship again, so small against the sea of stars. He shrugged. “Impossible to say.”
“I’ve been looking at it for days now, and it always makes me wonder how many leagues he has left to go,” Kalder said. “Do you think the artist is asking us to make that call? Or do you think his intent was to say it doesn’t matter where the traveler is going, that only the intent matters, that destination is irrelevant to determination?”
“I think he decided to paint a starship in space,” Lyokh said.
“You should get along famously with Captain Desh.” The senator nodded to himself. Lyokh thought it looked like he had come to some conclusion that he wasn’t going to share. “The painting has another point, as well, I think. One the artist did not intend.”
“And what’s that, sir?”
Kalder sighed heavily. “That here you and I stand, looking at this piece of art, a manifestation of sentient thought if ever there was one. For only intelligence could bring such a work of art to life. The artist himself is likely dead, buried on some planet or asteroid, his name already forgotten. I imagine he had brief celebrity, a few brushes with true greatness that brought him to be commissioned for this piece. Now it sits in a stateroom on a ship, with two men staring at it, trying to determine its meaning. You and I imbue this painting, Captain. We make it art. Do you agree?”
Lyokh shrugged. “I guess so.”
“If we agree, then that makes art not a thing, but an act. In which case, you and I are the artists now. The painter himself is doing nothing with this painting. He merely drew some lines, created perspective, and splashed some color onto it. It is you and I that are sculpting, you and I are in the act of making art.” He looked over at Lyokh. “I’d like you to remember that as we move forward. We imbue this Crusade with our intentions. We manifest meaning for it. Do you understand, Captain?”
“Sure.”
In that moment, Lyokh realized something. This man has had too many years to think about this. It made him wonder about Kalder’s earlier dodge about how long ago he had served. Just how old is this grig?
Lyokh decided to bring the subject back around to something he could participate in. “What you said back there. To the High Priestess. It was highly unprofessional.”
“It was?”
“It was. And it was also premature.”
“Premature?”
“Yes. She had only just tossed one insult to each of us. I was surprised she provoked you with so little.”
Kalder looked at the painting for a while, then said, “I addressed her the way she needed to be addressed. All of us are different. Some of us respond better to threats. Others respond to promises of reward. I’ve known people like her, they’re all over Monarch, and they cover all the worlds I’ve crossed in my time. Each bout of invectives, like the ones she ‘tossed’ at us, is a prelude to a subsidence into self-righteousness. If ever you let them gain footing, they start to take over, like weeds in the eaves. And then where are you?”
Lyokh wiggled his head back and forth. “As it happens, I don’t really care, I’ll let it be settled between the two of you. But the part you said about my soldiers, and the people that sacrificed their lives for hers? That part I liked. My thanks.”
“Well, coming from you, Captain, I’ll take that as high praise. Especially since I detected you despised me from the moment you met me.”
“I did. I do.” Lyokh looked at him. “Sorry if that offends, but tonight feels like a night for bluntness. Especially after your rant. Maybe it’s the wine.”
Kalder nodded. “The wine will do it. But I always admire honesty. Honesty never offends me. So don’t worry about hating me, it’s quite natural.” He looked back at the painting. Lyokh wondered if he was still wondering about the leagues the traveler had left to go. “But I do hope that your ill feelings towards me can be assuaged over time. I didn’t come to rob you of your glory at Widden, nor stifle the time of your mourning.”
“No, you just seek to use us all as tools. For your precious Crusade.” Lyokh smirked. “Sorry. That bluntness again.”
“And yet, offense has st
ill not been taken. But let me challenge you on that. You believe I’ve come here with nothing more in mind than to use you all to my own ends, is that true?”
“I have my own feelings about politicians and how they operate. Just like I have reservations about zealots like Zane. I was raised in different circumstances than you and these others,” Lyokh said, nodding towards Desh and Moira. “In a place where politics and religion had a way of poisoning everything good. Especially good people.”
“I know,” Kalder said. “I read about it in your record. Timon was the moon, yes?”
Lyokh nodded. “Then you’ll know I grew up around zealots.”
“All of whom had a perennial distrust of politicians, I’m sure.”
Lyokh thought back, seeing the blood trickling down the arms of those crucified, even as throngs of crowds heaved like waves in an ocean, each wide-eyed lunatic trying to be the next one to get to fling a rock at the accused. “That’s true. Even as they operated their religions and their temples with their own brand of politics.”
“Yet you cast aside their superstitions. You maintained an open mind when you left there, and shed that old life like a hatchling sheds its skin to turn coil. Might I ask why you did not also shed your distrust in politicians?”
“Like religion, they never gave me a reason to.”
Kalder nodded thoughtfully, then said, “You know we’re making a few stops for resource-gathering.”
“Yes, sir.”
“After that, our next major stop is the Taka-Renault System, where we may run into a Romulus and Remus Problem. If that happens, you may be deployed again. But, should we succeed in diplomatic negotiations, a great deed will have been done. The reconnection between two human civilizations. We may rescue the people of Taka-Renault from a fate like that of the Orphesians and the vorta. Does that not seem noble to you?”
“It does,” Lyokh said.
“And beyond that, the Crusade seeks to discover the truth of the Strangers, a secret no other race has yet uncovered, which could perhaps yield an answer to the Brood. To all humanity’s enemies, perhaps. Does that not seem noble to you?”
“It does,” Lyokh admitted.
“And with the Knights of Sol revitalized, under the command of the Hero of Kennit and Phanes, the people might at last have reason to abandon their belief in the Fall of Man, and instead see mankind resurgent. Does that not seem noble to you?”
He nodded. “I see where you’re going with this.”
“It was politics that got the engine of government moving to create this venture, Captain. I have appreciated your efforts that got us here. Now, I only ask that you appreciate mine.”
Looking at the senator, Lyokh thought he had discovered a new facet to the man. Plainly, Kalder was trying to persuade him, if only to get him on the same page as the others he had brought into his fold. A politician had a lot of practice at convincing people of things that were against their best interests, he knew that much. So he knew he had to be careful when putting his faith in any one man or belief system. The last time he had done that, had been when he put his faith in his brothers and sisters of IX Legion. Before that, he had given his faith over to zealots of Timon. One of those had paid off, the other had not.
He was very cautious about handing over that kind of loyalty to a man he had just met.
“I will give you the benefit of the doubt, Senator,” Lyokh finally said.
“Good,” Kalder said.
“But I have to ask, why now? Why launch this Crusade now, of all times?”
“It had to be now. Now or never. Faith 6A tells us the people have found some modicum of hope in what we’re doing, as I predicted they would. There is true fervor in restoring Man’s former glory. The existence of such hopeful aspirations owes, ironically, to the depth of despair.” He looked at Lyokh. “It was our despairing moment that gave birth to the movement you and I now find ourselves at the head of.”
“Speaking of Man’s former glory, that gets me thinking about xenos, and their place in the galaxy. I heard another rumor about you. I heard you were the one behind this Xeno Nonconformist Act, that says people will be arrested for fraternizing with aliens. That true?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Kalder looked at him. “Because we humans have much to do, and tolerance of alien races only slows us down, complicates matters with their various belief systems and political structures that threaten to become en vogue. We cannot mate with them, we cannot worship their gods, we cannot endure them. Eventually, we will destroy them all. Humans are the destined masters of the Milky Way Galaxy, and the universe, and, eventually, the multiverse.”
Lyokh was taken aback by that sweeping statement. “You really believe that?”
“I do. And soon, I believe I will convince you of that, especially after we come to the s’Dar Watchtower.” Kalder sighed. Then, he gestured at the painting again, and said, apropros of nothing, “I sometimes feel like the artist is also asking us to chase the traveler.”
THE NEXT DAY, the Crusade Fleet gathered at the edge of the Phanes System. The nav data was going through one last review between all the ships, navigators making absolutely certain all trajectories were matched, so that there would be no drift between the ships once they entered the FTL bubble. Moira was in the CIC of Voice of Reason, watching her work be verified one last time. Kalder stood behind her with Captain Desh and Captain Fee.
Down in the main hangar bay of Lord Ishimoto, Lyokh stood with more than a hundred soldiers, officers, and naval crew to honor the dead. Even the Orphesians were there. Only the vorta were absent, for whenever there was no work to be done, they simply vanished. Lyokh was presented one of the flags that had flown on a downed Nova shuttle, as a symbolic gesture to him and the rest of Gold Wing.
All other wings were given similar honors. They hung their flags in the doorway of the training room.
An hour after night cycle began, Lyokh was at The Place To Be. Also there were Meiks, Takirovanen, Paupau, Ziir, Abethik, O’Tulley, Yabbaphast, Brosier, Beirs, and Durzor in his wheelchair, as they held up glasses of swill and toasted the fallen. Yabbaphast had a new oculator to replace an eye that got taken out by shrapnel, and Beirs was missing an arm from the elbow down; it was currently encased in a long jar of nanite-infused gels, hopefully repairing it enough to receive a replacement.
They shared stories of their brothers and sisters that died, and right then and there, Lyokh declared that henceforth the warhulks of the Crusade would be called Heeten’s Heroes. They all cheered at that, even the Orphesians that were present. They clinked glasses as the inertial dampeners engaged into overdrive.
The fleet timed their departure perfectly.
When the A-drives were engaged, there was the briefest of flashes, like stars winking out of existence. And then all twenty-eight ships were gone, leaving nothing but black vacuum in their wake.
: The End of Ratavastec
No one knew where it came from, or who made it. There were theories, though. Lots of theories. But there were no definitive answers about the Ecophage. The only thing anyone knew was that, if it wanted to, it could probably destroy the entire galaxy. Some scientists believed that in time it would.
Slowly but surely, the silver-and-brown cloud moved into the Ratavastec System. Its formations happened slowly, like the changing of seasons. It came in from a hundred-year-old voyage from the last system it had destroyed, moving as quietly as time. The last measurements had the cloud being fifty million miles wide, and almost as long. Some of the drones that moved among it were no bigger than a human, a few were as large as a skyrake, but the vast majority of the cloud was composed of nanites no bigger than motes of dust.
The Ecophage used a number of propulsion methods to get around the galaxy and continue its mysterious quest. The cloud’s main two methods were the use of solar winds, and gravity assisted boosts. The nanomachines used solar energy to push it along, and, whenever they were finished devouring a
planet and tripling or quadrupling their numbers, they used the planet’s gravity to whip around, gain speed, and shoot off for their next target. The Ecophage could also generate hydrogen, and expunge great amounts of it to redirect the cloud-swarm, making sharp course corrections along the way.
It was absolutely impossible to say how old the Ecophage was, or how long it had been doing this; traveling across the galaxy, bouncing from star system to star system, devouring all valuable resources and converting them either to materials or to energy. The prevailing theory was that some long-extinct race had started exploring the cosmos, but, rather than sending out their own explorers, had focused on drone-based mining and exploration. Most races had done this, but perhaps one race had gone too far, and made a a group of basic probes with above-average AI, with programming to gather resources as they went and replicate themselves. And those replications made replications, and so on.
The Ecophage was constantly being followed by a host of specialists, safe within their research vessels, all keeping their distance of about three light-minutes away. Humans had the most ships following it. The Isoshi and Faedyans had lost their enthusiasm for the cloud-swarm long ago, but had shared their data with the Republic.
The Merchant Research Fleet was made up of all human vessels, complete with sensor suites designed specifically for studying the heat blooms of the cloud-swarm, as well as its formation changes. The Ecophage had four distinct shapes—what the humans called starburst, controlled starburst, fanned, and accreted. Minor fluctuations in each formation was usually cause for new study, as was happening now.
The ship leading the fleet was called the Eyes On. The chief researcher was Dr. Addison Klein, who had been on the project since its launch thirty years prior, and had spent a lifetime poring over the data that had been handed over to humanity from alien scientists. For thousands of years, researchers had been keeping tabs on the Ecophage, though it rarely mattered much—the cloud-swarm did not travel nearly as fast as other threats, such as the Brood, and their attacks on solar systems were quite rare events, though no less devastating.