by Chad Huskins
A chime sounded at Lyokh’s side, just as they were about to order another round of swill. It was another appointment. This one with the stellarpath. It was meant to be only a short five-minute conference relaying some information about the ecliptic coordinates of the Taka-Renault System, and while he could probably take it in The Place To Be, he thought it would seem unprofessional. He excused himself from the others and rushed back up to his office, dressed himself properly in uniform, and then made the call.
Moira Holdengard appeared from the torso up on his wallscreen, with her short, fiery red hair slicked back, her lips as red as her hair. In fact, all her clothes were red, too. It all made her pale flesh even paler, but it worked on her.
“Moira,” he said. In their first conference like this two days ago, she had insisted he use her first name.
“Captain.” She, however, insisted on using his title. “How’ve you been?”
“Well enough. You?”
“I’m—Pritch, back off it. Pritch!—” The vid cut off. Seconds later, she called him again. “Sorry, my Vac Hound. He gets curious with blinking things. He’s used to our cockpit, and his kind are bred to want to look for work, nose a few buttons.”
Lyokh watched the jet-black dog, with its streaks of white, move through the camera’s field of view. “I can certainly sympathize with the frustration of being cooped up.”
She waved at something off screen, and pulled up an agenda for both of them. It only had two points on it, just the ecliptic coordinate system that Lyokh would need to spread to all the Nova pilots, should they require them, and the now-ancient findings of the last team to go through Taka-Renault. “Okay, so, what we’re looking at here is a standard setup for an ecliptic coordinate system, a little different than in Phanes because we’ve only got the one start in Taka-Renault. You know about the possible Romulus and Remus Problem here, but what you haven’t seen is the latest workups I’ve done with Diogenes, showing the most probable layouts of a civilization of that level.”
She waved her hand, and brought up a 3D mock-up of how Taka-Renault’s star looked a few hundred years ago—it was an image taken from the last explorers to pass through the system. “The latest prediction I’ve made is that there’s probably some kind of a Dyson swarm, or an attempt to make one, at least, around their star. It might’ve been a huge project they abandoned a long time ago, though.”
Lyokh winced. “How do you know if there’s a Dyson sphere or swarm there?”
“I can see the star’s light through a telescope from where we’re presently stationed,” she said. “Sensors show a serious dimming effect. Normally, a star will only dim one to two percent when a planet passes in front of it. Taka-Renault’s star is dimming by as much as twenty-three percent. That means something big is dimming it. Also, looking at the star in different wavelengths of light can tell us if it’s an alien structure. If we see any color dependence—for example, if it gets dimmer in the ultraviolet than it does in the infrared—then that rules out it being a solid structure. I’m guessing a swarm of satellites around the star, but not a solid sphere.”
She waved her hand again, brought up a 3D map in front of Lyokh, showing the whole system, with green dots highlighting key areas.
“These are the planets most likely to have serious industry, requiring the most ships for protection. I’m guessing there will probably be a heavy reliance on these two moons here,” she said, moving a cursor over them, “since they have—had—huge deposits of minerals that are key in making electronics. I’d recommend a standard Sable deployment in these areas, but I leave that up to you and the Visquain, of course.”
Lyokh lifted an eyebrow in surprise. “You’re familiar with Sable deployments?”
Moira looked at him, then smiled awkwardly. “Oh…yes, I guess I forgot to mention. I was briefly in the Navy.”
“No, shit? What did you do?”
“Flight mechanic.”
He nodded. “Makes senses, considering the career you ended up in. You went through the Navy to pay for school?”
“Something like that.”
“How did you wind up with Kalder?” He realized suddenly how that sounded. A little too prying, a touch too personal. “Sorry, you don’t have to—”
“No, no, it’s fine. It’s really simple. And really boring. I’ve got bills to pay, like anybody else. Kalder found me through a search, I guess. He asked a couple of people I knew professionally, some of my professors. I guess they gave enough rave reviews that I got the job.” She added, a bit ominously, “I don’t think I was the first, though.”
Any other time, Lyokh might have let the comment pass, but there was something about her…something in the way she said it…
“What do you mean? What others?”
Moira looked up at him. Seemed to consider something. Threw caution to the wind. “Well, I discovered that I’m not the first from my College to look into Taka-Renault. In fact, a colleague of mine…she was looking into all the star systems of Trevor’s Cluster: Fidhar, Cropulakit, and Taka-Renault.”
Lyokh shrugged. “Is that so strange? I’m sure you Collegiates overlap studies all the time.”
“Well, to my knowledge, no one else was looking into it. And they shouldn’t have. Trevor’s Cluster, to all intents and purposes, is unremarkable. It’s not until you start looking that you’ll find any mention of the old colonists that made Taka-Renault its home. But if my colleague had discovered that…” Moira trailed off.
Lyokh nodded, following her thinking. “She would have shared it. There would already have been fanfare around it. And you wouldn’t have been so surprised to find it occupied by humans.”
“Exactly.”
“Huh. Strange coincidence.”
“Perhaps not so strange,” Moira said. It was said in an almost-whisper.
“What do you mean?” he asked.
Moira just looked at the screen, saying nothing.
“Moira?”
She cleared her throat. “Maybe we should just stick to the agenda, hm? We can cover this some other time.”
Lyokh nodded, watching her carefully. He almost pushed her further on the subject, but she was already on the move.
“Now, let’s look at what the last scouts into Taka-Renault found a couple hundred years ago.”
LYOKH HAD BEEN telling the truth when he said not much about his post-knighted life felt any different than his pre-knighted life. That is, until he saw the effect it had on the men. The training had become more intense. As if feeling that their name demanded that they earn it, all of his Knights of Sol were frequently training, usually using Miss Persephone’s considerable size and emptiness to perform mock raids, and deploy in the Sable formation as Moira had suggested.
Lyokh joined them, running drills of room clearing with Tsuyoshi and Ahlander, shooting and transitioning drills with Takirovanen, and morning PT with Meiks. Herodinsk did group sessions with the field blade, and the class size was swelling, even though it was elective. Artemis was growing stronger, faster, though still Lyokh was matchless in sparring.
“Again!” he shouted when he wasn’t satisfied with their deployment aboard Rabastiik and Thrallyin. They even did an orbit around a rogue asteroid, fluttering around the tumbling thing for the better part of an hour before returning to Persephone.
Lyokh gave them little downtime. It gave them all something worthwhile to focus on while they waited for Ramlock’s return. There were some arguments, a couple of fights. The paperwork for each incident wound up on his desk, and he had to weigh each case separately and decide what to do. More times than not, the psychiatrists involved said it was stress that had followed them from the grief of Phanes and Kennit, just now boiling over. The treatment, the shrinks said, was merely time and discussion. That was all the medicine any shrink had ever found to heal such wounds, they said.
EACH NIGHT, THE purple greatwyrm returned to haunt him. Lyokh thought it was nothing at first, but now he was beginning to wonder. Ori
ginally, it had seemed like a creative reaction his brain was having to all the trauma he had recently suffered, a colorful display arranged by subconscious notions of monters and dragons. Perhaps the creature itself even represented his increasing workload, and how it threatened to swallow him whole. Perhaps the strange planet with the whickering grass and the three moons were all just filler for the main illusion. Perhaps it was the same for the disk of gases that towered above the world, bisecting one of those moons.
Lyokh felt strange familiarity with the place, and each time he went there, he saw it more and more as a visit, not as a dream. During his psych evals, his shrink agreed with the suspicions Lyokh had shared weeks ago when he’d first mentioned it, that they were nothing more than playful manifestations of a mind that had seen a great deal. So many worlds, so many suns, and so much death, all of it combining, synthesizing some emotion into a visual representation.
Every night, he saw the greatwyrm. And every time, the dream ended with him being swallowed. One night, he woke up with the world spinning, like vertigo had hold of him. He almost vomited, but managed to keep it all in.
Then…Lyokh smelled something in his bunk. He could’ve swore he smelled…
Sulfur.
It had followed him from his dream. As bizarre as that sounded, in that moment he believed it. In the morning, the feeling would have faded, as would have the odor. He was sure of it. And then he would convince himself it had meant nothing. It gave him some solace to know that the skeptic in him would win again.
BROTHER PENITENT MORKOVIKSON liked to run his fellow contrite brothers through training twice daily. Lyokh sometimes joined them on the ship Kneeling Penitent Man, and invited them to train on Lord Ishimoto or Miss Persephone. Observing them, Lyokh noted that they favored training in two areas: firing lines, and medical assistance. They didn’t do much squad-based kill tactics—indeed, they seemed not to know what that was. They liked to conduct drills where they laid down tons of suppression fire, then rushed forward with their shields, forming a wall around someone playing the wounded man, and then treat him.
Lyokh thought it was one of the strangest, and most unique, styles of team training he had ever seen. They did not seem to care if they injured their foes—most of their equipment was very old, usually missing any kind of HUD or auto-targeting systems—and so they just ran towards the enemy like ancient armies, roaring across a battlefield and creating so much confusion by their sheer numbers, bravery, and shouting.
Each man among them had been put through thorough lessons on first aid, triage, even complex surgery.
One day, while watching Ptolem put Heeten’s Heroes through their paces, Lyokh walked over to see what they were doing. Morkovikson was bent over a dummy bot, which came complete with synthetic human parts and artificial blood, and was showing a proper tourniquet and amputation.
“All right, who’s up first?” said Morkovikson, standing up and wiping the fake blood on his pants. “Tubastia, you go.” A young contrite brother wearing an oculator in place of both eyes bowed low, his robes whispering as he rushed to the bot’s side and began the procedure.
Morkovikson turned towards Lyokh, and smiled in surprise. “Ah, Sir Captain. You honor us with your audience. It’s good that you’re here. My men need to know how to work under pressure, and your presence ought lend considerable weight to the moment.”
Lyokh nodded, and clapped him on the shoulder. “I’ve been watching you guys. I like what I’m seeing. I can see now why our mortality rate dropped so much after you joined us in Vastill.”
“Did it?”
“According to the numbers I saw in my inbox, yes.”
“Well, I’m delighted we could be of such help!”
“Do you think we could do some cross-training with your guys?
Morkovikson took a step back, and bowed low. “You honor us, Sir Captain. We are all sinners and monsters in the Contrite Army, and are not worthy of the kindness of those as high as yourself.”
Lyokh waved a hand. “Enough of that. You’re no lower than I am—”
“It falls on me to remind you that all of us are lower than you,” said Morkovikson. “The majority of us are killers and thieves. Myself, I am a murderer and a rapist, only granted this second chance, such as it is, by the Three Goddesses. So yes, Sir Captain, I am inferior to you. All of us contrite brothers are. In every way. You would insult us if you ever forgot that.”
Lyokh shifted his weight awkwardly. “Sorry. I had no idea…that…”
“It’s perfectly fine, Sir Captain. I assure you, we will do everything we can to earn your respect, and will do anything you ask of us. The Repentant Designate tasks me with leading these sorry souls,” he said, waving at the men, all huddled around Tubastia and watching him struggling with the amputation. The bot was giving off screams, trying to rattle the brother. “And if you say that we can provide some supplemental training to your people, well, it is our duty to share what knowledge we have.”
Lyokh nodded. Then, he looked at the Brother Penitent. “As I understand it, you are required to answer any question I have about you or your past. Is that right?”
“It is.”
“So, if I asked you who it was you raped and killed, you would have to tell me?”
“I would.” Morkovikson raised a bushy eyebrow. “Would you like to know?”
Lyokh thought about it for a moment, unsure of how he felt, now that he was faced with this reality. He hadn’t had time to stop and think about the criminals occupying the halls of the various ships of Crusade Fleet.
“No,” he finally said. “That’s your business. And it’s in the past.”
Morkovikson bowed low. “As you say, Sir Captain.”
THEIR TRAINING COMMENCED the following day. They trained in different ships, through cargo holds and corridors, through hangar bays and fab rooms. They trained aboard the Brotherhood ships Tao of Piety and Abandon the Ego, sharing information they had all learned about tight spaces. Lyokh showed Morkovikson how his people fought in narrow corridors, and Morkovikson showed Lyokh how his people pulled the wounded out of the same corridors.
It was astounding. The sharing of information proved to be just the jolt that the Knights of Sol needed. A few of the contrite brothers became fast friends with the knights, but Lyokh noticed that Morkovikson always pulled those brothers to the side, and quietly chastised them about getting too familiar.
Lyokh showed them all firing drills that he thought could help with their accuracy, and Morkovikson showed them his own modified version of a phalanx for protecting the wounded. But the contrite brothers were most impressed by Lyokh’s methods for movement in zero-gravity, and the bravest of them tried this while walking on the outer hull of Miss Persephone.
Many brothers were not ready for this, and screamed in terror as their brains fought to find some kind of up or down when facing the eternitiy of stars before them. Lyokh had seen that in even the most hardened soldiers, at least on their first few times on EVAs. He supposed Man still hadn’t evolved to understand the skyless, groundless world of space. They simply weren’t meant to be here, out in all this emptiness.
They trained walking the hull with magboots, and pushing themselves around in vacuum with e-suit jets, mixing Lyokh’s squad-based theories with Morkovikson’s principles of rescue.
It was a beautiful ballet, a free exchange of information that invigorated everyone, and helped them all to grow.
It was while Lyokh was putting his and Morkovikson’s people through a drill he had just invented for recovering a wounded man out of the void, that he received a message on his HUD. He checked it. It was from Julian. It read:THE SENATOR HAS DECIDED TO EXPLORE THE S’DAR WATCHTOWER WHILE WE WAIT FOR RAMLOCK’S RETURN.
“Let’s call it a day, boys and girls,” said Lyokh over the open channel. “Looks like we’ve got a new mission.”
CAPTAIN DESH RAN them through the briefing. Lyokh had noticed the man taking a lot of initiative lately, and in t
his case he took up the entirety of the briefing, while keeping Captains Donovan, Fee, and Trepp out of it. Lyokh had been wondering why Kalder had brought this man on in the first place. A quick LOG check showed that he didn’t have the greatest military track record, fraught with insubordination and risky, if brave, combat maneuvers. But something about him must have intrigued Kalder. One of the things Lyokh imagined the senator might’ve found interesting was his tendency to cast off protocol, speak out of turn, assume command of things that weren’t his to assume, and generally just lord his connection to Kalder over the others. The man didn’t even dress like a sailor, his moppy hair was always in disarray and his beard waxed and waned from unkempt to positively scraggly.
After the briefing, Lyokh and his five senior guys met out in the hallway and discussed who would be going. They heard the chime that heralded their jump to faster-than-light, and felt the lurch in their stomachs as they discussed the layout of the s’Dar Watchtower. Archaeologists’ maps showed it was much like all the others the Strangers had left, and presented no new conundrums.
Lyokh was just nominating the leaders for the teams when Desh stepped out into the corridor, and said, without any ceremony or apology for interrupting, “You’re going to be leading the expedition.” He clapped Lyokh on the shoulder like they were old friends, then walked right past them.
Lyokh called after him, “Hey!” Desh stopped and turned back. “You’re not in charge of the mission.”
Desh shrugged. “It comes from Kalder.”
“I’m in charge of deployments. Neither you nor he control those decisions.”
For a long moment, the others in the hall stared awkwardly between them.
Desh flashed a condescending smile. “The Crusade is Kalder’s. You didn’t get the memo?”