by Mike Smith
“What happened to him?” Jon asked, curiously.
“Oh, he married her, they now have a beautiful daughter. Sometimes I look at his picture, wondering how things might have turned out differently had we stayed together. What life would be like if we had had a daughter, but it's a moot point now anyway, as he died a while back,” she concluded sadly.
Jon raised his glass in a toast, “To the ones that we have loved—and lost.”
Anna raised her glass in reply, but her expression remained troubled.
*****
In a fit of anger Jason threw the datapad across the length of his small quarters, only taking little satisfaction at the crunch as it bounced off the door and came to rest on the floor. He wondered if it was worth the effort to walk the length of the room and jump up and down on it, before reluctantly deciding against that course of action. He would probably have to spend the rest of the day filling in dozens of requisition forms to obtain a replacement.
Soon after the Commander had first tasked him with tracking the source of the transmission to Captain James Harrison on the Indomitable, he had set to work with gusto. For the people who had sent the transmission had made a fatal mistake by broadcasting it live. Had they just recorded it and then sent it, the message would have been untraceable. Broken up into tens of millions of packets, routed a million and one different ways, only to be reassembled upon arrival at their destination. A live transmission was different, for the duration of the communication a channel had existed, a pathway through the digital ether that had linked those who had sent it and Captain Harrison. Jason had quickly gotten to work, following that digital breadcrumb trail, when he uncovered the first problem. Whoever had initiated the communication had not been stupid and had routed the message through many, many different relays.
Each relay could make a peer-to-peer connection with any other, and with a little less than a thousand Tachyon relays making up the system, the number of possible combinations increased exponentially with each relay that the communication was routed through. Assuming that the message was routed through a couple of hundred different relays, it was almost impossible to track the source. He had manually tracked the message back through the first couple of relays, but that had taken weeks of his time, and he had finally given up in disgust.
Instead he wrote a worm to do the trace for him.
This small piece of software would upload itself into the relay, search through the message log, find which relay broadcast the message and then transfer itself to the source relay to repeat the process. The worm worked exactly as designed and in the span of six months had traced the message back through—two relays.
It was this that had caused the datapad to be flung the length of the room in a fit of pique. For assuming a couple of hundred relays, it would take a decade or more to find the source of the transmission.
The problem was that everything was too slow. Each relay transferred tens of billions of packets per second; the individual message logs were petabytes in size. Worse was that the worm could only utilise a fraction of one percent of the relays processing power. The rest was needed to route tens of millions of data-streams simultaneously.
If he could only have exclusive access to the network for a couple of hours. His worm could utilise the full processing power of each of the relays, and what was currently taking months would only take minutes. However it was not possible to have exclusive access to the network. Each planet in the Confederation had overall maintenance responsibility for their own Tachyon relay, only taking down individual relays as and when necessary for emergency maintenance. To take the entire system down simultaneously? Nobody had such authority. Only the Emperor could ever—
Jason banged his head against the desk. He was such an idiot. Rubbing his sore head he put an urgent call through to Commander Radec.
*****
The incessant bleeping roused Albert from his slumber. With his head pounding, disorientated, for a moment he wondered where he was.
“Lights,” he croaked. “Less light, less light,” he cried out painfully, trying to shield his eyes. With the lights now dimmer, his gaze came to rest on the empty bottle of whiskey on his desk.
Then it struck him. Eden Prime. Marcus. Sofia.
The door chimed again but this time he just ignored it. Deciding that he needed some anaesthetic for the hangover before he could deal with any more customers, he was halfway through opening a new bottle when the door suddenly slid open.
Albert could only gape, as he was the only one with the code for that door. Furthermore he had spent several painstaking hours scrubbing all other codes. The drink dulled his reactions as he scrabbled madly in his drawer for the pistol that he always kept close at hand. At the same time, he was trying to make out the intruder, but could only see a faint outline, hidden by the shadows of the room. His sight was not helped one little bit by the dim lighting he had insisted upon earlier.
“There is no need for that,” a familiar voice rang out from the direction of the door.
“Jon? Is that you? But what are you doing here? I thought that you were now—”
“Emperor?” Jon interrupted him. “Marcus’s successor? Right on both accounts, but I’ve taken the day off.”
Albert blinked bleary eyed at him, unsure what to say, finally just settling on a surly, “What do you want?”
“First I want to know if you had any involvement in the attack on Eden Prime?”
“What? No! Of course not. Marcus and Sofia were important to me also, but for vastly different reasons.”
Jon looked at Albert, as if gauging his response, before finally nodding, accepting his explanation. “In which case you had better put on some coffee, because I need you sober for what I want next.”
Albert laughed, but there was no humour in it, just hurt. “I thought that you were all-knowing?”
“Indeed I am,” Jon grinned. “But have you ever thought how an Emperor comes to be omnipotent? Somebody needs to tell the poor guy what he needs to know. Congratulations, you’ve just been handed the job.”
*****
A couple of hours later, now stone-cold sober, but wishing he wasn’t, Albert looked at Jon as if the man had completely lost his mind. “No, I refuse. I won’t do it.”
“I could insist you know?” Jon warned mildly. “One word from me and I could have you thrown in jail, never to see the light of day until you give me what I want.”
“But you won’t.”
“No, I won’t,” Jon sighed. “I owe you that much. So if I cannot threaten you, then I will simply have to buy what I want.”
“You might be rich now Jon, but not all the Aurelius family wealth combined would be enough to pay for that information. I cannot spend the money dead, and neither can you,” Albert reminded him.
“That is the price that I will have to pay, but right now we are talking about you, not me. Anyway I did not plan to offer you money. Instead I will offer you something far more valuable. I offer you a family.”
“I don’t understand,” said Albert confused.
“I know that your wife died many decades ago. I also know that you have a daughter.”
“Had a daughter,” Albert corrected him, reaching for the bottle of whiskey on his desk. This was not a conversation he wanted to have sober. “She also died many years ago.”
“I also know that,” Jon nodded. “She died when Sofia was still a little girl. Sofia often spoke to me of her, for she missed her deeply, as did Marcus. Many a long night we would sit together and he would speak to me of his long dead wife. Sofia’s mother.”
Albert’s hand shook as he took a firm grip of his glass, struggling to bring it to his lips without spilling any of the contents. “You knew? For how long?” he asked, in a strangled tone of voice.
“That Marcus’s wife, Sofia’s mother, was your daughter? I found out a few years before Harkov betrayed Marcus and the Empire. I always wondered why you had served Marcus, and his father before him, so
faithfully, then one day suddenly upped and left. It seemed a strange coincidence that it was exactly around the same time she died. That was why I brought Sofia here as, aside from my family, it was the only other place that I knew she would be safe. That’s why I knew you would help us.”
Albert closed his eyes in the pain at her loss. “Did she know? That I was her grandfather?” he asked desperately.
“I don’t know. It was not my place to tell her.”
“Well it’s too late now. They’re all gone. My wife. My daughter. Marcus and Sofia. All gone…” He trailed off, watching the drink swirl around the glass, before bringing it up to his lips, emptying the glass in a single gulp.
“Maybe not. Sofia has a son. A little boy called Marcus, with blond hair and your blue eyes. You’re a great-grandfather now. So that is what I offer you in payment for this information; to be a part of a family again. I think the boy would like to get to know his irritable, cantankerous great-grandfather, don’t you?”
Albert looked directly into Jon’s eyes; sure that this was some sort of trick to get him to part with the information Jon wanted. Yet, as he stared into the unblinking gaze, Albert could see the truth in it. Jon was telling the truth. He had a great-grandson, and for the first time in many months he found something new inside of himself—hope.
Then Jon’s words sank into his consciousness and he, instead, felt a blazing anger. “You would bargain with me for access to my own great-grandson? My own flesh and blood? After everything that I have already lost?”
“Don’t talk to me about loss,” Jon hissed in a strangled tone of voice. “You have no right to take the moral high ground on this. Not when I have lost everything. Marcus had Sofia. You have a great-grandson. Me? I have nothing but memories of fleeting moments of happiness.”
Albert looked away ashamed, for he had lost a son-in-law and a granddaughter, but Jon had lost his wife and a man he loved as a father—and more. He had read Jon’s personal file countless times and had been horrified at what this man had lost throughout his life, amazed that he could even stand up straight and look him in the eye. “Then I don’t understand, what is it that you are offering?” Albert asked.
“When the boy is older, and you read bedtime stories to him, and he asks you if the monsters in those stories are real, what are you going to say Albert? Are you going to lie to him and say such monsters don’t exist? Or will you tell him the truth? Tell him that such monsters do exist out there, because you and I know both know that they do. We’ve both fought them. So this is what I am offering you. Give me what I need, and I am going to slay every last one of them, so that they will never threaten anybody ever again. And then you can tell the boy the truth. That such monsters don’t exist, not anymore.”
“But Jon, if I give you this and you do what you say, think of the cost. They will never forgive you for this, or forget. They will hunt you down for the rest of your life. They will not rest until you are dead.” Albert pleaded with him.
“And that is the price I am willing to pay,” Jon nodded his head in agreement.
*****
With Albert’s promise to get the information that he requested, but knowing it would take some time, Jon reluctantly stepped on-board the Endless Light. The thought briefly crossed his mind that he should just depart for some remote uncharted system and escape from the crushing weight of responsibility his position now entailed. The idea reminded him of his suggestion to Sofia, now seemingly a lifetime ago, that the two of them should just elope. He wondered why he hadn’t insisted…
“Commander,” the voice of the Endless Light interrupted his reverie. “You have an incoming communication.”
“Only one?” he grumbled. “Who is it?”
“Lieutenant Edgar,” came back the prompt response.
“Well at least it’s not Anna checking up on me,” he muttered aloud. Having told her of this trip, or a rough approximation of it, he’d been slightly vague as to his final destination. “On screen,” he called out, sliding into the pilot’s seat of the ship.
“Jason,” he called out with forced joviality. “How is Senator Calis?”
“Dead and buried,” came Jason’s not unexpected reply.
“Really?” Jon replied with a knowing smile. “I would never have guessed.” Jason just shot him a bad-tempered look. “Don’t forget that you volunteered to go with Miranda. Speaking of which, how is she?”
“Infatuated,” Jason replied bad tempered.
“With the Senator’s son?” Jon guessed. “There is no accounting for bad taste I suppose. I remember Sofia also had a soft spot for the boy, or at least she looked somewhat distressed as I was about to decapitate him.”
“A shame you didn’t,” Jason uttered from between clenched teeth.
Jon just laughed, leaning back and resting his feet up on the flight console, much to the indignation of the ship, which bleeped at being used as an expensive footrest. “You know,” Jon mused out aloud. “I think it’s these little chats that I miss most about my time on Terra Nova.”
“Just exactly where are you anyway?” Jason inquired curiously, finally noticing Jon’s surroundings.
“Memphis Station,” he replied without even thinking.
“What are you doing there?” Jason inquired curiously.
“Vacationing,” Jon responded quickly. As Lieutenant Edgar was one of the smartest people that he knew, and was perfectly capable of putting one plus one together and coming up with five. “So as much as I enjoy this chat, I know that you didn’t call me from halfway across the Confederation to complain about the Senator’s son.” Jon quickly added to distract him from prying further into just why he was here.
Jason quickly filled him in on the latest results of his worm and what he needed to speed up the search.
“Do it,” Jon ordered.
“Commander, this is going to take the entire Tachyon relay system down for several hours. Isn’t there somebody that you want to consult with first?”
“No,” Jon said. “What I do want are the people behind this attack. You saw the same recording that I did. You know what kind of people we’re dealing with. I want them found, and then I want them dead and buried,” he uttered chillingly.
Not one who needed to be told twice, Jason nodded his head then closed the communication channel.
*****
Jason sat behind his desk, staring in rapt fascination at the blinking control on the datapad resting in front of him, awaiting his command to start the program—and shut down the entire network. He had already checked his programming three times and now he was just procrastinating. The program would shut down the transmission network, give full processing priority to his worm, and then wait for it to complete the trace. Only then would the relays restart and resume transmitting. He really, really hoped this would work as designed; otherwise he was likely to remain busy for most of the rest of his life fixing this.
With a deep breath, he tapped the control to start the program, only releasing it several seconds later when the universe did not seem to come to an abrupt end. A quick check confirmed that all external data links from the ship had gone down. He could only sit back and wait.
Anxiously.
*****
For the second time in the space of a year, all communications stopped. However, this time there was no message to observe in the meantime. For a species that had come addicted to instantaneous communication across light-years, the enforced silence had a profound effect.
For many this was the simple joy of walking around a desk and talking face-to-face with a colleague who they hadn’t spoken to in years. Others took the enforced downtime to spend with their partners, their children and families. Many others simply took the opportunity to leave their homes or their offices and to walk outside into the bright sunshine, shielding their eyes from the glare, too used to arriving before the sun had risen and not leaving until long after sunset. To stare up in the bright blue sky, to feel the sun on their faces, the
cool breeze on their skin.
To be reminded what it felt like to be alive.
Others communicated in a far more intimate way. Sociologists observing a noticeable increase in births some nine months later…
*****
Robert Calis closed his eyes, rubbing his aching forehead with weary hands. It had been a long day, with a major mine accident, where he had helped coordinate the rescue efforts, followed by several hours of back-to-back meetings with regional politicians and senior advisers to discuss his run for the Senate, to succeed his mother as Senator for the Callas Star Cluster. He hardly felt in a position to comment that in all probability the discussions were a waste of time, as it seemed unlikely that there was going to be a Confederation much longer—and the Senate was sure to be discarded soon after. He assumed that the original agreement reached by his mother would still be in effect, and that he would be rewarded with a high-ranking position in the new administration.
He wondered why that idea bothered him so much.
Such concerns brought his thoughts full circle, back to Sofia—and Miranda. He could not help but constantly compare the two, for in many ways they were similar, both in character and spirit. However that was where the similarities ended, for the two were like night and day. Sofia was the constant optimist, with her bright sunny disposition, easy smiles and firm belief in the general goodness of people. Miranda was the opposite with her dark brooding looks, strong cynicism and no-nonsense attitude. And yet both of them were in love with Jon Radec. Not for the first time Robert shook his head in disbelief, wondering what it was about the man that seemed to so attract women to him.
It was none of these thoughts that were the cause of his headache, instead it was the continuing nagging of his conscience. For a man that so fervently derided Jon Radec for his failure to act in stopping the attack on Eden Prime, he was continually aware of his own less than honourable actions. From his ongoing imprisonment and isolation of Sofia, to his in-depth involvement in a conspiracy to overthrow the duly elected government. A conspiracy that had already resulted in the deaths of thousands, and was likely to result in many more before it was concluded.