Pax Imperia (The Redemption Trilogy)

by Mike Smith

  The alarms ringing in the background, and almost constant impacts against the hull clearly demonstrated he had not been unconscious for very long, as the bombardment from Malthus’s fleet continued on, unabated.

  He remembered every word Elsie had spoken, every image from his dream, with crystal clarity, but still could not believe it—it just seemed too incredible. He must have hit his head far harder than he first thought and that, combined with his imminent demise, probably brought about the strange dream. Most likely he simply had a bad case of concussion.

  Staring helplessly at the damage control readouts, he decided that ghosts were not likely to be able to offer much assistance when it came to repairing his flagship. The display was a veritable sea of red, showing damaged or destroyed systems, one after the other. Perhaps he would have to fall back on his offer to Elsie to throw stones at Malthus, as that was about all that he had left. He certainly had no shortage of ammunition, glancing around at the piles of debris surround him.

  Turning back to the console, his eyes were drawn to one system, the only one still operational. A solitary green island, floating in an ocean of red. He frowned, discarding it out of hand. He had no plans to go anywhere, and that was all that it was good for. For the ship reported that the wormhole generators were still on-line and functioning. He was not the least bit surprised, for they were buried in the very heart of the ship, over a dozen of them, running the length of ship. Used to generate the massive wormhole around it, causing the gravity that formed the wormhole, literally swallowing the ship whole, as it propelled it to speeds faster-than-light, and beyond.

  Staring at the lone green light, an idea started to form in his head. It was crazy. It was worse than crazy, it was suicidal, but seeing his only other option was to sit there and await death, it held a certain appeal nonetheless.

  As a young officer in the Imperial Navy he had few friends, and even less money. When not on duty, when many of the other officers departed for more expensive pursuits, he had remained behind in his quarters, alone, transfixed by the data-net. Growing up on Altair, his parents did not have their own connection, as it was prohibitively expensive. Similarly there were no public access terminals in Carrington City; the few working terminals belonging exclusively to the rich. Therefore, upon receiving his commission he had been astounded to learn he had his own private access, free of charge, for as long as he wished.

  He had gorged himself on it for months upon end, reading, studying and learning everything he could. He had been wide-eyed with excitement, a young boy being given the keys to a candy shop. He devoured everything, from history and politics to botany and science, but it was the technology that had fascinated him most. As a young boy, watching the ships arriving and departing at the spaceport where his father had worked, it had seemed like magic. Therefore he read everything on the subject. From the early days of spaceflight, to the slow sub-light ships that had first set out to colonise the Sol System, to the discovery of faster-than-light travel, which permitted humanity to reach for the stars.

  All of the successes—but also many of the failures.

  For the stable wormholes generated to permit ships to travel such incredible distances had been the result of many failed experiments, some minor, others catastrophic, before humanity had been able to perfect the technology.

  One of the unstable wormholes had even resulted in the complete destruction of a laboratory, badly damaging the building, causing several deaths. Research had been temporarily suspended until an investigation could take place, resulting in several recommendations to stop such a disaster ever taking place again. Over the next five hundred years, the technology had been perfected time and time again. New checks and safeguards introduced so that in the event of a failure, the system would safely shut down, ensuing that no harm could possibly take place.

  Jon started to methodically switch off each and every such system, disabling others, bypassing even more. Many of them had purposefully been designed to never be disabled, but all fell swiftly before his commands. Five hundred years of safety precautions were removed in the space of a few short minutes.

  Only then did he begin to power up the massive wormhole generators, swiftly passing their usual safe operating limits, forcing them to supply more and more power, quickly heading into dangerous territory, and then beyond. For the wormhole that had destroyed that laboratory was tiny, the generator an experimental one, an order of magnitude smaller than any on the Invincible, and the ship had a dozen of them.

  Meanwhile, outside the ship, a wormhole started to form, like none that had ever been summoned before.

  *****

  “Captain,” a voice called out in surprise and shock. “Sensors have detected a large power surge from the Invincible. The ship has activated its FTL engines and a wormhole is starting to form.”

  “That’s impossible,” Miller shook his head. “We’re far too close to the centre of this system. The ship wouldn’t be able to produce a stable wormhole with the gravity from the star. They shouldn’t even be able to activate the engines, let alone to generate a wormhole.”

  “He’s trying to escape, again,” Malthus interrupted with swift comprehension. “He knows he cannot win, so now he is fleeing, just like he did before, with Marcus’s daughter, when they escaped from Harkov.”

  “I’m not so sure Senator,” Miller disagreed. “I’ve never seen energy readings like this before, I don’t think—”

  “You’re not paid to think, but follow my orders,” Malthus snarled. “Radec won’t escape again. I won’t allow it. Stop him.”

  “He’s out of range of our weapons, Senator,” the officer replied nervously. “We don’t have any missiles left, as you ordered that we fire them all—”

  “Yes, yes,” Malthus ignored the obvious rebuke. “Well follow him,” he shouted. “You,” he pointed at the Helm Officer. “Follow the Invincible, I don’t care what you have to do, just catch that ship. Get as close as you can. You,” he pointed at the Tactical Officer. “Fire as soon as we’re within range.”

  At the nod from both officers, Malthus turned back to Captain Miller, gloating. “This is why you all failed to stop Radec. Decisive action, that’s what it takes. Firm, bold leadership.”

  “Yes Senator,” Miller sighed, refusing to meet his gaze. Instead he was wondering what the hell Radec was doing, as he couldn’t jump this close to a star. The wormhole would be too unstable. It was suicide.

  Yet somehow Captain Miller doubted that was what Radec had in mind.

  *****

  Jon watched the wormhole start to form. Growing larger and larger, it began to rotate, the spin caused by the gravitational singularity at its centre. A gravitational singularity that was entirely artificial, caused by the massive wormhole generators from inside the ship.

  Such a wormhole was only ever designed to grow large enough to encapsulate the diameter of the ship. However, this one had already grown to twice the size of the Invincible and was still growing larger by the second.

  The next jolt to hit the ship did not come from any enemy warship, but instead the swirling wormhole forming directly ahead. Having grown to a large enough size and mass to start to affect the surrounding region of space, as space-time started to curve around it. The result?

  Gravity.

  Jon activated all the remaining reverse thrusters, only used when the ship was about to enter a space dock. They offered limited manoeuvring when the main engines were off-line, or completely destroyed, as in the case of the Invincible. Hopefully they would buy the ship a few more minutes, as the next tremor shook the ship to its very core.

  Absently noting the other ships had ceased fire, his eyes were totally fixated on the sight ahead of him, as the wormhole grew larger and even more unstable. The light from the surrounding stars began to bend, the result of the gravitational lensing effect, as even light started to become affected, desperate to escape from the effects of the gravity clawing at it.

  Eventually even i
t started to lose the fight as, with a sudden burst of X-rays, the event horizon started to form, delimiting the point of no return. Slowly, inch-by-inch, meter-by-meter the Invincible was being drawn towards that swirling maelstrom, which had now turned completely black, as no more light was able to escape.

  A black hole.

  Ever since their discovery many centuries before, they had inspired awe and terror in equal measure. An inescapable doorway to some other place, where nothing could escape, not even light. They had often been compared to doorways to the underworld.

  “Now I have opened the door, your time for retribution has come,” Jon uttered aloud, sight firmly fixed ahead. “Come and take your vengeance.”

  Just as Elsie had forewarned him, his army was just waiting for his command and, with the portal now opened to them, they didn’t need to be commanded twice. For what nobody had ever considered was that, while the laws of quantum physics suggested nothing could escape from a black hole, the same laws did not necessarily apply to the souls of the dead.

  And they came, summoned by his command. Slowly at first, one at a time, then in pairs, then in groups and then in their multitudes.

  *****

  The massive jolt knocked everybody to their feet; none could remain standing, as the Revenge was knocked sideways by the impact from the gravity waves.

  “What the hell was that?” Malthus cried out desperately, on being tossed to the floor like a discarded rag doll, as forces far more powerful than him started to come into play.

  “Massive gravity distortions all around us,” the officer called out frantically. “It’s as if a massive wormhole is forming all around us, but far larger than I’ve ever seen before.”

  “But where?” Malthus demanded.

  “There,” another voice shouted, a horrified expression on the speaker’s face. He pointed at the view-screen, which displayed a most terrifying sight. For the screen had been showing the rapidly growing shape of the Invincible, as the Revenge had been quickly closing the distance between the two, and it still showed the ship, but that was all. For all around them, one by one, stars were winking out of existence. As if, as easily as one blew out a candle, the Great Maker had simply reached out and extinguished them, they went dark.

  “What is happening?” Malthus cried out in fear. “The stars, they’re vanishing, disappearing. But to where?”

  “It’s not the stars that are disappearing, it’s the light from then,” Miller stuttered, petrified with sudden understanding. “It is the Invincible. The ship was not generating a wormhole to flee with, but one to destroy us all. For it is not a wormhole at all—but a black hole, one that Radec has summoned to devour us all.”

  “Contact the Invincible,” Malthus screamed. “Radec must stop this insanity before he kills us all.”

  *****

  The wormhole generators on the Invincible started to falter and fail. For they had never been designed to run continuously for so long. In addition, their power output was ten times higher than they had ever been certified for. They were literally tearing themselves apart from within, as nothing could sustain such incredible outputs of energy for long.

  The first generator that had begun to fail and shutdown flickered, then glowed suddenly bright, before once again starting to fade, as if a slightly breeze had stirred it’s dying embers. It sparked again, growing brighter and stronger, but still not enough to continue to sustain the energy output. Then the generator blazed with a sudden great light, glowing brighter and brighter. The energy output levels that had begun to fall, started to climb at an increasing rate, exceeding their earlier levels, growing larger and larger, until finally the generator disappeared into a glowing ball of white light.

  The scene was repeated up and down the length of the ship, as wormhole generators vanishing, to be replaced with miniature stars, burning brightly. The light from them started to slowly spread out across the length of the ship.

  The combined output of the wormhole generators quickly exceeding the energy output of a planet, soon reaching the levels only found in the heart of a star. It took a few thousand souls, glowing radiantly, mere seconds to achieve what would eventually take humanity a couple more centuries of development to even start to approach.

  *****

  Jon had been calmly waiting for the incoming communication; the only anticipation had been when it would arrive, not if.

  “Senator Malthus, I have been expecting your call. From your expression you seem to be somewhat in distress?”

  “Radec,” Malthus shouted, all his earlier confidence having long since evaporated, leaving nothing but blind panic. “What have you done? You will kill us all. Stop this madness.”

  Jon leaned forward, every trace of amusement wiped clean from his face, leaving only a merciless expression. A Lord fully prepared to deal with his wayward vassal for the last time. “I swore an oath before all the Confederation that I would stop you—no matter the cost.”

  “But this is lunacy. You’ll be killing yourself too.”

  “A price that I will gladly pay,” Jon nodded in agreement. “Secure in the knowledge that you will be safely locked away in the pits of hell for all eternity. Where everyone will finally be safe from you and your scheming. Your conspiracies and threats all end here, as they die along with you. Nobody will have to fear you ever again.”

  “I will give you anything that you desire. Riches, wealth and all the power I can offer, everything you ever wanted and more. I have knowledge that you will find indispensable; with it you could topple planets. You could rule for all eternity, completely unassailable. Your children would rule the Empire for the next five hundred years unchallenged. I can give you anything you wish for. Please. I beg you to stop this insanity.”

  The shockwave from the next gravity wave tossed the Revenge around as if it were a toy boat setting forth to sail across the wide ocean. The ship was slowly, but inexorably, drawn towards the swirling maelstrom continuing to expand before it. Meanwhile the Invincible held firm in the face of such extraordinary forces, as if anchored by the Great Maker himself.

  Malthus was thrown to the floor, as he prostrated himself, trembling before the view-screen. On the bridge of his flagship, surrounded by his crew and fleet of hundreds of warships and, standing against them all, just one man, alone, on a doomed ship.

  They were all helpless before him.

  “I care nothing of your power or wealth.” Jon scornfully discarded Malthus’s offer. “I have never wanted or desired any of it. For where is all your power and wealth now, Malthus? A lifetime spent scheming and plotting to steal both, leaving nothing but a trail of bodies and victims in your wake. Well it counts for nothing now. You cannot take it with you into the next life, and it means nothing when you stand, alone, before the Great Maker. Where everybody is judged equally, irrespective of wealth or power. Meanwhile I am already rich beyond my wildest imaginings, knowing that I have family and friends that love me and will remember my name. My actions and deeds will continue to live on through them, and throughout history. You, however, die alone, leaving nothing to remember you by. Nobody will care for your name, or your family’s. Your name will become nothing more than a curse, a warning to others of what fate befalls traitors and conspirators.” Jon watched on impassively as Malthus’s ship continued to relentlessly be drawn towards the event horizon, its engines at full power, futilely trying to resist the merciless pull of gravity.

  “No! I beg you, please, have mercy,” Malthus wailed pitifully, watching, as tendrils of darkness seemed to reach out towards his ship—and him.

  “The same mercy that you showed your victims?” Jon ridiculed him. “You have spent your entire life living off the pain, fear and despair of others. You and your family are nothing more than parasites, and it’s time for you to go,” Jon insisted coldly, terminating the transmission.

  Malthus could only gawk at the encroaching darkness, a scream torn from his lips, as everything around him was consumed, leaving him in
the dark, alone—with nothing but the shadows whispering his name, as they reached out for him.

  For at least death was swift and merciful, but the tortured souls fully planned on keeping him alive for the rest of eternity, screaming in absolute agony.

  *****

  Jon watched, unblinkingly, as Malthus’s flagship was finally drawn into the event horizon. The extreme gravitational forces started to shear the ship into pieces and tendrils of darkness pulled the remains of the ship into the gaping maw of the black hole. Consuming all, until nothing remained of ship nor man.

  He released a breath that he had not even realised he had been holding, finally finding himself free. Free of the burden of responsibility, the chains of obligation, his sworn duty to all finally fulfilled. He somehow felt lighter, free of the guilt that had plagued him for so long. He blinked, noticing the dark cloak he had wrapped around himself was gone. He wondered if it had ever really existed, or simply been a figment of his imagination, a physical manifestation of the crushing burden he had been forced to endure.

  Looking up, Jon was unsurprised to observe Elsie once again standing at his side, a small smile gracing her lips.

  “It seems like throwing rocks was unnecessarily after all.”

  “I couldn’t have done it without your help,” Jon thanked her.

  “Only a little help. It was still mostly you. It was you that found the way, just like I somehow knew that you would. As always before you have come through in the end.”

  Jon was surprised to notice she was starting to glow, before realising it was not just her, but the ship, their surroundings slowly turning white.

  “So you have been my guardian angel? Looking out for me?” Jon guessed. Many people had commented to him that he must have one, closely looking out for him, to have managed to survive so long.

  Elsie tipped her head back and laughed, a glorious sound, like silver bells echoing through the air on a crisp winter’s morning. “Me? No. I’m no angel. I have neither the temperament nor inclination. Anyway the job is already taken by another. One who is far more beautiful than me, and loves you in a way that I couldn’t divine. But our time is growing short.” Elsie motioned around them, to the ship slowing being consumed by the light. “We are holding the doorway open for as long as we can, but even we have our limits. It’s time for us all to go,” she said, giving him a knowing look.