Tethered Worlds: Unwelcome Star

by Gregory Faccone

  Aristahl was uncharacteristically concerned. Jordahk was pretty sure it had more to do with protecting his grandson than personal safety. Aristahl pulled an old bracer out of his bag. It unfolded and auto-conformed to his forearm over the spacesuit.

  The maintenance bot drilled near the control panel. "There is half gravity and thin atmosphere on the other side," Aristahl said. "This airlock will not cycle, but we have hard-locked the last hatch so the minimal air should hold. Do not trust it. Jordahk, keep your helmet closed and stay behind me."

  Aristahl reached through the drilled hole and maintained resonance contact with something while the maintenance bot jacked the door open. With a whoosh, the chamber filled with thin air, and pale light shone through the opening hatch. A scutum built into the back of Glick's large gauntlet sprang to life. A blur took a little longer to fill the interior of a shoulder-width hard air shield.

  Before them was a wide corridor, perpendicular to their passage, lit with the faint light of yellowish glow panels. The maintenance bot ambled in first, its head rotating every sensor. With a flash, its second step became its last. The bot spun crazily. Its torso exploded in every direction, sending debris flying.

  Warnings flashed across Pheron's fleet VADs. His head cocked.

  "They're firing?"

  A trio of teleforce beams arced from just beyond the planetary horizon. Each 500-meter strand curved around the gravity well of Adams Rush and slammed into a frigate. Their shields burned white hot at the impact points, and streams of dislodged plasma jetted into space. The T-beams carried enough kinetic force to push back each of the ships, forcing their thrust rings to fire in compensation.

  Pheron grimaced at his predicament. In some ways his options were as restricted as those of the Adams Rush Navy. The locals had limited firepower and a broken command structure. His units were in maneuver-restricted formations, guarding the incomplete egress from all probable fire lanes.

  "What were they?" he snapped to his bridge crew. He always stayed controlled in battle but wouldn't hesitate to cut someone down for incompetence.

  "Eleven hundreds, sir," his deployment officer called the KT measurement up to command. The volume was unnecessary, considering the bridge crew was linked with communication aids. Pheron thought the officer was likely trying to avoid blame.

  The main chess pieces were unchanged, but that required confirmation. "Are the enemy cruisers engaging?" he asked his command AI.

  "Enemy cruiser positions unchanged," the AI said evenly. "Only a detached pocket gruppe is engaging."

  Pheron didn't trust the breached AI. At least the betraying purple-bordered VAD showed no new spike of information sent to the Archivers. Transmissions without his permission ate away his authority, not to mention his patience. His bitsmith lieutenant was back on the bridge where his progress could be encouraged. The man wasn't holding up well. He lifted a head with sweat-plastered hair and skin that reminded Pheron of rotting cheese.

  "It's t-true sir," the bitsmith said. His nod was jerky and too fast.

  The field commander cogitated exactly one more second. Eleven hundred kinetic-teslas. Frigate-sized beams. Schematics and capabilities danced around the command chair. The pocket gruppe was only three frigates and a destroyer-sized ship. The locals were trying to provoke him with the old "rogue captain" routine.

  "Do not engage," he said force-wide, "defensive fire only."

  Going to war with a soon-to-be member world wouldn't further the cause. If the Perigeum wanted that, they would have sent someone else. Open war against the Vallum Corps would be astronomically expensive. He just needed to hold out a little longer. When the egress went online, this would all be over, and he would rise.

  An alert circle highlighted more incoming fire. Not more T-beams, but a short string of hyper-accelerated rocks. The larger "rogue" ship wasn't a destroyer; it was a javelin. Destroyers generally carried mixed armament of T-beams and single-rock hyperguns. The javelin, on the other hand, was a war-era design that needed escort protection, but could pour devastating firepower onto a spot in space.

  Pheron allowed himself a quiet curse. He detached a pocket gruppe from his gamma command squadron. "Cover that line of fire, damn it."

  The Perigeum units laid down defensive fire. Defensive T-beams and intercept guns blasted the rocks short of their target. Fast-moving debris slammed into his frigates with spectacular flashes, but no damage.

  The Adams Rush gruppe fired the next series for simultaneous arrival. Pheron's egress protection restrictions meant his units had to catch the incoming fire rather than dodge it. It was chaotic as multiple ships shuffled to spread damage across fresh shields. Add to that the devastating power of a javelin, and one small area of space was turning into a dangerous circus. Then the locals revealed the linchpin to their gambit.

  A small ship raced toward the egress. It must have built up significant speed on the other side of the planet, because it skimmed along the atmosphere nearly out of control. Perigeum units couldn't fire upon it without risking planetary bombardment. Such a bombardment would bring about the ruination of all his plans.

  Civilizations at war avoided orbital planetary bombardment. It was a sure way to incur humanity's ire. With so many "dry" worlds out there, if mankind had learned one lesson, it was that habitable planets were precious and exceedingly rare.

  "Ship type?" Specs drew before Pheron.

  "An armored yacht," the command AI said. "A known model, but significantly modified."

  With his units out of position, a small opening was exposed below the egress. With the totality of the enemy plan clear, he relaxed. "Desperation."

  His fingers flowed across ship icons, and he delivered firing orders that blanketed an empty column of space. A couple of seconds later his intuition proved correct when the yacht leaped off the atmosphere. It maintained its speed, heading directly for the egress.

  To avoid fire, the yacht began a crazy corkscrew. It was too extreme for civilian grav weaves to safeguard a human crew. He nodded in grudging admiration. The yacht had been turned into a ship-killer missile. That was an expensive and inefficient way to engage in naval warfare. The goal was likely to disrupt assembly of the irrefutably expensive egress. On that front the unconventional attack could work.

  "Bring us down," Pheron ordered. Where standard Perigeum frigates were boxy, and destroyers angled and muscular, his command cruiser showed the smooth lines of that prestigious class. It had the scale for long sweeping shapes. Its flattened, rounded fuselage was surrounded by a triangular A-frame. Its top housed T-beam arrays, and off the lower legs were large, smooth engine clusters. It glided down, settling between the zigzagging yacht and the egress.

  The yacht was a wily target. Its plasma shields were surprisingly hot for a modified civilian ship, and it sported layers of ablative armor. But the gambit using the tough, little ship was doomed once he divined its design. As it closed on the egress, it also closed on the command cruiser's weaponry, and the less it could veer. He ordered his wing frigates even lower to free them from angles that might damage the precarious situation planetside.

  A red fire cone lit in front of his command gruppe icons. Pheron watched numbers tick down. Glancing blows and an evasive course were slowing but not stopping the frenetic yacht's progress. Finally, the red cone turned green.

  "Command gruppe, combined fire."

  His trio of attached frigates let loose with their T-beams. The command cruiser fired its mammoth 1800s and a salvo of rocks. Tracking solutions were crisp at such close range, especially when the AIs could factor in the enemy's ultimate target. The frigate T-beams wiped the yacht clean of shielding, causing an incandescent cloud of chromatic plasma to dissipate into space beyond. Then a direct hit from one of the cruiser's big 1800s impaled the yacht, crumpling it in the middle.

  The hapless ship, plunged sideways, didn't wallow long. A half second later, the rocks slammed into it. Hyper-accelerated projectiles made excellent anti-ship weapons with no
need for explosives. At their speed, energy transfer to target was tremendous. Two connected solidly. The yacht cartwheeled in vaporizing incandescence before exploding.

  The detonation flashed white, followed by a larger, expanding blue particle wave. The shields of nearby ships absorbed it harmlessly. Pheron sat back in his chair, realizing he'd been literally on the edge of his seat. He brought his awareness out of space and back onto the bridge. Aetaire was standing behind him.

  "A thermo-magnetic warhead? Barbaric." Aetaire made his disgust apparent.

  "Desperate times." Aetaire's reaction was understandable, but Pheron felt no anger. While he had the upper hand, he actually admired the gambit.

  "Units from the main enemy fleet have intercepted the attacking pocket gruppe," the command AI said.

  "Ah yes, the theater must play out." Pheron grinned darkly. The excitement put a little color in his dark, hue-less skin. A touch of pink tinged in the medium gray colortat around the back of his head.

  "I'm certain a transmission will come in from some hiding politician. Something about how sorry he is for such an uncouth and unprovoked attack, how he'll see all the officers involved brought to severe and swift justice." Pheron exhaled a short, derisive puff. "Quite frankly, their civilian government's in freefall. I doubt the Adams Rush Navy is accepting any major deployment orders until the new elections. I'll be surprised if we see more than one ship commander take the fall for this."

  "We got what we needed from their backwards assembly," Aetaire said. "The chaos since only furthers our cause."

  Aetaire spoke with elite superiority common to the politically connected of the Perigeum. At best they thought worlds like Adams Rush quaint and simple. Often they thought much worse, especially toward planets associated with the Sojourners. Despite the Sojourners' Crusade having receded two centuries into the past, the greatest multi-civilization war mankind had ever waged still influenced the mature and educated. Younger people who buried their minds in the Perigeum's social nexus didn't realize how much that distant event still affected their present-day culture.

  "The disarray does serve us," Pheron said, "as long as full-scale hostilities don't break out. We don't want them forming a new government in haste and requesting Vallum Corps assistance."

  A private alarm went off. A fleeting feeling of frustration washed over Pheron. The subtle alarm indicated a subtle threat. A large information dump had just been transmitted to the Archiver squadron. He checked the logs. The Legion spy network just reported in. Pheron sighed. The Archivers were more interested in what was developing planetside than in space.

  The forest conflagration was spectacular, even when viewed from space. Auscultare had been asked to play many times, mostly in slow motion, the series of precisely timed, expanding circle of explosions. He could appreciate the workmanship, especially considering the calculations were done on the fly under field conditions.

  The blasts intentionally created a powerful pressure wave followed by a super-hot core. The pattern accelerated the pressure wave while slowing the heat. Riding the crest of destruction, a suspicious piece of "debris" was blown out, likely their quarry.

  Auscultare, with his capacity hobbled, couldn't be sure what it was, but the commodore was convinced. The man was growing more irrational and impulsive. Auscultare determined those qualities were held in disdain by the group to which the commodore was associated, but he wasn't sure he was supposed to know that.

  Part of him felt at home with these Archivers and their so-called mystic artifacts. Many of the items obtained were hardly older than Auscultare himself. The term "artifacts" just didn't fit. The sensation he associated with human pain pressed on him again, making his thoughts difficult and laborious. Certain memories were inaccessible. Part of him wasn't pleased about working for Archivers, but he couldn't ascertain why. As before, he put those numbing computations aside and focused on the task at hand.

  "I've run all the image clarification algorithms I know," the AI said. "Anything more would be... art."

  The commodore reclined in the command chair, surrounded by VADs. One focused on an indistinct collection of image points blown out of the explosion. While not clear, it was likely a man.

  "Then make some art using visual data from those worthless slags," the commodore said. His breathing was laborious.

  The image resolved into a slightly off-color man curled up behind a scutum. The blast wave pushed him just ahead of the flames. As the image moved forward in time, the man was propelled into tree cover.

  "It's him," the commodore spat.

  Auscultare knew the tone was magnified by pain. The commodore's over-modified body reacted poorly to NuSkin, and he complained frequently of painful nerve tingling. Conflicting alterations warred among themselves, and the benign para-organic dermis was an unwelcome addition. The pain was finally lessening, but other symptoms would continue indefinitely due, in part, to his outrageous strength modifications.

  "Lucky bastard," the commodore grumbled. "He and I are going to meet again." He read a bio off another VAD. "Kord Wilkrest. Served one term Adams Rush Assembly of Delegates. Not known to have any mystic affinity. Two sons, Stannis and Jordahk; not known to have any mystic affinity."

  While Adams Rush prided itself on individualism and non-centralized databases, Auscultare dug in the right places for visual data. Kord Wilkrest was a rugged man growing in popularity. The VAD showed him giving an impassioned speech.

  Stannis Wilkrest's image wasn't recent, apparently taken from the admission records of a medical school on Patram. He was a tall man with a severe face, no confirmed mystic affinity, but the record was out-of-date.

  Jordahk Wilkrest, captured candidly behind his father at some rally, was wary.

  "No confirmed mystic affinity," the commodore mused.

  "It's likely," Auscultare added, "the boy was in the fanicle the night it was destroyed by the owl."

  "Assists in family weapons training business. Known hobby, mystic artifact hunting. Attested to by off-world queries."

  The commodore's uniform sleeves were removed to reduce irritation on tingling nerves. Auscultare's emergency protection programming preserved the commodore's life, but protection from heat was not complete, and severe burns on the commodore's extremities kept the Archiver squadron's inexperienced nurse busy for some time. The red-faced man moved his arm, inducing pain.

  "Radiated NuSkin." He gently returned his arm to the rest. "Anything more on this Kord Wilkrest's father?"

  The commodore was examining a comparatively empty VAD containing the bio of Aristahl Wilkrest, imprimatur. Auscultare's efforts to gather more information proved inadequate. He didn't even have a confirmed picture. All likely ones had distorted likenesses.

  "So he scrubs or mods all imagery of him." The commodore was suspicious.

  "I believe so. Especially considering his long history on Adams Rush dating back to the reconstruction period." Auscultare paused. "One moment."

  A buried VAD came to the fore, one dedicated to information transfers from the Starmada task force. Although Auscultare's shadow tap had been discovered and partially hacked, the information transfer continued. Being detected wasn't the Archiver way, but the "Fifth Arkhon," as the commodore was known in the secret upper echelons of that organization, wasn't dissuaded.

  A quick examination of the new dump revealed information that should please the commodore. It should have also pleased Auscultare, but he felt no such sensation regarding this admin.

  Auscultare displayed the relevant data as the sweating commodore's eyes darted back and forth.

  "About radiating time." The commodore's expression registered as devious.

  "I secretly piggybacked an extra command in the last Legion spy network orders queue," the AI said. "One informant is high in the new government movement. My request for all things Wilkrest has apparently found a source."

  A smoldering fire, dormant for many days, was rekindling in the commodore's demeanor. "Who is it?"<
br />
  "They're identified only by anonymous asset number. File notes indicate this person is concerned about safety and wants post-egress guarantees."

  "Another sniveling weasel."

  "There's more. I think it's what you've been looking for."

  An image of a mature man was displayed, taken at some distance with the typical distortion of a compy micro eye. He wore an old-fashioned dark coat that went to his knees. He carried himself in a formal way similar to the modified images. But the face was different. It had more character and was more "true."

  The commodore ordered his chair erect and grimaced from the sudden move. "Is it real?"

  "The informant says this is Aristahl Wilkrest, imprimatur."

  "Run it for hits!"

  "I have, without success, but our database doesn't contain the Perigeum's full Sojourners' Crusade record."

  "Then query the command cruiser." The commodore was growing impatient, which wasn't unusual of late.

  "With my shadow tap compromised, I won't be able to perform the search secretly."

  "Do it!" the commodore said, his face redder than usual.

  "I have a facial match. I believe it's from an event fifty years ago in which Admiral Ferric Marculus was honored."

  "The Iron Commander?"

  "The same." Auscultare boxed and expanded a small section of the image showing a person sitting at the far end of a dais. He wore a long, old-fashioned coat. The hair was darker, but otherwise it was very much Aristahl Wilkrest.

  "How does a man important enough to be on the dais with the Iron Commander have no public record? No coin line accounts? An imprimatur with no record of works?"

  "Yes, I find no mystic craftings. No grav weaves, ravelens, or even repair contracts."

  The commodore shifted impatiently. "He might be a weak imprimatur, passing on no usable gift." He paused, staring at the image. "Or..." Below his ear a bead of sweat dripped. He wiped it unconsciously with his forearm causing stinging nerve pain. "Damn it!"