by Peter Kenson
TWO HEIRS
THE MARMOROS TRILOGY: Book 1
by Peter Kenson
Copyright 2014 Peter Kenson
Prologue
The psychic blast reverberated through all corners of the empire and for the few seconds it lasted, the universe was a sad place. The outpouring of grief was so intense that grown men stopped in mid-stride and women and children burst into tears for no reason other than the intensity of the emotion that suddenly hit them. Telepaths everywhere instinctively strengthened their shields yet still cringed from the sheer power of the outburst. The whole of the known universe felt an almost personal loss but only one in a trillion had any inkling of what really had just happened.
***
Some hours later, four of those more knowledgeable people were standing around a Stellar Display Tank on the Imperial planet of Galgos.
Khan, the head of the Imperial Secret Service, opened the discussion.
“So the babe survived the crash after all.”
“Is there any other possible explanation for this phenomenon?”
“You’re the Chief Scientific Advisor. You tell me.”
The scientist shook his head. “Until four hours ago I would not have said it was possible, a mental blast of that power. Not even for a member of the Ystrad royal family. The scream originated from a planet in the region of space where we know the escape ship was headed after the attack on the royal palace. But the Navy searched that whole region.”
“We did.” Space Admiral Wei, the third member of the quartet said, fiddling with the controls on the display. It was the most powerful model display tank, capable of showing stellar and planetary objects down to asteroid level. It could even indicate the status of ships and satellites in a particular region of space, if there was a suitable information source such as a local navigational beacon, to upload the information.
“This is the region where we think the blast originated. It was 25 years ago but I’ve scanned the records. We searched every inhabited and uninhabited planet in that entire region but we found no trace of a crash site.”
“Well obviously you should have looked harder.”
“Gentlemen, gentlemen,” Khan intervened. “Recriminations at this stage are not going to move us forward. What are the damage estimates?” he said, turning to the fourth member of the group.
“Reports are coming in of casualties on every Imperial planet; industrial accidents, traffic accidents, major transport problems. All due to momentary loss of concentration. On top of that, we have severe casualties among the telepathic community. Anyone who didn’t get their shields up in time suffered trauma and several hundred are in shock induced comas. We don’t have the full figures yet; the reports are still coming in but the damage will run into billions.
“Whoever or whatever caused this has to be found and stopped. The Emperor is concerned at the moment but if it should happen again…. He will be looking for heads to liberate from shoulders, if you understand me.”
Khan tried to calm the situation. “You will have to manage the Emperor. You’re the Chancellor. It’s part of your job description.
“None of us are in a position as yet, to guarantee anything about a recurrence. But every psychologist I’ve spoken to in the last couple of hours, has agreed that this was grief probably caused by a singular traumatic event rather than an on-going situation.
“I asked them to hypothesise and extrapolate based on the Ystrad baby scenario. Assuming that the baby survived the crash, and all the evidence seems to be pointing that way, he would have needed help to survive this long. We know that one of the family’s retainers escaped in the craft with the baby. We can only speculate that something has happened to either the boy himself or to his guardian.”
“You refer to him as a boy but it’s been 25 years since the Belsi attacked Ystradis. The boy will be a grown man by now.”
“That’s not necessarily so”, the chief scientist said. “We don’t know everything about the Ystrad physiology; they’re quite a secretive race. But we know they are very long lived, much longer than most other races and develop to maturity or adulthood over a correspondingly longer timespan. Coupled with that, the consensus of opinion among the telepathic community is that the outburst had childish overtones of fear and loneliness as well as the massive feeling of sadness and loss. I don’t think we’re talking about an adult Ystrad here. I think we’re talking about a child who has just lost the guardian who’s been looking after him for the last 25 years.”
“Then we have to find this child,” the chancellor stated, “if he is still a child, and restore him to his people before anything else happens to him that might trigger another outburst. How confident are we about the child’s location?”
“Reasonably confident. Telepaths are not scientific instruments and everybody was caught unawares by this blast. Nevertheless we’ve triangulated best estimates from as many telepaths as we can and we’ve narrowed down the possibilities to only three star systems. Two of the three contain no habitable planets and the escape craft they used could not have sustained life in a hostile environment for as much as one year let alone twenty five. The third stellar system has one planet in the Goldilocks zone, the habitable zone around the star. That has to be the favourite. They could have exited the escape craft and mingled with the local population. I understand the differences in physical appearance are not that great.”
“And you surveyed this planet at the time of the search, admiral?”
“We did, and found no trace of a crash site. However, the land mass of the planet is mainly concentrated in the southern hemisphere. Most of the northern hemisphere is ocean. If the escape craft came down in the ocean, there would be no trace of a crash site to find.”
“So your excuse is that they splashed down in the ocean and somehow managed to swim to shore. Is that it?”
“It is not an excuse, chancellor, but it is a viable theory. We know that the type of craft they were using had some aquatic capability. They would not have had to… swim very far.”
“I see. And the native population. What stage are they at?”
“Unfortunately this is one of the original Terran colonies that was lost after the collapse of the First Expansion. With the loss of contact, the civilisation regressed. When it was rediscovered about 150 years ago, it was a feudal state. Castles, warlords, definitely pre-industrial. Probably no more than 0.5 on the Kardashev scale.”
“So we can’t go in and mount a full scale search without contravening at least three Galactic Non-Intervention laws.”
“Not a chance. The Department of Exo-Affairs has slapped an interdiction on the planet. Absolutely no contact. However, the situation is even more complicated than that.”
The other three all looked at Khan. “How so?”
“We believe that we have located, at least on a planetary level, the missing heir to the throne of Ystrad. Technically their uncrowned king since the demise of his parents. If we have done that, the Ystrad, being a telepathic race, will also have done so and probably more easily and quickly than we did. They will undoubtedly mount a search and rescue mission regardless of any Galactic Non-Intervention laws.
“And it gets worse. The Ystrad are a scattered race following the capture of Ystradis by the Belsi, in the conflict from which the baby fled. However, the restoration of their king would provide a rallying point for their people and could lead to a renewal of the war with the Belsi and an attempt to retake their home planet.
“The Belsi, on the other hand, will do everything in their power to prevent this. Now the Belsi are inherently a non-telepathic race but they will h
ave access to telepaths and it will not take them long to find the location of this planet. Once they have it, they will be down there in numbers, trampling everything and everybody in their way to find this Ystrad prince and eliminate him.
“So we now have not only the possibility of technological interference with a pre-industrial society but the real risk of an inter-racial conflict being waged on the surface of this planet in the middle of a primitive and innocent people.”
“Oh shit”, muttered the chancellor. “Do we have to tell the Emperor?”
“That’s your call, of course,” Khan said. “But I don’t see how we can keep the lid on this, particularly if it does break out into open conflict.”
“So what’s to be done?”
“I suggest that the first thing is to get the Emperor to summon the Belsi and the Ystrad ambassadors and read them the riot act. Tell them the boy is under his personal protection; make him a ward of the Imperial court or something. If he puts on one of his really scary performances it might slow them down a bit, or at least make them think twice about putting troops on the ground.
“The second thing is to seal off the planet as far as we can. They will still try to put some people in there even if they don’t send in troops. Admiral Wei, can you put a blockade up around the planet?”
“Not that would be totally effective. You can commit as many ships as you want to a planetary blockade and a determined smuggler or blockade runner would find a way through. They always do. The best I can do is to put up a network of early warning satellites with a warship there to monitor the signals and intercept what he can.”
“Okay then. The third thing is…. We’ve got to find this youngster and before anybody else does. And that means we’ve got to put our own people on the ground.”
“And break a few galactic laws ourselves?”
“It won’t be the first time and I doubt it will be the last. Of course it would probably be best not to draw the Emperor’s attention to this part of the plan. Plausible deniability and all that.”
“How will we identify the child from the native population? For a start, what age would the boy be or, at least appear to be?”
“That’s very difficult to say with any degree of confidence. The exo-team who have been studying the race say that the rate of development of a young Ystrad is heavily dependent on environmental factors; suitable food supply, secure family environment, education and training, peer group pressure etc. With the possible exception of the food supply, most of those other factors have either not been present or not been ideal. Best estimate is that he will appear to be in his low teens, possibly as much as 15/16 but no more and he could be very much younger.”
“Great. That narrows it down to most of the male children on the planet. So how will we identify this particular one?”
“Well, the boy is probably going to be a loner. He may be able to physically pass as one of the natives but he will not belong to any family group. However, I would suggest the most profitable course would be to look for telepathic leakage. The native population is very definitely non-telepathic. The evidence of this blast shows that the boy is not in full control of his own ability and is unlikely to be able to fully shield himself. If we use people who are capable of tracking telepathic ability, he may give himself away.”
It was the Chancellor who voiced the suspicion that had been growing as Khan relayed all this information.
“Uh, Khan. How exactly do we know all these details about the local population?”
“Well… I do have some low-level assets on the planet. Locals who file regular reports but without any understanding of why, or who they’re reporting to. Useful as contacts for the people we will have to send in but no more than that.”
“So, do you have any agents suitable for this assignment?”
“Yes, of course. We have to treat this as a priority task and I have three or four agents who could handle it. All of them have some telepathic ability, either natural or trained and all of them are capable of dealing with a mission of this… sensitivity. I will just have to pull them off their current deployments.”
“Won’t a team of agents increase the risk of drawing attention to themselves?”
“They won’t be a team as such. I will have to send them in as individuals, working on their own. Scatter them across the continent to provide maximum coverage. I will alert the local contacts to help but it’s a huge area to search. What worries me is the risk of technological contamination. All of my people are trained in the latest weapons, devices, technological gizmos, anything that will give them an edge. And none of which they will be able to use on this planet. They’re going to have to go in bare-arsed.”
“Do we have a choice?”
“No regrettably, I don’t believe we do.”
Khan looked around the room at the others.
“Gentlemen, we have to find this boy, this heir to the Ystrad throne. Chancellor, I’m relying on you to scare the living daylights out of those ambassadors and keep their people off that planet. Admiral, I want that blockade up and running as soon as possible, to the best level that you can achieve. And I will go and roust out some agents for reassignment.”
Chapter 1
The man sat quietly astride his horse, watching the activity in the clearing below. Four covered wagons and five open carts had arrived a few moments earlier and were preparing to set up camp for the night. They were escorted by a large group of horsemen who spread out around the clearing. He counted thirty eight mounted fighters, some with swords and bows and others carrying spears and shields. Another nine warriors were driving the carts, their personal mounts saddled and tethered to the rear of each wagon. Their armour was minimal, mostly sleeveless leather jerkins, the archers identifiable by the leather bracer on their arm.
The exception was clearly the leader of the group. Mounted on the pick of the horses, a chestnut mare with four white feet and a white blaze on his nose, he wore a chain mail shirt and a crested helmet that had seen better days. While all the others dismounted to set up the camp, he rode the perimeter of the clearing posting sentries in the treeline both ahead and behind along the trail they had used.
Quickly but without any fuss, the drivers arranged the wagons into a semicircle in the centre of the clearing allowing fifty paces of open space between the campsite and the nearest trees. The leader of the group was a cautious man who obviously did not intend to be surprised during the night. “But then,” the watcher thought, “you don't survive long at this game without learning some caution”.
At the central point of the circle, two of the men were building a fireplace, cutting the turf into squares and stacking them, ready to replace in the morning. Others watered the horses at the stream which flowed swiftly down the ridge to his left to border one edge of the clearing. The horses were then hobbled before being turned loose to feed on the grass.
One of the wagons had disgorged a quantity of slaves, the clanking of their ankle chains audible above the bustle of the camp. Eight male and five female slaves were labouring now to erect the tents around the other side of the circle. One of the women stumbled and fell under the load she was carrying but no-one moved to help her. One of the warriors cursed her and gave her a kick in the ribs before dragging her upright by her hair. He was a giant of a man standing head and shoulders above most of the other men and lifted the slave easily off her feet, dangling her by her hair until a shouted curse from the leader made him release his hold. If the watcher on the ridge felt any emotion at the slave's cries of pain, it did not show on his face but he made a mental note of the giant swordsman in the book of accounts.
There were other women in the camp too. Two of the cleaner and better dressed had ridden up front with the driver of one of the wagons but most of the rest had been sprawled across the contents of the open carts. One of the tents being erected was much larger than the others and the leader's two women disappeared inside as soon as it was up.
The other women busied themselves helping to unload the carts and prepare the evening meal.
There was another woman as well who caught the watcher's eye. She had travelled in one of the covered wagons but she was not manacled like the slaves and she was clearly not one of the camp followers. She was better dressed and from a distance appeared more beautiful than the leader's two women but she did not go into the leader's tent. Instead she stayed by the wagons and seemed to ignore the activity going on around her. She had what could best be described as presence but with no obvious role or authority. He could not fit her into any of the easy categories but noted that all of the camp followers and most of the men walked cautiously around her.
His attention was diverted then by the arrival of the outriders; the two point riders coming back down the trail that forded the stream, two more coming in from the far side of the camp and another two following the side trail over the ridge about eighty paces to the east of where the observer sat. Despite himself, he was impressed. He had known they were out there of course, but it was another indication that this was more than just an ordinary band of brigands and slavers. Some of them, definitely the leader and almost certainly some of the others, had received military training at some point.
His horse stirred as a small animal disturbed by the riders on the trail, rustled through the undergrowth behind them. He leaned forward slightly to rub the horse's neck and whisper in its ear. The rustling faded away and horse and rider resumed their watch.
When he had found the group earlier in the day there had been more of them, nearer sixty on his original count. Somewhere along the trail as he manoeuvred to keep out of sight of the outriders, a group of them had split off. So now they waited, horse and man looking as though carved from a single block of wood as they stood motionless, concealed from view by the beech trees that crested the ridge.
The late afternoon sun was rapidly heading towards the treetops and an autumn mist was starting to form over the stream. The first frosts were still a few weeks away he judged, but already the evenings were turning chilly. The camp fire below was starting to catch now and the slaves were being herded away towards the trees to collect armfuls of dry wood.