by Drew Wagar
Rebecca and Jim slowly sat down, Rebecca having to sit sideways rather awkwardly, and then swinging her legs around.
The food was exquisite. Jim was extremely hungry and began to eat. Rebecca sat in stony silence, refusing to move. She stared at Zerz with cold hatred.
“So,” Jim ventured after some time, “would you care to explain yourself?”
Zerz still seemed inordinately relaxed. “Jim. This affair is more important than you, me or… ” He waved his hand dismissively in Rebecca’s direction. She glowered in return.
“… Greater things are at stake. I cannot stress the import of this enough.”
Jim shook his head. “Zerz, for God’s sake, stop with the big picture stuff. Tell us what is going on.”
Zerz made a show of wiping his mouth, setting aside his cutlery and moving aside his dishes. Only then did he return Jim’s look.
“Yes, I am the assassin… ”
Jim heard Rebecca’s knuckles crack. He could see the whites of her finger bones showing through the skin on her hands.
“… But I am not an idle mercenary out for profit. My contracts are vetted for suitability against a grand design. Everything I do is necessary. My overriding objective has never wavered. I am Zerz Furvel; the survival of Galcop is my sole motivation. I will stop at nothing to preserve it, defend it and maintain it.”
“You hypocrite!” Rebecca yelled. “You murder civilians, you killed Galcop staff!”
“I do not expect such as you to understand,” Zerz continued. “Such things are necessary for the greater good.”
“The excuse of dictators and oppressors throughout recorded history!” Jim snapped back.
Zerz shook his head. “Jim, let me be absolutely direct. Galcop is dying. System by system the economy is turning sour. The Federation and Imperials snap at our heels, the Thargoids grow ever more brazen in their attacks. All my simulations, whether economic or military show that we are doomed, sooner or later. It’s only a matter of time.”
“That’s rubbish!” Rebecca interjected.
“Sure, Galcop has its issues, but a collapse is hyperbole, it’s nonsense! Doomed! Come on!” Jim said, agreeing with her.
“Didn’t the President mention this?” Zerz returned.
Jim cast his mind back, remembering. “He said that there were things afoot beyond all this, and that Galcop’s future might not be secure for some reason… ”
“Allow me to let you into the reason for his concern. It’s a secret; classified information of the highest degree. The wormholes, the overdrive channels between the charts used by the galactic witchspace jumpers, are growing unstable. They are collapsing. We’ve been trying for years to prevent the decay. Nothing we have tried has worked. In thirty years, give or take, they will be gone. Tell me then what will happen.”
Jim shook his head. “Without galactic witchspace, Galcop is just Chart One, two hundred systems… ”
“Not a big enough economy to be self sustaining, particularly in light of the increasing vociferousness of our opposing factions. I’ve even given it a name – the ‘Selezen Crisis’, named after the man who discovered the effect. The fact remains, Galcop will collapse inwards and cease to exist.”
“It will be good riddance as far as I care!” Rebecca intervened.
“And you think you and people like you will survive as independent traders without the protection of Galcop? Every system an anarchy?” Zerz snapped back at her. “Or take your chances with the Federation or the Imperials? It would be disastrous, the end of civilisation!”
“What’s this got to do with Raxxla?” Jim interrupted.
“Raxxla, by my own conclusion, is our only hope,” Zerz said, a gleam coming into his eye. “Raxxla is linked with every piece of new technology that emerges. Raxxla holds the key to new technologies, future technologies! Yet we are drip-fed this technology by whim, by this shadow organisation that claims it has our best interests at heart.”
“The Dark Wheel.”
“The Dark Wheel,” Zerz’ voice was full of cynicism and venom, “this holier-than-thou troupe of old star hands who think they know best. Doling out technology in equal measures to us, the Imperials and the Federation, allowing none to gain an upper hand. Always preserving the status quo. Well, it’s time we had more than our ‘fair’ share. We need this to survive.”
Rebecca narrowed her eyes. “This is all because you failed with the Q-Bomb, isn’t it?”
Zerz seemed surprised. “Very astute. Had the Q-Bomb been successful, Achenar would have been destroyed. Galcop could have taken over their jurisdiction… ”
“You’re nothing but a mass murderer!” Rebecca shot back. “You would kill the people of an entire planet to get what you want! My family weren’t even involved, but you had to kill them to continue your master plan… ”
“Spare me your insignificant personal crisis! Had Jim not taken matters into his own hands you and your family would never have been involved! Blame him for your parents’ death, not me!” Zerz was uncharacteristically angry for a moment, before he regained control.
“You killed them,” Rebecca said coldly. “Not Jim.”
“If I hadn’t intervened, we would be at war with the Imperials by now,” Jim shot back at Zerz. “And we’d probably be losing!”
“Only because of your failure – your Q-Bomb was flawed!” Zerz returned.
“I never intended to build a bomb! You built the things, not me!”
“Regardless,” Zerz waved his hands dismissively. “I will use any and all means at my disposal to keep Galcop ahead of the Imperials, the Federation and the Thargoids. Galcop itself is too weak to openly search out and use the more aggressive methods necessary, only by grasping all possibilities can we survive. The Chief of Staff knew this, now only I remain to carry out the task.”
“So now you’re going after Raxxla.”
“ Raxxla is our last chance,” Zerz said. “I have painstakingly pieced together every last morsel of information on it. The Dark Wheel has been solely privy to this information for too long. It’s time for others to use it now.”
“You’re convinced that you know what Raxxla actually is?” Jim murmured.
“Yes, I am. And once I tell you, both of you will be willing to help me find it.”
Rebecca’s fists clenched on the table, but she didn’t say anything. Zerz paused.
Jim looked across at Rebecca and then back at Zerz. “Well?”
“Plainly put, the stories and legends of Raxxla are true,” Zerz began. “It is indeed a planet on which there is a portal, a time machine if you prefer.”
“Time travel?” Jim said, weakly, his incredulity strained to breaking point. “You’re mad.”
“So what can you do with this … . this portal?” Rebecca asked, curious despite herself.
“It’s able to move people, ships, resources, pretty much anything you wish to any date in history, or any time in the future. Imagine being able to make a military decision, proceed into the future and see the consequences, come back and alter events until they were suitable. Or taking technologies from the future to use in the past, as I believe has already been done with all these recent innovations.” Zerz looked over to Rebecca. “Or perhaps travelling back in time to avert a personal disaster. It’s all possible with Raxxla.”
Jim looked across at Rebecca, she had gone deathly pale. He saw her bite her bottom lip and frown. He remembered the habit; it meant she was thinking hard. Zerz evidently caught the expression on her face and read it accurately.
She can’t possibly be taking this seriously! Don’t fall for it, Rebecca!
Zerz was looking directly at her. “Help me to find it, and you can use Raxxla for your own purposes.”
Leave her alone, you manipulating bastard!
“Rebecca, don’t listen to him!” Jim snapped. “He’s playing you along, there is no such thing as time travel.”
“On the contrary,” Zerz replied. “As I explained before, technol
ogy arrives sporadically, at intervals. It is always preceded by a resurgence in Raxxla stories, and always the Dark Wheel comes out of hiding. I have thoroughly researched these events, there is a pattern and a trail.”
“That’s your evidence? Dammit Zerz, you’re a scientist – at least, you were! Time travel, portals, planets, the end of Galcop! You tell me what I should be thinking! Occam’s Razor!” Jim snapped.
“Occam’s what?” Rebecca interrupted bewildered, still trying to follow the conversation. Jim noticed she was now focussed intently, her open hostility had dropped away in favour of curiosity. He recognised the classic opportunistic attitude of a trader; weighing odds, risks and uncertainties.
“What Jim means,” Zerz said slowly, “is that, all things being considered equally, the simplest explanation is likely to be the correct one. That Raxxla is nothing more than a set of coincidences and imaginative flights of fancy. What would I need to prove my story?”
“Prove?” Jim blustered. “You’d need to show me some technology from the future, or you’d need to show me this fabled Raxxla of yours! Go on! Show me the planet, if it is a planet!”
Zerz leaned back in his chair. “Oh, Raxxla is a planet, all right. A unique and special one, but I can’t show it to you, not yet.”
“Surprise, surprise.”
Zerz got to his feet and paced around the far side of the table.
“Have you ever seen a personal shield before, Jim? You saw it first hand.”
“Granted, that’s impressive, but it’s hardly utterly unprecedented. I can see any number of technologies that could be miniaturised to perform that feat with a bit of R&D. We miniaturised lasers with little problem.”
“Perhaps this will convince you.”
Zerz slid a commtab over to Jim. “Pull up the equipment section for the Falchion.”
“Falchion ?” Rebecca queried.
“The name of this ship,” Jim replied sourly, typing a command into the commtab. He read the readout.
“This is junk,” he said in surprise.
“I assure you it’s true,” Zerz replied. “It’s one the of the reasons I’ve been so successful as an assassin in recent months.”
Rebecca’s face was a question mark, so Jim slid the commtab to her. She read it in astonishment, two particular entries jumped out at her immediately. They were jarringly obvious to anyone familiar with space travel.
Front Mount: Small Plasma Accelerator.
Military Drive: Range 21 Light Years.
“A plasma beam weapon?” Rebecca asked, sliding the commtab back to Jim and thinking back to the image that Iacobus had showed her a few days before. “That would explain… ”
“Capable of rendering current shield technology effectively useless,” Zerz said grandly. “Makes a military laser look like a penlight.”
“It’s not possible, nobody can make it work!” Jim was shaking his head. “We, the Imperials and the Federation all tried and failed! Tens of people were killed in industrial accidents. It’s been given up as a dead loss! Accelerated plasma weapons are a fiction. Only the old style direct plasma cannons are viable.”
“Feel free to blast a hole in this cavern if you think it’s necessary,” Zerz continued, “though I’d rather you didn’t.”
Something in his voice challenged Jim.
He’s not lying! At least, not about that…
“And the drive?” Jim asked. “You’re really saying the seven light year limit can be broken… ?”
“Yes.”
“So that’s how you eluded me time and again!” Rebecca cried. “I was right on your tail and yet you were able to jump a system ahead! I couldn’t understand how you did it!”
“Clever girl,” Zerz said disparagingly. “It’s technology from the future, I stole both concepts from a damaged Dark Wheel ship I caught. A Dark Wheel ship that must have been to Raxxla at some point. They just haven’t seen fit to divulge this equipment to the rest of us yet. That’s how the Dark Wheel can slip aside and disappear whenever they wish too.”
Jim chucked the commtab aside. “Even if I buy the concept of technology from the future, which I’m not sure I do, where is Raxxla? Do you know?”
“No.”
“So you’ve no proof at all, in actual fact. Just a bogus technology claim that I can probably fly a Python through. It’s probably just smoke and mirrors… ”
“Consider this. If Raxxla had a specific location how could it possibly have gone uncharted for so long? You can’t hide an entire planet from view. Even if you had a cloaking device big enough and enough power to run it, it would show up on a simple gravitational trace.”
“So you’re agreeing that it doesn’t really exist?”
“No. Consider the myths. Raxxla is a ghost planet, a portal, an elusive destination. It’s been reported in different places all over the charts. If we assume Raxxla does exist, how can we satisfy these myths?”
“The people who reported them were nutters, or tabloid journalists?” Rebecca interrupted disparagingly. “Like Anna Mereso… ”
“Or…” Zerz looked at Jim quizzically.
“Raxxla moves,” Jim said softly.
“Precisely.”
“But that is ridiculous,” Jim spluttered. “You can’t move a planet, at least not across those distances! The amount of energy required to move a planet that far would vaporise it! You might be able to adjust an orbit, but that’s a far cry from… ”
“You’re assuming that Raxxla is in an orbit.”
“But…” Jim stopped. “A rogue planet?”
“What?” Rebecca snapped, her attention riveted on the conversation. “What’s a rogue planet?”
“A planet not gravitationally bound to a star,” Zerz replied, “tracing a path through the galaxy, undetected, unnoticed, never in the same place twice.”
“The only way to detect it would be via gravitational anomalies in other system orbits,” Jim continued. “But it would be frozen solid; no light, no heat for most of the time!”
“Perhaps. What is key is this: Raxxla legends come back at intervals, every few decades or thereabouts. If we trace unexplained gravitational anomalies back through history…”
“We’ll get a track…” Jim muttered, his mouth falling open.
“The secret to unlocking Raxxla,” Zerz said with a smile. “That track may intersect with the times and locations of sudden tranches of technology improvement. The clues to where it will appear next. I don’t think even the Dark Wheel ever knows the location with any certainty. They only guard the clues. They only interfere when people go looking with the right background information, which is hardly ever.”
“This still doesn’t work,” Jim said, shaking his head. “Even if Raxxla is a rogue planet, there is no way it could be moving fast enough to travel galactic distances in just a few decades, and if it was travelling at relativistic speeds you’d never be able to rendezvous with it anyway.”
“Consider what else we know. Raxxla legends suggest a portal in space and time.”
“It’s just fairy tales!” Jim was on the defensive, he was beginning to fear there really was truth behind what Zerz was talking about.
“Assume the reports are true for the moment,” Zerz continued doggedly. “Theoretically, how could you achieve time travel?”
Jim shook his head and shrugged his shoulders. “Well, theoretically there are a quite a few ways! A singularity, quantum string oscillations, black holes, perhaps a mis-configured witchspace jump, but theoretically! No one would consider them plausible… ”
“A witchspace jump? And the planet appears to be able to move quickly…”
“A lot of conjecture! What you’re suggesting is a planet with a witchspace drive!”
Zerz smiled. “A planetary witchspace drive is probably overstating it, but certainly a planet that is influenced by witchspace, or influences witchspace. The clues are there Jim. Two intersecting tracks, and a witchspace profile, a frozen planet. It’s just goi
ng to need your kind of genius to figure out where Raxxla is right now. Then we can go there.”
“Assuming I’ll do it for you.”
“Oh, you’ll do it all right.”
What?
Jim and Zerz both turned to look at Rebecca. Her voice was ice cold. There was no sound save for the quiet unobtrusive background music.
“Rebecca, no… ” Jim stared into her face. Her expression was threatening. She had obviously made her own calculations.
Rebecca looked at Zerz intently. “Is all this really true? Raxxla gives you the ability to go back in time and change things?”
Zerz nodded. “I believe it is so.”
Surely she can’t believe this…
“Rebecca!” Jim intervened. “Raxxla, even if it does exist, is more important than our own needs and wants! We can’t let him of all people get hold of it!”
Her voice shook. “I don’t give a damn about all that! I’ve heard enough! If there is even the smallest chance I can save my family, I’ll take it! Because of this murderer,” she sneered at Zerz, “every day I have relived the death of my family! Every day! I see their ship burning away, hear their screams over narrowband! I want this! I want Raxxla just as much as him!”
“Rebecca and her family were accidental inclusions in the Q-Bomb affair, Jim,” Zerz said smoothly. “A warning, a delay, something small would be enough to save them. I was forced to kill them only because they were witnesses. It means little to me if they are not involved. I would be quite content to not have her chasing me around the galaxy looking for vengeance. It has been rather tedious… ”
“I don’t believe you. I don’t believe this!” Jim protested. “Rebecca, this is complete hogwash! Don’t listen to him! He’s just telling you what you want to hear… ”
Zerz opened a drawer in the table, pulling out what appeared to be a thin manilla folder. Jim knew it was a coded file, DNA-linked to its owner. It had to be the Raxxla file. Rebecca was looking at it intently.
“Here it is,” Zerz said in hushed tones. He pressed his thumb again the top corner. “De-restrict access.”
The folder glowed for a moment, and then Zerz slid it across the table towards Jim.