by Z H Brown
Kiryu extracted herself from the mob and came towards the ship, with Solemn following close behind.
“As soon as the fog started receding, we figured you must’ve been successful,” she said. She peered around Ansaria. “Where’s the lieutenant?”
Ansaria motioned to Alvara, who came forward bearing the Goreman’s weapon. “I’m sorry, lieutenant.”
Kiryu gently took the weapon from Alvara’s hands. Ansaria could see the pain in her face, but Kiryu swallowed hard before speaking.
“Was it a good death?” she asked.
“We couldn’t have completed the mission without his sacrifice,” said the sergeant solemnly.
Kiryu silently looked over Goreman’s weapon for a few moments before speaking again.
“What will you do now?”
“We still have our own mission to complete,” replied Ansaria. “And the first step in that is getting Solemn back home. After that, we’ll be able to get back on track.”
Unless we’re too late.
“Once we’re in space, we’ll send a distress call to the nearest Imperial outpost. They should have a relief fleet here within a couple days.”
Kiryu nodded, and then raised her hand in a salute.
“Thank you for your help here, sergeant,” she said. “And good luck to you on your mission.”
Ansaria returned the salute, as did her troops behind her.
“We’re glad we were able to help, ma’am,” she said. “Let’s load up, troops. Governor, that means you, too.”
The squad trouped back into the craft, and Ansaria turned to regard Kiryu one last time before the door closed. She was staring at the cannon in her hands with a pained look on her face, and Ansaria said a silent prayer for her and her fallen CO. When the door fully closed, the Starhopper rocketed upward into the atmosphere and away from the planet.
Ansaria had never imagined she would see an impatient mech, and yet Solemn’s temporary housing was giving off all the vibes of someone waiting to unwrap a present right in front of them. He kept walking up and down the cramped ship, glancing out the window before checking the ETA with Slog. After the twelfth time of this, Ansaria was sure Slog was going to deck him one, governor or no.
Ansaria decided to distract him from his constant waiting, at least for a few moments. “So what will happen when you add that component to your set up, Solemn?” she asked.
The anxious bot stopped pacing long enough to answer her question.
“With this device, I will finally be able to completely split my consciousness from my physical body. What exactly will happen, I’m afraid I don’t know, though I do not believe any one will be in any danger once it happens.”
“But you don’t know for sure?”
“I have run a thousand simulations of the event, sergeant,” he said, in a slightly haughty tone. “It is highly unlikely something will happen to threaten you or your squad. The only one in any real danger is myself; if something did go wrong, it would only most likely result in my death.”
“Well, that’s comforting…for me, at least.”
“Indeed,” said Solemn, before turning to look out the window again.
When the ship finally landed on Myrthal, Solemn could barely wait for the hatch to open before disembarking. He rushed back into his lab with Ansaria and her squad following a short distance behind him.
By the time they reached the lab, Solemn was already at work affixing the component to the equipment next to his emaciated corpse. When that was done, he moved over to the device that his bot had come from. He turned to them.
“Just in case things go…wrong, I just want to say thank you, to all of you. I doubt I could’ve survived on Brakka on my own, let alone recover my missing piece.”
“Just doing our duty, governor,” said Ansaria, though with less enthusiasm then she would usually have.
He nodded to her, and then stepped into the bot container. The room thrummed with energy once again, and the next time he spoke, Solemn’s voice reverberated throughout the room.
“Ah…so good to be whole again; I can only imagine how I’ll feel after this.” The blue glow intensified, and the equipment next to Solemn’s body activated. Figures and status updates flashed across the monitor. The equipment let out a small beep, and the room began to shake. Ansaria and the others struggled to keep their balance as the whole lab rumbled with telekinetic energy; Ansaria briefly wondered if the shaking would cause an avalanche outside.
The blue glow began to intensify again, this time to such levels that Ansaria was forced to shield her eyes. The whine of power building up began to fill her ears. She could feel the very air vibrating with power. She called out to Solemn, but she could barely hear her own voice and the disembodied consciousness did not respond. Just as Ansaria began to wonder how much longer this could go on for, she and her squad were suddenly overwhelmed with a single, all encompassing, outside thought:
VICTORY!
With that, the glow, the rumble and the steady whine of power building up reached a crescendo. Ansaria felt her senses being inundated when suddenly, everything went quiet.
Ansaria lowered her hand from her eyes. The lab was still, aside from some dust drifting down from the high ceiling. The ever-present blue glow was gone, leaving only the outside sunlight to illuminate the room.
They tentatively made their way over to Solemn’s body. Alvara checked the monitor. “The body is still alive, but there’s zero brain activity,” she said.
“He did it,” said Slog in a slightly awed voice. “The bastich actually did it.” Ansaria felt that their observation had only confirmed what the voice in their head had told them. Solemn was gone, free from his body.
“Where do you think he went?” asked Alvara.
“No clue,” said Ansaria. “But he better be careful out there. The universe is a dangerous place; probably even for a free-floating consciousness.”
They all turned to the window as a mechanical sound came from outside. A hangar on the west side of the building was slowly opening. When it finished, a large, sleek craft with wide wings was revealed, colored in the pervasive Myrthal colors of blue and gray.
“Looks like he kept his end of the bargain,” said Ansaria. “Let’s move it out, squad, we’ve got an Empire to save.”
Chapter XIV
Aboard the Throneship, Part III
The Golden Imperium covers a still-unknown number of worlds and is comprised of an unknown number of species. Each species, when it is discovered, is evaluated to determine what role it will serve in the Imperium before it is assigned to that task. Once a world’s task is assigned, that is the only job its race is permitted to perform. Its citizens have no say in how their government is run, nor are they allowed to explore or trade with outsiders. It will be a blessing indeed when the Empire liberates these worlds from their tyrannical rulers.
--Excerpt from The Newcomer’s Guide to the Empire
Everything was going according to plan. The Throneship was on course for its destination where forces outside its control would seize the opportunity to maneuver the vessel to its destruction. Once it reached the frontlines, the only threats to their plans would be eliminated.
True, things weren’t going quite to plan. The squad of insignificant soldiers had intercepted incriminating data that threatened the whole operation, and the Reno unit dispatched to handle the situation had so far been unable to eliminate them, but they were of little concern. That they had survived this long was indeed impressive, but even if they managed to rendezvous with the Throneship, they would be arrested as deserters, and probably executed as well.
Still, it was unlikely they would make it that far. Reno had been designed to be the perfect killing machine, and it’d already managed to eliminate a top Imperial agent. No doubt the squad’s continued survival was simply fortuitous luck on their part. But luck couldn’t keep them alive forever. Either the hunter would catch its prey, or the interlopers would be destroyed by the very
Empire they were trying to save.
No need to worry. Everything was going according to plan. The voice said so, and the voice couldn’t be wrong.
COMMAND: Eliminate targets.
COMMAND: Preserve the silence.
COMMAND: Ensure the arrival.
Chapter XV
Refueling Outpost 17-B
While both the Empire and the Imperium are undeniably powerful, it is important to always keep one fact in mind: this galaxy is vast. It is extremely likely that one day other civilizations may be encountered that will rival or even dwarf the domain of our great Emperor.
--Excerpt from The Newcomer’s Guide to the Empire
Ansaria awoke with a gasp. Her dreams (nightmares, really) had been a jumbled mess of images and feelings. The last thing she remembered was the face of the Jukai King leering out of a hole in reality. One by one, her friends had disappeared in a flash of blinding light. That horrible reptilian visage had turned toward her, and she had been engulfed in that light before she had woken up. She wasn’t sure if it had been her terror that had awoken her, or the steady beep of her TIG.
She took a steadying breath and answered the call. “Go ahead, Slog.”
“Sarge, we have a…situation. You should probably come to the cockpit.”
Ansaria groaned. “I’m on my way.”
Since leaving Myrthal, they had been traveling through Z-Space for more than a day. Slog and Tread had been taking turns at the helm throughout the journey and Slog was there now. As Ansaria opened the cockpit, she was briefly overwhelmed by the light suffusing the small room.
The craft was parked in real space near a massive gas giant. The planet was awash with red and orange gases, which reflected the light from the system’s star and bathed everything in sight in a fiery light. A ring of rocky asteroids orbited the planet; the remains of a moon that had suffered a cataclysm eons ago and had been reduced to debris. On a particularly large rock was located a small Imperial outpost within viewing distance of where they sat.
“All right soldier,” said Ansaria. “What is it?” Slog rotated his seat to face his CO.
“Well, once again I’ve got good news and bad news. The good news is that we’re making fantastic time, and should reach the staging center at about the same time as the Throneship. The bad news is we need to refuel the Z-engine, and the only outpost on our route is….not responding.”
Ansaria pinched the bridge of her nose.
Great, another problem.
“You know,” she said wistfully, “one of these days we’re going to go somewhere in the Empire that’s actually working like it’s supposed to. So, we’re not getting any word from the outpost?”
Slog shook his head. “’Fraid not, ma’am. I’ve been hailing them since we dropped out of Z-Space and haven’t gotten so much as a peep out of them. There’s also no hint of a distress call, live or automated. It’s like the whole place just shut down and everyone left without leaving a note.”
“Can we find another place to refuel?” asked Ansaria, already knowing the answer.
“At sub-light speeds, the nearest refueling post is three days away. We’d never make it there and reach the staging area in time to rendezvous with the Emperor.”
“Of course not. Can we refuel the ship on our own?”
“The station looks like it’s completely shut down, so we’ll have to get inside and switch what we need back on, but once it’s up and running, we’ll be good to go…assuming the lugs didn’t take all the fuel with them when they went…wherever.”
“All right Slog; take us in while I get the others up to speed. Let’s hope they did leave us some fuel.”
Slog turned back toward the controls. “You can say that again, Sarge.”
The craft glided into the docking area before coming to a stop with a dull thud. After the docking tube extended to the base’s door, Tread went in first to do a preliminary sweep and get the entryway open.
The android’s voice soon came over the comm. “The facility is powered down, but the gravity and life support are both still on. I won’t be able to get more information until we’re inside, but it looks like everything is intact.”
When the door was opened, Ansaria led the others across the tube and into the facility. All the lights were out, but the viewing windows were still open, allowing the Jovian-light to illuminate the interior. The sound of the squad’s footsteps echoed throughout the silent building, putting Ansaria further on edge. Despite the seeming peacefulness of the quiet facility, none of this was right. Something had happened here, and it probably hadn’t been good.
After walking down a long hallway, they reached a door leading to a room that branched off deeper into the facility. Ansaria called a halt.
“Tread, I want you to see if you can call up a schematic of this place; I don’t want us wondering around blindly. Find the main control room and then we’ll--”
Ansaria’s words were cut off by the sound of footsteps marching in the opposite direction from the way they came. It was hard to tell because of the echoes, but Ansaria was pretty sure they were headed in their direction.
“Defensive formation!” Ansaria hissed.
The squad scrambled to take up positions in the limited cover that was available. Ansaria wearily eyed the viewscreen to their right. These things were built to withstand impacts from micro-debris and asteroids, but she wasn’t sure how well they would hold up from a stray plasma shot.
The seconds ticked by as the squad waited for the owners of the footsteps to reach them. Finally, the door leading to the hall was pried open and two armored and armed figures stepped into the room. Ansaria tightened her grip on her rifle.
“Halt! Identify yourselves - in the name of the Empire!”
The two figures leveled their weapons at her, their heads moving slightly to scan the room but never taking their aim of Ansaria. When neither of them spoke, Ansaria addressed them again.
“Identify yourselves, or we will open fire!”
Instead of one of the two answering, a voice came from behind them.
“Hold your fire! We mean you no harm!”
A hand appeared on the shoulder of the soldier on the right. He turned ever so slightly to look back at the figure, before him and his partner stood to either side to allow the speaker to approach.
The owner of the voice strode forward followed by two more armored figures. The group was all dressed alike in heavy, smooth, black armor that completely covered them, their two luminescent blue eyes the only thing that stood out about their forms. Their weapons were long and sturdy, with a rectangular shape that ended in a double-barreled muzzle.
The speaker, wearing the same armor with the glowing blue eyes, was slightly different from his compatriots. While the others were large and bulky, he was slightly shorter and thinner, and his otherwise unassuming armor sported a long, dark blue cape that brushed the ground. Instead of the large rifles the others carried, he had a pair of pistols similar in design secured to his hips.
As he entered the room, the speaker held up his hands to show he was unarmed. “We have not come here to fight, soldier; I am sure we can resolve this peacefully.”
He gestured to his comrades, and they all pointed their weapons away from Ansaria, though they did not loosen their grip any.
Ansaria considered the situation for a moment or two before she also lowered her weapon. She gestured to her own people who did like-wise, though all of them kept their weapons on hand, just in case.
“All right, we can talk. Why don’t we start with you answering who you are and what you’re doing here? I don’t recognize any of your gear, which means you’re not Imperial, and since you’re not trying to disembowel me, you’re probably not with the Imperium. So who are you?”
The speaker slowly lowered his hands, though he took care to ensure he never moved like was going for his weapon.
“My name is Eberius; my crew and I are explorers from another system. We have been investig
ating the surrounding area and recently found ourselves in need of supplies. We happened upon this facility, and when we received no reply after contacting it, believed it to be abandoned. We came aboard not long ago to get what we needed before leaving.”
“We didn’t see another ship when we arrived, where did you park?”
“In the hangar on the side of the base we came from. We were initially unable to find a way to dock, and so were forced to venture outside our craft in order to successfully make our way inside.”
“Have you found any evidence of what happened here?”
“We found a couple bloodstains in the area leading to the hangar, but since they weren't fresh and we had no way of knowing how long they had been there, we continued with our salvage operation.”
Ansaria mulled over Eberius’ answers. They all seemed plausible, and they hadn’t encountered anything to suggest these…explorers had had a hand in shutting down the base. If they weren’t the enemy, then they could get back to their own immediate concerns.
“Tread, have you pulled up a map of this place yet?”
“Yes ma’am. The main computer is located deeper in the facility and a floor up. I’ll need to access it in order to determine what happened here, as well as to get the systems we need back online.”
“Good. M, you take the others and get to the computer. Eberius, you and your people can go back the way you came and leave.”
“If I may…um…you have not told me your name.”
“Sergeant Ansaria Dormus of the Xenlongian Imperial Military.”
“Ah; Sergeant Ansaria, if I may, we have not yet finished gathering what we need, and I believe having the system back up and running would benefit us both. Might I suggest that some of my men accompany yours to the computer, in case there are any hazards on the way? You and I could remain here for the time being and discuss our current situation.”