Birthright: The Complete Trilogy

by Rick Partlow

  "A what?" Pete blinked at him.

  I didn't understand what he meant either, and I was about to run a search for the phrase through my headcomp when Kara surprised me.

  "He's talking about the King Arthur myth," she explained. "The story was that there was a sword stuck in a stone and whoever could draw it out was the rightful king of England." She squinted at Cutter doubtfully. "But what makes him different?"

  "This is an educated guess," Cutter answered, "but I think it's because he's a good man."

  "Say what?" Deke snorted a laugh. I didn't laugh, but I eyed Cutter doubtfully.

  "What motivates us?" Cutter elaborated. "Captain Conner, you are an outlaw, a man who has little regard for society in general. You're not an evil man, but you are self-involved. Kara, you do your job not because of belief in something larger than yourself but because you are comfortable in it, because it allows you to avoid personal relationships." I saw Kara scowl at him, but he ignored it. "And I..." He chuckled, eyes hooded. "I have my own issues, as you well know. Neither Mrs. Mitchell nor the younger Mr. Mitchell have a neurolink, and as for our friend Trint...well, I don't know him that well, honestly." He looked to me.

  "You, however, Captain Mitchell, are now and have always been motivated by service to others. You left your planet to defend it from an external threat, despite opposition from your friends and family. You went against orders and risked everything to try to save those same people late in the war. And then you returned to be a public servant to protect them yet again."

  "Hold on," I finally interrupted him, uncomfortable with where the conversation was heading. "That's not..."

  "And why are you here right now, Captain Mitchell?" Cutter went on, ignoring my protest. "Not for personal gain, not for revenge, but to protect your family. Of all of us---who are suitably equipped for communication---your motives are the most pure." He raised his hands demonstratively. "And that's why you're the one they picked."

  I don't think any of us knew how to respond to that; we just stared at each other. Rather, it seemed like everyone was staring at me, which was considerably worse.

  "How long is it going to take us to get there?" Pete finally asked, breaking the silence.

  I was about to say that I had no idea, but found I did, somehow. "We're almost there. We're about to enter atmosphere."

  The main display shifted to a view from the nose of the ship, filled now with the curve of the planet. The oceans were a rich blue while the continents were covered with a lush green that promised abundant life.

  "Jesus," Deke muttered. "We had to have been accelerating at hundreds of gravities to get here this fast."

  "And none of us felt anything over standard gravity," Kara agreed. "And that gravity is against our axis of acceleration, at that."

  "If their technology wasn't like magic to us," Cutter pointed out, "people wouldn't be killing each other to try to get their hands on it."

  "Hey guys," Pete said, staring at the holographic display. "What are those?"

  I looked over and saw that the ship was on the light side of the planet, only a hundred meters or so above the ground, flying over the flood plain of a broad river lined with lush grass and stands of low brush. Drinking from the river was a herd of animals that had to be the size of a groundcar, if I was judging the distances correctly. They were walking on their hind legs, but bent over like they could go down on the front legs at need, and a bony protrusion stretched from the backs of their heads like an echo chamber. Long tails balanced them and I could see a hint of rainbow refraction coming from a downy coat of feathers on their hides. As we flew over, one of them tilted its head back and appeared to be hooting a warning to the others in the herd.

  I felt a chill go down my back as I realized what I was looking at.

  "Those," I answered my brother, hearing the numbness of shock in my own voice, "are dinosaurs."

  Chapter Twenty Two

  Cutter:

  Robert Chang felt his heartbeat speed up as he took a step out of the Predecessor ship and onto the polished stone surface of the landing pad. The "door" had opened for Caleb Mitchell and stayed open to allow the rest of them to exit the craft as it floated a meter above the ground. Even though the drop was a full meter, he noted, it didn't feel like more than a short step down due to the wonders of the ship's complete control of gravity.

  But the soft landing wasn't what had his heart beating faster. Nor was it the dinosaurs they'd overflown on the way through the valley, nor the pterosaurs he could see flying overhead even now, though the others couldn't stop talking about that. No, it was the structure that excited him. It was spherical and nearly a hundred meters tall and it hovered a few centimeters over the granite pad that stretched beneath it and out to another hundred yards in every direction.

  There were small animals out there, perhaps mammals, perhaps lizards of some kind, but nothing approached that granite pad or the floating globe. It was a dull, liquid silver and he thought for sure that he could see some sort of characters or pictograms swimming inside its surface somehow, but not clear enough for his eye to capture.

  This was the Holy Grail, the end of the quest.

  "How do we get into that?" Deke wondered, finally tearing his attention away from the animal life long enough to look at the sphere.

  He took a few steps toward it, hand shading his eyes from the sun that was descending into the late afternoon sky just behind the giant globe. "You think you can open it, Cal?"

  Caleb Mitchell shrugged, considering the structure thoughtfully, then looking at the bare palm of his right hand. "Probably. They wouldn't have brought me here if they weren't going to let me inside."

  "Perhaps we are asking the wrong question," Trint said, lumbering over to Mitchell and placing a restraining hand on his shoulder. The cyborg reminded Chang of one of the Tahni mecha he'd seen during the war. He was a walking, talking tank. "Not how you might enter this place, but whether you should enter it at all."

  "You think it's a trap of some kind?" Rachel asked him, her face taking on the same look it always did when she thought her husband was in danger. Chang was starting to think of it as her "worried cow" look.

  "Why would they bring us here to hurt us?" Cal objected, frowning. Apparently whatever alien apparition to whom he'd spoken had impressed him. "They could have trapped us all in the ship if they just wanted to kill us."

  "Undoubtedly," Trint granted. "I do not believe they mean you harm."

  "Then he has to go in," Kara objected, confused. "The AI said he has to decide whether or not to open up the Northwest Passage."

  "Why should he?" Trint asked pointedly. "Why does he have to make this decision? Because a 20,000 year old alien computer told him he had to?" The Tahni tossed his head sharply in a curiously inhuman gesture that Chang knew indicated negation. "I do not feel any obligation to follow this machine's direction and neither should he."

  "So you think we should just fly away and forget about it?" Kara asked. "You could do that?" That last was addressed to Cal.

  Chang felt the need to jump into the conversation before that line of thinking advanced any further.

  "You ignore a rather obvious point," Chang said. All eyes turned to him and he went on. "What makes you think that computer will let us leave before Captain Mitchell makes the decision?" He turned a hand up. "It brought us here for just that reason, I doubt it will give us a ride back until and unless we enter that structure and do what we were brought here to do."

  There was a silence for a moment as they considered that statement, a silence broken by the rustle of a warm wind through the trees around them and the far-off squawks of the pterosaurs. There was an inland sea not that far away and the flyers were fishing it. Chang ignored their calls, ignored the sweat beading on his forehead from the oppressive humidity, and watched Captain Mitchell.

  Caleb Mitchell had a look on his face that made Chang uncomfortable...a look he'd seen back when the man had been acting as a police officer. C
hang could see wheels turning behind his eyes, and knew there was a keen mind inside that deceptively plain farmer's face.

  "Yeah, we were brought here for a reason," Cal agreed. His mouth set in a hard line. "Everything that's happened has led to us coming here. Like that was the idea from the beginning."

  "I've been thinking the same thing." Kara admitted. She shot Chang a look, then shrugged and turned back to Cal. "I haven't said anything before now because I don't have any evidence for this, but I've had to consider the idea that General Murdock engineered all this."

  "Murdock?" Deke repeated, mouth falling open. "You're saying he tried to kill us? Attacked the Fleet base and killed all those people? Why the hell would he do that?"

  "He had to stop Gregorian from getting his hands on Predecessor technology," Kara suggested, "and he didn't trust the government or what they would do if they got it instead."

  There was an eruption of crosstalk from everyone, but Caleb Mitchell silenced it with a declaration that cut through the chatter.

  "That sounds plausible," Cal said, and Deke stared at him in disbelief for a moment until he continued: "Except for one thing." He waved a hand around them. "If it's Murdock, then where the hell is he?" He caught Kara's eye with a hard glare. "I know your boss well enough to know he's capable of being very ruthless and manipulative when he feels he has to be, but do you really think he would leave all of us out here on our own with the stakes this high?"

  "He would have been on one of Gregorian's ships," Kara said with a thoughtful nod. "But maybe he miscalculated and was on one of the ships that was destroyed by those drones or whatever they were that attacked us."

  "Why would they set up those drones anyway?" Pete wondered. "I mean, if they wanted us to find this place..."

  "Not before we were ready," Trint corrected him. "The ones who left this here wanted to make sure we had the technology to defend ourselves from the dangers that exist outside our Cluster."

  Chang looked at the cyborg, eyes narrowing. Trint seemed to know quite a bit for someone who hadn't actually talked to the ship's AI. Of course, Caleb Mitchell might have shared some of what he'd learned with Trint via neurolink...he did seem to trust the cyborg intimately.

  "There's no way that Murdock would take that kind of risk," Cal declared, bringing the conversation back on the course he'd set. "No one who'd gone to those sort of lengths to set this up would be anywhere but right here, right now."

  And with that, he stared Robert Chang directly in the eyes and Cutter finally knew that the game had come to an end. He wiped a drop of sweat away from his eyes and sighed.

  "I suppose it was inevitable that it would come to this," he said casually. He was careful to keep his arms folded and his hands away from his handgun; there was no point in things getting ugly any sooner than necessary.

  It was amusing watching the realization come over each of their faces, almost comical. They hadn't trusted him, but they hadn't suspected that...except, perhaps, for Trint. Again, he was just too hard to read for Chang to be sure.

  Kara was the last to understand, and he felt a pang of guilt at the shocked look on her face. She was the closest thing he had to a friend.

  "Robert," she said in almost a whisper, stepping over to stand only a few centimeters from him. He could see anger warring with pain and disappointment in her face. In the end, anger proved to be a better suit of armor and won out. "What the fuck was the point of all this?"

  "I'm surprised," he admitted quietly, "that you aren't asking me why I did it."

  'That's not hard to figure out," Deke commented, cynicism in his tone. "It's the fucking Northwest Passage. Even if you don't want to exploit it yourself, it's worth enough to buy your own fucking planet."

  "I don't give a shit why you did it, Robert," Kara snapped. "What I want to know is, why did you drag us along? You have your own hired guns, they could have taken out Gregorian for you."

  "Perhaps," he said with a shrug. "Perhaps not. It was a near thing even with soldiers of your prowess. Be that as it may, I needed him," he pointed a finger at Caleb Mitchell, "and I only knew one way to get him here. And now, Captain Mitchell, if you would be so kind as to open the way into that building..."

  Caleb looked at him as if he were insane...which, he had to admit, probably wasn't far wrong, from their viewpoint.

  "Why don't I just snap your neck instead?" the heavy-worlder asked with what could have been the beginnings of a snarl. He hadn't made a move yet, but Chang knew it wouldn't take much.

  "Captain Mitchell, I know you believe I am crazy, but do you really think I'm stupid?" Chang sighed in exasperation, cocking his head at the man as if he were regarding a child. "I do admire you as a person, and I'd rather not have to motivate you through threats, but...I've been on the same ship as your wife and brother for some time now. It was no great feat for me to have them both injected with a remotely operated nanite poison while they slept."

  Now Cal did move, and between eyeblinks a pair of laser-honed plastalloy talons were against Chang's throat, vibrating against the skin there as Caleb Mitchell's arm shook with the effort of preventing himself from removing Robert Chang's head from his body. Chang didn't even blink. Death was no longer something he feared.

  "I did mention the poison was remotely operated," he repeated, ignoring the trickle of blood running down his neck from where the talons had nicked the flesh there. "I should also tell you that it's keyed to activate if my headcomp should indicate that this body has been killed."

  Chang could see Caleb's teeth gritting inside his mostly closed mouth, see the muscles twitching in his neck as he tried to keep himself from killing the man threatening his family. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Rachel and Pete watching, horror in their eyes as they realized the implications of Robert Chang's words; for once the annoying little brother wasn't whining or stating the obvious. Then a large, inhuman hand came down on Caleb's shoulder, pulling him gently away from Chang.

  "Let him go," Trint said softly, so quietly Chang could barely hear the words. The cyborg's glare bored into him, and the look on his big, ugly face was pure death, but he pushed Mitchell away, interposing himself between them. "There is nothing we can do right now, Caleb."

  "Robert, you can't do this," Kara was saying, shaking her head and flexing her right hand. Chang could tell she'd been pointing the implanted laser at him and had barely restrained herself from using it. "Please, don't do this..."

  "I don't intend to harm any of you," Chang assured her, attempting a smile. "If Captain Mitchell cooperates, you'll all be free to leave this place very shortly and I will permanently disable the nanite poison."

  "Don't intend to harm us?" Deke spluttered. "You tried to have us all killed!"

  "If I'd actually been trying," Chang told him, by this time unable to keep a patronizing tone from his voice, "you'd all be dead many times over. Captain Mitchell, let us avoid any more drama." He waved a hand invitingly towards the globular structure.

  Caleb Mitchell closed his eyes, visibly controlling his anger, then turned sharply and walked towards the floating sphere with Cutter at his heels and the others following further back, hesitant and unsure.

  "It wasn't a guess, you know," Chang was saying to him as they approached the structure. "I'd been down to that ship several times in the last couple of years. It was a test, that ship, for our race as a whole. I went in myself, of course, and sent in many of my people as well, but it would never communicate with them."

  "How did you know it would talk to anyone?" Caleb asked, surprising him. He hadn't expected the man to talk to him at all unless forced to. The heavy-worlder still stared straight ahead though, not looking at him. "How did you know it wasn't just a broken artifact of a dead race?"

  "The Rescharr told me," Cutter said. Now Mitchell did look back, frowning. "That's what they called themselves, if you remember President Jameson's little propaganda broadcast with his cloned Predecessors. Their descendants on that moon---or rather, the
debased descendants of the few who chose to stay here rather than abandon the Cluster---still call themselves the Rescharr, though their society bears little resemblance to the ones we call the Predecessors."

  "How long have you known about this system?"

  Chang had to fight back a chuckle. Even though he knew Mitchell wanted more than anything to kill him, and had to be insane with worry over his family being in danger, his instincts from so many years as a Constable were too strong for him not to ask. He debated not answering the question; it seemed imprudent to be too free with details when dealing with someone as intelligent and resourceful as Mitchell.

  But what could it hurt? he wondered. In a few more hours, days at the most, I won't even be in this Cluster.

  "Since just after the incident four years ago," he said truthfully. "Once I found myself reanimated again, I used my resources to find out what I could about the Predecessors. One of them led me to tales of a Transition Line from which no scout ever returned."

  "And I suppose it was just a coincidence that Gregorian found out about its location not long after..."

  "Oh, why don't we just stick with the things you don't know, rather than the things you already suspect."

  "Okay," Mitchell said, stopping in mid-stride and turning to face Cutter. "Here's something I don't know: where's General Murdock?"

  "I thought you might get around to asking about him," Chang admitted, nodding. He could sense, even if he didn't turn to see the others paused behind them, listening. "I needed him out of the way for this to work. I used one of his sources on Belial, a woman he trusted, to lure him out to El Dorado; then I used the Predecessor ship I had acquired through a fortuitous use of bribes to known Naga employees to destroy their ship before he had a chance to land." Cutter heard Kara grunt as if she'd been punched in the gut.

  He shrugged. "I regretted the necessity, but he was far too dangerous to chance allowing him to live."

  "Tell me something, Mr. Chang," Rachel Mitchell asked, surprising him with the calm, calculating tone of her voice as much as with her question. "Exactly how many times have you been killed and reincarnated?"