Imperator

by Nick Cole

  “In reviewing some of the survivor accounts from the Moirai’s raids against the colonies… our science team got wind of what they were doing. What they were after. The questions they were asking of the few who managed to survive their attacks and interrogations… they led us to certain conclusions. In time we figured out the Moirai was making runs into the Dead Zone… and coming out. Incredibly.”

  She paused.

  “Bring us about,” Casper ordered. His voice was hard and cruel.

  She looked up in surprise. But the look in his eyes demanded she finish the explanation of her betrayal.

  “We made contact,” she said. “I… made contact. Yes. I offered to work with them.”

  “Why?” Casper hissed.

  “Because they were close to knowing everything that can be known. Don’t you understand what that thing does, Cas?” She practically shouted in his face. “This thing we’re surrounded by. It makes the intuitive leaps. Because all the data is there, and all it needs to do miracles is crunch that data and fill in the science you’re missing to get an answer. Cancer. Space folds. Interdimensional travel. Eternal life. It’s all there, Cas. Test, develop, and design, and the Palace can lead you to reproduce a result you can measure, deconstruct, and extrapolate. If I was ever going to find the answer to whether intelligence precedes physicality, this side of death, it was here. And they were the ticket in.”

  She stared at him as hard as he was staring at her. She wasn’t sorry in the least.

  “So I did it,” she whispered. Her voice was almost gone.

  But then she composed herself. She looked away, and came back to him anew. And her look this time was pure poison. There was a defiance there. A challenge to indict her for what she’d done.

  “They wanted to know, too,” she hissed. “As badly as both you and I want to know right now.”

  Casper flinched. His head involuntarily went to the side, forcing his dominant eye to watch her warily. As though he were watching some dangerous animal he’d met out in the forest. And when he realized this he leveled his gaze and stared her in the face as he spoke to the crew.

  “XO, unlimber the SSMs.”

  There was a pause during which no one in the flight crew moved.

  “Do it. Now!” he growled, watching Reina the whole time.

  The flight and weapons crews sprang into action.

  “Make our range at max engage!” the XO ordered.

  “Thirty seconds,” the pilot responded.

  “Weps—crack the seals on one and two,” said the XO.

  The weapons officer to the rear of the flight deck responded that both the ship-to-ship missiles were ready for action. Then he added, “Targeting solution coming through now.”

  In the silence, Casper watched her face change. It changed from the hard witch who’d done a deal with the devil in the night… to the girl he’d once known. The girl who had loved his best friend. And maybe even him.

  “You’ll kill him if you fire.”

  They both knew who she meant.

  Casper shook his head and turned away to watch the Moirai off the forward quarter.

  He reached forward and stabbed a finger at the targeting layout. “Hit her here,” he muttered, pointing toward the bow. “One torp. Once it detonates, we’re going into the superstructure. Comm and sensors, I need you to scan for Major Rechs’s transponder.”

  “Ready to fire,” the weapons officer announced from the rear of the flight deck.

  “Ready to fire,” confirmed the XO.

  “Fire,” Casper ordered.

  The SSM whooshed forth from its tube, rattling the whole ship as it went. These were the most powerful weapons in the Terran Navy’s arsenal, and they would remain so for many generations.

  Then Casper was showing the pilot a flight path they would take inside the superstructure of the Moirai.

  The crew watched as the missile sidewindered out into the energy locust–swarming void, its white-hot engine almost blue, dancing like a star, streaking forward toward the ancient cylinder.

  It detonated.

  A brief star burned bright inside the storm of data, flooding the shifting sky with sudden light, and then the front of the immense cylinder peeled away, sending debris in every direction.

  “Now, now, now!” ordered Casper to the flight crew. “Thrusters to full. This’ll be close.”

  One of the pilots might have been heard remarking that “close” was an understatement of the most extreme category.

  The assault frigate closed on the burning bow of the Moirai rapidly, the massive ship growing in size to fill the cockpit window, making it seem as though the Lexington were diving straight down into the burning, gaping maw of a giant eel.

  And then they were in. In the ship, in the ruptured main hab. Sections of the landscape were breaking loose around them in a maelstrom of burning oxygen. The Lexington was fighting heavy, gale-force atmospheric turbulence. A strange assortment of debris flew past and tried to escape with the tornado out the ruined bow.

  “This is insane,” hissed the pilot through gritted teeth.

  The Lex shifted, engaging her maneuvering thrusters into a howling scream to avoid an actual building that had come loose and was spinning in at them. A moment later what looked like a tractor tumbled toward them and slammed into the forward deflectors, obliterating itself in a spray of parts and displaced energy.

  “She’ll hold,” said the XO as the emergency power diversion warning lights and a harsh bell erupted across the damage control panels. “Rerouting batteries into forward deflectors.”

  The crazy world inside the massive generational ship was spinning and burning all at once. The Moirai’s hull ignited and caught fire, melting away in large sections. The Lex raced ahead of the wave of damage spreading from the bow.

  “I have the LZ,” shouted the co-pilot, peering down into the terrain sensor display. “Locking in flight path now.”

  Casper turned back to the sensor/comm station. “Anything on Major Rechs?”

  There was a long pause in which nothing could be heard beyond the howling burn of the wind screaming along the fuselage of the assault frigate. The ship dropped down toward the bizarre pyramids on the hab’s curving plain.

  “Got him!” shrieked the sensor operator.

  Casper scanned the tactical display. Rechs’s signal came up. He was down there in the midst of the pyramids.

  Four pyramids, just like on every world they’d ever found.

  “And there’s someone else down there too.”

  But Casper was gone from the flight deck, heading back to the cargo area and the boarding ramp.

  When he reached the hold, he ordered the crew chief to measure for an ambient oxygen reading.

  The chief pulled out his tablet and studied the data the ship’s external sensors were feeding him. “It’s a massive ship, sir. Even though it’s been holed, it’s going to take a few more minutes for all the ox to burn up. Five minutes at best. I can get you into an EVA, but that’ll take ten, minimum.”

  “Clear the hold, Chief.” And when the chief looked like he was about to protest, Casper cut him off with a sharp, “That’s an order.”

  When he was alone, he raised the cargo door.

  The ship was five hundred feet over the nightmare plain now turned apocalyptic dust storm.

  His comm chirped with an incoming message. “Captain. Forward hull is collapsing. We got two minutes at best. This thing’s coming down all around us.”

  “Never mind that. Put us down as close as you can get to the major.”

  The Lex circled the pyramids, dropping in low. Beyond the open cargo door, deadly debris shot past like twirling phantoms in a tornado.

  But the Lex’s pilot was good, and he angled the cargo door and crabbed the frigate in to bring it as close to Rechs as possibl
e.

  Rechs was holding on for dear life, gripping the edge of a pyramid with one gloved hand. With the other he was firing at a tall creature dressed in shrouded rags.

  The Dark Wanderer.

  The wind howled and shrieked in wails and whistling screams, threatening to rip Rechs from his precarious hold, threatening to rip the air straight out of Casper’s lungs. The oxygen was thin and getting thinner.

  Rechs was still twenty meters out.

  “Captain,” came the pilot over comm. “We can hold this position steady, but we can’t get closer.”

  The engines howled and whined. The ship danced at the behest of the storm-current’s buffets.

  Out across the uncrossable void, Rechs turned his head and shook it in the negative. The message was clear. Leave him. Now.

  “This is the captain,” Casper said over the comm. “Take us upwind. I’m attaching the cargo line to my gear. Give me about thirty yards of slack and try to get me close to him.”

  He didn’t bother to listen to their protestations. Instead he busied himself with the cargo line and a series of D-clips.

  A moment later the Lex’s engines strained and howled to pull the ship sideways and up, away from Rechs. And Casper stepped out into the void of the howling storm.

  He felt a sickening moment of floating and then being jerked violently downward. Except he was going sideways across the debris-littered hull-scape that now seemed to be in list rotation. Overhead and far down the spine, the hull was burning up like a metal sky on fire. Great sections of it were shorn loose by explosions that ripped through the superstructure.

  Casper had just enough time to wonder whether the line would hold before what little oxygen was in him was knocked completely out as the line jerked taut. Stars swam across his vision and he blacked out, briefly, dangling helplessly in the blast of the rushing oxygen escaping to be burnt up.

  He wasn’t far from Rechs. But he was far enough away that he would never reach him. There would be no leaps in this gale-force storm. No handholds that could remain in these tornadoes. For Rechs to even reach out to him, he would have to loosen his hold on the pyramid. And then…

  Darkness.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  The monster in the high valley beyond the endless desert roared like some immense giant demon from unknown nether hells. Its maw dropped open, revealing impossibly long fangs. Powerful simian arms reached out toward Casper.

  Casper fell backward onto the ground, helpless beneath the titan.

  Seeing only Urmo standing in front of him.

  Thinking… It’ll run him down and not even know it as it comes for me.

  Because coming for him it was.

  The ground shook.

  And the lost world all around disappeared.

  ***

  When Casper came to, he was still at the end of the line in the windstorm, being thrown about by the violent winds rushing toward the distant bow. But Rechs had a hold of him. Was holding on to Casper’s gear, his heavy armor attempting to drag the gear off and away into the swirling storm.

  “Reel us in!” Casper gasped in the thin oxygen. Hoping his comm would pick up. Hoping they were watching the external cams.

  And that was when he looked toward the largest pyramid. Some object the size of a naval gun had just whipped past them. They were being winched back into the bright and clean cargo hold as the air burned up and disappeared all around them, and that massive object had gone by, almost hitting them straight on. Almost carrying them off into the unfolding destruction of the ship.

  They would’ve been lost forever.

  That would’ve been the end of them.

  And the end of everything that would come.

  But the object missed, and merely drew Casper’s attention to the main pyramid. It was just like all the enigmatic and impenetrable pyramids every explorer had found on all the other worlds. Sealed. Impervious to investigation. Guarding all the secrets of what everyone called the Ancients in lieu of any real and actual knowledge of who and what they’d once been. Its angular surfaces never surrendering to the slightest inspection, cut, damage, or penetration of any kind.

  Except this pyramid was open along its facing side. And within, looking back at him, was… a blank space in the universe. Not just space, as in outer space. Not just emptiness, as in nothing. But a blank space in the known. A place one could see even though the mind wouldn’t allow it to.

  And walking into it was a tall being, cloaked in a shroud and limping. Head down, arms out, as though wading through the sea.

  It was an impossible thing in the middle of a hurricane. Inside a ship venting oxygen and coming apart at the seams. Physics, gravity, mass, energy, motion, and all the other laws that defined the undefinable were being broken right in front of his eyes.

  And he would often wonder, in the spare moments of the long journey to know what this power was, whether, maybe, he’d simply been hallucinating from the lack of oxygen.

  Maybe.

  The Dark Wanderer disappeared into the blank space in the side of the pyramid.

  Gone.

  And then Casper passed out again. The oxygen was all gone now.

  ***

  The savage monster stopped dead in its tracks, looming above Casper. Mid charge. It halted as suddenly as if it had hit an invisible wall. Dirt and debris flew out at them as its terrible claws dug into the dirt of that lost world.

  Casper opened his eyes.

  He had closed them expecting only death. Expecting nothing—or perhaps the answers to all things.

  And instead he had found himself here. At the end of himself.

  Finally.

  In the high valley on the lost planet. Beyond the desert.

  And Urmo standing between him and the terrible titan that was about to end his existence.

  There was nothing to be done now. Nothing but to die.

  The valley was silent. The monster had stopped its roar.

  He heard a distant, small hum. Almost like a monastic buzz.

  And as he scrambled to his feet, he saw that the triangular head of the towering beast had begun to sway above them. Its alizarin eyes were distant and far away. Its massive shoulders slumped, and then they too began to sway from side to side. The hum increased, buzzing in Casper’s ears.

  And when he looked down he saw little Urmo, eyes closed, one hand out, with two little furry fingers pointing at the giant killer above their heads. Pointing as though he were reaching out to touch the thing’s heart.

  The look on Urmo’s face might have been described as beatific. Transcendent. Peaceful. As though this little thing knew all the things that needed knowing. The good and the bad of the universe. And it was comfortable with that knowledge, knowing that all things can be made right.

  The beast groaned and fell over onto its side, causing a small earthquake. Its heaving chest neither rose nor fell. It was clear that it had just suddenly, and instantly, died.

  Casper, mouth agape, looked down at Urmo.

  Urmo’s eyes fluttered open. The delightful little creature that had once been there, constantly obsessed with the minutiae of two-headed rats, various rocks, and miscellaneous pieces of Casper’s gear, was gone. In its place was a new Urmo. A tired Urmo. A knowing Urmo, who looked deep inside Casper.

  The creature nodded at him once, slowly, with sad, mournful eyes. He nodded at Casper with a look that said, All that you know… is gone now.

  And what came next was…

  The Lesson of Becoming the Thing you Fear Starts with Trying to Change the Things You Never Could

  Deep within the Temple of Morghul, the student is running in a darkness that strangles. Like running from a dragon that cannot be defeated. Because some things cannot be defeated by mere mortals. Some things can only be feared. Some things one must simply run for their liv
es from.

  This is the end of the Lesson of Fear, and now begins the next lesson. The final lesson before all things learned can truly be understood. This is the last lesson. The lesson where you confront yourself, thinking you are confronting your worst fear.

  The void swallows the student, and even in the swallowing there is a way through. Even though the dragon, a Black Dragon, is just at his heels and he has lost all his weapons, including his most powerful one.

  Which is reason.

  Space, reality, whatever you want to call it here within the strange temple, opens up before him into a void. And yes there are stars. Stars within the temple. Stars within the void.

  It is full of stars.

  Whatever it is exactly.

  For an insane moment, that giddy kind of insanity that seems to be the very opposite of reason, he feels like a constellation. The frightened student running from the dragon feels like all this is part of some particular arrangement of the stars. The Black Dragon. Himself. Surely on all the worlds that consist of a galaxy, there must be some only-for-that-planet alignment where such a constellation might be drawn and mythicized by observers on the surface of an alien world.

  “Tell me the story of the frightened student, Papa,” some child might say while pointing

  into the night sky. Pointing at the broken glass up there we call stars.

  Tell me why he was afraid. Tell me why he runs.

  Tell me, Papa. Tell me the frightened man’s story.

  Well, my child, the wise one might begin. Long ago he was just a child such as you. Living in the ruins of a ruined world. His parents were murdered by savage ones who took, plundered, and murdered because there were always such. Murdered by strangers who called the endless road home. Murdered by hard and wild savages who’d gone almost animal, become less than what they once were, in order to survive. Even if that meant someone else must die. They took, and in the taking they slaughtered. And one day they slaughtered the frightened child’s parents while he was away from their farm.

  Why, Papa? Why would they do such a terrible thing?

  Who can say? Who can say why the galaxy is so hard and cruel on the innocent and why such wild people are allowed to ruin the simple lives of others? Who can say?