Conquest and Empire (Stellar Conquest Series Book 5)

by David VanDyke

  Jill watched as the Skulls rode away in the truck, the two units mingling and moving as if stunned by the turn of events. Spectre twirled his finger in the direction of the VTOL pilot and the rotors spun up as he opened the door for Jill.

  Inside the luxuriously appointed craft, Spectre slid his pistol back into his jacket. “Did you really kill Charles?” he asked.

  Jill awkwardly lifted the severed head from inside her jacket, dropping it in Spectre’s lap. “The bastard tried to mess with my head, so I took his. I guess nobody ever told him Stewards are inoculated against Blend bio-psych tricks.”

  Spectre chuckled. “I must admit, that’s a well-kept secret, as I didn’t know either. How did you…ah, it must have been Raphaela or one of her brood.”

  “Yep. Absen had her immunize all the Stewards.”

  “And you insisted you didn’t do wet work.”

  “I did what I believed necessary at the time,” Jill said stiffly.

  “My point exactly.” Spectre clapped Jill on the shoulder.

  Jill turned to look out the window at the city below. “They EMPed Shades, Clayton and me, but I shut my systems off in time to preserve them. I woke up in a cell block. Can you get these things off me?” She turned back and held up the heavy cuffs. “Then I need to find my men.”

  “When we get to the palace I’m sure we can locate a locksmith. We’ll find your men, Jill, if they’re still alive. I’ve sent in the regular ground forces to clean out the Croc compound you escaped from. In fact, I can do better than that.” Spectre picked up a comm handset and punched in a string of numbers. “General? This is Spectre. Raven has turned traitor and been executed. You are now in charge of the Skulls, in my name. If you want to keep your job and your life, you will ensure two men in Skull custody, Stewards Schaeffer and Clayton, are returned intact to the palace immediately.”

  Hanging up, Spectre took Raven’s head in his hands. “Alas, poor Yorick…”

  “That thing can’t come back to life or anything, can it? I mean, dead is dead, even for Blends, right?”

  “Yes, though a Blend might survive even a decapitation if the head and body were reunited within minutes. You’ve prevented that, so…Charles Denham is no more.”

  “Raphaela won’t be happy.”

  “She’ll understand. She’s not naïve.”

  The VTOL landed in a palace courtyard, one that Jill hadn’t seen before. Armed and uniformed Ground Forces regulars guarded every meter of wall, every doorway.

  “I apologize for not making sure the Skulls were gone and the area secure before you arrived,” Spectre said.

  “I wish I could believe that,” Jill replied. “I have to wonder whether you just ‘happened’ to let two dangerous dogs wander into the same backyard. Maybe you wanted to see who’d come out on top.”

  “An interesting theory, but not quite correct. If anything, I wanted to see Charles’ reaction to your presence, but I never believed he would try what he did.” Spectre held up his hands. “Even I miscalculate from time to time.”

  “Good to know you realize you’re still mortal, Spooky.”

  Spectre smiled. “I know you’re trying to needle me, but from you, I welcome that old nickname. It’s nostalgic. You see? I’m human after all.”

  Jill snorted. “See you later. And make sure these soldiers know what a Steward’s uniform looks like and what it means. I’d hate for any other heads to roll.”

  ***

  In his quarters, Spectre placed Charles’ bald head on a table and rested his fingertips on the skin of its cranium. Sending a flood of seeker particles, he soon extracted much of the dead man’s Meme molecular memory from where it resided alongside its human counterpart.

  Without cellular life to preserve it, the bioelectrical data any human would possess had already disintegrated long past recovery, but the complex Meme molecules acted like pieces of a hard drive, able to survive long after death.

  You were more right than you knew, Jill, Spectre thought to himself. I was hoping Charles would overreach himself and make a mistake egregious enough to bring discredit, but I never expected him to underestimate you to the point of losing his life. Still, it may work out for the best. His loss as a highly effective insurgent leader must be balanced against his unpredictability. Overall…I can live with it.

  Eventually, Spectre retrieved all he could, an interesting cache of secrets that would serve him and Naomi Alkina quite well in the coming months. The Skulls would have to be brought completely to heel, and one part of that was to eliminate – or seize – all their hidden bases, safe houses, and other resources.

  Opening a valve and flipping an igniter switch, Spectre waited until his small but effective incinerator, usually used to destroy hardcopy or data drives, reached its optimum temperature. “Goodbye, Charles,” he said aloud, rolling the head down the short chute and into the blazing flame. “Rest in pieces.”

  Chapter 7

  Father-Mother and Monarch of the Brood Therion stared with three eyes at the message plate he held in one manipulator cluster. “Another failure. This younger generation of Archons has grown soft and weak. If not for the imperatives of the Brood, I would say, ‘Let the infestations breed for a time.’ In a few dozen or a few hundred years, when they grow complacent, we would fall on them again and feast. In the meantime, I would set our children against each other to test who is the fittest, weeding out this current crop of fools.”

  Therion’s Council of Senior Archons flashed their respectful assent, as they should. Rarely did any raise a disagreement, much less oppose him. Ever since he had taken power, the Brood had marched across this arm of the spiral galaxy with few setbacks, never checked in its inexorable advance through a million star systems.

  But the Brood – they had no name for their form of government, no Empire or Kingdom or Raj, for the Brood and its regime were no more distinguishable from one another than ants were from their genetic imperatives – the Brood had grown so spread out that, even with the null space drive, messages took years or more for the fastest communication ships to travel from one end of its domain to another.

  Here, near the enormous star they called Center, the null space gradient meant outgoing messages and ships traveled fast, but incoming information arrived more slowly. This report Therion held had taken nearly a full year to reach him, a standardized segment of time measured by the orbital period of the Brood’s original homeworld, now a shrine to its history.

  “But,” Therion said via the complex patterns of light that served the Brood as voice, “the current sociological cycle is not yet complete. A proper appreciation of historical pressures guides the Brood, and even I cannot stand against such wisdom.”

  The Council again signaled its weighty assent.

  “Therefore, one of you must appoint, equip and dispatch a Praetor. Who shall accept this responsibility?”

  Each of the sixteen senior Archons again gave its assent immediately, as was proper. Therion suppressed what a human would interpret as a sigh. One problem with surrounding himself with reliable, dutiful Archons was that none stepped out of line, none challenged him on any issue.

  The boredom caused him an almost physical pain.

  Perhaps he should not have been so diligent in hunting down all of his rivals when he had taken power. He needed an enemy. Infestations hardly counted as such.

  Higher races do not term lower races “enemies,” he thought. They are part of the landscape, creatures to be exploited and eaten, though occasionally even an animal may catch some of the Brood unaware and rampage for a time.

  “Ikthor,” Therion said to his least compliant senior Archon, one he thought might have at least a tiny spark of ambition buried somewhere in his multiple brains. “I have reconsidered my first thought. I appoint you Praetor. You shall lead forces selected from your personal holdings. In your absence, your position on the Council shall remain your own, though you will need to appoint a proxy, of course.”

  Ikthor’s eye
s contracted with displeasure even as he spoke the only words possible: “In the Name of the All, Father-Mother, it shall be done. I go.” The Archon withdrew from the chamber without further words.

  Demotion to Praetor will stir resentment within Ikthor even as his proxy steps into the role of Council Archon, Therion thought. Others on the council, though they never challenge me, might nevertheless nibble around the edges of Ikthor’s territory – a star system here, a cluster there. When Ikthor returns, he will be combative and fat from conquest, filled with anger and determination to reclaim what is rightfully his. Even if the proxy steps aside and does not challenge him directly, that Archon will be Ikthor’s natural enemy, and Ikthor will be mine.

  The great game will become more interesting.

  That should banish my boredom.

  Chapter 8

  “Seems funny not to have Spooky along,” Ezekiel Denham said to the Sekoi Blend Bogrin as they boarded Steadfast Roger through a circular, sphincter-like opening. The ship had grown in the last year and had now attained the size of an old-style jetliner rather than merely that of a whale.

  “Spooky is Spectre now, and has great responsibility on the planet,” Bogrin replied.

  “I know that. Just making conversation.”

  Bogrin laughed. “In humans, ‘making conversation’ is often a sign of nervousness, even insecurity.”

  “Well, how do you feel about being appointed senior viceroy to the Gliese 370 system?”

  “Pleased, but not nervous.”

  “I’m shaking in my boots.”

  “You are not wearing boots.”

  “Tag the phrase in your translator. It means I’m terrified, though with an element of irony.”

  Bogrin laughed again.

  A commotion on the flight deck of the orbital shipyard where they rested caused both beings to turn and look. They watched as, near one of the doors, a human guard was flung back to roll and slide along the floor in his armor. Other men with weapons hurried to surround a Ryss warrior.

  “Oh, crap,” Ezekiel muttered, hopping to the deck in the low gravity and jogging toward the confrontation. When he got there he saw a snarling Trissk held at rifle’s point by a dozen men and women.

  “What’s the problem here, Lieutenant?” he addressed the most senior of the squad.

  “My lord, this alien here refuses to produce identification, and he assaulted one of my men.”

  Trissk hissed and snarled in Ryss, his words translated by a device high up on his battle harness. “I have submitted to your insulting procedures for long enough. There are exactly seven Ryss adult males in this system. Five have prosthetic limbs, one is so aged he can barely stand, and the last is me. If you cannot identify me without your machines, you are even weaker of mind than you are of body.”

  Taking advantage of the tendency of those born under Meme rule to defer to Blends, and thankful he was wearing his yellows, Ezekiel said, “Let him and his gear through. He’s with me.”

  “Yes, my lord.” The guards backed up and moved off, chastened.

  “Sorry about that,” Ezekiel said. “These local forces aren’t very flexible. They’re used to taking orders and following procedures, not thinking for themselves.”

  “Your apology is noted, friend Ezekiel, but I will be happy to be back on the Afrana and among my own kind, as will the rest of my people stuck here.”

  “Hopefully we will find the Afrana system safe and your people can return if they wish,” Ezekiel said as the two walked across the flight deck toward Roger. “I hear you’ll be recruiting warriors there to fight aboard Desolator and his fellows.”

  “That is my intention, but as you said, the situation on Afrana is unknown. I do not even know whether my name will be remembered.”

  Ezekiel nodded. “Fleet sent FTL test drones to the Gliese 370 system and two more nearby. The other two returned with data that those systems had been overrun with Scourges, but at least they proved the drive works. The one aimed at Afrana…”

  “It might have malfunctioned or been destroyed by a solar anomaly…or the Scourge. That’s what we’re going to find out,” Trissk said as he stepped up to the opening in Roger. “I cannot believe I am boarding this tomb of flesh again.”

  Ezekiel slapped Trissk on the back. “It’s better now. Bigger. Besides, we’ll all be sedated for most of the trip. The FTL field messes with people’s heads – human, Ryss or Sekoi.”

  “And Meme?”

  “We don’t know enough about how their brain-analogues work to predict for sure, and none of them wanted to come along for the ride. We’re bringing a blank mitosis as an experiment, but who knows what that will tell us?”

  “What indeed?” Trissk squared his shoulders and entered the Meme-grown ship as if marching to his death.

  Once inside, Ezekiel watched as Trissk placed his gear in a locker-hole and stood by one of four sarcophagi.

  “What’s the extra one for?” the Ryss asked, pointing to the only coffin not open to receive an occupant.

  “Just a backup.”

  “Let’s get this over with, then,” said Trissk, and Ezekiel ran his hand along the top of the sarcophagus. It split open with a sucking sound and Trissk lay down in it, shivering with distaste.

  “Nighty-night,” Ezekiel said, activating the container. It filled with biogel even as parts of its inner surface extruded to find all the orifices in the Ryss. The sarcophagus would maintain all life functions for the trip.

  Ezekiel saw that Bogrin had already sealed himself in his much larger coffin, sized for the thousand-pound hippo-like Sekoi, so the human stripped off his yellows and climbed into his own. Soon, the representative world of VR space opened up in his mind and he joined his two friends on the steampunk-inspired bridge.

  “We’ll be rendezvousing with the Erasmus shortly,” Ezekiel said, sitting down in a plush pedestaled seat to begin manipulating large brass levers. Placing his hands on a small, polished wooden ship’s wheel, he soon lifted Roger from the shipyard’s flight deck and set course for Mercury.

  Taking the liberty of manipulating their time senses, he shortened the apparent trip duration from hours to a mere ten minutes, just long enough to relax before they approached the innermost planet of the Solar System. Keeping the small, barren planet between Roger and the sun, Ezekiel soon brought them down to hover above the surface where they could see a large spherical ship resting on long struts.

  Despite Mercury’s proximity to Sol, its dark side remained quite cold. One full Mercury day lasted more than 58 Earth days, giving the outward surface plenty of time to cool. With no atmosphere, there was nothing to equalize the heat of the day from the cold of the night, no storms, no difficulties – except the chill.

  “Why is it on the surface?” Trissk asked. “Why not rendezvous in space?”

  “To cool the ship’s heat sinks and insulation as much as possible before we dive into the sun.”

  Trissk hissed. “That phrase does not inspire confidence.”

  “Don’t worry. We’ll be in wormhole space long before we burn up. I hope.”

  The Ryss snarled and moved away, staring out a porthole.

  Ezekiel piloted Roger down after establishing comms with the Erasmus. As they approached, he could see the FTL ship was much larger than it seemed at first impression – at least five hundred meters across. Most of that was insulation.

  A large bay door stood open, of barely a size for Roger’s porpoise shape to fit through. Should the worst happen, with Erasmus damaged and trapped in the Gliese 370 system, Steadfast Roger and his crew could survive without support. After all, no one on Earth knew what had happened there during the last 36 years.

  In extremis, Roger could even make the long trip back to Earth conventionally, with the three crewmen in coldsleep. Ezekiel fervently hoped that would not be necessary.

  “How’s it look, Roger?” Ezekiel asked.

  “Adequate, Ezekiel,” the sentient ship replied. Unlike most Meme-grown craft, Rog
er’s intellect approached that of humans, a result of Ezekiel’s constant genetic tinkering and mental interaction. “My skin is armored against space weaponry, so I believe it can protect me inside this cargo bay.”

  “Your sense of irony is improving, Roger.”

  “I was trying for sarcasm. Did I not succeed?”

  “Getting there.”

  Once the crew of Erasmus strapped Roger in place, Ezekiel informed the FTL ship’s bridge that all was secure and ready. A sensor feed gave those inside the Meme ship the ability to see what was going on.

  To limit boredom during the several more hours until launch, Ezekiel set their time senses on fast-forward. Soon, the Erasmus lifted, retracting the long struts that had held it perched above the frigid surface.

  Ezekiel was glad to view the sun in VR via sensor feed rather than directly. Manipulating controls, he dimmed the great disc until it shone no more brightly than the Moon as they approached. Long filaments of solar flares showed at the edge of the great circle, and he hoped the crew of Erasmus knew what they were doing, though he didn’t air his concerns in front of the others.

  “It must be strange to give up control to another ship,” Bogrin said from where he stood to Ezekiel’s left, staring out the great forward window alongside the human and the Ryss.

  “I’m less worried about that than what’s waiting for us at the other end. We might find ourselves running for our lives.”

  Trissk coughed a growl. “Simply another reason to hate these scouting missions: all the running. One can’t even count coup upon an enemy that has no appreciation for the niceties of such things.”

  A chime sounded, and then came the disembodied voice of the Erasmus’ comm tech. “Wormhole entry in ten minutes, Captain Denham. Please make certain your crew is properly sedated. Travel time will be approximately nine days, seventeen hours and twenty-seven minutes.”

  “Thank you, Erasmus,” Ezekiel replied. “Roger, put us to sleep, and then yourself, as per the plan.”