by Rolf Nelson
“I am sorry to hear that,” says Brother Libra, holding up the medallion, “Nevertheless, we are in your debt. If you need anything we can provide, you have but to ask.”
They stand and shake hands, looking one another in the eye. The monks in the courtyard sing the final line of their chant as Helton turns and leaves.
Let all souls be revived
Marks
Nighttime on Tajemnica, and the lights are dim as Allonia walks silently down the passageway to Helton’s cabin. His door is half open. Inside the room, a couple of the many computer screens that double as lights are set on low, providing a soft, diffused light. The bed is made, and Helton’s nowhere to be seen.
“Knock-knock?”
“Come in,” Helton calls from the head, voice muffled by the door. “Be there in a minute.”
Allonia enters and sits at his desk. She runs her eyes around the room and sees, on the foot of the bed, the book Helton found in the tunnel. She looks at it curiously for a moment, then lazily reaches over to pick it up. After leafing through it casually, she examines the shallow crater in the back from the grenade blast, about 15 centimeters across and nearly halfway through. The edges of the crater are tattered and blackened. The rest of the pages are silvery white. She runs her hands over the undamaged side and feels something she cannot see.
“Lights 50 percent,” she calls, and the room brightens. She looks more closely, angling the book to get the best visibility. “Lights 80 percent.” In the brighter light she can faintly see a design on the undamaged cover: a set of twelve interlocking cogwheels, loosely encircled by a chain.
Helton walks in from the head, and Allonia asks him, “What are these marks?”
“What marks?”
“These.” She hands him the book, and he examines it closely.
“Hmmm. That looks like … almost like some of the things carved into the stones at Planet Movers grav-post sites.”
“Is it a book about them?”
“Don’t know what it is. Could be. Huh. Looks like there are some marks showing up inside, too.”
Helton holds the book angled to the light, looking at the edges of the pages where they were damaged by the grenade. He sees faint scattered dots and very small lines, with more around the edges of the crater. No obvious groups or patterns.
“I wonder… I’ll have to borrow a microscope or scanner from Stenson to get a closer look. See if there is anything legible inside. I’m sure those weren’t there earlier. One more thing on tomorrow’s list.” He puts the book down. “What’s up?”
“Just dropping by to say thank you for sending Kwon and his family this way. He’s a great cook, and I was going crazy down there trying to get three meals a day for everyone. He makes it seem easy. And knows what to do with just about everything! And little Kimi is the cutest thing! Quinn has been treating her like a favorite little sister.”
“Kwon’s an old friend, helped me out more than once. Trying to find someone here not being leaned on by Seymore whom I can trust is difficult. Just when I think things are turning to shit, something good pops up.”
“Unless it’s more bad stuff first.”
“Well, yeah, that too, but things are looking good at the moment. Anything else?” Helton asks.
“No, just thanks, good night, and see you in the morning!”
“You’re welcome. G’night.”
Stenson and Helton sit at a workbench in Engineering, using a scanner to inspect the cover of the book. “Let’s see what we have here,” Stenson says. “Visible first.” The image on the screen zooms in gradually and becomes slightly more detailed. He adjusts a control, saying, “Let’s enhance contrast.” The image grows sharper.
“Cogs and chains for sure,” says Helton. “Definitely Planet Mover style. Any matches with known engravings?”
“Easy to check.” Stenson taps at the computer for a second. “Nope, nothing exact. Hmmm… Twelve gears, 144 links. Pretty common gear and link count, typical gear ratios with teeth in multiples of six. Pretty basic style composite. Okay … IR?” The image changes, but not much.
“UV next, I suppose?” says Helton. The colors on the screen change, but the image is the same.
Stenson fiddles, looking back and forth between the controls and the image. “Chem scan says … interesting chemicals. Not off-the-shelf molecules. Should be both photo and oh-two reactive.”
“They react to light or oxygen?”
“No…” Stenson says cautiously. “I think … I think it’ll only react to oxygen in the presence of light, or vice versa. Have to play with it a bit to find what sort of concentrations and intensity and wavelength it likes best, but I’d bet that’s it.”
“So, not your garden-variety desert guru text?”
“Nope. That it most assuredly is not, unless you consider the Garden of Eden to be garden-variety.”
“Look inside now?”
“Be my guest,” says Stenson.
Helton removes the book from the scanner, opens it to the first page on the undamaged side, slides it back in. “Can you composite all those views?” he asks.
“Patience, patience.”
“Visible first?”
The screen shows a few faint marks scattered about the page. Stenson enhances the contrast, but there is nothing obviously worth further attention. The infrared and ultraviolet views show different colors, but no other changes. A chem scan of the page shows a sea of chemical signatures with no distinct patterns.
“Well, nothing there,” Stenson says, “or perhaps, a lot of nothing there yet.”
“So, we just leave it out in the weather and wait?”
“Pretty much. Lots going on here, so I don’t really have time to experiment properly. In the meantime, I’d leave it open with a wide-spectrum light on it, check regularly, see what happens.”
“Any ideas?” Helton asks.
“More ideas than Harbin has ways of killing you, but until I have more data it’s just wild speculation. I like knowing enough to make educated guesses.”
“So just be patient?”
“Yup, ’fraid so.”
Levels
Morning sun shines on the training ground near Tajemnica. Sergeant Kaushik, Corporal Kaminski, and First Sergeant Harbin Reel stand with the recruits, all dressed in simple camo fatigue uniforms. The recruits stand in two rows, with Kaushik and Kaminski as the squad leaders. Arrayed before the formation is a series of mannequins, each armed and clad differently, ranging through typical periods of Earth history, from the primitive — clothing and staff only — to modern powered assault armor with smart weapons, laser guidance systems, and built-in medical diagnosis and treatment. In between are greaves, vambraces, swords, helmets, a crossbow, plate armor, a bolt-action rifle and bayonet, a semi-auto rifle and sidearm, and full space armor.
Harbin paces back and forth as he speaks. His tone is patient and quietly emphatic. He knows this topic well.
“If you get mugged, or your home is attacked without cause, or your ship is hit by pirates and you are dumped in a desert, or you are fighting for the survival of the species, you fight with whatever you have, and the only rule is: win. That’s been true since before humankind had language to call ourselves “human.” But humans seem to like rules, even when they don’t all make sense. And there are always charismatic egomaniacs, or God’s Prophet of the week, or someone out to save us from ourselves who think they know how to run things if only we’d just do what they say and follow their rules.” He snorts in derision. “Sadly, there are always too many bloody ignorant save-the-worlders, my-tribe-firsters, and NIMBY’s willing to do what they say and try to enforce their laws on folks.
“So here we are. In an undeclared war, the rule book is pretty slim. In a declared war the rulebook may be a bit thicker, and the contract spells out the details. The rules might sound stupid at first, but there ARE reasons for them.
“All of you have heard this before, but not from me. Today we introduce you to the ba
sics of the combat levels. Following the bloodshed of the mid and late 21st century, people thought we needed more rules about warfare, something with more teeth. Then the stars went away, and we were all fighting for our survival system-by-system, and everyone came up with their own rules. After the stars came back, not every planet was on the same tech footing, but some people still managed to piss in everyone’s oatmeal, or have competing interests, even with a hundred other worlds on which to get out of each other’s way. Humans are not the most rational pieces of meat.
“And we still didn’t know anything about the Planet Movers, except they had tech at least as high as our best, and about the only common elements of their carved symbols that we do understand are the sword and spear. So, the surviving planets decided we would only allow fighting between declared combatants at the lowest level of military technology both sides would agree to. More rules.”
He pauses and shrugs eloquently at the skeptical recruits. “If there is significant fighting in an undeclared war, ANYONE can show up to the party for target practice. Some people just love to do that, so most people have learned to keep things at least sort of honest.
“As a potential Plataean soldier, you have to learn all potential weapons, because you might have to use them. If you try to cheat, you open the entire unit to all offensive firepower anyone wants to have fun shooting your sorry ass with. Smuggle a Level Seven pistol to a Level Four sword fight, and you might discover yourself finding out how well your chainmail handles a close-laid barrage of artillery shells some neutral observer and camera crew send your way for shits and grins and film rights because they’re bored.
“You WILL adhere to strict level compliance, or you WILL get killed by the first officer or NCO who sees you doing something illegal. You can always use lower tech, and sometimes it’s all you’ve got. Occasionally it’s even the best choice. It is what the contract says that you must live by. If you can’t become competent at them all, you’re only good as a limited-contract temporary. But you can still find good jobs if you can do any of them particularly well. We’ll give you a basic introduction to each level and see how well your natural instincts match it. You will get more advanced training in the second phase of initial training with a larger group.”
Harbin pauses and looks at the recruits, inviting questions. A slender, freckled young man speaks first:
“So if I get attacked, I can only defend myself by what a contract says I can use?”
“In a declared battle setting, correct. And that’s all we are talking about here, Horkle,” Harbin answers.
The smart-ass of the group pipes up. “So if I’m about to get killed by a spear when I’m standing in a shield wall and I shoot the guy with a pistol–”
“I will cut you down myself, Darch … if I have to. Anyone else seeing such a violation is expected to do the same. With medical attention you might survive a spear thrust from the enemy. You will not survive your unit if you betray their trust and endanger them.”
“That’s messed up,” says a recruit in the back rank.
“That’s how you keep wars small, Sanchez. How you prevent the destruction of another billion people, the laying waste to planets; how you entice leadership onto the battlefield to be properly dealt with. Few politicians are willing to actually fight for their beliefs; shaming them into truly defending their positions forces a lot of them to back down on the really stupid shit and wise up. Not a perfect system, but it’s one way to keep some of the snollygosters honest, or at least sidelined.”
“So why don’t they just … not declare a war … and use whatever they want?” Horkle asks.
“Because assassination and declaration of war is a two-way street, and there are always guys willing to hire out for the right price to settle a dispute, and many freelancers are as good or better than government hires. Especially in governments run by cronyism and nepotism. Some folks forget the lessons of history, and it’s up to people like us to remind them from time to time. A pol who bargains honestly is safe, even if stupid. Not so honest, not so safe.”
“Would you assassinate someone like Darch’s dad?” asks Sanchez.
Harbin looks Sanchez in the eye. “Not really my decision; I don’t usually pick the contracts.” He pauses thoughtfully. “From what I know of Councilor Darch, his policies are ineffective, expensive, counterproductive, self-serving, anti-freedom, and often overturned. But he is technically honest in most of his dealings, even if he abuses the intent of the law while complying with the letter of it, so I would not accept a contract against him personally. At the current time.
“Many laws and rules are stupid. With time you will learn which you can ignore, or bend, or work around, and which are essential. But to have no rules or principles is worse, and you guys are too young to really understand that. Just remember: when I tell you how to do something, IT IS THE WAY TO DO IT! We care about what works. Even if it’s something as simple as how to shit in an outhouse, listen and remember, because there is a reason for it!”
“So how do you shit in an outhouse?” Darch asks sarcastically.
Harbin stares directly at Darch, whose smartass smile fades. “Close the lid. Drop your gear. Open the lid. Shit. Wipe. Close the lid. Get your gear back on.” Darch straightens up and his face goes blank as the other recruits giggle around him.
“So,” Harbin continues, “let’s get started and see how badly you can hurt yourself while trying to hurt your opponent.”
They start the morning dressed in normal camo fatigues, squaring off with quarterstaffs. Some try to show off, but fail miserably, dropping their staffs or sending them flying. Kaushik and Kaminski lead the recruits in basic drills of parry, thrust, strike.
Harbin briefly faces off against one recruit while the others watch. The recruit takes a big overhead swing down at Harbin, who casually deflects it down and to the side, using its force to spin his own staff up. He swings it around blindingly fast and stops, holding it motionless, just before hitting the recruit’s head. The recruit stares at the end of the staff, then at Harbin, recognizing how badly he could have been thumped. Harbin looks at him with a slight grin and motions for him to try again.
It’s a simple obstacle course, but the recruits are wearing high-tech body armor and carrying small packs, lots of gear, rifles, and belts and bandoleers of ammo. They are clearly struggling with the weight, bulk, and restrictions of the gear as they climb over low walls, maneuver through a slalom course of six-inch diameter posts set in the ground, and swing on a rope across a short gap. One tries to run between two posts and gets stuck, hung up on his gear. Kaminski grabs him, pulls him back a bit, unhooks the gear from the post, turns him sideways so he is narrower, and pushes him gently through the gap.
Recruits stand in two ranks wearing Romanesque armor, holding javelins and shields. Facing them, about twenty-five meters away, is a line of mannequins with shields.
Kaminski steps up, hefts his pilum, takes a quick step, and throws it forcefully. The javelin makes a fast, low arc and buries itself in the shield, coming out the far side, just missing the dummy’s shoulder.
Darch, next in line, takes a step forward, tries to throw his pilum. It makes an awkward, flat arc, and lands, sideways and flat against the ground only two-thirds of the way to the target.
Kaushik steps forward, and taking a quick stutter step throws his pilum. The arc is higher than Kaminski’s, not thrown as forcefully, but it thwacks down into the shoulder of the dummy, not the shield. He looks at Kaminski, gives a friendly smile, and executes a small bow. Kaminski nods in acknowledgment.
Sanchez steps up and throws. It sails imperfectly through a high arc, and the tip gouges in at an angle into the side of the dummy’s face. Darch glowers at Sanchez, Kaminski claps him on the shoulder, and Harbin grins.
The morning sun is near zenith. Horkle and Darch, still wearing the Romanesque armor, run to a porta-potty off to the side of the training field. Darch hurriedly hands Horkle his spear and leans his shiel
d against the side. He steps in and closes the door. There is the rattling of shifting gear, then a large splash, then a long silence. “Aaahhh, ssshhhiiiitttt.”
“Lid?” Horkle asks, smiling hugely, nearly doubled over trying to stifle a laugh.
“Oh, go stick it in a diseased donkey!”
Plaque
It’s sunny and bright outside the ship, and Helton and Allonia are just coming back from a walk around the port area. Helton is wearing his pistol belt and his normal functional clothes. Allonia wears a conservative calf-length skirt and blouse in solid colors and embroidery, and her hair is in a thick braid. Their smiles and quiet laughter are easygoing and friendly.
The ship’s stern ramp is down, but the cargo bay doors are closed. Helton hits the OPEN button. While they’re waiting for the doors to open, Allonia casually looks around the area inside the ramp and outside the doors. She notices something up in the corner where the inner door meets the side wall.
“What’s that?”
“What’s what?” Helton asks. He follows her gaze up to the corner above and sees a tarnished brass plaque with many rows and columns of small marks on it. “Huh. Looks like writing.” The plaque is covered with rows and columns of etched names. Most are in Roman characters, but there are also Cyrillic, Japanese, Hindi, Korean, Hebrew, and a scattering of other scripts. Hundreds and hundreds of names are there, some with military ranks.
“I don’t remember seeing that before,” Allonia says. “Who are all those people? Or, who were they?”
“I’d guess former crew and complement. Some ships have a placard to commemorate people who have served on it. Have to look some of them up.”
“That’s a lot of people. This ship must have been around a long time to have that many serve on her.”
“Indeed. You said it came out of the Deep, so I’m sure she has some history to her. I’ll see if Lag can find out anything about it. Maybe those names, too.”
Power Bill
Sergeant Kaushik and three recruits are on guard duty, standing casually at the foot of the cargo bay ramp, wearing light armor and carrying light rifles, when a small vehicle comes down the road from the direction of the spaceport, kicking up dust.