by Jay Allan
“Nice job, John,” Hurley said, trying to sound as calm and nonchalant as possible as she wiped her hand across the back of her neck. She stared down at her palm, covered in sweat, and she smiled.
I’m so glad Admiral Garret sent Wilder here to keep me out of trouble!
Chapter Two
From the Personal Log of Terrance Compton
Cornwall is gone. Will we ever see her again? Will she return with the thirty-two brave souls aboard or will they simply vanish from our knowledge, lost and presumed dead? They left with my leave, aboard the vessel I gave them, but I have since doubted my decision. They were volunteers all, but still, I am their commander, and I share the guilt for whatever happens to them. If their fate is to die, if they become lost as they try to return, or if they are destroyed by the Regent’s warships, I know their shades will join those of the thousands who have died under my command. I did not order them to go, but my conscience allows me no relief on such technicalities.
Their mission is one of science, one of outreach. For we learned many things on that ancient planet in system X48, not the least of which is we were not alone, that the beings of the First Imperium had visited seven worlds, and that on each of them they modified the DNA of the creatures they found, turning the primitive beasts they found into their children. The discovery of the First Imperium told us we were not unique, that intelligent life existed elsewhere. The discoveries on X48 confirmed there were yet others, cousins of humanity.
Five of these six other worlds are far away, hundreds of transits, with the deadly vastness of the Imperium between us and them. But one is close. Closer at least. And so we felt the need to seek them out. Speculation ran wild in the fleet. Was there a brother race out there? Would they be a new ally against the Regent? An advanced and powerful race that might help us? Or would they be primitive, behind us on the growth curve…in need of our protection should the Regent’s forces ever find them?
Or would they be an enemy? Would they resent us, mistrust our intentions? Would they seek to destroy us, or subjugate us as slaves? Few wanted to consider this option, but it weighed heavily on me. Earth gave birth to the human race, yet men have spent almost six thousand years of recorded history warring with each other. Indeed, the Superpowers had fought almost constantly over the last century, allying only when they faced certain obliteration at the hands of the Regent’s vast fleets.
So, perhaps our brave scientists will find this new race, communicate with them somehow, bring them to our side with their vast industry and massive battle fleets. But my mind is in other places. Darker places. And in my nightmares I see our scouts dragged from the wreckage of their ship and paraded before crowds of humanoids, like us but subtly different too. I see them taken to labs, dissected, tested in horrifying ways.
Perhaps I am too dark, too negative in my outlook. But I have seen more death, more horror than any man was made to endure. What I have seen, what I have lived…changes a man.
AS Cornwall
Y17 System
The Fleet: 99 ships (+7 Leviathans), 23995 crew
“Transit in thirty seconds. All stations at red alert.” Captain Skarn was trying to sound sharp, ready for trouble. But this was the seventeenth transit since Cornwall had left the fleet, and the sixteen before it had all been the same. No sign of any enemy ships, no scanning devices detected, no hostile activity of any kind. It appeared the Regent’s forces were focused on the fleet and that Cornwall had managed to slip away undetected. But Skarn had exercised the same caution with every transit nevertheless.
The attack ship had gone off by itself, along an entirely different course from the rest of the fleet. Compton and the other ships were seeking Shangri la, the informal name that had stuck to the mysterious world the people of the First Imperium had prepared hundreds of thousands of years ago for humanity’s expected arrival. Cornwall was searching for something else, another destination mentioned in the cache of data retrieved on Planet X48 II…the nearest of the six other worlds the warrior caste of the First Imperium had seeded with modified DNA. The possible home of a race of mankind’s cousins…and a potential ally in the fight against the Regent and its legions of robot spaceships and ground forces.
“All stations report ready, Captain.” Lieutenant Inkerman turned and looked over at Skarn. Cornwall had a skeleton crew, all volunteers. They were naval personnel, like everyone else in the fleet, but they were also scientists, most of them at least, unaccustomed to manning the tactical stations and running a ship.
This was a dangerous mission, a wild trip that took them enormously far from Midway and the rest of the fleet. Compton had agreed to spare a ship for the operation, and give his blessing to the group of scientists who had requested permission to go, but he had been adamant he couldn’t spare tactical personnel, not when the fleet had been forced to fight its way through every system, taking casualties in each engagement.
Skarn had been the senior officer among those assigned to Cornwall, so she had become its captain, a courtesy promotion from her normal rank of lieutenant commander. She was a competent officer, one with over ten years’ service, but she had no operational experience in battle. She’d been aboard ship during many fights, everyone in the fleet had, but she’d always been assigned to support positions. Now, if Cornwall got into a fight, it would be her issuing the battle orders, leading her sparse and inexperienced crew into combat.
She felt the strange feeling, the bizarre coldness that always passed through her during a warp gate transit. Then she tensed as she tended to do in the terrible moment before the ship’s systems came back online. Her eyes were locked on the main display, staring at the staticky interference pattern, her stomach clenched, her hands balled into tense fists. It usually took about a minute for the ship’s AI to reboot, and to reactivate the rest of the vessel’s systems, and until the scanning suite came back online, her imagination worked on overdrive, spawning visions of enemy fleets and minefields around the warp gate.
Skarn wanted to believe her people had put enough space behind them, that they had evaded any First Imperium pursuers, but she still felt the wave of fear with each transit. And she knew her people had to go back the way they had come if they were ever going to get back. She didn’t relish the prospect of Cornwall being permanently adrift, cut off from the rest of the already lost fleet…and she hadn’t let herself consider how dangerous the road back would be.
“Systems coming back online, Captain.” Inkerman had become better at hiding his nerves, and his voice was steady, even firm. Skarn realized he actually sounded like a tactical officer now and not the misplaced physicist he really was.
Skarn stared at the display, every nerve in her body tingling. It wasn’t just the possibility of First Imperium ships, though that was enough to worry about. This transit was special, the final one. If the data retrieved from X48 II was correct, this system’s third planet was home to a race of beings whose DNA had been manipulated by the First Imperium, just as humanity’s had been.
Her mind raced. Would they be friendly? Would her people be able to communicate with their distant cousins? Would they be technologically advanced…able to help in the war against the Regent? Her people had traveled deep into the darkness, alone and at great risk, just to answer those questions.
“Scanners coming online, Captain.” Inkerman’s voice was still strong, perhaps just a bit of his earlier nervousness creeping back in. He hesitated, staring down at his screen. Then he looked up and said, “No contacts, Captain.”
Skarn leaned back in her chair, feeling the relief everywhere in her body. “Okay, Lieutenant, let’s do what we came for. Set a course for planet three so we can get a closer look.
* * *
“This is incredible…it’s like ancient Greece or Rome, but these people did it hundreds of thousands of years ago.” Sasha Debornan stood on top of the hill, staring out over the remnants of the city below. There wasn’t much left, just a few mounds here and there, and a pillar or
two sticking out of the sand. But Debornan was an archeologist, and she saw in the worn and weathered remains the glory of an ancient civilization that had once flourished here.
At least archeology was one of her many disciplines. She was the kind of officer sometimes posted to Alliance vessels to cover a variety of little-needed duties, an academic with backup training in some moderately useful skill, like climatology, that justified her existence onboard. At least until the First Imperium showed up. Suddenly, officers with her training were desperately sought after, and she’d gone along with the fleet to pursue the opportunity of a lifetime, the chance to explore worlds once inhabited by the only intelligent alien lifeform ever encountered.
It had been a fluke that stranded Debornan with the fleet. She’d taken a shuttle from Sigma-4 to Midway to use the labs on Compton’s flagship to speed her analysis of some First Imperium material samples…and she was scheduled to go back in less than twenty-four hours. But then, Augustus Garret blew the warp gate and stranded them all.
She’d gone into a deep depression at first, feeling sorry for herself, for the cruel trick fate had played on her. But then she’d started exploring the First Imperium worlds along the fleet’s line of retreat, and the pursuit of knowledge had reinvigorated her. She’d been overwhelmed by the magnificence of the ancient cities on those planets, but these ruins, though far more primitive and worn down than those of the First Imperium, were wondrous in their own ways.
“You’d know better than me, Sasha. It barely looks like anything. Just a couple hills.” Don Rames was about forty meters down the ridge from Debornan. The two scientists wore environmental suits, and they spoke over their com units.
“Look at the size of the city, Don.” She pointed off to the right. “See that line over there? I’d bet that bottle of wine I’ve got stashed on Midway that’s the remnant of a wall.” She turned and waved her arm in the opposite direction. “And that’s another one, way over there. That makes the enclosed area two, perhaps three times the size of Ur or Uruk. If we’re looking at this world’s equivalent of Mesopotamia, it’s not a comparison where we do well.”
“Well, they’re gone now. I’m not picking up any contaminants or abnormal biologic agents. There are some bacteria and viruses, but nothing like a species-killing bioweapon.” He paused and looked out over the remains of the city. “Of course, whatever killed these people, it happened a long time ago. If it was bacterial or viral, perhaps the strain died out. It might have needed the host to survive. We’re going to need to find some fossilized remains if we want a chance at a real answer.”
“I don’t see any indications of any technological weaponry,” Debornan said, staring down at a handheld scanner as she did. “No signs of blast damage, no scarring on the stones, no abnormal background radiation. If the First Imperium killed these people, they didn’t use conventional weapons.”
She sighed softly. The excitement of exploring the ancient civilization had momentarily distracted her, turning her away from the sadness and disappointment everyone on Cornwall had felt when the first scans came in. From the moment the ship entered orbit her scanners had reported no artificial energy generation on the planet. None at all. In an instant, all hope of finding a technologically advanced civilization was lost.
The initial data retrieved by the landing party had been darker still. Yes, intelligent beings had lived on this world. Yes, from all she could tell on initial inspection, they had been very much like humans. But they were dead now, gone, the planet a lifeless graveyard, with nothing but some very ancient ruins left behind to show that sentient beings had ever lived there.
Sasha turned and held out a scanning device, staring down at a small screen. “I can’t imagine the civilization these beings would have produced by now. They were hundreds of millennia ahead of us…and now they’re gone. Just like the people of the First Imperium.”
“Do you think the Regent wiped them out?” Rames was holding a small pile of rocks in his gloved hand, but he dropped them and walked over toward Sasha. “Or maybe they destroyed themselves.”
“That’s unlikely,” she replied almost immediately. “They were amazingly advanced compared to where Earth people were at the same time, but this was still a primitive society, on par perhaps with Sumer or Babylon. It’s very unlikely a civilization at that technological level could wipe itself out. If it wasn’t the Regent that destroyed these people, it had to be a natural disaster, an asteroid impact or a virulent plague. Some kind of extinction event.” She paused, looking out over the ruins as she did. “And so far, I see zero evidence of that.”
“But if it was the Regent, wouldn’t there be some trace remaining? Radiation or some kind of damage from technological weapons? Would the Regent’s forces come, commit genocide, and then meticulously clean up after themselves…so much so that we can’t detect a trace that they were here?”
Sasha turned back toward Rames, but she didn’t say anything. He had good questions, but she didn’t have any answers. None that made any sense.
“The Regent’s forces certainly didn’t worry about cleaning up after themselves on the First Imperium worlds. There was wreckage everywhere on X48 II, and plenty of traces of the fighting that destroyed the people there.”
“I don’t know, Don,” Sasha said. “Obviously, the fighting on the First Imperium worlds was high tech on both sides, so that’s a difference. But I have no idea why we can’t detect any signs of the Regent’s forces here. If I had to guess, I’d still say these people were exterminated by the forces of the First Imperium.” She paused. “There are just no signs of a naturally-occurring disaster on a species-killing scale. And the chance that these people eradicated themselves fighting with spears and chariots is unlikely to the point of impossibility.”
“So, what do we do?” He stood and looked at her.
“What can we do? We collect everything we can…fossils, building stones, air samples, water samples…a full scanning profile. And then we go back up to Cornwall and try to find our way back to the fleet. What happened to these people is a scientific curiosity now.” She looked down, a sad expression coming over her face. “Whoever they might have been—potential friends, reluctant allies, even enemies—they are gone now. They were gone before our oldest civilizations began to crawl their way out of savagery.”
Rames nodded, but he looked unsatisfied. Sasha understood. It was a disappointing end to their quest…and now they all had to face the reality of the trip back to the fleet, and the dangers they would encounter. All to return and report more hopeless news, yet another dead planet, its biological denizens destroyed by the paranoid wrath of the Regent.
Sasha twisted around, trying to rub her back against the inside of her suit. The itch had been bothering her for a few minutes, but now it was worse, almost a pain, like a tiny jab. Then it was gone, as suddenly as it had come on. She looked over at Rames, and for an instant she thought he was doing the same thing, twisting around as if he had a similar feeling. But then she wasn’t sure. He looked normal enough now.
You’re letting your mind run wild, she thought. It’s just hot in this suit. Sweaty, sticky. Itchy.
She pushed the whole thing out of her mind. Mostly, at least.
“Let’s get the crews to work and get everything we need.” She looked all around, and she felt a shiver between her shoulders. She’d expected to be overwhelmed by scientific curiosity, by the need to uncover all the secrets of this ancient civilization. But her desire for knowledge was overcome with a sense of dread. She couldn’t explain it, but this place was haunted…and they had to leave, as soon as possible. “I’d just as soon get out of the graveyard as soon as we can.”
He turned toward her, nodding. “I’ll second that.”
Chapter Three
From the Research Notes of Hieronymus Cutter
It has been two months since we fled X48, since the fleets of the renegade command unit saved us. In that time I have refined my virus, improved it in every wa
y I can devise. Though its use is still limited by our ability to deliver it to an enemy AI, it is clear that First Imperium units are vulnerable to its effects. I do not foresee a way to utilize it against the fleets pursuing us, though neither did I predict the method and effect of its delivery into the rogue command unit. It is hard for a mind as oriented to science as mine to accept the undeniable uncertainty that surrounds us. I have tried to learn to work in terms of probability and even belief.
Much of my time has also been spent assisting the fleet’s damage control efforts. Many ships have been badly damaged, and though the converted factory ships are now producing ammunition and spare parts, many ships have required unorthodox modifications to their systems, workarounds for needed repairs that are impossible outside of a space dock. It is an axiom that in times of war and great need, advancement moves at an accelerated pace, and so it has been in the fleet. My team and I have devised a number of improvements to our ships’ power production and transfer systems, and we have increased the firepower of our x-ray laser batteries almost 80%. If we had the means to build a new Yorktown-class battleship, we could now produce a vessel that had 40% more thrust, double the firepower, and a host of other improvements. Perhaps, if we are able to find Shangri la—and escape the deadly pursuit that has plagued us since X48—we will one day have that chance.
For all the effort and ceaseless labor involved in keeping the fleet functioning, my thoughts have been elsewhere, with Almeerhan, a being of the First Imperium who died, depending on your perspective, either two months or five hundred thousand years ago. His words haunt my dreams, my deepest thoughts, and I long to spend every hour deciphering the massive store of data he gave us. I have devoted what time I could—and Ana has worked almost around the clock, slowly unlocking the ancient mysteries contained in that silver cylinder.