The Syracuse Deception

by T. S. Williams

  “I have a lot of political backing” Hecate said cryptically. “I might not get another command though”.

  “How long have you been in?”.

  “Forty years. Most of it on ships. So I’m really not ready for the beach. You?”.

  “I’ve been commanding a junk yard since the Treaty of Good Faith. I am really not popular with the powers that be”.

  “Your shoulder has a Psy-Guard patch. How did you end up in the High Guard Fleet?”.

  “I will answer. But over food. The menu is displayed on the table top”.

  Seph flicked up and down the many options. She came to rest on fillet steak. Fresh meat was never heard of on Lakedaemian Starships. Too space intensive. She tapped out her choice. While she did, Lennard seemed to sit still, lost in thought.

  “Aren’t you eating?” she asked suspiciously.

  “I placed my order”.

  “Famed Laurentian brain computer, right?”.

  “No. I ordered before you arrived” Magnus said smiling. “I was reviewing the CIC log. No dramas so far, but contact is sporadic deep underground”.

  There was a chime. Then Lennard stood up, walked over to a section of wall, which slid aside to reveal a tray with two meals on plates with cutlery and condiments. He returned and passed out the bounty.

  As they ate the conversation picked up again “I was assigned to the Psy-Guard in my childhood. Both my parents are psy-sensitive. My abilities didn’t manifest until I was in my mid-teens”.

  He paused, letting the old memories rush through his mind.

  “When I was at the Institute, I didn’t fit in. Some of my talents were poorly understood and very hard to control. It was deemed safest to end my training there. I still had a century of service, so I asked to join the Fleet. That was forty-one years ago”.

  “Sounds like regret, Lennard?”.

  “I was glad to join Patrol Flotilla. Up until the Treaty of Good Faith, that was the best decision of my life. The last six years of sitting at Tor Station were difficult. Knowing I had another fifty-nine to go was worse”.

  “Why were you posted into exile?”

  “The fleet was shrinking, it was take that job or go find a new role in life. I was hoping an exploration flight might come up, but Laurentia has really closed in on itself. After this, I may find my career forcibly changed”.

  “What would you do?”.

  “Astro-engineering maybe, or join the Humane League”, Seph looked a little confused as he spoke, “We don’t have actual prisons. Most serious crimes result in internal exile to a penal colony. The League are responsible for the welfare of internal exiles. It’s unpopular work”.

  “We don’t have much prison space either. Most of our serious criminals are re-educated, then relocated to another planet and watched closely. Very few reoffend”.

  “Looks like neither supremacist or integrationist has quite perfected human cultures”.

  “Careful, Lennard. Back home, the Ephorate would probe anyone who spoke or heard such words”.

  “Then, Persephone, we each hold the other’s career in our hands”.

  “Perhaps, but what of it? Duty decides our actions”.

  “The Kingdom wants closer links with your Empire”.

  “The Lakedaemon Emperor tends to consider foreign powers as enemies either current or future. Peaceful relations are temporary for him”.

  “We have one mutual interest”.

  “Yes, the Blight. The last crusade was a hundred and twenty years ago. A mutual enemy made friends of purists, supremacists and integrationists”.

  “The Kingdom signed the Treaty of Good Faith barely six years ago, now we face a Blight resurgence. Isolationism and delegation to the neighbours is clearly won’t stop the Blight”.

  “Before the treaty, My Empire and your Kingdom were deep in a cold war. We can’t begin a Blight crusade with one eye constantly on each other”.

  “Yeah! We have to secure this current crisis together, then force our governments to work together on the bigger picture”.

  She looked thoughtfully “Dictating a whole star nation’s foreign policy is pretty ambitious for a mere Commander. Don’t you think, Lennard?”.

  He looked back “Every problem is an opportunity, when looked at the right way Persephone”.

  He raised his glass in salute. He felt blessed and cursed that it was filled only with water.

  Down on Socotra 3, Cartwright was getting claustrophobic. She felt trapped like a rat in a cage. She was tired from fighting, her adrenalin constantly spiking. She would be glad to escape back to Dreadnought. Once she realized how bottled up they were, she almost charged the Blight constructs intent on fighting to death.

  Analyzing the problem like an engineer, she had an epiphany. This was an underground shipyard. There had to be a way in and out for ships.

  She’d hidden her fears from her troops and worked her way round the cavern looking for it. The idea of either being captured and experimented on, resulting in death or infection were enough to stave off thoughts of just lying down and quitting.

  She crept a short distance inside a rock fissure, looking for any hint it would lead to some kind of exit. The other kept her maser carbine at the ready.

  Like lightening, a construct leapt from a small niche. It seemed to grow larger as it flew at her. It slammed in to her chest before she could react, knocking her to the ground, her maser carbine dropping from her hands instinctively as she moved to defend herself. Her mind’s eye tried to transmit for help, but something blocked the signal.

  Another construct landed heavily on her feet. She lashed out with arms, battering the crude covering on the construct, but failing to unseat it. She did manage to lift her hips, one hand grabbed the gauss pistol from her leg holster. Her arm popped up like a piston. The pistol bucked in her hand. The constructs burst apart. She rolled up on to a knee and slotted two more. She slapped her pistol back into the holster. Her left hand flashed out and grabbed her carbine. She laid down fire into the fissure, then rushed back into the main cavern, her heart pounding.

  Since making contact with the small party of survivors, the landing party had been under constant attack. She had no way to send word to the surface. The original relays weren’t working, probably destroyed. The dog drones and smart missiles sent to replace them, didn’t make it through. She was now twenty minutes late for the scheduled check in with Dreadnought.

  Cartwright moved back into the main cavern, drawing her team back into a coherent formation. Blighters kept trying to leave the tunnels around the ancient starship. Athena and the small contingent of paras leapt on suit jets, zipping around the cavern, wrecking them left and right. The Hippeis moved fast and furious around the ground level, unable to match the Laurentians’ agility.

  The few military survivors from the base huddled inside the starship, nominally guarding the science team trying to access the ship’s functions. In reality, they were near collapse and good for little.

  The Blight intelligence that had so expertly fought the Lycurgus and her escorts was thankfully lacking here. Cartwright couldn’t tell if this was an older strain or if the new strain had the same limitations. If all the constructs and infected came on at once, they would be overwhelmed soon.

  What she did know was, they couldn’t keep this up much longer. They were running out of ammo. She set off for the ship’s main computer, via mind’s eye she ordered her now empty tool-mule to meet her there.

  The ancient starship was an odd blend of familiar and alien. In many places, form followed function. One Casimir Effect Generator, looked much like another. However, where Laurentian systems use white, blue or black, the eye that designed the archeo-tech of Avalon and Socotra 3 liked reds, greens and yellows. Staring too long at the few functioning systems could easily bring on a headache.

  As she walked through the corridors, in her mind’s eye, Cartwright could see the background carrier wave used in Laurentian technology to allow wireless int
erfaces. The familiar, overlaid the foreign at every turn.

  After a few minutes, she found the room she wanted. A few Lakedaemian specialists played half-heartedly with their tools. Their hands and in some cases bodies, buried in access hatches to the primary computer system. It had indifferently resisted their efforts for decades and the mood of the would-be pioneers showed little had changed today.

  The tool-mule sidled up to her, like a guilty puppy. She sent a command via her mind’s eye. It rolled on its back, baring its belly. She slid her gloved finger around it, in a rough square. The armour melted away leaving a box the width of her head and half as tall.

  This was the reason she had been unofficially exiled to Tor Station. It was also the last copy. Her fingers found the contact points, her mind’s eye ran through her very own nervous system, communicating with her grandfather’s digitized mind residing in this very ordinary looking box.

  Her inner voice cried out “Hi Grandpa…. I know I promised not to bring you back again, but I really need one last favour”.

  She got no reply “Please”.

  The reply sounded like gravel rubbed together “Oh, my girl. You will be the second death of me. Or is it third?”.

  She sighed. “I never could say no to you…..”.

  She mentally projected her request, like a shout from her soul.

  The box in her hands started to dissolved, rapidly losing shape. She held her hands over an innocuous pillar that appeared to be carved from marble. The now fluid mass, flowed over the top, down the sides and then started disappearing, dissolving into the polished surface.

  All around the room, displays starting lighting up one by one. The electronic ghost of Major-General Frederick Cartwright found itself with a body once more. This one was somewhat taller than he remembered.

  Lieutenant Cartwright was desperate when she had applied her grandfather to the ancient starship’s primary computer. Now the nanobots that had made up his old storage medium were spreading themselves around the starship via repair capillaries. Where they landed, they acted just like the Blight, overriding the ancient, untainted electronics firmware, unlocking the software restraints.

  The archeo-tech found strewn across the galaxy usually came in two flavours. It was either ravenous Blight, desperate to infect any biological or machine it came in contact with, or it was beautiful works of engineering, vulnerable to its hostile cousin.

  Numerous precursor civilisations had inhabited the galaxy long before humans even knew there was anything above the clouds in the sky. They had risen and fallen leaving behind marvellous technologies along with terrifying hazards. The Blight was the most prevalent danger, but far from the only one.

  Laurentian society had experience of good and bad examples. Cartwright, like most children on Avalon, had visited the Deep Crust shipyard and seen leviathan starships lying inert. She had strolled through White Spire City suburbs and looked up at the thin thread than ran high into the sky, all the way to Sky Keep, thirty-nine thousand kilometres away in ground-synchronous orbit.

  Her mind’s eye drew her attention to a new message. Her Grandfather’s voice rang out excitedly “Kneel before me puny humans, worship your master, Frankenstein’s monster!!”. She sighed in exasperation and replied “Escape first, megalomania second Grandpa!”.

  Chapter 15

  In Dreadnought’s CIC, Magnus had just taken over the watch. As he settled down and buckled in, the sensor displays focused on the Socotra 3 base started singing out for attention. Dust and ash started billowing up from what looked like a caldera. With Dreadnought’s high orbit, a volcanic eruption posed no threat. The landing party, deep underground might well be at some risk, although he doubted one of the reputed Lakedaemian Artificer morae would have built a base near an active or insufficiently dormant volcanoes.

  The dust, ash and smoke continued to boil out of the ground like the very mouth of Hell had opened. Even watching from nearly forty-thousand kilometres away was not enough to feel safe. The hills around the caldera began visibly shaking.

  As suddenly as it began the eruptions stopped, though smoke and dust hung in the air over the caldera. A titanic shadow arose within the dust cloud then burst forth.

  Magnus and the CIC crew watched the first archeo-tech starship for one thousand years take flight.

  His mind’s eye let him react. Fast. He ordered Dreadnought to condition 1 in a heartbeat, then repeated his instruction verbally. Spoken orders in the High Guard were still a strong tradition. It gave a disparate group a shared situational awareness. Leadership, as ever, was the little things.

  He was about to order Dreadnought to open fire, when Able Telemetrist Kelly Devon at sensors cried out “IFF reads friend, our landing party is on that ship”.

  Shortly after, the main screen flickered, the tactical information disappeared and the familiar face of Lieutenant Cartwright appeared. “Dreadnought-Actual, Dreadnought-Actual, this is Lima-Papa-1-1. Request you check fire. Friendly unit making orbit”.

  “Lima-Papa-1-1, this is Actual. Authentication accepted. Climb to our altitude, then fall in line astern”.

  “We acknowledge Actual. Requesting fire mission on our launch coordinates”.

  “Lima-Papa-1-1, what am I shooting at?”.

  “Actual, Blight activity is high. The Lakedaemon base has been overrun. There are probably more of these ships back down there. Definitely other archeo-tech, but all survivors accounted for on this vessel, no friendlies left behind”.

  “Copy. Continue climb to orbit. Out”.

  Magnus called out the Tactical post “Guns, load Tall Boy rounds. Target the launch site. Don’t hit our landing party’s ride please. Open fire when ready”.

  Chief Gunner Sarah Bryant had the post for this watch. She replied “Aye aye Skipper”, between her mind’s eye and her hands flying over the weapon controls, rounds started raining down from the spinal launcher with satisfying rapidity.

  At first, there was no effect. After a few seconds, the ground around the launch site started shaking and flashing. After a few flashes, the mountains around the site disappeared into the earth, leaving a much larger crater. One last Tall Boy struck home, a spurt of white hot magma shot up out of the tortured landscape. The last round had tapped a last vestige of molten rock buried under the dormant volcano.

  Magnus beheld the destruction with more than a little pride and just a twinge of anxiety. He sighed “Nicely done, Chief. Now I have to go tell a Lakedaemon Admiral, I just blitzed her base”.

  Bryant looked up from her read outs “Perhaps the Admiral would accept a used starship in return Skipper. High mileage but a lot of optional extras…… Sir”.

  “I’ll bare it in mind. Sub-Lieutenant Bainham, you have control”.

  Bainham, had been guesting at engineering to cover the absence of Cartwright. He hadn’t expected to take a watch but snapped out “Aye Skipper, I have control” as Magnus disappeared through the CIC hatch.

  In the guest quarters, Admiral Hecate had mixed views on the news.

  “You blew up our research base”, her voice chilled his spine “Without speaking with me first, despite our joint mission. I don’t believe it”. Magnus swore he saw his own murder flash in her eyes.

  “I had no choice. Your whole facility was under Blight control. I was asked to provide an urgent ground strike. By our jointly agreed mission leader no less”. He refused to sound too apologetic.

  “This is an act of war”. She was looking into his eyes now, her rage focused like a laser.

  “If we’re at war, I’m not at liberty to share the product of our labours”.

  “What product?”.

  “Near 7 million tonnes of it, orbiting about two hundred kilometres astern of us”.

  “Stop talking in riddles, Commander”.

  “Our team rescued everything they could from your base. Survivors, military and civilian. Data and an artefact. An ancient starship.” Magnus paused. “If we are at war, I’m obliged to turn it all
over to Fleet Intelligence back home”.

  “What good is an old rust bucket to me?”.

  “It’s packed with exactly the technology your base was looking to extract”. The curiosity running across her face gave Magnus an opening to continue “Reactionless drives, gamma-ray weapons, advanced stealth, you name it. That nifty vessel has it”.

  “We’d jump a couple hundred years of development in twenty years. Our ships could match your own”. Her eyes grew wide, her mind blinded by possibilities and her voice warmed from liquid helium to sugary seduction “We can fight the Blight together, on equal terms. We’d be the two leading cultures of our factions. The rest would follow us”.

  She suddenly sounded wistful “When we’re done, we could live in peace. No need for half our people to live in poverty. No need to conquer and expand”.

  Before he could respond, her attention returned to the present, her tone changed again, suddenly less certain “When will you turn it over……. Magnus?”.

  In the meantime, Bainham held the watch in Dreadnought’s CIC and busy opening another can of worms, though he didn’t know it yet.

  Up the CIC’s big screen, Cartwright’s face had turned red “What do you mean he’s giving it away?”.

  Bainham continued on, oblivious to the danger “The Skipper didn’t exactly say that. He was in a hurry, Ma’am”.

  “Tell him to stop mucking about with that…. woman. I need to speak with him. Urgently Sub-Lieutenant”.

  The screen blanked before he could reply.

  Magnus had completed his meeting with Admiral Hecate and set both ships on course to leave the system as stealthily as possible. He’d then retreated to his cabin in the hopes of falling asleep. As military personnel throughout human history could attest, such hopes were usually forlorn.

  A chime in his mind’s eye drew his attention to a Cartwright’s request for contact. He’d brushed it off earlier, but he supposed he should deal with it sooner rather than later.

  He’d finally got around to personalizing his cabin. A comfortable armchair now squatted in an otherwise unused corner of his cabin. He sat himself comfortably, with a small measure of neat scotch in a glass and opened a voice channel to Cartwright onboard the ancient starship. He made a note to try and get a more satisfying name for their discovery than an alpha-numeric hull designation. He didn’t want or expect a long conversation. His attitude bled over to his voice. He sounded bored and tired. “Report please, Lieutenant”.