“Technology had to be primitive to prevent infection. It took generations of researchers to overcome that risk”. She sighed whimsically almost to herself “The earliest Imperial ships used sails to catch solar radiation pressure. Hence sailors, not astronauts or cosmonauts”.
He tried to project a smile into his voice, knowing Halkyone couldn’t see his face “Are you a history buff?”.
“A little bit”, Halkyone paused as if deciding whether to say more, “As a child I always thought the notion of sailing between planets was romantic, like a repeat of old Earth’s age of sail on a bigger canvas. One of my ancestors sailed on the Patrocles”.
He joined in with what little history he could remember “The ship that circumnavigated the home system?”, he underplayed his knowledge to keep Halkyone talking, “That marked the end of the second dark age, didn’t it?”.
“Yeah, my family have an eight-hundred year old photo of the crew and some other keepsakes”. Finally, Halkyone started to sound like she could cope with her present misfortune.
The reprieve didn’t last long.
One of Asteria’s crew chose that moment to interrupt. Dardanus hadn’t seen him enter, but he’d heard the sound of footfalls close by. When he turned to look, a short man with the scars of radiation burns on his bald head was standing outside his cell. The sailor’s muscular build quickly disabused Dardanus of the notion that he could to attack and escape. The rank insignia on his green ship suit indicated he was an Anthypaspistis and the name patch had Colaeus written on in big golden letters.
Colaeus eyed him directly sitting on the floor. “Four huge Hippei dump you on my ship, then leave. You don’t look like a threat to the Empire to me. Tell me son, what am I supposed to do with you?”.
Dardanus replied “I supposed letting me go is out of the question?”.
Colaeus’ eyes narrowed “We’re in space. Where you gonna go?”.
Dardanus sighed, it felt like he’d done nothing but sigh for the last forty-eight hours “I really need to send a message to ……”, he tailed off “someone. I have no idea really”.
Colaeus gave him a look up and down. From out of view he pulled up a mug of tea and a toolbox to sit on. “So tell me your message”.
Dardanus figured he either knew everything already, or was genuinely out of the loop about the Prince’s Blight infection and subsequent warmongering. Dardanus had nothing to lose by telling his tale. He launched into why he thought he’d been brought be onboard the Asteria and why.
Colaeus just sat listened.
At the end of Dardanus’ story, Colaeus finished his mug of tea and left without a word. Halkyone spoke up “Well at least they didn’t throw us out the airlock”.
Dardanus lay back in his cell, stared at the ceiling and grunted “What did we have to lose?”.
In Frankenstein’s CIC, Cartwright lay with her upper body buried in the Tactical post’s maintenance port. She and the work crew had been going through the ancient mainframe for days without much success. Her grandfather’s personality had disappeared back into the deep recesses of the computer network.
Despite the age, the modern built Dreadnought closely resembled the Frankenstein. After the first Blight, following the Terran Exodus, uninfected examples of humanity’s highest technological achievements were scattered across much of known space.
Once the second dark age had passed, the old tech was dusted off, used and copied. Once access codes were reset, fresh mass was added to the auto-repair system and Blight countermeasures were installed, the old ships were good as new.
Yet here she was, covered in a thousand years of grime, trying to get the ship’s computer to run without the Grandaddy’s Ghost simulator v0.8 alpha. “Hear that Grandad, you’re an alpha. Not a beta! I never let anyone else test you” she muttered coldly to herself. After sixteen hours, she still couldn’t get the ship’s computer network to reboot.
She dragged herself back into the room and took a sip of hot coffee from her mug. Except it was stone cold and tasted fuck awful. Her last shred of patience stopped her hurling the mug straight at the main display.
Simultaneously her mind’s eye chimed and a disembodied head appeared on CIC’s main screen.
“Hannah, you miss ol’ granddad yet?”.
Her face was a flat mask “I am not in the mood. I’ve been up for twenty hours. If you aren’t here to help, then go delete yourself”.
“Hannah, that’s not gonna work”.
She grunted out “What isn’t?”.
“Hannah, you dumped that infiltration pack into the ship’s network. By now, the whole network has been remade in my image. You can’t reboot and start again”.
She dialled back her frustration “I’ve been ordered to get this ship ready for Admiral Hecate. I don’t have time to fight you, Grandad”.
“I know. Ok. I get it. Orders. If Intelligence fears are right, we need to get this ship and that damn Space Pirate back to the Empire pronto”.
Cartwright sighed “Grandad, please don’t tell me you’ve hacked the Fleet Intelligence database”.
Frederick Cartwright’s disembodied laugh was incredibly disconcerting. “No, Hannah”.
Cartwright replied fearfully “Is that no I won’t tell you? Or no, I haven’t done that?”.
“Hannah, I know who’s going to own this ship shortly. I’ve just made some new friends. Ones who are very well acquainted with the events in the galaxy outside of Cloud base” Fred chuckled to himself. “The Muse convocation here is huge”.
She sighed in frustration “Fine. Can you just help me set up the CIC posts so they can be used without a mind’s eye, please?” her tone was exactly the one she’d used to get her way as a kid.
“Yes, Hannah of course. As long as you please stop trying to delete me” his own synthesised voice sounded like a grown man asking a toddler to stop headbutting him in the daddy-bags for attention.
“And you have to behave like a normal computer when they come onboard. No more Skynet-takeover bollocks”.
Somehow, her Grandfather’s face on the display managed to look distracted, then he said “I’ve got to go now. Camperdown and Hecate are coming aboard. We’ll talk again later”.
The CIC screen switched to internal security, showing the progress of the two Admirals through the ship.
“Okay Grandad go already”.
“I’ll be back”.
She took a couple of minutes to tidy up her tools and clear up her workspace. She belatedly remembered to seal up the maintenance hatch, setting traps for Flag Officers was frowned on. Mostly by flag officers.
The CIC hatch slid open. Camperdown stepped inside and approached the tactical post where she was standing, followed by his Lakedaemian shadow. Cartwright politely acknowledged them both then waited.
Admiral Camperdown looked nervous, very much out of character for him. Conversely, Admiral Hecate looked suspicious, very much in character.
Camperdown came over to the tactical post near Cartwright “Lieutenant, thank you for taking the time out of your work on the Frankenstein to speak with us”.
Cartwright nodded politely “No problem, Sir, Ma’am”, Hecate’s suspicious expression remained.
Camperdown looked a little more relaxed in response to Cartwright’s calm. He continued “Please brief the Admiral and I on your progress readying Frankenstein for handover”.
Cartwright felt an inner warmth of relief as she tapped the adapted controls projected from the Tactical post in demonstration “As you can see, I’ve been working on a revised interface removing the reliance on the mind’s eye style neural implant” her smile grew as she deliberately threw more technobabble in the conversation and saw both Flag Officers respond in time honoured fashion, boredom and confusion.
She summed up her argument “So to provide a command summary, we take our didactic education laser and burn the knowledge of how to use the Frankenstein’s adapted controls directly into Lakedaemian brains. Like we do with our
children and the school curriculum”.
Both Admirals nodded, smiled and complimented her ideas. In the case of Camperdown, he had the cultural background to understand the implications, but it had clearly passed over Hecate’s head. Cartwright could write anything into the brains of Lakedaemians and no-one would be any the wiser.
Chapter 24
Dardanus sat at the rear of Asteria’s CIC. The crew all paid him no attention despite the hulking sailor next to him conspicuously holding an old chemical propellant pistol. It somehow hadn’t set off any security alarms. The old sailor handled it with practiced skill, though Dardanus suspected it was for his protection as much as anything.
Battlegroup Apollonius had stood off Naval Station Hyperion, in the Antioch system, for five hours now. Dardanus assumed it was due to the message Asteria had managed to ping off by message laser as the Battlegroup jumped in.
Asteria’s wily skipper, Ploiarchos Elias had managed to displace Asteria ahead of the main formation and make it look accidental. Elias had gained just enough distance to send off a warning by comms laser, without detection by any of the other ships of the battlegroup.
Dardanus had been asked for a code word the local Inquisition could recognize. The string of numbers and letters he’d babbled back had come with the warrants issued by CID. He hoped the warrant broadcast had got that far.
When the Apollonius queried why Asteria was out of formation, the skipper had sworn at the nearest engineer in CIC, then apologized for the performance of his old ship.
When the transmission was finished, he took the shocked sailor to one side and shook his hand, whilst loudly thanking him. The poor man could not have looked more confused.
The comms officer sitting near Dardanus watched message traffic fly back and forth between Apollonius and Naval Station Hyperion. Each query and response brought no resolution. Eventually the local battlegroup undocked and sailed protectively between Battlegroup Apollonius and Hyperion. At the same time, numerous message drones were dispatched across the system to alternate jump points. Prince Ptolemy’s ships couldn’t hope to intercept enough to make a difference. The Empire would soon know of his treachery.
After another four hours of indecision, Prince Ptolemy decided remaining in Antioch system was pointless and directed all his ships to move out to the final target, Atlantis.
In Asteria’s CIC, Ploiarchos Elias guided Dardanus through a hatch at the rear of the room, into his day cabin. The Sailor standing guard moved to cover the main CIC hatch, leaving them alone.
Dardanus felt no fear now, Elias and most of the crew had to be uninfected. They’d just helped him when it mattered most, preventing the infection spreading and Ptolemy getting his reinforcements.
Dardanus looked Elias over with an eye practiced in reading people. He looked haggard. His ship suit was rumpled and his face unshaven. His grey hair looked lank and his steely eyes had big circles beneath them. “I didn’t believe what Anthypaspistis Colaeus told me” he paused, choking on the truth “Not until they refused the Battlegroup’s approach”.
Elias looked away “I expected to be escorting you off my ship in manacles, into the arms of your fellow Inquisitors”. Dardanus started to speak but was cut off as Elias continued “What the hell is my ship caught up in?”.
It took Dardanus two hours to convince the Ploiarchos of his evidence, Halkyone’s own discoveries that began the investigation and the conspirators’ reaction to the warrants he applied for.
Elias listened intently, every time Dardanus expected shock or surprise, Elias offered only weary acceptance.
When Dardanus finished speaking, Elias reached into his desk, his face a mask. At first Dardanus thought he’d made a mistake, Elias was the Prince’s conspirator and having given out everything he knew. Dardanus was relieved when Elias placed out a bottle of very old cognac in front of him. He poured a healthy measure for each and told his own tale.
Elias had known Prince Ptolemy for a long time and had been a loyal servant. The young Prince had served in the Imperial Navy with Elias. He’d watched as an ambitious and intelligent man turned bitter and hateful after the succession crisis.
The Emperor had disobeyed Imperial law and had a natural daughter in secret. For hundreds of years the Lakedaemon Empire had been ruled by clones of the first Emperor. The Clone Princes were raised to replace him. As the Empire grew beyond one man’s ability to control, they were sent out to rule new Principalities that were added by conquest or colonisation. When the Emperor died, his memories were passed to the senior Prince.
However, when the Princess came of age the Emperor rewrote the Act of Imperial Succession. It made her the Crown Princess, first in line for the Imperial throne. Ptolemy and two of his brothers objected. The Emperor retaliated, dropping them further down the line of succession and banishing them to the furthest flung Principalities as a warning to the rest. Ptolemy, in his rage, was driven to revenge.
Elias had escorted Prince Ptolemy to a meeting aboard a Blight ship in the Socotra System, ten days ago. Elias couldn’t stomach parleying with humanity’s greatest foe. Now with the revelations from Dardanus, Elias’ face turned ashen. He knew he could no longer remain loyal to his Prince.
Aboard the flag ship of Battlegroup Apollonius, after days of travel across the interstellar void, Prince Ptolemy was riven with frustration and joy. Despite his treacherous brothers failing to support him, his ships had arrived orbit over the planet Atlantis. His goal was within sight.
The fleet of advanced ships that promised him dominion over the Empire and perhaps all of known space were below him. He just had to work out where.
The blue gas giant’s atmosphere was thick and turbulent. It’s gravity well was punishing. He directed his battlegroup spread out in low orbit to sweep the whole planet with magnetic anomaly detectors. For one last time, Ptolemy had to endure the pressure of his own imagination, whilst the minds of his crews were occupied with their jobs.
Ninety minutes later, a destroyer, the Ephialtes, detected a fault in the magnetic flux lines of the planet. More of Ptolemy’s ships changed orbit to form up with the Ephialtes and help localize the contact. Slowly, the battlegroup reformed and teased out the nature of the leviathan below.
One contact became three. The first and smallest, was travelling along sedately below the local speed of sound. Below it two more, far bigger contacts lurked, where gas gave way to liquid.
Ptolemy strode into the Apollonius’ CIC to find the senior crew looking pleased they had found their target, but troubled as to how to proceed. He marched up to the command level, took a seat next to Apollonius’ commanding officer and said aloud “Comms, get me a signal to Ephialtes”, preferably with a minimum of grovelling, he added to himself. A snivelling “Yes, your Highness” rang out from the direction of a faceless member of the Comms section. He sighed mentally. A moment later “Ephialtes on channel six for you, your Highness”.
The face of the Ephialtes commanding Officer, an Antiploiarchos unknown to the Clone Prince. He looked pleased with himself. “Your Highness”.
Ptolemy’s face was stony “Ephialtes, I’m sending you a flight path on the data link. Follow it. Immediately”.
The luckless Antiploiarchos looked down at his data display. Ptolemy could pinpoint exactly when he realised his fate. Every muscle in the Officer’s body seemed to spasm at once. “Your Royal Highness, please we’ve served you so well. We found your target. Let us keep serving you”
Ptolemy cut him off in a furious whisper “Get your ship moving immediately, or I’ll have your next in command shoot you in the head and carry out my orders” his voice grew harsher “And if they fail to obey I’ll keep going until there’s no one left alive” his contempt for this coward was almost too much to bare, but he kept his tone level “then I’ll send your ghost ship down on remote control”.
He paused “Now get on with it” and gestured dismissively to the comms section to cut the channel.
The tension in
Apollonius’ CIC rose to frightening intensity. Everyone avoided his gaze. They dared not even look at Ptolemy, lest they be next.
A voice from the warfare section called “Ephialtes is starting her turn your Royal Highness”. Why the military reported every minor detail verbally he would never really understand, when he could see it for himself on one of the numerous situation screens plastering the CIC’s walls.
Half a minute later “Life pods separating from Ephialtes”. Then fifteen seconds after that “She’s firing her drive, your Highness”. The disinterested expression never left Ptolemy’s face.
“Ephialtes is dropping from orbit” the voice paused “Atmospheric entry in forty-one minutes…mark”.
Ptolemy began tapping away furiously on his controls. Orbital mechanics and sensor ranges flashed past his eyes. After two minutes of furious effort, he was satisfied with his work. “Comms”, Ptolemy called out “Send out my new formation orders on the data channel”. Across the slightly diminished battlegroup, ships lined up to be next to take the drop.
In the meantime, he noted the Asteria, his old cruiser, picking up the life pods from Ephialtes. Hardly worth the time to collect cowards, but they were last in line to dive, even after his own Apollonius, so they had the time. He knew he could trust Asteria’s commanding officer. He’d known Ploiarchos Elias for years and considered him a friend. The man was as brave as he was clever.
Soon enough Apollonius began her own death dive, still monitoring the ships ahead of her. Ptolemy never knew if the Ephialtes missed its unsuspecting target deliberately or by accident. He watched in frustration as it disappeared into the depths of the blue world’s unforgiving aether, never to be heard from again.
In a much higher orbit, the Blight gestalt aboard ex-Palantine watched the exploits of its Royal cat’s paw with a mixture of incredulity and disappointment. If the Blighted Ptolemy had managed to infect more of the Lakedaemon Empire’s Clone Princes with the new vassal strain, it would have had three or four times the ships to take the target.
The Syracuse Deception Page 17