Shards of Eternity

by John Triptych

  Upon mention of her father, Ava speedily regained her composure. She turned and looked up at him. “Where is my brother’s shard?”

  Vega grinned. “With me, of course. Along with the other shards, I now have four. Isn’t it wonderful?”

  “You are a wicked man.”

  Vega tilted his head back and laughed. “You know, I think the antecessors must be on my side. To believe that Archon Hrothgar’s daughter would actually leave the safety of her palace, and for me to find her along with the fourth shard. It’s pretty clear that fortune smiles upon me. At least now we don’t need to get married.”

  Ava hissed. “You’re nothing but a thief.”

  Vega’s demeanor instantly changed as a streak of anger shone in his eyes. “I have all the cards, woman. You shouldn’t taunt me like this.”

  “That shard is mine,” Ava said. “My brother Jurt wanted me to have it for safekeeping.”

  Vega gave her a contemptuous look. “I’ve read about the tales of these relics. Your family used to be nothing more than a gang of hardscrabble miners until they found the shards, then all of a sudden they used these relics’ powers to conquer a swath of star systems. If your ancestors weren’t so lucky in finding them, you and your father would still be working as lowly caste members in those same pits as the slaves do now.”

  “You have no right to—”

  Vega cut her off with a wagging finger. “Uh uh. In this galaxy, the strong do whatever they want and the weak suffer whenever they can. You are so naive, so careless to walk around in public carrying such a priceless relic, therefore you have no one to blame but yourself.”

  Ava’s chin began to tremble. She wanted to cry again, and only a slight sense of anger was stopping her. “You didn’t have to do this.”

  “Of course I had to,” Vega said. “If it wasn’t me, it would have been somebody else. Your family’s holdings were ripe for the taking. It’s the way of the universe. Someone stronger or smarter always takes over.”

  “All we had to do was bribe or intimidate all the smugglers in Kurgan to keep an eye out for us,” Baz added. “Imagine our surprise when one of them told us they had you.”

  Ava could no longer cry. All she wanted to do was go home. To hug her father and ask for forgiveness. “What will happen now?”

  Vega pointed at Baz, who turned and opened the hatch once more. The captain of the Tiburon gestured towards the opening. “Now we’ll need you two ladies to enter another module. It’s a nice little sealed room with a very gorgeous view of the outside. Don’t try to escape though, because all you’ll end up doing is letting the air out, and you’ll die. If your father cooperates, then he gets you both back, safe and sound.”

  Ava hesitated. She could tell he was completely untrustworthy, and her streak of defiance began to increase. “I demand to speak with my father first.”

  “You don’t get to demand anything,” Vega said. “Now are you both gonna get moving or do I have to start spanking your spoiled royal butt?”

  Dilye held on to her mistress’s hand while leading her forward. “This way, my lady. I’m with you.”

  Vega grabbed Dilye by the throat as the handmaiden began passing beside him. “My, my, you are so devoted to your lady, aren’t you? Why don’t you join me? I could use a cat-eyed servant to attend to my needs. I promise you’ll have a lifetime of fun.”

  Ava used all her strength to pull Dilye away from him as both women hurried towards the opening. “Don’t you touch her.”

  Vega bitterly pushed them both away, and the two women nearly collided with a wall. “Get going then. You both deserve each other.”

  Baz gave them a condescending glare as his hand slid over to his holster. “Hurry it up, you two lizard-eyed mutants.”

  Dilye held her mistress close and righted their trajectory. A few seconds later, they both made it out into the corridor. Two other armed men flanked them, giving them menacing stares while leading the pair down the corridor and out of sight.

  Baz shook his head. “Ungrateful wenches. Why don’t we just kill them before stuffing their bodies into the capsule?”

  Vega’s smile returned. “You need to know how to play the game, Baz. We make them think they’re safe first, then we kill ’em. Did you order the crew to plant the explosives all over the pod?”

  “Sure did, boss,” Baz said. “You can remotely detonate them using your battle suit’s com-links.”

  “Pity we lost all our warbots. We could sure use them now,” Vega said. “Next to you, who’s our best guy who can maneuver in null gee using an Armatus?”

  “JC Metcalf, he’s ex-Star Force. Served as a Spaceborne infantry. Do you want him in charge when we do the exchange?”

  “No,” Vega said. “I’ll be out there myself. Get my personal a-suit ready.”

  Baz’s eyebrows went up. “You’re going out there?”

  Vega’s voice had a noticeable irritability to it. “I have to. Those damned xtid are insisting on it. I gotta bring all the shards with me and test them once I make contact with the archon.”

  “What about me?”

  “You’re staying on the bridge,” Vega said. “And don’t ever leave without me.”

  “You can count on me, boss.”

  “I hope so,” Vega said. “If there’s going to be any shooting, make sure you don’t hit me.”

  “You got it.”

  “When I leave the Tiburon, I’ll be locking out the navigational systems via command override,” Vega said. “Lest you have any bright ideas about abandoning me.”

  “I’m offended, boss. You don’t trust moi?”

  “Pays to be cautious,” Vega said. “This system we’re in contains a lot of separate shadow zones, and they lead to all sorts of different places; that’s why I chose it.”

  Baz brought up the holographic system map on his wrist smartcom. “Red dwarf star with nothing but an asteroid field surrounding it. I was wondering why you chose this location.”

  “We’re just outside of the Scythian cluster, so this means the damned archon can’t bring his whole fleet in to support him. We also got lots of places to hide among the many drifting rocks out here, so we need to position the men where they can cover me.”

  “Metcalf knows what he’s doing,” Baz said. “This’ll be a cinch.”

  “Keep the Tiburon powered down and don’t fire up the radiators until we make the exchange,” Vega said. “Once I confirm I got the shards, then I’ll get back into the shuttle for an intercept course with you.”

  “Okay. What do I do about the archon?”

  “If he’s truly the loving father that we think he is, then he’ll make a beeline towards the hostages in the capsule,” Vega said. “I can kill him easily by detonating the charges we have, but I need to get a safe distance away so they can’t come after me.”

  “So we play it by ear?”

  “Of course. Wait for my signal.”

  “Where are the xtid in all of this?”

  “They gave me the coordinates to meet them in another star system, and that’s when I’ll hand the shards over and exchange them for the fake ones,” Vega said. “After that, we head back to Kurgan and take over.”

  “Why even hand them over? Let’s just take the relics and go.”

  “Don’t mess with the xtid,” Vega said. “If we just keep the crystals, they could send assassins after us in the future, and even though I’d have become a noble, there are lots of ways to kill a man.”

  Baz rubbed the back of his neck. “Those shards though. The stories about what they could do if you have all the pieces.”

  Vega took out a transparent cylinder from beneath the folds of his long coat and held it up. The four crystals glowed with a strange neon radiance. “I really could care less about them. These things are a means to an end—a life of luxury for us. Whatever the xtid plan to do with the shards is none of my business.”

  34 The Exchange

  The unnamed planetoid near the center of the aste
roid field had a full rotational period of only five hours, giving it a characteristic shape of an oblate spheroid. Its barren, pockmarked surface had wide degrees of gravity in differing places, with the strongest being close to fifteen percent of one-gee at its equatorial region, right where the exchange would take place.

  Using the smart vision of his helmet visor, Toto Vega looked down at the crater below him. Hours before, his crew had deposited a sealed capsule with the two hostages on the base of the caldera, and now they waited for the archon’s ship to arrive.

  Vega and four of his subordinates were hiding behind the walls of a nearby smaller crater. He hated the long downtime, especially while wearing an uncomfortable battle suit, but he could already imagine the kind of life he would lead once the final part of this affair was over.

  His remote camera feed lingered over the two women trapped inside the capsule. The Lady Ava Maladore and her handmaiden seemed to be sitting by the viewport, staring at nothing but dust and rocks, anxiously awaiting their fate. He had instructed them not to try and attempt to open their module, and they had reluctantly agreed, for they had no spacesuits to wear. The captives had enough life support to last for days, and Vega sort of envied them, for at least they had some space to move around in.

  Baz Wilkerson’s voice came over his com-link circuit. “Archon’s flagship coming into range.”

  “Okay, send them the message using the remote drone, then stand by.”

  “Roger that. Message sent.”

  Vega’s enhanced imaging had already spotted the old heavy cruiser Tighu approaching the planetoid. It had started out as a small spot in his virtual tactical map, before rapidly increasing in size. Shaped like a metallic lozenge with trailing spider silk radiators that glowed, the bio-ship looked like a radiant box jellyfish in a wine-dark ocean.

  After an hour, the Tighu maintained her distance, and he could now see a lone Concordance shuttlecraft approaching the surface near the craters. His message specifically stated that the archon’s ship would not approach any further than a hundred thousand klicks, and it seemed they were cooperating. Nevertheless, he had already armed the explosive charges along the capsule’s superstructure, and his readouts came back with an affirming green indicator, ready to be morphed into a detonating red at the mental flick of a switch.

  He activated his com-links as the shuttlecraft hovered a few klicks above the crater where the capsule had been deposited. “That’s as far as your transport goes, Archon.”

  Hrothgar Maladore’s voice came over his helmet’s speakers. “My daughter, is she in that pod?”

  “I’m sure you can scan it yourself from where you are to confirm,” Vega said. “Let me give you permission to view the camera feeds inside the capsule.”

  After a minute, the archon’s voice became softer. “Yes, they are indeed there.”

  “Good,” Vega said. “Based on my remote scans, you are carrying the final shard with you, yes?”

  “I am.”

  “Alright, let’s get this over with,” Vega said. “I assume you have a spacesuit, so bring in your shuttle to the coordinates I’m sending you now. Once your transport lands, power down and you walk out alone to meet me.”

  There was a pause, and then archon answered him. “Yes, very well.”

  Inside the Tiburon’s bridge, Baz sat in the captain’s chair while staring at the tactical map on his console. The archon’s ship retained her present orbit and so far had not begun any overt moves. So far so good, he thought.

  The ship’s tactical officer turned and looked at him. “Baz, there’s something we need to look into.”

  Baz frowned. “When I’m sitting on this chair, you’ll address me as captain.”

  “Sorry … Captain.”

  “That’s better,” Baz said. “Now what is it?”

  “One of the nearby asteroids is giving off a strange reading every time I do a passive sensor sweep of it.”

  “Can you elaborate? What kind of reading?”

  “Almost like it’s giving off more heat than a ball of rock should.”

  Baz leaned back and crossed his arms. “You got any suggestions?”

  “We could launch a probe at it and take a closer look,” the tactical officer said. “Just to be on the safe side.”

  “Okay, launch a probe then.”

  “Yes, Captain.”

  The archon’s shuttle made a belly landing on the planetoid’s surface, leaving a cloud of dust all around it. Vega took cover behind a column of hardened regolith less than a klick away, using his com-links to maintain audio on both his ground team and with the Tiburon.

  JC Metcalf crouched down beside him while separately monitoring his own suit’s tactical display. “Captain, the archon is moving out, heading in this direction.”

  Vega rechecked the status of his battle armor’s weapons and jump systems. “Is he carrying the shard?”

  “Yes, sir. My radiation sensor is off the grid.”

  “Okay, I’m going to go meet him. Cover me.”

  “You got it, Captain.”

  The planetoid’s gravity was very light, and Vega leapt out into the open, initially misjudging his jump capabilities, which caused him to float in the airless void a little too long for his taste. Cursing over the com-links, he put less acceleration into his next hop and in a short time started to get the hang of it.

  Hrothgar wore a green bio-armored suit, the chitinous plating resembling a strange hybrid of human and insect. Antennae sprouted from the back of his helmet, like the feelers of a grasshopper. The archon stood on a flat plateau and waited silently as Vega made his way over to him.

  Vega used his jump jets to make a soft landing a few meters in front of the archon. Even though the lasers attached to his wrists stayed hidden in their banks, his shoulder-mounted gauss rifle could be brought to bear immediately.

  Approaching the archon, Vega held his hand up. “Okay, let’s see the relic.”

  Hrothgar pulled out a small container from a bulge at the back of his suit and held it in front of him. The transparent capsule held a glowing crystal shard. “If you truly want Scythia then you may have it. All I want now is to be reunited with my daughter and live out my life in peace.”

  Vega smiled as he strode forward and took the shard from the archon’s outstretched hands. Taking out his own container, he held the pieces closely together and couldn’t help but be entranced as all five shards began emitting a harmonious multicolored glow. “No wonder your people are so mesmerized with this. I could stare at them for hours.”

  “Now that you have what you want,” the archon said, “I want to go to my daughter.”

  Vega quickly placed the crystals into the rear compartment of his battle armor. “Go and get them.”

  “There is one thing I want to tell you about those shards, Vega.”

  Vega eyed him warily, ready to release his suit’s weapons for immediate use. “What?”

  “There are six shards, not five,” the archon said. “My family never bothered to look for the others, for we believe that to bring all the shards together shall bring forth a bad omen.”

  “And that’s why you lost your kingdom, for believing in such stupid stuff,” Vega said laughingly. “Now get outta here.”

  “Curse you, pirate,” the archon said before he turned around and activated his own jump jets.

  Vega thought about shooting the archon in the back as the old man hopped away but decided not to. He had won his kingdom and would return to Kurgan shortly as its undisputed ruler. Twisting sideways, he engaged his own jump jets as he headed back to where his team was hiding.

  On the Tiburon’s bridge, the tactical officer assumed remote control of the probe as it got closer to the nearby asteroid in question. Once it got into range, he could run a full sensor sweep of it and get a visual confirmation as well.

  Baz had just received the call from his captain, and he was getting impatient. “We need to swing by and pick up Vega already.”

&n
bsp; “I just need another minute to maneuver the probe and get it over to that floating rock’s dark side.”

  “Fine, but while you do that, I’m going to get us moving,” Baz said before turning to look at the helmsman. “Power up the engines and radiators, and let’s go pick up the shuttle.”

  “Yes, sir,” the chief pilot said as he began to activate the ship’s fusion drive.

  The tactical officer kept his eyes on the console in front of him. The angle of the asteroid slowly tilted as the probe began to orbit it. A loud beep startled him, and he switched to a computer-assisted analysis. “I got a contact!”

  Baz twisted his head over in the other man’s direction. “What kind of contact?”

  The tactical officer could only stare in surprise. “It’s a battle drone, and it just powered up.”

  When the probe came over her scopes, Karana knew the ruse was up. She quickly switched the battle drone’s mode to automatic and began to check her battle suit’s own weapons. The sudden lurch meant her small craft had fired up its engines and made for a high-gee acceleration towards the planetoid where Vega would be found. She hoped to close the distance quickly and get to the barren rock’s surface before her target could get away.

  Based on their pooled information about Toto Vega’s habits and star charts, Karana and Fytti had guessed correctly on both the star system and the asteroid where the deal would take place.

  The Nepenthe’s strike team had inserted themselves amongst the nearby planetoids and powered down, staying hidden for days. They managed to discreetly observe the Tiburon entering the asteroid field and inserting the capsule containing the prisoners onto the surface. The xtid were no doubt in the vicinity as well, but they couldn’t pinpoint their exact location, and standing orders from Captain Dangard told them to wait until the aliens revealed themselves.

  No sense in waiting now, she thought. I need to get down there.