Shards of Eternity

by John Triptych

  Zytll knew he would have to pay a sort of penance. I’ll have to ask the other primes to assist me in the diplomacy, but once they see the prize I have gotten on behalf of our empire, they will surely rally behind me in support.

  The prospect of being branded a rogue did enter his mind, yet Zytll remained confident his acquisition of the artifact would smooth over any such worries. Hopefully the archon and his daughter were both killed down on the planetoid, and it would mean House Dragos can easily be pacified if we help them take over Scythia.

  Within the Nepenthe’s battlesphere, Creull made a low growl as she focused on the contact moving away from the asteroid field. “The Wondrous Beacon is now heading towards the shadow zone directly below us.”

  “Helm,” Captain Dangard said. “Plot and execute an intercept course. Let’s see if these xtid would like a rematch.”

  “You got it, Captain,” Oana said.

  Zytll had barely gotten back into his command pod on the Wondrous Beacon’s bridge when the alert sounded. Placing the set of crystals in the compartment of his stalk-like chair, he buzzed with surprise. “Have you identified the contact?”

  “Yes, Executor,” the battle master said. “She’s the Nepenthe.”

  Zytll wriggled his four hands together in awe. “What are they doing here?”

  “According to the latest scans, she destroyed the Tiburon,” the battle master said. “She’s now accelerating with an eye towards intercepting us.”

  “These pirates are unfathomable,” Zytll said. “They have nothing to gain and everything to lose by being here.”

  “Perhaps it is for mere vengeance,” the attack master said.

  Zytll was unconvinced. “Revenge? They seek to pit themselves against us for that? How petty. If war is what they wish, then they shall have it. Sound the alert.”

  “Wondrous Beacon ready,” the battle master said. “All crew are prepared and weapons are on standby.”

  “This is turning even better than I expected,” Zytll said. “Now I can blame those pirates for it all when I am questioned by the arbiters afterwards. The ship is yours, Battle Master.”

  Creull narrowed her yellowish eyes while looking at the tactical console inside the Nepenthe. “They’re accelerating and turning towards us.”

  “Bring our delta-V up to four-gees,” Dangard said.

  Oana got pushed back into her pilot’s chair as the Nepenthe’s acceleration surged. “Done, Captain.”

  “Enemy vessel turning,” Creull said. “She’s attempting a high elliptical orbit at us.”

  Dangard nodded silently, ignoring the increased pounding of gravity on his chest and shoulders. There was no doubt the xtid ship was already firing at them by now, and he had to keep his mind clear to make a split-second decision as to where he would position the Nepenthe to best weather the damage directed at them.

  “I’ve fired forty salvos towards her next predicted positions,” Creull said. “I think it’s best we save the remaining lancers we have in the ship for when we get closer.”

  “No,” Dangard said. “Fire them now. Make her either commit to our destruction or decide to retreat.”

  “Yes, Captain,” Creull said. She didn’t understand his strategy at first, but soon realized what her superior was up to.

  The Wondrous Beacon had taken damage against the archon’s ship, and her acceleration was much slower for the rematch with the Nepenthe. Both vessels began wide orbital maneuvers, trying to keep their bows aimed at each other while jinking and adjusting their acceleration whenever their respective sensors detected a swarm of incoming kinetic ordinance.

  Making a hard turn, the Nepenthe took a barrage of high-speed solid shells into her port side, slightly damaging her radiators and forcing a rerouting of excess high temperature into her heatsinks. The rising thermal spikes had occurred so quickly that a number of spacers were engulfed in one of the maintenance rooms and severely burned.

  The Wondrous Beacon also absorbed some hits of her own, and a gauss round penetrated all the way past her outer hull and embedded itself in the vessel’s superstructure. The resulting cascade of damage tore through parts of the main fusion reactor, and the xtid battlecruiser could no longer maintain optimum acceleration.

  In order to compensate for a significant loss of delta-V, the Wondrous Beacon attempted a more compact orbit in order to keep her armored bow aimed at the Nepenthe.

  An automated missile battery, partly hidden at the edge of the nearby dark matter field, instantly calculated a fair chance of a hit with a surprise attack on the xtid ship and fired off its last salvo. It took less than twenty minutes for the lancer warheads to adjust their course before detonating their shaped fusion charges, sending a stream of highly accelerated molten metal towards their target.

  Several crewmembers inside the Wondrous Beacon’s bridge droned in surprise when the entire ship gyrated. The missile attack came from an unexpected direction, and it was mostly too late for evasive action. The resulting high velocity impacts further damaged the drive, and the xtid vessel began to slow down dramatically.

  Inside the bridge, the battle master remained impassive, yet he knew they were now at a tremendous disadvantage. “Heat buildup on our aft section is close to the critical stage. We have to slacken our laser fire.”

  The attack master was the first to lose his cool, and he slapped the sides of his pod chair with three hands. “By our ancestors, I just need a few more minutes. My lasers have ablated a whole section of the Nepenthe’s bow already.”

  “You cannot have it,” the battle master said, overruling him. “If we do not lessen the heat flow, it will flood into our essential chambers.”

  The attack master turned towards their ultimate superior. “Executor, please give me a few minutes. I can penetrate the Nepenthe’s outer hull and disable her main guns.”

  Although he had heard the attack master’s plea, Zytll was too engrossed by what he held in his hands. He had taken out the five artifacts from the compartment on the side of his chair pod and had been staring deeply at the glowing crystals for several minutes in silence. There is some wondrous power in these shards, he thought. And I can bring them forth.

  The surprised attack master gave his executor a dumbfounded stare. “Executor, do I have your permission?”

  “The foolish archon and the even more foolish Vega never knew,” Zytll said to no one in particular. Reaching over to the opposite side of his chair, he pulled out a small container pod and let it float in the air in front of him. When he tapped the surface of the membrane, the seed opened up, revealing a sixth shard.

  “Do not bother our executor,” the battle master said as he kept his focus on his tactical display. “He gave me command.”

  Zytll held all six shards in both pairs of hands in front of him. The glittering radiance of myriad colors leapt from one shard to the next as they began to glow brighter. “With this power, I can destroy the Nepenthe.”

  The attack master continued to stare in stunned speechlessness as the light emanating from the collection of shards began to intensify, surpassing the command bridge’s glow stalks.

  All the other crewmembers stared nervously towards their executor as Zytll continued to hold up the collection of relics. The scintillating incandescence proved overpowering, and he could no longer make out anything else. A slight tingling in his hands became painful before completely numbing his nerve endings.

  The battle master finally noticed, and when he turned to look at his superior, he had to use his hands to cover his eyes due to the ever-increasing glare which came close to blinding him. “Executor, what is happening?”

  “I can … feel … the power,” Zytll said softly. He had lost all other sensations. It seemed like he was floating away to someplace … different. Zytll’s body throbbed as its cells began to lose molecular cohesion. His awareness reached past the material universe and began to enter a new state of existence.

  In desperation, the battle master turned to the
others. The intense light confused his senses, and he could only see shadowy blurs in his field of vision now. “Someone take those crystals away from him! Hurry!”

  The other crewmembers tried to scramble out of their pod chairs. The talk master uttered a high-pitched buzz, a panicked shriek of terror that was reserved for when his kind faced certain, implacable doom.

  Zytll sensed the crystals were now floating in front of him, his transparent hands having passed completely through them. He tried to look down upon his torso, yet all he could see was an immaterial, ghostly form where his body once was. The power of the shards had transformed him, and all his concerns no longer mattered.

  A strange voice spoke to him. None of the others could hear it. “Come to us. Leave this form of existence behind.”

  Zytll knew he had somehow gained new senses, yet he couldn’t detect the identity of the being who was speaking to him. “Who are you? Are you the antecessors? The old ones of my species?”

  “It doesn’t matter now, does it? Let go and embrace infinity.”

  “Yes, yes,” Zytll said. “I must find the answers to what I seek.”

  “Good.”

  The battle master screamed, as did the rest of the crew, but it was too late.

  Within the Nepenthe’s battlesphere, Creull uttered a confused purr. “The Wondrous Beacon stopped reacting to us. She’s dead in space.”

  Captain Dangard raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean, Commander?”

  “She was matching us blow for blow,” Creull said breathlessly. “Then all of a sudden she began to drift and stopped firing.”

  “My sensors are detecting a huge radiation spike coming from within the enemy ship,” Oana said.

  Dangard was both pleased and curious about the sudden change of fortune. “We were dishing it out and now this?”

  “Our guns must have caused a meltdown which took out their entire command and control module,” Creull said. “But it would have to be an extremely lucky shot.”

  Oana’s mouth hung open as she stared at the new readings. “Whoa, massive implosion within the enemy ship, and it cascaded and erupted outwards. Huge, gaping hole along her starboard side. I think she’s out of commission.”

  Dangard crossed his arms. “I’ve never experienced this in battle before. What could have caused that?”

  “No idea,” Creull said. “I suggest we finish her off. We can unleash our remaining stock of lancers before the Wondrous Beacon can recover.”

  “Do it,” Dangard said. “Hit her with everything we got.”

  37 The Paths

  Duncan Hauk brushed away a speck of dust from his sergeant’s chevron as he walked alongside the lieutenant through the gardens behind the palace in Kurgan. The archon’s state funeral happened the day before, and all the nobles had gathered to elect Lady Ava as regent until her future offspring could take over.

  Garrett Strand glanced at the boy while moving past a hedgerow. “Keep that up and you’re liable to break it.”

  Hauk let his hands slip down to his sides. “Sorry, LT. I just wanted to keep it shiny and new.”

  Strand chuckled. “In the end, it’s just a piece of metal. What matters is you’ve got your promotion and everyone in the crew knows it.”

  “Thanks, LT.”

  “Don’t thank me,” Strand said. “You’ve earned your stripes.”

  “Yeah, I spent almost a whole day trapped inside the automed,” the boy said. “That was worse than getting hurt. Sappho wouldn’t let me sleep while I was undergoing treatment, and it felt like being inside a coffin.”

  “Major concussion, right?”

  “Along with broken ribs and a fractured spine,” Hauk said. “The bio-gel saved me when my battle armor took multiple breaches.”

  “You sacrificed your body to shield the Lady Ava and her handmaiden during the bombardment, and they’re both alive because of you. Pretty heroic. And foolhardy.”

  “Yes, LT.”

  Fytti came out from behind a side door and walked up to them. “A fair morning to you both.”

  Strand stopped in front of her and smiled. “I heard the rebels are now being given a voice in this new government, and the Lady Ava will announce a general amnesty tomorrow.”

  “All thanks to you,” Fytti said. “The other nobles were fearful the Dragos would come in and take over, but they seem to have been stymied, for now.”

  “I’d have thought they would attempt an invasion,” Strand said.

  “Well, Lady Ava does have the full collection of shards in her possession,” Fytti said. “The entire star cluster is rallying around her, and the people feel a common kinship because of it. Her political base is solid, and the Dragos will have no choice but to acknowledge her rule.”

  “Glad it worked out for her.”

  “And for Scythia,” Fytti said. “Possessing those relics has pretty much stopped all opposition to her family.”

  Hauk suppressed a smile. “But they’re fake.”

  Fytti winked at the boy. “Only a very few know that. I’m sure you were both instructed to keep it under wraps.”

  Strand gave a playful slap to the boy’s upper left arm. “And we will. Most of our own crew don’t even know the full story. Since Lady Ava granted the Nepenthe sanctuary in this part of the galaxy, we’ll keep our word.”

  “I’m sorry for blurting it out loud like that,” Hauk said. “Won’t happen again, LT.”

  Fytti smiled. “I guess the antecessors really do smile upon your outfit, for if the archon had lived, he would have you all thrown out.”

  Strand nodded. Archon Hrothgar Maladore died with his men during the xtid bombardment. “So I heard Lady Ava will get married.”

  “To her childhood sweetheart too,” Fytti said. “Some minor functionary who’s on his way back. Have you been invited to her wedding as well?”

  “We have,” Strand said. “We just came from a meeting with her about it. But I think we’ll be leaving soon. The captain doesn’t want to stay too long in this part of space.”

  “I can understand that,” Fytti said. “The xtid will no doubt take revenge for the destruction of one of their capital ships. Best not to tarry in this sector.”

  “My captain has a weird story about that battle,” Strand said to her. “The question is, what about you?”

  Fytti raised an eyebrow. “Me?”

  Strand nodded. “You proved invaluable in our intel gathering out here. We could use someone with Concordance contacts on our crew.”

  Fytti let out a short laugh. “I thank you for the offer, but I already accepted a position here in Kurgan to become Lady Ava’s chief advisor.”

  “Congratulations, that’s a step up from being a black market info merc,” Strand said. “But I would have said no if I were in your shoes. Too many stuck-up nobles in this palace and all their silly intrigues. No way would I want to live and work here.”

  “I’ll take these stuffy aristocrats over the kind of life you’re offering,” Fytti said laughingly. “I stayed inside your ship during the battle, and I still didn’t feel safe. That kind of career has a very low life expectancy.”

  Hauk placed his hands on his hips. “I like it. There’s a bit of an adrenaline rush when combat starts, plus I get to travel around the galaxy.”

  Fytti giggled while lightly touching the boy’s soft cheek. “Not everyone can be like you, Duncan. I plan to live quietly from now on. Of course, if you all need anything, feel free to visit me here from time to time.”

  After saying goodbye to them, Fytti made her way to the inner wing of the palace. The march up four full flights of stairs left her legs wobbly, but she figured a week of doing these things would get her into shape soon enough. Guards had been posted on every floor due to the current political tensions, yet they respectfully stood aside when she walked past them. The whiff of change was in the air, and everyone knew it.

  Entering a private chamber, Fytti walked over to Lady Ava, who was standing beside a bed, looking in on
one of the sleeping wounded. The regent glanced in her direction, and Fytti bowed slightly out of respect.

  “Are the pirates leaving?”

  “They are, my lady,” Fytti said.

  Ava placed a hand over the glowing necklace of five shards around her neck. “Will they keep our secret?”

  “I believe so. They have no reason to cause any disruption in this star cluster.”

  Ava nodded. The state treasury had taken a hit when Fytti advised her to give a monetary reward to the crew of the Nepenthe, but she also realized these pirates were just like any other mercenaries. Her uncle the lord chamberlain reluctantly agreed, since it was a better alternative than telling the public what really happened.

  “I have news of Orist,” Fytti said. “He will be arriving in the palace this afternoon.”

  Ava let out a smile. In the end, she got what she wanted. It would take some time to get over the death of her father, though the pending return of her beloved would help to ease things somewhat. “What is the mood of our rebel friends?”

  “Essala’s death has strengthened Nubnar Palacios’s overall position,” Fytti said. “The rebel cells are cooperating under his leadership, and the added representation you offered to their movement pretty much means the insurgency is over.”

  “So everything is fine?”

  “The Dragos might still be a problem, so we need to watch out for their spies and assassins.”

  “What about the xtid?”

  “I believe they know it was the Nepenthe who defeated them, and they will rightfully blame the pirates instead of us,” Fytti said.

  “The pirate Captain Dangard mentioned the battle in his talk with me,” Ava said. “He was surprised when he found out the xtid had gotten hold of the real shards.”