“Our cargo?” said Orson, incredulous. “Who would try to steal our cargo? Collectors of alien art? What a ridiculous thought!”
Bauer looked more thoughtful. “It’s a possibility, Dr. Orson. Some of those tablets and amulets were made of an unknown material. Maybe it’s more valuable than we understood.”
“When are the repair crews going to arrive?” said Taren.
Bauer consulted his phone. “Three hours.”
“All right,” said Taren. “Get everyone to the hotel.” She tapped her own phone a few times. “I’ve sent you directions. You ought to be safe enough since it’s almost certainly me or our cargo that our attackers wanted. If you don’t go looking for trouble, you should be safe there.”
“And what will you be doing?” said Orson.
“Captain March and I are going to conduct a security assessment of the ship,” said Taren, which March supposed was true enough, “and then we are going to take the relics to a secure cargo vault on the station. If the artifacts were the target of the attack, then it’s best to separate them from the crew for everyone’s safety.”
Orson’s customary sneer returned. “And I suppose one or two of the artifacts will conveniently disappear while they are in the vault? Maybe when we return to Calaskar, in a few months, you’ll be hawking a line of brooches based on the artifacts. I can see them now. Dr. Adelaide Taren, Space Archaeologist, presents the finest in exotic jewelry, available now for just six easy installments of ninety-nine…”
“Shut up,” said March. “Your life is at risk. Stop talking and move.”
Orson scowled at March and jabbed him in the chest. “Don’t give me orders, thug. I am a professor at the Royal…”
March’s left hand could have crushed Orson’s hand to a bloody pulp, so instead he caught Orson’s jabbing finger in his right. Orson tried to wrench his hand back, but March held it fast.
“The hotel,” said March, starting to squeeze. “Now, please, Professor Orson.”
“This is assault,” said Orson. “This is physical assault!”
“Not if you hit him first,” said Bauer in a bland voice. He was failing to keep the amusement off his face. “Which, you know, you did.”
Orson wrenched his arm back, and March let him go. He stalked away, muttering to himself, and the rest of the film crew and the academics disembarked from the Shovel. March noticed that the video crew followed directions much more competently than the academics.
“I’ll make sure they get to the hotel,” said Bauer, “and keep them from getting into too much trouble.”
“Thanks, Lars,” said Taren. “Getting academics to do anything is like herding cats. This would be a lot harder without you.”
Bauer grinned. “I’ve been with the company long enough to get profit sharing, and once we add a segment about a pirate attack to the new documentary, it’s going to sell amazingly well. I might retire and buy a fishing boat.”
Taren smiled. “Two boats, hopefully.”
“Ah, one would be enough. Boats are like wives. A man should really only have one.”
“Wise man,” said Taren, and Bauer followed the rest of the crew and the academics down the corridor.
“He seems like a steady man,” said March.
“Yeah,” said Taren. She blinked and rubbed her face, taking a deep breath. “He saw action in the Royal Calaskaran Navy, so he knows how to keep his head in a crisis. And he’s got a wife and five kids back on Calaskar.” Taren sighed. “If I had known this was going to be so dangerous, I wouldn’t have brought him. But I would have a hell of a time managing the others without him.”
“Children are expensive,” said March. “Perhaps he’s glad of the opportunity to make some money.” Mostly, March was glad that Bauer had gotten the damned academics out of the way so he could examine the Shovel’s cargo. March had never been to a university, had never attended any sort of school except for the training that the Machinists and the Silent Order had given him and some technical classes about starship operations. Given Orson’s ability to stand around and jabber about irrelevancies while his life was in danger, March suspected that he hadn’t missed very much.
On the other hand, the university had people like Taren…
Annoyed with himself, March pushed the thought from his mind. “We should look at the cargo at once.”
“Yes,” agreed Taren, and she led the way into the Shovel’s landing bay.
The Shovel had an even tighter fit in its landing bay than the Tiger did, so tight that the cargo ramp would have only a meter of clearance once it was down. Taren led the way to one of the ventral airlocks, unlocked it, and March followed her into the ship.
At once he saw the signs of damage. There was a heavy scent of scorched electronics in the air, and the low rumble of overtaxed machinery. Further down the corridor, he saw scorch marks and impact holes in the wall, likely left by some of the shrapnel that had punched through the hull. Four automated repair drones on treads zipped back and forth before the damaged areas, welding new plates to the walls. Repair drones could do a lot with a damaged ship, but given the extent of the damage to the Shovel’s drive section, the ship would need more help than the drones could provide.
“We were really lucky,” said Taren in response to his unspoken observation. “If even one more missile had gotten through…we’d have been a sitting duck, and they could have forced entry and taken the ship.” She sighed. “The cargo bay is this way. We’ve got the artifacts in the strong room.”
March nodded and followed her through another hatch and into the cargo bay. It was a big space, at least half of the ship’s interior capacity, and lit by arc lights on the ceiling that threw stark shadows against the deck. Most of the space was taken up by supplies, dismantled prefabricated buildings, and what March recognized as crates holding the equipment of the video crew – lighting rigs and cameras and servers and so on. To his amusement, he saw a set of chairs gathered around a coffee table, a neutral backdrop hanging behind them. Likely the video crew had recorded a few segments with Taren and some of the graduate students there.
March didn’t like the cargo bay. There were too many nooks and crannies, too many shadows where an attacker could conceal himself. If Taren had indeed found what he thought she had on Xenostas, the artifacts could not stay here. The Shovel was simply not secure enough.
Taren crossed to a reinforced door on the far side of the cargo bay and tapped a sequence of commands into a computer panel. She swiped a fingertip across a scanner and then typed a password. The door unlocked with a series of clangs, and Taren grasped the handle and grunted as she swung it open.
The small, square room beyond contained the ship’s valuables. Several strongboxes held the ship’s collection of hard currency, and a row of plastic crates dominated the floor, their sides marked with lists of their contents. Taren walked to one of the crates and knelt next to it, undoing the fasteners.
“These aren’t locked?” said March, his unease increasing.
“They were in the strong room,” said Taren, “and we didn’t know the artifacts might be valuable.” She pulled away the lid, revealing a lot of foam packing material. Her hands sank into it, and she drew out a metal case. She set the case on another crate and flipped open the lid.
March stared at the objects inside the case.
The artifacts rested in a neat row, twenty of them. Each one was oval shaped, about three inches long, two inches wide, an inch thick, and a bluish-green color. The devices put March in mind of a row of beetles waiting in silence.
And he had seen devices like those before.
Twenty. Dear God, she had found twenty of them.
“Captain March?” said Taren, looking at him in concern. Some of his alarm must have shown on his face.
“Orson’s wrong about you,” said March. “You’re an excellent archaeologist.”
“Thank…you?” said Taren. “But I do wish you would explain.”
“You’re an excellent
archaeologist,” said March, “because you have found genuine artifacts belonging to the Great Elder Ones.”
Taren gave him a sharp look. “The Great Elder Ones? How do you know that name?”
“Invaders,” said March. “A long time ago this part of the galaxy was ruled by a coalition of powerful and peaceful races. I know one of those races called themselves the Harmonious Scholars, but I don’t know the rest of their names. Another race called the Great Elder Ones invaded from another reality or another universe. The coalition managed to repulse the Great Elder Ones, but destroyed themselves in the process.”
“That is one theory in xenoarchaeological thought,” said Taren. “We think that the Great Elder Ones might have been the ‘demons’ of Ninevehk myth and might have turned up in the mythology and religion of other alien cultures. Myself, I think that…wait, we’re wandering from the point.” Her eyes considered him. “How do you know that? That’s incredibly obscure information. Not that it’s a big secret or anything, but I’d say maybe only a dozen scholars on Calaskar are familiar with the topic.”
“Because the Custodian told me,” said March.
Taren blinked. “The Custodian? You mean the alien artificial intelligence that controls the Eschaton system?”
March nodded, still staring at the row of artifacts. “That’s right.”
“I thought the Custodian was insane.”
“It is,” said March, “but it told me about the Great Elder Ones, and it told me what those things are.” He pointed with his metal hand at the artifacts. He had meant to do it with his hand of flesh, but the sheer recognition of the danger the items posed had caused him to point with his cybernetic hand instead, as if bracing for an attack.
“What are they, then?” said Taren. She looked at him. “I take it they’re not religious artifacts.”
“No,” said March. “They’re called quantum inducers. When activated, they can create a quantum entanglement effect.”
“Like a tachyon, you mean?” said Taren. “One tachyon does something, and then another tachyon does the same thing because of the quantum entanglement effect, no matter how much distance is between them.”
March nodded. He wasn’t a physicist, but that explanation was close enough. “The Machinists found a bunch of quantum inducers somewhere and used them to construct devices called Wraiths. The Wraith is a perfect mind-control device, and it can control a victim so thoroughly that the victim doesn’t even realize what is happening.”
Taren frowned. “That would be a powerful weapon. If you used it on the right person at the right time, you could bring down an entire empire.” She looked at him, at the quantum inducers, and then back at him. “Let me guess. The Machinists only have a limited number of quantum inducers, and they haven’t been able to figure out how to make more.”
“Yes,” said March. “They have thirty-four left.” They had once possessed thirty-six, but March had taken two of them back with him to the Silent Order and the Admiralty. “They lost one of their inducers…”
“Bet you had something to do with that.”
March grunted. “They lost one, and to get it back they sent an entire task force of capital starships. They were willing to lose an entire task force to get one quantum inducer back.”
Taren let out a quiet laugh. “And now I’ve gone and found twenty of the damned things.”
“You did,” said March, thinking hard.
This was much worse than he had thought.
To assassinate a Beta Operative of the Silent Order, the Machinists might go to some length. But to get their hands on twenty quantum inducers of the Great Elder Ones…the Machinists would do anything. Absolutely anything.
“I suppose you’re going to confiscate them,” said Taren.
“If you keep them you’re going to be killed,” said March. “You have to understand. The Machinists would kill you to get just one of these things. They would kill your entire crew, all your colleagues, and everyone on Rustbelt Station for just one quantum inducer. For twenty? They would wipe out civilizations to get their hands on twenty of the damned things.”
“No, you’re right,” said Taren. She looked at the row of inducers and shook her head. “We can just edit that out of the video. Erase the logs. No, that would look suspicious. We’ll keep the record of the find and say they were stolen on Rustbelt Station during repairs. Mysterious alien artifacts of unknown provenance. Add a bit of drama to the video.” Suddenly she laughed.
“What?” said March.
Taren grinned at him. “We’ll blame Ronstadt Corporation for the theft. Say their negligence caused it.” March laughed a little that. “Serves them right for screwing me over.”
“All right,” said March, relieved that she understood the gravity of the situation. He had expected her to fight him, or to insist that the artifacts remain in her possession. Censor had said that she would see reason. “We have to move these things as soon as possible. The Machinists know that they’re on the Shovel, and any operatives they have left on Rustbelt Station will be heading here…”
Taren took a deep breath. “I think you had better take them on the Tiger and go.”
March blinked. “I’m sorry?”
“Your ship is faster and better armed than mine,” said Taren. “And I’ll be blunt. The presence of those artifacts puts my people at risk. You have a better chance of getting them safely to Calaskar alone than if you wait around for the Shovel to get repaired.”
March hesitated. His mission had been to protect Dr. Adelaide Taren and get her back to Calaskar. But the mission parameters had changed, hadn’t they? The quantum inducers put Taren and her crew at risk. Once March had taken them back to Calaskar, the risk to Taren would be minimal. So long as she was careful, she ought to be safe.
And Adelaide Taren struck him as a careful woman.
“All right,” said March. “I’ll take the inducers and leave at once.”
Taren nodded. “I’ll make a fuss with Ronstadt about the theft of some of our cargo. The Machinists will figure it out and go after you, I’m afraid.”
March shrugged. “That’s my job.”
“Good luck, Captain March.” Taren smiled, her gray eyes glinting. He found that he liked her smile. “Thank you for saving our lives. A pity I didn’t get to know you any better.”
March wasn’t sure how to respond to that…and then a dark thought occurred to him.
Taren had found twenty quantum inducers on Xenostas. March doubted the Great Elder Ones had confined their technology just to the manufacture of quantum inducers. Ever since he had first encountered a Wraith device, March had heard rumors about something the Machinists wanted or were planning, something they called the Pulse. No one knew what it was, but March suspected it was a weapon built from the technology of the Great Elder Ones.
Had Taren found something on Xenostas that would help the Machinists build the Pulse?
“What is it?” said Taren. She must have caught the change in his expression.
“The other objects you found on Xenostas,” said March. “The quantum inducers would have given off trace amounts of dark energy.”
“They did,” said Taren.
“Did any of the other artifacts?” said March.
Taren frowned, and then her eyes widened. “Yes. One of them.”
“Let me see it,” said March. “The Machinists might be after that as well.”
“All right,” said Taren. She knelt, picked up a smaller case, and set it on one of the crates. “But you can only look at it for a short time.”
“Why?”
“Because.” Taren unlocked the case, revealing a quantity of plastic packing peanuts. “If it’s exposed to normal light for more than five minutes, it will explode.”
Before March could respond to that, she pushed aside the packing material.
A glint of red light caught his eye.
At first, March thought he was looking at a ruby or a similar precious stone. It was a face
ted crystal about the size of his fist, though it had the strange alien sheen of the quantum inducers. There was a sullen red glow from within the crystal, and it was getting brighter even as he looked at it.
“What is it?” said March.
“I was hoping that you knew,” said Taren. “We have no idea what it is, but we have an idea of what it does.”
“What does it do?” said March.
“It absorbs energy,” said Taren. “Right now, it’s absorbing the visible spectrum from the lights overhead. If we were to cover it up, the energy would dissipate. But if we left it exposed for a total of five minutes and thirty-two seconds, the amount of energy it absorbed would reach a critical level, and it would explode.”
“Explode?” said March, frowning at the crystal.
“Boom.” Taren spread her hands to pantomime an explosion. “It’s not a big explosion. Like, maybe a handful of blasting caps. If you were holding the Firestone at the time, you might lose a couple of fingers, but it wouldn’t kill you.”
“Firestone?” said March.
Taren nodded. “That was the nickname we gave the thing. It looks kind of like a firestone, doesn’t it? Albeit a glowing one.” Come to think of it, the crystal’s inner glow had gotten brighter in the few moments it had been exposed. March started to speak a warning, but Taren covered it with packing peanuts again and closed the case.
“How did you find out about its properties?” said March. “The hard way, I assume?”
“Close,” said Taren, “but not quite. The vault where we found it on Xenostas was sealed. No natural light for thousands of years. The spectrographic analysis showed that the Firestone was…well, we have no idea what it is made of, but it’s basically invincible.” That matched with what March had learned of the quantum inducers. The best scientists in the Ministry of Defense had been unable to find any way of damaging the quantum inducers and suspected the devices could survive unharmed in the heart of a star. “We set it on a table in the sun, and a few minutes later it set the table on fire. After that, we tried a few more tests, including a focused microwave beam…”
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