The Well of Time

by Robert I. Katz

  That, at least, was how it was supposed to go, and to some extent, it already had. The attacks on Imperial shipping had nearly ceased as had the majority of the deliberate subversion of the Imperial military and civilian bureaucracy.

  Neither the attacks nor the subversion had vanished, however, and in the year since the Imperium’s defeat, were slowly, once again, increasing.

  It had become painfully obvious that the Imperium had not been acting on its own.

  There were a thousand leads, Sirianus-2 merely one of them. A patriotic merchant captain who had served in the Navy had given Intelligence the tip. A small vessel, commanded by an old friend of his, had been heading to the Sirianus system and was never heard from again. Michael and his crew, a little bored now that the war was over, volunteered to follow up on the most promising leads toward the inner curve of the spiral arm, and so here they were.

  Arcturus, and High Command, had grumbled. Gehenna was the only Hades class battleship still in existence and one of the Empire’s most important assets. Why risk an irreplaceable ship on a low-level threat?

  Michael was not impressed with this argument. He had turned both the London and the schematics for Gehenna over to the Empire and new, advanced ships were already coming off the assembly lines. Gehenna was not as irreplaceable as she had been. Besides, it was Michael’s ship and Michael’s crew, and the ship’s brain knew it. Nobody could order Gehenna to do anything, aside from Michael.

  As a lead, this was proving worthwhile. The gladiators were all sold to arenas far from the capital. None were shipped off-world. Sirianus-2’s slaver network was a home-grown affair. The hijacked ships, however, were sold off-world.

  Michael smiled. Richter looked sick, as well he might. “Tell us everything you know,” Michael said.

  Gehenna followed a standard First Empire design, though on a larger and more luxurious scale than any navy vessel before her. The ship had four decks, all designed around a central atrium. Deck one contained shops, restaurants, gardens and what appeared to be forests, ponds and open fields. Deck two was sub-divided into twenty floors of private living quarters, and contained recreational facilities, the brig, a fully equipped hospital and gymnasiums. Deck three housed the ship’s engines, repair shops, manufactories, offensive weaponry and the primary matrix for the ship’s brain. Deck four contained the transport bays where four corvettes, scout ships, pinnaces, escape pods and patrol boats were kept, plus secondary and tertiary matrices for the brain and numerous empty storage chambers.

  Gehenna carried over five thousand marines, plus a full naval crew, including a Commanding Officer, an Executive Officer and Chief Officers for the Divisions of Intelligence, Security, Engineering and Medical, each with its appropriate contingent of Junior Officers. There were also ten cadets in training, chaplains for the most common devotional sects and two Chief Petty Officers, each in charge of a battalion of five hundred naval personnel, almost a quarter of which were aliens, many of whose reproductive schemas and physical makeup had nothing to do with either sex or gender. By custom, these latter were always referred to as “Mister,” when not being addressed by rank.

  There were over a thousand civilians, including the spouses and children of the marines and the naval crew, plus shop keepers, restaurant staff, school teachers and a group of historians and academics specializing in the history and technology of the ancient past.

  The model had been a common one in the First Empire, whose citizens, particularly during the internecine war with the Hirrill, could be drafted into the military at any time. Indeed, the very concept of a ‘civilian’ had become hazy as the long, genocidal struggle dragged on.

  Gehenna was large enough to sustain its own little world, staffed more like a city than a ship of the line. High Command’s conception of Gehenna’s role was that unless engaged in a strictly military mission, she would function as an ambassador of goodwill, while intimidating any possible adversary.

  The Commanding Officer was a very experienced Captain named Twyla Thorenson. The XO was Commander Bradley Dumas, a native of Reliance. Both had been eager for the posting, since command of the largest, most powerful ship in over two-thousand years was a highly prized assignment, almost guaranteed to accelerate their careers.

  The more that Captain Thorenson learned, however, the less sanguine she became. She did not know what to make of Michael Glover, and the place of Gehenna in the naval hierarchy seemed to make no sense. Gehenna’s official status was “on-loan” and Michael, a man whose origins and history were a blank slate, held the rank of Commodore.

  Captain Thorenson did not have to wonder for long.

  “Admiral,” she said, and glanced at the second man sitting in an easy chair across from the Admiral’s desk. He was short and slight, with short blonde hair and pale blue eyes. She knew the Admiral. His name was Marcus Khan. He was the CO of the naval base on Sumeria, Dancy’s largest moon. Admiral Khan was tall and lean, with short dark hair and sharp gray eyes.

  “Captain,” the Admiral said. “Please sit down.”

  She did so. The office, she noted, was neat, almost Spartan, with no decorations other than a picture sitting on the desk of the Admiral, looking somewhat younger, posing with a pretty, red-haired woman at his side.

  “Coffee?” the Admiral asked. “Tea?”

  “No, thank you.”

  Admiral Khan smiled. The smile, Captain Thorsenson thought, appeared strained.

  “I asked you here today to inform you of certain facts regarding your newest assignment.” The Admiral paused.

  “Facts, sir?”

  Admiral Khan nodded his chin toward the man sitting next to her. “Let me introduce a colleague of mine. You may call him Arcturus.”

  The Captain blinked. She had heard of Arcturus, the head of Naval Intelligence. Everybody had, but few had met him. Rumor had it that he was a distant cousin of the Imperator. Rumor also said that he knew everything and could see into your soul.

  “What do you know,” Arcturus said, “of your posting to the Gehenna?”

  Captain Thorenson frowned. “She’s the largest ship ever built. There’s none other like her.”

  “That may or may not be true,” the Admiral said. “Larger ships may have been built in the distant past, or might be owned today by civilizations of which we are unaware. It is true that Gehenna is the largest ship currently possessed by the Second Interstellar Empire of Mankind.”

  Strange, the Captain thought. She would have expected satisfaction, even pride. The Admiral’s tone, however, seemed less than thrilled.

  “What,” Arcturus asked, “have you heard of her origins?”

  The Captain blinked. “Nothing.”

  “Nothing? Nothing at all?”

  “The rumors are that she was built in secret and kept in reserve.” She shrugged. “The official information states that the ship is a copy of an ancient First Empire battleship.”

  “Hah,” the Admiral said. “Gehenna was most certainly a secret, and she absolutely was kept in reserve, but she was not our secret. The presence—even the existence—of Gehenna, is a stroke of ridiculously good fortune. When the Imperium attempted their coup, we were simply lucky she was here.”

  “Gehenna,” Arcturus said, “is not a copy of an ancient First Empire battleship. Gehenna is a First Empire battleship.”

  “Oh,” the Captain said. She stared at him.

  “Oh, indeed.” Arcturus sighed. “There were over two-thousand worlds in the First Empire. We’ve explored fewer than half of them; and we know for a fact that after the Empire’s collapse, many worlds on the periphery retained a space-going capacity and continued to explore and expand. Two thousand years have passed. Who knows how many Empires, worlds and habitats are out there? Who knows what remains to be discovered? That question is rarely far from our thoughts, particularly now, after our encounter with the Imperium.

  “But as for how Gehenna came to be here, that is a long story.” Arcturus gave her a half-hearted smile. �
��Have you ever heard the name, Michael Glover…?”

  The story that Arcturus told was a remarkable one. It concerned characters out of myth and legend and history so old it was nearly forgotten.

  Gehenna, officially, was a naval vessel. In reality, she belonged to Michael Glover, former elite commando, covert agent, Governor-General, Imperial Viceroy and finally, Ptolemy, one of the fabled triumvirate under the command of Alexander, the savior and then the destroyer of the First Interstellar Empire of Mankind.

  Captain Thorenson cleared her throat. “Ptolemy,” she said. “I’ve heard of Ptolemy. We studied some of his campaigns at the Academy.”

  The Admiral nodded. “The flanking maneuver he pulled off at Star’s End is still considered a classic of mis-direction.”

  Captain Thorenson frowned. “He sacrificed an entire fleet to entice the Hirrill into over-extending themselves.”

  “The fleet comprised obsolete ships about to be scrapped and it was largely manned by drones. The remaining few were all volunteers.”

  “A remarkable man,” Arcturus said.

  “A ruthless man, I’d say.”

  The Admiral shrugged. “They were at war with a race that was doing its best to eradicate mankind. He did what he thought necessary. The maneuver succeeded. The Hirrill fleet was wiped out.”

  “Why does nobody know this?”

  Arcturus shrugged. “High Command saw no particular reason to keep his identity secret, but Michael Glover prefers it this way. He would rather remain anonymous. It makes his work easier.”

  “His work? What is his work?”

  Admiral Khan frowned at that. “Whatever he wants it to be.”

  Captain Thorenson dispatched twenty marines to each of the thirty-seven arenas. Well over half of the gladiators turned out to be volunteers, willing to fight and kill and possibly die for the possibility of improving their sad, impoverished lot. The rest were slaves. No neural networks compelled their obedience, merely the threat of maiming or death if they did not fight and die as ordered. The rest of the gladiators knew all this, but neither they nor their so-called authorities cared.

  The slaves were freed. A squadron of Gehenna’s marines commandeered the city jail and Ambassador Richter, his aide, his aide’s aide and all of their staff were confined there. Local officials were given a choice of cooperating or dying. They chose to cooperate. A scout ship carried Gehenna’s report back to Reliance.

  The Empire did not tolerate slavery. Before long, a fleet would be dispatched, with a planetary governor appointed by the Empire. Sirianus-2 had lost the right to remain an independent world.

  Good, Michael thought.

  It had taken two days for the ship’s personnel and crew to settle into their berths, to acquaint themselves with their postings, their comrades and their new officers. On the morning of the third day, Michael chaired a meeting. Captain Thorenson was there, of course, and Commander Dumas. Henrik Anson, whose official rank was Colonel and whose position was Chief of Security, the Engineering Officers, the Medical Officers, the Chief Petty Officers and all of their junior staff sat around a very large table. Dustin Nye, newly invested with the rank of Major in the Imperial Marines and given the title of Chief Training Officer, was also present.

  At Michael’s insistence, Frankie, Richard Norlin and the rest of his old crew sat on chairs against the wall, as did two shopkeepers and a restaurant owner, elected by the civilians on the ship to report back to them and represent their interests, and the ten cadets, paying rapt attention.

  “Welcome aboard,” Michael began. “For those of you who don’t know me, I am Commodore Michael Glover.” None of them knew him, of course. The official story, at least for the moment, was that Michael had spent a long career in Naval Intelligence, working undercover, his exact role a highly classified secret. It was sort of the truth.

  All of them stared at his face. A few frowned. “I wanted to welcome all of you aboard Gehenna,” he said, “the largest and most formidable military vessel ever built.” This may or may not have been accurate, Michael thought, but it sounded impressive. “As you all know, Gehenna was instrumental in defending Dancy against the recent invasion attempt by the entity known as the Imperium, and then participated in the Empire’s retaliatory invasion of Imperium space.

  “We have defeated the Imperium. It seems unlikely, however, that the Imperium is the last threat that the Second Interstellar Empire of Mankind will face.” Michael paused, sipped from a glass of water. “Gehenna is uniquely qualified to deal with threats. I don’t need to enumerate her capabilities. You all know them.

  “The Navy has carefully selected Gehenna’s officers and crew. This is an elite crew for an elite ship. I have total confidence in every one of you.” If only that were true. Every elite crew contained at least a few elite lunatics, with egos so large they were convinced to the bottom of their devious little souls that they were more qualified to run the ship than their appointed commanders.

  Michael smiled. “We will be setting out on our first mission twelve hours from now. The mission is exploratory. We have received information that may or may not lead us to coordinated activity against the interests of the Empire. The relevant data relevant has been sent to your interfaces. Please review it as soon as possible.”

  Michael paused. “Are there any questions?”

  All of them stared at him. A few of the juniors looked at each other and shrugged. Nobody spoke.

  “No?” Michael nodded. “Then thank you for coming.” He smiled at Twyla Thorenson. “Captain Thorenson will brief you further.”

  He rose to his feet and walked from the room. As one, Frankie, Richard Norlin and the rest rose and walked out with him.

  It was always a good idea, Michael thought, to start with a firm statement. He had deliberately not introduced his former crew. None of them were military and none had a formal role to play in the ship’s mission. Nevertheless, they were his…guests. What other jobs they might have and what their relationship to the Commodore might be, was nobody’s business. He wanted them to clearly understand that.

  All-in-all, he thought, not a bad way to start.

  Chapter 3

  Cassidy-1 was a large, Earth-like planet circling a red dwarf sun. Such suns were more common and far more stable than the larger stars in the galaxy and lasted much longer, theoretically for trillions of years, as opposed to a mere few billion for the rest. Up to forty percent of such stars possess rocky, Earth-like planets, and the majority of these planets contain enough water to sustain a human population.

  Cassidy-1 was a typical example. The planet was twice the diameter of Earth, but being rather low in metals, had only 1.2 times the mass, and hence a similar gravity. Terraforming the place had been easy, primarily introducing selected Earthly flora and fauna and waiting a few hundred years for it to spread across the globe. There were two small continents and thousands of tiny islands on Cassidy-1. The star, Cassidy, emitted little light compared to Sol but since the world rotated at a much closer distance to its primary, the available energy was more than sufficient to maintain a sub-tropical climate. The oceans were deep, spacious and rich. Earthly sea-life was at home there, existing in relative harmony with numerous native species of inedible (to humans) deep-water amphibians and dinoflagellates. Living was easy and Cassidy had survived through the Interregnum with far less disruption than most former worlds of the First Empire.

  Now, it was a peaceful, independent world, far from the center of civilization, but just as happy for all of that. Gehenna’s databanks listed 103 small governments, most occupying only an island or two. There were two spaceports, one on each of the two continents. The busiest was on Hancock, the largest continent, about half the size of ancient Australia.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Brian Connelly said.

  He wasn’t lying. Not unexpected but still disappointing. Brian Connelly was the Administrator of the Hancock spaceport. For such an unimportant and out-of-the-way world
, Cassidy received a lot of visitors, primarily tourists who came to enjoy the beaches, the warm, placid waters and the fishing. Michael had already had a similar conversation with Chen Roberts, the administrator for the smaller, mostly commercial port on Torino, the smaller, more temperate continent to the Northeast. He, also, knew nothing about hijacked ships.

  Nations that rely on tourism for their financial well-being need to give those tourists what they want, in this case, excellent restaurants, clean streets, sights to see, things to do, all in luxurious safety. Nobody on Cassidy-1 was hijacking ships, certainly not in proximity to the more populous areas of the planet, but with many thousands of small, habitable islands, it was possible that stolen ships were being transferred, even purchased, somewhere else.

  According to Andreas Richter, the hijacked ships had been sent to Cassidy-1, but other than that, he knew almost nothing. Richter, it turned out, was rather low on the criminal hierarchy. The actual hijackers, the ones who transported the ships to their ultimate destinations, had all disappeared.

  Michael sighed. Gehenna remained in orbit, hidden by its stealth screening. The crew deserved shore leave, but not yet. Seven thousand personnel could not be transported down to the surface in secret. Nothing to do now but wait and see.

  Michael and Frankie had settled into a very comfortable beach-side resort with what he still tended to think of as his “crew,” though by now, these were only a small portion of the actual crew. Curly, Rosanna and the rest were off doing whatever they felt like, while Michael and Frankie spent a few hours lazing around the pool.