The sword and the drow g.., p.8
Blue Heart (Gods & Assassins Book 3), page 8
To my utter surprise, he laid a hand on my shoulder – as if to comfort me. Damn, this guy.
“Revenge has no place in our creed. Vash went outside our norms. He contracted with the Horax to kill you. We don’t farm out business to the cartels, Raul.”
“You train your own assassins.”
He winced for the first time.
“That word … it’s a pejorative.”
“But accurate.”
“No. Not for us. Our soldiers are trained to silence our enemies. We only remove people who pose a direct threat to our goals. We serve a higher purpose.”
OK. Religious fanatics. Brilliant.
“And you would be the one who calls the shots?”
He removed his hand and returned his eyes to the digital board.
“Not at all.”
“Lumen says the Children of Orpheus have no one leader. Call me skeptical.”
Horatio chuckled.
“She’s correct, Raul. I’m one of many. We’re neither a pyramid nor a flow chart. No one sits at the top. However, we do have levels. We call them variations.” He slid his hands across the controls, and a door slipped open. “I’ll say no more about our structure. If you agree to the job and demonstrate your loyalty, we’ll talk further.”
“Loyalty?”
Horatio crossed the threshold and waved me forward ...
Into an equally dull room but for a round light-table and a handful of serviceable chairs.
As secret lairs went, I’d seen better.
“Please, Raul, have a seat anywhere.”
I complied but also persisted.
“Again, to this matter of loyalty.”
He slipped into a chair facing me.
“The Children of Orpheus is exclusive, but we have made a few exceptions over the centuries. On occasion, we find individuals who provide enormous value.”
“The reason I’m here.”
“We hope.”
Horatio laid his hands flat on the table. It came to life seconds later, radiating with the silver of moonlight. A red octagonal jewel rose from the center. I saw similar tech during my brief adventure in Artemis Station, shortly before being buried alive.
“What I intend to show you, Raul, is known only to twelve hundred human beings. Most were taught in the oral tradition from the earliest age.” Brainwashed, in other words. “Only one in five has seen these images. Yesenia, for example, does not belong to the variation with access.”
“Uh-huh. So, I get to skip the line. Yes?”
He got a hoot out of my witty retort.
“Let’s call it a special exemption.”
“You’re about to answer all my questions. What’s to prevent me from having a sudden bout of disloyalty down the road?”
“Nothing. But unlike the cartels, we’re invisible. And in the interest of protecting our goals, we’ll succeed where the Horax failed. We’re not a large group, Raul, but our hands touch every lever. I’m asking for an alliance, not a blood oath.”
I disagreed. He was leading me down an all-or-nothing road. Fortunately, that road was paved with twenty million credits.
“Then I’ll have to learn to keep my mouth shut. Not the simplest chore. I’m a loquacious man.”
The son of a bitch winked.
“I’ve been known to hold court myself, Raul. What do you say we proceed?” I assented, after which he launched a series of holos from the projection crystal. “I know you tried to uncover details on your own, but what you’ll see today are facts. I’ll start from the beginning.”
A three-kilometer Ark Carrier, the signature colony ship of the old Chancellory, filled the space above the light table.
“This was the Orpheus. It entered the Aztecan system on Standard Day 119, SY 4205. It carried sixty-one thousand colonists from the Earth province of Guadalajara. They were brought here in a ship built for one third the population. Cattle.” He shook his head. “The advance teams had established ground infrastructure, but it was skeletal at best. The Chancellors didn’t care. Their sole purpose was to forcibly emigrate as many ethnics off-world as quickly as possible.”
Yep. As wolf god, I journeyed across the continuum. A few stops included observations of how the old Chancellory built its colonial empire. What Horatio described was common practice.
“Orpheus arrived first,” he continued. “Now, these city-ships were not designed for atmospheric travel. However, the Admiralty assured everyone the Orpheus had been refitted to become the first Ark Carrier capable of landing, taking off, and achieving escape velocity. The official after-reports showed early concern among the Orpheus command staff. Many objected to off-loading their cargo on the surface. But doing so would cut their mission time by weeks, allowing them to return to Earth sooner to collect the next cattle.”
I tapped the armrests.
“I’ve read up on the early Chancellors, my friend. They were a bizarre lot. Controlled the human race – not a challenger in sight – and yet they still took risky shortcuts.”
Horatio sized it down for me.
“They were cheap bastards where ethnics were concerned. Now, this is where our story becomes interesting. The Orpheus attempted to land at its designated coordinates.” He called up a map of the northern continent, with a red shaded area marking the intended landing spot. “It’s now known as Tejanos.” The map shifted far east toward the coast. “The trip ended here – at Ixtapa.”
The pieces began to fit.
“As the Orpheus approached the coastline, it reported a series of engine failures. A short time later, it crashed.”
The site on the coastline of Ixtapa flashed red.
“Founders Memorial. Yes?”
Horatio expanded a present-day photo of the site. An engine core – black and cylindrical and a hundred meters diameter – rested on the sand, the last remnant from the crash.
“Thirty-nine thousand died in minutes, another fifteen thousand in the next two days, and thousands more succumbed to disease.”
“What of the fortunate few?”
“One section broke off in shallow sea, extinguishing the fires quickly enough for many to escape. However, the command staff died on impact, leaving the colonists to fend for themselves. You see, the next Carrier wasn’t due for a month, and only a few outposts of Chancellor scientists were stationed on the planet, thousands of kilometers away. A few leaders emerged among the survivors. They held the community together until help arrived.”
I recalled my own research on this story.
“The archives at Ixtapa say only six thousand died.”
Horatio grunted. “Because that’s what the Chancellors listed in their official reports. One of many falsehoods. The colonists had no means to challenge the Chancellors. The Unification Guard was quickly dispatched to maintain order and resettle survivors. Living day to day on a new, hostile world took priority over fighting coverups.”
“You sound like you were there.”
He stifled a laugh.
“Despite the official historical record, many documents survived. Some others were eventually clawed from the Chancellors through espionage and sheer force of will. The same few leaders who aided the Orpheus survivors made it their mission to find justice for those who were not.”
“And how did that work out?”
Horatio licked his lips. Wouldn’t he have enjoyed a nice glass of white about now?
“It’s a work in progress, Raul.”
“Huh. Eleven hundred years is a long damn time, my friend. I question your definition of progress.”
“We spent all but the past thirty-one years under the Chancellory’s straitjacket. We moved in the quietest corners, one delicate step at a time. Now, we move swiftly toward a resolution.”
“Ah. Resolution toward what? And how does it connect to Ixtapa?”
He threw up a series of images that showed the full scope of the disaster site shortly after the crash, thousands of dead and dying, survivors huddled in makeshift campsites, and the first Chancellor rescue crews.
“Raul, you will not find these images at Founders Memorial or in any historical archive. They belong to us. The truth.” He isolated the shots of piled corpses and Carrier wreckage scattered to the horizon’s edge. “Four days after these images were taken, the entire superstructure vanished but for the single engine core. The bodies also vanished.”
This seemed in line with a wild legend I found in my research.
“Four days? How would that be possible?”
He thumbed through a wide directory of holos like a librarian who’d been down this road many times.
“These were taken two days after the crash. See here? The burned rubble of the forward section is gone. And here’s three days. Only the aft section, the engine core, and some scattered debris remain. By this stage, only colonists who escaped the crash unharmed lived near the site. Four thousand and two hundred. Now we reach the point where the occasional outsider like yourself has a difficult time suspending disbelief.”
If he knew all the madness I’d seen, Horatio wouldn’t have raised an alert. I wasn’t in position to verify those images, and yep, their timestamps could’ve been faked. But this guy was talking about the foundational event that kept his cult running for centuries. I had no reason to disbelieve what I saw.
Which in turn generated a few thousand questions.
“I have an open mind, my friend. When a man travels the stars, he learns to appreciate the improbable.”
His twinkle returned, along with a wry smile.
“I thought you might, Raul. If that’s your name.”
“We’re not here to discuss me. A fun legend I found in my research said that as the Orpheus vanished overnight, some settlers reported visions of a ‘special light’ rising from beneath the surface. Some claimed to hear voices. Soon after, most settlers died – except for those who saw the light. When the Chancellors arrived, they claimed the deaths arose from a previously undetected terrestrial virus. More coverup? Or does the truth lie somewhere else?”
Horatio tossed away most of the holos and held a few in reserve.
“This is where we come to it, Raul. The very heart of our group. The reason we continue our fight. Why we never forgot our ancestors. And indirectly, why we wish to commission your services. What I’m about to tell you redefines more than Aztecan history. It unravels human history. It forces us to reconsider everything we know about the planets we colonized.”
“Only that?”
Horatio didn’t flinch at my snark. OK, so maybe it was a big deal for humans. I wanted to see where this was headed.
“One piece of the Chancellor report was true. Most survivors did contract a terrestrial virus. However, the Chancellors claimed the five hundred without symptoms had a genetic immunity. They used DNA samples to devise a vaccine. They inoculated every subsequent colonist. It worked, but not because of superior Chancellory tech.”
I braced myself for the loony intersection of fact and fiction.
“This is where you tell me the five hundred received their immunity from the ‘special light.’ Yes?”
“It was more than mere light. It was an intelligence, ancient and far beyond our capacity to understand. It spoke to everyone through their dreams. Only twelve percent heard the voice and replied. The others dismissed it. Most woke without remembering, as is common with dreams. All those who spoke to the voice were saved from the virus.”
My interest hadn’t waned, yet this fella pushed me down a very slippery slope.
“My mind is open, Horatio, but please don’t tell me the voice came from something called God.”
“I won’t. But it did have a name.”
Naturally.
“Allow me to guess. Ixoca?”
He didn’t miss a beat.
“Yesenia told me you wouldn’t drop the subject.”
“I don’t like dangling mysteries. Tell me about Ixoca. It spoke to them in their dreams. Yes?” He nodded. “Anyone hear it while awake?”
“Oh, yes, Raul. Even today.”
He said it with no more consequence than “Nice weather we’re having.” I saw no evidence of empty obedience in those pearly eyes. No sign of hypnotism, programming, or the hundred other forms of mind control. Horatio was a master salesman; despite this guy’s claims to the remarkable, he never shifted his tone. Hype wasn’t his style.
“So, my friend. You say Ixoca, which saved the founding colonists by speaking through their dreams, is still with us and actively engaged with its followers. Yes?”
“Absolutely.” He thumbed through his holos. “Care to see him?”
10
NO, THE ‘SPECIAL LIGHT’ DIDN’T walk through the door. Instead, Horatio tossed up a dark, fuzzy image from the crash site. He claimed it was recorded on the second night, before a huge section of Orpheus disappeared without a trace. I saw the silhouette of rubble and a faint blue haze emanating from within. This was the best he could do?
I tried not to sound disrespectful.
“Where is Ixoca?”
“There. The light.”
“That’s at least fifty meters away.”
“It was. Survivors reported disruptions in their recording tech, so we have very little visual evidence. Beyond this image, there is a vid three seconds long.”
He displayed it. The image bounced all over the damn place. The cam operator must’ve been running. In the final split second, a blue flash rose out of the darkness. There was no sound.
Horatio replayed the vid frame by frame. At 2.3 seconds, a compressed blue glow entered from behind the cam. By 2.5 seconds, it was level with the cam, to the operator’s right. By 2.7 seconds, it zoomed ahead. The excerpt ended at 2.9.
“That’s all you have, my friend?”
He wasn’t rattled. “From Ixtapa, eleven hundred years ago. Yes. But before you dismiss me, consider this one frame. We refined it over the years. Here you are: 2.8 seconds.”
Refined didn’t do it justice. I might have been staring at a different image altogether. Everything had been filtered out except the blue mass and magnified to look inside. At first, the translucent object in the center resembled a well-honed emerald. A second, deeper gaze revealed a familiar geometric pattern.
Almost like …
No. Hell no.
“Theo, search my syneth core. See if you can find a match.”
“If you insist, Royal. We hope you will soon end the agony for poor Addis. It’s a truly abominable state that …:
“Shut the hell up and do what I say.”
Did Moon recognize it, too? He’d chime in if he did.
I betrayed none of my heightened interest to our host. That image could’ve been manipulated. This might yet be a damn fine con.
“Horatio, I’m not a man of science or faith. I travel, I drink, and I see amazing things. But I remember enough schooling to know I’m looking at an atomic structure. For what?”
“A baseline matrix, Raul.”
“For?”
“Restructuring chemical properties on an accelerated scale.”
“To accomplish what exactly?”
“Many uses, but one in particular. Terraforming.”
Damned if he didn’t say the word. What took Theo so long?
“So in this case, you’re saying Ixoca used that matrix to transform the crash site in a matter of days?”
“It would’ve been child’s play for him. Raul, I didn’t exaggerate when I said this secret will unravel human history. Are you familiar with the Maynor Terraform Thesis?”
Time to play dumb. He hadn’t said anything I didn’t know, but if he confirmed my suspicions and wasn’t playing me for a fool …
“Never heard of it,” I said.
“An Aztecan wrote it nine hundred years ago. The core principles go like this: The odds of forty planets with Earth-like atmospheres, all residing within a thousand light-years of each other, are staggering. The chance of those worlds also being connected by a stable wormhole network defies any logic, leading to one conclusion. This sector of the galaxy was manufactured for humans by a greater intelligence. The Chancellory suppressed scientific research to validate the thesis. Humans, they said, conquered the stars because of their own ingenuity, not by alien manipulation.”
Oh, that.
The messy truth.
I knew what Horatio implied about Ixoca, and damned if that image weren’t tempting. But I kept my expectations low until I received confirmation.
“I’ve heard the stories, my friend. You’re talking about the so-called Jewels of Eternity.”
Finally, I cracked the salesman’s smile. His rosy cheeks flattened, and he leaned forward.
“You know about them?”
“It’s not classified anymore, but not accepted scientific fact, either.” Not according to the Collectorate anyway. I knew otherwise. “Lots of confusion after everything that went down on Aeterna. Or what they used to call it – Hiebimini, yes?”
“Indeed. It’s been seventy years since Hiebimini fell. The most valuable planet in the sector reduced to a lifeless rock and reborn decades later as Aeterna. Terraformed with more than eight thousand unique ecostems. An impossible world.”
“So they say. The immortals have kept a tight lid on the science. Or so I’ve been told.”
Those bioengineered humans captured Aeterna shortly after they took down the first Collectorate in 5358. I was created in the same labs as the Aeternans, which symbolically made them my brothers and sisters. However, circumstance kicked me along many paths far from Aeterna. Good damn thing, too. My lives were far more interesting without those assholes up in my business.
Horatio said, “Aeternans allow quotas of scientists to study the planet, but they claim whatever terraformed it no longer resides there. They won’t use the name or allow open discussion about the nature of the Jewels, their origin, or their possible efforts to terraform other worlds in this sector.”
“The match is not precise,” Theo announced. “But it is close enough. That matrix belongs to the core program developed by the J’Hai.”
How about that? I hadn’t thought of the J’Hai in centuries. They were the second oldest race in the universe, but dead for millions of years. Also the ones who created the Jewels of Eternity.
