Brink of destruction, p.38
Brink of Destruction, page 38
There was a long silence. “Very well, First Sergeant. You may take one or two of the crawlers out to attempt to send a distress signal. But the rest of us are staying here for the time being. There is still air in this compartment, and it will last a while longer. If you make contact, then we will see about attempting an evacuation. If not…” The colonel sighed, audible even over the comms. “Then I suggest you find a way to die in whatever way you think suitable.”
Gritting his teeth, Draven propelled Karou into the bay, making sure the others were still following. “Let’s go. May as well grab the closest to the doors. Let’s just hope it still starts.”
Even as he said it, he felt a flash of dread. What if the aliens, or their human servants, had disabled all of the vehicles once they’d gotten them inside?
Apparently they hadn’t felt the need. The crawler powered up immediately, though the power cells were lower than he would have liked. Then they were faced with the issue of how to get out.
“The doors open when pierced,” one of the privates pointed out.
“Yes, but then we vent this entire bay into space.” Draven chewed his lip inside his helmet, but finally, when no one else spoke, he realized they didn’t have a choice. Without power, the controls to cycle the bay’s atmosphere wouldn’t work anyway.
Rotating the turret, he fired at the door. The displays showed that the crawler’s autocannon had been unloaded, but the vehicle still had power, so the combat laser worked. It flared against the dark membrane.
The door stayed closed.
He cycled the laser and fired again. Another flare, as dull as it was with the material absorbing a lot of its energy, but still no response from the door.
Draven was fighting back fear when a third shot did the trick.
The door retracted into the frame, a little more sluggishly than they’d seen inside before the kill command. But they had a route out onto the surface now.
He realized that he’d lost track of directions in the hunt inside, and with a sudden gulp he wondered if they were about to roll out into the pit of the crater in the center of the base, but as he looked through the turret’s sensors, he saw the reddish plain outside, brighter in the display than it was in real life.
Backing the vehicle out of the bay, he made for open ground, already deploying the long-range comm array. He scanned the screen and the controls, hoping he could figure them out. Being a first sergeant meant needing a certain degree of experience and skill with all the systems that a Zolarian soldier might need to use—in large part because the non-coms often had to step in when an officer or a one-term soldier didn’t know how to do something—but that hardly made him a comm expert.
There. A broad-band open comm channel for emergencies. Exactly what he needed. He keyed it, opened the comm, and began to speak.
“This is First Sergeant Draven, Zolarian Grand Army. There are nearly a hundred of us remaining on this planet. We were being held prisoner by the vithang and their servants, but now we are stranded in a dead base which is quickly losing atmosphere. Is there anyone out there who can render assistance?” He sent the message in Franai first, hoping maybe there were more Zolarian ships out there, but he followed that up with his somewhat more halting, accented Anglisch. That was the other official language of the Grand Democracy, after all, and there might be other ships out there.
Silence. Silence, and the faint hiss of radiation from the brown dwarf. He could feel the despair from the other soldiers in the crawler, even though none of them spoke.
Keying the comm again, trying to keep the desperation out of his voice, he repeated the call in both languages.
“Zolarian.” The voice spoke Anglisch, in a clipped, flat accent that Draven recognized with some dismay. “This is the CCS Supremacy.”
“Corvanites.” Draven couldn’t tell who had said it, but there was dread in the name.
“Supremacy, this is First Sergeant Draven. We are without supplies or power, and will be without atmosphere soon. We are declaring a state of emergency and requesting aid.” He thought about invoking the Tau Ceti Accords, but the Corvanites could generally be expected to dismiss any interstellar laws that tied their hands militarily as a device of the Newlanders and their lackeys.
He knew just how precarious their position was, begging for help from the Corvanites, but the alternative was Colonel Dirix’s plan of a chemical sleep that ended in death.
There was a long pause. He tried to tell himself that the captain of the Supremacy was consulting with his higher command. There had to be more than one Corvanite starship, if they’d presented enough of a threat for the vithang to react the way they had.
A part of him feared that the Corvanite had simply decided to let them die without another word.
“Zolarians. Send coordinates for a pickup. Approach the shuttles without arms. You are not to be prisoners, as no open state of war currently exists between our worlds, but you will not be allowed aboard Corvanite starships armed. We will transfer you at the first available stop where you can procure transport into Zolarian space.”
Draven could read between the lines, tempering his relief. There might not be a state of war between Corvan and Zolah now, but that could change at any time. And the Corvanites would make sure that these survivors carried that word back to the Assembly.
Right now, he didn’t care. He was going to live, and hopefully see his family again. This might not be the end between the Corvanites and the Grand Democracy, but for Cul Draven, it was the beginning of the end.
He acknowledged and switched comms channels to inform Colonel Dirix.
EPILOGUE
Bringing the full Assembly together on Zolah was a massive undertaking, if only because, according to the rules, it had to be available to everyone on the planet. There was no way for that to actually happen, even with the virtual presence that the vast majority resorted to, but the forms had to be adhered to.
The logistical challenges and the sheer insane hassle of it didn’t bother Dominic Faron. He glanced up at the slowly filling Assembly chamber in the largest amphitheater on the planet, the sun shining through the tinted glass above, then returned his gaze to the financial reports on his data plate. The time and effort it took to govern through the Assembly had increasingly become the point. Democracy was messy, but it got much less so when it became so inconvenient that the majority effectively abdicated in favor of those with the ambition and the resources to get things done.
He sighed. All the same, this was a meeting that couldn’t be handled behind closed doors, and there were doubtless going to be far too many speeches, as random idiots felt the need to spout off about their spirit of democracy and their umbrage at the visitor who had demanded to speak to the full Assembly. Faron didn’t care for the Corvanite consul either, but he had far more informed and sophisticated reasons.
Especially since he knew exactly why Consul D’Cruze was here.
With a curse, he shut off the data plate. He couldn’t focus on the figures right now.
“M’ser Faron.” He looked up to see Cora Desarne standing in the door of his Assembly pod. The pod was tiny, with room for only two people at most, but that was another necessary sacrifice to keep up appearances. “I see you are as happy about today as I am.”
“M’sel Desarne.” He waved to the second chair without rising. “No Zolarian should be happy about this. Unfortunately, we know the contents of Consul D’Cruze’s speech ahead of time, so we get to be unhappy longer than our less-dedicated fellow citizens.”
Desarne raised a sardonic eyebrow as he sat down. Even their wording was carefully chosen. Frankness was not a virtue for people in their position. “You’ve seen the footage?”
“Of course.” Faron wanted a drink to wash the sour taste out of his mouth again. “We had to know it would come to this.”
“Unfortunately, we didn’t know the Corvanites were quite so good at information warfare.” Desarne’s lips twisted in a bitter grimace.
Faron was trying to think of a more delicate way to put his rejoinder when the alert chime sounded throughout the amphitheater. The chime, along with everything else happening in the amphitheater, would be heard throughout the orbital network, which was allowing holographic telepresence all over the planet, but limited access elsewhere in the system. The allied systems would find out about this soon enough, but the important decisions were all made on Zolah, and that was simply accepted.
A door opened far below, and Consul D’Cruze strode out to the podium. Faron could bring a close-range holo up to see details, but he did not. He knew what was coming. He didn’t need to see it in full detail.
“People of Zolah.” As was expected of a Corvanite, D’Cruze was blunt and omitted all the usual flowery language about democracy and the decision-making of the wisdom of the crowd that usually went with addressing the Assembly. There was a faint murmur of discontent through the amphitheater, and Faron glanced around at the tier upon tier of pods, a faint smile coming to his face despite the circumstances. This still might not go quite like the Corvanites hoped.
“By now, most of you should have seen the holo sent to every major media outlet for a hundred and fifty light years. If you have not, I will replay it for you.” He held up a data plate and tapped a control, and the holo in every pod lit up with the images that Faron had already had burned into his brain, even as he had tried to think of a plan to evade the inevitable consequences.
Starships hovered in orbit over Herulean, site of one of the Mytunese defense bases that needed to be reduced before the Mytunese Republic could be brought to its knees. Many of the ships were the expected red, rounded cylinder profile of Mytunese destroyers and cruisers, and many more were the light gray spike shapes of Corvanite ships.
More concerning was all the rest. Not only were there representative ships from dozens of other human worlds, many of them Corvanite allies, but many others from worlds that the Assembly—and the ZIS—had considered neutral. There were several non-human ships as well.
Most concerning of all were the sleek, tapered, bronze lozenge shapes of otuchan ships. Not the brutish designs of the diaspora otuchans, those that the Zolarians had stepped forward to defend—if only because of who their enemies were—but those of the far more civilized and powerful homeworld otuchans.
The view shifted toward the Zolarian strike force moving in from the outer system, where it had been hunting the alien ships that had disrupted the original assault plans. Reduced from the strange happenings near Atavisa, the fleet had been reinforced in anticipation of the move on the Tolakoi base, but it was immediately apparent that it was badly outnumbered.
Faron had been expecting the recording of the ultimatum issued by the Corvanite commander, but D’Cruze paused the holo there. “Your fleet, reinforced by a people trained and given wormhole technology by your forces, was going to assault a Corvanite ally. The justification for this was a Mytunese strike on a diaspora otuchan world, a strike that you characterized as genocide.” He touched a control, and the visuals changed, this time showing unmistakably human architecture, at least where it hadn’t been burned and blasted to rubble. “That strike, conducted on a world where those same otuchans were attacking your fleet, was in justifiable retaliation for otuchan strikes on civilian targets within the Mytunese Republic.”
The murmurs had grown, and Faron swallowed hard. That part had been carefully scrubbed before it had ever gotten to the rank and file on Zolah, Aube, or any others of the crown jewel worlds.
D’Cruze raised his voice. “You were not told that part, were you? You were lied to, by people who believed that to stop our militarism, our ‘warmongering,’ any atrocity was justified! Including the conquest of an ally of Corvan Prime, with the aid of the agents of an alien empire willing to commit actual genocide in order to preserve your alliances!”
The image changed again, and Faron felt sick. He knew where that holo came from. The smoking, radioactive ruins of the Afa Thura megacity on Thuraban was another secret that had been closely kept when the partnering force on that world had reported it.
The murmur became an uproar. Regardless of the reasons, the Grand Army and the ZIS—and those who were trusted to handle the messy business of government that most of the people didn’t have the patience for—had kept unfortunate details from the rest of the Assembly. That alone was bad. That so many people had died was worse, especially when it made the Zolarians look like the aggressors.
After all, D’Cruze hadn’t shown any footage that depicted the Corvanites pushing past their sphere of influence, as draconian as their grip there was, and unfortunately, Faron and his fellows didn’t have any to show, either.
“When our ships rescued some of your soldiers some months ago, they did it because no state of open war existed between the Council of Corvan and the so-called ‘Grand Democracy’ of Zolah.” D’Cruze’s voice boomed across the amphitheater, vastly amplified as he turned up the gain. “That fact still stands. And it will stand, so long as this aggression in the guise of humanitarianism ends.” He changed the holo one more time. It shifted to a local star map, with nearly seventy systems highlighted. “We have been patient so far. That patience is at an end. Any Zolarian military force that presumes to pass any of these systems will be met with deadly force and utterly annihilated. And then a state of open war will exist between our worlds.”
D’Cruze tapped his data plate once more, and the holos vanished. “This is your warning. Stay within your space, or be destroyed.” With military precision, he pivoted on his heel and left the amphitheater.
The Assembly erupted, and Dominic Faron slumped in his seat, feeling sick.
***
Halfway around the planet, Cul Draven, newly retired from the Grand Army of Zolah, watched the Assembly’s meeting, feeling just as ill as the vastly more wealthy and powerful Dominic Faron. He had different reasons, though.
All those men and women. Dead. And for what? He had watched the Corvanite consul’s presentation with decidedly mixed feelings. He had seen enough to know that the Corvanites were a danger, and the more they believed that the Zolarians were either allies to the Newlanders or their would-be heirs, the more dangerous they would be. This fiasco of the last fifty thousand hours, roughly and relatively speaking, would only make them far more dangerous.
And his government—he was far too jaded and cynical to believe that the government of the “Grand Democracy” really was “everyone” anymore—was not only going to let those soldiers’ deaths go to waste, they were going to tear themselves apart over this.
It just plays into the vithang’s hands.
He shut off the holo and stepped outside, looking up at the deepening evening. A few stars shone in the dark beyond the clouds. He didn’t think any of them were vithang systems, but he couldn’t be sure.
I still don’t know why they wanted us at each other’s throats. I just know that they did, and the more we fight amongst ourselves, the happier they are. He thought of that sinister, snakelike being, and how it had laughed at him, spoken of its dedication. Dedication to what?
He’d never know. The survivors of that ill-fated expedition had been strictly charged by ZIS to say nothing to anyone about the vithang, the ghost ships, or that brown dwarf system for as long as they lived. Of course, the Corvanites had destroyed any cover story for the disaster that had befallen the 220th Regiment when they’d sent out their broadcasts by courier ship to every system along the Corvanite-Zolarian frontier. But that wouldn’t stop the powers that be from sending the mob after him out of spite.
“Are you all right?” Emily had kept her distance when he got quiet, ever since he’d gotten home. They’d seen very little of each other since he’d left for Zhogalgan, all those tens of thousands of hours ago, and they were still feeling each other out again. As good as it had been to see her and his children—especially given the relief that he wasn’t going to be disappeared to the asteroid mines after being pilloried in front of the Assembly—it was as if they were having to get to know each other all over from the beginning.
“I will be.” He held out an arm, and after a moment she came into the circle of his embrace. It was almost as if they were courting again.
He sighed, looking up. Provided those dark ships don’t come for us here.
***
“Attention!” Thirty pairs of boots rang out on the hard floor as the doors opened and a rail-thin form in dark red and bearing the sigil of the Council of Corvan on his chest stepped inside the audience chamber.
“At ease, gentlemen, this is not a formal audience.” General Kaminsky—Bannon had confirmed with Commander Fox that this was indeed the hero of Sarapas, the man he’d read of voraciously when he’d been a boy preparing to step onto the agoge field—waved a dismissive hand.
None of the gathered officers, all veterans and survivors of KR-7712, the brown dwarf where the ghost ship base had been found, relaxed. Between the respect commanded by this man, and the circumstances of the meeting, there was little reason to.
Kaminsky looked around. “So, first things first. We got some intel out of those Zolarians before you released them. We have a name for the people who are sending the ghost ships. The Vithang Imperium. Unfortunately, the name is all we have.”
He found a chair and sank into it. “Please, gentlemen, be seated. I’m an old man and have lived a hard life. And I don’t want to crane my neck looking up at all of you while I go into this.” He raised an eyebrow. “I don’t need to say that everything spoken in here is, for now, to be considered classified.”
Bannon waited for Commander Fox and Captain Haarot to sit before he did as well, still conscious of the added weight—physically insignificant but morally enormous—of his new captain’s bars. He was still a phalanx commander, but it had been decided to advance the rank for Special Tasks Phalanx leaders to captain.
