The empire of dust, p.1
The Empire of Dust, page 1
part #3 of Chronicles of the Second Interstellar Empire of Mankind Series
The Empire of Dust: Book Three of the Chronicles of the Second Interstellar Empire of Mankind
By
Robert I. Katz
Also by Robert I. Katz
Edward Maret: A Novel of the Future
The Cannibal’s Feast
The Kurtz and Barent Mystery Series:
Surgical Risk
The Anatomy Lesson
Seizure
The Chairmen
The Chronicles of the Second Interstellar Empire of Mankind:
The Game Players of Meridien
The City of Ashes
The Empire of Dust
The Empire of Dust:
Book Three of the Chronicles of the Second Interstellar Empire of Mankind
Copyright © 2018 by Robert I. Katz
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to any person, living or dead, is strictly coincidental.
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form, without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
Cover design by Steven A. Katz
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Prologue
He groaned as the cold slowly seeped into his awareness. Dimly, he felt that he might have shivered but he wasn’t certain of this. He was numb. Am I alive? He thought that he must be. I think, therefore…how did that go? Something. The thought hung there in the back of his brain, elusive. Slowly, he wriggled his fingers, then his toes. He tried to blink his eyes but the darkness was absolute. Maybe he succeeded. He couldn’t tell. Fingers and toes then. He wriggled them again then clenched his fists. If I have hands then I must have arms, and legs. That was a comforting thought. Arms and legs were good, at least a start. He tried to cry out but something liquid and harsh filled his mouth.
Wait, a voice seemed to say. Everything will be explained. Give it time. Was this his own thought or did it come from somewhere outside? Something that might have been amusement filled his mind. He had nowhere to go and nothing but time.
For a time then, he slept.
Chapter 1
The planet was dusty, almost barren, but there was life. It clustered around the oases and on the coasts, people struggling to make a living. Their database listed the world as Baldur-3, the third world in the Baldur system. The local web was unshielded and easy to access. The city below them was called Norwich.
“What do you think?” Michael Glover asked.
“We need fuel,” Romulus said. “They have fuel.”
Deuterium for the fusion generators. They had jumped far and this was the first human settled world they had come across in over a month that was more than a series of ruins. “I don’t know,” Michael said. “They’re not exactly high tech.”
“High enough. The world is clean and orderly. There are three universities on the Western continent and another five on the Eastern. They’re not barbarians. They’ll have what we need.”
Michael shrugged. “Better than nothing.”
The ship’s sensors had revealed a landing field on a large island off the coast of the Eastern continent. He instructed the AI to approach. They were hailed when still fifty kilometers up. “Unknown ship. State your business and world of origin.”
“This is the starship London,” Michael said. “Out of Beta Ionis-4.” It was nonsense, of course. Beta Ionis was a rocky, frozen system with a population of sentient, low temperature aliens that had never developed interstellar travel. Humanity had been trading with them for thousands of years.
The voice seemed to hesitate. “We have no record of human habitation in the Beta-Ionis system.”
“We maintain a habitat in the asteroid belt.” This was true, or it was true in the days of the Empire. Regardless, it was not a statement that could be disproven from half a galaxy away.
“Please state your business.”
“The London is a merchant vessel. I have a cargo to sell and I wish to purchase deuterium.”
“The names of your crew?”
“There is only myself. My name is Michael Glover.”
After a moment, the voice said. “You may land. Please follow the beacon to slip number eight.”
Twenty minutes later, the London settled into the designated location. Up close, the port was busier than Michael had expected. Cargo carriers rolled across the dusty tarmac. Three other slips were occupied, all with ships somewhat smaller than their own. “I think you should stay aboard,” Michael said. “Actually, you should stay hidden.”
Romulus looked nothing like Homo Sapiens. His matte black composite structure possessed arms, legs and a head only as a concession to human sensibilities. Romulus nodded. Without a word, he pressed a panel in the wall of the main cabin. The panel slid open. The robot entered and the panel slid seamlessly closed.
Five minutes later, the port inspectors arrived, one small, young and female, the other male, of indeterminate age, with a harried expression on his face. Michael pressed a button. A metal ramp unfolded and the main airlock opened. The inspectors entered, glancing curiously around the cabin. “Captain Glover?” The male inspector held out a hand. Michael took it. “I’m Chief Inspector Mark Conway. This is Assistant Inspector Natalie Levin. Welcome to Baldur.”
Natalie Levin frowned. “You’re really the only one aboard? I’ve heard of fully automated ships. I’ve never seen one.”
Michael smiled. “We’re proud of it. It’s a copy of an ancient First Empire design.”
“Well, we’ll need to inspect your cargo.”
“Feel free.”
The cargo had been carefully chosen. Little of it was high tech, mainly inexpensive but no longer up-to-date pre-fab matrices and solid state transistors that could be adapted to a variety of computer platforms, spices from five different worlds that had been stored in liquid nitrogen for over two thousand years, a lockbox of uncut jewels, most of them unique to their own worlds of origin, another lockbox containing small ingots of gold and another of platinum, and pallets of spider silk from the jungles of Rigel.
Natalie Levin pursed her lips when she saw the manifest and frowned at Michael. “You can’t trade the spices here unless you get authorization from the medical authorities declaring them safe for human consumption. Also, the matrices might contain viruses that our own computers aren’t equipped to handle. You’re not allowed to sell them or let them connect to the local web. The rest of it is approved.” She tore a sheet of paper off a clipboard. “Post this in your cargo bay where prospective buyers can see it. Good luck.”
“An interesting cargo,” Conway said. “You’ve travelled widely.”
“It’s what I do,” Michael said. “Buy low and sell high.” It was a plausible statement but not exactly the truth. It could easily become the truth, however. He had to do something to occupy his time and whatever that something ultimately turned out to be, an itinerant merchant captain made an excellent cover.
“Your papers are in order,” Conway said. “I suggest that you head over to the merchant’s guild. They’ll put you in touch with potential buyers.” He glanced at a comp on his wrist. “Too late tonight, though. They open first thing in the morning.”
“Thank you,” Michael said. “I’ll do that. Meanwhile, what is there to do at night in your fair city?” Calling it a city was definitely a stretch but it never hurt to be polite.
Natalie Levin snorted. “Not much,” she said.
Conway smiled at her. “We have some excellent restaurants, a zoo and a museum. There are a number of local sports teams but none of them are playing this evening. Two small theaters offer live entertainment. One of them is playing Twelfth Night, the 5714 translation. Also, the local web carries numerous channels. If you want to get off your ship, there are three reasonable hotels in the center of town.” He shrugged. “Good luck.”
They shook hands again, Michael thanked them both and waited until they had gone and the airlock closed behind them before saying, “What do you think?”
Romulus’ voice issued from a speaker grid near the ceiling. “Everything seems in order. I’m not expecting trouble.”
“No,” Michael said. “It all seems very civilized.”
Chapter 2
When he had awakened for the second time, he found that he was stronger. He opened his eyes and could see light. He was lying on a soft mattress on a narrow bed and covered by a white sheet. A monitor hanging near the ceiling displayed his temperature, a picture of his beating heart with digital readout of the blood flow through each coronary artery, electrocardiogram with heart rate, and oxygen saturation. The values were all normal.
But where was here? Many, many years ago, he had chosen to serve the Empire and after that initial choice, the choices given him had been few. He sighed, held up his right hand in front of his face and flexed the fist. It looked like his hand, the hand that he remembered. It looked…normal. He smiled and drifted back to sleep.
When he awoke for a third time, he felt almost himself. He noted the slow drip of the IV line, feeding a milky white fluid into a vein. Daylight shone in through the window. “Hello?” he said.
There was no answer and he considered swinging his legs over the side of the bed. Sooner or later, he would have to get up, if only to empty his bladder. Might as well be now. A ping came from the monitor. “Please state your name.”
The request was routine. He had known it would be coming. One out of ten thousand, for reasons not perfectly understood, did not survive the freezing process. Twice that number awoke with at least minimal brain damage, most commonly transient amnesia. “Michael Glover,” he said.
“Your date of birth?”
“April 17, 3912, Imperial calendar.”
“Excellent,” the voice said. “Please wait.”
For what? He smiled to himself. He was well acquainted with bureaucracy. Hurry up and wait was standard operating procedure in all bureaucratic organizations, but he didn’t have to wait long. The door opened and a thin, humanoid robot entered the room. The robot was constructed of a black composite material. It had legs, arms and a head. Aside from a speaker grill and two optic sensors about where a mouth and eyes would be on a human, the head was otherwise featureless. Michael noted the sensor grid displayed on its abdomen. The robot walked up to the side of the bed and stopped. “How are you feeling?” it asked.
“A little weak, otherwise fine.”
The robot cocked its head. “That is to be expected. Please refer to me as Romulus.” The robot scanned the monitor screen, nodded in an absurd parody of a human gesture, deftly removed the IV line and covered the puncture with a small bandage, all of which Michael tolerated without comment. The robot stepped back from the bed and said, “I am to explain your mission.”
Michael smiled. No sense in waiting. “Please do.”
“Not here,” the robot said. “Follow me.” It turned and walked out the door.
Michael scrambled out of bed. He was naked. The simulated display in the upper corner of his visual field gave him the ambient temperature and atmospheric composition: exactly twenty degrees, not quite seventy-nine percent nitrogen, twenty-one percent oxygen, a scattering of trace gasses, perfectly safe and comfortable. The robot paused in the doorway, turned its head and waited until Michael felt steady on his feet, then resumed walking. Michael followed.
Chapter 3
The port was situated at the edge of the city, bounded by woods on two sides, with a grassy plain to the west that ended at an isthmus separating the island from the mainland, and a distant glow of city lights to the east. Michael had been cooped up in the ship for almost a month. He was eager to sample the fresh air of a new world and he decided to walk into town. The spiral arm of the milky way shone brightly overhead. The breeze was cool, the air fresh and filled with the scents of springtime flowers. After a half an hour, he came to the first row of small houses, then another and soon after, a row of two and three story office buildings, mostly empty now. He passed a few pedestrians, then more and soon he came to a central square that was almost crowded, lined with shops and restaurants.
There were a lot of families strolling about, three and four generations together. They seemed to marry young here and have a lot of kids. More than half carried weapons, some knives in belt sheaths, a few holstered pistols. He wandered into a clothing shop. The goods were all local. Spider silk might fetch a good price, he thought. He nodded to the proprietor and walked back out to the street.
A lit sign across the square said “Norwich Tavern.” He was hungry and taverns were always good places to pick up gossip, though the word ‘tavern’ might have a different meaning on this world than on others; but he liked the place immediately. The floor was wood, with dark paneling on the walls, solid wooden booths and tables, comfortable looking chairs and a long wooden bar covering one whole side of the room. Most of the booths and about half the tables were occupied. A waitress, middle aged, slim, brunette and pretty greeted him at the door. “You can sit anywhere,” she said. “Someone will be right with you.”
He took a booth near the center of the row that gave him a good view of the room and picked up the menu. The general headings were obvious but some of the meats were obscure. What was a lapwing? The waitress who had greeted him walked up a few minutes later with a table setting and a glass of water. “Anything to drink?”
“Draft beer,” he said. “Whatever’s good.”
“Well, that’s a matter of opinion, but the Hofheiser Golden is probably our biggest seller.”
“I’ll have that,” he said, and ordered a sandwich of something that the menu described as, ‘slow roasted barbecued quagga on wheat bread.’ It came with soup, a salad of mixed greens and dessert. He had his doubts about the rest of it but was looking forward to dessert.
The waitress smiled. “Be right back.”
At its most sensitive level, and particularly in a crowd, Michael’s augmented hearing could be overwhelming, even painful. He normally adjusted it to human baseline. He sub-vocalized a code and the tiny server beneath his sagittal sinus increased the auditory input so that even whispers from the furthest corner of the room could be picked up. A table near the back held five men from a starship crew but their conversation told Michael nothing he didn’t already know. They were heading out in the morning, having sold their cargo for a decent price and re-invested the proceeds in ironwood, a local product popular on several nearby worlds. Pirate activity had been reported but none in this sector. The Empire patrols had not reached this far out yet but presumably would in a few more years. The Empire was expanding. The crew was not sure how they felt about this. Neither was Michael.
Michael’s beer arrived. He sipped it, nodded in approval. Cold, with a lot of hops. The food arrived a minute later, first the soup, which wasn’t bad, then the salad, nondescript but inoffensive. The sandwich was excellent, the meat tender and smoky.
In the back corner, two men were about to arm wrestle. One was big and burly with a shaved, bald head, pale white skin, enormous shoulders and a bushy beard. The other had a lined, sunburnt face and clothes that did not appear to have been recently washed. A small crowd was gathered around the table.
“Two credits on Rangel,” one of them said.
A second one looked at the competitors and narrowed his eyes. “I’ll take that bet. Curly will destroy him.”
Curly, presumably the bald guy, looked up and grinned. The two competitors locked hands and one of the spectators, who seemed to be the designated referee, said, “Go.”
Curly did not seem to be straining and the easy smile never left his face. The back of Rangel’s hand slammed down on the table. Rangel shook his head. “Shit,” he said, and rose to his feet.
“Anybody else?” Curly said.
Michael toyed with the idea of trying his luck but decided against it. He didn’t need the money and he didn’t want any trouble. He finished the sandwich and waited for dessert. One of the spacers rose to his feet and ambled to the back of the room. “How about me?” he said.
Curly frowned. “Where you from?”
The spacer grinned. “Scorpius Lambda.”
“Scorpius Lambda is high gravity,” Curly said.
The spacer nodded. “That’s right.”
Curly looked him up and down. “You have any other mods or implants? All natural?”
“Just me,” the spacer said.
The spacer’s comrades had all walked over and joined the crowd around the table. They were grinning. Michael shook his head. Curly frowned, then shrugged his massive shoulders. “Why not?” he said.
