The Empress i-3 Read online

  Droad’s meteoric rise in political popularity had not been matched by successes in his personal life, however. Sarah Engstrom had left him for Aldo, and he’d subsequently taken up with Ensign Tolbert. Unfortunately, Tolbert’s infatuation with an older, extremely busy and driven man had faded quickly. Within a few months, he was alone again. He’d thrown himself into his work as usual, and managed to get warning transmissions out to planets in every direction-even to Old Earth itself, a world no one had heard from in nearly a century.

  A little over a year after the aliens had been defeated in the Kale system, Droad called upon an old friend for a visit. He called Aldo Moreno. The man came that very morning, as he’d been residing in the capitol city near the Nexus headquarters. Droad had known this, but hadn’t expected such a rapid response.

  Aldo appeared at the doorway as it dissolved away with a shimmer. He was of Swiss-Italian descent, as were many on Neu Schweitz. His hair and eyes were dark and thoughtful. His large nose tended to tilt high into the air when he was annoyed.

  “Fancy door,” Aldo commented. “May I come in?”

  “By all means,” Droad responded, providing a politician’s automatic smile.

  Aldo stepped inside and inspected the office. He whistled in appreciation, toeing the rich carpet that was over an inch deep. He thumbed the tail feathers of a stuffed rook he found hanging near the corner window, which offered a panoramic view of the capitol city far below.

  “A real bird and a real window?” he asked.

  Droad nodded. Droad’s eyes slid to the dueling sword at Aldo’s side then back up to the man’s face. Aldo had the eyes of a calculating killer, but Droad considered the man to be a valuable friend.

  “Why did you summon me here, Senator?” Aldo asked, turning his attention again to the stuffed bird. Although the natives of Neu Schweitz’s cantons called them rooks-and they were black-feathered birds-they were not the same species that flew upon Old Earth. They were far larger, being nearly a meter tall in some cases. They were quiet birds, as well. They did not twitter and squawk. Instead-they stared. Today, this dead rook stared down at the two men from its timeless perch. Aldo tapped at one black, reptilian foot thoughtfully.

  “I needed to speak with you about a serious matter, Aldo.”

  “Is this about Sarah? I left her some time ago. You may not have heard.”

  “Yes, I know,” Droad said.

  “Is it about my dueling, then? I’ve taken care to keep kills to the minimum and my records will show every instance of a disagreement has been documented and witnessed.”

  “Meticulously,” Droad murmured.

  Aldo spun around and stared at the Senator intently. “You didn’t have a hand in getting me out of that misunderstanding in the tavern, did you?”

  Droad smiled more broadly. “What you suggest is absurd. I’m a simple servant of the people. I would no more abuse my power unethically than would any other Senator of the Nexus.”

  “Of course,” Aldo said with a tiny snort. He smiled for the first time. “And thanks.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “Okay then, if it isn’t a legal matter, or Sarah-why am I here?”

  “Because I need you, Aldo.”

  “An unusual admission for anyone.”

  “Nevertheless, it’s true.”

  Aldo squinted at Droad, as if peering into the other man’s mind. His eyes suddenly widened in alarm. “Not them? They’ve shown up again?”

  Droad raised a hand to calm his friend. “No. Not exactly. Not yet. But I’m sure the aliens will do so-somewhere.”

  Aldo shook his head and gestured for Droad to speak further.

  “I’ve been busy, Aldo.”

  “With the Senate and the transmitted warnings, yes. I’ve heard and I approve. I voted for you, you know. Even though I had to tap your name into the search field to do it.”

  “Thanks. But I’m not talking about warnings. I don’t think they go far enough. I’ve made other-arrangements.”

  Aldo squinted at him again. “Arrangements? That could only mean a ship. I haven’t heard anything about a ship.”

  Droad nodded, impressed that he had jumped to the correct conclusion so quickly. Aldo was a sharp man. “Privately, I’ve worked in secret on several critical plans that have gone further than transmitting warnings to endangered human colonies. And yes, I’ve managed to get a ship built. It’s ready to leave tonight.”

  Aldo was at a loss for words. Then a look of calculation swept over him. He nodded as if having divined Droad’s true purposes. The performance was so convincing, Droad wondered if he actually had seen more deeply than had been intended.

  “This is about Sarah after all,” Aldo said at last. “I see it clearly now. You get me out of a misunderstanding with the law, then request a favor. As a result, I’m sent off on a decade-long fool’s errand, where hopefully I meet with some unfortunate accident in space. Elaborate, Droad. I had no idea you cared so deeply for her. Well, let me assure you, this ruse is unnecessary. I was infatuated with the woman for months, just as you were. But I have many personality flaws, and one of them includes an inability to maintain a relationship-”

  Droad finally stopped Aldo’s speech, waving away his words as if they hung in the air between them. He stepped forward and reached out a hand. Reluctantly, suspiciously, Aldo clasped the offered hand with his own and they shook hands.

  “No, Aldo,” Droad said. “I’m not sending you away for my own convenience. In fact, I’ll miss you and I’m unhappy to lose your help.”

  “What then?”

  “You are simply the best man for the job. You know the enemy. You know how to handle people as well as alien invaders. I need you to fly out to Ignis Glace and do what you can to defend that world.”

  Aldo stared in disbelief. “I barely remember my grade school lessons about that strange place. It’s the most remote planet that remains under local Nexus control.”

  “It’s also my homeworld, and I’m asking you to help defend my home for me.”

  Aldo looked troubled. “You have family there?”

  “I did, yes. I left long ago. I would like you to check on them for me.”

  “But this is a diplomatic mission. I’m no diplomat, Droad.”

  “You will not be the ambassador. You are to be the ambassador’s bodyguard. Possibly, the role will expand when you meet the natives. The people on Ignis Glace do not respond well to diplomacy. They are tough and unpleasant for the most part. That fact contributed to my decision to leave my homeworld and emigrate here to the capitol.”

  “I understand they use titles on Ignis Glace,” Aldo said. “What was your title? Are you nobility there?”

  “Yes,” Droad said. “I was a Baron and Droad House possessed a small fief.”

  Aldo chuckled. “A Baron! Then you became a governor and most recently a senator? You should run for king, next.”

  “This is no laughing matter, Aldo. They are my people. Will you help?”

  Aldo grimaced. Droad thought drily that he looked like a trapped animal.

  “Why me?” Aldo asked.

  “Because you are as hard as nails and you can read people very well. You are not to be a diplomat, but rather an agent. Most people here at the Nexus-they could never understand how people from my frontier planet think. The people here are too bureaucratic.”

  “While in comparison, I’m some kind of pirate?” Aldo demanded. “What do you want me to do out there?”

  “You must do what you can to get the fractious Houses of my homeworld to understand the danger and teach them how to fight this implacable enemy.”

  “All right, I’ll ask a deeper question then: why aren’t you going?”

  Droad sighed and went to stare down at the city spread out two thousand feet below. “I’m needed here. If other infections show up, we’ll have to send a fleet to expunge the enemy. We’re building stations in space even now-hundreds of them. To keep up this effort will be easy for a fe
w years, as the fear will be fresh in the minds of the people. In time, however, their fear will begin to fade. I remain here anticipating that time, a decade from now. I will keep stoking those flames so they are not forgotten.”

  “Sounds dull.”

  “Exceedingly so. You’re role is infinitely more exciting.”

  “Still, your own family, Droad…” Aldo said, looking at him sidelong. “I don’t believe you’d hand off this mission to another unless there were a greater reason.”

  Droad frowned. He’d hoped he wouldn’t have to reveal too much. In truth, he’d left Ignis Glace under less than pleasant circumstances. He sighed, realizing Aldo must be told more in order to get him to go. “I had a wife and children on Ignis Glace,” he said.

  Aldo’s eyes widened. He was clearly impressed.

  “We were incompatible,” Droad went on. “I left to keep the peace.”

  “I see,” Aldo said thoughtfully. “And if I refuse to go? Will you sign a writ for my arrest?”

  Droad shook his head.

  Aldo was silent for a time. They both stared down at the bustling city. A light dusting of snow began to fall as they watched, slowly turning the shoulders of the buildings white.

  “I’ll do it,” Aldo said at last. “You know I love to travel, but I’ve never been out of the system. I have to admit, crossing blades with the aliens-that was more exhilarating than dueling fops for their paychecks.”

  “Excellent,” Droad said.

  “How large is the crew? Is it a big ship, like the Zurich?”

  Droad shook his head. “Sadly, no. It can’t be. It’s a small vessel with a crew of less than twenty souls.”

  Aldo looked stunned. “What kind of armament does it have?”

  “Nothing to speak of. You must understand, the ship is built for interstellar travel- fast interstellar travel. It must catch up with Gladius and pass her. It can reach speeds very close to that of light, but to do so, little of her displacement can be devoted to anything other than propulsion.”

  Aldo looked slightly worried, but he nodded. “Makes sense. Where do I board her?”

  Droad gave him the directions, poured two shots of fine whiskey and toasted his friend goodbye.

  When Aldo had departed, Droad returned alone to his window. The city below was gray-white now, punctuated by colorful flashing lights. Mech cabs whizzed this way and that, taking people to countless destinations. How mechanical and chaotic such a hive of activity must have looked to the enemy. He wondered if there was an alien counterpart to himself out there somewhere, struggling and preparing for war just as vigorously as he himself did each day.

  Watching the people of Neu Schweitz was hypnotic. They’d suffered in the war with the Skaintz Imperium, but in his opinion they’d gotten off lightly thus far. All told, the people of this planet had been barely scratched when compared to past populations that had come into contact with the enemy. This world had lost no more than a million souls, and with that minor price the enemy had been expunged from the system. Unfortunately, the rest of the local Nexus-governed worlds could not be guaranteed such a rosy experience.

  The Nexus Senate had passed a resolution to warn them in detail, and official transmissions had been made. The situation should alarm any colonial government: countless vids streamed out, showing the enemy, their ships, their virulent power to grow in numbers and military strength exponentially in a very short time span. Every world was exhorted to vigilance and defensive build-up. They were to arm themselves and seek out every anomaly in their local handfuls of planets and asteroids, hunting down possible invaders. The biggest fear was of sleeper-agents, reawakened and goaded into activity by signals sent out by the enemy over recent years. The alien transmissions had awakened pockets of dormant creatures with these signals, or at least had done so in the grim case of Minerva, and her slaughtered inhabitants, a people formerly known as the Vlax.

  Droad’s mind turned back to Aldo. He wondered how he would fare on the frontier world of Ignis Glace. Hopefully, he would perform great deeds there, should they require doing.

  Droad feared that they would.

  Aboard Gladius, events unfolded slowly at first. The continuously accelerating ship blazed onward for the first leg of the journey toward Ignis Glace without mishap. The middle leg of the voyage would be spent coasting at approximately sixty percent of the speed of light, while the last stretch would be spent decelerating so the ship would not flash through the destination system in a matter of hours. The course and program were locked in, and little variation could be applied to these preset arrangements without disastrous consequences.

  For those of the crew that were not in cryo-sleep, the two Gs of acceleration weren’t the only hardship that must be dealt with. The incredible speed of interstellar travel was not without complications. Ships such as Gladius generated a time dilation effect for those aboard, a side-effect of Einstein’s theory of relativity, which unfortunately for spacers, had turned out to be more than just a theory. The faster the ship went, the slower time progressed for those who existed aboard her. All told, the journey would take a little over two years of relative time off the lives of the crew and passengers, despite the fact the distance covered was several lightyears. Most spacers aged at approximately one third the rate of people who lived on a planet. Aging slowly was an unavoidable part of life for those who traveled regularly among the stars. They were nomads of the cosmos who rarely returned to their native worlds-and they were unlikely to see a familiar living face if they ever did go home. Their parents would generally be dead after what seemed only a decade to them. Likewise, anyone left home such as a spouse, sibling or even their own children might be found old and decrepit by the time they returned. Spacers occasionally took their families with them, but more often they simply didn’t have a family, and lived disconnected lives inside the bellies of their vast ships.

  Fateful events began to unfold on Gladius when the AI watchdogs on the bridge detected an anomaly. The lifeboat systems were going offline, one after another. In the strictest terms, this was not a huge problem. When traveling at half the speed of light, lifeboats were useless anyway. If there was a serious problem aboard ship, none could escape death by abandoning Gladius. Small ships didn’t have the propulsion required to decelerate enough to make a safe landing. In past cases where lifeboat exits from interstellar craft had been attempted, the results had been dramatic and troubling. Anyone in such a small craft traveling at such extreme speeds often slammed into the planet of their destination at speeds measured in millions of miles per hour-or more likely, they sailed through the system entirely and vanish into deepest space.

  Extreme speeds caused other deadly hazards as well. Large vessels such as Gladius had a field generated in the nose section, an electromagnetic trick of physics that prevented the bits of stardust and debris that floated everywhere in the cosmos from piercing the hull. Traveling at tremendous speeds, a grain of sand became a tiny bullet that would puncture the ship’s skin and anyone inside the hull. The forward fields prevented such catastrophes.

  Lifeboats, however, had neither protective fields nor powerful engines. In short, they were useless during long-range crossings of the void. Knowing all this, the midshipman who discovered the anomaly in the lifeboat pods did so without grave concern. The ensign who received the midshipman’s boring report was equally disinterested. He filed an email, and a copy of the work-order was sent to all the lower deck maintenance people, most of who were hibernating in cryo-sleep. The ensign knew the matter would be properly handled in a few weeks, when the majority of the crew would be awakened for the long months of coasting in space. At that point, there would be plenty of time for repairs on relatively useless systems.

  #

  Third-rate maintenance crewman Garth was a tall, gangling man who rarely spoke and who had been cursed with a haunting stare. After the aliens had been hunted down and expunged from Gladius, Garth had been found hiding in the vast hold and declared a stowawa
y. His status was upgraded to that of ‘refugee’ after it was determined he’d survived the horrors of both Garm and Neu Schweitz. Taking pity on the skinny wretch with coal-black eyes, the Captain had ordered that he be released from the brig and assigned to cleaning the engine rooms to earn his keep. Garth performed his duties as a silent, ghostly presence. Others tried to befriend him, but they were routinely ignored until they gave up.

  Seventeen standard days before the coasting period began, Garth received a memo in his email box. It was a work-order, suggesting that some unknown level of maintenance was required in the lifeboat berths on the starboard side of the ship. Garth studied the email with concern. The order was vague, saying a warning alarm had been tripped, but there was nothing about the cause nor the solution. He was to ‘investigate’ this ‘anomaly’. Neither of these words were ones that Garth welcomed. After dealing with the alien Skaintz on multiple occasions, he’d come to recognize their operational signatures. This could be nothing at all-or it could be the end of everything.

  Garth tucked his computer scroll into his utility belt, tightened the touch-seals on his coveralls and headed for his supply closet. The door groaned on metal hinges as it swung open. Inside was his kit: a self-propelling cart mounted on an octagonal anti-grav pad. A bewildering array of power tools, cleaning systems and a central trash compactor made up the bulk of the kit. A tall suction-mop stood clipped to the compactor. The ragged head of the mop flapped like a pennant as he pushed the humming contrivance down the tube-like corridors.

  Garth passed one or two crewman on his wending way down to the lifeboat pods. Often, they waved or called out a salutation, but Garth did not respond-he never did. His eyes might flick to theirs, but after a fleeting moment of contact, his vision roved elsewhere. The crewmen shrugged, unoffended. He was the weird maintenance guy-there was nothing unusual about his behavior.