The Others Page 13

  “Would you be able to bring in Defekts as well to speak on the Hegemony’s behalf along with the offered Arbeiter and Kriegeri? Or are they all in mines somewhere, digging for radioactive ore until they drop to the ground and die?” Barron cursed himself the instant the words escaped his lips. Such provocations were not likely to be productive in any way, but he’d never been able to forget what he’d seen years before when the White Fleet had first ventured into Hegemony space, the way the Defekts were treated, how they were used as expendable labor.

  “We can trade barbs, Tyler, though I suspect that will come to no productive purpose. I can only state that you on the Rim have not carried the burden of dealing with such populations, millions of people with DNA so badly scarred, they are barely human.”

  Barron could hear discomfort in Akella’s voice as she offered up a defense of her people. She doesn’t approve of it either…at least she has doubts…

  After a long pause, Akella continued, “I do not deny that many of my people have behaved badly toward the Defekts, and certainly the most…inferior among their numbers. Such attitudes are born of the degraded nature of the Defekts, in part, yet I would also say to you that such conduct is not commendable. It is not the Defekts’ fault their ancestors were damaged by radiation and biological warfare, yet is their place in Hegemony society so different than that of the many impoverished workers on your Iron Belt worlds?” There was no accusatory tone in her words, simply calm rationality. Perhaps we can agree that both our cultures have their faults, as well as their strengths. Surely, you can acknowledge that our commitment to preventing a repeat of the Great Death, and our efforts to reintroduce technology and modern methods of medicine food production to worlds reduced to virtual savagery, have had some positive effects.”

  Barron winced at the jab at the Iron Belt’s lower classes. Those worlds were the pride of the Confederation’s economy…and the shame of its pretensions to be an enlightened power that valued freedom. Still, he barely managed to hold back the angry response that formed almost reflexively. “All cultures have their positives and negatives, Akella…but the fact remains that your people were the invaders, the aggressors. The White Fleet that first encountered the Hegemony was an instrument of exploration, not conquest. Had you not attacked us, we would have withdrawn voluntarily and respected your borders.”

  “I have no doubt, Tyler, but allow me to ask you one question. Your people know far less than mine about what you call the Cataclysm. You see yourselves as rising up from its effects, rebuilding civilization and prosperity. But what if all your achievement on the Rim is no more than a momentary blip. What if the downfall is still underway, if all your people built will be swept away in another wave of decline? Would our attempts to bring your people into the Hegemony be justified if we were able to prevent that? Would the deaths of some millions of spacers and soldiers be too great a price to pay to save the billions on the Rim from a dark age thousands of years long?”

  Barron was becoming more impressed with each passing moment. He wasn’t sure he believed Akella’s premises, but he didn’t have the slightest doubt about her intelligence…and he was beginning to believe in her honesty as well. He still despised the Hegemony, but if he had to work with them, he thought he could tolerate Akella. At least from what he’d seen so far.

  “You draw conclusions that far outstrip the evidence. You may state that the Cataclysm is still, in effect, underway, that all we view as a rebound is merely a temporary respite in the slide. Perhaps that is true…but it is a lot to accept without proof.”

  “I will show you proof, Tyler Barron, or at least substantial evidence. I will share with you all my people know of the events that destroyed the empire, and you can decide for yourself. And I will also allow you to view all my people know of the Others, including footage of our recent engagement with them. You may still harbor reservations, even profound disagreements with Hegemony ways and culture, as well as the current status of decay in human civilization, but I do not believe you will retain the slightest doubt that the Others are a grave threat, both to the Hegemony, and to every man and woman on the Rim.”

  Barron nodded. Part of him wanted to argue, and he was far from accepting Akella’s position that the Hegemony’s aggression had merely been part of an effort to arrest the decline of civilization. It was too convenient, too cleansing of the guilt the Hegemony bore for so many deaths and so much destruction. But he believed her warning about those she called the ‘Others.’ He’d believed it before she’d said a word, before the meeting had even begun. Perhaps not fully in his mind, but totally and without doubt in his gut.

  “Perhaps, then, that is the place to begin. As intriguing as I suspect I will find your imperial histories and archeological reports, it certainly seems this enemy—the Others, as you call them—is the matter of paramount importance. I would very much like to see the documentation of your recent encounter.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Colossus

  Lyra System

  Year 322 AC

  “Slowly, Commander, slowly…push that thing too hard and…” Fritz didn’t finish the sentence. She didn’t have to. Eric Kalmut knew only too well what would happen if the antimatter containment failed even the slightest bit. He found the whole business unnerving, though he was grateful, at least, to have his boots on solid ground, or, more accurately, solid deck. He’d spent about as much time as he could manage crawling over narrow catwalks and shimmying along conduits suspended twenty meters up.

  “We’re moving up a tenth of a percent a second, Commodore, and we’ve got it capped at a five percent flow rate. I don’t know how much slower we can go.” Kalmut had a good sense for the immense power flowing through the conduit, even at the restricted rate. Antimatter was an incredible fuel, by far the most powerful known to human science. But it was beyond volatile, and any contact whatsoever with ordinary matter would have the most unfortunate consequences.

  Kalmut watched as Fritz looked down at the small scanning device in her hands. She was searching for leaks, he knew, but he also wondered if there was any real purpose in that. It wasn’t like normal radiation, where catching the contamination early would allow the area to be evacuated or the leak to be plugged. By the time Fritz could detect loose antimatter particles, it would likely be far to late to salvage the situation. Confederation ships didn’t use antimatter, first and foremost because Rim technology had not developed ways to economically produce the precious substance. But there was another reason, one that hung like a cloud over efforts to restore Colossus to fully operational status. Confederation safeguards and control systems lacked the advanced shielding and backups required to effectively deploy antimatter. A microsecond’s leak in any system was almost certain to result in catastrophe, and Kalmut had watched Fritz check out every safety and backup system what seemed like a hundred times. By normal standards, work on Colossus appeared to move at a snail’s pace, but measured against the reality that one serious malfunction could destroy the entire vessel and everyone aboard, operations had proceeded swiftly enough.

  “We’re up to fifty percent flow rate, Commodore. All systems appear fully operational. All shielding one hundred percent functional.”

  “I’m not picking up any leaks, either. You may be right, Commander. We may have things working, at least here.” A pause, then Fritz continued. “But antimatter is cantankerous. I know we’re getting more pressure to finish here, but I’m not going to rush any work, at least not on the power systems. I want everything checked and rechecked…and then checked again. I’ll push the engineers—our own and the contractors—working on all the other systems, but the engines and reactors will remain the sole domain of the staff I handpicked. I don’t want anyone in here except people who served with us in the wars. Antimatter is dangerous to anyone, but it’s new for us to be using it on this operational scale, and not only that, but once we’ve exhausted what’s in the storage units, Colossus will he helpless. It might make a nice
museum or something, but it won’t be a warship anymore. The Confederation couldn’t produce enough antimatter in a millennium to refuel this thing. We might rig some fusion reactors to move it—slowly—but that’s about all we could manage for the foreseeable future. And the work would probably take years.”

  Kalmut nodded, silent for a moment. He’d been thinking about everything Fritz had just said, and the realization that no matter how well they adapted Colossus to their operations, the best they could hope for was to move the great ship to some permanent location. Deployment to any kind of active operations was out of the question, at least until a way could be found to refuel the vessel. That reality had hung like a pall over the entire effort.

  “It’s a shame, Commodore. We’ve got something this powerful, and we really can’t use it. Could you imagine the thing running out of fuel in a war zone?” Kalmut’s tone and his easy reference to battlefronts exhibited the somber assessment Fritz and most of the Confederation’s veterans shared. After two brutal wars—and for those left from the old Dauntless’s crew, the desperate fight against Invictus that had preceded them both—peace seemed a vague and implausible concept. The Hegemony hadn’t been defeated, they’d just offered a truce and pulled back. Anyone looking for a bet that peace had finally come wouldn’t find many takers in the fleet.

  “It is, Commander. No question. I’ve even wondered if we wouldn’t be better off tearing the thing apart and studying its tech. I’d wager we could push our science forward a century or more, and probably fairly quickly. Otherwise, Colossus is going to be an immobile hulk, studied, of course, but nowhere as effectively as it we really tore into it. I don’t know when we’ll be able to produce kilograms of antimatter, much less the vast quantities this ship uses. That could be more than a century from now, maybe even a millennium. It’s not just the tech, that’s the easy part. It’s the energy requirement. Until we can built vast energy collectors around stars or harness an entire planet’s geothermal activity, we’re going to be stuck producing grams of antimatter…nothing that’s going to send Colossus back into battle.

  The room was silent for a moment, and then Fritz looked back down at the scanner. Everything still showed clear. But before she could turn back and tell Kalmut, her comm buzzed.

  She tapped the small device on her collar. “Fritz here.”

  “Commodore…” The officer on the line was clearly hesitant to continue. “…Mr. Dennis is…demanding a meeting with you immediately.” It was painfully clear the young lieutenant on the line would rather have cut off a finger or two than relay that particular message to an officer as legendary in the navy as Anya Fritz…not to mention one famous for unloading on those who upset her with a fury that was the talk of the fleet.

  Fritz felt the wave of anger building. She almost snapped back, but some part of her, probably grown of age and wisdom, reminded her the officer on the comm hadn’t done anything. She was just an unfortunate pawn, stuck in the middle of a storm.

  She would save her rage for Dennis. He wanted a meeting? She would give him a meeting, though she suspected he would get a lot more than he’d bargained for.

  “Conference room three, Lieutenant. Fifteen minutes. Please advise Mr. Dennis that means fifteen. If he is so much as thirty seconds late, I have him thrown out of one of the airlocks.” She shut the line before the officer could respond.

  Before she’d had to respond. It had been an act of mercy to a junior member of her staff.

  Antoine Dennis could expect nothing of the kind. She’d spent as much time as she cared to arguing with the fool. She was going to explain the facts of life to the self-appointed representative for the civilian contractors working on Colossus, and she was going to do it in a way that allowed no chance he could misunderstand.

  She gestured to Kalmut and told him to continue, and then she stomped out of the room, her boots clanging hard on the smooth metal deck.

  She decided not to stop by her cabin to get her sidearm.

  Barely.

  * * *

  Andi stepped out of the shuttle, reaching out and grabbing the small handhold. She was used to being agile, sure on her feet, but she’d been a bit off the last few weeks. The nausea had been the worst, and she’d spent no small amount of time revisiting anything she’d dared to eat, but she also found the dizziness off putting. It wasn’t severe by any measure, but for someone accustomed to her old level of activity, it was annoying.

  She looked across the deck, the scowl on her face vanishing almost immediately as she saw Anya Fritz standing along the wall about ten meters away. The engineer started moving toward her almost immediately, and Andi matched her friend’s pace. Andi had known Fritz as long as she had Tyler, and while they hadn’t spent an enormous amount of time together, they shared the camaraderie of those who had fought and struggled side by side. They were members of the same group, and they were connected through the battles they had fought, and the people they loved and respected. And, with Tyler gone, Andi was excited to see anyone who felt like a connection to him.

  “Andi, it’s so good to see you.” The normally cool and grim engineer threw open her arms and embraced the new arrival. Andi appreciated the gesture, though the pressure of Fritz’s tight embrace made her stomach flop a little. She was grateful her face was over Fritz’s shoulder, facing away. She’d told almost no one about her pregnancy, and she intended to keep it that way until she had no choice. That would be soon enough, she knew, but it wouldn’t be right there, in one of Colossus’s landing bays.

  “It’s good to see you, too, Anya. I’m sure they’ve kept you busy out here. My God, this thing is incredible.”

  “Yes, it’s been one thing after another. I’m afraid we’ve just begun to scratch the surface.” A pause. “By the way, I’m sorry I couldn’t make it back for the wedding. I would have loved to be there, but there is a lot of pressure to get Colossus moved somewhere more secure. The admiral told me to proceed at my own pace, but I know he was worried about making at least some progress quickly.”

  “No worries at all. I can’t imagine how crazed your schedule has been. And, you’re right, Tyler never said so specifically, but I know he was worried about the whole situation with the Hegemony, and even the Union. Getting Colossus someplace we don’t need a whole fleet to guard it will make a lot of people’s minds rest easier, I suspect.” Barron’s concern for the great ship was one of the reasons she had come. She didn’t imagine she could offer anything substantive to aid Fritz’s operation—though she was, or had been, somewhat of a practical expert on old tech—but checking on things, and perhaps most importantly, confirming that Anya Fritz had been free to operate without interference or harassment, seemed like the best she could do for Tyler just then.

  It was also just about the last chance she’d have to get away from Megara, at least until the baby was born. Andi didn’t have the slightest doubt about Tyler or being married to him, but she’d been a wanderer all her life, and the thought of settling down, of living in one place for years and years, scared he hell out of her. And another few months, and transit point travel would be out of the question, at least until after she gave birth.

  “I’d love to catch up, Anya, but business first. I’m mostly here for Tyler, to make sure that you’ve been allowed to run the operation as you see fit. You know how important it is to safeguard this ship, and to glean from it what we can. I’m not the fleet admiral, but I think I can pull some of the same strings while he’s gone. And, I’ve got a few connections of my own.” Not the least of those was Gary Holsten. The head of Confederation Intelligence was one of Tyler Barron’s closest friends and allies, but Andi had actually worked as one of Holsten’s agents. Perhaps more importantly, she’d been captured and tortured by Sector Nine, and she still had some play in milking the guilt Holsten felt for sending her to Dannith in the first place.

  “So far, we’ve been left alone.” A pause. “The civilian contractors have become somewhat of a pain. They’ve got a repres
entative now who thinks he can negotiate working conditions with me…but all he’s going to manage to do is negotiate his way to an all expenses paid tour of Colossus’s exterior, straight from the airlock without a suit.”

  Andi smiled. “I might be able to help you with that particular problem. I had some similar…challenges…on Craydon, though more from the oligarchs than the workers. I suspect your particular gang of troublemakers will be easier to…reason with.”

  Easier to scare…

  Chapter Seventeen

  6,000,000,000 Kilometers from Planet Eliason

  Upsilon Vega System

  Year of Renewal 267 (322 AC)

  Ilius sat quietly, part of him regretting the fact that he’d pushed Chronos until his friend and superior had consented to his posting with what was being called, optimistically, the Verification Force. He was as hopeful as Chronos, and everyone else involved, that the scanner mods would actually work, that they would allow the outgunned Hegemony ships to at least fight back in a material way against their deadly enemies. But he found his confidence wavering.

  It wasn’t fear feeding Ilius’s uncertainty. He’d come beyond that, accepted his fate. For all his efforts to focus on the war and ways to win it, at his core he’d given in to hopelessness. He’d been at the one large battle the Hegemony had fought against the invader, he’d watched vast monitors, the greatest and most powerful ships known, save only for Colossus, stand utterly helpless, unable to even strike at their attackers, even as the enormous hulls were split open by the Others’ deadly beams.

  Some part of him, a spark in the depths of his mind perhaps, watched with some shred of anticipation, to see if Avia’s crew had indeed discovered a way to target the enemy’s ships. But his grim attitude came from other places, too. He’d seen the fleet savaged, thousands of helpless Kriegeri, and the Masters leading the fleet, killed. He’d watched the might of the Hegemony, and the great polity’s pride in its power and place in the galaxy shattered in a matter of hours. But he’d escaped the misery of seeing just what the Others did to a captured system, how they handled worlds full of Arbeiter and Kriegeri—and Masters, too.