Stars & Empire 2: 10 More Galactic Tales (Stars & Empire Box Set Collection) Read online

  With thumb and forefinger, Esther reached into the envelope and drew out a single sheet of paper. In the same careful handwriting and blue ink lay the identity of the person she was apparently being asked to kill: The Mother Superior, The Order of the Sainted Cumulus Mesofactia, Quadrant 18, Sector NA.

  19.

  Sister Esther Dale did not hesitate. She knew that if she stopped to think about the words on the paper that lay at her feet where she had dropped it only moments before that she would falter. And she could not falter now without undoing the confidence that allowed John Bucksmith to live on as Levi Sarig. And if he was killed due to a failure on her part, then any hope she had at making up the deficit caused by her murder of the man known to her now as Richard Xiao was lost. All these thoughts pierced through her consciousness simultaneously. But they did not cause her to lose her focus.

  Esther had practiced the sequencing necessary to effectively induce cardiac arrest via electromagnetic interruption of the heart’s beating so many times in preparation for the sacrifice of the key that her hands were already finishing their movements by the time she had taken the two steps forward to close the space between her and the Mother Superior. Perhaps the Mother Superior thought that Esther was coming to show her what was on the paper; perhaps Esther was simply moving too quickly for the Mother to react. She was old, after all. Old enough that a heart attack was certainly not out of the question.

  And so as Esther came face to face with the Mother Superior, she watched as the Mother’s eyes widened in surprise. The protections in place on the room did not apply to attacks from the interior, apparently. And while the Mother’s t’rosary was sounding its defensive alarm, the internal dampening field absorbed it: no one outside the office could see or hear anything amiss.

  The Mother Superior’s eyes bulged, then squeezed tight in evident pain. Esther upped the intensity of the cardiac interruption. The Mother collapsed against Esther, seeking support as her thin bones shook. She’s so light! Esther noticed, distractedly. Esther obediently caught her, gently lowering her to the ground. How would she explain her failure to summon help? It must have happened quickly, Esther decided. And her impulse had been to try to help herself, given her training. But sometimes even an initiate would fail.

  Esther excused herself from the limbs currently straightening and stiffening in their final agonies of death. She walked back to where the cream paper lay on the floor. Picking it up gently, Esther returned to the Mother’s side. It was a sacrifice, after all. A sacrifice that would allow Esther to cut her ties, and leave. No one else need know the tasks she had undertaken. The Shadow Network could not be so extensive; it would take effort, perhaps even a new vocation, but she could sink from their view.

  With these thoughts bringing the calm and control she sought, Esther placed the cream paper into a plasticene trash can and then quickly initiated the incineration mode. The thin smoke wound gently towards the ceiling, dissipating slightly as it neared the end of its journey. The Mother Superior lay dead at her feet. Esther turned to rise and disable the defenses in place on the room itself. She sought for the correct stream frequency with the t’rosary, but struggled to locate the source of the defensive deceptions. Just as she was beginning to wonder if it would be possible for her to find a way to use the remaining electromagnetic residue through the Mother’s manipulated fingers in order to disable the wards, she heard a soft click followed by a gentle sliding. A hidden panel opened up behind the Mother Superior’s imposing desk.

  And out stepped the Mother Superior.

  20.

  “As you can see, Sister Esther Dale, currently using the alias Beatrice Cortez thanks to illegally obtained identity alterations, is fully capable of committing murder,” the Mother Superior said.

  Esther stood still. Her mind, however, was racing. Who was the Mother Superior talking to? As if in answer to her question, several heavily armed special forces followed her through the hidden door.

  “It is my opinion that Sister Esther has, in fact, long been nurturing these psychopathic tendencies. We have kept an eye on her for some time, especially once she showed interest in being inducted into the Mysteries of the High Tech. Until the vicious murders of Sister Anna, Sister Maria, and Sister Tia, we had no direct proof of her instability.”

  Esther stared at the Mother Superior. Surely this was some kind of bizarre test? Some way to prove her loyalty, to demonstrate her ability to keep her oaths as the Mother had previously admonished? Why in the world would the Mother Superior wish to assign the blame for her fellow initiate’s deaths to Esther Dale? She still had not moved. She was not certain that she even could move, based off of the limiting sequences she observed the Mother working on her own t’rosary.

  “But you have seen with your own eyes the rapidity with which her psychosis now appears to be manifesting itself. Whatever delusions she has concocted, there is no denying the proof of the vicious attack just made ... on my own person. A desperate move by a woman desperate to cover up her guilt. I’m afraid this is not the first time she has killed on these sacred grounds.” The Mother Superior sounded as if she were not only appalled, but emotionally moved by the depravity of the sister she had fed, sheltered, and taught all these years.

  Bravo, thought Esther. The Mother Superior’s latest words had made it clear to her: she had created a perfect double through Protocol 43F. Someone—some poor sister likely emotionally manipulated by the Mother Superior—had willingly undergone a complete Re-Birth and become a perfect facsimile of the Mother herself. Esther had no idea how long the facsimile had been in place, but she suspected that this was a very recent development. It would be quite difficult to keep two Mother Superiors a secret for long.

  Then the true Mother Superior had hidden herself and the special forces within the secret compartment. Who knows what they had seen—Esther knew well that unless one was face-to-face with another person (and apparently not even that was always safe) that both image and sound could be manipulated. At any rate, they clearly saw her kill the false Mother Superior. She wondered if the special forces realized that the false Mother had been, at heart, an actual person—a person willing to suffer an innocent and violent death, though to be fair they may not have realized that was part of the package—or if the true Mother Superior had somehow convinced them that she was some sort of embodied hologram or even artificial intelligence.

  I wonder when she made the decision to blame me for the deaths of my sisters. And why me? What could she possibly gain?

  It did not matter now. They were clipping her hands behind her back. They removed her t’rosary with help from the Mother Superior. They pushed her head down roughly. She knew where she was going. She watched as two tears—her first in over eight years—tracked down her nose before falling softly. They landed on the dead body at her feet, washing her sister’s crown.

  Esther longed to close the unseeing eyes. But she could not.

  Epilogue

  The Mother Superior sat alone in her room. Her office was still being cleaned. And it would be a while before she really wanted to spend much time alone there again. Although she knew it had been necessary, watching Sister Esther react so quickly to the instructions contained in the second envelope had been quite difficult. The ease with which the initiate had harnessed the power of the t’rosary, twisting it towards death, demonstrated a true talent. Sister Esther’s arrest was a significant loss to her convent—and even though she had arranged it herself, carefully framing Sister Esther for last week’s deaths, the Mother Superior could not help but feel that loss.

  And then there had been the matter of seeing her own body attacked and convulsing on the floor until death arrived. She would need to see that additional prayers were said for Sister Martha. She had been loyal. And easy to persuade. Qualities that, like Sister Esther’s facility with the t’rosary, the Mother Superior had long cultivated.

  Too many losses. But all for the greater good. For the greater gain. For the greater G
od. And ultimately, that’s what her service all boiled down to: she served the Conglomerate God, and He had spoken to her. Unlike many others in her order, the Mother Superior was, at root, essentially practical rather than idealistic. Which meant that she provided excellent administration for her convent. And that when the Conglomerate God spoke, He did not have to deal with the overwhelming presence of ritual and abnegation that had built up over the hundreds of years He had been worshiped by mankind in the universe. He spoke; she listened.

  “Mother Superior?” A clear, young voice cut through her thoughts.

  “Yes,” she replied wearily.

  “The sisters at the school sent me here, and then the other sisters here, they had me go into this room to wait, but then I saw you pass by on your way here, and I thought I might just ask you directly....” The Mother Superior opened her door. An athletic young woman stood there, hands in pockets, thumbs fidgeting slightly.

  “What can I do for you?” she asked the young woman.

  “I would like to, you know, enroll or sign up or whatever you’re calling it here.”

  “The official path to enter the Sisterhood requires parental approval, archived via vid-screen to the Panopt. Surely you knew this before now.”

  “Yeah, I know, but—I know this isn’t common or anything, but both of my parents, they’re, well, they’ve passed.”

  Interesting. The Mother Superior gave the girl another look. “And your guardian?” she asked her.

  “I’m legal in one week.”

  “I see.”

  “Look, I’ve already archived my decision with the Flight Path a few days ago. But I’ve been having a ... a change of heart. I think that my place is here. I, uh, I want to be part of the Sisterhood. I’ve tested in since I was fourteen, if that helps.”

  Definitely interesting.

  “I am sure that we can work something out. The Sisters of the Order of the Sainted Cumulus Mesofactia are known for their beneficence towards the young. What shall I call you?”

  “Amelia. My name is Amelia Xiao.”

  “Welcome Novice Amelia. Let’s get you settled.”

  -o0o-

  To be notified of the releases of books 2-4, please sign up for Endi Webb’s mailing list.

  -o0o-

  Other books by Endi Webb

  PAX HUMANA SAGA:

  The Terran Gambit

  Chains of Destiny

  Into the Void (coming December 2014)

  THE ROHVIM CHRONICLES:

  Metal and Flesh

  Water and Blood

  Earth and Sky (coming 2015)

  Contributor to:

  The Robot Chronicles

  The Telepath Chronicles

  MOON WRECK

  RAYMOND L. WEIL

  -o0o-

  BONUS:

  THE SLAVER WARS: ALIEN CONTACT

  CHAPTER ONE

  THE STAR CROSS

  CHAPTER ONE

  MOON WRECK

  THE SLAVER WARS: BOOK 1

  RAYMOND L. WEIL

  Copyright © 2013 Raymond L. Weil

  All Rights Reserved

  _o0o_

  Moon Wreck

  Chapter One

  Mission Commander Jason Strong stared at the damaged lunar lander with a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. His best friend and copilot Greg Johnson was standing next to him. They both wore cumbersome white spacesuits suited to the lunar environment. All Jason could hear was Greg’s heavy breathing coming over the suit radio. He was also having a hard time keeping his own breathing steady. The landing had been a disaster, and there were no backup plans for what had happened. They were stranded on the Moon with no way home.

  “Damn!” Greg finally managed to say in an unsteady voice. “We’re really screwed now. How could this happen?”

  Both men were staring at their lunar lander, which was lying on its side at the edge of a small crater. The crater was only four to six feet deep, but that had been enough for one of the lander’s support struts to become unstable and the lander to topple over.

  “I don’t see any way to right it,” commented Jason, thinking about what they needed to do and the equipment they had available to them. “Nobody ever considered this scenario.”

  “How about the mechanical arm on the rover?” asked Greg, sounding desperate. “Could we use it to set the lander back up?”

  He had a wife and infant son back home, and he didn’t want Elizabeth to have to raise their son by herself. He could just imagine how she was feeling. There had been no contact with Mission Control for over twelve hours. Down on Earth, they would know something had gone terribly wrong. He could imagine the people in the Control Center frantically trying to contact them and only getting silence back in return. They had lost all contact just a few minutes into their descent.

  “Not strong enough,” replied Jason, shaking his head as he thought about their options. “The lander just weighs too much. Even in the lighter lunar gravity it’s too much for the mechanical arm on the rover.”

  “Then we’re going to die here,” responded Greg, glumly. He walked over to the lander in a shuffling gate and put his white gloved hand against the small American flag on the side of the lander. It had been his lifelong dream to travel to the Moon. “We’re the first manned mission to the Moon in decades, and we crashed. It’ll be years before there’s another.”

  Jason walked over to stand next to Greg and reached out and put his hand on his friend’s shoulder. The open hatch to the lander was just above them. They were fortunate the hatch had remained unblocked, or they would have been trapped inside. “Any chance of getting the radio working?”

  “The antennas are crushed,” replied Greg, pointing toward the front of the lander, which was leaning against a large dark boulder. The boulder had put a sizable dent in the side of the lander. They were fortunate it hadn’t penetrated the hull. “Not only that, but that mysterious interference we detected on our descent will screw up any radio signal we try to transmit.”

  “That damn interference shut down our computers,” spoke Jason, recalling the harrowing descent when most of the lander’s systems had suddenly shut down.

  It had been all he could do to stabilize the lander and finish the descent to the surface. Without the advanced LIDAR ranging system online and computers, they had to resort to old fashion radar. Unfortunately, the radar system was intermittent due to the powerful interference coming from the Moon. Greg had to look out the lander’s viewports to guide Jason down the last several hundred feet. Because they couldn’t see or detect what was directly below them, they had crashed in the small crater.

  Jason was silent for a moment as he weighed their options. None were good. “We have enough air in the lander to last several weeks; if we can get power to the recycler, our oxygen supply will last for several months.”

  “The batteries are fully charged, and the emergency fuel cells are intact,” responded Greg, sounding slightly calmer. He had checked those before they had exited the lander. “But that still leaves the question of what we do about food and water. Even on emergency rations, we only have enough for about three weeks.”

  “Can we get the rover out?’ asked Jason, walking over to stare at the bottom of the lander and the compartment that held the lunar rover. He had a plan that he had been considering. Somehow, he had to find a way to get them off the Moon and back to Earth.

  “I don’t see why not,” replied Greg, coming to stand next to Jason and staring up at the rover’s shielded compartment. “It’s light enough in the Moon’s gravity that we should be able to position it properly if there’s a problem. I don’t see any obvious damage to the rover compartment. Why do you want to get the rover out? It’s sort of pointless. I mean, why do any exploration? We can’t get back to Earth!”

  Jason turned to face Greg. He knew Greg was worried about his wife and son. “Something’s causing the interference that screwed up our landing. It’s still preventing any radio signals from getting out. D
on’t forget that the rover has a radio that’s capable of reaching our orbiting command module. We just need to find what’s causing that interference and shut it down.”

  “You think it’s artificial?” Greg asked in surprise, his eyes growing wide. This was something he hadn’t considered. “How can that be possible? We would have known if there had been another mission heading for the Moon. You can’t keep something like that a secret.”

  “The interference has to be artificial,” answered Jason, looking off toward the south. “It didn’t start until we began our descent. To me that’s too big a coincidence. I don’t think it was a manned mission. As you said, something like that couldn’t be kept a secret.”

  “You think another country snuck a probe up here hoping to screw up our landing so our company couldn’t get the space contract?” asked Greg with doubt in his voice. He just didn’t see how it could have been done in secret.

  He knew that a smaller rocket would have been harder to detect, but it still would have been difficult to land a probe on the Moon without it being noticed. Not only that but they had kept their landing site a secret until the day of the launch.

  “What else?” Jason replied with growing conviction in his voice. “This exploration contract for the Moon and Mars is worth potentially hundreds of billions of dollars. There are even companies in our own country that would like to see us fail.”

  “It would have cost a hell of a lot of money to get a probe to the Moon just to sabotage us,” replied Greg, doubtfully. “But I can see how the space contract would have made it tempting. With our failure, there are several other companies that will be jumping in to get their share.” Greg was silent for a moment as he mulled everything over.