Imperial Night (Ashes of Empire, #3) Page 7

  “Aye, aye, sir.”

  — 9 —

  ––––––––

  “Sensors are picking up heightened radiation levels from the wormhole terminus, sir,” Savage’s combat systems officer announced when Vara entered the cruiser’s combat information center. “Fifteen minutes at most until the bogies emerge. The optical commo link with Ivan Rebroff is live, and the mines are ready to accept our command codes.”

  “Thank you.” Vara settled into the throne-like command chair and studied the holographic tactical projection dominating the CIC’s heart. It showed the position of both ships, the wormhole’s terminus disk, and the hundreds of command-detonated mines scattered along the expected exit path.

  This would be his first action against intruders as captain, though he’d been Vanquish’s first officer when she intercepted the last wolf pack that tried its luck. Yet, Vara felt little by way of trepidation, which pleased him. Five sloop-sized reivers against a Coromandel class cruiser and a Kalinka class frigate? It wasn’t even a contest, despite the age of both former imperial warships. One broadside would suffice. Two if they raised shields before Vara ordered his ships to open fire.

  He heard the door open and knew Sister Brienne, Savage’s chaplain, was taking her accustomed seat behind him. He turned and nodded politely at her, a gesture she returned with equal formality. Brienne, who’d come to Lyonesse from Arietis as a refugee with her parents when she was barely ten years old, belonged to the new generation trained by Sister Marta, the Order’s most revered teacher in living memory. Though only in her mid-thirties, Brienne had so far proved to be an exceptional ship’s counselor, capable of dealing with the most troubled souls. Small of stature, with sparkling blue eyes in an elfin face topped by a cap of gleaming auburn hair, her straightforward manner inspired trust.

  Yet Vara found her ability to connect with others almost preternatural and kept a professional distance rather than use her as a sounding board and confidante, like so many of his fellow commanding officers did with their chaplains. Vara had noticed those least comfortable around Void Sisters even after so long were almost invariably old-time imperial officers who’d defected with Commodore Bryner and not the survivors of Morane’s 197th Battle Group or the Lyonesse natives. Much of that discomfort probably stemmed from the late Admiral Zahar’s hatred of the Order.

  The minutes seemed to drag by as Vara and his crew waited for the bogies to cross the wormhole’s event horizon. Neither he nor anyone else made attempts at small talk. Intercepting intruders was such a rare event nowadays that the tension in the CIC was almost palpable as the crew focused on their duties to the exclusion of everything else.

  “Radiation levels are peaking,” the sensor chief announced almost precisely fifteen minutes after Vara’s arrival.

  Those words pulled him from his idle contemplation of the tactical hologram.

  “Thank you.”

  Less than a minute later. “Emergence traces. Five distinct signatures that match the traffic control buoy’s sensor readings.”

  Within seconds, five red icons appeared inside the three-dimensional projection, joining the blue icons representing Savage and Ivan Rebroff and the green icons denoting the mines.

  “Assigning targets,” the combat systems officer announced.

  Three of the red icons turned into squares, making them Savage’s while the other two became triangles, meaning they belonged to the frigate.

  “Ivan Rebroff confirms.”

  “Go up systems. Targeting sensors on.”

  “Up systems and sensors on, aye,” the combat systems officer replied in a smooth voice. “Their threat boards should be screaming.”

  “I make two hundred or so life signs per ship, sir. It seems a lot for small hulls.”

  A sudden and unexpected gasp came from the back of the CIC. Vara turned and saw Sister Brienne’s face twist in anguish, a novel, and unnerving sight. Her voice when she spoke sounded far from its usual, melodic self. It was a hoarse, deep-throated thing that belonged in the furthest circle of hell.

  “There is an evil aboard those ships like I’ve never encountered, nor read of in the Order’s annals. You must destroy them. Now.”

  A chill ran up Vara’s spine, though whether it came from Brienne’s words or her tone, or both, he couldn’t tell.

  “Why?”

  As she replied, her voice lost most of its eeriness.

  “You must remove them from the universe, Captain, lest their evil contaminates everything good.”

  “How can you tell?” When Brienne gave him an exasperated look, he said, “Right. You just know.”

  “Captain.” The communications petty officer raised his hand. “One of the bogies is calling, text only, in Anglic. They demand to know who we are and why we’re targeting them.”

  “And they raised shields,” the sensor chief added.

  Two volleys it was.

  Vara felt indecision rob him of his plan. He turned away from Brienne, whose eyes still reflected an unearthly glow. But before he could decide on a course of action, she spoke again.

  “You wish to open a visual link with the ship calling ours instead of unleashing Savage’s cleansing fire. Those are your orders. Know this. They will not appear as you and me, though they are human, at least outwardly. But their souls, if they still have them, are no longer anything the Almighty can recognize. That which animates them is alien. Unfathomable. Something twisted them beyond recognition, and they are a peril to us. One we cannot let escape and infest other worlds still untouched by this corruption, let alone our home.”

  The certainty in Brienne’s tone made Vara hesitate even more. He suppressed the instinct to glance back at her over his shoulder and focused on carrying out his mission, mystical visions be damned.

  “Signals, open a visual link with the ship querying us and make sure Ivan Rebroff sees everything we see.”

  “Sir.” A few seconds passed. “Ivan Rebroff is connected.”

  “Confirmed,” Commander Zheng’s disembodied voice reached their ears almost at once.

  “And we’re linked.”

  The being whose image swam into view on the primary display was still identifiably human, but barely. Vara ignored Brienne’s strangled intake of breath behind him and studied the man intently.

  His head was hairless, down to missing eyebrows. Ritual scars and piercings adorned a bony face with sunken cheeks and deep-set eyes while undecipherable tattoos wound their way around his scalp. Irregular greenish-blue splotches marred his scalp and neck while his sclera had turned a deep, unhealthy orange. When he opened his mouth to speak, Vara saw blackened teeth filed to a sharp point.

  “Who are you?” His gravelly voice almost matched that used by Brienne moments earlier when she demanded the intruders’ destruction.

  On impulse, Vara avoided mentioning the Republic of Lyonesse or its Navy.

  “I am the guardian of this wormhole junction. You are not welcome here. Turn around, leave, and never come back.”

  A cruel smile split the man’s nightmarish face.

  “No. I hear there’s an oasis of advanced tech at the end of this wormhole branch, and we will find it.”

  “Why?”

  “Advanced tech means advanced medicine.”

  Brienne’s soft voice caught Vara by surprise. “They’re dying, Captain, every single one, though it’s a painful and protracted death.”

  “Who said that?” The man asked in a querulous tone.

  Vara’s eyes narrowed with suspicion.

  “Are you dying? You certainly don’t look healthy to me.”

  “None of your business. If you want a fight, we’ll fight, and the devil take the loser. Or you can move out of our way and let us find help.” He shook with barely suppressed rage.

  “We don’t allow visitors.”

  “Destroy them,” Brienne urged once again in a tone
pitched solely for his ears. “No one, not even the Almighty, can save them, nor can we allow them near healthy populations.”

  The man’s face turned into a mask of pure hatred.

  “Then we’ll invite ourselves.”

  “They’re powering weapons,” the sensor chief announced.

  Vara knew he no longer had a choice. His aging ships couldn’t afford a lucky hit from the bogies.

  “Open fire.”

  He felt the vibrations from Savage’s launchers almost before his words died away. The Navy carried less advanced Lyonesse-built missiles after withdrawing the last of the old imperial stock from service years earlier. But against indifferently maintained reivers no bigger than imperial sloops, they would suffice.

  A howl of rage came through the speakers while the barbarian frothed at the lips. It died just as suddenly when the missile volley struck the bogies’ shields. They collapsed with breathtaking speed after cycling through the spectrum of colors from green to deep violet in the blink of an eye.

  Streams of plasma erupted from both warships’ main guns as the communications link died. Moments later, Vara and his crew watched with something akin to awe as the plasma ate through hulls, creating geysers of flash-frozen air. A weak volley erupted from the bogies’ smaller guns, but in vain. They broke apart one after the other as their antimatter fuel containment fields failed, turning them into tiny novae. Secondary explosions continued to dot the wreckage for a few more minutes, and then it was all over.

  “I’m not picking up any life signs,” the sensor chief finally said, breaking the silence that enveloped Savage’s CIC.

  “Neither is Ivan Rebroff. What the hell just happened, sir?” Zhang, who didn’t hear Brienne’s warnings, sounded more than a little puzzled. Her hologram popped up in front of Vara’s command chair.

  “Did that maniac look healthy to you?”

  Zhang exhaled slowly. “No.”

  “Did your ship’s counselor pick up anything strange about them?”

  “She was unnerved by their appearance, more than I’ve ever seen, but said nothing.” A frown creased Zhang’s forehead.

  “Sister Brienne believes they were slowly dying from something, which explains why they wanted to find Lyonesse.”

  “We should retrieve a body and their computer cores so we can find out what was ailing them.”

  “No!” Brienne’s vehemence startled both captains, and they stared at her.

  “They were diseased, and we cannot expose ourselves to whatever they carried. The symptoms I detected are so unusual we might face something never seen by our species before now. And if it is new, we almost certainly have no cure.”

  “Seems to me the guy was rabid at the end,” the combat systems officer said.

  Brienne inclined her head toward him.

  “A good observation. We might indeed find the barbarians suffered from something that attacks the central nervous system. But we must carry out our investigation remotely and cannot bring any of the equipment used back aboard this ship. When we’re done, you must incinerate the debris so that no passing ship unwittingly salvages contaminated wreckage.”

  Something about Brienne’s intensity forbade any dissent, and he nodded once.

  “It shall be done. Can the medical staff work with the engineering section and modify one of our probes for medical analysis?”

  “Yes. I’ll let them know right away.”

  Vara glanced at Zhang.

  “Want to tackle finding and remotely downloading one of their computer cores?”

  “Sure.”

  “Excellent. Please go ahead. Signals, call Dawn Hunter and let her know she can transit the wormhole at her convenience. In the meantime, I’ll draw up a preliminary report for HQ.”

  As he headed for his day cabin after standing the Outer Picket down from battle stations, Vara couldn’t get the image of the unnamed man out of his mind, and it unnerved him more than he cared to admit.

  — 10 —

  ––––––––

  “Good heavens!” Vice President Charis Sandino, a grandmotherly woman in her late fifties with thick, silvery blond hair, sat back in her chair at the foot of the conference table, wearing an alarmed look. Lieutenant General Barca had just finished relaying Vara’s report, vividly illustrated with the video of the brief conversation between him and the barbarian. The other attendees, members of Morane’s cabinet, seemed equally dismayed. Only the president maintained his inscrutable demeanor. “You’re telling me there’s a pandemic somewhere out in the badlands and barbarians are spreading it across the former empire?”

  “Possibly, Madame Vice President. We don’t know what that is yet, but Outer Picket should find answers for us within the next few days. The only thing we can say for sure is that the man who spoke with Captain Vara showed symptoms of something never seen before, and both ship’s counselors picked up intensely disturbing brain waves. Savage’s counselor recommended Vara destroy the reivers at once, which should tell you something. Void Sisters aren’t the bloodthirsty sort.”

  “I trust they’ll apply the strictest quarantine protocols,” Wevers Rauseo, the Health Secretary and a medical doctor with four decades of practice, said.

  “There will be no physical contact between Outer Picket and the intruders’ remains, Mister Secretary. They will do everything remotely with droids and probes. The equipment they’re using will be destroyed rather than recovered, along with the wreckage.” Barca saw nods of approval around the table. “We must assume that this thing is spreading if those affected are traveling through the wormhole network, which means closing off the Lyonesse Branch to traffic until we find out more. Once Dawn Hunter is back, I’m suspending Void Ship expeditions until further notice.”

  “How can we be sure Dawn Hunter isn’t carrying the disease if it is a disease and not something worse?” Jonas Morane asked.

  “We don’t, Mister President. I’ve given orders that Dawn Hunter goes no further than Outer Picket. Once Savage’s medical people figure out what was wrong with the barbarians, they’ll see that Dawn Hunter’s medical officer tests everyone aboard. Chances are the crew will be clean. This is the first we hear of an epidemic, and those five ships came from the badlands via Peralka, whose other connections with the Coalsack Sector are rather convoluted.”

  “What if the people in Dawn Hunter caught whatever ailed the barbarians?”

  “She’ll stay quarantined away from Lyonesse until we develop a cure.”

  Morane didn’t ask what would happen if they couldn’t find a cure because he and the other cabinet members already knew the answer. Lyonesse’s survival as a world with advanced technology, including faster-than-light travel, was paramount. After more than two decades of isolation in an increasingly hostile galaxy, everyone understood that principle, especially those at the highest levels of government, because their oaths of office explicitly referred to it.

  “As well,” Barca continued, “I’ve ordered the Navy to intercept any ship entering the republic’s star systems via interstellar space under the presumption it could carry infected crew and passengers. If this group of barbarians was seeking a place with advanced medical capabilities, others like it might do the same but avoid the Arietis wormhole so they can slip past our pickets.”

  “What are the chances of that?” Sandino asked.

  “Impossible to say, Madame Vice President. Not high in my estimation, because any ship attempting such a crossing would need larger antimatter containment units. But the chances aren’t zero either. It’s, therefore, best if we consider any starship approaching our space as infected until we can prove otherwise. That includes Dawn Hunter.”

  “And Outer Picket, if they screw up the quarantine protocols,” Rauseo added in a sour tone.

  “They won’t. I have full confidence in my people and the Void medical personnel aboard their ships. Both Outer Picket units will
stay at least a thousand kilometers from the wreckage, and I’ve already written off the equipment they’ll need for the remote analysis.”

  “You said none of Outer Picket’s healers could identify the ailment based on the symptoms that barbarian displayed.”

  Barca turned to Defense Secretary DeCarde.

  “That’s correct, Madame Secretary. And they searched the medical database afterward. I also passed copies of the recording Savage made to infectious disease specialists at the Lannion Hospital and the university’s medical school, as well as to the Lyonesse Abbey’s foremost healers. None could come up with a known illness that would present such symptoms. Chances are we’re dealing with a new pathogen. Perhaps it’s something that incubated out beyond the empire’s sphere for generations and is only now spreading along with barbarians desperate for advanced tech they can’t build themselves and can no longer easily steal from outlying imperial worlds.”

  “Or there could be another source,” DeCarde said with a grim expression.

  Morane cocked an eyebrow at her.

  “Such as?”

  “Biological warfare, sir, whether intended or unintended.”

  Rauseo scoffed. “How can biowarfare be unintended?”

  “Simple. The empire operated bioweapon labs. It wasn’t exactly a well-guarded secret within the armed forces. Fortunately, the empire built those labs in isolated star systems along the frontier, where accidents wouldn’t threaten entire sectors. What if barbarians stumbled across one such lab, broke in so they could salvage tech and accidentally infected themselves with any number of pathogens that they then brought home and spread throughout the badlands during raids?” When she saw her colleague wince, DeCarde nodded sympathetically. “Empress Dendera’s final, if unplanned revenge.”

  “You have a way of making a nasty situation seem even worse, Brigid.”

  She winked at him. “What can I say, Wevers? It’s a natural talent.”

  “What security classification did you put on this news, General?” Morane asked.