Dreadnought (Lost Colonies Trilogy Book 2) (35 page)

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It was nearly a month later that my aunt, the Lady Grantholm, showed up and asked me to escort her to an event. I questioned her on the nature of the affair, but she was determinedly vague.

“You promised that you’d back me up when the time came, William,” she reminded me gently.

In sudden understanding, I offered her my arm. She had me do the driving—no chauffeur or guards of any kind. When we arrived at an ancient estate on the Hudson River, I still wasn’t sure what was coming next.

We landed the air car politely at the main entrance, then drove up a winding gravel road to a formidable gate. The gate opened under power without any visible inspection from security.

“They know me here,” my aunt said, giving me an encouraging smile.

I drove the car up to a looming mansion built with Romanesque columns and ivy-covered walls. The house was grand in an old-fashioned way that I hadn’t seen for years. It gripped a mountaintop overlooking the river and was surrounded by tall trees. What famous personage had built the place centuries earlier? I could only imagine.

“This way Lady,” said the doorman, who was an oldster with bristling white eyebrows. He gave me a brisk up-down appraisal. “Your driver will be comfortable in the garage, I’m sure.”

I frowned, but my aunt put a firm hand on my arm. “He’s my nephew. Surely, you’ve seen him in the news vids?”

The doorman’s eyebrows bunched up, then rose in comic surprise as recognition set in.

“Captain Sparhawk? Can it be? You’re so young…”

“Thank you,” I said, taking his comment in the best possible light.

He flushed scarlet and ushered us into the great house without further delay.

Once inside, I was greeted by cold air, shadows and mildew. I expected to be escorted to the upstairs parlor, but instead we were led to a heavy door at the side of the great staircase. The attendant opened the door and urged us to continue through, unguided. Our path led beyond its worn sill and down winding steps into the dark sub-floors beneath the mansion.

“In less happy times,” my aunt explained, “people of class sheltered in these places. The surface of our world was… unsavory.”

I glanced at her in surprise. She must have been speaking of the days immediately following the Cataclysm. I’d heard people had lived in bunkers—but I’d never visited one before.

On the way down the steps, which wound farther and farther, ever deeper into the earth, I began to hear distant voices.

The voices were faint and indecipherable at first. Slowly, they broke up into conversations, then individual words. Those who spoke were almost whispering, and I began to wonder if I was overhearing the chit-chat of ghosts.

At last, we came to a landing surrounded by marble pillars. It struck me as very odd that anyone would bother to haul such heavy, gaudy things this far down into the ground.

“Don’t worry,” my aunt said quietly, “there’s an elevator to take us back up to the top when this is over.”

At her words, I glanced back up the way we’d come. The spiraling staircase corkscrewed around at least a dozen full revolutions above our heads.

We stopped at a tall door of dark oak. I wasn’t surprised when it creaked as it opened.

There, in the dim-lit chamber beyond, was a gallery of sorts. Figures sat in a semi-circle, and when we entered the room we stood in their midst. Only then did I realize we’d stepped out upon a stage, and that we were in fact the center of their attention.

My aunt bowed deeply, and I did the same. The crowd quieted and regarded us soberly.

Without preamble, my Aunt Helen began to tell the tale of our long voyage to the stars. She talked about each planet: Our visit with the Connatic, the fateful run-in with the Stroj pirates, and the trio of planets, Ruby, Jade and Sapphire, which had all fallen into barbarism.

She kept talking, and they kept listening. At last, she came to the part concerning our battle in the skies over Earth. It was then that a single withered hand rose from the front row.

The owner of the hand was an exceedingly old person. He had a face like parchment, and a voice like sandpaper rasping over old wood.

The others simply called him ‘the Chairman.’ I recognized him at once—his face was on the credit pieces in my pocket.

“Helen of Grantholm,” he said, “we know what you did among the stars. We know you brought death home to Earth. Why do you seek to council us now, after these great failures?”

She sucked in a breath and began to answer, but I took a step forward and interrupted. The thump of my boots on the old stage echoed, and all their glittering eyes turned to me.

“Hold on just a minute sir,” I said, “the Stroj were already here among us. They were here before we took this journey, and I would hazard to guess that they’re still here now, spying and waiting for the right moment to strike.”

A murmur swept the group. My statements were unwelcome, but none of them offered a counterargument, so I pressed on.

“We aren’t choosing this path,” I said, “it has chosen us. More Stroj warships will come to Earth. They will not be denied.”

“And why is this?” the Chairman demanded.

“Because they seek revenge. They see our existence, free and unsubmissive, as an affront to their dominance.”

“What do you propose we do about it? Send more emissaries on bended knees? Fortify Earth?”

“Yes… and no,” I said. “I’ve met these creatures in battle. They aren’t like us. They’re a blend of man, machine, and insanity. They must be destroyed. Diplomacy will only inflame their passions.”

“My nephew speaks the truth,” my aunt said at my side.

I glanced at her, but she waved for me to continue.

“I don’t know what sins we’ve committed in the past,” I said, “but whatever they were, the colonists seem to barely remember them now. The time has come to rejoin with our lost children. To provide the discipline they so desperately need.”

“Discipline?” said a thin, corpse-like woman in the second row. “You’re suggesting we do more than build up our defenses?”

“Yes. We have only a single world, a single star system. We barely know where these new bridges to the stars lead. There’s much to learn and ignorance might mean extinction. We must build great ships and retake the stars.”

They were silent for a time, but slowly, this silence gave way to a dozen separate conversations.

It was then that I began to recognize more of the people in that room. My eyes had finally adjusted to the gloom. My ears began to remember subtleties of voice that I’d heard before in documentaries and historical touch-texts...

These were famous people. People whose names were in the history books that our schools taught to children. Every one of them had long since been assumed dead—but the extremes of Earth’s technology had kept them very much alive and filled with a disturbing vigor.

Grantholm was one of their kind. I understood that now. Frail and yet resilient, her lifespan had been artificially extended. All these people, these extreme oldsters, were anachronisms in the flesh. I could not begin to understand the nature of the special drugs, implants, cleansings and surgeries that kept them all among the living.

The truth was that Helen Grantholm was probably the youngest member of this esteemed group. She was important to them, I could tell, as she was still capable of moving among the young with effective grace. At the same time, she was ancient enough to understand them and be trusted by them.

“Colleagues,” she said loudly, spinning slowly in place, “my nephew speaks the truth. Long ago, we cast our colonies adrift. We cut off our pathways to the stars. That decision has served us for a century and a half—but no longer. We aren’t in control of this new situation.  They’ve come back to us, our bastard children, those who we left out there to die in the dark.”

“Cutting them off was the right decision back then,” said the whisper-thin woman in the second row, “and it’s the right decision now to leave them alone forever.”

My eyes widened and fixated upon the oldster in that moment. Could it be true? Could it be that we hadn’t been separated from the colonies by a natural disaster? That the Cataclysm had been an orchestrated event?

My mind reeled with the repercussions. What I knew of history was in flux.

I wasn’t a babe born yesterday, mind you, no matter what the ghoulish people who sat in this dark dungeon might be thinking. I knew very well that throughout time there’d always been the accepted truth—and the
real
truth. When dramatic events had struck in the past, they’d rarely done so without someone lurking behind the curtains and pulling the levers of power.

But these oldsters that encircled me now—they knew the
real
truth. They knew what had actually occurred so long ago because they’d lived through it all in their youth. And by their own admissions, they were the very ones who’d pulled those levers.

What could have possessed them to set all our colonies adrift? Such a monstrous act it had been, destroying the economies of Earth and all her children at once…

Almost as soon as I asked myself the question, I knew the answer—they’d done it for power. To retain their grip on the world.

When people were insecure, when death, starvation and disaster stalked the world, rulers grew more powerful. Such had always been the way. Despots were forever born in moments of desperation, when the law-abiding feared their own shadows.

“There’s another option,” said the Chairman. “There’s another way.”

“What way is that, your Excellency?” my aunt asked tensely.

“We could do it again,” he said. “We still have the power. The machines may be ancient, but they can be repaired. The signal will wipe away these bridges to the stars—just as it did the last time.”

Eyes wide, I looked at my aunt. She seemed speechless. This was not at all how she’d thought things would go.

Again, I decided to interject myself into the conversation.

“Chairman,” I said, “if I may be so bold?”

“Speak, Sparhawk. We owe you the breath in our dusty lungs. We’ll hear your ideas—but know first that we on this council will determine our own path.”

“I would not presume to know better than the wisest minds of Earth,” I said, “but I would implore you to think of what such an act would do to Earth now. We’ve come so far! To erase all our technology—so many would suffer. So many would die. Even those here in this circle would be… well, out of respect… I’d best not say.”

“Speak!” bellowed the Chairman, which caused him to explode into a fit of coughing.

When he’d regained control of himself, I forced a tight smile. “I’m young, as you’ve all noticed. But not so young that I don’t know my share of oldsters. The last time the Cataclysm struck, you were all in your prime. Now… well… ask yourselves: could you survive hardship again?”

Quiet fell over the group. They seemed stubborn, but uncertain. My aunt stepped into this gap and seized the moment.

“No!” she said firmly. “Most of us would die! Perhaps
all
of us would die. I know I’m not capable of living through those times again. This recent voyage—it nearly killed me on a dozen occasions.”

The group fell to muttering. A half-dozen separate conversations were spawned.

At last, the Chairman slapped his palm on the table before him. Hoarsely he announced, “Sparhawk makes a good point. Let’s discuss how we might build this fleet. What it might entail.”

We had them back on track. Aunt Helen began running vids on a holoprojector of great antiquity. In the center of the chamber, it depicted ships and designs for armament. She’d clearly gotten these files from Star Guard officials, who must have labored long and hard on them.

The group viewed the presentation stoically, but I could tell they were impressed by the scope of it, as was I.

The meeting continued after that, dragging on through a litany of complaints from possibly every member. But, in my opinion, they were now on a preordained path.

Eventually, they voted to build the fleet proposed in the imaginary graphics. A fleet such as had never been built before. These ships would be awesome weapons. Vessels designed to destroy entire worlds, if need be.

I couldn’t help but imagine how this fleet would darken the skies when it was finished. It couldn’t help but terrorize any opposition that dared threaten Old Earth.

Even though I was glad this dusty group hadn’t decided to disconnect my world for a second time, I didn’t feel at ease. The oldsters in this place were a strange lot. The more I listened to them and interacted with them the stranger they seemed to be.

As a group, they’d passed on into a new phase of their lives that I found unfathomable. They seemed to exist outside the normal cycle of life.

Throughout time, babies had forever become children. Those children had inevitably grown into adults, and the adults would inexorably slide into old age and decline—that was the familiar pattern of the past.

But these individuals had discovered a new, shadowy form of existence. It had warped them, in my opinion.

Decades earlier, they’d become reclusive. But that was only an early stage. Now, they lived lives that I almost couldn’t imagine for myself. They reminded me of spiders, one and all. Creatures both strange and yet oddly familiar.
Things,
neither completely alive or completely dead, that had managed to live on inexplicably past their time, spinning their webs in the dark.