Her Brother's Keeper - eARC (33 page)

“Can he follow us through?”

“Negative, Skipper. Not transit-capable.” The
Pagan-
class was little more than a cylindrical can with an engine cluster on one end and massive radiators coming out of the sides. It was not atmospheric, nor was it particularly elegant, but the Combine military supposedly had hundreds of them in reserve.

Minutes ticked by, agonizingly slowly, as Catherine ran the numbers on her console. The command deck grew noticeably hot, and streams of sweat ran down her head under the high gravity. Running at this acceleration for half an hour was burning through the reaction mass she’d just paid a king’s ransom for, and was straining the ship’s cooling systems. The radiators could only radiate heat away so quickly, and the internal heat sinks could only absorb so much. Once their capacities were exceeded, emergency cutoffs would engage. If those safeguards were overridden, the ship would overheat and systems would start to fail. The interior could become too hot for the crew to function in. The trajectory Kel Morrow had given her was the fastest route to the transit point, and if that
Pagan-H
kept up its relentless pursuit, she’d have no choice but to engage. Right on schedule, the
Andromeda’
s engines cut, plunging the crew back into the relief freefall. The pursuing Combine ship followed suit a moment later.

The transit point grew nearer and nearer. Despite the Internal Security broadcast, the
Pagan-H
continued on its intercept trajectory, constantly issuing demands that the
Andromeda
stand by to be boarded. On Catherine’s display, two circles represented the ships’ respective targeting envelopes, drawing inexorably closer like a nascent Venn diagram. As they drew near one another, she ordered Azevedo to engage the ship’s electronic countermeasures. The ECM couldn’t do anything to hide the
Andromeda
’s massive thermal signature, but it could play hell with incoming missiles’ terminal guidance. The crew was already at battle stations; Catherine and her officers on the command deck were still in their flight suits, but those crewmembers who had time to do so had already been ordered don their spacesuits in the event of a hull breach. All crew not on duty were secured in their individual berths, which all had emergency life-support systems of their own.

After thirty minutes of coasting and cooling, the engines fired again, accelerating for the final dash to the transit point. The pursuing
Pagan-H
responded in kind. A long moment passed, then warning tones sounded as she fired off a volley of missiles.

“Skipper!” Azevedo said excitedly. This was his first time in combat. “Incoming volley designated Salvo-Alpha, time to impact, six minutes!”

Catherine nodded. “Wolfram, target the incoming missiles, fire at will. Luis, deploy countermeasures. Try using the radar to fry their guidance systems.”

“Targeting missiles,” Wolfram confirmed. “I have a lock on the
Pagan
itself.”

“Hold your fire,” the captain ordered. “This is bad enough without us starting a war with the Combine. Defensive fire only. We’ll engage the ship as a last resort. Luis, what’s the capability of their laser weapons?”

“Database says they’re pretty light on lasers and have no railguns. They’re missile carriers, Skipper.”

“Excellent. Colin, keep us on course for the transit point. Engineering?”

“Standing by, Captain,” Indira Nair replied, sweat dripping down her face. “Transit motivator is spun up, stable, and running hot.”

“Very good. It’s going to be close. As soon as your boards are green for translation, engage the motivator. Do not wait for my order.”

“Yes ma’am!”

“Incoming missiles locked!” Wolfram said. “Firing!”

“Splash one!” Luis announced, as a powerful beam of coherent light caused one of the incoming missiles to detonate. “Splash two!” he said as another, damaged, veered off course. Another was spoofed by the countermeasures.

“Last one destroyed,
Kapitänin
!” Wolfram announced proudly. It had been a long time since he’d manned the weapons station, and Catherine could see her exec was in his element.

An alarm sounded again. “Bandit is firing a second volley, Skipper! Salvo-Bravo, count…eight incoming missiles!”

Catherine’s lip curled into a humorless grin. “Not very sporting of them, eh?”

“Skipper! Third volley! Salvo-Charlie! Another four missiles!” Far away, across the void of space, the four rotary missile racks of the
Pagan
spat out missile after missile, ripple-firing the warheads not directly at the
Andromeda
, but toward where the
Andromeda
would be when they intercepted her. “They must be dumping their magazines!”

“Engaging!” Wolfram said. Invisible beams lanced out into the night. Brilliant countermeasures spat out of dispensers across the
Andromeda
’s hull, trying to confuse and beguile the incoming warheads. Numerous missiles were damaged, knocked off course, or destroyed outright by the defensive laser fire, but they were still coming. The
Pagan
, seemingly possessed of an inexhaustible supply of the weapons, vomited out another volley. The crew was floored with G-forces as Colin skewed the ship, consuming some of the incoming missiles in the inferno of the
Andromeda
’s exhaust plume.

Damn it all,
Catherine cursed, wishing she would have just shot Corbin with her laser. “Wolfram,” she said, resolved to do what had to be done. “Arm missiles. Send our friend a volley, three rounds rapid, on my mark. Maintain lasers for defensive—”

Before she could finish her command, the
Andromeda
plunged into the quantum foam and vanished from the physical universe. The final missiles, no longer having a target, continued harmlessly into oblivion.

Chapter 23

Zanzibar

Danzig-5012 Solar System

Equatorial Region, 300 km north of Freeport

Cecil Blackwood lifted his respirator and took a long drink from his flask. The tunnel he found himself in was well-lit with high-intensity work lights. The voices of Aristotle Lang’s workers were barely audible over the roar of the earthmoving machinery, even with Cecil’s electronic hearing protection.

Nearby, Zak Mesa and Anna Kay watched in silence. Their faces were obscured by respirators and goggles, but Cecil noted that they were holding hands.
Good
, he thought to himself. Happiness was hard to come by on Zanzibar; you had to take it where you found it.

This tunnel wasn’t like other hastily dug subterranean storage sites. It was wide enough to have a two-lane road, paved with ceramicrete running its length. The originally installed lighting and ventilation no longer worked, but the tunnel itself was structurally sound. The only blockages were deliberate cave-ins, intended to keep intruders out.

Intruders like Cecil Blackwood and Aristotle Lang. Cecil took another swig of booze. It had taken weeks of research, false starts, and dead ends, but Zak and Anna had finally located Lang’s precious vault. Given how remote and how deeply dug the site was, Cecil was sure there was something of immense value in there. What, exactly, he couldn’t say—all records of what had been placed in that vault had been deliberately scrubbed before the Maggot invasion.

Lang seemed confident that it had all been worth it, though. The pompous warlord stood off to the side, not bothering with a respirator, his mouth in a wide grin as machines worked at the heavy blast doors. The tunnel had been deliberately collapsed at three separate points along its long, straight path beneath a barren mountain north of Freeport. Getting through the cave-ins had been slow going, damaging several pieces of equipment and killing four of Lang’s workers. The effort had continued though, and now they were at the end: the blast doors to the vault.

Cecil found himself secretly hoping that there was nothing in there. Lang would likely kill Zak out of frustration, but the look on his face would be priceless. Still, he was as curious as anyone else as to what this vault contained. Every storage site they had uncovered so far had contained at least a few items of value: artifacts from the vanished Zanzibari civilization, mostly, but also precious metals, useful machinery, even records of the human colony on Zanzibar before its destruction. It was a historical treasure trove, enough to make even Zak Mesa crack a smile.

Lang’s greed was insatiable, though, and he was focused like a laser on finding the vault. Now he waited, believing this to be his moment of triumph. Perhaps it was, and perhaps Cecil’s ordeal was almost over. His sister, Catherine, was on her way, and should be arriving on Zanzibar soon. She was coming to take him home. Cecil dared to hope that he would be able to leave this rock behind and never return. He didn’t speculate about what he’d do after this, but whatever it was, it’d be somewhere with plenty of sunshine, fresh, breathable air, and every luxury he could afford.

For Zak and Anna, it was also a moment of triumph, if a bittersweet one. The secrets they’d uncovered would go down in the history books. They had learned more about Zanzibar than any researchers had since before the war, and their hard work had paid off. Even Cecil considered it a tragedy that such dedication to research and learning should serve to benefit a maniac like Aristotle Lang, but nonetheless, Zak and Anna had much to be proud of. He doubted they really believed him, but Cecil had promised them both that he’d ensure they were taken care of, once their ordeal was over. They had earned it, after all.

It had taken days of constant drilling to breach the armored, reinforced ceramicrete blast doors, but Lang had kept the pressure on his foremen, and his dig crews had been relentless. Now, as the warlord watched eagerly, a drilling machine was about to punch through the last layer of the meter-and-a-half thick blast doors. The technicians monitoring the drilling robot were intensely studying the displays, sweat trickling down their faces. The machines and lighting had caused it to grow uncomfortably warm in the tunnel, and everyone was nervous as well. One of them, a dark-haired man whose face was covered with a breathing apparatus, cocked his head suddenly. He tapped the controls and the machine ground to a halt. As the heavy, tracked drilling machine backed out, a loud, beeping alarm marking its time, the clouds of dust drifted through the hole it had just dug. A slight breeze wafted through the entire tunnel as the air pressure equalized. When the machine was far enough away, its operators shut it down, and it was suddenly eerily quiet.

Everyone looked to Aristotle Lang. The warlord, for his part, was focused only on the entrance to the tunnel. He approached slowly, cautiously even, as if he were afraid it was all a dream. His mouth agape, he shook his head slowly before looking over at his trio of captives. “Mr. Mesa, come here, my boy.”

Zak and Cecil looked at one another anxiously, but the historian approached Lang quietly, saying nothing. Cecil and Anna followed tepidly.

“You’ve done it,” Lang said softly, almost choked up. “You have done this thing for me. I never doubted you.”

“Well, yes, but I can’t confirm that there’s anything of value—”

“Nonsense, boy. No one would go through this much trouble without good reason. Listen to me now. Take your compatriots and go in with me. Together, we will see what you have worked so hard to find. You’ve all earned it.”

It took the trio of off-worlders only a few moments to get ready. Protective hard hats, flashlights, and recorders were all readied. As they prepared to enter, Lang’s men clustered around the breach in the blast door in a large semicircle, but kept their distance. They had been afraid that some alien horror was buried in there. Cecil didn’t think so, but he certainly couldn’t rule it out. He was a little nervous himself, if he cared to admit it.

Lang went in first, his flashlight leading the way as he ducked through the hole in the blast door. Zak followed, then Anna. Cecil was last. Taking a deep breath of filtered, condensed air, the Avalonian aristocrat ducked down, stepped through the breach, and joined the others on the far side. When he cleared the borehole he stood up and shined his light around the massive room he found himself in. “My God.”

The vault was
not
empty. The middle of the huge room was open, allowing even large trucks to enter. A turntable built into the floor would rotate them around so they could drive back out of the tunnel without having to back out. A dust-covered, eight-wheeled, seven-ton truck sat on the turntable, where it had been left more than a century before. Beyond it were stacks of shipping containers, neatly organized and arranged. The room was ten meters high, and the containers were stacked almost to the ceiling.

The four vault hunters, in awe, slowly moved deeper into the vast storage room, each wandering in a different direction. As before, the containers were marked and labeled with hard copy manifests of their contents. Cecil brushed the dust off of the clear plastic envelope and read the packing list. The artifact was given a serial number, and had been cataloged by when and where it had been found. The description itself was vague; Cecil didn’t know what was meant by “anomalous materials,” exactly. The thing that caught his attention was the last line, “ORIGIN”: instead of “Native Zanzibari” like all of the stored artifacts they’d found before, this one was listed as “Unknown Extraterrestrial Antecedent Species.”

It took Cecil a moment to process what he’d just read.
Antecedent species.
His heart dropped into his stomach. “Zak!” he shouted. “Zak, get over here!”

The historian, with Anna Kay and Aristotle Lang in tow, jogged over to Cecil, wondering what he was so upset about. Instead of explaining, Cecil merely shined his light on the container and pointed. Zak leaned forward and read the manifest, his mouth unconsciously moving as he did so. “Unknown extraterrestrial Antecessor…species…” he said, trailing off. He stood up slowly, eyes wide. “Cecil,” he said, looking as if he’d seen a ghost. “This is it. This is the secret they were hiding. It wasn’t just the Zanzibari artifacts. There…there was another species on this planet. Look at the date codes! It was from the same era as the Zanzibari civilization! Cecil, the natives, they were being visited by advanced aliens! My God, they found Antecessor artifacts…they…I don’t…” Zak trailed off again, looking a little woozy. He steadied himself on the massive storage shelf and breathed deeply through his mask for a moment. “Cecil, do you know what this means? Right here, in this room, are materials, artifacts left over from a species so advanced they were traveling the stars four
million
years ago. This is a priceless find…priceless.”

In the depths of space, there had been found evidence of species older and more advanced than humankind. While humanity had encountered only one other spacefaring race, the aliens derisively known as the Maggots, the galaxy was nonetheless full of life. Most worlds that supported life had nothing akin to a sentient species; the few sentient races that
had
been encountered were all very primitive compared to humanity. Only the Maggots surpassed the human race in their technological capabilities, for they were far older. It was widely believed that the forces the Concordiat fought and defeated were the last remnants, the dying gasp of a once mighty, galaxy-spanning empire. The Maggots, it was believed, had been a spacefaring race for thousands of years before humanity ever left the Earth, but even they were young in a universe that was incredibly ancient. There had been scattered evidence of advanced, intelligent, spacefaring races far, far older than even the Maggots. Human scientists had no names for them, and knew nothing about them aside from what could be gleaned from the occasional bit of leftover material or fossilized biological matter. These multiple races were known collectively as Antecessors, and what little remained of them, after millions or even billions of years, was indeed priceless.

This fact was not lost on Aristotle Lang. He slowly ran a hand over the container, smudging the thick layer of dust with his gloved hand. The look on his face was one of awe, even lust. “Mr. Mesa,” he said quietly. “You will be rewarded handsomely, you and your partner both. You cannot imagine how wealthy you just made me. You cannot imagine…”

Zak frowned. “All I want is to go home,” he said ruefully.

Lang ignored his tone, still almost in shock. “Then go home you shall. You have earned it. I need…I need to get my men in here. I need to appraise these artifacts, find buyers…so much to do…”

Cecil, treading carefully, tried to caution the old warlord. “These anomalous materials could be toxic, radioactive, or dangerous in some other way. You must be careful. If the Zanzibaran colonists found prehistoric alien technology—”

“Then they have made me a very,
very
rich man, Mr. Blackwood,” Lang interrupted. He turned to Cecil. “Zanzibar is my home. I was born here, in squalor. Every day is a struggle for survival on this Godforsaken planet. There is nothing here but chaos, violence, and suffering. This, this is the key, don’t you see? By leveraging these natural resources, I can remake this miserable world into something fit to live on! Money, investment, research, all of these things will flow to Zanzibar now. The man who controls these resources controls the future of this world.
I
control these resources now, Mr. Blackwood. I’m going to make Zanzibar a better world.”

And kill everyone who gets in your way,
Cecil thought numbly.
Dear God, what have I done?

* * *

A steady wind howled through Lang’s Burg, blasting the east side of the settlement with dust and sand. Zak Mesa, huddled over his console, three separate displays up, paid the wind no mind. He was utterly lost in his work, and had been so for hours. It was only in the last hour or so, when he had gotten up to empty his bladder, that he realized that night had fallen. Cecil had staggered by sometime before that, guided by Bianca to his bed. He had gotten so drunk he could barely stand, and his Zanzibaran…girlfriend? Concubine? Zak had never really figured out their relationship. In any case, Bianca had been promising Cecil all sorts of intimate delights if he’d just stop drinking and come to bed.

The historian hadn’t thought about it long enough to figure out what Cecil was on about. The Avalonian rich boy went through depressive mood swings like this from time to time, and the easiest thing to do was to just let him sort himself out. Bianca seemed to genuinely care about him, though, which puzzled Zak, but he had never been able to figure women out anyway.

Rubbing his eyes, Zak took another sip from an awful, probably unsafe, locally produced energy drink and focused on his reading. There had been so much information in the vault, saved on drives for long-term storage, that it had been utterly overwhelming. Lang had secured all of the found artifacts for himself, and had them under heavy guard. He was even now trying to find ships to take them off-world, buyers for the goods, and places to buy weapons from. Within a local year or two, Zak figured, his armies would overrun Freeport and he’d be the de facto dictator of the entire planet. The alien treasures, instead of being studied, cataloged, and put on display, would be hoarded away by greedy collectors, smuggled into private collections, or destructively exploited.

It sickened Zak. It sickened him that he’d uncovered one of the greatest xenoarchaeological finds in history, one that had been carefully and deliberately hidden before the Second Interstellar War, and it was all to the benefit of a violent megalomaniac like Aristotle Lang. He might end up in the history books, but he wondered what those books would say about him in the end. How many people were going to die because of Lang? What would become of the artifacts?

It was depressing to think about, so Zak tried not to think. At times, he thought he understood why Cecil drank so much. In any case, his ordeal was, hopefully, almost over. Cecil’s sister was on her way; with luck, Zak and Anna would be off Zanzibar. He didn’t know what would happen after that. He’d been too depressed, too overwhelmed, and too wrapped up in his work to broach the subject with her. That talk would have to come, sooner or later, and Zak found himself dreading it. She was a woman of wealth, education, and note. He had been barely making a living as an archivist, a minimum-wage historian, when Cecil had initially approached him. He had very little to go home to back on Columbia. Anna had everything she could possibly want on New Constantinople.