systems are
collated through eighty quasar emissions and the galactic
plume..."
I stopped and stepped back-I had
inadvertently begun reading from ship's data core.
"Easy boy!" Hammerstein stepped forward and
instinctively placed himself between I and the relic.
"Rather well engineered, weren't they." I
quipped sardonically, seeking to add a note of levity. "Must have
been a nasty surprise to the poor Arcturian Air corps when these
monsters showed up."
"Yes, yes indeed," Hammerstein smiled,
"although nasty, I think, was probably not the expletive the poor
buggers must have lipped when they engaged."
"And now we have one,
nearly intact, and still packing the poison that brought her
down."
"After the war the Imperials stopped using
Cyborged crews. They raised an entire new caste of soldiers-not
linked to their Hive mind at all." Hammerstein said quietly. "It
was the last Great War of multiple systems. Since then there have
only been small inter system wars. No one dared challenge the
Imperials again."
Gabriel Montagudo, Stefano
Tsai
"I think Princess Clairissa
Maggio may have found the Arcturians were not, in fact, threatening
the Imperials. Whatever echo still lingers in the neural net of
that ships computer systems, well, I think that is something more
menacing that a galaxy full of feisty Colonials. Both factors
provide your motive-and it falls doubly on the Cyborgian Central
Command Economies-the Empire. As for the other as yet unknown
suspects, we'll have to wait for them to strike again." I offered
coolly.
Hammerstein glowered
impatience and looked at the relic. "We've got a crew picking the
remains of Parsons' kill in the Oort now. There will be something.
There always is."
We made back to the
Officers mess for a breakfast of cakes and coffees. At least that's
what they called it. I ate silently, knowing Hammerstein had
already requisitioned the bots I suggested from a com. By lunch the
bots would be scouring the relic.
The wreckage salvaged from
the wormhole attack had arrived at the Hangar as well, and the
techs were happily after that for clues. I could sense Hammerstein
was pushing back an idea that had validity, so I drilled him with
my little kid eyes and he knew that I knew.
"So what is it detective? What is it about
the wormhole attack that you don't want to face?'
He chortled a grumbling laugh that bordered
on a burp, and looked at me with a bitter sweet half smile. "No
hiding anything from you, aye?" His eyes darkened and I felt a rush
of emotion he'd walled up for decades suddenly opening up, and its
impact was palpable to me.
His sense of self from that long ago decade
was profoundly different-he had been young, a handful of years
older than I. His self image from that time impacted me like a
strange reflection of the man in front of me-leaner, with swift
hair, a reckless step, and an unquenchable awe and thirst for
adventure. Youth. Caldris had been in a territorial dispute with
the Paramon Republic near the Pleiades.
Paramon was always
disputing some silly rock, and this time it was one of our
Kingdom's trade stations near Baal One, a horrid seared rock of
soullessness-but our trade station orbited it and operated
important business with Chrysalis Isla, deep in the Pleiades
Confederation.
Hammerstein's memories came
at me- the flight deck of his first
assignment, glorying in the sight of the Kingdom's ships of the
line at the ready. Anticipation, joy, a thrill of imminent
combat-and then the impossible, the unheard of-a wormhole deep in
the gravity well of Baal One sweeping at at them like a cobra, hard
and fast and the young Hammerstein watched as the ships of the
line-and all of his friends were on those ships-disintegrated in
the irresistible shock wave.
He was nineteen and alone. The only real
family he had ever known had been those fellows on the other ships.
He had been transferred from one of those very ships that
morning.
There was an awkward moment
as the face of the young
collated through eighty quasar emissions and the galactic
plume..."
I stopped and stepped back-I had
inadvertently begun reading from ship's data core.
"Easy boy!" Hammerstein stepped forward and
instinctively placed himself between I and the relic.
"Rather well engineered, weren't they." I
quipped sardonically, seeking to add a note of levity. "Must have
been a nasty surprise to the poor Arcturian Air corps when these
monsters showed up."
"Yes, yes indeed," Hammerstein smiled,
"although nasty, I think, was probably not the expletive the poor
buggers must have lipped when they engaged."
"And now we have one,
nearly intact, and still packing the poison that brought her
down."
"After the war the Imperials stopped using
Cyborged crews. They raised an entire new caste of soldiers-not
linked to their Hive mind at all." Hammerstein said quietly. "It
was the last Great War of multiple systems. Since then there have
only been small inter system wars. No one dared challenge the
Imperials again."
Gabriel Montagudo, Stefano
Tsai
"I think Princess Clairissa
Maggio may have found the Arcturians were not, in fact, threatening
the Imperials. Whatever echo still lingers in the neural net of
that ships computer systems, well, I think that is something more
menacing that a galaxy full of feisty Colonials. Both factors
provide your motive-and it falls doubly on the Cyborgian Central
Command Economies-the Empire. As for the other as yet unknown
suspects, we'll have to wait for them to strike again." I offered
coolly.
Hammerstein glowered
impatience and looked at the relic. "We've got a crew picking the
remains of Parsons' kill in the Oort now. There will be something.
There always is."
We made back to the
Officers mess for a breakfast of cakes and coffees. At least that's
what they called it. I ate silently, knowing Hammerstein had
already requisitioned the bots I suggested from a com. By lunch the
bots would be scouring the relic.
The wreckage salvaged from
the wormhole attack had arrived at the Hangar as well, and the
techs were happily after that for clues. I could sense Hammerstein
was pushing back an idea that had validity, so I drilled him with
my little kid eyes and he knew that I knew.
"So what is it detective? What is it about
the wormhole attack that you don't want to face?'
He chortled a grumbling laugh that bordered
on a burp, and looked at me with a bitter sweet half smile. "No
hiding anything from you, aye?" His eyes darkened and I felt a rush
of emotion he'd walled up for decades suddenly opening up, and its
impact was palpable to me.
His sense of self from that long ago decade
was profoundly different-he had been young, a handful of years
older than I. His self image from that time impacted me like a
strange reflection of the man in front of me-leaner, with swift
hair, a reckless step, and an unquenchable awe and thirst for
adventure. Youth. Caldris had been in a territorial dispute with
the Paramon Republic near the Pleiades.
Paramon was always
disputing some silly rock, and this time it was one of our
Kingdom's trade stations near Baal One, a horrid seared rock of
soullessness-but our trade station orbited it and operated
important business with Chrysalis Isla, deep in the Pleiades
Confederation.
Hammerstein's memories came
at me- the flight deck of his first
assignment, glorying in the sight of the Kingdom's ships of the
line at the ready. Anticipation, joy, a thrill of imminent
combat-and then the impossible, the unheard of-a wormhole deep in
the gravity well of Baal One sweeping at at them like a cobra, hard
and fast and the young Hammerstein watched as the ships of the
line-and all of his friends were on those ships-disintegrated in
the irresistible shock wave.
He was nineteen and alone. The only real
family he had ever known had been those fellows on the other ships.
He had been transferred from one of those very ships that
morning.
There was an awkward moment
as the face of the young
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