Stars of Charon (Legacy of the Thar'esh Book 1) (27 page)

“You see
here,” Loid’s voice continued as the view zoomed in on the two symbols on the
wall. “These are your mystery aren’t they? These are what your friends at
MineWorks saw and what you two went to investigate in the first place, right?”

He paused
long enough that both Ju-lin and I nodded, waiting for him to continue.

“Well I
have news for ya kiddies,” Loid said. “This isn’t some cryptic code or ancient
language. These things aren’t a big mystery at all. Any border pilot who has
done a bit of smuggling will be able to read them. Yours truly included. See, I
told you that you should have trusted me.”

The image
faded, and Loid’s torso reappeared.

“It’s a star
map,” he continued. “In the old days traders used diagrams like this to
identify the locations of flux points within a system. See, watch this.”

His image
faded again, replaced with two floating circles with symbols along the outside
edge.

“The two
rings combine at a ninety degree angle, like so, and then they would match up
the symbols like this, so that the marker is aligned with the first orbiting
planet. From there, this symbol means there is a flux point out that direction,
this other symbol here, on the edge, indicates the distance from the sun.”

As we
watched, the two shapes fit together and three bright points of light appeared
in mid-air, scattered away from the central star.

“So it’s
a navigational chart,” Ju-lin whispered.

“But wait
a minute,” I said. “Those aren’t our symbols. The rings he just showed us had
symbols along the outside edge of the circle, but the ones in the cave were all
inside the circles.”

“Now here
is where it gets interesting,” Loid’s face reappeared once again. “If you were
paying attention at home, you noticed a subtle difference between the
traditional nav rings, and yours, namely that the symbols you found were
inverted into the ring. That’s because your maps don’t show the way to a flux
point out in space, they point the way to something else, something on the
planet itself. Take a look.”

The
holographic screen shifted back to the image from the cave and the symbols on
the wall. As we watched, the symbols separated from the wall, and slid together
as the others had in the simulation that Loid had just played, except this
time, instead of highlighting distant points in space, a bright point appeared
at the surface of the planet near the northern pole.

“See
there? Your symbols were a map pointing to internal coordinates. Pretty smooth
actually. Too bad you two didn’t come to me with
that
in the first
place, could have saved us all quite a trip and probably saved me from whatever
happened to me back on that station. Not that you should feel guilty.”

“Hell,” I
sighed.

“Oh, and
there is one more thing,” the view shifted back toward the entrance to the
cave. “You said something about the cave getting blown up, so I took a look,
see that there, that blur, that’s your bomb. Now, if we enhance it like this,
yeah, there. No more blur. A nice scanner you guys used there. See, now we can
see that the little guy is a pretty nifty plasma drone. Now, zoom closer here
with me—”

We leaned
forward as the image zoomed in toward the drone, filling up almost the entire
display. The focus adjusted until we could make out the finest details and
scratches on the stainless steel surface.

I peered
at the small nameplate that was bolted onto the side of the drone:
Mark II
Strip-mining Plasma Drone, MineWorks Ltd
.

“No way,”
Ju-lin gasped.

“Hell,” I
repeated.

“It looks
like some of your friendly neighbors weren’t that friendly,” Loid broke in
again. “It wasn’t the Celestrials, or even the Draugari who melted down the
cave and almost killed you two.”

“But
why?” Ju-lin asked.

We both
stumbled backwards as Loid’s face reappeared.

“Why
is
the question,” Loid said as if responding to Ju-lin. “The MineWorks goons who
blew it up must have some clue of what the symbols meant, or at least that
there was something of value that they didn’t want the Celestrials to get ahold
of. Why else would they use the drone to destroy the cave rather than, I don’t
know, use it to defend the colony? What I do know is that there is something
back on your little world that MineWorks, the Collegiate, and maybe even the
Draugari will kill for. Now there’s a sober thought. Especially since I’m
guessing they already killed me for it and I don’t even know what it is. Ain’t
that a pisser?

“Anyway,
well now you two kids are stuck here for a bit,” Loid’s tone sobered as he
continued. “I know Twiggy is probably already clawing at the hull to get
moving, but seriously, take this time to think through what you’re doing.
You’re young. You have a ship. A fine ship at that. Don’t think that your only
option is to run back over to your little world and get yourselves killed. I’ve
seen a lot of worlds, and I haven’t found a single one I wanted to die on. So
run in, get your family, and get out.”

His image
moved out of range of the projector.

“Oh, and
one more thing,” his head popped back into view, large enough that I was sure
his head must have been inches from the camera. “Just in case I’m not dead, you
keep this ship safe. I’ll be back for her.”

There was
a flash of light and the projector went dark.

We were
silent for several breaths, listening to the soft hum of the lights.

“At least
the Collegiate doesn’t know that whatever it is, it’s on the planet,” Ju-lin
broke the silence. “I mean, MineWorks may know, and Growd may have a scan of
it, but he never sent out the images in the drones. At least that means dad,
Marin, and the colonists are safe. Hopefully the Collegiate think that the cave
is destroyed and there is nothing left to worry about.”

“They
know,” I said slowly, my stomach churned as my conversation with Alume replayed
in my head. “I told Alume about the circles. He asked about the symbols, if
they were inside or outside the circle. I told him.”

“What?”
Ju-lin’s face was white.

I slid
into a chair, my arms and legs felt numb.

“I
thought if I told him a little I could learn what they were after,” I breathed
slowly. “I thought I was being clever, but I gave him everything. He knew that
the symbols were a map, and now he knows that it pointed to a location on the
planet itself. And he knows about the plasma drone. I thought that the
Celestrials had fired it. When I mentioned it he sent a message immediately. He
knew his pilots didn’t fire it, he must have known as soon as I said it.”

“If he
knows there is something hidden on the planet, he will move to either retrieve
it or destroy it,” Ju-lin said, the tenor of her voice was flat. “What it is
doesn’t matter. He’s bombed the colony once, he may do it again.”

“He
will
do it again,” I said quietly. “And because of the drone, he knows that
MineWorks may be there to defend it. He’s going to go in with force.”

“How do
you know?” Ju-lin became animated again. “Maybe it’s some artifact or
something. Now that he knows it’s on the world he may just go look for it,
retrieve it, and leave.”

“That’s
not his plan,” I said. “He said so. Whatever is on that world, he doesn’t want
to see it retrieved or saved. He wants to see it burn.”

“They’re
historians,” Ju-lin countered. “That can’t be right. They wouldn’t just destroy
something like that.”

“They
would if they know it’s the last remnant of the Thar’esh.”

“Thar’esh?”
She echoed. “Now you’re worried about Loid’s boogie-man? You’re not making any
sense.”

“I am
Thar’esh,” the words slipped through my lips uneasily. The thought had been
racing relentlessly through my mind, I finally turned to face it. “Or at least
I think that’s what I was. Vasudeva, the four-pointed star, the Collegiate use
it as their symbol because the Thar’esh destroyed the entire system. The
Collegiate are sworn to take vengeance and destroy any surviving memory of the
Thar’esh.”

“You are
Thar’esh?” She asked, not believing. “That’s a stupid thing to say. It isn’t
possible. Your world didn’t have any tech. None. That’s why the terraformers
didn’t know the world was inhabited. We talked about it all before. Your
memories are about farming, no starships, no electronics, nothing. How could
those
people who hadn’t even mastered metalworking have been the same race that the
Celestrials have nightmares about, and once destroyed an entire
star system
?
The Thar’esh are just stories. Nobody has that kind of technology. It’s all
hokey. Fairy tales. How can you believe that? It’s absurd.”

“You may
be right, but Alume believes it,” I responded. “That’s all that matters. He
will act on it, he
is
acting on it. He will destroy everything.”

“What do
you mean ‘destroy everything’?” Ju-lin said. “He clearly doesn’t know that you
are, whatever it is you are. You’re the only one left, you’re safe. He will go,
scan the world, see that it’s only inhabited by humans, and leave.”

“It’s not
just that. The circles. The map. Even if he doesn’t know where it is, he knows
there is something left on the planet. And maybe there is, maybe it’s a ship or
a weapon,” I said. “Maybe that’s what MineWorks is after as well. You didn’t
see how he was talking. Alume, the Collegiate; they don’t just want vengeance,
they want to erase the last remnants of the Thar’esh from existence. He won’t
just go scan the planet, I think he will—”

I didn’t
finish the sentence.

“Dad,”
Ju-lin said breathlessly as she turned and pushed her way into the cockpit.

Chapter
27

“Seven days of fluxes,” Jen’tak muttered as he sat across
from me in the navigator’s seat.

We were resting comfortably in the cabin of the Carrack,
looking out at the endless black of space. I sat in my gunnery seat, flipping
through the long-range scans of the system.

“Seven days and nothing, nothing at all,” Jen’tak continued.
“Are you sure this mission wasn’t a punishment? What did we do to deserve
this?”

Kal grunted something from the pilot’s seat.

“What Kal?” Jen’tak leaned forward. “Bah, he’s asleep. We’re
on a mission to nowhere to sit and watch nothing.”

I should wake Kal, I thought, but why bother? Jen’tak was
right, there was nothing to see. I flipped through the ship’s internal
diagnostics. The Slires were both docked securely, the pilots and Tren were
taking their shift sleeping.

“How many more days of this?” Jen’tak asked. “Lor’ten?”

“In eleven days we will be relieved, but we stay until then,”
I answered. “Our orders were clear. We wait.”

“Wait? Wait for what? We are warriors, it is not in our blood
to wait.”

Out of the corner of my eye I saw a blink of red on my
display. I turned my head, squinting, there it was again. Now two, then three.

“The wait may be over, Jen’tak,” I answered as I activated
the shipboard intercom. “Battle stations, three Celestrial fighters just
entered the system.”

The wait
for Loid’s 12-hour lockdown to expire passed with agonizing slowness. For the
first two hours Ju-lin tried to override the controls and access the engines,
but Loid had done his job well, the ship wasn’t going anywhere. Eventually, she
gave up and slipped back into the pilot’s seat to pour through the local system
maps to plot out the fastest jump path back to the colony.

“We can
do it in six jumps, but that will take us back through Shindar, not sure if
that’s the best idea,” Ju-lin spoke quickly to herself. “There are some longer
options that will avoid most of Celestrial space which would take 38 hours. Too
long. What if we go back over through the Furies, we could run into a patrol
that could stop us for an inspection, but then they would probably think we
stole the ship. But then, Loid’s credentials seemed to work well enough, and it
looks like he has a file here on what to transfer where to pay off the
different Earthborn patrols, if we pay them off we should be able to slip
past—”

Ju-lin
continued for hours staring at the heads-up display and talking to herself as
she plotted different paths. I could see the lines of concern on her face. She
had already lost her mother, and now her father and brother were left sitting
on the colony with no way to defend themselves from what we were certain was
coming.

With
Ju-lin focused on her task, I was left quietly to my own thoughts. Though I was
afraid for the colony, and the faces I knew there, I was ashamed to find that
my curiosity of what was hidden on the world outweighed my concern for the
8,000 human lives that hung in the balance. I found Loid’s simulation of the
symbols from the cave on the ship’s computer and studied the coordinates. What
could it be? I wracked my memories. I recalled being in caves with my teacher,
for funerals, ceremonies. My first memories as a human were from a cave. The
cave had saved my life. But in all of my memories the caves were empty. The
walls were sheer. There were no alters, or books, or technology. The only
images I could ever recall seeing on a cave wall were the symbols I saw with my
human eyes.

Whatever
was hidden, was hidden well. I didn’t know what it was.

“Get up,”
Ju-lin smacked my cheek lightly, waking me up in my bunk. “We have five
minutes.”

I opened
my eyes, I hadn’t slept.

Ju-lin
proudly handed me a cup of over-brewed tea. It was bitter but I smiled and
thanked her. I noticed that she wasn’t drinking one herself.

“Did you
get any sleep?” I asked.

“Sleep?”
she scoffed as she used one of the bulkhead handholds to stretch, my eyes
lingered on her bare stomach. “About an hour maybe.”

Again I
couldn’t help but be amazed at Ju-lin’s surge of energy now that we were about
to get moving again. When I had left her in the cabin some hours ago she looked
exhausted and worn. But now, with a perilous path in front of us, she was
chipper and even cheerful.

“I
optimized a route,” she turned away as she switched positions to stretch her
other leg, I stole a lingering look at her backside. “It should take us a total
of 27 hours flying time to get back to the colony. Nine
jumps total. I
figured
we could take shifts on watch so the
other can get some sleep as we go, I have a schedule worked out. Oh, I found
these protein bars, they taste more or less like cardboard, but it’s
breakfast.”

“Looks like you thought of everything,” I said a
s I tore off the edge of the wrapper and
took a bite of the protein bar. I’d never tasted cardboard, I knew then that I
never wanted to.

“More or
less,” she grinned. “I also found all of the ship’s gunnery schematics and a
simulation system. I have it wired into the consoles if you want to give it a
run through and check it out. I have to say, Loid has this bird rigged up to
fight. When we ran into those pirates he made it sound like we wouldn’t have
had a chance against those Drakes, but we have enough firepower on this thing
to—”

The
ship’s lights flickered off for a half-second and then came back on, brighter
than before. Deeper in the ship I heard a deep whirl followed by the soft
reverberations of the engines powering up.

Ju-lin
smiled.

“Looks
like it’s time to go,” I said as I pulled myself up out of the chair.

“So it
does,” she responded.

I
gestured grandly toward the cockpit and made a small bow. “After you, captain.”

Her smile
broadened as she stepped past me and through the hatch.

The
fighters that had followed Cwaylyn out into the black were nowhere to be seen.
They were replaced with a steady flow of cargo ships and couriers coming and
going from the station. The local NewsNet was broadcasting a warning looking
for an unidentified modified racing vessel that had stolen technical design
schematics.

“Design
schematics?” I asked.

“The
Collegiate must be covering it up,” Ju-lin answered. “Interesting.”

“At least
it means we’re safe,” I answered.

“Relatively,”
she replied as she turned up the throttle and set us on course to the first
flux point.

After two
hours we made our first flux into a well patrolled Celestrial system. We were
hailed by Celestrial patrol ships three times, each time we sent our
credentials, they scanned us, and sent us on our way. After seven hours we made
another flux into a system called Gateway. Positioned on the edge of the
Celestrial Empire, Gateway serves as the main trading hub between the
Celestrial Empire, Earthborn Protectorate, and Domari Collective. I watched out
the viewport in awe as dozens upon dozens of huge cargo vessels and swarms of
Celestrial patrol fighters slid through the darkness between the flux points. We
were stopped and scanned once on our flight through Gateway. Between our empty
cargo hold and Loid’s flight credentials, we were allowed through to the flux
point to the Earthborn system of Nexus.

As we
fluxed into Nexus my jaw dropped in awe at the sight of the twin blazing blue
stars in the distance.

“Yeah, it
always gets me too,” Ju-lin said quietly from the pilot’s seat. “Binary star
systems are something else. Welcome to Nexus.”

“I read
about Nexus,” I answered. “It has two terraformed super-earths, right?”

“Yeah,
and about a dozen orbital trading platforms.” Ju-lin answered. “Dad always says
that if Earth is the heart of the Protectorate, Nexus is the stomach. There are
seven flux points in system, two lead to the Domari Collective, that one behind
us back to the Celestrial Empire, and the other four take us back deeper into
Protectorate territory. If it’s legal, and it’s traded, it comes through
Nexus.”

“And the
illegal?”

“You saw
all the security back on Gateway, look over there,” she pointed to the
distance.

I turned
my head and saw the hulking shapes of two Protectorate Dreadnaughts floating
nearby.

“Smugglers
are too smart to try to run through this mess,” Ju-lin continued. “They take
the long way around and go through the Furies instead. It’s a dozen more fluxes
to go through the Furies, but you have a helluva lot better odds dodging
patrols or bribing customs officers out there like Loid does than you do here.”

I nodded
in agreement.

We talked
for a while longer about Nexus, and the twin-terraformed super-earths, Artemis
and Apollo, that were silent spinning in distant orbit around the binary stars.
Though she had never been to Artemis, Ju-lin told me about a class trip she had
once taken to Apollo. She talked about buildings two hundred stories high that
shot up from the ground like shards of mirrored glass, she described the
Earthborn Protectorate’s Grand Stock Market, and a performance hall where she
had slept through some rendition of an ancient-earth opera.

As she
spoke I could see her relaxing slightly. Though she had tried not to let it
show, I realized that being in Celestrial space had made her nervous. Now that
we were in the shadows of the familiar shapes of the Protectorate Dreadnaughts,
she allowed herself to relax. After a few minutes she began to yawn, and
grudgingly slipped back into her bunk to sleep as we began the seven-hour trek
across Nexus to our next flux point.

Our trip
across the system was the first time I had access to the Protectorate’s
NewsNets. I quickly realized that it more than a localized news network. It was
a federation of networks that connected humanity from system to system. News
traveled slowly. The latest news from the border worlds was still days old.
Though ships could travel from system to system through flux points,
information didn’t have it quite so easy and had to be carried rather than
transmitted. I recalled the communication drone that MineWorks had sent and
figured that the NewsNets had to operate using some sort of distributed
delivery system.

Time
passed quickly. To keep myself awake I browsed the net. There were stories of a
few Draugari attacks on unprotected shipping lanes, an in-depth look at a
contested element of a trade agreement between the Protectorate and the loosely
controlled Domari Collective, and extensive coverage of the conflicts between
the Prime Minister and the Senate on everything from military spending to
licensing and registration fees for hovers. Intermixed between articles were
flash commercials for new starships, gourmet freeze-dried treats, exotic
getaways, and localized planetary alerts for wanted criminals or suspected
smugglers.

I found
myself fascinated by the endless complexity of the Protectorate. The colonists
had spoken of the Protectorate as a distant and foreboding thing: like the
cloud of an expanding storm that they were trying to avoid. But despite their
distaste, the colonists still devoured any vids that made their way out to the
colony. They didn’t want to be part of the corruption and waste of the
Protectorate itself, but they wanted to be close to it. I began to realize that
most people wanted both freedom and stability, but in a dangerous universe, you
could not have both. Those who ventured out beyond the border worlds suffered
through the harsh realities of space and the untamed wilds. Draugari raiders,
Domari smugglers, Earthborn pirates, Celestrial reformists, and Osterian
scavengers were out waiting in the black.

So I
realized that each man and woman struck a bargain: sacrifice some of their
freedoms for the safety and prosperity of the Earthborn Protectorate. Some were
true believers, like Ju-lin’s brother Marin, who sought to become part of the
system to shape it from within. Others, like the colonists, treated the central
government of the Protectorate as a necessary evil, and still others saw the
vastness of the federated worlds as an opportunity for profit.

Again I
thought of the small slice of the human universe that I had come to know. I
thought of Lee. I was pretty certain that, like his son, he had once believed
in the Protectorate. He had joined the Protectorate Fleet and excelled, but
then, somewhere along the way, something happened. I wondered if it was the
death of his wife, or something else he had seen. But he had lost his faith.

My
thoughts drifted back to Ju-lin, who was sleeping silently in the cabin behind
me. Call it whatever you want, a void soul or just restlessness, she would
never resign herself to embracing the Protectorate like Marin. I wanted to
think that I was like her, but I wasn’t sure. As I thought about it, shades of
memories swept through me. I felt Lor’ten’s loyalty to his clan, a deep sense
of unflinching and undying devotion to the betterment of the whole. I also
recalled my teacher’s lessons and lectures: “Community is submission to your
own weakness to the greater strength of the whole.”