The Princess of Caldris (4 page)

“
Crab cakes.” Father said,
“he likes crab cakes.”

I wore the disser in the kitchen while the
Chef made the cakes. It made him uncomfortable, and I felt my first
guilty pleasure of swaggering machismo. The Chef, an artist to his
hypersensitive core, was thoroughly nonplussed.

“
Dissers in my kitchen?
Nyet!” He swatted at me with a spatula.

Tokushima leaned forward, “He saved us from
assassins today.” She said softly. “Really nasty assassins.
Probably from the Transhuman Imperials out of Deneb IV. Auto-bots
with cloaking technology. Only he knew they were coming.”

His eyes widened. “I see.” He turned the
crab cakes. “It is, after all, a stylish disser of great antiquity
and value. Perhaps worthy of my kitchen after all.”

I beamed; glory.

“
Should they come again,
please kill them cleanly and do not mess up my kitchen.” he
added.

Steve Moore

II

All the stars in a jewel
box.

“
Not the
fountains and holograms of the palace and its parapets, not the
staid Royal Guard with pomp and ceremony deftly done, nay, not the
silks and cashmere hauled through hyperspace by stalwart brave star
trading guildsmen. Not elegant floating divans crafted in the minds
of brilliant architects and engineers-nay, these are not the
treasures as Princess of the realm I value
most.

Nay, but the library and
art gallery-there is my greatest treasure. Histories upon
histories; all the songs of divas tragic and triumphant, the
orchestras of countless kingdoms, the fire lit bongos of
hardscrabble settlers in steaming jungles, their ships still warm
from the hyper-streams, the gallant calls of doomed officers
singing their final charge on lonely strange last stands. The
collected tales connecting all of humanity across time, their
moments of dash and beauty and even their ignominious wretchedness
when all was lost and stand they still did. These are my treasures.
I never cross the threshold of the palace library without a moments
pause to wonder, what soul shall share their insights and brave
fortitude against the fading of their light with me that day?
Creature comforts and possession; a room at the Inn at best, then
gone with the fading of the light. Our stories as such, all that
remains for us to forever whisper in the ears of our posterity,
‘Shine, delight, and rise-you are what you do this
day.’”

–
Princess Clairissa
Maggio, “All the stars a jewel box; come look.” Caldris.

As fitting for a scholarly
Princess, her name’s roots went back to ancient Earth Latin.
Clairissa meant “brilliant”, and "Maggio" May, a month of Spring.
Like the pure light of an impressionistic painting of
flowering trees in the South of
France
, captured forever, her essays had
been food to my young soul. I never told my father, or my mother,
only Mr. Gibbons knew how eagerly I had awaited the posting of her
journals. Now she was gone, my muse and light-absconded with by
whatever short sighted fools, or worse-scoundrels.

Hammerstein secured a small
detail of agents around the Sole estate with combat droids. The
palace put security satellites on alert and a station in
geosynchronous orbit added another layer of surveillance. The
estate secure, we gathered in my father’s study. It was time for me
to reveal what I had sensed in the palace library. Night had long
since fallen. An eventful day, to say the least.

My father sat at his desk.
Hammerstein and Tokushima took chairs on either side. I sat
opposite them all. I could sense apprehension, eagerness, and
dread. Beyond the large windows, volcanoes glowed in the distance;
father and mothers massive company machinery working the
lava.

I remembered the library
and the impressions that had struck me.
The echoes in the quanta
. “Her
research regarding the Arcturian wars had been all consuming.” I
began, “I could feel her paths to and fro-her mind’s echoes like a
perfume lingering. Her first concern was of course the question of
the war’s justification which the official Cyborgian Central
Command Economies-the Transhumans-had given for the first strike
they had made upon the Arcturian Colonies.”

Recognition filled their minds. Memories of
school days and history lessons regarding those wars. The official
justification had been the Arcturians building a fleet of their own
with intentions of a massive attack against the Deneb IV. The
Cyborgian Central Command Economies-CCCE, had been mastering
control of trade in the civilized portions of the galaxy through
the building of interstellar gateways.

The Arcturians stopped
granting star gateway rights along the Sagittarius Spiral Arm.
Claiming the settlements in the Arm, their frontier, as Arcturian
territory, CCCE would not be allowed to extend its tariffs and
hegemony. So CCCE leapfrogged ahead into the Spiral Arm and began
establishing “settlements” of their own. Gateways began
construction. The Arcturians defied them, fighting broke
out.

“
The Arcturians had long
established that CCCE in the Arm was not building legal settlements
at all, which would have required settlers, but military outposts.
Intergalactic law regarding settlements required civilian
settlers.”

Hammerstein’s emotions shot
across to me, a cynical, grim understanding that indeed the CCCE
settlements were a farce. CCCE’s command economies controlled all
aspects of their citizen’s lives from the cradle to the grave. In
such a culture, frontiersmen could not be created. There were no
clamoring masses yearning to breathe free. I smiled back. He
understood.

Father looked apprehensively at the large
windows. I felt he regretted their ostentatious openness now. He
wished they were smaller. Menace lurked in his mind now at every
large window. Would there be more cloaked assassin bots?

I sensed none. I continued, “The Galaxy had
long taken the official CCCE justifications of the war with guarded
cynicism. No one wanted to be next. Clairissa felt a real answer to
the history could be found among the ruins in the various Arcturian
worlds. She requested the funding of some small archaeological
expeditions and followed their research diligently.”

I felt her excitement lingering at the
palace. “Calculations of the ruined shipyards sizes and capacities
didn’t match the official story. She was growing convinced the
attack was unjustified.”

“
Motive.” Hammerstein
interjected. “CCCE didn’t want their history soiled.”

Father’s eyes darkened,
“Motive enough to kidnap a Princess of a sovereign star
system?”

Hammerstein shrugged. “Perhaps.”

“
There is more,” I said.
“One of the expeditions had discovered a CCCE frigate.”

“
The invincible armada,”
Tokushima said bitterly. “Which inexplicably, by the end of the
war, was largely absent.”

“
Yes. The armada of Cyborg
warriors which after the war was replaced with a new cast of non
hive mind warriors, the new Spartans of CCCE. The irony being that
civilization-from their Transhuman ruling caste and the population
of citizens more or less under the influence of the hive, have long
now been defended by a separate caste. Ordinary humans such as
ourselves.”

That strange combination and order now
filled the room with perplexity. It was what it was, the CCCE
Samurai defending an empire unlike themselves in every way. The
galaxy’s civilizations and worlds taking it as matter of fact, its
oddness however striking all, far and near, as a queer sort of
arrangement.

“
And the ship the
Princess’s expedition discovered?” I asked aloud.

Now
my
eyes darkened for sure. “That is
what I stepped back from. That is what killed your first empath and
left the second in intensive care. The ships logs possessed a
recording. In the recording is evil.”

“
You mean something evil?”
Tokushima corrected my phrase.

“
No. I
mean Evil.
Evil itself
.”

They all smiled apologetically at what they
perceived as my hyperbole. “Evil is not a thing, Winteroud.” My
father said gently. It is an adjective, describing an action.”

I remembered the impression that had
assailed me. “No father, they had discovered Evil. As in a thing. A
noun.”

Discomfort continued among the adults. “Can
you describe the nature of this Evil more?”

“
When you pulled me back,
Officer Hammerstein, so I could not sense more of it, you were
wise. As you noted when you gave me this assignment, my empathic
powers have not progressed to the sensitivity of an older empath.
But it has progressed enough to know when something is
dangerous.”

I could feel his frustration. So close to
more clues, so delicate the search.

“
People describe predatory
animals as evil. This is because of the destruction they wreak when
humans accidentally fall prey to such things. However, I often feel
the minds of such animals in zoological gardens or in the wild.
They are not evil. They are merely meat machines going about their
business of preying. They have no hatred of their prey, merely
hunger. Sometimes a thrill of a hunt. No malice, no diabolical
viciousness.”

“
And you felt that…there?”
Tokushima asked with impending sense of dread.

“
Yes.”

“
Where did it come from?”
from Father, sharply. Hammerstein gave a cold thousand yard
stare.

I looked at him directly,
“Officer Hammerstein knows, in more detail than I can sense from a
threshold darkly.” I said. “Princess Clairissa.”

“
Her archaeological
expedition,” Hammerstein answered with steeled emotion. “…at the
ruins of an Arcturian Neely station, which was in a decayed orbit
around a red giant star.”

That was the first time I had heard anyone
use the expression “Neely” to describe an O’Neal station. I knew
what he meant though, a very long cylinder with high grade
environments on the inside. An Arcturian O’Neal station would have
been a thousand years old.

“
An attack frigate from the
CCCE Armada had crashed into the Neely” he said.

“
Kamikaze?” Farther
hissed.

Hammerstein’s bottom lip rose stoutly,
“Valid question, but no. There’s evidence it was a combat accident.
However, the archaeologists opened two files on the ship. A black
box log, and a transmission the ship had received.

“
A
Sunrider 3000 attack ship.”
I suddenly
knew. Hammerstein’s jaw tightened. “Yes. Then the expedition went
dark. Apparently, whatever was on that transmission completely
disorganized the neural nets of the entire Cyborgian CCCE crew. And
when the archaeologists opened the file, a millennia later, it did
it to them too. Strangely, it seems the file was sent from the
archaeological site to the hypercaster at the palace by automated
systems.”

He let the implications run through my mind
a moment before he continued.

“
It sent itself.” I said,
and let him consider the implication; a sentient
program.

“
Why didn’t it hurt the
Princess?” Tokushima wondered aloud.

“
The Palace hypercast
receiver runs automatic screens on all incoming transmissions. This
file was coded so unusually, it tripped the screens. The Princess
never saw the files. The data on the files was incredibly dense,
and a cursory scan reveals a hologram with…numerous geometries in
three dimensional patterns and fractals.”

“
Where is the original
hardware?” A worried look shot across fathers face.

“
In the Sunrider. We
brought the ship back, it’s at Fort Oort Station. In the Kuiper
belt.” Hammerstein said at last.

Something was turning in the back of my
mind. I didn’t know what yet, but it was not good. “Don’t bring it
any closer in this star system. Keep it out in the Oort clouds. I
should go there as well. I need to know if the transmission in the
ship is fundamentally different than the transmission on the
derelict frigate.”

Father rose, “Hammerstein”-he cut himself
off, his thought unfinished. Only his emotion conveyed to me across
his den: dread, desperation, and a chillingly morose sense of
imminent doom.

“
What choice do we have,
Sir Sole? The boy himself insists with warning. He hasn’t missed
yet. We can’t ignore him. He needs to go. He needs to go now. I can
have a Hammerhead make an in-system hyper jump. With normal space
time on both ends of the jump, he’ll be at Fort Oort in the
morning. He can sleep on the journey.”