The Cor Chronicles: Volume 04 - Gods and Steel Read online

  Titles by Martin V. Parece II

  Blood and Steel (The Cor Chronicles, Vol. I)

  Fire and Steel (The Cor Chronicles, Vol. II)

  Darkness and Steel (The Cor Chronicles, Vol. III)

  Gods and Steel (The Cor Chronicles, Vol. IV)

  Titles Forthcoming from Martin V. Parece II

  The Path of Gods

  Copyright 2013

  Arcturus Publishing, Martin V. Parece II

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be printed, scanned, reproduced or distributed in any printed or electronic form without express permission from the above.

  To everyone – friends, family and fans – who give me the strength to keep writing.

  AUTHOR’S FOREWARD

  Science fiction and fantasy writers have long held a tradition of describing worlds of which they are afraid, worlds that they hope do not come to pass. Heinlein depicted a future Earth in Starship Troopers where Nazi-ism had taken control of the world peacefully, yet it was no more free than if the Nazis had won World War II. In Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, otherwise known as “Bladerunner”, Dick showed a world where the rampant greed of the great corporations forced the creation of a race of slaves to support Earth’s material needs. Tolkien’s works of course were a metaphor to show how industrialism and modernism unchecked threaten to destroy us all. While I would dare not put myself on the level of such masters, I join in this tradition. I fear a world where extremism of all kinds, from all sides of the table, threatens to tread us all under the boots of a few.

  Prologue

  My subcutaneous receiver chimed from behind my left ear just as we exited the ship. I answered it, watching my party assemble outside. “Chen,” I said.

  “Commander Chen, Dix here,” came Lieutenant Dixon’s voice. In command of the Guangzhou, she was the unofficial second in command of my flotilla. “EMC vessel entered normal space just after you started your descent. Your reentry blocked communications. No reply to communication attempts. Commander, they’ve entered the atmosphere, headed for your position.”

  “Any indication or intelligence that EMC ships have developed landing capabilities?” I asked.

  “Negative, commander. It’s a simple Beagle-class ship with a payload module,” she replied. “Do we engage?”

  Payload module? They have no way to land safely. Alarms sounded in my head. A suicide mission. My god, they’re carrying a nuke. Don’t they know the war is over?

  “Sir, do we engage?” Dix asked again in my ear.

  “Negative,” I replied. “Maintain observational orbit, but intercept any additional EMC craft.”

  “Affirmative,” she said after a long pause. “Paul, be careful. Guangzhou out.”

  I looked into the sky just as a sonic boom echoed through the air. The ship had entered the atmosphere at intense speed, and on a clear day, I might have been able to see it as it plummeted downward. It was a cold day on the eastern coast, as the continent was well into winter. Great gray clouds covered the sky to block out the orange giant sun and threaten to cover the ground with rain or even snow. Below me, the doctor and a dozen heavily armed marines waited at attention. I turned and passed through the airlock to stand on my ship’s observation deck.

  “Lieutenant Martinez!” I shouted as I scanned the deck. He dropped down from the command center through an open overhead hatch. He was a fairly short man, just over one point six meters, and a mix of several different ethnicities, which was not uncommon considering that his parents hailed from the Philippines on Old Earth.

  “Sir?!” Martinez said, standing at attention.

  “A Beagle-class EMC ship has broken the atmosphere. It should be showing on radar by now. As soon as we’re clear, intercept and engage. Return when the threat is eliminated.”

  “Aye sir,” Martinez responded. He was my first officer, well trained and disciplined, but he was too one dimensional. He would never be given his own command. I think that was fine with him.

  As I look back at it now, I realize I didn’t have the faintest idea what I was doing beyond following orders. I passed back through the airlock and heard it hiss as it sealed behind me. I half jogged down the ramp to join my party. When I joined them, the ramp mechanically retracted behind me, and I heard the ship’s lifter engines begin to hum to life. A marine handed me a sidearm – a standard issue M2074A forty caliber with twenty light armor piercing rounds – which I immediately checked before I chambered the first round. I clicked the safety back in place and holstered the weapon.

  “We have a development,” I announced. “The EMC has sent a ship. They’ve refused to answer hails. I’ve ordered Lieutenant Martinez to engage. We need to move. Now.”

  Two marines took the lead while the other ten fell in around and behind Doctor Hightower and me. Several picked up the doctor’s equipment to help him keep pace because I didn’t have to tell any of them that we needed to be at least three hundred meters from the Herbert Walker for her to take off. We crossed the distance at a full run, and I heard the quad-lifters roar to life behind us. We did not slow even when we heard the main thrusters kick in to propel my ship after its prey. This part of the coastline was not conducive to landing and taking off, as the ground was too sandy and unstable, so the Herbert Walker had to land almost two kilometers from the boats.

  Crossing the distance on foot should have been a leisurely stroll on a chilly day, but the EMC had changed that by sending a ship to Arcturus V. As we ran, I did the quick math. Assuming they came from Earth, the EMC crew had crossed nearly thirty five light years, which if they hadn’t monkeyed with the Steingartner too much meant about two years and three months to them. According to Earth, they left nearly five hundred fifty years ago. They had no idea that the war was over, and at that point in Earth’s timeline, only the militants had spacecraft. My God. I’m fucked, I thought. It took us six minutes to reach the boats’ location, and Doctor Hightower panted as he leaned onto his knees.

  Thunder sounded high above the clouds and a great distance off. I looked up but saw no flashes of lightning or heard anything else to indicate such a storm was above us. No, there were few thunderstorms in winter, even on an alien world. The sound was from an explosion thousands of meters in the air, and I hoped it was the right ship exploding.

  “Should we not have taken off as well, then come back?” asked Hightower.

  I looked down at him. He was on one knee and his breathing had slowed somewhat. Hightower was a pale, pasty man in his mid thirties whose height did not match his name exactly. Not that he was short at an even two meters, but when I saw him for the first time on my crew manifest, I expected him to be eight feet tall. He was red haired and spoke with what was once known as a British accent, which was unusual as few escaped that part of Old Earth before the EMC took over.

  “Martinez, report,” I said, having activated my transmitter.

  “EMC craft on its way to the surface in flames, sir.”

  “Good work.”

  “Sir,” Martinez’s tone indicated a problem, “they jettisoned their payload before missile impact. It’s parachuting to the water now. We can’t get a missile lock on it.”

  The Herbert Walker was an older Explorer-class that had been retrofitted at AGS with missiles and additional equipment over its life, but they had never given it guns.

  “Nothing you can do about it now,” I said. “Martinez, get into orbit and wait for my signal.”

  “Yes sir,” he said after a pause.

  I turned my attention back to the marines. They had located the boats and deactivated the generator that powered the light ben
ding apparatus. This area of Arcturus was uninhabited for kilometers, but we still couldn’t have risked an adventurous local happening across the equipment that we had left behind. I took the doctor’s arm and helped him up as we loaded into the craft.

  “No Doctor,” I replied to Hightower’s earlier question. “We have a mission to complete, and I trust Lieutenant Martinez implicitly.”

  “I still don’t understand the mission,” Hightower said.

  The boats’ electric motors kicked in with a slight hum, and we were off through the water. Ocean spray covered us all, and occasionally, cold ocean water lapped up into the boats. It was warmer than the air around us, but still felt oddly cold, as if water was not meant to be that temperature.

  “I think Admiral Zheng’s orders were plain.”

  “Plain perhaps, but Paul, they don’t make any sense. We’re to disconnect this guy who is connected into a computer system more advanced than anything we’ve ever seen. He’s ancient beyond our understanding, and these machines have been keeping him alive for God knows how long. What do you think is going to happen when I pull the plug? What’s the purpose?”

  “I’m a soldier,” I replied, “I’m not paid to think.”

  “That’s a load of horseshit, and you know it.”

  I smiled mischievously. “I’ve never seen a horse.”

  “But you understand what I mean, don’t you?” Hightower asked part exasperated, part laconic. “Everything we’ve done here has been wrong from the beginning, and we keep fucking with it.”

  “Doctor, please watch your mouth,” I said, turning to face him as the boat jumped through the low crested waves. “I knew about your misgivings and offered you the chance to stay behind. You’re here on this mission. Don’t think our friendship will prevent me from placing you under arrest.”

  “Aye sir,” Hightower said crisply, and he refused to make eye contact with me for the rest of the ride.

  “Commander, we’re here,” announced one of the marines after we had ridden well over a kilometer out to sea.

  “Very well. Set motors to station keeping and prepare everyone to dive.”

  The men set to checking and distributing breathers, masks and lead weights. Our uniforms were insulated of course and would provide enough protection from the cold water, and the masks would help protect our heads. The breathers were a simple but ingenious piece of technology that took in water and converted it to oxygen, releasing the excess hydrogen and sodium chloride. The problem was one could only use them for about fifteen minutes before becoming light headed to the point of passing out. Fortunately, our destination was only about thirty meters under the surface, and the weights would get us there long before the oxygen levels in our blood reached critical.

  “Sir! Object!”

  I followed the marine’s outstretched finger to a speck way off in the distance, just below the cloud cover. I took her digital binoculars and zoomed in on the coordinates locked into their display. Sure enough, I saw a payload module, a big cylinder about ten meters long, lumbering slowly out of the sky toward the ocean surface. Two giant parachutes and some sort of deceleration thruster slowed its to descent so that it simply didn’t shatter upon high speed impact with the surface. It was almost three kilometers off and still about two kilometers in the air. I ran a quick calculation and figured it would hit water in about three minutes. What the hell is in there? Too big to hold just a nuke.

  “Good eyes Corporal,” I said, handing back her glasses. “All hands, we’re going down now. Full alert. We may have hostiles.”

  Tethered together in groups of three or four, we dropped off the sides of the boats and into the water; it was cold as I expected, but we could only just feel it through our field uniforms. They kept out both the water and the cold. There was very little marine life here, no doubt having fled into deeper, warmer waters or other seas altogether like the narrow one near the equator.

  The weights pulled us down quickly toward our destination, and it was mere moments before I could actually see the facility. We had the schematics of course, and I knew that it measured a full kilometer in diameter. Soft light glowed blue and green from its pressure resistant observation ports, and from this angle the whole thing looked like some giant, demonic jellyfish. At least, what I thought a jellyfish looked like since I had never seen one. Several marines used high intensity laser pointers to highlight the airlock closest to our descent, and we all swam for it. Many of us dropped our weights, no longer needing them, and I watched idly as mine sank into depths beyond my sight.

  It amazed me that no enterprising local had ever found this place, as close as it was to the surface, and I thought one might just be able to make out its glow through the water at night. But then, even if one of the people here found the place, what would they do then? While they may be able to get down to it, certainly they would have no idea how to enter.

  The first marines to reach the facility anchored themselves to metal rungs that were part of the structure itself, likely for external repairs or service work. They opened the airlock, and the first of my party, a squad of four marines entered. They sealed the door behind them, as the airlock was only large enough for about six persons, and we watched as the water drained from the claustrophobic room. Once it was empty, the pressure door on the other side opened, and they stepped through with readied weapons to make certain the corridor beyond was secure.

  The airlock flooded, and we opened the external door again. This time, Hightower and I, with the three marines tasked with lugging his gear, entered. By the time the airlock had drained and the interior door began to move, my marines inside had motioned all clear. I passed inside, not waiting to see in the last four of my men. Consummate soldiers and professionals, I did not need to babysit them.

  “Sir,” Corporal Henner called. Beyond the airlock, three corridors split off, one to each the left and right and a third straight ahead. It was this last one from which he came. “I accessed a computer terminal. Confirmed, there has been no breach since the last SACA visit a hundred Solar years ago.”

  “Excellent. I want everyone in the command center immediately,” I said.

  “Johns and Hiroshi are there now, sir,” Henner replied.

  “Good. There’s too many hatches and airlocks to guard. I need them on the monitors. If the facility is breached, we need to know immediately.”

  “Yes sir!” Henner saluted and jogged back the way he had come while dispatching my orders via his transmitter.

  “Ready, Doctor?” I asked, turning to face Hightower.

  “No,” Hightower answered with a slight shrug, and then a lopsided smile came over his face. “But I don’t suppose that changes anything, does it?”

  “No,” I agreed, and I returned the smile with a jerk of my head down the corridor. “Come on, you damn limey.”

  “You know, we Brits haven’t sucked on limes for quite a long time.”

  “I… don’t care,” I replied with a shake of my head.

  I took a quick pace down the metal corridor, my fleet boots clanging hard against the catwalk that served as a floor. I didn’t want to look down through the holes in the grating, for I had done that once, and it made me very dizzy, almost nauseated. The installation extended to dozens of levels below us, and at times, you could see all the way to the bottom. The first time I came here, I had flipped an old copper coin, something called a penny into one of these gaps as a joke. I wasn’t laughing when I finally, faintly heard it ding off something something far below.

  The place that looked oddly organic from the outside appeared fully manmade and industrial on the inside. Wires and conduits hung from the ceiling, weaving and branching this way and that down side passages. They delivered power, information and who knew what else to various parts of the station. I recognized many panels and components scrounged and cannibalized from Ark-class ships, but most of the construct was wholly original.

  We knew the place had originally been built for scientific resea
rch, but what it turned into after whatever cataclysm had taken Arcturus V astonished us all. Fact was it was our own fault that we didn’t know what had happened here. Arcturus was highly habitable, much like Aldebaran III, with nothing to endanger our colonists. It seems that somehow, its colonization had just been forgotten – some sort of bookkeeping error. In actuality, I didn’t really believe the official story, but I couldn’t prove otherwise. As such, the place was under tight wraps by the Brass.

  Apparently, that hadn’t stopped the EMC from discovering it.

  The corridor opened into a large circular room, about fifteen meters across. It contained ten computer terminals, any of which could access any and all information available and were capable of displaying up to four fully interactive holographic screens each. One of these was active and being monitored by two marines while the other marines took guard positions at strategic points around the room. My attention was focused on the figure seated in the center of the room.

  “Damn,” Hightower sighed, “I was hoping he was dead.”

  “He’s at least a thousand years old. I wouldn’t have thought another hundred would kill him,” I replied.

  “Hoping was the operative word.”

  We approached him together. He was nothing more than skin stretched over a skeleton, with little to no flesh or muscle to be seen. His veins and arteries bulged outward, almost as if they were mounted on the outside instead of under his skin. He had almost no hair on his body, except for a few thin, loose patches on his scalp. Genetically, we catalogued him as Caucasian. We had been unable to tell otherwise, for his skin, irises and remaining hair was completely void of pigmentation, and his body had devolved so as to have no other physical signs. When we found him originally, we wouldn’t have even known he was male without a visual inspection.

  I couldn’t take my eyes off the vast array of connectivity – wires, cords and tubes – that seemed to everywhere penetrate the man’s emaciated form. A catheter had been inserted into his bladder and a similar, larger tube in his back for excremental waste. Yet another tube passed through his open mouth and down his esophagus, while two more removed and returned his blood, no doubt as some form of dialysis. Additional tubing passed through his nostrils and nasal passages and into his lungs to constantly feed him oxygen, but all of this was basic life support and should not have been able to keep him alive beyond a certain point. That impossible feat was accomplished, we think, by the several arrays of wiring that seemed to constantly pass electric impulses all the way through his nervous system, including his brain. A Universal Link Device blinked from just behind his left ear, connecting him always to the facility’s massive computer core. All of the different materials connecting him to life seemed completely resistant to age or oxidation, just like the facility itself.