The Starkahn of Rhada (3 page)

“The control system’s main center is shielded. I can’t get a really accurate reading. But it is still functioning.”

“Could that thing be a robot?” I asked.

“It is likely. Not a true cyborg, in any case. No organic higher systems. But it has a brain, of sorts.”

“Weapons?”

“Unknown.”

“Anything else stirring besides the protonics?”

“Main engines are inert, but undamaged as far as I can tell.”

“The center shut them down?”

“It would seem so. Wherever this thing came from, it has definitely arrived in the selected place. The brain damage didn’t impair the arrival procedures.”

I stirred uneasily in my pod. “Range now?”

“One thousand kilometers coming up on my mark.” A pause. “Mark.”

“Hold here.”

Ariane matched speed and direction to the derelict instantly, inertia dissipated by molecular reversal. It was one of her best maneuvers, and we used it often.

The stars blazed in glory through the transparent shielding of the pod. The sky of the galactic center was like a field of diamonds piled in profusion against the velvet night. I darkened the walls and increased the magnification of the Q-band holograph. At a thousand K it was still impossible to give meaningful scale to the thing in the lasered space. But it was obviously, overpoweringly immense. It blotted out the nebular glow in fully two-thirds of the display. The cold light of the Delphinus star shone on the black hull. I could see that the projections I had noted before girdled the entire vessel. I could not guess at the purpose of the protuberances, but some intuition of mine or Ariane’s told me they were part of the great ship’s weaponry. The black starcraft was
hostile
--the cyborg and I could both feel it.

Yet the historian in me was stirring. What a find! Warlocks from all over the Empire would want to inspect and study it. The clergy would want a look at it, as well, for though the Order of Navigators was now in the twilight of its great power, it had been the priest-Navigators of the Order who had kept alive the art of starflight and much else during our civilization’s Dark Time.

“How far to the next commo beacon?” I asked.

“That is CB-20 in 61 Omicron Draco. Eighteen hours at four kilolights.” No starship yet built, not even the ADSPS cyborgs, carried hyperlight radio. The equipment was too bulky. The drones we were launching periodically would home on the nearest commo beacon and dock to transmit their messages--but there was no way we could call for a Fleet vessel directly.

I drew a deep breath and said, “Close the range to five hundred K.”

She could tell what was in my mind because we were interfaced. “This really calls for a full-scale expedition, Kier,” the cyborg said. “We should chart it and head for CB-20.”

She was absolutely right, of course. She always was. But I was overcome by a huge reluctance to turn our find over to the Grand Fleet without closer inspection. It occurred to me that I was looking at what was probably the most important discovery made in space for the last millennium. I couldn’t just chart it and turn away. I am a Rhad, after all.

“We will,” I said. “After I make a personal survey.”

“It could be dangerous,” Ariane warned, sounding like Lady Nora again.

“It’s a derelict. We have a search and rescue responsibility,” I said.

“You know better than that, Starkahn.”

“Go to five hundred kilometers,” I ordered.

“Older acknowledged,” she said, sounding annoyed. “My objections are on the tapes and in the next drone.” As usual, she was getting in the last word.

Beware, O, beware, all you safe and lawful people,
The deathmen, the spellwitches, the weepers
And all the dreadful daemons of the night
Dream of revenge--

Whilst they watch you from
The Cloud
, yes!

Chant from the
Book of Warls
,
early Second Stellar Empire period

The crimes committed in the name of a better world are legion! What if the victims of the Russian Purge Trials could speak? What if the millions murdered by Hitler could give tongue to their agony? What if the descendants of those tortured souls we have condemned to the intergalactic night could return to face us--their tormentors? Should we not tremble?

Lord Megum, Chairman of the Concerned Coalition,
late First Stellar Empire period.
Tape fragment of a speech found in the ruins of Tel-Buda, Earth

To approach the great dark ship was like a step backward into time. I had to remind myself that this was not the age of Glamiss and Kier the Rebel and Queen Ariane. This was now---the modem age. Fact, not fear and superstition, ruled. Not Glamiss the Conqueror, but placid Sokolovsky of Bellatrix governed the Empire from the Galacton’s throne in Nyor. Not Kier the Rebel, but a council of reasonable guildsmen directed the destinies of the Rhadan planets. The cybs and demons with which the Navigators and old warlocks used to frighten grown men and women were half a millennium out of date. There were no ghosts, and I was a modem man, an officer of the Fleet, a Rhadan nobleman and an educated person. Still, the dreadful ship made my blood run cold.

At the reduced distance I had to lower the magnification of the Q-band holograph to keep the dark spaceship within the confines of my pod. It hung against the luminous sky, rotating ponderously, as enigmatic as the ruins of Astraris or the Sphinx.

There were no ports or transparent surfaces that I could see. But there was nothing remarkable about that. Few of the ancient starships had glassine decks.

“Any better readings?” I asked.

“Mass distribution is interesting,” Ariane said. “That thing is almost solid.”

“Solid? How could that be?”

“The entire hull is packed with protonic and nucleonic hardware. The logic cards alone must number in the quintillions,” Ariane said. “I don’t know, Kier. The whole thing gives me a bad feeling. The ship is practically one immense space-born computer. I don’t know why I think so--call it female intuition if you like--but I think it is some sort of war-games device. A weapons system.”

I tried to digest that, still staring at the holograph of the monstrous black hulk. “There are no life-support systems? No crew areas?”

“None. The entire vessel seems to be automatic, guided by a low order of intelligence in the protonics. Wait, one. I’m getting a low-level sensor reading on the scan. Hold while I compute.”

I drew an uneasy breath, and presently Ariane spoke again. “There is one free passageway leading to what seems to be a special area in the central core. But the chamber is only two meters by two meters by four meters. Except for that and the access passage, the hull is packed solid with circuitry and machines.”

“Close to fifty kilometers,” I said, my throat dry. “Acknowledged,” the cyborg replied. No protest this time.

I shut down the holography, and the walls of my pod grew transparent once again. I watched as the growing bulk of the dark starship blotted out the Delphinus star. I could feel Ariane maneuvering, tacking against the drift of the plasma winds from the white dwarf.

At fifty kilometers the strange vessel’s size became overpowering. It was one thing to see the derelict’s holographic image inside my pod, it was quite another to see the thing itself, as long as the island of Tel-Manhat, blotting out the sky. We seemed, even at this distance, to be under the curve of the great hull.

“Kier,” Ariane said suddenly. “I am picking up some indications of power consumption. Very low. Less than a thousandth of an ampere. But it is there. The readout indicates some sort of life-support system. Not more than one meter by two meters. Very sophisticated. And it seems totally independent of the main power sources aboard and distinct from the positronics.”

I had the squeamish feeling that Ariane was describing some sort of coffin, and I was about to comment when the ship’s rotation slowly brought into view an open portal.

The nebular glow painted the nightside of the hull with a vague, silvery light. But the portal was distinct: a darker darkness against the black bulk of the ship. I raised the magnification of the walls and zoomed in on the opening. It was exactly that, an opening. No hatch, no airlock--just an open hole.

“Probe that, Ariane,” I said anxiously.

“It’s just what it appears to be, Kier. An ingress-egress port. Completely open to space.”

Now I knew (if I had ever doubted it) that I should chart the derelict’s position and make for CB-20 at Ariane’s best speed. But that open portal drew me. I was, after all, twenty and the Starkahn of Rhada, and I lived in an age that offered little in the way of opportunities for grand gestures and gallantry. Bookish I was, but I was the descendant of warrior star kings and the son of a Great Vegan noblewoman. Personal bravery was expected of me.

What I planned now was not bravery, of course. It was sheer folly--and Ariane said so.

“You can’t be serious,” she said, sounding very feminine. “You simply can
not
be serious.”

“I am,” I said, trying to sound masterful and commanding.

“I won’t permit it,” she declared.

I drew a deep breath, nerved myself, and said, “I am in command.” It was quite true. Ariane’s fleet rank was ensign, a single sunburst to my two as a sublieutenant. This was not always the case. In several of the Survey teams, the cyborg held the higher rank. Ariane had to defer to me. But as a free citizen of the Empire, she had the right to enter her protests on the log tapes. This was a privilege she exercised often, and she did it now.

“I am making a copy for the Lady Nora, as well,” she said threateningly.

“We’ll see about that,” I said hotly. ‘Those tapes are classified as of now.”

“Protest,” Ariane said sharply.

“Noted,” I said, tight-lipped. Probably if Ariane hadn’t threatened to “tell my mother on me,” I might have reconsidered. There was actually very little I could accomplish by boarding the derelict, and sober second thoughts about penetrating that grim and enigmatic monster were chilling my desire for glory. But there was no turning back now. “It is decided,” I said.

I could feel the computer working again. She was probably searching Fleet regulations for some way to prevent me going EV in a tactically questionable situation. But there would be nothing. The Grand Fleet still operated on the regulations and Noble Code written when the military took over the starships from the Order of Navigators. My single sunburst advantage in rank made me warleader, lord, king and master of our little two-person ecology.

“There’s nothing in the Regs, is there?” I asked.

“No,” Ariane said.

“So?”

“Very well, Starkahn,” she said. She was sulking, no doubt of it.

“Take us in to one kilometer while I suit up,” I said, feeling masterful and vindicated: a true descendant of Kier the Rebel.

The legends say that there were those among the great of the Golden Age who determined to cleanse the race of all foulness, and to this purpose sent into darkness millions: some guilty, some innocent, all embittered.

The legends say this, and so do the Warls. But of my own knowledge, I cannot tell whether or not this monstrous tale is true.

Nav (Bishop) Julianus Mullerium,
Anticlericalism in the Age of the Star Kings,
middle Second Stellar Empire period

Before the founding of our Order, there was undoubtedly great glory. What was lacking was conscience.

Attributed to St. Emeric of Rhada, Grand Master of Navigators,
early Second Stellar Empire period

And so it was that I found myself slowly free-falling through the dark shaft into the heart of the derelict starship. When I left the “surface,” I did so with dread. But with the exercise of the mental discipline I had learned in my seven grimly confining years at the Fleet Academy, I managed to bring myself out of my funk.

The fact was that there seemed, at the moment at least, little enough to be frightened about. In the absorbing darkness there was very little sensation of falling, or of movement of any sort. Then there was Ariane’s comforting presence, for we soon discovered that the E-phone functioned perfectly through the metal and shielding of the derelict.

I was suffering from a mild claustrophobia in the passageway. I moved “downward” in an egg of light from my suit lamps. High “above” me I could still see the tiny opening dusted with stars. Then I reached an angle in the shaft, and the patch of sky vanished.

Ariane spoke to me. “Something has taken note of you. I am getting some protonic leakage. Very low level, but it wasn’t there before. Suggest you return.”

I swallowed to ease the rusty taste in my throat and said, “Noted. Just a bit farther. Keep me informed.”

Later, it seemed hours but it was only seconds, Ariane said, “No change.”

At least whatever it was took no overt action against my penetration of the ship. Perhaps, I thought, it wasn’t intended to.

I didn’t like it. I decided to go for one minute more and then abandon my exploration. I told Ariane so.

“Keep sending,” she said. “Talk.”

“I am moving now. This place is black as hell. I must be a good two kilometers inside and still nothing but this shaft. I’ll go on for thirty seconds more and then I’ll--” I stopped abruptly. Ariane immediately demanded to know what was happening.

But nothing was happening at all. I had come up against a blank wall. I oriented myself, standing on a side wall, and stared, stunned by the anticlimax of it. An open passageway leading into the gut of the huge vessel, and now this--a wall.

I described it to Ariane.

“Not logical,” she said shortly.

“Nevertheless,” I said, annoyed.

“There must be a way through. The life-support system I scanned is just past it.”

I turned up my suit lamps and saw the symbols. They formed a single word. The letters were spiny and archaic: almost, but not quite, the characters of First Empire Anglic. The word was a simple instruction.
Touch
.