The Vanity of Hope Read online

  StarTripper tilted back as the engine-heavy stern pulled the ship under.

  “Give me a reference on our position,” he said, climbing back towards his chair before the incline of the floor became too steep.

  The ship appeared as a red dot in the lightMatrix that showed it was two hundred and thirty-seven fathoms to the bottom.

  “The reasoning behind your actions is outside my operational parameters,” Iris said, “but I must ask: why have you done this?”

  “Sometimes, mortals need reminding of their place.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We pretend we’re gods, but in truth, there’s no seat for us at the table of the mighty.” The myths would grow over time. He hadn’t died at the bottom of a dirty swamp. He’d found the fabled blue planet, they’d whisper, and it was so beautiful he’d decided to stay there as captain of the entire world. That was a good way to be remembered. Nobody else would’ve dared the epic journey to reap the ultimate reward. Who had the courage to risk everything for the chance of eternal fame and fortune? He alone had earned the right to be known as the greatest pirate to have ever lived. The famous Captain Jbir of Tilas—the king of the pirates; a king amongst fools. “The trouble is, Iris, no matter how much we conspire to be gods, we are only kings.”

  He leaned forward into a half-fetal crouch. There was no disgrace in how he had truly gone out. Nobody could have fought the Négus and won. Out of curiosity and a pathological mistrust of loose ends, Reuzk would come for the ship. He would exit this world anonymously, but rise again to fight another day. Stronger and less trusting of those in power, especially her—and wouldn’t Reuzk love to know the truth? At a time of his choosing, he’d tell the world the entire sordid affair, from his hasty escape from the emperor’s palace on Tilas all the way to why he really left Heyre. His face froze in clenched rage. Full and unfettered revenge was one failSafe away.

  The ship pointed to near vertical and a piercing alarm sounded.

  “Captain, the inner cargo door has collapsed,” Iris said, floating to his side, dressed in an all-black robe. “My calculations indicate only the bridge and engine bay have the structural strength to survive the weight of mud at the bottom.”

  He pulled his sidearm from the holster and checked the counter on the side plate—three Neonite slugs left. He’d only need one. He pressed the end of the barrel against his temple. “We were a good team, weren’t we?”

  “Some said we were the best.”

  “Remember me in a good light when they take you back.”

  A horrible sucking sound came from above as the watchtower sank beneath the surface.

  He curled his index finger around the trigger. “Goodbye, Iris. Happy dreams.”

  “Goodbye, Captain Jbir.”

  #

  The Ravines were an epic geological scar that ran from north to south, polar cap to polar cap. Formed at the juncture of two massive tectonic plates over countless eons, the Ravines were at the widest point five hundred miles of oozing lava flows and poison-filled valleys between jagged ridges and sheer rock faces rising to precipitous mountain peaks. Savage, wind drafts blasted the gas-reddened atmosphere in unpredictable ways that might suck an unwary flier into the poisonous abyss or carry them skyward into the oxygen-starved death zone. With the Endless Sea guarding the east, the Ravines were a natural, impenetrable prison wall to the barbarians exiled on the Western Plains when they lost the civil war on Heyre soon after Queen Lillia’s arrival from Tilas.

  The Federation built the Gate at the western end of the only canyon to bisect the Ravines. The Gate’s primary mission, as the forward military outpost was to spy into space towards Tilas for any sign of encroaching Decay. Constructed from honeycombed Tylinite with a glass-smooth outer layer, the Gate was, at over five hundred feet wide and almost two hundred feet high, impervious to anything less than a thermonuclear attack. Of less importance to the Federation, the Gate was also part of a security pact with the queen to prevent external unrest creeping inwards from her Outer Domains and infecting the civilized world. As a physical fortress, the Gate kept the barbarians from invading the Great Northern Forest and raiding the Opalite mines and towns in the east.

  General Reuzk inspected the newest batch of Federation soldiers ordered from Heyre to the Gate for rehabilitation. No one volunteered for active service on Gukre. Outsiders considered the Gate closer to a penal colony than a military blockade. The intimidating landscape, hostile fauna and wildlife, isolation from loved ones, and a minimum of permitted possessions brought wayward soldiers back into the fold, or broke them. Either way, they left the Gate of more use than when they came. The lesson had to be burned in—conform to his code or return to the civilian population and take your chances.

  He cupped his hand over his ear and listened to the Indigo-encrypted message. ‘Unauthorized ship detected over the Great Swamp.’

  “Lieutenant Yuanzi, continue the prep for tonight’s patrol inside the canyon,” he said to the Gate’s resident commander.

  “Yes, sir. Will you be leading them?”

  “Something’s come up.”

  He ordered a hyperPod and sprinted down the wax-smooth corridor to the nearest dispersion hub. “What have we got?” he asked as the Pod doors closed behind him.

  “Data coming in now,” the operator said, “but… It’s best you see for yourself.”

  He bounded up the final security-enabled steps to the control center. “What’s wrong?”

  “The craft doesn’t have an incoming flight path,” the operator replied. “Our dataNet indicates a point of arrival.”

  “What do we know about the ship?” he asked, raising his voice above the rising staccato of buzz words and acronyms.

  “The ship’s called StarTripper. We have a full dossier. Registered to Captain Jbir. Wanted on Heyre for questioning about… that’s odd, that file is classified—Indigo. The ship left from the Base on Heyre over sixteen hundred years ago. Nothing since, and I mean nothing. They just disappeared. Shall I send a request to Amie for assistance?”

  “Leave her to me. Where’s the ship now?”

  “It’s crash-landed in the Great Swamp.”

  “Crashed or landed?”

  “A reckless but controlled descent.”

  Reuzk stared into the lightMatrix and racked his memories for Jbir. Weapons smuggling for them to the Outer Domains. Jbir always liked being at the center of the biggest shows and was the consummate negotiator when it came to playing both sides of the game, which had made him both useful and dangerous. Whatever his last mission was it had to be have been extra big—over sixteen hundred years ‘big,’ with a classification color that could only originate from one source. Whatever the reason for the abnormal arrival, Jbir was too good a pirate to be here by accident.

  “Upgrade the landing site to Violet. Get three Hawks there now, and two patrols—Vipers and bioMechs.” He rubbed a cold unease at the back of his neck.

  “The Hawks are on their way.”

  “Bring Citadel down and put a Laboratory ship onsite. Let’s not take any chances.”

  “Do we need that much hardware? I mean, it’s only Jbir.”

  Reuzk clamped his hand onto the operator’s shoulder. “I don’t care how Yuanzi does things around here, but when I ask…” He tightened his grip. “Understand?”

  The operator winced, unable to break free. “Yes… sir.”

  “Why didn’t Citadel detect StarTripper?”

  “It was over the horizon. There appears to be a momentary blind spot.”

  He left the control center for the spaceport on the top deck. “Sirion, engage full cloaking and activate armory. We have a situation.”

  #

  Five hundred miles away on the far side of the Ravines, the first winter storm from the north descended upon the Great Swamp and blotted out the rising sun.

  Reuzk landed Sirion on the leeward side of the Laboratory ship. He tapped the lightScreen to confirm the tumbling outside temper
ature and unstrapped from the pilot seat. He lifted the collar higher and zippered the full-length coat to the tip of his nose and dragged his hat down until only his eyes showed. He palmed the exit panel and pulled his gloves on tight as the stairs unfolded to the ground.

  He fitted the blizzard glasses and turned sideways against the growling wind. He’d been in worse on Tilas. Sleek-bodied, short-range killer Hawks patrolled the Great Swamp in long glides and leisurely flaps of their broad wings. They moved their long necks from side to side as they searched with large, wide spectrum eyes and communicated in high-pitched squawks. Despite their impeccable aerial pedigree, it was only a matter of time before the ice rain forced the Hawks to leave or go much higher.

  The Citadel surveillance platform, redirected from the upper reaches of the atmosphere from where it surveyed the Great Plains, fired a beam of blue light into the center of the shattered impact rings.

  The domed Laboratory ship came in low at the edge of the swamp and tested the spongy ground with its six legs before settling. Two soldiers carried a chest down the ramp and released nine eel-like probes into the swamp. The probes slithered through the surface scum to the blue beam and dived beneath.

  “Give me something,” Reuzk said, entering the Laboratory ship.

  Captain Lirq pored over the dataStream from Citadel and traced his finger along the dark, trail line through the lightMatrix. “Ultrasound indicates something exited the ship and swam sub-surface to the edge of the swamp.”

  “Was the hatch open before or after impact?”

  “After.”

  “Refocus the Hawks on the edge of the forest, but keep Citadel zeroed on the ship. Send a Viper patrol to secure the exit point, but do not engage until I give the order, and get me a hoverPod.”

  The hoverPod skidded up the swamp bank next to the disturbed mud. “Where is it?” he asked, saluting the waiting patrol leader as he disembarked.

  “It’s in the Great Northern Forest, sir,” the Viper said, guiding him further along the edge. “This is where it came out.”

  Reuzk knelt and spread his hand inside a footprint where the creature had pulled itself from the swamp. “It’s four-legged, but can walk on two.” A shiver raced over him and he backed away. “Lirq, search the databanks of known life forms for a match to these prints. I’ve got a bad feeling about our visitor.”

  “We have no records of those footprints,” Lirq replied. “Are you all right, sir? You look pale.”

  “Send the Vipers into the forest and get Citadel over here. Let’s see what we can flush out. The bioMechs are to guard the site in case anything else comes out of that goo.”

  The eight Vipers walked single file along the tracks, taking five steps to cover a single stride left by the creature.

  “We’re inside the forest,” the Viper patrol leader said, “but we’re not picking up any signs or scents.”

  “Citadel, are you tracking this thing?”

  “Negative,” the ship’s military AI, Miri, responded in a male voice. “It’s using an unknown cloaking system.”

  Reuzk’s blizzard glasses frosted to Indigo for privacy and he turned to his left. “Find that thing,” he confided. “Track only. Do not engage. I want to know where it’s going.”

  “Confirmed, General Reuzk,” a slightly metallic voice replied above the growling wind.

  The storm deepened over the forest and sheets of ice-rain swept in reducing visibility to an arm’s length. A swirling gust pushed him sideways as he reached the hoverPod. He backed around and raced across the swamp ahead of the plummeting temperature. The storm might yet take care of the creature and save further complication. Decay had made the leap from Tilas to Gukre, and almost certainly onto Heyre unnoticed by their best technology, but the bold arrival of the swamp creature suggested it had an opposing agenda. He drove the hoverPod over the growing ripples right to the Laboratory door and ran inside.

  The storm’s a Category Six and increasing,” Lirq said. “Gusts are over one hundred and fifty.”

  A ferocious gust of ice-saturated wind rocked the ship. “Withdraw the bioMechs,” Reuzk said, grabbing the back of a chair.

  “What about the Vipers?”

  “What’ve we got from StarTripper?” he asked, studying the lightMatrix.

  “It’s structurally intact, but for how long is anyone’s guess as it sinks and the pressure increases. The probes are at their operational limit and their dataStreams are breaking up.” Small, bright red lights flashed in the lightMatrix. “Blood detected. Multiple sources.”

  “Lock the probes onto the strongest scent and see where that leads.”

  One by one the probe signals crackled and went dead.

  He thumped his fist on the console. “I need that ship. Can we bring it to the surface?”

  Lirq gave a questioning look. “We won’t be able to grow a rig over the winter months and by spring the ship will be a crumbled wreck. Maybe the bottom of the swamp is the best place for StarTripper.”

  “Have our best rig ready to winch by first ice melt,” Reuzk said, walking away.

  He bent forward and tilted his head sideways to the driving ice as he returned to Sirion. He shook the ice from his coat and hung it on the back of the cockpit door, placing his gloves on the table. Leaving his hat on, he poured a hot soup and grasped the cup to warm his hands. Citadel operated a Violet-level security surveillance algorithm that prevented Prediction and made planning for a blind spot impossible. Yet, Jbir entered the airspace over the Great Swamp in the exact time frame and landed undetected. He blew on the soup and sipped until his mouth burned.

  It was inconceivable Jbir got that lucky, but then again he wasn’t running the show. The ship arrived above Gukre from nowhere, moments before the arrival of the earliest winter storm for a century, and landed in a swamp, of all the crazy places. A crew changeover at the time added an extra two minutes to getting ‘boots on the ground’—just the right amount of time for the creature to escape unseen.

  What other ‘bugs’ existed in the Federation’s surveillance systems?

  He had dozens of questions about the strange arrival, but only one needed an immediate answer. Where was the creature going? He placed a hand against the bioPad and waited for his Violet security clearance to bypass the Gate’s internal monitoring systems.

  “General Reuzk,” Amie said. “Is there a problem on Gukre?”

  He pushed the half-finished cup aside. “Put me through to President Lauzen.”

  Chapter 6

  The mountain peaks reached their highest point four hundred miles northeast of the Gate, in the Huriut Range. Squeezed into the middle of the permanently ice-covered peaks, Mount Goema pierced the grey, winter clouds and soared into the heavens. Half-hidden in the clouds nine thousand feet above the Great Northern Forest, the Taksa monastery perched on a natural granite outcrop at the juncture of the lower and upper realms.

  The four hundred monks who fled persecution on Heyre had built the monastery from stone quarried in the valley below and carried it up two blocks at a time. Unlike the conscripted soldiers at the Gate, the monks saw Gukre’s harsh conditions as a blessing that kept their minds focused inwards and away from the outside sensory world.

  Master Choen opened the shutters and peered into the cruel night. The yellow candlelight in the window deepened the wrinkles on his face to the haggard canvas of a long and unsettled life. Wild thoughts continued to plague his mind since the bright orange ball had blazed through the low cloud above the Great Swamp three mornings ago and disappeared over the horizon. Although visible for only a moment, the fireball had left his heart uncertain.

  “Maybe I’ve been on this wretched planet too long,” he said, “but less makes sense to me these days and I feel a gathering gloom. The animals of the Northern Forests are bolder, and the weather grows strange.”

  Silak placed a comforting hand on his master’s sleeve. “Such storms are not unheard of. Winter will pass and the animals will go back to their natu
ral ways. Everything goes in cycles.”

  “It’s not the weather, Silak, or the strangeness of nature, but I fear for our future.” The dark night lured him closer to the window. “Gukre weighs on me as never before.”

  “Master, your mind is the finest in the monastery. Your teachings are sublime.”

  He sank lower, struggling to turn from the night.

  “What is it, master, truly? The morning will soon be here to lighten your heart.”

  “It was the wind playing tricks, but I thought I heard my name called.” He withdrew from the window. “Do you think I was wrong to build the monastery on Gukre? The sun shines more kindly on Heyre and the air is gentler. Maybe Nedje was right.”

  “I’ve heard from those who have left Nedje’s school that he’s blinded by vanity and teaches a new way.”

  “Nedje was my most promising student.”

  “He is arrogant and thinks he is wiser than the masters who came before him—even more than Goral.”

  “You are too harsh on him.”

  “The seduction of Heyre is slow and sweet. Nedje will not turn back.”

  “Nedje will see the error of his judgment and return to our ways.” He closed the shutters against the uneasy night. “What is happening to my Faith?” he murmured, as he turned his back and walked from the room.

  The first rays of dawn washed over Mount Goema and lit the Meditation Hall in soft light. Master Choen settled cross-legged on the mat-covered wooden floor and clasped his hands together in his lap. He straightened his spine and closed his eyes to dampen his mind and not think. Time and again, he caught his mind wandering and gently ushered it to a quiet state, yet the urgency of something being very wrong refused to leave. And then everything fell silent. As a master of the Teachings of Goral, he had experienced the onset of the boundless and eternal many times, but the enveloping peace deepened and he ascended to a realm he’d never experienced before. A golden light came and the Word spoke his name.