Silent Order: Eclipse Hand Read online

  “Why?” said Cassandra. “Why would the Final Consciousness want me dead? I mean, I know they’re monsters,” March’s opinion of her rose, “but what did I ever to do them?”

  “What I’m about to tell you is a secret that will get you killed if you tell anyone,” said March, “but you’ve stumbled into it with your Eclipse machine. Recently, the Machinists devised a quantum entanglement device that works as a perfect mind-control machine.”

  “How is that possible?” said Cassandra.

  “Damned if I know,” said March, “and the Machinists themselves don’t know either. It’s based on some ancient alien technology, and they don’t know how to reproduce it. But they have enough of the machines to cause trouble.”

  “But what good would that do them?” said Cassandra.

  “Think about it,” said March. “An undetectable mind-control device. At the right time and the right place, that could destroy a world. Imagine if they mind-controlled President Murdan. Or the Prime Minister of Calaskar, or the King. Or one of President Murdan’s bodyguards. Do you see the kind of power?”

  “I...I think I do,” said Cassandra. “But if the Eclipse can detect the mind-control quantum entanglement effect...but my machine is only a prototype! I don’t know if it will work like that.”

  “Neither do the Machinists,” said March, “but they don’t want to take that chance. I’ve seen their mind-control device work. Rather than risk losing that advantage, they’ll just kill you and take your research.”

  She looked horrified. “What am I going to do?”

  March drummed his fingers on the table some more. “Do you have any family?”

  “No,” said Cassandra. “My parents died while I was an undergraduate, and I don’t have any siblings.”

  “No close friends, either?” said March.

  Cassandra shook her head. “I was kind of…well, not popular.”

  “Any lovers?” said March.

  She turned a deep red. “I...uh, well, not recently. One in my first year of graduate school. He...um, turned out to be married, so I refused to see him since.”

  March nodded. “You’re lucky, then.”

  She scowled. “Why does that make me lucky?”

  “Because that means you’re not going to get pictures of your friends or your family or your lover strapped naked to a chair with electrodes stapled to them,” said March. “I know how Murdan’s secret police operate. Those Raptors were probably his black ops squad, sent to bring you and the prototype Eclipse machine back to Oradrea so Murdan could hand you over to the Machinists. If you got away, the next step would be to coerce you into coming back with threats to friends and family. Good thing you were a loner.”

  “Lucky me,” said Cassandra in a faint voice. She looked sick. “What...what should I do now?”

  “Normally, I would just take you straight to Constantinople and give you to the Silent Order,” said March. “They would be able to protect you from Machinist agents and Murdan’s thugs. But the hyperdrive took damage in the fight, and I don’t know how many more jumps we’ll get out of it before it fails. We’ll head for JX2278C and try to link up with Captain Torrence and the Alpine. It’s another four jumps and two days to JX2278C from here, and the hyperdrive should be able to manage that. We can dock with the Alpine and ride it back to Calaskar from there.”

  “Should we look at the hyperdrive now?” said Cassandra. “I actually know a lot about hyperdrives. I might be able to help repair it.”

  “Tomorrow,” said March. “If we change course to JX2278C when we drop out of hyperspace...Vigil, how long of a sublight transit would we have?”

  “Six hours, thirty-nine minutes,” said Vigil.

  “We can examine it then,” said March. “I don’t want to attempt repairs while in hyperspace because if it fails, we’ll be stuck in interstellar space. Or the resonator coils will fail, and we’ll be possessed by macrobes.” Actually, Cassandra would be possessed by macrobes, since March’s Machinist implants made him resistant to possession by dark energy-based life forms, but he wouldn’t wish such a terrible fate on anyone.

  “Ugh,” said Cassandra with a fearful shudder. “I’ve seen...I mean, I’ve read reports about what happens with macrobe possession, but I’ve never seen it...”

  “I have,” said March. “I think we can both agree that you never want to see it.”

  Cassandra nodded again. “Then what should I do now?”

  “I think,” said March, “that you should get some rest. When was the last time you slept?” Depending on the route she had taken from Oradrea, she had spent the last two to four days in that shuttle.

  “Oh, God, I don’t know,” said Cassandra. “Two days? Maybe three?”

  March nodded, finished his coffee, and stood. “You can use a guest cabin. I’ll get your suitcase.”

  A few moments later he opened the door to the guest cabin, and she stepped inside. The Tiger’s cabins were modest, with a bunk, a desk with a computer terminal, and a dresser. A small alcove held the toilet and the sanitizer booth. Cassandra hefted her suitcase onto the bunk, opened it, and started to take her clothes out and put them into the dresser. March wondered why the hell she was doing that, and then realized it was a habit. She had been an academic all her life and was probably used to sleeping in different dormitories every year.

  As she lifted a shirt, something caught March’s eye.

  It was a worn old teddy bear. She still slept with a teddy bear. She had struck March as a fragile woman...but then again, she had held it together long enough to escape from Oradrea’s secret police.

  “Sleep well,” said March. “If you need anything, ask Vigil, and she’ll contact me.”

  “I will,” said Cassandra. “Captain March...thank you. I...didn’t think I would find anyone who would help me this much.”

  March nodded and stepped back, and the door closed.

  He would sleep in the pilot’s chair in the flight cabin in case anything went wrong...and in case he had been wrong about Cassandra Yerzhov.

  “Vigil,” said March in a quiet voice. “Notify me if Dr. Yerzhov leaves her cabin or if she attempts to access any sensitive systems or areas of the ship.”

  “Acknowledged,” said Vigil.

  He went to the cargo hold first, opened her trunk, and searched it thoroughly. There were no bombs or weapons, only off-the-shelf hyperdrive parts, dark matter sensors, and a thick binder that held technical blueprints. She had been telling the truth about that much.

  Did he believe Cassandra Yerzhov’s story?

  March found that he did. Either she really was a terrified young woman far out of her depth, or she was one of the best actresses he had ever encountered. Her story was unlikely, true, but stranger things had happened. And it made grim sense. If Cassandra had indeed devised a means of detecting quantum entanglement, it threatened the Machinists’ Wraith devices. They would try to kill her and claim the Eclipse device for themselves, and President Murdan of Oradrea jumped every time the Final Consciousness snapped its fingers.

  And yet…

  She seemed like a trap, a honey pot. Officers of the Royal Calaskaran Navy thought of themselves as knights, as chivalric warriors fighting against the malevolent hordes of the Final Consciousness. Someone like Cassandra Yerzhov...a typical naval officer would have fallen all over himself to protect her, and while Manuel Torrence was a good operative, he was still an officer of the Royal Calaskaran Navy at heart.

  Perhaps she had been a honey trap.

  Not aimed at March – he was too cynical to fall for a damsel in distress.

  Manuel Torrence might, though.

  Then again, March had just agreed to head to the JX2278C system, hadn’t he?

  Perhaps that was paranoid, but for an Alpha Operative of the Silent Order, paranoia was a way of life.

  He believed Cassandra’s story, but he kept his pistol at his belt, just in case.

  Chapter 3: Eclipse

  About seven hour
s later, Cassandra emerged from her cabin looking much refreshed, and she volunteered to help March examine the hyperdrive.

  The engine room was at the rear of the dorsal corridor, over the cargo bay, and it provided access to the Tiger’s engine components. At least, it provided access to the engine components that were repairable from within the ship. Repairing the ion thrusters and the sublight fusion drive required EVA suits, but the kind of damage that would shut down the fusion drive would probably also destroy the Tiger.

  Small comfort as that was. Still, the design of the fusion drive had not changed in thousands of years, and it was a rugged piece of technology.

  Unlike the hyperdrive, which was endlessly finicky.

  “Good morning, Captain March,” said Cassandra. She still seemed nervous, but she was attempting to cover it with cheerfulness. She was smiling too widely, fidgeting in a clean jumpsuit, and her hair was mussed. “Ready to look at the hyperdrive?”

  “Yes,” said March, stretching. He had slept in the pilot’s acceleration chair, which was never comfortable. But if anything went wrong, he wanted to be near the controls to deal with it. Fortunately, it hadn’t been necessary. The Tiger had exited hyperspace without incident, and there had been no ships nearby. They were now flying to the coordinates of their next jump point, and all systems were operating at normal capacities.

  Except for the hyperdrive, which kept having minor power surges at random moments.

  “Oh, good,” said Cassandra. “I hope I can be helpful.”

  March decided not to answer that. “This way.”

  He led the way into the engine room. Pipes and bundles of wiring covered the ceiling and the walls, save for the spots occupied by the various consoles that had direct control of the ion thrusters and the sublight drive. The master systems display rested on one wall, and two metal coils stood against the back wall. They were the dark energy resonators, which generated the protective field that kept macrobes from attacking the ship while in hyperspace. A large metal cylinder lay on its side, filling up about the central third of the floor. It was the core of the hyperdrive, and March opened the metal cowling and slid it aside, revealing the guts of the hyperdrive.

  “Oh,” said Cassandra, peering at the hyperdrive with wide eyes. “Let’s see.”

  March decided to ignore her. She might have a doctorate in dark energy mechanics, but that did not translate into the hands-on knowledge to repair a damaged hyperdrive. He crossed to one of the consoles, retrieved a laptop, and plugged it into the computer access port on the hyperdrive. The diagnostic program booted up, and March waited for the results to start scrolling across the screen.

  “This is a Mercator Foundry Yards Traveler Model Nine mid-weight hyperdrive,” said Cassandra. March blinked in surprise. “No, my mistake. Model Ten.” She pointed at the exposed machinery. “Those two extra power couplings. Mercator only added those with the Model Ten in the Traveler line.”

  March blinked again. “How the hell did you know that?”

  Cassandra stared in confusion, and then she laughed. “Oh! Well, I do have a doctorate in dark energy mechanics. I don’t know how it works on other worlds but at the University of Oradrea that includes three semesters of practical hyperdrive maintenance and repair.”

  “Huh,” said March. He hadn’t expected that. Supposed it showed the dangers of making assumptions.

  “I don’t know why it is surprising,” said Cassandra, her attention on the innards of the hyperdrive. “Of the graduates of the University’s physics program, about two-thirds of them go to work for Oradrean Drive Yards. Oradrean hyperdrives are the best produced in human space.”

  “Which is one of the reasons that President Murdan can do whatever he wants,” said March. “The company makes the best hyperdrives, but there are strings attached. Oradrean Drive Yards sells their hyperdrives to whoever bribes Murdan and his family. That’s enough revenue to keep the planetary economy afloat, pay for his secret police, and bribe his cronies.”

  Cassandra did not respond. Perhaps she was offended by March’s analysis of her planet’s political situation. More likely she had not paid any attention to politics until her government had decided to kill her.

  “You should really replace this with an Oradrean hyperdrive,” said Cassandra. “Um. Do you have an EM field reader?”

  Amused, March straightened up, retrieved an EM field reader from a cabinet under one of the consoles, and passed the stubby black box to her.

  “If you had an Oradrean hyperdrive,” said Cassandra, “you would have seventeen percent greater efficiency, and nine percent reduced transit time through your hyperspace tunnels due to dark energy conservation.”

  “The Oradrean government,” said March, “is not terribly interested in selling hyperdrives to Calaskar. Or Calaskaran privateers, for that matter.”

  “I would offer to help you get one,” said Cassandra, “but I suppose I am a wanted criminal now.” She waved the EM field reader over some of the components. “I think I see the problem.”

  “Go on,” said March. The diagnostic program hadn’t finished yet.

  “The dark energy surge regulator,” said Cassandra, pointing at the component in question. “When your ship took shrapnel damage, all the dark energy hadn’t drained out of it. The power surge caused partial crystallization in the component. Um...about thirty-seven percent, I’d say. Maybe a little less.”

  The laptop beeped. The diagnostic program had found thirty-five percent crystallization in the dark energy surge regulator.

  “I think you’re right,” said March.

  Cassandra moved to the side and pulled up a section of the metal grill floor, gazing at the black sphere of the dark matter reactor. “It doesn’t look like your dark matter reactor has suffered any damage.”

  “Good,” said March, confirming her results on the diagnostic program. “I paid a lot of money for it.”

  She frowned as she peered at it. “That’s not a standard design for a Mercator Foundry Yards dark matter reactor.”

  “Long story,” said March. “The dark matter reactor’s fine, but it’s the hyperdrive that’s the problem.”

  Cassandra closed the grill. “With a thirty to forty percent crystallization, the drive will get another three to seven jumps before the regulator fails entirely. When that happens, the drive will no longer be able to open a hyperspace tunnel without a critical failure, and you’ll need to install a new regulator. Do you have one?”

  March sighed. “I do. It’s installed in a parallel circuit to the main one.”

  Cassandra gaped at him, turned back to the hyperdrive, and lifted the EM field reader. “It was totally destroyed by the power surge.”

  “Yeah,” said March.

  “But...keeping the spare in a parallel circuit is not accepted repair procedure,” said Cassandra.

  March sighed. “It’s not. But if you’re in a firefight and the main regulator is damaged, having a backup one ready in the circuit can save your life.”

  “Or it can fry one of the regulators and partially crystallize the others,” said Cassandra. “That is not accepted repair procedure.”

  “I thought you didn’t know anything about starship repair and maintenance,” said March.

  “I don’t,” said Cassandra. “I’m familiar with hyperdrive design and repair, though.” She paused. “Though I suppose hyperdrives, by definition, are in starships. Captain March...what are we going to do?”

  “It’s three more jumps from here to system JX2278C,” said March. “Almost certainly the hyperdrive will make it that far. We’ll link up with Captain Torrence and ride the Alpine back to Calaskaran space. Even if we miss the Alpine, JX2278C is close to Calaskaran space. The Royal Navy patrols it regularly. If we keep a distress call running, we’ll probably run into a Calaskaran destroyer sooner rather than later.”

  “Oh,” said Cassandra. She blinked a few times. “I just hoped...I just hoped we could get to safety, that’s all.”

  �
��We’re not safe until we’re in Calaskaran space,” said March. For that matter, they wouldn’t be safe until March had gotten that relic of the Great Elder Ones out of the cargo hold and Cassandra to the Silent Order or the Ministry of Defense. “But no one’s shooting at you right now.”

  “That’s true,” said Cassandra. “I suppose I should look on the bright side.” She gave him a brittle smile. “I just...I just keep thinking how I’ll never see Oradrea or Sonari City again. I mean, I didn’t like it very much, but it was home, and I’ll never get to go back now.”

  “If you had stayed there, you would have been shot,” said March. Or they would have handed her over to the Machinists, scooped out half of her organs, replaced them with cybernetics, and turned her into a drone connected to the hive mind of the Final Consciousness.

  Getting shot might be preferable to that.

  “I know,” said Cassandra. “I just...I think about my life, you know? I didn’t have anyone. It’s like you said. If President Murdan killed me or handed me over to the Final Consciousness, no one would have known. No one would have cared.”