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  March sighed and rubbed his face with his right hand, the metal fingers of his left drumming on the arm of the chair.

  He thought of the withered corpses on Outer Vanguard Station.

  Was this at last a clue to the Pulse?

  Ever since that ill-fated mission to Rustbelt Station to rescue Roanna Vindex, March had heard rumors of the Pulse. The Machinist agent Simon Lorre had been convinced the Pulse would destroy Calaskar, and Mr. Odin had hinted on Burnchain Station that the fall of Calaskar would come soon.

  March had to know. He had to find out.

  But as he looked around Adelaide’s loft, he realized how much he didn’t want to go.

  He heard a soft footstep in the hallway and turned his head. Adelaide came into sight, wearing one of his shirts, as she often did. He didn’t mind. The shirt hung to the middle of her thighs, offering an excellent view of her slim legs. Her black hair was still tousled from sleep and the lovemaking that had proceeded it, and she gazed down at him.

  “I’m sorry if I woke you,” said March.

  “That was Censor, wasn’t it?” said Adelaide. “You only use that tone of voice when you talk to him.”

  “Yeah,” said March. “Mission. I’m going to be gone a month, maybe longer.” He looked up at her. “I’m sorry.”

  Adelaide sighed, then stepped closer to the chair, climbed over the arm, and settled herself on his lap. Her arms coiled around his neck, and she rested her head against his chest for a moment.

  “Will you hurt them?” she said.

  “Yes,” said March. “If I can.”

  His eyes strayed to her right thigh, to the old scar there, left from the day her husband and unborn child had been murdered.

  “Good,” she murmured. She lifted her face and gazed at him. “I don’t want you to go…but don’t feel guilty on my account. I want you to hurt them, Jack. I want you to stop them from ripping apart other people like the way they ripped us apart.”

  She understood, and she understood in a way that no other woman ever would. Professor Adelaide Taren was a minor public figure on Calaskar. She had written dozens of books and appeared in dozens of documentaries about the history of Calaskar and the long-extinct alien races that had once inhabited this region of the galaxy, and she was rich, successful, and respected (even if her colleagues at the University didn’t like her all that much). But she had wanted to be Mrs. Adelaide Taren, wife of Duncan Taren and the mother of his children, to go quietly about her life as all her siblings did.

  The Machinists had taken that from her and forced her to become someone else. Just as they had taken March’s left arm and forced him to become an Iron Hand.

  “This mission,” said March.

  Adelaide nodded, waiting. The skin of her legs felt very warm against his.

  “You know I can’t talk about it,” said March. “But I don’t like it. Feels like it’s going to be a mess. Too many things can go wrong.”

  “You’ll win,” said Adelaide. “You’ll win and come back to me. That’s what you do.”

  “Yes,” said March.

  If he could.

  “When do you have to leave?” said Adelaide.

  “Soon,” said March. “I should probably book a seat on the next shuttle to Calaskar Station.”

  “Okay.” Adelaide shifted position, straddling him, and then pulled off the shirt and dropped it to the floor. She wasn’t wearing anything else. “I’ll drive you to the spaceport.”

  March raised an eyebrow. “Dressed like that?”

  She grinned at him. “After we say goodbye first. Properly.”

  Chapter 2: Scientific Impossibilities

  Two days later March walked through one of the main commercial concourses on Alexandria Station, his luggage rolling behind him.

  After docking the Tiger at one of Alexandria Station’s outer landing platforms and paying the fee to leave the ship stored there for a month, March had changed out of his customary jumpsuit to clothes more suitable for travel aboard a civilian starliner – boots, trousers, a white shirt, a vest, and black Calaskaran coat. He probably should have worn a tie, but wearing such an easy handle around his neck made his combat instincts scream in protest. The usual black glove and bracer concealed the dull gray metal of his cybernetic left arm. After he had changed clothes, he had packed garments suitable for visiting Raetia into an automated wheel suitcase and set off for the Tilehouse, the suitcase synced to his phone and rolling after him.

  March didn’t like leaving the Tiger behind, and he especially didn’t like operating without the store of weapons and equipment on the Tiger. But once he and Cassandra reached Raetia and Northgate City, the head of the local Silent Order branch should be able to provide him with any weapons or tools he might need.

  He hoped.

  There was a good-sized crowd on Alexandria Station’s commercial concourse today, likely from the multiple starliners that March had seen docked during his approach. The commercial concourse was a wide space, three levels high, with shops and businesses lining the balconies. The walls and deck had been built of polished metal, and the ceiling was transparent, offering a splendid view of the surrounding starfield and passing ships. Since this was a Calaskaran station, the screens hanging on the walls and mounted to the railings showed videos from the Ministry of Information about the station, or videos about the history of Calaskar. March smiled to himself when he spotted Adelaide in one of them.

  Though his attention remained on the crowds around him. March could not relax his vigilance, not for any reason, until he had brought Cassandra Yerzhov back alive from the Falcon Republic.

  After another kilometer of walking, March came to the Tilehouse.

  It was a bar and restaurant on the lowest level of the concourse. Calaskaran society tended to embrace its class system, and the Tilehouse was the sort of bar favored by starship crewers and enlisted Navy men. Officers and nobles went to their own bars elsewhere. March strode inside, his boots clicking on the polished stone tiles that gave the bar its name. The smell of cigarette smoke and the sharper odor of strong alcohol came to March’s nose. A long bar ran the length of the far wall, staffed by female bartenders in tight vests and skirts that just barely met the standards of Calaskaran propriety. Tables stood scattered around the room, and starship crewers and enlisted Navy men sat at those tables, eating and drinking. Quite a few card games were underway.

  Dr. Cassandra Yerzhov stood at the bar, an automated suitcase next to her, a frown on her face as she looked at her phone.

  She had changed in the two years since March had met her. Sometimes people could change for the worse in that time.

  Cassandra, he thought, had changed for the better.

  When he had met her, she had been thin, but that had been the thinness of a woman who forgot to eat and never bothered to exercise, and she had stood with a noticeable slump. Now she stood ramrod straight, and her face had lost its faint puffiness. March had taught her to lift weights during their journey, and it seemed that she had kept up with it. She wore the usual public formalwear of a Calaskaran woman – black jacket, white blouse, knee-length black skirt, and the garments fit her well. Her hair had been short and disheveled, but now it was long and glossy and hung loose about her shoulders.

  March took a deep breath, walked over, and leaned against the bar next to her.

  “Hello, Cassandra.”

  She blinked, looked up from her phone (she was reading a mathematical equation), and stared at him.

  Then her face lit up with a wide smile.

  “Jack!” She fumbled with her phone, set it down, and held out her right hand. March started to shake her hand, but to his surprise, she caught him in a quick hug. “It’s, um…it’s really good to see you again. Even if we have to work.”

  “You, too,” said March, stepping back as she slid out her suitcase. “You have everything we need?”

  “Yes, I do,” said Cassandra. She squatted, opened up a pocket on her suitcase, and drew ou
t the small blue leather folder of a Calaskaran passport, its cover embossed with the King’s seal. March opened it and saw his own face giving him a sullen stare. According to the passport and the other identity documents, his name was Jack Norther, a security consultant employed by Cuirass Corporation, and currently assigned to provide private security for one Dr. Cassandra Yarrow on her visit to the University of Raetia.

  “Good,” said March, tucking the folder into an inside pocket of his coat.

  “I have a million things I need to tell you,” said Cassandra, tapping her phone. The wheels on her suitcase came to life, and it rolled towards her. “But we should probably wait until we’re on the ship. Uh…it’s named the Majesty, and it’s docked at Ring Two. We’re scheduled to leave in two and a half hours.”

  March nodded. “That should give us enough time to get through security and get on board.” He did the math in his head. From here, it would be three to four days to Raetia, depending on which route the Majesty took.

  “Yeah,” said Cassandra as they walked to the concourse, suitcases rolling behind them. “I am glad to see you again, Jack.” She grinned. “But I really hope this trip goes better than our last one.”

  Despite himself, March laughed. “I won’t argue.”

  ###

  The Kingdom of Calaskar and the Falcon Republic were not friendly, but neither were they at war, and so both Royal Calaskaran Starlines and various companies from the Republic ran starliner flights into each other’s space. The Majesty was a standard Caravel-class starliner, a chunky looking cylinder about three and a half kilometers long. It was an “economy” ship, which meant it focused more on passenger and cargo space rather than the luxurious amenities of a Wayfinder-class starliner. That suited March just fine, who wanted to keep a low profile. Though it did amuse him that the Silent Order would save money by giving them a berth on an economy-class starliner.

  At least they had paid for March and Cassandra to have separate cabins. It would not have surprised March if the Order had decided they should masquerade as a married couple to save on travel costs.

  That thought troubled March as he stood in line with Cassandra at the check-in counter for Royal Calaskaran Starlines. Personal feelings could complicate a mission. Granted, he and Adelaide had functioned well in a crisis, first at Rustbelt Station and during the Wasp attack at Vesper’s World, and then in a few minor incidents since. March and Cassandra had also functioned well during a crisis.

  But Cassandra had propositioned him the last time that he had seen her, and March had turned her down.

  Was that going to cause a problem now?

  The agent at the check-in desk accepted their documents and passports without question, and March and Cassandra boarded the Majesty. The starliner might have been economy-class, but it was pleasant enough, and it reminded March of some of the nicer hotels he had stayed in over the years. He and Cassandra were on deck seven, with two adjoined cabins connected by a communicating door. The rooms themselves were about the size of the cabins on the Tiger, with a pair of bunks, a desk, a dresser, a bathroom and a sanitizier booth. Entertainment would have to be found either on their own tablet computers or in the ship’s communal areas.

  But they had work to do.

  “Jack,” said Cassandra as he locked the door to his cabin behind them. “We’ve got a lot to talk about…”

  “Yeah,” said March. “Wait a second. I want to check for microphones.”

  She nodded, and March produced his phone and loaded an application designed to check for the feedback of multiple microphones. After he launched the application, he opened the connecting door between the two cabins and did a thorough inspection of both cabins. The check came up clean.

  “All right,” said March. Cassandra sat on the lower bunk, and he pulled out the desk chair and seated himself. “We have a lot of things to discuss.”

  “Yes.” Cassandra folded her arms over her chest, and March’s first thought was that she was angry.

  No. That wasn’t it. She was worried. Alarmed, even.

  “Jack,” she said. “This entire mission is…really weird.”

  March nodded. “Beta Operatives tend not to go in the field.”

  “Hmm?” said Cassandra. “Oh. Well, yes, but that’s not what I meant. The radiation that killed those men.”

  “It must have been a bad way to die,” said March.

  “Yeah,” said Cassandra. “Excruciating. Every nerve in the body dying at once. At least it would have been quick. But it’s not possible.” She looked at him. “How much do you know about triple-theta dark energy radiation?”

  “Not a lot,” March admitted. “I know enough about dark energy physics to fly a starship and do hyperdrive repair, but not much else.”

  “Okay,” said Cassandra. “Okay. Um…basic primer in dark energy radiation. There are a lot of different frequency bands of dark energy radiation, just how visible light and ultraviolet and infrared are different frequencies of the electromagnetic spectrum.” March nodded. “In dark energy physics, we designate radiation frequencies alpha through omega, the letters from the ancient Greek alphabet. Except there’s more than twenty-six of them, so we just start over – double-alpha, triple-alpha, and so on.” March nodded again. “When people talk about dark energy radiation, they mostly mean the alpha through gamma bands. Human hyperdrive technology uses alpha radiation, and so do most alien races. Alpha’s the easiest to use and generate with a dark matter reactor. Some alien races use beta or delta – I think the Eumenidae use gamma-band radiation as part of their hive mind, which was why the Royal Navy ships in the Vesper system had a hard time detecting their dark energy radiation profiles at first.”

  “Yeah, I’d heard that,” said March.

  “But triple-theta,” said Cassandra, her tension vanishing as she warmed to her topic, “has two unique properties. No, wait, three. First, it’s absolutely lethal to any organic material of any type. You probably know that already, if you found those poor men.” March nodded. “Second, triple-theta radiation is artificial.”

  March frowned. “Artificial?”

  “Yeah,” said Cassandra. “Like, it never occurs naturally. Um…you know what a synthetic element is?”

  “An element that doesn’t occur in nature but can be created in a lab,” said March. “Like Americium or Einsteinium or Jupiterinium.”

  Cassandra nodded. “I could recite all one hundred and seventy-three of them for you, but that would be a waste of time.” Despite himself, March smiled. “Triple-theta dark energy radiation is like that. It never occurs naturally. Third, it can’t exist in our universe. Only in hyperspace.”

  “But those men are still dead,” said March.

  “Like I said, really weird,” said Cassandra. “I saw the cellular scans. Those men were killed by triple-theta dark energy radiation, beyond all possibility of doubt. Humanity only knows triple-theta radiation exists by accident. After the hyperdrive was invented during the Third Solar Republic and the great exodus from primeval Earth began…um, the hyperdrives were primitive by modern standards, you know? The dark energy surge regulators were crude, and sometimes they would overload and malfunction and release a burst of triple-theta radiation that killed everyone on the ship…”

  “In the exact same way those dead men I found were killed,” said March.

  “Exactly,” said Cassandra. “Eventually the design flaw was corrected, and triple-theta radiation has been a historical footnote. Which is the fourth weird thing, come to think of it. Censor said some of those dead men were on Raetia.” March nodded. “Triple-theta dark energy radiation shouldn’t be able to exist in a planetary gravity well. It just can’t. It should be physically impossible, like dividing by zero. Yet those men were killed by triple-theta. At first, I thought they had to have been killed off-planet, and then the corpses dumped there, but there is video footage of some of the victims entering the building twenty minutes before they died.”

  “But it’s already im
possible for triple-theta radiation to exist in this universe,” said March. “So why shouldn’t it appear in a planetary gravity well?”

  Cassandra bobbed her head. “You see why this is so weird? There is no explanation for it. But…”

  “But you have a theory,” said March.

  “I don’t have any proof yet,” said Cassandra, “but if this Roger Slovell guy and his ship were seen near the victims, and Slovell is a Machinist sympathizer…I wonder if the Final Consciousness dug up more relics of the Great Elder Ones. Like some of the stuff that nearly got both of us killed on the Alpine. I wonder if the Machinists found another device of the Great Elder Ones, like a triple-theta radiation generator or something…”

  “Yeah,” said March. “A device that generates undetectable lethal radiation would be the kind of toy the Machinists would love. And the Falcon Republic is a hell of a place to keep it.”

  Cassandra blinked. “Have you been to Raetia before?”

  March nodded. “Couple of times. It wasn’t pleasant. It’s like Rustaril without the complacency and Oradrea without the public order.”

  “What’s it really like?” said Cassandra. “I read about it in the files Censor sent me, but…”

  “But that’s not the same as seeing it for yourself,” said March. “Fair enough. You told me about dark energy radiation, so I’ll tell you about the Falcon Republic. Though dark energy radiation probably makes more sense than the Falcons.”

  “The Falcons are the Republic’s military, right?” said Cassandra. “But they’re the ones in charge?”

  “Yeah,” said March. “Time for a history lesson. Raetia was originally a Calaskaran colony and one of the core worlds of the kingdom. A thousand years ago, a revolutionary movement started and seized control of the planet. The Kingdom let them go since Calaskar was fighting the pantherax at the time and the Royal Navy was hanging on by its fingernails. The revolutionaries wanted to overthrow the King and the Royal Church and start a republic where all would be equal, and there would be no restrictions on personal behavior between adults – total social, financial, personal, and political equality between all citizens. You’ve read more history books than I have, so you know that kind of thing usually ends in a bloodbath and a few genocides.” Cassandra nodded. “The revolution became more violent and started executing people right and left. By the end, five different radical factions were battling for control of the planet, and something like six hundred million people had been killed or executed in the space of fifteen years. Then the Falcons took over.”