Empire from the Ashes Read online

  "We built no base, Commander."

  MacIntyre's green eyes narrowed in irritation.

  "Well somebody sure as hell did," he growled.

  "You are suffering under a misapprehension, Commander. This is not a base 'on' your moon. It is your moon."

  * * *

  For just an instant, MacIntyre was certain he'd misunderstood.

  "What did you say?" he asked finally.

  "I said this is your moon, Commander. In point of fact, you are seated on the command bridge of a spacecraft."

  "A spacecraft? As big as the moon?" MacIntyre said faintly.

  "Correct. A vessel some three thousand-three-two-oh-two-point-seven-nine-five, to be precise—of your kilometers in diameter."

  "But—" MacIntyre's voice died in shock. He'd known the installation was huge, but no one could replace the moon without someone noticing, however advanced their technology!

  "I don't believe it," he said flatly.

  "Nonetheless, it is true."

  "It's not possible," MacIntyre said stubbornly. "If this thing is the size you say, what happened to the real moon?"

  "It was destroyed," his informant said calmly. "With the exception of sufficient of its original material to make up the negligible difference in diameter, it was dropped into your sun. It is standard Fleet procedure to camouflage picket units or any capital ship that may be required to spend extended periods in systems not claimed by the Imperium."

  "You camouflaged your ship as our moon? That's insane!"

  "On the contrary, Commander. A planetoid-class starship is not an easy object to hide. Replacing an existing moon of appropriate size is by far the simplest means of concealment, particularly when, as in this case, the original surface contours are faithfully recreated as part of the procedure."

  "Preposterous! Somebody on Earth would have noticed something going on!"

  "No, Commander, they would not. In point of fact, your species was not on Earth to observe it."

  "What?!"

  "The events I have just described took place approximately fifty-one thousand of your years ago," his informant said gently.

  MacIntyre sagged around his bones. He was mad, he thought calmly. That was certainly the most reasonable explanation.

  "Perhaps it would be simpler if I explained from the beginning rather than answering questions," the voice suggested.

  "Perhaps it would be simpler if you explained in person!" MacIntyre snapped, suddenly savage in his confusion.

  "But I am explaining in person," the voice said.

  "I mean face-to-face," MacIntyre grated.

  "Unfortunately, Commander, I do not have a face," the voice said, and MacIntyre could have sworn he heard wry amusement in it. "You see, in a sense, you are sitting inside me."

  "Inside—?" MacIntyre whispered.

  "Precisely, Commander. I am Dahak, the central command computer of the Imperial ship-of-the-line Dahak."

  "Gaaa," MacIntyre said softly.

  "I beg your pardon?" Dahak said calmly. "Shall I continue?"

  MacIntyre gripped the arms of his chair and closed his eyes, counting slowly to a hundred.

  "Sure," he said at last, opening his eyes slowly. "Why don't you do that?"

  "Very well. Please observe the visual display, Commander."

  Earth vanished, and another image replaced it. It was a sphere, as bronze-bright as the cylinder that had captured his Beagle, but despite the lack of any reference scale, he knew it was far, far larger.

  The image turned and grew, and details became visible, swelling rapidly into vast blisters and domes. There were no visible ports, and he saw no sign of any means of propulsion. The hull was completely featureless but for those smoothly rounded protrusions... until its turning motion brought him face-to-face with a tremendous replica of the dragon that had adorned the hatch. It sprawled over one face of the sphere like a vast ensign, arrogant and proud, and he swallowed. It covered a relatively small area of the hull, but if that sphere was what he thought it was, this dragon was about the size of Montana.

  "This is Dahak," the voice told him, "Hull Number One-Seven-Two-Two-Nine-One, an Utu-class planetoid of Battle Fleet, built fifty-two thousand Terran years ago in the Anhur System by the Fourth Imperium."

  MacIntyre stared at the screen, too entranced to disbelieve. The image of the ship filled it entirely, seeming as if it must fall from the display and crush him, and then it dissolved into a computer-generated schematic of the monster vessel. It was too stupendous for him to register much, and the schematic changed even as he watched, rolling to present him with an exploded polar view of deck after inconceivable deck as the voice continued.

  "The Utu-class were designed both for the line of battle and for independent, long-term survey and picket deployment, with core crews of two hundred and fifty thousand. Intended optimum deployment time is twenty-five Terran years, with provision for a sixty percent increase in personnel during that period. Maximum deployment time is virtually unlimited, assuming crew expansion is contained.

  "In addition to small, two-seat fighters that may be employed in either attack or defense, Dahak deploys sublight parasite warships massing up to eighty thousand tons. Shipboard weaponry centers around hyper-capable missile batteries backed up by direct-fire energy weapons. Weapon payloads range from chemical warheads through fusion, anti-matter, and gravitonic warheads. Essentially, Commander, this ship could vaporize your planet."

  "My God!" MacIntyre whispered. He wanted to disbelieve—God, how he wanted to!—but he couldn't.

  "Sublight propulsion," Dahak went on, ignoring the interruption, "relies upon phased gravitonic progression. Your present terminology lacks the referents for an accurate description, but for purposes of visualization, you may consider it a reactionless drive with a maximum attainable velocity of fifty-two-point-four percent that of light. Above that velocity, a vessel of this size would lose phase lock, and be destroyed.

  "Unlike previous designs, the Utu-class do not rely upon multi-dimensional drives—what your science fiction writers have dubbed 'hyper drives,' Commander—for faster-than-light travel. Instead, this ship employs the Enchanach Drive. You may envision it as the creation of converging artificially-generated 'black holes,' which force the vessel out of phase with normal space in a series of instantaneous transpositions between coordinates in normal space. Under Enchanach Drive, dwell time in normal space between transpositions is approximately point-seven-five Terran femtoseconds.

  "The Enchanach Drive's maximum effective velocity is approximately Cee-six factorial. While this is lower than that of the latest hyper drives, Enchanach Drive vessels have several tactical advantages. Most importantly, they may enter, maneuver in, and leave a supralight state at will, whereas hyper drive vessels may enter and leave supralight only at pre-selected coordinates.

  "Power generation for the Utu-class—"

  "Stop." MacIntyre's single word halted Dahak's voice instantly, and he rubbed his eyes slowly, wishing he could wake up at home in bed.

  "Look," he said finally, "this is all very interesting, uh, Dahak." He felt a bit silly speaking to a machine, even one like this. "But aside from convincing me that this is one mean mother of a ship, it doesn't seem very pertinent. I mean, I'm impressed as hell, but what does anyone need with a ship like this? Thirty-two hundred kilometers in diameter, eighty-thousand-ton parasite warships, two-hundred-thousand-man crews, vaporize planets... . Jesus H. Christ! What is this 'Fourth Imperium'? Who in God's name does it need that kind of firepower against, and what the hell is it doing here?!"

  "I will explain, if I may resume my briefing," Dahak said calmly, and MacIntyre snorted, then waved for it to continue. "Thank you, Commander.

  "You are correct: technical data may be left to the future. But for you to understand my difficulty—and the reason it is your difficulty, as well—I must summarize some history. Please understand that much of this represents reconstruction and deduction based upon very scant physical
evidence.

  "Briefly, the Fourth Imperium is a political unit, originating upon the Planet Birhat in the Bia System some seven thousand years prior to Dahak's entry into your solar system. As of that time, the Imperium consisted of some fifteen hundred star systems. It is called the Fourth Imperium because it is the third such interstellar entity to exist within recorded history. The existence of at least one prehistoric imperium, designated the 'First Imperium' by Imperial historians, has been conclusively demonstrated, although archaeological evidence suggests that, in fact, a minimum of nine additional prehistoric imperia intervened between the First and Second Imperium. All, however, were destroyed in part or in whole by the Achuultani."

  A formless chill tingled down MacIntyre's spine.

  "And just what were the Achuultani?" he asked, trying to keep his strange, shadowy emotions out of his voice.

  "Available data are insufficient for conclusive determinations," Dahak replied. "Fragmentary evidence suggests that the Achuultani are a single species, possibly of extra-galactic origin. Even the name is a transliteration of a transliteration from an unattested myth of the Second Imperium. More data may have been amassed during actual incursions, but most such information was lost in the general destruction attendant upon such incursions or during the reconstruction that followed them. What has been retained pertains more directly to tactics and apparent objectives. On the basis of that data, historians of the Fourth Imperium conclude that the first such incursion occurred on the close order of seventy million Terran years ago."

  "Seventy mil—?!" MacIntyre chopped himself off. No species could survive over such an incredible period. Then again, the moon couldn't be an alien starship, could it? He nodded jerkily for Dahak to continue.

  "Supporting evidence may be found upon your own planet, Commander," the computer said calmly. "The sudden disappearance of terrestrial dinosaurs at the end of your Mesozoic Era coincides with the first known Achuultani incursion. Many Terran scientists have suggested that this may have been the consequence of a massive meteor impact. My own observations suggest that they are correct, and the Achuultani have always favored large kinetic weapons."

  "But... but why? Why would anyone wipe out dinosaurs?!"

  "The Achuultani objective," Dahak said precisely, "appears to be the obliteration of all competing species, wherever situated. While it is unlikely that terrestrial dinosaurs, who were essentially a satisfied life form, might have competed with them, that would not prevent them from striking the planet as a long-term precaution against the emergence of a competitor. Their attention was probably drawn to Earth by the presence of a First Imperium colony, however. I base this conclusion on data that indicate the existence of a First Imperium military installation on your fifth planet."

  "Fifth planet?" MacIntyre parroted, overloaded by what he was hearing. "You mean... ?"

  "Precisely, Commander: the asteroid belt. It would appear they struck your fifth planet a bit harder than Earth, and it was much smaller and less geologically stable to begin with."

  "Are you sure?"

  "I have had sufficient time to amass conclusive observational data. In addition, such an act would be consistent with recorded Achuultani tactics and the deduced military policies of the First Imperium, which apparently preferred to place system defense bases upon centrally-located non-life-bearing bodies."

  Dahak paused, and MacIntyre sat silent, trying to grasp the sheer stretch of time involved. Then the computer spoke again.

  "Shall I continue?" it asked, and he managed another nod.

  "Thank you. Imperial analysts speculate that the periodic Achuultani incursions into this arm of the galaxy represent sweeps in search of potential competitors—what your own military might term 'search and destroy' missions—rather than attempts to expand their imperial sphere. The Achuultani culture would appear to be extremely stable, one might almost say static, for very few technological advances have been observed since the Second Imperium. The precise reasons for this apparent cultural stasis and for the widely varying intervals between such sweeps are unknown, as is the precise locus from which they originate. While some evidence does suggest an extra-galactic origin for the species, pattern analysis suggests that the Achuultani currently occupy a region far to the galactic east. This, unfortunately, places Sol in an extremely exposed position, as your solar system lies on the eastern fringe of the Imperium. In short, the Achuultani must pass Sol to reach the Imperium.

  "This has not mattered to your planet of late, as there has been nothing to attract Achuultani attention to this system since the end of the First Incursion. That protection no longer obtains, however. Your civilization's technical base is now sufficiently advanced to produce an electronic and neutrino signature that their instruments cannot fail to detect."

  "My God!" MacIntyre turned pale as the implications struck home.

  "Precisely, Commander. Your sun's location also explains Dahak's presence in this region. Dahak's mission was to picket the Noarl System, directly in the center of the traditional Achuultani incursion route. Unfortunately—or, more precisely, by hostile design—Dahak suffered catastrophic failure of a major component of its Enchanach Drive while en route to its intended station, and Senior Fleet Captain Druaga was forced to stop here for repairs."

  "But if the damage was repairable, why are you still here?"

  "Because there was, in fact, no damage." Dahak's voice was as measured as ever, but MacIntyre's hyper-sensitive mind seemed to hear a hidden core of anger. "The 'failure' was contrived by Dahak's chief engineer, Fleet Captain (Engineering) Anu, as the opening gambit in a mutiny against Fleet authority."

  "Mutiny?"

  "Mutiny. Fleet Captain Anu and a minority of sympathizers among the crew feared that a new Achuultani incursion was imminent. As an advanced picket directly in the path of any such incursion, Dahak would very probably be destroyed. Rather than risk destruction, the mutineers chose to seize the ship and flee to a distant star in search of a colonizable planet."

  "Was that feasible?" MacIntyre asked in a fascinated tone.

  "It was. Dahak's cruising radius is effectively unlimited, Commander, with technical capabilities sufficient to inaugurate a sound technology base on any habitable world, and the crew would provide ample genetic material for a viable planetary population. Moreover, the simulation of a major engineering failure was a cleverly conceived tactic to prevent detection of the mutiny until the mutineers could move beyond possible interception by other Fleet units. Fleet Captain Anu knew that Senior Fleet Captain Druaga would transmit a malfunction report. If no further word was received, Fleet Central's natural assumption would be that the damage had been sufficient to destroy the ship."

  "I see. But I gather from your choice of tense that the mutiny failed?"

  "Incorrect, Commander."

  "Then it succeeded?" MacIntyre asked, scratching his head in puzzlement.

  "Incorrect," Dahak said again.

  "Well it must have done one or the other!"

  "Incorrect," Dahak said a third time. "The mutiny, Commander, has not yet been resolved."

  * * *

  MacIntyre sighed and leaned back in resignation, crossing his arms. Dahak's last statement was preposterous. Yet his concept of words like "preposterous" was acquiring a certain punch-drunk elasticity.

  "All right," he said finally. "I'll humor you. How can a mutiny that started fifty thousand years ago still be unresolved?"

  "In essence," Dahak said, seemingly impervious to MacIntyre's irony, "it is a condition of deadlock. Senior Fleet Captain Druaga instructed Comp Cent to render the interior of the ship uninhabitable in order to force evacuation of the vessel by mutineers and loyalists alike, after which Dahak's weaponry would command the situation. Only loyal officers would be permitted to reenter the vessel once the interior had been decontaminated, at which point Fleet control would be restored.

  "Unknown to Senior Fleet Captain Druaga, however, Fleet Captain Anu had implanted contingency
instructions in his back-up engineering computers and isolated them from Comp Cent's net. Those instructions were intended to destroy Dahak's internal power rooms, with the ultimate goal of depriving Comp Cent of power and so destroying it. As chief engineer, and armed with complete knowledge of how the sabotage had been achieved, it would have been comparatively simple for him to effect repairs and assume control of the ship.

  "When Comp Cent implemented Senior Fleet Captain Druaga's orders, all loyal personnel abandoned ship in lifeboats. Fleet Captain Anu, however, had secretly prepared several sublight parasites for the apparent purpose of marooning any crewmen who refused to accept his authority. In the event, his own followers made use of those transports and a small number of armed parasites when they evacuated Dahak, with the result that they carried to Earth a complete and functional, if limited, technical base. The loyalists, by contrast, had only the emergency kits of their lifeboats.

  "This would not have mattered if Fleet Captain Anu's sabotage programs had not very nearly achieved their purpose. Before Comp Cent became aware of and deactivated them, three hundred and ten of Dahak's three hundred and twelve fusion power plants had been destroyed, dropping Dahak's internal power net below minimal operational density. Sufficient power remained to implement a defensive fire plan as per Senior Fleet Captain Druaga's orders, but not to simultaneously decontaminate the interior and effect emergency repairs, as well. As a result, Comp Cent was unable to immediately and fully execute its orders. It was necessary to repair the damage before Comp Cent could decontaminate, yet repairs amounted to virtual rebuilding and required more power than remained. Indeed, power levels were so low that it was impossible even to operate Dahak's core tap. This, in turn, meant that emergency power reserves were quickly drained and that it was necessary to spend extended periods rebuilding those reserves between piecemeal repair activities.

  "Because of these extreme conditions, Comp Cent was dysfunctional for erratic but extended periods, though automatic defensive programs remained operational. Scanner recordings indicate that seven mutinous parasites were destroyed during the repair period, but each defensive action drained power levels still further, which, in turn, extended Comp Cent's dysfunctional periods and further slowed repairs by extending the intervals required to rebuild reserve power to permit reactivation of sufficient of Comp Cent to direct each new stage of work.