A House United Read online

  If I can’t have that ship, she thought frostily, no one can.

  Chapter XXIV: An Uninvited Guest

  “Before we commence with the interrogation,” the most physically perfect woman McKnight had ever seen said, as her golden eyes flicked across the small group—most of whom were armed—that met her at the landing pad, “I must, in the strongest possible terms, encourage you to evacuate your people from this facility. In sixteen hours, the Imperial Fleet will arrive and your freighter will be unable to escape them.”

  McKnight shot Tremblay a dire look, but the Intelligence Officer studiously ignored her. “Forgetting the issue of what you think you know about this facility—or the people who man it—why did you reveal your ship to our sensors? You must have known it would be destroyed as soon as our weapons locked onto it.”

  “Of course,” the woman said, her golden eyes boring into McKnight’s, “what other possible reason might I have had for revealing its location than to enlist your unwitting aid in destroying it? But again,” she shook her head firmly, “the Imperial Fleet will be here in sixteen hours and three minutes. You must evacuate your people while the rest of us make final preparations to destroy the Core Fragment.”

  McKnight arched a brow incredulously, “Even if we were here to do something of that nature—“

  “Melissa McKnight,” the woman interrupted, “first in her class at every step of her scholastic career—up until her joining Caprian Intelligence, where she was a rather pedestrian fifth out of twenty. Soon after the results of the first term were posted, she transferred to Tactical where, once again, she became the biggest fish in her new—and particularly diminutive—pond. Her marriage to Sam Sarkozi was annulled due to her request—”

  “Fine,” McKnight cut in tersely, “so you’re well-informed.”

  “Melissa,” the golden-eyed woman said with a sigh, “had I wanted you and your people dead, I can assure you that is precisely what would have transpired. But like any useful—if admittedly crude—collection of tools, you serve an important purpose in this conspiracy.”

  “Conspiracy?” McKnight repeated. “Co-conspirators don’t generally think of themselves as engaged in a conspiracy.”

  “Yes, well, most people delude themselves—be it with disguises, sweet lies, chemical stimulants, or any number of other dopamine-eliciting stimuli. I am not most people, Lieutenant Commander—I am here to help, but if you do not immediately act on my advice then you will forego the opportunity to avail yourself of that help.”

  “Why should I believe you?” McKnight pressed.

  “That ship you destroyed out there, the Constans Vigilantia,” the woman said as she reached between her gravity-defying breasts and plucked a data crystal—evoking a sudden increase in the tension of the armed guards who flanked McKnight. “Calm yourselves, boys,” the woman said, flicking a gaze to the nearest two guards before blindly tossing the crystal to the center of McKnight's chest. “It was a Pulsar-class warship, which made it the very best of Imperial technology—even more complex and, in many respects, more valuable than a Command Carrier. Ask yourself: why would I sacrifice such a vehicle simply in a bid to gain your trust—a bid which clearly has little chance of success?”

  “Maybe you’re a fanatic,” McKnight shrugged, “we’ve had to kill quite a few of those en route to this moment.”

  “And if I was a fanatic, your best move would be to strike me down before deciding on whatever course of action you deem appropriate,” the woman nodded approvingly before gesturing to the crystal. “But as yet another token of goodwill, I have placed a data file on that crystal which should be of great interest to you.”

  McKnight handed the crystal to Jarrett, who took it and plugged it into a hardened, completely isolated data pad. The pad displayed the crystal’s contents after a momentary pause, and Shiyuan’s sudden gasp was enough to draw McKnight’s attention to the pad’s screen.

  What she saw did nothing to alleviate her mounting concerns about this woman—who claimed to be an Imperial Senator from one of the most powerful Great Houses in the Imperium of Man. On the pad’s display was an algorithm—a long, incredibly complicated algorithm but one with which she had become quite familiar during the past few weeks: it was the so-called ‘Key’ file which, when input to the two mile spherical chamber several miles beneath their feet, was supposed to open Archie’s indestructible shell.

  “Is it complete?” she asked levelly, drawing a solemn nod from Jarrett. McKnight narrowed her eyes and fixed them on the Senator, “Why show us this?”

  “Because it is incorrect,” Senator Bellucci replied simply. “But before we continue, I must repeat myself—something I am loathe to do in any circumstances, I can assure you: you must evacuate your people. Now.”

  “If it’s incomplete, we’ll fail to open the outer shell,” McKnight said challengingly, abandoning any veneer of dissembly or wordplay. “And we’ll probably all die when whatever defense mechanisms inside that thing come online.”

  “Correct,” Bellucci nodded approvingly before tapping her temple with a finger, “which is why I brought you the completed algorithm. I do not ask you to trust me, Melissa,” the Senator said, stepping forward as her golden eyes seemed to pour themselves into McKnight’s, “I simply ask you to assess this situation from a tactical perspective. Why would I do any of what I have done if I meant to betray you, or wished to see you fail?”

  McKnight chafed at being addressed by her given name, but after moving past that particular bit of irritation she did precisely as the Senator suggested: she assessed the situation tactically.

  There were obvious long-shot scenarios in which it was theoretically possible for the Senator to have come to the base with the information she had thus far presented. But none of those scenarios fit with the rest of what McKnight knew about their shadowy pursuer—who had been aboard the very vessel her long guns had just torn from high orbit.

  In the end, she was forced to agree with the Senator. It made zero sense for Bellucci to come—in person, no less—if her sole intention was to sow confusion or manipulate them into failing. If provoking the failure of McKnight’s mission was Bellucci’s goal, she could have simply sat back in high orbit and called in the Imperial Fleet—which McKnight was essentially convinced she had already done as part of some long-lensed scheme, the depths of which were opaque to her at this very moment.

  So she activated her wrist-link’s base-wide emergency channel and, after the connection was live, she said, “Attention: this is Commander McKnight. In sixteen hours the Imperial Fleet will arrive in-system, and they know exactly where we are,” she said, fixing Bellucci with a borderline murderous look as she continued, “we’ve prepared for this moment since we set foot on this rock, and now it’s here. All personnel are to begin evacuation protocol Omega Five—repeat: all personnel are to begin evacuation protocol Omega Five. This is not a drill. Organize into your evac teams and assemble at your designated rendezvous points immediately. Again: this is not a drill.”

  “This is the XO,” Spalding followed, speaking into his own link, “evacuation Omega Five is ‘go.’ I say again: evacuation plan Omega Five is ‘go.’ Let’s do this, people.”

  “Stay calm,” McKnight urged, “stay focused, and make sure your entire evac teams are ready to board the shuttles as soon as your turn comes. We only get one shot at this—lock and load, McKnight out.”

  The silence on the landing pad was deafening as everyone seemed momentarily paralyzed by the hardly-unexpected news.

  “You heard the lady!” Spalding barked as nearby platform workers looked on with mouths agape. “Get those slackin’ rears on the move or, as the Demon is my witness, I’ll see to it each and every one of you is scrubbin’ deck-plates with yer tongues for a month!”

  Like a herd of spooked rabbits, the workers all hopped to with a renewed spring in their steps as they scurried away from the platform. Omega Five protocol demanded that any nonessential activities be abandoned i
n favor of organizing the evacuation teams, which McKnight was pleased to see had already sprang into action as they prepped the handful of small landing craft which had been assembled on the landing pad for this very occasion.

  After the workers had satisfactorily set about their charges, McKnight spared the usually mild-mannered Spalding a bemused look. For a moment or two in that little tirade of his, she had heard his father’s voice as clearly as at any other time she’d been subjected to the crazed old man’s colorful invective.

  If it works… she thought to herself before refocusing on the Senator.

  “Good,” Bellucci said shortly, “now take me to the Core Fragment—I want to see it die with my own eyes.”

  “First provide this supposedly ‘complete’ Key sequence,” McKnight said flatly, “or the only place you’ll be going is a cell.”

  Bellucci’s smile was decidedly serpentine, “Of course, Melissa.”

  “And don’t call me that,” McKnight said irritably as the woman produced another data crystal, which she flipped to Shiyuan. A few seconds after he had inserted it into the pad’s crystal port, he cocked his head dubiously. “Will it work?” she pressed.

  “That’s…impossible to say,” he said hesitantly, “but if I’m not mistaken, these equations account for several…” he gulped audibly, “neutronium pellets which have been placed at irregular positions within the shell itself.”

  “Neutronium?” McKnight repeated skeptically, slicing a tight look Bellucci’s way. “Is that even possible?”

  “It is,” Bellucci said with a nod. “The pellets are, if my information is complete, the second-to-last line of the Core Fragment’s robust arsenal of defensive mechanisms.”

  “How much work will it be to integrate these equations into the system?” Spalding asked after perusing the data pad for himself.

  “A few minutes at most,” Jarrett said confidently. “The equipment is ready whenever we are, but the process of unlocking the shell will—according to our best information,” he said with a pointed—and decidedly unafraid—look in the Senator’s direction, “require at least nine consecutive hours of work.”

  “Which means we might only get one shot,” Spalding added grimly.

  McKnight gestured to the nearby grav-train, “Then hop to it.” She turned to the nearest guard—a recently-healed Tracto-an who had received significant neural therapy to his left side following years of crippling disability afflicted by a stroke—and pointed to the Senator, “Stay precisely five meters from our guest here at all times. If she moves to one meter closer or further than that, you are to kill her however you wish.”

  “Understood,” he nodded, thumbing the safety off of his blaster pistol and taking up position behind the Senator.

  “My, my,” Bellucci flashed a lopsided smile, “you certainly know how to show a girl a good time.”

  “Don’t test me, lady,” McKnight warned, and thankfully the other woman seemed to take the hint as she abstained from further verbal sparring during the ride deep into the subterranean base.

  Chapter XXV: A Puzzle of Questionable Divinity

  After spending twenty minutes going over the Senator’s numbers—with Guo and Jarrett erupting into periodic and rather heated arguments in their native tongue over specific lines of the updated equations—McKnight’s people seemed convinced that they had correctly integrated Bellucci’s new figures.

  “You need to understand, Commander,” Guo said after they had finished making the adjustments, “that if the neutronium pellets are not there—or even if their masses are incorrectly appreciated by these equations—we will not know our error until the PNR has already passed. It will take at least seven hours to unlock the outer layers of the Core Fragment’s shell,” he tilted his chin toward the motionless sphere which floated at the very center of the chamber, “before we reach the inner layers where these pellets are located. Due to the complexly interacting antigravity forces at work within the shell, we are unable to ascertain the existence of these pellets before we reach the innermost layers.”

  “So we won’t know one way or the other until it’s too late to do anything about it,” McKnight concluded, drawing solemn nods from the high-powered analysts. “Fine—we proceed with the Senator’s input,” she ordered, knowing that while her gut told her to ignore the Senator her higher brain told her that Bellucci was indeed as invested in this project’s completion as anyone else in the room.

  In the end, Melissa McKnight went with her reason instead of her intuition—and she knew better than anyone what the stakes were in doing so.

  “Initiating startup diagnostics,” Lieutenant Spalding said, his voice resonating throughout the cavernous, mirror-finished interior of the Key. A low thrum permeated the chamber, and the perfectly-central Core Fragment was bathed in a dazzling array of silver, gold, and greenish light as each of the chamber’s many grav-plates initiated its own local diagnostics.

  “Power outputs of plants one through six are in the green,” reported Penelope Winters from her station in the small platform from which history would—if all went according to plan—be made some nine hours later. “Plants seven through twenty are on standby.”

  “Key sequence is uploaded and ready,” Shiyuan said from his station at sensors.

  “All recording equipment is online,” Guo added from his station beside Shiyuan.

  Spalding gave McKnight a look that was equal parts eager anticipation and trepidation—conflicting emotions which she shared with her XO—as he asked, “Permission to activate the Key, Captain?”

  She nodded curtly, trying to project all of the authority and command she thought someone in her position was supposed to feel—even though she presently felt none of it—and replied, “Permission granted—let's unwrap this so-called 'god'.”

  “Activating Key,” Spalding reported, “sequential activation of each station required: Power, activate.”

  Winters’ prompt reply came, “Power activated: grav-plates are charging to maximum.”

  “Control,” he turned to Jarrett, “upload the program.”

  “Program uploaded,” came Shiyuan’s reply a few moments later.

  “Recording,” Spalding turned to Guo, “initiate active scans.”

  “Active scans initiated.”

  Spalding turned his eyes toward the center of the spherical cavern, where the dancing lights no longer played across the Core Fragment’s outer shell—which only made it seem somehow more foreboding and ominous as it hung there, a mile away, in perfect stillness and silence. The high-powered grav-plates thrummed with eager anticipation as they prepared to exert incredibly powerful—and even more incredibly precise—gravitational forces on the shell at the center of the chamber.

  “Activating the Key,” he declared, and a moment later the surface of Archie’s outer shell exploded with a dazzling display unlike anything McKnight—or any of them—had ever seen.

  Like loops of glowing, golden thread springing into existence, beams of light burst forth from Archie’s outer shell before curving backward toward their origins, creating dozens of teardrop-shaped loops all across the shell’s surface. They originated and terminated into what looked like minute cracks in the surface of its unblemished, impervious shell.

  Those minute cracks slowly grew, and as they did so the number of looping threads of light multiplied exponentially. The cracks soon covered the entire surface of the Core Fragment’s outer shell, criss-crossing in a pattern that was both beautiful and chaotic as smaller cracks appeared across the previously unbroken sections of the mirror-perfect shell.

  The multiplication of cracks and looping lights continued until their naked eyes could no longer cope with the intense brightness of the object in the cavern’s center. Thankfully the platform on which they were perched was enclosed in a thin film of photo-reactive material, which slowly accommodated by dimming in response to the soon-to-be-blinding light shining forth from the Core Fragment.

  “Archie’s median d
iameter has expanded by eighty three percent,” Guo reported.

  “Expansion rate is precisely as predicted,” Shiyuan added as the cracked outer surface of the Core Fragment continued to expand with steadily increasing speed.

  “Median diameter now three hundred percent of original,” Guo reported steadily. “Four hundred percent,” he added, an uncharacteristic note of awe threading his words.

  “Outer shell expansion rate is perfectly in line with expectations,” Shiyuan reiterated, and for several seconds it seemed as though the object before them was an exploding star whose blast wave would soon reach them.

  Sure enough, just as McKnight had intuited, the Core Fragment’s outer shell continued to expand until the original ‘plates’ of separate material were little more than a contiguous, wire-thin mesh. The gaps between the individual strands of material composing that mesh were large enough to drive a grav-train through. Wider and wider the outer layer expanded, becoming little more than barely-perceptible threads like those of a spider web as they raced outward from the chamber's center precisely like an unthinkably vast Hoberman sphere.

  That expansion abruptly ceased—with the nearest thread of the outer shell hanging just a few centimeters from the platform’s thin, photo-reactive shell—and when it did the blinding light from the center of the chamber vanished entirely.

  “First layer penetrated,” Jarrett reported.

  “Give me a systems check,” Spalding commanded.

  “Power draws within zero-point-zero-zero-three percent of predicted values,” Winters reported tightly, relaying news that none of them had wanted to hear.

  “Shiyuan?” Spalding asked the potato-faced information specialist, who was busy performing extremely complex calculations on his workstation.