The Armageddon Inheritance

And because they did not know such things, none knew their world had barely seven months to live.

Chapter Seven

Colin MacIntyre was not afraid, for “afraid” was too weak a word.

He sat with his back to the conference room hatch as the others filed in, and he felt their own fear against his spine. He waited until all were seated, then swung his chair to meet their eyes. Their faces looked even worse than he’d expected.

“All right,” he said at last. “We’ve got to decide what to do next.”

Their steady regard threw his lie back at him, even Jiltanith’s, and he wanted to scream at them. We didn’t have to decide; he did, and he wished with all his soul that he had never heard of a starship named Dahak.

He stopped himself and drew a deep breath, closing his eyes. When he opened them again, the shadows within them had retreated just a bit.

“Dahak,” he said quietly, “have you got anything more for us?”

“Negative, Captain. I have examined all known Imperial weapons and research. Nothing in my data base can account for the observational data.”

Colin managed not to spit a curse. Observational data. What a neat, concise way to describe two once-inhabited planets with no life whatever. Not a tree, not a shrub, nothing. There were no plains of volcanic glass and lingering radioactivity, no indications of warfare—just bare, terribly-eroded earth and stone and a few pathetic clusters of buildings sagging into wind and storm-threshed ruin. Even their precarious existence said much for the durability of Imperial building materials, for Dahakestimated there had been no living hand to tend them in almost forty-five thousand years.

No birds, he thought. No animals. Not even an insect. Just … nothing. The only movement was the wind. Weather had flensed the denuded planet until its stony bones gaped through like the teeth of a skull, bared in a horrible, grinning rictus of desecration and death.

“Hector?” he said finally. “Do you have any ideas?”

“None.” MacMahan’s normally controlled face was even more impassive than usual, and he seemed to hunker down in his chair.

“Cohanna?”

“I can’t add much, sir, but I’d have to say it was a bio-weapon of some sort. Some unimaginable sort.” Cohanna shivered. “I’ve landed unmanned probes for spot analyses, but I don’t dare send teams down.”

Colin nodded.

“I can’t imagine how it was done,” the biosciences officer continued. “What kind of weapon could produce this? If they’d irradiated the place… But there’s simply nothing to go on, Captain. Nothing at all.”

“All right.” Colin inhaled deeply. “’Tanni, what can you tell us?”

“Scarce more than ’Hanna. We have found some three score orbital vessels and installations; all lie abandoned to the dead. As with the planets, we durst not look too close, yet our probes have scanned them well. In all our servos have attended lie naught save bones.”

“Dahak? Any luck accessing their computers?”

“Very little, Captain. I have been unable to carry out detailed study of the equipment, but there are major differences between it and the technology with which I am familiar. In particular, the computer nets appear to have been connected with fold-space links, which would provide a substantial increase in speed over my own molecular circuitry, and these computers operated on a radically different principle, maintaining data flow in semi-permanent force fields rather than in physical storage units. Their power supplies failed long ago, and without continuous energization—” The computer’s voice paused in the electronic equivalent of a shrug.

“The only instance in which partial data retrieval has been possible is artifact seventeen, the Fleet vessel Cordan,” Dahak continued. “Unfortunately, the data core was of limited capacity, as the unit itself was merely a three-man sublight utility boat, and had suffered from failed fold-space units. Most data in memory are encoded in a multi-level Fleet code I have not yet been able to break, though I believe I might succeed if a larger sample could be obtained. The recoverable data consist primarily of routine operational records and astrogational material.

“I was able to date the catastrophe by consulting the last entry made by Cordan’s captain. It contains no indication of alarm, nor, unfortunately, was she loquacious. The last entry simply records an invitation for her and her crew to dine at the planetary governor’s residence on Defram-A III.”

“Nothing more?” Ninhursag asked quietly.

“No, Commander. There undoubtedly was additional data, but only Cordan’s command computer utilized hard storage techniques, and it is sadly decayed. I have located twelve additional auxiliary and special-function computer nets, but none contain recoverable data.”

“Vlad?” Colin turned to his engineer.

“I wish I could tell you something. The fact that we dare not go over and experiment leaves us with little hard data, but the remotes indicate that their technology was substantially more advanced than Dahak’s. On the other hand, we have seen little real evidence of fundamental breakthroughs—it is more like a highly sophisticated refinement of what we already have.”

“How now, Vlad?” Jiltanith asked. “Hath not our Dahak but now said their computers are scarce like unto himself?”

“True enough, ’Tanni, but the differences are incremental.” Vlad frowned. “What he is actually saying is that they moved much further into energy-state engineering than before. I cannot say certainly without something to take apart and put back together, but those force field memories probably manifested as solid surfaces when powered up. The Imperium was moving in that direction even before the mutiny—our own shield is exactly the same thing on a gross scale. What they discovered was a way to do the same sorts of things on a scale which makes even molycircs big and clumsy, but it was theoretically possible from the beginning. You see? Incremental advances.”

Jiltanith nodded slowly, and Colin leaned his elbows on the table.

“Bearing that in mind, Dahak, what are the chances of recovering useful data from any other computers we encounter?”

“Assuming they are of the variety Fleet Captain (Engineering) Chernikov has been discussing and that they have been left unattended without power, nil. Please note, however, that Cordan’s command computer was not of that type.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning, Captain, that it is highly probable Fleet units retained solid data storage for critical systems precisely because energy data storage was susceptible to loss in the event of power failure. If that is indeed the case, any large sublight unit should provide quite considerable amounts of data. Any supralight Fleet combatant would, in all probability, retain a hard-storage backup of its complete data core.”

“I see.” Colin leaned back and rubbed his eyes.

“All right. We’re five and a half months from Terra, and so far all we’ve found is one completely destroyed Fleet base and two totally dead planets. If Dahak’s wrong about the Fleet retaining hard-storage for its central computers, we can’t even hope to find out what happened, much less find help, from any system where this disaster spilled over.

“If we turn back right now, we’ll reach Sol over a year before the Achuultani scouts, which would at least permit us to help Earth stand them off. By the same token, it would be impossible for us to do that and then return