unhappy to lose your help.”
“What then?”
“You are simply the best man for the job. You know the enemy. You know how to handle people as well as alien invaders. I need you to fly out to Ignis Glace and do what you can to defend that world.”
Aldo stared in disbelief. “I barely remember my grade school lessons about that strange place. It’s the most remote planet that remains under local Nexus control.”
“It’s also my homeworld, and I’m asking you to help defend my home for me.”
Aldo looked troubled. “You have family there?”
“I did, yes. I left long ago. I would like you to check on them for me.”
“But this is a diplomatic mission. I’m no diplomat, Droad.”
“You will not be the ambassador. You are to be the ambassador’s bodyguard. Possibly, the role will expand when you meet the natives. The people on Ignis Glace do not respond well to diplomacy. They are tough and unpleasant for the most part. That fact contributed to my decision to leave my homeworld and emigrate here to the capitol.”
“I understand they use titles on Ignis Glace,” Aldo said. “What was your title? Are you nobility there?”
“Yes,” Droad said. “I was a Baron and Droad House possessed a small fief.”
Aldo chuckled. “A Baron! Then you became a governor and most recently a senator? You should run for king, next.”
“This is no laughing matter, Aldo. They are my people. Will you help?”
Aldo grimaced. Droad thought drily that he looked like a trapped animal.
“Why me?” Aldo asked.
“Because you are as hard as nails and you can read people very well. You are not to be a diplomat, but rather an agent. Most people here at the Nexus-they could never understand how people from my frontier planet think. The people here are too bureaucratic.”
“While in comparison, I’m some kind of pirate?” Aldo demanded. “What do you want me to do out there?”
“You must do what you can to get the fractious Houses of my homeworld to understand the danger and teach them how to fight this implacable enemy.”
“All right, I’ll ask a deeper question then: why aren’t you going?”
Droad sighed and went to stare down at the city spread out two thousand feet below. “I’m needed here. If other infections show up, we’ll have to send a fleet to expunge the enemy. We’re building stations in space even now-hundreds of them. To keep up this effort will be easy for a few years, as the fear will be fresh in the minds of the people. In time, however, their fear will begin to fade. I remain here anticipating that time, a decade from now. I will keep stoking those flames so they are not forgotten.”
“Sounds dull.”
“Exceedingly so. You’re role is infinitely more exciting.”
“Still, your own family, Droad…” Aldo said, looking at him sidelong. “I don’t believe you’d hand off this mission to another unless there were a greater reason.”
Droad frowned. He’d hoped he wouldn’t have to reveal too much. In truth, he’d left Ignis Glace under less than pleasant circumstances. He sighed, realizing Aldo must be told more in order to get him to go. “I had a wife and children on Ignis Glace,” he said.
Aldo’s eyes widened. He was clearly impressed.
“We were incompatible,” Droad went on. “I left to keep the peace.”
“I see,” Aldo said thoughtfully. “And if I refuse to go? Will you sign a writ for my arrest?”
Droad shook his head.
Aldo was silent for a time. They both stared down at the bustling city. A light dusting of snow began to fall as they watched, slowly turning the shoulders of the buildings white.
“I’ll do it,” Aldo said at last. “You know I love to travel, but I’ve never been out of the system. I have to admit, crossing blades with the aliens-that was more exhilarating than dueling fops for their paychecks.”
“Excellent,” Droad said.
“How large is the crew? Is it a big ship, like the Zurich?”
Droad shook his head. “Sadly, no. It can’t be. It’s a small vessel with a crew of less than twenty souls.”
Aldo looked stunned. “What kind of armament does it have?”
“Nothing to speak of. You must understand, the ship is built for interstellar travel- fast interstellar travel. It must catch up with Gladius and pass her. It can reach speeds very close to that of light, but to do so, little of her displacement can be devoted to anything other than propulsion.”
Aldo looked slightly worried, but he nodded. “Makes sense. Where do I board her?”
Droad gave him the directions, poured two shots of fine whiskey and toasted his friend goodbye.
When Aldo had departed, Droad returned alone to his window. The city below was gray-white now, punctuated by colorful flashing lights. Mech cabs whizzed this way and that, taking people to countless destinations. How mechanical and chaotic such a hive of activity must have looked to the enemy. He wondered if there was an alien counterpart to himself out there somewhere, struggling and preparing for war just as vigorously as he himself did each day.
Watching the people of Neu Schweitz was hypnotic. They’d suffered in the war with the Skaintz Imperium, but in his opinion they’d gotten off lightly thus far. All told, the people of this planet had been barely scratched when compared to past populations that had come into contact with the enemy. This world had lost no more than a million souls, and with that minor price the enemy had been expunged from the system. Unfortunately, the rest of the local Nexus-governed worlds could not be guaranteed such a rosy experience.
The Nexus Senate had passed a resolution to warn them in detail, and official transmissions had been made. The situation should alarm any colonial government: countless vids streamed out, showing the enemy, their ships, their virulent power to grow in numbers and military strength exponentially in a very short time span. Every world was exhorted to vigilance and defensive build-up. They were to arm themselves and seek out every anomaly in their local handfuls of planets and asteroids, hunting down possible invaders. The biggest fear was of sleeper- agents, reawakened and goaded into activity by signals sent out by the enemy over recent years. The alien transmissions had awakened pockets of dormant creatures with these signals, or at least had done so in the grim case of Minerva, and her slaughtered inhabitants, a people formerly known as the Vlax.
Droad’s mind turned back to Aldo. He wondered how he would fare on the frontier world of Ignis Glace. Hopefully, he would perform great deeds there, should they require doing.
Droad feared that they would.
Aboard Gladius, events unfolded slowly at first. The continuously accelerating ship blazed onward for the first leg of the journey toward Ignis Glace without mishap. The middle leg of the voyage would be spent coasting at approximately sixty percent of the speed of light, while the last stretch would be spent decelerating so the ship would not flash through the destination system in a matter of hours. The course and program were locked in, and little variation could be applied to these preset arrangements without disastrous consequences.
For those of the crew that were not in cryo-sleep, the two Gs of acceleration weren’t the only hardship that must be dealt with. The incredible speed of interstellar travel was not without complications. Ships such as Gladius generated a time dilation effect for those aboard, a side-effect of Einstein’s theory of relativity, which unfortunately for spacers, had turned out to be more than just a theory. The faster the ship went, the slower time progressed for those who existed aboard her. All told, the journey would take a little over two years of relative time off the lives of the crew and passengers, despite the fact the distance covered was several lightyears. Most spacers aged at approximately one third the rate of people who lived on a planet. Aging slowly was an unavoidable part of life for those who traveled regularly among the stars. They were nomads of the cosmos who rarely returned to their native worlds-and they were unlikely to see a familiar living face if they ever did go home. Their parents would generally be dead after what seemed only a decade to them. Likewise, anyone left home such as a spouse, sibling or even their own children might be found old and decrepit by the time they returned. Spacers occasionally took their families with them, but more often they simply didn’t have a family, and lived disconnected lives inside the bellies of their vast ships.
Fateful events began to unfold on Gladius when the AI watchdogs on the bridge detected an anomaly. The
