The scale of the conflicts the Council had been involved in was beginning to dawn on Orson as he looked at the assembled fleet. It made sense, there were millions of worlds within Council space, and trillions of citizens. Orson shuddered a little, aware this was only a fraction of the Council’s might.
“So,” Orson said. He turned around, putting his back towards the viewscreen. “First thing’s first. We’re on a combat footing. Orders are to be prepared, the expectation of an attack from this, Substrate, is high.”
“You think they’ll really take a shot at Earth?” Johnson said.
“No idea. From what the corporal obtained, maybe? The Substrate is one of the Council’s major rivals. Smaller, but with better technology. From what I can make out their ships of the line, something called a dreadnought, is a match for multiple Council battleships.”
“That’s a fucking scary idea,” Nguyen said. “Council battleships are big bastards. Can’t even dock at the Watchtower. What about this knower thing? What’s the deal there?”
“So,” Orson tapped at the tablet in his hand, the viewscreen behind him changing, displaying dozens of documents next to one another. “It looks like this knower, is a messiah figure for several sects of the Council’s religion. Ones that the council has worked very hard to suppress. It’s standard messiah stuff. The one main thing is that all of these sects preached a message of peace. Pretty counter to the Council’s conquering modus operandi.”
“So, they’re scared of what, an uprising of pacifists? Doesn’t seem like it’s worth worrying over. Is that it?” Nguyen said. “I risked my life and career for that? We worked all this out right after I got this stuff. It took you days to dig out what we already knew?”
“Not sure what else to say, corporal.” Orson tossed the tablet onto his seat. “The big thing is that they sent marines to stop that ship we chased. Human marines. They used humans to try and kill a human.”
Johnson raised his hand. “To be fair, we’ve been killing each other since the dawn of history. Nothing new there.”
“What the commander means, is that humans don’t know anything about this, knower. We kill him and it’s just another nameless person dead. Not a martyred messiah.” Nguyen smiled, confident in her assertion.
“Right on. It was part of a cover-up. Question is, what are we going to do about it?”
The barriers between jump space and real space rippled, as the drone flew through, disappearing into a glowing corridor, screaming through jump space to its destination. Despite mastery of faster than light travel being common across the galaxy, faster than light communications hadn’t quite been cracked yet, messages carried by drone or small scout ships.
Greddog smiled as the drone vanished from his scopes, carrying its message deep into space. On the screen, an indicator informed him another was being loaded. He turned his head and pressed a key on the console next to him, repeating the video he had embedded on the drones. One of a human solving an impossible puzzle, of a crowd chanting his name.
It had been the human’s own actions that had given Greddog the idea. He had turned the crowd to his ends, using the infamy of his title to sway the audience. If the human wanted to be recognised as the knower, then Greddog would oblige. It would be impossible to hide then.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Machines hummed, a low, steady rhythm throbbing from them as the drums within them turned over. It had surprised Michael a little, to find a laundrette tucked within the hallways of the Sword. The massive ship felt a little like a high-rise tenement Michael had lived in for one short summer. A damp concrete warren, full of secret rooms and winding corridors. Still, The Sword dwarfed that building. Kestok had given him a length that had translated as one point four miles, the psychic effect still weirdly specific. It was hard to imagine something so large existing at all, never mind living within it. The ship had twenty-two decks, making the liveable area worryingly large. It was a little disconcerting, as if the ship was meant to teem with life.
In a way, it was. The Sword had been the last ship designed to leave, a lifeboat leaving a sinking planet. In that light, it was hardly surprising it had washroom facilities. The ships galley was also massive, designed to feed hundreds at a time. Meggok had gotten lost in its facilities, experimenting with the various strange appliances. He had been particularly excited about something that both sliced and steamed vegetables at the same time.
Michael stretched out his arms, resting his palms on the long bench he was sat on. At least, Michael assumed it was a bench, as far as he knew it could be a long girder rising out of the floor. It was hard to tell, the soft pearlescent sheen to everything made things blur together strangely. He wasn’t even sure he had found a laundrette at first, not until water had come pouring out from the wall. It seemed despite all their miraculous technology, the ancient Merydians had never mastered the art of the washing machine.
Michael sat there finding odd solace in the churning of the machine. It was set into the wall, a long bank of identical appliances filling one side of the chamber. It was cold, they hadn’t found the temperature settings yet, and the Merydians apparently lived in a colder climate even before the ice age that beset them. The situation had been made worse by Michael removing all his clothes, save for his boxers. He had been wearing his white suit constantly, and it was unbelievably ripe. He would have lost the underwear too, had the idea of standing naked in an alien spaceship, pushing buttons not filled him with a strange sense of foreboding, as if reality had an embarrassing sense of humour.
“So, this some kind of washroom?” Aileena said, immediately proving his point. She was stood in the doorway, her own clothes bundled under her arm. She had decided to wear the spacesuits they had descended the cables in, a far more sensible idea than Michaels.
“Uh, yeah,” Michael said, his hands snapping over his groin. “They are, uh, a bit temperamental.”
“I’m sure I’ll work it out. Are you, alright there? Not cold?”
“Extremely. Eyes front, please. All of them.”
Aileena laughed, crossing the room in a few long strides. “Sure.” A smirk was written across her face. She pulled open the nearest washing machine, dumping her clothes within. “It’s kind of crazy, isn’t it? The water in these pipes has been here for thousands of years, and now someone is waking it up from its sleep to wash some pants.”
“All water is thousands of years old when you think about it,” Michael said. “It’s like you learn about in school, the rain cycle and all that.”
“Is it? Can’t say I ever went to school. Not properly anyway.”
“No, that not a thing in Council space?”
“No, it is. Lots of schools actually. It’s the perfect way for the Council to worm its propaganda into the heads of kids. No, I was raised by monks, they taught me.”
“I can’t imagine you, fearsome space mercenary Aileena, living in a monastery.”
“Well, I did. That’s how I ended up a mercenary actually. They taught me to read, write, fly, shoot, fight, everything I needed to be a good merc.” Aileena slammed the door shut on the machine and peered at the controls.
“I’m sorry, what the hell kind of monks do that?”
“The order of the bloody hand? You’ve not heard of them?” Aileena looked at Michael’s confused face. “Oh, right yeah. Sorry, I forgot.”
“Forgot you kidnapped me?”
“A lot’s happened since then.”