The Synod's Heaving Shipyards, according to all public records, did not exist. Yet they were infamous for the experimental spacecraft they, ostensibly, did not produce. The masses and media loved to speculate on the prototypes and classified ships that were said to be constructed there. But, even among them, the Naught was unique.
The Naught was a polished piece of the canvas of space, all but invisible to the keenest-eyed observer. At the moment, given that the nearest observer was almost a million klicks below on the surface of New Nowhere, the pilot of the Naught was confident—down to three decimals—that she was hidden.
Her name was Magrizia Mal of the Stained Manufactory, and she was rare, even for a Cavalier. As one of the seven made to have ever joined the Synod’s elite force of peacekeepers, she had a lot to prove. Honor demanded she operate at twice the standard as the next Cavalier (and eight times that of a crown species) to be worthy of the Badge, let alone to earn her way up those illustrious ranks.
Thus, she had tailored the Naught herself, in ways she deemed absolutely necessary, but that left the organics scratching their heads. Who would need aluminum nitride and composite-graphene wire connections? Why bother with saphate processors, obscenely expensive as they were? And what was the point of an algorithm-predictive gyroscope?
In live action, she tracked her response times, not in seconds, but in picoseconds.
Of course, there were disadvantages to being a machine. For one, even the semi-organics hated you. The organics rarely noticed you were there (which had its uses). Maintenance was a never-ending—and increasingly expensive—labor. Unfortunately, the Great Crown Seats of the Synod, in their infinite wisdom, deigned only to pay Magrizia the standard wages for a Cavalier, the standard wage might be considered a small fortune. And if one was willing to lean on their connections, one might claim even more.
Magrizia, being one of the Made, was not connected. And even if she was, she would not sink to such vulgar means. Besides, was it not every Cavalier’s right to enjoy noble poverty in its fullest? To live life, as it were, on the knife’s edge between fortune and ruin?
On the 10th orbit around the planet, she pinged a message to the mission’s handler, a representative from the Crown. It was her 10th such message, and as always, her timing was exact.
Her report read: Nothing new. All remains the same.
And, as always, there was no response.
A storm was gathering off Singer’s Hollow. The city was hazy, but thought she saw a caravan gathering on the flats. Magrizia nodded appreciatively. Brave, to ride into a storm like that. If there was lightning, it might be his last one.
On the 11th orbit, the storms had grown so large, a full quarter of the planet was hidden under a dusty, red veil. Magrizia watched the clouds with an idle impatience that, after a day, turned to a feeling of injustice. This planet is no ally of honor. Even the storms seek to derail my quest.
But soon, the storms would hit the Claws, and split into rivers of airborne sand. And the Mission might continue. How long had she been out here? A month? Somehow, she had imagined being a Cavalier might require less waiting around.
On orbit number 12, the storms cleared enough that Magrizia could see the smoke coming from Old Ocotiyo. Magrizia flicked her scopes, increasing their magnification, until she could pick out the war vehicles and little black specks. Some gang lord or self-styled “Mayor” raiding the city. The same that had ridden out from Singer’s Hollow?
Now that she thought about it, there were rather a lot of vehicles. More than most raiding parties. And the hundreds of black specks, the xenos, were putting out the fires, as if they intended to save the very city they had stormed.
An expansion, then.
But what about the Peace?
In the last month, Magrizia had heard the other Cavaliers speak, increasingly, of changes at the hub of the Great Synod. They grumbled of unusual missions. They whispered of Ring Navies, quietly slipping away from the Mass Council (An unforgivable disgrace. Those ships did not belong to the Rings, but to the Synod). Magrizia didn’t take part in such gossip, it was beneath a Cavalier.
But now, a decade of frontier peace, appeared to have broken under her very watch.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Could it be that even the ants of New Nowhere felt the shifting of the winds? Perhaps the gathering storm back at the core was more potent than Magrizia first guessed.
She reported the disturbance to the handler, and, for once, she got a reply.
“Not him,” the Representative sent back, “Continue your search.”
Magrizia didn’t know who the Crown’s Representative was, didn’t even have a name, but this was far from her first anonymous contract. The Crowns had their reasons. All she knew was they were looking for a xeno whose sign “will be visible from orbit.”
On the 13th orbit, Magrizia Mal of the Stained Manufactory missed her perfect deadline. The deadline passed by less than three seconds, when the Crown Representative sent a message to the Naught.
“Report.”
In fact, Magrizia had been about to hit send on her report (Nothing new, all remains the same) when something new did happen.
“I believe I see something.”
She wanted to verify her findings before packaging and transferring her visuals to the Representative. The red-orange planet of New Nowhere, veined with blue rivers and striped with torn strips of clouds, had grown a black spot. It was about three-fourths up the northern hemisphere, in the middle of the great dune sea that separated the ice caps from the rest of the planet.
Magrizia checked her maps. According to the original surveys, the expanse was sometimes called the Northern Wastes. Out in the dunes, there was a lone Spirine, which had never attracted an enduring population. Magrizia had never seen the Spirine in person—from above, the structure was occluded by an anomalous patch of ever-present clouds, but she had a few images of the structure on record: a black, bony, tree-like tower, which stretched two full klicks into the sky.
Only, now, the clouds were gone. And so was the Spirine, replaced by a sunken crater littered with metallic debris that flashed in the sunlight. Red and white and black. Already, the wind began to fill in the crater with orange sand.
Magrizia had never seen anything like this before. In fact, she wasn’t sure anyone in the Synod had seen anything like this. The last time a Dyssian ruin was destroyed was when that Rimward Gyriphate had accidentally blown up half his planet. Somehow, this felt … intentional. Controlled, even.
This information was worth transferring. She sent her visuals to the Crown Representative.
Their reply was instant, “Confirmed. Target was active recently in that location.”
“What is your confidence level?” Magrizia asked, “This is unknown phenomena.” She offered to send drones to investigate. And then, because her imagination modules were alight with a thousand possibilities—each one, leading to an ever greater glory—she offered to send herself.
“Negative, negative. Maintain maximum distance,” the message said. “Engage and you will die.”
Preposterous, she thought, and almost said. Fortunately, Magrizia held her composure, and her rank remained undiminished.
“If I may be granted permission,” Magrizia said carefully, “I may post bounties. There is a favorable chance we will apprehend the target by end of month—”
“There is no such chance.”
A pause. The force of their language made her recalculate. She worried she had overstepped. Now that she had found the target, perhaps the Crown Representative might assign a different Cavalier. It had happened before, and, in her eagerness to appease, she had let herself be blinded to reality.
But then, a new message came through. “Belay that last. Post every bounty that you can. We will grant access to Treasury funds. Make his life as hard as possible.”
Treasury funds? They would pit the whole planet against the target. All the common rabble…
Outwardly, Magrizia only hesitated. Internally, her processes ground to a halt. This was her Mission. Her quest. It was glory and honor at stake. If she must contend with a whole world of murderers and badlanders and rural-dwelling organics who spoke more romantically to their guns than their spouses, how was she to ever join the esteemed ranks of the Cavaliers of Old? How would she prove she was as Brave as Glindel the Brave, or as Wise as Saotavi the Extremely Informed, or even, dare she dream, as Noble as the legendary Sir Gavant himself?
Magrizia sent a new message. “If that is to be the case, if we are to involve the common rabble, then may I try my hand as well? It is possible I may eliminate the target ahead of schedule, with less of a, and I must apologize for my crude language, a mess.”
A thoughtful pause. The message came back: “Why not?”
“Is that an affirmative?”
“Yeah. Knock yourself out.”
She knew the answer to this one, “To be beaten, bashed, bloodied or battered. If honor demands I must, I will.”
Magrizia’s critical processing powers were on a galloping detour through her imagination modules (The honor! The glory!), when the handler said something that almost made her language models crash.
“I'll be out there soon.”
Her visions of adventure began to fade. The presence of a Crown, even a representative of the Crown, was sure to bring with it several light years of red tape.
“For what purpose?” Magrizia sent back.
“He’s an enemy of the state. I’ll do what has to be done.”
Oh, she thought, suddenly interested. Could it be? She hadn’t considered the fact, that perhaps this Representative might not be a Crown at all, but a fellow Cavalier.
“Am I to assist you, my noble and brave colleague?” she asked.
The longest pause yet. “Best if you stay outta my way.”
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THE END OF BOOK 1