Chapter 2: Giant

In the vacuum of space, the small Sunguard scout ship descended in complete silence toward the frozen surface of Europa. It wasn’t exactly sleek or beautiful, but at least it wasn’t quite as boxy as the larger Sunguard War Cruisers parked on the nearby landing field, Colonel Reynolds thought. Not that its form affected its functionality, but the bulky monstrosities the Terran Federation used for traveling between the stars had always irked him. Someday, surely, function would no longer be the only parameter considered when designing starships.

As the vessel descended, a feeble ray from the distant sun suddenly reflected off its hull and glinted as it passed over the Sunguard emblem on its side. Other than the yellow and red of that solar icon and a handful of multicolored designations splattered across the ship’s surfaces, the craft was painted a dull gray with only the slightest trace of beige in its pigmentation.

Together with General Talerk and a handful of support personnel, he stood waiting at the entrance to the landing field, clad in full space suits. The bulky orange garments that protected them from the lethal combination of temperatures that never rose above a hundred Kelvin, the high-energy particles trapped in Jupiter’s radiation belt, and, of course, the hard vacuum itself, were a necessary evil. Out here, you either dressed for the occasion, or you died—quickly, and painfully.

The door to the scout ship opened in eerie silence. In the frigid vacuum, a bare hand gripped the frame as the pilot emerged from the shadows within the vessel. Its operator, a woman in her early thirties wearing nothing more than a gray jumpsuit with red stripes along its sides, stepped out into the cold and walked across the landing field, her tall black boots leaving impeccable prints in the dusty snow that covered the surface. In the low gravity, and without any atmosphere to act as a friction buffer, her long ginger-copper-red hair danced impossibly with every step she took. As Colonel Reynolds watched, her face became covered with a fine layer of ice as the moisture in the air escaping from the airlock crystallized on her skin, obscuring the faint freckles he had seen there when she first emerged from the door.

The ice didn’t bother her. Nor did the vacuum or the radiation.

When she spoke, her lips didn’t move. Instead, sound was synthesized directly from her thoughts and broadcast into the comm system of their space suits.

“Good morning,” she said, her voice bright and friendly. “Why don’t we take this inside?”

General Talerk cleared her throat. “What did you find, ma’am?”

The Special Agent turned to look at her.

“I’m sure you good people don’t want to stay out here any longer than necessary. There’s no hurry. Let’s go inside before we talk.”

No hurry. Those two words once more filled Colonel Reynolds with dread. Whatever had happened on New Caribbean was apparently already over, and nothing they could do now would change the situation there for the better.

Once the airlock next to the landing field had cycled to even out the pressure, he removed his white helmet and shook his head slightly, as if that might help him clear his thoughts. The air smelled faintly of metal, but he was quite certain that the headache beginning to form behind his temples had nothing whatsoever to do with his recent spacewalk.

Sending an evacuation fleet to Eta Boötis without knowing the cause of the problem had been out of the question. He fully understood the general’s reasoning in that regard. But sending a single scout ship had still been deemed viable. And given the stakes, assigning a Special Agent had been the only reasonable choice for the crew. Whatever had happened out there was likely either too dangerous to be handled by a biological operative, or it would require decisions to be made on the spot that only a Special Agent had the authority to make.

So, the call had gone out, a suggestion that a Sunguard Special Agent should travel to New Caribbean to investigate the calamity that had befallen the colony there, and Special Agent Ellie McBrian had volunteered for the mission that, over the course of three days, had taken her to the far side of the Terran Federation and back again.

They gathered in a small conference room on the third floor, with large windows overlooking the frozen plains outside. High in the sky, covering a significant fraction of the black emptiness above, hung the mottled brown disk of Jupiter, like a giant eye keeping constant watch over them.

After treating himself to a cinnamon roll and a large cup of coffee from the pastries table in the corner, Colonel Reynolds sat down at the center of the rectangular black table that dominated the room. Next to him sat General Talerk, her green uniform heavy with medals and ribbons. On the opposite side, Special Agent McBrian pulled out a metal chair and sat down, her legs crossed as she leaned back with a soft sigh, clearly enjoying her own roll.

To the untrained eye, she looked like any ordinary woman. No one would ever suspect she was anything more than her meek appearance suggested. Yet Colonel Reynolds was always struck with awe whenever he reminded himself of her immense age. If you were to draw a timeline on a piece of paper and mark down select historical events on it together with her day of “birth,” the date when the young woman facing him had been taken online would be closer to the French Revolution than to the present day.

No one said a word.

If the Special Agent’s appearance was underwhelming, her presence was not. She dominated the room completely, and no one would have even dreamed of breaking the spell she held over them. Not until she spoke first.

“The Terran Federation colony on New Caribbean is gone, General,” she finally said, directing her statement at the senior officer present.

There was no “I regret to inform you” to be found in that sentence, Colonel Reynolds noticed, a trace of annoyance creeping up his spine. The woman had just delivered the news that a hundred thousand citizens of the Terran Federation were gone without so much as saying she was sorry.

No, not annoyance. What he felt when he heard her statement was something else, though he couldn’t quite put his finger on what it was. There was a discrepancy there, but he couldn’t yet shape it into a thought. Suspicion? No, that was too strong a word. And besides, it wasn’t one you would ever use when speaking of a Sunguard Special Agent.

Because whatever he might think about her, she wasn’t cold. She wasn’t uncaring. The green eyes that seemed to look into his soul from across the table held deep, genuine sympathy for the people around her. And yet… the loss of the inhabitants of New Caribbean didn’t seem to faze her in the slightest.

“You will begin the process of writing off the colony immediately,” she ordered General Talerk. “Reclaiming the colony is not worth the effort, and not in the best interest of the people of the Terran Federation. There are hundreds of other worlds out there that would serve the evacuation effort better. There is no need to return to Eta Boötis. The system is henceforth off-limits to the Sunguard.”

“Yes, ma’am,” General Talerk replied immediately. There was no “how,” no “why,” no “but” in her response. With military precision, the general obeyed the order her superior had given her. Anything else would, of course, have been unthinkable. She would never question the Special Agent.

He could stay silent no longer.

“Ma’am,” he said, carefully considering how to phrase his question so as not to get himself into more trouble than necessary. “I mean no disrespect, but could you please tell us what happened at Eta Boötis?”

There. He had asked the question the general would never dare to voice. If the Special Agent didn’t volunteered the information, no one else would ever ask it of her, and the knowledge of what had transpired on New Caribbean would forever remain buried in her memories.

Special Agent McBrian turned her head to look at him. Her long red hair fell over her shoulder as she did so.

“The colony has been destroyed, Colonel Reynolds,” she replied softly. “There is nothing left for you there. And the Sunguard has lost Special Agent Myan Lami.”

He nodded politely. It didn’t really matter that he wanted to continue his line of questioning. If the Special Agent didn’t wish to tell him, there was nothing more he could do to force the issue. If the events at the colony had to be kept secret by her, it was for a good reason. And besides, the none-too-subtle elbow he felt in his side made it clear that General Talerk wouldn’t tolerate any further insubordination from him in this regard anyway.

Frustrated by his own inability to question the Special Agent, he eventually decided to let the issue go—for now. While it grated on him that he would get no answers from her, he was honest enough to admit he wasn’t being completely fair. Had she been an admiral sitting in that same chair, wearing an admiral’s white uniform and golden medals, he wouldn’t even have thought to question her orders. But here she was, seemingly just a young girl wearing a simple jumpsuit without even the slightest hint of decorations or rank to elevate her importance, and he instinctively fell into the trap of feeling he was her superior, when in reality it was, in every way imaginable, the other way around. She would be the one giving orders to the admirals.

Had she been a biological agent, the level of trust the Terran Federation had placed in her—and in her brothers and sisters—would have been unwise, to say the least. But with their genetic loyalty, it was another matter entirely. For six hundred years, that trust had been validated time and again as the Special Agents went about their business as the vanguard of humanity. Not once during those centuries had they strayed from their path, and never had Solar Command had any reason to regret the authority it had vested in its biotic creations. To be honest, Colonel Reynolds had to admit that not giving them free rein would have been the immoral choice—not to mention an immense waste of resources.

And yet…

He didn’t trust the woman.

“You are dismissed,” Special Agent McBrian told them.

He began to rise from his chair, but the gray-clad woman motioned with her hand for him to sit down again.

She smiled at him. “I would appreciate it if you could stay, Colonel Reynolds.”

General Talerk, together with the support personnel, stood and left the room, leaving the two of them alone. Suddenly, the large space of the conference room seemed to constrict his breath. He wasn’t claustrophobic, not in the slightest, but in the presence of the Special Agent, even the most open of spaces felt small and restrictive. She was, for lack of a better word, overwhelming.

“Here,” she said as she stretched out her hand to take his coffee mug. “Let me get you a refill.”

She stood and walked to the corner table. As she poured a second serving of the fragrant black liquid into his cup, she looked back at him over her shoulder.

“You don’t approve of my handling of the situation, Colonel.”

It was a statement of fact, not a question. Yet his only instinct was to deny it. Given her age, she would have been manufactured without telepathy, so she wouldn’t be able to sense if he lied to her.

“No, ma’am,” he replied. “That’s not it at all. You have my full support.”

She returned with his coffee to the conference table and handed him the mug before sitting down in her chair again. When she looked him in the eyes, he felt as transparent as a sheet of glass. She knew.

Of course, he thought, you didn’t need to be telepathic to spot a lie. People had been able to do that for as long as there had been liars. If you knew the signs, anyone could learn to see when someone wasn’t telling the truth. And Special Agent McBrian had half a millennium of experience to lean on in that regard.

“I want you to drop this,” she told him. “Do not investigate the Eta Boötis incident any further.”

Had he been a civilian, such a request would, of course, have made him even more likely to keep looking into the matter. But he was a Sunguard officer and was expected to follow orders. And the word of a Special Agent wasn’t just an order. She had the authority to create new laws at her discretion, and disobeying her request would literally be a crime. Doing so wouldn’t just get him court-martialed. If he wasn’t careful, he could end up in a work camp on Mercury for treason against the Terran Federation.

“Yes, ma’am,” he lied without so much as a hint of remorse. “This is the last you’ll hear of it.”

Author's Note

The story you're reading is one of many set in the Lords of the Stars universe I've been creating over the past 30 years, where familiar characters and places reappear, and new favorites await discovery. Check out my profile to explore more stories from this universe.

While Guardian of the Wolf is entirely standalone and can be read without any prior knowledge, I think you’ll particularly enjoy Soldiers of Heart and Steel and Choices of Steel, both which are prequels to this story, as well as Conscience of Steel and From My Point of View, which are sequels.

Visit the official Lords of the Stars blog for more information about this hard sci-fi universe: https://lordsofthestars.wordpress.com

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