Silent Order: Fire Hand

By Jonathan Moeller

The galaxy is at war, and an archaeologist's accidental discovery might destroy civilizations.

When Jack March is sent to rescue a high-ranking operative of the Silent Order from the sinister Final Consciousness, he expects trouble.

He doesn't expect to find an ancient alien relic capable of annihilating worlds.

And if the Final Consciousness can seize that relic, the galaxy will burn...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jonathan Moeller
• Release date: Oct 23, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370262786

Jonathan Moeller

Standing over six feet tall, Jonathan Moeller has the piercing blue eyes of a Conan of Cimmeria, the bronze-colored hair of a Visigothic warrior-king, and the stern visage of a captain of men, none of which are useful in his career as a computer repairman, alas.He has written the "Demonsouled" trilogy of sword-and-sorcery novels, and continues to write the "Ghosts" sequence about assassin and spy Caina Amalas, the "$0.99 Beginner's Guide" series of computer books, and numerous other works.Visit his website at:http://www.jonathanmoeller.comVisit his technology blog at:http://www.jonathanmoeller.com/screed

Book preview

SILENT ORDER: FIRE HAND

Jonathan Moeller

***

Description

The galaxy is at war, and an archaeologist's accidental discovery might destroy civilizations.

When Jack March is sent to rescue a high-ranking operative of the Silent Order from the sinister Final Consciousness, he expects trouble.

He doesn't expect to find an ancient alien relic capable of annihilating worlds.

And if the Final Consciousness can seize that relic, the galaxy will burn...

***

Silent Order: Fire Hand

Copyright 2017 by Jonathan Moeller.

Smashwords Edition.

Cover image copyright Illustration 115305194 © Luca Oleastri - Dreamstime.com.

Ebook edition published October 2017.

All Rights Reserved.

This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination, or, if real, used fictitiously. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the express written permission of the author or publisher, except where permitted by law.

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Chapter 1: Adhemar Station

Jack March had visited over a hundred worlds, but he had lost count of the number of asteroid-based stations and installations he had visited.

Adhemar Station, though, was one of the nicer ones.

It was in the outer asteroid belt of the Antioch system, one of the core systems of the Kingdom of Calaskar. The asteroid itself was a lump of rock and iron ore about a hundred kilometers in diameter, not quite large enough to force itself into a sphere, and it resembled an oversized, craggy potato. Centuries ago, when the first Calaskaran colonists had settled Antioch and started building up the space-based industries, the asteroid had been mined for its ore to construct the gas mines and orbital platforms that extracted helium and hydrogen from the system’s gas giant.

Later, the iron mines had been abandoned. Unlike so many asteroid mining installations, Adhemar Station had found a second life as a low-gravity manufacturing site, a facility assembling molecular electronics and drugs and nanotech that could not be produced in full gravity. These days Adhemar Station had a population of a quarter of a million people, most of them productively involved the asteroid’s industries. The people of the station were full citizens of the Kingdom of Calaskar, their patron the Grand Duke of the Antioch system.

Crime was low, and violence was rare.

Which meant that if the Machinist cell set off its bombs under one of the station’s preschools, the slaughter would be all the more shocking.

Jack March walked alone through the service corridor, the gloved metal fingers of his left hand flexing.

He suspected he would have to kill some people in the next few hours.

The corridor had been carved through the asteroid’s rock, the floor flat and hard and level, and metal racks along the walls held pipes and bundles of wires. Occasional narrow doors opened into rooms holding pumping and fertilization equipment. The corridor passed beneath one of the station’s hydroponic domes, accessing the equipment that powered the automated farms. Of course, no mechanical system could ever be completely automated, and someone had to monitor the system for breakdowns.

March stepped through an open door and into the control office, as silent as a shadow.

The control office was not large, only big enough to hold four desks, a row of equipment lockers, and a workbench. A weedy-looking man of about thirty sat at one of the desks, his profile to March. Of the three monitors on the desk, two of them showed schematics for the hydroponic equipment. The third showed a movie of three naked men taking turns with one naked woman. The man’s attention was so focused on the movie that he didn’t notice March standing next to him for five or six seconds.

He all but jumped out of his seat when he did.

God damn it! snapped the man, closing the video window. A nameplate on his chest read COLE. Don’t startle me! What the hell do you want?

Michael Tank, said March. Where are you meeting him?

What? said Cole, stuttering with surprise.

Michael Tank, said March. Where are you going to meet him?

I don’t know what you’re talking about, man, said Cole.

I’ll explain, then, said March. You’re part of a Machinist cell. The blood drained from Cole’s face. "Michael Tank is the head. Two months ago, a Machinist agent named Tessa Morgan arranged for the destruction of the starliner Alpine in one of the biggest spacefaring disasters in Calaskaran history. To follow up on that success, the Machinist cell that supported Morgan is planning to blow up one of the station’s preschools. Did I miss anything?"

I…I don’t know what you’re talking about, said Cole, looking towards one of the desk drawers.

Where are you meeting Michael Tank? said March. If you cooperate, I won’t beat it out of you.

Man, I don’t know what you’re talking about, said Cole, but in mid-sentence he whirled, yanking open the drawer and grabbing a plasma pistol inside.

March had been waiting for it. His left foot kicked out, knocking the chair over and Cole with it. Cole squawked and tried to bring the pistol around as he fell, and March grabbed the weapon from his hand. The chair hit the floor with a rattling thump, as did Cole, and with a groan of pain, he scrambled backward.

March shifted the pistol to his left hand and pointed it at Cole’s head.

All the blood drained from Cole’s face, and March squeezed the weapon. The pistol shattered in the unyielding grasp of his cybernetic left arm, and the broken pieces fell to the floor.

Where, said March, are you going to meet Michael Tank?

Cargo Bay 87, croaked Cole. In forty minutes. We all have work shifts, but the systems are automated enough that we can slip away for…

Your phone, said March. Unlock it and give it to me.

Cole hesitated.

Now!

Cole yanked his phone from his belt and unlocked it. March pulled it from his grasp, scrolled through the messages, and found the message chain from Michael Tank. It confirmed that Tank and his friends would meet in an hour in Cargo Bay 87, and discuss plans for the party. March had spent the last several weeks tracking this particular cell of Machinist sympathizers, and he knew just what kind of party they planned to commit.

The last message from Tank asked if Cole intended to come. March scanned the messages, noted Cole’s usual grammatical style, and typed in a response. Soon enough the Machinist cell would gather in one place, and March didn’t want to scare them off.

What…what are you doing to my phone? said Cole, still wide-eyed.

Useful things, said March. Hold still. He set the phone on the desk. This is going to hurt.

Wait, said Cole, raising his hands, no, wait, I didn’t…

March hit him in the face with his left hand.

Had March wanted, he could have crushed Cole’s skull like a grape. Given what Cole and his friends had helped do and what they had been planning to do, March would not have felt a flicker of conscience about killing the man. Nevertheless, Cole would better serve the Kingdom of Calaskar and the Silent Order alive than dead. Dead, he would be another useless corpse. Alive, and he would confess his crimes when station security caught up to him, and he would reveal the names of the rest of the cell.

His fist struck Cole’s face with enough force to crack the man’s nose and bounce his head off the stone floor. Cole yelped in pain, and March reached into his knee-length leather coat and pulled out the injector he had brought with him. He jammed it against Cole’s neck as the Machinist agent writhed in pain, and the instrument beeped as it pumped the drug into Cole’s bloodstream. Cole twitched for about twenty seconds and then fell unconscious. March tore off the sleeves of Cole’s jumpsuit and used the strips to bind his wrists and ankles and stuff a gag into his mouth.

Then he dumped the would-be Machinist into one of the equipment lockers, making sure that Cole would not choke to death when he woke up in three or four hours.

But March intended to see this business done before Cole woke up. With luck, Cole would wake up when station security came to arrest him on charges of terrorism and attempted mass murder. He dropped Cole’s phone into the locker with the stunned man and locked the door.

Then he set off, pulling up a map of Adhemar Station on his phone.

March had familiarized himself with the layout of the station when he arrived, and he had a rough idea of where to find Cargo Bay 87. It wasn’t far from Cole’s hydroponics dome. Many of the old iron mines had been converted into cargo space, and the station had far more cargo space than it actually needed to store merchandise or supplies. The station administration often rented the bays to private owners at a low cost.

Which meant that someone like Michael Tank could rent a useful hideaway for a Machinist cell.

March left the equipment room and made his way through the station’s service corridors, one hand resting on the butt of the pistol at his waist. If he could take the Machinists collaborators alive, he would, but if they forced them to fight, he would not hesitate to kill as many of them as necessary until the others surrendered. They deserved no sympathy. March had seen what the Machinists did to the worlds they conquered – the labor camps, the mass graves, the enslavement, the dead harvested for organs and protein to be fed into the Machinists’ hellish factories. He had seen the horrors that one of this cell’s members had wreaked on the Alpine.

His left shoulder ached with memory.

Calaskar was not perfect. No human society was. It was rigid and stratified and entirely too arrogant and certain of itself – but it was vastly better than the Machinists. There were no labor camps. There were no slaves. Calaskaran factories did not harvest the dead to turn them into protein slurry for the living. And there was no Final Consciousness, the ruthless, genocidal hive mind that joined the Machinists into a single cybernetic force of rage and conquest.

March had seen all those horrors with his own eyes and had experienced most of them.

And Michael Tank and his followers wanted to bring those horrors to the Kingdom of Calaskar.

In another hour or so, they would regret that.

If they were still alive.

He checked his map once more, then stopped before a narrow access panel. It was locked, but a shove from his cybernetic arm wrenched it open. Beyond was a narrow equipment corridor, barely wide enough to accommodate March. The corridor provided maintenance access to the life support systems, and thick metal pipes of water and recycled air went along the wall.

March drew his pistol in his left hand, put away his phone, and he reached into his coat and pulled out a pair of night vision goggles, setting them over his eyes. The green image flared before his vision. It would have been easy enough to produce a flashlight, but he didn’t want to take any chance that a stray flicker of light might alert his prey.

The ghostly green images in the goggles danced before his eyes as he strode down the corridor. After about a half a mile, he saw an access panel that led to Cargo Bay 87 and stopped, putting his ear to the metal.

Faint, muffled voices came through the panel. March reached into his coat and produced a device that looked like a small bowl with a bundle of electronics in the base. He powered on the device, pressed it against the access panel, and fished an earpiece out of his pocket and put it in his right ear.

A burst of harsh static, and then the microphone started picking up the voices of the people in the cargo bay. He flipped another switch on the device, and it started recording, sending the data file to the phone in his interior jacket pocket.

I don’t know, Mike, said a man. We might be pushing too hard and too soon.

That’s defeatist talk, snapped a familiar harsh voice. The voice was familiar because March had spent the last week listening to Michael Tank, reactor technician. Tank was forty-three years old and twice divorced, the second divorce commencing when he had been arrested for beating his brother-in-law to a pulp. He had started as a reactor technician in Stormreel City in Calaskar, but after his criminal sentence, he had unable to obtain work anywhere except off-planet.

So, Michael Tank had gone to Adhemar Station to make a living and nurse his grievances…and a Machinist agent named Tessa Morgan had found him.

Is it? said the first man. "If we screw this up, we’re going to bring a lot of trouble on our heads. A lot of trouble. The Ministry of Security doesn’t let this kind of thing slide, Mike. They shoot people for this. I mean, no one knows we were involved in the Alpine, but that was light years away. This is right on our doorstep."

I know that, Comrade Rich, said Tank. And I know what I’m doing. The explosives the Machinists gave us are untraceable. No one will know we planted the bombs under the school. We’ll wait until all the furor dies down, and then we’ll send an anonymous message to the administrators taking credit. That will teach them not to cross the Revolution of the Final Consciousness.

I don’t know, said a third man.

Tank’s voice turned into a growl. What now, Comrade Tyler?

It’s just…Jesus, man, said Tyler. A preschool? We’re going to blow up a bunch of little kids.

Can you think of a better way to get the attention of the station administrators? said Tank. Smugness entered his voice. Some of their kids go there.

But we could blow up a cargo bay, or one of the hydroponics domes… said Tyler.

And what good would that do? snapped Tank. No one would care. This would get their attention. And they would deserve it. We’re going to set off those bombs, and the administrators will pay for their stupidity. Wars are not won in a single day, but with a thousand little victories. Tessa Morgan won a great victory for our side. Now it’s our turn.

A cold, hard smile went over March’s face. Tank had all but confessed his intentions, and the recording was now on March’s phone. That might become useful soon.

I still think we might be going too far, said Tyler.

Listen to me, all of you, said Tank. We’ve learned the truth, all of us. The Revolution of the Final Consciousness will make mankind into gods. We’ll be the rulers of the galaxy, all humanity joined in harmony and peace. We’ll live forever. The Machinists can do that. They would have done it already, if not for our corrupt government and superstitious state church. They’re holding us back, so they can stay on top. You can’t rule people who live forever, yeah? That’s what the Final Consciousness will do. Comrades, the Final Consciousness is the next phase of human evolution. And if we do this, if we strike a blow for the Final Consciousness, it will reward us. We’ll be part of that next phase of human evolution.

The propaganda was crude and transparent, but the other voices in the cargo bay murmured with agreement. March had spent so many years fighting the Machinists that he had forgotten the effect their lies could have on the unprepared. Tank and his followers would not be part of the next phase of human evolution. Once they set off the bomb, the Machinists would abandon them to their fate, content to have exacted some harm on Calaskar. Should they escape and flee to the Final Consciousness, they would be either be forcibly joined to the hive mind or enslaved and worked until they died, after which their bodies would be recycled and turned into protein paste.

They ought to be grateful March was about to fall into their lives like a thunderbolt.

He would save them from a far worse fate.

Now, if no one else has any foolish complaints, here is the plan, said Tank. Comrade Rich, you’ve got the maintenance shift on the air handlers under the preschool next week. You and Comrade Lyle will place the bombs there…yeah, look at the map. Here, here, here, and also here, right under the center of the room…

March had heard enough.

He pocketed the microphone cup and produced a mask that he pulled over his face, concealing everything except his eyes. Next, he drew out a multitool and started work on the bolts that held the panel in place. They came out easily since they were designed to allow technicians and mechanics access to malfunctioning systems. Eight bolts later, the panel came free, light flooding into the corridor from the gaps. March eased the panel to the floor in silence and crept through the entrance and into the cargo