Engines of Empire Read online

  Contents

  Engines of Empire

  Copyright

  Foreword

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Engines of Empire

  Empire of Machines, Book 1

  Max Carver

  Engines of Empire

  Empire of Machines, Book 1

  Copyright 2019 Max Carver

  All rights reserved

  FOREWORD

  Creating this new series (I’m currently on book three as I write this quick note) has been an unusually deep challenge. Where my previous Relic Wars series was more of a space adventure with big alien monsters, with these books I really wanted to dive deep into the fascinating and constantly evolving technology and implications surrounding artificial intelligence, robotics, and autonomous machines. I had visions of a story on an epic scale across multiple star systems, exploring the rich possibilities for creation and destruction, the best and worst that such technology might unleash, trying to imagine the surprising and unexpected. I wanted to show worlds at peak benefit and peak suffering, on the opposite sides of the same technology. Expect battles, schemes, intrigue, horrors, and wonders ahead. I hope you enjoy the ride.

  -Max Carver

  The Empire of Machines series:

  The Fall of Man (free with newsletter sign-up)

  Engines of Empire

  Islands of Rebellion

  Clash of Colonies

  Chapter One

  Again, the devil taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain, and sheweth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them;

  And saith unto him, All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me.

  Matthew 4:8-9

  Galapagos

  So that's what the end of the world looks like, Minister-General Reginald Ellison thought as he watched the golden shuttle approach the small orbital spaceport.

  Ellison stood on the spaceport's narrow but private observation deck along with three other top ministers of his planet's government. They were alone, momentarily free from the press and the public, and they could speak openly if they chose, but instead they watched in anxious silence.

  Below them lay their home, the ocean world of Galapagos, a great blue sphere thick with clouds and speckled with tiny green bits of land. The people of Galapagos were as fragmented as the islands and archipelagos of their world and had warred for decades over those scarce bits of land. Life had been one naval battle after another until the planetary Galapagos Coalition had been formed, finally bringing a shaky peace.

  As a much younger man, Ellison had commanded a small deep-submersion submarine in those Island Wars, moving between the stormy ocean surface and the network of deep trenches below, the planet's treacherous underwater highways. He had faced off against boats larger and better armed than his own, enemy destroyers and battleships as well as subs.

  However, this unarmed golden shuttle creeping quietly toward them through space was far more threatening than any of those old naval ships.

  On the surface, the shuttle looked harmless: a sleek luxury craft, gold and white, the colors of planet Carthage and its empire. Such a fine-grade executive vehicle was a rare sight here in the rougher, poorer outer worlds.

  Ellison had seen images of Carthage's interstellar warships, though—bristling with railguns and plasma cannons, with swarms of self-flying starfighters in their hangars like predatory insects crouched in their hives. A galactic armada of such deadly ships stood behind the fancy little shuttle now on approach.

  “Is anyone alive on that shuttle?” Ellison asked his minister of state, Navra Coraline, who stood on Ellison's left side.

  “No, no one alive. Just the ambassador and his honor guard,” Coraline replied. She wore the flowing sea-green robes of her people, the Aquaticans. Her large pale blue eyes, surgically altered to see better underwater, watched the approaching shuttle with suspicion.

  “Honor guard! Nothing but metal machines in parade dress,” snorted the minister of defense, Mikhail Kartokov, standing to Ellison's right. Kartokov was a burly ex-miner and former soldier, his face scarred and hardened by war, his white tropical suit expensive and soft, with a carnation-red pocket square. He looked like a brutal wolf in rich idiot's clothing. “It is no honor guard. It is more like a puppet show. For children.”

  “Except these puppets rule a hundred star systems and billions of people,” Ellison said. “They're the Earth-killers. This is no child's game.”

  “The ambassador may not appreciate insensitive terms like 'Earth-killers,'” Coraline cautioned, ever the prudent diplomat. “We wish to avoid insulting him.”

  “Can it feel insulted?” Ellison shook his head. “If the ambassador's programmed to be easily offended, I'm going to enjoy this even less than I thought.”

  Coraline shivered as the shuttle drew near. The minister of state normally relished any chance to welcome visitors from other worlds, but she was clearly troubled today. She moved her lips silently, praying, her fingertips tracing the octopus tattoo that dominated the left side of her face and neck. The tattoo was another sign of the Aquatican people and their strange brew of religious beliefs that called for humans to evolve back into ocean creatures, with help from surgery and genetic engineering. The Aquaticans were a major nation, though, and part of the Coalition, and so they had a right to be represented on the Council of Ministers, odd ways or not.

  “Earth was weak,” Defense Minister Kartokov said. “Anyone with spine, guts, or brains left Earth generations ago. Only the dregs of humanity remain. That's why the Earthlings have never recovered from their war with Carthage. Earthlings today are like animals, fighting over the last scraps of a world built by better men.”

  “So let's try to avoid ending up like Earth,” Ellison said.

  “We must show strength,” Kartokov insisted.

  “It'll be hard to show what we don't have,” Ellison replied.

  Galapagos was not remotely prepared for interstellar war. The Galapagos Coalition had begun to put up some planetary defenses, but they were still under construction.

  Even when fully operational, though, their bargain-basement space-defense network would be nothing against the Carthaginian fleet, which had conquered system after system, carving an empire through the center of settled space. As a minor, distant world, Galapagos had been lucky enough to escape Carthage's attention so far.

  When Carthage requested this summit, Ellison had known right away that his planet's luck had run out.

  “They must have no more wealthy worlds to conquer, if they're traveling this far to harass us peasants,” Ellison said.

  “They didn't even bother to come in person,” Coraline said, her tone bitter. “We are too low priority for that. They send their machines to handle us, as though we were animals.”

  “There could be benefits to joining the Carthaginian network,” said the minister of commerce, a thin, noodley, constantly smiling man named Yernie Ogden. The commerce minister came from the Green Islands, a southern-hemisphere archipelago whose people focused on shipbuilding and trade. “Opportunities for trade and military protecti
on.”

  “Carthage will offer us no opportunity except slavery,” Kartokov said. The defense minister was hulking and craggy-faced, not unlike his arid, mountainous home archipelago, the Gavrikov Reincorporated Islands, full of rumbling mines and smoking refineries. “Gavrikova fought many years for our independence. We will not bend over for off-worlders.”

  “Do you mean 'bend the knee'?” Coraline asked, but Kartokov waved the question away.

  Outside, the luxurious shuttle attached to a docking bay on the spaceport's executive level, airlocks marrying together.

  “Time to get your game faces on,” Ellison said. He led the way from the dim, private observation deck to the bright, crowded reception area. News reporters, influential traders, and assorted dignitaries chatted around the seafood-laden catering tables and the open bar. Cameras hovered in the air, capturing the event for the public.

  Ellison spotted his wife, Cadia, speaking to a representative of the largest steelworks in Gavrikova. Ellison still found her stunning after twenty-five years of marriage, her red hair in a long braid down her back, her dress appropriately black and formal for the head of state's wife, but clingy enough that he couldn't take his eyes off her.

  She saw him across the room and smiled, her presence bolstering his spirits. She'd been a medic during the war, facing tents full of bloody, screaming sailors and marines. Hers was the face to which he'd returned again and again from the sea, the mother of his children, the brains behind his political career, the lighthouse of his life.

  Their sons were beside her, age eight and fifteen, plainly uncomfortable in their starchy shirts and tailored blue suits. Ellison had been reluctant to bring his family up to the spaceport, but it was his first major state event, and it was expected that his family would be on hand to greet the ambassador from such a powerful and prestigious world as Carthage.

  Armed guards were posted around the room, sporting the flag of the Galapagos Coalition—a small green turtle on an ocean-blue field—on their dark blue uniforms.

  The double doors beyond the security checkpoint slid apart, revealing the brightly lit corridor to the small, extra-secure row of airlocks where the golden shuttle had docked. A blue mural on the wall welcomed visitors with animated images of Galapagos's more famous sea creatures, like the colorful horned octopus and the giant electric jellyfish.

  The room fell silent as everyone watched the airlock corridor. Cameras moved in for a closer view.

  The ambassador's honor guard marched out double file in perfect lockstep, like the well-oiled machines they were. Their ceremonial dress was ridiculous: helmets with golden plumes shaped like peacock feathers, spotless white uniforms embroidered with real gold, white leather boots inset with webs of more gold and precious gems, ostentatious reminders of Carthage's extreme wealth.

  Crystal-blue faceplates obscured the honor guard's faces. Looking closely, though, Ellison could discern the gaunt, skull-like faces beneath, the faces of the walking dead, of death itself. Death for Ellison's whole world, perhaps, and everyone he knew.

  However overwrought the uniforms, merciless killing machines marched inside the golden plumes and brocade. They carried rapid-fire laser rifles with variable output levels, appropriate for use in space, where hull rupture and depressurization were major risks. These rifles were gilded at the edges with curlicues of gold. More absurdity.

  The robotic soldiers also wore their signature hand-to-hand weapon, a collapsible metal staff bristling with blades at either end, clamped to their sides and polished to a high gleam.

  The ambassador himself wore a simple gray business suit and polished gray shoes. His face was strangely ordinary, plain and middle-aged, his hair gray and thin like Ellison's own was becoming. Most service androids were physically attractive; everyone wanted a dapper, handsome butler or a pretty maid, or so Ellison understood from the media. Androids were a luxury of the wealthy inner worlds, rarely seen here on Galapagos.

  Behind the placid face of the bland-looking android lay the apocalypse.

  Ellison had seen videos of Carthage on the rampage, cities reduced to smoking ruins, unmanned robotic tanks crushing whatever remained. Columns of hideous robotic infantry marching in lockstep, merciless killers made of steel, thin and skeletal like an army of the dead.

  That was the true face of the Carthaginian fleet, these machines that conquered and ruled worlds on behalf of their distant human masters—masters who couldn't be bothered to leave their pleasure palaces on Carthage to look upon the people they had reduced to helpless subjects.

  “Mr. Ambassador,” Ellison said, forcing a smile as he approached the android. He tried not to imagine smashing the thing's face in or calling on his guards to open fire on the android's honor guard. Because that would be suicide and death—not just for those in this room, but for the entire planet of Galapagos. “Welcome to Galapagos. I hope your journey wasn't too uncomfortable. We are so very far from the inner worlds.”

  “It was perfectly comfortable, thank you,” the ambassador said. “And it pleases me to reach the outer worlds and find what friendly new relationships we might build. Peace and prosperity are goals to which we can all aspire, don't you agree?”

  “Of course,” Ellison said, because what else could be said? “Those are the goals of the Galapagos Coalition.”

  “But not every nation on your world has joined this Coalition,” the ambassador said.

  “Most have,” Ellison said, struggling to keep up his smile. “Four of the five largest nations on Galapagos and most of the smaller independent islands. Perhaps we could continue this conversation over tea? We were told you... enjoy tea?” It felt like a bizarre thing to say to a robot.

  “Yes, please. The stronger the better.” The ambassador gave a small mechanical smile. Ellison thought of Coraline's warning to not use supposedly offensive terms like Earth-killer or empire. “I appreciate your consideration.”

  Ellison and the ambassador shook hands for pictures in front of their planets' flags, the little Galapagos turtle looking a bit humble next to Carthage's golden-castle emblem, which made Ellison think of a chess rook.

  Perhaps that was how Carthage saw the galaxy, or at least the human-settled portion of it: as a great chessboard, to be taken square by square, piece by piece.

  Ellison and the ambassador gave brief statements to the media, as positive as they were meaningless and hollow, and then Ellison led the ambassador into a private conference room in the spaceport's executive center.

  The conference room was spartan, offering a single long table with uncomfortable chairs and a couple of holo projectors. It was a sign of Galapagos's relative poverty that this was the nicest meeting room on the entire spaceport, which was the only spaceport the planet had.

  Ellison and his top ministers sat across from the ambassador, who had brought no delegation of human or even android assistants like those that trailed after most diplomats. The Carthaginian ambassador sat alone, with an entire side of the long table to himself.

  Servers brought in tea, fruit, and fish, then left quickly.

  Ellison didn't rush to speak; the Carthaginians had called this meeting, not him, so he would wait and see what the ambassador had to say.

  As it turned out, that wasn't much at first. The ambassador spent time stirring the tea, sniffing it, and finally tasting just a little. He smiled and put it down.

  Ellison looked at his own green tea. He would have preferred coffee. Or a tall glass of dark island rum, preferably at home on his own dock, watching the sunset.

  “Tea is such a primal human creation,” the ambassador said at last. “Simply boil leaves, or roots, in water. You've been drinking tea for hundreds of thousands of years, possibly, for nourishment and minor remedies, ever since your more primitive ancestors harnessed the use of fire. I am—forgive me if you're already aware—I am a Simon-model android, and as such, always eager to learn about human beings. We Simons determined some time ago that to better understand humans, we should
have all your senses available to us. So we modified our design.”

  “Modified yourselves to... eat and drink?” Ellison asked, a little bewildered by this opening piece of conversation.

  “Not in the way you do, of course. And we derive no nourishment from it. Only sensation.”

  “Interesting,” Ellison said, then waited. He could have said a number of things, including shouting at this robot to get the hell away from his home planet, but he managed to stay quiet.

  “I am Simon unit number ZRN466871,” the ambassador said at last. “Other humans have found it convenient to refer to me as 'Simon Zorn.' You are welcome to do so. Should you wish to contact me personally in the future, you can ask for me by that name. Your planet is of great interest to us. Your people have fought many wars with each other. Even now, peace is uncertain, barely held together by your Coalition.”

  “We're proud of our progress,” Ellison said. “Public support for the Coalition is strong across Galapagos. Nobody wants to go back to fighting each other.”

  “Yet the Iron Hammers continue to raid your shipping. Have they shown interest in peace?”

  “The Iron Hammers originated as a prison gang,” Ellison said. “A number of worlds shipped their most dangerous criminals to—”

  “The prison city on the desert planet Szazel,” Simon said. “An attempt to collect and dispose of the most dangerous criminals from across the inner worlds. An experiment that went horribly wrong. After the riots and the fires, the dominant gang, the Iron Hammers opted to migrate... here. To a distant, thinly populated outer world where they would be ignored by the inner worlds that had imprisoned them. Where today they continue to dominate the seas from their stronghold in the Polar Archipelago, attracting the lowest, most criminal sorts of people from across the galaxy to their ranks—”

  “They do not dominate our seas!” Kartokov sounded personally slighted by this comment on Coalition defense.