Read Online Ultima by Stephen Baxter - Free Book Online

“Is it the Brikanti?”
    Jiang said, “They communicate by crude radio. I would be surprised if they could hack into our sophisticated information systems to do this.”
    And Beth turned to look at Earthshine. While the rest of the bridge shut down—even the main lights were flickering now—he seemed to be glowing, oddly, from within, as if transfigured. A golden light.
    â€œYou,” she said. “It’s not the Brikanti doing this—this isn’t part of their attack.
It’s you
, Earthshine.”
    McGregor turned on him. “What the hell are you doing to my ship, you old monster?”
    Earthshine stood up from his couch, his virtual body passing through the harness. “Saving you all. General, the only asset we have in this reality is the knowledge we bring from—where we came from. I have taken that knowledge into myself, for safekeeping. Even the ship’s physical systems are being destroyed, now they are drained of data. The Brikanti have captured a useless hulk. I will use the knowledge I have stored in myself to bargain for our lives.”
    McGregor roared, “And who the hell put you in charge?”
    â€œI just did. And now, I think—”
    The door slid open.
    A party of figures floated into the bridge without ceremony, in clunky pressure suits of what looked like leather and steel ribbing, each bearing a stylized rifle with bayonet fixed. They all had their faceplates open, and they stared around at what was evidently a very unfamiliar environment. At a quiet word from a central figure, they spread out quickly into the bridge, one standing over each crew or passenger.
    Beth found herself facing a short, squat, heavily built man; she had to raise her hand to shield her eyes from a flashlight attached to his weapon that he shone in her face.
    â€œNobody resist,” McGregor murmured. “We’re in their hands now.”
    The leader of the invading party lowered her rifle—she was a woman, pale complexion, perhaps fortyish—and she made straight for Lex McGregor, the obvious command figure. She spoke, softly but firmly, and Beth heard a simultaneous translation come from a speaker on a console.
    â€œMy name is Kerys. I command the vessel
Ukelwydd
—”
    â€œI know who you are.” Earthshine stepped toward her.
    The warriors tried to block his way and waved their weapons at him, but the golden figure simply walked
through
them. A couple of men broke away, evidently panicked by this eerie display.
    The commander, however, stood her ground.
    â€œ
Trierarchus
Kerys, my name is Earthshine. And we need to talk.”

8
    AD 2222; AUC 2975
    It took a month after Stef and Yuri emerged from the Hatch before the
Malleus Jesu
was ready to depart from the double-star system of Romulus and Remus for Earth—or Terra, as the Romans and Brikanti called it. The setting up of the permanent
colonia
continued apace, even as ferry craft blasted up to the orbiting starship carrying away personnel, equipment and supplies for the return journey. Stef was bemused to observe that the ferries themselves were driven by small clusters of kernels—“vulcans” as the Romans called the energetic wormhole-like anomalies—even in the atmosphere of an inhabited planet, like this one. No such craft had ever been allowed anywhere near the surface of the Earth,
her
Earth, not before the final war of 2213 anyhow.
    Early one morning, with six days left to departure, Stef Kalinski was approached by a Brikanti who introduced herself only as Eilidh. Tall and spare, Eilidh was dressed much as
trierarchus
Movena was in a hooded woollen poncho, trousers, boots. But unlike Movena, Eilidh wore a heavy belt as the Romans wore, with a gaudy brass buckle and loops for weapons, though empty.
    Stef, as had become her habit, had been spending her free time at the Hatch site with her slate, trying ineffectually to learn a little more of the physics of the