The Lost Stars: Shattered Spear Read Free

Syndicate’s power and given places like Midway their chances at freedom. “Black Jack is . . . for the people.”
    The transport’s captain grimaced. “The universe seems to be full of impossible things these days. Could the enigmas have used something other than jump space?”
    Kontos paused before answering, upset that the possibility had not occurred to him. “We know of only two ways to travel between stars in less than decades. That doesn’t mean another one could not exist. But what we saw of this enigma ship matched the behavior of something using jump space.”
    “How could a jump point be there? Jump points are created because the gravity wells of stars are huge enough to stretch space itself far enough to create thin spots which we can use to enter or leave jump space. Jump points stay in the same spots relative to the stars that created them. They don’t come and go.”
    “Perhaps the enigma ship used a different kind of jump point,” Kontos speculated. “Or perhaps the enigmas have discovered a new way to mess with our sensors, and there was no ship there.”
    “What should we do?”
    “We’ll investigate both possibilities as well as we can, though neither your ship nor mine has exotic scientific instruments that might be able to see something we cannot already see. Let’s get this off-load done as quickly as possible once we reach the planet so we can return to Midway. I want to report this.”
    He didn’t know what the inexplicable appearance of the enigma warship at Iwa meant, but it could not mean anything good. Neither would the chance that the enigmas had discovered a new way to fool the sensors of human ships. The enigmas had refused to negotiate or even openly disclose their existence for decades, remaining invisible to Syndicate sensors as they seized human-occupied star systems and destroyed human spacecraft without warning. The secret of their invisibility had been solved by Black Jack, but the enigmas had nonetheless continued their attacks. If they could now directly jump to human-occupied star systems other than Midway, it would present a serious threat.
    President Iceni had to be told. She would know what to do.
    *   *   *
    THE largest city on the planet known as Midway in the star system that humanity had named Midway had been built to Syndicate standards. Curves were inefficient, so straight lines marked the street grid, and straight lines characterized the buildings that lined those streets. Those designs also meant straight lines of sight in all directions, which helped out another standard feature of Syndicate cities: surveillance systems intended to provide continuous coverage of every square centimeter. Even though the Syndicate Internal Security Service agents (nicknamed “snakes” by the citizens) had been eliminated during the rebellion by President Iceni and General Drakon, the surveillance systems remained, though other watchers now made use of them.
    But other standard aspects of the Syndicate were corruption,shoddy work wherever undermotivated workers could get away with it, and shoddy construction wherever corporations could get away with it. Between bribes, badly placed surveillance devices, and poor quality in much of the surveillance gear, the system intended to see everything in fact had cracks in its picture of the city. And in those cracks, crime could still operate, vice could find its outlets, and those who did not want to be seen could remain invisible. The president and the general might be slowly changing how things had been done under the Syndicate, but the nature of the underbelly of human cities had not changed in thousands of years and would not change here anytime soon.
    Colonel Bran Malin cautiously eased his way down a short alley, placing each step carefully to avoid noise. A security light intended to illuminate the alley had never worked, but the low-light “cat’s-eye” contact lenses Malin was using provided a decent view of the