The Nuln Chronicle

I have been asked to write a story for Traveller.

Here it is and I am rather proud of it.

If you enjoy it please let me know. If you want more let me know.

The Bard

 

A Tale From Traveller
An Introduction

The depths of space are vast, so incomprehensible that it is amazing Humanity has managed to spread so far. The empire has grown and exploded and alien races have been discovered we have a peace of sorts in the core systems and the only discord is the rise of people with minds of power. Not in the political sense but in the ability to use the mind physically - they call themselves the gifted, the talented - imperial scientists call them Psionicists. As for the Imperial security services they just call them criminals. The Empire has chosen to outlaw Psionicists on the grounds that there is no effective way to control them - short of a full lobotomy. Those talents who did not conform and could not work within the constraints of the empire created a branch of corsairs known as The Mind of the Brotherhood and set out to carve out a part of the universe for themselves. Eventually the Mind had control of a small pocket of worlds in an uncharted region of space. They closed of the trade routes and blanked all knowledge of their existence from men’s minds. They became the stuff of legends.

The Ballad

Kyre sat in the captain’s cabin of the Corsair - Jagged Shark, she had achieved command through hard work, cunning and the death of the previous captain. It felt good to be the mistress of her own ship but she felt an ache, an emptiness that even this joy could not fill. Her mind drifted back to the first adventure she had with him…

She had been 19 at the time a young naïve girl on a great adventure. The group of mercenaries she had become part of had been introduced to the Imperial Spy Master himself Prince Duncan the Black and he had known who she was. This was to be awkward and, as it turned out, almost mortally dangerous. Kyre had just come into her powers and, although being tested as a child, it came as a massive and explosive shock. From nowhere she started to hear voices, voices that could be ascribed to people around her, but voices that were not aural, not vocalised. Intelligence was one of her strong suits and she quickly realised that she was reading peoples thoughts and she also realised that she was now in mortal danger.

Prince Duncan had publicly declared that he would leave no stone unturned to route out the Psionic menace and here she was about to demonstrate a powerful Psionic ability. To make matters worse she realized that the Prince was enamored with her in a way she was not prepared for. He asked her to dance and she realized something even more frightening she could read his thoughts even though he had anti-Psionic treatments. Indeed as she faltered around the dance floor she noticed how many of the rich and powerful were wearing anti thought screens that seemed to have failed – at least that was how she thought –hardly surprising when she was reading the thoughts of every member of the crowd.

It was as she stepped of the dance floor with the prince unwilling to let go of her arm that she noticed the rest of her party, acting as bodyguards and servants milling around the guests. She could read their thoughts as easily if not better than the shielded big wigs and they were unshielded. Whilst still reading the deranged and horrific details of her crewmates lives she noticed that she felt an oasis of mental calm, more correctly she found a space devoid of thought. She looked at the contents of that space and saw the ship’s doctor, standing with the Prince and two of the state secret police’s highest-ranking officers. They all looked relaxed none of them taking any particular notice of what was around them. Dr Templar looked directly at her as if sensing her scrutiny he smiled, a self-deprecating upturn of his lips and gave her a mocking bow. She realized then that some how time had gone “missing” she had been lead off the dance floor by the prince now he was with a group of people, she was stood on her own and there was no point of occurrence.

Dazed Kyre sifted through her short-term memory and there was the missing period but it seemed cut off from her own memory like a person watching a telecast of the event but from her perspective. She was about to scream when a quiet and powerful voice spoke to her, it told her to hide her thoughts as best she could. She looked around to see who had spoken to her but no one was near her and no one was looking her way. The voice went on to advise her that if her talent was discovered she could very well lose her life. She paled as the voice spoke to her, she had guessed a telepath was “talking” to her, she also guessed that the telepath had somehow felt her awakening. Finally the voice told her that the Prince and the Doctor were very good friends and that she should beware of them both.

Kyre shaken but undeterred by the events unfolding in her head walked over to the group of men and smiled her vivacious best. The prince glowed with smug satisfaction as his mind revealed to her that he believed she had become besotted with his power and looks. The two policemen nodded in greeting and introduced themselves as Commissioner Hans Lipfield director of Intergalactic Naval Police and Major General Sir Harcourt Bathington Smyth Head of Section 2 (Planetary Military Intelligence). She shook their hands and discovered that she was able to read their thoughts too. How she controlled her anger she still couldn’t say but as soon as the red mist came it went again and she was calm, surprising her more than the fact that the two distinguished gentleman believed her to be a high class trollop of the worst kind. They both kept their faces straight but both intended to ask the Prince for her number, Kyre was disgusted.

She turned to the fourth member of the group thinking the worst after all the three fools with him had mentally insulted and demeaned her and she could do nothing that would not give the game away. As she looked up at the doctor’s time ravaged face she noticed two things. First the warmth in his eyes, a humor she had rarely witnessed in another human being’s and secondly that for the first time that evening she could not read a single thought. She probed as best she could but all that she could see was nothing as if he had a mental wall that stopped intrusive thought an inch from his skin…

Kyre was broken from her reverie by the sound of the ships auto defense alarm, leaping out of her chair she slid her sidearm into its holster and strode to the bridge. Her XO came up to her and saluted, “Ma’am it’s the Golden Sunrise…” She glowered, aware of the pause and the thoughts the XO would be having.

Damn!! she thought how had he repaired the damage so quick? A stupid question, her husband was after all related to the Emperor. But how had he managed to catch up to them? No time for questions she had to fight him and escape, there was no question of surrender, and no question of her ship beating the Imperial Space Navy’s most advanced battle destroyer. Before she could issue the order to prepare for attack she was interrupted by a voice over the Comms Link.

“Kyre Drazma, by order of his imperial highness, stand down your weapons and prepared to be boarded”

Kyre grabbed the comms “Stuff You” she screamed into the vox.

A different voice responded, a voice she knew all to well a voice of a liar, a cheat, and a devious amoral butcher.

“Kyre, you are mine. I own you body and soul. You will not escape me!!”

“Go to Hell … you set one foot on this boat Duncan and I will rip you a new windpipe.”

“I love it when you threaten me … it means I can punish you with no remorse” The voice came back, it dripped with venom and the promise of dire consequences.

“I think you have finally cracked Duncan. You have threatened me for the last time. Remember what I did to your last torturer and that was whilst chained to your bed hand and foot.”

“I remember” Duncan’s voice was angry but had a sound of defeat to it as well. “Very well Kyre, but you know I cannot let you live so prepare to die. Goodbye I did love you once.”

There was an ominous click and the comm. board went silent then the Sensor tech almost screamed, “they have begun to charge the plasma canon.”

Kyre pushed the duty pilot from the conning seat, “brace for impact” she yelled as she pushed forward in the thrust levers. The crew slapped their safety cages down over their shoulders the duty pilot leaded into an acceleration couch and strapped himself in. The Ragged Shark started to gracefully move toward the enemy vessel. As they approached Kyre sent out a bolt of un-channeled thought blanketing the space around the Golden Sunrise, then she squeezed. The mind net shrank around the ship and as it did so the officers and crew of the naval destroyer passed out. Kyre continued to contract the net until the navigator and engineer stated they were ready to jump. With a mental flick she released the net and flicked the jump computer on, with a whoosh of expanding starlight they escaped Duncan’s grasp one more time.

Kyre realized that Duncan would never give her up, she was too powerful to be let loose and she gave him control over the government through her talent. She could not allow her self to become his slave again. His protestations of love may have been true once but when he discovered her talent it became his focus for keeping her. He had her trained by the best Psionic teachers he could coerce and blackmail into doing it. He kept her secret and renewed his efforts to find and destroy the Psionic rebels. What he did not broadcast was that the most powerful of those rebels actually worked for him as agents and he wanted Kyre to be his most powerful weapon in the fight to maintain the Empire. Kyre might even have helped him if she had not seen inside his head and realized how far he was prepared to go to achieve his goals.

As the ship continued through jump space Kyre sat in her cabin and planned. She knew now that she had to disappear, she had to become a ghost, as she thought this she remembered the last time she had seen …Him.

The Idopsin II was on her last legs the crew was preparing to bail. The engineer had burned up in a massive incendiary fireball; the gunner and the captain had managed to let go of each other long enough to suit up and now were about to leave in the first escape pod. The mercenary and the pilot had drawn short straws and got each other for company. It was a pairing not meant to survive. Kyre had drawn Poison Ivy - the camouflage expert. As the first two pods blasted toward the planet Kyre strapped Poison into a chair, he was unconscious because Kyre just did not like him. She sat down in the piloting chair of the pod and looked up as the Doctor gently leant across and pulled the safety belt across strapping her into the webbing chair.

“Take care Red!” he smiled, not for the first time she thought how beautiful that smile was. She tried one last time to read his thoughts, 4 years of trying she had not managed to break his shield she had never read a single thought of the tall, quiet doctor. She smiled back at him, a rare thing for her “You too Saint, You Too”. He had slammed the lid down and the pod had jettisoned she tap the thrusters to orient the pod so she could watch the ship, it continued on its unguided path toward the sun, Kyre waited for the Doctors pod to jettison, she watched, holding her breath. Suddenly the Idopsin II exploded there was no sound, but Kyre could almost feel a shockwave and bits of debris flew out in all directions. She felt a wave of nausea as she realized she had not seen Simon’s pod jettison, she knew that no one could have survived that explosion and a tear flowed down her cheek. “Damn” she said to herself “The only man to really make me laugh is the only man to ever make me cry and he has to blow himself up to do it.”

That had been over 6 years ago, she knew that he was alive, he had resurfaced a year later at Duncan’s side, Head of Imperial Psionic Medical Research. Perhaps it was he who had told Duncan where to find her. She did not know only that Duncan had come to pick her up and take her back to the Core worlds. She never saw Dr Simon Templar in person, although he did send the occasional text to her. His words seemed to comfort her somehow, even more as she became aware of the change in attitude to Talents because of his work. Still mistrusted, they were less persecuted than previously, indeed under the good doctors auspices a training program was being offered to talents, all be it so they could be used in the Imperial Military. Dr Templar was becoming a great and powerful man. Unfortunately the Talented were starting to blame him for what they saw as government slavery. Rumours started to spread that he was carrying out illegal experiments.

Kyre watched the newscasts and when possible stole looks at Duncan’s briefing papers she could not reconcile the gentle ships doctor with the mad scientist who now went nowhere with out an armed bodyguard and a Helicopter gunship. It was around this point that Duncan’s attitude changed toward her, he became paranoid that she was twisting his thoughts. He started to systematically destroy her peace of mind and finally turned to out right torture finally he sent her to the Psionic institute with orders for her vivisection. She was drugged and awoke in a 10 x 10 cell in a straight jacket. The guards wore a new form of mind shield projector one designed by Dr Templar, one that Kyre could not get through. After a week in solitary confinement she was roughly bundled onto a gurney and wheeled to a waiting room, with in a few minutes a man she did not know came in and ordered the guards out of the room. He gently took the jacket off and although Kyre had been planning to fight him she found she could not. The man gave her a set of clothes and a set of documents. She looked at the papers then at the man as she stared into his eyes she saw another pair of eyes, a soft laughing kindly pair of eyes in her mind. She knew then that Simon Templar; the gentle ships doctor was somehow involved in this rescue. She also saw that the man in front of her had drawn a syringe full of some drug and she smiled at him letting him know she understood…

Kyre was once again pulled from her thoughts; the chief engineer telling her that the jump engines were on their way out. She was not concerned her plans were set she would disappear it would keep her crew safe and get Duncan off her back with luck. She started to give the ships AI some very explicit instructions then she plotted a course to intercept a star liner. They emerged into real space she called all hands to battle stations. The corsair slipped into the blind spot of the Interstellar Lines Ship - The Rot Zwerg – they opened a channel to the slow luxury cruise ship and issued a warning “Stand to or we blow a hole in you”. The Liner, like all pleasure craft of her type would, immediately slowed the insurance would not cover the replacement of the ship and there was a good chance that a pirate would only want the cargo. Slaver raids had for the most parts ceased. Kyre and her boarding commandos took their armed gig across and docked with Rot Zwerg.

Kyre strolled to the bridge and spoke to the crew, she offered the usual terms and the crew surrendered. As she took their weapons, her gunnery sergeant aboard the corsair came across the tannoy, he was in a panic as the ships computer had taken control of the ships weaponry and had locked out all the command codes. Kyre took the news rather well considering, she turned to the liners captain and continued to ask for the ships crew, passenger and cargo manifests. The corsairs engineer came on two minutes later and stated that the ships targeting system had locked onto the Liner and that the armoury had auto-sealed so they could not disarm the guns. Kyre stared at the comm. then at the captain.

“I think we had better evacuate to the corsair” she laughed bitterly. The Liner captain looked confused. He finally understood that the corsair was going to fire on the liner and that the corsair crew could not stop it. Before he could broadcast the evacuation signal the Corsairs guns fired and all power died on the Bridge. The emergency back up kicked in and the captain ordered the evacuation. Kyre looked at her crew and ordered them to treat the passengers as guest not as captures. She continued with the evacuation as her ship fired again knocking out the Thruster engines. As if planned the auto destruct that liners carried as a last ditch answer to slavers (better death than slavery) suddenly kicked in. The captain went white as he saw the 3 hour count down. Kyre crew panicked as well knowing that they had no time to loot the ship and that what had been a raid had become a full-scale rescue.

Kyre watched the corsair, her ship, leave the system, she knew her crew would be safe in fact they believed she was dead; her plan had worked. It had been difficult ordering the AI to shoot on an unarmed liner but she made sure that it damaged only those systems she specified. The last shot through the bridge had required a little precision timing on her part but her boarding crew saw her take the full blast of a ships laser, they never knew she was a Psionic. No one else was in view and the liners auto recorder had been disabled. She blinked back a tear as the corsair vanished then she undid the work she had done with her mind. Deactivating the auto sequence she made her way to the secondary bridge.

She had programmed one jump with the still functioning jump engines and set them off. Whilst the computer attempted to compensate for the damage and lack of a pilot, Kyre went down to the cryo berths. She prepared the injections as Stephen had showed her that first time and powered up the sleep pod. She took the shots and entered the berth, as she drifted into a drugged coma she saw a smiling, warm pair of eyes and she swore she heard a voice “Sleep tight Red, Sleep tight.”

Epilogue

The Rot Zwerg has not been seen in explored space for over 200 years. The official story is that she drifted into the pull of a black hole. Old spacers however say that in the unexplored reaches she drifts and that any who encounter it hear a message on their comm. systems asking for them to board but those that do find a ghost hulk empty and devoid of life, the story goes on to say that when the auto recorders are checked they show no messages were received. The interesting thing about the messages and the stories is that the last words are always the same.

“I didn’t know my love, I didn’t know”