Free The Mandate of Heaven by Mike Smith

could remember,” father sighed.  “Although he swore to me, until the day that he died, that I reminded him of somebody.”
    “How long did you spend with the Professor?”
    “Several months,” he replied.  “My squad and I were hired to guard him and protect the facility where he worked.  It was a high-tech, secret, research laboratory, so there was very little security but the High-Lord wanted the Professor closely guarded and insisted on daily progress reports.”
    “Why?  What was the Professor working on?” I asked, wide-eyed with curiosity.
    My father was silent for a long time, as if weighing up just how much to tell me, before whispering quietly to me, almost as if he was afraid that the surrounding trees had ears.  “A weapon.”
    I blinked, hardly expecting that answer.  “A weapon?” I echoed incredulously.
    My father just nodded.
    “And where is this weapon now ?” I prompted him.
    My father looked at me in surprise, as if he couldn’t comprehend the question.  “Well, I have it, of course.  Why do you think I’ve spent the past thirty years here, hiding on the very edge of the Imperium?”
    “You have the weapon, designed and built by Professor Henry Alcubierre?” I knew I was starting to sound like a broken record, stuck on repeat, but in all honesty, I just didn’t know what else to say.
    My father nodded again, but I couldn’t see any laughter in his eyes, nor his lips upturned in a smile.  If this was some sort of joke, he gave no outwardly visible sign.
    “Let me see it then,” I insisted and, after a moment’s hesitation, my father turned about-face, heading back the way that we had just come.  Literally. As we then spent the next twenty minutes retracing our steps until, once again, I found myself standing in front of the ship, the Céleste.
    “It's inside the ship?” I asked confused.
    “No, that is the weapon,” he insisted, motioning towards the ship.
    I glanced at it once again, but it remained unchanged, sitting in the middle of the cavern, still, silent and about as threatening as a mouse.  Seriously, I had seen bottle openers that had appeared more menacing.
    “Watch carefully,” my father broke the embarrassing silence, activating the remote that he had been carrying with him since he had discovered me earlier.  With a few deft taps on the device, he nodded his head.
    I looked round, expecting some sort of massive death ray to suddenly appear, but nothing happened and for a moment I wondered if it hadn’t worked.  It took me a few moments to register what had happened, as it was not immediately obvious.
    The ship—had vanished!
    “It’s a cloaking device,” I breathed in sudden understanding.  For I had heard differing rumours of such devices over the years, but had never come close to one.  I looked carefully at where the ship had been parked, looking for shadows, trailing edges, reflecting light, anything to indicate that a ship was hidden there, but I couldn’t see a thing.  The ship had completely vanished.  I would swear that we were the only occupants of the room.  “Very impressive,” I conceded.  “What does it use?  Metamaterials?  Optical camouflage or Retro-Reflective projection?”
    “No, nothing like that,” my father snorted dismissively. Reaching down to the floor and picking up a small rock, obviously left over from when the cave had been hollowed out, and tossed it to me.  “Throw it at the ship,” he insisted, gesturing to the centre of the cavern where the ship remained hidden.
    Shrugging my shoulders, not completely understanding the reason behind the request, but complying nonetheless, I threw the rock in the direction of the ship.  It was a good throw, striking the ship squarely amidships—or it should have.
    Instead it passed cleanly through.
    I could only stare, speechless, observing the rock strike the far wall, on the other side of the room.  Only then did it hit me.  There was no other entrance, or exit,