Contagion

by David Ryker

  “Good. That’s the last thing we need,” Foyle said. “Maybe once we win this war they’ll feel too safe for their own good and make a mistake.”

  Maybe. And winning the war was a big maybe too.

  “Very well,” the commander said. “Keep an eye on him. In the meantime, Chief Engineer Iliescu needs to get to work on a detector that we can install at every entrance to the ship to look for those spores. The Centaurians haven’t attacked us that way yet, but I’m sure they’ll try. Meeting adjourned.”

  Everybody started to get up. I cocked my head. Now that no one was talking, I noticed something.

  “There’s no jazz playing over the PA system anymore,” I said.

  “Yes, we finally ironed out that bug,” Iliescu replied.

  “That’s too bad. I kind of liked it.”

  Iliescu smiled. “At least the Biospherists gave us something.”

  Iliescu walked me out.

  “You seem to have become good friends with General R’kk’kar. Do you think you could get some information from him about those ships?”

  “Not a chance. He’s got to obey a higher authority, so even if he wanted to tell me more, he wouldn’t.”

  “I’m convinced those ships weren’t invented by them. But how did they get them?”

  “Dunno. I’m curious that they’re organic just like the Centaurian ships. Do you think there’s a link?”

  “I’m not sure. Centaurian bioengineering technology is far above what we see in the Dri’kai Shadow Fighters. I’m beginning to believe that they might have a common origin, however.”

  “A common origin?”

  “Indeed,” he said, leading me to an elevator. “Oh, these work now too. The doors to private rooms still keep popping open, however, so watch it. Yes, it’s hard to tell without any examples to study up close, but there are certain similarities to how the organisms are engineered that make me think they might stem from the same parent technology.”

  “So the Dri’kai fighters were once animals like those sea creatures that keep kicking our ass?”

  “No. The Dri’kai fighters are a fusion of organic matter and advanced electronics and metallurgy. I’m sure you’ve noticed that the ship is far more advanced than the weaponry. That’s because the weapons are the latest Dri’kai models, and entirely traditional technology, while the ship itself is something more organic.”

  He pushed a button and the door to the elevator shut. I hoped his confidence in fixing the bug was well placed and the door would open again. I needed to piss and I didn’t want to be stuck in an elevator. Wetting my wheelchair wouldn’t exactly improve my appearance.

  “So the Dri’kai installed their weapons on ships they found somewhere?” I asked.

  “Something like that. Dr. Sanchez came up with an interesting observation. All the races we have met or heard about in this section of the Orion Arm developed warp technology at roughly the same time. There are more primitive races, not fully sentient, that have been colonized by some of the more aggressive species. All the fully sentient races, however, have developed warp technology in the past two hundred years.”

  “So?”

  Iliescu turned to me. “It’s so statistically unlikely that it is next to impossible.”

  “Oh.”

  “Oh indeed. So the question is, how did it happen? That encyclopedia they gave us provides no answers. It gives a standard story for each advanced race, saying that they developed warp independently. That can’t be true.”

  “Why lie to us?”

  “They may not be lying, at least not directly. They may have developed it separately, but not independently.”

  “I’m not following you.”

  “They might have been assisted.”

  “By who?”

  “That is a very good question.”

  The elevator door opened and a bird flew in and perched on the armrest of my wheelchair. He was a little guy with blue feathers and a yellow breast. I think it was called a finch, but I wasn’t sure. Birds aren’t my forte.

  “What the hell?”

  Iliescu laughed.

  “Oh yes, we fix a bug and we get another. He must have come from the dining hall. You know that sonic barrier we have at the doors to keep the birds in? That’s gone down. Now the birds are getting everywhere. I have a robin in my private quarters who doesn’t want to leave.”

  We went out into the corridor. The bird stayed perched on my wheelchair. A female technician smiled at me as she walked past.

  “Can’t you fix it?”

  “I’m a little more concerned about fixing the breaches in the hull and replacing our drone fleet.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “Have you noticed that you’re the only one General R’kk’kar has a personal relationship with?”

  “Not as personal as he wants,” I said, thinking of that weird scene in the space station bar.

  Iliescu resisted the urge to be a wiseass. He had, of course, heard all about it. That confusing interaction was too potentially significant to keep from the rest of the high command. Not even Foyle had let out a snicker when we told him. Instead he only looked appalled.

  “The general obviously respects you as a fellow warrior. Of course he acts correctly with the rest of us, but you are the only one he addresses as ‘friend and comrade in arms,’ which is high praise in the Dri’kai language.”

  “That’s true. I guess it’s because I did well in that fist fight. If you want to get all buddy buddy with him, maybe you should challenge him to a brawl.”

  “Somehow I don’t think I’d do well enough to earn his respect. You have. I’m hoping you can encourage that friendship and get more into his confidence. Perhaps he’ll tell you a bit more.”

  “Somehow I don’t think so. The Dri’kai can be pretty tight-lipped when they want to be.”

  “Try to bring the conversation around to the fighters of the Centaurian ships, or to how much better their warp technology is than ours. That should be easy enough. Maybe he’ll let something slip.”

  “Andrei, I don’t want to take advantage of his friendship like that.”

  He stopped again, making me do the same. The finch fluttered its wings and shot down the corridor.

  “We are alone in the middle of a bigger war than any of us could have ever imagined. We need to find out as much as we can in order to survive. Your Dri’kai friend is holding back because he or his superiors think humans might be a threat someday. Well, we’re not. We just want to get to Terra Nova and start over again without any trouble. I don’t see anything wrong with doing everything we can to ensure that happens.”

  “You’re right,” I said with a sigh. “I’ll try to find out more. I just don’t have any idea how the hell I’m going to do that.”

  30

  The fleet rendezvoused with the other ships in an area of dead space. No stars were nearby, only the glittering red veil of a nearby nebula.

  A large collection of ships had arrived, nearly doubling the size of our fleet in number.

  But not in quality. Since only the ships close enough to come had so far answered the call, many weren’t all that useful. There were several Vrimjlen freighters with minimal weaponry, but carrying some production facilities that might prove useful. A Subine science vessel had almost no weapons at all but was put to work researching the Centaurian bioweapons. A Dri’kai cruiser had shown up, along with a few small Vlern warships, but that was pretty much it for fighting vessels.

  Except for one ship that got a lot of people talking.

  A Vrimjlen supply ship had shown up. It had been heading to a colony world with the materials for several nuclear power plants, including a whole bunch of uranium.

  It would be simple enough, people said, to refine that uranium into plutonium, and fit that plutonium into warheads. We could go back to the Chordatid home world and finish the job.

  But that’s not all people said. The Chordatids were dying out, their ocean world taken over by
a hostile species that obviously bioengineered marine life to make weapons and spaceships. That planet was the greatest supply depot the Centaurians could ask for.

  And now we had the means to destroy it. That uranium had enough potential explosive power to bathe the entire Chordatid home world in lethal radiation.

  It was the logical thing to do. It was the strategically imperative thing to do.

  But no one had the guts to mention it to the Chordatids. Hell, no one had the guts to talk about it above a whisper.

  And yet everyone was talking about it.

  General R’kk’kar talked about it too, when I went to the Dri’kai flagship to speak with him.

  We sat in an odd little lounge, divided by a glassteel barrier. That way I could have my atmosphere on my side and he could have his atmosphere on his side. Neither of us had to wear a respirator. It also meant that we couldn’t get into a fistfight. That was fine. I was still in that damn wheelchair.

  R’kk’kar must have sensed my embarrassment because he indicated my chair with a grand gesture and proclaimed, “When this war is over and we are victorious, that chair should be put in a museum to show how a great warrior can fight even when at the point of death.”

  So the Dri’kai had museums? That was interesting. I wondered what they put in them. Severed heads?

  After we settled down to our respective drinks—me with a synthesized whiskey and him with some lumpy purple mixture that let off wisps of smoke—he leaned forward and in a low voice said what was on his mind.

  “We have to launch another nuclear strike, Commander Ayers. We have to make that planet useless to them.”

  I let out a long sigh. I’d been hearing this talk for a couple of days now. It made me uncomfortable, even a little bit dirty, and yet I couldn’t figure out an argument against it.

  After a long pause, and a slug of bad whiskey for courage, I replied, “You’re right, of course. Many of the humans are thinking the same thing. But how do we suggest it to the Chordatids?”

  My Dri’kai friend looked into his drink. It was odd to see him look unsure of himself. “I don’t know. I don’t see how we can.”

  “Do you think they will suggest it themselves?”

  “Perhaps. They are one of the more logical and methodical races. They think things through and look at everything from different angles. It has certainly occurred to them. But to destroy one’s own homeworld? To wipe out the last remnants of one’s own race? That is too much to ask.”

  “I read in that encyclopedia you gave us that they were the first race to develop warp technology,” I said, trying to steer the conversation the way our chief engineer wanted.

  “That is true. Ironic, isn’t it, that a race so unsuited for interstellar travel would be the first?”

  “I’m surprised they developed it at all.”

  “Perhaps being so limited in movement they yearned for it more than many other races,” R’kk’kar said.

  “I would think they had enough to explore in what they call the World Ocean.”

  “Oh, I am sure they know every centimeter of that. That probe went into some very remote hiding places looking for survivors. That’s why the Centaurians are so insidious. They used the only thing that could reach every square meter of that vast ocean—microbes.”

  I continued to press him. “But don’t you think it’s interesting that they became one of the first spacefaring races? It just seems so unlikely to me.”

  “I am not a scientist, my friend and comrade in arms, so I don’t know much about how they managed it. I suppose they were luckier than we were in their discoveries.”

  Suddenly R’kk’kar tensed. He looked away, took a long drink, his eyes flicking in my direction once or twice, and then he said, “But enough historical speculation. We need to think of the present. The Dri’kai fleet will be ready to strike in a week’s time. Some other ships will take longer to repair, and we are happy to offer Dri’kai technicians, the best in the galaxy, to help repair the Nansen. What do the doctors say about your recovery?”

  And after that the conversation stayed on my condition, the fleet’s condition, and possible strategies for our next move. I decided not to steer the conversation back to the development of space travel. I knew R’kk’kar would avoid it and bringing it up a second time would look suspicious.

  It didn’t matter. I had a feeling he had already let slip an important clue.

  Once I got back to the Nansen, I dropped by Medical to see Valeria and run this conversation by her. Like me, she was itching to get back to work even though her recovery was going to take a lot longer.

  She listened to my account and thought for a moment.

  “So those were his exact words, ‘luckier than we were in their discoveries’? That’s interesting.”

  “Yeah, it could have been just a figure of speech except that he obviously felt he had said too much.”

  “Scientific discoveries are rarely made by luck. Oh, we talk about accidental discoveries such as penicillin, but really these aren’t luck at all, since without the scientific knowledge to appreciate them already in place, these accidents would pass by unnoticed.”

  “But how could they ‘discover’ warp technology? It’s not like it’s just sitting around in nature. You’re making me go back to high school physics here, but didn’t it take several generations to perfect warp technology?”

  “It was a long and expensive process with a lot of mistakes along the way. It’s not something a species could just stumble upon. And for them all to stumble upon it within a century of each other? Impossible.”

  “Iliescu said the same thing.”

  She fell silent for a moment, her brow furrowing, her eyes focused on something only she could see. Then her eyes widened and she looked at me.

  “Maybe they discovered technology from a previous civilization!”

  “What? You mean some race that died out?”

  “Why not? The galaxy is old. Lots of intelligent species could have died out over the span of billions of years.”

  Yeah, like ours almost had. Almost was.

  She went on. “What if this race had spread out over the galaxy and left artifacts that later races could have discovered? They could have reversed engineered the warp engines.”

  “Even after millions of years?”

  “Sure, they would have been broken, maybe missing lots of pieces, but the remains would have given them a jump start in development.”

  “I don’t know. This sounds like a stretch. We haven’t seen any evidence of any ancient civilization.”

  Valeria shrugged. “How hard have we looked? We’ve only been to one planet and didn’t get a chance to explore it. Ever since, we’ve been running and fighting.”

  Good point. Then I thought of something.

  “It still wouldn’t work. If the Dri’kai and the Chordatids and the rest didn’t have warp technology, they wouldn’t get the chance to get away from their own solar systems and find this stuff.”

  “Oh.” Valeria looked disappointed.

  “Sorry,” I said, kissing her forehead. “You wanted to turn from exobiologist to exoarchaeologist, didn’t you?”

  She grinned. “I suppose so. Oh! Maybe an old transmission passed through this part of the galaxy and gave them the information. A transmission from a race that might even still be around. The races here haven’t had warp technology for very long, only a couple of centuries. Maybe we never received it because it came from the opposite direction. That transmission would still be heading for Earth.”

  Yeah, a transmission that would finally reveal that we weren’t alone in the universe. Something we had wanted to receive ever since the modern era began. And now it would reach a dead Earth with no one around to pick it up and know its value.

  Fucking hell, we really messed up, didn’t we?

  “Why would an alien race broadcast the details of warp technology?”

  “Who knows? It’s hard enough to understand the races we�
�re already interacting with. And it may not have been intended for other races. Maybe it was some sort of scientific communication for other members of the same race.”

  “We’re getting into a lot of maybes here.”

  She tugged at me. I drew closer, trying not to topple off my wheelchair, and she planted a kiss on my lips. “Welcome to science.”

  “Bring it up at the high command meeting. It will give you something to do.”

  “I have to think it through first. That gives me plenty to do. I’ll message Iliescu and have a talk with him.”

  “Great.” I checked the time. “Look. I gotta go. The doc has allowed me a few hours of light work a day and I’m going to go help Qiang with some stuff.”

  “All right. Thanks for giving me something to work on. I was going stir crazy here.”

  “Thank R’kk’kar. He’s helped out you and me both.”

  A sly smile spread across her lips. “Maybe we should indulge him and his mate with a little display of how things are done on Earth.”

  My jaw dropped.

  “You can’t be serious.”

  She laughed and poked me in the chest. “Joke!”

  I shook my head. “Fucking hell, don’t do that.”

  Her laughter followed me out into the hall. It was a good thing to hear.

  I didn’t get to see her much the next few days. Even with my limited work time I was busy, and in my time off I was getting some physical therapy and sleeping way more than usual. Despite Dr. Stark constantly grumbling that I was the worst patient he’d ever had, I realized I needed to take care of myself if I was going to take part in the next battle.

  And there would be a next battle. There was no doubt about that.

  The spy probes managed to get through the Centaurian sentries again and brought back images from the planet. With our retreat and the time lag of the probes getting there and back, they showed us images and video from two weeks after the battle.