by BL Craig
“Mr. Butcher, plus .5 gees,” were the first real helm orders he’d ever received from the Captain. William engaged the thrust and the ship shot forward at 10.5 gees. The compensators drew power from the engines and cancelled the first ten, but for the first time on the Tilly, William felt the slight press of acceleration.
Immediately, several crashes rang throughout the ship, accompanied by a rather loud “Ooff” that William guessed was Addy.
“Helm, thrust to 9.5,” ordered the Captain. “All hands report. Addy, are you alright?”
“Yes Captain. I was in the main corridor, but I’m not hurt badly. You didn’t accelerate fast enough. Nothing is broken.” To William, it sounded like a complaint.
“Why the hell were you in the corridor? I ordered you to secure.”
“Well Captain, I thought that if I broke a leg with William at the helm, he would have to take care of me.”
The last four words were so loaded with innuendo William rolled his eyes.
A snort escaped the Captain’s mouth before she could bite it back. William could hear the sound of Sarah hanging in her harness, balled up with laughter, while gasping for breath over the com. Even Alex and John laughed. It just was not that funny.
After a minute, the Captain broke it up. “All right, if we’re done malingering for the sake of a joke, can we figure out what else went crashing about. Back on the ball, people.”
“That’s what Addy said,” choked out Sarah.
It took twenty minutes to secure the items that were missed and get back to the drill. The full crew was on the bridge for the show this time.
“Once more then, Mr. Butcher. Helm plus .5 and bring us back around on a heading for Clarke’s targets.” After they’d completed the turn, the Captain slowly increased the acceleration to the Tilly’s max. This turned out to be seventeen gees, one and a half over the rated specs. William was amazed not just by the ship’s speed, but also by how little it affected him. He had bragged about being able to stay conscious at seven gees, but conscious and functioning were different things. As a reanimate, he felt the seven gees, but there was no tunnel vision or breathing pain. It was more than the extra strength, though that helped, there was a native resistance to this body that made it easy to focus despite the physical stress. If this is what plus 7 felt like, he really wanted to know what he could handle now.
“Fly like we’re being chased. Random course alterations and high gee turns. Let’s see how I can work this thing in combat conditions,” ordered the Captain.
William had fun jigging the ship about, dodging pretend enemies while the Captain obliterated a small army of woodland creatures. William lost track of a few while performing acrobatics, but he was certain he saw a fox, a Babylonian wolf cat, a frog in a top hat, a porcupine, and a shrew-like rodent.
“Well, that was fun,” said the Captain once the last critter had been dispatched. “I’m not sure that we’ll be anything in a real fight, but spacefaring woodland creatures everywhere should be quivering in fear. You’ve outdone yourself, Clarke. Thanks to your able assistant as well.”
* * *
…
* * *
The next day, the Tilly jumped away, one hop closer to Rannit One. William was helping Sarah clean out one of the algae vats slated to house the ever-growing Karl Marx. They had drained the water and were inside, hand scraping the corners of the wide shallow vat where the bots had not been able to get everything.
“How come the algae and fungus don’t die in FTL?” William asked.
“No one knows exactly.” She stood, stretching after prolonged crouching, one hand on her hip, the other waving the scraper. “It’s got something to do with nervous systems. Plants and fungus do fine as do microbiota, but anything with a nervous system goes heads up. It’s a little fuzzy with things like worms. They don’t have fully developed nervous systems. Some invertebrates do OK, typically ones without much in the way of brains.”
“But Elixir somehow gets around that?”
“Yeah, there’s some mumbo-jumbo that’s supposed to explain it in the AfterLife literature, but they keep the details pretty locked down. The company gets away with having a monopoly on reanimation because they never filed patents on the core processes.”
“How do patents stop monopolies?”
“Well, if you file a patent, you get a period of time in which you are the only one who can use that technology, but to do that, you have to disclose all the technical details of the process and it’s public record. So, when your patent runs out, someone else can use your technology. Also, they can look at your patent and figure out a slightly different way to do it that qualifies as a ‘novel’ addition. Then they can do what you do even if you have a patent, but they may have to pay you a licensing fee.”
“So, no patent, no competition?”
“Yeah, they keep the knowledge as ‘proprietary info’ and the only way to get it is either reverse engineer or espionage. Since all the tech requires a hyperspace jump to reach, unless you want to wait a really long time, the living are shit out of luck if they want to try and steal it.”
“But no one has figured it out on their own?”
“Oh, lots of people have figured out the Elixir and the NCMs.”
“So why isn’t there any competition?”
“Cause everyone who knows how to do it is dead and indentured to AfterLife,” she gave him a rueful smile. “But mostly it’s because there is one key component no one has figured out.”
“What’s that?”
“How the bloody hell they do it. You can take a fresh body and pump it full of Elixir and install an NCM and all you’ll get is a slightly fancier corpse.”
“There’s something else?”
“Yup. And that’s the secret AfterLife has kept for 600 plus years.”
* * *
…
* * *
Rannit One circled a bright K-type main sequence star that would keep shining long after Sol had burned itself out. The star had a robust collection of planets, and signs of organized intelligent activity were everywhere. The 4th planet, in particular, was a hive of activity. As expected, there were two active gates and a number of objects in orbit around the clearly inhabited world.
The Tilly sat above all the activity, dark and silent. The Captain wanted to take in the scene before they dropped in behind the 2nd moon and launched Tesla on its weeks long journey. They already had telemetry on the second gate from the data Perlin had supplied, but the crew felt better collecting their own data from above the stellar disc. They had been watching the scene for several hours, letting the capacitors recharge in preparation for two back-to-back jumps. There seemed to be little activity around the smaller, more distant moon, which boded well for their plan. There was constant traffic through the gates and a building haze nearby that must be a massing of ships.
“Something’s definitely going on down there,” said the Captain. “Clarke, you’re ready for probe launch?” she asked over the com.
“Everything’s ready, Captain.”
“Ok, Butcher, drop us in nice and quiet behind the moon.”
William already had the jump programmed. The tricky part would be turning the Tilly twice when they emerged from slipstream behind the moon. First, he would need to turn the ship for Tesla’s exit, then turn it again to line up the next jump out of system. Those turns would send the Tilly’s drive emissions directly into active Rannit space. He needed to keep the burns as minimal as possible.
The ship dropped in behind the moon after just a few minutes in slipstream.
“Ok, line her up, Mr. Butcher.”
William carefully rolled the ship, minimizing emissions in the direction of the planet and its moon. The odds that the Rannit would notice were low, but if a paranoid Captain decided to investigate some random static, they might very well find the Tesla on its silent journey.
“We’re in position, Captain.”
“Launch when you are ready, Cla
rke.”
There was a moment of waiting. “Tesla is out of the shoot. Ten gee burn is active.” They waited, watching the black drone as it headed toward the moon, receding to a small black dot. After about 30 minutes, Sarah came back on the com. “Burn complete. Tesla is in position to swing around the moon and continue past planet four.”
“Godspeed, Tesla,” said the Captain. “Let’s get out of here, Mr. Butcher.”
William fired up the FTL and headed toward the next Rannit gate.
* * *
…
* * *
“How many bloody systems do these fuzzballs have?” whined Sarah. They had just left the 5th Rannit system. The last had contained three gates. They had made a best guess as to which gate to follow.
“It’s possible we’ve passed out of Rannit space into some other species zone. The data we have from the first contact meetings with the Cosi imply that there are several sentient species whose territories are adjacent and even overlapping.”
“Doubtful,” said Alex. “The structures and organization we’ve observed in the last four systems are generally consistent with Rannit technology.”
“What about this next system, Nguyen?” asked the Captain. “The binary neutron stars. The odds are high that one of them is a pulsar with high ionizing radiation emissions. Not a good place to build.”
“True, Captain, but given what we’ve seen so far. I believe the Cosi follow a similar gate-building approach to ours. The gate between Mirada and Rannit One was a much larger affair than the gates we’ve seen since. As with the gate between Earth and Mirada, more infrastructure was required to open the wormhole for such a distance. That puts the binary star system as the most likely place for the next gate.”
“We could just turn around, to rendezvous with Tesla, but we’ve got time for one more system,” said the Captain. “I’m inclined to collect as much data as possible. Alright, Clarke, I guess we’re going to get to break out Karl Marx.”
* * *
…
* * *
Preparing for the possible bombardment of ionizing radiation was not just a matter of moving Sarah’s rack of stinky fungus. William found the fact that the fungus was just about the only thing he could smell deeply offensive. Ships’ systems were designed for long service in space and could take a radiation pummeling for a limited time with no damage. But other equipment, sensitive medical tools, and the algae vats would need to be stowed and protected.
“You sure you don’t need help with the vats?” William asked Sarah.
“No, I got it. Karl Marx is an obedient little fungus. I really only need to protect the exotic strains. The Prochlorococcus a is slime of great prowess. It spits radiation in the eye and eats space junk for breakfast. Everything good in the hold?”
“Yes, it looks like a flea market for little old men who save bits of tin foil and old lawnbots ‘just in case.’” William said the last in a querulous old man voice and gave an exaggerated shudder.
“Were you traumatized by someone’s grandfather as a young man? Did you have to help grandpa organize the tin foil collection?”
“You joke. My friend Chris’s grandfather saved everything. We found a potato clock his dad had made in third year at school one time when we went digging to find grandpas old photo album. When we found the album, the screen was cracked. We offered to move the photos over to a new one, but he wasn’t having it. ‘This one’s just fine, boys. You kids don’t appreciate stuff.’”
“How did you even know it was a potato clock after that long?” Sarah asked, disgusted.
“Because grandpa told us what it was. I was honestly worried it was granny’s mummified appendix. Then we tried to put the photos on his nexus for him and it was completely full of pictures of peoples’ feet. Not bare feet. Feet in shoes—but still. He must have deleted the family photos to fit so many pictures of feet on the nexus. I mean, how do you do that? Oh, and there was the porn. So much porn. I guess it was the porn taking up all the space. Still, he could have cloud stored the family photos.”
Sarah was laughing, “Well, the cloud isn’t always as safe as you think. I had this cousin. I don’t know how she did it but she managed to completely and permanently delete the family share. Six generations of photos and documents since we came to Arcadia. Poof. She was trying to get rid of a photo that made her look ‘stupid.’ You’re not even supposed to be able to delete those kind of archives! I’m ashamed to admit, we all called her ‘Cousin Stupid’ behind her back after that. My wife didn’t even know Cousin’s Stupid’s real name until we got a wedding announcement, and she asks, ‘Who the hell’s Liza Clarke?’ My dad spent months pulling together all the stuff that friends and family had in their personal storage. Of course, a lot of them had been deleted or buried who-knows-where because everyone knew we had the archive.”
William stored the bit about Sarah’s wife away for reference. “Yeah, well after we’re done with the pulsar we’ve got to clean everything back up,” William said. “It shouldn’t be too bad though, the big clean up streamlined things a lot.”
“Maybe I can channel Cousin Stupid and just disappear all the junk in the hold,” Sarah grinned.
“You let me know if you develop that superpower.”
* * *
…
* * *
“This fungus of yours really stinks, Clarke,” grumbled Brooks.
“Don’t you listen to him, Karl Marx, you’re perfect just the way you are.” She reached over her shoulder and stroked the fuzzy rack of lichen-like fungus. “It’s not really Karl Marx that stinks, it’s the nutrient mix I’m feeding it.”
“This is like being back in the 7th year boys locker room. All elbows, knees, and stench,” grumbled Brooks.
The six crew members were crowded into the conference room. They had pushed the table out and moved some of the back-up consoles in. They had taken to stopping a couple of light years from a system, completely recharging, then taking short jumps in. That left the option to flee at a moment’s notice.
William held up a hand, “We’re punching out in 5 . . .4 . . .3 . . .2 . . .1.”
The world juddered and stopped.
“Ok, crew, let’s get this done quick. The priority is finding the gate and any infrastructure. Everyone, report on your sections.”
“Partition is functioning, we are charging now but we can engage a two light year jump as soon as we have the coordinates,” Addy reported.
“We’re in position 2.3 AUs from the pulsar,” William confirmed.
Brooks grunted, “Silent running has been engaged.”
“Karl Marx remains a fungus among men.”
“Thank you, Clarke,” the Captain deadpanned. “Nguyen, what can you see?”
Alex did not speak, instead she flicked a projection up for everyone to see.
“Well, shit,” said the Captain.
“Are they all . . .” William trailed off.
“Yes, 14 and counting,” Alex confirmed.
Crowding the sky above an ovoid rocky planetoid were gates upon gates, ships streaming through.
“Oh look,” said Brooks, “They set up a massive dipole magnet. We didn’t even need the stupid fungus.”
“I can visualize 18 gates from here,” said Alex, “If the amount of traffic we’ve detected in the last couple minutes is a normal sample, more ships flow through this hub in a day than exist in all of Earth-controlled space.”
“Everyone, take a couple of gates and analyze the traffic patterns. We want to pay particular attention to any ships that look military, but also for an increase in freighters and other supply-type ships moving in the direction of Rannit One.” The Captain assigned gates to each crew member. retaining the gate back in the direction of Rannit One for herself.
William had three gates that were positioned close together. He interpolated where those gates were likely to lead and noted any systems along that path. They had gotten far enough away from Earth now that there was littl
e in the way of imaging for the surrounding stars. Exploring further would take a lot of guess work. He also saw a sprawling installation on its surface come into view as the dwarf plant rotated. That must be the traffic control base.
The ship sensors continued to collect data on the traffic in and out of the gates he had been assigned. William pulled up some individual ships and noted his observations about their likely function. He added those to the identification VI. He saw the rest of the crew were doing the same. Hopefully they were improving the VI’s precision instead of sending it wildly off course with incorrect assumptions.
He could see the Captain was grabbing their data and overlaying the traffic patterns to the gate back to Rannit One. After about 20 minutes, Brooks got up, opened the conference room door and wrestled the largest rack holding Karl Marx into the hallway. “Tired of having my knees at my ears,” he muttered, returning to his station. No one commented.
William could see a pattern emerging from the data. There was definitely more traffic headed toward Rannit One and far less coming back. There were not many obviously armed ships, but there were plenty of transport freighters and a surprising number of small craft.
The Captain straightened up from where she had been hunching over her console and pushed back. “Based on the traffic and what we know about the systems we passed on the way here, there is likely a network of over a hundred settled worlds accessible from this hub, all within a week’s travel by gate. Given enough time, the Rannit could field a fleet big enough to wash over Mirada and then on to Earth. We need to get back home.”
* * *
…
* * *
They had already planned to take a more direct route back to Rannit One. No need to follow the gates back, which would only increase their risk of detection. In the weeks they’d spent zig-zagging through alien space, the Rannit might have assembled an invasion armada from the dozens of worlds they had access to. The crew debated heading directly back to Mirada, but the few days that would save were more than offset by the need to retrieve Tesla.
