Win’s suit alarm flared. In less than a second, his primary power source sparked out in a burst of red and white, forcing him to convert to his backup.
“We passed through a magnetic field,” said Zhelnikov. “Backup power online.”
“How strong would it have to be to fry shielded primaries?”
“Strong. This must be the secret.”
“What secret?” Win asked.
“To how this station functions. There is no machinery or additional structure needed. Not like in the hollowed-out asteroid that we’ve converted.”
“I don’t follow.”
“The form is the function. The material itself is somehow arranged to channel energy from wherever it’s generated and focuses that power to sustain Childress transit.”
“Speak English, old man.”
Zhelnikov chuckled. “I told you about how Sommen plasma weapons work and you’ve seen the dimensional data too; there’s no room in this structure for energy generation, at least not in a form we understand. Use that brain of yours.”
Win’s mind reeled. The vastness of the corridor threatened to overpower his senses, making it difficult to concentrate. “This entire structure is an antenna. It’s channeling energy produced somewhere else and converting it into whatever is needed to fold space on itself, joining to otherwise distant points in three dimensions.”
“That is my guess as well. With no visible machinery or mechanisms I would imagine that the function is achieved at a quantum level—the same way that this place communicated with you. There are no moving parts. This entire thing is built using a combination of materials, the organization of which is what gives it an ability to channel energy. And with no moving parts . . .”
Win finished Zhelnikov’s sentence with a whisper. “It would last as long as its energy source, wherever that is. Maybe forever.”
“Nothing is forever. But for our purposes, yeah. Basically forever.” Zhelnikov punched at his forearm, then reached out to attach a line to Win’s belt. “I’m out of maneuvering gas. Take us back to the airlock. We’ve gone far enough this trip and it’s time to get back.”
“Zhelnikov. Something comes.”
From ahead, in the direction they’d been moving, Win had detected motion. The corridor’s gentle curve made it possible to see a long distance but the lighting and his sensor limitations prevented him from pulling focus. His screen rendered everything in a cloud of static, within which something approached in a fishlike swimming motion and now the sound hit them: a combination of screeching metal and tones, reminding Win of mechanisms unused for years and left to rust. He turned and punched at his maneuvering jets, sending them back toward the airlock.
“Move it,” said Zhelnikov.
“I am.”
“Not fast enough.”
The inner doorway loomed ahead but Win’s lack of perspective prevented him from judging the distance and he shot a laser, realizing that they still had some way to go. He pulsed his thrusters again, holding them open for seconds.
“I hope we can stop,” he said.
“Just aim for the opening and get us through. We can risk slamming against a wall or two. I’m getting a good look at this thing, Win. We don’t want it to catch us out here.”
“Send me the image; if I look back it might screw up our course.”
A small section of Win’s screen lit up with Zhelnikov’s transmission. He squinted. Whatever approached made him think of a combination of giant spider crab and octopus, with four sets of tentacles that jutted from an articulated, tubular abdomen. It had folded ten legs back along its sides, accelerating not with gasses, but, Win guessed, with energy that created a flickering aura, sparking in arc flashes against the section closest to the structure’s wall. Win became so transfixed that he misjudged the distance to the airlock doors.
His gas jets fired in a last second attempt to slow, but it was too late; the pair sped through the narrow opening then slammed into the side of the airlock, spinning and impacting a second time, this time against the outer door. Win shook his head to clear it. Red lights blinked on his screen and a quiet hissing sound filled his suit while his computer calmly repeated the warning: suit breach, suit breach, suit breach . . . Zhelnikov appeared beside him and grabbed his helmet.
“Stay still! You’re mixing gases with this atmosphere; major crack at your helmet rear.”
“Seal it!” Win shouted.
“What do you think I’m doing?”
“I’ve lost too much oxygen, Zhelnikov; we have to get back . . .”
Win’s voice froze. The hissing had stopped and his suit oxygen-mix indicator crept back toward normal but he ignored the sensors, his vision dedicated to the barely open inner airlock door.
“Zhelnikov,” he said.
“I see it. Can’t you send a thought and tell this damn thing to open the outer airlock door?”
“I’m trying. It’s not working.”
“Look at that creature.”
Two thin articulated arms pushed through the crack, their ends tipped with tentacle digits the size of human arms, which touched the inside of the door—probing for something. Eventually they stopped. The tips began pulsing with light as they pressed and Win watched, hypnotized by the rhythm until he glanced through the crack. The thing’s “face” consisted of an array of lights and angular protrusions, reminding him of a lobster. There was no color. Not silver, or white, he realized, something different, as if the thing had been drained of every pigment to be left with a dead gray somewhere on its way to turning black.
He probed it with his mind, recoiling with a sensation of something both intelligent and dead, concurrently.
“It’s not alive,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“This is what controls the station. It’s not alive. It’s some kind of automaton, left behind to tend to the wormhole.”
“Does it know we’re here?”
“Yes.”
“Why isn’t it taking a look at us? Or attacking?”
Win’s voice dropped to a whisper. “It doesn’t care, Zhelnikov. We are nothing. It’s something between us and a god.”
Without warning, the tentacles retracted and a beam of blue light shot from the thing’s face to first illuminate Zhelnikov. When it shone on Win he gritted his teeth in pain; a message came through, overpowering him with a kind of mental feedback: Do not return.
The inner doors closed, shutting the creature out. Win heard the airlock cycle to vacuum before the outer doors opened again, spilling the two into space where he sent spurts of gas to propel them in the direction of the lifeboat. By the time they reentered the small craft, sweat filled Win’s suit and he fought the urge to vomit from the aftereffects of breathing so much nitrogen, his head still dizzy from mild hypoxia.
“Get us back to the station,” Zhelnikov ordered the pilot. He turned to Win. “We need to rejoin the group soon; regroup with them in Sommen space.”
“What about the weapon installation on the Higgins?”
“We’ll accelerate at lower gees. They have to do low-g acceleration anyway because of you and me. Engineering teams will finish the work in transit.”
“What did we just experience?”
Zhelnikov thought before answering. “I don’t really know.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
In the middle of nothing, San thought. The unknown. Deep space, uncharted.
She submerged into a pool of thought, its surface shimmering with reflected starlight that disappeared when she concentrated. Her subconscious had been packed with data streams. Some shone with the pledge of excitement while others buzzed with importance, the promise of information foundational to war and strategy. But one caught her eye: The flow looked plain and slower than the rest, and San examined it, wondering if it had been meant to go unnoticed, its banality a coating that almost camouflaged but which now demanded inspection.
“We need a navigation solution to the next transit, San,” the
captain said. The Marine lieutenant had stretched the handset from the wall and held it against her helmet. She opened her eyes; the stars shone through ashram glass, which made them look wavy and uncertain.
“I will return to the tomb soon, Captain. One thing to do in the ashram first.”
“Fine. Make it quick, San.”
The lieutenant replaced the handset. “What’s so important, miss?”
“What is your name?”
“Richards, ma’am.”
“Your first name, Lieutenant.”
The Marine paused for a second and she sensed embarrassment when he answered. “Eugene.”
“Eugene, please be quiet; I need to concentrate.”
San closed her eyes again. She sunk into her thoughts and passed through them, submerging beneath the conscious information and then back to where the subconscious lived, moving toward the slow stream before she pulled away, startled by something. San’s eyes snapped open. Alarms blared through her helmet speakers and the lieutenant grabbed her by the belt, dragging her toward the hatch. He banged his fist on the controls until it opened and then pushed her through and into the arms of a Marine who waited outside.
“What’s going on?” San yelled.
Wilson broke through, his thoughts frenzied. The Sommen are here—in our space. They’ve hailed both the captains, of the Jerusalem and Bangkok.
For what?
For us—the “human priests.” We’re to shuttle to the Sommen ship immediately.
San froze, letting the Marines drag her while she began to hyperventilate. This was it. The one reason the Sommen would demand to see her and Wilson was to kill them both. Somewhere they’d been involved with a treaty violation while the Sommen had stuck to the agreement for decades, never once breaking its terms; their forces would only enter human space for violations of the treaty by humans. Even then, a Sommen incursion would be invoked for two additional purposes: to start the war, or to impose another penalty decided by their priests. The penalties listed in the Sommen texts were all death. The means of dispatch varied with the degree of dishonor for those involved in treaty violations, ranging anywhere from slow disembowelment to decapitation.
They’re going to kill us, San sent. What did we do? How could you or I have violated the treaty?
We didn’t. This has to be something else.
One of the Marines pushed his way through a maintenance crew, slamming a woman into a pipe gallery. He barked something at San, but she had long since been soaked with her own terror and that of the surrounding crew, the intensity of which rendered any sounds almost mute. She felt the man’s fear; his thoughts drifted over her and San caught a picture of her ship, split into pieces by the fiery plasma of Sommen warships.
My God, Wilson. I can feel the uncertainty of everyone on this ship; it’s overloading my mind. Their Proelian training has been forgotten.
Nobody knows what’s going on, San.
Did your captain tell you anything?
The Sommen came out of nowhere. One medium ship, Hastatus class, and three smaller vessels—Sagittarii class. We’re being taken to the Hastatus-class vessel.
San searched for the memories. Fleet had converted the Sommen names for their vessel classes into words taken from Earth’s ancient history, from military terms used in ancient Rome. Hastatus. It would be similar to a heavy cruiser in Fleet terms, the staple of any battle group and produced in vast numbers. In Sommen terms, just one Hastatus-class ship could rip their two Fleet vessels apart.
Her escort pushed San into an oversized shuttle, one converted to carry troops, and two Marine platoons in full battle kit scrambled through the hatch after her. They strapped themselves in. The lieutenant shouted orders while two of his men strapped her to an acceleration couch and connected the secure coms cable to her helmet. As soon as the inner airlock hatch shut, a bump of acceleration followed and the shuttle lifted from the hangar, space soon wrapping them in its empty blanket.
“Ten kilometers out,” the pilot announced. “It’s hard to get a good reading; targeting drones can’t fix properly.”
It’s the Sommen material and their ship design. It’s why we built the Bangkok and Jerusalem the way we did.
“Did you say something?” the lieutenant asked.
“No, Eugene,” San whispered. “I was thinking out loud.”
She glanced out the nearest viewport. A tiny speck of light caught her eye and she zoomed in, her suit computer outlining the shape of an object and gauging the temperature of a hotspot near its rear as it screamed through space: Wilson’s shuttle.
I can see you, she sent. We are so small out here. Surrounded on all sides by a vacuum and absolute cold where mankind was never intended to live. Space is filled with death; if death could be mined like gold, we’d all be rich.
Are you okay, San? She felt the concern, his question wrapped in a layer of worry.
Mathematics is truth, Wilson. But what they didn’t teach us is that mathematics is murder and war and assassination. I saw this when we took out the Chinese vessels. And it keeps emerging from my calculations in the tomb. Mathematics is sterile. The Proelians understood this when they filled our infant minds with history, a history designed to influence our calculations; mathematics soaked in one-sided history isn’t truth. It’s a vast conspiracy.
This is war, San. The Sommen will attack in a matter of decades and the entire human race is at stake. If you really think this is all wrong, maybe the abbess will let you do something else when we return.
Before the Marines grabbed me to put me in the shuttle, San sent, I was about to enter a data stream. One that is almost hidden. When I got close to it, I sensed that it contained powerful information that could influence us and all our calculations. Everything. It has to be something that could give us actual freedom in what we do. We aren’t just navigators. We’re communicators, but most importantly: We are intelligence collectors. Facilitators of death and destruction. We guide the Proelian and Fleet decisions but only inside the narrow confines of what we are allowed to do and how we are allowed to decide. With complete freedom of thought, we could finally do what’s in everyone’s best interest, not just the Proelians.
Why would the nuns put that in our subconscious? Wouldn’t it undermine their plans?
San did her best to hide the frustration; she could almost see his mind spinning at a rate much slower than hers and it reminded her of walking with a toddler, one that asked San to slow down.
Because, Wilson. It’s all about faith. Even the Proelians can’t escape the importance of objective truth; it’s the underpinning of their and the Sommen religions. I think the stream I was about to examine involves a prophecy, maybe one that explains everything, even the Sommen. If the Proelians hadn’t placed that data stream in our minds, they knew they’d be subverting something—a series of events placed into motion long ago, but one which demands we have free will. It’s a paradox: They want us to act in one way, but they cannot trust in a course’s authenticity unless we have complete freedom to decide.
Explain it again to me later; we’re about to dock.
Wilson didn’t see it, San realized, the most logical reason for the Sommen to have intercepted them in human space: they knew the Bangkok and Jerusalem were headed on a course to break the treaty and enter Sommen territory.
San looked out the nearest viewport, the form of the Sommen cruiser filling the glass through which she stared. The usual material used for Sommen ship construction had shifted from green to a deep black, almost indistinguishable from the fabric of space. It was black within black. Then the Sommen hangar door opened, spilling red light into the area around them; it illuminated the shuttle nose and filled the troop area with its glow, reminding San of the fires of hell. The analogy was valid. In less than a minute they’d be docked on an enemy vessel and although grateful for the Marines’ presence, it was doubtful they’d be able to save her or themselves in the event of conflict. Their small craft had just entered the be
lly of a fiend.
San punched at her forearm, switching the view on her heads-up by linking it to the shuttle’s forward cameras, after which she paused in amazement. The cruiser’s hangar enveloped them in its vastness—a space the size of several football fields in every direction. Racks of small Sommen craft filled most of one side, the ships reminding her of wasps. They had multiple segments and their bodies blistered with sensor packages and missile hard points, filmy insect wings the only things missing. Wilson’s shuttle cruised before them, leading the way to a blinking set of lights on a platform where its landing pads extracted with a buzz. A moment later they engaged magnetic locks, and San heard the pilot breathe a sigh of relief.
“I didn’t know if this thing had any metal we could lock onto,” he muttered.
The lieutenant appeared at San’s side, his hands moving over her shoulder sensors and back-mounted gear in a last minute check. “Everything is operational. Your Sommen translator working?”
“Yes. But I doubt the Sommen will be speaking much if they’re taking us to a priest.”
“We won’t be met by the Sommen. One of their subjugated races will meet us at the platform and escort us from there to wherever we’re headed.”
The subjugated races. These were the alien worlds conquered by the Sommen, their sentient species scooped up to serve lesser roles in a military machine: ships maintenance, supply, anything not involved with the priesthood or with combat. They were slaves, forced to engage in work that the Sommen judged too cowardly. Too safe. San went numb with a mixture of fear and excitement; it would be her first time seeing an alien race, face to face, which almost made her forget that the meeting could end in her execution.
San glided into the elongated troop airlock, Marines crammed around her. When the outer door opened, they guided her through to join with Wilson’s group, and she noted the atmosphere’s composition—the ammonia-rich mixture of the Sommen. The Marines’ magnetic boots locked onto a metallic floor. It was a black surface in an otherwise ocean of greens, where Sommen armor materials locked together in patterns that reminded San of a twisted jungle. She grabbed onto the Marine in front so she wouldn’t lose the group.
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