“The AI that contacted the young girl, Margherita Calvino, was not able to determine a precise location. It seems the system is surrounded by something that… distorts and occludes incoming starlight, and the AI had been damaged and lost much of its memory.” He leaned forward. “However, we do know this. The Calvinos visited the Shroudworld before they disappeared on their mission to find what the girl called the Second Green Disk system.”
Bria growled.
“What? What’s the Shroudworld?” Tarkos asked.
“Despair,” Bria said. “Lost place. Worst place.”
“Wait a minute,” Tarkos said. “You called The Well of Furies the worst place in the Galaxy. It’s not fair to tell me that there is someplace worse that the Well of Furies, after I survived that.”
“No. Said: Well of Furies is abomination.”
“I stand corrected,” Tarkos muttered.
McDonough leaned towards Tarkos. “The Shroudworld is a place that was claimed by, and is inhabited by… dropouts of Galactic civilization. The Alliance members fear it, because the people there live to—well, as far as I can figure it, they live to cast doubt on everything the Alliance is. They live to cast doubt on everything, actually.”
“Doesn’t sound too tough,” Tarkos said.
Bria closed her top two eyes.
“You’ll need to go to the Shroudworld,” McDonough said, “and see if you can learn if anyone there knows where this Second Green Disk system is. Or, anyway, you’ll have to find out what they told the Calvinos. Because the Calvinos thought they could learn something there that would help them find the system. And they found it. Ergo, you learn that something too.”
“We can’t just hyperradio them a query?” Tarkos said.
McDonough laughed. “They’re much more… enigmatic than that. No. Personal visit. Retrace the steps of the Calvinos. If you can find where this Second Green Disk is, you can lead the invasion force, so that we can seize this wormhole technology.”
“And save Margherita Calvino.”
“And save Margherita Calvino.”
Tarkos looked at Bria. “Just the two of us?”
“No. We are putting together a team to help you. Including a navigator that I believe you already know. Tiklik’al’Tikas.”
Tarkos smiled. He had been thinking about the enigmatic Kirt AI Tiklik’al’Takas when he saw the honor guard of robots that greeted him at the door. He had hoped Tiklik might be among them, but the robot had not been there. No doubt Tiklik, with his extensive knowledge, was in demand elsewhere. “He will prove useful.”
“And,” McDonough said, “we may send the mother. Dr. Calvino.”
“Is that wise?”
“I’m not sure. But the doctors are printing some nanotech and microbots to work on her brain. They claim it’ll work as well in an autodoc as here. She’s no longer in danger of losing her life. The only question now is: will she recover some of her mind? If she does, she obviously could be very useful.”
McDonough stood. “You’ll have to act fast. And leave in the next several days. I’m sorry, but we don’t have time. Things are in… disarray… in many star systems. Even in the capital, on Neelee-ornor, there is strife. Factions are forming. The Alliance grows weaker, not stronger, as time passes. I suggest you go say goodbye to your mother. It’ll take a few days to get the starsleeve prepared for you.”
_____
The next morning, Tarkos stood out on the lawn again, holding his mother’s hands in his own.
“I am so very sorry, mother, that I must go. I must report at the Harmonizer Headquarters, and sometime soon I will be leaving Earth.”
She squeezed his hands. “I am proud of you, Amir. Do not be sad. And don’t worry about me. It is wonderful, that you are out there, among the stars. My pains are a mother’s pains: I will miss you, and I will worry that you will never have a family, if you stay too long away from Earth. You’re never going to meet a decent human woman out there, in the galaxy.”
Bria sighed quietly. His mother looked to the Sussurat sharply and frowned. “Oh. Something happened, didn’t it?”
“I did meet someone, Mother. But she died. She died doing something impossible and wonderful, something that may save many, many millions of people. Including many human beings.”
“Oh, Amir,” her voice caught, and she had to swallow before she could speak again, “Oh, my Amir, I’m so sorry. That’s so sad. What was her name? Where was she from? Who was her family?”
Tarkos smiled sadly. “Her name was Katrin Haukursdottir. She was from Iceland. She has a brother there still. He’s a marine biologist. And I met her on one of the most frightening places in the Galaxy. A world called the Well of Furies. But she wasn’t afraid….”
His mother hugged him. “Write to me. Tell me of her. You must write and tell me everything, so that I can love her too.”
Tarkos nodded. “I will. And I will do more than that. You have reminded me of my duty.”
He hugged her again and then backed away. Bria put her head down, eyes wide, and said, “Goodbye, friend mother.”
“Try to keep him alive,” Tarkos’s mother told Bria.
The Harmonizers turned and walked into their waiting ship.
EPILOGUES
Tarkos waited in the back of the bar, his hands around a mug of coffee on the wood table. He liked the room: the floors, walls, and even ceiling were clad with dark wood. The edges of the table before him had been rounded over with wear. The finish had worn off the chair he sat in, revealing pale pine.
Bright sunlight, coming from a low sun reluctant to pass below the horizon, shot through the long windows facing south and west. He was nearly alone in the room. The only other person: a woman behind the bar, reading on a tablet while he waited.
The door finally opened, and a young man with blond hair and pale eyes came in. He pulled the door closed against the wind. He looked to the woman but pointed over his shoulder.
“Guth min,” he said, “Thath er geimskip I grasinu!”
In answer the woman nodded her head toward Tarkos, where he now stood. Tarkos felt his heart skip. The man looked like Katrin. He had her eyes, her sharp brow, her thoughtful expression. They were like twins.
The man took one step toward Tarkos and stopped. He looked at the insignia on his chest, the claw of the Harmonizer corp. Tarkos said, “You are Sven Haukurson.”
The man nodded, seemingly involuntarily. He did not speak.
“Please, would you sit with me,” Tarkos said. “I… it’s about Katrin.”
The suspicious expression on the man’s face seemed to collapse. He stepped forward, and slowly pulled out the chair opposite Tarkos. He sat. Tarkos sat.
“That is your ship outside?”
“Yes,” Tarkos said. “A Predator Cruiser.”
“It’s….”
“Awesome. Yes.”
The man shook his head. “Strange. I was late to vote. And I waited then, at the polling station, for the count. Most of the votes are in. We lost. I mean, you lost, I lost: Earth will not join the Alliance.”
“Earth can vote again,” Tarkos told him. “In 64 Neelee-ornor years. Eighty-one Terran years. Perhaps then the human race will want to join the Alliance.”
Sven nodded. “I might not live to see it. But yes. Another chance.” He looked up then, meeting Tarkos’s eyes. “You knew Katrin?”
“Yes.”
“They told me she died. But that’s all they told me. Nothing more. Can you… can you tell me what happened?”
Tarkos shook his head. “No. No, I’m very sorry. I’m not permitted to do that. If I live, perhaps sometime in the future I will be able to tell you. I would like that. But I can say something... I came to tell you something else. Your sister—”
Tarkos was surprised to find his voice cracked. He swallowed. He took a deep breath and blinked several times, fighting the feeling that his eyes might redden with tears.
“I came here to tell you that your sister did
something wonderful. She did something that no creature had been able to do, and many had tried, over thousands of years. And because of this thing she did, she saved countless lives. Throughout the Galaxy. She….”
But he could not go on. He looked away, struggling to control his eyes, his wavering voice. He pressed his trembling hands on the table.
The man furrowed his brow in thought. “You knew her.”
Tarkos nodded.
“You loved her.”
He nodded again.
The men sat together in silence a long while. Finally, Tarkos said, “I must go. I just wanted you to… to know that she was very important. She did not die in vain. And I knew she would want me to come see you just to…. She talked of you often.”
Tarkos stood. He held out his hand. Sven Haukursson took it, but he did not shake. Instead, he held on, his grip firm. Perhaps he held onto his sister in this way, for a moment.
“At least tell me your name, friend.”
“Amir Tarkos. Harmonizer.”
He pulled his hand free and walked to the door, without looking back. His ship began to hover, stirring grass as the engines whined. He went out into the cold air. Mountains surrounded them on three sides, black and gray in the pale sun. They formed a valley, at the end of which the sea glittered.
The starboard door of the Cruiser opened, and Bria stood there, her fur shifting in the wind.
Tarkos stepped into the ship. As the door closed, he looked out over the snow topped mountains. “I have a feeling,” Tarkos said, “that I won’t ever be back here on Earth again.”
Bria huffed. The door clanged closed.
_____
Margherita had a terrible headache. A pain throbbed in her skull, as if her heart held a hammer and used it to hit her brain each time it beat.
She opened her eyes. Insidious blue light. Dark stone above her. She could see it clearly: her view lacked the pale fine scratches that covered her helmet. She still wore her suit, but her helmet had been removed.
Multifaceted eyes hove into her field of view. She groaned. Black eyes. A red carapace. At least it was Six-Traveler. Not Weapon-Maker. She tried to speak but could say nothing. Her tongue stuck to her dry palate.
“You attempted to end your life,” Six-Traveler said.
It seemed that if she breathed slowly, the pain in her skull grew a little more mild. She took long, deep breaths. They had rigged together some kind of breather, and wrapped it around her mouth, but not her nose. It leaked. She tasted Rinneret air. But the air being pumped into the mask was dry. High in oxygen.
“You attempted to end your life,” Six-Traveler repeated. “I had studied reports that your species often resists servitude, even by taking actions that are destructive of profit.”
Margherita smirked. But the plastic wrap over her mouth made it difficult. She lifted her head slightly and looked around. She had been set atop a box of some kind. Boxes surrounded them. A pile of kludged together medical machinery sat next to her. The service robot that Six-Traveler used for its errands stood in the corner. She recognized the room: a storage space off the bay where her ship was parked.
“How’d you get me?” she said in English. Then, slowly, in Rinneret she managed to say, “How?”
Six-Traveler gestured toward the robot. “It retrieved you.”
She lay her head back on the table.
“I have restored to you 47% of your person stake,” Six-Traveler said.
Margherita thought about that for a moment. Then, she tried to laugh. It made her cough, and her head throbbed even more severely.
Forty seven percent. Of course. Six-Traveler was a Rinneret. Not like most other Rinneret, but still, in the end, a Rinneret. He had given her back enough so that she had 49% of her person shares. He held 51%. A very Rinneret approach: to show a hint of generosity in a way that almost, but not quite, gave her what she wanted.
“There is much to be done,” Six-Traveler clicked and clattered. “We have lost contact with your world and you are the only human available for study. I want to better understand your species. I believe that it is possible we will find profitable ways to coexist. You can be of use in my assessment of this possibility.”
Margherita tried to speak again. It came out again in English, but she managed to repeat herself in Rinneret. “Why should I help you?” she asked.
Six-Traveler nodded his flat head, making his eyes gleam. He waved his small arms. He seemed, if she was not mistaken, quite pleased with this question. “If you assist me, you can earn 2% of your person shares.”
There it was. If she earned back 2% of her person shares, she would be the majority stakeholder in her future. She would be free. Or, at least, legally independent.
“Keep Weapon-Maker away from me,” Margherita said.
“I can attempt this.”
She nodded her head very slightly. “Deal.”
Six-Traveler slithered from the room, his many legs undulating. Its robot followed behind.
She lifted her arm and touched the microphone in her collar. “Ship?”
“Yes Margherita.”
“I’m coming home, ship.” She coughed and swallowed. It hurt. There was too much oxygen in the mix coming out of this tank that they used to resuscitate her. Good for her head but hell on her throat. But she was going to take it back to the ship. She could use more oxygen. “I’m coming as soon as I can stand. And as soon as I can find my helmet.”
“Yes, Margherita.”
“We need to start planning again. Looks like it’s still up to us to save the human race.”
THE END
The Predator Space Chronicles continue in:
Question Zero
THE PREDATOR SPACE CHRONICLES
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Craig DeLancey is a writer and philosopher. He has published dozens of short stories in magazines like Lightspeed, Analog, Cosmos, Shimmer, and Nature Physics. His novel Gods of Earth is available now with 47North Press. Born in Pittsburgh, PA, he now makes his home in upstate New York and, in addition to writing, teaches philosophy at Oswego State, part of the State University of New York (SUNY).
Included for free in this edition of Earthrise is this peek ahead at Question Zero (Predator Space Chronicles VI):
“It looks like the broken end of the Galaxy,” Amir Tarkos whispered. He shook his head in consternation. As one of the only humans in the Harmonizer Corp, he had seen many strange things during his years as a warrior defending all life in the Galactic Alliance. But somehow the Galaxy never stopped surprising him.
His partner and commander, the bear-like Sussurat he called Bria, huffed in agreement. They sat side by side in the cockpit of their ship, a predator cruiser. The view out of the front made them both stare in amazement: the cluster of ships before them could constitute an armada, if only the ships were spaceworthy.
Their cruiser had come into orbit above the Shroudworld, a huge rocky planet orbiting a bit close to its small g-class star. Before them rose the pinnacle station of a space elevator towering from a vast island in a blue sea on the planet’s equator. But a thick cluster of
ships, tethered together in a spiky mass, hid the terminus station of the elevator. It looked to Tarkos like a frayed beehive left at the top of a tree after being abandoned years before. Of course, that made him wonder if any of the ships could still sting.
He turned the magnification up, and the view revealed a conglomeration ancient and huge: massive structures arranged in no discernible pattern, a veritable penrose tiling of mad shapes incongruously thrust together. And when he turned the magnification even higher, he had to catch his breath.
“There are ships of every kind,” he said. Next to him, his commander Bria blinked in agreement. They could see ancient gray Kirt ships, crystal Neelee ships, tissue-thin Rinneret ships, and encrusted old OnUnAn ships. It seemed that sentient beings from every race in the galaxy had abandoned a ship here, at some time.
“Wait,” Tarkos said, pushing a finger against the window before them. “Is that… that ship looks like a spacegnasher. An Ulltrian ship.”
“Yessss,” Bria said.
Tarkos shook his head. “Even some Ulltrians have come to this planet and stayed. Why? Why would all these ships be here?”
“Plot course,” Bria said, always eager to push Tarkos back onto their task at hand.
“Aye, Commander,” Tarkos said with mock solemnity. “Only, how the hell do you get through that?”
“Find entrance.”
Tarkos plotted a close turn around the cluster of ships, hoping to find some gap in it. There had to be some way to get to the terminus station, so that they could begin their negotiations with the gatekeepers for the planet below.
They found the entrance on the far side of the cluster, a few degrees to the planetward side of the sphere. A gap in the agglomeration of tethered ships left a tunnel a kilomeasure in diameter that led toward the elevator’s pinnacle. Bria took the controls, and they dove into the dark. The cruiser’s computer began to chatter, struggling to find a protocol it could share with the transmissions coming from the station ahead. The computer made a sighing noise in a minute, having found some way to negotiate with the dock.
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