by Craig Allen
We are not free of the Reed and never will be until it is gone.
“That’s not true,” Cody said. “The Reed Entity confirmed it with us. It lost control of you when you left the system. You are and have been free of it for some time.”
Not true. We can feel it. When we rest we hear the Reed. It is there.
“No, it isn’t.” Cody tried to explain it in a way the toad would understand. “You’re experiencing trauma, a result of the Reed’s former control over you.”
I am not injured.
“Your mind is though you can’t tell.” Cody tapped his forehead but then realized the toad might not understand the gesture. “The same sort of thing happens to us. You only think you are under its control, but you are not. You are free.”
The toad stamped down on the deck plate hard enough to make it rattle.
Not true not true not true not true.
Gaston stepped toward the transparency. “We have no reason to lie to you.”
You work with the Reed and do its bidding. You are under its control now.
“The Reed has something we want,” Cody said. “We wouldn’t work with it otherwise.”
It will not give you what you want. It will promise but not deliver. It will control you.
Cody was tired of defending himself. “We would have left you alone had you left us alone.”
Could not let you take the heavy dirt to the Reed.
Cody folded his arms. “Do you even know what the Reed Entity is planning?”
It is planning control. It wishes to control all within its sight.
Cody wanted to kick the transparency, wishing the thing would give him a straight answer. At the same time, he didn’t want to dismiss the creature altogether, on the off chance it was correct.
He changed the subject. “What was that sphere your people used on the neutron star?”
We found it in the place of many stars. We thought it was yours.
“We don’t have the ability,” Gaston said. “One look at our technology should have told you that.”
What you have is far beyond what we have imagined. We assumed the sphere was yours.
“And it collapses stars,” Cody said. “How did you learn what it can do?”
We used the sphere on a star within the place of many stars, one that was far greater than our own. It is now smaller, the same as the one we destroyed.
“The device advances the star into its next stage of development,” Cody said. “When massive stars collapse, they become neutron stars.”
“So when they used it on the neutron star,” Gaston said, “they made a black hole.”
“In theory, a neutron star could become a black hole if it took on enough matter. We’re lucky it didn’t create a…”
The toad looked at Cody as if he should’ve figured it out already.
“You created the gamma-ray burst when you collapsed the massive star,” Cody said. “Was that on purpose?”
The calculations were more exact than we could have imagined.
“They used our technology to calculate the right star to use,” Cody said. “They then collapsed it with that device, in just the right way, to create a gamma-ray burst, one that would direct itself at the Kali system. With all the stars in the globular cluster, they could easily find one that would be suitable.”
“It’s a hell of a weapon,” Gaston. “So why did you use it on the mining facility?”
The Reed sent you here to collect the heavy dirt. We cannot let the Reed succeed in its plan, but we arrived too late.
“You didn’t answer my question from before,” Cody said. “Do you know what the Reed is planning? I mean, how will it gain control of us?”
It does not matter. The Reed must be stopped. You must stop helping it and never speak to it again.
“We will leave this system once the Reed Entity is gone,” Gaston said.
The toad tilted its head to the side.
Gone?
“It is leaving,” Cody said. “The world from which you came is poison. You know this, yes?”
The toad bounced its head, imitating a human nod.
“That means the planet is useless to you now,” Gaston said. “And when the Reed leaves, it will take the planet with it. It has this power.”
And you will learn this power from the Reed.
Cody nodded. “That is our hope, yes.”
There is no hope when the Reed has its claws in you.
Cody sighed. “Nevertheless, we’ve agreed to help. When we’re finished, the Reed Entity will be gone forever. It will be so far away it can’t reach us or you.”
The toad stood still for a moment, regarding both Cody and Gaston. Finally, it tapped out another message.
The Reed must die. We will see to it. There is no peace, no matter where the Reed is.
“Aren’t you listening?” Gaston asked. “The Reed is leaving. Soon, it’ll be gone forever.”
We must end the Reed. There is no choice.
The toad wandered to the other end of the cell, opposite the holoviewer, and lay down. It rested its head on the deck with its front claws curled under its body.
“I guess we’re done.” Gaston pointed at the guards. “Make sure someone is in here at all times.”
One guard nodded. “Yes, sir.”
Gaston led Cody out of the brig and into the main hall then turned and faced him. “You think that thing’s got PTSD?”
“Possibly,” Cody said. “Its mind was under the control of another being. It had no will of its own, probably for most of its life. That would psychologically harm anyone.”
“Yeah.” Gaston frowned. “Not sure what I’m going to do with that thing. I’ll let the admiral decide.”
Gaston exited the brig. “We’re heading back to Kali within the hour. I just hope we can be done with this shit soon.”
~~~
Cody was gathering his things when the Odin transitioned back into the Kali system. Sonja had been busy all day, and he hadn’t had a chance to speak with her again.
Damn. I should’ve asked her in the hopper.
Cody finished packing his rucksack and left his quarters. He’d taken not two steps before he heard an announcement.
“Dr. Brenner, report to the main hangar deck, tube nine.”
He checked the time then headed for the hangar bay, passing through a lounge where a view of the outside was displayed across one wall. The massive ringed gas-giant of Kali IV filled much of the screen, her rings nearly parallel with the hopper’s trajectory and close enough to see individual chunks of ice.
He paused at the screen, his head cocked. They should’ve been on the outskirts of the system near Kali VIII. Nothing was near Kali IV, not anymore. Months before, he and Sonja had come across a satellite floating in the rings, completely hidden from most sensors. It had been relaying information between Kali and a ship near the mining facility. Cody managed to shut it down even as it fired upon the hopper he and Sonja were in. That spy satellite might not have been the only one.
“Dr. Brenner, report to the main hangar deck, tube nine.”
Cody double-timed it to the hangar. When he finally arrived, Sonja was standing by the hopper, tapping her fingers on her forearm. The hopper looked to be in working condition. The only damage he saw was scorch marks covering most of the hull.
“About time,” she said.
Cody shrugged. “I was just trying to figure out why we aren’t at the ring facility.”
“Noticed that, did you?” She gestured for him to follow her inside the hopper. “I’ll explain on the way.”
Cody climbed aboard via the rear hatch and buckled up in the co-pilot’s seat. Any other pilot would’ve insisted he sit in the back, but he’d had so much cockpit time he could almost fly the thing. In fact, he had flown a hopper once before. Just not very well.
Cody strapped in. “Fixed already?”
“Yep,” she said. “Components on most ships are modular. They just pulled out t
he busted components and installed new ones.”
“So new reactor, new engines…”
“And new internal gravity plates. All we need is a new paint job, but that’s for much later.” She smiled. “No more black holes, okay?”
“Deal.”
In moments, they were cleared for launch, processed through the docking tube, and flying through space. The ice of Kali IV’s rings was farther away than in the view he’d seen from the Odin, which was probably zoomed in for effect. Sonja engaged the drive, and they flew toward the rings.
“So what’s going on?” Cody asked. “I thought we had to deliver the ex-mat to the ring as fast as possible.”
“It’s being transferred to the Tokugawa. They’ll make the final delivery.” She adjusted their course so the rings would be below them, relatively. “In the meantime, one of the Tokugawa’s probes found an anomaly in these rings.”
“Another one?” Cody frowned. “They already had one satellite out here. How many do they have?”
“Hopefully none, but we’re not that lucky.”
Sonja pulled up navigation on the HUD, which tracked a course through the icy rings toward a spot on the far side of the giant world. An image appeared next to it, showing a glint of light with a description next to it.
“The probe detected a reflection that didn’t match anything else in the rings,” Sonja said. “Could be debris from something the creatures of Kali were experimenting with back in the day and forgot about, or it could be something important.”
“And I’m here because…?”
“Because last time we found something floating out in the rings, it was a satellite, and you managed to hack into it.” Sonja winked at him. “Aren’t you lucky?”
“I am.” He stared out into the star field. “I hate to say this, but it’s probably something the toads put out here. They were waiting for us by the mine.”
“That’s probably coincidence,” Sonja said.
“Maybe. But they seem to know the Reed Entity is up to something. And they probably know that because they have spies out here.”
“Or spy-sats.” Sonja slumped. “I wish this was over. I’m so sick of this place.”
“It’ll be over soon.” Cody prayed that would be true.
Their course took them along the northern edge of the rings of ice. According to the report, the glint of light detected by the probe was on the southern hemisphere side of the rings.
“There.” Sonja zoomed in on the point on the HUD. “That’s it.”
A glint flashed across the expanse of ice. It was brief but long enough for the hopper’s sensors to get a read on it.
“It’s made of alloys similar to bridge-sats,” Cody said. “The shape is about the same too.”
“Yeah, that’s it.” She pulled up the weapons console as she slowed their velocity. “Let’s see how close we can get.”
“I’ll see if I can get into it.” Cody brought up the comm system and went to work.
The hopper slowed but was still too fast for Cody’s comfort, given the surrounding ice. He let Sonja do the piloting while he attempted to contact what he assumed was a bridge-sat.
In seconds, he had a transponder, which immediately demanded access codes. He passed in Deveau’s code on the off chance it would work. Angry red text responded in the negative. He proceeded to try the myriad of other codes that usually worked.
“How’s it going?” Sonja asked.
“Nothing so far.” He frowned as he pulled up a console. “I think the toads are finally starting to use better security, for once.”
Cody managed to gain access to the transponder’s root code as Sonja dropped below the ice. The systems in use were the same as those used ten years before, which was the technology the Reed Entity had stolen from the old Kali vessel that had crashed. Cody had worked on the systems during the war, which made hacking the satellite easier than it would have been for someone else on the Odin.
“Gravimetrics are picking up something weird out there,” Sonja said. “You sure that thing hasn’t noticed you?”
“Doesn’t look like it.” A firewall he didn’t expect came up, but he bypassed it with ease… a little too much ease.
Cody caught the warning on his screen just in time. “Sonja! Back upstairs!”
The HUD lit up with a lock-on alarm.
Sonja pulled the stick back hard. “Shit!”
The hopper rose up into the ice as grasers opened fire. Chunks of ice exploded when the induced gamma rays smashed through them. A trail of exploding ice led toward the hopper while Sonja banked hard away from the planet. The hopper vibrated, and a damage schematic appeared on the HUD.
“Looks like that shot took off a layer of armor,” Cody said.
“Yeah, I noticed.” Sonja banked again.
More trails of broken ice lanced out before the hopper as the satellite’s defense system took more and more shots at them.
“Those are capital-ship-class grasers.” Sonja gritted her teeth when a nearby chunk of ice exploded, sending particles across the canopy. “Christ, there won’t be any rings left by the time that satellite’s done.”
Empty paths in the ice traced away from the satellite toward the places the hopper had been. The hopper vibrated again, and an alarm sounded. The schematic on the HUD showed tube one was offline.
“No torpedoes on that side.” Sonja dove into the ring, dodging a chunk of ice the size of the hopper. “Remember how to use grasers?”
“Bet your life I do.”
“I’m about to.”
Cody brought up fire control and activated the targeting system. It scanned the sky as Sonja darted through the ring. More ice disintegrated around them.
“Having trouble getting a lock.” Cody thought he had one and fired a burst.
Grasers cut through the ice the other way, for a change, but missed their mark.
Sonja banked and rolled the hopper. “Don’t you dare ask me to keep this thing steady.”
“It’d be nice.” Then again, Cody knew that remaining steady would mean ending up dead.
The targeting system locked on once more, but Cody fired half a second after it lost the lock.
The hopper crashed through a piece of ice half the size of the hopper itself. Alarms flashed, but Cody didn’t bother to check what else had been damaged. He continued to coax the targeting system into locking on to the satellite. A stationary target should’ve been easy, but with all the graser fire, they had no choice but to push the hopper near its limits just to keep from dying.
Cody swore to himself. The hopper’s targeting system had determined that the range of the satellite’s grasers was many times greater than the distance between the hopper and the satellite when it first opened fire. That meant the satellite had waited to fire until it was almost impossible for the hopper to get out of range. At full burn, they could get away in twenty seconds. But that would mean flying in a straight line, and the grasers would lock on and vaporize them before they could get a quarter of that distance.
Sonja swung the hopper around once more. Two lock-on signals came on the HUD: one from the satellite’s grasers picking up the hopper, and the other for the hopper’s grasers as they focused on the satellite. Cody fired, praying they were first.
A path from the hopper tore through the ice to the satellite, sending a shower of fire and debris. He fired another shot to be sure. The satellite spun out of position, bouncing off ice as it hurtled toward the planet below.
Cody did a quick scan. “Its grasers are offline. Power readings minimal.”
Sonja leveled out the hopper, pointing it in the direction of the satellite as it fell into the thick atmosphere of Kali IV. “I wonder if that thing got a signal out.”
“Checking now,” Cody said. “The hopper comm system managed to gain access during our little engagement.”
The satellite continued to fall. Reaching the atmosphere would take several hours. Gas giants didn’t have a surface like a normal pla
net, which meant the satellite would fall deeper into the thick soup of gas until the pressure at the lower layers crushed the satellite into a tiny ball.
“Downloading files.” Cody looked at the most recent one. “That’s what I was afraid of.”
Cody moved his screen to the main HUD so that Sonja could see. The satellite had sent a warning signal across bridge-space only seconds earlier.
“Then there’s this.” Cody pulled up another file. “This image was taken about five minutes ago.”
The image had been enhanced but was otherwise unaltered. It showed the teleportation ring.
Sonja stared at the image for a moment. “Go through the hopper sensor logs and see if you can figure out where the signal was sent.”
Cody did so. “I think we already know who received the signal.”
“Yeah.” Sonja adjusted course back toward the Odin, flying over the new holes in the rings around Kali IV. “Which means the toads are probably going to show up.”
~~~
They had barely set the hopper on the deck aboard the Odin before crewmembers began repairs, stripping off bad components and adding new ones.
The rear hatch opened, and just as Cody was about to step out, crewmen walked in, carrying a canister half the size of a person. The clear canister showed a stabilization system inside, which surrounded an exotic-matter pod.
Sonja stepped into the hopper bay. “Gentlemen, care to explain this?”
“You have new orders.” A chief petty officer strode into the hopper and handed Sonja a viewer.
