by J. N. Chaney
It vanished.
Something clattered to the deck beside the other Radiant Point. It was the maintenance drone.
Viktor whistled. “I’d call that a gate.”
Dash nodded. “Yeah. Let’s try taking these things further apart from one another and try it again.”
Subsequent testing showed that it worked along the length of the Absolute Zero’s docking bay. It worked if the Radiant Points were at the opposite ends of the ship. They loaded one of the Radiant Points onto a shuttle and moved it progressively farther and farther away. The little maintenance drone quite happily clattered back and forth between the two devices and kept working afterward.
“Okay, let’s try something. Let’s load one aboard a ship, translate it away, and make sure it still works,” Dash said.
They did, loading one of the Radiant Points aboard a destroyer, whose Captain translated a light-year away.
It made no difference. The drone disappeared from one end and reappeared at the other, each time. Moreover, Custodian confirmed that the transit time was so small as to effectively be zero.
Dash watched as the drone once more clattered to the Absolute Zero’s deck by his feet. Only an instant before, it had been almost ten light-years away.
He picked up the drone. “Well, little fellow, you’re quite the pioneer. You’re the first thing to pass through a gate made by the Cygnus Realm,” he said.
“Technically, Dash, we just figured out how to make this alien technology work like a gate,” Conover replied.
Dash shot him a glance. “Details. It’s our gate, the product of your hard work. So I’ll happily take the credit for it, on behalf of the Realm, thank you very much. I’m magnanimous that way.”
“Fancy word,” Conover said.
“I’m a fancy guy,” Dash preened.
“Well, this is fine if we want to send maintenance drones across the universe, but can we make it handle anything bigger?” Viktor asked.
Elois looked up from a data pad she’d been studying with two of her engineers. “We can. We can scale the gates up simply by providing more power to them.”
“Okay, how big can we make them?”
“As big as we want, it seems. Big enough for ships to pass through, anyway. I’m sure there’s a practical upper limit because there’s nothing in the math to suggest a gate couldn’t be, ah, infinitely big.”
“Except for the infinite power thing to feed,” Dash noted.
Elois smirked. “There is that. I think big enough for our biggest ships to pass through is probably sufficient.”
“Which brings us to the true, burning question,” Harolyn said.
They all turned to look at her.
She shrugged as though it were obvious. “Where do we put the other end?”
Dash paused. “One end will be here. The Forge. Home, anyway.”
“And the other?”
He swept a hand at the nearby bulkhead. “Out there, across the Big Black.”
“Sure, but across is pretty vague. How far across?” Harolyn persisted, one brow now lifted in curiosity.
Dash said nothing for a moment before answering.
“Why, all the way, of course.”
17
“I look at it as a chance to finally get caught up on all the sleep these two wars have cost me,” Dash said, then turned to the Inner Circle, gathered in the Forge’s Command Center.
“Dash, it’s cryosleep, or something much like it. It’s risky as hell,” Leira said, hands planted stubbornly on her hips.
“There’s a reason we haven’t used cryosleep in, well, what? At least a couple of centuries, now?” Amy put in.
Dash raised his hands. “I know all this. But, first, this isn’t really cryosleep. Right, Custodian?”
“Strictly speaking, no. Dash’s body would be reduced to a much lower-than-normal temperature, to slow down metabolic processes. Most of the suspended-animation effect comes from temporal stasis, though. In its area of effect, it can’t stop time, but it can slow it.”
“Custodian, we use that for storing things like biological samples. We’ve never used it on a full-grown, living human. Has anyone? Do we even know what effects it will have?” Leira asked.
“One of the results of long-term exposure to temporally adjusted cryosleep is abnormal hair growth.”
Silence descended on the Command Center, sudden and surprised. Someone giggled. Leira looked at Dash.
“You’re trying to imagine me with a mullet right now, aren’t you?” Dash asked.
“Actually, I’m trying not to do that. Custodian, are you serious?”
“No, of course not. However, I do wish to thank you for providing me with another datapoint,” Custodian replied.
“A datapoint? What are you talking about?” Leira shot back.
“The other AIs and I have noted that, when we state something as fact, you tend to automatically believe it possible, even when it’s obviously silly. We decided to conduct an experiment to confirm this.”
Amy planted her hands on her hips. “So that explains why Hathaway told me the Talon would fly faster if I painted it red!”
“And why Kristin announced that taking up dancing would enhance my movements when I was in the Pulsar’s cradle!” Conover put in.
Dash grinned. “Sentinel, you were in on this?”
“I have no knowledge of this supposed experiment and question its very ethical foundation.”
Dash narrowed his eyes. “Really?”
“And we have another datapoint,” Custodian said, sounding a little smug.
“So these AIs have been running an experiment on us?” Leira said, her tone a mix of disbelief, anger, and more than a little amusement.
“You humanoids frequently use false proclamations of things as fact as a form of good-natured, interpersonal humor. It is an interesting social mechanism that we are trying to understand,” Custodian replied.
“But—they’re AIs, just machines. They shouldn’t be experimenting on anyone,” Wei-Ping, lounging against a console, put in.
But Dash firmly shook his head. “No, they’re not. They’re crucial members of our Inner Circle and valued citizens of the Cygnus Realm. They’re also our friends.”
Everyone agreed, especially from the mech pilots. Even Wei-Ping, after a moment of lingering doubt, shrugged and joined in.
A pause before Custodian replied.
“We appreciate that, Messenger.”
“But, to bring us back on course, you still didn’t answer the question about the long-term effects of cryosleep,” Leira said.
“For the relatively short duration of Dash’s flight, there should be little or no residual effects.”
“Seven weeks is a long time.”
But Dash sniffed. “Go talk to Armagost. Ask him how many years he and his people were in cryosleep. And they didn’t have the benefit of Unseen tech.”
Leira stubbornly crossed her arms and sighed. “I just don’t like the idea of you being gone so long, and no, not just for personal reasons, before anyone unwisely suggests that. You’re going to be alone that whole time, Dash. You should at least take another mech with you.”
“Or even just send one of us, instead,” Conover said.
Dash stuck his hands in his pockets. “I get it, guys. But we need to get that second Radiant Point out to where it’s going to help us take this war to the Deepers where they live. The Archetype is still the biggest, most capable mech we’ve got. You’re just as capable as I am of running things here. But there is one thing I need to do.”
Dash walked up to Conover, stopped in front him, and gave the young man a grave look.
“While I’m gone, you’re going to be in command of the Cygnus Realm. Leira will act as your number two and chief advisor.” Dash glanced at Leira, who nodded. This was actually the one part of the plan she did agree with.
Conover rocked back a step, as though Dash had walked up and punched him.
“I—what?”
/>
“You’re going to be the Acting Messenger.”
“Dash, I—I can’t!”
Dash put his hands on Conover’s shoulders, smiled, and nodded. “Yes, you can. Believe me. If I didn’t think you could, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation.”
Conover’s head swiveled around the Command Center. Dash had already quietly briefed almost all of the Inner Circle. And those few he hadn’t yet managed to get to, like Wei-Ping, were just nodding their appreciation.
Benzel walked up to Conover and whacked him on the shoulder. “Don’t worry, boss. You have any trouble with anyone, just tell old Benzel, and he’ll sort ’em out.”
Wei-Ping snorted. “And what if the trouble’s with old Benzel?”
Leira smiled sweetly. “Then old Leira will take care of it.”
Dash wasn’t used to sharing the Archetype’s cockpit with anyone. In fact, he’d always considered it quite spacious, even needlessly so, considering that he spent virtually all of his time here stuck in the cradle anyway. But having Elois pushed in on one side of him and Viktor on the other, it felt about as spacious as a suit of vac-armor.
“So those are all the changes and modifications the AIs said were necessary,” Elois said, wrapping up her briefing.
“And they’ve all checked out. Sentinel’s declared them all green, so you’re good to launch any time,” Viktor added.
“What about the remotes?”
“Already loaded into the leg compartments.”
“And the Radiant Point?”
“Thanks to all the upgrades to the Archetype, Sentinel was able to free up space in the mech’s belly. It’s been turned into a heavily shielded cargo compartment just big enough for the Radiant Point. That puts the thing under the mech’s thickest armor and should block any sort of emissions that might give away the fact you’re carrying it,” Viktor replied.
Dash nodded. Outwardly, not much had changed. Emitters for the temporal stasis system had been installed surrounding the cradle, mounted on the deck and the overhead, and that was about it.
So he was ready to fly, undertaking a journey that, by any stretch of the imagination, strained belief.
One hundred and sixty thousand light-years. That’s how far he was going to travel. At that point, just shy of the Large Magellanic Cloud, a meticulous stellar survey had revealed another ancient white dwarf star. It was the furthest discernible point the AIs could use as a fixed destination. Even then, while Dash cryo-slept, Sentinel was going to have to make repeated and lengthy stays in intergalactic real-space to get navigational fixes and stay on course to it. Of the roughly seven weeks of flight-time, the mech would spend only a little less than six actually translating through unSpace.
“You okay with it, Dash? Maybe want to add cupholders? A vanity mirror?” Elois asked, smirking.
“Nah, I think this’ll do just fine. Now, if you folks will kindly get the hell out of my cockpit, I’ll do some pre-flight checks.”
“Getting the hell out now, sir,” Viktor said, giving Dash a wink.
When they were gone, Dash sat cross-legged on the deck of the Archetype’s cockpit. He’d never done that before, it struck him. He’d only clambered across it to enter and exit the cradle. For a while, he just enjoyed the moment of solitude. The quiet let memories come sifting back in. All the time he’d spent here, fighting, destroying, almost dying. But the memory that came rushing back the strongest was his very first one of this place, when the Archetype had still been buried in the icy depths of a comet, and he’d been sucking on his last dregs of air in his vac-suit.
You are safe, Messenger.
It wasn’t actually the first thing Sentinel had ever said to him—that had been something about initializing a power core. But it was the first thing he remembered clearly.
“Dash, is something wrong?” Sentinel asked.
He glanced up from his reverie. “Huh? Oh. No. I was just thinking. Remembering.”
“Our first encounter?”
“Hey, have you been eavesdropping on my thoughts?”
“A general, superficial impression of your current thoughts always permeates the Meld. Unless, of course, you specifically wish to cancel it, as you do when you wish to get intimate with Leira.”
“That’s enough of that line of discussion, thanks.”
“It is interesting that, for a shared experience you both obviously find so fulfilling, you are reluctant in the extreme to discuss it.”
“It’s called privacy. It’s—” Dash hesitated, then decided he really wasn’t up to a lengthy discussion about love and sex and human behavior related to them; that level of nuance could be dealt with at another time. “It’s just not something we talk about, outside the relationship—or at least I don’t. Humans are—varied.”
“Very well. Then allow me to return to my first point. You are recalling the first time we interacted when you first discovered the Archetype. May I ask why?”
“Eh, no particular reason, really. I guess I’m just a little, I don’t know, nervous about this trip. I just can’t wrap my mind around the distances we’re talking here. It’s—”
Dash stopped and just shook his head. The whole thing was just too big to fit inside his brain.
Well, except for one aspect of it. He was about to put his life into Sentinel’s care in a way he never had before.
You are safe, Messenger.
Dash smiled. “I believe you, Sentinel.”
“You believe what, exactly?”
“One of the very first things you said to me. You are safe, Messenger. It might be a little late saying it, but I believe you, Sentinel. I really do.”
Dash looked back, watching the Forge recede behind him. When he arrived at his destination in about seven weeks—about the time it took Freya to properly age a batch of her plumato wine—the light leaving here now would take one hundred and sixty thousand years to catch up to him. Dash had checked to see what happened about one hundred and sixty thousand years ago in human history.
It was about then that early versions of humans first started wearing clothing.
“Okay, Dash, your Radiant Point seems to be staying linked to the one we’ve got here just fine. From our end, everything’s green,” Leira said over the comm.
Dash checked the status of the Radiant Point stashed in the Archetype’s belly. As far as it was concerned, it happily remained an indivisible whole with its fellow, back on the Forge. They’d already tested them at full power, opening gates large enough to push ships through. As soon as Dash arrived at his far-off destination, he’d deploy it and, assuming all went according to plan, the Cygnus Realm should begin pouring through it.
One lingering question bothered him, though.
Who had built the Radiant Points? If it had been the Deepers, they were wholly unlike any of their other tech. And if it was someone else, someone even older, were they still out there? Could Dash unknowingly be on his way to meet them? And, if so, would they be new friends, new enemies, or something else altogether?
He shoved the thoughts aside and returned his attention to the comm—to the here and now, where it belonged.
“Roger that, Leira. See you in a few months,” he said.
“Dash?”
“Yo.”
A long moment passed before she spoke again.
“Be safe. Leira out.”
“I’ve prepared a summary of the various tests and potential in-flight upgrades I’ll be conducting while you’re in cryo-sleep,” Sentinel said. “Do you wish to review it?”
“Is there anything that really requires my approval?”
“Not really. I believe that, given the duration of the flight, I will be able to collect ample data upon which to base these improvements. I’m essentially planning to use the time as a long-term experiment regarding the efficiency of the drive and perhaps gain some insights into the nature of Dark Metal in its various forms.”
“I have every confidence you’ll do just fine, Sentinel. Y
ou really only need to wake me if there’s an emergency.”
“Understood.”
They flew on for a while in silence. It would be almost a day, yet, before Sentinel activated the cryosleep system. However, Dash had wanted to remain awake until they’d cleared the galactic margin, and the chances of unexpected Deeper encounters had fallen behind them.
“Do you think I’ll dream, Sentinel?” Dash asked.
“I have no idea. The fundamental nature of, and reasons for the phenomena known as sleep and dreaming in humanoids remains largely a mystery.”
“Even to the Unseen?”
“The Creators weren’t omniscient.”
“Fair point.”
“Regardless, it doesn’t matter whether you dream or not,” Sentinel said after a moment.
“Oh? How come?”
“Because you are safe, Dash.”
Dash smiled. The long, dark journey ahead of him, the most epic ever undertaken by a human being, now seemed a little less uncertain.
18
Dash stretched out his legs and looked up into the sky. He pushed his gaze as far as he could into the vast, purplish blue, but there was nothing to see—it was just a sky, with no clouds or depth. His eyes had no traction. There was nothing to grab or focus on. It felt as if he was suspended in a void, deepened purple and unending, without any markers or detail.
Except it wasn’t. Somewhere, high above him, the color deepened to black, and then beyond that—
Dash gasped. He was falling. Falling up. His body was being taken, hurtling upward at the behest of an unseen force, powerful and unseen. He wanted to scream, but thunderous wind just ripped the air from his lungs, a tornadic howl that overwhelmed his senses. He caught a glimpse of the ground racing away between his feet, and now the air thinned around him, forcing him to gasp, to fight for even enough air to breathe. Soon, even that wouldn’t be enough. He’d fall into that blackness and keep falling forever.
He clawed at ice. Still gasping, still fighting for air, he dug at the ice with his bare hands, rocky crystals that shattered under his scrabbling—he had to get through it, had to scrape it away to get at what was inside it, and he had to do it before he ran out of air.
