by Bobby Adair
“But if they evolve,” guesses Lenox, “how do they remain one species? If each line is a clone of the parent, it seems the species would diverge down a billion different branches.”
“They control the content and development of their genetic material,” says Phil, “not consciously, but they do.”
“They control it?” I ask, “Epigenetically?”
“Not exactly,” answers Phil, “but yes. Traits the species values are expressed. Traits they don’t value are repressed.”
“That still doesn’t explain how they don’t diverge,” says Lenox. “Eventually, they would, right? Or am I thinking their development molecules act too much like DNA?”
“Expressed molecules tend to be passed to subsequent generations more than repressed development molecules.” Phil stops there, but throws in an afterthought. “And they share.”
“Wait,” I say. “What? They share? I thought they were asexual.”
Phil regrets having thrown in that last bit.
“C’mon,” says Silva, “you started this. Tell us.”
“Through their skin,” says Phil. “Development molecules are always present in the secretions on their skin.”
“Ewh!” Lenox is grossed out.
Silva shivers.
“Whenever they touch,” adds Phil, “they exchange molecules that contain bits of their genetic code. It keeps them all genetically similar.”
“That’s disgusting,” says Silva.
“They’re just different,” says Phil. “I don’t know why I ever brought it up.”
“Why did you bring it up?” I ask.
“The stresses of being out in space,” he says, “like today. Being rammed by that ship, it’s bad for Nicky when she’s reproducing. The stress could kill the egg.”
“But it’s not just an egg,” guesses Silva.
Phil shakes his head.
And then I figure it out, too. “You see the egg as your child, don’t you. You’re its father.”
Phil nods at that one.
“How?” All concepts of adoptive parents aside, the thought of Phil co-parenting a Gray is too alien to me.
“The intellectual development of Grays starts from the moment the egg forms,” says Phil.
“Go on,” says Lenox.
“It’s why having the weakest member of the pod carry the egg doesn’t have a detrimental effect on the species. There’s the genetic sharing I told you about, but there’s also the intellectual development. All of the pod members influence the hatchling, the most dominant having the most influence, and the most submissive having the least.”
“So,” I guess, “This Gray hatchling Nicky has in the oven will come out thinking like a human?”
"It will assimilate most of what I know," says Phil, "and much of what Nicky knows. Education in a Gray, if you can call it that, is the process of the older Grays helping the younger ones to learn how to understand all the knowledge they’ve implanted when it was developing.”
“It’ll be a little Phil in a Gray body.” Lenox looks at the rest of us after she says it. “Is that a good thing?” She smiles at Phil to let him know she’s kidding. “Congratulations.”
"Yeah," says Silva walking over to hug Phil.
“Let’s go back to this stress thing,” I say. “Are you telling us that Nicky needs bedrest?”
“No,” says Phil, “but she can’t come with us on these missions anymore.”
“And?” I press.
Phil shakes his head. “The hatchling is my child as much as it is Nicky’s. I have to protect it. I can’t fight in this war anymore. I’ve decided, we’re going to go to the colonies.”
Chapter 45
We pop out of bubble, and the cruiser is there. It can travel at nearly eight times the speed of light. We can barely exceed the speed limit by fifty percent. We didn’t expect to beat it to the rendezvous.
“Bring us in alongside,” I tell Lenox. I turn to Silva. “Call—”
“I’m no Jablonsky,” she tells me, “but I know when to make a call.”
“Right.” I wonder if I made a mistake in letting the formalities of rank fall by the wayside.
“What now?” asks Phil.
“We wait,” I tell him. “We’ll be here awhile. Why don’t you run a full diagnostic on the ship and—”
“Diagnostic?” Phil asks. “I don’t have my tricorder. I think I left it on the Turd.”
Lenox laughs. She’s old enough to get the joke.
I point to Phil’s console. “Just get me a status on the ship’s system.”
“The ship systems’ instrumentation was damaged when Silva blew the interior airlock door,” says Phil. “I can barely keep the ship running, let alone tell whether it’s going to blow up.
“You’re being obstinate.” I take a breath and proceed without rising to his argument bait. “Inspect the grav array and the reactor. Check all the hull plates for damage. Look for any H leaks. The Trogs didn’t build this ship after they conquered earth. They salvaged it, which means it was probably damaged once before we attacked it. I want to know how and I want to know how effectively the repairs were made. You and Nicky don’t need any instruments to evaluate every grav plate in the hull.”
“One thing that does work,” says Phil, “is our hydrogen sensors. They’re showing we’re below fifty percent in the tanks.”
“We’ll top off the tanks from the cruiser’s stores.”
“Do you have permission for that?”
“Aside from it just making sense,” I tell Phil. “I’m taking Brice over to the cruiser to talk with Punjari. I’ll make the arrangements when I’m there.”
“After we do all that?” asks Phil. “What then?”
“You’re being a dick, Phil.”
“That’s not a very majorly thing to say.”
“Look, Phil,” I calm myself again, “I’m sorry we lost the Rusty Turd. I’m sorry we lost the crew.”
“Why did you say the Rusty Turd first?”
“Goddammit, Phil. I don’t want to argue with you right now, okay? You and I can deal with all of our shit some other time. Just give it a rest.”
“Phil,” says Lenox, “not now.”
He says, “I just want to know what the plan is now that we’re here.”
“Colonel Bird’s ships aren’t supposed to be here for another four days,” I tell him. Hell, I thought he already knew. “After we get this rusty piece of ship into fighting condition, to whatever degree that's possible, we'll assist Punjari with the cruiser."
“How?” asks Lenox. “We’re not engineers.”
“However they need us,” I tell her.
“After Bird gets here?” asks Phil.
“Phil,” I tell him. “I know where you’re going with this. You want to stay with the cruiser. That’s fine. That’s your prerogative. That’s probably best for you. I already told you that. Besides, you have your responsibilities, now. The Turd II will be a volunteer ship. I’ll raise a crew from Madsen’s and Bird’s people. We’ll head out and do whatever Bird tells us to.”
“And if he tells you we’re all going out to the colonies together?” asks Phil.
Silva turns to look. She’s interested in the answer.
“Do you have Punjari on the line yet?” I ask her.
Chapter 46
Days pass quickly when you’re sweating through twelve hours of work, even with a skin-tight suit regulating your temperature beneath the orange outer layer.
Phil and I have been avoiding each other. And that’s not easy given his sphere of telepathic awareness is growing larger. I know we should sit down and have one of those big heart-to-heart things. I can feel so much anger coming off of him, all directed at me, and I don’t want to dive into it. I don’t want to listen to him explain to me in gory detail how I’ve led us all here. I don’t want to hear his take on every mistake I’ve made, along with his reason why it could have turne
d out better if I’d not been so sure of myself. If I’d only taken the time to query him for his advice. I know that’s what he wants. That’s his way.
I’m sure the conversation will turn into an argument, and with the grief of Penny's death still raw, I'm afraid we'll both say things we won't be able to take back. So, I'm acting like any good adult, and I'm letting the situation fester.
“We should switch sides again,” says Brice.
I silently agree and move to change places with him. That puts me on grabbing feet and him picking Trogs up by the head.
A few hundred Trog corpses are stacked loosely on the hull, just outside one of the airlock hangars. The door is open, as we’re on the last step of the process.
By practiced consensus, Brice grabs a frozen Trog corpse by the helmet. I grasp the ankles. We lift him easily because there’s no grav to fight with, and we heave him into the void. There’s no back-and-forth swing for momentum—that would be pointless work with no gravity to swing against—there’s just the one heave. A few paces away, Peterson and Silva are flinging another corpse. Several pairs of Madsen’s people are doing the same.
The cruiser held more than ten thousand bodies when we took it. They all need to be disposed of by the slow process of hauling them through the massive ship, stripping them of anything of value, stacking them in the nearest airlock until full, evacuating the airlock, and then hauling the bodies out onto the hull. The last step is tossing them into the void.
Now a stream of corpses is spinning many long kilometers away from the cruiser, all moving in generally the same direction. We’re not even halfway through.
“It was good of Punjari to spare a few techs to work on our assault ship,” says Brice as he reaches down for another corpse.
“Yeah,” I agree. “Now that the bridge airlock door is repaired and the assault ship is airtight again, he says they can tweak the reactor to get another fifteen or twenty percent out of it.”
“I was talking to the guys aligning the array,” says Brice. “They think we might get another few g’s out of it at sub-light speed.”
I nod and grunt. The increase in performance is nothing like what we got from Spitz’s crew back on Iapetus, so I’m underwhelmed. Still, any edge we can get over the Trogs will increase our odds of killing their ships and living to brag about it. “What’s the lineup looking like?”
“No change,” says Brice. “Still you and me, Lenox, Peterson, and some of Madsen’s guys.”
“Madsen?” I ask.
“He’s in. You talk to Silva yet? She’s a hell of a good shooter to have on our team in a scrap.”
We toss a Trog and grab another.
“I’m not pushing Silva,” I tell him. “I don’t even bring it up with her.”
“She hasn’t decided on the colonies, yet?” asks Brice.
“She thinks we should go with Phil and Nicky and everybody else.”
“If I were you,” says Brice. “I’d go.”
We toss a few more corpses in silence before I say, “I’m sorry about Penny. I truly am.”
"Nothing you could have done to make it come out any different," says Brice. "It's just war." He says it with an empty darkness I think I finally understand. I've lost enough people that the blackness in his soul finally makes sense.
“Would you have gone out to the colonies?” I ask. “You and Penny?”
“That’s an easy ‘yes’ in retrospect.” Brice laughs. It’s black, like everything in his mood lately. He’s found a new depth in his internal void, and it makes me wonder how much loss one person can take before they finally break. “Neither of us would have, though. Can’t say we’d have done anything different. You know, after a while, no matter how many times you tell yourself every day is a roll of the dice, that you’re just as likely to die as any other corpse in the void, you don’t think it’ll happen to you.”
We go back to work in silence after that, sweating through the weight of all our dead friends. We work through most of the corpses on the hull when Brice says, “You still have Silva. You should go before you lose her.”
“You think—”
Brice stops, stands up straight and looks at me. “You and me, we know what’s coming, right? It’s gonna be more of what’s already happened. You know that, right? This war here, it’ll never end for us. We’ll fight until we’re dead. Maybe more will step up to take our places. I don’t know. But when people stop resisting, that’s when the war will be over.”
“You don’t think we can win?”
“You don’t need to sell me on the bullshit,” says Brice. “I’m in until the end, but I can read the scoreboard. The war is lost. It’s people like you and me who’ll never accept the defeat, never shame the memory of the dead by laying down our guns. Guys like us only have one way out.”
I don’t know how to respond.
“You,” says Brice, “you should really think about it, though. What’ll you do when Silva dies? What’ll she do when you get killed? Right now you have something. You should take your chips off the table and find a way to convince yourself that going to the colonies isn’t losing. It’s just not the victory you wanted.”
“I’ll tell Silva to go,” I tell him. “You were right before. I can’t lay down my guns and quit. I don’t want to die, yet I can’t live knowing I could have done more.”
“Even if it’s a lost cause.”
“It’s not lost while I’m breathing,” I tell him.
“That’s why you should take Silva and go,” says Brice, “because, and don’t take this the wrong way, you’re still stupid enough to think there’s a chance we can win here. Be honest with her. Tell yourself the truth. You’re both going to die if you stay. No ifs, no buts, no maybes. It’s just a matter of when. That’s all. If you want to stay and fight out of stubbornness, then tell her what she’s throwing her life away for. She deserves to know.”
Chapter 47
“What?” asks Brice, picking up on my tension just as Phil shouts a warning over all comm channels.
I point at something so far away it can’t be seen with the naked eye. “Trog cruisers. That way.”
“Shit.”
Another two pinprick pulses of blue pop out of the emptiness near the first six.
Punjari and Madsen are on the line, asking Phil for clarification. How close? How many? How soon? Are you sure?
The first six Trog ships to arrive are now glowing bright blue, pushing max g’s to close the distance between us and them. And that erases half the questions from my mind. This is no accident. They know we’re here and they’re coming for us.
“Punjari!” I shout to get his attention. “One hundred percent on all three reactors. Do it now. We need to jump as soon as possible.”
“It’ll take time,” he tells me. “Two reactors are powered all the way down to save fuel. We need time to ramp them up."
“Don’t waste time talking to me,” I tell him. “Do it.”
Madsen connects with me over the comm. “What do you need from me?”
“Get to the bridge and kick Punjari’s people in the ass.”
“Will do. Madsen out.”
“Seven minutes,” says Phil, “until they get here. Less for their railgun slugs if they start shooting.”
I look toward the Turd II and see it awash in blue as it powers through a spin to slide back along the cruiser’s hull.
“We’re coming to pick you up.”
“Brice,” I say, “get Silva and Peterson. We’ll board through the assault doors, once Lenox brings the ship over.”
“Twenty minutes,” says Punjari, “that’s how long it’ll be before we have enough power to jump.”
Goddamn slow Trog reactors.
“Phil,” I say, “head for the bridge. We need to change the plan.” I turn to Brice and the others, “Max grav for the bridge.” I jump and push every amp of my suit’s power into my grav plates. In seconds, I’m skimming o
ver the hull, following one of the curved gun spines toward the bow. Brice, Peterson, and Silva are behind me.
“Punjari,” I call. “Are you on the bridge?”
“Of course.”
“I want you and all your people off and on the Turd by the time I get there.” It’s an unrealistic request. Lenox will beat us to the bow by only twenty seconds.
“Are we abandoning ship?” asks Punjari.
“You are,” I tell him.
“My work crew is in a maze of hallways in the barracks section,” says Madsen. “We’re moving as fast as we can, but we won’t make it.”
“Half my team is working on reactor optimization," says Punjari. "They’re back in the main bay. It’ll take three minutes just to cycle the airlock for them to move out of the hangar bay and into the forward section.”
Ahead, I see the Turd II coming to a stop where the hole still gapes on the nose of the cruiser.
“I can’t abandon them,” says Punjari. “We can’t lose this ship.”
“Sunk costs,” says Brice over a private link. “We escape with what we can and live to fight another day.”
Brice doesn’t tell me that because he’s a coward. It’s because he’s right. But I’m not ready to give up. Over the private link, I tell him, “As soon as we reach the Turd II, make sure Silva and Peterson get inside. I want Silva on the comm station as soon as possible.”
“On the comm station?” he asks. “Why is that—” And then he gets it.
“Get your people off the ship,” I tell Punjari, as I decelerate under hard g’s and slip between the Turd II and the cruiser to make the tight turn through the hole in the bridge. Over the comm, I hear Brice ordering Peterson and Silva not to follow me, and then I’m dodging past a pair of Punjari’s engineers struggling awkwardly to get out through the hole and onto the hull.
I make the attempt to grab control of their suits and fly them over to the Turd, but I don’t have admin permissions. So I curse instead. “Not much time,” I announce to them as my feet land on the deck. Gravving tight with my boots, I run to a position at the helm. “Why aren’t you moving, Punjari?”
