Hell's Reach (Galactic Liberation Series Book 6)

by B. V. Larson

  It all made sense, but Straker felt like there was still something Mara wasn’t telling him. She was being cagey—all brainiacs were like that. They all thought they were smarter than anyone else. Okay, they were, technically—but not as much as they thought. He paced back and forth, trying to find the flaw, but couldn’t—yet.

  But he would, eventually.

  He took his leave without saying any more.

  To divert himself from brooding over the implications of Mara’s actions, he headed for the bridge. The few crew he saw—the passageways seemed strangely empty—greeted him along the way with broad smiles and more cheerfulness than seemed warranted. He attributed it to winning a battle, plus the day they’d had to rest and recover.

  On the bridge, an equally cheerful Captain Salishan stood. “Flag on deck!”

  “At ease, carry on,” Straker replied automatically, glancing around at the skeleton crew. None of the secondary stations were manned, and several primaries, such as Damage Control, were also empty of crew.

  “Good to see you up and around, sir.”

  “The rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated.” He wondered what they’d heard, what gossip had been circulating. Word of his appearance with his troops should have percolated throughout the ship, but hearing was one thing: seeing was quite another.

  Seeing was believing.

  That’s what they say, he thought. But not always.

  “Those rejuvenation tanks are amazing,” he continued, holding up his hands, waggling his fingers and rotating his wrists as if to show off his recovery.

  “Doctor Straker did heroic work on everyone,” Salishan replied, and the few watchstanders there applauded spontaneously. “She’s promised to restore all the wounded to duty within a few days.”

  “How many of your crew did we lose?”

  “Fifty-six. Plus battlesuiters.”

  Straker frowned at the number. It had to be higher—but maybe Mara had been cheating even more than she let on. He decided to go with it.

  “Over one hundred fallen Breakers,” he said loudly. “A high price, but worth it to save many more. We’ll carry our remains home to Utopia and honor them there.”

  Those around him cast their eyes down and muttered in approval.

  “Good news about the wounded, though,” he continued. “We’re lucky to have the medical tech.” He was speechifying for the benefit of the audience, but it seemed to be working.

  Salishan’s brow furrowed. “Yes, sir... but there’s a problem. I have more than half the crew down on the surface, but we’re losing captives faster than we can rescue them. The machines are malfunctioning, people are waking up and panicking, and those spawn are ripping their way out before we can reach all of them. Even though we’re setting the freed captives to helping, there’s not enough of anything. Not enough food, not enough medical supplies, not enough hands to disconnect people and save them from rotting in place. And even once we free them, what will we do with them? We can’t possibly take them all aboard.”

  “How long can they survive here once they’re freed?”

  “Our estimates? Five days. Some more, some less, depending on their particular environment.”

  “What do our brainiacs say?”

  “Sinden and Mara agree. Zaxby doesn’t seem to want to talk to me, and Redwolf has disappeared.”

  Straker growled in his throat. “Comms, wideband comlink hail, FTL and conventional. Straker to Zaxby. Respond immediately. Set that to repeat until he does.”

  “Aye aye, sir.”

  “Mercy, have you run the numbers on shuttling rescued people through the wormhole into the butterfly collector system and setting them down on the green worlds?”

  “Yes, sir. Twenty thousand a day maximum. Even if we load to standing room only like cattle, with zero food and water, we’re millions short—and that would only rescue the humanoids.”

  “Regardless, I want transport runs started ASAP. Better to save a few thousand than none at all.”

  “It’ll take at least twelve hours for the first load. And there are fuel issues. We’ll have to recall all the landers and personnel from their work. It means saving those ready to flee right now, at the expense of others still hooked up.”

  He sighed and rubbed his neck, frustrated. “I know. Get started on it anyway.”

  “Aye aye, sir.” Salishan began issuing orders.

  Straker turned to the holotank, which showed the system—its one worldlet which Trollheim orbited, its massive black hole around which the planetoid spun, a few comets and asteroids around the far edges—and the wormhole linking to the butterfly collector system with its attendant singularity. He chewed his lower lip and sucked his teeth for a moment in contemplation.

  Wormhole.

  Singularity.

  Black hole.

  A black hole was just a big singularity, one created by nature instead of by some intelligent agency. His conversation with Zaxby before the battle established the idea that the Predators intended to use this black hole to generate a wormhole big enough to send the planetoid through —when everything was ready, years in the future. Lucky thing—in a very broad sense, not lucky for the Breakers personally—that their plans were thwarted.

  “Have we found evidence of machinery to generate a wormhole off that black hole?” he asked into the air.

  “Not yet,” Salishan replied. “We’ve had no spare personnel to do a tech survey. We’re trying to save lives.”

  Straker waved his hand in dismissal. “Rightly so, but a wormhole big enough for this planetoid might be the only way to save those lives before times runs out.”

  “That’s—” Clearly, Salishan was going to say “impossible,” but she suppressed it. “Yes sir… How?”

  “Only one guy I know could possibly pull it off,” Straker said with a glance upward at the overhead, where various items most people forgot about resided: projectors, vents—and vid and voice pickups. “If he could, he’d really be a hero.”

  “I accept your challenge!” said Zaxby’s voice from above. As expected, the cagey Ruxin had been listening in before responding to the automated comlink hail. Simultaneously, Redwolf’s icon appeared in the holotank next to Trollheim as Zaxby dropped stealth mode. “Though as a fair-minded being, I must give primary credit to Roentgen. He was able to establish communication with the system engineer, the ‘butterfly collector,’ which calls itself Watcher. ‘Observer’ or ‘Researcher’ is probably more accurate, but Roentgen is a romantic at heart and likes the poetic ring of Watcher.”

  Straker gripped the rail in excitement. “I need to talk to Watcher. Pick me up on the flight deck.”

  Chapter 34

  Roentgen, aboard Redwolf-ship.

  Roentgen observed his fuse-mate Straker as he walked with the strange, high-limbed grace of a primate into the circular control area of Redwolf-ship. The four-limbs always seemed as if they would fall over at any moment, balanced on their lower extremities. At least Ruxins had a proper eight limbs, though they were undifferentiated into upper and lower halves like one of the People.

  Aliens were so strange, it made him dizzy—sometimes giddy, sometimes tremendously depressed. How could he ever come to understand them?

  But he almost understood Straker, having undergone the fusing. From the human’s dreams and impressions he’d glimpsed another set of sensory organs. Eyes were not so strange—limited to a narrow EM spectrum, yet amazingly fine within it—the colors!

  But ears! Organs that could perceive vibration—called “sound”—opened up an entirely new dimension of meaning, so limited in distance, but so sensitive and rich and thrilling! Voices—and music! Ethereal, transporting!

  And the sense called “smell!” Astounding!

  At first he’d wondered how humans had survived in their thin skins, with vulnerable organs and inability to see through objects, until he realized their environments were gentle and protected rather than harsh and demanding like Thoria’s. Humans wrap
ped themselves in sheltered and bounded bubbles, carefully constructed ships, and suits designed to protect themselves instead of others. Every day their fragile lives seemed to bring risk of immediate death, with no fission-siblings to carry on.

  So brave!

  And what’s more, each human was utterly unique. Roentgen mourned for all the humans who had died without passing on their memories to fission-siblings. Yet somehow, each new human who arose acquired the possibility of generating unique and exceptional life experiences, and recording them, however incompletely, for the next generation. It seemed a lonely and forlorn existence, with no fission-twins to create a real family. Instead of coming into existence fully formed, they had to generate and educate offspring over years, barely able to teach them a fraction of their knowledge before dying after perhaps a mere century.

  So inferior... and yet somehow they’d achieved such greatness. It was a puzzle worth lifetimes of study.

  And today, Roentgen might witness more greatness. He would have the honor of being the translator and living transceiver between Straker and Watcher. How fortunate he was to be here! His fission-siblings would rejoice for him.

  “Zaxby, take us to Watcher,” Straker commanded.

  “We’re already on our way,” Zaxby replied, and Roentgen saw it was true. Redwolf-ship arrowed toward the wormhole leading to the engineered system, the terminus of many wormholes, the location of the Watcher inside the cool white sun.

  “Roentgen, tell me about Watcher.”

  Roentgen turned his designated suit-front to Straker—designated, because his suit had no “front,” any more than Roentgen himself did. He’d had Zaxby make a few marks resembling the symmetrical front of a human space-suit—hints of a faceplate, a nametag in Earthan—and took care to aim this pattern at whatever human he conversed with. It seemed to make them more comfortable.

  “I had very little time to speak with it. I believe it is a single being of great intellect, far greater than our own. It appears to share some attributes of an AI, although that might be an illusion brought about by our perspective.”

  “Illusion?” Straker asked.

  “To small intelligences, all larger intelligences might appear to be much the same.”

  When he’d fused with Straker, Roentgen had gained the ability to interpret human facial expressions. At this time, Straker’s displayed annoyance. “I don’t accept that we’re smaller.”

  “Yet it is a fact. We are individually smaller in intellect, if not in significance. There is no shame in it. We must accept the situation as it is.”

  “No we don’t. I’ve spent my life changing situations I don’t like. Right now, we have millions of innocent people on a death-clock. I don’t like that. There’s one being who might have the power to save them: Watcher. So again, tell me about it. Is it arrogant? Emotional? Purely rational? What does it care about? Come on, Roentgen. Help me!”

  Roentgen reoriented his mind to Straker’s desires and tried to convey his limited impressions of Watcher. “I believe curiosity is its primary motivation. If it has emotions, they support and reinforce curiosity. It desires to observe living things and what they do, rather than merely investigate physical phenomena. I postulate that the green worlds in its system are laboratories where it has placed various collected species in order to observe how they interact.”

  “Does it care who lives or dies, or does it just observe?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  Straker paced. “So it’s like a rich guy with a fenced biological preserve, importing species and creating a menagerie. Lions and tigers and bears... and the things they eat, like deer. And the plants the deer eat, and so on. The big question is, when the tigers and bears fight, does it care who wins? If the lions eat all the deer, does it matter to Watcher? Or does it shrug, record what happened, and go collecting something new to play with?”

  “I do not know. And yet... ” Roentgen said thoughtfully.

  “What?”

  “I would suggest that most collectors and researchers have incentives to preserve their specimens—in the aggregate if not individually.”

  “You mean while it may not care about any single specimen, it won’t let the whole population get wiped out—otherwise, it loses a unique part of its collection.”

  “Perhaps.” Roentgen strongly wished he could provide Straker with more answers, but his brief communication with Watcher had been taken up with figuring out the language and methodology, not actually passing informational memes or in conversing.

  “Okay… that’s a start.”

  Soon, Redwolf-ship had passed through the wormhole, and Zaxby turned them toward a position of communication interception—between a singularity and the star.

  This turned out not to be necessary. Roentgen suddenly saw and felt a blast of neutrinos aimed directly at Redwolf-ship, a searchlight of visible, tactile speech a human might call a megaphone yelling at him.

  “CEASE MOVEMENT AND CONVERSE,” the “voice” of Watcher said.

  “Come to relative rest and hold position,” Roentgen told Zaxby. “We have Watcher’s attention.”

  “Tell it who I am, and that we need its help,” Straker said.

  “I will translate your words directly, fuse-mate Straker. Speak to me as if to Watcher, and when you hear me speak, it will be Watcher’s words—unless I say otherwise.”

  “Understood. Tell it.”

  Roentgen calmed his mind and mentally removed himself from between Watcher and Straker, becoming a living transceiver of conversation:

  “I am Straker, leader of the beings which defeated the Predators in the next system. We need your help.”

  I AM WATCHER. WHY SHOULD I EXPEND EFFORT TO HELP YOU?

  “I know you’re curious about us and what goes on in and near your domain. You must also be curious about what goes on outside this nebula.”

  I AM CURIOUS, BUT I UNDERSTAND FAR MORE THAN YOU ABOUT EVERYTHING. WHAT CAN YOU GIVE ME THAT I CANNOT TAKE FOR MYSELF?

  “Intimate knowledge of living creatures. You sent your wormhole to bring my ship here, and you observed our interactions with the Predators—our battles. But can you see what’s going on within our ships? Can you see into our minds? Do you know our motivations? I don’t think so.”

  WHY SHOULD I CARE ABOUT YOUR MOTIVATIONS?

  “Because those are infinitely interesting. You can infer reasons and motivations from behavior, but only approximately. Wouldn’t you rather speak directly to the creatures you observe?”

  INTERACTING WITH THEM CHANGES THEIR BEHAVIOR. OBSERVATION IS A PURER ART.

  “Yet you’re speaking with us.”

  YOU HAVE FOUND A WAY TO COMMUNICATE WITH ME. THIS IS INTERESTING ENOUGH TO SULLY THE PURITY OF MY OBSERVATION.

  “Sullied purity... So you’re an imperfect being, like us.”

  LIKE YOU? NO. IMPERFECT? WHO EXISTS WITHOUT IMPERFECTION? PERFECTION WOULD BE INFINITELY BORING, DON’T YOU THINK?

  “That’s a question for philosophers. Right now, I need to save lives. For that, I need your help.”

  I AM AMUSED. WHAT DO YOU PROPOSE?

  “There are millions of sentient beings trapped on a planetoid on the other side of the wormhole—the one where we fought, the one formerly of the Predators. We don’t have the resources to save them. You could—by sending one of your wormholes to bring the planetoid to this system, to add it to your menagerie. If you put the planetoid in orbit above your most compatible green world, we could shuttle them to the surface and many would survive.”

  THIS WOULD TAKE SIGNIFICANT RESOURCES OF MINE. HOW DOES IT BENEFIT ME?

  “You could observe and interact with many new species at your whim. It would take months or years to organize satisfactory transport to eventually remove them all from the nebula and return them to their homes. Some may even choose to stay.”

  WHY SHOULD IT INTEREST ME TO DO THIS IF I ALLOW ANY TO LEAVE?

  “You have the power to compel us to stay, I suppose. I don’t know if yo
u have any morals beyond self-interest, but allowing traffic and commerce would bring you a near-infinite stream of living beings to observe.”

  SELF-INTEREST, YES. THIS INTRIGUES ME. WHAT IS YOUR SELF-INTEREST HERE?

  “Some of these rescued people are under my command, so I’m responsible. Others are innocents. I’m trying to do the right thing, but it’s also in my self-interest to rescue them. It will improve many relationships with my organization. Their homeworlds and people will owe us a debt. We will profit directly and indirectly. That’s how trade and commerce work. Many of us also believe in doing good for its own sake, and because it makes us feel better. Some even believe there are divine forces beyond the natural world, forces which reward good deeds.”

  DIVINE FORCES? THAT’S PREPOSTEROUS. BY DEFINITION, THERE IS NOTHING BEYOND THE NATURAL WORLD.

  “Yet aren’t you curious about what people believe, and why they believe it? What evidence might they have for such preposterous beliefs? How useful might such beliefs be, even if preposterous? These things are examples of new ways of thinking that you may not have ever experienced or observed before.”

  I MUST PONDER THIS…

  “For how long?”

  IN MY PERCEPTION, QUITE A LONG TIME. IN YOURS, ONLY SECONDS… NOW, MY THOUGHTS ARE COMPLETE.

  “Great. Go on.”