by Sharon Lee
The crew shared glances. They’d deviated, on captain’s orders, from what was to be a calm and peaceful direct rendezvous with the RosaRing.
Meteor shields went live automatically. The target was a little over a tenth of a light-second away, so energetic debris wasn’t an immediate threat.
The captain said nothing, watching this crew’s first live-fire action. The sub-captain was sweating: His experience on this system was simulations. His battle experience had been on ships whose entire beam output was negligible compared to any single projector in any of the battleship’s twenty multibeam projector banks. There was a reason these beams were called planet busters, as they were about to prove.
Radar showed the target, distance and rotation. Like many planets, there was ice at the poles. Like many planets there was atmosphere. Like many planets, one might target the broadside equator, where rotational stress assisted the destructive effects of incoming beams.
The captain and the sub-captain had spent several sessions in the captain’s cabin perfecting this plan. The crew thought it merely the third drill, but the target was a danger to Trikandle; the sub-captain had done the math the captain required.
The sub-captain’s orders from the captain: develop an attack sequence, prepare the crew through drills, and then give the deck commands required for the kill, on the captain’s signal. The captain required excellence from those who served under him.
In return, in those sessions, he displayed excellence. He’d shared the words and codes of exigency—the ship’s self-destruct sequence, the code of relinquishing command, the codes for . . . all of them. Smit had taught him, and he passed the ship’s necessities on.
The captain listened to the deck, the radar, the hum of power that underlay the deck, the stars beyond, just as he’d seen Admiral Smit listen. The form was Admiral Smit’s axiom: Effective command radiates power; those under command bask in the rays of their orders.
Watching the screens, feeling the universe flow around him, the captain radiated command, looking firmly at the sub-captain and saying “Ni faris,” into the mic that reached only the sub-captain’s headset.
A startle there, a so brief pause. The sub-captain’s glance fled from the captain’s face to his command screen, and he echoed the captain to his crew. “We commit! Fire!”
The deck thrummed and the power was an audible rasp ending in a noise that was . . .
“Zap!”
The sotto voce comment by a crewman unseen barely beat the squeal of discharge that thrummed the entire fabric of the battleship. On screens crew throughout the ship saw what happens when a bank of planet-buster projectors hurls the forces of chaos.
The captain blinked. Some teaching moments have more impact than others. When he’d accepted this mission on that Day of Changes, when he’d last held Verita in their own bed, he hadn’t expected to train a crew so raw, nor to have orders on file permitting such a mission. Things were going well, seventeen days in system.
Change Year Day, Sumtap 01, 404 CSY
They’d begun that Day of Changes knowing there would be changes.
This was not their first Day of Changes; they’d learned the meaning of it together as child scholars, learned the joy of festive food and guessing games, learned later of the small pains that might come from the day, then, the larger ones as schoolmates and first crushes were pared away by the necessities of more adult pursuits.
Eventually they’d pled their cases one to another for more than stolen kisses and learned to trust in each other’s hard-driving ambition. They turned to each other rather than others, asking “How do we solve this?” or, admitting being at wit’s end: “Solve this!” They wore matching bands of custom Triluxian in honor of their plans.
His ambition led him to the fleet, in search of opportunity as it recovered from the debacle of the Battle of Azren Clouds. He’d risen quickly, leading several raiding missions and rescues before being attached to Admiral Smit and Implacable.
She, drawn to research, joined the efforts to extract the most dangerous secrets of the Ligonier Library, where her skills at academic infighting were as recognized as her scientific insights. Nor had Verita shared all her solvings with the academic community, reserving for herself and Kiland the news that she’d moved from theory to actual practice several strains of those life-constructions thought lost in the collapsed universe their foremothers had fled.
While the old guard flailed at the changes wrought by dusty carbon clouds invading their trade lanes, Kiland and Verita shone as beacons for the future. Let the failures retire or suicide—they dealt only in power and success.
On that memorable Day of Change, they played before the clock buzzed them officially into the dawn. Verita began by nipping his ear and spooning him, her hands busy, mouth full of kisses and words; promises, teases—and more, her potent arms pulling his shoulder, aiming his willing mouth and . . .
After, they sat in their atrium, cheered by their nakedness as ocean breezes brought them spring’s promise of more than mere renewal. What sprang from this year would crown their lives.
By tradition, they arrived at dusk, he from the south, she from the north, at their own front door. Flowers and gifts they each carried in profusion, the promise of change strong in their hands while their faces were a little secret, the mouths a little sad under the smiles.
“I will be your slave tonight, my love,” said Verita, as they exchanged delicate fragrant bouquets on their threshold. “And you will solve my passion.
“Unless,” she added, as she followed him into their home, “unless you demand I solve for you, in which case I will take tomorrow.”
“Slave or solve.” He laughed. “I’ll savor either.”
He trembled with lust, though they were still dressed, and his eyes darkened his smile. But her smile, too, was near fled, dancing on the tip of her tongue.
“Is it well, Katido Volupto?” he whispered, and shed his burdens as she shed hers, the hall table not large enough for the wealth of gifts they had brought.
“It is,” she said. “It is so well it is nearly perfect. The project goes forward . . . yes. But until it is announced, I can hardly tell you more. And for you?”
“Yes, it is nearly perfect. Next week, I return to space!”
She laughed, and was relieved, nearly knocking him down as she wrapped herself about him, filling his eyes with her kisses and his ears with her demand, “Tell me, tell me that you will not be lonely. Next week I go to space, as well!”
Averil 04, 407 CSY
Implacable in a hurry was a sight to be seen, which was good, since there was no way of hiding the fearsome output of its antique power units. The mighty timonium plasma sets spewed neutrons and neutrinos alike while powering the last ship of the line from any of the Cloudgate armed forces. She left behind an elemental thermal signature that might cloud an astronomer’s view of the cosmos for centuries, but the chance of there being such, here, was negligible.
Ship of the line was a misnomer when applied to Implacable, for most ships of its type fielded two centuries ago were gone. Of that generation of batalsipo grandas—a dozen dozen ships more powerful than entire modern star fleets—only Implacable held air. The others were victims of their wars or, as often, dismantled for resources.
Verita watched the secret news of Implacable’s arrival. Station Ops was slow in this; her own equipment better tuned—she’d had budget for new installs while Ops was stuck with original equipment. So much of the mission was on scant budget, including using the mighty Implacable as a towboat! However, the calculations had worked well for the incoming trip, with the transit from Jump point to Trikandle’s one-hundred-day orbit a mere twelve days. This time Implacable was too awkwardly placed for such a quick run, she knew.
Kiland’s Change Day news had placed him back aboard the vessel that had made him one of the most powerful men in the reformed Confederation. The same Change Day saw Verita leap to her life-long goal—science leader of an exp
edition that could return the Confederation to greatness.
As principal investigator she was technically second-in-command of the RosaRing, an agricultural lab repurposed into a self-sufficient xenoplanet research laboratory. The administrator’s position was higher in the flow charts, but Prenla Verita was the reason the RosaRing had been dispatched.
Among the last messages from Implacable as it departed the system had been several for her, under admiral’s seal—sent by Kiland, with Admiral Smit’s approval. Each was more full of promise than the last, and the final promising what they’d suspected: Smit was retiring, and he favored as commander of Implacable none but Kiland.
Now orbiting the fecund planet Trikandle, the real mission of the RosaRing was daunting: hurry Trikandle through an evolution toward the oxygenated photosynthetic atmosphere required to add it as a populated Confederation world. This was hands-on work—with satellites, imaging systems, drones, rovers, and observer craft.
The Confederation’s directors had risked much in mounting the expedition at all, and they’d cast for glory over stability, rushing their claim on the Trikandle system by making the station a permanent fixture.
The atmosphere on Trikandle was an unbreathable amalgam: storms of methane mixing with unstable compounds, leaving odd pools of multilayered liquids . . . including water. Measurable pockets of oxygen enriched the atmosphere in deep valleys and craters. It was now oxygen rich for a world where free oxygen had hitherto been bound to rocks or was a trace gas high in the atmosphere.
On Trikandle life roiled, it flittered, it rolled; it gathered itself into mats of color and motion, it launched itself against barriers of other life with potent chemistry of acid and base. It grew through ceaseless life cycles of solution and dissolution. As it writhed into toxic tentacles, grew sniffer stalks and eye puddles, it fed a future Verita was struggling to direct.
Verita was supported by the work she’d done since graduate school, fed by secrets pilfered in the great war more than a century gone by, when Implacable’s weapons led the attack on Quadraterra’s defenses and stood guard over the looting of the Ligonier Library.
Some of that looted knowledge had been useless; the physics of a closed and finite universe did not translate perfectly to this one. But in the end times of the old universe, there’d been clones and all manner of living abominations shaped by the unknowable minds of the Great Enemy, Sherikas. That there were detailed instructions of the building of such pseudolife was a secret Verita held close.
Scientists at Ligonier Library had plotted their control of the new universe, using the tools that had won the old. They’d been pushed to unleash at-will terraforming, wild cellular advances—and much of their knowledge had come to Verita’s hands.
Verita’s ambition supported Kiland’s. They were a good team politically and would carry their bloodlines to the top of the Confederation’s hierarchy. Well-placed by birth and education, they would easily live two centuries or more. Their Confederation would sweep aside the remnants of the old Terran Empire, the Liadens, and even the Yxtrang.
In Verita’s display screens Implacable’s thrust sparkled across many bands, infernos created by in-system engines that were no longer welcome in most habited systems.
The Confederation’s pride and joy . . . well, once there was a new source of accessible wealth under their control, a whole new planet to be used, followed by many more to be farmed at will—then, Implacable could be a regal exemplar of their might!
Kiland’s parting message going out she knew by heart, and believed it still:
“I live to serve your needs and solve your problems, my Verita. Our next Change Day together we shall reprise and surmount all our dreams and fantasies.”
And now—Implacable was back, and all of their future beckoned.
• • • • • •
It was the sixth hundredth day since the special pair of rovers was unleashed.
Today, Verita studied the area called Quozmo. The implication of the new, bolder streaking on ground and air was clear to her, though she really wished to be sure it was not yet clear to Admin Desler. Admin was only a few days returned from her course of enforced rest. In other days her episode might have been called “nervous exhaustion.” Admin’s work had become more difficult with the several suicides among the staff overworked with aging equipment and shredded schedules. Desler, a tenured academic appointed to the post to remove her from a politically sensitive position, was unequal to the increased stress.
It had taken time for the crew psychologist to understand the situation and by then, Admin Desler had been in a precarious state. She was taken under care, some of her work redistributed to Verita and to Desler’s assistant.
The right corner of the screen showed a notification—ground side ops. She gestured and took the voice call.
“Investigator, I’ve a message from Quozmo Ob2. They’ve lost relay from the Debae and Dabbie rover pair again and they’re down to four drones, three of them lightweights. Do we want the drones all back now?”
Verita pushed back at her hair—if Kiland didn’t prefer it long enough to brush and caress she’d have cut it short.
“Condense the last of the valley images and send them to me. Begin reacquisition interrogation on the rovers. Work on that, priority!”
The rover teams . . . the rover teams acted like they were sentient. They weren’t, of course, Verita never quite dared bringing both parts of the legacy together. Though for this, she had considered it.
The rovers were semi-autonomous. They could go for years without input—collecting, analyzing, reporting when queried. The pair’s self-selected braided trail method was working so well she’d asked the next units be programmed to emulate it. The lead rovers were encountering pods and accumulations of . . . things. Life. New life. Life chosen and sown by her will, growing in a wilderness of chaos.
The valley the rovers roamed was a tectonic artifact, more a long gash than a crater. The upthrust of plateau at the far end looked to be impact residue, but her studies confirmed the heights as cooling volcanic plumes, recent. Those plumes generated thermal activity in the valley, a rich source of energy and minerals. Minerals including timonium, platinum, gold.
The valley was geologically active, with three rivers rushing into it. The hydrocarbons were interesting, but one of those rivers ran seasonally as water, as it did now, sometimes sharing the riverbeds, sometimes competing. Within the last year, spongy mats of winter vegetation had begun catching against the cliffsides, and the oxygen levels were notably higher.
“Yes,” Verita said to ground ops, “recover the drones, as long as they haven’t been below the pressure threshold.”
“Altitude threshold, right, not height threshold? We’ve been pushing, as you requested. There’s been wind and updrafts around the mount—we’ve been using that to keep the glidefoils active beyond normal duration.”
Verita closed her eyes, considering. Yes, she’d approved that. There shouldn’t have been any problem there, surely . . .
“Show me the flight paths. Show me recent weather, too.”
As those screens came up, simultaneously there was a shout from somewhere down the hall and a chime.
The admin’s voice rang out throughout the RosaRing.
“Attention, all staff. We have a distant Jump arrival confirmed and are awaiting ID. Scan Security, please man your stations. Timing is appropriate for our Year Three Rendezvous.”
Verita grinned, even though she’d known. She had so much to share with Kiland, doubtless he for her.
In the meantime, she had a decision to make.
She leaned back, sniffing at the flight paths now on screen as if she could scent a hint of ammonia, or of the crystalline precipitate which sometimes wafted to the gravel beds left behind after the flush of spring floods.
The pressure gradients were in flux. The stronger of the atmospheric currents had tunneled through the flat current they called the mesostream, which sometimes hel
d considerable water vapor. The visualization showed a convective dance then, as if ramped high into the sky by the volcanic uplands, high into the stratopause.
Technically, the drones were not to fly as low as the stratopause, where the temperatures neared the freezing point of water. In such conditions microbes might be found on normal worlds.
Verita made her decision.
“Call them home.”
Averil 04, 407 CSY
“What’s the measure on that? Are we even at the right star? Where’s the gassers?”
Kiland’s sarcasm was inappropriate if nearly inaudible.
Automatics admitted that yes, Implacable had come to the right place despite her recalcitrant Struven units and the haste of their departure. The gas giants rolled in their orbits, the companion brown dwarf continued its distant, lonely journey three quarters of a light-year away among rocky clouds of debris. He read them that quickly, but his crew . . .
His crew checked their instruments, followed protocol, eventually they nodded at him.
He signaled the traditional arrival announcement. It went out without the usual time-to-dock though, and he . . . did the math himself, signaling the sub-captain to do the same.
“Shield at basic,” he said, but the automatics were seeing to that, the junior officers chasing behind, just in case.
“Weapons checks, threats?”
There were no threats.
At full in-system power it would take them days just to overcome the fractional errors; right now they were moving at significant velocity away from their target. The revamped crew was still learning the ship—Admiral Smit’s veteran crew would never have arrived so far off the mark, or so unsure of the recover.
“Attention, Implacable, we are arrived and making our way to the RosaRing. This will not be a twelve-day jaunt; expect full maintenance routines. Deck officers set duty cycles. Acceleration alerts within the hour.”
