The Star Gate

by Dean C. Moore

  Ejecting the “bee’s nest” into outer space might have been the safest option of all, but they were here to take their game up, one level at a time, and that hardly suggested admitting defeat to the first alien intelligence they encountered. It was probably that kind of thinking that had gotten her branded a sociopath.

  Solo, if he were around, might have been another option. But Solo was himself a specialist, focused on interdimensional enemies. Or at least that’s what Cassandra had been led to believe.

  The portal framed by the giant pentagram floating outside the ship was just the kind of case you brought in Solo to investigate. Studying it would be what was preoccupying him now. Perhaps that was why he couldn’t waste any more time on her. If that gate opened before they were ready…

  Cassandra headed for Solo’s lab. She was curious as to what the Nautilus’s probes had revealed to him. And she wanted to know how well that jived with her findings.

  Had her gut picked up on something the probes did not? If she didn’t believe such a thing was possible she’d never have stepped outside the ship in the first place.

  She broke into a run. If she was right, she had to get the information in her head to Solo, before the probes’ findings or lack thereof lulled him into a false sense of security.

  And her nanite COMM link with the Nautilus was down. It was probably keeping her in quarantine until it was sure establishing a link with her mind wouldn’t invite any further infestation. Cassandra couldn’t say she blamed the Nautilus’s supersentience. Then again, Cassandra had just thrown something far deadlier than a nuclear bomb inside its head—a nanite hive-mind bomb; the ship might have taken that personally and branded her persona non grata, revoking all of her privileges.

  Would Cassandra make it to Solo in time? This was a big-ass ship, and they were fighting an enemy that could turn seconds into eternities with hive mind intelligence meant to make the most of each sliver of time; if it could do more with those slivers than the Nautilus’s supersentience was capable—then this was a war that could well be lost in a single frantic footstep.

  THIRTEEN

  THE NOUVEAU VIKING PLANET, ERESDRA

  Hertha took one look at Asger and gasped. When last she saw him, his brutish body lay sprawled on the ground, broken and twisted beyond recognition, so mushed on one side that that side had turned to soup. He’d dropped from a dragon in flight and from such heights that nothing else could be expected, not even for one such as he, whose bones were fortified by hitting his head against rocks and playing kickball with boulders with the kids.

  By his side were Dag, Canute, and Gosta, also risen from the dead, and she didn’t mind thinking, looking all the better for it. There was a sparkle in their eyes she hadn’t seen in many moons.

  Eira, too, walked among the living yet again, a reward she was even less deserving of than the others.

  Besides the entourage were the little people; they barely rose to the knees of the giants they were escorting; it was a miracle they hadn’t been trampled underfoot.

  They were giving the two women a second to take it all in. Freja, tending the fire beside Hertha, had stopped paying attention to how and where she was dropping the logs, causing the flame to shoot up and singe their eyelashes and their hair. It wasn’t enough to cause the women to jump back in alarm or to even take much notice; they were still staring transfixed at the walking dead.

  “What’s the meaning of this?” Hertha asked, reaching for her weapon.

  “Oh, settle down, woman. Everything is not a prelude to battle.” Asger plodded to one of the logs by the fire and there he collapsed. “I swear coming back from the dead has taken it out of me.” He rubbed his hands in front of the fire and held them out to the flames.

  “You have room to talk. You’re barely three thousand years old. I’ve seen blades of grass with more claim to the earth.” Canute pushed Asger off the log and made room for himself. “You can better survive me on one of the logs further back from the fire, you greedy bastard.”

  Dag came up behind Canute, swung his club at him as hard as he could, knocking Canute off the seat, and claiming it for himself; his backside hitting it just as hard and with just as much finality. Canute, his hard head being what it was, just grimaced and took another front row log for himself. He eyed the women warily, not wanting to have to fight one of them off next for the privilege of sitting in this close to the fire.

  But he was not getting off that log without a fight, of that much Hertha and Freja were entirely confident.

  Hertha snorted. “You’d think you were middle earth people the way you clamor for heat so.”

  She took her eyes off the three men who couldn’t be bothered with any of the women—situation normal—their kind had sex the way most male animals went into heat. Only it wasn’t the scent of the women entering mating season which drew them; it was the aftermath of battle, when they were all puffed up. This time was different; this time they’d had their asses handed to them by the little people. Maybe the two parties had called a truce long enough to catch their breaths and this was all this roundup was about.

  Gosta, for his part, with all his body fat, contented himself with the outer ring of logs, the furthest from the fire.

  Hertha gave the little people the beady eyes. “You speak our language?”

  “Only by way of our technology—tiny little computers smaller than dust inside us that also allow our tongues and palate to coordinate to produce the foreign sounds,” Leon explained. “The dust is inside you, too, now, so you can speak our native language as well, so if we unintentionally revert to it out of habit, you do not feel like we’re trying to get something past you.”

  “Ahem.” Patent made a throat-clearing sound beside him. “You mean our magic, right?”

  Leon smiled softly. “They know about technology, even if they no longer rely on it as we do,” he said looking straight into Hertha’s eyes as if he could read her all too clearly.

  Hertha nodded, giving him a wary look. The little people had become an all-too painful reminder of their ancient history, and as long-lived as they were, it wasn’t so ancient as all that.

  “We are too small not to make ourselves hoarse being heard,” Patent groused. “The hypodermics. I forgot about the hypodermics.” He banged himself beside the head with his palm and reached into a pocket on his arm, pulled out the pouch. The other little people did the same, injecting themselves with the tiniest lance Hertha had ever seen—smaller than one of her sewing needles.

  Then they stood there staring at the giants and then staring at one another and feeling like fools. “When I get my hands on Natty,” Patent dissembled.

  In the next moment they grew into giants themselves. The women gasped and jumped back. The three men around the fire took note of the transformation.

  “Settle down, woman, everything is not a preamble for battle,” Asger reiterated.

  Hertha refused to let go of her weapon all the same. Freja seemed of no different mind.

  “I liked them better when they were small,” Eira said, stepping toward the inner circle for the first time, and setting down her weapon. “When they were smaller there was the hope of one of them crawling between my legs and doing what the big ones fear to do. Now that they have nothing to prove on that score, I fear for the worst.”

  Hertha refused to budge or relax, but finally the joke burst the bubble of tension surrounding her. She laughed and eased off the grip on her club, setting it back down.

  “You will want to speak to Asger,” Hertha said, grabbing Dag with one hand and throwing him well away from the fire’s heat. He picked himself up grumbling the way a volcano does before it erupts. He claimed the seat behind Hertha as she squatted down on the log, and proceeded to braid her hair like a rope to fashion a noose to slip around her neck, which he tested as he went along. She ignored him.

  “Asger is the one with the strongest connection to our ancestral memory,” Hertha explained. “Our race was once like you
rs, imbued with many magical powers that went along with our technologies. Those days are long gone and what remains lingers in the form of legends and dream-distorted memories. I presume you came here to get answers, no?”

  The one who was obviously their leader, Leon, nodded. There was no need for introductions; the mind link they shared by way of their technology had given Hertha their names.

  “Yes, but he will not answer any questions without your approval,” Leon said. So, their leader had an aptitude for politics. Hertha had nearly forgotten about diplomacy; her people had little need for it. Even when trading with the other tribes, battles were used to settle most disputes, not words. “And you will not grant it without knowing why the hell we want to go through that portal.”

  Hertha grunted and nodded slowly before she even realized she was doing so. Damn right this alien was. Her people had seen all kinds from all worlds come and go—all wanted to jump through the portal. None of them much cared for anything Hertha and her people had to offer. She couldn’t pretend to be offended by that. Their lives were hard and simple and the call of the past was strong now, even to her own people—especially to the ones who remembered the past the best, who remembered being like gods once. Asger and Hertha were frequently called upon to remind the ones getting homesick for the past that those tech toys came with their downsides, and that playing god more often than not invited the devil instead.

  “There’s nothing on the other side of that gate you would care to find,” Hertha said matter-of-factly, knowing she was wasting her breath. They never listened; no one ever bided her warnings. It was the way of such things.

  “We know it is the first of many gates,” Leon said. Her people gasped. Hertha was no less surprised, but she dared not show it. “We know that unless we pass through and accept the trials that await on the other side of each of the gates then what will one day come through from the other side is not something we will be able to fight off. And the survival of my world depends on us learning what we need to know to stop whatever is out there; whatever put an end to the species that created the gates when it jumped through the last star gate.”

  The alien leader let his words settle in. Hertha’s people were already mumbling to themselves and to one another, fretting about the implications of what he was saying.

  “You are saying that if we don’t enlist with you, our fate will be no different,” Hertha said. Asger, she noticed was taking everything in, but their leader though he may be, he was a leader in battle; he was not their chief strategist and negotiator; he knew this part of things was best left in her hands.

  “Yes. We suspect they wiped out your world once before, when it was far more advanced than it is now,” Leon explained. “It was suicide then to go against this master race; it will be even more disastrous for you to go against them now. Even so, I’m afraid your situation is not so drastically different from our own. As far as we know, no amount of technology has ever been able to hold up against the master race. And it may not be the only one that’s out there. It’s just the first to come knocking on our door.”

  “Master race?”

  It took Leon a second to clarify what he meant by the term; he wondered if it would be possible to communicate that meaning to her. “These are post-singularity civilizations. They exist in a time when technology advances at a pace beyond our mortal comprehension; it is a time in which the machines make themselves for we are no longer smart enough to make them.” He could have been describing the Nautilus and its crew, of course. But they were barely at the dawn of such an age; in that light it was impossible to do any more than glimpse at what lay ahead for all of them.

  Hertha sighed. Their leader may have been many things, but lying was not a tool he was employing against her. She could smell it; deceit in any form, was as malodorous to her and as sharply defined on another sentient lifeform as was the stink flowers of her world that smelt of death.

  “We cannot abandon our children,” Hertha said. “They are our future.”

  “The doll people, as you call them, will stay behind and care for them as their own.” Leon yanked on the line, hoping to set the hook, “You have seen them in battle. They are no less fearless or able than your kind. And we can leave ten of them for every one of you that comes with us.”

  “Not good enough,” Hertha said as she saw the lights of hope flicking on in the eyes of the men of her tribe, always so eager for battle and glory, pretending only now to be more focused on the fire and staying warm than in worldly and, as it was, other-worldly affairs.

  “The children can climb inside the cockpits of the doll people”—ah, inside their heads, Leon clarified—“and fly them like ships. Those ships can then be piloted back to you, wherever you are, should you choose to remain where we leave you, if you feel any of the worlds we are about to visit offers you more than this one. Or, if none of us make it back, and the kids need to be taken away from this world—and out of the path of the master race as they once again come through the gates—the dolls can ensure their escape.”

  “You are certain the master race will come? How can you be so sure?” Freja barked, rising sharply and pacing, throwing a rock into the fire that stirred embers in everyone’s faces.

  Hertha silenced her with a look. She was too young and too inexperienced to be negotiating milk out of a cow. The next outburst and Hertha would take her head off. Freja read the look on her face and stormed off. It was unclear what Freja was so upset about; she had no children to tie her to this or any other world. But Hertha had long suspected she was dating a woman from another tribe; such things were forbidden among their kind. If the two were caught together, both would be killed immediately. The practice dated back to the time of spies; to a time Hertha herself could barely remember, and surely Freja had no idea of. No wonder she felt defiant.

  Hertha stuck her hand in the fire, ostensibly to stir it, but she needed to feel its flames to settle her mind. When it had all but scalded her, she withdrew her arm, and sighed. “I and my people will not go with you.” The men stirred, grumbling. “Silence!” she barked at them. That put an end to their nonsense, for now. “But you will leave some of your doll people with us. They will teach us everything they know about your technology. My hope is that they will reawaken our ancestral memories further. Perhaps, working together, we can reclaim enough secrets from the past to stand a chance against this master race the next time they come storming through.”

  Leon stared blankly, and then nodded slowly. “Yes, yes, it’s an excellent plan. You may be Earth’s last hope if we cannot stop what’s coming through. Earth is the name for our world. If you cannot save your world, then for sure ours will be lost. Our technology allows us to communicate across portals and across space and time. We will leave you one of our singularity phones.” He placed the phone on the log beside him; it looked like a weapon in its own right. Everyone stared at it with dread; it was one more unwanted invitation to embrace their past, to even understand how to work “the phone.” “We will share what intel with you that we can as we learn it in hopes that it will help you prepare yourself for the inevitable.”

  Hertha, broke the trance that came with staring at the phone and nodded her head. “Then, it is decided. Asger will take you to where the artifacts are. His memories will reawaken the closer he gets to them and the more he interacts with them.” She turned and glared at Asger. “Now, Asger.”

  “But surely tonight we feast and make merriment to welcome and honor our brave friends,” Canute said, speaking up. The old man was a drunk; it was the only way he could deal with the wounds from battle and the ones wrought by old age; any excuse to get to the drinking.

  “It is ungracious enough that you have elected against our better judgement not to join them in their honorable quest,” Dag chimed in. “A shame we can never live down. But—”

  “Shut up, you fools. They did not come to make friends. Their quest allows for no such luxury as taking a break. It is I who am ashamed at the
stupidity evinced by my own kind. Forgive us,” she said, turning to the aliens. “We have gotten used to a simple life and our simple ways, using it as a panacea from the past. It is but a fool’s dream. I see that now. In time, they will, too.”

  Asger rose. “You’re not going along with this,” Freja balked at him, lobbing another stone into the fire and sending another blast of embers into everyone’s faces, after strutting back from wherever she’d made off to; evidently she had dropped out of sight but not out of spying range.

  “You can’t argue with good sense, woman, except to make a bigger fool of yourself,” Asger barked back at her. “Hertha’s right. We’ve been shamed enough for one day. I shan’t have you or anyone else piling on like children because you’re being told what you don’t want to hear.”

  Leon surveyed the mood of the group, assessing, looking for a peace offering. Hertha could read him, one leader to another. “Maybe I can suggest a break of a kind, in honor of the great sport you have shown us today,” Leon said. “Alpha Unit is comprised of our younger fighters. They are in need of more battle training.”

  “Um, well, yes,” Canute said, rubbing his chin and looking for a way out of this, the slimy little worm, “but battle again, so soon? It does seem a bit much, even for my kind.”

  “There will be tech toys aplenty to help jog your ancestral memories,” Leon continued, and reading Canute just fine, adding, “and, of course, plenty of drink and food and sex to quench your every desire.”

  “Drink, you say?” Canute’s tone had changed entirely.

  “Food, you say?” Dag said rubbing his belly. Gosta’s ears, too, had pricked up.

  “Sex, you say?” Eria said, speaking out.

  Leon nodded and smiled. “The younger ones of our kind go in for it as often as they can get it, and of course, the doll people can simply engage another module and be even more tireless at the enterprise.”

  Eira kicked some dirt in Asger’s face. “They’re far better hosts than we are.”