Imperative - eARC

by Steve White

  “I suspect that because her shaxzhutok conversancy is now every bit as—restricted—as our own, that necessity compelled her to innovate and adopt the same signaling method that so many later Dispersates discovered: communicating through on-off selnarmic pulses. No content in the selnarm itself, but it was a natural means of transmitting one of our earliest telegraphic codes. A string of silences and signals of varying duration, each of which signified a different letter or speech-act. Slow, but far more precise and flexible than the traditional and largely symbolic shaxzhutok sendings that the First Dispersate clings to.”

  Inzrep’fel sent a careful, inquisitive tendril of selnarm out toward her commander: (unsurety, foreboding), “And what implications or meanings do you derive from the First Dispersate’s iconic sending, Admiral?”

  Zum’ref, irked, let his left cluster’s tendrils spasm as he replied. “The conclusion is inescapable, even if it were not for the last four years of pulsed-binary selnarm updates from Amunsit at Zarzuela. In short, these patch-furred bipeds that she names ‘humans’ have thoroughly seduced and suborned the First Dispersate. And now they are trying to use our own sibling-shaxzhu to infect us with the same heretical soul-rot.”

  Inzrep’fel sent (regret, accord). “So it seems—but then, what must we do?”

  Three years ago, Zum’ref’s answering emotion would have been one of regret and mourning; now, all he could feel was brimming resentment, even bitterness. “We must learn from the mistakes of those siblings-in-Illudor who went before us. The war-leader of the First Dispersate—Torhok—reportedly foresaw this outcome: that the shaxzhu would attempt to undermine the proper, Destoshaz leadership of our fleets. Indeed, it was through just such internecine bickerings that Senior Admiral Amunsit in the Zarzuela system very nearly lost control of her own Dispersate on three occasions. She has been entirely too patient with her shaxzhu’s quaint but discordant shaxzhutok challenges to common-sense contemporary planning.”

  “But,” Inzrep’fel pointed out, “she did propose that her shaxzhu be kept in cryogenic sleep until all the alien, tool-making zhetteksh were eliminated.”

  “Yes, and that was her mistake: she proposed it. She was foolish enough to bring the matter before her own Council of Twenty before acting upon it. They forced her to rouse at least a few of the shaxzhu from cold sleep to share in the deliberations. And as if the shaxzhu weren’t troublesome enough on their own, the majority of the Sleepers from other castes have many of the same soft-headed notions about ‘communicating’ with these alien animals. Even those of our own Destoshaz caste.”

  Inzrep’fel’s selnarm was tense. “Then how are we to save ourselves from a similar fate, Destoshaz’at?”

  Zum’ref managed to summon a modest pulse of (regret). “We have no choice: we must completely remove the danger posed by our own shaxzhu—and by our many thousands of Sleepers, besides.”

  “Very well, but how are we to render them harmless? They are, as you say, fairly numerous.”

  “Unfortunately, there is only one sure solution: we must kill those who threaten us.”

  “Kill shaxzhu?”

  “Yes, and Sleepers.”

  Inzrep’fel blinked. “I foresee a problem, Admiral Zum’ref. The shaxzhu and the Sleepers are renowned for their subtlety, their cunning. They might work against us in secret until it is too late.”

  Zum’ref sent (approval, gratification) along with his concurrence. “This is most assuredly true.”

  “Then how shall we identify which ones must be killed?”

  “That problem is easily solved, Intendant.”

  “It is?”

  “Yes: we kill them all.”

  Part Two

  The Deluge

  CHAPTER NINE

  The chestnut-haired little girl ran toward him along the beach in the dazzling Mediterranean sun, leaving her mother and sister behind. She waved to him and smiled…

  A sickening foreknowledge took him. Courtenay! he shouted desperately…or tried to shout, but no sound came, for he wasn’t really there…

  And then the beach and the sea and the sky and the universe vanished, replaced by a glare and a roar so intense that the senses seemed to blend into each other—the roar blinded, and the glare deafened. The little girl was screaming as she burst into flames and began to melt.

  And the buzzer wouldn’t stop…

  Buzzer…?

  The incongruity brought Ian Trevayne abruptly awake, drenched in sweat. Awkwardly, he jabbed the button on his bedside communicator, stopping the sound his sleeping mind had incorporated into the all-too-familiar nightmare. It was always more or less the same, and it had plagued him—although at increasingly long intervals, with the passage of years—ever since the early days of the Fringe Revolution, when he had learned of the death of his first wife and their two daughters, vaporized by the fusion bombs of the rebels of the Terran Republic.

  The Terran Republic whose uniform I now wear. He always told himself that. It hadn’t stopped the nightmares. And this time the dreary, leaden depression that followed was worse than usual, because that damned buzzer had awakened him in mid-dream, which always made the memory of the dream more vivid and slower to dissolve under the tide of waking-world sensations and thoughts.

  “Yes,” he mumbled in the direction of the communicator, unable to keep the irritation out of his voice.

  “I’m sorry to awaken you, Admiral.” The voice was, surprisingly, Rear Admiral M’Zangwe’s. Even more surprisingly, the voice held help repressed tension. “I wouldn’t have done so, except that…well, we’ve gotten some peculiar sensor readings. Not an immediate threat,” he added hastily. “Maybe no threat at all. But it’s something I think you’ll want to know about at once. Commodore Hagen is analyzing the readings now.”

  Both gloom and annoyance immediately fled from Trevayne’s mind, as did the last vestiges of sleep. M’Zangwe was, to put it mildly, not one to jump at shadows. “All right, Adrian. I’ll meet you and Commodore Hagen in the Intelligence Center in five minutes.” As always, he couldn’t help but smile at the ancient naval tradition that gave a “courtesy promotion” to anyone with the rank of captain who was aboard a ship in any capacity other than that of the ship’s commander—the only person aboard who could be addressed by the sacrosanct title.

  He became aware that Magda had also sat up in bed. “What is it, Ian?”

  “Some kind of sensor returns that Adrian considers significant,” said Trevayne as he reached for his clothes. “If he’s concerned, I’m concerned. You’d better come too.”

  *

  In the semi-gloom of TRNS Li Han’s Intelligence Center, Andreas Hagen stood silhouetted against the faint glow of the holographic display tank, facing an audience that included M’Zangwe, Rear Admiral Rafaela Shang, and Flag Captain Hugo Allende as well as Trevayne and Magda.

  “All right, Andreas,” said Trevayne as briskly as he could manage a few minutes after awakening. “What do we have?”

  Hagen cleared his throat. “Well, Admiral, as you know the readings from the astronomical sensors, although not of immediate urgency, are periodically reviewed—”

  Trevayne nodded. Li Han’s sensor suites—including the very long-range astronomical ones—were on the same scale as the rest of her. There were university observatories less well equipped for their function.

  “—and the latest review turned up two new astronomical objects.” Hagen drew a deep breath. “We have interpreted them as the flares of photon drives.”

  Trevayne, now fully alert, gave the Intelligence officer a hard look. “You realize the implications of what you’re saying, don’t you?”

  “Yes, sir,” said Hagen unflinchingly.

  For a moment, Trevayne reviewed those implications himself.

  The term “photon drive” was actually something of a misnomer for what was essentially an antimatter drive based on complete cancellation, exploiting the energies in the “quantum foam” of empty space by altering the parity ra
te of particle and antiparticle creation and annihilation. It emitted an incredibly focused source of energy and a very wide spectrum of radiation. Some preferred the term “pinhole drive” after the way it pinched a reaction aperture in the fabric of space-time. But the photons were at least partially the thrust agency, and the name had stuck.

  At any rate, the principle of the thing had been known for a very long time. But nobody had used reaction drives—even this one—since the invention of inertia-cancelling drive fields. Admittedly, those drive fields were inherently limited to a velocity of 11.7 percent of lightspeed, later enhanced by the phased gravitic effect of the Desai Drive to about 50 percent, while photon drives could theoretically accelerate all the way up to Einstein’s Wall, given enough time. But with the warp network allowing instantaneous transit between star systems, who needed that kind of capability?

  The answer, it had turned out, was: the Arduans.

  It had been by the photon drives’ flares that those worlds’ human inhabitants had known they were coming. And now, it seemed, such flares were in the sky again.

  “Yes, sir,” Hagen repeated. “It’s got to be a subsequent Arduan diaspora.”

  Shang looked skeptical. “Does it have to be them? Couldn’t it be some other race, unknown to us, that’s decided to try slower-than-light interstellar colonization?”

  “We thought of that, Admiral. But the sensors had been observing these flares long enough, before we reviewed them, for us to determine the ships’ vectors and extrapolate them backwards. There’s no doubt about it: their point of origin is the Arduan home system.”

  Magda spoke softly, partly to Trevayne and partly to herself. “In a way, it’s too bad Cyrus didn’t make this discovery.”

  Trevayne understood. Waldeck’s Task Force 14.2, though predominantly PSU, also included Arduan elements. But this task force was a Terran Republic/Rim Federation affair, and therefore all-human. Trevayne had no Arduans whose brains he could pick.

  “Well,” he said to Hagen, “let’s see this course you’ve projected for them.”

  They all gathered before the display tank. At the moment, the display was in the two-dimensional mode, showing the relevant portions of the warp network, with the green icon of their task force in the starless warp nexus just beyond Hulixon, still awaiting further advance by Cyrus Waldeck along the warp chain he was following. Tangri-held systems showed in red.

  Hagen manipulated controls. For an instant, the tank’s interior was chaos. Then it stabilized in three-dimensional form, with the string-lights of warp lines gone and the stars strewn about to reflect their actual placement relative to one another in normal space. The Tangri systems still glowed red, but their locations were seemingly random, as were those of the two green icons. Hagen did some more fiddling, and the scale expanded until two new icons appeared, yellow and trailing tiny tails.

  “The tails represent their vectors,” the Intelligence officer explained. “The sensor data is being automatically incorporated into the display. And at the same time, the computer is correcting it to account for the time lag in the observations. Remember, we’re seeing these flares where they were years ago—about five years, in the case of the closer one. This shows where they are now. Incidentally, they are gradually decelerating.”

  “And where are they going?” Trevayne inquired.

  For answer, Hagen turned to the controls again, but then paused. “Now, you must understand, Admiral, that there’s an element of uncertainty in this. We have to make certain assumptions—notably, that they will not alter course, which presumably they have a limited capability to do.”

  “Why should they do that?” scoffed Allende. “I mean, they’ve been heading for a preplanned destination for who knows how many years. Why should they change their minds now?”

  “Precisely, Captain. And on that basis, we can easily project their courses. But the results are somewhat puzzling.” String-lights representing extrapolated courses appeared in the tank. For a moment, there was silence.

  “Where is that one going?” M’Zangwe demanded irritably.

  “Nowhere, Admiral. At least not in this region of space. The course doesn’t intersect with any star system in normal space, or any such system with which we have any warp connections.”

  “Is it possible that it’s out of control?” Shang wondered. “Some sort of malfunction, or the crew succumbing to a plague, or—”

  “That’s not something we need speculate about at this time,” said Trevayne firmly. “Evidently that one is just passing harmlessly through the spaces that are of no interest to us, and can therefore be ignored. This other one, on the other hand…” He pointed at the second string-light, which terminated at a scarlet dot.

  “So they’re headed for a Tangri system,” said Magda. She turned to Hagen. “Which one?”

  Hagen restored the warpline display. With a light-pencil, he pointed at a red dot a few warp connections along the axis they were following. “Our intelligence assessments indicate it’s a system held by the Daroga Horde. Incidentally, their rate of deceleration confirms that it is their destination.”

  “When are they going to get there?”

  “Here again, the need to make certain assumptions makes a definite answer impossible. But with that proviso, we postulate an ETA of approximately fourteen and a half standard years from now.”

  Trevayne drew a deep breath and released it. “Thank you, Andreas. Captain Allende, please order a courier drone prepared. We need to pass along this information without delay…and I’d like very much to consult with our Arduan friends, who may be able to offer some insights about these later diasporas. But for the moment, I think that’s all the action we need take.” He turned to the others and smiled. “I will be very, very disappointed if we haven’t wrapped up this campaign, and occupied that destination system, in far less than fourteen years! So when they arrive we should be able to have a reception committee waiting for them, including their fellow Arduans. Does everyone agree?”

  There was no demur. It was agreed by all that the discovery was interesting but called for no urgent steps.

  CHAPTER TEN

  With the power plant dead and the grav generators off, the bodies in the forward section of the main corridor floated like drowned men in a stagnant pool. They turned slowly, globules of blood drifting behind and around each one in a widening pattern. ’Sandro Magee looked past the nearby corpses—each one in civilian coveralls rent by multiple, dark-rimmed holes—and moved his shoulders so that the neckless space-helmet was now aimed up the corridor and into the small bridge at the other end of the prospector ship. The hatch was open and another torso was just drifting out of sight beyond the rim of the coaming, trailing more dark droplets. “Are you seeing this, Doghouse?”

  “We are, Bloodhound One,” Ossian Wethermere’s voice answered. “Recommend you proceed with extreme caution.”

  Harry Li, who was not on the command circuit, muttered. “Jeez, ya think?”

  ’Sandro cut a sharp glance at him and pushed off the deck with a grace that was almost incongruous in so large a man. As he did, his receiver crackled to life once again. “Say again, Bloodhound One. Negative read on that last transmission.”

  Evidently Magee’s mic had picked up a fragment of Harry’s insolent sotto voce comment. Or not so sotto voce after all, it seemed. “Nothing of importance, Doghouse. Just some housekeeping chatter on our end.”

  Harry waved to the two Marines with them and kicked himself more aggressively down the corridor. The trio arrived at the bridge with coil guns at the ready. Their suddenly relaxed posture told ’Sandro what they had found: more of the same. No survivors. And no attackers.

  Magee shifted to the tactical channel as he continued to drift forward. “Any clues as to what happened here, Harry?”

  “You mean other than a stem-to-stern massacre? No idea, ’Sandro. A few of the crew lived long enough to get to a weapons locker, another one managed to get a sidearm out of a holster.
But beyond that, nothing. No sign of attacker casualties, no sign that the crew got a shot off. Whoever greased them was a known—and evidently trusted—group.”

  “Damn it, this just doesn’t make sense.”

  “As if anything about this investigation does? The deeper we go, the wider and weirder the clues and connections become. I can’t figure—”

  Alessandro’s radio crackled again, emitted a triple-tone which signified that its secure channel had been switched remotely. Wethermere’s voice was calm and uninflected—which told Magee that the fecal matter had definitely hit the oscillating air circulator: Ossian typically communicated by emphasis and inflection almost as much as by words. So when his voice became flat—

  “Bloodhound One, be advised: we’ve got a bogey inbound, emerging from the shadow of the debris-field at 87 by 18.”

  “A hostile, Doghouse?”

  “Uncertain, Bloodhound.”

  “Do we call for the gig to auto dock with this ship and exfil at the double, sir?”

  “Negative. Just gather your team on the bridge and observe radio silence.”

  “Acknowledged. And once we’re on the bridge?”

  “Check the ship’s systems and await further orders.”

  “Received and understood. Bloodhound out.”

  Li was staring at ’Sandro from the other side of the bridge. “Did we find some trouble?”

  “Do we ever find anything else? Call the other teams up here, Harry. Radios off once they’ve got the word.”

  “And then?”

  “And then we wait.”

  *

  Eighteen light-seconds away, snugged in the lee of a Brobdingnagian chunk of what had once been an Arachnid monitor, Ossian Wethermere leaned back in the well-worn captain’s chair of the forty-year-old freighter-turned-Q-ship Woolly Imposter. He nodded at his commo officer. “Ensign Schlender, terminate all broadcast. Confirm lascom array remains fixed on Bankshot One.”

  “Broadcast comms are now dark, Captain. Bankshot One telemetry test returns five by five.”