This particular experience was less intense and more sublime, with a handful of image threads appearing to him at first. He recognized vague images of familiar people and things—such as Kratos, Captain Middleton, the Prejudice, and even Abyss—but other images seemed somehow familiar and yet were definitely not.
His mind chose a thread, but to say that he chose it would be to infer a degree of agency he did not think he possessed. It was more like he was a passenger in his own mind, which seemed almost like a raft adrift on a rushing river. When a fork came in the river of imagery, the raft seemed to act of its own accord rather than by any will of Kongming’s.
He realized this was the most profound sense of selflessness that he had ever experienced, and that realization somehow sharpened the imagery all around him as new threads appeared in his mind’s eye.
He saw dozens—perhaps hundreds—of forks in the river appear in rapid succession. Each time that he made a choice of which thread to follow, he glimpsed catastrophe in the thread he had not ‘chosen’ to pursue.
On and on it went, until he was finally able to see the deaths of people he knew—alongside countless people he did not know—before his unconscious mind arranged a group of paths before him.
Eventually he realized that many of the streams he saw were repeating themselves. How long he had been reviewing these probability threads, or how many times each had appeared to him, he was uncertain. But it seemed as though his mind drifted along the rushing rapids for days without ever finding a thread which did not show the end of someone he knew.
He finally distilled the options down to three distinct and radically different threads. He examined them with as much deliberation as he could manage, but he soon realized that a sense of dread and foreboding had grown at the periphery of his consciousness.
He sharpened his focus and centered his attention on the first thread, knowing that he could not afford to delay in making a choice. This first thread showed the deaths of Captain Middleton, Chief Garibaldi, Toto, Hephaestion, and everyone else who had remained aboard the Prejudice. In addition to them, the Stalwart Commander, Mrr’shan, Prichtac, and everyone else who Kongming knew in the Gorgon Sectors—aside from Kratos, Abyss, Wojo, and the crew of the Unthreadable Needle—all died in this particular variant. Only the Needle and her crew survived, and if his reading was correct then not only would they survive but they would inexplicably thrive in a murky, difficult-to-see future.
Kongming quickly dismissed this thread, knowing he could never sacrifice the lives of so many simply to preserve himself and those who were presently closest to him. He focused on the second thread, which blossomed in his mind as a distinctly predatory sound began chirping—or clicking—at the edge of his consciousness.
This second thread showed that everyone who had died in the previous thread survived, while everyone aboard the Needle died. This was a tempting future for him personally because in it he shared the fate of those who had accompanied him on this leg of his mission. He remembered the horror—the absolute, unmitigated horror—of choosing between the lives of his beloved Lu Bu and Vali Funar back on Cagnzyz. His cold, rational mind had made the choice without delay, but the aftermath and the introspection which followed had hollowed him out to the core of his being.
Who am I to decide who lives and who dies? he silently asked himself, and with that mental query the volume of the predatory sounds—which now very much resembled the howling of wolves—increased tenfold.
He held onto the second thread and focused on the third, final thread. However much of his conscious mind remained involved, at this point, knew that it was the best possible future—but his emotional self knew it would only result in a repeat of the introspective hell he had endured since recalling the death of Vali Funar.
No, he thought to himself bitterly, the murder of Vali Funar.
In this third and final thread, Kongming saw the deaths of two of his fellow crew aboard the Unthreadable Needle. In a way, he had long since come to terms with their deaths—which only served to increase his reluctance to select this particular thread. The two who would die were Abyss and Kratos, with one dying well before the other but with both expiring long before Kongming—or any other member of the AG Fleet—could rejoin them.
Unlike the other two threads, the first of which had already been reabsorbed into the river of threads, these deaths only inspired a tiny fraction of the emotional response—including self-loathing, despair, and anger—that Kongming felt compared to the death of Vali Funar. The image of a seed planting in the ground came to the fore of his mind as he contemplated their deaths and, as he focused on it in order to better understand its meaning, the predatory sounds at his peripheral consciousness increased until they nearly overwhelmed his entire being.
A chord of truly unadulterated terror, the likes of which Kongming had only experienced once before, took root in his mind and Kongming knew he had a choice to make:
Either he abandoned the new target provided by the Crafter and return directly to Captain Middleton, or he investigated the new target star system and, after arriving there, it would be inevitable that both Abyss and Kratos would die.
The choice was clear, and though he saw a handful of other deaths in the third thread he knew that logically he had no choice at all.
“Who am I to decide who lives and who dies?” he asked, realizing only after he had spoken that his eyes were open and that he had broken the trance-like state required for the Sight to function.
His entire body was trembling, his clothing was soaked with sweat and the incense and candles had already burned out. He was alone in the dark, he was cold, and he had a pounding headache which seemed powerful enough to crush his eyeballs from the inside out.
It took him nearly an hour before he had rehydrated himself and managed to stop the tremors which had wracked his body. A quick check of the chronometer showed that the Needle, if Nail had kept to the itinerary, was already several jumps into their journey.
“It’s not too late…” he whispered to himself, knowing it would be several more days before they arrived in the star system which held certain doom for both Kratos and Abyss. He could still turn the Needle around and spare both of their lives. He could ignore these damnable visions—as he suspected any sane person would do—and let the universe unfold around him as it was wont to do. He could, with only the barest hint of abrogation, surrender—or, what’s more, actively refuse—this blasted ‘Sight’ and return to the life of someone who did not know what the future held.
For a short moment, he was as tempted by that possibility as he had every been tempted in his young life. But then the moment passed and a new question pass his lips unbidden by his conscious mind.
“If not me…then who?” he asked, fresh resolve steeling his nerve as he realized that it was more than a burden he now carried with this ‘Sight.’
He had been given a chance to make decisions—monumentally important decisions—with a degree of clarity unknown to most of humanity. To throw away that chance simply for a chance to be normal was to be nothing less than a coward, and while Kongming was flawed in many ways…
“I am no coward,” he clenched his fists before resolving to walk the path he was already on. He did not know what would happen if he shared his vision with Abyss and Kratos, and the idea of authoring causality conundrums flared into the fore of his mind for several minutes before he dismissed them entirely. He would tell them, because even if free will truly was an illusion of the highest order then it was still one of the few illusions worth cherishing.
And, as a scientifically-minded man, Kongming would take no small measure of pleasure in demonstrating that something as vast, powerful, ancient and incalculably complex as the Eye was anything less than omniscient.
With those thoughts whirling about his head, he resolved to do the only thing one could realistically do when faced with the potential loss of those he had come to know, respect, and even care about:
He
went to spend as much time with them as possible before such a potential loss became a real one.
Chapter XXXVIII: Of Sterner Stuff than I
“You are convinced that this will come to be?” Kratos repeated after listening to Kongming explain his vision.
Abyss’s multifaceted eyes seemed fixed on Kongming as the young man nodded, “I am as convinced of this as I am of anything I have ever said, Kratos.”
Kratos rubbed his jaw contemplatively while Abyss remained uncharacteristically motionless, appearing almost like a manacled statue in his brig-like quarters.
“But you have no details?” Kratos pressed, and Kongming shook his head.
“I…the visions are dangerous,” he explained sheepishly. “I remained as long as I thought was safe to do so, but…” he trailed off, ashamed that he did not remain for a few more seconds to gather potentially crucial information from examining the threads of probability.
Kratos scoffed, “If you must indulge in self-pity, Master Kongming, then do so when not in my presence. I would not tarnish my thoughts of you with images of such weakness.”
Kongming recoiled as if struck, completely blindsided by Kratos’ bluntness, “What do you mean?”
“Look at me,” Kratos gestured to his herculean body. “How many fights do you think came to me during my life, and how many do you think I brought to my enemies? An often unrecognized burden of my physical gifts is that I will always have the advantage of my opponent.” He snorted as his eye drifted off in what looked like reminiscence, “Even when standing face-to-face with a supposed ‘god,’ I felt nothing but the thrill of anticipation at toppling yet another colossal foe. How would you feel when standing a few meters from a Bug Bio-Harvester?”
Kongming shuddered at the thought of the bloated, grub-like organic matter harvesters. They could measure as much as ten meters long and four meters tall, and they had maws filled with teeth, mandibles, and acid injectors which would liquefy the hardest bone or shell in seconds so that the harvester could store the biomass internally. The idea of becoming a partially-digested sample in a Bio-Harvester’s gut was enough to turn any man’s stomach—and blunt the edge of his nerve.
“I would be terrified,” Kongming admitted.
“Of course you would,” Kratos agreed. “But I was not. That does not make me better than you—to the contrary,” he said pointedly, “if you could fight your fear and stand tall in the face of such a horror, it would mean you were made of sterner stuff than I. So you have your visions,” Kratos shrugged indifferently. “It is no different with Captain Middleton and his tactical simulations: he uses them to divine the future much as children use games to divine future interactions. Chess, cards, simulated warfare,” he ticked off fingers with each listed item, “it is all the same. You have an unnatural gift to divine the future and, while I am generally skeptical as to the nature of such divinations, I have come to trust your judgment. If you say this is our best course, and if you say we will either die or live as cowards after someone else fought our battles for us, then I will not begrudge my death if it means standing tall against my enemies. But I do not accept,” he finished pointedly, “that the future is already set. I will do my part to make my mark on the universe, and if that means I must die then I am content to die in service to a cause I find worthy.”
Kongming was suitably cowed by Kratos’ words, and decided to ask a question which had burned itself into his mind since getting to know the one-eyed Tracto-an. “What is it about Captain Middleton’s ‘cause’ that appeals to you? You were a rebel—a heretic—back on Tracto. You even joined Jean Luc Montagne’s pirate fleet before being recruited into the MSP. I have never understood how you changed or what changed you.”
Kratos grinned, “Then you do not understand me as well as I’d hoped. It is simple: I refused to make obeisance to a system which rejected nonconformity. All I wanted, and all I ever worked to build, was the chance to live as I chose while giving others the chance to do the same. On Tracto there is no room for dissent, and all conflicts are settled through strength—be it economic, military, or even political,” his lip curled at that last word. “So the only way to secure one’s freedom was with the blood of would-be subjugators. Things…happened,” he continued darkly, “and it became clear that the world I wished to build was not one which I could bring to be. I joined the Blood Lord—a pretentious title employed by the unimaginative, I might add—since doing so gave me a chance to lend my arm to the destruction of the centralized power structure which the Hold Mistresses had erected for themselves. It was not until I joined Captain Middleton that I realized my life’s work had already been completed elsewhere, in the so-called ‘River of Stars.’ The Confederation, and its Multi-Sector Patrol Fleet, was a better example of decentralized state power than I had ever seen—which was all I had ever fought to bring to Tracto.”
“You would die for this?” Abyss asked through his translator, prompting Kratos to turn to the Brain Bug.
“Of course,” the Tracto-an nodded. “A man without the courage to die for what he values is no man at all. At best he is a boy, and at worst a eunuch deprived of his manhood by an oppressive culture—and such cultures invariably deceive us into acting against our best interests with high ideals like ‘honor,’ ‘duty,’ and the like. I once tried to teach a promising youth that lesson,” Kratos gritted his teeth, “but I failed.”
Abyss’s eyes seemed transfixed on Kratos now, which surprised Kongming since the Bug’s attention had been completely fixated on Kongming since the meeting had begun. But Abyss remained silent, so Kongming decided to address him, “Are you sure you understand what I’ve said?”
“This information has been compiled and examined with a high degree of accuracy,” Abyss assured him.
“And you have no objection to going to this star system?” Kongming asked warily.
“Of course not,” Abyss shook his head in a crude approximation of the human gesture. “Reality is reality; fate is fate; life must end. Accurate predictions regarding that end should not radically modify behaviors in an enlightened locus of consciousness.”
“That treads dangerously close to arrogance,” Kratos chided.
“It does,” Abyss acknowledged simply, prompting Kongming and Kratos to laugh in unison.
“Ok,” Kongming exhaled in a mixture of relief and resignation, “then since we’re scheduled to arrive in the target star system in four days, and I’m clearly les enlightened than you are,” he nodded jokingly to Abyss, “I’d like to spend much of that remaining time with each of you.”
“If your doing so is for pity’s sake,” Kratos warned, “I am uninterested.”
“However,” Abyss put in, “if it is intended to increase enlightenment, there should be no objection.”
Kratos eyed the Bug before nodding, “Agreed.”
“Good,” Kongming nodded, and they spent much of the next four days in each other’s company—which represented only a small uptick in their previous level of social interaction.
Kongming would come to take great solace from that fact after reflecting on it in the weeks and months to come.
Chapter XXXIX: The Lost Swarm
“Point transfer complete,” the Needle’s Helmsman, Hammer, reported after clearing the inertial sump.
“Scanning,” Kongming reported as he sent out active scans from the Needle’s surprisingly robust sensor suite. “Three planets detected: one gas giant of three standard Jovian masses in the outermost orbit; one quasi-molten, tidally-locked planet in the innermost orbit; and…a glacial, rocky world positioned just at the outer edge of the Goldilocks Zone.” A handful of alarms sounded on his sensor panel as more discrete readings came in from the second planet, and he quickly steeled his nerves as he called out, “Bug ships detected in orbit of the second planet!”
“Shields up,” Primarch Nail boomed, “prepare for emergency exit jump!”
“Wait, Primarch,” Kongming said after poring over the passive sensor dat
a, “it appears…it seems as though the ships are in a state of…hibernation?” He re-scanned the thermal readings, along with the ships’ attitudes and orbital inclinations before confirming, “I have never seen these readings, but it appears as though the Bug ships are all in relatively high, remarkably stable orbits of the second planet. Their core temperatures are nearly a hundred degrees kelvin lower than any recorded Bug ship temperatures, but they are clearly not dead. No battle damage is visible at this range, and their baseline temperatures would be far, far lower if they were derelict hulks.”
“Confirm those readings,” Nail snapped.
“Readings confirmed,” Kongming insisted, forwarding the feeds directly to Nail’s chair, “the active scans will return better data in an hour but it seems like these Bug ships are, essentially, asleep.”
Nail perused the data feeds before fractionally relaxing, “Belay the jump order, Hammer—for now. But keep the drives charged in case those Bugs start powering up.”
“Yes, Primarch,” Hammer acknowledged.
“How many ships are there in orbit of the second planet?” Nail demanded.
Kongming cocked his head dubiously after reviewing the sensor readings, “It appears that there are nearly one hundred total Bug ships, Primarch.”
Nail’s eyebrows rose in abject alarm, “That’s an entire Hive Fleet!”
“There aren’t supposed to be any Bug Hives in the Gorgon Sectors,” Kongming allowed, “but this fleet breakdown appears to show a fully intact Hive Fleet, complete with a Mothership and a dozen Harvester-class Cruisers.”
“A fleet that large could strip an entire Gaia-class planet in weeks,” Nail growled. “They must have killed the second planet and gone into hibernation.”
“That does not appear to be consistent with Bug behavioral patterns, Primarch,” Kongming mused. “In fact…I think the opposite may indeed be the case: if my understanding of Bug activity patterns is even close to accurate, then these Bugs would have already departed this star system if they had stripped the second planet as they are known to do. That they are in hibernation suggests, to me, that they arrived only to find the planet inaccessible.”
The Middle Road (Spineward Sectors: Middleton's Pride Book 7) Page 37
