The Dying Light
Page 9
He shrugged. “It may have successfully summoned my sibling here, then malfunctioned.”
“That wouldn’t explain why he bothered to reply.”
“Unless the beacon is an AI,” Cane suggested. “Or we have it the wrong way around. Perhaps the Sol transmission is from my sibling, and the reply from someone else entirely.”
Roche thought this over. The first transmission had come from Jagabis, their current destination. “If so, that means we’re heading into trouble.”
“I know.” Cane’s dark features remained expressionless. “It appears that being able to translate the transmission, even in part, has only made the situation worse.”
“It’s not your fault, Cane,” Roche said. “This whole system is a mess.” She rubbed sleep from her eyes with the heels of her hands. “Besides, you can’t help what you are,” she went on, sensing that he wanted something more from her than just acting as a confessor. “Your lack of motive worries me sometimes, but you’ve convinced me that you don’t mean me any harm—for what that’s worth. Just because you’re a weapon, and you’ve been designed to do certain things that might harm a great number of people, that doesn’t mean you will. There’s a big difference between design and intent, after all; I try to keep that in mind.”
Cane nodded slowly. “Thank you, Morgan. I was worried that the reminder of what I am might cause you to rethink our association.”
She smiled vaguely. “I’m glad you told me. At the very least, we can get the Box onto it and see whether it can’t translate the rest.”
“You would like me to tell the Box?”
“I can’t see why not. Having some understanding of a high-level Sol language will probably come in handy one day.” She went on: “When you have the time, go over the text of the transmission, pull out the bits that you can translate and see what the Box can come up with. It may be no more of a linguist than you or I, but it must be able to run basic statistical checks. Something’s bound to come up.”
Cane stood, his muscles flexing smoothly with the movement. “We’ll begin immediately.”
“I’ll be down to review your results soon.” She stood, too, and followed him to the door. “But don’t let it get in the way of mapping the system. That’s our first priority at the moment.”
The door slid closed behind Cane, leaving Roche with yet another mystery to ponder. She wondered how many more this system would throw at her before finally surrendering some definite answers. And how much longer she could juggle the conflicting trust and suspicion she felt for Adoni Cane.
When she made it to the bridge almost an hour later, the first wave of information had begun to arrive. The probe aimed at the sun had announced that it had data to send within moments of Cane’s return. Since then, the Box, Cane, and Kajic had been fully occupied, paring back the packets of data to the ones most relevant or likely to contain answers to Roche’s many questions. As a result, the mystery of the possible Sol transmissions had been placed on hold.
“Okay,” she said, settling into her seat. Maii took a place next to her, apart from a hand on her shoulder keeping carefully unobtrusive. “Let’s see what we’ve got.”
“Pictures in visual spectra, mostly,” said Kajic. “And, according to the Box, the mechanism underlying the Gauntlet.”
“Show me.”
The main screen blossomed to reveal a bloated red giant, magnified to fill one third of the view. Cooler patches had been dimmed by compensators to appear charcoal black, giving the star’s surface a cracked appearance. Massive disturbances, clearly visible despite the blur of distance, flowed sluggishly from each pole to the equator, skewed east by the star’s rotation.
Roche winced at the sight. “You’d never guess that until a month ago, that used to be a green dwarf.”
“Precisely,” said the Box. “The change in its composition goes much deeper than I thought.”
“How deep, exactly?”
“To the core. Look closely, Morgan.”
‘The view zoomed forward, closer to the star. Gases bubbled like magma from an unimaginable interior, casting a baleful red light through the bridge. A green ring stood out on the screen, highlighting a darker point. As the ring swung past, Roche realized that the point at its center was an object orbiting the star, deep within its chromosphere. She had no reference points against which to estimate the object’s size, but the way it disturbed the gases around it, leaving a deep, roiling scar in its wake, suggested enormous size or mass, or both.
“That can’t be a ship,” she said.
“It isn’t,” said the Box. “It is one of sixteen quark breeders in high-speed orbit, firing pellets of strange matter into the heart of the star.”
“You can tell that just by looking at it?”
“Not entirely, Morgan. If you watch carefully, you can see the pellets strike the photosphere.”
Roche looked more closely at the image. Sure enough, every few seconds or so, a bright spark of blue light flared at the base of the wake.
“Why strange matter?” asked Haid.
“Strange matter is super-dense,” Roche said before the Box could reply, “and it can be moved more easily and more precisely than neutronium. With it, you can alter the workings of a star’s core. Once you control the core, you can play with its electromagnetic and gravity fields.”
“This, clearly, is how the Riem-Perez Horizon is generated,” added the Box.
“Overkill,” said Haid.
“The Gauntlet is a grotesque example of just that,” the AI agreed. “If its designers had stopped to consider what they were doing even for a moment, they would have realized that what they hoped for simply wasn’t possible.”
Haid shrugged. “You have to admire them for trying, anyway.”
The quark breeder continued to plow its way through Hintubet’s wounded chromosphere, as implacable as the physics that foretold the star’s death.
“What would happen if we destroyed them?” Cane asked.
“Disaster,” said the Box. “The nuclear processes inside the sun would spiral out of control until the reactions sustaining the Riem-Perez Horizon ceased. The boundary would become increasingly chaotic until, within a very short period of time, it collapsed entirely.”
“Any idea who planted the breeders?” said Roche.
“Detail is sparse at this resolution,” said the Box. “I cannot tell if the breeders display any markings. However, only one nation in this region manufactures breeders of the sort required for such a macro-project as this, and that is the Eckandar Trade Axis.”
“Do you think they might be involved?”
“No. The devices have been available for many centuries; the array is probably that belonging to the original Gauntlet prototype, not one manufactured recently.”
“That’s good to know. I hate to think why anyone would build them today.” Roche mused to herself for a moment. “If this is the prototype, and it’s being used to entrap the Sol Wunderkind, then it must have been kept somewhere nearby. Allowing time for the weapon to be dusted off and programmed, then put into place and activated, that doesn’t leave much for transport.”
“Do we know when it was activated?” asked Haid.
“Not before the twenty-sixth of last month,” said the Box. “That was when the Armada Marines investigating the system were ambushed. Presumably the system was open at that point.”
“Is there any way to pin it down further?”
“I have been observing the rate of decay of the boundary. If we assume that it originally extended to cover Palasian System’s cometary halo, then that gives us an activation date somewhere between the thirty-seventh and fortieth.”
“So that means the people behind the Gauntlet had a little more than one week to get it here,” Roche said.
“How would they have got it past the clone warrior?” asked Haid.
“One assumes the breeders were slow-jumped as close to the sun as possible with a large relative velocity,” said the Box. “Once they we
re captured by Hintubet’s gravity and safely inside the chromosphere, there would have been very little the Sol Wunderkind could have done to interfere with them.”
“He wouldn’t have known what they were, after all,” said Roche.
“They would have demonstrated no overtly hostile behavior,” added Cane. “And there may have been more pressing matters demanding his attention.”
“That makes sense.” Roche turned her attention away from the sun and the device crippling it. “What else have we found?”
“We have a probe orbiting Cartha’s Planet,” said Kajic. “Everything seems in order there. Wight Station—the automated solar research installation—has not been damaged.”
“Because it was no threat,” Roche said. “Go on.”
“The same probe examined the Mattar Belt as it flew through,” Kajic went on. “There is evidence of activity on several asteroids, although only one prowling mine was observed in situ. Likewise, it had not been interfered with.”
“Any sign of people?”
“No. The inner system appears to be uninhabited, except by machines.”
“Perhaps we can use them to our advantage, then. Box, as we get closer, I want you to make contact with the AIs on Wight Station and the prowling mines. They may have recorded information that will help us plot the movements of the Sol Wunderkind.”
“I will do so,” said the Box. “If other installations have been attacked in the same manner as Guhr Outpost, the explosions should have been noticed by one or more of these observers. We may be able to pinpoint the exact time each attack took place.”
“Let me know what you find.” Roche turned to Kajic. “Any news from Jagabis?”
“The probe will be in position, relative to us, in about an hour. All transmissions ceased from that region twenty-five minutes ago, corresponding almost exactly with our arrival in the system.”
Roche mentally approximated the time it would take data traveling at light-speed to cross the system twice; as Kajic had said, it did match the time required for someone on Jagabis to observe the arrival of the Ana Vereine, then for the immediate cessation of transmissions to be observed by Kajic.
“So someone knows we’re here,” she said somberly.
“They knew where we were,” said Haid. “We’ve been camouflaged since we arrived, which still gives us some element of surprise.”
Roche nodded. “Have the other probes found anything?”
“Two used Gatamin as a gravity-whip, but neither reported anything unusual,” said Kajic. “Again, that planetary system was uninhabited.”
Roche took a moment to study the images of the smallish, once blue-green gas giant, third most distant from the sun. Apart from its remarkable rings, it was easy to overlook.
“Herensung likewise appears untouched,” Kajic went on, “at least from a distance. There were a few orbital communication relays that are now silent, but until the probe arrives we have no way of knowing what has happened to them.”
“That leaves Cemenid, and the double-jovian.” Roche was curious to see both. Cemenid, the largest planet, had been home to a COE communications base; Kukumat and Murukan were simply mysterious, on the opposite side of the system.
“Cemenid is a couple of hours away,” said Kajic. “The double will be at least another twelve.”
Roche couldn’t complain about that; she already had enough data to keep her occupied for days, and would soon have more. The double jovian was simply a bonus.
She applied herself to the information with a will and Maii’s help, trying to find any evidence of the Sol clone warrior’s passage. Occasional details surfaced from the growing files—wreckage of satellite here, an ion afterwash there—but no actual sightings. Wherever the Wunderkind was, he had been effective in hiding himself—so far. When the data from the other major planets arrived, she hoped to know where he was not, at least. Then it would become a more difficult quest, through the gulfs between planets or in the mess of dark bodies known as Autoville between Cemenid and Gatamin. She didn’t like to think that he might have hidden any farther out than that; Mishra’s Stake, the second dark-body halo, extended in a band one and half thousand million kilometers wide almost as far as Voloras. If he was hiding in there, he would be impossible to find.
The only consolation was that if he was in there, he would be effectively unable to surprise them. Which is why Roche felt safe ruling it out. He would never have allowed himself to reduce his options so severely, assuming Cane’s behavior was anything to go by.
Roche pondered this.
the reave said.
“We’re picking up something unusual,” said Kajic. “From Jagabis?” Roche asked, pushing the data she had been studying to one side and focusing her attention on the main screen.
“No. It’s a tightbeam from roughly the same direction, though.”
“Contents?”
“A request for ID on a COE band. That’s all.” Kajic paused. “The transmission is coming once every minute, and we’re only picking up the fringes of it. Also, it’s blue-shifted, indicating that the source is moving toward us.”
Toward them? Roche stiffened in her seat. “A ship?”
“That seems likely, although I haven’t detected any emissions yet.”
“Keep looking. Show me the message in full.”
A window on the main screen opened, displaying four brief lines of text:-
VESSEL ENTERING PALASIAN SYSTEM 0805
ID REQUESTED
RESPOND ASAP
QUOLMANN
“Who’s this ‘Quolmann’?” asked Haid.
“It’s not a who,” said Roche. “It’s COE Intelligence shorthand for ‘Trust me; I’m an ally.’”
“And should we?” asked Haid evenly.
“That depends,” said Cane. “If the code is common knowledge, then we should treat its use here with suspicion.”
“It’s not well known,” said Roche. “Otherwise it would have been changed. But I’m disinclined to trust someone even if they are from COE Intelligence.”
“So what do we do?” Kajic asked. “Ignore it?”
“We can’t afford to,” said Roche uneasily. “The message was sent to us. They may not know exactly where we are, given that we’re only picking up the edges of the tight- beam, but they do have a rough idea.”
“They could be sending the message to several likely locations,” suggested Cane.
Roche quickly dismissed the idea. “No, the ship is still coming in this direction.” She thought for a moment, then said: “We’re being predictable. Uri, I want to change course slightly; swing us away from the sun and to a wider approach. I know it’ll mean taking longer to get to Jagabis, but I think we have to do it—at least until we know how far away this ship is. At the same time, send a remote to reply to the tightbeam on our original course. Give it half an hour before sending our ID and
the ‘Quolmann’ code word—that’s all. Keep the probe on our old heading until it receives a reply. It can relay any messages without putting the Ana Vereine at risk.”
“Consider it done,” said Kajic.
Roche read the text of the message again. “It’s almost as though they were expecting someone from COE Intelligence to come,” she mused.
“And have nothing to fear from them,” added Cane.
“That puts them in a minority,” said Haid wryly.
“The Jagabis data is being processed,” announced Kajic.
“Finally.” Roche prepared herself for another inrush of information. “Okay. Let’s see it.”
The probe had inserted itself into a polar orbit around the innermost jovian world of Palasian System. Even under Hintubet’s stark, crimson light, Roche was struck by the beauty of the planet. Its bands and vortices were manifold and varied, ranging from thick jet streams to thin wisps; its pole was a region of intense electromagnetic activity, the atmosphere constantly erupting with flashes of lightning. Its rings were small relative to those of some of the other planets, but they were there, framing a large number of moons—fourteen known, Roche recalled from the COE files. The largest of them, Aro, was also the largest solid body in the system; for that reason, plus its more hospitable distance from the sun, it had been chosen over Cartha’s Planet for the system’s permanent civilian base.
She studied the data intently, eager for—and yet simultaneously dreading—her first sight of Aro Spaceport and its close neighbor, Emptage City. Although she knew that the probe “had sent this view some hours ago, she couldn’t help but feel nervous about what she might see, as though she were more intimately involved than a mere observer. What if the Sol Wunderkind were to be attacking Aro at the very moment the moon came into view? What would she do? She fought to suppress the discomforting notion, because the truth was, there would be nothing she could do. They would be helpless to defend the base
The probe changed course as it crossed Jagabis’s north pole. Its tiny but powerful thrusters fired to insert it into an equatorial orbit intersecting that of Aro. Roche waited impatiently as the minutes ticked by until, finally, the red dot of the moon appeared over the bulge of the distant horizon.