A House United

by Caleb Wachter

  “Do I need to know what we had to give up in order to get access to this second Conduit?” Spalding asked into the growing silence.

  “Yes,” McKnight said, toying with the data crystals in her pocket as she sighed, the weight of the previous hours' tension seeming to hit her all at once, “but not yet.”

  “Understood,” he said with a nod. “Next watch starts in six hours, but I've only been up for two hours. You should probably get some rest.”

  “I'll be in my quarters,” McKnight agreed with a gracious nod, turning and making her way to her berth aboard the relatively cramped 24.

  When she arrived there, she found a not-so-surprising individual standing patiently outside her quarters. At seeing him there, it took her less than two seconds to decide how she was going to spend the first portion of her hard-earned downtime.

  “How's Traian?” Tiberius asked after establishing a com-link with Helena down in the ship's surprisingly robust sickbay.

  “The scanners show that his central nervous system is functioning more or less properly,” she replied, “but he is neither conscious or responding to reflex stimulation. The foreign structures have increased so greatly in density that they now out-mass the neural tissues to which they are attached—and they are still spreading.”

  “Is there any way to slow that process down?” Spalding asked grimly.

  “We have already attempted every method possible with the available equipment,” she shook her head. “In fact, some of our efforts resulted in an increase in the rate of growth rather than a decrease.”

  “Your recommendation?”

  “Sedatives are ineffective,” she said firmly. “The only option is to physically quarantine him as Captain McKnight instructed.”

  Spalding set his jaw; he hated the idea of imprisoning a fellow crewman—especially one who, according to McKnight, had been instrumental in facilitating her rescue from the moon base.

  But, like his CO, he could conceive of no viable alternative at this point. Traian was an unknown variable at this point, and it made little difference just how much assistance he had provided. Too many variables made things unpredictable, and unpredictability inevitably led to failure.

  “The cell is on deck five,” Tiberius nodded curtly, “Horgan should have made the last modifications to it by now.”

  “The Chief is already here,” she said with a look off-pickup, “and will conduct Traian to the cell now.”

  “Thank you, Doctor—sorry, Helena,” he corrected with a tight smile.

  “Sickbay, out,” Helena acknowledged before severing the connection.

  A few minutes later, the 24 point transferred out of the star system and embarked on what would hopefully be its final voyage as bearer of the mixed former MSP crew and Tracto-ans.

  “I guess age does have its virtues,” McKnight panted—her first words in the full hour after she had locked the door to her modest quarters.

  “Age is a sequence of trade-offs with ever-diminishing returns,” Nazoraios replied with a shrug, his breathing only fractionally labored. “But one must embrace those returns and adapt to them, lest he permit his youthful rivals to define the measure of his worth on unfavorable terms.”

  McKnight looked up at him with mock incredulity, “Is that your way of subtly telling me I'm too old to compete with teenagers in the looks department?”

  “I believe you just received what your people would call a 'refresher course' on the axiom 'appearances can be deceiving',” Nazoraios said confidently—confidence which, she had to admit, he'd just earned eight times over.

  “It certainly was refreshing,” she admitted with a contented sigh before turning serious, “but I need to be clear about something: I don't belong to—“

  “Nor I you,” he interrupted smoothly. “This is whatever you make of it, either a pleasureful diversion or an audition for something more. I am too old to argue with you over which it should be.”

  “What was it for you?” she asked with piqued interest, suspecting he was leading her through the entire conversation—and, for a rare moment in her life, she was content to have him do so.

  “An audition,” he replied simply. “My great work is already complete; I have never lived solely for myself, not even for a single day in my entire life, and of all the things I have ever wanted for myself this was the first desire I acted on regardless of the consequences.”

  “What consequences?”

  He sighed, “I would tell you, but not yet. I...” he trailed off uncertainly, “am unsure how to describe my life prior to setting sail on the River of Stars.”

  She looked up at him in the dim light of her quarters, searching his shadowy features and finding nothing readable. She scowled, “You don't actually think like that, do you? That whole 'River of Stars' nonsense your people use to describe space travel doesn't seem like you.”

  He chuckled, “You are indeed perceptive. I am glad you were not born to Tracto—you would have made a formidable Hold Mistress.”

  “Which would have made us enemies?” she pressed, having pieced together bits of Nazoraios' past over the past few months of perusing crew records and what few comments she had collected on him. Apparently he had been part of a vast, secret society which opposed the rule of the Hold Mistresses. Such opposition placed him, and those like him, in direct opposition to Men—the 'god' of their people who, in reality, was just another type of artificial intelligence like the one worshiped in the Empire of Man.

  “Indeed, which would have been unfortunate,” he agreed, delicately wrapping her hair around his fingers before giving a firm tug, yanking her head back and giving her a surprising thrill as he added, “since I much prefer you as a bedfellow.”

  “Don't change the subject,” she scolded, half-hoping that he would ignore her protest and finding herself mildly disappointed when he ceased the previous bit of play by releasing her hair. “What made you different? Why did you oppose the Hold Mistresses?”

  “Most of the impetus arose from simple human nature; certain men will always rebel against authority they deem unwarranted,” he shrugged before his eyes hardened. “But some of it was more...personal.”

  “Personal?” she repeated in confusion. “You mean the men like you had been wronged by the Hold Mistresses.”

  “Yes, but not in the way you might think...” he sighed before trailing off into silence, which lasted for a full minute before he melodiously intoned:

  “And then he'll come, th' Eternal King.

  Liberty, steel, and laws he'll bring.

  He'll free our eyes and minds to see

  not what now is, but what might be.

  Against his might they'll band togeth'r;

  their storm of fear, for us, he'll weath'r.

  A eulogy writ in blood and stars

  r'minds all free men: his path is ours.

  We'll reach the Ice on ships 'thout sails,

  beyond—nay, through—the Riv'r's travails.

  A god's death rattle doth make known:

  th' Eternal King resumes his throne.”

  McKnight had no idea how to respond to that, so she thought about the piece of crude, but surprisingly effective poetry for a few moments as she recalled what she had learned of Tracto-an history. “The Eternal King...it's supposed to appear to be King Lykurgos, but in reality it isn't a person at all—it's an idea.”

  “That is what generations before me believed as well, as I too believed...” Nazoraios nodded in approval, “until I met him for myself and understood the truth.”

  “The river...it's talking about the River of Stars?” she asked skeptically. “How can that be? Your people weren't capable of getting off-world until the Admiral Montagne established contact.”

  “You forget: humans were not indigenous to Tracto,” Nazoraios chided. “The so-called 'god,' Men, was ever-manipulative of human affairs. Tales of 'uploads' and terrible wars among the stars were never far from the consciousness of my people, Captain. By wrapping t
he reality of technology and its consequences in a shroud of mysticism and superstition, and invoking heresy against those who would question such an obviously dogmatic presentation, Men was able to control the minds of my people completely.”

  “But The Eternal King changed that?” McKnight said disbelievingly.

  “No, he did not,” he replied, “but I believe that his work is not yet finished.”

  “I don't know how you can think The Eternal King is a real person,” she shook her head. “You're a smart man, Nazoraios—probably smarter than I am,” she admitted with a trace of envy, “and certainly more introspective. That poem, whoever wrote it, was projecting an idea into the minds of those who hear it. It's a standard ode to liberty with a little mystery and vague phraseology tossed in for good measure.”

  “Perhaps,” he allowed. “But it is unimportant. Whatever the truth is, we cannot undo it with our desires; what is, is, and what is not, is not. I have already done what I could in regard to the Eternal King; if I was wrong, I was wrong. But if I was right...” he trailed off pointedly.

  “If you were right,” she decided to play along, “then you had nothing left to teach him, which is why you stayed behind.”

  His silence spoke volumes as they lay there together for several minutes, before eventually stirring and resuming their prior regimen of relaxation—well, not so much 'relaxation' as 're-invigoration.'

  After another hour—and seven more engagements, each more raucous than the last—she knew it was precisely what she had needed.

  Chapter XXXIV: A Glittering Rainbow

  “Sensor contact,” Shiyuan reported a few moments after the 24 point transferred into the star system designated for their rendezvous with the Jefferson-class warship, Rainbow.

  “Is it the Rainbow?” McKnight asked, working to keep her voice steady as she did so. She had taken a massive risk turning over the aged warship to the newly-liberated droids which had previously inhabited Lynch's moon base where the Core Fragment, Archie, had been destroyed. It was still possible for them to reach the Gorgon Sectors without regaining control of the ancient warship, but it would be an order of magnitude—or two—more difficult to do so aboard the 24 than it would be aboard the Rainbow.

  “I'm...I think so...” Shiyuan said hesitantly. “the physical profile matches, but I'm getting all kinds of extra energy signatures. It's pumping out at least ten times its max-rated EM signal, Captain, and the composition isn't what it should be.”

  A moment later, his readings were piped into the bridge's main display and McKnight found herself leaning forward in growing alarm at what she saw.

  Jarrett was right: the ship on the viewer looked like the Rainbow in terms of geometry, but even its mass was dramatically greater than it had previously been. Coupled with the intense waves of EM pouring off the thing, she was uncertain it truly was the same ship.

  “There,” she stood from her chair and pointed to one of the ancient warship's counter-rotating hab modules, “that's the section that was blown out during the sabotage. Magnify it.”

  A second later, Jarrett did as commanded and she saw the same series of patch welds which her engineers had made to repair the damaged section.

  “That's our work, all right,” Lieutenant Spalding confirmed. “I remember directing two of those weld lines personally,” he gestured to a pair of criss-crossing reinforcement plates.

  “Then why is the ship's entire primary hull now composed of Duralloy II?” Shiyuan challenged, drawing raised brows from every person on the bridge—including McKnight.

  He pulled up technical schematics and sensor feed data which seemingly confirmed his assertion: the aged warship had apparently been 'upgraded' so extensively that the vast majority of its steel superstructure had been replaced with the far-more-resilient Duralloy II—a material which had been thought to be mythical by residents of the Confederated Spineward Sectors until very, very recently.

  “There,” Tiberius Spalding interrupted as Shiyuan's sensor feeds showed activity on the forward section of the Rainbow's primary hull, “magnify that.”

  Shiyuan did so, and for several seconds the entire bridge crew stood in stunned silence at what they saw.

  Like an army of ants, hundreds—or perhaps thousands—of individual, spider-like drones moved in perfectly-choreographed unity as they pulled up sections of the forward hull and methodically replaced them with huge plates of Duralloy II. Some of the spider-looking droids were as large as a shuttle while others were smaller than house cats, but they all shared the same general design and geometry.

  What have I done? McKnight silently asked herself in horror, suspecting that her agreement to 'unshackle' the droids had led them to re-engineer—and multiply!—themselves to the point that they now looked like a terrifying cross between two of humanity's most persistent adversaries: droids and Bugs. She schooled her features and turned to Waldo, who had become the 24's com-tech over the past few weeks' journey, “Tell them to stop monkeying with my ship—now!”

  A moment later the spindly, red-and-white-striped droid confirmed, “Message transmitted and received.”

  A quick check of the visual feeds showed that the droids, again displaying uncanny coordination, had ceased their movements completely. They appeared frozen in time, with only the Rainbow's gentle drift across the star field behind it serving to counter that illusion.

  She took several calming breaths before saying, “I think an explanation is in order, Waldo.”

  “I have received such an explanation, Captain,” he replied promptly. “Shall I convey it?”

  “In my office, now,” she growled. “XO, you have the bridge—notify me the instant anything changes.”

  “Yes, Captain,” Spalding nodded, and a few moments later Waldo and McKnight entered the office adjoining the bridge where he conveyed the droids' message.

  “They should have asked my permission first,” she said tightly twenty minutes later, after Waldo had conveyed the droids' message in its entirety.

  “They were convinced that the human axiom 'better to ask forgiveness than permission' would apply here, Captain, especially considering the intrusive surveillance under which Mr. Tremblay had the entire base they previously called home,” he said with what sounded like genuine confusion. “Were they wrong?”

  She gritted her teeth, “Probably not—but they will be asking for my forgiveness, Waldo. Make sure they understand that.”

  “They are confident that the upgrades made to the Rainbow—along with their complete, indisputable records regarding how, when, and why those upgrades were made—will suffice as a peace offering of sorts,” he assured her. “After all: the Rainbow is their home now, too—or it will be for some of them, if you permit it. They deemed the ship's previous condition to be unacceptably fragile considering the high degree of probability that we will engage in armed conflict in the so-called 'days to come'.”

  She closed her eyes, infuriated at the thought that she could be so well-predicted by the machines. But she knew there was a legitimate chance they were telling the truth; she had, after all, freed them from the most restrictive portions of their former existence. Unless their intelligence was completely alien, some measure of gratitude—or at least reciprocity—would be warranted.

  “I'll have the XO make the inspections,” she finally said, “after he's had time to review the records you mentioned.”

  “Shall I convey your gratitude?” Waldo asked, causing McKnight to scoff.

  “No,” she shook her head, audibly grinding her teeth before enhancing her calm, “but you can convey my...approval of the various upgrades they opted to make. How much longer will it take to complete those upgrades?”

  “At least forty six of your standard days,” he replied promptly, causing her heart to sink.

  She shook her head, “We're going to have to cancel those efforts then; we have to get underway as soon as possible.”

  “They are aware of that,” he replied with an obvious eye r
oll, “which is why they modified their chassis' so radically: they can perform most of these upgrades in transit. However, producing the Duralloy II is an energy-intensive operation and will require another eight days in this system before sufficient material has been produced to complete the upgrades. The rest of the ship's improved components can be fabricated en route, using raw materials stockpiled during their time waiting in this system.”

  “Eight days?” she repeated thoughtfully. “It will take at least three days just to transfer our people and resources from this ship over to the Rainbow...ok, tell them they've got their eight days,” she confirmed before activating her wrist-link. “XO, join me.”

  “Acknowledged,” he said, and a moment later he stepped through the door to her office. She handed him the data slate which Waldo had uploaded the relevant information onto.

  “Review these change logs—along with their supposedly indisputable authenticity,” she added with a pointed look in Waldo's direction, which caused the often-flamboyant droid to sigh in exasperation, “and come up with an inspection plan. I want to make sure everything is as it appears before we start transferring people and materials over there.”

  “Understood, Captain,” he nodded.

  “It's just like they said, Captain,” Spalding said in genuine surprise after returning from the away mission aboard the Rainbow. “This whole ship has been re-built, stem to stern, except for the damaged hab module and the section of forward hull they were working on when we arrived.”

  “Bottom line?” she pressed, having reviewed the droids' report but finding it difficult to believe in its entirety.

  “On balance, the upgrades aren't quite as good as they make them out to be,” he said pointedly before his lips parted in a wide grin, “but even ignoring the keel-mounted mass driver, they still make the Rainbow better than anything this side of an Imperial Battleship—and possibly even superior to one of those.”