by David Weber
If it puzzled him, it was driving Cohanna batty. The senior biosciences officer was buried in her office with Dahak, trying to make sense of her instrument readings and snarling at any soul incautious enough to disturb her.
At least the sadly-eroded mountains and seas were where they were supposed to be, loosely speaking, and there were still some clusters of buildings. They were weather-battered ruins (not surprisingly given the worn-away look of the mountain ranges) liberally coated in greenery, but they were there. Not that it helped; most were as badly wrecked as Keerah’s had been, and there was nothing—absolutely nothing—where Fleet Central was supposed to be.
Yet some of the Bia System’s puzzles offered Colin hope. One of them floated a few thousand kilometers from Dahak, serenely orbiting the improbability which had once been the Imperium’s capital, and he turned his head to study it anew, tugging at the end of his nose to help himself think.
The enigmatic structure was even bigger than Dahak, which was a sobering thought, for a quarter of Dahak’s colossal tonnage was committed to propulsion. This thing—whatever it was—clearly wasn’t intended to move, which made all of its mass available for other things. Like the weapon systems Dahak’s scanners had picked up. Lots of weapon systems. Missile launchers, energy weapons, and launch bays for fighters and sublight parasites Nergal’s size or bigger. Yet for all its gargantuan firepower, much of its tonnage was obviously committed to something else … but what?
Worse, it was also the source of the core tap Dahak had detected. Even now, that energy sink roared away within it, sucking in all that tremendous power. Presumably it meant to do something with it, but as yet it had shown no signs of exactly what that was. It hadn’t even spoken to Dahak, despite his polite queries for information. It just sat there, being there.
“Captain?”
“Yes, Dahak?”
“I believe I have determined the function of that installation.”
“Well?”
“I believe, sir, that it is Fleet Central.”
“I thought Fleet Central was on the planet!”
“So it was, fifty-one thousand years ago. I have, however, been carrying out systematic scans, and I have located the installation’s core computer. It is, indeed, a combination of energy-state and solid-state engineering. It is also approximately three-hundred-fifty-point-two kilometers in diameter.”
“Eeep!” Colin whipped around to stare at Jiltanith, but for once she looked as stunned as he felt. Dear God, he thought faintly. Dear, sweet God. If Vlad and Dahak’s projections about the capabilities of energy-state computer science were correct, that thing was … it was…
“I beg your pardon, sir?” Dahak said courteously.
“Uh … never mind. Continue your report.”
“There is very little more to report. The size of its computer core, coupled with its obvious defensive capability, indicates that it must, at the very least, have been the central command complex for the Bia System. Given that Birhat remained the capital of the Empire as it had been of the Imperium, this certainly suggests that it was also Fleet Central.”
“I … see. And it still isn’t responding to your hails?”
“It is not. And even the Empire’s computers should have noticed us by now.”
“Could it have done so and chosen to ignore us?”
“The possibility exists, but while it is probable Fleet procedures have changed, we were challenged and we did reply. That should have initiated an automatic request for data core transmission from any newly-arrived unit.”
“Even if there’s no human crew aboard?”
“Sir,” Dahak said with the patience of one trying not to be insubordinate to a dense superior, “we were challenged, which indicates the initiation of an automatic sequence of some sort. And, sir, Fleet Central should not have permitted a vessel of Dahak’s size and firepower to close to this proximity without assuring itself that the vessel in question truly was what it claimed to be. Since no information has been exchanged, there is no way Fleet Central could know my response to its challenge was genuine. Hence we should at the very least be targeted by its weapons until we provide a satisfactory account of ourselves, yet that installation has not even objected to my scanning it. Fleet Central would never permit an unknown unit to do that.”
“All right, I’ll accept that—even if that does seem to be exactly what it’s doing—and God knows I don’t want to piss it off, but sooner or later we’ll have to get some sort of response out of it. Any suggestions?”
“As I have explained,” Dahak said even more patiently, “we should already have elicited a response.”
“I know that,” Colin replied, equally patiently, “but we haven’t. Isn’t there any sort of emergency override procedure?”
“No, sir, there is not. None was ever required.”
“Damn it, do you mean to tell me there’s no way to talk to it if it doesn’t respond to your hails?”
There was a pause lengthy enough to raise Colin’s eyebrows. He was about to repeat his question when his electronic henchman finally answered.
“There might be one way,” Dahak said with such manifest reluctance Colin felt an instant twinge of anxiety.
“Well, spit it out!”
“We might attempt physical access, but I would not recommend doing so.”
“What? Why not?”
“Because, Captain, access to Fleet Central was highly restricted. Without express instructions from its command crew to its security systems, only two types of individuals might demand entrance without being fired upon.”
“Oh?” Colin felt a sudden queasiness and was quite pleased he’d managed to sound so calm. “And what two types might that be?”
“Flag officers and commanders of capital ships of Battle Fleet.”
“Which means …” Colin said slowly.
“Which means,” Dahak told him, “that the only member of this crew who might make the attempt is you.”
He looked up and saw Jiltanith staring at him in horror.
Chapter Twelve
They went to their quarters to argue.
Jiltanith opened her mouth, eyes flashing dangerously, but Dahak’s electronic reflexes beat her to it.
“Senior Fleet Captain MacIntyre,” he said with icy formality, “what you propose is not yet and may never become necessary, and I remind you of Fleet Regulation Nine-One-Seven, Subsection Three-One, Paragraph Two: ‘The commander of any Fleet unit shall safeguard the chain of command against unnecessary risk.’ I submit, sir, that your intentions violate both the spirit and letter of this regulation, and I must, therefore, respectfully insist that you immediately abandon this ill-advised, hazardous, and most unwise plan.”
“Dahak,” Colin said, “shut up.”
“Senior Fl—”
“I said shut up,” Colin repeated in a dangerously level voice, and Dahak shut up. “Thank you. Now. We both know the people who wrote the Fleet Regs never envisioned this situation, but if you want to quote regs, here’s one for you. Regulation One-Three, Section One. ‘In the absence of orders from higher authority, the commander of any Battle Fleet unit or formation shall employ his command or any sub-unit or member thereof in the manner best calculated, in his considered judgment, to preserve the Imperium and his race.’ You once said I had a command mentality. Well, maybe I do and maybe I don’t, but this is a command decision and you’re damned well going to live with it.”
“But—”
“The discussion is closed, Dahak.”
There was a long moment of silence before the computer replied.
“Acknowledged,” he said in his frostiest tones, but Colin knew that was the easy part. He smiled crookedly at Jiltanith, glad they were alone, and gave it his best shot.
“’Tanni, I don’t want to argue with my XO, either.”
“Dost’a not, indeed?” she flared. “Then contend with thy wife, lackwit! Scarce one thin day in this system, and already thou wouldst risk thy
life?! What maggot hath devoured thy brain entire?! Or mayhap ’tis vanity speaks, for most assuredly ’tis not wisdom!”
“It isn’t vanity, and you know it. We simply don’t have time to waste.”
“Time, thou sayst?!” she spat like an angry cat. “Dost’a think my wits addled as thine own? Howsoe’er thou dost proceed, yet will we never return to Terra ere the Achuultani scouts! And if that be so, then where’s the need o’ witless haste? Four months easily, mayhap five, may we spend here and still out-speed the true incursion back to Earth—and well thou knowest!”
“All right,” he said, and her eyes narrowed at his unexpected agreement, “but assume you’re right and we start poking around. What happens when we do something Fleet Central doesn’t like, ’Tanni? Until we know what it might object to, we can’t know what might get everyone aboard this ship killed. So until we establish communications with it, we can’t do anything else, either!”
Jiltanith’s fingers flexed like the cat she so resembled, but she drew a breath and made herself consider his argument.
“Aye, there’s summat in that,” she admitted, manifestly against her will. “Yet still ’tis true we have spent but little time upon the task. Must thou so soon essay this madness?”
“I’m afraid so,” he sighed. “If this is Fleet Central, it’s either Ali Baba’s Cave or Pandora’s Box, and we have to find out which. Assuming any of Battle Fleet’s still operational—and the way this thing powered itself up is the first sign something may be—we don’t know how long it’ll take to assemble it. We need every minute we can buy, ’Tanni.”
She turned away, pacing, arms folded beneath her breasts, shoulders tight with a fear Colin knew was not for herself. He longed to tell her he understood, but he knew better than to … and that she knew already.
She turned back to him at last, eyes shadowed, and he knew he’d won.
“Aye,” she sighed, hugging him tightly and pressing her face into his shoulder. “My heart doth rail against it, yet my mind—my cursed mind—concedeth. But, oh, my dearest dear, would I might forbid thee this!”
“I know,” he whispered into the sweet-smelling silk of her hair.
Colin felt like an ant beneath an impending foot. Fleet Central’s armored flank seemed to trap him, ready to crush him between itself and the blue-white sphere of Birhat, and he hoped Cohanna wasn’t monitoring his bio read-outs.
He nudged his cutter to a stop. A green and yellow beacon marked a small hatch, but though his head ached from concentrating on his implants, he felt no response. He timed the beacon’s sequence carefully.
“Dahak, I have a point-seven-five-second visual flash, green-amber-amber-green-amber, on a Class Seven hatch.”
“Assuming Fleet conventions have not changed, Captain, that should indicate an active access point for small craft.”
“I know.” Colin swallowed, wishing his mouth weren’t quite so dry. “Unfortunately, my implants can’t pick up a thing.”
Colin felt a sudden, almost audible click deep in his skull and blinked at a brief surge of vertigo as a not quite familiar tingle pulsed in his feed.
“I’ve got something. Still not clear, but—” The tingle suddenly turned sharp and familiar. “That’s it!”
“Acknowledged, Captain,” Dahak said. “The translation programs devised for Omega Three did not perfectly meet our requirements, but I believe my new modifications to your implant software should suffice. I caution you again, however, that additional, inherently unforeseeable difficulties may await.”
“Understood.” Colin edged closer, insinuating his thoughts cautiously into the hatch computers, and something answered. It was an ID challenge, but it tasted … odd.
He keyed his personal implant code with exquisite care, and for an instant just long enough to feel relieved disappointment, nothing happened. Then the hatch slid open, and he dried his palms on his uniform trousers.
“Well, people,” he murmured, “door’s open. Wish me luck.”
“So do we all,” Jiltanith told him softly. “Take care, my love.”
The next half-hour was among the most nerve-wracking in Colin’s life. His basic implant codes had sufficed to open the hatch, but that only roused the internal security systems.
There was a strangeness to their challenges, a dogged, mechanical persistence he’d never encountered from Dahak, but they were thorough. At every turn, it seemed, there were demands for identification on ever deeper security levels. He found himself responding with bridge officer codes he hadn’t known he knew and realized that the computers were digging deep into his challenge-response conditioning. No wonder Druaga had felt confident Anu could never override his own final orders to Dahak! Colin had never guessed just how many security codes Dahak had buried in his own implants and subconscious.
But he reached the central transit shaft at last, and felt both relief and a different tension as he plugged into the traffic sub-net and requested transport to Fleet Central’s Command Alpha. He half-expected yet another challenge, but the routing computers sent back a ready signal, and he stepped out into the shaft.
One thing about the terror of the unknown, he thought wryly as the shaft took him and hurled him inward: it neatly displaced such mundane fears as being mashed to paste by the transit shaft’s gravitonics!
The shaft deposited him outside Command Alpha in a brightly-lit chamber big enough for an assault shuttle. The command deck hatch bore no unit ensign, as if Fleet Central was above such things. There was only the emblem of the Fourth Empire: the Imperium’s starburst surmounted by an intricate diadem.
Colin looked about, natural senses and implants busy, and paled as he detected the security systems guarding this gleaming portal. Heavy grav guns in artfully hidden housings were backed up by the weapons Vlad had dubbed warp guns, and their targeting systems were centered on him. He tried to straighten his hunched shoulders and approached the huge hatch with a steady tread.
Almost to his surprise, it licked aside, and more silent hatches—twice as many as guarded Dahak’s Command One—opened as he walked down the brightly lit tunnel, fighting a sense of entrapment. And then, at last, he stepped out into the very heart and brain of Battle Fleet, and the last hatch closed behind him.
It wasn’t as impressive as Command One, was his first thought—but only his first. It lacked the gorgeous, perfect holo projections of Dahak’s bridge, but the softly bright chamber was far, far larger. Dedicated hypercom consoles circled its walls, labeled with names he knew in flowing Imperial script, names which had been only half-believed-in legends in his implant education from Dahak. Systems and sectors, famous Fleet bases and proud formations—the names vanished into unreadable distance, and Quadrant Command nets extended out across the floor, the ranked couches and consoles too numerous to count, driving home the inconceivable vastness of the Empire.
It made him feel very, very insignificant.
Yet he was here … and those couches were empty. He had come eight hundred light-years to reach this enormous room, come from a planet teeming with humanity to this silence no voice had broken in forty-five millennia, and all this might and power of empire were but the work of Man.
He crossed the shining deck, bootheels ringing on jeweled mosaics, and ghosts hovered in the corners, watchful and measuring. He wondered what they made of him.
It took ten minutes to reach the raised dais at the center of the command deck, and he climbed its broad steps steadily, the weight of some foreordained fate seeming to press upon his shoulders, until he reached the top at last.
He lowered himself into the throne-like couch before the single console. It conformed smoothly to his body, and he forced himself to relax and draw a deep, slow breath before he reached out through his feed.
There was a quick flicker of response, and he felt a surge of hope—then grunted and flinched as he was hurled violently out of the net.
“Implant interface access denied,” a voice said. It was a soft, musical cont
ralto … utterly devoid of life or emotion.
Colin rubbed his forehead, trying to soothe the sudden ache deep inside his brain, and looked around the silent command deck for inspiration. He found none, and reached out again, more carefully.
“Implant interface access denied.” The voice threw him out of the net even more violently. “Warning. Unauthorized access to this installation is punishable by imprisonment for not less than ninety-five standard years.”
“Damn,” Colin muttered. He was more than half-afraid of how Fleet Central might react to activating his fold-space com but saw no option. “Dahak?”
“Yes, Captain?”
“I’m getting an implant access denial warning.”
“Voice or neural feed?”
“Voice. The damned thing won’t even talk to my implants.”
“Interesting,” Dahak mused, “and illogical. You have been admitted to Command Alpha; logically, therefore, Fleet Central recognizes you as an officer of Battle Fleet. Assuming that to be true, access should not be denied.”
“The same thought had occurred to me,” Colin said a bit sarcastically.
“Have you attempted verbal communication, sir?”
“No.”
“I would recommend that as the next logical step.”
“Thanks a lot,” Colin muttered, then cleared his throat.
“Computer,” he said, feeling just a bit foolish addressing the emptiness.
“Acknowledged,” the emotionless voice said, and his heart leapt. By damn, maybe there was a way in yet!
“Why have I been denied implant access?”
“Improper implant identification,” the voice replied.
“Improper in what way?”
“Data anomaly detected. Implant interface access denied.”
“What anomaly?” he asked, far more patiently than he felt.
“Implant identification not in Fleet Central data base. Individual not recognized by core access programs. Implant interface access denied.”
