by Tanya Huff
*Two of those symbols are new.*
Craig took another step back.
*Ablin gon savit. Do you see . . .*
“I see it.”
His name, rising up as though he’d just traced it.
Then his image although he was a good meter and a half back.
Alamber’s name.
Alamber’s image.
Tylen’s.
Yahsamus.
Werst.
Zhou’s.
And then all six, about five centimeters high in a line across the center of the sheet.
* * *
• • •
“At the very least, it’s programmable.”
Toes flexing against the deck, Captain Carveg shot a skeptical glance at Yahsamus. “You think that’s all it is, Tech?”
“I think we can’t discount the possibility.”
“I doubt we’re discounting any possibility at this point.”
“Captain Carveg, General Morris is approaching.”
Approaching boot heels beat out an emphatic challenge under the warning.
The captain’s nostril ridges closed, then opened again significantly slower. “Let him in, Petty Officer.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Werst shifted over to stand by her, exchanged glares with the commander, and stayed put. Craig wondered if he could claim species imperative should he try and take Morris out. Probably not. Pity.
“I should have been informed immediately!” Morris’ cheeks were red. Lieutenant Jonnez looked grateful to no longer be the general’s only audience as he followed him over the lip of the hatch.
“You were.”
Craig had to admit, he admired the captain’s use of bland.
Morris’ cheeks flushed darker. “You shouldn’t have entered the compartment until I arrived.”
“Warden Ryder was already in the compartment. We’d have attracted more attention waiting in the passageway.” Captain Carveg showed teeth. “Also, my ship. My compartment. And it was your decision to keep the plastic on the Berganitan.”
He swept an unreadable gaze over the line of bodies between him and the plastic. “We couldn’t have secured it in the Marine packet, not if it went molecular.”
“We have a brig,” Elisk offered.
They could set up emergency containment, large enough for one Human, two Krai, or any number of di’Taykan—who didn’t mind crowding—but it wouldn’t hold the plastic. Craig saw no reason to mention any of that.
“You lot have done enough,” Morris snarled.
“Not sure how I see that as a bad thing, mate.” Slouched back against the wall, being the most Craig Ryder he could be in Torin’s absence, Craig nodded toward the hanging plastic. “Doing enough, that is. We got them to respond.”
Morris waved that off. “You got the sensors to engage and acknowledge your presence.”
“No, they’re alive.”
“And you know that because of your affinity with the plastic?”
“It’s why you wanted us here.”
“You. And Kerr. Not the rest of them. And given your affinity, Warden Ryder, I’m sure you’ve noticed this thing doesn’t behave like any other plastic we’ve encountered.”
“We’ve encountered the plastic three times.” Elisk tried to match Captain Carveg’s bland and didn’t quite make it, but it was a good attempt. “Would you judge an entire species on three meetings?”
“Three and a half,” Craig corrected. “Way back when the shit hit the fan, a frame in the general’s office responded to me.”
The captain’s nostril ridges closed as she shifted to face him. “And what happened to this frame, Warden Ryder?”
“No idea, ma’am. But the general was cleared.”
“Of course I was cleared! This exhibits none of the similarities shown during the other three . . .”
“And a half,” Zhou added. “Sir.” He followed the honorific with a grunt as Yahsamus stepped back on his foot.
“It hasn’t communicated,” Morris insisted. “It doesn’t change shape.”
“They were abandoned in a dark hole for a millennium, completely unstimulated.” Alamber’s hair rose as he glared at the general. “That’s torture.”
“The plastic can keep a war going for centuries with no one being the wiser,” Morris scoffed. “I should think they could leave a hole in the ground.”
“Maybe they couldn’t leave. Maybe the hole was a prison built to neutralize their abilities.”
“There’s been no energy reading from the site.” The general’s protest lacked conviction. He’d been on the dais. “And if your entirely unsupported theory is correct, do we want to release a prisoner? We have no idea of what it’s done.”
“The rest of the plastic started a war,” Werst growled. “They could’ve objected.”
Captain Carveg nodded thoughtfully. “So there’s a chance this plastic is one of the good guys.”
“Not one of the good guys, ma’am.” Alamber patted the edge of the sheet. “They’re a molecular hive mind. There’s billions of them here. Billions of the good guys.”
“Billions,” the captain repeated. She reached out toward the plastic but stopped short of touching it. “Why don’t they separate?”
“Since they haven’t, I suspect they can’t.” The imprint of his fingers appeared and disappeared. “They were in that hole for a long time. If it was set up so to keep them from separating, from changing form, the ability could have atrophied.”
“It’s a theory,” she allowed.
Craig had honestly never considered he’d feel sorry for any part of the plastic. Hobbled, then locked for centuries below the surface—that was treatment he could have some sympathy for.
Alamber swept a fingertip the length of his slate. “We need to continue stimulating it.”
“I think you’ve provided quite enough stimulation, Warden di’Cikeys,” Morris growled.
Captain Carveg raised a hand before any of the di’Taykan in the room could respond, holding them quiet with force of personality. No wonder Torin liked her.
“We could take it around,” Alamber suggested, ignoring both the general and the uncompleted innuendo. “We could show it things.”
“And how do you suggest we contain it if it comes apart?” The captain waited until she was certain she had Alamber’s full attention. “It can’t leave this compartment. I’m not giving it free range of my ship and crew.”
The flash of emotion on Kahananui’s broad features couldn’t have expressed gratitude more clearly if he’d shouted it out loud. He looked a little embarrassed when he realized Craig had noticed, then he shrugged.
“Okay.” The movement of Alamber’s hair suggested it wasn’t okay. “There’s a screen . . .” He spun in place then pointed to a slightly reflective surface on the bulkhead next to the hatch. “We’ll keep information running on the screen so it keeps learning.”
“Commander Kahananui will approve the content.”
Craig found it hard to believe Captain Carveg, who’d fought in the war the plastic had maintained, had agreed with Alamber’s suggestion. Seemed he wasn’t the only one having his heartstrings played.
“You surely can’t agree with this, Captain! Educating the enemy?”
And that was the expected reaction.
“I surely can, General. You want to negotiate with Big Yellow . . .” She waved a hand toward the sheet. It billowed in and out, reacting to the air currents. “. . . here’s your intermediary. Locked away for the duration of the war, it has no twuper in the race. And it owes us one for freeing it,” she added, as he opened his mouth.
“If you think it’ll acknowledge that, Captain, you have your head in the treetops.” His eyes narrowed and his chin lifted, his expression so self-satisfied Craig wanted to
punt him out an airlock. “It doesn’t matter. We’ve been out of Susumi for almost half an hour and my analysis of the situation was immediately sent to command. Any new orders will make it entirely clear who has the final say regarding the plastic and will keep the Wardens well away from it.” Mouth curving, he added, “The commander of Marines has full access to the Susumi packet independent of the command structure of the vessel transporting those Marines.”
Captain Carveg nodded in acknowledgment—Craig admired her self-control—then turned to Alamber. “Warden di’Cikeys.”
His hair spread and he held up his slate. “We have a go on new information readiness.”
She leaned back to meet his gaze, shook her head, and raised her voice, “Lieutenant di’Paliic.”
“Captain.”
“Warden di’Cikeys is about to send you a file that needs to go out in a Susumi packet to Command, ten minutes ago.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Warden, send the file.”
“File is sent, Captain.”
The smile she flashed at Morris showed teeth. “Now they can make an informed decision. Until they do, our previous orders stand.”
“Captain, we’ve dropped eighty-seven percent of our Susumi velocity. Captain Khawaja of the CS Odyic sends his regards, the codes to his surveillance drones, and is heading for the jump buoy. Big Yellow is up on the screens.”
“Understood. Commander, if you would.”
Kahananui raised his slate, and the wall screen flicked white, flashed the Berganitan’s crest, and cleared to show a ship hanging in deep space. They’d traveled far enough from the core that the stars beyond it showed as scattered points of light against the black.
“Still big and yellow,” Werst grunted beside him. “Still looks like the concept of a ship more than the reality.”
Craig folded his arms and stared at the image. Big Yellow hadn’t changed.
Had they?
“Not a lot of ambient light out here,” Werst continued. “Serley chrika must be lit up like it’s doing a mating dance.”
“Look at me, look at me,” Captain Carveg said quietly.
Morris blew out a breath. “Looks like it did the last time.”
“Look at me, look at me again,” the captain amended.
“Are you implying there’s another of those . . .”
Craig didn’t blame the general for falling silent. For all that Big Yellow had rearranged its interior to test both Confederation and Primacy rats running its maze—he shoved the memory of being sucked through the floor back into the mental box with his other near death experiences—the exterior had remained a unique, but recognizable ship. This was . . . new. They’d all seen the plastic disappear after announcing they were off to analyze data and the squints had calculated their actual speed by slowing Presit’s recording, but there was fast and then there was fast. The former applied to a shifting pile of plastic the size of a Krai and the latter applied to something over twenty kilometers long and almost the size of an OutSector Station.
“Yeah, like that isn’t creepy,” Alamber muttered.
The giant head hanging in space was the gray of the vaguely bipedal plastic representative they’d spoken to on the prison planet, the features barely defined—depressed and slightly paler ovals for eyes, a slash across the lower third for a mouth. Craig couldn’t remember if the original had a nose. Decided it didn’t matter when the mouth opened.
“You have that which is ours.”
Morris twitched invisible wrinkles out of his tunic and squared up with the image. “We’d like to open a dialogue with you.”
“Return that which is ours.”
“Lieutenant di’Paliic, send General Morris’ message to the plastic.”
“Uh . . . due respect, Captain, but sound doesn’t travel in a vacuum.”
“You’re not shouting in its ear, Lieutenant. Hit it with every type of carrier wave we have. It’s talking to us, I assume it wants a response.”
“They want a response,” Alamber muttered, arms folded.
Morris flushed, aware he’d tried to open a dialogue with a wall screen, but he held his position, and Craig reluctantly admitted the general had traits he might admire were he not such a murderous show pony.
“Dialogue is unnecessary. Give us what is OURS!” Its mouth opened and kept opening as it advanced toward the Berganitan. The image filled the screen, then suddenly snapped back to its original size.
Alamber’s hand had closed around Craig’s forearm, his grip on the edge of painful. Werst swore under his breath. Yahsamus had stepped in front of Elisk. Tylen and Zhou were pressed close enough together they could probably hear each other’s heart pound.
Captain Carveg cleared her throat. “Did it move back to its original position, or did we compensate?”
“Compensated.” Commander Kahananui checked his slate. “It’s now one hundred and eighteen kilometers off our starboard bow, ma’am.”
“Exactly as far apart as we were the first time.”
“You remember the exact distance?” Morris asked, both brows up.
“It was a big yellow spaceship,” Captain Carveg told him. “I found it memorable.”
“Yeah, well, I’m wondering why it’s trying to frighten us.” When he found himself being observed by all eyes, Craig rolled his own eyes and folded his arms. “StarCops, season two finale, ‘The Planet Eater.’ No one?” Lieutenant Jonnez looked like he might know what Craig was talking about and that the last thing he wanted to do was draw attention to himself. Maybe StarCops wasn’t officer level entertainment, but of the other six Wardens in the compartment, that only excused Elisk.
Zhou raised a hand. “I didn’t start watching until season five.”
“You only watch because Gunny loves the shitshow,” Werst grumbled.
“Your point, Warden Ryder?” Captain Carveg sighed.
“That . . .” Craig waved at the screen. “. . . is a bad special effect it pulled from a popular vid because it thinks it’ll frighten us. Why does it want us frightened?”
“It wants us reacting,” the captain replied. “Not thinking.”
“It wants us to hand over the data sheet without argument,” Morris growled.
Tylen’s hair had flattened against her head. “It kept us at war for centuries, why doesn’t it just take it?”
“We fought. It didn’t,” Yahsamus reminded her. “But it sure as shit knows what we can do.”
“It spent a few months in Gunny’s head. It’s got to be fukking terrified.” Werst flushed a deeper green when the captain turned a flat stare in his direction. “Ma’am.”
Morris’ chest visibly rose and fell. Either he’d been as startled as everyone else in the room, or now they were talking fight, he was getting into it. “Parliament thinks if we hand over its lost property, the plastic will be our friend.”
“Friends. Plural.” Alamber’s hair flattened at the general’s glance and he raised both hands. “Maybe they’re pissed because we keep calling them an it. Ever think of that?”
To Craig’s surprise, Morris sighed. “There’ve been conflicts based on worse reasons. No one takes an it as seriously as a they. I appreciate you reminding us, Warden di’Cikeys.”
Eyes light, Alamber looked as though he’d just found a salamander taking a swim in his beer. Even his hair moved as though it were confused. “You’re welcome?”
“I had assumed,” Morris continued, “that the balance of power between us didn’t lend itself to friendship. It seems our relationship may be more equal than I thought. If they don’t want to fight us, but do want their property back, that property must be very important to them. Why?”
“We don’t know that the data sheet is property, General.” Captain Carveg frowned up at him. “Sentient beings, regardless of their appearance, aren’t property.”<
br />
“I’m aware of that, Captain.” He nodded toward the screen. “If I could send another message?”
“Be my guest.”
“Polyhydroxide alcoholyde . . .”
Craig acknowledged that Morris couldn’t refer to Big Yellow plastic, but wasn’t using polyhydroxide alcoholyde like calling the members of the Confederation meat?
“. . . we will consider your request.”
“Now what?” he asked when that seemed to be all Morris had to say.
“Now, we wait.”
* * *
Torin wouldn’t have approved Marie Bilodeau’s hiring if competent had been the only word used to describe her. Bilodeau had graduated third in her flight class, had come highly recommended by her last CO, and the words actually used to describe her—as a pilot—were bugfuk crazy. To be fair, those were the words Marines used to describe most vacuum jockeys, and VJs were the only group Torin had ever heard of that lacked the exceptions necessary to prove the rule.
Marie aimed the Baylet at the point where the five of them would fling themselves out an open airlock; speeds, vectors, and station rotation all worked out for that single point. If she hit it at the wrong speed or at the wrong time, the best result would involve picking the team up from a high Silsviss orbit and never being allowed to forget her screwup. The worst would be heading home alone and never being able to forget her screwup. The Silsviss were too good on the guns to risk multiple runs. As it was, the Baylet had already taken two hits on the approach, bucking hard enough both times the airlock would have emptied but for magnetic soles. Ignoring the impacts, Marie held her course as the targeting data on the cuff of Torin’s HE suit counted down.
Standing at the edge of the airlock, toes of her boots out in the black, she watched the final numbers merge . . .
“Three. Two. Now!”
They pushed off with force enough to clear the radiation in the Baylet’s fantail—one beast with five heads, ten legs, and a single purpose. Arcing toward the maintenance hatch, they carefully separated, falling in toward a final target area a hundred meters in diameter. Fifty meters out, twelve meters away from Ressk on her left and Nicholin on her right, Torin hit her maneuvering jets long enough to drop her speed to survivable. One after another, the others did the same. If the Silsviss registered the energy bursts, there’d be a welcoming committee, but if they slammed into the station hard enough to break bone, they’d set off the impact alarms, the guaranteed welcoming committee would be made complicated by injuries, and that made decelerating worth the risk.
