First Fleet #1-4: The Complete Saga

by Stephen Case

  This was not a way to live.

  He shifted on the bunk and felt fresh waves of pain.

  He had been preparing a transmission for Cam and the girls, something that told them where he was and what he had been doing, in case this ship was ever recovered.

  Not that there was much chance of that, he admitted to himself. They were on a dead-end voyage toward a planet that offered only the slimmest chance of survival. It was, after all, the origin of whatever had destroyed this fleet.

  Out the window, he saw a shape in the darkness. It was grey and round, rearing up suddenly against the background stars as the ship rolled on an evasive maneuver. Huge cracks scarred its surface, visible even from this distance, as though the planet—for it was, certainly, a planet—was more fractured than whole, held together by only its own tenuous gravity.

  The Grave Worlds. Or one of them, at least.

  They were close.

  The ship rolled again, taking the pale skull of a world out of view.

  The intercom crackled. It was too early for Beka to be calling him for his shift at the controls. Maybe she was giving the all clear that they had passed out of range again and could administer—if they wanted—the weak antidote that Donovan had fashioned for them. It was simply a powerful painkiller, and it made Paul sick. Sometimes it was better to just fall back into a shallow sleep and wait for the pain to pass.

  They were never going to get out of this. They were locked in some kind of circle. They were in a maze, the walls of which were ever shifting. Paul could see it in his mind: all muted grays and fog.

  But the voice on the intercom was not Beka’s. It was one that Paul did not recognize, though he realized after a moment that it must belong to the one person on board he had never heard speak-the small, dark man who always looked frightened and had not stirred from his place beside the Brick as far as Paul had seen.

  “Beka? Are you there? Anyone? This is Aggiz.”

  Beka must have responded directly from the command deck, though Aggiz obviously did not understand the intercom mechanism enough to switch from an all-ship channel.

  “I can see it now, Beka. You need to come down. There is someone in the Brick. A face. A face in the Brick.”

  Another pause as Beka assumedly responded.

  “All right,” Aggiz answered and clicked off.

  The communication channel lapsed again into silence. Paul considered for a moment. Beka could not leave the command deck until her shift was up, but whatever she had told Aggiz had apparently satisfied him.

  Paul wondered if he should he go to the command deck and relieve her so she could see what Aggiz needed? Paul had an image of him in the cavernous science bay: dusky skin and deep eyes in a dingy lab coat, like a wilted leaf in the sterile metallic whiteness of the bay.

  But Beka likely had contacted Donovan, whose sleep cycle—as indicated by his empty bunk—had not yet begun.

  Paul waited indecisively for a moment. He hated not knowing what to do or where he was needed, and lately that was how he felt pretty much all the time. That was one of the things that had been wonderful about Cam: she knew what he needed to be doing each moment, and she told him. Here, in this almost completely empty ship, he never knew where to plug in, where to be, what to say.

  He sat up. He would not be able to get back to sleep. He would go to the science bay. That way, if Beka was not able to come, he could offer to help or listen or see whatever it was Aggiz needed.

  He left his bunk and made his way through the corridors of the ship. The ship kept the lights dimmed when the corridors were empty. Now, it was that way almost all the time with the rest of the crew—those strange mannequins—incapacitated. Lights clicked on as he passed and then dimmed again behind him. He ran in an island of light, like a pulse along a darkened wire.

  When he arrived at the science bay—only having to stop and ask the ship directions twice—he found Beka already there standing beside Aggiz. They were both staring up at the Brick, as though the face Aggiz mentioned was visible within.

  Perhaps it was, as much as Paul understood these things. The whole system seemed like magic to him. The side of the Brick, cleared of most of the wires and fiber optic cables that normally shrouded it, was as black and soft to the eye as velvet. Paul saw no hint of texture or color. It was so black that it was hard to tell where the actual surface started, like looking into a night sky devoid of stars.

  Beka glanced over at him as he entered. The dark circles below her eyes made them look almost as hollow as Aggiz’s.

  “I heard his message over the intercom,” Paul explained, wondering if they would want him to leave. “I wasn’t sure where you were or if anyone would be able to come.”

  “You could have used the intercom yourself,” she pointed out.

  He shrugged, embarrassed to admit that it had not occurred to him.

  “Donovan’s covering for me,” she added. When he said nothing further, she sighed and motioned him over. “Aggiz thinks he’s found something in the Brick.”

  “I thought it was empty,” Paul said.

  “So did I,” she answered.

  They both looked at the small man. He seemed even thinner and narrower than he had before. It was more than a lack of sleep or food, though he sat at the center of a field of debris of uneaten or partially eaten meals. His eyes were pale and fevered.

  “It’s them,” he said. “But not all of them. One of them. There’s one in the Brick. It’s trying to use it, use the Brick.” His speech came fast and staccato.

  Paul heard the caution in Beka’s tone. “Where, Aggiz?”

  “Here.” He swiveled one of the monitors. “We thought it was thermal noise. You did. But look now. It’s regular.”

  Paul saw nothing, but Beka’s brow furrowed.

  “I don’t see it, Aggiz,” she said.

  “Subtle. But it’s clear during …” Aggiz trailed off.

  “When we get close to one of those ships?” she asked.

  He nodded, somehow furtively.

  “Aggiz, we’re not … We don’t …” Beka sighed. “We’re not at our best when those things get close. We can’t think straight.”

  “No.” A shifting of Aggiz’s arms drew Paul’s attention, and he noticed long, angry furrows along their length. “It is hard. There is noise. In here.” He jabbed a finger at his temple. “But there too. It gets clearer.”

  “You think the creatures on those ships are using the Brick to communicate?” Paul asked. “With us? Or with each other?”

  Aggiz’s eyes flicked in his direction for an instant.

  “It was loud. Before. There were voices. Including hers—my …” Aggiz blinked rapidly. “But now it’s quiet. And it can speak. Yes.”

  Paul couldn’t tell if that last was an answer to his question.

  Beka reached around Aggiz and pulled Paul away until they were out of earshot of at the other end of the bay.

  “He’s gotten worse,” she said.

  “Is he right?”

  “I can’t see anything,” she said, shaking her head angrily, sending her mass of brown hair back and forth across her shoulders. “And he’s obviously not … resisting when we pass close to one of the ships. I don’t know what he’s seeing.”

  “What should we do?”

  “Donovan wants to sedate him and take him to one of the medical bays. Keep him sedated and force feed him.”

  “Do you think we should?”

  She glared at him as though angry with the questions. “I don’t know, Paul. At this point I’m not sure that I see the point. We’re stretched thin enough already. In a few more days, Aggiz might be the healthiest of any of us.”

  “We’re trapped, aren’t we?” he said.

  “We’re not getting through fast enough. I can’t figure the pattern to their movements. It’s not random. Yet it’s not organized. We’re stuck in some kind of dance. Every time we try to break through, we have to swing back in.”

  “Not random
. Like Aggiz’s monitors.”

  “Maybe.”

  Aggiz’s voice rang through the bay, harsh and exultant. “There!”

  They hurried back to his side.

  He was sitting straight and speaking commands tersely to the computer. “Scan back. There. There. Enhance that signal. Recompress. Magnify.”

  “What is it, Aggiz?” Beka asked.

  “There! Someone is answering. It is there. You cannot see it. But it is. And now someone is answering!” Aggiz was nearly breathless. “There. Crisp signal. You recognize.”

  Beka gasped. Paul still saw nothing more than dancing numbers and colors.

  “Human,” Beka whispered. “Aggiz, how is that possible? How are there human memories in the Brick again? From where?”

  “Two minds,” Aggiz rattled. “I know those patterns. Neurologically immature. The Brick is calling, and two human children are answering.”

  Beka seated herself beside him and fired up another series of monitors. She pulled out an interface panel and began punching in commands. Paul sat and watched them work in silence for several minutes.

  “I don’t understand,” Beka kept muttering.

  “What is it?” Paul finally broke in.

  “There are two human minds in here,” she said. “I don’t understand where they came from. It’s almost as though someone uploaded memories back into the Brick from somewhere else … though they don’t have the normal coding. Memory scans bring in a host of time and identity stamps. These are just … naked.”

  “Imprinted,” Aggiz said.

  “How could a mind get into the Brick without a scan?” Paul asked.

  “They’re nearly identical though, Aggiz,” Beka said, ignoring his question. “A mirror? An echo?”

  “I recognize patterns like this,” Aggiz said again. “Neurologically. Twins.”

  Paul’s heart skipped a beat.

  “You can tell that from the signal?” he asked.

  Aggiz nodded shortly. He seemed more alive, as though the flare-up of activity within the Brick had brought him back to a sharp focus of cogency. “I can tell much, can judge much, from the structure of memories. The structure of mind. In the Brick.”

  “And it’s clearer,” Beka explained. “Usually the Brick is loaded with tens of thousands of individual personalities and memories. These are … louder, crisper, because there’s the space for it. Of course it’s not like that at all,” she added. “These are analogies.”

  “Like voices in an empty room,” Aggiz offered.

  Paul felt his gut clench. He thought, wildly, of his daughter’s dreams, the dreams they used to tell him about of seeing people outside the walls of the habitation.

  “What are they doing, Aggiz?” Beka was staring at her display. “They’re interacting with something. They’re not static. They’re doing …”

  “The signal you cannot see. The creature. The things outside. They are interacting with it. Here.” Aggiz muttered a command and a single spangled and shifting display took over each of the monitors. “There is one image here, one memory, coming through especially strong.”

  “How is this possible?” Paul asked again.

  “Like he said, voices in an empty room,” Beka muttered. “We couldn’t extract memories when they were so tightly compressed. But these condensates are huge. They’re using the entire space of the Brick to resonate. The memories are clear.”

  “I can display,” Aggiz whispered. “I can make them visible.”

  The colorful static on the monitors cleared, to be replaced by a face.

  Paul gasped.

  It was Cam.

  Thirty-Six

  Cam decided to take the twins with her.

  She remembered sharply the night she had left them alone in the habitation when she ascended to Station in orbit, and she would not let that feeling —of helplessness and rage that they were in danger and outside of her protection—happen again. Cam was not sure what she was looking for or what she would find.

  But being out of the sterile walls and beyond the sightless windows of the habitation would do them all some good.

  The twins seemed better. Perry was still angry, but it had softened over the past few days. She and Agnes had had another dreamless night, which was better than Cam could say.

  She wasn’t sure she had slept at all. The darkness beyond the windows and the darkness of her eyelids had blended into one another until the slow dawn found her still upright in the chair beside the window, weapons assembled.

  Station would have to come with them, at least its vocal processor would. There was too much data from the wide array of sensors scattered about the surrounding plantation. It was difficult for her to follow it all visually. It made for a maddening conversation on her part, but the truth was that the artificial intelligence of Station’s systems was the best bet she had of finding out whether anything was actually out there.

  Not that there should be anything out there.

  Not that there could be.

  But Cam was not going to take any chances.

  “What’s that?” Perry asked, wide-eyed as Cam loaded the gear into the rear locker of the crawler.

  “It’s a heavy rail-gun,” she said. “These are plasma charges.”

  There didn’t seem to be any reason to equivocate.

  The girls watched with fascination.

  “Are we going to go find daddy?” Perry asked.

  “Not yet.” Cam lowered the last roll of cartridges into the seat and paused. “At least, I don’t think so.”

  She turned to the girls. “I’m not sure what we’re going to find. Probably nothing.”

  “We will find something,” Perry nodded gravely. “We’re going to find the thing we dreamed about.”

  Cam wondered again at their solitude, at the gravity of growing up alone on an empty world. They were about to leave, for the first time in their lives, the only home they had ever known.

  They climbed into the treaded crawler and set off down a rugged path of broken stones that trailed into the valley. The girls stared at everything through the crawler’s bubble canopy with fascination. It was a clear day, as it always was on Onaway. The light seemed liquid, pushing up over the tops of the hills and spreading down into the valley, giving the landscape a softness that it should not have held in such emptiness.

  Cam turned the crawler south at the top of the first ridge, heading toward the coordinates where Station had reported the sensor ghosts last night.

  “Are we going to see the trees?” Agnes asked.

  The question made Cam realize again what this expedition meant to the twins. They were seeing things they had only ever heard their parents discuss before or viewed through long-range feeds.

  “The trees are farther to the east, along the Finback Ridge.” She bit her lip. In the brightness of the rock and dust, her fears of the night before seemed unfounded and irrational. “Tell you what—we can head out that way first. We’ll eat lunch there before we go looking for whatever was giving those sensor readings.”

  Agnes and Perry clasped hands in the back seat, their only outward sign of delight.

  Cam knew these routes well, though it was usually Paul who toured the plantation and all of its various aspects. There were more forests even farther to the east, but the spur running along the Finback was close enough to reach by lunch.

  In a little over an hour—an hour of silent, intensive study in which the girls gazed out the window as calmly and raptly as they took in their lessons on the feeds in the habitation—she saw the wrinkle of the long, low ridge appear on the horizon with a faint sheen of green along its back.

  “The trees,” Perry said simply.

  The trees were huge, like the spars of ancient sailing vessels. Their trunks were straight and slender, untouched by winds on the nearly airless plains. Their modified needle-clusters were tiny spines along the lengths of the upper branches, giving the entire narrow grove the appearance of towers rimed with green frost.<
br />
  “We’ll drive up there and eat in their shadows,” Cam said.

  The girls craned their necks as they approached. There were more rows of the trees on the horizon, stretching outward toward the eastern reaches of the plantation in long, straight lines. Their trunks held the color of the stones from which they sprouted. Cam had always thought the evergreens—engineered to survive in the marginal conditions of Onaway—looked more alien than anything native to the planet.

  “Can we open the canopy?” Agnes asked when they were below them.

  Cam shook her head. “Not enough air yet. Maybe when your kids are grown.”

  They ate silently in the shadows of the trees. Cam wondered if she should explain to the girls how trees and sunlight worked back in System, the fluttering and the shimmering of color and shadow. Here, the shadows fell down on them like wires, stiff and unmoving. The light was tinged a cold blue-green.

  “I’ve read about this,” Perry said after a while. “It’s called a picnic.”

  Cam smiled.

  “I am detecting motion again,” Station said when they had nearly finished a lunch of bread, cheese and perfectly spherical hydroponic tomatoes.

  “Where?” she asked.

  “It appears to be where the anomalous readings from last night were detected. On the rock-burner perimeter.”

  “It could be a rockslide,” Agnes explained seriously. “That’s what the sensors there are for.”

  “Seismic activity,” agreed Perry, biting into the last tomato.

  Cam looked at the girls. “Do you think that’s what it is?”

  They shook their heads in unison.

  Cam stared upward into the unmoving branches of the strange trees, weighing their situation. “We could go back to the habitation,” she said finally. “We’re safe there. We could wait this out, whatever it is.”

  She knew it wasn’t true. She knew that something was searching for them, though she did not understand what or why. She was taking them into danger, no matter what decision she made.

  Perry reached over the seat and touched her shoulder. “We don’t want to go back.”