The Deplosion Saga

by Paul Anlee

“Amuses?” Trillian leered a little.

  “Not in that way! Although, I have to admit, I did wonder the same when I first met him. No, I think it’s more to do with you being the one responsible for his full instantiation. I’m sure she’d find that whole angle intriguing.”

  “Hmm. He is somewhat of an anomaly. How did they escape Vacationland?”

  “I don’t know the details, but Darya found a way to bypass the normal connection routes you blocked. But….”

  She laughed. “Oh! I get it! They’ve also escaped from the recharging station, haven’t they? They got away, and you have no idea where they are!” Mary slapped her thigh in glee.

  Trillian was not amused. “They may have evaded our search for the moment, but I assure you they will be found.” His eyes narrowed. “You can help me with that. Darya strikes me as someone who plans her moves thoroughly and well in advance. Surely, you’re familiar with some of her retreats?”

  Mary stopped smiling. “I don’t know anything about that.”

  Trillian reached across the table and touched her arm.

  “I believe you do,” he said.

  Mary heard an odd buzzing sound and her world went fuzzy. Everything was wrapped in clouds, the table, the beach, the forest, everything except his face and penetrating eyes.

  “Tell me where she is hiding,” he commanded.

  Mary felt the near-physical compulsion to confess. So far, she’d said nothing of consequence, nothing he couldn’t have guessed for himself. Her vision narrowed until her world was filled with the image of Trillian’s eyes boring into her, demanding she tell him everything. She almost succumbed, almost blurted out the location of Secondus.

  Something snapped inside her, and Trillian jolted back in his chair as if she’d struck him with the back of her hand.

  Concepta attack repelled—the words floated in her visual field in stark red letters.

  The confused look on Trillian’s face—or maybe it was her own sense of relief—made her burst out laughing.

  Darya’s upgrades! She’d forgotten that when Darya had installed the new quark-spin logic in her semiconductor brain, she’d also replaced her security software.

  While she couldn’t access the quark-spin lattice within her trueself on the other side of Trillian’s blocks, the enhanced security software was a part of her BIOS. Wherever her consciousness went, the security routines went as well. In this case, allowing her to connect with the identical quark-spin technology of the Alternus inworld hardware.

  It was Mary’s turn to smile broadly. “I did warn you,” she said to the dazed Shard, “You’re not the only one with formidable talents.”

  12

  “Well, where is it?” Brother Stralasi shot Darak a skeptical glance. “I mean, it consumed an entire planet didn’t it? It should be easy enough to spot…if your calculations were correct.”

  Darak scanned the empty depths of space for a telltale round, dark patch that would signal the position of the detestable light-blocking Eater.

  “It shouldn’t be too hard to find. I would imagine it’s as big as a large star by now, bigger than the sun of the Origin solar system it came from. Maybe even bigger than the entire solar system, depending on what’s crossed its path.”

  Gazing out from their protective bubble, Stralasi detected a tiny shift in the position of the distant stars. He took a sturdier stance on the little piece of Gargus 718.5 turf on which they stood.

  “Are we moving?”

  “A small number of light hours every few seconds,” Darak replied. “I’m comparing star fields from slightly different perspectives to see if the Eater blocks any of their light.”

  “Have you found anything?”

  “Not yet, but I’ll need thousands of shifts to cover most of the relevant sky.”

  “How long will that take?”

  “A couple of hours. Why don’t you find something to read?” Darak pulled something tiny from a pocket and set it down where the turf contacted the transparent wall. The thing grew into a bookcase housing several hundred novels, a comfortable-looking chair, and a reading lamp.

  “I’m sure you can find something in the library to capture your interest while you wait.”

  Stralasi scuffed his feet in the dirt like a reticent child. A book would be better than nothing, I guess. It looks like nothing interesting will be happening here in the next little while.

  He supposed he ought to be thankful for that small mercy, so soon after the battle near the triple suns. That they were ever there felt surreal to him now. The worst of the battle had taken place far enough away from him, and he’d seen so few of the pyrotechnics he’d anticipated, that their survival felt oddly anticlimactic.

  At least from my perspective—he thought. I’m sure it was more than exciting for Darak.

  After the plasma edge of the exploding suns enveloped them, everything had happened so fast, he’d had no time to be frightened. By the time the adrenaline rush kicked in, they were already safely removed from the physical threat.

  That was hours ago. Truth be told, I am little tired—he thought. Maybe something to read and a rest would be good.

  * * *

  Stralasi woke with a start. The book he’d been reading was closed on the table beside his chair. A small blanket covered his lap and the reading lamp was off. Only the dim light of the distant stars suffused their protective bubble.

  Darak stood rooted in the same place he’d been hours earlier, at the edge of their tiny piece of land. His hands were crossed behind his back, and his face was locked in concentration on the nearby galaxies.

  “Any luck?” Stralasi asked.

  Darak turned. “Oddly, no.”

  “Why ‘oddly’?”

  “The detector readings should have narrowed the location of the Eater to within thirty light years. I realize it’s been over a hundred million years since Alum first moved it out of the Origin system, but I wouldn’t think it could have travelled very far.”

  “You weren’t there?”

  “No, I was away on missions to distant colonies at the time. When I returned, I assumed He’d wisely redirected the Eater into intergalactic space, somewhere comparatively empty. Out there, between the galaxies, it would grow at a crawling pace and not be a threat to anyone for billions of years. I felt sure we’d figure out a solution long before it posed a problem again.”

  “So why isn’t it there? Wherever ‘there’ is.”

  “That’s a good question. There were some anomalies in the data. Perhaps I should investigate those.”

  “Anomalies?”

  “The more recent readings, starting about seven million years ago, made no sense. I assumed the machinery had grown faulty and ignored them.”

  “How did they make no sense?”

  “Well, at first they indicated the Eater had suddenly changed position by many millions of light years. Then, I don’t know, they got strange.”

  “Strange?”

  “Well, it would make no sense to you.”

  “Try me,” the monk invited.

  “Okay. There was an odd shift in the polarization of the soltron emissions—“

  “You’re right. That meant nothing.”

  “In any case, the theory would suggest that one might see such a change if the Eater were moving at near light speed. But that’s impossible.”

  “I thought you were all about the impossible.”

  Darak regarded Stralasi with some combination of amusement, respect, and irritation.

  “Mm,” he said.

  “Not particularly enlightening,” Stralasi noted aloud.

  “True. Sorry, I was distracted. I’ve just now calculated where the Eater might be if I didn’t throw out the anomalous data.”

  “And the answer is?”

  “Far away. And I don’t like where it’s heading.”

  13

  Darya stopped at the end of the twenty-klick long tunnel leading out from the far end of the abandoned habitat.

>   “What do you see?” Timothy asked, bumping into her from behind.

  “Here, patch into my sensorium; you’ll be able to see through my receptors.”

  Space outside the tunnel was dark, as always. Darya switched modes from visible light to the microwave spectrum and everything lit up. She traced the radiation to a pair of satellites orbiting their asteroid about a hundred kilometers above the surface. The satellites pulsed brightly as they swept the surface below.

  “Can they see us?” he asked.

  “No, don’t worry. At that wavelength and distance, there’s not enough resolution. But if we leave this hole, we’ll be easy to detect.”

  “So we can’t go back, and we can’t go forward. What do we do?”

  Darya watched the satellites. As one came up over the horizon, the other disappeared from view. They used a single antenna to both illuminate and listen for returning signals, which meant their radar broadcast wasn’t continuous over any single location. She timed the pulses sweeping over the landscape and considered options.

  “I’m not sure yet,” she replied. “The pulses are coming in ten-second intervals. That’s not much to work with. Maybe the best thing is to wait and see if they’ll leave after a few hours without anything to report.”

  “In that case, should we go back into the habitat?” Timothy asked. “What if they decide to search there?”

  “That could be a concern, but I doubt anyone realizes it still exists. I have access to massive archives, and even I had no idea it was here. Anyway, let’s wait inside a while. We can check back later.”

  The pair turned and returned down the long passageway. Not daring to tip off the satellites with rocket emissions, they used their extended manipulators to push and pull their way along the tunnel.

  They explored the abandoned habitat for hours, drifting in and out of long-vacated buildings. The dim visibility made possible by their microwave pulses allowed them to see a few hundred yards at a time, beyond which everything deteriorated from fuzzy gray to featureless black.

  They moved over dark, empty streets and frozen riverbeds, taking care not to warm the ice enough to produce detectable off-gassing.

  The overall experience was the gloomiest in Timothy’s memory. Even during the height of terror when they were fleeing Trillian inworld, there were moments one might call “life affirming.” Here, everything was a shade of barely distinguishable bleakness.

  If there was a Hell, he imagined it must be like this, dark, out of focus, devoid of life and joy, and filled with the constant fear that Securitors or Angels could fly out of one of the connecting tunnels and into the habitat at any time.

  That would, at least, end this pointless waiting—he thought.

  After millions of years of servitude as a Partial in DonTon, one would think he’d have become accustomed to waiting. Apparently, his newly found consciousness was accompanied by impatience.

  Maybe the dark, eerie silence of the abandoned cavern was starting to affect him or maybe it was his experience since gaining Full consciousness, but he doubted the sentinels would leave their stations anytime soon.

  Twice, Darya drifted to the ends of the passageways at each cap to check if the surveillance had moved on. Thirty hours later, the satellites were still there, high above.

  When she returned, Timothy was full of questions.

  “How long should we wait before we do something? What if they never leave?”

  Darya had no answers for him. “I don’t understand why they’re still there. By now, they must’ve compared the records of all the Cybrids who were docked in the recharging crater and everyone who lifted out. It’s only logical to conclude we were among the thousands destroyed by the Angels. They couldn’t have kept track of every single Cybrid they blasted.”

  “Maybe they’re just a suspicious lot.”

  “They are, but they’ve never given me or my followers much credit when it comes to planning. If that’s changed, they’re doing deeper strategic analysis than they used to.”

  “Trillian’s influence?”

  “No doubt. And if he won’t rest until he’s sure I’m dead or gone, we could be waiting here for years, perhaps decades.”

  “If that’s our only option, I’ll go mad,” Timothy replied, and he meant it.

  “I’m not ready to give up yet,” Darya said. “We’ve got a ten second window to cover a hundred kilometers, if we want to get past the sentinels.”

  “Do you have a plan?”

  “Maybe the hint of one. Let me take another look in a few hours.”

  Timothy did his best to be patient. He explored more of the empty city, looking for options. He found a huge door leading into an old access shaft that connected to a service cavern closer to the asteroid’s exterior. The narrower chamber was more oppressive than the main habitat and he fled within minutes of discovering it.

  He returned to the main habitat just as Darya came back from a final visit to the portal of the tunnel. “Are they still there?” he asked.

  “Yes, and they’ve added another group of satellites to the surveillance.”

  “What difference does that make?”

  “It halves the time between radar pulses. We’re down to a five-second window between scans. If we’re going to make a run for it, we’ll only have five seconds to get past their sweeps.”

  “Is that even possible?”

  “Maybe…barely. But if we wait and they add more, it’ll be impossible. Sooner or later, somebody’s going to figure out there’s an old habitat down here. When that happens, it’s game over, and no Reset button.”

  “That would be most unpleasant.” The British accent that Timothy had retained from his Casa DonTon days played well to understatement. “I vote to go now.”

  “Me, too. I have no desire to hang around and watch our options disappear. So far, they’re acting as if they have no idea this place exists. That gives us an advantage. If we can get up enough speed, we can get past the radar net between sweeps.”

  “Can we get up enough speed?”

  Darya transmitted her plan to Timothy. “I think so. According to my calculations, we’ve got a little over two hundred kilometers in this tunnel to accelerate. We should be able to get up to thirty klicks per second in that distance. Before we start, we’ll need to plug the tunnel we took into this cavern so our rocket exhaust won’t give us away too soon.”

  “I see. So, just to confirm, your plan is to hurtle ourselves the length of the habitat at maximum acceleration and “thread the needle” into a tiny tunnel at the end, while traveling about thirty kilometers per second?”

  “No, worse. We’ll only have one chance to do it, so we’ll have to leave together. Our propulsion exhausts will follow us out and be detected within seconds. We’ll need to fly in tandem.”

  “That sounds…challenging.”

  “Yes, some very tricky navigation, and we’ll be flying almost blind the whole way. We’ll either be on target and pass through in under a second, or we’ll smash into the wall surrounding the tunnel entrance.”

  Timothy weighed the merits of possible demise by fiery destruction versus spending another thirty years in the tunnel. “Is there no other way out?”

  “Nothing I can think of. This is a lot to take in, I know. You haven’t been in your body for long so you may not have a lot of confidence in our navigation abilities but I assure you, we can do this. We just need to prepare carefully.”

  “And if we’re off by the tiniest bit, we die,” Timothy stated.

  “Yes.”

  As a kindness, she omitted the part that, if they were not successful, their destruction would release their matter-antimatter propellant from its containment which, in turn, would obliterate the entire asteroid and kill hundreds of thousands of Cybrids trapped inside the local Alternus inworld, including Mary and Trillian.

  Is there anything I won’t risk to survive and be free? To carry on this struggle? And what happens if we don’t make it? Will the rebe
llion die? Will nobody be able to stop Alum’s Divine Plan to destroy the universe? She returned her focus to the escape plan; there was no other way.

  Though she hadn’t asked explicitly, Timothy formally accepted the plan, and his fate, with a crisp and professional, “Very well. How shall we begin?”

  In that instant, Darya imagined the floating Cybrid orb before her as he once was, Timothy, First Footman of Casa DonTon, standing tall and straightening the tails of his jacket.

  “If there is no other way, we must proceed with all haste and caution to make this plan successful,” he urged.

  * * *

  Over the next few hours, Darya showed Timothy how to convert his rocket into an antimatter cutting torch, and they set about plugging the tunnel.

  Together, they removed the narrow tops of the tallest spires in the empty city and pushed them deep into the passageway. Once they had the middle kilometer loosely plugged, Darya cut a circle of construction material a little smaller than the diameter of the tunnel, and they leaned it up against the other rubble.

  Darya braced her manipulators against the tunnel wall and laser-welded the piece to the lining rock. They piled more material against it and she added another plug about a hundred meters in.

  “There. That should prevent our exhaust from streaming out of this end,” she said when they were done.

  Timothy surveyed their work. “One can only hope we haven’t sealed our graves as well.”

  Darya ignored the comment, and assigned him to hang back at the mouth of the cavern while she travelled to the outside opening at the other end of the habitat to get an update.

  The same satellites were in position and, mercifully, no new ones had been added. Darya timed the radar pulses. There was still nearly a five-second interval between sweeps.

  She set an internal timer coordinated with the sweeps: 40 milliseconds on, 480 off. Yes, I think this could work. Providing the surveillance covers no more than a hundred twenty klicks out, and we can accelerate to thirty kilometers per second, and we don’t hit the wall, we should be able to escape before the next signal sweep. No problem.

  Satisfied, Darya collected Timothy and the two of them moved to the far end of the cavern. She meticulously noted features along the floor of the chamber, anything that would help them navigate during their full-speed dash along the length of the city.