Kasmik rummaged in the cargo and gear pods they had brought from Keenomsh’pont and eventually found the echopod of Chase’s voice. They all listened.
“…the Tailless…the Umans at Kinlok Island…are a military unit. That’s what the wavemaker is…it’s a weapon. They’re fighting an enemy that lives far away, not here in the waters of Seome. The enemy are called the Coethi. Both the Umans and the Coethi use devices like the wavemaker to travel in time, back to the past, forward to the future. They fight each other to determine who will control all these currents and streams of time. From what I’ve been able to learn, the Coethi aren’t like the Tailless at all, nor like you. They’re machines…really small machines. They group together in big swarms….”
Kasmik looked up when Chase’s words were heard. “Do you think maybe--?”
Telspo couldn’t believe it. “Somehow, they came through with us.”
Potop agreed. “They used the Farpool…the same as we did. Eekoti Chase said he was worried about this…now it’s happened.”
Kasmik felt a cold shiver. “Now they’re loose…we’d better get everybody away from the rift, away from that cone.”
“Somebody should tell the Metah what’s happened. Sing it out to the repeaters.”
And when they saw that the small swarm of m’jeete, once enclosed in its net, had now been freed by the damnable Tailless weapons and were now expanding, swelling out of the rift, growing and replicating exponentially right before them, they panicked and gathered the rest of the settlers.
For the swarm had already formed up into an expanding cloud, a dark mass shaped eerily like a clenched fist in the shadows of the raining silt, and had begun slowly but steadily moving off in the direction of one of the submarines.
Kasmik, Telspo, Potop and the rest of the settlers gathered together quickly into a tightly linked roam and headed in the opposite direction. No one knew what the m’jeete were truly capable of. No one wanted to wait and find out.
They roamed together east of Reed Banks for many minutes and didn’t stop until they were many kilometers away, losing themselves in a dense forest of kelp. They stopped there. Kasmik found that one of the Skortish…Skaman lo kel: Sk’ort…had had the presence of mind to follow in one of the kip’ts. The remaining settlers hung there and listened.
What they heard sent chills down their backbones.
The main body of the m’jeete swarm had been attracted by the density and sound of Xichang, the Chinese submarine, now cruising off from the ruins of Ponkel’te after launching her torpedoes and completing her part of Operation Pobeda. The Qin-class boat had been coming about to a new heading and had started to plane upward to a radio mast depth of thirty meters when the first tendrils of the swarm fell upon her.
Unknown to the doomed crew of Xichang, the m’jeete swarm was composed of countless trillions of nanometer-scale autonomous robotic devices, linked together into a sort of single entity, possessed of great computational power and the ability to replicate and disassemble any structure it encountered. The swarm fell upon the outer hull plates of the Xichang as a swarm of flies might congregate around livestock in a field and, because it was so programmed, began immediately deconstructing the molecular structure of her hull plates.
At a depth of two hundred meters, the first hull breach was all that was needed. Her pressure integrity lost, the hull of Xichang explosively imploded in a rending, sickening screech of HY-alloy steel and her bulkheads collapsed shortly thereafter.
The crew burned alive in the scalding inferno of compression and Xichang quickly lost way, lost trim, lost all of her internal pressure and began sinking toward the seabed several thousand meters below, still enveloped in the death grip of the m’jeete swarm.
Five minutes later, the crumpled wreckage of the submarine slammed bow first into the sandy bottom of Reed Banks and lay still, shrouded in the death mist of the bots and occasional streams of bubbles issuing from the last collapsing pockets of air.
All of this heard by the survivors of Ponkel’te, kilometers away. It was also heard by the terrified crew of Komsomolsk, less than two kilometers to the west.
“Let’s get out of here!” yelled Komsomolsk’s captain Barzin. Sonar had reported details of what all of them had already heard with their own ears. “Come about to zero eight five degrees. Make turns for thirty knots. All ahead, flank speed! Sonar, anything--?”
Sonar came back after a short pause. “Negative, Captain. The swarm’s not following us. It’s still hovering around the Xichang…what’s left of her. Reading large diffuse mass two thousand meters astern of us…that’s the swarm. Nothing around us or ahead of us.”
Barzin scarcely breathed and held on as the boat came about sharply, her deck rolling sharply into the left-hand turn. “We’ll clear the area first, then advise Admiral Neverin what happened. I want to put several kilometers between us and that…cloud or whatever it us, before we head up. Fleet needs to know about this too. It looks like the Sea People have weapons we didn’t even know about.”
Komsomolsk settled into her run and steamed away at flank speed from the carnage of Ponkel’te and the Chinese submarine.
All of this was heard by the Ponkti and the Skortish as well.
The argument went on for hours, as arguments often do, but Kasmik was the ranking tu’kelke, by virtue of his standing with Loptoheen’s tuk em’kel and finally exerted his authority. The settlers had been roaming around and around the kelp forest for half the day and the sound of the Russian submarine and its surface fleet was growing dim and distant with each passing hour.
Kasmik issued orders. “Telspo, you and Potop take Skaman and the kip’t. Follow the Tailless craft, the submarine. Find out where they live. Report back. This kind of attack can’t go unpunished. We have to show the Tailless that we live in these waters too and we have a right to live as we please.”
None of the Ponkti doubted Kasmik’s authority but the Skortish were more cautious. Skaman spoke up.
“We should inform our Metahs before doing anything. Sing it to the repeaters…we’ve got good voices here.”
“And the Kel’metah…eekoti Chase…he should know. He knows about the Tailless…and the m’jeete too. Let them instruct us what we should do.”
Kazmik bumped Skaman off the roam. The two of them stopped short, and faced each other beak to beak. The others gathered around, tense and anxious.
“This is exactly what I would expect from Skortish scum. Lazy, indolent trash…what do you expect from kelke who live beside a trench…that’s where all our garbage goes, did you know that?”
Skaman was about to spear Kasmik right in the face but cooler heads prevailed. Potop separated the two. “Stop…both of you. Stop this. You act like midlings. Lektereenah would have both of you shame-bound for something like this. Let’s talk this out—”
So they talked. Kasmik and Telspo were all for following the Russian submarine to its home. Potop and Skaman, the Sk’ort, held out for getting orders from the Metah, both Lektereenah of the Ponkti and Okeemah of the Sk’ort.
Kasmik could pulse from the surrounding crowd that he was outnumbered, despite his nominal authority. Reluctantly, he gave in,
“Okay, have it your way. We’ll advise the Kel’metah, Chase. Who has the best voice around here?”
That turned out to be a Skortish settler named Kwala, a female. Kwala was smallish, but with a large head and mouth. Her beak was short too but she had a deep, rich voice that boomed out like a pal’penk in heat.
The settlers decided on a message and Kwala headed off to find the sound channel and sing out the words.
In the meantime, Kasmik and Telspo inventoried what weapons they had taken with them in the last frantic moments of escape from the wreckage of Ponkel’te.
Kasmik was determined to make the Tailless pay for what they had done.
Likteek told Chase about the distant message from the Ponkti settlement, playing the echopod he had recorded of Kwala’s voice, greatly dimm
ed by distance from the far seas. They were in the lab, with several others, all of them agitated, distressed upon hearing the news.
“Tailless worms,” one tech muttered. He swept around the small vault-like cave, knocking specimen jars and instruments off the shelves, earning a sharp rebuke from Likteek.
“Kah…we can’t trust them…we should never trust them.”
“The Ponkti should retaliate…I wouldn’t blame them.”
Chase said, “This is bad news...really bad news. Not only the attack itself but what the Ponkti seemed to have discovered. Likteek, somewhere in your cabinets of echopods may be one I recorded when I met with Dringoth and Lieutenant Golich at Kinlok Island, when the wavemaker—the time twister—was there. It recorded what they told me about their enemy…the far enemy that was not on Seome—”
Likteek helped Chase shuffle through stacks and racks of echopods and scentbulbs…the precious reservoir of knowledge they had managed to bring through the Farpool.
“Maybe this one,” suggested Likteek, pulling a pod down from a high shelf. He handed it to Chase.
Chase thumbed the studs on the bottom. “We’ll see…here, let’s listen….”
“So what does this Time Twister do?” Chase asks. He examines some of the instruments and controls, until Acth:On’e intervenes and politely shoves him away.
Dringoth shrugs. “Got a singularity engine at the core. It reaches out several parsecs from here and flings anything it finds out of local space-time. Sends it off to who knows where…other side of the galaxy. Maybe other side of the Universe. We don’t understand it ourselves. Timejump just gave us the basics. First Time Displacement Battery just operates and maintains the thing.” He pats a rack of gear. “This baby keeps Halo space clean, free of Coethi and other nasties.” His face darkens. “As long as you people stop trying to damage it, that is. We’re having to fight off the Coethi and the local life too. It’s getting old.”
“I’ve made skimmer trips out to Big Mama myself, plenty of times,” Golich jumps in. “I’ve seen all those whirlpools. Twister does that. Leakage effects. We used to enjoy herding fish and whatnot into the vortexes and watch ‘em being accelerated out of space time…lots of fun but it got old. Anything to pass the time on this hellhole. Never seen this Farpool you speak of, though.”
Acth:On’e is openly skeptical. “It’s pretty hard to believe one of these whirlpools could become a wormhole…I guess it’s possible. But then I’m no scientist.”
“Your weapon is destroying this world,” Angie says. “The sound, the whirlpools—“
“—the vibrations and waves,” Chase adds. “The Seomish brought us here to talk to you. You’ve got to turn off the Time Twister…they actually call it the wavemaker. It’s making rubble out of their cities—people are dying….”
Dringoth scoffs. “I don’t believe any of it. Even if there were actual cities and whole civilizations under the sea here, it wouldn’t matter. We have a mission and we have our orders. A Coethi fleet’s been sighted in Halo space the last few days and is probably bearing down on us right now. They know we’re here. They may have even more effective starballs. If the whiz kids at T2—Timejump Intelligence—are even close to being right, the sun up there—Sigma Albeth B-- is doomed. So is this world, unless we can keep yanking Coethi ships into forever with the Twister.” Dringoth’s hard blue eyes bore in on Chase and Angie. “So you see: if I really do what you want, you’re dead. We’re all dead. And Coethi occupies Halo Alpha and Uman settlements start going poof. We’re planning on a better outcome.”
Angie has an idea. “Maybe you could work with the Seomish…re-design your Twister. Re-locate it somewhere else. Aren’t there other worlds around this sun?”
Golich gives an exhausted sigh, like he is explaining this for the millionth time. “Strategy says the Twister stays here on Storm. It’s preposterous. You want reasons, I’ll give you reasons. How about strategic location in the Halo? Storm’s right there. How about the stability and cooling properties of the oceans here? Perfect for the Twister. How about concealment possibilities…when we rebuilt the Twister, we made it look more like some of the islands around here.”
“Except the Coethi already know we’re back here on Storm,” Acth:On’e complains. “They’re not that stupid…they keep losing crashers and time ships in this sector…they’ll put two and two together. “
Dringoth waves them all quiet. “It’s all academic anyway. The Twister’s all that stands between Uman bases in this sector and Coethi overrunning everything. Military necessity dictates the Twister remain operational and located where it is. I don’t like it any more than you do. Believe me, nothing would please me more than to abandon this sewer of a planet and get out of here. We did that once. But Timejump sent us back…pretty much for the reasons Mr. Golich just outlined. I’m sorry…we just can’t do what you want….”
Chase thumbed the echopod off and held it with both hands. “From what the repeaters are saying about the Ponkti attack, the Coethi must have somehow come through the Farpool during the Great Emigration. They…or at least some of them…are here now, right here on Earth.”
Likteek was picking up and replacing gear that had been knocked off by the wayward tech. “The Ponkti speak of a swarm…this must be the Coethi. Small, very tiny creatures, like our mah’jeet…in fact, they call them m’jeete.”
“They could be just as deadly,” Chase said. “The Umans back in Seome said they were like little machines, smaller than bacteria, like viruses. They form huge swarms in space, light-years across.” He stopped, realizing that Likteek really had no concept of space or light-years. “They come from the really far seas, Lik. And they’re powerful enough and dangerous enough to have damaged your sun badly enough to cause it to explode. If the Coethi are now here on Earth, every living thing, us and the Tailless, are in danger.”
“We must take this to the Metah,” Likteek decided. “Maybe even to the Kel’em themselves.”
Chase was forced to agree.
When the Kel’em met for deliberations, it was normal Omtorish practice for the assembly to go on a roam. Chase always found this practice curious…it was like having Congress or a state legislature set out on a nature hike when time came to make decisions.
Chase had once told Angie this wasn’t such a bad idea. “It gets them out into their world, where they can see and hear for themselves what’s going on.”
In order for Chase to able to keep up with the kel elders on a roam, he was given a waterjet device grown from baby tillet and bio-modified. He strapped the thing on and when Mokleeoh and her advisors set off, Chase found he could use the jet’s undulations, muscular contractions and ink expulsions to keep up, more or less.
Mokleeoh hummed to herself for awhile, as the small convoy, escorted by a squad of prodsmen, cruised back and forth around the perimeter of the Omtorish quarter of Keenomsh’pont, still rebuilding from the Tailless attacks and the earthquakes. Huts were being erected practically on top of each other and additional niches, hollows and burrows carved and dug out of the hard volcanic tuff that littered the seafloor and lower seamount slopes with boulders of every shape and size.
Mokleeoh finally came right to the point. Chase’s echopod translated her words, with only an occasional stutter.
“The question is what should we do. If what Likteek and Kel’metah Chase say is true, there is great danger for all of us. Should we antagonize the Tailless more and help our Ponkti and Skortish brothers and sisters? Or should we let this incident pass and allow the Ponkti to deal with the situation as they decide themselves?”
“Affectionate Metah…” Likteek stroked hard to keep up. The scientist was no longer a young kelke and the roam was hard work. “Affectionate Metah… the Kel’metah Chase and I both believe that the swarm the Ponkti have discovered poses the greater threat. The Tailless may not know of this threat…I don’t claim to have full understanding here, but the swarm…the Coethi, as I am told they are called…come from a
future time…the descendants of the Tailless today, when they came to Seome many mah ago, were engaged in battles with this enemy. Now, they are here and we feel the Tailless don’t know or recognize the threat—”
One councilor named Mongu spat disgust. He roamed two levels behind the Metah herself, but his voice was easily heard over the swish of the water.
“It was the Tailless who brought this menace to Seome. Why should we help them? Let them fight this enemy…it’s not our fight.”
Another councilor disagreed. It was Parek, a noted arguer from the debating em’kel. “Except that it is our fight now, honored Mongu. We live on Urku, same as the Tailless. We face the same challenges now, don’t we?”
Mokleeoh let the debate go on for a time, then had one of her prodsmen bring Chase forward, to the head of the roam, where all could hear.
To Chase, flying at the head of a convoy of Seomish on full roam was like riding a jet ski off Scotland Beach in the middle of the summer. It was both exhilarating and a little nerve-wracking at the same time. The prodsmen helped him keep up, adjusting his waterjet for best speed.
“Kel’metah, you’re part Tailless,” Mokleeoh said. “Should we inform the Tailless of this discovery, inform them of what we know of this great enemy or not?”
Put that way, Chase figured this was really no place for a beach bum to be, somehow making life and death decisions for a whole civilization of refugees. Better to put price codes on T-shirts and boogie boards and sunscreen than this. Really, what could he say…that hadn’t already been said?
But it was clear that Mokleeoh, and her Kel’em of advisors and councilors and elders expected him to say something…something profound and insightful and really deep.
The Farpool_Exodus Page 22
