“It is time, Jaelle. We must make our dash for the Artifact.”
“To the bridge then.” She stands, taller than I, but a little shaky on her long legs.
In truth I have never left the bridge all the controls are slaved to me. I have watched the yawning hole in space-time grow as we approach. Perhaps Jaelle is luckier she cannot see the approaching plunge.
We reach the bridge and I am grateful for Jaelle’s presence as she attends to engines and all other controls, leaving the helm to me so I may concentrate on our approach.
“The Collector’s vessel is turning, yes, committed to the turn,” Jaelle reports.
Starships do not turn easily or quickly; the moment I have waited for is now. I apply as much acceleration as I can with Jaelle aboard. Only a little leaks through the AG field, but it presses her into her seat.
I keep one eye on her as we accelerate. She notices and gives me her wild grin, fangs included. “Pour it on, kit-sister, pour it on.”
We leap ahead. In minutes we are approaching the edge of the disturbance. The gradient is not as steep as that of a singularity and somehow I draw the impression of a shallowness to it.
“Is that it?” Jaelle calls, her voice strained.
In visual spectrum there is an occlusion of stars; we can now perceive a disk. I see many things besides.
“Jaelle, I must go outside now to fully extend my senses. I will fly the ship remotely from there.
“Good luck,” she grits between clenched teeth.
The gravity forces do not slow me and I quickly exit the ship. I extend the filaments of my hair and data flows in, far beyond what Stardust’s crude sensor suite can deliver to me. I feel the maw of the gravity gradient reach out for us. Our speed increases, though the only sign is that space around us has become smeary as the stars are distorted. We plunge down. My sensors become so severely disrupted that I shut them down. I am disoriented even in visible light. I hear Jaelle yowling in protest over our link. I cannot guess how terrible it is for my biological companion.
Then we are through, my sensors reengage and I behold marvels. Around us is a vast blue hall, not the blackness of normal space. The stars appear as thin bars of light scattered through this hall like neon wires.
“It… it’s beautiful,” comes Jaelle’s voice.
“Yes,” I answer. “The gravity well acts as a lens.”
“Look,” Jaelle says. “That must be the brown dwarf.”
It is easy to spot. The dwarf was barely visibly in normal space but here it is a dull orange ember, a coal in the sky, its light concentrated.
I drop the ship’s nose sixty degrees, the starlines whirl around us and below us is the Artifact. It is huge. Nowhere in my databases is information on a ship or station of such size. Nor does it resemble anything built by the Infestors in my time. Few details reach my scans; space here is still distorting my sensors. I detect no power and see only visible light falling from the starlines around us. The Artifact seems to drink in light. It is roughly circular but banded about the center, with thick structures giving it almost the appearance of a ringed world. Its surface is irregular with towers, ports, and structures all over. Only distance makes it seem smoothly circular.
“My gods,” Jaelle said. “What is it? How big is it?”
“I can only answer the latter question. It is over 6,000 kilometers in diameter and I have never seen anything like it before.”
“Do you sense any attack, or even a probe?”
“No. The outer hull is registering near absolute zero, but that means nothing. I cannot delve the interior. All I know is that it emits neither power nor light.”
“Then it is dead.”
“I do not assume so much. Unless the gravity gradient is self-sustaining once formed, it must somehow be generating this field.”
“The Hummel will be coming in on our heels. We’d better figure on getting down on that… thing, out of sight.”
“Excellent tactics. We shall continue to close. I will come in now. My own sensors are no more reliable than the ships’ and it may be safer inside.
***
An alarm sounded and crewmen near me jumped to their feet and ran out of the gym. My guard, this time, was a Morok. His red eyes fastened on mine. “Up,” he grunted. “The bridge.”
We made our way there quickly, as I was as eager to find out what had happened as anyone. The hatch slid back on a full bridge; we were obviously at general quarters.
I found Ferlan in her accustomed seat, dressed in red robes which contrasted with her metallic silver hair and oddly reminded me of Christmas. She looked up sharply as I entered. Sensing the tension, I waited to be spoken to.
“They’ve disappeared off our long-range scan,” the weapons officer said. “No debris, no return of signal.” Others on the bridge exchanged worried looks.
“This is expected,” Ferlan announced. “Much the same occurred a century ago. All it means is that we have found what we are looking for.”
“Scan is giving back peculiar readings,” said the navigator, another Morok but with better command of standard than my guard.
Marcel strode over and examined the instruments, checking some readings himself. “It is as if we approach the planetary mass of gas giant size, yet nothing is there.”
“Only a white whale,” I murmured to myself.
“Ah, so you favor the classics, do you?” Ferlan said. “I have a fine first edition of Melville below. Perhaps I will loan it to you.”
“You might try reading it first.”
“Don’t be tiresome, Wrik. I am not Ahab. I have my own very good reasons for seeking the Artifact.”
“Are you still sure they are your reasons?”
“Enough,” Marcel growled, balling a huge fist. “You take too many liberties with Madame.”
“No, Marcel.” She raised a hand and checked the ape-man. “It is of no concern, just a frightened boy talking. Full speed after Maauro; conform to her prior movements.”
Marcel glared at me. “Yes, Madame.” He turned to the controls and I released the breath I’d been holding
“You may remain on the bridge, Wrik, if you promise not to be an annoyance.”
I nod.
“I said promise,” Ferlan repeated, a touch of ice in her voice. The grey eyes held nothing of her occasional friendliness.
“Agreed.”
Ferlan turned back to Marcel. “How long until we reach the area where the Stardust disappeared?”
“Three hours,” he replied.
“We can go faster than that surely,” she demanded.
“Madame, the fuel. We are far from any base. If we need to flee back jumpspace at the systems edge—”
“Yes, yes. I suppose you are right,” Ferlan sighed. “It is so hard to be patient sometimes. So, Wrik, what is Maauro doing?”
I shrugged. “Isn’t it obvious? Maauro knows where we want to go and is getting there first. Stardust can’t outgun your ship. But once we land, the odds switch to Maauro’s side. You may have drained me of what I know, but it’s a far cry from facing Maauro out in the open. You have your pet Infestors, but Maauro is designed to kill those, and without high-tech weaponry, they’re no threat to her. As for Guilders, you haven’t fared well against her before.”
Ferlan smiled her chilly smile. “As you say, quite obvious. Still it serves me well. Let us see if Maauro can land safely. How nice of her to pave the way for us.”
The three hours were not wasted. Hummel’s crew remained on alert status. Ferlan ordered the landing force to the roll-off deck and to man the vehicles there. She apparently expected to be driving somewhere. Flinss was ordered to move the Infestors into the vehicles.
“One will go into my transport, the other two in yours,” Ferlan ordered. “Be sure that all personnel take precautions against Infestor
influence.”
“We have never tried some of this equipment under field conditions,” Flinns protested.
Ferlan’s elegant eyebrows rose. “Do you lack confidence in your work?”
“No, Madam but it might be useful if we use the prisoners as test subjects. If there are Infestor influences, they can be used to detect them.”
I thought of the station crew and their mad mindlessness, the overwriting of their personalities.
Ferlan looked at me, her lips pursed. “I do not wish to lose the services of Trigardt or Dusko quite yet.”
“The effects have been minor and at the first sign we can put them under helmets,” Flinns said.
“Those effects were not minor on the space station. Did you forget the intel from their interrogation?” Ferlan asked.
“No, Madam, but that was an atypical brain, something that Boran’s people unwisely experimented on. We have seen no such power in these juveniles, or they would have used it on us before this. Also, those beings were under influence for months. These will be under for minutes at most.
“If not them, then we should use whoever else is most expendable. We need this sort of detector.”
“Madame,” Marcel said. “I know you are indulgent with this boy, but we need a detector,”
“I have no concern with using Dusko,” she replied.
“He is Dua-Denlenn and so are a few of the crew, but most are human. That may make a difference. You should not take a risk with yourself for this boy. It is unlikely they will be harmed in any event.”
“Very well,” Ferlan said, not looking at me. “But you are personally responsible to me in this. If Wrik starts to behave oddly, you will get him under a helmet immediately.”
Marcel gave me a broad grin. “I treat him like my own baby. I change his diaper too.”
A laugh rolled around the bridge, quickly stilled by a glare from Ferlan.
“Coming up on disappearance point,” the helmsman, a hard-bitten, balding human, called.
“Sound collision alarm,” Marcel rumbled, all business again. “Madam, to your special chair. Please.”
While Marcel was helping Ferlan into her plush chair and belting her in, I moved to a take-hold against the wall and belted myself into a standing brace there.
An alarm shrilled overhead. “Encountering gravity gradient. Prepare for jump-like turbulence and gravity sheers. Take-hold, take-hold, take-hold.”
“Speed increasing,” the helmsman shouted. ”Up 10,000 kmpsc, 20,000—”
The universe turned inside out, like jump, only worse, with debilitating colors and smells. The ship bucked and yawed, terrifying in a vessel with an AG field. That meant forces were nearly overwhelming the redundancies of the controls holding the singularity that was the ship’s stardrive. It also meant we were near failure point and death.
Then we were through. The effects faded almost immediately. People gasped in relief and snapped to their controls, checking for damage.
I released the takehold web and walked over to Ferlan’s padded chair, wondering how the older woman had borne the effects. I found her sitting, eyes closed, hands distorted into claws in the armrests.
I looked around but everyone was busy. I opened the ornate, padded chest that she kept her tea service in and poured a cup. I’d seen her mix it often enough to know how she liked it.
When I turned back, I was looking straight into her clear, grey eyes. I froze in surprise and looked down at the cup. Perhaps she was as surprised as I was. I grimaced and handed her the tea. Her hands shook and I ended up holding it as she drank deeply.
“Not very ladylike, I’m afraid,” she said, “to slurp one’s tea down so quickly.”
I took the cup back. “Another?”
“Yes, thank you.”
I took a few seconds to mix the tea. I noticed Marcel came over to Ferlan with a guilty look.
“I am fine, Marcel. Wrik is looking after me.”
He returned to his controls but with a jealous glare at me.
I ignored him and gave Ferlan her tea. She sipped at this with her usual restraint.
After a few seconds she handed me the cup, but her hand clasped my wrist when I went to take it. “Wrik,” she whispered. “We have many dangerous hours ahead of us. Please be very careful. Don’t do anything stupid. I should dislike it very much if you came to harm.”
Unsure of what to say, I simply nodded and took the cup.
“Madam,” Marcel said, looking up from his scanner. “This you should see with your own eyes. Raise the shield on the ports.” He came over and, again with the jealous glare, helped Ferlan out of her chair as the big panels rolled back from the plaststeel windows of the ship.
Space was blue and filled with filament lines of varying colors.
“Stars,” I wondered.
“Yes,” Marcel said.
“And there is the brown dwarf,” Ferlan said. “It looks like a giant coal. I wonder why it is a disk and the other stars are lines?”
“Something to do with its nearness to whatever is distorting light,” Marcel speculated. “It is so much closer than the stars and radiates steadily.”
“Scan is back on line. We got a big return below,” the helmsman called.
“Reorient the ship,” Marcel ordered. “Let us see what we have journeyed so far for.”
The ship pitched down and there it lay. I could only stare at the immense irregular-shaped object. It looked unlike any starship or space station I had ever seen. Its vast bulk was dimly lit by the starlines. “I can’t believe.”
“Yes,” Ferlan said. “After a century of hunting, to finally see it with my own eyes.”
‘But what are we seeing?” I asked
“No one knows. There is power on that Artifact and much more.” A rapt expression slid over her face. “It is a door to a past we know nothing of, knowledge of species that achieved heights and insights we do not yet dream of. Secrets,” she said with nearly a religious fervor, “that we have not yet discovered.
“I must have them!” Her hands reached out like claws toward the massive darkness, as if to snatch the fabulous objects she imagined from the sight of others.
“If it doesn’t have us,” I muttered.
“Any sign of Maauro’s ship?” Ferlan asked
“No other vessel on scan. Either she’s down there, or on the other side of it.”
Ferlan turned to me. “What do you think?”
“May I speak to you in private?” I said.
She raised her eyebrows and we moved off to a quiet section of the bridge.
We looked at each other for a few seconds. “Listen to me.” I said. “Coward to villain, listen to me. Don’t do this. Maauro is beyond anything you have ever met. You tangle with her and you will die as will everyone else aboard this ship. Turn back now.”
Ferlan smiled sadly. “That is sweet, Wrik. Really it is. But I cannot turn back and still be who and what I am. To thine own self be true.”
“It’s not just your life.”
“These others, Wrik, do they deserve such consideration? My devices, my servants, each with a raft of their own crimes?”
I shook my head. “Probably not, but I don’t deserve any better either.”
Ferlan smiled. “No, Wrik, we are here and will try our luck. Sometimes one must give the universe a chance to pass out its judgments. Be careful.”
“You too, Madam Ferlan.”
“And you won’t tell me what you think Maauro is doing.”
“No. Don’t look to me for any help with her, not even if it costs me my life.”
“Good for you. Go get into your planetside gear. See you at the transport.”
Chapter 26
“I wish I had not brought you into this danger,” I say as we close in on the Artifact’s surface, looking fo
r a safe landing site.
Jaelle glanced over at me, tearing her eyes from the giant mass ahead of us with effort. “What, and give Wrik up to you without a fight, Kit-sister?”
I am surprised, and while retaining my alertness toward the Artifact, respond to her. “Jaelle, I am not a biological, or even of either of your species. My gender is an artifice. I do not seek a romantic entanglement with Wrik. I don’t have any gender equipment with which to enjoy such a relationship.”
“I’m kidding, mostly. Should we be talking about this with death staring down its muzzle at us?”
“I am quite capable of combat multi-tasking,” I say, unable to contain a miffed tone in my voice. This seems to amuse Jaelle, which provokes me further. “I know this has caused tension between us. I wish to discuss why.”
“Will this matter if we are vaporized?”
“Nothing will matter if we are vaporized.”
“Good point. I care for Wrik. Maybe I love him, though since we are of different species we cannot have a family. That is something I will do with a male of my own kind eventually. I do want kits.”
“Have you discussed this with him?” I ask, disturbed by the fragility of Wrik’s network pair-bond with Jaelle. I had thought this was a permanent link.
“You will find that males of any species rarely think about the future, much less plan for it. No, Wrik and I might become consorts—“
“Consorts?”
“It’s like a marriage, a legal interspecies relationship, not necessarily exclusive, as we are of different species and need different things. We may become consorts, but he is not Nekoan. There are things that he cannot do for me, or I for him.
“I have powerful feelings for him. But he is an alien. We use the same words for things, but do they even mean the same thing?
“You ask these questions and yet, other than sex, our relationship is not so different from yours. I don’t know that his feelings for you aren’t as deep, or deeper than his for me.”
My Outcast State (The Maauro Chronicles Book 1) Page 27
