Darkness Rising

by C. Gockel

  “Hold your fire!” James ordered. “It’s out of range.”

  Volka scanned the horizon. She saw no sign of the two ships.

  “Sundancer means to come back,” Carl whispered.

  Volka couldn’t see Sundancer, but she could feel her. It was as though there was a string stretched between her heart and the ship. She knew Sundancer would return for them. “I know that,” Volka said.

  “I know that, too,” said the Marine with orange eyes.

  Volka took a shaky breath and told herself that the weakening in the thread between her and Sundancer was just her imagination—her eyes confusing her heart. But she remembered the dark gray veins spreading across the ship and Sundancer’s scream and wasn’t sure.

  Volka’s eyes dropped to the forest floor in dismay, and her breath caught. Among the fallen trees and branches were what looked like piles of black ice sitting in puddles of black water. Staring at them turned her stomach and made her hair rise in her helmet.

  “Some of that dripped on us,” said one of the Marines, flicking some of the ooze off of his suit with a gloved hand.

  Volka’s stomach abruptly seized up, and she fell to one knee.

  “Sundancer!” she said, as a weight bowed her to the ground. Her vision turned black, she felt like she might vomit, and her breath rattled in her ears. Blinking her eyes didn’t clear them; she shivered as an immense shadow fell over her…

  A cord snapped in her heart, and it skipped a beat.

  She sucked in a long breath that felt too cold, and her vision came back in a rush.

  Instead of making Volka feel relieved, it felt ominous…

  Volka cried out, and the orange-eyed Marine whispered, “The spaceship’s gone?”

  Carl squeaked miserably from the backpack. “Yes.”

  Volka’s face crumpled. “I killed her. I convinced her to come here.”

  The Marine with the orange eyes put his hand on her shoulder. “Cry later. Right now, we have to make her sacrifice worth it.”

  Volka’s head snapped to him, and she growled.

  His jaw got hard, and she could see the orange of his eyes through his visor. “That’s it. Be angry,” he urged. “But don’t give up. Be the fierce weere you are.”

  Insects trilled for a long moment. Volka heard shouts from the cave. And then James said something she’d been too shocked to think about. “We’ve lost our only ride home.”

  Volka climbed shakily to her feet, feeling as dazed and as disconnected as she had when her mother had died. But the orange-eyed Marine was right. She couldn’t give up; she couldn’t be weak, not now.

  James continued, voice too calm, “We need to be ready for when the crew of Gate 33—or whatever it is that is controlling them—comes back to finish the job.”

  How long could they survive against the thing that possessed the crew? Surely not the years it would take a rescue ship to reach them…Sundancer had been the only ship in the galaxy that could travel faster than light without a gate. She felt her heart rate quickening. Her hands sagged.

  “Don’t lose hope!” Carl squeaked. “There are other faster-than-light vehicles in the works.”

  Inside the helmet, Volka’s ears tried to perk.

  James looked over his shoulder and then shook his head. “Since Sundancer’s arrival, the Republic has intensified gateless faster-than-light research and development. But they’re not even in the prototype stage. Don’t give false hope.”

  He spun on his heel and began marching into the cave.

  “There is hope. Can you feel it, Volka?” Carl asked.

  No one made any sign as having heard, so maybe he’d done it telepathically. Volka didn’t feel hope, but in the very pit of her stomach, there was a fury growing as hot as the sun Sundancer had imagined.

  15

  Luddeccea: Stolen Light

  “Open outrigger hatches and extend,” Alaric ordered.

  There was the soft click of switches being flipped, and the hum of the Merkabah’s reactor deepened. Seconds ticked by.

  “Outriggers extended and the net is ready to be deployed, Captain,” Commander Ran declared.

  The Merkabah was a littoral combat ship like Alaric’s last posting. His eldest son had described the last LCS he’d flown as “a fat jet plane.” Designed for patrolling the Luddeccean System’s planets and outposts, LCS had hover engines at the bow, stern, and beneath either wing that provided for agile maneuvering in atmosphere as well as lift. The wings themselves would allow them to fly in atmosphere without hover or time bands. Like his last ship, the Merkabah had grav plating that kept the three decks at a constant .9 G. It had the standard guns and exterior shielding but fewer torpedoes. Unlike his last posting, the Merkabah did not have time bands for near-light-speed.

  The Merkabah’s bridge was nothing like his last one, either. In the center was a holo-projector about a meter and a half in diameter. Seated around the holo at computer terminals were priests in Luddeccean Green robes. Some were weere and others human. The holo depicted the vessel’s exterior. Protruding from its hull midship were outriggers for the nets at two o’clock, six o’clock, and ten o’clock. On the holo, the net extended from the outriggers as faint lines of blue light. Studying the holo, Alaric said, “The outrigger at two o’clock is out of position.” The netting was faintly buckled around it.

  “Adjusting,” said the human priest at a terminal, and the net shifted.

  “We’re ready to test,” Ran breathed.

  “No.” Alaric shook his head, his nostrils flaring at Ran’s suggestion. “I want the outrigger withdrawn, and I want Agrawal to see why its extension was out of alignment,” he said, referring to their chief engineer.

  All ambient conversation on the bridge ceased. They were ready to be part of history, but so much of history was hidden. They had no idea how many historic human firsts were really the tenth or eleventh trial. Men who failed were all but forgotten. Alaric wanted to be known as a first, but he held every man’s life on the ship in his hand, and they would not be snuffed out by any avoidable error.

  “Sir,” Ran said. “If we delay the test we’ll be thrown off schedule.”

  The man had seen the phaser resistant, faster-than-light ship the android had escaped on. He had access to the same intel Alaric had, and yet he was behaving as though the Luddeccean System was secure. Turning to his commander, he spoke with deliberate calm. “We will make sure the outrigger deployment is fully functional before we engage the net.” They would be ready to depart from their destination in seconds.

  For a beat too long Ran did not respond, but then he said, “Very well.”

  “I will inform command of the delay,” Alaric said, heading to the conference room off the bridge. He would take the heat and give heat back if need be.

  “I’ll come too,” Ran said, falling into step behind him.

  Ran exhaled as soon as they were alone, and then he snapped, “You’re right. We should make sure the outriggers are deploying correctly before testing. They can’t expect us to keep to schedule while making us rely on weere.”

  Alaric paused. The small meeting room had portholes that currently faced the shattered ring of Time Gate 8. He could just make out the warm lights of command’s position at the opposite side. He turned to Ran. “We’re behind because this is a brand-new technology. The first near-light-speed vessel was months behind schedule.”

  Alaric saw his first’s hands curl before he snapped them behind his back.

  Raising an eyebrow, Alaric turned his attention to the comm.

  Three hours later, all the outriggers were successfully telescoping from the hull to their correct alignment. Alaric stood on the bridge, feeling out of his body. Gazing down at the net in the holo, he was too amazed to be terrified. The net flared around the illusory ship from the outriggers in a perfect sphere. Made up of the same dangerous and unstable particles that made hover technology and time bands possible, the net created a rift in space-time. It utilized more po
wer than the typical near-light-speed time bands, but utilized less power than a time gate. Instead of being anchored to metal, the particles were suspended in nearly invisible nets. Alaric had read the reports explaining this suspension. He’d done well in physics and mathematics but didn’t pretend to understand how it all worked.

  “Inform command we’re ready to perform the test,” he said.

  Alaric heard an ensign following his orders as he scanned the holo and the terminal readouts. The target was set. Alaric found himself holding his breath. He glanced at Ran. Their eyes met and Ran’s Adam’s apple bobbed. A few men on the bridge were praying.

  “Energize the net,” Alaric said.

  “Activated at port,” a priest declared.

  “Activated at starboard,” declared another priest.

  “Activated at keel,” declared the final priest.

  Alaric turned from the holo and gazed out the window. For a moment he was staring at Time Gate 8 again, and then the net became visible as tendrils of blue light. A warning light flashed red on the bridge, and an alarm sounded.

  At a terminal, a priest declared, “At current rate of drain, we’ll be out of power in—”

  Gravity vanished. The net flared outward, becoming a veil, and then contracted around the ship. Gravity returned, and Alaric fell forward in his seat, catching himself on his armrests, his safety harness digging into his shoulders. The alarm was silent, the red light no longer flashed, and the net was gone. So was Time Gate 8 and Luddeccea.

  Pressing the comm link, Alaric said, “Engineering report.” The alarms should not have sounded.

  Agrawal’s voice crackled through the bridge. “We’re fine, sir, and have enough juice for another jump. She’s just not used to such large, sudden drops in power.”

  A weight lifted from Alaric’s shoulders, and he actually laughed, relieved not to be dead, relieved that their engines weren’t damaged. Cheers went up around the deck. Remembering the purpose of their voyage and realizing they weren’t “out of the woods” yet, Alaric entered a command in the small terminal near his chair. Probably sensing Alaric’s concern, the men on the deck went silent. Alaric’s screen flickered, and his jaw dropped. It had worked. They had traveled 1.63 parsecs…instantly.

  Alaric raised his voice. “Gentlemen, we’ve done it. We have achieved gateless, faster-than-light travel.”

  Cheers rose around the bridge again. Men stood up and clapped each other on the back. A few weere and humans shook hands. Leaving his seat and walking among them, Alaric made a point of shaking the hand of one of the weere priests. Alaric’s face hurt, and it took him a moment to realize he was grinning ear-to-ear, using muscles that didn’t get a workout often.

  Ran clapped his hands for attention and said, “You may have heard that the Republic has a gateless faster-than-light ship.” The volume on the bridge dropped. Ran beamed and raised his chin. “But their ship is of alien origin. We built ours ourselves, men. Ourselves.”

  There were more cheers, but Alaric’s smile dropped. The Luddecceans hadn’t built it themselves. They were decades behind the Republic in tech—and what they did have was stolen. Usually, their tech was stolen from Republic pirates, but the “time-net” they’d just used was stolen from Time Gate 8.

  Over the last century, Luddeccean priests had been poring through the data banks of Time Gate 8. When Gate 8 attacked, Luddeccea had been part of the Republic, and the attack had appeared suicidal. Time gates were, for all intents and purposes, stationary. Their rings created the same sort of bubble in space-time that the Merkabah had just experienced—but only in the space within their ring. Gates could not transport themselves. But after decades of search, the priests, led by Archbishop Sato, had come across plans for the time-net. The gate hadn’t been planning suicide. It had been planning to transport itself away before the Galactic Fleet arrived. And now the technology had fallen into the hands of the people the gate had wanted to destroy.

  Ran’s fable of technological superiority made Alaric’s skin crawl and his teeth grind. The illogic of it made him wonder again if he hadn’t been born on the wrong side of the Kanakah Cloud.

  To the priest he’d shaken hands with, Alaric said, “Connect with command.” His lips turned up ruefully. The only way to reach command over 1.63 parsecs was by Q-comm—more stolen tech. Theirs just wasn’t wired into anyone’s skull. He surveyed the jubilant faces around the room, feeling oddly detached. Even if the tech wasn’t theirs, this was a human first. He was proud—and also relieved not to be at the heart of Luddeccea’s star like a few of the first unmanned test drones. He’d be seeing his sons again.

  The weere priest looked up at him and said, “Sir, it’s Archbishop Sato himself.”

  The bridge went silent.

  Alaric bowed toward the terminal. The archbishop appeared on the monitor. He was seated at a desk. The white werfle was at his left hand, blinking at the screen. The archbishop’s expression was flat, and Alaric had an immediate sense of foreboding.

  “Your Excellency,” Alaric said, keeping his voice level. “The test was a success.”

  Sato nodded. “Return to Station Base. We have to advance and modify our scheduled reveal of the Net Drive to the Republic.”

  Alaric pulled away from the screen. The plan had always been to reveal the Net Drive as deterrence against incursions into Luddeccean space—but that reveal had been scheduled months in the future. He waited to hear details of the revised time table and “modifications.”

  Touching his glasses, the archbishop said instead, “And Captain…congratulations.”

  The archbishop disconnected. A wild cheer went up from the bridge, but the word “modify” kept replaying in Alaric’s mind. He scanned the bridge, eyeing the men at their various command stations, and he looked down at the holo showing the outriggers and the net, but also all the Merkabah’s armaments and shielding. He clasped his hands behind his back.

  They could have sent a simple research team in a simple shuttle on this first human leap through time and space. That would have been the logical, economical, first leap in normal times and ordinary circumstances. Instead, they’d outfitted a warship and sent Alaric with a crew that included veteran spacemen. In extraordinary circumstances, gambles were appropriate.

  Not twenty minutes later, they docked with the husk of Time Gate 8 and a team of thirty-two Elite Infantry Guardsmen were added to the crew, along with the Archbishop Kenji Sato himself at their head, seated in his wheelchair, the white werfle perched on his shoulders. Ujk, the weere priest from the interrogation room, followed closely behind. Evidently, the reveal of the Luddeccean prowess was going to be immediate. Certainly they had intelligence that said it was necessary, but was the archbishop’s presence necessary? On the one hand, that the archbishop was willing to risk his life said much about the man, on the other…

  Bowing as the archbishop was wheeled onto the bridge, Alaric said, “Sir, I don’t know that Luddeccea can spare you for this trip.” He had been the only one to hold the planet together during the plague.

  Sighing, Sato said, “Captain, humanity cannot afford not to have me for this trip. I have some intelligence to share.”

  An hour later, Alaric sat in the meeting room, dazedly gazing at the white werfle. It had crawled from its perch on the archbishop’s shoulder to the table and met his gaze with slowly blinking eyes.

  “You are sure of this intelligence?” Alaric said.

  “Of course His Excellency is sure,” Ran said.

  More evenly, Ujk said, “We are sure.”

  “It’s a gamble,” Alaric said.

  “But you understand the stakes,” said Sato.

  “If the intelligence is correct,” Alaric replied. “If it isn’t correct, intruding in Galactic Republic space—even space that is only marginally its territory—will be seen as an act of war and we may be at war with the Republic within the next Luddeccean standard day.” He couldn’t fathom that what he’d just been told was true. It was too
impossible. Too fantastic. As fantastic as a plague devised by werfles. “If we go to war with the Republic, we will lose.” One ship wouldn’t be enough against the Galactic Fleet armada that would stream through the Kanakah Cloud gate if the intelligence was wrong.

  “War with the Republic is the least of our worries,” said Sato.

  Alaric couldn’t squash the feeling that this was madness, that they were being set up.

  Ran shifted in his chair. “War isn’t a certainty in any event, Your Excellency. The Republic is weak. Their people are divided and lazy.”

  Alaric rapped his hand against the armrest. Yes, the Republic’s people were divided and some might well be lazy, but the Fleet was another matter. Ran was wrong and also eager. If the archbishop was wrong, eagerness would make war a certainty. A cool head would be needed to soothe any damage, and that wasn’t Ran.

  “We would appreciate your cool head in this crisis,” Sato said, too accurately echoing Alaric’s own thoughts.

  Alaric went cold, and his eyes rose to the archbishop’s, but Sato was eyeing the werfle. Alaric had the disquieting sensation that the galaxy had just begun rotating in the opposite direction, that everything he knew and believed was wrong, but all he said was, “We will prepare for the attack, Your Excellency.”

  16

  Nature Against the Machine

  6T9’s descent came to an abrupt halt half a meter from the ground. The sensory receptors beneath his arms screamed and flashed red. Walker was over a meter above him, dangling from her own harness. The safety straps holding Dr. Lang on the stretcher were only designed to keep her from rolling off the side, and the slender woman slipped through the restraints toward 6T9. Her feet and the case impacted against his chest and stomach with lung-collapsing force, and all his sensors in his abdomen screamed and flashed their warnings, too. Self-preservation functions urging him to let go of the stretcher warred with his human preservation functions. Human preservation won out, but the conflict was excruciating.