by David Brin
“I make out at least two basic ship types,” he diagnosed, peering into the analytical scope. “One of ’em might be Jophur. The other … I can’t tell.”
In fact, it was hard to get a fix on anything, because their own vessel kept heaving and shuddering. Kaa yanked the station back into normal space whenever his fey instincts told him that a new chaos wave was coming, or when a flapping crease in B Level threatened to fold over itself and smash anything caught between.
Crossing this unstable zone of hyperreality — a rather short span by earlier standards — became a treacherous series of mad sprints that got worse, dura by dura. Each flicker seemed to take greater concentration than the last, demanding more from the gasping engines. And yet, there could be no pause for rest. It was essential to reenter hyperspace as soon as possible, for at any moment B Level might detach completely, leaving them stranded, many light months from any refuge. Food and air would give out long before Harry’s small group might traverse such a vast distance of flat metric.
Too bad we Earthlings never pursued our early knack at impulse rocketry, after making contact with the Civilization of Five Galaxies. It seemed the most ridiculous of all wolfling technologies, to make ships capable of brute-force acceleration toward lightspeed. With so many cheap shortcuts available from the Great Library, who needed such a tool kit of outlandishly extravagant tricks?
The answer was apparent.
We do. Anyone who wants to travel around Galaxy Four may need them, from now till the end of time.
At least there were clear signs of progress. Each jump brought them visibly closer to that warm, sturdy sun. Yet, the tense moments passed with aching slowness, as they followed a rubble-strewn trail of devastated star-craft.
“I guess that Jophur battleship must have got word to their headquarters, while it was off chasing Streaker,” Dwer concluded. “Their reinforcements arrived at the worst moment, just in time to be smashed by the Rupture.”
“We should rejoice,” mused Kiwei. “I have no wish to live in a Jophur satrapy.”
“Hmph,” Harry commented. “That assumes all of their fleet was caught in hyperspace during the worst of it. For all we know, a whole squadron may have made it safely. They could be waiting for us at Jijo.”
It was a dismal prospect — to have endured so much, only to face capture at the end by humorless stacks of uncompromising sap-rings.
“Well,” Dwer said, after a few more edgy jumps, when the yellow star was already looking quite sunlike. “We won’t have long to wait now.”
He pressed close to the forwardmost window, as eager to spy Jijo as Rety was to evade the verdict of destiny.
Earth
THE SOLAR SYSTEM WAS LITTERED WITH wreckage from more than two years of seesaw fighting — shattered reminders of stiff wolfling resistance that surely came as a rude shock to invaders expecting easy conquest. Fourthhand tales of that savage struggle had reached Streaker’s crew, even at the remote Fractal World. Apparently, the defense was already the stuff of legends.
Ion clouds and rubble traced the inward path of that fighting retreat … vaporized swathes in the cometary ice belt … still-smoldering craters on Triton and Nereid … and several asteroid-sized clumps of twisted metal, tumbling in orbit beyond Uranus.
It must have been quite a show. Sorry I missed it.
More debris was added recently, when the Great Rupture struck. Ships that tried any kind of FTL maneuvering during the causality storm had been lucky to reach normal space again with more consistency than an ice slurpie. Saturn’s orbit was now a glittering junkyard, soon to become a vast ring around the sun.
Unfortunately, long-range scans showed more than enough big vessels left to finish the job. Scores of great dreadnoughts — several of them titans compared to the enormous Polkjhy — gathered in martial formations along the new battlefront, all too near Earth’s shimmering blue spark.
The first picket boats hailed Streaker well beyond the orbit of Ceres. A bizarre, mixed squadron consisting of corvettes and frigates from the Tandu, Soro, and gorouph navies, joined in uneasy federation. They were alert, despite the havoc that residual chaos waves still played on instruments. When Streaker ignored their challenge and kept plunging rapidly sunward, the nearest ships raced closer to open fire with deadly accuracy.
Blades of razorlike force scythed at the Earthship — only to glance off its transmuted hull. Heat beams were absorbed quietly, with no observable effect, dissipating harmlessly into another level of spacetime.
If these failures fazed the enemy, they did not show it openly. Rushing closer, several lead vessels launched volleys of powerful, intelligent missiles, hurtling toward Streaker at great speed. According to Suessi, this was the worst threat. Direct energy weapons had little effect on the Transcendent’s coating. But physical shock could disrupt anything made of matter, if it came hard and fast enough, in a well-timed sequence of shaped concussions.
As if aware of that danger, Streaker’s sapient outer layer suddenly became active. Tendrils fluttered, like cilia surrounding a bacterium. Swarms of tiny objects flew off their waving tips, darting to meet the incoming barrage. Under extreme magnification, the strange interceptors looked like tiny pockets of writhing protoplasm, jet-black, but disconcertingly alive.
“Reified concepts,” explained the disembodied Niss Machine, sounding awed and unnerved. “Destructive programs, capable of making a machine terminally self-hostile. They don’t even have to enter computers as data, but can do so by physical contact.”
“You’re talking about freestanding memes!” Gillian replied. “I thought they can’t exist here in real space, without a host to carry—”
“Apparently, we’re wrong about that.” The Niss shrugged with its funnel of spinning lines. “Remember, Transcendents are a melding of life orders. They are part meme, themselves.”
She nodded, willing to accept the incredible.
The expanding memic swarm collided with the incoming barrage, but effects and outcomes weren’t evident at first. Tension filled Streaker’s bridge, as the missiles continued on course for several more seconds …
… only to veer abruptly aside, missing the Earthship and spiraling off manically before igniting in flashy torrents of brilliance, lighting up the asteroid belt.
The dolphins exulted, but Gillian quashed any celebratory thoughts as premature. She recalled a warning, from the Transcendent being who had visited her office.
“Do not be deceived by illusions of invulnerability. You have been given advantages. But they are limited.
“It would be wise to recall that you are not gods.
“Not yet, that is.…”
Indeed, Gillian wasn’t counting on a thing. Soon, the enemy would learn not to send mere robots against a ship defended by hordes of predatory ideas. Or else they would attack with overwhelming numbers.
Still, I guess the ends justify the memes, she thought, raising a brief, ironic smile. Tom would have liked the pun — a real groaner.
Right now, in the heat of battle, she missed him with a pang that felt fresh, as if years and kiloparsecs meant nothing, and their parting had been yesterday.
The next line of ships — destroyers — had little more effect. A few of their missiles managed to detonate nearby, but not in a coordinated spread. Streaker’s protective layers dealt with the flux.
When Akeakemai asked for permission to fire back, Gillian refused.
“We might damage a few,” she said. “But they’d notice our offensive capacity is tiny, compared to defense. I’d rather leave them guessing we’re equally formidable, both ways. So formidable, we can afford to ignore them.”
Of course it was all part of a bluff she had worked out. Her greatest one yet.
A new force rose to meet Streaker — this time consisting of sleek, powerful cruisers. Meanwhile, the giant dreadnoughts near Earth began changing formation, arranging themselves into a hollow shell, its cusp aimed toward Gillian’s ship. Loudspeakers groaned
, twittered and beeped in several formal languages, as commanders of the united fleet beamed a final warning.
IDENTIFY YOUSELF, OR BE DESTROYED.
She wondered.
After all this time, hounding us to every far corner of the Five Galaxies, have we really changed so much that you don’t recognize your intended prey — coming now to beard you in your den?
Gillian decided.
It’s time to end the silence. Answer their beamed challenge with one of our own.
Pressing a lever, she unleashed her prerecorded message — one that had drawn her entire concentration ever since Streaker dived into that cool black tunnel milliseconds ahead of a supernova’s fist. It was inspired partly by her own interview with the transcendent being.
More than one can play games of illusion, she had thought. Of all the tricks pulled by her godlike visitor, the one that impressed her least had been that showy series of visual poses, mimicking everyone from Tom and Jake Demwa to Hikahi and Creideiki.
Mirages are a dime a dozen.
If Earthlings possessed any craft that was equal to the best Galactic technology, it lay in the art of manipulating optic images.
The play began with one of her oldest disguises — one she routinely used to fool Streaker’s stolen Library unit.
Appearing suddenly in the holo tank, a stern Thennanin admiral strode forth, preening his elbow and shoulder spikes, puffing up his extravagant head-crest, and clearing his vents with a deep harrrumph, before commencing to speak in stately, formal Galactic Six, addressing his remarks to those besieging Earth.
“Brethren! Fellow high patrons of starfaring civilization and descendants of the Great Progenitors! I come before you now at a crucial juncture of choice. You, along with all your clients and clan mates, may profit or suffer because of decisions made during this nexus of opportunity.
“The time has come to look past blinders of false belief. Your presence here (which my clan had the great wisdom to resist) is anathema to destiny. It brings you nothing but cascading sorrow, replenished from an inexhaustible supply of hardship that the universe willingly provides the obstinate!”
It really was a very good Thennanin, quite pompous and credible. But credibility — even plausibility — wasn’t the point here.
No, it was the sheer effrontery of this ruse that should gall them.
Her ersatz admiral continued.
• • •
“Consider the facts, misguided brethren.
“Number one.
“To whom did the Progenitors reveal relics of great-and-profound value?
“To you? Or even to the Old Ones you revere?”
While speaking those words, the Thennanin started to melt, shifting and reconfiguring in a much more gaudy and disturbing manner than the Transcendent had. (Her visitor’s intent had been to focus Gillian’s thoughts, while her aim right now was to frighten … then enrage.)
The big admiral finished transforming into a quite different entity that now floated in midair, glossy and gray, resembling Captain Creideiki at his most handsome and charismatic, before an accident permanently scarred his handsome sleek head.
“No they did not! The Progenitors did not disclose hidden truths to you, or to any noble clan or alliance!
“In fact, the Ghost Fleet was revealed to one such as this!”
Creideiki’s image thrashed its tail flukes for emphasis.
“A member of the youngest of all client races. A race whose talents would have made any senior patron eager to adopt them, yet who proudly call themselves members of wolfling Earthclan!
“Next, consider yet another fact. The way the Earthship, Streaker, evaded all your searches and clever schemes to capture it! Even when you bribed and suborned the Great Institutes, did such acts of treasonous cheating avail you at all?”
• • •
The figure began shifting again, continuing, sotto voce, with teasing GalSix undertones.
(“Tell me, brethren. Have you begun to guess the identity of the vessel now plummeting toward you, laughingly defiant of your vaunted power?
“Do you need more clues? You shall have them!”)
A male human shape replaced Creideiki. She had tried using Tom as a model, but that proved too hard. So she settled on old Jake Demwa … which was probably a good idea anyway. The Soro would instantly recognize him from two centuries of frustration, when he had proved their bane on numerous occasions.
“Fact three: Despite great wealth and innumerable lives spent subduing the Terrans’ homeworld, what have you accomplished here, except to make their legend grow? Even on the verge of apparent success, can you be certain this is not yet another ruse? A trick, meant to draw in your reserves? To make their unexpected triumph seem all the greater in others’ eyes?
“Even if you win, and the last human lies dead — with every dolphin and chimp readopted by some humorless clan — will you withstand the vengeance others may then take upon you, in the name of martyred Earth?
“Ask yourselves this. Might these wolflings rise even stronger, out of death? Either in fact, or else in a flood of new ideas? Ideas that will span the New Era to come, diverting Galactic culture down paths you can’t imagine?”
Streaker shuddered. The lights flickered. On other screens, Gillian glimpsed a brief, violent, one-sided battle, as the cruiser flotilla fired volleys while sweeping past. Either they were getting a knack for using dumbed-down brains in their missiles or there were simply too many, this time. For whatever reason, about a dozen got through, detonating uncomfortably close.
Suessi gave a thumbs-up sign, indicating the pattern wasn’t focused enough to be dangerous. But it showed the limits of their defense.
Just so long as the enemy can’t tell. Let them think we’re just shrugging it all off, for a bit longer.
In the holo tank, Jake Demwa faded into another shape — one of the elder races Streaker encountered at the vast, chilly habitat called the Fractal World. Without pause, that stark visage continued the soliloquy.
“Or take fact number four: Did any of you foretell the Great Rupture? So conservative were you all, so trusting of your own elders, that you had no idea the Old Ones were manipulating the Great Library, and the other Institutes! For their own reasons, they kept the Civilization of Five Galaxies ignorant. We had no inkling to prepare, or that this sort of massive spatiotemporal breakup has happened before!
“Yet, a warning did come. Even while beset by attackers, the Terrans did their citizenly duty, broadcasting an alert based upon their alternative mathematics.
“Is it a coincidence that great harm befell those who ignored the warning? Those blinded by their contempt for wolfling science, who chose obstinate ideology over pragmatism?”
(“Have you guessed yet, brethren? Have ye figured out who streaks toward you now? Insolent. Heedless of the reverence you feel yourselves due? Can you sniff/sense/feel/grok the very thing you covet … and secretly fear?”)
Cruisers fell in behind Streaker, cutting off retreat. Looming just ahead, the unified armada of capital ships left their siege positions to meet this challenge, spreading to envelop and enclose the impudent newcomer in an inescapable mesh of fire.
“They’re talking to each other,” informed the Niss Machine. “From battleship to battleship. A lot more discussion than you’d expect for warships going into a fight. It’s coded, but I can tell it is pretty heated.
“Is it possible they don’t understand your hints and clues, Dr. Baskin? Perhaps you’ve been too coy. Shall we go ahead and tell them who we are?”
She shook her head.
“Relax. They’re probably just arguing over how best to kill us.”
Streaker had one hope. This kind of envelopment pattern meant the enemy must concentrate their volleys into a very narrow zone, or else risk damaging each other. If the Earthship could create uncertainty over its exact position, that might result in a focused blast that was offset just enough, so their Transcendent-shell would not be over
whelmed. Then, amid the blinding aftermath, Streaker would swerve away and run for it! With any luck, this amazing survival would make the enemy pause long enough for a good head start … before the entire fleet came baying after her.
The aim was simple: to buy time, giving Earth a brief respite — a chance to quickly rearm the Luna fortresses — arid possibly get a few mothers and children away before the end.
“They are p-preparing to fire!” announced the detection officer, who then squealed a warning in Primal Delphin. “Here come sharkssss!”
Gillian felt palpable twinges go off in her mind as several hundred speedy missiles leaped from launching tubes, arming themselves as they raced toward Streaker. At this range, many would carry psi and probability warheads, as well as annihilation charges.
Streaker’s protective shell cast forth swarms of countermemes, but this time the effort would clearly be inadequate.
“You know what to do,” she told Akeakemai, trusting her life to his skill. This was not a job for a pilot but for a gifted geometrodynamics engineer.
Lacking anything else to do while waiting for obliteration, Gillian turned back to the scene playing out within the holo tank — the same message being watched on the command deck of every battleship.
The last of her simulated Old Ones started to dissolve. And yet — (copying tricks she had learned from the Transcendent) — the voice went on, using tones that were intentionally infuriating, patronizing, and serenely confident.
“Can you see the symbol on this vessel’s prow? Is it the familiar emblem of five spiral rays? Or has something else taken its place? Can you recognize the nature of our new shell?
