Interstellar Starpilots

by F Stephan

  “I’ll lead you through this one last jump and you’ll reach a safe place. You will recuperate, repair, and we’ll fly again.”

  The jump had been successful, but on the exit, he had gone into a deep coma, his body and mind too damaged to wake up again. His ships had reached Volpre, guided by the automated control center, and all but a few trusted servants fled upon landing, abandoning him. The station’s automated nanite repaired everything they could on his ships. When they found him, an anomaly without a template in their design database, they did the best what they could, preserving the machinery around him, preserving his life.

  When his mind awoke after a millennium of slumber and strange dreams, he wasn’t entirely human anymore, his body meshed with both the medical center and the control consoles around him in a tangle of metal plates, cables, nerves, and human flesh. When he understood what he had become, his mind fled in a red dream from which he took two more millennia to escape.

  At last, he began to rebuild the station and redirect the humans on the path of science and technology. They had made him their nightmare, their shadow, and he became it, guiding them from the dark. He ached to become human again, and for that, he needed, even more than before, to find the way back to his own lab. Very quickly he realized he needed to find humans clean of nanites. He needed to provide the repair nanites with a neutral template to help them rebuild his lost body.

  Through slow radio waves, he sent out messages within Volpre and to Ullem and his former supporters. A few answered his call and began to spread his vision. It was a slow process, but he had learned patience over the years. A century before he was ready to leave Volpre, the Federation contacted the station. How he had hated those humans of the Federation! They had come too late for him, everything he had wished for, free and out of his control. Them and their principles of nonintervention. He could feel her hand behind them. He had known his sister for ages untold and he would recognize her work anywhere. His agents soon confirmed that someone was working against his ideas. How long before the fight for the minds become a real war? He hid and waited for more.

  When the Federation made a hub of Volpre, he tested the humans of the Federation, but none were free of his nanites. They all bore her mark, even if she was discreet, self-effacing. And her agents were still searching for him. After all this time, she remained alert.

  He couldn’t jump easily through hyperspace anymore, could only manage a few jumps at a time now. He bid his time further still, subverting more and more humans in the Federation, building a network of allies and spies.

  Now, the time was drawing near. The last human parts of his body were beginning to degenerate, and soon, he wouldn’t be able to cure himself. He had to move on before it was too late.

  “What are the next steps, Master?” The agent’s voice drew him out of his reverie. He knew his very presence disquieted humans, but the past troubled him more and more often.

  “My friend, I’ll leave today to get closer to Alkath. I need to be in position for the next phase of my plan. And I’m also concerned with the human’s interference in that area. It’s time to get them out of the way.”

  “Can I be of service?”

  “Yes. I need you to deliver a message to that coward Lapren on Ullem. He needs to set his part of the plan in motion.”

  “What if he rejects your proposal?”

  “My friend, he needs us more than we need him.” The other chuckled, an empty sound in the hall. “And, we’ve got an agent close to him, to help him do as he must. This is under control. Once it’s done, you’ll go back to Earth and prepare for my arrival. I’ll be there within six to nine months.”

  “They have an incredibly low level of traffic between the planet and space. It won’t be easy to smuggle you to the planet!”

  “Find a way, my friend. There always is one. Take a few months if you need to. I trust you on this. Now, it is time for you to go and return to your quarter. I know my presence isn’t easy on you. Rest and prepare your work. Let me know what you need, and you’ll have it.”

  The agent rose, put his helmet back on and hurried out of the hangar toward the inhabited areas. At the same time, the hangar’s outer door opened, and cranes slowly pushed the ship out of his cocoon into space. This would be his first trip in four thousand years. A lesser Daughter at the central control saw the move and classified the ship as a random asteroid. Just a flick of her hand and the forbidden area of Volpre was at last free of shadows.

  Brian

  Alkath, 2140 AD, October

  While the Ancient starship moved to a seldom-used jump point in Volpre, Brian, on Alkath, watched the stars above him with fascination. Behind him, he heard Loupiac’s frail voice. “Now, find Dupner and draw me the fastest path you can find. You can use your nanites if you focus on energy only.”

  They had failed him once again that day. Alvam had suggested a simple maneuver, to help him win a few points, and he had been unable to complete it. It had led to new strife within his crew with points lost. He dreaded activating them now, fearing a new failure.

  He began working slowly without any help. He knew where to look for Dupner and he could find jump points on his own. He began drawing routes, computing the different lengths. As the complexity increased, beads of sweat began to form on his forehead.

  “You can’t do it without them. Go.”

  Brian suddenly closed his eyes, recited his mantra, and activated his nanites.

  In a minute, he drew the route in the air and turned back to his mentor. “The fastest path is through the Horse Nebula.”

  “Could you confirm the number of ships of that path?”

  Brian puzzled the question out for a few seconds before activating a link to the Datadump in parallel. “It isn’t traveled at all. The traffic goes first to Baol and then to Dupner. It’s a good week longer with ten more jumps. It’s the third best option.” Loupiac looked at him without a word. “Master, I don’t see any reason why?”

  “Brian, I’ve told you not to call me master. Recheck your route between jumps two and three. It starts from inside a star within the nebula. To jump from there and survive, you’d need to grab the jump anchor from outside the star envelope.”

  “But, that’s impossible!” blurted Brian.

  “It’s difficult, yes. But impossible, no. You’ve done something similar already. Freeriders can do it.” Loupiac raised his hand before Brian could interrupt him again. “What’s interesting is that your nanites don’t fail you when you use them with low stress and energy request. This type of reaction is very weird. At one point near the end, a mist of nanites began to form around you, like there was some fight inside you. Strange.” Loupiac lapsed into his own world, leaving Brian to think through his words.

  “Am I doomed then?” Brian’s heart sank as the transfer to a navigator job became more and more unavoidable.

  “Doomed? No, I wouldn’t say so.” Loupiac shook himself. Brian suspected he spent more time in his memories than in the present these days. “If we were on Adheek, I’d send you to see Doctor Nilse and we would figure it out. Here, our doctor, Soum, is only interested in nanite injections. He’s useless for us. We need to find another way for you.”

  “What can I do? My crew won’t respect me for much longer if I continue to be unreliable.”

  “Breathe. That’s always a good start.” Nothing ever remained serious with Loupiac. “You’re going into space next week. Keep your nanite usage at a minimum. Focus on energy readings and leave the rest out. In the meantime, I’ll look into the Core Data Sphere for more ideas.” Loupiac had a bad coughing fit. “Young man, it’s time for bed for old men like me. We’ll talk more when you return.” Then, he closed his eyes and fell fast asleep.

  Brian rose slowly and left the house without a sound. He toured the island before walking back to his room, unable to sleep. Once again, he ended up on the roof watching the sunrise with the gulzari family. He had received news of Earth, mostly bad, and of his sister,
including a picture of his nephew. She was making it in the corporate world while he was failing up here. He couldn’t stand the constant scrutiny of his every move while she transformed it into a force that drove her. If only he could talk to his sister . . . He missed her, missed talking with his father in a less complex or controlled world. With the morning sky reddening, he saw also a hand setting up a satellite dish out of a window in a small outbuilding and getting it back inside as quickly thereafter. Weird, I thought energy usage was tightly controlled here. Well, my unknown morning buddy, I won’t snitch on you.

  Heikert

  Lelet, 2140 AD, October

  The small ship was set on a slow collision course to the dark side of Lelet’s second moon, the one not visible from the planet. Moonlight had argued against it all she could, but once Bolgaren had suggested it, she couldn’t fight it. She understood the need for more direct evidence, but she was afraid of detection and its potential consequences with the paranoid planet. She curled up in a corner of the bridge, looking anxiously at a series of 3-Ds around her.

  Listening to her fears, the cybergeek had rigged an alarm that would go off if, or when, an electromagnetic beam scanned them, and they waited for any sign of alert. They had powered down the ship to the bare minimum, leaking close to no energy. Bolgaren took refuge in a virtual environment and fled the wait. Master Heikert made sure they ate, slept, and kept healthy. He had been through such periods many times with his wife and he knew how to take care of his crew.

  One day, in the middle of the two cold weeks needed to reach it, Moonlight removed her 3-D and looked him in the eyes.

  “What happened, Master?”

  He was surprised by the sudden question. “What? When?”

  “Firstrat Bolgor told me you had once carried out many such missions and you had stopped once, never to return. Why stop? And why come back?”

  This was unusually direct for her. Bolgaren had opened his eyes and was looking at him, brought out of his virtual games. Time for the truth? Maybe so.

  “Thirty years ago, I went on an exploration with my wife Nellym and our crew. The navigators on Alkath believed they had found an Ancient space station. They were right. We reached it normally enough and I disembarked for a reconnaissance.” Images flashed back at him, the difficult jump to reach that star system, their elation at finding the dark object orbiting a giant planet on the outer edge of the habitable zone. “I entered it alone with a jetpack to check the larger compartment. I had just found what we call a secure shelter, breathable air, and water on the inner side of the station when Nellym caught a strange signal farther inside the system. I was far inside and moving back would take me two hours at least. She decided to go and have a look.” Heikert winced in pain. It had been just like her, to jump on a new mystery. “It was a trap, she jumped close to the coordinates and two ships were waiting for her on an interception course.”

  “Like what happened to theoldcow?” Bolgaren was truly paying attention, it seemed.

  “Same tactics. Light years away. It triggered my curiosity.”

  “But, how did you escape? They came to check on the station, didn’t they?” Moonlight might be a serious engineer, she wanted to hear to the end of the story.

  Heikert looked at her briefly. Nellym had shared the same intense glare whenever she wanted something. He sighed, facing again those hard memories. “I had little time to act. I wanted to strike back but I had no weapons of any sort. While I was looking for an armory, I found a link toward a remote satellite, kilometers away from the station. I grabbed a survival tank and I used my jetpack to reach it and anchor it. The other ships came in and searched the station for two days before leaving. I was hooked into the network and I took detailed pictures of three crewmembers. There was one who stayed hidden in the second ship the whole time and I couldn’t get him.” Failure still ate at him after all this time.

  “When they left, did you jump on the ship to get carried away to civilizations?”

  The question from Bolgaren was so insane Heikert laughed, easing some tension. “This isn’t a virtual game, you can’t stay outside a ship during a jump and survive. No, when they left, I flew back to the station and cowered there, still in shock. Later, I found a shutdown message to an Ancient ship that had been coming back to the station. I don’t know who or why they sent it, but that ship was halfway around the giant planet. With that information, I rigged one of the station’s survival pods and flew to the scout. It took me a month of slow travel to find it, another two months to reactivate fully, and then I could move back to the Federation, not through the route Nellym had taken but through the route the other had taken.” Heikert still had regular nightmares of this period. “She guided me during that time. Talking as I carried out all tasks on the ship.” The others looked blankly at him, disturbed by his tale.

  “But you said Federation intelligence had pieced together only one path.”

  “So I did. Someone was better at this game, I found out.”

  “And the crewmember, did you find them?” Moonlight had an eager smile on her face, eager for the punishment that should conclude the story.

  “Dead. A ship blew up while flying back to Ullem. No survivors. No bodies to recover.”

  “Too simple.” Bolgaren wasn’t convinced. “Any other clue? What about the other ship?”

  “Lost for the last thirty years. And I’ve been looking everywhere I could think. No electronic traces of any sort anywhere. The only clue we have is the attack pattern and from time to time, a red nanites cloud. Not Ullemites. But close with a specific signature.” Heikert pondered his word, bringing back to mind the vision on those nanites.

  “Do you think this plague could have the same type of nanites in it?”

  Heikert nodded grimly but ferociously. I’m sure the fourth didn’t die. I’ll find you.

  Brian

  Earth, 2140 AD, October

  Brian knocked at Poulem’s door. On a puzzled “Yes?” he entered quickly, not wishing to be seen in the corridor. Poulem sat straight at her desk, facing Illoma, a complex 3-D star chart in front of them.

  Illoma turned a dazzling, even if surprised, smile on him. “Brian, you wanted to see me?”

  “Sorry, Illoma. I had a question for Poulem.”

  She seemed to flinch a little from the answer but rose gracefully. “We were finished. I’ll leave you two to talk in that case.” With two quick strides and a whiff of perfume, she left the room, her presence still lingering for Brian.

  Poulem pushed her chair back and rose, slightly taller than Brian, an icon of the old time. “You had a question? In Ullem, boys only come on specific occasions.” She seemed amused, yet a bit stressed by his apparently unusual request.

  “I don’t think it’s that type of question.” Poulem breathed in relief and Brian had new insight into her. Still expecting Alvam? How long have you been waiting? Did he ever visit you? Brian hesitated and plunged. “You told me of what you faced to graduate from Ullem and come here. Did you face a time where your nanites got out of control?”

  “Does it happen to you?” There was a sudden worry in her voice. “You fear they will get out of control and suddenly they don’t work anymore?”

  Brian nodded silently while she looked at him, studying him from head to toe.

  “You don’t look like you have that type of problem.” She was looking for something, but Brian couldn’t guess what. “Yes, it happened to some of us. My younger cousin, even. Alvam had it for a while but recovered, a rare event.”

  “Can you tell more of how he did it? Should I ask him?”

  “No.” She was afraid of the suggestion. “He never said. Never agreed to talk about it, even. No one remembers it except me. He would know.” Brian accepted her request with a simple gesture. “He only talked about that old superstition, regarding the Sons of the Prophet. That the nanites would bend to a strong enough will and he had had to grow enough for that.”

  “What happened to the other?�
� Brian feared the answer, but he had come for answers and had to see this to the end.

  “The same thing that always happens. Shot and incinerated to ashes.” Her elegant voice sounded coarse, her eyes were downcast, her cheeks suddenly moist.

  “Sorry.” Brian burned with shame for having asked it. I’m doomed.

  “But you don’t have the same type of nanites. You face something else.” She looked up at him, gathering herself. “That was the first thing I checked. Still, I may be able to help if you’re willing to confide in me.”

  Who wouldn’t trust a goddess? Her question went deeper than that, with true honesty that rang in Brian’s hears. “I’ve already done so, Poulem. Anything would help.”

  “Do you have a strong fear? Something that blocks your nanites?”

  “You know about it, you’ve seen it. Fire. I can’t keep most of them with fire around.”

  “You can’t evade it or block the thought. Because once unleashed, your mind will find it and bring it forward. Your fear will take over and you’ll lose control. Many of the Federation officials don’t want to admit their superpilots can feel fear, but this is true. All of us feel fear.” It reminded Brian of the captain who had brought them from Adheek to Volpre. He had been scared to hell by every jump he had done.

  “So, I can’t do anything about it?”

  “The only thing you can do is to laugh at it and dive into it until it’s no longer a fear. Either you best it enough to overcome it or you’ll remain its servant. Next time you see some fire, put your hand into it. Until it stops burning.” Her voice had returned to normal, controlled and beautiful. But behind it was a profound sense of despair. How many of her schoolmates had she lost this way? Facing their fears until they died or survived.