The Tau Ceti Diversion

by Chris McMahon

  Although he feared the worst after such a vast period of elapsed time, the Fountain had searched all the hatching areas, and the nearby forests where the growing Fin feeders — the Fintil young — should have been. He found trace remains of the hatched eggs, yet there had been no sign of the innocent, lumbering quadrupeds. There should have been. The Fin were dumb animals who never wandered far from food. He examined marker animals — those whose physiology was similar to the Fin feeders — for diseases, but their populations were as he expected, with no sign of a plague that may have affected the Fin. He deployed aerial probes that surveyed the biosystem, fearing the evolution of a new predator in the carefully designed environment, yet there was no sign of a threat. The whole dark side had been crafted to nurture the Fin feeders for the long decades as they grew, matured, and at last began the Change to adult Fintil.

  A sharp concussion sounded in the distance, followed by a deeper rumble that echoed across the valley. Perhaps a landslide? If so, it was a major one. He lowered the spectral analyzer and turned away from the brightness of the crystalline mountain. His senses expanded, flowing south toward the concussion. For a brief moment, he felt the presence of an alien mind.

  His wings beat faster, and he felt himself rising up, the analyzer forgotten in his hands.

  Aliens!

  This is why his beloved children had not reached him. Cru had been invaded. He had been a fool not to consider it. The Fintil had been alone too long. His mind grew dark as he saw how vulnerable the growing progeny of the Fintil would be to spacefaring aliens — new races who had no conception of the ancient laws that preserved peace in this quadrant. He reviewed the weapons at his disposal. Weapons of awesome power. To the Fintil, the dark side was sacrosanct. The eons-old races that formed the confederation of which they were a member all understood this. That an alien would even dare to disturb the Fintil mid-cycle was crime enough. To enter the dark side … if they had destroyed the precious progeny of his race, they and their home worlds would suffer a terrible retribution.

  With a burst of speed, he swept toward the fading rumble, checking his shielding devices. All of the instruments registered at full power, as they should. The devices used on the dark side were activated and powered by part of the spectrum emitted by the transmission network.

  First, he must seek out the invaders. These aliens who had dared to threaten his children.

  Then he must destroy them.

  CHAPTER 16

  Karic sat watching the cave entrance. The rumble of the falling rocks had long ago subsided, the billowing clouds of dust settling across the higher slopes or swallowed by the damp mists of the jungle below.

  Mara raised a hand to her temple, gingerly touching the small wound there. Andrai had left an hour ago to explore the depths of the cave. “What now?”

  “We need the lander. The suspension sets in the lander core are the key to our survival. I had hoped we could do that without outright conflict with the Imbirri — using the defensive shield to protect the new base camp around the lander — but the Awakener is too prepared for us. Too intent on seeing us dead … and he has an army.” Karic let out a long breath. There would be no bloodless victory now. “We are going to have to fight our way to the screen, then to the lander. For that we will need weapons. Equipment.”

  Mara gathered the long strands of her dark hair, which had become loose in their flight from the Awakener. Her fingers moved quickly to bind it into two tight braids. The whole time her eyes never left him.

  “We cannot outrun them on the ground,” continued Karic. “With a second, fully fuelled pod, we could land, disassemble the screen and fly it to the core section. This time we’ll survey the site in detail before we approach. I’m not getting surprised again.”

  “So it’s back to that damn valley. A robotic drop, then back here again. This whole trip was a waste of time,” said Mara.

  Karic ignored the comment. “We should wait here for a while, then backtrack to the pod.”

  “Wait here?” Mara tied the two braids into a bun behind her head, then laid her hands on her thighs, fists clenched. “What if the Awakener discovers us in this cavern? He could make it our tomb with a single burst of that energy weapon. What’s to stop him destroying the lander? We have to get that shield around it now.”

  “The core section withstood that weapon once before.” Karic swallowed, trying to rid his mouth of the taste of bitter dust. In truth, he had no idea if the core section could withstand a determined assault from the Awakener’s energy weapon.

  “You really believe he won’t destroy it?”

  Karic knew that the Awakener would not be satisfied until he had destroyed them and every last trace of them. Until he had turned their bodies to ash like the fallen Imbirri. He also knew that reaching the lander or the shield was impossible right now. “We have no choice.” Wearily, he lifted up the heavy shaft of the inert weapon and examined it. If only they could fight the Awakener with a weapon that rivaled his. The tragedy was there had never been any need for violence. All the Starburst survivors had wanted to do was to find a quiet corner of the landscape in which to wait out the centuries while a rescue probe could reach them from Earth. All the survivors except for Janzen.

  He walked to the small cave entrance, searching the verges of the jungle outside for any sign of movement.

  Janzen, who had caused all this, was now the safest of all of them, in stasis in the lander’s core section. He may be the only one to survive. If so, it would be his story that would become history. Karic would be branded an incompetent traitor. He seethed with anger and frustration.

  The situation had conspired against them from the beginning. Why did their presence here have to precipitate such violence, such catastrophic change? Why did so many have to die?

  “We have to leave here,” said Mara, standing. “If we are found inside this cave, we are trapped.”

  Karic nodded, deep in thought. He tapped the heavy shaft of the scepter into his left palm as he paced. “I know, Mara. And yet what happens if he gets us in the open?”

  “Then perhaps we should recover the shield and bring it here.”

  “The Awakener will be watching the lander and the screen, waiting to see if we’ll return.”

  They stood silently beneath the oppressive mass of the mountain peak.

  When they had left the darkened valley in the pod only hours ago, it seemed as though nothing could stop them. The technology that had brought them to Cru was once more at their command. The lander’s core section and the intact stasis gear was right in their grasp. The prize — survival and ultimate return to Earth — had been so glittering, so enticing, that it had blinded them. Karic blamed himself. He should have foreseen the Awakener’s trap. It was only determination and luck that had enabled them to elude him. If the fuel in the pod had not been critical, they would have flown directly to the lander and a final destruction at the hands of the Awakener. Karic’s anger rose to fury. Yet there was nothing they could do except run for the darkened valley and hope they made it.

  “Karic. Mara.” Andrai emerged from the rear of the cave, grinning, his blond hair and face streaked with dirt.

  “Andrai, did you find anything useful?” asked Karic.

  “No. The fissure ends in solid rock about a kilometer inside the mountain.”

  “God. You’re a sight.” Mara wiped at Andrai’s face with the sleeve of her uniform, which was only marginally cleaner.

  Karic’s stomach twisted, but he forced himself to focus. “Let’s try to make it back to the pod.”

  “At least we’d be getting out of this damn deathtrap,” said Mara.

  The three of them left the cave, taking care to move quietly. In the distance, Karic could see the lake where he had first set down the pod. The waters glistened with the captured image of the crystal range beyond it, and for an instant it seemed to be the reflection of some impossibly gibbous moon.

  They emerged onto the treeless slope below the
peak, now strewn with sharp-edged stone blasted away from the cliffs above them. As they wove between the rubble, heading for the tree line below them, Karic felt uneasy. He looked behind them, and above at the peak, then scanned the wall of green below. There was no movement, yet he could not shake the feeling of exposure. Of being watched.

  Mara and Andrai slowed too, instinctively sensing something odd.

  “Boss. There are no insects,” said Andrai, his voice lowered to a harsh whisper.

  Andrai was right. There was no sound at all. The bizarre calls of the local forest — the insect ecosystem — were completely absent.

  “Stop,” hissed Karic.

  He was just about to trigger the fugue, to reach out with his new, enhanced senses and check the path ahead, when a score of Imbirri emerged from the jungle. Karic’s heart sank as they fanned out across the tree line and up the slope to either side of them.

  “Karic.” Mara shrank back toward him. Andrai instinctively followed.

  They were trapped. Following behind the Imbirri, his head raised in triumph, was the Awakener. After all they had endured, this was it. There was no way out.

  The Awakener pointed the scepter at them.

  “Damn you to Hell!” screamed Karic.

  ***

  The Fountain circled the peak. The vegetation that remained on it was charred and twisted. One side of its sheer face had been blasted away, the slope around the peak littered with debris. This was the source of the sound that had drawn him, he was sure of it. The alien intruders would be close. He could almost feel them …

  There!

  When he first sensed the aliens, he had feared his children were lost. Not just laid waste by time, but the victim of atrocity. But he could see them! Almost a hundred, each twice the size of the normal Fin feeders, and bipedal! Their rough skin was mottled with color, the main band across their crown hinting at the mature Fintil they would become — greens and golds destined to be males and females, reds and purples the mixed-gender castes of warrior and scientist.

  Spellbound, the Fountain glided down toward them. He was amazed at the changes, at this miracle of survival after so many millennia. His mind flowed down to touch them, caressing them lightly, as though they were too precious to be held. His excitement doubled. Not only were they alive, they were strong.

  How was this possible? How could they have survived like this for thousands of years without closing the cycle from Fin to Fintil?

  His senses wrapped the Fin like protective wings, and he savored their essence, yet there was an odd dissonance in their midst. As he drew closer, he saw why. Three aliens were with them, dwarfed by the feeders that surrounded them. One of these must be the alien he sensed from the transmission node.

  The Fountain dove down toward them, determined to protect the innocent Fin from the intruders. As he approached, he could see a wide swath of destruction carved through the nearby jungle, littered with debris. An alien shielding device squatted like an insult inside the blackened scar, a crude construction that relied on magnetically confined plasma.

  Rage welled within him. Not once, in many millions of years of Fintil civilization, had an alien dared to disturb the sanctity of Cru during this delicate part of their cycle.

  The Fountain drew a weapon from his belt and steepened his dive. Deceptively small, the little device could channel enough power from the transmission network to reduce the whole peak to rubble. He reached out expertly with his mind, communicating, adjusting the targeting so that none of the Fin would be harmed.

  Justice would be swift.

  He was closing fast. The blackened ground reflected in his multi-faceted eyes as he swept down toward the aliens.

  The Fountain was ready for anything — except the scene unfolding below him.

  Many of the Fin clutched crude weapons, the normal padded forepaws of the feeders evolved into a three-fingered hand. He saw the faint glow in their dark eyes, the intent way they moved.

  All the signs coalesced into a single stunning realization.

  Intelligence.

  He pulled out of the dive and hovered. Thoughts flashed rapidly through the chambers of his ancient mind as he struggled to bring this new development into context.

  Once, many millions of years ago, the planet of Cru knew true night and day. It knew dawn and dusk, and its skies two moons. Although living in the hottest regions, the Fintil females would lay their tiny, leathery eggs in the cool, dark places: jungles, caves near fertile valleys, beneath the thick humus of the jungle floor. Here, the hatched spawn — the quadrupedal Fin feeders — would roam free, foraging and growing until the time of their Change.

  The Fintil civilization grew and prospered. Their scientists unlocked the secrets of interstellar travel, and both moons were collapsed into a singularity — contained within a vast machine — which was further grown until its mass rivaled a planet. The singularity could then be harnessed for instantaneous space travel. Such devices were needed for moving any physical mass in Timespace. In their hubris and lust for exploration, the Fintil kept the device, the Translocator, positioned in orbit around Cru. Over the millennia, its gravitational field clawed at the planet. The planet’s rotation decreased. The scientists gave dire warnings. The Fintil factions argued, and the massive cost and effort required to shift the Translocator, and the vast time period required to execute the project — over multiple Fintil lifecycles — led to an impasse. As the planet slowed, the cooler forests shrank and finally died under the hot, ceaseless sun, or withered in the long, cold dark. Hatcheries were devised, but the Fin were dying in their thousands. Some natural element was missing.

  The decrease in Cru’s rotation accelerated, driven by increased travel through the Translocator. Before the Fintil could reach consensus or act, Cru became tidally locked to Tau Ceti, a single face presented to the hot sun for eternity, another to the depths of space.

  The crisis finally spurred the Fintil to action. The Translocator, which had caused the planet’s reduced rotation, was shifted to an orbit around Tau Ceti. The dark side of Cru was altered to become a garden nursery, the night-shrouded half of the planet transformed by an extensive network of transmission towers that provided heat and light. The bright side remained home to the heat-loving adult Fintil, where they constructed the new cities of their revitalized civilization. Once more, they grew and prospered. Then eons passed. Despite all their technology, some flaw in their makeup led to a decreased fertility rate, and despite the best efforts of their scientists, they once more declined. Now another change had appeared in the Fintil genetics. Another point of crisis in their long history.

  The Fin he had known, little better than animals, had vanished from Cru, and evolved into a new form.

  Below him, the Fin feeders milled in a single group, standing on two legs. They arrayed themselves in order. He saw them speak with each other. Communicate in their own language. Close now, their individual minds sang to him the thrilling, frightening song of sentience.

  Here, under him, surrounded by the Fin, stood the three alien beings. Their type was unfamiliar to him. He examined them closer. One held a power rod!

  He turned into a dive once more, readying his weapon.

  Despite the impossible changes in the Fin — their transformation from unintelligent quadruped to bipedal sentient — all that really mattered was their protection.

  So intent was the Fountain on the aliens he failed to notice that the leader of the Fin also carried one of the power rods and was now preparing to use it.

  He landed in a blur of gold. A tall, magnificent being. Wings outstretched, translucent. Standing between Karic and the nearest of the Imbirri, he was now blocking the path of the Awakener’s weapon.

  The Fountain kept his wings fully open, as though to shelter his children. He activated a shield that would protect him and the Fin from the force of any blast. He was waiting for it, ready to answer any attack from the alien intruders with devastating power. Yet there was no attack.<
br />
  The Fountain touched the mind of the alien holding the power rod. He could sense the alien’s intent, and knew with sudden certainty he had never intended to destroy his children. This … human … felt only fear. Yet of what?

  ***

  To Karic, it seemed as though the golden being emerged out of nowhere. He looked up in astonishment. It was the golden figure from his dreams.

  The Imbirri broke ranks, some running in fear, others captured by the Fintil’s beauty. Most of those that remained waited for the Awakener to pass judgment on the newcomer, but their leader was as stunned as the rest. The huge Imbirri stood frozen, his eyes dark with shock.

  Karic approached the Fintil.

  “Karic! What are you doing?” Mara’s narrow face was white with fear.

  “Mara. Don’t you realize what this means? The Imbirri aren’t what’s left of the high-tech culture. There are two races on this planet. Two races. This is the advanced one. It has to be. We have to establish contact. Only they can get us out of this mess.” Karic spoke without turning, as though if he took his eyes off this startling, winged apparition it would vanish. “Stay quiet. I’m going to try and communicate.”

  “But …” Mara choked back her words, her face a mixture of fear and anger as she looked up at the tall alien.

  Andrai stepped closer to her, drawing her back protectively. “Let him try, Mara. He must have done it before, with the other one — the Deepwatch. How else could we have found the bier?”

  “Coincidence,” she spat, but she let Andrai draw her back toward the cave entrance, leaving Karic alone with the aliens. The remaining Imbirri ignored them, all their attention on the newcomer.

  Karic stepped forward. The golden, winged alien stood more than three meters tall. Insectoid, and without a doubt sentient. Every single ecological niche was filled with insects, from the lowest to the highest forms of life. He should have guessed the beings at the biological apex would be the same.