by J. N. Chaney
He overshot, hard.
Desperately, Dash began to brake. But as he did, he realized he had another problem. The N’Teel homeworld, more than ten thousand klicks of solid planet, was coming up fast, and he was only a moment away from slamming into it.
A thought flashed through Dash’s mind. Would it be ironic if, in trying to save the N’Teel, he ended up screwing them over by smashing the Archetype into their planet at some colossal velocity? He wondered if it might be enough to cause an extinction-level event—
While Dash’s conscious mind lingered in this moment of horrific fascination, his deeper, more primal monkey brain got on with the business of trying to save the day. He targeted the Deeper Bishop with the dark-lances and nova-cannons in continuous fire, at the same time shoving the Blur drive back up to one hundred and ten percent, directed at right angles to his current course.
“Sentinel, show me our trajectory relative to the planet!”
An arcing line appeared, showing the course the Archetype would follow in its current energy state. Unfortunately, that line still passed through the planet.
“How much—?”
“One hundred and twenty five percent is the minimum power needed to clear the planet, and yes, I’ve already anticipated that, so I’ve removed the safeties from the Blur drive’s throttle.
Part of Dash recoiled at the thought of pushing the drive that hard. But part of him was already sliding the power up the scale.
The angry crimson line showing his trajectory slowly began to rise, less and less of it intersecting the planet with each second. He was now less than thirty seconds from impact.
“Aw, hell.”
He opened the throttle as much as he dared.
The drive shot up to one hundred and thirty-two percent. A massive hand squashed Dash into the cradle. Even the upgraded inertial dampers weren’t up to this sort of acceleration. The blood rushed from Dash’s head, igniting grey fireworks that popped in little explosions around the edges of his consciousness, eating it away.
Less than fifteen seconds. Dash could only wait and hope now. The crimson line kept rising toward the planet’s surface. But the grey fog spreading across his awareness had almost completely engulfed him. His last thought was of the Archetype slamming into something, hard, and—
Dash blinked, trying to clear away the fuzz. Where the hell was he?
As soon as he thought the question, everything came dribbling back. He levered his eyes open and checked the tactical display. The Archetype was now sailing roughly in the direction of the galactic core, the N’Teel homeworld dwindling away behind him.
Across the board, status indicators flashed yellow. Some had gone red.
“Sentinel?”
“You missed the fireworks.”
“What?”
“Our velocity was barely sufficient to clear the planet. Fortunately, the atmosphere proved as unyielding as I expected it would, so we bounced off of it. Unfortunately, the Archetype has paid the price for it.”
Dash had to keep fighting to clear away the grey fog lingering in his brain and stay focused.
“How bad?”
“Bad enough, but not crippling.”
He took in the status of the Blur drive. It was entirely dark.
“No drive, huh?”
“The drive is currently a semi-molten mass of slag. It’s really quite remarkable just how much stress it was able to take before it failed.”
“Shit. So we’re screwed.”
“Not at all. I’ve been firing the distortion-cannon, which is still online, in regular bursts. That’s progressively slowing us down. And the translation drive still works, so we can still return to the Kingsport.”
“Distortion-cannon, huh? Good idea.” Dash managed a weak smile. “Sounds like something I’d come up with.”
“Dash, you okay?” Conover asked.
“For some definitions of okay, sure.”
Amy cut in. “That was crazy, Dash. Crazy. People are going to be replaying that imagery for years!”
“Anyway, Amy and I finished vaporizing that third Bishop just as it was starting to hit the atmosphere,” Conover said.
“Maybe some ashes will someday drift down to the surface, but that’s about it,” Amy said.
“Good work. Now, if you guys don’t mind, I think I’m going to need a hand.”
“Sure thing, boss. What do you want us to do?” Amy asked.
“Break out the tow cables, folks, and pull me back home.”
19
“It’s nice to see you guys thinking big, but holy shit,” Dash said, staring at the image Ragsdale had called up onto the main 3-D viewer in the Kingsport’s expanded Command Center.
What Ragsdale, Harolyn, Freya, and Kai had envisioned was an integration of the Greenbelt, the mobile dockyards, and a whole suite of other capabilities directly into the Kingsport. They were effectively proposing to turn the massive station into what amounted to a completely self-sustaining construct, on which people could be born, live out their lives into their old age, and die. And it could all be without ever seeing the Milky Way galaxy as anything but a spectacular yet distant light show.
They were proposing to evolve the Kingsport from a station into what amounted to a world.
Ragsdale crossed his arms. “Hey, go big or go home, right?”
“It isn’t even entirely our idea,” Kai said, holding something up for Dash to see. “Do you remember this?”
“Yeah, that’s the model of the Kingsport I grabbed right before we bugged out of your Order’s abandoned, critter-infested, earthquake-ridden monastery.” Dash flashed Kai a grin. “Did I miss any plagues in that list?”
“Well, you could add fire from the sky, I suppose. But that was us, incinerating the bugs. In any case, if you examine this model closely, you’ll see what I mean,” Kai replied.
Dash did. Small but significant differences marked it, compared to the Kingsport’s actual schematics. He frowned.
“I’m not sure what any of these changes are supposed to accomplish.”
“Neither are we. But the changes themselves aren’t the point. What is, is the fact that some of my brethren had obviously discovered schematics of some sort for the Kingsport and were actually seeking to modify them.”
“To them, it was probably more of an interesting exercise in what if than anything resembling an actual plan,” Harolyn said.
Kai nodded. “I doubt that my esteemed brethren ever actually believed this could be built. They probably saw the Kingsport as an abstract representation of the miraculous power of the Unseen and sought to venerate it through study. Altering it was probably part of their attempts to understand it. Unfortunately, like a lot of things regarding my Order, we may never know for sure.”
“But the point was that it was altered. So that got us thinking—do we really have to stick with the Unseen’s schematics for this place?” Ragsdale said.
“After all, we’re smart people, or at least the Unseen seemed to think so. So why not take their design and adapt it for our own use?”
Dash looked at the model and pushed up his lower lip in thoughtful appreciation of what Ragsdale and the others were proposing to do.
“Custodian, what do you think of this?”
“It is an innovative extrapolation of the Creator’s intent for the Kingsport.”
Dash exchanged a bemused glance with the others. “Is that a yes, it’s good innovation, or no, it’s bad innovation?”
“Is there such a thing as bad innovation?” Harolyn asked.
Ragsdale smiled. “Ask the people who tried Freya’s take on brandy made from green tea.”
“Oh. Right. I tried that stuff. Yikes.”
“These modifications would turn the Kingsport into a complete habitation—essentially, a self-contained world. I believe the Creators only ever intended it to be the centerpiece of an operational and strategic network of installations located somewhere within the Milky Way. I don’t believe they ev
er envisioned it being constructed in intergalactic space,” Custodian said.
Dash sighed. “Custodian, you seem to be dancing around the point. Do you think it’s a good idea or not?”
“It’s an improvement on the Creators’ design, which will enable it to support thriving life in an environment where that isn’t otherwise even remotely possible.” A pause, then Custodian went on.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea. I think it’s an excellent one. And that means you have now surpassed the Creators in your own creative vision. In a way, you are now the Creators. I believe that the Unseen would be proud of this legacy.”
Dash and the others just stared. Not only had Custodian just admitted he faced a moment of existential upheaval, but he’d also come through it in a way they could never have imagined.
He’d just called Dash and the others—and by extension, all humans—the Creators.
Despite all of the pain and uncertainty around the war, Dash found this a profoundly touching, almost awe-inspiring moment.
“However, to avoid confusion, I’ll continue to refer to the Unseen as the Creators, if you don’t mind,” Custodian went on.
Dash laughed. “Absolutely.”
“After all, I wouldn’t want it to go to your heads.”
This time, they all laughed.
Dash tapped at the controls of the shuttle, bringing it to a stop. The vast expanse of the Atrium, the hub of the Kingsport, loomed all around him. The Forge was incorporated into it, no longer a construct unto itself but now just part of a vastly larger whole. That made Dash a little wistful. The Forge wasn’t gone, but it wasn’t really the Forge anymore, was it?
He curled his lip. Nah, screw that. It would always be the Forge. He’d make sure that name was known by future generations.
Future generations. People yet to be born, who would not just be citizens of the Cygnus Realm but the first humans to claim the space between the galaxies as their birthright.
“Dash, I have an update on repairs to the Archetype,” Sentinel said.
Dash pulled his attention back from the distant place it had gone, far beyond the flickering points of welding glare and into the distance of both space and time.
“Yeah, go ahead, Sentinel.”
“I’d estimate one more full day and then the Archetype will be ready to resume flight operations. And you’ll be pleased to know that the power capacity of the Blur drive has again been increased. I’ve rescaled it so that the peak output you achieved at the N’Teel homeworld will now represent one hundred and five percent power.”
“Huh. How much higher can we go?”
“We’ve reached the effective limit of even Dark Metal Two-based tech. We are still only using a small fraction of the potential output of the kugelblitz power source, but further advances will require the use of materials and physical principles that we don’t yet possess.”
“Don’t yet possess? Sounds like you’re leaving the door open to possibilities.”
“If there is one thing I’ve learned from you as Messenger, it’s that nothing should be discounted. Sometimes I think that your lack of understanding is actually a strength. You don’t know where the limits are, so you ignore them.”
“You’ve been talking to Custodian.”
“All of the AIs feel the same way—even Tybalt who, of course, would never admit it.”
Dash laughed. “You don’t know how good it is to hear that, Sentinel. Honestly, I’ve been in awe of you guys since the beginning, so hearing that means a lot.”
“Dash, Ragsdale here.”
“Go ahead.”
“We’ve finished up that simulation modeling of the new and improved design for the Kingsport. It looks good, and Custodian’s on board with it. It’s ready for you to review when you’ve got time.”
Dash looked back outside the little shuttle at the busywork going on all around him, growing the Kingsport, getting it incrementally closer to their ultimate vision for it. He reached for the shuttle’s controls to turn it around and return it to its hangar,so he could meet Ragsdale and go over the new plans.
But his fingers froze in mid-air, and he let them fall away again. As soon as he stepped out of this shuttle, he’d be swamped with reports, requests for meetings, updates, and endless paperwork. He didn’t want to let go of this moment of solitude.
“Hey, Ragsdale? Can you do me a favor and just send the schematics to me here?”
A moment passed before Ragsdale replied.
“Alone time.”
“What?”
“Alone Time. You’re out in the shuttle all by yourself, and you’re not ready to end it yet.”
“Well, shit. You sure you’re not psychic?”
Ragsdale laughed. “I don’t think I am. I just know how important alone time is.”
“You know, I get the idea of spending time alone, but you’re saying that like it’s a formal name for something.”
“It kind of is. It’s a soldier thing. You’ve been given your orders, you’ve got your 2IC working on all the nitty-gritty stuff that needs to be done before an op, like feeding the troops, checking their weapons, making sure they get some rest, maybe even rehearsing some basic battle drills. In the meantime, you take some alone time. You go off somewhere by yourself and take some time to think about things. You think about how you’re going to approach the op. About what problems you’re likely to face. About what your plan is ultimately going to look like. Alone time is important.”
Dash smiled. “Alone time. Yeah, I like that. Well, I guess this is my alone time then.”
“The schematics are on their way,” Ragsdale said.
Dash watched as they flashed up on the shuttle’s auxiliary display. He spent a few minutes scrolling, just browsing through them. Eventually, he switched back to the comm and called up Ragsdale.
“This is pretty amazing. You’re proposing to actually turn the Kingsport into a world. Hell, a homeworld, for the Cygnus Realm, out here in the middle of nothing.”
“Everybody’s gotta live somewhere. Besides, we have the power to burn, and thanks to the Greenbelt and the clones of her we can build, we’ll have ample food. Custodian says the Kingsport is enough of a closed system that we’ll only need to occasionally top up water and air. I think this is doable, Dash. In fact, I don’t think we just should do it, I think we have to do it.”
Dash watched as a squadron of maintenance remotes slid past, tractoring along a major structure member fresh out of the Forge’s fabricators. “You sound pretty passionate about this, my friend. Like it’s become something of a mission for you.”
“It has.”
“Why?”
“I’m an old soldier, Dash. I know how fleeting life really is. In the greater scheme of things, even our home worlds won’t last forever. This is a way of ensuring we’re not just the legacy of the Unseen, we’re our own legacy. And besides, something tells me we’re not done going out there into that big empty.”
“An Eden in the darkness,” Dash said.
“Hey, I didn’t know you had poetry in you.”
“I’m a complicated man, Ragsdale. And that’s despite what Leira says.”
“Okay, well, an Eden in the darkness then. I like that.”
But even as he said it, Dash found himself staring out of the shuttle again, out past the bustle of the Kingsport, into that big empty, as Ragsdale called it.
The Kingsport would be an Eden in the darkness. A self-contained world with its own biome.
“Why just one?” he asked, though as much of himself as of Ragsdale.
“What?”
Dash tapped at the controls. “I’m coming back. Have the Inner Circle meet me in the Command Center in, uh, thirty minutes.”
“Can I get a heads-up on what you’re thinking?”
Dash wheeled the shuttle around and applied thrust, aiming it back at its hangar.
“Sure. You guys decided to think big, and I’m all for that.” He smiled at the rightness of
everything that had just occurred to him, a whole series of puzzle pieces falling suddenly into place. It was an answer to a question it hadn’t even occurred to him to ask, until now.
His smile widened. “So if big is good, why don’t we start thinking even bigger?”
Leira laughed. “Dash, you can’t be serious.”
He waved a hand at the 3-D display in the Kingsport’s Command Center. “I slaved away at these images for the entire ten seconds it took me to describe to Custodian what I wanted them to show. A little appreciation would be nice.”
“So you are serious about this?” Conover asked. “Isn’t that a little, um, ambitious?”
“Oh, I think we’ve translated away from ambitious and are well on our way to insane,” Amy said.
But Jexin stepped forward, shaking her head. “I don’t think this is too ambitious at all. I think it’s inspired. Visionary, even.”
Dash turned his attention to the rest of the Inner Circle. Ragsdale stood in the back, watching, his arms crossed. He was on board already, of course, having been part of it. Everyone else seemed doubtful, but no one seemed outright opposed. The one that surprised him with her ardent support was Jexin.
“Jex, I’m curious. Why are you so in favor of this?” he asked.
“Because you’re proposing to save whole environments and the species that inhabit them. As someone who’s home planet was ravaged by the Golden, how could I not support this? There are species that I grew up with, creatures I used to see every day, that are now extinct, thanks to the Golden.”
Harolyn nodded along with Jexin as she spoke. “You’d probably get a very similar answer from the Oksa, considering what the Deepers did to their world.”
“A few other races, too,” Viktor put in. “The Deepers did a number on the home planets of others and would have scoured the N’Teel and Hriki worlds down to the bedrock if they’d had a chance.”
