by J. N. Chaney
Now Conover started to nod. “Yeah, okay. Good points. And it doesn’t have to be a deliberate attack that wipes out a biosphere. Stars blow up, asteroids smash into things, wandering black holes rip planets apart.”
“But those are all natural processes,” Leira said, obviously digging in her skeptical heels. “They might suck, but they’re just part of how the universe works, right?”
Dash raised his eyebrows at her. “Says the woman standing aboard a massive artificial station being built in intergalactic space. Nothing very natural about that, is there?”
Benzel cleared his throat. “I’ve got a different take on this. I think it’s a great idea, saving all these biomes and stuff. But how are we going to do it? Adding enough space to the Kingsport for just one of these complete ecosystems is going to be a massive job, use up huge amounts of material, and take a lot of effort over a lot of time.”
Dash nodded his agreement. “You’re right. It would.” He glanced back at the display, about to engage in some theatrics. But he thought it would help get his point across and, besides, he just wanted to.
“Now, if only there were already something out there, already built, specifically designed to contain complete biomes.” He dramatically furrowed his brow and tapped his chin. “Hmmm. If only…”
“Yes, yes, you’re talking about the Arkubators, aren’t you?” Leira asked.
He turned back, looking incredulous. “The Arkubators! Of course! Why didn’t I think of that?”
“You did, Messenger, just fifteen minutes ago. You discussed it with me,” Custodian said.
Dash scowled. “Way to rain on my parade, Custodian.”
“You’re welcome.”
Dash grinned. “Yes. The Arkubators. We can bring them here, repurpose them, and either incorporate them into the Kingsport itself or keep them on-station nearby, each preserving a different biome.”
“More than one each, probably, from what we’ve seen of them,” Conover put in.
“Exactly. We’re supposed to defend life, right?” Dash found himself getting genuinely impassioned now. There was nothing theatrical about it.
“It was our mission during the Life War, and it’s our mission now. We can do that, defend it, with more than just dark-lances and missiles and mechs, though. We can defend it by saving it, preserving it, so it lives on no matter what happens back in the galaxy. We gather as many biomes as we can, and we bring them out here, into the big empty, and make it not quite so empty anymore.”
By the time he’d finished talking, even Leira was nodding. But it was Kai, who’d been standing in the back with Ragsdale, that walked forward and stopped in front of Dash.
“I often refer to the Enemy of All Life to describe the Golden, the Bright and the Verity, the Deepers—anyone or anything, really, whose purpose is to destroy life. But you, Messenger, Dash—you deserve the opposing title. You are the Preserver of All Life, and I’m proud to stand with you in this great mission. How do we begin?”
Dash just stared at Kai. Being offered a title as grandiose as the Preserver of All Life made Dash want to squirm uncomfortably, at least a little. But the utter sincerity in Kai’s solemn gaze made him smile with profound gratitude instead.
He turned to the display. “Custodian, put up all the Arkubators we know about and then start a search for as many more as we can find. Once we do that, we’ll find crews to pull them home.”
“Home?” Custodian asked.
Dash turned back to Kai, to the others, still smiling, and waved his hand all around him.
“Yeah. Here. The Kingsport.” He caught Leira’s eye, and his smile widened, echoing hers.
“Home.”
20
“Dash Sawyer, down-and-out courier, becomes Dash Sawyer, Preserver of All Life. I’d say that counts as local boy makes good,” Leira said, chuckling.
Dash glanced at the Archetype’s tactical display, making sure nothing had changed, that his mech and the Swift were still on-station with the three salvage ships. Just as they had been for the past two days, they were.
“Has a nice ring to it. I’m thinking I should get business cards printed up,” he quipped.
They were just one of eleven expeditions to secure intact Arkubators and return them to the Kingsport. Four of the others were traveling far enough that their crews had to travel in cryosleep suspension. The result was a recovery effort spanning nearly thirty thousand light-years, which was a monumental undertaking, especially considering it only involved a small part of the fleet.
The Deepers were cooperating, too. Aside from their occasional patrols skipping along the edges of Cygnus Realm sensor coverage, they’d been entirely dormant. That actually worried Dash, hinting that they might be marshalling their forces for a big effort somewhere.
“Or it might mean that we’ve kicked their asses hard enough that they have to suck back and lick their wounds,” Benzel had offered with a fierce grin. Dash had acknowledged his optimism with a grin of his own, but privately, he found it easier to assume the worst.
Still, they had a lull, so they might as well take advantage of it. And here they were, doing just that—en route to a pair of Arkubators orbiting the Milky Way’s rim, in the same plane as the galactic ecliptic. They were nearly seven hundred light-years spinward of League space, far enough away to make it a long trip, but not far enough that cryosleep was required—just about two weeks of tedious flight each way. Dash and Leira had alternated sleeping and waking cycles, regulated by their Melds and coordinated between Sentinel and Tybalt.
“We’ll be returning to real space in five minutes,” Sentinel said.
Dash acknowledged, then switched to the comm. “Okay, folks, you all know the drill. Leira and I lead, while you good salvage folks hang back until we’re sure it’s clear.”
It wasn’t likely the Deepers had much of a force on-station out here, but if they did, the two mechs should be enough to defeat it, or at least delay it long enough for the salvage team to escape.
Dash actually hoped there were Deepers out here. He wanted to take some on and try out the unexpected improvements to the Archetype, the ones Custodian had sprung on him with equally unexpected motives.
“It’s grey,” Dash said, stopping short.
He stood in the Forge’s massive fabrication bay, staring up at the titanic form of the mech. The Archetype’s lines had actually changed over time, so while it was the same mech he’d discovered hidden in a comet in the Pasture, it also wasn’t. New armor had bulked it up, the Blur drive’s upgrades had necessitated a larger housing, and new weapons mounts protruded where none had protruded before. But it had never been uniformly grey the way it was now.
“Custodian, what did you do to my mech?”
“The grey coloration is an application of the improved superconductive armor first trialed on the Stalwart. There were deficiencies in the design that have now been addressed. The Archetype seemed like the logical test bed, given your penchant for finding the thick of the action.”
Dash resumed walking toward the mech, still craning his neck up at it. “Well, I’m not going to complain about better protection, but—grey? Doesn’t it come in other colors?”
“I can slap a coat of paint over it if you wish, but it will be instantly burned away by any incoming attack.”
Dash stopped, put his hands on his hips, and chuckled. “No, that’s fine. I’m just—”
“—yanking my chain, I know. For someone who prides himself on being unpredictable, sometimes you most certainly aren’t.”
“My unpredictability is unpredictable,” Dash said, then stopped at the sight of two bulges atop each of the mech’s mighty shoulders.
“You’ve added something else up on either side of the head,” he said.
“Indeed. The Archetype’s armament has been reinforced by two improved gamma-ray lasers.”
“Grasers? But I thought those things were too damned unreliable to use outside of a fixed installation like the Forge.”
“Notice I said improved. These are new generation grasers, far more reliable than earlier iterations. Again, the Archetype seems to be the perfect test bed for them.”
Dash smiled. None of these changes had been made with his approval. It would have been a simple matter for either Custodian or Sentinel to ask him, but they hadn’t. They’d just gone ahead and done it.
“You and Sentinel were trying to surprise me, weren’t you?”
“We were. Your birthday is in five days, after all,” Sentinel said.
“My—” Dash stopped, thinking. Sure enough, his birthday was in five days. He didn’t pay much attention to birthdays anymore, though, and had completely forgotten about this one. But the AIs apparently hadn’t.
“Holy shit, guys. Really?”
“We would have waited until your actual birthday but reasoned you’d quickly see through any attempt to delay clearing the Archetype to return to flight ops,” Custodian said.
“Plus, we are fighting a war. Getting the Archetype back into action sooner rather than later is desirable. Still, happy birthday, Dash,” Sentinel said.
Dash shook his head, smiling. If having two hyper-advanced alien artificial intelligences give you a birthday present didn’t rank up there for truly amazing things, then nothing did.
Dash was disappointed, though, to find that there were no Deepers present. There were only the two Arkubators following their long, stately orbit around the Milky Way.
Still, they approached the two ships cautiously. There might not be Deepers evident, but it didn’t mean they—or something just as potentially dangerous—weren’t aboard the two colossal ships.
Neither of them reacted to the presence of the mechs, though. In the case of the first one they checked out, it was immediately evident why. Some past disaster had smashed open the Arkubator’s hull, leaving a torn gap big enough to fly the Victory through. Whatever it had contained would have long ago been lost to hard vacuum and abyssal cold.
The second Arkubator seemed to be intact, though. They approached it gingerly, stopping just a few hundred klicks away.
“Sentinel, anything seem out of the ordinary?” he asked.
“For that matter, is this one actually even alive?” Leira added. “It just seems awfully quiet.”
“This Arkubator is well above ambient temperature and is generating power. Its internal environment seems to be intact,” Sentinel replied.
“Can we tell anything about what’s inside it? I mean, it would be nice to know what sort of biome we’re bringing back to the Kingsport,” Dash said.
“Not just whatever biome we’re bringing back. It would be nice to be sure it’s not actually full of Deepers,” Leira added.
“From a strict exterior scan, no. However, the salvage team will need to enter the vessel anyway to confirm structural integrity and the internal layout of the Arkubator, so they’ll find out one way or another,” Sentinel replied.
“Then let’s do that, shall we?” Dash said, maybe a little too quickly. As much as he wanted to try out the new Archetype in battle, the idea of getting out of the mech and walking around was hugely appealing right now. The Meld actually prevented him from suffering the effects of long periods in the cradle—after two hours, two days, or two weeks, he felt much the same, both physically and mentally. But it still wasn’t the same as actually walking.
“Leira, care to join me for a stroll?”
“Hand in armored hand, through a potentially hostile biome? You sweet talker, you.”
Dash hefted his mag-carbine and stared at the imposing wall of foliage looming ahead. Leira stood to his right, doing much the same. Behind them, the first salvage team huddled around another of the ubiquitous remotes, this one sporting a variety of instruments related to their particular profession of recovering stuff.
Dash turned to look back at them. They were all vac-armoured up and would be unless or until the environment was declared non-toxic. As a result, he had to turn completely around to face the salvagers.
The head of the team, a former member of the Gentle Friends named Losko, finally pulled his gaze away from the instruments and stuck up an armored thumb. “Breathable atmosphere, Dash. A little on the humid side, but no atmospheric toxins, radiation background is normal, and we’re not detecting any dangerous pathogens.”
“So what’s the verdict?”
“Eh, I’d say we can take our helmets off, but Elois and her people really wanted us to avoid doing that so we didn’t contaminate these environments. Unless you say otherwise, I recommend we don’t strip our armor and just stay suited up.”
Leira smirked and waggled her eyebrows at Dash. “Strip your armor. I like the sound of that.”
Dash made a show of counting on his fingers. “It has been two weeks—”
“You guys want us to give you some alone time?” Losko asked, chuckling.
“Hey, easy for you guys to joke about, considering you got here aboard ships, with beds and, uh, soap, and such,” Leira shot back.
“Oh, yeah, the trip was just one wild party the whole way.”
“Not on my ship, it wasn’t,” one of the other salvagers grouched, getting a laugh all around.
“No, we’ll stick with Elois’s preferences and stay suited up,” Dash said. He turned back to the wall of jungle and resumed taking in their surroundings.
He looked up. The Arkubator’s gravity was polarized in the plane of the hull, meaning that down would always be toward their feet, even if they walked around the inside circumference of the enormous craft. It also meant that he was looking at more jungle directly overhead. A long, rod-like light source ran down the middle of the huge space, illuminating the entire interior.
Dash glanced at Leira. “Care to take a look around?”
“Sure.”
“Uh, guys? Don’t go too far or get yourselves in trouble, okay? We’re here to salvage this thing, not mount rescue missions,” Losko said.
“Yes, mother,” Dash replied, then set off, pushing into the wall of foliage.
The immediate concern about entering a strange ecosystem was always the presence of large, apex predators—or a multitude of smaller ones, Dash thought, remembering the creatures called Fangrats that he and Leira had encountered while searching for a power core for the Archetype. The fact was, though, that most ecosystems were relatively benign. Predators tended to avoid things they didn’t recognize, and even if they didn’t, a warning shot from a mag-carbine was usually enough to dissuade them. In fact, the bigger threats were things like pathogens—viral, bacterial, or prions—and toxins. But their vac-armor was sealed against such potential and insidious threats. Just as importantly, it also prevented them from shedding their own potential contaminants into the environment, which could be just as bad—a sort of unintended biological invasion of this pristine, self-contained little world.
They stopped where a small waterfall gushed over some rocks, splashing into a small pond before draining away in a meandering creek. They saw more of the feathered, arboreal creatures that resembled crabs that they’d encountered several times already. They waved their antennae in what seemed like regular, repeating patterns, perhaps a primitive language. These ones were clustered around the edge of the pond.
Dash veered away from them, giving them a wide berth. As much as possible, he wanted to avoid interfering with the fauna. He and Leira were actually already on their way back to where the salvage team was working, surveying the Arkubator’s structure to determine how best to take it in tow.
“You know, I swear those crab things are trying to talk to us,” Dash said, cradling his mag-carbine.
“Maybe they are. Maybe they’re trying to warn us about that,” Leira said, her voice quiet but in a tense, clipped way that made the hairs on Dash’s neck prickle up.
Dash glanced at her and saw her facing off to his right. He slowly turned and found himself nearly face-to-face with something furry, a little larger than him, and sporting what looked like a
n awful lot of sharp, serrated teeth.
Okay, apex predators weren’t usually a problem.
His immediate gut-wrench eased, though, as his thinking brain reasserted itself over that ancient fight-or-flight instinct. His vac-amor was meant to take high-velocity slugs and plasma bolts, so those teeth, as fearsome as they looked, weren’t likely much of a threat. A few niggling fears about things like potent bio-acids lingered, but the creature didn’t seem interested in lunging at him or doing anything but staring at him curiously.
They stood like that for a moment, face to alien face, studying one another.
Dash had to admit, it was a handsome creature. Iridescent, blue-green fur cascaded down its flanks and back, and along the upper sides of not just one but two tails, each flicking independently. Beneath, down its mostly hairless neck and belly, it was a deep purplish-red, apparently the color of its skin under the fur. Its eyes were big, bluish, and set forward in its head, emphasizing its role in this biome as a predator.
Dash tilted his head, trying to get a better look at it. It did likewise.
He tilted his head back. It did the same.
“Huh.”
Dash slowly raised a hand. After a moment, it awkwardly raised a forepaw.
He switched to the armor’s external speaker. “Well, hello there.”
The creature blinked, pulled back, let out a resonant hoot, then spun with smooth agility and vanished back into the trees.
“Let’s just hope it’s not gone off to invite a bunch of its friends to dinner,” Leira said.
Dash shook his head. “I don’t think so. It was—I think it was just curious, sizing me up.”
“Yeah, for a stew pot.”
Dash clicked his tongue. “There’s a lesson in that little encounter for you, Leira.”
“Oh? And what’s that?”
“Not all aliens are assholes.”
She sniffed. “You’ll forgive me if I look at our track record of asshole aliens versus non-asshole ones, and, oh, hey, look at that. Guess which column is bigger.”
