by Manda Benson
If she could create some sort of diversion and get both of Winters’s heads facing the same way, that would be enough. It didn’t have to be a genuine danger to them, she speculated. These were not men of the Blood. They did not understand the caste system. They had stolen the Bellwether and presumably had never been aboard a ship that was operating normally.
Jed sent a signal to the Shamrock and felt it respond. For a moment, nothing happened, then a disc shape, a little over a foot in diameter, appeared in the airlock. It stretched a hinged mechanical limb over the lip and clawed at the empty air a few times. Then it tipped over and fell upside-down, its metal shell making a noise on the floor of the cargo hold. One of Winters turned to stare at it, his other member glancing at it before turning back toward the three of them.
The robot’s legs moved for a moment before it levered itself over. Another robot fell down beside it, then another. They began to advance toward Winters, walking like three-legged crabs. The first reached his leg and stretched up, clawing at his ankle. He let out a yell and stepped back, and his other half spun around and shot one of the robots, blowing the lid of the base compartment off it and leaving it spinning on its back, legs twitching spasmodically. At once Samphrey got to her hands and knees behind Winters’s right half and grabbed his other component’s left ankle. Viprion slammed the hard object in his hand in the back of the left’s head, and Jed reached over Samphrey and seized the right by the neck, pulling him back so he tripped over the girl on the floor.
Winters’s right dropped his gun on hitting the floor, and Samphrey caught it. His other one had fallen on his face but maintained his grip on the weapon, and now he was getting to his feet unsteadily, pain and disorientation apparent on his face. Jed stepped over the one on the floor and kicked his hand. The gun spun along the floor toward the Shamrock. “Quickly!” Jed grabbed it and beckoned to Samphrey to board the ship.
Viprion ran behind her. “What are you waiting for?”
Jed looked back to the corridor through which they’d entered the cargo bay.
“The halfBlood? He’s not worth the risk of going back in there. That ship of yours is among the fastest built, if we escape now they can’t follow us. Let’s get out of here while we still can.”
“But he would be worth the risk, if he was of the Blood?” Jed asked
“He’s not anyway so it’s immaterial. Let’s leave.”
Jed covered the remaining distance to her ship’s airlock in three strides and put her foot up onto the lip. To be away from this place and to be safe in her ship, that was all she wanted now.
* * * *
After Taggart had taken the other prisoners away, one of the men had hit Wolff in the chest. Wolff had fallen back to mitigate the blow and landed on the floor, where someone’s boot struck him in the backside. He crawled under the bench and the man tried to kick him again, but smashed his shin against the edge of the seat and screamed, grabbing his leg and falling back against his twin, who acted as though he was in as much pain.
The other pair of men pushed past the injured ones and knelt down. One of them grabbed Wolff’s tunic. “Out!” he said, punching Wolff in the shoulder with his free arm, but in the confined space his fist had no force behind it.
At a beeping sound, he released Wolff and stood. “Rogers,” he said, opening a device and holding it to his ear.
The man closed his transmitter. “He says now.” His twin added. “Kill the Insular.”
The other men twitched and looked at each other. “I don’t want to. What if he changes his mind again, and he’s already dead? You saw what he had done to Collins.”
The transmitter beeped, and the man held it up to his ear. “Yes?” He looked at his twin, and then at the other pair of twins. “There’s some sort of problem on the bridge. We’re needed up there.”
The other pair was opening the door now. They went through and held it behind them for the first pair.
Wolff ran at the one closest to the door and hit him in the back. They both fell through the door and into the far wall, and Wolff kicked the door to the cell, slamming it shut and trapping one man inside. Wolff rolled over twice and landed on hands and toes, springing to his feet. He ran three strides before the other pair got hold of them—the other man had stayed at the door outside the cell, apparently unable to leave his twin, and he was shouting at the other two to come back with the keys.
Wolff used the momentum of the first one to swing him around on his arm and into the other, and the two of them met headfirst with an unpleasant noise and staggered off. The noise of the Bellwether’s engines was clearly audible, and the walls and floor swayed with inertial forces. Were these Geminals idiots? They were accelerating their ship at a rate beyond its capacity. Wolff ran on into the corridor. “Jed!” he called. He sensed the Shamrock’s signal, and turned toward it. He broke out into a cargo bay. A pair of men lay on the floor, and he vaulted over them in haste. There were the ships, and there stood Jed with one foot in the airlock, Viprion behind her with an expression of unwelcome surprise.
“Wolff!”
He ran to her. “What’s happening? Is it chimaera?”
Jed shook her head. “It won’t be chimaera, it’s something they’ve not seen before. I won’t know for sure unless we can get the ship out.”
“Jed, wait.” Wolff put his hand on her elbow as she took hold of the rail. “What is it?”
“There’s only one thing it can be.” Over her shoulder, she met his eyes. “It’s a Herald.”
“Herald?”
“Did you ever hear of the Horsehead Nebula?” Jed was up through the airlock and Wolff followed her toward the Shamrock’s bridge.
“Named for a beast supposed to be native to the Solar system?”
“So it was likened to. As it was unfortunately discovered, it’s not a natural dust mass shaped that way by coincidence, but an artificial construction. An effigy.”
The airlock door hissed shut behind Wolff. “Men made an effigy to this animal?”
“Not men, some other civilisation, assumed to be extinct now, and obviously it was an effigy of a herald and not this horse-creature, but those who saw the nebula did so before anyone saw the thing it was intended to represent, because they never leave the galactic core.”
“Why is it called a Herald?”
“That’s not what it’s properly called, fool! It was in a poem written about the cold fall, the death of the universe, and the name stuck. They need heavy metals, supernova products, to grow, and sunlight to live at maturity. When the galaxy grows dim, it’s said, they will breed in vast numbers and leave the core, destroying everything in their search for energy, only to die in their trillions.”
By now they had reached the bridge, and the floor wobbled slightly as the Shamrock took off. A scraping sound penetrated the hull as Jed turned the ship to face the Bellwether’s airlock. Outside the bridge window Winters got up and ran into the corridor. The hum of the Shamrock’s engine rose, and a fierce beam of light cut from the prow, burning the airlock door. It only took a few moments for the synchrotron cannon to burn around the thin edge of the inner door. Alarms started going off. The synchrotron cannon fired again, cutting out the Bellwether’s outer door. With a bang and a loud rattle, the door fell away into the void. Turbulence buffeted the Shamrock as it eased out, and the sound of the alarms faded away. Behind, the myth ship knocked against the airlock as it pulled after.
Viprion let out a shout, and Wolff looked in the direction he faced. Toward the starboard a dark gap lay in the stars. It moved with a flapping undulation, like a sheet flying in the wind.
“I know it’s there,” Jed said. “You need not announce it.”
“If it’s chasing the Bellwether it’ll ignore us,” said Samphrey.
Jed turned and looked at the girl, her expression stern. “It is not your place to speak. Don’t. Now sit.”
Samphrey’s expression dropped and she stepped back to the bridge seating, her eyes downcast i
n subservience. The Shamrock was accelerating, its engine noise a thrum that rose in pitch endlessly.
“Where is that weapon?” Viprion asked. “It sounded as though one of the ground crews had found it. Please do not tell me that the Geminals have it.”
“No, it wasn’t in my toolbelt, and that thing they found on me was a morran’s diary.”
Viprion let out a snort, his mouth twisting.
“The thing’s on the floor over there somewhere, I think.” Wolff went behind the seating and found the object lying against the wall. “I don’t know what it is.”
“Bring it.” Viprion held out his hand imperiously.
Wolff glared at Viprion then looked at Jed. She turned away, scowling. “Oh, give it to him, Wolff. He seems better equipped to make sense of it than you.”
Viprion examined the item, turning it over several times in his hands. “It is primitive. As I would expect of technology made by such people as the Geminals appeared to have been, and with their population virtually annihilated and their scientists all dead, it is understandable why it’s imperative for them to reclaim it. Either they only made one, or the others were lost when they tried to attack and were defeated.”
“What is it?” Wolff said.
“From what I gathered from Taggart, it’s an activator for something, something they’ve spent a long time infecting civilisation with.”
“An activator? But there was only one component in there I recognised.” Wolff took the device back from Viprion. “It’s used in graviton devices—inertia dampers and graviton beam generators.”
Jed’s face tightened. A pattern of lights flickered across the Shamrock’s console. “It’s following.”
“Perhaps it changed its mind?” Wolff suggested.
“It’s not intelligent. It doesn’t have a mind to change. It just chases electromagnetic signals and eats them.”
“Perhaps,” said Viprion, scrutinising his hands, “we have inadvertently brought with us the source of whatever signal originally attracted it. It did seem there was some sort of rogue transmission going on.”
“The only things we brought with us is ourselves,” said Jed, “and the ship.”
“Precisely.” Viprion shot Wolff a wry look. “How long was your sentence?”
“My sentence? Three months, from...” Wolff thought back. “It’s today, isn’t it?”
“There you have it. Your bail slave chip has expired, and it’s broadcasting a Freeman signal to alert any nearby computers to your location. Whichever ship you are on picks it up and re-broadcasts it.”
“He’s right,” said Jed uneasily. “The ship’s broadcasting a radio signal, but it did it automatically with no input from me.”
“Can you outrun this Herald thing?” Wolff asked.
Viprion made a scathing noise in his throat. “Would be easier to get rid of the source of the transmission.”
Jed raised her hand to Viprion. “No, wait. Wolff, your blood has the Moiety in it, and your nervous system has grafted onto that chip. If you can use it to communicate, you can probably turn it off by yourself if you can work it out.”
Viprion’s eyes moved restlessly. “What of that thing that’s following us?”
“Once the ship gets close to light speed, it won’t be able to follow. It’s not an Alcubierre organism like the chimaera. It’s the reaching light speed that’s a problem. I’m running in for a close slingshot round the nearest sun. That might lose it.”
Wolff sat beside Samphrey. He leant his elbows on his knees and concentrated on what he could sense of the Shamrock. Jed detected his intrusion and turned around.
“I’m just trying to concentrate on my own signal by following it back!” Wolff protested. “I’m not trying to do you any harm!”
As he concentrated on the signal an orange hemisphere appeared in the bridge window, its glare dulled by the photomitigators in the vitreous alloy. He could feel the heat and light coming off it, through the Shamrock’s senses, as it grew larger. He began to feel the great dark shape occupying the sky behind the ship, and the light of the red sun caught its wings, like a bird riding a thermal, and reflected from innumerable bright scales. The sun’s honeycombed surface lay directly below the Shamrock’s keel now, and it bubbled and seethed with gas and light. The Herald was gaining on them, its head stretching out, horse-formed. It opened its jaws, showing two great fangs each as long as the Bellwether from prow to propulsion, and reached for the ship, and a reverberating groan thundered through the photosphere and penetrated the Shamrock’s walls.
Stop transmitting, damn you! Wolff willed in panic.
The jaws closed with a muffled noise, and the Herald began to lose distance. The lurid fusion horizon was falling away beneath them, and the Shamrock was accelerating out into the void. “Five minutes to the light barrier!” Jed announced, her voice more full of hope and relief than Wolff had ever heard it.
“The Herald’s stopped,” said Wolff. “Its course takes it away from us.”
A massive concussion shook the bridge, throwing everyone forward and onto the floor toward the main console. The Shamrock shuddered, the engine made an earsplitting noise, and all over the bridge alarms went off.
Chapter 17
Wild Card
Time devours body and mind,
Slow attrition, strongest alloy cannot resist,
Decay takes all from our kind,
Only in deeds and progeny shall we persist.
“Did the Herald do that?” Wolff shouted over the alarms.
“No!” Pain contorted Jed’s face. “Fool, we’ve been shot in the head. She used the slingshot to stay out of detection range and ambushed us!”
“She?”
“The other Archer!”
Wolff got to his feet, keeping his knees bent. Tremors still reverberated through the ship’s hull. “So now what, are we going to be boarded?”
Jed closed her eyes, grimacing. “No. She’s not old enough to be able to mindlock me. I’m stronger than her. Her only chance was to ambush us.”
“Then mindlock her!” Viprion shouted. He was sitting on the floor with his feet on the seating, and he tried to lever himself up with his arms.
“There’s no time! She’s ahead of our course, her flank is to us. Two of the engine’s chimaera were wrecked in the explosion. I can’t get out of her line of sight!”
“Why’s she attacking you?” Wolff stepped forward, but he could see nothing ahead. The other ship must have been too distant.
“She’s young.” Viprion swung his legs sideways and got to his knees. “Probably a former apprentice of the other Archer you killed.”
“The other Archer you told to kill us,” Wolff added. “The Geminals’ weapon. We could use that.”
“No,” said Viprion. “We don’t even know what it is. It’s moronic to use something we don’t understand!”
“It may be our only choice,” said Jed.
“Better morons than dead,” Wolff said.
“Can’t you use your arrows? The synchrotron cannon?”
“The synchrotron cannon won’t work at this distance, and I can’t fire arrows from the bridge. That thing, where is it?”
“It’s here.” Samphrey picked up something from the floor and gave it to Jed.
Wolff studied the device in her hands. “It looks as though it could be fitted into the graviton beam machinery of a ship, like this one. Can you do that?”
Jed turned back toward the console and one of the ship’s robots scuttled out. She raised the lid on the back of it and placed the device inside. The robot retreated backward into the walls of the ship. “I will fire the graviton beam at the other ship as soon as it is in place.”
“Please reconsider!” Viprion raised his hands and stepped forward. “The weapon could damage this ship too!”
“If it transmits a signal on a gravitational wave and we use it through the Shamrock’s graviton beam, the ship’s inertia dampers will protect it from anything in that b
eam. Wolff is right. There is nothing to lose and everything to gain. I’m firing the beam now.”
The only indication the ship gave was a slight increase in engine noise and a flicker of lights from the console.
“What happened?”
Jed frowned. More lights pulsed. “Nothing. It’s still there. It looks like the propulsion is out.”
Viprion sighed.
“I’m not picking up any signals from it. It should be coming into visual range soon.”
Wolff stepped beside her and peered ahead. A starlike object was growing brighter, and the Shamrock decelerated as they came closer. It began to take form, the light coming from its reflective Teng steel hull. No fusion light illuminated the propulsion bulb at the tip of its tail.
Viprion stood at Jed’s other side and looked upon it. “There are no signals from it at all?”
“It’s electromagnetically dead. How can a signal mediated by gravitons do such a thing?”
As the Shamrock closed the distance, it turned, the other ship passing across to the side of the window and moving out of view as the vessel rotated. “I’m docking. Viprion, go aboard and see what has become of it.”
Viprion started, his eyebrows jumping on his forehead. “Go aboard? Prithee, send a robot, or a more… expendable passenger.”
“Why not just leave it here?” Wolff said.
“Because, it is not the way of the Code!”
“Whatever happened to that ship could still be a threat! We knew not the nature of the weapon we used, and we should consider ourselves fortunate.”
“Oh, shut up, Viprion. I’ll go.”
Jed looked sharply at Wolff when he said this.
“Whatever’s on the ship has to be better than staying here and listening to you wittering on. Just don’t,” Wolff said, shrugging expansively at Jed, “don’t go off without me again.”
“I shall not leave without you, and as insurance of my intentions, you shall have Samphrey to accompany you.”
