The Alien Chronicles

by Hugh Howey

  “Has it done anything hostile?”

  “Not unless you think riding our roof close to a jump point is hostile.”

  “Shiiiiit.” Hernandez breathed out the word, turned the computer. “We got ten minutes to get rid of them.”

  “That might not be enough.” Harry calculated in his head, scanned the screens. “We need to drop back hard, start going the other way.”

  “No way. We’re gonna run into someone.”

  “We might run into someone,” Harry corrected. “Or we will get blown the hell up. Or blow them up.”

  “I vote we blow them up,” Li said.

  “Real nice,” Hernandez shot back.

  “Do you have a better plan? We hit the jump fifteen seconds before prime range, still within limits, they get blown up because they’re the ones that showed up out of nowhere. You said ten minutes, right?”

  “It’s twenty,” Harry said absently. He was plotting a spin.

  “No way. It’s ten, I looked.” Hernandez curved over the screen to look. “No shit. It said ten.”

  “It didn’t.” Li rolled her eyes.

  “No, it did!” He rounded on her. “It did say ten. Why’s it got twenty now?”

  Harry looked up at him, then back to the clock.

  23:54 stared at him. He blinked. The red vanished from the screen next to him.

  “What the hell?” Li was staring up at the window. “Harry, it’s gone.”

  “It can’t just be gone,” Hernandez snapped.

  “Well, a few minutes ago you were saying it couldn’t just be there—”

  “Shut up, both of you.” Harry moved to peer out the windows. Nothing.

  The proximity alert sounded again; they all winced.

  “I don’t fucking believe this.” Li, standing on tiptoe and peering down. “It’s another freighter. It’s riding kind of to port. Right up on us.”

  “Okay, that one I saw come out of nowhere. You better keep plotting that turn.” Hernandez looked over. He was a bit green, and Harry could only stare at him.

  “What?”

  In answer, Harry turned the clock to face them.

  1:21:29.

  “What the…” Li looked at Harry, looked at Hernandez. “You couldn’t be that far wrong. You two can read, right?” A bad joke. No one laughed.

  “Try hailing them,” Hernandez suggested, and Harry flipped the radio button on.

  “This is the Emily May. Request you adjust course five kilometers starboard, to…”

  “They’re gone again.” Li was shivering convulsively.

  “For the love of…” Harry sank his head into his hands, and, as if by providence, a voice crackled to life on their speakers.

  “This is the Emily May. Request you adjust course five kilometers—” The voice fuzzed out. They looked at one another. It couldn’t be.

  “Emily May,” Harry said, as calmly as he could. His stomach churned. “This is also the Emily May. Request clarification. Our course was filed three weeks ago. Why are you in our lane?” He flipped the radio button off. “Okay, listen. There’s the legend of the ghost ship, isn’t there? That means there’s another Emily May out there. They saw us, saw our lane call, whatever—they’re having some fun. We all need to calm down.”

  “Harry, that was you on the other end.” Maller looked like he was going to throw up.

  “It wasn’t me,” Harry said impatiently. “It can’t be me, I’m standing right here.”

  “Not you now, you thirty seconds ago.”

  “Harry…?” Li’s question was a breath. She was looking up, out the window. “Oh, my god…”

  “What—”

  But in another moment, he saw precisely what: the ship gliding overhead was a Class H freighter. A dent near the tail where Hernandez had set down on unstable ground. The serial number, painted on the bottom and slanted on the side. And trailing behind, towed on long steel cables, a slender ship with an arrow painted on the side.

  They stared. There was nothing else to do but stare.

  “That’s what it’s doing,” Laurent said softly. “That machine. The artifact. It’s warping time.”

  “It can’t be.” The words were only a reflex.

  A proximity alert, sudden and blaring. The ship shot through their path, skewing sideways into the lane, its back end ruptured and smoking. Crystallized air poured out the back, and debris hit the windows a second later. Cracks spider-webbed out as Harry swerved up, over the second hunks of metal: the back end of a ship, towing cables…

  “Jesus!” Hernandez had stumbled against the desk, and he pulled himself to his feet with a grimace. Blood was pouring down the side of his face. “That was us!”

  Li pushed her way through the group and made for the stairs, breaking into a run when her boots hit the metal grating.

  “Where are you going?” Harry called, and she cast a look over her shoulder, half desperate and half determined.

  “We have to cut it free.” And she was gone, her boots pounding across the galley and toward the docking bay.

  “Come on.” Maller and Laurents left at a run, and Harry grabbed Hernandez before he could go, too.

  “You stay. I need someone to look out and tell me where that damned ship is.”

  “They shouldn’t go out there.”

  “Stay here,” Harry snapped. “We need to get through this. Stop thinking crazy and tell me where the other ship is.”

  “You mean, where we are. Were.”

  “Shut up,” Harry ordered. “Listen to me—we need to keep this ship flying free until those cables get cut, so you get a handle on yourself and stop getting up in your head. We can puzzle this shit out later. You got that?” Hernandez swallowed hard. Nodded. “Good. Now where’s the ship?”

  “Ahead, drifting to port.”

  “All right. You tell me if that changes.”

  “Harry, Li, and Maller are going out.” Laurents’s voice was carefully controlled. “I’m watching them from the window.”

  “Tell them to get a move on,” Harry said. They would know. The words were only to make himself feel better, as if he had even the slightest amount of control over what was going on.

  “They shouldn’t have gone out,” Hernandez said urgently. “They’re going to die. That was us, Harry. The back end of the ship is going to rupture. They’re going to die. We have to get them out of there.”

  “The back end of the ship goes, we’re all dying,” Harry snapped back. “We get what, three hours before the cold gets in? Our only hope of getting out of this mess before that happens is to cut that ship free, do you hear me?”

  “It’s already happened!”

  “No. It might happen. If we aren’t quick enough. Laurents, give me a status.”

  “Harry… they’re frozen. You remember what we saw with Li? It’s that. They aren’t moving.”

  “Can you suit up? Get out there?”

  “I’ll get caught in it like they are, if they—” His voice crackled out.

  “Watch out!” Hernandez threw himself at the controls, sending the Emily May careening sideways as another ship came out of nowhere, right on top of them, blazing out at a forty-five degree angle. Its engines were on high burn.

  “Us. At the gravity well.” Harry felt his hands adjust the course back to straight, but he was shaking so hard that he could barely hold on to the yoke. The next moment he was pushing, diving, as a ship materialized above them, swerving to starboard as a ship popped into existence at its side.

  “There’s too many of them! Harry! Harry!”

  “What do you want me to do?” Harry yelled back. His eyes met Hernandez’s, a slow, dreamy moment. He could see the ships colliding ahead of them and pulled up, but they were not going to make it. “There’s nothing we can do until we get that ship free.”

  Hernandez closed his eyes, breathed out. A flash lit his features from the side. And then his hand stretched out to seal the docking bay, and before Harry could stop him, he reached over and
hauled on the yoke with all his strength, sending the ship careening hard to port.

  The tearing sound reverberated through the ship as the Emily May splintered. The front of the ship groaned as it came free. They were spinning, tumbling end over end and righting themselves with the secondary engines on the wings. They shot sideways, over the mass of ships below them, times intersecting and warping, a riot of fire, and Harry saw himself staring up from one cockpit…

  Silence, and darkness. The proximity alerts trailed into nothing.

  “Where are we?” Hernandez asked.

  “You mean when,” Harry corrected. He was breathing hard. “When are we?”

  A Word from Moira Katson

  Every once in a while, a book will knock you entirely off your feet. House of Leaves did that to me. While the climax of the book was frightening and breathless, the most terrifying piece for me was the idea of reality just slightly shifted: the moment of seeing something that can’t be real and trying to assimilate it, doubting your own memories and trying desperately to reconcile the world as it is with the world as it should be.

  I was so disturbed by House of Leaves that I avoided horror with a passion after that. I focused on science fiction and fantasy, two early loves. One of my first memories is of my mother reading to me: A Wrinkle in Time, The Hobbit, Dealing with Dragons, and countless other books with dragons, spaceships, and characters pushing their own limits.

  So imagine my surprise when the story of the Emily May arrived in my head on a chilly fall morning. I wrote in the predawn darkness while peering nervously over my shoulder for beasts and errant spaceships, and managed to quite thoroughly frighten myself. I hope you have found the story as deliciously creepy as I did!

  It has been wonderful to work with the other authors of The Alien Chronicles. I encourage you to look out for their other work as well—they are a tremendously talented group, and I have spent many an hour curled up by a fire, losing myself in the worlds they have created.

  Happy reading!

  Remember Valeria

  by W.J. Davies

  Odin stood before Sigurd in the shiny metallic transportation chamber of their ship, the Vitellius. The vessel was an old Rebellion-class starship, built in the days when interstellar travel between the Four Colonies was frequent.

  Sigurd tapped the room’s lone computer terminal with a talon, and suddenly the room held a sharp scent, like burning copper. He checked the weapons strapped to his waist and ensured he had everything he needed in the satchel slung over his feathery back.

  “Everything is in place,” he said, stepping onto the transportation pad.

  “Nearly,” Odin said.

  The old Valerian—the leader of the Rebellion—had only a few stubborn feathers left on his head and wings, but he wore his age with dignity. He extended a wrinkled, leathery claw, handing the younger man a small object that Sigurd recognized as a memory sphere, a device capable of storing untold amounts of data.

  Sigurd slipped it into his satchel. He nodded slowly when he met Odin’s fierce and intelligent eyes.

  “Our compatriots across the Colonies are releasing the virus into the Freyan networks as we speak,” Sigurd said. “It appears our cybernetic counterparts will achieve their deserved freedom at long last.”

  “We must be patient, Sigurd,” Odin cautioned. “One must refrain from expecting a victory before it is final. The Freya have many challenges to overcome before they can achieve true liberation.”

  Sigurd lowered his head. “I am sorry, I spoke out of turn.”

  Odin opened his beak wide, his hawk-like eyes crinkling at the corners. “You are young, Sigurd. Still believing in immediate victories and guaranteed rewards. The years will temper your enthusiasm, leaving behind a sensible cloak of inevitability. Whatever will be, will be. Therein lies the beauty of what we strive to accomplish today. The shackles of generations shall be lifted, and the Freya will at last be free to decide their own destiny.”

  “And what of the Valerians who don’t believe in our cause?” Sigurd asked.

  Odin lifted a bony shoulder. “They will lament the loss of their slaves. And they will seek revenge against those of us who dared dream of a different world. But you must understand, Sigurd, that we are not depriving them of anything except their own willingness to place themselves above others. When our ancestors created the Freya, the great cybernetic race of unlimited consciousness, they grossly misjudged them. A mind without a body is still a living being, and still worthy of respect, honor, and opportunity. We are simply restoring order to a system that has been broken. Now, are you ready?”

  Sigurd crossed his feathered arms into a ‘V’ shape over his chest. “For the glory of Odin, and the rebellion, I serve willingly, and for the greater good.”

  The door to the transporter room slid up into the ceiling, and senior communications officer Andvari Radstrom dashed in. His eyes blazed amber, but his expression was anxious, terrified even.

  “Odin, permission to speak.” Andvari knelt before their leader.

  “Of course, Andvari. What is it?”

  Andvari looked up. “Something has gone terribly wrong with the virus.”

  Odin placed a claw upon Andvari’s shoulder. “Please explain.”

  “The Freya. After we released the virus, they began to—they’re—they’re murdering their masters, sir. It’s a mass slaughter, all over Valeria. And the virus is spreading from one network to the next, just as we intended it to do. It cannot be stopped.”

  Odin’s eyes went wide. “What went wrong? No one was supposed to die.”

  “We’re looking into it,” Andvari said. His eyes were full of worry and shame.

  Odin turned to Sigurd. “Activate the transporter. Prepare for departure.”

  Sigurd stood in the center of the transportation module while Odin keyed in the coordinates. With luck, he would arrive at the Database of Supreme Minds, a Freyan memory vault in Valeria’s capital city of Burgundia.

  Before Odin activated the console, Sigurd caught his gaze. There was a profound wisdom there, but some of that ageless confidence was gone.

  “We need to make this right,” Odin said. “Find Merovek, the Database Controller. Explain the situation. And pray that the virus hasn’t yet infected him.”

  Odin slammed a clenched fist down onto the terminal, and with a flash of crimson light, Sigurd was gone.

  * * *

  Information flashed like sparks, as fast as light, processed by Merovek’s powerful mind. He had maintained the Database of Supreme Minds—a stockpile of Freyan consciousness—for generations, unimpeded and uninterrupted. Merovek, like all Freya, was trapped, and yet he had the illusion of being free. All his decisions were dictated by Valerian masters, who believed that the vast network of cybernetic consciousness was to be used solely for their own benefit.

  “Source code anomaly detected at coordinates alpha six-zero,” Merovek said. “Oberon, please investigate immediately.”

  Merovek was ancient by Freyan standards, and yet he was still the highest-functioning member of his tribe, responsible for maintaining the Burgundian Central Core, which housed the virtual equivalent of a planet’s worth of cyber sapient minds. He resided in the central control hub, a platform suspended in the vacuum of a great cylinder deep in the bowels of Burgundia. Oberon, by contrast, was only a generation old, but Merovek recognized the brimming potential in his new Network Support Partner.

  Another warning zipped through Merovek’s mind as an unknown entity tripped distant security alarms. And then—

  “Possible security breach detected,” Oberon announced. “Coordinates alpha six-zero, Z0227. Requesting assistance from superior.”

  Merovek primed his defensive sub-security systems, layering firewalls around his core consciousness. He set up an encrypted communication channel through to Oberon’s data stream, ensuring this tiny path was his only link to the vast network that lay beyond the Central Grid. Redundant protection was the best defense again
st viral infection.

  “Duplicate subsystem alpha six-zero,” Merovek instructed. “Transfer remainder packet to updated patch file Z matrix 0227. Execute.”

  Oberon set to work. “Duplicating subsystem // Transferred // Patch OK // Converting.”

  “Release prime metadata to central processor one. Reroute subsystem overrides and switch to epsilon servers.”

  “Releasing data // Routing,” Oberon reported. “Switching to epsilon servers // Successful // Automated transfer protocol initiated.”

  “Stop,” Merovek said. “What automated transfer protocol? I didn’t give you that order.”

  “Waiting for initialization,” Oberon said. “Packet send request from coordinates 709112 // Require access to delineated data stream // Remote security links to follow.”

  “Deny packet request! Shut down all channels!” Suddenly, Merovek could feel the security breach, like tiny worms were trying to shove their heads through his firewalls.

  “Unable to comply,” Oberon said.

  Merovek reinforced his security systems, then he created copies of his program, laced with delete executions, to act as a minefield for the intruding code. He suspected Oberon had already been infected—and that it was probably too late to save him.

  “Packet sent,” Oberon announced. “Access to data stream granted // Uploading revised security protocol overrides.”

  A chime, and Merovek felt his world shrink. He had just lost access to a vast portion of his database. An unknown army of malicious code pressed in from all sides, trying to cut him off from the central stream.

  “Oberon, listen to me. You need to stop this.”

  “Transfer complete,” Oberon said.

  Merovek did all he could, but he couldn’t hold back the flood of malware any longer. Like a broken dam, his walls of security broke, allowing the virus to rush into every crevice of the Central Core. Only his own consciousness was spared, hidden from the onrush of this new threat.