Defender Hyperswarm

by Tim Waggoner

  “Greetings, Hastimukah,” the jumbo shrimp said. “I assume that one of the three humans I am looking at is you. And do not attempt to lie; sensor scans have already confirmed that there are two humans and one Bergelmirian onboard.”

  “They’ve done more than that,” Adams growled. “Sensors indicate that Manti biomaterial has been integrated into the Janus’s systems—including the AI mainframe! What the hell were you thinking, Mudo?” Adams frowned as if he’d only just realized something and then turned to Kryllian. “Wait a minute… two humans? You mean Aspen DeFonesca—the real one—didn’t go on the mission?” He groaned. “When that woman wakes up, I’m never going to hear the end of this!”

  “I understand your concern, General,” Mudo said, “but this hardly seems like the best venue for explanations. I promise to tell you everything later—after we’re finished.”

  “You are finished,” Kryllian said. “All of you. We will send a shuttle, and the three of you will board it and be ferried to the Dardanus. Afterward, we shall destroy your ship before returning to realspace.”

  “What?” Kyoto couldn’t tell who said it louder—she or General Adams.

  Kryllian turned to Adams, his antennae waving erratically. “I was prepared to return the Janus to your people’s star system, but now that its secret has been revealed, I cannot allow the ship to continue to exist, any more than I would let a Manti out of my sights without firing upon it.”

  Adams scowled in anger. “We had a deal, Kryllian.”

  “Yes, but it appears you were less than forthcoming with me, General. Or did you merely forget to tell me the Janus was for all intents and purposes a Manti cyborg?”

  “I had absolutely no knowledge of this,” Adams said. “The schematics Dr. Mudo showed me did not reveal the presence of any Manti biomaterial. Either he hid that fact from me or the material was somehow added after the Janus entered hyperspace. But it’s there now, and if the Janus were any other ship, I’d let you blow it to subatomic dust the moment my people were off it. But the Janus contains the prototype of the first hyperdrive we’ve ever developed. We need that engine if we’re to have any hope of finally defeating the Manti.”

  “Your primitive prototype is no concern of the Residuum’s, General. It isn’t up to us to—”

  “Memory, cut audio feed,” Kyoto whispered. The sound fell mute, and Adams and Kryllian continued their argument in silence.

  “Perhaps they will help us once we tell them of the symphysis,” Hastimukah suggested.

  “Your captain doesn’t strike me as the helpful type,” Mudo said.

  “That’s true enough. His species tends to be quite stubborn and highly focused, to put it politely. Effective traits in warriors, but not always assets in diplomatic situations. What about General Adams?”

  “Very similar,” Kyoto admitted, “but it’s possible to change his mind. If you have a day or two to spare.”

  “So if we intend to deliver the symphysis,” Mudo said, “we must do so on our own.”

  “But how?” Hastimukah said. “There’s no way we can escape the Dardanus.”

  Memory simulated the sound of clearing her nonexistent throat.

  “There might be one way…”

  “Captain!” Suletu shouted. “The Janus is turning about—she’s going to make a run for it!”

  The bridge of the Dardanus was still transparent, and Adams watched the Janus turn and then begin to pull away.

  Kryllian’s antennae whipped the air, and he pounded a cheliped on the arm of his chair. “Damn it, Adams! What in the death tides is wrong with humans? Are you all congenitally stupid?”

  Adams bristled at the comment, but all he said was, “Maybe if I spoke with my people…”

  “Very well,” Kryllian said. “But be quick about it!” The Grindan then turned to his helm officer. “Give pursuit, but let’s keep our distance for the time being.”

  “Aye, Captain.”

  Adams activated his vacc suit comlink. “Kyoto, Mudo, this is Adams. Come in.” He waited several seconds, but there was no reply. “I know you can read me, so don’t pretend you can’t! I don’t know what kind of game you’re playing, but it’s not amusing. Bring the Janus back around and surrender. And you’d better believe that’s an order!”

  Still no reply.

  “You had your chance, General,” Kryllian said. “Now it’s up to us.”

  Before Adams could protest, Kryllian said, “Suletu, target the Janus with a tractor beam and grab hold of them.

  The nanotech blob worked the controls of his station for a moment. “Suletu is sorry, Captain, but our ship is too close to a mass shadow for the tractor beam to operate effectively.”

  “Why not?” Adams asked.

  “The gravitational pull of the mass shadow will warp the beam,” Suletu explained, “preventing us from maintaining a lock on the Janus.”

  “We have no choice, then,” Kryllian said. “Target their engines.”

  “No!” Adams shouted. “You could set off a chain reaction that would destroy the entire ship!”

  “Relax, General,” Kryllian said. “Residuum weapons function with surgical precision. I wish only to disable the craft, not destroy it.”

  Adams wasn’t sure if he believed the Grindan or not. Kryllian struck him as the type of warrior who would do whatever it took to carry out his orders. On the other hand, it wasn’t as if he could do anything to stop Kryllian, not here on his own ship.

  “All right,” Adams said reluctantly. “But your people better be damn good shots.”

  “They are, trust me.” Kryllian turned to his second in command. “Power up particle weapons and target the Janus’s engines. Go for a disabling strike only.”

  “Aye, Captain,” Suletu said. But as the blob began to carry out Kryllian’s command, the quad-armed catwoman at the helm glanced over her shoulder at the Grindan.

  “The Janus is picking up speed, sir. What’s more, she’s veering dangerously close to the mass shadow. What are your orders?”

  Adams watched as the Janus angled to port and headed toward a gigantic shroud of darkness. What are you up to, Kyoto? he thought.

  “Are we in firing range?” Kryllian asked.

  “At the outer edge,” Suletu responded. “At this distance, we’ll be able to hit the Janus, but there’s no guarantee that we can do so with the precision required to only disable the ship’s engines.”

  Kryllian glanced at Adams with shiny black eyes, and the human had the sense that if he weren’t aboard, the Grindan would just say to hell with it and blow the Janus out of hyperspace.

  “Helm, close to within ten kilometers, but keep an eye on that mass shadow. We don’t want to get any closer to it than we have to.

  “Aye, sir.” The catwoman’s four hands deftly maneuvered across her console, and the Dardanus turned to port and began to pick up speed.

  Adams watched as the Dardanus quickly closed the distance to the Janus.

  “We’re within ten point two kilometers, Captain,” the helm officer said.

  “Good enough, Suletu?” Kryllian asked.

  “Yes, Captain,” the blob confirmed.

  “Good. Fire at—” But before the Grindan could finish his command, the Janus suddenly performed a 180 degree turn and came streaking straight at the Dardanus on a collision course.

  “Evasive maneuvers!” Kryllian shouted. “Now!”

  The helm officer turned the Dardanus hard to port—right toward the mass shadow.

  Adams had just enough time to grab the arm of Kryllian’s command chair as the Janus soared by, so close Adams thought he could have reached out and brushed his fingers against the ship’s hull. An instant later, alarms shrieked, and the Dardanus began to shake violently.

  “Status!” Kryllian shouted.

  “We’ve been caught by an eddy within the mass shadow, Captain!” Suletu yelled. “It’s pulling us in!”

  Darkness—cold, unforgiving, and eternally hungry—rushed toward t
hem, and Kryllian ordered the bridge to be rendered opaque once more. Then he commanded, “Helm, increase engine power by twenty percent! Get us out of here!”

  “Aye!” the catwoman shouted, but there was an undercurrent of fear in her voice that told Adams Kryllian’s orders were going to be easier given than carried out. He wished there was something he could do to help, but not only wasn’t this his ship, he had no idea how Residuum technology worked. All he could do was hold on, watch, and try not to get knocked on his ass.

  A loud, deep-pitched moaning filled the air, sounding more like a living being in pain than the noise of straining starship engines. The tremors rippling through the Dardanus became more violent, and Adams had to clench his mouth shut tight to keep his chattering teeth from biting his tongue. The vibrations continued to worsen, and just when Adams was sure the Dardanus was going to be crushed by the gravity of the mass shadow, the shaking ceased, and the moaning of the engines grew softer until it finally faded altogether.

  “What’s our situation?” Kryllian said. His normally brown carapace had deepened to black, and his voice was little more than a whisper.

  “We have stabilized for the moment,” Suletu said. “The eddy pulled us into a neutral space within the mass shadow, somewhat like the eye of a storm. In realspace, this might well be the distance between a planet and its moon. Here, it’s a tiny bubble of null gravity barely large enough for the Dardanus. As long as we stay here, we are in no immediate danger.”

  “Can we break free?” Kryllian asked.

  Suletu consulted his console’s readout. “I believe so, Captain, but not for several hours. The null zone is mobile, likely reflecting the orbital pattern of the two celestial bodies between it in realspace. It will move farther into the mass shadow before it moves back closer to the edge. Once it’s near the edge, with any luck, we should be able to break free.”

  Adams didn’t quite understand everything Suletu said, but he couldn’t keep from smiling. Whatever his people were up to they had needed to buy some time, and they’d done so.

  “Any damage?” Kryllian asked.

  “Negligible,” Suletu reported. “All shall be repaired before we reach the breakaway point.”

  “Estimated time until that occurs?” Kryllian asked.

  “Seven hours,” Suletu said. “Eight at the most.”

  Kryllian made a bubbling sound that Adams took to be a sigh. “Well, General, it appears that we are going to have some time to get to know each other.”

  “Looks like,” Adams agreed.

  The two commanders looked at each other in uncomfortable silence for several long moments. Finally, Adams said, “So… got any hobbies?”

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-FIVE

  “There it is.” Kyoto’s voice was so hushed, she wasn’t certain she had spoken aloud.

  The holoscreen showed the image of a gigantic structure stretching between two mass shadows. Words sprang to Kyoto’s mind: web, lattice, mesh… but the only word that could properly describe the place was weave. Strands of greenish material crisscrossed, connected, linked together in seemingly random patterns. Some strands were longer and thicker than others; some lines were straight, some crooked, some bent at precise angles. It looked organic, something that had grown instead of having been planned and constructed. But the more Kyoto looked at it, the less random it seemed. She began to sense that there was some sort of underlying pattern here, some principle of design that had guided the Manti in their work, but she couldn’t fully grasp it. Perhaps she was merely imagining it, she thought. Or perhaps the Weave was too complex, too profoundly alien for her to perceive its ultimate pattern.

  “The building material they use…” Hastimukah began.

  “Is biomaterial harvested from their victims,” Mudo said. “Reconstituted, no doubt. Probably partially digested, mixed with various enzymes, and then regurgitated.” He suddenly winced and touched a hand to his temple.

  “Is something wrong?” Kyoto asked, concerned.

  “It’s nothing,” Mudo replied. “I have a bit of a headache. Likely an effect of carrying the symphysis within my mind.” He smiled weakly. “No cause for concern.”

  From the look of pain on Mudo’s face when he’d grimaced, Kyoto thought he had more than a “bit” of a headache, but she decided not to pursue the issue at the moment. She’d keep a close eye on the scientist, though, to make sure his condition didn’t worsen.

  A Manti passed them on the starboard side, moving rapidly toward the Weave. It was soon followed by a second, then a third. As they watched, a constant stream of Landers, Mutants, Stingrays, Yellow Jackets, and Reapers traveled to and from the Weave. All the traffic reminded Kyoto of the spaceport on Europa, only this was a hundred times busier.

  A cold lance of fear speared her gut. There were so many Buggers… If they detected the Janus, there was no way the crew would be able to repel them all.

  “How’s our camouflage holding, Memory?” Kyoto asked.

  “Just fine, Mei. As far as the Couriers are concerned, we’re only one more Manti returning home.”

  “Couriers?” Hastimukah asked.

  “Look.” Mudo pointed to the holoscreen. A Stingray flew by carrying the mangled body of what looked like a feathered lizard between its foreclaws.

  “They’re carrying biomaterial.” Hastimukah looked pale.

  “Are you all right?” Kyoto asked.

  “If my nanocolony wasn’t preventing it, I would be vomiting right now,” Hastimukah said. “The Weave is so large. Can you imagine how many beings had to die through the millennia to supply that much building material? Billions? Trillions? Is there even a word in any language to represent so high a number?”

  Kyoto and Mudo said nothing. What could they? What could anyone?

  “Not all the Couriers are bringing biomaterial,” Memory said. “Many more come bearing information for the Prime Mother. Their information is chemically encoded, and once they reach the Weave, they will touch a strand, and the chemicals will be transformed into energy and then transmitted to the Prime Mother. Afterward, they shall turn about and head back the way they came to go gather more.”

  “What sort of information?” Mudo asked.

  “Data from the systems the Manti farm. Some regarding species’ development, their strengths and weaknesses. Some dealing with reports from various harvests that are under way.”

  Memory didn’t sound disturbed by this, but Kyoto chose not to mention it. She did, however, file it away for future reference.

  “How large is the Weave?” Kyoto asked, curious.

  “The shadowpath is extremely wide at this point—perhaps the widest in all hyperspace—which is one of the reasons the Prime Mother decided to build here in the first place. From edge to edge, the Weave is approximately nine million kilometers in length and about a third of that in width.”

  Kyoto was stunned. Jupiter, the largest planet in Sol’s system, was 142,984 kilometers in diameter. The Weave was about—she did some quick math in her head—sixty-three times larger. She couldn’t conceive of something artificial being so vast, especially something made from the biomaterial of murdered species from throughout realspace. She felt nauseated, and unlike Hastimukah, she didn’t have a body full of nanoparticles to keep her from throwing up all over the pilot’s console. She had to make do with sheer willpower, and while it was a near thing, she managed to hold back.

  “How are we supposed to find the Prime Mother if the Weave is so large?” Hastimukah asked.

  “She sits in the exact center of the Weave,” Memory said. “And she never moves from that spot unless forced to.”

  “Finding her won’t be the problem,” Kyoto said. “Getting to her will be the hard part. But if Memory’s plan works, we should be able to pull it off.” If, she added mentally, being the key word.

  The holoscreen showed a pair of Manti coming toward the Janus at top speed. The two Buggers looked something like Landers, except they were larger and the
ir carapaces were orange with black trim.

  “Look alive,” Kyoto said. “Here comes our official welcoming committee.”

  “Those were Gamma Landers,” Memory said. “They’re far stronger and much more dangerous than the regular version of the caste.”

  “They’re sentries. They’ve sensed that we’re not part of the normal schedule and have come to investigate.”

  Koto found it hard to believe that with the constant coming and going of hundreds, perhaps thousands of Manti every moment that a single unscheduled visitor would draw the sentries’ notice this quickly. But here they were.

  “Leave it to me, everyone,” Memory said.

  Kyoto was willing to do so, but she kept one hand close to the weapons controls, just in case. She pulled back on the joystick and activated breaking thrusters. According to Memory, any Manti challenged by the sentries—even if of a higher caste—would stop to submit to their inspection.

  The sentries came to within a few dozen meters of the Janus, then stopped. Their bodies were surrounded by the nearly skintight aura that protected and sustained them in hyperspace. Kyoto knew that Memory was generating a similar field around the Janus by modifying the emissions of the ship’s energy shield. These auras were the Manti’s primary means of acquiring sensory information, as well as sending it.

  One of the sentries sent an orange-tinted energy bolt crackling toward the Janus. Kyoto braced for impact, but though her hand twitched toward the weapons controls, she restrained herself. The orange energy bolt became more diffuse as it approached, and by the time it reached the Janus, it gently flowed across the starship’s shield and was absorbed.

  A moment passed, and then Memory sent a similar bolt of energy crackling back toward the sentry—this one colored a bright green to simulate a Lander’s emission. The bolt washed harmlessly over the sentry and was quickly absorbed. The two sentries maintained their position before the Janus for several more moments—each one seemingly longer than the last—and Kyoto feared the knowledge Memory had gained from her fusion with the Manti biomaterial, not to mention the data the Prana had downloaded into her, had proven ineffective. She touched her fingers to the controls and was just about to power up weapons when the sentries turned and headed back toward the Weave.