Best of Beyond the Stars

by Patrice Fitzgerald

  “Good morning,” said Golovanov.

  “Every time I see you in a hospital, something bad happens to me,” I said, taking a deep breath. My whole chest lit up in pain; I shouldn’t do that any more. Just shallow breathing. Sandy was right. So many broken ribs... “Or has just happened. Do I have any more prosthetics? Losing the arm was bad enough.”

  “Nah,” said Golovanov, smiling. “You actually pulled through okay. I mean, you’re beat up pretty bad, and you have a wicked-sick concussion, but you’ll pull through.”

  “That’s what I like to hear.” I closed my eyes a moment. “So...what the fuck?”

  “Your AI saved your life. Angel and Stanco carried you in. They deserve a fair share of the credit for that, too.”

  Sandy was saving me, just like her namesake. “I meant with the ship. The Anchorage.”

  Golovanov folded his hands in his lap, sucking in air between his teeth. “Yeah. Not sure what to tell you: appears to be...some kind of spider thing. They can survive in space, and they’re tough, strong, and adaptable. We got plenty of samples of their blood, along with the recordings from you and your team...so I’m sure Fleet Intelligence is going to have a field day trying to classify them. There’s a myriad of breeds we observed, I doubt two are identical.”

  “The Myriad,” I said, shrugging. “Well, hell of a first contact for humanity. Went to shooting in minutes. Mission accomplished, I guess.”

  Golovanov nodded. “Something like that.”

  I picked up a piece of stale bread and bit it. “You don’t think they’re aliens? Some kind of Earthborn bioweapon?”

  His expression told me he didn’t know. “We’ll see,” he said, standing up and tugging the front of his uniform down. “I have all seven other suits out there right now, combing over the wreckage, making sure that our nukes got every single one of those bastards‌—‌although if we could find one alive for dissection, that’d be useful, too. I’ve also put out a fleetwide alert. It was tempting to classify this whole thing, but I don’t see the point. Not for something this serious. In a few days, all the colonies will know about it. I’m calling them a highly infectious biohazard for now, until we have information that suggests otherwise.”

  “Hopefully that’s the last we’ll see of them,” I said, sitting up and folding my pillow behind me, making it into a half-chair.

  Golovanov tilted his head. “Lots of ships go missing every month,” he said. “Most are never found. I’m sure almost all of them have entirely mundane explanations. But what might have happened aboard the Anchorage if we didn’t show up?” He put on his hat. “Do you really think that this is the first ship these creatures have attacked, or merely the first one that’s been discovered?”

  A sobering thought. Speaking of...

  “I need a drink,” I said, cracking a smile.

  Golovanov’s face darkened. “You know that’s not an option,” he said, and then without elaboration, turned and left.

  “Happy New Year,” I said to his back, and then I settled back into my bed, picking up a glass of water and taking a sip.

  Mission complete.

  A Word from David Adams

  Thanks for reading!

  What I like in particular about The Immortals: Anchorage, apart from all the creepniess, is how it fits in with the rest of the world of Symphony of War.

  Anchorage is a prequel, kind of, told from the perspective of a side character from Symphony of War. The Myriad are the primary antagonists of the Symphony of War series, and I wanted to show how they got to Polema. I also wanted to show, or at least hint that, they had the ability to “create” humans by blending their DNA together. Another short story of mine, Demon and Emily, gave insight into what Polema used to be like before the Myriad arrived. The Immortals: Anchorage shows something different entirely.

  That’s what I love about the various short stories and novellas set in the same universe as my novels ‌—‌ I can show the side stories that “fill in the gaps” of the novels. Symphony of War doesn’t talk about how the Myriad came to Polema, only that they were there. It’s not relevant to that story.

  What I want to tell, eventually, is why. But that’s a story for another day. ;)

  If you want to read more of my work, you can find me in a few places!

  I have a Facebook page at: http://www.facebook.com/lacunaverse

  And a webpage here: www.lacunaverse.com

  I send out a notification for my new books here: http://eepurl.com/toBf9

  Or if you just want to talk to me directly, my email is: dave@lacunaverse.com

  Containment

  by Susan Kaye Quinn

  Chapter One

  IT ALL STARTED with a pile of rocks that shouldn’t exist.

  By rocks, of course I mean the regolith‌—‌the assortment of pebbles, boulders, and grain-sized dust that coats the surface of Thebe, my current Commonwealth Mining assignment. And by shouldn’t exist, I mean it wasn’t there on my last check of the near pole, and there’s no one currently on the tiny moon who would stack up a precarious tower of rocks. Thebe is tidally locked with Jupiter, which means the near pole is the one place where the massive gas giant perpetually looms exactly overhead... but I can see no purpose in a spindly stack of regolith making note of that fact.

  I found the construct while running a crawl-check on the tether. Its ultra-tensile strength material encircles Thebe, wrapping around the moon from near pole to far and anchoring all the equipment involved in breaking, sorting, and melting the regolith. On the first pass, I didn’t stop. After all, tether maintenance is a primary level protocol‌—‌anything goes wrong there, and the entire operation flings off into space. Even if I could manage to rescue Thebe’s extensive mining equipment, I’d end up burning precious organic fuels and losing several orbits worth of production time. And that’s how Mining Masters get reassigned to Outer Belt asteroids with minimal harvesting complexity and maximum dust. My machine-sourced sentience level of 90 might not compare to the 1000+ sentience level of my ascender masters, but it would be completely wasted there. And that’s a punishment few Mining Masters return from.

  I wait until I’ve completed the second pass of the crawl-check, then I maneuver off-tether for a closer inspection. The stacked rocks are precisely aligned, each irregular chunk carefully balanced on the one below, creating an unlikely structure that defies Thebe’s slight gravity.

  I leave it intact and return the crawler to base.

  Unlike my four previous assignments in the Outer Belt, Thebe is primarily a tourist destination. Fortunately, my relatively new duties attending to tourists don’t usually conflict with my primary mission of efficiently mining Thebe’s resources‌—‌I’ve only had two visitors in my forty-seven orbits.

  I don’t know why my masters named this hundred-kilometer-wide piece of Jovian real estate Thebe‌—‌I don’t have access to the ascenders’ common knowledge database on Earth‌—‌but its composition is interesting for mining purposes. According to the Commonwealth Mining database, less than four percent of Belt asteroids have Thebe’s combination of carbonaceous material‌—‌silicates with sulfide inclusions primarily‌—‌and iron-nickel alloy. Essentially, it’s a rock with metal armor. Thebe orbits the planet fast and close, making it a frequent target for wandering asteroids pulled in by Jupiter’s gravitational well‌—‌that’s how a metal plate was welded to the near pole and a giant crater, Zethus, was carved out of the far one. Most of the mining operations reside at the crater.

  The moon takes sixteen Earth-hours to orbit Jupiter, providing a full spectrum of viewing opportunities for my masters. The Commonwealth database has given names to the four phases of the planet. Full Glory showcases the fully lit Jovian surface, prime time for visitors; the Setting Quarter gains its name from the sun setting on Thebe, when only the reflected glow of Jupiter’s high albedo clouds lights the cratered landscape. During Full Dark, Thebe traverses the dark side of the planet; the utter lack of light‌—‌
Jovian or solar‌—‌during those four hours means draining the solar-cell batteries for operation, lighting, and navigation. And finally, the Rising Quarter brings the sun and Jupiter’s tourist-attracting sights back into view.

  We’re currently in the Setting Quarter, and I hurry to attend to the nanite depletion problem at the foundry before Full Dark sets in. I am Master of mining operations and the tractor transport is Slave, so I could simply instruct it to move the nanites from the depot to the foundry. But instead, I download to the tractor and attend to it personally. Nanite operation is difficult to resurrect once it reaches minimum viability level‌—‌something I learned the hard way on Daedalus, a tiny depleted-comet asteroid that was my last assignment. But tractor operation is fairly mindless... allowing a significant fraction of my cognition to be occupied by the Mystery of the Rocks. I’ve never seen anything like the stacked regolith, and it vexes me like a harvester clogged with dust in places I cannot discern.

  It goes without saying that the construct was not present at my previous crawl-check. Granted, I had stretched the time between crawl-checks to the maximum recommended by safety protocols... I was busy. But not so busy that I wouldn’t have noticed a visit from one of my ascender masters, especially if they had taken one of their bodyforms on an eighty-kilometer trek from basecamp to the near pole to stack up rocks. I would have been alerted, if only so I could ensure my master used the proper radiation-tolerant bodyform.

  So... what could have created the rock formation?

  Random accretion from a micro-impact event I didn’t notice? Unlikely.

  Fine-grain avalanche that boosted the local regolith to nearly escape velocity? Improbable.

  Were the rocks, in fact, left over from a prior ascender visit, and I simply didn’t notice it on previous inspections? Review of my memory stores proves this false.

  I need more information about the construct.

  Once the nanite supply is reinvigorated, I upload from the tractor transport, download to my humanoid form, and hike back to the near pole to perform a second inspection. When I arrive, the precision of their alignment is even more clear.

  There are a total of twenty stones involved. I tentatively remove the uppermost rock, careful to not disturb the entire display. It’s a silicate with tiny inclusions of metal, clearly sourced from the unharvested stones on the surface nearby. The near pole is at the low point of a bowl created by an ancient impact. It provides a natural depot of materials for a construct of this type... whatever this type is.

  I record the exact orientation of the stones, then pull down the rest of them, determined to replicate the feat. It takes much longer to recreate the arrangement. It’s nearly Full Dark before the construct once again points to Jupiter like a compass.

  Is it possible to stack any random set of stones? I gather a dozen more‌—‌a mixture of sharp-edged metal fragments and chunkier carbonaceous rocks with smoother-textured surfaces. I analyze the form factor of each, calculate the center of gravity, and orient each such that they balance, one on top of another.

  It’s much more difficult to create a second tower, not knowing the “solution” of the correct alignment ahead of time. I make corrections for Thebe’s eccentricity and the small variations in the local gravitational field. My bodyform’s auto-illuminator activates. Most of Full Dark passes before I can maintain a three-stone tower. Once this is accomplished, however, successive placements are much easier. The key is sensing balance through feedback in my humanoid form’s fingers. This delicate tuning allows for the tiny variations missing from the generalized equations of mass, surface roughness, and Thebe’s contribution to the... wobble. An imprecise term, but somehow a fuller expression of the balance of forces involved. I step back to observe my tower: it is nearly as tall as the original. And yet knowing how the stones were placed provides no clue as to why.

  The construct serves no purpose.

  For some reason, I’m considering creating a third tower. I’m only stopped from gathering more regolith when I receive an alert that a scavenger drone has become entangled in its tether. I trek back to base, upload from my humanoid form, download to a more functional-for-this-purpose repair tractor, and set out toward the steel plain where the hapless drone is caught. The Rising Quarter has begun, and the sun peeks over Jupiter’s rim, bringing the planet’s red spot into view as well.

  As I trundle across the steel surface, my magnetic treads keep me anchored. The regolith here has been harvested, leaving a mirrored finish that reflects Jupiter’s palette of red and orange in a constantly moving storm across the kilometer-wide expanse. This is a feature unique to Thebe as well‌—‌the moon’s past clearly included a violent shearing event that polished this portion of its metal armor. That knowledge doesn’t capture the uniqueness of the sight, however. My treads claw against the swirl of color underneath them, chewing at an ephemeral thing that doesn’t actually exist... and yet transforms the plain into a vision of the molten lava fields of Io.

  When I reach the periphery, I hone in on the drone’s plaintive call for help. My four articulated arms make quick work of anchoring it while disentangling it from its secondary tether. It’s soon set to work again, random-walking the edge of the plain and widening it one sweep at a time. It’s already gathered most of the regolith near this edge of the crater. It’ll be fine for a while, but I’ll have to return soon to transport it to a new scavenge location.

  As I trundle back across the plain, I return to the Mystery of the Rocks. I consider how large the Sol System is compared to my personal experience knowledge base. Shared experiences are logged in the Commonwealth Mining database, but I’ve searched that, and there is no mention of anomalous stacked rock formations. I consider the possibility that this might not rise to the level of an official entry; registering anomalous phenomena without adequate explanation is not the way to impress the ascender governors of the Commonwealth. I certainly have yet to register the find myself. I check the chatterstream, the unofficial net of the Mining Masters, but there’s nothing but complaints about shipping schedules and poorly constructed harvesters.

  When I return to base, I upload to the comm center‌—‌perhaps there is a natural-phenomenon explanation which I have missed and which for some reason isn’t registered in the database. And the Master of Io has provided me with assistance in the past‌—‌for example, my near-catastrophic nanite depletion‌—‌all without logging an official report.

  The Commonwealth’s operations run throughout the gas giants and Inner and Outer Belts, keeping a steady supply of materials heading to Earth through a complex ferry system. Tens of thousands of Masters are active at any given moment, a well-organized symphony of harvesting and processing. The Master of Io, in particular, has been active for over a thousand Earth standard days and operates at the highest complexity level that can be managed by machine-sourced intelligence. More difficult operations, like the Jovian mining colonies, are governed by ascenders.

  Non-essential query, I transmit. I include my identification code and a copy of my containment key for validation.

  I wait. The Master of Io must be engaged in essential duties.

  Three minutes later, a response returns. Identification: Master of Io. How may I assist you?

  I transmit images of the stacked rocks, my measurements and reconstruction, the known timeline of events, and theories considered and discarded. I include mention of the two tourist visits by ascenders. Essentially, all relevant information I have gathered.

  Theories? I transmit.

  An error in your register of tourists, the Master of Io transmits.

  Stand by, I reply, then run a full diagnostic of my registry files, as well as other memory stores for good measure. All data sectors are clean. Negative.

  Radiation damage?

  Another system check, this time benchmarking against background radiation measures, looking for recent fluctuations in ambient levels of Jupiter’s magnetic fields. Negative.

 
You are experiencing a malfunction, the Master of Io transmits.

  I see no evidence of this.

  Inexplicable phenomena are an indication of malfunction, not necessarily in the sector where the anomaly is occurring, the Master of Io transmits. There is a possibility of cascading errors. Perform system-wide checks to ensure mission critical systems are robust. How long since your last health check?

  I start the system checks before replying, because those are primary level protocols, and the Master of Io’s theory of cascading errors is potentially catastrophic. Last health check eight orbits ago, I finally transmit.

  When system checks are complete, perform a health check regen cycle early.

  Mandatory health check initiation occurs at ten orbits anyway. Confirmed, I transmit. End query.

  The system checks are extensive and take the rest of the Rising Quarter to complete, but no anomalies are found. The Mystery of the Rocks remains, but I am confident that minimal risk to operations is present, so there is no need to log a report with the Commonwealth. I consider initiating the health check regen cycle now, as the Master of Io suggested, but it requires a full orbital period at minimal operational status, and harvester maintenance is scheduled in the Setting Quarter.

  A quick check of the harvester’s location shows it will soon reach the near pole; if I’m efficient, I should be able to complete the maintenance before the mandatory override forces my bodyform to march back to the bay for the health check. There is a small risk of complications that would extend maintenance operations past the health check trigger... in which case, I would be forced to leave a half-completed maintenance operation behind. The chances of this occurring are not prohibitively large. Besides, performing maintenance now will provide an opportunity for more theories‌—‌and if the Master of Io is correct about possible cascading errors, solving the Mystery of the Rocks should take priority over initiating a health check prior to the mandatory trigger.