by Barry Kirwan
“Unknown,” Vashta shouted.
They flashed over a lake, and Shiva dipped lower, sending a fountain of water up into the sky behind them.
Micah cleared his throat. “We’re not going for subtlety then, Shiva?”
“They are tracking us Micah. In fact they are firing at us.”
“Let’s see what they’ve got against a Level Fifteen Mind-ship.”
The display blazed white, then red, then white again. Then the screen readjusted, filtering out the high energy plasma fire so he could see the tracer lines coming from two towers at the edge of the city. At first they reminded him of battleship towers, as if some giant vessel had been buried just below ground level. Each tower had an array of weapons turrets and cannons, almost all of which were firing simultaneously. The intensity of the energy bearing down on them was igniting everything between Shiva and the towers, creating a tunnel of fire. He wondered how they protected the city from the heat and backwash radiation, then he saw it; a shield, similar to the one around the orbital city.
“Take down their shield.”
A mauve circle spat out ahead of them, unperturbed by enemy beams, and grew in size, then narrowed into a cone that sped off and disappeared. A second later, the shield fizzed and died, and the enemy beams cut off; an intelligent protection system, since there was no point having a defence grid that killed most of Savange’s population.
Shiva slowed so fast that thunder roared around them, then she slewed lazily between the two towers. “Drop-zone,” Shiva said.
“Okay, bore the hole.” Micah turned to Vashta. “The Bridge is yours.” He ran to the aft of the ship, knowing that Shiva was tilting to a vertical position, from whence she would core a deep shaft.
“Kat, tell me you’re ready.”
“Almost!”
Micah leapt aboard the sled as the aft door opened. Steam flushed in, then cleared, revealing a smoking hole, five metres in diameter. He engaged the sled engine and dropped out of Shiva, circling once, scanning the rim of the hole. “Kat, where the hell –”
She slammed into his back, and locked her arms around his waist, just as Shiva roared off to combat another weapons-tower.
“Go,” she said.
He let the sled drop like a stone, no lights, his resident projecting an image of the polished cylinder around him, and the floor a kilometre below to the fiftieth level; where Sandy, Antonia and the other captives were, where Ash and Ramires were, and, he knew, where Louise would be waiting.
Ash watched Louise dart between displays and controls, like a wild bird suddenly trapped in a room, barking orders on her wristcom. She strode over to him.
“How do they know where we are, where you are? We’re shielded.” She looked away. “And even if they can track you, they couldn’t know where the captives are, unless…”
Ash was sure of the next question, and glad she hadn’t posed it to Rashid earlier. Hopefully now it was too late.
She stared at him. “Your eyes. They’re not Mannekhi, are they? Tell me Rashid.”
Ash heard his alter ego tell her they were a gift from Kalaran, and that they could link with a Hohash via subspace. There was no known shield in existence that could block subspace. Ash guessed what was coming next. It was okay, he told himself, he’d been blind before. The pain cut through his eyes like a jagged knife, even though he knew Louise had probably used a laser scalpel. Hot fluid splashed onto his cheeks and temples, then ran down his neck. Sonja screamed. It’s alright, he heard Rashid say. This is how we met, remember? Sonja was sobbing. Ash hoped Louise wouldn’t kill her.
He listened, a blind man’s skill not easily forgotten. But Louise said nothing, furiously tapping displays. Then he heard the unmistakable sound of explosions, sonic grenades, and flashbombs further down the corridor, and the hissing of the gas canisters that would knock out all Alicians.
Plan F was right on schedule.
Micah and Kat had arrived.
In the bowels of the Kalarash ship, Pierre stared into the bubbling pool that had just swallowed Ukrull and Jen. Pierre had always hated water, and had never learned to swim, a fact he’d managed to conceal during his astronaut training back on Earth. He hadn’t told Jen or Ukrull either. But swimming through water should be easier than staying afloat. Besides, Kalaran was gone, and they needed to start working with Hellera. He checked his face-mask one more time, and plunged in.
The green-tinged fluid was warm, the visibility good. He saw Ukrull, so ungainly on land, tuck his fore-claws by his side, and use his long tail to swim easily, like a marine iguana back on Earth. Jen swam with a practical breast stroke and occasional dolphin kick, while he clawed his way through the fluid like a dog. He stayed at the rear.
The inside of Kalaran’s ship, from what Jen had told him, had been as vast as Hellera’s, filled with sweet air and small asteroids each with their own gravity field, with a mercury lake at the bottom. By contrast, Hellera’s ship, though equally vast, was filled with liquid. Instead of the asteroids, there were purple or red bulbous masses that slowly changed shape from sphere to ovoid to long, flat tongues that occasionally broke and split, forming two new spheres. It was mesmerising, and he had to concentrate on keeping up with Jen rather than staying to watch and wonder what these masses were. He had no idea of the surrounding liquid’s function or chemical composition.
Swimming upward through the water – he decided to think of it as water for now – was not easy, and it reminded him of their situation. He watched Jen; she had lost the most, first Dimitri, then Kalaran. Yet she swam onwards. He tried to mimic her actions, and after a while found a steady rhythm. He wondered why Hellera was making them do this, there must be an easier mode of transport. It occurred to him that a liquid made for good internal defence.
During the next twenty minutes Pierre saw shapes in the water, always just a little too far off to make out their details; human-sized, moving independently, swimming fast through the fluid. Several times Ukrull paused their ascent, waiting for something to pass overhead before continuing. Pierre’s headset had no comms capability, so all questions would have to wait.
At last he saw the ship walls tapering to a neck above him. He tried to recall the external form of the Kalarash vessel: crossbow-shaped with a narrow shaft ascending to an arrowhead at the top. He guessed that was their destination. After another few minutes, he saw a ceiling. A hatch irised open and the three of them swam through it into darkness. It sealed beneath them, and then the water began flushing out through grooves beneath their feet, and the lights came on.
Jen was first to take off her mask. “Well, I needed a workout. It’s made me hungry though. Glad there’s a cockpit, I was beginning to wonder.” She climbed a circular ramp up and out of the wet pit onto a dry upper deck. Pierre followed suit, Ukrull crawling out of the pit on all fours.
Ukrull illuminated consoles, and view-screens sprang to life. Pierre studied each one in turn. A holo arose showing a supernova. There were few in the galaxy, and Pierre had visited this one before, with Ukrull. “The Tla Beth homeworld,” he said.
“Where?” asked Jen, suddenly at his side.
He pointed to the centre of the nebula-like explosion of green, scarlet, yellow and purple light, and almost immeasurable radiation. “Inside, masked in some kind of null-field. They live on an asteroid at its heart.”
Jen walked closer to the screen. “How old is this supernova? They can last millennia, can’t they?”
“This one far older,” Ukrull grunted. He laid a fore-claw on Pierre’s shoulder. “I go there now.”
Pierre met Ukrull’s yellow reptilian eyes. They didn’t waver, or grow or shrink as they often did, and Pierre understood that they might not meet again. He gripped Ukrull’s fore-claw as hard as he could. Ukrull grunted something in his native language, and all Pierre could do was nod and say “Good luck, my friend.”
Ukrull crawled back into the pit, filled it with fluid, and disappeared through the hatch.
�
��One by one,” Jen said.
“What?” Pierre asked, unsure he’d heard her correctly.
“Nothing.” She busied herself with one of the consoles, fixing something to her temple. She seemed at home.
Pierre studied the holo of the supernova, Hellera’s ship at its leading edge and, much further out, other ships, and something else.
“Nchkani, Level Sixteen, and dark worms,” Jen said without looking up.
“Nchkani? But weren’t they on our side?”
“Right tense, Pierre. They were our allies.”
There were a lot of ships. But he’d understood that the higher the Level, the fewer in number, like the Kalarash, the Tla Beth, and even the Rangers.
Jen pored over her console, and answered his unspoken question. “One ship, one Nchkani.”
The sensors in front of Pierre counted three hundred ships, and more were still arriving. Even at only one Nchkani per ship, this was possibly their entire race assembled in one place for one battle. And most of the Tla Beth were here, too. For both species it was about dominance. Nchkani and Tla Beth committing everything to the battle for second place after either Qorall or Hellera; only one of those second-tier species would walk away from here.
Pierre sat down. He was happier in the cockpit as Jen called it; the rest of Hellera’s ship was too vast after years of travelling in the Ice Pick.
“Are there enough Nchkani to mount an attack?” Jen asked.
He stretched the ship’s sensors far outwards to pick up inbounds, while he pondered. Hellera had presumably created this place just for them, based on Jen’s travels with Kalaran. But Jen’s question was the wrong one. She was thinking of a normal attack by hordes of worms and Nchkani vessels. Besides, what would you attack a supernova with? Hellera’s ship was well inside the supernova remnant field that fluxed with intense, off-the-scale radiation, but only because her ship’s super-dense alloys were from another galaxy; the Nchkani could not approach closer – yet.
“The question is what can they do with this many ships and worms,” he said.
“Kalaran would have liked you; you talk like he does – did.” She cleared her throat. “So, what do you figure is their game plan?”
Pierre had narrowed it down to three candidates. “First, they could try to feed energy into the supernova to destabilise it, causing it to emit a shock wave and collapse into a black hole or a neutron star, or even a Magnetar, a rather nasty neutron star variant; any of which could terminate the Tla Beth sanctuary.”
“Wouldn’t the Nchkani ships get caught in the shock wave?”
“Yes; it travels at ten per cent of the speed of light; pretty hard to outrun. Second option is that they use the dark worms as shields, and penetrate the supernova itself. I don’t have enough information on the Nchkani vessels, but the worms are very large, and very tough. I’m pretty sure Qorall has tampered with their physiology.”
“Sounds like that kid’s vid-game, Meteorite Shower.”
“I agree,” he said. He’d mastered it when he was six, which lost him most of his school friends that year. He re-focused. “Hellera could certainly pick enough of them off to break such a manoeuvre. Third is a straightforward, old-style siege, keeping the Tla Beth and Hellera here while Qorall methodically tips the balance elsewhere.”
Hellera’s voice cut through, jarring him. It was the first time they had heard from her since arriving.
“It is the third. They are also hoping that to break the stalemate, the Tla Beth themselves will initiate the shockwave.”
Hellera sounded so certain. “How can you be sure?” Pierre asked.
A holographic image of a Nchkani flashed up in front of him. Jen walked to Pierre’s side. It wasn’t a pretty sight; the octopus-like creature squirmed, its tentacles writhing, each one tethered.
Hellera spoke while they stared. “Qorall injected all Nchkani with a virus preventing me from downloading its memories, hence the use of old-fashioned but ultimately efficient methods.”
The creature’s central body mass shook violently, excreting steaming yellow pus from its pores. Its beak opened and closed sporadically. Pierre was glad there was no sound. A single metallic pole drove into what looked like its eye. Pierre swallowed. He was about to say something when Jen placed a hand on his arm, and shook her head. He understood. Hellera would see squeamishness on his part as weak. They were at war. Hellera snapped her finger and thumb and the Nchkani stilled, presumably dead. The hologram dissolved, much to Pierre’s relief.
Jen filled the ensuing silence. “So it’s a question of timing, right? The risks and advantages are shifting: more Nchkani ships and worms arriving here, Esperia vulnerable, Qorall doing who knows what, and the Tla Beth – what are they up to, by the way? I can’t believe they are just sitting there.”
“Your friend missed some variables, Pierre. Explain the battle math, I’m busy.”
Hellera was gone again.
“She didn’t mention Kalaran,” Jen said.
Pierre was not surprised; he’d met Hellera once before. “We don’t know anything about Kalarash emotional attachments, if they have any. Besides, I’m sure Ukrull has already briefed her.”
“Still, Kalaran would have said something about her if the roles had been reversed.”
Pierre gave her a look to convey that he, too, was busy, and Jen went back to her console. But she didn’t stay quiet.
“Tell me how you are doing it.”
Pierre sighed, then began articulating the mathematics. “I’m mentally constructing a four dimensional geometric plane that operationalizes real-time and predicted evolution of key dynamic variables – the ones already mentioned plus a few others – and looks for cusps or spikes in two opposing value utility factors; our favour and Qorall’s. It will tell us the optimum time to… Oh.”
“What?”
He turned to face her. “The optimum time for us passed thirty minutes ago.”
Jen shrugged. “So when’s the next one in our favour?”
“No, that’s just it, there isn’t one. From here on it’s downhill. The odds get progressively worse for us, and Qorall’s get better and better.”
Jen got up, and headed toward the pit, picking up her mask.
He followed her and stood as the water rose over his feet and ankles. “Where are we going?”
“To get some answers. We’re going to find a Hohash, and then talk to Ukrull on the Tla Beth homeworld. Something’s going on there. A variable Hellera hasn’t told us about, and isn’t going to.”
“Do you even know how to find one? And what makes you think any of them will talk to us?” The water reached his knees.
“I’ve been touched by Kalaran, Pierre. They sense it. I’m guessing even Hellera does, which is probably why she let me on board. She’s not very sociable, is she?”
“What if her plan is too complex for us?” The water rose above his waist.
“You’re a well-behaved Level Ten being, aren’t you, Pierre, fitting nicely into the Kalarash’s intelligence apartheid system called Grid Society.” She splashed water in his face. “Wake up, Pierre. We have to stop playing their game, assuming what they are doing is best for us, or else we’ll never be anything other than pawns. You’re the bloody scientist, not me, you work it out.”
He stared at her, then slid the mask over his face just in time.
She smiled at him, her mask sealed, and spoke through the intercom. “That’s more like it. More like Dimitri.” She touched a pad and the door opened, flushing them down into the ship’s internal sea.
It took nearly an hour to reach the bottom. Pierre wondered if Hellera would intervene, but she didn’t. They reached a surface layer between water and air. It rippled, mirror-like, and they passed through to the other side, then half-drifted, half-fell as gravity re-asserted itself and they stood on dry sand, looking around.
“This way,” Jen said.
Pierre followed her gaze and spied something. As they approached, he recognise
d it as an ornate throne, which was odd, as whoever sat in it would survey nothing but desert. Hovering nearby was a Hohash mirror, in the shape of an elongated diamond. While Jen tried to access it with her node, Pierre wandered around the throne, careful not to touch it. On the way, he’d been considering the Grid hierarchy: its flaws and its benefits. Clearly the societal system worked, in that there were few wars; Pierre remembered Hellera’s ‘history lesson’ showing how most space-faring civilisations sputtered into existence for tens of thousands of years before fizzling out. There had been no social fabric to bind different races together cohesively, leading to anarchy, wars, and species obliteration or obsolescence; until the Grid system. The intelligence Levels locked species into a role for a very long time, preserving the status quo of the hierarchy. It was sustainable, but it was also stagnant. Little evolution, few surprises. He wondered what Darwin would have thought about it all, or Fiyong Choh for that matter. The ultimate choice seemed to be between rigidity and chaos.
“I’m through,” Jen announced.
Pierre walked over and stood behind her, and gazed at the Tla Beth homeworld, its tan surface against a violet and steel sky that raged like a brewing hurricane. In the foreground was Ukrull, with three Tla Beth and a robed female figure whose skin and long hair blazed white. Ukrull was gesticulating wildly, his tail thrashing. He didn’t look happy. The woman was unmoved.
“Hellera?” Jen said. “I thought Kalarash couldn’t leave their ships?”
“An instantiation of her.” But his eyes were drawn to the background. It was some way off, but it was definitely a Kalarash ship, on the ground. He recognised the colouring, and assumed Jen did too.
“Jen, when you came back with Kalaran and brought the extra Kalarash ship –“
“Darkur’s ship.”
“Yes. Did you ever leave the cockpit?” But he already guessed the answer.
“She’s there, isn’t she, inside the supernova with Ukrull and the Tla Beth, and her ship. We’re on Darkur’s ship, on the front line between them and the Nchkani.”
