by Mark Wandrey
“Are you so certain?”
Lilith floated there for a few moments and contemplated him. Aaron wasn't fooled; he could see the gears turning behind those eyes, the same eyes he saw in the mirror every morning. It was a hard thing for him to be a bastard. Like Minu, he wanted to know this girl, and wished it hadn't all come down to such a bizarre situation. Finally, since she didn't say anything, he turned to leave.
“I'd like to talk to her again.”
Aaron stopped and turned around slowly. “Talk to who?”
“The commander.”
“Who?”
“Minu Alma, the commander of this ship.”
“Who?”
An emotion flashed across those eyes. Frustration or anger? “My mother.”
Aaron nodded and gave her a tiny smile. “Okay, I'll talk to her; see if she's willing after that last exciting encounter.”
Lilith tried to return the smile. It was more a rictus than a smile, but Aaron increased his smile nonetheless. “Thank you, father.”
Act two, later that day. This time Minu knew what to expect and she floated into the space gracefully, catching herself on the edge of the doorway before facing her daughter. “You wanted to talk to me.” Lilith looked around the room and Minu wondered if she was aware she was acting like a typical young girl caught acting badly. “Well?”
“I am sorry for being...mean to you, mother.”
Minu heaved a silent sigh, gave her a tiny smile and nodded her head. “I accept your apology, Lilith. This isn't easy, for any of us. I know it’s too late to be your real mother and raise you, but I'd like to be what I can.”
“That would be acceptable.” Lilith gave her impression of a smile. Luckily Aaron had warned her so she didn't react as negatively as she was tempted. “Can you tell me about our family? Your computer records are not exhaustive.”
“What do you want to know?”
“Tell me about your mother.”
Minu gave an audible sigh this time, not expecting to be confronted with something she had yet to really come to grips with herself. Lilith cocked her head expectantly, watching Minu. “Okay. Her name was Sharon and her father was Chosen, like me.”
Chapter 18
March 20th, 522 AE (subjective)
Quantum Convergence Point, Interstellar Space
The Kaatan dropped back into the normal universe in deep space. The old CIC crew was all gathered, except now they were only there in case of an emergency. In their discussions, Minu had gotten Lilith to agree to the remote possibility that something could happen and they would be needed. She also explained that humans liked to have a purpose, and it would help to pass the time.
“No stars or planets anywhere nearby,” Ted told them as he reviewed the sensor data.
“What's here, Lilith?” Minu asked like she used to address Pip when he was wired in. Lilith had allowed Pip to interface with the ship again, but she was very adamant that he didn't overstep his bounds. Pip assured her he would be a good boy and the two even had a few conversations. He found her to be brilliant on his own level. She'd told Minu that she found him to be amusing.
“We need to activate some systems.”
“Can you explain?”
“It will take too long and is too technical.”
“Will you try?”
It was quiet for a moment and she knew her daughter was struggling against her ever present anti-social side. The computers might have taught her to be a ship’s operator, but it didn't do her any favors by scrimping on social skills. She finally relented. “We are here to enable the tactical drive.” Minu felt her pulse race. The Weavers. But how could they do that out here, in deep space trillions of kilometers from anything. “Once we have reached the proper coordinates, it will only take a moment.”
“What is at those coordinates?” Bjorn asked her. Like others in the crew, Bjorn and Ted had both had occasion to interview their new ship’s master. Ted amazed at her intellect, saying she reminded him very much of Chriso at a younger age. Bjorn was less impressed, and more concerned. “She is more a force of nature than anything,” he warned Minu. “Do not underestimate her; she shares none of our concerns for living things. She only cares for this ship, and perhaps you and Aaron. Perhaps.”
“This is a convergence point in our galaxy. You can think of it as a temporal Lagrange point where the fabric of the universe is very delicate.”
Without saying anything, Minu jumped up and left the CIC. Only Aaron noticed, turning his head to watch her go. He guessed she was going down to talk to Lilith in person. But she headed straight for the very nose of the Kaatan, to a tiny room she'd visited once back when they'd first gotten the ship. As she entered, she saw the formerly dark Portal type dais was now glowing. “So you understand,” she heard Lilith's voice, and then was stunned to see her floating nearby.
“How can you do that out here?”
Lilith gave a little smirk, much improved from four days of practice. “Mother, the entire ship is really in free fall. There is only gravity where you walk because the ship decides you need it. I do not, so there is none.”
“Oh,” Minu said and turned to look at the brightly glowing dais. “Is it going to become a Portal?”
“Not in the sense of what you know of as a Portal.” Floating panels of Concordia script appeared before Lilith. Her long thin fingers danced on them. “The ship is creating a stationary gravity well.”
“How powerful?”
“For a millisecond, it will rival a collapsing star.”
A black hole? Minu whistled through her teeth. “What is it for?”
“We're sending a message.” There was no sensation as the ship made the already thin structure of space ring like a bell. Once, twice, three times. And then, the dais pulsed so brightly that both women had to put a hand before their eyes. When they could look around their hands, swirling snakes of plasma chased each other over the dais. “Now the ship is fully operational.”
“Can we just 'Portal' to Bellatrix now?”
“Not yet, it will be about a month before we can use the drive. So we travel to your home the usual way.”
“It can be your home too.” The swirling snakes of energy were mystifying to watch. She didn't know how to ask her daughter if there was now a Weaver inside.
“This ship must remain my home,” she said and gestured to her so thin arms and legs.
“Just because you can't walk, doesn't mean there wouldn't be a way to go down to the planet surface. Gravity generation technology can also negate it.”
Lilith nodded her head and regarded the energy swirls. “Is that beautiful?”
“Very much so.”
“I wonder if it will be different when the Weaver arrives?”
Minu felt her head spin a little, an image of the ethereal species calling themselves Weavers appearing in the back of her mind. Lilith said she had vast amounts of data on ancient Concordia species. If she knew about the Weavers, then they must be real. “I don't know,” Minu said, “this looks different than other Portals. Is the process similar? Will we be able to instantly travel anywhere in the galaxy?”
“No, the range is limited to a few hundred light years. But other than that, it is just like a Portal.”
They stood watching the swirling plasma for a moment. Lilith glanced at Minu, then towards the door, but in her new 'social training' she knew it was rude to just leave. Minu spoke up before she could leave. “Lilith, what are you going to do?”
“Do? I am going to return to my station, wait for the space fabric to stabilize, and set course for your- our world.”
“No, after that. You're the master of this vessel, though you say I am its commander. There is nothing stopping you from just leaving after we arrive at Bellatrix.”
“Correct.”
“So what are you going to do?”
She looked at the door again and thought. “I do not know, mother.”
Minu watched her, trying to ken any deeper meaning
, but Lilith possessed an exceptional poker face. She'd considered teaching her the game. “I guess that's good enough for now. Please, call me any time, I like talking to you.”
“I like talking to you too. You are not what I was led to expect.”
“And what was that?”
“The computer taught me that biological parents are often commanding, and indifferent to their offspring, especially while youthful, such as me.”
“Then maybe I don't know how to be a proper parent.”
“No, I believe you are better than others would be.”
“You are a biased opinion.”
“Perhaps. I must return to my station, please excuse me.”
“Of course. And your manners are improving quickly.”
“Pip has been helping me, and I am helping him. What the ship did to him was unfortunate. The Medical Intelligence was trying to make him into something like me, while at the same time repairing him. I believe it failed on both accounts. He is somewhat like me now, not fully able to deal with your 'social situations'.”
“I would agree.” Minu watched Lilith, her daughter, float from the drive room. She looked almost like films she'd seen of dolphins swimming in the oceans back on earth. She never touched anything, just swam in the center of the halls with graceful movements of arms and legs. There was no way her swimming motions actually propelled her through the air. The ship must be lousy with tiny hoverfield generators. Or had they been added by the little industrious crystalline bots after her emergence? Minu decided it really didn't matter. She walked from the room and headed back to the CIC. But when she got there, Minu realized she had a problem. Was it possible to explain what just happened without explaining the Weavers? No, it wasn't.
She stuck her head into the CIC. “We can't move for a few minutes, according to Lilith. I'd like to see the senior staff in the galley right away.” Senior staff was her code for all the humans, and Var'at. Off to one side of the CIC, Var'at and his brothers were having a discussion.
Var'at disengaged himself and headed out.
In the galley, everyone found a seat as Minu stood at the end of the table. Cherise noticed right away that she seemed nervous, at least more so than lately. Learning to deal with Lilith had put a strain on the woman that everyone could see. A strain more profound than command ever had.
“Thanks,” she said after the last of them was seated and the galley door closed. “I called you here to tell you what is going on with the ship, and to make good on a promise.” She looked directly at Ted as she said the last part. “I said I'd tell you what happened with the Portals once we were safe, and I've put it off far too long.”
“You are damned right you did,” he said darkly.
“I appreciate your restraint. This operation has been one challenge after another. And while Lilith is a person, not a challenge, her sudden appearance and the emotional baggage that came with it were no less challenging in themselves.” Ted nodded in understanding while the others watched.
“About two years ago, under the tutelage of Jovich, I started meditating on the Portals. A practice he said many older Chosen did, including my father.”
“Some of the scouts do it too,” Aaron said. “A few said they've had visions of ghosts, or spiders.”
Minu chuckled then sighed. “Oh, they weren't visions. They are a species called the Weavers.”
Over the next hour she laid it all out for them. The first encounter in the Portal room back on Bellatrix, the Weavers intervening to save her life during the Vendetta, and their giving her the 'secret' key codes she'd used to first rescue them from Sunshine, then to gain access to the Kaatan. She finished off a little out of chronology. “And they didn't want to talk to me at all on Sunshine. They've been insisting they only want to talk to one person for almost a year.”
“Who?” Pip asked; something like worry on his face.
“You.”
Pip looked down and nodded. “I was afraid of that.”
“Why?”
“Because I first spoke to them about a month before I was injured.”
“Damn it Pip! Why didn't you tell us? Even your uncle?” Bjorn had said during her story that many Chosen over the years relayed similar encounters, but none had a name for the creatures, and they'd never talked to them.
“Same reason you haven't been jabbering about it to everyone! The Chosen have their own psychiatrists and a whole wing of rubber rooms in Tranquility for those who can't handle the pressure.”
“Are they really rubber?” Aaron asked. Pip rolled his eyes.
“So what did you tell them that made the Weavers want to talk to you so badly.”
“I told them I would help them with a problem.”
“What problem?” Minu asked, beginning to get annoyed.
“Their deal.” Minu’s eyes shot daggers and he continued. “They had a deal with some ancient Concordia species. They run the Portals, and in exchange they got something in return. Well, it’s been a long time since they've gotten anything out of the deal, and even the frustratingly non-linear Weavers are getting annoyed.” He looked up at them all before continuing. “They told me unless I can help them, they would cease cooperation, effectively shutting down all commerce and traffic between worlds of the Concordia.”
Chapter 19
March 17th, 522 AE (subjective)
Former Rasa Leasehold
Singh-Apal Katoosh hadn't left the bridge of his ship for a week. The battleship was a floating hulk since the tiny enemy ship devastated it. The attack with the solar prominence was inconceivable enough from any standpoint, but after his ship’s shields were down from a grazing hit of the plasma that destroyed her sister ship, the little monster had put a brace of disastrous shots into his ship’s superstructure. Each burst was precisely aimed, taking out impulse drive, the gravitic lens drive, and the central computer. A week later and the great, ponderous carrack had finally managed to haul the carcass of his battleship far enough away from the sun that they were no longer in danger of fiery death.
At first he'd almost ordered the carrack captain put to the spike for allowing the little ship's escape, but then he came to his senses as his survival was assured. Attempting to stop the monster would only have cost them another irreplaceable ship. They'd been sadly out matched. Still, his brain was full of questions. Why had the ship feigned helplessness for so long before turning the tables? Why use the seemingly suicidal maneuver through the sun instead of just engaging them head on, as was within its ability? And finally, where had it gone?
Singh would have to report to the High T’Chillen leadership that some of the Rasa had escaped to parts unknown. Of course the Concordia Council would not be informed of their humiliation here; that was unthinkable. Most species had no clue that some spaceships remained; the most precious assets of the higher order. They were mostly used as terror weapons, but also a mark of prestige. All five of the higher order species possessed ships, some more than others. The T'Chillen were second only to the Mok-Tok, but maybe not after this week. The battleships were the ultimate expression of space power. Able to operate independently for extended periods, capable of incredible speeds, able to carry thousands of troops, and stuffed with weapons and defenses. And yet a tiny ship not much bigger than one of the battleship’s shuttles had obliterated one, and crippled another, maybe beyond repair. The technicians’ only good news was that the carrack’s FTL field would be strong enough to carry both ships back to their shipyard, though at only five hundred times the speed of light. The journey would take the two ships five years, and twenty would pass to the outside world. The high command would have to decide whether to scuttle the remaining battleship, he could not make that call.
“Communications from the Portal on the Rasa planet surface,” announced a technician, the female casting her eye stalks down in deference to him.
“Send it to my pedestal here,” he informed, curling tightly on the padded column to free a hand should it be needed. A second l
ater a screen slid from one of the pedestal supports and came alive. He felt his hood twitch as he recognized the high fleet lord.
“A tiny bug to squash and you get your tail spike chewed off?”
“It was not as simple as it appeared.” He did his best not to sound supplicate. He wasn't sure if he succeeded. “You are aware of the technical nest’s attempts to investigate the fleets of ships at Enigma?”
“I have heard of it.”
“The Rasa's incursion at Enigma is what predicated the approval of their destruction!” The fleet lord moved back from the camera, taken slightly aback. “Yes, that is correct. I admit I am not knowledgeable about those derelict ships and what is hoped to be gained by all the expenditures to study them.”
“That's just it; they are not derelict as we believed. The Rasa somehow gained access to one of the ships and escaped in it, after destroying several shuttles and hundreds of warriors.”
“I've seen the images, what type of ship was it?”
“The smallest of the needle and ball ships.”
“That does not sound bad.”
“It showed up here as we neared the extermination of the Rasa. At first it appeared weak and almost helpless, so we pursued as it tried to flee. Then everything turned to waste.” He explained what the Rasa ship did to their squadron, in careful detail, including the pinpoint accuracy of the A-PAW fire employed against his own ship. “This ship is more powerful than anything we possess.”
“And there are more of those at Enigma?”
“Dozens.”
“With but a handful of these ships, the T'Chillen could...”
“What?”
“Nothing, I was just thinking aloud.” Singh waited while the fleet lord considered. He knew quite well what the aging leader was thinking. With a few of those death machines, the T'Chillen could sweep all four of the other higher order species aside, even against their combined might. The threat of a combined opposition was all that had kept any one or two of them from doing just that untold eons ago. “Scuttle the crippled battleship and return to Skesh to await further orders. I must consult the T'Chillen council.” The screen went blank and Singh contemplated the star field outside projected on the forward bulkhead of the battleships CIC.
