System Failure

by Joe Zieja

  “Well, you know what they say about clever men,” Krell said, shifting slightly in his chair. He appeared to also be holding something in his left hand. A drink, perhaps. “Behind every one of them sits a clever woman.”

  Alandra frowned. The thought of being placed behind someone felt very insulting. Then again, it was Rogers he was talking about. Maybe that wouldn’t be so bad, under the right circumstances.

  “Regardless,” Krell continued, perhaps sensing her tension, “I wanted to tell you personally how much I value the hard work you’ve put into this mission so far. If I’ve offended or come off too strong, I apologize. I have . . . difficulties going slow when I see something that interests me.”

  Now Alandra was blushing. Captain Rogers had also claimed that interesting things interested him, but coming from Krell, it sounded very different.

  “General,” Alandra said, pretending to find something interesting on the other side of the room to look at. “I appreciate the praise, I assure you, but I do have quite a lot going on over here, as I am sure you do as well. We must prepare to rid the galaxy of these vermin and restore order, and to do that we need to be on the Flagship.”

  Nodding, Krell sat forward, the grin melting from his face. “Of course. I am sorry for wasting your time.”

  Now she’d offended him? Alandra was finding it difficult to navigate a conversation with this man.

  “If it so pleases you, we can continue this discussion in person,” Alandra said.

  It took considerable personal restraint not to slap a hand over her own mouth. Why in the world had she said that? Krell was clearly after her considerable prestige and rank in the Thelicosan political-military regime—there could be no other reason for his constant flattery—but that didn’t mean she had to encourage him. The Alandra Keffoule she knew would have just ended the call with a cold, curt goodbye and gone on with her day.

  “Oh?” General Krell said, leaning into the word. “And what exactly—”

  Again, Alandra’s datapad began to chime. Now that she was using her personal terminal to . . . do whatever she was doing with Krell, the datapad was free to accept messages from other parts of the ship. This message was coming from the bridge, and Pre-Commodore Chinnaker by the looks of it.

  “General Krell, hold a moment.”

  Don’t tell him to hold, Alandra thought. Just hang up! Why are you still talking to him?

  “Yes?” Alandra said into her datapad.

  “Grand Marshal,” the pre-commodore said over the radio. “He’s here.”

  “Who’s here?”

  A pause. Alandra felt her hackles rise.

  “The Astromologer.”

  A long silence followed. This could not be true. Nobody had made the request for him yet. It was practically impossible that he was already on his way from Thelicosa, never mind actually on the Limiter ready to perform his mathematical divinations and psychic trigonometry. Then again, this was the Astromologer. He did not play by normal rules.

  “General Krell,” she said, her tone flat, perhaps awestruck. “I will speak with you later.”

  • • •

  Alandra felt herself actually begin to sweat as she rode the elevator to the bridge, wishing that she’d been able to take her Chariot instead, but it was being repaired. Even she, who was high enough in the ranks to command a sizable fleet and a sizable amount of respect to go with it, had never met the man. His very existence was considered one of the system’s most closely guarded secrets, his abilities known only to a select few at the very highest echelons of the Thelicosan Council.

  The fact that she knew about him at all was an honor, a side effect of being the Tangential Tornado and one of the members of the highly secretive F Sequence special operations squadron. Some of their missions had come directly from the Astromologer himself, though the orders had been passed through several layers of military command first. His divinations had led them to immense, incredible victories even during her short tenure in the F Sequence. Who knew what other facets of Thelicosan history the Astromologer had played a part in?

  And now he was here, on her ship. Likely he’d be coming with her onto the Flagship as well. He belonged at the center of the action, where he could have the most impact. A rare sensation came over her; she felt unprepared. Maybe even unworthy.

  Xan, who had remained as taciturn as always, appeared to be avoiding eye contact with her, and he stood rather stiffly with a datapad in his hand.

  “Everything is ready for our departure?” Alandra said.

  “Yes, Grand Marshal,” Xan said.

  He still didn’t look at her.

  Alandra sighed. “Out with it, Xan. What is it?”

  Finally, he locked eyes with her for a moment, his thin mouth pursing. “I was under the impression that you were not interested in my opinions.”

  “When did I give you that impression?”

  “It may have been when we were on our way back from Merida Prime, and you told me ‘I am not interested in your opinions.’ ”

  “That’s because you were convinced that I was going to be taken hostage as soon as I boarded the Flagship,” Alandra said. The banter was helping her relax a little bit, and she leaned against the wall, running a hand through her mess of hair. She sighed. “I may be a hardened military commander, Xan, but I am not stupid. Something is on your mind, and it’s about more than where I am going to unpack my suitcases this evening. I understand that the situation is tense, but you haven’t been yourself in weeks.”

  Breaking eye contact again, Xan pointed a long, bony finger at the elevator controls. “We’re almost there.”

  Alandra closed her eyes for a moment. This was starting to feel less like a disagreement between her and her assistant and more like drama. She hated drama. It was purposeless and dangerous, the kind of distraction that could bring down empires without proper attention. As a rule Alandra did not participate in drama; she didn’t read books that had any drama in them, and she absolutely refused to talk to teenagers. Xan was starting to remind her of a teenager, mopey and silent, hinting at a truth that slept underneath a bed made out of long sighs and fake sobs.

  “So be it,” Alandra said. “But you and I will finish this discussion later. I will not have my assistant acting like a dog who has lost its owner.”

  “I am not—” Xan began to argue, but the elevator dinged.

  With that sound rushed back all of the anxiety that Alandra had dismissed while talking to Xan. Now, thankfully, she had much less time to dwell on it all. The doors to the bridge opened, and Alandra walked through, flanked on both sides by Thelicosan military security who gave her crisp pi-shaped salutes. She barely returned the gesture; her eyes were busy scanning the bridge for her new guest. She’d never seen any pictures of the Astromologer—rumors actually said that any device that attempted to take a picture of him broke immediately—so she didn’t quite know what to expect.

  Pre-Commodore Chinnaker, a thin, frail man with bright eyes and a surprisingly deep voice, was standing in front of her chair, looking out the window with his arms folded behind his back. Despite being young, he did exude an air of command, which was one of the most important things for a commander to exude. When he heard her arrive, he turned around, greeting her with a salute and much less pomp and circumstance than Zergan had done. Part of her thought it was a good change of pace, and another part missed feeling like they were about to fight a decisive space battle every time she walked onto the bridge.

  “Grand Marshal,” Chinnaker said, nodding. Alandra could tell he was nervous, but could also tell he was trying to hide it. Another important aspect of command was always burying your feelings deep behind impenetrable walls. Perhaps Chinnaker would do better in her stead than she’d originally assumed.

  Alandra tried, in turn, not to seem like she was scanning the room for anyone who might look like the most important astromological figure in existence.

  “Well?” Alandra said, stepping close to Chinnaker
to avoid having the entire bridge hear their conversation. “Where is he?”

  Chinnaker cleared his throat. “As one might expect, the, ah, Astromologer is a bit unconventional.”

  Having no idea what to make of that, Alandra simply raised her eyebrow and waited for him to continue. Chinnaker turned around and pointed out the window, and Alandra immediately saw what she’d been missing.

  Alandra simply stared, forcing her mouth to remain closed. She wasn’t sure if she would have called it strange, or beautiful, or even perhaps horrifying in its own way. The Astromologer—for it could have been no other man than he—was floating in space, performing what could only be described as a ritual dance. He also, somehow, appeared to not be wearing a space suit.

  “How . . . ?” Alandra managed to get out.

  “We don’t really know, ma’am,” Chinnaker said.

  The Astromologer spun in slow circles, controlling his movements with such precision and grace that it seemed as though he’d been born and raised in zero gravity. Obviously biology and physics made that impossible—he would have been quite deformed—but it looked so very natural that it was easy to ignore the laws of science. And Alandra never ignored the laws of science. The Astromologer twisted and turned and flipped and bowed. He held an object in each hand, but it was impossible to tell from the distance what it was, and it was equally impossible to tell what the man looked like. He wore a dark, almost glossy uniform that was unlike anything anyone in the Thelicosan military had ever donned. A cape of sorts flowed behind him, adding to the experience.

  It appeared for a moment that he had come to a halt, curling into a fetal position and allowing his own inertia to gently rotate him in place.

  “Is he . . . done?” Chinnaker whispered.

  “Did he give any preamble to this?” Alandra asked. “Did he come to the bridge first to explain anything?”

  “No,” Chinnaker said, then frowned, unable to take his eyes from the Astromologer. “Well, he was here in the bridge, yes, Grand Marshal, but only to give the helmsman some orders. He said that the Limiter needed to be ‘properly aligned.’ ”

  Alandra nodded. For some reason, this made perfect sense to her. “Of course.”

  Chinnaker shot her a little glance, likely wondering what secret information Alandra had access to that he didn’t. In truth, Alandra knew just as little about all of this as he did. Perhaps she just had a bit more faith, and was willing to accept anything the Astromologer did as a matter of course.

  “So do we . . . go pick him up? Is he in a meditative trance?” Chinnaker asked, raising a hand to give the order.

  “No,” Alandra said, some mathematical intuition telling her to wait. “Hold a moment. I think . . .”

  As if the Astromologer had heard her, all of a sudden he exploded from the ball he’d rolled himself up into, arching his back in a way that seemed almost inappropriate, his mouth open in an a way that also seemed almost inappropriate. Alandra felt inappropriate herself, felt color rising to her face. This was math.

  From his hands, something dashed out into the space around him. Well, “dashed out” wasn’t quite accurate. Since he was in a vacuum, had he actually thrown the objects, they would have gone on forever. Instead, he seemed to whip his hand out and place several objects in space at highly calculated intervals. They spun in place, rotating around their center of mass in a way so precise that it seemed as though they’d been placed on a spit. Alandra squinted. Flat, rectangular objects. Cards? She wasn’t privy to how the Astromologer performed any of his skills, so wild conjecture was her only option. Perhaps they were multiplication flash cards, or rectangular tangrams? Both seemed equally unlikely.

  Behind them, Alandra thought she heard a quiet sob coming from Xan.

  “It’s so beautiful,” he whispered.

  It was beautiful, even though Alandra had no idea what it was she was looking at. The Astromologer gently caressed the objects in front of him, spending time staring at each rotating form before moving on to the next one. It looked like there were five or six of them total, but they were stacked in such a way that it was possible that several lay unseen behind other cards.

  Then, as suddenly as the exercise had begun, it stopped. The Astromologer appeared to take a slow, deep breath—Alandra realized again that he wasn’t wearing a space suit—and collected the cards. Without appearing to engage any device, or pull on any tether, he then turned his body fully toward the window of the bridge and spread his arms out wide, as if preparing to take a bow. One of the offensive-systems technicians actually clapped until shushed into silence by a nearby comrade. The Astromologer slowly floated upward and out of sight.

  “He’s coming back to the hatch,” Chinnaker called so suddenly and loudly that Alandra felt her foot twitch. “Make preparations to open it immediately! I want—”

  Chinnaker blinked, his mouth hanging open. He seemed to recall that Alandra was on the bridge and was, therefore, still in command. He looked at her, then looked at her foot, then looked at her again.

  “Forgive me,” he said with a bow of his head. “I was so caught up in . . . no, I must not make excuses.”

  Yes, perhaps she’d misjudged Chinnaker entirely. While he clearly still had the impulses that came with being young, he was working to control them. With Alandra being there to guide him from the Flagship, he would make a fine substitute.

  “It is nothing,” Alandra said. “You may continue to command the bridge. I am leaving very shortly.”

  Chinnaker bowed even lower, acknowledging the clemency. In truth, it wasn’t so large an infraction that she would have given him a spinning back kick to the face, but it was a testament to his own quest for perfection that he expected it.

  “May your parallel lines never intersect,” he said.

  So focused on thinking about who she was leaving her ship to, Alandra didn’t notice the bridge doors open. Only after the Astromologer stepped behind her did she finally turn around and steel her nerves. Alandra prided herself on the way in which she was able to keep a tight grip on her emotions, but that skill was showing cracks on the surface as she stood before one of the most powerful mathematicians of all time. He didn’t say anything; he didn’t need to. He merely stood there, tall, broad-shouldered, solid. Alandra immediately noticed—not without large amounts of cognitive relief—that he was indeed wearing some sort of space suit. It looked like a sort of custom-built VMU with a clear cellophane hood that was resting on the nape of his neck. Some mechanism might cause it to pull over his face when he was in vacuum.

  Whoever had fabricated the suit hadn’t lacked for style, either. It was, as she’d seen through the window of the bridge, a glossy, almost metallic color with silver accents, like something out of a superhero story. A thick, black cape hung off his shoulders, the material also giving off a certain sheen. In short, everything about his personage had a bit of a glow to it, and that wasn’t limited to his clothes, either.

  His face, while not exactly attractive, was the kind of face that carried with it the calm of years of experience. The Astromologer’s age was difficult to discern—he could have been in his late thirties as easily as he could have been in his early fifties—but there was no doubt that immense wisdom sat upon those shoulders, firmly attaching him to the ground. He didn’t seem to be existing in the environment around him as much as he seemed to be a part of the environment around him.

  It was, in a word, amazing.

  “Welcome to my ship and my fleet,” Alandra said. Civilians were only afforded salutes with rare exceptions, but in this case Alandra erred on the side of properness and offered one anyway. The Astromologer acknowledged her with a nod.

  “I feel that there is a total harmony of space converging on this location,” the Astromologer said. His voice was light and airy, with a bit of a rasp to it. “We are occupying the realm that lies directly between the possible and the impossible. We stand on the edge of reality.”

  Alandra nodded, feeling the man
’s power like a physical force. It was a glorious thing to simply be standing in his presence. It was like logarithmic functions were flowing directly into her brain, exponentially amplifying her numerical soul. She understood then that what he had been doing outside of the ship had been some sort of divination ritual. She could see the deck of cards held in his gloved hand, though she couldn’t see exactly what they were.

  “Yes,” Alandra said. “The edge of reality.”

  Although Alandra wasn’t entirely sure what he meant by that, she trusted that it was wise and directly applicable to their current situation. Perhaps she could meditate on it this evening while she performed her daily calculus. What would it be like to understand the feeling of standing on the edge of reality?

  “Is there anything we can do for you? I assume you will be coming with me to the—”

  “Flagship,” the Astromologer interrupted. “The flow of the universe has already told me this. And aboard that vessel”—he took a deep breath, closing his eyes—“will be the other half of your heart.” He opened his eyes and looked at her, eyebrows arched in curiosity. “How very interesting.”

  Alandra felt her face turn red. Of course the Astromologer would see through her so easily. Despite the fact that she knew he was an invaluable ally, it made her feel cautious, reserved.

  “Perhaps,” she said, trying and failing to keep eye contact. “There are larger goals at the moment.”

  “Yes,” the Astromologer said. “Of course. The orbital pattern of all things is shifting, a Hohmann transfer of galactic proportions.”

  Frowning, Alandra fumbled for something to say in response. Hohmann transfers had become too expensive and inefficient a thousand years earlier. It seemed a rather archaic reference for such a learned man, but she trusted his wisdom. Very often, solutions to contemporary problems could be found in ancient knowledge.