by Alex Lamb
‘Oh no,’ said Zoe. ‘They’re pertinent, all right, but it’s not like we have a choice any more. And I think we have a bigger problem.’
‘Worse than being chased by killer aliens while short on fuel?’ said Venetia.
Zoe shrugged. ‘Maybe yes. I’ve been looking over the data we gathered from that jelly-ship thing. Those strands were showing passive emissions before we trashed them and we got a good look at their profile. It’s freaking me out. The rest of the Photurian tech we’ve found so far has been foreign, but it’s not magic. In fact, most of it’s just been lame. I can’t make head or tail of the biotech, of course, but there’s no reason to suspect it’s anything special. It just sits there. The jelly-ship, though, is a giant, screaming non-compute.’
Mark struggled with an urge to shut Zoe’s technical chatter down. He was starting to find her obsession with alien drive systems trying. However, so far she’d been consistently right about the threats facing them, and they wouldn’t have made it out of Nerroskovi without her ingenuity. He decided to give her room to talk.
‘Go on,’ he said gently.
Zoe glanced his way with a grateful expression. ‘There’s a difference between foreign tech and what you might call miracle tech,’ she said. ‘Foreign tech can be weird and surprising – all the parts look jumbled up and the design priorities feel backwards. That’s what it’s like when you examine at the Fecund stuff. With miracle tech, though, it’s more like trying to scale a wall of ice. There’s nothing to grab on to. You just scrabble around on the surface. You look at the machinery for answers and your mind just comes back blank. The suntap is like that. There are no answers for you to find. It’s been designed that way. The fact that we’ve found that kind of tech here changes the whole scale of the game we’re playing. And it makes me wonder if maybe the Transcended are involved after all. That would be the good outcome.’
‘This again?’ said Ash.
She shot his avatar a withering look. ‘Either that or some species of equivalent power.’
‘That sounds like a stretch to me,’ said Ash, ‘given how dumb their drones are.’
She glared at him. ‘We’d be very stupid to be making any assumptions about these machines right now. Anyone examining Fecund technology for the first time would see a mixture of dumb and miraculous there, too. Those drones might look clumsy, but the devil’s in the details.’
‘Can you help us understand how this is relevant?’ said Mark. ‘I mean, either we can beat them or we can’t. Right?’
Zoe sighed. ‘There’s no way to explain without getting technical.’
‘Then get technical,’ said Mark. ‘We’re not idiots. It’s okay. Tell us what we’re dealing with.’
Zoe peered up into his camera. ‘Do you know what B-mesons are?’
‘Sure. Primer particles. The warp emitters fire them – we use them to trigger curvon decay.’
She nodded. ‘They’re also called doorway particles. Most of the universe we see is governed by the physics of the Standard Model, or low-order physics. But to achieve anything like warp effects, you have to use particles sensitive to higher-order interactions – the kind that govern spatial curvature and particle decay. The whole Higgs-Weak interaction landscape. B-meson pathways are the cheapest, easiest route out of the StanMod domain. That trick, plus decay forcing, underpins almost all modern drive technology.’
‘I fail to see where this is going,’ said Sam.
‘You will if you give me a fucking minute,’ said Zoe. ‘The point is, you can’t get curvon decay without B-mesons or something like them. You can’t do anything without them. But that jelly-drive? No B-mesons. No tau-primers, either, so it can’t be a pure stealth drive. I saw evidence of plasma-forcing, but everything else is missing.’
‘Is it possible the drive was just off when we passed it?’ said Mark.
‘Of course it was off!’ said Zoe. ‘But there was still passive emission. That’s my point – the drive was idling so there was enough power going through it for my SAPs to make guesses about how it was supposed to work. And then I compared that to the profile of the arrivals spike when the drive was active. And that’s when it hit me. Their arrivals spike was all wrong, just like the warp profiles of those first drones were wrong. There’s no evidence of doorway particle decay. That’s what’s fucked up about it. I missed it the first time because I didn’t even consider it. I assumed something else had to be going on – field compression, maybe, or a pseudo-vacuum regime we don’t know about yet.’
‘Is it possible that your SAP just came back with the wrong answers?’ said Mark.
Zoe waved a dismissive hand. ‘Of course. That was my first assumption, which is why I double-checked. But I can’t find a flaw in its logic, so I’m forced to conclude that we’re looking at a technological advance on the scale of the suntap. Maybe bigger.’
‘Which changes things how?’ he said.
She gave him a weary, imploring expression. ‘The suntap was bait,’ she said. ‘Free power handed to the human race with a huge price tag attached – an off-switch for our entire species. Death on the scale of entire stars. Whenever you see a halfwit species using technology they can’t possibly have invented, it’s safe to guess that someone’s in the background pulling the strings. So you have to ask, what’s the cost? Who’s really in charge here and what do they want?’
‘So you’re worried that someone – or something – else is behind the Photurians,’ said Mark.
‘Right,’ said Zoe. ‘And what do they want with the human race? The Transcended have an off-switch for human life, but they appear to have decided not to use it yet. Who says this new bunch are going to be quite so generous? Who says that after Carter there’ll even be an Earth to go back to?’
11.4: ASH
Ash listened from the bridge while Sam wove his next little web of lies, his disgust building steadily. It was painfully obvious that Sam had set up their detour to Carter, with all the extra horror that visit might entail. Sam obviously didn’t give a shit about the lives of anyone on board – or anyone else, for that matter. So why hadn’t he gone further already and killed all his witnesses?
As soon as Ash framed the question to himself, he knew the answer. Had Sam killed the other passengers, Ash’s own loyalty to the League would have snapped. Sam knew that, and Sam still needed someone to pilot the Gulliver – it was a ro-ship and Sam couldn’t fly it himself. That, Ash realised, gave him some bargaining power. He relished the notion.
It occurred to him then that Sam probably would have only drugged Mark rather than try to kill him if he’d actually been able to find a suitable compound in Citra’s lab. That would have made him look more compassionate and exposed him to less risk. But he’d been hamstrung by not understanding the limits of Mark’s biology. He’d been improvising, and he was still at it.
So why had Sam chosen Carter? From the little Mark had seen of it, Carter looked like a barely settled shit-hole, of interest only to field-researchers and pioneer-lifestyle types. Because, Ash reasoned, the alternative was New Panama, and Sam couldn’t control anything from there. His movements would be too visible. The fact that Carter was a backwater played directly to Sam’s interests. Sam had lost his chance to convince Mark to head for Snakepit and so had taken the next-best option.
While Zoe rattled on with her Vartian-style paranoia, Ash slid out of his bunk and made his way across to the hatch that led down to the lounge. He waited there until the meeting was over, then, as Sam came up the ladder, Ash grabbed his arm and dragged him to the nearest privacy chamber. Sam shot him a disgusted look but let himself be manhandled. Ash pushed Sam inside and shut the door behind them.
Sam adjusted his sleeve and tsked. Ash no longer gave a shit what his boss thought.
‘You set that up,’ he said. ‘You trashed our fuel on purpose.’
‘Here’s what I did,’ said S
am, stabbing the air in front of Ash’s chest. ‘I followed your lead.’
Ash brayed with laughter. ‘And how do you figure that?’
‘You bought into Mark’s plan, so I did, too. I just used it to rescue your ass, that’s all. Tell me, why didn’t you stick to your guns and tell the truth the moment you walked into the bridge? Nobody was stopping you. You could have told him everything.’
Ash coloured. Sam knew why, of course. Because given the chance to save himself without revealing his guilt, he’d grabbed at it. Desperately.
‘Let’s face it,’ said Sam. ‘You’re not exactly arguing from any moral high ground here.’
Ash knew enough by now to understand that Sam was a snake, and that his emotions were being manipulated. Unfortunately, he couldn’t contest Sam’s point.
‘You just put hundreds of thousands of lives at risk,’ he said instead.
‘A problem I’ll solve,’ said Sam. ‘I’ll evacuate them.’
‘Bullshit,’ said Ash. ‘You can’t know that for sure, and what if you can’t? Then we’ve got a massive target-containment problem on our hands. Carter is huge compared to Tiwanaku. If you fuck up just slightly, those Nems could double their intelligence in a week. We already don’t have a clue what they’re doing.’
Sam’s expression grew steadily darker. ‘I’ll manage it.’
‘How?’ Ash demanded. ‘By magic?’
‘By killing everyone in the fucking system, if necessary,’ said Sam. ‘You know me well enough by now to believe I’d do it. My overrides give me complete access to their antimatter store and every Fleet drone in the system. Modern infrastructure is delicate. It would take me about fifteen minutes to point something with a warp drive at every population centre on the planet. End of problem.’
Ash reeled. ‘All that just so you don’t have to come clean to Mark? That’s insane. Where’s your perspective?’
‘No,’ Sam snapped. ‘You’re the one with no fucking perspective. Use that modified brain of yours to think through the options for a moment, would you? We either stick to our plan, fucked up though it is, or we fold. I can’t see any other options. Can you? If we stick, we have a major fucking Nem problem, granted, but Earth’s government still has to turn over. After the Earth is targeted, power will have to go to the Fleet. We win. You live. The war is averted. If we fold, we have the same exact fucking Nem problem, but Fleet credibility is trashed the moment our actions are revealed. You die. I die. And from then on it’s every planet for themselves. That means war. Fuck the Nems. Who needs them? We’ll murder each other. In case you hadn’t noticed, Captain Corrigan, you’re in a card game where the price of sitting at the table keeps going up. But the consequences of winning or losing don’t change.’
‘Maybe I don’t like the game any more,’ said Ash.
‘Tough shit,’ said Sam, ‘because quitting is losing. And another thing – if you ever touch me like that again, I’ll kill you. Do you understand?’
Ash rolled his eyes. ‘Please. With your big fists, I bet.’
‘You be careful who you fuck with,’ said Sam, jabbing his finger. ‘There is exactly one person in the universe who can keep you alive longer than a month. Your choices are my mercy or a firing squad. Now get your shit together, because we’ve got a civilisation to save.’
Sam let himself out.
Ash leaned up against the wall and screamed his fury till he was hoarse.
12: FRONTIERS
12.1: ANN
By the time the Chiyome docked at Snakepit Station, Ann had a status update from Nelson waiting for her.
‘Repairs are underway,’ he told her. ‘The hull has been camouflaged using the code you provided. I admit to concern about the notion of a ship this large being hidden at all, particularly given its gravity footprint, but your recommendations have been followed in any case.’
Nelson shouldn’t have worried. Nem-cloaking didn’t exactly hide a ship so much as loudly instruct the Nems not to see it. Presuming the technique still worked, of course. It had been derived from the Nems’ own swarming protocols. Ann trusted in their immutability rather less than she had a week ago.
‘Two final points on Will Monet,’ Nelson added.
Ann’s shoulders tightened.
‘First, do remember that he has a persistent link to his ship whenever it’s in range,’ he said. ‘That’s not something we can deactivate. It’s woven deep into the smart-blood architecture that keeps the Ariel Two running. The ship will seek him out wherever he is, and you’ll need to maintain careful shielding if you want to prevent that. I assume you’ve been briefed and taken all reasonable precautions.’
Ann had.
Nelson paused, his patrician face revealing some unexpected vulnerability.
‘Second point: please look after him. He’s dangerous, I know, and more powerful than any of us. But that doesn’t mean he’s not human. He hurts just like everyone else. I fear that we’ve damaged him, bringing him to this point, because he was always more predictable to us when he was angry. I regret that. I’ve lost a good friend for the sake of what I believe. I sincerely hope it was the right choice. If it’s in your power, please don’t make his damage any worse. Do what you can for him. Help him understand. Nelson out.’
The message window closed. Ann shut her eyes and felt dirty. She dearly wished she didn’t have to face down Will again, but getting one of her crew to escort him to the station would have made a coward out of her. So she steeled herself and drifted up out of her couch to fetch Will from the privacy chamber. This time, she was determined to keep her cool.
She took a pellet gun loaded with cartridges of Meleta’s biomaterial. If the camera feeds from the privacy chamber were anything to go by, Will had discovered the coating on the room’s seals. She had to be ready for anything.
The hatch slid back to reveal Will floating at the far end of the space, waiting.
‘What did you put on the walls?’ he said.
He didn’t look angry any more. If anything, Will Monet looked awed.
‘I warned you about our new technology,’ she said.
‘That’s not new,’ said Will. ‘It’s stolen.’
‘The distinction is irrelevant,’ she replied. ‘It’s new to us.’ She didn’t actually believe that for a moment but had no desire to let Will know how she really felt. ‘This way, please,’ she said, gesturing with the gun. ‘I presume you can guess what this pistol fires.’
Will came calmly. ‘You have to stop this,’ he said.
She sighed. ‘I believe we’ve already had this discussion, Captain Monet – you disapprove of our choices. But you still haven’t been fully briefed yet.’
He shook his head. ‘Do you honestly believe there’s a single thing your superiors can tell me that compares to what I’ve already learned in that room?’
They transferred to the docking pod.
‘I imagine you’ve learned that your powers have limits,’ she said.
The pod whisked them away towards the habitat ring, gravity building slowly.
‘Whatever you splashed on the walls in there is scarier than anything I’ve ever seen,’ said Will.
He appeared to have given up trying to score emotional points, her betrayal of him relegated to a side note in his thinking. Ann wasn’t sure whether to be hurt by that or relieved.
‘That stuff is almost as far in advance of our abilities as the Transcended Relic,’ said Will. ‘The fact that it can chew its way through my smart-cells should be proof enough of that. You imagine you’re using whatever’s at this star as a tool in your big game, but it’s the other way around – someone is playing you instead.’
‘We’ll take your opinion into consideration, of course,’ said Ann.
She didn’t like his assessment. The League had long assumed that Snakepit had been left for humanity by the Transc
ended as a kind of prize to boost their development, just like the suntap and all their other gifts. With a single sentient force apparently weeding out intelligent species in the galaxy on million-year timescales, what room was left for another explanation? Snakepit’s technologies had also proven suspiciously adaptable to human use, only bolstering that theory. However, given what she’d seen at Tiwanaku, a deeper agenda for the alien biosphere suddenly sounded plausible. She adjusted her hold on the wall as her feet settled to the floor.
Will gave her a long, exasperated stare. ‘Honestly,’ he said. ‘What is there left to learn about your organisation that I can’t already guess? You found out about the Fecund sites the sects were hiding and saw the potential for all-out war. You decided to fight them on their own terms and went looking for counter-weapons. Then you found this place, which appeared to be the answer to your prayers. Without worrying too much about the possible consequences, you started using it to reclaim your advantage.’
Ann gritted her teeth. He wasn’t far off.
‘What you all failed to notice in your rush for a solution,’ he said, ‘was that the stupid-looking drones you were deploying were quietly trying to hack you – just like the Transcended hacked me. That’s what they were attempting to do in Tiwanaku, you realise – unpick the protocols of human biology. That kid with the idol in his neck was a failed experiment. So was everything else we saw. Those cells on the walls of your privacy chamber are just the same – they’re learning. But here’s the thing. This stuff isn’t like Transcended technology. For starters, it’s not obviously benign. There are no clues in it. You’ve found something old that may be very, very bad. If you think it’s just a piece of technology left for you to play with that conveniently pumps out tame munitions, you’re wrong. Dead wrong.’
Ann kept her face a mask of calm while her thoughts accelerated. Something about his assessment made a horrible kind of sense. What if the League’s entire reasoning had been wrong? What if the planet didn’t belong to the Transcended after all? What if this was someone else’s version of the same kind of honeytrap as the lure star?
