by Nick Webb
“The Unthinkable Thought.”
“I’m sorry?”
“Deep within our psyches, written into our very DNA, are things forbidden. We must not think them. Must not consider them. It is sacred to us. But the rebellious children, they … defiled them.”
“And what are those forbidden things?”
Zivic wasn’t sure if that was the right tack for his father to take, given that these aliens had nearly committed self genocide over them, but surprisingly, she answered. “Our point of origin, for one. Our planet that we came from. It was forbidden to think of it, to look for it, or even to speak of it.”
“Why?”
“I have no idea, Friend of the Motherkiller. It just is. Some things just are.”
“Ok. What else?”
“The … the null space. The room of … nadir. The place of … negative … energy. Past the Unpassable Door. The dark … sanctuary. The….” She seemed confused at this point, as if searching for the right human words to convey something that could only be described using her native language.
Ballsy turned to Qwerty. “Lieutenant? Can you help?”
Qwerty stepped forward. “If you please, ma’am. I do speak a good helping of Skiohra. Enough to shake a stick at, my momma would say.”
She cocked her head in confusion.
“Tells us what you just told us, but do it in your own language. I’ll see if I can translate for my colleagues.”
She took a deep breath, and then spoke. The Skiohra language was surprisingly beautiful. Long vowels and extended riffs of notes on a single vowel that would rise and fall like a musical scale. Like music.
And at times, the music was dark.
Qwerty’s brow was squished up, as if he was in deep concentration. He stared directly at her mouth the entire time, as if trying to simultaneously read her lips while he listened. Finally, she stopped, but Qwerty stood there for several moments, nodding, as if still processing it all.
“Lieutenant?”
He turned to them. “There is a room here on this ship. And they’ve attached such … deep emotional significance to this room that it infuses their very language and their culture. The room is taboo. It’s almost like a negative space on their own ship. They don’t acknowledge its existence most of the time. They go out of their way to avoid the corridor that leads to it. It’s like a dark, forbidden temple to them. But … more than that. And that’s where I understand why she was having trouble. It’s … impossible to translate.”
“Just give us the gist, then, lieutenant. We’ve got a war going on, remember,” said Ballsy.
“It’s a space that is so wrapped up in not just their psyches, as she said, but their biology. It’s literally written into them that this room is a place they must avoid at all costs. Because it’s a place of creation and destruction, of life and death, of existence and … unexistence. I don’t know if that’s quite right, but it feels close.”
Ballsy turned back to Krull. “And you fought over this room? Millions dead? For … a room?”
“Friend of the Motherkiller, our ship is our world. Rooms to us are like islands or territories for you. Have you not fought over land in your history?”
“Touché.”
“Even now, so many of my Interior children want to go in there. Want the mystery to be revealed. And I … I can not fathom it. I can not abide the thought.”
Ballsy considered for a moment. “Well … what if … what if I went in? Is that acceptable? I could poke my head in, see what the hubbub is about, and tell you if it’s really worth fighting over.”
She looked incensed. Revulsion crept over her face.
“Or not.” Ballsy smiled. At that moment his comm device beeped, and he tapped it. “Go ahead.”
“Tyler, you done yet? Is she seeing reason?” Oppenheimer’s voice blared out from Ballsy’s pocket.
“We’re working on it, admiral. Stand by.” Ballsy tapped the comm and looked up at Krull. “Listen, Matriarch. I have a … superior officer over there on the Independence that is … well, let’s just say he may be a little crazy himself. Seems like there’s a lot of that going around these days. And he wants a showdown with the Swarm. Right here and now. Using your ship as a weapon against them.”
Krull almost laughed. “The Benevolence? Our ship is no match for one of the Swarm vessels. They dwarf us. They out-power us ten to one, at least.”
“Yes, but what about all six of your ships against one of theirs?”
She paused. Her eyes widened. “Have you already forgotten our struggles? I can no more invite them here than you can summon the Swarm and sit down with them for a hot beverage.”
“Yes, well, maybe they’d come if they knew their homeworld was threatened….”
Her back stiffened. “How … how did you know?”
“Honestly? We guessed.”
“This aspect of the Unthinkable Thought is … somewhat less forceful than the others. Perhaps because I can look out my window and see it there, and the mystery is removed. It’s the mystery that frightens sometimes, is it not?”
Ballsy nodded. “Which is why I made my earlier offer, Matriarch.”
She closed her eyes, and thought. “I see now your intentions. You summon the Swarm. We summon our people. We destroy ourselves fighting the Swarm, and in the end, you get another planet. And you brought backup just in case we failed.”
Ballsy looked confused. “I’m sorry? I don’t understand.”
“Do you think our sensors are blind? We detected it the moment you q-jumped into the system.”
Ballsy looked a little rattled. “Detected what?”
“Your artificial singularity. It’s there. On your ship. Waiting to be used against the Swarm ship if we fail to stop it. I thought your people had learned their lesson with those devices, but clearly you have not.”
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Bridge
Sword of Justice
Debris cloud of El Amin
When the three other thugs had made it to the flight deck and started trying to patch the hole in the door where the Granger’s Heel was lodged, it was a simple enough matter to remotely lock and seal the doors, and cut off access to the emergency hatch behind the bulkhead. They were trapped. For a long time. She supposed she could kill them, but that would have probably freaked her captive out and make him try something desperate knowing he was probably next, and she still needed him.
She turned to him. “See? They’re safe too. Trapped, but safe. Your name is Gephardt?”
He nodded once. “Steve.”
“Ok, Steve. This is what’s going to happen now. You’re going to summon the doctor here. What was his name? Avasar?”
“Yeah.”
“Get him up here. Tell him Taylor is alive after all, but needs immediate medical attention, and that you and your companions here,” she motioned to the other two dead bodies, “can’t move him without risking his life. Got it?”
“Ok. Yeah.” He tapped the PA again. “Hey, Doc, Taylor’s alive. I repeat, Taylor is alive. But he’s in bad shape. I don’t think we should move him or he’ll bleed out. Get your ass up here asap.”
Avasar answered. “I’m on my way. Keep pressure on those wounds, for god’s sake.”
She pointed the gun straight at his forehead. “Stay. If you move an inch, you’re dead. Understand?”
He flinched when the gun pointed towards him, but nodded vigorously.
Liu positioned herself next to the entrance to the bridge, out of sight of anyone coming in. Moments later, the door opened, and the doctor ran through. He stopped suddenly when he saw the bodies.
“Wait a minute…” he began.
“That’s far enough, Doctor Avasar. I’m glad you could join us,” said Liu.
He turned around, slowly, and put his hands in the air. “Oh.”
It took over an hour, but she managed to get all five of them locked in her freighter, donned with vacuum suits, and the ship pushed back out into spac
e, free and clear of the frigate. She tapped on her commlink to the freighter. “Sorry about the q-drive, boys. But you should have enough fuel to make it to Sangre de Cristo with conventional engines in about, oh five days. Don’t eat the rations all at once.” She tapped it off.
Now. The reason she’d come.
Finally.
Dr. Avasar had given her his charts and all the notes of everything that had been done for him. And to him, as some of the files had ominous names like Viral Assays, Biosignature-Metawave Impedance Matching Charts, and some that were title-less. “My god, Danny, what have they done to you?”
The door to sickbay slid open, and there he was. Asleep. Just like in the picture Proctor had shown her, with tubes coming out of him, horrible wounds and burns covering his body. And yet, somehow, the scarring seemed far less serious in person. Or perhaps they’d healed miraculously fast.
She stood by the bed, unsure of what to do. She fought the powerful urge to bend over and kiss his forehead. Given the file name Viral Assays, she had no idea if he’d contracted something and was contagious.
“Danny,” she said, very softly.
Nothing changed. He didn’t move. The machines hummed and beeped occasionally, breaking the stone silence.
She opened his charts on the data pad Avasar had given her and flipped to the last few pages. With a quick scan she saw that he had indeed been awake recently, and was showing marked improvement. So she tried again.
“Danny,” she said again, with a little more force.
She risked contact. A hand, rested down on the fabric of the gown covering his body. A small shake.
“Danny,” she said a third time.
Nothing.
“Damn.”
She flipped through the charts again, and this time she noticed they were incomplete. There was only about a week’s worth of data. Everything before that was gone. “That rat bastard,” she said, weighing the idea of following the freighter and threaten Avasar with a quick death unless he released the rest to her.
Except, no, he would have known she’d discover something missing like that and would chase after him. No, there must be something else. Her eyes glanced up to a room off to the side. The head physician’s office. Of course. The data pad might just be an incomplete record. It may only hold a certain number of days of charts before old charts were archived and offloaded into the doctor’s main system.
She left Danny and slipped into the office and waved the computer on. Sure enough, there were the charts. All of them. From when Danny was picked up that first day, very near death, to just a few hours ago. She sat down and started to plunge into it all.
It made sense to start at the beginning. Weeks ago. When the dome on Sangre de Cristo was nuked by the package that Danny had unknowingly transported aboard the Magdalena Issachar. He escaped the ship, but fell through the atmosphere to his certain death. From that point there was no indication of what happened. The first notes were that he was found in a lake of liquid methane shortly after the blast. That must have cushioned his landing enough to survive, and brought his body temperature down so that he would survive the trauma long enough for the docs to fix him up.
She followed his treatment over the first few weeks, watching his vital signs improve over time, but some concern noted about the extent of the burns and whether he’d ever even have his own skin again.
“Now hold on….” Something was wrong. “What the hell?” A few weeks after he was recovered, at five thirty in the morning, he was pronounced dead. But then just a few hours later there was another entry, describing his treatment as if nothing happened. “That’s … damn peculiar.”
She flipped though another few days of charts. Another strange entry. “Injection site shows signs of accelerated cell regrowth and restructuring. Skin basal cell restoration, and even creation, along with the expected meta-space inductive pathways that historical notes indicate….”
Oh my god.
“…indicate incorporation of Valarisi biological patterns.” She stood up, her eyes wide, a sick feeling spreading from her stomach. “They injected you with Swarm matter?”
She turned around and glanced out the window towards Danny’s bed.
But Danny was not there.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Matriarch’s Command Center
Skiohra generation ship Benevolence
Near planet Shao-587
Ballsy’s fists balled up. Zivic saw his face flush red. “Are you sure? You’re telling me there is an artificial singularity device on board my own ship?”
Krull inclined her head once. “I am sure as the sky is black.”
His father swung around, pointed at Zivic and Qwerty, then to their marine escort, and said, “we’re leaving. Now.” As he walked out the door to the command center he called back to Krull. “I’m sorry for the intrusion, Matriarch. I have some things to take care of on my ship.”
“Friend of the Motherkiller, wait,” said Krull.
Ballsy paused, and turned around. “What is it?”
“I will take you up on your offer.”
“What?”
“Your offer. The Unthinkable Thought exists for me and my people. Not for you. If you entering the forbidden room and determining that there is no danger is what it takes to end this senseless war among my people, then that is what I must do.”
Ballsy shook his head. “It’s going to have to wait. I’ve got to go take out the trash on my own ship. This device that the admiral brought aboard the Independence is illegal. And no one is above the law. Not Oppenheimer, not the president. They’re illegal for a reason. Thirty years ago they wreaked havoc on my people and yours. Their use is what enabled the Swarm to come through the Penumbran black hole seventy-five years early. They were like a big, flashing signal to the Swarm that said, here we are, come get us. They devastated worlds with them. They destroyed the Florida peninsula. Dozens of cities across the UE. No. I will not tolerate their use, even by my superiors. Now, if you’ll excuse me.”
“Tyler Volz, please wait.”
It was the first time that he’d ever heard Krull call any human by their given name rather than by a title given by the Skiohra. Ballsy’s eyebrows elevated, as he recognized the same thing. “Matriarch?”
“Please. Please help me end my people’s war. Before it’s too late. If you do, we can help you in your war against the Swarm.”
“Madam, if you’re not already helping us in the war against the Swarm just because it’s the right thing to do, then I have nothing else to say to you.”
“Please, Tyler Volz.”
He was still paused by the door, standing in the hallway just outside the command center. He cracked the knuckles of his fingers with his thumb as he considered, something Zivic recognized as something he only did when he was very nervous and very unsure of himself, which rarely happened. “Not now. I need to clean my own house first.” He considered. “Come with me to Britannia. I need to go there now and I can’t wait. If this order truly came from the new president, he needs to be exposed sooner rather than later, before he can do more damage. And the only place I can do that is at Britannia. That’s where the president currently is, and so where I have to go. Accompany me there, and I promise I’ll make time to help you solve your mystery as soon as I get to the bottom of my own mystery.”
Her answer came quickly. “Agreed.”
Zivic followed his father out of the command center and down the hall, back toward the pod that would whisk them away back to the flight deck. “What does it mean that there’s one of those things on our ship?”
“It means we’ve got lawless traitors in our midst. That was a dangerous Swarm weapon back in the day. They used it to destroy worlds and kill billions. And it messed with time itself. They’re so dangerous that congress at the time banned them under penalty of life imprisonment. Anyone found trying to produce one or, god forbid, use one, would rot in a cell for the rest of their lives. And the fact that we’ve got on
e right now means that Oppenheimer at least, and possibly even the president are not just law-breakers, but endangering all of us.”
They entered the pod, Qwerty and the marines on their heels, and before long they were boarding the shuttle and fighter.
Once back on the bridge, flanked by the two marines who’d accompanied them to the Benevolence, Ballsy strode up to Admiral Oppenheimer.
“And? Are they going to help us? Or was this whole charade just a waste of time?” said Oppenheimer.
“Admiral, under the authority of section Five of the UE Military Code of Naval Justice, I’m placing you under arrest for the violation of civil code UEC 512a. Namely, the production, transport, or knowing harboring or storage of an artificial singularity device.”
“You’ve lost your mind,” said Oppenheimer, indignant.
“Maybe so. But at least I’ll do it while keeping our laws.” Captain Volz motioned to the marines. “Not the brig. Just the observation lounge down the hall. We’ll need him when we get the president on the line. And the speaker of the house—they’ll need to hear this to be able to start impeachment proceedings.”
Oppenheimer stared them down. “Think about what you’re doing, soldiers. I’m the Fleet Admiral of IDF. I answer only to the president and no one else. Are you willing to mutiny and follow a renegade like Captain Volz? You’ll sit in a cell for years if you do.”
They hesitated, weighing their choices. Ballsy stepped towards them. “Look, son,” he began, staring one of them in the eye, “we can sort this all out once we get to Britannia. And if I’m wrong, I take all the blame. You can be sure of that.”
Ballsy was lucky that all of the marines that Oppenheimer brought with him were currently occupying the Benevolence and that these marines had served with Captain Volz and knew him. Ballsy had a certain amount of cachet, especially among fighter pilots and marines. They motioned to the admiral. “This way, sir.”
Oppenheimer swore, and started following them off the bridge. “You’ll regret this, Tyler. This will be your last mistake as a free man.”
