Exodus

by Alex Lamb

  Mark reluctantly reinserted himself into piloting mode. He vaporised the buoy with a brief g-ray blast before aiming them onwards to the system where Rachel’s ship was supposed to be. As he flew, a murky dread grew inside him. Backspace no longer looked so clean or open now that he knew something was lurking in it, even if it only turned out to be his past.

  6.3: ANN

  Ann marched her avatar back to its stateroom, sat it on the bed, and abandoned it. The emptiness inside her ached, leaving a kind of vivid, painful indifference where her hope was supposed to be. Since her run to the edge of the Flaw, things had gone from bad to worse. First, she’d lost her chance to make a stand. Then had come the crushing proof that the Academy hadn’t needed her to do that anyway. They’d out-thought her models already, trapping more ships than she ever could have killed with just the Dantes at her command. So Ann had tried to square herself with the idea of personal obsolescence ended by a mercifully quick death in the Zone. Now even that wasn’t coming.

  Instead, here she was, stuck on a ship full of chattering idiots who appeared to imagine that just because they’d sailed through a wall of depleted curvons their fates weren’t still sealed. It made her feel like screaming. The only possible solution was work.

  She dived inwards to update her suite of threat models with data on their new situation. A vast landscape of timelines swam into focus, littered with stacks of semantic tags. Once upon a time, building models like this had been her job. These days, they served as an escape.

  She brought up a spread of update tools and started tinkering. It didn’t help. She wanted to smash something – or someone.

  [Let it go,] said her shadow. [So what if we passed the Flaw? You know it’s just a matter of time before we hit trouble again.]

  Ann refused to reply.

  [It’s really not that bad,] it went on. [You can’t expect them all to be as keen to let go of living as you are. You’ve died already. They haven’t.]

  [Shut up!] she told it. [I have no interest in your philosophising right now.]

  [You’re behaving like a child,] her shadow told her. [This is nothing more than a tantrum. You’re embarrassed because you never expected this moment to actually happen, and you’re so used to having your own way on a starship that you’ve forgotten what it’s like to share one.]

  [If that’s true, then it makes me perfect company for the rest of the assholes on this ship!] she shouted back.

  Her shadow would have been less intolerable had it not so obviously been a reflection of her own subconscious self-criticism. She knew she’d behaved badly, but the pointlessness of their mission sucked at her soul. She shouldn’t have let them bully her into coming. Her place was back on Galatea helping Poli, not staggering onwards like a broken robot, blindly marching into the void just because they’d ordered her to.

  A request ping invaded her sensorium. Someone was trying to reach her. She ignored it. The ping came again. It would be Ira – that bomb-site of a man still trying to build a bond with her, as he had every day since their last tedious intervention with Palla. Once, she’d found Ira attractive – compelling even. Light romantic tension had been a persistent feature of their work together for decades. But back then he’d been a true statesman. Listening to the flaccid therapist he’d become made her wonder what she’d ever seen in him.

  [You should get that,] said her shadow.

  [You, too?] Ann roared into her mind.

  Reluctantly, she resurfaced into the pointless yacht metaphor and ordered the door to open.

  Ira stood there in the white linen suit he’d adopted, looking like a cross between an Agatha Christie character and an over-muscled gnome. He smiled like an idiot.

  ‘What?’ she growled.

  ‘We found something significant,’ he said. ‘I thought you should know.’

  ‘Great,’ she said. ‘Have fun with that.’ She instructed the door to shut.

  He pushed it back open. ‘Don’t you want to know what it is?’

  ‘Of course not,’ she said. ‘It’s not an enemy, otherwise I’d be back in helm-space already. So whatever it is, it doesn’t concern me.’

  ‘A signal buoy,’ he said. ‘A human one, more than forty years old. We think it’s showing us the way to Rachel Bock’s lost ship.’

  Her insides pulled tighter. Here was something else she hadn’t anticipated. But what of it? Why should she care?

  ‘And this is relevant how?’ she said.

  Ira exhaled heavily. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘I’m sorry that your models of our spectacular deaths didn’t pan out. The fact that we’re still alive must be very distressing to you, but it’s possible that there is an upside to the mission succeeding. Like being able to end the war, perhaps.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ Ann growled. ‘Do you even know what this mission’s threat characteristics look like? Dying before the Flaw was the good exit point, but it was never the one with the highest threat levels. That exit is Snakepit, as I tried to explain in the briefing. Our target will be blockaded, Ira. Extensively. That will have nothing to do with us and everything to do with the Photes’ desperate desire to reclaim their planet. They will have it surrounded just as they did Earth, and every other planet they try to take.’

  ‘Mark and Clath don’t think so.’

  ‘That’s because they’re guessing!’ Ann exclaimed. ‘They’re seeing what they want to see. I didn’t guess what the Photes will do at Snakepit, I aggregated every piece of siege data we had on them and let the answer emerge. Mark and Clath don’t expect a blockade because they’re not thinking like Photes. So even if we wander around out here for years finding miracle after miracle, in the end we are still dead. D-E-A-D, dead. Do you understand?’

  ‘Well, that’s perfect then, isn’t it?’ said Ira, looking annoyed. ‘In that case, you have no reason not to enjoy yourself. You get your warrior’s death and your blaze of glory. And until then, you get to live. Actually live!’

  ‘What’s the point of that?’ Ann spat. ‘What possible pleasure could I derive from all that living? I have one purpose, Ira, and that’s to fight.’

  ‘You don’t need a purpose, Ann. You’re not a machine.’

  She got up from the bed and walked towards him, her body humming with furious energy.

  ‘Am I?’ she said. ‘I don’t need to sleep. I don’t need normal food. I don’t even need company because I have it right here inside my head.’ She punched her temple with an index finger. ‘Not a single person has looked at me like a human for the last forty years, Ira. I’ve forgotten what it means to have equals or to feel love. Or to be wanted as anything other than a weapon or an object of reverence. I’m so used to being feared that I’ve stopped noticing. I just expect it. I have no family. No real friends. No life. I died on Snakepit,’ she told him. ‘I am undead. I am alone. And it is not fun.’

  Ira leaned against the doorway and sighed at her.

  ‘You know what I hear when you say that?’ he said. ‘Speaking professionally, as ship’s psychologist? I hear someone who’s just admitted that they’re not sleeping properly, along with a bunch of other self-indulgent shit. Would you like some help with that? Sleep’s important, you know. It might explain why you’re feeling so negative.’

  ‘I don’t sleep because I don’t want to, Ira! Because every time I dream, I see fire. I see the missions you sent me on, back in the good old Suicide War. I see whole worlds burning. I see continents bubbling like roasted marshmallows. I hear the screams over the audio channel of yet another colony that’s changed its mind about wholesale dying. I feel the shake of the boser as I stab yet another planet in the heart. I feel myself breaking inside all over again. Over and over and over! I have no interest in sleep, Ira. None!’

  Ira’s face went blank.

  She’d delivered a low blow and she knew it. For the first time in a long while, Ann felt guilt. There was a tacit pact between those who had dealt with the war that they didn’t bring it up.

&nbs
p; She turned away. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘But you did ask.’

  Ira shrugged. ‘No problem,’ he said. ‘It’s old news. But for the record, I didn’t have any fun back then, either. I signed those orders, remember? I watched every single report you sent me, and the ones from every other death squad. Just like I made myself watch every single awful Phote interrogation recording they sent – something you were spared, by the way. I did it all for exactly the same reason you did. Because it was my responsibility. We still have a lot in common, you and I. But I do sleep. Which makes me better than you.’

  Ann felt an unexpected twist of embarrassment at that.

  ‘How?’

  ‘Drugs,’ said Ira with a bleak chuckle. ‘Lots and lots of drugs. And here’s another reason I’m better than you.’ One muscle twitched in his cheek. ‘I’m am still a fucking professional. I got the same breaks you did, Ann. The same isolation. The same nightmares. The same regret. But guess what? I’m dealing with it. Oh, and you’re wrong, by the way. I never stopped looking at you as a person and a friend, the whole time we worked together. Are you telling me you never even noticed?’ He shook his head in disgust. ‘I used to admire you, Andromeda Ludik. You were the most impressive, intelligent woman I’d ever met. A true scientist as well as a great officer. Now you’re weak.’ He snorted. ‘On the inside, where it counts. No wonder they dumped you. What would Poli think of you if she saw you acting like this? I think she’d be ashamed. I think she’d tell you to grow the fuck up.’

  Ann blinked at him and felt a slow, caving sensation radiate from the pit of her stomach. Apparently, she still had the capacity to be hurt.

  But Ira wasn’t done. ‘Let me offer you a word of advice from a very, very old man. When life hands you the opportunity to actually live for a little while, take it. Even if you’re all full to bursting with your own self-pity. Otherwise, you may regret it later.’

  He nodded his respects and strolled off down the deck, leaving the door hanging open behind him.

  6.4: IRA

  The buoy turned out to be one of several placed at intervals outside the Flaw, so that even a ship travelling at full warp was likely to find one. They all pointed to the same place.

  At the end of the trail of signposts, Mark dropped them at the heliopause to look at the G-class system ahead. It was an ordinary sort of place, if a little small. The star sported three rocky worlds, one super-Jovian gas giant and a couple of paltry ice giants on wonky orbits. Sure enough, the Diggory was there, locked in place around planet two, a world that showed intriguing hints of a biosphere.

  Ira felt a curious stirring as he peered down the length of a solar system at the tiny blue dot where a human ship was hiding. What was left of Rachel Bock lay there. She’d been his engineer aboard the Ariel on that fateful mission to the lure star when they’d met the Transcended, which meant she was as much a part of his past as Mark’s.

  She’d been a brilliant woman, and the only one he knew who’d had both the wisdom and the courage to imagine that mankind’s future wasn’t to be found in the ruins of the Fecund. Instead she’d decided to look for it at the edges of space, where their understanding ended. As the rest of them were falling into the foolishness that had unleashed the Photurians, Rachel had struck out on her own on behalf of the human race. The universe, of course, couldn’t let such a good deed go unpunished. And so she’d vanished, taking all her sanity with her.

  Now, at last, they stood a chance of righting that wrong and at least discovering what her fate had been. In that sense, Ira felt that Mark’s ambitions were utterly laudable. He’d been the one to step up to the plate and propose that they try her vision for exploring Backspace a second time, despite the costs.

  At that thought, he felt a spark of actual, spontaneous hope and savoured it. His last conversation with Ann had punctured something deep inside him that did not want to be disturbed. He’d found it maddening in the moment and harrowing afterwards.

  While he was grateful to have some of his own emotions back, his ability to sleep had fled, banished into oblivion by a fresh tide of war dreams. But now, thank Gal, they had something to think about other than fighting and dying and wallowing in regret. They had a real mystery to solve. How had Rachel made it this far? And, given that she had, why hadn’t she turned back? Maybe he could help Ann see the wonder in that puzzle. Maybe this was how he brought her back to herself. If any challenge was worthy of her extraordinary talents, it was surely that.

  ‘Wait,’ said Palla. ‘What the fuck?’

  She reached out to the helm-space display and opened a sub-window. She zoomed in tight, not on the blue world ahead but on the system’s lone gas giant. One of its moons looked wrong. In the grainy low-res image they could muster at this distance, it resembled a soap bubble with something floating inside it – crystals, maybe.

  But it was the scale on the image that made it startling. The object clearly wasn’t natural, yet it was thousands of kilometres across. That meant a facility on the scale of the Ovid Shipyards, at least. Ira gaped at it and felt another old emotion stirring inside him: unease.

  ‘It’s an artefact!’ said Clath. ‘This system’s in use.’ She refocused the telescope array and began running noise filters on the images. ‘And it’s not the only one. Christ! Look!’

  She started bringing up zoomed windows. Not a single one of the gas giant’s moons was normal. At least three of them appeared to be enclosed in bubbles of their own. Long silver tethers extended out from some of them into space, sporting smaller bubbles. Other structures became apparent nearby – huge, translucent orbitals made of what looked like glass.

  As the observational data piled up, it became very clear that they were witnessing engineering on a scale that humankind had never seen. Even the Fecund hadn’t built this big.

  ‘Oh. My. God!’ said Clath, her hands over her mouth.

  ‘It looks like your Backspace predictions are already broken,’ Judj told Mark. ‘This is definitely not unoccupied space.’

  ‘Bullshit,’ said Mark. ‘Remember the first rule of alien contact: your neighbour is probably dead. These are going to be ruins. The Frontier used to be full of them.’

  ‘You call those ruins?’ said Judj. ‘They look perfectly intact.’

  ‘There are no energy signatures,’ said Mark. ‘The whole place is dark. The only signal I’m getting from the entire system is the one from the Diggory, and that’s incredibly faint.’

  ‘Maybe they don’t need energy signatures,’ said Judj. ‘Who knows what we’re looking at?’

  Palla brought up a comms-link with a click of her fingers. ‘Ann, you might want to see this,’ she said. ‘The system’s occupied.’

  Ann ported back to the bridge in an instant and stared fixedly at the displays. Ira watched tremors of veiled emotion pass through the frown she wore as she took in the sights. Was that embarrassment? Of course it was. They’d just left Ann’s grim script far behind and her moral high ground along with it.

  Without a word, Ann grabbed copies of the view-feeds and started manipulating them at superhuman speed.

  ‘I need more resolution,’ she said. ‘These images are inadequate.’

  ‘First the signposts,’ said Judj. ‘Now this. Does anyone else here get the feeling we’re being led?’

  ‘So we’re being led,’ said Palla with a reckless grin. ‘Let’s get closer. We won’t be able to learn much skulking around the out-system. If it’s that dangerous, the Diggory wouldn’t still be here.’

  ‘Are you nuts?’ said Judj. ‘We don’t understand a damned thing about what we’re looking at. What if it’s a trap, and the buoy and that ship are bait?’

  ‘Then we’ll have to be careful,’ said Ira. ‘But Palla’s right – we need to go in. We just encountered a potential source of military advantage, which means we have to assess it. Otherwise, if the Photes do ever come after us, we risk handing them the war.’

  He remembered first discovering the leftovers of the
Fecund civilisation all those years ago – the smashed remnants of the once-powerful race the Transcended had left for them to find. He’d been full of legitimate concerns back then and all it had done was slow them down. When you faced the unknown, risks were inevitable.

  ‘Besides,’ he added, ‘we’re out of fuel. We used what we had left following those signposts. Where else can we go?’

  ‘Fine!’ said Judj. ‘In that case, can I recommend we at least break out the database shock key? I don’t want to be responsible for sending yet another kind of alien off to predate on the human race. We have one of those, thanks very much.’

  ‘Already on it,’ said Palla. ‘First thing I did. I also have the ship’s self-destruct on standby, so you can all calm down.’

  Mark shot her a look of contained alarm and then took them slowly inwards. Their speed dropped as they nosed into ever more ion-cluttered space.

  Everything around the gas giant appeared to be made of magic soap bubbles and silver. The structures had curious refractive properties, casting rainbows everywhere. The closer they got, the clearer it became that the planet was infested with the stuff.

  ‘Look at this,’ said Clath.

  She brought up a scan of the Jovian world’s upper atmosphere. It, too, was full of bubbles, like a children’s ball pit on a titanic scale.

  ‘Those things are everywhere,’ she said.

  ‘What are they?’ said Palla.

  Clath shook her head. ‘From the readings I’m getting, they’re not made of anything recognisable. I think they might be energy fields of some sort. They don’t scan like matter at all.’

  ‘Energy fields but no energy signatures?’ said Judj. ‘How does that work?’

  ‘I’ll tell you as soon as I’ve figured it out,’ said Clath.

  As they swung in closer to the gas giant, the details of some of the lunar habitats resolved themselves. Ira found himself staring at fairy-tale environments locked under impossible sheets of glass, many of them made of yet more soap and silver. One moon was swathed in what looked like huge ceramic forests. Another sported cities of branching towers so slender that no normal physics could have held them up. Spectroscopic readings started to come back revealing atmospheres under those shells thick with unbreathable noble gases, mostly helium and neon.