by C. Gockel
“So ya gotta provoke it,” Jerome declared.
The wave disruptors settled, and the surface became ice again.
“How can you provoke the Dark if it is enshrouded in metal, though?” Volka asked. “Like the bombs were above New Grande?”
TAB said, “Dr. Shore is saying, ‘James use it,’ and so is Young. Oh … my. In my data banks, that is purely theoretical.”
Volka said quizzically, “James, the ships are telling me that you have a photon teleporter beam. What is that?”
James did not immediately respond.
6T9 hazarded a guess. “You can teleport photons directly into an object?”
Volka gasped. “Like a phaser that can shoot anyone, no matter where they are, or if they take shelter?”
James’s reply was a grumble. “Quantum teleportation is natural and spontaneous. You’ve been pierced by photons teleporting before. The beam only fires single photons—granted, it can fire them in rapid succession at predetermined targets, but it isn’t harmful in and of itself.”
Volka’s voice was wry when she replied, “Since we all know about this beam now, why not fire away?”
6T9’s circuits sparked.
Jerome said, “Sir, if you do, may I suggest you be provocative?”
James was quiet for a moment, and then said, “Firing now.”
Nothing discernable happened. There was no flash of light. 6T9 didn’t detect any significant electromagnetic radiation from James’s pod or heat, but the next instant, Volka was shouting, “Get out of there now!” and his wave disruptor was screaming.
Steam exploded from the ice and James’s pod disappeared.
A wolf snarled.
The Dark was pulling at the waves of the universe. Volka felt it, and then the next moment, the mindscape went gray. Growling, she closed her eyes, and saw with her mind and the ships’ consciousnesses the waves that made up the universe. The waves of the spokes were dull and faint. She saw through them to Jerome, who was a white, hot star shaped like a man, and 6T9 and James, fainter, but with pinpoints of light flashing from the bases of their skulls. The Dark was coming for them. Exploding from the surface of the wheel, racing up the spoke, were spherical folds in the waves—drones, she was sure of it—filled with the Dark. They’d come not from the ice, but from everywhere in the wheel. They’d encountered them in The People’s Inside-Out-World as well, the second time they’d visited. James’s provocation must have awakened them. She was sure that they would reach the pods before they escaped through the fissure in the spoke they’d entered. Farsong keened in sorrow and in horror.
Volka snarled. Her hands clenched into fists, and she saw where she wanted to go. The ships saw it too, and her captains. The desire had barely entered her mind before the ships were there, hovering above a point on the spoke just ahead of the pods. Volka’s hands squeezed as though she were pulling the trigger of the phaser cannons her Marines carried. With her eyes focused on a single spot, she imagined them cutting a new escape route for the away team. She felt Young, articulating her desire, “Concentrate your fire!” But that thought was already echoing among her captains and their crews before the words were done. Phaser fire ripped through the void into the side of the spoke, slicing—hopefully—a gap for 6T9, James, Jerome, and TAB to escape through, just as she had imagined. She wasn’t controlling the Marines; she was a conduit for their own goal: rescue the members of their tribe, their pack. They weren’t slaves, but they were of her own mind … and making her own mind better. Dr. Patrick was analyzing their target’s response to their blasts, and she heard and conveyed a thought she didn’t even truly understand about altering the frequency of their phasers. It was heard. It was understood, and a piece of the spoke curled inward. Inside was only dark, not the flickering she’d seen earlier. Also—
Ramirez said, “Gap’s not wide enough for the pods!” at the same instant two of the Dark’s drones collided with James's pod. Instead of buckling inward, it exploded, propelling him outward.
Volka thought of the narrow gap, and Jerome replied, “Understood. TAB understands. Gotta get James.” She didn’t think he thought the words; she thought her mind might just be translating his resolve into words … but why would he need to rescue James?
Jerome exploded outward from his pod, and she looked through his eyes. In the dimness, she saw that the hover pack James wore was buckled inward and shadowy. 6T9, free of his pod, was in Jerome’s vision a moment later, and then Jerome and 6T9 had activated their hover packs and were blasting toward James. Farsong called into her mind, “More drones,” and Volka saw them coming. Jerome and 6T9 had James, and they were hauling him to the new gap that they’d cut in the spoke, but James’s rescue had cost them time, and a drone was heading toward them too fast.
Young’s voice—or his thoughts—echoed in her mind. “Team, give them cover!” Four Marines shot from the keel of Young’s ship toward the spoke, phaser cannons primed, recoil dampeners glowing. One of them disappeared into the new gap the Marines had cut in the spoke. Nightwing called out, “More drones are awakened in the wheel,” and Volka saw hundreds of drones heading toward the spoke.
Stratos imagined what would happen—the drones would pass the team inside the spoke, emerge from the fissure en masse, and attack the ships and Marines in the vacuum before they could get away. Volka experienced his apprehension, echoed it, and Young had a responding wish that Volka felt and relayed before he could even form the words.
Rhinehart and Ramirez heard Young’s unspoken command through Volka. “Already there!” Their ships had darted back to the fissure and Rhinehart and Ramirez were leading teams of phaser cannon equipped Marines in to prevent Stratos’s dark daydream from becoming reality.
“Jerome is through!” Farsong cried, and Volka saw the Marine emerging from the spoke, hauled out by men atop it. She also saw Rhinehart’s phaser cannon ripping beams down the spoke, and the spoke’s interior surface lighting like sunrise. More phaser fire erupted from Rhinehart’s and Ramirez’s teams and the spoke became as bright as day. Brighter than that was the rage in the Marines’ hearts. Volka could taste metal in her mouth and in the mouths of all of her tribe, her pack mates.
“The mechanical person is out,” declared Farsong.
It was 6T9. Volka saw it through Jerome’s eyes. Jerome and 6T9 were bending down and hauling James from the gap. There was still a Marine inside, firing, and Volka knew they wouldn’t leave him behind.
Dr. Patrick had another worry. The gap they cut in the spoke was a weak point. The drones might target it and burst through instead of aiming for the fissure defended by Rhinehart and Ramirez. They had nothing to seal it. Volka felt it. The captains felt it.
“Everyone, be ready to fire on the gap as soon as the team is away.” It was Young’s order, and every captain heard it through Volka … she gritted her teeth and expanded the feeling to their teams … and thank God all the strangers aboard their ships were too focused for anything but fear and battle lust. They’d long since given up on radio silence, and Dixon ordered a haul line … in the next instant, James was being hoisted away from the spoke on a line, and Jerome and 6T9 were dragging the Marine who’d covered them out by his feet. Inside the spoke, drones were fast approaching, too many for Ramirez and Rhinehart to destroy.
“Get away! Cover yourselves!” was in every mind.
Jerome, still holding onto the Marine’s leg, activated his pack, pulling the Marine and 6T9 up to Sundancer. 6T9 wasn’t telepathically connected, but in less than a second, he got the idea and activated his pack. The other Marines blasted away but kept their phaser cannons aimed at the gap. The Marine being dragged by his legs by 6T9 and Jerome didn’t fight to turn around … he kept his phaser cannon aimed at the gap as well, covering Jerome and Sixty, and Volka loved him a little for it.
A drone exploded out from the gap. The Marine between Sixty and Jerome was closest. His phaser fire hit it first. Another drone exploded in the first’s wake, and more were co
ming. In Sharon’s mind, the spoke was filled with a wall of advancing drones—she and her team had stayed in until the last. “Out of there!” was a cry in every heart.
Rhinehart’s and Ramirez’s teams returned to their ships but fired out along the spoke’s surface as they did, knocking out a few of the drones emerging from the gap.
And then they were inside their ships. Dixon was shouting, “Sinclair, 6T9, and Jerome are aboard.” Farsong was crying out, “You have my captain!” and Volka felt a sense of relief as every single Skimmer gathered the last of their crews.
Sixty asked, “Did we get everyone?” He was on Sundancer’s bridge, and she heard it through the ship and Jerome’s ears and every team member’s ears.
Her heart spoke through Jerome. “Yep.” And she felt every human on the bridge relax.
She wasn’t sure if she heard Sixty’s next words from the mindscape, Jerome, or her crew’s minds, or over an ether connection, because it seemed to echo through her ears and her heart all at once. “Burnt-out transistors, James! What in Luddeccea’s conception of Hell did you say to it?”
And then Sundancer turned to light.
6T9 was lying face down on Sundancer’s bridge when the ship finished her free-gate. He reached into the ether and got only a local hub shared by the Marines. 6T9 muttered into the floor, “Really, James, what did you say to the Dark?” He lifted his head. The other android had started the mission aboard Young’s ship; two pods were too much for one bridge. But someone aboard Volka’s ship had cast James a lifeline—literally. It had a hook at the end that had somehow gotten embedded in James’s suit. Foam had surged up around the hook to protect James from the vacuum at the site of the tear.
In a very machine-like voice, James said, “I am an android. I said something logical.”
There was the whisper of footfalls, Volka’s and more, and then Lieutenant Dixon said, “Where are we?”
Jerome answered, “We’re in a baby galaxy the ships like to go to when they’re stressed.”
6T9 rolled over. Volka was staring down at him.
“The ships are stressed … no one was hurt? We have everyone?” he asked.
“We have everyone. James is the only one with significant damage,” Volka replied. “It’s just …”
Young’s voice cracked over the ether. “We scared the elderships.”
Volka frowned slightly, bent down, and offered 6T9 a hand. He took it, though he didn’t need it. Her hand was in a glove and so was his, and as awkward as that tactile sensation was, it was nice not to be only a pod sensor. And then his own processors detected that the silence had stretched too long. He sought more data. “They were frightened because we were almost destroyed?”
Volka only stared at him.
Dr. Patrick’s voice joined the ether, wry and perhaps rueful. “For a few minutes, we were all a single mind. An Alpha predator’s mind.”
Carl hopped across the bridge. He’d discarded his “sausage suit.” “They’re light-eating surrender-rocks. Your aggression scared them.”
6T9 glanced at Volka.
“I’m not sorry,” she whispered, chin dipping, fierce and wolf-like. Alpha-predator-like.
Jerome murmured, “Information flowed between us faster than the ether, faster than words. I just felt, and everyone else felt, and we all knew …”
6T9 remembered The One during the siege of New Grande using telekinesis to open a door for him. Over one hundred cats had faced the same spot, flicked their tails in time, and made heavy duty locks disengage. And he thought of the Dark, in a holo speaking in chorus, eyes blinking in time. Static raced below his skin. “You were … one mind?” he asked carefully and glanced at Volka. Had she controlled them?
“No,” said Jerome. “We were completely ourselves, and everyone knew.”
“It was existential.” That came over the ether from the medical doctor among them, a Dr. Elam. 6T9 hadn’t served with him; Volka had, very briefly, and then a Skimmer had stolen him for a captain.
Someone in the ether laughed. “That’s your medical diagnosis?”
“Indeed, it is my professional opinion,” Dr. Elam replied. “It was …”
For 4.25 seconds, much longer than the usual pause between words, no one said anything. 6T9 had been in churches, synagogues, and mosques before and after Eliza’s death. It was as quiet as that. Jerome’s eyes shifted to Volka, though, and so 6T9’s did, too. She didn’t seem to notice Jerome. She was looking down at 6T9’s hand, clutched in two of hers, but he suspected that she wasn’t really seeing him. She blinked and then shrugged.
Young’s voice cracked over the ether. “What did you say to it, James?”
TAB’s voice came over the ether from Jerome’s channel. “I know what he said! Time Gate 1 told me.”
“It was logical,” James said flatly.
TAB bubbled on, “He said, ‘Eat android—’”
The expletive that followed was covered by a burst of laughter in the ether so consuming it overwhelmed 6T9’s visual receptors, and he was blind. When he could see again, he found Volka’s eyes wide, her hand over her mouth. But TAB hadn’t said the words aloud, he’d only spoken over the ether. 6T9’s eyes slid to Jerome. The communications officer’s eyes had slid to Volka, his brow furrowed, his lips parted … 6T9 wasn’t telepathic, but he saw the instant Jerome knew Volka was telepathic, true telepathic too, not just being fed information by the ships. Volka froze. The communications officer looked away fast, and TAB gasped. Slapping a hand over his neural port, Jerome whispered, “Shh.”
Stratos’s voice exploded over the ether. “That was legendary!”
Jerome, Dixon, and every Marine aboard Sundancer roared with laughter again. Shoulders unwound, heads were thrown back, smiles stretched ear to ear. But 6T9’s eyes slid to James. The other android had flipped over to his back and was frowning at the ceiling. 6T9 couldn’t find it funny.
“Let’s go home, everyone,” Volka said. In the next instant, the ship turned to light.
When they were solid again, 6T9 connected to the ether, just out of habit. The familiar ether noise of System 1 filled his mind, blurring to static as he scanned the channels, and then he stopped. “Noa’s on Fleet’s public channel,” he said aloud.
“Maybe that’s why she’s not answering?” James murmured, putting a hand over his port. Of course James would try to connect with Noa as soon as he was “home.”
6T9 remained tuned into Fleet’s public channel, curious. Noa was standing atop a building in Paris, under a noonday sun that etched her dark features in sharp relief. She was near where 6T9’s trial had been held, her expression hard. An announcer was saying, “This is from Admiral Noa Sato’s press conference where she announced her retirement from Fleet just an hour ago. Noa Sato famously escaped Luddeccea prior to Revelation, and—”
“We never discussed her resignation,” James exclaimed. “As of this morning, she intended to remain with Fleet.”
“Noa … retired?” Volka murmured.
Leaping up, James paced Sundancer’s small bridge, tapping his port, and each step made static flare along 6T9’s spine. Swinging around, James spoke to Carl, “There’s nothing, not even a message. Carl—”
The little werfle rose to his paw pairs; his eyes were closed. “James, I don’t know what made her change her mind. But I’m sending Eric Hoffer to her now.”
James’s brow furrowed, and 6T9 explained, “Hoffer’s a member of The One. I served with him in New Grande. He is brave”— he remembered the cat coaxing the uninfected to throw Molotov cocktails on Infected dead—“and resourceful.”
Opening his eyes, Carl nodded and held out a paw to the other android. “Don’t try to reach her over the ether, James. If she hasn’t contacted you …”
James shivered. It was a slight tell—if 6T9 had blinked, he would have missed it. “She’s in danger.”
Volka whispered, “The ships would sense the Dark if it were on Earth. They don’t. She isn’t Infected.”
<
br /> “If she’s still on Earth,” James said.
Volka’s lips parted, but she said nothing.
“Aww … Come on,” Dixon said, sounding like he was trying too hard to be cheerful. “Maybe she just is in a meeting with some big wigs and is maintaining radio silence.”
James glared at him, but Dixon had turned to Volka. “We are cleared to land aboard Time Gate 1. Same dock as always.”
Volka nodded. “Sundancer knows.”
6T9 felt the gentle drop of pressure in his heels as the ship descended.
James paced the bridge again, and he didn’t stop until Sundancer came to a halt. Dixon said, “Airlocks closed. You can open the ship.”
Volka stood stock still.
“What is it, Volka?” Jerome asked.
“We’re all under arrest,” Volka said.
James, Dixon, and Jerome all looked toward her sharply. Her lips curled in a sharp smile, and she said, “The ships told me.”
“Impossible,” Dixon said.
“For what?” 6T9 exclaimed.
“Treason,” Volka whispered.
5
Treason
Galactic Republic : Time Gate 1
“Do you know this man!” the man wearing the drab gray Fleet service uniform demanded of Volka. He stood across the table, towering above her. She was seated on a chair. He was new. Usually, it was Captain Orion Smith who was her interviewer.
The man licked his lips. Go on, say it, he didn’t say aloud.
The room was small and dark. It smelled like dust and disuse. Her interrogator’s breath smelled like the sort of soy protein bars that humans ate in a hurry and burnt coffee. He wore too much cologne, and it made Volka’s nose itch.
“Once again, do you know this man!” he demanded.
Volka leaned back in her chair. He was trying to entrap her somehow, but his mind was a maze she didn’t understand. He thought she had lied and that excited him, but she’d only told the truth. She glanced at a holo on the table, the room’s only light source. It showed an unremarkable man of middle age walking alone on a misty street. He wore a turtleneck, and a coat over that with the collar pulled up. He was hunching over, as though he were chilled. There were hills in the background, ancient houses in the foreground—stone things that could be from Earth’s Europe in the Middle Ages. She’d seen similar buildings in illustrated books of fairytales in the library of Silas, her friend and former employer on Luddeccea. “I don’t even know where this holo was taken,” she said in frustration.
