by C. Gockel
“Flip the station!” someone shouted.
“I don’t want to hear this—” a swear followed.
Volka’s ears flicked, and she looked around her nervously. The crowd was getting larger; she and Sixty would have to push people aside if they wanted to leave.
“Our planet is in ruins and the Central Systems News Network is talking about some stupid holostar?” a woman declared. Angry murmurs drowned out whatever CSNN announcers were saying.
“I’d join too, if we weren’t fighting the Dark here!” someone shouted, a reminder that System 5, despite the safety of the station, still was routing out the Dark, and recovering from the last strike.
Sixty pulled Volka to his side. Something flew past her hip, and then there was a clink and a cracking. Sixty jerked Volka more forcefully, pulling her against his chest. The light of the holo winked out. On the floor the projector was cracked, and beside it rested a sharp, chrome object that might once have been part of a security ‘bot. There was a collective intake of breath, a halting of thought, and then a ripple of anger that made Volka’s lip curl, and her hair rise … but the crowd dispersed, someone mentally hoping, “I hope Gate 5 didn’t see that,” and then in direct opposition to the first thought, from the same person, “I hope it did!”
“We have a war going on here,” a woman said. “Don’t the central systems care?”
Volka’s brow furrowed. She’d always thought of System 5 as part of the “central systems.” Her ears folded. Sixty didn’t move. The floor below them lit brightly with the fairy lights, pulsing faintly. A tiny ‘bot with a duster-vacuum appendage zipped from the ceiling and spoke with Five’s voice, “I failed to protect you.”
“No harm done,” Sixty said.
Volka’s ears perked toward the cracked holosphere. “Are people in the Republic reacting like this everywhere?”
The little ‘bot hummed and bounced in the air. “No.”
Volka sagged against Sixty. Letting herself feel the solidity of him, she swiveled her ears to the hum where he didn’t have a heart.
“Well, rusty bolts,” he sighed.
The ‘bot bounced in the air. “System 12 and System 13 are having similar reactions, though.” Volka frowned. That meant only the systems that had been affected.
People walking by looked at the broken holo curiously. A man with a drill began removing metal plates from a shop window; Volka’s ears curled at the noise.
“At least some systems are concerned,” 6T9 said. “It’s something.”
It was. And Alaric’s call was attracting recruits to Luddeccea from everywhere. They would have a plan to find the shipyard soon, and she had to believe that they would be successful in that … and yet … all it would take would be a tiny bit of Darkness to spark a major infection, and it was already here. How did you respond to that? How did you live your life with that?
Her stomach growled. Sixty bent low, and his breath warmed her ear. “As much as I enjoy public displays of affection—” Volka’s eyes went wide. She was in a position that would be considered “compromising” on much of Luddeccea. Her ears flicked. Strangely, it wasn’t affecting her the way it usually did. She didn’t feel heat from his touch. Too much stress, maybe, fatigue, and the remaining nausea from her rough night.
“—maybe we should get something to eat?” he suggested.
She thought of red meat and open flame, and her mouth watered. “Let’s go get some BBQ,” she said, pulling away. They had to live now.
19
Discovery
System 11
Sundancer’s hull went from a beautiful, transparent display of System 11’s seventh planet—blue as a sapphire, with sparkling icy rings—to putrid green. Lieutenant Dixon, sitting cross-legged on the bridge like the rest of the crew, enjoying a well-deserved break, craned his neck up, as though he possessed the ability to see through the ceiling. “What?”
6T9 couldn’t feel Sundancer’s emotions, but he was getting better at reading them. Volka was sick again. Unplugging himself from a power pack, 6T9 replied, “It’s nothing.”
Electricity hummed through 6T9’s ethernet receptor. For a brief moment, he was connected to Dixon, but then the flow of excited electrons stopped, as though Dixon had almost said something and decided against it.
Grabbing Volka’s canteen, 6T9 made his way to the back of the ship. A few eyes followed him, but no one commented. The aft compartment with the portable toilet opened, and Volka emerged, ears sagging and dark circles under her eyes. Carl—awake for once—chirped mournfully from the floor.
“I don’t think the new formula works,” Volka said.
“We’ll try another one.” This was the third different suppressant in as many weeks since the attack on Donner.
She nodded but didn’t meet his eyes.
Three weeks that they’d spent ferrying food and following up on notifications from sex ‘bots of suspicious infectious diseases. Two Dark outbreaks had been found, thankfully in the early stages; the Luddecceans had been able to work with the unincorporated local leaders to neutralize them. It had also been three weeks visiting the worlds the Skimmers had determined likely candidates. Three weeks of very little sleep for Volka. If she stopped taking the suppressants, she’d need a week off. 6T9 was beginning to think it would be a good idea. Surely only a week—
Volka’s ears came forward, and her eyes got wide, but focused on nothing. The shared ether channel hummed, sparking a cascade of electrons in his circuits. Sundancer’s hull became transparent; the sapphire blue gas-giant became visible along with the other Skimmers. Carl hissed. And before 6T9 could ask, Volka said, “The Luddeccean survey team is under attack.”
6T9 spun toward the bridge, Volka behind him, Carl streaking past his feet.
“I see them, Carl!” Volka replied. “Jerome, put it into the ether for 6T9 and James!”
A hazy image played in the corner of 6T9’s vision: a bridge like the Merkabah’s, a planet with black water and blue skies, a strange werfle screaming … and then phaser fire on either side.
Another inset appeared, this one crisp and sharp. The location of the Luddeccean survey team: the fourth planet from a yellow star, larger than Earth, temperate, with an enormous moon.
Outside, the Skimmers were moving into their Phalanx position … and then they were light.
They free-gated to a point three hundred kilometers away from the planet’s surface. Nothing seemed amiss, but Volka tasted bile in her mouth. From being sick, from the Dark infected waters of the planet below, and from the fear in Dandelion, the werfle tagging along with the Luddeccean survey team.
The Skimmers dove toward the planet, Carl saying, thinking, and feeling, “Dandelion, be calm.”
Volka’s point of view shifted. She wasn’t just within Sundancer, she was within all of the Skimmers, just out of the atmosphere of the giant planet, its surface black and glossy beneath white clouds. It might be awe inspiring if it weren’t for the psychosomatic stench that filled her nostrils.
They were one hundred kilometers from where the Luddeccean survey team had arrived.
A chorus of thought rose from her captains and their crews. “Potential singularity weapon!” And Volka saw it directly before the Phalanx, an enormous ring of orange and silver, tilted so that it was nearly perpendicular with the planet below. For an instant, through the ring she could see the stars beyond it, but an instant later, the inside of the ring became a dark maw.
And Volka knew what Lieutenant Young suspected: the Luddecceans had free-gated right into a trap.
She saw those ships through Dandelion. They were being pursued by five single-man fighters that were smaller, faster, and more maneuverable than the clumsy LCS. They were Galactican ships without free-gating ability, but somehow, they were here, on the far side of the galaxy. Did the Dark have a free-gating fighter carrier or a gate?
Volka felt in her heart the fifty-four souls split between the LCSs. Sundancer vibrated with Volka’s growl. They
would not let those fifty-four die or become Infected. “Cannons will remain in the ships,” Volka commanded, aloud for Sixty and in her heart for her captains in their Skimmers.
“Ethernet is jammed,” Jerome thought. “Republic tech.”
The captains and Volka relayed that to their teams aloud. If the ethernet was jammed, Sixty and James were blind. James was aboard Nightwing and could hardlink with Young. Sixty couldn’t hardlink with Volka. Volka found Dixon’s mind and let herself flow into it. “Hardlink with Sixty so he has access to our telepathy.” She wasn’t sure if she gave the command aloud or mentally, but she felt his mental surprise and then acceptance.
“Dive.” The command was from Noa, but Volka had already done it, or the Skimmers had, or all of them. Volka wasn’t sure if she was herself, her ships, or her captains. Clouds whipped around the ships as they entered the atmosphere, but no flames. Dr. Patrick started wondering about the “slipperiness” of the Skimmers’ exteriors that made them able to avoid the friction of reentry … at the worst possible time.
Volka growled.
“Not the time, not the time,” Dr. Patrick admonished himself, and an adrenaline-fueled laugh exploded from all her captains, and Noa and Dixon who had been roped into the telepathic party line.
Volka couldn’t see the Luddecceans and their pursuers with any of her eyes, though she felt the waves between them growing tighter and more robust. Her heart beat at double speed … and then the Luddeccean LCSs were below the Skimmers, one listing badly. Likely a problem with the starboard hover engine, someone in her cloud of contacts thought. Without a fully functioning hover, they’d need a tow to get out of the atmosphere, or even just to stay aloft much longer. A torpedo exited the limping LCS and twisted up toward one of the fighters—the injured Luddeccean vessel was down but not out. At the last minute, the fighter evaded the missile. The missile continued on its former pass; the same jammers that were blocking Volka’s ships’ local ether were blocking Luddeccean control of their weapons.
We’re in range. The captains’ and ships’ thoughts were a chorus. Volka ordered, “Cannons, now!”
Volka didn’t see the hull become opaque; her eyes were too much the eyes of the ships, but she felt it. And she felt Sixty’s weapon slipping through Sundancer’s keel. It felt cold and occasionally sharp.
“In position,” Sixty said, and her ears perked, as though they were glad to be useful again.
Two of the fighters were coming around to confront them. Volka growled.
“Take the one to port,” she ordered, seizing the threads of her captains at their cannons. Her thoughts flew like phaser fire, and the weapons fired as fast as thought, their flames wider than normal and faintly blue at the edges. And then, in the heat of battle, Dr. Patrick was briefly distracted. “There must be a higher than standard concentration of methane in the atmosphere—”
“Patrick!” Volka and the other captains roared.
Dr. Patrick remembered where he was, and everyone’s attention was back where it should be. Their phasers at first flowed over the fighters, as timebands deflected the onslaught as though the weapons were no more than a forceful wind. Growling, Volka and her captains and Sixty did not relent. It was eighteen against five, and then four, and then three, and then two and then one. A roar went up in Volka’s heart and from her crew. The Skimmers pulled up to avoid the wreckage …
And Volka’s heart fell … no, Dandelion’s heart fell.
She looked down. The undamaged Luddeccean ship had cast a tow cable to its companion, but it wasn’t going to be enough. She needed Sixty’s mind—
“Volka,” Sixty said, and she blinked and saw the bridge. Her bridge. She was sitting on the floor, arms wrapped around Carl. Dixon was hooked up to Sixty, and what she saw, Dixon saw, and what Dixon saw, Sixty saw.
“The damaged LCS must have a tow line of its own. If they can cast it up to Sundancer—”
“—between Sundancer and the other LCS, we can tow her out of atmosphere,” Volka thought. And then thought something else. “Something is coming; we have to be very quick.” Her heart sped up. She felt a rising tide of fear from eighteen ships that threatened to overwhelm her. She blinked. And saw what they saw: an enormous wave in the sea below, rolling toward them almost leisurely, gathering height, gathering power. It would reach the limping LCS in minutes and suck it down into the water. If that black wave touched the Skimmers, it would infect them and pull them down, too.
“We can’t contact the Luddecceans,” Dixon said. “We can’t tell them to throw us a line.”
Volka swallowed. She didn’t know the Luddeccean crews. There was no one aboard she could picture—and yet, she thought she could reach out to the crew of the damaged ship, talk to the captain mind-to-mind, convince him or compel him … or could she control the crews without them even realizing it, without establishing a conscious connection … Could she do that? Should she do that? Did she want to do that … what might she learn in that fleeting intersection of minds …?
“I can with a lightbeam,” Sixty said. He looked at Volka, and his eyes flashed, literally. Lightbeams and Morse Code! Both were used by Luddecceans and Galacticans. There would be no compulsion, no unasked for reading of hearts or minds.
“Yes,” she whispered, and pictured 6T9 dropping through the floor. The elderships cried out in panic. The human captains were afraid, but something akin to bloodlust was in the humans, too. Sharon Rhinehart’s thoughts roared through the waves. “Don’t let the motherfuckers get them!” The rage and determination was picked up and echoed not just by the captains but by their crews, and the humans carried their ships with their will.
“Drop him through the keel, Sundancer!” Volka shouted, felt, and imagined, and she pictured the Skimmers plunging toward the LCS, too, letting Sundancer slip from the front and center of the formation to the bottom and middle.
She felt the sensation of 6T9 leaving, smoother and warmer than cannons. She opened her eyes and saw Sixty’s feet, toes pointed up, as though he were hanging upside down from a tree limb, the rest cut off disturbingly at the knee, and then even those were gone. She told herself he knew what he was doing.
Sundancer couldn’t push one thing out and pull another thing in at the same time, and 6T9 came back online just in time to see the phaser cannon splash into the dark water below. Hanging upside down by his knees, locking his joints to keep from being blown back against the hull, he waved his arms like an idiot, trying to capture the attention of the LCS below them. He set his eye lights to repeat a message in Morse Code. Throw a cable. Throw a cable. Throw a cable, you idiots.
The last wasn’t polite or politic but they were all about to wind up in the soup, literally.
A yellow light went on in the periphery of his vision. Slipping through Sundancer had drained his battery, and his lightbeam was at high brightness to compensate for the full daylight. The 1.75 G wasn’t helping, either. If he were human, he’d probably pass out from asphyxiation as his lungs were crushed by his other organs. Of course, if he were human, he would have died slipping through Sundancer’s hull. As it was, the worst side effect he had was a lack of sensation in his feet.
He didn’t look at the giant wave that was going to crash down on the LCS and the Skimmers—that would mean looking away from the LCS, whose attention he was trying to catch. Oh, rusted gears, not the ship, it was Luddeccean and therefore an idiot machine; he needed human attention within the ship. He searched for a porthole and continued to wave his arms and flash his eyes.
Why was he doing this? Losing one LCS was far better than losing two LCSs and the Skimmers. What had possessed his Q-comm to flash bright white, and his mouth to spout this brilliant plan?
His battery light flashed orange, and he stopped waving his arms.
Fried processors, was any human in the ship below smart enough to—
A black snake whipped through the air. For .3 milliseconds, 6T9 thought it was strange that a snake was this high up, especially in suc
h high gravity—and then the snake hit him and he realized it was a cable from the LCS. He blinked. No, it was a hose reinforced with metal fibers. Apparently, they didn’t have a tow cable. He blamed the misunderstandings on his battery … now flashing red. His hands slipped along the hose’s length, but he twisted them fast, wrapping it around his arms.
His steel skeleton wasn’t strong enough to tow a spaceship or even half of a spaceship. He looked at the approaching black wave. His battery did have enough juice to calculate that there was thirty seconds before it would hit the first of the Skimmers.
Why had he suggested this again? He was not tied to any programming that forced him to save human lives. In fact, in this case, his programming might have compelled him to not attempt this obviously ill-conceived rescue. It was more rational to sacrifice the one ship and her crew.
Pressure increased on his head and shoulders. He blinked, and found his body being sucked into Sundancer, tow hose and all. The ship dipped just before he thought his wrists would be torn off. 6T9 shut down and came back online to find himself lying on Sundancer’s floor, the thick poly hose wrapped around his wrists. Dixon was sitting cross-legged next to him, a hardlink slinking from his neural port to a holomat. Two of the weere crew were sitting beside him, panting, their arms on his. A red light was blinking madly in his mind. “Power!” he gasped.
One of the weere ripped off 6T9’s helmet and peeled back the side of his head; another jacked a cable into him. Sweet electricity flowed into 6T9’s neural port. He raised himself to his elbows and found himself staring at Volka.
Her eyes were closed, and Carl was twisted in a ball on her lap. The ship was opaque; she couldn’t be transparent with the cable-hose running through her. 6T9 rolled partially over, and the holomat came to life, revealing the scene outside. Volka was hijacking Dixon’s mind so that 6T9 could see. The picture in the holo made that a dubious honor. The top of the black wave crashed over the struggling LCS, dangerously close to Sundancer.
