Supernova

by C. Gockel

Sundancer’s keel opened, and air, cold and sharp at their current altitude, entered the bridge.

  “We can hop right in,” Dixon commented.

  6T9 circuits sparked. There was a hole in the Uriel’s hull, large enough for three men to enter side by side.

  6T9 said to Volka, “Clear off the bridge, or at least get Carl out of here. Our suits may be Infected when we return.”

  Backing away from her, 6T9 coiled a hardlink wire around his wrist and snicked his visor shut. He didn’t want to leave her gaze. Nodding once, he turned around and did.

  Not thirty seconds after they entered the Uriel, speakers everywhere—in 6T9’s helmet, in Flores and Dixon’s helmets, and in the walls—crackled. A woman’s beatific tones breezed through the smoky ship. “You do not have to die. Join us. We are forgiveness. We are oneness. We are peace.”

  At that moment, Dixon nearly went sprawling over a half-burnt corpse. “Peace, my ass.”

  6T9’s Q-comm sparked randomly. “Lieutenant, language.” It was the sort of thing he’d say to Davies.

  “Peace, my gluteus maximus,” Dixon replied. “Flores, I hope I didn’t burn your delicate weere ears.”

  “Not more than the burn in my nose. Ugh. Infected. Close.”

  Ahead was an unlit intersection. “We need to go right,” Dixon whispered.

  On the right-hand side, there was the glow of phaser fire.

  Flores whispered, “Stay back, human oafs.” She slipped forward with familiar grace, her steps much quieter than 6T9 could manage.

  Dixon protested, “How will you know friend from—?”

  6T9 put a hand on his arm.

  Dixon shook himself. “Of course, she’ll know Infected.”

  Flores reached the corner, crouched against the wall, and then spun around the intersection into the hallway, laying down a continuous stream of fire to the left. The next moment, she threw herself back around the corner, and phaser fire streaked above her head from the right. “Friendly!” she cried out. “We’re friendly!”

  A voice, muffled by a helmet, but still recognizable said, “We reject your peace and your lies!”

  “Ko!” Sixty shouted, racing for the intersection. He skidded to a halt as more phaser fire rushed by his nose.

  “Come out and let me kill you!” Commander Ko shouted.

  Over an intercom, the beatific voice said, “We are your friends. Join us.”

  Snapping off his helmet, 6T9 poked his head around the corner, and then withdrew as Luddeccean phaser fire lit the hallway where his head had been. “Ko, it’s me! I can help with your computer problem.”

  “General?” Ko asked.

  “Hurry, there are lots more Infected coming!” Flores said in the ether.

  6T9 poked his head around the corner again, and then remembered half his face was torn off to expose his neural port, and half his skull was on display. Without his urge to soothe human sensibilities, he’d forgotten. He pulled back just before he was hit by fire.

  Ko shouted, “It’s okay, ensign! I recognized him … half of him.”

  “But he took his helmet off—”

  “I can’t get Infected. I’m a machine!” 6T9 shouted.

  Flores, expression pained behind her visor, jerked her hand down the hallway.

  “We have company coming,” 6T9 said. “Let me come around.”

  “We won’t fire,” Ko promised.

  To Flores and Dixon, he said, “Cover the exit.” He was barely aware of their acknowledgement before he slipped cautiously around the corner in a crouch. Phaser fire was not forthcoming, but he heard a Luddeccean hiss, “He’s a machine!”

  And Ko say, “Don’t fire. That’s an order.”

  The smoke made it hard to see; they seemed to be speaking from behind a strange half-wall. As he got closer, 6T9 saw that it was one of the hallway’s vertical wall panels peeled off and stacked horizontally. There was about fifty centis clear above the stack, and a twenty-centi gap between the panels that the Luddecceans could fire through. The ship had probably been designed so that it could be defended with just such barricades. The ether was down and their radios untrustworthy, so 6T9 used hand signals to share that revelation to Flores and Dixon. Dixon nodded, and he heard furious scrambling in the corridor that was their escape route. Footsteps sounded directly behind him. The Luddecceans lifted the upper panel, and 6T9 belly flopped through the gap just as phaser fire ripped down the hall.

  Sliding on his belly, 6T9 looked back. The Luddecceans dropped the top panel and returned fire. There were four of them, including Ko. The barricade wasn’t their only shelter; they could also press their bodies into the shallow gaps in the wall where the panels had been.

  Ko pointed to a door on the left side just past the barricade. Beyond the door, the hallway had collapsed … that was the way to the dock where the Skimmers waited for evacuation. Ko’s team were relatively protected, just trapped. With that observation, he rolled to the wall, jumped to his feet, and looked at Ko for the code to the door. Ko was firing through the barricade and growling. On impulse, 6T9 pressed the button beside the door. It swooshed open.

  There was a table in the middle of the room with computer terminals that might have been stolen from the 1990s—they had keyboards. On the far side of the table, a man in a Fleet envirosuit was bent over one, his hands moving across the keys with impressive speed—for a human. “I told you, I am not leaving until this is done.” The voice was Darmadi’s.

  “Give me access to your systems.”

  Darmadi looked up. There was a rifle on the table beside him and a pistol at his hip. He reached for neither.

  6T9’s Q-comm sparked, and his hand went to his waist where the ring was hidden beneath his suit. It would be so easy to kill Darmadi; no one would ever need know.

  “Wait to kill me until I’m done.”

  For a moment—three milliseconds, to be precise—6T9 was too stunned to reply. Darmadi knew. He blinked. Darmadi was bent back over the keyboard again, fingers tapping madly.

  Whipping the hardlink off his wrist, 6T9 jacked one side into his head and another into a port. “Don’t waste time forcing me to force access.”

  Darmadi swore, issued a long string of numbers, letters, and symbols … fast for a human speaking. 6T9 entered them as Darmadi spoke them, and found himself talking to another beastly, impolite Luddeccean computer.

  Darmadi hissed, “They have the bridge. They’ve got someone, maybe several someones, who keep establishing new partitions, and I can’t trigger the weapon.”

  Code scrolled before 6T9’s eyes, and he saw the rapid changes being implemented by their foe—or foes. They’d jacked themselves in. They were fast, as fast as human processors aided by cybernetics could be. Which was admittedly faster than most machines. 6T9 was not most machines “Compensating.”

  Tap. Tap. Tap. “You’re fast. Well done.”

  It was nice of Darmadi not to say, “Not fast enough.” 6T9 was rapidly suspecting he wouldn’t be. Since Darmadi was being nice—or optimistic—6T9 was, too. “Be ready to trigger our weapon.”

  Darmadi’s fingers tapped on the keys. “I will be able to trigger it, but I can’t release it. The hatch is sealed by fire. It will detonate in the Uriel. You’ll have three minutes to escape.”

  “Understood.” Code streamed before 6T9’s eyes. His foe was very fast. Almost to himself, he whispered, “Daddy 1, I might need a little more processing power for—”

  His Q-comm went white. The offending code disappeared. And then for an instant, the universe was mathematical formulas, vast and unending, and 6T9 understood how to drill through space-time. Other numbers were the story of how telepathy worked, explanations of telekinesis and pyrokinesis, and how some species could grasp the waves and achieve such things. Someday Volka might be more than telepathic; he intuited that in an instant. He also knew the temperature on Time Gate 1’s promenade and heard the thoughts of every single person aboard the gate. He felt incredibly full, almost too full. There was n
o room for anything but his mind; his body was nothing more than code. It was unnerving. It was wonderful. And then it was gone.

  6T9 cried out. His Q-comm dimmed and relit, and he found himself staring at Darmadi. The captain was holding one end of the hardlink in one hand and his rifle in the other.

  “It’s triggered,” the captain said.

  6T9 was just himself, with only his one little server, but that little server knew enough to understand what just happened. Time Gate 1 had given him all his processing power. “Thank you, Daddy 1,” he thought.

  Darmadi wasn’t in front of him anymore. He was at the door, slamming a hand down on a button. The door slid open, revealing a hallway dark with smoke. 6T9’s suit’s sensors alerted him that it was hot in the hallway. 6T9 came fully back into himself. Moving faster than Darmadi could, he crouched down and bolted out into the hallway, rifle level with the gap between the wall panels. He lay down fire between the shoulders of the Luddecceans firing from their cubbies in the wall. He noted that the top panel had warped and melted, leaving a gap just large enough …

  Turning to Darmadi, he shouted above the roar of phasers, “First hallway on the left. Tell Volka to let Flores and Dixon know we’re coming.” And then he launched himself over the panels and through the gap, back to the floor, finger squeezing his rifle trigger, not aiming, just firing as fast as he could in a wide arc to keep their foes back. Twisting in the air, he brought his feet under him, and then dived, belly flopping on the floor and sliding, rifle still engaged. Dark, human-shaped shadows fell to the floor, all eerily silent. Over the ship’s intercom, the beatific voice was saying, “Your weapon is a failure. We forgive you for your aggression. All we want is oneness.” More Infected entered the hallway, not bothering to take cover. Phaser fire slid past 6T9 on either side, the Luddecceans covering him from behind. Flores and Dixon were firing at them from behind the corner of the corridor that was their exit. They’d managed to hold them back there with more detached wall panels. Dixon shouted, “Take cover!” and a grenade flew from his hand over the heads of the first approaching Infected. Flores slid a panel fast from their corridor into the hallway 6T9 was in, perpendicular to him. Another slid on top of that, forming a low protective wall, just as the Luddecceans had done before the computer access room.

  Captain Darmadi was shouting, “Move, Move!”

  6T9 jumped up, and, crouching low, jogged to the wall and began laying phaser fire over it.

  Dixon slid out and tossed another grenade over it. Flores was shouting to the Luddecceans. “This way!” A Luddeccean was shouting, “These two aren’t Infected.” Darmadi was shouting, “Give me your grenades and follow them.”

  The next thing 6T9 knew, Darmadi was tossing a grenade over the barrier, shouting at Ko over the beatific voice, “Go! I’ll cover you.”

  There was an explosion. The panels buckled but held.

  Down the exit corridor, Flores was dragging Ko toward Sundancer, and Darmadi threw another grenade. It occurred to 6T9 that just two minutes earlier Darmadi had said, “You’ll have three minutes to get out—”

  You’ll, not we will. Darmadi expected to die. He was guarding the retreat. Going down with his ship like a good captain. Which would be terribly convenient for 6T9 in the short run.

  Dixon tossed one more grenade, and 6T9 took the opportunity to snag Darmadi around the waist and bodily force him toward the other corridor, ordering Dixon to move.

  “What are you doing?” Darmadi said, just barely audible.

  Perpetuating a problem and a situation 6T9 didn’t like. Volka was telepathically connected to Darmadi, and probably would always be to some extent. She would never be connected to 6T9 in that way, which meant if Darmadi died, she’d never know for certain that it wasn’t 6T9’s fault.

  Nightwing didn’t have any more ammo.

  Another drone hit Sundancer, this one on her bow. It burst, and dark veins of Infection spread over her hull. She was still attached to the side of the Uriel by her keel. They were close enough to Planet Zero that there was gravity. Sundancer had been counteracting the planet’s gravity so that sideways felt like down, but as the Infection crawled along her surface, gravity slowly became starboard. Volka had put the sleeping Carl in the aft compartment. She hoped he was fine—or, his borrowed body was fine. Carl wasn’t within it; the string was too thin.

  “Go!” Volka ordered Young. She’d convinced all the other Skimmers to leave.

  It was Nightwing who responded, “Sundancer is a child! I will not leave her.”

  “The bomb has been triggered!” Volka replied. “She’ll be fine!”

  If it worked. She heard the Dark speaking over the Uriel’s intercoms through Alaric’s mind. It said their weapon was a failure. Alaric hoped it was because they didn’t understand the weapon’s nature, that they did not understand that it was not just a fusion bomb, but one fueled from a distant power source, the power of its explosion much greater than the sum of the elements within it.

  Or maybe they’d disabled it somehow.

  “You don’t know that,” Nightwing replied, echoing her thoughts.

  Sundancer was very weak, but flashed optimistically … like a child. Volka gulped.

  Shouts came from outside Sundancer. Leaning against what had been the floor, and now was a wall, Volka tried to warn them about the change in gravity. She couldn’t make out the people in their smoke-stained envirosuits, but there were a lot more of them than Sixty, Dixon, and Flores, and they were coming at a dead run, phaser fire silhouetting them. She wasn’t sure if Alaric was among them—their thoughts were all a jumble—and the waves were vibrating too furiously to see if Sixty was among them, either. Pulling back from the wall, she gestured wildly to what was left of the crew. “Get back! Get back!”

  The next thing she knew, people were diving into the ship, landing on top of each other. Someone she didn’t know was shouting, “Seal up! Seal up!” But Volka didn’t relay the order to Sundancer.

  “Sixty,” she called.

  “Seal up, Volka!” Sixty replied, and only then did Volka send the thought to Sundancer. As the keel closed, Nightwing cried out in panic. Another Infected drone must have landed upon Sundancer, because from the direction of the aft compartments another blot of gray was spreading, a stain of paint over rough paper …

  Sundancer’s interior was dark, opaque, even at her keel where the Infection had yet to spread, but Volka knew through the eyes of the other Skimmers that Sundancer was tumbling toward the glossy black ocean below.

  Sixty said, “It should have exploded by now,” and Alaric’s sense of failure was as vast as an ocean that threatened to pull her down.

  Sundancer spun at that instant, twisting her uninfected keel to the water so the impact wouldn’t destroy them. They’d drown in darkness instead. Everyone within Sundancer was tossed from the wall to the floor. With a wail that rattled through Volka’s bones, Nightwing followed Sundancer, the Galacticans and Luddecceans within helpless to stop the ship.

  There was nothing for Volka to do. Not for Alaric’s despair or for the crew’s fear.

  “Sixty!” Volka called, unable to distinguish him from the other shapes, unable to smell him. At that instant, his Q-comm sparked sharply, and she threw out a hand in its direction. A hand curled around hers. She wanted to smell him, and now close, she saw his helmet was off, the dim light glinting here and there on the half of his exposed skull. She wanted to take off her helmet and press her forehead against his. They were lying on the floor, both on their elbows. She reached to take off her helmet, but his hand caught hers.

  Sundancer hit the water. Everyone on the bridge bounced, Volka’s teeth rattled, but the suit protected her. Infection spread through Sundancer’s keel, and her topside became very, very dark. They were being submersed in the waves.

  Volka struggled against his hand. The suit protected her from the impact, but now—

  “Wait,” Sixty said.

  “I want to kiss you,” Volka said.r />
  “I don’t want you to be Infected,” Sixty replied, pressing his face against her visor so she couldn’t lift it. “Please, if you are Infected …”

  She’d hate him. Volka stopped struggling with the helmet and let that hand rest on top of his.

  The holomat, forgotten, sprang to life in the corner of the room. A harsh red light filtered into the bridge. Volka closed her eyes, determined to ignore it and the fear around her, Alaric’s sense of failure, and Nightwing’s rage and terror as he sank beneath the inky waves alongside Sundancer. She thought of Sixty instead. His hands on hers, his forehead—skin and metal bone—pressed against her visor. Sundancer flickered weakly in her mind, and she tried to catch that flicker and the flicker of 6T9’s Q-comm in her mind’s eye.

  A woman’s voice filled Sundancer’s interior, the same from the minds she’d read. “You didn’t get close enough. Your fission weapon will generate barely a scratch.”

  “It blew up, but not enough,” Dixon whispered.

  Volka and Sixty turned their heads to the holo. It displayed the exploding Uriel. Just like a fission bomb as far as Volka knew, a flash, an outward wave of pressure. Alaric gasped in dismay. He’d lost a ship and too many men, all for nothing. “It didn’t—”

  The epicenter of the explosion started to grow, and grow, and grow. Volka’s visor darkened to protect her eyes. Sixty hissed and turned away. Volka’s visor went flat black except for a warning that flashed, Visual overload. Volka turned her head. The holomat was glowing so brightly that the bridge was bright as day.

  Around her gasps rose, swears, and invocations, and prayers to God.

  The voice in the holomat said, “We welcome you. All is forgiven. Just let us—”

  … And then there was silence. No one breathed, whispered, or moved …. Until Sundancer giggled and began to rise. The ship spoke for perhaps the sixth time in her existence. “You are all silly.”

  Nightwing’s terror became wonder.

  Sixty laughed. Luddecceans and Galacticans erupted in cheers. Stoic Alaric actually whooped.