The Dark Imbalance

by Sean Williams

  “Like I said, I want you to have time to think. I want you to think about everything that has happened. I want you to consider what your people have done, and I want you to know why it would have been utterly wrong for the Crescend to have intervened.” He paused before adding, with almost a hint of amusement: “Besides, it seems only fitting, given that you spared me.”

  “I spared all of you!” she snapped angrily.

  “Yes,” he said. “And I want you to think about that, too, as you slowly die, Morgan.”

  The nacelle rocked again.

  “It doesn’t have to be like this, Cane,” she said desperately, hoping to reach that part of his nature she was sure existed, the part she had come to know over the weeks since they had first met.

  “Yes it does, Morgan. We are programmed to exact revenge and we shall do so to the best of our capabilities. And we will win.”

  “But this is crazy! There is no grudge left to pursue! Surely we can get along?”

  “History would disagree with you.”

  “No—history agrees with me. Humanity has diversified so much since your creators were around. We come in all shapes and sizes now, and we live in all sorts of places. But underneath it all, we’re still all Human. Some may think they’re better, but in the end we’re all the same. And regardless of what has happened in the past, or what might happen in the future, eventually you will fit in too. It’s inevitable.”

  There was a mocking laugh which filled her helmet. “Assimilation? How typically arrogant of the victors.”

  “There was no victor,” she stressed, feeling the need for urgency as the nacelle continued to shift uneasily beneath her. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you, Cane. There’s just Humanity.”

  “Exactly,” he said. “Humanity... the victor.”

  His answer caught her with her mouth open to respond, but the words stuck in her throat.

  Humanity... the victor.

  “No,” she said. “That can’t be, Cane. You’re Human. You have to be.”

  “You’re wrong, Morgan,” he said.

  “But... it’s not possible!”

  “It’s more than possible,” he said. “It’s the essence of this entire conflict. You deny our existence, so we repeal yours.”

  “But...” The concept was so difficult for her to grasp, she found the words almost impossible to say. “You’re aliens?”

  “We are the indigens,” he said. “You are the invader.”

  “Now I know you’re lying.”

  “No, this time I am telling the truth,” he said. “It’s simply a matter of perspective. My creators were exploring the galaxy before Humanity’s ancestors had even reached its moon. We had created the beginnings of an anchor-point network before you learned how to use hyperspace. By the time our expanding empires came into contact, you were catching up fast but you were still our inferiors, and would have been for some time. You were hasty, impetuous, prone to sudden advances followed by long periods of decay—the brutal disequilibrium of individuality. We on the other hand were patient, persistent, and compassionate. Ours was the steady growth of unity.

  “Neither of our civilizations had encountered alien life before, so we were unprepared to deal with such differences; we had no warning of what would come. We didn’t expect you to learn from us as quickly as you did. We didn’t expect your expansion to be so rapid, and so inconsiderate of our own. You stole our worlds, Morgan; you appropriated our anchor-point network and you encroached upon the society we had accreted so carefully over thousands of years. And you hurt us! Maybe you didn’t mean to. Maybe you didn’t even realize what you were doing. But you did it nonetheless. And we, like any injured organism, struck back.”

  She shook her head, dizzy with the concept of what she was hearing. “There’s no evidence for any of this. How do I know you’re telling me the truth?”

  “What reason do I have to lie to you now?”

  She didn’t say anything; she couldn’t. There didn’t seem to be anything to say. The reality upon which her entire life was founded now seemed as shaky as the nacelle that rocked and moaned beneath her.

  She thought of the anchor points supposedly older than Humanity itself, and found herself believing him. As incredible as it seemed, maybe she had finally learned the truth.

  “You won’t find evidence of our existence,” he went on, “because it was either suppressed or destroyed in the process of your expansion. And in time, it was forgotten entirely. Even the war that engulfed our two species was forgotten. The origin of my makers was one of the first details to go—for although wiping out an entire losing Caste was not unheard of, destroying the only other intelligent life you had found in the universe was. Even those military leaders who sanctioned the genocide ultimately realized this. Perhaps we could have learned to live together. Perhaps you were hasty in assuming that, where more than one of my kind existed, the threat remains that the group mind can emerge again, as strong as before—or even stronger. Perhaps you had been wrong in pursuing the war to its ultimate, deadly conclusion.”

  “And were we wrong?” she asked. “Could we have lived together?”

  “No,” he said bluntly. “You had proven too many times that peaceful coexistence—in the long-term—simply wasn’t a possibility. There had been too many broken treaties, smashed peace accords, violated cease-fires... We had grown tired of tolerating you, and resolved to rid our galaxy of you.”

  “But you lost.”

  “No, Morgan. We didn’t,” he said. “We are tenacious. I am proof of that.”

  “But what are you? You look like one of us; your anatomy is at least based on ours; you could almost be one of us, if you tried. What’s happened to your precious origins now?”

  “It exists in our minds, and will exist again when the data encoded in our introns is released. We carry within us the knowledge to re-create our race in its original form. Given time, we can restore the galaxy to the way it should be—the way it was meant to be—and we will reclaim our planets and systems. We will travel your anchor-point network. We will take from you all those things that should have been ours, and make them ours. The balance of justice shall be restored.”

  The nacelle suddenly lurched beneath Roche, throwing her off balance. There was a crunching, tearing sound, and artificial gravity failed. She used her thrusters to keep her against the hull while the suit anchored itself firmly into place. When next she looked up, everything was silent—even the rumble of the main drive was gone—and the nacelle was drifting away from the Ana Vereine.

  “I want to thank you, Morgan,” he said. The growing distance between them and the unsteadiness of the nacelle made it difficult for her to focus on him. “You have enabled us to continue the work we were created to do. Without the High Caste to interfere, the battlefield will be even. We can fight openly, if we choose to. We will prevail if we can, or we will die. History does not allow us a third option.”

  “There are always options,” she muttered, thinking of the many times she could have turned away from the path that had led her here. “We make our own destinies.”

  “But sometimes they are made for us.”

  “Then they can be unmade.”

  “If you truly believe that, Morgan Roche, then you’re more of a fool than I thought.”

  Light flashed from his thrusters as he leapt off the Ana Vereine and arced toward the ship waiting for him. She was too far away to make out whether or not he had taken Haid with him. Not that it mattered anymore. In fact, she thought it would be better for Haid to be left behind. If he wasn’t already dead, she felt it would be better for him to die there rather than at the hands of Cane and his siblings later....

  She clutched the hull and waited for Cane to say something more, but nothing came. The flare of his thrusters disappeared into a wide-mouthed airlock leading into the Hum ship. A minute passed in silence, then space became crowded in the vicinity of the Ana Vereine. Temporal echoes converged on the slow-jumping Ap
ostle, creating a halo of flickering, short-lived ghosts around the spiny craft. As the echoes converged, the warp in space reached peak flexure until, with a flash of light so bright it left Roche blind in her sole eye for almost thirty seconds, it disappeared.

  21

  Ana Vereine Fragment (Nacelle D)

  955.2.16

  0430

  Seventeen minutes later, the Ana Vereine exploded.

  Roche didn’t see it; she was inside the nacelle, trying to find anything that might be of use. But she felt the expanding wave-front as it hit. It shook her like a die in a cup. When it passed, she disentangled herself from the remains of a solar antenna and went back out onto the hull to see. There was nothing else for her to do.

  Cane had chosen the nacelle well. It contained little but packed storerooms full of raw materials for repairs and hyperspace disrupters that were useless without power to run them. There was no communicator, no long-term life-support and no means of turning the nacelle into a powered vehicle of any kind. If she could plug the leaks, she could survive a day or two, but that was all. Had she found a way to contact the council drone that had shadowed the ship, she might have got away a distress call to Trezise; she might have had a chance of being rescued. But even if Cane’s friends hadn’t destroyed the drone to prevent anyone’s overseeing their actions, she had no way of finding it, let alone sending a message. She was trapped.

  So, when the Ana Vereine exploded, she went up on the hull to witness the pyre of her former friends and allies, and the place she had called home for the previous nine weeks.

  And she saw something else, too—something completely unexpected.

  An elongated star flew unsteadily out of the cloud of debris that was all that remained of the Dato Marauder. Bobbing and weaving like a drunken bird, it angled in the general direction of the tumbling nacelle. Where it wasn’t burned black, its hull plating shone bright gold.

  Perched on the truncated end of an access corridor that had once joined the nacelle to the main drive section of the ship, Roche watched it come. Despite the damage, she immediately recognized the ship. When it was closer, she moved out onto an exposed section and waved for attention. It changed course to rendezvous with her.

  “Your suit beacon was moving,” said Vri over the radio. “I followed it on the off chance you were still alive.”

  Her relief at hearing the Surin soldier’s voice could not be measured. “I’m glad to see you, Vri.”

  “And I you,” he said as he brought his fighter down.

  What relief she had felt on finding the Surin alive was quickly tempered when she climbed aboard his ship and realized his condition.

  His golden armor looked worse than the ship. He had taken two powerful shots: one to the right thigh and one in a line across the back of his head. The back of his skull was a mess of blood, bone, and fur. The tiny cockpit—with barely enough room for the two of them—stank of his blood.

  Roche didn’t say anything because there didn’t seem to be anything to say.

  “I was coming to assist you,” he said, his eyes going in and out of focus as he talked. “I shouldn’t have left Maii. She needed me, and I wasn’t there. But I—” He coughed, winced, and tried again. “Alta took me by surprise,” he said feebly. “Shot me and left me for dead.” He smiled despite the pain. “When I woke up, the docks were in flames. Esperance was undamaged, though. It had sealed automatically and could weather worse than a mine or two, if it had to—and it did, when the drive went up. I couldn’t move before then in case I was exposed. I wouldn’t have stood a chance against that other ship. I had to wait...”

  “You did the right thing,” she reassured him.

  “Esperance ...” He stopped, breathing rapidly, and shut his eyes. He seemed to be running out of energy. “I give it to you, now.”

  Roche unsealed one of her suit gloves and touched his forehead. His skin was extremely cold, but she had no idea whether or not this was a bad sign for a Surin. The same ignorance struck her when she examined the instrument board in front of her. Although she had flown Surin vessels before, this was nothing like what she was used to. It had been designed to suit him, she suspected, with every screen and switch tailored for his needs, his mind. She suspected that she would be able to open the airlock if she ever had the need to, but she doubted she would be able to pilot the ship.

  She wasn’t about to tell him that, though.

  “Thank you, Vri.”

  He opened his eyes briefly, but didn’t see her.

  “I fear,” he said faintly, “that I have failed.”

  He died before she had a chance to say anything more.

  * * *

  The first thing she did was seal Vri’s suit and get his body out of the pilot’s seat. He had set Esperance on a course to nowhere; the engines were firing at a constant, gentle rate, with no apparent intention of stopping and no clear destination other than away from the nacelle. Maybe he had intended to change the settings before he died, or perhaps he had assumed that she would be able to do so herself.

  Distantly, she felt embarrassed at being so helpless. With the Box she might have had a chance. Even without implants, it could have told her what to do. At the very least she would have had someone to talk to.

  She played with the controls at random and managed to find the attitude jets. All that did was send the fighter into a slow tumble around its long axis and made its course even more chaotic. Fearing she would touch the wrong control completely and blow the drive core, she sat back and tried to think. The life-support seemed to be working fine, and there was no shortage of power. She could survive in the fighter longer than she would have on the nacelle, so that was an improvement. Given time, she could work out how to operate the drive or the communicator, which would improve her situation even more...

  The one thing she could understand was the navigation display. The small fighter’s projected course—as near as she could tell—took it through the outer edge of the ring system; she would strike the fringes of it within a day. The electrical anomalies Kajic had noted seemed to be fading, but she was still wary of them. When she wasn’t puzzling over the controls, she kept her eye on the screen. What she would do if it was a trap, she didn’t know.

  Even as fatigue wore her down into a feverish creature talking to itself and weeping in fits and starts, she resisted sleeping. She was afraid of her dreams, of what she would see on closing her eyes. She didn’t want to see Maii alive or dead: that wound was too fresh, the grief too keen. The same with Haid, and Kajic, and the Box—even Alta Ansourian and Cane. Especially Cane.

  She had trusted him, and he had betrayed her. Put boldly, in black and white, she could accept it. As soon as she looked beneath that pronouncement, however, at the emotional consequences and potential ramifications, she saw the pain. She didn’t want that. She would have the rest of her life to dwell upon it, however long that might be. If she could forget about it just for a moment, now, she would be grateful.

  In the end she did sleep. Not even she could put it off forever. But there were no dreams—and for that she was grateful.

  * * *

  Fourteen hours after she left the nacelle, the glowing haze of the ring had expanded to fill most of her forward view. It looked like smoke: yellowish and acrid, with denser wisps almost blocking out the stars behind them. Strange, glowing sheets rippled through it at odd moments, but with little more definition than a predawn glow. She could no longer make out the plane of the ecliptic, or tell by sight alone at what angle she was approaching it. It was just there, before her, something she could neither avoid nor find any pleasure in viewing.

  Once again, she regretted Sol System’s lack of grandeur. If she had been about to crash into the Soul around Sciacca’s World, or be electrocuted by the ion bridge snapping across the gap between Kukumat and Murukan, Palasian System’s double-jovian, that would have at least been something to marvel at. But here, all she was heading for was a cloud of dust. She didn’t eve
n know what it would do to her. It might not do anything at all, if it was thin enough. Even if it was as dense as the average planetary ring, the most the Esperance would suffer as it passed through the cloud was some wear on its ablative shield.

  That was exactly what it was suffering from when she began to hear voices.

  At first she thought she was dreaming. A snatch of phrase caught her ear, apparently from somewhere behind her, followed quickly by another. Then another, and another, until the sounds came in a continuous, muddled stream. The whispers belonged to people of all ages and many different accents; most spoke galactic standard—although she could discern maybe one word in three—and some spoke in tongues she had never heard before. There were too many of them, too many fragments, for her to follow. All she could pick up were the individual flavors as they rushed by her, like ghosts in an echo park, or a half-remembered dream. They were happy, sad, angry, hurt, proud, joyous—all colors of the emotional spectrum.

  When her suit’s life-support kicked in, she knew she wasn’t asleep. The temperature in the fighter had risen to an uncomfortable point without her noticing, so intrigued had she become with the whispering. She must have underestimated the velocity the fighter had accrued during its hours of constant thrust. Even as she studied the data, annoyed with herself for not paying attention, she could feel a slight vibration through the bulkheads. Having no knowledge of how to access the ship’s diagnostic systems, she couldn’t tell if the hull was being damaged by the high-speed rain of dust. All she could do was worry about it. Eventually, the ship would pass through the ring and out the other side. Or it wouldn’t. The situation was as simple as that.

  “Oh, for an axe...”

  The whispered phrase caught her ear. There was a pause, filled with other whispers, then the fragment continued. The words were buried under others, but she could make them out. She knew them. She had heard them before.