He sifted through the limited records, attempting to tease additional information from them, but the shoddy resolution persisted in beguiling him. There was no way to tell the class of the two vessels or even their fleet of origin. The bearing of the ships as they escaped and an approximate mass value were all he could glean, but with luck, that might be enough.
He continued backward until he saw two small atmospheric craft take off from the surface. A landing party, he thought. Another chance to put a face on the killers.
The first craft in the playback wasn’t much help. The occupants were covered in armor, their features disguised by helmets. They were bipedal, four-limbed, and of medium size, which narrowed the possibilities down to only six dozen known sentient species. Their armor and weaponry were an unfamiliar design, but the group was unmistakably infantry.
The occupants of the second craft wore no such obstructions. D’armic froze the image, wrestling with what he saw. It was a human female, judging by her chest protrusions and slim waist. She wore long hair of a shade far lighter than any of the tribes found on Culpus-Alam.
This presented a problem, for if she wasn’t native, it could only mean the ships had come from Earth’s systems, but that was plainly impossible. Humans were still centuries away from developing high … space …
The answer struck D’armic like one of the searing rocks erupting from the dying world below. Buoy #4258743-E. By a coincidence of cosmic proportions, they had stumbled onto it, stolen it, and used the high-space radio within to copy their own, doubtlessly crude, portal generator.
Which also led D’armic to the inescapable conclusion that the humans had slid right past him before he had mended the gap in the buoy network. That wasn’t going to reflect well on his performance review.
No matter. Pride is a consideration for other races.
As was anger, but despite the fact he felt none of the rage that had driven his ancestors, D’armic felt a responsibility to the dead of Culpus-Alam. His people had been the ones to hatch the atrocity of geocide into the universe. It was therefore appropriate that a Lividite be the one to return it to the grave.
He set about preparing a detailed report for his superiors, but even traveling through high-space, the dispatch would take considerable time to reach Bureau headquarters. As had been the case for many cycles, D’armic would have to move on his own initiative.
Leaving the broken world in his wake, D’armic set course along an identical bearing to the retreating vessels. His cutter would have to move swiftly before the trail overgrew. D’armic couldn’t fathom why, absent their passions, the humans had slaughtered their own people.
As the high-space portal opened ahead, he resolved to ask them. Personally.
CHAPTER 31
Allison’s feet pounded down the hall. She’d run for over an hour, hard. Her legs had felt like rubber for the last two kilometers, but now they burned so badly she was pretty sure they were vulcanizing.
After a few more paces her earbud beeped. Twelve kilometers had come and gone. She finally succumbed to her aches and sank against the nearest wall. Even though Maggie’s interior was kept at a cool eighteen degrees C, sweat beaded on Allison’s forehead and shoulders. The wraparound glasses she wore to counteract the disorienting effects of hyperspace started to fog.
“Captain?” asked the ceiling.
Allison took a moment to bring her breathing under control before answering.
“Captain, are you all right?”
“I’m fine, Maggie, just a little winded. What’s wrong?”
“Nothing is wrong, per se. You have a message from Captain Tiberius. Would you like to hear it now?”
“I’d rather listen to my own firing squad.”
“I do not understand.”
“It’s sarcasm, Maggie. It means I don’t want to listen to his message right now.” Or ever.
“All right. I will place it in your queue for later review.”
“Thanks.” Allison pressed her bare shoulders against the cool wall. It felt good. The corridor was quiet and empty, aside from her labored breaths. Still, she felt as though she wasn’t the only one present.
“You’re still there, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” confirmed the ceiling.
“Did you want to ask me something else?”
“Yes. I have noticed that your disposition changes when you are confronted with Captain Tiberius. You exhibit uncharacteristic belligerence and volatility.”
“It’s that obvious, huh?”
“Yes. I am concerned about you.”
“Don’t be. I know you were programmed with an eye to mediate conflicts among the crew, but it won’t be needed. I can handle Tiberius, and myself.”
“What about Captain Tiberius puts you off? He has a reputation for competence and strong leadership.”
“Yes, his greatness is one of his more enduring traits.”
“Don’t you mean endearing traits?”
“No, enduring, because we have to endure it. He uses his accomplishments as an excuse to act like a spoiled frat boy. And, if I’m going to be honest, there’s more than a little resentment involved. We’ve been living this mission since before his parents were born. Everyone abandoned their old lives to be here. Our friends and family are either old or dead. When we finally do get home, it won’t really be home. The world we left is six decades in the past. All our music, holos, and favorite places to eat will be forgotten, bulldozed over, and recycled. We all agreed to make those sacrifices because it was the only way to get the job done.
“But now, Tiberius and his merry men just waltz out here in their sparkly new ship and get equal billing. The launch of Magel—” Allison remembered who she was talking to. “Your launch, Maggie, is barely within living memory for the people back home. All the fanfare goes to the Bucephalus. Not to mention it has the only hyperdrive, so we have to follow them around like a lost puppy. That’s not fair to any of us.”
“Forgive the interruption, Captain, but you are overlooking something. If we had not come this far, the buoy would have remained undiscovered, and the development of hyperspace travel would not have occurred. Without our expedition, Bucephalus could not exist.”
“Of course you’re right, Maggie. I guess I’m just feeling a bit like yesterday’s leftovers.”
“May I ask another question?”
Allison nodded.
“Does this resentment extend to Mr. Fletcher and Lieutenant Harris?”
“Well, no, but that’s different.”
“How?”
Allison opened her mouth to answer, but she knew anything that came out would only be hot air. “You have to ask the tough questions, huh?”
“I only wish to better understand human relationships.”
“You and me both.”
“One moment, Captain. Chief Billings would like to speak with you.”
An accent as thick as Texas toast crackled from the ceiling. “Ma’am, you there?”
“Yes, Steven, I can hear you.”
“Good. Could you c’mon down to engineering? We’ve got a … situation.”
“Define ‘situation.’”
“Promise not to be mad?”
“Nope.”
“It was worth a shot. Well, here’s the deal. We were fixin’ to open up that nanny android y’all brought up from Solonis to start studying it, when it started up and jumped off the table.”
“Did it get loose?”
“No, ma’am. It didn’t try to run; it just stood there scolding us for trying to sneak a peek in its britches.”
“How could you tell what it was saying?”
“’Cause it started talkin’ English, ma’am.”
Now that was interesting. In the background, Allison heard a slightly tinny voice lay into her chief engineer. “Steven, my scans indicate you are lacking in essential vitamins and minerals. You haven’t been eating your vegetables.”
“Vegetables are what food eats, you mechani
cal Mary Poppins!” Billings shot back. “Captain, you gotta get down here. It’s chaos.”
Allison’s head shook slowly, while a smile tugged at the corners of her mouth. “I’ll be right there, Steven.”
She stood, readjusted her socks, and headed toward engineering at a jog.
* * *
Felix’s eyes darted around the small double cabin restlessly while crewman Nash dug through an old metal-banded wood trunk that most certainly wasn’t standard AESA issue.
“Don’t you worry, sir. Should only be a minute. I know they’re in here. Just traded one to Ensign … well, it doesn’t matter who.”
Throughout history, every ship larger than a lifeboat has had a crewmember with a certain entrepreneurial spirit. They were the ones everyone went to for items that had fallen off, or were never on, the official inventory. Nash fulfilled this critical role on board Bucephalus. He was short and shaped like a bowling pin. His hairline had receded faster than a strong tide.
“Ah, here it is. Best love potion you could ask for.”
Held aloft in Nash’s hands was a small, clear plastic vial with a screw-on top. It looked like the sort of vial a hospital would use to hold blood samples, except this one didn’t appear to be holding anything.
Felix frowned. “But it’s empty, isn’t it?”
“Empty?” Nash’s eyes went wide with exasperation, although the effect was somewhat dulled by the bulky 3-D glasses. “Of course it’s not empty. I’m a businessman. Would I sell you an empty vial?”
“I suppose not.”
“Of course not. I could hardly make a living if I went around selling empty vials to hardworking folks like yourself. What would that do to my reputation?”
“I see your point. So, then, what is it full of?”
“Air.”
“Air, right. But why put it in a vial when the room is already full of it?”
“Not so fast, young man. It isn’t just any old tangy, recycled air. This here’s homeopathic air. It’s a one-trillion-power dilution of bull shark testosterone and mallard pheromones, so it’s all very scientific.”
“Mallard pheromones?”
“Sure. You ever see a mallard mate? Them boys don’t take no for an answer.”
“All right, but isn’t homeopathy based on dilutions of water?”
“Water? Naw, that’s weak sauce. First you dilute the ingredients in water, then you let the water evaporate and capture that air the water used to be in. See, that way the air remembers what the water remembered having in it, so it’s like, exponential. Makes all them ground-up Chinese tiger wangs look downright flaccid by comparison.”
Felix was beginning to regret coming. Earlier in the day, he’d noticed Bucephalus’s and Magellan’s shuttle crews were scheduled to run maneuvers to get their pilots comfortable working in hyper, and to familiarize them with the flight decks on the other ship. This meant that there was a real chance for an “accidental” encounter with Jacqueline. Felix was looking for any edge he could get, but he couldn’t muster much confidence in magic air.
“I’ll need to think about it.”
“What’s to think about?” Nash threw an arm around Felix’s shoulders and pulled him close. “I like you, Freddy.”
“Felix.”
“Him, too. Anyway, tell you what I’ll do. How’s about I offer you an ironclad, money-back guarantee. If it don’t work, just return the unused portion for a full refund. What do you have to lose?”
“Besides my pride?”
“Pride! What can you buy with pride? Nothing, because it’s worthless. Less than worthless, even. Men will pass up big opportunities just to hold on to their pride. Opportunities like this here love potion. C’mon, kid, whadaya say? Help an old spacer out. I’ve got to cover my overhead, you know.”
“Yeah?” Felix looked at the man’s rapidly vanishing hair. “Buy a hat.”
Felix marched down the hall, leaving the unlicensed homeopath in his cave. From behind, someone matched his gait, someone who cast a shadow befitting an upright bear.
“Hello, Tom.”
“Afternoon, Felix,” Harris said. “I couldn’t help but notice you walking out of Nash’s cabin. Anything you want to talk about?”
“It was nothing.”
“People don’t go to see a guy like Nash for ‘nothing.’”
“Fine, you got me.” Felix held out his wrists, offering them up for handcuffs. “I went to Nash to buy some counterfeit sunglasses. Slap the bracelets on me.”
“Be serious, Felix.”
Felix stuck his hands in his pockets and looked at his feet while they walked. “All right. I wanted to get something to spice me up a bit in case I ran into … someone.”
“Someone? Oh, please. Like I don’t know you’ve got a thing for Dorsett. I even have a pretty good idea what that thing is.”
“It’s not like that.”
“Yes, it is. What I don’t understand is why you’re looking for enhancement from the ship’s smuggler. What’s wrong with the real you?”
“Are you kidding? The real me drowns in rivers.”
“I wouldn’t call it a river. More like a stream.”
“That’s not helping. Anyway, I’ve been myself around women my whole life; it hasn’t been the most successful tactic.”
“Those were girls, not women. They couldn’t see what makes you great. Now, Dorsett’s a little tech geek, always got grease under her fingernails. You really think she won’t be switched on by the man who invented hyperspace travel?”
“Stole hyperspace travel.”
“You say potato. Listen, buddy, I have to run my platoon through some counter-boarding drills while these shuttle maneuvers are going on. Why don’t you come along and play hostage? You might run into Dorsett that way.”
“Thanks, Tom, but I’ve already played hostage for real.”
“That wasn’t so much hostage as hors d’oeuvre.”
“Hilarious. I should get back to the bridge and work up the numbers for the next transition.”
“Suit yourself. I’ll see you later.”
CHAPTER 32
Two days and six light-years later, Earth’s ambassadors to the galaxy reemerged from hyperspace. Magellan and the Bucephalus fell into formation and arched toward a mystery that had caused sleepless nights among astronomers for three hundred years: the Twinkling Star.
It’s true that when looking up through a turbulent atmosphere, stars twinkle. This one was different; it twinkled even when seen through space-based telescopes. To make matters worse, it had only started twinkling in 2049, causing many astrophysicists to go hoarse and bald from the fits of angry shouting and hair pulling.
Half a dozen hypotheses were tested to failure, including debris from a planet cracking up, a wobbly accretion disk, and that it was just a star with a busted thermostat. This continued until 2073, when they all got epically wasted at a conference in Oslo and voted to just call the damned thing a miracle and be done with it.
This interim solution persevered until Magellan launched for Solonis B in 2285. It was hoped that from the relatively short distance of six light-years, some new insights about the mystery star could be gleaned from her powerful, multispectrum telescope.
Now, from a distance of barely six light-minutes, not even the telescope was necessary. Floating between the system primary and the Earth ships was a field of gargantuan, opaque membranes. Kilometers-long streamers jutted from their centers, pointing toward the outer system like wind socks. The canopies themselves were vaguely circular, but featured a divot to one side, making them slightly asymmetrical. A person could be forgiven for thinking they looked remarkably like giant—
“Lily pads,” Ensign Prescott said in astonishment.
Allison whistled. “If those are the lily pads, I’d hate to see the bullfrogs.”
“Or the gators,” added Chief Billings.
“Gators? What the hell kind of ponds did you have growing up?”
“The Gulf of Mex
ico. Everything’s—”
“—bigger in Texas. We know. Maggie, what does your spectrograph say?”
“The sails are comprised mostly of simple organic polymers and are less than one millimeter thick along greater than 90 percent of their surface area. The tail structures are made of similar materials, but contain higher concentrations of metallic elements.”
“You said organic. Are they alive like the crystal plankton around Proxima Centauri?”
“Unknown, although both the chemical makeup and internal structure of the objects are significantly less complex than any terrestrial or exosolar life yet cataloged.”
Allison rubbed her hands together greedily. “We should get a sample.”
“How?” asked Billings. “Those things gotta be over a thousand square kilometers.”
“Do you bring home the whole set of curtains or just a swatch?”
“Curtains? My cabin don’t even have a window.”
“Very funny, Steven. I meant a small sample, like a square meter. Prescott, put Lieutenant Dorsett on the line, please.”
* * *
The Bureau of Frontier Resources cutter shot through hyperspace in a flash. D’armic’s intuition had been confirmed a few moments ago as the echoes of a high-space portal appeared in the Okim system; the only system along the human ship’s heading for almost five thousand larkims.
D’armic took a moment to consider his good fortune. While he’d been too late to save Culpus-Alam, Okim was already a dead system. There were no inhabited planets to destroy. Not anymore. Despite their head start, it appeared he would make the apprehension before more lives were lost to this fresh menace.
He swung the little cutter about and triggered a hard deceleration. D’armic set the controls and returned to his cabin to brew a pot of tea and to meditate on the confrontation to come.
* * *
Once Jacqueline had collected their sample, the two ships sailed with purpose toward the single planet sitting inside the Twinkling Star’s Goldilocks zone. At least it had been.
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