The lights went out. There were a series of explosions very close by, followed by the high-pitched whine of shipguns on full automatic opening up. I didn’t mean to do that.
“They’re in the corridor,” barked the Gunso on the team radio. “Power’s down in the whole compartment!”
“Hachiman’s spear, they’ve cut the mains!” Hadeishi popped up from under the console, finding the room had cleared save for Sho-i Lovelace, who was staring at him with wide eyes. The engineering panel was dead, along with the overheads and everything else in the room save one emergency light which had flickered on to shed a feeble reddish glow.
“No power,” she bleated, pointing at the lightless displays.
Mitsuharu glared around the room, and then caught sight of her field comp, which was still humming away. “Powercell-pull the powercells from everything you’ve got. Move!”
Lovelace’s face cleared and she tore open the satchel, dragging out two Fleet-standard cells, just like the ones that ran her comp. “Here-and I’ve an adapter!”
Hadeishi was back under the panel, one ear listening to the scrum in the hallway, with both cells in his hands and the adapter wrapped around one wrist. The choonk of a grenade launcher punched through all the other noise and he hooked an arm out, grabbing the Sho-i by the foot. “Down!” She yelped, pitching over backward, just as the doorway billowed with smoke, shrapnel, and the whine of flechettes. Two sharp booms followed, and then the marine Gunso ducked back in.
“They’re coming again, Chu-sa -I can hear ’em howling up past the bathrooms at that junction.”
“One minute,” Hadeishi replied. “Jacking power to the console-now.”
Lovelace rose up enough to see the display, watching as the interface flickered to life. An unfamiliar set of v-panes unfolded, filled with the tight columns of technical Khadesh, but the arrangement was familiar enough, and some of the icons were still Fleet standard issue. “Panel’s coming up; switching to maintenance-”
Under the console, Hadeishi rotated the comm node to face him and saw the main power feed was still in place. Gingerly-there was no telling if the Khaid up on Command would decide to flip the mains back on-he levered the connector out. “Node is dead, no power!”
“I’m in maintenance mode on the console, Chu-sa. Overwriting the diagnostics suite now.”
Lovelace’s field comp, plugged socket-to-socket into the sub-comp running the console itself, chuckled and whirred for approximately four seconds, reloading the tools, interface image, and ’net matrix which ran the display itself. All of the v-panes went blank for an instant, and then reappeared, now showing the Fleet-standard interface.
“We’re live,” Lovelace said, keying a blur of commands with a stylus in either hand.
The Gunso at the door caught Hadeishi’s eye, signing They’re coming.
Mitsuharu nodded, flipping himself out from under the console. He had the second powercell in his hand, thumb on the safety switch. “Twenty seconds, Sho-i, and you’ll be back on the shipnet.”
“Ready,” she snapped, back in her element, thin-boned face gleaming with the reflected light of the v-panes unfolding like a thousand blooming flowers on the display. Hadeishi flipped the switch, feeling the cell come to life, and his earbug suddenly woke up as an Imperial-standard comm frequency flooded the room. “Hit it.”
Lovelace keyed a complicated, thirty-six ideogram sequence. A screaming howl rose on their radios-the sound of a hunting pack in full cry-and the Gunso at the door ducked out, his shipgun hammering away at some unseen target. A pane popped up on the display, filled with warning notices in white lettering on a red background. Mitsuharu leaned over the panel, waiting for the authorization glyph to appear.
When it did, he keyed the reset code distributed by the Fleet to all commanding officers in the event of their encountering-or capturing-a starship of Imperial manufacture in inhuman hands. There was a tidy business in reselling retired Fleet spacecraft-some of which found their way into service with hostile powers. Too, the Fleet did-occasionally-lose ships in battle, ships that might be refurbished or rebuilt by those with the technical infrastructure to do so.
Another blast, larger than the last, smashed at the doorway, flinging the Gunso back into the room. Smoke billowed from something burning, filling the air with thousands of tiny black globules. A hulking figure, easily a meter taller than any of Hadeishi’s team, bounced through the opening.
The Yilan bucked twice in quick succession against Mitsuharu’s shoulder, his thigh braced against the console, and the Khaid was thrown back, chest armor splintering as the blast hit him square-on. Lovelace squealed, ducking under the console.
“ Sho-i, back to your station!” Hadeishi shouted, dodging across the room with a kick. He got an angle on the corridor, saw there was hand-to-hand fighting amongst a swirl of figures-nearly all of them in Khaid armor-and double-tapped the tallest attacker he could see. “Seal every hatch, door, ventilator, and compartment partition from frame four updeck, and flood the Command ring with fire-suppression foam!”
The Naniwa
The battle-cruiser had accelerated inbound at superluminal, having found the hyper gradient dropping off precipitously as they moved away from the Barrier. Now, having leapt three light-years from the Pinhole to the immediate vicinity of the rosette, her forward big eye filled with the ever-growing glare of the ejection jet. With initial repairs complete and Command fully staffed again, Kosho watched the plot unfold with a weather eye. The near edge of the vast shoal of debris was quickly approaching and she was on edge. There were more spectators on hand than she was used to. Prince Xochitl was still camped out in Secondary Command, and a v-pane showing his handsome but worn face had acquired a permanent-and unwelcome-place on her console.
The camera displays revealed static undulations of deep purple hue, crested with orange from the glare of the plasma stream, which gradually resolved into strings of gigantic beads, and then into enormous individual entities drifting in a black soup of smaller, irregular material. Ship’s comp began scanning, trying to pattern-match the jagged shapes.
Susan stood up slowly, both eyes on the screen, one hand on the edge of her console. She had already recognized what lay before them and the sheer scale of it held her speechless for a moment.
At the XO’s console, Oc Chac stiffened as the first models began to flow onto his display from the comp analysis. “Ships!” he exclaimed. “They’re starships.”
“All wrecked.” Holloway started to bite at a fingernail, before forcing his hands to the console.
“A fleet of hundreds-no, thousands!” Prince Xochitl’s expression was a study in mingled awe and excitement. He looked off-screen, and then said: “Initial analysis detects four thousand, thirty-four objects in this debris field which are likely starships of some provenance.”
“The Prince is impressed,” Susan said without emotion. What will he want to do with an armada of leviathans that perished deep in the abyss of time, leaving us only traces of their titanic struggle? And Queen of Heaven, four thousand ships? There might not be four thousand starships of this size in the entire Empire!
Oc Chac sat down again, spreading his hands to indicate the spectra telemetry duly generated by ship-comp. “This is all old. Ancient. Who were they, Gensui?”
Xochitl did not respond, seemingly lost in his own thoughts. Kosho stirred herself, saying: “We have more pressing concerns, Sho-sa. Radiation levels from that accretion disc are climbing by the hour. Reconfigure the shipskin for maximum protection and pull in any sensor booms or nodes which may be adversely affected.”
In his v-pane, the Prince stirred, anger shading his expression.
“However,” Susan continued, shooting Xochitl a quelling look. “We want as detailed a scan as we can manage, while maintaining hull integrity and our protection, as we pass through the wreckage. Pay close attention for energy sources! Thai-i Holloway, please find us a path through with as little debris as possible.”
/> ***
The Naniwa edged through the ancient armada, her engines at one-quarter, booms extended, and the shipskin deployed for maximum data absorption in those parts of the battle-cruiser which were not inhabited. Kosho was back on the bridge, a great feeling of unease riding her shoulders, as the massive shapes drifted past on the camera displays. The alien vessels were enormous-far larger than even the Tlemitl -and formed of three “wings” joined at a central core. Most were shattered, showing gaping wounds in the unknown metal, but despite this-to her eye-Susan was gaining the uncomfortable impression that all of the ships were of a very similar kind.
“Even the smallest is the size of one of our colony stations,” the Prince mused. He had not left Secondary Command in almost thirty-six hours, obsessively reviewing every data-point as it flowed across the sensor network.
“ Chu-sa.” Konev’s voice barely concealed his eagerness. “Should we dispatch an exploration team? We could board one of the smaller wrecks! Maybe there is something useful to be gleaned, like a memory core or a switch capable of controlling the thread-barrier? Even a training manual?”
Prince Xochitl interrupted before Susan could reply. “A waste of time! I need something in operation, Chu-sa. This is all”-he made an angry motion towards the wraparound v-display configured in Secondary Command-“a diversion.”
That would be “no,” thought Kosho, hiding her reaction behind an impassive, cool mask.
“ Hai, Lord Prince,” she replied, then shook her head at the Russian. “Not one energy source has cropped up in the scan data, Thai-i. We’d need a proper science team to evaluate all of this.”
Xochitl nodded, satisfied, and then turned away to stare at the vista playing out on his screens.
Susan was not pleased. So we leave Chekov’s famous pistol lying beside the road at our backs. What can the man want with an “operating mechanism?” Does he believe that we can divine or control something of this magnitude without any technical resources to draw on?
More troubling was the intuition that the Prince believed exactly that. Kosho tried to put the issue from her mind, tapping up the latest data from the remote she’d dropped at the Pinhole. Nothing had yet appeared from out of the Barrier, but she didn’t believe her luck would hold in that respect either. Wish we’d had more mines left…
***
Six hours later, they had completed their passage of the wrecked fleet and come within viewing range of the structure, which stood at a resonance point formed by the gravity wells of the three brown dwarves-now huge, distorted discs on the display, shedding a ruddy glare which the v-panes automatically blocked out-and the swirling vortex of the accretion disc hiding the singularity. Each sun was distended, extruding a long tail of mass corkscrewing down into the black hole.
“ Kyo? We’ve lost hyper gradient-the local g field is tremendously distorted.” Thai-i Olin licked his lips nervously. “Something emanating from that-object-is maintaining field equilibrium. While we’re inside its influence… there’s no way we can punch through to superluminal.”
At this close range, the Naniwa ’s hull was completely locked down, all booms drawn inboard. Hull temperature was rising as well, for the ambient radiation storm in this area of space was intense. Their external sensors were now limited to a set of battle-hardened scanners built to operate during a bomb-pod storm. Despite stepping down the fidelity of their data capture by orders of magnitude, the “structure” was of such colossal size they could not help but make out some detail.
General silence prevailed in Command as they watched the visuals unspool. Nothing in the natural world contrived this, Kosho thought, trying to wrap her mind around the sheer scale of what they beheld. Nothing in the world of men could have built it. It cannot even hail from this eon in time. Why aren’t we dead right now?
She tore her gaze away, looking to the Prince for fresh orders. He was silent, eyes hooded, fingertips steepled beneath his noble nose. Now which way will Sayu jump?
Presently, Prince Xochitl frowned hugely at Susan and grumbled, “I agree that caution is required in dealing with… with this relic. Dispatch an exploratory team in a combat shuttle as soon as possible. They can perform a short-range scan and begin detailed mapping of the surface.”
“ Hai, Lord Prince.”
Kosho gestured for Konev to join her at the command station. When the weapons officer was within range of a quiet conversation, his hands clasped behind his back and veritably vibrating with desire, she looked him up and down, troubled by the eager expression on the Russian’s face.
“If you wish to try your luck-out there-find two other volunteers and refit one of the cargo shuttles to fly by wire. We’ll run the boat out, and you can fly in on camera.” She raised her hand sharply, cutting off the boy before he could protest. “If you’re successful with a close-in approach, and can drop some sensor packs onto the surface with the shuttle’s cargo arm-then we’ll work up a manned landing. But until then-you’ve your orders.”
“ Domo arigato, Chu-sa! I know just who to ask.”
Bowing, he left. Kosho stared after him for a moment, and then flicked the Prince’s v-pane away from her display. Now the Prince owes me a shuttle, she thought, suppressing a wave of irritation. Unable to sit any longer, she rose and paced over to Oc Chac’s station, where the Sho-sa, Pucatli, and Holloway were poring over the detailed model of the structure being assembled by the ship’s comp as measurements flowed in from the shipskin.
The Mayan’s face was filled with delight as he shifted views, drilling down to successive levels of detail. “Looks like a Chimalacatl -the shield-reed, doesn’t it, Chu-sa?” he remarked, looking up as she approached.
Susan nodded. If the Gods made sunflowers as big as a large moon, and gave them long, spiked metallic petals, and a center formed from triangles within triangles…
Xochitl’s face was visible on Chac’s console as well, his visage equally bright-though not with the joy of exploration or curiosity, but naked greed. “Each petal is comprised of hundreds of thousands of folds-do you see them? Set one within another… such scale! We’re still waiting for an estimate of age, but surely this is something from the First Sun!”
Kosho felt her gut clench. She looked to Pucatli. “No erosion rates from the surface?”
“Nothing, kyo. The skin should be pitted by micrometeoroids or cosmic ray impacts-but we’re seeing nothing at all-just like it came from the fab yesterday.”
“ Chu-sa.” Oc Chac’s voice shaded into awe. He was indicating a fresh set of scan data, from shipborne receptors pointed towards the singularity itself. “Look at this… A tether or beanstalk of some kind?”
Something with barely any cross section at all traced a hard, straight line down from the “flower” towards the boiling fury of the accretion disk and-one supposed-the event horizon of the black hole.
The Mayan rubbed a hand across the back of his head. “Could they be powering this structure from the electromagnetic field generated by the infall? Gods, that would give them almost unlimited capacity!”
“It is possible,” Susan replied, resisting the urge to fold her arms. Instead, she kept both hands clasped behind her back, forcing her mind to consider the implications of such a place to her ship. Her gut churned, triggering her med-band to dispense antianxiety meds in a sharp, cold burst.
***
Gretchen was standing in a portal, her tripartite shadow thrown sharp on a glassy floor by a harsh, brassy glare at her back. Before her, a massive chamber stretched off into a hazy distance, the room spined with endless ranks of sharp vaults. Everywhere there was motion-long streams of the white-garbed Chosen flowed up from the vaults below, and then passed out through the triangular exits, shepherded by guardsmen who loomed above them, armor glinting black and crimson. The air reverberated with the sound of their feet on the floor, their bright, carefree chatter, and heavy tread of the protectors watching over them. With stately grace, she descended a phalanx of steps. As she moved, th
e nearest of the Chosen looked up, their faces emerging from the haze like flowers opening before the rays of the first sun. Three of them cried out, seeing her, raising their hands in greeting. Now she was close enough to touch Isabelle’s hair, see Tristan’s bright blue eyes shining. Duncan was looking away, his attention caught by something speaking in enormous, earth-shaking tones. She put her hand on his shoulder, and he turned. Anderssen saw – the roof of the medbay as she blinked away tears. Anderssen gasped, drawing a ragged breath into lungs starved for air. A queer humming died away, replaced by the sound of someone drinking soup and the distant rattle and clink of men and women working in an enclosed space. The smell of the soup-picken, she guessed-struck her hard, turning her stomach into a twisted ball of hunger.
“Oh sweet Jesus.” Gretchen rolled sideways, feeling utterly drained. A parchment envelope slipped from her hands, landing amongst the blankets. “There had better be a liter of that for me, Crow, or I’ll murder you where you stand.”
Hummingbird looked back at her, dark green eyes curious over the edge of his bowl. “There has been a full breakfast the last two days, Anderssen, but you have been sleeping-so I’ve done you the favor of cleaning the plate.”
Lacking even the moisture to spit, Gretchen managed to sit up and found that-indeed-there was a full tray set beside her bed. More soup, a bowl of red gelatin, kaffe, two bottles of hydrofast. Fingers shaking a little, she popped the top from the first of the orange bottles and began sipping carefully.
After a few minutes, Hummingbird set down the bowl and Anderssen drained the last of her bottle.
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