“The starting point is one of the anchor d-gates near Synra, which were built specifically for use by the research teams tasked with following up on the Shorai’s discoveries, and all the d-gate pairs line up with those discoveries—except the last stop. It doesn’t have a companion d-gate or a press release to tout it.”
He pointed to three annotations far afield of the Tabiji’s travels, well on the left side of the galaxy. “But what about these over here?”
She paced through the map hologram to peer at them for a few seconds, then returned to his side. “Two possibilities I can think of. Either the Shorai found something at the terminus point that the Guides didn’t want to make public—something the Tabiji is visiting repeatedly—then the Shorai continued on with its exploration, or….”
“Or the later press releases are fake.” He sighed heavily. “I wonder, is the Shorai still flying at all? Or was it destroyed, and the Guides have neglected to inform their Advisors for eight years.”
She winced. “I know what I’d put my money on, if I had any.”
“Yeah.”
“Mason Fassar…I must have known him.”
“The Advisor who captained the Shorai? You were professional colleagues, but I wouldn’t say he was your friend. Not outside of work. He is—or was, as now seems likely—a good man. Serious to the point of being taciturn, but dedicated to his work.”
A shiver chilled Dashiel’s skin. “And they haven’t regened him. Are they so desperate to keep what happened to the Shorai a secret that they’ve stored his psyche all this time?”
“It’s no worse than them psyche-wiping me to keep it.”
“You know the depths of my rage about what they did to you. But, respectfully, yes, it is worse. At least they allowed you to draw a new breath—and stars, look what you’ve done with it. Nearly a decade on, he’s still waiting to wake up again.”
Her brow furrowed, and she left the map behind to go to the kitchen module. After digging around in the refrigeration unit for several seconds, she produced a sealed bottle of wine. “I need a drink. Do you want one?”
He opened his mouth to respond that of course he did, because he always did…then realized he hadn’t entertained so much as an idle yearning for a drink since joining her on the ship. In truth, it had never been an addiction, merely a poor form of escape.
Did he desire one now? Yes. Because once upon a time he’d drank for enjoyment rather than escape. He’d done so with her at his side and he at hers. And though she couldn’t know it—and gods willing she never would—with her offer she was erasing another scar from his psyche.
“Dashiel?”
“Yes, please.”
She poured two glasses, returned to his side and handed him one. He brought the glass to his lips then held it there, letting the wine hover at his lips while he watched her take a long sip and gaze pensively at the map.
“You’re right. About Fassar. It is worse, and they’ve done it to the rest of the Shorai’s crew, too, I assume. It’s unconscionable. You know, just a few weeks ago, when all this was first starting, Joaquim, Perrin and I had a conversation about how we as a society did not store people. Only, it appears we do. Not the criminals, either, but the explorers and the pioneers.”
She shook her head roughly. “What are we saying here? That whatever the Shorai discovered and whatever the ship’s fate, as a result of the discovery the Guides are kidnapping people, forcing them into a comatose state, stuffing them in stasis chambers and shipping them across the galaxy to the location in question?”
“Looks like.” They both stood there silently for a while, letting the absurd yet unassailable conclusion sink in…then letting the implications spin out from it like ribbons in the wind.
Finally he sank onto the couch, set his glass on the side table and dropped his elbows to his knees. “The truth is, other than a rough start to our relationship with the Taiyoks and an incomprehensible encounter with the Sogain, we’ve had a fairly uneventful stay in the Gennisi galaxy. We staked our claim to our little corner of the galaxy and settled in, happy to be left alone to live how we chose.
“But this doesn’t mean there aren’t grave threats out in the cosmos—more terrifying than our imaginations can conjure—and remarkable wonders beyond our capacity to envision. It shouldn’t be a surprise that when we finally went looking, we discovered one of them.”
She nodded thoughtfully and shut off the map. “Well, I guess it’s time for us to go find out which one.”
MERGE (FIELD)
32
* * *
WAYFARER
Asterion Dominion Space
A TOWERING D-GATE FLOATED placidly in the expanse of space. Its interior shimmered like a mirror with nothing to reflect.
Nika’s hand hovered over the controls, ready to traverse the d-gate and cross kiloparsecs. But Dashiel was staring at the object with such intensity that she decided to let him have a moment.
Finally he spoke, though his gaze didn’t deviate. “The design requirements were absurd. We had to build objects that when deployed would be larger than the vessel carrying them. Not a significant hurdle for most equipment, but quantum teleportation devices whose purpose is to open and maintain pathways that cut through the literal fabric of space? It’s not so easy to make such technology foldable and collapsible.”
“But you did.”
“I did—or my people did. Because you were right. This is one of mine.” He huffed a breath and relaxed into his chair. “Sorry. I don’t usually dreamily wax philosophical over anything except you. Carry on.”
“It’s okay. I enjoy listening to you talk about your work.”
“You do?”
“Well…it might be more accurate to say I enjoy you enjoying talking about your work.” She turned her head until her hair fell across her face and hid her smile as she accelerated through the d-gate.
They emerged through the other side into space that looked much like the space they’d left. Dashiel had said the d-gates would have been secured in areas as devoid of activity as possible to reduce the chances of them being disrupted or destroyed by violent cosmic phenomena: supernovas, black holes, active stellar formation and so on. Therefore, whatever the Shorai had found here—according to the press release, a rare triple neutron star system—it was situated at least a hundred parsecs away. It also hardly mattered, as they weren’t here to visit it.
A few hours later, the final d-gate floated in front of them as placidly as the first. But what had up to now been a leisurely journey hop-scotching across the galaxy now transformed into a perilous gambit. What waited on the other side must be the answer to a great many questions. They needed to not only discover this answer, but survive its discovery to return home and change its consequences.
Nika checked the settings on the Taiyok cloaking device, then threw some additional power its way. Next, she checked the native emission dampener and did the same for it. “We are now as invisible as any object possibly can be. We’ll use impulse power on approach to the target location and tip-toe our way in.”
“Sounds good. And at the first sign we’ve been detected or of an approaching threat, we’ll bolt.”
“Bolting is also prepped and ready.”
“All right. Let’s go.”
Gennisi Galaxy, Northwest Quadrant
The sensor displays screamed out a cacophony of overlapping signals at them. The Wayfarer wasn’t a scientific research ship, and it lacked the specialized equipment required to properly parse and analyze the plethora of data washing over it. The volume of noise was so overwhelming, in fact, the instruments were barely able to record it all.
“Whatever is here, it’s not hiding its presence.”
Nika frowned as her eyes darted between the scrolling sensor data and the viewport. “Which is why we are.”
That the mystery here on the edge of the galaxy involved highly advanced technology, and thus presumably an advanced species, now seemed blindingly obvious
. This was the noise of a civilization. But what kind of civilization, and of what inclinations, remained far less clear.
The basic astronomical analysis routine they’d installed proclaimed a white dwarf star system the source of the noise. Four planets orbited the star, but they were by and large silent. This implied the system was not the civilization’s home, which wasn’t notable in and of itself. But assuming the residents had been here for a minimum of eight years, one would think they’d have at least set up a smattering of groundside camps.
As she’d promised, they crept toward the star at an excruciatingly slow speed. Her pulse outpaced it by a fair margin, but she worked to remain otherwise calm. She’d once been a diplomat, a profession where progress often advanced more slowly than glacier flow; she could be patient for an hour.
At 0.7 AU out from the star, their sensors picked up two detached rings of objects orbiting at right angles to one another.
They received the first visual images when they were three megameters from intersecting one of the orbital paths, and she idled the ship briefly so they could study them. The design of the objects resembled nothing Asterions or Taiyoks built, and even Dashiel refused to hazard a guess as to their purpose.
“Can we determine scale? How big are these things?”
She scowled at the equipment controls…she should have downloaded more scientific databases. “Um, I think the sensor is saying the one in the image is roughly four hundred meters in diameter.”
“So big.”
An analysis algorithm spit out a factoid that based on the distance between the objects detected so far, in excess of four thousand of the objects orbited the star. She had to wonder…big compared to what?
Whatever the purpose of the orbital network, EM signals on every band were transmitting between it and the center of the system.
They sneaked through a gap between two of the objects and continued on.
At 0.4 AU out from the star, space began to get crowded. Given the comparative vastness of even short distances in space, this was no easy feat.
Ships flew in every direction—small ships, large ships, but most of all truly enormous ships. The shapes and hull configurations varied, but all were built of a dark, burnished metal that reflected almost no light.
Every so often, two of the ships met one another and docked together, interlinking as effortlessly as if they’d once been two halves of a whole, then separated and continued on.
The star at the center of the system was encased in a Dyson structure—not quite a shell, as it was porous, but a tight lattice more solid than a swarm and far more extensive than a series of rings. The star also wasn’t a white dwarf at all, but the analysis algorithms could be forgiven for being led astray by the encasement.
Outside the Dyson structure, a ring of stations or platforms orbited the full circumference of the star.
She queried the algorithm for another quantity estimate…and sank back in her chair. Eleven thousand?
Each platform was the size of a city, something like twenty kilometers in diameter. The vessels arriving and departing each platform resembled insect swarms, so numerous were they.
Nika instinctively drew in her shoulders and curled her legs beneath her, as if she could make their ship smaller by making herself smaller. If they were less than a speck of dust, they might escape notice.
At 0.2 AU out from the star she brought the Wayfarer to a halt and completed their transformation into a hole in space.
It felt like they had wandered into the central hub of the universe itself. The technology on display was undeniably advanced, but other than the Dyson structure and the presence of objects identifiable as stations and ships, it was all so foreign in design and operation that it masqueraded as magic.
“This isn’t some multi-species conglomerate. A single, monolithic species is driving this operation.”
She glanced over at Dashiel. He hadn’t spoken in several minutes, though neither had she. “Why do you say that?”
“The uniformity of design. Sure, the ships come in a variety of shapes and sizes, I assume depending on their function, but there’s a certain sameness to every structure, from the ships as small as ours to those massive platforms.”
She supposed he was right, but she didn’t have his eye for manufacturing design details. “I expect these are the Rasu, then. But none of this answers the big question: what do they want with us?”
“I doubt it’s to join their interstellar community of peaceful sapient beings.”
“Wouldn’t it have been fantastic if it were?”
He reached out to squeeze her hand. “So fantastic.”
From four successive platforms, more ships than usual departed. Two megameters out from the stellar ring, they began forming up together.
She gestured toward the growing assembly to draw Dashiel’s attention to it, then cautiously reengaged the impulse engine and eased toward it.
“Not too close. Kudos to the Taiyoks for their remarkable cloaking technology, but I don’t think we should risk getting any closer to…” he eyed the busy flow of ship traffic surrounding them “…anything.”
She dipped lower, below the gathering fleet from their perspective, and slowed to a stop, then peered upward through the viewport. “Are those weapons?”
“Well, of course they have weapons….” Dashiel trailed off as he craned his neck to join her in scrutinizing the mammoth ship above them.
Up close, the hull resolved into a deep purple hue. Across the entire underbelly, row after row of modules jutted out to break the hull’s profile into jagged shards.
“They could be for breaking up asteroids or…moons. Planets.” Dashiel sank against the dash to face her. “I’m not seeing anything that looks like a visitor center.”
“Ha!” She laughed, less at the absurdity of the notion than at what it said about the entire situation. “I’m not either. Still, we haven’t seen definitive evidence that they’re hostile or aggressive, only that they’re ridiculously advanced. And very busy.”
He nodded. “The armaments make a compelling argument, but no, we haven’t seen them fire on peaceful craft or…planets. But where are our people? Once they’re brought here they don’t return, so what happens to them? Are they having tea with the aliens inside one of these platforms?”
“If that were true, they wouldn’t have needed to make the voyage in stasis chambers—it’s a ten-hour trip. They wouldn’t have needed to be kidnapped. And it would be Advisors here, not outpost workers and criminals.” She considered the looming hull above them once again. Crept toward it.
“Nika, we’re getting too close.”
She craned her neck to the point of discomfort to gaze up at the weapons. The jagged shards appeared to be oblong crystalline formations, and their design was almost…familiar. They reminded her of something she’d seen before. But what?
“That’s enough.” Dashiel reached over and took charge of the controls, reversing thrusters to regain a bit of distance from the fleet.
A fleet which had now grown beyond the edges of their vision, even at a greater distance. While they’d been gaping at the one ship, a thousand more had joined it.
The smaller vessels began linking together like they’d seen some do on their way in. Small ships grouped together to become large ships.
The invaders stepped forward in unison, tightening their circle, as the remainder of their bodies liquefied. The individual units joined together to form a solid wall around the natives, then a ceiling.
She blinked, confused. Where in her memory stores had that come from? “We have to get closer. Just for a couple of seconds. I need to see how they’re connecting to one another.”
“Why does it matter?”
“Because I think I know something.”
“But…okay.” Dashiel shot her a dubious look, but he eased their ship up and forward. She ceded the controls fully to him and all but climbed on top of the narrow dash in an attempt to get fractio
nally closer to the viewport and thus to the merging vessels above them.
Merging.
The invading aliens stretched out their arm limbs, and what had earlier appeared to be metal or a hard mineral compound transformed into a pseudo-liquid. Now-fluid arms extended until they touched, then merged with one another.
The memory blended effortlessly into reality. All the small ships had now become large ships. Above them, two of the large ships approached one another. Several meters before their hulls touched, the metal comprising each hull lost its structure to become fluidic as each stretched out to touch the other. By the time the two ships met, it was as two fluids merging together. The metal gradually resolidified, until a single seamless hull existed where before there had been two.
The outer shells of the orbs dissolved, stretched out through the air and merged with one another to form a seamless ring.
She stumbled backward, half fell off the dash and collapsed into Dashiel’s chair. They weren’t interlinking. They were melding together.
“Nika, what’s wrong?”
“I’ve seen the Rasu before. I’ve seen their technology in action. I’ve seen what they do to the species they encounter. Dashiel, we are in serious trouble.”
He glanced out the viewport, where the large ships were now merging into the genuinely colossal ships, which then became…more colossal. “You’re not making any sense. How could you possibly have seen them before?”
“I’ll tell you the story once we get out of here, though it probably won’t explain much, because I don’t understand it either. But first, we should do the getting out of here. Trust me, we do not want to be captured by these aliens.”
Neither of them reached for the controls, however. Instead they stared out at the forming behemoth, stunned into inaction by the impossibility of what their eyes showed them. When the final merging was complete, the weapons covering the underbelly lined up from bow to stern as if they had always belonged to a single ship.
Asterion Noir: The Complete Collection (Amaranthe Collections Book 4) Page 48