by Kelly Gay
A small rectangular box rests in her right hand. It seems familiar, but the sunlight glinting off its surface hides its features from view. “This device will log my words and serve to fill the spaces between spaces with understanding and truth. It will hold this truth beyond my passing, beyond the termination of life in the galaxy and its reseeding, and the reemergence of spacefaring civilizations. And even then, some secrets will be kept a while longer.”
A breeze lifts a few strands of her hair while her gaze lies with longing over the land. There is no ancilla to calm the burning ache in her chest or prevent the sting in her eyes. Rion feels the Librarian’s pain quite clearly and wants to reach out, to offer some comfort.
“My part in Living Time grows short. The pride and hubris of my Forerunner nature propels me to fear despite knowing better. I am afraid. Of being forgotten, misunderstood, leaving the galaxy to chance, ceasing to exist…”
Her pause is an effort to clear away the sadness.
The moment passes. One corner of her mouth lifts with a memory that brings a small mote of happiness.
“The Didact often said my ability to read the flow of Living Time was unlike any in the ecumene. In the early centuries of our marriage, this was spoken with unreserved pride and no small amount of affection. Later, it was said with grudging respect and no small amount of debate. Ours was an unlikely match. But two opposing forces can make the strongest bond.…
“I mourn deeply our losses and our separations. I mourn our children, and the many I tended, nurtured, and guided. I mourn the possibilities that went nowhere, for I have seen their enormous potential and have withstood the heartache of knowing what might have been.
“Yet, for all my ability and knowledge, I cannot steer the flow of Living Time around my own eventuality.
“My husband was not wrong. Through life’s interaction with the cosmos, I see the strings and paths and fates and the millions of possible outcomes born of a single possible choice. Vast, overarching probabilities are far easier to see than the faintest filament, that one tiny spark of possibility in a sea of possibilities.
“Sometimes the smallest acts echo the loudest.
“My mentor, the first to seed my young mind with such a notion, would be amused by the sum total of my life, of the cyclical nature of fate and time. She was fond of analogy and metaphor and irony—she adored a good irony.”
Her fondness for this mentor fills Rion with gladness. The memory eases some of the ache in the Librarian’s heart.
“ ‘An unconventional tutor for an unconventional child,’ my father once said as I listened around the corner of his work space. Perhaps the greatest gift he gave me was accepting his unusual child needed a suitably unusual tutor.
“My first glimpse of Living Time came as a child, a chaotic nightmare with no beginning or end, an overwhelming cacophony of moments, deeds, acts, memories, none of which I understood, bombarding me from all directions, jumbling together, tangling and making it impossible to navigate. My only recourse was to hide, to pull my body in close, squeeze my eyes shut, and wait. Wait to wake up.
“Forerunner children rarely weep with any regularity. Most are born with an innate calm, a natural instinct to regulate excessive emotions—a pleasing characteristic that follows many throughout life. I, however, cried with all the fervor of a human child. My inability to sleep made everyone’s life miserable. Our household monitors were only able to console my dreams with chemical intervention.
“In my waking hours, I was a quick study, my thirst for knowledge insatiable and necessary to my well-being. Information was sustenance. My fascination for life in all its forms knew no boundary; the intense wonder of it, springing up in the most impossible environments, was a miracle in which I too could share. This study often took the place of sleep, and while Forerunners grow to no longer need sleep, certainly all children need their rest.
“As the years went by, natural sleep proved elusive and the chemicals were taking their toll on my development into first-form.
“One of my tutors—and the one who would later become my mentor—was a Lifeworker named Harmony in Gifted Symmetry. Her reputation as unconventional was well-known across my home planet. Forerunners were true conformists, their customs within our society—and more so within our rates—guiding our entire lives. But there were always those like Harmony, whose brilliance outshone tradition and regulation. Rebels and outliers were typically frowned upon, but never the brilliant ones like Harmony—they were always given concessions, at least in public and academic circles.
“Harmony had just entered her four-thousandth year when I was born. She was renowned for her work on psy-neural remapping and programming and had a gift for corrective therapy and guided remediation in children and young Manipulars.
“Harmony showed me that my nightmares, and the fear they created, could be studied. We recorded, analyzed, and drew conclusions. My dreams became a separate entity, an unsolved puzzle to study and test, thus appealing to the great driving need for knowledge that constantly churned in my center.
“My mentor was very astute,” the Librarian says with a glint of humor and pride, and Rion can feel the great affection that wells in the Librarian’s chest.
“Through Harmony’s teachings, navigating through the chaos and tangle of my nightmares, squeezing through the strings and webs and layers, suddenly became a challenge I welcomed.
“It was the quieting of my own fear that gave the tangled web its voice. And I listened. What I heard was… injury, confinement, imbalance, the desperate need to unravel and rejoin the flow of what I then came to understand as Living Time.
“I became an astute listener. I learned to follow. Events leading to threads, threads leading to divergence, and divergence leading to possibilities that had not yet solidified. These possibilities would shape my entire life to come.
“Eventually, I traveled through Living Time the same way I traveled through the Forerunners’ vast stores of knowledge, only able to see what was, what is, and never what was to come, only the possibilities and probabilities.
“After I gained my first-form, the Domain opened to me, an event I coveted more than anything I had so far in my short life.
“I should have known my experience would be unconventional.
“It was not my ancestors who greeted me with warmth and the sharing of their great knowledge and experience, but the deep darkness of space, and out of it, shapeless forms, ghosts, flowing toward me with dizzying speed. In two great lines they shuddered past me, great rushing rivers that had become too bloated and too full, spilling over their nebulous banks and oozing fetid and rank and infectious across a field of living green.
“I woke drowning. And I’ve been fighting for Life ever since.”
CHAPTER 19
Ace of Spades / Slipspace to New Carthage
Ram was relieved to see Niko and Lessa gathered in the lounge, sitting around the table, and Spark waiting over the holopad. After the blowout in the hold, he expected the tension and somber mood that greeted him. Losing Rion had everyone on edge.
First things first. That’s how he operated, one foot in front of the other.
He was an orderly sort, open-minded, willing to listen to the opinions of others if asked, occasionally if not. A captain who rarely raised his voice—he didn’t need that kind of energy in his life. His requirements consisted of a crew that enjoyed their jobs, didn’t complain too much, and respected the process, the ship, and its captain. He had learned over the years not to waste time with anything else. If that wasn’t good enough, you could get your ass off his ship. That simple.
Taking the lead here on the Ace of Spades was a little trickier.
But it needed to be done. Niko and Lessa didn’t have enough experience or maturity to think too far down the road of consequences. And Spark… while he could run a fleet of ships in his sleep, being a shipboard AI clearly wasn’t his calling; it was simply a bridge to something else, though Spark didn’t se
em to know what that was. Ram had seen it time and again in others. Didn’t make Spark wrong or bad, just made him… temporary.
Like Ram himself.
He slid into a seat at the table and got right to business. “Let’s start with the portal. Spark, you want to fill us in on what you know about it, what the captain might be going through… and what we can expect when we find her?”
“Of course. I believe the portal on Zeta Halo was issued from a personal slipspace unit, a device that follows similar principles as those used in translocation technologies and those used in remotely sending a Halo through slipspace, for instance. The device itself can exist in one location, on either the departure or destination side. The anomalous placement of such a device was most likely done without authorization; personal slipspace units were forbidden to use except by special license from the Forerunner Council.”
“Why forbidden?” Lessa asked.
“Imagine billions of souls regularly using personal transports across four million worlds. The immense buildup of reconciliation would have made it impossible and highly dangerous for any other space travel to occur.”
“Traveling Forerunners had armor, though. Rion is human. She doesn’t have that kind of protection,” Lessa said miserably.
“Do you remember my story, when Riser and Bornstellar and I were kidnapped by the Master Builder?” Spark said. “We were taken from orbit down to the San’Shyuum homeworld in what I can only describe as a kind of bubble, protection spheres that guarded us from the conditions of space. It is my conclusion that the captain may be contained in such a way and is therefore safe within the portal and the rigors of slipspace.”
“And how about out of it?” Niko asked. “Are we talking another Cartographer site?”
“I cannot say.”
“So this place could be perfectly safe, or it could have been destroyed thousands of years ago, or be underwater, or in some other danger zone…” Lessa rubbed her temples and released a frustrated groan. “It makes me sick just thinking about it.”
“She had, what, a handgun and a couple frags?” Niko added in a quiet tone, his face a little paler than before.
“Assault rifle, a few extra mags,” Ram answered. “But we know the vests are kept prepacked, so she has light, enough food and water tabs to last a few days, a couple heat strips, and a med kit. If she landed in the kind of facilities we’ve been to so far, she’ll survive until we get to her.” He leaned back in his chair and lifted his arms over his head in an effort to alleviate the pressure on his chest, locking his hands behind his head. “But getting to her is going to be tricky.”
With the wave of his hand, a serene vision appeared of a blue planet hovering over the table. New Carthage might look tranquil from orbit, but Ram knew firsthand the dangers lurking in its vast oceans and the weathered shale mountains, high alpine plains, and semi-arid grasslands and deserts. He made a flare motion with his fingers to zoom closer on a particular landmass. That in turn became a region, and the region became Pilvros, with a coordinate dot sitting directly in the city center, smack-dab in the heart of its tallest skyscraper. “The key’s coordinates are right on top of Hannibal HQ.”
Niko bent forward and let his forehead make a nice thud against the surface. “Ow.” Kid forgot about his injury. “Tricky is a goddamn understatement, Ram.”
“What’s Hannibal HQ?” Lessa asked.
“The headquarters of Hannibal Weapons Systems. They’re a tech giant—securities, ordnance…” Niko sat up and began a search on his screen.
“Their R and D, manufacturing, and testing sites are in Kotka,” Ram said. “But the business center, the heart of HWS, is in Pilvros. In terms of security, it’ll be tight.”
“So what are we thinking? The portal is somewhere in the building or hidden beneath it?” Lessa asked. “And if that’s the case, how could they have built an entire skyscraper without detecting it?”
“Forerunners employed a variety of stealth technology. Bafflers, energy fields, spatial distortion, dazzlers…,” Spark answered.
“Who says they didn’t detect it?” Niko scrolled through text. “Says here in 2474, the Hannibal family settled on thirty acres in the Pori Region. Those thirty acres would eventually become the city of Pilvros. There’s been a building on our coordinate site since 2505. Six years after that, Jack Pilvros Hannibal tested the first small-scale quantum photonic amplifier for SATCOM relays. It revolutionized the speed and integrity of extraplanetary communication. They called him a genius, the brightest forward thinker of the day. That patent and all of the ones since remain closely guarded.
“So it’s possible. Good ole JP found a Forerunner facility out in the wilds of Pori, began reverse-engineering the tech he found, and built his empire right on top of it.”
“Maybe,” Ram said. “It’s a pretty big coincidence to ignore. Whatever jump-started his career, Hannibal isn’t one we should underestimate. He built an empire that extends from Pilvros to New Mombasa. His company is nice and cozy with the UNSC, advancing the tech on small arms, major weapons, security… If he did find our site, you better believe the steps he’s created to keep it hidden are going to be extreme.”
Niko swiped images of Hannibal HQ’s interior from his datapad to the holopad. “Swanky place. Building’s been updated throughout the years. The atrium is four stories and centered around this beauty. They call it the Pori Meteor—try saying that five times fast.” A mammoth shard of variegated rock took center stage, surrounded by carefully landscaped plants, accent lighting, and viewing benches.
“Yeah, that’s not suspicious.” Lessa shifted to Spark. “What kind of Forerunner site should we be looking for?”
“The new key that was forged could very well be read at a multitude of sites: terminals, way stations, Cartographers…,” Spark replied. “Once we are near the site, I will know more.”
“We’ll need to make as little noise as possible,” Ram said, his mind already weighing options. “This place might look like an inviting office building, but it’s a fortress, make no mistake. We have three days until we drop out of our jump. Once in orbit, we’ll hang there and see what we can find out. Sound good?”
They voiced their agreement. All in all, despite the challenge they faced, Ram was pleased with the meeting. Now came the harder part.
It was clear Niko felt one hundred percent responsible for what had happened to the captain. But the real reason the tullioc creatures had attacked the ship would sit a little longer. For now, a lesson needed to be learned. A ship was only as good as a crew that worked together.
Assuming the discussion was over, Niko started to rise.
“We’re not done,” Ram told him, returning the kid’s surprised look with a steady gaze. “I can find out myself with a little digging, but would rather you come clean about what happened back on Zeta.”
After a long bout of silence, Niko returned to his seat and suddenly found his cuticles of great interest. Ram could feel the kid’s knee quietly bouncing under the table. Niko didn’t seem to know where to start, but there was no need to push; that would have the opposite effect Ram was after. He merely sat back and waited.
“Fine,” Niko muttered. “Look… I’m from Aleria,” he said as if that explained everything. “Shit follows you no matter where or how far you run. The guilds—they don’t just let you go, not if they can help it.”
A pale shade slid over Lessa’s features. “Cross Cut wants you back?”
“No. Well, I’m sure they’d love to have me back, but, no.… It’s Holson Relay. They want a bank of midlevel slipspace capacitors.”
“That’s a big ask,” Ram said. Big, but not impossible.
“They’re not asking. All the guilds care about is having the fastest and the largest fleets. The more they can run, and the quicker they can do it, the more credits they bank. Holson is trying to get ahead. And I have one month to help them do it.”
“And if you don’t deliver?”
Niko scru
bbed both hands over his head and linked them behind his neck, staring at the ceiling with a pained expression. “I’d rather deliver it, and just be done with it.”
“You don’t owe them anything,” Lessa said, not getting it.
But Ram certainly did. The humiliation the kid was trying so hard to hide told him all he needed to know. Everyone had skeletons in their closet. And sometimes you paid a hefty price for keeping them there.
Ram relaxed, retrieving a hand-rolled cigarette from his pocket and then tapping it on the table as he studied Niko. “So… we give them what they want and get them off your back once and for all.”
“What?” Niko and Lessa said together.
“We’ll see what we can do once we reach New Carthage.”
Lessa’s sharp laugh echoed across the lounge. “You’re just going to waltz into a market somewhere and buy a bank of capacitors?”
Ram returned her disbelief with an easy shrug. “New Carthage isn’t the worst place to find what he needs. Inner Colony. Strong tech sector. Vibrant economy. Means plenty of ships. And where there are ships, there are slipspace capacitors. Mission first, and then we’ll see what we can do.”
“There is the very real possibility it is a trap.” Spark voiced the same concern lurking in Ram’s mind. “The ONI reward for our capture is a strong incentive.”
“I don’t think this is part of that,” Niko told Spark. “Snitching to the authorities, especially between outlaws, never looks good and taints you among the guilds. Plus, they don’t want to meet—they want me to score the capacitors, put them in rented storage, and then give them the location and lock code.”
“Send me the connection path to your guild contact,” Ram said. “No arguments. You’ll remain point of contact, but someone else needs to be able to communicate with them if anything goes wrong. For now… let’s tell them you’ve got a line on the capacitors, and you’ll be in touch. That’ll keep them off your back for a while.”