Ship of Destiny

by Frank Chadwick

  “Wait,” Ma said, “now what makes you think star travel is a Guardian-only technology? We’ve only seen eight of the starships and maybe you know who or what’s driving them, but I sure don’t.”

  Sam saw her flush with anger and he couldn’t blame her. Ma hadn’t just interrupted her, he’d managed to sound pretty patronizing as well. Choice took a breath before answering.

  “We discovered the Guardians are genetically engineered to digest any protein chains from any tree of life. What does that remind you of?”

  Choice looked at Ma for a moment and he shrugged.

  “Think harder,” she said, and when the flush of anger rose in his cheeks and ears, she shook her head.

  “As you more than anyone on this ship should know, Lieutenant Ma, every jump drive in the Cottohazz is protected from examination by a defense mechanism which produces a neurotoxin fatal to every large organism from every tree of life we know. Dr. Däng, do you know any way to create a single organic neurotoxin which will attack every large species of every tree of life in the Cottohazz?”

  “No, dear, but I am not a microbiologist.”

  “Do you know any microbiologist who could do that?”

  “Well . . . I suppose not,” Däng answered. “That is an interesting point.”

  “We always assumed the Varoki made that device to protect their intellectual property,” Choice continued. “But bioengineering has never been a significant feature of Varoki technology. How did they come up with it? Now that we know they found and copied the jump drive, I think they just found a way around the defenses that were already there and copied them as well. I’d bet my life that anti-tamper device is Guardian bioengineered, and if so, why would the Guardians need it? Obviously to guard it against their own client races, or as Dr. Johnstone suggests, their slaves.”

  The table was silent as they all thought that over. Then Ma whistled.

  “Ms. Choice, I have to hand it to you. I think you’re right. That makes you one and one,” he said with a grin, as if he were an instructor awarding a student a prize.

  “One and one?” she said.

  “Well, you were wrong about the galaxy being full of conscious, self-aware machines left behind by vanished civilizations, but I think you nailed this one.”

  Choice stared at him for several long seconds and then looked around the other faces surrounding the table, the irritation on her face changing to confusion and then surprise.

  “You mean you haven’t figured it out?” she asked all of them. “I thought it was too obvious to even mention. Weren’t any of you listening to the recording when our prisoner asked Captain Bitka, rhetorically, what the difference was between an organism and a machine? Don’t you remember Dr. Däng telling us that the Guardians were intelligently designed? Lieutenant Ma, you said if I could find a way to give a machine an orgasm you’d listen to me. In reply, I offer our oversexed prisoner, Te’Anna. The Guardians are the machines of an extinct civilization. We just never imagined machines made of meat.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Two days later, aboard USS Cam Ranh Bay,

  outbound to Destie-Seven

  9 June 2134 (one hundred thirteen days after Incident Seventeen)

  Sam coasted onto the bridge, took the watch from Homer Alexander, and strapped himself into the command chair. He checked the chronometer: 0345, halfway through the Mid Watch.

  “Habitat wheel is spun down and locked, sir.” Lieutenant Barr-Sanchez at Ops One reported. “All passengers and crew reported strapped in. Ship is secure for acceleration.”

  “Very well, helm,” Sam replied, “make your burn.”

  “Aye, aye, sir.”

  Barr-Sanchez hit the acceleration warning klaxon, waited ten seconds, and then fired the main thruster. Sam felt the vibration of it through the structure of the ship itself. Then the acceleration pushed him back in his chair until the nose of Cam Ranh Bay became “up.” They were starting with a half-gee burn for ten minutes, spending a chunk of HRM to build up an initial vector. After that they would drop back to a sustained twentieth of a gee. Since the power plant could generate a higher exhaust velocity at lower thrust, their reaction mass efficiency would be much better, and they could sustain that thrust all the way to the gas giant.

  For over a month they had coasted silently in low-emission mode, living off a charged power ring and recycled waste heat. Now their direct fusion thruster would show up on every large thermal array in the star system. P’Daan and his long ships would know where they were and would know where they were headed. If what they thought about the Guardian ships was true, they did not have the thrust to catch the Bay before it got to Destie-Seven-Echo, the moon holding the system’s main shipyard.

  Unless the Guardians made an in-system jump and got out ahead of them. There was nothing Sam could do about that but wait and see what happened. He thought the odds were better than fifty-fifty they would not execute an in-system jump. He thought he was beginning to get a handle on their psychology. Well, they’d see soon enough.

  Signaler First Lakhanpal in the Comm One chair beside him gave a start and touched his ear. “Uh . . . Captain? I’m getting a tight beam text, low power, in Destie. Here’s the translation: So lonely. Nice you travel with me. There’s no signature, sir.”

  “Track it if you can,” Sam said, sitting forward in his chair and activating his own workstation display. “But you say it’s low power?”

  “Very low power sir. Can’t have come from . . . Oh, shit! It’s from the bulk carrier we’ve been shadowing!”

  “Captain, should I sound general quarters?” the petty officer in the TAC One chair asked. Sam shook his head and settled back in his chair.

  “If it wanted to hurt us, it would have done so a long time ago,” he said.

  “You mean there’s crew on that bulk carrier, sir?” Lakhanpal asked. “I thought it was unmanned.”

  “It is unmanned. That’s the ship talking.”

  All this time the bulk carrier had known they were there and said nothing, told no one, happy just for the company of another ship. Te’Anna had said it must be lonely for a Human crew with no ship to talk to. What was it like for a self-aware ship with no crew? It took a moment for Sam to trust his voice to continue.

  “COMM, make the following reply in Destie, very low power, tight beam, no signature: I will always remember you. Safe voyage.”

  Three hours later Lieutenant Koichi Ma sat across from the captain and poked at his breakfast: scrambled egglike-substance with diced faux ham. Actually, that was a disservice to the galley crew, who did a great job putting meals on tables. He usually liked breakfast, but today he had no taste for anything, especially breakfast with the captain, but it was his turn in the rotation. If only Bitka weren’t so damned . . . optimistic. It just wasn’t natural, and if it was an act, it was a hell of a good one.

  “You seem distracted, Mister Ma,” the captain said between mouthfuls of egg. Nothing wrong with his appetite.

  “Sorry, sir, My A-gang has an EVA deficit we’re having a hard time catching up on.”

  “What’s the problem?”

  Ma shrugged. “Only so many EVA-qualified techs, and safety standards limit how many hours a watch they can spend suited up and working out there in hard vacuum. Being under constant acceleration, even at a twentieth of a gee, makes everything harder and a lot more dangerous. Now Lieutenant Alexander wants us to move six of the Mark Four missiles out of their launch pods on the habitat wheel and up to the main hull’s docking bay. I don’t have the job hours to do it as soon as he wants.”

  The captain put his fork down, slowly raised his coffee mug, and sipped carefully. In a twentieth of a gee, sudden movements tended to put coffee all over the place.

  “Well, we need those Mark Fours up in the main hull if we’re going to use them in a fight,” the captain said. “You know our plan involves decoupling the main hull from the spin habitat so we can get more acceleration. Plan also calls for using th
ose Mark Fours as a supplement to the railgun-launched Mark Fives. The Fours aren’t as lethal but they’ve got their own solid-fuel rocket engines and more acceleration than our jury-rigged Mark Fives.”

  “Yes, sir. I’m just not sure how we’re going to get it done.”

  The captain sat studying him with that look which Ma had never learned to penetrate but had gotten used to. The captain was thinking, but usually not about what a disappointment someone was. Mostly he thought about fixing the problem.

  “Well, let’s do this,” he said. “I don’t want you to push crew safety but put off some of the routine maintenance and make a block of time with those hours you free up. You get your crew all set and I’ll have Ops cut the thrusters, give you time to move those missiles in zero gee, which should be a lot easier. I don’t want to coast for long with those two Guardian ships still accelerating behind us, so let’s move four missiles now. That’s all the plan calls for. The other two are insurance. We’ll see about moving the other two once you get caught up on the maintenance backlog. What do you think?”

  “Cutting the acceleration will make it a lot easier, sir. And safer.”

  “Can you get those four missiles moved in an hour?”

  “It’ll be tight sir. I’ll do my best . . . ” Ma stopped. Why was he promising something he knew he couldn’t deliver? “No, sir. I can’t do it in an hour. It will take at least two.”

  Bitka got that far-away look again as he sipped his coffee.

  “Okay, two hours. Let me know when you have it set up.”

  That afternoon Sam woke from a light nap in his day cabin when an incoming comm vibrated the base of his skull. He sat up on the couch, rested his legs on the floor, and took a minute or so to collect his thoughts and drive away the last fog of sleep. He squinted and saw Homer Alexander’s ID tag. Homer was OOD that watch.

  “Yes, TAC?”

  Those two long ships following us have started burning a lot of HRM, sir, Alexander said. They’re trying to catch up.

  Those were the two Guardian long ships which had been outbound, apparently toward the gas giant Destie Seven, as part of the system-wide search. Once Sam had lit the Bay’s reactor and accelerated away from the bulk carrier, the Desties had tracked them up. The two outbound long ships had begun accelerating as well, and they had continued to do so for the last two days.

  “Well,” Sam said, “they’re heading for the biggest gas station in the star system, assuming they scoop hydrogen from gas giants for reaction mass like we do. Hard to see how they get around otherwise. They must figure they can afford to burn it up. They making any progress?”

  No, sir. Still falling behind. So what’s the point?

  Yeah, Sam wondered, what was the point? The Guardians couldn’t catch them before the Bay got to Destie-Seven. Of course, the gas giant wasn’t their main concern, it was the shipyard at Destie-Seven-Echo. Had the Guardians figured that out? Probably. It wasn’t that complicated if they stopped to think about it. Of course, these were immortal gods who’d been on the top of the heap for centuries, maybe millennia. Did they bother to think hard anymore?

  “I don’t know what they intend, TAC, but the longer they burn, the less time we’ll have to take care of business at the shipyard. Since we still don’t know what we’re going to do when we get there, I’d rather they took their time following us.”

  Wait one, Alexander said, and the contact went dead for a few seconds, then Alexander came back on. Captain, we’ve got an incoming tight beam holocomm.

  “Where’s it from, TAC?”

  Looks like Destie-Five orbit. It’s definitely a Destie or Guardian holocomm, but they’ve cut the data flow rate down so our processors can decode it without a work-around. Same procedure they used back before.

  “Nice of them to remember,” Sam said. “Is there an explanatory tag on it?”

  Yes, sir. It says it’s for you. Asks for you by name: Captain Samuel Bitka.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  At the same time, aboard USS Cam Ranh Bay,

  outbound to Destie-Seven

  9 June 2134 (one hundred thirteen days after Incident Seventeen)

  Ka’Deem Brook sat at the desk in the office he had inherited from Mikko Running-Deer and went through the meaningless routine of producing yet another Plan of the Day, as if everyone on the ship did not know that today was going to be like yesterday and like tomorrow, at least for the immediate future.

  His mind wandered and he wondered what Choice was doing right now. Had she taken another lover? He wouldn’t mind if she had, as long as it was another civilian. He wouldn’t like her talking about him in bed to another officer, but he could live with that. He just hoped she hadn’t found one before she broke off their relationship. He’d never had any expectation the affair would last forever and had simply enjoyed it while it had. A Cottohazz-wide famous musician and a Navy lieutenant? Sure, he could just see himself at SMA—the Stellar Music Awards—the ugly duckling among a thousand swans. No, he’d enjoyed his moment of carnal bliss, and he knew people in the service would eventually figure out it had happened, maybe with some understated hints from him. That wouldn’t do him any harm, either. Maybe she’d even mention him in a tell-all memoir of her harrowing adventure. That would smack! Even if she trashed him, that would still smack. He wondered if it would cause much trouble with his wife Bunny.

  But . . . what if Choice took up with an enlisted crewperson? What would their pillow talk about him be? The thought sent a shudder of dread through his body.

  The commlink vibrated at the base of his skull and he saw the ID tag for Captain Bitka. Now what?

  “Yes, sir?”

  XO, I’ve got an incoming holocomm from the Guardians addressed personally to me. We’ll record it but you should helmet up and sit in. Set your holosuite to receive only. No point in confusing them as to who’s who.

  “Aye, aye, sir,” Brook answered and felt his stomach tighten as he cut the circuit and looked around for his helmet. It was just here this morning. Ah! The door brackets. There it was.

  His hand trembled slightly as he slipped on the helmet and sealed it. He plugged his shipsuit into the life-support umbilical at his desk workstation—who knew how long this would take? He took a couple measured, steadying breaths and felt his heart rate start to slow again.

  He had seen vid of the Guardians but had not been present in any of the interviews with their prisoner. He had no need to participate, nor any desire. The less he had to interact with them the better, but he knew he had a job to do. Someone had to keep the captain in check.

  Ka’Deem Brook was probably the only senior officer on Cam Ranh Bay who had not been swept away upon hearing that Sam Bitka was taking command. He’d already gotten a full report on Captain Bitka from his friend and Annapolis classmate, Larry Goldjune: the lack of experience and professional polish, the tendency to shoot from the hip and trust to luck, the unwillingness to accept Navy tradition and procedures.

  Actually, Larry and Brook hadn’t exactly been classmates. Brook had been a year older than Larry, a “Youngster” to Larry’s “Plebe” when they met. Somehow, he had never felt able to exercise authority over the younger midshipman. Brook chalked that up to Larry’s natural leadership. He’d have far preferred Larry as a captain to Bitka.

  Even back at Annapolis, Brook and everyone around him knew Larry Goldjune would someday outrank them all, and it wouldn’t pay to antagonize him. After all, it was in Larry’s blood: his father at that time a senior captain commanding a President-class cruiser and his uncle had already worn the two collar stars of rear admiral upper half. If somehow Brook returned from this nightmare, having a Goldjune ally would matter.

  Captain Bitka wasn’t a disaster as a commanding officer, but he also wasn’t anything special, in Brook’s opinion. Bitka had no real experience in operations or on the technical side—unless you counted being able to repair an ordinary fabricator, a job for a machinist’s mate second class. He had very little com
mand experience, and his lack of a formal command education at the academy was apparent in almost everything he did. His one claim to fame was his supposed genius for tactics, but the new drills which were beating long ships in the simulations were developed by Alexander, with some help from Acho, not by Bitka. Even the idea for them had come from that leatherhead, Haykuz.

  Bitka was likeable, Brook supposed, in a remote sort of way, but even there he managed to sacrifice most of the majesty associated with a commanding officer without gaining any sort of intimacy with the crew in return. Ma and Alexander, the two fellow reservists among the department heads, probably looked up to him for obvious reasons: birds of a feather. Brook wasn’t sure where Acho stood. What had puzzled him was Running-Deer’s admiration for him, especially as she had been the other academy-trained senior officer on board. He chalked that up to her infatuation. Too bad she had died before seeing her hero had feet of clay.

  Not that Brook wanted Bitka’s job. He just wanted a captain he had more confidence in.

  XO, are you ready? he heard Bitka ask inside his head. Brook slid the helmet visor down and secured it with a click, activating his holosuite.

  “Ready, Captain Bitka.”

  Good. Won’t pay to keep a god waiting too long. COMM, patch us through.

  As the channel opened, the holosuite took over and Brook’s view of his office disappeared, replaced by that of the interior of an alien starship. He made sure the holosuite was recording their first look at what was probably the bridge of a Guardian long ship. It had workstations which looked similar to those of the New People, but crewed by an entirely different alien race, barrel-chested with slender arms, large heads, dark coloration, and what looked to be a carapace of some type. The faces looked more like insects than anything else, but with more familiar-looking eyes, although four of them: two on the front of the face and one to each side. Another race with awkward-looking hands and only three fingers and a thumb. Brook immediately recognized the Guardian from the earlier broadcasts by the coloration of his feathers: P’Daan.