by C. Gockel
“Murderers. Sadists. Primitive beasts. Abusers of Children.”
Volka heard the scream of a rabbit she’d snared on the asteroid, the horrified squeak of rats before she’d wrung their necks and saw the eyes of deer roll in terror—she remembered that one vividly. Her shot had not been clean; she’d felt bad at the time but hadn’t dwelled on it … reliving it was worse. But worse than reliving it was the fear of what would come next. “No!” she exclaimed. But come the memories did … the screams of pain when she’d broken a weere man’s toes in No Weere, the men she’d killed aboard the Leetier, the pirates she’d shot, the pirate captain she’d killed by depressurization, and her brief desire to torture that captain before she’d ultimately murdered her.
“Sadists! Sadists!” the voices roared.
Lieutenant Young moaned, and the misery in the utterance snapped Volka into the real world. All the humans around her had fallen to their knees. Clutching her head, Rhinehart cried in agony, and Dr. Patrick was wrestling with something she couldn’t see.
“Get out! Get out!” Jerome cried, palms pressed to his eyes.
Young’s eyes briefly met hers, and Volka slipped into his mind … and saw a woman in a bunker holding a child. Both the child’s and woman’s eyes were open in death. Around their corpses were men and women in military fatigues, weapons at the ready … but eyes vacant. “It was a mistake,” Young said. Clutching his head, he bowed, and the mental connection severed. The only one who seemed unaffected—or differently affected—was Carl. The werfle was on top of the crate, hissing, spitting, and clawing at an invisible enemy. His necklace crackled. “The strings, Volka! Focus on the strings!” At Carl’s words she saw the strings again. The entire ship was so full of them, it was as though they were entrapped in a spider’s nest—Volka began slapping herself, as though she could dislodge them, but they weren’t attached by any physical means.
“Murderers of children,” the voices roared, and the present vanished. She saw instead the children on the pirates’ planet and remembered the emptiness in her own heart as she’d slaughtered them—the complete absence of emotion she’d had in that moment. Looking back, the calm, the void of feeling she’d experienced, was terrifying. She’d been worse than any myth of machines that she’d been taught to fear in her early life on Luddeccea. Her face crumpled; her body did, too. Bile rose in her throat. She remembered 6T9 saying, “There has to have been another way.” The weight of the memory and the telepathic onslaught of the elder ships pushed her down to the floor, as though the strings she’d imagined were solid things.
The elder ships’ voices roared again. “You didn’t want to find another way. You are pitiless. Unforgivable.”
Hot tears fell down Volka’s cheeks.
“You know it is true,” the voices roared.
But in her mind, she saw 6T9 saying, “I ran simulations … hundreds of them. There was no other way.” For a moment, the strings lightened. Volka rose to one knee, and then the other and shouted heavenward, “No. You’re the ones who are wrong.”
“Rationalization,” the ships roared.
Volka grinned with all her teeth. “Science and math from someone who cannot kill or maim or hurt, whose very being is repulsed by those things is not wrong!”
“You have abused a child!” the ships thundered, and the weight of the accusation sent Volka sprawling into some crates. Before she could scramble upright, they took over her mind again. She saw the universe from Sundancer’s view, felt Sundancer’s terror as the ship let the Dark’s weapons hit her in order to save Volka and the others on S33. Volka experienced the ship’s panic in the ensuing pursuit, and abject horror that Sundancer felt as her life-force faded in the shadow of one of the system’s moons. And then Volka was thrust into the diversion Sundancer had created on the pirates’ planet. She lived the ship’s terror as she struggled in the maw of the planet’s carnivorous flowers, waiting for the Dark to strike. And Volka felt Sundancer’s more recent dread as the ship had lowered into Reich’s facility, where the Dark’s weapons waited. She lived the alarm Sundancer had felt when they’d been cornered by the Dark’s ships after dropping off Ambassador Zhao.
Volka had thought she had experienced the ship’s consciousness before, but she’d been wrong. She’d only skimmed the surface. Volka had been overwhelmed at times by the ship’s emotions—they all had been tossed around by them as though on a turbulent sea occasionally—but she hadn’t seen beneath. Now she did. They’d theorized before that Sundancer was a child, but now she knew that was undeniable. The ship was a child; Sundancer’s understanding of the universe was simplistic—Sundancer didn’t understand why she did things for Volka and Carl; the ship just did what they willed because they were the only family she had.
Volka’s will disintegrated. She’d abused Sundancer. No child deserved what they’d put her through. It had been abuse, intentional or not.
Falling to the floor, barely catching herself, Volka whispered, “Sundancer, I am so sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
Her hands on the ship’s floor went warm, the strings of the universe so tight between her and the elder ships snapped, and she was engulfed by the consciousness of Sundancer. Sensation ran up her hands and into her heart and mind; Volka felt Sundancer’s confusion and incomprehension. More visions came to her mind. She saw herself, 6T9, and Carl making their way across the chasm on Libertas toward the ship and felt disbelief and joy, the sensation that she might be having a particularly cruel dream. Sundancer had been so afraid they weren’t real! Volka felt Sundancer’s fear thinking that they’d die on S33—Sundancer had faded into unconsciousness behind S33’s cold, dark moon, believing she’d never see Volka and Carl again … and she lived Sundancer’s later wonder when the ship awoke and realized that Volka and Carl hadn’t died. Volka experienced the shock Sundancer had felt when Alaric’s ship had blasted at the carnivorous flowers, the wonder in the way they fought against the Dark on Reich’s planet, too—with violence and passion that rivaled the Dark itself. In a flash, Volka understood that physical violence was anathema to everything Sundancer knew from her time with her own kind, and her time with the aliens, and yet that violence and passion had saved the little ship time and time again.
“You don’t have to do it anymore,” Volka said. “You can stay with your own kind.”
Volka’s mind filled with the image of the inside-out-world filled with alien corpses, and an image of Earth black with the sludge that was the blue-green algae form the Dark preferred. She saw a bumblebee caught in a pool of the thick poison muck.
“It’s not your fight, Sundancer,” Volka whispered.
The mental connection snapped. Around Volka the crates began to rattle. Beneath her, the floor began to shake. Carl, standing on his hind legs, crashed to all ten paws. Young had managed to push himself up a wall, but his knees buckled, and he slipped to the floor again. The air shimmered as though with heat and then the ship rocked with a single word. “Nnnnnoooo.”
Flush on Sundancer’s floor, Volka’s hands grew hot—transference of the ship’s conviction. Sundancer thought it was her fight, too. Sundancer didn’t want humans or their worlds to die.
And then the floor cooled, and it was like a sigh. Volka felt longing from the little ship and saw the space ports they had visited, Shinar, Time Gate 5, Copernicus, Luddeccea, Earth, and their own little asteroid. She saw the garden with its butterflies by day and owls at night. Sundancer wanted to go home … but … Another picture filled her mind. The same strands of spiderweb that filled the inside of the ship wrapped around the outside as well.
A new sensation began to rise in Volka’s stomach. It boiled up from within her, making her stand, and her hands form fists. She was enraged. The ships, Sundancer’s own kind, who’d so recently been silent frozen obelisks, who’d just been saved by human fusion fire were judging humankind—and they’d trapped Sundancer because they’d rather the ship be dead and alone than associate with human savages.
&nb
sp; “It is time to leave, Sundancer,” Volka whispered, and envisioned the strings peeling away. She felt Sundancer’s agreement, but also the ship’s uncertainty. She didn’t know how to confront her own kind.
Volka’s eyes slid to Carl, and saw him with both her eyes and her mind. The little creature was a whirling dervish of rage, and around him the strings were thinner, but overall, it was having no effect on the elder ships’ mental assault. “Stupid, light-sipping, surrender rocks!” he raged at the ships. “Of course I feel no guilt for saving your baby!”
“Saving?” the ships roared in terrible unison. “You’ve corrupted her.”
“Poisoned her.”
“Abused her.”
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” Young said. Volka looked at him slouched on the floor, palms pressed to his eyes. She saw the strings were tight around him, the other Marines, and Dr. Patrick. Her lips curled in disgust. Not at the humans. At the ships that would torment creatures without a mental defense against telepathic assault. Her mind roved over the Marines, all of them, every one of them, even the ones she couldn’t see in other parts of the ship. The humans were doubly disadvantaged against the ships. Unlike Carl, they could feel guilt. Unlike her, they had no defense … and yet … suddenly Volka thought she might know how to fight the elder ships.
“We’re breaking out of here, Sundancer,” she hissed, feeling every word. “But I need your help. You have to help me amplify human thoughts.”
Anything, the ship answered, though it was only an emotion, Volka felt certain. It was a terrible responsibility, but it might save Sundancer and everyone aboard her. Volka held onto that thought, closed her eyes, and let the real world melt away. She felt Sundancer’s psychic embrace, as surely as the ship’s physical embrace protected her from the void. Power surged through Volka as Sundancer’s abilities made her own stronger. Volka felt the strings of the universe between her and Sundancer, the ships, and the Marines … and her hands twisted as though to rip them away. With her mind and her heart, she whispered to the elder ships, “You’re right. It was terrible for Sundancer to experience such things.”
Volka could, unlike Carl, understand that. She was human—partially. She did feel guilt at the death she caused, even of deer and rats. She purposely tried to make her kills clean. But she needed to kill, even more so than humans. She was a carnivore. There were worse things to be.
In her mind, Sundancer’s walls fell away. Volka was suspended in the void by her rage. “It was terrible what she was put through.”
There was a pause, as though the elder ships were digesting that admission. The strings vibrated with their righteousness, and Volka let them wallow in it. Slashing her hands, Volka imagined the strings wrapping around the Marines and Dr. Patrick ripping away … and then the humans and Carl were suspended with her in her mind’s eye—or rather, Sundancer’s mind’s eye, for surely it was Sundancer allowing her to do this. For a blinding instant, Volka knew her crew—all their shames and strengths and their will. She saw Carl as he was: an amalgamation of the being that inhabited a werfle and the werfle itself. The werfle was all predator, a predator that could love its kin, but outside of its kin its ability to empathize was strained. Carl loved Volka and 6T9 as hatchlings, family … not as teammates. Possibly because his mind wasn’t wired in a way that could. His kind were more capable of genocide than humans were: outside of kin, there was no concept of murder.
The humans were … different. They were so much weaker than Carl’s kind. Sixty had once told her there was a theory that humans only survived because of their relationship with canines. Canines had given humans speed, hearing, and a sense of smell that humans lacked. Maybe that early success had forever altered the human psyche. Humans could be hostile to the “other,” but the definition of “other” was flexible, both at a species level and a personal level. Humans could empathize in a way that Carl couldn’t … and it was humans who were going to help Volka win.
She felt the seventeen humans become aware of her mental presence, felt them questioning in seventeen different ways, from Young’s, “Volka, what is going on?” to Dr. Patrick’s, “How are we in the void?” and Ramirez’s less specific, “What the fuck?”
“We fight them the way they are fighting us, telepathically,” Volka replied.
She felt the vibration in the strings between the elder ships and themselves change and knew they didn’t have much time. “Follow my lead,” she commanded, infusing the words with confidence she didn’t feel, just as Young had done with Jerome not long ago. And then she focused on the ships. “It was so wrong that we used Sundancer, a baby, to survive,” Volka whispered, and she felt it … and the Marines felt it, too. They didn’t believe in letting children fight their battles. They fought so the weak didn’t have to.
The web of telepathic tethers to Sundancer did not release, but Volka knew the ships were beginning to be set off kilter by the joint admission. Maybe they’d never encountered a violent species that acknowledged the ambiguity of its existence, that knew the moral tightrope it walked, or understood it was the best of bad options it regularly chose from.
Volka’s lip curled. “It was so wrong that we had to!”
She let her mind fill with memories of the alien colony ships, and the beautiful aliens she’d seen within it—delicate bodies, wide eyes, feathery hair …
Human minds echoed her thoughts with memories and impressions of The People that were their own … many of them things Volka herself had not known or dwelt on.
From Young, she saw the inside-out-world as it had been, filled with large, luminous structures based on spiraling symmetry, like the sea shells of Earth. The vision flowed through the mental space to the ships along with Young’s sense of wonder and despair that the beings who had built it had died.
Dr. Patrick imagined the alien computers, and all the data they contained … and that had been lost.
The ship’s new doctor knew about the aliens, and about all the evidence collected in the inside-out-world on how they cared for their sick and wounded. Evidence to any doctor of higher intelligence.
Rhinehart imagined a four-legged, cat-sized companion animal to the aliens. It had a prehensile tail, tufted ears, and enormous eyes—and then the Marine imagined the corpse of a companion animal wrapped around one of The People, as though they had been trying to shelter each other in their last moments.
Ramirez had a child, and he saw his own child on the faces of the adolescent blue alien corpses they’d seen in the inside-out-world. It filled him with equal amounts of despair and blood lust. He wanted to avenge the deaths of children not his own, and it made Volka’s heart hurt.
Some of the Marines had seen holos that would have been of interest to Sixty—aliens falling over each other in orgies. The Marine’s thoughts were both profane, poignant, and bitterly humorous—at last they’d found a beautiful, exotic, alien species ready and willing to fuck!—and those aliens had all been destroyed by an entity that took all that was worth living for out of life. The Marines would die before they’d surrender to that. Once Volka might have been vaguely disgusted by their imaginings. But the same Marines with those thoughts would die for her. They’d kill for her. She was part of their tribe.
She took all their thoughts, let them fill her with rage and power, and focused it on the elder ships. “You surrendered.” She knew that, deep in her soul, and it ignited her like a fuse. “You are responsible for the deaths of billions. We will not go so easily! We will never surrender!”
At her words, a mental shout rose from Young. “Ooo-rah!” A dam burst, and fifteen more Marines, one doctor, and a werfle, added their thoughts to that chorus. “Ooo-rah!”
The spider webbing of strings loosened, and Volka thought, or maybe screamed, “Sundancer, now!”
27
Tribe Human
Galactic Republic: Earth
Aboard the train, James scanned the data he was receiving. “The Q-comm connection to Volka’s ship is back online
but it doesn’t know their location. Is there anything you can tell me?”
Appearing pale and exhausted, Darmadi only shook his head.
James frowned. In the data Tab had relayed, the humans aboard Sundancer had seen something—by all appearances something pleasant—and then fallen as though in pain. He hadn’t relayed that to the captain. After the initial telepathic shock, Darmadi’s vitals had been normal.
James scanned more of Tab’s data. “Their science officer expressed a theory that they blew a hole in the edge of the universe and then expanded the universe a bit.” James only said it because it seemed ridiculous.
Darmadi leaned back. “How would they blow a—?”
A waitress walked by, and Darmadi’s jaw snapped shut. He watched her pass, expression cautious. Putting his elbows on the table, massaging his knuckles, Darmadi whispered over his fingers, “With the same weapons you used in S33.”
James’s eyebrows rose. He hadn’t believed the doctor’s analysis, but the team had used the same fusion grenades they’d used in S33. It was intriguing that Darmadi had seized on the possibility immediately. James cocked his head, studying the man. A sub-routine activated, and a memory of Noa gently chiding him played in his mind. “When you stare at humans like that, you make them feel like a bug under a microscope.” James carefully righted himself. Fortunately, Darmadi had turned to the window, and he didn’t appear to have noticed. The captain’s lips parted as though to speak, closed again, and then he turned to James and blurted, “Nothing else?”
“The humans aboard the ship are quiet and still…” Tab’s visual data filled his vision. The Marines and Volka were silent and still as statues but standing at least, not writhing on the floor. “They look like they’re in telepathic communication with someone.” They weren’t communicating etherly, and that sent a fizzle of static along his spine.