Kali's Fire

by Craig Allen

Everyone was scrambling from one section to another. That had been true since the fleet left the Kali system. Cody tried to keep out of the way as he followed the map on his internal viewer. He had no clue where Sonja was. He wasn’t even sure where his quarters were or, indeed, if any had been set up for him.

  None of that mattered, though, as Admiral Jericho had given him an assignment. With luck, maybe he could convince Reggie that fighting the reeds was in the best interests of his people and the planet in general. In all honesty, Cody was dubious. The different species of Kali had been hunting and eating each other since before humans walked erect. He doubted he could convince those altered by the reeds to work together.

  It was worth a try, though.

  The Tokugawa and the fleet had left the Kali system after the warning and gathered on the far side of the globular cluster, nearly three light-years away from Kali. The entire fleet sat there, waiting for… what? Cody had heard nothing more after being ushered off the bridge, and he was only aware of their location from a conversation with the helmsman, who was off duty and happened to be a fan of Cody. He was still amazed by how many military people had seen his orbital drops before the war.

  Cody entered the brig.

  A chief petty officer eyed him carefully. “Can I help you, sir?”

  “I’m Dr. Cody Brenner. I’m here to see our prisoner.”

  The chief chuckled. “Prisoner. That’s what we’re calling that thing? I feel like I’m running a zoo.”

  Cody laughed along with him, out of politeness more than anything.

  “This way, Doctor.”

  The chief stood and gestured toward one of four doors in the brig. He waved a hand over a console on his desk. A buzzer sounded, and the door slid open. After the door closed behind Cody, he heard it lock.

  Two marines flanked the large cell where the toad was being kept. The creature was lying on the floor, unmoving, giving no notice at all that Cody had entered. The marines ignored him, keeping their attention on Reggie.

  Cody spoke to the toad directly. “Reggie, I need to speak with you.”

  The toad didn’t move.

  “It’s customary to acknowledge an individual who is speaking to you so they are aware that you are listening.”

  One of the claws of the creature rose briefly then settled back down again.

  Cody was amazed at the similarities between species from completely different worlds though he was annoyed that sarcasm was one of those common traits.

  “Good.” Cody activated a file on his handheld viewer. “Have you heard this voice?”

  The voice echoed throughout the brig. “Leave this system. It and the cluster belong to me.”

  Reggie leapt to his feet, and the marines brought their rifles to bear. He opened his maw and bellowed so loudly Cody was sure everyone onboard heard it. Reggie danced around the room like an animal in a cage trying to avoid being eaten.

  One marine spoke. “Sir, better step back.”

  Instead, Cody stepped right up to the transparency. “What’s wrong? Tell me. Do you want to hear the voice again?”

  The toad froze then dashed toward the console and quickly tapped out a message.

  Not want to hear the leader of all.

  “You couldn’t have heard this voice for long.”

  The Reed has many voices. That is its voice for you.

  “And how do you know this? How do you hear its voice?”

  The voice appears inside of us. Not from outside. The Reed can do this to all. We are slaves of the Reed. We hear its many voices. We hate the Reed.

  Cody had the impression the creature didn’t hate him or see him as prey but was simply indifferent.

  “We could help each other,” Cody said. “You hate the reeds, as do we. If we worked together, we could fight them. Together, we could win.”

  No.

  “We’ve had our differences, but that’s in the past. Against a common enemy, we can be friends. We can free your planet from their rule. You can be your own people again.”

  Reggie lowered his head, as if considering. He then tapped out a message.

  We belong to the Reed. We cannot fight it. The Reed will not allow it. Controls our actions when it chooses. Controls our thoughts when it chooses. Cannot. No.

  “You are slaves, aren’t you?”

  Reggie didn’t respond, but he didn’t need to respond. Cody understood all he needed to know. He started to leave.

  Request.

  Cody glanced back at the toad. “What sort of request?”

  End me.

  Cody stared at the words as they hung in the air. “Why?”

  Cannot speak. Cannot see. Pain.

  Reggie collapsed to the floor, his large front claws spread forward, his massive head tilted to one side, as if he didn’t have a care in the universe… or a desire to live.

  Killing Reggie might be a blessing, at least for Reggie, but Admiral Jericho would want to keep him alive to interrogate him. “I’ll see what I can do. You are safe from the reeds here. Know that.”

  There is no safe.

  Reggie didn’t move as Cody left.

  ~~~

  Cody sat patiently in the same conference room where he had met Admiral Jericho. He didn’t recall a similar room being on the Washington, or maybe he had simply never seen it before.

  Jericho sat at the head of the table, flanked by a wide-shouldered lieutenant commander and a lieutenant who seemed to be a head shorter than said commander. The captain of the Tokugawa had graying sideburns, a custom on some worlds to reflect an individual’s actual age. He sat next to the lieutenant commander. Officers filled every remaining seat in the room, but Cody didn’t recognize any of them.

  A quiet had befallen the room after Cody played the recording of the toad’s response to Ann’s voice.

  Finally, the lieutenant commander spoke up. “It wants to die? Why?”

  Cody summarized the issue as best as he could. “Provider—a sort of tribal leader for all toads—made a deal with the red reeds to teach the toads all about our technology. The reeds can alter the creatures of that world, including their minds. I believe it is the reason the toads learned technology so quickly. But now the toads have been altered to such a degree they no longer wish to live.”

  Jericho let out a muffled chuckle. “They made a deal with the devil, and they’re paying the price.”

  Cody assumed that meant Jericho wouldn’t let the toad die, which was what he’d expected. Granting the toad’s request wasn’t a bad thing, but arguing with an admiral would have been futile.

  “Mr. Davis,” Jericho said. “What are your findings?”

  The short lieutenant rose and activated the table’s holoviewer, which showed a view of planet Kali from space, plus a series of red and green icons scattered in orbit. The green icons were labeled with names of ships in the fleets. The red ones Cody assumed were Kali vessels.

  Mr. Davis gestured at the icons with a pointer. “These are gravimetric and lidar readings from our recent encounter in the Kali system.”

  A translucent blue sphere surrounded one green icon as well as a handful of red ones. As the simulation rolled forward, the red icons vanished.

  “These enemy vessels are within a thousand kilometers of the Joan of Arc, who was scanning with every sensor system she had. At this distance, even with the best camo fields in place, they would have picked up something. Instead, all bogeys simply disappeared.”

  “I doubt they vanished like perfume in the wind, Mr. Davis,” Jericho said.

  “They did not, sir.” He rolled back the simulation and zoomed in on one red icon in particular. “Watch this ship’s velocity just before it vanishes.”

  Again, the simulation rolled forward, though even more slowly. The red icon accelerated away from the Joan of Arc briefly before fading away.

  Mr. Davis continued. “The ship’s velocity increases as it vanishes, by almost fifteen g’s per second. That amount of sudden acceleration is only possible wi
th gravity drives.”

  “But there was nothing on gravimetrics,” the captain said.

  “Precisely, sir.” Davis pointed at the simulation. “Somehow, this ship managed to accelerate without setting off gravimetrics on any ship’s sensors, even Joan of Arc’s. That means they either have an alternate form of propulsion or they have a way to conceal the gravity waves of their drives.”

  Cody did his best to not groan out loud. The toads had access to space vessels, grasers, and tactical torpedoes. That put them on equal footing with humans. A field that concealed their gravity drives gave them a tremendous advantage.

  “Whatever it is, it’s beyond our capabilities.” Jericho rubbed his brow. “Mr. Connor, please tell me we have information from the probe.”

  Cody wanted to ask what probe they meant, but the lieutenant commander spoke.

  “Very little, sir.” Mr. Connor changed the holographic image to a view of Kali from a great distance. It zoomed in rapidly until the planet’s continents could be seen. “Well, we managed to get a camouflaged probe in system. It’s taken a while to get solid readings as the probe can’t use grav-drives or it would get discovered. So far, passive systems have not picked up much of anything across the electromagnetic spectrum. Not even heat plumes. However, we did find one incident.”

  An image of the southern hemisphere appeared, out over the ocean, showing a Kali-type vessel a hundred thousand kilometers over Kali’s surface. The vessel maneuvered then disappeared two seconds later.

  “Here’s the interesting part.” Mr. Connor reversed the recording until the ship was visible once more then froze it, revealing a distorted sphere in front the ship. “These are gravimetric readings, but they barely register. This sort of reading is usually found near operational bridge sats.”

  Jericho’s eyebrow raised. “That’s a wormhole?”

  “Yes, sir.” The image rolled forward again. When the ship vanished, so did the sphere. “In fact, it is identical to the wormholes opened by bridge satellites in order to communicate across interstellar distances by creating shortcuts in space-time, like bringing two ends of a string together. It’s too small to actually affect the ship itself in any meaningful way. They haven’t determined how to open larger wormholes any more than we have.”

  “But that means we can track them,” Cody said.

  Mr. Connor raised an eyebrow. After Jericho nodded his approval to answer, Mr. Connor did so. “Unlikely, Doctor. The anomaly vanished when their stealth field activated. The point I wanted to bring up was that the ship shown here did not create the wormhole.”

  “Do we know where the origin point is, Mr. Connor?” Jericho asked.

  “Not precisely, sir.” He zoomed in the view on the surface of the planet’s southern hemisphere, about eight hundred kilometers distant from Monster Island, where various points were highlighted. “We detected similar readings here. These are, again, micro-wormhole openings.”

  “That whole area is about two thousand kilometers across,” Jericho said, “but this doesn’t explain how they up and disappeared before our eyes.”

  “Perhaps, I can help with that, Admiral.” Another lieutenant commander stood, one who’d been sitting at the opposite end of the table. “I’ve gone over the data retrieved by Sergeant Lance Bodin.”

  Cody winced at the sound of Bodin’s name. He hadn’t had time to mourn, and he wouldn’t for a while yet.

  “I assume you found something useful, Mr. Bradley,” Jericho said.

  “Yes, Admiral.” Mr. Bradley pulled up a schematic of a Daedalus engine on the table’s viewing globe. “We build an Alcubierre bubble through negative energy created from the Casimir effect, with a great deal of help from exotic matter. The ship remains still while the space around the ship moves, like a rock skipping across a pond.” As a series of diagrams and columns of text appeared on the table console, he continued, “The information downloaded by Sergeant Bodin revealed formulas that I recalled from during the war. We had a theory that we could alter the exterior of the Alcubierre bubble in such a way that it would wrap surrounding light around it perfectly, reflecting what was on the other side.”

  “A stealth field,” Cody said.

  “Yes, a very good one,” Mr. Bradley said. “A standard camouflage field will not block gravimetrics. However, since an Alcubierre bubble effectively removes the ship from the universe, nothing could be detected inside. Not even on gravimetrics.” He sat down. “We never could make it work. By our calculations, the field required a tremendous amount of exotic matter, which we didn’t have access to. That, and moving the vessel was problematic. We ended up moving on to other projects.”

  Jericho put a hand to his forehead. “How did they discover this?”

  “The information wasn’t aboard the UEAF Kali,” Bradley said. “I verified that.”

  “So they discovered the technology entirely on their own.” Jericho pointed at the image on the table. “I assume they cannot see outside this bubble any more than they could a conventional one.”

  “That’s true, sir,” Mr. Bradley said. “It’s another reason why we abandoned the project. No one could see the stealth ship, but it can’t see anyone else, either.”

  Cody studied the image hovering over the conference table. “What if they’re using these wormholes to communicate? Like a hose feeding a diver air, only in this case, they’re feeding a transmission of some kind through the wormhole to the ship inside the bubble. Those wormholes are too small to peer through like a periscope, so an outside source would need to feed the ship information about the surrounding area, nearby ships and obstacles, its trajectory, and so forth. The stealth ship would never have to deactivate its field.”

  “Interesting.” Jericho forced a small laugh. “I’m glad we had the element of surprise when we arrived, or they would have used this against us.” He tapped his chin. “I’ll bet these smaller wormholes on the surface are connected to a main communication hub somewhere. If so, and we destroyed that hub, they’d be blind with their stealth fields up. They’d lose a major tactical advantage. But we’d have to nuke this entire two-thousand-klick area to be sure.”

  “That’s a large area, Admiral.” Cody panned the image out over the ocean. “And the fliers’ island isn’t that far away. The prevailing winds will carry the fallout over the island.”

  “True enough.” Jericho brushed at one cheek. “Well, whatever we do, we need to do it now. Options.”

  No one spoke. Cody wasn’t a military tactician. He was a linguist and a programmer. He didn’t know how to approach the island, get by all those ships, and rescue the fliers without being noticed. Also, they couldn’t see the Kali ships anymore, but Kali ships could see the fleet as it approached.

  Unless they couldn’t be spotted either.

  “Mr. Bradley,” Cody said. “Could you duplicate this effect in one of our ships?”

  Mr. Bradley raised an eyebrow. “Possibly, but we’d need a significant amount of ex-mat to do so, more than what we have in our engines.”

  “We still have the ex-mat we extracted from that star,” Cody said. “Would that be enough?”

  Mr. Bradley shrugged. “I’d have to do some calculations, but at first glance I’d say no.”

  Jericho gestured at the holovisual. “I believe I understand what you have in mind, Doctor, but elaborate for us.”

  All eyes were on Cody as he spoke. “We fly in, cloaked, using the same process the toads used. We’d have to plan out our course ahead of time so we don’t hit anything, unless we can duplicate this wormhole effect the toads are using. Once we get past their fleet, we can emulate their transponder signal. Likely, they’ve changed it, so we’ll have to duplicate it once more, but I should be able to do it. We could also contact the fliers to help us search for this communications hub. They would know better than the rest of us where this hub is located. Two months ago, they helped the Washington find similar caches.”

  People at the table either nodded or raised an eyebr
ow.

  Jericho rubbed his chin for a moment. “Mr. Bradley, see how much exotic matter you need to duplicate this technology, assuming it’s possible.”

  “You’re going to try it, Admiral?” the captain asked.

  “I don’t know about you, but I’m not comfortable with a backwater planet full of violent predators having a technological advantage over the UEAF.” Jericho clasped his hands, his shoulders relaxed. “But from what I’m hearing, we’ll need more of this fire that planet Kali loves so much.”

  A chime sounded, and a voice drifted from above. “Captain, we have contacts that just shut down their Alcubierre fields. Ten total, all closing in.”

  “Identify,” the captain said.

  “Ten Spican vessels. Looks like heavy cruisers.” The sailor spoke with an edge of trepidation. “ETA thirty minutes. They’re hailing.”

  “Patch it here, Ensign,” Jericho said.

  Cody raised an eyebrow as he tried to recall all the requirements for communicating with the Spicans. They were sensitive and subject to mood swings, which meant phrasing was important.

  Another chime sounded, then someone else spoke. The tonality was wrong, as if the person speaking could not hear his own voice—that or he was unsure how a human voice really sounded.

  “We meet you in deep space and wish you wellness and hope your metamorphosis is distant.”

  The statement raised many eyebrows throughout the conference room. The “deep space” part made sense. The Spican probably wanted to emphasize they weren’t meeting near Kali itself, the topic of which they considered touchy and didn’t refer to it directly for that reason. The second part was a standard greeting. The metamorphosis from neutral to male and then to female was a disturbing process, one the Spicans went through every couple years. They were always relieved when it ended.