“Those smudges of instability around the lens—they are thick cosmic vortexes yet they are whipping and transforming around it like lightning,” van der Voort commented. “Fascinating.”
“Those are our natural wormholes, or perhaps they’re the wormhole at different points in space-time. Nobody is really certain,” Doctor Takamura explained. “My mentor, Natori Yamaguchi, spent his entire life and career trying to explain and analyze this instability. To tell you even what he and his colleagues believed would take too long and require that most of you go back for your doctorates in astrophysics, particle physics, and perhaps cosmology. In simple terms, though, he believed that what you are looking at might well be caused by a peculiar structure never before observed but long known to exist called a boltzmon. It is a black hole reduced to the point where it cannot exist anymore. Most of them open up holes in space-time and are believed to simply fall through. The Lens is but an artifact of that collapse, which may well be in some distant galaxy.”
“Where does this—boltzmon—fall through?” Harker asked.
“Nobody knows. Another universe, perhaps, or other dimensions. This one, however, so we infer from the surrounding matter, seems to have gotten itself stuck in a loop or bubble in space-time. It keeps falling into the hole, but it appears to not quite make it before time curves back so it keeps falling again, and so on. That is why the ‘eye,’ so to speak, appears to shift, or blink, in two stages. At least, that is the prevailing theory. This temporal loop is the cause of the microlens, and is also causing other previously unobserved phenomena, such as the generation of the wormhole or wormholes, and the spewing out of particle strings. Strings we’ve encountered before, but not like these. For one thing, they seem to be attracted to and go right up the center of the wormholes. They may be part of one and the same thing. In a better and more merciful universe, I and countless of my colleagues would be studying and measuring and experimenting and getting to understand this rather than theorizing about it. All I can tell you right now for sure is that if we energized the cap we have on the wormhole in this region, a fingerlike string of particles the likes of which we’ve never seen before would shoot out at essentially the speed of light. Its properties are—bizarre, as is its parent.”
“I can guess,” Harker replied. “But it doesn’t tell me what this place does.”
“This place?” Juanita Krill took over once more. “This place is where specially shielded, specially reinforcing gates can be turned on and off. That was, at least, the theory when it was built, but it’s never been fully operational and we are dealing with a phenomenon without precedent. For a century theoreticians have run models trying to explain and understand it, and I’ve given you a very simplified version of some of the more popular theories, but the important thing is, nobody knows. That’s because the only way to get to the Lens artifact is from areas now deep within Titan-occupied space. We can’t measure it and we can’t play with it. The money involved in just getting this far was cut from The Confederacy budget in the early fights over how best to meet the Titan threat. Much of it went into conventional weaponry that could be more quickly and cheaply built and deployed—or on worlds of influential politicians. They couldn’t afford research on an idea that might be no more than a scientific curiosity. Only the Karas family, which made its fortune building genhole plates and gates, saw its potential as a weapon. And as the futility of conventional arms and tactics was made clear, and the Titan advance clearly turned in this direction, and the direction of a dozen other worlds built as preserves by great industrial families or corporations, they decided to act on their own to try and save their worlds.”
“The Karas family sold everything, pretty much, save the ships and factories it would need, and hired the finest particle physicists and greatest engineers to come here and do what they could,” Father Chicanis added. “Among them were Professor Yamaguchi and, in the final marriage of theory to weapon, the mathematical genius of Marcus Lin, Doctor van der Voort’s chief in later years. Several fortunes were poured into this, but what could they do? They couldn’t move out so many billions of people in so short a time. There weren’t the ships and there weren’t places to put them, and there was a great deal of resistance to evacuation—denial, you might call it, up until things were imminent, by which time it was far too late.”
“But how could they expect this—apparatus to work?” van der Voort asked. He wasn’t the only one metaphorically shaking his head. “Untested, theoretical, forces explained only in computer models among theoreticians?”
“Not precisely, Doctor,” Takamura responded. “Remember, we found the other end of this occurring naturally. I know the theory, and though I cannot even conceive that they actually were able to build something that could cap it, they did. Sygolin 37, the material we use to line genholes, the artificial wormholes that we use for interstellar travel, is synthesized from purely theoretical models of substances found near the event horizons of black holes. They are theoretical because, like going to the surface of a Titan-occupied world, it is rather easy to get there but so far impossible to get back. Yet the theory worked. We made the plasma, it works, and we are here. With a slight adjustment, it was sufficient to cap the hole. Time has no real meaning inside one, so the string coming down the center of this hole is simply, well, there, waiting for an exit, into true space-time so that it can continue. That was tested, before the Titans came. And because it was spewing out before we capped it, we know what happens when it strikes something.”
“Yes?” Harker prompted. This was now something he could follow.
“It simply goes through, almost like a neutrino, and within the blink of an eye it has changed into more familiar particles and come apart. But in that moment when it penetrates, the most amazing thing happens. The string—which is incredibly fine, almost microscopic in thickness—does absolutely nothing. The effect, however, of its penetration on the matter and energy on all sides of it is something else again. This is ripped, torn, and shredded in space-time. It’s a rather local effect, but it is devastating. Rapid opening and closing creates short bursts that can rend the very fabric of space-time itself in the area immediately around the penetration point. Once it emerges into true space, only Sygolin 37 appears able to affect it, and then only to divert it. The Titans do not travel by wormholes. They use a method we know nothing about. There is nothing even resembling Sygolin 37 in their ships, bases, or artifacts. They use a system of building with energy flux that remains beyond us. We have no idea how they do it. But it definitely obeys the basic laws of the physical universe.”
“You’re sure of that, are you?” Harker pressed.
“You do not have to know why gravity works to know how it works. Yes, we are sure. If we could maintain full energy on our ships and weapons, we could hurt them. The thing is, we can’t. Their system dampens everything, drains the bulk. We think they don’t actually use it—that this effect is there not to guard against us, but rather to keep their own systems pure. The beauty of using the string from Priam’s Lens is that we don’t believe they can dampen it nor contain it. It would be too fast and too vicious, and its very passage would create massive instabilities in their structures. If we could unleash just a burst or two, even for fractions of a second, at any of those bases down there, we believe that their entire grid would collapse. They are interconnected—base to base, pole to pole, nexus to nexus. If one goes, the feedback alone through their systems might destabilize the rest. If their grid comes down, then their damping fields also come down.”
“Sounds like a lot of ifs,” Harker noted. “Still, it’s better than anything they’ve come up with so far. There are, of course, a few things that you haven’t explained to me yet.”
“Yes?” Krill responded.
“First, why didn’t the Karas family use this place to shoot their superweapon at the Titans when they were coming? That was the idea, I take it?”
“It was,” Father Chicanis agreed. “Unfortunat
ely, the Titans arrived before the defensive network was fully deployed, and they moved so swiftly that they had the damping mechanism in operation and had established primary occupation of Helena before anyone could act. Then there was the problem of what to do as a result. They had the system in place, but the plates weren’t fully deployed. Some were, and I suppose still are, in the underground complex thirty kilometers or so outside of Ephesus, or, at least, where Ephesus used to be. That’s where the Dutchman’s agent was heading, to see if anything really did remain that was of great enough value to risk a larger team to come in and loot.”
“Being that close to a Titan base, what could they possibly hope to steal?” Katarina Socolov asked, making her presence felt for the first time.
“Good question. The answer is data modules,” Krill replied. “With trickle charges they can retain their information for many centuries. The Titan scouring doesn’t go deep underground, and the damping field only sucks up significant sources of energy which it surveys and then targets. It doesn’t drain batteries; it simply ignores them since you can’t recharge them and it can act if significant stored energy is released. There was every reason to believe that the data modules for this project remained down there, probably in the cold and dark ruins of the place, but accessible.”
“You mean they were already going for the Lens?”
“No, not at all. The Dutchman never believed it would work, I don’t think. But the physics involved, the research, and, most of all, the almost century-old security codes for holdings throughout The Confederacy would still be valid in some places, particularly ones that were hastily evacuated. I will give each of the ground crew a small portion of what the agent—whose name was Michael Joseph Murphy, by the way—of the infiltration into the area and into the complex. Part of it had collapsed, all of it was quite dark and dangerous. The upshot is that he could not make it to the data control center. He had to content himself with the administrative records only. Those are what we have. Those are what he thought was vital enough to give his own life for, to uplink after a nightmarish journey across a very alien landscape. So we know where to look. We have sufficient numbers to make it work, but we’re few enough to escape notice. And we know from the administrative recordings that it is quite likely the key ones also survive. That data on the wormhole seals would allow us to control and possibly selectively ‘fire’ the weapon by linking gates and opening and closing routings. That’s what this place does.”
“We’re going down there, Harker,” N’Gana said firmly. “We’re going down much better outfitted than Mister Murphy was. He was a pirate, a freebooter, a thief with enormous guts. I’ll give him that. Guts and the integrity to do his job even if he himself couldn’t make it. I don’t know what motivated him. He was a deserter from long ago and a scoundrel and probably a killer, but when he saw that the Priam weapon might just destroy the enemy, he died a patriot. Now we have to finish his job. The initial targeting systems that were here when the Titans came in are no good. The Titans drained the power from the old gates. The normal transport ones imploded as you’d expect, but the ones designed for this project were inert, they had their power supplies at idle rather than off. The Titans drained them and, as a security measure, they shorted. None of the targeting information survived there. We’re going in to get the backup. They never figured out how, even though they worked to the end finishing this thing. I understand it broke the old man’s heart as well as his wallet.”
Father Chicanis sighed. “Yes, he was a great man and he could not live with this level of failure after all he had built. His sister has kept the hope and dream alive with fanatical devotion, and herself alive as well way beyond what anyone could conceive, all in the faith that one day God would find a way.”
“Some holy messenger!” Harker snorted. “The Dutchman’s a monster!”
“Perhaps, but many monsters wound up doing God’s bidding in the past, and He has different standards. Many of the heroines of the Bible are real or pretend prostitutes and thieves, and even the most beloved of God, King David, committed murder, adultery, and most of the other sins prohibited in the Ten Commandments. I can pray for the souls of his victims and for his own soul, but I will not allow who or what he is to reject what is brought to us.”
Harker thought a moment. “Constantine Karas—his sister is the old lady?”
“No, not really. She’s far more stubborn and ancient than that. Madame Sotoropolis, you see, is Constantine Karas’s grandmother. Or, at least, she’s ninety percent cyborg and ten percent ancient grandmother who is dedicated to this on sheer willpower. Her daughter, Melinda, Constantine’s mother, died a few years ago, trying to assemble and finance an expedition just to see if this sort of thing was feasible. She failed. The Dutchman didn’t. Sometimes it pays to have a thief about if you want to steal something.”
Harker thought it over. “Then why not have thieves do this?”
“The Dutchman’s no fool. Murphy died, and died ugly. He’s not going to risk more of his limited band on this. Instead, he notified the Karas family and they took it from there. He controls the exit, after all.”
Gene Harker didn’t much like the sound of that. “So what you’re saying is, if this is really down there, and if we can somehow get it, and if we can get it back here in some unfathomable manner, and if this thing is still set up right, and if this theoretical bullshit actually works, and if it really can blow slashing gaps through Titans, then we have to turn over this power exclusively to someone who has no ethics, no morals, and could become the next oppressor?”
“One thing at a time, Mister Harker,” Colonel N’Gana said philosophically. “You go back and count through all those ifs you just spouted. He’s the concluding problem if all the other ones work out. Let’s do one thing at a time. Besides, the human race has had countless tyrants over it and always managed to outlast them. We can deal with our own kind, no matter how insane, sooner or later. But if we can’t first deal with the Titans, then what difference does the rest make?”
There wasn’t a good answer to that. Finally Harker said, “So, how is this supposed to work? You go down there and go hand to hand with all the threats that might be there, minus any suits or computers or authentic weaponry, and you clear the path so Father Chicanis can guide you to the installation while Doc Socolov studies and deals with the natives, or whatever the surviving humans might be called. Then our silent Quadulan friend here slides down past the blockage through a hole it can get through even if you can’t, retrieves the backup modules, and you all sneak out past the noses of the Titans and somehow manage to get picked up without them seeing you and blowing you out of the air and without whatever got that poor bloke Murphy eating you, then you turn the liberated data over to the science trio up here, and we blow the beggars away and bring freedom to the universe. That about right?”
“Something like that,” the Colonel responded. “And we welcome an old experienced hand to the ground party, Mister Harker.”
“What makes you so sure I’ll go down with you?”
“Well, for one thing, you didn’t come this far to stop now. Second, you can survive for ages, I suspect, in that fancy combat suit, but it doesn’t seem to have any genhole actuators or plasma shielding on its own. The Dutchman may control our exit, sir, but no matter how much power you might think that suit gives you, I assure you that we control whether or not you can ever leave this system. You invited yourself along; now we expect you to be useful. I know your service record and reputation. You’ve got real guts and a lot of fighting skill. I don’t know how good you are without modern arms, but if your Commando training was anything close to my Ranger training, then you are better equipped for this than the vast majority of people, including most here. And we’re not going down there as unprotected as Murphy, I assure you. You can come, or you can watch, but coming with us is the only ticket home.” Harker sighed. “Well, if you put it that way, I guess maybe I’ll come. Somebody from the official services
should be there, I suppose, anyway. And it may be the only chance I get to see Doctor Socolov naked.”
“Mister Harker!” she exclaimed, in a tone that did not convey if she were truly shocked or only playing at it.
• • •
“The lifeboat will be cramped beyond belief with the added body, but we need you on the ground,” the usually silent Sergeant Mogutu said. “We have enough spare supplies to accommodate you, but both the colonel and I want to know a bit more about your unconventional skills just in case. We have two civilians along, remember, who have little hope in a fight. I never saw a priest who wasn’t trying to be a target all the time, and these science types are so filled with their own scientific interests they’ll ignore an ambush.”
“You’re all civilians to me,” Harker pointed out. “I’m still serving, at least as far as I know.”
“Well, you know what I mean. And this is a military operation, start to finish. Number one priority is to make sure that nothing kills or captures the Pooka. Otherwise we wind up no better than Murphy, for all the effort. Of course, after it hands us the cubes, everybody is expendable except the one who gets the cubes out. On the ground, the old ranks aren’t valid. The colonel is the commander, and I am second in command. As the uninvited guest, you’re third, since we have three others to consider and an overall mission to accomplish. Got it?”
Harker nodded. “Okay, fair enough. I’m not too thrilled about this mission anyway, you know.”
“What’s your hand-to-hand rating?”
“I’m black belt in seven disciplines. That’s the good news. The bad news is that, other than some jujitsu, I haven’t really kept it up. After spending an eternity in a regeneration tank, the spark just kind of left me.”
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