Tyger Bright

by T. C. McCarthy

  “I will,” said Win. “I am sure this will work.”

  “You’ve contacted them before?”

  “I don’t know if I contacted them as much as they found my signature and then reached out to me. But yes.”

  “Do it again. And report back when you finish. Just ask the crew for directions to my quarters, you’ll find your way.”

  Win replaced the handset. He pulled on the loose ends of his foot straps, cinching himself toward the floor, then closed his eyes. I am the next iteration of death. The future. The mind is a weapon, my sight the way to aim it, and I will destroy the world.

  The glass overhead shattered as Win rocketed outward, both expanding and accelerating through space. He moved for an eternity. The motion then slowed and Win hovered, motionless in the midst of blackness, the stars so far away that they barely looked visible in tiny pinpoints of light. He concentrated. Win sent thoughts in every direction and willed them to travel as fast and as far as possible, trying to recreate the conditions he’d experienced the first time he’d contacted a Sommen priest.

  Nothing happened. Win felt the pricking of cold on his skin, the absolute zero of deep space doing its best to attack his consciousness and remind him that there were things old and powerful in the universe. Time itself shifted so that Win knew every minute was a year on Earth; soon his bones and skin would disappear into dust, the Higgins an empty husk of metal and plastic on a decaying orbit back to Earth.

  You are nothing, a voice said. Dust is where you belong. A fitting end.

  Win’s consciousness buzzed; the space around him remained a vacuum, the voice in his thoughts. You are Sommen?

  We have seen you, but now we know. We see you in the light and not in the dark, and we see your plans. We know the flaws. You have no faith.

  I don’t know what you mean.

  Win felt a blast of heat. It was as if something transformed the words into an understandable sensation—an emotion, disgust, converted into kinetic energy.

  You know of the document, the prophecy and its words, but even if you found it you would be too stupid to recognize its meaning. Human priests, your priests, are the faithful. They know the way and are on the path. We too warred amongst ourselves, long ago, but not like you; you and your allies have no honor.

  Win focused, sending a wave of anger. I do not understand. You said I was like you. Why are you now displeased?

  The priests, especially the female priests. They are true to your kind and understand the way. They created navigators out of human flesh. You are an abomination. And we now know of your base, the one outside the human authorized zone, and it is only because the female priests spoke of it that we still honor the treaty. You and your master are marked. When we find this base I will have my warriors dismember you, personally.

  Win broke contact. His consciousness returned to his body where he woke, still “sitting” in zero g, bouncing against the straps. He disconnected and moved toward the hatch, not able to spin the wheel with his weak arms, instead pounding on it with the metal of his servo harness.

  As soon as the security crewman opened it, Win pushed through, knocking him against a conduit so the man cursed. He pulled into the tight corridor. Passageways enveloped him in their intersecting paths and Win soon lost his bearings, moving first in one direction and then another until he reached a dead end and slammed his fist against the wall. A crewmember then showed him the way, escorting him through the tunnels until he stopped, opening Zhelnikov’s hatch with stubby arms.

  Win burst into Zhelnikov’s room and tried to seal the hatch behind him.

  “They know.”

  “What do they know? Slow down, boy.”

  “I am not a boy and the Sommen know something. They know what I am and they know about you; they talked about a human base, one located outside our authorized territories.”

  “That’s not possible. How could they know?”

  “Proelian whores. They must have sent an emissary to the Sommen—risked a journey into their space. What base is this, Zhelnikov? The Sommen haven’t yet found it, but they search.”

  “We will head there. I’ve arranged for a diversion, one that will excuse us temporarily from the mission so we can detour—to Childress. That’s where the base is.”

  Win sunk into his mind where images flashed one after another of Zhelnikov and Fleet flag officers in a distant planning room. Each of them wore bulky environment suits. One of the officers, a woman, glared at a stream of data that flickered in midair, a holo-image of troop strengths, budgets and research status—an endless river of information that went blurry any time Win tried to grasp it. The last image was of Win’s brain, which only remained in midair for an instant, replaced by a weapon. Along the spine of a heavy battleship ran a semicylindrical piece of equipment, hundreds of meters long and punctuated by rectangular protrusions.

  “You have a weapon,” said Win.

  “Yes. We have a weapon. The Proelian influence is unacceptable to a segment of Fleet flag officers, and this weapon will rid us of their influence.”

  “All this intrigue and yet Fleet worries about me.”

  Zhelnikov nodded. “Win, you have changed. We did not generate adequate predictions of the direction your cellular evolution would progress.”

  “I cannot keep having this conversation, Zhelnikov. You’re incapable of grasping what I see and how far my vision reaches.”

  “You agreed to this program, Win—before we began the treatment. You are a Fleet officer, subject to the chain of command and your behavior has my superiors greatly concerned. We are out here, in this piece of crap ship, because of your actions. I lost most of my R & D programs because of your actions.”

  “I am not the same. Not the way I was before signing up.”

  “Well.” Zhelnikov sighed, shaking his head. “It doesn’t matter that you’ve changed, Win. I think that’s the point. You are a Fleet asset whether you’re human or not, and because of that we needed to regain control.”

  Win felt a chill. Zhelnikov’s face had hardened and where there had been muscle twitches and a refusal to look at Win because of fear, now there was nothing. The man stared at Win’s faceplate and its cluster of vision globes.

  “What have you done, old man?”

  “We introduced a poison in your last treatment. We couldn’t risk altering your brain chemistry or physiology so this is targeted; it permanently binds to receptors on your few remaining organs and will interfere with their operation, sending you to a slow death. It will hurt. And it’s the only thing that makes having to live on the Higgins bearable: the thought that I can kill you now if you step out of line.”

  Win latched onto a handhold, the loop of fabric attached to the wall via thick metal studs. “You don’t see the bigger picture, old man. I . . .”

  “Silence. Right now, as long as I administer the antidote with your treatments, you live. I am in charge here, Win. Not you.”

  Win struggled for a response. Zhelnikov’s quarters were larger than most, fitting for a flag officer, and had been appointed with faux wood panels that resembled dark mahogany, stained almost black. His zero-gravity chair resembled leather, with padded straps to keep him in place. Even his illum-bot looked expensive. The tiny robot hovered overhead in zero g, glittering in its own light that reflected off brass coverings that had been affixed to every sharp corner. There was history here, thought Win. Not the room itself, which was new, but in the sense of naval traditions stretching backward centuries and in a flash he recognized that in all his calculations he’d failed to account for human weaknesses. First among them: jealousy. It had been an error for Win to assume that Zhelnikov and the others would see the logic in his decisions because they didn’t yet see the connections and relevance. They were minor beings with power who believed Win had overstepped his authority. There was no more heinous a transgression than acting without permission, he realized, in the minds of talentless bureaucrats.

  “Zhelnikov. You don�
�t understand what’s happening. Out there.”

  “It doesn’t matter, boy. Here we are.”

  “The Proelians have the Sommen texts.”

  “Yes. So?”

  “The Sommen have prophecies. I don’t know what they are but in my visions I saw it: faith without doubt and steeped in views of the future that led them to a path of nonstop war. War without end.”

  “Win, please.”

  “Stop. I’m trying to communicate something, for which there are no words. The Sommen eradicated all faiths on Earth because they didn’t match up with their prophecies of war and destruction. None of them.”

  “Except for the Proelians,” Zhelnikov said.

  “Except for the Proelians.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me this earlier?”

  “It is so obvious. I see these things as pictures and visions so that they immediately snap into an overall framework, one that forms a strategic vision. Complex but clear. The question I ask myself now is this: Why didn’t you see it?”

  “And so those documents you wanted in Portugal. They were about a Proelian prophecy?”

  “It isn’t about a prophecy.” Win moved his hands to draw a circle in the air. “It’s the prophecy, the one that closes the loop with Sommen faith. And the Church lied to the public. It happened in ancient days, early twentieth century, and afterward one of the children to whom the visions appeared wrote them down. Three secrets.”

  “And you don’t know them.”

  “The first two, yes. But nobody knows the third. I can’t see it. It’s like having a splinter that you can’t extract, Zhelnikov, except this splinter is in my consciousness.”

  “But why would the Church lie?”

  “Because whatever the third secret’s text stated, it was so frightening that the Church thought it better to hide the truth.”

  “Once the microbot threat is extinguished in Portugal, my allies in Fleet will send in a search party. We’ll find the secret.”

  Win felt a tiredness descend, making his eyes close and his speech slow. “And your men will find nothing; it’s not there anymore. I saw it on the nun’s face as I killed her. If I knew what the text said, I could start attacking the Sommen belief that the Proelians are their best allies, and the ones against whom they should war.”

  “I will never understand it,” said Zhelnikov. “How the Sommen can see a race of people as allies while planning to eradicate us.”

  “War is the great cleansing. War clears the mind through fire and the sharp edge. War creates the iron core, necessary for what comes at the end, the iron demanded by the Great Creator who will return at the appointed time.”

  “You whispered that when we were with the Admiral. You’re saying that the Sommen faith is the explanation.”

  “I’m saying,” Win said, “that the Sommen honor us by their intent to eradicate humanity. You will never understand because you can’t; it’s in their DNA, but not yours. Tell me about this weapon you have, Zhelnikov. I saw it in my mind: a gigantic thing, down the spine of a heavy battleship. What’s in Childress?”

  Zhelnikov coughed, his body shaking with the effort and at first Win thought the man might pass out. When the fit stopped, Win waited. The old man’s environmental suit draped over his thin frame, almost swallowing him in a sea of gray fabric, the color of Fleet senior officers. Zhelnikov ignited an electronic cigarette and inhaled as much as he could, exhaling a cloud of mist that dissipated long before reaching Win; at the same time a distant hum rang through Zhelnikov’s quarters.

  “The engines have started,” Zhelnikov said, “and soon we will enter the long sleep. My scientists tell me that your biochemistry will handle it well, but we must be careful. I will need you and your abilities after we transit the first wormhole.”

  “But the weapon. Childress.”

  “Plans, Win. Strategies. The fewer who know, the better, so what I’m about to tell you can go no further.” Zhelnikov paused, blowing another cloud of mist. “The weapon is a plasma cannon—more advanced than any we’ve created in the past and the first step in reverse engineering the Sommen handheld plasma weapons. No fusion reactor is needed. This weapon taps a star, requiring a fraction of the energy you’d think, and creates a beam so powerful it makes standard Fleet cannons irrelevant. Impotent.”

  Win’s mind went into action. He ran through the physics and math, numbers and formulae shifting and spinning through his thoughts.

  “It’s interdimensional.”

  “Interuniverse,” Zhelnikov corrected him. “At its core is a group of Sommen-designed microaccelerators that open a gateway into a parallel universe, but in a way that is acceptable to the Sommen faith. Not the same mechanism used by our old communications device, the one that attracted their attention and brought them in the first place. This device opens a portal inside a star. The star is in an alternate universe, and we tap its plasma, venting it via a massive barrel that tunes the beam via magnetic fields.”

  Win imagined the destruction. His mind reeled at the thought of directing the energy contained in a star’s corona and he almost lost his grip of the strap as he grappled with the implications.

  “You could sweep a planet with such a destructive source—render it sterile.”

  “Yes.” Zhelnikov nodded. “But that’s not our intent. Not yet.”

  “You will arm your ships with it,” said Win.

  “And once that is done we will take back Fleet. By force. But the base outside Childress must not fall. Not yet. It’s where the research has been done and the first tests were successful beyond our hopes. Already two battleships and a drone carrier are on their way there, for outfitting with the weapon. Then my associates and I will oust Admiral Posobiec, who is sympathetic to the Proelians. We will take back control.”

  “It is a sound plan. I will help.”

  Win was about to say more when a voice came from the room’s speaker, announcing that the ship would begin its burn out of the solar system in an hour. It crackled with static. The sound echoed in Win’s mind, reminding him of the hiss of deep space, which wasn’t really empty but filled with particles and waves, mindless energy that had its own frequency to broadcast a single message: futility. Entropy would win in the end.

  “I had better get into my acceleration couch,” he said.

  “Win, wait. There’s one more thing. I’m happy that you will help us, but you need to understand: I don’t control your antidote. I don’t know who does. No matter how often you try to read me or figure out where the antidote is or how it gets into your treatment, it won’t work. There are allies on this ship who have been trained by the Proelians but whose loyalty is mine. One of them leaves the antidote for me and only controls a small supply at any one time.”

  “For now, old man, you have no need to fear.”

  Zhelnikov handed Win a box. “Go to your quarters and strap in. Then inject yourself with this. You and I aren’t engineered for Fleet operations and will need it to handle the g-forces of high acceleration and deceleration. Pray that we don’t have to fight.”

  “Why?”

  “Because. If the crew has to take evasive maneuvers, nothing they can give us will work; the gees will compress our internal organs into jelly. One last thing: I need you in the ashram the moment we come out of cryo. The Higgins won’t be going where the admiral thinks, so remember: into the ashram when you wake up. Now, go.”

  Win finally managed to spin the hatch open and moved into the corridor, almost colliding with crewmembers that sped through the passage on their way to complete last-minute tasks. He pulled himself a short distance. Inside his compartment, he strapped in and closed his eyes, opening the box and removing an autoinjector by feel. He pressed it against a small membrane sunken into his suit arm and pulled the trigger, slipping everything into a webbed overhead pouch after finishing.

  Win screamed in agony. Whatever Zhelnikov had given him made if feel as though his internal tissue had begun to harden into concrete, and he
worked through his mantras, hoping that the concentration would distract him and lessen the pain.

  War is the great cleansing. War clears the mind through fire and the sharp edge. War creates the iron core, necessary for what comes at the end, the iron demanded by the Great Creator who will return at the appointed time.

  “It is only in war that I am reborn. War is the crucible that prepares a warrior for final presentation to the Creator.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  San ran star charts through her head, doing her best to ignore the tightness of the tomb, its space so confined that it seemed about to collapse around her, compressing her into breathless dust. She lay on her back. The Bangkok’s captain had named it the tomb because San had to crawl into the space between two immense banks of steel and electronics, which had been machined and designed to fit her frame with precision, after which the two blocks closed in a clamshell to sandwich her in place with both arms outstretched. Thousands of needles then plunged into her skin. The thin steel connected with nerve cells, inducing an itching in her scalp—so intense that at one point San screamed. The needles ran to banks of relays that would translate her thoughts into mechanical actions and allow control of the ship, but they would also make the ship an extension of her mind. Signals travelled in each direction; San felt the tingling coldness of space on her skin, and her vision was that of forward optical sensors so she marveled at the view of stars, invoking a sense of awe that forced her to start over with breathing exercises. Once calmed, she compared the tiny points of light to those on her memory of charts.

  Mathematics is truth. It is the foundation of navigation and I must let go; by controlling my faculties and organs I open the road, allowing memories to emerge. All things must be considered, the gravity well a curve in the road of space-time. Mathematics is truth . . .

  The Bangkok gently turned. One thousand meters in length, the ship was nowhere near as large as Fleet drone carriers and heavy battleships, but still managed to cram ten thousand men and women into five living areas; in the event of a hit, at least some crew had a chance of surviving. Each crew compartment contained cryo beds in addition to banks of emergency ones near the ship’s center, pressed between gargantuan fuel tanks and the central mechanical computing core. San pointed the ship in the direction of the first leg toward their destination. A wormhole, she thought. A tunnel in space whose creation Fleet still couldn’t fathom, or who had created them, but now so common that people didn’t bother discussing the mystery. They just were.