“Miss Kyarr,” he started. “I’m afraid I have some bad news.”
“My mother is dead.”
“Yes. A fast scout caught up with us months ago, carrying orders; the notice was with them. I am sorry for your loss. I can’t give you the time you need since we’re about to go into combat, but when it’s over, do whatever you have to.” The captain pointed at the hologram and started his briefing, assigning roles and responsibilities. San’s thoughts and attention focused elsewhere.
When would she ever see home again? The sadness of having been rejected by Fleet—so long ago on Earth—seemed ridiculous, a reflection of past naiveté that now only embarrassed. What had she been thinking? Life in Fleet meant that nobody had a life at all; ships’ needs dictated how every minute and hour would be spent, and had already mandated that the time would add up to years of life spent in hibernation, asleep without dreams while the universal clock ticked its way toward loss and inevitability.
My mother is dead.
“San!” The captain’s shout pulled her from her trance.
“Yes, sir.”
“I asked if you think you can communicate with Ganymede while we transit. It’s my understanding that your and Mister Wilson’s training was cut short before you could test long-range coms.”
“It was. And to be blunt, I don’t know. But I’ll try.”
The captain nodded. “Your Marine detachment is being woken now. They will accompany you to the ashram and the lieutenant will relay messages between you and the bridge, Miss Kyarr.” He looked at everyone around the table and nodded again. “That’s it. We transit with the Jerusalem in one hour. Everyone to your posts.”
San couldn’t move. The room emptied and she barely noticed when a Marine in a battle suit entered, taking her by one arm and pulling her toward the door where the rest of her guards gathered to form a circle, each man placing a hand on her shoulder and gripping. A song crackled from the men’s helmet speakers as they sung. By the end of it she had started crying and the group carried her through the passageways, guiding her weightless form around corners and through forward hatches where they arrived at the ashram. The lieutenant shut the last hatch, ordering the rest to stand outside.
“She’s gone,” the lieutenant said. “It’s okay to be sad. But . . .”
“But what?” asked San.
“But we’re about to go into combat, ma’am, and I just found out that the Higgins is gone; Fleet approved another route for them and now we have to transit without our decoy. This is our reality, our right now. Your mother died while we slept and I’m sure that it’s painful. But this ship needs you ready to fight in under an hour.”
“When did you find out about the Higgins? I don’t want to be on this ship.”
“Weren’t you at the briefing?” When San shrugged he continued. “Look, forget the Higgins. Everyone goes through this—doubt. A sense that going to space was a mistake. Everyone. Fleet knows it, even expects it. But not during combat. If you can’t do what’s asked of you, then I need to tell the captain.”
San submerged into thought again, looking up through the glass at a foreign starscape. The ship had moved closer to an inner portion of Orion’s arm and had been oriented so the ashram faced the galactic core where billions of stars filled her view. In areas, they seemed close enough to each other to have fused into one giant pool of liquid light, reds and blues punctuated by bright white. She hated them. The existence of stars had robbed her of an alternate life; they had slipped into the ship and ripped the year away while she slept, solidified in frozen gel. Stars had become the enemy—selfish things that cared only about their burning and brightness, luring men from Earth with a promise of greatness that rotted into a reality of boredom and death.
“I will do it. Maybe killing will take my mind off the stars.”
“That’s the spirit.” The lieutenant took up his position near the coms port, and lifted the handset. “We’re burning toward the wormhole now. Face the bow and you can see it. Transit in thirty minutes.”
“Have you ever killed anyone, Lieutenant?”
“Yes.”
“Who?”
The man answered in a soft voice. “More Chinese than I can remember. You get used to it. They’re not people anymore, miss—not after all the alterations to their form, all the cloning.”
“I’ve never seen one. Not in real life.”
“Then prepare yourself. The Chinese have almost no human left in them, but enough to make you realize how monstrous men can be. Tell yourself this if it helps: You’re putting them out of their misery and it’s a mercy to kill them. That is one hundred percent true.”
San looked away from the stars, focusing on the lieutenant. “Once we start shooting, our enemy will detect targeting signatures. The Bangkok’s radars will give our position when it shows us theirs.”
“No, ma’am. It won’t because our stealth targeting drones are already on the other side of the wormhole. Once we pass through and are in position they will paint the enemy and transmit the coordinates of Chinese vessels to our gunners and missile batteries. Thousands of drones. We won’t emit anything because our gunners, not computers, calculate targeting solutions and then the missiles guide themselves.”
“Men are targeting our weapons? Manually?”
“I’ve seen the training, ma’am. On Ganymede. We have nothing those monsters can infiltrate—not a single targeting computer and the captain will cut engines so we coast out of the wormhole, invisible. It will be a slaughter.”
As if the final piece of a puzzle had locked in place, the Marine’s words closed a circuit that sent a pulse of electricity through San’s mind. In a flash she saw the abbess and the bishop. They stood over Ganymede shipyard in the stance of watching angels, glowing with white light that spread from their outstretched arms and penetrated everything, including the minds of the countless Fleet personnel assembled below them. The Chinese would be an offering at Fleet’s Proelian altar.
“So my sight is not needed for this fight.”
“You are needed for something greater, miss; this is a sideshow. The real prize is in Sommen territory, where we’re headed next.”
San sensed something in his words. They represented the still water on top of an ocean calm, under which strong currents gouged the seafloor to send storms of sand and rock toward shore. The lieutenant was terrified.
“You know what we will find there,” she said. “In the abandoned region of space around the Sommen home world.”
“I know what I have been briefed. Nothing more. And much of that I can’t speak of, not even to you.”
“What can you tell me?”
“I can tell you that we’ll need your sight. The Sommen are an ancient race but there was another that predated them. One that has gone extinct, destroyed by something that the Proelian nuns, their bishop, and the admiral’s finest Fleet researchers haven’t disclosed to us. The Sommen are terrified; can you believe that? They aren’t supposed to be scared of anything, but whatever ended this ancient race has them shaking.”
A wave of memories flooded San’s mind without warning, washing across her consciousness so the lieutenant and the ashram disappeared when she submerged into a great cathedral. Sunlight streamed through stained glass windows. The colors splashed against her white dress, forming orange and green patches so intense that San almost believed it was real and incense smoke floated everywhere, penetrating even skin. The smell of spice made her sneeze, a nearby nun glancing with disapproval.
Out of the pit the Chinese forces came, locusts upon the backs of locusts that spread across Earth in a blanket of rot and filth. Men and women choked on their waste. All of East and Southeast Asia hid from their forces but there was no place to hide, no way to evade humans that had changed themselves into living sensors that could see through walls and that had no humanity except for patches of flesh and pockets of DNA. They had the faces of men, but were not men.
“San,” the lieutenan
t said. “Are you with me?”
San returned to the present, blinking, and for the first time since coming out of cryo, felt calm. “A monster has been released.”
“What?”
“A monster. He’s loose, but not on Earth.”
The lieutenant replaced the handset and pushed off the wall, drifting toward her. “Are you okay?”
“It’s nothing. Something they put in my head a long time ago when I was a toddler. But the Proelians believe it. They think we’re headed for some final battle.”
“And maybe we are.” The lieutenant moved back to the wall and pulled the handset out again. “Turn around and get ready. We’re entering the wormhole. It won’t be long now. I’ll relay your messages to the captain.”
San shifted her weight and spun just in time to catch it: the wormhole. It swallowed the front of the ship in a mirrored surface, gobbling up the Bangkok’s bow before the ashram entered, the pool of light so bright that it blinded her. They were through in a blink. As quickly as it had appeared the wormhole was gone, behind San, who marveled at how the star field had changed, replacing the thick galactic arm with an endless expanse of darkness.
“Whatever you do to connect with Ganymede, do it now,” the lieutenant said. “The fighting will start in five minutes.”
San slipped a dose of serum from a belt pouch and screwed it into a socket at the point where the suit’s arm connected with its shoulder armor. “Where are the Chinese?”
“Out there. You can’t see them but you will when we go weapons free.”
“When is that?”
“Four minutes, now, miss.”
San hit the button. The shoulder mechanism snapped open a valve and a needle jabbed deep into her muscles, pushing a bolus of serum into her bloodstream. It burned going in. Her view of the ashram wavered and resembled a screen with static where the lieutenant came in and out of the picture, everything else fading into darkness striped by luminous purple fog.
Something nudged the edge of her mind and San concentrated on the sensation, forcing the purple to shift into a swirling, black and gray vortex. A warm shadow enveloped her. At first there was a tapping sensation that San tried to interpret, the code obvious after her filter of mathematics snapped in place, but then it shifted again. Now, a voice whispered from the darkness.
This is Ganymede Station . . .
I am here, San sent. I can hear.
“Open your eyes, San.” The lieutenant’s voice broke through the shadows, muffled, as if the man had been buried under a mile of cotton balls and in a universe San couldn’t reach. “You can’t see the battle unless you open your eyes. It’s starting.”
Send us the data, San. The abbess orders it.
San opened her eyes. Chinese ships had opened fire on empty space, spitting missiles into emptiness so at this distance they resembled children’s toys, bottle rockets that spun and twisted toward nothingness. Then they started detonating. One after another the warheads blew to send hot clouds of molten metal that impacted against objects so tiny that San hadn’t noticed them: mindless things that, she guessed, were the targeting drones the lieutenant had mentioned.
The battle has started. I count two Chinese ships.
What kind?
How would I know that?
It is in your memories. Relax and dig.
“They’re heavy cruisers,” the lieutenant interrupted. “You’re whispering and I can hear you.”
San willed her mind to open further; she turned, aiming for her earliest memories, which surfaced easily—the survivors of a shipwreck, merging with her consciousness.
Heavy cruisers, both of them. Crew about a thousand. Automated systems and advanced electronic-warfare capabilities.
This should be easy, Ganymede sent. San sensed laugher in the message. The Chinese have no idea what’s about to hit them.
Space itself lit with a blazing eruption of fire, followed by a rumbling noise that shook the ashram as columns of flame erupted from the Bangkok’s sides. Then the Jerusalem lit up. Exhaust fires leapt from the ship and stabbed outward in the direction of the Chinese Fleet and at first San wondered if this was some new plasma weapon until she saw the corkscrewing motion of the flames, the motion of missiles. But these were huge. San judged from the rocket motors that the things were the size of a heavy-transport vehicle.
Missiles launched, she sent.
Understood. Relay to the Bangkok’s captain that he is to recover drones and burn immediately after victory. You are to exit that area in case there are other Chinese groups, close enough to reinforce.
Speaking out loud while also maintaining the connection with Ganymede confused her. A splitting pain seared San’s head. She imagined trying to dream and be awake, simultaneously, but once she’d finished the lieutenant relayed the message into his handset then turned back to face her.
“Watch this, miss; you don’t want to miss it.”
Explosions blossomed in the distance. The Fleet missiles struck Chinese vessels, their payload of molten metal penetrating and venting white gas plumes into space. Some of them targeted hydrogen storage, sending secondary explosions to rip through both ships and fragment them into chunks that spun into darkness. A wave of terror blew over her; San recoiled at the thoughts of dying Chinese soldiers, their sense of confusion and fear threatening to break her connection with Ganymede.
Both vessels destroyed, she sent. My connection is weakening.
Abbess says you’ve done a good job. She also says to tell you something important: This is the first time we’ve communicated instantaneously over such a great distance.
Who’s ‘we’?
Anyone. Everyone. Ganymede out.
San felt the lieutenant’s hands on her shoulders; he shook her out of the trance and then pulled her feet from the floor loops, guiding her toward the hatch.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“We burn in two minutes, to put some distance between us and the wormhole.”
“But I haven’t done the navigation; the captain won’t know where we’re going.”
“That’s not important, San; you can get us on course later. Right now we need to get the hell out of here. The remaining targeting drones are all back onboard.”
San felt a tear form; it left her eye, hovering in midair as they opened the hatch.
“I heard their screams.”
The lieutenant grabbed her shoulders again, this time with force. “Never be sad about that. I told you: These are animals. You’ve never fought the Chinese. I could tell you stories about them that would make your hair stand on end.”
“My father fought them,” she whispered, then realized it had been part lie. My father fought for the Chinese, so long ago. The two passed into the corridor, and the group began moving in the direction of their quarters.
“Lieutenant. Back in the ashram you were scared. I sensed something when you mentioned that the Higgins was on a new course.”
The lieutenant glanced at her; San saw in the tenseness of his face that she’d angered him. “Fleet is at war with itself. On the one side you have Proelians, who gained favor years ago when it became clear that the Sommen war will be just as much about faith as it will be about killing.”
“And on the other side?”
“Zhelnikov’s patrons. Old Fleet. Power is a major influencer of decisions and that old man got corrupted by it a long time ago; he won’t give up ruling status willingly. We doubt that he put that bot in your quarters himself, but I guarantee you one of his pals did.”
“And so the course change for the Higgins—you think it was for nefarious purposes.”
“They will rendezvous with us in Sommen space. I’m sure we’ll find out then, ma’am.” He opened the hatch to her quarters. “One minute to burn. We’ll meet you out here when it’s over because the captain wants you in the tomb again.”
Soon after strapping in, San felt the jolt of acceleration push her into the couch, pressing air from her lungs a
s she struggled to inflate them. Even with her engineered body, the pressure was almost unbearable. The Bangkok groaned under high gees. Overhead pipes popped and creaked and San heard the roar of water flow through one as the fluid coursed rearward toward the reactors. She knew: This was coolant. Another loop of piping would carry superheated water away from the fusion reactors so that if the pipe broke she’d be fried in an instant, her flesh melted and burned off, bones converted to ash. Instantaneous death.
Mathematics is truth. Mathematics is the framework and foundation, within which we judge truth versus lie, victory versus defeat. God gave us mathematics. It is with mathematics that we face our adversaries and carry out His will. It is a vehicle. There is no greater truth than the ones found in the exquisite problem sets.
Wilson’s voice entered her mind, breaking San’s concentration. Did you see the dead? he asked.
Yes.
I saw them too. Up close. I willed myself to watch from a point near one of the Chinese ships. When our missiles hit and the ship detonated, it cracked open the way you’d crack a lobster. Hundreds of them spilled out into space, screaming. I can’t do this, San.
Yes, you can, Wilson. You have to.
Have you talked to anyone about the wormholes? he asked. How they were created, who keeps them open?
I know there was someone before the Sommen.
Exactly. If you view the edges of wormholes you’ll see it, San. Machinery. Thin rings of it that resemble the lines on a basketball, which we pass between. I viewed it on the way through.
What’s your point?
What are we even doing out here? We know nothing about the history of the universe and those who do know aren’t telling us anything. We’re guinea pigs. Fleet and Ganymede use us for coms and navigation, and for our little assassination mission, but we don’t know the big picture. I’m scared of what’s out there, and I don’t mean the Sommen.
I am too, Wilson.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Win hovered in the ashram, staring at the wormhole they’d just fled. At five kilometers away the mirrorlike sphere threatened to swallow the ship and he sensed the waves of excitement in the crew below. The Higgins’s weapons aimed at the transit and her gunners concentrated so hard at their screens that men and women dropped mental barriers, their thoughts running through Win’s mind in streams of words and images. Information, combined with pulses of emotion, became so intense that he had to block everything, shutting off the section of his mind that he needed most: the portion scanning for Sommen signatures. Instead he watched. And over his helmet speakers, he heard the captain announce Zhelnikov’s on-ship arrival, followed by an announcement that there had still been no sign of Sommen incursion from Childress.
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