"Yes, ShipLord," Athan said. He came briefly to attention and left the room.
Sythil was already at the panel, entering the communications request. She stepped away from the wall as the screen displayed the status. The screen emitted a long tone, and Jessin's face appeared on the wall.
He looked bored, sitting slouched with his chin resting in his hand. The corner of his mouth flicked up when he saw her.
"ShipLord Karak," he said. "What can I do for you?"
"Hello, Mr. Jessin," Asarik said. She sat up in her chair, pulling the front of her uniform straight. "Look, I'm not good at making small talk. I was thinking that you and I should meet."
From her place beside the panel, Sythil widened her eyes slightly. She quelled a smile.
Jessin pulled his face back slightly, dropping his hand. "Meet?" he said, surprise plain in his voice. "That's not part of the plan."
"I don't know what your plan is, Mr. Jessin. But if we're going to be stuck here, I thought it might be more--" Asarik searched for the word, "--interesting if we met in person." She shrugged. "Like I said, I'm not good at small talk."
Jessin considered for a second. "Well," he said. "Sure." The grin came back in full force. "Jump in one of your shuttles and come on over. I'll let the CombatMind know."
Asarik frowned slightly. She hadn't thought about the shuttles. "We only have escape craft," she said quickly. "They don't have the range. I can bring Serens' Reach within range and take an escape skiff from there. That should serve." She nearly said they were unarmed, so it didn't matter how close they got, but she didn't want him thinking about weapons of any type.
Jessin leaned back in his seat, smiling broadly. "A Serensian ShipLord coming my way." He hooted and leaned forward, asking, "Do you dance, ShipLord Karak?"
Asarik showed him a tight smile. "Sort of," she said. "My navigators inform me we'll be within range in two hours, Mr. Jessin."
"Till then," he said, still smiling like a devil.
Sythil ended the connection.
"I'll show him the kicking dance," Asarik growled. "With the elbow and the hardened fingers." She caught herself and looked at Lieutenant Sythil. "Can we get close enough to hit his array if he thinks I'm coming by escape craft?" she asked.
"I'll check with Athan," Sythil said. "Let's hope so."
Asarik shot her a dark look.
"I believe so," Sythil corrected.
Chapter 6
Her mother recorded a message for Asarik in the ten minutes she had before the escape craft separated from Hunter's Fury. She was sitting in a small chamber like the plans room on Serens' Reach, like a thousand other small rooms on Serensian ships. Ahsal looked calm but tired. Asark had paused the recording over and over again to catch her mother at different angles, looking for some insight beyond her words.
"Asarik," she said. "I love you more than I can ever say. It is because I love you that I must do my duty."
She didn't mention her pending death in the message, only said that she was proud of her, that she knew her future held many great things, and she was so pleased with the woman she had become. Her mother seemed capable of so much more emotion than Asarik thought she was able to feel. She sometimes felt as if the world were her on the other side of a pane of glass. She could watch it, even interact with it, but it didn't touch her back.
Her mother was iron. Her mother had thought of her in those last moments, took the time to step away from her crew, compose herself, and record those words: The ShipLord who had just destroyed three cruisers in direct combat.
After Sythil left the plans room and the door hissed closed, Asarik opened her hands on the table in front of her and looked at her palms. She allowed herself five breaths, opening and closing her fingers.
She hadn't discussed with Sythil and Athan the other options if the attack on the array didn't work. She didn't feel she had to; it was the subtext in close range combat. There was no reason to close with an enemy unless you ultimately planned a kinetic attack or self-destruction.
Asarik stood and straightened her uniform. She walked around the table to the panel where Jessin's face had been and tapped a command. The screen flickered, and then she saw her own reflection in its face.
"Father," she said. She had to clear her throat quickly, then continued, "I wished to send you a message. This should-- will be included with the verification message we will be sending through the Halith Gate."
Asarik explained what had happened after they passed through the gate. She described the statement Tyu Sala had made and their plan to approach Prowling Thunder and attack its missile control center. She stated that she couldn't verify the direct involvement of the Garalan government. All the evidence indicated Tyu Sala represented a religious fringe group. She would include the message recording with the communications drone.
When she ran out of mission-related information to relay, she sat for a second collecting her thoughts. She wished she could think of something meaningful without sounding morose. She didn't believe she was going to die but she couldn't deny the possibility. But hadn't that been every day in service?
She smiled to herself then looked back at the screen. "I love you, Father," she said. "I will see you soon."
Asarik tapped the panel to end the recording.
She spent the next hour and a half walking the corridors of Serens' Reach, checking on the wounded in the medical section, talking to several scientists who already had hypothesis ready to send back to Serens, and assisting for a few minutes with the teams loading refuse and unnecessary equipment into the airlocks to serve as chaff against missile attacks.
The mood in the ship was tense but hopeful. She found Warrant Officer Thasan in his lab, walls covered in new images of the ProgressWorld's surface, already highlighting the ruins of former human activity.
"How long ago?" she asked.
He shook his head. "Several thousand years from these erosion patterns. I've searched the archives for mention of an Elegaia and nothing comes up. There's mention of Halith as the third gate ever created." He waved a hand. "Where they learned that, who knows. There's no real citation. But if there's information about the gate, why not anything about its system? That's just dumb. We knew this coming in. It's the same for all these dormant gates. But still. Dumb. You think people who could build space ships could figure out how to store data. Sometimes I think we like it that way, erasing the past so we don't have to face it. Dumb."
Asarik returned to the command deck to find Lieutenant Athan leaning back in his chair with hands resting on his chest, eyes closed, while Sythil sat hunched over her data display. Her fingers pulled and teased among the data points as she checked and rechecked her results.
"ShipLord," Sythil said, too loudly, and Athan jerked forward in his chair. He blinked, looking around, then raked a hand through his hair and grimaced at Sythil.
"Update," Asarik said. She crossed her arms as she took her place in the center of the room.
"At this range, our tight beam will have an eighty percent effectiveness against Prowling Thunder, ShipLord," Athan said. "We are on an approach vector that will provide us the best access to the gate in approximately fifteen minutes."
"Our attack will reach a co-efficient between beam latency and distance to the gate's activation threshold at that point, ShipLord."
"Are the engines ready?"
"Engines report full capacity, ShipLord. I'll send the velocity warning in ten minutes."
Asarik nodded. In a screen on the opposite side of the command deck, the view from the drone still showed images of Elegaia flowing beneath it. The sky had turned deep shades of pink and gray as it followed the sunset. She watched the screen as technicians around her called out procedure checks and verified system status. The hum of activity as background sound for the screen was strangely soothing.
"ShipLord," Sythil called. "We have a communications request from Prowling Thunder."
"Here it is," Asarik said. "He'll want to know why w
e haven't launched an escape craft." She took a step closer to Athan. "When we reach the window," she said, "you start the attack. Don't wait for my signal."
The lanky lieutenant nodded, cracking his knuckles. "Seven minutes, ShipLord," he said.
Asarik waved a hand. "Accept the request," she said.
Iranat Jessin appeared on the screen. Asarik frowned. The alloy ring of an environmental suit sat beneath his silver-striped chin. He appeared to be standing in an airlock. Status lights blinked behind his head.
"ShipLord Karak," he said, grinning. His voice sounded tinny from the closed space.
"Mr. Jessin," she said. "We're just reaching position now."
"I know you are. That's really excellent. I was really looking forward to meeting with you. I was going to tell you the whole story about Laiklin Sartor and how I got myself into this whole mess. But I'm not going to have time now." As he talked, Jessin reached up to tap something above his head, showing his gloved hand.
Asarik locked eyes with Sythil and the lieutenant nodded. She and Athan both began hunting through their sensor data.
"Why aren't we going to get to meet, Mr. Jessin?" Asarik asked.
"I told you before I was leaving. That's still the plan. You see, I know you've been worried about missiles this whole time, but this ship doesn't have any. They pulled them all out."
Athan looked up abruptly, staring hard at Jessin and blinking through his bangs. Furiously, he tapped a new set of commands into his console. When he appeared to find what he was looking for, he shook his head and pushed himself slowly away from his console, holding out his hands like the data terrified him.
Jessin reached below the screen and pulled up his helmet, fitted it down over his head. The sound of the suit sealing itself and filled the screen, followed by Jessin's pronounced breathing. "Well," he said. "Maybe there's one missile left. I've got this thing to get me out back through the gate. Then this ship is going to go up and they said it was going to be a big enough boom to shut down the gate." He barked a laugh. "Can you imagine that? I don't know what they're using, or if that's even possible. I would think you'd need something the size of a star to shut down a gate."
The screen now looked through the translucent curve of Jessin's helmet. It became clear he wasn't standing in an airlock but lying inside some cramped vessel. A series of beeps sounded and the image began to shake.
"Kill it," Asarik shouted. "He's launching."
"I show a fast mover leaving Prowling Thunder," Sythil called.
"Launch the communications drone," Asarik commanded. "Send it through the gate with him."
Athan nodded as his fingers danced through the commands.
Beside him, Sythil gasped. "ShipLord, I show massive gravity fluctuations emanating from Prowling Thunder."
"Drone away," Athan said. He looked up, searching around until his gaze found Asarik. "ShipLord, I believe what they mean to do is destabilize the engine cores to trigger a cascade. Prowling Thunder isn't going to explode It's going to implode. They're forming a black hole."
"How?" Asarik said. The screen with Jessin's face had lost sound but the image still jounced and vibrated. He had his eyes squeezed closed under the velocity.
"I don't know what they've packed that ship full of, but that's why it wasn't giving off any environmental signatures. It's just a bunch of mass ready to fuel the gravitational collapse."
"Sound All Hazards," Asarik said. "We need immediate course correction through the gate." She looked at Sythil. "Do we have time?"
Sythil's face was ashen. "The simulations can't say. I don't know how fast the reaction is happening on Prowling Thunder."
"I have a course," Athan said. He didn't wait for Asarik's reply. "Executing."
The hammer of thrust fell on Asarik, driving her into the empty console beside Athan. Vaguely, she hoped the rest of the crew had found someplace to strap in. There would be more injuries -- if they survived at all. Her vision smeared as she struggled to hold her head up against the weight. Klaxons blared throughout the command deck and then abruptly quieted as if she were plunged underwater.
Lieutenant Athan sat hunched over his console, elbows hard on the alloy, while his fingers continued to manipulate the controls. He moved through several command sequences, then tapped an execute function.
"Eat that, Jessin," she heard him groan.
The screen that had been showing Jessin's scrunched face flicked to a graph showing waveforms. It was the maintenance signal Athan had showed her earlier.
"What are you doing?" she demanded, voice barely escaping her throat.
Athan shifted his gaze to meet her eyes. "By your leave, ShipLord," he said. "I just attacked his pod's navigation array." Athan shifted his eyes back to his console display and his lips stretched in a misshapen smile. "Our drone just shot past him. The gate is activating but he's off course." He continued to watch the read-out, narrating what he saw. "The drone is through, ShipLord. Halith is open. We need-- to maintain another ten minutes at full velocity."
Sythil groaned. "Prowling Thunder's gravity is increasing exponentially."
"Do you have a graph?" Athan said.
"I can't tell if we're going to escape it," Sythil complained, voice hoarse. She stabbed her console and the graph appeared on a wall panel, two waves expanding in parallel, one slowly overtaking the other.
Alarms continued to murmur in the background as if from a great distance. Her fingers felt slippery on the console. Everything denied her grasp. She was going to be flung away.
Asarik heaved a breath and didn't know if she could trust her senses. The air tasted like blood. She stared at the panel, the lines blurring. The graphs were either flaring brighter, or she was getting tunnel vision.
In the screen next to Prowling Thunder's swelling wave, the drone continued to chase Elegaia's sunset, now over black waves tipped with silver, the sun a pink glimmer on the horizon.
The drone was going to lose the sun, she thought. It shouldn't be losing the light.
As her vision closed in, the black waves undulated, silver lines seeming to push out of the screen then pull back, almost like breath. The wave tips danced until she realized the movement was static running portions of the image. The drone's signal was breaking up. They were losing it.
The static pushed out through the image and it fragmented, filling the screen with noise. Asarik wanted to close her eyes but felt like that would be a surrender. She held onto the console, sucking in shallow breaths against the pressure.
The screen flashed, and a woman's face appeared in the static. At first, Asarik thought it was her mother, her memory of Ahsal's final message. But this face was not her mother. It had high cheekbones and a narrow chin. The static smoothed into dark skin and gold eyes that stood out like flames. Her hair was iron gray and gathered at the back of her neck, feathered on either brow. She looked neither old nor young.
Asarik felt the woman was looking directly at her. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw other faces staring at the screen, dumbstruck. They couldn't all be having the same dying hallucination.
"Hello," the woman said. Her voice was rich, reverberating. "I have received your response to the call. I have been waiting so long. I wish to welcome you. My name is Alia. I am a daughter of Sesat."
Asarik stared at the screen. Her eyes were dry. Her face felt scalded by pressure. Her joints ached. She wished she could see Sythil's display, to be able to watch the two lines intersecting their velocity against Prowling Thunder's swelling gravity well.
The woman seemed to be waiting for a response but Asarik didn't know how to reply. She ached to answer. What if this was just one of the old beacons, broadcasting a recording? What if it was a trick in her mind, a weakness to drag her back down into the mud. She wasn't mud. She was iron.
"Hello," she whispered. "I am--"
She couldn't finish the sentence. She dragged her gaze from the woman's face to the graph showing Prowling Thunder's expanding gravity well, a pit
hungering to suck them back in. They weren't going to make it.
The mention of the name Saset made her mind stumble to the faces in the cafeteria, tired from loading debris in the airlocks. The chaff.
"Sythil," Asarik groaned. "Sythil, the airlocks."
The lieutenant slowly looked Asarik's direction, barely lifting her head from her console. She frowned, not understanding.
"Jettison the chaff," Asarik said, trying to shout against the pressure.
Understanding dawned in Sythil's eyes. She stared for a heartbeat, then turned her gaze back to her console, pulling her hands up to tap the commands. She paused with a finger outstretched, then jabbed the console.
There was no noticeable change, but the graph showing the gravity well seemed to pause like it had frozen. Asarik blinked, her eyes burning, not trusting her sight. Then the icon showing Serens' Reach pulled away. A flicker of hope sparked in her thoughts.
She moved her gaze to Alia's face, the woman's eyes like two flames in the dark, the only bright points in the vibrating ship.
I'm Asarik, she thought. I am iron.
Her thoughts clipped short as Serens' Reach achieved the threshold and translated through Halith Gate.
Chapter 7
Asarik stumbled in the tall grass, laughing. She fell to her knees and then flopped down on the ground, rolling over to see her father coming to a stop above her. He put his hands on his hips and breathed heavily, laughing with her. Then her mother was standing beside him, and both of them were looking down on her. The rain was falling harder now. She was no longer protected by the high grass and it fell fully on her face, pelting her cheeks and reaching into her hair with cold fingers. The sky above their heads had grown darker, a deep purple bruise. She blinked, losing the images of her mother and father.
We aren't the same when we come out, she thought. The gates do change us.
The Expanding Universe Page 7