by Craig Allen
“What the hell are you doing here?” A face filled the hologlobe. “You were under strict orders to maintain guard over Kali Prime. You have no right to be here.”
Gaston raised an eyebrow. “To whom am I speaking?”
“Fredrick Simmons.” The man crossed his arms and stuck his chin in the air. “I’m the director. I demand you tell me why you are here.”
“Orders,” Gaston said.
“Whose?”
“Admiral Jericho, of course.” Gaston narrowed his eyes. “Do you even know who he is?”
“Yes, I know who he is.” The man’s face had turned red. “How dare he disregard orders just so—”
Gaston raised his voice. “Mr. Simmons, I think you should come aboard so we can sort this out.”
“Absolutely not.” Simmons paced, and the view followed him. “I’m contacting UEAF Intelligence at once. I’ll have you stripped of rank and court-martialed.”
“Oh?” Gaston glanced at Galloway. “He sounds serious.”
Both of them snickered as Simmons fumed.
“How much does Jericho know?” Simmons held up a hand. “Never mind. I’m giving you strict orders to maintain confidentiality about this facility.”
“You’re giving me orders?” Gaston snorted then laughed out loud. “There’s something I think you should know.”
Simmons glared. “What could you possibly know that I don’t?”
“That this conversation is being broadcast back to the Tokugawa as we speak,” Gaston said. “We’re broadcasting on our bridge comm, so they should be receiving with virtually no delay despite the vast distance.”
The man’s face quivered.
“He’ll either have me fetch you, or he’ll come here directly.” Gaston smiled. “To be honest, I’m not sure which is worse. He’s not happy that he was lied to.”
Simmons only stared in disbelief, as if no one had a right to speak to him that way.
“I’ll get back to you when I hear back from the admiral.” Gaston waved his thumb back and forth, and the comm officer cut off the signal. “If the admiral calls, notify—”
The comm chimed, and the comm officer smiled. “Speak of the devil, sir.”
Gaston snickered. “Put him on.”
Jericho’s image appeared on the main hologlobe. “Clever, Captain.”
“I wasn’t trying to be, sir,” Gaston said. “I just thought you’d like to know.”
“True enough.” Jericho gave a slight smile. “I’ll contact Mr. Simmons and tell him to cooperate. Have him come aboard then return to Kali Prime at once. I want him on the Tokugawa as soon as possible. And Dr. Brenner?”
Cody stepped forward. “Yes, Admiral?”
“I’d like you to return to the Tokugawa as well. I’ll have need of you here.”
The image cut out before Cody had a chance to ask what that was.
“Contact that damn ring or whatever it is,” Gaston ordered. “Make arrangements with Mr. Simmons to board the Odin. Doc, I hope the old man’s not pissed with you.”
Cody couldn’t agree more.
~~~
The docking tube opened and deposited the hopper directly onto the Tokugawa’s flight deck.
Sonja shut down the engines. “Why do you think the old man wanted you here?”
The hopper’s comm panel chimed. “Dr. Brenner, please report to conference room four.”
“Understood.” Cody shut off the channel. “Maybe I’m in trouble.”
Sonja snickered. “Hope it’s not because of me.”
“If it is, I have no…” Cody stared through the canopy. “Oh. Now I know why I’m here.”
Sitting on an upper platform was a small, round vessel with spines protruding from it. The design was unmistakable, like a porcupine curled up into a ball, a smaller version of the larger Spican vessels.
“Looks like a guest has arrived,” Cody said.
~~~
Cody waited quietly, periodically drumming his fingers on the armrest of his chair, glancing at the time displayed on the large conference table before him. He was in the same meeting room where he had met Admiral Jericho eight months before. Or he was in an identical room.
Gaston leaned back in his chair, legs crossed and hands behind his head. If the unprofessional pose bothered Jericho, he didn’t show it. Sonja was next to Cody and hadn’t moved or fidgeted once. At the end of the table, Admiral Jericho sat patiently, waiting—as they all did—for a late Mr. Simmons.
Nearby, a lieutenant stood at parade rest, periodically eyeing a Spican resting in one corner of the room. The chair brought in for the representative from the Spican fleet was a quarter of a meter high, half a meter wide, and mounted with a ridiculously wide back. The Spican stared at the chair for several moments. He—at least, Cody assumed the Spican was in the male phase of its cycle—sat and stood several times. He breathed through three different blowholes around his body, all of which were connected to a breathing apparatus that made up his enviro-suit. The air passing through the Spican’s suit created a strange sort of rushing sound like a river in the distance.
Cody was wondering how the Spican had squeezed through the narrow door into the conference room when the Spican broke the silence, speaking through his voice box. “We have nothing like this.”
Cody didn’t know what the Spican meant until he gestured with one of his legs at the chair underneath him. “We call it a chair, Ambassador. We invented them long ago.”
“We use them all the time,” Gaston added. “Spiffy, eh?”
The Spican flexed each of his long, thin legs spread evenly around his body. Cody couldn’t see how the creature could stand on such thin limbs when he had such a bulky, three-sided body. The Spican stood, reaching his full height of two and a half meters, and looked at the stool again.
The Spican turned one eye toward Jericho. “It would not upset your people if I shared the design with my people.”
“No, it would not,” Jericho said. “We are glad you enjoy the chair.”
“Thanks is given.” The Spican sat once more. “Such construction will be life changing among my people.”
Jericho smiled at the Spican then checked the chronometer on the holocontrols hovering at his end of the conference table. “I was told our guest was on the way. However—”
The door opened, and Mr. Simmons walked in. He didn’t bother with introductions or greetings as he stalked toward Jericho and waved a finger at him. “You’ve got a lot of goddamn nerve, violating orders like that.”
Gaston stood, sending his chair a good meter away. “Mr. Simmons, if you’d like, I’d be happy to teach you proper decorum in the presence of high-ranking officers.”
Simmons glared at Gaston. “What’s that supposed to…?”
Simmons trailed off at the sight of the Spican. His mouth fell open as he backed away, grabbing a chair and wheeling it between himself and the ambassador.
The Spican twisted his body around and focused two of his eyes on Simmons. “Agitation is a shared trait between our peoples. Even when inappropriate.”
Simmons tried twice to speak then managed to get intelligible words out on his third attempt. “Why is it here?”
“The ambassador speaks for the Spican ships that have helped keep this world in order.” Jericho stood and clasped his hands behind his back. “And you will treat him and the rest of us with respect.”
“Why should I? You’ve ruined months of preparation.” Simmons tried to kick the chair between him and the Spican, but it barely moved. “You disobeyed orders, and you will answer for this. My brother is a senator on Earth with direct access to the UET council. I can have all of your careers on a silver platter.”
Jericho regarded the man calmly for a moment. “Well, if we’re going to unzip and wave our credentials around, my standing as an admiral in the UEAF is nothing to sneeze at. In addition, my father is Prince Herodotus Delunde Jericho the Third, heir tertiary to the throne of Sherman’s World. He also happens to sit o
n the UET council itself, and he would certainly speak in my defense.”
Simmons swallowed, stepping away.
Jericho closed in on Simmons. “My father would never throw me into an unknown situation like this. He has always shared important information, and he has always relied on me to keep it from the rest of the crew. This, however, I know nothing about. Not only whatever the hell it is you are constructing, but who authorized it.”
Jericho swiped at the holocontrols on the table, and two images appeared. One was the massive ring, and the other was the frozen recording of Simmons’s discussion with the Reed Entity. The Spican shuffled closer to look at the image.
“I’m certain the UET is not fully aware of what you are doing,” Jericho said. “But they will be before long, I assure you.”
“Hold on a moment,” Simmons said. “You can’t do anything that would jeopardize our plans. Humanity depends on it.”
The Spican shifted slightly, focusing one eye, and Simmons cringed again.
“You’ll have to give me a better answer than that,” Jericho said. “I think I’ll report this to my father and see what he has to say. Not to worry. I can confirm your story before long.” He nodded at his lieutenant, who started to leave.
Simmons held up his hands. “No. Wait!”
The lieutenant stopped and looked at Jericho, who waved him back over.
Simmons stood, his shoulders drooping. “I’ll submit myself to the authorities of your choosing. But I’m begging you, wait until after we are finished here. After that, you can tell the UET whatever you want. Tell them I threatened you or—”
“Threatened.” The Spican shuffled toward Mr. Simmons. “Such conflict ceased between our peoples long ago. You wish to begin a similar conflict.”
Cody wasn’t sure if the Spican was becoming agitated or not. If the ambassador didn’t see Simmons as the tiny man that he was, he might report the worst possible news to the other Spicans. Cody doubted the war would start again, but the Spican temperament was volatile enough that they might just cause problems.
“What? No, I…” Simmons threw up his hands, which made the Spican shrink back briefly. “I meant that Admiral Jericho could make that accusation if he wished, since I did threaten him when I—”
“You’ll have to excuse Mr. Simmons, Ambassador,” Jericho said. “He is not threatening to anyone.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Simmons asked.
“It means you aren’t even a threat to mosquitoes,” Jericho said, “and everyone can see that.”
Simmons pressed his lips together. “Admiral, you don’t understand. This gate will change how we travel the universe. Don’t you see?”
“A gate?” Cody reached for the holoviewer and scanned through the files, pulling up a schematic that looked like the gate outside. He pointed at the calculations. “These are calculations similar to those used to open a wormhole for a bridge-sat. Is that what this is? A modified bridge-sat?”
“That’s one way of looking at it.” Simmons took a deep breath, as if readying himself for a court-martial even though he wasn’t military. “A bridge-sat opens a microscopic Einstein-Rosen bridge across space-time, just big enough to send a microwave beam transmission through to another bridge-sat. This”—he waved his hand at the diagram—“can send something much larger.”
“A probe?” Cody asked. “Or a ship?”
Simmons nodded. “This device was designed by the creature you call the Reed Entity. It has an intellectual capacity beyond anything we can imagine. When it saw our designs for a bridge-sat and for the Alcubierre field that removes space vessels from causal reality, allowing them to move many multiples of light speed, it had an idea. It solved a problem no engineer on Earth has been able to.”
The Spican’s outer shell vibrated, and his voice box translated. “You can cross the void with a single step.”
Simmons looked at the Spican, grinning. “That’s right. We can build a gate like this in space for ships to travel through. Even better, we could create one on the surface of a planet, from which you could walk through the gate and reach the other side.”
“Put one gate on Earth,” Jericho said, “and the other here on Kali.”
Simmons nodded. “You could cross light years as easily as walking through a doorway. I mean, we’d have to do it in a controlled setting. The atmospheric pressure on Kali is greater than on Earth. If you just opened it up outside, the pressure differential would cause Kali’s atmosphere to spew into Earth’s until there was an equilibrium. We’d have to build both gates inside a controlled environment, but you get the idea.”
“Gateways.” Cody stared at the schematic then looked at the giant ring. “No more spaceships for travel. You could just walk from one world to the next.”
Simmons nodded. “Like I said, it will change humanity forever. Among all the great inventions of humankind, from language to writing, to the wheel, to industry, computing, Alcubierre fields… this will rank up there with all of them.”
A silence fell upon the room. Cody had enjoyed hiking when he was younger. To hike from one world to the next would be a dream come true. Not to mention transferring supplies from one world to another. Instead of boarding space vessels, one could simply carry them across the threshold of an interstellar gate. The possibilities were almost endless.
“I see your point, Mr. Simmons.” Jericho tapped his chain for a moment. “And I’m assuming the UET council doesn’t know of this.”
“Some do,” Simmons said. “There are those on the council who are opposed to working with the Reed Entity. They regard the creature as an unknown to be either left alone or destroyed.”
“Destroyed?” Cody shook his head. “Why?”
“The Entity can reach the stars,” the Spican said, “with weapons equal to our own and beyond.”
“And it has the resources to build that technology,” Jericho said. “It’s been cooperative recently, but the Reed Entity, with its massive resources, could harm both humans and Spicans and probably the Tauns as well.”
Cody examined the ring schematics again. “I assume you could fly a fleet of ships through it.”
“And more,” Simmons said. “The ring can expand to a radius much greater than what you see.”
Cody shook his head. “For what purpose? What do you intend to send through it?”
Simmons started to speak when a voice interrupted the silence. “Tell them.”
Cody spun around. Standing against the wall was a woman. She glided toward the table as if on wheels. Behind her eyes slithered red tentacles, which then quickly became normal eyes. She stood with her arms at her sides, staring straight ahead. The Ann-puppet used by the Reed Entity regarded everyone in the room briefly.
Everyone backed away. Cody tried to place himself between the Ann-puppet and Sonja, but she instead stepped in front of him, her hand on her coil pistol. The Spican’s voice box made a series of unintelligible barks as the ambassador lifted a chair in the air with one of his three tentacles.
Jericho tapped a holoconsole on the desk. “Intruder alert, conference room four. Intruder alert.” He held a hand out toward the Spican. “Ambassador, allow me to handle this.”
The Spican lowered the chair but still gripped it. An alarm sounded, and seconds later, the conference-room doors opened as a squad of marines carrying coil rifles poured through. Jericho pointed at Ann, and they trained their rifles on her.
Simmons held up his hands. “Don’t shoot. Er, hold your fire, marines, or whatever—”
“That will be enough, Mr. Simmons.” Jericho stepped forward. He started to say more, but the Ann-puppet cut him off.
She hovered over the floor, staring at Simmons. “Tell them.”
Simmons sagged his shoulders. “The Reed Entity wants to escape what’s coming.”
“Escape what?” Cody looked at the Ann-puppet. “What is he talking about?”
Her head turned mechanically in Cody’s direction, and she stared at h
im with unfocused eyes. “I know your people like to keep secrets from each other. Why, I do not know. But I will not keep this one.”
Simmons straightened his suit. “With all due respect, we have an agreement.”
“My survival is at stake,” she said. “I will not risk that over any agreement.”
“What agreement, and what is coming?” Jericho asked. “I’m growing tired of secrets as well. Someone damn well better give me an answer.”
The Ann-puppet floated toward Jericho. One of the marines reached for her arm.
“Belay that!” Jericho shouted too late.
The marine’s hand flew backward, along with the rest of him. He sailed over the table and landed on the floor.
“Hold your fire!” Jericho pointed at the marine on the floor. “Check him. The rest of you, do not fire unless I give the order.”
The marines backed away while one checked on the marine on the floor. The Spican reached for the bewildered marine with a tentacle and lifted the man to his feet. The marine stared at the Spican for a moment before nodding in thanks.
Jericho approached the Ann-puppet, which ignored him and everyone else as she stared at the holodisplay on the table.
“You will not assault my people again,” Jericho said. “You boarded my ship without permission, and if there was some way I could throw you in the brig, I would. Now, tell me what you are trying to escape from.”
“This.” Her hand pointed at the holodisplay.
The view changed to a schematic with a picture of a star nearby. How the display changed, Cody had no idea. According to the statistics next to the image of the star, it was several thousand times more massive than the local star. As Cody watched, the star grew smaller. Over the course of a full minute, the star collapsed into a pinpoint.
“The creation of a singularity,” the Spican said. “Such a thing has not been witnessed.”
“A black hole.” Cody checked the coordinates. “It’s on the far side of the globular cluster. It’s too far away to be a threat to you.”
“What was released upon the star’s destruction is a threat.” She pointed at the table again.