“We’ve suspected something weird’s been going on behind the scenes for a while now. I wasn’t sure if it was the SI. One of its agents was involved.”
“How long?” Ozzie chanted; he wasn’t about to let Nigel off this one.
“Couple of days.”
“Pretty good. Longer than I’d have given you credit for.”
“Oh, like you were sure,” Nigel snapped back. “You who were so confident you used Johansson as an excuse to play superthief for kicks. You know, I bet you’re secretly pissed Johansson hasn’t been caught. For a hundred thirty years you’ve been waiting for this little stunt to get added to the catalogue of Ozzie legends, haven’t you?”
Ozzie pulled a sullen expression, modeled on Orion at his worst. “I was playing long odds, is all. I told you: Johansson was convincing. Somebody should have taken a close look. And don’t sit there telling me I shouldn’t have done anything. Look outside and see the kind of super-deep shit we’re in right now.”
“Were.”
“What?”
“Were in deep shit. I’ve managed to pull us out of it. There’s not going to be any more MorningLightMountain anymore, or the Starflyer.”
That little edge of conceit was something about Nigel that always bugged Ozzie. “What have you done, Nigel?”
“I’m sending a ship to Dyson Alpha; a nova bomb is going to take care of MorningLightMountain once and for all. This is all going to be settled within a week.”
“Nova bomb? Is that what your secret weapon is? Nobody on the unisphere knows. What the fuck is it?”
“Same principle as a diverted-energy-function nuke, but bigged up like you wouldn’t believe. Our Dynasty weapons development team took the diverted-energy principle, and bolted it onto a quantumbuster. Simple really, the quantumbuster effect field converts any matter within its radius directly into energy, only now that energy is diverted into expanding the effect field farther. And that’s a lot of energy. The field grows large enough to convert a measurable percentage of a star, which gives us an explosion on the same scale as a nova. It annihilates the star and any planet orbiting within a hundred AUs. The radiation will be lethal to any habitable planet within another thirty or so light-years.”
Ozzie frowned, horribly intrigued despite every liberal moral he possessed. “That’s an impossible feedback.”
“Not quite. It only has to hold together for a fraction of a second. Conversion is almost instantaneous. That gives us a loophole.”
“No.” Ozzie put his hands to his temples, shaking his head hard enough to make his hair wave from side to side. Realization of what was about to happen was affecting his body far worse than any little sober-up tablet forced down his throat. He really did think he was going to be physically sick. “No, no, I don’t give shit about the mechanics. Nigel, you can’t do this, man. You can’t kill MorningLightMountain, it is the Primes now, their whole species.”
“We’ve been through this, Ozzie; the War Cabinet, Dynasty heads, the StPetersburg team; we looked at every tactical scenario, every option. There’s nothing else we can do. MorningLightMountain is trying to exterminate us, just like the Starflyer planned. Maybe you should have tried a little harder to get me to take notice of Johansson instead of playing the romantic underdog. Not that you ever were that, Ozzie, it just suits you to pretend so you can get laid more often. Well, wake up and smell the coffee; we’re not college students anymore, Ozzie, we left California behind three and a half centuries ago. Grow up; I had to—and I get laid more than you because of it. Why do you think I used your name in the War Cabinet announcement? People trust you, Ozzie, they like you. If you’d kicked up a fuss back when you met Johansson, they would have listened; Heather would have busted the Starflyer’s corruption apart like a jackhammer on glass. Don’t go around blaming me and calling me a warmonger. You knew, Ozzie, you goddamn knew about a threat to the entire human race, and you didn’t fucking tell anyone. Who’s to blame, Ozzie? Who backed us into this corner, huh? Who took away our options?”
Ozzie had sunk back into the chair as Nigel’s voice grew louder. It wasn’t often Nigel, the original calculating iceman, lost his temper, but when he did it was best not to interrupt—people had been ruined, or worse, for making that mistake. Besides, there was a nasty taste of guilt spreading around Ozzie’s brain like a fast-acting poison. “It’s genocide, man,” he said simply and quietly. There was no logical argument he could come up with to counter the tirade. “It is so not what we are.”
“You think I don’t fucking know that,” Nigel stormed. “I wore the same T-shirts as you, I went on the same marches. I hated the military industrial imperialism that ran the world back then. Now look where you’ve put me!”
“Okay.” Ozzie raised his hands. “Just calm down, man.”
“I am fucking calm. Anybody else, Ozzie, and I mean anybody, and they would have been wiped from history by now. Nobody would question what happened to you, because you would never have existed.”
“I’ve seen it happen, man,” Ozzie whispered. “I walked one of the ghost planets. I witnessed their history; I felt them die, Nigel, every last one of them. You can’t let it happen. You just can’t, I’m begging you, man. I’m on my goddamn knees, here. Don’t do this.”
“There is no other way.”
“There’s always another way. Look, Clouddancer said the barrier generator was only disabled, not destroyed.”
Nigel gave him a startled look. “It was a variant on the flare bomb, we think; it altered the generator’s quantum structure.”
“There, see! The generator is still there. We’ve just got to repair it, get it working again.”
“Ozzie!” Nigel gave his friend a weary, despairing look. “You’re grasping at straws. It’s not you.”
“We have to try.”
“Ozzie, think it through. The barrier generator is the size of a planet, and we’ve got days, maybe only hours before MorningLightMountain strikes back at the Commonwealth. If it does, it will kill us, it will genocide the human race. Do you understand that?”
“Let me try,” Ozzie implored. “You’re sending a ship, right, the one with the nova bomb?”
“Yeah. We developed something new, Ozzie, this drive is something else again. It doesn’t use any of our old wormhole technology; you really do just jump into hyperspace. MorningLightMountain can’t detect it.”
“Perfect! Let me go on it. I can take a look at the generator. You know if anyone can work it out, I can.”
“Ozzie—”
“MorningLightMountain won’t know I’m there. If it starts an attack on the Commonwealth I’ll fling a nova bomb into its star myself. But we have to try this. Let me go, Nigel. It’s a chance. I know you, man; you won’t be able to live with yourself if you don’t at least consider it.”
“Ozzie, every physicist in the Commonwealth has been studying the data which the Second Chance gathered on the generator. We don’t even know what some of the shells are, let alone what they do. And we certainly don’t know how to build sections of them. Not inside a week. Get real here.”
“I can do it, I know I can. There must be a self-repair function, something that can undo the damage. Yeah! Clouddancer said it should outlive the star itself. If the Starflyer could have destroyed the generator, it would. That gives us a chance.”
“You’re not going, Ozzie.”
“Give me one good reason.”
“I don’t trust you.”
For a moment Ozzie thought Nigel had hit him—his skin certainly went numb the way it did after a sharp blow. He couldn’t hear anything either. The air in the study had turned dead. “What?” His voice was a piteous croak.
“I don’t know if you’re a Starflyer agent or not. If it’s going to take a last shot at defeating us, then this would be absolutely perfect. So read my lips: you are not taking our two most secret weapons into the MorningLightMountain star system by yourself. They are the only guarantees of racial survival we’ve got.”<
br />
“I’m not a Starflyer agent,” Ozzie said meekly. “You can’t really think that.”
“You’re either a friend of Johansson’s like you said, or a Starflyer agent. Those are the only two reasons for stopping the Far Away cargo inspections, because both groups need to get their equipment through without drawing any official attention. Right now, Johansson is out of contact on his way to Far Away, so I can’t confirm your story short of a memory read. I don’t want to do that, even if we had the time—which we don’t. So for now, I’m doing what any good friend would do, and quarantining you. When Johansson gets back, he’ll be able to vouch for you. I’m sorry, Ozzie, but we’ve learned the hard way just how deep the Starflyer has penetrated our society. I’m even partly to blame for that. I let that sonofabitch Alster fool me, which is going to take some serious piety on my part to recover from. And we both know how hard that will be.”
“You really mean this, don’t you, Nige; you’re not going to let me go.”
“I can’t. If this was reversed, you wouldn’t either.”
“Oh, man. This is the only chance we’ve got to save our souls. We can’t commit genocide.”
“We have to.”
“Look, will you at least tell the captain to take a flyby of the generator?”
“Sure thing, Ozzie. We’ll do that.”
Ozzie knew that tone, Nigel was just humoring him. “You son of a bitch.”
Nigel stood up. “You and your friends will stay here until this is settled. I can’t give you unisphere access, but if there’s anything you want, just ask.”
Ozzie almost told him where to stick his hospitality. “All the data on the generator. I’m going to look at it anyway.”
“Fair enough, Ozzie.”
“And if I find a way of fixing it…”
“I’ll bend over and you can kick my ass into orbit.”
“Damn right I will. Oh, and Nigel, get the boy a girl, will you? A sweet one, not some fifth-lifer.”
Nigel gave him an irritated glance. “Do I look like a pimp?”
Ozzie smiled.
“This is only going to take a week,” Nigel said. “He can wait.”
“Hey, come on, man, we could all be dead by then. The kid’s never been laid. Now you’ve gone and flung him in jail. Five-star, sure, but it’s still the pen. Give him a break.”
“Ozzie—”
“If you can’t call out for a hooker, send one of your wives along. They’re all about his age anyway.”
“You can’t annoy me into doing this.”
“Just do it, Nige, show some humanity here. I’ll pick up the tab if it bothers you that much.”
“Whatever.” Nigel went out of the door with a fractious wave of his hand.
“Fuck you very much,” Ozzie shouted after him.
***
Eight hours into the flight to Port Evergreen, and the Carbon Goose passengers were finally starting to relax. There was a general feeling among them now that they might actually make it to the wormhole generator after all. Tail winds had picked up as they crossed the ocean. Wilson had announced their projected flight time was another hour and a quarter at most.
Paula wasn’t anything like as optimistic as the others. The Starflyer only needed a five-minute lead on them through the wormhole. Even with their reduced flight time, it was going to get close on forty minutes. Apart from a couple of hours spent in a fitful sleep, she’d spent her time reviewing contingency survival plans. There were plenty of scenarios loaded into the avionics, mostly connected with the plane being forced to ditch in the ocean. Given that each Carbon Goose carried emergency food packs, and there were more stores at Shackleton and Port Evergreen, she estimated that they’d have enough to eat for between seventeen to twenty months. It would mean returning to Shackleton where the other planes were parked, but they weren’t facing instant doom. Power and warmth were certainly easy enough; the micropiles could supply them with electricity for decades.
She walked back through the top passenger deck, which everyone had settled in. The Guardians regarded her with expressions of suspicion and hostility. Not that it bothered her; open animosity was a near constant companion in her job. Cat’s Claws simply ignored her, while the three remaining members of the Paris team smiled warmly as she passed. The stairs at the back of the cabin took her down to the next deck, which had its lights down low. She could just see the horizon through the small circular windows, a fuzzy pink line separating the black ocean from a star-filled sky. Flashes from the neutron star sent a broad livid blue shimmer across the water, leaving a purple afterimage on her retinas. They were just keeping ahead of the dawn, which was scheduled to catch up with them twenty minutes after they reached Port Evergreen.
Four more sets of stairs, and two pressure hatches put her in the lower cargo hold, where all their vehicles were stowed. The turbine noise was loudest here, almost as if there was some kind of combustion engine operating somewhere close by. Even with Wilson turning the heating on full, it was chilly in the big compartment. She zipped up the black and lavender fleece that had been in her CST executive travel pack and walked to the center, where Qatux was spending the journey. They’d managed to find half a dozen emergency heaters, which now ringed the large alien blowing warm air on its dark gray hide.
Nobody knew anything about Raiel physiology, so Paula couldn’t tell if its occasional shivering was the same reaction that humans had to cold, or a manifestation of its little dependency problem. Two of its smaller tentacles quivered as she approached.
“Paula, you are most welcome,” it sighed hoarsely.
“Thank you.”
Tiger Pansy was sitting on a crate beside Qatux, wearing the contents of two travel packs over her skirt and blouse. For once she’d abandoned her heels to use a pair of boots, then pulled some fur-lined travel slippers on top of them. She still looked miserably cold, her gloved hands cupped around a mug of tomato soup.
Adam and Bradley had also pulled up some crates. Their expressions remained neutral as she sat on the corner of the crate that Tiger Pansy was using. For whatever reason, Bradley had never gone in for reprofiling or genetic modification; he was still maintaining his mid-thirties age, though she’d never been able to track down which rejuvenation clinic he used. A tall man, especially compared to her, with his fair hair shading almost to silver-blond, contrasting with the darkest eyes she’d ever seen, his handsome features rose with a welcoming smile, not in the least triumphant, merely polite. Bradley was genuinely pleased to have her with them, though she would not forget nor forgive the terms that had brought her on board.
Adam couldn’t be more different from the founder of the Guardians; much squatter than Bradley’s athletically lanky frame, with muscle bulk that had been added since their last confirmed image of him on Velaines. Most of the Paris office would have walked right past him without a flicker of recognition, but after so long Paula could identify his face anywhere no matter what reprofiling he gave himself. Indeed, after so many changes there was now a severe limit on any new alterations. This new rounded face that alluded to youthful middle age was a strong warning against so much economic self-applied cellular reprofiling. His cheeks and chin were leathery, and afflicted with what appeared to be a mild form of eczema. The collar of his semiorganic coat was plagued by strands of dark hair that was dropping out like a radiation victim’s.
“Shaving must be painful,” she said.
Adam’s hand went halfway to his face before he became conscious of it. “There are suitable creams, thank you for your concern. You don’t look too hot yourself right now. Travel sick, Investigator?”
“Just tired.”
“Please,” Bradley pleaded.
“I’ve been assessing our food supplies should we be stuck here,” Paula said. “We should be all right for some time, but I came to ask what Qatux eats.”
All five of the Raiel’s eye stalks swiveled around in unison to focus on her. “Your concern is touching, Paula.
There is no need for alarm. I will be able to digest human food. I estimate I will consume as much as five human adults per day. With the exception of curry. It does not agree with my digestive process.”
“Hey, me neither,” Tiger Pansy chirped in.
“Are you all right?” Paula asked her. “I can spell you if you want to sleep.”
“That’s real kind. I’m okay, though. I grabbed a few hours in here a while back.”
“Do you and Mr. Elvin intend to argue with each other?” Qatux asked. “You have been adversaries for many years now. I would find such contrary and emotional discourse to be most elating.”
“I’m not looking for a fight,” Paula said stiffly. “This is a new situation, for both of us.”
Adam looked up at the Raiel. “The enemy of my enemy is my friend. Old human saying.”
“Do you really set aside old battles so easily?”
“Put it into context with the threat of humanity’s extermination, and you’ll understand,” Paula said.
“It’s kinda sweet,” Tiger Pansy said. “That we can all just get along, you know.”
“Thank you, my dear,” Qatux said. “That was a most impressive feeling of sympathy and, I believe, camaraderie.”
“That’s why I get the big bucks,” she said, giggling. “Not!”
Paula turned to Bradley. “The good news is that if the Starflyer does close the wormhole behind it, we will be able to survive.”
“You might, my dear, but for me such failure will be worse than death.”
“I understand. I’d like to know now, what exactly are your plans. I might be able to help.”
“Plans,” Bradley murmured sadly. “I had grand plans, Investigator. Once. Today, things have become somewhat fluid. All we can do is hope that our friends on Far Away find some way of preventing the Starflyer from going through the wormhole until we arrive at Port Evergreen. That way we might still manage to corner it and kill it. Dreaming heavens, I cannot believe it has come to this.”
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