Talisman of Earth

by A. S. Deller

  He never felt quite like how he felt then, and it worried him. Something was wrong. The shutdown must have scrambled one of his processing nodes. Gulliver would have to run multiple diagnostic routines to pin down where the failure was. It could take seconds, minutes, or days.

  The AI Core started its search in earnest.

  Finally, after the raving tumult of the past week, there was time to dig in and validate the usefulness of the other mystery of LM-32f: the quantum memory device she had found lodged inside a corner of the distress beacon’s housing.

  Dr. Kyra Weller pored over the holos that filled the air over her private workstation in the astrophysics and astrogation lab compartment. The upload readouts ticked through petabytes as data streamed from the Pernet device. The felinoid scientist Sior had apparently chosen to leave the twin girls with more than just their lives. It seemed to be a titanic collection of information specifically focused on Valgon territory in the Milky Way.

  The hatch opened with a whoosh and Dr. Seok Won Cho ambled into the room, carrying a selection of food from the galley. “How is the compatibility so far?” He asked as he spread out a series of colorful little trays on a stainless steel desktop.

  “It’s working. Gulliver is filling in a lot of gaps in our rendition of the Catalogue. This is stuff none of us have ever seen or heard of. Most of it is Valgon history, science, religion, from their point of view. There doesn’t appear to be much new detail on the Malign. Gulliver’s cross-referencing everything, removing duplicate data.”

  Cho gazed longingly at the food choices even as he nodded to Weller’s voice. “So what are you hungry for? I got a little bit of all the new stuff today. Maybe the curried lentils with Martian carrots? You like lentils.”

  As much as he wasn’t listening to her, she wasn’t listening to him. The sheer quantity and quality of Sior’s information dump, his “patch”, was astounding. It would require years of review to learn from it all. Though if Kyra had anything at all anymore, it was time.

  When the pleasant scent of the lentil stew wafted over to her, she was also struck suddenly by the patch’s immediate import. Kyra now had access to relatively recent Alliance records.

  “Gulliver!” She excitedly spoke aloud, comm implant be damned.

  “Yes, Dr. Weller?” Came the AI’s placid voice.

  “Perform a priority one scan for information on coordinates of Valgon wormhole stabilization constructs!”

  Dr. Cho floundered with a food tray and dropped it on the deck. “Foist it! I mean...oops,” he said.

  “Yes, Doctor. Scan in progress.”

  “Visual,” Kyra said.

  The holographic presentation of data changed midstream, switching from reams of Valgon base-12 code to three-dimensional images of the local open star cluster. The Talisman was currently warping across the galactic plane on one of the Milky Way’s spiral arms. The holo depicted the ship’s location to within a few light years, a miniscule red dot in a swirl of glinting stars. Earth was still immensely far afield, almost a century away even at the Talisman’s one hundred times light speed.

  “Scan completed,” Gulliver stated. “Calculating.”

  Instantly, a brilliant jade dotted line extended outward from the tiny red speck. It tilted about ten degrees off from the galactic plane, ending a very short distance away from the Talisman.

  “Thank Infinitus. It’s so close,” Kyra uttered hoarsely, nearly speechless.

  “I have also found confirmation of another point you may find pleasing, Doctor.”

  “Go on.”

  “There is evidence that Preceptor Sior Herci of Pernet may still be alive, and located on this same lek essel,” Gulliver said bluntly.

  Kyra smiled. Now, if only their luck could hold.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  “Star Dock 17, that’s where I partook of my medical training, Commander,” Doctor Hubert Martell said as he examined one of the stitched lacerations along Rhodes’ hairline.

  “Glad to hear that you partook,” Rhodes grunted, adjusting his sitting posture on his sickbay bed.

  “This looks good. I’ll take the stitches out in a few days. Your rib fracture will heal in a few weeks.”

  “Why not forgo the waiting and shoot a few nanos into my veins?”

  “Policy is only to use nanomedical devices for extreme life threatening injury. Even after we updated our own tech to League standards, the risk of nanos overpopulating is still there. Granted, it’s point zero zero five percent now, whereas it was point zero one percent before. But nano overgrowth is still just as deadly. Patients still lose limbs and organs from it to this day, you know,” lectured Martell.

  “Thank you for the lesson, Doc. I see the twins are gone.”

  “Yesterday evening. Both doing very well, back with Lt. Sorakith.”

  Rhodes grinned, satisfied. “So, what’s my prognosis?”

  “You took the starfish treatment harder than they did. Their advanced biologies likely helped the girls bounce back so quickly,” the doctor said, fussing around with Rhodes’ IV.

  “So what was medical academy like on Star Dock 17?” Rhodes said, feigning interest to kill time.

  Martell’s gaunt face grew an all-too jubilant smile. Rhodes really wasn’t prepared for it, and could almost feel a headache coming on. Martell spoke wistfully, “Half the distance between Earth and Mars. I still remember the telescopic viewing ports, seeing both planets pass through them on their orbits. But the best part of the training, for me, Commander, were the dissections.”

  “Oh?” Said Rhodes, acting surprised.

  “Yes! There were humans, Althorians, Kenek, Insigari. The little Insigari bodies were so interesting, Commander. Very few similarities to anything on Earth, other than the general worm body design. Yes, and Valgons. It was frowned upon, of course, but most of us were quite thrilled whenever we had a chance to delve into the innermost workings of those devilish creatures. Beautifully evolved for killing, and so foul-smelling. We wore rebreathers whenever we had one in the lab.”

  Rhodes nodded vigorously, “I can only imagine.”

  “Well, you are almost ready for duty, Commander. Take another day to rest and I will get you back on the bridge,” Martell said, back to his old, bland, only slightly creepy self.

  Rhodes leaned back and closed his eyes, sure to watch Martell leave before shutting them completely.

  Several hours later, Gray felt a light touch on his right, human shoulder. Blinky awake, he expected to see Sorakith, or Kyra.

  Captain Reina Lancer stood above him, ramrod straight, a concerned, restrained smile on her face.

  “I know that look, sir. This isn’t just a social, ‘how are you doing, I brought you some cookies’ visit, is it?”

  There was a little bit of that, but it was only precursor to the meat of why she was there. Within ten minutes, Rhodes found himself staring down the barrel of something he didn’t want to think about. “I am feeling well enough to argue with you, if that’s what you’re asking, Captain,” Rhodes grunted as he sat up and whipped his legs over the side of his sickbay bed.

  Reina Lancer leaned casually against a bulkhead across from him, arms crossed. She shook her head and said, “Actually, I was asking if you agree with me.”

  “That the girls are cured? I’m cured! Sir,” he added.

  “You had an infection. Dr. Weller concurred with Dr. Martell on your physical health and with Dr. Shelton on your cybernetic systems being clear of any more metamorphic code, but no one is certain when it comes to the twins’ state of being.”

  Rhodes hung his head and spoke lower, “Shelton doesn’t know the first thing about biology and neither she nor Martell is an expert on Malign.”

  “Which is why Dr. Weller was involved in all of their analyses,” Lancer exhaled.

  “They’re children.”

  “Right. They aren’t war criminals. I’m not saying we put them in the brig, put them on trial. I’m just proposing that we place them in hi
bernation,” the Captain said plainly.

  Rhodes stood quickly, lost his balance for a second but propped himself against the wall with his left cybernetic arm. His metal fingers clunked to a stop, spread like five motorcycle kickstops. He met Lancer’s eyes with a challenging glare. “You know if we do that, they won’t see the light of day for months. Maybe years. Maybe longer.”

  “They’ll be dreaming, Commander,” Reina nodded. “No pain, no fear. And in the meantime, we’ll have the time to investigate the samples we’ve taken from them, possibly reverse engineer the infection and evaluate it.”

  Rhodes squinted, scrunched up his mouth, unsure what to say or do. “You’re not ‘proposing’ anything, Captain.”

  “Correct. I want your opinion, but this is something I’ve made up my mind on.”

  “Well, you know where I stand,” Rhodes said.

  Lancer stepped toward him, leveling a cool and steady gaze at her XO. “You know it’s the right thing. Everything used to just be about the crew and the ship. Then we found the twins, and the data that came with them. Now it’s about much more. The Earth hangs in the balance. Humanity. The League. Everything.”

  Dipping his head back down, averting his eyes, Rhodes said quietly, “Yes. Yes sir.”

  The Captain gritted her jaw, nodded once, and turned to leave. Limping away on her single crutch, with her back toward him, Rhodes heard her say, “Heal up, Commander. I need you topside.”

  The Sickbay hatch closed behind her.

  Kyra Weller stepped into the holographic field and was immersed in thousands of galaxies. She moved forward, thinking that each step she took was essentially equal to 100 million light years. Pinwheels, spirals and clusters of turquoise, lavender, coral and brilliant glowing scarlet surrounded her. In any direction she turned her gaze, Kyra was looking across at least 13.8 billion light years.

  She turned around and realized the hologram had centered her location on the Milky Way, and there it was. A pearly disc that contained everything she had ever known. It hovered in the midst of the galactic local group of about 40 other galaxies, with Andromeda and Triangulum the largest nearby. And then, to her surprise, amid the natural beauty she noticed four thin red vectors pointing away from one arm of the Milky way. Each one seemed to be moving, ever so slowly, toward one of the nearby smaller satellite galaxies to the Milky Way: the Canis Major Dwarf, the Sagittarius Elliptical Dwarf, the Ursa Major II Dwarf, and the Large Magellanic Cloud.

  Dr. Weller quickly reached out with her hands and made a butterfly swim stroke motion. The hologram expanded tenfold, making the Milky Way several feet across and the four crimson lines more obvious. She warily lifted a finger and touched one of the vectors. A holographic panel instantly popped into existence in front of her, showing the detail of what spearheaded the vector. Kyra’s eyes widened and her hand flew to her mouth at the sight.

  Moments later, Captain Lancer limped into the ward room, still supporting herself on a crutch, for an All-Officers Meeting called by Dr. Weller.

  Rax inclined on his specially-designed Kenek chair, with Commander Rhodes on his left and Lieutenant Ming to his right. Sorakith sat next to Kyra and Lt. Lille Altzen, who immediately stood to help the Captain into her chair at the head of the table. Lancer straightened her uniform coat and looked to Kyra, “So Doctor, you sounded a little out of sorts when you called this AOM.”

  Kyra nodded, “I’ll just say it. I opened up the Catalogue for the first time since the Pernet patch was fully applied. I decided to start with an overview, so I looked at the universal map. There were four vectors tracing out of our galaxy, and when I zoomed on them, they were Malign. Four Malign fleets, each on a heading to one of our four nearest galactic neighbors.” She stopped; let it sink in.

  After nearly a minute, Sorakith was the first to visibly react. She lowered her head into her hands and ran them back through her maroon and rust-tinged frills. Rhodes and Lancer looked across the table at each other, competing for who could hold the grimmest countenance. Ming looked up to Rax, who glanced down at her and said simply, “Inevitable.”

  “The Valgon Alliance has too much competition in the Milky Way, but who knows what is in those other galaxies? They could be a billion years more advanced, or primitive enough to be little more than chattel to those monsters,” Ming said.

  “How did they get so far, so fast?” Asked Altzen as she brushed a lock of champagne hair behind an ear.

  Kyra answered, “Even if those vectors are just averages, the chance that naturally occurring singularities exist with such frequency to allow for paths like that is too low.”

  “And?” Rhodes prompted impatiently.

  “So someone must have created them, eons ago. Built roads of black holes so that pioneers could travel between galaxies once they found a way to use wormholes,” Dr. Weller said.

  “Amazing,” uttered Sorakith.

  Another long silence, as their darkening thoughts continued to grind on.

  “We can’t just let the Malign infest the entire universe,” said Ming.

  Lancer wondered aloud, “If there are even greater intelligences out there, they’ll know where the invaders came from. The Milky Way will be marked as the source, and we will all be considered enemies.”

  Rhodes pounded his fist on the table, wincing at the pain he normally wouldn’t have felt had he used his cybernetic arm. “We won’t let them! Kyra, could we—- is it possible there is a way to find the exact coordinates of all of the singularities along these roads?”

  “It might be,” Dr. Weller said.

  The ward room hatch opened, and the twins leisurely walked in and poised themselves behind Rhodes. Lancer said, “What are you two doing here?”

  “I called them in with the comms I had Doc implant in them. They’ve been listening in the whole time, and Jerni told me they had seen this all before,” said Rhodes.

  “Comms? Those are Star Navy equipment, Gray. The girls shouldn’t be linked in like that,” she reprimanded.

  Rhodes nodded, “I know, but you know the old maxim ‘it’s better to ask forgiveness than permission’.”

  “I know it. And I don’t agree with it. Commander.”

  “Sorry?” Rhodes shrugged.

  “Did those comm links have anything to do with how the girls infected Gulliver?”

  “No, sir,” said Dr. Weller. “The only implant the trojan acted through was the XO’s. I should add that I knew about this before, too. Martell didn’t act without my consent.”

  Lancer sighed, “So why are they here?”

  “Go ahead, girls. Dr. Weller says she can figure out where all of the singularities are,” said Rhodes.

  “It’s possible, I said,” Kyra reiterated.

  Jerni and Ruri shared another glance, and Jerni said, “All that time in the laboratory, Ruri and I only had each other, and our encyclopedia. We studied everything we could find.”

  Ruri continued, “The Alliance calls the singularity roads ‘Krekee Seel’, or ‘God Paths’. They don’t know who built them, but it was surely done long ago.”

  “At least one hundred and thirteen million years ago,” said Jerni.

  They let that soak in.

  Rax broke the stillness. “There are legends. Only legends. No data has survived from that epoch.”

  “Right. There are volumes devoted to it in the Galactic Catalogue. They’re called various names, like Ancients, and Forebears, etcetera,” Sorakith said.

  “Because there is little left of them but imaginings,” grumbled Rax.

  Kyra nodded, “Little left. But no mention of the God Paths.”

  “Tell them what you told me,” Rhodes prompted, narrowing his eyes toward the twins.

  Ruri spoke animatedly, “The Malign, with their limitless computing resources, over hundreds of thousands of years, were able to break the mathematics that allowed the Alliance to access other dimensions. That’s how they gained extradimensional communication capability. They can speak to each other i
nstantaneously across light years, something the League still cannot do. It is their largest advantage. It is how they activated the God Paths.”

  “We continued the calculations, just now,” Jerni concluded, “And there’s a way to strand the Malign fleets, possibly even destroy them, using their own extradimensional technology.”

  “How? If it’s only a communications tool?” Asked Carly Ming.

  The twins exchanged a playful glance, almost as if they were deciding who should answer. Jerni kept going, “We confirmed that the M-theory extension of string theory is reality, with seven higher dimensions and four common dimensions. Supergravity interacts with dimensional membranes to produce the low-entropy dynamics.”

  Rax and Lancer shared a look of consternation. Lancer said, ”Dr. Weller, how much of this are you getting?”

  “Some. Enough,” Kyra answered, too uneasily.

  Ruri took over, “We’ll go right to the good stuff. If we can get a powerful enough extradimensional transmitter, we could propagate a wave of gravitons across each of the God Paths and move them out of alignment!”

  “And strand, possibly even destroy, the Malign fleets,” Rhodes concluded.

  “You did all that math in ten minutes?” Dr. Weller spouted.

  “Don’t be perplexed,” Jerni said. “Gulliver helped us, of course.”

  Carly Ming sat up and slapped her hands on the table. “This isn’t just that easy. We all know that Alliance extradimensional tech always self-destructs. The Star Navy, hell, the entire League, has been chasing it forever!”

  Kyra raised a hand, palm out, and said calmly, “It’s not some ephemeral dream. It exists. And if we can’t lay our hands on one of the transmitters, then what we need is the knowledge of how to make it for ourselves.”

  Lille Altzen sighed, “We’ve been trying that for centuries, too.”

  “Well, we have, anyway,” Rax grumbled in his gravelly voice, nodding toward Sorakith.

  “Thousands of years more advanced than Earth and they still don’t have it,” Carly shook her head.