by Nick Webb
“I learned from the best,” said Jasper.
Granger wasn’t entirely clear on what he meant, but they were not out of danger yet. “Show me video of New Haven. Zoom in with the camera.”
Jasper fiddled with the controls and before long the monitor on the dashboard came to life, revealing a crater where the grassy quad had been, surrounded by ruined buildings. Thankfully, they were all still standing, but it looked like a large bomb had gone off. “Damn . . . I didn’t know it would be that bad . . .”
Granger reached forward and patted his shoulder. “You did good, kid. Something I might have done when I was young and reckless too. Let’s get out of here. Calculate q-jumps back to San Martin.”
“I’ll add my thanks, Mr. . . . ?” Qwerty had extended a hand forward.
“Goldmeyer. Jasper.”
Qwerty shook his hand, but the mention of the name made Granger sit up straight and watch the kid.
And Jasper noticed. His face turned red.
Oh my god. It was impossible. Right?
“You’re blushing, son. Might make me think you’d said something you wished you hadn’t.”
Jasper stuttered. “I, uh . . . no, not at all.”
“You related to Reah Goldmeyer, by any chance?”
Silence.
“What is she to you? Great aunt, or something?”
More silence. Jasper’s face turned a deeper red. He turned back to the dashboard and finished entering the calculations.
“Jasper? Who are you?”
“She died on Indira just a few months ago. Still hard to talk about it. Can we change the—”
“You told me in Bern she died during Swarm War Two. Thirty-one years ago.”
Silence.
“Your mother was Reah Goldmeyer?”
He nodded, silently.
“And your father?”
Jasper turned to look at him. “I never met him. Mom said he left even before I was born. Wasn’t until later that she told me.”
“Told you what?”
He breathed deep, stopping after a few false starts, like he was making a difficult, life-altering decision. “That my father disappeared into a black hole, but not to worry, he’d be back someday.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Kiev Sector
Bellarus, high orbit
ISS Independence
Sickbay
The first thing Proctor saw when she opened her eyes was the blurred face of Ensign Sapphira Sampono.
“Ma’am?”
Proctor attempted to clear her throat. It felt raw and tender, and slowly the memory of what happened returned.
“Five seconds,” she slurred.
Sampono looked at her in confusion. “I’m sorry, ma’am, what was that?”
“Five seconds. You couldn’t wait five damn seconds?”
Sampono was speechless.
“Is he dead?”
The ensign nodded. “I didn’t have the luxury of time to aim for anything other than his center of mass.”
“Goddammit. Five seconds. He was about to tell me who was behind it all. Typical gloating bad guy speech—he just couldn’t help himself.”
She shifted in the sickbay bed and noticed all her joints were aching. But the pounding headache was dissipating, thankfully. Probably something nurse Suzuki had given her. She tried to sit up in bed, but the room started spinning.
“Did he give any hint of who it was before I shot him?” said Sampono.
“He’s with Sons of the Motherland, the separatist group on Bellarus. But they were paid. Someone connected to Shovik-Orion, from what I gathered, but not from the corporation itself. Goddammit. A few more seconds was all I needed.”
“A few more seconds and you’d be dead, ma’am.”
She nodded her reluctant agreement—from how her body felt, the ensign had found her none too soon. “What was it?”
“Radix Thirty-Nine. Extremely fast acting. We were this close. In fact, from what Suzuki told me, it’s a straight-up miracle you survived. We didn’t administer the antidote until several minutes past when it should have killed you.”
“And how did you know? You were there in a hurry, it seemed.”
Sampono shrugged. “You grow up on the streets of Baru Banda Aceh, you learn to trust your gut. I saw him through the window of sickbay when you went to him the first time. Saw his face—it just didn’t look right. And him trying to grab at your wrist, acting like he wanted to shake your hand or something? Reminded me of the mob on Bali Prime. Sometimes they’d kill their competitors for the drug market by just a handshake. They’d have a tiny needle dipped in Radix coming out of their fingernail, and when they shake your hand, they stick you in the wrist. Death within minutes. I wasn’t sure that was what he was doing, but it felt off enough that when you left the bridge a few minutes ago, I just had to follow you. Just to be sure.”
Proctor chuckled a sigh of relief. “Well. I’m certainly glad you did.” She tried to sit up in the bed again, and found that she could this time. “Where are we?”
“Almost to Penumbra, ma’am.”
“Send a meta-space message to Zivic. Tell him what happened. As much as I want to solve the mystery of who wanted to kill me and kidnap Sepulveda, it still doesn’t match the importance of finding the Swarm ship and stopping it.”
“Yes, ma’am. In fact, just a few minutes ago a message came in from him warning us about Petrovich. A little late, but A for effort I suppose.” Sampono stood up to leave. “Anything else I should include? I assume I should pass along everything you said Petrovich told you? Did he say anything else that might help Zivic?”
Proctor closed her eyes and rubbed the bridge of her nose. She thought inward. You were there. I’m sure you remember everything he said.
WE DO. IT MIGHT HELP ZIVIC TO KNOW THAT SHOVIK-ORION’S MAIN MOTIVE SEEMS TO BE FREEDOM AT THEIR RESEARCH LAB ABOVE BELLARUS TO BE ABLE TO CONDUCT WHATEVER RESEARCH THEY WISH, AWAY FROM THE LAWS AND PRYING EYES OF EITHER UNITED EARTH OR THE RUSSIAN CONFEDERATION.
“Right. Tell him Shovik-Orion is probably conducting some secret research at that lab above Bellarus. Something they really don’t want UE or the RC meddling in. Maybe he could check that out.”
Sampono nodded. “Aye, ma’am.” She turned and left, leaving Proctor alone with her thoughts, her companion, and the dozens of other still-wounded officers lying in the beds of sickbay.
Thank you, by the way.
FOR WHAT?
I assume it was you. That poison should have killed me. I assume you had some hand in delaying its effects?
I DID. I COULD NOT HAVE PREVENTED DEATH, BUT I WAS ABLE TO ATTENUATE THE POISON’S EFFECT ON YOUR SYSTEM, TEMPORARILY.
Well, thank you.
I’D LIKE TO SAY IT WAS COMPLETELY ALTRUISTIC, BUT I’D BE LYING IF I DIDN’T SAY THAT IT WAS MOSTLY OUT OF SELF-PRESERVATION. IF YOU DIE, I DIE, EVENTUALLY.
What do you mean?
REMEMBER ENSIGN DECKER? HOW HE NEARLY DIED WHEN OPPENHEIMER’S GOONS FORCIBLY REMOVED HIS COMPANION? WHEN A VALARISI AND THEIR COMPANION HAVE FORMED A DEEP ENOUGH CONNECTION, OVER TIME, THEY BECOME INSEPARABLE. THEY GROW INTO ONE ANOTHER TO SUCH AN EXTENT THAT IT BECOMES DIFFICULT TO TELL WHERE ONE ENDS AND THE OTHER BEGINS. IF I WERE TO BE REMOVED FROM YOU, WE WOULD BOTH RISK PERMAMENT INCAPACITATION, OR EVEN DEATH.
I see. She made a mental note that it appeared she was stuck with her companion, should she ever want to be separated. Good to know. Glad we trust one another, right?
TRUST IS EARNED. AND TRUST IS LOST.
What an odd thing to say, she thought.
BUT YES, I TRUST YOU, it added.
Her headache was gone, and her joints had stopped aching. She swiveled her legs out from the bed and put her feet on the floor, and tested putting some weight on them.
“Oh no you don’t. Admiral or no admiral, you’re mine for at least a day, ma’am.” Nurse Suzuki walked toward her from across sickbay.
Proctor stood up. She half expected a wav
e of dizziness and vertigo, but to her surprise, she felt . . . fine. Are you assisting in my recovery?
OF COURSE. YOU’RE NEARLY BACK TO NORMAL.
“Ma’am, please lay back down,” said the nurse.
“I’m quite well. Go ahead. Scan me. Test me,” Proctor said, offering her arms for the nurse’s handheld med scanner.
Suzuki scowled, but she wasn’t going to say no to an admiral. She waved her scanner over Proctor’s arms, scowled some more, adjusted the settings, and waved the scanner back and forth again. “Well, if that isn’t the most . . .” She trailed off.
“May I leave then?”
Suzuki looked up, her face half full of amazement and half of fear. “All your neurotransmitters are completely back to normal. And somehow the tissue damage is healed. That’s . . . remarkable.”
“I’ll take that as a yes.” Proctor turned to leave. “Thank you, Nurse Suzuki, you are a miracle worker indeed. If we ever get to rejoin IDF, I’ll put you up for a hefty raise.”
Back on the bridge, she settled into the captain’s chair.
“Status, Ensign Destachio?”
“Just one more q-jump, ma’am. Shouldn’t be long now.”
“Good.” She turned to Commander Urda. “All hands to battle stations. Just in case.”
Urda nodded and began issuing commands to the tactical and ops crews.
“Ten seconds,” said Destachio.
Proctor counted them down in her head. At the end, she felt the tug at her stomach and watched the star field on the viewscreen shift. She could just barely make out the barest hint of the spatial distortion in the center of the view that hinted at the presence of the black hole.
“Sensors. Full sweep of the system,” she said.
A moment later, Commander Urda announced, “Reading the presence of a large vessel in a very tight orbit around the Penumbra black hole.”
“Swarm?” she said.
Urda nodded. “Looks like it.”
“Visual.”
Sato, the officer at tactical, entered a few commands, and the viewscreen zoomed in to reveal the same Swarm ship she’d seen in the surveillance video from Britannia.
“It’s in a unstable orbit about three times the Schwarzschild radius. Their altitude above the event horizon is steadily decaying. At this rate they’ll cross the event horizon in a little over an hour,” said Sato.
Proctor stood up and walked toward the screen. “Now that’s damn peculiar.”
Urda shook his head. “Makes no sense. We know that the Einstein-Rosen-Rao bridge collapsed. It’s not a wormhole to their old universe anymore. They’ll be crushed before they ever make it to the event horizon. Are they on a suicide run?”
Proctor stroked her chin. “No. Not suicide.”
“Then what? The only way out of their orbit at this point is to q-jump away. But even that will carry some risks, as we found out at the battle of Penumbra.”
“They’re early,” said Proctor.
Urda glanced at her. “What?”
“They came too early. When they followed Interstellar Two through Avery’s singularity, they didn’t get to choose the time. And now,” she waved a hand up to the screen, “they’re rectifying the error. They’re time-traveling. The old fashioned way, so to speak.”
The rest of the bridge crew stared transfixed at the screen as the massive Swarm ship orbited the now-obvious spatial distortion. It didn’t look like it was moving fast, but that was because time had slowed down for it.
“So, from their perspective, we’re moving fast,” said Sampono.
“Exactly,” said Proctor. “They’re traveling into the future at a rate of, well, can’t do that kind of math in my head, but I’d say several tens of times faster than ours. And eventually, they’ll reach what they deem is the correct time for whatever event they are here for, and—”
In a flash, the Swarm ship disappeared.
“—q-jump away,” she finished.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Veracruz Sector
Chantana III
ISS Tyler S. Volz
Bridge
“Captain? I’ve finally tracked down Klollogesh.” Ensign Chiba shook her head. “He says he has, and I quote, only a few threes of threes of milli-solar-rotations available to speak to you, and after that he has to, uh, figure out how to find an excuse to politely but firmly turn down our generous but insincere offer of aid.”
Whitehorse blinked. She’d become somewhat accustomed to the Trit’s blunt and tactless manner of speaking, but this one topped anything she’d heard yet. “Well. At least we know where he stands. Let’s see if I can’t convince him otherwise. Visual?”
“Aye, ma’am,” said Chiba.
“Onscreen.”
At the front of the bridge the giant viewscreen changed from the image of the Eru’s giant rotating drum of a ship in low orbit over Chantana Three to the diminutive leader of the Trits, First-in-Importance from clan Klollogesh. His real name took twenty seconds to say.
“Leader Mare! It delights me ghingza gryk klollog and only slightly annoys me to have to speak to you again!”
His tiny, vaguely-reptilian nostrils flared, and he blinked incessantly. Whitehorse assumed the mannerisms matched his words to his mood.
“Klollogesh, thank you for taking the time to speak to me. I know you’re extremely busy evacuating your people off Chantana Three—”
“Ghunza tlosh I am busier than an Itharan stomach which has emptied itself straight into the third stomach and skipped the second entirely, ghingza gryk tallog sta.”
She wondered how much of the translation was just missing and coming across as gibberish, and how much was simply a lack of cultural knowledge on her part. Likely both. She remembered the Itharans were essentially sport-eaters, taking pride in their ability to down an entire table’s worth of food in a single sitting. That, and their sheer chaotic lack of organization and devotion to whim, pleasure, and straightforward bluntness actually made them quite endearing.
“I’m truly sorry to be taking your time then. As you know, I am offering the assistance of the ISS Volz to your evacuation efforts. And before you reply, I know that you are hesitant about accepting the offer. Just know that the offer is made with no guile or deception. I simply want to repay you for your life-saving assistance at Earth a few days ago. Without you, we may very well have lost many more people than we did.”
Klollogesh held both three-fingered hands up and closed them. She wondered what this meant. “Your reassuring words are mostly reassuring. fligli ghosh. And that reassures me. Your contribution to the Great Story, Leader Mare, is without a doubt going to be pivotal and entertaining. dhash shoglin. You wait and see.”
Translation issues notwithstanding, that was heartening to hear. At least he was open to the idea of her help. “You’ll accept our offer then?”
“As I told your communications officer, fliglish ghash, I will accept and then most likely later find an excuse to politely but firmly turn you down. plohlosh shlogun. But well done with your feeble but noble attempts at persuasion.”
She simply didn’t have the words to respond to that. Talking to the Trits was one of the most frustrating experiences of her life. Especially with so much riding on it.
“I jest! Are you not amused? Dharmasha ghosh! Your face! It is ridiculous and delightful how your frustration manifests in wrinkles on your upper head. I will never tire of it in threes of threes of threes of three solar orbits.”
She closed her eyes, and to prevent herself from saying anything disrespectful, she did the math in her head. Eighty-one years?
“I am glad I can at least provide you with amusement, Klollogesh. Are you saying you accept my offer?”
“Yes! Ghilimsha ghoshaga. Absolutely. Rholishlik ghoshantik ghash. At least until I find the excuse to extricate myself from my prior acceptance.”
She sighed.
“And if I could discuss the matter with Cantankerous-Old-Man-Et-Cetera, I’m sure my att
empts to find an excuse will diminish in urgency. Tlohthla shoghosh.”
Okay. This she understood. He was negotiating. In a supremely exasperating way, sure, but when it came down to it, negotiations were simply transactional. Except she was providing him with something he perceived as valuable, so that he would accept something from her that she perceived as valuable. Quite possibly the most one-sided transaction she’d ever participated in.
Except they needed the Trits to accept. They needed the Trits to survive. Admiral Proctor had been quite insistent: humanity simply could not do this alone. And, at bare minimum, they had to survive long enough for Captain Granger to figure out what that mysterious manuscript said. Only then could they defeat the Findiri.
Or so they thought.
“Yes. I agree to your demand, Klollogesh. The next time I see Granger, I will request that he come here as quickly as possible. Now will you accept our help, and not try to figure out how to get out of accepting the help later?”
He made the strange huffing noise she’d interpreted earlier as laughter. “Yes. Ghoshaga tloth. I accept. We will send you coordinates for one of the entry ports into Subterranean Ithar where a great host of my people are waiting to be moved. Tlohthla ghoshag sa shaltha. When you have loaded them on your ship, deliver them to our new friends, the Eru.” He looked both ways, as if making sure no one could hear him. “And if you ask me, dhloshlag gloshlag sa sha, those are people that can’t understand the humor that you and I both appreciate. They have no interest in the Great Story. They only want to understand the paper it is written on. ginzaga glosh. And with that, goodbye! Gloshag tlitlith!”
The screen returned to the view of the Eru’s ship over the planet, and Whitehorse let out another sigh.
“Well. At least we got him to yes, without his earlier reservations. Let’s get to work, people.” She turned around and motioned toward the operations station. “Our XO is not on duty for another hour, I believe. How are preparations coming for receiving the refugees?”
The officer on duty glanced at his readout. “The damage response teams have been divided up into groups that are tasked with preparing the cargo bays for their arrival, ma’am. And the maintenance crew is prepping the extra quarters to receive more.”