by Nick Webb
Except the blood was frozen solid, along with the rest of the chunk of flesh. He surprised himself by even noticing that detail in the surreal scene before him. It was even more surprising that he noticed that detail, but didn’t notice the sound of the doors opening again.
“Oh,” said Wiggum. “Oh shit.”
He had to think fast. Very, very fast.
First, he yelled toward the ceiling. “Security! Get here now! Where the hell are you?”
“Nearly there, sir,” came the voice again.
“Security, medical emergency. Get the medical team here immediately.”
“Aye, sir.”
He walked over to the instrument panel and entered an emergency shut-down sequence that would quickly ramp the power down and dissipate the singularity safely, but after a moment’s consideration, he merely ramped the power down to nearly nothing, such that the singularity wouldn’t be visible to the naked eye. The flickering point disappeared, and he ran over to Whitehorse’s body and knelt down next to her.
“There’s no pulse,” he said, feeling the captain’s neck, Of course there wouldn’t be, given that her heart was laying on the floor several meters away.
The doors opened again, and the security team rushed in. He was still feeling for a pulse when he looked up.
“You’re too late. I think she’s gone,” he said, hoping against hope that he didn’t sound as absurd as he thought he sounded.
But from their perspective, he was their XO, kneeling next to their dying captain in a vain attempt to save her.
“What the hell are you waiting for? Get the medical team here, now!” he barked. And they sprang into action, one of them getting on the comm and ordering the team to hurry the hell up, and another rushing forward to assist however he could, which for him only meant kneeling down next to the captain’s body with Shin-Wentworth.
The ship’s chief medical officer was there a few moments later and Shin-Wentworth waved him over to the body. “Doc. You gotta do something. Anything. We need a fucking miracle here.”
The doctor took one look at the hole in her chest, and simply asked, “When did this happen?”
Shin-Wentworth stammered, “Uh, what, two minutes ago?”
The doctor eyed him, then glanced down at his own watch. “Time of death was at nine-fifty-two, ship’s time.” He returned his gaze to Shin-Wentworth, and looked him over cooly. “I recommend a full autopsy and investigation, sir.”
Shine-Wentworth stared down at the late Captain Jerusha Whitehorse, the hole in her chest now having leaked so much blood that a pool of it had formed around her, bathing his knees in it. The symbolism was not lost on him—he thought back to his teenage years in Sunday school, learning about baptism and blood sacrifice and all that archaic shit.
This was his baptism of blood. This was his new life. He was committed now to his mission, chained to it, bound to it in a way he hadn’t before. He must succeed. He would succeed. Megan, Molly, and Eddie would all live again. He swore it.
“So do I, Doctor,” he replied, “a full investigation. Thorough autopsy. We need to get to the bottom of this.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Irigoyen Sector
Kyoto Three
General Leslie Groves Military Technology Research Center
Decker was no longer Decker.
He was Decker plus. Decker and. Decker transcended. He was many, and he was one. He was in all things and all things in him.
When he thought, the I also meant we, but the we was so intimate, so pure, such that it was an entirely new singular personal pronoun.
We are legion, he thought, remembering the words from scripture. In the old context, he remembered it had a terrible connotation. A legion of demons. Now?
A choir of angels. And he was director, soloist, ensemble, section, and chorus.
When he spoke, he heard a great rush of waters behind his voice. Only his ears could hear it, but that didn’t make it any less real.
The old Decker was lost.
The new Decker knew exactly where he needed to go.
And it was far, far away.
“Hands in the air!” the voice had yelled.
He held his hands high in the air, just as instructed.
“Keep them up!”
The two marines leveled their assault rifles at him. He smiled.
“Where did you come from, man?” one of them asked.
“From in there,” he answered, motioning toward the pool with his head.
“Cut the bullshit!” the other man yelled. “How did you get past us? Are there others?” He waited a moment for an answer, then, “Talk or I’ll blow your fucking head off!”
“I told you, I came from in there,” Decker replied, again motioning with his head toward the pool. “I’ve been there for days, waiting for someone to rescue me. I thought you’d given up on me.”
The first marine narrowed his eyes and peered into the pool. “But . . . how did you survive? They watched your body dissolve . . .”
Decker shrugged. “I thought it was common knowledge that the Valarisi can heal cellular damage. They helped me breathe down there too.” He took a step forward. Both marines held their rifles higher.
“Stop! Get on the floor! Now!”
He obligingly sank onto his knees, keeping his hands high in the air. He slowly lowered one to the ground to support himself as he laid down, then stretched both arms above his head.
One of the marines lowered his weapon and grabbed the wrist restraints attached to his belt. He laid the rifle on the ground next to the other marine and stepped forward, kneeling down next to Decker. Stretching forward he snapped one of the cuffs on a wrist and wrenched it backward behind his back. “Give me your other arm,” he instructed.
Decker complied. Both hands were now laying on the small of his back. The marine reached for the free wrist to secure it. His hand brushed up against Decker’s free hand, ever so briefly.
The marine paused.
“Something wrong?” asked Decker.
“I . . . no,” replied the marine. He reached back down and fumbled with the restraints, trying to get them secured around the free wrist. “Dammit! Help me out here. I think the thing might be busted.”
The other marine hesitated. “You sure? Here, take mine.” He reached behind his waist and unhooked his restraints, tossing them at the other marine. They fell to the floor with a clatter.
“Nah, these are fine. I just . . . can’t . . . seem . . . to . . .” He fumbled with them, trying to get the cuff closed around the second wrist. “Goddammit! Help me!”
The other marine finally set his rifle down and knelt down to help. “What’s the problem? Looks fine to me, just close the damn restraint!”
“It’s not closing, dumbass. You try.”
The second marine reached down and grabbed the second wrist and the free cuff.
He paused.
He paused for a very long time.
“Is there a problem, gentlemen?” said Decker.
The first marine fished a key out of one of his pockets and unlocked the first restraint. “No problem at all.”
“Good,” said Decker. His hands now free, he gently moved the first marine’s knee from off his back, and the man complied willingly, slowly. Decker stood up. Felt good to stretch his legs. His new, perfect legs.
The second marine shook his head a few times, then stared straight ahead. “What now?”
At first Decker started to think the reply at him, using the Ligature, but guessed it was probably too early for the man. Words would have to suffice.
“You’re going to escort me to a closet, and you’ll lock it behind me so I can’t be discovered for the next hour or so. Then you’ll go find the director, and give him a good, firm handshake. After that?” He pointed up at the two cameras fixed to the wall near the ceiling. “You’re going to go into the system and erase this little episode, and replace it with the five minutes of footage that came before. And then,
one by one, go congratulate every single staff member, guard, janitor, and cook here on a job well done. Shake all their hands so they know you mean it.”
Decker made for the exit. The marines followed him, after retrieving their assault rifles. “And then?” asked the second marine.
“And then?” Decker smiled. “The real work begins.”
The second marine struggled to speak, halting over his words. The Valarisi inside of him had not yet completed the work of submission. “Work? What work?”
Decker walked out into the corridor. “Saving humanity, of course.” He pulled open a closet door. “Whether it wants to be saved or not.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Penumbra System
ISS Independence
Bridge
“Ma’am, I’m picking up an odd reading from the black hole. I almost wasn’t going to say anything it’s so small, but these days . . . ?” Commander Urda was frowning at the tactical console.
“What is it?”
She’d just watched her quarry, the Swarm ship, q-jump away to God-knows-where, and had been silently mulling next steps. What she planned to do with the Swarm ship when she caught it she still hadn’t the foggiest idea—almost like a dog chasing a ground car—but she’d cross that bridge when she came to it, she supposed.
“Just a small fluctuation in the meta-space signature coming from the black hole. Except, it’s localized to a small area outside the event horizon,” said Urda.
“Strange.” She stood up and walked back to the tactical station. Sure enough, the data coming off the sensors confirmed what he said. “Is it only meta-space?”
“Nothing on the high-energy end of the spectrum.”
“Gravitational?”
Commander Urda shook his head. “Haven’t checked yet. One moment,” he tapped a few buttons. “Yeah, I’m reading a sizable gravitational distortion several dozen kilometers from the event horizon. It’s in a decaying orbit, but should be stable for at least another few days.”
“Visual?”
He tapped a few buttons and shook his head again. “We’re diffraction limited, I’m afraid. At this range it’d just be a few pixels.”
“Ensign Destachio, take us in closer. Put us in an orbit of about,” she glanced at Urda, “one thousand kilometers?”
He nodded. “Yeah, we should be able to image whatever it is from that distance, unless it’s just a few microns across.”
She glanced over at the officer manning the science station. Ensign . . . dammit. “Ensign, what’s our time dilation at that orbit?”
She looked like a deer caught in the headlights, but managed to fiddle with her console and calculate an answer. “Only about three percent slower, Admiral.”
Proctor returned to the command console. “Get ready to time travel, folks. With any luck you’ll get to tell your kids what two minutes into the future looks like. Mr. Destachio?”
“Aye, ma’am, engaging engines.”
The Independence approached the event horizon, speeding up as it went to maintain a stable orbit. Before long, Destachio announced, “One thousand kilometers from the event horizon, ma’am.”
The sight of the black hole’s effect on the light passing around it was a thing that haunted her nightmares. They’d come much, much closer during the battle of Penumbra just a few months earlier, but the fear that they’d actually cross the event horizon and fall into the black hole had been such a powerful terror for her that it still woke her up at night, remembering the distorted sight of the stars behind the event horizon, stretched out and moving in strange directions.
“Okay, can we get a visual now, Mumford?”
“Aye, ma’am. Zooming in.”
The view screen changed. In the background was still the sight of the warped space at the edge of the event horizon, but in the foreground was . . . something.
“What is it? I see two lights, and in between them, I can’t make it out.”
Mumford shook his head. “I’ll see if I can enhance the image. Here we go.”
The image sharpened, and Proctor stroked her chin. “Well I’ll be damned. It’s a watch. And that other thing? I still can’t make it out.”
Mumford tapped a few buttons, then went a shade of white. “It’s human flesh, ma’am.”
“Flesh?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
What in the world?
Commander Urda stood next to her, watching the screen. “Do you think this is what the Swarm was waiting for? It’s unusual, but worth traveling trillions of years into the past for?”
Proctor shook her head. “No idea. Mumford? Thorough scan of those two lights. If they are what I think they are . . .”
“Aye, ma’am. Won’t take a moment.” He frowned at the data. “Reading another pair, ma’am. This pair has a stream of carbon dioxide molecules passing between them. And a third pair, ma’am. These . . . I don’t even know what this is. Lots of disperse organic matter, and what looks like dirt, and some strange metal alloys.”
“Take all the data now and we’ll analyze it later after we’ve left the neighborhood of the event horizon. Destachio, when he’s done, q-jump us to Britannia—the remains of Britannia,” she caught herself. “There’s someone I want to show this to.”
“Aye, ma’am.”
It wasn’t a minute later when Mumford announced the scan was finished. “Mr. Destachio?” said Proctor.
“And . . . we’re off,” he said. She felt the tug in her stomach of the q-field, and the viewscreen changed to show the swirling maelstrom of Britannia.
It felt like she was visiting a graveyard.
“Who’ve we got here? I assume the Dirac is still around. Anyone else?”
She’d designated the ruins of Britannia as a muster point for any ship in the fleet that had not followed Oppenheimer in his surrender to the Findiri, and had hoped that more than just the Independence, the Dirac, and the Volz would follow her.
“Not that I can see, ma’am.” Mumford looked up at her with a pained expression. “Sorry.”
“So it’s just us then.” She sat down in the captain’s chair. “Right. Open a channel to the Dirac. Let’s see what Rayna has to say about these artificial singularities.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Il Nido Sector
Paradiso
ISS Tyler S. Volz
Bridge
“How many more q-jumps?” said Commander Shin-Wentworth.
“Two, sir,” said the helmsman.
It had only been five hours. Blood should dry after five hours, right? He nervously reached down to his knee and rubbed it, encouraging the blood to dry faster. It still felt sopping wet.
He looked down. His pants were clean. Right. He’d changed immediately after the incident. Why did his knees still feel wet? Was he going crazy? He chuckled. Yeah, probably.
Go crazy all you want, Harry, just take the next step, and then the next step, and you’ll have them with you again.
He tapped his comm button. “Engineering, this is the Commander. Status of the power plant? Is power shunted through the q-field and meta-space emitters yet?”
“Nearly there, sir. You’ll have up to seventy-five percent of available power able to be emitted.”
“Seventy-five? I wanted ninety.”
“The emitters weren’t designed to handle that, sir. It’s outside the specs.”
“I don’t care about the specs, just do ninety.”
He heard a click of a tongue. “But sir—”
“Trust me, everything here is engineered with tolerances at least twice what they tell us, because they know that some happy-go-lucky IDF captain is always going to want to push the engines well past their limit. Just do it.”
Silence for a few seconds.
“Were my orders unclear, Lieutenant Beesley?”
“They’re clear, sir. Beesley out.”
He felt the internal tug at his organs of the familiar q-jump field, and he knew he was one step closer.
“Tactical, we’re likely to see a Findiri ship or two at Paradiso, and probably several IDF ships engaged in relief and recovery efforts at the capital. We’re going to come in hot, carry out our task, and get out. We’ll be vulnerable for a few minutes. During that time I want evasive maneuvers, and, if necessary, a full spread of railgun fire on any ship that gets in our way. Understood?”
“Aye, sir,” said the helmsman. He hesitated. “And . . . if all the Findiri ships and IDF ships get in our way? What then?”
Shin-Wentworth nodded. “Then we do plan B. We’ll use the results of our recent experimentation to encourage them to get out of our way. At least for a few minutes.”
“Aye, sir.” He didn’t sound convinced.
If he was honest with himself, neither did he. There were so many variables, so many unknowns he hadn’t worked out yet.
But time was running out.
Time. Always, always, he needed more time.
He’d have it soon enough.
“Last q-jump in one minute,” said the helmsman.
He turned to Director Wiggum. “Are you ready? Have you finished the calculations?”
“I have,” Wiggum shrugged, “but with so many degrees of freedom I can only be so confident in the result. Meta-space wave envelope strength? Quantum tunneling phase variances? Hell, I don’t even know the perturbations from the second-order graviton-photon coupling—”
“Just . . . best guess. Okay?”
Wiggum shrugged again. “You got it, boss.”
“Are the prototype singularities still anchored to Penumbra?”
“They are. We can essentially use them to tie new singularities to, no need to go through the re-anchoring process. Saves a lot of energy.”
“Good.” His stomach was filling with butterflies. This was it. This was the moment he’d worked so hard for over the last few days. “And we’re confident that the secondary singularities can be generated in the past, over such a great distance from Penumbra?”