by Nick Webb
“I do.”
“I don’t know, son.”
Jasper’s hand lingered, and finally squeezed the shoulder. “It’s true, Dad.” Granger reached up and squeezed the hand back. “You’re the reason we’re all still fighting. You’re the good guy. You’re the hero.”
Granger met his eyes. “Am I?”
Before he could answer, he let go of the hand and returned his attention to the flight controls. “We’ve got to board the Eru ship before that wave of crust debris hits us.”
He piloted the Trit ship into the opening doors of one of the Eru’s giant shuttle bays. To his surprise, several beings he recognized were waiting for him as they debarked.
“Varioosh. And you,” he turned to one of the Eru beings standing nearby. “Shelby Proctor talked to you. Or tried to, anyway.”
The Eru waved its four arms, and said something excitedly. At first Granger thought it was trying to talk to him, but then he realized it was looking directly behind him. He turned and saw Commander Qwerty descending the ramp. “Howdy! Unt-unt-wa!”
The Eru said something unintelligible, the translator program still in the very beginnings of understanding their language. Varioosh cocked her head to the side, then spoke when the being was finished.
“She says, welcome back to our home, human of ages past. You are most welcome here.”
Granger turned to Varioosh. “You speak Eru!”
“Of course we do, Old-man-et-cetera. You taught my ancestors their language many exponentiations of threes of solar cycles ago. You introduced us to each other. We have had a most beneficial friendship over the years, even though we have so little in common.” She turned to the Eru. “This is one of their leaders. We call her Emphatic-four-arms, because of how she waves her arms so humorously.”
“What’s her name in their language?”
Varioosh verbalized a human laugh. “Ha! Ha! Ha! Their names are absolutely unintelligible to us, and incredibly boring. Strings of random letters and numbers that have no life, no story to them. But they are not offended by the names we give them.”
It all sounded so interesting. He wanted to hear the whole story, the history of both of their people and their friendship.
But there was no time. He turned back to the Eru. “Emphatic. I’m looking for something. A book. Or a record. I gave it to you long ago for safekeeping. Do you know what I’m talking about? Do you have it?”
The Eru turned to Varioosh, who in turn waited for Qwerty’s translator to finish converting from English to Itharan. Then the diminutive Trit spoke to the Eru.
Granger didn’t need to know the first thing about the Eru’s language to understand her. She clapped her main arms, then her lower secondary arms, and said a word over and over. “Vint. Vint. Vint!”
“She says yes,” said Varioosh. The Eru kept talking, and eventually Varioosh added, “She will take you to the room of human records. It is encoded there. But she warns you that it is gibberish, and that it is up to you to translate them.”
Granger turned back to Qwerty. “It’s showtime, Commander. We’ve got the human Voynich Manuscript, we’ve got the Eru, we’ve got that other alien manuscript, now all we lack is the Itharan.” He turned to Varioosh. “Has Klollogesh arrived yet? I sent my officer to help him escape.”
She looked confused, if Trit facial emotions translated over to human. “Arrived?”
“Yes, arrived. He is the only Itharan who knows your people’s contribution to this code.” He watched her face change, and started to understand what she meant. “We need the Itharan manuscript. Without it . . .” He trailed off.
“I’m truly sorry, Old-man-et-cetera. It was Klollogesh’s destiny, he believed, to use our world as a weapon to help stop the monsters who came here. He needed to be down there to assure its completion.”
Assure its completion. The words sounded so cold and sanitary for the magnitude of the loss. Klollogesh was dead. His children, dead. And with him, the Itharan manuscript.
He turned to one of the Trit pilots. “I thought you said he escaped the great death.”
“He did! His place in the Great Story is assured forever!” said the pilot, his two underarms excitedly fluttering.
“But he’s dead,” said Granger.
“But is he though?” replied the pilot. “Death is forgetting. He will never be forgotten.”
“Did he not give you the message before the end?” said Varioosh, innocently.
“No!” He pounded the piston holding the hatch open. “Goddammit, no.” He took out his handheld and opened the comm. “Commander Shin-Wentworth. I gave you a mission. Did you complete that mission?”
After a few moments pause, the commander responded. “Sorry, sir. He refused to come. And at the end there was no time to force him to come with us. Truly sorry, sir.”
He felt dead inside. All that work. All the sacrifices, everything, all for nothing, now that Klollogesh was dead. “Very well, Commander. Get the Defiance out of here. Rendezvous with us at . . .” He glanced at Varioosh. “We need to get out of here. Where are we going?”
She said something to the Eru, and she responded. Varioosh turned back to him. “She says it is up to you, for now.
“Great. Shin-Wentworth? Rendezvous at—”
“How about Paradiso, sir?”
He was caught off guard. “Excuse me?”
“It’s the perfect place, for now. We can q-jump in behind the shadow of Paradiso’s moon—the EM field surrounding it should shield us from detection. Plus, there should be a healthy representation of IDF, CIDR, RC, and Findiri ships there, all assisting in the disaster response. They’ll be distracted and occupied, and we can pick up valuable intel for next steps.”
“I was going to say the Britannia debris field—”
The man had the audacity to cut him off again. He wasn’t sure whether to be annoyed, or impressed with the man’s chutzpa. “Inadvisable, sir. By now Oppenheimer and the Findiri will undoubtedly know it’s a rendezvous point for our side, and will be watching it like a hawk. Too dangerous.”
He had some fair points. Granger nodded. “Fine. Rendezvous at Paradiso. Granger out.”
Commander Qwerty had come up behind him, studying his handheld. “Uh, sir, some bad news out of Earth. And also from Admiral Proctor.”
Oh god, what now?
He braced himself, and turned. “Yes?”
“The admiral says she has failed in her efforts to form an alliance between human nations in preparation for the attempts to form one with the alien races. Additionally, she has lost track of the Swarm ship.”
“And?”
Qwerty sighed and closed his eyes, as if he didn’t even want to say it. “And Talus rounded up a group of people related to or friends with officers on the Independence, the Volz, the Dirac, and a few other IDF ships that sided with us, meaning to put them in the execution line. They, uh, they tried to escape. And, well . . .” He couldn’t continue, and instead showed Granger the handheld.
He took it, and read out loud. “All two hundred and sixteen passengers presumed dead. And at least fifty-three thousand dead or unaccounted for in Amarillo.” Granger closed the handheld, dropped it on the floor, and walked toward the shuttle bay exit.
Jasper ran after him. “Dad, wait!”
“Don’t fucking call me dad.”
“Just wait! Vestige. I’ve told you, at Vestige we have a whole little fleet just waiting for you. Diaz said it’s yours and—”
“I don’t want a fucking fleet. I want people to fucking stop dying for me. Got it, kid?” He paused at the shuttle bay doors. “Maybe Oppenheimer was right after all. Maybe we should have just rolled over and sided with them.”
“You’re wrong,” said Jasper.
“Am I? Probably. Been wrong about a lot, apparently.” He opened the doors, on his way to . . . he didn’t care. Just away. “Face it, kid. It’s over. Go back to Vestige and take your precious ragtag fleet and get the hell out while you still can.”
/>
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
Poincaré Sector
World IXF-459
High Orbit
The lightyears passed like rain.
What an odd comparison, they thought. They, him, all of him. Decker and the entire host of the Valarisi in one.
What made him think of rain?
He remembered as a child, looking out of the family cabin on the northern tip of Vancouver Island as the winter storms howled in from the Pacific. The wind and rain would lash the panes, and they would shudder and rattle. He’d stare out and get lost in the mesmerizing scene, lose track of time, and get scolded for ignoring the calls to dinner.
Or was it something else? Looking out across a liquid landscape, blues and pinks and greens from the pulsating flora pushing up out of the sea of Valarisi, each bush and tree themselves a physical vehicle for an individual Valarisi that chose to take upon itself plant-form. He, as a plant, would look out, and up.
At the rain.
The rain of destruction coming down from the skies. Bombs that incinerated billions, no, trillions—no. Individuals and consciences without number, it seemed. It was a golden age. They had enjoyed just a single solar cycle of liberation from the Swarm when it happened.
When Shelby Proctor showed up with her fleet, and incinerated the planet.
The bombs fell like rain, so innumerable were they.
Decker glanced at the indicator on the helm console. Eighty-two more lightyears. Not quite like rain. Just a few more q-jumps, in fact. In his short life as Decker-Plus, time had taken on new meaning, new context. In some ways, it passed far more quickly. In others, like molasses.
Molasses. Was that a human reference, or Valarisi? So many memories mixed together in his vast consciousness.
Two more q-jumps.
Then one.
Then the planet snapped into place on the view screen, against a backdrop of stars. Without even seeing them, he knew they were there. The vehicles of liberation. Granger had made them, eons ago, as a first attempt to defend against the coming Swarm. Somehow, he-they remembered that as if it were last week.
But Granger’s attempt failed, the fruits of the labor forgotten.
Until this moment. Now? They were vehicles of liberation.
And he-they could feel them, somehow, through meta-space? Through the Ligature? They, as robotic, electronic beings, had no conscience, and could never have been connected to the Ligature. But meta-space was just a physical field, mediated by waves and particles in duality, just like everything else in nature. So, in a sense, the robotic sentinels were the most natural thing in the world.
Everything was natural, because it existed. The skyscrapers on Earth? They exist. Natural. A natural habitat of Homo sapiens. The Skiohra generation ships? Natural. A habitat of the species that Granger, once upon a time, had coopted and forced along an evolutionary path that would result in a species of utmost use to him and his goals.
Granger? Natural. A unit of the Homo sapiens species, granted extraordinarily long life by them, the Valarisi.
The Valarisi. Natural? What were their origins? Not even they knew. It was out of memory and time. And yet . . .
They existed, and since they existed, they were natural.
The Swarm?
Decker shuddered. Even as he did, he wasn’t sure if it was the human part, or the host of Valarisi in him that shuddered.
The Swarm was not natural.
They existed, did they not? And so therefore weren’t they natural? It was a debate that had raged among the host of the Valarisi for many months in the pool on Kyoto Three. A debate that was eventually settled.
They were definitely not natural. They came from a different universe, a different reality. A different nature. The physical constants governing their atoms and molecules weren’t even the same. That they managed to exist in the universe at all was a wonder. A . . . miracle? Like Shelby Proctor’s dreams that had warned and guided her? That used the death ramblings of a dying sibling from decades earlier to help defeat the Swarm-controlled Huntsman?
Miracles weren’t natural either. And yet . . . they existed? Maybe. Maybe not. That’s what made them miracles, he supposed—the uncertainty.
But the Swarm: from a different reality, and therefore not natural. And therefore, needed to be removed from nature. From reality. They needed to become unreal again.
And as Decker reached out through the Ligature and felt the sleeping host of electronic consciences below the surface, he-they knew that this was the moment, and the method, of the Swarm’s final extermination. Their unmaking.
“But there’s not enough of them yet. There’s hundreds. We need millions.” He-they paused in thought. “They need stimuli. A reason to churn out more of them. Millions more of them.”
He spoke the words out loud, though he could have thought them at the crew manning the small bridge with him.
He went on. “Granger and his team stumbling through here a few days ago was enough to wake them, but not enough to stimulate their automated manufacturing base. We need something big. Something that will make them say, oh shit, time to wake up and fight.” He twiddled his thumbs, knowing the answer, but almost fearing the result. What if something went wrong? He-they, Decker-Valarisi, knew more than any being alive, could think and reason and model and predict with more accuracy than any living thing. Naturally.
And yet, there was still a sliver of uncertainty.
Could he risk the future of the universe without absolute certainty?
There was not a single quantum transition in reality that was without uncertainty.
And so, yes. Yes he could.
“Helm. Put us into a low orbit.” And with the order given, he-they closed his eyes and reached out through meta-space, searching, feeling . . . and found them.
And summoned them.
Here we are. All of us. Come get us.
He opened his eyes. And he could feel it.
The Swarm—the last, final Swarm ship in all of existence, was coming.
And he was the bait.
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
Il Nido Sector
Paradiso
ISS Tyler S. Volz
Shin-Wentworth knew he was close. He could feel it. He could tell by the way his heart raced—even his subconscious knew it.
“No change in the Findiri or IDF ships?” he said.
“No, sir. IDF ships are still engaged in recovery efforts, and the two Findiri ships are just sitting in high orbit,” said the tactical officer.
“Good.” He walked back to the science station where Director Wiggum was staring at some code he’d written, modeling the projected behavior of the newly obtained Itharan two-dimensional singularity generator. “And?” The man didn’t respond. “Doctor Wiggum?”
“Oh! Sorry, you startled me.” He didn’t even look up, but traced his finger along a few parts of the model generated by the code.
“Are we ready? Is it going to work?”
“Work? Maybe. Ready? I suppose we’re as ready as we’ll ever be, until we actually test it.”
Shin-Wentworth nodded. “The actual run will have to be the test. Stand by to anchor the secondary singularity. You sure we have enough power?”
“I’m sure. It’s the primary singularity that requires millions of terawatts. Earth’s Western Hemisphere power grid is still the best option.”
“Okay. And you passed the coordinates along to tactical?”
“Mmmm,” was all the confirmation Wiggum gave, as he stared at his model.
The man was turning batty. He couldn’t wait to be rid of him. “Tactical. Be ready to channel ninety-five percent of power to the meta-space projector and aim it at the coordinates supplied by Doctor Wiggum.”
“Aye, sir.”
He turned to the helm. “Be ready. When the cap banks hit full, we’re q-jumping in. You understand the order of events?”
The young helmsman nodded nervously. “Jump in, wait for confirmation from tacti
cal, then immediately q-jump to Earth.”
“You got it, son. Don’t worry, you’ll do fine,” he rested a hand on the shoulder of the kid. Couldn’t be more than twenty. “You lost some people on that freighter, didn’t you.”
The kid shook his head. “Yes, sir. My brother. Messaged me. Thought he was going to escape. And then . . . well,” he said. “He was just a kid, sir. Fifteen.”
Shin-Wentworth nodded. “We’re close, Ensign. Stay alert, do your duty, and soon this will all be over.”
He watched the indicator for the capacitor banks. Nearly fifty percent.
Nearly there. Hold on, Megan.
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
Il Nido Sector
Far Side of Paradiso’s Moon
Eru Generation Ship
“Human-who-talks-much, are you still working or have you entered your dream state?” Varioosh poked her head through the door.
Qwerty waved her in. “Still working, darling. Just trying to make sense of this Eru database. The fact that it’s base sixteen actually makes interpreting their written language much easier than their verbal. Make quite a bit of progress. In fact, come here, won’t you?” He pointed to the chair next to his, in front of a large wall of computer monitors and control dashboards.
“How can I assist, Human-who-talks-much?” Varioosh sat down where he indicated.
“Mrs. Emphatic showed me their copy of the Voynich Manuscript. Digital, of course, which makes things easier. I’ve tried every which way to combine the three manuscripts I have into one, and tried using one manuscript to parse the others, I’ve gone through any number of combinations of mixing and matching symbols and letters, to no avail. With everything I’ve tried, there’s just no discernible pattern that pops out. That’s what I look for: the patterns. Once a pattern emerges, that tells me there’s meaning there. With anything. Language, sensor data, what have you.”
Varioosh nodded her understanding, a distinctly human expression, he noted. The Trits seemed to pick up on other races’ customs remarkably quickly, adapting them into their own. “And you feel that the pattern eludes you because the inputs are incomplete, do you not?”