“Thank you,” Gavin whispered.
The Maneusis nodded slowly.
Gavin bowed and took his leave. He left the commissary and returned briefly to his quarters, just long enough to record a mental message, leaving instructions for Dillon and Nance in his absence. Then he walked in calm, measured steps towards the lev shaft, reflecting again on what he had seen in the chronotrace. By the time the lev stopped on the central floor, he was sufficiently clear on his decision to wonder how he ever doubted it. He made one last stop at the lab to gather the things he needed and then headed towards the cargo bay.
He did not remember what he had felt when he left the Welkin for Oasis last time, but he wondered if it was similar to what he felt now. Inadequacy. Misgivings. Despair. He was almost certain that his plan would fail, but that did not bother him. Success is not measured in the outcome, but in being faithful to do what was right, no matter the cost. All men die sooner or later and he had lived longer than most. Better to live bravely and truly to the end than to wait for death in the cold dark corner of cowardice.
Despite what he told himself, and the overwhelming sense of inevitability which coursed through him, he hoped this was not the end.
He was not quite ready to leave this world just yet.
Thirty
A New Assignment
Two researchers in silver lab coats walked stride for stride through the Nebula’s corridors. They had just come from a debriefing in the Orientation Room and were on their way towards the Repository on the other side of the ship. The Nebula was nearly half a click across, but the lev waiting for them at the end of the hallway would make the trip little more than a brief inconvenience. They mounted the black disc floating just above the floor and rode off along one of the lev lanes.
The only Collectives they passed on their way were supervising somatarch crews busy repairing the ship. The researchers sped through several unfinished corridors, some of which were little more than bare frameworks revealing open sky churning above them.
“It seems hard to believe they will be able to finish the reconstruction on time,” Aaron remarked.
“The plan seems sound enough. The somatarchs are quite efficient at these sorts of repetitive tasks,” answered Donovan, the other researcher. He had more of an engineering mindset, having worked on the construction of others ships before coming onboard the Nebula, so Aaron trusted his opinion.
“At least there’s something left to repair,” Aaron commented. Most ships would not have survived crashing into the surface of a planet, much less left any survivors, but the Nebula was no ordinary ship. Most of the crew being in cryo-sleep had certainly helped. The interstellar cryo-chambers were located in the most well-protected parts of the ship.
“The hard part will be finding another suitable planet to start over on again,” Donovan observed. Aaron could not tell whether the comment was meant to express concern or merely a statement of fact. Donovan was a hard man to read. He rarely shared as much through his bioseine as he could have.
Aaron hoped that this might be one of the rare instances where Donovan was incorrect. He was more than ready to resume their interstellar journey. As an environmental investigator, his skills would be put to good use in finding the Collective a new world to colonize. He would perform a more in-depth analysis of the possible candidates this time. The decision to enter Nai’s atmosphere without sending in recon ships had been a mistake. Then again, they didn’t have much choice. Getting inside the atmosphere was the only way to avoid the Delegation’s interstellar scans.
Of course, there was no guarantee of finding any habitable worlds within scanning range. Even if they did stumble across one there were always risk factors on unexplored worlds—interstellar scans didn’t pick up everything. Nai was a perfect example. It scanned out as having suitable metrics, but now that they were here he could hardly imagine a more inhospitable place. Resources were scarce, long range communication impossible, and the weather completely unpredictable, defying all known modeling algorithms.
“There are several planets within a reasonable distance,” Aaron stated. “But we won’t really know anything definite until we send out some scout teams. Either way, I’m just glad we won’t be going back into cryo-sleep.”
“Let’s hope not. We’re still under evaluation, though,” Donovan reminded him.
“Maybe one of us will test out as a memorant. That would help. I wonder why they didn’t test us before the journey began, though? Why wait until after they’ve promoted us to the Development team?”
Donovan’s thoughts became guarded. There he went, close to the vest again. Was that a sign that he had been wondering the same thing, too?
“I’m not questioning their methods,” Aaron followed up, trying to reassure him. “I’m just curious, that’s all.”
“I’m not so sure that’s the way they’d see it. I’d keep those kinds of thoughts to myself if I were you if you want to stay on this side of the cryo-vault,” Donovan warned.
The curt response caught Aaron off guard.
“You’re right. Sorry for bringing it up.” Aaron felt awkward apologizing. They had not even been Developers for a single day and already he was out of step. Not for the first time he wondered why they had even promoted him to this level. They must be getting desperate, he thought, but squelched the notion as soon as it popped into his mind. He had to be more careful, toe the line like Donovan.
Aaron glanced through one of the windows along the corridor as they passed by. He could see other sections of the ship and crews with portable fabricators braving the sand storms to finish them. The fabricators had long, low frames with floating material ejectors constantly maneuvering themselves to create panels, struts, and other components needed to rebuild the infrastructure of the Nebula. The ship was close to eighty-five percent complete. If everything went according to schedule, it was projected to be completed in less than a ten span.
The black disc Aaron and Donovan floated on scuttled beyond the windows and into a passage with a checkpoint. The platform slowed briefly when it passed through several bands of yellow lights and then picked up speed again. Security had become tighter than ever of late. There were too many exposed areas where outsiders could get in. The checkpoints were designed to keep them from getting very far.
A few moments later, the disc dropped the two researchers off outside the door to the Repository. It swished aside and they stepped into the chamber. Black metallic memory blocks and large neon canisters of remin fluid were stacked floor to ceiling along the walls. The glowing green solution reflected off the metallic surfaces, giving an overexposed appearance to the room. The spacious warehouse of memories was larger even than the Nebula’s bridge. So many thoughts, so many lives, all within the confines of a single room.
Xander stood in between two rows of memory blocks. The black cubes came up to his shoulder so that from the doorway all that could be seen was his head. His eyes were glassy, his gaze fixed on some spot on the wall to their right. He was using the esolace. Since neither Aaron or Donovan had access to the channels he was using they walked over and waited for him to finish.
“Your orientation went well, I take it?” Xander acknowledged their presence through the Development channel, though his eyes remained unfocused.
“Excellent,” Donovan replied. “It was a lot to take in, even with a bioseine, but I feel much more up to speed with the situation now.”
“Good. We will continue to monitor you to ensure there are no side effects from your extended time in cryo-sleep. Once everything checks out, we will submit you for memorant testing.”
A sense of mild alarm arose in Aaron’s mind. In the back of his mind he had already been wondering about the side effects of coming out of cryo-sleep. He had heard strange things could happen to a person in that state. He hadn’t felt quite himself since coming out and even Donovan at times seemed to act in odd ways, more like a stranger than the long-time friend Aaron knew him to be.
> “Understood,” Donovan replied, taking the news in stride. “How are repairs to the ship progressing?”
“Well, but it may not be enough. We have reason to believe that the Delegation may have discovered our presence on this planet. We found a radial jaunter abandoned in the desert this morning. It was damaged and inoperative, no doubt a victim of the same sorts of storms which grounded the Nebula, but there was no indication that the pilot died in the crash. We assume he will construct a new ship and open a sidereal portal as soon as possible if he has not already done so. Then he will call in what’s left of the Delegation fleet to finish what they began on Kess.”
Xander relayed the news quickly and efficiently, as would be expected from such a veteran Developer, but Aaron struggled to suppress the rising panic inside of him. The Delegation was coming to this planet? Wasn’t it enough that they destroyed the Collective’s home world of Kess? Did they mean to eradicate all life on Nai too? Whatever their intentions, the Collective was in no shape to position them, not with the Nebula in the state it was in.
“That’s terrible news. Is there anything we can do to help accelerate the repair of the ship. I know that’s not our area of expertise…” Aaron allowed the dangling thought to shrivel away. Once again he had reacted without thinking, making suggestions to his superior on a subject which he knew nothing about.
Mild concern registered on Donovan’s face, which only deepened Aaron’s regret at having let the thoughts slip through.
“We actually have something else for you to work on, though it is of no less importance,” Xander replied.
“What would that be?” Donovan asked.
“The survivor of the crash has not contacted the Delegation yet as far as we know. If we can find him before he calls in our enemy’s forces we can stop this war before it ever starts.”
“We’ll do whatever it takes to protect the Collective,” Donovan promised.
Xander nodded distractedly. “I need you to resume a project that has been abandoned for some time. You were briefed about past deviants during your orientation. The project in question belonged to one of our most prominent defectors.”
Aaron and Donovan exchanged worried glances. Working on deviant technology was inherently dangerous. They didn’t want to get sucked in to aberrant ways of thinking.
“Do not be concerned,” Xander assured them. “The decision to resume this work has been approved and gone through the proper channels.”
“Which deviant are you referring to?” Donovan asked.
“Gavin, one of our archivists.”
“And what was he working on?” Donovan followed up in his typical, businesslike fashion.
“It’s a device designed to retrace time and playback events from the past. According to the logs he never finished it while he was a Developer, but now we are not so sure. We have had several inexplicable security breaches of late and are wondering if this device might have played a part. We have decided to investigate the possibility of crafting one for ourselves or at least finding a way to render any others ineffective.”
“Difficult times demand unorthodox approaches,” Donovan remarked.
“Sounds interesting,” Aaron commented, intrigued in the project despite the device’s clandestine origins. “So what is this device called?”
“The chronotrace,” Xander replied.
Light from the chronotrace filled the lab, glinting off the instruments and the blue-tinted visors worn by Aaron and Donovan. The device had been running for almost half a slice, its longest period of continuous operation yet. Without warning a blossom of white light consumed it and it spun to a stop. The malfunction coincided with a brief shaking of the walls, but they often shuddered like that from the quakes. The tremors had been happening ever since they crashed, but they rarely lasted for very long and had only damaged the ship significantly on one occasion, collapsing a newly framed-up wall. Yet another of Nai’s many instabilities.
“We’re tracing an area one tenth the size of what the chronotrace should be capable of and it still can’t handle the presence of zoetic entities,” Aaron remarked, lifting his visor. “You would think the celerium coil would mitigate the power fluctuations.”
“The way things are going, I doubt we’ll have it ready before the launch,” Donovan replied. The exact time of launch was not known, but both thought it would be no more than a few days.
“It took Gavin years to perfect this device,” Aaron commented. “I don’t see how they expect us to finish it in less than a ten span.”
“But we have access to all of his research.” Donovan also removed his mask and the two of them walked over to their prototype sitting on top of a column of celerium. The ebony stone was a bit wider than Aaron’s body and came up to his shoulder. The chronotrace attached to it was burnt out so they could no longer sense it with their minds. They’d have to replace the bioseine interface again which meant it would be close to a full slice before they could perform another test.
Donovan picked up the disabled device and brought it to a nearby table. He pulled out a tool connected to a sectioned cable which stretched down from the ceiling and set to work dismantling it.
While Aaron watched his colleague work, he ran back through the logs, going over all of the successful test runs Gavin had recorded. In reviewing the notes about these experiments, Aaron noticed a detail that he had missed.
“Donovan, did you see these references to the sub-rational algorithms in Gavin’s notes?” Aaron asked.
“Briefly, why?” Donovan replied, not bothering to look up from his work.
“All of the successful tests included them,” Aaron replied.
“Not exactly. You’re forgetting the field test he did during the storm. The Developers ruled that out as a malfunction,” Donovan reminded him.
Aaron studied the section on the failed peer review and found that what Donovan reported was true. Though Gavin had initially claimed that test as a success, the Developers had rejected it. But Aaron decided he needed to see it for himself. Through the esolace, he jumped to the test in question, accessing the trace recorded in the logs. Speeding up the sequence, he went straight to the end where the malfunction occurred. A tall silvery being appeared at that point, near the edge of the projection. It looked vaguely human, but its mercurial skin and otherworldly appearance marked it as a strict anomaly. It made sense that allowing for the possibility of non-standard events might cause the chronotrace to malfunction like that, but following Gavin’s thought process might help them break through the wall they kept running into.
“What if we included the sub-rational algorithms on a few runs—just to see what would happen?” Aaron asked.
“And waste more time? I don’t see the point,” Donovan countered.
Aaron knew he was right, but he didn’t see the harm in trying. Ordinarily, he would have simply gone with what he knew to be true, but he had reached the end of his ideas.
“What are the proofs against the sub-rational?” Aaron let the thought out without realizing it. He had meant to keep it to himself, but his vigilance slipped for the briefest of moments.
Donovan’s face wore the closest thing to shock Aaron could ever remember seeing. The expression jarred Aaron to his senses.
“I don’t know what I was thinking,” he added hastily, “I’m sure the proofs are so elementary that they didn’t bother including them in the knowledge base…” Aaron decided to simply withdraw his thoughts instead of continuing on. He was only making things worse by trying to explain himself.
Donovan’s stoic expression returned and no more thoughts were exchanged on the subject. Aaron did not know whether this meant that the matter would be forgotten or if Donovan would report it when it was more convenient. Knowing Donovan, he suspected the latter, and yet Aaron had the sudden impression that he didn’t really know Donovan as well as he thought. After all these years, his friend was sometimes as big a mystery to him as this device they were trying to create.
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br /> At that moment the door to the lab slid open and Cyrith entered into the room exhibiting the same plastic expression as always. He usually checked in on their progress once per day, but this time he was earlier than usual.
“What is the status of the project?” he asked, the unspoken tenor of his thoughts as brusque as his expression.
“We had a run of nearly six microslices today,” Donovan reported.
“What about zoetic entities? Have you made any progress in that area?”
“None, but we’re working on it.”
Cyrith’s stare remained unwavering, though Aaron detected a notable shift in the nature of his thoughts. There was an uncharacteristic urgency to them.
“Every moment the device remains unfinished our enemies may be moving against us. Until we have a way to discover their plans everything here on the Nebula, everything the Collective is working towards, is at risk.”
“We will have it working soon,” Donovan assured him. “Our goal is still to finish before launch.”
“Then you will have to get it working by tomorrow,” Cyrith came back.
“Tomorrow?” Aaron chimed in, knowing it would be impossible to fix everything by then.
“We’ve decided to move up the launch. We cannot afford to remain chained to this wasteland prison any longer. The quakes show no signs of letting up and we cannot afford risking further damage to the Nebula. We will mount skyward in the morning.”
“But the ship—will all the repairs be finished?” Aaron asked.
Cyrith stared blankly ahead, his mind consumed in endless calculations. “No. But if we don’t clear the planet’s atmosphere in time we will have no chance against the Delegation.”
These details left Aaron reeling. Things were worse than he thought.
“What sort of weapons does this ship even have? We’ve been working on this project ever since we got out of cryo-sleep so neither of us have been briefed on the ship’s capabilities,” Aaron probed.
The Chronotrace Sequence- The Complete Box Set Page 93