by Damon Alan
Emille, once she gets them there, will return to us in a shuttle, and we’ll pick her up. Gaia will be a loss to us, but Eris says we can trust the ship to do well by Eislen and his people. Over six thousand of them. Almost seven thousand. That number is inconceivable to me, these people blindly following some kid into oblivion because they think he’s a prophet of their gods.
Religion has power over the uneducated, for sure.
I sort of want to go along, I mean, they’re going to Andromeda. Who would even think that a reasonable thing to say? It sounds mad. But I believe Emille can do it. It’s not like her powers have shown much in the way of limits.
[Nervous Laughter]
The Fyurigan is making terraforming equipment to Gaia’s specifications to restock her. We’re working on another plan to make sure the new colony has enough food, since we have time to kill while Eislen’s followers are all cryogenically suspended. Gaia can only freeze the colonists at a certain maximum rate, so we only deliver enough people for the current crop of popsicles. Nobody wants a bunch of stone age people wandering around touching all of the colony ship’s buttons.
[A forty-two second pause]
Is any of this even making sense? I have so much to log that it’s a bit overwhelming.
As I said, we have a plan to get food. We’re going to test Dr. Jannis’ drug, and see if the adepts can function inside the galaxy. Personally, I have total confidence in her. But we will still practice by moving next to Gaia’s singularity with conventional methods and stressing the adepts. If that works, we’ll jump to a spot I know that should be uninhabited, Hive free, and stocked to the brim.
[Twelve seconds of silence]
I hope the emotions of the place don’t overwhelm me. I’ve always prided myself, at least since I took command of the Seventh Fleet, on being serious. On being steady. But this is going to be a hard one to swallow.
[A sound the AI estimates 96% probability of being a sinus clearing sniff, indicating an emotional state in Admiral Dayson]
I should clean up and get back to the matter at hand. Alarin needs to read my memories, and I doubt he wants these feelings clogging up the works.
End the log, Lucy.
Chapter 42 - Memory Lane
01 Febbed 15330
Sarah’s eyes were closed, and she did her best to think of a place she’d only been once before.
Alarin sat across from her, his breathing was steady. Sarah found that oddly reassuring. Why, she didn’t know, but the man she trusted as her friend was about to be more intimate with her than any lover had ever been.
“I will make every attempt to look only where you show me, Sarah. You will take my mind’s hand, and guide me to what you want,” he reassured her.
Are you reading my thoughts now?
I am if you direct them at me. Don’t worry, your memories are safe with me. I will sort them, and then only show Emille what she needs to know.
Okay. I know you and I have touched minds before, but this feels like I am opening up ancient secrets to you. Doors best left shut.
If you prefer I can find a female adept to do this, he told her.
No, this will be the best way. I trust you.
And, Sarah, my friend, I trust you. I have put my life in your hands and I would do it again a thousand times. You are opening up to me in a way that is usually reserved for family, among the adepts of Zeffult. Which to me, you have become.
That made her suck in a breath, and a sob escaped her, catching her completely by surprise.
You think you have no family. But you’re wrong. You have me, and you have Peter. He loves you, and is stupid enough to think you don’t make mistakes. You’ve brainwashed that boy.
She laughed, and wiped a tear from her face. This sort of vulnerability was what she’d hoped to avoid. The last thing her life needed was complication at the moment.
Complication? That is what life is without family. You have sacrificed for my people. You are, in every way, my sister. And as your brother, you will open your mind and heart to me.
Yes sir, she replied.
Alarin will do fine, no ‘sir’ needed. Now think of this place you want us to travel to, and then after we’re done here you can take me to that eating place with the delicious pastries that Elvanik loved.
She laughed again, then thought of the station she’d visited once, long ago, as the navigator on the RKV Chimera.
“Good,” Alarin said out loud, startling her. As she jumped she felt him push deeper into her mind. It was almost… sexual.
I can’t be your brother if you’re going to think those thoughts of me.
“Shut up, you idiot,” she spat out.
There, that’s more like a good sister. Now, think of the star this station is at.
She did as he told her, imagining the warm yellow glow of it in a blue sky.
That is what your skies usually look like? That color is very rare.
It is common, in fact, she thought, confirming that most skies were blue. Although, to be honest, there are worlds with all sorts of colors in their skies. It depends on the stars they orbit and the nature of their atmospheres.
Interesting, he said, although she didn’t think that was what he was focused on at the moment.
Imagine that station again. Imagine yourself looking at it, with the star over your right shoulder. As you remember it if the faint traces of your memories are correct.
“What do you mean, if they’re correct?”
Memories lie as often as people do. They change. Each time we remember something we add in a detail that wasn’t there before, or change a spoken word, or a color.
That thought didn’t sit with her well. What if I don’t have this memory correct?
That is why I’m having you think of it so many ways. I will work out the changes, and relay the information to Emille as error free as possible. Even if it’s slightly wrong in most ways, what is important is the location data, which your mind seems to be good at preserving.
How is that possible? I don’t have the gift.
He huffed in derision toward that comment. Sure you do. But not enough to affect the world around you. Intuition, that’s the gift. Or a feeling that you should be doing something, or a sense that you’re being watched. For your people, you’re fairly talented, really. It’s making this a lot easier.
“Are you done yet?” she asked, opening her eyes to look at him.
His eyes opened as well. “Yes. I have what I need. You have a lot of things you and I could talk about if you like. There is a lot of hurt in there.”
That didn’t make her happy. “You told me you were only going for the memories.”
“Hey, don’t blame me. Your emotions are strong. To get around them, I had to address them, know them, and put them aside. I can’t get past that point if I don’t know what the problem is. It’s not like you don’t have reasons. Your life is filled with loss and pain.”
She sighed. This wasn’t what she’d expected. “I think we’re done here.”
He nodded and stood up. “I’m sorry. But I meant what I said. You’re family to me.”
“Let’s get to that bakery, before they run out of your pastries,” she said, changing the subject.
“You have money, right?” he asked.
“You’re right. You are like a brother,” she said as she closed the door to the meeting room behind her.
Chapter 43 - Into the Nest of Demons
11 Febbed 15330
The EF-2358 floated away from the rest of the fleet, in stellar orbit beyond the boundaries of the Oasis system. A Hobar-class escort frigate, it was never intended to be this far from other ships and alone. Every spare hole in the ship was stuffed with rations, water, or other supplies needed to survive in deep space.
Doctor Jannis’s drug worked, at least in proximity to Gaia. But the real test was whether it would work in the chaotic cacophony of gravity waves within the galaxy proper. The adepts seemed to be able to deal with waves f
rom one direction, but incoming from a thousand vectors? That was an unknown.
One that was about to be tested.
The small ship normally carried thirty-seven souls, now it had twenty.
Sarah, Dr. Jannis, Alarin and Emille. Ensign Algiss, the only original member of the crew remaining for the test, was the pilot. Lieutenants Seto and Harmeen. Ensign Hamden and thirteen of his best marines acting as crew and defense.
“T-minus three minutes, doctor, is the drug at full efficacy?” Sarah asked.
Dr. Jannis checked Emille’s blood serum again, using the diagnostic equipment strapped to her arm.
Sarah watched as Alarin leaned in to read the numbers he wouldn’t understand.
I have learned enough to know a few things, Sarah. If you’re going to think about me, maybe you should not think at me.
Sarah smiled. My apologies.
Accepted. You are as worried about this as I am, he responded.
Leaders worry, she said.
She watched as Dr. Jannis look up at Alarin and smiled. The man visibly relaxed.
His eyes glanced up the command deck at Sarah. I know.
“T-minus two minutes,” Sarah said into the ship PA system.
“Mister Harmeen, bring the fusion reactor to full.”
The ship hummed as plasma poured into the power plant. Gigawatts of power waited for her command. “Full power, Admiral.”
“Set condition one. Battle stations. Conflict may be imminent,” echoed from the speakers as she gave her next command.
“All systems green, we are at full power,” Harmeen said.
Sarah stared at the countdown clock.
“Emille Sur’batti, are you ready?”
The young adept looked at Sarah and grinned. “My name is Emille. Remember who your friends are, Sarah.”
That was amusing. Sometimes it seemed like the adepts were an unblended mix of wisdom and goofiness, and which came up at any moment was a random chance. “Emille then,” she told the young adept, before looking at Thea. “Doctor?”
“Her readings are all in normal limits, the drug is at the level we need, and she’s doing fine.”
“Get in your seats.”
Dr. Jannis and Alarin strapped into their grav couches as Sarah called off the one minute mark. Across the ship the crew were ready to fight. Two combat engineers served in the engine room. The rest of Hamden’s marines manned the rail guns. Everyone else was on the bridge.
“Thirty seconds,” Sarah said. “Now Harmeen.”
A signal beamed to them from the Stennis appeared on the visual display at Emille’s station. It carried an image of a fuzzy star. One deep inside the Galaxy proper.
It called to Sarah.
Korvand Prime.
The AI took over the countdown. “Ten… nine…”
As the countdown reached zero, Emille let out a small gasp and Alarin’s eyes closed. The front viewscreen changed from an image of Oasis, tiny and alone, to a very similar looking star swimming in a myriad of pinpoint lights.
Home.
“Mister Algiss, fix our location,” Sarah barked. “Mister Harmeen, sensors on passive only. Such as they are. Tell me what’s out there.”
The sensor package on an escort frigate was weak. Targeting data came from the capital ship it protected.
“Aye, ma’am,” Harmeen replied.
“One hundred and six AU from the primary, zero-one-two mark zero-four-seven from galactic core bearing, Admiral” Algiss said.
Sarah nodded.
“No targets transmitting this area, ma’am. There are transmissions from in system. Definitely not human.”
Seto’s eyes widened as she acknowledged that last part.
“Thank you Lieutenant Commander.”
Sarah pondered what to do next. The supply depot she’d docked at one time when aboard the RKV Chimera was in a multi-thousand year orbit. It wouldn’t be transmitting. It was dark and fairly evasive to active radar.
And they were going to rely on Sarah’s navigation memories to find it.
“Where now, Admiral?” Dr. Jannis asked.
“Mister Algiss, mark the spot at two-six-eight mark one-eight-one for Emille, at a distance of two hundred AU.”
Sarah watched as every detail about that point was put on the view screen. The appearance of the primary. The location of the background stars relative. Finally, the small telescope the ship carried settled long the required vector the ship would need traverse to reach the destination point.
“I can get us close,” Emille said.
“Do it,” Sarah ordered.
Again the patterns on the viewscreen changed, and they were in another place.
“Mister Seto, how long would it take a radar burst from our sensors to reach a point forty AU from Korvand? That is as close as any Hive patrol should be,” Sarah asked.
“That would take about twenty-two hours,” Seto answered.
“Twenty-two hours…” Sarah wondered. “Is that enough time to look through the cache and get the good stuff?”
“You’d know the answer to that, Admiral,” Seto said.
Sarah frowned at her, and Seto shrugged.
These crewmen were comfortable with her. That never would have flown in the Korvandi Navy. But it was better this way.
“Mister Harmeen, light up the sensors. Find that cache. It should be at precisely two-hundred AU from the star, and zero degrees off the ecliptic plane. Keep the signal as focused as possible.”
Harmeen looked down at his equipment, then back up at her. “Focused as possible. Aye, ma’am.”
He didn’t sound hopeful of that.
“Do what you can,” she said.
At least they knew the general part of the haystack the needle was in.
Chapter 44 - We’re Not Alone
Cycle 148, Year 8750
“There is it,” Navin Harmeen said.
Emille had impressed herself with this transition. She’d studied the angles of the stars, the size of the star, and the line along which Steran Algiss had directed her.
It had taken them four hours to find and jump to the station Sarah wanted them to plunder.
The crew on the bridge watched the station approach. They were burning their engines on low power to keep their new post-jump location secret from any Hive ships that might respond to their sensor bursts at their previous jump point.
Navin Harmeen’s next words were panicked. “Cap… Admiral, we’re being locked on!”
Sarah’s head jerked to the left toward him. “What?” She was clearly in disbelief. “Who?”
“The station,” he answered, more calm. “I’m detecting railgun fire.”
“Full evasive, down relative. The reactor core is underneath, the firing solutions they have downward are far weaker.”
She thinks, Alarin’s voice echoed in Emille’s mind.
Emille gulped.
“Time of closure?” Sarah asked.
“One minute, thirty-two seconds. Or so.”
“Does the grappler drive on this thing work?” she asked next.
Navin Harmeen nodded. Sarah pointed at Steran Algiss, and squeezed her finger in the motion the newcomers used to fire their weapons.
Emille didn’t know this fellow who was flying for them very well, but she instantly decided he was going to have an uphill struggle to gain her approval once he turned on whatever a grappler drive was.
Steran Algiss nodded at his commander, touched a button and then all of Tsungte’s anger broke loose.
The EF-2358 slammed forward, then down. Then left. Right. Up. Left. Down. The device Emille was in, the newcomers called it a gravcouch, grabbed her like it was trying to squeeze the juice out her. And might even have succeeded a little.
A moment later the ships Faroo powered engines lit like torches, the gravcouch thing slammed to a new direction, and she was pressed into it as if a stegandi was walking on her chest. She wanted to cry, but her voice wouldn’t work. She began to panic.
I am with you, Alarin said to her.
What is going on?
Sarah is trying to keep us alive. I’m reading her now, if you sensed the determination in her that I do, you’d understand that this will be all fine in the end, he answered.
She stared at the viewscreen in front of her, the stars danced wildly across it. Of all things, that motion made her ill. Her last meal lurched violently up from her guts and slung clear across the room, painting a streak across the viewscreen she’d been staring at. A powerful jet of air swept down from above, pushing any moisture from her face.
“I am administering a sedative, Emille Sur’batti, you are under duress,” a voice said in her ear. She recognized it. The talking machine that Sarah called Brantis, the ship’s AI.
She couldn’t talk back to it, but felt a small prick in her arm.
Moments later it all seemed to be much less important. The stars still reeled, but she seemed to be a casual observer. She let her mind wander, expanding her consciousness outside of the ship. Her awareness passed over the hull of the station they were coming for, and then another object behind it. A ship, almost as big as the Stennis.
No. It was bigger.
“Emille, get us out of here,” Sarah ordered.
Emille tried to grasp the feel of her home world, but could not. She stretched out her feelings toward where they’d come to this star and sensed nothing.
“I cannot,” Emille said between jolts.
Sarah didn’t ask why. She apparently didn’t have time for that. She issued commands that Emille barely understood, but the other newcomers on the bridge responded to her every word.
Dr. Jannis’s voice whispered in Emille’s ear. “Did you feel a prick in your arm?”
“Yes.”
“Okay. Brantis just informed me that he injected you. Seems the sedative may have suppressed your top end adept abilities. Do you still feel most of your powers?”
“I do.”
“Okay,” the doctor said. “We’ll research this further. Don’t worry about it, Emille, and don’t do anything unless Sarah orders you to do so. Wait for now.”
She could do that. The newcomers would keep her alive. They genuinely cared. What was it she’d been doing? Oh yes, the ship she’d discovered.