Valence (Confluence Book 4)

by Jennifer Foehner Wells

  She didn’t look to be more than twenty-five, and he doubted she was even that old. Her frickin’ sidekick was a plant. How aggressive could a plant be?

  If she didn’t bolt, she might be able to help them die a little more slowly.

  Ron was barking orders, ordering Pio to start spooling up the jump drive in case they had to retreat, calling all hands to battle stations. “We’ve got a commodity down there that could save a lot of lives. If Kai’Memna gets even a whiff of how important it is to us, he’ll destroy the Tree just to make sure we can never have it. That would be a huge loss. We’re going to do our best to make sure that doesn’t happen.”

  Ron turned to Alan. “Activate the anti-anipraxis protocol.”

  Alan nodded and brought the devices online. No external attempts at anipraxis would get through the jamming network, but internally they could continue to communicate as usual because the devices all broadcast outward. Their signals overlapped to such an extent that they could lose any single device and still be safe from Kai’Memna mind-fucking abilities.

  Ron started to pivot away, but stopped and gave Alan a sidelong glance. “Your blink drive is ready for the testing phase.”

  Alan straightened, instantly on alert. He hadn’t expected Ron to bring this up. “Yeah.”

  “So let’s test it.”

  Alan blinked and let out a long slow breath, rubbing the back of his neck. On one hand, he was ninety-nine percent sure it would work. On the other, he hadn’t completed all of the phases of testing. Sure, he’d done extensive experimentation on several stages of smaller-scale drives and knocked out all the bugs. Those drives worked like a charm. And he had already built and installed a full-scale drive on the ship. He just hadn’t run it through all its paces yet.

  But going straight to full-ship usage was skipping a few steps. Changing the scale to that degree, well… they might just blink out of existence if he got something wrong.

  But if they were likely to die anyway, it was probably worth the risk. “Okay, boss. You know that’s a terrible idea.”

  Ron huffed. “A terrible plan is better than no plan. Where are you at with the gravitational sling?”

  “Nowhere near being ready. I don’t have any of the mechanisms installed on the Oblignatus.”

  Ron spread his hands, like they were talking about the weather. “Okay, so it can’t be used on the scale of this ship, but you’ve got working prototypes that could still pack a wallop, right?”

  A malevolent grin crept across Alan’s face. He hadn’t even considered them. True, there were only three, but they could do a fuckton of damage to three ships. Suddenly survival didn’t seem quite so remote. “I do. I might be persuaded to sacrifice them, if it means I get to live through this.”

  “Get to work. Shock and awe, man. That’s what we’ve got to create or we’ll lose this planet’s resources. We can’t let those kuboderans figure out that what we’re doing here is important. They’ll just mow down the Tree. Cutting and running is not an option.”

  “Aye-aye.”

  Alan raced to the workshop on Tech Deck, communicating his ideas with Pio as he ran. She was the most qualified to drive these things.

  Pio asked, “Alan, have you forgotten the abandoned first-generation blink drive?”

  “It didn’t work properly, remember? We didn’t get the calculations quite right. It distorted space-time too much.”

  “Precisely. Not safe for moving a ship, but perfect as a weapon.”

  He laughed. “I like how you think, Pio.”

  “With your permission, I’ll move it now and use its grappling arm to attach it to a small asteroid in orbit.”

  “Even better.”

  The Portacollus and pals took their time. Ultimately the fourteen ships surrounded the Oblignatus on all sides, matching their orbit and velocity, just like the last time they’d hung out, over Pliga. It was like deja vu. Except this time they’d brought a few more friends.

  Alan looked up from his sensor logs. “Ongoing attempts at anipraxis are being neutralized by the anti-anipraxis network.”

  Ron nodded from the command chair. “He’s gotta be getting frustrated. Stay alert. We’ll let them make the first move.”

  Ryliuk spoke from the communications console. “We’re being hailed.”

  “This should be interesting,” Alan murmured. Kai’Memna didn’t have vocal chords. How was he planning to communicate without anipraxia?

  “Open a channel. On-screen,” Ron said.

  An emaciated sectilian appeared before them. His skin was the color of ash, and patches of his hair were missing. Alan had seen a lot of skinny sectilians, but this guy was skeletal. It was shocking. “We meet again.” His voice was low and growling.

  Ron stood up. “Actually, I don’t believe we’ve had the pleasure.”

  “I use this body as a vessel for the vocalization of speech, when necessary.”

  Ron nodded. “Then I’m speaking with Kai’Memna, I assume?”

  “You are.”

  Ron kept up the jocular tone. “What can we do for you, Kai’Memna? You know, we have plenty of rations aboard. We’d be happy to provide aid. It looks like your dude could use a biscuit.”

  The sectilian before them practically snarled, “It seems humans are even more insolent than sectilians.”

  Ron smiled. He didn’t look perturbed in the slightest. “Oh, we’ve earned our reputation.”

  “I will speak freely with Ei’Pio.”

  Ron looked mildly apologetic. “I’m afraid I can’t let you do that.”

  “Then I’ll destroy your petty contrivances. And if your ship is obliterated in the process, it will be of little consequence.”

  Ron shrugged like he was unconcerned. “You can try.” He turned to Ryliuk. “Cut the connection and be ready to reset exterior cameras.” And to Alan, his eyes hard but steady, he said, “Blink.”

  They’d set it up so that Ei’Pio was constantly feeding the most advantageous coordinates into Alan’s console. He only had to press a button to send them faster than light to the new location. He did.

  His vision vibrated for a moment that ended in a flash that was dark around the edges. As soon as he registered the phenomenon, it muted, and his eyesight returned to normal. He looked down at his sensor data and noted that they were in orbit high above the kuboderan ships, just out of firing range.

  The blink drive had worked. Relief flooded through him.

  “All hands check in. Everyone okay?” Ron said, cool as a cucumber.

  One by one, all five crew members checked in, reporting that they were fine.

  Ron tipped his head toward Alan as a sort of congratulatory nod, then turned his attention to the new camera view that had come up on the viewscreen just in time to show the aftermath of what had happened while they’d been moving to the new position.

  All fourteen ships had fired through empty space… into each other.

  Jaross announced, “Six of the fourteen ships have taken minor damage, including the Portacollus.”

  Alan crowed, “Hells yeah!”

  The blink drive worked just as he’d dreamed it would. It was glorious. This was absolutely the pinnacle of his career.

  Several of Kai’Memna’s ships were in the process of backing off, breaking formation. A few narrowly missed hitting neighboring ships. They’d clearly never seen anything like this and were scrambling. He could just imagine how confused and pissed off they were.

  Ron said, “Deploy two gravitational slings at the Portacollus to create some more chaos before they can regroup. We’ll hold the remaining two in reserve until we need them.”

  Alan triggered a compartment door that would let two of his babies out into space. “You heard him, Pio. Maximum destruction, please.”

  “With pleasure,” she replied. She was remarkably calm, considering the state she’d been in when they’d first met her, but maybe that was because she actually had some control in this situation. She used the first-generat
ion blink drive first, maneuvering it quickly so that it dropped the warp bubble when the edge of it came in contact with the hull just over the Portacollus’s engineering decks. As the warp bubble fell apart, not only did the space-time distortion impact the hull of the Portacollus, but the small asteroid the drive had in tow broke apart violently, doubling the impact. The resulting explosion created a breach.

  Alan called out, “Hey, Ron, keep talking to him, man!”

  Ron raised a brow. “Why? We’ve got nothing to say.”

  “Trash talk. Kai’Memna would love it.”

  Ron coughed out a chuckle. Damn, that guy was cool under pressure. “Blink.”

  Alan checked all of the readouts. Everything was green for go. He pressed the button. They skipped across space again with the same momentary visual disturbance. It was less disorienting the second time. Pio calmly sent one of Alan’s prototype gravitational slings toward the hole the first one had created. This one was equipped with a very small fission bomb which would create a very large EMP.

  And it was away.

  Alan watched his monitors closely, every muscle tensed. “Three… two… one. EMP detonation.”

  A bright flash emanated from the crater in the Portacollus’s hull. Then every light on that ship went out. Oh, yeah. That was satisfying.

  Alan nodded smugly. “It worked. The Portacollus has gone dark. Setting coordinates for the third blink drive on target number two.”

  Ron said, “Blink. And hold those gravitational slings for a minute. I believe I do have something to say.”

  Alan scanned his console again. Pio was very good at keeping up with several tasks at once. New coordinates were ready to go, changing in real time along with their position. He triggered the blink drive again and quickly reoriented himself. Now they were below and ahead of the fourteen ships in the orbital plane.

  Ryliuk reset the cameras so they could watch the ships above and behind them.

  Ron stood up. “Open an audio-visual channel with every ship.”

  A moment later, Ryliuk said, “Channel open, Qua’dux.”

  Ron spread his hands. “You guys just aren’t bringing your A game. We can do this all day long. We’ve got a couple of these special bombs for each of you, if you insist on keeping this up. But I don’t think you will. Why? I think you’re all smarter than that. Look, you must realize by now that you aren’t a serious threat to us. Your leader is down for the count.”

  Ron stepped closer to the camera mounted above the screen. “We’re human. Yes, we’re insolent. But we’re also innovative. And we don’t take shit. We also believe all people are equal. That’s why our kuboderan navigators have the same rights and privileges we do. They’re free. Free to choose their destiny. They don’t endure a yoke. If they don’t want to fly, they can retire, whenever and wherever they want.”

  Ron turned and took his time returning to the command chair. “I bet there are a few of you who have been uncomfortable with Kai’Memna’s tactics all along. But he didn’t really give you an option, did he? You had to decide between joining him and death. Now, I’m going to tell you something. Kai’Memna wasn’t wrong. You do deserve to be free. But genocide will never be the right way to achieve that goal. There’s always another way. So here’s the thing. I’m going to give you three choices right here and now.”

  Ron held up three fingers, folding them down one at a time as he spoke. “You can keep fighting us and die here. You can leave and find some quiet place to settle down and put all of this behind you. Or you can join us. We’ll help you find a crew that you can be proud to call your equals. No yoke necessary. Just equity and trust. You need never be slaves again. The choice is yours. I suggest you decide quickly.” Ron made a cutting motion with his hand. Ryliuk’s eyes widened for a second, and then he leaned over his console and tapped the channel closed.

  Jaross called out, “The Portacollus is losing altitude fast.”

  Ron’s eyes narrowed. “Jesus. Can it really be this easy? Split the screen. Half on Kai’Memna, half on the rest of his fleet.”

  Ryliuk hunched over his console, tapping his screens furiously, then looked up as he made Ron’s order manifest.

  The Portacollus twirled drunkenly as the asteroid’s impact, the planet’s gravity, and Kai’Memna’s abortive attempts to maneuver prevailed over what was left of its forward momentum. The rest of Kai’Memna’s fleet maintained position, probably observing the same thing they were.

  Huna spoke up for the first time from the rear of the bridge, where he’d been watching everything silently. “Is there anything we can do to preserve the lives of the innocents aboard?”

  Pio spoke inside Alan’s head—probably in everyone’s heads—in an anguished whisper. “They’ve been dead for decades. We’re finally letting them go to find their peace in dusk.”

  Alan glanced around. Ryliuk and Jaross looked solemn, but no one protested. He couldn’t help but think of the maneuvers Pio had performed to save the Speroancora months before. Trying to pull a stunt like that now with a ship in freefall would be foolish. They’d die trying to save them. And if the rest of the crew looked like the man they’d just seen on the screen, Pio was right. They were releasing them from a hellish existence.

  It didn’t take long. The Portacollus flipped end over end until it hit atmosphere. Then it glowed bright red from the friction of entry and pieces started breaking off. The fissure they’d created with the gravitational sling split the ship in two and a plume of water vaporized in the sky, creating a vertical white cloud. If Kai’Memna hadn’t already been dead, he’d just boiled alive.

  “Damn,” Alan muttered. He glanced over at Ron. Ron’s shoulders drooped a little, and he had a look on his face like he’d just tasted something bad. He was shaking his head slightly.

  Alan looked back at the screen in time to see the final impact. The largest piece hit a part of the main continent covered with the Tree. They’d just lost some of their potential crop. The rest landed somewhere on the dark side of Pliga That Was.

  He’d be taking a shuttle down later to verify that son of a bitch was actually dead this time.

  Ron straightened. “Pio, if we drop the anipraxis shield, do you feel up to saying a few words to the kuboderans back there? I want to assure you that the shield will go right back up if anything funny happens.”

  Pio’s voice was soft, but firm. “I will do my best, Quasador Dux Ronald Gibbs. What would you like me to convey to them?”

  Ron looked thoughtful. “Nothing more or less than the truth as you see it.”

  38

  January 27, 2031

  Fourteen years after Jane Holloway’s Global Announcement

  ZARA ALMOST MISSED the small file. It was so close in proximity to a much larger file that its single tiny symbol was nearly eclipsed, and was probably often mistaken for a part of the larger file. Her multidisciplinary team had been assigned the task of meticulously cataloging every file in the database, so she approached the project from several vectors to prevent any omissions. The file cloud had been mapped many times, but this was to be the definitive, internationally recognized version, commissioned by a newly formed international oversight committee.

  When she opened the small file, she gasped in surprise. The sound echoed through the room and a few people looked up. She quickly brought her expression under control because she wasn’t ready to share this… not just yet.

  She couldn’t believe no one else had seen this. If they had, she’d have heard about it. They’d all been looking at this thing for years. How could they have missed it?

  But maybe that was the point.

  It was a personal message from Jane Holloway. A video.

  As a kid she’d found videos of Holloway lecturing and watched them over and over again, but this was different, special. This was an older Jane Holloway who had been on the Speroancora. Presumably she’d have more to say than she had on the Global Announcement. Zara tilted her screen as unobtrusively as she could and l
ooked around. No one should be able to see it. She rummaged in her purse for some ear buds and stuck them in her ears, then found the jack on the PC under her desk and plugged them in. She hit Play.

  The backdrop was the same as it had been for the Global Announcement. Greenish walls and some consoles. The general consensus was that this was the bridge of the Speroancora. Jane wore the same expression. Serious, but genial. She spoke in Mensententia.

  “Congratulations. You’ve made significant headway into understanding the sectilian file packet we sent to Earth, or you wouldn’t have been able to find this video. My fellow Providence crewmate, Dr. Alan Bergen, programmed this particular file to unmask after a series of files were examined that we as a group felt were most important. Good work.”

  The urge to hoot with childish glee was nearly overwhelming, but Zara managed to keep herself in check, just barely.

  “Along with this video, you’ll find that this file contains glossaries and indexes of the entirety of the sectilian file packet, personally created by me with the assistance of Dr. Ronald Gibbs, Dr. Alan Bergen, and the Speroancora’s navigator, Ei’Brai.”

  That was exactly what Zara and her team were working on. She couldn’t wait to look at these files to see how Jane had organized them.

  “I can’t take all the credit. The packet was originally compiled by the sectilian crew that came to our system in 1947. We modified it only slightly. The Quasador Dux of the vessel at that time, Rageth Elia Hator, had intended to send the sectilian version of tablet computers to the surface, knowing that Earth’s computers at that time were primitive and in the earliest stages of development. Under Hator, humans would have been coaxed through the program with the help of their new sectilian friends. Sadly, they died before they could accomplish their mission. We realized that a lot of things, technology especially, have changed in the intervening sixty-plus years, with no small thanks owing to the study of the sectilian shuttle that crashed in Roswell that year.”