First Fleet #1-4: The Complete Saga

by Stephen Case

  Jens coughed, which wracked her ribs with pain. She licked her lips and tried to speak.

  The doctor leaned closer.

  “Colonizers don’t have doctors,” Jens rasped. “They have undertakers.”

  “Oh good!” The face smiled. “Very good. A sense of humor. Make note, Glaucon. This is the first sign of recovery.”

  “I’m not joking.” Jens tried to move but found that either bonds or the nature of her wounds restrained her. “Kill me now.”

  The face in front of her slowly came into focus.

  Jens had sat through multiple briefings on the Colonizers and seen images taken from the historical feeds as well as the limited interactions that had taken place once contact had been reestablished. Three centuries were insignificant on the scale of human evolution, but the Colonizers had been living in outer System for generations before their exodus. Years of reduced gravity gave them a characteristic thin, drawn, almost elfish look. The face before her now fit that description, though it was dirty, with wide eyes and furrowed, shaggy brows caked with grey dust.

  “She refers, no doubt,” the face said, “to our reputedly antiquated technology.” His brows furrowed even further and he turned to his companion, who remained out of view. “We are, as they say amongst themselves, fossils. Dinosaurs, even. Relics from the more primitive days of humanity.”

  He turned back to Jens. “But we, my survivor, have a few tricks of our own. We have even, believe it or not, availed ourselves of certain avenues of research that your own cultural mores have forbidden.”

  “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,” Jens said.

  Speaking was a wall against fear. Faced with this figure from the ancient past, she found to her surprise that she experienced an almost visceral horror. The fact that he was trying to be civil simply made it worse.

  She forced herself to analyze the situation. She was a prisoner, obviously, and she was clearly being treated and held for some purpose. Colonizers, the briefing officer had said, would interrogate any soldier they were able to capture for information on advanced technology. Command gave explicit protocol for the level of compliance in such an event.

  “I am Sergeant Jens Grale, of System, third wing leader of the Georges Forbes,” she began. “It is Command policy that active soldiers have no training whatsoever in combat technologies. I can’t tell you how the re-gen pods work. I don’t have forge-ship schematics. I can’t explain light-line physics. I don’t even know how to repair my own heavy-suit.”

  The Colonizer rubbed his hands together—one of which still held the light that swayed wildly in the darkness—and laughed again. “Segmented education at its best,” he said to his companion. “Silos, my dear Glaucon. Silos all the way up.”

  He paused. “But I’m not here to interrogate you, survivor. As I said, I’m a doctor, and the antiquated technologies that you are so sure we would discard in a heartbeat for a glimpse into your own technological wonderland are what have kept you alive. And they will, with some time and some patience, have you up on your feet again.”

  “If you’ve saved me,” she asked, “then why do I feel like I’m dying?”

  He laughed once more, this time clicking his small light to a visor he wore and peering again into her face. “Because,” he explained with exaggerated slowness, “this is what it feels like to heal. To not simply re-grow your body from scratch every time it gets banged up.”

  “Where am I?”

  “Ah,” said the doctor, turning away. “That is the question, isn’t it? And now you are interrogating me.”

  He turned to his assistant and snapped, “Glaucon! Let me watch you make an absolute mess of changing the patient’s dressings.”

  A new figure moved into the light. Beyond the small light the doctor wore on his brow, Jens’s eyes had adjusted so she could see enough. The entire chamber in which she rested was suffused with a faint grey glow. She was reminded sharply of the mist in the caverns through which her wing had fallen.

  “I’m in one of the mines,” she said.

  The second figure, Glaucon, approached and nodded. He looked much younger than the doctor, with a jutting jaw and classic good-looking features. He lacked the narrow features characteristic of a Colonizer, which made Jens imagine for a moment that he was a prisoner like herself.

  “Are these the Grave Worlds?” she asked him. “Where is the rest of my wing?”

  Glaucon opened his mouth to speak, but the doctor snapped again. “The dressings!”

  She was lying on a cot, Jens could see now. There were a bundle of vials, wires, and tubing hanging over her head to which the Colonizer doctor was making adjustments.

  “You had multiple broken ribs,” he explained in a bored voice. “Lacerations. A broken femur. That’s going to take a while to set.”

  She repeated her questions.

  Noises broke out somewhere beyond one of the stone walls of the chamber, and the doctor and Glaucon both stopped what they were doing and fell silent, staring towards the sounds warily. Their obvious fear made them both seem more human and familiar.

  “What is it?” Jens asked. “What’s wrong?”

  The doctor motioned her to be silent. When the noises—voices?—had faded, he turned to her again.

  “What’s wrong? What’s wrong? A war is what’s wrong,” he said. “An unprovoked attack is wrong.” He sighed. “And these planets. This place. Everything about this place is wrong. Everything.”

  They finished their work. Jens peered at them suspiciously.

  “I would ask you to not try to escape,” the doctor said, almost apologetically, when he was done. “But you’ll find it impossible to move yet. And there’s no place to go.”

  She stared.

  He leaned down in front of her so that his dirty, narrow face was close to hers. “We don’t eat our prisoners. At least, not unless we’re very, very hungry.”

  It took Jens several moments to realize that the wide grimace across his face was a smile. Glaucon looked on as though he was embarrassed.

  “This is barbaric,” she finally muttered. “I want a new body.”

  The doctor rose and his grin widened. “We don’t do that here,” he called over his shoulder as he and his assistant left. “This is healing, my survivor, and usually healing hurts.”

  When they left, Jens lay back and tried to sleep. Noises came and went beyond the walls of the chamber. A few times she heard approaching and retreating footfalls, as though someone was passing down a corridor beyond the entrance to the chamber. At other times the noises sounded like breathing or talking, either low murmured voices or words raised in a pitched argument. She could not turn her head to see the door through which the doctor had entered and exited.

  After some time, the pale grey glow in the chamber faded. Sometime after that, Jens slept again.

  Twenty-Nine

  The Clerke Maxwell and its tiny crew drifted deeper into the midst of the Fleet. Pain came and went in waves each time one of the vessels took an interest in them or passed by too close, until Beka felt like an old woman, joints aching, her hands cramped and clawed.

  Yet the pain kept her mind clear and focused on the problem of the Fleet’s motion.

  Beka thought of life as little more than a series of problems to solve. Without a puzzle in front of her or defined parameters and a clear goal, she felt untethered. For her, the things that should have been on the periphery became too important. A problem kept her focused.

  And right now, there were terrible things that she would rather not think about waiting beyond that circle of focus. The image of Tsai-Liu lying on the floor of the chamber where he died. Nightmares about what was living on the ships they were trying to thread a path through. Fears of her sister dead somewhere out there, or trapped on the worlds below.

  She could not bear to think about these for long.

  The three-dimensional riddle of the Fleet also gave her an excuse to lie awake in her bunk in the empty barr
acks. She did not want to sleep. Sleep brought dreams of Davis and Eleanor, and they always ended the same. Davis would rise or turn toward her. A flower of green would appear on his arm—an echo of the explosion Beka had triggered—growing, engulfing his hand, reaching outward with a thousand stretching arms and mouths.

  She would wake, shaking.

  No answers came at night.

  Beka glanced at the dim chronometer beside her bed. It was early morning according to ship time, almost time for her to take over from Donovan on the command deck. As a crew, they were stretched too thin. Someone always had to remain awake and alert, ready to notify the others if any ship approached.

  She rose. It took her only a couple minutes to pour some cold, dark, reconstituted coffee and drink it in a gulp. Then Beka walked the dim corridors toward the command deck.

  Donovan was sleeping at his seat.

  “Wake up,” she said and touched his shoulder.

  Startled, he jumped, looked around wildly and then focused on her face.

  “Time to go to bed,” she said, trying not to smile.

  “Gods, I’m sorry. I’m awake.” Donovan ran his hands over his face and peered down at the table in front of him. “Your latest path through this minefield looks clear for now. I thought we were getting close to one a while back, but it veered off at the last minute.”

  Beka tied her hair back and stepped up to take Donovan’s position. “Have you heard anything from Aggiz?”

  “No,” Donovan answered. “The computer shows he hasn’t stirred from the science bay.”

  Beka considered this for a moment. Besides herself, Aggiz was the last surviving member of their original team.

  He had always been absent in the manner of a distracted genius, but it had never troubled Beka much. He was a source of immense amounts of information and had been invaluable in their attempts to pull data from the Brick. Over their time together, Beka learned how to cut through his faltering communication patterns and extract what she needed for their work. But since the Brick had gone dark, Aggiz had become ever more withdrawn, running scan after scan of the blank monolith.

  “I don’t know what he hopes to find,” she said.

  “He’s an obsessive compulsive guy, Beka.” Donovan seemed disinterested. “He’s convinced himself there’s still some way to rescue the memories that were wiped.”

  “But there’s no information left to extract,” Beka sighed.

  “Paul was supposed to take a meal for him when he left and I came on duty,” Donovan said. He lowered his voice. “I don’t think he took his injection during the last approach, but none of us have had the time or energy to check on him.”

  “I was there during the last alert. It was worse than that,” Beka shuddered. “He was standing beside the Brick, screaming. I injected him, but he was furious. He said he wanted to hear it, that he wanted to understand.”

  “Ulysses at the mast, huh?”

  Beka did not understand the reference and shrugged.

  Donovan stretched and Beka heard his joints pop.

  He saw her expression. “We’re aging,” he explained. “We have to get through this soon.”

  “How much longer?”

  Donovan glanced down at the displays. “That depends on how many more of these ships we have to avoid. You know our route better than I do.” He leaned across the holographic field. “There are a few of them on the periphery of our range right now. It’s like weaving through a minefield where the goddamned mines won’t stay still.”

  “It’s like walking through a graveyard,” Beka added, thinking of something Paul had said. “But the bodies keep wandering.”

  “That’s a pleasant image.”

  Beka turned toward him. “You saw it, Donovan. Whatever is on those ships. You know what it is.”

  “I don’t. I told you.” He moved away.

  Donovan had the lights of the command deck dimmed so that the glow from the surrounding monitors bathed his face in flickering orange and red. He shuddered and touched a control to increase the ambient brightness until the room seemed as sterile, bright and safe as a regeneration bay. He turned to look at her full in the face.

  “I saw something old and smooth and … I don’t know … leathern. I saw a face.” He wore an expression that Beka found difficult to evaluate: somewhere between fear and longing. “But it was what happened to the others on the Elphinstone—the way they just … broke. Their minds sort of ran, like molten stone. You know what I mean. You can hear it at the edges, when they come.”

  Beka shook herself out of Donovan’s gaze. His words unnerved her. This wasn’t the first time she had asked him about what he had seen, nor the first time he had answered.

  But she’d never dared think too hard about the information he gave her. She didn’t want to. Not then, and not now.

  “I feel like I’m back on the Elphinstone,” Donovan finally said, making an effort to break the eerie silence that had dropped around them like a curtain. “That was a hospital ship with too many bodies and not enough doctors. This is an asylum, but the patients are out there, in the darkness.”

  “We have bodies here too, Donovan,” she said, thinking of the Synthetics and Davis.

  “Yeah.” He stretched again. “Yeah. Just like home.” He moved to the door.

  Beka remembered Aggiz. “Wait,” she said. “I’m not scheduled to come on duty for a bit yet. Wait here for a few minutes. I’m going to go check on Aggiz.”

  Donovan sighed but nodded. “I don’t think it will do any good, but at least try to get him to eat something. We can’t afford to lose anyone else.”

  *

  Beka climbed back through the bowels of the labyrinthine ship, its interlocking corridors as tangled and sterile as gauze, to the science lab near its rear that housed the Brick. She thought again about what she had said to Donovan; that they were in a cemetery dance, careening through a patchwork of open graves.

  Graves, clustered in space …

  What was it about the patterns of the dead First Fleet that was bothering her?

  Beka blinked and tried to focus, but she was still deeply tired. She wondered how long before the invariable alarm sounded and she would have to take Donovan’s injection again, gritting her teeth against the pain.

  When she reached the science bay, she entered without knocking, knowing Aggiz would be within and oblivious to her. The res-pod still sat in its corner, no longer holding Donovan’s regenerating form but instead the burned body of Davis beneath its clouded glass. The Brick was a black monolith in the chamber’s center; Aggiz huddled before it like a supplicant in the shadow of a faceless god.

  “Aggiz,” Beka said to the small man before the monitors. He had not stirred when she entered.

  Aggiz did not answer.

  Beka stepped closer and squinted at the colored readout on the screen he was studying. The display consisted of ribbons of red and grey, scanning back and forth with a constant stream of numbers. Beka recognized them as the parameters of the Brick’s particle matrix, the ordered bits of quantum foam that normally held the black device’s information. By their tiny amplitudes, Beka saw that they were nothing more than random thermal fluctuations.

  “What is it, Aggiz?” Beka pointed at the screen. “There’s nothing in there but noise.”

  Aggiz licked his lips. His eyes found Beka’s and slowly focused.

  “Echoes, Beka.” He coughed and reached for a glass of water. “You’re right. You’re—the information is gone. The particles are cold. Still. At absolute zero, or as close as possible.”

  Beka nodded.

  “There’s nothing left of—there’s nothing of them. They’re gone. The minds, the particles encoding them, were sharp and clear. But not anymore.” He spoke slowly, but his words gathered momentum as he seemed to become more fully awake. He inclined his head toward the monitors as though bowing in memory. “Nothing there, Beka. But beneath. The noise. Can’t keep it completely cold.”

  “B
ackground noise, Aggiz.”

  “No.” He shook his head sharply. “Not completely. Not noise. A pattern.”

  Aggiz keyed a command at his terminal, and the monitor display took on new angles and dimension. “I am—I have been tracking thermal readings in the Brick. Something is there, Beka. An echo. A ghost. But just one. Only one.”

  His sudden intensity startled her.

  “Residual information?” Beka frowned at the images spreading like fingers of frost across a window. Staring at anything long enough gave rise to imagined patterns. What she saw now reminded her vaguely of the haphazard sidesteps of the Fleet’s ships.

  “You can’t … It’s not clear,” Aggiz said. “Very faint. But sometimes …”

  Beka could see his eyes losing their focus, drawn back from her own to the monitor’s broil of static. He had lost someone in the Brick, she knew. Aggiz had never made it clear who—a lover obviously, someone from his past—but the pain he felt when the Brick blanked was palpable.

  “Aggiz, you have to let her go.”

  He did not answer.

  “You have to take the pain when it comes,” she told him, realizing her words held a double meaning. “If you don’t take the injection, you’ll start fading like Tsai-Liu. You’ll be as drained as the Brick, Aggiz. Pain is the only thing that shuts them out.”

  “No.” His voice was faint, as though it came from a great distance. “It’s there too. They’re whispering.”

  He would say nothing more. Beka pushed a platter of cold egg-supplement and biscuits—remnants of the day’s breakfast—closer to his motionless form and left the bay with its ghosts.

  The ship continued its crawl through the night.

  Thirty

  Cam Dowager wanted to be a materialist. She wanted to believe that there was, in a very real sense, nothing more to the universe than particles dancing in space.

  It was a view of the universe that was solid. The Brick itself—all the concise, organized madness of the Contract, the regeneration of bodies and storing of personalities—proved that it was true.

  Given the correct nutrient mix and sufficient genetic patterning, you could re-grow a human being. You could re-plant their memories from stored information. That should have clinched things. It was what life really was at the core: nothing more than information translated into the arrangement of particles.