by James Palmer
“Hail the Archive,” said Captain Kuttner.
“Channel open,” said Brackett.
“This is Captain Henry Kuttner of the LS Onslaught,” he said. “I’d like to speak with Administrator Solomon.”
There was dead silence on the other end for a long moment. “This is Dr. Solomon,” said a female voice testily. “State your business here.”
“We believe the Archive contains data of the utmost significance.”
“Where have I heard that one before? Hank? What’s going on?”
“We don’t have time for chitchat, Helena,” said Kuttner. “We’re all in great danger. And we think by studying the Progenitor epics we’ll find a way to stop another long and costly war with the Dragons.”
“Hold, please,” said Dr. Solomon.
Kuttner rolled his eyes as the feed went silent. “I hate this bureaucratic crap.”
“How do you know her?” asked Hamilton.
“It’s a long story,” Kuttner muttered.
Hamilton nodded. He knew what that meant. He had a few long stories himself, and had known the captain just long enough to know when not to pry into his personal life.
“All right,” said Doctor Solomon after several minutes. “You’re going to make a few hundred grad students very jealous, but you can send a small party aboard.”
“Great, Helena. Thank you. I’m sending my first officer, a Draconi scientist, and a couple of Marines. That OK?”
“Fine,” she said. “Solomon out.”
Kuttner turned to Hamilton. “We’ll prep a shuttle for you. Select a couple of Marines and get over there on the double. We may not have much time before another attack.”
Hamilton nodded. “I’ll take Ellison and Rodriguez. Dutton’s too trigger happy.”
“Fine,” said Kuttner. “You’re in charge of this jaunt. Get what we need and get out.”
“It may take a little time,” said Hamilton. “Like finding a particular needle in a stack of needles.”
“If I know Helena Solomon,” said Kuttner, “she’s got that entire Archive indexed by now. If what Drizda needs is in existence, you’ll find it here.”
Ellison expertly guided their shuttle toward the immense black pyramid. Its huge size was even more apparent outside the Onslaught. It was so formidable, so ancient, that it took Hamilton’s breath away.
As they neared it, a small opening appeared toward the pyramid’s base, and Ellison fired the shuttle’s attitude thrusters to line it up with the docking port. “We’re going in,” she said, as the opening loomed larger in the shuttle’s observation blister.
Moments later they were inside the massive structure, the docking door closed, atmosphere pressurized to Earth standard. Hamilton unstrapped from the crash couch and opened the shuttle door. Drizda did the same and joined him at the opening, her slick black tongue flicking out, tasting the atmosphere, her reptilian eyes going over every inch of the docking bay.
As they stepped out of the shuttle, a complement of Archive personnel walked out to meet them. There were two white-robed docents, one male, one female, tightbeam quantum net uplinks fused to their bald skulls. Standing between them was a tall woman wearing the familiar white and black uniform of Fleet Science. Her shoulder length hair had once been blond, but was turning an intense white. Her eyes were a pale blue, set in high cheekbones. Hamilton could tell she had been very beautiful in her younger days, and she still was, but her bearing made her look more tough and formidable than anything else, a facade as impregnable as the alien structure she occupied.
“Dr. Solomon, I presume,” said Hamilton, extending his right hand. “I am Commander Hamilton of the LS Onslaught.”
Dr. Solomon simply stared at him, her arms at her sides. “I don’t know what this is about, but we are in the middle of some very important indexing and core dumping. The Archive’s servers are quite slow.” She looked at Drizda a bit warily.
Drizda stepped forward. “Doctor Solomon,” she said. “I am Drizda of the Draconi Science Guild.”
Hamilton glanced at her, impressed at her use of mankind’s name for her race. What the Draconi called themselves was unpronounceable.
“Our colonies are being destroyed,” she went on. “And yours, too. We believe a clue to the things that are attacking both our peoples lies somewhere in the Progenitor Epics.”
Solomon arched an eyebrow. “Are you a student of the Epics?”
“Only casually, when I was younger.”
“The Epics are complex and lengthy,” said Dr. Solomon. “Too big even for a single Archive to store them all. Without knowing what you’re looking for—”
“I think I do,” said Drizda. “With your permission and help, I’d like to try. The fate of worlds hangs in the balance.”
Hamilton nodded. “She’s telling the truth, Doctor Solomon. We’ve seen these things firsthand. If the Progenitors knew of a way to stop them, we need that information now.”
Dr. Solomon’s icy demeanor softened, but only a little. “All right. Follow me. My docents and I will help you all we can.”
Chapter 12
The Progenitor Epics
Hamilton’s group followed Dr. Solomon and her docents through a veritable labyrinth of corridors.
“This place is amazing,” said Hamilton. His voice was a near whisper, but still it echoed loudly in the vast maze. “I always wondered why the Progenitors put these where they did.”
“I believe the answer is quite simple,” said Drizda. “If a race is advanced enough to detect an Archive’s presence, let alone reach it, then they are worthy of the knowledge contained within.”
“That makes sense,” said Hamilton. “If anything about the Progenitors does.”
“They are still very mysterious,” said Drizda. “Did you know that out of all this knowledge of their culture and expertise, we still don’t have the slightest inkling what they looked like?”
Hamilton nodded. “Yes. I always thought that was strange. Ancient human civilizations always left behind cave paintings, pictographs, art. The Progenitors don’t have any of that. I’ve always wondered why.”
“Perhaps it simply never occurred to them,” Drizda offered as they followed Dr. Solomon and her docents around a bend in the corridor.
Hamilton looked at Drizda. She was incredibly bright. Surely she was an asset to Draconi high command. He couldn’t understand why they would shun her as they have.
“Why did your people cast you out?” he asked.
Her alien eyes flitted toward him. “I suppose you deserve an answer. I guess I owe you that much for sparing my life on Verdant.”
She was silent for a long moment before opening her mouth to speak. “My people were offended by my research. I was studying the origins of life on my world, and comparing my people to yours and what little we know of the long-dead Progenitors.”
“The origin of species,” said Hamilton. “That got pretty contentious back on my homeworld for a while too.”
Drizda nodded. “My people believe they were hatched from a Cosmic Egg by an all-powerful dragon we call the Egg Mother. They believe that, in the beginning, the Egg Mother was all that was. Her eggs became all the planets, and the glint of her scales became the stars. They also believe that we are chief among her children, masters of the stars, and that anyone else we encounter is inferior, and put there by her for the express purpose of being our food.”
Hamilton had never heard their cosmology put like this before, but based on what he knew of the Draconi it made perfect sense. Man’s first encounter with the Draconi was at a fringe colony. The colonists were slaughtered, many of them eaten.
“You say ‘they’ believe. You no longer believe this?”
“No,” she said, her tongue darting from her mouth. “My studies have concluded that this just cannot be. But that only made me an outsider. But there were other scientists before me who questioned the existence of the Egg Mother. That isn’t the reason I was cast out of my clan.”
“As I studied the Progenitors, I started to wonder what had happened to them. They left behind the Archives and the Q-gates, but nothing else of them lasts. We found a few archaeological sites on a couple of fringe worlds that might be linked to their civilization, but where did they go? How did a race of beings so powerful, and spread all across the galaxy, just vanish?”
“My people have wondered that as well,” said Hamilton.
“I believe that they were wiped out en masse by something,” she said.
Hamilton pursed his lips in thought. “A pulsar, a gamma ray burst, a supernova. Any one of those things could have done them in. But they were pretty spread out. An interplanetary civilization couldn’t get destroyed that easily. It’s part of the reason why we left Earth.”
“No. But that’s what I think happened. All at once, just…” she clicked her talons together.
“My people didn’t like that theory either. It made them uncomfortable, upset their place in the cosmos.”
“I’m sure they have trouble wrapping their heads around the concept of the Progenitors,” said Hamilton. “A race of beings more powerful than both our species put together, when you’re supposed to be the superior race.”
“Yes. And the fact that they were no longer on top sent them into a frenzy. Knowing of the Progenitors was bad enough, but when we encountered your kind, it really upset many of us. I believe that is part of the reason we attacked you so fervently. And for that, I am sorry.”
“My kind can be pretty irrational too,” said Hamilton.
“We’re here,” said Dr. Solomon as they exited the maze of corridors into a large central room. The floor was composed of some silvery material, with desks rising up from it at regular intervals, as if extruded from it. People sat at many of them, their eyes glued to virtual terminals upon which flickered incomprehensible sigils and glyphs representing the Progenitor language.
Dr. Solomon guided them to one of the desks. “You may access the Archive from this workstation,” she said. My docents will help you. She glanced nervously at the two marines.
“This is a peaceful facility not attached to the military. If this is some excuse to commandeer our research—”
“I assure you, Dr.,” said Hamilton, “this is nothing of the sort. Once we have what we need, we’ll be on our way.”
Dr. Solomon looked them over suspiciously one last time before disappearing among the many desks. A couple of researchers looked up from their studies but quickly got back to work. The rest ignored them, so involved in whatever they were working on.
Drizda sat before the terminal while the female docent showed her how to access and use the computer.
“How long do you think this will take?” asked Hamilton.
“I don’t know,” answered Drizda. “I will hurry as fast as I can.”
Hamilton turned to the Marines. To Lt. Ellison he said, “How fast can you get us under way once we’re ready to go?”
“I can start the pre-flight sequence from here,” she said, tapping a small metal plate embedded in her right temple.
“Good. We need to be able to make our next move fast.”
Drizda caught on quickly, and her two four-fingered hands moved deftly over the terminal’s keyboard, even though it had been retrofitted for human beings. Hamilton watched as data on the Progenitor culture flew past on the floating holographic displays.
“These are the files pertaining to a particular section of the Epics,” she said. “I believe what I’m after is contained within it.”
“Good. “Let’s get it and go.”
The male docent showed Drizda how to connect her slate to the terminal in order to download the information. Hamilton’s cochlear implant chimed. It was Captain Kuttner.
“Hurry it up. We’ve got company.”
“Almost done,” he said. “Should I be worried?”
“With our luck,” said Kuttner, “yes.”
The captain cut the connection.
Hamilton turned to Ellison. “Fire up the shuttle. As soon as this downloads we’re out of here.”
“Commander Hamilton,” said a familiar voice. He turned to see Dr. Solomon marching toward him. “A word?”
“We’re almost done here, Doctor,” he said. “I thank you for your cooperation.”
“Stuff it, Commander,” she said. “I’d like to know why there is another Fleet ship heading this way, and why they’re telling me not to let your people aboard the Archive.”
“It’s complicated,” said Hamilton. He looked down at Drizda, but her slate was still downloading the Progenitor information packet. Complex alien glyphs flickered across the device’s screen.
“If you’re in some kind of trouble that endangers the Archive and our work here, Commander, I need to know about it.”
“No you don’t,” said Hamilton. “We’ll be out of your hair in a few minutes. The Archive is in no danger.”
The huge structure shuddered, lights in its upper reaches flickering.
“You were saying, Commander?” said Dr. Solomon.
Chapter 13
Battle of the Archive
“Sir,” said Lt. Brackett. “The Heinlein has just emerged from the Q-gate. They’re hailing us.”
“What now?” said Captain Kuttner as he shifted uneasily in his command chair. “Open the channel.”
The view screen shimmered, and the gigantic close-up of the Archive was replaced by the visage of a stern-looking young woman in command gray. “This is Captain Dejah Carter of the frigate Heinlein. You are in direct violation of Solar Navy code. I have been mandated by the Fleet to order your immediate surrender.”
Kuttner arched an eyebrow. “For what? Missing my retirement party? Captain, don’t you think this is a bit excessive?”
“My opinions on the matter are not at issue,” she said. “I have my orders.”
“I see,” said Kuttner. “And who gave that order? On whose authority?”
“You are hereby ordered to surrender immediately and be remanded into my custody,” she said, ignoring his question.
Kuttner felt his face flush hot with anger. This girl was young enough to be his granddaughter, and she was supposed to surrender himself just like that?
“Cut the feed!” he commanded, and the view screen went dark.
“There’s something else going on here,” he said.
“They’re moving in at a high rate of speed,” said Hudson. “Estimated intercept in six minutes.”
Kuttner touched a button on his command chair, opening an audio channel to everyone on board.
“Listen up, everyone,” he said. Everyone on the command deck turned toward him.
“This is going to get ugly. “You all have promising careers ahead of you. If you wanted to mutiny right now I wouldn’t hold it against you. But something sinister is afoot here. Something out there is eating colonies and spaceships, and it’s almost as if the Admiralty wants to blame it on the dragons so we can go back to war with them. I think that’s wrong. I think it flies in the face of everything we hold dear. I think it disgraces the memories of everyone who fought and died so that we could have this peace. And I have no intention of obeying Captain Kindergartner’s order. If anyone disagrees, here’s where you get off. Kuttner out.”
The command deck was eerily silent. Kuttner stared into the faces of his crew, glad to find only loyalty there.
“We’re with you, Captain,” said Gunner Cade. “All the way.”
“All decks reporting their solidarity, sir,” said Brackett. All shuttles still present and accounted for, all escape pods still in their niches.”
Kuttner nodded. “Lt. Hudson, evasive maneuvers. All hands, battle stations.”
Hudson deftly turned the massive ship around as Cade warmed up the guns.
“Do not fire unless fired upon,” Kuttner commanded. “And only to wound, not destroy.”
/> Cade nodded. “Aye, sir. I’m looking for soft targets now.”
A wireframe schematic of the Heinlein floated in the air in front of Cade’s workstation that he moved and twisted around. Kuttner didn’t want to destroy another Navy vessel, but if he could cripple them it would allow them to get away and go back to tracking down those deadly machines that were at the heart of this whole mess.
“Sir,” said Cade. “They’re firing on us.”
“Taking evasive action,” said Hudson through gritted teeth.
“Deflector field on full,” said Kuttner.
The depleted uranium shell missed the Onslaught by little more than ten thousand kilometers, a hair’s breadth in spaceflight terms. It struck the Archive instead, a small blossom of flame appearing briefly for a flickering instant.
“No visible damage to the Archive,” said Cade.
Kuttner exhaled a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. “Get Hamilton and his party back here on the double.”
“The docking port is opening,” said Hudson. “Our shuttle is coming out.”
“It’s Hamilton,” said Brackett, head cocked as if listening to something. “He says he has what we need.”
“Hudson,” said Kuttner. “Keep us between the Heinlein and Hamilton’s shuttle, and plot a course for the Q-gate. As soon as the craft is aboard I want us away from here.”
“Aye,” said Hudson, his long fingers flying over the controls.
“Sir,” said Cade, an edge of unease in his voice. “Detecting hundreds of hostiles streaking this way. Small, metallic, equipped with cold fusion drives.
“It’s them!” said Kuttner. “Commander, I suggest you get your ass back here on the double. We’ve got even worse company.”
“They’re three minutes away,” said Hudson.
Kuttner nodded. “Cade, do not fire on the Heinlein. Brackett, get me their captain.”
“On screen,” said Brackett.
“Captain, uh, Carter,” he said. “Are you detecting a swarm of small metallic objects heading our way?”
Carter looked off screen for a second. “Yes. So?”