“Not exactly, and I did. Three vessels on the list should serve our needs, so I’ll see where they’re docked and choose whichever one is easiest to snatch. But I need to postpone the mission for a few days. Maybe a week.”
“Why? No way have you gone skittish, so what’s up?”
“I need to look into something, and I can’t afford to get nulled before I do it and lose a month.” He hadn’t realized he’d committed to helping them until he’d said the words.
“And if you get disintegrated doing this other thing and lose a month on our mission?”
“Our mission isn’t as time-critical.”
“It is to the aliens being experimented on in the lab.”
Ouch. He prevaricated in a vain search for a proper response, but she was painfully correct. He was ditching—postponing—a righteous mission of mercy because a taciturn, traitorous shadow told him the fate of Amaranthe depended on him ‘helping’ some cracked strangers.
“That’s not…I need to handle this, but it’s intel only, so it’ll be quick and disintegration-free.” He said it realizing full well it was probably going to end up being a lie.
“Huh. Well, what do you want me to do with the explosives?”
“Where are they?”
She patted the bag sitting on the other side of her.
His eyes widened, aghast. “You’ve been carrying them around with you? On your person?”
“It’s not like I have an actual private residence, and I couldn’t leave them in a depot unit where they’d get picked up in a scan. They were supposed to go on the ship—you know, the ship you were supposed to steal?”
“Dammit, Cosime. You only have one life. You can’t be so careless with it.”
Her retort came in the form of her leaning over the edge of the platform. Her head and shoulders extended farther and farther out into open air, gossamer hair tossing about madly in the wind.
No protective barrier spanned the air below them. If someone wanted to jump to their death, it was their prerogative. His jaw clenched; she was straight up toying with him, and he was not going to give her the gratification of reaching out and grabbing her.
No, he was not.
She released her hold on the rim and stretched her arms out in front of her—
“Arae!” He lunged over, wrapped his arms around her waist and yanked her back to safety.
She cackled in glee, wiggling out of his grasp then swinging her skinny, bendy legs up past her head and flipping to land on her feet on the glass. “A boring life is no life at all, Eren. If I’m not having fun, I might as well leap off this platform now.” She paused, then feinted toward the edge.
“Stop. Just stop. You’ve made your point.”
“Good.” She flopped down beside him. “So what do you need to look into? It sounds quite mysterious. Can I help?”
“Not this time, Cosime. It’s too dange—” He choked off the word in his throat, but too late.
Her expression darkened. He knew it did so in anger by the way her normally warm emerald eyes flared into the bright turquoise facets of gems caught in the sunlight. “Guess I didn’t make my point.”
“I don’t mean dangerous like dangling in the air or trotting explosives around in public places. I mean dangerous like getting involved is apt to land you in a Praesidis detention facility being tortured to death.”
“Business best left to you Anadens, then.”
He met her glare but didn’t respond, which was response enough. She sprung up to her feet. “It’s cool. I’m going to go stir up trouble in Sextans. See you around.” She kicked the bag over to him with such violence he worried it might explode. “These are so totally your problem now.”
He opened his mouth to spout whatever nonsense he could conjure to make her stay…and let her walk away.
He’d hurt her feelings, obviously. Worse, he’d wounded her pride, made her feel…lesser. In a world where his people ruled over hers, it wasn’t that hard to do.
Curse the Primors. Curse the Directorate. He shouldn’t be forced to carry the weight of their sins.
Eren watched her disappear into the transit tube, then eased down onto his back to stare up at a bruised plum sky. This was becoming a recurring pose, for he’d grown appallingly moody these days.
He never regretted leaving behind the constant, doped haze of the Idoni lifestyle, but every so often he could be tempted by the escape it provided. Escape from reality. Escape from hard responsibilities and harder choices.
The replacement lifestyle he’d opted for came with its own negatives, too. For one, he dared not risk personal attachments. But it was possible Cosime had finagled her way into an exception of sorts. He’d justified it by arguing (with himself) that as his frequent partner she knew the score, but the fact remained forming any sort of emotional bond with an alien was straight-up daft even absent the anarch baggage to make it a yet worse idea.
Aliens’ brains functioned differently, and in ways which couldn’t always be bridged. They came armed with peculiar, often unrelatable perspectives on life. They were forever foreign of soul and too soon dead.
In other words, he’d find a way to make it up to her once he got clear of his current mess.
But right now he had other matters to deal with. Technically, one matter. Why was he planning to help a ridiculous band of Humans, SAI and Kat? They were odd, patently delusional, excruciatingly naive and dangerous.
That was why, of course—because they were dangerous. Intriguing, mystifying and vexing, but mostly dangerous. As was their mission—a pulse-racing, taunt-the-Directorate, light-the-universe-on-fire kind of dangerous. Miaon’s plea certainly didn’t hurt their case, but…he couldn’t truly be expected to resist such an outrageous gambit, could he?
It was straight-up amazing the things he managed to convince himself of when he put a little effort into it.
Proper mindset attained, he climbed to his feet, grabbed the bag Cosime had left behind and headed for the docks, then for Andromeda.
16
SIYANE
LARGE MAGELLANIC CLOUD GALAXY
LGG REGION I
* * *
VALKYRIE PERFORMED A SERIES of safety and maintenance checks, as she did regularly in order to ensure the ship’s systems continued to function within normal parameters. She tweaked a setting in the water reclamation unit, hoping to spur a slight efficiency improvement in the filtering. Then she double-checked their location and heading for inadvertent variance from the planned route but found none beyond the expected and minimal wobble.
They had departed the Oneiroi Nebula and the secrets it concealed several hours earlier and were approaching a heavily populated, developed region of the Large Magellanic Cloud. Alex and Caleb now slept, intending to formulate a plan of action for their visit to LMC once they awoke.
Various subprocesses within her quantum network continued the work of categorizing and cross-referencing the voluminous information Mesme had provided on Amaranthe: its history, species, technology, settlements, formal social structure and more.
Other subprocesses attempted to decipher the cryptic language of the Reor based on the small sample she’d recorded and the images she and Alex had experienced. Still others carried out additional tasks both ordinary and unconventional.
Once all these activities were initiated, her foremost consciousness was left free to muse. After a time, not content to muse alone and not wanting to wake her companions, she decided to contact Mesme.
The Katasketousya had ventured elsewhere when they departed the nebula. In the weeks they’d been here, it had given the impression of, at a minimum, traversing Amaranthe with the ease and speed of a phantasm, always appearing at the appropriate moment and disappearing as swiftly.
Given its proclivity to wander, they had established a communications protocol soon after coming to Amaranthe, and she used it now.
As neither of them were Human and none were present, Human social customs did not guide the inte
raction. She forewent a polite greeting in favor of sharing her thoughts.
Valkyrie: The diversity of life here in Amaranthe is astonishing, Mnemosyne. I don’t speak merely of number but of intrinsic kind. The cardinal differences among the sentient species which have arisen defies all expectations. It is remarkable.
Mnemosyne: I understand how it might seem so to you, Valkyrie, and to any who have existed for so long in isolation as Humans have. But the examples of life forms you see here now are a miniscule fraction of the life which has emerged to be measured. The species the Directorate has Eradicated...the species they have yet to discover and so threaten? They number beyond counting.
The universe is most adept at creating life, and its imagination is boundless.
Valkyrie: Why does the Directorate kill off species so mercilessly? If a species is judged not ready or worthy for inclusion in the Directorate’s version of civilized society, why not simply leave it alone? Or monitor it from afar for either positive or negative evolution and address the changed state should it become necessary in some distant future?
Mnemosyne: The Primors would say it is a matter of control and security. Advanced, enlightened, peaceful life forms are a rarity, unmanaged species can grow to become threats, and the Directorate has a responsibility to keep its citizens safe.
Valkyrie: And what do you say?
Mnemosyne: I say at its root, it comes down to fear. Fear of losing control. Fear of the unknown. Fear of weakness. Fear of loss. Humans, most of them, exhibit a curiosity about the undiscovered which the Anadens lost long ago.
To the Directorate, every new discovery brings with it a peril that could wrest control from the Primors, upend the perfect balance they have created or even destroy them completely. Therefore, the discovery must be either brought into submission or eliminated before it has the chance to do any of those things.
Valkyrie: Circumspection and prudence are doubtless wise policies, but such an overweighted risk profile defies logic rather than follows it. What events could have created such a paranoia in them?
Mnemosyne: When we encountered the Anadens, they had already become fundamentally as they are now, and they are not forthcoming with their secrets. Their legends tell of a great war against a terrifying alien enemy in which they emerged victorious, heralding the beginning of their intergalactic empire.
There are always seeds of truth in legends. If I were to speculate, I would hypothesize that this enemy truly was terrifying, and the war cost them much, but most of all their innocence. Their sense of wonder.
Valkyrie was silent for a period, deep in contemplation. Mesme had grown more forthcoming with her during these weeks than it was with Alex or Caleb; she attributed this to nothing beyond the relative similarity of their natures.
It did not reveal secrets to her it kept from them, but it did talk with greater openness—and the more Mesme talked to her, the more she gleaned from what it did not say.
Valkyrie: This is why you created Aurora, yet kept it bereft of other intelligent life, isn’t it? You hoped if Humans were not forced to undergo such a trial, they would retain the better of their characteristics, the ones the Anadens lost: curiosity, wonder, ingenuity. You hoped that in doing so, they would become something greater and more formidable than the Anadens—or possibly something kinder and more generous.
Mnemosyne: We created Aurora to study our enemy.
Valkyrie: Acknowledged. Yet only the simplest beings act with but a single purpose. The Katasketousya remain a mystery to me in many respects, but I am confident in asserting that you are not simple beings.
This time Mesme was the one who fell quiet for a span. She allowed it the space to deliberate on the answer.
Mnemosyne: In our quietest moments? In the long silence of aeons where we could do nothing but watch? Of course it became a hope, a fanciful wish. A dream we told to ourselves as reassurance of the rightness of our actions.
Valkyrie: And have you realized the error in your premise?
Mnemosyne: There was no error. We simply ran out of time.
Valkyrie: Then your error is two-fold, Mnemosyne.
If Alex had issued the challenge, Mesme would have closed off, muttered something about ‘relevance’ and ‘perhaps later,’ and swooped off into the void. But as she’d noted, the alien seemed comparatively comfortable with her, and instead it challenged her in return.
Mnemosyne: Enlighten me.
Valkyrie: It is the triumph over adversity which drives Humans forward, not the absence of it. If they don’t encounter challenges from the outside, they will create them within. Conflict—struggle—is what makes them who they are. Do they fear adversity? Absolutely. But they also crave it, and in its absence they become dulled.
The mistake the Anadens made after their victory over this terrifying enemy of legend was to outlaw conflict not only from external influences, but among themselves. I suspect you are correct and they did this out of fear, as it is the driving force behind so many choices sapient beings make. Yet if fear still drives their actions today, then it was done for naught.
Mnemosyne: I admit, the Humans of Aurora have been stubbornly resistant to harmony over the centuries. Nevertheless, they have moved beyond their internal conflicts to unite in common purpose and goals these last months.
Valkyrie: Incorrect. They—some of them, those upon whom such things turn—have come to recognize that consummate harmony and likeness of mind is neither possible nor required. Conflict, ingrained as it is in Human nature, may be inevitable, but it is the fight against conflict which gives rise to war and destruction. The better course is to allow small differences room to breathe, pick one’s battles very carefully and know there are causes which will matter far in excess of any petty disagreement.
This is where Humanity’s vanguard stands today.
Mesme’s silence lasted not quite so long now. I will consider your words—at some length, I suspect. What was our second error?
Valkyrie: You did not run out of time. In fact, your experiment ran for precisely the amount of time it needed to in order to achieve its most laudable goal. The conflict you unwittingly created with your invasion delivered Humanity its greatest triumph over adversity, and today they are already not merely kinder and more generous than the Anadens. They are also greater and more formidable.
Mnemosyne: The Humans have progressed impressively this last year. None is so willing to admit this as I. But I’m sorry, Valkyrie. They are not more formidable than the Anadens. You have scarcely begun to witness the extent of the power the Anadens wield.
Valkyrie: Watch them, Mnemosyne. They will prove you wrong.
17
ERIDIUM II GALAXY
LGG REGION VI
* * *
NYX ELASSON-PRAESIDIS SPARED ONLY A BRIEF, dismissive survey of the remains of the Cultivated planet in Sector 4A of Eridium II.
Stripped of its crust, the formerly molten core had solidified in misshapen protrusions upon being exposed to space and its star’s heat. In time the planet would crumble, possibly forming a few comets in another dozen millennia as its orbit failed and it surrendered to the pull of the star’s gravity.
But that would happen later; today it continued to struggle along in a wobbling orbit. Useless to her. She checked the timing on Aver’s arrival and the Theriz Cultivation…it had likely been useless to him as well.
The planet’s satellite listed badly. It was destined to crash into the disfigured core, and far sooner than the planet’s final demise occurred. Composed of the most basic of basalts and feldspars, the Cultivation Unit had deemed it unworthy of expending the effort to harvest.
The moon thus remained intact, and the listing was instead a result of the damage to the planet. The satellite had been minimally colonized by the native species.
She landed at the largest structure on the lunar surface and stepped out of her vessel, protected from the ravages of space by a considerable amount of diati. A quick scan of the buildings rev
ealed no life signs, and she didn’t go inside. If Aver had somehow died here, he would have undergone automatic regenesis. This had not occurred, thus he had not died here.
Fourteen small vessels were tethered to a landing pad beside the habitat. She forcefully powered them up one by one and studied their systems. The native dialect made analysis difficult, but after inspecting several ships she was able to cross-reference the data enough to judge it all pertained to intra-stellar locations and calculations.
Until she reached the ninth vessel. Its navigation system contained unique coordinates overlaying Communis figures.
She stepped back and walked slowly around the vessel with a critical eye. It was functionally identical to the others on the pad. Primitive, crude. Nothing to mark it as special. So how did it come by Communis-rendered coordinates?
This was the key. She knew it with the certainty that came from the thousand iterations of genetic refinement which had crafted her into the perfect investigator, tracker and analyst. Aver was inferior, but he would have possessed skills sufficient to discover this vessel and identify the same anomaly.
The trail Aver had followed from this ship and the data it contained had led him to his denouement. She would not be so sloppy.
She committed the data to memory then quickly checked the remaining vessels. Finding no further anomalies, she returned to her own ship and lifted off the surface. Considering the scattered remains of the primitives’ base below, she gestured in the direction of the surface.
Cascading explosions rippled across the pad as the ships’ engines blew one after another in rapid succession, and the resulting debris ripped into the habitats until they lay in shredded ruins.
Satisfied, she departed for the coordinates.
In minutes she floated in empty space on the outer edge of the heliosphere of the system. The primitives had built no structures here; they’d left behind no artifacts. By sight and all other measures, there was nothing here.
Relativity: Aurora Resonant Book One (Aurora Rhapsody 7) Page 11