James Wittenbach - Worlds Apart 03

by Bodicea

  Matthew wavered at the hatch. Do nothing? It went against everything he was feeling at that moment. He wanted Eliza to know he felt terrible about how he had treated her. He wanted her to tell him it was all right, that she forgave him. He wanted to throw himself at her mercy.

  “Don’t even think about begging for forgiveness,” Eddie told him. “She will never respect you again if you go back to her on your knees.” He shoved Matthew through the hatch and grabbed the mug of hot cocoa just as it closed.

  There was a brief flurry of knocks on the door, then Matthew gave up and went away.

  Eddie called back to the bar. “Puck, add a mug of hot cocoa and a flask of willowfine to Flt.

  Lieutenant Driver’s tab.”

  “The interior of this spacecraft has been optimized for your comfort,” Ciel was explaining to the Bodicéan delegation as the entered Winnie a few hours later. There was no sign of woolbeastskin covers on the landing couches, but someone had taken the time to arrange for privacy curtains in floral prints at each couch. Comfortable robes lay folded on a bench, and there was a scent of flowers in the main cabin. In the front of the ship, technicians had installed a blond wood conference table, surrounded by ten luxuriously stuffed chairs.

  Eight of the Inner Circle had chosen to come on the voyage, and they poked uncertainly around in the cabin, selecting seat for what boded to be a long journey. Lear guided Ciel to a seat at the front, where they could sit face to face. “Perhaps not as comfortable as your airships, but we have made every effort to assure your comfort. We have a fairly long flight ahead of us. The landing couches will recline and reshape to support whatever position you find comfortable. We have plenty of food and reading materials, as well as dramas and interactive recreational experiences.”

  “How long will this journey last?” Ciel asked.

  Lear smiled ingratiatingly. “That’s a question with a very interesting answer. As you accelerate toward the speed of light, relative time slows down. The effect only becomes noticeable above about .5c. We will be traveling at about .75c. Although it will take us about six days to reach the approximate position of the alien fleet, it will seem like less than two days on board this ship.”

  Ciel daubed at her temples with the hot, wet cloth Lear provided her. “It seems so unnatural, to be hurtling through space at such speeds, time itself being distorted.”

  “Technically, it’s us, not time that’s being distorted,” said Alkema, unhelpfully, stopping as he passed her seat on his way to join Commander Keeler in the Command Module. Alkema did not want to be on this mission. He was almost certain they were going to die, and he had barely begun to enjoy his lieutenanthood.

  “Thank you, Mr. Alkema, for advising us on that distinction,” Lear said, in a tone that indicated she considered herself neither advised nor grateful, and a look that said, I wonder what your head would look like on a stick. Alkema shouldered his landing pack and continued toward the front of the ship.

  “I don’t think I like the idea of being distorted in time,” Ciel sighed. It must have offended her deeply, Lear thought. She longed for harmony with nature on her own terms. Space travel probably isolated the human from nature more than any other activity. This was of necessity.

  Nature in space was cold vacuum and instant death, and travel at any speed that didn’t boggle the mind meant months between planets.

  “At least the airships have private sleeping accommodations,” Ciel continued, looking doubtfully at the cabin dividers.

  “The ship is equipped with sleeper units,” Lear interjected quickly, and instantly regretted it.

  “Sleeper units?”

  “Aye, sleeper units. On long space voyages, they help enhance your sleep experience by providing you with an optimally comfortable environment and ensuring that your dreams are peaceful and satisfying. Many of our people keep them in their homes.” Ciel shook her head and laughed in a sighing, grandmotherly way. “You can not even sleep without assistance from your technology.”

  Lear doubted anyone of the Bodicéans would be using the sleeper units.

  Within an hour, they had fired off the launch-rails, joined in formation with their escort ships, and set a course for the outsystem. The hours after launch were uneventful. As though avoiding the “hen party” in the main cabin, Keeler, Alkema, and Wang remained in the command module. Keeler taught them to play simultaneous games of Chess, Backgammon, Yahtzee, Poker, and Resistance, but Alkema was too good, and the game far less interesting without shots of alcoholic beverages.

  Lear announced it when they passed the outermost planet of the 10 225 Vulpeculus system. The women seemed unimpressed.

  Winnie headed into the darkest part of the night.

  “There,” Alkema said, a few hours later. He brought up a sensor reading. A line of small yellow dots were moving in from the outsystem.

  Winnie analyzed the sensor readings and cross-checked them from the readings provided by Recce One, confirming the identity of the alien fleet. “Alien ships, ahoy,” said Keeler.

  “Four degrees off the plane of the system at bearing 270 by 15.”

  “Reversing propulsion field,” Wang announced. “Slowing to .25c.”

  “Time to intercept?”

  “Eleven minutes,” Alkema answered.

  “This would probably be a good time to pray,” Keeler said, clasping his hands together, and bowing his head. “Dear Lord, this may be the stupidest thing I have ever done, but if You let me live through this, I promise to top it. Fear no Evil.”

  “God is Near.” Alkema answered.

  “Amen.”

  Keeler touched a communications panel. “Executive Commander Lear, we are approaching the alien fleet. Advise our passengers.”

  “Acknowledged.”

  Alkema touched some switches above the co-pilot’s stations. “Let’s bring those enhanced shields on-line.”

  On the open line to the cabin below, they heard Lear announcing that they were closing on the alien fleet, and advising the women to return to their landing couches. She explained how the safety features would protect them in the event of “violent maneuvering.” It all sound sounded so mundane, and Lear sounded like a cabin safety hologram. All the while, tension in the command module built as the tiny dots on Alkema’s monitor slowly took on the shapes of chunky hexagons and cubagons, finally resembling abstract sculptures of legless, wingless, insects.

  “It’s awfully warm in here,” Keeler said, tugging at the collar of his uniform. Now what happens? He had turned this over in his mind almost continually since he first suggested the idea. On the one hand, he could point out the window and say to the Bodicéans, “See, nasty aliens. Told you so.” From what he knew of the Bodicéans, they would then say “So what?” or want to give the aliens a hug or something. Perhaps the aliens would make his case for him by attacking the ship, and if they survived, his point would be made.

  The alien ships, he reflected, did not seem all that menacing. They looked more like big ugly cargo containers or concrete egg boxes or roadway barriers than warships. He wondered what they would have looked like, hanging in the pink sky over Medea, raining bombs and shooting cannons, laying waste to that world.

  “Slowing to .1 c,” Flight Captain Wang reported.

  “Do you think they detect us?” Alkema asked a few minutes later, breaking the commander’s doomy reverie.

  “Lt. Cmdr. Miller and some of the laser-brains from Technical Core analyzed the scans of the vessel he boarded. He thinks their scanning capacity is limited.”

  “How limited?” Wang asked.

  “I think they’ve detected us,” Alkema said.

  “Why?”

  “Because they’re moving.”

  They were close now, close enough for the internal monitors to display the alien ships in detail. The great slab ships were drawing away from each other, like an honor guard, creating a long straight corridor for the Aves to traverse.

  Lear called up to the command module.
She sounded nervous. “Commander, what’s happening?”

  Keeler, though his heart was racing and his breathing intensified, answered. “The alien ships are pulling apart, producing a corridor approximately 1,800 kilometers wide. I think they intend for us to travel through it.”

  “Why?” Lear asked, as though she expected him to know.

  Keeler studied it. “That corridor is outside the estimated weapons range of their ships. It is as if they are creating a safe passage for us.” Probably so they can close in behind us and annihilate us, he thought, but did not say aloud. “It could be a trap,” he soft-pedaled. “Are the Bodicéans impressed enough yet?”

  There was a long pause, and some muted discussion in the background. Keeler could make out phrases like, “how do we know…” and “they don’t look…” and “what proof…” Lear returned a moment later to confirm his hypothesis. “They need additional confirmation commander. The alien vessels are still outside of visual range.” Keeler nodded grimly. “Break out the excursion suits, I think we’re going to have to dock with one of those …” He almost said flying tombstones, but held his tongue.

  “Acknowledged.”

  “Mr. Wang, slow to 1,000 meters per second, and prepare for docking maneuver.” Alkema stared at him. Didn’t Lt. Commander Miller almost get killed doing this? he wanted to shout, but he guessed that this is what being a Tactical Lieutenant was all about.

  From that perspective, he guessed, perhaps it was best that he might not be one for very long.

  Keeler caught a hint of the young officer’s thoughts. “I don’t think there is any other way to convince them of the danger to their planet. Mr. Wang, bring us around. Oz has spoken.”

  “Commander, I am detecting something at the end of the corridor. Something massive.” Keeler and Alkema bent over the tactical station. Four hundred thousand kilometers ahead, back behind where the line of alien ships ended, was something so large it bent light around it.

  “Up ahead,” said Flight Captain Wang. There was nothing more to be said. No way to describe the indescribable.

  Up ahead loomed a bright sphere, radiating a brilliant inner light. They were still too far away to pick out details, only its gleam.

  “It must be a thousand kilometers across.”

  “A thousand and change,” Wang whispered.

  Winnie closed on the sphere. It was constructed of some kind of white material forming a latticework around plates of gray-black metal, an alloy the sensors could not identify. It was not a perfect sphere, but around its center was a ring with thousands of smaller domes, like bubbles in soap.

  “Can you scan it?” Keeler asked. Alkema directed the Aves sensor toward the great sphere. The image of the sphere peeled away in layers on the display, showing what lay inside. Beneath the domes were glimpses of water, plant-life, and thousands of layers of structures.

  It was a ship that aspired to be a world.

  “A world-ship,” Keeler said out loud. “Commander Lear, are you seeing what we’re seeing.”

  “We certainly are, Commander Keeler,” she responded.

  “Commander Keeler,” said Flight Captain Wang. “I am receiving a transmission, it’s a landing beacon, on Pegasus’s own standard frequency.

  Keeler looked at the display Wang was pointing at, and realized for the thousandth time he was expected to understand what it meant when he did not have a clue. “Does this mean they want us to land?” he said out loud, a good enough dodge.

  Lear interrupted. “Commander, that ship must be where the alien leadership lives. They are clearly sending an invitation. This might be the chance we need to work out a peaceful, diplomatic solution to the crisis. We have to take it.”

  Keeler did not agree at all with her reasoning. “Mr. Wang, follow that beacon and take us in. David, download all of our sensor readings into one of our missiles.”

  “Za, Commander.”

  “Before we get too close to that sphere, jettison the missile. Don’t launch, jettison. We don’t want to appear provocative. Let the missile track our course into the sphere. Once we’re inside, send the missile back toward Pegasus. Set an evasive course to keep it out of the weapons range of the fleet.”

  “The missile will never reach Pegasus in time,” Alkema said.

  “As soon as it reaches the outer system, have it send a signal to our extraction facility on the seventh planet. Send all of our tactical data, and tell them good luck.” Alkema completed the operation in seconds. “Missile away.” Keeler leaned over the front seats of the command module as the giant alien sphere filled the canopy. “Gentlemen, let’s do this thing. Fear no evil.” Wang unconsciously chewed his lower lip as he guided Winnie into a long latitudinal groove in the globe’s surface. “God is Near.”

  There was a brief impression of huge structures looming over them. Suddenly, what had been the surface of the globe became a sky. There was a dazzling light all around then, and then they were inside.

  Winnie passed through a chamber that must have been hundreds of kilometers long, and lined with long metal racks, from which hung a variety of shapes like folded origami.

  Presently, two of the shapes took wing and began flying alongside the ship, wheeling and shrieking.

  Seven hundred meters below, according to the sensors, was a vast landscape that defied the mind’s attempts to categorize its patterns, like a circuit board done in metal and stone, like a vast plain covered in children’s blocks, runes, and hieroglyphics, an impressionist landscape painted by a robot Monet, fractals seen through the tessellated eyes of spiders and flies.

  Looking at it made the eyes hurt, and the brain scream out for a simpler geometry.

  “There,” said Wang, pointing through the canopy. Ahead of them, a great shape loomed, like a pyramid made by stacking lots of little pyramids on top of one another. He eased off the throttle as the ship drew up to one of the many flat spaces on the side.

  “Tell the women to prepare for landing,” said Keeler. Gee, that sounded heroic. Oz has spoken.

  Part of the pyramid began reconfiguring itself before their unbelieving eyes. Blocks slid apart opening into a vast space that must have been a kind of hangar.

  “Life signs,” said Keeler to Alkema quickly. In all the confusion, they had not scanned for life signs, Alkema picked up on it and ran a sweep of the hangar.

  “There are sixteen people below us… I think… Wait a minute.” As the Aves passed inside the walls, the visual sensor made a contrary analysis. “Eight life forms,” Alkema corrected. He looked at the data. Eight bodies, but sixteen heartbeats, and a bio-electric field twice as strong as a normal humans. He half-whistled. Aliens.

  The ship settled to the ground.

  “The atmosphere outside is generally breathable, nitrogen, oxygen, carbon dioxide, with traces of methane and hydrogen hexafluoride,” Jersey Partridge reported.

  “Hazardous levels?” Lear asked.

  “Depends on how long we’re out there.” Partridge pulled out the smallest of the breathing filters. “This should be sufficient. If your skin begins to sting, let me know. You should return to the ship immediately.”

  The hatch slid open. Keeler was the first to lay eyes on their hosts. He was shocked by their appearance, having expected to see creatures like the one they had encountered on the surface of Hearth, or that Miller and Ng had discovered in the hold of the attack ship. The beings assembled in the hangar looked nothing like them at all. They were so different, so shocking in appearance, that Keeler had to suppress a gasp when he laid eyes on them.

  They looked like people.

  There were four men and four women waiting for them. They were giants. In stature and in proportions, they were like statues of pagan gods. They were beautiful. Men and women alike shared the chiseled muscularity of Olympic champions. Their skin was uniformly bronzed, long hair flowed past their shoulders held in place by a golden band around the forehead. They were almost naked, wearing nothing but thin slips of cloth that hid
nothing that was ordinarily hidden; and what was normally hidden was, proportional to the rest of their physiques.

  A man and a woman stepped forward, and spoke with a voice that echoed and reverberated impressively. The woman spoke. “We extend our welcome to you fellow travelers. On behalf of Coronado, Welcome to the World-Ship of the Eighth Echelon of Aurelia.”

  Lear wondered whether Keeler or Ciel should respond, this being Keeler’s ship, but Ciel’s system. Keeler simply stepped forward and said. “I am Commander William Keeler of the Pathfinder Ship Pegasus.”

  “We know who you are,” said the man. “Come with us.”

  They were led down a long corridor, lined with engraved gold tiles. Midway up the wall was a strip of light about 10 centimeters across with brightly colored ideograms running along it.

  They were dwarfed by their guards, next to whom the members of the excursion party looked like adolescent children. The Bodicéans, in turn, looked like lumpy pre-teens.

  At the end of the corridor, a pair of large round doors rolled aside, one to the left and one to the right, revealing a large, brightly lit chamber beyond, where another woman waited to receive them. She stood on a kind of balcony, and behind her stretched the vast landscape of this planet that was her world.

  Like the others, she was a giantess. You could have disassembled her body, used the good bits to make a normal sized woman and the rest to make a champion shot-putter. Her mass was great, but her proportions were right. Reduced to 70% scale, she would have been a heartbreaker. Her breasts were as large and firm as watermelons. Her face was framed by a cascade of brilliant blond locks. She walked forward, and wrapped a sheer robe over her naked body.

  She smiled, and Keeler almost immediately sensed his mind being probed. He deflected it, easily. “I am Coronado, the First of the Eight Echelon of the Aurelian Union.” Keeler step forward and looked up to Coronado. “I am Commander William Keeler of the Pathfinder Ship Pegasus, this is my Executive Officer, Goneril Lear, and this is …”