by Amy DuBoff
“Overseeing the chemical transfer,” Trisha replied.
Fiona nodded. “If it’s not one task, it’s another.”
Karen settled into her chair, pleased to be working with such a capable team.
She watched the monitors showing feeds from the remote sites as the workers moved the massive drilling laser into place. It, in theory, could cut through the entire planetary crust in a matter of hours. However, due to heat issues, and concerns about geological stability, they needed to go much slower.
If Karen had her way, they’d just turn the drill on full blast to melt the alien nest, and be done with it. Apparently, though, the FDG wanted to stick with the tried and true method of exterminating the particular foe, and that involved the chemical mixture. While laser incineration sounded much more satisfying, she understood the necessity of using proven strategies.
On the monitor, the three-story drill finished maneuvering onto its hover platform. Giant spikes plunged into the ground to secure it in place, and the laser drillhead pivoted downward.
“Ground team has given the all clear to go,” Trisha announced.
Karen took a deep breath. “All right. Let’s—”
An incoming communication marked as ‘urgent’ and bearing FDG credentials lit up her monitor. “I should get this,” she said, coming to attention. “Proceed with the drilling.”
She rose from the workstation she’d co-opted in the central office and stepped into one of the conference call rooms along the adjacent hallway. Once situated, she answered the call.
Ava’s face appeared. “Have you started drilling?” she asked frantically.
“Just gave the order. Wh—”
“Stop them!” she exclaimed.
“Why—”
“Now!”
Karen ran from the conference room back to the central office. “Stop!” she shouted over the din. “The drill, shut it down!”
Trisha repeated the order to the drill team, and the monitor showed the glow fading from the laser head. “Care to explain?” she asked Karen.
Karen’s face flushed. “Order came down from the FDG. If they gave the order, it’s for a good reason. I’ll get the details.” She jogged back to where she’d accepted the call.
Ava was pacing back and forth on the screen.
“It’s off,” Karen announced. “Now, what the hell?”
Ava breathed a sigh of visible relief. “Garett. He was subverted. He did something with the regulator on the drill, I don’t know what.”
Karen’s head swam. “He…?” She leaned against the back wall of the tiny room. “The drill could have overheated and exploded.”
“Can a regulator be fixed?” Ava asked.
“I’ll have to ask the mechanics, but I imagine so.”
“You have to get that drill going. Our timeline—”
“I know, Ava,” Karen interrupted. “We’ll fix it in time.” Somehow…
The FDG officer nodded. “There’s one other thing. As soon as you get the drill sorted out, I need you to run some tests.”
* * *
Coordinating so many moving pieces had Kurtz in his element.
Reports were rolling in from the fleet sent to retrieve the chemical cocktail from Nezar about their progress filling the transport tanks, while the few armored ships the FDG could spare at the moment had been deployed as their escort. Everything was coming together, but the timing would be tight with the alignment.
A new message illuminated on Kurtz’s desktop. It was from the Raven, marked with Ava’s access code.
“Lieutenant,” he greeted.
“Sir, we’re on our way to Gidyon.”
“I see the tankers are almost filled. NTech came through for us.”
Ava nodded. “Yes, sir. There was a near-miss with sabotage involving the drill, but Karen assured me the hole would be completed in time.”
Now, that I hadn’t heard about. “Are you sure everything is okay?” he asked.
“It has to be so it will be, right, sir?”
Kurtz smiled. “The Nezarans have proven themselves resourceful. I’ll check in with them while you’re in transit to make sure our timeline doesn’t need to shift.”
“Thank you, sir. I accounted for the estimated repair time when we synchronized our clocks for the release tomorrow. It was easier to do at the planet so we didn’t have to account for communication lag through the Annex Gate relay.”
“Good call. There’s enough normal space between the two points that it’s not reliable.” Kurtz looked her over. “Did you have something else you wanted to discuss?”
“Sir, I think I know how the Dyons have been able to build all these things.”
Kurtz raised an eyebrow at the cryptic statement. “Explain.”
“I mean,” Ava continued, “we were wondering about their specialization as a species. They seem to have knowledge of nanotech, but not in the way we’d expect for beings that exist in that form. But I think I figured it out, when I was interfacing with Edgar down on Nezar.” She paused. “I believe they manipulate matter.”
“Pardon?”
“Like, they don’t actually have nanotech. They just manipulate what’s there.”
Kurtz let the words sink in. “What about the telepathic receptors, and the rock formations?”
She nodded. “I was thinking about that, too. Those are just made out of a mineral, a raw material. But when arranged in a particular pattern, it takes on a specific harmonic frequency that facilitates the properties we’ve observed.”
“And the bioamplifier?”
“Tweaks to a simple biological form to accomplish the desired ends. I suspect their manipulations are limited to that microscopic biological level and inanimate materials, though, or else they wouldn’t need genetic engineering to make ‘vessels’ out of Weres and other people.”
Kurtz folded his hands on his desktop. “It fits, Lieutenant, but what evidence do you have? It’s a bold claim about capabilities of a race that already seems to be able to do things they shouldn’t.”
“Edgar’s memories. The details he picked up,” Ava explained. “It’s different watching events through someone else’s eyes. When I went to Gidyon, I was taking everything in as an FDG warrior. I’ve been to dozens of worlds and interacted with a number of races over the years. I’m used to accepting the unusual as normal. But Edgar—he spent his life on Nezar. The cute, little cocoberas on Coraxa could be considered as scary as a three-meter-tall tentacle monster, for all the interaction he’d had with other species. So when Edgar saw inside that facility, he picked up on things that I had glossed over because of my past experiences.”
“Such as?” Kurtz prompted.
“Well, my first clue was the stairs. When we were on Gidyon, I’d thought it was all poured concrete. Through Edgar’s eyes, however, it was definitely stone—but there were no signs of the rock having been formed. It was just simply arranged in the final design.”
“The facilities could have been different.”
“That occurred to me, sir, so I looked up the footage from our mission record. The exact type of rock is different, but it’s not the concrete I’d originally thought it was. I verified that with the density readings. It’s one of those little details that I didn’t even think to look at.”
“None of us did, apparently.” Kurtz’s eyebrows drew together. “Were there other observations you gleaned from Edgar?”
Ava nodded. “Yes, sir. Two things. The first was a frequency—a hum—in the air. We never paid much attention to it on Gidyon because we’re so used to background mechanical noise from ships and stations. The second thing was related to the walls around the pit. We didn’t see anything on Gidyon, but when Edgar approached the pit, these weird lights appeared in the rock. There was a pattern in the forms—the same pattern we saw in the computer system architecture, and in how the landscape was arranged on Gidyon.”
“We already knew that pattern had significance to them.”
“But we didn’t know why, sir. Seeing the minerals arranged in the pattern, I had Karen get some NTech scientists to replicate the form with the mineral. Except the structure fell apart each time. That’s when they made the connection that the waveform of the frequency was strikingly similar to the patterns formed by the minerals. So, they played the frequency while constructing the mineral structure, and it all suddenly worked. The structure held together.”
Kurtz leaned forward. “Are you sure?”
“It was small scale, but the lab results were verified,” Ava confirmed.
“So that frequency may have something to do with how the Gidyon planet operates,” Kurtz mused. “If we interrupt that sound…”
“It may break apart,” Ava completed for him. “If the chemicals alone don’t do the trick, we can disrupt the bonds holding the rest of it together by playing an opposing soundwave.”
“In theory.”
“Yes, sir. It’s only a theory. And there’s a major complication: soundwaves don’t travel in space, and we also don’t have a big enough speaker, even if it did.”
That’s it! Kurtz perked up. “We don’t need actual sound.”
“Sir?”
“Other types of signals—specifically, telepathic signals—don’t require a physical medium for transfer. And that entire planet is designed to be one giant communication hub.”
Ava raised an eyebrow. “Are you suggesting that I… think that frequency? We need to break up a physical object with a soundwave. Telepathy isn’t the same thing.”
“Doesn’t the mineral resonate with telepathic signals? To do that, it must convert the telepathic energy into actual physical vibrations.”
“I guess, but…” Ava trailed off.
“You brought it up, Lieutenant. Did you have another course of action in mind?”
Her expression changed to one of determination. “No, sir. I can do this.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
Shit, why did I ever agree to do this? Ava groaned inwardly as the Raven made its final approach into the Gidyon System.
>>Not to be the voice of dissent, but it is a longshot,<< Ruby said in her mind.
Thanks, Ruby. That’s really helpful, Ava grumbled.
>>Just being realistic. But I do think you should try.<<
I was going to try, regardless of what you think, but I’m glad to hear you don’t think I’m completely out of my mind.
>>Oh, I do,<< the AI replied with a dead serious tone. >>It just happens to be a brand of crazy I endorse. Go big, right?<<
Ava smiled. Always go big.
The plan was absurd any way Ava looked at it, but the nature of the enemy demanded an unconventional approach. She took a deep breath and went to meet her team in the kitchen.
“Ready?” Widmore asked when she entered.
Already seated at the table, the three Were members of her team were ready to lend moral support.
Ava nodded to the major. “Let’s do it.”
“We’re still a few minutes out from the strike time, but why don’t you feel them out?” Widmore suggested. “You need to make sure you can get a solid connection.”
“I’ll give it a shot.”
For lack of having someone’s eyes to gaze into, Ava focused on the view of the planet out the window. “Hello?” she asked into the void.
She could sense the planet and the strange, constant hum, but no sentient presence met her probe.
“I know you’re out there. I want to talk.”
Silence.
“No response,” she reported with a sigh.
“Hmm.” Widmore stroked his chin. “Hopefully, once they realize we—” He cut off when a jolt rocked the Raven.
“Uh, what was that?” Edwin asked no one in particular.
Ava looked around outside, but none of the other ships were visible with her naked eye. She reached out to magnify the view, but another jolt rocked them, powerful enough to make her stumble against the wall.
“That’s not good.”
Widmore ran toward the ladder. “I need to get to the bridge.”
Ava followed him. “Is it something I did, I wonder?” she speculated while they climbed.
“I have no idea,” the major replied. “Obviously, they know we’re here now.”
Once at the top of the ladder, they ran toward the bridge, and were knocked sideways in the middle of the corridor.
“That was stronger than the last,” Ava observed.
“I don’t like that trend one bit.”
Widmore was the first through the door. “What the hell is going on?” he asked the captain and first officer.
“Ship is acting like we’re caught in some sort of gravity well,” Rod replied while he fought with the controls. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say we were at the event horizon of a black hole.”
Aleya shook her head. “Nothing about this makes any sense. Other ships are reporting the same thing. We’re all being pulled toward the planet.”
“Oooooh shit,” Ava whispered.
Widmore turned to look at her, standing behind him. “What?”
“Remember how we said the gravity on the planet was too strong for something of its mass? What if they have some kind of massive gravity generator and they just cranked it up to the max?”
The others’ faces drained.
“That would explain it,” Rod said, “but I don’t like where it’s going.”
“Anti-grav at that scale is really unstable.” Aleya shook her head. “They won’t be able to keep this up for long without it going critical.”
“And what would happen then?” Widmore asked.
“Fuck if I know, but it’d be bad,” the first officer replied.
“Pull back,” Widmore ordered.
“We’ve tried, but navigation is, uh… not behaving,” Rod said.
“Fuck,” Ava whispered to herself. “Sir?” She jerked her head toward the hall.
Widmore followed. “What?”
“What if the Dyons figured out a way to remotely hack our ship’s computers using the algorithms from the external processor we left behind?”
The major got that look in his eyes that he did whenever he was in crunch time. “We need to act before they get complete control.” He ran back into the bridge. “All right, get ready to send those torpedoes. And, Ava, you’re up. Time to get their attention and keep it.”
“Yes, sir,” she acknowledged.
A fucking gravity generator? Really? she added privately to Ruby while she followed Widmore back to the kitchen area.
>>Pulling us out of orbit would make a great way to ruin our day.<<
Except all those tankers would explode on the surface and kill them anyway.
>>But we’d have a gruesome death,<< Ruby pointed out.
Ava caught on. And that might give them the energy to counteract our chemical assault.
>>Sounds like a desperate move on their part, if that is their aim.<<
I don’t intend to find out, either way.
Ava reached the bottom of the ladder, and then ran to the kitchen.
“What’s going on?” Nick asked.
“Gravity generator, we think. And they may have hacked our nav system,” Ava replied. “But we’re going to take them down first.”
She stared at the planet out the window, extending her mind. “No more playing. Let’s have a chat.”
Her telepathic probe met only emptiness at first, and then a chorus of voices whispered in her mind. “You’ll still be ours.”
Ava tapped the side of her head to let Widmore know she’d made contact.
Widmore, in turn, pointed to the ticking clock for their synchronized strike. Ava would have to keep the Dyons talking for another seventy seconds.
“Where did you come from?” she asked as a stall tactic.
“Far from here, and soon all will be ours,” the chorus replied.
Another jolt shook the ship, and Ava steadied herself with her hands on the windowsil
l. “I appreciate your ambition. In fact, I was just talking with a friend about how you need to go big or not bother. So, congrats on that.”
The aliens retreated slightly, as though caught off-guard by the casual tone—just like Ava had intended.
“We’d really like to stop fighting with you,” she continued when they didn’t reply. “Except you’re making that really fucking difficult.”
“Submit!” the chorus said in her mind.
Ava felt the tug of their power, but she held firm. “See, we want that done the other way around.”
“We will never work with inferior beings.”
Feedback squealed on the ship’s comm system, breaking Ava’s focus. She covered her ears. “What was—”
“Transmitter on the planet just activated!” Aleya announced over the comm when the squeal subsided. “Signal is fifteen times prior recorded magnitude.”
Widmore swore under his breath. “We need to shut that thing down!”
Shit! Ava struggled to clear her mind and restore the telepathic link. “What are you trying to do?” she asked the aliens.
They didn’t reply, but the connection was reestablished; she could sense their satisfaction.
Ava checked the countdown clock: five seconds. Let’s see how long that smugness lasts.
Widmore activated a magnification overlay on the window. The enhanced image showed a torpedo launching from the ship nearest the Raven, forming a thin, bright streak across the black. The trail continued through the planet’s atmosphere, and then there was a moment of stillness.
An explosive plume flashed for a second, and then a shockwave rippled through the surrounding landscape. The torpedo had hit its mark, and systems registered that the capsule carrying the chemical cocktail had disintegrated like it was supposed to.
“I bet that got their attention,” Ava said without taking her eyes off the view out the window.
“Sorry,” she continued through the telepathic link, “that was rude of us to knock down the whole front door rather than knocking politely.”
The aliens roared in her mind—blind, directionless anger.
Ava smirked. “Oh, wait, you enslaved a bunch of our people and then said you’d do it all again. Yeah, we’re not here to play nice.”