Into the Maelstrom
Page 27
“You still regret allowing Brygan to reach the empire with the data,” Williams said, making it a statement rather than a question. That had been a hard call for him to make, even though he was far from being military-minded.
“It might have been better for the Union if Nystolov had been intercepted.”
Intercepted. A thinly veiled euphemism for the destruction of the shuttle that Drake had recommended. Even now, knowing that the Neo-Soviet empire might beat them to a major discovery, Williams could not find it in himself to condemn the scout.
“How many lives did he save, Paul, when we were bringing aboard the crystalline formation sample? Maybe even yours?”
Drake shrugged uneasily. “Maybe,” he admitted. “I guess there’s no disgrace in learning from the enemy.”
“Not unless you want to make all the mistakes yourself,” Williams said. He offered Drake his hand. “Good luck, Paul.”
“Thank you, Major. I’m sure to see you when I get back.” The Marine broke the handshake with one final pump, then turned on his heel and walked with purpose down the corridor as Williams keyed his security code into the lab’s lock.
Passing inside, all thoughts of Drake and the Icarus’s next flight were forgotten. Randall Williams spared a final thought for Brygan Nystolov and the scout’s assertion that some things were better left undiscovered. Ultimately, the scientist in Williams had decided to disagree. The potential alien threat existed and would have found them sooner or later. Now the Union had time to prepare, to unlock as many secrets of the Maelstrom as possible. It was the same motive that had driven Nystolov to abandon the Union team.
A group of four technicians worked around the large crystalline fragment, which took up better than half the large room. Two worked up close with delicate instruments, and another pair on consoles monitoring its signal pulses. Randall Williams walked along its side, one hand trailing over the smooth emerald facets and occasionally lingering on the new fracture growths.
He nodded a greeting to Lieutenant Theresa Dupras, assigned as his direct aide once again and the scientist in charge of this particular experiment. She made room at her console, its screen dedicated to a baseline trace over which the pulse would strobe like some alien heartbeat.
“Okay, everyone.” Williams waved their attention toward the formation. “We’re going to vary the top-end amplitude of a frequency-modulated carrier wave and see what that does to the crystals’ output. Let’s try and find the regenerative signal feedback this time.” He nodded once to Dupras. “Give me a signal.”
And then Major Randall Williams began to wrestle with a new problem, losing himself in the challenge.
* * *
The nanite cores sensed a nearby varying signal. Strong magnitude. The modulation suggested intelligence rather than background noise—an intelligence technologically advanced enough to be manipulating energy for the purpose of communication, power, or weaponry. It was what the probe was designed to recognize, and call attention to.
The incoming energy patterns were re-formed to elevate the power of the signal pulse already in progress. The strengthened signal radiated out from the crystals, to be sampled and recorded by the Union scientists’ equipment. It passed through walls and out over the surface of the moon, above the Tycho Crater Base. Passing up through the thin atmosphere cost it less than three seconds and a small measure of strength as a portion of the signal reflected back off the moon’s thin ionosphere. Then the signal was freed into the Maelstrom.
It reached and passed by the Earth. Stations Independence and Freedom might have detected it except for the repairs still to be made on their electronics capabilities. A Neo-Soviet ground-based installation did detect the ultrahigh-frequency pulses, but as the invariable signals seemed to convey no actual intelligence, the event was labeled one of several thousand anomalies.
Beyond the Earth, the signal found little except vacuum and minor debris for some time. The icy blue nebula eventually fell into its wake, as did a few of the planets that could be seen decorating Earth’s night skies in place of stars. The signal passed through the space recently inhabited by a large portion of a long-dead planetoid, and it would pass by that same island ninety-three million kilometers later where it had temporarily fused into the surface of an airless planet. Asteroid belts. Rogue suns. Derelict spacecraft. World after world.
The beacon swept the alien sky of the Maelstrom, always searching.
About the Author
Into the Maelstrom is Loren Coleman’s fifth published novel. His previous novels were all set in the BattleTech® universe. He has also written game fiction and source material for such companies as FASA, TSR, and Wizards of the Coast.
Loren currently resides in Washington State with his wife, Heather Joy, two sons, Talon LaRon and Connery Rhys Monroe, and a new daughter, Alexia Joy. He works in the company of three Siamese cats.