The Tuloriad-ARC

by John Ringo

  "You don't have to. Besides, all too soon, you will."

  Sally noticed the boy's fishing line twitching. "And more important, you've got a bite."

  "And so you want the Reverend Doctor to be a fisher of . . . Posleen?" the AS asked.

  "More part of a fishing team," Dwyer answered. "See, we can't know which religion will take with them. So we want to give them a menu to choose from." Dwyer thought upon the sundry missionaries collected so far for the mission and thought, A highly limited menu, if I have anything to say about it.

  After the AS translated, Guano sat on his haunches for some minutes, absentmindedly sipping from his quart of formaldehyde. When he began speaking again, it was to say, through the AS, "Despite Boyd's little joke, I've never actually made a sermon against the Whore of Rome. I don't make sermons about or against Jews, or Mormons, or Muslims, or Buddhists or any other of God's children. I'll admit to having a soft spot in my hearts for Sikhs and Gurkhas and Kshatriya Hindus.

  "And I have a soft spot, too, for my own people, forever denied God's grace and redemption. So, yes, Father, I and my family will go with you."

  Chapter Eleven

  Then did the hurtling asteroids menace;

  Then did the star, Hemaleen, threaten death.

  —The Tuloriad, Na'agastenalooren

  Anno Domini 2010

  Posleen Ship Arganaza'al

  There was an ancient song of hope, sung upon entry into a new system. Tulo'stenaloor's bridge crew sang it, even as did the various kessentai busied about the innards of the ship, as the Essthree called out, "Emergence in . . . five . . . four . . . three . . . two . . . one . . ."

  And nothing happened.

  The Essthree immediately turned to his navigation computer and began to beat on the control panel. That first choice failing, he actually began trying to use the thing's controls.

  "No luck," said Essthree. "I'm locked out." He began to pound on the control panel again. Well, it wasn't as if the original ship designers hadn't anticipated that a frustrated Posleen God-king might not feel the urge from time to time. The thing was overbuilt.

  "Fuscirto! Miserable, misbegotten, filthy, foul, vile . . ."

  "Shut up, Essthree," Tulo said, one claw indicating the main view screen where the formless void of Transitspace was replaced with the torso of Aelool, the Indowy.

  "Greeting, Posleen!" Aelool's image said. "And welcome aboard Hijack Spacelines, Flight Number One. I'll be your flight attendant for this trip. We'll be cruising the galaxy at speeds you really wouldn't believe. So relax and enjoy the journey. And just leave the driving to us."

  "I hate fucking Indowy with a sense of humor," Tulo muttered. To the screen he shouted, "When do we come out of Transitspace? Where will we come out."

  The screen didn't answer.

  About two weeks later, as humans meansure time, the screen came to life once again with the image of Aelool.

  "By this time," the image said, "you will have realized that you are not coming out of subspace quite where you intended to. That was, of course, my doing. I'd give you my apologies for infecting your ship's navigation computer but what good would apologies be at this point?

  "Nevertheless, be of good heart and good cheer. I did not do as I did to harm you, but to help. For reason I cannot go into without betraying confidences, you will not be safe unless you get very, very far from the humans, far enough, at least, for them to forget the better portion of their grudge.

  "Long and hard we searched, my clan and I, for at least the start point for you to begin looking for such a world. Between legends—yours, ours, the crabs', and the Aldenata's . . . oh, and some others we can't quite pinpoint the origin of—we think we did find such a place. It is to that that you are going. It is from there you may begin your search for . . . for whatever you think you want to find.

  "In time, you may well thank me. Good luck. Aelool, out."

  "Bastard!" Tulo said. "We should have eaten him after all."

  "Umm . . . maybe not," Goloswin said as the ship suddenly emerged out of transitspace. Though what kind of space it emerged into . . .

  "Where the fuck are we?" Tulo demanded. It was a really good question since the ship had popped into an area of space with no stars nearby. This was . . . rare.

  "Beats me," Essthree and Esstwo said together.

  "I've got nothin'," the Rememberer said.

  "And we need to refuel," Essfour added.

  Goloswin looked terribly unhappy. Or confused. It amounted to the same thing with him.

  "There's something out there," the tinkerer admitted. "I'm not sure just what, though."

  "Fine," Tulo said. "What do you think it is . . . or might be . . . or whatever?"

  The tinkerer chewed on his lower lip carefully for a whle before answering. "I think it's a power source . . . ummm . . . for a containment unit . . . full of anti-matter."

  "In the middle of nowhere?"

  "Infinite universe," Goloswin offered. "Infinite possibilities. No, I don't know what the fuck a pod of anti-matter is doing here. I only know we need to refuel and there it is."

  "A trap?" the Rememberer suggested.

  Golo shook his head. "A trap is for beings you haven't already trapped. We, on the other hand, once that little fuzz-face took over the ship, were already trapped."

  "Refuel then?" Essfour asked of Tulo'stenaloor.

  "You have a better option?" the clan lord asked.

  "Umm . . . no."

  "Then, by all means, refuel."

  Refueling, for the Posleen, generally meant taking station off of a gas giant and manufacturing anti-matter, a process that could take anywhere from days to weeks. In this case, with the fuel already present, it was done in a matter of hours, most of that being spent docking the containment unit to the ship.

  Had it taken twice the normal time, they'd still have been on their way sooner than they were. As it was, nearly six of the humans' weeks had passed and they were still stuck there, fully refueled and unable to make any headway. The ship lay dead in space.

  Goloswin thought he was making headway though. Hunched over a holographic projection of the virus that had taken control of the ship, he believed he had narrowed it down to a certain set of—admittedly very complex—codes.

  "Identifying the virus is the key to defeating it, Tulo," he said, his claw sweeping expansively over the projected code. "If I can . . . ah, shit."

  Even as Golo cursed, the code began transforming itself under his very eyes. As it did that, the ship began to hum as it powered itself up for a jump through transitspace.

  Eons past the asteroid had been formed, back in the time of the Knower Wars, the ancient wars fought between those Posleen who, while loyal to the Aldenata, Lords of Creation, had still questioned the Aldenata, and those who had been both loyal and unquestioning.

  There had been two Posleen planets in the system then, one dominated by the Knowers and the other by the Loyals. No one living knew any longer which of the two had seen its planet blown to flinders to form the asteroid belt that remained. It didn't really matter anyway, as the Posleen of the planet which had been smashed had still scoured the other planet almost free of life before dying. They had scoured it free of anything one might call civilization.

  The ship emerged, in a flash that told of the rending of Transitspace. There had been little warning before the Posleen of Tulo'stenaloor experienced the gut-wrenching shift and found themselves hurled into a maelstrom of hurtling asteroids, meteors, and other space debris.

  "Little fucking-bat-faced shit eater!" exclaimed Esstwo, as he found himself, once again, desperately trying to keep his ship from destruction. Under Esstwo's direction, fire lanced out from the ship, most notably at an "o-my-freaking-spirits-of-the-ancestors-and-Aldenata-demon-shit-combined" huge asteroid that was not merely in the ship's path at emergence but was, all on its own, on a collision course.

  "Getitgetitgetitgetit!" shrieked the Essthree, standing at the helm.

 
; "I'mtryingdammittothepits!" the Esstwo screamed back, even as his beams and KEWs attempted to break the asteroid into little bits. But the thing was enormous. There was little chance.

  "Notgonnawork!" Tulo said, then repeated, "Notgonnawork. Fuckfuckfuck!"

  Tulo shook his head, collecting himself. "If you can't smash it can you shave it?"

  "Shave it? Shave it? Shave it!" The Esstwo tapped his screens several times, causing a grid to appear over the asteroid in the main view screen. "Essthree, I'm going to put everything I have into slicing the section that will appear—" a caret showed on the asteroid's upper middle quadrant—"here. Can you dive under it?"

  "Beats trying to smash through," Essthree answered. "But I don't know if we'll . . ."

  Not waiting for the Essthree to finish, Esstwo began slashing at the asteroid, his beams following down the spot marked on the view screen. Bits of incandescent matter began to slough off.

  In the screen the asteroid arose, then recentered itself as the computers adjusted.

  Essthree shook his head. "It's going to be close but, no, we're not quite going to make it."

  "All hands, secure for collision!"

  Finba'anaga heard the call, "Secure for collision." His hearts immediately began to race. Even as they did, he did; to race for the interior of the ship.

  There was a traffic jam of sorts at the nearest passageway. None of the Posleen present had weapons, and so it came down to teeth and claws. Finba was smaller than most. He found himself pushed aside. Which was just as well, really, since the hatchway sphinctered shut, slicing two larger Posleen neatly across the torsos. They screamed for a little while, not very long.

  Fortunately or unfortunately, that left Finba'anaga alone in an airtight compartment.

  A close but uninvolved observer would have seen quite a show. The asteroid spun as it moved, leaving a vertical spiral trail of glowing matter behind it. The Arganaza'al didn't spin, but it did twist as it attempted to go under the asteroid. Almost, it made it. Sadly, the top five sections that comprised the ship—landers for when the time came for landing—were sliced off, in whole or in part, spilling air and writhing, agonized, rapidly decompressing and flash freezing Posleen bodies to space.

  "Binastarion? Binastarion, wake up," insisted the Artificial Sentience now floating in air, held approximately in place only by the chain around the Kessenalt's neck. "BINASTARION, WAKE UP!"

  "Huh?"

  Gravity was gone. The view screens were dead. What light there was came from a dozen or so small panels with their own integral power sources. Around the bridge Tulo's dozen floated. Some of them, moaning in pain, floated with arms and legs at odd angles, or had yellow blood leaking from torn hides and scalps . . . or both . . . or all three. Brasingala, for example, had one arm and one leg twisted into a shape no Posleen could assume naturally, had a flap of yellow skin hanging off and leaving his skull exposed, and was oozing blood from a half dozen rips in his torso, to boot.

  "Wha' happen'?"

  "We were struck, Binastarion, by an asteroid. The ship is badly damaged. The anti-matter engines went into emergency shutdown to avert a containment failure. And right now, we are heading for the local sun.

  "On the plus side," the AS added, brightly, "we're heading to that sun comparatively slowly."

  The corridor in which Finba'anaga was trapped was darker than a human's soul. It was also cold, oh, so cold.

  Finba trembled but with more than the cold. Fearful it was to be trapped there, alone and in the blackness, not knowing whether he would be rescued, not knowing if he would be trapped there forever, his soul caught inside a dead body for eternity.

  In truth, even the air had begun to go foul, causing the kessentai to gasp and pant. Had there been any light, he'd have seen an odd greenish tinge to his skin, as his blood grew ever more oxygen depleted.

  Finba'anaga might have already taken his own way out, long before, except that none of the newcomers to Tulo'stenaloor's band were yet trusted enough even to be allowed their boma blades. He'd considered simply ramming his head into the wall.

  But that would hurt with relatively little chance of killing. So what point? And yet will not the cold eventually hurt more. Perhaps it would be better to freeze while unconscious.

  As Finba was summoning his courage to stand, put his head down, and make a frantic run for an anvil to beat his head against, faintly, through the metal walls of his prison, he heard what sounded like a cutting or drilling machine, wearing away at the metal. Under the louder sounds of the cutting implement, Finba'anaga thought he heard Borasmena's voice shouting "Faster, damn you! If anyone's trapped in there, his air will only last so long."

  Indeed, it's almost all gone now, Finba thought. Hurry or there'll be nothing here for you to find but some steaks and chops.

  "How many did we lose?" Tulo asked, meeting in the main hall deep in the hold with his beaten up, scratched, scarred, broken limbed and broken toothed dozen.

  The Essone started to answer, then had to puke into a bucket. Even Posleen could be subject to concussion. After gagging on what little vomit there was, the personnel officer continued, "About twelve hundred mixed cosslain, kessentai, and a few normals. They were just scoured off by the asteroid, most of them while still in hibernation state."

  "We're in somewhat better shape for weapons," Essfour put in. "They were mostly bolted into racks and survived the collision and decompression pretty well."

  "Doesn't really matter," Essthree said. "We're going into the sun. I've tried the maneuvering engines. They don't have the thrust to get us out. Besides, the most I can orient where they'll do any real good is four, three of them not really well oriented for it. It's not enough to do more than slow us down. Worse, they're not intended for constant use and they will break eventually."

  Tulo turned to Goloswin, beside whom was standing one junior kessentai who couldn't stoop trembling. "Any chance of getting the main anti-matter engines back on line?"

  "Not in time," the tinkerer answered, resignedly. With less resignation, he added, "Not that we won't try. But even if I could, the landers' engines can't take any more power than the landers generate themselves, we can't jump in our current state and I lack the materials to fix it. I did manage to get life support back up."

  "I can't shoot our way through a star," the Esstwo said.

  "Didn't think so. Fuck."

  Goloswin slept badly, his dreams impinged upon by a nightmare of yellow eyeballs vibrating on the ends of nerve strings. First there were two, then four, then eight, and then his entire field of dream view was covered with the horrid things, bouncing back and forth against each other. They came closer, closer, closer . . .

  Goloswin awoke with a scream, his claws unconsciously fending off the wave of . . .

  Shit . . . that's an idea I've never had before.

  "You're joking, right?"

  "Just because it's never been done that we know of doesn't mean it can't be done, Tulo," the tinkerer answered.

  "Seven engines would be enough, I think, Tulo," the Essthree said. "I think actually five would, if you add the maneuvering thrusters of the central C-Dec, which would be open to space if we cast off the landers."

  "How do we connect them?"

  "I'm working on that," Golo answered.

  "By the way, where in the name of all demons and shit eaters are we?" Tulo asked.

  "I don't know," Esstwo answered, "not yet, anyway. Buuut . . . based on the radiation coming from the fifth planet, we've been here before. The People of the Ships, I mean."

  Tulo cocked his head, inquisitively. "What kind of radiation?"

  "All kinds. It's only traces now, but I can still pick it up."

  "Dangerous?"

  "In the short term? No, not in eons. The war here was long, long ago."

  "Does this place have a name?" Tulo asked.

  "The system does. 'Hemaleen.' But the records, even the Rememberer's oldest scrolls of the Knower Wars, have nothing but the name and
a rough description. I think . . . perhaps . . . few must have escaped. Perhaps none did."

  "Can we land on it, safely, to refine enough metal to do repairs?"

  "If we can land on it, we can land on it," the Esstwo answered.

  "I've got a solution, Tulo," Goloswin said, "but it's not an easy solution."

  "I'm listening."

  "Well . . . we can't really start chopping up the internal structure of the ship. But we've got the remnants of the five sections, the five landers, that the asteroid scoured off sitting out there uselessly. We can use EVA suits to go out and cut those away. The shadow of the ship should protect us from the sun."