by Mel Keegan
“Of course, Captain,” Lai’a responded, and then added as if it were an afterthought, “I have located the G7 star identified by the Ebrezjim as the Zunshu home sun. Do you wish to proceed there at once, Captain Vaurien, Doctor Sherratt?”
“How far – how long?” Vaurien wondered.
“At Weimann safe overrun, just eight hours,” it told him.
Vaurien’s helmet turned toward Mark and Shapiro. “Other than a sudden attack of spastic shakes, do we have a reason to wait?”
For a long moment they both seemed to hesitate, and Travers’s heart thudded against his ribs. At last Shapiro said, “Now it’s come to the very moment, I’d like nothing more than to give you a fine reason to delay. But there isn’t one. Mark?”
“We’ll learn no more by staying here,” Mark said grimly. “Lai’a is just as capable of charting this region en route. Lai’a?”
“I have charted and cataloged all parts of the Zunshu Drift that are visible from this vantage point,” it reported. “Do you wish to chart it all before proceeding to the Zunshu system?”
“Or chart it on the way back?” Jazinsky’s voice was no more than a rasp. “None of it matters, Mark, until we come back.” The word unless hung on the air like a sword suspended overhead.
“Lai’a,” Mark said very quietly, “proceed to the Zunshu system. Richard?”
“Yes.” Vaurien paused to swallow, the sound audible over the comm. “Eight hours, Lai’a … and drop us out of e-space well outside the system. Don’t go anywhere near the heliopause till you’ve reconnoitred the zone.” Into the loop he said, “Everything we’ve got goes online in seven hours, people. Take the chance to get some rest. If there’s anything you need to fix, fix it now. Lai’a, report on your new firewall.”
“It is impossible to validate it, Captain, without testing it,” Lai’a told him. “I had expected to be assaulted as we exited the Zunshu Gate.”
“Yeah,” Vaurien said not much above a whisper, “that’s what we all expected.”
“Object match.” Lai’a announced. “Colonel Rusch, Doctor Jazinsky, you might like to see the data streaming to Tech 2. I have identified the Trinity system, on the extreme edge of resolution.”
A collective groan breathed from Rusch, Jazinsky and Mark. Travers took a step closer to Marin and asked, “What?”
“Edge of resolution,” Jazinsky said acidly. “Trinity is a triple star system, three super-luminous, supergiant stars, very short-lived, violent, locked in orbit around each other. They’re like a lighthouse. Using Velcastra as your vantage point, Trinity’s about 18o off Orion 359 and just a few degrees off the starfields in the Resalq constellation of Cornova – what’s it mean, Mark? The Hourglass, is it? Trinity’s brighter than a whole gaggle of giant stars. If it’s on the edge of resolution, it means we’re so far out, I’ll give you short odds, Neil, Lai’a won’t even be able to identify another object. Anything we know will be in a swatch of sky so small, you won’t pick it out of the Cornova starfields. Those starfields,” she added, “are only visible from Deep Sky observatories using gravity lensing. The Aenestra charted them very roughly, using extreme deep scan, from Orion 359. ”
“Oh, fuck,” Vidal said succinctly. “Lai’a, using line-of-sight – Velcastra to the trinary to us – and figuring distance based on the apparent magnitude of a known object … how far out are we?”
“Precision is impossible, Colonel,” Lai’a warned. “I estimate we are likely 45,000 light years from the Deep Sky.”
“That’s – that’s halfway across the galaxy,” Rabelais whispered.
“It’s about 40, maybe 50 years to get home,” Queneau added, “if we can’t get back into transspace. Sweet Christ.” It was a prayer, not a profanity.
Vaurien’s voice was taut. “Anything else, Lai’a, from the deep scan?”
“Nothing, Captain,” Lai’a said without a thread of regret. “To dispel Captain Queneau’s concerns, the transspace drive is functioning perfectly.”
“Sure it is,” Queneau muttered. “And remind me of exactly where we’re heading.”
“To Zunshu 161,” Lai’a responded.
It had already charted the region, Travers thought with acid rationale. The black hole at the heart of the Zunshu Drift and its supergiant stars were the first objects cataloged, followed by the giant stars, the pulsars and more exotic systems where two, three, four stars danced around each other in a waltz of mutual attraction – and at last the mundane systems where life could arise and civilization might flourish.
“All right,” Vaurien said tersely, “we’re safe in e-space – nothing’s going to touch us for seven hours. Joss, blow us back up to pressure and temperature. I’m going to get out of this goddamned hardsuit. I’ll be in the crew lounge, if you need me … don’t need me, people. Not for a couple of hours.”
In the navtank, a clock began to count down. Minutes later Joss announced full pressure across the habitation module, and with a muttered oath Travers cracked the seals, rotated the helmet a few degrees left and lifted it off. The air was cold, fresh, and he was not surprised to find his skin sweated.
Jazinsky’s face was grim, an expression Mark mirrored. They would spend the next hours trying to make sense of dormant weapons, passive installations, sensor probes that did not happen, weapons that were not launched. Travers had no inkling of an answer – the soldier’s perspective was useless here.
The navtank was bright with the charts of the region, and the transspace pilots were drawn to it irresistibly. The navigators, Travers, Queneau and Rodman, were less fascinated. The world in which they worked was Elarne itself, a realm which had little in common with the stars and distances of normal space.
Without comment Vaurien was stacking his armor just inside the Ops room, where the blastdoors had opened. Beyond, Marin had begun to set his own, piece by piece, in the corner of the half-lit crew lounge. Sweat prickled Travers’s back as he joined Curtis there. Less than a minute to break the seals and mound up the armor, and he was at the ’chef, wanting no more than a bottle of water, which he drank without pause for breath. His mouth was still dry as he dropped the empty into the recycle chute.
Pale faces appeared in the lounge and voices were hushed. Vaurien took the recliner in the corner by the door, set his head back and closed his eyes. Travers might have envied him the ability to rest, but Richard’s mouth was a compressed line and his hands were knotted.
“Neil.” Marin beckoned him to the couch under what would have been viewports on a normal cruiser. “Take a breath. If there’s an answer that can be dug out of what we know, the Resalq and Barb and Lex will find it. If there isn’t … it’ll find us soon enough.”
At a place arbitrarily called Zunshu 161. Travers dropped onto the couch beside him, but relaxation was alien territory. He listened to the loop instead – Bravo were playing folgen, bantering between themselves, indulging in veeree, listening to music. The routine was familiar to anyone who had served with a Marines unit. The hours before deployment were the hardest to get through, frequently much harder than the action itself. Travers listened to them bickering over the folgen, and smiled. Grant, Fargo and Inosanto had gone back to Grant’s quarters, right by the Infirmary, and their comms were off. Travers knew exactly what they would be doing; it was almost a ritual on the night before battle. Down on the Harlequin, in the big hangar, Hubler and Rodman were doing the same. Shapiro and Kim sat in the corner by the bar, talking softly, sharing old memories over cognac and slender Cutty Sark cigars, rolled in the city of Sark itself.
Voices carried from Ops as the Resalq, Jazinsky and Rusch continued to hammer on the sparse data with frequent interjections from Lai’a, but every suggestion was mere conjecture. Travers stopped listening when Marin took his hand. He said nothing. Neil did not need to hear a word, but let himself be pulled up by that hand and followed Curtis back to their stateroom.
The lights were low, the music quiet. If Travers might have expected a frenzy inspired by adre
naline and healthy fear, he was surprised. Marin was very slow, very gentle, and when he was done Neil felt a soul-deep peace. If human beings possessed any such thing as a soul, he mused as they lay together. No one knew the answer to that riddle; perhaps no one ever would.
They did not sleep, but the peace lasted long enough to make the hours liveable. With twenty minutes to spare Jon Kim was on the loop, calling the roll a second time with the command, ‘helmets on.’ With ten minutes to spare the company was back in armor, waiting for the habitation module to blow back down to zero pressure, and soon after Vaurien’s voice called from Ops,
“Pick your territory, people. Negative Weimann transition in two minutes.”
Every weapons system was online before Lai’a dropped out of e-space. Sensors shouted across the void and this time, before Vaurien or Sherratt could even speak, chain guns, railguns and missile launchers were hot. Travers and Marin stood with Vidal, Rabelais and Queneau, mere spectators as 40 guns tracked as fast as only a machine could drive them, picking off targets the instant sensors could identify them. Its voice was as calm as ever as it said,
“Tracking more than 900 objects. Standby.”
“A swarm?” Jazinsky asked. “Are we in a minefield?”
“No,” Lai’a told her. “The weapons are ranged in unusual cluster formations at regular distances apart, like beads strung on a web. More interesting, Doctor Jazinsky, is that they are not imploding when triggered.”
“Not imploding?” Vidal demanded. “Goddamn, I sound like a bloody echo. What d’you mean, Lai’a?”
“I mean that the weapons, when triggered, explode,” Lai’a said in the untroubled tones of the machine. “Some explosions might be due to malfunction in gravity weapons, but not all. There is no doubt that most, perhaps all, of these weapons are not gravity weapons.”
“But Zunshu weapons are gravity devices,” Rusch protested.
It was Mark who said with ominous quiet, “Every weapon we’ve seen has been a gravity device, Alexis. We haven’t seen these before.”
Vaurien’s armored hands rested on the side of the tank, where the threedee was a chaos of targets and icons which shifted from red ‘live weapon’ markers to dim blue numbers spelling out the coordinates where each was destroyed. “Lai’a, are you getting beacon signals?” he asked sharply. “There ought to be a warning buoy.”
“I am receiving a signal.” Lai’a paused. “I assume it is the official caution of a weapons zone ahead, and a warning to turn back. However, the language and encryption are unknown, and no cipher has been provided. This is not the language of the Zunshu drone command channels. Nor is it the language of the core AI of the Kjorin stasis chamber. The lingual sample is too small to allow translation. I can stream it to Comm 2, if you would care to examine it.”
“Do that.” Mark was on his way, striding around the tank as he spoke. “Don’t forget, Barb, Alexis, the Kjorin chamber is many centuries old. The signals we’re receiving now are current, and they’re going to be very different. Allow for technological development.”
The signal issuing from the workstation was plain audio, and to Travers’s ears it sounded like a single moaning wail, not unlike the wind whistling through a crevice. It fluted, oscillating around set points, punctuated occasionally by a higher or lower note. If he had not been told it contained coherent information, he would have heard pure sound.
“The message is 8.7 seconds in duration, and repeats,” Lai’a reported. “It is broadcasting from a beacon on the edge of the heliopause, and began to transmit when triggered by my presence. I would assume many such beacons are on station keeping around this system, and many such weapons fields guard the approaches to Zunshu 161.”
“Has there been any system override attempt?” Mark turned his back on the comm workstation. “Anything similar to what befell the Ebrezjim’s AI?”
“No,” Lai’a told him. “Firewalls are active. I will report any attempt at interference with my processes. Crossing the heliopause, Captain Vaurien. We are inside the outer defenses. I have pinpointed Zunshu 161-D, the gas giant identified by the Ebrezjim as the Zunshu homeworld. I recommend an e-space transit to the outer edge of the Weimann exclusion zone, to shorten the flight duration and escape this weapons field before I sustain damage.”
“These weapons are more than you can handle?” Vaurien was watching the navtank, where flurries of warheads seemed to appear as fast as Lai’a destroyed them.
“Individually, I can eliminate anything I have yet detected. However, I have insufficient guns to target every weapon. Some are inevitably impacting the Arago shielding.”
“Problem?” Mark’s voice was like a razor.
“Not until Arago projectors begin to stress.” Lai’a paused. “I remind you, protecting the habitation module and the transspace drive are my paramount priorities. Arago projectors are currently at capacity. Theoretically, I can withstand this barrage, but the risk can be avoided altogether via a Weimann transition.”
“Do it.” Vaurien did not hesitate. “I’d hoped to chart the system on the way in – know what we’re sitting right inside of – but we could run into fifty of these defense zones. A hundred. It’s a pointless risk, Mark, if we can jump right into the neighborhood of 161-D. Yes?”
“Yes,” Mark agreed. “Lai’a, take great care to observe the usual Weimann exclusion zone. There’s no sense announcing ourselves by drowning a hemisphere in fallout.”
“Fuckitall to hell,” Tor whispered, “is that what the Ebrezjim did? They dropped out too close, fried half a world?”
“They wouldn’t be so crass,” Dario said in a forced whisper. “They knew the dangers of drive engines at least as well as we do.”
“Drop out and scan the region, scan everything,” Vaurien was saying. “Immediately that you’re out, cycle the Weimanns right back up to ignition minus one second and hold there.”
“Acknowledged,” Lai’a said calmly. “Arago 44 is overheating. Weimann transition in 50 seconds. Arago 28 has scrammed. Railguns 8, 14 and 19 have exceeded tolerable operating temperatures.”
The barrage was without pause and without end. Travers’s eyes were still on the tank, watching icons flicker over into coordinates like so many fireflies winking out, but the litany of increasing minor malfunction was a sporadic murmur as the clock counted down. Neil’s was not the only voice to curse in relief as the deck gave the familiar shimmy, seemed to drop out from under the feet, and the ship slithered into e-space.
“Negative Weimann transition in nine minutes,” Lai’a reported. “Drones deploying to effect immediate repairs. Number 3 generator is throttled to minimal output, pending maintenance. Drones are coming online. Estimate 150 drones will be contaminated past recovery point; manufacture of replacements has commenced.”
Nine minutes. Travers forced a breath to the bottom of his lungs. “Richard, if we’re ever going to run into an attempt to override Lai’a, this would be it.”
“I have to agree,” Mark said quietly. “Michael, you’re confident of your preparations?”
“You mean, in case we have to make a run for it?” Vidal demanded acerbically. “If we’re at minus one second from an e-space jump, all we have to do is hit the button – and you can do that from Tech 1, right here in Ops. Lock the Weimann solution in right now. Get us back to the Drift, and Jo and I will find us an event, get us the hell out.”
“Get us out – and do what, exactly?” It was Teniko – of course. He was in the rear of the Ops room, saying nothing, contributing nothing, until this moment. “The whole point of coming to this gods-forsaken place was to meet these freaking bastards face to face, and almost certainly wipe them off the face of creation.”
“Negotiate,” Shapiro said quickly. “We didn’t come here as destroyers – we’re not a punitive expedition. I made that point abundantly clear before we began.”
”Oh, please,” Teniko groaned. “As if anybody ever believed the Zunshu would listen to the voice of reason, after ev
erything they’ve done to two species. As if there’s some magic word we can say that’d make them back off and play nice.”
Shapiro’s armor turned toward Vaurien and Sherratt. “In fact, he makes a valid point. We came here to try to negotiate, but if an armistice, a cessation of hostilities, were to prove impossible, the bottom line was always a fight. Can we afford to make a run for it, Richard, Mark, escape back into transspace? We’d have solved nothing by running.”
“We’d have bought ourselves the time to effect repairs while we skulk in the driftway,” Vaurien said with an icy rationale. “And when we come back to this system, we’ll drop out right in high orbit over 161-D, forget the niceties. No more Weimann exclusion protocol. Come in straight from the Drift with every gun primed, every Arago at maximum, and shoot till the buggers are ready to talk.”
The silence was dense. Perhaps the same thought was on every mind, but only Teniko was about to voice it, playing the devil’s advocate, as Mark had once said.
“You want to skip a whole stage?” he asked cynically. “Somebody has to say this. Okay, I’ll volunteer to be the bastard. Does anybody but me want to just exterminate some nasty Zunshu ass and get the hell out before I get hurt?”
“Xenocide?” Vidal echoed.
“Doesn’t bother them,” Teniko rasped. “Extermination is the way they do business. They stomp us like rats. And two can play at that game. You want to make it simple? Kill the planet, and we can go home. We can be out of here in a half hour. Home,” he added breathlessly.
“But – annihilation,” Rusch murmured.
“Perhaps it’s the difference,” Mark said levelly, “between justice and revenge. And make no mistake, we can destroy all life on the planet. It’s not difficult. Several Weimann jumps performed sequentially from medium-low orbit … irradiation saturating every hemisphere. Life would simply be … extinguished.”
“And we’d never know why they came for us,” Shapiro added. “Your people and ours have been systematically murdered over the space of a millennium, Mark, and if we go blazing in here as the great destroyers, we’ll never know why.”