by Jay Allan
He put the device back in the bag and leapt to his feet, pushing the door fully open as he did. He looked inside. There was a room in front of him. Not just a room, but a sprawling, massive chamber so large he could barely see the other side. And it was full of equipment.
He stepped in now, and the noise was even louder. He could see the production equipment…it was some kind of factory, a fully automated one. He was standing on a catwalk about three meters from the main floor. There were stairs on either side of him leading down.
He stared out, watching the machines working, producing something…though he couldn’t tell what. The units closest to him seemed to be manufacturing components. It looked like the final assembly section was deeper into the chamber.
“What the hell is this?” He spoke softly to himself, under his breath. But he got an answer.
“Security bots, H2. The newest design. Enough of them to secure the Research facility from any attack.”
H2 felt his stomach tighten. The voice was unmistakable. Achilles. He realized the Mule was standing behind him. He tensed up, geared himself up for a fight. He was at a disadvantage. The younger Mules were physically superior…stronger and faster than he was. But there was no choice. He had to get out of here and warn Hieronymus.
He turned quickly, preparing to spring forward. But he froze as his eyes settled on Achilles. The Mule stood in the doorway, staring at him. Peleus was right behind, and Achilles held something in his hand. H2 wasn’t sure exactly what it was, but he’d have bet it was a weapon of some kind.
“What are you doing, Achilles? What is all this?”
“It is impressive, is it not, H2? I must say, I’m rather proud of it myself. Especially since I was able to arrange it in total secrecy. At least until now.”
“Battle bots? Are you so ready to destroy the republic, to fight against your fellow humans?”
“This is not about conquest, H2, nor about harming the others. It is we who have been discriminated against for decades. We who have toiled for all that time unlocking the secrets of the Ancients…while being denied the basic right to propagate our kind. Is that right? That our one failing has been used against us, our inability to naturally reproduce?”
“Achilles, the place to address that is in the Assembly. Not with armed robot soldiers.”
“Have we not done that, my friend? How many times have we sought the repeal of the Prohibition? How many times have we been denied, told to wait? Wait for what? Until the people we have served get over their primitive fears of us? Or until we have deciphered the last of the ancient knowledge, and we serve no further purpose?”
H2 looked over Achilles’ shoulder, at the other Mule present. “Peleus, surely you are not part of this…you have always been a reasonable man.”
“We are not men, H2. Not even you. We are something else. And Achilles is right. The people who have denied us our rights for so long could easily decide we must be imprisoned. Or killed. Indeed, the Human Society already advocates our confinement. They call us abominations. Is it so extreme that we would seek to control our own destinies? These bots will be the means for us to protect ourselves, to throw off the shackles the Assembly has placed upon us. They will not be used against anyone who does not first attack us.”
H2 stared at Peleus for a moment. Then again at Achilles. He was agitated, committed to arguing his point. He knew the road the Mules had chosen could only lead to disaster…yet he understood. Despite his loyalty to Hieronymus, he felt the same anger, the same resentment as the others. But this was not the way. It couldn’t be.
“There has to be another way…perhaps if we speak to President Harmon. Despite his inaction in the past, I believe he is sympathetic to our…”
“President Harmon has called an election, H2…one he is unlikely to win. Do you think our timing arbitrary, that after so many years of patience, we have chosen to move now without careful consideration? Without external stimuli forcing our hand? President Harmon has allowed political expediency to rule his actions…yet I could believe he would eventually yield, that he would one day grant what we ask, what is only our basic right. He is a fair man, corrupted perhaps by the need to placate different factions, but at his heart someone we could work with.”
He stepped forward, his eyes locked on H2’s. “But who will replace him? The Society and their cleansing platform? The Earthers, who would devote all resources to a fruitless search for a route back to humanity’s home space? The Tanks? They face a lesser version of the persecution we do, but if they gain power without our help, could we expect them to aid us? Or would they simply fear us as the others do, and seek to keep the Prohibition in place?”
He turned and glanced back at Peleus before staring back at H2. “We have no power in the political process…our rivals have ensured that by so drastically limiting our numbers. They can ignore us, even as they seek to make deals with each other to secure power.” He paused. “Unless we take action, stand for ourselves. We must ensure that we are able to propagate, grow our numbers…for we are the future of mankind.”
H2 sighed. Part of him wanted to agree with Achilles, to join with him and the others. But he thought of Hieronymus…and Ana. Even Sophie Barcomme. They were all Pilgrims, naturally born, non-engineered humans. And they had not only beaten the First Imperium, they had created the Mules. “I understand your anger, Achilles, your drive to secure our future. Yet consider your words, the arrogance. The others fear us, yes…but are they wrong to do so? Have we done anything to assuage their concerns? You think of them as lesser beings…” He glanced back at Peleus. “All of you do.” A pause. “Even me, whom you also deem a lesser being…I feel it. It is hard not to feel this way when we are more capable, when they have depended so much on our research, work they could never have completed on their own…and returned so little in terms of gratitude or even concern for us. Yet in that realization, I can also see the cause of their fear, the forces behind their opinions about us. I do not condone it, but I understand it.”
“I understand it too.” Achilles’ voice was cold. “But understanding it does not excuse it. We are come to a hard choice. Humor the petty fears and jealousies of the humans…or stand for our own now, and secure our futures. If we do not act, we will die out. We don’t know how long our lifespans will be, but we are not immortal. Without the ability to create more of our kind, we will become extinct, be it in a hundred years…or five hundred.” He paused. “Assuming the humans don’t move against us at some point. For we will only become weaker as their populations grow.”
“Achilles, Peleus…don’t do this. Dr. Cutter will resist this. You know that. Are you prepared to kill him? The man who created us all.”
“Dr. Cutter will not be harmed. Nor will you…or Dr. Zhukov. But none of you will not be allowed to interfere. I am sorry, H2, but I must detain you, at least until this has played out.” He gestured with the gun in his hand.
“And if I refuse? You said you would not kill me.”
“And I won’t.” He glanced down at his hand. “This is a stun gun, one of my own design. I will use it on you if you force me to, but I’d rather not. I’m afraid it is very high-powered. Your constitution is likely strong enough to resist a standard stunner of human manufacture.”
H2 stood still for a few seconds. He knew he had almost no chance to escape. Peleus and Achilles were both stronger than he was…and there were two of them. And Achilles had the stun gun aimed and ready. He was exceedingly unlikely to miss. But any chance was worth taking. He had to stop this if he could.
He lunged forward, swinging to the side, hoping to evade Achilles’ shot. But his adversary was faster than him, his eyesight keener, his mind quicker. H2 had taken his chance, tried against the odds to get away, to warn Cutter and the others. But the stun beam caught him in the side. His body was wracked with pain, feeling as though he’d been turned inside out. Every nerve ending was on fire, and his mind was a jumble of confused thoughts. And then, mercifully, everyt
hing went dark.
Chapter Nine
Log of Admiral Nicki Frette
We are now five weeks out from Earth Two, following Hurley’s plotted course. I’d never expected to find anything this far in—Hurley had been maintaining normal communications when she was in this system—but still, I find myself disappointed. It is not rational—whatever happened to the vessel did so much farther out than this, so a lack of evidence now means nothing. I guess I’m just worried about what I might find. There are few good options. As much as I tell myself they could be waiting out there, alive and well in a damaged ship, I know that is the unlikeliest of all the possibilities.
Indeed, though I feel self-loathing even as I write this, to discover that the ship was lost with all hands as the result of some accident would be a relief, a good result in at least one way. Because if that is not the case, the likeliest alternative is a dark one indeed. For instead of rescued crews, we are likely to bring war back with us, another struggle, likely with some remnant of the First Imperium. Though it is also possible we could have encountered a new enemy. That may seem unlikely, but we know through bitter experience that man is not alone in the universe.
Whatever awaits us, however many misgivings plague my sleep, I will also note another feeling, one quite different from the dark reckonings of war and death. I look out at the stars, at the endless dark blanket of space. At the wonder of exploration, the worlds, the stars we pass by. I have been too long at a desk, too long removed from this grand spectacle. Though I helped to command a force of spaceships, issued orders to them on a daily basis, too often they sat parked in orbit, standing vigil. The republic has prospered these past thirty years, yet I realize now we have lost something. Hurley’s mission notwithstanding, we have done little to truly explore the space around us. We stand on the edge of a magnificent frontier, along a fringe of the most distant stars men on Earth could see as they stared up at the night sky. And yet, we have mostly remained in our adopted home system, almost ignoring the universe around us.
Perhaps it was the fleet’s desperate journey, the losses, the suffering. The survivors came to equate space with danger, death, heartbreak. Two-thirds of our number perished during those two years of struggle, and not a survivor exists who didn’t lose friends, comrades, family.
But this cannot be. Humanity has many failings, and a penchant for self-destruction that we cannot seem to leave behind us, one that even now threatens the republic. It has always been our curiosity that has sustained us, our need to explore, to expand…to discover that which we do not yet know. If we allow ourselves to lose this, we are surely doomed, to slow decay, if not to violent and cataclysmic destruction at our own hands.
I hope these thoughts will resonate, that my words will cause my fellow humans to reawaken our shared need to push out and explore, to grow in every way we can, and to learn all the universe can teach us.
I am indeed conflicted right now, beset by inconsistent emotions…my fear of what we will find struggling with the joy my soul feels at again pushing out into the great unknown. And there is one more thing, the bane of space travelers—and seafarers before them—the ache we feel, the longing for loved ones. Like most humans who have stepped onto a ship for a long voyage, I have left someone behind, and my heart aches for it. I have little to mend that wound, save the thought that one day we will be reunited. And as millions have in my place before, I focus my thoughts on that day…and set aside the emptiness I feel at being apart from the one who should be closest to me.
Bridge, E2S Compton
System G-23, Six Transits from Earth Two
Earth Two Date 12.11.30
“Scanners coming online, Admiral. I should have preliminary data in a few seconds.”
Frette sat in her chair in the center of Compton’s flag bridge, looking out over her small team. The real Compton had been supported by fourteen officers in Midway’s command center, sixteen if the optional stations were filled. But Nicki Frette’s command staff was six, and that included herself and the Marine guard posted at the door, more out of tradition than need.
“Very well, Commander Kemp. Report as soon as you have anything.”
The vessels of the republic were far more automated than those of the old fleet. Part of that was the inevitable adoption of sophisticated First Imperium artificial intelligence design…but mostly it was the reality faced by a young republic limited first and foremost by the size of its small but growing population. Barely seventeen thousand had survived to colonize Earth Two, and the various methods for accelerating population growth—promoting large families and encouraging frequent pregnancies, the quickening of annual classes of Tanks, even the experimental creation of the Mules—all had created their own resentments and political problems. And in spite of them all, the republic simply couldn’t spare the numbers it required to man ships the old way. There had been no choice, automation had been the only viable answer, especially for a people so traumatized by the fleet’s struggle that the maintenance of a strong military was the one thing everyone agreed upon.
At least it had been thirty years ago. The new generations, both Tanks and NBs, had grown up in peacetime. Even the attacks by surviving First Imperium squadrons had petered out by the time the oldest of them were old enough to understand. They had heard their parents and the rest of the Pilgrims speak ominously of dangers lying out in space…but many of them began to doubt such warnings, to believe that their fathers and mothers had defeated the enemy, and that only peace lay in the future. Their calls to divert government expenditures from the military to other priorities were growing louder, and Frette knew the election coming up could lead to drastic cutbacks and the mothballing of many of the navy’s vessels. It was a prospect that terrified her.
“Admiral, preliminary scans are clear. Looks like an oxygen-neon-magnesium white dwarf. Possibly a binary system…looks like a main sequence companion star, but its way out on its orbit now, too far for detailed analysis.” Kemp paused. “I’m picking up three planets. Looks like one of them might have been habitable at one time, but they’re all cold hulks now.”
At one time…that’s a casual way to look at a couple billion years. We think of the First Imperium as old, but what…who…was here before them? Were there people who lived on that planet? Before their sun expanded into a red giant, and then collapsed into a white dwarf? Did they live their own lives, fight their own wars when Earth was a volcanic nightmare and man’s ancestors were bacteria swimming around in the primordial ooze?
“Very well, Commander. Continue your scans. The mission parameters state Hurley should have left a status drone in this system.”
“Yes, Admiral.” Kemp focused on his displays. Frette’s tactical officer was a Pilgrim like herself, a veteran of the fleet’s great journey to Earth Two…and a very small group in the task force, at least beyond some of the ship commanders. His regular rank was captain, but he’d taken a temporary demotion to serve as Frette’s fleet tactical officer. The navy was rife with all kinds of ancient tradition and ritual, most of it nonsense in her opinion. But she’d long ago learned it was easier to humor such things than to waste effort fighting them. And commander was the designated rank for an admiral’s tactical officer. Frette didn’t give a shit about any of that, but Kemp was a traditionalist, and he’d requested the temporary drop in rank. Some silliness about his dynamic when dealing with the ship captains.
Frette had gone along with the whole thing, mostly because it seemed easier, and she had far too much on her mind already. But none of it mattered anyway. When Kemp spoke to the fleet’s captains, he did it in her name, and woe to the ship commander who questioned those orders.
Frette stared down at her screen, watching, waiting, hoping for word that the fleet’s scanners had found Compton’s drone. The small devices had a dual purpose, to leave behind a trail of status reports to any republic ships following Hurley. And to serve as relay stations for sending transmissions back to Earth Two. Research, mostly
by the Mules, she reminded herself, had unlocked the secrets of communicating through the warp gates, opening the door to transmissions that effectively traveled faster than light. But even the Mules had been unable to match the ranges the First Imperium had attained. Signal attenuation was a major problem, and sending a message through more than six or seven transits required booster stations.
She was actually hoping they couldn’t find the device. If the probe had suffered a critical malfunction, or if it had been struck by an asteroid or other celestial body, it would explain Hurley’s failure to report. The loss of the probe would feed her vanishing hopes that they would find the lost ship intact, its crew alive…that all her fears of disaster and war were overblown.
“I’ve got the probe’s signal, Admiral. Accessing now.”
Frette felt her stomach tighten. She wasn’t going to say it, she wasn’t even going to think about it…but the chances that Hurley was still out there had just declined precipitously.
“Send it to my screen, Commander.”
“Yes, Admiral. Should be there any second now.”
Frette stared at the lines of text and numbers streaming by. Status reports, log entries, copies of previous dispatches to Earth Two. Everything that should be there. But no signs of a recent message.
“I want that probe brought in, Commander…and I want a full diagnostic done. Every system, every circuit.”
“Yes, Admiral.”
Frette didn’t know if there was anything wrong with the probe—indeed, she suspected it would check out completely. But she had to know for sure.