Echo Rift

by G. S. Jennsen

  “They already have a stranglehold on the retail business sector in The Approach, and presumably in other neighborhoods as well. I expect their reach also extends into other criminal arenas, but I don’t have definitive knowledge or proof of it. Though he’s personally charming, he’s not averse to using extreme violence to achieve his ends, whatever they may be. Oh, and he’s also a Prevo, as are many of the Rivinchi cartel members. That cube contains all the information Meno and I were able to gather on him and his activities. I thought you could put it to good use.”

  “I admit, this is news to me. How is it possible we never knew of his existence?”

  “No official records tie Vilane to Trieneri, only a labyrinthine trail of money for his education. But he effectively confirmed his heritage to me when I challenged him on it.”

  Richard leaned forward, concern darkening his features. “What sort of interactions did you have with this man?”

  “Pleasant ones, at first. Then, not so much.”

  “I see. I can’t pretend to be surprised you survived those encounters with the upper hand, but people of this ilk aren’t to be trifled with.”

  “Believe me, I understand that. It’s only one reason I’m glad to be rid of Pandora.”

  “Well, I can definitely put this information to good use. Do you know who his mother is?”

  “There’s none on record, nor was there any trail that might lead to one.”

  “Interesting. Do you think he’s a vanity baby?”

  She considered the question. “People can alter their appearances a fair amount these days. But while he favors Aiden Trieneri, he doesn’t look like a clone. Fairer complexion, slighter build.”

  “Trieneri probably used an anonymous DNA donor.” Richard stared at the cube, then at her. “Listen, if your information pans out, this could warrant a partial commutation of your sentence. A reduction in the amount of the fine and number of hours of community service, at a minimum.”

  “But not a weakening of the ban on holding government positions?”

  He shook his head. “I’m sorry. Both governments have indicated their intransigence on that point.”

  “I figured.”

  “Do you want me to get Justice General Perralle and Judge Sarna back in here to review—?”

  “No, it’s not necessary. I wasn’t trying to negotiate…the information is yours to use as you see fit.”

  “All right. If you’re sure.” He set the cube to the side. “What are you going to do now? If you don’t mind me asking.”

  Her gaze drifted to the tableau outside the viewport. It was good to be back at HQ. The sentencing was done, the ordeal endured, and she was still on her feet. It was time to move forward.

  “I’m a survivor, but it appears I have some lessons to learn about navigating this world the proper way. I’m going to go piece my life back together and see if I can make something new of it. Speaking of which, is your husband available to chat for a few minutes?”

  Richard blinked. “You want to talk to Will?”

  “If it’s permissible.”

  “Of course—I mean, it’s absolutely permissible. You merely caught me by surprise. Um…given the nature of today’s meeting, can I ask what it’s regarding?”

  “Nothing involving law enforcement, past or future crimes or prison sentences, I promise. I only want to float the idea of a little side project by him and see if he might be willing to help me with it.”

  After Will arrived and escorted Mia off to discuss her ‘side project,’ Richard considered the tiny cube sitting at his fingertips. The ghosts of the past never stayed dead for too long, did they?

  Without thinking overly hard about it, he sent a livecomm request.

  Graham Delavasi answered it from his boat, a beer in one hand and a fishing pole in the other. The forested mountains swayed like shamrocks behind him amid a clear midday sky.

  “Richard! Are you comming me to arrange another visit?”

  “I wish. Soon, if I have my druthers. First, though, I’ve got a tip I’d appreciate your help with in running to ground.”

  “But I’m—”

  “Fishing. I know. But trust me, my friend, you want in on this one.”

  48

  * * *

  SIYANE

  Beyond the Boundaries of Concord Space

  Wyddoniiet glided around the cabin of the Siyane like a specter given physical form. Rotating eyes took in machinery and furniture that must look as strange to them as theirs had to her and Caleb. After a full visual tour, they dismissed their surroundings to drift toward the cockpit.

  The alien wasn’t so incomprehensible as the average Efkam, but they were damn close. Of course, Alex had no reason to believe Wyddoniiet was a good representation of the Ourankeli species. The psychological trauma of seeing your civilization destroyed, followed by centuries of running in constant fear, followed by yet more centuries of forced isolation, would damage any sentient being’s psyche, and possibly their sanity.

  “Your synthetic companion. Where has it gone?”

  ‘I am in the ship now.’

  Much as every visitor before them, upon hearing Valkyrie’s disembodied voice emerge from the ship for the first time, Wyddoniiet’s multi-faceted gaze flitted to the ceiling and swept across the walls. “Strange.”

  Alex shrugged as she checked over the system readouts to triple-confirm the Siyane hadn’t suffered any damage from the Ymyrath Field. “In many ways, Valkyrie is the ship. A copy of her hardware resides within its hull. But she’s also much, much more than the ship.”

  “Your people coexist peacefully with synthetics, then?”

  “We do.”

  “Interesting. Not many species reach such an advanced stage of evolution.”

  How many species had the Ourankeli watched rise and fall across the millennia? She’d never thought of accepting synthetics as a matter of evolution, but rather one of refined societal advancement. But if it was a stage virtually every species encountered, then perhaps the description wasn’t far off. She found she liked the idea, if only because it put them further ahead in the evolution game than their elder Anaden cousins. Also, she took no small pleasure from impressing their reticent alien guest.

  His own checks complete, Caleb spun his chair around to direct his attention to Wyddoniiet. “You said your people are hiding in a system they believe the Rasu have already pillaged and moved on from?”

  “Yes. After fleeing for so long, this group elected to circle back. Rasu clog our galaxy cluster now, but they are not everywhere. As they are fundamentally scavengers, not every stellar system holds resources worth dismantling and confiscating.”

  Alex frowned. “I’ve never thought of them as scavengers.”

  “They take what belongs to others and repurpose it to their needs.”

  “But they’re not going through people’s garbage. They’re razing entire civilizations, then stripping away everything the civilization had built. That’s not scavenging, it’s…marauding?”

  Wyddoniiet waved an appendage toward the viewport. “A matter of semantics, one supposes.”

  She shot Caleb a squirrelly look. She really should be used to even the quirkiest aliens by now; she’d spent plenty of time around her fair share of them.

  ‘Based on the information Wyddoniiet provided, I have identified the stellar system in question with a ninety-two percent likelihood.’

  “Good job, Valkyrie. Are we ready to wormhole in?”

  Wyddoniiet’s face drew in tight. “I do not know what we will find when we arrive. It has been almost two centuries since I last made contact with those who settled there.”

  Caleb projected a confident demeanor for their guest. “We’ll stealth as soon as we exit the wormhole.”

  “What makes you believe your stealth technology will defeat the Rasu’s scanners?”

  “Oh, we’ve tested it quite thoroughly against them. It’ll hold, and we’ll be able to assess the situation in relative safet
y.”

  “Safety is not a concept that has meaning for my people any longer.”

  Melodramatic much? At least she turned away before she rolled her eyes. “Let’s just see what we find when we get there. Valkyrie, whenever you’re ready.”

  ‘Prepare for wormhole traversal.’

  The Caeles Prism burned out a tear in space in front of the Siyane. The Ourankeli might have been impressed for the second time in five minutes, judging by the quiet noise that escaped their constantly shifting mouth. Or maybe not.

  The system they exited into hosted a K1 IV star and little else. A roasting tidally locked planet orbiting at a snug 0.05 AU, a captured gas giant at 2.6 AU, and a rocky planetoid devoid of any atmosphere at 0.7 AU. The last one was their destination.

  Alarms began ringing when they were fifty megameters out from the planetoid. ‘Rasu signatures detected in the area.’

  “Goddammit!” Alex stood and slipped past the hovering Ourankeli to pace in agitation through the cabin. “What are the odds of them showing up here at this moment, right the fuck when we arrive?”

  The Ourankeli’s fluid body seemed to deflate, shrinking in on itself. “They have pursued us across the stars for centuries. It was always inevitable that they would find us yet again. The only question is whether we have arrived at the end of their massacre, or the beginning.”

  Four Rasu cruiser-style vessels circled the planetoid, firing their violet beams at the surface in a systematic pattern. It appeared they intended to burn through the exposed crust until they reached the Ourankeli hiding beneath the surface.

  Alex glanced over her shoulder to find Wyddoniiet vibrating behind her chair. “What kind of protection do they have in there?”

  “The settlement is almost wholly self-contained. Small vents chiseled through the crust to the surface expel what gases and refuse they cannot recycle. A single hidden entry exists, in the form of a door crafted out of the bedrock itself. It is controllable only from the inside. The Rasu have not detected it, else they would have concentrated all their fire on its location, burned the door away and entered the settlement with all due speed.”

  Caleb nodded grimly, though his eyes danced with intensity. “Then we can still save your people.”

  “You are a single, tiny ship facing untold megatons of Rasu weaponry.”

  Alex snorted. “A single tiny ship with four 7,000-kilotonne equivalent negative energy missiles ready to launch. Four missiles, four Rasu cruisers.”

  Despite her bravado, Caleb winced. He wasn’t convinced, either. “The damage spread from a single missile isn’t wide enough to completely destroy one of those ships, is it?”

  Alex glared out the viewport and let Valkyrie answer.

  ‘If the Rasu vessels maintain the approximate size and shape they currently display, I estimate detonation by all four missiles will result in seventy-three percent destruction of Rasu material.’

  “And the remaining twenty-seven percent will then reform and continue shooting.” Alex gave up pouting, conceded the point and started studying the incoming scans of the vessels. “If we aim the missiles at their weapons assemblies, whatever Rasu material that’s left won’t be able to shoot. Remember, those crystal weapons of theirs aren’t Rasu.”

  “True. But as soon as that door opens to let us in, they can still transform and flood the settlement.”

  For a second, she almost wished Caleb would return to being detached and distracted, but she hurriedly banished the thought. Hopefully the shame she felt at having entertained it didn’t show on her face. It was beyond wonderful to have him back—really back. Besides, he was right, and in her world reality always won out.

  She offered him a chagrined smile. “Good point. Give me a minute to work on this.”

  But it didn’t take nearly so long, as inspiration flared and took shape in her mind. “Wyddoniiet, do you know how to recreate the radiation bomb your people used on the Rasu? The Ymyrath Field?”

  “I know the formula underlying its design, but building it took us months and thousands of workers.”

  “We don’t need a big one. Merely one powerful enough to disrupt the functionality of these four Rasu for, say, a few hours.”

  “You will not have on hand the materials required.”

  Yep, the arrogant ones still annoyed the hell out of her. “You might be surprised. Caleb, what do you think?”

  “You want to pull something like what we did to the superdreadnought factory in the portal space, don’t you?”

  She flashed him a grin; she adored how he never needed for her to explain what she was thinking. “If Wyddoniiet can tell us how to recreate the bomb, can you rig one of our probes to deliver it?”

  His grin was far closer to a smirk, of course. “You know I can.”

  “I do. Valkyrie, pull us back another twenty megameters to be safe, so we can work without worrying about catching errant fire.” She stood and went to the data center table, where she opened a new file. “Tell us about the radiation bomb.”

  “In the simplest terms, it was similar to a neutron bomb.”

  “That’s not very high tech.”

  The alien fixed three eyes on her. Oh no, were they offended? Turnabout was fair play. “The more advanced and comfortable a civilization becomes, the more likely it is to neglect the most basic rules of chemistry. Of physics. Of existence. The concept behind the Ymyrath Field relies on those basic concepts. The design and delivery, however, were most elegant.”

  “I’m sure they were, but today I don’t care about elegance. Why a neutron bomb?”

  “I stated it was similar to a neutron bomb. The details of the device were extremely complicated.”

  “In addition to being elegant? Sounds like quite a weapon indeed.” Caleb choked off a laugh, but her sarcasm was lost on their guest, who simply stared at her. Did they have eyelids? They never seemed to blink. “Okay, why something similar to a neutron bomb?”

  “It was deemed the most effective way to create rapid but subtle—thus possibly unnoticed—radiation damage across the largest region of material. In particular, the radiation damage it caused was deliberately potent in increasing the number of dislocation loops in the Rasu’s atomic makeup, thereby disrupting their resonance hybrid structures—”

  “Resonance? Oh, never mind, you mean chemical resonance. Go on.”

  “A sufficient concentration—”

  “Wait a minute. The Rasu operate almost entirely in space, so far as we’ve seen. They must have protective measures to deal with all manner of ionizing radiation.”

  “Indeed they must. But neutron-based radiation would not be high on their list of threats, so long as they stayed outside of a star’s corona and didn’t attack a nuclear-capable civilization prepared to destroy its own world in order to defeat the enemy. We played the odds.”

  “Fair enough. Please continue.”

  Did the alien sigh? It looked like they sighed. “As I was saying, a sufficient concentration of dislocation loops induced radical plasticity in the Rasu. Once deformed, they could not reform.” Wyddoniiet’s eyes swirled around. “Now that I have informed you of the bomb’s nature, I assume you cannot manufacture such a device on this ship in the next hour.”

  Valkyrie?

  I am intensely curious about the details, but the science is theoretically sound.

  We get these people rescued, and I guarantee one of them can give us a full download on the weapon. But seeing as we don’t have those details at the moment, what do you think? Will a basic neutron bomb accomplish the same result?

  For a short period—several hours, perhaps as long as a day—I believe it should.

  ‘Should’ wasn’t an overly strong endorsement from Valkyrie, but it was what they had. “Oh, but we can.” She spun to Caleb. “The old He3 LEN fusion reactor that used to power the ship’s internal systems. We retired it when we installed the Zero Drive, but I kept it in storage in case the Zero Drive didn’t live up to expectations.

/>   “If we strip off the protective enclosure, which we’ll need to do to allow the neutron radiation to escape, I think we can fit it inside one of the probe casings, then wire it to turn on remotely. It’ll be sloppy and I’m sure a pale imitation of the Ourankeli’s Ymyrath Field…” she arched an eyebrow, but Wyddoniiet remained oblivious “…but I bet it will get the job done for long enough for us to get everyone out and escape.”

  Caleb nodded sharply. “I’m on it. Any other special rewiring I’ll need to do?”

  “Almost certainly, but Valkyrie will walk you through it. I’m going to work out the logistics of our little staged battle here.”

  Caleb emerged from the engineering well coated in a layer of sweat from working in an environment suit for safety reasons, his hair a rumpled mess. But he looked inordinately pleased with himself and all the more handsome for it. “Done and loaded into a launch bay. We’ll have to reload one of the negative energy missiles once we fire the probe.”

  “We’ll have time to reload, as we’ll want to give the bomb a few minutes to do its work before we start firing.” When he got to the cockpit, she reached up and wiped a smudge of grease off his cheek. “Thank you.”

  “Always.” He collapsed into his chair and took a swig of the water he’d grabbed on the way. “Are we ready? We should get it launched quickly, before it irradiates the ship.”

  She shuddered at the thought. “Closing to four megameters from the planetoid’s surface.”

  The Ourankeli agitated behind them. “When your makeshift bomb detonates, won’t the radiation degrade the hull of your ship as well?”