by J. N. Chaney
“Maybe. I guess there’s only going to be one way to find out,” Dash said, then told Sentinel to give the order to the flotilla to make the last short hop into the system and confront whatever they found there.
Which, as it turned out, wasn’t Deepers or anything unnatural at all. The tactical display became fuzzy as soon as the Archetype fell back out of unSpace, suggesting some sort of interference.
“Uh, Sentinel? Care to explain what’s going on?”
“It appears to be a severe solar storm. A succession of large coronal mass ejections has flooded the system with intensely charged particles. That’s the reason for the inability of the settlement here to communicate,” Sentinel replied.
“Ah. Yeah, I guess they’re using conventional comms tech. It hasn’t been upgraded to Unseen standards,” Conover put in.
“So this all comes down to bad space weather?” Dash asked.
“Essentially, yes,” Sentinel replied.
Dash curled his lip. They’d brought a lot of firepower to confront what was basically a massive cloud of protons and electrons.
“Alright, then. Are the people here in danger from these coronal mass things?”
“Any exposed personnel not protected by a planetary atmosphere or magnetic field, or otherwise shielded, could receive a significant dose of radiation. But the facilities are otherwise hardened against it.”
“Well, I guess our work here is done then,” Dash said.
“Uh, not quite. Dash, we’re picking up an intermittent contact at our two o’clock, high,” Wei-Ping said. “Looks like a ship.”
Dash checked the tactical display. Sure enough, a contact flickered, appearing, disappearing, reappearing again. It was generally moving deeper into the system with each appearance, but slowly, and from a strange direction—outside League space, rather than within it.
“Sentinel, can you clean that up?” Dash asked. He wondered if there might be some shenanigans going on here after all. The Unseen had developed the capability to detonate stars, in the form of the Lens—something they’d fortunately never had to resort to using. Could the Deepers have similar tech, somehow triggering coronal mass ejections and effectively weaponizing the sun?
Now that was an unsettling thought.
But the first stirrings of worry puffed away when Sentinel identified the ship as a Rimworld League freighter. She was able to firm up the contact, showing the ship to be slowly tumbling out of control. Wei-Ping launched a pair of her ready Denkillers to investigate. Once they got close enough to cut through the interference and speak to her captain, they were able to confirm that they’d suffered systems failures to solar-storm damage but would soon have it righted.
“Except he’s lying,” Wei-Ping said.
Dash lifted his eyebrows. “Oh? About what?”
“About who he is and what he’s doing out here.”
“Really. How can you tell?”
Wei-Ping chuckled. “Because I know a privateer when I see one.”
“Uh, looks like a regular tramp freighter to me,” Dash replied.
“Yeah, except he’s way out here on the margins of the League’s standard space lanes. Oh, and do you notice in the Denkillers’ imagery he’s got a salvage airlock on both beams? That’s pricey stuff for a freighter.”
Dash had a eureka moment. Salvage airlocks were meant to conform themselves to nearly any surface and lock on using a combination of magnetic grapples and vacuum adhesive. They were, indeed, expensive pieces of equipment, particularly for a ship that had no specific need of them.
“I must be slipping in my old age. Back when I was a courier, I’m sure I would’ve noticed that,” Dash said, his voice rueful.
This time, Wei-Ping laughed. “Not if you’d encountered me, Dash. This guy’s an amateur. I’d have been all up in your face before you even read my transponder code.”
“Which would have been a fake.”
She clicked her tongue. “Faking transponder codes is illegal.”
“Piracy—sorry, privateering is illegal, Wei-Ping.”
“Only if you get caught!”
It was Dash’s turn to laugh. As Wei-Ping transmitted the details about the apparently obvious pirate ship to League authorities, something started tickling the back of his mind.
He grimaced. Was he going to have another of those unexpected memory shows again?
But, no. These were his own thoughts doing the tickling. Something about that pirate ship. Or not the ship itself. Something about how they’d found it. Where it was. No, where it was coming from.
“He was drifting into the system from an unexpected direction,” Dash said.
“Who? The pirate? Indeed he was. Is that significant somehow, beyond helping to convince Wei-Ping he was a pirate?” Sentinel asked.
“Yeah, it is. The last time we encountered something unexpected, coming from a strange direction, it was the escape pod holding poor old S. Lavarovna, late of the good ship Novgorod.”
“True. And the significance of that is…?”
“Well, when we traced her trajectory back, it led to that first white dwarf star we found, the one with the planet that had that primordial goop on it where we found the Radiant Point.”
“Yes. And?”
“And, this pirate, apparently drifting in from outside League space, made me think of Lavarovna. When we found her, she was coming from outside the galaxy. No one was home when we checked that system. So, why not go look again?”
Leira blew out an exasperated sigh and leaned in to rest her elbows on the conference table. “You want to fly out there again?”
Dash nodded, then glanced around the War Room. They still used the repurposed crew lounge from time to time, mostly for informal meetings. Before the Command Center had been activated, it had been the Forge’s impromptu nerve center.
“Anyone else care to object?”
Leira scowled. “I wasn’t objecting. I just don’t wanna fly for days out into”—she jerked a thumb behind her, toward the viewport—“that again. It’s boring.”
“Hey, what have you got against my ship?” Benzel, sitting further down the table, said. He put a growl in his voice, but the mischievous smile blunted the effect.
Leira glanced behind her. Sure enough, the Herald had just moved into view on her way to a new station.
“Yes, Benzel, I was talking about the Herald,” Leira shot back, rolling her eyes and making Benzel grin.
Amy cut in. “Too bad we don’t have another Radiant Point. We could just set up a gate there and call it a day.”
Dash shrugged. “Coulda shoulda woulda. At the time, a surveillance drone seemed to be enough.”
“Which actually does raise a point. The drone hasn’t sent back any alerts. So is it really worth making the trip out to Goop?” Conover asked.
Goop was the name they’d given to the barren, frigid world orbiting a lonely white dwarf where they’d found their first Radiant Point. The name referred to the gooey sludge that seemed to be partly organic and partly mechanical, incorporating some sort of nanotech that Elois hadn’t yet been able to decipher. Besides holding the Radiant Point, it seemed to serve some other cryptic purpose—something biological, possibly a nursery for embryonic Deepers. They’d left a surveillance buoy there to monitor it, but even using unSpace-enabled comms, transmissions to and from it still took half a day to make the trip.
“Unless something’s happened in the last twelve hours or so,” Harolyn noted. She’d finally returned from a whirlwind liaison tour to the N’Teel, Hriki, and Oksa, where she’d been waving the Cygnus Realm’s flag.
“That’s a narrow window of time,” Conover replied, frowning. “It’d be quite the coincidence if something did happen between breakfast and now.”
Dash leaned forward. “We’re assuming the buoy is still even there.”
“What, you think it’s been destroyed?” Leira asked.
But Conover shook his head again. “It was designed to trigger an alert if it de
tected any ships approaching. Unless the Deepers were able to sneak up on it somehow, I can’t see that happening either.”
“I can,” Dash replied, opening his mouth to go on. But the door to the War Room opening cut him off.
Ragsdale entered. “Hey, everyone. I’ve got somebody with me.”
He gave the door a theatrical flourish, and Jexin stepped through.
Everyone present broke into smiles and offered some delighted words. Dash stood and walked in front of Jexin, smiling broadly.
“Welcome back to duty, Jex,” he said, reaching out and hugging her.
She bared her teeth. “You know, this is one way that we Kosan immobilize our prey before we kill and eat them.” But she returned the hug warmly anyway.
Dash laughed and gestured her to a seat. She limped to it and sat, then stretched out her leg with a soft hiss.
“So what’s the prognosis?” Conover asked.
“Custodian says my leg should be fully healed in another two or three days. He had to implant some stuff to replace missing bone, but my body should be able to do the rest.”
“That’s great, Jex,” Dash said, returning to his seat. He caught Jexin giving him a bemused look.
“What?”
“Sorry, Dash, it’s just—I mean, I know the difference between you and Newton, thanks to the Meld, but you do sound exactly alike.”
Amy snorted a chuckle, but Dash held up a warning hand. “What did we say we weren’t going to do anymore?”
Amy returned him a look that was apparently supposed to be a chastened one. “Sorry, boss.”
“Anyway, where were we?” Dash asked.
“Leira was bitching about traveling all the way back out to Goop,” Benzel put in, flashing her another grin. She stuck her tongue out at him, and he threw up his hands. “Your argument is as elegant as ever, lady.”
Dash smiled, thankful for the bond among his trusted circle. It wasn’t anything you could force. It was—forged. Made through time and pressure and fear and relief, and for a moment, Dash could relax. But only just.
He looked around the table, then brought Jexin and Ragsdale up to date on what they’d been discussing.
“Which leaves us with the bottom line,” Dash finished.
“Yeah. Do we stay or do we go?” Amy replied.
“We go.”
Dash glanced at Jexin. Her answer had been immediate and firm. A little too immediate and firm, he thought. As much as he hated to admit it, Newton had been good for her. But there was still an undercurrent of rage that bothered him.
Benzel leaned in and nodded his agreement. “I think we should go. For one, it’s something proactive, because otherwise we’re just sitting around here watching the Kingsport slowly expand. And while my Herald isn’t boring, Leira”—he shot her a theatrical glare—“that kinda is.”
“We do also know it’s somewhere important to the Deepers,” Harolyn offered.
Dash had to nod. Proactive, and something important to the Deepers, made for a pretty convincing argument. Before he could say anything, though, Ragsdale spoke up.
“You know, I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not the most diplomatic guy around—”
“Yeah, you sure didn’t make us feel all that welcome on Gulch,” Leira put in.
“Oh? You mean when you lied about why you were there, pretended you were working for somebody else, and only eventually got around to mentioning the big-assed, crashed Golden spaceship less than a day’s drive from where I lived?”
She pretended to look cool. “Yeah. Exactly.”
“Anyway, what I was going to say before I was so rudely interrupted was that if it really is a Deeper nursery or whatever you want to call it out there, the Deepers might be willing to go to great lengths to protect it. They might even be willing to talk.”
Dash lifted his eyebrows. “Talk? As in, well, talk? Diplomatically?”
“Why not? It might be worth a try. The alternative is fighting a war of annihilation, and they’re currently not winning it,” Harolyn said.
Conover sniffed. “Yeah, but are we winning it?”
Dash swept a hand toward the enormous Deeper platform less than a light-year away. “We’re definitely not losing. So far, we’re the ones that have been making ground at their expense.” He turned to Ragsdale. “What makes you think they’d even be willing to talk?”
“Nothing. They might not be. The concept might not even really apply to them. But I still think it’s worth a try.”
“Interesting take from a guy with a military background,” Amy said.
Ragsdale gave her a steady look. “Trust me, no one hates war more than a soldier.”
Amy pushed up her lower lip and nodded. “Fair point.”
“I have to admit, I like this idea,” Dash said, again opening his mouth to go on, and again being cut off.
“I don’t.”
Dash glanced at the speaker. It was Jexin.
He exchanged a glance with Leira. Her expression said, tread carefully here, Dash. He hoped his said, no shit.
“Care to explain, Jex?” he asked.
“What’s to explain? They’re monsters. They’re not worth talking to. The only interaction we need to have with them is the one where we destroy them.”
Awkward silence lingered. Dash leaned into it.
“You know what, Jex? I don’t disagree with you. Frankly, I think it’s going to be a waste of time. I think we’re probably going to have to go on fighting them, piling up casualties on both sides.” He pointed out the viewport toward the Herald, which had almost slid out of view, and the rest of the fleet beyond it. “I think a lot of those ships are likely to be destroyed, a lot of those people are going to die, and a lot more are going to be hurt, some of them badly.” He met her eyes. “Just like you were.”
Jexin stared back at him, her eyes as black as the space outside. Dash knew this was a critical moment. It would almost certainly determine whether Jexin really was fit for flight duties or not.
The moment went on. Dash felt the others around the table shifting and fidgeting uncomfortably, but he remained rock steady, his gaze locked on hers.
“Do you really believe it’s not going to work? That we’re facing a lot more war, destruction, and death?” she finally asked.
Dash sighed and gave her a heartfelt nod. “Yeah, I do, unfortunately. But I think it’s worth a try anyway.”
Another moment of silence, then Jexin nodded. The air in the room suddenly lightened, as though the pressure had dropped, just a bit.
“Uh, we do have one problem with this,” Leira said.
Dash looked at her.
“How are we actually going to talk to the Deepers? We don’t even know if they have a language. Our translators have exactly nothing to work with.”
“Huh. Good point.”
But Conover raised a finger. “Actually, they do have a language. And we know it really well because we’ve studied the crap out of it.”
“Okay. And that would be?”
“Their machine code. It’s how their Bishops communicate, after all.”
Dash leaned back, smiling.
“So it is.”
16
Leira had been right. The flight had been boring. It had also been made longer by the specific way Dash wanted to deploy. Now, he and Jexin led a task force of ten heavy cruisers and another dozen escorts commanded by Benzel aboard the Herald, and a small reserve of another squadron of heavy cruisers bringing up the rear. He eyed the capital ships with a touch of envy. Their crews, at least, had real beds, messes, showers, and other amenities to get them through the days-long flight. The mech pilots just had to suck it up.
Now, though, they’d arrived at their destination, that lonely white dwarf, either a cast-off flung out of the Milky Way or an even older intergalactic wanderer caught by the galaxy’s gravity. As soon as they dropped out of unSpace, the threat board lit up.
“We’re being illuminated by surveillance scanners,�
�� Sentinel said. “There is a sizable Deeper fleet present—twenty-nine capital ships, including a battleship, and thirty-two smaller craft.”
“So they did somehow manage to fiddle with our surveillance buoy before they whacked it,” Benzel said.
“Sure looks that way,” Dash agreed. “Harolyn, are you online?”
“Right here. We’re ready to send the words when you give the word.”
Dash pondered the tactical display. The Deeper fleet had already begun to maneuver into a compact formation and accelerate toward them. Sentinel gave fifteen minutes as the time for the first long-range firing solutions to come up.
“Well, no sense waiting. Harolyn, if you please, say hello to our ugly friends out there.”
“Okay, here goes.”
A thin, ear-scraping squeal sounded over the comm. It meant nothing to Dash, of course, but it didn’t need to. He, Ragsdale and Harolyn, had composed it. It was hardly a speech for the ages. Still, if it really ended up being the first tentative step to peace, then future generations of poor school kids might be forced to memorize the damned thing.
We come in peace, seeking an opportunity for dialogue with you. There’s no need for this costly and destructive war to continue. We’re prepared to have a delegation from the Cygnus Realm meet with you in order to discuss a peaceful way forward.
When Dash had read it out to the Inner Circle back on the Forge, Jexin had muttered something darkly that he invited her to voice to everyone.
“Sending a delegation to meet with them is asking whoever’s part of it to trust their lives to monsters,” she’d said.
“I hear you loud and clear, Jex. But I think there’s a lot of fuel to go through the reactor before we get to anything resembling a face to—er, whatever meeting.”
She nodded, but that sullen expression of suppressed anger remained. Dash had even discretely spoken to Newton about it during the long flight out here.
Now that had been a surreal experience.