by J. N. Chaney
“Do you guys think, if they had the chance, the Deepers would hesitate to destroy the Kingsport? The Forge? The Anchors? Any of our ships, whether warships or civilian ones full of innocent people?”
No one answered. No one needed to.
“Jexin, I’m going to leave this up to you. JETS is enabled and we’re weapons-free. If you shoot, we all do,” Dash said.
“We offered the Deepers peace. They pretty clearly said no, just like I knew they would, just like I know what they’d do to us if they had the chance,” Jexin said.
She paused.
“They brought this on themselves,” she added, then fired her dark-lance straight into the viscous, primordial sludge that was, as far as they knew, a Deeper incubator.
JETS combined the other four mechs’ attacks with hers, raking the little planet’s surface with dark-lance shots and slamming it with fusillades of nova-cannon and scattershot fire. In seconds, its surface began to glow orange-red, melting in places and flowing as molten slag. Anything organic was instantly vaporized, cooked off, lost to the emptiness of space.
The firing stopped.
Dash, his eyes still fixed on the incandescent corpse of the planet, nodded. At who or what, he wasn’t even sure.
A step that couldn’t be taken back. And a message to the Deepers. We won’t stop, it said, until every one of your kind is dead.
“Time to go home,” he said.
Except it wasn’t. Not quite, anyway.
“Dash, we found a gate,” Benzel said.
“What? Where? We didn’t detect any gates out here.”
“Tell that to the two Bishops that just vanished through it. We thought we had them for sure. Chased them when they ran away from the battle, then poof! No more Bishops.”
Dash watched as the new data, repeated from the Herald, appeared on the tactical display. The Bishops had emerged from one of the Deeper ships once it was clear the battle was lost, and immediately tried to flee. It showed a very human-like sense of self-preservation, as did their seeming to avoid direct involvement in the battle. It also showed that the Bishops were inured to the harsh conditions of space, further hinting at them being artificial constructs containing organic life-forms. It was something they still hadn’t completely worked out, making Dash think that they might need to dissect one of the ones they had stashed away in the Iron Gate to see just what made it tick.
He watched as Sentinel replayed the Bishops’ course, tracking directly away from the Milky Way, the Herald and her squadron in hot pursuit. Sure enough, a few moments later, they winked out of existence. Scans of the area revealed a gate sitting a few million klicks away, out in the middle of empty space.
“It makes sense there’d be a gate out here somewhere. The Deepers probably wanted easy access to their—well, what used to be their nursery,” Leira said. She’d taken over as his wing, while Jexin, Conover, and Amy rejoined the rest of the fleet.
“Yeah, but I thought that’s what the Radiant Point we’d found was,” Dash replied.
“Apparently not.”
Apparently not, indeed. Dash and Leira flew out to inspect the gate while Wei-Ping led the Realm fleet through the mopping up phase, including retrieving as much scrap and salvage as they could.
Dash brought the Archetype to a stop relative to the Herald, Leira by his side. The gate was barely visible, a dim, purplish-black wound in reality. It looked essentially identical to the Black Gate, the inciting event for everything since.
“Sentinel, can we access this gate and rekey it to another location?”
“We can. It will take some time, but we now have sufficient understanding, along with the technology to do it.”
“Okay, let’s do that. Rekey it back to the Kingsport. As soon as you have, send a message to Ragsdale to bring Eastern through. We’ll establish this as another forward base.” He smiled. “Besides, it’s only fair he gets to come and visit his own personal Cannae.”
While Sentinel worked to access and change the gate’s terminus, Dash found himself momentarily with nothing to do. But that didn’t mean his thoughts were idle. In fact, they kept drifting back to the moment before the battle had erupted. The Deepers had made their intentions clear as soon as they opened fire, but the bit that kept plucking at his mind happened immediately before that.
“Leira, do you remember the Deepers’ answer to our peace offering?”
“You mean the barrage of missiles? I do.”
“No, right before that. Their actual answer to our offer.”
“Um, something about being used?”
“Sentinel, can you repeat it for us?” Dash asked.
“The Corrupted uses. He does not save,” she intoned.
“Yeah. That. Right there. One of those words in particular bothers me. And by bothers me, I mean worries me.”
“Which one?” Leira asked.
“Who exactly is he?”
17
Dash groaned as the comm chimed. He stopped in the middle of taking off his boots and checked it. It was a message from the Duty Officer in the Command Center and it was, naturally, marked urgent. Urgent seemed to be the only type of message he got these days.
“Really? Now I can’t even take off my boots after a long flight without something blowing up?” He sighed and contemplated just flopping back on his bed and pretending he wasn’t home. Then he activated the comm.
“Dash here. Go ahead.”
“Sorry, Dash. I know you just got back, but I’ve got an urgent message from the Absolute Zero for you.”
He stood. The Absolute Zero had left the Kingsport a few days earlier, taking a trip back to Backwater to do some further study on the gate there. She was well-protected by the heavy cruiser Athena and four escort ships. But if they’d been bounced by a superior Deeper force, that might not be enough, and he might be strapping himself right back into the Archetype.
“Okay, Absolute Zero, over to you then. Dash here. What’s up?”
“Dash, it’s Elois. We just retrieved something that I think you’ll be interested in.”
“Is this going to be another one of those cryptic, there’s something you need to see clichés?”
“What?”
“It’s just that every time—” He stopped and shook his head. “Never mind. Is it something you can show me over the comm?”
“I can, but I’m not sure how much sense it’s going to make.”
“Okay, color me intrigued. What is it?”
“It’s a missile. One of ours, in fact. We detected it on our way out of the Backwater system, heading back to the Kingsport.”
Dash furrowed his brow. “A missile? Okay. Probably one that got fired during one of the battles there and never hit a target or detonated.”
That wasn’t supposed to happen, he knew. Missiles were supposed to destroy themselves when they exhausted their fuel to prevent them becoming navigation hazards. Occasionally, though, battle damage could knock that functionality off-line, leaving the missile consigned to sailing on forever into deep space.
“Yeah, I’m sure it is. But this one’s been—changed, I guess, for lack of a better word.”
“Changed? Changed how?”
“It’s been infected by something. It seems both organic and inorganic, kind of like the primordial goop.”
“How the hell did that happen?”
“No idea. Anyway, we’re bringing it back to the Kingsport so we can give it a closer look.”
Dash scowled. “Hearing you’re carrying something that’s infected doesn’t exactly fill me with great confidence. Are you sure it won’t infect anything else? Like your ship?”
“Way ahead of you on that. We didn’t actually bring it right aboard. We’re tractoring it externally, keeping it a few hundred meters away. It’s going to slow us down translating like that, but we should be back at the Kingsport in another day or so.”
Dash actually smiled. “You mean I have a whole day to myself?”
“Well, I c
an’t guarantee that, but that’s all I personally have for now,” Elois replied with a chuckle.
“Roger that. See you when you get here. Dash out.”
He moved back to his bed and sat down to resume taking off his boots.
“Eh, to hell with it.”
He flopped back, sprawled sideways across the bed, and lay there, immersing himself in the silence.
And a few moments later, he fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.
As he entered the Command Center, Dash rubbed his neck and grimaced. “Turns out sprawling sideways across the bed isn’t a good idea.”
“Hey, what you and Leira do on your own time is none of my business,” Viktor said, raising his hands.
Leira, walking alongside Dash, threw her hands up to her face and gasped. “Why, Viktor, I do declare, are you casting my honor as a lady into question?”
He smirked. “Yup.”
Dash glanced around to see most of the Inner Circle was here. Elois already peered out of the main viewscreen, which was split between her image aboard the Absolute Zero, and a solitary missile hanging motionless in space. A pair of maintenance remotes hung nearby, one decked out with a suite of sensors, the other shining a light on the projectile to make it more distinct.
“So that’s it, huh?” Dash asked.
“It is. Oh, and have you got me on that big screen? I hate being on that thing. I feel like you can see right into every pore,” Elois replied.
Dash smiled. “Elois, you are ravishingly beautiful no matter what size screen you’re on.”
Elois smiled back. “What a superficially charming thing to say. Hey, Leira, this one’s a keeper.”
“I know. I mean, how could I pass up both charming and superficial?”
Elois’s smile flashed briefly to a grin but quickly lapsed back into earnest solemnity. “Anyway, there’s our newest little problem.” She went on to describe essentially what she’d already told Dash.
“So this missile has been compromised, both mechanically and in terms of its controlling code. We’re not sure how, or what that means other than the fact that we don’t control it anymore. Something else does.”
“Well, that sounds ominous,” Dash said, crossing his arms. He glanced at the rest of his people, wanting to give them a chance to speak up.
“Elois, have you tried remotely connecting to its maintenance telemetry? Every missile should have remote access,” Benzel said.
Elois nodded. “One of the first things we tried, in fact. And, given our healthy paranoia about the Deepers, we tried to do it through a maintenance remote, which had a nova-cannon trained on it. The remote was able to establish a link, but the missile stubbornly refused to talk to it.”
Dash raised a cautionary hand. “Elois, if that thing has been infected by a virus, as in a computer virus, let’s be super careful about connecting it to anything. We had a really bad experience aboard the Forge once, when a Golden agent managed to slip a virus into its systems. It took us days to completely eliminate it.”
“Understood, and that’s why we’re only using the remotes. And we’re not even connected to them, we’re letting them run autonomously. That’s why all we know is that the missile is active. Even if it had sent data, we wouldn’t have accessed it without talking to you and the brain-trust around you first.”
Dash nodded, satisfied that Elois knew what she was doing. She was, after all, a specialist in xeno biology and tech, so she was used to the most stringent of containment protocols.
He turned back to the rest. “Anyone else? Questions, ideas, anything?”
“Are we sure this is even related to the Deepers? Could it be some kind of natural thing?” Viktor asked.
Ragsdale sniffed. “Right now, we should assume that everything we encounter that we don’t understand is of Deeper origin and a threat.”
“So is this, what, some new Deeper weapon?” Jexin asked.
Elois shrugged. “Possibly. I mean, I’m with Ragsdale about the Deeper origin thing, but is it a weapon? Not sure yet.”
“Why the heck would the Deepers use a weapon we’ve never seen before on some random, drifting missile?” Amy asked. The only answer she got was a round of shrugs and head shakes.
“I think we have to assume it’s a weapon,” Dash finally said, then looked back at Elois. “You said it has an organic component to it?”
“Yeah, organic and mechanical both, like that goop you brought back from that far-out-there planet.”
“Now a twisted ball of slag,” Jexin said, baring her teeth.
“That has a definite Deeper flavor to it for sure,” Dash said, tapping his lower lip.
“So if it’s a weapon, how do we defend against it?” Amy asked.
Elois shrugged again. “Another excellent question, and one I hope we can answer very soon. If it is something self-replicating, though, like some sort of hybrid digital and organic virus, then the surest way in the short-term is to avoid coming into direct contact with it.”
“Elois, is there any way you can isolate a sample of it?” Conover asked.
“Another one of the many things we’re working on,” she replied.
Dash tapped his chin a couple more times. “In the meantime, can you guys just slice off a piece of the missile so we get a sample that way?”
“That, we should be able to do, sure.” Elois turned and spoke to someone off-image. A moment later, the maintenance remote that had been illuminating the missile moved closer and extended a cutting tool. Elois continued her off-camera conversation.
The cutting tool briefly flared, slicing a piece out of the missile’s casing.
“Is the warhead in that thing still active?” Amy asked.
Elois gave a grim smile. “We’re assuming it is, which is why it’s sitting as far away from this ship as it is—well outside what Custodian tells me would be the usual blast radius.”
Dash watched the two remotes. They were identical to the one that had been pruning bushes on the Greenbelt. Unsung heroes, indeed.
The remote finally backed away from the missile, tractoring a slice of casing along behind it.
“So we’re sure that piece is infected, right?” Dash asked.
Elois again looked off-image and said something. A new window popped open, displaying a smooth, non-reflective surface. It was a close-up of the missile casing fragment.
“It’s hard to see visually. We’re mostly seeing the infection indirectly,” Elois said, then pointed. “There.”
The image zoomed in. Sure enough, a small part of the casing was pocked and blackened, as though something corrosive had eaten away at it.
“Externally, that’s about all the evidence we see, these small, local blemishes. We think it’s probably a lot worse inside, but we haven’t started dissecting it yet.”
“Okay, Elois, now see if you can destroy it,” Dash said.
“Really?”
“Yes. Really. Let’s put it somewhere where we can fire a dark-lance at it and see what happens.”
The remote moved the fragment to a location a few klicks away from the missile, released it, then backed away a few hundred meters.
Nothing.
Elois once more spoke to someone. “Sorry, Dash, our Defensive Systems Officer tells me there’s nothing for the dark-lance to lock onto. He could fire by eye, but he tells me the chances of just happening to score a hit are pretty low.”
“Then use the remote as a target,” Viktor suggested.
The remote drifted back in until it sat only a meter away. Elois moved the second remote close enough to be able to see what happened.
“Firing now,” Elois said.
Nothing changed. Then the image briefly flashed a deep, reddish-purple, and the remote was simply gone, puffed to quantum vapor. Dash surprised himself by suddenly being a little sad, which was ridiculous. The remotes were machines. Just tools. It was like destroying a spanner or a screwdriver.
But wasn’t Sentinel just a machine? Custodian? Wasn�
�t Newton just a machine?
He puffed out a sigh, shoving philosophical musings about what constitutes life somewhere well down his to-do pile.
“The fragment’s gone, turned to monatomic dust,” Elois finally confirmed.
“So, whatever it is, a dark-lance can kill it,” Leira said.
Dash stuck his hands on his hips. “Yeah. So we’ve got at least one way of dealing with it. Meantime, Elois, make this your absolute top priority. If the Deepers are starting to deploy some sort of new, infectious bio-organic weapon thing, we need to know it, and know everything about it, and we need to know it, like, yesterday.”
“Roger that,” she replied, and the viewscreen cleared back to its default star chart.
Dash turned to the Inner Circle, who were muttering among themselves, discussing this new turn of events. All except for Ragsdale, he noticed, who’d instead moved to one of the Ops consoles. He stood behind the tech operating it, who was staring at something on her screen.
“Yo, Ragsdale, you decided to move on to more interesting things?” he asked. But he knew full well Ragsdale hadn’t. The man was pursuing something, probably a hunch. Out of all of the Inner Circle, he was probably the one who listened to his gut feelings more than anyone except Dash himself.
Ragsdale held up a finger, watched the console for a moment, then pressed his lips into a thin line and nodded. “Okay, put that up,” he said to the tech.
The big screen lit up with a new star chart, one much more zoomed in and detailed. It showed a dashed line indicating a presumed trajectory. It was rendered in red, meaning it was hostile.
Ragsdale strode to the front of the room. “I was curious about Deeper contacts in the area. This line connects three of them, all pretty similar.”
“We get lots of sporadic contacts around Backwater and most other friendly systems, though. We’ve just assumed it’s the Deepers keeping tabs on us,” Dash said.
“Yeah, but these three have the most similar signal. Custodian, any idea what those signals actually are?”