THE BLACK FLEET CRISIS #3 - TYRANTS_TEST

by Michael P. Kube-Mcdowell

  me in chamber twenty-one. Now, let's get going."

  A few hundred twisting meters further, the passages narrowed still

  tighter, to the point where Lobot could barely wriggle through, and

  Artoo could not.

  "Go back to where we dropped off the grid and my suit and wait for me

  there," Lobot said. "Artoo, the link I've been using to access your

  event log and memory registers--can you make it bidirectional, so Lando

  will know what happened to me if I don't come back?

  Maybe you could isolate one of my transmit channels."

  Artoo chirped reassuringly and relayed his assent over the link.

  "Master Lobot, may I say something before you leave?"

  "Quickly."

  "It is possible that there is no command center as you envision it," "I

  don't have anything 'envisioned."" "I mean to say that rule-based logic

  can be encoded very compactly. My own language processors contain the

  equivalent of more than eight times ten to the twelfth decision trees,

  all within a space of approximately five cubic centimeters."

  "And the giant dewback lizards of Tatooine have a neural cluster

  smaller than the brain of a newborn human.

  Yes, I understand your point," Lobot said, looking back at the

  droids.

  "But I am not looking' for the vagabond's bridge, or its brain. I

  could easily miss those, or fail to recognize them. I am looking for

  its threshold of awareness, and it will know when I have found it."

  Lando lingered in the auditorium as long as the question of whether the

  vagabond could heal its great wounds hung in the balance.

  In the beginning, a thin band of new material appeared around the edges

  of each opening in the hull.

  The smaller opening forward continued to close, just as Lando had seen

  demonstrated at the airlock. But for a long time, it seemed as though

  nothing was happening at the larger wound, as if the process had

  somehow stalled.

  Before giving up, Lando moved to a portal on the other side of the

  chamber. From there, the beam from his chest lamp revealed that the

  entire opening had skinned over with what looked like the same sort of

  transparent material he was peering through.

  That discovery held him there, even though it again seemed for the

  longest time as if nothing was happening.

  He remembered how when they had first boarded

  the vagabond, he had been able to see Lady Luck's floodlights through

  the wall of the airlock.

  That should have told me something, he thought. Like shining a lantern

  through your hand. I should have been thinking organic right from the

  first. But we thought the genetic sequence was just some engineer's

  idea of a clever little code.

  His eyes kept expecting the gossamer transparency to be momentarily

  transformed into solid bulkhead, just as the transparency in the

  auditorium went from one state to the other in a matter of seconds.

  But instead, a lattice of opaque material appeared first, echoing the

  crisscross pattern he had. seen in the stringers in the interspace.

  Then, finally, each individual section of the lattice began to close

  over.

  That was when Lando tried to leave, feeling as though he had witnessed

  an exhibition of Qella ingenuity more impressive than the. lost

  orrery.

  "Lobot, where are you now?" he called over the suit's comlink, to no

  reply. "The hull breaches are nearly repaired I'm heading back.

  Lobot?" He switched to the secondary comm channel and repeated the

  call, with the same result.

  Returning to the primary channel, he heard a voice he did not expect to

  hear: "--I would be glad to relay a message to him."

  "Threepio, what are you doing on Lobot's comlink?

  What's going on there?"

  "Pardon me, Master Lando, but Master Lobot left his contact suit in our

  keeping."

  "You mean he's gone off by himself? Where is he?

  Where did he go?"

  "He said he was seeking the threshold of awareness," said Threepio.

  "I'm quite sure I don't know what that means."

  "Where are you, then? Is Artoo with you?"

  "We are somewhere in the vagabond's inner core," said Threepio. "Artoo

  says that if you return to chamber two-twenty-nine, he can direct you

  to us from there," "I'll be there in three minutes."

  But Lando had crossed through only two chambers when the portal ahead

  of him closed as he approached it. Turning, he saw the portal behind

  him had closed at the same time. Neither would respond to his touch.

  The portals to the interspace and the core were equally recalcitrant.

  He was sealed in.

  "Threepio, is anything happening there? All of a sudden, the express

  lanes out here are closed."

  The only reply was a burst of white-noise static.

  Then the ship groaned, deep and long. The chamber shuddered around

  Lando.

  "Blast," Lando said, his eyes searching the boundaries of his prison.

  "They're back."

  The groaning continued, and the shaking grew worse. The glow-rings

  around the portals dimmed and disappeared. In the darkness, Lando was

  thrown against the face of the chamber.

  She's turning fast this time--the propulsion system, whatever it is, is

  back online.

  "Propulsion--stang! No, please, don't try it," Lando implored the

  ship. "Not after taking hits like those--" The vagabond paid him no

  mind. Moments later, with the roaring growl and violent shaking at a

  terrifying peak, the vessel twisted realspace until it opened, then

  fell through infinity's door.

  Twenty-seven hours after she had taken custody of the Qella remains,

  Joi Eicroth hand-delivered a stack of three datacards containing the

  cadaver's genetic sequences to Admiral Drayson at his home on the north

  shore of Victory Lake.

  Drayson's face was haggard and his greeting embrace distracted. "I

  expected you to transmit the sequences to me in a secure packet." He

  rubbed his eyes.

  "I expected it several hours ago, in fact."

  "That was before we knew how extensive the sequences are. It would

  have taken me nearly as long to

  encode and transmit the report as it did to fly down here," she said,

  moving past him into the grand parlor.

  "And I wouldn't have gotten to see you again."

  A tired smile making a bid to reach his lips, Drayson followed her.

  You're saying that you found something surprising?"

  "Very," she said. "What species was that creature, Hiram? I would

  love to know more about its ethology and ecological niche."

  "I have a small research team looking into that right now," said

  Drayson. "I hope to be able to share their findings with you soon.

  What was the surprise?

  Something about the amount of genetic material?"

  She settled in a reclining chair facing the parlor's lakeview

  transparency. "It's that exactly," she said.

  "This species has three--at least three---different types of cells that

  contain genetic material. The ordinary so-matic cells have sixty-two

  chromosomes--" "That's on the high side, isn't it?" asked Drayson,

  settling on
a small padded bench nearby. "Go on."

  "Yes, it is. But that's the smaller part of the whole," she said.

  "This species has two other kinds of genetic material as well, in two

  different structures located in two different parts of their bodies.

  "I call them code capsules, because they're encapsulated in a solid

  protein coat. There are billions of these capsules in that carcass. I

  almost mistook them for a massive parasitic infection--that's why I

  started looking at them in the first place."

  "How big are the capsules?"

  "Big. About the size of the biggest crystals of silicon dioxide out on

  your beach," she said. "But the same oval shape as the creature's

  torso. It took me five hours just to figure out how to extract them

  from their tubules and break through the protein coat without

  destroying the contents. The contents turned out to be nearly solid

  genetic material." She gestured at the data-cards.

  "Your DNA and mine together wouldn't fill one of those. I barely got

  the creature's genome to fit on three of them."

  Drayson stared down at the objects in his hand.

  "This is one copy? I thought you were doing the triplicate thing."

  "One copy. As near as I could tell, almost five percent of the

  creature's body weight is genetic material.

  That's unprecedented."

  "What does it need with all that?"

  "That's a good question," she said. "I don't know.

  I do know that it's far more than information theory says would be

  necessary to specify and construct an organism of the size and

  complexity of the one you brought me."

  "How much more?"

  She squinted as she thought. "Maybe two hundred times too much."

  "Which means what?"

  "I don't know," she said with a shrug. "The context is missing. Maybe

  when your team reports--" "Speculate, please."

  Eicroth frowned. "Well, there's a lot of old biological history in our

  chromosomes, in the form of inactive genes. Maybe this is something

  similar, but covering a much longer history or a more convoluted

  evolutionary path."

  "Any other ideas?"

  "One kind of weird one," she said, showing a self-effacing smile.

  "Maybe it's because I started off with the idea that these code

  capsules were parasites, but I keep wondering what good they are to the

  organism itself.

  The protein coat just about ensures that they're inert. I also wonder

  how they're passed on to offspring. The virus analogy is

  tempting--likewise for mitochondria."

  "If you had to guess--" "If I had to guess, I'd say it almost looks

  like this species carries a giant catalog of spare genetic blueprints

  around inside itself."

  "Blueprints for what?"

  "I don't know. There's a kinship in the genetic se-quencesmsomething

  recognizable as kin, anyway. Bio-chemically, there'd be a family

  resemblance."

  "What about the analogy to the Fw'Sen?" Drayson asked. "Don't they

  mate only once, before they're sexually mature?"

  "You mean, could these be retained fertilized eggs?

  I don't think so. The capsule tubules are completely separate from the

  somatic-cell reproductive anatomy."

  She shook her head. "It's very odd, and I don't pretend to understand

  it."

  Nodding, Drayson stood. "I have to go do something with this," he

  said, holding up the datacards.

  "Will you stay?"

  Her smile brightened. "If my boss is willing to wait a little longer

  for the results of the dissection."

  "I'll have a word with him," Drayson said. "Look, I'll be downstairs

  for a little while with this--get yourself something to eat if you

  haven't had a chance."

  "When's the last time you ate?"

  He shook his head. "I've had no appetite."

  Eicroth knew better than to ask the reason. "I'll see if I can find

  something for two," she said, reaching for his hand and giving it a

  squeeze. "Come on back up when you can."

  The instant that Lady Luck left hyperspace, its slave circuits

  relinquished control.

  "That isn't supposed to happen," Pakkpekatt said, showing teeth and

  hissing.

  His companion on the yacht's flight deck was Bijo Hammax. "What's

  supposed to happen?"

  Agent Pleck appeared at the hatchway. "The usual arrangement for a

  hyperspace beckon call is for the responding ship to ping the signaling

  unit when it jumps in," he said. "The beckon call sends a local

  reference signal, and the ship follows it to the location of the

  transmitter. If the beckon call sends a wave-off instead, the

  responding ship should jump out again immediately."

  "And we're just sitting here?" said Hammax.

  "Maybe we were stood up."

  "Contact sweep," said Pakkpekatt.

  "Coming up," Hammax said, turning to the displays at his station.

  "Something out there."

  "A more detailed analysis would be considerably more useful,"

  Pakkpekatt said.

  "Something big," said Hammax. "A lot bigger than we are. Look, this

  isn't where I work. Pleck, maybe you'd better take the number-two

  position."

  Pleck slid into the seat as Hammax vacated it.

  "Contact is capital, type three," Pleck read off the board.

  "Too small," said Pakkpekatt.

  "Range to contact, two thousand meters."

  "Two thousand--stang, we're right on top of it," Hammax said, whirling

  toward the viewport. "We ought to be able to see it bare-eyed. They

  can sure see us." He dug into a storage bin for the laser cannon

  controller.

  "Contact is blacked out, cold, and adrift. No tran-sponder," Pleck

  said, then frowned. "A scatter of little stuff out there, too, same

  neighborhood. One floater that might be a body."

  "Nothing that might be the vagabond?"

  Pleck shook his head. "If she was here, she's gone."

  "The same is not necessarily true of General Calris-sian," Pakkpekatt

  said. "We'll go in for a look. Agent Taisden, please stand ready with

  your recorders."

  Lady Luck crept toward the wreck of Gorath as though wary of waking the

  dead. At five hundred meters, Pakkpekatt called for the bow lights,

  and a great metal corpse suddenly appeared before them.

  "Strike-class," said Pakkpekatt.

  "Or used to be," said Hammax. "She's all stove in."

  "This doesn't match what we saw at Gmar As-kilon," said Pleck, studying

  the spectral display. "This is not the same weapon the vagabond used

  against D-Eighty-nine and Kauri. It doesn't match anything in the

  database."

  readable, and remained so as he flew Lady Luck around the derelict at

  a distance of a hundred meters.

  Before the survey was complete, Hammax removed the targeting headset.

  "What would you expect to happen if the transmitter got toasted?" he

  asked, turning to the commander. "If Calrissian and his team were

  aboard--" "We need confirmation, Colonel Hammax, not speculation."

  "That's my job," Hammax said, nodding. "I'll go get suited up."

  Taisden grunted in surprise. "Excuse me--Colonel Pakkpekatt, would you

  take a look at the comm queue, please?"<
br />
  Pakkpekatt spun his couch back toward the controls.

  "When did that show up?"

  "Just now," said Taisden. "Is that your personal comm code, sir?"

  "No," said Pakkpekatt. "How very interesting."

  "What?" asked Hammax, leaning forward between the couches with a hand

  on the back of each.

  Taisden pointed. "A ready-to-transmit notice for a white-star

  dispatch, personal to the colonel."

  "A notice that can be received only by a military-rated secure

  hypercomm," said Pakkpekatt.

  "I thought we'd loaded one aboard," said Hammax.

  "We did," said Taisden. "This didn't come over our gear. Calrissian