“Yes,” came borne on a mental sigh of gratitude from her mind to his—via the Squid, he couldn’t forget, “this, Alan, but…just this. Let’s go slowly.”
He tried not to let his body go stiff, because he did understand her. Suddenly he understood better than he ever had before. In that moment, she was so tired she couldn’t hold back. She was raw. She was enjoying his touch, his company, the comfort he offered. For the first time he had a real insight into her inner turmoil—the desire she felt for him, the curiosity about what being with him would be like, and the need to remain aloof and professional to maintain both order and the respect of Ron and Ajaya—all were at war within her.
She’d given him a glimpse of her inner workings, and he wouldn’t disrespect that by pressuring her for more. Her inner life was just as complicated as his. What he got from this unguarded interaction with her was that if he could continue to show patience, he would eventually be rewarded in spades.
So even though his loins ached—which she acknowledged with chagrin—he just held her, moving his lips over hers, one hand roaming up and down her spine in a soothing motion that went nowhere near either a bra clasp or the round swell of her ass. He savored the moment and kept his lust in check.
She sighed with contentment against his lips and broke off the kiss, leaning into him more fully, her head coming to rest against his chest. Her mental state was suffused with dreaminess, and he slowly realized she was no longer in touch with reality. Her mind spun crazy webs of disjointed thoughts. He looked down, not really surprised to see her eyes closed and lips parted. She’d relaxed into their warm embrace and had instantly fallen asleep.
He huffed with disbelief and wondered what the hell he should do now.
He glanced back at the device with wonder. The thing was an artificial-wormhole generator. That in and of itself was freaking insanely cool.
But there was more. His heart thudded. There was an interesting side effect when the device was active, as it was for hours in preparation in advance of a jump, as well as for hours long after a jump had been achieved: the device created an electromagnetic field. Normally, when the enormous drawer housing the device was closed, it was locked inside a Faraday cage and therefore wouldn’t emit the EM field. But he’d opened it while it was still active, exposing them to it.
This EM field, he now realized, disrupted the reception of the quantum entanglement that allowed anipraxis with Ei’Brai. It was hard to translate Jane’s very alien way of understanding the tech to the way he had been trained to interpret the science, but it seemed that when the waves hit the organs in the brain that made anipraxia possible, they acted on those organs as if they were measuring the spin of the electrons, effectively disrupting the connection. That made sense because of the spooky way quantum entanglement worked—observation defined what state the entangled electrons were in, not allowing them to stay in a state of superposition—therefore creating a static outgoing signal and not allowing new throughput.
It was jamming the signal. It made the Squid’s telepathic Wi-Fi drop out. That was why Jane had been so disoriented. It wasn’t just sheer exhaustion, though that had played a role. She’d been kicked out of Ei’Brai’s anipraxic network.
If this device could do that… His thoughts raced as he considered the possibilities. He’d have to do some testing to figure out the specific frequency—easy enough to do with a wideband antenna and a spectrum analyzer. Once he did, he could reproduce it. And that meant he could actually relax without feeling like he was being watched by a squirmy, aquatic peeping Tom. That would free up some much-needed mental energy so he could focus on what was most important—mastering the alien tech.
He looked down on Jane, limp in his arms, and kissed her forehead before swooping to lift her legs out from under her—like a fucking hero—thinking about how she’d carried him around not so long ago. It was about damn time he got to return the favor.
Her lips curled up in a sleepy smile before she threw an arm around his neck and nestled her face against him. She’d heard his thoughts. She liked them.
“Thank you,” flitted briefly against his mind and then away as she went deeper into sleep, completely relaxed. His own lips quirked up on one side as he began to walk, carefully, hoping the slight limp from his cybernetic leg wouldn’t disturb her.
She trusted him.
Ei’Brai was there in the background, a distant brooding presence. Alan got the feeling that the Squid was just as exhausted as Jane seemed to be. Ei’Brai didn’t say anything, but his attitude was also one of gratitude. He was also glad Jane was resting. So the Squid was sensible about something, anyway.
Alan grunted. She was heavier than he’d imagined. He hoped like hell that he’d be able to manage carrying her all the way back to her quarters without mishap. The last thing he wanted to do was thunk her head into a door frame like he was in a bad slapstick routine in a terrible sitcom. He wanted to keep the moment sweet. He needed, just one fucking time, to feel like the good guy.
He looked over his shoulder wistfully in the direction of the wormhole generator, then strode into the deck-to-deck transport, feeling happier than he’d felt in a very long time.
4
Ei’Brai’s anxiety was not on par with any emotion that humans or sectilians could understand. It was an emotion uniquely kuboderan, based purely on magnitude alone.
A kuboderan was capable of simultaneously holding dozens of possible outcomes in his or her mind at once. When faced with a dearth of knowledge about an upcoming situation, the possibilities could become overwhelming, even paralyzing. The fact that he was powerless to affect the outcomes, stuck as he always was in his aquatic environment, was something he and every other individual of his kind struggled with when forced to watch his or her terrestrial mind-mates go off into the unknown. Approaching Sectilius was having this very effect on him, and it seemed magnified somehow. It was troubling, the difficulty he was having reining that sensation in.
He was keenly aware that his mental state affected his human crew, so he constrained his apprehension to the strictest measure he was capable of. To that end, he employed rigorous exercise regimens and enforced a strict sleeping schedule, rotating his three cerebrums through rest phases to maintain optimal working parameters at all times. He’d gotten sloppy before, had developed bad habits during his long solitude. That could no longer stand. He must act in a manner worthy of the rank Ei—now more than ever.
The final jump placed the Speroancora at the edge of the Sectilius system. Normally he would have placed them far closer to their destination, but jumps were safest when endpoints were calculated for vast empty space. This strategy went back to an earlier time when jumps were more erratic—as they were with Jane. The distance also gave Quasador Dux Jane Holloway the opportunity to rest and recuperate from the taxing effects of the jump before she and the other humans went down to the surface.
Upon entering the system, they began broadcasting hailing radio signals, according to standard sectilian protocols. No answering signal was received on any channel. He monitored them all. Indeed, even as their trajectory took them deeper into the system, no stray communication signals of any kind were received.
Sectilia and her moon were silent.
Doubts churned in his mind. He was careful to keep them from the Qua’dux’s notice, though he couldn’t truly hide them from her. Was he putting her in abject danger? Could he bear it if she were injured or worse? And if the worst should come to pass, would he find himself stranded once again? He was certain he would go mad if that occurred. But what other course was there? Worse was the idea that he would most likely be forced to give her up. He couldn’t refuse if the Sectilius decided to replace this crew. He’d be forced to adapt or face harsh consequences. He’d experienced significant crew changes many times in his life, but this was so radically different.
He would miss her.
He found some solace in the fact that the humans derived much pleasure from the s
imple act of observing the sights as they traversed the system. And he too could see them now with fresh eyes after so much time away. But was it fresh eyes, or had he just…forgotten them? Had it been so long that they would feel new? Or had he blotted these memories out during his long solitude to protect himself from the pain of remembering? Something about the disparity in his memory troubled him, but there were too many other anxieties on his mind to single that one out as significant.
As they passed a large hydrogen-helium planet, so critical to the stability of an inhabited system, each of the humans gazed with awe at its swirling surface through the large viewscreen on the bridge. Without compromising more than a few moments of time, and with the Qua’dux’s blessing, he treated them to some of the most arresting views of that planet—its swirling storms and the endless layers of gasses of varying color and density.
Dr. Ajaya Varma gasped when the ship rose up out of the plane of the ring around the planet, displaying the striated band of rock and ice to its best advantage. The entire planet had an insubstantial, ethereal quality to it. It gleamed.
Dr. Ronald Gibbs remarked aloud, “Human eyes have never seen our own gas giants like this. It’s...bizarre, isn’t it? To see this in an alien system when Jupiter and Saturn have only been seen as images taken by drones?”
The Qua’dux and her crew made it a habit to spend their waking hours on the bridge as Sectilia slowly transformed from a pinpoint of reflected light in the distance to a lush blue-green sphere orbited by three smaller spheres, two of which were barren rocks, and the third of which was a diminutive and less verdant version of Sectilia herself—Atielle, their initial destination.
As the Speroancora passed the orbital plane of the fifth planet in the system, the ship’s passage triggered a buoy to emit a warning. A red light bounced in the peripheral vision of his ocular implant. The Qua’dux felt his attention shift and instantly merged with him to assess the message.
The buoy identified itself as a quarantine beacon, placed by the Unified Sentient Races, the consortium of worlds whose primary objective was to work together against the terror of their common enemy: the Swarm. The buoy warned that trading with Sectilius was forbidden and that going deeper into the system would incur penalties and sanctions. The system was monitored remotely via extensive, redundant relays. The USR would lift the ban when it deemed Sectilius was no longer a threat to the rest of the galaxy. Until such time, it strongly advised them to leave the system.
“Have you ever seen anything like this buoy before?” the Qua’dux asked him.
“Never,” he replied.
“Let’s send in a drone to see if it has any firepower,” she said.
He did. He determined it was just a messaging system.
She didn’t hesitate. “Ignore it. We know the risks. Besides, surely they don’t mean to prevent Sectilius ships from going home.”
They encountered three more such buoys as they drew closer, each one with similar messages. None of them contained ordnance of any kind.
As the distance closed, he could not help but reach out to the full extent of his ability, seeking communication with his own kind. It had been readily apparent for some time that no intact ships were left orbiting either planetary body, and yet he held out hope that some individuals might have survived an oceanic crash landing, to subsist in the oceans of either world, awaiting rescue.
It was soon apparent that was not the case. No kuboderans remained, though at any given time in the past there might have been dozens of his kind in orbit.
The Quasador Dux monitored his thoughts as he searched, her own hopes high. When he abandoned the search, despondent and stricken with grief, she came to him in person.
She leaned her body against the transparent material that separated them and splayed her hand out over the glass, as though she were reaching out to him. She shared his pain.
For a moment it seemed unbearable that he could not touch her, for he wanted to experience the warm twining of bodies that she called a hug. He had observed this behavior among the humans and it seemed so…reassuring and natural. He wondered if wild kuboderans touched each other that way and suspected that they did. That kind of comfort would be welcome now. She smiled at his whimsical thought and promised that one day she would do just that.
She watched him gravely as he wrestled with his emotions. This discovery was another confirmation of loss. Though the deaths had happened long ago, he couldn’t file them away so quickly.
Ei’Brai reached out an arm and carefully laid some suckers over the spot where the Qua’dux’s hand rested. When he refocused on her, he saw a wet trail on her face that had originated in her eye. A uniquely human expression of sympathy. A strange quirk of their physiology, to be sure. Yet saline tears sacrificed for his lost kin seemed appropriate.
She understood him, silently. He was surprised at how much that eased the pain. Sectilians rarely shared such feelings with kuboderans. The former Qua’dux had been an exception. He’d never thought he would find another friendship like this in his lifetime. Yet here she was before him, brought to him by the Providence.
She stayed well past the onset of her discomfort. She communed with him even as her lips turned pale, her body shivered to make itself warm, and her teeth clattered together. Finally he sent her away, and guilt lay over the distress, that he had let her linger so long.
Eventually he set the pain aside, to feel it to its depth later, when there was more time for leisure, and plotted a course to put the Speroancora in geosynchronous orbit around Atielle over the residence of the issue of the esteemed Quasador Dux Rageth Elia Hator.
Both planets remained silent.
As they took up orbit high above the stratosphere, Ei’Brai detected only small numbers of sectilians on both planets in scattered pockets. The populations of both worlds had been decimated.
At this distance they were little more than faint mental signatures. There were a few mind masters who were somewhat stronger, but none who had the range of the kuboderans. He did not detect anyone he had previously connected to, which would have made communication feasible.
He had hoped to be able to use anipraxia to make introductions for the Qua’dux and her crew, but that would not be possible. That could make her journey more perilous. Yet he had faith in her skills and he counseled her to be forthright and straightforward with everyone she might meet. She patiently endured his admonitions, despite the fact that this was her field of expertise. He appreciated her forbearance.
They were prepared as well as could be expected under the circumstances. They would be outfitted with everything that could be thought of to protect them.
It was the things that could not be anticipated that worried him.
5
Jane swallowed a bite of a nutrition square. She’d gathered the others over a meal to discuss their upcoming arrival at Atielle. Jane sat at the head of an oblong table in the vast cafeteria-style room they used as a crew mess. Alan sat on one side with Ajaya and Ron on the other, the two so close to each other their arms occasionally brushed.
Her primary concern was unraveling the issue of the yoke before they left the ship. It was a complex amalgam of devices and software that controlled Ei’Brai, preventing him from moving the vessel without her consent and presence on board. They would be leaving him alone up here, and if something should happen to her, he would be trapped once again, as he had been in their solar system. That wasn’t okay with her. She wanted him to have more latitude in a worst-case scenario. Alan had been looking into the issue already, but it was complex and hidden, even from her, for security reasons. She felt she couldn’t depart until they found some way to decrease the yoke’s power at least somewhat. She asked Alan to make that a priority in the coming days.
They’d already gone over the issues of the breathability of the air on the moon, which wasn’t going to be a problem, and the foreign microbes, which they’d all already been exposed to without any negative impact on the Speroa
ncora. They’d deliberated the size of the Sectilius system’s star, the fact that it was slightly larger than Earth’s, and that Sectilia and Atielle were closer to their star than Earth was to Sol and what that might mean to them while they were planetside.
Ron joked, “But I didn’t pack my sunscreen.”
They’d also discussed how to handle potential reinfection with the rogue squillae some of them had been affected by when they first boarded this ship, and the safety measures they should take to prevent that problem from recurring. So far all scans for the specific signals squillae emitted were negative. There was no indication that any nanites were extant on Atielle. Given the volumes that would have been in use before the squillae plague, they should have been detectable if still present. That didn’t mean they couldn’t exist in small pockets, even if someone had managed to obliterate them on a large scale. As a group they worked out how to enact several levels of prevention and control just to be safe, including a small set of nanites, programmed to work defensively, for each individual.
With those details set, it was time to discuss the problem of the weather conditions on Atielle. The conversation was going about like she’d imagined it would.
“The entire planet is having a monsoon season? You’re sure about this?” Alan asked incredulously, the food in his hand seemingly forgotten.
Ron frowned. “How’s that even possible?”
Ajaya put down a food cube she’d been about to nibble on. “Surely there is some kind of temperate zone where we can touch down and travel overland?”
Jane sighed. “Unfortunately, no. Atielle is small, about one-third the mass of Earth, though its surface area is roughly twice that of our moon. It’s orbiting Sectilia, which is a much bigger planet than we—”
“We’d call it a Super-Earth,” Alan said and put down his food like he’d lost his appetite.
Confluence 2: Remanence Page 3