by Jason Letts
While Brina had bright brown eyes and a warm smile for him, the boy’s neutral expression was similar to what he had during the coma. For the longest time Loris imagined sharing a celebratory moment with him about their victory of the Detonans, but recent events required a much different tact. Never before had Loris imagined he wasn’t on their side, and that assumption may have been foolish.
“Your people called you a troublemaker,” Loris said. “Was there something important about the Detonans that you didn’t tell us?”
The boy’s passive eyes took on the faintest shine as he communicated directly with Loris’s mind.
“If you were smart enough, you would realize the problem with intelligence is its basis in knowledge. I know what the Detonans know, but I also don’t know what they don’t know. I gather from you that they don’t know where the probes come from or about the window, as your scientist calls it, deep in their planet.”
Loris pursed his lips, unsatisfied.
“I don’t want to get lost in semantics, but how could you think that the Detonans made the probes when they didn’t? You said the probes were part of their system for determining the end date for a species’ existence, but they don’t seem to have any control over them,” he went on.
“Loris,” Brina said, and he could see in her eyes that she was trying to get him to calm down.
“Do you see the space between what you think is a contradiction? To the Detonans, the probes were a naturally occurring phenomenon that they considered theirs. I knew their belief that the probes foretold messages of doom for life forms throughout the galaxy, but now it’s clear that I as well was deceived by their unfounded assumptions. The Detonans do not have the capacity to imbue their creations with omniscience, and thus we have our own limitations.”
Loris found it hard to argue. There was something about talking with a being who could broadcast speech directly into his mind that made him feel in over his head.
“What does that mean for the people on Nova who are expecting some calamity to strike in just a few months? We had assumed that meant the Detonans would be coming, but now it seems like it has to be something else,” he said.
The boy didn’t immediately respond, instead closing his eyes for so long that Loris began to wonder if he’d slipped back into unconsciousness.
“This is getting complicated,” Brina said in a low voice right before the boy reopened his eyes. Loris nodded.
“Remember what happened to my people,” came the childlike voice into Loris’s mind. “The Detonans could’ve never predicted that you would arrive at precisely that time and usher in our extinction. I’ve given them much more credit than they deserve. The probe on Nova poses another quandary. Did humanity receive a second probe because the prophecy of the first went unfulfilled, or does it mean something else? Are the probes predicting apocalyptic events will take place, or are they causing them?”
“Who’s to say they’re all operating under the same principle, anyway,” Brina added.
The boy turned his head to her in the chair next to his bed and nodded.
“My belief at this point is that these probes are operating more as markers of chaos in the fabric of space and time, which the Detonans had appropriated as a signifier for exterminating their experiments.”
“What does that mean for Nova?” Loris asked. Since the Magellan was headed there now, the lives of the entire remaining human population depended on the answer. The boy leaned forward and set his thin arms in his lap.
“It means you need to expand your understanding of the forces at work in the galaxy, because anything could happen.”
CHAPTER 3
Now that all of the urgent business was out of the way, Loris was ready to get back into the routine of the transit schedule, starting with a good night’s sleep in the commander’s quarters. But there was one more thing he needed to do before calling it quits for the day.
A chime signaled someone at the door, and when he got up, it slid open to reveal a tall redhead. Like himself, Panic had already traded in her uniform for polyfiber sleepwear. She’d let down her hair as well, and Loris didn’t think he’d ever noticed how much of it there was. It curved around her ears and off her shoulders in waves.
“I’m sorry for calling you over right before bed,” Loris said.
“Not at all. What’s up?” she asked.
Loris brought her in and had her take a seat at the small table halfway between the bed and the kitchenette. Stacks of manuals and briefings he’d barely touched still took up all the table space.
They exchanged a glance that lasted a little too long as Loris fumbled for how to begin.
“I’m really not against people who disagree with me or challenge me, but sometimes it can really make a difference when you’ve got someone there you can count on to have your back. I’m talking about someone who understands where you’re coming from, not someone who automatically agrees with everything you say.”
Panic squinted.
“What are you getting at? I don’t follow.”
“What I mean is, as you know we’ve got a vacancy in the executive suite, since Chief Yamaguchi has been relocated into the janitorial department, where his temperament will be better employed mopping up the mess hall. That means we need a new Chief of Defense, and I want it to be you,” he said.
Her eyes widened and she sat up a little straighter before she shook her head and a smile cracked across her lips.
“You must be joking, right? There are at least a dozen senior officers who’d be more qualified. I don’t know half of what they know…” she said, and Loris had to grab hold of her hands to stop her as she began to babble her protestations.
“Listen to me, you’ve been there with me on the front lines of every stage of this fight. You have almost twenty years’ experience as an officer. Your new quarters will have a table covered in just as many documents about protocol and standard operating procedures. What I want you for is your instincts. You don’t back down. You embrace creative solutions. And you find a way to be successful,” he explained.
Calling on her to take charge of the station’s military arm was an idea that continued to bring him warmth. Considering what they were coming from and headed into, this position was going to be more crucial than ever. Her cheeks reddened a little and she looked at him like he was a ghost.
“Is this really what you want? If I’m here acting as Chief of Defense, only Lopez will be there with you on the Cortes to bail out your epic failures.”
Loris snorted and narrowed his eyes at her.
“Take the job. Do you accept?”
“Yes!”
Leaning back, Loris enjoyed the broad smile that appeared on her face as she finally reached out and grabbed the opportunity.
“That’s settled then. And it’s a good thing, too. We’ve got a meeting with the other chiefs tomorrow to go over some very important briefings.”
When he got up, she did the same, but she didn’t follow him when he took a few steps toward the door.
“Wait, you’re not showing me out, are you? Where I come from on the Tennessee coast, something like this can’t happen without a drink to celebrate.”
“Oh, sure,” Loris said, caught off guard. The station did have a place near the mess hall that passed as a bar, but he remembered seeing something stuffed in the back of one of the cabinets that might do the trick.
He pulled out a dusty, quarter-empty bottle and spared a thought for his father, who had probably needed it when the conspiracy against him began to mount. But when Loris spilled some of the liquor onto his stack of papers, Panic was all laughter. It was strong stuff, but the celebration didn’t end after one drink.
“I never wanted to tell you,” she began, “but when we were searching through the wreckage of Unified command and that corpse touched your shoulder, making you scream, I almost doubled over laughing.”
“It’s funny you bring that up,” Loris said, determined to get even. “
Remember when the mutiny was going on and you had those guns? I couldn’t bring myself to tell you those were bb guns.”
“No! Are you sure? Old technology is so confusing.”
“Don’t feel too bad about it. If we’d ended up in a shootout, we would’ve caused some serious welts,” he said.
She laughed again in a carefree way he’d only seen the slightest glimpse of during all their time working together. When she finished the last of her drink, she held her glass in her lap and stared at it solemnly.
“I still remember the day that I met you, that bar in Second New York the night before we left and the world ended. You were young, hopeless when it came to not knowing what you couldn’t do, and very handsome,” she said, raising her eyes to his. “Somehow since then you seem older than time would suggest, but still very handsome.”
“And still hopeless, I’m sure,” he said, not knowing what else to say.
She leaned forward with a gentle smile and put her hand on his knee.
“This night doesn’t have to end yet.”
Loris blinked and drew back, caught between trying not to ruin her happiness and needing an escape.
“Panic…”
“You can call me Carrie. Sometimes it’s a little weird having everybody shout something that suggests I should freak out.”
“Carrie, I’m flattered, but…Brina,” he said. Panic’s mouth gaped a little as the realization came to her.
“Oh my God, I’m sorry. I…”
“No, I didn’t…”
“I shouldn’t have. I’m sorry. I didn’t think anything had happened there. I hardly ever see you two together, and when you are, she’s always so reserved,” she said.
“It’s complicated. She’s not very affectionate in public. The loss of Earth really devastated her,” Loris said.
“I can understand that,” Panic said, before getting up, running a hand through her hair, and taking a step toward the door. “I feel so stupid.”
“Please, don’t feel bad. There’s nothing wrong with what happened. We can just forget it.”
“If you want to make someone else Chief of Defense, I’ll understand.”
Loris lightly held the fabric over her shoulder before she could slink farther away. He needed to get her to move past this.
“Don’t be silly. We have a job to do. Sleep this off and get ready for tomorrow.”
A weak smile returned to her lips, but she couldn’t have vanished through the doorway any faster if she were in the final sprint of a race.
“I’d like to start by welcoming the newest member of the executive suite, who’ll be taking over for Mr. Yamaguchi as Chief of Defense. I know she’ll do an excellent job and bring the kind of warrior’s perspective we can all learn from. It’s Carrie Panicka!” Loris said, standing and gesturing to her around the middle of the long conference table.
Panic nodded stiffly at the slight applause, but couldn’t bring herself to look over at Loris.
“Thank you.” Her whisper might as well have come from a mouse hiding in the corner.
“Does anyone have any appetizers before we move on to the main course?” he asked, looking over the group. One of the chairs was still empty, that of Trynton Quade, who instead appeared on the wall monitor via a feed from the Incubator.
“I do,” Riki Lala said. “Before leaving Detonus we deployed a number of sensors to detect any changes in the planet’s atmosphere and even give us an idea about what the Detonans might be up to.”
“Oh, great. Have we learned anything about what they’ve done since we left?”
“Yes, we have,” Lala said in her typical monotone. “They’ve destroyed all of the sensors.”
Loris pursed his lips and stifled a sigh.
“What do you have for us, Quade,” he said, shifting his attention to the monitor.
The man’s long, taut face in front of the alien spacecraft’s strange environment made for a disturbing image. He couldn’t shake the thought that Quade had been captured, even though there might’ve even been a dead Detonan slumped against a wall in the background. His red eyes didn’t help. Quade had a penchant for requiring very little sleep, and Loris was sure he’d been pushing that to its limits as he worked around the clock.
“Right. I’m transmitting my report now. There’s a lot of useful information we’ve recovered from the Incubator’s system. I’ll take you through some of the highlights and then you can snuggle up with a blanket and tea to read more about their pattern of genocide later,” he said.
“Have you come across clues about what we might be running into at Nova?” Loris asked.
Quade licked his lips and scratched his bristly cheeks, making Loris wish the screen was much smaller than it was.
“If there was ever anyone alive who could’ve trawled this mountain of data written in a completely alien script in so little time, I’d love to meet them, but I did manage to uncover a likely possibility. If you remember when the probe descended on Nova, we wondered if that meant the Detonans had slower vessels or would take a long period of time before departure. Assuming now that neither is the case, there’s enough information about the dozen or so species that the Detonans created—where they are located in the galaxy, the general composition of their life forms, and details about their often militaristic civilizations—that we can make a guess about who’s coming.
“Whether the Detonans communicated with them once we arrived at Nova or they just gravitate toward the probes as part of their uniquely itinerate cultures, I can’t be sure, but there was one group of beings that weren’t even that far away but would require a full year to arrive,” Quade said.
Marta Aylward, who had been looking at the report on a handheld console, let it drop against the table.
“Will you spit it out already? If you drag it out any longer we’ll reach Nova first,” she said.
Quade rolled his eyes.
“It would take time to properly prepare you to digest this information, but since you want the short version, I’ll just say that the Detonans have created a gas-based life form that is bound together solely through electrical signals ricocheting around its particles. My best guess is that when they get to Nova, they’ll look like a sea full of jellyfish. We’re calling them the Agartathons, based on a rough translation.”
Loris knew Quade often infused his speech with an air of superiority that wasn’t exactly necessary, but in this case he happily would’ve accepted some more preparation before being told that they were about to encounter electrified space jellyfish.
“There are obvious questions to be asked about what their capabilities are, but can I just zero in for a moment on your comment that the Detonans have created a dozen species and we didn’t know about any of them. It’s starting to look like Unified’s revered space canvassing system actually missed a lot,” Loris said, exasperated.
“We never imagined the space gas could be alive,” Lala said plainly.
“That’s part of it,” Quade went on. “It seems the Detonans attempted to create even more bizarre creatures with each iteration, at least one of which was so unstable that it failed to survive on its own. But in truth we have encountered more of the Detonans’ handiwork.”
“You mean the Silica,” Loris said, clenching a fist as he remembered his old adversaries. They seemed quaint and juvenile compared to what they were up against now.
“You might be annoyed to learn that the purpose of their creation seems to be entirely to antagonize us. Their home world was chosen precisely because it would be difficult for us to distinguish among other stars, and they seem to have very little driving their existence other than reproduction and ship construction in order to attack us. They didn’t even exist more than fifty years prior to their first assault. The Detonans gave them all the technology and the tools to pester us for eternity, or until the Earth blew up,” Quade said.
“I’d say that’s more than annoying. It’s aggravating and if I spend more time thinking ab
out it, I’ll probably want to break something. Let’s go back to the jellyfish,” Loris said.
“The Agarthanons,” Quade corrected him, “have some capabilities that defy the imagination and frankly should make us think twice about going anywhere near where they might be. Although they exist comfortably in the vacuum of space and travel without ships, they can carry material objects with them, inside themselves it would seem.
“More troubling, if you think about the law of relativity, E equals MC squared, they are somehow able to reverse that equation and split apart energy into mass and movement. When you think about potential sources of energy in the universe, there’s not much other than stars and planets. But how they gather that energy is unclear.”
Loris sat back in his chair, sure his face was just as blank as everyone else’s. He struggled to put together any kind of coherent response.
“I feel like I’m trapped in a dream. Next I’ll be able to defy gravity,” Aylward said grimly.
“That’s not the end of it. According to the Detonan’s data, the Agarthanons were already sent a probe and an attempt was made to wipe them out, but they survived,” Quade said.
“Then how are we supposed to fight them? How do you shoot and kill a gas?” Panic asked, quickly losing her composure. She had her arms wrapped tightly around her middle as if she were trying to hold herself in place.
“Don’t ask me,” said Quade. “That’s your job to figure out.”
That comforting response left her to glance desperately around the table in search of a lifeline. For a second, Loris wondered if he’d made a mistake and her skills wouldn’t translate. She was unflappable in battle, but senior staff meetings brought an entirely different kind of pressure.
“We all understand that this isn’t going to be like anything we’ve faced before. No one has the answers about what we should do, leaving us with no better option than to make guesses and shoot in the dark. But we are going to reach our destination and attempt to save the Novans before these things can get to them. Is there any way to locate the jellyfish and confirm their location?”