Aurora Rising: The Complete Collection

by G. S. Jennsen

  He nodded slowly. Carefully. “I realize you risked everything for the possibility of peace. Gave up your own happiness so others could be safe. The rest of the galaxy will never know, but I do. So, I guess what I’m trying to say is…if you want, you can stop by the house in the morning. I’ll cook breakfast. And we’ll…talk.”

  Will’s eyes were shining a little too brightly, but he straightened his shoulders and raised his chin a notch. “I can. I will. Whatever it takes. I need you to know that.”

  He needed to leave now or he wouldn’t leave at all. He moved back, creating distance between them.

  “Then I’ll….” Richard stood frozen in the hotel hallway, paralyzed by the suspicion another step, no matter the direction, would irrevocably alter his fate.

  “Oh, damn it all to Hell. Is there a chance I can come in?”

  “A chance? Yeah…” Will’s jaw worked anxiously “…there’s a chance. The door’s open, and I’m asking you to come in. All you have to do is step through.”

  Richard took a deep breath…and did exactly that.

  53

  KRYSK

  SENECAN FEDERATION COLONY

  * * *

  “MOMMY!”

  Isabela wrapped her arms around the flurry of arms and legs and curls and squeezed with everything she had. “I missed you so much, sweetheart.”

  The response was muffled into the fabric of her shirt. “I missed you too, Mommy.”

  She hurriedly wiped away a tear before pulling back to inspect her daughter. No obvious injuries. No rips in her clothing from misadventures. No streaks of red in her eyes from too much crying. Instead they sparkled with the fiery spirit she recognized.

  “I’m sorry I was late. Did you have fun staying at Anna’s house?”

  Marlee’s head bobbed up and down with gusto. “She has a holovid of Punkie Bear & Saskoo we got to play in and we went to the amusement park and we ate spaghetti and sherbet and—”

  She tousled her daughter’s hair, the way Caleb liked to do. “You can tell me all about it on the way home. I need to speak to Anna’s mother a minute. Go grab your bag, and don’t forget Mr. Freckles.”

  Marlee dashed off, and Isabela rose and turned to Theresa Bishop. “I can’t thank you enough. I apologize for the delay. Consider me in your debt.”

  “It’s not a problem. Is your mother doing better?”

  She had lied to Theresa, spinning a tale of a nonexistent illness sickening her mother. A flash of guilt crossed her thoughts, but it wasn’t as though she could tell the woman the truth. “She is, thank you. I was allowed to take her home this morning.”

  “Well, Marlee was a joy, if a bit exhausting. I’m not sure I’m ready to have two of them full-time. She wore me out!”

  Isabela grimaced. “She does that.”

  “You were in Cavare. Did you hear anything about these alie—”

  Marlee crashed into her legs from behind. “I’m ready, Mommy. Can we go to the gelato shop on the way home?”

  “We’ll see. Tell Mrs. Bishop ‘thank you’ for taking care of you.”

  Marlee straightened up and lifted her chin all proper-like. “Thank you for feeding me and taking me to school and letting me play with Anna and letting me sleep in your house, Mrs. Bishop.”

  Theresa shook Marlee’s hand formally. “You’re very welcome, Marlee. I’m sure I’ll see you again soon.”

  Grateful to not have to stay and answer uncomfortable questions regarding aliens and wars and her brother, she ushered Marlee out the door and to the car. After several seconds of convincing her to sit still long enough to strap her in, Isabela finally managed to circle to the driver’s side and climb in.

  “Did you get to see Uncle Caleb when you were at Granmama’s?”

  She quickly schooled her expression. Though his name had been cleared days earlier, he remained unreachable. She refused to believe he was dead but recognized she possessed no justification other than faith to do so.

  “I’m afraid not. He’s on Elathan for work right now.”

  “Can we go to Elathan? I wanna see Uncle Caleb again.”

  Her chest constricted, and for what must be the thousandth time in the last two weeks she wished so badly Daniel were here. Damn him for dying, because she didn’t want to do this alone. “Not right now. I have to go back to work.”

  At Marlee’s forlorn pout she sighed. “Maybe in a few weeks.”

  “Yay!” Her daughter fiddled with Mr. Freckles. “Mommy, the news said stuff about a war. Are bad people coming to shoot at us?”

  “No, sweetie. In fact, I think the war’s going to end real soon.” Director Delavasi had told her the conspiracy she helped reveal was related to the war and there was a good chance hostilities would cease in the near future. He had no answer when it came to the aliens, however. One crisis to the next.

  But for today she wanted to focus on Marlee and on trying to rediscover her life as it had existed before she left for Cavare, difficult though it might prove to be. It felt as though she was walking through a dream with everything but she and her daughter painted in gauze and glycerin, sounds traveling through insulation before reaching her.

  The truth was the world just didn’t look the same once you’d had a knife pressed to your throat.

  Was this what Caleb experienced when he pretended to be an ordinary person—a normal, average assembly line manager building shuttles for a living? Had it been this way for him for the near-month he stayed with her? His visit seemed an eternity ago…from a different, simpler life.

  She hoped he hadn’t felt that way. She hoped in her home he was comfortable enough to be himself, real and whole. She hoped someday she would be able to ask him.

  The truth about her father remained her secret for now. She had no idea if telling her mother was the right thing to do…something else she desperately hoped to be able to ask Caleb, someday. But not today.

  Banishing the dispiriting thoughts to a corner of her mind, she reached over and squeezed Marlee’s hand with a smile. “So what kind of gelato do you want? Strawberry? Chocolate?”

  Her daughter’s eyes widened in glee. “Strawberry-chocolate-watermelon!”

  54

  SIYANE

  PORTAL PRIME

  * * *

  I WISH YOU FORTUNE commensurate to your valor.

  The flecks of light swirling around them like a sea of fireflies vanished and Mesme was gone.

  “Not one for sentimental goodbyes, is it?”

  “Somehow I’m not surprised.” Caleb placed both hands on her shoulders and urged her about to face the same direction he did.

  Her mouth fell open in disbelief. “Yebat’sya mne….”

  Alex could feel him smirking behind her. “It’s beautiful.”

  The Siyane sat peacefully eighty meters away, beyond the final slope of the mountains. Long grasses swayed beneath it in the gentle breeze. It was intact, undisturbed and a pure tungsten silver from bow to stern.

  She cocked her head to the side. A brighter silver rippled over it, creating a pearled effect across the hull. “This shouldn’t have happened so fast—not the entire ship.”

  “Maybe the energy absorbed from two violent encounters with the barrier super-charged the process?”

  She hardly realized she was walking toward it, her gaze never leaving her ship. Each step brought another subtle ripple along the hull. Intellectually she realized every shift in viewing angle presented a marginally different hue and reflection, but it evoked an impression of the hull itself being in constant motion.

  When she reached the ship her hand rose to caress the bow. The material didn’t shine beyond the pearling, though it was subtly lustrous, and the reflection of light off the hull diffused despite the smoothness of the material.

  She scanned the length of the ship for any streaks or marrings, but the transformation appeared complete and utterly flawless.

  “It is beautiful.” She sensed Caleb’s presence and followed the statement with a
peek over her shoulder, at which point he grabbed her and whirled her around, his lips meeting hers in a fierce kiss.

  She let the sensations cascade through her: the warmth of his body, the taste of cinnamon and honey on his lips, the steady, comforting grasp of his arms. For just a moment she allowed herself to forget the ongoing destruction of civilization, the mind-fuck that had been the alien encounters and the daunting tasks lying before them. For just a moment she allowed herself to simply be.

  Then the moment threatened to become too intense for the setting and she pulled away a fraction. “What was that for?”

  “I need a reason to kiss you now?”

  “No, you don’t. But still….”

  His forehead dropped to rest on hers. “For being so damn remarkable.”

  “Oh.” Her voice worked past the lump in her throat. “Come on. We have work to do.”

  “Yes, your mysterious plan to defeat the alien armada. I will fulfill all your most secret and pornographic desires if you tell me what it is.”

  She laughed as she opened the hatch and jogged up the ramp. “Not that work, the other work—and you already are.”

  “More secret and more pornographic—what other work? The shield?”

  Once inside she went straight to the control panel by the data center and fed it the information contained in her internal data store. In seconds the intricate code sprang to life above the table.

  She leaned back against the desk, crossed her arms over her chest and studied it. Her initial impression in the few seconds she’d observed it had been largely correct: ternary programming repeating on an infinite loop. The fundamental qutrit formulation was different as it measured values between -1, 0 and 1, but it was logically consistent. She could shift it to a formulation her systems would understand.

  But would her systems even accept ternary code? Such programming was the province of Artificials and as advanced as the tech in her ship was, it didn’t include ware quite that sophisticated.

  “Alex.”

  She jumped, startled. Caleb leaned into the data center opposite her. “While I am exceptionally skilled at reading you—arguably a master at it in fact—I cannot actually see inside your brain. What are you doing?”

  “Sorry.” She gave him an apologetic smile. “Yes, this is the code from the orb powering their cloaking shield. If I can determine how to port it to the defense systems, we can use it to hide from the enemy ships on both sides of the portal.”

  “Are you sure we should take the time to do this now? Hyperion didn’t seem too pleased by our presence here.”

  “We don’t have a choice, Caleb. You saw those ships chasing us before. We might as well have been broadcasting our location on wideband, and we will not be able to outrun them.”

  “Granted. And this kind of shielding will increase our ability to move around back home. Okay, I’m in. Next question: can you make it work?”

  She nodded deliberately, her mind still racing through the details. “I seriously doubt we’ll be able to generate a pocket of shifted space-time, but I think we can generate a projection replicating the surrounding space. Mostly. Assuming I can make the Siyane understand ternary code.”

  “Your systems merely require the instruction from the code, and those can be expressed in binary qubits easily enough.”

  “Easily enough, huh? But you’re right. I’ll have to write an interpreter for both the input and the output and segregate the new ternary code so it doesn’t corrupt the ware running the ship.”

  Her head fell back to glare at the ceiling. “This will be the worst sort of patchwork hack job. Reality is going to leak out. We’ll have to run the dampener field at max and hope between the two it’s enough. And it’ll take power to run the projection.”

  She dropped her chin to regard him over the table. “We need more power. Ten, maybe twelve percent. Can you find it for me?”

  A hint of astonishment flashed across his features before the trademark smirk replaced it. “You bet your ass I can.”

  Caleb dropped a full plate on her stomach. “Eat something.”

  She glanced at the sandwich then at him. She was sprawled on her back halfway into the exposed engineering core. All three panels protecting the core were removed and stacked along the wall of the lower hull. The plethora of sensors and instruments were physically located throughout the ship—many of them integrated into the outer hull itself—but the connections all ran through this junction. From here the information they carried was transmitted to the HUD, the data center and wherever else it belonged.

  She was hungry. She grabbed the sandwich and rolled on her side to prop up on an elbow.

  He settled cross-legged on the floor with his own sandwich. “How goes it?”

  “Mmhmm….” At his quizzical expression she quit trying to talk while chewing, instead hastening to finish her bite. “I’ve connected the relevant instruments into the module and they seem to be accepting the interpreter. I still need to retrofit the broadcast antennae to accept instructions from the module. Any progress on the power?”

  “Yep. It’ll be 2.4° cooler in here. Can you handle it?”

  She groaned. “You ask too much.”

  “Yeah, well, we also have to go without the gases and heavy metals scanners, but I doubt we’ll miss them.”

  “Is that all?”

  “No. You need to increase the safety catch on the LEN reactor from 105% to 109%.”

  She cringed and considered the implications. A reactor overload meant either a catastrophic loss of power or a catastrophic loss of ship. But it was rated safe to 117%.

  “All right. But tell me that’s everything.”

  “That’s everything.”

  “Thank god.” She eyed the readout coming from the junction box to confirm it hadn’t started throwing errors or spewing gibberish. “By the way, when I was writing the interpreter I had an idea, so I checked the data we recorded in Metis.”

  “And?”

  “I think the interference in our communications was due to a negative quantum field of sorts. Kennedy and I did a project in college on what, if anything, could interfere with a pervasive quantum field like the exanet. Well, mostly I did the project. She had to go home for her brother’s wedding, so I doubt she’d remember it. Anyway, the answer was ‘not much’—but a competing quantum field would decohere the entanglement. The code for this shield includes a -1 measurement point in addition to 0 and 1, which is exactly the sort of thing to cause problems.”

  Caleb shrugged as he took a sip of water. “What do we do about it?”

  “I fed a tiny portion of the dampener field into the comm system. In theory it will shield the qubits on this end from the interference. There’s not much else I can do right now.”

  She motioned for him to hand over his water. He complied while giving her an odd look, and she got the impression he had only been halfway paying attention.

  “So let me see if I get this straight. You want us to merge with Artificials?”

  Her head shook behind her sandwich. “Not merge. Connect.”

  “But something tells me you’re talking about a deeper connection than a remote interface.”

  “It has to be, because using an interface is little more than talking to an Artificial. Even real time, in the middle of a battle a conversation is not going to be enough. There’s a doctor on Sagan who’s at the forefront of cybernetics research. She’s been studying ways Artificials might learn by internalizing the human experience—or individual people’s experiences.”

  “Forgive me if I’m skeptical.”

  “I don’t blame you. Look, the simple fact is we likely can’t defeat this invasion without using Artificials, and not merely as consultants. Only we can’t risk using Artificials, not alone. But if some people—battlefield commanders or ship captains or I don’t know exactly who—were to share a more symbiotic interconnection with them? In theory you’d have those strengths of humanity—creativity, unpredictability, inge
nuity—thinking and acting at quantum speed. We—”

  You have not yet departed.

  Shit. “Get out of my head, Mesme.”

  Caleb regarded her curiously; she made an obscene gesture at the low ceiling.

  My warning was not made in jest. You are no longer safe here.

  “Fine, I get it. We’ll be leaving soon.”

  Silence followed. Satisfied he was gone, she frowned at Caleb. “We need to hurry.”

  55

  EARTH

  LONDON, EARTH ALLIANCE ASSEMBLY

  * * *

  MIRIAM LOCATED HER DESIGNATED seat in the Assembly Chamber, engaged in the required formality of greeting those she knew by sight and squared her shoulders to the required formality of the venue.

  The designated seat appeared to be something of a seat of honor, on the second row and relatively near the center of the semicircle auditorium. She appreciated the recognition but didn’t have time for honorariums or honorifics; she didn’t even have time to be here. Nevertheless she recognized the necessity of making the trip to London in this specific circumstance.

  Her last visit to the Chamber had been to accept a Medal of Honor posthumously awarded to David by the Assembly. She allowed the memory to wash over her, all the pain and pride and honor and despair.

  The crowd grew hushed as the Secretary stepped up to the podium and gaveled the session to order.

  Assembly Speaker Charles Gagnon replaced the Secretary at the podium. He drew in a weighty breath and raised his eyes to the audience. “Ladies and Gentlemen, Representatives and honored guests. These last weeks have been a difficult, trying period for us all, and unfortunately the dark times are not yet drawing to a close.

  “Those of us serving in the Assembly are civil servants, working to do the best we can for our constituents and the Alliance. Like everyone else we are not perfect. We make mistakes. But know this: we always act in a manner we believe is right given the information available to us at that point.