by Ben Jeapes
There was silence on the flight deck as the report was digested.
‘So, how long until the Commonwealth sends another ship anyway?’ Perry said.
Gilmore’s question was more urgent. ‘Is the generator returning a signal?’
The generator was indeed returning a signal. It was returning the fact that apart from not being attached to the ship it was otherwise in one hundred percent working order.
The XCs had one fully functioning example of the prize of Commonwealth technology, a step-through generator that could take them anywhere, and it was defended by an almost unscathed warship that could probably match anything the crippled Pathfinder threw at it.
Pathfinder wasn’t leaving.
Twelve
Day Eighteen: 20 June 2153
‘And that,’ Gilmore finished, ‘is the situation.’ He paused for questions.
The observers had been invited up to the flight deck, at Gilmore’s suggestion in a rare moment of observer empathy. He knew how it felt, being kept cooped up in the granny annex, out of the way and out of the dataflow. They stood in one corner with himself and Sand Strong. Behind them the watch crew hunkered around the central command desk, co-ordinating the repair crews that were working flat out all around the ship.
Rhukaya Bakan was the first to speak. ‘So, they have a step-through generator.’
‘They have our step-through generator,’ said Peter Lardner, the Euro observer.
‘The one we were going to use to get home with.’ The Pacifican, Toshio Shintani.
‘Correct,’ said Gilmore, who had spent the last five minutes explaining exactly that. He forced a smile. If the great game of life had dealt him the hand of a diplomat, he would handle it.
‘I’m impressed you take it so calmly,’ said Bakan. ‘Perhaps worry about your son is clouding your judgement. We, on the other hand . . .’
Gilmore stared at her. You bitch! ‘Listen—’ he said through his teeth.
Sand Strong spoke. ‘Ms Bakan, please! There’s really no cause for alarm. It’s highly unlikely that the XCs will be able to use it.’
‘Oh?’ Something in Bakan’s tone rang an alarm at the back of Gilmore’s mind: it was the ‘oh?’ of an advocate who is giving a hostile witness rope to hang himself. But Sand Strong would not have picked up on it.
‘For a start, a step-through point requires enormous power,’ the Rustie said. ‘The ships used by the XCs are similar to the Earth ships of ten years ago, pre-contact. Their fusion reactors could never provide enough energy.’
‘UK-One came to the Roving using its own power,’ Bakan said.
‘But it required the output of all its reactors, working in series.’ Gilmore added his support to Sand Strong. ‘The XCs have nothing like that many out here.’
Lardner cleared his throat. ‘Doesn’t SkySpy get its power from vacuum energy, like this ship?’
‘Yes,’ Gilmore said.
‘And supposing they get SkySpy’s power back online . . .?’
Bakan shot him a satisfied smile, as if to say, ‘exactly’.
‘That is very unlikely,’ Sand Strong said.
‘But possible?’ Bakan insisted.
‘Not impossible,’ Sand Strong agreed.
‘They’d be starting from scratch.’ Gilmore had never had any patience for remote hypotheticals; he despised the mentality which said that cleverly playing with words could alter the facts. ‘It took us years to copy First Breed technology, and that was when the First Breed technology had been deliberately left lying around for us to find. They’re not going to twig step-through any time soon.’
He could see that he was getting home, at least to most of the observers. A few faint smiles, less hunching of shoulders and crowding forward. They were being reassured.
Most of them. Bakan opened her mouth, no doubt to lay down another clever legalism, so Gilmore got there first.
‘And there’s much, much more to step-through than just opening a point,’ he said. ‘You know the two ends have to be at equivalent gravitational potentials, along a line straight out from the nearest star. Starting in our current position, even if they could open a point then they’d end up in deep space somewhere thousands of light years from Earth or the Roving. To be a threat to us, they’d have to establish the co-ordinates of our worlds, then position themselves along a step-through line and—’
‘And they don’t have those co-ordinates?’ Bakan said.
‘Of course not.’ Gilmore gestured angrily over at the navigator’s position. ‘There are the co-ordinates. The generator takes instructions from here, the flight deck. The nav computers.’
Something about Bakan’s expression told him he still hadn’t made his point. ‘The generator has no computing power of its own? No memory?’
‘No, it—’
‘Actually . . .’ Sand Strong sounded apologetic and he glanced up at Gilmore. ‘There is an in-built memory buffer, of course.’
‘And would that retain the co-ordinates?’ said Bakan.
‘It would . . . yes. It would retain the co-ordinates of the last five or six step-throughs.’
Bakan’s voice was smooth and deadly. It was almost fascinating to watch as she held up her hand and ticked off a count on her fingers. ‘The last step-through was to this place. The one before that was from the Roving to rendezvous with the lifeboat. So the Roving’s co-ordinates will be in the buffer. The one before that will have been from when Pathfinder last entered the Roving system. Where did it come from then?’
‘From an observation station on Sample World Seven. We were bringing in some researchers from . . .’ Sand Strong paused.
‘Do go on,’ Bakan said, very pleasantly.
‘From Earth.’
‘So Earth was four step-throughs ago?’
‘Yes.’ Gilmore almost expected Sand Strong to add, ‘Your Honour’.
‘So Earth’s co-ordinates will be in the buffer too?’
‘It is not impossible.’
Two minutes ago the observers had been showing signs of relaxing. No more.
‘So,’ Bakan said. She crossed her arms and looked at Sand Strong. Then Gilmore. Then Sand Strong again. ‘What are you going to do about it?’
‘Where the hell did she learn so much about Pathfinder? Or about step-through?’ Gilmore muttered as the little party made its way for’ard, to the hangar deck. He couldn’t shake the feeling that Bakan had engineered the whole conversation, to make it reach the point where it seemed a reasonable assumption that the XCs were poised on the verge of step-through. It was disorienting; even more so, when he thought how with a few choice words, she had gone from a sympathetic, pleasant individual – someone who understood about Joel, someone who could share his feelings – to being about as welcome as a leaky spacesuit. The woman still refused to admit that action wasn’t possible and she had insisted on speaking to Bill Perry.
Well, good luck to her. Gilmore knew what Perry would say. Unfortunately, Sand Strong’s orders were to be co-operative with the civilians so they had to waste time actually bothering the marine captain.
‘Our voyages weren’t classified. She could have found details on the public net,’ Sand Strong said by way of answer. They came to the lift doors and waited. ‘As for the technical details of step-through generators, I believe they were made public in your tenure as commodore.’
Gilmore ground his teeth all the way up to the hangar deck.
The smell of fuel, the noise of charging generators – all comfortable and homely to a spacer. Gilmore and Sand Strong led the observers around the landing boats and over to where the marines were checking and stripping their equipment.
‘Captain Perry, could we have a word?’ Sand Strong called. Perry said something to McCallum – it didn’t look like an expression of joy at being summoned from his tasks by a group of civilians – and came over to them.
‘Sand Strong?’ he said, curt but polite. The Rustie was after all his superior officer. Perry had never e
xpected to take orders from a non-human but he would do it properly.
‘Ms Bakan would like to know—’
‘Ms Bakan wants us to recapture or destroy the step-through generator,’ Gilmore said. ‘Preferably before the XCs turn Earth into another Dead World.’
‘I would value your military assessment of the situation,’ Bakan said with a bright smile. ‘Please.’
Perry frowned at Gilmore, at Sand Strong. I was interrupted for this? Gilmore did his best to say ‘I know, but what can you do?’ by means of a shrug.
‘I expect my military assessment matches what you’ve already been told,’ Perry said. ‘If we were closer, within range, we could pick it off with the ship’s guns and wait for the Commonwealth to rescue us. But we’re way out of range, so we stay put. Ship’s gunnery isn’t my specialty but I know that much.’
‘A retrieval mission?’ Bakan said. ‘You and your people go out in your armour?’
Perry snorted: he had yet to learn even to try and be polite to civilians and for once Gilmore was one hundred percent behind him. ‘We’re, what, a light second away from SkySpy? It’s a little out of our armour’s range.’
‘How much by?’
‘Oh, about a couple of years. A light second is a long way on thruster power.’
‘Well, we do seem to be exhausting the possibilities . . .’ Bakan said.
‘Indeed,’ said Sand Strong. ‘Please trust my professional judgement. The chances of the XCs successfully operating the step-through generator are minimal—’
‘But not non-existent.’ Bakan looked back up at Perry. ‘Captain, please can you tell us all about Device Ultimate?’
Time seemed to stand still. Gilmore, who had no idea what Device Ultimate was, still felt as if the air around him had frozen. Perry had instantly grown a layer of composure that Gilmore was certain hid a core of deep shock.
Even Sand Strong was surprised. Gilmore knew enough Rustie body language to tell that.
‘Device Ultimate?’ said one of the observers. ‘Is he a Rustie?’
‘It’s not a First Breed name,’ Sand Strong said. ‘It is . . . where exactly did you hear about it, Ms Bakan?’
Not on the public net, I’ll bet, Gilmore thought.
‘It’s what Captain Perry and his people retrieved from SkySpy,’ Bakan said. ‘Tell us about it, Captain, please.’
Perry looked at Sand Strong. ‘Your orders, sir?’
Even Gilmore was hanging on every word. He of all people should have known what was on SkySpy and he was sure Device Ultimate had never featured in any briefing.
‘It’s a bomb,’ Sand Strong finally said.
The observers breathed again. ‘Well, what good is—’ someone said.
‘It’s more than that, surely,’ said Bakan.
‘Why don’t you tell us?’ Gilmore challenged.
Bakan blinked innocently at him. ‘And spread classified information around?’
‘It was a safety device installed by the Ones Who Command,’ Sand Strong said. ‘We learnt of it from Captain McLaughlin’s sealed orders that came from Admiral Chase. Where Admiral Chase found out about it, I don’t know.’
There was a long pause. He obviously wasn’t going to volunteer more.
Bakan sighed. ‘Oh, all right. I expect my government and the admiral had the same informant. This is what we’ve been told by March Sage Savour.’
Another of those sudden temperature changes. Sand Strong, Gilmore noticed with a sinking feeling, had suddenly become much more attentive. Rusties had been created as servants by genetic manipulation, before the Ones Who Command wiped themselves out, and old habits died hard. March Sage Savour in his time had been Senior of the Roving. March Sage Savour had spent the four years since the Roving Mission in exile on an island in the Roving’s tropics, while his comrades died around him. But March Sage Savour still clung onto life and apparently he still knew how to shove his oar in.
‘March Sage Savour was on the mission that discovered the XCs,’ Bakan said. ‘He witnessed the xenocide at first hand, and a worst case scenario for him was to have fleets of XC ships pouring through step-through points onto the Roving. He and the other Ones Who Command therefore devised the worst case solution. Device Ultimate contains a highly powerful grav controller. A miniature black hole that can be turned on and off at will. It could be put on board one of your landing boats operating under automatic pilot. It could be shielded and flown into the sun’s interior. At full boost, the process could be accomplished in days. The grav controller would cause sufficient fluctuations there to destabilize the sun and cause it to explode.’
No-one spoke; everyone’s mind was taken up with the vision. Bakan continued, almost as an afterthought: ‘Naturally it has a lot of safeguards, it requires authentication codes and all that to operate, but March Sage Savour gave them to me before we left.’
Gilmore had once unexpectedly found himself in command of a ship armed with nuclear weapons. That experience, he now found, was far down the scale of possible surprises.
‘It . . .’ he said. ‘I mean, I . . . they never told us about it. It was on SkySpy all this time and they never told us.’
‘No,’ Bakan agreed. ‘They wouldn’t, would they? They weren’t going to trust a device like that to the First Breed or to humans.’
‘Isn’t it a bit . . . drastic?’ said Lardner.
‘It won’t cause a nova,’ Bakan said. ‘The XC race will survive. What will happen is the top one percent of the sun’s outer layer will erupt. There’ll be a blast of plasma and radiation and a magnetic pulse that will wipe out the XC civilization. Knock them back into the Stone Age.’
‘And us?’ Gilmore said.
‘We shelter behind the Shield, appropriately enough. The planet would take a knocking but we’d be safe. Then we stay put and await another rescue attempt by the Commonwealth – one is bound to come. I have the exact specs to show you, Sand Strong, if you’re interested.’
‘Millions of XCs would die. All the ones in space and on the day side of Homeworld, for a start,’ Gilmore said. He was so caught up with the horror of the vision that it even took a moment for the additional thought to register: Joel, too.
‘What’s wrong with you?’ Bakan shouted. Her composure, the calm and quiet lawyerly tones, were suddenly gone. ‘They could be studying the generator right now, working out how it works, sending its details back to Homeworld. Even if we recapture the physical item, the knowledge will have spread and they’ll . . . they’ll . . .’
She caught herself abruptly, took a breath, let some colour return to her cheeks. Gilmore studied her in fascination.
‘My God, you’re terrified, aren’t you? The Commonwealth has always had a healthy respect for them but you . . . you are honest to God, pants-wetting terrified.’
‘Half the XC population or the entire Earth,’ said Bakan. ‘It’s no contest.’
‘Prevent another xenocide by becoming xenocides ourselves?’ Gilmore said.
‘If necessary.’ She glared at Sand Strong. ‘You must see that!’
‘Sand Strong . . .’ Gilmore said.
‘The decision is mine to make!’ Sand Strong was unexpectedly vehement. Bringing the Ones Who Command back into the equation had been a powerful stroke. ‘I am now Senior of this ship.’
And Gilmore had to respect that.
Bakan didn’t. ‘Your orders were to evaluate the situation and take appropriate action,’ she said. ‘You can decide to use Device Ultimate, with the full sanction of the Commonwealth government . . .’
‘Ms Bakan, be silent or be removed from this group,’ Sand Strong said. Then there was a very long pause. ‘Captain Perry?’
‘Sir?’
‘Where is Device Ultimate at this precise moment?’
‘Over there, sir.’ Perry indicated the three large boxes to one side of the bay.
‘Detail a twenty-four hour sentry watch. Armed.’
‘Already done, sir.’
‘Than
k you. No-one is to approach it without the personal, signed approval of myself or Captain McLaughlin.’ Sand Strong looked up at Bakan. ‘Our orders were to retrieve Device Ultimate, to prevent it from falling into XC hands. We’ve followed our orders. Now, we will continue to repair Pathfinder and await rescue ourselves.’
‘And if they work out how step-through works?’ said Bakan.
‘They will not.’
‘But they’ll have the knowledge,’ Bakan insisted, ‘which they could use at any time.’
‘We’re not a secret to them any more,’ Gilmore snapped. His patience with this creature had stretched as thin as it could before holes started showing. ‘The Commonwealth will open negotiations with them. We’ll talk to them—’
‘You can’t talk to these creatures!’ Bakan was all but screaming. She swallowed, gained some composure. ‘Captain Perry.’ Bakan turned to the marine. ‘You’ve fought them. You’ve seen what they’re like. You’ve lost men to them, good men, you’ve seen the corpses on SkySpy.’
Perry was stony faced. ‘I have my orders, ma’am.’
Bakan paused. ‘You take your orders from Sand Strong?’
‘Of course.’
‘Yes, of course.’ It was obviously an internal struggle, but she mastered it. She bowed to Sand Strong. ‘Thank you for considering my option. I couldn’t have asked for more. Excuse me, I’m returning to my cabin.’
She turned and headed for the elevator, leaving the rest of the observers, Gilmore, Perry and Sand Strong standing in bewilderment.
Rhukaya Bakan was the first observer to get back to the granny annex. Apart from her it was deserted. She put a hand on the table to steady herself, took two or three deep breaths. She had almost lost it.
But gradually the heavy breathing died down; then her shoulders shook slightly, and then a chuckle crept out of her. In the secure solitude of the annex, it turned into a full-bodied laugh. Yes, she thought, a pretty convincing display of fright and terror. She hadn’t expected it to convert Sand Strong there and then, but it should have planted seeds and that was what counted. It was already an unexpected bonus that Pathfinder’s human captain was out of the running.