Erebus

by Ralph Kern

  “Anyway, Layton, move your ass. It’s my turn.”

  ***

  “I am sorry.” Agapov looked it. The surly Federation agent had told us that he couldn’t come with us. Now we were saying our goodbyes in the airlock of Gagarin.

  “It’s okay,” Vance replied, surprising me again with her soft demeanor. “It’s a hell of an ask.”

  Agapov nodded, unable to meet our eyes. Since he had made it clear he wasn’t making the jump, his surly manner had changed and become more withdrawn; he was tortured by his decision. The choice to hunt Frain and Drayton had lost out to the more instinctive drive to return to his wife and young son.

  “Pavel,” I said with a strained and probably obviously false levity, “you’re still on the team. We need someone to stay here and do the hard work while we’re gallivanting around the galaxy. I’ve got my people at The Hague looking into clues back here. Coordinate with them; you can still play an important part in this.”

  He nodded, his jaw clenched tight. I knew the feeling. Sometimes, I had not been able to join my team when they faced a shitty situation. It was heart breaking. The desire to stay with your team, to have their backs through thick and thin, always burned deep and hot. But this man had a family, and that, to him, was more important. I couldn’t blame him. After all, why had we signed up to this line of work if not to protect our loved ones?

  “Besides, we need someone to apply the thumbscrews to Rosenberg, or Smith, or whatever we’re calling him today,” I said about our informant from the Hibernia station. “One of us is the best person for the job.”

  “Yes,” he growled and glared over at Rosenberg. “Rest assured, he will tell me everything.”

  “Yeah…” I frowned slightly. I glanced at the silent Rosenberg, drifting a small distance away under one of Major Phillips’s troops. “Just…don’t actually use thumbscrews.”

  For the first time in days, Agapov grinned. He drifted forward and slapped my back, sending us both spinning around the entry to the airlock. “Fear not, my friend. I will resist the temptation.”

  “See you in a few years.”

  “And you.”

  The rest of the team said their goodbyes before Agapov led Rosenberg into the lock. It slammed shut with a sense of finality.

  CHAPTER 37

  GAGARIN

  Gagarin slowed as it approached the swarm of gateways at the Lagrange point. This was the hub of humanity’s fledging interstellar society. From daring explorers to colonists, everyone who wanted to go to another star came through here.

  “Magnificent, isn’t it?” Frampton’s eyes were positively glowing, whether from the reflection of the holograms, his HUD set to bright, or simple enthusiasm, I didn’t know. I suspected the latter.

  I watched on the holotank as Gagarin entered the swarm of gates, each one a giant lattice of gleaming girders and equipment modules, ready to catapult whatever was flown into them across the light-years. Except catapult was the wrong word. I was getting nervous.

  “You know, I read somewhere that these damn things kill you. They just create a copy of you at the other end,” I said, my dry throat making my voice croak a little.

  “I guess they do,” Frampton said distractedly.

  I half grunted a scoff. He had the therapeutic manner of a slop bucket beside a counselor’s couch—this wasn’t what I’d wanted to hear.

  “Oh, um,” he stuttered as he turned and focused on me. “I wouldn’t worry about it.”

  “Are you kidding me?” I was unable to contain a nervous laugh.

  “No, seriously. There was a congressional hearing back in…oh, 2110ish, I think it was, just before the first gate was used. They had everyone there for it: scientists, priests, ministers, rabbis, imams—the works. They spent the best part of a year kicking it around the table. Eventually they figured that God would merely transport your soul into the new body at the other end.”

  Yeah, I had heard about that. Undoubtedly their view was assisted by some massive donations Helios Heavy Industries, the creators of the original gates, had made to their respective faiths. At least I hadn’t seen the pope do a papal visit to the Tau Ceti colony yet.

  “That’s…reassuring,” I said. “And for those of us who are, at best, agnostic?”

  Frampton merely shrugged.

  “So if we go through the gateway now, it’ll take eight years for the signal to get to Sirius. What happens if the gateway’s not there at the other end? You know, if it’s been destroyed somehow.”

  “In that case, we’d simply disappear,” Frampton said matter-of-factly. I probably had a look of horror on my face from his response. “But the system has so much redundancy in it, I doubt that would ever happen. Each gateway is incredibly robust. It can self-repair from near-catastrophic damage. Even if it couldn’t, the original Von Neumann gateships always build a spare gateway, which will instantly take over. And if both get wiped out somehow, a neighboring star will dispatch a VN gateship to put the system back in the network. The whole system is built on redundancy upon redundancy.”

  “Okay, but what—”

  “Look,” he interrupted my constant questions, changing the topic and pointing at one gateway that seemed somehow bigger yet less advanced than the rest. It was all girders and big, boxy clusters of equipment as opposed to the smooth and modern lines of the others. “That one was the first: the Tau Ceti Gateway. That’s the one Endeavour first traveled through.”

  “Uh huh.” The sheer historical weight of the massive artifact sweeping by was lost on me. I knew it had a place in history on par with Endeavour, Sputnik, Apollo 11, the original Zheng He Mars ship, or Trident, the first ship to Jupiter, but it just didn’t feel real at the moment. My awe and respect for the history and significance of this gate was a little lost under a few concerns about self-preservation.

  “They are amazing pieces of technology.” Frampton had moved to the large display window, resting his hand on the screen in a curiously childlike pose.

  “So I gather.” I was feeling queasy now that the time was getting close.

  “I mean, the scanners in them can instantly map everything—every atom, which direction they’re going in. You know, if you start moving your hand, for example, as we pass through the gate, it will even map the electrical impulses and muscle movements that you are making. When we come out the other end, you will carry on making that movement.”

  “Great.” I probably still wasn’t sounding convinced, but it was too late to back out now.

  “Of course, to get such resolution, it quite literally has to rip you apart.”

  “Will you shut the hell up!” My heart was beating so fast that my HUD was flashing a blinking red heart warning in the corner of my field of vision. Much more of Frampton’s reassurances and I would have to order my medical implants to regulate my body functions.

  “And it will transform all that information into quantum information that is sent from this gateway to the destination instantly.”

  “Hold on,” I said, gripping onto that piece of information. I blurted out the obvious question. “If it sends it instantly, why don’t we travel instantly?”

  “And then it will reassemble it again instantly. What?” Frampton said, finally responding to me. “Oh. Well, it can send the data instantly, but it’s all garbled up. When it arrives, it’s just a mess.”

  And to think, I thought that asking questions would chill me out. Big mistake, that was.

  “I didn’t cover more than the basics of gate theory at college, but what I do know is that the problem with quantum communication is something called decoherence. The information is all messed up, encoded, they call it. So they have to rectify it. To do that, the gate has to send the key to put it all back together again, and that is done the old-fashioned way. Basically, they fire a communications laser at the receiving gate. That’s what limits us to light speed.”

  I watched Gagarin slide closer to the gaping lattice entrance of the Sirius Gateway.

/>   “So that alien gate seems to work roughly the same way as ours?”

  “Seems to,” Frampton said. “There are some differences. Quite a lot of the technology seems to be substantially better than ours in terms of scanning. Red Star hasn’t managed to find the power source, though, or a transmission medium they use to rectify the data, but we know there’s no laser.”

  “So how do you think they’re doing it? How have they managed to lick this garbling problem?”

  “Beats me. I’m a CIS analyst with a major in physics. I don’t exactly keep abreast of this stuff,” Frampton said dismissively. “Magic? Certainly seems that way. The Io facility was just a great big scanner and quantum encoder. It shouldn’t even work since it seems to be missing half the components it needs. They didn’t manage to explore the whole of the facility, but that stuff should be pretty obvious.”

  I thought back to Drayton’s HUD playback. Clearly it had worked, however they had managed to get around the problems.

  Gagarin was closing on the Sirius Gateway, lining up with the opening of the structure. Lights were pulsating in sequence, guiding us. I watched on the holotank as our ship eased backward until it was completely enveloped in the crisscross of girders, beams, and boxes.

  We were ready to go. We had all said our goodbyes. This was it. There would be no long countdown; we were as good to go as we could be.

  “Everyone, please take a seat. We are preparing for transit,” Captain Vasily called over open the link.

  I seated myself in one of the mess chairs and, probably rather redundantly, strapped myself in. Frampton had given a wry grin at this but knew enough to keep quiet.

  I could feel warmth on my skin. It wasn’t uncomfortable, more like the feeling of being out in the sun on a hot day. It started to build, and the room seemed to brighten.

  “I never expected to feel it,” Frampton said. I looked over at him and saw that his hands were gripping his seat arms so hard that his knuckles were whitening. Glad I wasn’t the only one feeling a bit on the nervous side.

  The heat and light grew. My skin started to prickle. It felt like it was building to a crescendo. The world was being whitewashed, the pleasant warmth moving through discomfort into pain and then on to agony.

  Just as the light turned blinding and the pain became unbearable, it snapped off—just ended, like someone had flicked a switch. I blinked and looked around and saw that Frampton, Vance, and Sihota were doing the same, questioning looks on their faces.

  “What happened?” I asked. The pain left no traces; it was simply gone. I didn’t even know if I had imagined it—some kind of psychosomatic reaction to the thought that the gateway was shattering me into my component atoms? “Why didn’t it work?”

  “God, that was awful,” Vance breathed.

  “All hands, this is the bridge,” Vasily called out over the Link. “We have successfully transited into the Sirius star system. We are here.”

  INTERLUDE

  “Frain,” Voice Patrice said coldly. “A name that would be scribed on the Linked Consensus if it wasn’t vaulted. A man responsible for the Two Great Cacophonies: when Io was destroyed and the de-spin of Concorde when every member of the Link cried out at once in fear. However, we want our children to be able to sleep at night, so we keep the name Frain locked away. It took us years to repair the damage that man caused.”

  “It goes to show,” the host smiled, “even the Linked’s vaunted egalitarianism and openness falls down when it comes to the Io Incident. A true accomplishment, Voice, that the secret has held for as long as it has.”

  “And it seems you are not the only one who has violated the OST.” The Voice of the Linked looked pointedly at Kara Hanley.

  “Voice, the fact I am here should tell you I’ve made my peace with whatever action the good people in this room choose to take.” Hanley looked around the table. “I may have been granted immunity for assisting the authorities, but the scandal will sink Red Star if it’s revealed. And I personally will undoubtedly be the sacrificial lamb in an effort to stave off the wolves.”

  “Yes, about that…” Patrice glanced at President Lance Hopkins, the current chair of the Treaty nations. “It seems the Linked are the only ones not informed on the discovery of this artifact?”

  “There is much hidden in the archives,” Hopkins said offhandedly. “The trick is knowing when we can release it…for the good of all humanity, of course.”

  “And I assure you, you are not the only one left out,” one of the other power players in the room growled.

  The host held his hands out. “As you can see, there is plenty of blame to go around this room.”

  “So it seems,” Patrice said. “Congratulations, deft maneuvering. You have built up some powerful allies just by telling this Trent’s story.

  “Thank you,” the host smiled again.

  “More importantly, though—” Patrice said in a measured tone, “and do not get me wrong, you will have questions to answer on this silence—why would anyone destroy such a significant artifact?”

  “Oh, the story isn’t over yet.” The host glanced at the two figures standing in shadows at the edge of the room. One of them nodded an encouragement to him. “Let us continue Trent’s tale, shall we?”

  PART TWO 2192 CE

  CHAPTER 38

  GAGARIN

  “Now this is a surprise—two starships in four days,” the hologram of the petite Korean lady from Sangam Consolidated said. “And to what do we owe the pleasure?”

  Gagarin had pulled out of the Sirius gate and was drifting away from it slowly but steadily while we figured out just where the hell Erebus had gone.

  The system was a vast, sparsely populated expanse, and Erebus was nowhere to be seen. The closest thing to a capital it had was the ice world colony called, rather optimistically, Twilight Garden. The rest of the population was scattered around various stations and ships cruising around, researching the binary star system.

  “Good morning, Sirius Gate Control.” Vasily exchanged a look with Vance on the bridge. It was clear he was uncomfortable with subterfuge, but nonetheless, he dropped straight into our cover story. We didn’t want to panic the system by telling them a one-man weapon of mass destruction was wandering around their system. “Nothing too glamorous, I’m afraid. We are currently tasked with an exploration charter with a multisystem remit. Our ongoing destination is Ross 780. Some of the crew have friends and family in Sirius, and we’ve been allowed to make a minor detour due to a private welfare issue.”

  “Oh?” The lady looked puzzled, and no wonder; a minor diversion just to drop in and see friends would objectively add years to any round trip. “Is it something I can help with?”

  “That’s a negative.” Vasily gave a weak laugh. This guy couldn’t even tell a white lie. I could see Phillips standing in the corner of the bridge rolling her piercing electric-blue eyes. “As I say, it’s a private matter, and the bosses are keen to keep it that way.”

  “Very well.” The lady gave a shrug. The look on her face suggested that she was already generating some gossip for what must have been a small-town-community mentality. “If you decide we can provide any assistance, please ask.”

  “You say another ship came through?” Vasily asked. It wasn’t exactly a perfect segue.

  “Yes,” she said, the puzzled look returning. “Her transponder code said she was a Helios ship, Erebus. The captain just passed the customary compliments and went straight to A-drive. They were in quite the hurry.”

  “Well, that sounds rude,” Vasily said. “It’s always nice to say hello to a fellow explorer ship. What was her last heading?”

  “Captain Vasily, you mind telling us what is going on?” The controller looked straight at the captain, locking onto him with her eyes like they were targeting computers.

  “Standby,” he replied hopelessly, his reserves of slyness well and truly used up. He looked at Vance, the de facto spokesperson. She gave a sigh and stepped forward into t
he communication ring to address the Sirius controller.

  “Good morning. Joan Vance, United States Combined Intelligence Service here. I apologize for the caginess; however, we have a somewhat sensitive matter to take care of. There is some concern that one of the crew of Erebus has committed a criminal act, and we have been given orders to follow and apprehend him.” Vance was a smooth operator.

  “Okay, the truth at last. Thank you for that.” The woman’s brow furrowed. “And may I ask what the nature of this criminal act is?”

  “I’m afraid not. I’m sure you would appreciate a certain amount of discretion if you were in this suspect’s position. After all, one is innocent until proven guilty. So if you could please just furnish us with Erebus’s last known heading, we would be obliged. I am transmitting an OST authorization code for that information.”

  “This isn’t Sol, Joan,” the woman replied testily. Her eyes unfocused briefly, probably reading the OST authorization, before she snapped back to attention. She was obviously annoyed that we weren’t telling her the whole story. “We don’t have the same sensor coverage. The best I can tell you is she went to A-drive headed toward Sirius B. Probably Twilight Garden. That’s where the majority of the Sirius infrastructure is.”

  “Thank you, Sirius Control. Rest assured, we will tell you what we can, when we can,” Vance smiled.

  A tight nod came in response. “We don’t want any trouble here. We may be from many organizations, but we are one small community.”

  “Understood. Out.”

  ***

  Gagarin slammed back into normal space a few million miles away from the glistening midnight-blue world of Twilight Garden and fired her antimatter torch, sliding her into orbit.

  The planet was renowned for being one of the prettier in the vicinity of Sol. If and when interstellar tourism ever took off in star systems that offered nothing more than a glorious vista, it would definitely find itself on the Hypernet travel review sites.